......................................................... RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & CO., 90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 1870. CO NT E N T S. CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET, FYTTE FIRST........................................................... 5 FYTTE SECONP................................................. 15 FYTTE THIRD............................................................... 24 A TALE OF EXPIATION................... 33 MORNING MONOLOGUE................................... 44 THE FIELD OF FLOWERS...................................... 50 COTTAGES...........................55......... 55 AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY 72............................. 72 INCH CRUIN................................................. CU N91 A DAY AT WINDERMERE........................................... 95 THE MOORS, PROLOGUE......................................... 103 FLIGHT FIRST-GLEN ETIVE.....................1............,... 113 FLIGHT SECOND -THE COVES OF CRUACHAX.............................. 122 FLIGHT THIRD-STILL LIFE............................................. 129 FLIGHT FOURTH-DowN RIVER AND UP LOCH.................... 140 HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM................................ 150 THE HOLY CHILD.......................................... 157 OUR PARISH............61........................................... MAY-DAY 168.................................................... 168 SACRED POETRY, CHAPTER I..2..................................... 2 CHAPTER II................................................................... 188 CHAPTER III................................................................. 195 CHAPTER IV..................................................... 200 CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY, FIRST CANTICLE................................................ 203 SECOND CANTICLE.................................................... 213 THIRD CANTICLE......................................................... 222 FOURTH CANTICLE........................................................... 228 DR. KITCHINER, FIRST COURSE.................................................. 234 SECOND COURSE.........., 2....................................... 238 THIRD COURSE......................................................... 241 FOURTH COURSE......................................................... 245 SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS, FIRST RHAPSODY...................................... 249 SECOND RHAPSODY................................................ 255 A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON........................ 260 THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT......................... 267 CHRISTMAS DREAMS...................................2............... 271 OUR WINTER QUARTERS......27...................... 278 STROLL TO GRASSMERE, FInST SAUN1 TER............................................ 287 SECOND SAUNTER..o....... a. *.. o. * -...... 297 L'ENVOY............................................. o 303 3 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. human character, pray what is there at all sur FYTTE FIRST. prising in your being madly fond of shooting — and your brother Tom just as foolish about TEiERE is a fine and beautiful alliancebetween fishing-and cousin Jack perfectly insane cn all pastimes pursued on flood, field, and fell. fox-hunting-while the old gentleman your faThe principles in human nature on which they ther, in spite of wind and weather, perennial depend, are in all the same; but those princi- gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing of ples are subject to infinite modifications and the white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire varieties, according to the difference of indi- wolds-and uncle Ben, as if just escaped from vidual and national character. All such pas- Bedlam or St. Luke's, with Dr. Haslam at his times, whether followed merely as pastimes, heels, or with a few hundred yards' start of or as professions, or as the immediate means Dr. Warburton, is seen galloping, in a Welsh of sustaining life, require sense, sagacity, and wig and strange apparel, in the rear of a pack knowledge of nature and nature's laws; nor of Lilliputian beagles, all barking as if they less, patience, perseverance, courage even, and were as mad as their master, supposed to be bodily strength or activity, while the spirit in chase of an invisible animal that keeps which animates and supports them is a spirit eternally doubling in field and forest-" still of anxiety, doubt, fear, hope, joy, exultation, hoped for, never seen," and well christened and triumph —in the heart of the young a by the name of Escape! fierce passion-in the heart of the old Ea Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. passion still, but subdued and tamed down, All people have thirty-three faculties. Now without, however, being much dulled or dead- there are but twenty-four letters in the alphaened, by various experience of all the myste- bet; yet how many languages-some six-thouries of the calling, and by the gradual subsid- sand we believe, each of which is susceptible ing of all impetuous impulses in the frames of many dialects! No wonder, then, that you of all mortal men beyond perhaps threescore, might as well try to count all the sands on the when the blackest head will be becoming gray, sea-shore as all the species of sportsmen. the most nervous knee less firmly knit, the There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any most steely-springed instep less elastic, the man with a large and sound development keenest eye less of a far-keeker, and, above from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and all, the most boiling heart less like a caldron deer-stalking-from being, in short, a univeror a crater-yea, the whole man' subject to sal genius in sports and pastimes. Heaven some dimness or decay, and, consequently, has made us such a man. the whole duty of man like the new edition Yet there seems to be a natural course oi of a book, from which many passages that progress in pastimes. We do not now speak formed the chief glory of the editioprinceps have of marbles-or knuckling down at taw-or been expunged-the wh2le characterofthestyle trundling a hoop-or pall-lall-or pitch and corrected withoutbeingtherebyimproved —just toss-or any other of the games of the school iike the later editions of the Pleasures of Ima- playground. We restrict ourselves to what, gination, which were written by Akenside when somewhat inaccurately perhaps, are called he was abc ut twenty-one, and altered by him field-sports. Thus angling seems the earliest at forty-tc the exclusion or destruction of of them all in the order of nature. There the many most splendida vitia, by which process new-breeched urchin stands on the low bridge the poem, in our humble opinion, was shorn of the little bit burnie! and with crooked pin, of its brightest beams, and suffered disastrous baited with one unwrithing ringofa deadworm, twilight and eclipse-perplexing critics. and attached to a yarn-thread —for he has not Now, seeing that such pastimes are in num- yet got into hair, and is years off gut-his rod her almost infinite, and infinite the varieties of of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will 6 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. ne si-and during all his play-hours, as forget- was possible, and dashing upon him like an ful of his primer as if the weary art of print- osprey, soars up with him in his talons to the ing had never been invented, day after day, bank, breaking his line as he hurries off to a week after week, month after month, in mute, spot of safety twenty yards from the pool, and deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soul- then flinging him down on a heath-surrounded engrossing hope of some time or other catch- plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him bounce ing a minnow or a beardie! A tug-a tug! about till he is tired, and lies gasping with un-'With face ten times flushed and pale by turns frequent and feeble motions,bright and beauti. ere you could count ten, he at last has strength, ful, and glorious with all his yellow light and in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull away crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred at the monster-and there he lies in his beauty in his scaly splendour, beneath a sun that never among the gowans and the greensward, for he shone before so dazzingly: but now the ra has whapped him right over his head and far diance of the captive'creature is dimmer and away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, obscured, for the eye of day winks and seems and, at the very least, two inches long! Off he almost shut behind that slow-sailing mass of flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sisters and brothers, and cousins, and all and sunshine. the neighbourhood, holding the fish aloft in Springs, summers, autumns, winters-each both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, like within itself longer, by many times longer than a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten the whole year of grown-up life, that slips at at the first blush of cold blood on his small last through one's fingers like a knotless thread fumy fingers. He carries about with him, up- -pass over the curled darling's brow; and stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate; look at him now, a straight and strengthy striphe will not wash his hands before dinner, for ling, in the savage spirit of sport, springing he exults in the silver scales adhering to the over rock-ledge.after rock-ledge, nor heeding.thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the aught as he plashes knee-deep, or waistbandbaggy's maw-and at night, " cabin'd, cribb'd, high, through river-feeding torrents, to the gloconfined," he is overheard murmuring in his rious music of his running and ringing reel, sleep-a thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely seeking yet infant dreams! with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white From that hour Angling is no more a mere breakers of the sea. No hazel or willow wand, delightful day-dream, haunted by the dim hopes no half-crown rod of ash framed by village of imaginary minnows, but a reality —an art- wright, is now in his practised hands, of which a science-of which the flaxen-headed school- the very left is dexterous; but a twenty-feet boy feels himself to be master-a mystery in rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and a-glitter which he has been initiated; and off he goes with the preserving varnish, limber as the atnow all alone, in the power of successful pas- tenuating line itself, and lithe to its topmost sion to the distant brook-brook a mile off- tenuity as the elephant's proboscis-the hiccory with fields, and hedges, and single trees, and and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw —from little groves, and a huge forest of six acres, be- butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees tween it and the house in which he is boarded and beautifully less," the beau-ideal of a rod or was born! There flows on the slender music by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses of the shadowy shallows —there pours the materialized! Afish-fat, fair, and forty! "She deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The is a salmon, therefore to be woo'd-she is a scared water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, salmon, therefore to be won"-but shy, timid, and dipping, disappears among the airy bubbles, capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now to him a new sight of joy and wonder. And oh! full of fear, like any other female whom the how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yel- cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in lowing along the braes, where leap the lambs, spite of all her struggling, will bring to the less happy than he, on the knolls of sunshine! gasp at last; and then with calm eyes behold His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod her lying in the shade dead or worse than dead, in two pieces-yes, his line is of hair twisted- fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the plaited by his own soon-instructed little fingers. lustre of her beauty, insensible to sun or By Heavens, he is fishing with the fly! And shower, even the most perishable of all perishthe Fates, who, grim and grisly as they are able things in a world of perishing!-But the painted to be by full-grown, ungrateful, lying salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to poets, smile like angels upon the paidler in the spring to the plunging-stone. There, suddenly, brook, winnowing the air with their wings into instinct with new passion, she shoots out of western breezes, while at the very first throw the foam like a bar of silver bullion; and, re. the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath lasping into the flood, is in another moment at the bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and the very head of the water fall! Give her the then a sudden plunge, and then a race like butt-give her the butt-or she is gone for ever lightning, changes at once the child into the with the thunder into ten fathom deep!-Now boy, and shoots through his thrilling and aching comes the trial of your tackle-and when was heart the ecstasy of a new life expanding in Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a cataract 1 Her snout is southwards-right up sudden brightens up the sky. Fortuna favet the middle of the main current of the hill-born fortibus-and with one long pull, and strong river, as if she would seek its very course pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelve- where she was spawned! She still swims incher on the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the swift, and strong, and deep-and the line goes.nly bay in all the burn where such an exploit steady, boys, steady-stiff and steady as a Tory CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 7 in the roar of Opposition. There is yet in stem and round in head, visible and audible an hour's play in her dorsal fin-danger in too from afar the bee-resounding umbrage, the flap of her tail-and yet may her silver alike on stormy sea-coast and in sheltered in shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. land vale, still loving the roof of the fisher Why the river was yesterday in spate, and she man's or peasant's cottage. is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in waterfalls are now level with the flood, and shape like a very musket, such as soldier: she meets with no impediment or obstruction bear-a Christmas present from parent, once -the course is clear-no tree-roots here-no a colonel of volunteers —nor feeble to discharge floating branches-for during the night they the pea-bullet or barley-shot, formidable to face have all been swept down to the salt loch. and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hin In medio tutissinras ibis-ay, now you feel she der-end of playmate, scornfully yet fearfully begins to fail-the butt tells now every time exposed. But the shooter soon tires of such you deliver your right. What! another mad ineffectual trigger-and his soul, as well ar leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems his hair, is set on fire by that extraordinary absolutely to have discovered, or rather to be compound-Gunpowder. He begins with burnan impersonation of, the Perpetual Motion. ing off his eyebrows on the King's birthday Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea- squibs and crackers follow, and all the pleacook!-you in the tattered blue breeches, with sures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the off a gun —" and follow to the field some wardevil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?l —Ha! like lord"-in hopes of being allowed todlisWatty Ritchie, my man, is that you? God charge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto bless your honest laughing phiz! What Watty, has made his last point, and the half-hidden would you think of a Fish like that about chimneys of home are again seen smoking Peebles? Tam Grieve never gruppit sae heavy among the trees. This is his first practice in a ane since first he belanged to the Council.- fire arms, and from that hour he is-a Shooter. Curse that colley! Ay! well done, Watty! Then there is in most rural parishes-and Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks- of rural parishes alone do we condescend to:f that white one, with caving horns, kicking speak-a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver heels, and straight-up tail, come bellowing by on the butt-perhaps one that originally served between us and the river, then, " Madam! all in the Scots Greys. It is bought, or borrowed, is lost, except honour!" If we lose this Fish by the young shooter, who begins firing first at six o'clock, then suicide at seven. Our will at barn-doors, then at trees, and then at living is made-ten thousand to the Foundling-ditto things-a strange cur, who, from his lolling to the Thames Tunnel- ha-ha-my Beauty! tongue maybe supposed to have the hydrophobia Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver -a cat that has purred herself asleep on the side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if sunny churchyard wall, or is watching mice at all further resistance now were vain, and grace- their hole-mouths among the graves-a waterfully thou wert surrendering thyself to death! rat in the mill-lead-or weasel that, running to No faith in female-she trusts to the last trial his retreat in the wall,always turns round to look of her tail-sweetly workest thou, O Reel of at you-a goose wandered from his common Reels! and on thy smooth axle spinning in disappointed love-or brown duck, easily sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our mistaken by the unscrupulous for a wild one, own worthy planet. Scrope —Bainbridge- in pond remote from human dwelling, or on Maule-princes among Anglers-oh! that you meadow by the river side, away from the clack were here! Where the devil is SirHumphry? of the muter-mill. The corby-crow, too, shout. At his retort? By mysterious sympathy-far ed out of his nest on some tree lower than off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we usual, is a good flying mark to the more ad. are killing the noblest fish whose back ever vanced class: or morning magpie, a-chatter rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the at skreigh of day close to the cottage door Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, en- among the chickens; or a flock of pigeons tranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Ab- wheeling overhead on the stubble field, or sit. botsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! ting so thick together, that every s tock is blue Poor Sandy-why on thypale face that melan- with tempting plumage. choly smie! —Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! But the pistol is discharged fox a fowling Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and al- piece-brown and rusty, with a slight crack mcst with a swirl-whitening as she nears the probably in the muzzle, and a lock out of all sand-there she has it-struck right into the proportion to the barrel. Then the young shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Mi- shooter aspires at halfpennies thrown up into nerva, or Venus-and lies at last in all her glo- the air-and generally hit, for there is never rious length and breadth of beaming beauty, wanting an apparent dent in copper metal; fit prey for giant or demigod angling before and thence he mounts to the glancing and *he Flood! skimming swallow, a household bird, and there. "The child is father of the man, fore to be held sacred, but shot at on the excuse, And I would wish my days to be of its being next to impossible to hit him-an Bound each to each by natural piety!" opinion strengthened into belief by several So much for the Angler. The Shooter, summers' practice. But the small brown and again, he begins with his pipe-gun, formed of white marten wheeling through below the.he last year's growth of a branch of the plane- bridge, or along the many-holed red sand-bank, tree-the beautiful dark-green-leaved and fra- is admitted by all boys to be fair game-and grant.flowered plane-tree-that stands straight still more, the longed-winged legless black 8 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. devilet, that, if it falls to the ground, cannot rise fastening a knowing eye on dunce andl ne'er. again, and therefore screams wheeling round do-weel, holds up, in silent warning, the terror the corner, and battlements of towers and cas- of the taws. Frequent flogging will cowe the tles, or far out even of cannon shot, gambles spirit of the best man and dog in Britain. in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a Ponto travels now in fear and trembling but a thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within few yards from his tyrant's feet, till, rousing the orbit of the eagle's flight. It seems to boy- himself to the sudden scent of something snmellish eyes, that the creatures near the earth, ing strongly, he draws slowly and beautifully, when but little blue sky is seen between the and specks and the wallflowers growing on the "'There fix'd, a perfect semicirle stands." coign of vantage-the signal is given to fire; Up runs the Tyro ready-cocked, and, in his but the devilets are too high in heaven to smell eagerness, stumbling among the stubble,when, the sulphur. The starling whips with a shrill hark and lo! the gabble of grey goslings, and cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground the bill-protruded hiss of goose and gander! bnt a tiny bit of mossy mortar inhabited by a Bang goes the right-hand barrel at Ponto, who spider! now thinks it high time to be off to the tune But the Day of Days arrives at last, when of "ower the hills and far awa'," while the the school-boy, or rather the college boy, return- young gentleman, half-ashamed and half-ining to his rural vacation, (for in Scotland censed, half-glad and half-sorry, discharges the college winters tread close, too close, on the left-hand barrel, with a highly improper curse, beel. of academies,) has a gun-a gun in a at the father of the feathered family before him, case —adouble-barrel too-of his own-and is who receives the shot like a ball in his breast, provided with a license, probably without any throws a somerset quite surprising for a bird other qualification than that of hit or miss. On of his usual habits, and after biting the dust some portentous morning he effulges with the with his bill, and thumping it with his bottom, sun in velveteen jacket and breeches of the breathes an eternal farewell to this sublunary same-many-buttoned gaiters, and an unker- scene — and leaves himself to be paid for at chiefed throat.'Tis the fourteenth of Septem- the rate of eighteenpence a pound to his justly ber, and lo! a pointer at his heels-Ponto, of irritated owner, on whose farm he had led a course-a game-bag like a beggar's wallet at long and not only harmless, but honourable his side-destined to be at eve as full of charity and useful life. -and all the paraphernalia of an accomplished It is nearly as impossible a thing as we sportsman. Proud, were she to see the sight, know, to borrow a dog about the time the sun would be the "mother that bore him;" the has reached his meridian, on the First Day of heart of that old sportsman, his daddy, would the Partridges. Ponto by this time has sneaked, sing for joy! Thechained mastiff in the yard unseen by human eye, into his kennel, and yowls his admiration; the servant lasses uplift coiled himself up into the arms of " tired Nathe pane of their garret, and, with suddenly ture's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in their makes offer of a colley, who, from numbering rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, Roger, who has been cleaning out the barn, is quite a Don in his way among the cheepers, comes forth to partake of the caulker; and and has been known in a turnip field to stand away go the footsteps of the old poacher in an attitude very similar to that of setting. and his pupil through the autumnal rime, off Luath has no objection to a frolic over the to the uplands, where-for it is one of the ear- fields, and plays the part of Ponto to perfection. liest of harvests —there is scarcely a single At last he catches sight of a covey basking, acre of standing corn. The turnip fields are and, leaping in upon them open-mouthed, debright green with hope and expectation-and spatches them right and left, even like the facoveys are couching on lazy beds beneath mous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at Westthe potato-shaw. Every high hedge, ditch- minster. The birds are bagged with a gentle guarded on either side, shelters its own brood- remonstrance, and Luath's exploit rewarded imagination hears the whir shaking the dew- with a whang of cheese. Elated by the presdrops from the broom on the brae-and first sure on his shoulder, the young gentleman one bird, and then another, and then the re- laughs at the idea of pointing; and fires away, maining numoer, in itself no contemptible co- like winking, at every uprise of birds, near or vey, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in remote; works a miracle bybringing down three the clouds, from the coppice brushwood with at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be here and there an intercepting standard tree. crossing, and wearied with such slaughter, Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who can having a cold in his nose, or having ante-break- mark down to an inch, and walks up to the fasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent dropped pout as if he could kick her up with nothing short of a badger, and, every other field, his foot; and thus the bag in a few hours is he starts in horror, shame, and amazement, to half full of feathers; while, to close with eclat hear himself, without having attended to his the sport of the day, the cunning elder takes points, enclosed in a whirring covey. He is him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the still duly taken between those inexorable edge of the wood, and returning the gun into knees; out comes the speck-and-span new his hands, shows him poor pussy sitting with dog-whip, heavy enough for a horse; and the open eyes, fast asleep! The pellets are in her yowl of the patient is heard over the whole brain, and turning herself over, she crunkles parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised out to her full length, like a piece of untwisting i,fants to their breasts; and the schoolmaster, Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 9 poach of the jacket, yet unstained by blood, ing birds-younglarks, perhaps, walking on tht yawns to receive her-and in she goes plump; lea-or young linnets hanging on the brn)om — paws, ears, body, feet, fud, and all-while Luath, down by yonder in the holm lands, where there all the way home to the Mains, keeps snoking are no trees, exceptindeed that one glorious sin. at the red drops oozing through; for well he gle tree, the Golden Oak, and he is guarded by knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, Glowrer, and then what a most capital chase! the smfell of pussy, whether sitting beneath a Stretching herself up with crooked back, as tuft of withered grass on the brae, or burrowed if taking a yawn-off she jumps, with tremenbeneath a snow wreath. A hare, we certainly dous spangs, and tail, thickened with fear and must say, in spite of haughtier sportsman's anger, perpendicular. Youf-youf-youf-go scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory shot. the terriers-head over heels perhaps in their But let us trace no further thus, step by step, fury-and are not long in turning her-and the Pilgrim's Progress. Look at him now-.a bringing her to bay at the hedge-root, all finished sportsman-on the moors-the bright ablaze and abristle. A she-devil incarnate!black boundless Dalwhinnie moors, stretching Hark-all at once now strikes up a trio-Caaway, by long Loch Erricht side, into the dim talani caterwauling the treble-Glowrer taking and distant day that hangs, with all its clouds, the bass-and Tearer the tenor-a cruel con. over the bosom of far Loch Rannoch. Is that cert cut short by a squalling throttler. Away — the pluffer at partridge-pouts who had nearly away along the holm-and over the knowe — been the death of poor Ponto? Lord Kennedy and into the wood-for lo! the gudewife, branhimself might take a lesson now from the dishing a besom, comes flying demented withstraight and steady style in which on the moun- out her mutch down to the murder of her tabby tain. brow, and up to the middle in heather, he -her son, a stout stripling, is seen skirting the brings his Manton to the deadlylevel! More un- potato-field to intercept our flight-and, most erring eye never glanced along brown barrel! formidable of all foes, the Man of the House Finer forefinger never touched a trigger! Fol- himself, in his shirt-sleeves and flail in his low him a whole day, and not one wounded bird. hand, bolts from the barn, down the croft, All most beautifully arrested on their flight by across the burn, and up the brae, to cut us off instantaneous death! Down dropped right from the Manse. The hunt's up-and'tis a and left, like lead on the heather —old cock and capital steeple chase. Disperse-disperse! hen, singled out among the orphaned brood, as Down the hill, Jack-up the hill, Gill-dive calmly as a cook would do it in the larder from the dell, Kit-thread the wood, Pat-a hunamong a pile of plumage. No random shot dred yards' start is a gnrat matter-a stern within —no needless shot out of distance — chase is always a long chase-schoolboys are covered every feather before stir of finger — generally in prime wind-the old man begins and body, back, and brain, pierced, broken, to puff and blow, and snort, and put his paws shattered! And what perfect pointers! There to his paunch-the son is thrown out by a they stand, as still as death-yet instinct with double of dainty Davy's-and the " sair belife-the whole half dozen! Mungo, the black- grutten mither" is gathering up the torn and tanned-Don, the red-spotted-Clara, the snow- tattered remains of Tortoise-shell Tabby, and white-Primrose, the pale yellow-Basto, the invoking the vengeance of heaven and earth bright brown, and Nimrod, in his coat of many on her pitiless murderers. Some slight relief colours, often seen afar through the mists like to her bursting and breaking heart to vow, that a meteor. she will make the minister hear of it on the So much for the Angler's and the Shooter's deafest side of his head-ay, even if she have Progress-now briefly for the Hunter's. Hunt- to break in upon him sitting on Saturday night, ing, in this country,unquestionably commences getting aff by rote his fushionless sermon, in with cats. Few cottages without a cat. If you his ain study. do not find her on the mouse watch at the gable Now, gentle reader, again observe, that end of the house just at the corner, take a solar though we have now described, con amore, a observation, and by it look for her on bank or most cruel case of cat-killing, in which we brae-somewhere about the premises-if un- certainly did play a most aggravated part, successful, peep into the byre, and up through some Sixty Years since, far indeed are we a hole among the dusty divots of the roof, and from recommending such wanton barbarity chance is you see her eyes glittering far-ben to the rising generation. We are not inditing in the gloom; but if she be not there either, a homily on humanity to animals, nor have into the barn and up on the mow, and surely we been appointed to succeed the Rev. Dr. she is on the straw or on the baulks below the Somerville of Currie, the great Patentee of the lipples. No. Well, then, let your eye travel Safety Double Bloody Barrel, to preach the along the edge of that little wood behind the annual Gibsonian sermon on that subject — cottage-ay, yonder she is!-but she sees both we are simply stating certain matters of fact, you and your two terriers —one rough and the illustrative of the rise and progress of the love other smooth-and, slinking away through a of pastime in the soul, and leave our readers gap in the old hawthorn hedge in among the to draw the moral. But may we be permitted hazels, she either lies perdu, or is up a fir-tree to say, that the naughtiest schoolboys often almost as high as the magpie's or corby's nest. make the most pious men; that it does no2 Now-observe-shooting cats is one thing- follow according to the wise saws and modern and hunting them is another-and shooting instances of prophetic old women of both sexes, and hunting, though they may be united, are that he who in boyhood has worried a cat with aere treated separately; so, in the present case, terriers, will, in manhood, commit murder on the cat makes her escape. But get her watch- one of his own species; or that peccadilloes 10 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. are the progenitors of capital crimes. Nature castles after wall-flowers and starlings-being allows to growing lads a certain range of wick- run away with in carts by colts against turn. edness, sans peur et sans reproche. She seems, pike gates-buying bad ballads from young indeed, to whistle into their ear, to mock an- glpsy-girls, who, on receiving a sixpence, give cient females-to laugh at Quakers-to make ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take mouths at a 1escent man and his wife riding your change out of that;"-on a borrowed double tc church-the matron's thick legs lu- broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail-a dedicrously bobbing from the pillion, kept firm vil for galloping-not only attending countryon Dobbin's rump by her bottom, "ponderibus races for a saddle and collar, but entering for librata suis,"-to tip the wink to young women and winning the prize-dancing like a devil during sermon on Sunday-and on Saturday, in barns at kirns-seeing his blooming partner most impertinently to kiss them, whether they home over the blooming heather, most perilous will or no, on high-road or by-path —and to per- adventure of all in which virgin-puberty can petrate many other little nameless enormities. be involved-fighting with a rival in corduroy No doubt, at the time, such things will wear breeches, and poll shorn beneath a caup, till rather a suspicious character; and the boy who his eyes just twinkle through the swollen blue is detected in the fact, must be punished by -and, to conclude "this strange eventful hispawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from tory," once brought home at one o'clockin the play. But when punished, he is of course left morning, God knows whence or by whom, and free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found by the shrieking servant, sent out to found that he sleeps a whit the less soundly, listen for him in the moonlight, dead-drunk on or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his dreams. the gravel at the gate! Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong Nay, start not, parental reader-nor, in the to guilt. But fun and frolic, even when tres- terror of anticipation, send, without loss of a passes, are not guilt; and though a cat have single day, for your son at a distant academy, nine lives, she has but one Ghost —and that mayhap pursuing even such another career. will haunt no house where there are terriers. Trust thou to the genial, gracious, and benign What! surely if you have the happiness of vis medicatrix naturre. What though a few clouds being a parent you would not wish your only bedim and deform "the innocent brightness of boy —your son and heir-the blended image the new-born day!" Lo! how splendid the of his mother's loveliness and his father's meridian ether! What though the frost seem manly beauty-to be a smug, smooth, prim, to blight the beauty of the budding and blowand proper prig, with his hair always combed ing rose? Look how she revives beneath dew, down onhis forehead, hands always unglaured, rain, and sunshine, till your eyes can even and without spot or blemish on his white-thread scarce endure the lustre! WThat though the stockings? You would not wish him, surely, waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute th to be always moping and musing in a corner snow of the swan? They fall off from her exwith a good book held close to his nMse-bo- panded wings, and, pure as a spirit, she soars tanizing with his maiden aunts-doing the away, and descends into her own silver lake, pretty at tea-tables with tabbies, in handing stainless as the water-lilies floating round her round the short-bread, taking cups, and attend- breast. And shall the immortal soul suffer ing to the kettle-telling tales on all naughty lasting contamination from the transient boys and girls-laying up his penny a-week chances of its nascent state-in this, less fa. pocket-money in a penny pig-keeping all his voured than material and immaterial things clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled that perish?'No-it is undergoing endless drawer-having his own peg for his uncrushed transmigrations,-every hour a being differhat-saying his prayers precisely as the clock ent, yet the same-dark stains blotted outstrikes nine, while his companions are yet at rueful inscriptions effaced-many an erasure blind-man's buff —and puffed up every Sabbath- of impressions once thought permanent, but eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon soon altogether forgotten-and vindicating, in memory for a sermon-while all the other boys the midst of the earthly corruption in which it are scolded for having fallen asleep before is immersed, its own celestial origin, characTenthly? You would not wish him, surely, ter, and end, often flickering, or seemingly to write sermons himself at his tender years, blown out, like a taper in the wind, but all at nay-even to be able to give you chapter and once self-reillumined, and shining in inextin verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. guishable and self-fed radiance-like a star in Better far that he should begin early to break heaven. your heart, by taking no care even of his Sun- Therefore, bad as boys too often are-and a day clothes-blotting his copy-impiously pin- disgrace to the mother who bore them-the ning pieces of paper to the Dominie's tail, who cradle in which they were rocked-the nurse to him was a second father-going to the fish- by whom they were suckled-the schoolmas. ing not only without leave but against orders- ter by whom they were flogged-and the hang. bathing in the forbidden pool, where the tai- man by whom it was prophesied they were te lor was drowned-drying powder before the be executed-wait patiently for a few years, school-room fire, and blowing himself and and you will see them all transfigured-one'wo crack-sculled cronies to the ceiling-tying into a preacher of such winning eloquence, kettles to the tails of dogs-shooting an old that he almost persuades all men to be Chris. woman's laying hen-galloping bare-backed tians-another into a parliamentary orator, shelties down stony steeps —climbing trees to who commands the applause of listening sew. the slenderest twig on which bird could build, ates, and?;1:d up the tooth-of-time-intended sides of old "Reads his history in a nation's eyes," CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 11 -one into a painter, before whose thunderous Lurcher-though a' fowr be let lowse on her neavens the storms of Poussin" pale their inef- at ance, and ye surround her or she rise." fectual fires"-another into a poet composing What are your great, big, fat, lazy English and playing, side by side, on his own peculiar hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who harp, in a concert of vocal and instrumental have the food brought to their very mouth in music, with Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth- preserves, and are out of breath with five one into a great soldier, who, when Welling- minutes' scamper among themselves-to the ton is no more, shall, for the freedom of the middle-sized, hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steelworld, conquer a future Waterloo-another legged, long-winded mawkins of Scotland, that who hoisted his flag on the "mast of some tall scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the ammiral," shall, like Eliab Harvey in the Te- wee moorland yardie that shelters them, tut meraire, lay two three-deckers on board at prey in distant fields, take a breathing every once, and clothe some now nameless peak or gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired promontory in immortal glory, like that shining as young eagles ringing the sky for pastime on Trafalgar. and before the dogs seem not so much scour Well, then, after cat-killing comes Coursing. ing for life as for pleasure, with such an air Cats have a look of hares-kittens of leverets of freedom, liberty, and independence, do they -and they are all called Pussy. The terriers fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the are useful still, preceding the line like skirmish- faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they ers, and with finest noses startling the mawkin to the spine —strong in bone, and sound in from bracken-bush or rush bower, her sky- bottom-see, see how Tickler clears that light garret in the old quarry, or her brown twenty-feet moss-hag at a single spar.g like a study in the brake. Away with your coursing bird-tops that hedge that would turn any on Marlborough downs, where huge hares are hunter that ever stabled in Melton Mowbrayseen squatted from a distance, and the sleek and then, at full speed northward, moves as dogs, disrobed of their gaudy trappings, are let upon a pivot within his own length, and close slip by a Tryer, running for cups and collars upon his haunches, without losing a foot, off before lords and ladies, and squires of high within a point of due south. A kennel! He and low degree-a pretty pastime enough, no never was and never will be in a kennel all doubt, in its way, and a splendid cavalcade. his free joyful days. He has walked and run But will it for a moment compare with the -and leaped and swam about-at his own sudden and all-unlooked-for start of the "auld will, ever since he was nine days old-and he witch" from the bunweed-covered lea, when would have done so sooner had he had any the throat of every pedestrian is privileged to eyes. None of your stinking cracklets for cry " halloo-halloo-halloo"-and whipcord- lim-he takes his meals with the family, sittailed greyhound and hairy lurcher, without ting at the right hand of the master's eldest any invidious distinction of birth or bearing, son. He sleeps in any bed of the house he lay their deep breasts to the sward at the same chooses; and, though no Methodist, he goes moment, to the same instinct, and brattle over every third Sunday to church. That is the the brae after the disappearing Ears, laid flat education of a Scottish greyhound-and the at the first sight of her pursuers, as with re- consequence is, that you may pardonably mistroverted eyes she turns her face to the moun- take him for a deer dog from Badenoch or tain, and seeks the cairn only a little lower Lochaber, and no doubt in the world that he than the falcon's nest. would rejoice in a glimpse of the antlers on What signifies any sport in the open air, the weather gleam, except in congenial scenery of earth and "Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode heaven'I Go, thou gentle Cockney! and angle To his hills that encircle the sea." in the New River;-but, bold Englishman, This may be called roughing it-slovenlycome with us and try a salmon-cast in the old coarse-rude-artless-unscientific. But we Tay. Go, thou gentle Cockney! and course a say no-it is your only coursing. Gods! with suburban hare in the purlieus of Blackheath; what a bounding bosom the schoolboy salutes -but, bold Englishman, come with us and the dawning of the cool-clear-crisp, yes, course an animal that never heard a city-bell, crisp October morn, (for there has been a by day a hare, by night an old woman, that slight frost, and the almost leafless hedgerows loves the dogs she dreads, and, hunt her as are all glittering with rime;) and, little time you will with a leash and a half of lightfoots, lost at dress or breakfast, crams the luncheon still returns at dark to the same form in the into his pouch, and away to the Trysting-hill turf-dike of the garden of the mountain cottage. Farmhouse, which he fears the gamekeeper The children, who love her as their own eyes and his grews will have left ere he can run -for she has been as a pet about the family, across the two long Scotch miles of moor besummer and winter, since that chubby-cheeked tween him and his joy! With steps elastic, urchin, of some five years old, first began to he feels flying along the sward as from a swing in his self-rocking cradle-will scarcely spring-board; like a roe, he clears the burns care to see her started-nay, one or two of the and bursts his way through the brakes pantwickedest among them will join in the halloo; ing, not from breathlessness but anxiety, he "or often, ere this, "has she cheated the very lightly leaps the garden fence without a pole,,owlers, and lauched ower her shouther at the and lo, the green jacket of one huntsman, the ang dowgs walloping ahint her, sair forfa- red jacket of another, on the plat before the 4uhen, up the benty brae —and it's no the day door, and two or three tall rawboned poachers that she's gaun to be killed by Rough Robin, -and there is mirth and music, fun and frolic, or smooth Spring, or the red Biek, or the hairy and the very soul of enterprise, adventure, and 12 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. desperation, in that word-while tall and church. Then hares shift the sites of their graceful stand the black, the brindled, and the country seats every season. This month they yellow breed, with keen yet quiet eyes, pro- love the fallow field-that, the stubble; this, phetic of their destined prey, and though mo- you will see them, almost without looking for tionless now as stone statues of hounds at the them, big and brown on the bare stony upland feet of Meleager, soon to launch like lightning lea-that, you must have a hawk's eye in your at the loved halloo! head to discern, discover, detect them, like Out comes the gudewife with her own bottle birds in their nests,. embowered below the from the press in the spence, with as big a bunweed or the bracken; they choose to spend belly and broad a bottom as her own, and they this week in a wood impervious to wet or wind are no trifle-for the worthy woman has been -that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover; making much beef for many years, is more- now you may depend on finding madam at over in the family way, and surely this time home in the sulks within the very heart of a there will be twins at least-and pours out a bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, canty caulker for each crowing crony, begin- while the squire cocks his fud at you from the ning with the gentle, and ending with the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the semple, that is our and herself; and better airts; —in short, he who knows at all times speerit never steamed in sma' still. She offers where to find a hare, even if he knew not one another with "hinny," by way of Athole brose; single thing else but the way to his mouth, but it is put off till evening, for coursing re- cannot be called an ignorint man —is probably quires a clear head, and the same sobriety a. better-informed man in the long run than the then adorned our youth that now dignifies our friend on his right, discoursing about the old age. The gudeman, although an elder of Turks, the Greeks, the Portugals, and all that the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits sort of thing, giving himself the lie on every that solemn office, needs not much persuasion arrival of his daily paper. We never yet to let the flail rest for one day, anxious though knew an old courser, (him of the Sporting he be to show the first aits in the market; and Annals included,) who was not a man both of donning his broad blue bonnet, and the short- abilities and virtues. But where were we?est-tailed auld coat he can find, and taking his at the Trysting-hill Farmhouse, jocularly kent in his hand, he gruffly gives Wully his called Hunger-them-Out. orders for a' things about the place, and sets Line is formed, and with measured steps we off with the yonkers for a holyday. Not a man march towards the hills-for we ourselves are on earth who has not his own pastime, depend the schoolboy, bold, bright, and blooming as on't, austere as he may look; and'twould be the rose —fleet of foot almost as the very antewell for this wicked world if no elder in it haI lope —Oh! now, alas! dim and withered as a a "sin that maist easily beset him," worse stalk from which winter has swept all the than what Gibby Watson's wife used to call blossoms-slow as the sloth along the ground his "awfu' fondness for the Grews!" -spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered And who that loves to walk or wander over pantaloon! the green earth, except indeed it merely be "o heaven! that from our bright and shining years Some sonnetteer or ballad-monger, if he had Age would but take the things youth needed not!" time and could afford it, and lived in a toler- An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping ably open country, would not keep, at the very rushy ascent to the hills-and putting his least, three greyhounds? No better eating brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, inthan a hare, though old blockhead Burton- timates that she is in her old form behind the and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever dike-and the noble dumb animals, with there was one in this world-in his Anatomy, pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware chooses to call it melancholy meat. Did he that her hour is come. Plash, plash, through ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commence- the marsh, and then on the dry furze beyond, ment, swallow a tureen of hare-soup with half you see her large dark-brown eyes-Soho, a peck of mealy potatoes? If ever he did- soho, soho-Holloo, halloo, halloo-for a moand notwithstanding called hare melancholy ment the seemingly horned creature appears to meat, there can be no occasion whatever for dally with the danger, and to linger ere she now wishing him any further punishment. If lays her lugs on her shoulder, and away, like he never did-then he was on earth the most thoughts pursuing thoughts-away fly hare unfortunate of men. England-as you love and hounds towards the mountain. us and yourself-cultivate hare-soup, without Stand all still for a minute-for not a bush for a moment dreaming of giving up roasted the height of our knee to break our view-and hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly sauce being is not that brattling burst up the brae " beautihanded round on a large trencher. But there ful exceedingly," and sufficient to chain in adis no such thing as melancholy meat-neither miration the beatings of the rudest gazer's fish, flesh, nor fowl-provided only there be heart! Yes; of all beautiful sights-none enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish more, none so much so, as the miraculous drives you to despair. But independently of motion of a four-tooted wild anima., changed spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even dauner- at once, from a seeming inert sod or tone, into mng about the home farm seeking for a hare? flight fleet as that of the falcon's wing! InIt is quite an art or science. You must con- stinct against instinct! fear and ferocity in sult not only the wind and weather of to-day, one flight!' Pursuers and pursued bound but of the night before-and of every day and together, in every turning and twisting of ther night back to last Sunday, when probably you career, by the operation of two headlong paswere prevented by the rain from going to sions! Now they are all three upon her-and CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 13 she dies! No! glancing aside, like a bullet toral or silvan heights. If old or indc lent, take from a wall, she bounds almost at a right angle your station on a heaven-kissing hill, and hug from her straight course-and, for a moment, the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will ride, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting then let it be on a nimble galloway of sonle four. headlong one over the other, all three, with teen hands, that can gallop a good pace on the erected tails, suddenly bring themselves up- road, and keep sure footing on bridle paths, ot like racing barks when down goes the helm, upon the pathless braes-and by judicious and one after another, bowsprit and boom horsemanship, you may meet the pack at many almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and again a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far out bears up on the starboard tack upon a wind- at the death. But the schoolboy and the shepand in a close line, head to heel, so that you herd-and the whipper-in-as each hopes for might cover them all with a sheet-again, all favour from his own Diana-let them all be on open-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, foot —and have studied the country for every and go with her over the cliff. imaginable variety that can occurin the winter's We are all on foot-and pray what horse campaign. One often hears of a cunning old could gallop through among all these quag- fox-but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton mires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, to the most guileless young hare. What deceit over all the water-cressy and puddocky ditches, in every double! What calculation in every sinking soft on hither and thither side, even to squat! Of what far more complicated than the two-legged leaper's ankle or knee-up that Cretan Labyrinth is the creature, now hunted hill on the perpendicular strewn with flint- for the first time, sitting in the centre! a listenshivers-down these loose-hanging cliffs — ing the baffled roar! Now into the pool she through that brake of old stunted birches with plunges, to free herself from the fatal scent stools hard as iron-over that mile of quaking that lures on death. Now down the torrent muir where the plover breeds-and-finally- course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from up-up-up to where the dwarfed heather dies her poor paws, fur-protected from the sharp away among the cinders, and in winter you flints that lame the fiends that so sorely beset might mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a patch her, till many limp along in their own blood. of snow? Now along the coping of stone walls she crawls The thing is impossible-so we are all on and scrambles-and now ventures from the foot-and the fleetest keeper that ever footed wood along the frequented high-road, heedless it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles of danger from the front, so that she may escape give us sixty yards. " Ha! Peter the wild the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the boy, how are you off for wind " —we exult- pretty little garden of the wayside, or even the ingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by village cot, she creeps, as if to implore protecon the bent. But see-see —they are bringing tion from the innocent children, or the nursing her back again down the Red Mount-glancing mother. Yes, she will even seek refuge in the aside, she throws them all three out-yes, all sanctuary of the cradle. The terrier drags her three, and few enow too, though fair play be a out from below a tombstone, and she dies in jewel-and ere they can recover, she is a-head the churchyard. The hunters come reeking a hundred yards up the hill. There is a beauti- and reeling on, we ourselves among the num. ful trial of bone and bottom! Now one, and ber-and to the winding horn that echoes reply then another, takes almost imperceptibly the from the walls of the house of worship-and lead; but she steals away from them inch by now, in momentary contrition, inch-beating them all blind-and, suddenly "Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen!' disappearing —Heaven knows how —leaves disappearing-Heaven knows how-leaves and we bethink ourselves-alas! all in vain them all in the lurch. With out-lolling tongues, foand we bethink ourselves hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping "Xature expellas furcd, tamen usque recurret"tails, they come one by one down the steep, of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and looking somewhat sheepish, and then lie down of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and together on their sides, as if indeed about to humanity: — die in defeat. She has carried away her cocked T One les on reader, let us two divide, Taught by what nature shows and what conceals, fud unscathed for the third time, from Three Never to blend our pleasure and our pride of the Best in all broad Scotland-nor can With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." there any longer be the smallest doubt in the It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry world, in the minds of the most skeptical, that to practice-so let us conclude with a pane. she is-what all the country-side have long gyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this known her to be-a Witch. pastime is the very strongest that can possess From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen the heart-nor, of all the heroes of antiquity, that the transition is easy in the order of na- is there one to our imagination more poetical ture-and so it is from coursing to Fox-Hunt- than Nimrod. His whole character is given, and ing —by means, however, of a- small interme- his whole history, in two words-Mighty Hundiate step-the Harriers. Musical is a pack ter. That he hunted the fox is not probable; of harriers as a peal of bells. How melo- for the sole aim and end of his existence was diously they ring changes in the woods, and not to exterminate-that would have been cutin the hollow of the mountains! A level ting his own throat-but to thin man-devourcountry we have already consigned to merited ing wild beasts-the Pards-with Leo at their Iontempt, (though there is no rule without an head. But in a land like this, where not even exception; and as we shall see by and by, a wolf has existed for centuries-nor a wild there is one too here,) and commend us, even boar-the same spirit that would have driven with harriers, to the ups and downs of the pas- the British youth on the tusk and paw of the 14 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on tracts, but for the triumphs of the Turf? Blood such steeds as never neighed before the flood, -blood there must be, either for strength, or nor " summered high in bliss" on the sloping speed, or endurance. The very heaviest capastures of undeluged Ararat-and gathers valry-the Life Guards and the Scots Greys, them together in gallant array on the edge of and all other dragoons, must have blood. But the cover, without racing and fox-hunting, where could "When first the hunter's startling horn is heard it be found? Such pastimes nerve one of the Upon the golden hills." arms of the nation when in battle; but for them What a squadron of cavalry! What fiery eyes'twould be palsied. What better education, and flaming nostrils-betokening with what too, not only for a horse, but his rider, before ardent passion the noble animals will revel in playing a bloodier game in his first war camthe chase! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut paign? Thus he becomes demicorpsed with sorrel, gray-of all shades and hues-and the noble animal; and what easy, equable every courser distinguished by his own peculiar motion to him is afterwards a charge over a character of shape and form-yet all blending wide level plain, with nothing in the way but harmoniously as they crown the mount; so a few regiments of flying Frenchmen! The that a painter would only have to group and hills and dales of merry England have been colour them as they stand, nor lose, if able to the best riding-school to her gentlemen —her catch them, one of the dazzling lights or deep- gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease ening shadows streamed on them from that — but, with Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, suny, yet not unstormy sky. and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, have You read in books of travels and romances, left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful You read in books of travels and romances, of Barbs and Arabs galloping in the desert- pastimes pursued among the silvan scenery, and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross the head of his Saracenic chivalry; but take swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry; and our word for it, great part of all such descrip- still have they been in the shock victorious; tions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon devil's name should dwellers in the desert at Saldanha-the overthrow that uncrowned always be going at full speed? And how can him at Waterloo! that full speed be any thing more than a slow " Well, do you know, that, after all you that full speed be any thing more than a slow have said, Mr. North, I cannot understand the heavy hand-gallop at the best, the barbs being have said, Mr. North, I cannot understand the up to the belly at every stroke? They are passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It up to the belly at every stroke? They are seems to me both cruel and dangerous." always, it is said, in high condition-but we, seems to me both cruel and dangerous who know something about horse-flesh, give Cruelty! Is their cruelty in laying the rein that assertion the lie. They have seldom any on their necks, and delivering them up to the thing either to eat or drink; they are as lean transport of their high condition —for every as church mice; and covered with clammy throbbing vein is visible —at the first full burst sweat before they have ambled a league from of that maddening cry, and letting loose to their tne tent. And then such a set of absurd riders, delight the living thunderbolts? Danger! with knees up to their noses, like so many What danger but of breaking their own legs, tailors riding to Brentford, via the deserts of necks, or backs, and those of their riders? Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and such And what right have you to complain of that, saddles! But the whole set-out, rider and rid- lying all your length, a huge hulking fellow, den, accoutrements and all, is too. much for snoring and snorting half-asleep on a sofa, one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent sufficient to sicken a whole street d What laugh to the wild ass as he goes braying un- though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, harnessed by. But look there! Arabian sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and blood, and British bone! Not bred in and in, passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue X to the death of all the fine strong animal spirits After the first Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, to the death of all the fine strong animal spirits till he -but blood intermingled and interfused by till he is run in upon —once, perhaps, in thec -but blood intermingled and'interfused by whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a comtwenty crosses, nature exulting in each succes- mo. It is an Idea that is pursued, or crossing a cowhirlsive produce, till her power can no further go, mon. It is an Idea that is pursued, oanine musicand in yonder glorious greywind of horses, to a storm of canine musicand in yonder glordious grey, ofahorse worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped " Gives the world assurance of a horse! " among a band of Moors, sleeping at midnight Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or by an extinguished fire on the African sands. squadrons, and in the. hand of each rider a There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his the Fancy of one man in all that glorious field breast but for the silver-laced blue, the gorge- of Three Hundred. Once off and away-while ous uniform of the Hussars of England-con- wood and welkin rings-and nothing is feltfound all cuirasses and cuirassiers! —let the nothing is imaged in that hurricane flight, trumpet sound a charge, and ten thousand of but scorn of all obstructions, dikes, ditches the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be op- drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all posed with spear and scimitar-and through the impediments reared in the way of so many their snow-ranks will the Three Hundred go rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, like thaw —splitting them into dissolution with in an inclosed, cultivated, civilized, and Chris..he noise of thunder. tian country. There they go-prince and peer, The proof of the pudding is in the eating of baronet and squire-the nobility and gentry of t; and where, we ask, were the British cavalry England, the flower of the men of the earth, ever overthrown 1 And how could the great each on such a steed as Pollux never reined, north-country horse-coupers perform their con- nor Philip's warlike son-for could we imagine CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 15 Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, I Alexander would be thrown out during the FYTTE SECOND. very first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of Wx are always unwilling to speak of our. meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gar- selves, lest we should appear egotistical-for dens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, halls, egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and must naturally be anxious to know something temples, all go wavering by, each demigod of our early history-and their anxiety shall seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged steed therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that skims or labours along, to the swelling or we enjoyed some rare advantages and oppor. sinking music, now loud as a near regimental tunities in our boyhood regarding field sports, band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide and grew up, even from that first great era in over the country are dispersed the scarlet run- every Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only ners-and a hundred villages pour forth their a fisher but a fowler; and it is necessary that admiring swarms, as the main current of the we enter into some interesting details. chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wea- There had been from time immemorial, it ried and all astray, lost at last in the perplexing was understood, in the Manse, a duck-gun of woods. Crash goes the top-timber of the five- very great length, and a musket that, according barred gate-away over the ears flies the ex- to an old tradition, had been out both in the rough-rider in a surprising somerset-after a Seventeen and Forty-five. There were ten succession of stumbles, down is the gallant boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to Grey on knees and nose, making sad work gun or musket, each boy retaining possession among the fallow-Friendship is a fine thing, for a single day only; but then the shooting and the story of Damon and Pythias most,season continued all the year. They must affecting indeed-but Pylades eyes Orestes on have been of admirable materials and workhis back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly manship; for neither of them so much as once leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands burst during the Seven Years' War. The musto his ear, and with a "hark forward, tantivy!" ket, who, we have often since thought, must leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure- surely rather have been a blunderbuss in disand ere the fallen has risen and shaken him- guise, was a perfect devil for kicking when self, is round the corner of the white village- she received her discharge; so much so indeed, church, down the dell, over the brook and that it was reckoned creditable for the smaller close on the heels of the straining pack, all a- boys not to be knocked down by the recoil. yell up the hill crowned by the Squire's Folly. She had a very wide mouth-and was thought," Every man for himself, and God for us all," by us "an awfu' scatterer;" a qualification is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. which we considered of the very highest merit. If death befall, what wonder. since man and She carried any thing we choose to put into horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide her-there still being of all her performances soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened win- a loud and favourable report-balls, buttons, dows in a still room, the clergyman in one chucky-stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but corner with his prayers, and the physician in two faults-she had got addicted, probably in another with his pills, making assurance early life, to one habit of burning priming, and doubly sure, and preventing all possibility of to another of hanging fire; habits of which it the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branch was impossible, for us at least, to break her by smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's the most assiduous hammering of many a new back not timely levelled with his steed's; let series of flints; but such was the high place faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; she justly occupied in the affection and admira let hidden drain yield to fore feet and work a tion of us all, that faults like these did not in the sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with briery least detract from her general character. Our mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down delight, when she did absolutely and positively man and horse, to cliffs unscalable by the very and bong fide go off, was in proportion to the Welch goat; let duke's or earl's son go sheer comparative rarity of that occurrence; and as over a quarry twenty feet deep, and as many to hanging fire-why we used to let her take high; yet "Without stop or stay, down the her own time, contriving to keep her at the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut music grows fiercer and more savage-lo! all perhaps, teeth clenched, face girning, and head that remains together of the pack, in far more slightly averted over the right shoulder, till dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scotout of their skins, under insanity from the tish females, took things leisurely, went off at scent, for Vulpes can hardly now make a last with an explosion like the blowing up of crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or a rock. any one of the other three demoniacs, have The "Lang gun," again, was of much gen. time to look in one another's splashed faces, tler disposition, and, instead of kicking, ran he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up into the opposite extreme on being let off, inn the general growl; and smug, and smooth, dining forwards as if she would follow the and dry, and warm, and cozey, as he was an shot. We believe, however, this apparent hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in peculiarity arose from her extreme length, his furze bush in the cover-he is now piece- which rendered it difficult for us to hold her meal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is horizontally-and hence the muzzle being atlie not, pray, well off for sepulture? tracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of the Shooter. That such 16 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. is the true theory of the phenomenon seems to each particular barn-door, when the farmers be proved by this-that when the " Lang Gun" were at work, you might have thought you saw was, in the act of firing, laid across the shoul- the entire sparrow population of the parish ders of two boys standing about a yard the one Seldom a Sabbath, during pairing, building, before the other, she kicked every bit as well breeding, nursing, and training season, could as the blunderbuss. Her lock was of a very you hear a single syllable of the sermon fox peculiarconstruction. It was so contrived that, their sakes, all a-huddle and a-chirp in the bel when on full cock, the dog-head, as we used to fry and among the old loose slates. On every call it, stood back at least seven inches, and stercoraceous deposit on coach, cart, or bridle unless the flint was put in to a nicety, by pull- road, they were busy on grain and pulse; and, ing the trigger you by no means caused any in spite of cur and cat, legions embrowned uncovering of the pan, but things in general every cottage garden. Emigration itself in remained in statu quo-and there was perfect many million families would have left no persilence. She had a worm-eaten stock into ceptible void; and the inexterminable multiwhich the barrel seldom was able to get itself tude would have laughed at the Plague. fairly inserted; and even with the aid of cir- The other small birds of the parish began to cumvoluting twine,'twas always c)ggly. Thus, feel their security from our shot, and sung their too, the vizy (Anglice sight) generally inclined best, unscared on hedge, bush, and tree. Perunduly to one side or the other, and was the haps, too, for sake of their own sweet strains, cause of all of us every day hitting and hurting we spared the lyrists of Scotland, the linnet objects of whose existence even we were not and the lark, the one in the yellow broom, the aware, till alarmed by the lowing or the gal- other beneath the rosy cloud-while there was loping of cattle on the hills; and we hear now ever a sevenfold red shield before Robin's the yell of an old woman in black bonnet and breast, whether flitting silent as a falling leaf, red cloak, who shook her staff at us like a witch, or trilling his autumnal lay on the rigging or with the blood running down the furrows of her pointed gable-end of barn or brye. Now and face, and with many oaths maintained that she then the large bunting, conspicuous on a topwas murdered. The "Lang Gun" had cer- twig, and proud of his rustic psalmody, tempted tainly a strong vomit-and, with slugs or his own doom-or the cunning stone-chat, swan-shot, was dangerous at two hundred glancing about the old dikes usually shot at yards to any living thing. Bob Howie, at in vain-or yellow-hammer, under the ban of that distance arrested the career of a mad dog the national superstition, with a drop of the -a single slug having been sent through the devil's blood beneath his pretty crest, pretty in eye into the brain. We wonder if one or both spite of that cruel creed —or green-finch, too of those companions of our boyhood be yet rich in plumage for his poorer song-or shilfa, alive-or, like many other great guns that the beautiful nest-builder, shivering his whitehave since made more noise in the world, plumed wings in shade and sunshine, in joy fallen a silent prey to the rust of oblivion. the most rapturous, in grief the most despairing Not a boy in the school had a game certifi- of all the creatures of the air-or redpole, bacas —or, as it was called in the parish-" a lanced on the down of the thistle or flower of leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such the bunweed on the old clovery lea-or, haply a permit necessary; as we confined ourselves twice seen in a season, the very goldfinch almost exclusively to sparrows. Not that we himself, a radiant and gorgeous spirit brought had any personal animosity to the sparrow in- on the breeze from afar, and worthy, if only dividually-on the contrary, we loved him, slightly wounded, of being enclosed within a and had a tame one —a fellow of infinite fancy silver cage from Fairy Land. - with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like But we waxed more ambitious as we grew a gamecock. But their numbers, without old —and then wo to the rookery on the elmnumber numberless, seemed to justify the hu- tree grove! Down dropt the dark denizens in manest of boys in killing any quantity of dozens, rebounding with a thud and a skraigh sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes settle from the velvet moss, which under that umon the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge brage formed firm floor for Titania's feetof the Manse garden in myriads, midge-like; while others kept dangling dead or dying by and then out any two of us, whose day it hap- the claws, cheating the crusted pie, and all the pened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd blue skies above were intercepted by cawing Meg and the Lang Gun, charged two hands and clouds of distracted parents, now dipping down a finger; and with a loud shout, startling them in despair almost within a shot, and now, as from their roost like the sudden casting of a if sick of this world, soaring away up into the swarm of bees, we let drive into the whir-a very heavens, and disappearing to return no shower of feathers was instantly seen swim- more-till sunset should bring silence, and the ming in the air, and flower-bed and onion bed night air roll off the horrid smell of sulphur covered with scores of the mortally wounded from the desolated bowers; and then indeed old cocks with black heads, old hens with would they come all flying back upon their brown, and the pride of the eaves laid low be- strong instinct, like black-sailed barks before fore their first crop of peas! Never was there the wind, some from the depth of far-off firsuch a parish for sparrows. You had but to woods, where they had lain quacking at the fling a stone into any stack-yard, and up rose ceaseless cannonade, some from the furrows a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every cottage of the new-braided fields aloof on the uplands, Nwlas drilled by them like honey-combs. House- some from deep dell close at hand, and some spouts were of no use in rainy weather-for from the middle of the moorish wilderness. Jley were all choked up by sprauch-nests. At Happiest of all human homes, beautifu. CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 17 Craig-Hall! For so even now dost thou ap- brightness of her contentment; through the pear to be-in the rich, deep, mellow, green heaviest flood the blue skies will still be -light of imagination trembling on tower and making their appearance with an impatient tree-art thou yet undilapidated andundecayed, smile, and all the rivers and burns, with the in thy old manorial solemnity almost majesti- multitude of their various voices, sing praises cal, though even then thou hadst long been unto Heaven. tenanted but by an humble farmer's family- Therefore, bathing our feet in beauty, we people of low degreel The evening-festival went bounding over the flowery fields and of the First Day of the Rooks-nay, scoff not broomy braes to the grove-girdled Craig-Hall. at such an anniversary-was still held in thy During the long noisy day, we thought not of ample kitchen-of old'the bower of brave lords the coming evening, happy as we knew it was and ladies bright-while the harper, as he sung to be; and during the long and almost as neisy his song of love or war, kept his eyes fixed on evening, we forgot all the pastime of the day. her who sat beneath the deas. The days of Weeks before, had each of us engaged his chivalry were gone-and the days had come partner for the first country dance, by right of curds and cream, and, preferred by some his own when supper came, and to sit close to people though not by us, of cream-cheese. Old him with her tender side with waist at first men and old women, widowers and widows, stealthily arm-encircle.1, and at last boldly and yet all alike cheerful and chatty at a great age, almost with proud display. In the churchyard, for often as they near the dead, how more life- before or after Sabbath-service, a word whislike seem the living! Middle-aged men and pered into the ear of blooming and blushing middle-aged women, husbands and wives, those rustic sufficed; or if that opportunity failed, sedate, with hair combed straight on their fore- the angler had but to step into her father's heads, sun-burnt faces, and horny hands esta- burn-side cottage, and with the contents of his blished on their knees-these serene; with basket leave a tender request, and from be countenances many of them not unlovely- hind the gable-end carry away a word, a smile comely all-and with arms decently folded a kiss, and a waving farewell. beneath their matronly bosoms-as they sat in Many a high-roofed hall have we, since those their holyday dresses, feeling as if the season days, seen, made beautiful with festoons and of youth had hardly yet flown by, or were, on garlands, beneath the hand of taste and genius such a merry meeting, for a blink restored! decorating, for some splendid festival, the abode Boys and virgins-those bold even in their of the noble expecting a still nobler guest. But tashfulness-these blushing whenever eyes oh! what pure bliss, and what profound, was met eyes-nor would they-nor could they- then breathed into the bosom of boyhood from have spoken in the hush to save their souls; that glorious branch of hawthorn, in the chim. yet ere the evening star arose, many a pretty ney-itself almost a tree, so thick-so deep-. maiden had, down looking and playing with so rich its load of blossoms-so like its frathe hem of her garment, sung linnet-like her grance to something breathed from heaven ain favourite auld Scottish sang! and many a and so transitory in its sweetness too, that as sweet sang even then delighted Scotia's spirit, she approached to inhale it, down fell many a though Robin Burns was but a youth-walking snow-flake to the virgins breath-in an hour mute among the wild-flowers on the moor- all melted quite away! No broom that now-anor aware of the immortal melodies soon to days grows on the brae, so yellow as the broom breathe from his impassioned heart! -the golden broom-the broom that seemed still Of all the year's holydays, not even except- to keep the hills in sunlight long after the sun ing the First of May, this was the most delight- himself had sunk-the broom in which we first ful. The First of May, longed for so passion- found the lintwhite's nest-and of its petals, ately from the first peep of the primrose, more precious than pearls, saw framed a sometimes came deformed with mist and wreath for the dark hair of that dark-eyed cloud, or cheerless with whistling winds, girl, an orphan, and melancholy even in her. or winter-like with a sudden fall of snow. merriment —dark-haired and dark-eyed indeed, And thus all our hopes were dashed-the but whose forehead, whose bosom, were yet roomy hay-wagon remained in its shed —whiter than the driven snow. Greenhouses — the preparations made for us in the distant conservatories-orangeries -are exquisitely. moorland farmhouse were vain-the fishing- balmy still-and, in presence of these strange rods hung useless on the nails-and discon- plants, one could believe that he had been solate schoolboys sat moping in corners, sorry, transported to some rich foreign clime.. But ashamed, and angry with Scotland's springs. now we carry the burden of our years. along But though the "leafy month of June" be fre- with us-and that consciousness bedims. the quently showery, it is almost always sunny too. blossoms, and makes mournful the balm, as Every half hour there is such a radiant blink from flowers in some fair burial-place;, breaththat the young heart sings aloud for joy; sum- ing of the tomb. But oh! that Craig-Hall hawmer rain makes the hair grow, and hats are thorn! and oh! that Craig-Hall broom! they little orno use towards the Longest Day; there send their sweet rich scent so far into the is something cheerful even in thunder, if it hushed air of memory, that all the weary wornbe not rather too near; the lark has not yet out weaknesses of age drop from us like a ceased altogether to sing, for he soars over garment, and even now-the flight of that swalhis second nest, unappalled beneath the sablest lowseems more aerial-more alive with blisshis cloud; the green earth repels from her reful- clay-built nest-the ancientlong-ago blue of the gent bosom the blackest shadows, nor will sky returns to heaven not for many a, many suffer herself to be saddened in the fulness and a long year have we seen so ftir-so frail. —.t. 2 18 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Transparent and angel-mantle-looking a cloud! serpent. Flash! Bang! over he goes deadThe very viol speaks-the very dance responds no, not dead-but how unlike that unavailing in Craig-Hall: this-this is the very festival flapping, as head over heels he goes spinning of the First Day of the Rooks-Mary Mather, over the tarn, to the serene unsettling of him. the pride of the parish-the county-the land self from sod or stone, when, his hunger sated, -the earth-is our partner-and long mayest and his craw filled with fish for his far off thou, O moon! remain behind thy cloud- brood, he used to lift his blue bulk into the air. when the parting kiss is given-and the love- and with long depending legs, at first floated.etter, at that tenderest moment, dropped into away like a wearied thing, but soon, as his ner bosom! plumes felt the current of air homewards But we have lost the thread of our discourse, flowing, urged swifter and swifter his easy und must pause to search for it, even like a course-laggard and lazy no more-leaving spinster of old, in the disarranged spindle of leagues behind him, ere you had shifted your one of those pretty little wheels now heard no motion in watching his cloudlike career, soon more in the humble ingle, hushed by machi- invisible among the woods! nery clink-clanking with power-looms in every The disgorged eels are returned-some of town and city of the land. Another year, and them alive-to their native element-the mud. we often found ourselves-alone-or with one And the dead heron floats away before small chosen comrade; for even then we began to winds and waves into the middle of the tarn. have our sympathies and antipathies, not only Where is he-the matchless Newfoundlander with roses and lilies, or to cats and cheese, but. —nromine gaudens FRO, because white as the with or to the eyes, and looks, and foreheads, froth of the sea? Off with a colley. So-stript and hair, and voices, and motions, and silence, with the first intention, we plunge from a and rest of human beings, loving them with a rock, and, perfect love-we must not say hating them with,. Though in the scowl of heaven, the tarn a perfect hatred —alone or with a friend, among Grows dark as we are swimming," the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and Draco-like, breast-high, we stem the surge, stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, and with the heron floating before us, return the Whawp! At first sight of his long bill to the heather-fringed shore, and give three aloft above the rushes, we could hear our heart cheers that startle the echoes, asleep from beating quick time in the desert; at the turn- year's end to year's end, in the Grey-Linn ing of his neck, the body being yet still, our Cairn. heart ceased to beat altogether-and we grew Into the silent twilight of many a wild rocksick with hope when near enough to see the and-river scene, beautiful and bewildering as wild beauty of his eye. Unfolded, like a the fairy work of sleep, will he find himself thought, was then the brown silence of the brought who knows where to seek the heron shy creature's ample wings-and with a in all his solitary haunts. For often when the warning cry he wheeled away upon the wind, moors are storm-swept, and his bill would be unharmed by our ineffectual hail, seen falling baffled by the waves of tarn and loch, he sails ar short of the deceptive distance, while his away from his swinging-tree, and through mate that had lain couched-perhaps in her some open glade dipping down to the secluded nest of eggs or young, exposed yet hidden- stream, alights within the calm chasm, and within killing range, half-running, half-fly- folds his wings in the breezeless air. The ing, flapped herself into flight, simulating clouds are driving fast aloft in a carry from lame leg and wounded wing; and the two the sea-but they are all reflected in that peldisappearing together behind the hills, left lucid pool-so perfect the cliff-guarded repose. us in our vain reason thwarted by instinct, A better day-a better hour-a better minute to resume with live hopes rising out of the for fishing could not have been chosen by Mr. ashes of the dead, our daily-disappointed Heron, who is already swallowing a par. quest over the houseless mosses. Yet now Another-and another-but something falls and then to our steady aim the bill of the from the rock into the water; and suspicious, whawp disgorged blood-and as we felt the though unalarmed, he leisurely addresses himfeathers in our hand, and from tip to tip eyed self to a short flight up the channel —round the outstretched wings, Fortune, we felt, had that tower-like cliff standing strangely by no better boon to bestow, earth no greater tri- itself, with a crest of self-sown flowering umph. shrubs; and lo! another vista, if possible, just Ilush-stoop-kneel-crawl-for by all our a degree more silent-more secluded-more hopes of mercy —a heron-a heron! An eel solitary-beneath the mid-day night of woods! dangling across his bill! And now the water- To shoot thee there-would be as impious as selpent has disappeared! From morning dawn to have killed a sacred Ibis stalking in the hath the fowl been fishing here-perhaps on shade of an Egyptian temple. Yet it is fortu. that very stone-for it is one of those days when nate for thee-folded up there, as thou art, as eels are a-roaming in the shallows, and the motionless as thy sitting-stone-that at this heron knows that they are as likely to pass by moment we have no fire-arms-for we had:hat stone as any other-from morning dawn heard of a fish-like trout in that very pool, and -and'tis now past meridian, half-past two! this-O Heron-is no gun but a rod. Thou Be propitious, oh ye Fates! and never-never believest thyself to be in utter solitude —no -shall he again fold his wings on the edge of sportsman but thyself in the chasm-for the his gaping nest, on the trees that overtop the otter, thou knowest, loves not such very rocky only tower left of the old castle. Another eel! rivers; and fish with bitten shoulder seldom and we too can crawl silent as the sinuous lies here-that epicure's tasted prey. Yes CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 19 within ten yards of thee lies couched thy kle-mou'd Meg! neither thou nor the "Lanp enemy, who once had a design upon thee, even Gun" are of any avail here-for that old drake` in the very egg. Our mental soliloquy disturbs who, together with his shadow, on which he not thy watchful sense-for the air stirs not seems to be sitting, is almost as big as a boat when the soul thinks, or feels, or fancies about in the water, the outermost landward sentinel, man, bird, or beast. We feel, O Heron! that near as he seems to be in the deception of the there is not only humanity —but poetry, in our clear frosty air, is yet better than three hunbeing. Imagination haunts and possesses us dred yards from the shore —and, at safe dis. in our pastimes, colouring them even with tance, cocks his eye at the fowler. There is serious —solemn-and sacred light-and thou no boat on the loch, and knowing that, how assuredly hast something priest-like and an- tempting in its unapproachable reeds and cient in thy look-and about thy light-blue rushes, and hut-crested knoll-a hut built per. plume robes, which the very elements admire haps by some fowler, in the olden time-yon and reverence-the waters wetting them not- central Isle! But be still as a shadow-for nor tne winds ruffling-and moreover we love lo! a batch of Whig-seceders, paddling all by thee-Heron-for the sake of that old castle, themselves towards that creek —and as surely beside whose gloom thou utteredst thy first as our name is Christopher, in another quarter feeble cry! A Ruin nameless, traditionless- of an hour, they will consist of killed, wounded, sole, undisputed property of Oblivion! and missing. On our belly —with unhatted Hurra!-Heron-hurra! why, that was an head just peering overthe knowe-andMuckleawkward tumble-and very nearly had we mou'd Meg slowly and softly stretched out on hold of thee by the tail! Didst thou take us the rest, so as not to rustle a windle-strae, we for a water-kelpie? A fright like that is lie motionless as a mawkin, till the coterie enough to leave thee an idiot all the rest of collects together for simultaneous dive down thy life.'Tis a wonder thou didst not go into to the aquatic plants and insects of the fastfits-but thy nerves must be sorely shaken- shallowing bay; and, just as they are upon the and what an account of this adventure will turn with their tails, a single report, loud as a certainly be shrieked unto thy mate, to the volley, scatters the unsparing slugs about their music of the creaking boughs! Not, even doups. and the still clear water, in sudden diswert thou a secular bird of ages, wouldst thou turbance, is afloat with scattered feathers, and ever once again revisit this dreadful place. stained with blood. For fear has a wondrous memory in. all dumb Now is the time for the snow-white, here creatures —and rather wouldst thou see thy nesf and there ebon-spotted Fro —who with burning die of famine, than seek for fish in this man- eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick monster-haunted pool! Farewell! farewell! breath ever and anon trembling on a passionate Many are the hundreds of hill and mountain whine, to bounce up, as if discharged by a lochs to us as familiarly known, round all catapulta, and first with immense and enortheir rushy or rocky margins, as that pond mous high-and-far leaps, and then, fleet as any there in the garden of Buchanan Lodge. That greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down pond has but one goose and one gander, and the brae, to dash, all fours, like a flying squirnine goslings-about half-a-dozen trouts, if in- rel fearlessly from his tree, many yards into deed they have not sickened and died of Nos- the bay with one splashing and momentarily talgia, missing in the stillness the gurgle of disappearing spang, and then, head and their native Tweed-and a brace of perch, shoulders and broad line of back and rudder now nothing but prickle. But the lochs-the tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy hill, the mountain lochs now in our mind's water line, to mouth first that murdered maweye and our mind's ear,-heaven and earth! sey of a mallard, lying as still as if she had the bogs are black with duck, teal, and widgeon been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown -up there "comes for food or play" to the bosom towards heaven-then that old Drake, holla of the winds, a wedge of wild geese, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more piercing the marbled heavens with clamour- gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale and lo! in the very centre of the mediterranean, gray, and his back delicately pencilled and the Royal Family of the Swans! Up springs crossed with numberless waved dusky linesthe silver sea-trout in the sunshine-see Sir precious prize to one skilled like us in the Humphrey!-a salmon-a salmon fresh run angling art-next-nobly done, glorious Froin love and glory from the sea! that cream colour crowned widgeon, with For how many admirable articles are there bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from themes in the above short paragraph! Duck, the neck by loveliest waved ash-brown and teal, and widgeon, wild-geese, swans! And white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on first, duck, teal, and widgeon. There they are, the indescribable and changeable green beautyall collected together, without regard to party spot of his wings-and now, if we mistake not, politics, in their very best attire, as thick as a Golden Eye, best described by his namethe citizens of Edinburgh, their wives, sweet- finally, that exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, hearts, and children, on the Calton Hill, on poetical in its delicately pencilled spots as an the first day of the king's visit to Scotland. As Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted thick, but not so steady-for what swimming to a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, about in circles-what ducking and diving is with some few other means and appliances to there! —all the while accompanied with a sort boot, carved finely-most finely-by razor-like of low, thick, gurgling, not unsweet, nor un- knife, in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning musical quackery, the expression of the intense to divide-tasted by a tongue and palate both joy of feeding, freedom, and play. Oh! Muc- healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning 20 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. rose -swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to more have we ourselves?-of life and of be extending itself in its intense delight-and death! Why fear to say that thou wert di. received into a stomach yawning with greed vinely commissioned and inspired —on that and gratitude,-oh! surely the thrice-blessed most dismal and shrieking hour, when little of all web-footed birds; the apex of Apician Harry Seymour, that bright English boy, luxury; and able, were any thing on the face "whom all that looked on loved," entangled of this feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on among the cruel chains of those fair waterthe very brink of fate, a short quarter of an lilies, all so innocently yet so murderously hour from an inferior Elysium! floating round him, was, by all standing or How nobly, like a craken or sea-serpent, running about there with clenched hands, or Fro reareth his massy head above the foam, kneeling on the sod-given up to inextricable his gathered prey seized-all four —by their death? We were not present to sa re the dear limber necks, and brightening, like a bunch of boy, who had been delivered to our care as to flowers, as they glitter towards the shore! that of an elder brother, by the noble lady who, With one bold body-shake, felt to the point of in her deep widow's weeds, kissed her sole each particular hair, he scatters the water darling's sunny head, and disappeared. We from his coat like mist, reminding one of that were not present-or by all that is holiest in glorious line in Shakspeare, heaven or on earth-our arms had been soon "Like dewdrops from the Lion's mane," around thy neck, when thou wert seemingly about to perish! advancing with sinewy legs seemingly length- But poor, dumb, despised dogish!nothing, as ened by the drenching flood, and dripping tail ut a poor, dumb, despised dog-nothere —and some say, but animated dust-was there —and stretched out in all its broad longitude, with without shout or signal-for all the Christian hair almost like white hanging plumes-mag- creatures were alike helpless in their despair nificent as tail of the Desert-Born at the head -shot swift as a sunbeam over the deep, and of his seraglio in the Arabian Sands. Halfway by those golden tresses, sinking and brightenhis master meets his beloved Fro on the slope; ing through the wave, brought the noble child and first proudly and haughtily pausing to ashore, and stood over him, as if in joy and mark our eye, and then humbly, as beseemeth sorrow, lying too like death on the sand! And one whom nature, in his boldest and brightest when little Harry opened his glazed eyes, and bearing, hath yet made a slave-he lays the looked bewildered on all the faces aroundoffering at our feet, and having felt on his and then fainted, and revived and fainted again capacious forehead the approving pressure of -till at last he came to dim recollection of our hand, this world on the bosom of the physician ", While, like the murmur of a dream, brought thither with incomprehensible speed Ile hears us breathe his name," from his dwelling afar off-thou didst lick his he suddenly flings himself round with a wheel cold white hands and blue face, with a whine of transport, and in many a widening circle that struck awful pity into all hearts, and thou pursues his own uncontrollable ecstasies with didst follow him-one of the group-as he was whirlwind speed; till, as if utterly joy-ex- borne along-and frisking and gambolling no hausted, he brings his snow-white bulk into more all that day, gently didst thou lay thyself dignified repose on a knoll, that very moment down at the feet of his little bed, and Swatch illuminated by a burst of sunshine! there unsleeping all night long! For the boy Notnow-as fades upon our pen the solemn knew that God had employed one of his lowly light of the dying day-shall we dare to decide, creatures to save him-and beseeched that he whether or not Nature-O most matchless might lie there to be looked at by the light of creature of thy kind!-gave thee, or gave thee the taper, till he himself, as the pains went not, the gift of an immortal soul! Better such away, might fall asleep! And we, the watchers creed-fond and foolish though it may be —yet by his bed-side, heard him in his dreams men. scarcely unscriptural, for in each word of tioning the creature's name in his prayers scripture there are many meanings, even when Yet at times-O Fro-thou wert a sad dog each sacred syllable is darkest to be read,- indeed-neither to bind nor to hold-for thy better such creed than that of the atheist or blood was soon set a-boil, and thou-like Juskeptic, distracted ever in his seemingly sullen lius Caesar-and Demetrius Poliorcetes-and apathy, by the dim, dark doom of dust. Better Alexander the Great-and many other ancient that Fro should live, than that Newton should and modern kings and heroes-thou wert the die-for ever. What though the benevolent slave of thy passions. No Scipio wert thou Howard devoted his days to visit the dungeon's with a Spanish captive. Often-in spite of gloom, and by intercession with princes, to set threatening eye and uplifted thong —uplifted the prisoners free from the low damp-dripping only, for thou went'st unflogged to thy gravestone roof of the deep-dug cell beneath the didst thou disappear for days at a time-as if foundation rocks of the citadel, to the high lost or dead. Rumours of thee were brought dewdropping vault of heaven, too, too daz- to the kirk by shepherds from the remotest zlingly illumined by the lamp of the insufferable hills in the parish-most confused and contrasun! There reason triumphed-those were dictory-but, when collected and compared, the works of glorified humanity. But thou- all agreeing in this-that thou wert living, and a creature of mere instinct-according to life-like, and life-imparting, and after a season Descartes, a machine, an automaton —hadst from thy travels to return; and return thou still yet a constant light of thought and of affection didst-wearied often and wo-begone-purpled in thine eyes-nor wert thou without some thy snow-white curling-and thy broad breast glimmering and mysterious notions-and what torn, not disfigured, by honourable wounds. Foi CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 21 never yet. saw we a fighter like thee. Up on the bloody place, uncertain whether or not his thy hind legs in a moment, like a growling enemy were about to return, Fro finally lies Polar monster, with thy fore-paws round thy down at some distance, and with bloody flews foeman's neck, bull-dog, colly, mastiff, or grey- keeps licking his bloody legs, and with long hound, and down with him in a moment, with darting tongue cleansing the mire from his as much ease as Cass, in the wrestling-ring at neck, breast, side, and back-a sanguinary Carlisle, would throw a Bagman, and then wo spectacle! He seems almost insensible to our to the throat of the downfallen, for thy jaws caresses, and there is something almost like were shark-like as they opened and shut with upbraiding in his victorious eyes. Now that their terrific tusks, grinding through skin and his veins are cooling, he begins to feel the pain sinew to the spine. of his wounds-many on, and close to vital Once, and once only —bullied out of all en- parts. Most agonizing of all-all his four durance by a half-drunken carrier —did we con- shanks are tusk-pierced, and, in less than ten sent to let thee engage in a pitched battle with minutes, he limps away to his kennel, lame as a mastiff victorious in fifty fights-a famous if riddled by shotshanker-and a throttler beyond all compare. "Hlieu quantum mutatus ab illo It was indeed a bloody business-now growl- Hectore!" ing along the glawr of the road-a hairy hurri- gore-besmeared and dirt-draggled-an hour cane-now snorting in the suffocating ditch- ago serenely bright as the lily in June, or the now fair play on the clean and clear crown of April snow. The huge wagon moves away the causey-now rolling over and over through out of the clachan without its master, who, a chance-open white little gate, into a cottage- ferocious from the death of the other brute he garden-now separated by choking them both loved, dares the whole school to combat. Off with a chord-now brought out again with fly a dozen jackets-and a devil's dozen of savage and fiery eyes to the scratch on a green striplings from twelve past to going sixteenplat round the sign-board-swinging tree in the firmly wedged together like the Macedonian middle of the village-auld women in their Phalanx-are yelling for the fray. There is mutches crying out, "Shame! whare's the such another shrieking of women as at the minister?" "-oung women, with combs in their taking of Troy. But pretty heads, blinking with pale and almost "The Prince of Mearns stept forth before the crowd, weeping faces from low-lintelled doors-chi- Ad, Carter, challenged you to single fight!" dren crowding for sight and safety on the Bob Howie, who never yet feared the face of louping-on-stone —and loud cries ever and anon clay, and had too great a heart to suffer mere at each turn and eddy of the fight, of" Well children to combat the strongest and most done, Fro, well done, Fro —see how he worries unhappy man in the whole country-stripped his windpipe —well done, Fro!" for Fro was to the buff; and there he stands, with the delight and glory of the whole parish, and "An eye like Mars, to threaten and command the honour of all its inhabitants, male and fe- shoulders like Atlas-breast like Herculesmale, was felt to be staked on the issue- and arms like Vulcan. The heart of Benjawhile at intervals was heard the harsh hoarse min the wagoner dies within him-he accepts voice of the carriers and his compeers, cursing the challenge for a future day-and retreating and swearing in triumph in a many-oathed backwards to his clothes, receives a rightlanguage peculiar to the race that drive the hander as from a sledge-hammer on the temple, broad-wheeled wagons with the high canvas that fells him like an ox. The other carters roofs, as the might of Teeger prevailed, and all close in, but are sent spinning in all directhe indomitable Fro seemed to be on his last tions as from the sails of a windmill. Ever legs beneath a grip of the jugular, and then as each successive lout seeks the earth, we stretched motionless and passive-in defeat or savage school-boys rush in upon him in twos, death. A mere ruse to recover wind. Like and threes, and fours, basting and battering unshorn Samson starting from his sleep, and him as he bawls; at this very crisis-so fate snapping like fired flax the vain bands of the ordained-are seen hurrying down the hill Philistines, Fro whawmled Teeger off, and from the south, leaving their wives, sweet. twisting round his head in spite of the grip on hearts, and asses in the rear, with coal-black the jugular, the skin stretching and giving way hair and sparkling eyes, brown brawny legs, in a ghastly but unfelt wound, he suddenly and clenched iron fists at the end of long arms, seized with all his tusks his antagonist's eye, swinging flail-like at all times, and more than and bit it clean out of the socket. A yowl of now, ready for the fray, a gang of Gipsies! unendurable pain-spouting of blood-sick- while-beautiful coincidence!-up the hill ness-swooning-tumbling over-and death. from the north come on, at double-quick time, His last fight is over! His remaining eye an awkward squad of as grim Milesians as glazed-his protruded tongue bitten in anguish ever buried a pike in a Protestant. Nor quesby his own grinding teeth-his massy hind tion nor reply; but in a moment a general legs stretched out with a kick lilke a horse- melee. Men at work in the hay-fields, who his short tail stiffens-he is laid out a grim would not leave their work for a dog-fight, fling corpse-flung into a cart tied behind the down scythe and rake, and over hedges inte wagon-and off to the tan-yard. the high-road, a stalwart reinforcenment. WeavNo shouts of victory-but stern, sullen, half- ers leap from their treddles-doff their blue ashamed silence-as of guilty things after aprons, and out into the air. The red-cowled the perpetration of a misdeed. Still glaring tailor pops his head through a skylight, and savagely, ere yet the wrath of fight has sub- next moment is in the street. The butcher sided in his heart, and going and returning t6 strips his long light-blue linen coat, to engage RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. a Paddy; and the smith, ready for action-for whisky comes, hands it about at his own ez; the huge arms of Burniwind are always bare- pense, caulker after caulker, to the vanquished with a hand-ower-hip delivery, makes the head -for. Bob was as generous as brave; had no of the king of the gipsies ring like an anvil. spite at the gipsies; and as for Irishmen, why There has been no marshalling of forces-yet they were ranting, roving, red-hot, dare-devil lo! as if formed in two regular lines by the boys, just like himself; and after -he figbt, Adjutant himself after the first tuilzie, stand he would have gone with them to Purgatory, the carters, the gipsies, and the Irishmen, op- or a few steps further down the hill. All the posed to Bob Howie, the butcher, the smith, battle through, we manse-boys had fought, it the tailor, the weaver, the hay-makers, and the may be said, behind the shadow of him our boys from the manse-the latter drawn up cau- hero; and in warding off mischief frcm us, tiously, but not cowardly, in the rear. What a he received not a few heavy body-blows from twinkling of fists and shillelas! what bashed and King Carew, a descendant of Bamfylde Moore, bloody noses! cut blubber lips —cheekbones and some crown-cracks from the shillelas of out of all proportion to the rest of the face, and, the Connaught Rangers. through sudden black and blue tumefactions, Down comes a sudden thunder-plump, mak nen's changed into pigs' eyes! And now there ing the road a river-and to the whiff o' Jight.'s also rugging of caps and mutches and hair, ning, all in the shape of man, woman, and "femineo ululatu," for the Egyptian Amazons child, are under roof-cover. The afternoon bear down like fiuries on the glee'd widow that soon clears up, and the haymakers leave the keeps the change-house, half-witted Shoosy clanking empty gill or half-mutchkin stoup, that sells yellow sand, and Davie Donald's dun for the field, to see what the rain has done — daughter, commonly called Spunkie. What the forge begins again to roar-the sound of shrieking and tossing of arms, round the whole the flying shuttle tells us that the weaver is length and breadth of the village! Where is again on his treddles; the tailor hoists up his Simon Andrew the constable? Where is auld little window in the thatch, in that close conRobert Maxwell the ruling elder? What can finement, to enjoy the caller air-the tinklers have become of Laird Warnock, whose word go to encamp on the common-" the air is is law? An what can the Minister be about, balm" —insects, dropping from eave and tree, can anybody tell, that he does not come flying " show to the sun their waved coats dropt with from the manse to save the lives of his pa- gold"-though the season of bird-singing be rishioners from cannibals, and gipsies, and over and gone, there is a pleasant chirping Eerish, murdering their way to the gallows? hereabouts, thereabouts, everywhere; the old How-why-or when-that bloody battle blind beggar, dog-led, goes from door to door, ceased to be, was never distinctly known either unconscious that such a stramash has ever then or since; but, like every thing else, it had been-and dancing round our champion, away an end —and even now we have a confused we schoolboys all fly -with him to swim in the dream of the spot at its termination-naked Brother Loch, taking our fishing-rods with us, men lying on their backs in the mire, all for one clap of thunder will not frighten the drenched in blood-with women, some old and trouts; and about the middle or end of July, ugly, with shrivelled witch-like hag breasts, we have known great labbers, twenty inches others young, and darkly, swarthily, blackly long, play wallop between our very feet, in beautiful, with budding or new-blown bosoms the warm shallow water, within a yard of the unkerchiefed in the colley-shangy-perilous to edge, to the yellow bodied, tinsey-tailed, black see-leaning over them: and these were the half-heckle, with brown mallard wing, a mere Egyptians! Men in brown shirts, gore-spot- midge, but once fixed in lip or tongue, " inexted, with green bandages round their broken tricable as the gorged lion's bite." heads, laughing, and joking, and jeering, and But ever after that passage in the life of Fro, singing, and shouting, though desperately his were, on the whole, years of peace. Every mauled and mangled-while Scottish wives, season seemed to strengthen his sagacity, and and widows, and maids, could not help crying to unfold his wonderful instincts. Most asout in sympathy, " Oh! but they're bonnie men suredly he knew all the simpler parts of speech -what a pity they should aye be sae fond o' -all the household words in the Scottish lanfechting, and a' manner o' mischief!"-and guage. He was, in all our pastimes, as much these were the Irishmen! Retired and apart, one of ourselves, as if, instead of being a Pagar. hangs the weaver, with his head over a wall, with four feet, he had been a Christian with dog-sick, and bocking in strong convulsions; two. As for temper, we trace the sweetness some haymakers are washing their cut faces of our own to his; an angry word from one he in the well: the butcher, bloody as a bit of his loved, he forgot in half a minute, offering his own beef, walks silent into the shambles; the lion-like paw; yet there were particular peosmith, whose grimy face hides its pummelling, ple he could not abide, nor from their hands goes off grinning a ghastly smile in the hands would he have accepted a roasted potato out of his scolding, yet not unloving wife; the of the dripping pan, and in this he resembled tailor, gay as a flea, and hot as his own goose, his master. He knew the Sabbath-day as to show how much more he has given than well as the Sexton-and never was known to received, offers to leap any man on the ground, bark till the Monday morning when the cock hop-step-and-jump, for a mutchkin-while Bob crew; and then he would give a long musical lHowie walks about, without a visible wound, ex- yowl, as if his breast were relieved from silence. cept the mark of bloody knuckles on his brawny If ever, in this cold, changeful, inconstant world, oreast, with arms a-kimbo, seaman fashion- there was a friendship that might be called sinfor Bob had been at sea-and as soon as the cere, it was that which, half a century ago and CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. npwards, subsisted between Christopher North in or below their shadow. The great Erne, of and John Fro. We never had a quarrel in all Sea-eagle, pounces on the mallard, as he our lives-and within these two months we mounts from the bulrushes before the wild made a pilgrimage to his grave. He was bu- swans sailing, with all wings hoisted, like a ried- not byour hands, butby the hands of one fleet-but osprey nor eagle dares to try his whose tender and manly heart loved the old, talons on that stately bird —for he is bold in blind, deaf, staggering creature to the very his beauty, and formidable as he is fair; the last-for such in his fourteenth year he truly pinions that swim and soar can also smite; was-a sad and sorry sight to see, to them who and though the one be a lover of war, the other remembered the glory of his stately and ma- of peace, yet of them it may be said, jestic years. One dray he crawled with a moan- "The eagle he is lord above, like whine to our brother's feet, and expired. The swan is lord below!" Reader, young, bright, and beautiful though To have shot such a creature-so largethou be-remember all flesh is dust! so white-so high-soaring-and on the winds This is an episode-a tale in itself complete, of midnight wafted from so far-a creature yet growing out of, and appertaining to, the that seemed not merely a stranger in that loch, main plot of Epic or Article. You will recol- but belonging to some mysterious land in lect we were speaking of ducks, teals, and another hemisphere, whose coast ships with widgeons-and we come now to the next clause frozen rigging have been known to visit, of the verse-wild geese and swans. driving under bare poles through a month's Some people's geese are all swans; but so snow storms-to have shot such a creature: far from that being the case with ours-sad was an era in our imagination, from which, and sorry are we to say it-now all our swans had nature been more prodigal, we might have are geese. But in our buoyant boyhood, all sprung up a poet. Once, and but once, we God's creatures were to our eyes just as God were involved in the glory of that event. The made them; and there was ever-especially creature had been in a dream of some river birds-a tinge of beauty over them all. What or lake in Kamtschatka-or ideally listening, an inconceivable difference-distance-to the "Across the waves' tumultuous roar, imagination, between the nature of a tame and The wolf's long howl from Oonalashka's shore," a wild goose! Aloft in heaven, themselves in when, guided by our good genius and our night invisible, the gabble of a cloud of wild brightest star, we suddenly saw him sitting geese is sublime. Whence comes it-whither asleep in all his state, within gunshot, in a bay goes it —for what end, and by what power im- of the moonlight Loch! We had nearly fainted pelled? Reason sees not into the darkness of -died on the very spot-and why were we nc; instinct-and therefore the awe-struck heart entitled to have died as well as any other of the night-wandering boy beats to hear the passionate spirit, whom joy ever divorced league-long gabble that probably has winged from life 1 We blew his black bill into pieces its wedge-like way from the lakes, and marshes, -not a feather on his head but was touched and dreary morasses of Siberia, from Lapland, and like a little white-sailed pleasure-boat or Iceland, or the unfrequented and unknown caught in a whirlwind, the wild swan spun northern regions of America-regions set round, and then lay motionless on the water, apart, quoth Bewick we believe, for summer as if all her masts had gone by the board. residences and breeding places, and where they We were all alone that night —not even Fro are amply provided with a variety of food, a was with us; we had reasons for being alone, large portion of which must consist of the for we wished not that there should be any larva of gnats, and myriads of insects, there foot-fall but our own round that mountain-hut fostered by the unsetting sun! Now they are Could we swim? Ay, like the wild swan him all gabbling good Gaelic over a Highland night- self, through surge or breaker. But now the moor. Perhaps in another hour the descend- loch was still as the sky, and twenty strokes ing cloud will be covering the wide waters at carried us close to the glorious creature, which, the head of the wild Loch Maree-or, silent grasped by both hands, and supporting us as and asleep, the whole host be riding at anchor it was trailed beneath our breast, while we around Loniond's Isles! floated rather than swam ashore, we felt to be But'tis now mid-day-and lo! in that medi- in verity our-Prey! We trembled with a terranean-a flock of wild Swans! Have they sort of fear, to behold him lying indeed dead dropt down from the ether into the water al- on the sward. The moon-the many stars most as pure as ether, without having once here and there one wondrously large andl folded their wings, since they rose aloft to shun lustrous —the hushed glittering loch-the hills, the insupportable northern snows hundreds of though somewhat dimmed, green all winter leagues beyond the storm-swept Orcades 1 To through, with here and there a patch of snow look at the quiet creatures, you might think on their summits in the blue sky, on which lay that they had never left the circle of that little a few fleecy clouds-the mighty foreign bird, loch. There they hang on their shadows, whose plumage we had never hoped to touch even as if asleep in the sunshine; and now but in a dream, lying like the ghost of somestretching out their long wings-how apt for thing that ought not to have been destroyedflight from clime to clime!-joyously they beat the scene was altogether such as made our the liquid radiance, till to the loud flapping wild young heart quake, and almost repent of high rises the mist, and wide spreads the foam, having killed a creature so surpassingly almost sufficient for a rainbow. Safe are they beautiful. But that was a fleeting fancy —and from all birds of prey. The Osprey dashes over the wide moors we went, like an American 4own on the teal, or sea-trout, swimming with- Indian laden with game, journeying to his 24 tRECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. wigwam over the wilderness. As we whitened hills, not a few mountains, some most extrat towards the village in the light of morning, the ordinary cliffs, considerable store of woods earlier labourers held up their hands in wonder and one, indeed, that might well be called The what and who we might be; and Fro, who had Forest. missed his master, and was lying awake for Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead through him on the mount, came bounding along, nor thy own sweet stormy skies, Auld Scotland! could refrain the bark of delighted passion as and as sternly and grimly thou look'st far over his nose nuzzled in the soft down of the bosom the hushed or howling seas, remember theeof the creature whom he remembered to have till all thy moors and mosses quake at thy sometimes seen floating too far off in the lake, heart, as if swallowing up an invading armor far above our reach cleaving the firmament. -a fate that oft befell,thy foes of yore-re. member thee, in mist-shrouded dream, and FYTTE: THIRID. cloud-born vision, of the long line of kings, and heroes, and sages, and bards, whose hal 0 MUCKL;-MOU'D Meg! and can it be that lowed bones sleep in pine-darkened tombs thou art numbered among forgotten things- among the mountain heather, by the side of unexistences! rivers, and lochs, and arms of ocean —their "Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course, spirits yet seen in lofty superstition, sailing With rocks, and stones, and trees!" or sitting on the swift or settled tempest. Lift What would we not now give for a sight- up thy rock-crowned forehead, Auld Scotland! a kiss-of thy dear lips! Lips which we re- and sing aloud to all the nations of the earth, member once to have put to our own, even with thy voice of cliffs, and caves, and caverns, when thy beloved barrel was double-loaded! "Wha daur meddle wi' me." Now we sigh to think on what then made us shudder! Oh! that thy butt were but now What! some small, puny, piteous windpipes resting on our shoulder! Alas! for ever are heard cheeping against thee from the Cock. discharged! Burst and rent asunder, art thou neys-like ragged chickens agape in the pip. now lying buried in a peat-moss? Did some How the feeble and fearful creatures would vulgar villain of a village Vulcan convert thee, crawl on their hands and knees, faint and name and nature, into nailsge Some dark- giddy, and shrieking out for help to the heather visaged Douglas of a henroost-robbing Egyp- stalks, if forced to face one of thy cliffs, and tian, solder thee into a pan Oh! that our foot its flinty bosom! How would the depths passion could dig down unto thee in the of their long ears, cotton-stuffed in vain, ache bowels of the earth-and with loud lamenting to the spray-thunder of thy cataracts! Sick, elegies, and louder hymns of gratulation, re- sick would be their stomachs, storm-swept in store thee, buttless, lockless, vizyless, burst, a six-oared cutter into the jaws of Staffa! That rent, torn, and twisted though thou be'st, to the sight is sufficient to set the most saturnine on the light of day, and of the world-rejoicing Sun! guffaw-the Barry Cornwall himself, crossing Then would we adorn thee with evergreen a chasm a hundred yards deep, wreaths of the laurel and the ivy-and hang' On the uncertain footing of a spar," thee up, in memory and in monument of all on a tree felled where it stood, centuries ago, the bright, dim, still, stormy days of our boy- by steel or storm, into a ledgeless bridge, oft hood-when gloom itself was glory-and when sounding and shaking to the hunter's feet in -But chase of the red-deer! The Cockneys do not " Be hush'd my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns, like us Scotchmen-because of our high cheekWhen the faint and the feeble deplore." bones. They are sometimes very high indeed, Cassandra-Corinna-Sappho-Lucretia-Cle- very coarse, and very ugly, and give a Scotchopatra-Tighe-De Sta1l —in their beauty or man a grim and gaunt look, assuredly not to in their genius, are, with millions on millions be sneezed at, with any hope of impunity, on of the fair-faced or bright-souled, nothing but a dark day and in a lonesome place, by the dust and ashes; and as they are, so shall Baillie, most heroic chief of the most heroic clan in and Grant, and Hemans, and Landon be-and all the level land of Lud, travelling all by himwhy vainly yearn " with love and longings in- self in a horse and gig, and with a black boy in a finite," to save from doom of perishable nature cockaded glazed hat, through the Heelands o' -of all created things, but one alone-Muckle- Scotland, passing of course, at the very least, for mou'd Meg! a captain of Hussars! Then Scotchmen canlna After a storm comes a calm; and we hasten keep their-backs straught, it seems, and are alto give the sporting world the concluding ac- ways booin' and booin' afore a great man. count of our education. In the moorland Cannot they, indeed? Do they, indeed 1 Asparish-God bless it-in which we had the cend with that Scottish shepherd yon mouninestimable advantage of passing our boyhood tain's breast-swim with him that mountain -there were a good many falcons-of course loch-a bottle of Glenlivet, who first stands in the kite or glead-the buzzard-the sparrow- shallow water, on the Oak Isle-and whose hawk-the marsh harrier-that imp the merlin back will be straughtest, that of the Caledoand, rare bird and beautiful! there, on a nian or the Cockney! The little ILuddite will cliff which, alas! a crutched man must climb be puking among the heather, about some fivec no more, did the Peregrine build her nest. hundred feet above the level of the sea-higher You must not wonder at this, for the parish for the first time in his life than St. Paul's, and was an extensive one even for Scotland-half nearer than he will again be, either in the spirit Highland, half Lowland —and had not only or the flesh, to heaven. The little Luddite "mnurs and mosses many o," but numerous will be puking in the hitherto unpollutel loch, CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 25 after some seven strokes or so, with a strong forgotten tarns, or counting twice over some Scottish weed twisted like an eel round its one of our more darlingwaters, worthy to aash thigh, and shrieking out for the nearest resus- their waves against the sides of ships-alone citating machine in a country, where, alas! wanting to the magnificence of those inland there is no Humane Society. The back of the seas! Yes-it was as level, as boggy, as shepherd-even in presence of that "great hilly, as mountainous, as woody, as lochy, man"-will be as straught as-do not tremble, and as rivery a parish, as ever laughed to Cockney-this Crutch. Conspicuous from afar scorn Colonel Mudge and his Trigonometrical like a cairn, from the inn-door at Arrochar, in Survey. an hour he will be turning up his little finger Was not that a noble parish for apprenticeso-on the Cobbler's head; or, in twenty mi- ship in sports and pastimes of a great master. nutes, gliding like a swan, or shooting like a No need of any teacher. On the wings of joy salmon, his back being still straught-leaving we were borne over the bosom of nature, and Luss, he will be shaking the dewdrops from his learnt all things worthy and needful to be brawny body on the silver sand of Inch Morren. learned, by instinct first, and afterwards by And happy were we,' Christopher North, reason. To look at a wild creature-winged happy were we in the parish in which Fate de- with feathers, or mere feet-and not desire to livered us up to Nature, that, under her tuition, destroy or capture it-is impossible to passion our destinies might be fulfilled. A parish! -to imagination-to fancy. Thus had we Why it was in itself a kingdom-a world. longed to feel and handle the glossy plumage Thirty miles long by twenty at the broadest, of the beaked bird-the wide-winged Birds of and five at the narrowest; and is not that a Prey-before our finger had ever touched a kingdom-is not that a world worthy of any trigger. Their various flight, in various weamonarch that ever wore a crown? Was it ther, we had watched and noted with somelevel! Yes, league-long levels were in it of thing even of the eye of a naturalist-the greensward, hard as the sand of the sea-shore, wonder of a poet; for among the brood of yet springy and elastic, fit training ground for boys there are hundreds and thousands of Childers, or Eclipse, or Hambletonian, or Smo- poets who never see manhood,-the poetry lensko, or for a charge of cavalry in some great dying away —the boy growing up into mere pitched battle, while artillery might keep play- prose;-yet to some even of the paragraphs ing against artillery from innumerous affront- of these Three Fyttes do we appeal, that a few ing hills. Was it boggy? Yes, black bogs sparks of the sacred light are yet alive within were there, which extorted a panegyric from us; and sad to our old ears would be the sound the roving Irishman in his richest brogue- of "Put out the light, and then-put out the bogs in which forests had of old been buried, light!" Thus were we impelled, even when a and armies with all their banners. Was it mere child, far away from the manse, for miles, hilly! Ay, there the white sheep nibbled, and into the moors and woods. Once it was feared the back cattle grazed; there they baa'd and that poor wee Kit was lost; for having set off they lowed upon a thousand hills-a crowd of all by himself, at sunrise, to draw a night-line cones, all green as emerald. Was it moun- from the distant Black Loch, and look at a trap tainous Give answer from afar, ye mist- set for a glead, a mist overtook him on the shrouded summits, and ye clouds cloven by moor on his homeward way, with an eel as the eagle's wing! But whether ye be indeed long as himself hanging over his shoulder, and mountains, or whether ye be clouds, who can held him prisoner for many hours within its tell, bedazzled as are his eyes by that long- shifting walls, frail indeed, and opposiig no lingering sunset, that drenches heaven and resistance to the hand, yet impenetrable to the earth in one indistinguishable glory, setting feet of fear as the stone dungeon's thraldom. the West on fire, as if the final conflagration If the mist had remained, that would have were begun! Was it woody. Hush, hush, been nothing; only a still cold wet seat on a and you will hear a pine-cone drop in the stone; but as " a trot becomes a gallop soon, central silence of a forest-a silent and soli- in spite of curb and rein," so a Scotch mist tary wilderness-in which you may wander a becomes a shower-and a shower a floodwhole day long, unaccompanied but by the and a flood a storm-and a storm a tempestcushat, the corby, the falcon, the roe, and they and a tempest thunder and lightning-and are all shy of human feet, and, like thoughts, thunder and lightning heaven-quake and pass away in a moment; so if you long for earth-quake-till the heart of poor wee Kit leas fleeting farewells from the native dwellers *quaked, and almost died within him in the in the wood, lo! the bright brown queen of the desert. In this age of Confessions, need we butterflies, gay and gaudy in her glancings be ashamed to own, in the face.of the whole through the solitude, the dragon-fly whirring world, that we sat us down and cried! The bird-like over the pools in the glade; and if small brown Moorland bird, as dry as a toast, your ear desire music, the robin and the wren hopped out of his heather-hole, and cheerfully may haply trill you a few notes among the cheeped comfort. With crest just a thought briery rocks, or the bold bla,.kbild open wide lowered by the rain, the green-backed, whitehis yellow bill in his holly-tree, and set the breasted peaseweep, walked close by us in the squirrels a-leaping all within reach of his mist; and sight of wonder, that made even in. ringing roundelay. Any rivers? one-to whom that quandary by the quagmire our heart beat a thousand torrents are tributary-as he him- with joy —lo! never seen before, and seldom self is tributary to the sea. Any lochs? How since, three wee peaseweeps, not three days many we know not-for we never counted old, little bigger than shrew-mice, all covered them twice alike-omitting perhaps some with blackish down, interspersed with long 26 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. white hair running after their mother! But killed him for not building a house of his own the large hazel eye of the she peaseweep, rest- in a country where there was no want of less even in the most utter solitude, soon sticks. But the kite or glead, as the same dis. spied us glowering at her, and her young ones, tinguished ornithologist rightly says, is pro. through our tears; and not for a moment verbial for the ease and gracefulness of its doubting-Heaven forgive her,for the shrewd flight, which generally consists of large and but cruel suspicion!-that we were Lord Eg- sweeping circles, performed with a motionless linton's gamekeeper —with a sudden shrill cry wing, or at least with a slight and almost imthat thrilled to the marrow in our cold back- perceptible stroke of its pinions, and at very bone-flapped and fluttered herself away into distant intervals. In this manner, and direct.,he mist, while the little black bits of down ing its course by its tail, which acts as a rud. disappeared, like devils, into the moss. The der, whose slightest motion produces effect, it croaking of the frogs gr:w terrible. And frequently soars to such a height as to become worse and worse, close at hand, seeking almost invisible to the human eye. Him we ]:.5 lost cows through the mist, the bellow loved to slay, as a bird worthy of our barrel of the notorious red bull! We began saying Him and her have we watched for days, like our prayers; and just then the sun forced a lynx, till we were led, almost as if by an himself out into the open day, and, like instinct, to their nest in the heart of the forest the sudden opening of the shutters of a room, -a nest lined with wool, hair, and other soft the whole world was filled with light. The materials, in the fork of some large tree. frogs seemed to sink among the pow-heads- They will not, of course, utterly forsake their as for the red bull who had tossed the tinker, nest, when they have young, fire at them as he was cantering away, with his tail towards you will, though they become more wary, and us, to a lot of cows on the hill; and hark-a seem as if they heard a leaf fall, so suddenly long, a loud, an oft-repeated halloo! Rab Ro- will they start and soar to heaven. We re ger, honest fellow, and Leezy Muir, honest member, from an ambuscade in a briery dell lass, from the manse, in search of our dead in the forest, shooting one flying overhead to body! Rab pulls our ears lightly, and Leezy its nest; and, on going up to him as he lay on kisses us from the one to the other —wrings his back, with clenched talons and fierce eyes, the rain out of our long yellow hair-(a pretty absolutely shrieking and yelling with fear, and contrast to the small gray sprig now on the rage, and pain, we intended to spare his life, crown of our pericranium, and the thin tail and only take him prisoner, when we beheld a-cock behind)-and by and by stepping into beside him on the sod, a chicken from the Hazel-Deanhead for a drap and a "chitterin' brood of famous ginger piles, then, all but his piece," by the time we reach the manse we are small self, following the feet of their clucking as dry as a whistle-take our scold and our mother at the manse! With visage all inparmies from the minister-and, by way of flamed, we gave him the butt on his double punishment and penance, after a little hot organ of destructiveness, then only known to whisky toddy, with brown sugar and a bit of us by the popular name of" back o' the head," bun, are bundled off to bed in the daytime! exclaiming Thus we grew up a Fowler, ere a loaded "Pallas te hoe vulnere, Pal:as gun was in our hand-and often guided the Immolat"city-fowler to the haunts of the curlew, the Quivered every feather, from beak to tail and plover, the moorfowl, and the falcon. The talon, in his last convulsion, falcon! yes-in the higher region of clouds and cliffs. For now we had shot up into a "Vitaquecumgemitufugitindignatasubumbras stripling-and how fast had we so shot up In the season of love what combats have you may know, by taking notice of the school- we been witness to-Umpire-between birds boy on the play-green, and two years after- of prey! The Female Falcon, she sat aloof wards discovering, perhaps, that he is that like a sultana, in her soft, sleek, glossy plumes, fne tall ensign carrying the colours among the iris in her eye of wilder, more piercing, Lhe light-bobs of the regiment, to the sound of fiery, cruel, fascinating, and maddening lustre, clarion and flute, cymbal and great drum, than ever lit the face of the haughtiest human marching into the city a thousand strong. queen, adored by princes on her throne of diaWe used in early boyhood, deceived by monds. And now her whole plumage shivers some uncertainty in size, not to distinguish -and is ruffled-for her own Gentle Peregrine between a kite and a buzzard, which was very appears, and they two will enjoy their dallistupid, and unlike us-more like Poietes in ance on the edge of the cliff-chasm-and the Salmonia. The flight of the buzzard, as may Bride shall become a wife in that stormy sunbe seen in Selby, is slow-and except during shine on the loftiest precipice of all these our the season of incubation, when it often soars Alps. But a sudden sugh sweeps down from to a considerable height, it seldom remains heaven, and a rival Hawk comes rushing in long on the wing. It is indeed a heavy, inac- his rage from his widowed eyry, and will win tive bird, both in disposition and appearance, and wear this his second selected bride —for and is generally seen perched upon some old her sake, tearing, or to be torn, to pieces. and decayed tree, such being its favourite Both struck down from heaven, fall a hundred haunt. Him we soon thought little or nothing fathom to the heather, talon-locked, in the muabout-and the last one we shot, it was, we tual gripe of death. Fair play, gentlemen, and remember, jast as he was coming out of the attend to the Umpire. It is, we unde:stanl. t( deserted nest of a crow, which he had taken be an up-and-down fight. Allow us to disen possession of out of p-ire laziness; and we tangle you-and withcut giving advantage to CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 27 either-elbow-room to both. Neither of you bhers, from all the impulses that come to them ever saw a human face so near before-nor in solitude gaining more, far more than they ever were captive in a human hand. Both have lost! When we are awake, or half fasten their momentarily frightened eyes on awake, or almost sunk into a sleep, they arc us, and, holding back their heads, emit a wild ceaselessly gathering materials for the think. ringing cry. But now they catch sight of each ing and feeling soul-and it is hers, in a deep other, and in an instant are one bunch of delight formed of memory and imagination, to torn, bloody plumes. Perhaps their wings are put them together by a divine plastic power, broken, and they can soar no more-so up we in which she is almost, as it were, a very crefling them both into the air-and wheeling ator, till she exult to look on beauty and on each within a short circle, clash again go both grandeur such as this earth and these heavens birds together, and the talons keep tearing never saw, products of her own immortal and throats till they die. Let them die, then, for immaterial energies, and BEING once, to BE for both are for ever disabled to enjoy their lady- ever, when the universe, with all its suns and love. She, like some peerless flower in the systems, is no more! days of chivalry at a fatal tournament, seeing But oftener we and our shadows glided along her rival lovers dying for her sake, nor ever the gloom at the foot of the cliffs, ear-led by the to wear her glove or scarf in the front of bat- incessant cry of the young hawks in their nest, tIe, rising to leave her canopy in tears of grief ever hungry except when asleep. Left to and pride-even like such Angelica, the Fal- themselves, when the old birds are hunting, con unfolds her wings, and flies slowly away an hour's'want of food is felt to be famine, and from her dying ravishers, to bewail her vir- you hear the cry of the callow creatures, angry ginity on the mountains. "0 Frailty! thy with one another, and it may be, fighting with name is woman!" A third Lover is already soft beak and pointless claws, till a living on the wing, more fortunate than his preced- lump of down tumbles over the rock-ledge, ing peers-and Angelica is won, woo'd, and soon to be picked to the bone by insects, who sitting, about to lay an egg in an old eyry, likewise all live upon prey; for example, Ants soon repaired and furbished up for the honey- of carrion. Get you behind that briery bield, week, with a number of small birds lying on that wild-rose hanging rock, far and wide the edge of the hymeneal couch, with which, scenting the wilderness with a faint perfume; when wearied with love, and yawp with hun- or into that cell, almost a parlour, with a Gothic ger, Angelica may cram her maw till she be roof formed by large stones leaning one against ready to burst, by her bridegroom's breast. the other and so arrested, as they tumbled from Forgotten all human dwellings, and all the the frost-riven breast of the precipice. Wait thoughts and feelings that abide by firesides, there, though it should be for hours-but it and doorways, and rooms, and roofs-delight- will not be for hours; for both the old hawks ful was it, during the long, long midsummer are circling the sky, one over the marsh and holyday, to lie all alone, on the green-sward one over the wood. She comes-she comesof some moor-surrounded mount, not far from the female Sparrowhawk, twice the size of her the foot of some range of cliffs, and with our mate; and while he is plain in his dress, as a face up to the sky, wait, unwearying, till a cunning and cruel Quaker, she is gay and speck was seen to cross the blue cloudless gaudy as a Demirep dressed for the pit of the lift, and steadying itself after a minute's qui- Opera-deep and broad her bosom, with an vering into motionless rest, as if hung sus- air of luxury in her eyes that glitter like d pended there by the counteracting attraction serpent's. But now she is a mother, and plays of heaven and earth, known to be a Falcon! a mother's part-greedier, even than for her. Balanced far above its prey, and, soon as the self, for her greedy young. The lightning right moment came, ready to pounce down, flashes from the cave-mouth, and she comes and fly away with the treasure in its talons to tumbling, and dashing, and rattling through its crying eyry! If no such speck were for the dwarf bushes on the cliff-face, perpendicuhours visible in the ether, doubtless dream lar and plumb-down, within three yards of her upon dream, rising unbidden, and all of their murderer. Her husband will not visit his nest own wild accord, congenial with the wilder- this day-no-nor all night long; for a father's ness, did, like phantasmagoria, pass to and is not as a mother's love. Your only chance fro, backwards and forwards, along the dark- of killing him, too, is to take a lynx-eyed cirened curtain of our imagination, all the lights cuit round about all the moors within half a of reason being extinguished or removed! In league; and possibly you may see him sitting that trance, not unheard, although scarcely on some cairn, or stone, or tree-stump, afraid noticed, was the cry of the curlew, the murmur to fly either hither or thither, perplexed by the of the little moorland burn, or the din, almost sudden death he saw appearing among the unlike dashing, of the far-off loch,'Twas thus accountable smoke, scenting it yet with his that the senses, in their most languid state, fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of your apministered to the fancy, and fed her for a fu- proach. Hazard a long shot-for you are right ture day, when all the imagery then received behind him —and a slug may hit him on the so imperfectly, and in broken fragments, into head, and, following the feathers, split his ner mysterious keeping, was to arise in order- skull-cap and scatter his brains.'Tis done-!y array, and to form a world more lovely and and the eyry is orphan'd. Let the small brown more romantic even than the reality, which moorland birds twitter Io Pean, as they hang then lay hushed or whispering, glittering or balanced on the bulrushes-let the stone-chat gloomly, in the outward air. For the -senses glance less fearfully within shelter of the old hear and see all things in their seeming slum- gray cairn-let the cushat coo his joycus grati I's3 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. mude in the wocd —and the lark soar up to hea- difficulty from knoll to knor, pursued by the yen, afraid no more of a demon descending shrieking magpies, buffeted by the corby, and from the cloud. As for the imps in the eyry, lying on his back, 1;ke a recreant, before the let them die of rage and hunger-for there beak of the raven, who, a month ago, was tertmust always be pain in the world; and'tis rifled to hop round the carcass till the king of well when its endurance by the savage is the the air was satiated, and gave his permission cause of pleasure to the sweet-when the gore- to croaking Sooty to dig into the bowels he yearning cry of the cruel'is drowned in the himself had scorned. Yet he is a noble aim song of the kind at feed or play-and the to the fowler still; you break a wing and a tribes of the peace-loving rejoice in the des- leg, but fear to touch him with your hand; pair and death of the robbers and shedders of Fro feels the iron-clutch of his talons conblood! stricted in the death-pang; and holding him Not one fowler of fifty thousand has in all up, you wonder that such an anatomy-for his his days shot an Eagle. That royal race seems weight is not more than three pounds-could nearly extinct in Scotland. Gaze as you will drive his claws through that shaggy hide till over the wide circumference of a Highland blood sprung to the blow-inextricable but to heaven, calm as the bride's dream of love, or yells of pain, and leaving gashes hard to heal, disturbed as the shipwrecked sailor's vision of for virulent is the poison of rage in a dying a storm, and all spring and summer long you. bird of prey. may not chance to see the shadow pf an Eagle Sublime solitude of our boyhood! where in the sun. The old kings of the air are some- each stone in the desert was sublime, unassotimes yet seen by the shepherds on cliff or be- ciated though it was with dreams of memory, neath cloud; but their offspring are rarely in its own simple native power over the human allowed to get full fledged in spite of the rifle heart! Each sudden breath of wind passed always lying loaded in the shieling. But in by us like the voice of a spirit. There were the days of our boyhood there were many glori- strange meanings in the clouds-often so like ous things on earth and air that now no more human forms and faces threatening us off, or seem to exist, and among these were the beckoning us on, with long black arms, back Eagles. One pair had from time immemorial into the long-withdrawing wilderness of heanuilt on the Echo-cliff, and you could see with ven. We wished then, with quaking bosoms, a telescope the eyry, with the rim of its cir- that we had not been all alone in the desertcumference, six feet in diameter, strewn with that there had been another heart, whose beatpartridges, moorfowl, and leverets-their ings might have kept time with our own, that feathers and their skeletons. But the Echo- we might have gathered courage in the silent cliff was inaccessible. and sullen gloom from the light in a brother's ~' Hither the rainbow comes, the cloud, eye-the smile on a brother's countenance. And mists that spread the flying shroud, And often had we such a friend in these our And sunbeams, and the flying blast, far-off wanderings over moors and mountains, That if it could, would hurry past, But that enormous barrier binds it fast." by the edge of lochs, and through the umbrage No human eye ever saw the birds within a of the old pinewoods. A friend from whom thousand feet of the lower earth; yet how "we had received his heart, and given him often must they have stooped down on lamb back our own," —such a friendship as the most and leveret, and struck the cushat in her very fortunate and the most happy-and at that yew-tree in the centre of the wood! Perhaps time we were both-are sometimes permitted they preyed at midnight, by the light of the by Providence, with all the passionate devowaning moon-at mid-day, in the night of tion of young and untamed imagination, to sun-hiding tempests-or afar off, in even more enjoy, during a bright dreamy world of which solitary wilds, carried thither on the whirlwind that friendship is as the Polar star. Emilius of their own wings, they swept off their prey Godfrey! for ever holy be the name! a boy from uninhabited isles, ept off their prey when we were but a child —when we were but a youth, a man. We felt stronger in the sha"Placed far amid the melancholy main," dow of his arm-happier, bolder, better in the or vast inland glens, where not a summer light of his countenance. He was the proshieling smiles beneath the region of eternal tector-the guardian of our moral being. In snows. But eagles are subject to diseases in our pastimes we bounded with wilder glee-at flesh, and bone, and blood, just like the veriest our studies we sat with intenser earnestness, poultry that die of croup and consumption on by his side. He it was that taught us how to the dunghill before the byre-door. Sickness feel all those glorious sunsets, and embued our blinds the eye that God framed to pierce the young spirit with the love and worship of naeas, and weakens the wing that dallies with ture. He it was that taught us to feel that our the tempest. Then the eagle feels how vain evening prayer was no idle ceremony to be. is the doctrine of the divine right of kings. hastily gone through —that we might lay cown Hle is hawked at by the mousing owl, whose our head on the pillow, then soon smoothed in instinct instructs him that these talons have sleep, but a command of God, which a response lost their grasp, and these pinions their death- from nature summoned the humble heart to blow. The eagle lies for weeks famished in obey. He it was who for ever had at comhis eyry, and hunger-driven over the ledge, mand wit for the sportive, wisdom for the se~eaves it to ascend no more. He is dethroned, rious hour. Fun and frolic flowed in the merry and wasted to mere bones-a bunch of feathers music of his lips-they lightened from the gay — his flight is now slower than that of the glancing of his eyes-and then, all at once, tiuzzard-he floats himself along now with when the one changed its measures, and the CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 29 ther gathnered, as it were, a mist or a cloud, the sky. With him we first foLowed the Fal. an answering sympathy chained our own con in her flight-he showed us on the Echotongue, and darkened our own countenance, in cliff the Eagle's eyry. To the thicket he led intercommunion of spirit felt to be indeed us where lay couched the iovely-spotted Doe, divine! It seemed as if we knew but the or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing words of language-that he was a scholar who on the glade with her two fawns at her side. saw into their very essence. The books we But for him we should not then have seen the read together were, every page, and every sen- antlers of the red-deer, for the Forest was tence of every page, all covered over with indeed a most savage place, and hauntedlight. Where his eye fell not as we read, all such was the superstition at which they who was dim or dark, unintelligible or with imper- scorned it trembled-haunted by the ghost of fect meanings. Whetherwe perused with him a huntsman whom a jealous rival had mur. a volume writ by a nature like our own, or the dered as he stooped, after the chase, at a little volume of the earth and the sky, or the volume mountain well that ever since oozed out blood. revealed from Heaven, next day we always What converse passed between us two in all knew and felt that something had been added those still shadowy solitudes! Into what to our being. Thus imperceptibly we grew depths of human nature did he teach our wonup in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer dering eyes to look down! Oh! what was to moral and religious air, with all our finer become of us, we sometimes thought in sadaffections towards other human beings, all our ness that all at once made our spirits sinkkindred and our kind, touched with a dearer like a lark falling suddenly to earth, struck by domestic tenderness, or with a sweet benevo- the fear of some unwonted shadow from above lence that seemed to our ardent fancy to em- -what was to become of us when the manbrace the dwellers in the uttermost regions of date should arrive for him to leave the Manse the earth. No secret of pleasure or pain-of for ever, and sail away in a ship to India never joy or grief-of fear or hope-had our heart more to return! Ever as that dreaded day to withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. drew nearer, more frequent was the haze in He saw it as it beat within our bosom, with all our eyes; and in our blindness, we knew not its imperfections-may we venture to say, with that such tears ought to have been far more all its virtues. A repented folly-a confessed rueful still, for that he then lay under orders fault —a sin for which we were truly contrite for a longer and more lamentable voyage-a -a vice flung from us with loathing and with voyage over a narrow streight to the eternal shame-in such moods as these, happier were shore. All-all at once he drooped; on one we to see his serious and his solemn smile, fatal morning the dread decay began-with no than when in mirth and merriment we sat by forewarning, the springs on which his being his side in the social hour on a knoll in the had so lightly-so proudly-so grandly moved, open sunshine, and the whole school were in gave way. Between one Sabbath and another ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his his bright eyes darkened-and while all the genius, even like a flock of birds chirping in people were assembled at the sacrament, the their joy all newly-alighted in a vernal land. soul of Emilius Godfrey soared up to Heaven. In spite of that difference in our years-or oh! It was indeed a dreadful death, serene and say rather because that very difference did sainted though it were-and not a hall-not a touch the one heart with tenderness and the house —not a hut-not a shieling within all the other with reverence, how often did we two circle of those wide mountains, that did not on wander, like elder and younger brother, in the that night mourn as if it had lost a son. All sunlight and the moonlight solitudes! Woods the vast parish attended his funeral-Low-into whose inmost recesses we should have landers and Highlanders in their own garb of quaked alone to penetrate, in his company grief. And have time andtempest nowblackl were glad as gardens, through their most ened the white marble of that monument-is awful umbrage; and there was beauty in the that inscription now hard to be read-the name shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts-in whose of Emilius Godfrey in green obliteration —nor lonesome thunder, as it pealed into those haply one surviving who ever saw the light pitchy pools, we durst not by ourselves have of the countenance of him there interred! faced the spray-in his presence, dinn'd with Forgotten as if he had never been! for few a merry music in the desert, and cheerful was were that glorious orphan's kindred-and they the thin mist they cast sparkling up into the lived in a foreign land-forgotten but by one air. Too severe for our uncompanioned spirit, heart, faithful through all the chances and then easily overcome with awe, was the soli- changes of this restless world! And therein tude of those remote inland lochs. But as we enshrined among all its holiest remembrances, walked with him along the winding shores, shall be the image of Emilius Godfrey, till it how passing sweet the calm of both blue too, like his, shall be but dust and ashes! depths-how magnificent the white-crested Oh! blame not boys for so soon forgetting waves tumbling beneath the black thunder- one another-in absence or in death. Yet forcloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed getting is not just the very word; call it rather on it along with his, at the beginning or the a reconcilement to doom and destiny-in thus ending of some sudden storm, the Apparition obeying a benign law of nature that soon of the Rainbow! Grander in its wildness, streams sunshine over the shadows of the alat seemed to sweep at once all the swinging grave. Not otherwise could all the ongoings and stooping woods, to our ear, because his of this world be continued. The nascent spirit too listened, the concerto by winds and waves outgrows much in which it once found all deplayeil at midnight, when not one star was in light; and thoughts delightful still, thoughts 80) RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. of the faces3 and the voices of the dead, perish nor did our old master and minister frownnot, lying sometimes in slumber-sometimes for he grudged not to the boy he loved the in sleep. It belongs not to the blessed season remnant of the dream about to be rolled away and genius of youth, to hug to its heart useless like the dawn's rosy clouds. We Lemanded and unavailing griefs. Images of the well- with our eye-not with our voice-one long beloved, when they themselves are in the holyday, throughout that our last autumn, on mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, to the pale farewell blossoms of the Christthrough the meditative hush of solitude. But mas rose. With our rod we went earlier to our main business-our prime joys and our the loch or river; but we had not known tho prime sorrows-ought to be-must be with the roughly our own soul-for now we angled les. living. Duty demands it; and Love, who passionately-less perseveringlythan was our would pine to death over the bones of the dead, wont of yore-sitting in a pensive —a melansoon fastens upon other objects with eyes and choly-a miserable dream, by the dashing voices to smile and whisper an answer to all waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our his vows. So was it with us. Ere the mid- gun we plunged earlier in the morning into summer sun had withered the flowers that the forest, and we returned later at eve-but spring had sprinkled over our Godfrey's grave, less earnest-less eager were we to hear the youth vindicated its own right to happiness; cushat's moan from his yew-tree-to see the and we felt that we did wrong to visit too often hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft that corner in the kirkyard. No fears had we on the sky. A thousand dead thoughts came of any too oblivious tendencies; in our dreams to life again in the gloom of the woods-and we saw him-most often all alive as ever- we sometimes did wring our hands in an sometimes a phantom away from that grave! agony of grief, to know that our eyes should If the morning light was frequently hard to be not behold the birch-tree brightening there endured, bursting suddenly upon us along with with another spring. the feeling that he was dead, it more frequent- Then every visit we paid to cottage or to ly cheered and gladdened us with resignation, shieling was felt to be a farewell; there was and sent us forth a fit playmate to the dawn something mournful in the smiles on the swee. that rang with all sounds of joy. Again we faces of the ruddy rustics, with their silken found ourselves angling down the river, or snoods, to whom we used to whisper harmless along the loch —once more following the flight love-meanings, in which there was no evil of the Falcon along the woods-eying the guile; we regarded the solemn toil-and-careEagle on the Echo-Cliff. Days passed by, with- worn countenances of the old with a profounder out so much as one thought of Emilius God- emotion than had ever touched our hearts in frey-pursuing our pastime with all our pas- the hour of our more thoughtless joy; and the sion, reading our books intently-just as if he whole life of those dwellers among the *oods, had never been! But often and often, too, we and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to thought we saw his figure coming down the us far more affecting now that we saw deeper hill straight towards us-his very figure-we into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung could not be deceived-but the love-raised from the conviction that the time was close at ghost disappeared on a sudden-the grief- hand when we should mingle with it no more. woven spectre melted into the mist. The The thoughts that possessed our most secret strength, that formerly had come from his bosom failed not by the least observant to be counsels, now began to grow up of itself with- discovered in our open eyes. They who had in our own unassisted being. The world of liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our nature became more our own, moulded and follies, the insolencies of our reckless boymodified by all our own feelings and fancies; hood, were all forgotten; whatever had been and with a bolder and more original eye we our sins, pride towards the poor was never saw the smoke from the sprinkled cottages, among the number; we had shunned not and read the faces of the mountaineers on stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; their way to their work, or coming and going our mite had been given to the widow who had to the house of God. lost her own; quarrelsome with the young we Then this was to be our last year in the might sometimes have been, for boyblood is parish —now dear to us as our birth-place; soon heated, and boils before a defying eye; nay, itself our very birth-place-for in it from but in one thing at least we were Spartans, we the darkness of infancy had our soul been revered the head of old age. born. Once gone and away from the region And many at least were the kind-some the of cloud and mountain, we felt that most pro- sad farewells, ere long whispered by us at bably never more should we return. For gloaming among the glens. Let them rest for others, who thought they knew us better than ever silent amidst that music in the memory we did ourselves, had chalked out a future which is felt, not heard-its blessing mute.ife for young Christopher North-a life that though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a But to Thee-O palest Phantom-clothed in splendid name. Therefore we determined white raiment, not like unto a ghost risen with with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of pas- its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph sion, to make the most-the best —of the few descending from the skies to bless-unto Thee months that remained to us, of that our wild, will we dare to speak, as through the mist of free, and romantic existence, as yet untram- years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, melled by those inexorable laws, which, once charming us, while we cannot choose but weep launched into the world, all alike-young and with the selfsame vision that often glided before old-must obey. Our books were flung aside- us long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 31,f our voice would pause for a little while, and before the tempest, she came upont us in the then pass by, like a white bird from the sea, midst of that dreary moss; and at the sound floating unscared close by the shepherd's head, of our voice, fell down with clasped hands' at or alighting to trim its plumes on a knoll far our feet-" My father's dead!" Had the hut up an inland glen! Death seems not to have put already on the strange, dim, desolate look touched that face, pale though it be-lifelike is of mortality? For people came walking fhst the waving of those gentle hands —and the down the braes, and in a little while there was soft, sweet, low music which now we hear, a group round us, and we bore her back again steals not sure from lips hushed by the burial to her dwelling in our arms. As for us, we mould! Restored by the power of love, she had been on our way to bid the fair creature stands before us as she stood of yore. Not and her father farewell. How could she ha';r one of all the hairs of her golden head was lived-an otter orphan-in such a world.~ singed by the lightning that shivered the tree The holy power that is in Innocence would for under which the child had run for shelter from ever have remained with her; but Innocence the flashing sky. But in a moment the blue longs to be away when her sister Joy has delight in her dewv eyes was dimmed-and parted; and it is sorrowful to see the one or never again did she behold either flower or earth, when the other has gone to Heaven: star. Yet all the images of all the things she This sorrow none of us had long to see; foi had loved remained in her memory, clear and though a flower, when withered at the root, and distinct as the things themselves before unex- doomed ere eve to perish, may yet look to the tinguished eyes-and ere three summers had careless eye the same as when it blossomed in flown ov'r her head, which, like the blossom its pride-yet its leaves, still green, are not as of some fair perennial flower, in heaven's once they were —its bloom, though fair, is gracious dew and sunshine each season lifted faded-and at set of sun, the dews shall find it its loveliness higher and higher in the light — in decay, and fall unfelt on its petals. Ere she could trip her singing way through the Sabbath came, the orphan child was dead. wide wilderness, all by her joyful self, led, as Methinks we see now her little funeral. Her all believed, nor erred they in so believing, by birth had been the humbles. of the humble; an angel's hand! When the primroses peeped and though all in life had loved her, it was through the reviving grass upon the vernal thought best that none should be asked to the braes, they seemed to give themselves into her funeral of her and her father but two or three fingers; and'twas thought they hung longer friends; the old clergyman himself walked at unfaded round her neck or forehead than if the head of the father's coffin-we at the head they had been left to drink the dew on their of the daughter's-for this was granted unto native bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, our exceeding love;-and thus passed away though her garment touched the broom-stalk for ever the Blind Beauty of the Moor! on which they sang. The cushat, as she thrid Yet sometimes to a more desperate passion her way through the wood, continued to croon than had ever before driven us over the wilds, in her darksome tree-and the lark, although did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue just dropped from the cloud, was cheered by our pastime like one doomed to be a wild her presence into a new passion of song, and huntsman under some spell of magic. Let us, mounted over her head, as if it were his first ere we go away from these high haunts and be matin hymn. All the creatures of the earth no more seen-let us away far up the Great and air manifestly loved the Wanderer of the Glen, beyond the Echo-Cliff, and with our rifle Wilderness-and as for human beings, she -'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey-let was named, in their pity, their wonder, and us stalk the red-deer. In that chase or forest their delight, the Blind Beauty of the Moor! the antlers. lay not thick as now they lie on the She was an only child, and her mother had Athole Braes; they were still a rare sightdied in giving her birth. And now her father, and often and often had Godfrey and we gone stricken by one of the many cruel diseases up and down the Glen, without a single glimpse that shorten the lives of shepherds on the hills, of buck or doe rising up from among the hea. was bed-ridden-and he was poor. Of all ther. But as the true angler will try every words ever syllabled by human lips, the most cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has blessed is-Charity. No manna now in the reason to know that but one single fish has run wilderness is rained from heaven-for the up from the sea-so we, a true hunter, neither mouths of the hungry need it not in this our grudged nor wearied to stand for hours, still as Christian land. A few goats feeding among the heron by the stream, hardly in hope, but the rocks gave them milk, and there was bread satisfied with the possibility, that a deer might for them in each neighbour's house-neighbour pass by us in the desert. Steadiest and strong though miles afar-as the sacred duty came est is self-fed passion springing in spite of cirround-and the unrepining poor sent the grate- cumstance. When blows the warm showery fill child away with their prayers. south-west wind, the trouts turn up their yellow One evening, returning to the hut with her sides at every dropping of the fly upon the curl usual song, she danced up to her father's face ing water-and the angler is soon sated with an his rushy bed, and it was cold in death. If the perpetual play. But once-twice-thrice she shrieked-if she fainted-there was but -during a long blustering day-the sullen,ne Ear that heard, one Eye that saw her in plunge of a salmon is sufficient for that day's her swoon. Not now floating light like a joy. Still, therefore, still as a cairn that stands small moving cloud unwilling to leave the for ever on the hill, or rather as the shadow on flowery braes, though it be to melt in heaven, a dial, that though it moves is never seen to but driven along like a shroud of flying mist move, day after day were we on our station in 32 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. the Great Glen. A'oud, wild, wrathful, and wet his hair in the misty cloud, pursuing the savage cry from some huge animal, made our ptarmigan, now in their variegated summer heart leap to our mouth, and bathed our fore- dress, seen even among the unmelted:aows. head in sweat. We looked up-and a red- The scene shifts-and high up on the heath deer-a stag of ten-the king of the forest- above the Linn of Dee, in the Forest of Braestood with all his antlers, snuffing the wind, mar, the Thane-God bless him —has stalked but yet blind to our figure overshadowed by a the red-deer to his lair, and now lays his unrock. The rifle-ball pierced his heart-and erring rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's leaping up far higher than our head, he tum- Oak. Never shall Eld deaden our sympathies bled in terrific death, and lay stone-still before with the pastimes of our fellow men any more our starting eyes amid the rustling of the than with their highest raptures, Lheir prostrong-bented heather! There we stood sur- foundest grief. Blessings on the head of every veying him for a long triumphing hour. true sportsman on flood, or field, or fell; nor Ghastly were his glazed eyes —and ghastlier shall we take it at all amiss should any one of his long bloody tongue, bitten through at the them, in return for the pleasure he may have very root in agony. The branches of his ant- enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in lers pierced the sward like swords. His bulk smoky cabin during a rainy day, to the peatseemed mightier in death even than when it reek flavour of the glorious Glenlivet, send us, was crowned with that kingly head, snuffing by the Inverness coach, Aberdeen steam-packthe north wind. In other two hours we were et, or any other rapid conveyance, a basket of down at Moor-edge and up again, with an game, red, black, or brown, or peradventure a eager train, to the head of the Great Glen, haunch of the red-deer. coming and going a distance of a dozen long Reader! be thou a male, bold as the Tercel miles. A hay-wagon forced its way through Gentle-or a female, fair as the Falcon —a the bogs and over the braes-and on our return male, stern as an old Stag-or a female, soft into the inhabited country, we were met by as a young Doe-we entreat thee to think shoals of peasants, men, women, and children, kindly of Us and of our Article-and to look huzzaing over the Prey; for not for many years in love or in friendship on Christopher in his -never since the funeral of the old lord-had Sporting Jacket, now come to the close of his the antlers of a red-deer been seen by them Three Fyttes, into which he had fallen-out of trailing along the heather. one into another-and from which he has now Fifty years and more-and oh! my weary been revived by the application of a little salt soul! half a century took a long long time to to his mouth, and then a caulker. Nor think die away, in gloom and in glory, in pain and that, rambling as we have been, somewhat pleasure, in storms through which were afraid after the style of thinking common in sleep to fly even' the spirit's most eagle-winged rap- there has been no method in our madness, no tures, in calms that rocked all her feelings like lucidus ordo in our dream. All the pages are azure-plumed halcyons to rest-though now to instinct with one spirit-our thoughts and our look back upon it, what seems it all but a feelings have all followed one another, actransitory dream of toil and trouble, of which cording to the most approved principles of the smiles, the sighs, the tears, the groans, association-and a fine proportion has been were all alike vain as the forgotten sunbeams unconsciously preserved. The article may and the clouds! Fifty years and more are be likened to some noble tree, which —algone-and this is the Twelfth of August, though here and there a branch have somewhat Eighteen hundred and twenty-eight; and all overgrown its brother above or below it, an the Highland mountains have since dawn been arm stretched itself out into further gloom on astir, and thundering to the impetuous sports- this side than on that, so that there are irregu. men's joys! Our spirit burns within us, but larities in the umbrage-is still disfigured not our limbs are palsied, and our feet must brush by those sports and freaks of nature working the heather no more. Lo! how beautifully on a great scale, and stands, magnificent obthese fast-travelling pointers do their work on ject! equal to an old castle, on the cliff above that black mountain's breast! intersecting it the cataract. Wo and shame to the sacrileinto parallelograms, and squares, and circles, gious hand that would lop away one budding and now all astoop on a sudden, as if frozen to bough! Undisturbed let the tame and wild death! Higher up among the rocks, and cliffs, creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, and stones, we see a stripling, whose ambition find shelter or shade under the calm circum. it is to strike the sky with his forehead, and ference of its green old age. TALE OF EXPIATION. 33 TALE OF EXPIATION. MARGARET BURNSIDE was an orphan. Her happiness flowed, was now, when leisure per. parents, who had been the poorest people in mitted, seldom or never out of her hands; and the parish, had died when she was a mere in lonely places, where there was no human child; and as they had left no near relatives, ear to hearken, did the dying girl often support there were few or none to care much about her heart, when quaking in natural fears of the desolate creature, who might be well said the grave, by singing to herself hymns and to have been left friendless in the world. True psalms. But her hour was not yet comethat the feeling of charity is seldom wholly though by the inscrutable decrees of Proviwanting in any heart; but it is generally but a dence doomed to be hideous with almost inexcold feeling among hard-working folk, towards piable guilt. As for herself-she was innocent objects out of the narrow circle of their own as the linnet that sang beside her in the broom, family affections, and selfishness has a ready and innocent was she to be up to the last and strong excuse in necessity. There seems, throbbings of her religious heart. When the indeed, to be a sort of chance in the lot of the sunshine fell on the leaves of her Bible, the orphan offspring of paupers. On some the orphan seemed to see in the holy words, eye of Christian benevolence falls at the very brightening through the radiance, assurances first moment of their uttermost destitution- of forgiveness of all her sins-small sins inand their worst sorrows, instead of beginning, deed-yet to her humble and contrite heart terminate with the tears shed over their pa- exceeding great-and to be pardoned only by rents' graves. They are taken by the hands, the intercession of Him who died for us on the as soon as their hands have been stretched tree. Often, when clouds were in the sky, and out for protection, and admitted as inmates blackness covered the Book, hope died away into households, whose doors, had their fathers from the discoloured page-and the lonely and mothers been alive, they would never creature wept and sobbed over the doom dehave darkened. The light of comfort falls nounced on all who sin, and repent notupon them during the gloom of grief, and whetherin deed or in thought. And thus reliattends them all their days. Others, again, gion became within her an awful thing —till, are overlooked at the first fall of affliction, as in her resignation, she feared to die. But look if by some unaccountable fatality; the wretch- on that flower by the hill-side path, withered, edness with which all have become familiar, as it seems, beyond the power of sun and air no one very tenderly pities; and thus the or- and dew and rain to restore it to life. Next phan, reconciling herself to the extreme hard- day, you happen to return to the place, its ships of her condition, lives on uncheered by leaves are of a dazzling green, its blossoms of those sympathies out of which grow both a dazzling crimson. So was it with this Orphan. happiness and virtue, and yielding by degrees Nature, as if kindling towards her in sudden to the constant pressure of her lot, becomes love, not only restored her in a few weeks to poor in spirit as in estate, and either vegetates life-but to perfect health; and ere-long she, like an almost worthless weed that is care- whom few had looked at, and for whom still lessly trodden on by every foot, or if by nature fewer cared, was acknowledged to be the fairborn a flower, in time loses her lustre, and all est girl in all the parish-while she continued her days leads the life not so much of a ser- to sit, as she had always done from her very vant as of a slave. childhood, on the poor's form in the lobby of the Such, till she was twelve years old, had been kirk. Such a face, such a figure, and such a the fate of Margaret Burnside. Of a slender manner, in one so poorly attired and so meanly form and weak constitution, she had never placed, attracted the eyes of the young Ladies been able for much work; and thus from one in the Patron's Gallery. Margaret Burnside discontented and harsh master and mistress to was taken under their especial protectionanother, she had been transferred from house sent for two years to a superior school, where to house-always the poorest-till she came she was taught all things useful for persons in to be looked on as an encumbrance rather than humble life-and while yet scarcely fifteen, a help in any family, and thought hardly worth returning to her native parish, was appointed her bread. Sad and sickly she sat on the braes teacher of a small school of her own, to which herding the kine. It was supposed that she were sent all the girls who could be spared was in a consumption-and as the shadow of from home, from those of parents poor as her death seemed to lie on the neglected creature's own had been, up to those of the farmers and face, a feeling something like love was awa- small proprietors, who knew the blessings of kened towards her in the heart of pity, for a good education-and that without it, the which she showed her gratitude by still attend- minister may preach in vain. And thus Maring to all household tasks with an alacrity be- garet Burnside grew and blossomed like the yond her strength. Few doubted that she was lily of the field-and every eye blessed herdying —and it was plain that she thought so and she drew her breath in gratitude, piety, herself; for the Bible, which, in her friendless- and peace. ness, she had always read more than other Thus a few happy and useful years passed. children who were too happy to reflect often by-and it was forgotten by all-but herself — on the Word of tha: Being from whom their that Margaret Burnside was an orphan. gut 3 34 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. to be without one near and dear blood-relative of labour, and rarely long pursued against the in all the world, must often, even to the happy law without vitiating the whole character, was heart of youthful innocence, be more than a a favourite with all the parish. Singularly pensive-a painful thought; and therefore, handsome, and with manners above his birth, though Margaret Burnside was always cheer- Ludovic was welcome wherever he went, both ful among her little scholars, yet in the retire- with young and old. No merry-making could ment of her own room, (a pretty parlour, with deserve the name without him; and at all a window looking into a flower-garden,) and meetings for the display of feats of strength on her walks among the braes, her mien was and agility, far and wide, through more counsomewhat melancholy, and her eyes wore that ties than one, he was the champion. Nor had he touching expression, which seems doubtfully received a mean education. All that the parish to denote-neither joy nor sadness-but a habit schoolmaster could teach he knew; and having of soul which, in its tranquillity, still partakes been the darling companion of all the gentle. of the mournful, as if memory dwelt often on man's sons in the Manse, the faculties of his past sorrows, and hope scarcely ventured to mind had kept pace with theirs, and from them indulge in dreams of future repose. That he had caught unconsciously that demeanour profound orphan-feeling embued her whole so far superior to what could have been excharacter; and sometimes, when the young pected from one in his humble condition, but Ladies from the Castle smiled praises upon which, at the same time, seemed so congenial her, she retired in gratitude to her chamber- with his happy nature as to be readily acknowand wept. ledged to be one of its original gifts. Of his Among the friends at whose houses she sister, Alice, it is sufficient to say, that she was visited were the family at Moorside, the high- the bosom-friend of Margaret Burnside, and est hill-farm in the parish, and on which her that all who saw their friendship felt that it father had been a hind. It consisted of the was just. The small parentless grand-daughmaster, a man whose head was gray, his son ter was also dear to Margaret-more than perand daughter, and a grandchild, her scholar, haps her heart knew, because that, like herwhose parents were dead. Gilbert Adamson self, she was an orphan. But the creature was had long been a widower-indeed'his wife had also a merry and a madcap child, and her never been in the parish, but had died abroad. freakish pranks, and playful perversenesses, He had been a soldier in his youth and prime as she tossed her head in untameable glee, and of manhood; and when he came to settle at went dancing and singing, like a bird on the Moorside, he had been looked at with no very boughs of a tree, all day long, by some strange friendly eyes; for evil rumours of his charac- sympathies entirely won the heart of her who, ter had preceded his arrival there-and in that throughout all her own childhood, had been peaceful pastoral parish, far removed from the familiar with grief, and a lonely shedder of world's strife, suspicions, without any good tears. And thus did Margaret love her, it reason perhaps, had attached themselves to might be said, even with a very mother's love. the morality and religion of a man, who had She generally passed her free Saturday afterseen much foreign service, and had passed the noons at Moorside, and often slept there all best years of his life in the wars. It was long night with little Ann in her bosom. At before these suspicions faded away, and with such times Ludovic was never from home, some they still existed in an invincible feeling and many a Sabbath he walked with her of dislike or even aversion. But the natural to the kirk-all the family together —and fierceness and ferocity which, as these peaceful once by themselves for miles along the moor dwellers among the hills imagined, had at first, -a forenoon of perfect sunshine, which rein spite of his efforts to control them, often turned upon him. in his agony on his dying dangerously exhibited themselves in fiery out- day. breaks, advancing age had gradually subdued; No one said, no one thought that Ludovic Gilbert Adamson had grown a hard-working and Margaret were lovers-nor were they, and industrious man; affected, if he followed though well worthy indeed of each other's it not in sincerity, even an austerely religious love; for the orphan's whole heart was filled life; and as he possessed more than common and satisfied with a sense of duty, and all its sagacity and intelligence, he had acquired at affections were centred:n her school, where last, if not won, a certain ascendency in the all eyes blessed her, anc, where she had been parish, even over many whose hearts never placed for the good of all th ~se gladsome creaopened nor warmed towards him-so that he tures, by them who had rescued her from the was now an elder of the kirk-and, as the penury that kills the soul, and whose gracious most unwilling were obliged to acknowledge, bounty she remembered even in her sleep. In a just steward to the poor. His gray hairs her prayers she beseeched God to bless them weic not honoured, but it would not be too rather than the wretch on her knees-their much to say that they were respected. Many images, their names, were ever before her who had doubted him before came to think eyes and on her ear; and next to that peace of they had done him injustice, and sought to mind which passeth all understanding, and wipe away their fault by regarding him with comes from the footstool of God into the humesteem, and showing themselves willing to ble, lowly, and contrite heart, was to that orinterchange all neighbourly kindnesses and phan, day and night, waking or sleeping, the services with all the family at Moorside. His bliss of her gratitude. And thus Ludovic to son, though somewhat wild and unsteady, and her was a brother, and no more; a name too much addicted to the fascinating pastimes sacred as that of sister, by which she always of flood and field, often so ruinous to the sons called her Alice, and was so called in return, TALE OF EXPIATION. 35 But to Ludovic, wh. had a soul of fire, Mar- porch, to train up the pretty creepers on the garet was dearer far than ever sister was to wall. In the kirkyard, a smiling group every the brother whom, at the sacrifice of her own Sabbath forenoon waited for her at the gatelife, she might have rescued from death. Go and walked, with her at their head, into the where he might, a phantom was at his side- House of God-a beautiful procession to al] a pale fair face for ever fixed its melancholy their parents' eyes-one by one dropping away eyes on his, as if foreboding something dismal into their own seats, as the band moved along even when they faintly smiled; and once he the little lobby, and the minister sitting in the awoke at. midnight, when all the house were pulpit all the while, looked solemnly down asleep, crying, with shrieks, "0 God of mercy! upon the fair flock-the shepherd of their Margaret is murdered!" Mysterious passion souls! of Love! that darkens its own dreams of de- It was Sabbath, but Margaret Burnside was light with unimaginable horrors! Shall we not in the kirk. The congregation had risen call such dire bewilderment the superstition to join in prayer, when the great door was of troubled fantasy, or the inspiration of the thrown open, and a woman, apparelled as for prophetic soul! the house of worship, but wild and ghastly in From what seemingly insignificant sources her face and eyes as a maniac hunted by evil -and by means of what humble instruments spirits, burst in upon the service, and, with -may this life's best happiness be diffused uplifted hands, beseeched the man of God to over the households of industrious men! Here forgive her irreverent entrance, for that the was the orphan daughter of forgotten paupers, foulest and most unnatural murder had been both dead ere she could speak; herself, during done, and that her own eyes had seen the corpse all her melancholy childhood, a pauper even of Margaret Burnside lying on the moor in a more enslaved than ever they had been-one pool of blood! The congregation gave one of the most neglected and unvalued of all groan, and then an outcry as if the roof of the God's creatures —who, had she then died, would kirk had been toppling over their heads. All have been buried in some nettled nook of the cheeks waxed white, women fainted, and the kirkyard, nor her grave been watered almost firmest heart quaked with terror and pity, as by one single tear-suddenly brought out from once and again the affrighted witness, in the the cold and cruel shade in which she had same words, described the horrid spectacle, been withering away, by the interposition of and then rushed out into the open air, followed human but angelic hands, into the heaven's by hundreds, who for some minutes had been most gracious sunshine, where all at once her palsy-stricken; and now the kirkyard was all'eauty blossomed like the rose. She, who for in a tumult round the body of her who lay in so many years had been even begrudgingly fed a swoon. In the midst of that dreadful ferment, on the poorest and scantiest fare, by Penury there were voices crying aloud that the poor ungrateful for all her weak but zealous efforts woman was mad, and that such horror could to please by doing her best, in sickness and not be beneath the sun; for such a perpetra sorrow, at all her tasks, in or out of doors, and tion on the Sabbath-day, and first heard of in all weathers, however rough and severe — just as the prayers of his people were about to was now raised to the rank of a moral, in- ascend to the Father of all mercies, shocked tellectual, and religious being, and presided belief, and doubt struggled with despair as in over, tended, and instructed many little ones, the helpless shudderings of some dream of far, far happier in their childhood than it had blood. The crowd were at last prevailed on been her lot to be, and all growing up beneath by their pastor to disperse, and sit down on the her now untroubled eyes, in innocence, love, tombstones, and water being sprinkled over and joy inspired into their hearts by her, their the face of her who still lay in that mortal young and happy benefactress. Not a human swoon, and the air suffered to circulate freely dwelling in all the parish, that had not reason round her, she again opened her glassy eyes, to be thankful to Margaret Burnside. She and raising herself on her elbow, stared on the taught them to be pleasant in their manners, multitude, all gathered there so wan and silent, neat in their persons, rational in their minds, and shrieked out, "The Day of Judgment! pure in their hearts, and industrious in all The Day of Judgment!" their habits. Rudeness, coarseness, sullenness, The aged minister raised her on her feet, all angry fits, and all idle dispositions-the be- and led her to a grave, on which she sat down, setting vices and sins of the children of the and hid her face on his knees. "0 that I poor, whose home-education is often so miser- should have lived Lo see the day-but dreadfu. ably, and almost necessarily neglected-did are the decrees of the Most High-and she this sweet Teacher, by the divine influence of whom we all loved has been cruelly murmeekness never ruffled, and tenderness never dered! Carry me with you, people, and I troubled, in a few months subdue and over- will show you where lies her corpse." come-till her school-room, every day in the "Where-where is Ludovic Adamson?" week, was, in its cheerfulness, sacred as a cried a hoarse voice which none there had Sabbath, and murmured from morn till eve ever heard before; and all eyes were turned with the hum of perpetual happiness. The in one direction; but none knew who had effects were soon felt in every house. All spoken, and all again was hush. Then all art floors were tidier, and order and regularity once a hundred voices repeated the same enlivened every hearth. It was the pride of words, "Where-where is Ludovic Adamher scholars to get their own little gardens son?" and there was no reply. Then, indeed, behind their parents' huts to bloom like that was the kirkyard in an angry and a wrathful of the Brae —and. in imitation of that flowery ferment, and men looked far into each other's 30 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. eyes for confirmation of their suspicions. And savage croak along a range of cliffs. The there was whispering about things, that, though whole multitude stood stock-still at that car. in themselves light as air, seemed now charged rion-sound. The guide said shudderingly, in with hideous import; and then arose sacred a low hurried voice, "See, see-that is her appeals to Heaven's eternal justice, horridly mantle"-and there indeed Margaret lay, all ningled with oaths and curses; and all the in a heap, maimed, mangled, murdered, with crowd, springing to their feet, pronounced, a hundred gashes. The corpse seemed as if "that no other but he could be the murderer." it had been baked in frost, and was embedded It was remembered now, that for months in coagulated blood. Shreds and patches of past Margaret Burnside had often looked me- her dress, torn away from her bosom, be. lancholy-that her visits had been less fre- strewed the bushes-for many yards round quent to Moorside; and one person in the about, there had been the trampling of feet, crowd said, that a few weeks ago she had and a long lock of hair that had been torn come upon them suddenly in a retired place, from her temples, with the dews yet unmelted when Margaret was weeping bitterly, and Lu- on it, was lying upon a plant of broom, a little dovic tossing his arms, seemingly in wrath way from the corpse. The first to lift the and distraction. All agreed that of late he body from the horrid bed was Gilbert Adam. had led a disturbed and reckless life —and son. He had been long familiar with death that something dark and suspicious had hung in all its ghastliness, and all had now looked about him, wherever he went, as if he were to him-forgetting for the moment that he was haunted.by an evil conscience. But did not the father of the murderer-to perform the strange men sometimes pass through the Moor task from which they recoiled in horror. -squalid mendicants, robber-like, from the far- Resting on one knee, he placed the corpse on off city-one by one, yet seemingly belonging the other —and who could have believed, that to the same gang-with bludgeons in their even the most violent and cruel death could hands-half-naked, and often drunken in their have wrought such a change on a face once hunger, as at the doors of lonesome houses so beautiful! All was distortion-and territhey demanded alms; or more like foot-pads ble it was to see the dim glazed eyes, fixedly than beggars, with stern gestures, rising up open, and the orbs insensible to the strong sun from the ditches on the way-side, stopped the that smote her face white as snow among the frightened women and children going upon streaks as if left by bloody fingers! Her throat errands, and thanklessly received pence from was all discoloured-and a silk handkerchief the poor? One of them must have been the twisted into a cord, that had manifestly been murderer! But then, again, the whole tide of used in the murder, was of a redder hue than suspicion would set in upon Ludovic-her when it had veiled her breast. No one knows lover; for the darker and more dreadful the what horror his eyes are able to look on, till guilt, the more welcome is it to the fears of they are tried. A circle of stupified gazers the imagination when its waking dreams are was drawn by a horrid fascination closer and floating in blood. closer round the corpse-and women stood A tall figure came forward from the porch, there holding children by the hands, and faintand all was silence when the congregation ed not, but observed the sight, and shuddered beheld the Father of the suspected criminal. without shrieking, and stood there all dumb as He stood still as a tree in a calm day —trunk, ghosts. But the body was now borne along limbs, moved not-and his gray head was un- by many hands-at first none knew in what covered. He then stretched out his arm, not direction, till many voices muttered, "To Moor. in an imploring, but in a commanding atti- side-to Moorside"-and in an hour it was tude, and essayed to speak; but his White lips laid on the bed in which Margaret Burnside quivered, and his tongue refused its office. At had so often slept with her beloved little Ann last, almost fiercely, he uttered, "Who -dares in her bosom. denounce my son?" and like the growling The hand of some one had thrown a cloth thunder, the crowd cried, "All-all-he is the over the corpse. The room was filled with peomurderer!" Some said that the old man ple-but all their power and capacity of horror smiled; but it could have been but a convul- had been exhausted-and the silence was now sion of the features-outraged nature's wrung- almost like that which attends a natural death, out and writhing expression of disdain, to when all the neighbours are assembled for the show how a father's love brooks the cruelty funeral. Alice, with little Ann beside her, of foolish falsehood and injustice. kneeled at the bed, nor feared to lean her head Men, w omen, and children-all whom grief close to the covered corpse-sobbing out syllaand horror had not made helpless-moved bles that showed how passionately she prayed away cowards the Moor-the woman who had -and that she and her little niece-and, oh! seen the sight leading the way; for now her for that unhappy father —were delivering themwhole strength had returned to her, and she selves up into the hands of God. The father was drawn and driven by an irresistible pas- knelt not-neither did he sit down-nor move sion to look again at what had almost de- -nor groan-but stood at the foot of the bed, stroyed her judgment. Now they were miles with arms folded almost sternly-and with from the kirk, and over some brushwood, at eyes fixed on the sheet, in which there seemed the edge of a morass some distance from the to be neither ruth nor dread- but only an auscommon footpath, crows were seen diving and tere composure, which were it indeed but recareering in the air, and a raven flapping sud- signation to that dismal decree of Providence, denly out of the covert, sailed away with a had been most sublime-but who can see into TALE OF EXPIATION. 87 the heart of a man either righteous or wicked, men who now held him by the arm; and all and know what may be passing there, breath- assembled then exclaimed, " Guilty, guilty — ed from the gates of heaven or of hell! that one word will hang him! Oh, pity, pity, for Soon as the body had been found, shepherds his father and poor sister-this will break their and herdsmen, fleet of foot as the deer, had set hearts!" Appalled, yet firm of foot, the pri. off to scour the country far and wide, hill and soner forced his way into the house, and turn. glen, mountain and morass, moor and wood, ing, in his confusion, into the chamber on the for the murderer. If he be on the face of the left, there he beheld the corpse of the murdered earth, and not self-plunged in despairing sui- on the bed-for the sheet had been removedcide into some quagmire, he will be found — as yet not laid out, and disfigured and deformfor all the population of many districts are ed just as she had been found on the moor, in now afoot, and precipices are clomb till now the same misshapen heap of death! One long brushed but by the falcons. A figure, like that insane glare-one shriek, as if all his heartof a man, is seen by some of the hunters from strings at once had burst-and then down fell a hill-top, lying among the stones by the side the strong man on the floor like lead. One of a solitary loch. They separate, and descend trial was past which no human hardihood upon him, and then gathering in, they behold could endure —another, and yet another awaits the man whom they seek-Ludovic Adamson, him; but them he will bear as the guilty brave the murderer. have often borne them, and the most searching His face is pale and haggard-yet flushed eye shall not see him quail at the bar or on as if by a fever centered in his heart. That the scaffold. is no dress for the Sabbath-day-soiled and They lifted the stricken wretch from the savage-looking-and giving to the eyes that floor, pllaced him in a chair, and held him upsearch an assurance of guilt. He starts to his right, till he should revive from the fit. And feet, as they think, like some wild beast sur- he soon did revive; for health flowed in all prised in his lair, and gathering itself up to his veins, and he had the strength of a giant. fight or fly. But-strange enormity —a Bible But when his senses returned, there was none is in his hand! And the shepherd who first to pity him; for the shock had given an exseized him, taking the book out of his grasp, pression of guilty horror to all his looks, and, looks into the page, and reads, "VWhoever shed- like a man walking in his sleep under the deth man's blood, by man shall his blood be temptation of some dreadful dream, he moved surely shed." On a leaf is written, in her own with fixed eyes towards the bed, and looking at well-known hand, "The gift of Margaret Burn- the corpse, gobbled in hideous laughter, and side!" Not a word is said by his captors- then wept and tore his hair like a distracted they offer no needless violence —no indignities woman or child. Then he stooped down as he -but answer all inquiries of surprise and as- would kiss the face, but staggered back, and, tonishment (Oh! can one so young be so hard- covering his eyes with his hands, uttered such ened in wickedness!) by a stern silence, and a groan as is sometimes heard rending the upbraiding eyes, that like daggers must stab sinner's breast when the avenging Furies are his heart. At last he walks doggedly and sul- upon him in his dreams. All who heard it lenly along, and refuses to speak-yet his felt that he was guilty; and there was a fierce tread is firm-there is no want of composure cry through the room of " Make him touch the in his face-now that the first passion of fear body, and if he be the murderer, it will bleed!" or anger has left it; and now that they have -" Fear not, Ludovic, to touch it, my boy," the murderer in their clutch, some begin al- said his father.; "bleed afresh it will not, for most to pity him, and others to believe, or at thou art innocent: and savage though now least to hope, that he may be innocent. As yet they be who once were proud to be thy friends, they have said not a word of the crime of even they will believe thee guiltless when the which they accuse him; but let him try to mas- corpse refuses to bear witness against thee, ter the expression of his voice and his eyes as and not a drop leaves its quiet heart!" But he may, guilt is in those stealthy glances- his son spake not a word, nor did he seem to guilt is in those reckless tones. And why does know that his father had spoken; but he suflie seek to hide his right hand in his bosom? fered himself to be led passively towards the And whatever he may affect to say-they ask bed. One of the bystanders took his hand and him not —most certainly that stain on his shirt- placed it on the naked breast, when out of the collar is blood. But now they are at Moor- corners of the teeth-clenched mouth, and out side. of the swollen nostrils, two or three blood-drops There is still a great crowd all round about visibly oozed; and a sort of shrieking shout the house-in the garden-and at the door-and declared the sacred faith of all the crowd ilt a troubled cry announces that the criminal has the dreadful ordeal. " What body is this?'ti;; been taken, and is close at hand. His father all over blood!" said the prisoner, looking with meets him at the gate; and, kneeling down, an idiot vacancy on the faces that surrounded holds up his clasped hands, and says, "My him. But now the sheriff of the county en. son, if thou art guilty, confess, and die." The tered the room, along with some officers of criminal angrily waves his father aside, and justice, and he was spared any further shocks walks towards the door. "Fools! fools! what from that old saving superstition. His wrista mean ye by this? What crime has been com- soon after were manacled. These were all the mitted? And how dare ye to think me the words he had uttered since he recovered from criminal? Am I like a murderer?"-" We the fit; and he seemed now in a state of never spoke to him of the murder —we never stupor. spoke to him of the murder!" cried one of the Ludovic Adamson, after examination of wit a:sC RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. nesses who crowded against him from many perpetrated, nor that wretched si lner's soul unexpected quarters, was committed that very given to perdition. Yet others had gentler and Sabbath night to prison on a charge of murder. humaner thoughts. They remembered him On the Tuesday following, the remains of Mar- walking along God-supported beneath the bier garet Burnside were interred. All the parish -and at the mouth of the grave-and feared were at the funeral. In Scotland it is not cus- to look on that head-formerly grizzled, but tomary for females to join in the last simple now quite gray —when on the very first Sabceremonies of death. But in this case they bath after the murder he took his place in the did; and all her scholars, in the same white elder's seat, and was able to stand up, along dresses in which they used to walk with her with the rest of the congregation, when the at their head into the kirk on Sabbaths, followed minister prayed for peace to his soul, and the bier. Alice and little Ann were there, hoped for the deliverance out of jeopardy of nearest the coffin, and the father of him who him now lying in bonds. A low Amen went had wrought all this wo was one of its sup- all round the kirk at these words; for the most porters. The head of the murdered girl rest- hopeless called to mind that maxim of law, ed, it might be said, on his shoulder-but none equity, and justice-that every man under ac. can know the strength which God gives to his cusation of crime should be held innocent till servants-and all present felt for him, as he he is proved to be guilty. Nay, a human tribu. walked steadily under that dismal burden, a nal might condemn him, and yet might he stand pity, and even an affection, which they had acquitted before the tribunal of God. been unable to yield to him ere he had been There were various accounts of the behaso sorely tried. The Ladies from the Castle viour of the prisoner. Some said that he was were among the other mourners, and stood by desperately hardened-others, sunk in sullen,he open grave. A sunnier day had never apathy and indifference-and one or two pershone from heaven, and that very grave itself sons belonging to the parish who had seen partook of the brightness, as the coffin —with him, declared that he seemed to care not for the gilt letters, " Margaret Burnside, Aged 18" himself, but to be plunged in profound melan-was let down, and in the darkness below choly for the fate of Margaret Burnside, whose disappeared. No flowers were sprinkled there name he involuntarily mentioned, and then -nor afterwards planted on the turf-vain bowed his head on his knees and wept. His offerings of unavailing sorrow! But in that guilt he neither admitted at that interview, nor nook-beside the bodies of her poor parents- denied; but he confessed that some circumshe was left for the grass to grow over her, as stances bore hard against him, and that he was over the other humble dead; and nothing but prepared for the event of his trial-condemna. the very simplest headstone was placed there, tion and death. " But if you are not guilty, with a sentence from Scripture below the name. Ludovic, who can be the murderer? Not the There was less weeping, less sobbing, than at slightest shade of suspicion has fallen on any many other funerals; for as sure as Mercy other person-and did not, alas! the body bleed ruled the skies, all believed that she was there when"- The unhappy wretch sprang up -all knew it, just as if the gates of heaven from the bed, it was said, at these words, and had opened and showed her a white-robed hurried like a madman back and forward along spirit at the right hand of the throne. And the stone floor of his cell. "Yea-yea!" at why should any rueful lamentation have been last he cried, "the mouth and nostrils of my wailed over the senseless dust! But on the Margaret Lid indeed bleed when they pressed way home over the hills, and in the hush of down my hand on her cold bosom. It is God's evening beside their hearths, and in the still- truth!" " God's truth?" —" Yes-God's truth. ness of night on their beds-all-young and I saw first one drop, and then another, trickle old-all did nothing but weep! towards me-and I prayed to our Saviour to For weeks-such was the pity, grief, and wipe them off before other eyes might behold awe inspired by this portentous crime and la- the dreadful witnesses against me; but at that mentable calamity, that all the domestic on- hour Heaven was most unmerciful —for those goings in all the houses far and wide, were two small drops-as all of you saw-soon be. melancholy and mournful, as if the country came a very stream —and all her face, neck, had been fearing a visitation of the plague. and breast-you saw it as well as I miserable Sin, it was felt, had br6ught not only sorrow — were at last drenched in blood. Then I may on the parish, but shame that ages would not have confessed that I was guilty-did I, or did wipe away; and strangers, as they travelled I not, confess itl Tell me-for I remember through the moor, would point the place where nothing distinctly;-but if I did-the judgment the foulest murder had been committed in all of offended Heaven, then punishing me for my the annals of crime. As for the family at sins, had made me worse than mad-and so Moorside, the daughter had their boundless had all your abhorrent eyes; and, men, if I compassion, though no eye had seen her since did confess, it was the cruelty of God that drove the funeral; but people, in speaking of the me to it-and your cruelty-which was great; fither, would still shake their heads, and put for no pity had any one for me that day, though their fingers to their lips, and say to one an- Margaret Burnside lay before me a murdered other in whispers, that Gilbert Adamson had corpse-and a hoarse whisper came to my ear once been a bold, bad man-that his religion, urging me to confess —I well believe from no.n spite of all his repulsive austerity, wore not human lips, but from the Father of Lies, who,,Jie aspect of truth-and that, had he held a at that hour, was suffered to leave the pit to tricter and a stronger hand on the errors of ensnare my soul." Such was said to have ais misguided son, this foul deed had not been been the main sense of what he uttered in the TALE OF EXPIATION. 39 presence of two or three who had formerly heart was not yet wholly broken; and it waEJ been among his most intimate friends, and who believed that, for years, he might outlive the knew not, on leaving his cell and coming into blow that at first had seemed more than a the open air, whether to think him innocent or mortal man might bear and be! Yet that his guilty. As long as they thought they saw his wo, though hidden, was dismal, all erelong eyes regarding them, and that they heard his knew, from certain tokens that intrenched his voice speaking, they believed him innocent; face-cheeks shrunk and fallen-brow not so but when the expression of the tone of his much furrowed as scarred, eyes quenched, voice, and of the look of his eyes-which they hair thinner and thinner far, as if he himself had felt belonged to innocence-died away had torn it away in handfuls during the soli. from their memory —then arose against him tude of midnight-and now absolutely as white the strong, strange, circumstantial evidence, as snow; and over the whole man an indewhich, wisely or unwisely-lawyers and judges scribable ancientness far beyond his yearshave said cannot lie —and then, in their hearts, though they were many, and most of them had one and all of them pronounced him guilty. been passed in torrid climes-all showed how But had not his father often visited the pris- grief has its agonies as destructive as those of oner's cell Once-and once only; for in guilt, and those the most wasting when they obedience to his son's passionate prayer, be- work in the heart and in the brain, unrelieved seeching him-if there were any mercy left by the shedding of one single tear-when the either on earth or in heaven —never more to very soul turns dry as dust, and life is imenter that dungeon, the miserable parent had prisoned, rather than mingled, in the decaying not again entered the prison; but he had been -the mouldering body! seen one morning at dawn, by one who knew The Day of Trial came, and all iabbur was his person, walking round and round the walls, suspended in the parish, as if it had been a staring up at the black building in distraction, mourning fast. Hundreds of people from this especially at one small grated window in the remote district poured into the circuit-town, north tower-and it is most probable that he and besieged the court-house. Horsemen were had been pacing his rounds there during all in readiness, soon as the verdict should be rethe night. Nobody could conjecture, however turned, to carry the intelligence-of life or dimly, what was the meaning of his banish- death-to all those glens. A few words will ment from his son's cell. Gilbert Adamson, suffice to tell the trial, the nature of the eviso stern to others, even to his own only daugh- dence, and its issue. The prisoner, who stood ter, had been always but too indulgent to his at the bar in black, appeared —though nllserLudovic-and had that lost wretch's guilt, so ably changed from a man of great muscular exceeding great, changed his heart into stone, power and activity, a magnificent man, into a and made the sight of his old father's gray hairs tall thin shadow —perfectly unappalled; but hateful to his eyes 1 But then the jailer, who in a face so white, and wasted, and wo-begone, had heard him imploring —beseeching-corn- the most profound physiognomist could read manding his father to remain till after the trial not one faintest symptom either of hope or at Moorside, said, that all the while the prison- fear, trembling or trust, guilt or innocence. er sobbed and wept like a child; and that when He hardly seemed to belong to this world, and he unlocked the door of the cell, to let the old stood fearfully and ghastily conspicuous beman out, it was a hard thing to tear away the tween the officers of justice, above all the arms and hands of Ludovic from his knees, crowd that devoured him with their eyes, all while the father sat like a stone image on the leaning towards the bar to catch the first sound bed, and kept his tearless eyes fixed sternly of his voice, when to the indictment he should upon the wall, as if not a soul had been pre- plead "Not Guilty." These words he did utsent, and he himself had been a criminal con- ter, in a hollow voice altogether passionless, demned next day to die. and then was suffered to sit down, which he The father had obeyed, religiously, that miser- did in a manner destitute of all emotion. Durable injunction, and from religion it seemed ing all the many long hours of his trial, he he had found comfort. For Sabbath after Sab- never moved head, limbs, or body, except once, bath he was at the kirk-he stood, as he had when he drank some water, which he had not been wont to do for years, at the poor's plate, asked for, but which was given to him by a and returned grave salutations to those who friend. The evidence was entirely circumdropt their mite into the small sacred treasury stantial, and consisted of a few damning facts, -his eyes calmly, and even critically, regard- and of many of the very slightest sort, which, ed the pastor during prayer and sermon-and taken singly, seemed to mean nothing, but his deep bass voice was heard, as usual, which, when considered all together, seemed through all the house of God in the Psalms. to mean something against him-how much On week-days, he was seen by passers-by to or how little, there were among the agitated drive his flocks afield, and to overlook his audience many differing opinions. But slight sheep on the hill-pastures, or in the pen-fold; as they were, either singly or together, they and as it was -still spring, and seed-time had told fearfully against the prisoner, when coi. been late this season, he was observed holding nected with the fatal few which no ingenuity the plough, as of yore; nor had his skill de- could ever explain away; and though inge serted him-for the furrows were as straight nuity did all it could do, when wielded by as if drawn by a rule on paper-and soon eloquence of the highest order-and as the oright and beautiful was the braird on all the prisoner's counsel sat down, there went a Jkw lands of his farm. The Comforter was rustle and a buzz through the court, and a comwith him, and, sorely as he had been tried, his munication of looks and whispers, that seemed 40 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. to denote that there were hopes of his acquit- been picked up near the body, was sworn tc tal-yet, if such hopes there were, they were be in his handwriting; and though the meandeadened by the recollection of the calm, clear, ing of the words-yet legible-was obscure, logical address to the jury by the counsel for they seemed to express a request that Margaret the crown, and destroyed by the judge's charge, would meet him on the moor on that Saturday which amounted almost to demonstration of afternoon she was murdered. The words guilt, and concluded with a confession due to "Saturday" — "meet me"-" last time,"-were his oath and conscience, that he saw not how not indistinct, and the paper was of the same the jury could do their duty to their Creator quality and colour with some found in a drawer and their fellow-creatures, but by returning one in his bed-room at Moorside. It was proved verdict. They retired to consider it; and, dur- that he had been drinking with some dissolute ing a deathlike silence, all eyes were bent on persons-poachers and the like-in a public a deathlike image. house in a neighbouring parish all Saturday, It had appeared in evidence, that the murder till well on in the afternoon, when he left them had been committed, at least all the gashes in- in a state of intoxication-and was then seen flicted-for there were also finger-marks of running along the hill side in the direction of strangulation-with a bill-hook, such as for- the moor. Where he passed the night between esters use in lopping trees; and several wit- the Saturday and the Sabbath, he could give nesses swore that the bill-hook which was no account, except once when unasked, and as shown them, stained with blood, and with hair if speaking to himself, he was overheard by sticking on the haft-belonged to Ludovic the jailer to mutter, " Oh! that fatal night-that Adamson. It was also given in evidence- fatal night!" And then, when suddenly interthough some doubts rested on the nature of the rogated, "Where were you?" he answered, precise Words-that on that day, in the room "Asleep on the hill;" and immediately relapsed with the corpse, he had given a wild and in- into a state of mental abstraction. These were coherent denial to the question then put to him the chief circumstances against him, wnich his in the din, "What he had done with the bill- counsel had striven to explain away. That hook?" Nobody had seen it in his possession most eloquent person dwelt with affecting since the spring before; but it had been found, earnestness on the wickedness of putting any after several weeks' search, in a hag in the evil construction on the distracted behaviour moss, in the direction that he would have most of the wretched man when brought without probably taken-had he been the murderer- warning upon the sudden sight of the mangled when flying from the spot to the loch where he corpse of the beautiful girl, whom all allowed was seized. The shoes which he had on when he had most passionately and tenderly loved; taken, fitted the foot-marks on the ground, not and he strove to prove-as he did prove to the far from the place of the murder, but not so conviction of many-that such behaviour was perfectly as another pair which were found in incompatible with such guilt, and almost of the house. But that other pair, it was proved, itself established his innocence. All that was belonged to the old man; and therefore the sworn to against him, as having passed in that correspondence between the footmarks and the dreadful room, was in truth for him-unless all prisoner's shoes, though not perfect, was a cir- our knowledge of the best and of the worst of cumstance of much suspicion. But a far human nature were not, as folly, to be given stronger fact, in this part of the evidence, was to the winds. He beseeched the jury, theresworn to against the prisoner. Though there fore, to look at all the other circumstances that was no blood on his shoes-when apprehended did indeed seem to bear hard upon the pri his legs were bare-though that circumstance, soner, in the light of his innocence, and not of strange as it may seem, had never been noticed his guilt, and that they wou'd all fade into till he was on the way to prison! His stock- nothing. What mattered his possession of the ings had been next day found lying on the watch and other trinkets? Lovers as they sward, near the shore of the loch, manifestly were, might not the unhappy girl have given after having been washed and laid out to dry them to him for temporary keepsakes? Or in the sun. At mention of this circumstance might he not have taken them from her in some a cold shudder ran through the court; but playful mood, or received them-(and the neither that, nor indeed any other circumstance brooch was cracked, and the mainspring of the in the evidence —not even the account of the watch broken, though the glass was whole)appearance which the murdered body exhibit- to get them repaired in the town, which he ed when found on the moor, or when after- often visited, and she never? Could human wards laid on the bed-extorted from the pri- credulity for one moment believe, that such a soner one groan-one sigh-or touched the man as the prisoner at the bar had been sworn imperturbable deathliness of his countenance. to be by a host of witnesses-and especially It was proved, that when searched-in prison, by that witness, who, with such overwhelming and not before; for the agitation that reigned solemnity, had declared he loved him as his over all assembled in the room at Moorside own son, and would have been proud if Heathat dreadful day, had confounded even those ven had given him such a son —he who had bap. accustomed to deal with suspected criminals tized him, and know xl hin well ever since a — there were found in his pocket a small child-that such a man could rob the body of French gold watch, and also a gold brooch, her whom he had violated and murdered! If, which the ladies of the Castle had given to under the instigation of the devil, he had vioMargaretBurnside. On these beingtaken from lated and murdered:her, and for a moment him, he had said nothing, but looked aghast. were made the hidetus supposition, did vast A,,t.ece of torn and bloody paper, which hal, hell hold that demon whose voice would have TALE OF EXPIATION. 41 tempted the violator and murderer-suppose had forsaken. As free from sin himself as him both-yea, that man at the bar-sworn to might be mortal and fallen man-mortal be. by all the parish, if need were, as a man of cause fallen-he knew from Scripture and from tenderest charities, and generosity unbounded nature, that in "the lowest deep there is still a -in the lust of lucre, consequent on the satiat- lower deep" in wickedness, into which all of ing of another lust-to rob his victim of a few woman born may fall, unless held back by the trinkets! Let loose the wildest imagination arm of the Almighty Being, whom they must into the realms of wildest wickedness, and yet serve steadfastly ill holiness and truth. He they dared not, as they feared God, to credit for knew, too, from the same source, that man cana moment the union of such appalling and not sin beyond the reach of God's mercy-it such paltry guilt, in that man who now trembled the worst of all imaginable sinners seek, in a not before them, but who seemed cut off from Bible-breathed spirit at last, that mercy through all the sensibilitios of this life by the scythe the Atonement of the Redeemer. Daily-and of Misery that had shorn him down! But why nightly-he visited that cell; nor did he fear try to recount, however feebly, the line of to touch the hand-now wasted to the bonedefence taken by the speaker, who on that day which at the temptation of the Prince of the seemed all but inspired. The sea may over- Air, who is mysteriously suffered to enter in at turn rocks, or fire consume them till they split the gates of every human heart that is guardin pieces; but a crisis there sometimes is in ed not by the flaming sword of God's own Serman's destiny, which all the powers ever aphim —was lately drenched in the blood of lodged in the lips of man, were they touched the most innocent creature that ever looked on with a coal from heaven, cannot avert, and the day. Yet a sore trial it was to his Christiwhen even he who strives to save, feels and anity to find the criminal so obdurate. He knows that he is striving all in vain-ay, vain, would make no confession. Yet said that it as a worm-to arrest the tread of Fate about was fit-that it was far best that he should to trample down its victim into the dust. All die-that he deserved death! But ever when hoped-many almost believed-that the pri- the deed without a name was alluded to, his soner would be acquitted-that a verdict of tongue was tied; and once in the midst of an " Not Proven," at least, if not of " Not Guilty," impassioned prayer, beseeching him to listen would be returned; but they had not been to conscience and confess-he that prayed sworn to do justice before man and before shuddered to behold him frown, and to hear God-and, if need were, to seal up even the bursting out in terrible energy, "Cease-cease fountains of mercy in their hearts-flowing, to torment me, or you will drive me to deny and easily set a-flowing, by such a spectacle my God!" as that bar presented-a man already seeming No father came to visit him in his cell. On to belong unto the dead! the day of trial he had been missing from In about a quarter of an hour the jury re- Moorside, and was seen next morning-(where turned to the box-and the verdict, having been he had been all night never was knownsealed with black wax, was handed up to the though it was afterwards rumoured that one Judge, who read, " We unanimously find the like him had been seen sitting, as the gloaming prisoner Guilty." He then stood up to receive darkened, on the very spot of the murder)-. the sentence of death. Not a dry eye was in wandering about the hills, hither and thither, the court during the Judge's solemn and affect- and round and round about, like a man stricking address to the criminal —except those of en with blindness, and vainly seeking to find the Shadow on whom had been pronounced the his home. When brought into the house, his doom. "Your body will be hung in chains senses were gone, and he had lost the power on the moor-on a gibbet erected on the spot of speech. All he could do was to mutter where you murdered the victim of your unhal- some disjointed syllables, which he did continlowed lust, and there will your bones bleach ually, without one moment's cessation, one unin the sun, and rattle in the wind, after the in- intelligible and most rueful moan! The figure sects and the birds of the air have devoured of his daughter seemed to cast no image on your flesh; and in all future times, the spot on his eyes-blind and dumb he sat where he had which, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, you been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, perpetrated that double crime, at which all hu- with his shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his manity shudders, will be looked on from afar forehead, and the fixed orbs-though stone. by the traveller passing through that lonesome blind at least to all real things-beneath them wild with a sacred horror!" Here the voice flashing fire. He had borne up bravely-al. of the Judge faltered, and he covered his face most to the last-but had some tongue syllawith his hands; but the prisoner stood unmov- bled his son's doom in the solitude, and at that ed in figure, and in face untroubled-and when instant had insanity smitten him! all was closed, was removed from the bar, the Such utter prostration of intellect had been same ghostlike and unearthly phantom, seem- expected by none; for the old man, up to the ingly unconscious of what had passed, or even very night before the Trial, had expressed the of his own existence. most confident trust of his son's acquittal. Surely now he will suffer his old father to Nothing had ever served to shake his convicvisit him in his cell! " Once more only-only tion of his innocence-though he had always once more let me see him before I die! " were forborne speaking about the circumstances of his words to the clergyman of the parish, the murder-and had communicated to nobody whose Manse he had so often visited when a any of the grounds dn which he more than young and happy boy. That servantof Christ hoped in a case so hopeless; and though a had not forsaken him whom now all the world trouble in his eyes often gave the lie to his lip 42 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPIIER NORTH. when he used to say to the silent neighbours, any thing could have beer. seen, had been shut "We shall soon see him back at Moorside." fast against all horrid sights-and the horses' Had his belief in his Ludovic's innocence, and hoofs and the wheels must have -been muffled his trust in God that that innocence would be that had brought that hideous Framework to the established and set free, been so sacred, that Moor. But there it now stood-a dreadful,he blow, when it did come, struck him like a Tree! The sun moved higher and higher up hammer, and felled him to the ground, from the sky, and all the eyes of that congregation which he had risen with a riven brain! In were at once turned towards the east, for a dull whatever way the shock had been given, it had sound, as of rumbling wheels and trampling been terrible; for old Gilbert Adamson was feet, seemed shaking the Moor in that direcnow a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in tion; and lo! surrounded with armed men on Moorside-not keepers from a mad-house-for horseback, and environed with halberds, came his daughter could not afford such tendence- on a cart, in which three persons seemed to be but two of her brother's friends, who sat up sitting, he in the middle all dressed in whitewith him alternately, night and day, while the the death-clothes of the murderer-the unpityarms of the old man, in his distraction, had to ing shedder of most innocent blood. be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning There was no bell to toll there-but at the was at an end now; but the echoes of the hills very moment he was ascending the scaffold, a responded to his yells and shrieks; and people black cloud knelled thunder, and many hunwere afraid to go near the house. It was pro- dreds of people all at once fell down upon their posed among the neighbours to take Alice and knees. The man in white lifted up his eyes, little Ann out of it; and an asylum for them and said, " O Lord God of Heaven! and Thou was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at his blessed Son, who died to save sinners! acall their entreaties; and as, in such a case, it cept this sacrifice!" would have been too shocking to tear her away Not one in all that immense crowd coula by violence, she was suffered to remain with have known that that white apparition was him who knew her not, but who often-it was Ludovic Adamson. His hair, that had been said-stared distractedly upon her, as if she almost jet-black, was now white as his facehad been some fiend sent in upon his insanity as his figure, dressed, as it seemed, for the from the place of punishment. Weeks pass- grave. Are they going to execute the mured on, and still she was there-hiding herself derer in his shroud? Stone-blind, and stoneat times from those terrifying eyes; and from deaf, there he stood-yet had he, without help; her watching corner, waiting from morn till walked up the steps of the scaf.Pild. A hymn night, and from night till morn-for she sel- of several voices arose —the man of God close dom lay down to sleep, and had never undress- beside the criminal, with the Bible in his uped herself since that fatal sentence-for some lifted hands; but those bloodless lips had no moment of exhausted horror, when she might motion-with him this world was not, though steal out, and carry some slight gleam of com- yet he was in life-in life, and no more! And fort, however evanescent, to the glimmer or was this the man who, a few months ago, the gloom in which the brain of her Father flinging the fear of death from him, as a flash swam through a dream of blood. But there of sunshine flings aside the shades, had dewere no lucid intervals; and ever as she mov- scended into that pit which an hour before had ed towards him, like a pitying angel, did he fu- been bellowing, as the foul vapours exploded riously rage against her, as if she had been a like cannons, and brought up the bodies of fiend. At last, she who, though yet so young, them who had perished in the womb of the had lived to see the murdered corpse of her earth? Was this he who once leaped into the dearest friend-murdered by her own only devouring fire, and re-appeared, after all had brother, whom, in secret, that murdered maid- given over for lost the glorious boy, with an en had most tenderly loved-that murderous infant in his arms, while the flames seemed to brother loaded with prison-chains, and con- eddy back, that they might scathe not the head demned to the gibbet for inexpiable and unpar- of the deliverer, and a shower of blessings fell donable crimes-her father raving like a de- upon him as he laid it in its mother's bosom, mon, self-murderous were his hands but free, and made the heart of the widow to sing for nor visited by one glimpse of mercy from Him joy? It is he. And now the executioner pulls who rules the skies —after having borne more down the cord from the beam, and fastens it than, as she meekly said, had ever poor girl round the criminal's neck. His face is already borne, she took to her bed quite heart-broken, covered, and that fatal handkerchief is in his and, the night before the day of execution, hand. The whole crowd are now kneeling, died. As for poor little Ann, she had been and one multitudinous sob convulses the air; — wiled away some weeks before; and in the when wild outcries, and shrieks, and yells, are blessed thoughtlessness of childhood, was not at that moment heard from the distant gloom without hours of happiness among her play- of the glen that opens up to Moorside, and mates on the braes. three figures, one far in advance of the others, The Morning of that Day arose, and the come flying, as on the wings of the wind, to Moor was all blackened with people round the gibbet. Hundreds started to their feet, and the tall gibbet, that seemed to have grown, "'Tis the maniac —'tis the lunatic!" was the with its horrid arms, out of the ground during cry. Precipitating himself down a rocky hill. the night. No sound of axes or hammers had side, that seemed hardly accessible but to the been heard clinking during the dark hours- goats, the maniac, the lunatic, at a few despe. nothing had been seen passing along the road; rate leaps and bounds, just as it was expected all the windows of all the houses from which he would have been dashed in pieces, alighted TALE OF EXPIATION. 43 unstunned upon the level greensward; and once that now indeed they looked on the mur now, far ahead of his keepers, with incredible derer. The dreadful delusion under which all swiftness neared the scaffold-and the dense their understandings had been brought by the crowd making a lane for him in their fear and power of circumstances, was by that voice astonishment, he flew up the ladder to the hor- destroyed-the obduracy of him who had been rid platform, and grasping his son in his arms, about to die was now seen to have been the howled dreadfully over him; and then with a most heroic virtue —the self-sacrifice of a son loud voice cried, "Saved-saved-saved!" to save a father from ignominy and death. So sudden had been that wild rush, that all " 0 monster, beyond the reach of redempthe officers of justice-the very executioner- tion! and the very day after the murder, while stood aghast; and now the prisoner's neck is the corpse was lying in blood on the Moor, he free from that accursed cord-his face is once was with us in the House of God! Tear him more visible without that hideous shroud —and in pieces-rend him limb from limb-tear him he sinks down senseless on the scaffold. intoa thousand pieces!" "The Evil One had "Seize him-seize him!" and he was seized- power given him to prevail against me, and I but no maniac —no lunatic —was the father fell under the temptation. It was so written in now-for during the night, and during the the Book of Predestination, and the deed lies dawn, and during the morn, and on to midday- at the door of God!" " Tear the blasphemer on to the HOUR OF ORNE —when all rueful pre- into pieces! Let the scaffold drink his blood!" parations were to be completed-had Provi- -" So let it be, if it be so written, good people dence been clearing and calming the tumult in Satan never left me since the murder till this that troubled brain; and as the cottage clock day-he sat by my side in the kirk —when I struck oNE, memory brightened at the chime was ploughing in the field-there-ever as I into a perfect knowledge of the past, and pro- came back from the other end of the furrowphetic imagination saw the future lowering he stood on the headrig-in the shape of a black upon the dismal present. All night long, with shadow. But now I see him not-he has rethe cunning of a madman-for all night long turned to his den in the pit. I cannot imagine he had still been mad-the miserable old man what I have been doing, or what has been done had been disengaging his hands from the ma- to me, all the time between the day of trial and nacles, and that done, springing like a wild this of execution. Was I mad? No matter. beast from his cage, he flew out of the open But you shall not hang Ludovic-he, poor door, nor could a horse's speed on that fearful boy, is innocent;-here, look at him-hereroad have overtaken him before he reached the I tell you again-is the Violator and the Murscaffold. derer!" No need was there to hold the miserable But shall the men in authority dare to stay man. He who had been so furious in his ma- the execution at a maniac's words? If they nacles at Moorside, seemed now, to the people dare not-that multitude will, now all rising at a distance, calm as wben he used to sit in together like the waves of the sea. " Cut the the elder's seat beneath the pulpit in that small cords asunder that bind our Ludovic's arms" kirk. But they who were near or on the scaf- -a thousand voices cried; and the murderer, fold, saw something horrid in the fixedness of unclasping a knife, that, all unknown to his his countenance. "Let go your hold of me, keepers, he had worn in his breast when a ye fools!" he muttered to some of the mean maniac, sheared them asunder as the sickle wretches of the law, who still had him in their shears the corn.. But his son stirred not-and clutch-and tossing his hands on high, cried on being lifted up by his father, gave not so with a loud voice, "Give ear, ye Heavens! much as a groan. His heart had burst-and and hear, 0 Earth! I am the Violator-I am he was dead. No one touched the gray-headed the Murderer!" murderer, who knelt down —not to pray-but The moor groaned as in earthquake-and to look into his son's eyes —and to examine then all that congregation bowed their heads his lips-and to feel his left breast-and to with a rustling noise, like a wood smitten by the search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, wind. Had they heard aright the unimagina- or to assure himself-and many a corpse had ble confession? His head had long been gray the plunderer handled on the field after hush -he had reached the term allotted to man's of the noise of battle-that this was death. mortal life here below-threescore and ten. He rose; and standing forward on the edge of Morning and evening, never had the Bible the scaffold, said, with a voice that shook not, been out of his hands at the hour set apart deep,strong,hollow,andhoarse-"Goodpeople! for family worship. And who so eloquent as I am likewise now the murderer of my daughhe in expounding its most dreadful mysteries?. ter and of my son! and of myself!" Next The unregenerate heart of man, he had ever moment the knife was in his heart —and he fell said-in scriptural phrase-was " desperately down a corpse on the corpse of his Ludovic. wicked." Desperately wicked indeed! And All round the sultry horizon the black clouds now again he tossed his arms wrathfully-so had for hours been gathering —and now came the wild motion looked-in the wrathful skies. the thunder and the lightning-and the storm. "I ravished-I murdered her-ye know it, ye Again the whole multitude prostrated them. evil spirits in the depths of hell!" Conster- selves on the moor-an"'he Pastor, bending; nation now fell on the minds of all-and the over the dead bodies, said, truth was clear as light-and all eves knew at " TaIs is ExPrATIoR!" 44 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 3MORNING MONOLOGUE. "K NOWLEDGE is Power." So is Talent-so sing "many a lovely lay," that perished liknf is Genius-so is Virtue. Which is the great- the flowers around them, in rraise of the est. It might seem hard to tell; but united, Power at whose footstool they "stooped their they go forth conquering and to conquer. Nor anointed heads as low as death." Even then is that union rare. Kindred in nature, they has Genius been honoured, because though it love to dwell together in the same "palace of ceased to be august, still it was beautiful; it the soul." Remember Milton. But too often seemed to change fetters of iron into bands of they are disunited; and then, though still roses, and to halo with a glory the brows of Powers, they are but feeble, and their defeats slaves. The wine-cup mantled in its light; are frequent as their triumphs. What! is it and Love forgot in the bower Poetry built for so even with VirtueS It is, and it is not. bliss, that the bride might be torn from the Virtue may reign without the support of Ta- bridegroom's bosom on her bridal night by a lent and Genius; but her counsellor is Con- tyrant's lust. Even there Genius was happy, science, and what is Conscience but Reason and diffused happiness; at its bidding was rich by birthright in knowledge directly de- heard pipe, tabor, and dulcimer; and to his rived from the heaven of heavens beyond all lips " Warbling melody" life floated by, in the the stars? midst of all oppression, a not undelightful And may Genius and Talent indeed be, con- dream! ceive, and execute, without the support of But how has it been with us in our Green Virtue? You will find that question answered Island of the West r Some people are afraid of mn the following lines by Charles Grant, which revolutions. Heaven pity them! we have had deserve the name of philosophical poetry:- a hundred since the Roman bridged our rivers, Talents,'tis true, quick, various, bright, has God and led his highways over our mountains. To Virtue oft denied, on Vice bestow'd; And what the worse have we been of being Just as fond Nature lovelier colours brings thus revolved? We are no radicals; but we To deck the insect's than the eagle's wings. But then of man the high-born nobler part, dearly love a revolution-like that of the stars, The ethereal energies that touch the heart, No two nights are the heavens the same-all Creative Fancy, labouring Thought intense, the luminaries are revolving to the music of Imagination's wild magnificence, And all the dread sublimities of Song- their own spheres-look, we beseech you, on These, Virtue! these to thee alone belong, that new-risen star. He is elected by universal Such is the natural constitution of humanity; suffrage-a glorious representative of a million and in the happiest state of social life, all its lesser lights; and on dissolution of that Parlianoblest Faculties would bear legitimate sway, ment-how silent but how eloque-nt!-he is each in its own province, within the spirit's sure of his return. Why, we should dearly ample domains. There, Genius would be love the late revolution we have seen belowhonoured; and Poetry another name for reli- it is no longer called Reform —were it to fling gion. But to such a state there can, under the up to free light from fettered darkness a few most favouring skies. be no more than an ap- fine bold original spirits, who might give the proximation; and the time never was when whole world a new character, and a more ma Virtue suffered no persecution, Honour no jestic aspect to crouching life. But we look shame, Genius no neglect, nor fetters were not abroad and see strutting to and fro the sons of imposed by tyrannous power on the feet of little men blown up with vanity, in a lane the free. The age of Homer, the age of Solon, where tradition not yet old tells of a race ot the age of Pericles, the age of Numa, the age giants. We are ashamed of ourselves to thin; of Augustus, the age of Alfred, the age of Leo, we feared the throes of the times, seeing noi the age of Elizabeth, the age of Anne, the age portentous but pitiable births. Brush these of Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron, have they away; and let us think of the great dead-let not been all bright and great ages? Yet had us look on the great living —and, strong in methey been faithfully chronicled, over the mise- mory and hope, be confident in the cause of ry and madness of how many despairing spi- Freedom. "Great men have been among usrits fraught with heavenly fire, might we not better none;" and can it be said that now there have been called to pour forth our unavailing is "a want of books and men," or that those indignations and griefs! we have, are mere dwarfs and duodecimos? Under despotic governments, again, such as Is there no energy, no spirit of adventure and have sunk deep their roots into Oriental soils, enterprise, no passion in the character of our and beneath Oriental skies prosperously ex-country? Has not wide over earth panded their long-enduring umbrage, where " England sent her men, of men the chief, might is right, and submission virtue, noble- To plant the Tree of Life, to plant fair Freedom's Tree 1" minded men-for sake of that peace which is Has not she, the Heart of Europe and the ever dearest to the human heart, and if it de- Queen, kindled America into life, and raised scend not a glad and gracious gift from Heaven, up in the New World a power to balance the will yet not ungratefully be accepted when Old, star steadying star in their unconflicting breathed somewhat sadly from the quieted bo- courses? You can scarce see her shores for som of earth by tyranny saved from trouble- ships; her inland groves are crested with have submitted, almost without mourning, to towers aned emples; and mists brooding at in MORNING MONOLOGUE. 45 tervals over her far-extended plains, tell of of Peer to that of Beggar. To live is the litost towns and cities, their hum unheard by the many of us can do. Why then complain? gazer from her glorious hills. Of such a land Men should not complain when it is their duty it would need a gifted eye to look into all that as men to work. Silence need not be sullen — is passing within the mighty heart; but it needs but better sullenness than all this outrageous no gifted eye, no gifted ear, to see and hear outcry, as if words the winds scatter, were to there the glare and the groaning of great an- drop into the soil and grow up grain. Procesguish, as of lurid breakers tumbling in and sions! is this a time for full-grown men in out of the caves of the sea. But is it or is it holyday shows to play the part of children 1 not a land where all the faculties of the soul If they desire advancement, let them, like their are free as they ever were since the Fall? betters, turn to and work. All men worth Grant that there are tremendous abuses in all mentioning in this country belong to the workdepartments of public and private life; that ing classes. What seated Thurlow, and Wedrulers and legislators have often been as deaf to derb urne, and Scott, and Erskine, and Copley, the "still small voice" as to the cry of the mil- and Brougham on the woolsack? Work. lion; that they whom they have ruled, and for What made Wellington? For seven years whom they have legislated often so unwisely or war all over Spain, and finally at Waterloo — wickedly, have been as often untrue to them work —bloody and glorious work. selves, and in self-imposed idolatry Yet still the patriot cry is of sinecures. "Have bow'd their knees Let the few sluggards that possess but cannot To despicable gods;" enjoy them, doze away on them till sinecures Yet base, blind and deaf (and better dumb) and sinecurists drop into the dust. Shall such must be he who would deny, that here Genius creatures disturb the equanimity of the maghas had, and now has her noblest triumphs; nanimous working-classes of England? True that Poetry has here kindled purer fires on to themselves in life's great relations, they loftier altars than ever sent up their incense need not grudge, for a little while longer, the to Grecian skies; that Philosophy has sounded paupers a few paltry pence out of their earndepths in which her torch was not extinguish- ings; for they know a sure and silent deathed, but, though bright, could pierce not the blow has been struck against that order of "heart of the mystery" into which it sent some things by the sense of the land, and that all strong illuminations; that Virtue here has had who receive wages must henceforth give work. chosen champions, victorious in their martyr- All along that has been the rule-these are the dom; and Religion her ministers and her ser- exceptions; or say, that has been the law — vants not unworthy of her whose title is from these are its revolutions. Let there be high heaven. rewards, and none grudge them-in honour Causes there have been, are, and ever will and gold-for high work. And men of high be, why often, even here, the very highest fa- talents-never extinct-will reach up their culties "rot in cold obstruction." But in all hands and seize them, amidst the acclamathe ordinary affairs of life, have not the best tions of a people who have ever taken pride the best chance to win the day? Who, in in a great ambition. If the competition is to general, achieve competence, wealth, splen- be in future more open than ever, to know it dour, magnificence, in their condition as citi- is so will rejoice the souls of all who are not zens? The feeble, the ignorant, and the base, slaves. But clear the course! Let not the or the strong, the instructed, and the bold crowd rush in-for by doing so, they will bring Would you, at the offstart, back mediocrity down the racers, and be themselves trampled with alien influence, against high talent with to death. none but its own —the native "might that Now we say that the race is-if not always slumbers in a peasant's arm," or, nobler far, — ninety-nine times in a hundred-to the swift, that which neither sleeps nor slumbers in a and the battle to the strong. We may have peasant's heart? There is something abhorrent been fortunate in our naval and military from every sentiment in man's breast to see, friends; but we cannot charge our memory as we too often do, imbecility advanced to high with a single consummate ass holding a adix places by the mere accident of high birth. tinguished rank in either service. That such But how our hearts warm within us to behold consummate asses are in both, we have been the base-born, if in Britain we may use the credibly informed, and believe it; and we have word, by virtue of their own irresistible ener- sometimes almost imagined that we heard their gies, taking precedence, rightful and gladly bray at no great distance, and the flapping of granted of the blood of kings! Yet we have their ears. Poor creatures enough do rise by heard it whispered, insinuated, surmised, spo- seniority or purchase, or if anybody knows ken, vociferated, howled, and roaredin avoice how else, we do not; and such will be the of small-beer-souring thunder, that Church case to the end of the chapter of human acciand State, Army and Navy, are all officered by dents. But merit not only makes the man, the influence of the Back-stairs-that few or but the officer on shore and at sea. Thev are none but blockheads, by means of brass only, as noble and discontented a set of fellows all, mount from the Bar which they have disturb- as ever boarded or stormed; and they willt ed to that Bench which they disgrace; and continue so, not till some change in the Adthat mankind intrust the cure of all diseases miralty, or at the Horseguards, for Sir James their flesh is heir to, to the exclusive care of Grahame does his duty, and so does Lord Hill. every here and there a handful of old women. but till a change in humanity, for'tis no mole Whether overstocked or not,'twould be hard than Adam did, and we attribute whatever may to say, but all professions are full-from that be amiss or awry, chiefly to the Fall. Let the 46 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. radicals set poor human nature on her legs fit him for life. Bah! Tell that to the marines again, and what would become of them? In Now and then one meets a man eminent in a the French service there is no rising at all, it liberal profession, who has not been at any seems, but by merit; but there is also much place that could easily be called a College. running away; not in a disgraceful style, for But the great streams of talent in England our natural enemies, and artificial friends are keep perpetually flowing from the gates of her a brave race, but in mere indignation and dis- glorious Universities-and he who would deny gust to see troops so shamefully ill-officered as it in any mixed company of leading men in ours, which it would be a disgrace to look in London, wouli only have to open his eyes in the face on the field, either in column or line. the hush that rebuked his folly, to see that he Therefore they never stand a charge, but are was a Cockney, clever enough, perhaps, in off in legions of honour, eagles and all, before his own small way, and the author of some troops that have been so uniformly flogged sonnets, but even to his own feelings painfully from time immemorial, as to have no other out of place among men who had not studied name but raw lobsters, led on by officers all at the Surrey. shivering or benumbed under the " cold shade We cannot say that we have any fears, this of aristocracy," like Picton and Pack. fine clear September morning, for the Church We once thought of going ourselves to the of England in England. In Ireland, deserted English Bar, but were dissuaded from doing and betrayed, it has received a dilapidating so by some judicious friends, who assured us shock. Fain would seven millions of "the we should only be throwing away our great finest people on the earth," and likewise the talents and unexampled eloquence; for that most infatuated, who are so proud of the versuccess depended solely on interest, and we dure of their isle, that they love to make' the had none we knew of, either in high places or green one red," see the entire edifice overin low, and had then never seen an attorney. thrown, not one stone left upon another, and We wept for the fate of many dear friends in its very name smothered in a smoky cloud of wigs, and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. ascending dust. They have told us so in yells, On our return from Palestine and other foreign over which has still been heard "the wolf's parts, behold them all bending under briefs, long howl," the savage cry of the O'Connell. bound by retaining fees, or like game-hawks, And Ministers who pretend to be Protestants, wheeling in airy circuits over the rural pro- and in reform have not yet declared against vinces, and pouncing down on their prey, the Reformation, have tamely yielded, recreants away to their eyries with talon-fulls, which from the truth, to brawlers who would pull they devoured at their luxurious leisure, un- down her holiest altars, and given up "pure troubled by any callow young! They now religion, breathing household laws," a sacrifice compose the Bench. to superstition. But there is a power enshrined Ere we set off for Salem, we had thoughts in England which no Government dare seek to of entering the Church, and of becoming Bi- desecrate-in the hearts of the good and wise, shops. But'twas necessary, we were told, grateful to an establishment that has guarded first to be tutor to a lord. That, in our pride, Christianity from corruption, and is venerated we could not stomach; but if ours had not by all the most enlightened spirits who conbeen the sin by which Satan fell, where now scientiously worship without its pale, and had been the excellent Howley? All our know that in the peaceful shadow of its habits in youth led us to associate much with strength repose their own humbler and unintending divines. A few of them are still troubled altars. curates; but'twere vain to try to count the We have been taking a cheerful-a hopeful vicars, rectors, canons, deans, archdeacons, view of our surrounding world, as it is inand bishops, with whom, when we were all closed within these our seas, whose ideal murunder-graduates together at Oxford, we used to mur seemed awhile to breathe in unison with do nothing but read Greek all day, and Latin our Monologue. We have been believing, that all night. Yet you hear nothing but abuse of in this our native land, the road of merit is such a Church! and are told to look at the the road to success-say happiness. And is Dissenters. We do look at them, and an not the law the same in the world of Literauglier set we never saw; not one in a hundred, ture and the Fine Arts? Give a great genius in his grimness, a gentleman. Not a single any thing like fair play, and he will gain glory scholar have they got to show, and now that nay bread. True, he may be before his age Hall is mute, not one orator. Their divinity and may have to create his worshippers.' Bul is of the dust-and their discourses dry bones. how few such! And is it a disgrace to an age Down with the old Universities-up with new. to produce a genius whose grandeur it cannot The old are not yet down, but the new are up; all at once comprehend.? The works of genius and how dazzling the contrast, even to the are surely not often incomprehensible to the purblind! You may hew down trees, but not highest contemporary minds, and if they win towers; and Granta and Rhedicyna will show their admiration, pity not the poor Poet. But their temples to the sun, ages after such struc- pray syllable the living Poet's name who has tures shall have become hospitals. They en- had reason to complain Qf having fallen on lighten the land. Beloved are they by all the evil days, or who is with "darkness and with gentlemen of England. Even the plucked think danger compassed round." From humblest of them with tears of filial reverence, and birth-places in the obscurest nooks frequently having renewed their plumage, clap their have we seen wings and crow defiance to all their foes. A mnan, you say, can get there no education to Star-bright appear;" MORNING MONOLOGUE. 47 trorm unsuspected rest among the water-lilies Many a sad and serious hour have we read of the mountain-mere, the snow-white swan in D'Israeli, and many a lesson may all lovers of lull plumage soar into the sky. Hush! no literature learn from his well-instructed books. nonsense about Wordsworth. "Far-off his But from the unhappy stories therein so feel. coming shone;" and what if, for a while, men ingly and eloquently narrated, has many " a knew not whether'twas some mirage-glimmer, famous ape" drawn conclusions the very or the dawning of a new " orb of song!" reverse of those which he himself leaves to be We have heard rather too much even from drawn by all minds possessed of any philoso. that great poet about the deafness and blind- phy. Melancholy the moral of these moving ness of the present time. No Time but the tales; but we must look for it, not into the future, he avers, has ears or eyes for divine society that surrounds us, though on it too we music and light. Was Homer in his own day must keep a watchful, and, in spite of all its obscure, or Shakspeare? But Heaven forbid sins, a not irreverent eye, but into our own we should force the bard into an argument; hearts. There lies the source of evil which we allow him to sit undisturbed by us in the some evil power perhaps without us stirs up bower nature delighted to build for him, with till it wells over in misery. Then fiercely small help from his own hands, at the dim end turns the wretch first against " the world and ef that alley green, among lake-murmur and the world's law," both sometimes iniquitous, mountain-shadow, for ever haunted by enno. and last of all against the rebellious spirit in bling visions. But we love and respect present his own breast, but for whose own innate corTime-partly, we confess, because he has ruption his moral being would have been vicshown some little kindly feeling for ourselves, torious against all outward assaults, violent ol whereas we fear Future Time may forget us insidious, "and to the end persisting safe among many others of his worthy father's arrived." friends, and the name of Christopher North Many men of genius have died without their "Die on his ears a faint unheeded sound." fame, and for their fate we may surely mourn, without calumniating ollr kind. It was their But Present Time has not been unjust to Wil- lot to die. Such was the will of God. Many iam Wordsworth. Some small temporalities such have come and gone, ere they knew themwere so; imps running about the feet of Pre- selves what they were; their brothers, and sent Time, and sometimes making him stum- sisters, and friends knew it not; knew it not ble: but on raising his eyes from the ground, their fathers and mothers; nor the village he saw something shining like an Apparition maidens on whose bosoms they laid their dying on the mountain top, and he hailed, and with heads. Many, conscious of the divine flame, a friendly voice, the advent of another true and visited by mysterious stirrings that would Poet of nature and of man. not let them rest, have like vernal wild-flowers We must know how to read that prophet, be- withered, or been cut down like young trees in fore we preach from any text in his book of the season of leaf and blossom. Of this our revelations. mortal life what are these but beautiful evan"We poets in our youth begin in gladness, ishings! Such was our young Scottish Poet, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." Michael Bruce-a fine scholar, who taught a Michael Bruce-a fine scholar, who taught a Why spoke he thus? Because a deep dark- little wayside school, and died, a mere lad, of ness had fallen upon him all alone in a moun- consumption. LochLeven Castle,whereMary tain-cave, and he quaked before the mystery Stuart was imprisoned, looks not more melancholy among the dim waters for her than for " He thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, its own Poet's sake! The linnet, in its joy The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride; the yellow broom, sings not more Of him who walk'd in glory and in joy, among the yellow broom, sings not more Following his plough upon the mountain side;" sweetly than did he in his sadness, sitting and if they died miserably, "How may I beside his unopened grave, " one song that will perish!" But they wanted wisdom. There- not die," though the dirge but draw now and fore the marvellous boy drank one bowl drug- then a tear from some simple heart. ged with sudden, and the glorious ploughman "Now spring returns-but not to me retr rns many bowls drugged with lingering death. If The vernal joy my better years have known; Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns, we must weep over the woes of Genius, let us And all the joys of life with health are flown." know for whom we may rightly shed our tears. To young Genius to die is often a great With one drop of ink you may write the names gain. The green leaf was almost hidden in "ThemoightyfPoetsintheir all miserydea blossoms, and the tree put forth beautiful The mighty Poets in their misery dead.~" promise. Cold winds blew, and clouds interWordsworth wrote those lines, as we said, in.cepted the sunshine; but it felt the dews of the inspiration of a profound but not permanent heaven, and kept flourishing fail even in the melancholy; and they must not be profaned moonlight, deriving sweet sustenance from the by being used as a quotation in defence of stars. But would all those blossoms have accusations against human society, which, been fruitS Many would have formed, but in some lips, become accusations against more perhaps dropt in unperceived decay, and Providence. The mighty Poets have been the tree which " all eyes that looked on loved,' not only wiser, but happier than they knew; might not have been the pride of the garden, and what glory from heaven and earth was Death could not permit the chance of such dis-, poured over their inward life, up to the very appointment, stepped kindly in, and lett the moment it darkened amway into the gloom of spring-dream" sweetbut mournful to the soul,'f the grave! among its half-fancied memories. Such was 48 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. the fate, perhaps, of Henry Kirke White. His little essays, clear as wells and deep as tarns, fine moral and intellectual being was not left that so far from their being any thing in the to pine away neglected; and if, in gratitude constitution of genius naturally kindred either and ambition, twin-births in that noble heart, tc vice or misery, it is framed of light and love he laid down his life for sake of the lore he and happiness, and that its sins and sufferings loved, let us lament the dead with no passion- come not from the spirit but from the flesh. ate ejaculations over injustice by none comn- Yet is its flesh as firm, and perhaps somewhat mitted, console ourselves with the thought, in finer than that of the common clay; but still noways unkind to his merits, that he died in a it is clay-for all men are dust. mild bright spring that might have been suc- But what if they who, on the ground of geceeded by no very glorious summer; and that, *nius, claim exemption from our blame, and fading away as he did among the tears of the inclusion within our sympathies, even wher. good and great, his memory has been em- seen suffering from their own sins, have no balmed, not only in his own gentle inspirations, genius at all, but are mere ordinary men, and but in the immortal eulogy of Southey. But, but for the fumes of some physical excitement, alas! many thus endowed by nature "have which they mistake for the airs of inspiration, waged with fortune an unequal war;" and are absolutely stupider than people generally pining away in poverty and disappointment, go, and even without any tolerable abilities for have died broken-hearted-and been buried- alphabetical education? Many such run versome in unhonoured-some even in unwept sifying about, and will not try to settle down graves! And how many have had a far more into an easy sedentary trade, till getting thirsty dismal lot, because their life was not so inno- through perpetual perspiration, they take to cent! The children of misfortune, but of error drinking, come to you with subscription-papers too-of frailty, vice, and sin. Once gone for poetry, with a cock in their eye that tells of astray, with much to tempt them on, and no low tippling houses, and, accepting your halfvoice, no hand, to draw them back, theirs has crown, slander you when melting it in the been at first a flowery descent to death, but purling purlieus of their own donkey-browsed soon sorely beset with thorns, lacerating the Parnassus. friendless wretches, till, with shame and re- Can this age be fairly charged-we speak of morse their sole attendants, they have tottered England and Scotland-with a shameful ininto uncoffined holes and found peace. difference-or worse-a cruel scorn-or worse With sorrows and sufferings like these, it still-a barbarous persecution of young perwould be hardly fair to blame society at large sons of humble birth, in whom there may apfor having little or no sympathy; for they are, pear a promise of talent, or of genius? Many in the most affecting cases, borne in silence, are the scholars in whom their early benefacand are unknown even to the generous and tors have had reason to be proud of themselves, humane in their own neighbourhood, who while they have been happy to send their sons might have done something or much to afford to be instructed in the noblest lore, by men encouragement or relief. Nor has Charity whose boyhood they had rescued from the always neglected those who so well deserved darkness of despair, and clothed it with the her open hand, and in their virtuous poverty warmth and light of hope. And were we to might, without abatement of honourable pride speak of endowments in schools and colleges, in themselves, have accepted silent succour to in which so many fine scholars have been silent distress. Pity that her blessings should brought up from among the humbler classes, be so often intercepted by worthless applicants, who but for them had been bred to some mean on their way, it may be said, to the rmagnani- handicraft, we should show better reason still mnous who have not applied at all, but spoken for believing that moral and intellectual worth to her heart in a silent language, which was is not overlooked, or left to pine neglected in not meant even to express the penury it be- obscure places, as it is too much the fashion trayed. But we shall never believe that dew with a certain set of discontented declaimers twice blessed seldom descends, in such a land to give out; but that in no other country has as ours, cn the noble young head that else had such provision been made for the meritorious sunk like a chance flower in some dank shade, children of the enlightened poor as in England. left to wither among weeds. We almost ven- But we fear that the talent and the genius ture to say, that much of such unpitied, be- which, according to them, have been so often cause often unsuspected suffering, cannotcease left or sent to beggary, to the great reproach to be without a change in the moral govern- even of our national character, have not been ment of the world. of a kind which a thoughtful humanity would Nor has Genius a right to claim from Con- in its benefactions have recognised; for it science what is due but to Virtue. None who looks not with very hopeful eyes on mere irlove humanity can wish to speak harshly of regular sallies of fancy, least of all when spurnits mere frailties or errors-but none who ing prudence and propriety, and symptomatic revere morality can allow privilege to its of a mental constitution easily excited, but sins. All who sin suffer, with or without averse to labour, and insensible to the delight genius; and we are nowhere taught in the labour brings with it, when the faculties are all New Testament, that remorse in its agony, devoted in steadfastness of purpose to the acand penitence in its sorrow, visit men's ima- quisition of knowledge and the attainment of ginations only; but whatever way they enter, truth. their rueful dwelling is in the heart. Poets'Tis not easy to know, seeing it so difficult shed no bitterer tears than ordinary men; and to define it, whether this or that youth who Fonblanqne finely showed us, in one of h s late thinks he has genius, has it or not; the only MORNING MONOLOGUE. 49 proof he may have given of it is perhaps a and are happy in the sight of' the beauty still few copies of verses, which breathe the animal more beauteous" revealed to their fine percep. gladness of young life, and are tinged with tions, though to them was not given the faculty tints of the beautiful, which joy itself, more that by combining in spiritual passion creates. imaginative than it ever again will be, steals But what has thither brought the self-deceived, from the sunset; but sound sense, and judg- who will not be convinced of their delusion, ment, and taste, which is sense and judg- even were Homer or Milton's very self to ment of all finest feelings and thoughts, and frown on them with eyes no longer dim, but the love of light dawning on the intellect, and angry in their brightness like lowering stars? ability to gather into knowledge facts near and But we must beware-perhaps too late-of from afar, till the mind sees systems, and in growing unintelligible, and ask you, in plainer them understands the phenomena which, when terms, if you do not think that by far the greatlooked at singly, perplexed the pleasure of the est number of all those who raise an outcry sight-these, and aptitudes and capacities and against the injustice of the world to men of powers such as these, are indeed of promise, genius, are persons of the meanest abilities, and more than promise; they are already per- who have all their lives been foolishly fighting formance, and justify in minds thus gifted, and with their stars? Their demons have not in those who watch their workings, hopes of a whispered to them "have a taste," but "you wiser and happier future when the boy shall have genius," and the world gives the demons be a man. the lie. Thence anger, spite, rancour, and Perhaps too much honour, rather than too envy eat their hearts, and they "rail against little, has been shown by his age to mediocre the Lord's anointed." They set up idols of poetry and other works of fiction. A few clay, and fall down and worship them-or idols gleams of genius have given some writers of brass, more worthless than clay; or they of little worth a considerable reputation; and perversely, and in hatred, not in love, pretend great -waxed the pride of poetasters. But true reverence for the Fair and Good, because, forpoetry burst in beauty over the land, and we sooth, placed by man's ingratitude too far in became intolerant of "false glitter." Fresh the shade, whereas man's pity has, in deep sprang its flowers from the " dedal earth," or compassion, removed the objects of their love, seeme(l, they were so surpassingly beautiful, because of their imperfections not blameless, as if spring had indeed descended from heaven, back in among that veiling shade, that their "'veiled in a shower of shadowing roses," and beauty might stiil be visible, while their dewo longer could we suffer young gentlemen and formities were hidden in "a dim religious ladies, treading among the profusion, to gather light." the glorious scatterings, and weaving them into Let none of the sons or daughters of genius fantastic or even tasteful garlands, to present hearken to such outcry but with contempt — them to us, as if they had been raised from and at all times with suspicion, when they find the seed of their own genius, and entitled themselves the objects of such lamentations. therefore "to bear their name in the wild The world is not-at least does not wish to be, wvoods." This flower-gathering, pretty pas- an unkind, ungenerous, and unjust world, time though it be, and altogether innocent, fell Many who think themselves neglected, are far into di.;repute; and then all such florists be- more thought of than they suppose; just as &gan to complain of being neglected, or de- many, who imagine the world ringing with their spised, or persecuted, and their friends to la- name, are in the world's ears nearly anonymnent over their fate, the fate of all genius, "in mous. Only one edition or two of your poems amorous ditties all a summer's day." have sold-but is it not pretty well that five Besides the living poets of highest rank, hundred or a thousand copies have been read, are there not many whose claims to join the or glanced over, or looked at, or skimmed, or sacred band have been allowed, because their skipped, or fondled, or petted, or tossed aside, lips, too, have sometimes been touched with a "between malice and true love," by ten times fire from heaven? Second-rate indeed! Ay, that number of your fellow-creatures, not one well for those who are third, fourth, or fifth- of whom ever saw your face; while many milrate-knowing where sit Homer, Shakspeare, lions of men, nearly your equals, and not a few and Milton. Round about Parnassus run many millions your superiors far, have contentedly parallel roads, with forests "of cedar and dropt into the grave, at the close of a long life, branching palm between," overshadowing the without having once " invoked the Muse," and sunshine on each magnificent level with a who would have laughed in your face had you sense of something more sublime still nearer talked to them, even in their greatest glee, the forked summit; and each band, so that about their genius. they be not ambitious overmuch, in their own There is a glen in the Highlands (dearly be. region may wander or repose in grateful bliss. loved Southrons, call on us, on your way Thousands look up with envy from "the low- through Edinburgh, and we shall delight to lying fields of the beautiful land" immediately instruct you how to walk our mountainS) -without the line that goes wavingly asweep called Glencro-very unlike Glenco. A good round the base of the holy mountain, separating road winds up the steep ascent, and at the it from the common earth. What clamlour and summit there is a stone seat, on which you what din from the excluded crowd! Many are read, " Rest and be thankful." You do so-and heard there to whom nature has been kind, but are not a little proud-if pedestrians-of your they have not yet learned "to know them- achievement. Looking up, you see cliffs high selves," or they would retire, but not afar off, above your head, (not the Cobbler,) and in the and in sileni adore. And so they do erelong, clear sky, as far above them, a balanced bird, 4 50 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. You envy him his seemingly motionless wings, soar,"-and wish you were a great Poet. Bltl and wonder at his air-supporters. Down he you are no more a great Poet than an Eagl' darts, or aside he shoots, or right up he soars, eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip-and wil! and you wish you were an Eagle. You have not rest-and-be-thankful that you are a man reached Rest-and-be-thankful, yet rest you will and a Christian. Nay, you are more, an author not, and thankful you will not be, and you scorn of no mean repute; and your prose is allowed the mean inscription, which many a worthier to be excellent, better far than the best para. wayfarer has blessed, while sitting on that graph in this our Morning Monologue. But stone he has said, "give us this day our daily you are sick of walking, and nothing will sabread," eat his crust, and then walked away tisfy you but to fly. Be contented, as we are, contented down to Cairndow. Just so it has with feet, and weep not for wings; and let us been with you sitting at your appointed place take comfort together from a cheering quota-pretty high up-on the road to the summit tion from the philosophic Grayof the Biforked Hill. You look up and see "For they that creep, and they that fly, Byron-there "sitting where you may not Just end where they began." THE FIELD OF FLOWERS. A Mar-MouaINx on Ulswater and the banks of the Lake with all its ranges of mountains of Ulswater-commingled earth and heaven! every single tree, every grove, and all the Spring is many-coloured as Autumn; but now woods seeming to show or to conceal the scene Joy scatters the hues daily brightening into at the bidding of the Spirit of Beauty-reclined greener life, then Melancholy dropt them daily two Figures-the one almost rustic, but venedimming into yellower death. The fear of rable in the simplicity of old age-the other Winter then-but now the hope of Summer; no longer young, but still in the prime of lifeand Nature rings with hymns hailing the visi- and though plainly apparelled, with form and ble advent of the perfect year. If for a mo- bearing such as are pointed out in cities, ment the woods are silent, it is but to burst because belonging to distinguished men. The forth anew into louder song. The rain is over old man behaved towards him with deference and gone-but the showery sky speaks in the but not humility; and between them too-in streams on a hundred hills; and the wide many things unlike-it was clear even from mountain gloom opens its heart to the sun- their silence that there was Friendship. shine, that on many a dripping precipice burns A little way off, and sometimes almost run like fire. lopthing seems inanimate. The ning, now up and now down the slopes and very clouds and their shadows look alive-the hollows, was a girl about eight years oldtrees, never dead, are wide-awakened from whether beautiful or not you could not know, their sleep-families of flowers are frequenting for her face was either half-hidden in golden all the dewy places-old walls are splendid hair, or when she tossed the tresses from her with the light of lichens-and birch-crowned brow, it was so bright in the sunshine that you cliffs up among the coves send down their fine saw no features, only a gleam of joy. Now fragrance to the Lake an every bolder breath she was chasing the butterflies, not to hurt that whitens with break. g wavelets the blue them, but to get a nearer sight of their delicate of its breezy bosom. No,e mute the voice of gauze wings-the first that had come-she man. The shepherd is whooping on the hill wondered whence-to waver and wanton for a -the ploughman calling to his team some- little while in the spring-sunshine, and then, where among the furrows in some small late she felt, as wondrously, one and all as by confield, won from the woods; and you hear the sent, to vanish. And now she stooped as if to laughter and the echoes of the laughter-one pull some little wild-flower, her hand for a sound-of children busied in half-work, half- moment withheld by a loving sense of its play; for what else in vernal sunshine is the loveliness, but ever and anon adding some new occupation of young rustic life?'Tis no colour to the blended bloom intended to gladArcadia-no golden age. But a lovelier scene den her father's eyes —though the happy child -in the midst of all its grandeur-is not in knew full well, and sometimes wept to know, merry and majestic England; nor did the hills that she herself had his entire heart. Yet of this earth ever circumscribe a pleasanter gliding, or tripping, or dancing along, she dwelling for a nobler peasantry, than these touched not with fairy foot one white clover. Cumbrian ranges of rocks and pastures, where flower on which she saw working the silent the raven croaks in his own region, unre- bee. Her father looked too often sad, and she garded in theirs by the fleecy flocks. How feared-though what it was, she imagined not beautiful the Church Tower! even in dreams —that some great misery must On a knoll not far from the shore, and not have befallen him before they came to live in -nigh above the water, yet by an especial feli- the glen. And such, too, she had heard from city cf place gently commanding all that reach a chance whisper, was the belief of their neigh THE FIELD OF FLOWERS. 5L sours. But momentary the shadows on the times, for great part of a day, by ourselves light of childhood! Nor was she insensible to two, over long tracts of uninhabited moors, her own beauty, that with the innocence it en- and yet never once from my lips escaped one shrined combined to make her happy; and first word about my fates or fortunes-so frozen met her own eyes every morning, when most was the secret in my heart. Often have I beautiful, awakening from the hushed awe of heard the sound of your voice, as if it were her prayers. She was clad in russet, like a that of the idle wind; and often the words I cottager's child; but her air spoke of finer did hear seemed, in the confusion, to have no breeding than may be met with among those relation to us, to be strange syllablings in the nountains-though natural grace accompanies wilderness, as from the hauntings of some evil there many a maiden going with her pitcher to spirit instigating me to self-destruction." the well-and gentle blood and old flows there " I saw that your life was oppressed by some in the veins of now humble men-who, but for perpetual burden; but God darkened not your the decay of families once high, might have mind while your heart was disturbed so grievlived in halls, now dilapidated, and scarcely ously; and well pleased were we all to think, distinguished through masses of ivy from the that in caring so kindly for the griefs of others, circumjacent rocks! you might come at last to forget your own; or The child stole close behind her father, and if that were impossible, to feel, that with the kissing his cheek, said, "Were there ever such alleviations of time, and sympathy, and relovely flowers seen on Ulswater before, father 7 ligion, yours was no more than the common I do not believe that they will ever die." And lot of sorrow." she put them in his breast. Not a smile came They rose-and continued to walk in silence to his countenance-no look of love-no faint -but not apart-up and down that small silvan recognition-no gratitude for the gift which at enclosure overlooked but by rocks. The child other times might haply have drawn a tear. saw her father's distraction-no unusual sight She stood abashed in the sternness of his eyes, to her; yet on each recurrence as mournful which, though fixed on her, seemed to see her and full of fear as if seen for the first timenot; and feeling that her glee was mistimed- and pretended to be playing aloof with her for with such gloom she was not unfamiliar- face pale in tears. the child felt as if her own happiness had been "That child's mother is not dead. Where sin, and, retiring into a glade among the broom, she is now I know not-perhaps in a foreign sat down and wept. country hiding her guilt and her shame. All " Poor wretch, better far that she never had say that a lovelier child was never seen than been born!" that wretch-God bless her-how beautiful is The old man looked on his friend with com- the poor creature now in her happiness singpassion, but with no surprise; and only said, ing over her flowers! Just such another must " God will dry up her tears." her mother have been at her age. She is now These few simple words, uttered in a solemn an outcast —and an adulteress." voice, but without one tone of' reproach, The pastor'turned away his face, for ill the seemed somewhat to calm the other's trouble, silence he heard groans, and the hollow voice who first looking towards the spot where his again spoke:child was sobbing to herself, though he heard "Through many dismal days and nights it not, and then looking up to heaven, ejacu- have I striven to forgive her, but never for lated for her sake a broken prayer. He then many hours together have I been enabled to would have fain called her to him; but he was repent my curse. For on my knees I implored ashamed that even she should see him in such God to curse her-her head-her eyes-her a passion of grief-and the old man went to breast-her body-mind, heart, and soul-and her of his own accord, and bade her, as from that she might go down a loathsome leper to her father, again to take her pastime among the grave." the flowers. Soon was she dancing in her "Remember what He said to the womanhappiness as before; and, that her father might' Go, and sin no more!'" hear she was obeying him, singing a song.. " The words have haunted me all up and "For five years every Sabbath have I at- down thehills-his words andmine; but mine tended divine service in your chapel-yet dare have always sounded liker justice at last-for I not call myself a Christian. I have prayed my nature was created human —and human for faith-nor, wretch that I am, am I an un- are all the passions that pronounced that holy believer. But I fear tc fling myself at the foot or unholy curse!" of the cross. God be merciful to me a sin- "Yet you would not curse her now-were ner!" she laying here at your feet-or if you were The old man opened not his lips; for he felt standing by her death-bed 1" that there was about to be made some confes- "Lying here at my feet! Even here-on sion. Yet he doubted not that the sufferer this very spot-not blasted, but green through had been more sinned against than sinning; all the year-within the shelter of these two for the goodness of the stranger-so called rocks-she did lie at my feet in her beautystill after five years' residence among the moun- and as I thought her innocence —my own hap tains-was known in many a vale-and the py bride! Hither I brought her to be tlestPastor knew that charity covereth a multitude and blest I was even up to the measure of my of sins-and even as a moral virtue prepares misery. This world is hell to me now-but'he heart for heaven. So sacred a thing is then it was heaven!" solace in this woful world. "These awful names are of the mysteries'We have walked together, many hundred bevond the grave." 52 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTtH. "'Hearme and judge. Shewas an orphan; all day it was forsaken-she abandoned it atdo her father's and mother's relations were dead, me on its birth-day! Twice had that day but a few who were very poor. I married her, been observed by us-as the sweetest-the and secured her life against this heartless and most sacred of holydays; and now that it had wicked world. That child was born-and again come round-but I not present-for 1 while it grew like a flower-she left it-and was on foreign service-thus did she observe its father-we who loved her beyond light and it-and disappeared with her paramour. It life, and would have given up both for her so happened that we went that day into action sake." — and I committed her and our child to the "And have not yet found heart to forgive mercy of God in fervent prayers; for love her-miserable as she needs must be-seeing made me religious-and for their sakes I she has been a great sinner!" feared though I shunned not death. I lay all " Who forgives. The father his profligate night among the wounded on the field of battle son, or disobedient daughter? No; he disin- -and it was a severe frost. Pain kept me herits his first-born, and suffers him to perish, from sleep, but I saw them as distinctly as in perhaps by an ignominious death. He leaves a dream —the mother lying with her child in his only daughter to drag out her days in her bosom in our own bed. Was not that penury-a widow with orphans. The world vision mockery enough to drive me mad! may condemn, but is silent; he goes to church After a few weeks a letter came to me from every Sabbath, but no preacher denounces herself-and I kissed it and pressed it to my punishment onthe unrelenting, the unforgiving heart; for no black seal was there —and I parent. Yet how easily might he have taken knew that little Lucy was alive. No meaning them both back to his heart, and loved them for a while seemed to be in the words-and better than ever! But she poisoned my cup then they began to blacken into ghastly chaof life when it seemed to overflow with hea- racters-till at last I gathered from the horrid ven. Had God dashed it from my lips, I could revelation that she was sunk in sin and have borne my doom. But with her own hand shame, steeped for evermore in utmost polluwhich I had clasped at the altar-and with our tion. Lucy at her knees-she gave me that loath- "A friend was with me-and I gave it to some draught of shame and sorrow;-I drank him to read-for in my anguish at first I felt it to the dregs-and it is burning all through no shame-and I watched his face as he read my being-now-as if it had been hell-fire it, that I might see corroboration of the increfrom the hands of a fiend in the shape of an dible truth, which continued to look like falseangel. In what page of the New Testament hood, even while it pierced my heart with am I told to forgive her? Let me see the verse agonizing pangs.'It may be a forgery,' was -and then shall I know that Christianity is all he could utter-after long agitation; but an imposture; for the voice of God within me the shape of each letter was too familiar to -the conscience which is his still small voice my eyes-the way in which the paper was -commands me never from my memory to folded-and I knew my doom was sealed. obliterate that curse-never to forgive her, Hours must have passed, for the room grew and her wickedness-not even if we should dark-and I asked him to leave me for the see each other's shadows in a future state, night. He kissed my forehead-for we had after the day of judgment." been as brothers. I saw him next morningHis countenance grew ghastly-and stagger- dead-cut nearly in two-yet had he left a ing to a stone, he sat down and eyed the skies paper for me, written an hour before he fell, with a vacant stare, like a man whom dreams so filled with holiest friendship, that oh! how carry about in his sleep.' His face was like ashes even in my agony I wept for him, now but a -and he gasped like one about to fall into a fit. lump of cold clay and blood, and envied him " Bring me water" —and the old man motioned at the same time a soldier's grave! on the child, who, giving ear to him for a mo- "And has the time indeed come that I can ment, flew away to the Lake-side with an urn thus speak calmly of all that horror! The she had brought with her for flowers; and body was brought into my room, and it lay held it to her' father's lips. His eyes saw it all day and all night close to my bed. Ba not;-there was her sweet pale face all wet false was I to all our life-long friendship — with tears, almost touching his own-her in- and almost with indifference I- looked upon noeent mouth breathing that pure balm that the corpse. Momentary starts of affection seems to a father's soul to be inhaled from the seized me-but I cared little or nothing for bowers of paradise. He took her into his bosom the death of him, the tender and the true, the -and kissed her dewy eyes-and begged her gentle and the brave, the pious and the nobletc cetase her sobbing-to smile-to laugh-to hearted; my anguish was all for her, the cruel sing -to dance away into the'sunshine-to be and the faithless, dead to honour, to religion happy! And Lucy afraid, not of her father, dead-dead to all the sanctities of nature-for but of his kindness-for the simple creature her, and for her alone, I suffered all ghastliest was not able to understand his wild utterance agonies-nor any comfort came to me in my of blessings-returned to the glade but not to despair, from the conviction that she was her pastime; and couching like a fawn among worthless; for desperately wicked as she had the fern, kept her eyes on her father, and left shown herself to be-oh! crowding came -her flowers to fade unheeded beside her empty back upon me all our hours of happinessurn. all her sweet smiles-all her loving looks — "Unintelligible mystery of wickedness! all her affectionate words-all her conjugal That child was just three years old'the very and maternal tendernesses; and the loss of THE FIELD OF FLOWERS. 53 all that bliss-the change of it all into strange, I but leave her alone to herself in her affec. sudden, shameful, and everlasting misery, tionate innocence, the smile that always lies smote me till I swooned, and was delivered on her face when she is asleep would remain up to a trance in which the rueful reality was there —only brighter-all the time her eyes mixed up with fantasms more horrible than are awake; but I dash it away by my unhalman's mind can suffer out of the hell of sleep! lowed harshness, and people looking on her "Wretched coward that I was to outlive in her trouble, wonder to think how sad can that night! But my mind was weak from be the countenance even of a little child. 0 great loss of blood-and the blow so stunned God of mercy! what if she were to die!" me that I had not strength of resolution to "She will not die-she will live," said the die. I might have torn off the bandages- pitying pastor-" and many happy. years-my for nobody watched me-and my wounds were son-are yet in store even for you-sorely as thought mortal. But the love of life had not you have been tried; for it is not in nature welled out with all those vital streams; and that your wretchedness can endure for ever. as I began to recover, another passion took She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's possession of me-and I vowed that there happiness. You prayed just now that the God should be atonement and revenge. I was not of Mercy would spare her life-and has he not obscure. My dishonour was known through spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet the whole army. Not a tent-not a hut-in how full of Life! Let not then your gratitude which my name was not bandied about-a to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it jest in the mouths of profligate poltroons- produce there resignation-if need be, contripronounced with pity by the compassionate tion-and, above all, forgiveness." brave. I had commanded my men with pride. "Yes! I had a hope to live for-mangled as No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I was in body, and racked in mind-a hope I looked on our colours; but no wretch led that was a faith-and bitter-sweet it was in out to execution for desertion or cowardice imagined foretaste of fruition-the hope and ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight the faith of revenge. They said he would not of human faces arrayed around him, with aim at my life. But what was that to me who more shame and horror than did I when, on thirsted for his blood l Was he to escape my way to a transport, I came suddenly on death, because he dared not wound bone, or my own corps, marching to music as if they flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the aswere taking up a position in the line of battle sassin had already stabbed my soul l Satis— as they had often done with me at their faction! I tellyou thatI was forrevenge. Not head-all sternly silent before an approaching that his blood could wipe out the stain with storm of fire. What brought them there? To which my name was imbrued, but let it be do me honour! Me, smeared with infamy, mixed with the mould; and he who invaded and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. my marriage-bed-and hallowed was it by Honour had been the idol I worshipped- every generous passion that ever breathed alas! too, too passionately far-and now I lay upon woman's breast-let him fall down in in my litter like a slave sold to stripes-and convulsions, and vomit out his heart's blood, heard as if a legion of demons were mocking at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retrime and with loud and long huzzas; and then bution dealt out to him by the harrd of him a confused murmur of blessings on our noble whom he had degraded in the eyes of the whole commander, so they called mW —me, despica- world beneath the condition even of a felon, ble in my own esteem-scorned-insulted- and delivered over in my misery to contempt forsaken-me, who could not bind to mine the and scorn. I found him out; —there he was bosom that for years had touched it-a wretch before me-in all that beauty by women so so poor in power over a woman's heart, that beloved-graceful as Apollo; and with a no sooner had I left her to her own thoughts haughty air, as if proud of an achievement than she felt that she had never loved me, that adorned his name, he saluted me-her husand, opening her fair breast to a new-born band-on the field,-and let the wind play with bliss, sacrificed me without remorse-nor could his raven tresses-his curled love-locks-and bear to think of me any more as her husband then presented himself to my aim in an attitude — not even for sake of that child whom I knew a statuary would have admired. I shot him she loved-for no hypocrite was she there; through the heart." and oh! lost creature though she was-even The good old man heard the dreadful words now I wonder over that unaccountable deser- with a shudder-yet they had come to his ears tion-and much she must have suffered from not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had the image of that small bed, beside which she gradually been growing black with wrath, long used to sit for hours, perfectly happy from the before he ended in an avowal of murder. Nor, sight of that face which I too so often blessed on ceasing his wild words and distracted de5n her hearing, because it was so like her meanour, did it seem that his heart was touched own! Where is my child? Have I fright- with any remorse. His eyes retained their ened her away into the wood by my unfather- savage glare-his teeth were clenched —and ly looks? She too will come to hate me- he feasted on his crime. oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a "Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revela. fairy's, gliding through among the broom! tion," solemnly said his aged friend, "can sub. Sorrow has no business with her-nor she due the evil passions of our nature, or enable with sorrow. Yet-even her how often have conscience itself to see and repent of sin I made ween! All the unhappiness she has Your wrongs were indeed great-but without ever known has all come from me; and would a change wrought in all your spirit, alas! my 64 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. son! you cannot hope to see the kingdom of dead of cold and hunger: she whom I cherished heaven." in all luxury-whose delicate frame seemed to "Who dares to condemn the deed? He de- bring round itself all the purest air and sweet. served death-and whence was doom to come est sunshine-she may have expired in the but from me the Avenger? I took his life- very mire-and her body been huddled into but once I saved it. I bore him from the some hole called a pauper's grave. And I battlements of a fort stormed in vain —after have suffered all this to happen her! Or have we had all been blown up by the springing of I suffered her to become one of the miserable a mine; and from bayonets that had drunk multitude who support hated and hateful life my blood as well as his-and his widowed by prostitution Black was her crime; yet mother blessed me as the saviour of her son. I hardly did she deserve to be one of that howltold my wife to receive him as a brother-and ing crew-she whose voice was once so sweet, for my sake to feel towards him a sister's love. her eyes so pure, and her soul so innocentWho shall speak of temptation-or frailty —or forup to the hour I parted with her weeping, infatuation to me? Let the fools hold their no evil thought had ever been hers; —then peace. His wounds became dearer to her why, ye eternal Heavens! why fell she from abandoned heart than mine had ever been; that sphere where she shone like a star! Let yet had her cheek lain many a night on the that mystery that shrouds my mind in darkness scars that seamed this breast-for I was not be lightened-let me see into its heart-and backward in battle, and our place was in the know but the meaning of her guilt-and then van. I was no coward, that she who loved may I be able to forgive it; but for five years, heroism in him should have dishonoured her day and night, it has troubled and confounded husband. True, he was younger by some me-and from blind and baffled wrath with an years than me —and God had given him per- iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night nicious beauty-and she was young, too-oh! through which I cannot grope my way, no the brightest of all mortal creatures the day refuge can I find-and nothing is left me but she became my bride-nor less bright with to tear my hair out by handfuls-as, like a that baby at her bosom-a matron in girlhood's madman, I have done-to curse her by name resplendent spring! Is youth a plea for wicked- in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon ness? And was I old? I, who in spite of all her the curse of God. O wicked-most wicked! I have suffered, feel the vital blood yet boiling Yet He who judges the hearts of his creatures, as to a furnace; but cut off for ever by her knows that I have a thousand and a thousand crime from fame and glory-and from a soldier times forgiven her, but that a chasm lay bein his proud career, covered with honour in tween us, from which, the moment that I came the eyes of all my countrymen, changed in an to its brink, a voice drove me back-I know hour into an outlawed and nameless slave. not whether of a good or evil spirit-and bade My name has been borne by a race of heroes rme leave her to her fate. But she must be -the blood in my veins has flowed down a dead-and needs not nowmy tears. Ofriend! long line of illustrious ancestors-and here judge me not too sternly-from this my conam I now-a hidden, disguised hypocrite- fession; for all my wild words have imperdwelling. among peasants-and afraid-ay, fectly expressed to you but parts of my miserafraid, because ashamed, to lift my eyes freely able being-and if I could lay it all before you, from the ground even among the solitudes of you would pity me perhaps as much as conthe mountains, lest some wandering stranger demn-for my worst passions only have now should recognise me, and see the brand of found utterance-all my better feelings will ignominy her hand and his-accursed both- not return nor abide for words-even I myself burnt in upon my brow. She forsook this have forgotten them; but your pitying face bosom-but tell me if it was in disgust with seems to say, that they will be remembered at these my scars?" the Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And And as he bared it, distractedly, that noble with these words he fell down on his knees, chest was seen indeed disfigured with many a and prayed too for pardon to his own sins. gash-on which a wife might well have rested The old man encouraged him not to despairher head with gratitude not less devout be- it needed but a motion of his hand to bring the cause of a lofty pride mingling with life-deep child from her couch in the cover, and Lucy affection. But the burst of passion was gone was folded to her father's heart. The forgiveby -and, covering his face with his hands, he ness was felt to be holy in that embrace. wept like a child. The day had brightened up into more perfect "Oh! cruel-cruel was her conduct to me; beauty, and showers were sporting with sunyet what has mine been to her-for so many shine on the blue air of Spring. The sky years! I could not tear her image from my showed something like a rainbow-and the memory-n9t an hour has it ceased to haunt Lake, in some parts quite still, and in some me; since I came among these mountains, her breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments ghost is for ever at my side. Ihave striven to of wood and rock, and waves that would have drive it away with curses, but still there is the murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat phantom. Sometimes-beautiful as on our suddenly hoisting a sail. And such a very marriage day-all in purest white-adorned boat appeared round a promontory that stretchwith flowers-it wreathes its arms around my ed no great way into the water, and formed neck-and offers its mouth to my kisses-and with a crescent of low meadow-land a bay that then all at once is changed into a leering was the first to feel the wind coming down wretch, retaining a likeness of my bride-then Glencoin. The boatman was rowing hqled into a corpse. And perhaps she is dead- lessly along, when a sudden squall struck the COTTAGES. 55,ail, and in an instant the skiff was upset and "Not thus could I have kissed thy lipswent down. No shrieks -were heard —and the Lucy-had they been red with life. White boatman swam ashore; but a figure was seen are they-and white must they long have been! struggling where the sail disappeared-and No pollution on them-nor on that poor bosom starting from his knees, he who knew not fear now. Contrite tears had long since washed plunged into the Lake, and after desperate ex- out thy sin. A feeble hand traced these lines ertions brought the drowned creature to the -and in them an humble heart said nothing side-a female meanly attired-seemingly a but God's truth. Child-behold your mother. stranger-and so attenuated that it was plain Art thou afraid to touch the dead?" she must have been in a dying state, and had "No-father-I am not afraid to kiss her she not thus perished, would have had but few lips —as you did now. Sometimes, when you days to live. The hair was gray —but the face thought me asleep, I have heard you praying though withered was not old-and, as she lay for my mother." on the greensward, the features were beautiful "Oh! child! cease-cease —o)l my heart as well as calm in the sunshine. will burst." He stood over her awhile-as if struck mo- People began to gather about the body-but tionless-and then kneeling beside the body, awe kept them aloof; and as for removing it tissed its lips and eyes-and said only, "It is to a house, none who saw it but knew such Lucy!" care would have been vain, for doubt there The old man was close by- and so was that could be none that there lay death. So the child. They too knelt-and the passion of the groups remained for a while at a distancemourner held him dumb, with his face close to even the old pastor went a good many paces the face of death-ghastly its glare beside the apart; and under the shadow of that tree the sleep that knows no waking, and is forsaken father and child composed her limbs, and by all dreams. He opened the bosom-wasted closed her eyes, and continued to sit beside to the bone-in the idle thought that she might her, as still as if they had been watching over yet breathe-and a paper dropt out into his one asleep. hand, which he read aloud to himself-uncon- That death was seen by all to be a strange scious that any one was near. "I am fast calamity to him who had lived long among dying-and desire to die at your feet. Per- them-had-adopted many of their customshaps you will spurn me —it is right you should; and was even as one of themselves-so it but you will see how sorrow has killed the seemed-in the familiar intercourse of man wicked wretch who was once your wife. I with man. Some dim notion that this was the have lived in humble servitude for five years, dead body of his wife was entertained by many, and have suffered great hardships. I think I they knew not why; and their clergyman felt am a penitent-and have been told by reli- that then there needed to be neither concealgious persons that I may hope for pardon from ment nor avowal of the truth. So in solemn Heaven. Oh! that you would forgive me too! sympathy they approached the body and its and let me have one look at our Lucy. I will watchers; a bier had been prepared: and linger about the Field of Flowers-perhaps walking at the head, as if it had been a funeral, you will come there, and see me lie down and the Father of little Lucy, holding her hand, die on the very spot where we passed a sum- silently directed the procession towards his mer day the week of our marriage." own house-out of the FIELD OF FLOWERS. COTTAGES. HAVE you any intention, dear reader, of build- governess her retreat-and the tutor his dening a house in the country? If you have, pray, the housekeeper sits like an overgrown spider for your own sake and ours, let it not be a in her own sanctum-the butler bargains for Cottage. We presume that you are obliged his dim apartment —and the four maids must to live, one-half of the year at least, in a town. have their front-area window. In short, from Then why change altogether the character of cellarage to garret, all is complete, and Numyour domicile and your establishment 1 You ber Forty-two is really a splendid mansion. are an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and have a Now, dear.reader, far be it from us to queshouse in the Circus, or Heriot Row, or Aber- tion the propriety or prudence of such an escromby Place, or Queen Street. The said tablishment. Your house was not built for house has five or six stories, and is such a nothing-it was no easy thing to get the paintpalace as one might expect in the City of Pa- ers out-the furnishing thereof was no triflelaces. Your drawing-rooms can, at a pinch, the feu-duty is really unreasonable-and taxes hold some ten score of modern Athenians- - are taxes still, notwithstanding the principles your dining-room might feast one-half of the of free trade, and the universal prosperity of contributors to Blackwood's Magazine —your the country. Servants are wasteful, and their I' placens uxor" has her boudoir-your eldest wages absurd-and the whole style of living, daughter, now verging on womanhood, her with long-necked bottles, most extravagant. music-room-your boys their own studio-the But still we do not object to your establisht 56 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. ment-far from it, we admire it much; nor is down the whole Cottage would have been diffi there a single house in town where we make cult-at least to build it up again would have ourselves more agreeable to a late hour, or been so; so we had to submit. Custom, they that we leave with a greater quantity of wine say, is second nature, but not when a dead ra of a good quality under our girdle. Few is in the house. No, none can ever become things would give us more temporary uneasi- accustomed to that; yet good springs out of ness, than to hear of any embarrassment in evil-for the live rats could not endure it, and your money concerns. We are not people to emigrated to a friend's house, about a mile off, forget good fare, we assure you; and long and who has never had a sound night's rest from far may all shapes of sorrow keep aloof from that day. We have not revisited our Cottage the hospitable board, whether illuminated by for several years; but time does wonders, and gas, oil, or mutton. we were lately told by a person of some ve. But what we were going to say is this-that racity, that the smell was then nearly gonethe head of such a house ought not to live, but our informant is a gentleman of blunted when ruralizing, in a Cottage. He ought to be olfactory nerves, having been engaged fromcDns'stent. Nothing so beautiful as consis- seventeen to seventy in a soap-work. tency. What then is so absurd as to cram Smoke too! More especially that mysteriyourself, your wife, your numerous progeny, ous and infernal sort, called back-smoke! The and your scarcely less numerous menials, into old proverb, "No smoke without fire," is a a concern called a Cottage? The ordinary base lie. We have seen smoke without fire heat of a baker's oven is very few degrees in every room in a most delightful Cottage we above that of a brown study, during the month inhabited during the dog-days. The moment of July, in a substantial, low-roofed Cottage. you rushed for refuge even into a closet, you Then the smell of the kitchen! How it aggra- were blinded and stifled; nor shall we ever forvates the sultry closeness! A strange, com- get our horror on being within an ace ofsmothpounded, inexplicable smell of animal, vegeta- eration in the cellar. At last, we groped our ble, and mineral matter. It is at the worst way into the kitchen. Neither cook nor jack during the latter part of the forenoon, when was visible. We heard, indeed, a whirring every thing has been got into preparation for and revolvingnoise-and then suddenly Grizie cookery. There is then nothing savoury about swearing through the mist. Yet all this while the smell-it is dull, dead-almost catacom- people were admiring our cottage from a disbish. A small back-kitchen has it in its power tance, and especially this self-same accursed to destroy the sweetness of any Cottage. Add back-smoke, some portions of which had made a scullery, and the three are omnipotent. Of an excursion up the chimneys, and was waverthe eternalclashing ofpots, pans, plates, trench- ing away in a spiral form to the sky, in a style ers, and general crockery, we now say no- captivating to Mr. Price on the Picturesque. thing; irndeed, the sound somewhat relieves No doubt, there are many things very roman the smell, and the ear comes occasionally in tic about a Cottage. Creepers, for example. to the aid of the nose. Such noises are wind- Why, sir, these creepers are the most misfalls; but not so the scolding of cook and but- chievous nuisance that can afflict a family. ler-at first low and tetchy, with pauses-then There is no occasion for mentioning names, sharp, but still interrupted-by and by, loud but-devil take all parasites. Some of the and ready in reply-finally a discordant gab- rogues will actually grow a couple of inches ble of vulgar fury, like maniacs quarrelling in upon you in one day's time; and when all other bedlam. Hear it you must-you and all the honest plants are asleep, the creepers are hard strangers. To explain it away is impossible; at it all night long, stretching out their toes and and your fear is, that Alecto, Tisiphone, or their fingers, and catching an inextricable hold Megtera, will come flying into the parlour with of every wall they can reach, till, finally, you a bloody cleaver, dripping with the butler's see them thrusting their impudentheads through brains. During the time of the quarrel the the very slates. Then, like other low-bred spit has been standing still, and a gigot of the creatures, they are covered with vermin. All five-year-old black-faceburnt on one side to cin- manner of moths-the most grievous grubsder.-"To dinner witn what appetite you may." slimy slugs-spiders spinning toils to ensnare It would be quite unpardonable to forget one the caterpillar —earwigs and slaters, that would especial smell which irretrievably ruined'our raise the gorge of a country curate-woodhappiness during a whole summer-the smell lice-the slaver of gowk's-spittle-midgesof a dead rat. The accursed vermin died jocks-with-the-many-legs: in short, the whole somewhere in the Cottage; but whether be- plague of insects infest that-Virgin's bower. neath a floor, within lath and plaster, or in Open the lattice for half an hour, and you find roof, baffled the conjectures of the most saga- yourself in an entomological museum. Then,,cious. The whole family used to walk about there are no pins fixing down the specimens. the Cottage for hours every day, snuffing on a All these beetles are alive, more especially the:travel of discovery; and we distinctly remem- enormous blackguard crawling behind your ber the face of one elderly maiden-lady at the ear. A moth plumps into your tumbler of cold.moment she thought she had traced the source negus, and goes whirling around in meal, till of the fumee to the wall behind a window- he makes absolute porritch. As you open your shutter. But even at the very same instant mouth in amazement, the large blue-bottle fly, we ourselves had proclaimed it with open having made his escape from the spiders, and ),ostril from a press in an opposite corner. seeing that not a moment is to be lost, precipiTerriers were procured-but the dog Billy tates himself head-foremost down your throat, himself woull have been -et fault. To pull and is felt, after a few ineffectual struggles, COTTAGES. 57 settling in despair at the very bottom of your to say, with the addition of a dozen purchased stomach. Still, no person will be so unreason- pounds weekly, you are not very often out of able as to deny that creepers on a Cottage are that commodity. Then, once or twice in a most beautiful. For the sake of their beauty, summer, they suddenly lose their temper, and some little sacrifices must be made of one's chase the governess and your daughters over comforts, especially as it is only for one-half of the edge of a gravel-pit. Nothing they like so the year, and last really was a most delightful much as the tender sprouts of cauliflower, nor summer. do they abhor green pease. The garden-hedge How truly romantic is a thatch roof! The is of privet, a pretty fence, and fast growing, eaves how commodious bfor sparrows! What a but not formidable to a four-year-old. On paradise for rats and mice! What a comfort- going to eat a few gooseberries by sunrise, able colony of vermin! They all bore their you start a covey of cows, that in their alarm own tunnels in every direction, and the whole plunge into the hot-bed with a smash, as if all interior becomes a Cretan labyrinth. Frush, the glass in the island had been broken —and frush becomes the whole cover in a few sea- rushing out at the gate at the critical instant sons; and not a bird can open his wing, not a little Tommy is tottering in, they leave the rat switch his tail, without scattering the straw heir-apparent, scarcely deserving that name, like chaff. Eternal repairs! Look when you half hidden in the border. There is no sale will, and half-a-dozen thatchers are riding on for such outlandish animals in the homethe rigging: of all operatives the most inoper- market, and it is not Martinmas, so you must ative. Then there is always one of the num- make a present of them to the president or five ber descending the ladder for a horn of ale. silver-cupman of an agricultural society, and Without warning, the straw is all used up; you receive in return a sorry red round, desand no more fit for the purpose can be got perately saltpetred, at Christmas. within twenty miles. They hint heather-and What is a Cottage in the country, unless you sigh for slate-the beautiful sky-blue, sea- " your banks are all furnished with bees, green, Ballahulish slate! But the summer is whose murmurs invite one to sleep 1" There nearly over and gone, and you must be flitting the hives stand, like four-and-twenty fiddlers all back to the city; so you let the job stand over in a row. Not a more harmless insect in allthis to spring, and the soaking rains and snows of world than a bee. Wasps are devils incarnate, a long winter search the Cottage to its heart's. but bees are fleshly sprites, as amiable as core, and every floor is erelong laden with a industrious. You are strolling along, in decrop of fungi —the, bed-posts are ornamented lightful mental vacuity, looking at a poem of curiously with lichens, and mosses bathe the Barry Cornwall's, when smack comes an inwalls with their various and inimitable lustre. furiated honey-maker against your eyelid, and Every thingis romantic that is pastoral — plunges into you the fortieth part of an inch and what more pastoral than sheep? Accord- of sting saturated in venom. The wretch ingly, living in a Cottage, you kill your own clings to your lid like a burr, and it feels as if mutton. Great lubberly Leicesters or South- he had a million claws to hold him on while Downs are not worth the mastication, so you he is darting his weapon into your eyeball. keep the small black-face. Stone walls are Your banks are indeed well furnished with ugly things, you think, near a Cottage, so you bees, but their murmurs do not invite you to have rails or hurdles. Day and night are the sleep; on the contrary, away you fly like a small black-face, out of pure spite, bouncing madman, bolt into your wife's room, and roar through or over all impediments, after an ad- out for the recipe. The whole of one side of venturous leader, and, despising the daisied your face is most absurdly swollen, while the turf, keep nibbling away at all your rare flow- other is in statu quo. One eye is dwindled ering shrubs, till your avenue is a desolation. away to almost nothing, and is peering forth Every twig has its little ball of wool, and it is from its rainbow-coloured envelope, while the a rare time for the nest-makers. You purchase other is open as day to melting charity, and a colley, but he compromises the affair with shining over a cheek of the purest crimson. the fleecy nation, and contents himself with Infatuated man! Why could you not purchase barking all night long at the moon, if there hap- your honey? Jemmy Thomson, the poet, pen to be one, if not, at the firmament of his would have let you have it, from Habbie'skennel. You are too humane to hing or drown Howe, the true Pentland elixir, for five shilLuath, so you give him to a friend. But Luath lings the pint; for during this season both the is in love with the cook, and pays her nightly heather and the clover were prolific of the visits. Afraid of being entrapped should he honey-dew, and the Skeps rejoiced over all step into the kennel, he takes up his station, af- Scotland on a thousand hills. ter supper, on a knoll within ear-range, and We could tell many stories about bees, pointing his snout to the stars, joins the music but that would be leading us away from the of the spheres, and is himself a perfect Sirius. main argument. We remember reading in an The gardener at last gets orders to shoot him American newspaper, some years ago, that the — and the gun being somewhat rusty, bursts United States lost one of their most upright and blows off his left hand —so that Andrew and erudite judges by bees, which stung him Fairservice retires on a pension. to death in a wood while he was going the Of all breeds of cattle we most admire the circuit. About a year afterwards, we read in Alderney. They are slim, delicate, wild-deer- the same newspaper, "We are afraid we have looking creatures, that give an air to a Cottage. lost another judge by bees;" and then followed But they are most capricious milkers. Of a somewhat affrightful description of the ascourse you make your own butter; that is sassination of another American Blackstone 58 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTII. by the same insects. We could not fail to trace your approaching retirement from all the sympathize with both sufferers; for in the troubles of this life, to the dimity-curtained summer of the famous comet we ourselves had cubiculu'm on Tweedside. nearly shared the same fate. Our Newfound- We know of few events so restorative as the lander upset a hive in his vagaries-and the arrival of a coachful of one's friends, if the whole swarm unjustly attacked us. The buzz house be roomy. But if every thing there be was an absolute roar-and for the first time on a small scale, how tremendous a sudden in our lives we were under a cloud. Such importation of live cattle! The children are bizzing in our hair! and of what avail were all trundled away out of the cottage, and their fifty-times-washed nankeen breeches against room given up to the young ladies, with all the Polish Lancers? With our trusty crutch its enigmatical and emblematical wall-tracery we made thousands bite the dust-but the The captain is billeted in the boudoir, on a wounded and dying crawled up our legs, and shake-down. My lady's maid must positively stung us cruelly over the lower regions. At pass the night in the butler's pantry, and the last we took to flight, and found shelter in the valet makes a dormitory of the store-room. ice-house. But it seemed as if a new hive had Where the old gentleman and his spouse have been disturbed in that cool grotto. Again we been disposed of, remains as controversial a sallied out stripping off garment after garment, point as the authorship of Junius; but next till in puris naturalibus, we leaped into a win- morning at the breakfast-table, it appears that dow, which happened to be that of the draw- all have survived the night, and the hospitable ing-room, where a large party of ladies and hostess remarks, with a self-complacent smile, gentlemen were awaiting the dinner-bell-but that small as the cottage appears, it has wonfancy must dream the rest. derful accommodation, and could have easily We now offer a Set of Blackwood's Maga- admitted half a dozen more patients. The zine to any scientific character who will visiters politely request to be favoured with a answer this seemingly simple question-what plan of so very commodious a cottage, but is Damp 1 Quicksilver is a joke to it, for get- silently swear never again to sleep in a house ting into or out of any place. Capricious as of one story, till life's brief tale be told. damp is, it is faithful in its affection to all But not one half the comforts of a cottage Cottages ornees. What more pleasant than a have yet been enumerated-nor shall they be bow-window! You had better, however, not by us at the present juncture. Suffice it to sit with your back against the wall, for it is as add, that the strange coachman had been perblue and ropy as that of a charnel-house. suaded to put up his horses in the outhouses, Probably the wall is tastily papered-a. vine- instead of taking them to an excellent inn leaf pattern perhaps-or something spriggy- about two miles off. The old black long-tailed or in the aviary line —or, mayhap, hay-makers, steeds, that had dragged the vehicle for nearly or shepherds piping in the dale. But all dis- twenty years, had been lodged in what was tinctions are levelled in the mould-Phyllis called the stable, and the horse behind had has a black patch over her eye, and Strephon been introduced into the byre. As bad luck seems to be playing on a pair of bellows. would have it, a small, sick, and surly shelty Damp delights to descend chimneys, and is was in his stall; and without the slightest one of smoke's most powerful auxiliaries. It provocation, he had, during the night-watches, is a thousand pities you hung up-just in that so handled his heels against Mr. Fox, that unlucky spot —Grecian Williams's Thebes- he had not left the senior a leg to stand for now one of the finest water-colour paint- upon, while he had bit a lump out of the butings in the world is not worth six-and-eight- tocks of Mr. Pitt little less than an orange. A pence. There is no living in the country cow, afraid of her calf, had committed an aswithout a library. Take down, with all due sault on the roadster, and tore up his flank with caution, that enormous tome, the Excursion, her crooked horn as clean as if it had been a and let us hear something of the Pedlar. There ripping chisel. The party had to proceed with is an end to the invention of printing. Lo and post-horses; and although Mr. Dick be at once behold, blank verse indeed! You cannot help one of the most skilful and most moderate turning over twenty leaves at once, for they of veterinary surgeons, his bill at the end of are all amalgamated in must and mouldiness. autumn was necessarily as long as that of a Lord Byron himself is no better than an proctor. Mr. Fox gave up the ghost-Mr. Pitt Egyptian mummy; and the Great Unlinown was put on the superannuated list-and Joaddresses you in hieroglyphics. seph Hume, the hack, was sent to the dogs. re have heard different opinions maintained To this condition, then, we must come at on the subject of damp sheets. For our own last, that if you build at all in the country, it part, we always wish to feel the difference must be a mansion three stories high, at the between sheets and cerements. We hate lowest-large airy rooms-roof of slates and every thing clammy. It is awkward, on leap- lead-and walls of the freestone or the Roman ing out of bed to admire the moon, to drag cement. No small black-faces, no Alderneys, along with you, glued round the body and no beehives. Buy all your vivres, and live members, the whole paraphernalia of the like a gentleman. Seldom or never be withcouch. It can never be good for rheumatism out a houseful of company. If you manage -problematical even for fever. Now, be can- your family matters properly, you may have did-did you ever sleep in perfectly dry sheets your time nearly as much at your own disin a Cottage orn6e. You would not like to posal as if you were the greatest of hunkses, say " No, never," in the morning-privately, and never gave but unavoidable dinners. Lec t) host or hostess. But confess publicly, and the breakfast-gong sound at ten o'clock-q'uite COTTAGES. 59 soon enough. The young people will have their source in reason; and our admiration is been romping about the parlours or the pur- always built on the foundation of truth. Taste, iieus for a couple of hours-and will all make and feeling, and thought, and experience, and their appearance in the beauty of high health knowledge of this life's concerns, are all indis. and high spirits. Chat away as long as need pensable to the true delights the imagination be, after muffins and mutton-ham, in small experiences in beholding a beautiful bona fide groups on sofas and settees, and then slip you Cottage. It must be the dwelling of the poor; away to your library, to add a chapter to your and it is that which gives it its whole character. novel, or your history, or to any other task By the poor, we mean not paupers, beggars; that is to make you immortal. Let gigs and but families who, to eat, must work, and who, curricles draw up in the circle, and the wooing by working, may still be able to eat. Plain, and betrothed wheel away across a few pa- coarse, not scanty, but unsuperfluous fare is rishes. Let the pedestrians saunter off into theirs from year's-end to year's-end, excepting the woods or to the hillside-the anglers be off some decent and grateful change on chance to loch or river. No great harm even in a holydays of nature's own appointment-a wedgame or two at billiards —if such be of any the ding, or a christening, or a funeral. Yes, a cue-sagacious spinsters of a certain age, funeral; for when this mortal coil is shuffled staid dowagers, and bachelors of sedentary off, why should the hundreds of people that habits, may have recourse, without blame, to come trooping over muirs and mosses to see the chess or backgammon board. At two lunch the body deposited, walk so many miles, and -and at six the dinner-gong will bring the lose a whole day's work, without a dinner? whole flock together, all dressed-mind that- And, if there be a dinner, should it not be a all dressed, for slovenliness is an abomination. good one. And if a good one, will the comrn Let no elderly gentleman, however bilious pany not be social? But this is a subject for and rich, seek to monopolize a young lady- a future paper, nor need such paper be of other but study the nature of things. Champagne than a cheerful character. Poverty, then, is of course, and if not all the delicacies, at least the builder and beautifier of all huts and cotall the substantialities of the season. Join the tages. But the views of honest poverty are ladies in about two hours-a little elevated or always hopeful and prospective. Strength of so-almost imperceptibly-but still a little muscle and strength of mind form a truly Holy elevated or so; then music-whispering in Alliance; and the future brightens before the corners-if moonlight and stars, then an hour's steadfast eyes of trust. Therefore, when a out-of-door study of astronomy —no very regu- house is built in the valley, or on the hillside lar supper-but an appearance of plates and — be it that of the poorest cottar-there is some tumblers, and to bed, -to happy dreams and little room, or nook, or spare place, which hope slumbers light, at the witching hour. Let no consecrates to the future. Better times may gentleman or lady snore, if it can be avoided, come-a shilling or two may be added to the lest they annoy the crickets; and if you hear week's wages-parsimony may accumulate a any extraordinary noise round and round small capital in the Savings bank sufficient to about the mansion, be not alarmed, for why purchase an old eight-day clock, a chest of should not the owls choose their own hour of drawers for the wife, a curtained bed for the revelry 1 lumber-place, which a little labour will convert Fond as we are of the country, we would into a bed-room. It is not to be thought that not, had we our option, live there all the year the pasture-fields become every year greener, round. We should just uish to linger into the and the corn-fields every harvest more yellow winter about as far as the middle of December -that the hedgerows grow to thicker fragrance, -then to a city-say at once Edinburgh. There and the birch-tree waves its tresses higher in is as good skating-ground, and as good curling- the air, and expands its white-rinded stem ground, at Lochend and Duddingstone, as any almost to the bulk of a tree of the forest-and where in all Scotland-nor is there anywhere yet that there shall be no visible progress from else better beef and greens. There is no per- good to better in the dwelling of those whose fection anywhere, but Edinburgh society is hands and hearts thus cultivate the soil into excellent. We are certainly agreeable citi- rejoicing beauty. As the whole land prospers, zens; with just a sufficient spice of party so does each individual dwelling. Every ten spirit to season the feast of reason and the years, the observing eye sees a new expression flow of soul, and to prevent society from be- on the face of the silent earth; the law of lax coming drowsily unanimous. Without the bour is no melancholy lot; for to industry the fillip of a little scandal, honest people would yoke is easy, and content is its own exceeding fall asleep; and surely it is far preferable to great reward. that to abuse one's friends with moderation. Therefore, it does our heart good to look on Even Literature and the Belles Lettres are not a Cottage. Here the objections to straw-roofs entirely useless; and our Human Life would have no application. A few sparrows chirp. not be so delightful as that of Mr. Rogers, ing and fluttering in the eaves can do no great without a few occasional Noctes Ambro- harm, and they serve to amuse the children. sianve. The very baby in the cradle, when all the fa But the title of our article recalls our wan- mily are in the fields, mother and all, hears the dering thoughts, and our talk must be of Cot- cheerful twitter, and is reconciled to solitude, tages. Now, think not, beloved reader, that The quantity of corn that a few sparrows can we care not for Cottages, for that would indeed eat-greedy creatures as they are-cannot be be a gross mistake. But our very affections very deadly; and it is chiefly in the winter are philosophical; our sympathies have all time that they attack the stacks, when there is Go RERECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. much excuse to be made on the plea of hunger. household, and which an awakened eye Mt ould As to the destruction of a little thatch, why, sweep away as absolute nuisances. IPerhaps there is not a boy about the house, above ten the very depth of their affections-the solemyears, who is not a thatcher, and there is no nity of their religious thought-and the reexpense in such repairs. Let the honeysuckle flective spirit in which they carry on the too steal up the wall, and even blind unchecked warfare of life-hide from them the percep. a corner of the kitchen-window. Its fragrance tion of what, after all, is of such very inferior will often cheer unconsciously the labourer's moment, and even create a sort of austerity heart, as, in the midday-hour of rest, he sits of character which makes them disregard, too dandling his child on his knee, or converses much, trifles that appear to have no influence with the passing pedlar. Let the moss-rose or connection with the essence of weal or wo. tree flourish, that its bright blush-balls may Yet if there be any truth in this, it affords, we dazzle in the kirk the eyes of the lover of fair confess, an explanation rather than a justifiHelen Irwin, as they rise and fall with every cation. movement of a bosom yet happy in its virgin Our business at present, however, is rather innocence. Nature does not spread in vain with single Cottages than with villages. We her flowers in flush and fragrance over every Scottish people have, for some years past, been obscure nook of earth. Simple and pure is doing all we could to make ourselves ridicuthe delight they inspire. Not to the poet's eye lous, by claiming for our capital the name of alone is their language addressed. The beauti- Modern Athens, and talking all manner of ful symbols are understood by lowliest minds; nonsense about a city which stands nobly on and while the philosophical Wordsworth speaks its own proper foundation; while we have of the meanest flower that blows giving a joy kept our mouths comparatively shut about the too deep for tears, so do all mankind feel the beauty of our hills and vales, and the rational exquisite truth of Burns's more simple address happiness that everywhere overflows our nato the mountain-daisy which his ploughshare tive land. Our character is to be found in the had upturned. The one touches sympathies country; and therefore, gentle reader, behold too profound to be general-the other speaks along with us a specimen of Scottish scenery. as a son of the soil affected by the fate of the It is not above some four miles long-its most familiar flower that springs from the breadth somewhere about a third of its length; bosom of our common dust. a fair oblong, sheltered and secluded by a line Generally speaking, there has been a spirit of varied eminences, on some of which lies the of improvement at work, during these last power of cultivation, and over others the vivid twenty years, upon all the Cottages in Scot- verdure peculiar to a pastoral region; while, land. The villages are certainly much neater telling of disturbed times past for ever, stand and cleaner than formerly, and in very few yonder the ruins of an old fortalice or keep, respects, if any, positively offensive. Perhaps picturesque in its deserted decay. The plough none of them have-nor ever will have-the has stopped at the edge of the profitable and exquisite trimness, the habitual and hereditary beautiful coppice-woods, and encircled the tall rustic elegance, of the best villages of England. elm-grove. The rocky pasturage, with its cloThere, even the idle and worthless have an in- very and daisied turf, is alive with sheep and stinctive love of what is decent, and orderly, cattle-its briery knolls with birds-its broom and pretty in their habitations. The very and whins with bees-and its wimpling burn drunkard must have a well-sanded floor, a with trouts and minnows glancing through the clean-swept hearth, clear-polished furniture, shallows, or leaping among the cloud of inand uncobwebbed walls to the room in which sects that glitter over its pools. Here and he quaffs, guzzles, and smokes himself into there a cottage-not above twenty in all —one stupidity. His wife may be a scold, but seldom low down in the holm, another on a cliff beside a slattern-his children ill taught, but well the waterfall: that is the mill-another breakapparelled. Much of this is observable even ing the horizon in its more ambitious stationamong the worst of the class; and, no doubt, and another far up at the hill-foot, where there such things must also have their effect in is not a single tree, only shrubs and brackens. tempering and restraining excesses. Where- On a bleak day, there is but little beauty in as, on the other hand, the house of a well- such a glen; but when the sun is cloudless, behaved, well-doing English villager is a and all the light serene, it is a place where perfect model of comfort and propriety. In poet or painter may see visions, and dream Scotland, the houses of the dissolute are always dreams, of the very age of gold. At such seadens of dirt, and disorder, and distraction. All sons, there is a homefelt feeling of humble reordinary goings-on are inextricably confused ality, blending with the emotions of imagina— meals eaten in different nooks, and at no re- tion. In such places, the low-born, high-souled gular hour-nothing in its right place or time poets of old breathed forth their songs, and -the whole abode as if on the eve of a flitting; hymns, and elegies-the undying lyrical poetry while, with few exceptions, even in the dwell- of the heart of Scotland. inzs of the best families in the village, one may Take the remotest cottage first in order, detect occasional forgetfulness of trifling mat- HILLFOOT, and hear who are its inmates-the ters, that, if remembered, would be found Schoolmaster and his spouse. The schoolgreatly conducive to comfort-occasional in- house stands on a little unappropriated piece sensibilities to what would be graceful in their of ground —at least it seems to be so-quite at condition, and might be secured at, little ex- the head of the glen; for there the hils sink pense and less trouble-occasional blindness down on each side, and afford an easy access t., minute deformities that mar the aspect of the to the seat of learning from two neighbouring COTTAGES. 61 vales, both in the same parish. Perhaps fifty companyr, either at home or a friend's house, scholars are there taught-and with their small is not averse to a hospitable cup, and that then fees, and his small salary, Allan Easton is con- the memories of other days crowd upon his tented. Allan was originally intended for the brain, and loosen his tongue into eloquence. Church; but some peccadilloes obstructed his Old Susan keeps a sharp warning eye upon progress with the Presbytery, and he never her husband on all such occasions; but Allan was a preacher. That disappointment of all braves its glances, and is forgiven. his hopes was for many years grievously felt, We see only the uncertain glimmer of their' and somewhat soured his mind with the world. dwelling through the low-lying mist: and It is often impossible to recover one single therefore we cannot describe it, as if it were false step in the slippery road of life-and Al- clearly before our eyes. But should you ever Ian Easton, year after year, saw himself falling chance to angle your way up to HILLFOOT, adfarther and farther into the rear of almost all mire Allan Easton's flower-garden, and the his contemporaries. One became a minister, jargonel pear-tree on the southern gable. The and got a manse, with' a stipend of twenty climate is somewhat high, but it is not cold; chalders; another grew into an East India and, except when the spring-frosts come late Nabob; one married the laird's widow, and and sharp, there do all blossoms and fruits kept a pack of hounds; another expanded into abound, on every shrub and tree native to a colonel; one cleared a plum by a cotton- Scotland. You will hardly know how to dismill; another became the Croesus of a bank- tinguish-or rather, to speak in clerkly phrase, while Allan, who had beat them all hollow at to analyze the sound prevalent over the fields all the classes, wore second-hand clothes, and and air; for it is made up of that of the burn, lived on the same fare with the poorest hind in of bees, of old Susan's wheel, and the hum of the parish. He had married, rather too late, the busy school. But now it is the play-hour, the partner of his frailties —and after many and Allan Easton comes into his kitchen for trials, and, as he thought, not a few persecu- his frugal dinner. Brush up your Latin, and tions, he got settled at last, when his head, not out with a few of the largest trouts in your very old, was getting gray, and his face some- pannier. Susan fries them in fresh butter and what wrinkled. His wife, during his worst oatmeal-the grayhaired pedagogue asks a poverty, had gone again into service-the lot, blessing —and a merrier man, within the limits indeed, to which she had been born; and Allan of becoming mirth, you never passed an hour's had struggled and starved upon private teach- talk withal. So much for Allan Easton and ing. His appointment to the parish-school Susan his spouse. had, therefore, been to them both a blessed You look as if you wished to ask who inelevation. The office was respectable —and habits the Cottage —on the left hand yonderloftier ambition had long been dead. Now that stares upon us with four front windows, they are old people-considerably upwards of and pricks up its ears like a new-started hare? sixty-and twenty years' professional life have Why, sir, that was once a Shooting-box. It converted Allan Easton, once the wild and was built about twenty years ago, by a sporteccentric genius, into a staid, solemn, formal, ing gentleman of two excellent double-barand pedantic pedagogue. All his scholars relled guns, and three stanch pointers. He love him, for even in the discharge of such attempted to live there, several times, from very humble duties, talents make themselves the 12th of August till the end of September, felt and respected; and the kindness of an and went pluffing disconsolately among the affectionate and once sorely wounded but now hills from sunrise to sunset. He has been healed heart, is never lost upon the susceptible long dead and buried; and the Box, they say. imaginations of the young. Allan has some- is now haunted. It has been attempted to be times sent out no contemptible scholars, as let furnished, and there is now a board to that scholars go in Scotland, to the universities; effect hung out like an escutcheon. Picturand his heart has warmed within him when he esque people say it ruins the whole beauty of has read their names, in the newspaper from the glen; but we must not think so, for it is the manse, in the list of successful competitors not in the power of the ugliest house that ever for prizes. During vacation-time, Allan and was built to do that, although, to effect such a his spouse leave their cottage locked up, and purpose, it is unquestionably a skilful contri. disappear, none know exactly whither, on vance. The window-shutters have been closed visits to an old friend or two, who have not for several years, and the chimneys look as if altogether forgotten them in their obscurity. they had breathed their last. It stands in a During the rest of the year, his only out-of- perpetual eddy, and the ground shelves so all doors amusement is an afternoon's angling, an around it, that there is barely room for a barart in which it is universally allowed he excels rel to catch the rain-drippings from the slateall mortal men, both in river and loch; and eaves. If it be indeed haunted, pity the poor often, during the long winter nights, when the ghost! You may have it on a lease, short or shepherd is walking by his dwelling, to visit long, for merely paying the taxes. Every yeal nis "ain lassie," down the burn, he hears it costs some pounds in advertisement. What Allan's fiddle playing, in the solitary silence, a jointure-house it would be for a relict! By some one of those Scottish melodies, that we name, WIN)DY-KxowE. know not whether it be cheerful or plaintive, Nay, let us not fear to sketch the character but soothing to every heart that has been at all of its last inhabitant, for we desire but to speak acquainted with grief. Rumour says too, but the truth. Drunkard, stand forward, that we rumour has not a scrupulous conscience, that may have a look at you, and draw your pice the Schoolmaster, when he meets with pleaaInt ture. There he stands! The mouth of the 62 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. drunkard, you may observe, contracts a sin- quently pointed to his ear, both being on full gularly sensitive appearance-seemingly red cock, and his brains not blown out only by a and rawish; and he is perpetually licking or miracle. He tries to read the newspapersmacking his lips, as Yf his palate were dry just arrived-but cannot find his spectacles. and adust. His is a thirst that water will not Then, by way of variety, he attempts a tune quench. He might as well drink air. His on the fiddle; but the bridge is broken, and whole being burns for a dram. The whole her side cracked, and the bass-string snapped world is contracted into a caulker. He would — and she is restored to her peg among the sell his soul in such extremity, were the black cobwebs. In comes a red-headed, stockingless bottle denied him, for a gulp. Not to save his lass, with her carrots in papers, and lays the soul from eternal fire, would he, or rather cloth for dinner —salt beef and greens. But could he, if left alone with it, refrain from pull- the Major's stomach scunners at the Skye-stot ing out the plug, and sucking away at destruc- -his eyes roll eagerly for the hot-water-and tion. What a snout he turns up to the morning in a couple of hours he is dead-drunk in his air, inflamed, pimpled, snubby, and snorty, and chair, or stoitering and staggering, in aimless with a nob at the end on't like one carved out dalliance with the scullion, among the pots and of a stick by the knife of a schoolboy-rough pans of an ever-disorderly and dirty kitchen. and hot to the very eye-a nose which, rather Mean people, in shabby sporting velveteen than pull, you would submit even to be in dresses, rise up as he enters from the dresser some degree insulted. A perpetual cough ha- covered with cans, jugs, and quechs, and take rasses and exhausts him, and a perpetual ex- off their rusty and greasy napless hats to the pectoration. How his hand trembles! It is Major; and, to conclude the day worthily and an effort even to sign his name: one of his consistently, he squelches himself down sides is certainly not by any means as sound among the reprobate'crew, takes his turn at as the other: there has been a touch of palsy smutty jest and smuttier song, which drive there; and the next hint will draw down his even the' jades out of the kitchen-falls back chin to his collar-bone, and convert him, a insensible,'exposed to gross and indecent month before dissolution, into a slavering practical jokes from the vilest of the unhanged idiot. There is no occupation, small or great, -and finally is carried to bed on a hand-barinsignificant or important, to which he can row, with hanging head and heels, like a calf turn, for any length of time, his hand, his across a butcher's cart, and, with glazed eyes heart, or his head. He cannot angle —for his and lolling tongue, is tumbled upon the quilt fingers refuse to tie a knot, much more to busk -if ever to awake it is extremely -doubtful; a fly. The glimmer and the glow of the stream but if awake he do, it ig to the same wretched would make his brain dizzy —to wet his feet round of brutal degradation-a career, of row would, he fears, be death. Yet he thinks which the inevitable close is an unfriended that he will go out-during that sunny blink death-bed and a pauper's grave. O hero! six of a showery day-and try the well-known feet high, and once with a brawn like Hercupool in which he used to bathe in boyhood, les-in the prime of life too-well born and with the long, matted, green-trailing water- well bred-once bearing the king's commisplants depending on the slippery rocks, and sion-and on that glorious morn, now forgotthe water-ousel gliding from beneath the arch ten or bitterly remembered, thanked on the that hides her "procreant cradle," and then field of battle by Picton, though he of the fightsinking like a stone suddenly in the limpid ing division was a hero of few words-is that stream. He sits down on the bank, and fum- a death worthy of a man-a soldier-and a bling in his pouch for his pocket-book, brings Christian? A dram-drinker! Faugh! faugh! out, instead, a pocket-pistol. Turning his fiery Look over-lean over that stile, where a pig face towards the mild, blue, vernal sky, he lies wallowing in mire —and a voice, faint and pours the gurgling brandy down his throat — feeble, and far off, as if it came from some first one dose, and then another-till, in an dim and remote world within your lost soul hour, stupefied and dazed, he sees not the sil- will cry, that of the two beasts, that bristly one, very crimson-spotted trouts, shooting, and agrunt in sensual sleep, with its snout snoring leaping, and tumbling,; and plunging in deep across the husk trough, is, as a physical, moral and shallow; a day on which, with one of and intellectual being, superior to you, late Captain Co!ley's March-Browns, in an hour Majorin his Majesty's - regiment of foot, we could fill our pannier. Or, if it be autumn now dram-drinker, drunkard, and dotard, and or winter, het calls, perhaps, with a voice at self-doomed to a disgraceful and disgusting once gruff and feeble, on old Ponto, and will death ere you shall have completed your take a pluff at the partridges. In former days, thirtieth year. What a changed being from down they used to go, right and left, in potatoe that day when you carried the colours, and or turnip-field, broomy brae or stubble-but were found, the bravest of the brave, and the now his sight is dim and wavering, and his most beautiful of the beautiful, with the gloriiouch trembles on the trigger. The covey ous tatters wrapped round yourbody all drenchwhirs off, unharmed in a single feather-and ed in blood, your hand grasping the broken poor Ponto, remembering better days, cannot sabre, and two grim Frenchmen lying hacked conceal his melancholy, falls in at his master's and hewed at your feet! Your father and your heel, and will range no more. Out, as usual, mother- saw your name in the "Great Lord's" comes the brandy-bottle-he is still a good Despatch; and it was as much as he could do to shot when his mouth is the mark; and having keep her from falling on the floor, for " her joy emptied the fatal flask, he staggers homewards, was like a deep affright!" Both are dead now with the muzzles of his double-barrel fre- and better so, for the sight of that blotched COTTAGES. 63 face and those glazed eyes, now and then remained in the chains of his tyrannical pas. glittering in fitful frenzy, would have killed sion, nor seemed ever, for more than the short them both, nor, after such a spectacle, could term of a day, to cease hugging them to his their old bones have rested in the grave. heart. Semblance of all that is most veneraAlas, Scotland-ay, well-educated, moral, ble in the character of Scotland's peasantry! religious Scotland can show, in the bosom of Image of a perfect patriarch, walking out to her bonny banks and braes, cases worse than meditate at eventide! What a noble forethis; at which, if there be tears in heaven, the head! Features how high, dignified, and comangels weep. Look at that grayheaded man, posed! There, sitting in the shade of that old of threescore and upwards, sitting by the way- wayside tree, he seems some religious Misside! He was once an Elder of the Kirk, and sionary, travelling to and fro over the face of a pious man he was, if ever piety adorned the the earth, seeking out sin and sorrow, that he temples-" the lyart haffets, wearing thin and may tame them under the word of God, and bare," of a Scottish peasant. What eye be- change their very being into piety and peace. held the many hundred steps, that one by one, Call him not a hoary hypocrite, for he cannot with imperceptible gradation, led him down- help that noble-that venerable-that apostodown-down to the lowest depths of shame, lic aspect-that dignified figure, as if bent suffering, and ruin? For years before it was gently by Time, loath to touch it with too bruited abroad through the parish that Gabriel heavy a hand-that holy sprinkling over his Mason was addicted to drink, his wife used to furrowed temples of the silver-soft, and the sit weeping alone in the spence when her sons snow-white hair-these are the gifts of graand daughters were out at their work in the cious Nature all-and Nature will not reclaim fields, and the infatuated man, fierce in the them, but in the tomb. That is Gabriel Mason excitement of raw ardent spirits, kept cause- -the Drunkard! And in an hour you may, lessly raging and storming through every nook if your eyes can bear the sight, see and hear of that once so. peaceful tenement, which for him staggering up and down the village, oursmany happy years had never been disturbed ing, swearing, preaching, praying-stoned by by the loud voice of anger or reproach. His blackguard boys and girls, who hound all the eyes were seldom turned on his unhappy wife dogs and curs at his heels, till, taking refuge except with a sullen scowl, or fiery wrath; in the smithy or the pot-house, he becomes the but when they did look on her with kindness, sport of grown clowns, and, after much idiot there was also a rueful self-upbraiding in their laughter, ruefully mingled with sighs, and expression, on account of his cruelty; and at groans, and tears, he is suffered to mount upon sight of such transitory tenderness, her heart a table, and urged, perhaps, by reckless folly would overflow with forgiving affection, and to give out a text from the Bible, which is her sunk eyes with unendurable tears.' But nearly all engraven on his memory-so much neither domestic sin nor domestic sorrow will and so many other things effaced for everconceal from the eyes and the ears of men; and there, like a wild Itinerant, he stammers and at last Gabriel Mason's name was a by- forth unintentional blasphemy, till the liquor word in the mouth of the scoffer. One Sab- he has been allowed or instigated to swallow, bath he entered the kirk in a state of miserable smites him suddenly senseless, and, falling abandonment, and from that day he was no down, he is huddled off into a corner of some longer an elder. To regain his character lumber-room; and left to sleep-better far for seemed to him, in his desperation, beyond the such a wretch were it to death. power of man, and against the decree of God. Let us descend, then, from that most incleSo he delivered himself up, like a slave, to ment front, into the lown boundaries of the that one appetite, and in a few years his whole HOLiM. The farm-steading covers a goodly household had gone to destruction. His wife portion of the peninsula shaped by the burn, was a matron, almost in the prime of life, that here looks almost like a river. With its when she died; but as she kept wearing away outhouses it forms three sides of a square, and to the other world, her face told that she felt the fourth is composed of a set of jolly stacks, her years had been too many in this. Her that will keep the thrashing-machine at work eldest son, unable, in pride and shame, to lift during all the winter. The interior of the up his eyes at kirk or market, went away to square rejoices in a glorious dung-hill, (Oh, the city, and enlisted into a regiment about to breathe not the name!) that will cover every embark on foreign service. His two sisters field with luxuriant harvests-twelve bolls of went to take farewell of him, but never re- oats to the acre. There the cattle —oxen yet turned; one, it is said, having died of a fever "lean, and lank, and brown as is the ribbed in the Infirmary, just as if she had been a sea-sand," will, in a few months, eat thempauper; and the other-for the sight of sin, selves up, on straw and turnip, into obesity. and sorrow, and shame, and suffering, is ruin- There turkeys walk demure —there geese wadous to the soul-gave herself up, in her beauty, dile, and there the feathery-legged king of an easy prey to a destroyer, and doubtless has Bantam struts among his seraglio, keeping run her course of agonies, and is now at peace. pertly aloof from double-combed Chanticleer, The rest of the family dropt down, one by one, that squire of dames, crowing to his partlets. out of sight, into inferior situations in far-off There a cloud of pigeons often descends places; but there was a curse, it was thought, among the corny chaff, and then whirs off to hanging over the family, and of none of them the uplands. No chained mastiff looking did ever a favourable report come to their na- grimly from the kennel's mouth, but a set of tive parish; while he, the infatuated sinner, cheerful and sagacious colleys are seen sitwhose vice seemed to have worked all the wo, ting on their hurdies, or " worrying ither in 64 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. diversion." A snaggy colt or two, and a but devour. Not a set of teeth round that brood mare, with a spice of blood, and a foal kitchen-dresser that is not white as the driven at her heels, know their shed, and evidently snow. Breath too, in spite of syboes, sweet are favourites with the family. Out comes as dawn-dew-the whole female frame full the master, a rosy-cheeked cafle, upwards of of health, freshness, spirit, and animation! six feet high, broad-shouldered, with a blue Away all delicate wooers, thrice-high-fantasti. bonnet and velveteen breeches-a man not to cal! The diet is wholesome-and the sleep be jostled on the crown o' the causey, and a will be sound; therefore eat away, Bessy — match for any horse-couper from Bewcastle, nor fear to laugh, although your pretty mouth or gipsy from Yetholm. But let us into the be full —for we are no poet to madden into kitchen. There's the wife-a bit tidy body — misanthropy at your mastication; and, in spite and pretty withal-more authoritative in her of the heartiest meal ever virgin ate, to us quiet demeanour than the most tyrannical these lips are roses still, "thy eyes are lodemere housekeeper that ever thumped a ser- stars, and thy breath sweet air." Would for vant lass with the beetle. These three are her thy sake we had been born a shepherd-groom! daughters. First, Girzie, the eldest, seemingly No-no-no! For some few joyous years older than her mother-for she is somewhat mayest thou wear thy silken snood unharmed, hard-favoured, and strong red hair dangling and silence with thy songs the linnet among over a squint eye, is apt to give an expression the broom, at the sweet hour of prime. And of advanced years, even to a youthful virgin. then mayest thou plight thy truth-in all the Vaccination was not known in Girzie's baby- warmth of innocence-to some ardent yet hood, but she is, nevertheless, a clean-skinned thoughtful youth, who will carry his bride creature, and her full bosom is white as snow. exultingly to his own low-roofed home —toil She is what is delicately called a strapper, for her and the children at her knees, through rosy-armed as the morning, and not a little of summer's heat and winter's cold-and sit with an Aurora about the ankles. She makes her her in the kirk, when long years have gone way, in all household affairs, through every by, a comely matron, attended by daughters impediment, and will obviously prove, when- acknowledged to be fair —but neither so fair, ever the experiment is made, a most excellent nor so good, nor so pious, as their mother. wife. Mysie, the second daughter, is more What a contrast to the jocund Holm is the composed, more genteel, and sits sewing, with RowAx-TREE-H-T —SO still, and seemingly so her a favourite occupation, for she has very desolate! It is close upon the public road, neat hands; and is, in fact, the milliner and and yet so low, that you might pass it without mantua-maker for all the house. She could observing its turf-roof. There live old Aggy no more lift that enormous pan of boiling Robinson, the carrier, and her consumptive water off the fire than she could fly, which in daughter. Old Aggy has borne that epithet the grasp of Girzie is safely landed on the for twenty years, and her daughter is not much hearth. Mysie has somewhat of a pensive under sixty. That poor creature is bedridden look, as if in love-and we have heard that and helpless, and has to be fed almost like a she is betrothed to young Mr. Rentoul, the di- child. Old Aggy has for many years had the vinity student, who lately made a speech be- same white pony —well named Samson —that fore the Anti-patronage Society, and therefore she drives three times a-week, all the year may reasonably expect very soon to get a round, to and from the nearest market-town, kirk. But look-there comes dancing in from carrying all sorts of articles to nearly twenty the ewe-bughts the bright-eyed Bessy, the different families, living miles apart. Every flower of the flock, the most beautiful girl in other day in the week-for there is but one Almondale, and fit to be bosom-burd of the Sabbath either to herself or Samson-she Gentle Shephferd himself! Oh that wewere a drives coals, or peat, or wood, or lime, or poet, to sing the innocence of her budding stones for the roads. She is clothed in a man's breast! But-Heaven preserve us! —what is coat, an old rusty beaver, and a red petticoat. the angelic creature about? Making rumble- Aggy never was a beauty, and now she is alde-thumps! Now she pounds the potatoes most frightful, with a formidable beard, and a and cabbages as with pestle and mortar! rough voice-and violent gestures, encouragEver and anon licking the butter off her fin- ing the overladen enemy of the Philistines. gers, and then dashing in the salt! Methinks But as soon as she enters her hut, she is silent, her laugh is out of all bounds loud-and, un- patient, and affectionate, at her daughter's bedless my eyes deceived me, that stout lout side. They sleep on the same chaff-mattress, whispered in her delicate ear some coarse and she hears, during the dead of the night, jest, that made the eloquent blood mount up her daughter's slightest moan. Her voice is into her not undelighted countenance. Hea- not rough at all when the poor old creature is vens and earth!-perhaps an assignation in saying her prayers; nor, we may be well asthe barn, or byre, or bush aboon Traquair. sured, is its lowest whisper unheard in heaBut the long dresser is set out with dinner- ven. the gudeman's bonnet is reverently laid aside Your eyes are wandering away to the eastern -and if any stomach assembled there be now side of the vale, and they have fixed themselves empty, it is not likely, judging from appear- on the Cottage of the SEVEY OAKS. The grove ances, that it will be in that state again before is a noble one; and, indeed, those are the onlyv next Sabbath-and it is now but the rhiddle timber-trees in the valley. There is a tradition of the week. Was it not my Lord Byron who belonging to the grove, but we shall tell it some liked not to see women eat? Poo-poo-non- other time; now, we have to do with that sense! We like to see them not only eat- mean-looking Cottage, all unworthy of such COTTAGES. 05 magnificent shelter. With its ragged thatch suicide; but palsy has stricken him —and in a it has a cold cheerless look-almost a look of few weeks he will totter into the grave. indigence. The walls are sordid in the streaked There is a Cottage in that hollow, and you ochre-wash-a wisp of straw supplies the see the smoke-even the chimney-top, but you place of a broken pane —the door seems as if could not see the Cottage itself, unless you it were inhospitable-and every object about were within fifty yards of it, so surrounded is is in untended disorder. The green pool in it with knolls and small green eminences, in a front, with its floating straws and feathers, den of its own, a shoot or scion from the and miry edge, is at once unhealthy and need- main stem of the valley. It is called THE less; the hedgerows are full of gaps, and open Bnoonr, and there is something singular, and at the roots; the few garments spread upon not uninteresting, in the history of its owner. them seem to have stiffened in the weather, He married very early in life, indeed when forgotten by the persons who placed them quite a boy, which is not, by the way, very there; and half-starved young cattle are stray- unusual among the peasantry of Scotland, ing about in what once was agarden. Wretched prudent and calculating as is their general sight it is; for that dwelling, although never character. David Drysdale, before he was beautiful, was once the tidiest and best-kept thirty years of age, had a family of seven in all the district. But what has misery to do children, and a pretty family they were as with the comfort of its habitation? might be seen in all the parish. His life was The owner of that house was once a man in theirs, and his mind never w-andered far well to do in the world; but he minded this from his fireside. His wife was of a consumpworld's goods more than it was fitting to do, tive family, and that insidious and fatal disease and made Mammon his god. Abilities he never showed in her a single symptom during possessed far beyond the common run of men, ten years of marriage; but one cold evening and he applied them all, with all the energy awoke it at her very heart, and in less than of a strong mind, to the accumulation of wealth. two months it ~hurried her into the grave. Every rule of his life had that for its ultimate Poor creature, such a spectre! When her end; and he despised a bargain unless he husband used tocarryher, for the sake of a little outwitted his neighbour. Without any acts temporary relief, from chair to couch, and of downright knavery, he was not an honest from her couch back again to her bed, twenty man-hard to the poor-and a tyrannical times in a day, he hardly could help weeping, master. lIe sought to wring from the very with all his consideration, to feel her frame as soil more than it could produce; his servants, light as a bundle of leaves. The medical man among whom were his wife and daughter, he said, that in all his practice he never had kept at work, like slaves, from twilight to known soul and body keep together in such twilight; and was a forestaller and a regrater utter attenuation. But her soul was as clear — a character which, when Political Economy as ever while racking pain was in her fleshwas unknown, was of all the most odious in less bones. Even he, her loving husband, the judgment of simple husbandmen. His was relieved from wo when she expired; for spirits rose with the price of meal, and every no sadness, no sorrow, could be equal to the handful dealt out to the beggar was paid like misery of groans from one so patient and so a tax. What could the Bible teach to such a resigned. Perhaps consumption is infectious man? What good could he derive from the -so, at least, it seemed here; for first one calm air of the house of worship? He sent child began to droop, and then another-the his only son to the city, with injunctions in- elder ones first; and, within the two following stilled into him to make the most of all trans- years, there were almost as many funerals actions, at every hazard but that of his money; from this one house as from all the others in and the consequencewas,in afewyears,shame, the parish. Yes-they all died-of the whole ruin, and expatriation. His only daughter, im- family not one was spared. Two, indeed, were prisoned, dispirited, enthralled, fell a prey to a thought to have pined away in a sort of fearvulgar seducer; and being driven from her ful foreboding —and a fever took off a thirdfather's house, abandoned herself, in hopeless but four certainly died of the same hereditary misery, to a life of prostitution. His wife, complaint with the mother; and now not a heartbroken by cruelty and affliction, was voice was heard in the house. He did not never afterwards altogether in her right mind, desert the Broom; and the farm-work was still and now sits weeping by the hearth, or wanders carried on, nobody could tell how. The setI. off to distant places, lone houses and villages, vants, to be sure, knew their duty, and often almost in the condition of an idiot-wild-eyed, performed it without orders. Sometimes the loose-haired, and dressed like a very beggar. master put his hand to the plough, but oftener Speculation after speculation failed-with he led the life of a shepherd, and was by himfarm-yard crowded with old stacks, he had to self among the hills. He never smiled-and curse three successive plentiful harvests-and at every meal he still sat like a man about to his mailing was now destitute. The unhappy be led out to die. But what will not retire man grew sour, stern, fierce, in his calamity; away-recede-disappear from the vision of and, when his brain was inflamed with liquor, the souls of us mortals! Tenacious as we are a dangerous madman. He is now a sort of of our griefs, even more than of our joys, both cattle-dealer-buys and sells miserable horses elude our grasp. We gaze after themrewith -and at fairs associates with knaves and re- longings or self-upbraiding aspirations far their probates, knowing that no honest man will return; but they are shadows, and like shadows deal with him except in pity or derision. He vanish. Then human duties, lowly though has more than once attempted to commit they may be, have their sanative and salutary 5 66 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. influence on ourwhole frame ofbeing. Without best loved the dead, came in with cheerful their performance conscience cannot be still; countenances, and acknowledged in their hearts with it, conscience brings peace in extremity that since change is the law of life, there wa.. of evil. Then occupation kills grief, and in- no one, far or near, whom they could have. dustry abates passion. No balm for sorrow borne to see sitting in that chair but Alice like the sweat of the brow poured into the Gray. The husband knew their eelings from furrows of the earth, in the open air, and their looks, and his fireside blazed once more beneath the sunshine of heaven. These truths with a cheerful lustre. were felt by the childless widower, long before O gentle reader, young perhaps, and inex. they were understood by him; and when two perienced of this world, wonder not at this so years had gone drearily, ay dismally, almost great Change! The heart is full, perhaps, of a despairingly, by-he began at times to feel pure and holy affection, nor can it die, even something like happiness again when sitting for an hour of sleep. May it never die but in among his friends in the kirk, or at their fire- the grave! Yet die it may, and leave thee sides, or in the labours of the field, or even blameless. The time may come when that on the market-day, among this world's con- bosom, now thy Elysium, will awaken not, cerns. Thus, they who knew him and his with all its heaving beauty, one single passufferings, were pleased to recognise what sionate or adoring sigh. Those eyes, that now might be called resignation and its grave stream agitation and bliss into thy throbbing tranquillity; while strangers discerned in him heart, may, on some not very distant day, be nothing more than a staid and solemn demean- cold to thy imagination, as the distant and unour, which might be natural to many a man heeded stars. That voice, now thrilling through never severely tried, and offering no interrup- every nerve, may fall on thy ear a disregarded cion to the cheerfulness that pervaded their sound. Other hopes, otherfears, othertroubles, ordinary life. may possess thee wholly —and that more than He had a cousin a few years younger than angel of Heaven seem to fade away into a himself, who had also married when a girl, and shape of earth's most common clay. But here when little more than a girl had been left a there was no change-no forgetfulness —no widow. Her parents were both dead, and she oblivion-no faithlessness to a holy trust. had lived for a good many years as an upper The melancholy man often saw his Hannah, servant, or rather companion and friend, in the and all his seven sweet children-now fair in house of a relation. As cousins, they had all life-nowpale in death. Sometimes, perhaps, their lives been familiar and affectionate, and the sight, the sound-their smiles and their Alice Gray had frequently lived months at a voices —disturbed him, till his heart quaked time at the Broom, taking care of the children, within him, and he wished that he too was and in all respects one of the family. Their dead. But God it was who had removed them conditions were now almost equally desolate, from our earth-and was it possible to doubt and a deep sympathy made them now more that they were all in blessedness? Shed your firmly attached than they ever could have been tears over change from virtue to vice, happi. in better days. Still, nothing at all resembling ness to misery; but weep not for those still, love was in either of their hearts, nor did the sad, mysterious processes by which gracious thought of marriage ever pass across their ima- Nature alleviates the afflictions of our mortal gination.s. They found, however, increasing lot, and enables us to endure the life which the satisfaction in each other's company; and Lord ourGodhath given us. Erelong, husband looks and words of sad and sober endearment and wife could bear to speak of those who gradually bound them together in affection were now no more seen; when the phantoms stronger far than either could have believed. rose before them in. the silence of the night, Their friends saw and spoke of the attach- they all wore pleasant and approving countement, and of its probable result, long before nances, and the beautiful family often came they were aware of its full nature; and no- from Heaven to visit their father in his body was surprised, but, on the contrary, all dreams. He did not wish, much less hope, in were well pleased, when it was understood this life, for such happiness as had once been that they were to be man and wife. There was his-nor did Alice Gray, even for one hour, scmething almost mournful in their marriage imagine that such happiness it was in her -no rejoicing-no merry-making-but yet power to bestow. They knew each other's visible symptoms of gratitude, contentment, hearts-what they had suffered and survived; and peace. An air of cheerfulness was not and, since the meridian of life and joy was long of investing the melancholy Broom-the gone, they were contented with the pensive very swallows twittered more gladly from the twilight. window-corners, and there was joy in the coo- Look, there is a pretty Cottage-by name ing of the pigeons on the sunny roof. The LEASIDE-one that might almost do for a farm awoke through all its fields, and the farm- painter-just sufficiently shaded by trees, and servants once more sang and whistled at their showing a new aspect every step you take, and work. The wandering beggar, who remem- each new aspect beautiful. There is, it is bered the charity of other years, looked with true, neither moss, nor lichens, nor weather. no cold expression on her who now dealt out stains on the roof-but all is smooth, neat, trim, his dole; and, as his old eyes were dimmed deep thatch, from rigging to eaves, with a for the sake of those who were gone, gave a picturesque elevated window covered with the fervent blessing on the new mistress of the same material, and all the walls white as snow. house, and prayed that she might long be The whole building is at all times as fresh as spared The neighbours, even they who had if just washed by a vernal shower. Compe COTTAGES. O7 tence breathes from every lattice, and that man from India, loves his poor father and porch l.as been reared more for ornament than mother as tenderly as if he had never left their defence, although, no doubt, it is useful both in roof; and is prouder of them, too, than if they March and November winds. Every field were clothed in fine raiment, and fared sump. about it is like a garden, and yet the garden is tuously every day. Mr. Airlie of the Mount brightly conspicuous amidst all the surround- has his own seat in the gallery of the Kirk — ing cultivation. The hedgerows are all clipped, his father, as an Elder, sits below the pulpit — for they have grown there for many and many but occasionally the pious and proud son joins a year; and the shears were necessary to keep his mother in the pew, where he and his brothem down from shutting out the vista of the thers sat long ago; and every Sabbath one or lovely vale. That is the dwelling of Adam other of his children takes its place beside the Airlie the Elder. Happy old man! This life venerated matron. The old man generally has gone uniformly well with him and his; leaves the churchyard leaning on his Gilbert's yet, had it been otherwise, there is a power in arm-and although the sight has long been so his spirit that would have sustained the sever- common as to draw no attention, yet no doubt est inflictions of Providence. His gratitude to there is always an under and unconscious God is something solemn and awful, and ever pleasure in many a mind witnessing the accompanied with a profound sense of his utter sacredness of the bond of blood. Now and unworthiness of all the long-continued mercies then the old matron is prevailed upon, when vouchsafed to his family. His own happiness, the weather is bad and roads nIiry, to take a prolonged to a great age, has not closed within seat home in the carriage-but the Elder his heart one source of pity or affection for his always prefers walking thither with his son, brethren of mankind. In his own guiltless and he is stout and hale, although upwards of conscience, guiltless before man, he yet feels threescore and ten years. incessantly the frailties of his nature, and is Walter, the second son, is now a captain in meek, humble, and penitent as the greatest the navy, having served for years before the sinner. He, his wife, an old faithful female mast. His mind is in his profession, and he servant, and an occasional grand-daughter, is perpetually complaining of being unemnow form the whole household. His three sons ployed —a ship-a ship, is still the burden of have all prospered in the world. The eldest his song. But when at home-which he often went abroad when a mere boy, and many fears is for weeks together-he attaches himself to went with him-a bold, adventurous, and some- all the ongoings of rural life, as devotedly as what reckless creature. But consideration if a plougher of the soil instead of the sea. came to him in a foreign climate, and tamed His mother wonders, with tears in her eyes, down his ardent mind to a thoughtful, not a why, having a competency, he should still wish selfish prudence. Twenty years he lived in to provoke the dangers of the deep; and beIndia-and what a blessed day was the day of seeches him sometimes to become a farmer in his return! Yet in the prime of life, by dis- his native vale. And perhaps more improbaease unbroken, and with a heart full to over- ble things have happened; for the captain, it flowing with all its old sacred affections, he is said, has fallen desperately in love with the came back to his father's lowly cottage, and daughter of the clergyman of a neighbouring wept as he crossed the threshold. His parents parish, and the doctor will not give his consent needed not any of his wealth; but they were to the marriage, unless he promise to live, if blamelessly proud, nevertheless, of his honest allowed, on shore. The political state of acquisitions-proud when he became a land- Europe certainly seems at present favourable holder in his native parish, and employed the to the consummation of the wishes of all sons of his old companions, and some of his parties. old companions themselves, in the building of Of David, the third son, who has not heard, his unostentatious mansion, or in cultivating the that has heard any thing of the pulpit eloquence wild but not unlovely moor, which was dear to of Scotland?-Should his life be spared, there him for the sake of the countless remembrances can be no doubt that he will one day or other that clothed the bare banks of its lochs, and be Moderator of the General Assembly, permurmured in the little stream that ran among haps Professor of Divinity in a College. Be the pastoral braes. The new mansion is a that as it may, a better Christian never cxcouple of miles from his parental Cottage; but pounded the truths of the gospel, although not a week, indeed seldom half that time, some folks pretend to say that he is not evanelapses, without a visit to that dear dwelling. gelical. He is, however; beloved by the poor They likewise not unfrequently visit him-for -the orphan and the widow; and his minishis wife is dear to them as a daughter of their trations, powerful in the kirk to a devoutly own; and the ancient couple delight in the listening congregation, are so too at the sicknoise and laughter of his pretty flock. Yet the bed, when only two or three are gathered son understands perfectly well that the aged around it, and when the dying man feels how people love best their own roof-and that its a fellow-creature can, by scriptural aids, familiar quiet is every day dearer to their strengthen his trust in the mercy of his Maker. habituated affections. Therefore he makes no Every year, on each birthday of their sons, parade of filial tenderness-forces nothing new the old people hold a festival-in May, in upon them-is glad to see the uninterrupted August, and at Christmas. The sailor alone tenor of their humble happiness; and if they looks disconsolate as a bachelor, but that are proud of him, which all the parish knows, reproach will be wiped away before autumn' so is there not a child within its bounds that and should God grant the cottagers a few more does not know that Mr. Airlie, the rich gentle- years, some new faces will yet smile upon the 68 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. nolydays; and there is in their unwithered all the air, and the glen is noiseless, except hearts warm love enough for all that may join with the uncertain murmur of the now unthe party. We too-yes, gentle reader-we swollen waterfalls. That is the croak of the too shall be there- as we have often been raven sitting on his cliff halfway up Ben-Oura; during the last ten years-and you yourself and hark, the last belling of the red-deer, as will judge, from all you know of us, whether the herd lies down in the mist among the last or no we have a heart to understand and enjoy ridge of heather, blending with the shrubless such rare felicity. stones, rocks, and cliffs that girdle the upper But let us be off to the mountains, and en- regions of the vast mountain. deavour to interest our beloved reader in a Within the dimness of that hut you hear Highland Cottage-in any one, taken at hap- greetings in the Gaelic tongue, in a female hazard, from a hundred. You have been voice; and when the eye has by and by become roaming all day among the mountains, and able to endure the smoke, it discerns the perhaps seen no house except at a dwindling household-the veteran's ancient dame-a distance. Probably you have wished not to young man that may be his son, or rather his see any house, but aruined shieling —adeserted grandson, but whom you soon know to be hut-or an unroofed and dilapidated shed for neither, with black matted locks, the keen eye, the outlying cattle of some remote farm. But and the light limbs of the hunter-a young now the sun has inflamed all the western woman, his wife, suckling a child, and yet heaven, and darkness will soon descend. with a girlish look, as if but one year before There is now a muteness more stern and her silken snoodhad been untied-and alassie solemn than during unfaded daylight. List- of ten years, who had brought home the goats, the faint, far-off, subterranean sound of the and now sits timidly in a nook eyeing the bagpipe. Some old soldier, probably, playing stranger. The low growl of the huge, brindled a gathering or a coronach. The narrow dell stag-hound had been hushed by a word on your widens and widens into a great glen, in which first entrance, and the noble animal watches you just discern the blue gleam of a loch. his master's eye, which he obeys in his freeThe martial music is more distinctly heard- dom throughout all the forest-chase. A napkin loud, fitful, fierce, like the trampling of men in is taken out of an old worm-eaten chest, and battle. Where is the piper? In a cave, or spread over a strangely-carved table, that within the Fairies' Knowe? At the door of a seems to have belonged once to a place of hut. His eyes were extinguished by oph- pride; and the hungry and thirsty stranger thalmia, and there he sits, fronting the sun- scarcely knows which most to admire, the light, stone-blind. Long silverhairflows down broad bannocks of barley-meal and the huge his broad shoulders, and you perceive that, roll of butter, or the giant bottle, whose mouth when he rises, he will rear up a stately bulk. exhales the strong savour of conquering GlenThe music stops, and you hear the bleating of livet. The board is spread-why not fall to goats. There they come, prancing down the and eat? First be thanks given to the Lord rocks, and stare upon the stranger. The old God Almighty. The blind man holds up his soldier turns himself towards the voice of the hand and prays in a low chanting voice, and Sassenach, and, with the bold courtesy of the then breaks bread for the lips of the stranger. camp, bids him enter the hut. One minute's On such an occasion is felt the sanctity of the view has sufficed to imprint the scene for ever meal shared by human beings brought accion the memory-a hut whose turf-walls and dentally together-the salt is sacred-and the roof are incorporated with the living mountain, hearth an altar. and seem not the work of man's hand, but the No great travellers are we, yet have we seen casual architecture of some convulsion —the something of this habitable globe. The Hightumbling down of fragments from the mountain lands of Scotland is but a small region, nor is side by raging torrents, or a partial earthquake; its interior by any means so remote as the infor all the scenery about is torn to pieces- terior of Africa. Yet'tis remote. The life of like the scattering of some wide ruin. The that very blind veteran might, in better hands imagination dreams of the earliest days of our than ours, make an interesting history. In his race, when men harboured, like the other youth he had been a shepherd-a herdsmancreatures, in places provided by nature. But a hunter-something even of a poet. For even here, there are visible traces of cultivation thirty years he had been a soldier —in many working in the spirit of a mountainous region climates and many conflicts. Since first he -a few glades of the purest verdure opened bloodied his bayonet, how many of his comout among the tall brackens, with a birch-tree rades had been buried in heaps! flung into or two dropped just where the eye of taste trenches dug on the field of battle! How could have wished, had the painter planted the many famous captains had shone in the blaze sapling, instead of the winds of heaven having of their fame-faded into the light of common wafted thither the seed-a small croft of day-died in obscurity, and been utterly for. barley, surrounded by a cairn-l-ke wall, made gotten! What fierce passions must have agiup of stones cleared from the soil, and a patch tated the frame of that now calm old man! of potatoe ground, neat almost as the garden On what dreadful scenes, when forts and towns that shows in a nook its fruit-bushes and a were taken by storm, must those eyes, now few flowers. All the blasts that ever blew withered into nothing, have glared with all the must be unavailing against the briery rock that fury of man's most wrathful soul! Now peace shelters the hut from the airt of storms; and is with him for evermore. Nothing to speak the smoke may rise under its lee, unwavering of the din of battle, but his own pipes wailing mon he windiest day. There is sweetness in or raging among the hollow of the mountains. COTTAGES. 69 En relaticn to his campaigning career, his pre- low, wide, solemn, and melancholy sound. sent life is as the life of another state. The Runlets, torrents, rivers, lochs, and seaspageantry of war has all rolled off and away reeds, heather, forests, caves, and cliffs, all are for ever; all its actions but phantoms now of sound, sounding together a choral anthem. a dimly-remembered dream. He thinks of his Gracious heavens! what mistakes people former self, as sergeant in the Black Watch, have fallen into when writing about Solitude! and almost imagines he beholds another man. A man leaves a town for a few months, and In his long, long blindness, he has created an- goes with his wife and family, and a travelling other world to himself out of new voices-the library, into some solitary glen. Friends are voices of new generations, and of torrents thun- perpetually visiting him from afar, or the deringallyear longround about his hut. Almost neighbouring gentry leaving their cards, while all the savage has been tamed within him, and his servant-boy rides daily to the post-village an awful religion falls deeper and deeper upon for his letters and newspapers. And call you him, as he knows how he is nearing the grave. that solitude I The whole world is with you, Often his whole mind is dim, for he is exceed- morning, noon, and night. But go by ycuringly old, and then he sees only fragments of self, without book or friend, and live a month his youthful life-the last forty years are as if in this hut at the head of Glenevis. Go at they had never been —and he hears shouts and dawn among the cliffs of yonder pine-forest, huzzas, that half a century ago rent the air and wait there till night hangs her moon-lamp with victory. He can still chant, in a hoarse in heaven. Commune with your own soul, broken voice, battle-hymns and dirges; and and be still. Let the images of departed years thus, strangely forgetful and strangely tena- rise, phantom-like, of their own awful accord cious of the past, linked to this life by ties that from the darkness of your memory, and pass only the mountaineer can know, and yet feel- away into the wood-gloom or the mountaining himself on the brink of the next, Old Blind mist. Will conscience dread such spectres? Donald Roy, the Giant of the Hut of the Three Will you quake before them, and bow down Torrents, will not scruple to quaff the "strong your head on the mossy root of some old oak, waters," till his mind is awakened —brighten- and sob in the stern silence of the haunted ed-dimmed-darkened-and seemingly ex- place 1 Thoughts, feelings, passions, spectral tinguished-till the sunrise again smites him, deeds, will come rushing around your lair, as as he lies in a heap among the heather; and with the sound of the wings of innumerous then he lifts up, unashamed and remorseless, birds-ay, many of them like birds of prey, to that head, which, with its long quiet hairs, a gnaw your very heart. How many duties unpainter might choose for the image of a saint discharged' How many opportunities neglectabout to become a martyr. ed,! How many pleasures devoured! How We leave old Donald asleep, and go with many sins hugged! How many wickednesses his son-in-law, Lewis of the light-foot, and perpetrated! The desert looks more grim — Maida the stag-hound, surnamed the Throttler, the heaven lowers-and the sun, like God's Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod, own eye, stares in upon your conscience! To his hills that encircle the sea." But such is not the solitude of our beautfiul young shepherd-girl of the Hut of the Three We have been ascending mountain-range Torrents. Her soul is as clear, as calm as the after mountain-range, before sunrise; and lo! pool pictured at times by the floating clouds night is gone, and nature rejoices in the day that let fall their shadows through among the through all her solitudes. Still as death, yet as overhanging birch-trees. What harm could life cheerful-and unspeakable grandeur in the she ever do 1 What harm could she ever think. sudden revelation. Where is the wild-deer She may have wept-for there is sorrow withherd i-where, ask the keen eyes of Maida, is out sin; may have wept even at her prayersthe forest of antlers!-Lewis of the light-foot for there is penitence free from guilt, and inbounds before, with his long gun pointing to- nocence itself often kneels in contrition. Down wards the mists now gathered up to the sum- the long glen she accompanies the stream to mits of Benevis. the house of God-sings her psalms-and reNightfall-and we are once more at the Hut turns wearied to her heather-bed. She is, inof the Three Torrents. Small Amy is grown deed, a solitary child; the eagle, and the raven, familiar now, and, almost without being asked, and the red-deer see that she is so-and echo sings us the choicest of her Gaelic airs-a few knows it when from her airy cliff she repeats too of Lowland melody: all merry, yet all sad the happy creature's song. Her world is within — if in smiles begun, ending in a shower-or this one glen. In this one glen she may live at least a tender mist of tears. Heard'st thou all her days-be wooed, won, wedded, buried. ever such a syren as this Celtic child? Did Buried-said we Oh, why think of burial we not always tell you that fairies were indeed when gazing on that resplendent head? Interrealities of the twilight or moonlight world? minable tracts of the shining day await her, And she is their Queen. Hark! what thunders the lonely darling of nature; nor dare Time of applause! The waterfall at the head of the ever eclipse the lustre of those wild-beaming great Corrie thunders encore with a hundred eyes! Her beauty shaLll be immortal, like that echoes. But the songs are over, and the small of her country's fairies. So, Flower of the singtr gone to her heather-bed. There is a Wilderness, we wave towards thee a joyful — Highland moon!- The shield of an unfallen though an everlasting farewell. arch-angel. There are not many stars-but Where are we now? There is not on this those two-ay, that One, is sufficient to sustain round green earth a lovelier Loch than Achrav. the glory of the night. Be not alarmed at that About a mile above Loch Vennachar and as 70 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. we approach the Brigg of Turk, we arrive at of oaten reed, in a lovelier nook than where the summit of an eminence, whence we descry yonder cottage stands, shaded, but scarcely the sudden and wide prospect of the windings sheltered, by a few birch-trees. It is in truth of the river that issues from Loch Achray- not a cottage-but a very SHIELING, part ot and the Loch itself reposing-sleeping-dream- the knoll adhering to the side of the mountain ing on its pastoral, its silvan bed. Achray, Not another dwelling-even as small as itself — being interpreted, signifies the "Level Field," within a mile in any direction. Those goats and gives its name to a delightful farm at the that seem to walk where there is no footing west end. On " that happy, rural seat of va- along the side of the cliff, go of themselves to rious view," could we lie all day long; and as be milked at evening to a house beyond the, all the beauty tends towards the west, each hill, without any barking dog to set them home. afternoon hour deepens and also brightens it There are many footpaths, but all of sheep, exinto mellower splendour. Not to keep con- cept one leading through the coppice-wood to stantly seeing the lovely Loch is indeed im- the distant kirk. The angler seldom disturbs possible —yet its still waters soothe the soul, those shallows, and the heron has them to him. without holding it away from the woods and self, watching often with motionless neck all cliffs, that forming of themselves a perfect pic- day long. Yet the Shieling is inhabited, and ture, are yet all united with the mountainous has been so by the same person for a good many region of the setting sun. Many long years years. You might look at it for hours, and yet have elapsed-at our time of life ten are many see no one so much as moving to the door. But -since we passed one delightful evening in a little smoke hovers over it-very faint if it the hospitable house that stands near the be smoke at all-and nothing else tells that wooden bridge over the Teith, just wheeling within is life. into Loch Achray. What a wilderness of It is inhabited by a widow, who once was wooded rocks, containing a thousand little the happiest of wives, and lived far down the mossy glens, each large enough for a fairy's glen; where it is richly cultivated, in a house kingdom! Between and Loch Katrine is the astir with many children. It so happened, that Place of Roes —nor need the angler try to pe- in the course of nature, without any extraordinetrate the underwood; for every shallow, nary bereavements, she outlived all the houseevery linn, every pool is overshaded by its hold, except one, on whom fell the saddest own canopy, and the living fly and moth alone affliction that can befall a human being-the ever dip their wings in the chequered waters. utter loss of reason. For some years after the Safe there are all the little singing birds, from death of her husband, and all her other children, hawk or glead-andit is indeedan Aviaryin the this son was her support; and there was no wild. Pine-groves stand here and there amid occasion to pity them in their poverty, where the natural woods-and among their tall gloom all were poor. Her natural cheerfulness never the cushat sits crooning in beloved solitude, forsook her; and although fallen back in the rarely startled by human footstep, and bearing world, and obliged in her age to live without at his own pleasure through the forest the sound many comforts she once had known, yet all the of his flipping wings. past gradually was softened into peace, and the But let us arise from the greensward, and be- widow and her son were in that shieling as fore we pace along the sweet shores of Loch happy as any family in the parish. He worked Achray, for its nearest murmur is yet more at all kinds of work without, and she sat spinthan a mile off, turn away up from the Brigg ning from morning to night within-a constant of Turk into Glenfinglas. A strong mountain- occupation, soothing to one before whose mind torrent, in which a painter, even with the soul past times might otherwise have come too often, of Salvator Rosa, might find studies inexhaust- and that creates contentment by its undisturbed ible for years, tumbles on the left of a ravine, sameness and invisible progression. If not in which a small band of warriors might stop always at meals, the widow saw her son for an the march of a numerous host. With what a hour or two every night, and throughout the loud voice it brawls through the silence, fresh- whole Sabbath-day. They slept, too, under one ening the hazels, the birches, and the oaks, roof; and she liked the stormy weather when that in that perpetual spray need not the dew's the rains were on —for then he found some inrefreshment. Butthe savage scene softens as genious employment within the shieling, or you advance, and you come out of that silvan cheered her with some book lent by a friend, prison into a plain of meadows and corn-fields, or with the lively or plaintive music of his alive with the peacieful dwellings of indus- native hills. Sometimes, in her gratitude, she trious men. Here the bases of the mountains, said that she was happier now than when she and even their sides high up, are without had so many other causes to be so; and when neather-a rich sward, with here and there a occasionally an acquaintance dropt in upon deep bed of brackens, and a little sheep-shel- her, her face gave a welcome that spoke more tering grove. Skeletons of old trees of prodi- than resignation; nor was she averse to pargious size lie covered with mosses and wild- take the socialty of the other huts, and sat flowers, or stand with their barkless trunks and sedate among youthful merriment, when sumwhite limbs unmoved when the tempest blows. mer or winter festival came round, and poverty Glenfinglas was anciently a deer-forest of the rejoiced in the riches of content and innocence. Kings of Scotland; but hunter's horn no more But her trials, great as they had been, were awakens the echoes of Benledi. not yet over; for this her only son was laid A more beautiful vale never inspired pas- prostrate by fever-and, when it left his body toral poet in Arcadia, nor did Sicilian shep- he survived hopelessly stricken in mind. His herds of old ever pipe to each other for prize eyes, so clear and intelligent, were now fixPdJ COTTAGES. 71 In idiocy, or rolled about unobserving of all land maidens that danced on the greenswards objects living or dead. To him all weather among the blooming heather on the mountains seemed the same, and if suffered, he would of Glenetive-who so fair as Flora, the only have lain down like a creature void of under- daughter of the King's Forester, and grandstanding, in rain or on snow, nor been able to child to the Bard famous for his songs of Faifind his way back for many paces from the hut. ries in the Hill of Peace, and the Mermaid. As all thought and feeling had left him, so had Queen in her Palace of Emerald floating far speech, all but a moaning as of pain or wo, down beneath the foam-waves of the sea? which none but a mother could bear to hear And who, among all the Highland youth that without shuddering —but she heard it during went abroad to the bloody wars from the base night as well as day, and only sometimes lifted of Benevis, to compare with Ranald of the Red. up her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer was Cliff, whose sires had been soldiers for centu. made to send him to a place where the afflicted ries, in the days of the dagger and Lochaber were taken care of; but she beseeched charity axe-stately in his strength amid the battle as for the first tinie for such alms as would enable the oak in a storm, but gentle in peace as the her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to birch-tree, that whispers with all its leaves to keep her son in the shieling; and the means the slightest summer-breath 1 If their love was were given her from many quarters to do so great when often fed at the light of each other's decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes, what was it when Ranald was far off eyes observed, but of which the poor object him- among the sands of Egypt, and Flora left an self was insensible and unconscious. Hence- orphan to pine away in her native glen 1 Beforth, it may almost be said, she never more neath the shadow of the Pyramids he dreamt saw the sun, nor heard the torrents roar. She of Dalness and the deer forest, that was the went not to the kirk, but kept her Sabbath dwelling of his love-and she, as she stood by where the paralytic lay-and there she sung the murmurs of that sea-loch, longed for the the lonely psalm, and said the lonely prayer, wings of the osprey, that she might flee away unheard in Heaven as many repining spirits to the war-tents beyond the ocean, and be at would have thought-but it was not so; for in rest! two years there came a meaning to his eyes, But years-a few years —long and lingering and he found a few words of imperfect speech, as they might seem to loving hearts separated among which was that of " Mother." Oh! how by the roar of seas-yet all too, too short when her heart burned within her, to know that her'tis thought how small a number lead from the face was at last recognised! To feel that her cradle to the grave-brought Ranald and Flora kiss was returned, and to see the first tear that once more into each other's arms. Alas! for trickled from eyes that long had ceased to the poor soldier! for never more was he to weep! Day after day, the darkness that co- behold that face from which he kissed the vered his brain grew less and less deep-to trickling tears. Like many another gallant her that bewilderment gave the blessedness of youth, he had lost his eyesight from the sharp hope; for her son now knew that he had an burning sand —and was led to the shieling of immortal soul, and in the evening joined faintly his love like a wandering mendicant who and feebly and erringly in prayer. For weeks obeys the hand of a child. Nor did his face afterwards he remembered only events and bear that smile of resignation usually so affectscenes long past and distant-and believed ing on the calm countenances of the blind. that his father, and all his brothers and sisters, Seldom did he speak-and his sighs itcre were yet alive. He called upon them by their deeper, longer, and more disturbed than those names to come and kiss him-on them, who which almost any sorrow ever wrings from had all long been buried in the dust. But his the young. Could it be that he groaned in soul struggled itself into reason and remem- remorse over some secret crime? brance-and he at last said, "Mother! did some Happy-completely happy, would Flora have accident befall me yesterday at my work down been to have tended him like a sister all his the glen — I feel weak, and about to die!" The dark life long, or, like a daughter, to have sat shadows of death were indeed around him; but beside the bed of one whose hair was getting he lived to be told much of what had hap- fast gray, long before its time. Almost all her pened-and rendered up a perfectly unclouded relatibns were dead, and almost all her friends spirit into the mercy of his Saviour. His away to other glens. But he had returned, mother felt that all her prayers had been and blindness, for which there was no hope, granted in that one boon-and, when the coffin must bind his steps for ever within little room. was borne away from the shieling, she re- But they had been betrothed almost from her mained in it with a friend, assured that in this childhood, and would she-if he desired itworld there could for her be no more grief. fear to become his wife now, shrouded as he And there in that same shieling, now that years was, now and for ever in the helpless dark? have gone by, she still lingers, visited as often From his lips, however, her maidenly modesty as she wishes by her poor neighbours —for to required that the words should come, ncr the poor sorrow is a sacred thing-who, by could she sometimes help wondering, in halfturns, send one of their daughters to stay with upbraiding sorrow, that Ranald joyed not in her, and cheer a life that cannot be long, but his great affliction to claim her for his wife. that, end when it may, will be laid down with- Poor were they to be sure-yet not so poor as out one impious misgiving, and in the humility to leave life without its comforts; and in every of a Christian's faith. glen of her native Highlands, were there nc The scene shifts of itself, and we are at the worthy families far poorer than they? But head of Glenetive. Who among all the High- weeks, months, passed on, and Ranatd rc -72 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER INORTH. mained in a neighbouring hut, shunning the same vision yawned before him —an open sunshine, and moaning, it was said, when he grave in the corner of the hill burial-ground thought none were near, both night and day. without any kirk. Sometimes. he had been overheard muttering Flora knew that his days were indeed nurato himself lamentable words-and, blind as his bered; for when had he ever been afraid of eyes were to all the objects of the real world, death-and could his spirit have quailed thus it was rumoured up and down the glen, that under a mere common dreaml Soon was she he saw visions of woful events about to befall to be all alone in this world; yet when Ranald one whom he loved. should die, she felt that her own days would One midnight he found his way, unguided, not be many, and there was sudden and strong like a man walking in his sleep-but although comfort in the belief that they would be buried in a hideous trance, he was yet broad awake- in one grave. to the hut where Flora dwelt, and called on Such were her words to the dying man; and her, in a dirge-like voice, to speak a few words all at once he took her in his arms, and asked with him ere he died. They sat down together her "If she had no fears of the narrow house " among the heather, on the very spot where the His whole nature seemed to undergo a change farewell embrace had been given the morning under the calm voice of her reply; and he he went away to the wars; and Flora's heart said, "Dost thou fear not then, my Flora, to died within her, when he told her that the hear the words of dooms" "Blessed will they Curse under which his forefathers had suffer- be, if in death we be not disunited." "Thou ed, had fallen upon him; and that he had seen too, my wife-for my wife thou now art on his wraith pass by in a shroud, and heard a earth, and mayest be so in heaven-thou too, voice whisper the very day he was to die. Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." And was it Ranald of the Red-Cliff, the It was a gentle and gracious summer nightbravest of the brave, that thus shuddered in so clear, that the shepherds on the hills were.he fear of death like a felon at the tolling of scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And.he great prison-bell! Ay, death is dreadful there, at earliest daylight, were Ranald and when foreseen by a ghastly superstition. He Flora found, on the greensward, among the tall felt the shroud already bound round his limbs heather, lying side by side, with their calm and body with gentle folds, beyond the power faces up to heaven, and never more to smile of a giant to burst; and day and night the or weep in this mortal world. AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. Ouns is a poetical age; but has it produced — hold up the product of his loom between one Great Poem I Not one. your eye and the light, and it glows and glimJust look at them for a moment. There is mers like the peacock's back or the breast of the Pleasures of Memory-an elegant, grace- the rainbow. Sometimes it seems to be but ful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, of the "hodden gray;" when sunbeam or which it does one's eyes good to gaze on- shadow smites it, and lo! it is burnished like one's ears good to listen to —one's very fingers the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger good to touch, so smooth is the versification ever produce a Great Poem? You might as and the wire-wove paper. Never will the well ask if he built St. Paul's. Pleasures of Memory be forgotten till the Breathes not the man with a more poetical world is in its dotage. But is it a Great temperament than Bowles. No wonder that Poem? About as much so as an ant-hill, his old eyes are still so lustrous; for they prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a moun- possess the sacred gift of beautifying creation, tain purple with heather and golden with woods. by shedding over it the charm of melancholy. It is a symmetrical erection-in the shape of " Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the mea cone —and the apex points heavenwards; mory of joys that are past" —is the text we but'tis not a sky-piercer. You take it at a should choose were we about to preach on his nop-and pursue your journey. Yet it en- genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, dures. For the rains and the dews, and the does his spirit now breathe over the still reairs, and the sunshine, love the fairy knoll, ceding Past. But time-sanctified are all the and there it greens and blossoms delicately and shows that arise before his pensive imaginadelightfully; you hardly know whether a work tion; and the common light of day, once gone, of art or a work of nature. in his poetry seems to shine as if it had all Then, there is the poetry of Crabbe. We been dying sunset or moonlight, or the newhear it is not very popular. If so, then neither born dawn. His human sensibilities are so Is human life. For of all our poets, he has fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his most skilfully woven the web and woven the poetical aspirations so delicate as to be felt woof of all his compositions with the materials always human. Hence his Sonnets have been of human life-homespun indeed; but though dear to poets-having in them " more than often coarse, always strong-and though set meets the ear"-spiritual treathings that hang to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently exceed- around the words like light around fair flowers;;ng fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay and hence. too, have they been beloved by all AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY 73 natural hearts who, having not the " faculty hymn-and now it dies away elegiac-like, as divine," have yet the "vision"-that is, the if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, power of seeing and of hearing the sights and uncertain, dream-like, and visionary all; but the sounds which genius alone can awaken, never else than beautiful; and ever and anon, bringing them from afar out of the dust and we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the dimness of evanishment. hush of night-and we awaken as if from a Mr. Bowles has been a poet for good fifty dream. Is it not even so?-In his youth years; and if his genius do not burn quite so Campbell lived where " distant isles could bright as it did some lustres bygone-yet we hear the loud Corbrechtan roar;" and some. do not say there is any abatement even of its times his poetry is like that whirlpool-the brightness: it shines with a mellower and sound as of thewheels of many chariots. Yes, also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he happy was it for him that he had liberty to was perhaps rather too pensive —too melan- roam along the many-based, hollow-rumbling choly-too pathetic-too wo-begone-in too western coast of that unaccountable county great bereavement. Like the nightingale, he Argyleshire. The sea-roar cultivated his natusung with a thorn at his breast-from which rally fine musical ear, and it sank too into his one wondered the point had not been broken heart. Hence is his prime Poem bright with off by perpetual pressure. Yet, though rather hope as is the sunny sea when sailor's sweetmonotonous, his strains were most musical as hearts on the shore are looking out for ships; well as melancholy; feeling was often re- and from a foreign station down comes the lieved by fancy; and one dreamed, in listening fleet before the wind, and the very shells beto his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of neath their footsteps seem to sing for joy. As moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if and of the yellow sands of dim-imaged seas she were our own only daughter-filling our murmuring round "the shores of old Ro- life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate, mance." A fine enthusiasm too was his-in Even now we see her ghost gliding through those youthful years-inspired by the poetry those giant woods! As for Lochiel's Warnof Greece and Rome; and in some of his hap- ing, there-was heard the voice of the Last of piest inspirations there was a delightful and the Seers. The Second Sight is now extin. original union-to be found nowhere else that guished in the Highland glooms-the Lament we can remember-of the spirit of that an- wails no more, cient song-the pure classical spirit that mur- "That man may not hide what God would reveal!" mured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus The Navy owes much to "Ye mariners of with that of our own poetry, that like a noble England." Sheer hulks often seemed ships Naiad dwells in the " clear well of English un- till that strain arose-but ever since in our defiled." In almost all his strains you felt the imagination have they brightened the roaring scholar; but his was no affected or pedantic ocean. And dare we say, after that, that Camp. scholarship-intrusive most when least re- bell has never written a Great Poem? Yesquired; but the growth of a consummate clas- in the face even of the Metropolitan! sical education, of which the career was not It was said many long years ago in the inglorious amongthe towers ofOxford. Bowles Edinburgh Review, that none but maudlin was a pupil of the Wartons-Joe and Tom- milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed God bless their souls!-and his name may be that James Montgomery was a poet. Then is joined, not unworthily, with theirs-and with Maga a maudlin milliner-and Christopher Mason's, and Gray's, and Collins's-academics North a sentimental ensign. We once called all; the works of them all showing a delicate Montgomery a Moravian; and though he asand exquisite colouring of classicalart, enrich- sures us that we were mistaken, yet having ing their own English nature. Bowles's muse is made an assertion, we always stick to it, and always loath to forget-wherever she roam or therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in linger-Winchester and Oxford —the Itchin his own belief, yet in ours. Of alrreligious and the Isis. None educated in those delight- sects, the Moravians are the most simpleful and divine haunts will ever forget them, minded, pure-hearted, and high-souled-and who can read Horner and Pindar, and Sopho- these qualities, shine serenely in the Pelican cles, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, Island. In earnestness and fervour, that poem in the original; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in renegade sons are those alone who pursued sincerity, and therefore shall fale not away; their poetical studies-in translations. They neither shall it moulder-not even although never knew the nature of the true old Greek exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so fire. rudely through time's mutations. Not that it But has Bowles written a Great Poem? If is a mummy. Say rather a fair form laid he has, publish it, and we shall make him a asleep in immortality-its face wearing, day Bishop. and night, summer and winter, look at it when What shall we say of the Pleasures of you will, a saintly-a celestial smile. That is Hope? That the harp from which that music a true image; but is the Pelican Island a Great breathed, was an zEolian harp placed in the Poem 1 We pause not for a reply. window of a high hall, to catch airs from Lyrical Poetry, we opine,hath many branches heaven when heaven was glad, as well she -and one of them "beautiful exceedingly" might be with such moon and such stars, and with bud, blossom, and fruit of balm and bright streamering half the region with a magnificent ness, round which is ever heard the murmur aurora borealis. Now the music deepens into of bees and of birds, hangs trailingly along a majestic march-now it swells into a holy the mossy greensward when the air is calmin. 74 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. and ever and ancn, when blow the fitful breezes, What has been the result? Seven voluine it is uplifted in the sunshine, and glows wav- (oh! why not seven more?) of poetry, as ingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the loftiest beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and region of the Tree which is Amaranth. That of Apollo. The earth-the middle air-the skl; is a fanciful, perhaps foolish form of expres- -the heaven-the heart, mind, and soul of sion, employed at present to signify Song-writ- man-are "the haunt and main region of his ing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever song." In describing external nature as she is, warbled, or chanted, or sung, the best, in our no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworthestimation, is verily none other than Thomas not even Thomson; in embuing her and mak. Moore. True that Robert Burns has indited ing her pregnant with spirituaLities, till the many songs that slip into the heart, just like mighty mother teems with "beauty far more light, no one knows how, filling its chambers beauteous" than she had ever rejoiced in till sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing such communion-he excels all the brother. more to desire for perfect contentment. Or hood. Therein lies his special glory, and let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like therein the immortal evidences of the might listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird of his creative imagination. All men at times in the brake, a laverock in the sky. They sing "muse on nature with a poet's eye,"-but in the fulness of their joy, as nature teaches Wordsworth ever-and his soul has grown them —and so did he; and the man, woman, or more and more religious from such worship. child, who is delighted not with such singing, Every rock is an altar-every grove a shrine. be their virtues what they may, must never We fear that there will be sectarians even in hope to be in Heaven. Gracious Providence this Natural Religion till the end of time. placed Burns in the midst of the sources of But he is the High Priest of Nature-or, to use Lyrical Poetry-when he was born a Scottish his own words, or nearly so, he is the High peasant. Now, Moore is an Irishman, and Priest "in the metropolitan temple built in the was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, heart of mighty poets." But has he-even he and translated-after a fashion-Anacreon. -ever written a Great Poem? If he has-it And Moore has lived much in towns? and cities is not the Excursion. Nay, the Excursion is — and in that society whch will suffer none not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, all else to be called good. Some advantages he swimming in the light of poetry; some of has enjoyed which Burns never did-but then them sweet and simple, some elegant and how many disadvantages has he undergone, graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some fromn which the Ayrshire Ploughman, in the of " strength and state," some majestic, some bondage of his poverty, was free! You see magnificent, some sublime. But though it all that at a single glance into their poetry. has an opening, it has no beginning; you can But all in humble life is not high-all in high discover the middle only by the numerals on life is not low; and there is as much to guard the page; and the most serious apprehensions against in hovel as in hall-in "auld clay- have been very generally entertained that it bigging" as in marble palace. Burns some- has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary tines wrote like a mere boor-Moore has too breathe the vital air, may the Excursion, stop often written like a mere man of fashion. But where it will, be renewed; and as in its pretake them both at their best -and both are ini- sent shape it comprehends but a Three Days' mitable. Both are national poets-and who Walk, we have but to think of an Excursion.;hall say, that if Moore had been born and of three weeks, three months, or three years, bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life had been such a land of knowledge, and virtue, of man is not always limited to the term of and religion as Scotland is —and surely, with- threescore and ten years. What a Journal out offence, we may say that it never was, and might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion never will be-though we love the Green till the land overflowed; but whether in one Island well-that with his fine fancy, warm volume, as nQw, or in fifty, in future, not a heart, and exquisite sensibilities, he might not Great Poem-nay, not a Poem at all-nor ever have been as natural a lyrist as Burns; while, to be so esteemed, till the principles on which take him as he is, who can deny that in rich- Great Poets build the lofty rhyme are exploded, ness, in variety, in grace, and in the power of and the very names of Art and Science smothart, he is superior to the ploughman. Of Lal- ered and lost in the bosom of Nature from lah Rookh and the Loves of the Angels, we which they arose. defy you to read a page without admiration; Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, probut the question recurs, and it is easily an- vided only he be alive and hear, be shut up in swered, we need not say in the negative, did a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and sub Moore ever write a Great Poem? jected for a few minutes to the ethereal influLet us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal ence of that wonderful man's monologue, and Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here is he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The the man who has devoted his whole life to barren wilderness may not blossom like the poetry. It is his profession. He is a poet rose, butit will seem, or rather feel to do so, unjust as his brother is a clergyman. He is the der the lustre of an imagination exhaustless as Head of the Lake School, just as his brother the sun. You may have seen perhaps rocks is Master of Trinity. Nothing in this life and suddenly so glorified by sunlight with colours ili this world has he had to do, beneath sun, manifold, that the bees seek them, deluded by moor. and stars, but the show of flowers. The sun, you know, does "'io niurmur by the living brooks not always show his orb even in the daytimeA music sweeter than their own." and people are often ignorant of his place in AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY.'5 tile firmament. But he keeps shining away at on "honey-dew," and by lips that have "breath. his leisure, as you would know were he to suf- ed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic fer eclipse. Perhaps he —the sun-is at no language, which, all the while that it is Eng. other time a more delightful luminary than lish, is as grand as Greek and as soft as when he is pleased to dispense his influence Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is through a general haze, or mist-softening all the alchymist that in his crucible melts down the day till meridian is almost like the after- hours to moments-and lo! diamonds sprinkled noon, and the grove, anticipating gloaming, on a plate of gold. bursts into " dance and minstrelsy" ere the god What a world would this be were all its ingo down into the sea. Clouds too become him habitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Duwell-whether thin and fleecy and braided, or crow, discourse like Coleridge, and do every piled up all round about him castle-wise and thing else in a style of equal perfection! But cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of temples and pray, how does a man write poetry with a pen other metropolitan structures; nor is it rea- upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring sonable to find fault with him, when, as naked it from his inspired lips? Read the Ancient as the hour he was born, " he flames on the Mariner, the Nightingale, and Genevieve. In forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur the first, you shudder at the superstition of the too cf hi~ appearance on setting, has become sea-in the second, you thrill with the melo. quite proverbial. Now in all this he resem- dies of the woods-in the third, earth is like bles Coleridge. It is easy to talk-not very heaven;-for you are made to feel that difficult to speechify-hard to speak; but to ",All thoughts, all passions, all delights, " discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Hea- Whatever stirs this mortal frame yen on mortal man. Coleridge has it in per- All are but ministers of Love, fection. While he is discoursing, the world And feed his sacred flame loses all its commonplaces, and you and your Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great wife imagine yourself Adam and Eve listening Poem? No; for besides the Regions of the to the affable archangel Raphael in the Gar- Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is den of Eden. You would no more dream of another up to which his wing might not soar; wishing him to be mute for awhile, than you though the plumes are strong as soft. But would a river that "imposes silence with a stil- why should he who loveth to take " the wings ly sound." Whether you understand two con- of a dove that he may flee away" to the bosecutive sentences, we shall not stop too curi- som of beauty, though there never for a mo. ously to inquire; but you do something better, ment to be at rest-why should he, like an you feel the whole just like any other divine eagle, soar into the storms that roll above this music. And'tis your own faultif you do not visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual "A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." thunder? Reason is said to be one faculty, and Imagina- Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remontion another-but there cannot be a grosser strates, rather angrily, with the Public, against mistake; they are one and indivisible; only in her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to most cases they live like cat and dog, in mutual put into one class, himself, Coleridge, and worrying, or haply sue for a divorce; whereas Southey, as birds of a feather, that not only in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as flock together but warble the same sort of well as one flesh, and keep billing and cooing song. But he elsewhere tells us that he and in a perpetual honey-moon. Then his mind is Coleridge hold the same principles in the Art learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, as Poetical; and among his Lyrical Ballads he well as the Greeks and Romans; and though admitted the three finest compositions of his we have heard simpletons say that he knows illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, nothing of science, we have heard him on is not to blame in taking him at his word, even chemistry puzzle Sir Humphrey Davy-and if she had discerned no family likeness in prove to his own entire satisfaction, that Leib- their genius. Southey certainly resembles nitz and Newton, though good men, were but Wordsworth less than Coleridge does; but he iniifferent astronomers. Besides, he thinks lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen nothing of inventing a new science, with a miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphi. complete nomenclature, in a twinkling-and losophical though pensive Public that link oz sRhould you seem sluggish of apprehension, he connection should be allowed to be sufficient, ondows you with an additional sense or two, even were there no other less patent and ma. nver and above the usual seven, till you are no terial than the Macadamized turnpike road. longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music But true it is and of verity, that Southey, of fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy among our living Poets, stands aloof and "alone piece of poetry. All the faculties, both of soul in his glory;" for he alone of them all has adand sense, seem amicably to interchange their ventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, functions and their provinces; and you fear the different characters, customs, and manners not that the dream may dissolve, persuaded of nations. Joan of Are is an English and that you are in a future state of permanent French story-Thalaba, Arabian —Kehama,Inenjoyment. Nor are we now using any exag- dian —Madoc, Welsh and American —and Ro geration; for if you will but think how unut- derick, Spanish and Moorish; nor would it be terably dull are all the ordinary sayings and easy to say (setting aside the first, which was doings:f this life, spent as it is with ordinary a very youthful work) in which of these noble people, you may imagine how in sweet deliri- Poems Mr. Southey has most successfully perum you may be robbed of yourself by a se- formed an achievement entirely beyond the raphic tongue that has fed since first it lisped power of any but the highest genius. In Ma. 76 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. doc, and especially in Roderick, he has relied Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear On the truth of nature-as it is seen in the his- ilow Madoc from the shores of Britain srrcead The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path, tory of great national transactions and events. And quell'd barbaric power, and overthrew In Thalaba and in Kehama, though in them, The bloody altars of idolatry, too, he has brought to bear an almost bound- And planted on its fanes triumphantly too, he has brought to bear an almost bound- The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay." less lore, he follows the leading of Fancy and Imagination, and walks in a world of wonders. Of all his chief Poems the conception and tht Seldom, if ever, has one and the same Poet execution are original; in much faulty and ima exhibited such power in such different kinds perfect both; but bearing throughout the im. of Poetry-in Truth a Master, and in Fiction press of original power; and breathing a moral a Magician. charm, in the midst of the wildest and some It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast times even extravagant imaginings, that shall stores of knowledge gathered from books-and preserve them for ever from oblivion, embalm. that we have but to look at the multifarious ing them in the spirit of delight and of love. accumulation of notes appended to his great Fairy Tales-or tales of witchcraft and enPoems to see that they are not Inventions. chantment, seldom stir the holiest and deepest The materials of poetry indeed are there-often feelings of the heart; but Thalaba and Keha. the raw materials-seldom more; but the Ima- ma do so; " the still sad music of humanity" gination that moulded them into beautiful, or is ever with us among all most wonderful and magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his wild; and of a11 the spells, and charms, and taown-and has shown itself most creative. lismans that are seen working strange effects Southey never was among the Arabians nor before our eyes, the strongest are ever felt to Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travel- be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures lers. But had he not been a Poet he might of domestic affection and bliss! what sanctity have read till he was blind, nor ever seen and devotion! Meek as a child is Innocence "The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste," in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether matron or maid, mother or daughter-in joy or sorrow-as they appear "How happily the years of Thalaba went by!" before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and In what guidance but that of his own genius dutiful," with Faith, Hope and Charity their did he descend with the Destroyer into the Dom- guardian angels, nor Fear ever once crossing daniel Caves? And who showed him the their path! We feel, in perusing such picSwerga's Bowers of Bliss? Who built for tures —"Purity! thy name is woman!" and are him with all its palaces that submarine City of not these Great Poems? We are silent. But the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the should you answer "yes," from us in our presuperficial thunder of the sea! The greatness sent mood you shall receive no contradiction. as well as the originality of Southey's genius The transition always seems to us, we is seen in the conception of every one of his scarcely know why, as natural as delightful Five Chief Works-with the exception of Joan from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the of Arc, which was written in very early youth, poets of the day have produced poems in which and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthu- are pictured and narrated, epicly, national chasiasm. They are one and all National Poems racters, and events, and actions, and catastro-wonderfully true to the customs and charac- phes. Southey has heroically invaded foreign ters of the inhabitants of the countries in which countries; Scott as heroically brought his are laid the scenes of all their various adven- power to bear on his own people; and both tures and enterprises-and the Poet has en- have achieved immortal triumphs. But Scottirely succeeded in investing with an individual land is proud of her great national minstrel-nterest each representative of a race. Thala- and as long as she is Scotland, will wash and ba is a true Arab —Madoc a true Briton —ing warm the laurels round his brow, with rains Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Keha- and winds that will for ever keep brightening ma is a personage whom we can be made to their glossy verdure. Whereas England, unimagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter con- grateful ever to her men of genius, already fined himself in his poetry to Scotlan —except often forgets the poetry of Southey; while Ii Rokeby —and his might then went not with Little Britain abuses his patriotism in his po. him across the Border; though in his novels litics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten and romances he was at home when abroad — her own history till Sir Walter burnished it all and nowhere else more gloriously than with up till it glowed again —it is hard to say wheSaladin in the Desert. Lalla Rookh is full of ther in his poetry or in his prose the brightest — Drilliant poetry; and one of the series-the and the past became the present. We know Fire Worshippers-is Moore's highest effort; now the characte r of our own people as it tut the whole is too elaborately Oriental-and showed itself in war and peace-in palace, often in pure weariness of all that accumula- castle, hall, hut, hovel, and shieling —through tion of the gorgeous imagery of the East, we centuries of advancing civilization, from the shut up the false glitter, and thank Heaven time when Edinburgh was first ycleped Auld that we are in one of the bleakest and barest Reekie, down to the period when the bright corners of the West. But Southey's magic is idea first occurred to her inhabitants to call more potent-and he was privileged to ex- her the Modern Athens. This he has effected more potent-andhewasprlaivilegedm — toex-by means of about one hundred volumes, each " Come, lla stento- a tle f ime o ol'exhibiting to the life about fifty characters, and " Come, listen to a tale of times of old! each character not only an individual in him. Come, for ye know me. I am he who framed Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song. self or herself, but the renresentative —so we AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. 77 offer to prove if you be skeptical-of a distinct and their Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish-c f kings class or order of human beings, from the Mo- that fought for fame or freedom-of fatal Flod narch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the den and bright Bannockburn-of the nt. Gipsy, from the Bruce to the Moniplies, from LIVTVIER. If that be not national to the teeth, Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennisoun. We shall Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtoeu's not sprung never say that Scott is Shakspeare; but we from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. shall say that he has conceived and created- Let Abbotsford, then, be cognomed by those you know the meaning of these words-as that choose it, the Ariosto of the North-we many characters-real living flesh-and-blood shall continue to call him plain Sir Walter. human beings —naturally, truly, and consist- Now, we beg leave to decline answering oar ently, as Shakspeare; who, always transcend- own question-has he ever written a Great antly great in pictures of the passions-out of Poem? We do not care one straw whether he their range, which surely does not comprehend has or not; for he has done this-he has exall rational being-was —nay, do not threaten hibited human life in a greater variety of forms to murder us-not seldom an imperfect delinea- and lights, all definite and distinct, than any tor of human life. All the world believed that other man whose name has reached our ears; Sir Walter had not only exhausted his own ge- and therefore, without fear or trembling, we nius in his poetry, but that he had exhausted all tell the world to its face, that he is, out of all the matter of Scottish life-he and Burns to- sight, the greatest genius of the age, not forgether-and that no more ground unturned-up getting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr. Faustus. lay on this side of the Tweed. Perhaps he "What? Scott a greater genius than Byron!" thought so too for a while-and shared in the Yes-beyond compare. Byron had a vivid and general and natural delusion. But one morn- strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw ing before breakfast it occurred to him, that in things as they are, occasionally standing proall his poetry he had done little or nothing- minently and boldly out from the flat surface though more for Scotland than any other of of this world; and in general, when his coul her poets —except the Ploughman-and that it was up, he described them with a master's would not be much amiss to commence a New might. We speak now of the external worldCentury of Inventions. Hence the Prose Tales of nature and of art. Now observe how he -Novels-and Romances-fresh floods of light dealt with nature. In his early poems he bepouring all over Scotland-and occasionally trayed no passionate love of nature, though we illuminating England, France, and Germany, do not doubt that he felt it; and even in the and even Palestine-whatever land had been first two cantos of Childe Harold he was an ennobled by Scottish enterprise, genius, va- unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at lour, and virtue. her shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarmUp to the era of Sir Walter, living people had ness; but simply stating a fact. He had somesome vague, general, indistinct notions about thing else to think of, it would appear; and dead people mouldering away to nothing cen- proved himself a poet. But in the third canto, turies ago, in regular kirkyards and chance "a change came over the spirit of his dream," burial-places, "'mang muirs and mosses many and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and O,," somewhere or other in that difficultly-dis- mountains. Unfortunately, however, for his tinguished and very debatable district called originality, that canto is almost a cento —his the Borders. All at once he touched their model being Wordsworth. His merit, whattombs with a divining rod, and the turf streamed ever it may be, is limited therefore to that of out ghosts, some in woodmen's dresses-most imitation. And observe, the imitation is not in warrior's mail: green arches leaped forth merely occasional or verbal; but all the dewith yew-bows and quivers-and giants stalked scriptions'are conceived in the spirit of Wordsshaking spears. The gray chronicler smiled; worth, coloured by it and shaped-from it they and, taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light live, and breathe, and have their being; and the annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of that so entirely, that had the Excursion and auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for Lyrical Ballads never been, neither had any the first time, knew the character of its ances- composition at all resembling, either in contors; for those were not spectres-not they ception or execution, the third canto of Childe indeed-nor phantoms of the brain-but gaunt Harold. His soul, however, having been flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;-base- awakened by the inspiration of the Bard of born cottage churls of the olden time, because Nature, never afterwards fell asleep, nor got Scottish, became familiar to the love of the drowsy over her beauties or glories; and much nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high- fine description pervades most of his subseborn lineage of palace-kings The worst of quent works. He afterwards made much of Sir Walter is, that he has haried all Scotland. what he saw his own-and even described it Never was there such a freebooter. He hurries after his own fashion; but a greater in that all men's cattle-kills themselves off hand, and domain was his instructor and guide-nor in makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he his noblest efforts did he ever make any close disturbed and illuminated all the land as with approach to those inspired passages, which he the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie had manifestly set as models before his imagiwith their islands distinct by midnight as by nation. With all the fair and great objects in mid-day; wide woods glow gloriously in the the world of art, again, Byron dealt like a poet gloom; and by the stormy splendour you even of original genius. They themselves, and not see ships, with all sails set, far at sea. His descriptions of them, kindled it up; and thus favourite themes in prose or numerous verse, "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," are still "Knights and Lords and mighty Earls," do almost entirely compose the fourth cantc 78 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. which is worth, ten times over, all the rest. sent to say, that so far from having no souls The impetuosity of his career is astonishing; -a whim of Mahomet's, who thought but of never for a moment does his wing flag; ever their bodies-women are the sole spiritual and anon he stoops but to soar again with a beings that walk the earth not unseen; they mnore majestic sweep; and you see how he glo- alone, without pursuing a complicated and ries in his flight-that he is proud as Lucifer. scientific system of deception and hypocrisy, The first two cantos are frequently cold, cum- are privileged from on high to write poetry brous, stiff, heavy, and dull; and, with the ex- We-men we mean-may affect a virtue ception of perhaps a dozen stanzas, and these though we have it not, and appear to be in. far from being of first-rate excellence, they are spired by the divine afflatus. Nay, we somefound wofully wanting in the true fire. Many times-often-are truly so inspired, and write passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, like Gods. A few of us are subject to fits, and after all, was right in thinking-at first-but in them utter oracles. But the truth is too poorly of these cantos; and so was the friend, glaring to be denied, that all male rational not Mr. Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon creatures are in the long run vile, corrupt, and them in manuscript. True, they " made a pro- polluted; and that the best man that ever died digious sensation," butbitter-bad stuff has often in his bed within the arms of his distracted done that; while often unheeded or unheard wife, is wickeder far than the worst woman has been an angel's voice. Had they been suf- that was ever iniquitously hanged for murderfered to stand alone, long ere now had they ing what was called her poor husband, who in been pretty well forgotten; and had they been all cases righteously deserved his fate. Purity followed by other two cantos no better than of mind is incompatible with manhood; and a themselves, then had the whole four in good monk is a monster-so is every Fellow of a time been most certainly damned. But, fortu- College, and every Roman Catholic Priest, nately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself from Father O'Leary to Dr. Doyle. Confespledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a sions, indeed! Wh3y had Joseph himself consuperior style; borrowing, stealing, and rob- fessed all he ever felt and thought to Potiphar's bing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that wife, she would have frowned him from her must have amazed the plundered; but inter- presence in all the chaste dignity of virtuous mingling with the spoil riches fairly won by indignation, and so far from tearing off his his own genius from the exhaustless treasury garment, would not have touched it for the of nature, who loved her wayward, her wicked, whole world. But all women-till men by and her wondrous son. Is Childe Harold, then, marriage, or by something, if that be possible, a Great Poem? What! with one half of it worse even than marriage, try in vain to relittle above mediocrity, one quarter of it not duce them nearly to their own level-are pure original in conceptions and in execution swarm- as dewdrops or moonbeams, and know not the ing with faults, and the remainder glorious! meaning of evil. Their genius conjectures it; As for his tales —the Giaour, Corsair, Lara, and in that there is no sin. But their genius Bride of Abydos, Siege of Corinth, and so forth- loves best to image forth good, for'tis the they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate blessing of their life, its power, and its glory; performances-sometimes nobly and some- and hence, when they write poetry, it is re times meanly versified-but displaying neither ligious, sweet, soft, solemn, and divine. originality nor fertility of invention, and assu- Observe, however-to prevent all mistakes redly no wide range either of feeling or of — that we speak but of British women-and thought, though over that range a supreme of British women of the present age. Of the dominion. Some of his dramas are magnifi- German Fair Sex we know little or nothing; cent-and in many of his smaller poems, but daresay that the Baroness la Motte Fouqu6 pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhi- is a worthy woman, and as vapid as the Baron. bits almost every kind of talent; and in it the Neither make we any allusion to Madame Gendegradation of poetry is perfect. lis, or other illustrious Lemans of the French But there is another glory belonging to this school, who charitably adopted their own na. age, and almost to this age alone of our poetry tural daughters, while other less pious ladies, -the glory of Female Genius. We have heard who had become mothers without being wives, and seen it seriously argued whether or not sent theirs to Foundling Hospitals. We restrict women are equal to men; as if there could be ourselves to the Maids and Matrons of this a moment's doubt in any mind unbesotted by Island-and of this Age; and as it is of poetisex, that they are infinitely superior; not in cal genius that we speak-we name the names understanding, thank Heaven, nor in intellect, of Joanna Baillie, Mary Tighe, Felicia Heout in all other "impulses of soul and sense" mans, Caroline Bowles, Mary Howitt, Letitia that dignify and adorn human beings, and Elizabeth Landon, and the Lovely Norton; make them worthy of living on this delightful while we pronounce several other sweet-soundrarth. Men for the most part are such worth- ing Christian surnames in whispering underess wretches, that we wonder how women tones of affection, almost as inaudible as the'condescended to allow the world to be carried sound of the growing of grass on a dewy on; and we attribute that phenomenon solely evening. to the hallowed yearnings of maternal affec- Corinna and Sappho must have been women tion, which breathes as strongly in maid as in of transcendant genius so to move Greece. matron, and may be beautifully seen in the For though the Greek character was most ima child fondling its doll in its blissful bosom. pressible and combustible, it was so only to Philoprogenitiveness! But not to pursue that the finest finger and fire. In that delightful nteresting speculation, suffice it for the pre- land dunces were all dumb. Where genius AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY 79 alone spoke and sung poetry, how hard to ex- imagination as his own. For, in the act of eel! Corinna and Sappho did excel-the one, imagination, he can suppress in his mind its it is said, conquering Pindar-and the other own peculiar feelings-its good and gracious all the world but Phaon. affections-call up from their hidden places But our own Joanna has been visited with those elements of our being, of which the seeds a still loftier inspiration. She has created were sown in him as in all-give them unnatragedies which Sophocles-or Euripides- tural magnitude and power-conceive the disnay, even 2Eschylus himself, might have fear- order of passions, the perpetration of crimes, ed, in competition for the crown. She is our the tortures of remorse, or the scorn of that Tragic Queen; but she belongs to all places human weakness, from which his own gentle as to all times; and Sir Walter truly said-let bosom and blameless life are pure and free. them who dare deny it-that he saw her Ge- He can bring himself, in short, into an imaginius in a sister shape sailing by the side of nary and momentary sympathy with the wickthe Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna loves to pace ed, just as his mind falls of itself into a natural the pastoral mead; and then we are made to and true sympathy with those whose character think of the tender dawn, the clear noon, and is accordant with his own; and watching the the bright meridian of her life, past among the emotions and workings of his mind in the tall cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lone- spontaneous and in the forced sympathy, he some heart of the dark Strathaven Muirs. knows and understands from himself what Plays on the Passions! "How absurd!" passes in the minds of others. What is done said one philosophical writer. "This will ne- in the highest degree by the highest genius, is ver do. It has done-perfectly. What, pray, done by all of ourselves in lesser degree, and is the aim of all tragedy? The Stagyrite has unconsciously, at every moment, in our intertold us-to purify the passions by pity and course with one another. To this kind of symterror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul- pathy, so essential to our knowledge of the till its atmosphere is like that of a calm, bright human mind, and without which there can be summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on neither poetry nor philosophy, are necessary a the Passions. And all that Joanna intended- largeness of heart which willingly yields itself and it was a great intention greatly effected- to conceive the feelings and states of others was in her Series of Dramas to steady her pur- whose character is utterly unlike its own, and poses by ever keeping one great end in view, freedom from any inordinate overpowering of which the perpetual perception ctuld not passion which quenches in the mind the feelfail to make all the means harmonious, and ings of nature it has already known, and places therefore majestic. One passion was, there- it in habitual enmity to the affections and hapfore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each piness of its kind. To paint bad passions, is glorious tragedy-sovereign sometimes by di- not to praise them: they alone can paint them vine right-sometimes an usurper —generally well who hate, fear, or pity them; and therea tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid fore Baillie has done so-nay start not-better reign of Hate. But in his sister-the seraphic than Byron. sway of Love. Darkness and light sometimes Well may our land be proud of such women. opposed in sublime contrast-and sometimes None such ever before adorned her poetical the light swallowing up the darkness-or annals. Glance over that most interesting "smoothing its raven down till it smiles." volume, "Specimens of British Poetesses," by Finally, all is black as night and the grave- that amiable, ingenious, and erudite man, the for the light, unextinguished, glides away into Reverend Alexander Dyce, and what effulgence some far-off world of peace. Count Basil! begins to break towards the close of the A woman only could have imagined that divine eighteenth century! For ages on ages the drama. How different the love Basil feels for genius of English women had ever and anon Victoria from Anthony's for Cleopatra! Pure, been shining forth in song; but faint though deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on fair was the lustre, and struggling imprisonea it we see him borne away to shame, destruc- in clouds. Some of the sweet singers of those tion, and death. It is indeed his ruling pas- days bribg tears to our eyes by their simple sion. But up to the day he first saw her face pathos-for their poetry breathes of their own his ruling passion had been the love of glory. sorrows, and shows that they were but too faAnd the hour he died by his own hand was miliar with grief. But their strains are mere troubled into madness by many passions; for melodies "sweetly played in tune." The are they not all mysteriously linked together, deeper harmonies of poetry seem to have been sometimes a dreadful brotherhood? beyond their reach. The range of their power Do you wonder how one mind can have such was limited. Anne, Countess of Winchelsea vivid consciousness of the feelings of another, -Catherine Phillips, known by the name of while their characters are cast in such different Orinda-and Mrs. Anne Killigrew, who, as moulds It is, indeed, wonderful-but the Dryden says, was made an angel, "in the last power is that of sympathy and genius. The promotion to the skies,"-showed, as they sang dramatic poet, whose heart breathes love to all on earth, that they were all worthy to sing in living things, and whose overflowing tender- heaven. But what were their hymns to those ness diffuses itself over the beauty even of that are now warbled around us from many unliving nature, may yet paint with his cre- sister spirits, pure in their lives as they, but ative hand the steeled heart of him who sits on brighter far in their genius, and more fortunate a throne of blood-the lust of crime in a mind in its nurture. Poetry from female lips was polluted with wickedness-the remorse of acts then half a wonder and half a reproach. But which could never pass'n thought through his now'tis no longer rare-not even the highest 80 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. yes, the highest-for Innocence and Purity are lar, and read by the same classes with a stil, of the highest hierarchies; and the thoughts greater eagerness of delight. Into this mystery and feelings they inspire, though breathed in we shall not now inquire; but we mention it words and tones, "gentle and low, an excellent now merely to show how divine a thing true thing in woman," are yet lofty as the stars, and genius is, which, burning within the bosoms humble too as the flowers beneath our feet. of a few favourite sons of nature, guards them We have not forgotten an order of poets, pe- from all such pollution, lifts them up above it culiar, we believe, to our own enlightened land all, purifies their whole being, and without -a high order of poets sprung from the lower consuming their family affections or friendorders of the people —and not only sprung ships, or making them unhappy with their lot, from them, but bred as well as born in "the and disgusted with all about them, reveals to huts where poor men lie," and glorifying their them all that is fair and bright and beautiful in condition by the light of song. Such glory be- feeling and in imagination, makes them very longs-we believe —exclusively to this country poets indeed, and should fortune favour, and and to this age. Mr. Southey, who in his own chance and accident, gains for them wide over high genius and fame is never insensible to the the world, the glory of a poet's name. virtues of his fellow-men, however humble From all such evil influences incident to and obscure the sphere in which they may their condition-and we are now speaking but move, has sent forth a volume-and a most of the evil-The Five emerged; and first and interesting one-on the uneducated poets; nor foremost-Burns. Our dearly beloved Thomas shall we presume to gainsay one of his bene- Carlyle is reported to have said at a dinner volent words. But this we do say, that all the given to Allan Cunningham in Dumfries, that verse-writers of whom he there treats, and all Burns was not only one of the greatest of.he verse-writers of the same sort of whom he poets, but likewise of philosophers. We hope does not treat, that ever existed on the face of not. What he did may be told in one short Lhe earth, shrink up into a lean and shrivelled sentence. His genius purified and ennobled Dundle of leaves or sticks, compared with these in his imagination and in his heart the chai'ive —Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Bloomfield, racter and condition of the Scottish peasantry and Clare. It must be a strong soil-the soil -and reflected them, ideally true to nature, in of this Britain-which sends up such products 1 the living waters of Song. That is what he and we must not complain of the clime beneath did; but to do that, did not require the highest which they grow to such height, and bear such powers ~f the poet and the philosopher. Nay, fruitage. The spirit of domestic life must be had he marvellously possessed them, he never sound-the natural knowledge of good and evil would have written a single line of the poetry high-the religion true-the laws just —and of the late Robert Burns. Thank Heaven for the government, on the whole, good, methinks, not having made him such a man-but merely that have all conspired to educate these chil- the Ayrshire Ploughman. He was called into dren of genius, whose souls Nature had framed existence for a certain work, for the fulness of of the finer clay. time was come-but he was neither a ShakSuch men seem to us more clearly and cer- speare, nor a Scott, nor a Goethe; and therefore.ainly men of genius, than many who, under he rejoiced in writing the Saturday Night, and different circumstances, may have effected the Twa Dogs, and the Holy Fair, and 0' a' higher achievements. For though they en- the Airts the Win' can blaw, and eke the joyed in their condition ineffable blessings to Vision. But forbid it, all ye Gracious Powers! dilate their spirits, and touch them with all that we should quarrel with Thomas Carlyletenderest thoughts, it is not easy to imagine, on and that, too, for calling Robert Burns one of the other hand, the deadening or degrading the greatest poets and philosophers. influences to which by that condition they Like a strong man rejoicing to run a race, were inevitably exposed, and which keep down we behold Burns in his golden prime; and the heaven-aspiring flame of genius, or ex- glory gleams from the Peasant's head, far and tinguish it wholly, or hold it smouldering under wide over Scotland. See the shadow tottering all sorts of rubbish. Only look at the'attempts to the tomb! frenzied with fears of a prisonin verse of the common run of clodhoppers. for some five pound debt-existing, perhaps, Buy a few ballads from the wall or stall-and but in his diseased imagination-for, alas! you groan to think that you have been born- sorely diseased it was, and he too, at last, such is the mess of mire and filth which often, seemed somewhat insane. He escapes that without the slightest intention of offence, those disgrace in the grave. Buried with his bones rural, city, or suburban bards of the lower be allremembrances of his miseries! Butthe orders prepare for boys, virgins, and matrons, spirit of song, which was his true spirit, unwho all devour it greedily, without suspicion. polluted and unfallen, lives, and breathes, and Strange it is that even in that mural minstrelsy, has its being, in the peasant-life of Scotland; occasionally occurs a phrase or line, and even his songs, which are as household and sheepstanza, sweet and simple, and to nature true; fold words, consecrated by the charm that is but consider it in the light of poetry read, re- in all the heart's purest affections, love and cited, and sung by the people, and you might pity, and the joy of grief, shall never decay, till well be appalled by the revelation therein among the people have decayed the virtues nade of the tastes, feelings, and thoughts of which they celebrate, and by which they were the lower orders. And yet in the midst of all inspired; and should some dismal change in the popularity of such productions, the best of the skies ever overshadow the sunshine of our Burns' poems, his Cottar's Saturday Night, and national character, antd savage storms end in most delicate of his songs, are still more popu- sullen stillness, which is moral death, in the AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. 81 poetry of Burns the natives of happier lands rise up lovely in their own silent domains, will see how noble was once the degenerated before the dreaming fancy of the tender-hearted race that may then be looking down disconso- Shepherd. The still green beauty of the pas lately on the dim grass of Scotland with the toral hills and vales where he passed all his unuplifted eyes of cowards and slaves. days, inspired him with ever-brooding visions The trutl ought always to be spoken; and of Fairy Land, till, as he lay musing on the therefore we say that in fancy James Hogg- brae, the world of shadows seemed, in the clear in spite of his name and his teeth-was not depths, a softened reflection of real life, like inferior to Robert Burns-and why not 1 The the hills and heavens in the water of his native Forest is a better school-room for Fancy than lake. When he speaks of Fairy Land, his ever Burns stud ed in; it overflowed with language becomes aerial as the very voice of poetical traditions. But comparisons are the fairy people, serenest images rise up with always odious; and the great glory of James the music of the verse, and we almost believe is, that he is as unlike Robert as ever one poet in the being of those unlocalized realms of was unlike another. peace, and of which he sings like a native Among hills that once were a forest, and minstrel. still bear that name, and by the side of a river Yes, James-thou wert but a poor shepherd not unknown in song, lying in his plaid on a to the last-poor in this world's goods-though brae among the "woolly people," behold that Altrive Lake is a pretty little bit farmie-given true son of genius —" The Ettrick Shepherd." thee by the best of Dukes-with its few laigh We are never so happy as when praising sheep-braes-its somewhat stony hayfield or James; but pastoral poets are the most incom- two-its pasture where Crummie might unprehensible of God's creatures; and here is hungered graze - nyeuck for the potato's one of the best of them all, who confesses the bloomy or ploomy shaws-and path-divided Chaldee and denies the Noctes! from the porch —the garden, among whose The Queen's Wake is a garland of fair flowers "wee Jamie" played. But nature had forest flowers, bound with a band of rushes given thee, to console thy heart in all disapfrom the moor. It is not a poem —not it —nor pointments from the "false smiling of fortune was it intended to be so; you might as well beguiling," a boon which thou didst hug to thy call a bright bouquet of flowers a flower, which, heart with transport on the darkest day —the by the by, we do in Scotland. Some of the "gift o' genie," and the power of immortal ballads are very beautiful; one or two even song. splendid; most of them spirited; and the worst And has Scotland to the Ettrick Shepherd far better than the best that ever was written been just-been generous-as she was-or by any bard in danger of being a blockhead. was not-to the Ayrshire peasant?-has she, "Kilmeny" alone places our (ay, our) Shepherd in her conduct to him, shown her contritiorn among the Undying Ones. London soon loses for her sin-whatever that may have been-to all memory of lions, let them visit her in the Burns. It is hard to tell. Fashion tosses the shape of any animal they please. But the feathered head —and gentility turns away her Heart of the Forest never forgets. It knows painted cheek from the Mountain Bard; but no such word as absence. The Death of a when, at the shrine of true poetry, did ever Poet there, is but the beginning of a Life of such votaries devoutly worship. Cold, false, Fame. His songs no more perish than do and hollow, ever has been their admiration of flowers. There are no Annuals in the Forest. genius-and different, indeed, from their evanAll are perennial; or if they do indeed die, escent ejaculations, has ever been the enduring their fadings away are invisible in the constant voice of fame. Scorn be to the scorners! But succession-the sweet unbroken series of ever- Scott, and Wordsworth, and Southey and lasting bloom. So will it be in his native Byron, and the other great bards, have all haunts with the many songs of the Ettrick loved the Shepherd's lays-and Joanna the Shepherd. The lochs may be drained —corn palm-crowned, and Felicia the muse's darling, may grow where once the Yarrow flowed-nor and Caroline the Christian poetess, and all the is such change much more unlikely than in other fair female spirits of song. And in his. the olden time would have been thought the native land, all hearts that love her streams, extirpation of all the vast oak-woods, where and her hills, and her cottages, and her kirks, the deer trembled to fall into the den of the the bee-humming garden and the primrosewolf, and the wild boar barrowed beneath the circled fold, the white hawthorn and the green eagle's eyrie. All extinct now! But obsolete fairy-knowe, all delight in Kilmeny and Mary never shall be the Shepherd's plaintive or Lee, and in many another vision that visited pawky, his melan6holy or merry, lays. The the Shepherd in the Forest. ghost of "Mary Lee" will be seen in the moon- And what can surpass many of the Shep light coming down the hills; the "Witch of herd's songs 1 The most undefinable of all Fife" on the clouds will still bestride her undefinable kinds of poetical inspiration are besom; and the " Gude Grey Cat" will mew surely —Songs. They seem to start up indeed in imagination, were even the last mouse on from the dew-sprinkled soil of'a poet's soul,. his last legs, and the feline species swept off like flowers; the first stanza being root, the by war, pestilence, and famine, and heard to second leaf, the third bud, and all the rest pur no more! blossom, till the song is like a stalk laden with, It is here where Burns was weakest, that the its own beauty, and laying itself down in. Shepherd is strongest —the world of shadows. languid del':ht on the soft bed of moss-song The airy beings that to the impassioned soul and flow.r alike having the same "dying of Burp.s seemed cold, bloodless, unattractive, fall!" 6 82 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. A fragment! And the more piteous because saw or heard a jewel or a tune of a thought ol a fragment. Go in search of the pathetic, and a feeling, but he immediately made it his cwn you will find it tear-steeped, sigh-breathed, -that is, stole it. He was too honest a man moan-muttered, and groaned in fragments. to refrain from such thefts. The thoughts and The poet seems often struck dumb by wo- feelings-to whom by divine right did they be. his heart feels that suffering is at its acme- long? To Nature. But Burns beheld them and that he should break off and away from a " waif and stray," and in peril of being lost for sight too sad to be longer looked on-haply ever. He seized then on those " snatches of too humiliating to be disclosed. So, too, it old songs," wavering away into the same ob. sometimes is with the beautiful. The soul in livion that lies on the graves of the nameless its delight seeks to escape from the emotion bards who first gave them being; and now, that oppresses it-is speechless-and the song spiritually interfused with his own lays, they falls mute. Such is frequently the character are secured against decay-and like them im. -and the origin of that character-of our auld mortal. So hath the Shepherd stolen many Scottish Sangs. In their mournfulness are of the Flowers of the Forest-whose beauty they not almost like the wail of some bird dis- had breathed there ever since Flodden's fatal tracted on the bush from which its nest has overthrow; but they had been long fading and been harried, and then suddenly flying away pining away in the solitary places, wherein so for ever into the woods? In their joyfulness, many of their kindred had utterly disappeared, are they not almost like the hymn of some and beneath the restoring light of his genius bird, that love-stricken' suddenly darts from the their bloom and their balm were for ever retree-top down to the caresses that flutter through newed. But the thief of all thieves is the Niths. the spring! And such, too, are often the airs dale and Galloway thief-called by Sir Walter to which those dear auld sangs are sung. most characteristically, "HonestAllan!" Thief From excess of feeling —fragmentary; or of and forger as he is-we often wonder why he one divine part to which genius may be defied is permitted to live. Many is the sweet stanza to conceive another, because but one hour in he has stolen from Time —that silly old all time could have given it birth. carle who kens not even his own-many the You may call this pure nonsense-but'tis so lifelike line-and many the strange single word pure that you need not fear to swallow it. All that seems to possess the power of all the parts great song-writers, nevertheless, have been ofspeech. And, having stolen them,to what use great thieves. Those who had the blessed fate did he turn the treasures? Why, unable to to flourish first —to be born when "this'auld give back every man his own —for'they were cloak was new,"-the cloak we mean which all dead, buried, and forgotten-by a potent nature wears-scrupled not to creep upon her prayer he evoked from his Pool-Palace, over. as she lay asleep beneath the shadow of some shadowed by the Dalswinton woods, the Genius single tree among of the Nith, to preserve the gathered flowers "The grace of forest-woods decay'd, of song for ever unwithered, for that they all And pastoral melancholy," had grown ages ago beneath and around the and to steal the very pearls out of her hair — green shadows of Criffel, and longed now to be andout of the silken snood which enamoured Pan embalmed in the purity of the purest river that'out of the silken snood which enamoured Pan Scotland sees flowing in unsullied silver to the.'himself had not untied in the Golden Age. Or sea. But the Genius of the Nith-frowning and if she ventured, as sometimes she did, to walksmilin.along the highways of the earth, they robbed in ang s her, love, and pride- refused the votive her in the face of day of her dew-wrought reti- offering, and told him to be gone; for that hecule-without hurting, however, the hand from the Genius —was not a Cromek —and could which they brushed thait net of gossamer. the Genius-was not a Cromek-and could hic they bruscame thed that netr geof gossamer. e distinguish with half an eye what belonged to Then came the Silver Age of Song, the age, antiquity, from'what had undergone, in Allan's in which we now live —and the song-singers hands, change into " something rich and rare;" were thieves still-stealing and robbing from and above all, from what had been blown to ythem whow had stolen. and robbed of old; life that very year by the breath of Allan's own yet, how account. you.for this phenmenon — genius,' love-inspired by "his ain lassie," the all parties remain richer than ever-and Na- " lass that he loe'd best," springing from seeds ture, especially, after all this' thieving and itlass that he loe'd best," spriingshed by the dews of robbery, and piracy and plunder, many mil- the same gracious skies, that filled with motion lion times richer than the -day on which she the same gracious skies, that filled with motion recelion times richer than the day on which she and music the transparency of the river god's received her dowry, never-failing urn.' "The bridal-of the earth and sky;" We love Allan's " Maid of Elvar." It beats and with "golden store" sufficient in its scat- with a fine, free, bold, and healthful spirit. terings to enable all the sons of genius she Along with the growth of the mutual love of will ever bear, to "set up for themselves" in Eustace and Sybil, he paints peasant-life with poetry, accumulating capital upon capital, till a pen that reminds us of the'pencil of Wilkie, each is a Crosus, rejoicing to lend it out with- He is as familiar with it all as Burns; and out any other interest than cent per cent, paidin Burns would have perused with tears many sighs, smiles, and tears, and without any other of these pictures, even the most cheerful-for.ecurity than the promise of a quiet eye, the flood-gates of Robin's heart often suddenly flung themselves open to a touch, while a rush. "That broods and sleeps an its own heart i" ing gush-wondering gazers knew not whying gush-vwondering gazers knew not whyAmongst the most famous'thie es in our time bedimmed the lustre of his large black eyes. bave been Rob, James, and Allan. Burns never Allan gives us descriptions of Washings and AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. 83 Wa;chings o' claes, as Homer has done before eyes as the golden grain, ebbing like tide of him in the Odyssey, and that other Allan in sea before a close long line of glancing sickles the Gentle Shepherd —of Kirks, and Christen- -no sound so sweet as, rising up into the ings, and Hallowe'ens, and other Festivals. pure harvest-air, frost-touched though sunny Nor has he feared to string his lyre-why -beneath the shade of hedge-row-tree, after should he? —to such themes as the Cottar's their mid-day meal, the song of the jolly reapSaturday Night-and the simple ritual of our ers. But are not his pictures sometimes too faith, sung and said crowded? No. For there lies the power of "In some small kirk upon the sunny brae, the pen over the pencil. The pencil can do That stands all by itself on some sweet Sabbath-day." much, the pen every thing; the Painter is im. prisoned within a few feet of canvas, the Ay, many are the merits of this " Rustic Poet commands the horizon with an eye that Tale." To appreciate them properly, we must circumnavigates the globe; even that glorious carry along with us, during the perusal of the pageant, a painted Panorama, is circumscribed poem, a right understanding and feeling of that by bounds, over which imagination, feeling pleasant epithet-Rustic. Rusticity and Ur- them all too narrow, is uneasy till she soars; banity are polar opposites-and there lie be- but the Poet's Panorama is commensurate tween many million modes of Manners, which with the soul's desires, and nay include the you know are Minor Morals. But not to puz- Universe. zle a subject in itself sufficiently simple, the This Poem reads as if it had been written same person may be at once rustic and urbane, during the " dewy hour of prime." Allan must and that too, either in his character of man or be an early riser. But, if not so now, some of poet, or in his twofold capacity of both; for forty years ago he was up every morning with observe that though you may be a man without the lark, being a poet, we defy you to be a poet without being a man. A Rustic is a clodhopper; an Ur- "Walking to labour by that cheerful song," bane is a paviour. But it is obvious thatthe pa- away up the Nith, through the Dalswinton viour in a field hops the clod; that the clodhopper woods; or, for any thing we know to the in a street paces the pavee. At the same time, contrary, intersecting with stone-walls, that it is equally obvious that the paviour, in hop- wanted not their scientific coping, the green ping the clod, performs the feat with a sort of pastures of Sanquhar. Now he is familiar city smoke, which breathes of bricks; that the with Chantry's form-full statues; then, with clodhopper, in pacing the pavee, overcomes the the shapeless cairn on the moor, the rude difficulty with a kind of country air, that is headstone on the martyr's grave. And thus redolent of broom. Probably, too, Urbanus it is that the present has given him power through a deep fallow is seen ploughing his over the past-that a certain grace and deliway in pumps; Rusticus along the shallow cacy, inspired by the pursuits of his prime, stones is heard clattering on clogs. But to blend with the creative dreams that are peocease pursuing the subject through all its vari- pled with the lights and shadows of his youth ations, suffice it for the present (for we per- -that the spirit of the old ballad breathes still ceive that we must resume the discussion in its strong simplicity through the composianothdr time) to say, that Allan Cunningham tion of his "New Poem"-and that art is seen is a living example and lively proof of the truth harmoniously blending there with nature. of our Philosophy-it being universally al- We have said already that we delight in the lowed in the best circles of town and country, story; for it belongs to an "order of fables that he is an URBANE RUSTIc. gray," which has been ever dear to Poets. Now, that is the man for our love and mo- Poets have ever loved to bring into the pleaney, when the work to be done is a Poem on sant places and paths of lowly life, persons Scottish Life. (we eschew all manner of personages and heroes We can say of Allan what Allan says of and heroines, especially with the epithet "our" Eustace: prefixed) whose native lot lay in a higher "far from the pasture moor sphere: For they felt that by such contrast, He comes; the fragrance of the dale and wood natural though rare, a beautiful light was muIs scenting all his garments, green and good." Is scenting all his garments, green and good." tually reflected from each condition, and that The rural imagery is fresh and fair; not sacred revelations were thereby made of hucopied Cockney-wise, from pictures in oil man character, of which all that is pure and or water-colours-from mezzotintoes or line- profound appertains equally to all estates of engravings-but from the free open face of this our mortal being, provided only that hap. day, or the dim retiring face of eve, or the piness knows from whom it comes, and that face, "black but comely," of night-by sun- misery and misfortune are alleviated by relilight or moonlight, ever Nature. Sometimes gion. Thus Electra appears before us at her he gives us-Studies. Small, sweet, sunny father's Tomb, the virgi; wife of the peasant spots. of still or dancing day-stream-gleam- Auturgus, who reverently abstains from the grove-glow-sky-glympse-or cottage-roof, in intact body of the daughter of the king. Look the deep dell sending up its smoke to the high into Shakspeare. Rosalind was not so loveneavens. But usually Allan paints with a able at court as in the woods. Her beauty sweeping pencil. He lays down his land- might have been more brilliant, and her conscapes, stretching wide and far, and fills them versation too, among lords and ladies; but with woods and rivers, hills and mountains, more touching both, because lrue to tenderer flocks of sheep and herds of cattle; and of all nature, when we see and hear her in dialogue sights in life ard nature, none so dear to his with the neat-herdess-RosALYND and Audrey! 84 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. And trickles not the tear down thy cheek, fair that ground-as if nature were not at liberty reader-burns not the heart within thee, when to find her own level. Flat indeed! So is the thou thinkest of Florizel and Perdita on the sea. Wait till you have walked a few miles Farm in the Forest? in among the Fens-and you will be waftea Nor from thosevisions needwe fear to turn along like a little sail-boat, up and down to Sybil Lesley. We see her in Elvar Tower, undulations green and gladsome as waves. a high-born Lady-in Dalgonar Glen, an hum- Think ye there is no scenery there? Why, ble bondmaid. The change might have been you are in the heart of a vast metropolis!-yet the reverse-as with the lassie beloved by have not the sense to see the silent city of the Gentle Shepherd. Both are best. The mole-hills sleeping in the sun. Call that pond bust that gloriously set off the burnishing of a lake-and by a word how is it transfiguredl the rounded silk, not less divinely shrouded Now you discern flowers unfolding on its low its enchantment beneath the swelling russet. banks and braes-and the rustle of the rushes Graceful in bower or hall were those arms, is like that of a tiny forest-how appropriate and delicate those fingers,when moving-white to the wild! Gaze-and to your gaze what along the rich embroidery, or across the strings colouring grows! Not in green only-or il of the sculptured harp; nor less so when be- russet brown doth nature choose to be ap fore the cottage door they woke the homely parelled in this her solitude-nor ever again music of the humming wheel, or when on the will you call her dreary here-for see how brae beside the Pool, they playfully intertwined every one, of those fifty flying showers lightens their softness with the new-washed fleeces, or up its own line of beauty along the plain-inwhen among the laughing lasses at the Linn, stantaneous as dreams-or stationary as waknot loath were they to lay out the coarse linen ing thought-till, ere you are aware that all in the bleaching sunshine, conspicuous She was changing, the variety has all melted away the while among the rustic beauties, as was into one harmonious glow, attempered by that Nausicaa of old among her nymphs at the rainbow. Fountain. Let these few words suffice to show that we We are in love with Sybil Lesley. She is understand ahd feel the flattest-dullest-tamfull of spunk. That is not a vulgar word; or est places, as they are most ignorantly called if it have been so heretofore, henceforth let it -that have yet been discovered in England. cease to be so, and be held synonymous with Not in such did John Clare abide-but many spirit. She shows it in her defiance of Sir such he hath traversed; and his studies have Ralph on the shore of Solway-in her flight been from childhood upwards among scenes from the Tower of Elvar; and the character which to ordinary eyes might seem to afford she displays then and there, prepares us for small scope and few materials for contemplathe part she plays in the peasant's cot in the tion. But his are not ordinary eyes-but glen of Dalgonar. We are not surprised to gifted; and in every nook and corner of his see her take so kindly to the duties of a rustic own county the Northamptonshire Peasant service; for we call to mind how she sat has, during some two score years and more, amongthe humble good-folks in thehall,when every spring found without seeking either Thrift and Waste figured in that rude but some lovelier aspect of "the old familiar wise Morality, and how the gracious lady faces," or some newfaces smiling upon him, showed she sympathized with the cares and as if mutual recognition kindled joy and amity contentments of lowly life. in their hearts. England has singled out John Clare from John Clare often reminds us of James Gra among her humble sons, (Ebenezer Elliot be- hame. They are two of our most artless poets. longs altogether to another order)-as the Their versification is mostly very sweet, though most conspicuous for poetical genius, next to rather flowing forth according to a certain Robert Bloomfield. That is a proud distinc- fine natural sense of melody, than constructed tion-whatever critics may choose to say; and on any principles of music. So, too, with their we cordially sympathize with the beautiful ex- imagery, which seems seldom selected with pression of his gratitude to the Rural Muse, much care; so that, while it is always true to when he says- nature, and often possesses a charm from its "Like as the little lark from off its nest, appearing to rise up of itself, and with little or Beside the mossy hill, awakes in glee, no effort on the poet's part to form a picture, it To seek the morning's throne, a merry guest- is not unfrequently chargeable with repetition So do I seek thy shrine, if that may be, STo w I sbek thy shinew attempts anf thter smile from thee." -sometimes, perhaps, with a sameness which. but for the inherent interest in the objects Now, England is out of all sight the most themselves, might be felt a little wearisomebeautiful country in the whole world-Scotland there is so much still life. They are both most alone excepted -and, thank heaven, they two affectionately disposed towards all manner of are one kingdom-divided by no line either birds. Grahame's "Birds of Scotland" is a real or imaginary-united by the Tweed. We delightful poem; yet its best passages are forget at this moment-if ever we knew it- not superior to some of Clare's about the the precise number of her counties; but we same charming creatures-and they are both remember that one and all of them-" alike, ornithologists after Audubon's and our own but oh! how different"-are fit birth-places heart. Were all that has been well written and abodes for poets. Some of them we know in English verse about birds to be gathered well, are flat-and we in Scotland, with hills together, what a sweet set of volumes it would or mountains for evr before our eyes, are make! And how many, think ye-three, six, sometimes disposed to find fault with them on twelve That would be indeed an aviary AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. 85 the only one we can think of with pleasure- It is not to be thought, however, that the out of the hedge-rows and the woods. Tories Northamptonshire Peasant does not often treat as we are, we never see a wild bird on the earnestly of the common pleasures and pains, wing without inhaling in silence " the Cause the cares and occupations of that condition of of Liberty all over the world!" We feel then life in which he was born, and has passed all that it is indeed "like the air we breathe- his days. He knows them well, and has illuswithout it we die." So do they. We have trated them well, though seldomer in his later been reading lately, for a leisure hour or two than in his earlier poems; and we cannot help of an evening-a volume by a worthy German, thinking that he might greatly extend his popuDoctor Bechstein-on Cage Birds. The slave- larity, which in England is considerable, by dealer never for a moment suspects the wicked- devoting his Rural Muse to subjects lying ness of kidnapping young and old-crimping within his ken, and of everlasting interest. them for life-teaching them to draw water- Bloomfield's reputation rests on his "Farmer's and, oh nefas! to sing! He seems to think Boy"-on some exquisite passages on "News that only in confinement do they fulfil the ends from the Farm"-and on some of the tales and of their existence-even the skylark. Yet he pictures in his "' May-day with the Muses." His sees them, one and all, subject to the most smaller poems are very inferior to those of miserable diseases-and rotting away within Clare-But the Northamptonshire Peasant has the wires. Why could not the Doctor have written nothing in which all honest English taken a stroll into the country once or twice a- hearts must delight, at all comparable with week, and in one morning or evening hour those truly rural compositions of the Suffolk laid in sufficient music to serve him during shoemaker. Itis in his powerto do so-would the intervening time, without causing a single he but earnestly set himself to the work. He bosom to be ruffled for his sake. Shoot them must be more familiar with all the ongoings -spit them-pie them-pickle them —eat them of rural life than his compeer could have -but imprison them not; we speak as Con- been; nor need he fear to tread again the same servatives-murder rather than immure them ground, for it is as new as if it had never been -for more forgivable far it is to cut short touched, and will continue to be so till the end their songs at the height of glee, than to pro- of time. The soil in which the native virtues tract them in a rueful simulation of music, in of the English character grow, is unexhausted which you hear the same sweet notes, but if and inexhaustible; let him break it up on any your heart thinks at all, " a voice of weeping spot he chooses, and poetry will spring to light and of loud lament" all unlike, alas! to the like clover from lime. Nor need he fear being congratulation that from the free choirs is an imitator. His mind is an original one, his ringing so exultingly in their native woods. most indifferent verses prove it; for though How prettily Clare writes of the "insect he must have read much poetry since his earyouth." lier day —doubtless all our best modern poetry "These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard, -he retains his own style, which though it be And happy units of a numerous herd not marked by any very strong characteristics, Of playfellows the laughing Summer brings, s yet sufficiently peculiar to show that it beMocking the sunshine on their glittering wings, yet sufficiently peculiar to show that it be How merrily they creep, and run, and fly! longs to himself, and is a natural gift. PastoNo kin they hear to labour's drudgery,~ rals-eclogues-and idyls-in a hundred forms Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose; -remain to be written by such poets as he And where they fly for dinner no one knows- remain to be written by such poets as he The dewdrops feed them not-they love the shine and his brethren; and there can be no doubt Of noon, whose sons may bring them golden wine. at all, that if he will scheme something of the All day they're playing in their Sunday dressWhen night repose, for they can do no less; kind, and begin upon it, without waiting to Then to the heath-bell's purple hood they fly, know fully or clearly what he may be intendAnd like to princes in their slumbers lie,, that before three winters, with their Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all, ng, that before three winters, with their long Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all, -n silken beds and roomy painted hall. nights, are gone, he will find himself in posSo merrily they spend their summer-day, session of more than mere materials for a Now in the corn-fields, now in the new-mown hay. volume of poems that will meet with general One almost fancies that such happy things, With colour'd hoods and richly-burnish'd wings, acceptation, and give him a permanent place Are fairy folk, in splendid masquerade by the side of him he loves so well-Robert Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid. Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still, 3loomfield. Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill." Ebenezer Elliot (of whom more another day) Time has been —nor yet very long ago- claims with pride to be the Poet of the Poorwhen such unpretending poetry as this-hum- and the poor might well be proud, did they ble indeed in every sense, but nevertheless the know it, that they have such a poet. Not a product of genius which speaks foritself audi- few of them know it now-and many will bly and clearly in lowliest strains —would not know it in future; for a muse of fire like his have passed by unheeded or unbeloved; now- will yet send its illumination "into dark deep a-days it may to many who hold their heads holds." May it consume all the noxious va. high, seem of no more worth than an old song. pours that infest such regions —and purify the But as Wordsworth says, atmosphere-till the air breathed there be the "Pleasures newly found are sweet, breath of life. But the poor have other poets Though they lie about our feet;" besides him-Crabbe and Burns. We agail and if stately people would but stoop and look mention their names-and no more. Kindly about their paths, which do not always run spirits were they both; but Burns had experi along the heights, they would often make dis- enced all his poetry-and therefore his poetry coveries of what concerned them more than is an embodiment of national character. We speculations among the stars. say it not in disparagement or reproof of Ebo 86 RRECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NO-1TH. nezer-conspicuous over all-for let all men than the same order in any other country; but speak as they think or feel-but how gentle in in no other country are such interests given to all his noblest inspirations was Robin! He that order in trust-and as they attend to that, did not shun sins or sorrows; but he told the trust is the glory or the shame —the blessingt truth of the poor man's life, when he showed or the curse-of their high estate. that it was, on the whole, virtuous and happy But let us retrace our footsteps in moraliz -bear witness those immortal strains, "'The ing mood, not unmixed with sadness-to the Twa Dogs," "The Vision," "The Cottar's Mausoleum of Burns. Scotland is abused by Saturday night," the sangs voiced all braid England for having starved Burns to death, or Scotland thorough by her boys and virgins, say for having suffered him to drink himself to rather her lads and lassies-while the lark death, out of a cup filled to the brim with bitsings aloft and the linnet below, the mavis in ter disappointment and black despair. Eng the golden broom accompanying the music in land lies. There is our gage-glove, let her the golden cloud. We desire-not in wilful take it up, and then for mortal combat with delusion-but in earnest hope-in devout trust sword and spear —only not on horseback-for, -that poetry shall show that the paths of the for reasons on which it would be idle to be peasant poor are paths of pleasantness and more explicit, we always fight now on foot, peace. If they should seem in that light even and have sent our high horse to graze all the pleasanter and more peaceful than they ever rest of his life on the mountains of the moon. now can be below the sun, think not that any; Well then, Scotland met Burns, on his first evil can arise " to mortal man who liveth here sun-burst, with one exulting acclaim., Scotby toil" from such representations-for imagi- land bought and read his poetry, and Burns, nation and reality are not two different things for a poor man, became rich-rich to his -they blend in life; but there the darker sha- heart's desire-and reached the summit of his dows do often, alas! prevail-and sometimes ambition, in the way of this world's life, in a may be felt even by the hand; whereas in — Farm. Blithe Robin would have scorned poetry the lights are triumphant-and gazing " an awmous" from any hands but from those on the glory men's hearts burn within them- of nature; nor in those days needed he help and they carry the joy in among their own from woman-born. True, that times begun by griefs, till despondency gives way to exulta- and by to go rather hard with him, and he tion, and the day's darg of this worky world is with them; for his mode of life was not lightened by a dawn of dreams. "Such as grave livers do in Scotland use," This is the effect of all good poetry-accord- and as we sow we must reap. His day of life ing to its power-of the poetry of Robert began to darken ere meridian-and the darkBloomfield as of the poetry of Robert Burns. ness doubtless had brought disturbance before John Clare, too, is well entitled to a portion of it had been perceived by any eyes but his own such praise; and therefore his name deserves -for people are always looking to themselves to become a household word in the dwellings and their own lot; and how much mortal of the rural poor. Living in leisure among misery may for years be daily depicted in the the scenes in which he once toiled, may he face, figure, or manners even of a friend, withonce more contemplate them all without dis-out our seeing or suspecting it! Till all at turbance. Having lost none of his sympa- once he makes a confession, and we then know thies, he has learnt to refine them all and see that he has been long numbered among the into their source-and wiser in his simplicity most wretched of the wretched-the slave of than they who were formery his yokefellows his own sins and sorrows-or thralled beneath are in theirs, he knows many things well which those of another, to whom fate may have given they know imperfectly or not at all, and is pri- sovereign power over his whole life. Well, vileged therein to be their teacher. Surely in then-or rather ill, then-Burns behaved as an age when the smallest contribution to most men do in misery-and the farm going science is duly estimated, and useful know- to ruin —that is, crop and stock to pay the rent ledge not only held in honour but diffused, -he desired to be-and was made-an Expoetry ought not to be despised, more especi- ciseman. And for that-you ninny —you are ally when emanating from them who belong whinnying scornfully at Scotland! Many a to the very condition which they seek to illus- better man than yourself-beg your pardontrate, and whose ambition it is to do justice to has been, and is now, an Exciseman. Nay, its natural enjoyments and appropriate virtues. to be plain with you-we doubt if your educaIn spite of all they have suffered, and still suf- tion has been sufficiently intellectual for an fer, the peasantry of England are a race that Exciseman. We never heard it said of you, may be regarded with better feelings than pride. We look forward confidently to the'"And even the story ran that he could gauge." time when education-already in much good- Burns then was made what he desired to beand if the plans of the wisest counsellors pre- what he was fit for-though you are not-and vail, about to become altogether good-will what was in itself respectable-an Exciseman. raise at once their condition and their charac- His salary was not so large certainly as that ter. The Government has its duties to dis- of the Bishop of Durham-or even of London charge-clear as day. And what is not in the -but it was certainly larger than that of many power of the gentlemen of England? Let a curate at that time doing perhaps double of them exert that power to the utmost-and then treble duty in those dioceses, without much indeed they will deserve the noble name of audible complaint on their part, or outcry from -'Aristocracy." We speak not thus in re- Scotland against blind and brutal English biproach-for they better deserve that name shops, or against beggarly England, for starving AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. 87 her pauper-curates, by whatever genius or fess that it was pitiful. At least, if she will not erudition adorned. Burns died an Exciseman, hang down her head in humiliation for her own it is true, at the age of thirty-seven; on the neglect of her own "poetic child," let her not same day died an English curate we could hold it high over Scotland for the neglect of name, a surpassing scholar, and of stainless hers-palliated as that neglect was by many virtue, blind, palsied, "old and miserably things-and since, in some measure, expiated poor"-without as much money as would bury by a whole nation's tears shed over her great him; and no wonder, for he never had the poet's grave. salary of a Scotch Exciseman. What! not a word for Allan Ramsay. TheTwo blacks-nay twenty-won't make a ocritus was a pleasant Pastoral, and Sicilia sees white. True-but one black is as black as him among the stars. But all his dear Idyls another-and the Southern Pot, brazen as together are not equal in worth to the single it is, must not abuse with impunity the North- Gentle Shepherd. Habbie's How is a hallowed ern Pan. But now to the right nail, and let us place now among the green airy Pentlands. knock it on the head. What did England do Sacred for ever the solitary murmur of that for her own Bloomfield? He was not in ge- waterfa'. nius to be spoken of in the same year with " A flowerie howm, between twa verdant braes, Burns-but he was beyond all compare, and Where lassies use to wash and bleach their claes; out of all sight, the best poet that had arisen A trotting burnie, wimpling through the ground, It's channel pebbles, shining, smooth, and round: produced by England's lower orders. He was HeIe view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear, the most spiritual shoemaker that ever handled'Twill please your eye, then gratify your ear; an awl. The Farmer's Boy is a wonderful While Jenny what she wishes discommends, And Meg, with better sense, true love defends!" poem —and will live in the poetry of England. Did England, then, keep Bloomfield in comfort, "About them and siclike," is the whole poem. and scatter flowers along the smooth and Yet "faithful loves shall memorize the song." sunny path that led him to the grave? No. Without any scenery but that of rafters, which He had given him, by some minister or other, overhead fancy may suppose a grove,'tis even we believe Lord Sidmouth, a paltry place in yet sometimes acted by rustics in the barn, some office or other-most uncongenial with though nothing on this earth will ever persuade all his nature and all his habits-of which the a low-born Scottish lass to take a part in a play; shabby salary was insufficient to purchase for while delightful is felt, even by the lords and. his family even the bare necessaries of life. ladies of the land, the simple Drama of humble He thus dragged out for many long obscure life; and we ourselves have seen a high-born years a sickly existence, as miserable as the maiden look " beautiful exceedingly" as Patie's existence of'a good man can be made by Betrothed, kilted to the knee in the kirtle of a narrowest circumstances-and all the while Shepherdess. Englishmen were scoffingly scorning, with We have been gradually growing national haughty and bitter taunts, the patronage that, overmuch, and are about to grow even more at his own earnest desire, made Burns an Ex- so, therefore ask you to what era, pray, did ciseman. Nay, when Southey, late in Bloom- Thomson belongl To none. Thomson had field's life, and when it was drawing mourn- no precursor-and till Cowper no follower. He fully to a close, proposed a contribution for effulged all at once sunlike-like Scotland's his behoof, and put down his own five pounds, storm-loving, mist-enamoured sun, which till how many purse-strings were untied 1 how you have seen on a day of thunder, you canmuch fine gold was poured out for the indi- not be said ever to have seen the sun. Cowgent son of genius and virtue? Shame shuffles per followed Thomson merely in time. We the sum out of sight-for it was not sufficient should have had the Task, even had we never to have bought the manumission of an old had the Seasons. These two were "Heralds negro slave. of a mighty train ensuing;" add them, then, to It was no easy matter to deal rightly with the worthies of our own age, and they belong such a man as Burns. In those disturbed and to it-and all the rest of the poetry of the mo distracted times, still more difficultwas it to dern world-to which add that of the ancientcarry into execution any designs for his good- if multiplied by ten in quantity-and by twenty and much was there even to excuse his coun- in quality —would not so variously, so vigortrymen then in power for looking upon him ously, and so truly image the form and preswith an evil eye. But Bloomfield led a pure, sure, the life and spirit of the mother of us all peaceable, and blameless life. Easy, indeed, -Nature. Are then the Seasons and the Task would it have been to make him happy-but Great Poems Yes,-Why? What! Do he was as much forgotten as if he had been you need to be told that that Poem must be dead; and when he died-did England mourn great, which was the first to paint the rolling over him-or, after having denied him bread, mystery of the year, and to show that all its give him so much as a stone. No. He dropt Seasons are but the varied God?.The idea into the grave with no other lament we ever was original and sublime; and the fulfilment heard of but a few copies of poorish verses in thereof so complete, that some six thousand some of the Annuals, and seldom or never now years having elapsed between the creation of does one hear a whisper of his name. O fie! the world and of that poem, some sixty thouwell may the white rose blush red-and the sand, we prophesy, will elapse between the ap. red rose turn pale. Let England then leave pearance of that poem and the publication of Scotland to her shame about Burns; and, think- another equally great, on a subject external to ing of her own treatment of Bloomfield, cover the mind, equally magnificent. We further her own face with both her hands, and con- presume, that you hold sacred the Hearth. 88 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Now, in the Task, the Hearth is the heart of in a rude age, from the first dawning of' rasolt the poem, just as it is of a happy house. No and fancy, till that period at which he may be other poem is so full of domestic happiness- supposed capable of appearing in the world as humble and high; none is so breathed over by a Scottish Minstrel; that is, as an itinerant the spirit cf the Christian religion. poet and music iann.-a character which, accord. Poetry, which, though not dead, had long ing to the notions of our forefathers, was no' been sleeping in Scotland, was restored to only respectable, but sacred. waking life by THOMsoX. His genius was na- " There lived in Gothic days, as legends tell, tional; and so, too, was the subject of his first A shepherd swain, a man of low degree; and geatest song. By saying that his genius Whose sires perchance in Fairyland might dwell. and greatest song. By saying that his enius Sicilian groves and vales of Arcady; was national, we mean that its temperament But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie; was enthusiastic and passionate, and that, A nation famed for song and beauty's charms; Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free; though highly imaginative, the sources of its Patient of toil, serene amid alarms; power lay in the heart. The Castle of Indo- Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms. lence is distinguished by purer taste and finer " The shepherd swain, of whom I mention made, fancy; but with all its exquisite beauties, that On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock; The sickle, scythe, or plough he never sway'd; poem is but the vision of a dream. The Sea- An honfiest heart was almost all his stock; sons are glorious realities; and the charm of His drink the living waters from the rock; the strain that sings the "rolling year" is its The milky dams supplied his board, and lent Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock; truth. But what mean we by saying that the And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent, Seasons are a national subject? —do we assert Did guide and guard their wanderings, wheresoe'er that they are solely Scottish? That would be they went." too bold, even for us; but we scruple not to Did patriotism ever inspire genius with sentiassert, that Thomson has made them so, as far ment more Scottish than that? Did imagina as might be without insult, injury, or injustice, tion ever create scenery more Scottish, Man to the rest of the globe. His suns rise and set ners, Morals, Life. in Scottish heavens; his 1"deep-fermenting "Lo! where the stripling wrapt in wonder roves. Beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine; tempests are brewed in grim evening" Scot- And sees, on high, amidst th' encircling groves, tish skies; Scottish is his thunder of cloud and From cliff to cliff the foaming torrents shine; cataract; his " vapours, and snows, and storms" While waters, woods, and winds, in concert join, And echo swells the chorus to the skies." are Scottish; and, strange as the assertion Beattie chants there like a man who had been would have sounded in the ears of Samuel at the Linnof Dee. He wore a wig, it is true; Johnson, Scottish are his woods, their sugh, at the Linn of Dee. He wore awig,it is true; Johnson, Scottish are his woods, their sugh, but at times, when the fit was on him, he wrote and their roar; nor less their stillness, more like the unshorn Apollo. awful amidst the vast multitude of steady The genius of Grahame was national, and stems, than when all the sullen pine-tops are so too was the subject of his first and best poem swinging to the hurricane. A dread love of The Sabbath. his native land was in his heart when he cried in the solitude- 11 How still the morning of the hallow'd day!" " Hail, kindred glooms! congenial horrors hail!" is a line that could have been uttered only by The genius of HOME was national-and so a holy Scottish heart. For we alone know Towhe sgeniub t of h s. national-and so, what is indeed Sabbath silence-an earnest of too, was the subject of his justly famous Tra- everlastingrest. Toourhearts, theverybirds gedy of Douglas. He had studied the old Bal- everlasting rest. To our hearts, the very birds lads; their simplicities were sweet to him as of Scotland sing holily on that day. A sacred wall-flowers on ruins. On the story of Gill smile is on the dewy flowers. The lilies look Morice, who was an Earl's son, he founded the whiter in their loveliness; the blush-rose red Tragedy, which surely no Scottish eyes ever dens in the sun with a diviner dye; and with witnessed without tears. Are not these most a more celestial scent the hoary hawthorn sweetens the wilderness. Sorely disturbed of yore, over the glens and hills of Scotland, was "'Ye woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom the Day o' Peace! Accords with my soul's sadness!" the Day of Peace! And these even more so - s, Oh, the great goodness of the Saints of Old!" "Red came the river down, and loud and oft the Covenanters. Listen to the Sabbath bardThe angry Spirit of the water shriek'd!" "With them each day was holy; but that morn The Scottish Tragedian in an evil hour crossed On which the angel said,' See where the Lord the Tweed, riding on horseback all the way to, Was laid,' jovous arose; to die that day Was bliss. Long ere the dawn by devious ways, London. His genius got Anglified, tookacon- O'er hills, through woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sumption, and perished in the prime of life. sought But nearly half a century afterwards, on see- The upland muirs where rivers, there but brooks, But nearly half a century afterwards, on see- Dispart to different seas. Fast by such brooks ing the Siddons in Lady Randolph, and hearing A little glen is sometimes scoop'd, a plat her low, deep, wild, wo-begone voice exclaim, With greensward gay, and flowers that strangers seem' My beautiful! my brave " "Amid the heathery wild, that all around' My beautiful! my brav~e "' "the aged harp- Fatigues the eye: in solitudeslike these er's soul awoke," and his dim eyes were again Thy persecuted children, Scotia, foil'd lighted up for a moment with the fires of ge- A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws. There, leaning on his spear, (one of the array nius-say rather for a moment bedewed with Whose gleam, in former days, had scathed the lose the tears of sensibility re-awakened from rlecay On England's banner, and had powerless struck and dotage. The infatuate monarch, and his wavering host!) Thegean nius ofBoeattie gw. national, and ~The lyart veteran heard the word of God The genius of Beattie was national, and so By Cameron thunder'd, or by Renwick ponr'd was the subject of his charming song-The In gentle stream: then rose the song, the loud Minstrel. For what is its design. He tells us, Her plaintm ofpraise The wheeling p p l over ceased o, trace the progress of a poetical genius, lit rn And on the distant cairn the watcher's ear AN HOUR'S TAIK ABOUT POETRY. 89 C;aught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note. of Time," for so young a man, was a vast But years more gloomy follow'd; and no more The book he loved best was The assembled people dared, in face of day,book he loved best was To worship God, or even at the dead the Bible, and his style is often scriptural Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce, Of our poets, he had studied, we believe, bnt And thunder-peals compelled the men of blood Milton, Young, and Byron. He had much t. To couch within their dens; then dauntlessly The scatter'd few would meet, in some deep dell learn in composition; and, had he lived, he By rocks o'ercanopied, to hear the voice, would have looked almost with humiliation Their faithful pastor's voice. He by the gleam Of sheeted lightning oped the sacred book, on much that is at present eulogized by his And words of comfort spake; over their souls devoted admirers. But the soul of poetry is His accents soothing came, as to her young there, though often diml developed, and many The heathfowl's plumes, when, at the close of evee,y She gathers in, mournful, her brood dispersed passages there are, and long ones too; that By murderous sport, and o'er the remnant spreads heave, and hurry, and glow along in a divine Fondly her wings; close nestling'neath her breast th They cherished cower amid the purple bloom." entusiasm. " His ears he closed, to listen to the strains Not a few other sweet singers or strong, na- That Sion's bards did consecrate of old, tive to this nook of our isle, might we now in And fix'd his Pindus upon Lebanon." these humble pages lovingly commemorate; and Let us fly again to England, and leaving for "four shall we mention, dearer than the rest," another hour Shelley and Hunt and Keates, for sake of that virtue, among many virtues, and Croly and Milman and Heber, and Ster. which we have been lauding all along, their na- ling and Milnes and Tennyson, with some tionalitv; —These are AaID and Mo-rnIiEtwLL, younger aspirants of our own day; and Gray, (of whom another hour,) MoiR and POLLOXc. Collins, and Goldsmith, and lesser stars of that Of Moir, our own "delightful Delta," as we constellation, let us alight on the verge of that love to call him-and the epithet now by right famous era when the throne was occupied by appertains to his name-we shall now say Dryden, and then by Pope-searching still for simply this, that he has produced many origi- a Great Poem. Did either of them ever write nal pieces which will possess a permanent one? No-never. Sir Walter says finely of place in the poetry of Scotland. Delicacy and glorious John, grace characterize his happiest compositions;," And Dryden in immortal strain, some of them are beautiful in a cheerful spirit Had raised the Table Round again, that has only to look on nature to be happy; But that a ribald King and Court and others breathe the simplest and purest Bade him play on to make them sport, and others breathe the simplest and purest The world defrauded of the high design, pathos. His scenery, whether sea-coast or Profaned the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty inland, is always truly Scottish; and at times line." his pen drops touches of light on minute ob-. But why, we ask, did Dryden suffer a ribald jects, that till then had slumbered in the shade, king and court to debase and degrade him, and but now "shine well where they stand" or lie, strangle his immortal strain. Because he as component and characteristic parts of our was poor.. But could he not have died of cold, lowland landscapes. Let others labour away thirst, and hunger-of starvation? Have not at long poems, and for their pains get neglect millions of men and women done so, rather or oblivion; Moir is seen as he is in many than sacrifice their conscience! And shall we short ones, which the Scottish Muses may " not grant to a great poet that indulgence which willingly let die." And that must be a pleasant many an humble hind would have flung with thought when it touches the heart of the mild- scorn in our teeth, and rather than havy est and most modest of men, as he sits by his availed himself of it, faced the fagot, or the family-fire, beside those most dear to him, halter, or the stake set within the sea-flood? after a day past in smoothing, by his skill, the But it is satisfactory to know that Dryden, bed and the brow of pain, in restoring sickness though still glorious John, was not a Great to health, in alleviating sufferings that cannot Poet. He was seldom visited by the pathetic be cured, or in mitigating the pangs of death. or the sublime-else had his genius held fast Pollok had great criginal genius, strong in its integrity-been ribald to no ribald-and a sacred sense of religion. Such of his short indignantly kicked to the devil both court and compositions as we have seen, written in early king. But what a master of reasoning in youth, were but mere copies of verses, and verse! And of verse what a volume of gave little or no promise of power. But his fire! "The long-resounding march and enersoul was working in the green moorland soli- gy divine." Pope, again, with the common tudes round about his father's house, in the frailties of humanity, was an ethereal creature -wild and beautiful parishes of Eaglesham and -and played on his own harp with finest taste, Mearns, separated by thee, OYearn! sweetest and wonderful execution. We doubt, indeed, of pastoral streams, that murmur through the if such a finished style has ever been heard west, as under those broomyand birken banks since from any one of the King Apollo's mu and trees, where the gray-linties sing, is formed sicians. His versification may Se monoto the clear junction of the rills, issuing, the one nous, but without a sweet and potent charm from the hill-spring above the Black-waterfall, only to ears of leather. That his poetry and the other from the Brother-loch. The has no passion is the creed of critics "of poet in prime of youth (he died in his twenty- Cambyses' vein;" Hleloise and the Unfortunate seventh year) embarked on a high and adven- Lady have made the world's heart to throb. turous emprise, and voyaged the illimitable As for Imagination, we shall continue till such Deep. His spirit expanded its wings, and in time as that faculty has been distinguished a holy pride felt them to be broad, as they from Fancy, to see it shining in the Rape of hovered over the dark abyss. The " Course the Lock, with a lambent lustre; if high intel. 94iI RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTII. lect be not dominant in his Epistles and his done for the least deformed of the tragedies o, Essay on Man, you will look for it in vain in the Old English Drama that humanity could the nineteenth century; all other Satires seem do, enlightened by the Christian religion; but complimentary to their victims when read after Nature has risen up to vindicate herself against the Dunciad-and could a man, whose heart such misrepresentations as they afford; and was not heroic, have given us another Iliad, sometimes finds it all she can do to stomach which, all unlike as it is to the Greek, may be Shakspeare. read with transport, even after Homer's. But the monstrosities we have mentioned are We have not yet, it would seem, found the not the worst to be found in the Old English objects of our search-a Great Poem. Let us Drama. Others there are that, till civilized extend our quest into the Elizabethan age. We Christendom fall back into barbarous Heathenare at once sucked into the theatre. With the dom, must for ever be unendurable to human whole drama of that age we are conversant ears, whether long or short-we mean the oband familiar; but whether we understand it or scenities. That sin is banished for ever from not, is another question. It aspires to give our literature. The poet who might dare to representations of Human Life in all its in- commit it, would be immediately hooted out of finite varieties, and inconsistencies, and con- society, and sent to roost in barns among the flicts, and turmoils produced by the Passions. owls. But the Old English Drama is stuffed Time and space are not suffered to interpose with ineffable pollutions; and full of passages their unities between the Poet and his vast that the street-walker would be ashamed to design, who, provided he can satisfy the spec- read in the stews. We have not seen that tators by the pageant of their own passions volume of the Family Dramatists which contains moving across the stage, may exhibit there Massinger. But if made fit for female readwhatever he wills from life, death, or the grave. ing, his plays must be mutilated and mangled'Tis a sublime conception —and sometimes out of all likeness to the original wholes. has given rise to sublime performance; but To free them even from the grossest impurihas been crowned with full success in no hands ties, without destroying their very life, is imbut those of Shakspeare. Great as was the possible; and it would be far better to make a genius of many of the dramatists of that age, selection of fine passages, after the manner of not one of them has produced a Great Tragedy. Lamb's Specimens-but with a severer eyeGreat Tragedy indeed! What! without harmo- than to attempt in vain to preserve their chany or proportion in the plan-with all puzzling racter as plays, and at the same time to expunge perplexities and inextricable entanglements in all that is too disgusting, perhaps, to be dangerthe plot, andwith disgust andhorrorin thecatas- ous to boys and virgins. Full-grown men may trophe! As for the characters,male and female read what they choose-perhaps without suf-saw ye ever such a set of swaggerers and ran- fering from it; but the modesty of the young tipoles as they often are in one act-Methodist clear eye must not be profaned-and we canpreachers and demure young women. at a love- not, for our own part, imagine a Family Old feast in another-absolute heroes and heroines English Dramatist. of high calibre in a third-and so on, changing And here again bursts upon us the glory of and shifting name and nature, according to the the Greek Drama. The Athenians were as laws of the Romantic Drama forsooth-but in wicked, as licentious, as polluted, and much hideous violation of the laws of nature-till the more so, we hope, than ever were the English; curtain falls over a heap of bodies huddled to- but they debased not with their gross vices gether, without regard to age or sex, as if they their glorious tragedies. Nature in her higher had been overtaken in liquor! We admit that moods alone, and most majestic aspects, trod there is gross exaggeration in the picture; but their stage. Buffoons, and ribalds, and zanies, there is always truth in a tolerable caricature and "rude indecent clowns," were confined to -and this is one of a tragedy of Webster, comedies; and even there they too were idealFord, or Massinger. ized, and resembled not the obscene samples It is satisfactory toknow that the good sense, that so often sicken us in the midst of "the actand good feeling, and good taste of the people ing of a dreadful thing" in our old theatre. of England, will not submit to be belaboured They knew that "with other ministrations, thou, by editors and critics into unqualified admira- 0 Nature!" teachest thy handmaid Art to tion of such enormities. The Old English soothe the souls of thy congregated childrenDrama lies buried in the dust with all its trage- congregated to behold her noble goings-on, and dies. Never more will they move across the to rise up and depart elevated by the transcenstage. Scholars read them, and often with de- dent pageant. The Tragic muse was in those light, admiration, and wonder; for genius is a days a Priestess-tragedies were religious strange spirit, and has begotten strange children ceremonies; for all the ancestral stories they on the body of the Tragic Muse. In the closet celebrated were under consecration-the spirit it is pleasant to peruse the countenances, at of the ages of heroes and demigods descended once divine, human, and brutal, of the incom- over the vast amphitheatre; and thus were prehensible monsters-to scan their forms,,Eschylus, and Sophocles, and Euripides, the powerful though misshapen —to watch their guardians of the national character, which we movements, vigorous though distorted —and to all know, was, in spite of all it suffered under hold up one's hands in amazement on hearing for ever passionately enamoured of all the them not seldom discourse most excellent mu- forms of greatness. sic. But we should shudder to see them on Forgive us-spirit of Shakspeare! that the stage enacting the parts of men and wo- seem'st to animate that high-brow'd bust-if men-and call for the manager. All has been indeed we have offered any shcw of irreve, INCH-CRUIN. 91 rence to thy name and nature; for now, in the fire was a fortunate cne in which so many noiselessness of midnight, to our awed but books of it were burnt. If no such fortunate loving hearts do both appear divine! Forgive fire ever took place, then let us trust that the us —,we beseech thee-that on going to bed- moths drillingly devoured the manuscript-and which we are just about to do-we may be able that'tis all safe. Purgatorial pains-unless to compose ourselves to sleep-and dream of indeed they should prove eternal-are insuffi. Miranda and Imogen, and Desdemona and Cor- cient punishment for the impious man who delia. Father revered Df that holy family! by invented Allegory. If you have got any thing the strong light in this eyes of Innocence we to say, sir, out with it-in one or other of the beseech thee to forgive us!-Ha! what old ghost many forms of speech employed naturally by art thou —clothed in the weeds of more than creatures to whom God has given the gift of mortal misery —mad, mad, mad-come and "discourse of reason." But beware of misgone-was it Lear? spending your life in perversely attempting to We have found then, it seems-at last-the make shadow substance, and substance shadow. object of our search-a Great Poem —ay —four Wonderful analogies there are among all Great Poems-Lear-Hamlet-Othello-Mac- created things, material and immaterial-and beth. And was the revealer of those high millions so fine that Poets alone discern themmysteries in his youth a deer-stealer in the and sometimes succeed in showing them in parks of Warwickshire, a linkboy in London words. Most spiritual region of poetry-and streets 1 And died he before his grand climac- to be visited at rare times and seasons-nor all teric in a dimmish sort of a middle-sized tene- life-long ought bard there to abide. For a while ment in Stratford-on-Avon, of a surfeit from let the veil of Allegory be drawn before the an over-dose of home-brewed humming ale? face of Truth, that the light of its beauty may Such is the tradition. shine through it with a softened charm-dim Had we a daughter-an only daughter —we and drear-like the moon gradually obscuring should wish her to be like in its own halo on a dewy night. Such air"Heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb." woven veil of Allegory is no human invention. In that one line has Wordsworth done an un- The soul brought it with her when appreciable service to Spenser. He has im- "Trailing clouds of glory she did come proved upon a picture in the Fairy Queen- From heaven, which is her home." making "the beauty still more beauteous," by Sometimes, now and then, in moods strange a single touch of a pencil dipped in moonlight, and high-obey the bidding of the soul-and or in sunlight tender as Luna's smiles. Through allegorize; but live not all life-long in an Alle. Spenser's many nine-lined stanzas the lovely gory-even as Spenser did —Spenser the di. lady glides along her own world-and our eyes vine; for with all his heavenly genius-and follow in delight the sinless wanderer. In brighter visions never met mortal eyes than Wordsworth's one single celestial line we be- his —what is he but a "dreamer among men," hold her neither in time nor space-an. im- and what may save that wondrous poem from mortal omnipresent idea at one gaze occupying the doom of oblivion? the soul. To this conclusion must we come at last — And is not the Fairy Queen a Great Poem? that in the English language there is but Like the Excursion, it is at all events a long one Great Poem. What! Not Lear, Hamlet, one-" slow to begin, and never ending." That Othello, Macbeth 1 PARADISE LOST. INC H-C RUIN. OH! for the plumes and pinions of the poised or castle, encompassed with the umbrage ci Eagle, that we might now hang over Loch Lo- undying oaks. mondandallheris.-s! From what point of the We should as soon think of penning a critique compass would we ccme on our rushing vans? on Milton's Paradise Lost as on Loch Lomond. Up from Leven-banks, or down from Glenfal- People there are in the world, doubtless, who loch, or over the hill of Luss, or down to Row- think them both too long; but to our minds, ardennan; and then up and away, as the chance neither the one nor the other exceeds the due currents in the sky might lead, with the Glory measure by a leaf or a league. You may, if it of Scotland, blue; bright, and breaking into so pleaseth you, think it, in a mist, a Mediterrafoam, thousands on thousands of feet below, nean sea. For then you behold many miles of with every island distinctin the peculiar beauty tumbling waves, with no land beyond; atrd of its own youthful or ancient woods? For were a ship to rise up in full sail, she would remember, that with the eagle's wing we must seem voyaging on to some distant shore. Or also have the eagle's eye; and all the while you may look on it as a great arm only of the our own soul to look with such lens and such ocean, stretched out into the mountainous mainiris, and with its own endless visions to invest land. Or say, rather, some river of the first thO pinnacles of all the far-down ruins of church order, that shows to the sun Islands Dever OV2 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. ceasing to adorn his course for a thousand waves, towards the melancholy shores of Inch. leagues, in another day about to be lost in the Cruin, the Island of the Afflicted. Beauti;u.h dominion of the sea. Or rather look on it as is it by nature, with its bays, and fields, and it is, as Loch Lomond, the Loch of a hundred woods, as any isle that sees its shadow in the Isles-of shores laden with all kinds of beauty, deeps; but human sorrows have steeped it in throughout the infinite succession of bays and eternal gloom, and terribly is it haunted to our narbours-huts and houses sprinkled over the imagination. Here no woodman's hut peeps sides of its green hills, that ever and anon send from the glade-here are not seen the branchup a wider smoke from villages clustering ing antlers of the deer moving among the round the church-tower beneath the wooded boughs that stir not-no place of peace is this rocks-halls half-hidden in groves, for centu- where the world-wearied hermit sits penitent ries the residence of families proud of their in his cell, and prepares his soul for Heaven. Gaelic blood-forests that, however wide be the Its inhabitants are a woful people, and all its fall beneath the axe when their hour is come, various charms are hidden from their eyes, or yet, far as the eye can reach, go circling round seen in ghastly transfiguration; for here, bethe mountain's base, inhabited by the roe and neath the yew-tree's shade, sit moping, or the red-deer; —but we have got into a sentence roam about with rueful lamentation, the soulthat threatens to be without end-a dim, dreary, distracted and the insane! Ay-these sweet sentence, in the middle of which the very writer and pleasant murmurs break round a Lunatic himself gets afraid of ghosts, and fervently Asylum! And the shadows that are now and prays for the period when he shall be again then seen among the umbrage are laughing chatting with the reader on a shady seat, under or weeping in the eclipse of reason, and may his own paragraph and his own pear-tree. never know again aught of the real character Oh! for our admirable friend Mr. Smith of of this world,, to which, exiled as they are Jordanhill's matchless cutter, to glide through from it, they are yet' bound by the ties of a among the glittering archipelago! But we common hature that, though sorely deranged, must be contented with a somewhat clumsy are not- wholly broken, and still separate them four-oared barge, wide and deep enough for a by an awful depth of darkness from the beasts cattle ferry-boat. This morning's sunrise found that perish. us at the mouth of the Goblin's Cave on Loch Thither, love, yielding reluctantly at last to Katrine, and among Lomond's lovely isles shall despair, has consented that the object on which sunset leave us among the last glimmer of the all its wise solicitudes had for years been unsoftened gold. To which of all those lovely availably bestowed both night and day, should isles shall we drift before the wind on the small be rowed over, perhaps at midnight, and when heaving andbreaking wavesl To Inch-Murrin, asleep, and left there with beings like itself, where the fallow-deer repose-or to the yew- all dimly conscious of their doom. To many shaded Inch-Caillach, the cemetery of Clan- such the change may often bring little or no Alpin-the Holy Isle of Nuns l One hushing heed-for outward things may have ceased to afternoon hour may yet be ours on the waters- impress, and they may be living in their own another of the slowly-walking twilight-that rueful world, different from all that we hear or time which the gazing spirit is too wrapt to behold. To some it may seem that they have measure, while "sinks the Day-star in the been spirited away to another state of existocean's bed"-and so on to midnight, the reign ence-beautiful, indeed, and fair to see, with of silence and shadow, the resplendent Diana all those lovely trees and shadows of trees; with her hair-halo, and all her star-nymphs, but still a miserable, a most miserable place, rejoicing round their Queen. Let the names without one face they ever saw before, and of all objects be forgotten —and imagination haunted by glaring eyes that shoot forth fear, roam over the works of nature, as if they lay suspicion, and hatred. Others, again, there in their primeval majesty, without one trace of are, who know well the misty head of Benman's dominion. Slow-sailing Heron, that Lomond, which, with joyful pleasure-parties cloud-like seekest thy nest on yonder lofty mass set free from the city, they had in other years of pines —to us thy flight seems the very symbol exultingly scaled, and looked down, perhaps, of a long lone life of peace. As thou foldest in a solemn pause of their youthful ecstasy, thy wide wings on the topmost bough, beneath on the far-off and melancholy Inch-Cruin! thee tower the unregarded Ruins, where many Thankful are they for such a haven at lastgenerations sleep. Onwards thou floatest like for they are remote from the disturbance of the a dream, nor changest thy gradually descend- incomprehensible life that bewildered them, ing course for the Eagle, that, far above thy and from the pity of familiar faces that was line of travel, comes rushing unwearied from more than could be borne. his prey in distant Isles of the sea. The Os- So let us float upon our oars behind the prey! off-off-to Inch-Loning-or the dark shadow of this rock, nor approach nearer the cliffs of Glenfalloch, many leagues away, which sacred retreat of misery. Let us not gaze too he will reach almost like a thought! Close intently into the glades, for we might see some your eyes but for a moment-and when you figure there who wished to be seen nevermore, look again, where is the Cloud-Cleaver now I and recognise in the hurrying shadow the Gone in the sunshine, and haply seated in his living remains of a friend. How profound the eyrie on Ben-Lomond's head. hush! No sigh —no groan-no shriek-no But amidst all this splendour and magnifi- voice —no tossing of arms-no restless chaf. cence, our eyes are drawn against our will, ing of feet! God in mercy has for a while and by a sort of sad fascination which we calmed the congregation of the afflicted, and cannot resist, along the glittering and dancing the Isle is overspread with a sweet Sabbath INCHI-CRUIN. 93 silence. What medicine for them like the equally versatile and profound-the first boto breath of heaven the dew-the sunshine —in intellect and in imagination. He was a and the murmur of the wave! Nature her- poor man's son-the only son of a working self is their kind physician, and sometimes -carpenter-and his father intended him for the not unfrequently brings them by her holy skill church. But the youth soon felt that to him back to the world of clear intelligence and the trammels of a strict faith would be unserene affection. They listen calmly to the bearable, and he lived on from year to year, blessed sound of the oar that brings a visit of uncertain what profession to choose. Meanfriends-to sojourn with them for a day-or while his friends, all inferior to him in talents to take them away to another retirement, and acquirements, followed the plain, open, where they, in restored reason, may sit around and beaten path, that leads sooner or later to the board, nor fear to meditate during the mid- respectability and independence. He was left night watches on the dream, which, although alone in his genius, useless, although admired dispelled, may in all its ghastliness return. — while those who had looked in high hopes There was a glorious burst of sunshine! on his early career, began to have their fears And of all the Lomond Isles, what one rises that they might never be realized. His first up in the sudden illumination so bright as attempts to attract the notice of the public, Inch-Cruin 1 although not absolute failures —for some of his Methinks we see sitting in his narrow and compositions, both in prose and verse, were low-roofed cell, careless of food, dress, sleep, indeed beautiful-were not triumphantly sucor shelter alike, him who in the opulent mart cessful, and he began to taste the bitterness of of commerce was one of the most opulent, and disappointed ambition. His wit and colloquial devoted heart and soul to show and magnifi- talents carried him into the society of the discence. His house was like a palace with its sipated and the licentious; and before he was pictured and mirror'd walls, and the nights aware of the fact, he had got the character of wore away to dance, revelry, and song. For- all others the most humiliating-that of a man tune poured riches at his feet, which he had who knew not how to estimate his own worth, only to gather up; and every enterprise in nor to preserve it from pollution. He found which he took part, prospered beyond the himself silently and gradually excluded from reach of imagination. But all at once —as the higher circle which he had once adorned, if lightning had struck the dome of his pros- and sunk inextricablyinto a lower grade of perity, and earthquake let down its founda- social life. His whole habits became loose tions, it sank, crackled, and disappeared-and and irregular; his studies were pursued but the man of a million was a houseless, infa- by fits and starts; his knowledge, instead of mous, and bankrupt beggar. In one day his keeping pace with that of the times, became proud face changed into the ghastly smiling clouded and obscure, and even diminished; of an idiot-he dragged his limbs in paralysis his dress was meaner; his manners hurried, -and slavered out unmeaning words foreign and reckless, and wild, and ere long he became to all the pursuits in which his active intellect a slave to drunkenness, and then to every low had for many years been plunged. All his and degrading vice. relations-to whom it was known he had ne- His father died, it was said, of a broken heart ver shown kindness —were persons in humble -for to him his son had been all in all, and condition. Ruined creditors we do not expect the unhappy youth felt that the death lay at his to be very pitiful, and people asked what was door. At last, shunned by most —tolerated but to become of him till he died. A poor crea- by a few for the sake of other times-domiciled ture, whom he had seduced and abandoned to in the haunts of infamy-loaded with a heap want, but who had succeeded to a small pro- of paltry debts, and pursued by the hounds of perty on the death of a distant relation, re- the law, the fear of a prison drove him mad, membered her first, her only love, when all and his whole mind was utterly and hopelessly the rest of the world were willing to forget overthrown. A few of the friends of his boyhim; and she it was who had him conveyed hood raised a subscription in his behoof-and thither, herself sitting in the boat with her within the gloom of these woods he has been arm round the unconscious idiot, who now shrouded for many years, but not unvisited vegetates on the charity of her whom he be- once or twice a summer by some one, who trayed. For fifteen years he has continued to knew, love', and admired him in the morning exist in the same state, and you may pro- of that genius that long before its meridian nounce his name on the busy Exchange of brightness had been so fatally eclipsed. the city where he flourished and fell, and And can it be in cold and unimpassioned haply the person you speak to shall have en- words like these that we thus speak of Thee tirely forgotten it. and thy doom, thou Soul of fire, and once the The evils genius sometimes brings to its brightest of the free, privileged by nature to possessor have often been said and sung, per- walk along the mountain-ranges, and mix their haps with exaggerations, but not'always with- spirits with the stars! Can it be that all thy out truth. It is found frequently apart from glorious aspirations, by thyself forgotten, have prudence and principle; and in a world con- no dwelling-place in the memory of one who stituted like ours, how can it fail to reap a loved thee so well, and had his deepest affection Harvest of misery or death? A fine genius, so profoundly returned! Thine was a heart and even a high, had been bestowed on One once tremblingly alive to all the noblest and wvho is now an inmate of that cottage cell, finest sympathies of our nature, and the humpeering between these two rocks. At College, blest human sensibilities became beautiful he outstripped all his compeerr by powers when tinged by the light of thy imagination. 1.94 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Fhy geius invested the most ordinary objects palled was he ever in the whizzing and hissing with a charm not their own; and the vision it fire —nor did his bold broad breast ever shrink created thy lips were eloquent to disclose. from the bayonet, that with the finished fencer's What although thy poor old father died, be- art he has often turned aside when red with cause by thy hand all his hopes were shivered, death. In many of the pitched battles of the and for thy sake poverty stripped even the Spanish campaigns his plume was conspicuous coverlet from his dying-bed-yet we feel as if over the dark green lines, that, breaking asunsome dreadful destiny, rather than thy own der in fragments like those of the flowing sea, crime, blinded thee to his fast decay, and only to re-advance over the bloody fields, closed thine ears in deafness to his beseeching cleared the ground that was to be debated beprayer. Oh! charge not to creatures such as tween the great armaments. Yet in all such we all the fearful consequences of our mis- desperate service he never received one single conduct and evil ways! We break hearts we wound. But on a mid-day march, as he was would die to heal-and hurry on towards the gaily singing a love-song, the sun smote him grave those whom to save we would leap into to the very brain, and from that moment his the devouring fire. Many wondered in their right hand grasped the sword no more. anger that thou couldst be so callous to the Not on the face of all the earth-or of all the old man's grief-and couldst walk tearless at sea-is there a spot of profounder peace than his coffin. The very night of the day he was that isle that has long been his abode. But to buried thou wert among thy wild companions, him all the scene is alive with the pomp of in a house of infamy, close to the wall of the war. Every far-offprecipice is a fort, that has churchyard. Was not that enough to tell us its own Spanish name-and the cloud above all that disease was in thy brain, and that seems to his eyes the tricolor, or the flag of his reason, struggling with insanity, had changed own victorious country. War, that dread game sorrow to despair. But perfect forgiveness- that nations play at, is now to the poor insane forgiveness made tender by profoundest pity- soldier a mere child's pastime, from which was finally extended to thee by all thy friends sometimes he himself will turn with a sigh or -frail and erring like thyself in many things, a smile. For sense assails him in his delirium, although not so fatally misled and lost, because for a moment and no more; and he feels that in the mystery of Providence not so irresistibly he is far away, and for ever, from all his comtried. It seemed as if thou hadst offended the panions in glory, in an asylum that must be Guardian Genius, who, according to the old left but for the grave! Perhaps in such mophilosophy which thou knewest so well, is ments he may have remembered the night, given to every human being at his birth; and when at Badajos he led the forlorn hope; but that then the angel left thy side, and Satan even forlorn hope now hath he none, and he strove to drag thee to perdition. And hath sinks away back into his delusions, at which any peace come to thee-a youth no more- even his brother sufferers smile —so foolish but in what might have been the prime of man- does the restless campaigner seem to these men hood, bent down, they say, to the ground, with of peace! a head all floating with silver hairs —hath any Lo! a white ghost-like figure, slowly issuing peace come to thy distracted soul in these from the trees, and sitting herself down on a woods, over which there now seems again to stone, with face fixed on the waters! Npw brood a holy horror?-Yes-thy fine dark eyes she is so perfectly still, that had we not seen are not wholly without intelligence as they her motion thither, she and the rock would look on the sun, moon, and stars; although all have seemed but one! Somewhat fantastically their courses seem now confused to thy imagi- dressed, even in her apparent despair. Were nation, once regular and ordered in their mag- we close to her, we should see a face yet beaunificence before that intellect which science tiful, beneath hair white as snow. Her voice claimed as her own. The harmonies of nature too, but seldom heard, is still sweet and low; are not all lost on thy ear, poured forth through- and sometimes, when all are asleep, or at least out all seasons, over the world of sound and silent, she begins at midnight to sing! She yet sight. Glimpses of beauty startle thee as thou touches the guitar-an instrument in fashion wanderest along the shores of thy prison-isle; in Scotland when she led the fashion-with and that fine poetical genius, not yet ex- infinite grace and delicacy-and the songs she tinguished altogether, although faiiL: and flick- loves best are those in a foreign tongue. For ering, gives vent to something like snatches more than thirty years hath the unfortunate of songs, and broken elegies, that seem to lady come to the water's edge daily, and hour wail over the ruins of thy own soul! Such after hour continue to sit motionless on that peace as ever visits them afflicted as thou art, self-same stone, looking down into the loch. be with thee in cell or on shore; nor lost to Her story is now almost like a dim tradition Heaven will be the wild moanings of-to us- from other ages, and the history of those who thy unintelligible prayers! come here often fades away into nothing. But hark to the spirit-stirring voice of the Everywhere else they are forgotten-here bugle scaling the sky, and leaping up and down there are none who can remember. Who once In echoes among the distant mountains! Such so beautiful as the "Fair Portuguese." It a strain animates the voltigeur, skirmishing in was said at that time that she was a Nun-but front of the line of battle, or sending flashes of the sacred veil was drawn aside by the hand sudden death from the woods. Alas! for him of love, and she came to Scotland with her dewho now deludes his yet high heart with a few liverer! Yes, her deliverer! He delivered her notes of the music that so often was accompa- from the gloom-often the peaceful gloom that nied by his sword waving on to glory. Unap- hovers round the altar of Superstition-and A DAY AT WINDERMERE. 95 after a few years of love and life and joy-she Inversnayde, and whom they vainly wept over sat where you now see her sitting, and the as dead. One evening she had floated away world she had adorned moved on in brightness by herself in a small boat-while her parents and in music as before! Since there has to her heard, without fear, the clang-dullerand dull. been so much suffering-was there on her part er-of the oars, no longer visible in the distant no sin! No-all believed her to be guiltless, moonshine. In an hour the returning vesse: except one, whose jealousy would have seen touched the beach-but no child was to be falsehood lurking in an angel's eyes; but she seen-and they listened in vain for the music was utterly deserted; and being in a strange of the happy creature's songs. For weeks the country, worse than an orphan, her mind gave loch rolled and roared like the sea-nor was way; for say not —oh say not —that innocence the body found any where lying on the shore. can always stand against shame and despair! Long, long afterwards, some little white bones The hymns she sings at midnight are hymns to were interred in Christian burial, for the pathe Virgin; but all her songs are songs about rents believed them to be the remains of their love and chivalry, and knights that went cru- child-all that had been left by the bill of the sading to the Holy Land. He who brought her raven. But not so thought many dwellers from another sanctuary into the one now before along the mountain-shores-for had not her'us, has been dead many years. He perished very voice been often heard by the shepherds, in shipwreck-and'tis thought that she sits when the unseen flight of Fairies sailed singing there gazing down into the loch, as on the along up the solitary Glenfalloch, away over place where he sank or was buried; for when the moors of Tynedrum, and down to the sweet told that he was drowned, she shrieked, and Dalmally, where the shadow of Cruachan made the sign of the cross-and since that long- darkens the old ruins of melancholy Kilchurn? ago day that stone has in all weathers been The lost child's parents died in their old ageher constant seat. but she,'tis said, is unchanged in shape and Away we go westwards-like fire-worship- features-the same fair thing she was the pers devoutly gazing on the setting sun. And evening that she disappeared, only a shade of another isle seems to shoot across our path, sadness is on her pale face, as if she were separated suddenly, as if by magic, from the pining for the sound of human voices, and the mainland. How beautiful, with its many cres- gleam of the peat-fire of the shieling. Ever, cents, the low-lying shores, carrying here and when the Fairy-court is seen for a moment be there a single tree quite into the water, and neath the glimpses of the moon, she is sitting with verdant shallows guarding the lonely se- by the side of the gracious Queen. Words of clusion even from the keel of canoe! Round might there are, that if whispered at right seaand round we row, but not a single landing son, would yet recall her from the shadowy place. Shall we take each of us a fair burden world, to which she has been spirited away; in his arms, and bear it to that knoll, whisper- but small sentinels stand at their stations round ing and quivering through the twilight with a the isle, and at nearing of human breath, a few birches whose stems glitter like silver pil- shrill warning is given from sedge and waterlars in the shade? No-let us not disturb the lilly, and like dew-drops melt away the phansilent people, now donning their green array toms, while, mixed with peals of little laughter, for nightly revelries. It is the " Isle of Fai- overhead is heard the winnowing of;wings. ries," and on that knoll hath the fishermen For the hollow of the earth, and the hollow of often seen their Queen sitting on a throne, sur- the air, is their Invisible Kingdom; and when rounded by myriads of creatures no taller than they touch the herbage or flowers of this earth hare-bells; one splash of the oar-and all is of ours, whose lonely places they love, then vanished. There, it is said, lives among the only are they revealed to human eyes-at Folk of Peace, the fair child who, many years all times else to our senses unexistent as ago, disappeared from her parents' shieling at dreams! A DAY AT WINDERMIERE. OLD and gouty, we are confined to our chair; dulgent master.'Tis pleasure to look at Doand occasionally, during an hour of rainless mitian-so we love to call him-sallying from sunshine, are wheeled by female hands along the centre against a wearied wasp, lying, like the gravel-walks of our Policy, an unrepining a silk worm, circumvoluted in the inextricable and philosophical valetudinarian. Even the toils, and then seizing the sinner by the nape Crutch is laid up in ordinary, and is encircled of the neck, like Christopher with a Cockncy, with cobwebs. A monstrous spider has there to see the emperor haul him away into the set up his rest; and our still study ever and charnel-house. But we have often less savage anon hearkens to the shrill buzz of some poor recreations-such as watching our bee-hives fly expiring between those formidable forceps when about to send forth colcnies-feeding our -iust as so many human ephemerals have pigeons, a purple people that dazzle the daylight breathed their last beneath the bite of his in- -gathering roses as they choke our smal 96 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. chariot-wheels with their golden orbs —eating scaffold-but like ourselves, on a hair-mattress. grapes out of vine-leaf-draperied baskets, above a feather-bed, our head decently sunk in beautifying beneath the gentle fingers of the three pillows and one bolster, and our frame Gentle into fairy network graceful as the gos- stretched out unagitatedly beneath a white samer-drinking elder-flower frontiniac from counterpane. But meanwhile-though almost invisible glasses, so transparent in its yellow- as unlocomotive as the dead in body -there is ness seems the liquid radiance-at one mo- perpetual motion in our minds. Sleep is one ment eyeing a page of Paradise Lost, and at thing, and stagnation is another-as is well another of Paradise Regained; for what else known to all eyes that have ever seen, by is the face of her who often visiteth our Eden, moonlight and midnight, the face of Christoand whose coming and whose going is ever pher North, or of Windermere. like a heavenly dream. Then laying back Windermere! Why, at this blessed moment our head upon the cushion of our triumphal we behold the beauty of all its intermingling car, and with half-shut eyes, subsiding slowly isles. There they are-all gazing down on into haunted sleep or slumber, with our fine their own reflected loveliness in the magic features up to heaven, a saint-like image, mirror of the air-like water, just as many a such as Raphael loved to paint, or Flaxman holy time we have seen them all agaze, when, to embue with the soul of stillness in the life- with suspended oar and suspended breathhushed marble. Such, dearest reader, are no sound but a ripple on the Naiad's bow, and some of our pastimes-and so do we contrive a beating at our own heart-motionless in to close our ears to the sound of the scythe of -our own motionless bark —we seemed to Saturn,ceaselessly sweepingoverthe earth,and float midway down that beautiful abyss leaving, at every stride of the mower, a swathe between the heaven above and the heaven more rueful than ever, afteranightofshipwreck, below, on some strange terrestrial' scene did strew with ghastliness a lee sea-shore! composed of trees and the shadows of trees, Thus do we make a virtue of necessity — by the imagination made indistinguishable and thus contentment wreathes with silk and to the eye, and as delight deepened into velvet the prisoner's chains. Once were we- dreams, all lost at last, clouds, groves, water, long, long ago-restless as a sunbeam on the air, sky, in their various and profound confurestless wave-rapid as a river that seems en- sion of supernatural peace. But a sea-born raged with all impediments, but all the while breeze is on Bowness Bay; all at once the lake in passionate love is. blue as the sky; and that evanescent world " Doth make sweet music with th' enamell'd stones,"- is felt to have been but a vision. Like swans that had been asleep in the airless sunshine, strong as a steed let loose from Arab's tent in lo! where from every shady nook appear the the oasis to slake his thirst at the desert well- white-sailed pinnaces; for on merry Winderfierce in our harmless joy as a red-deer belling mere-you must know-every breezy hour on the hills-tameless as the eagle sporting in has its own Regatta. the storm-gay as the "dolphin on a tropic But intending to be useful, we are becoming sea" —" mad as young bulls"-and wild as a ornamental: of us it must not be said, that whole wilderness of adolescent lions. But now -alas! and alack-a-day! the sunbeam is but "s Pure description holds the place of sense,"a patch of sober verdure-the river is changed therefore, let us be simple but not silly, as into a canal-the" desert-born" is foundered- plain as is possible without being prosy, as the red-deer is slow as an old ram-the eagle instructive as is consistent with being enterhas forsook his cliff and his clouds, and hops taining, a cheerful companion and a trusty among the gooseberry bushes-the dolphin has guide. degenerated into a land tortoise-without dan- We shall suppose that you have left Kendal, ger now might a very child take the bull by the and are on your way to Bowness. Forget, as horns-and though something of a lion still, much as may be, all worldly cares and anxieour roar is like that of the nightingale, "most ties, and let your hearts be open and free to all musical, most melancholy"-and, as we attempt genial impulses about to be breathed into them to shake our mane, your grandmother-fair pe- from the beautiful and sublime in nature. ruser-cannot choose but weep. There is no need of that foolish state of feeling It speaks folios in favour of our philanthropy, called enthusiasm. You have but to be happy; to know that, in our own imprisonment, we and by and by your happiness will grow into.ove to see all life free as air. Would that by delight. The blue mountains already set your a word of ours we could clothe all human imaginations at work; among those clouds and shoulders with wings! would that by a word mists you fancy many a magnificent preciof ours we could plume all human spirits pice-and in the valleys that sleep below you with thoughts strong as the eagle's pinions, image to yourselves the scenery of rivers and that they might winnow their way into the lakes. The landscape immediately around graempyrean! Tories! Yes! we are Tories. dually grows more and more picturesque and our faith is in the Divine right of kings-but romantic; and you feel that you are on the easy, my boys, easy —all free men are kings, very borders of Fairy-Land. The first smile and they hold their empire from heaven. That of Windermere salutes your impatient eyes, is our political-philosophical-moral-reli- and sinks silently into your heart. You know gious creed. In its spirit we have lived- not how beautiful it may be —nor yet in what and in its spirit we hope to die-not on the the beauty consists; but your finest sensibilities scaffold like Sidney —no-no-no-not by to nature are touched-and a tinge of poetry, as any manner of means rike Sidr.ey on the from a rainbow, overspreads that cluster of A DAY AT WINDERMERE. 57 islands that seems to woo y Ju to their still re- bearing down to windward-for the morning treats. And now breeze is born-many a tiny sail. It has the "Wooded Winandermere, the river-lake," appearance of a race. Yes-it is a race; and with all its bays and promontories, lies in the the Liverpoolian, as of yore, is eating them all morning light serene as a Sabbath, and cheer- out of the wind, and without another tack will ftl as a Holyday; and you feel that there is make her anchorage. But hark-Music!'Tis loveliness on this earth more exquisite and the Bowness Band playing "See the conquer. perfect than ever visited your slumbers even ing Hero comes!" —and our old friend has in the glimpses of a dream. The first sight of carried away the gold cup from all competisuch a scene will be unforgotten to your dying tors. day-for such passive impressions are deeper Now turn your faces up the hill above the than we can cxplain-our whole spiritual being village school. That green mount is what is is suddenly awakened to receive them-and called a-Station. The villagers are admiring associations, swift as light, are gathered into a grove of parasols, while you-the party-are one Emotion of Beauty which shall be imperish- admiring the village-with its irregular roofs able, and which, often as memory recalls that white, blue, gray, green, brown, and black moment, grows into genius, and vents itself in walls- fruit-laden trees so yellow-its central appropriate expressions, each in itself a picture. church-tower-and environing groves variously Thus may one moment minister to years; and burnished by autumn. Saw ye ever banks and the life-wearied heart of old age by one delight- braes and knolls so beautifully bedropt with ful remembrance be restored to primal joy- human dwellings? There is no solitude about the glory ol the past brought beamingly upon Windermere. Shame on human nature were the faded present-and the world that is ob- Paradise uninhabited! Here, in amicable scurely passing away from our eyes re-illu- neighbourhood, are halls and huts-here rises mined with the visions of its earlymorn. The. through groves the dome of the rich man's shows of nature are indeed evanscent, but their mansion-and there the low roof of the poor spiritual influences are immortal; and from that man's cottage beneath its one single sycagrove now glowing in the sunlight may your more! Here are hundreds of small properties heart derive a delight that shall utterly perish hereditary in the same families for hundrt ds but in the grave. of years-and never, never, 0 WestmorelanId! But now you are in the White Lion, and our may thy race of statesmen be extinct-nor the advice to you —perhaps unnecessary —is im- virtues that ennoble their humble households! mediately to order breakfast. There are many See, suddenly brought forth by sunshine from parlours-some with a charming prospect and among the old woods-and then sinking away some with6ut any prospect at all; butremember into her usual unobtrusive serenity-the lake. that there are other people in the world besides loving Rayrig, almost level, so it seems, with yourselves —and therefore, into whatever par- the water, yet smiling over her own quiet bay lour you may be shown by a pretty maid, be con- from the grove-shelter of her pastoral mound. tented, and lose no time in addressingyourselves Within her walls may peace ever dwell with to your repast. That over, be in no hurry to get piety-and the light of science long blend with on the Lake. Perhaps all the boats are engaged the lustre of the domestic hearth. Thence to — andBillyBalmeris attheWaterhead. Sostroll Calgarth is all one forest-yet glade-broken, into the churchyard, and take a glance over the and enlivened by open uplands; so that the graves. Close to the oriel-window of the church roamer, while he expects a night of umbrage, is one tomb over which one might meditate often finds himself in the open day, beneath half an autumnal day. Enter the church, and the bright blue bow of heaven haply without a you will feel the beauty of these fine lines in cloud. The eye travels delighted over the the Excursion- multitudinous tree-tops-often dense as one " Not raised in nice proportions was the pile, single tree —till it rests, in sublime satisfaction, But large and massy; for duralion built; But large and massy; for duration built * on the far-off mountains, that lose not a woody With pillars crowded, and the roof upheld character till the tree-sprinkled pastures. By naked rafters intricately cross'd roughen into rocks-and rocks tower into preLike leafless underboughs,'mid some thick grove, cipices where the falcons breed. But the lake All wither'd by the depth of shade above!", cipices where the falcons breed. But the lake will not suffer the eye long to wander among Go down to the low terrace-walk along the the distant glooms. She wins us wholly to Bay. The Bay is in itself a Lake, at all times herself-and restlessly and passionately for a cheerful with its scattered fleet, at anchor or while, but calmly and affectionately at last, the under weigh —its villas and cottages, each re- heart embraces all her beauty, and wishes joicing in its garden or orchard —its meadows that the vision might endure for ever, and that mellowing to the reedy margin of the pellucid here our tents were pitched-to be struck nc water-its heath-covered boat-houses-its own more during our earthly pilgrimage. Imaginaportion of the Isle called Beautiful-and be- tion lapses into a-thousand moods. Oh for a yond that silvan haunt, the sweet Furness fairy pinnace to glide and float for aye over Fells, with gentle outline undulating in the those golden waves! A hermit-cell on sweet sky, and among its spiral larches showing, Lady-Holm! A silvan shieling on Loughrig here and there, groves and copses of the old side! A nest in that nameless dell, which unviolated woods. Yes, Bowness-Bay is in sees but one small slip of heaven, and longs at itself a Lake; but how finely does it blend night for the reascending visit of its few loving away, through its screens of oak and syca- stars! A dwelling open to all the skyey inmore-trees, into a larger Lake-another, yet fluence on the mountain-brow, the darling of the same-oa whose blue bosom you see the rising or the setting sun, and often seen bv 7 093 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. eyes in the lower world glittering through the Therefore " row, vassals, row, for the prede rainbow! of the Lowlands;" and as rowing is a thirsty All this seems a very imperfect picture in- exercise, let us land at the Ferry, and each deed, or panorama of Windermere, from the man refresh himself with a horn of ale. hill behind the school-house in the village of There is not a prettier place on all Winder. Bowness. So, to put a stop to such nonsense, mere than the Ferry-House, or one better let us descend to the White Lion-and inquire adapted for a honey-moon. You can hand about Billy Balmer. Honest Billy has arrived your bride into a boat almost out of the parlour from Waterhead-seems tolerably steady-Mr. window, and be off among the islands in a UIllock's boats may be trusted-so let us take moment, or into nook or bay where no prying a voyage of discovery on the Lake. Let those eye, even through telescope, (a most unwarwho have reason to think that they have been rantable instrument,) can overlook your happiborn to die a different death from drowning, ness; or you can secrete yourselves, like buck' hoist a sail. We to-day shall feather an oar. and doe, among the lady-fern on Furness Fells, Billy takes the stroke-Mr. William Garnet's where not a sunbeam can intrude on your at the helm-and "row, vassals, row, for the sacred privacy, and where you may melt down pride of the Lowlands," is the choral song that hours to moments, in chaste connubial bliss, accompanies the Naiad out of the bay, and brightening futurity with plans of domestic round the north end of the Isle called Beauti- enjoyment, like long lines of lustre streaming ful, under the wrave-darkening umbrage of that across the lake. But at present, let us visit ancient oak. And now we are in the lovely the fort-looking building among the cliffs called straits between that Island and the mainland The Station, and see how Windermere looks of Furness Fells. The village has disappeared, as we front the east. Why, you would not but not melted away; for hark! the Church- know it to be the same lake. The Isle called tower tolls ten-and see the sun is high in Beautiful, which heretofore had scarcely heaven. High, but not hot-for the first Sep- seemed an isle, appearing to belong to one or tember frosts chilled the rosy fingers of the other shore of the mainland, from this point of morn as she bathed them in the dews, and the view is an isle indeed, loading the lake with a air is cool as a cucumber. Cool but bland- weight of beauty, and giving it an ineffable and as clear and transparent as a fine eye character of richness which nowhere else does lighted up by a good conscience. There were it possess; while the other lesser isles, dropt breezes in Bowness Bay-but here there are "in nature's careless haste" between it and none-or, if there be, they but whisper aloft in the Furness Fells, connect it still with those the tree-tops, and ruffle not the water, which is lovely shores from which it floats a short way calm as Louisa's breast. The small isles here apart, without being disunited-one spirit are but few in number-yet the best arithme- blending the whole together within the comtician of the party cannot count them-in con- pass of a fledgling's flight. Beyond these fusion so rich and rare do they blend their "Sister isles, that smile shadows with those of the groves on the Isle Together like a happy family called Beautiful, and on the Furness Fells. A Of beauty and of love," tide,, imperceptible to the eye, drifts us on the eye meets the Rayrig-woods, with but a among and above those beautiful reflections2- gleam of water between, only visible in sunthat downward world of hanging dreams! and shine, and is gently conducted by them up the ever and anon we beckon unto Billy gently to hills of Applethwaite, diversified with cultidip his oar, that we may see a world destroyed vated enclosures, "all green as emerald" to and recreated in one moment of time. Yes, their very summits, with all their pastoral and Billy! thou art a poet-and canst work more arable grounds besprinkled with stately single wonders with thin; oar than could he with his trees, copses, or groves. On the nearer side pen who painted "heavenly Una with her of these hills is seen, stretching far off to other milk-white lamb," wandering by herself in lofty regions-Hill-bell and High Street conFairy-Land. How is it, pray, that our souls spicuous over the rest-the long vale of Troutare satiated with such beauty as this? Is it beck, with its picturesque cottages, in "numbecause'tis unsilbstantial all —senseless, bers without number numberless," and all its though fair-and in its evanescence unsuited sable pines and sycamores-on the further to the sympathies that yearn for the permanen- side, that most silvan of all silvan mountains, cies of breathing life? Dreams are delightful where lately the Hemans warbled her native only as delusions within the delusion of this wood-notes wild in her poetic bower, fitly callour mortal waking existence —one touch of ed Dovenest, and beyond, Kirkstone Fells and what we call reality dissolves them all; bliss- Rydal Head, magnificent giants looking westful though they may have been, we care not ward to the Langdale Pikes, (here unseen,) when the bubble bursts- nay, we are glad'The last that parley with the setting sun." again to return to our own natural world, care- Immediately in front, the hills are low and haunted though in its happiest moods it be- lovely, sloping with gentle undulations down glad as if we had escaped from glamoury; to the lake, here grove-girdled along all its and, oh! beyond expression sweet it is once shores. The elm-grove that overshadows the more to drink the light of living eyes-the Parsonage is especially conspicuous-stately music of living lips-after that preternatural and solemn in a green old age —and though hush that steeps the shadowy realms of the now silent, in spring and early summer clamor imagination, whether stretching along a sun- ous with rooks, in love or alarm, an ancient set-heaven, or the mystical imagery of earth family, and not to be expelled from their heredi. and sky floating in the lustre of lake or sea. tary seats. Following the line of shore to the A DAY AT WINDERMERE. 99 right, and turning your eyes unwillingly away were set upon a sublunary table, the facik from the bright and breezy Belfield, they fall principes are the dinner-lunches you may de. on the elegant architecture of Storr's-hall, vour in the White Lion, Bowness. Take a gleaming from a glade in the thick woods, and walk-and a seat on the green that overlooks still looking southward they see a serene series the village, almost on a level with the lead. of the same forest scenery, along the heights roof of the venerable church-while Hebe is of Gillhead and Gummer's-How, till Winder- laying the cloth for a repast fit for Jove, Juno, mere is lost, apparently narrowed into a river, and the other heathen gods and goddesses; and beyond Townhead and Fellfoot, where the if you must have politics-why, call for the prospect is closed by a beaconed eminence Standard or Sun, (Heavens! there is that hawk clothed with shadowy trees to the very base already at the Times,) and devote a few hurof the Tower. The points and promontories ried and hungry minutes to the French Revolujutting into the lake from these and the oppo- tion. Why, the Green of all Greens —often site shores-which are of an humbler, though traced by us of yore beneath the midnight not tame character-are all placed most felici- moonlight, till a path was worn along the edge tously; and as the lights and shadows keep of the low wall; still called "North's Walk"shifting on the water, assume endless varieties is absolutely converted into a reading-room, of relative position to the eye, so that often and our laking party into a political club. during one short hour you might think you There is Louisa with the Leeds Intelligencerhad been gazingon Windermere witha kaleido- and Matilda with the Morning Herald-and scopical eye, that had seemed to create the Harriet with that York paper worth them all beauty which in good truth is floating there put together-for it tells of Priam, and the for ever on the bosom of nature. Cardinal, and St. Nicholas-but, hark! a soft That description, perhaps, is not so very footstep! And then a soft voice-no dialect much amiss; but should you think otherwise, or accent pleasanter than the Westmoreland be so good as to give us a better: meanwhile — whispers that the dinner-lunch is on the let us descend from The Station-and its table-and no leading article like acold round stained windows-stained into setting sunlight of beef, or a veal-pie. Let the Parisians settle — frost and snow-the purpling autumn-and their Constitution as they will-meanwhile let the first faint vernal green-and re-embark at us strengthen ours; and after a single glass of the Ferry-House pier. Berkshire Island is Madeira-and a horn of home-brewed-let us fair-but we have always looked at it with an off on foot-on horseback-in gig-car and evil eye since unable to weather it in our old chariot-to Troutbeck. schooner, one day when the Victory, on the It is about a Scottish mile, we'should think, same tack, shot by us to windward like a from Bowness to Cook's HIouse-along the salmon. But now we are half way between turnpike road-half the distance lying embowStorr's Point and Rawlinson's Nab-so, my ered in the Rayrig woods-and half open to dear Garnet, down with the helm and let us lake, cloud, and sky. It is pleasant to lose put about (who is that catching crabs?) for a sight now and then of the lake along whose fine front view of the Grecian edifice. It does banks you are travelling, especially if during honour to the genius of Gaddy-and say what separation you become a Druid. The water people choose of a classic clime, the light of a woos you at your return with her bluest smile, Westmoreland sky falls beautifully on that and her whitest murmur. Some of the finest marble-like stone, which, whether the heavens trees in all the Rayrig woods have had the be in gloom or glory, " shines well where it good sense to grow by the roadside, where they stands," and flings across the lake a majestic can see all that is passing, and make their own shadow. Methought there passed along the observations on us deciduous plants. Few of lawn the image of one now in his tomb! The them seem to be very old- not much older memory of that bright day returns, when Win- than Christopher North-and, like him, they dermere glittered with all her sails in honour wear well, trunk sound to the core, arms with of the great Northern Minstrel, and of him the a long sweep, and head in fine proportions of Eloquent, whose lips are now mute in the dust. cerebral development, fortified against all Methinks we see his smile benign-that we storms-perfect pictures of oaks in their prime. hear his voice silver-sweet! You may see one-without looking for it-near "But away with melancholy, a farm-house called Miller-ground-himself a Nor doleful changes ring"- grove. His trunk is clothed in a tunic of ns such thoughts came like shadows, like moss, which shows the ancient Sylvan to great hadows let them depart-and spite of that advantage-and it would be no easy matter to which happeneth to all men —" this one day we give him a fall. Should you wish to see give to merriment." Pull, Billy, pull-or we Windermere in all her glory, you have but to will turn you round-and in that case there is enter a gate a few yards on this side of his no refreshment nearer than Newby-bridge. shade, and ascend an eminence called by us The Naiad feels the invigorated impulse-and Greenbank-but you had as well leave your her cut-water murmurs to the tune of six knots red mantle in the carriage, for an enormous through the tiny cataract foaming round her white, long-horned Lancashire bull has for bows. The woods are all running down the some years established his head-quarters not:ake,-and at that rate, by two post meridiem far off, and you would not wish your wife to will be in the sea. become a widow, with six fatherless childrenD. Commend us-on a tour-to lunch and din- But the royal road of poetry is often the most ner in one.'Tis a saving both of time and splendid-and by keeping the turnpike, you money-and of all the dinner-lunches that ever soon find yourself on -a wterrace to which there 100 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. was nothing to cc mpare in the hanging gar- — and some perpendicular walls. The outllres dens of Babylon. There is the widest breadth of the mountains here have no specific cha. of water-the richest foreground of wood-and racter. That bridge is but a poor feature-and the most magnificent background of mountains the stream here very common-place. Put them -not only in Westmoreland but-believe us — not on paper. Yet alive-is not the secluded in all the world. That blue roof is Calgarth — scene felt to be most beautiful? It has a soul. and no traveller ever pauses on this brow The pure spirit of the pastoral age is breathing without giving it a blessing-for the sake of here-in this utter noislessness there is the the illustrious dead; for there long dwelt in oblivion of all turmoil; and as the bleating of the body Richard Watson, the Defender of the flocks comes on the ear, along the fine air, Faith, and there within the shadow of his me- from the green pastures of the Kenwmere mory still dwell those dearest on earth to his range of soft undulating hills, the stilled( nearl beatified spirit. So pass along in high and whispers to itself, "this is peace!" solemn thought, till you lose sight of Calgarth The worst of it is, that of all people that on in the lone road that leads by St. Catharines, earth do dwell, your Troutbeck statesmen, we and then relapse into pleasant fancies and have heard, are the most litigious-the most picturesque dreams. This is the best way by quarrelsome about straws. Not a footpath in far of approaching Troutbeck. No ups and all the parish that has not cost many pounds downs in this life were ever more enlivening in lawsuits. The most insignificant stile is -not even the ups and downs of a bird learn- referred to a full bench of magistrates. That ing to fly. Sheep-fences, six feet high, are ad- gate was carried to the Quarter Sessions. No mirable contrivances for shutting out scenery; branch of a tree can shoot six inches over a and by shutting out much scenery, why, you march-wall without being indicted for a tresconfer an unappreciable value on the little that pass. And should a frost-loosened stone tumble remains visible, and feel as if you could hug from some sskrees down upon a neighbour's it to your heart. But sometimes one does feel field, he will be served with a notice to quit tempted to shove down a few roods of inter- before next morning. Many of the small procepting stone-wall higher than the horse-hair perties hereabouts have been mortgaged over on a cuirassier's casque-though sheep should head and ears mainly to fee attorneys. Yet eat the suckers and scions, protected as'they the last hoop of apples will go the same roadthere shoot, at the price of the concealment of and the statesman, driven at last from his pathe picturesque and the poetical from beauty- ternal fields, will sue for something or another searching eyes. That is a long lane, it is in form& paYperis, were it but the worthless said,'which'has never a turning; so this must wood and second-hand nails that may be desbe a short one, which has a hundred. You tined for his coffin. This is a pretty picture have turned your back on Winderimere-and of pastoral life-but we must take pastoral our advice to you is, to keep your face to the life as we find it. Nor have we any doubt that mountains. Troutbeck is a jewel-a diamond things were every whit as bad in the time of of a stream-but Bobbin Mills have exhausted the Patriarchs-else-whence the satirical some of the most lustrous pools, changing sneer, "sham Abraham?" Yonder is the them into shallows, where the minnows rove. Village straggling away up along the hillside, Deep dells are hisdelight-and he loves the till the furthest house seems a rock fallen with rugged scaurs that intrench his wooded banks trees from the mountain. The cottages stand -and the fantastic rocks that tower-like hang for the most part in clusters of twos or threesat intervals over his winding course, and with here and there what in Scotland we seem sometimes to block it up; but the miner should call a clachan-many a sma' toun withworks his way out beneath galleries and arches in the ae lang toun; but where in all braid in the living stone-sometimes silent-some- Scotland is a mile-long scattered congregation times singing-and sometimes roaring like of rural dwellings, all dropt down where the thunder-till subsiding into a placid spirit, ere Painter and the Poet would have wished to he reaches the wooden bridge in the bonny plant them, on knolls and in dells, and on holms of Calgarth, he glides graceful as the banks and braes, and below tree-crested rocks, swan that sometimes sees his image in his and all bound together in picturesque confubreast, and through alder and willow banks sion by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamore, murmurs away his life in the Lake. and by flower-gardens and fruit-orchards, rich.Yes-that is Troutbeck Chapel-one of the as those of the Hesperides? smallest-and to our eyes the very simplest- If you have no objections-our pretty dears of all the chapels among the hills. Yet will it -we shall return to Bowness by Lowood. Let be remembered when more pretending edifices us form a straggling line of march-so that we are forgotten —just like some mild, sensible, may one and all indulge in olur own silent but perhaps somewhat too silent person, whose fancies —and let not a word be spoken, virgins acquaintanceship-nay friendship —we feel a -under the penalty of two kisses for one sylwish to cultivate we scarce know why, except ]able-till we crown the height above Briarythat he is mild, sensible, and silent; whereas Close. Why, there it is already-and we hear we would not be civil to the brusque, upsetting, our musical friend's voice-accompanied'guitar. and loquacious puppy at his elbow, whose From the front of his cottage, the head and information is as various as it is profound, shoulders of Windermere are seen in their were one word or look of courtesy to save most majestic shape-and from nowhere else him from the flames. For heaven's sake, is the long-withdrawing Langdale so magnifiLousia, don't sketch Troutbeck Chapel. There cently closed by mountains. There at sunset is nothingbut a squafe twer-ahorizontalroof hangs "Cloud-land, gorgeous land," by gazing A DAY AT WINDERMERE. 101 on wiich for an hour we shall all become poets familiar yet inscrutable mystery, to our senses and poetesses. Who said that Windermere and our souls express sanctity and purity of was too narrow? The same critic who thinks the immortal essence enshrined within, by aid the full harvest moon too round-and despises of all associated perceptions and emotions the twinkling of the evening star. It is all the that the heart and the imagination can agglo. way down-from head to foot-from the Bra- merate round them, as instantly and as unhesithay to the Leven-of the proper breadth pre- tatingly as the faculties of thought and feeling cisely-to a quarter of an inch. Were the can agglomerate round a lily or a rose, for reeds in Poolwyke Bay-on which the birds example, the perceptions and emotions that love to balance themselves-at low or high make them —by divine right of inalienable water, to be visible longer or shorter than beauty-the Royal Families of Flowers. This what they have always been in the habit of definition-or description rather-of human being on such occasions since first we brushed female beauty, may appear to some, as indeed them with an oar, when landing in our skiff it appears to us-something vague; but all from the Endeavour, the beauty of the whole profound truths-out of the exact sciencesof Windermere would be impaired-so exqui- are something vague; and it is manifestly the sitely adapted is that pellucid gleam to the design of a benign and gracious Providence, lips of its silvan shores. True, there are flaws that they should be so till the end of time-till in the diamond-but only when the squalls mortality puts on immortality-and earth is come; and as the blackness sweeps by, that heaven. Vagueness, therefore, is no fault in diamond of the first water is again sky-bright philosophy-any more than in the dawn of and sky-blue as an angel's eyes. Lowood Bay morning, or the gloaming of eve. Enough, if -we are now embarked in Mr. Jackson's pret- each clause of the sentence that seeks to elucitiest pinnace-when the sun is westering- date a confessed mystery, has a meaning barwhich it now is-surpasses all other bays in monious with all the meanings in all the other fresh-water mediterraneans. Eve loves to clauses-and that the effect of the whole taken see her pensive face reflected in that serenest together is musical-and a tune. Then it is mirror. To flatter such a divinity is impossi- Truth. For all Falsehood is dissonant-and ble-but sure she never wears a smile so di- verity is concent. It is our faith, that the souls vine as when adjusting her dusky tresses in of some women are angelic-or nearly so — that truest of all glasses, set in the richest of by nature and the Christian religion; and that all frames. Pleased she retires-with a wa- the faces and persons of some women are anvering motion-and casting "many a longing, gelic or nearly so-whose souls, nevertheless, lingering look behind," fades indistinctly away are seen to be far otherwise-and, on that discoamong the Brathay woods; while Night, her very, beauty fades or dies. But may not soul eldest sister, or rather her younger-we really and body-spirit and matter-meet in perfect know not which-takes her place at the dark- union at birth; and grow together into a creaening mirror, till it glitters with her crescent- ture, though of spiritual mould, comparable moon-coronet, wreathed perhaps with a white with Eve before the Fall? Such a creaturecloud, and just over the silver bow the lustre such creatures-may have been; but the quesof one large yellow star. tion is-did you ever see one. We almost As none of the party complain of hunger, think that we have-but many long years ago; let us crack among us a single bottle of our "She is dedde, worthy host's choice old Madeira-and then Gone to her death-bedde haste in the barouche (ha! here it is) to Bow- All under the willow tree.' ness. It is right now to laugh-and sing-and And it may be that her image in the moonlight recite poetry-and talk all manner of nonsense. of memory and imagination, may be more perDidn't ye hear something crack? Can it be a fectly beautiful than she herself ever was, spring-or merely the axeltree? Our clerical when friendfrom Chester assures us'twas but a string "Upgrew that living flower beneath our eye." of his guitar-so no more shrieking-and after Yes-'tis thus that we form to ourselves-in. coffee we shall have communicably within our souls-what we "Rise up, rise up, Xarifa, lay your golden cushion down!" choose to call Ideal Beauty-that is, a life-inAnd then we two, my dear sir, must have a death image or Eidolon of a Being whose voice contest at chess-at which, if you beat us, we was once heard, and whose footsteps once sa.a_ leave our bed at midnight, and murder wandered among the flowers of this earth. But you in your sleep. " But where," murmurs it is a mistake to believe that such beauty as Matilda, "are we going?" To Oresthead, love this can visit the soul only after the original -and Elleray-for you must see a sight these in which it once breathed is no more. For sweet eyes of thine never saw before-a as it can only be seen by profoundest passion SUNSET. -and the profoundest are the passions of Love, We have often wondered if there be in the and Pity, and Grief-then why may not each world one woman indisputably and undeniably and all of these passions —when we consider the most beautiful of all women-or if, indeed, the constitution of this world and this life-be our first mother were "the loveliest of her awakened in their utmost height and depth by daughters, Eve." What humanfemale beauty the sight of living beauty, as well as by the is, all men feel-but few men know-and none memory of the dead? To do so is surely can tell-further than that it is perfect spiritual within "the reachings of our souls,"- -and if health, breathingly imbodied in perfect corpore- so, then may the virgin beauty of his daughter, alflesh and blood, according to certain heaven- praying with folded hands and heavenward framed adaptions of form and hue, yet by a face when leaning in health on her fathe's 102 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. knees, transcend even the ideal beauty which the western sky, keeps fading away as it fades, shall afterwards visit his slumbers nightly, till at last all the ineffable splendour expires, long years after he has laid her head in the and the spirit that has been lost to this world in grave. If by ideal beauty, you mean a beauty the transcendent vision, or has been seeing alt beyond whatever breathed, and moved, and things appertaining to this world in visionary had its being on earth-then we suspect that symbols, returns from that celestial sojourn, not even " that inner eye which is -the bliss of and knows that its lot is, henceforth as heretosolitude" ever beheld it: but if you merely fore,to walkweariedly perhaps, and wo-begone, mean by ideal beauty, that which is composed over the no longer divine but disenchanted of ideas, and of the feelings attached by nature earth! to ideas, then, begging your pardon, my good It is very kind in the moon and stars-just sir, all beauty whatever is ideal-and you had like them-to rise so soon after sunset. The better begin to study metaphysics. heart sinks at the sight of the sky, when a chaBut what we were wishing to say is this- racterless night succeeds such a blaze of light that whatever may be the truth with regard to -like dull reality dashing the last vestiges of human female beauty-Windermere, seen by the brightest of dreams. When the moon is sunset from the spot where we now stand, "hid in her vacant interlunar cave," and not a Elleray, is at this moment the most beautiful star can " burst its cerements," imagination in scene on this earth. The reasons why it must the dim blank droops her wings-our thoughts be so are multitudinous. Not only can the eye become of the earth earthly-and poetry seems take in, but the imagination, in its awakened a pastime fit but for fools and children. But power, can master all the component elements how different our mood, when of the spectacle-and while it adequately dis- "Glows the firmament with living sapphires," cerns and sufficiently feels the influence of and Diana, who has ascended high in heaven, each, is alive throughout all its essence to the without our having once observed the divinity, divine agency of the whole. The charm lies bends her silver bow among the rejoicing stars, in its entirety —its unity, which is so perfect- while the lake, like another sky, seems to conso seemeth it to our eyes-that'tis in itself a tain its own luminaries, a different division of complete world-of which not a line could be the constellated night!'Tis merry Winderaltered without disturbing the spirit of beauty mere no more. Yet we must not call her methat lies recumbent there, wherever the earth lancholy-though somewhat sad she seems, meets the sky. There is nothing here frag- and pensive, as if the stillness of universal namentary; and had a poet been born, and bred ture did touch her heart. How serene all the here all his days, nor known aught of fair or lights-how peaceful all the shadows! Steadgrand beyond this liquid vale, yet had he sung fast alike-as if they would brood for evertruly and profoundly of the shows of nature. yet transient as all loveliness-and at the No rude and shapeless masses of mountains mercy of every cloud. In some places the -such as too often in our own dear Scotland lake has disappeared-in others, the moonlight encumber the earth with dreary desolation- is almost like sunshine-only silver instead of with gloom without grandeur-and magnitude gold. Here spots of quiet light-there lines of without magnificence. But almost in orderly trembling lustre-and there a flood of radiance array, and irregular just up to the point of the chequered by the images of trees. Lo! the picturesque, where poetry is not needed for the Isle called Beautiful has now gathered upon fancy's pleasure, stand the Race of Giants- its central grove all the radiance issuing from mist-veiled transparently-or crowned with that celestial Urn; and almost in another moclouds slowly settling of their own accord into ment it seems blended with the dim mass of all the forms that Beauty loves, when with her mainland, and blackness enshrouds the woods. sister-spirit Peace she descends at eve from Still as seems the night to unobservant eyes, it highest heaven to sleep among the shades of is fluctuating in its expression as the face of a earth. sleeper overspread with pleasant but disturbSweet would be the hush of lake, woods, and ing dreams. Never for any two successive skies, were it not so solemn! The silence is moments is the aspect of the night the same,that of a temple, and, as we face the west, irre- each smile has its own meaning, its own chasistibly are we led to adore. The mighty sun racter; and Light is felt to be like Music, to occupies with his flaming retinue all the re- have a melody and a harmony of its own-so gion. Mighty yet mild-for from his disc, mysteriously allied are the powers and proa while insufferably bright, is effused now a vinces of eye and ear, and by such a kindred gentle crimson light, that dyes all the west in and congenial agency do they administer to one uniform glory, save where yet round the the workings of the spirit. cloud edges lingers the purple, the green, and Well, that is very extraordinary-Rainthe yellow lustre, unwilling to forsake the rain —rain! All the eyes of heaven were violet beds of the sky, changing, while we bright as bright might be-the sky was blue gaze, into heavenly roses; till that prevailing as violets-that braided whiteness, that here crimson colour at last gains entire possession and there floated like a veil on the brow of of the heavens, and all the previous splendour night, was all that recalled the memory of gives way toone whose paramount purity, lus- clouds-and as for the moon, no faintest halo trous as fire, is in its steadfast beauty sublime. yellowed round her orb, that seemed indeed And. lo! the lake has received that sunset into "one perfect chrysolite;"-yet while all the its bosom. It, too, softly burns with a crimson winds seemed laid asleep till morn, and beauty glow-and, as sinks the sun below the moun- to have chained all the elements into peacetains Windermere, gorgeous in her array as overcast in a moment is the firmament-an THE MOORS. 103 etanishmg has left it blank as mist-there is shows the long lake-shore all tumbling with a fast, thick, attering on the woods-yes- foamy breakers. A strong wind is there-but rain-rain-rain-and ere we reach Bowness, here there is not a breath. But the woods the party will be wet through to their skins. across the lake are bowing their heads to the Nay-matters are getting still more serious- blast. Windermere is in a tumult-the storm for there was lightning —yea, lightning! Ten comes flying on wings all abroad-and now we seconds! and hark, very respectable thunder! are in the very heart of the hurricane. See, in With all our wisdom, we have not been wea- Bowness is hurrying many a light-for the ther-wise-or we should have known, when people fear we may be on the lake; and faithwe saw it, an electrical sunset. Only look ful Billy, depend on't, is launching his life-boat now towards the West. There floats Noah's to go to our assistance. Well, this is an ad. Ark-a magnificent spectacle; and now for venture.-But soft-what ails our Argand the Flood. That far-off sullen sound proclaims Lamp! Our Study is in such darkness that cataracts. And what may mean that sighing we. cannot see our paper-in the midst of a and muaning and muttering up among the thunder-storm we conclude, and to bed by a cliffs. See-see how the sheet lightning flaff of lightning. THE MOORS. tesque and fantastic ash, with a crooked back, and arms disproportionately long, like a giant OxCE we knew the Highlands absolutely too in extreme old age dwindling into a dwarf, to well-not a nook that was not as familiar to us jut out from the hole in the wall, and should as our brown study. We had not to complain your leaden eye chance at the time to love the of the lochs, glens, woods, and mountains ground, to put his mossy fist right in your phi. alone, for having so fastened themselves upon losophical countenance! In short, it is very us on a great scale that we found it impossible possible to know a country so thoroughly well, to shake them off; but the hardship in our outside and in, from mountain to molehill, that case was, that all the subordinate parts of the you get mutually tired of one another's conmscenery, many of them dull and dreary enough, pany, and are ready to vent your quarrel in reand some of them intolerably tedious, had ciprocal imprecations. taken it upon themselves so to thrust their in- So was it once with us and the Highlands. timacy upon us, in all winds and weathers, that That "too much familiarity breeds contempt" without giving them the cut direct there was we learned many a long year ago, when learnno way of escaping from the burden of their ing to write large text; and passages in our friendship. To courteous and humane Chris- life have been a running commentary on the tians, such as we have always been both by theme then set us by that incomparable caliname and nature as far back as we can recol- graphist, Butterworth. All "the old familiar lect, it is painful to cut even an impudent faces" occasionally come in for a portion of stone, or an upsetting tree that may cross our that feeling; and on that account, we are glad path uncalled for, or obtrude itself on our that we saw, but for one day and one night, privacy when we wish to be alone in our me- Charles Lamb's. Therefore, some dozen years ditations. Yet, we confess, they used some- ago we gave up the Highlands, not wishing to times sorely to try our temper. It is all very quarrel with them, and confined our tender aswell for you, our good sir, to say in excuse for siduities to the Lowlands, while, like two great them that such objects are inanimate. So Flats as we were, we kept staring away at each much the worse. Were they animate, like other, with our lives on the same level. All yourself, they might be reasoned with on the the consequences that might naturally have impropriety of interrupting the stream of any been expected have ensued; and we are now man's soliloquies. But being not merely in- as heartily sick of the Lowlands, and they of animate but irrational, objects of that class us. What can we do but return to our First know not to keep their own place, which in- Love deed, it may be said in reply, is kept for them Allow us to offer another view of the sub. by nature. But that Mistress of the Ceremo- ject. There is not about Old Age one blessing nies, though enjoying a fine green old age, more deserving gratitude to Heaven, than the cannot be expected to be equally attentive to gradual bedimming of memory brought on iy the proceedings of all the objects under her years. In youth, all things, internal and extercontrol. Accordingly, often when she is not nal, are unforgetable, and by the perpetual looking, what more common than for a huge presence of passion oppress the soul. The hulking fellow of a rock, with an absurd tuft eye of a woman haunts the victim on whom of trees on his head, who has observed you it may have given a glance, till he leaps per lying half-asleep on the greensward, to hang haps out of a four-story window. A beautiful eavesdropping, as it were, over your most lake, or a sublime mountain, drives a young secret thoughts, which he whispers to the winds, poet as mad as a March hare. He loses him and they to all the clouds! Or for some gro- self in an interminable forest louring all round 104 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER _\NORTH; the horizo;n ~a a garret six feet square. It happy that our dim memory and our dim ima matters not to him whether his eyes be open gination restore and revive in our mind none or shut. Ile is at the mercy of all Life and all but the characteristic features of the scenery Nature, and not for one ]hour can he escape of the Highlands, unmixed with baser matter, from their persecutions. His soul is the slave and all floating magnificently through a spiritof the Seven Senses, and each is a tyrant with ual haze, so that the whole region is now more instruments of torture, to whom and to which than ever idealized; and in spite of all his Phalaris, with his brazen bull, was a pointless present, past, and future prosiness-Christojoke. But in old age " the heart of a man is pher NErth, soon as in thought his feet touch oppressed with care" no longer; the Seven the heather, becomes a poet. Tyrants have lost their sceptres, and are de- It has long been well known to the whole throned; and the grayheaded gentleman feels world that we are a sad egotist —yet our egothat his soul has " set up its rest." His eyes tism, so far from being a detraction from our are dazzled no more with insufferable light- attraction, seems to be the very soul of it, no more his ears tingle with music too exqui- making it impossible in nature for any reason. site to be borne-no more his touch is trans- able being to come within its sphere, without port. The scents of nature, stealing from the being drawn by sweet compulsion to the old balmy mouths of lilies and roses, are deadened wizard's heart. He is so humane! Only look in his nostrils. He is above and beyond the at him for a few minutes, and Eking becomes reach of all the long arms of many-handed love-love becomes veneration. And all this misery, as he is out of the convulsive clutch even before he has opened his lips-by the of bliss. And is not this the state of best hap- mere power of his ogles and his temples. In piness for mortal man? Tranquillity! The his large mild blue eyes is written not only his peaceful air that we breathe as we are wester- nature, but miraculously, in German text, his ing towards the suns&t-regions of our Being, eryv name, tf)riBtopltcr eotrt~. Mrs. Gentle and feel that we are about to drop down for was the first to discover it; though we rememever out of sight behind the Sacred Mountains. ber having been asked more than once in our All this may be very fine, but cannot be said youth, by an alarmed virgin on whom we to help us far on with our Prologue. Let us happened at the time to be looking tender, "If try it again. Old men, we remarked, ought to we were aware that there was something prebe thankful to Heaven for their dim memories. ternatural in our eyes!"? GIjr' teopct is conNever do we feel that more profoundly than spicuous in our right eye —Dort[t in our left, when dreatning about the Highlands. All is and when we wish to be incog., we either draw confusion. Nothing distinctly do we remember their fringed curtains, or, nunlike, keep the -not even the names of lochs and mountains. tell-tale orbs fixed on the ground. Candour Where is Ben Cru —Cru-Cru-what's-his- whispers us to confess, that some years ago a name? Ay-ay-Cruachan. At this blessed child was exhibited at six-pence with WILLIAX moment we see his cloud-capped head-but we WooD legible in its optics-having been affilihave clean forgotten the silver sound of the ated, by ocular evidence, on a gentleman of name of the country he encumbers. Ross- that name, who, with his dying breath, disshire? Nay, that won't do-he never was at owned the soft impeachment. But in that'rain. We are assured by Dr. Reid's, Dr. Beat- case nature had written a vile scrawl-in ours tie's, and Dugald Stewart's great Instinctive her hand is firm, and goes off with a flourish. First Principle Belief, that oftener than once, Have you ever entered, all alone, the shadows or ten times either, have we been in a day-long of some dilapidated old burial-place, and in a hollow among precipices dear to eagles, called nook made beautiful by wild-briers and a flowGlen-Etive. But where begins or where ends ering thorn, beheld the stone image of some that "severe sojourn," is now to us a mystery long-forgotten worthy lying on his grave? — though we hear the sound of the sea and Some knight who perhaps -had fought in Pathe dashing of cataracts. Yet though all is lestine —or some holy man, who in the Abbeythus dim in our memory, would you believe it now almost gone-had led a long still life of that nothing is utterly lost? No, not even the prayer?. The moment you knew that you thoughts that soared like eagles vanishing in were standing among the dwellings of the dead, the light-or that dived like ravens into the howimpressive became the ruins! Did not that g-oom. They all re-appear-those from the stone image wax more and more lifelike in its Empyrean —-,:hese from Hades-reminding us repose? And as you kept your eyes fixed on of the good or the evil borne in other days, the features Time had not had the heart to within the spiritual regions of our boundless obliterate, seemed not your soul to bear the being. The world of eye and ear is not in echoes of the Miserere sung by the brethren? reality narrowed because it glimmers; ever So looks Christopher-on his couch-in his and anon as years advance, a light direct from ALcovE. He is taking his siesta-and the faint heaven dissipates the gloom, and bright and shadows you see coming and going across his glorious as of yore the landscape laughs to face are dreams.'Tis a pensive dormitory, the sea, the sea to heaven, and heaven back and hangs undisturbed in its spiritual region again to the gazing spirit that leaps forward as a cloud on the sky of the Longest Day when to the hailing light with something of the same it falls on the Sabbath. divine passion that gave wings to our youth. What think you of OUR FATHER, alongside All this may be still finer, yet cannot be said, of the Pedlar in the Excursion? Wordsworthl any more than the preceding paragraph, much saysto help us on with our Prologue. To come then, if l()ssible, to the point at once —We are- Spreal by a brotheihood of lofty elm THE MOORS. 105 Appear'd a roofless hut; four naked walls borately painted by the hand of a great master That stared upon each other! I look'd round, And to my wish and to my hope espied in the aforesaid Poem. Him whom I sought; a man of reverend age, Him had I mark'd the day before-alone, But stout and hale, for travel unimpair'd. And station'd in the public way, with face There was he seen upon the cottage bench, Turn'd to the sun then setting, while that staff Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep; Afforded to the figure of the man, An iron-pointed staff lay at his side." Detained for contemplation or repose, Alas! "stout and hale" are words that could Graceful support," &c. not be applied, without cruel mocking, to our As if it were yesterday, we remember our figure. "Recumbent in the shade" unques- first interview with the Bard. It was at the tionably he is-yet "recumbent" is a clumsy Lady's Oak, between Ambleside and Rydal. word for such quietude; and, recurring to our We were then in the very flower of our ageformer image, we prefer to say, in the words just sixty; so we need not say the century had of Wilson- then seen but little of this world. The Bard " Still is he as a frame of stone was a mere boy of some six lustres, and had a That in its stillness lies alone, lyrical ballad look that established his identity With silence breathing from its face, at first sight, all unlike the lack-a-daisical. His For ever in some holy place,ithin his vest on the region Chapel or aisle-on marble laid, right hand was within his vest on the region With pale hands on his pale breast spread, of the heart, and he ceased his crooning as we An image humble, meek, ga"nd low, stood face to face. What a noble countenance! at once austere and gracious-haughty and be. No "iron-pointed staff lies at his side" —but nign-of a man conscious of his greatness "Satan's dread," THE CRUTCH! Wordsworth while yet companioning with the humble-an tells us over again that the Pedlar- unrecognised power dwelling in the woods. "With no appendage but a staff, Our figure at that moment so impressed itself The prized memorial of relinquish'd toils, on his imagination, that it in time supplanted Upon the cottage-bench reposed his limbs,e of the real Pedlar, and grew into the Screen'd from the sun." the image of the real Pedlar, and grew into the Emeritus of the Three Days. We were standing On his couch, in his A lcove, Christoh ver in that very attitude-having deposited on the reposing-not his limbs alone-but his very coping of the wall our Kit, since adopted by essence. THE CRUTCH is, indeed, both de jure the British Army, with us at once a library and and de facto the prized memorial of toils —but, a larder. thank Heaven, not relinquished toils; and thenand even more characteristi how characteristic of the dear merciless old man-hardly distinguishable among the fringed callydraperies of his canopy, the dependent and in- Such Plain was his garb. wSuch as might suit a rustic sire, prepared dependent KxNOuT. For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man Was the Pedlar absolutely asleep We Whom no one could have pass'd without remark. not-twas but a doze. Re- Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs shrewdly suspect not-'twas but a doze. "Re- And his whole figure breathed intelligence. cumbent in the shade, as if asleep" —" Upon that Time had compress'd the freshness of his checks cottage-bench reposed his limbs" —induce us to Into a narrower circle of deep red, cottage-bench reposed his i.n us to But had not tamed his eye, that under brows, lean to the opinion that he was but on the bor- Shaggy and grey, had meanings, which it brought der of the Land of Nod. Nay, the poet gets From years of youth; whilst, like a being made more explicit, and with that minute particu- Of many beings, he had wondrous skill To blend with knowledge of the years to come, larity so charming in poetical description, Human, or such as lie beyond the grave." fi nally informs s that finally informs us that In our intellectual characters we indulge "Supine the wanderer lay, the pleasing hope that there are some striking Ris eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut, The shadows of the breezy elms above points of resemblance, on which, however, oir Dappling his face." modesty will not permit us to dwell-and in It would appear, then, on an impartial con- our acquirements, more particularly in Plane sideration of all the circumstances of the case, and Spherical Trigonometry. that the "man of reverend age," though " re- "' While yet he linger'd in the rudiments cumbent" and "supine" upon the "cottage Of science, and among her simplest laws, His triangles-they were the stars of heaven. bench," " as if asleep," and " his eyes, as if in The silent stars! oft did he take delight drowsiness, half shut," was in a mood between To measure the altitude of some tall crag, sleeping and waking; and this creed is corro-That is the eagle's birthplace," &c. borated by the following assertion- So it was with us. Give us but a base and a " He had not heard the sound quadrant-and when a student in Jemmy MilOf my approaching steps, and in the shade lar's class, we could have given you the altiUnnoticed did I stand some minutes' space. tude of any steeple in Glasgow or the Gorbals. At length I hail'd him, seeing that his hat Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim Occasionally, too, in a small party of friends, Had newly scoop'da running stream." though not proud of the accomplishment, we He rose; and so do We, for probably by this have been prevailed on, as you may have time you may have discovered that we have heard, to delight humanity with a song-" The been describing Ourselves in our siesta or mid- Flowers of the Forest," "Roy's Wife," "Flee day snooze —as we have been beholding in up, flee up, thou bonnie bonnie Cock," or our mind's eye our venerated and mysterious " Auld Langsyne"-just as the Pedlar Double. ", At request would sing We cannot help flattering ourse ves-if in- Old songs, the product of his native hills A skilful distribution of sweet sounds, deed it be flattery —that though no relative of Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed his, we have a look of the Pedlar —-as he is ela- As cool refreshing water, by the care 106' RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Of the industrious husbandman diffused dom of making such a personage the chief Through a parch'd meadow field in time of character in a Philosophical Poem. drought." character in a Philosophical Poem. Our natural disposition, too, is as amiable as He is described as endowed by nature with that of the " Vagrant Merchant." a great intellect, a noble imagination, a profound soul, and a tender heart. It will not be And surely never did tere livThe rough spoearth said that nature keeps these her noblest gifts A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports And teasing ways of children vex'd not him: for human beings born in this or that condition Indulgent listener was he to the tongue of life: she gives them to her favourites-for Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, To hisfraternal so, in the highest sense, they are to whom Obtain reluctant hearing.l such gifts befall; and not unfrequently, in an Obtain reluctant hearing." Who can read the following lines, and not obscure place, of one of the FORTUNATI %hink of Christopher North? "The fulgent head Star-bright appears." " Birds and beasls, Wordsworth appropriately places the birth of An'd the mute fish that glances in the stream, Wordsworth appropriately places the birth of And harmless reptile coiling in the sun, such a being in an humble dwelling in the And gorgeous insect hovering in the air, Highlands of Scotland. The fowl domestic, and the household dogLn,his capacious mind he loved them all." " Among the hills of Athol he was born; Where on a small hereditary farm, True, that our love of An unproductive slip of barren ground, His parents, with their numerous offspring, dwelt: "The mute fish that glances in the stream," A virtuous household, though exceeding poor." is not incompatible with the practice of the His childhood was nurtured at home in Chris"angler's silent trade," or with the pleasure of tian love and truth-and acquired other know"filling our pannier." The Pedlar, too, we have ledge at a winter school; for in summer he reason to know, was like his poet and our- "tended cattle on the hill" selves, in that art a craftsman, and for love "That stood beat the molecatcher at husking a batch of Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge." May-flies. We question whether Lascelles And the influence of such education and occuhimself were his master at a green dragon. pation among such natural objects, WoIds" The harmless reptile coiling in the sun" we worth expounds in some as fine poetry as ever are not so sure about, having once been bit by issued from the cells of philosophic thought. an adder, whom in our simplicity we mistook for A" So the foundations of his mind were laid." a slow-worm-the very day, by the by, on The boy had small need of bookswhich we were poisoned by a dish of toad- "For many a tale stools, by our own hand gathered for mush- Traditionary, round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, rooms. But we have long given over chasing Nourish'd Imagination inn iher growth, butterflies, and feel, as the Pedlar did, that they And gave the mind that apprehensive power are beautiful creatures, and that'tis a sin be- By which she is made quick to recognise The moral properties and scope of things." tween finger and thumb to compress their nealy wings. The household dog we do in- But in the Manse there were books ana he leed dearly love, though when old Surly looks read suspicious we prudently keep out of the reach "1 Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied, s e pudomest f, we Wf t. rach The life and death of martyrs, who sustain'd, of his chain. As for " the domestic fowl, we With will inflexible, those fearful pangs, breed scores every spring, solely for the delight Triumphantly display'd in records left of seeing them at their walks, Of persecution and the Covenant." "Among the rural villages and farms;" Can you not believe that by the time he was as old as you were when you used to ride to and though game to the back-bone, they are the races on.a pony, by the side of your sire allowed to wear the spurs nature gave them- the Squire, this boy was your equal in knowto crow unclipped, challenging but the echoes; ledge, though you had a private tutor all to nor is the sward, like the sod, ever reddened yourself) and were then a promising lad, as with their heroic blood, for hateful to our ears indeed you are now after the lapse of a quarthe war-song, ter of a century? True, as yet he " had small "Welcome to your gory bed, Latin and no Greek;" but the elements of Or to victory!" these languages may be learned —trust us-'Tis our way, you know, to pass from gay by slow degrees-by the mind rejoicing in the to grave matter, and often from a jocular to a consciousness of its growing faculties-during serious view of the same subject-iti being leisure hours from other studies-as they were natural to us-and having become habitual by the Athol adolescent. A Scholar-in your too, from our writing occasionally in Black- sense of the word-he might not be called, wood's Magazine. All the world knows our even when he had reached his seventeenth admiration of Wordsworth, and admits that year, though probably he would have puzzled we have done almost as much as Jeffrey or you in Livy and Virgil; nor of English poetry Taylor to make his poetry popular among the had he read much-the less the better for such "educated circles." But we are not a nation a mind-at that age, and in that conditionof idolaters, and worship neither graven image for nor man that is born of a woman. We may A" Accumulated feelings press'd his heart seem to have treated the Pedlar with insuffi- With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd cient respect in that playful parallel between By nature, by the turbulence subdued Of his own mind, by mystery and hope, him and ourselves; but there you are wrong And the first virgin passion of a soul again, forbwe desire thereby to do him honour. Communing with the glorious Universe." We wish now to say a few words on the wis- But he had read Poetry-ay, the same Poetry THE MOORS. 107 fhat Wordsworth's self read at the same age artificial society; and in ten thousand cases -and where the heart of such society was happily "Among the hills sound at the core, notwithstanding the rotten ITe gazed upon that mighty Orb of Sun, kitchen-stuff with which it was incrusted, the The divine Milton." The divine Milton." thusinstructed, shocks have killed the prejudices; and men Thus endowed, and thus instructed, and women, encouraged to consult their own "By Nature, that did never yet betray breasts, have heard responses there to the The heart that loved her," truths uttered in music by the high-souled the youth was "greater than he knew;" yet Bard, assuring them of an existence there of that there was something great in, as well as capacities of pure delight, of which they had about him, he felt- had either but a faint suspicion, or, because "Thus daily thirsti.g in that lonesome life," "of the world's dread laugh," feared to in for some diviner communication than had yet dulge, and nearly let die. been vouchsafed to him by the Giver and In- Mr. Wordsworth quotes from Heron's Scot-,;pirer of his restless Being. land an interesting passage, illustrative of the "In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought, life led in our country at that timne by that Thus was he rear'd; much wanting to assist class of persons from whom he has chosen The growth of intellect, yet gaining more, one-not, mind you, imaginary, though for And every moral feeling of his soul purposes of imagination-adding that "his Strengthen'd and braced, by breathing in content own personal knowledge emboldened him to The keeng from the who ell of homely lfe." draw the portrait." In that passage Heron says, "As they wander, each alone, through But he is in his eighteenth year, and thinly inhabited districts, they form habits of "Is summon'd to select the course reflection and of sublime contemplation," and Of humhble industry that promised hest that, with all their qualifications, no wonder To yield him no unworthy maintenance." they should contribute much to polish the For a season he taught a village school, which roughness and soften the rusticity of our peamany a fine, high, and noble spirit has done santry. "In North America," he says, "travel and is doing; but he was impatient of the hills ling merchants from the settlements have done he loved, and and continue to do much more towards civiliz "That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrains ing the Indian natives than all the missiona The Savoyard to quit his native rocks, The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales, ries, Papist or Protestant, who have ever been (Spirit attach'd to:3gions mountainous sent among them;" and, speaking again of Like their own steadfast clouds,) did now impel Scotland, he says, it is not more than twent HIis restless mind to look abroad with hope."ys, "it is not more than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from It had become his duty to choose a profession any part of Scotland to England for the -a trade-a calling. He was not a gentle- purpose to carry the pack, was considered as man, mind ye, and had probably never so much going to lead the life, and acquire the fortune as heard a rumour of the existence of a silver of a gentleman. When, after twenty years' fork: he had been born with a wooden spoon absence in that honourable line of employin his mouth-and hadlived,partly from choice ment, he returned with his acquisitions to his and partly from necessity, on a vegetable diet. native country, he was regarded as a gentlelie had not ten pounds in the world he could man to all intents and purposes." We have call his own; but he could borrow fifty, for his ourselves known gentlemen who had carried father's son was to be trusted to that amount the pack-one of them a man of great talents by any family that chanced to have it among and acquirements-who lived in his old age in the Athol hills-therefore he resolved on "a the highest circles of society. Nobody troubled hard service," which their head about his birth and parentage-for -Gain'd merited respect in simpler times; he was then very rich; but you could not sit ten When squire, and priest, and they who round them minutes in his company without feeling that dwelt In rustic sequestration, all dependent he was " one of God Almighty's gentlemen," Upon the PEDLAR's toil, supplied their wants, belonging to the " aristocracy of Nature." Or pleased their fancies with the ware he brought. You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had Wilson, the illustrious Ornithologist, second he lived twenty years in the hut where he not even to Audubon-and sometimes absurdspoiledthebannocks? WouldGustavushave ly called the Great American Orr.'Jihclogist, ceased to be Gustavus had he been doomed to because with pen and pencil he painted in dree an ignoble life in the obscurest nook in colours that will never die-the Birtes of the Dalecarlial Were princes and peers in our New World. He was a weaver-a Paisley day degraded by working, in their expatria- weaver-a useful trade, and a pleasant place tion, with head or hand for breadl Are the -where these now dim eyes of ours first saw Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteen the light. And Sandy was a pedlar. Hear his pence a day, without victuals, on embankments words in an autobiography unknown to the of railroads. "At the risk of giving a shock Bard: —" I have this day, I believe, measured to the prejudices of artificial society, I have the height of an hundred stairs, and explored ever been ready to pay homage to the aristo- the recesses of twice that number of niseracracy of nature, undet a conviction that vigor- ble habitations; and what have I gained by ous human-heartedness is the constituent prin- it? —only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an ciple of true taste." These are Wordsworth's invaluable treasure of obserration. In this own words, and deserve letters of gold. He elegant dome, wrapt up in glittering silks, and nas given many a shock to the prejudices of stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair 108 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. daugh ers of wealth and indolence-the ample I all ranks entertain of them is, that they are mirror, flowery floor, and magnificent couch, mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and their surrounding attendants; while, suspended illiterate, watching every opportunity, and in his wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped using every mean art within their power, tc canary warbles to enchanting echoes. Within cheat." This is a sad account of the estithe confines of that sickly hovel, hung round mation in which a trade was then held in with squadrobs of his brother-artists, the pale- Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets faced weaver plies the resounding lay, or has attributed to the chief character in a poem launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. comprehensive of philosophical discussions,ifting his simple latch, and stooping for en- on all the highest interests of humanity. But trance to the miserable hut, there sits poverty both Wilson and Wordsworth are in the right: and ever-moaning disease, clothed in dunghill both saw and have spoken truth. Most small rags, and ever shivering over the fireless packmen were then, in some measure, what chimney. Ascending this stair, the voice of Wilson says they were generally esteemed joy bursts on my ear-the bridegroom and to be-peddling pilferers, and insignificant bride, surrounded by their jocund companions, swindlers. Poverty sent them swarming over circle the sparkling glass and humorous joke, bank and brae, and the " sma' kintra touns"or join in the raptures of the noisy dance-the and for a plack people will forget principle squeaking fiddle breaking through the general who have, as we say in Scotland, missed the uproar in sudden intervals, while the sound- world. Wilson knew that to a man like himing floor groans beneath its unruly load. self there was degradation in such a calling; Leaving these happy mortals, and ushering and he latterly vented his contemptuous into this silent mansion, a more solemn-a sense of it, exaggerating the baseness of the striking object presents itself to my view. name and nature of packman. But suppose The windows, the furniture, and every thing such a man as Wilson to have been in better that could lend one cheerful thought, are hung times one of but a few packmen travelling in solemn white; and there, stretched pale and regularly for years over the same country, lifeless, lies the awful corpse, while a few each with his own district or domain, and weeping friends sit, black and solitary, near there can be no doubt that he would have the breathless clay. In this other place, the been an object both of interest and of respect fearless sons of Bacchus extend their brazen -his opportunities of seeing the very best throats, in shouts like bursting thunder, to the and the very happiest of humble life, in praise of their gorgeous chief. Opening this itself very various, would have been very door, the lonely matron explores, for consola- great; and with his original genius, he would tion, her Bible; and in this house the wife have become, like Wordsworth's Pedlar, a brawls, the children shriek, and the poor hus- good moral Philosopher. band bids me depart, lest his termagant's Without, therefore, denying the truth of his fury should vent itself on me. In short, such picture of packmanship, we may believe the an inconceivable variety daily occurs to my truth of a picture entirely the reverse, from the observation in real life, that would, were they hand and heart of a still wiser man-though moralized upon, convey more maxims of wis- his wisdom has been gathered from less imdom, and give a juster knowledge of mankind, mediate contact with the coarse garments and than whole volumes of Lives and Adventures, clay floors of the labouring poor. that perhaps never had a being except in the It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of prolific bra];,3 of their fantastic authors." his own " personal knowledge" of packmen or At a subsequent period he retraced his steps, pedlars. We cannot say of him in the words taking with him copies of his poems to dis- of Burns, "the fient a pride, nae pride had he;' tribute among subscribers, and endeavour to for pride and power are brothers on earth, promote a more extensive circulation. Of this whatever they may prove to be in heaven. excursion also he has given an account in his But his prime pride is his poetry; and he had journal, from which it appears that his sue- not now been " sole king of rocky Cumberland," cess was far from encouraging. Among had he not studied the character of his subjects amusing incidents, sketches of character, in "huts where poor men lie "-had he not occasional sound and intelligent remarks " stopped his anointed head" beneath the doors upon the manners and prospects of the com- of such huts, as willingly as he ever raised it mon classes of society into which he found aloft, with all its glorious laurels, in the palaces his way, there are not a few severe expressions of nobles and princes. Yes, the inspiration indicative of deep disappointment, and some he "derived from the light of setting suns," that merely bespeak the keener pangs of the was not so sacred as that which often kindled wounded pride founded on conscious merit. within his spirit all the divinity of Christian "' You," says he, on one occasion, "whose man,' when conversing charitably with his souls are susceptible of the finest feelings, who brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty high. are elevated to rapture with the least dawnings road, or among the green lanes and alleys of of hope, and sunk into despondency with the merry England. You are a scholar, and love slightest thwartings of your expectations- poetry? Then here you have it of the finest, think what I felt." Wilson himself attributed and wil..'>e sad to think that heaven had not his ill fortune, in his attempts to gain the made you a pedlar. humble patronage of the poor for his poetical pursuits, to his occupation. " A pack-man is a " In days of yore how fortunately fared character which none esteems, and almost The Minstrel! wandering on from Hall to Hall, character which none esteems, and almost aronial Court or Royal; cheer'd with gifts every one'despises. The idea that people of Munificent, and love, and Ladies' praise; THE MOORS. 109 Now meeting on his road anf armed Knight, "The Boy must part from Mosedale groves Now resting with a Pilgrim by the side And leave Blencathara's rugged coves, Of a clear brook;-beneath an Abbey's roof And quit the flowers that summer brings One evening sumptuously lodged; the next To Glenderamakin's lofty springs; Humbly, in a religious Hospital; Must vanish, and his careless cheer Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood; Be turn'd to heaviness and fear." Or haply shrouded in a Hermit's cell. Him,-sleeping or awake, the Robber spared; Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him til He walk'd-protected from the sword of war again he is free to set his foot on the moun-.By virtue of that sacred Instrument His Harp, suspended at the Traveller's side, tains. His dear companion wheresoe'er he went, "Again he wanders forth at will, Opening from Land to Land an easy way And tends a flock from hill to hill: By melody, and by the charm of verse. His garb is humble; ne'er was seen Yet not the noblest of that honour'd Race Such garb with such a noble mien; Drew happier, loftier, more empassion'd thoughts Among the shepherd grooms no mate From his long journeyings and eventful life, Hath he, a child of strength and state." Than this obscure Itinerant had skill To gather, ranging through the tamer ground So lives he till he is restoredOf these our unimaginative days; "Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth; Both while he trode the earth in humblest guise, The shepherd-lord was honour'd more and more; Accoutred with his burden and his staff; And, ages after he was laid in earth, And now, when free to move with lighter pace.'The good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore!" "What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School Now mark-that Poem has been declared by Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes, Look'd on this Guide with reverential love. one and all of thee "Poets of Britain" to be Each with the other pleased, we now pursued equal to any thing in the language; and its Our journey-beneath favourable skies. greatness lies in the perfect truth of the Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a light greatness ies n the perfect truth of the Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass, profound philosophy which so poetically deRarely a house, that did not yield to him lineates the education of the naturally noble Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth character of Clifford. Does he sink in our Some way-beguiling tale. -Nor was he loath to enter ragged huts, esteem because at the Feast of the RestoraHuts where his charity was blest; his voice tion he turns a deaf ear to the fervent harper Heard as the voice of an experienced friend. And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held dispute who sings, With his own mind, unable to subdue " Happy day and happy the hour, Impatience, through inaptness to perceive When our shepherd in his power, General distress in his particular lot; Mounted, mail'd, with lance and sword, Or cherishing resentment, or in vain To his ancestors restored, Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd, Like a re-appearing star, And finding in herself no steady power Like a glory from afar, To draw the line of comfort that divides First shall head the flock of war!" Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven, From the injustice of our brother men; No-his generous nature is true to its gene. To him appeal was made as to a judge; rous nurture; and now deeply imbued with Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd The perturbation; listen'd to the plea; the goodness he had too long loved in others Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave ever to forget, he appears noblest when showSo grounded, so applied, that it was heard ing himself faithful in his own hall to the With softened spirit-e'en when it condemn'd."n "huts where poor men lie;" while we know What was to hinder such a man-thus born not, at the solemn close, which life the Poet and thus bred-with such a youth and such a has most glorified-the humble or the highprime-from being in his old age worthy of whether the Lord did the Shepherd more enwalking among the mountains with Words- noble, or the Shepherd the Lord. worth, and descanting Now, we ask, is there any essential difference between what Wordsworth thus records " On man, on nature, and on human life?" of the high-born Shepherd-Lord in the Feast And remember he was a Scotsman-compatriot of Brougham Castle, and what he records of of CHRISTOPHER NORTH. the low-born Pedlar in the Excursion? None. What would you rather have had the Sage They are both educated among the hills; and in the Excursion to have been? The Senior according to the nature of their own souls and Fellow of a College? A Head? A retired that of their education, is the progressive Judge? An Ex-Lord Chancellor? A Na- growth and ultimate formation of their chabob 1 A Banker? A Millionaire. or, at once racter. Both are exalted beings-because both to condescend on individuals, Natus Consu- are wise and good-but to his own coeval he mere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable has given, besides eloquence and genius, Custos Rotulorum.? " The vision and the faculty divine," You have read, bright bold neophyte, the that's Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, "When years had brought the philosophic mind" to the estates and honours of his ancestors? he might walk through the dominions of the Who is he that bounds Intellect and the Imagination, a Sage and a ",Who is he that bounds with joy On Carrock's side, a shepherd boy? Teacher. No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass Look into life, and watch the growth of chaLight as the wind along the grass. racter. Men are not what they seem to the Can this be He that hither came In secret, like a smother'd flame. outward eye-mere machines moving about For whom such thoughtful tears were shed in customary occupations-productive labourFor shelter and a poor man's bread! 1 1 ers of food and wearing apparel-slaves from Who but the same noble boy whom his high- morn to night at taskwork set them by the born mother in disastrous days had confided Wealth of Nations. They are the Children when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet of God. The soul never sleeps-not even there he is no longer safe-and when its wearied body is heard snoring by 110 RECREA'IONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. people living in the next street. All the souls nevis, Helvellyn in'England, in Ireland the now in this world are for ever awake; and Reeks; and you see that they are mere molethis life, believe us, though in moral sadness hills to Chimborazo. Nevertheless, they are it has often been rightly called so, is no dream. the hills of the Eagle. And think ye not that In a dream we have no will of our own, no an Eagle glorifies the sky more than a Condor 1 power over ourselves; ourselves are not felt That Vulture-for Vulture he is-flies leagueto be ourselves; our familiar friends seem high-the Golden Eagle is satisfied to poise strangers from some far off country; the dead himself half a mile above the loch, which, are alive, yet we wonder not; the laws of the judged by the-rapidity of its long river's flow, physical world are suspended, or changed, or may be based a thousand feet or more above confused by our fantasy; Intellect, Imagina- the level of the sea. From that height methinks tion, the Moral Sense, Affection, Passion, are the Bird-Royal, with the golden eye, can see not possessed by us in the same way we pos- the rising and the setting sun, and his march sess them out of that mystery: were life a on the meridian, without a telescope. If ever Dream, or like a Dream, it would never lead he fly by night-and we think we have seen a to Heaven. shadow passing the stars that was on the wing Again, then, we say to you, look into life and of life-he must be a rare astronomer. watch the growth of character. In a world "High from the summit of a craggy cliff where the ear cannot listen without hearing Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frown the clank of chains, the soul may yet be free On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race.he lank of chains, the sou' m. y yetefreeResign the setting sun to Indian worlds, as if it already inhabited the skies. For its The Royal Eagle rears his vigorous young, Maker gave it LIBERTY OF CHOIC]E OF GOOD OR Strong-pounced and burning with paternal fire. Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own OFr EVIL; and if it has chosen the good it is a He drives them from his fort, the towering seat King. All its faculties are then fed on their For ages of his empire; which in peace appropriate food provided for them in nature. Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea It then knows where the necessaries and the He wings his course, and preys in distant isles." luxuries of its life grow, and how they may be Do you long for wings, and envy the Eagle? gathered —in a still sunny region inaccessible Not if you be wise. Alas! such is human to blight —"no mildewed ear blasting his nature, that in one year's time the novelty of wholesome brother." In the beautiful language pinions would be over, and you would skim of our friend Aird- undelighted the edges of the clouds. Why do " And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the Hills of we think it a glorious thing to fly fiom the God." summit of some inland mountain away to disGo, read the ExcUnitsio then —venerate the tant isles. Because our feet are bound to the PEDLAR -pity the SOLITARY-respect the dust. We enjoy the eagle's flight far more PRIEST, and love the POET. than the eagle himself driving headlong before So charmed have we been with the sound of the storm; for imagination dallies with the our own voice-of all sounds on earth the unknown power, and the wings that are denied sweetest surely to our ears-and, therefore, we to our bodies are expanded in our souls. Subso dearly love the monologue, and from the lime are the circles the sun-staring creature dialogue turn averse, impatient of him ycleped traces in the heavens, to us who lie stretched the interlocutor, who, like a shallow brook, among the heather bloom. Could we do the will keep prattling and babbling on between same, we should still be longing to pierce the still deep pools of our discourse, which through the atmosphere to some other planet; nature feeds with frequent waterfalls-so and an elevation of leagues above the snows charmed have we been with the sound of our of the Himalayas would not satisfy our aspiraown voice, that scarcely conscious the while tions. But we can calculate the distances of of more than a gentle ascent along the sloping the stars, and are happy as Galileo in his sward of a rural Sabbath day's journey, we dungeon. perceive mow that we must have achieved a Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of Highland league-five miles-of rough uphill You our Scottish mountains, as you are of Us. work, and are standing tiptoe on the Mountain- Stretch yourself up to your full height as we top. True that his altitude is not very great- now do to ours-and let "' Andes, giant of the somewhere, we should suppose, between two Western Star," but dare to look at us, and we and three thousand feet-much higher than the will tear the " meteor standard to the winds Pentlands-somewhat higher than the Ochils unfurled" from his cloudy hands. There you -a middle-sized Grampian. Great painters stand-and were you to rear your summits and poets know that power lies not in mere much higher into heaven you would alarm the measurable bulk. Atlas, it is true, is a giant, hidden stars. and he has need to be so, supporting the globe. Yet we have seen you higher-butdit was in So is Andes; but his strength has never been storm. In calm like this, you do well to look lut to proof, as he carries but clouds. The beautiful-your solemn altitude suits the sunny Cordilleras-but we must not be personal-so season, and the peaceful sky. But when the suffice it to say, that soul, not size, equally in thunder at mid-day would hide your heads in a mountains and in men, is and inspires the true night of cloud, you thrust them through the sublime. Mont Blanc might be as big again; blackness, and show them to the glens, crownbut what then, if without his glaciers 1 ed with fire. These mountains are neither immense nor Are they a sea of mountains! No-they are enormous —nor are there any such in the mountains in a sea. And what a sea! Waves British Isles. Look for a few of the highest on of water, when at the prodigious, are never Riddell's ingenious Scale —in Scotland Ben- higher than the foretop of a man-of-war. Waves THE MOORS. 111 of vapour-they alone are seen flying moun- as if we belonged to them and not they to us, tains high-dashing, but howling not-and in forgetting that they are made to perish, we tc. their silent ascension, all held together by the live for ever! same spirit, but perpetually changing its But let us descend the mountain by the side beautiful array, where order seems ever and of this torrent. What a splendid series of anon to come in among disorder, there is a translucent pools! We carry the Excursion grandeur that settles down in the soul of in our pocket, for the use of our friends; but youthful poet roaming in delirium among the our presentation copy is here-we have gotten mountain glooms, and " pacifies the fever of it by heart. And it does our heart good to his heart." hear ourselves recite. Listen ye Naiads tc Call not now these vapours waves; for the famous picture of the Ram:movement there is none among the ledges, and " Thus having reach'd a bridge, that overarch'd ridges, and roads, and avenues, and galleries, The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalm'd and groves, and houses, and churches, and In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw andgro -andf paes-l framed o ist A twofold image on a grassy bank castles, and fairy palaces-all framed of mist. A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood Far up among and above that wondrous re- Another and the same! Most beautiful gion, through which you hear voices of water- On the green turf, with his imperial front Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb, falls deepening the silence, behold hundreds The breathing creature stood; as beautiful of mountain-tops-blue, purple, violet,-for Beneath him, show'd his shadowy counterpart; the sun is shining straight on some and aslant Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky, And each seem'd centre of his own fair world. on others-and on those not at all; nor can Antipodes unconscious of each other, the shepherd at your side, though he has lived Yet, in partition, with their several spheres, among them all his life, till after long ponder- Ah whlended in pirfect swerllne its to our sight. ing tell you the names of those most familiar Or to disturb so fair a spectacle, to him; for they seem to have all interchanged And yet a breath can do it." sites and altitudes, and Black Benhun himself, Oh! that the Solitary, and the Pedlar, and the Eagle-breeder, looks so serenely in his the Poet, and the Priest and his Lady, were rainbow, that you might almost mistake him here to see a sight more glorious far than that for Ben Louey or the Hill of Hinds. illustrious and visionary Ram. Two ChristoHave you not seen sunsets in which the pher Norths-as Highland chieftains-in the mountains were embedded in masses of clouds Royal Tartan-one burning in the air-the all burning and blazing-yes, blazing-with other in the water-two stationary meteors, unimaginable mixtures of all the colours that each seeming native to its own element! This ever were born-intensifying into a glory that setting the heather, that the linn on fire-this absolutely became insupportable to the soul a-blaze with war, that tempered into truce; as insufferable to the eyes-and that left the while the Sun, astonied at the spectacle, nor eyes for hours after you had retreated from knowing the refulgent substance from the the supernatural scene, even when shut, all resplendent shadow, bids the clouds lie still filled with floating films of cross-lights, cutting in heaven, and the winds all hold their breath, the sky imagery into gorgeous fragments? And that exulting nature may be permitted for a were not the mountains of such sunsets, whe- little while to enjoy the miracle she unawares ther they were of land or of cloud, sufficiently has wrought-alas! gone as she gazes, and vast for your utmost capacities and powers of gone for ever? Our bonnet has tumbled into delight and joy longing to commune with the the Pool —and Christopher-like the Ram in Region then felt to be in very truth Heaven l the Excursion-stands shorn of his beamsNor could the spirit, entranced in admiration, no better worth looking at than the late Laird conceive at that moment any Heaven beyond- of Macnab. while the senses themselves seemed to have Now, since the truth must be told, that was had given them a revelation, that as it was but a Flight of Fancy-and our apparel is created could be felt but by an immortal spirit. more like that of a Lowland Quaker than a It elevates our being to be in the body near Highland chief.'Tis all of a snuffy brownthe sky-at once on earth and in Heaven. In an excellent colour for hiding the dirt. Sinthe body 1 Yes —we feel at once fettered and gle-breasted our coatee-and we are in shorts. free. In Tirme we wear our fetters, and heavy Were our name to be imposed by our hat, it though t.zyr be, and painfully riveted on, sel- would be Sir Cloudesly Shovel. On our back dom do we welcome Death coming to strike a wallet —and in our hand the Crutch. And them off-but groan at sight of the executioner. thus, not without occasional alarm to the catIn eternity we believe that all is spiritual-and tie, though we hurry no man's, we go stalking in that belief, which doubt sometimes shakes along the sward and swinging across the but to prove that its foundation lies rooted far stream, and leaping over the quagmires-by down below all earthquakes, endurable is the no means unlike that extraordinary pedestrian sound of dust to dust. Poets speak of the spirit, who has been accompanying us for the last while yet in the flesh, blending, mingling, being half hour, far overhead up-by yonder, as if he absorbed in the great forms of the outward uni- ineant mischief; but he will find that we are verse, and they speak as if such absorption up to a trick or two, and not easily to be done were celestial and divine. But is not this a brown by a native, a Cockney of Cloud-Land, material creed? Let Imaginationbeware how a long-legged awkward fellow with a head she seeks to glo,-ify the objects of the senses, like a dragon, and proud of his red plush, and having glorified them, to elevate them into in that country called thunder-and-lightnin:g a kindred being with our own, exalting them breeches, hot very, one would think, in such that we may claim with them that kindred being, sultry weather-but confound us if he has 112 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. not this moment stript them off; and be not but all choral movements and melodies forpursuing his journey in puris lnaturalibus-yes, sook the mountails, still and silent as so much as naked as the minute he was born-our Sha- I painted canvas. Waterfalls first tamed their dow on the Clouds! thunder, then listened alarmed to their own The Picture of the Ram has been declared echoes, wailed themselves away into diminuby sumphs in search of the sublime to border tive murmurs, gasped for life, died, and were on the Burlesque. They forget that a sumph buried at the feet of the green slippery precimay just as truly be said to border on a sage. pices. Tarns sank into moors; and there was All things in heaven and on earth, mediately the voice of weeping heard and low lament and immediately, border on one another-much among the water-lilies. Ay, millions of pretty depends on the way you look at them-and flowrets died in their infancy, even on their Poets, who are strange creatures, often love mother's breast; the bee fainted in the desert to enjoy and display their power by bringing for want of the honey-dew, and the groundthe burlesque into. the region of the sublime. cells of industry were hushed below the heaOf what breed was the Tup? Cheviot, Lei- ther. Cattle lay lean on the brownness of a cester, Southdown 1 Had he gained the Cup hundred hills, and the hoof of the red-deer lost at the Great North Show l We believe not, its fleetness. Along the shores of lochs great and that his owner saw in him simply a fine stones appeared within what for centuries had specimen of an ordinary breed-a shapely been the lowest water-mark; and whole bays, and useful animal. In size he was not to once bright and beautiful with reed-pointed be named on the same day with the famous wavelets, became swamps, cracked and Ram of Derby, " whose tail was made a rope, seamed, or rustling in the aridity with a useless sir, to toll the market-bell." Jason would have crop, to the sugh of the passing wind. On the thought nothing of him compared with the shore of the sea alone you beheld no change. Golden Fleece. The Sun sees a superior sire The tides ebbed and flowed as before-the of flocks as he enters Aries. Sorry are we to small billows racing over the silver sands to say it, but the truth must be spoken, he was the same goal of shells, or climbing up to the somewhat bandy-legged, and rather coarse in same wild-flowers that bathe the foundation of wool. But heaven, earth, air, and water con- some old castle belonging to the ocean. spired to glorify him, as the Poet and his friends But the windows of heaven were openedchanced to come upon him at the Pool, and, and, like giants refreshed with mountain-dew, more than them all united, the Poet's own soul; the rivers flung themselves over the cliffs with and a sheep that would not have sold for fifty roars of thunder. The autumnal woods are shillings, became Lord Paramount of two fresher than those of summer. The mild harworlds, his regal mind all the time uncon- vest-moon will yet repair the evil done by the scious of its empiry, and engrossed with the outrageous sun; and, in the gracious afterthought of a few score silly ewes. growth, the green earth far and wide rejoices Seldom have we seen so serene a day. It as in spring. Like people that have hidden seems to have lain in one and the same spirit themselves in caves when their native land over all the Highlands. We have been wan- was oppressed, out gush the torrents, and dedering since sunrise, and'tis now near sunset; scend with songs to the plain. The hill-country vet not an hour without a visible heaven in all is itself again when it hears the voice of the Lochs. In the pure element overflowing streams. Magnificent army of mists! whose so many spacious vales and glens profound, array encompasses islands of the sea, and who the great and stern objects of nature have all still, as thy glorious vanguard keeps deploying day long been looking more sublime or more among the glens, rollest on in silence more beautiful in the reflected shadows, invested sublime than the trampling of the feet of with one universal peace. The momentary horses, or the sound of the wheels of chariots, evanescence of all that imagery at a breath to the heath-covered mountains of Scotland, we touches us with the thought that all it repre- bid thee hail! sents, steadfast as seems its endurance, will In all our wanderings through the Highlands, as utterly pass away. Such visions when towards night we have always found ourselves gazed on in that wondrous depth and purity on at home. What though no human dwelling a still slow-moving day, always inspire some was at hand? We cared not-for we could such feeling as this; and we sigh to think how find a bed-room among the casual inclinations transitory must be all things, when the setting of rocks, and of all curtains the wild-brier sun is seen to sink behind the mountain, and forms itself into the most gracefully-festooned al the golden pomp at the same instant to draperies, letting in green light alone from the evanish from the Loch. intercepted stars. Many a cave we know ofEvening is preparing to let fall her shades- cool by day, and warm by night-how they and Nature, cool, fresh, and unwearied, is lay- happen to be so, we cannot tell-where no ing herself down for a few hours' sleep. There man but ourselves ever slept or ever will had been a long strong summer drought, and a sleep; and sometimes, on startling a doe at week ago you would have pitied-absolutely evening in her thicket, we have lain down in pitied the poor Highlands. You missed the her lair, and in our slumbers heard the rain cottage-girl with her pitcher at the well in the pattering on the roofing birk-tree, but felt not brae, for the spring scarcely trickled, and the one drop on our face, till at dawning we struck water-cresses were yellow before their time. a shower of diamonds from the fragrant Many a dancing hill-stream was dead-only tresses. But to-night we shall not need to sleep here and there one stronger than her sisters among the sylvans; for our Tail has pitched attempted a pas-seul over the shelving rocks; our Tent on the Moor-and is now sweeping THE MOORS. 113 the mountain with telescope for sight of our wrong with this planet of ours, and creation descending feet. Hark! signal-gun and bag- were falling back into chaos. But we love pipe hail our advent, and the Pyramid bright- scenes of beautiful repose too profoundly ever ens in its joy, independent of the sunlight, that to dream of " transferring them to canvas." has left but one streak in the sky. Such employment would be felt by us to be desecration —though we look with delight on the work when done by others-the picture without the process-the product of genius without thought of its mortal instruments. We FLIGHT FIRST.-GLEN-ETIVE. work in words, and words are, in good truth, images, feelings, thoughts; and of these the YES! all we have to do is to let down their outer world, as well as the inner, is composed, lids-to will that our eyes shall see —and, lo! let materialists say what they will. Prose is there it is-a creation! Day dawns, and for poetry-we have proved that to the satisfaction our delight in soft illumination from the dim of all mankind. Look! we beseech you-how obscure floats slowly up a visionary loch- a little Loch seems to rise up with its tall he. island after island evolving itself into settled ronry-a central isle-and all its silvan braes, stateliness above its trembling shadow, till, till it lies almost on a level with the floor of our from the overpowering beauty of the wide con- Cave, from which in three minutes we could fusion of woods and waters, we seek relief, but hobble on our crutch down the inclining greenfind none, in gazing on the sky; for the east is sward to the Bay of Waterlilies, and in that in all the glory of sunrise, and the heads and canoe be afloat among the Swans. All birches the names of the mountains are uncertain -not any other kind of tree-except a few among the gorgeous colouring of the clouds. pines, on whose tops the large nests reposeWould that we were a painter! Oh! how we and here and there a still bird standing as if should dash on the day and interlace it with asleep. What a place for Roes! night! That chasm should be filled with en- The great masters, were their eyes to fall during gloom, thicker and thicker, nor the sun on our idle words, might haply smile-not himself suffered to assuage the sullen spirit, contemptuously-on our ignorance of artnow lowering and threatening there, as if por- but graciously on our knowledge of nature. tentous of earthquake. Danger and fear should All we have to do, then, is to learn the theory be made to hang together for ever on those and practice of art-and assuredly we should cliffs, and halfway up the precipice be fixed forthwith set about doing so, had we any reathe restless cloud ascending from the abyss, so sonable prospect of living long enough to open that in imagination you could not choose but an exhibition of pictures from our own easel. hear the cataract. The Shadows should seem As it is, we must be contented with that Gallery, to be stalking away like evil spirits before richer than the Louvre, which our imagination angels of light-for at our bidding the Splen- has furnished with masterpieces beyond all dours should prevail against them, deploying price or purchase-many of them touched with from the gates of Heaven beneath the banners her own golden finger, the rest the work of of morn. Yet the whole picture should be high but not superior hands. Imagination, who harmonious as a hymn-as a hymn at once limns in air, has none of those difficulties to sublime and sweet-serene and solemn-nor contend with that always beset, and often baffle, should it not be felt as even cheerful-and artists in oils or waters. At a breath she can sometimes as if there were about to be merri- modify, alter, obliterate, or restore; at a breath ment in Nature's heart-for the multitude of she can colour vacuity with rainbow huesthe isles should rejoice-and the new-woke crown the cliff with its castle-swing the drawwaters look as if they were waiting for the bridge over the gulf profound-through a breezes to enliven them into waves, and wearied night of woods roll the river along on its moonof rest to be longing for the motion already lit reach-by fragmentary cinctures of mist beginning to rustle by fits along the silvan and cloud, so girdle one mountain that it has shores. Perhaps a deer or two —but we have the power of a hundred-giant rising aboveopened a corner of the fringed curtains of our giant, far and wide, as if the mighty multitude, eyes-the idea is gone-and Turner or Thorm- in magnificent and triumphant disorder, were son must transfer from our paper to his can- indeed scaling heaven. vas the imperfect out-line-for it is no more To speak more prosaically, every true and -and make us a present of the finished pic- accepted lover of nature regards her with a ture. painter's as well as a poet's eye. He breaks, Strange that with all our love of nature, and not down any scene rudely, and with "many of art, we never'were a Painter. True that an oft-repeated stroke;" but unconsciously and in boyhood we were no contemptible hand at insensibly he transfigures into Wholes, and all a Lion or a Tiger-and sketches by us of such day long, from morn till dewy eve, he is- pre cats springing or preparing to spring in keela- ceded, as he walks along, by landscapes retlr vine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, ing in their perfection, one and all of them the might well make Edwin Landseer stare. Even birth of his own inspired spirit. All non-esyet we are a sort of Salvator Rosa at a savage sentials do of themselves drop off and' disapscene, and our black-lead pencil heaps up con- pear-all the characteristics of the scenery fused shatterings of rocks, and flings a moun- range themselves round a cenltre recognised tainous region into convulsions, as if an earth- by the inner sense that cannot err-and thus quake heaved, in a way that is no canny, making it is that " beauty pitches her tents before him" people shudder as if something had gone -that sublimity companions the pilgrim in the 8 114 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. waste wilderness-and grandeur for his sake Fairies be, they pray heaven to let fall on the keeps slowly sailing or settling in the clouds. AWFUL THiTSSIL all the health and happiness With such pictures has our Gallery been so that are in the wholesome stars. thickly hung round for many years, that we The dawn is softly-slowly-stealing upon have often thought there was not room for one day; for the uprisen sun, though here the other single frame; yet a vacant space has edge of his disc as yet be invisible, is diffusing always been found for every new chef-d'cuv're abroad " the sweet hour of prime," and all the that came to add itself to our collection-and eastern region is tinged with crimson, faint the light from that cupola so distributes itself and fine as that which ileeps within the that it falls wherever it is wanted-wherever wreaths of the sea-sounding shells. Hark it is wanted not how tender the shadow! or the eagle's earliest cry, yet in his eyry. An, how solemn th? gloom! other hour, and he and his giant mate will be Why, we are now in Glen-Etive-and sitting seen spirally ascending the skies, in many a with our sketch book at the mouth of our glorious gyration, tutoring their offspring to Tent. Our oft-repeated passionate prayer, dally with the sunshine, that when their plumes "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness!" are stronger, they may dally with the storm. 0 Forest of Dalness! how sweet is thy name! has once more, after more than twenty years' Hundreds of red-deer are now lying halfabsence, in this haunt of our fanciful youth asleep among the fern, and heather, with their and imaginative manhood, been granted, and antlers, could our eyes now behold them, Christopher, he thinks, could again bound motionless as the birch-tree branches with along these cliffs like a deer. Ay, wellnigh which they are blended in their lair. At the quarter of a century has elapsed since we signal-belling of their king, a hero unconpitched this selfsame snow-white Tent amid quered in a hundred fights, the whole herd the -purple heather, by the Lin of Dee. Howwhole herd e purple heatly goes, winnowing on the of Dee. ow rises at once like a grove, and with their stateheetly goes, winnoaing on the air,'eeven ly heads lifted aloft on the weather-gleam, the weariest waving of Time's care-laden snuff the sweet scent of the morning air, far wings! A few yellow weather-stains are on and wide surcharged with the honey-dew yet the canvas-but the pole is yet sound —or unmelting on the heather, and eye with the unmelting on the heather, and eye with the call it rather mast-for we have hoisted our looks of liberty the glad daylight that mantles topgallant, the Black Mount with a many-coloured gar" And lo! the silver cross, to Scotland dear," ment. Ha! the first plunge of the salmon in languidly lifts itself up, an ineffectual streamer, the Rowan-tree Pool. There again he shoots in the fitful morning breezes! into the air, white as silver, fresh run from Bold son, or bright daughter of England! the sea! For Loch-Etive, you must know, is hast thou ever seen a SCOTTISH THRISSIL? one of the many million arms of Ocean, and What height are you —Captain of the Gren- bright now are rolling in the billows of -the adier Guards? "Six feet four on my stocking far-heaving tide. Music meet for such a morn soles." Poo-a dwarf! Stand up with your and such mountains. Straight stretches the back to that stalk. Your head does not reach glen for leagues, and then bending through the above his waist-he hangs high over you- blue gloom, seems to wind away with one "his radious croun of rubies." There's a sweep into infinitude. The Great Glen of Flower! dear to Lady Nature above all others, Scotland-Glen-More itself-is not grander. saving and excepting the Rose, and he is the But the Great Glen of Scotland is yet a living Rose's husband-the Guardian Genii of the forest. Glen-Etive has few woods or noneland consecrated the Union, and it has been and the want of them is sublime. For cenblest. Eyeing the sun like an angry star that turies ago pines and oaks in the course of will not suffer eclipse either from light or nature all perished; and they exist now but in shadow-but burns proudly-fiercely-in its tradition wavering on the tongues of old bards, native lustre-storm-brightened, and undi- or deep down in the mosses show their black shevelled by the tempest in which it swings. trunks to the light, when the torrents join the See, it stoops beneath the blast within reach river in spate, and the moor divulges its of your hand. Grasp it ere it recoil aloft; and secrets as in an earthquake. Sweetly sung, your hand will be as if it had crushed a sleep- thou small, brown, moorland bird, though thy ing wasp-swarm. But you cannot crush it- song be but a twitter! And true to thy time — to do that would require a giant with an iron even to a balmy minute-art thou, with thy glove. Then let it alone to dally with the wind, velvet tunic of black striped with yellow, as and the sun, and the rain, and the snow-all thou windest thy small but not sullen hornalike dear to its spears and rubies; and as by us called in our pride HUMBLE BEE —but you look at the armed lustre, you will see a not, methinks, so very humble, while booming beautiful emblem and a stately of a people's high in air in oft-repeated circles, wondering warlike peace. The stalk indeed is slender, at our Tent, and at the flag that now unfolds but it sways without danger of breaking in the its gaudy length like a burnished serpent, as blast; in the calm it reposes as gently as the if the smell of some far-off darling heather-bed gowan at its root. The softest leaf that en- had touched thy finest instinct, away thou folds in silk the sweetest flower of the garden, fliest straight southward to that rich flowernot greener than those that sting not if but store, unerringly as the carrier-pigeon wafting tenderly you touch them, for they are green as to distant lands some love-message on its the garments of the Fairies that dance by wings. Yet humble after all thou art; for all.moonlight round the Symbol of old Scotland, day long, making thy industry thy delight, and unchristened creatures though they the thou returnest at shut of day, cheerful even in THE MOORS. 115'ly weariness, to thy ground-cell within the enthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before knoll, where as Fancy dreams the Fairies dwell through all her streams and falls; and at the -a Silent People in the Land of Peace. sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting And why hast thou, wild singing spirit of of the moon, we awoke. the Highland Glenorchy, that cheerest the long- Age is the season of Imagination, youth of withdrawing vale from Inveruren to Dalmally, Passion; and having been long,young, shall and from Dalmally Church-tower to the Old we repine that we are now old. They alone Castle of Kilchurn, round whose mouldering are rich who are full of years-the Lords of turrets thou sweepest with more pensive mur- Time's Treasury are all on the staff of Wis. mur, till thy name and existence are lost in dom; their commissions are enclosed in furthat noble loch-why hast thou never had thy rows on their foreheads, and secured to them Bard 1 "A hundred bards have I had in for life. Fearless of fate, and far above for. bygone ages,"is thyreply; "but the Sassenach tune, they hold their heritage by the great understands not the traditionary strains, and charter of nature for behoof of all her children the music of the Gaelic poetry is wasted on who have not, like impatient heirs, to wait for his ear." Songs of war and of love are yet their decease; for every hour dispenses their awakened by the shepherds amongqthese lonely wealth, and their bounty is not a late bequest braes; and often when the moon rises over but a perpetual benefaction. Death but sancBen Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars titles their gifts to gratitude; and their worth in soft reflection beneath the still waters of that is more clearly seen and profoundly felt within long inland sea, she hears the echoes of harps the solemn gloom of the grave. chiming through the silence of departed years. And said we truly that Age is the season of Tradition tells, that on no other banks did the Imagination? That Youth is the season of fairies so love to thread the mazes of their Passion your own beating and bounding hearts mystic dance, as on the heathy, and brackeny, now tell you-your own boiling blood. Intenand oaken banks of the Orchy, during the long sity is its characteristic; and it burns like a summer nights wvhen the thick-falling dews flame of fire, too often but to consume. Experceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a live- pansion of the soul is ours, with all its feellier music to every waterfall. ings and all its " thoughts, that wander through There it was, on a little river island, that eternity;" nor needeth then the spirit to have once, whether sleeping or waking we know wings, for power is given her, beyond the not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's Funeral. dove's or the eagle's, and no weariness can First we heard small pipes playing, as if no touch her on that heavenward flight. bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to the Yet we are all of " the earth earthy," and young night winds; and more piteous than aught that and old alike, must we love and honour our trills from earthly instrument was the scarce home. Your eyes are bright-ours are dim; audible dirge! It seemed to float over the but "it is the soul that sees," and " this diurnal stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive sphere" is visible through the mist of tears. note, till the airy anthem came floating over In that light how more than beautiful-how our couch, and then alighted without footsteps holy-appears even this world! All sadness, among the heather. The pattering of little save of sin, is there most sacred; and sinitself feet was then heard, as if living creatures were loses its terrors in repentance, which alas! is arranging themselves in order, and then there seldom perfect but in the near prospect of diswas nothing but a more ordered hymn. The solution. For temptation may intercept her harmony was like the melting of musical dew- within a few feet of her expected rest, nay, drops, and sang, without words, of sorrow and dash the dust from her hand that she has gadeath. We opened our eyes, or rather sight thered from the burial-place to strew on her came to them when closed, and dream was head; butYouth sees flowery fields and shining vision! Hundreds of creatures, no taller than rivers far-stretching before her path, and canthe crest of the lapwing, and all hanging down not imagine for a moment that among life's their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green golden mountains there is many a Place of plat among the rocks; and in the midst was a Tombs! bier, framed as it seemed of flowers unknown But let us speak only of this earth-this to the Highland hills; and on the bier a Fairy, world —this life-and is not Age the season of lying with uncovered face, pale as the lily, and Imagination? Imagination is Memory imbued motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter by joy or sorrow with creative power over the and fainter, and then died quite away; when past, till it becomes the present, and then, on two of the creatures came from the circle, and that vision "far off the coming shines" of the took their station, one at the head and the other future, till all the spiritual realm overflows at the foot of the bier. They sang alternate with light. Therefore was it that, in illumined measures, not louder than the twittering of the Greece, Memory was called the Mother of the awakened wood-lark before it goes up the Muses; and how divinely indeed they sang dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desola- around her as she lay in the pensive shade! tion of death. The flower-bier stirred; for the You know the words of Milton — spot cn which it lay sank slowly down, and in "' Till old experience doth attain a few moments the greensward was smooth as To something like prophetic strain;" ever-the very dews glittering above the buried and you know, while reading them, that Expe. Fairy. A cloud passed over the moon; and, rience is consummate Memory, Imagination with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed wide as. the world, another name fcr Wisdom, duskily away, heard afar off, so still was the all one with Genius. and in its "prophetic midnight solitude of the glen. Then the dis- strain"-Inspiration. 11G RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. We would fain lower our tone-and on this are almost stern even in their beauty, and ill theme speak like what we are, one of the their sublimity overawing; look at yon precihumblest children of Mother Earth. We can- pice that dwindles into pebbles the granite not leap now twenty-three feet on level ground, blocks that choke up the shore! (our utmost might be twenty-three inches,) Now all this, and a million times more than nevertheless, we could "put a girdle round all this, have we too done in our Youth, and the globe in forty minutes,"-ay, in half an yet'tis all nothing to what we do whenever hour, were we not unwilling to dispirit Ariel. we will it in our Age. For almost all that What are feats done in the flesh and by the is passion; spiritual passion indeed-and as muscle? At first —worms though we be-we all emotions are akin, they all work with, cannot even crawl; —disdainful next of that and into one another's hands, and, however acquirement, we creep, and are distanced by remotely related, recognise and welcome one the earwig;-pretty lambs, we then totter to another, like Highland cousins, whenever they the terror of our deep-bosomed dames-till the meet. Imagination is not the Faculty to stand welkin rings with admiration to behold, sans aloof from the rest, but gives the ore hand to leading-strings, the weanlings walk;-like Fancy and the other to Feeling, and sets to wildfire then we run-for we have found the Passion, who is often so swallowed up in himuse of our feet; —like wild-geese then we fly self as to seem blind to their vis-a-vis, till all at -for we may not doubt we have wings;-in once he hugs all the Three, as if lie were decar, ship, balloon, the lords of earth, sea, and mented, and as suddenly sporting dos-a-dos —is sky, and universal nature. The car runs on off on a gallopade by himself right slick away a post-the ship on a rock-the "air hath over the mountain-tops. bubbles as the water hath"-the balloon is one To the senses of a schoolboy a green sour of them, and bursts like a bladder-and we be- crab is as a golden pippin, more delicious than come the prey of sharks, surgeons, or sextons. any pine-apple-the tree which he climbs to Where, pray, in all this is there a single symp- pluck it seems to grow in the garden of Eden tom or particle of Imagination? It is of Pas- -and the parish-moorland though it besion " all compact." over which he is let loose to play-Paradise. True, this is not a finished picture-'tis but It is barely possible there may be such a suba slight sketch of the season of Youth; but stance as matter, but all its qualities worth paint it as you will, as if faithful to nature you having are given it by mind. By a necessity will find Passion in plenty, and a dearth of of nature, then, we are all poets. We all make Imagination. Nor is the season of Youth the food we feed on; nor is jealousy, the greentherefore to be pitied-for Passion respires eyed monster, the only wretch who discolours and expires in bliss ineffable, and so far from and deforms. Every evil thought does dobeing eloquent as the unwise lecture, it is every good thought gives fresh lustre to the mute as a fish, and merely gasps. In Youth grass-to the flowers-to the stars. And as we are the creatures —the slaves of the senses. the faculties of sense, after becoming finer and But the bondage is borne exultingly in spite of more fine, do then, because that they are earthits severity; for erelong we come to discern ly, gradually lose their power, the faculties of through the dust of our own raising, the pin- the soul, because that they are heavenly, benacles of towers and temples serenely ascend- come then more and more and more indepening into the skies, high and holy places for dent of such ministrations, and continue tc rule, for rest, or'for religion, where as kings deal with images, and with ideas which are we may reign, as priests minister, as saints diviner than images, nor care for either partial adore. or total eclipse of the daylight, conversant as We do not'deny, excellent youth, that to they are, and familiar with a more resplendent your eyes and ears beautiful and sublime are -a spiritual universe. the sights and sounds of Nature-and of Art You still look incredulous and unconvinced her Angel. Enjoy thy pupilage, as we enjoyed of the truth of our position-but it was esours, and deliver thyself up withouten dread, tablished in our first three paragraphs; and or with a holy dread, to the gloom of woods, the rest, though proofs too, are intended merely where night for ever dwells —Wt the glory of for illustrations. Age alone understands the skies, where morn seems enthroned for ever. language of old Mother Earth —for Age alone, Coming and going a thousand and a thousand from his own experience, can imagine its times, yet,-in its familiar beauty, ever new as meanings in trouble or in rest-often mysteri. a dream-let thy soul span the heavens with ous enough even to him in all consciencethe rainbow. Ask thy heart in'the wilderness but intelligible though inarticulate-nor alif that " thunder, heard remote," be from cloud ways inarticulate; for though sobs and sighs or cataract; and ere it can reply, it may shud- are rife, and whispers and murmurs, and der at the shuddering moor, and your flesh groans and gurgling, yea, sometimes yells and creep upon your bones, as the heather seems cries, as if the old Earth were undergoing a to creep on the bent, with the awe of a pass- violent death-yet many a time and oft, within ing earthquake. Let the sea-mew be the guide these few years, have we heard her slowly up the glen, if thy delight be in peace pro- syllabling words out of the Bible, and as in founder than ever sat with her on the lull of listening we looked up to the sky, the fixed summer waves! For the inland loch seems stars responded to their truth, and, like Mercy but a vale overflowing with wondrous light- visiting Despair, the Moon bore it into the and realities they all look-these trees and heart of the stormy clouds. pastures, and rocks and hills, and clouds-not And are there not now-have there never softened images, as they are, of realities that been young Poets. Many; for Passion, so THE MOORS. 117 tossed as to leave, perhaps to give, the sufferer through all the hours, each in itself a spring, power to reflect on his ecstasy, grows poetical season, till the figurative words of Milton have because creative, and loves to express itself been fulfilledin "prose or numerous verse," at once its "Her arms nutriment and relief. Nay, Nature sometimes Branching so broad and long, that in the ground gifts her children with an imaginative spirit, The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow gifts herchidrewthniagiatvepirAbout the mother tree, a pillar'd shade tnat, from slight experiences of passion, re- HIigh overarch'd, and echoing walks between; joices to idealize intentions, and incidents, and There oft the Ettrick Shepherd, shunning heat Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds characters all coloured by it, or subject to its At loopholes cut through thickest shade." sway; and these are Poets, not with old heads on young shoulders, but with old hearts in Butalas! fortheOdontist! He, The best of all young bosoms; yet such premature genius ci" generis IlumnaEi," is dead. seldom escapes blight, the very springs of life the Bishops of Bristol is no more. Mansel are troubled, and its possessor sinks, pines, had not a tithe of his wit-nor Kaye a tithe of his wisdom. And can it bc that we have not fades, and dies. So was it with Chatterton yet edited isdom. And can it be that we have not and Keates. yet edited "IHis Remains!" "Alas! poor Yoand Keates." f Hamlet could smile even with the It may be, after all, that we have only proved rick!" If Hamlet could smile even with the Age to be the strongest season of Imagination;skull of the Jester in his hands, whom when a and if so, we have proved all we wish, for we princely boy he had loved, hanging on his neck seek not to deny, but to vindicate. Know- many a thousand times, why may not we, in ledge is power to the poet as it is power to all our mind's eye seeing that mirthful face "quite men-and indeed without Art and Science chap-fallen," and hearing as if dismally dead what is Poetry? Without cultivation the fa- ened by the dust, the voice that "so often set culty divine can have but imperfect vision. our table on a roar!" Dr. Parr's wig, too, is The inner eye is dependent on the outward eye all out of frizzle; a heavier shot has dishevellong familiar with material objects-a finer led its horsehair than ever was sent from the sense, cognisant of spiritualities, but acquired Shepherd's gun; no more shall it be mistaken by the soul from constant communion with for owl a-blink on the mid-day bough, or shadows-innate the capacity, but awakened ptarmigan basking in the sun high up among into power by gracious intercourse with Na- the regions of the snow. It has vanished, with ture. Thus Milton saw- after he became other lost things, to the Moon; and its image alone remains for the next edition of the celeBut know that Age is not made up of a multi- brated treatise " De Rebus Deperditis," a suitable tude of years-though that be the vulgar reckon- and a welcome frontispiece, transferred thither ing-but of a multitude of experiences; and by the engraver's cunning from the first of that a man at thirty, if good for much, must be those Eight Tomes that might make the Throne old. How long he may continue in the prime tremble, laid on the shoulders of Atlas who of Age, God decrees; many men of the most threatens to put down the Globe, by the least magnificent minds-for example, Michael An- judicious and the most unmerciful of editors gelo-have been all-glorious in power and that ever imposed upon the light living the majesty at fourscore and upwards; but one heavy dead-John Johnson, late of Birmingdrop of water on the brain can at any hour ham, Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the makle it barren as dust. So can great griefs. Royal College of Physicians, whose practice is Yestreen we had rather a hard bout of it in duller than that of all Death's doctors, and his the Tent-the Glenlivet was pithy-and our prescriptions in that preface unchristianly seTail sustained a total overthrow. They are vere. O'Doherty, likewise, has been gathered snoring as if it still were midnight. And is it to his fathers. The Standard-bearer has lowthus tat we sportsmen spend our tie on the ered his colours before the foe who alone is thus that we sportsmen spend our time on the invincible. The Ensign, let us not fear, has Moors Yet while "so many of our poorest been advanced to a company without purchase, subjects are yet asleep," let us repoint the nib been advanced to a company without purchase, Of our pen, ande ye th asleep," let us rep th'd in the Celestials; the Adjutant has got a Staff of our pen, and in the eye of the sweet-breath'd appointment. Tims was lately rumoured to Wellnigh quarter a century, we said, is over be in a galloping consumption; but the very and gone since by the Linn of Dee we pitched terms of the report, about one so sedentary -on that famous excursion-TTIE TENT. Then were sufficient to give it the lie. Though puny, was the genesis of that white Mwitch ~Maga. he is far from being unwell; and still engaged "aLike sgne tall Palm hernoiseless fabric grew " in polishing tea-spoons and other plated artiNay, not a noiselessfor the deafest wight that cles, at a rate cheaper than travelling gipsies Nay, not noiseless-for the deafest wight that do born. Prince Leopold is now King of the ever strove to hear with his mouth wide open, Belgians. but we must put an end in the might have sworn that he heard the sound of Belgiansnt to that portwe must put an end in the ten thousand hammers. Neither grew she Tent to that portentous snore. like a Palm-but like a Banyan-tree. Ever as "Arise, awake, or be for ever fallen!" she threw forth branches from her great unex- Ho-ho! gentlemen-so you have had the hausted stea, they were borne down by the precaution to sleep in your clothes. The sun, weight of their own beauty to the' soil-the like Maga, is mounting higher and higher in deep, black rich soil in which she grew, origi- heaven; so let us, we beseech you, to break. nally sown there by a bird of Paradise, that fast, and then off to the Moors. dropt the seed from her beak as she sailed "Substantial breakfast!" by Dugald Dhu, along in the sunshiny ether-and every lim- and by Donald Roy, and by Hamish Bhanberest spray there again taking root, reas- heaped up like icebergs round the pole. HIow cended a stately scion, and so on ceaselessly nobly stands in the centre that ten-gallon Cask 118 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH of Glenlivet! Proud is that round to court his it can be made to hold —that bright tend of shade. That twenty-pound Salmon lies be- the river-a silver bow-and that white-sand neath it even as yesterday he lay beneath the ed, shelly, shingly shore at Loch-Etive Head. cliff, while a column of light falls from him on on which a troop of Tritons are " charging that Grouse-Pie. Is not that Ham beautiful in with all their chivalry," still driven back and the calm consciousness of his protection? still returning, to the sound of trumpets, of That Tongue mutely eloquent in his praise? "flutes and soft recorders," from the sea. On Tap him with your knuckles, tenderly as if the table, all strewn and scattered "in confuyou loved him-and that with all your heart sion worse confounded," round the Cask, which and soul you do-and is not the response firm -" dilated stands as from the trunk of the gnarled oak? He is Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved," ye: "1 Virgin of Proserpina"-" by Jove" he is; what "buttery touches" might be given to the no wanton lip has ever touched his mouth so chaste; so knock out the bung, and let us hear "reliquias Danaum atque inmitis Achillei!" him gurgle. With diviner music does he fill Then the camp-beds tidily covered and arrangthe pitcher, and with a diviner liquidity of light ed along their own department of the circlethan did ever Naiad from fount of Helicon or quaint dresses hanging from loops, all the vaCastaly, pour into classic urn gracefully up- rious apparelling of hunter, shooter, fisher, and lifted by Grecian damsel to her graceful head, forester-rods, baskets, and nets occupying and borne away, with a thanksgiving hymn, their picturesque division —fowling-pieces, to her bower in the olive-grove. double and single, rejoicing through the oilAll eggs are good eating; and'tis a vulgar smooth brownness of their barrels in the exheresy which hold that those laid by sea-fowl quisite workmanship of a Manton and a Lanhave a fishy taste. The egg of the Sea-mew caster-American riflesi with their stocks more is exceeding sweet; so is that of the Gull. richly silver-chased than you could have Pleasant is even the yolk of the Cormorant- thought within reach of the arts in that young in the north of England ycleped the Scarth, and prosperous land-duck-guns, whose forand in the Lowlands of Scotland the Black By- midable and fatal length had in Lincolnshire uter. Try a Black Byuter's egg, my dear boy; often swept the fens-and on each side of the for though not newly laid, it has since May door, a brass carronade on idle hours to awabeen preserved in butter, and is as fresh as a ken the echoes-sitting erect on their hurdies, daisy after a shower. Do not be afraid of deerhound, greyhound, lucher, pointer, setter, stumbling on a brace of embryo Black Byu- spaniel, varmint, and though last, not least, ters in the interior of the globe, for by its O'Bronte watching Christopher with his steadweight we pronounce it an egg in no peril of fast eyes, slightly raised his large hanging parturition. You m'ay now smack your lips, triangular ears, his Thessalian bull dewlaps loud as if you were smacking your palms, for betokening keen anxiety to be off and away to that yellow morsel was unknown to Vitellius. the mountain, and with a full view of the white Don't crush the shell, but throw it into the star on his coal-black breast,Etive, that the Fairies may find it at night, and "Plaided and plumed in their Tartan array," go dancing in the fragile but buoyant canoe, in fits of small shrill laughter, along with the our three chosen Highlanders, chosen for their foam-bells over the ebbtide Rapids above Con- strength and their fleetness from among the nal's raging Ferry. prime Children of the Mist-and Tickler the The salmon is in shivers, and the grouse-pie Tall, who keeps growing after threescore and has vanished like a dream. ten like a stripling, and leaves his mark within a few inches of the top of the pole, arrayed in "' So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies, tights of Kendal green, bright from the skylight All that this world is proud of!" of the inimitable Vallance or the matchless Only a goose remains! and would that he too Williams-green too his vest, and green also were gone to return no more; for he makes us his tunic-while a green feather in a green an old man. No tradition survives in the bonnet dances in its airy splendour, and gold Glen of the era at which he first flourished. He button-holes give at once lustre and relief to seems to have belonged to some tribe of the the glowing verdure, (such was Little John, Anseres now extinct; and as for his own single when arrayed in all his glory, to walk behind individual self, our senses tell us, in alanguage Robin Hood and Maid Marian, as they glided not to be misinterpreted, that he must have be- from tree to tree, in wait for the fallow-deer in come defunct in the darkness of antiquity. But merry Sherwood,)-North in his Quaker garb nothing can be too old for a devil-so at sup- -Quaker-like all but in cuffs and flaps, which, per let us rectify him in Cayenne. when he goes to the Forest, are not-North, Oh! for David Wilkie, or William Simpson, with a figure combining in itself all the strength (while we send Gibb to bring away yonder of a William Penn, sans its corpulency, all the Shieling and its cliff,) to paint a picture-co- agility of a Tem Belcher with far more than a loured, if possible, from the life-of the Interior Jem Belcher's bottom-with a face exhibiting of our airy Pyramid. Door open, and perpen- in rarest union all the philosophy of a Bacon, dicular canvas walls folded up-that settled the benevolence of a Howard, the wisdom of a but cloudy sky, with here its broad blue fields, Wordsworth, the fire of a Byron, the gnosticity Ahd there its broad blue glimpsing glades-this of a John Bee, and the up-to-trappishness comgreensward mound in the midst of a wilder- bined not only with perfect honesty, but with ness of rock-strewn hether-as much of that honour bright, of the Sporting Editor of Bell's one mountain, and as many of those others, as Life in London-and then, why if Wilkie of THE MOORS. 119 Simpson fail in making a GEM of all that, they ducks, for example, to dive if they can, and get are not the men of genius we took them for, out of the way of mischief. It is giving birds that is all, and the art must be at a low ebb in- a chance for their lives, and is it not ungenedeed in these kingdoms. rous to grudge it? When our gun goes to out Well, our Tail has taken wings to itself and shoulder, that chance is but small; for with flown away with Dugald Dhu and Donald Rcy; double-barrel Brown Bess, it is but a word and and we, with Hamish Bhan, with Ponto, Piro, a blow,-the blow first, and long before you Basta, and O'Bronte, are left by ourselves in could say Jack Robinson, the gorcock plays the Tent. Before we proceed farther, it may thud on the heather. But we beg leave to set not be much amiss to turn up our little fingers the question at rest for ever by one single -yestreen we were all a leetle opstropelous- clencher. We have killed fifty birds —grouse and spermaceti is not a more " sovereign re- -at fifty successive shots-one bird only to the medy for an inward bruise," than is a hair from shot. And mind, not mere pouts-cheepers — the dog's tail that bit you an antidote to any for we are no chicken-butchers-but all thumppus that produces rabies in the shape of hy- ers-cocks and hens asbig as their parents, and drophobia. Fill up the quech, Hamish! a the parents themselves likewise; not one of caulker of Milbank can harm no man at any which fell out of bounds, (to borrow a phrase hour of the day-at least in the Highlands. from the somewhat silly though skilful pastime Sma' Stell, Hamish-assuredly Sma' Stell! of pigeon-shooting,) except one that suddenly Ere we start, Hamish, play us a Gathering- soared halfway up to the moon, and then and then a Pibroch. "The Campbells are "Into such strange vagaries fell coming" is like a storm from the mountain As he would dance," sweeping Glen-More, that roars beneath the and tumbled down stone-dead into a loch. hastening hurricane with all its woods. No Now, what more could have done a detonator earthquake like that which accompanies the in the hands of the devil himself?. Satan trampling of ten thousand men. So, round might have shot as well, perhaps, as Christothat shoulder, Hamish-and away for a mile pher North-better we defy him; and we canup the Glen-then, turning on your heel, blow not doubt that his detonator-given to him in till proud might be the mother that bore you; a present, we believe, by Joe Manton —is a and from the Tent-mouth Christopher will prime article-one of the best ever manufackeep smart fire from his Pattereroes, answered tured on the percussion system. But what hv all the echoes. Hamish-indeed more could he have done? When we had "The dun-deer's hide killed our fiftieth bird in style, we put it to the 011 swifter foot was never tied-" Christian reader, would not the odds have been for even now as that cloud-rather thunderous six to four on the flint? And would not Satan, in his aspect-settles himself over the Tent- at the close of the match, ten birds behind perere five minutes have elapsed-a mile off is haps, and with a bag shamefully rich iA poor the sullen sound of the bagpipe!-music pouts, that would have fallen to the ground which, if it rouse you not when heard among had he but thrown salt on their tails, have the mountains, may you henceforth confine looked excessively sheepish? True, that in yourself to the Jew's harp. Ay, here's a clay- rain or snow the percussion-lock will act, from more —let us fling away the scabbard-and in its detonating power, more correctly than the upon the front rank of the bayoneted muskets, common flint-lock, which, begging its pardon, till the Saxon array reels, or falls just where will then often not act at all; but that is its it has been standing, like a swathe of grass. only advantage, and we confess a great one, So swept of old the Highlanders —shepherds especially in Scotland, where it is a libel on and herdsmen-down the wooded cliffs of the the country to say that it always rains, for it pass of Killiekrankie, till Mackay's red-coats almost as often snows. However, spite of lay redder in blood among the heather, or wind and weather, we are faithful to flint; nor passed away like the lurid fragments of a shall any newfangled invention, howsoever cloud. " The Campbell's are coming"-and we ingenious, wean us from our First Love. will charge with the heroes in the van. The Let not youthful or middle-aged sportsmen whole clan is maddening along the Moor-and -in whose veins the blood yet gallops, canters, Maccallum More himself is at their head. But or trots-despise us, Monsieur Vieillard, in we beseech you, O'Bronte! not to look so like whose veins the blood creeps like a wearied a lion-and to hush in your throat and breast pedestrian at twilight hardly able to hobble that truly leonine growl-for after all,'tis but into the wayside inn-for thus so long prefera bagpipe with ribands ring the steel-pen to the steel barrel (the style " Streaming like meteors to the troubled air," of both is equally polished)-our Bramah to and all our martial enthusiasm has evaporated our Manton. Those two wild young fellows, in-wind. Tickler and the Admiral, whose united ages But let us inspect Brown Bess. Till sixty, amount to little more than a century and a half, we used a single barrel. At seventy we took are already slaughtering their way along the to a double;-but:dang detonators-we stick mountain side, the one on Bauchaille Etive, to the flint. "Flint," says Colonel Hawker, and the other on the Black Mount. But we "shoots strongest into the bird." A percus- love not to commit murder long before meri sion-gun is quicker, but flint is fast enough; dian —" gentle lover of Nature" as we are; so, and it does, indeed, argue rather a confusion in spite of the scorn of the more passionate than a rapidity of ideas, to find fault with sportsman, we shall continue for an hour or lightning for being too slow. With respect to two longer inditing, ever and anon lifting our the flash in the pan, it is but a fair warning to eyes from whitey-brown paper to whitey-blue Ito RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. sky, from memcrandum-book to mountain, ralt, and mountains on mountains of amethyst from inkbottle to loch, and delight ourselves, and streams on streams of silver; and, so and perchance a few thousand others, by a help us Heaven!-for with these eyes we have waking-dream description of Glen-Etive. seen them, a thousand and a thousand times —'Tis a vast Glen. Not one single human at sunrise and sunset, rivers on rivers of gold. dwellinganywhere spec-like onthe river-wind- What kind of climateS All kinds, and all ing plain-or nest-like among the brushwood kinds at once-not merely during the sama knolls-or rock-like among the fractured cliffs season, but the same hour. Suppose it three far up on the mountain region do our eyes be- o'clock of a summer afternoon —you have but hold, eager as they are to discover some symp- to choose your weather. Do you desire a clese, toms of life. Two houses we know to be in sultry, breathless gloom. You have it in the the solitude-ay, two-one of them near the stifling dens of Ben-Anea, where lions might head of the Loch, and the other near the head breed. A breezy coolness, with a sprinkling of the Glen-but both distant from this our of rain 7 Then open your vest to the green Tent, which is pitched between, in the very light in the dewy vales of Benlfira. Lochs heart of the Moor. We were mistaken in say- look lovely in mist, and so thinks the rainbow ing that Dalness is invisible-for yonder it -then away with you ere the rainbow fadelooms in sullen light, and before we have fin- away, we beseech you, to the wild shores of ished the sentence, may have again sunk into Lochan-a-Lfirich. But you would rather see a the moor. Ay, it is gone-for lights and sha- storm, and hear some Highland thunderS dows coming and going, we know not whence There is one at this moment on Unimore, and nor whither, here travel all day long-the Cruachlia growls to Meallanuir, till the catasole tenants-very ghost-like-and seeming- racts of Glashgour are dumb as the dry rocks ly in their shiftings embued with a sort of dim of Craig-TeOnan. uncertain life. How far off from our Tent In those regions we were, when a boy, initimay be the Loch? Miles-and silently as ated into the highest mysteriesof the Highlands. snow are seen to break the waves along the No guide dogged our steps-as well might a shore, while beyond them hangs, in aerial haze, red-deer have asked a cur to show him the the great blue water. How far off from our Forest of Braemar, or Beniglo-an eagle where Tent may be the mountains at the head of the best to build his eyry have advised with the Glen? Miles-for though that speck in the Glasgow Gander. O heavens! how we were sky into which they upheave their mighty alti- bewildered among the vast objects that fed that tudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cannot hear delirium of our boyhood! We dimly recogits cry. What giants are these right opposite nised faces of cliffs wearing dreadful frowns; our Pyramid? Co-grim chieftain-and his blind though they looked, they seemed sensible Tail. What an assemblage of thunder-riven of our approach; and we heard one horrid cliffs! This is what may be well called-Na- monster mutter, " What brings thee here, inture on a grand scale. Andthen, how simple! fatuated Pech —begone!" At his impotent We begin to feel ourselves-in spite of all we malice we could not choose but smile, and can do to support our dignity by our pride-a shook our staff at the blockhead, as since at mighty small and insignificant personage. We many a greater blockhead even than he have are about six feet high-and every body we shook-and more than shook our Crutch. around us about four thousand. Yes, that is But as through "pastures green and quiet the Four Thousand Feet Club! We had no waters by," we pursued, from sunrise to sunidea that in any situation we could be such set, our uncompanioned way, some sweet spot, dwindled dwarfs, such perfect pigmies. Our surrounded by heather, and shaded by fern, Tent is about as big as a fir-cone-and Chris- would woo us to lie down on its bosom, and topher North an insect! enjoy a visionary sleep! Then it was that What a wild world of clouds all over that the mountains confidentially told us their vast central wilderness of Northern Argyle- names-and we got them all by heart; for shire lyingbetween Cruachan and Melnatorran each name characterized its owner by some of Corryfinuarach and Ben Slarive a prodigious his peculiar and prominent qualities —as if iand! defying description, and in memory re- they had been one and all christened by poets sembling not realities, but like fragments of baptizing them from a font tremendous dreams. Is it a sterile region " Translucent, pure, Very. In places nothing but stones. Not a With touch ethereal of heaven's fiery rod." blade of grass-not a bent of heather —not 0 happy pastor of a peaceful flock! Thou even moss. And so they go shouldering up hast long gone to thy reward! One-twointo the sky-enormous masses-huger than three-four successors hast thou had in that churches or ships. And sometimes not unlike manse-(now it too has been taken down and such and other structures-all huddled together the plough gone over it)-and they all did their yet never jostling, so far as we have seen; and duty; yet still is thy memory fragrant in the though often overhanging, as if the wind might glen; for deeds like thine " smell sweet, and blow them over with a puff, steadfast in the blossom in the dust!" Under heaven, we storm that seems rather to be an earthquake, owed our life to thy care of us in a brain fever. and moving not a hair's-breadth, while all the Sometimes thy face would grow grave, never shingly sides of the mountains-you know angry, at our sallies-follies-call them what shingle-with an inconstant clatter-hurry- youwill,butnotsins. Andmethinkswehear skurry-seem to be breaking up into debris. the mild old man somewhat mournfully sayIs.that the character of the whole region? ing, "Mad boy! out of gladness often cometh No, you darling; it has vales on vales of eme grief-out of mirth misery; but our prayers THE MOORS. 121 when thou leavest us, shall be, that.never, and shall we ever see her more?) haJ been never, may such be thy fate!" Were those often pleased to say that we excel. But let us prayers heard in heaven and granted on earth? off to the Moor. Piro! Ponto! Basta! to your We ask our heart in awe, but its depths are paws, and O'Bronte, unfurl your tail to heaven. silent, and make no response. Pointers! ye are a noble trio. White, 0 Polu But is it our intention to sit scribbling here to! art thou as the foam of the sea. Piro! thou all day! Our fancy lets our feet enjoy their tan of all tans! red art thou as the dun-deer's sinecure, and they stretch themselves out in hide, and fleet as he while thou rangest the indolent longitude beneath the Tent-table, mountain brow, now hid in heather, and now while we are settled in spirit, a silent thought, re-appearing over the rocks. Waur hawk, on the battlements of our cloud-castle on the Basta!-for finest-scented through be thy scar summit of Cruachan. What a prospect! Our let nostrils, one bad trick alone hast thou; and cloud-castle rests upon a foundation of granite whenever that gray wing glances from some precipices; and down along their hundred pillar-stone in the wilderness, headlong goesl chasms, from which the eye recoils, we look on thou, O lawless negro! But behave thyself toLoch-Etive bearing on its bosom stationary- day, Basta! and let the kestrel unheeded sail so it seems in the sunshine-one snow-white or sun herself on the cliff: As for thee, sail! What brings the creaturethere-and on O'Bronte! the sable dog with the star-bright what errand may she be voyaging up the un- breast, keep thou like a serf at our heels, and inhabited sea-arm that stretches away into the when our course lies over the fens and marshes, uninhabited mountains? Some poet, perhaps, thou mayst sweep like a hairy hurricane among steers her-sitting at the helm in a dream, and the flappers, and haply to-day grip the old drake allowing her to dance her own way, at her own himself, and with thy fan-like tail proudly will, up and down the green glens and hills of spread in the wind, deposit at thy master's feet, the foam-crested waves-a swell rolling in the with a smile, the monstrous mallard. beauty of light and music for ever attendant But in what direction shall we go, callants — on her, as the Sea-mew-for so we choose to towards what airt shall we turn our faces? name her-pursuesher voyage-now on water, Over yonder cliffs shall we ascend, and deand now, as the breezes drop, in the air-ele- scend into Glen-Creran, where the stony rements at times undistinguishable, as the sha- gions that the ptarmigan love melts away into dows of the clouds and of the mountains mingle miles of the grousey heather, which, ere we their imagery in the sea. Oh! that our head, near the salmon-haunted Loch so beautiful, like that of a spider, were all studded with loses itself in woods that mellow all the heights eyes-that our imagination, sitting in the of Glen Ure and Fasnacloigh with silvan "palace of the soul," (a noble expression, shades, wherein the cushat coos, and the roe borrowed or stolen by Byron from Waller,) glides through the secret covert. Or shall we might see all at once all the sights from centre away up by Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, to circumference, as if all rallying around her and Mealgayre, into the Solitude of Streams, for her own delight, and oppressing her with that from all their lofty sources down to the farthe poetry of nature-a lyrical, and elegiac, an distant Loch have never yet brooked, nor will epic, or a tragic strain. Now the bright blue they ever brook, the bondage of bridges, save water-gleams enchain her vision, and are felt of some huge stone flung across some chasm, to constitute the vital, the essential spirit of or trunk of a tree-none but trunks of trees the whole —Loch Awe land-serpent, large as there, and all dead for centuries-that had serpent of the sea, lying asleep in the sun, sunk down where it grew, and spanned the with his burnished skin all bedropt with scales flood that eddies round it with a louder music? of silver and of gold-the lands of Lorn, mot- Wild region! yet not barren; for there are. tiled and speckled with innumerous lakelets, cattle on a thousand hills, that, wild as the where fancy sees millions of water-lilies riding very red-deer, toss their heads as they snuff at anchor in bays where the breezes have fallen the feet of rarest stranger, and form round him asleep-Oban, splendid among the splendours in a half-alarmed and half-threatening crescent. of that now almost motionless mediterranean, There flocks of goats-outliers from Dalness the mountain-loving Linnhe Loch-Jura, Isla, -may be seen as if following one another on Colonsay, and nameless other islands, floating the very air, along the lichen-stained cliffs that far and wide away on-on to Coll and Tiree, frown down unfathomed abysses-and there is drowned beneath the faint horizon. But now frequent heard the whirring of the gorcock's all the eyes in our spider-head are lost in one wing, and his gobble gathering together his blaze of undistinguishable glory; for the brood, scattered by the lightning that in its whole Highlands of Scotland are up in their season volleys through the silence, else far power against us-rivers, lochs, seas, islands, deeper than that of death;-for the silence of cliffs, clouds, and mountains. The pen drops death-that is of a churchyard filled with tombs from our hand, and here we are-not on the -is nothing to the austerity of the noiselessness battlements of the air-palace on the summit of that prevails under the shadow of Unimore Cruachan-but sitting on a tripod or three- and Attchorachen, with their cliffs on which legged stool at the mouth of our Tent, with our the storms have engraven strange hiergglyphiMS. before us, and at our right hand a quech calinscriptions, which, could but we read them of Glenlivet, fresh drawn from yonder ten-gal- wisely, would record the successive ages of the ion cask-and here's to the health of " Honest Earth, from the hour when fire or flood first men and bonny lasses" all over the globe. moulded the mountains, down to the very moSo much for description-an art in which ment that we are speaking, and with small the Public (God bless her, where s she now- steel-hammer roughening the edges of our IU2 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NCRTH. flints that they may fail not to murder. Or snorting pause, over the miry rneadows —tau. shall we away down by Armaddy, where the tivy! —tantivy!-away! away! away i Fox-Hunter dwells-and through the woods of Oh! son of a Rep! were nmt those glorious Inverkinglass and Achran, "double, double, days? But Time has laid his finger on us toil and trouble" overcome the braes of Ben- both, Filho; and never mere must we two be anea and Mealcopucaich, and drop down like seen by the edge of the co ver, two'unwearied eagles into Glen-Scrae, with a " When first the hunter's startling horn is heard peep in the distance of the young tower of Upon the golden hills." Dalmally, and the old turrets of Kilchurn?'Tis the last learned and highest lesson of Rich and rare is the shooting-ground, Hamish, Wisdom, Filho, in man's studious obedience which by that route lies between this our Tent to Nature's laws-to know when to stop in his and the many tarns that freshen the wilder- career. Pride, Passion, Pleasure, all urge him nesses of Lochanancrioch. Say the word-tip on* while Prudence, Propriety, Peace, cry the wink —tongue on your cheek-up with halt! halt! halt! That mandate we have your forefinger-and we shall go; for hark, timeously obeyed; and having, unblamed we Hamish, our chronometer chimes eight-a hope, and blameless, carried on the pastimes long day is yet before us-and what if we be of youth into manhood, and even through the benighted? We have a full moon and plenty primn of manhood to the verge of age-on that of stars. verge, after some few farewell vagaries up All these are splendid schemes-but what and down the debatable land, we had the resosay you, Hamish, to one less ambitious, and lution to drop our bridle-hand, to unloosen the better adapted to Old Kit 1 Let us beat all the our heels, and to dismount from spurs from our heels, and to dismount from best bits down by Armaddy-the Forge-Gleno, the stateliest and swiftest steed, Filho, that and Inveraw. We may do that well in some ever wafted mortal man over moor and mounsix or seven hours-and then let us try that tain like a storm-driven cloud. famous salmon-cast nearest the mansion- You are sure we are on, Hamish? And that (you have the rods?)-and if time permit, an he will not run away? Come, come, Surefoot, hour's trolling in Loch Awe, below the Pass none of your funking!'A better mane for of the Brander, for one of those giants that holding on by we could not imagine. Pure have immortalized the names of a Maule, a Shelty you say, Hamish? From his ears we Goldie, and a Wilson. Mercy on us, Shelty, should have suspected his grandfather of what a beard! You cannot have been shaved having been at least a Zebra. since Whitsunday-and never saw we such lengthy love-locks as those dangling at your heels. But let us mount, old Surefoot —mulish in naught but an inveterate aversion to all FLIGHT SECOND-THE COVES OF stumbling. And now for the heather! But CRUACHAN are you sure, gents, that we are on? And has it come to this! Where is the Cox~MrA-semicolon-colon-full-point! Al' grandson of the desert-born? three scent-struck into attitude steady as stones. Thirty years ago, and thou Filho da Puta That is beautiful. Ponto straight as a rodwert a flyer! A fencer beyond compare! Piro in a slight curve-and Basta a perfect Dost thou remember how, for a cool five semicircle. O'Bronte! down on your marrowhundred, thou clearedst yon canal in a style bones. But there is no need, Hamish, either that rivalled that of the red-deer across the for hurry or haste. On such ground, and on chasms of Cairngorm? All we had to do, was such a day, the birds will lie as if they were to hold hard and not ride over the hounds, asleep. Hamish, the flask!-not the powderwhen, running breast-high on the rear of Rey- flask, you dotterel-but the Glenlivet.'Tis nard, the savage pack wakened the welkin thus we always love to steady our hand for with the tumultuous hubbub of their death-cry, the first shot. It gives a fine feeling to the and whipper-in and huntsmen were flogging forefinger. on their faltering flight in vain through fields Ha! the heads of the old cock and hen, like and forests flying behind thy heels that glanced snakes, above the heather-motionless, but and glittered in the frosty sunshine. What with glancing eyes-and preparing for the steed like thee in all Britain at a steeple chase? spring. Whirr-whirr-wh:.rr-bang-bang Thy hoofs scorned the strong stubble, and tapsillery-tapsalteery- thud-thud —thud! skimmed the deep fallows, in which all other Old cock and old hen both down, Hamish. horses-heavy there as dragoons-seemed No mean omen, no awkward augury, of the fetlock-bound, or laboured on in staggerings, day's sport. Now for the orphan familysoil-sunk to the knees. Ditches dwindled marked ye them round beneath thy bounds, and rivulets were as rills; or if in flood they rudely overran their banks, into the spate plunged thy sixteen hands and "Faith and she's the teevil's nainsel-that is a-half height, like a Polar monster leaping she-at the shutin'; for may I tine ma mull, from an iceberg into the sea, and then lifting up and never pree sneeshin' mair, if she hae na thy small head and fine neck and high shoul- richt and left murdered fowre o' the creturs!" der, like a Draco from the weltering waters, -" Four!-why we only covered the old peowith a few proud pawings to which the re- ple; but if younkers will cross,'tis their own covered greensward rang, thy whole bold, fault that they bite the heather."-" They're bright-brown bulk reappeared on the bank, a' fowre spewin', sir, except ane-and her's crested by old Christopher, and after one short head's aff-and she's jumpin' about waur ncr THE MOORS. 123 ony o' them, wi' her bluidy neck. I wuss she physiognomists and phrenologists are we, and mayna tak to her wings again, and owre the what with instinctive, and what with intuitive knowe. But ca' in that great toozy ootlandish knowledge, we keek in a moment through all dowg, sir, for he's devourin' them-see hoo disguise. He in the centre of the group is he's flingin' them, first ane and then anither, the stickit minister-on his right stands the outowre his shoother, and keppin' them afore drunken dominie-on his left the captain, who they touch the grun in his mooth, like a in that raised look retains token of delirium mountebank wi' a shoor o' oranges!"-" Ham- tremens-the land-louper behind him is the ish, are they bagged l" —"Ou aye."-"Then land-measurer, who would be well to do in away to windward, ye sons of bitches-Hea- the world were he "monarch of all he survens, how they do their work!" veyed,"-but has been long out at elbows, and Up to the time of our grand climacteric we his society not much courted since he was loved a wide range-and thought nothing of rude to the auld wife at the time the gudeman describing and discussing a circle of ten miles was at the peats. That fine tall youth, the diameter in a day, up to our hips in heather. widow's son in Gleno, and his friend the But for these dozen or twenty years bypast, Sketcher, with his portfolio under his arm, we have preferred a narrow beat, snugly seat- are in indifferent company, Hamish; but who, ed on a sheltry, and pad the hoof on the hill pray, may be the phenomenon in plush, with no more. Yonder is the kind of ground we bow and arrow, and tasseled horn, bonnet now love-for why should an old man make a jauntily screwed to the sinister, glass stuck toil of a pleasure?'Tis one of the many in socket, and precisely in the middle of his small coves belonging to Glen-Etive, and looks puckered mouth a cigar. You do not say so down from no very great elevation upon the -a grocer's apprentice from the Gorbals! Loch. Its bottom, and sides nearly halfway No need of confabulating there, gemmen, on up, are green pastures, sheep-nibbled as smooth the knowe-come forward and confront Chrisas a lawn-and a rill, dropping in diamonds topher North. We find we have been too sefrom the cliffs at its upper end, betrays itself, vere in our strictures. After all, they are not where the water is invisible, by a line of still a bad set of fellows, as the world goes-imlivelier verdure. An old dilapidated sheepfold prudence must not be too harshly condemned is the only building, and seems to make the -Shakspeare taught us to see the soul of good scene still more solitary. Above the green in things evil-these two are excellent lads; pastures are the richest beds and bosoms of and, as for impertinence, it often proceeds heather ever bees murmured on-and above from mauvais honte, and with a glance we shall them nothing but bare cliffs. A stiff breeze replace the archer behind his counter. is now blowing into this cove from the sea- How goes it, Cappy. Rather stiff in the loch; and we shall slaughter the orphan fami- back, minister, with the mouth of the fowlingly at our leisure.'Tis probable they have piece peeping out between the tails of your dropped-single bird after single bird-or in long coat, and the butt at the back of ycur twos and threes-all along the first line of head, by way of bolster? You will find it heather that met their flight; and if so, we more comfortable to have her in hand. That shall pop them like partridges in turnips. bamboo, dominie, is well known to be an airThree points in the game! Each dog, it is gun. Have you your horse-pistol with you manifest, stands to a different lot of feathers; to-day, surveyor 1 Sagittarius, think you, you and we shall slaughter them, without dis- could hit, at twoscore, a haystack flying? Sit mounting, seriatim. No, Hamish-we must down, gentlemen, and let's have a crack. dismount-give us your shoulder-that will So ho! so ho! so ho! We see her black do. The Crutch —now we are on our pins. eyes beneath a primrose tuft on the brae. In Take a lesson. Whirr! Bang! Bag num- spring all one bank of blossoms; but'tis ber one, Hamish. Ay, that is right, Ponto- barish now and sheep-nibbled, though few back Basta. Ditto, ditto. Now Ponto and eyes but our own could have thus detected Basta both back Piro-right and left this time there the brown back of Mawkin. Dominie, -and not one of the brood will be left to cheep your Bamboo. Shoot her sitting? Fie fieof Christopher. Be ready-attend us with the no, no. Kick her up, Hamish. There she other double-barrel. Whirr! Bang-bang- goes. We are out of practice at single ball bang-bang! What think you of that, you son -but whizz! she has it between the shoul of the mist? There is a shower of feathers! ders. Head over heels she has started an They are all at sixes and sevens upon the other-why, that's funny-give us your bow greensward at the edge of the heather. Seven and arrow you green grocer-twang! within birds at four shots! The whole familyis now an inch of her fud. Gentlemen, suppose ne disposed of —father, mother, and eleven chil- tip you a song. Join all in the chorus. dren. If such fire still be in the dry wood, THE POWCHER' SON. what must it have been in the green! Let us lie down in the sheltered shade of the mossy In vamous oomeapprentice walls of the sheepfold-take a drop of Glen- Lauks! I zerved my meester truly livet-and philosophize. Vor neerly zeven yeer, Hollo! Hamish, who are these strange, sus- Untl I toozhll quickly heer. picious-looking strangers thitherwards-bound, CHo. Ou!'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, as hallan-shaker a set as may be seen on an In the zeason ofthe year: On!'twas ma delyght in a shiny sigbt, August day? Ay, ay, we ken the clan. A In the zeason of the year. weck's residence to a man of gumption gives Az me and ma coomerades sin insight into a neighbourhood. Unerring Were zetting on a snere, 124 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Lauks! the Geamkeepoors caem oop to uz; fit residence for new-created man, and habit Vor them we did na kere, able no more to flying dragons? Or shall we, Jump over ony wheere. rather, taking the globe as we find it, speculate CHO. Ou!'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, on the changes wrought on its surface by us, In the zeazon of the year: whom God gave feet to tread theearth, and Ou!'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year. faces to behold the heavens, and souls to soar Az we went oot wan morning into the heaven of heavens, on the wings of Atwixt your vive and zeex, hope, aspiring through temporal shades to We cautcht a heere alive, ma lads, eternal light? We found un in a deetch; We popt un in a bag, ma lads, Brethren!-The primary physical wants of We yoiten offvor town, the human being are food, clothing, shelter, We took un to a neeghhoor's hoose, and defence. To supply these he has invented And we zold un vor a crown. We zold un vor a crown, ma lads, all his arts. Hunger and thirst cultivate thBut a wont tell ye wheere. earth. Fear builds castles and embattles cities. CHO. Ou!'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, The animal is clothed by nature against cold In the zeazon of the year: Ou!'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, and storm, and shelters himself in his den. In the zeazon of the year. Man builds his habitation, and weaves his Then here's success to Powching, clothing. With horns, or teeth, or claws, the VoAnd here's loo think to ere a gentleman strong and deadly weapons with which nature And here's look to ere a gentleman Az wans to buy a heere, has furnished them, the animal kinds wage And here's to ere a geamkeepoor, their war; he forges swords and spears, and Azo woona zell it deere. constructs implements of destruction that will CHO. Ou!'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year: send death almost as far as his eye can mark Ou!'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, his foe, and sweep down thousands together. In the zeazon of the year. The animal that goes in quest of his food, that The Presbytery might have overlooked your pursues or flies from his enemy, has feet, or fault, Mac, for the case was not a flagrant one, wings, or fins; but man bids the horse, the and you were willing, we understand, to make camel, the elephant, bear him, and yokes them her an honest woman. Do you think you to his chariot. If the strong animal would could recollect one of your sermons? In cross the river, he swims. Man spans it with action and in unction you had not your su- a bridge. But the most powerful of them all perior in the Synod. Do give us a screed stands on the beach and gazes on the ocean. about Nimrod or Nebuchadnezzar. No dese- Man constructs a ship, and encircles the globe. cration in a sermon-better omitted, we grant, Other creatures must traverse the element naprayer and psalm. Should you be unable to ture has assigned, with means she has furnishreproduce an entire discourse, yet by dove- ed. He chooses his element, and makes his tailing-that is, a bit front one and a bit from means. Can the fish traverse the waters? So another-surely you can be at no loss for half can he. Can the bird fly the air! So can he. an hour's miscellaneous matter-heads and Can the camel speed over the desert? He shall tails. Or suppose we let you off with a View bear man as his rider. of the Church Question. You look glum and "That's beautifu'!" "Tuts, haud your shake your head. Can you, Mac, how can tongue, and tak a chow. There's some shag." you resist that Pulpit? " Is he gaun to be lang, Hamish?" " Wheesht! Behold in that semicircular low-browed cliff, you micht as weel be speaking in the kirk." backed by a range of bonny green braes dip- But to see what he owes to inventive art, ping down from the hills that do themselves we should compare man, not with inferior come shelving from the mountains, what ap- creatures, but with himself, looking over the pears at first sight to be a cave, but is merely face of human society,.as history or observa a blind window, as it were, a few feet deep, tion shows it. We shall find him almost arched and faced like a beautiful wcrk of ma- sharing the life of brutes, or removed from sonry, though chisel never touched it, nor them by innumerable differences, and incalcul man's hand dropped the line along the living lable degrees. In one place we see him harstone thus wrought by nature's self, who often bouring in caves, naked, living, we might shows us, in her mysterious processes, re- almost say, on prey, seeking from chance his semblances of effects produced by us her wretched sustenance, food which he eats just children on the same materials by our more as he finds it. He lives like a beggar on the most elaborate art. It is a very pulpit, and alms of nature. Turn to another land, and that projecting slab is the sounding-board. you see the face of the earth covered with the That upright stone in front of it, without the works of his hand —his habitation, wide-spreadaid of fancy, may well be thought the desk. ing stately cities-his clothing and the ornaTo us sitting here, this spot of greensward is ments of his person culled and fashioned from the floor; the sky that hangs low, as if it loved the three kingdoms of nature. For his fcc,d it, the roof of the sanctuary; nor is there any the face of the earth bears him tribute; and harm in saying, that we, if we choose to think the seasons and changes of heaven concur so, are sitting in a kirk. with his own art in ministering to his board Shall we mount the pulpit by that natural This is the difference which man has made in flight of steps, and, like a Sedgwick or a Buck- his own condition by the use of his intellectual:and, with a specimen in one hand, and before powers, awakened and goaded on by the neour eyes mountains whose faces the scars of cessities of his physical constitution. thunder have intrenched, tell you how the The various knowledge, the endlessly multiRiobe, after formation on formation, became plied observation, the experience and reason THE MOORS. 126 ings of man added to man, of generation fol- arise the first great laws by which society is lowing generation, which were required to held together in order. Thus that whole wonbring to a moderate state of advancement the derful development of the Moral Nature of great primary arts subservient to physical life man, in all those various forms which fill up -the arts of providing food, habitation, cloth- the history of the race, in part arises out of, ing, and defence, we are utterly unable to con- and is always intimately blended with, the laceive. We are born to the knowledge, which bours to which lie has been aroused by these was collected by the labours of many ages. first great necessities of his physical nature. How slowly were those arts reared up which But had the tendency to increase his numbers still remain to us! How many which had la- been out of all proportion to the means proboriously been brought to perfection, have vided by nature, and infinitely multipliable by been displaced by superior invention, and fall- art, for the subsistence of human beings, how en into oblivion! Fenced in as we are by the could this magnificent march have moved on? works of our predecessors, we see but a small Hence we may understand on what ground part of the power of man contending with the the ancient nations revered so highly, and difficulties of his lot. But what a wonderful even deified the authors of the primary arts of scene would be opened before our eyes, with life. They considered not the supply of the what intense interest should we look on, if we animal wants merely; but they contemplated could indeed behold him armed only with his that mighty change in the condition of manown implanted powers, and going forth to con- kind to which these arts have given origin. It quer the creation! If we could see him be- is on this ground, that they had raised the chaginning by subduing evils, and supplying racter of human life, that Virgil assigns them painful wants-going on to turn those evils their place in the dwellings of bliss, among deand wants into the means of enjoyment-and voted patriots and holy priests, among those at length, in the wantonness and pride of his whom song or prophecy had inspired, among power, filling his existence with luxuries;-if those benefactors of the race whose names we could see him from his first step, in the un- were to live for ever, giving his own most tamed though fruitful wilderness, advancing to beautiful expression to the.common sentiment subdue the soil, to tame and multiply the herds of mankind. -from bending the branches into a bower, to "Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi, fell the forest and quarry the rock-seizing Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, Quique pii vates, et Phcebo digna locuti, into his own hands the element of fire, direct- Inventas aut qui vitam ecoluere digner artes, ing its action on substances got from the Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo; bowels of the earth-fashioning wood, and Omnibus his nived cinguntur tempora vttt." stone, and metal, to the will of his thought- "That's Latin for the minister and the domi. searching the nature of plants to spin their nie." "Wheesht! Heard you ever the like o' fibres, or with their virtues to heal their dis- thatl Though I dinna understaun a word o't, eases;-if we could see him raise his first it gars me a' grue." "Wheest! wheesht!cities, launch his first ship, calling the winds we maun pit him intil Paurliment"-'" Rather and waters to be his servants, and to do his intil the General Assembly, to tussle wi' the work-changing the face of the earth-form- wild men." "He's nae Moderate, man; and ing lakes and rivers-joining seas, or stretch- gin I'm no sair mistaen, he's a wild man him. ing the continent itself into the dominion of sel, and wull uphaud the Veto." " Wheesht! the sea;-if we could do all this in imagina- wheesht! wheesht!" tion, then should we understand something of True, that in savage life men starve. But what man's intellect has done for his physical is that any proof that nature has cursed the life, and what the necessities of his physical race with a fatal tendency to multiply beyond life have done in forcing into action all the the means of subsistence None whatever. powers of his intelligence. Attend for a little to this point. Of the real But there are still higher considerations power of the bodily appetites for food, and the arising from the influence of man's physical sway they may attain over the moral nature necessities on the destiny of the species. It is of the mind, we, who are protected by our this subjugation of natural -evil, and this cre- place among the arrangements of civil society ated dominion of art, that prepares the earth to from greatly suffering under it, can indeed be the scene of his social existence. His hard form no adequate conception. Let us not now conquest was not the end of his toil. He has speak of those dreadful enormities which, in conquered the kingdom in which he was to the midst of dismal famine, are recorded to dwell in his state. The full unfolding of his have been perpetrated by civilized men, when moral powers was only possible in those states the whole moral soul, with all its strongest affecof society which are thus brought into being tions and instinctive abhorrences, has sunk by his conflict with all his physical faculties prostrate under the force of that animal sufferagainst all the stubborn powers of the material ing. But the power of which we speak, as universe; for out of the same conquest Wealth attained by this animal feeling, subsists habi is created. In this progress, and by means tually among whole tribes and nations. It is thus brought into action, society is divided that power which it acquires over the mind into classes. Property itself, the allotment of of the savage, who is frequently exposed to the earth, takes place, because it is the bosom suffer its severity, and who hunts for himself of the earth that yields food. That great foun- the food with which he is to appease it. Comrn dation of the stability of communities is thus pare the mind of the human being as you are connected with the same necessity; and in the accustomed to behold him, knowing the return same progress, and out of the same causes, cf this sensation only as a grateful incitement 1206 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. to take the ready nourishment which is spread Yet it is the most melancholy part of a1 for his repast, with that of his fellow-man such speculation, to observe what a wide bearing through the lonely woods the gnaw- gloom is cast over them by this severe neces. ing pang that goads him to his prey. Hunger sity, which is nevertheless the great and conis in his heart; hunger bears along his un- stant cause of the improvement of their condifatiguing feet; hunger lies in the strength of tion. It is not suffering alone-for that they his arm; hunger watches in his eye; hunger may be inured to bear,-but the darkness of listens in his ear; as he couches down in his the understanding, and the darkness of the covert, silently waiting the approach of his ex- heart, which comes on under the oppression pected spoil, this is the sole thought that fills of toil, that is miserable to see. Our fellow his aching breast-"I shall satisfy my hunger!" men, born with the same spirit as ourselves, When his deadly aim has brought his victim seem yet denied the common privileges of that to the ground, this is the thought that springs spirit. They seem to bring faculties into the up as he rushes to seize it, " I have got food world that cannot be unfolded, and powers of for my hungry soul!" What must be the affection and desire which not their fault but usurpation of animal nature here over the the lot of their birth will pervert and degrade. whole man! It is not merely the simple pain There is a humiliation laid upon our nature as if it were the forlornness of a human creature in the doom which seems thus to rest upon a bearing about his famishing existence in help- great portion of our species, which, while it lessness and despair —though that, too, is indeed requires our most considerate compassion for a true picture of some states of our race; but those who are thus depressed, compels us to here is not a suffering and sinking wretch- humble ourselves under the sense of our own he is a strong hunter, and puts forth his participation in the nature from which it flows. strength fiercely under the urgency of this Therefore, in estimating the worth, the virtue passion. All his might in the chasfe, all pride of our fellow men, whom Providence has of speed, and strength, and skill-all thoughts placed in a lot that yields to them the means, of long and hard endurance-all images of and little more than the means, of supporting perils past-all remembrances and all fore- life in themselves and those born of them, let sight-are gathered on that one strong and us never forget how intimate is the necessary keen desire-are bound down to the sense of union between the wants of the body and the that one bitter animal want. These feelings thoughts of the soul. Let us remember, that recurring day by day in the sole toil of his life, over a great portion of humanity, the soul is bring upon his soul a vehemence and power in a struggle for its independence and power of desire in this object, of which we can have with the necessities of that nature in which it no conception, till he becomes subjected to is enveloped. It has to support itself against hunger as to a mighty animal passion-a sickening, or irritating, or maddening thoughts passion such as it rages in those fierce animal inspired by weariness, lassitude, want, or the kinds which it drives with such ferocity on fear of want. It is chained down to the earth their prey. He knows hunger as the wolf by the influence of one great and constant knows it-he goes forth with his burning heart, occupation-that of providing the means of its like the tiger to lap blood. But turn to man mortal existence. When it shows itself shook in another condition to which he has been and agitated, or overcome in the struggle, brought by the very agency of his physical on what ought to be the thoughts and feelings of his intellectual and moral being! How far the wise for poor humanity! When, on the removed is he now from that daily contention other hand, we see nature preserving itself with such evils as these! How much does he pure, bold, and happy amidst the perpetual feel himself assured against them by belong- threatenings or assaults of those evils from ing to the great confederacy of social life! which it cannot fly, and though oppressed by How much is it veiled from his eyes by the its own weary wants, forgetting them all in many artificial circumstances in which the that love which ministers to the wants of satisfaction of the want is involved! The others-when we see the brow wrinkled and work in which he labours the whole day-on drenched by incessant toil, the body in the which his eyes are fixed and his hands toil- power of its prime bowed down to the dust, is something altogether unconnected with his and the whole frame in which the immortal own wants-connected with distant wants and spirit abides marked, but not dishonoured, by purposes of a thousand other men in which he its slavery to fate-and when, in the midst of has no participation. And as far as it is a all this ceaseless depression and oppression, work of skill, he has to fix his mind on ob- from which man must never hope to escape jects and purposes so totally removed from on earth, we see him still seeking and stil. himself, that they all tend still more to sever finding joy, delight, and happiness in the finer his thoughts from his own necessities: and affections of his spirtiual being, giving to the thus it is that civilization raises his moral lips of those he loves the scanty morsel earned character, when it protects almost every hu- by his own hungry and thirsty toil, purchasman being in a country from that subjection to ing by sweat, sickness, and fever, Education this passion, to which even noble tribes are and Instruction and Religion to the young bound down in the wildernesses of nature. creatures who delight him who is starving for "It's an awful thing hunger, Hamish, sure their sakes, resting with gratitude on that day, aiieugh; but I wush he was dune; for that whose return is ever like a fresh fountain to vlrve o' his sing-sanging is makin' me unco his exhausted and weary heart, and preserving sleepy-and ance I fa' owre, I'm no easy a profound and high sense of his own imwauxenin'. But wha's that snorrin'?" mortality among all the earth-born toils and THE MOORS. 127 troubles that would in vain chain him down "As in this varying and Uncertain weather, to the dust, -when we see all this, and think When gloom and glory force themselves together, When calm seems stormy, and tempestuous night of all this, we feel indeed how rich may be the At day's meridian lowers like noon of night!" poorest of the poor, and learn to respect the WVhose are these fine lines. Hooky Walker, moral being of man in its triumphs over the OutR owx. Dogs! Down-down-down-be power of his physical nature. But we do not stonelike, 0 Shelty!-and Hamish, sink thou learn to doubt or deny the wisdom of the into the heather like a lizard; for if these old Creator. We do not learn from all the strug- dim eyes of ours may be in aught believed, gles, and all these defeats, and all these vic- yonder by the birches stands a Red-Deer snuftories, and all these triumphs, that God sent fing the east wind! Hush! hush! hush! He us his creatures into this life to starve, be- suspects an enemy in that airt-but death cause the air, the earth, and the waters have comes upon him with stealthy foot, from the not wherewithal to feed the mouths that gape west; and if Apollo and Diana-the divinities for food through all the elements! Nor do we so long have worshipped-be now propiwe learn that want is a crime, and poverty a tious-his antlers shall be entangled in the sin-and that they who would toil, but cannot, heather, and his hoofs beat the heavens. Haand they who can toil, but have no work set mish, the rifle! A tinkle as of iron, and ahiss before them, are intruders at Nature's table, accompanying the explosion-and the King of and must be driven by those who are able to the Wilderness, bounding up into the air with pay for their seats to famine, starvation, and his antlers higher than ever waved chieftain's death-almost denied a burial!-Finis. Amen. plume, falls down stone-dead where he stood; Often has it been our lot, by our conversa- for the blue-pill has gone through his vitals, tional powers, to set the table on a snore. The and lightning itself could hardly have withermore stirring the theme, the more soporific the ed him into more instantaneous cessation of sound of our silver voice. Look there, we be- life! seech you! In a small spot of " stationary sun- He is an enormous animal. What antlers! shine," lie Hamish, and Surefoot, and O'Bronte, Roll him over, Hamish, on his side! See, up and Ponto, and Piro, and Basta, all sound to our breast, nearly, reaches the topmost asleep! Dogs are troubled sleepers-but these branch. He is what the hunter of old called four are now like the dreamless dead. Horses, a " Stag of Ten." His eye has lost the flash too, seem often to be witch-ridden in their of freedom-the tongue that browsed the sleep. But at this moment Surefoot is stretch- brushwood is bitten through by fhe clenched ed more like a stone than a shelty in the land teeth-the fleetness of his feet has felt that of Nod. As for Hamish, were he to lie so fatal frost-the wild heart is hushed, Hamish, braxy-like by himself on the hill, he would be -tame, tame, tame; and there the Monarch awakened by the bill of the raven digging into of the Mountains-the King of the Cliffs-the his sockets. We are Morpheus and Orpheus Grand Lama of the Glens-the Sultan of the in one incarnation-the very Pink of Poppy- Solitudes-the Dey of the Deserts-the Royal the true spirit of Opium-of Laudanum the Ranger of the Woods and Forests-yea, the concentrated Essence-of the black Drop the very Prince of the Air and Thane of ThundeI Gnome. — " shorn of all his beams," lies motionless as Indeed, gentlemen, you have reason to be a dead Jackass by the wayside, whose hide was ashamed of yourselves-but where is the awk- not thought worth the trouble of flaying by his ward squad. Clean gone. They have stolen owners the gipsies! "To this complexion has a marchon us, and while we have been preach- he come at last"-he who at dawn had bor. ing they have been poaching-sans mandate rowed the wings of the wind to carry him of the Marquis and Monzie. We may catch across the cataracts! them ere close of day; and, if they have a A sudden pang shoots across our heart smell of slaughter, we shall crack their What right had we to commit this murder. sconces with our crutch. No apologies, Ha- How, henceforth, shall we dare to hold up our mish-'tis only making the matter worse; but head among the lovers of liberty, after having weexpectedbetterthingsofthedogs. O'Bronte! thus stolen basely from behind on him the fie! fie! sirrah. Your sire would not have boldest, brightest, and most beautiful of all her fallen asleep during a speech of ours-and sons! We who for so many years have been such a speech!-he would have sat it out just able to hobble, and no more, by the aid of without winking-at each more splendid pas- the Crutch-who feared to let the heather-bent sage testifying his delight by a yowl. Leap touch our toe, so sensitive in its gout-We, over the Crutch, you reprobate, and let us see the old and impotent, all last winter bed-ridden, thee scour. Look a't him, Hamish, already and even now seated like a lameter on a beckoning to us on his hurdis from the hill-top. shelty, strapped by a patent buckle toga saddle Let us scale those barriers —and away over the provided with a pummel behind as well as betable-land between that summit and the head fore-such an unwieldy and weary wretch as of Gleno. No sooner said than done, and here We-" fat, and scant of breath"-and with our we are on the level-such a level as the ship hand almost perpetually pressed against our finds on the main sea, when in the storm-lull left side, when a coughing-fit of asthma brings she rides up and down the green swell, before back the stitch, seldom an absentee-to asthe tradewinds that coolthe tropics. The sur- sassinate THAT RED-DEER, whose flight on earth face of this main land-sea is black in the gloom, could accompany the eagle's in heaven; and and green in the glimmer, and purple in the not only to assassinate him, but, in a moral light, and crimson in the sunshine. Oh, never vein, to liken his carcass to that of a Jackass!'ooks nature so magnificent It will not bear further reflection; so, Hamish, 128 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. out with your whinger, and carve him a dish Yet,'tis strange how the human soul can fit for the gods-.-in a style worthy of Sir Tris- descend, pleasantly at ev ery note, from the top trem, Gil Morice, Robin Hood, or Lord Ra- to the bottom of passion's and imagination's nald. No; let him lie till nightfall, when we gamut. shall be returning from Inveraw with strength A Tarn-a Tarn! with but a small circle of sufficient to bear him to the Tent. unbroken water in the centre, and all the rest But hark, Hamish, to that sullen croak from of its shallowness bristling, in every bay, with the cliff! The old raven of the cove already reeds and rushes, and surrounded, all about scents death- the mossy flat, with marshes and quagmires! Sagacious of his quarry from afar!" What a breeding-place —"procreant cradle" for waterfowl! Now comes thy turn, O'Bronte But where art thou, Hamish? Ay, yonder is -for famous is thy name, almost as thy sire's, Hamish, wriggling on his very belly, like an among the flappers. Crawl down to leeward, adder, through the heather to windward of the Hamish, that you may pepper them-should croaker, whose nostrils, and eyes, and bill, are they take to flight overhead to the loch. Surenow all hungrily fascinated, and as it were foot, taste that greensward, and you will find already fastened into the very bowels of the it sweet and succulent. Dogs, heel-heel! — beast. His days are numbered. That sly ser- and now let us steal, on our Crutch, behind pent, by circuitous windings insinuating his that knoll, and open a sudden fire on the swimlimber length through among all obstructions, mers, who seem to think themselves out of has ascended unseen the drooping shoulder of shot at the edge of that line of water-lilies; but The cliff, and now cautiously erects his crest some of them will soon find themselves miswithin a hundred yards or more of the unsus- taken, whirling round on their backs, and pecting savage, still uttering at intervals his vainly endeavouring to dive after their friends sullen croak, croak, croak! Something crum- that disappear beneath the agitated surface bles, and old Sooty, unfolding his huge wings, shot-swept into spray. Long Gun! who oft to lifts himself up like Satan, about to sail away the forefinger of Colonel Hawker has swept for a while into another glen; but the rifle the night-harbour of Poole all alive with rings among the rocks-the lead has broken widgeons, be true to the trust now reposed in his spine-and look! how the demon, head thee by Kit North! And though these be over heels, goes tumbling down, down, many neither geese, nor swans, nor hoopers, yet, send hundred fathoms, dashed to pieces and im- thy leaden shower among them feeding in their paled on the sharp-pointed granite! Ere night- play, till all the air be afloat with specks, as if fall the bloody fragments will be devoured by at the shaking of a feather-bed that had burst his mate. Nothing now will disturb the car- the ticking, and the tarn covered with sprawlcass of the deer. No corbies dare enter the ing mawsies and mallards, in death-throes cove where the raven reigned; the hawk pre- among the ducklings! There it lies on its fers grouse to venison, and so does the eagle, rest-like a telescope. No eye has discovered who, however, like a good Catholic as he is- the invention-keen as those wild eyes are of this is Friday-has gone out to sea for a fish the plowterers on the shallows. Lightning dinner, which he devours to the music of the and thunder! to which all the echoes roar. waves on some isle-rock. Therefore lie there, But we meanwhile are on our back; for of all dethroned king! till thou art decapitated; and the recoils that ever shook a shoulder, that ere the moon wanes, that haunch will tower one was the severest-but'twill probably cure gloriously on our Tent-table at the Feast of our rheumatism and- Well done-nobly, Shells. gloriously done, O'Bronte! Heaven and earth, What is your private opinion, O'Bronte, of how otter-like he swims! Ha, Hamish! you the taste of Red-deer blood. Has it not a have cut off the retreat of that airy voyagerwild twang on the tongue and palate, far pre- you have given it him in his stern, Hamishferable to sheep's-head? You are absolutely and are re-loading for the flappers. One at a undergoing transfiguration into a deer-hound! time in your mouth, O'Bronte! Put about With your fore-paws on the flank, your tail with that tail for a rudder-and make for the brandished like a standard, and your crimson shore. What a stately creature! as he comes flews (thank you, Shepherd, for that word) issuing from the shallows, and, bearing the old licked by a long lambent tongue red as crimson, mallard breast high, walks all dripping along while your eyes express a fierce delight never the greensward, and then shakes from his felt before, and a stifled growl disturbs the star curled ebony the flashing spray-mist. He on your breast-just as you stand now, gives us one look as we crown the knoll, and O'Bronte, might Edwin Landseer rejoice to then in again with a spang and a plunge far paint thy picture, for which, immortal image into the tarn, caring no more for the reeds than of the wilderness, the Duke of Bedford would for so many winlestraes, and, fast as a seanot scruple to give a draft on his banker for serpent, is among the heart of the killed and one thousand pounds! wounded. In unerring instinct he always Shooting grouse after red-deer is, for a while seizes the dead-and now a devil's dozen lie at first, felt to be like writing an anagram in a along the shore. Come hither, O'Bronte, and lady's album, after having given the finishing caress thy old master. Ay-that showed a touch to a tragedy or an epic poem.'Tis like fine feeling-did that long shake that bedrizzled taking to catching shrimps in the sand with the sunshine. Put thy paws over our shoul one's toes, on one's return from Davis' Straits ders, and round our neck, true son of thy sire in a w?'aler that arrived at Peterhead with six- -oh! that he were but alive, to see and share een fish, each calculated at ten ton of oil. thy achievements; but indeed, two such dogs, THE MOORS. 129 living together in their prime at one era, would Not the best practice this in the world, cer have been too great glory for this sublunary tainly, for pointers-and it may teach them canine world. Therefore Sirius looked on thy bad habits on the hill; but, in some situations, sire with an evil eye, and in jealousy- all dogs and all men are alike, and cross them "Tantrane animis celestibus irae!" as you will, not a breed but shows a taint of growled upon some sinner to poison the Dog original sin, when under a temptation suffiof all Dogs, who leapt up almost to the ceiling ciently strong to bring it out. Ponto, Piro, and of the room where he slept —our own bed-room Basta, are now, according to their abilities, all -under the agony of that accursed arsenic, as bad as O'Bronte-and never, to be sure, gave one horrid howl, and expired. Methinks was there such a worrying in this wicked we know his murderer-his eye falls when it world. But now we shall cease our fire, and meets ours on the Street of Princes; and let leave the few flappers that are left alive to him scowl there but seldom-for though'tis their own meditations. Our conduct for the but suspicion, this fist, O'Bronte, doubles at last hour must have seemed to them no less the sight of the miscreant-and some day, im- unaccountable than alarming; and something pelled by wrath and disgust, it will smash his to quack over during the rest of the season. nose flat with the other features, till his face is Well, we do not remember ever to have seen a a pancake. Yea! as sure as Themis holds prettier pile of ducks and ducklings. Hamish, her balance in the skies, shall the poisoner be take census. What do you say-two score? punished out of all recognition by his parents, That beats cockfighting. Here's a hank of and be disowned by the Irish Cockney father twine, Hamish, tie them all together by the that begot him, and the Scotch Cockney mo- legs, and hang them, in two divisions of equal ther that bore him, as he carries home a tripe- weights, over the crupper of Surefoot like countenance enough to make his paramour the scullion miscarry, as she opens the door to him on the fifth flat of a common stair. But we are getting personal, O'Bronte, a vice ab- FLIGHT THIRD-STILL LIFE. horrent from our nature. There goes our Crutch, Hamish, whirling WE have been sufficiently slaughterous for aloft in the sky a rainbow flight, even a man of our fine sensibilities and moderate like the ten-pound hammer from the fling of desires, Hamish; and as, somehow or other, George Scougal at the St. Ronan's games. Our the scent seems to be beginning not to lie well gout is gone-so is our asthma-eke our -yet the air cannot be said to be close and rheumatism-and, like an eagle, we have re- sultry either —we shall let Brown Bess cool newed our youth. There is hop, step, and herself in bothbarrels-relinquish, for an hour jump, for you, Hamish-we should not fear, or so, our seat on Shelty, and, by way of a young and agile as you are, buck, to give you change, pad the hoof up that smooth ascent, a yard. But now for the flappers. Pointers strangely left stoneless-an avenue positively all stir your stumps and into the water. This looking as if it were artificial, as it stretches is rich. Why, the reeds are as full of flappers away, with its beautiful green undulations, as of frogs. If they can fly, the fools don't among the blocks; for though no view-hunter, know it. Why, there is a whole musquito-fleet we are, Hamish, what in fine language is callof yellow boys, not a month old. What a pro- ed a devout worshipper of Nature, an enthulific old lady must she have been, to have kept siast in the sublime; and if Nature do not on breeding till July. There she sits, cower- show us something worth gazing at when we ing, just on the edge of the reeds, uncertain reach, yonder altitudes, she must be a gray dewhether to dive or fly. By the creak and cry ceiver, and we shall never again kneel at her of the cradle of thy first-born, Hamish, spare footstool, or sing a hymn in her praise. the plumage on her yearning and quaking The truth is, we have a rending headache, breast. The little yellow images have all for Bess has been for some hours on the kick, melted away, and are now, in holy cunning of and Surefoot on the jog, and our exertions in instinct, deep down beneath the waters, shift- the pulpit were severe-action, Hamish, acing for themselves among the very mud at the tion, action, being, as Demosthenes said somebottom of the reeds. By and by they will be two or three thousand years ago, essential to floating with but the points of their bills above oratory; and you observed how nimbly we the surface, invisible among the air-bells. The kept changing legs, Hamish, how strenuously parent duck has also disappeared; the drake brandishing arms, throughout our discourseyou disposed of, Hamish, as the coward was saving the cunning pauses, thou simpleton, lifting up his lumbering body, with fat doup when, by way of relief to our auditors, we and long neck in the air, to seek safer skies. were as gentle as sucking-doves, and folded up We male creatures-drakes, ganders, and men our wings as if about to go to roost, whereas alike-what are we, when affection pleads, in we were but meditating a bolder flight-about comparison with females! In our passions, to soar, Hamish, into the empyrean. Over and we are brave, but these satiated, we turn upon above all that, we could not brook Tickler's, our heel and disappear from danger, like das- insolence, who, about the sma' hours, chal. tards. But doves, and ducks, and women, are lenged us, you know, quech for quech; and fearless in affection, to the very death. There- though we gave him a fair back-fall, yet we fore have we all our days, sleeping or waking, suffered in the tuilzie, and there is at this moloved the sex, virgin and matron, nor would we ment a throbbing in our temples that threateffs hurt a hair of their heads, gray or golden, for a regular brain-fever. We burn for alln airall else that shines beneath the sun. bath on the mountain-top. Moreover, ve rae 9 r10 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. seized with a sudden desire for solitude-to be speak to the stranger. In such places he wiil plain, we are getting sulky; so ascend, Sure- be delighted-perhaps surprised-to find in foot, Hamish, and be off with the pointers- uncorrupted strength all the primary elements O'Bronte goes with us-north-west, making a of human character. He will find that his circumbendibus round the Tomhans, where knowledge may be wider than theirs, and betMhairhe M'Intyre lived seven years with the ter ordered, but that it rests on the same founfairies; and in a couple of hours or so, you dation, and cormprehends the same matter. will find us under the Merlin Crag. There will be no want of sympathies between We offer to walk any man of our age in him and them; and what he knows best, and Great Britain. But what is our age. Con- loves most, will seldom fail to be that also found us if we know within a score or two. which they listen to with greatest interest, and Yet we cannot get rid of the impression that respecting which there is the closest commuwe are under ninety. However, as we seek nion between the minds of stranger and host, no advantage, and give no odds, we challenge He may know the course of the stars accordthe octogenarians of the United Kingdom- ing to the revelation of science-they may fair toe and heel-a twelve-hour match-for have studied them only as simple shepherds, love, fame, and a legitimate exchequer bill for "whose hearts were gladdened" walking on a thousand. Why these calves of ours would the mountain-top.. But thoe know-as he does look queer, we confess, on the legs of a Leith — who sowed the stars in heaven, and that porter; but even in our prime they were none their silent courses are all adjusted by the of your big vulgar calves, but they handled hand of the Most High. like iron-now more like butter. There is Oh! blessed, thrice blessed years of youth! still a spring in our instep; and our knees, would we choose to live over again all your sometimes shaky, are to-day knit as Pan's and forgotten and.unforgotten nights and days! neat as Apollo's. Poet we may not be, but Blessed, thrice blessed we call you, although, Pedestrian we are; with Wordsworth we could as we then felt, often darkened almost into innot walk along imaginative heights, but, if not sanity by self-sown sorrows springing out of grievously out of our reckoning, on the turn- our restless soul. No, we would not again pike road we could keep pace with Captain face such troubles, not even for the glorious Barclay for a short distance-say from Dun- apparitions that familiarly haunted us in glens dee to Aberdeen. and forests, on mountains and on the great sea. Oh! Gemini! but we are in high spirits. But all, or nearly all that did once so grievousYes-delights there indeed are, which none ly disturb, we can lay in the depths of the past, but pedestriansknow. Much-all depends on so that scarcely a ghastly voice is heard, a the character of the wanderer; he must have ghastly face beheld; while all that so charmed known what it is to commune with his own of yore, or nearly all, although no longer the thoughts and feelings, and be satisfied with daily companions of our life, still survive to be them even as with the converse of a chosen recalled at solemn hours, and with a "beauty friend. Not that he must always, in the soli- still more beauteous" to reinvest the earth, tudes that await him, be in a meditative mood, which neither sin nor sorrow can rob of its for ideas and emotions will of themselves arise, enchantments. We can still travel with the and he will only have to enjoy the pleasures solitary mountain-stream from its source to the which his own being spontaneously affords. sea, and see new visions at every vista of its It would indeed be ahopeless thing, if we were winding waters. The waterfall flows not with always to be on the stretch for happiness. In- its own monotonous voice of a day or an hour, tellect, Imagination, and Feeling, all work of but like a choral anthem pealing with the their own free-will, and not at the order of any hymns of many years. In the heart of the taskmaster. A rill soon becomes a stream-a blind mist on the mountain-ranges we can now stream a river —a river a loch-and a loch a sit alone, surrounded by a world of images, sea. So it is with the current within the spirit. over which time holds no power but to conseIt carries us along, without either oar or sail, crate or solemnize. Solitude we can deepen increasing in lepth, breadth, and swiftness, by a single volition, and by a single volition yet all the while the easy work of our own let in upon it the stir and noise of the world wonderful minds. While we seem only to see and life. Why, therefore, should we complain, or hear, we are thinking and feeling far be- or why lament the inevitable loss or change that yond the mere notices given by the senses; time brings with it to all that breathe? Beaud years afterwards we find that we have neath the shadow of the tree we can yet rebeen laying up treasures, in our most heedless pose, and tranquillize our spirit by its rustle, moments, of imagery, and connecting together or by the "green light" unchequered by one trains of thought that arise in startling beauty, stirring leaf. From sunrise to sunset, we can almost without cause or any traceable origin. lie below the old mossy tower, till the darkThe Pedestrian, too, must not only love his ness that shuts out the day, hides not the viown society, but the society of any other hu- sions that glide round the ruined battlements. man beings, if blameless and not impure, Cheerful as in a city can we traverse the among whom his lot may for a short season houseless moor; and although not a ship be ble cast. He must rejoice in all the forms and on the sea, we can set sail on the wings of shows of life, however simple they may be, imagination, and when wearied, sink down on,however humble, however low; and be able savage or serene isle, and let drop our anchor to ftnd food for his thoughts beside the ingle below the moon and stars.,of the loneliest hut, where the inmates sit with And'tis well we are so spiritual; for the Jfew words, and will rather be spoken to than senses are of no use here, and we must draw THE MOORS. 131 for amusement on our internal sources. A character was given to the Hill by its green:1ay-like night we have often seen about mid- silence, here and there broken by the songs summer, serenest of all among the Hebrides; and laughter of those linen-bleaching lassies, but a night-like day, such as this, ne'er before and by the arm-in-arm strolling of lovers in fell on us, and we might as well be in the the morning light or the evening shade. Here Heart o' Mid-Lothian.'Tis a dungeon, and a married people use to walk with their children, dark one-and we know not for what crime we thinking and feeling themselves to be in the have been condemned to solitary confinement. country; and here elderly gentlemen, like ourWere it mere mist we should not mind; but selves, with gold-headed canes, or simple the gloom is palpable —and makes resistance crutches, mused and meditated on the ongoings to the hand. We did not think clouds capa- of the noisy lower world. Such a Hill, so ble of such condensation-the blackness may close to a great City, yet undisturbed by it, and be felt like velvet'on a hearse. Would that embued at all times with a feeling of sweeter something would rustle-but no-all is breath- peace, because of the immediate neighbourlessly still, and not a wind dares whistle. If hood of the din and stir of which its green rethere be any thing visible or audible hereabout, cess high up in the blue air never partook, then are we stone-blind and stone-deaf. We seems now, in the mingled dream of imagina. have a vision! tion and memory, to have been a super-urban See! a great City in a mist! All is not Paradise! But a city cannot, ought not to be, shrouded —at intervals something huge is controlled in its growth; the natural beauty of beheld in the sky-what we know not, tower, this hill has had its day; now it is broken all temple, spire, dome, or a pile of nameless round with wide walks, alongwhich you might structures-one after the other fading away, or drive chariots a-breast; broad flights of stonesinking and settling down into the gloom that stairs lead up along the once elastic brae-turf; grows deeper and deeper like a night. The and its bosom is laden with towers and temstream of life seems almost hushed in the ples, monuments and mausoleums. Along one blind blank-yet you hear ever and anon, now side, where hanging gardens might have been, here, now there, the slow sound of feet moving magnificent as those of the old Babylon, to their own dull echoes, and lo! the Sun stretches the macadamized Royal Road to London, flanked by one receptacle for the quiet "Looks through the horizontal misty air, dead, and byanother for the unquiet livin-a Shoen of his beams," dead, and by another for the unquiet living-a church-yard and a prison dying away in a like some great ghost. Ay, he looks! does he bridewell. But, making amends for such not? straight on your face, as if you two were hideous deformities, with front nobly looking the only beings there-and were held looking to the cliffs, over a dell of dwellings seen at each other in some strange communion. dimly through the smoke-mist, stands, sacred Surely you must sometimes have felt that to the Muses, an Edifice that might have emotion, when the Luminary seemed no longer pleased the eye of Pericles! Alas, immedi. luminous, but a dull-red brazen orb, sick unto ately below, one that would have turned the the death-obscure the Shedder of Light and brain of Palladio! Modern Athens indeed! the Giver of Life lifeless! Few are the Grecians among thy architects; The Sea has sent a tide-borne wind to the those who are not Goths are Picts-and the City, and you almost start in wonder to behold king himself of the Painted People designed all the heavens clear of clouds, (how beautiful Nelson's Monument. was the clearing!) and bending in a mighty But who can be querulous on such a day? blue bow, that brightly overarches all the Weigh all its defects, designed and undesigned, brightened habitations of men! The spires and is not Edinburgh yet a noble city? Arghoot up into the sky-the domes tranquilly rest thur's Seat! how like a lion! The magnifithere-all the roofs glitter as with diamonds, cent range of Salisbury Crags, on which a all the white walls are lustrous, save where, battery might be built to blow the whole inhahere and there, some loftier range of buildings bitation to atoms! Our friend here, the Calhangs its steadfast shadow o'er square or street, ton, with his mural crown! Our Castle on magnifying the city, by means of separate his Cliff! Gloriously hung round with national multitudes of structures, each town-like in histories along all his battlements! Do' they itself, and the whole gathered together by the not embosom him in a style of grandeur outward eye, and the inward imagination, worthy, if such it be, of a " City of Palaces 7" worthy indeed of the name of Metropolis. Call all things by their right names, in heaven Let us sit down on this bench below the and on earth. Palaces they are not-nor are shadow of the Parthenon. The air is now so they built of marble; but they are stately rarefied, that you can see not indistinctly the houses, framed of stone from Craig-Leith figure of a man on Arthur's Seat. The Calton, quarry, almost as pale as the Parian; and when though a city hill-is as green as the Carter the sun looks fitfully through the storm, or as towering over the Border-forest. Not many now, serenely through the calm, richer than years ago, no stone edifice was on his unvio- Parian in the tempestuous or the peaceful lated verdure-he was a true rural Mount, light. Never beheld we the city wearing such where the lassies bleached their claes, in a a majestic metropolitan aspect. pure atmosphere, aloof from the city smoke almost as the sides and summit of Arthur's "Ay, proudly fling thy white arms to the sea, Queen of the unconquer'd North!" Seat. Flocks of sheep might have grazed here, had there been enclosures, and many How near the Frith! Gloriously does it..nilch-cows. But in their absence a pastoral supply the want of a river. It is a river, though 132 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. seeming, and sweeping into, the sea; but a "Set as an emerald ih, th., csjing Aes, river that man may never bridge; and though in triple union breathe as one, still now as the sky, we wish you saw it in its magnificent madness, when brought on the "Then come against us the whole world in arms, roarings of the stormful tide And we will meet Ihein"' "Breaks the long wave that at the Pole began." What is a people without pride? But let then know that its root rests on noble pillars; and C(oast-cities alone are Queens. All inland in the whole range of strength and stateliness, are but Tributaries. Earth's empiry belongs what pillars are there stronger and statelier to the Power that sees its shadow in the sea. than those glorious two-Genius and Liberty!' Two separate Cities, not twins-but one of Here valour has fought —here philosophy has ancient and one of modern birth-how harmo- meditated-here poetry has sung. Are not niously, in spite of form and features charac- our living yet as brave as our dead'! At'. teristically different, do they coalesce into one wisdom has not perished with the sages tW Capital! This miracle, methinks, is wrought whom we have built or are building monu by the Spirit of Nature on the World of Art. mental tombs. The muses yet love to breathe Her great features subdue almost into simi- the pure mountain-air of Caledon. And have larity a Whole constructed of such various we not amongst us one myriad-minded man, elements, for it is all felt to be kindred with whose name, without offence to that high-priest those guardian cliffs. Those eternal heights of nature, or his devoutest worshippers, may hold the Double City together in an amity that flow from our lips even when they utter that breathes over both the same national look-the of SHAIsrPEArE? impression of the same national soul. In the The Queen of the North has evaporatedolden time, the city gathered herself almost and we again have a glimpse of the Highlands. under the very wing of the Castle; for in her But where's the Sun? We know not in what heroic heart she ever heard, unalarmed but airt to look for him, for who knows but it may watchful, the alarums of war, and that cliff, now be afternoon? It is almost dark enough under heaven, was on earth the rock of her for evening-and if it be not far on in the day, salvation. But now the foundation of that then we shall have thunder. What saith our rock, whence yet the tranquil burgher hears repeater! One o'clock. Usually the brightest the morning and the evening bugle, is beau- hour of all the twelve-but any thing but tified by gardens that love its pensive shadow, bright at this moment. Can there be an eclipse for it tames the light to flowers by rude feet going on-an earthquake at his toilette-or untrodden, and yielding garlands for the brows merely a brewing of storm? Let us consult of perpetual peace. Thence elegance and our almanac. No eclipse set down for to-day grace arose; and while antiquity breathes over -the old earthquake dwells in the neighbourthat wilderness of antique structures pie- hood of Comrie, and has never been known to turesquely huddled along the blue line of sky journey thus far north-besides he has for — as Wilkie once finely said, like the spine of some years been bed-ridden; argal, there is some enormous animal; yet all along this side about to be a storm. What a fool of a landof that unrivered and mound-divided dell, now tortoise were we to crawl up to the top of a shines a new world of radiant dwellings, de- mountain, when we might have taken our claring by their regular but not monotonous choice of half-a-dozen glens with cottages in magnificence, that the same people, whose them every other mile, and a village at the end "perfervid genius" preserved them by war un- of each with a comfortable Change-house! humbled among the nations in days of dark- And up which of its sides, pray, was it that we ness, have now drawn a strength as invincible, crawled! Not this one-for it is as steep as from the beautiful arts which have been cul- a church-and we never in our life peeped tivated by peace in the days of light. over the brink of an uglier abyss. Ay, Mister And is the spirit of the inhabitation there Merlin,'tis wise of you to be flying home into worthy of the place inhabited? We are a your crevice-put your head below your wing, Scotsman. And the great English Moralist and do cease that cry.-Croak! croak! croak! has asked, where may a Scotsman be found Where is the sooty sinnerS We hear he is who loves not the honour or the glory of his on the wing-but he either sees or smells us, country better than truth? We are that Scots- probably both, and the horrid gurgle in his man-though for our country would we die. throat is choked by some cloud. Surely that Yet dearer too than life is to us the honour- was the sughing of wings! A Bird! alighting tf not the glory of our country; and had we a within fifty yards of us-and, from his mode thousand lives, proudly would we lay them all of folding his wings-an Eagle! This is too down in the dust rather than give-or see much-within fifty yards of an Eagle on his given-one single stain own mountain-top. Is he blind? Age dark"Unto the silver cross, to Scotland dear," ens even an Eagle's eyes-but he is not old, - for his plumage is perfect-and we see the on which as yet no stain appears save those glare of his far-keekers as he turns his head glorious weather-stains, that have fallen on its over his shoulder and regards his eyry on the folds from the clouds of war and the storms of cliff. We would not shoot him for a thousand battle. Sufficient praise to the spirit of our a-year for life. Not old-how do we kno-w land, that she knows how to love, admire, and that? Because he is a creature who is young rival —not in vain-the spirit of high-hearted at a hundred-so says Audubon-Swainsonand heroic England. Long as we and that our brother James-and all shepherds. Little other noble Isle suspects he who is lying so near him with his THlL MOORS, 133 Crutch. Our snuffy suit is of a colour with on us, and forgive us our sins, for if this lasts, the storm-stained granite-and if he walk this in another minute we are all at the bottom of way he will get a buffet. And he is walking that pond of pitch. Take care of yourself. this way-his head up, and his tail down-not O'Bronte! hopping like a filthy raven-but one foot before Here we are —sitting! How we were brought the other-like a man-like a King. We do to assume this rather uneasy posture we do not altogether like it-it is rather alarming- not pretend to say. We confine ourselves to he may not be an Eagle after all-but some- the fact. Sitting beside a Tarn. Our escape thing worse —" Hurra! ye Sky-scraper! Chris- appears to have been little less than miracutopher is upon you! take that, and that, and lous, and must have been mainly owing, under that"-all one tumbling scream, there he goes, Providence, to the Crutch. Who's laughing? Crutch and all, over the edge of the cliff.'Tis you,you old Witch, in hood and cloak, Dashed to death-but impossible for us to get crouching on the cliff, as if you were warmthe body. Whew! dashed to death indeed! ing your hands at the fire. Hold your tongue There he wheels, all on fire, round the thunder- -and you may sit there to all eternity if you gloom. Is it electric matter in the atmosphere choose-you cloud-ridden hag! No-there -or fear and wrath that illumine his wings 1 will be a blow-up some-day —as there evident. We wish we were safe down. There is no ly has been here before now; but no more wind here yet-none to speak of; but there is Geology-from the tarn, who is a'tarnation wind enough, to all appearance, in the region deep'un, runs a rill, and he offers to be our towards the west. The main body of the guide down to the Low Country. clouds is falling back on the reserve-and ob- Why, this does not look like the same day. serving that movement the right wing deploys No gloom here-but a green serenity-not so -as for the left it is broken, and its retreat poetical perhaps, but, in a human light, far will soon be a flight. Fear is contagious-the preferable to a "brown horror." No sulphurewhole army has fallen into irremediable disor- ous smell —" the air is balm." No sultriness der-has abandoned its commanding position — how cool the circulating medium! In our - and in an hour will be self-driven into the youth, when we had wings on our feet-and sea. We call that a Panic. were a feathered Mercury-Cherub we never Glory be to the corps that covers the retreat. were nor Cauliflower-by flying, in our weatherWe see now the cause of that retrograde wisdom, from glen to glen, we have made one movement. In the north-west " far off its day a whole week-with, at the end, a Sabbath. coming shone," and "in numbers without For all over the really mountaineous region of number numberless," lo! the adverse Host! the Highlands, every glen has its own indeThrown out in front the beautiful rifle brigade scribable kind of day-all vaguely comprecomes fleetly on, extending in open order along hended under the One Day that may happen the vast plain between the aerial Pine-moun- to be uppermost; and Lowland meteorologists, tains to yon Fire-cliffs. The enemy marches meeting in the evening after a long absencein masses-the space between the divisions having, perhaps, parted that morning-on comnow widening and now narrowing-and as paring notes lose their temper, and have been sure as we are alive we hear the sound of even known to proceed to extremities in detrumpets. The routed army has rallied and fence of facts well-established of a most conre-appears-and, hark, on the extreme left a tradictory and irreconcilable nature. cannonade. Never before had the Unholy Here is an angler fishing with the fly. In Alliance a finer park of artillery-and now its the glen beyond that range he would have used fire opens from the great battery in the centre, the minnow —and in the huge hollow behind and the hurly-burly is general far and wide our friends to the South-east, he might just as over the whole field of battle. well try the bare hook-though it is not uniBut these lead drops dancing on our bonnet versally true that trouts don't rise when there tell us to take up our crutch and be off-for is thunder. Let us see how he throws. What there it is sticking-and by and by the waters a cable! Flies! Tufts of heather. Hollo, will be in flood, and we may have to pass a you there; friend, what sport? What sport, night on the mountain. Down we go. we say? No answer; are you deaf? Dumb? We do not call this the same side of the He flourishes his flail and is mute. Let us try mountain we crawled up? There, all was pur- what a whack on the back may elicit. Down ple except what was green-and we were he flings it, and staring on us with a pair of happy tobe a heather-legged body, occasionally most extraordinary eyes, and a beard like a skipping like a grasshopper on turf. Here, all goat, is off like a shot. Alas we have fright. rocks save stones. Get out of the way, ye ened the wretch out of nis few poor wits, and ptarmigans. We hate shingle from the bottom he may kill himself among the rocks. He is of our oh dear! oh dear! but this is indeed an idiot-an innocent. We remember painful-sliddering on shingle away down seeing him near this very spot forty years ago what is any thing but an inclined plane-feet -and he was not young then-they often live foremost-accompanied with rattling debris- to extreme old age. No wonder he was terriat railroad speed-every twenty yards or so fled-for we are duly sensible of the outre tout dislodging a stone as big as one's-self, who in- ensemble we must have suddenly exhibited in stantly joins the procession, and there they go the glimmer that visits those weak and red hopping and jumping along with us, some be- eyes —he is an albino. That whack was rash, fore, some at each side, and, we shudder to to say the least of it-our Crutch was too think of it some behind-well somersetted much forhim; but we hear him whining-and aver our head, thou Grey Wacke —but mercy moaning-and, good God! there he is on his 134 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. knees with hands claspt in supplication-" Din- thy happiness-for though thou mayst wonuer na kill me-dinna kill me-'am silly —'am silly at our words, and think us a strange old man, -and folk say'am auld-auld-auld." The coming and going, once and for ever, to thee harmless creature is convinced we are not and thine a shadow and no more, yet lean thy going to kill him-takes from our hand what he head towards us that we may lay our hands on calls his fishing rod and tackle-and laughs like it and bless it-and promise, as thou art grow. an owl. "Ony meat-ony meat-ony meat " ing up here, sometimes to think of the voice "Yes, innocent, there is some meat in this that spake to thee by the Birk-tree well. Love, wallet, and you and we shall have our dinner." fear, and serve God, as the Bible teaches-and "Ho! ho! ho! ho! a smelled, a smelled! a whatever happens thee, quake not, but put thy can say the Lord's Prayer." " What's your trust in Heaven. name, my man?" "Daft Dooggythe Haveril." Do not be afraid of him, sweet one! O'Bronte "Sit down, Dugald." A sad mystery all this would submit to be flayed alive rather than -a drop of water on the brain will do it-so bite a child-see, he offers you a paw-take it wise physicians say, and we believe it. For without trembling-nay, he will let thee ride all that, the brain is not the soul. He takes on his back, my pretty dear-won't thou, the food with a kind of howl-and carries it O'Bronte? and scamper with thee up and down away to some distance, muttering " a aye eats the knolls like her coal-black charger rejoicing by mysel'!" He is saying grace! And now to bear the Fairy Queen. Thou tellest us thy he is eating like an animal.'Tis a saying of father and mother, sisters and brothers, all are old," Their lives are hidden with God!" dead; yet with a voice cheerful as well as This lovely little glen is almost altogether plaintive. Smile-laugh-sing-as thou wert new to us: yet so congenial its quiet to the doing a minute ago-as thou hast done for longings of our heart, that all at once it is many a morninga-and shall do for many a familiar to us as if we had sojourned here for morning more on thy way to the well-in the days-as if that cottage were our dwelling- woods-on the braes-in the house-often all place-and we had retired hither to await the by thyself when the old people are out of doors close. Were we never here before-in the not far off-or when sometimes they have for olden and golden time? Those dips in the a whole day been from home out of the glen. summits of the mountain seem to recall from Forget not our words-and no evil can befall oblivion memories of a morning all the same thee that may not, weak as thou art, be borne as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, -and nothing wicked that is allowed to walk almost as if then we were a different being, the earth will ever be able to hurt a hair on joy then the very element in which we drew thy head. our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmo- My stars! what a lovely little animal! A sphere of sadness often thickened with grief. tame fawn, by all that is wild-kneeling down'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among -to drink-no-no-at his lady's feet. The the past times in the dormitory-call it not colley catched it-thou sayest-on the edge the burial-place-over-shadowed by sweet or of the Auld wood-and by the time its wounds solemn imagery —in the inland regions; nor were cured, it seemed to have forgot its mother, can we question the recollections as they rise and soon learnt to follow thee about to far-off -being ghosts, they are silent-their coming places quite out of sight of this-and to play and their going alike a mystery-but some- gamesome tricks like a creature born among times-as now —they are happy hauntings- human dwellings. What! it dances like a kid and age is almost gladdened into illusion of -does it-and sometimes you put a garland returning youth. of wild flowers round its neck —and pursue it'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the High- like a huntress, as it pretends to be making lands-yet we know not that a painter would its escape into the forest! see in it the subject of a picture-for the Look, child, here is a pretty green purse for sprinklings of young trees have been sown you, that opens and shuts with a spring-socapriciously by nature, and there seems no and in it there is a gold coin, called a sovereason why on that hillside, and not on any reign, and a crooked sixpence. Don't blushother, should survive the remains of an old that was a graceful curtsey. Keep the crooked wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few sixpence for good-luck, and you never will are eminent with rocks and shrubs, but there want. With the yellow fellow buy a Sunday is no central assemblage, and the green wilder- gown and a pair of Sunday shoes, and what ness wantons in such disorder that you might else you like; and now-you two, lead the believe the pools there to be, not belonging as way-try a race to the door-and old Christothey are to the same running water, but each pher North will carry the pitcher-balancing itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own it on his head-thus-ha! O'Bronte galloping spring. True, that above its homehills there along as umpire. The Fawn has it, and by a are mountains-and these are cliffs on which neck has beat Camilla. the eagle might not disdain to build-but the We shall lunch ere we go-and lunch well range wheels away in its grandeur to face a too-for this is a poor man's, not a pauper's loftier region, of which we see here but the hut, and Heaven still grants his prayer-" give summits swimming in the distant clouds. us this day our daily bread." Sweeter-richer God bless that hut! and have its inmates in bannocks of barley-meal never met the mouth his holy keeping! But what Fairy is this of mortal man-nor more delicious butter. coming unawares on us sitting by the side of " We salt it, sir, for a friend in Glasgow-but the most lucid cf little wells? Set down thy now and then we tak' a bite of the fresh-do pitcher, my chill, and let us have a look at oblige us a', sir, by eatin', and you'll maybe THE MOORS. 135 find the mutton-ham no that bad, though I've large volumes, shall, ere many weeks elapse, kent it fatter-and, as you ha'e a long walk be lying for you at the Manse. Let us recite afore you, excuse me, sir, for being sae bauld to you, our worthy friends, a small sacred Us to suggest a glass o'speerit in your milk. Poem, which we have by heart, Christian, The gudeman is temperate, and he's been sae keep your eye on the page, and if we gu a' his life-but we keep it for a cordial-and wrong, do not fear to set us right. Can you that bottle-to be sure it's a gay big ane-and say many psalms and hymns 1 But we need would thole replenishing-has lasted us syne not ask-for Whitsuntide " "Piety is sweet to infant minds;" So presseth us to take care of number one what they love they remember-for how easy the gudewife, while the gudeman, busy as -how happy-to get dear things by heart! ourselves, eyes her with a well-pleased face, Happiest of all-the things held holy on earth but saith nothing, and the bonnie we bit lassie as in heaven-because appertaining here to sits on her stool at the wunnoc wi' her coggie Eternal Life. ready to do any service at a look, and supping little or nothing, out of bashfulness in presence TO THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD. BY THE XEi. of Christopher North, who she believes is a DUNCAN GRANT, A. M., MINISTER OF FORRES. good, and thinks may, perhaps, be some great "Beauteous on our heath-clad mountains, man. Our third bannock has had the goose- May our HERALD'S feet appear; berry jam laid on it thick by "the gudewife's Sweet, by silver lakes and fountains, air haun',"-and we suspect at that last wide May his voice be to our ear. Let the tenants of our rocks, bite we have smeared the corners of our mouth Shepherds watching o'er their flocks, -but it will only be making matters worse to Village swain and peasant boy, Thee salute with songs of joy! attempt licking it off with our tongue. Pussie! Thee salute with songs of thou hast a cunning look-purring on our "CHRISTIAN HERALD! spread the story thou hast a cunning look-purring on our IOf Redemption's wondrous plan; knees-and though those glass een o' thine'Tis Jehovah's brightest glory, are blinking at the cream on the saucer-with'Tis his highest gift to man; which thou jalousest we intend to let thee wet Lngelis glorthies tohar unfold, thy whiskers, —we fear thou mak'st no bones Heralds who its influence wield, of the poor birdies in the brake, and that many Make the waste a fruitful field. an unlucky leveret has lost its wits at the "To the fount of mercy soaring, spring of such a tiger.-Cats are queer crea- On the wings of faith and love; And the depths of grace exploring, tures, and have an instinctive liking to War- By the light shed from above; locks. Show us whence life's waters flow, And these two old people have survived all And where trees of blessing grow, Bearing fruit of heavenly bloom, their children-sons and daughters! They Breathing Eden's rich perfume. have told us the story of their life —and as "Love to God and man expressing, calmly as if they had been telling of the trials In thy course of mercy speed; of some other pair. Perhaps, in our sympathy, Lead to springs of joy and blessing, And with heavenly manna feed though we say but little, they feel a strength Scotland's children high and low, that is not always theirs-perhaps it is a re- Till the Lord they truly know: lief from silent sorrow to speak to one who is As to us our fathers told, a stranger to them, and yet, as they may think, He was known by them of old. a brother in affliction-but prayer like thanks- To tle young, in season vernal, Jesus in his grace disclose; giving assures us that there is in this hut a As the tree of life eternal, Christian composure, far beyond the need of'Neath whose shade they may repose, Shielded from the noontide ray, our pity, and sent from a region above the And from ev'ning's tribes of prey; stars. And refresh'd with fruits of love, There cannot be a cleaner cottage. Tidi- And with music from above. ness, it is pleasant to know, has for a good "CHRISTIAN HERALD! may the biessing many years past been establishing itself in Of the Highest thee attend, many years past been establishing itself in That, this chiefest boon possessing, Scotland among the minor domestic virtues. Thou may'st prove thy country's friend: Once established it will never decay; for it Tend to make our land assume must be felt to brighten, more than could be Whomething dof its formen wer e seen imagined by our fathers, the whole aspect of Sparkling on its pastures green; life. No need for any other household fairy 1"When the voice of warm devotion to sweep this floor. An orderly creature we To the throne of God arosehave seen she is, from all her movements out CMihty as thure ind of repose;and in doors-though the guest of but an Sweeter, than when Araby hour. They have told us that they had known Perfume breathes from flow'r and tree, what are called better days-and were once in Rising'bove the shining sphere, a thriving way of business in a town. But they were born and bred in the country; and It is time we were going-but we wish to their manners, not rustic but rural, breathe of hear how thy voice sounds, Christian, when it its serene and simple spirit-at once Lowland reads. So read these same verses, first' into and Highland-to us a pleasant union, not yoursel'," and then to us. They speak of without a certain charm of grace. mercies above your comprehension, and ours, What loose leaves are those lying on the and all men's; for they speak of the infinite Bible? A few odd numbers of the SCOTTISH goodness and mercy of God-but though thou CHRISTIXAN HERALD. We shall take care, our hast committed in thy short life no sins, or friends, that all the Numbers, bound in three but small, towards thy feIlow-creatures —-hcw 1386 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. could'st thou? yet thou knowest we are all are the Children of the Mist, and perhaps the! sinful in His eyes, and thou knowest on whose will favour us with a running commentary on merits is the reliance of our hopes of Heaven. Ossian. Stout, grim, heather-legged bodies Thank you, Christian. Three minutes from they are, one and all, and luckily we are pros two by your house-clock —she gives a clear vided with snuff and tobacco sufficient for the warning-and three minutes from two by our whole crew. Were they even ghosts they will watch —rather curious this coincidence to such not refuse a sneeshin', and a Highland spirit a nicety-we must take up our Crutch and go. will look picturesque puffing a cigar!-Hark! Thank thee, bonnie wee Christian-in wi' the we know them and their vocation. These are bannocks intil our pouch-but we fear you the Genii of the Mountain-dew; and their hidmust take us for a sad glutton. den enginery, depend on't, is not far off, but "Zicketty, dicketty, dock, buried in the bowels of some brae. See!-a The mouse ran up the clock; faint mist dissipating itself over the heather! The clock struck one, There-at work, shaming the idle waste, and Down the mouse ran, Zicketty, dicketty, dock." in use and wont to break even the Sabbath-day, is a STILL! Come closer, Christian-and let us put it to Do we look like Excisemen? The Crutch thine ear. What a pretty face of wonder at has indeed a suspicious family resemblance to the chime! Good people, you have work to a gauging-rod; and literary characters, like do in the hay-field-let us part-God bless us, may well be mistaken for the Supervisor you-Good-by-farewell! himself. But the smuggler's eye knows his Half an hour since we parted-we cannot enemy at a glance, as the fox knows a hound; help being a little sad-and fear we were not and the whispering group discern at once that so kind to the old people-not so considerate we are of a nobler breed. That one fear disas we ought to have been —and perhaps though pelled, Highland hospitality bids us welcome, pleased with us just now, they may say to one even into the mouth of the malt-kiln, and, with another before evening that we were too merry a smack on our loof, the Chief volunteers to for our years. Nonsense. We were all mer- initiate us into the grand mysteries of the Worm. ry together-daft Uncle amang the lave-for The turf-door is flung outward on its lithe the creature came stealing in and sat down on hinges, and already what a gracious smell! his own stool in the corner; and what's the In we go, ushered by unbonneted Celts, genuse of wearing a long face at all times like a tlemen in manner wherever the kilt is worn! Methodist minister? A Methodist minister! for the tartan is the symbol of courtesy, and Why, John Wesley was facete, and Whit- Mac a good password all the world over befield humorous, and Rowland Hill witty- tween man and man. Lowland eves are apt though he, we believe, was not a Methody; to water in the peat-reek, but erelong we shall yet were their hearts fountains of tears-and have another " drappie in our e'e," and drink ours is not a rock-if it be,'tis the rock of to the Clans in the "unchristened cretur." Horeb. What a sad neglect in our education, among Ha, Hamish! Here we are beneath the all the acquired lingoes extant, to have overMerlin Crag. What sport? Why, five brace looked the Gaelic! Yet nobody who has ever is not so much amiss-and they are thumpers. heard P. R. preach an Earse Sermon, need Fifteen brace in all. Ducks and flappers? despair of discoursing in that tongue after ar Seven leash.'We are getting on. hour's practice; so let us forget, if possible "But what are these, every word of English, and the language now So wither'd and so wild in their attire needed will rise up in its place. That look not like th' inhabitants o' the earth, And these fgures in men's coats and wo And yet are on't. Live you? or are you aught That man may question. You seem to understand me, men's petticoats are females? We are willing By each at once her choppy finger laying to believe it in spite of their beards. One of Upon her skinny lips:-you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret them absolutely suckling a child! Thank you, That you are so!" my dear sir, but we cannot swallow the conShakspeare is not familiar, we find, among tents of that quech. Yet, let us try. —A little the natives of Loch-Etive side-else these too warm, and rather harsh; but meat and fi~gures would reply, drink to a man of age. That seems to be goat-milk cheese, and the scones are barley; " All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glammis!" and they and the speerit will wash one another But not satisfied with laying their choppy fin- down in an amicable plea, nor quarrel at close gers on their skinny lips, they now put them quarters. Honey too-heather-honey of this to their plooky noses, having first each dipped blessed year's produce. Hecate's forefinger fore and thumb in his mull, and gibber Gaelic, mixes it in a quech with mountain-dew-and to us unintelligible as the quacking of ducks, that is Athole-brose? when a Christian auditor has been prevented There cannot be the least doubt in the world from catching its meaning by the gobbling of that the Hamiltonian system of teaching lanturkeys. guages is one of the best ever invented. It will Witches at the least, and about to prophesy enable anypupil ofcommon-run powers ofatteno to us some pleasant events, that are to termi- tion to read any part of the New Testament in nate disastrously in afteryears. Is there no nook Greek in some twenty lessons of an hour each. of earth perfectly solitary —but must natural or But what is that to the principle of the worm 1 supernatural footsteps haunt the remotest and Half a blessed hour has not elapsed since we most central places 1 But now we shall have entered into the door of this hill-house, and we eir fortunes told in choice Earse, for sure these offer twenty to one that we read Ossian, ad THE MOORS. 17 apertsram libri, in the original Gaelic. We feel ycleped "' The Despatch," now retired to the as if we could translate the works of Jeremy Braes of Balquhidder, and breathing strongly Bentham into that tongue —ay, even Francis the spirit of his youth. With that heatherMaximus Macnab's Theory of the Universe. houghed gentleman, fiery-tressed as the God of We guaranty ourselves to do both, this iden- Day, we were, for the quarter of a century that tical night before we go to sleep, and if the we held a large grazing farm, in the annual printers are busy during the intermediate practice of drinking a gill at the Falkirk Tryst; hours, to correct the press in the morning.~ and-wonderful, indeed, to think how old Why, there are not above five thousand roots- friends meet, we were present at the amputabut we are getting a little gizzy —into a state tion of the right leg of that timber-toed hero of civilation in the wilderness-and, gentlemen, with the bushy whiskers-in the Hospital let us drink-in solemn silence-the" Memory of Rosetta —having accompanied Sir David of Fingal." Baird's splendid Indian army to Egypt. O St. Cecilia! we did not lay our account Shying, for the present, the question in Po. with a bagpipe! What is the competition of litical Economy, and viewing the subject in a pipers in the Edinburgh Theatre, small as it is, moral, social, and poetical light, what, pray, is to this damnable drone in an earth-cell, eight the true influence of THE STILL? It makes feet by six! Yet while the drums of our ears people idle. Idle? What species of idleness are continuing to split like old parchment title- is that which consists in being up night and deeds to lands nowhere existing, and all our day-traversing moors and mountains in all animal economy, from finger to toe, is one weathers-constantly contriving the most skilagonizing dirl, 2Eolus himself sits as proud ful expedients for misleading the Excise, and as Lucifer in Pandemonium; and as the old which, on some disastrous day, when dragoons soldiers keep tending the Worm in the reek as suddenly shake the desert-when all is lost if all were silence, the male-looking females, except honour-hundreds of gallons of wash and especially the he-she with the imp at her (alas! alas! a-day!) wickedly wasted among lreast, nod, and smirk, and smile, and snap the heather roots, and the whole beautiful Aptheir fingers, in a challenge to a straspey- paratus lying battered and spiritless in the sun and, by all that is horrible, a red hairy arm is beneath the accursed blows of the Pagans-re. round our neck, and we are half-choked with turns, after a few weeks set apart to natural the fumes of whisky-kisses. An hour ago, we grief and indignation, with unabated energy, to were dreaming of Malvina! and here she is the selfsame work, even within view of the with a vengeance, while we in the character former ruins, and pouring out a libation of the of Oscar are embraced till almost all the Low- first amalgamated hotness that deserves the land breath in our body expires. name of speerit, devotes the whole Board of And this is STILL-LIFE. Excise to the Infernal Gods? Extraordinary it is, that, go where we will, The argument of idleness has not a leg to -ve are in a wonderfully short time discovered stand on, and falls at once to the ground. But to be Christopher North. A few years ago, the Still makes men dishonest. We grant that the instant we found our feet in a mine in there is a certain degree of dishonesty in cheatCornwall, after a descent of about one-third ing the Excise; and we shall allow yourself the bored earth's diameter, we were saluted by to fix it, who give as fine a caulker from the name by a grim Monops who had not seen the sma' still, as any moral writer on Honesty upper regions for years, preferring the interior with whom we have the pleasure occasionally of the planet; and forthwith, "Christopher to take a family dinner. But the poor fellows North, Christopher North," reverberated along either grow or purchase their own malt. They the galleries, while the gnomes came flocking do not steal it; and many is the silent benein all directions, with safety-lamps, to catch a diction that we have breathed over a bit patch glimpse of the famous Editor. On another of barley, far up on its stoney soil among the occasion, we remember when coasting the hills, bethinking that it would yield up its presouth of Ireland in our schooner, falling in cious spirit unexcised! Neither do they charge with a boat like a cockle-shell, well out of for it any very extravagant price-for what is the Bay of Bantry, and of the three half-naked twelve, fourteen, twenty shillings a gallon for Paddies that were ensnaring the finny race, such drink divine as is now steaming before two smoked us at the helm, and bawled out, us in that celestial caldron! "Kitty go bragh!" Were we to go up in a Having thus got rid of the charge of idleballoon, and by any accident descend in the ness and dishonesty, nothing more needs to be interior of Africa, we have not the slightest said on the Moral Influence of the Still; and doubt that Sultan Belloo would know us in a we come now, in the second place, to consider jiffy, having heard our person so frequently it in a Social Light. The biggest bigot will described by MajorDenham and Captain Clap- not dare to deny, that without whisky the perton. So we are known, it seems, in the Highlands of Scotland would be uninhabitableStill —by the men of the Worm? Yes-the And if all the population were gone, or extinct, principal proprietor in the concern is a school- where then would be your social life Smugmaster over about Loch-Earn-Head-a man of glers are seldom drunkards; neither are they no mean literary abilities, and an occasional men of boisterous manners or savage disposicontributor to the Magazine. He visits The tions. In general, they are grave, sedate, Shop in breeches-but now mounts the kilt- peaceable characters, not unlike elders of the and astonishes us by the versatility of his ta- kirk. Even Excisemen admit them, except on ents. In one of the most active working bees rare occasions, when human patience is ex re recognise a caddy, formerly in Auld Reeky hausled, to be merciful. Four pleasanter men 138 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. do not now exist in the bosom of the earth, Lamentations of Jeremiah over the siniul mul. than the friends with whom we are now on the titude of Small Stills! Hypocrisy! hypocrisy! hobnob. Stolen waters are sweet-a profound where shalt thou hide thy many-coloured sides? and beautiful reflection-and no doubt origi- Whisky is found by experience to be, on nally made by some peripatetic philosopher at the whole, a blessing in so misty and moun. a Still. The very soul of the strong drink eva- tainous a country. It destroys disease and baporates with the touch of the gauger's wand. nishes death; without some such stimulant An evil day would it indeed be for Scotland, the people would die of cold. You will see a that should witness the extinguishment of all fine old Gael, of ninety or a hundred, turn up her free and unlicensed mountain stills! The his little finger to a caulker with an air of pacharm of Highland hospitality would be wan triarchal solemnity altogether scriptural; his and withered, and the doch an dorras, instead great-grandchildren eyeing him with the moss of a blessing, would sound like a ban. respectful affection, and the youngest of them We have said that smugglers are never toddling across the floor, to take the quech from drunkards, not forgetting that general rules are his huge, withered, and hairy hand, Which he proved by exceptions; nay, we go farther, and lays oh the amiable Joseph's sleek craniology, declare that the Highlanders are the soberest with a blessing heartier through the Glenlivet, people in Europe. Whisky is to them a cor- and with all the earnestness of religion. There dial, a medicine, a life-preserver. Chief of the is no disgrace in getting drunk-in the Highumbrella and wraprascal! were you ever in lands-not even if you are of the above stand. the Highlands? We shall produce a single day ing-for where the people are so poor, such a from any of the fifty-two weeks of the year that state is but of rare occurrence; while it is felt will outargue you on the present subject, in all over the land of sleet and snow, that a " drap half-an-hour. What sound is that? The rush- o' the creatur" is a very necessary of life, and ing of rain from heaven, and the sudden out- that but for its " dew" the mountains would be cy of a thousand waterfalls. Look through a uninhabitable. At fairs, and funerals, and chink in the bothy, and far as you can see for marriages, and suchlike merry meetings, sothe mists, the heath-covered desert is steaming briety is sent to look after the sheep; but, exlike the smoke of a smouldering fire. Winds cept on charitable occasions of that kind, sobiting as winter come sweeping on their invi- briety stays at home among the peat-reek, and sible chariots armed with scythes, down every is contented with crowdy. Who that ever glen, and scatter far and wide over the moun- stooped his head beneath a Highland hut would tains the spray of the raging lochs. Now you grudge a few gallons of Glenlivet to its poor have a taste of the summer cold, more dan- but unrepining inmates 1 The seldomer they gerous far than that of Yule, for it often strikes get drunk the better-and it is but seldom they " aitches" into the unprepared bones, and con- do so; but let the rich man-the monied mogeals the blood of the shelterless shepherd on ralist, who bewails and begrudges the Gael a the hill. But one glorious gurgle of the speerit modicum of the liquor of life, remember the down the throat of a storm-stayed man! and doom of a certain Dives, who, in a certain place bold as a rainbow he faces the reappearing that shall now be nameless, cried, but cried in sun, and feels assured (though there he may vain for a drop of water. Lord bless the Highbe mistaken) of dying at a good old age. landers, say we, for the most harmless, hospiThen think, oh think, how miserably poor table, peaceable, brave people that ever deare most of those men who have fought our spised breeches, blue pibrochs, took invincible battles, and so often reddened their bayonets in standards, and believed in the authenticity of defence of our liberties and our laws! Would Ossian's poems. In that pure and lofty region you grudge them a little whisky. And, de- ignorance is not, as elsewhere, the mother of pend upon it, a little is the most, taking one vice-penury cannot repress the noble rage of day of the year with another, that they imbibe. the mountaineer as "he sings aloud old songs You figure to yourself two hundred thousand that are the music of the heart;" while superHighlanders, taking snuff, and chewing tobac- stition herself has an elevating influence, and co, and drinking whisky, all year long. Why, will be suffered, even by religion, to show her one pound of snuff, two of tobacco, and two shadowy shape and mutter her wild voice gallons of whisky, would be beyond the mark through the gloom that lies on the heads of the of the yearly allowance of every grown-up remote glens, and among the thousand caves man! Thousands never taste such luxuries of echo in her iron-bound coasts dashed on for at all-meal and water, potatoes and salt, their ever-night and day —summer and winteronly food. The animal food, sir, and the fer- by those sleepless seas, who have no sooner mented liquors of various kinds, Foreign and laid their heads on the pillow than up they British, which to our certain knowledge you start with a howl that cleaves the Orcades, have swallowed within the last twelve months, and away off in search of shipwrecks round would have sufficed for fifty families in our the corner of Cape Wrath. abstemious region of mist and snow. We In the third place, what shall we say of the have known you drink a bottle of champagne, poetical influence of STILLS? What more a bottle of port, and two bottles of claret, fre- poetical life can there be than that of the men quently at a sitting, equal, in prime cost, to with whom we are now quaffing the barleythree gallons of the best Glenlivet! And You breel They live with the moon and stars. (who, by the way, are an English clergyman, All the night winds are their familiars. If at circumstance we had entirely forgotten, and there be such things as ghosts, and fairies, and have published a Discourse against Drunken- apparitions-and that there are, no man who Dess, dedicated to a Bishop) pour forth the has travelled much by himself after sunset will THE MOORS. 139 deny, except from the mere love of contradic- attack your corpse from the worm-holes of the tion-they see them; or when invisible, which earth. Corbies, ravens, hawks, eagles, all the they generally are, hear them-here-there- feathered furies of beak and bill, will come everywhere-in sky, forest, cave, or hollow- flying ere sunset to anticipate the maggots, and sounding world immediately beneath their carry your remains-if you will allow us to feet. Many poets walk these wilds; nor do call them so-overthe whole of Argyleshirein their songs perish. They publish not with many living sepulchres. We confess ourselves Blackwood or with Murray-but for centuries unable to see the solitude of this-and begin on centuries, such songs are the preservers, to agree with Byron, that a man is less often the sources, of the oral traditions that go crowded at a masquerade. glimmering and gathering down the stream of But the same subject may be illustrated less years. Native are they to the mountains as tragically, and even with some slight comic the blooming heather, nor shall they ever cease effect. A man among mountains is often surto invest them with the light of poetry-in defi- rounded on all sides with mice and moles. ance of large farms, Methodist preachers, and What cozy nests do the former construct at the Caledonian Canal. the roots of heather, among tufts of grass in People are proud of talking of solitude. It the rushes, and the moss on the greensward! redounds, they opine, to the honour of their As for the latter, though you think you know great-mindedness to be thought capable of a mountain from a molehill, you are much living, for an hour or two, by themselves, at a mistaken; for what is a mountain, in many considerable distance from knots or skeins of cases, but a collection of molehills-and of their fellow-creatures. Byron, again, thought fairy knolls?-which again introduce a new he showed his superiority, by swearing as so- element into the composition, and show, ill lemnly as a man can do in the Spenserian still more glaring colours, your absurdity in stanza, that supposing yourself to be in solitude. The "To sit alone, and muse o'er flood and fell," "Silent People" are around you at every step. has nothing whatever to do with solitude-and You may not see them —for they are dressed that, if you wish to know and feel what soli- in invisible green; but they see you, and that tude really is, you must go to Almack's. unaccountable whispering and buzzing sound tude-really is, you must go to Almacone often hears in what we call the wilderness, "This-this is solitude-this is to be alone!" what is it, or what can it be, but the fairies His Lordship's opinions were often peculiar- making merry at your expense, pointing out but the passage has been much admired; to each other the extreme silliness of your therefore we are willing to believe that the meditative countenance, and laughing like to Great Desert is, in point of loneliness, unable split at your fond conceit of being alone among to stand a philosophical, much less a poetical a multitude of creatures far wiser than your comparison, with a well-frequented fancy-ball. self. But is the statement not borne out by facts? But should all this fail to convince you, that Zoology is on its side-more especially two of you are never less alone than when you think its most interesting branches, Entomology and yourself alone, and that a man never knows Ornithology. what it is to be in the very heart of life till lie Go to a desert and clap your back against a leaves London, and takes a walk in Glencliff. Do you think yourself alone? What a Etive —suppose yourself to have been leaning ninny! Your great clumsy splay feet are with your back against that knoll, dreaming bruising to death a batch of beetles. See that of the far-off race of men, when all at once the spider whom you have widowed, running up support gives way inwards, and you tumble and down your elegant leg, in distraction and head over heels in among a snug coterie of despair, bewailing the loss of a husband who, kilted Celts, in the very act of creating Glen. however savage to the ephemerals, had al- livet in a great warlock's caldron, seething to ways smiled sweetly upon her. Meanwhile, the top with the Spirit of Life! your shoulders have crushed a colony of small Such fancies as these, among im any others, red ants settled in a moss city beautifully were with us in the Still. But a glimmering roofed with lichens-and that accounts for the and a humming and a dizzy bewilderment sharp tickling behind your ear, which you hangs over that time and place, finally dying keep scratching, no Solomon, in ignorance of away into oblivion. H re are we sitting in a the cause of that effect. Should you sit down glade of a birch-wood in what must be Gleno -we must beg to draw a veil over your hur- -some miles from the Still. Hamish asleep, dies, which at the moment extinguish a fear- as usual, whenever he lies down, and all the ful amount of animal life-creation may be dogs yowffing in dreams, and Surefoot standsaid to groan under them; and, insect as you ing with his long beard above ours, almost the are yourself, you are defrauding millions of same in longitude. We have been more, we insects of their little day. All the while you suspect, than half-seas over, and are now are supposing yourself alone! Now are you lying on the shore of sobriety, alrmst a wreck. not, as we hinted, a prodigious ninny? But The truth is, that the new spirit is even m9re the whole wilderness-as you choose to call it dangerous than the new light. Both at first — is crawling with various life. London, with dazzle, then obfuscate, and lastly darken into its million and a half of inhabitants-includ- temporary death. There is, we fear, but one lng of course its suburbs-is, compared with word of one syllable in the English language it, an empty joke. Die —and you will soon be that could fully express our late condition. picked to the bones. The air swarms with Let our readers solve the enigma. Oh! those sharners-and an insurrection of radicals will quechs! By 140 RRECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. "What drugs, what spells, IFLIGHT FOURTH-DOWN RIVER AND What conjurations, and what mighty magic," UP LOCH. wras Christopher overthrown! A strange con- LET us inspect the state of Brown Bess. fusion of sexes, as of men in petticoats and Right barrel empty —left barrel-what is the women in breeches-gowns transmogrified meaning of this — crammed to the muzzle! into jackets-caps into bonnets-and thick Ay, that comes on visiting Stills. We have naked hairy legs into slim ankles decent in been snapping away at the coveys and single hose-all somewhere whirling and dancing by, birds all over the moor, without so much as a dim and obscure, to the sound of something pluff, with the right-hand cock-and then, groaning and yelling, sometimes inarticulate- imagining that we had fired, have kept loading ly, as if it came from something instrumental, away at the bore to the left, till, see! the ram and then mixed up with a wild gibberish, as rod absolutely stands upright in the air, with if shrieking, somehow or other, from living only about three inches hidden in the hollow! lips, human and brute-for a dream of yowl- What a narrow-a miraculous escape has the ing dogs is over all —utterly confounds us as world had of losing Christopher North! Had we strive to muster in recollection the few last he drawn that trigger instead of this, Brown hours that have passed tumultuously through Bess would have burst to a moral certainty, our brain-and then a wide black moor, some- and blown the old gentleman piecemeal over times covered with day, sometimes with night, the heather. " In the midst of life we are in stretches around us, hemmed in on all sides by death!" Could we but know one in a hunthe tops of mountains, seeming to reel in the dred of the close approachings of the skeleton, sky. Frequent flashes of fire, and a whirring we should lead a life of perpetual shudder. as of the wings of birds-but sound and sight Often and often do his bony fingers almost alike uncertain-break again upon our dream. clutch our throat, or his foot is put out to give Let us not mince the matter-we can afford us a cross-buttock. But a saving arm pulls the confession-we have been overtaken by him back, ere we have seen so much as his liquor-sadly intoxicated-out with it at once! shadow. We believe all this-but the belief Frown not, fairest of all sweet-for we lay our that comes not from something steadfastly calamity, not to the charge of the Glenlivet present before our eyes, is barren; and thus circling in countless quechs, but at the door it is, since believing is not seeing, that we of that inveterate enemy to sobriety-the Fresh walk hoodwinked nearly all our days, and Air. worst of all blindness is that of ingratitude But now we are as sober as a judge. Pity and forgetfulness of Him whose shield is for our misfortune-rather than forgive our sin. ever over us, and whose mercy shall be with We entered that Still in a State of innocence us in the world beyond the grave. before the Fall. Where we fell, we know not By all that is most beautifully wild in ant-in divers ways and sundry places-between mated nature, a Roe! a Roe! Shall we slay that magic cell on the breast of Benachochie, him where he stands, or let him vanish in and this glade in Gleno. But, silent glidings in among his native woods 1 "There are worse things in life than a fall among What a fool for asking ourselves such a heather." question! Slay him where he stands to be sure-for many pleasant seasons hath he led Surefoot, we suppose, kept himself tolerably in his leafy lairs, a life of leisure, delight, and sober-and O'Bronte, at each successive cloit, love, and the hour is come when he must sink must have assisted us to remount-for Hamish, down on his knees in a sudden and unpainful from his style of sleeping, must have been as death-fair silvan dreamer! We have drawn bad as his master; and, after all, it is wonder- that multitudinous shot-and both barrels of ful to think how we got here-over hags and Brown Bess now are loaded with ball —for mosses, and marshes and quagmires, like those Hamish is yet lying with his head on the rifle. in which " armies whole have sunk." But the Whiz! whiz! one is through lungs, and another truth is, that never in the whole course of our through neck-and seemingly rather to sleep lives-and that course has been a strange one than die, (so various are the many modes of -did we ever so often as once lose our way. expiration!) Set us down blindfolded on Zahara, and we "In quietness he lays him down will beat the caravan to Timbuctoo. Some- Gently, as a weary wave thing or other mysteriously indicative of the Sinks, when the summer breeze has died, right direction touches the soles of our feet in Against an anchor'd vessel's side. the shape of the ground they tread; and even y —Hamish-you may start to your feetwhen our souls have gone soaring far away, and see realized the vision of. your sleep. or have sunk within us, still have our feet What a set of distracted dogs! But O'Bronte pursued the shortest and the safest path that first catches sight of the quarry —and clearleads to the bourne of our pilgrimage. Is not ing, with grasshopper spangs, the patches of that strange? But not stranger surely than stunted coppice, stops stock-still beside the the flight of the bee, on his first voyage over roe in the glade, as if admiring and wondering the coves of the wilderness to the far-off heath- at the beauty of the fair spotted creature! Yes, rr-bells-or of the dove that is sent by some dogs have a sense of the beautiful. Else how lew stockjobber, to communicate to Dutchmen can you account for their loving so to lie the rise or fall of the funds, from London to down at the feet and lick the hands of the Hamburgh, from the clear shores of silver virgin whose eyes are mild, and forehead meek,'I'hames to the muddy shallows of the Zuyder- and hair of placid sunshine, rather than act Zee. the same part towards ugly women, who, THE MOORS. 14L coarser and coarser in each successive widow- Look and listen far and wide through a sunhood, when at their fourth husband are beyond shiny day, over a rich wooded region, with expression hideous, and felt to be so by the hedgerows, single trees, groves, and forests, whole canine tribe 1 Spenser must have seen and yet haply not one bird is to be seen or some dog like O'Bronte lying at the feet and heard-neither plumage nor song. Yet many licking the hand of some virgin-sweet reader, a bright lyrist is there, all mute till the harblike thyself-else never had he painted the inger-hour of sunset, when all earth, air, and posture of that Lion who guarded through heaven, shall be ringing with one song. AlFairyland most even so is it with this mountain-wilder"Heavenly Una and her milkwhite lamb." ness. Small bright-haired, bright-eyed, brightA divine line of Wordsworth's, which we shall faced children, come stealing out in the mornnever cease quoting on to the last of our in- ing from many hidden huts, each solitary in ditings, even to our dying day' its own site, the sole dwelling on its own brae But where, Hamish, are all the flappers, the or its own dell. Singing go they one and all, mawsies, and the mallards? What! You have alone or in small bands, trippingly along the left them-hare, grouse, bag, and all, at the wide moors; meeting into pleasant parties at Still! We remember it now —and allthe dis- cross paths, or at fords, till one stated hour tillers are to-night to be at our Tent, bringing sees them all gathered together, as now in the with them feathers, fur, and hide —ducks, small Schoolhouse of Gleno, and the echo of pussy, and deer. But take the roe on your the happy hum of the simple scholars is heard stalwart shoulders, Hamish, and bear it down soft among the cliffs. But all at once the hum to the silvan dwelling at the mouth of Gleno. now ceases, and there is a hurry out of doors, urefoot has a sufficient burden in us —for we and exulting cry; for the shadow of Hamish, are waxing more corpulent every day —and with the roe on his shoulders, has passed the erelong shall be a Silenus. small lead-latticed window, and the SchoolAy, travel all the world over, and a human room has emptied itself on the green, which is dwelling lovelier in its wildness shall you now brightening with the young blossoms of nowhere find, than the one that hides itself in life. "A roe —a roe-a roe!"-is still the the depth of its own beauty, beneath the last chorus of their song; and the Schoolmaster of the green knolls besprinkling Gleno, dropt himself, though educated at college for the down there in presence of the peacefulest bay kirk, has not lost the least particle of his of all Loch-Etive, in whose cloud-softened passion for the chase, and with kindling eyes bosom it sees itself reflected among the con- assists Hamish in laying down his burden, and genial imagery of the skies. And, hark! a gazes on the spots with a hunter's joy. Ws murmur as of swarming bees!'Tis a Gaelic leave you to imagine his delight and his sur school-set down in this loneliest of all places, prise when, at first hardly trusting his optics, by that religious wisdom that rests not till the he beholds CARISTOPHER ON SUREFOOT, and seeds of saving knowledge shall be sown over then, patting the shelty on the shoulder, bows all the wilds. That grayhaired minister of affectionately and respectfully to the Old Man, God, whom all Scotland venerates, hath been and while our hands grasp, takes a pleasure here from the great city on one of his holy in repeating over and over again that celebrated pilgrimages. And, lo! at his bidding, and surname-North-North-North. that of his coadjutors in the heavenly work, a After a brief and bright hour of glee and Schoolhouse has risen with its blue roof-the merriment, mingled with grave talk, nor marred pure diamond-sparkling slates of Ballahulish by the sweet undisturbance of all those elves -beneath a tuft of breeze-breaking trees. But maddening on the Green around the Roe, we whence come they-the little scholars-who express a wish that the scholars may all again are all murmuring there? We said that the be gathered together in the Schoolroom, to:shores of Loch-Etive were desolate. So seem undergo an examination by the Christian Phithey to the eye of Imagination, that loves to losopher of Buchanan Lodge.'Tis in all things gather up a hundred scenes into one, and to gentle, in nothing severe. All slates are inbreathe over the whole the lonesome spirit of stantly covered with numerals, and'tis pleasant one vast wilderness. But Imagination was a to see their skill in finest fractions, and in the liar ever-a romancer and a dealer in dreams. wonder-working golden rule of three. And Hers are the realms of fiction, now the rustling of their manuals is like that "A boundless contiguity of shade of rainy breezes among the summer leaves. No fears are here that the Book of God will But the land of truth is ever the haunt of the lose its sanctity by becoming too familiar to heart-there her eye reposes or expatiates, eye, lip, and hand. Like the sunlight in the and what sweet, humble, and lowly visions sky, the light that shines there is for ever dear arise before it, in a light that fadeth not away, -and unlike any sunlight in any skies, never but abideth for ever! Cottages, huts, shielings, is it clouded, permanently_ bright, and unshe sees hidden —few and far between indeed dimmed before pious eyes by one single -but all filled with Christian life-among the shadow. We ought, perhaps, to be ashamed, hoilows of the hills-and up, all the way up but we are not so-we are happy that not an the great glens-and by the shores of the lone- urchin is there who is not fully better acliest lochs-and sprinkled, not so rarely, among quainted'with the events and incidents rethe woods that enclose little fields and mea- corded in the Old and New Testaments than dows of their own-all the way down-more ourselves; and think not that all these could animated-till children are seen gathering be- have been so faithfully committed to memory fore their doors the shells of the contiguous sea. without the perpetual operation of the heart. 142 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Words are forgotten unless they are embalmed folk baa-and the hairy hordes bellow on a in spirit; and the air of the world, blow after- thousand hills. All the beauty and sublimity wards rudely as it may, shall never shrivel up on earth-over the Four Quarters of the World one syllable that has been steeped into their -is not worth a straw if valued against a good souls by the spirit of the Gospel-felt by these harvest. An average crop is satisfactory; but almost infant disciples of Christ to be the very a crop that soars high above an average —a breath of God. golden year of golden ears-sends joy into the It has turned out one of the sweetest and heart of heaven. No prating now of the deserenest afternoons that ever breathed a hush generacy of the potato. We can sing now over the face and bosom of August woods. with our single voice, like a numerous choCan we find it in our mind to think, in our rus, of heart to feel, in our hand to write that Scotland " Potatoes drest both ways, both roasted and boiled;" is now even more beautiful than in our youth! No-not in our heart to feel-but in our eyes Sixty bolls to the acre on a field of our own of to see-for they tell us it is the truth. The twenty acres —mealier than any meal-Perth people have cared for the land which the Lord reds-to the hue on whose cheeks dull was their God hath given them, and have made-the that on the face of the Fair Maid of Perth, wilderness to blossom like the rose. The when she blushed to confess to Burn-y-win' same Arts that have raised their condition that hand-over-hip he had struck the iron when have brightened their habitation; Agriculture, it was hot, and that she was no more the by fertilizing the loveliness of the low-lying Glover's. Oh bright are potato blooms!-Oh vales, has sublimed the sterility of the stupend- green are potato-shaws! —Oh yellow are potato ous mountain heights-and the thundrous tides, plums! But how oft- are blighted summer flowing up the lochs, bring power to the corn- hopes and broken summer promises! Spare fields and pastures created on hillsides once not the shaw-heap high the mounds —that horrid with rocks. The whole country laughs damp nor frost may dim a single eye; so that with a more vivid verdure-more pure the all winter through poor men may prosper, and flow of her streams and rivers-for many a spring see settings of such prolific vigour, that fen and marsh have been made dry, and the they shall yield a thousand-fold-and the sound rainbow pictures itself on clearer cataracts. of rumble-te-thumps be heard all over the The Highlands were, in our memory, over- land. spread with a too dreary gloom. Vast tracts Let the people eat-let them have food for there were in which Nature herself seemed their bodies, and then they will have heart to miserable; and if the heart find no human care for their souls; and the good and the wise happiness to repose on, Imagination will fold will look after their souls, with sure and certain her wings, or flee away to other regions, where hope of elevating them from their hovels to in her own visionary world she may soar at heaven, while prigs, with their eyes in a fine will, and at will stoop down to the homes of frenzy rolling, rail at railroads and all the other this real earth. Assuredly the inhabitants are vile inventions of an utilitarian age to open happier than they then were-better off-and up and expedite communication between the therefore the change, whatever loss it may Children of the Mist and the Sons and Daughcomprehend, has been a gain in good. Alas! ters of the Sunshine, to the utter annihilation poverty-penury-want-even of the necessa- of the sublime Spirit of Solitude. Be under no ries of life —are too often there still rife; but sort of alarm for Nature. There is some talk, patience and endurance dwell there, heroic and it is true, of a tunnel through Cruachan to the better far, Christian-nor has Charity been Black Mount, but the general impression seems slow to succour regions remote but not inac- to be that it will be a great bore. A joint-stock cessible, Charity acting in powxer delegated by company that undertook to remove Ben Nevis, Heaven to our National Councils. And thus is beginning to find unexpected obstructions. we can think not only without sadness, but Feasible as we confess it appeared, the idea of with an elevation of soul inspired by such draining Loch Lomond has been relinquished example of highest virtue in humblest estate, for the easier and more useful scheme of conani. in our own sphere exposed to other trials verting the Clyde from below Stonebyres, to be induced to follow it, set to us in many "a above the Bannatyne Fall, into a canal-the virtuous household, though exceeding poor." chief lock being, in the opinion of the most What are all the poetical fancies about "moun- ingenious speculators, almost ready-made at tain scenery," that ever fluttered on the leaves Corra Linn. of albums, in comparison with any scheme, Shall we never be done with our soliloquy? however prosaic, that tends in any way to in- It may be a little longish, for age is prolix —bat crease human comforts 1 The best sonnet that every whit as natural and congenial with cirever was written by a versifier from the South cumstances, as Hamlet's "to be or not to be, to the Crown of Benlomond, is not worth the that is the question." 0 beloved Albin! our worst pair of worsted stockings trotted in by a soul yearneth towards thee, and we invoke a small Celt going with his dad to seek for alost blessing on thy many thousand glens. The sheep among the snow-wreaths round his base. man who leaves a blessing on any one of thy As for eagles, and ravens, and red-deer," those solitary places, and gives expression to a good magnificent creatures so stately and bright," thought in presence of a Christian brother, is a let them shift for themselves-and perhaps in missionary of the church. What uncomplainspite of all our rhapsodies-the fewer of them ing and unrepining patience in thy solitary the better-but among geese, and turkeys, and huts! What unshrinking endurance of physicai poultry, let propagation flourish-the fleecy pain and want, that might well shame the Stmi','e THE MOORS. 143 philosophic pride! What calm contentment, A gentleman ought not to shoot like a game. akin to mirth, in so many lonesome households, keeper, any more than at billiards to play like hidden the greatest part of the year in mist and a marker, nor with four-in-hand ought he to snow! What peaceful deathbeds, witnessed tool his prads like the Portsmouth Dragsman. but by a few, a very few grave but tearless We choose to shoo like a philosopher as we eyes! Ay, how many martyrdoms for the holy are, and to preserve the golden mean in mur. love and religion of nature, worse to endure der. We hold, with Aristotle, that all virtue than those of old at the stake, because pro- consists in the middle, between the two ex. tracted through years of sore distress, for ever tremes; and thus we shoot in a style equidistan on the very limit of famine, yet for ever far from that of the gamekeeper on the one hand, removed from despair! Such is the people and that of the bagman on the other, neither among whom we seek to drop the books, whose killing nor missing every bird; but, true to the sacred leaves are too often scattered to the spirit of the Aristotelian doctrine, leaning with winds, or buried in the dust of Pagan lands. a decided inclination towards the first rather Blessed is the fount from whose wisely managed than the second predicament. If we shoot too munificence the small house of God will rise well one day, we are pretty sure to make frequent in the wide and sea-divided wilds, with amends for it by shooting just as much too ill its humble associate, the heath-roofed school, another; and thus, at the close of the week, in which, through the silence of nature, will be we can go to bed with a clear conscience. In heard the murmuring voices of the children of short, we shoot like gentlemen, scholars, pcets, the poor, instructed in the knowledge useful philosophers as we are; and looking at us, you for time, and of avail for eternity. have a sight We leave a loose sovereign or two to the "Of him who walks (rides) in glory and in j )y, Bible Fund; and remounting Surefoot, while Following his dog upon the mountain side,"our friend the school-master holds the stirrup a man evidently not shooting for a wager, and tenderly to our toe, jog down the road which is performing a match from the mean motive cf rather alarmingly like the channel of a drought- avarice or ambition, but blazing away " at his dried torrent, and turning round on the saddle, own sweet will," and, without seeming to know send our farewell salutes to the gazing scholars, it, making a great noise in the world. Such, first, bonnet wived round our head, and then, believe us, is ever the mode in which true genius that replaced, a kiss flung from our hand. displaysatoncetheearnestnessandthemodesty Hamish, relieved of the roe, which will be of its character.-But, Hamish-Hamish — taken up (how you shall by-and-by hear) on Hamish-look with both thine eyes on yonder our way back to the Tent, is close at our side, bank-yonder sunny bank, beneath the shade to be ready should Shelty stumble; O'Bronte of that fantastic cliff's superincumbent shadow as usual bounds in the van, and Ponto, Piro, -and seest thou not basking there a miracuand Basta, impatient for the next heather hill, lous amount of the right sort of feathers? keep close at our heels through the wood. They have packed, Hamish-theyhave packed, We do not admire that shooting-ground which early as it yet is in the season; and the question resembles a poultry-yard. Grouse and barn- is —What shall we do? We have it. Take up door fowls are constructed on opposite princi- a position-Hamish-about a hundred yards ples, the former being wild, and the latter tame in the rear-on yonder knoll —with the Colocreatures, when in their respective perfection. nel's Sweeper. Fire from the rest —mind, Of all dull pastimes, the dullest seems to us from the rest, Hamish-right into the centre sporting in a preserve; and we believe that we of that bed of plumage, and we shall be ready, share that feeling with the Grand Signior. The with Brown Bess and her sister, to pour in our sign of a lonely wayside inn in the Highlands, quartette upon the remains as they rise-so ought not to be the Hen and Chickens. Some that not escape shall one single feather. Let shooters, we know, sick of common sport,-love our coming "to the present" be your signal.slaughter. From sunrise to sunset of the First Bang! Whew! —what a flutter! Now take Day of the Moors, they must bag their hundred that-and that-and that-and that! Ia! brace. That can only be done where pouts Hamish-as at the springing of a mine, the prevail, and cheepers keep chiding; and where whole company has perished. Count the dea(L you have half-a-dozen attendants to hand you Twenty-one! Life is short-and by this corndouble-barrels sans intermission, for a round pendious style we take Time by the forelock. dozen of hours spent in a perpetual fire. Com- But where the devil are the ducks? Oh, yes! mend us to a plentiful sprinkling of game; to with the deer at the Still. Bag, and be stirground which seems occasionally barren, and ring. For the Salmon-pond is murmuring in which it needs a fine instructed eye to traverse our ear; and in another hour we must be at scientifically, and thereof to detect the latent Inveraw. Who said that Cruachan was a riches. Fear and Hope are the Deities whom steep mountain 1 Why, with a gentle, smooth, Christopher in his Sporting Jacket worships; and easy slope, he dips his footsteps in the and were they unpropitious, the Moors would sea-salt waters of Loch-Etive's tide, as if to lose all their witchcraft. We are a dead shot, accommodate the old gentleman who, half-abut not always, for the forefinger of our right century ago, used to beard him in his pride on hand is the most fitful forefinger in all this his throne of clouds. Heaven bless him!-he capricious world. Like all performers in the is a kind-hearted mountain, though his foreFine Arts, our execution is very uncertain; head be furrowed, and his aspect grim in and though "toujours pret" is the impress on stormyweather. A million memories "o' auld one side of our shield, "hit and miss" is that on lang syne " revive, as almost " smooth-sliding the other, and often the more characteristic. without step" Surefoot travels through the 144 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. silvan haunts, by us beloved of yore, when its sweet repose. The dim-seen ruins of cast.e every day was a dream, and every dream or religious house, secluded from all the stir filled to overflowing with poetic visions that that disturbed the shore, carries back our swarmed on every bough, on every bent, on dreams to the olden time, and we awake from every heather-bell, in every dewdrop, in every our reveries of" sorrows suffered long ago," tc mote o' the sun, in every line of gossamer, all enjoy the apparent happiness of the living over greenwood and greensward, gray cliff, world. purple heath, blue loch, "wine-faced sea," Loch Lomond is a sea! Along its shores " with locks divinely spreading, might you voyage in your swift schooner, with Like sullen hyacinths in vernal hue." shifting breezes, all a summer's day, nor at and all over the sky, seeming then a glorious sunset, when you dropped anchor, have seen infinitude, where light, and joy, and beauty had half the beautiful wonders. It is many-isled; their dwelling in calm and storm alike for and some of them are in themselves little evermore. worlds, with woods and hills. Houses are Heaven bless thee-with all her sun, moon, seen looking out from among old trees, and and stars! there thou art, dearest to us of all children playing on the greensward that slopes the lochs of Scotland-and they are all dear- safely into deep water, where in rushy havens mountain-crowned, cliff-guarded, isle-zoned, are drawn up the boats of fishermen, or of grove-girdled, wide-winding and far-stretching, woodcutters who go to their work on the mainwith thy many-bayed banks and braes of brush- land. You might live all your life on one of wood, fern, broom, and heather, rejoicing in those islands, and yet be no hermit. Hundreds their huts and shielings, thou glory of Argyle- of small bays indent the shores, and some of a shire, rill-and-river-fed, sea-arm-like, floating majestic character take a fine bold sweep with in thy majesty, magnificent Loch Awe! their towering groves, enclosing the mansion Comparisons, so far from being odious, are of a Colquhoun or a Campbell at enmity no always suggested to our hearts by the spirit of more, or the turreted castle of the rich alien, love. We behold Four Lochs-Loch Awe, who there finds himself as much at home as before our bodily eyes, which sometimes sleep in his hereditary hall, Sassenach and Gael -Loch-Lomond, Windermere, Killarney, be- now living in gentle friendship. What a prosfore those other eyes of ours that are waking pect from the Point of Firkin. The loch in ever. The longest is Loch Awe, which, from its whole length and breadth-the magnificent that bend below Sonnachan to distant Edder- expanse unbroken, though bedropped, with line, looks like a river. But cut off, with the unnumbered isles-and the shores diversified soft scythe or sickle of fancy, twenty miles of with jutting cape and far-shooting peninsula, the length of the mottled snake, who never enclosing sweet separate seclusions, each in coils himself up except in misty weather, and itself a loch. Ships might be sailing here, the who is now lying outstretched in the sunshine, largest ships of war; and there is anchorage -and the upper part, the head and shoulders, for fleets. But the clear course of the lovely are of themselves a Loch. Pleasant are his Leven is rock-crossed and intercepted with many hills, and magnificent his one mountain. gravelly shallows, and guards Loch-Lomond For you see but Cruachan. He is the master- from the white-winged roamers that from all spirit. Call him the noblest of Scotland's seas come crowding into the Firth of Clyde, Kings. His subjects are princes; and glori- and carry their streaming flags above the ously they range around him, stretching high, woods of Ardgowan. And there stands Ben. wide, and far away, yet all owing visible alle- What cares he for all the multitude of other giance to him their sole and undisputed sove- lochs his gaze commands-what cares he even reign. The setting and the rising sun do him for the salt-sea foam tumbling far away off homage. Peace loves-as now-to dwell with- into the ocean? All-sufficient for his love is in his shadow; but high among the precipices his own loch at his feet. How serenely looks are the halls of the storms. Green are the down the Giant! Is there not something very shores as emerald. But the dark heather with sweet in his sunny smile? Yet were you to its purple bloom sleeps in sombre shadow see him frown-as we have seen him-your over wide regions of dusk, and there is an heart would sink; and what would become of austere character in the cliffs. Moors and you-if all alone by your own single self, mosses intervene between holms and meadows, wandering over the wide moor that glooms in and those black spots are stacks of last year's utter houselessness between his corries and peats-nothuts, as you might think-but those Glenfalloch-what if you were to hear the other specks are huts, somewhat browner — strange mutterings we have heard, as if moanfew roofed with straw, almost all with heather ing from an earthquake among quagmires, till -though the better houses are slated-nor is you felt that the sound came from the sky, and there in the world to be found slate of a more all at once from the heart of night that had beautiful pale green colour than in the quar- strangled day burst a shattering peal that ries of Ballahulish. The scene is vast and might waken the dead-for Benlomond was in wild; yet so much beauty is interfused, that at wrath, and vented it in thunder 1 such an hour as this, its character is almost Perennially enjoying the blessing of a mild that of loveliness; the rude and rugged is felt er clime, and repaying the bounty of nature by to be rural, and no more; and the eye gliding beauty that bespeaks perpetual gratitudefrom the cottage gardens on its banks, to the merry as May, rich as June, shady as July, islands on the bosom of the Loch, loses sight lustrous as August, and serene as September, of the mighty masses heaved up to the heavens, for in her meet the characteristic charms of while the h!eart forgets that they are there, in every season, all delightfully mingled by the THE MOORS. 145 happy genius of the place commissioned to but suddenly tipt with fire shone out the gold. pervade the whole from heaven, most lovely en pinnacles of the Eagle's Nest; and as again yet most majestic, we breathed the music of they were tamed by cloud-shadow, the glow thy name, and start in this sterner solitude at of Purple Mountain for a while enchained our the sweet syllabling of Windermere, Winder- vision, and then left it free to feast on the mere! Translucent thy waters as diamond forests of Glena, till, wandering at the capriwithout a flaw. Unstained from source to sea cious will of fancy, it floated in delight over are all the streams soft issuing from their sil- the woods of Mucruss, and long lost among ver springs among those beautiful mountains. the trembling imagery of the water, found lastPure are they all as dew-and purer look the ing repose on the steadfast beauty of the silwhite clouds within their breast. These are van isle of Inisfallen. indeed the Fortunate Groves! Happy is every But now for the black mass of rapid waters tree. Blest the "Golden Oak," which seems that, murmuring from loch to river, rush roarto shine in lustre of his own, unborrowed from ing through that rainbow-arch, and bathe the the sun. Fairer far the flower-tangled grass green woods in freshening spray-mist through of those wood-encircled pastures than any a loveliest landscape, that steals along with meads of Asphodel. Thou need'st no isles its meadow-sprinkling trees close to the very on thy heavenly bosom, for in the sweet con- shore of Loch-Etive, binding the two lochs tofusion of thy shores are seen the images of gether with a silvan band —her whose calmer many isles, fragments that one might dream spirit never knows the ebb or flow of tide, and had been gently loosened from the land, and her who fluctuates even when the skies are had floated away into the lake till they had still with the swelling and subsiding tumult lost themselves in the fairy wilderness. But duly sent up into and recalled down from the though thou need'st them not, yet hast thou, 0 silence of her inland solitude. And now for Windermere! thine own steadfast and endur- one pool in that river, called by eminence the ing isles-her called the Beautiful-Land islets Salmon Pool, whose gravelly depths are somenot far apart that seem born of her; for theirs times paved with the blue backs of the silverthe same expression of countenance —that of scaled shiners, all strong as sunbeams, for a celestial calm-and, holiest of the sisterhood, while reposing there, till the river shall blackone that still retains the ruins of an oratory, en in its glee to the floods falling in Glenand bears the name of the Virgin Mother Mild, Scrae and Glenorchy, and then will they shoot to whom prays the mariner when sailing, in through the cataract —for'tis all one fall bethe moonlight, along Sicilian seas. tween the lochs-passionate of the sweet fresh Killarney! From the village of Cloghereen waters in which the Abbey-Isle reflects her issued an uncouth figure, who called himself one ruined tower, or Kilchurn, at all times the "Man of the Mountain;" and pleased with dim or dark in the shadow of Cruachan, Pan, we permitted him to blow his horn be- see his grim turrets, momentarily less grim, fire us up to the top of Mangerton, where the imaged in the tremblings of the casual sunDevil,'tis believed, scooped out the sward be- shine. Sometimes they lie like stones, nor neath the cliffs into a Punch-bowl. No doubt unless you stir them up with a long pole, will he did, and the Old Potter wrought with fire. they stir in the gleam, more than if they were'Tis the crater of an extinct volcano. Charles shadows breathed from trees when all winds Fox, Weld says, and Wright doubts, swam the are dead. But at other times, they are on Pool. Why not?'Tis not so cold as the Po- feed; and then no sooner does the fly drop on:ar Sea. We swam across it-as Mulcocky, the water in its blue and yellow gaudiness, were he alive, but he is dead, could vouch; (and oh! but the brown mallard wing is and felt braced like a drum. What a pano- bloody-bloody!) than some snout sucks it in rama! Our first feeling was one of grief that -some snout of some swine-necked shoulderwe were not an Irishman. We knew not bender; and instantly-as by dexterously dropwhere to fix our gaze. Surrounded by the ping your elbow you give him the butt, and dazzling bewilderment of all that multitudi- strike the barb through his tongue-down the nous magnificence, the eye, as if afraid to long reach of the river vista'd along that grapple with the near glory-for such another straight oak-avenue-but with clear space of day never shone from heaven-sought relief greensward between wood and water-shoots ill the remote distance, and slid along the the giant steel-stung in his fear, bounding beautiful river Kenmare, insinuating itself blue-white into the air, and then down into among the recesses of the mountains, till it the liquid element with a plunge as of a man, rested on the green glimmer of the far-off sea. or rather a horse, till your heart leaps to your The grandeur was felt, far off as it was, of mouth, or, as the Greeks we believe used to that iron-bound coast. Coming round with say, to your nose, and you are seen galloping an easy sweep, as the eyes of an eagle may along the banks, by spectators in search of the do, when hanging motionless aloft he but picturesque, and ignorant of angling, supposed turns his head, our eyes took in all the mighty in the act of making your escape, with an inrange of the Reeks, and rested in awe on comprehensible weapon in both hands, front Carran Tual. Wild yet gentle was the blue some rural madhouse. aerial haze over the glimpses of the Upper Eh? eh? not in our hat-not in our waistLake, where soft and sweet, in a girdle of coat-not in our jacket-not in our breeches t rocks,.seemed to be hanging, now in air and By the ghost of Autolycus some pickpocket, now in water-for all was strangely indistinct while we were moralizing, has abstracted our: in the dim confusion-masses of green light Lascelles! we may as well tie a stone to eacn that might be islands with their lovely trees; of our feet, and sink away from all sense of 10 146 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NOlI rH. nlsery in the Salmon Pool. Oh! that it had you —our Hearty-though not two feet long. been our purse! Who cares for a dozen dirty certainly do the perpendicular to the tune of foui sovereigns and a score of nasty notes? And -from tail-fin to water-surface-your snout what's the use of them to us now, or indeed at being six nearer the sky than the foam-bells any time? And what's the use of this identi- you break in your descent into your native cal rod! Hang it, if a little thing would not element. Cayenne, mustard, and ketchup is make us break it! A multiplying reel indeed! our zest, and we shall assuredly eat you at The invention of a fool. The Tent sees not sunset. Do you know the name of the Fool us again; this afternoon we shall return to at the other end-according to Dr. Johnson? Edinburgh. Don't talk to us of flies at the CHRISTOPHER NORTH.'Tis an honour to be next village. There are no flies at the village captured by the Old Knight of the Bloody -there is novillage. 0 Beelzebub! 0 Satan! Hand. You deserve to die such a death-for was ever man tempted as we are tempted? you keep in the middle of the current like a See-see a Fish-a fine Fish-an enormous mort of mettle, and are not one of the skulkers Fish-leaping to insult us! Give us our gun that seek the side, and would fain take to the that we may shoot him-no-no, dang, guns bush in hopes of prolonging life by foul en-and dang this great clumsy rod! There- tanglement. Bravely bored, GilMorrice. There let it lie there for the first person that passes- is as great difference in the moral qualities of for we swear never to angle more. As for the the finny tribe as among us humans-and we Awe we never liked it-and wonder what in- have known some cowardly wretches escape fatuation brought us here. We shall be made our clutches by madly floundering in among to pay for this yet-whew! there was a twinge floating weeds, or diving down among laby-that big toe of ours we'll warrant is as red rinths of stone at the bottom, in paroxysms of as fire, and we bitterly confess that we deserve fear that no tackle could withstand, not even the gout. Och! och! och! Mackenzie's. He has broke his heart. Feeble But hark! whoop and hollo, and is that too as the dying gladiator, the arena swims around the music of the hunter's horn? Reverberat- him, and he around the arena-till sailing with ing among the woods a well-known voice sa- snout shore-ward, at sea in his own pool, he lutes our ear, and there! bounds Hamish over absolutely rolls in convulsions in between our the rocks like a chamois taking his pastime. very feet, and we, unprepared for such a mode Holding up our LASCELLES! he places it with of procedure, hastily retreating, discover that a few respectful words-hoping we have not our joints are not so supple as of yore, and missed it-and standing aloof-leaves us to play cloit on our back among the gowans. our own reflections and our flies. Nor do O'Bronte tooths him by the cerebellum, and those amount to remorse-nor these to more carries him up-brae in his mouth like a mawthan a few dozens. Samson's strength having kin. About six pounds. been restored-we speak of our rod, mind ye, Had we killed such a mort as is now in Manot of ourselves-we lift up our downcast eyes, gog, fifty years ago, we should not have rested and steal somewhat ashamed a furtive glance a single instant after basketing him, before reat the trees and stones that must have over- rushing, with a sanguinary aspect, to the work heard and overseen all our behaviour. We of death. Now carelessly diffused, we lie on leave those who have been in any thing like our elbow, with our mild cheek on our palm, the same predicament to confess-not pub- and keep gazing-but not lack-a-daisically-on licly-there is no occasion for that-nor on the circumambient woods. Yes! circumamtheir knees -but to their own consciences, if bient-for look where we will, they accompany they have any, their grief and their joy, their our ken like a peristrephic panorama. If men guilt, and, we hope, their gratitude. Trans- have been seen walking like trees, why may ported though they were beyond all bounds, we not trees be seen walking like men-in batta. forgive them; for even those great masters of lia-in armies-but oh! how peaceful the arwisdom, the Stoics, were not infallible, nor ray; and as the slow silvan swimming away were they always able to sustain, at their ut- before our eyes subsides and settles, in that most strength, in practice the principles of steadfast variegation of colouring, whata depth their philosophy. of beauty and grandeur, of joy and peace! We are in a bloody mood, and shall not Phin! this rod is thy masterpiece. And leave this Pool —without twenty mortal mur- what Gut! There she has it! Reel-music for ders on our head. Jump away, TnoUTs-with- ever! Ten fathom are run out already —and out any bowels of compassion for the race of see how she shoots, Hamish; —such a somerflies. Devouring Ephemerals! Can you not set as that was never thrown from a springsuffer the poor insects to sport out their day? board. Just the size for strength and agilityThey must be insipid eating; but here are twenty pound to an ounce-jimp weight, Hasome savoury exceedingly-it is needless to mish —ha! Harlequin art thou-or Columbine 1 mention their name-that carry sauce piquante Assuredly neither Clown nor Pantaloon. Now in their tails. Do try the taste of this bobber we have turned her ladyship's nose up the -but any one of the three you please. There! stream, her lungs, if she have any, must be behold fast KIRBY —for that is a Whopper. A ginning to labour, and we almost hear her Mort! we did nbt suppose there were any in snore. What! in the sulks already-sullen the river. Why, he springs as if he were a among the stones. But we shall make you Fish? Go- it again, Beauty. We ourselves mudge, madam, were we to tear the very tongue couUd jump a bit in our day-.nearly four times out of your mouth. Aye, once more down the our own length-but we never could clear our middle to the tune of that spirited countryuwu height, nor within half-a-foot of it: while dance —"Off she goes!" Set corners, and THE MOORS. 147 reel! The gaff, Hamishl-the gaff! and the going to pull her through the first few hours landing-net! For here is a shallow of the sil- of the night-along with the flowing tide —up ver sand, spreading into the bay of a ford-and to Kinloch-Etive, to try a cast with their long ere she recovers from her astonishment, here net at the mouth of the river, now winding dim will we land her-with a strong pull, a long like a snake from King's House beneath the pull, and a pull altogether-just on the edge Black Mount, and along the bays at the head of the greensward-and then smite her on of the Loch. A rumour that we were on the the shoulder, Hamish-and, to make assurance river had reached them-and see an awning of doubly sure, the net under her tail, and hoist tartan over the stern, beneath which, as we sit, her aloft in the sunshine, a glorious prize, the sun may not smite our head by day, not dazzling the daylight, and giving a brighter the moon by night. We embark-and descend verdure to the woods. ing the river like a dream, rapidly but stilly He who takes two hours to kill a fish-be its and kept in the middle of the current by cunbulk what it may-is no man, ard is not worth ning helmsman, without aid of idle oaw, all six his meat, nor the vital air. The proportion is suspended, we drop along through the silvan a minute to the pound. This rule were we scenery, gliding serenely away back into the taught by the " Best at Most" among British mountain gloom, and enter into the wider sportsmen-Scrope the Matchless on moor, moonshine trembling on the wavy verdure of mountain, river, loch, or sea; and with exqui- the foam-crested sea. May this be Loch-Etive 1 site nicety, have we now carried it into prac- Yea-verily; but so broad here is its bosom, tice. Away with your useless steelyards. Let and so far spreads the billowy brightness, that us feel her teeth with our fore-finger, and then we might almost believe that our bark was held out at arm's length-so-we know by bounding over the ocean, and marching mer. feeling, that she is, as we said soon as we saw rily on the main. Are we-into such a dream her side, a twenty pounder to a drachm, and might fancy for a moment half beguile herself we have been true to time within two seconds. -rowing back, after a day among the savage She has literally no head; but her snout is in islanders, to our ship lying at anchor in the her shoulders. That is the beauty of a fish- offing, on a voyage of discovery round the high and round shoulders, short waisted, no world? loins, but all body, and not long of terminating Where are all the dogs. Ponto, Piro, Basta, -the shorter still the better-in a tail sharp trembling partly with cold, partly with hunger, and pointed as Diana's, when she is crescent partly with fatigue, and-partly with fear, an ong in the sky. and below the seats of the rowers-with their And lo, and behold! there is Diana-but not noses somewhat uncomfortably laid between crescent-for round and broad is she as the their fore-paws on the tarry timbers, but sun himself-shining in the south, with as yet O'Bronte boldly sitting at our side, and wvista needless light-for daylight has not gone fully eyeing the green swell as it heaves beau. down in the west-and we can hardly call it tifully by, ready at the slightest signal to leap gloaming. Chaste and cold though she seem, overboard, and wallow like a walrus in the a nunlike luminary who has just taken the brine, of which you might almost think he veil-a transparent veil of fine fleecy clouds- was born and bred, so native seems the elemen yet, alas! is she frail as of old, when she de- to the "Dowg o' Dowgs." Ay, these are seascended on the top of Latmos, to hold dalliance mews, O'Bronte, wheeling white as silver in with Endymion. She has absolutely the ap- the moonshine; but we shall not shoot thempearance of being in the family way-and not no-no-no —we will not shoot you, ye images far from her time. Lo! two of her children of playful peace, so fearlessly, nay, so lovingly stealing from ether towards her feet. One on attending our bark as it bounds over the breasts her right hand, and another on her left-the of the billows, in motion quick almost as your fairest daughters that ever charmed mother's slowest flight, while ye linger around, and beheart-and in heaven called stars. What a hind,'and before our path, like fair spirits wiling celestial trio the three form in the sky! The us along up this great Loch, farther and farther face of the moon keeps brightening as the through gloom and glimmer, into the heart of lesser two twinkle into larger lustre; and now, profounder solitude. On what errands of your though Day is still lingering, we feel that it is own are ye winnowing your way, stooping Night. When the one comes and when the ever and anon just to dip your wing-tips in the other goes, what eye can note, what tongue can waves, and then up into the open air-the blue tell-but what heart feels not in the dewy hush light filling this magnificent hollow-or seen divine, as the power of the beauty of earth de- glancing along the shadows of the mountains cays over us, and a still dream descends upon as they divide the Loch into a succession of us in the power of the beauty of heaven! separate bays, and often seem to block it up, But hark! the regular twang and dip of oars till another moonlight reach is seen extending coming up the river-and lo! indistinct in the far beyond, and carries the imagination on —on distance, something moving through the moon- -on-into inland recesses that seem to lose at shine-and now taking the likeness of a boat- last all connection with the forgotten sea. All a barge-with bonnetted heads leaning back at once the moon is like a ghost;-and we be. at every flashing stroke-and, Hamish, list! lieve-Heaven knows why-in the authenticity a choral song in thine own dear native tongue! of Ossian's Poems. Sent hither by the Queen of the sea-fairies to Was there ever such a man as Ossian? We bear back in state Christopher North to the devoutly hope there was-for if so, then there Tent? No.'Tis the big coble belonging to were a prodigious number of fine fellows, bethe tacksman of the Awe-and the crew are sides his Bardship, who after their death figured 148 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. away as their glimmering ghosts, with noble impossible-let all the inconsistencies ani. effect, among the moonlight mists of the moun- violations of nature ever charged against it tains. The poetry of Ossian has, it is true, be acknowledged-let all its glaring plagiar. since the days of Macpherson, in no'way isms from poetry of modern date inspire what coloured the poetry of the island; and Mr. derision they may-andfar worse the perpetual Wordsworth, who has written beautiful lines repetition of its own imbecilities and inanities, about the old Phantom, states that fact as an wearying one down even to disgust and anger; argument against its authenticity. He thinks -yet, in spite of all, are we not made to feel, Ossian, as we now possess him, no poet; and not only that we are among the mountains, but alleges that if these compositions had been the to forget that there is any other world in existgood things so many people have thought ence, save that which glooms and glimmers, them, they would, in some way or other, have and wails and raves around us in mists and breathed their spirit over the poetical genius clouds, and storms, and snows-full of lakes of the land. Who knows that they may not and rivers, sea-intersected and sea-surrounded, do so yet? The time may not have come. with a sky as troublous as the earth —yet both But must all true poetry necessarily create imi- at times visited with a mournful beauty that tation, and a school of imitators? One sees sinks strangely into the soul-while the shano reason why it must. Besides, the life which dowy life depictured there eludes not our human the poetry of Ossian celebrates, has utterly sympathies; nor yet, aerial though they bepassed away; and the poetry itself, good, bad, so sweet and sad are their voices-do there or indifferent, is so very peculiar, that to imi- float by as unbeloved, unpitied, or unhonoured tate it at all, you must almost transcribe it. -single, or in bands-the ghosts of the brave That, for a good many years, was often done, and beautiful when the few stars are dim, and but naturally inspired any other feeling than the moon is felt, not seen, to be yielding what delight or admiration. But the simple question faint light there mayebe in the skies. is, Do the poems of Ossian delight greatly and The boat in a moment is a bagpipe; and not widely? We think they do. Nor can we be- only so, but all the mountains are bagpipes, lieve that they would not still delight such a and so are the clouds. All the bagpipes poet as Mr. Wordsworth. What dreariness in the world are here, and they fill heaven overspreads them all! What a melancholy and earth.'Tis no exaggeration-much less spirit shrouds all his heroes, passing before us afiction-but the soul and body oftruth. There on the cloud, after all their battles have been Hamish stands stately at the prow; and as the fought, and their tombs raised on the hill! The boat hangs by midships on the very point that very picture of the old blind Hero-bard him- commands all the echoes, he fills the whole self, often attended by the weeping virgins night with the "Campbells are coming," till the whom war has made desolate, is always touch- sky yells with the gathering as of all the Clans. ing, often sublime. The desert is peopledwith His eyes are triumphantly fixed on ours to lamenting mortals, and the mists that wrap catch their emotions; his fingers cease their them with ghosts, whose remembrances of this twinkling; and still that wild gathering keeps life are all dirge and elegy. True, that the playing of itself among the mountains-faintimages are few and endlessly reiterated; but er and fainter, as it is flung from cliff to cliff, that, we suspect, is the case with all poetry till it dies away far-far off-as if in infinitude composed not in a philosophic age. The great — sweet even and soft in its evanescence as and constant appearances of nature suffice, in some lover's lute. their simplicity, for all its purposes. The poet We are now in the bay of Gleno. For though seeks not to vary their character, and his moonlight strangely alters the whole face of hearers are willing to be charmed over and nature, confusing its most settled features, and over again by the same strains. We believe with a gentle glamoury blending with the greenthat the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed sward what once was the gray granite, and inby any greater distinctness or variety of image- vesting with apparent woodiness what an hour ry. And if, indeed, Fingal lived and Ossian ago was the desolation of herbless cliffs —yet sung, we must believe that the old bard was not all the changes that wondrous nature, in blind; and we suspect that in such an age, ceaseless ebb and flow, ever wrought on her such a man would, in his blindness; think works, could metamorphose out of our recogdreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and nition that Glen, in which, one night —longheaths, and clouds, and mountains, moons and long agostars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, ",In life's morning march, when our spirit was young"' climbed, and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. Then has he no tenderness- we were visited by a dream-a dream that no pathos-no beauty. Alas for thousands of shadowed forth in its inexplicable symbols the hearts and souls if it be even so! For then whole course of our future life-the gravesare many of their holiest dreams worthless all, the tombs where many we loved are now and divinest melancholy a mere complaint of buried-that churchyard, where we hope the understanding, which a bit of philosophi- and believe that one day our own bones will cal critic'sm will purge away, as the leech's rest. phial does a-disease of the blood. But who shouts from the shore, HamishMacpherson's Ossian,is itnotpoetry? Words- and now, as if through his fingers, sends forth worth says it is not-but Christopher North a sharp shrill whistle that pierces the sky! says it is —with all reverence for the King. Ah, ha! we ken his shadow in the light, with Let its antiquity be given up —let such a state the roe on his shoulder.'Tis the schoolmasof society as is therein described be declared ter of Gleno, bringing down our quarry to the THE MOORS. 149 moat-kilted, we declare, like a true Son of the and state of the stones over which we makt Mist. The shore here is shelving but stony, such a clatter, we shrewdly suspect that the and our prow is aground. But strong-spined parliamentary grant for destroying the old and loined, and strong in their withers, are the Highland torrent-roads has not extended its M'Dougals of Lorn; and, wading up to the red ravages to Glen-Etive. O'Bronte, hairy knees, he has flung the roe into the boat. s" Like panting Time, toils after us in vain;" and followed it himself like a deer-hound. So bend to your oars, my hearties-my heroes — and the pointers are followingus by our own the wind freshens, and the tide strengthens from scent, and that of the roe,; in the distant darkthe sea; and at eight knots an hour we shall ness. Pull up, Hamish, pull up, or otherwise sweep along the shadows, and soon see the we shall overshoot our mark, and meet with:antern, twinkling as from a lighthouse, on the some accident or other, perhaps a capsize on pole of our Tent. Bachaille-Etive, or the Black Mount. We had In a boat, upon a great sea-arm, at night, no idea the circle of greensward in front of the among mountains, who would be so senseless, Tent was so spacious. Why, there is room so soulless as to speakw? The hour has its for the Lord Mayor of London's state-coach to might, turn with its eight horses, and that enormous " Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine!" ass, Parson Dillon, on the dickey. What could A unt this n w s enound thave made is think at the sea-gre moment of Lo, andon the hollows ofund the rocks, in the sea-grt keep mutteringll, ands Certes, the association of ideas is a droll thing, the hollows of the rocks, that keep muttering, as and also sometimes mostmagnificent. Dancing their entrances feel the touch of the tide. But no- and also sometimes mostrmagnificent. Dancing thin gibeneath the theTent, among strange figures! Celebra.. thingbeneaththe moon can bemore solemn,now tion of the nuptials of some Arab chief, in an that her aspect is so wan, and that some melan- oasis in the Great Desert of someStony Arabchief, in an choly spirit has obscuredthelustreof thestarsoasis in the Great Desert of Stony Arabia! choly spirit has obscured the lustre of the stars. Heavens! look at Tickler! How he hauls the We feel as if the breath of old elegiac poetry Hizzies! There is no time to be lost-he and were visiting our slumber. All is sad within the Admiral must not have all the sport to us, yet why we know not; and the sadness is the Admiral must not hane all the sport to stranger as it is deeper after a day of almost themselves; and, by and by, spite of ae and foolish pastime, spent by a being who believes infirmity, we shall show the oent a touch of that he is immortal, and that this life is but the the Highland Fling. Hollo! you landloupers! threshold of a life to come. Poor, puny, and Christopher is upon yourbehold the Tenth paltry pastimes indeed are they all! But are Avatar incarnated in North. they more so than those pursuits of which the But what Apparitions at the Tent-door samoral poet has sung, " The paths of glory lead but to the grave " "Back step these two fair angels, half afraid So suddenly to see the Griesly King!" Methinks, now, as we are entering into a sabler o suddenly to see the Griesly Kin mass of shadow, that the doctrine of eternal pun- Goat-herdesses from the cliffs of Glencreran ishment of sins conmmitted in time-but- or Glenco, kilted to the knee, and not uncon,'Here's a health to all good lasses, scious of their ankles, one twinkle of which i Here's a health to all good lasses, sufficient to bid "Begone dull care" for ever Pledge it merrily, fill your glasses; One hand on a shoulder of each of the mounLet the bumper toast go round, Let the bumper toast go round!" tain-nymphs-sweet liberties-and then emRest on your oars, lads. Hamish! the quech! braced by both, half in their arms, and half give each man a caulker, that his oar may send on their bosoms, was ever Old Man so pleaa bolder twang from its rollock, and our fish- santly let down from triumphal car, on the coble walk the waves like a man-of-war's gig, soft surface of his mother-earth? Ay, there with the captain on board, going ashore, after lies the Red-deer! and what heaps of smaller a long cruise, to meet his wife. Now she spins! slain! But was there ever such a rush of and lo! lights at Kinloch-Etive, and beyond on dogs! We shall be extinguished. Down, the breast of the mountain, bright as Hesperus dogs, down-nay, ladies and gentlemen, be -the pole-star of our Tent! seated-on one another's knees as before-we Well, this is indeed the Londe of Faery! A beseech you-we are but men like yourselves car with a nag caparisoned at the water edge! -and On with the roe, and in with Christopher and "Without the smile from partial beauty won, the fish. Now, Hamish, hand us the Crutch. Oh! what were nan!-a world without a sun!" After a cast or two, which, may they be success- What it is to be the darling of gods and ful as the night is auspicious, your presence, men, and women and children! Why, the gentlemen, will be expected in the Tent. Now, very stars burn brighter-and thou, O Moon! Hamish, handle thou the ribbons-alias the art like the Sun. We foresee a night of danc. hair-tether-and we will touch him behind, ing and drinking-till the mountainl-dew melt should he linger, with a weapon that might in the lustre of morn. Such a day should " Create a soul under the ribs of death." have a glorious death-and a glorious resur Linger! why the lightning flies from his heels, rection. Hurra! Hurra! as he carries us along a fine natural causeway, THE Moons ron EVER! Tax Moors! Tux like Ossiaa's car-borne heroes. From the size Moons! 160 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. HIGHLAND SNOW-STORIM. WHAT do you mean by original genius? By presence-if any mortal feeling be so —i~'hat fine line in the Pleasures of Hope- sublime. Your imagination is troubled, and "To muse on Nature with a poet's eye<" dreams of death, but of no single corpse, of no single grave. Nor fear you for yourselfWhy-genius-one kind of it at least —is for the Hut in which you thus enjoy the storm, transfusion of self into all outward things. is safer than the canopied c iff-calm of the The genius that does that-naturally, but no- eagle's nest; but your spirit is convulsed from velly-is original; and now you know the its deepest and darkest foundations, amd all meaning of one kind of original genius. Have that lay hidden there of the wild and wonderwe, then, Christopher North, that gift! Have ful, the pitiful and the strange, the terrible and you Yea, both of Us. Our spirits animate pathetic, is now upturned in dim confusion, the insensate earth, till she speaks, sings, and imagination, working among the hoarded smiles, laughs, weeps, sighs, groans, goes gatherings of the heart, creates out of them mad, and dies. Nothing easier, though per- moods kindred and congenial with the hurrihaps it is wicked, than for original genius like cane, intensifying the madness of the heaven ours,or yours,to drive the earth to distraction. and the earth, till that which sees and that e wave our wizard hand thus-and. lo! list! which is seen, that which hears and that she is insane. How she howls to heaven, and which is heard, undergo alternate mutual how the maddened heaven howls back her transfiguration; and the blind Roaring Dayfrenzy! Two dreadful maniacs raging apart, at once substance, shadow, and soul-is felt but in communion, in one vast bedlam! The t be one with ourselves-the blended whole drift-snow spins before the hurricane, hissing either the Live-Dead, or the Dead-Alive. like a nest of serpents let loose to torment the We are in a Highland Hut-if we called it air. What fierce flakes! furies! as if all the a Shieling we did so merely because we love wasps that ever stung had been revivified, and the sound of the word Shieling, and the image were now careering part and parcel of the it at once brings to eye and ear-the rustling tempest. We are in a Highland Hut in the of leaves on a summer silvan bower, by simmidst of mountains. But no land is to be seen ple art slightly changed from the form of the any more than if we were in the middle of the growth of nature, or the waving of fern on the sea. Yet a wan glare shows that the snow- turf-roof and turf-walls, all covered with wildstorm is strangely shadowed by superincum- flowers and mosses, and moulded by one sin.bent cliffs; and though you cannot see, you gle season into a knoll-like beauty, beside its hear the mountains. Rendings are going on, guardian birch-tree, insupportable to all evil frequent, over your head-and all around the spirits, but with its silvery stem and drooping blind wilderness-the thunderous tumblings tresses dear to the Silent People that won in down of avalanches, mixed with the moan- the land of peace. Truly this is not the sweet ing:;, shriekings, and yellings of caves, as if Shielin-season, when, far away from all other spirits there were angry with the snow-drift human dwellings, on the dip of some great choking up the fissures and chasns in the mountain, quite at the head of a day's-journeyclifls. Is that the creaking and groaning, and long glen, the young herdsman, haply all alene, rocking and tossing of old trees, afraid of be- without one single being with him that has the ing uprooted and flung into the spate? use of speech, liveth for months retired far "Red comes the river down, and loud and oft from kirk and cross-Luath his sole compaThe angry spirit of the water shrieks," nion-his sole care the pasturing heids-the more fearful than at midnight in this nightlike sole sounds he hears the croak of the i aven on day-whose meridian is a total sun eclipse. the cliff, or bark of the eagle in the sky. 0 The river runs by, bloodlike, through the sweet, solitary lot of lover! Haply in some snow —and, short as is the reach you can oasis in the wilderness, some steadfast gleam see through the flaky gloom, that short reach of emerald light amid the hyacinthine-hue of shows that all his course must be terrible- the heather, that young herdsman hath pitched more and more terrible-as, gathering his his tent, by one Good Spirit haunted morning, streams like a chieftain his clan-erelong he noon, and night, through the sunny, moonlight, will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to starry months,-the Orphan-girl, whom years the sea, undermining rocks, cutting mounds ago her dying father gave into his arms-the asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode old blind soldier-knowing that the boy would into the air with a roar like that of cannon. shield her innocence whea every blood-relaYou sometimes think you hear thunder, though tion had been buried-now Orphan-girl no you know that cannot be —but sublimer than more, but growing there like a lily at the thunder is the nameless noise so like that of Shieling door, or singing within sweetlier than agonized life-that eddies far and wide around any bird-the happiest of all living things-high and huge above-fear all the while be- her own Ronald's dark-haired Bride. ing at the bottom of your heart-an objectless, We are in a Highland Hut among a High c'imn dreary, undefinable fear, whose troubled land Snow-storm-and all at once amidst the HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM. 161 roar of the merciless hurricane we remember How passing sweet is that other stanza, the words of Burns-the peerless Peasant. heard like a low hymn amidst the noise of the Simple as they are, with what profound pathos tempest! Let our hearts once more recite itare they charged! "Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, "List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle; That, in the merry months o' spring, I think me on the ourie cattle, Delighted me to hear thee sing, Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle What comes o' thee O' winter war, Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, An' close thy e'e I" Beneath a scaur! The whole earth is for a moment green 4sIlk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, again-trees whisper-streamlets murmurThat, in the merry months o' sprintg, and the "merry month o' spring" is musical Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o' thee. through all her groves. But in another moWhar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing ment we know that almost all those sweetAnl' close thy e'e 1 singers are now dead-or that they " cow'r the " Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd, chittering wing"-never more to flutter through Lone from your savage homes exiled,ee" that shall The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cot spoil'd, and "close the.e'e" that shall My heart forgets, never more be reillumined with love, when While pitiless the tempest wild the Season of Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, Sore on you beats." and tower are again all a-twitter with the surBurns is our Lowland bard-but poetry is vivors of some gentler climate. poetry all over the world, when streamed from The poet's heart, humanized to utmost tenthe life-blood of the human heart. So sang derness by the beauty of its own merciful the Genius of inspired humanity in his bleak thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of " auld clay-biggin," on one of the braes of prey. Each syllable tells-each stroke of the Coila, and now our heart responds the strain, poet-painter's pencil depicts the life and sufhigh up among the Celtic cliffs, central among ferings of the wretched creatures. And then, a sea of mountains hidden in a snow-storm feeling that such an hour all life is subject to that enshrouds the day. Ay-the one single one lot, how profound the pathos reflected back door of this Hut-the one single " winnock," upon our own selves and our mortal condition, does " rattle" —by fits-as the blast smites it, by these few simplest wordsin spite of the white mound drifted hill-high all "My heart forgets, round the buried dwelling. Dim through the While pitiless the tempest wild peat-reek cower the figures in tartan-fear has Sore on you beats!" hushed the cry of the infant in the swinging They go to help the " ourie cattle" and the cradle-and all the other imps are mute. But " silly sheep;" but who knows that they are the household is thinner than usual at the not sent on an errand of higher mercy, by Him meal-hour; and feet that loved to follow the whose ear has not been shut to the prayer alred-deer along the bent, now fearless of pit- most frozen on the lips of them about to falls, since the first lour of morning light have perish!-an incident long forgotten, though on been traversing the tempest. The shepherds, the eve of that day on which the deliverance who sit all day long when summer hues are happened, so passionately did we all regard it, shining, and summer flowerets are blowing, that we felt that interference providential-as almost idle in their plaids, beneath the shadow if we had indeed seen the hand of God stretchof some rock watching their flocks feeding ed down through the mist and snow from above, around, and below, now expose their heaven. We all said that it would never leave bold breasts to all the perils of the pastoral our memory; yet all of us soon forgot it-but life. This is our Arcadia-a realm of wrath now while the tempest howls, it seems again — wo-danger, and death. Here are bred the of yesterday. men whose blood-when the bagpipe blows- One family lived in Glencreran, and another is prodigally poured forth on a thousand shores. in Glenco-the families of two brothers-selThe limbs strung to giant-force by such snows dom visiting each other on working-daysas these, moving in line of battle within the seldom meeting even on Sabbaths, for theirs shadow of the Pyramids, was not the same parish-kirkl-seldom coming " Brought from the dust the sound of liberty," together on rural festivals or holydays, for in while the Invincible standard was lowered be- the Highlands now these are not so frequent fore the heroes of the Old Black Watch, and as of yore; yet all these s weet seldoms, taken victory out of the very heart of defeat arose on together, to loving hearts made a happy many, "that thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes and thus, though each family passed its life in that madly rush against the banners of Albyn. its own home, there were many invisible The storm that has frozen in his eyry the eagle's threads stretched out through the intermediate wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the air, connecting the two dwellings togeth,rcliffs, and all night imprisoned the wild-cat in as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree his cell, hand in hand as is their wont when to another, each with its own secret nest. crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highland- And nestlike both dwellings were. That ill ers now face in its strongholds all over the Glenco, built beneath a treeless but highranges of mountains, come it from the wrath- heathered rock- own in all storms —with ful inland or the more wrathful sea. greensward and garden on a slope down to a "They think upon the ourie cattle rivulet, the clearest of the clear, (oh! once And silly sheep," wofully reddened!) and growing-so it seems and man's reason goes to the help of brute in- in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge stinct. stones that overshadow it-out of the earth l5,11 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. That in Glencreran, more conspicuous, on a and beauty? Insects unheard by them beforP, knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway hummed and glittered in the air-from treebetween mountain and mountain, so that the roots, where the snow was thin, little flowers, grove which shelters it, except when the sun or herbs flower-like, now for the first time were is shining high, is darkened by their meeting seen looking out as if alive-the trees them. shadows, and dark indeed even in the sunshine, selves seemed budding as if it were already for'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old oak- spring —and rare as in that rocky region are like pines. A little further down, and Glen- the birds of song, a faint trill for a moment ereran is very silvan; but this dwelling is the touched their ears, and the flutter of a wing, highest up of all, the first you descend upon, telling them that somewhere near there was near the foot of that wild hanging staircase preparation for a nest. Deep down beneath between you and Glen-Etive; and except this the snpw they listened to the tinkle of rills old oaklike grove of pines, there is not a tree, unreached by the frost-and merry, thought and hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture they, was the music of these contented prisonor hay-field, though these are kept by many a ers. Not summer's self, in its deepest green, rill there mingling themselves into one stream, so beautiful had ever been to them before, as in a perpetual lustre, that seems to be as na- now the mild white of Winter; and as their tive to the grass as its light is to the glow- eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they worm. Such are the two Huts-for they are ever seen before a sky of such perfect blue, a huts and no more-and you may see them still, sun so gentle in its brightness, or altogether a if you know how to discover the beautiful week-day in any season so like a Sabbath in sights of nature from descriptions treasured in its stillness, so like a holyday in its joy.! your heart-and if the spirit of change, now Lovers were they-although as yet they nowhere at rest on the earth, not even in its scarcely knew it; for from love only could most solitary places, have not swept from the have come such bliss as now was theirs, a scenes they beautified the humble but heredi- bliss that while it beautified was felt to come tary divellings that ought to be allowed, in the from the skies. fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into Flbora sang to Ranald many of her old songs the bosom of nature, through insensible and to those wild Gaelic airs that sound like the unperceived decay. sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the These Huts belonged to brothers-and each branches of storm-tossed trees when the subhad an only child-a son and a daughter- siding tempest is about to let them rest. Moborn on the same day-and now blooming on notonous music! but irresistible over the heart the verge of youth. A year ago, and they it has once awakened and enthralled, so sinwere but mere children-but what wondrous cere seems to be the mournfulness it breathes growth of frame and spirit does nature at that -a mournfulness brooding on the same note season of life often present before our eyes! that is at once its natural expression and its So that we almost see the very change going sweetest aliment-of which the singer never on between morn and morn, and feel that wearieth in her dream, while her heart all the these objects of our affection are daily brought time is haunted by all that is most piteous, by closer to ourselves, by partaking daily more the faces of the dead in their paleness returnandmore in all our most sacred thoughts, in our ing to the shades of life, only that once more cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of they may pour from their fixed eyes those the sorrows as well as the joys of our common strange showers of unaccountable tears! lot. Thus had these cousins grown up be- How merry were they between those mournfore their parent's eyes Flora Macdonald-a ful airs! How Flora trembled to see her name hallowed of yor4othe fairest, and Ra- lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he nald Cameron, the boldest of all the living told her tales of great battles fought in foreign flowers in Glenco and Glencreran. It was now lands, far across the sea-tales which he had their seventeenth birthday, and never had a drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes winter sun smiled more serenely over a hush scattered all over Lochaber and Badenoch, on of snow. Flora, it had been agreed on, was to the brink of the grave still garrulous of blood pass lhat day in Glencreran, and Ranald to meet her among the mountains, that he might The u at high in his meridian tower," bring her down the many precipitous passes but time had not been with the youthful lovers, to his parent's hut. It was the middle of and the blessed beings believed that'twas but February, and the snow had lain for weeks a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they with all its drifts unchanged, so calm had been had met in the prime of the morn! the weather, and so continued the frost. At The boy starts to his feet-and his keen eye the same hour, known by horologe on the cliff looks along the ready rifle-for his sires had touched by the finger of dawn, the happy crea- all been famous deer-stalkers, and the passion tures left each their own glen, and mile after of the chase was hereditary in his blood. Lo! mile of the smooth surface glide], away past a deer from Dalness, hound-driven or sullenly their feet, almost as the quiet water glides by astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen, the little boat that in favouring breezes walks then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, merrily along the sea. And soon they met and then away —away! The rifle-shot rings at the trysting-place-a bank of birch-trees dully from the scarce echoing snow-cliffs, and beneath a cliff that takes its name from the the animal leaps aloft, struck by a certain but Eagles. not sudden death-wound. Oh! for Fingal now On their meeting seemed not to them the to pull him down like a wolf! But labouring whole of nature suddenly inspired with joy and lumbering heavily along, the snow spotted HIGHLAND SNOW-SrORM. lb3 as he bounds with blood, the huge animal at his foolish passion, he flung down to chase that last disappears round some rocks at the head fatal deer! "Oh! Flora! if you would not of the glen. "Follow me, Flora!" the boy- fear to stay here by yourself-under the prohunter cries-and flinging down their plaids, tection of God, who surely will not forsake you they turn their bright faces to the mountain, -soon will I go and come from the place and away up the long glen after the stricken where our plaids are lying; and under the deer. Fleet was the mountain-girl-and Ra- shelter of the deer we may be able to outlive nald, as he ever and anon looked back to wave the hurricane-you wrapt up in them-and her on, with pride admired her lightsome mo- folded-O my dearest sister-in my arms!" tion as she bounded along the snow. Redder -"I will go with you down the glen, Ranald!" and redder grew that sn6w, and more heavily and she left his breast-but, weak as a day-oil trampled as they winded round the rocks. lamb, tottered and sank down on the snow. Yonder is the deer staggering up the mountain, The cold-intense as if the air were ice-had not half a mile off-now standing at bay, as if chilled her very heart, after the heat of that before his swimming eyes came Fingal, the long race; and it was manifest that here she terror of the forest, whose howl was known to must be for the night-to live or to die. And all the echoes, and quailed the herd while their the night seemed already come, so full was the antlers were yet afar off. "Rest, Flora! rest! lift of snow; while the glimmer every moment while I fly to him with my rifle-and shoot him became gloomier, as if the day were expiring through the heart!" long before its time. Howling at a distance Up-up-up the interminable glen, that kept down the glen was heard a sea-born tempest winding and winding round many a jutting from the Linnhe-Loch, where now they both promontory, and many a castellated cliff, the knew the tide was tumbling in, bringing with led-deer kept dragging his gore-oozing bulk, it sleet and snow blasts from afar; and from sometimes almost within, and then, for some the opposite quarter of the sky, an inland temhundreds of yards, just beyond rifle-shot; while pest was raging to meet it, while every lesser the boy, maddened by the chase, pressed for- glen had its own uproar, so that on all hands wards, now all alone, nor any more looking they were environed with death. behin d for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; "I will go-and, till I return, leave you with and thus he was hurried on for miles by the God."-" Go, Ranald!" and he went and came whirlwind of passion —till at last he struck the -as if he had been endowed with the raven's noble quarry, and down sank the antlers in the wings! snow, while the air was spurned by the con- Miles away-and miles back had he flown vulsive beatings of feet. Then leaped Ranald -and an hour had not been with his going upon the Red-deer like a beast of prey, and lift- and his coming-but what a dreary wretcheded up a look of triumph to the mountain tops. ness meanwhile had been hers! She feared'Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten that she was dying-that the cold snow-storm her-and he is alone-nor knows it —he and was killing her-and that she would never the Red-deer-an enormous animal-fast stif- more see Ranald, t6 say to him farewell. Soon fening in the frost of death. as he was gone, all her courage had died. Some large flakes of snow are in the air, and Alone, she feared death, and wept to think how they seem to waver and whirl, though an hour hard it was for one so young thus miserably ago there was not a breath. Faster they fall and to die. He came-and her whole being was faster-the flakes are almost as large as leaves changed. Folded up in both the plaids-she — and overhead whence so suddenly has come felt resigned. "Oh! kiss me-kiss me, Rathat huge yellow cloud? "Flora, where are nald-for your love-great as it is-is not as you? where are you, Flora! " and from the huge my love. You must never forget me, Ranald hide the boy leaps up, and sees that no Flora is -when your poor Flora is dead." athand. Butyonderis a moving speck far off Religion with these two young creatures upon the snow!'Tis she-'tis she —and again was as clear as the light of the Sabbath-dayRanald turns his eyes upon the quarry, and the and their belief in heaven just the same as in heart of the hunter burns within him like a new- earth. The will of God they thought of just stirred fire. Shrill as the eagle's cry disturbed as they thought of their parents' will-and the in his eyry, he sends a shout down the glen- - same was their loving obedience to its decrees. and Flora, with cheeks pale and bright by fits, If she was to die-supported now by the preis at last at his side. Panting and speechless sence of her brother-Flora was utterly reshe stands-and then dizzily sinks on his signed; if she were to live, her heart imagel breast. Her hair is ruffled by the wind that to itself the very forms of her grateful worrevives her, and her face all moistened by the ship. But' all at once she closed her eyessnow-flakes, now not falling but driven-for the ceased breathing-and, as the tempest htrwled day has undergone a dismal chan'ge, and all and rumbled in the gloom that fell atound over the skies are now lowering savage symp- them like blindness, Ranald almost sank down, toms of a fast-coming night-storm. thinking that she was dead. Bare is poor Flora's head, and sadly drenched "Wretched sinner that I am! —my wicked her hair, that an hour or two ago glittered in madness brought her here to die of cold!" the sunshine. Her shivering frame misses And he smote his breast-and tore his hairnow the warmth of the plaid, which almost no and feared to look up, lest the angry eye of cold can. penetrate, and which had kept the God were looking on him through the storm. vital current flowing freely in many a bitter All at once, without speaking a word, Rablast. What would the miserable boy give nald lifted Flora in his arms, and walked away now for the coverings lying far away, which, in up the glen-ihere almost narrowed into a 154 RECREATIONS OF CHRESTOPHER NORTH. pass. Distraction gave him supernatural one snow-shroud. Many passions-though strength, and her weight seemed that of a child. earth-born, heavenly all —p Ly, and grief, and Some walls of what had once been a house, he love, and hope, and at last despair-had pros. had suddenly remembered, were but a short trated the strength they had so long supported way off-whether or not they had any roof, he and the brave boy-who had been for some had forgotten; but the thought even of such time feeble as a very child after a fever-with shelter seemed a thought of salvation. There a mind confused and wandering, and in its it was-a snow-drift at the opening that had perplexities sore afraid of some nameless ill, once been a door-snow up the holes once had submitted to lay down his head beside his windows-the wood of the roof had been car- Flora's, and had soon become like her insenried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were sible to the night and all its storms! falling in, as if they would soon fill up the Bright was the peat-fire in the hut of Flora's inside of the ruin. The snow in front was all parents in Glenco —and they were among the; trampled as if by sheep; and carrying in his happiest of the humble happy, blessing this burden under:he low lintel, he saw the place the birthday of their blameless child. They was filled wita a flock that had foreknown the thought of her singing her sweet songs by the hurricane, and that all huddled together looked fireside of the hut in Glencreran-and tender on him as on the shepherd come to see how thoughts of her cousin Ranald were with them they were faring in the storm. in their prayers. No warning came to their And a young shepherd he was, with a lamb ears in the sugh or the howl; for Fear it is apparently dying in his arms. All colour-all that creates its own ghosts, and all its own motion-all breath seemed to be gone-and yet ghostlike visitings, and they had seen their something convinced his heart that she was Flora in the meekness of the morning, setting yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless, but forth on her way over the quiet mountains, across an angle of the walls some pine- like a fawn to play. Sometimes, too, Love,who branches had been flung as a sort of shelter starts at shadows as if they were of the grave, for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither is strangely insensible to realities that might in cruel weather-some pine-branches left by well inspire dismay. So was it now with the the woodcutters who had felled the few trees dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. that once stood at the very head of the glen. Their Ranald had left them in the morningInto that corner the snow-drift had not yet night had come, and he and Flora were not forced its way, and he sat down there with there-but the day had been almost like a sumFlora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping mer-day, and in their infatuation they never that the warmth of his distracted heart might doubted that the happy creatures had changed be felt by her who was as cold as a corpse. their minds, and that Flora had returned with The chill air was somewhat softened by the him to Glenco.' Ranald had laughingly said, breath of the huddled flock, and the edge of the that haply he might surprise the people in that cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a glen by bringing back to them Flora on her place in which it seemed possible that she birthday —and strange though it afterwards might revive-miserable as it was with mire- seemed to her to be, that belief prevented one mixed snow-and almost as cold as one sup- single fear from touching his mother's heart, poses the grave. And she did revive-and and she and her husband that night lay down under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared in untroubled sleep. to be not yet life-deserted. It was yet but the And what could have been done for them, afternoon —nightlike though it was-and he had they been told by some good or evil spirit thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a that their children were in the clutches of such faint red returned, and that they felt the kisses a night 1 As well seek for a single bark in the he dropt on them to drive death away. middle of the misty main! But the inland "Oh! father, go seek for Ranald, for I storm had been seen brewing among the moundreamt to-night he was perishing in the tains round King's House, and hut had comsnow!"- "Flora, fear not-God is with us." municated with hut, though far apart in re-" Wild swans, they say, are come to Loch- gions where the traveller sees no symptom;f Phoil-let us go, Ranald, and see them-but human life. Down through the long cliff-pass no rifle —for why kill creatures said to be so of Mealanumy, between Buchael-Etive and beautiful?" Over them where they lay, bended the Black-Mount, towards the lone House of down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give Dalness, that lives in everlasting shadows, way beneath the increasing weight; —but there went a band of shepherds, trampling their it still hung-though the drift came over their way across a hundred frozen streams. Dalness feet and up to their knees, and seemed stealing joined its strength-and then away over the upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I am over- drift-bridged chasms toiled that Gathering, with come with drowsiness, and fain. would be their sheep-dogs scouring the loose snows-in allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me-and the van, Fingal the Red Reaver, with his head what noise is this in our house!"-" Fear not aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eyeing -fear not, Flora-God is with us."-" Mother! the Correi where last he tasted blood. All am I lying in your arms.? My father surely "plaided in their tartan array," these shepherds is not in the storm! Oh! I have had a most laughed at the storm-and hark! you hear the dreadful dream!" and with such mutterings as bag-pipe play-the music the Highlanders love these Flora relapsed again into that perilous both in war and in peace. sleep-which soon becomes that of death. ~ "They think then of the ourie cattle, Night itself came-but Flora and Ranald And silly sheep;" knew it net-and both lav now motionless in and though they ken'twill be a moonless night HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM. 156 -for the snow-storm will sweep her out of wild-fowl feed. And thus Instinct, and Reason, heaven-up the mountain and down the glen and Faith conducted the saving band alongthey go, marking where flock and herd have and now they are at Glenco-and at the doo! betaken themselves, and now, at night-fall, un- of the Hut. afraid of that blind hollow, they descend into To life were brought the dead; and there at the depth where once stood the old Grove of midnight sat they up like ghosts. Strange Pines. Following the dogs, who know their seemed they-for a while-to each other's duties in their instinct, the band, without see- eyes —and at each other they looked as if they ing it, are now close to that ruined hut. Why had forgotten how dearly once they loved. Dark the sheen-dogs so-and why howls Fingal, Then as if in holy fear they gazed on each as if some spirit passed athwart the night? other's faces, thinking that they had awoke He scents the dead body of the boy who so together in heaven. "Flora!" said Ranaldoften had shouted him on in the forest, when and that sweet word, the first he had been the antlers went by! Not dead-nor dead she able to speak, reminded him of all that had who is on his bosom. Yetlife in both is frozen passed, and he knew that the God in whom -and will the iced blood in their veins ever they had put their trust had sent them deliveragain be thawed? Almost pitch-dark is the ance. Flora, too, knew her parents, who were roofless ruin-and the frightened sheep know on their knees-and she strove to rise up and not what is the terrible Shape that is howling kneel down beside them-but she was powerthere. But a man enters, and lifts up one of less as a broken reed-and when she thought the bodies, giving it into the arms of them at to join them in thanksgiving, her voice was the doorway-and then lifts up the other; and, gone. Still as death sat all the people in the by the flash of a rifle, they see that it is Ranald hut —and one or two who were fathers were Cameron and Flora Macdonald, seemingly not ashamed to weep. both frozen to death. Some of those reeds Who were they-the solitary pair-all alone that the shepherds burn in their huts are kin- by themselves save a small image of her on died, and in that small light they are assured whose breast it lay —whom-seven summers that such are the corpses. But that noble dog after-we came upon in our wanderings, beknows that death is not there-and licks the fore their Shieling in Correi-Vollach at the foot face of Ranald, as if he would restore life to of Ben Chrulas, who sees his shadow in a hunhis eyes. Two of the shepherds know well dred lochs? Who but Ranald and Flora! how to fold the dying in their plaids-how * i * gentliest to carry them along; for they had Nay, dry up-Daughter of our Age, dry up learnt it on the field of victorious battle, when, thy.tears! and we shall set a vision before without stumbling over the dead and wounded, thine eyes to fill them with unmoistened light. they bore away the shattered body-yet living Oft before have those woods and waters-of the youthful warrior, who had shown that those clouds and mountains —that sun and sky, of such a Clan he was worthy to be the Chief. held thy spirit in Elysium,-thy spirit, that then The storm was with them all the way down was disembodied, and living in the beauty and the glen-nor could they have heard each the glory of the elements.'Tis WxINDEuirERE other's voices had they spoke-but mutely they -WIrDERMERE! N ever canst thou have forshifted the burden from strong hand to hand- gotten those more than fortunate-those thrice. thinking of the Hut in Glenco, and of what blessed Isles! But when last we saw them would be felt there on their arrival with the within the still heaven of thy smiling eyes, dying or dead. Blind people walk through summer suns had overloaded them with beauty, what to them is the night of crowded day- and they stooped their flowers and foliage down streets-unpausing turn round corners —un- to the blushing, the burning deep, that glowed hesitatingly plunge down steep stairs-wind in its transparency with other groves as gorgetheir way fearlessly through whirlwinds of life ous as themselves, the whole mingling mass -and reach in their serenity, each one un- of reality and of shadow forming one creation. harmed, his own obscure house. For God is But now, lo! Windermere in Winter. All with the blind. So is he with all who walk on leafless now the groves that girdled her as if works of mercy. This saving band had no shifting rainbows were in love perpetually let. fear-and therefore there was no danger-on ting fall their colours on the Queen of Lakes. the edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew Gone now are her banks of emerald that carthe countenances of the mountains shown mo- ried our calm gazings with them, sloping away mentarily by ghastly gleamings through the back into the cerulean sky. Her mountains, fitful night, and the hollow sound of each par- shadowy in sunshine, and seeming restless as ticular stream beneath the snow at places seas, where are they now? —The cloud-cleavwhere in other weather there was a pool or a ing cliffs that shot up into the blue region where waterfall. The dip of the hills, in spite of the the buzzard sailed l All gone. But mourn not drifts, familiar to their feet, did not deceive for that loss. Accustom thine eye-and through them now; and then, the dogs in their instinct it thy soul to that transcendent substitution, and were guides that erred not, and as well as the deeply will they be reconciled. Sawest thou shepherds knew it themsexves did Fingal know ever the bosom of the Lake hushed into prothat they were anxious to reach Glenco. He founder rest? No white-winged pinnace glides led the way, as if he were in moonlight; and through the sunshine-no clanking oar is often stood still when they were shifting their heard leaving or approaching cape, point, or burden, and whined as if in grief. He knew bay-no music of voice, stop, or string, wakens where the bridges were-stones or logs; and the sleeping echoes. How strangely dim and he rounded the marshes where at springs the confused on the water the fantastic frostworl 166 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. ~magery, yet more steadfastly hanging there of our own spirits. Again both are gone from than ever hung the banks of summer! For the outward world-and naught remains but a all one sheet of ice, now clear as the Glass of forbidden frown of the cold bleak snow. But Glamoury in which that Lord of old beheld his imperishable in thy imagination will both sun. Geraldine-is Windermere, the heaven-loving sets be-and though it will sometimes retire and the heaven-beloved. Not a'avelet mur- into the recesses of thy memory, and lie there. murs in all her bays, from the silvan Brathay among the unsuspected treasures of forgotten to where the southern straits narrow into a imagery that have been unconsciously accu. river-now chained too, the Leven, on his sil- mulating there since first those gentle eyes of van course towards that perilous Estuary afar thine had perfect vision given to their depths off raging on its wreck-strewn sands. The -yet mysteriously brought back from vanishfrost came after the last fall of snow-and not ment by some one single silent thought, to a single flake ever touched that surface; and which power has been yielding over that bright now that you no longer miss the green twink- portion of the Past, will both of them someling of the large July leaves, does not imagina- times reappear to thee in solitude-or haply tion love those motionless frozen forests, cold when in the very heart of life. And then but not dead, serene but not sullen, inspirative surely a few tears will fall for sake of himin the strangeness of their apparelling of wild then no more seen-by whose side thou stoodthoughts about the scenery of foreign tlimes, est, when that double sunset enlarged thy sense far away among the regions of the North, of beauty, and made thee in thy father's eyes -where Nature works her wonders aloof from the sweetest-best-and brightest poetesshuman eyes, and that wild architect Frost, whose whole life is musical inspiration-ode, during the absence of the sun, employs his elegy, and hymn, sung not in words but in night of months in building and dissolving his looks-sigh-breathed or speechlessly distilled ice-palaces, magnificent beyond the reach of in tears flowing from feelings the farthest in any power set to work at the bidding of earth's this world from grief. crowned and sceptred kings. ~ All at once a So much, though but little, for the beautifulhundred houses, high up among the hills, seem with, perhaps, a tinge of the sublime. Are the on fire. The setting sun has smitten them, and two emotions different and distinct-thinkst the snow-tracts are illuminated by harmless thou, 0 metaphysical critic of the gruesome conflagrations. Their windows are all lighted countenance-or modifications of one and the up by a lurid splendour, in its strong sudden- same?'Tis a puzzling question —and we, ness sublime. But look, look, we beseech you, Sphinx, might wait till doomsday, before you, at the sun-the sunset-the sunset region- (Edipus, could solve the enigma. Certainly a and all that kindred and corresponding heaven, Rose is one thing and Mount.Etna is another effulgent, where a minute ago lay in its cold -an antelope and an elephant-an insect and glitter the blue bosom of the lake. Who knows a man-of-war, both sailing in the sun —a little the laws of light and the perpetual miracle of lucid well in which the fairies bathe, and the their operation? God —not thou. The snow- Polar Sea in which Leviathan is "wallowing mountains are white no more, but gorgeous in unwieldy, enormous in his gait"-the jewelled their colouring as the clouds. Lo! Pavey-Ark finger of a virgin bride, and grim Saturn with -magnificent range of cliffs —seeming to come his ring-the upward eye of a kneeling saint, forward, while you gaze!-How it glows with and a comet, " that from his horrid hair shakes a rosy light, as if a flush of flowers decked the pestilence and war." But let the rose bloom precipice in that delicate splendour! Lang- on the mouldering ruins of the palace of some dale-Pikes, methinks, are tinged with finest great king-among the temples of Balbec or purple, and the thought of violets is with us Syrian Tadmor-and in its beauty, methinks, as we gaze on the tinted bosom of the moun-'twill be also sublime. See the antelope boundtains dearest to the setting sun. But that long ing across a raging chasm —up among the broad slip of orange-coloured sky is yellowing region of eternal snows on Mont Blanc-and with its reflection almost all the rest of our deny it, if you please-but assuredly we think Alps-all but yon stranger-the summit of that there is sublimity in the fearless flight of some mountain belonging to another region- that beautiful creature, to whom nature grudged ay-the Great Gabel-silent now as sleep- not wings, but gave instead the power of when last we clomb his cliffs, thundering in plumes to her small delicate limbs, unfractured the mists of all his cataracts. In his shroud by alighting among the pointed rocks. All he stands pallid like a ghost. Beyond the reach alone, by your single solitary self, in some of the setting sun he lours in his exclusion wide, lifeless desert, could you deny sublimity from the rejoicing light, and imagination, per- to the unlooked-for hum of the tiniest insect, or sonifying his solitary vastness into forsaken to the sudden shiver of the beauty of his gauzelife, pities the doom of the forlorn Giant. Ha! wings? Not you, indeed. Stooping down to just as the eye of day is about to shut, one quench your thirst in that little lucid well smile seems sent afar to that lonesome moun- where the fairies bathe, what if you saw the tain, and a crown of crimson encompasses his image of the evening star shining in some forehead. strange subterranean world? We suspect On which of the two sunsets art thou now that you would hold in your breath, and swear gazing? Thou who art to our old loving eyes devoutly that it was sublime. Dead on the so like the " mountain nymph, sweet Liberty 1" very evening of her marriage day is that vir. On the sunset in the heaven-or the sunset in gin bride whose delicacy was so beautifulthe lake 1 The divine truth is-O Daughter and as she lies in her white wedding garments of our Age -that both sunsets are but visions that serve for a shroud- that emblem of eter. THE HOLY CHILD 1 7 nity and of eternal 1( ve, the ring, upon her fin- turn with his ring, anC with his horrid hair ger-with its encased star sh-ningbrightly now the comet-might be all less than nothings. that her eyes, once stars, are closed-would, me- Therefore beauty and sublimity are twin feelthinks, be sublime to all Christian hearts. In ings-one and the same birth-seldom insepacomparison with all these beautiful sublimities, rable; —if you still doubt it, become a fire-worMount.,Etna, the elephant, the man-of-war, shipper, and sing your morning and evening Leviathan swimming the ocean-stream, Sa- orisons to the rising and the setting sun. THE HOLY CHILD. Tuis House of ours is a prison-this Study cay, but often melts away into changes so inof ours a cell. Time has laid his fetters on our visible and inaudible that you wonder to find feet-fetters fine as the gossamer, but strong that it is all vanished, and to see the old tree as Samson's ribs, silken-soft to wise submis- again standing in its own faint-green glossy sion, but to vain impatience galling as cankered bark, with its many million buds, which perwound that keeps ceaselessly eating into the haps fancy suddenly expands into a power of bone. But while our bodily feet are thus bound umbrage impenetrable to the sun in Scorpio. by an inevitable and inexorable law, our men- A sudden burst of sunshine! bringing back tal wings are free as those of the lark, the dove, the pensive spirit from the past to the present, or the eagle —and they shall be expanded as and kindling it, till it dances like light reflected of yore, in calm or tempest, now touching with from a burning mirror. A cheerful Sun-scene; their tips the bosom of this dearly beloved though almost destitute of life. An undulating earth, and now aspiring heavenwards, beyond Landscape, hillocky and hilly, but not mounthe realms of mist and cloud, even unto the tainous, and buried under the weight of a day very core of the still heart of that otherwise and night's incessant and continuous snow-fall. unapproachable sky which graciously opens The weather has not been windy-and now to receive us on our flight, when, disencum- that the flakes have ceased falling, there is no, bered of the burden of all grovelling thoughts, a cloud to be seen, except some delicate braidand strong in spirituality, we exult to soar ings here and there along the calm of the Great "eyond this visible diurnal sphere," Blue Sea of Heaven. Most luminous is the sun, yet you can look straight on his face, nearing and nearing the native region of its almost with unwinking eyes, so mild and melown incomprehensible being. low is his large light as it overflows the day. Now touching, we said, with their tips the All enclosures have disappeared, and you in. bosom of this dearly beloved earth! How distinctly ken the greater landmarks, such as sweet that attraction to imagination's wings! a grove, a wood, a hall, a castle, a spire, a How delightful in that lower flight to skim village, a town —the faint haze of a far off and along the green ground, or as now along the smokeless city. Most intense is the silence; soft-bosomed beauty of the virgin snow! We for all the streams are dumb, and the great were asleep all night long-sound asleep as river lies like a dead serpent in the strath, children-while the flakes were falling, " and Not dead-for, lo! yonder one of his folds glit. soft as snow on snow" were all the descendings ters-and in the glitter you see him movingof our untroubled dreams. The moon and all while all the rest of his sullen length is palsied her stars were willing that their lustre should by frost, and looks livid and more livid at be veiled by that peaceful shower; and now every distant and more distant winding. What the sun, pleased with the purity of the morning blackens on that tower of snow. Crows earth, all white as innocence, looks down from roosting innumerous on a huge tree-but they heaven with a meek unmelting light, and still caw not in their hunger. Neither sheep nor leaves undissolved the stainless splendour. cattle are to be seen or heard —but they are There is frost in the air-but he " does his spi- cared for;-the folds and the farm-yards are all riting gently," studding the ground-snow thick- full of life —and the un'gathered stragglers are ly with diamonds, and shaping the tree-snow safe in their instincts. There has been a deep according to the peculiar and characteristic fall-but no storm-and the silence, though beauty of the leaves and sprays, on which it partly that of suffering, is not that of death has alighted almost as gently as the dews of Therefore, to the imagination, unsaddened by spring. You know every kind of tree still by the heart, the repose is beautiful. The almost its own spirit showing itself through that fairy unbroken uniformity of the scene-its simple veil-momentarily disguised from recognition and grand monotony-lulls all the thoughts -but admired the more in the sweet surprise and feelings into a calm, over which is breathed with which again your heart salutes its fkmi- the gentle excitation of a novel charm, inspirliar branches, all fancifully ornamented with ing many fancies, all of a quiet character. their snow foliage, that murmurs not like the Their range, perhaps, is not very extensive, green leaves of summer, that like the yellow but they all regard the homefelt and domestic "'aves of autllmn strews not the earth with de- charities of life. And the heart burns as here 158 RECREATtONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTIH. and there some human dwelling discovers the innocent. "Pure as snow," are words thel:tselfby a wreath of smoke up the air, or as felt to be most holy, as the image of some the robin redbreast, a creature that is ever at beautiful and beloved being comes and goes nand, comes flitting before your path with an before our eyes-brought from a far distance almost pert flutter of his feathers, bold from in this our living world, or from a distance the acquaintanceship he has formed with you further still in a world beyond the grave-the in severer weather at the threshold or window image of a virgin growing up sinlessly to woof the tenement, which for years may have manhood among her parents' prayers, or of been the winter sanctuary of the "bird whom some spiritual creature who expired long ago, man loves best," and who bears a Christian and carried with her her native innocence unname in every clime he inhabits. Meanwhile stained to heaven. ihe sun waxes brighter and warmer in heaven Such Spiritual Creature-too spiritual long -some insects are in the air, as if that mo- to sojourn below the skies-wert Thou-whose ment called to life-and the mosses that may rising and whose setting-both most starlike yet be visible here and there along the ridge of -brightened at once all thy native vale, and a wall or on the stem of a tree, in variegated at once left it in darkness. Thy name has lustre frost-brightened, seem to delight in the long slept in our heart-and there let it sleep snow, and in no other season of the year to be unbreathed-even as, when we are dreaming so happy as in winter. Such gentle touches our way through some solitary place, without of pleasure animate one's whole being, and naming it, we bless the beauty of some sweet connect, by many a fine association, the emo- wild-flower, pensively smiling to us through tions inspired by the objects of animate and of the snow. inanimate nature. The Sabbath returns on which, in the little Ponder on the idea-the emotion of purity- kirk among the hills, we saw thee' baptized. and how finely soul-blent is the delight imagi- Then comes a wavering glimmer of five sweet nation feels in a bright hush of new-fallen years, that to Thee, in all their varieties, were snow! Some speck or stain-however slight but as one delightful season, one blessed life -there always seems to be on the most perfect -and, finally, that other Sabbath, on which, whiteness of any other substance —or "dim at thy own dying request-between services suffusion veils" it with some faint discolour- thou wert buried. witness even the leaf of the lily or the rose. How mysterious are all thy ways and workHeaven forbid that we should ever breathe ings, 0 gracious Nature! Thou who art but aught but love and delight in the beauty of a name given by us to the Being in whom all these consummate flowers! But feels not the things are and have life. Ere three years old, heart, even when the midsummer morning she, whose image is now with us, all over the sunshine is melting the dews on their fragrant small silvan world that beheld the evanescent bosoms, that their loveliness is "of the earth revelation of her pure existence, was called earthy" —faintly tinged or streaked, when at the " Holy Child!" The taint of sin-inherited the very fairest, with a hue foreboding lan- from those who disobeyedin Paradise-seemed guishment and decay? Not the less for its from her fair clay to have been washed out at sake are those soulless flowers dear to us- the baptismal font, and by her first infantine thus owning kindred with them whose beauty tears. So pious people almost believed, look. is all soul enshrined for a short while on that ing on her so unlike all other children, in the perishable face. Do we not still regard the serenity of that habitual smile that clothed the insensate flowers-so emblematical of what, in creature's countenance with a wondrous beau. human life, we do most passionately love and ty at an age when on other infants is but faintprofoundly pity-with a pensive emotion, often ly seen the dawn of reason, and their eyes deepening into melancholy that sometimes, ere look happy just like the thoughtless flowers. the strong fit subsides, blackens into despair! So unlike all other children-but unlike only What pain doubtless was in the heart of the because sooner than they she seemed to have Elegiac Poet of old, when he sighed over the had given to her, even in the communion of transitory beauty of flowers- the cradle, an intimation of the being and the providence of God. Sooner, surely, than "Conquerimrur natura brevis quam gratia Florum' through any other clay that ever enshrouded But over a perfectly pure expanse of night- immortal spirit, dawned the light of religion fallen snow, when unaffected by the gentle sun, on the face of the "Holy Child." the first fine frost has incrusted it with small Her lisping language was sprinkled with sparkling diamonds, the prevalent emotion is words alien from common childhood's unJoy. There is a charm in the sudden and total certain speech, that murmurs only when in. disappearance even of the grassy green. All digent nature prompts; and her own parents the "old familiar faces" of nature are for a wondered whence they came, when first they while out of sight, and out of mind. That looked upon her kneeling in an unbidden white silence shzed by heaven over earth carries prayer. As one mild week of vernal sunshine with it, far and wide, the pure peace of another covers the braes with primroses, so shone region-almost another life. No image is with fair and fragrant feeling-unfolded, ere there to tell of this restless and noisy world. they knew, before her parents' eyes-the divine The cheerfulness of reality kindles up ourreve- nature of her who for a season was lent to rie ere it becomes a dream; and we are glad them from the skies. She learned to read out to feel our whole being complexioned by the of the Bible-almost without any teachingpassionless repose. If we think at all of hu- they knew not how-just by looking gladly on man life, it is only of the y:ung, the fair, and the words, even as she looked on the pretty THE HOLY CHILD. 159 daisies on the green-till their meanings stole The linnet ceased not his song for her, though insensibly into her soul, and the sweet sylla- her footsteps wandered into the green glade bles, succeeding each other on the blessed among the yellow broom, almost within reach page, were all united by the memories her of the spray from which he poured his melody heart had been treasuring every hour that her -the quiet eyes of his mate feared her not father or her mother had read aloud in her when her garments almost touched the bush hearing from the Book of Life. "Suffer little where she brooded on her young. Shyest o' children to come unto me, and forbid them not, the winged silvans, the cushat clapped not f4or of such is the kingdom of heaven"-how her wings away on the soft approach of such wept her parents, as these the most affecting harmless footsteps to the pine that concealed of our Saviour's words dropt silver-sweet from her slender nest. As if blown from heaven, her lips, and continued in her upward eyes descended round her path the showers of tile among the swimming tears! painted butterflies, to feed, sleep, or die —unBe not incredulous of this dawn of reason, disturbed byher-upon the wild-flowers-with wonderful as it may seem to you, so soon be- wings, whenm otionless.undistinguishablefrom coming morn-almost perfect daylight-with the blossoms. And well she loved the brown, the "Holy Child." Many such miracles are busy, blameless bees, come thither for the set before us-but we recognise them not, or honey-dews from a hundred cots sprinkled all pass them by with a word or a smile of short over the parish, and all high overhead sailing surprise. How leaps the baby in its mother's away at evening, laden and wearied, to their arms, when the mysterious charm of music straw-roofed skeps in many a hamlet garden. thrills through its little brain! And how learns The leaf of every tree, shrub, and plant, she it to modulate its feeble voice, unable yet to knew familiarly and lovingly in its own chaarticulate, to the melodies that bring forth all racteristic beauty; and she was loath to shake round its eyes a delighted smile! Who knows one dew-drop from the sweetbrier-rose. And what then may be the thoughts and feelings well she knew that all nature loved her in of the infant awakened to the sense of a new return-that they were dear to each other in world, alive through all its being to sounds that their innocence-and that the very sunshine, haply glide past our ears unmeaning as the in motion or in rest, was ready to come at the breath of the common air! Thus have mere bidding of her smiles. Skilful those small infants sometimes been seen inspiredbymusic white hands of hers among the reeds and till, like small genii, they warbled spell-strains rushes and osiers-and many a pretty flowerof their own, powerful to sadden and subdue basket grew beneath their touch, her parents our hearts. So, too, have infant eyes been so wondering on their return home t(; see the charmed by the rainbow irradiating the earth, handiwork of one who was never idle in her that almost infant hands have been taught, as happiness. Thus early-ere yet but five years if by inspiration, the power to paint in finest old-did she earn her mite for the sustenance colours, and to imitate, with a wondrous art, of her own beautiful life. The russet garb she the skies so beautiful to the quick-avwakened wore she herself had won-and thus Poverty, spirit of delight. What knowledge have not at the door of that hut, became even like a some children acquired, and gone down Guardian Angel, with the lineaments of heanscholars to their small untimely graves! ven on her brow, and the quietude of heaven Knowing that such things have been-are- beneath her feet. and will be —why art thou incredulous of the But these were but her lonely pastimes, or divine expansion of soul, so soon understand- gentle taskwork self-imposed among her pasing the things that are divine-in the "Holy times, and itself the sweetest of them all, inChild.?" spired by a sense of duty that still brings with Thus grew she in the eye of God, day by it its own delight, and hallowed by religion, day waxing wiser and wiser in the knowledge that even in the most adverse lot changes that tends towards the skies; and, as if some slavery into freedom-till the heart, insensible angel visitant were nightly with her in her to the bonds of necessity, sings aloud for joy. dreams, awakening every morn with a new The life within the life of the "Holy Child," dream of thought, that brought with it a gift apart from even such innocent employments of more comprehensive speech. Yet merry as these, and from such recreations as innoshe was at times with her companions among cent, among the shadows and the sunshine of the woods and braes, though while they all those silvan haunts, was passed-let us fear were laughing, she only smiled; and the pass- not to say the truth, wondrous as such worship ing traveller, who might pause for a moment was in one so very young-was passed in the to bless the sweet creatures in their play, could worship of God; and her parents-though not but single out one face among the many sometimes even saddened to see such piety ir, fair, so pensive in its paleness, a face to be a small creature like her, and afraid, in their remem'ered, coming from afar, like a mourn- exceeding love, that it betokened an early reful thought upon the hour of joy. moval from this world of one too perfectly pure Sister or brother of her own had she none- ever to be touched by its sins and sorrowsand often both her parents-who lived in a forbore, in an awful pity, ever to remove the hut by itself up among the mossy stumps of Bible from her knees, as she would sit with it the old decayed forest-had to leave her alone there, not at morning and at evening only, or -sometimes even all the day long from morn- all the Sabbath long as soon as they returned ing till night. But she no more wearied in her from the kirk, but often through all the hours solitariness than does the wren in the wood. of the longest and sunniest week-days, when, All the flowers were her friends-all the birds. had she chosen to do so, there was nothing to 160 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTIH. hinder her from going up the hill-side, or down piety so far surpassing their thoughts; ani to the little village, to play with the other chil- time-hardened sinners, it is said, when looking dren, always too happy when she appeared- and listening to the "Holy Child," knew the nothing to hinder her but the voice she heard error of their ways, and returned to the right speaking in that Book, and the hallelujahs path as at a voice from heaven. that, at the turning over of each blessed page, Bright was her seventh summer-the bright. came upon the ear of the "Holy Child" from est, so the aged said, that had ever, in man's white-robed saints all kneeling before His memory, shone over Scotland. One long, still, throne in heaven. sunny, blue day followed another, and in the Her life seemed to be the same in sleep. rainless weather, though the dews kept green Often at midnight, by the light of the moon the hills, the song of the streams was low shining in upon her little bed beside theirs, But paler and paler, in sunlight and moon her parents leant over her face, diviner in light, became the sweet face that had been dreams, and wept as she wept, her lips all the always pale; and the voice that had been alwhile murmuring, in broken sentences of ways something mournful, breathed lower and prayer, the name of Him who died for us all. sadder still from the too perfect whiteness of But plenteous as were her penitential tears- her breast. No need-no fear-to tell her that penitential in the holy humbleness of her stain- she was about to die. Sweet whispers had less spirit, over thoughts that had never left a sung it to her in her sleep-and waking she dimming breath on its purity, yet that seemed knew it in the look of the piteous skies. Bu' in those strange visitings to be haunting her as she spoke not to her parents of death more the shadows of sins-soon were they all dried than she had often done-and never of her up in the lustre of her returning smiles. Wak- own. Only she seemed to love them with a ing, her voice in the kirk was the sweetest more exceeding love-and was readier, even among many sweet, as all the young singers, sometimes when no one was speaking, with a and she the youngest far, sat together bythem- few drops of tears. Sometimes she disapselves, and within the congregational music peared-nor, when sought for, was found in of the psalm uplifted a silvery strain that the woods about the hut. And one day that sounded like the very spirit of the whole, even mystery was cleared; for a shepherd saw her like angelic harmony blent with a mortal song. sitting by herself on a grassy mound in a nook But sleeping, still more sweetly sang the "Holy of the small solitary kirkyard, a long mile off Child;" and then, too, in some diviner inspi- among the hills, so lost in reading the Bible, ration than ever was granted to it while awake, that shadow or sound of his feet awoke her her soul composed its own hymns, and set the not; and, ignorant of his presence, she knell: simple scriptural words to its own mysterious down and prayed-for a while weeping bittermusic-the tunes she loved best gliding into ly-but soon comforted by a heavenly calmone another, without once ever marring the that her sins might be forgiven her! melody, with pathetic touches interposed never One Sabbath evening, soon after, as she was heard before, and never more to be renewed! sitting beside her parents at the door of their For each dream had its own breathing, and hut, looking first for a long while on their many-visioned did then seem to be the sinless faces, and then for a long while on the sky, creature's sleep. though it was not yet the stated hour of worThe love that was borne for her all over the ship, she suddenly knelt down, and leaning on hill-region, and beyond its circling clouds, was their knees, with hands clasped more fervently almost such as mortal creatures might be than her wont, she broke forth into tremulous thought to feel for some existence that had singing of that hymn which from her lips they visibly come from heaven. Yet all who looked never heard without unendurable tears: on her, saw that she, like themselves, was "The hour of my departure's come, mortal, and many an eye was wet, the heart I hear the voice that calls me home; wist not why, to hear such wisdom falling At last, O Lord, let trouble cease, from such lips; for dimly did it prognosticate, And let thy servant die in peace that as short as bright would be her walk from They carried her fainting to her little bed, and the cradle to the grave. And thus for the uttered not a word to one another till she re" Holy Child" was their love elevated by awe, vived. The shock was sudden, but not unexand saddened by pity-and as by herself she pected, and they knew now that the hand of passed pensively by their dwellings, the same death was upon her, although her eyes soon eyes that smiled on her presence, on her dis- became brighter and brighter, they thought, appearance wept. than they had ever been before. But forehead, Not in vain for others-and for herself, oh! cheeks, lips, neck, and breast, were all as what great gain!-for those few years on earth white, and, to the quivering hands that touched (lid that pure spirit ponder on the word of God! them, almost as cold, as snow. Ineffable was Other children became pious from their delight the bliss in those radiant eyes; but the breath in her piety-for she was simple as the of words was frozen, and that hymn was alsimplest among them all, and walked with most her last farewell. Some few words she them hand in hand, nor declined companion- spake-and named the hour and day she ship with any one that was good. But all wished to be buried. Her lips could then grew good by being with her-and parents just faintly return the kiss, and no more-a had but to whisper her name, and in a mo- film came over the now dim blue of her eyes ment the passionate sob was hushed-the -the father listened for her breath-and then lowering brow lighted-and the household in the mother took his place, and leaned her ear peace. Older hearts owned the power of the to the unbreathing mouth, long deluding her OUR PARISH. I1il self with its lifelike smile; but a sudden dark- guilty of such ingratitude. " The Lord giveth, ness in the room, and a sudden stillness, most and the Lord taketh away —blessed be the dreadful both, convinced their unbelieving name of the Lord!" were the first words they hearts at last, that it was death. had spoke by that bedside; during many, many All the parish, it may be said, attended her long years of weal or wo, duly every morning funeral-for none stayed away from the kirk and night, these same blessed words did they that Sabbath-though many a voice was un- utter when on their knees together in prayer able to join in the Psalm. The little grave -and many a thousand times besides, when was soon filled up —and you hardly knew that they were apart, she in her silent hut, and he the turf had been disturbed beneath which she on the hill-neither of them unhappy in their lay. The afternoon service consisted but of a solitude, though never again, perhaps, was prayer-for he who ministered, had loved her his countenance so cheerful as of yore-and with love unspeakable-and, though an old though often suddenly amidst mirth or sungrayhaired man, all the time he prayed he shine their eyes were seen to overflow. Hapwept. In the sobbing kirk her parents were py had they been-as we mortal beings ever sitting, but no one looked at them-and when can be happy-during many pleasant years the congregation rose to go, there they re- of wedded life before she had been born. And mained sitting-and an hour afterwards, came happy were they-on to the verge of old age out again into the open air, and parting with — long after she had here ceased to be. Their their pastor at the gate, walked away to their Bible had indeed been an idle book-the Bible hut, overshadowed with the blessing of a thou- that belonged to "the Holy Child,"- and idle sand prayers. all their kirk-goings with "the Hol) Child," And did her parents, soon after she was bu- through the Sabbath-calm-had those interried, die of broken hearts, or pine away dis- mediate years not left a power of bliss beconsolately to their graves l Think not that hind them triumphant over death and the they, who were Christians indeed, could be grave. OUR PARISH. NAlTURE must be bleak and barren indeed to towns and cities called dreary, composed; but possess no power over the young spirit daily the composition itself-as well might we hope expanding on her breast into new suscepti- thus to show it to your soul's eye, as by a few bilities, that erelong are felt to fill life to over- extracts however fine, and a few criticisms flowing with a perpetual succession-an infi- however exquisite, to give you the idea of a nite series-of enjoyments. Nowhere is she perfect poem. destitute of that power-not on naked sea- But we have not given you more than a sin. shores-not in central deserts. But our boy- gle hint of a great part of our Parish-the hood was environed by the beautiful —its home Moor. It was then ever so many miles long, was among moors and mountains, which peo- and ever so many miles broad, and nobody ple in towns and cities called dreary, but thought of guessinghow many miles roundwhich we knew to be the cheerfullest and most but some twenty years ago it was absolutely gladsome parish in all braid Scotland-and measured to a rood by a land-louper of a landwell it might be, for it was in her very heart. surveyor-distributed-drained -enclosedMountains they seemed to us in those days, utterly ruined for ever. No, not for ever. Nathough now we believe they are only hills. But ture laughs to scorn acts of Parliament, and we such hills!-undulating far and wide away till predict that in a quarter of a century she will the highest even on clear days seemed to touch resume her management of that moor. We the sky, and in cloudy weather were verily a rejoice to hear that she is beginning already part of heaven. Many a valley, and many a to take lots of it into her own hands. Wheat glen-and many a hollow that was neither has no business there, and should keep to the valley nor glen-and many a flat, of but a carses. In spring she takes him by the braird few green acres, which we thought plains- till he looks yellow in the face long before his and many a cleft waterless with its birks and time-in summer, by the cuff of the neck till brechans, except when the rains came down, he lies down on his back and rots in the rain and then they all sang a new song in merry -in autumn, by the ears, and rubs him against chorus-and many a wood, and many a grove, the grain till he expires as fushionless as the for it takes no great number of trees to make winnlestraes with which he is interlaced-in a wood, and four firs by themselves in a lone- winter, she shakes him in the stook till he is some place are a grove-and many a single left but a shadow which pigeons despise. See sycamore, and many a single ash, kenned afar- him in stack at Christmas, and you pity the poor off above its protected cottage-and many an straw. Here and there bits of bear or big, and Indescribable spot of scenery, at once pastoral barley, she permits to flourish-nor is she loth and agricultural and silvan, where if house to see the flowers and,haws and apples on there was, you hardly knew it among the the poor man's plant, the life-sustaining potato rocks; —so was Our Parish, which people in -which none but political economists hate and 11 ~162 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. all Christians love. She is not so sure about blackamoors before your very feet, and as you turnips, but as they are a green crop she stumbled over them in the dark, throttling as leaves them to the care of the fly. But where as if they sought to strangle you, and then have her gowans gone. There they still are leaving you at your leisure to wipe from your in flocks, which no cultivation can scatter or mouth the mire by the light of a straggling eradicate-inextinguishable by all the lime star; —sunbeams that wrestled with the sha. that was ever brought unslokened from all the dows in the gloom-sometimes clean flung, kilns that ever glowed-by all the dung that and then they cowered into the heather, and was ever heaped up fresh and fuming from all insinuated themselves into the earth; somethe Augean stables in the land. Yet her heart times victorious, and then how they capered burns within her to behold, even in the midst in the lift, ere they shivered away-not always of what she abhors, the large dew-loved heads without a hymn of thunder-in beh'nd the of clover whitening or reddening, or with their clouds, tp refresh themselves in their ta errival colours amicably intermingled, a new nacle in the sky. birth glorious in the place of reedy marish or Won't you be done with this Moor, you mofen where the catspaws nodded-and them nomaniac? Not for yet a little while-for we she will retain unto herself when once more see Kitty North all by himself in the heart of she shall rejoice in her Wilderness Restored. it, a boy apparently about the age of twelve, And would we be so barbarous as to seek and happy as the day is long, though it is the to impede the progress of improvement, and Longest Day in all the year. Aimless he to render agriculture a dead letter? We are seems to be, but all alive as a grasshopper, and not so barbarous nor yet so savage. We love is leaping like a two-year-old across the hags. civilized life, of which we have long been one Were he to tumble in, what would become of of the smaller but sincerest ornaments. But the personage whomKean's Biographer would agriculture, like education, has its bounds. It call "the future Christopher the First." But is, like it, a science, and wo to the country no fear of that-for at no period of his life did that encourages all kinds of quacks. Cultivate he ever overrate his powers-and he knows a moor! educate a boor! First understand now his bound to an inch. Cap, bonnet, hat, the character of Clods and Clodhoppers. To he has none; and his yellow hair, dancing on say nothing of the Urbans and Suburbans-a his shoulders like a mane, gives him the look perilous people-yet of great capabilities; for of a precocious lion's whelp. Leonine too is to discuss that question would lead us into his aspect, yet mild withal; and but for a lanes; and as it is a long lane that has never certain fierceness in his gambols, you would a turning, for the present we keep in the open not suspect he was a young creature of prey. air, and abstain from wynds. We are no ene- A fowling-piece is in his left hand, and in his mies to poor soils, far less to rich ones igno- right a rod. And what may he be purposing rantly and stupidly called poor, which under to shoot? Any thing full-fledged that may proper treatment effuse riches; but to expect play whirr or sugh. Good grouse-ground this; to extract from paupers a return for the expen- but many are yet in the egg, and the rest are diture squandered by miserly greed on their but cheepers-little bigger than the small reluctant bottoms, cold and bare, is the in- brown moorland bird that goes burling up with sanity of speculation, and such schemers de- its own short epithalamium, and drops down serve being buried along with their capital in on the rushes still as a stone. Them he harms quagmires. Heavens! how they-the quag- not on their short flight-but marking them mires-suck in the dung! You say they don't down, twirls his piece like a fugleman, and suck it in-well, then, they spew it out-it thinks of the Twelfth. Safer methinks wilt evaporates-and what is the worth of weeds? thou be a score or two yards further off, 0 Lime whitens a moss, that is true, but so does Whawp! for though thy young are yet callow, snow. Snow melts-what becomes of lime Kit is beginning to think they may shift for no mortal knows but the powheads-them it themselves; and that long bill and that long poisons, and they give up the ghost. Drains neck, and those long legs and that long body are dug deep now-a-days-and we respect Mr. -the tout-ensemble so elegant, so graceful, and Johnstone. So are gold mines. But from so wild-are a strong temptation to the trigger; gold mines that precious metal-at a great -click-clack-whizz-phew —fire —smoke expense, witness its price-is exterred; in and thunder-head-over-heels topsy-turvy goes drains, that precious metal, witness wages, is the poor curlew-and Kit stands over him interred, and then it becomes squash. Stirks leaning on his single-barrel, with a stern but starve-heifers are hove with windy nothing somewhat sad aspect, exulting in his skill, yet with oxen frogs compete in bulk with every sorry for the creature whose wild cry will be prospect of a successful issue, and on such heard no more. pasturage where would be the virility of the'Tis an oasis in the desert. That green spot Bulls of Bashan? is called a quagmire —an ugly name enoughIf we be in error, we shall be forgiven at but itself is beautiful; for it diffuses its own least by all lovers of the past, and what to the light round about it, like a star vivifying its elderly seems the olden time. Oh, misery for halo. The sward encircling it is firm-and that Moor! Hundreds, thousands, loved it as Kit lays him down, heedless of the bird, with wel as we did; for though it grew no grain, eyes fixed on the oozing spring. How fresh many a glorious crop it bore —shadows that the wild cresses! His very eyes are drinking! glided like ghosts-the giants stalked-the His thirst is at once excited and satisfied by,dwarfs crept;-yet sometimes were the dwarfs looking at the lustrous leaves-composed of mere formidable than the giants, lying like cooling light without spot or stain. Wha. OUR PARISH. 163 ails the boy! He covers his face with his clear the way for the callant, Kit's comitng!' hands, and in his silence sighs. A small white cries Ebenezer Brackenrigg, the Elder, a douce hand, with its fingers spread, rises out of the man now, but a deevil in his youth, and like spring, as if it were beckoning to heaven in " a waff o' lichtnin'" past their een, Kit clears prayer-and then is sucked slowly in again the barrows a foot beyond Souple Tam, and out of sight with a gurgling groan. The at the first fly is declared victor by acclamation. spring so fresh and fair-so beautiful with its Oh, our unprophetic soul! did the day indeed cresses and many another water-loving plant dawn-many long years after this our earliest beside-is changed into the same horrid quag- great conquest yet traditional in the parish mire it was that day-a holyday-three years -that ere nightfall witnessed our defeat by ago-when racing in her joy Amy Lewars -a tailor! The Flying Tailor of Etterickblindly ran into it, among her blithe com- the Lying Shepherd thereof-would they had panions, and suddenly perished Childhood, never been born-the one to triumph an_ h le they say, soon dries its tears, and soon forgets. other to record that triumph;-yet let us be God be praised for all his goodness! true it is just to the powers of our rival-for though all that on the cheek of childhood tears are dried the world knows we were lame when we leapt up as if by the sunshine of joy stealing from him, long past our prime, had been wading all on high-but, God be praised for all his good- day in the Yarrow with some stones-weight in ness. false it is that the heart of childhood has our creel, and allowed him a yard, not a long memory, for in a moment the "Great must I call him, for he vanquish'd ME." mournful past revives within it-as often as What a place at night was that Moor! At the joyful —sadness becomes sorrow, sorrow night! That is a most indeterminate mode of grief, and grief anguish, as now it is with the expression, for there are nights of all sorts and solitary boy seated by that ghastly spot in the sizes, and what kind of a night do we mean? middle of the wide moor. Not a mirk night, for no man ever walked that Away he flies, and he is humming a tune. moor on a mirk night, except one, and he, But what's this? A merry-making in the though blind-fou, was drowned. But a night moor? Ay, merry-making; but were you to may be dark without being mirk, with or withtake part in it, you would find it about the out stars; and on many such a night have we, hardest work that ever tried the strength of but not always alone-who was with us you your spine.'Tis a party of divotflaughters. shall never know-threaded our way with no The people in the parish are now digging their other clue than that of evolving recollections, peats, and here is a whole household, provident originally notices, across that wilderness of of winter, borrowing fuel from the moss. labyrinths, fearlessly, yet at times with a beatThey are far from coals, and wood is intended ing heart. Our companion had her clue too, by nature for other uses; but fire in peat she one in her pocket, of blue worsted, with which dedicated to the hearth, and there it burns all she kept in repair all the stockings belonging over Scotland, Highland and Lowland, far and to the family, and one in her memory, of green near, at many a holy altar.'Tis the mid-day ethereal silk, which, finer far than any spider's hour of rest. Some are half-asleep, some yet web, she let out as she tript along the moor, eating, some making a sort of under-voiced, and on her homeward-way she felt, by some under-hand love. "Mr. North! Mr. North! spiritual touch, the invisible lines, along which Mr. North!" is the joyful cry-horny-fists first she retript as safely as if they had been moon-downy-fists next-and after heartiest greet- beams. During such journeyings we never ing, Master Kitty is installed, enthroned on a saw the moor, how then can you expect us to knowe, Master of the Ceremonies-and in good describe it? tine gives them a song. Then "galliards cry But oftener we were alone. Earthquakes a hall, a hall," and hark and lo! preluded by abroad are dreadful occurrences, and blot out six smacks-three foursome reels! "Sic the obituary. But here they are so gentle that hirdum-dirdum and sic din," on the sward, to the heedless multitude never feel them, and on a strathspey frae the fiddle o' auld blin' Hugh hearing you tell of theni, they incredulously Lyndsay, the itinerant musicianer, who was stare. That moor made no show of religion, noways particular about the number of his but was a Quaker. We had but to stand still strings, and when one, or even two snapped, for five minutes or so, no easy matter then, for used to play away at pretty much of the same we were more restless than a wave, or to lie tune with redoubled energy and variations. down with our ear to the ground, and the spirit He had the true old Niel-Gow yell, and had he was sure to move the old Quaker, who forth played on for ever, folk would have danced on with began to preach and pray and sing for ever till they had all, one after the other, Psalms. How he moaned at times as if his dropped down dead. What steps! heart were breaking! At times, as if some " Who will try me," cries Kit, "at loup-the- old forgotten sorrow were recalled, how he barrows." " I will," quoth Souple Tam. The sighed! Then recovering his self-possession, barrows are laid-how many side by side we as if to clear his voice, he gave a hem, and fear to say-for we have become sensitive on then a short nasty cough like a patient in a our veracity —on a beautiful piece of springy- consumption. Now all was hush, and you turf, an inclined plane with length sufficient might have supposed he had fallen asleep, for for a run; and while old and young line both in that hush you heard what seemed an intersides of the lane near the loup, stript to the mitting snore. ~When all at once, whew, whew, sark and the breeks, Souple Tam, as he fondly whew, as if he were whistling, accompanied hinks, shows the way to win, and clears them with a strange rushing sound as of diving l1 like a frog or a roebuck. "Clear the way, wings. That was in the air-but instantlv 164 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. after you heard something odder still in the cozy bields in wildest weather, and.some into bog. And while wondering, and of your won- which the snow was never known to drift) der finding no end, the ground, which a mo- green all the winter through —prennial nests, ment before had felt firm as a road, began to Such was the nature of the region where lay shrink, and sink, and hesitate, and hurry, and our Four Lochs. They were some quarter of crumble, and mumble all around you, and close a mile-some half mile-and some whole mile up to your very feet-the quagmires gurgling -not more-asunder; but there was no great as if choked-and a subterranean voice dis- height-and we have a hundred times climbed tinctly articulating Oh! Oh! Oh! the highest-from which they could be all seen We have heard of people who pretend not at once-so cannily were they embosomel, sc, to believe in ghosts-geologists who know how needed not to be embowered. the world was created; but will they explain The LITTLE LocH was the rushiest and reedi that moor? And how happened it that only est little rascal that ever rustled, and he was by nights and dark nights it was so haunted? on the very edge of the Moor. That he had Beneath a wakeful moon and unwinking stars fish we all persisted in believing, in spite of it was silent as a frozen sea. You listened all the successless angling of all kinds tha, then, and heard but the grass growing, and from time immemorial had assailed his sullen beautiful grass it was, though it was called depths-but what a place for powheads! One coarse, and made the sweetest-scented hay. continued bank of them-while yet they were What crowds of bum-bees' bykes —foggies- but eyes in the spawn-encircled it instead of did the scythe not reveal as it heaped up the water lilies; and at "the season of the year," heavy swathes-three hundred stone to the by throwing in a few stones you awoke a acre-by guess-for there was neither weigh- croaking that would have'silenced a rookery. ing nor measuring there then-a-days, but all In the early part of the century a pike had was in the lump-and there the rush-roped been seen basking in the shallows, by eyestacks stood all the winter through, that they measurement about ten feet long-but fortumight be near the " eerie outlan cattle," on nately he had never been hooked, or the conplaces where cart-wheel never circled, nor sequences would have been fatal. We have axle-tree creaked-nor ever car of antique seen the Little Loch alive with wild-ducks; make trailed its low load along-for the horse but it was almost impossible by position to get, would have been laired. We knew not then a shot at them-and quite impossible, if you at all-and now we but imperfectly know-the did, to get hold of the slain. Fro himself-the cause of the Beautiful. Then we believed the best dog that ever dived- was baffled by the Beautiful to be wholly extern; something we multiplicity of impediments and obstructions nad nothing to do with but to look at, and lo! -and at last refused to take the water-sat t shone divinely there! Happy creed if false down and howled in spiteful rage. Yet Im-for in it, with holiest reverence, we blame- agination loved the Little Loch, and so did essly adored the stars. There they were in Hope. We have conquered it in sleep both millions as we thought-every one brighter with rod and gun-the weight of bag and basthan another, when by chance we happened to ket has wakened us out of dreams of murder fix on any individual among them, that we that never were realized-yet once, and once might look through its face into its heart. All only, in it we caught an eel, which we skinned, above gloriously glittering, all below a blank. and wore the shrivel for many a day round our Our body here, our spirit there-how mean ankle-nor is it a vain superstition-to preour birth-place, our death-home how magnifi- serve it from sprains. We are willing the cent! "Fear God and keep his command- Little Loch should be drained; but you would ments," said a small still voice-and we felt have to dig a fearsome trench, for it used to that if He gave us strength to obey that law, have no bottom. A party of us -six-ascerwe should live for ever beyond all those stars. tained that fact, by heaving into it a stone But were there no Lochs in our parish! which six-and-thirty schoolboys of this degeneYea-Four. The Little Loch-the White rate age could not have lifted from its mossLoch-the Black Loch-and the Brother Loch. bed-and though we watched for an hour not Not a tree on the banks of any one of them- a bubble rose to the surface. It used someyet he had been a blockhead who called them times to boil like a pot on breathless days, for bare. Had there been any need for trees, Na- events happening in foreign countries disturbture would have sown them on hills she so ed the spring, and the torments it suffered dearly loved. Nor sheep nor cattle were ever thousands of fathoms below, were manifested heard to complain of those pastures. They above in turbulence that would have drowned bleated and they lowed as cheerily as the moor- a schoolboy's skiff. land birdies sang-and how cheerily that was The WHITE LOCH-so called from the silver nobody knew who had not often met the morn- sand of its shores-had likewise its rushy and ing on the brae, and shaken hands with her the reedy bogs; but access to every part of the rosy-fingered like two familiar friends. No main body was unimpeded, and you waded want of loun places there, in which the crea- into it, gradually deeper and deeper, with such tures could lie with wool or hair unruffled a delightful descent, that up to the arm-pits among surrounding storms. For the hills had and then to the chin, you could keep touching been dropt from the hollow of His hand who the sand with your big-toe, till you floated 1" tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"-and away off at the nail, out of your depth, without even high up, where you might see tempest- for a little while discovering that it was incumr stricken stones-one of them like pillars-but bent on you, for sake of your personal safety, piaced nDt there by human art-there were to take to regular swimming —-and then how OUR PARISH. I66 buoyant was the milk-warm water, without a once left it with disappointed hores of enjoy wave but of your own creating, as the ripples ment. It was the nearest, and therefore mos went circling away before your breast or your within our power, so that we could gallop to i breath! It was absolutely too clear —for with- on shank's naiggie, well on in the afternoon out knitting your brows you could not see it on and enjoy what seemed a long day of delight: bright airless days-and wondered what had swift as flew the hours, before evening-prayers, become of it-when all at once, as if it had Yet was it remote enough to make us always been that very moment created out of nothing, feel that our race thither was not for every day there it was! endued with some novel beauty -and we seldom returned home without an -for of all the lochs we ever knew-and to adventure. It was the largest too by far of the be so simple too-the White Loch had surely Four-and indeed its area would have held the greatest variety of expression-but all the waters of all the rest. Then there was a within the cheerful-for sadness was alien charm to our heart as well as our imagination altogether from its spirit, and the gentle Mere in its name-for tradition assigned it on acfor ever wore a smile. Swans —but that was count of three brothers that perished in its but once-our own eyes had seen on it- waters-and the same name for the same reaand were they wild or were they tame swans, son belongs to many another loch-and to one certain it is they were great and glorious and pool on almost every river. But above all it lovely creatures, and whiter than any snow. was the Loch for angling, and we long kept to No house was within sight, and they had no- perch. What schools! Not that they were thing to fear-nor did they look afraid-sail- of a very large size-though pretty well-but ing in the centre of the loch —nor did we see hundreds all nearly the same size gladdened them fly away-for we lay still on the hillside our'hearts as they lay, at the close of our till in the twilight we should not have known sport, in separate heaps on the greensward what they were, and we left them there among shore, more beautiful out of all sight than your the shadows seemingly asleep. In the morn- silver or golden fishes in a glass-vase, where ing they were gone, and perhaps making love one appears to be twenty, and the delusive in some foreign land. voracity is all for a single crumb. No bait so The BLACK Loca was a strange misnomer killing as cowshairn-mawks, fresh from their for one so fair-for black we never saw him, native bed, scooped out with the thumb. He except it might be for an hour or so before must have been a dear friend to whom in a thunder. If he really was a loch of colour the scarcity, by the water-side, when the corks original taint had been washed out of him, and were dipping, we would have given a mawk. he might have shown his face among the purest No pike. Therefore the trout were allowed to waters of Europe. But then he was deep; gain their natural size-and that seemed to be and knowing that, the natives had named him, about five pounds —adolescents not unfrequent in no unnatural confusion of ideas, the Black swam two or three-and you seldom or never Loch. We have seen wild-duck eggs five saw the smaller fry. But few were the days fathoms down so distinctly that we could count "good for the Brother Loch." Perch rarely them-and though that is not a bad dive, we failed you, for by perseverance you were sure have brought them up, one in our mouth and to fall in with one circumnatatory school or one in each hand, the tenants of course dead other, and to do murderous work among them -nor can we now conjecture what sank them with the mawk, from the schoolmaster himthere; but ornithologists see unaccountable self inclusive down to the little booby of the sights, and they only who are not ornitholo- lowest form. Not so with Trout. We have gists disbelieve Audubon and Wilson. Two angled ten hours a-day for half a-week, (during features had the Black Loch which gave it to the vacance,) without ever getting a single our eyes a pre-eminence in beauty over the rise, nor could even that be called bad sport, other three-a tongue of land that half divided for we lived in momentary expectation, minit, and never on hot days was without some gled with fear, of a monster. Better far from cattle grouped on its very point, and in among sunrise to, sunset never to move a fin, than oh! the water-and a cliff on which, though it was me miserable! to hook a huge hero with not very lofty, a pair of falcons had their nest. shoulders like a hog —play him till he comnes Yet in misty weather, when its head was hid- floating side up close to the shore, and then to den, the shrill cry seemed to come from a great feel the feckless fly leave his lip and begin height. There were some ruins too-tradition gamboling in the air, while he wallops away said of some church or chapel-that had been back into his native element, and sinks utterly ruins long before the establishment of the Pro- and for evermore into the dark profound. testant faith. But they were somewhat re- Life loses at such a moment all that makes mote, and likewise somewhat imaginary, for life desirable-yet strange! the wretch lives stones are found lying strangely distributed, on —and has not the heart to drown himself, and those looked to our eyes not like such as as he wrings his hands and curses his lot and builders use, but to have been dropped there the day he was born. But, thank Heaven, that most probably from the moon. ghastly fit of fancy is gone by, and we imagine But the best beloved, if not the most beauti- one of those dark, scowling, gusty, almost temful, of them all was the BROTHER LocH. It pestuous days, "prime for the Brother Loch." mattered not what was his disposition of ge- No glare or glitter on the water, no reflection nius, every one of us boys, however different of fleecy clouds, but a black-blue undulating might be our other tastes, preferred it far be- swell, at times turbulent-with now and then yond the rest, and for once that we visited any a breaking wave —that was the weather in of them we visited it twenty times, nor ever I which the giants fed, showing their backs like 166 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. iolphins within a fathom of the shore, and calves of the legs and the heels. The modern sucking in the red heckle among your very system of turning out the toes, and sticking feet. Not an insect in the air, yet then the fly out the legs as if they were cork or timber, is was al. the rage. This is a mystery, for you at once dangerous and ridiculous; hence in could do nothing with the worm. Oh! that our cavalry the men got unhorsed in every we had then known the science of the spin- charge. On pony-back we used to malke the ning minnow! But we were then but an ap- soles of our feet smack together below the prentice-whoare now Emeritus Grand Mas- belly, for quadruped and biped were both un ter. Yet at this distance of time-half a shod, and hoof needed no iron on that stonecentury and more-it is impious to repine. less sward. But the biggest fun of all was to Gut was not always to be got; and on such "grup the auld mare," and ride her sextuple, days a three-haired snood did the business — the tallest boy sitting on the neck, and the for they were bold as lions, and rashly rushed shortest on the rump with his face to the' tail, on death. The gleam of the yellow-worsted and holding on by that fundamental feature by body with star-y-pointed tail maddened them which the urchin tooled her along as by a with desire —no dallying with the gay-deceiver tiller. How the silly foal whinnied, as with — they licked him in-they gorged him-and light-gathered steps he accompanied in circles while satiating their passion got involved in his populous parent, and seemed almost to inextricable fate. You have seen a single doubt her identity, till one by one we slipped strong horse ploughing up hill. How he sets off over her hurdies, and let him take a suck! his brisket to it-and snuves along-as the But what comet is yon in the sky-" with fear furrows fall in beautiful regularity from the of change perplexing mallards "' A Flying gliding share. So snuved along the Monarch Dragon. Of many degrees is his tail, with a of the Mere-or the heir-apparent-or heir- tuft like that of Taurus terrified by the sudden presumptive-or some other branch of the entrance of the Sun into his sign. Up goes royal family-while our line kept steadily cut- Sandy Donald's rusty and rimless beaver as a ting the waves, and our rod enclosing some messenger to the Celestial. He obeys, and new segment of the sky. stooping his head, descends with many diverse But many another pastime we pursued upon divings, and buries his beak in the earth. The those pastoral hills, for even angling has its due feathered kite quails and is cowed by him of measure, and unless that be preserved, the pas- paper, and there is a scampering of cattle on a sion wastes itself into lassitude, or waxes into hundred hills. disease. " I would not angle alway," thinks the The Brother Loch saw annually another wise boy-" off to some other game we alto- sight, when on the Green-Brae was pitched a gether flew." Never were there such hills for Tent-a snow-white Pyramid, gathering to itself hare and hounds. There couched many a all the sunshine. There lords and ladies, and pussey-and there Bob Howie's famous Tick- knights and squires, celebrated Old May-day,and ler-the Grew of all Grews-first stained his half the parishflocked to the Festival. The Earl flues in the blood of the Fur. But there is no ofEglintoun, and SirMichael Shaw Stewart, and coursing between April and October-and old Sir John of Polloc, and Pollock of thatIlk, during the intervening months we used to and other heads of illustrious houses, with their have many a hunt on foot, without dogs, after wives and daughters, a beautiful show, did not the leverets. We all belonged to the High disdain them of low degree, but kept open table School indeed, and here was its playground. in the moor; and would you believe it, highCricket we had then never heard of; but there born youths and maidens ministered at the was ample room and verge enough for foot- board to cottage lads and lasses, whose sunball. Our prime delight, however, was the burnt faces hardly dared to smile, under awe chase. We were all in perpetual training, of that courtsey —yet whenever they lookedup and in such wind that there were no bellows there was happiness in their eyes. The young to mend after a flight of miles. We circled ladies were all arrayed in green; and after the Lochs. Plashing through the marishes the feast, they took bows and arrows in their we strained winding up the hillsides, till on lily hands, and shot at a target in a style that the cairn called a beacon that crowned the would have gladdened the heart of Maid Marian loftiest summit of the range, we stood and -nay, of Robin himself; —and one surpassing waved defiance to our pursuers scattered bright-the Star of Ayr-she held a hawk cn wide and far below, for'twas a Deer hunt. her wrist-a tercel gentle-after the fashion Then we became cavaliers. We caught the of the olden time; and ever as she moved her long-maned and long-tailed colts, and mount- arm you heard the chiming of silver bells. ing bare-backed, with rush helmets and segg And her brother-gay and gallant as Sir Trissabres charged the nowte till the stirks were trem-he blew his tasseled bugle —so sweet, scattered, and the lowing lord of herds him- so pure, so wild the music, that when he ceased self taken captive, as he stood pawing in a to breathe, the far-off repeated echoes, faint and nook with his nose to the ground and eyes dim, you thought died away in heaven, like an of fire. That was the riding-school in which angel's voice. we learned to witch the world with noble Wasitnot aParagonofaParish? Butwe horsemanship. We thus got confirmed in have not told you one half of its charms. There that fine, easy, unconstrained, natural seat, was a charm in every nook-and Youth was which we carried with us into the saddle the masterofthe spell. Smallmagicians were when we were required to handle the bridle we in size, but we were great in might. We.Ilstead of the mane.'Tis right to hold on by had but to open our eyes in the morning, a4d the knees, but equally so to hold on by the at one look al nature was beautiful. Wehav4 OUR PARISH. 167 said nothing about the Burns. The chief was being in the bell;" but in imagination's dream the Yearn-endearingly called the Humby, how sweetly do the seasons all slide into one from a farm near the Manse, and belonging to another! After sleep comes play, and see and the minister. Its chief source was, we believe, hear now how the merry Yearn goes tumbling the Brother Loch. But it whimpled with such over rocks, nor will rest in any one linn, but an infantine voice from the lucid bay, which impatient of each beautiful prison in which then knew nor sluice nor dam, that for a while one would think he might lie a willing thrall; it was scarcely even a rill, and you had to seek hurries on as if he were racing against time, for it among the heather. In doing so, ten to nor casts a look at the human dwellings now one some brooding birdie fluttered off her nest more frequent near his sides. But he will be -but not till your next step would have stopped by and by, whether he will or no; for crushed them all-or perhaps-but he had no there, if we be not much mistaken, there is a nest there-a snipe. There it is —betrayed by mill. But the wheel is at rest-the sluice on a line of livelier verdure. Erelong it sparkled the lade is down-with the lade he has nothing within banks of its own and "braes of green more to do than to fill it; and with undiminbracken," and as you footed along, shoals of ished volume he wends round the miller's garminnows, and perhaps a small trout or two, den-you see Dusty Jacket is a florist-and brastled away to the other side of the shallow, now is hidden in a dell; but a dell without any and hid themselves in the shadows.'Tis a rocks.'Tis but some hundred yards across pretty rill now-nor any longer mute; and you from bank to brae-and as you angle along on hear it murmur. It has acquired confidence either side, the sheep and lambs are bleating on its course, and has formed itself into its first high overhead; for though the braes are steep, pool-a waterfall, three feet high, with its own they are all intersected with sheep-walks, and tiny rocks, and a single birk-no, it is. a rowan ever and anon among the broom and the -too young yet to bear berries-else might a brackens are little platforms of close-nibbled child pluck the highest cluster. Imperceptibly, greensward, yet not bare-and nowhere else is insensibly, it grows just like life. The Burn the pasturage more succulent —nor do the is now in his boyhood; and a bold, bright boy young creatures not care to taste the primroses, he is-dancing and singing-nor heeding though were they to live entirely upon them, which way he goes along the wild, any more they could not keep down the profusion-so than that wee rosy-cheeked, flaxen-headed girl thickly studded in places are the constellations seems to heed, who drops you a curtsey, and on among sprinklings of single stars. Here the being asked by you, with your hand on her hill-blackbird builds-and here you know why hair, where she is going, answers wi' a soft Scotland is called the lintie's land. What Scuttish accent-ah! how sweet-"owre the bird lilts like the lintwhite? The lark alone. hill to see my Mither." Is that a house? No But here there are no larks-a little further -a fauld. For this is the VWashing-Pool. down and you will hear one ascending or deLook around you, and you never saw such scending over almost every field of grass or perfectly white sheep. They are Cheviots; of the tender braird. Down the dell before you, for the black-faces are on the higher hills to flitting from stone to stone, on short flight the north of the moor. We see a few rigs of seeks the water-pyet-seemingly a witless flax-and "lint is in the bell" —the steeping creature with its bonnie white breast-to wile whereof will sadly annoy the bit burnie, but you away from the crevice, even within the poor people must spin-and as this is not the waterfall, that holds its young-or with a cock season, we will think of nothing that can pol- of her tail she dips and disappears. There is lute his limpid waters. Symptoms of hus- grace in the glancing sandpiper-nor, though bandry! Potato-shaws luxuriating on lazy somewhat fantastical, is the water-wagtail inbeds, and a small field with alternate rigs of elegant-either belle or beau-an outlandish oats and barley. Yes, that is a house —" an bird that makes himself at home wherever he auld clay bigging"-in such Robin Burns was goes, and, vain as he looks, is contented if but born-in such was rocked the cradle of Pol- one admire him in a solitary place-though it lok. We think we hear two separate liquid is true that we have seen them in half dozens voices-and we are right-for from the flats on the midden in front of the cottage door beyond Floak, and away towards Kingswells, The blue slip of sky overhead has been gracomes another yet wilder burnie, and they dually widening, and the dell is done. Is that meet in one at the head of what you would snow? A bleachfield. Lasses can bleach probably call a meadow, but which we call a their own linen on the green near the pool, holm. There seems to be more arable land " atween twa flowery braes," as Allan has so hereabouts than a stranger could have had any sweetly sung, in his truly Scottish pastoral thee idea of; but it is a long time since the plough- Gentle Shepherd. But even they could not share traced those almost obliterated furrows well do without bleachfields on a larger scale, on the hillside; and such cultivation is now else dingy would be their smocks and their wisely confined, you observe, to the lower wedding-sheets. Therefore there is beauty in lands. We fear the Yearn-for that is his a bleachfield, and in none more than in Bel. sname now-heretofore he was anonymous- Meadows. But where is the Burnt They is about to get flat. But we must not grudge have stolen him out of his bed, and, alas! him a slumber or a sleep among the saughs, nothing but stones! Gather up your flies, and lulled by the mnurmur of millions of humble away down to yonder grove. There he is like bees-we speak within bounds-on their one risen from the dead; and how joyful his honied flowerage. We are confusing the sea- resurrection! All the way from this down to sons, for a few minutes ago we spoke of "lint the Brigg o' Humbie the angling is admirable, 16O RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. and the burn has become a stream. You the same; for they are so essentially blended, wade now through longer grass-sometimes that we defy you to show what is biblicaleven up to the knees; and half-forgetting pas- what apocryphal-and what pure romance. toral life, you ejaculate "Speed the plough!" How we transpose and dislocate while we Whitewashed houses-but still thatched-look limn in aerial colours! Where tree never down on you from among trees, that shelter grew we drop it down centuries old-or we them in front; while behind is an encampment tear out the gnarled oak by the roots, and of stacks, and on each side a line of offices, so steep what was once his shadow in sunshine that they are snug in every wind that blows. -hills sink at a touch, or at a beck mountains The Auld Brigg is gone, which is a pity; for rise; yet amidst all those fluctuations the spithough the turn was perilous sharp, time had rit of the place remains the same; for in that so coloured it, that in a sunny shower we have spirit has imagination all along been working, mistaken it for a rainbow. That's Humbie and boon nature smiles on her son as he imiHouse, God bless it! and though we cannot tates her creations —but "hers are heavenly, here with our bodily sense see the Manse, with his an empty dream." our spiritual eye we can see it anywhere. Where lies Our Parish, and what is its Ay! there is the cock on the Kirk-spire! The name? Seek, and you will find it either in wind we see has shifted to the south; and ere Renfrewshire, or in Utopia, or in the Moon. we reach the Cart, we shall have to stuff our As for its name, men call it the Mearns. pockets. The Cart! —ay, the river Cart-not M'Culloch, the great Glasgow painter-and that on which pretty Paisley stands, but the in Scotland he has no superior-will perhaps Black Cart, beloved by us chiefly for sake of accompany you to what once was the Moor. Cath-Cart Castle, which, when a collegian at All the Four Lochs, we understand, are there Glasgow, we visited every Play-Friday, and still; but the Little Loch transmogrified into deepened the ivy on its walls with our first an auxiliar appurtenance to some cursed sombre dreams. The scenery of the Yearn Wark-the Brother Loch much exhausted by. becomes even silvan now; and though still daily drains upon him by we know not what sweet it murmurs to our ear, they no longer wretch-the White Lochl larched-and the sink into our hearts. So let it mingle with the Black Loch of-a ghastly blue, cruelly cultiCart, and the Cart with the Clyde, and the vated all close round the brim. From his Clyde widen away in all his majesty, till the moor river becomes a firth, and the firth the sea; — "The parting genius is with sighing sent;" but we shut our eyes, and relapse into the but sometimes, on blear-eyed days, he is seen vision that showed us the solitary region dear- disconsolately sitting in some yet mossy spot est to our imagination and our hearts, and among the ruins of his ancient reign. That opening them on completion of the charm that painter has studied the aspect of the Old Forworks within the spirit when no daylight is lorn, and has shown it more than once on bits there, rejoice to find ourselves again sole-sit- of canvas not a foot long; and such pictures ting on the Green-Brae above the Brother Loch. will survive after the Ghost of the Genius has Such is an off-hand picture of Our Parish- bade farewell to the ruined solitudes he had pray, give us one of yours, that both may gain haunted ever since the flood, or been laid beby comparison. But is ours a true picture? neath the yet unprofaned Green-Brae, above True as Holy Writ-false as any fiction in the Brother Loch, whence we devoutly trust an Arabian tale. How is this? Perception, he will reissue, though ages may have to memory, imagination, are all modes —states elapse, to see all his quagmires in their priof mind. But mind, as we said before, is one meval glory, and all his hags more hideously substance, and matter another; and mind ne- beautiful, as they yawn back again into their ver deals with matter without metamorphosing former selves, frowning over the burial in it like a mythologist. Thus truth and false- their bottoms of all the harvests that had hood, reality and fiction, become all one and dared to ripen above their heads. MA 1AY-D A Y. AnT thou beautiful, as of old, 0 wild, moor- other kirkspire, yet how rich in streams, and land, silvan, and pastoral Parish! the Para- rivulets, and rills, each with its own peculiar dise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the murmur-art Thou with thy bold bleak exglorious dawning of life-can it be, beloved posure, sloping upwards in ever lustrous unworld of boyhood, that thou art indeed beauti- dulations to the portals of the East? How ful as of old? Though round and round thy endless the interchange of woods and meaboundaries in half an hour could fly the flap- dows, glens, dells, and broomy nooks, without ping dove —though the martens, wheeling to number, among thy banks and braes! And and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of a then of human dwellings-how rises the fCastle, centr-ai in its own domain, seem in smoke, ever and anon, into the sky, all neightheir mor, distant flight to glance their cres- bouring on each other, so that the cock-crow cent wings over a vale rejoicing apart in an- is heard from homestead to homestead-while MAY-DAY. 169 as you wander onwards, each roof still rises like it is built, and guarded by some woncerfu unexpectedly-and as solitary, as if it had felicity of situation equally against all the been far remote. Fairest of Scotland's thou- winds? No. Thither as yet have we no: sand parishes-neither Highland, nor Iowland courage to direct our footsteps-for that vene, -but undulating-let us again use the de- rable Man has long been dead-not one of scriptive word —like the sea in sunset after a his ancient household now remains on earth, day of storms-yes, Heaven's blessing be upon There the change, though it was gradual and thee! Thou art indeed beautiful as of old! unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of The same heavens! More blue than any nature, has been entire and complete. The colour that tinges the flowers of earth —like " old familiar faces" we can dream of, but nethe violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The ver more shall see-and the voices that are stillness of those lofty clouds makes them seem now heard within those walls, what can they whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! to thy ever be to us, when we would fain listen in the grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed corn, for thy brooding mate can no longer hear years? It is an appalling trial to approach a thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there is place where once we have been happier-hap. little or no change on these coppice-woods, pier far than ever we can be on this earth with their full budding branches all impatient again; and a worse evil doth it seem to our for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill- imagination to return to Paradise, with a hook levelled them with' the mossy stones, changed and saddened heart, than at first to be since among the broomy and briary knolls we driven from it into the outer world, if still persought the gray linnet's nest, or wondered to mitted to carry thither something of that spirit spy, among the rustling leaves, the robin red- that had glorified our prime. breast, seemingly forgetful of his winter bene- But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore factor, man. Surely there were trees here in on the crown of the hill-the first great Tree former times, that now are gone —tall, far- in the parish that used to get green; for stony spreading single trees, in whose shade used to as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare lie the ruminating cattle, with the small herd- and gnarled roots, they draw sustenance from girl asleep. Gone are they, and dimly remem- afar; and not another knoll on which the sun bered as the uncertain shadows of dreams; so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before yet not more forgotten than some living beings any other Sycamore, and almost as early as with w'iom our infancy and boyhood held con- the alder or the birch-the GLORY OF MOUNT verse-whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, un-hands so often grasped-arms linked in ours folded itself like a banner. You could then see as we danced along the braes-have long only the low windows of the dwelling-for ceased to be more than images and echoes, in- eaves, roof, and chimneys all disappearedcapable of commanding so much as one single and then, when you stood beneath, was not the tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to sound of the bees like the very sound of the all the holiest human affections, when beguiled sea itself, continuous, unabating, all day long by the slow but sure sorcery of time. unto evening, when, as if the tide of life had It is MAY-DAY, and we shall be happy as the ebbed, there was a perfect silence! season. What although some sad and solemn MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is deserve the name, bestowed on thee perhaps not at nightfall felt to have been the less de- long ago, not by any one of the humble prorightful, because shadows now and then be- prietors, but by the general voice of praise, al' dimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty. For an unhymning hush, took possession of field from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision or forest. We are all alone —a solitary pedes- of fields and meadows, knolls, braes, and hills, trian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, uncertain gleamings of a river, the smoke of whose motives are changeable as the came- many houses, and glittering perhaps in the leon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly sunshine, the spire of the House of God! To along to the merry music of streams-or linger have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting by the silent shores of lochs-or upon the hill- with his solemn, his austere Sabbath face, besummit pause, ourselves the only spectator of neath the pulpit, with his expressive eyes fixed a panorama painted by Spring, for our sole de- on the Preacher, you could not but have light-or plunge into the old wood's magnifi- judged him to be a man of a stern character cent exclusion from sky-where at mid-surn- and austere demeanour. To have seen him mer, day is as night-though not so now, for at labour on the working-days, you might this is the season of buds and blossoms; and alhnost have thought him the serf of some the cushat's nest is yetvisible on the half-leafed tyrant lord, for into all the toils of the field he boughs, and the sunshine streams in upon the carried the force of a mind that would suffer ground-flowers, that in another month will be nothing to be undone that strength and skill cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as could achieve; but within the humble porch those that bedeck the dead when the vault door of his own house, beside his own board, and is closed and all is silence. his own fireside, he was a man to be kindly What! shall we linger here within a little esteemed by his guests, by his own family tenmile of the MANSE, wherein and among its derly and reverently beloved. His wife was pleasant bounds our boyish life glided mur- the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman muring away, like a stream that never, till it of active habits and a strong mind, but tem leaves its native hills, knows taint or pollution, pering the natural sternness of her husband's and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest- character with that genial and jocund cheer 170 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. fulness, that of all the lesser virtues is the like the crocus, before the young thrushes had most efficient to the happiness of a household. left the nest in the honey-suckled corner of One daughter only had they, and we could the gavel end. Not a single hairin the churn. charm our heart even now, by evoking the va- Then what honey and what jam! The first, nished from oblivion, and imagining her over not heather, for that is too luscious, especially and over again in the light of words; but al- after such cream, but the pure white virgin though all objects, animate and inanimate, honey, like dew shaken from clover, but now seem always tinged with an air of sadness querny after winter keep; and oh! over a when they are past-and as at present we are layer of such butter on such barley-ban. resolved to be cheerful-obstinately to resist nocks was such honey, on such a day, in such all access of melancholy-an enemy to the pa- company, and to such palates, too divine to thet'c —and a scorner of shedders of tears- be described by such a pen as that now wielded therefore let Mary Morrison rest in her grave, by such a writer! The Jam! It was of gooseand let us paint a pleasant picture of a May- berries-the small black hairy ones-gathered'lay afternoon, and enjoy it as it was enjoyed to a very minute from the bush, and boiled to of old, beneath that stately Sycamore, with the a very moment in the pan! A bannock studgrandisonant name of THE, GLORY OF MOUNT ded with some dozen or two of such grozets PLEASANT. was more beautiful than a corresponding exThere, under the murmuring shadow round panse of heaven adorned with as many stars. and round that noble stem, used on MAY-DAY The question, withi the gawsy and generous I.o be fitted a somewhat fantastic board, all gudewife of Mount Pleasant, was not —"lMy deftly arrayed in homespun drapery, white as dear laddie, which will'ye hae-hinny or jam "'he patches of unmelted snow on the distant but, " Which will ye hae first l" The honey, mountain-head; and on various seats-stumps, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs, stones, stools, creepies, forms, chairs, armless or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half a dozen:and with no spine, or high-backed and elbowed, white cans of more moderate dimensions, from and the carving-work thereof most intricate whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper and allegorical-took their places, after much was withdrawn, while, like a steam of rich formal ceremony of scraping and bowing, distilled perfumes, rose a fruity fragrance, that blushing and curtseying, old, young and middle blended with the vernal balminess of the humaged, of high and low degree, till in one mo- ming Sycamore. There the bees, were all at ment all were hushed by the Minister shutting work for next May-day, happy as ever bees his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be blessing. And "well worthy of a grace as the age of gold, happy as Arcadians were we, lang's a tether," was the MAY-DAY meal spread nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song; beneath the shadow of the GLORY. oF MOUNT for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young PLEASANT. But the Minister uttered only a few English boy, the flute gave forth tunes almost fervent sentences, and then we all fell to the as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the curds and cream. What smooth, pure, bright lips of Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of burnished beauty on those horn spoons! How all singers in hut or hall that ever drew tears,;.pt to the hand the stalk-to the mouth how left nothing for the heart or the imagination to apt the bowl! Each guest drew closer to his desire in any one of Scotland's ancient melobreast the deep broth-plate of delft, rather more dies. than full of curds, many millions times more Never had Mary Morrison heard the old deliciously desirable even than blanc-mange, ballad-airs sung, except during the mid-day and then filled to overflowing with a blessed hour of rest, in the corn or hay field-and rude outpouring of creamy richness that tenaciously singers are they all-whether male or female descended from an enormous jug, the peculiar voices-although sometimes with a touch of expression of whose physiognomy, particu- natural pathos that finds its way to the heart. larly the nose, we will carry with us to the But as the nightingale would sing truly its own grave! The dairy at MOUNT PLEASANT con- variegated song, although it never were to hear sisted of twenty cows-almost all spring any one of its own kind warbling from among calvers, and of the Ayrshire breed-so you the shrub-roots, and the lark though alone on may guess what cream! The spoon could earth, would sing the hymn well known at the not stand in it-it was not so thick as that- gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the nafor that was too thick-but the spoon when ture within her, and inspired by her own deplaced upright in it, retained its perpendicu- lightful genius alone, did Mary Morrison feel larity for a while, and then, when uncertain on all the measures of those ancient melodies, and which side to fall, was grasped by the hand of give them all an expression at once so simple hungry schoolboy, and steered with its fresh and profound. People who said they did not alnd fragrant freight into a mouth already open care about music, especially Scottish music, it in wonder. Never beneath the sun, moon, and was so monotonous and insipid, laid aside their stars, were such oatmeal-cakes, peas-scones, indifferent looks before three nctes of the sim and barley-bannocks, as at MOUNT PLEASANT. plest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she You could have eaten away at them with plea- sat faintly blushing, less in bashfulness than sure, even although not hungry-and yet it in her own emotion, with her little bands play. was impossible of them to eat too much — ing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed Manna that they were!! Seldom indeed is on the ground, or raised, evei and anon, to the s)utter yellow on May-day. But the butter of roof. "In all common things," would most the gudewife of Mount Pleasant-such, and so people say, " she is but a very oltlinary girlrich was the old lea-pasture-was coloured but her musical turn is really very singular MAY-DAY. 17t Indeed;" —bat her happy father and mother ticular place, innumerable years ago! It waj knew, that in all common things-that is, in at the close of one of those midsummer days all the duties of an humble and innocent life, which melt away into twilight, rather than their Mary was by nature excellent as in the into Right, although the stars are visible, and melodies and harmonies of song-and that bird and beast are asleep. All by herself, as while her voice in the evening-psalm was as she walked along between the braes, was she angel's sweet, so was her spirit almost pure as singing a hymnan angel's, and nearly inexperienced of sin. And must this body die? Proud, indeed, were her parents on that This mortal frame decay! May-day to look upon her-and to listen to And must these feeble limbs of mine her-as their Mary sat beside the young English Lie mouldering in the clay boy-admired of all observers-and happier Not that the child had any thought of death, than she had ever been in this world before, in for she was as full of life as the star above the charm of their blended music, and the un- her was of lustre-tamed though they both conscious affection-sisterly, yet more than were by the holy hour. At our bidding she sisterly, for brother she had none-that towards renewed the strain that had ceased as we met; one so kind and noble was yearning at her and continued to sing it while we parted, her heart. voice dying away in the distance, like an anBeautiful were they both; and when they gel's from a broken dream. Never heard we sat side by side in their music, insensible must that voice again, for in three little weeks it had that hearthave been by whom they were not both gone, to be extinguished no more, to join the admired and beloved. It was thought that they heavenly choirs at the feet of the Redeemer. oved one another too, too well; for Harry Did both her parents lose all love to life, Wilton was the grandson of an English Peer, when their sole daughter was taken away-. and Mary Morrison a peasant's child; but they And did they die finally of broken hearts? No could not love too well-she in her tenderness -such is not the natural working of the hu-he in his passion-for, with them, life and man spirit, if kept in repair by pure and pious love was a delightful dream, out of which they thought. Never were they so happy indeed as were never to be awakened. For as by some they had once been-nor was their happiness secret sympathy, both sickened on the same of the same kind. Oh! different far inresigna. day —of the same fever-and died at the same tion that often wept when it did not repine-in hour; —and not from any dimn intention of faith that now held a tenderer commerce with those who buried them, but accidentally, and the skies! Smiles were not very long of being because the burial-ground of the Minister and again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan the Elder adjoined, were they buried almost in cousin of Mary's-they had been as sistersthe same grave-for not half a yard of daisied took her place, and filled it too, as far as the turf divided them-a curtain between the beds living can ever fill the place of the dead. Comn on which brother and sister slept. mon cares continued for a while to occupy the In their delirium they both talked about each Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to other-Mary Morrison and Harry Wilton —yet whom their substance was to be a blessing. their words were not words of love, only of Ordinary observers could not have discerned common kindness; for a'though on theirdeath- any abatement of his activities in field or beds they did nottalk about death,but frequent- market; but others saw that the toil to him ly about that May-day Festival, and other was now but a duty that had formerly been a pleasant meetings in neighbour's houses, or in delight. Mount Pleasant was let to a re. the Manse. Mary sometimes rose up in bed, lative, and the Morrisons retired to a small and in imagination joined her voice to that of the house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from flute which to his lips was to breath no more; the kirk. Let him be strong as a giant, infirmi. and even at the verv self-same moment-so it ties often come on the hard-working man bewonderfully was-did he tell all to be hushed, fore you can well call him old. It was so with for that Mary Morrison was about to sing the Adam Morrison. He broke down fast we have Flowers of the Forest. been told, in his sixtieth year, and after that Methinks that no deep impressions of the partook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of past, although haply they may sleep for ever, fiction alone do those who have long loved and and seem as if they had ceased to be, are ever well, lay themselves down and die in each utterly obliterated; but that they may, one and other's arms. Such happy deaths are recorded all, reappear at some hour or other however on humble tombstones; and there is one on distant, legible as at the very moment they which this inscription may be read-" HERB were first engraven on the memory. Not by the LIE TRE BODIES OF ADAM MORRISON AND OF power of meditation are the long ago vanished HELER ARMovu HIS SrorsE. THEY DIED ON thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which THE IST OF MAY 17-. HERE ALSO LIES THE we found delight or disturbance; but of them- BODY OF THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY MORnIsoaN, selves do they seem to arise, not undesired in- WHo DIED JUNE 2, 17 —." The headstone is a deed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come granite slab-as they almost all are in that unexpectedly floating up into some inland vale, kirkyard-and the kirk itself is of the same ennecause, unknown to us who wonder at them, during material. But touching that grave is a the tide is flowing and the breezes blow from Marble Monument, white almost as the very he main. Bright as the living image stands snow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry ot now before us the ghost-for what else is it than death, adorned with the armorial bearings be. the ghost-of Mary Morrison, just as she stood longing to a family of the high-born. before us on one particular day-in one par- Sworn Brother of our soul! during the 172 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. bright ardours of boyhood, when the present now awaken from the hanging tower of the was all-sufficient in its own bliss, the past soon Old Castle-" Wilton, Wilton!" The name forgotten, and the future unfeared, what might of the long-ago buried faintly and afar-off rehave been thy lot, beloved Harry Wilton, had peated by an echo! thy span of life been prolonged to this very A pensive shade has fallen across MAY-DAY day? Better-oh! far better was it for thee and while the sun is behind those castellated and thine that thou didst so early die; for it clouds, our imagination is willing to retire into seemeth that a curse is on that lofty lineage; the saddest places of memory, and gather toand that, with all theirgenius, accomplishments, gether stories and tales of tears. And many and virtues, dishonour comes and goes, a fami- such there are, annually sprinkled all round liar andprivileged guest,out and in their house. the humble huts of our imaginative and reShame never veiled the light of those bold ligious land, even like the wild-flowers that, in eyes, nor tamed the eloquence of those sunny endless succession, disappearing and reappearlips, nor ever for a single moment bowed down ing in their beauty, Spring drops down upon that young princely head that, like a fast-grow- every brae. And as ofttimes some one paring flower, seemed each successive morning to ticular tune, some one pathetic but imperfect be visibly rising up towards a stately man- and fragmentary part of an old melody, will hood. But the time was not far distant, when nearly touch the heart, when it is dead to the to thee life would have undergone a rueful finest and most finished strain; so now a faint transformation. Thy father, expatriated by the and dim tradition comes upon us, giving birth spells of a sorceress, and forced into foreign to uncertain and mysterious thoughts. It is an countries, to associate with vice, worthlessness, old Tradition. They were called the BLESSED profligacy, and crime! Thy mother, dead of a FAMILY! Far up at the head of yonder glen broken heart! And that lovely sister, who of old was their dwelling, and in their garden came to the Manse with her jewelled hair- sparkled the translucent well that is the But all these miserable things who could pro- source of the stream that animates the parish phesy, at the hour when we and the weeping with a hundred waterfalls. Father, mother, villagers laid thee, apart from the palace and and daughter-it was hard to say which of the the burial-vault of thy high-born ancestors, three was the most beloved! Yet they were without anthem or organ-peal, among the hum- not native here, but brought with them, from ble dead? Needless and foolish were all those some distant place, the soft and silvery acfloods of tears. In thy brief and beautiful cents of the pure English tongue, and manners course, nothing have we who loved thee to most gracious in their serene simplicity; lament or condemn. In few memories, indeed, while over a life composed of acts of charity doth thy image now survive; for in process was spread a stillness that nothing ever disof time what young face fadeth not away from turbed —the stillness of a thoughtful pity for eyes busied with the shows of this living world? human sins and sorrows, yet not unwilling to What young voice is not bedumbed to ears be moved to smiles by the breath of joy. In for ever filled with its perplexing din? Yet those days the very heart of Scotland was disthou, Nature, on this glorious May-day, re- tracted-persecution scattered her prayersjoicing in all the plenitude of thy bliss-we and during the summer months, families recall upon thee to bear witness to the intensity mained shut up in fear within their huts, as of our never-dying grief! Ye fields, that long if the snowdrifts of winter had blocked up and ago we so often trode together, with the wind- buried their doors. It was as if the shadow swept shadows hovering about our path-Ye of a thunder-cloud hung over all the land, so streams, whose murmur awoke our imagina- that men's hearts quaked as they looked up to tions, as we lay reading, or musing together in heaven-when, lo! all at once, Three gracious day-dreams, among the broomy braes-Ye Visitants appeared! Imagination investedtheir woods, where we started at the startled cushat, foreheads with a halo; and as they walked on or paused, without a word, to hear the crea- their missions of mercy, exclaimed-How ture's solitary moans and murmurs deepening beautiful are their feet! Few words was the the far off hush, already so profound-Ye Child ever heard to speak, except some words moors and mosses, black yet beautiful, with of prayer; but her image-like stillness breathed your peat-trenches overshadowed by the hea- a blessing wherever it smiled, and all the little ther-blossoms that scented the wilderness afar maidens loved her, when hushed almost into -where the little maiden, sent from the shiel- awe by her spiritual beauty, as she knelt with ing on errands to town or village in the coun- them in their morning and evening orisons. try below, seemed, as we met her in the sun- The Mother's face, too, it is said, was pale as shine, to rise up before us for our delight, like a face of grief, while her eyes seemed always a fairy from the desert bloom-Thou loch, happy, and a tone of thanksgiving was in her remote in thy treeless solitude, and with nought voice. Her Husband leant upon her on his reflected in thy many-springed waters but those way to the grave-for his eye's excessive low pastoral hills of excessive green, and the brightness glittered with death-and often, as white-barred blue of heaven-no creature on he prayed beside the sick-bed, his cheek beits shores but our own selves, keenly angling came like ashes, for his heart in a moment in the breezes, or lying in the shaded sunshine, ceased to beat, and then, as if about to burst with some book of old ballads, or strain of in agony, sounded audibly in the silence. some Immortal yet alive on earth-one and Journeying on did they all seem to heaven;< all, bear witness to our undying affection, that yet as they were passing by, how loving and -ilently now feeds on grief! And, oh! what how full of mercy! To them belonged some r verfl:2tsing thoughts did that shout of ours blessed power to wave away the sword thal MAY-DAY. 173 would fain have smitten the Saints. The dew- ness as the rattling peals shook the roof-tree, and drops on the greensward before the cottage- hid her face in her lover's bosom; the children,,oor, they suffered not to be polluted with crept closer and closer, each to some protecting:lood. Guardian Angels were they thought to knee, and the dogs came all into the house, and be, and such indeed they -rere, for what else lay down in dark places. Now and then there are the holy powers of innocence? —Guardian was a convulsive, irrepressible, but half-stifled Angels sent to save some of God's servants on shriek-some sobbed-and a loud hysterical earth from the choking tide and the scorching laugh from one overcome with terror sounded fire. Often, in the clear and starry nights, did ghastly between the deepest of all dread repose the dwellers among all these little dells, and -that which separates one peal from another, up along all these low hillsides, hear music when the flash and the roar are as one, and the flowing down from heaven, responsive to the thick air smells of sulphur. The body feels its hymns of the Blessed Family. Music without mortal nature, and shrinks as if about to be the syllabling of words-yet breathing worship, withered into nothing. Now the muttering and with the spirit of piety filling all the Night- thunder seems to have changed its place tc heavens. One whole day and night passed by, some distant cloud —now, as if returning to and not a hut had been enlightened by their blast those whom it had spared, waxes louder presence. Perhaps they had gone away with- and fiercer than before-till the Great Tree out warning as they had come-having been that shelters the house is shivered with a noise sent on another mission. With soft steps one like the masts of a ship carried away by the maiden, and then another entered the door, and board. " Look, father, look —see yonder is an then was heard the voice of weeping and of Angel all in white, descending from heaven!" loud lament. The three lay, side by side, peith said little Alice, who had already been almost their pale faces up to heaven. Dora, for that in the attitude of prayer, and now clasped her is the name tradition has handed down- hands together, and steadfastly, and without Dorothea,, the gift of God, lay between her fear of the lightning, eyed the sky. " One of Father and her Mother, and all their hands God's Holy Angels-one of those who sing be were lovingly and peacefully entwined. No fore the Lamb!" And with an inspired rapagonies had been there-unknown what hand, ture the fair child sprung to her feet.'" See ye human or divine, had closed their eyelids and hernot-seeye hernot-father-mother? Lo! composed their limbs; but there they lay as if she beckons to me with a palm in her hand, asleep, not to be awakened by the burst of sun- like one of the palms in that picture in our Bishine that dazzled upon their smiling counte- ble when our Saviour is entering into Jerusanances, cheek to cheek, in the awful beauty of lem! There she comes, nearer and nearer the united death. earth-Oh! pity, forgive, and have mercy on The deep religion of that troubled time had me, thou most beautiful of all the Angels-even sanctified the Strangers almost into an angelic for His name's sake." All eyes were turned character; and when the little kirk-bells were towards the black heavens, and then to the again heard tinkling through the air of peace, raving child. Her mother clasped her to her (the number of the martyrs being complete,) bosom, afraid that terror had turned her brain the beauty with which their living foreheads -and her father going to the door, surveyed had been invested, reappeared in the eyes of an ampler space of the sky. She flew to his imagination, as the Poets whom Nature kept side, and clinging to him again, exclaimed in to herself walked along the moonlight hills. a wild outcry, "On her forehead a star! on "The Blessed Family," which had been as a her forehead a star! And oh! on what lovely household word, appertaining to them while wings she is floating away, away into eternity! they lived, now when centuries have gone by, The Angel, Father, is calling me by my Chrisis still full of a dim but divine meaning; the tian name, and I must no more abide on earth; spirit of the tradition having remained, while but, touching the hem of her garment, be waftits framework has almost fallen into decay. ed away to heaven!" Sudden as a bird let How beautifully emerges that sun-stricken loose from the hand, darted the maiden fromn Cottage from the rocks, that all around it are her father's bosom, and with her face upward floating in a blue vapoury light! Were we so to the skies, pursued her flight. Young and disposed, methinks we could easily write a lit- old left the house, and at that moment the forktle book entirely about the obscure people that ed lightning came from the crashing cloud, and have lived and died about that farm, by name struck the whole tenement into ruins. Not a LOGAN BRAES. Neither is it without its old hair on any head was singed; and with one traditions. One May-day long ago-some two accord the people fell down upon their knees. centuries since-that rural festival was there From the eyes of the child, the Angel, or vision interrupted by a thunder-storm, and the party of the Angel, had disappeared; but on her re. of youths and maidens, driven from the budding turn to heaven, the Celestial heard the hymn arbours, were all assembled in the ample that rose from those that were saved, and above kitchen. The house seemed to be in the very all the voices, the small sweet silvery voice of heart of the the thunder; and the master began to her whose eves alone were worthy of beholding read, without declaring it to be a religious ser- a Saint Transfigured. vice, a chapter of the Bible; but the frequent For several hundred years has that farm be flashes of lightning so blinded him, that he was longed to the family of the Logans, nor has forced to lay down the Book, and all then sat son or daughter ever stained the name-while still without speaking a word; many with pale some have imparted to it, in its humble annals faces, and none without a mingled sense of what well may be called lustre. Many a time awe and fear. The maiden forgot her bashful- have we stood when a boy, ail alone, beginning 174 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. o be disturbed by the record of heroic or holy tered like a star in the darkness o' that disma. ives, in the kirkyard, beside the GRAVE OF THE day.'Mother, be not afraid,' she was heard MARTRis —the grave in which Christian and to say, when the foam o' the first wave broke Hannah Logan, mother and daughter, were in- about their feet —and just as these words were terred. Many a time have we listened to the uttered, all the great black clouds melted away story of their deaths, from the lips of one who from the sky, and the sun shone forth in the well knew how to stir the hearts of the young, firmament like the all-seeing eye of God. The till " from their eyes they wiped the tears that martyrs turned their faces a little towards one. sacred pity had engendered." Nearly a hun- another, for the cords could not wholly hinder dred years old was she that eloquent narrator them, and wi' voices as steady and as clear as -the Minister's mother —yet she could hear a ever they sang the psalm within the walls o' whisper, and read the Bible without spectacles that kirk, did they, while the sea was mount. -although we sometimes used to suspect her ing up-up from knee-waist-breast-neck of pretending to be reading off the Book, when, -chin-lip-sing praises and thanksgivings in fact, she was reciting from memory. The unto God. As soon as Hannah's voice was old lady often took a walk in the kirkyard- drowned, it seemed as if her mother, before and being of a pleasant and cheerful nature, the water reached her own lips, bowed and though in religious principle inflexibly austere, gave up the ghost. While the people were al. many were the most amusing anecdotes that gazing, the heads of both martyrs disappeared; she related to us and our compeers, all huddled and nothing then was to be seen on the face o' round her, "where heaved the turf in many a the waters, but here and there a bit white mouldering heap." But the evening converse breaking wave or silly sea-bird floating on the was always sure to have a serious termination flow.o' the tide into the bay. Back and back -and the venerable matron could not be more had aye fallen the people, as the tide was willing to tell, than we to hear again and again, roarin' on wi' a hollow soun'-and now that were it for the twentieth repetition, some old the water was high aboon the heads o' the tragic event that gathered a deeper interest martyrs, what chained that dismal congregafrom every recital, as if on each we became tion to the sea-shore? It was the countenance better acquainted with the characters of those o' a man that had suddenly come down frae to whom it had befallen, till the chasm that his hiding-place amang the moors-and who time had dug between them and us disap- now knew that his wife and daughter were peared, and we felt for the while that their bound to stakes deep down in the waters o' happiness or misery and ours were essentially the very bay that his eyes beheld rolling, and interdependent. At first she used, we well re- his ears heard roaring-all the while that there member, to fix her solemn spirit-like eyes on was a God in heaven! Naebody could speak our faces, to mark the different effects her story to him-although they all beseeched their produced on her hearers; but erelong she be- Maker to have compassion upon him, and not came possessed wholly by the pathos of her to let his heart break and his reason fail. own narrative, and with fluctuating features' The stakes! the stakes! 0 Jesus! point out and earnest action of head and hands, poured to me, with thy own scarred hand, the place forth her eloquence, as if soliloquizing among where my wife and daughter are bound to the the tombs. stakes-and I may yet bear them up out of "Ay, ay, my dear boys, that is the grave o' the sand, and bring the bodies ashore-to be the Martyrs. My father saw them die. The restored to life! 0 brethren, brethren!-said tide o' the far-ebbed sea was again beginning ye that my Christi'an and my Hannah have to flow, but the sands o' the bay o' death lay been for an hour below the sea? And was it sae dry, that there were but few spots where from fear of fifty armed men, that so many a bairn could hae wat its feet. Thousands thousand fathers and mothers, and sons and and tens o' thousands were standing a' roun' daughters, and brothers and sisters, rescued the edge of the bay-that was in shape just them not from such cruel, cruel death' After like that moon-and then twa stakes were uttering mony mair siclike raving words, he driven deep into the sand, that the waves o' suddenly plunged into the sea, and, being a the returning sea micht na loosen them-and strong swimmer, was soon far out into the my father, who was but a boy like ane o' bay-and led by some desperate instinct to yourselves noo, waes me, didna he see wi' his the very place where the stakes were fixed in ain een Christian Logan, and her wee dochter the sand. Perfectly resigned had the martyrs Hannah, for she was but eleven years auld- been to their doom-but in the agonies o' that hurried alang by the enemies o' the Lord, and horrible death, there had been some struggles tied to their accursed stakes within the power o' the mortal body, and the weight o' the o' the sea. He who holds the waters in the waters had borne down the stakes, so that, hollow o' his hand, thocht my father, will not just as if they had been lashed to a spar to suffer them to choke the prayer within those enable them to escape from shipwreck, baith holy lips-but what kent he o' the dreadfu' the bodies came floatin' to the surface, and his judgments o' the Almighty! Dreadfu' as hand grasped, without knowing it, his ain those judgments seemed to be, o' a' that crowd Hannah's gowden hair-sarely defiled, ye may o' mortal creatures there were but only twa weel think, wi' the sand-baith their faces that drew their breath without a shudder-and changed frae what they ance were by the these twa were Christian Logan and her beau- wrench o' death. Father, mother, and daughtifu' wee dochter Hannah, wi' her rosy cheeks, ter came a'thegither to the shore-and there for they blanched not in that last extremity, was a cry went far and wide, up even to the aer blue ee;, and her gowden hair, that glit- hiding-places o' the faithfu' among the hag MAY-DAY. 175 an-i c~euchs i' the moors, that the sea had eyes will glance-however rapidly-over an given up the living, and that the martyrs other page, nor fling it contemptuously aside were triumphant, even in this world, over the because amidst all the chance and change of powers o' Sin and o' Death. Yea, they were administrations, ministries, and ministers in indeed triumphant;-and well might the faith- high places, there murmur along the channels fu' sing aloud in the desert,' 0 Death, where of our memory "the simple annals of the is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?' poor," like unpolluted streams that sweep not for these three bodies were but as the weeds by city walls. on which they lay stretched out to the pitying Never were two brothers more unlike in all gaze of the multitude, but their spirits had things-in mind, body, habits, and disposition gane to heaven, to receive the eternal rewards -than Lawrie and Willie Logan-and we see, o' sanctity and truth." as in a glass, at this very moment, both their Not a house in all the parish —scarcely ex- images. "Wee Wine Willie"-for by that cepting Mount Pleasant itself-all round and name he was known over several parishesabout which our heart could in some dreamy was one of those extraordinary creatures that hour raise to life a greater multitude of dear one may liken to a rarest plant, which nature old remembrances, all touching ourselves, than sows here and there-sometimes for ever unLOGAN BRAES. The old people when we first regarded-among the common families of knew them, we used to think somewhat apt to Flowers. Early sickness had been his lotbe surly-fbr they were Seceders —and owing continued with scarcely any interruption from to some unavoidable prejudices, which we his cradle to school-years-so that not only were at no great pains to vanquish, we Manse- was his stature stunted, but his whole frame boys recognised something repulsive in that was delicate in the extreme; and his pale smallmost respectable word. Yet for the sake of featured face, remarkable for large, soft, downthat sad story of the Martyrs, there was always looking, hazel eyes, dark-lashed in their lustre, something affecting to us in the name of Logan had a sweet feminine character, that correBraes; and though Beltane was of old a Pagan sponded well with his voice, his motions, and Festival, celebrated with grave idolatries round his in-door pursuits-all serene and composed, fires a-blaze on a thousand hills, yet old Lau- and interfering with the outgoings of no other rence Logan would sweeten his vinegar aspect living thing. All sorts of scholarship, such as on May-day, would wipe out a score of wrinkles, the parish schoolmaster knew, he mastered as and calm, as far as that might be, the terrors if by intuition. His slate was quickly covered of his shaggy eyebrows. A little gentleness with long calculations, by which the most of manner goes a long way with such young puzzling questions were solved; and ere he folk as we were all then, when it is seen natu- was nine years old, he had made many pretty rally and easily worn for our sakes, and in mechanical contrivances with wheels and sympathy with our accustomed glee, by one pulleys, that showed in what direction lay the who in his ordinary deportment may have natural bent of his genius. Languages, too, added the austerity of religion to the vener- the creature seemed to see into with quickest ableness of old age. Smiles from old Laurence eyes, and with quickest ears to catch their Logan, the Seceder, were like rare sun-glimpses sounds-so that, at the same tender age, he in the gloom-and made the hush of his house might have been called a linguist, sitting with pleasant as a more cheerful place; for through his Greek and Latin books on a stool beside the restraint laid on reverent youth by feeling him by the fireside during the long winter akin to fear, the heart ever and anon bounded nights. All the neighbours who had any with freedom in the smile of the old man's books, cheerfully lent them to "Wee Wise eyes. Plain was his own apparel-a suit of Willie," and the Manse-boys gave him many a the hodden-gray. His wife, when in full dress, supply. At the head of every class he, of did not remind us of a Quakeress, for a course, was found-but no ambition had he to Quakeress then had we never seen-but we be there; and like a bee that works among often think now, when in company with a sen- many thousand others on the clover-lea, heedsible, cheerful, and comely-visaged matron of less of their murmurs, and intent wholly on that sect, of her of Logan Braes. No waster its own fragrant toil, did he go from task to was she of her tears, or her smiles, or her task-although that was no fitting name for the words, or her money, or her meal-either studious creature's meditations on all he read among those of her own blood, or the stranger or wrought —no more a task for him to grow in or the beggar that was within her gates. You knowledge and in thought, than for a lily of the heard not her foot on the floor-yet never was field to lift up its head towards the sun. That she idle-moving about in doors and out, from child's religion was like all the other parts of morning till night, so placid and so composed, his character-as prone to tears as that of other and always at small cost dressed so decently, children, when they read of the Divine Friend so becomingly to one who was not yet old, and dying for them on the cross; but it was pro. had not forgotten-why should she not remem- founder far than theirs, when it shed no tears, ber it?-that she was esteemed in youth a and only made the paleness of his countenance beauty, and that it was not for want of a more like that which we imagine to be the richer and younger lover, that she agreed at paleness of a phantom. No one ever saw him last to become the wife of the Laird of Logan angry, complaining, or displeased; for angeliBraes. cal indeed was his temper, purified, like gold Their family consisted of two sons and a in fire, by suffering. He shunned not the com niece;-and be thou who thou mayest that hast pany of other children, but loved all, as by so far read our May-day', we doubt not that thine them all he was more than beloved. In few 176 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. of their plays could lie take an active share; of the bold and daring that Lawrie Logan was but sitting a little way off, still attached to the not, in our belief, able to perform? We were merry brotherhood, though in their society he all several years younger-boys from nine to had no part to enact, he read his book on the fifteen —and he had shot up into sudden manknoll, or, happy dreamer, sunk away among hood-not only into its shape but its strength the visions of his own thoughts. There was — yet still the boyish spirit was fresh -vithin poetry in that child's spirit, but it was too es- him, and he never wearied of us in such exsentially blended with his whole happiness in cursions. The minister had a good opinion life, often to be imbodied in written words. of his principles, knowing how he had beer. A few compositions were found in his own brought up, and did not discountenance his small beautiful handwriting after his death- visits to the Manse, nor ours to Logan Braes. hymns and psalms. Prayers, too, had his Then what danger could we be in, go where heart indited-but they were not in measured we might, with one who had more than once language-framed, in his devout simplicity on shown how eager he was to risk his own life the model of our Lord's. How many hundred when that of another was in jeopardy! Genetimes have we formed a circle round him in rous and fearless youth! To thee we owed the gloaming, all sitting or lying on the greens- our own life-although seldom is that rescue ward, before the dews had begun to descend, now remembered-(for what will not in this listening to his tales and stories of holy or turmoiling world be forgotten?) when in pride heroic men and women, who had been greatly of the newly-acquired art of swimming, we had good and glorious in the days of old! Not un- ventured —with our clothes on too-some ten endeared to his imagination were the patriots, yards into the Brother-Loch, to disentangle our who, living and dying, loved the liberties of line from the water-lilies. It seemed that a the land-Tell-Bruce-or Wallace, he in hundred cords had got entangled round our whose immortal name a thousand rocks rejoice, legs, and our heart quaked too desperately to while many a wood bears it on its summits as suffer us to shriek-but Lawrie Logan had his they are swinging to the storm. Weak as a hand on us in a minute, and brought us to reed that is shaken in the wind, or the stalk of shore as easily as a Newfoundland dog lands a flower that tremblingly sustains its blossoms a bit of floating wood. beneath the dews that feed their transitory But that was a momentary danger, and lustre, was he whose lips were so eloquent to Lawrie Logan ran but small risk, you will say, read the eulogies of mighty men of war riding in saving us; so let us not extol that instance mailed through bloody battles. What matters of his intrepidity. But fancy to yourself, it that this frame of dust be frail, and of tiny gentle reader, the hideous mouth of an old size —still may it be the tenement of a lordly coal-pit, that had not been worked for time imspirit. But high as such warfare was, it satis- memorial, overgrown with thorns, and briers, flied not that thoughtful child-for other war- and brackens, but still visible from a small fare there was to read of, which was to him a mount above it, for some yards down its throat far deeper and more divine delight-the war- -the very throat of death and perdition. But fare waged by good men against the legions can you fancy also the childish and superof sin; and closed triumphantly in the eye of stitious terror with which we all regarded that God-let this world deem as it will-on ob- coal-pit, for it was said to be a hundred fathom scurest death-beds, or at the stake, or on the deep-with water at the bottom-so that you scaffold, where a profounder even than Sab- had to wait for many moments-almost a bath silence glorifies the martyr far beyond minute-before you heard a stone, first beating any shout that from the immense multitude against its sides-from one to the other —plunge would have torn the concave of the heavens. at last into the pool profound. In that very What a contrast to that creature was his field, too, a murder had been perpetrated, and elder brother! Lawrie was eighteen years old the woman's corpse flung by her sweetheart when first we visited Logan Braes, and was a into that coal-pit. One day some unaccountperfect hero in strength and stature-Bob able impulse had led a band of us into that Howie alone his equal-but Bob was then in interdicted field-which we remember was not the West Indies. In the afternoons, after his arable-but said to be a place where a hare work was over in the fields or in the barn, he was always sure to be found sitting among the had pleasure in getting us Manse-boys to ac- binweeds and thistles. A sort of thrilling company him to the Moor-Lochs for an hour's horror urged us on closer and closer to the angling or two in the evening, when the large mouth of the pit-when Wee Wise Willie's trouts came to the gravelly shallows, and, as foot slipping on the brae, he bounded with we waded midleg-deep, would sometimes take inexplicable force along-in among the thorns, the fly among our very feet. Or he would go briers, and brackens-through the whole hangwith us into the heart of the great wood, to ing mat and without a shriek, down-down — show us where the foxes had their earths-the down into destruction. We all saw it happen party being sometimes so fortunate as to see — every one of us-and it is scarcely too much the cubs disporting at the mouth of the briery to say, that we were for a while all mad with aperture in the strong and root-bound soil. Or horror. Yet we felt ourselves borne back we followed him, so far as he thought it safe instinctively from the horrible pit-and as aid for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, we could give none, we listened if we could and in fear and wonder that no repetition of hear any cry-but there was nore-and we the adventurous feat ever diminished, saw him all flew together out of the dreadfid field, and take the young starling from the crevice be- again collecting ourselves together feared to neath the tuft of wall-flowers. What was there separate on the different roads to our homes. MAY-DAY. 177 -Oh! can it be that our Wee Wise Willie has their sweet cousin too, Annie Raeburn, the this moment died sic a death-and no a single orphan, were lying embraced in speechless —. ane amang us a' greetin' for his sake?" said almost senseless trances; for the agony of one of us aloud; and then indeed did we burst such a deliverance was more than could well out into rueful sobbing, and ask one another by mortal creatures be endured. who could carry such tidings to Logan Braes? The child himself was the first to tell how All at once we heard a clear, rich, mellow his life had been miraculously saved. A few whistle as of a blackbird-and there with his shrubs had for many years been growing out favourite colley, searching for a stray lamb of the inside of the pit, almost as far down as among the knolls, was Lawrie Logan, who the light could reach, and among them had he hailed us with a laughing voice, and then been entangled in his descent, and held fast. asked us, " Whare is Wee Willie? hae ye For days, and weeks, and months, after that flung him like another Joseph into the pit?" deliverance, few persons visited Logan Braes, The consternation of our faces could not be for it was thought that old Laurence's brain misunderstood-whether we told him or not had received a shock from which it might what had happened we do not know-but he never recover; but the trouble that tried him staggered as if he would have fallen down- subsided, and the inside of the house was again and then ran off with amazing speed-not quiet as before, and its hospitable door open towards Logan Braes —but the village. We to all the neighbours. continued helplessly to wander about back and Never forgetful of his primal duties had forwards along the near edge of a wood, when been that bold youth-but too apt to forget the we beheld a multitude of people rapidly ad- many smaller ones that are wrapped round a vancing, and in a few minutes they surrounded life of poverty like invisible threads, and that the mouth of the pit. It was about the very cannot be broken violently or carelessly, withend of the hay-harvest-and many ropes that out endangering the calm consistency of all its had been employed that very day in the lead- ongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great ing of the hay of the Landlord of the Inn, who losses, errors, and distress. He did not keep was also an extensive farmer, were tied to- evil society-but neither did he shun it: and gether to the length of at least twenty fathom. having a pride in feats of strength and activity, Hope was quite dead-but her work is often as was natural to a stripling whose corporeal done by Despair. For a while there was con- faculties could not be excelled, he frequented fusion all around the pit-mouth, but with a all meetings where he was ikely to fall in white fixed face and glaring eyes, Lawrie with worthy competitors, and mn such trials of Logan advanced to the very brink, with the power, by degrees acquired a character for rope bound in many firm folds around him, recklessness, and even violence, of which and immediately behind him stood his gray- prudent men prognosticated evil, and that headed father, unbonneted, just as he had sorely disturbed his parents, who were, in risen from a prayer. " Is't my ain father that's their quiet retreat, lovers of all peace. With gaun to help me to gang doon to bring up what wonder and admiration did all the ManseWillie's body 7 0! merciful God, what a boys witness and hear reported the feats of judgment is this! Father-father-Oh! lie Lawrie Logan! It was he who, in pugilistic down at some distance awa' frae the sight o' combat, first vanquished Black King Carey this place. Robin Alison, and Gabriel Strang, the Egyptian, who travelled the country with and John Borland,'lt haud the ropes firm and two wives and a wagon of Staffordshire potsafe. 0, father-father-lie down, a bit apart tery, and had struck the " Yokel," as he called frai the crowd; and have mercy upon him- Lawrie, in the midst of all the tents on LedO thou, great God, have mercy upon him!" drie Green, at the great annual Baldernoch But the old man kept his place; and the only fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed one son who now survived to him disappeared Egyptian bite the dust —nor did Lawrie Logan within the jaws of the same murderous pit, always stand against the blows of one whose and was lowered slowly down, nearer and provincial fame was high in England, as the nearer to his little brother's corpse. They head of the Rough-and-Ready School. Even had spoken to him of foul air, of which to now-as in an ugly dream-we see the combreathe is death, but he had taken his reso- batants alternately prostrate, and returning to: lution, and not another word had been said to the encounter, covered with mire and blood shake it. And now, for a short time, there All the women left the Green, and the old men uwas no weight' at the line, except that of its shook their heads at such unchristian work; own length. It was plain that he had reached but Lawrie Logan did not want backers in the the bottom of the pit. Silent was all that con- shepherds and the ploughmen, to see fair play gregation, as if assembled in divine worship. against all the attempts of the Showinen and Again, there was a weight at the rope, and in the Newcastle horse-cowpers, who laid their a minute or two, a voice was heard far down money thick on the King; till a right hander the pit that spread a sort of wild hope-else, in the pit of the stomach, which had nearly why should it have spoken at all-and lo! been the gipsy's everlasting quietus, gave the the child-not like one of the dead-clasped victory to Lawrie, amid acclamations that in the arms of his brother, who was all covered would have fitlier graced a triumph in a better with dust and blood. " Fall all down on your cause' But that day was an evil day to all a knees-in the face o' heaven, and sing praises Logan Braes. A recruiting sergeant got Law to God, for my brother is yet alive!" rie into the tent, over which floated the co During that Psalm, father, mother, and both lours of the 42d Regiment, and in the intoxica their sons-the rescuer and the rescued-and tion of victory, whisky, and the bagpipe, the 12 178 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. young champion was as fairly enlisted into his family within to themselves, and then walked Majesty's service, as ever young girl, without away, without speaking, down to the Bridge. almost knowing it, was married at Gretna- After the lapse of an hour or more, and Green; and as the 42d were under orders to while we were all considering whether or no sail in a week, gold could not have bought off we should return to the house, the figure of such a man, and Lawrie Logan went on board Annie Raeburn was seen coming down.he a transport. brae towards the party, in a way very unlike Logan Braes was not the same place-in- her usual staid and quiet demeanour, and deed, the whole parish seemed altered-after stopping at some distance, to beckon with her Lawrie was gone, and our visits were thence- hand more particularly, it was thought, on forth any thing but cheerful ones, going by ourselves, as we stood a few yards apart from turns to.inquire for Willie, who seemed to be the rest. "Willie is worse,"' were the only pining away-not in any deadly disease, but words she said, as we hastened back together; just as if he himself knew, that without ailing and on entering the room, we found the old much he was not to be a long liver. Yet nearly man uncertainly pacing the floor by himself, two years passed on, and all that time the but with a composed countenance. "He exprinciple of life had seemed like a flickering pressed a wish to see you-but he is gone!" flame within him, that when you think it ex- We followed into Willie's small bedroom and piring or expired, streams up again with sur- study, and beheld him already laid out, and his prising brightness, and continues to glimmer mother sitting as calmly beside him as if she ever steadily with a protracted light. Every were watching his sleep. "Sab not sae sair, week-nay, almost every day, they feared to Lawrie-God was gracious to let him live to lose him-yet there he still was at morning this day, that he might dee in his brither's and evening prayers. The third spring after arms." the loss of his brother was remarkably mild, The sun has mounted high in heaven, while and breathing with west-winds that came soft- thus we have been dreaming away the hours ened over many woody miles from the sea. — a dozen miles at least have we slowly wanHe seemed stronger, and more cheerful, and dered over, since morning, along pleasant byexpressed a wish that the Manse-boys, and paths, where never dust lay, or from gate to some others of his companions, would come gate of pathless enclosures, a trespasser fearto Logan Braes, and once again celebrate May- less of those threatening nonentities, springday. There we all sat at the long table, and guns. There is the turnpike-road-the great both parents did their best to look cheerful north and south road —for it is either the one during the feast. Indeed, all that had once or the other, according to the airt towards been harsh and forbidding in the old man's which you choose to turn your face. Behold looks and manners, was now softened down a little WAYSIDE Iss, neatly thatched, and with by the perpetual yearnings at his heart to- white-washed front, and sign-board hanging,wards " the distant far and absent long," nor from a tree, on which are painted the figures less towards him that peaceful and pious child of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the whom every hour he saw, or thought he saw, other in breeches, shaking hands cautiously awaiting a call from the eternal voice. Al- across a running. brook. The meal of ail though sometimes sadness fell across us like meals is a paulo-post-meridian breakfast. The a shadow, yet the hours passed on as May-day rosiness of the combs of the strapping hens is hours should do; and what with our many- good augury;-hark, a cackle from the barntoned talk and laughter, the cooing of the another egg is laid-and chanticleer, stretching pigeons on the roof, and the twittering of the himself up on claw-tip, and clapping his w.ings swallows beneath the eaves, and the lark-songs of the bonny beaten gold, crows aloud to his ringing like silver bells over all the heavens, sultana till the welkin rings. "Turn to the it seemed a day that ought to bring good left, sir, if you please," quoth a comelymatron; tidings-or, the Soldier himself returning from and we find ourselves snugly seated in an armthe wars to bless the eyes of his parents once chair, not wearied, but to rest willing, while more, so that they might die in peace. " Hea- the clock ticks pleasantly, and we take no note ven hold us in its keeping, for there's his of time but by its gain; for here is our jour. wraith!" ejaculated Annie Raeburn. "It passed nal, in which we shall put down a few jottings before the window, and my Lawrie, I now for MAY-DAY. Three boiled eggs —oneto each know, is with the dead!"-Bending his stately penny-roll-are sufficient, under any circumhead beneath the lintel of the door, in the dress, stances, along with the same number fried and with the bearing of a soldier, Lawrie Lo- with mutton-ham, for the breakfast of a Gengan stepped again across his father's threshold tleman and a Tory. Nor do we remember — and, ere he well uttered " God be with you all!" when tea-cups have been on a proper scaleWillie was within his arms, and on his bosom. ever to have wished to go bey:ond the Golden His father and his mother rose not from their Rule of Three. In politics, we confess that chairs, but sat still, with faces like ashes. But we are rather ultra; but in all things else we we boys could not resist our joy, and shouted love moderation. "Come in, my bonny little his name aloud-while Luath, from his sleep lassie-ye needna keep keekin' irt that gate in the corner, leapt on his master breast-high, fra ahint the door"-and in a few minutes the and whining his dumb delight, frisked round curly-pated prattler is murmuring on our knee. him as of yore, when impatient to snuff the The sonsie wife, well pleased with the sight, dawn on the hill-side. " Let us go out and and knowing, from our kindness to children, play," said a boy's voice, and issuing some- that we are on the same side of politics with what seriously into the sunshine, we left the her gudeman-Ex-sergeantin the Black Watch, MAY-DAY. 179 and once Orderly to Garth himself-brings out tiled, and partly open to the elements, with its her ain bottle from the spence-a hollow square, naked rafters. Broken windows repaired with and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its an old petticoat, or a still older pair of breeches, honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess and walls that had always been plastered and kisses the glass, previously letting fall a not better plastered and worse plastered, in frosty inelegant curtsey-for she had, we now learned, weather-all labour in vain, as crumbling been a lady's maid in her youth to one who is patches told, and variegated streaks, and stains indeed a lady, all the time her lover was abroad of dismal ochre, meanest of all colours, and in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West still symptomatic of want, mismanagement, Indies, and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Por- bankruptcy, and perpetual flittings from a tenetugal, Holland, and, we think she said, Corfu. ment that was never known to have paid any One of the children has been sent to the field, rent. Then what a pair of drunkards were where her husband is sowing barley, to tell old Saunders and his spouse! Yet never once him that there is fear lest dinner cool; and the were they seen drunk on a Sabbath, or a fastmistress now draws herself up in pride of his day-regular kirk-goers, and attentive observnoble appearance, as the stately Highlander ers of ordinances. They had not very many salutes us with the respectful but bold air of children, yet, pass the door when you might, one who has seen some service at home and you were sure to hear a squall or a shriek, or abroad. Never knew we a man make other the ban of the mother, or the smacking of the than a good bow, who had partaken freely in a palm of the hand on the part of the enemy charge of bayonets. easiest of access; or you saw one of the Shenstone's lines about always meeting the ragged fiends pursued by a parent round the warmest welcome in an inn, are very natural cornet, and brought back by the hair of the and tender-as most of his compositions are, head till its eyes were like those of a Chinese. when he was at all in earnest. For our own Now, what decency-what neatness —what part, we cannot complain of ever meeting any order-in this household —this private public! other welcome than a warm one, go where we into which customers step like neighbours on may; for we are not obtrusive, and where we a visit, and are served with a heartiness and are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed, or good-will that deserve the name of hospitality, admired, (that last is a strong word, yet we all for they are gratuitous, and can only be repaid have our admirers,) we are exceeding chary in kind. A limited prospect does that, latticedof the light of our countenance. But at an window command-and the small panes cut inn, the only kind of' welcome that is indis- objects into too many parts-little more than pensable, is a civil one. When that is not the breadth of the turnpike road, and a hunforthcoming, we shake the dust, or the dirt, dred yards of the same, to the north and to the off our feet, and pursue our journey, well as- south, with a few budding hedgerows, half a sured that a few milestones will bring us to a dozen trees, and some green braes. Yet could humaner roof. Incivility and surliness have we sit and moralize, and intellectualize, for occasionally given us opportunities of behold- hours at this window, nor hear the striking ing rare celestial phenomena-meteors-fall- clock. ing and shooting stars-the Aurora Borealis, There trips by a blooming maiden of middld in her shifting splendours —haloes round the degree all alone-the more's the pity-yet per. moon, variously bright as the rainbow-elec- fectly happy in her own society, and one we trical arches forming themselves on the sky in venture to say who never received a love-let. a manner so wondrously beautiful, that we ter, valentines excepted, in all her innocent should be sorry to hear them accounted for by days. A fat man sitting by himself in a gig! philosophers-one half of the horizon blue, and somewhat red in the face, as if he- had dined without a cloud, and the other driving tempes- early, and not so sure of the road as his horse, tuouslylike the sea-foam, with waves mountain- who has drunk nothing but a single pailful of high-and divinest show of all for a solitary water, and is, anxious to get to town that he night-wandering man, who has any thing of a may be rubbed down, and see oats once more. -oul at all, far and wide, and high up into the Scamper away, ye joyous schoolboys, and, for bracious heavens, Planets and Stars all burn- your sake, may that cloud breathe forth rain ing as if their urns were newly fed with and breeze, before you reach the burn, which light, not twinkling as they do in a dewy or a you seem to fear may run dry before you can vapoury night, although then, too, are the see the Pool where the two-pounders lie. Mesoftened or veiled luminaries beautiful-but thinks we know that old woman, and of the large, full, and free over the whole firmament first novel we write she shall be the heroine. -a galaxy of shining and unanswerable argu- Ha! a brilliant bevy of mounted maidens,. ments in proof of the Immortality of the Soul. riding-habits, and Spanish hats, with " swaling The whole world is improving; nor can there feathers"-sisters, it is easy to see, and daughbe a pleasanter proof of that than this very ters of one whom we either loved, or thought wayside inn-ycleped the SALUTATIOX. What we loved; but now they say she is fat and vula miserable pot-house it was long ago, with a gar, is the devil's own scold, and makes her rusty-hinged door, that would neither open nor servants and her husband lead the lives of shut-neither let you out nor in-immovable slaves. All that we can say is, that once on a and intractable to foot or hand-or all at once, time it was tout une autre chose; for a smaller when you least expected it to yield, slamming foot, and a slimmer ankle, a more delicate to with a bang; a constant puddle in front waist, arms more lovely, reposing in their during rainy weather, and heaped up dust in gracefulness beneath her bosom, tresses of try-roof partly thatched, partly slated, partly brighter and more Parnished auburn —such 180 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTI. starlike eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach poltroon; two of the Seven Young Men —all the soul-But phoo! phoo! phoo! she mar- that now survive-impatient of the drudgery ried a jolted-headed squire with two thousand of the compting-house, and the injustice of acres, and, in self-defence, has grown fat, vul- the age-but they, we believe, are in the band gar, and a scold. There is a Head for a painter! -the triangle and the serpent; twelve cottonand what perfect peace and placidity all over spinners at the least; six weavers of woollens; the Blind Man's countenance! He is not a a couple of colliers from the bowels of the beggar, although he lives on alms-those sight- earth; and a score of miscellaneous rabble — less orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those flunkies long out of place, and unable to Elve withered hands, as, staff-supported, he stops on their liveries-felons acquitted, or that have at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells his dreed their punishment-picked men from the story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise shilling galleries of playhouses —and the elite moves, with his long silvery hair, journeying of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Look contentedly in darkness towards the eternal how all the rogues and reprobates march like light. A gang of gil,sies! with their numer- one man l! Alas! was it of such materials that ous assery laden with horn-spoons, pots, and our conquering army was made?-were such pans, and black-eyed children. We Should not the heroes of Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, be surprised to read some day in the newspa- and Waterloo? pers, that the villain who leads the van had Why not, and what then. Heroes are but been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. men after all. Men, as men go, are the maThat is the misfortune of having a bad physi- terials of which heroes are made; and reognomy, a sidelong look, a scarred cheek, and cruits in three years ripen into veterans. Cowa cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; ardice in one campaign is disciplined into to say nothing about rusty hair protruding courage, fear into valour. In presence of the through the holes of abrown hat, not made for enemy, pickpockets become patriots-memthe wearer-long, sinewy arms, all of one bers of the swell mob volunteer on forlorn thickness, terminating in huge, hairy, horny hopes, and step out from the ranks to head the hands, chiefly knuckles and nails-a sham- storm! Lord bless you! have you not stubling gait, notwithstanding that his legs are died sympathy and l'esprit de corps? An army finely proportioned, as if the night prowler fifty thousand strong consists, we shall supwere cautious not to be heard by the sleep- pose, in equal portions of saints and sinners; ing house, nor to awaken-so noiseless his and saints and sinners are all English, Irish, stealthy advances-the unchained mastiff in Scottish. What wonder, then, that they drive his kennel. all resistance to the devil, and go on from vicBut, hark! the spirit-stirring music of fife tory to victory, keeping all the cathedrals and and drum! A whole regiment of soldiers on churches in England hard at work with all their their march to replace another whole regiment organs, from Christmas to Christmas, blowing of soldiers —and that is as much as we can be Te Deunm? You must not be permitted too expected to know about their movements. curiously to analyze the composition of the Food for the cannon's mouth; but the maw of British army or the British navy. Look at war has been gorged and satiated, and the them, think of them as Wholes, with Nelsonor glittering soap-bubbles of reputation, blown by Wellington the head, and in one slump pray windy-cheeked Fame from the bowl of her God to bless the defenders of the throne, the pipe, have all burst as they have been clutched hearth, and the altar. by the hands of tall fellows in red raiment, The baggage-wagons halt, and some refreshand with feathers on their heads, just before ments are sent for to the women and children. going to lie down on what is called the bed Ay, creatures not'far advanced in their teens of honour. Melancholy indeed to think, that are there-a year or two ago, at school or serall these fine, fierce, ferocious, fire-eaters are vice, happy as the day was long, now mothers, doomed, but for some unlooked-for revolution with babies at their breasts-happy still perin the affairs of Europe and the world, to die haps; but that pretty face is wofully wan-that in their beds! Yet there is some comfort in hair did not use to be so dishevelled-and bony, thinking of the composition of a Company and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that of brave defenders of their country. It is, we lay so white, and warm, and smooth, in the shall suppose, Seventy strong. Well, jot down grasp of the seducer. Yet she thinks she is three ploughmen, genuine clodhoppers, chaw- his wife; and, in truth, there is a ring on her bacons sans peur et sans reproche, except that the marriage-finger. But, should the regiment overseers of the parish were upon them with embark, so many women, and no more, are orders of affiliation; and one shepherd, who suffered to go with a company; and, should made contradictory statements about the num- one of the lots not fall on her, she may take ber of the spring lambs, and in whose house had of her husband an everlasting farewell. been found during winter certain fleeces, for The Highflier Coach! carrying six in, and which no ingenuity could account; a laird's twelve outsides-driver and guard excludedson, long known by the name of the Ne'er- rate of motion eleven miles an hour, with stopdoweel; a Man of tailors, forced to accept the pages. Why, in the name of Heaven, are all bounty-money-during a protracted strike- people now-a-days in such haste and hurry! not dungs they, but flints all the nine; a bar- Is it absolutely necessary that one and all of ber, like many a son of genius, ruined by this dozen and a half Protestants and Catholics his wit, and who, after being driven from pole -alike anxious for emancipation-should be to pole, found refuge in the army at last; a at a particular place, at one particular moment banlrrvpc butcher, once a bully, and now a of time out of the twentv-f)n. hours given to MAY-DAY. 181 mana for motion and for rest? Confident are tune-so the Mains, sir;, has b en uninhabited we that that obese elderly gentleman beside for a good many years." Bu;t he had been Lhe coachman-whose ample rotundity is en- speaking to one who knew far more about the cased in that antique and almost obsolete in- Mains than he could do-and who was not vention, a spenser-needed not to have been sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand, so carried in a whirlwind to his comfortable undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the vene. home. Scarcely is there time for pity as we rable silence of its own decay. And this is behold an honest man's wife, pale as putty the moss-house that we helped to build with in the face at a tremendous swing, or lounge, our own hands-at least to hang the lichen or lurch of the Highflier, holding like grim tapestry, and stud the cornice with shells! We death to the balustrades. But umbrellas, pa- were one of the paviers of that pebbled floor rasols, plaids, shawls, bonnets, and great-coats -and that bright scintillating piece of spar, with as many necks as Hydra —the Pile of Life the centre of the circle, came all the way from has disappeared in a cloud of dust, and the Derbyshire in the knapsack of a geologist, faint bugle tells that already it has spun and who died a Professor. It is strange the roof reeled onwards a mile on its destination. has not fallen in long ago; but what a slight But here comes a vehicle at more rational ligature will often hold together a heap of ruins pace. Mercy on us-a hearse and six horses from tumbling into nothing! The old mossreturning leisurely from a funeral! Not im- house, though somewhat decrepit, is alive; probable that the person who has just quitted and, if these swallows don't take care, they it, had never, till he was a corpse, got higher will be stunning themselves against our face, than a single-horse Chay —yet no fewer than jerking out and in, through door and window, half-a-dozen hackneys must be hired for his twenty times in a minute. Yet with all that dust. But clear the way! "Hurra! hurra! twittering of swallows-and with all that frehe rides a race,'tis for a thousand pound!" quent crowing of a cock-and all that cawing Another, and another, and another-all work- of rooks-and cooing of doves —and lowing ing away with legs and knees, arms and shoul- of cattle along the holms-and bleating of ders, on cart-horses in the Brooze-the Brooze! lambs along the braes-it is nevertheless a The hearse-horses take no sort of notice of the pensive place; and here sit we like a hermit, cavalry of cart and plough, but each in turn world-sick, and to be revived only by hearkeeps its snorting nostrils deep plunged in the kening in the solitude to the voices of other pail of meal and water-for well may they be years. thirsty-the kirkyard being far among the hills, What more mournful thought than that of a and the roads not yet civilized. "May I ask, Decayed Family-a high-born race gradually friend," addressing ourself to the hearseman, worn out, and finally ceasing to be! The re"whom you have had inside l" "Only Dr. mote ancestors of this House were famous Sandilands, sir-if you are going my way, men of war-then some no less famous statesyou may have a lift for a dram!" We had men-then poets and historians-then minds always thought there was a superstition in still of fine, but of less energetic mould- and Scotland against marrying in the month of last of all, the mystery of madness breaiking May; but it appears that people are wedded suddenly forth from spirits that seemed to have and bedded in that month too-some in warm been especially formed for profoundest peace. sheets-and some in cold-cold-cold-drip- There were three sons and two daughters, unping damp as the grave. degenerate from the ancient stateliness of the But we must up, and off. Not many gentle- race-the oldest on his approach to manhood men's houses in the parish-that is to say, old erect as the young cedar, that seems conscious family seats; for of modern villas, or boxes, of being destined one day to be the tallest tree inhabited by persons imagining themselves in the woods. The twin-sisters were ladies gentlemen, and, for any thing we know to the indeed! Lovely as often are the low-born, no contrary, not wholly deceived in that belief, maiden ever stepped from her native cottagethere is rather too great an abundance. Four door, even in a poet's dream, with such an air family seats, however, there certainly are, of as that with which those fair beings walked sufficient antiquity to please a lover of the along their saloons and lawns. Their beauty olden time; and of those four, the one which no one could at all describe-and no one bewe used to love best to look at was-THE held it who did not say that it transcended all MAINS. NO need to describe it in many words. that imagination had been able to picture of A Hall on a river side, embosomed in woods angelic and divine. As the sisters were, so -holms and meadows winding away in front, were the brothers —distinguished above all with their low thick hedgerows and stately their mates conspicuously, and beyond all single trees-on-on-on —as far as the eye possibility of mistake; so that strangers could can reach, a crowd of grove-tops-elms chiefly, single them out at once as the heirs of beauty, or beeches-and a beautiful boundary of blue that, according to veritable pictures and true hills.' Good-day, Sergeant Stewart! farewell, traditions, had been an unalienable gift from Ma'am-farewell!" And in half an hour we nature to that family ever since it bore thr are sitting in the moss-house at the edge of the name. For the last three generations none outer garden, and gazing up at the many win- of that house had ever reached even the meri lowed gray walls of the MAINS, and its high dian of life-and those of whom we now speak steep-ridged roof, discoloured b3 the weather- had from childhood been orphans. Yet how stains of centuries. "The taxe.; on such a joyous and free were they one and all, and house,' quod Sergeant Stewart, " are of them- how often from this cell did evening hear their elves enough to ruin a man of moderate for- holy harmonies, as the Five united together 182 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. with voice, harp, and dulcimer, till the stars sacred books, although too long he was as a star themselves rejoiced!-One morning, Louisa, vainly sought for in a cloudy region, yet did who loved the dewy dawn, was met bewildered for a short time starlike reappear-and on his in her mind, and perfectly astray —with no death-bed he knew us, and the other mortal symptom of having been suddenly alarmed or creatures weeping beside him, and that there terrified-but with an unrecognising smile, was One who died to save sinners. and eyes scarcely changed in their expression, Let us away-let us away from this overalthough theyknew.not-butrarely-on whom powering place —and make our escape from they looked. It was but a few months till she such unendurable sadness. Is this fit celebra. died —and Adelaide was laughing carelessly tion of merry May-day. Is this the spirit in on her sister's funeral day —and asked why which we ought to look over the bosom of the mourning should be worn at a marriage, and earth, all teeming with buds and flowers just a plumed hearse sent to take away the bride. as man's heart should be teeming-and why Fairest of God's creatures! can it be that thou not ours —with hopes and joys'! Yet beautiful art still alive? Not with cherubs smiling as this May-day is-and all the country round round thy knees-not walking in the free which it so tenderly illumines, we came not realms of' earth and heaven with thy husband hither, a solitary pilgrim from our distant -the noble youth, who loved thee from thy home, to indulge ourself in a joyful happiness. childhood when himself a child; but oh! that No, hither came we purposely to mourn such misery can be beneath the sun-shut up among the scenes which in boyhood we selin some narrow cell perhaps-no one knows dom beheld through tears. And therefore where-whether in this thy native kingdom, or have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, in some foreign land —with those hands mana- when all life is rejoicing, from the grasshopper cled —a demon-light in eyes once most angeli- among our feet to the lark in the cloud. Mecal-and ringing through undistinguishable lancholy, and not mirth, doth he hope to find, days and nights imaginary shriekings and who after a life of wandering-and maybe not yellings in thy poor distracted brain!-Down without sorrow-comes back to gaze on the went the ship with all her crew in which banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once Percy sailed; —the sabre must have been in grew the flowers of Paradise. Flowers of Pathe hand of a skilful swordsman that in one radise are ye still-for, praise be to Heaven! of the Spanish battles hewed Sholto down; the sense of beauty is still strong within usand the gentle Richard, whose soul-while he and methinks we could feel the beauty of this possessed it clearly-was for ever among the scene though our heart were broken SACRED P OETRY. CHAPTER I. so different from its hymning when lost to sight in the sky-will fail to call forth the WE have often exposed the narrowness and deepest responses from the sanctuary of our weakness of that dogma, so pertinaciously ad- spirit. hered to by persons of cold hearts and limited "Let no pious ear be offended," says Johnunderstandings, that Religion is not a fit theme son, "if I advance, in opposition to many aufor poetical genius, and that Sacred Poetry is thorities, that poetical devotion cannot often beyond the powers of uninspired man. We please. The doctrines of religion may indeed do not know that the grounds on which that be defended in a didactic poem; and he who dogma stands have ever been formally stated has the happy power of arguing in verse, will by any writer but Samuel Johnson; and there- not lose it because his subject is sacred. A fore with all respect, nay, veneration, for his poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur memory, we shall now shortly examine his of nature, the flowers of spring and the harstatement, which, though, as we think, alto- vests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide gether unsatisfactory and sophistical, is yet a and the revolutions of the sky, and praise his splendid specimen of false reasoning, and Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. therefore worthy of being exposed and over- The subject of the disputation is not piety, but thrown. Dr. Johnson was not often utterly the motives to piety; that of the description is wrong in his mature and considerate judg- not God, but the works of God. Contemplamnents respecting any subject of paramount tive piety, or the intercourse between God and importance to the virtue and happiness of the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man, admankind. He was a good and wise being; mitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and but sometimes he did grievously err; and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in never more so than in his vain endeavour to a higher state than poetry can confer. exclude from the province of poetry its noblest, " The essence of poetry is invention; such highest, and holiest domain. Shut the gates invention as, by producing something unof heaven against Poetry, and her flights along expected, surprises and delights. The topics this earth will be feebler and lower —her wings of devotion are few, and being few are univer. -Logged and heavy by the attraction of matter sally known; but few as they are, they can be and her voice-like that of the caged lark, made no more; they can receive no grace from SACRED POETRY 188 novelty of sentiment, and very little from no- all didactic poetry? And who ever heard of velty of expression. Poetry pleases by ex- an essential distinction between piety, and hibiting an idea more grateful in the mind motives to piety? Mr. James Montgomery,in than things themselves afford. This effect a very excellent Essay prefixed to that most proceeds from the display of those parts of interesting collection, "The Christian Poet," nature which attract, and the concealment of well observes, that " motives to piety must be thcsxe that repel, the imagination; but religion of the nature of piety, otherwise they could must b shown as it is; suppression and addi- never incite to it-the precepts and sanctions tion equa., 2orrupt it; and such as it is, it is of the Gospel might as well be denied to be known already. Frompoetry the reader justly any part of the Gospel." And for our own expects, and from good poetry always obtains, parts, we scarcely know what piety is, sepathe enlargement of his comprehension and the rated from its motives-or how, so separated, elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be it could be expressed in words at all. hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. With regard, again, to descriptive poetry, Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, the argument, if argument it may be called, is is comprised in the name of the Supreme Be- still more lame and impotent. "A poet," it is lug. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infi- said, "may describe the beauty and the grannity cannot be amplified; Perfection cannot be deur of nature, the flowers of the spring and improved. the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the " The employments of pious meditation are tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praise faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested aside." Most true he may; but then we are by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, told, "the subject of the description is not God, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, but the works of God!" Alas! what trifling yet addressed to a Being without passions, is -what miserable trifling is this! In the works confined to a few modes, and is to be felt of God, God is felt to be by us his creatures, rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling whom he has spiritually endowed. We canin the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure not look on them, even in our least elevated for cadences and epithets. Supplication to moods, without some shadow of love or awe; man may diffuse itself through many topics in our most elevated moods, we gaze on them of persuasion; but supplication to God can with religion. By the very constitution of our only cry for mercy. intelligence, the effects speak of the cause. "Of sentiments purely religious, it will be We are led by nature up to nature's God. The found that the most simple expression is the Bible is not the only revelation-there is anmost sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its other-dimmer but not less divine-for surely power, because it is applied to the decoration the works are as the words of God. No great of something more excellent than itself. All poet, irn describing the glories and beauties of that pious verse can do is to help the memory the external world, is forgetful of the existence and delight the ear, and for these purposes it and attributes of the Most High. That thought, may be very useful; but it supplies nothing to and that feeling, animate all his strains; and the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology though he dare not to describe Him the Ineffaare too simple for eloquence, too sacred for ble, he cannot prevent his poetry from being fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to re- beautifully coloured by devotion, tinged by commend them by,ropes and figures, is to piety-in its essence it is religious. magnify by a concate mirror the sidereal he- It appears, then, that the qualifications ol misphere." restrictions with which Dr. Johnson is willing Here Dr. Johnson confesses that sacred sub- to allow that there may be didactic and dejects are not unfit-that they are fit-for di- scriptive sacred poetry, are wholly unmeandactic and descriptive poetry. Now, this is a ing, and made to depend on distinctions which very wide and comprehensive admission; and have no existence. being a right, and natural, and just admission, Of narrative poetry of a sacred kind, Mr. it cannot but strike the thoughtful reader at Montgomery well remarks, Johnson mak s no once as destructive of the great dogma by mention, except it be implicated with the statewhich Sacred Poetry is condemned. The doc- ment, that " the ideas of Christian Theology trines of Religion may be defended, he allows, are too sacred for fiction-a sentiment more in a didactic poem-and, pray, how can they just than the admirers of Milton and Klopbe defended unless they are also expounded? stock are willing to admit, without almost pleAnd how can they be expounded without being nary indulgence in favour of these great, but steeped, as it were, in religious feeling? Let not infallible authorities." Here Mr. Montgosuch a poem be as didactic as can possibly be mery expresses himself very cautiously- perimagined, still it must be pervaded by the very haps rather too much so-for he leaves us in spirit of religion-and that spirit, breathing the dark about his own belief. But this we do.hroughout the whole, must also be frequently not hesitate to say, that though there is great expressed, vividly, and passionately, and pro- danger of wrong being done to the ideas of foundly, in particular passages; and if so, Christian theology by poetry —a wrong which must it not be, in the strictest sense, a Sac-ed must be most painful to the whole Inner being poem? of a Christian; yet that there seems no neces"But," says Dr. Johnson, "the subject of sity of such a wrong, and that a great poet,.he disputation is not piety, but the motives to guarded by awe, and fear, and love, may move piety." Why introduce the word " disputa- his wings unblamed, and to the glory of God, ion," as if it characterized justly and entirely even amongst the most awful sanctities of his 184 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. faith. These sanctities may be too awful for some degree, breathe audibly some of th "'fiction"-but fiction is not the word here, any emotions which constitutes its blessedness more than disputation was the word there. poetry may even help the soul to ascend to Substitute for it the word poetry; and then, re- those celestial heights; because poetry may fleeting on that of Isaiah and of David, con- prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and versant with the Holy of Holies, we feel that it open itself out to the highest and holiest influneed not profane those other sanctities, if it be, ences of religion; for poetry there may be inlike its subject, indeed divine. True, that those spired directly from the word of God, using bards were inspired-with them the language and strong in the spirit of that the name word-unexistent but for the Old and New Of prophet and of poet was the same; Testament. but still, the power in the soul of a great poet, We agree with Mr. Montgomery, that the not in that highest of senses inspired, is, we sum of Dr. Johnson's argument amounts to may say it, of the same kind-inferior but in this-that contemplative piety, or the inter. degree; for religion itself is always an inspira- course between God and the human soul, cantion. It is felt to be so in the prose of holy not be poetical. But here we at once ask ourmen-Why not in their poetry? selves, what does he mean by poetical? "The If these views be just, and we have express- essence of poetry," he says, "is inventioned them "boldly, yet humbly."-all that remains such invention as, by producing something to be set aside of Dr. Johnson's argument is, unexpected, surprises and delights." Here, "that contemplative piety, or the intercourse again, there is confusionand sophistry. There between God and man, cannot be poetical. is much high and noble poetry of which invenMan, admitted to implore the mercy of his Cre- tion, such invention as is here spoken of, is ator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is not the essence. Devotional poetry is of that already in a higher state than poetry can character. Who would require something unconfer." expected and surprising in a strain of thanksThere is something very fine and true in the giving, repentance, or supplication? Such sentiment here; but the sentiment is only true feelings as these, if rightly expressed, may exin some cases, not in all. There are different lt or prostrate the soul, without much-with degrees in the pious moods of the most pious t any aid from the imagination-except in spirit that ever sought communion with its God as far as the imagination will work under the and its Saviour. Some of these are awe- power of every greatemotion that does not abstruck and speechless. That line, solutely confound mortal beingS, and humble them down even below the very dust. There "Come, then, expressive silence, muse his praise!" may be " no grace from novelty of sentiment," denies the power of poetry to be adequate to and " very little from novelty of expression"adoration, while the line itself is most glorious to use Dr. Johnson's words-for it is neither poetry. The temper even of our fallen spirits grace nor novelty that the spirit of the pcet is may be too divine for any words. Then the seeking-" the strain we hear is of a higher creature kneels mute before its Maker. But mood;" and "few as the topics of devotion are there not other states of mind in which we may be," (but are they few?) and " univerfeel ourselves drawn near to God, when there sally known," they are all commensurate-nay, is no such awful speechlessness laid upon us far more than commensurate with the whole -but when, on the contrary, our tongues are power of the soul-never can they become unloosened, and the heart that burns within will affecting while it is our lot to die; even from speak? Will speak, perhaps, in song-in the the lips of ordinary men, the words that flow inspiration of our piety breathing forth hymns on such topics flow effectually, if they are earand psalms-poetry indeed-if there be poetry nest, simple, and sincere; but from the lips of on this earth? Why may we not say that the genius, inspired by religion, who shall dare to spirits of just men made perfect-almost per- say that, on such topics, words have not flowed fect, by such visitations from heaven-will that are felt to be poetry almost worthy of the break forth-"rapt, inspired," into poetry, Celestial Ardours around the throne, and by which may be called holy, sacred, divine 1 their majesty to " link us to the radiant angels," We feel as if treading on forbidden ground- than whom we were made but a little lower, and therefore speak reverently; but still we do and with whom we may, when time shall be not fear to say, that between that highest state no more, be equalled in heaven? of contemplative piety which must be mute, We do not hesitate to say, that Dr. Johnson's down to that lowest state of the. same feeling doctrine of the effect of poetry is wholly false which evanishes and blends into mere human If it do indeed please, by exhibiting an idea emotion as between creature and creature, more grateful to the mind.than things them there are infinite degrees of emotion which selves afford, that is only because the things may be all imbodied, without offence, in words themselves are imperfect-more so than suits — and if so imbodied, with sincerity and hu- the aspirations of a spirit, always aspiring rnility, will be poetry, and poetry too of the because immortal, to a higher sphere-a higher indst beautiful and affecting kind. order of being. But when God himself is " Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his with all awe and reverence, made the subjec: Creator, and plead the merits cf his Redeemer, of song-then it is the office-the sacred officr Is already in a higher state than poetry can of poetry-not to exalt the subject, but to exal confer." Most true, indeed. But, though po- the soul that contemplates it. That poetr3 etry did not confer that higher state, poetry can do, else why does human nature glory it may nevertheless, in some measure and to the "Paradise Lost?" SACRED POETRY. 185 "Whatever is great, des. rable, or tremen- and excellence suppose misery, and are irm. dons, is comprised in the name of the Supreme perfection, but the instrument and capacity of Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted-In- all duty and all virtue." Happy he whose finity cannot be amplified-Perfection cannot faith is finally "fixed in the beloved point!" be improved." Should not this go to prohibit But even of that faith, what hinders the poet all speech-all discourse-all sermons con- whom it has blessed to sing. While, of its cerning the divine attributes? Immersed as tremblings, and veerings, and variations, why they are in matter, our souls wax dull, and the may not the poet, whose faith has experienced, attributes of the Deity are but as mere names. and still may experience them all, breathe Those attributes cannot, indeed, be exalted by many a melancholy and mournful lay, aspoetry. "The perfection of God cannot be suaged, ere the close, by the descent of peace? improved"-nor was it worthy of so wise a Thanksgiving, it is here admitted, is the man so to speak; but while the Creator abideth "most joyful of all holy effusions;" and the, in his own incomprehensible Being, the creak admission is sufficient to prove that it cannot ture, too willing to crawl blind and hoodwinked be "confined to a few modes." "Out of the alcng the earth, like a worm, may be raised by fulness of the heart the tongue speaketh;" and the voice of the charmer, " some sweet singer though at times the heart will be too full for of Israel," from his slimy track, and suddenly speech, yet as often even the coldest lips prove be made to soar on wings up into the ether. eloquent in gratitude-yea, the very dumb do Would Dr. Johnson have declared the use- speak-nor, in excess of joy, know the miracle'lessness of Natural Theology? On the same that has been wrought upon them by the power ground he must have done so, to preserve con- of their own mysterious and high enthusiasm. sistency in his doctrine. Do we, by exploring That " repentance, trembling in the presence wisdom, and power, and goodness, in all ani- of the Judge, should not be at leisure for camate and inanimate creation, exalt Omnipo- dences and epithets," is in one respect true; tence, amplify infinity, or improve perfection? but nobody supposes thaoduring such moWe become ourselves exalted by such divine ments-or hours-poetry is composed; and contemplations-by knowing the structure of surely when they have passed away, which a rose-leaf or of an insect's'wing. We are re- they must do, and the mind is left free to meminded of what, alas! we too often forget, and ditate upon them, and to recall them as shaexclaim, "Our Father which art in Heaven, dows of the past, there is nothing to prevent hallowed be thy name!" And while science them from being steadily and calmly contemexplores, may not poetry celebrate the glories plated, and depictured in somewhat softened and the mercies of our God? and altogether endurable light, so as to become The argument against which we contend proper subjects even of poetry-that is, proper gets weaker and weaker as it proceeds-the subjects of such expression as human nature gross misconception of the nature of poetry on is prompted to clothe with all its emotions, as which it is founded becomes more and more soon as they have subsided, after a swell or a glaring-the paradoxes, dealt out as confidently storm, into a calm, either placid altogether, or as if they were self-evident truths, more and still bearing traces of the agitation that has more repulsive alike to our feelings and our ceased, and have left the whole being selfunderstandings. "The employments of pious possessed, and both capable and desirous of meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, indulging itself in an after-emotion at once and supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, melancholy and sublime. Then, repentance cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. will not only be' at leisure for cadences and Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all epithets," but cadences and epithets will of holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being supe- themselves move harmonious numbers, and rior to us, is confined to a few modes, and is give birth, if genius as well as piety be there, to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, to religious poetry. Cadences and epithets are trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not indeed often sought for with care, and pains, at leisure for cadences and epithets. Suppli- and ingenuity; but they often come forth uncation to men may diffuse itself through many sought; and never more certainly and more topics of persuasion; but supplication to God easily than when the mind recovers itself from can only cry for mercy." What a vain attempt some oppressive mood, and, along with a cerauthoritatively to impose upon the common tain sublime sadness, is restored to the fuL sense of mankind! Faith is not invariably possession of powers that had for a short uniform. To preserve it unwavering-un- severe season been overwhelmed, but afterquaking-to save it from lingering or from wards look back, in very inspiration, on the sudden death —is the most difficult service to feelings that during their height were nearly which the frail spirit-frail even in its greatest unendurable, and then unfit for any outward strength-is called every day-every hour- and palpable form. The criminal trembling of this troubled, perplexing, agitating, and at the bar of an earthly tribunal, and with reoften most unintelligible life! "Liberty of morse and repentance receiving his doom, will," says Jeremy Taylor, "is like the motion might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set of a magnetic needle towards the north, full of his emotions to the measures of speech; but trembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the when recovered from the shock by pardon, or beloved point: it wavers as long as it is free, reprieve, or submission, is there any reason and is at rest when it can choose no more. It why he should not calmly recall the miseries is humility and truth to allow to man this and the prostation of spirit attendant on that.iberty; and, therefore, for this we may lay our hour, and give them touching and pathetic exraces in the dust, and confess that our dignity pression 186 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. "Supplication to man may diffuse itself cial lustre. How far more truly, and how far through many topics of persuasion; but sup- more sublimely, does Milton,' that mighty orb plication to God can only cry for mercy." of song," speak of his own divine gift-the And in that cry we say that there may be gift of Poetry! "These abilities are the inpoetry; for the God of Mercy suffers his crea- spired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are of tures to approach his throne in supplication, power to inbreed and cherish in a great people with words which they have learned when the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay supplicating one another; and the feeling of the perturbation of the mind, and set the affec. being forgiven, which we are graciously per- tions to a right tune; to celebrate in glorious mitted to believe may follow supplication, and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of and spring from it, may vent itself in many God's Almightiness, and what he suffers to be various and most affecting forms of speech. wrought with high providence in his Church; Men will supplicate God in many other words to sing victorious agonies of Martyrs and besides those of doubt and of despair; hope Saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and will mingle with prayer; and hope, as it glows, pious nations, doing valiantly through faith and burns, and expands, will speak in poetry against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the — else poetry there is none proceeding from general relapse of kingdoms and states from any of our most sacred passions. virtue and God's true worship. Lastly, whatDr. Johnson says, "Of sentiments purely soever in religion is holy and sublime, and in religious, it will be found that the most simple virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses passion, or admiration in all the changes of its lustre and its power, because it is applied that which is called fortune from without, or to the decoration of something' more excellent the wily subtleties and reflexions of men's than itself." Here he had in his mind the thoughts from within; all these things, with a most false notions of poetry, which he had solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out evidently imaginedto be an art despising sim- and describe-Teaching over the whole book plicity-whereas simplicity is its very soul. of morality and virtue, through all instances Simple expression, he truly says, is in religion of example, with such delight to those, espemost sublime-and why should not poetry be cially of soft and delicious temper, who will simple in its expression? Is it not always so not so much as look upon Truth herself unless -when the mood of mind it expresses is sim- they see her elegantly dressed; that, whereas pie, concise, and strong, and collected into one the paths of honesty and good life that appear great emotion? But he uses-as we see-the now rugged and difficult, appear to all men terms "lustre" and "decoration"-as if poetry easy and pleasant, though they were rugged necessarily, by its very nature, was always and difficult indeed." ambitious and ornate; whereas we all know, It is not easy to believe that no great broad that it is often in all its glory direct and simple lights have been thrown on the mysteries of as the language of very childhood, and for that men's minds since the days of the great poets, reason sublime. moralists, and metaphysicians of the ancient With such false notions of poetry, it is not world. We seem to feel more profoundly than to be wondered at that Dr. Johnson, enlight- they-ito see, as it were, into'a new world. ened man as he was, should have concluded The things of that world are of such surpasshis argument with this absurdity-" The ideas ing worth, that in certain awe-struck moods of Christian theology are too simple for elo- we regard them as almost above the province quence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic of Poetry. Since the revelation of Chrisfor ornament; to recommend them by tropes tianity, all moral thought has been sanctified and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror by Religion. Religion has given it a purity, a the sidereal hemisphere." No. Simple as solemnity, a sublimity, which, even among the they are-on them have been bestowed, and by noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in them awakened, the highest strains of elo- vain. The knowledge that shone but by fits quence-and here we hail the shade of Jeremy and dimly on the eyes of Socrates and Plato, Taylor alone-one of the highest that ever "that rolled in vain to find the light," has desoared from earth to heaven; sacred as they scended over many lands into " the huts where are, they have not been desecrated by the fic- poor men lie"-and thoughts are familiar there, tions-so to call them-of John Milton; ma- beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far jestic as are the heavens, their majesty has than ever flowed from the lips of Grecian sage not been lowered by the ornaments that the meditating among the magnificence of his pilrich genius of the old English divines has so lared temples. The whole condition and chaprofusely hung around them, like dewdrops ramter of the Human Being, in Christian glistening on the fruitage of the Tree of Life. countries, has been raised up to a loftier eleTrrpes and figures are nowhere more nu- vation; and he may be looked at in the face merous and refulgent than in the Scriptures without a sense of degradation, even when he themselves, from Isaiah to St. John; and, mag- wears the aspect of poverty and distress..i icent as are the "sidereal heavens" when Since that Religion was given us, and not the eye looks aloft, they are not to our eyes before, has been felt the meaning of that subless so, nor less lovely, when reflected in the lime expression-The Brotherhood of Man. bosom of a still lake or the slumbering ocean. Yet it is just as true, that there is as much This statement of facts destroys at once all misery and suffering in Christendom-nay, Dr. Johnson's splendid sophistry-splendid at far more of them all-than troubled and tole first sight-but on closer inspection a mere men's hearts during the reign of all those suha;ze. mist, or smoke, illuminated by an artifi- perstitior s and idolatries. But with what dif SACRED POETRY. 187 ferent feelings is it all thought of-spoken of- curb of critical control? If Relig:on be indeed looked at —alleviated - repented-expiated- all-in-all, and there are few who openly deny atoned for-now? In the olden time, such it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only in was the prostration of the "million," that it illusion-hint it as if we were half afraid of its was only when seen in high places that even spirit, half ashamed-and cunningly contrive duilt and Sin were felt to be appalling; —Re- to save our credit as Christians, without submorse was the privilege of Kings and Princes jecting ourselves to the condemnation of -and the Furies shook their scourges but be- critics, whose scorn, even in this enlightened fore the eyes of the high-born, whose crimes age, has-the more is the pity-even by mien had brought eclipse across the ancestral conscious of their genius and virtue, been glories of some ancient line. feared as more fatal than death? But we now know that there is but one No: let there be no compromise between origin from which flow all disastrous issues, false taste and true Religion. Bette] to be alike to the king and the beggar. It is sin condemned by all the periodical publications that does "with the lofty equalize the low;" in Great Britain than your own conscience. and the same deep-felt community of guilt and Let the dunce, with diseased spleen, who edits groans which renders Religion awful, has one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to given to poetry in a lower degree something his heart's discontent, in hollow league with of the same character-has made it far more his black-biled brother, who, sickened by your profoundly tender, more overpoweringly pa- success, has long laboured in vain to edit anthetic, more humane and thoughtful far, more other, still more unpublishable-but do you humble as well as more high, like Christian hold the even tenor of your way, assured that Charity more comprehensive; nay, we may the beauty which nature, and the Lord of nasay, like Christian Faith, felt by those to whom ture, have revealed to your eyes and your it is given to be from on high; and if not heart, when sown abroad will not be suffered utterly destroyed, darkened and miserably to perish, but will have everlasting life. Your weakened by a wicked or vicious life. books-humble and unpretending though they We may affirm, then, that as human nature be-yet here and there a page, not uninspired has been so greatly purified and elevated by by the spirit of Truth, and Faith, and Hope, the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with and Charity-that is, by Religion-will be held human nature in all its dearest and most inti- up before the ingle light, close to the eyes of mate concerns, must have partaken of that the pious patriarch, sitting with his children's purity and that elevation-and that it may children round his knees-nor will any one now be a far holier and more sacred inspira- sentiment, chastened by that fire that tempers tion, than when it was fabled to be the gift of the sacred links that bind together the brotherApollo and the Muses. We may not circum- hood of man, escape the solemn search of a scribe its sphere. To what cerulean heights soul, simple and strong in its Bible-taught shall not the wing of Poetry soar? Into what wisdom, and happy to feel and own commudungeon-gloom shall she not descend? If such nion of holy thought with one unknownbe her powers and privileges, shall she not be even perhaps by name-who although dead the servant and minister of Religion? yet speaketh-and, without superstition, is If from moral fictions of life Religion be numbered among the saints of that low!ly altogether excluded, then it would indeed be a household. waste of words to show that they must be He who knows that he writes in the fear of worse than worthless. They must be, not God and in the love of man, will not arrest imperfect merely, but false, and not false the thoughts that flow from his pen, because merely, but calumnious against human nature. he knows that they may-will be-insulted The agonies of passion fling men down to the and profaned by the name of cant, and he dust on their knees, or smite.them motionless himself held up as a hypocrite. In some as stone statues, sitting alone in their darken- hands, ridicule is indeed a terrible weapon. It ed chambers of despair. But sooner or later, is terrible in the hands of indignant genius, all eyes, all hearts look for comfort to God. branding the audacious forehead of falsehood The coldest metaphysical analyst could not or pollution. But ridicule in the hands either avoid that, in his sage enumeration of" each of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmparticular hair" that is twisted and untwisted less as a birch-rod in the palsied firgers of a by him into a sort of moral tie; and surely the superannuated beldam, who in her blear-eyed impassioned and philosophical poet will not, dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradare not, for the spirit that is within him, ex- dise might float in the sunshine ur.nharmed all elude that from his elegies, his hymns, and his its beautiful life long, although all ine sportssongs, which, whether mournful or exulting, men of Cockaigne were to keep f.ring at the are inspired by the life-long, life-deep convic- star-like plumage during the Christmas holytion, that all the greatv-ss of the present is but days of a thousand years. for the future-that the praises of this passing We never are disposed not to enjoy a reliearth are worthy of his lyre, only because it is gious spirit in metrical composition, but when overshadowed by the eternal heavens. induced to suspect that it is not sincere; and But though the total exclusion of Religion then we turn away from the hypocrite, just as from Poetry aspiring to be a picture of the life we do from a pious pretender in the intercourse or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of of life. Shocking it is indeed, to see "fools its -ery essence-how, it may be asked, shall rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we set bounds to this spirit —how shall we we words to express our disgust and horror at limit it-measure it-and accustom it to the the sight of fools, not rushing in among those 188 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. awful sanctities before which angels vail their before it passes away, provided it be left free faces with their wings, but mincing in, with to seek the empyrean, and not adstricted tc the red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns- glebe by some severe slavery of condition, would-be fashionables, with crow-quills in which destroys the desire of ascent by the same hands like those of milliners, and rings on inexorable laws that palsy the power, and e-. their fingers-afterwards extending their notes concile the toilers to the doom of the dust. If into Sacred Poems for the use of the public- all the states of being that poetry illustrates penny-a-liners, reporting the judgments of Pro- do thus tend, of their own accord, towards revidence as they would the proceedings in a ligious elevation, all high poetry must be repolice court. ligious; 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 CHAPTER II. the feelings, impulses, motives, aspirations, obligations, duties, privileges, which it shaTHE distinctive character of poetry, it has dows forth or imbodies, enveloping them in been said, and credited almost universally, is solemn shade or attractive light, are all, dito please. That they who have studied the laws rectly or indirectly, manifestly or secretly; of thought and passion should have suffered allied with the sense of the immortality of the themselves to be deluded by an unmeaning soul, and the belief of a future state of reward word is mortifying enough; but it is more than and retribution. Extinguish that sense and mortifying-it perplexes and confounds-to that belief in a poet's soul, and he may hang think that poets themselves, and poets too of up his harp. the highest order, have declared the same de- Among the great living poets Wordsworth grading belief of what is the scope and tenden- is the one whose poetry is to us the most inexcy, the end and aim of their own divine art- plicable-with all our reverence for his transforsooth, to please! Pleasure is no more the cendent genius, we do not fear to say the most end of poetry than it is the end of knowledge, open to the most serious charges —on the score or of virtue, or of religion, or of this world. of its religion. From the first line of the Lyrical The end of poetry is pleasure, delight, instruc- Ballads to the last of the " Excursion"-it is tion, expansion, elevation, honour, glory, hap- avowedly one system of thought and feeling, piness here and hereafter, or it is nothing. Is embracing his experiences of human life, and the end of Paradise Lost to please? Is the his meditations on the moral government of end of Dante's Divine Comedy to please? Is this world. The human heart-the human the end of the Psalms of David to please. Or mind-the human soul-to use his own fine of the songs of Isaiah? Yet it is probable that words-is " the haunt and main region of his poetry has often been injured or vitiated by song." There are few, perhaps none of our having been written in the spirit of this creed. affections-using that term in its largest sense It relieved poets from the burden of their duty -which have not been either slightly touched -from the responsibility of their endowments upon, or fully treated, by Wordsworth. In his — from the conscience that is in genius. We poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, suspect that this doctrine has borne especially to his eye, appears to be human life. Is there, hardon all sacredpoetry, disinclinedpoets to de- or is there not, some great and lamentable de. voting their genius to it-and consigned, if not to feect in that image, marring both the truth and oblivion, to neglect, much of what is greatin that beauty of the representation? We think there magnificent walk. Forif the masters of the Holy is-and that it lies in his Religion. Harp are to strike it but to please-if their high In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to inspirations are to be deadened and dragged his "Excursion," is there any allusion made, down by the prevalent power of such a mean except of the most trivial and transient kind, andunworthyaim —theywilleitherbecontented to Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be to awaken afew touching tones of"those strains called a Christian poet. The hopes that lie that once did sweet in Zion glide" —unwillingto beyond the grave-and the many holy and prolong and deepen them into the diapason of awful feelings in which on earth these hopes praise-or they will deposit their lyre within the are enshrined and fed, are rarely if ever part gloom of the sanctuary, and leave unawakened of the character of any of the persons-male "the soul of music sleeping on its strings." or female-old or young-brought before us All arguments, or rather objections to sacred in his beautiful Pastorals. Yet all the most poetry, dissolve as you internally look at them, interesting and affecting ongoings of this life like unabiding mist-shapes, or rather like ima- are exquisitely delineated-and innumerable gined mirage where no mirage is, but the mind of course are the occasions on which, had the itself makes ocular deceptions for its own thoughts and feelings of revealed religion been amusement. By sacred poetry, is mostly meant in Wordsworth's heart during the hours of in. Scriptural; but there are, and always have spiration-and he often has written like a been conceited and callous critics, who would man inspired-they must have found expresexclude all religious feelings from poetry, and sion in his strains; and the personages, humindeed from prose too, compendiously calling ble or high, that figure in his representations, them all cant. Had such criticasters been would have been, in their joys or their sorrows, right, all great nations would not have so their temptations and their trials, Christians. gloried in their great bards. Poetry, it is clear, But most assuredly this is not the case; the embraces all we can experience; and every religion of this great Poet-in all his poetry high, impassioned, imaginative, intellectual, published previous to the " Excursion"-is but and moral state of being becomes religious the "Religion of the Woods." SACRED POETRY. 189 In the "Excursion," his religion is brought and a very noble eulogy on the Church Esta forward-prominently and conspicuously-in blishment in England. How happened it that many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Ped- he who pronounced such eloquent panegyric lar, Poet, and Solitary. And a very high re- -that they who so devoutly inclined their ear ligion it often is; but is it Christianity? No to imbibe it —should have been all contented -it is not. There are glimpses given of some with of the Christian doctrines; just as if the va- "That basis laid, these principles of faith rious philosophical disquisitions, in which the Announced," Poem abounds, would be imperfect without and yet throughout the whole course of their some allusion to the Christian creed. The in- discussions, before and after, have forgotten terlocutors-eloquent as they all are-say but apparently that there was either Christianity little on that theme; nor do they show-if we or a Christian Church in the world? except the Priest-much interest in it-any We do not hesitate to say, that the thoughtsolicitude; they may all, for any thing that ful and sincere student of this great poet's appears to the contrary, be deists. works, must regard such omission-such inNow, perhaps, it may be said that Words- consistency or contradiction-with more than worth was deterred from entering on such a the pain of regret; for there is no relief theme by the awe of his spirit. But there is afforded to our defrauded hearts from any no appearance of this having been the case in quarter to which we can look. A pledge has any one single passage in the whole poem. Nor been given, that all the powers and privileges could it have been the case with such a man of a Christian poet shall be put forth and ex-a man privileged, by the power God has be- ercised for our behoof-for our delight and stowed upon him, to speak unto all the nations instruction; all other poetry is to sink away of the earth, on all themes, however high and before the heavenly splendour; Urania, or a holy, which the children of men can feel and greater muse, is invoked; and after all this understand. Christianity, during almost all solemn, and more than solemn preparation their disquisitions, lay in the way of all the made for our initiation into the mysteries, we speakers, as they kept journeying among the are put offwith a well-merited encomium on hills. the Church of England, from Bishop to Curate " On man, on nature, and on human life, inclusive; and though we have much fine Musing in Solitude'" poetry, and some high philosophy, it would But they, one and all, either did not perceive puzzle the most ingenious to detect much, or it, or, perceiving it, looked upon it with a cold any, Christian religion. and indifferent regard, and passed by into the Should the opinion boldly avowed be chalpoetry breathing from the dewy woods, or lenged, we shall enter into further exposition lowering from the cloudy skies. Their talk is and illustration of it; meanwhile, we confine of " Palmyra central, in the desert," rather than ourselves to some remarks on one of the most of Jerusalem. On the mythology of the Hea- elaborate tales of domestic suffering in the then much beautiful poetry is bestowed, but Excursion. In the story of Margaret, containnone on the theology of the Christian. ing, we believe, more than four hundred lines Yet there is no subject too high for Words- — a tolerably long poem in itself —though the worth's muse. In the preface to the " Excur- whole and entire state of a poor deserted wife sion," he says daringly-we fear too dar- and mother's heart, for year after year of ingly,- "hope deferred, that maketh the heart sick," " Urania, I shall need is described, or rather dissected, with an almost Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such cruel anatomy-not one quivering fibre being Descend to earth, or dwell in highest heaven! left unexposed-all the fluctuating, and finally For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink Deep-and aloft ascending, breathe in worlds all the constant agitations laid bare and naked To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil, that carried her at last lingeringly to the grave All strength-all terror-single or in bands, -there is not-except one or two weak lines, That ever was put forth in personal form, Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir that seem to have been afterwards purposely Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones; dropped in-one single syllable about Re. I pass them unalarm'd!". ligion. Was Margaret a Christian? —Let the Has the poet, who believes himself entitled answer be yes-as good a Christian as ever to speak thus of the power and province given kneeled in the small mountain chapel, in to him to put forth and to possess, spoken in whose churchyard her body now waits for the consonance with such a strain, by avoiding, resurrection. If she was-then the picture in part of the very work to which he so tri- painted of her and her agonies, is a libel not umphantly appeals, the Christian Revelation? only on her character, but on the character of Nothing could have reconciled us to a burst all other poor Christian women in this Chrisof such-audacity-we use the word consider- tian land. Placed as she was, for so many ately-but the exhibition of a spirit divinely years, in the clutches of so many passionsembued with the Christian faith. For what she surely must have turned sometimes —ay, else, we ask, but the truths beheld by the often, and often, and often, else had she sooner Christian Faith, can be beyond those "person- left the clay-towards her Lord and Saviour. al forms," "beyond Jehovah," "the choirs of But of such "comfort let no man speak,shouting angels," and the " empyreal thrones?" seems to have been the principle of Mr. WordsThis omission is felt the more deeply- worth; and the consequence is, that this, perthe more sadly-from such introduction as haps the most elaborate picture he ever painted there is of Christianity; for one of the books of any conflict within any one human heart, is, of the "Excursion" begins with a very long, with all its pathos, repulsive to very rellgiolus 190 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. mind —that being wanting without which the Her temper had been framed, as if to make entire representation is vitiated, and necessari- A Being who, by adding love to fear, Might live on earth a life of happiness. ly false to nature-to virtue-to resignation Her wedded partner lack'd not on his side -to life-and to death. These may seem strong The humble worth that satisfied her heartwords-but we are ready to defend them in the Frugal, affectionate, sober, and withal Keenly industrious. She with pride would tell face of all who may venture to impugn their That he was often seated at his loom truth. In summer, ere the mower was abroad Among the dewy grass —in early spring, This utter absence of Revealed Religion, Ere the last star had vanish'd. They who pass'd where it ought to have been all-in-all-for in At evening, from behind the garden fence such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or we Might hear his busy spade, which he would ply After his daily work, until the light regard the existence of sin or sorrow with re- Had fail'd, and every leaf and flower were lost pugnance-shocks far deeper feelings within In the dark hedges. So their days were spent us than those of taste, and throws over the In peace and comfort; and a pretty boy wsa hose poef to the, tal tow M et te- Was their best hope, next to the God in heaven." whole poem to which the tale of Margaret belongs, an unhappy suspicion of hollowness and We are prepared by that character, so amply insincerity in that poetical religion, which at and beautifully drawn, to pity her to the utthe best is a sorry substitute indeed for the most demand that may be made on our pity — light that is from heaven. Above all, it flings, to judge her leniently, even if in her desertion as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity she finally give way to inordinate and incura. over the orthodox Church-of-Englandism-for ble grief. But we are not prepared to see her once to quote a not inexpressive barbarism of sinking from depth to depth of despair, in wil. Bentham-which every now and then breaks ful abandonment to her anguish, without oftout either in passing compliment-amounting repeated and long-continued passionate prayers to but a bow-or in eloquent laudation, during for support or deliverance from her trouble, to which the poet appears to be prostrate on his the throne of mercy. Alas! it is true that in knees. He speaks nobly of cathedrals, and our happiness our gratitude to God is too often minsters, and so forth, reverendly adorning all more selfish than we think, and that in our the land; but in none-no, not one of the misery it faints or dies. So is it even with the houses of the humble, the hovels of the poor best of us-but surely not all life long-unless into which he takes us-is the religion preached the heart has been utterly crushed-the brain in those cathedrals and minsters, and chanted itself distorted in its functions, by some cain prayer to the pealing organ, represented as lamity, under which nature's self gives way, the power that in peace supports the roof-tree, and falls into ruins like a rent house when the lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the last prop is withdrawn. tutelary spirit of the lowly dwelling. Can this "Nine tedious years be rightl Impossible. And when we find the From their first separation-nine long years Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, She linger'd in unquiet widowhood-a A wife and widow. Needs must it have been otherwise as good as ever was produced by A sore heart-wasting." human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of the world of thought and feeling, It must indeed, and it is depicted by a masfancy and imagination, in which he breathes, ter's hand. But even were it granted that sufnor fears to declare to all men that he believes ferings, such as hers, might, in the course of himself to be one of the order of the High nature, have extinguished all-heavenly com. Priests of nature? fort-all reliance on God and her Saviour-the Shall it be said, in justification of the poet, process and progress of such fatal relinquishthat he presents a very interesting state of ment should have been shown, with all its mind, sometimes found actually existing, and struggles and all its agonies; if the religion of does not pretend to present a model of virtue?- one so good was so unavailing, its weakness that there are miseries which shut some hearts should have been exhibited and explained, that against religion, sensibilities which, being too we might have known assuredly why, in the severely tried, are disinclined, at least at cer- multitude of the thoughts within her, there was tain stages of their suffering, to look to that no solace for her sorrow, and how unpitying source for comfort? —that this is human nature, Heaven let her die o, grief. and the description only follows it?-that when This tale, too, is the very first told by the "in peace and comfort" her best hopes were Pedlar to the Poet, under circumstances of directed to "the God in heaven," and that her much solemnity, and with affecting note of habit in that respect was only broken up by the preparation. It arises naturally from the sight stroke of her calamity, causing such a derange- of the ruined cottage near which they, by apment of her mental power as should deeply in- pointment, have met; the narrator puts his terest the sympathies? —in short, that the poet whole heart into it, and the listener is over is an artist, and tha, the privation of all com- come by its pathos. No remark is made o fort from religion completes the picture of her Margaret's grief, except that desolation? 3' I turned aside in weakness, nor had power Would that such defence were of avail! To thank him for the tale which he had told. I stood, and leaning o'er the garden wall, But of whom does the poet so pathetically Review'd that woman's sufferings; and it seem'd speak? To comfort me, while, with a brother's love, I bless'd her in the impotence of grief. "Of one whose stock Then towards the cottage I return'd, and traced Of virtues bloom'd beneath this lowly roof. Fondly, though with an interest more mild, She was a woman of a steady mind, The secret spirit of humanity, Tender and deep in her excess of love; Which,'mid the calm, oblivious tendencies Not speaking much-pleased rather with the joy Of nature-'mid her plants, and weeds, and flower, Of her own thoughts By some especial care And silent overgrowings, still unrevived.'" SACRED POETRY. 191 Such musings receive the Pedlar's approba- misery, is religion the dominant principle o.,ion, and he says- thought and feeling in the character of any "My friend! enough to sorrow you have given. one human being with whom we are macu The purposes of wisdom ask no more. acquainted, living or dead. Of not a single Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read one man or woman are we made to feel the The forms of things with an unworthy eye. beauty of holiness-the poer and the flory She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here." beauty of holiness-the power and the glory of the Christian Faith. Beings are brought As the Poet, then, was entirely satisfied with before us whom we pity, respect, admire, love. the tale, so ought to be all readers. No hint The great poet is high-souled and tenderIs dropped that there was any thing to blame hearted-his song is pure as the morning, in the poor woman's nine years' passion —no bright as day, solemn as night. But his inspiregret breathed that she had sought not, by ration is not drawn from the Book of God, but means offered to all, for that peace of mind from the Book of Nature. Therefore it fails which passeth all understanding —no question to sustain his genius when venturing into the asked, how it was that she had not communed depths of tribulation and anguish. There. with her ewn afflicted heart, over the pages of fore imperfect are his most truthful delineathat Book where it is written, "Come unto me tions of sins and sorrows; and not in his all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I philosophy, lofty though it be, can be found will give ye rest!" The narrator had indeed alleviation or cure of the maladies that kill the said, that on revisiting her during her afflic- soul. Therefore never will the Excursion betion- come a bosom-book, endeared to all ranks and Which in er hmble lot ofbooks, conditions of a Christian People, like "The Which in her cottage window, heretofore, Had been piled up against the corner panes Task" or the "Night Thoughts." Their reliIn seemly order, now, with straggling leaves, gion is that of revelation —it acknowledges Lay scatter'd here and there, open or shut, no other source but the word of God. To that word, in all difficulty, distress, and dismay, But he does not mention the Bible. these poets appeal; and though they may What follows has always seemed to us of a sometimes, or often, misinterpret its judg. questionable character- ment, that is an evil incident to finite intelli" I well remember that those very plumes, gence; and the very consciousness that it is Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, g By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er, so, inspires a perpetual humility that is itself As once I pass'd, into my heart convey'd a virtue found to accompany only a Christian's So still an image of tranquillity, Faith So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful Amid the uneasy thoughts which fill'd my mind, We have elsewhere vindicated the choice That what wte feel of sorrow and despair of a person of low degree as Chief of the From ruin and from change, and all the griefs Excursion," and exult to think that a gret The passing shows of Being leave behind, Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live poet should have delivered his highest doe Where meditation was. I turn'd away, trines through the lips,of a Scottish Pedlar. And walk'd along my road in happiness." "Early had he learn'ed These are fine lines; nor shall we dare, in To reverence the volume that displays face of them, to deny the power of the beauty The mystery of life that cannot die." and serenity of nature to assuage the sorrow Throughout the poem he shows that he doec of us mortal beings, who live for awhile on reverence it, and that his whole being has her breast. Assuredly, there is sorrow that been purified and elevated by its spirit. But may be so assuaged; and the sorrow here fond as he is of preaching, and excellent in spoken of-for poor Margaret, many years the art or gift, a Christian Preacher he is notdead-was of that kind. But does not the at best a philosophical divine. Familiar by heart of a man beat painfully, as if violence his parentage and nurture with all most halwere offered to its most sacred memories, to lowed round the poor man's'hearth, and hear from the lips of wisdom, that "scrrow guarded by his noble nature from all offence and despair from ruin and from change, and to the sanctities there enshrined; yet the truth all the griefs" that we can suffer here below, must be told, he speaks not, he expounds not appear an idle dream among plumes, and the Word as the servant of the Lord, as the weeds, and speargrass, and mists, and rain- follower of Him Crucified. There is very drops! "Where meditation is!" What me- much in his announcements to his equals wilt ditation? Turn thou, 0 child of a day! to the of the mark set up in the New Testament. We New Testament, and therein thou mayest find seem to hear rather of a divine power and comfort. It matters not whether a spring- harmony in the universe than of the Living bank be thy seat by Rydal Mere, "while hea- God. The spirit of Christianity as connected ven and earth do make one imagery," or thou with the Incarnation of the Deity, the Humansittest in the shadow of death, beside a tomb. God, the link between heaven and earth, beWe said, that for the present we should con- tween helplessness and omnipotence, ought to fine our remarks on this subject to the story be everywhere visible in the religious effuof' Margaret; but they are, more or less, appli- sions of a Christian Poet-wonder and awe cable to almost all the stories in the Excur- for the greatness of God, gratitude and love sion. In many of the eloquent disquisitions for his goodness, humility and self-abasement and harangues of the Three Friends, they for his own unworthiness. Passages may per. carry along with them the sympathies of all haps be found in the "Excursion" expressive mankind; and the wisest may be enlightened of that spirit, but they are few and faint, and sy their wisdom. But what we complain of somewhat professional, falling Iot fromn the t, that neither in joy nor grief, happiness nor Pedlar but from the Pastor. If the mind, in 192 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. forming its conceptions of divine things, is the light of a system so congenial to the highest prouder of its own power than humbled in the feelings of our human nature, that the wisest comparison of its personal inferiority; and in spirits amongst us have sometimes been enunciating them in verse, more rejoices in tempted to forget that its origin is divine. the consciousness of the power of its own ge- Had the Excursion been written in the poet's nius than in the contemplation of Him from later life, it had not been so liable to such obwhom cometh every good and perfect gift-it jections as these; for much of his poetry comhas not attained Piety, and its worship is not posed since that era is imbued with a religious an acceptable service. For it is self-worship spirit, answering the soul's desire of the de-worship of the creature's own conceptions, voutest Christian. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets and an overweening complacency with its are sacred poetry indeed. How comprehenown greatness, in being able to form and so to sive the sympathy of a truly pious heart! express them as to win or command the praise How religion reconciles different forms, and and adoration of his fellow mortals. Those modes, and signs, and symbols of worship, lofty speculations, alternately declaimed among provided only they are all imbued with the the mountains, with an accompaniment of spirit of faith! This is the toleration Chriswaterfalls, by men full of fancies and eloquent tianity sanctions-for it is inspired by its own of speech, elude the hold of the earnest spirit universal love. No sectarian feeling here, longing for truth; disappointment and impa- that would exclude or debar from the holiest tience grow on the humblest and most reverent chamber in the poet's bosom one sincere mind, and escaping from the multitude of vain worshipper of our Father which is in heaven. words, the neophyte finds in one chapter of a Christian brethren! By that mysterious bond Book forgotten in that babblement, a light to our natures are brought' into more endearing his way and a support to his steps, which, fol- communion-now more than ever, brethren, lowing and trusting, he knows will lead him because of the blood that was shed for us all to everlasting life. from His blessed side! Even of that most Throughout the poem there is much talk of awful mystery in some prayer-like strains the the light of nature, little of the light of reve- Poet tremblingly speaks, in many a strain, at lation, and they all speak of the theological once so affecting and so elevating —breathing doctrines of which our human reason gives us so divinely of Christian charity to all whose assurance. Such expressions as these may trust is in the Cross! Who shall say what easily lead to important error, and do, indeed, form of worship is most acceptable to the seem often to have been misconceived and Almighty? All are holy in which the soul misemployed. What those truths are which seeks to approach him-holy human reason, unassisted, would discover to "The chapel lurking among trees, us on these subjects, it is impossible for us to Where a few villagers on bended knees know, for we have never seen it left absolute;y Find solace which a busy world disdains;" to itself. Instruction, more or less, in wander- we feel as the poet felt when he breathed to the ing tradition, or in express, full, and recorded image of some old abbeyrevelation, has always accompanied it; and we have never had other experience of the human mind than as exerting its powers under the And what heart partakes not the awe of his light of imparted knowledge. In these circum- "Beneath that branching roof stances, all that can be properly meant by Self-poised, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells those expressions which regard the power of Where light and shade repose, where music dwells the human mind to guide, to enlighten, or to Lingering-and wandering on as lothto die V satisfy itself in such great inquiries, is not Read the first of these sonnets with the lastthat it can be the discoverer of truth, but that, and then once more the strains that come bewith the doctrines of truth set before it, it is tween-and you will be made to feel how vaable to deduce arguments from its own inde- rious and how vast beneath the sky are the pendent sources which confirm it in their regions set apart by the soul for prayer and belief; or that, with truth and error proposed worship; and that all places become conseto its choice, it has means, to a certain extent, crated-the high and the humble —the mean in its own power, of distinguishing one from and the magnificent-in which Faith and Piety the other. For ourselves, we may understand have sought to hold communion with Heaven. easiiy that it would be impossible for us so to But they who duly worship God in temples shut out from our minds the knowledge which made with hands, meet every hour of their has been poured in upon them from our earliest lives " Devotional Excitements" as they walk years, in order to ascertain what self-left rea- among his works; and in the later poetry of son could find out. Yet this much we are able Wordsworth these abound —age having solemto do in the speculations of our philosophy. nized the whole frame of his being, that was We can inquire, in this light, what are the always alive to religious emotions-but more grounds of evidence which nature and reason than ever now, as around his paths in the themselves offer for belief in the same truths. evening of life longer fall the mysterious A like remark must be extended to the mo- shadows. More fervid lines have seldom rality which we seem now to inculcate from flowed from his spirit in its devoutest mood, the authority of human reason. We no longer than some awakened by the sounds and sights possess any such independent morality. The of a happy day in May-to him-though no spirit of a higher, purer, moral law than man church-bell was heard-a Sabbath. His occacould discover, has been breathed over the sional poems are often felt by us to be linked world, and we have grown -tu in the air and together by the finest affinities, which perhaps SACRED POETRY. 19f are but affinities between the feelings they in- to come down for an hour from heaven. How spire. Thus we turn from those lines to some solemn the opening strain! and from the mo. on a subject seemingly very different, from a mentary vision of Science on her speculative feeling of such fine affinities-which haply are Tower, how gently glides Imagination down, to but those subsisting between all things and take her place by the Poet's side, in his bark thoughts that are pure and good. We hear in afloat beneath Italian skies —suddenly be, them how the Poet, as he gazes on a Family dimmed, lake, land, and all, with a something that holds not the Christian Faith, embraces between day and night. In a moment we are them in the folds of Christian Love-and how conscious of Eclipse. Our slight surprise is religion as well as nature sanctifies the ten- lost in the sense of a strange beauty-solemn derns'; that is yearning at his heart towards not sad-settling on the face of nature and the them-" a Jewish Family"-who, though out- abodes of men. In a single stanza filled with casts by Heaven's decree, are not by Heaven, beautiful names of the beautiful, we have a still merciful to man, left forlorn on earth. vision of the Lake, with all its noblest banks, How exquisite the stanzas composed in one and bays, and bowers, and mountains-when cf the Catholic Chapels in Switzerland- in an instant we are wafted away from a scene that might well have satisfied our imagination "Doom'd as we are our native dust and our heart-if high emotions were not un To wet with many a bitter shower, and our heart-if hgh emotions were not unIt ill befits us to disdain controllable and omnipotent-wafted away by The Altar, to deride the Fane, Fancy with the speed of Fire-lakes, groves, Where patient sufferers bend, in trust To win a happi re hour. bend, in trst cliffs, mountains, all forgotten-and alight amid an a6rial host of figures, human and divine, on "I love, where spreads the village lawn, a spire that seeks the sky. How still those Upon some knee-worn Cell to gaze;ed sanctities and purities, all white as Hail to the firm unmoving Cross, imaged sanctities and purities, all white as Aloft, where pine their branches toss! snows of Apennine, stand in the heavenly reAnd to the Chapel far withdrawn, gion, circle above circle, and crowned as with That lurks by lonely ways! a zone of stars! They are imbued with life. "'Where'er we roam-along the brink In their animation the figures of angels and Of Rhine-or by the sweeping Po, saints, insensate stones no more, seem to feel Through Alpine vale, or champaign wide,hadows them, and look awful Whate'er we look on, at our side the Eclipse that ~hadows them, and look awful Be Charity —to bid us think in the portentou ight. In his inspiration he Xfnd feel, if woe would know." transcends the graiideur even of that moment's How sweetly are interspersed among them vision-and beholds in the visages of that some of humbler mood, most touching in their aerial host those of the sons of heaven darken simple pathos-such as a Hymn for the boat- ing with celestial sorrow at the Fall of Man men as they approach the Rapids-Lines on when hearing the song of the harvest damsels float- Throngs of celestial visages, Darkening like water in the breeze, iug homeward on the lake of Brientz —the Ita- A holy sadness shared." lian Itinerant and the Swiss Goatherd-and the Never since the day on which the wondrous Three Cottage Girls, representatives of Italian, edifice, in its consummate glory, first saluted of Helvetian, and of Scottish beauty, brought the sun, had it inspired in the soul of kneeling together, as if by magic, into one picture, each saint a thought so sad and so sublime-a breathing in her natural grace the peculiar thought beyond the reaches of the soul of him spirit and distinctive character of her country's whose genius bade it bear up all its holy adorncharms! Such gentle visions disappear, and ments so far from earth, that the silent comwe sit by the side of the Poet as he gazes from pany seem sometimes, as light and shadow his boat floating on the Lake of Lugano, on the move among them, to be in ascension to Church of San Salvador, which was almost heaven. But the Sun begins again to look like destroyed by lightning a few years ago, while the Sun, and the poet, relieved by the joyful the altar and the image of the patron saint light from that awful trance, delights to behold were untouched, and devoutly listen while he exclaims' " Town and Tower, The Vineyard and the Olive Bower, "Cliffs, fountains, rivers, seasons, times, Their lustre re-assume;" Let all remind the soul of heaven; Our slack devotion needs them all; and "breathes there a man with soul so dead,"' And faith, so oft of sense the thrall, that it burns not within him as he hears the While she, by aid of Nature, climbs, heart of the husband and the father breathe May hope to be forgiven." forth its love and its fear, remembering on a We do not hesitate to pronounce "Eclipse sudden the far distant whom it has never forof the Sun, 1820," one of the finest lyrical effu- gotten-a love and a fear that saddens, but dissions of combined thought, passion, sentiment, turbs not, for the vision he saw had inspired' and imagery, within the whole compass of him with a trust in the tender mercies of God?: poetry. If the beautiful be indeed essentially Commit to faithful memory, O Friend! who, different from the sublime, we here feel that may some time or other be a traveller over the they may be made to coalesce so as to be in wide world, the sacred stanzas that brings the their united agencies one divine power. We Poem to a close-and it will not fail to comfort called it lyrical, chiefly because of its transi- thee when sitting all alone by the well in the tions. Though not an ode, it is ode-like in its wilderness, or walking along the strange streets invocations; and it might be set and sung to of foreign cities, or lying in thy cot at midnigat music if Handel were yet alive, and St. Cecilia afloat on far-off seas. 13 194 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. "O ye, who guard and grace my Home wither, planted on the bank of "that river While in far-distant Lands we roam, whose streams make glad the city of the Lord. Was such a vision given to you? Or, while we look'd with favour'd eyes, Indeed, we see no reason why poetry, conDid sullen mist hide lake and skies ceived in the spirit of a most exclusive secAnd mountains from your view 7 tarianism, may, not be of a very high order, and IfI ask in vain —and know far less, powerfully impressive on minds whose reliHave spared my dwelling to this hour; gious tenents are most irreconcilable and hos. Sad blindness! but ordained to prove tile to those of the sect. Feelings, by being Our failth in Heaven's unfaling love, unduly concentrated, are not thereby necessarily enfeebled-on the contrary, often strengthLet us fly from Rydal to Sheffield. James ened; and there is a grand austerity which the Montgomery is trulyareligious poet. His popu- imagination more than admires-which the larity, which is great, has, by some scribes sit- conscience scarcely condemns. The feeling, ting in the armless chairs of the scorners, been the conviction from which that austerity grows, attributed chiefly to the power of sectarianism. is in itself right; for it is a feeling-a convicHie is, we believe, a sectary; and, if all sects tion of the perfect righteousness of God-the were animated by the spirit that breathes utter worthlessness of self-left man-the awful throughout his poetry, we should have no fears sanctity of duty-and the dreadfulness of the for the safety and stability of the Established judgment-doom, from which no soul is safe till Church; for in that selfsame spirit was she the seals have been broken, and the Archangel built, and by that selfsame spirit were her has blown his trumpet. A religion planted in foundations dug in a rock. Many are the such convictions as these, may become dark lights-solemn and awful all-in which the and disordered in its future growth within the eyes of us mortal creatures may see the Chris- spirit; and the tree, though of good seed and tian dispensation. Friends, looking down from in a strong soil, may come to be laden with the top of a high mountain on a city-sprinkled bitter fruit, and the very droppings of its leaves plain, have each his own vision of imagination may be pernicious to all who rest within its -each his own sinking or swelling of heart. shade. Still, such shelter is better in the blast They urge no inquisition into the peculiar affec- than the trunk of a dead faith; and such food, tions of each other's secret breasts-all assured, unwholesome though it be, is not so miserable from what each knows of his brother, that every as famine to a hungry soul. eye there may see God-that every tongue that Grant, then, that there may be in Mr. Monthas the gift of lofty utterance may sing his gomery's poetry certain sentiments, which, in praises aloud-that the lips that remain silent want of a better word, we call Sectarian, may be mute in adoration-and that all the They are not necessarily false, although-not distinctions of habits, customs, professions, perfectly reconcilable to our own creed, which, modes of life, even natural constitution and we shall suppose, is true. On the contrary, form of character, if not lost, may be blended we may be made much the better and the together in mild amalgamation under the comr- wiser men by meditating upon them; for mon atmosphere of eniotion, even as the towers, while they may, perhaps, (and we are merely domes, and temples, are all softly or brightly making a supposition,) be too strongly felt by interfused with the huts, cots, and homesteads- him, they may be too feebly felt by us-they the whole scene below harmonious, because in- may, perhaps, be rather blots on the beauty of habited by beings created by the same God- his poetry than of his faith-and if, in some *in his own image-and destined for the same degree, offensive in the composition of a poem, immortality. far less so, or not at all, in that of a life. It is base therefore, and false, to attribute, All his shorter poems are stamped with the in an invidious sense, any of Montgomery's character of the man. Most of them are breathfame to any such cause. No doubt many per- ings of his own devout spirit, either delighted sons read his poetry on account of its religion, or awed by a sense of' the Divine goodness who, but for that, would not have read it; and and mercy towards itself, or tremblingly alive no doubt, too, many of them neither feel nor — not in mere sensibility to human virtues and understand it. But so, too, do many persons joys, crimes and sorrows, for that often belongs read Wordsworth's poetry on account of its to the diseased and depraved-but in:.'2 re'a, religion —the religion of the woods —who, but moral, and religious thought, to all of good or for that, would not have read it; and so, too, evil befalling his brethren of mankind. "A many of them neither feel nor understand it. sparrow cannot fall to the ground"-a flower So is it with the common manners-painting of the field cannot wither immediately before poetry of Crabbe-the dark passion-painting his eyes-without awakening in his heart poetry of Byron-the high-romance-painting such thoughts as we may believe God inpoetry of Scott-and so on with Moore, Cole- tended should be awakened even by such ridge, Southey, and the rest. But it is to the sights as these; for the fall of a sparrow is mnens divinior, however displayed, that they a scriptural illustration of his providence, and owe all their fame. Had Montgomery not his hand framed the lily, whose array is more been a true poet, all the Religious Magazines royal than was that of Solomon in all his glory. in the world could not have saved his name Herein he resembles Wordsworth-less profrom forgetfulness and oblivion. He might found certainly-less lofty; for in its highest have flaunted his day like the melancholy moods the genius of Wordsworth walks by Poppy-melancholy in all its ill-scented gau- itself-unapproachable-on the earth it beaudiness; but as it is, he is like the Rose of tifies. But Montgomery's poetical piety is far:Sharon, whose bairnm and beauty shall not more prevalent over his whole character; it SACRED POETRY. 195 belongs more essentially and permanently to go, night and day, unbidden, forbidden across tne mnan. Perhaps, although we shall not say the minds of all men-fortified although the so, it may be more simple, natural, and true. main entrances may be; but when they do inMore accordant it certainly is, with the sym- vade his secret, solitary hours, he turns ever, pathies of ordinary minds. The piety of his such visitants to a happy account, and ques, poetryis far more Christian than that of Words- tions them, ghostlike as they are, concerning worth's. It is in all his feelings, all his thoughts, both the future and the past. Melancholy as all his imagery; and at the close of most of often his views are, we should not suppose his beautiful compositions, which are so often him a man of other than a cheerful mind; for avowals, confessions, prayers, thanksgivings, whenever the theme allows or demands it, he we feel, not the moral, but the religion of his is not averse to a sober glee, a composed gayesong. He "improves" all the "occasions" of ty that, although we cannot say it ever so far this life, because he has an "eye that broods sparkles out as to deserve to be called ab. on its own heart;" and that heart is impressed solutely brilliant, yet lends a charm to his by all lights and shadows, like a river or lake lighter-toned compositions, which it is peculiarwhose waters are pure-pure in their sources ly pleasant now and then to feel in the writand in their course. He is, manifestly, a man ings of a man whose genius is naturally, and of the kindliest home-affections; and these, from the course of life, not gloomy indeed, but though it is to be hoped the commonest of all, pensive, and less disposed to indulge itself in preserved to him in unabated glow and fresh- smiles than in tears. ness by innocence and piety, often give vent to themselves in little hymns and odelike 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 flowersER III. of poetry may be brought from afar, nor yet be PEOPLE now-a-days will write, because they felt to be exotics-to intertwine with the very see so many writing; the impulse comes upon simplest domestic feelings and thoughts-so them from without, not from within; loud simple, so perfectly human, that there is a voices from streets and squares of cities call touch of surprise on seeing them capable of on them to join the throng, but the still small such adornment, and more than a touch of voice that speaketh in the penetralia of the pleasure on feeling how much that adornment spirit is mute; and what else can be the re becomes them-brightening without changing, sult, but, in place of the song of lark, or linnet, and adding admiration to delight —wonder to or nightingale, at the best a concert of mocklove. ing-birds, at the worst an oratorio of ganders Montgomery, too, is almost as much of an and bubbleys? egotist as Wordsworth; and thence, frequently, At this particular juncture or crisis, the dishis power. The poet who keeps all the ap- ease would fain assume the symptoms of repearances of external nature, and even all the ligious inspiration. The poetasters are all passions of humanity, at arm's length, that he pious —all smitten with sanctity-Christian all may gaze on, inspect, study, and draw their over-and crossing and jostling on the Course portraits, either in the garb they ordinarily of Time-as they think, on the high-road to wear, or in a fancy dress, is likely to produce Heaven and Immortality. Never was seen a strong likeliness indeed; yet shall his piec- before such a shameless set of hypocrites. tures be wanting in ease and freedom-they Down on their knees they fall in booksellers' shall be cold and stiff —and both passion and shops, and, crowned with foolscap, repeat to imagination shall desiderate something charac- Blue-Stockings prayers addressed in doggerel teristic in nature, of the mountain or the man. to the Deity! They bandy about the Bible as But the poet who hugs to his bosom every if it were an Album. They forget that the thing he loves or admires-themselves, or the poorest sinner has a soul to be saved, as well thoughts that are their shadows-who is him- as a set of verses to be damned; they look self still the centre of the enchanted circle- forward to the First of the Month with more who, in the delusion of a strong creative genius, fear and trembling than to the Last Day; and absolutely believes that were he to die, all that beseech a critic to be merciful upon them with he now sees and hears delighted would die far more earnestness than they ever beseeched with him-who not only sees their Maker. They pray through the press" Poetic visions swarm on every bough," vainly striving to give some publicity to what but'the history of all his own most secret must be private for evermore; and are seen emotions written on the very rocks-who wiping away, at tea-parties, the tears of contrigathers up the many beautiful things that in tion and repentance for capital crimes perthe prodigality of nature lie scattered over the petrated but on paper, and perpetrated thereon earth, neglected or unheeded, and the more so paltrily, that so far from being worthy of dearly, the more passionately loves them, be- hell-fire, such delinquents, it is felt, would be cause they are now appropriated to the uses more suitably punished by being singed like of his own imagination, who will by her plucked fowls with their own unsaleable sheets alchymy so further brighten them that the They are frequently so singed; yet singeing thousands of eyes that formerly passed them has not the effect upon them for which singe by unseen or scorned, will be dazzled by their ing is designed; and like chickens in a shower rare and transcendent beauty-he is the " pre- that have got the pip, they keep still gasping antT vailing Poet!" Montgomery neither seeks nor shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip shuns those dark thoughts that will come and toe with their tails down, till finally they go ti 196 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. roostl in some obscure corner, and are no more Christian Poetry will be deeper and higher far seen among bipeds. than any that has ever yet been known amon2 Among those, however, who have been un- men. Indeed, the sovereign songs hitherto fortunately beguiled by the spirit of imitation have been either religious or superstitious and sympathy into religious poetry, one or two and as " the day-spring from on High that has -who for the present must be nameless- visited us" spreads wider and wider over the have shown feeling; and would they but obey earth, "the soul of the world, dreaming of their feeling, and prefer walking on the ground things to come," shall assuredly see more gIo. with their own free feet, to attempting to fly in rifled visions than have yet been submitted tc the air with borrowed and bound wings, they her ken. That Poetry has so seldom satisfiea might produce something really poetical, and the utmost longings and aspirations of human acquire a creditable reputation. But they are nature, can only have been because Poetry has too aspiring; and have taken into their hands so seldom dealt in its power with the only the sacred lyre without due preparation. He mysteries worth knowing-the greater rnys. who is so familiar with his Bible, that each teries of religion, into which the Christian is chapter, open it where he will, teems with initiated only through faith, an angel sent from hofisehold words, may draw thence the theme heaven to spirits struggling by supplications of many a pleasant and pathetic song. For is and sacrifices to escape from sin and death. not all human nature, and all human life, These, and many other thoughts and feel. shadowed forth in those pages? But the heart, ings concerning the "Vision and the Faculty to sing well from the Bible, must be embued divine," when employed on divine subjects, with religious feelings, as a flower is alter- have arisen within us, on reading —which we nately with dew and sunshine. The study of have often done with delight —"The Christian THE BOOiR must have been begun in the sim- Year," so full of Christian poetry of the purest plicity of childhood, when it was felt to be in- character. Mr. Keble is a poet whom Cowper deed divine-and carried on through all those himself would have loved —for in him piety silent intervals in which the soul of manhood inspires genius, and fancy and feeling are is restored, during the din of life, to the purity celestialized by religion. We peruse his book and peace of its early being. The Bible must in a tone and temper of spirit similar to tha be to such a poet even as the sky-with its which is breathed upon us by some calm day sun, moon, and stars-its boundless blue with in spring, when all imagery is serene and still all its cloud-mysteries-its peace deeper than -cheerful in the main-yet with a touch and the grave, because of realms beyond the grave a tinge of melancholy, which makes all the -its tumult louder than that of life, because blended bliss and beauty at once more endear. heard altogether in all the elements. He who ing and more profound. We should no more begins the study of the Bible late in life, must, think of criticising such poetry than of critiindeed, devote himself to it-night and day- cising the clear blue skies-the soft green and with an humble and a contrite heart as well earth-the " liquid lapse" of an unpolluted as an awakened and soaring spirit, ere he can stream, that hope to feel what he understands, or to under- c" Doth make sweet music with the enaniell'd stones, stand what he feels-thoughts and feelings Giving a gentle kiss to every flower breathing in upon him, as if from a region It overtaketh on its pilgrimage." hanging, In its mystery, between heaven and All is purity and peace; as we look and listen, earth. Nor dq we think that he will lightly we partake of the universal calm, and feel in venture on the composition of poetry drawn nature the presence of Him from whom it from such a source. The very thought of doing emanated. Indeed, we do not remember any so, were it to occur to his mind, would seem poetry nearly so beautiful as this, which reirreverent; itwould convince him that he was minds one so seldom of the poet's art. We still the slave of vanity, and pride, and the read it without ever thinking of the place world. which its author may hold among poets, just as They alone, therefore, to whom God has we behold a "lily of the field" without corn given genius as wel1 as faith, zeal, and bene- paring it with other flowers, but satisfied. with volence-will, of their own accord, fix their its own pure and simple loveliness; or each Pindus either on Lebanon or Calvary-and separate poem may be likened, in its unos. of these but few. The genius must be high- tentatious-unambitious-unconscious beauty the faith sure-and human love must coalesce -to with divine, that the strain may have power "A violet by a mossy stone, to reach the spirits of men, immersed as they Half hidden to the eye." are in matter, and with all their apprehensions Of all the flowers that sweeten this fair and conceptions blended with material image- earth, the violet is indeed the most delightful ry, and the things of this moving earth and in itself-form, fragrance, and colour-norless this restless life. in the humility of its birthplace, and in its So gifted and so endowed, a great or good haunts in the " sunshiny shade." Therefore, poet, having chosen his subject well within'tis a meet emblem of those sacred songs that religion, is on the sure road to immortal fame. may be said to blossom on Mount Sion. His work, when done, must secure sympathy The most imaginative poetry inspired by for ever; a sympathy not dependent on creeds, Nature, and dedicated to her praise, is never'trut out of which creeds spring, all of them perfectly and consummately beautiful till it nanifestly moulded by imaginative affections ascends into the religious; but'hen religion of religion. Christian Poetry will outlive breathes from, and around, and about it, only every other; for the time will come when at last when the poet has been hrought, by the SACRED POETRY. 197 leading of his own aroused spirit, to the utmost Against all such low aims he is preserved, pitch of his inspiration. He begins, and con- who, with Christian meekness, approaches th. tinues long, unblamed in mere emotions of muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks beauty; and he often pauses unblamed, and not to force his songs on the public ear; his brings his strain to a close, without having heart is free from the fever of fame; his poet. forsaken this earth, and the thoughts and feel- ry is praise and prayer. It meets our ear like ings which belong alone to this earth. But the sound of psalms from some unseen dwell poetry like;hat of the "Christian Year'- springs ing among the woods or hills, at which tilhe at once, visibly and audibly, from religion as wayfarer or wanderer stops on his journey, its fount. If it, indeed, issue from one of the and feels at every pause a holier solemnity in many springs religion opens in the human the silence of nature. Such poetry is indeed heart, no fear of its ever being dried up. got by heart; and memory is then tenacious to Small indeed may seem the silver line, when the death, for her hold on what she loves is first the rill steals forth from its sacred source! strengthened as much by grief as by joy; and, Bult how soon it begins to sing with a clear when even hope itself is dead-if, indeed, hope loud voice in the solitude! Bank and brae- ever dies-the trust is committed to despair. tree, shrub, and flower-grow greener at each Words are often as unforgetable as voiceless successive waterfall-the rains no more dis- thoughts; they become very thoughts them-'urb that limpid element than the dews-and selves, and are what they represent. How are never does it lose some reflection of the hea- many of the simply, rudely, but fervently and?ens. beautifully rhymed Psalms of David, very part In a few modest words, Mr. Keble states the and parcel of the most spiritual treasures of aim and object of his volume. He says truly, the Scottish peasant's being! that it is the peculiar happiness of the Church "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want, of England to possess in her authorized formu- He makes me down to lie laries an ample and secure provision,'both for In pastures green: he leadeth me a sound rule of faith and a sober standard of The quiet waters by." feeling in matters of practical religion. The These four lines sanctify to the thoughtful object of his publication will be attained, if shepherd on the braes every stream that glides any person find assistance from it in bringing through the solitary places-they have often his own thoughts and feelings into more entire given colours to the greensward beyond the unison with those recommended and exempli- brightness of all herbage and of all flowers. fled in the Prayer-Book. We add, that its ob- Thrice hallowed is that poetry which makes ject has been attained. In England, "The us mortal creatures feel the union that subsists Chnristian Year" is already placed in a thou- between the Book of Nature and the Book of sand homes among household books. People Life! are neither blind nor deaf yet to lovely sights Poetry has endeared childhood by a thouand sounds-and a true poet is as certain of sand pictures, in which fathers and mothers recognition now as at any period of our litera- behold with deeper love the faces of their own ture. In Scotland we have no prayer-book offspring. Such poetry has almost always been printed on paper-perhaps it would be better the production of the strongest and wisest if we had; but the prayer-book which has in- minds. Common intellects derive no power spired Mr. Keble, is compiled and composed from earliest memories; the primal morn, to from another Book, which, we believe, is more them never bright, has utterly faded in the read in Scotland than in any other country. smoky day; the present has swallowed up thf: Here the Sabbath reigns in power, that is felt past, as the future will swallow up the present, to be a sovereign power over all the land. We each season of life seems to stand by itself a:; have, it may be said, no prescribed holydays; a separate existence; and when old age comes, but all the events recorded in the Bible, and how helpless, melancholy, and forlorn! But which in England make certain days holy in he who lives in the spirit of another creed, outward as well as inward observances, are sees far into the heart of Christianity. He familiar to our knowledge and our feeling here; hears a divine voice saying-" Suffer little and therefore the poetry that seeks still more to children to come unto me, and forbid theln not, hallow them to the heart, will find every good for of such is the kingdom of heaven!" Thus heart recipient of its inspiration-for the Chris- it is that poetry throws back upon the New tian creed is "wide and general as the casing Testament the light she has borrowed from it, air," and felt as profoundly in the Highland and that man's mortal brother speaks in acheather-glen, where no sound of psalms is cordance with the Saviour of man. On a dead, heard but on the Sabbath, as in the cathedral insensible flower-a lily-a rose-a violet-a towns and cities of England, where so often daisy, Poetry may pour out all its divinest " Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, power —just as the sun itself sometimes seems The pealing anthem swells the note of praise." to look with all its light on some one especial Poetry in our age has been made too much blossom, all at once made transparently lusa thing to talk about-to show off upon-as if trous. And what if the flower be alive in all the writing and the reading of it were to be its leaves-and have in it an immortal spirit'! reckoned among what are commonly called Or what if its leaves be dead, and the immoraccomplishments. Thus, poets have too often tal spirit gone away to heaven 1 Genius shall sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art change death into sleep-till the grave, in itself to most unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, so dark and dismal, shall seem a bed of bright the most unworthy-for it implies much vo- and celestial repose.'_rom poetry, in words luntary self-degradation-is mere popularity. or marble-both alike still and serene as watlt 198 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. upon grass —we turn to the New Testament, holds. Almost as soon as the heart iT movedJ and read of the "Holy Innocents." "They by filial affection, that affection grows reverent were redeemed from among men, being the even to earthly parents-and, erelong, becolmes first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb." We piety towards the name of God and Saviour. look down into the depths of that text —and we Yet philosophers have said that the child must then turn again to Keble's lines, which from nc4 be too soon spoken to about religion. Will those depths have flowed over upon the unin- they fix the time? No-let religion-a myriad. spired page! Yet notuninspired-if that name meaning word-be whispered and breathed may be given to strains which, like the airs round about them, as soon as intelligence that had touched the flowers of Paradise, smiles in their eyes and quickens their cars, "whisper whence they stole those balmy while enjoying the sights and sounds of their sweets." Revelation has shown us that "we own small yet multitudinous world. are greater than we know;" and who may Let us turn to another strain of the same neglect the Infancy of that Being for whom mood, which will be read with tears by many Godhead died! a grateful heart-on the " Churching of WoThey who read the lines on "the Holy In- men." What would become of us without the nocents " in a mood of mind worthy of them, ceremonies of religion? How they strengthen will go on, with an equal delight, through those the piety out of which they spring! How, by on "The Epiphany." They are separated in concentrating all that is holy and divine around the volume by some kindred and congenial their outward forms, do they purify and sancstrains; but when brought close together, they tify the affections! What a change on his occupy the still region of thought as two large infant's face is wrought before a father's eyes clear stars do of themselves seem to occupy by Baptism! How the heart of the husband the entire sky. and the father yearns, as he sees the wife and How farbetter than skilfully-how inspiredly mother kneeling in thanksgiving after childdoes this Christian poet touch upon each sue- birth! cessive holy theme-winging his way through " Consider the lilies of the field how they the stainless ether like some dove gliding from grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; and tree to tree, and leaving one place of rest only yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all for another equally happy, on the folding and his glory was not arrayed like one of these." unfolding of its peaceful flight! Of late What is all the poetry that genius ever breathed many versifiers have attempted the theme; over all the flowers of this earth, to that one and some of them with shameful unsuccess. divine sentence! It has inspired our Chris. A bad poem on such a subject is a sin. He tian poet-and here is his heart-felt homily. who is a Christian indeed, will, when the star of Bethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. mute beneath the image, or he will hail it in "Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies,,trains simple as were those of the shepherds Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew, What more then magic in you lies watching their flocks by night when it appear- To fill the heart's fond view. ed of old, high as were those of the sages who In childhood's sports companions gay, came from the East bearing incense to the Inow sorrow, thi Life's downward way, Child in the Manger. Such are this Poet's Memorials prompt and true. strains, evolving themselves out of the few "Relics ye are of Eden's bowers, words —" Behold, the star, which they saw in As pure, as fragrant, and as fair, the east, went before them, till it came and As when ye crown'd the sunshine hours Of happy wanderers there. stood over where the young Child was: when Fall'n all beside-the world of life, they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding hIow is it stain'd with fear and strife great joy." In Reason's world what storms are rife, great. joy~."..What passions rage and glare! The transition from those affecting lines is ged e natural and delightful to a strain further on in Your first and perfect form ye show, the volume, entitled " Catechism." How soon The same that won Eve's matron smile the infant spirit is touched with love-another In the world's opening glow. The stars of Heaven a course are taught name for religion-none may dare to say who Too high above our human thought;have watched the eyes of little children. Feel- Ye may be found if ye are sought, ing and thought would seem to come upon And as we gaze we know. them like very inspiration-so strong it often "Ye dwell beside our paths and homes, is, and sudden, and clear; yet, no doubt, all the Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow, And guilty man, where'er he roams, work of natural processes going on within Your innocent mirth may borrow. Immortality. The wisdom of age has often The birds of air before us fleet, They cannot brook our shame to meet — been seen in the simplicity of childhood- But we may taste your solace sweet, creatures but five or six years old-soon per- And come again to-morrow. haps about to disappear-astonishing, and "1 Ye fearless in your nests abidesaddening, and subliming the souls of their Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise, parents and their parents' friends, by a holy Your silent lessons, undescried precocity of all ~pitiful and compassionate feel- By all but lowly eyes; precocity of all pitiful and compassionate feel- For ye could draw th' admiring gaze ings, blended into a mysterious piety that has Of Him who worlds and hearts surveys: made them sing happy hymns on the brink of Your order wild, your fragrant maze, He taught us how to prize. oeath and the grave. Such affecting instances of almost infantine unfolding of the spirit be- "Ye felt your Maker's smile that "nour, neath spiritual influence should not be rare- As when he paused and own'd you goob, His blessing on earth's primal bower, uor are they rare-in truly Christian house- Yet felt it all renew'd. SACRED POETRY. 19g, What care ye now, if winter's storm stead of leaving him in utter darkness, seemed Sweep ruthless o'er each silken form | to be accompanied with a burst of light. Christ's blessing at your heart is warm, Ye fear no vexing mood. Much of our most fashionable Modern "' Alas! of thousand bosoms kind, Poetry is at once ludicrously and lamentably That daily court you and caress, unsuitable and unseasonable to the innocent How few the happy secret find and youthful creatures who shed tears "such Of your calm loveliness!'Live forto-dayto-morrow'slight as angels weep" over the shameful sins or To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight. shameless sinners, crimes which, when per. Go, sleep like closing flowers at night, Go, sleep like mcosngwfll nibless.'"t petrated out of Poetry, and by persons with vulgar surnames, elevate their respective heSuch poetry as this must have a fine influ- roes to that vulgar altitude-the gallows. The ence on all the best human affections. Sacred darker-the stronger passions, forsooth! And are such songs to sorrow-and sorrow is either what hast thou to do-my dove-eyed Margaret a frequent visiter, or a domesticated inmate, in -with the darker and stronger passions? every household. Religion may thus be made Nothing whatever in thy sweet, still, serene, to steal unawares, even during ordinary hours, and seemingly almost sinless world. Be the into the commonest ongoings of life. Call not brighter and the weaker passions thinethe mother unhappy who closes the eyes of her brighter indeed-yet say not sweaker, for they dead child, whether it has smiled lonely in the are strong as death; —Love and Pity, Awe and'house, the sole delight of her eyes, or bloomed Reverence,Joy, Grief, and Sorrow, sunny smiles among other flowers, now all drooping for its and showery tears-be these all thy own-and sake-nor yet call the father unhappy who sometimes, too, on melancholy nights, let the lays his sweet son below the earth, and returns heaven of thy imagination be spanned in its to the home where his voice is to be heard starriness by the most celestial Evanescencenever more. That affliction brings forth feel- a Lunar Rainbow. ings unknown before in his heart; calming all There is such perfect sincerity in the " Chris. turbulent thoughts by the settled peace of the tian Year," such perfect sincerity, and consegrave. Then every page of the Bible is beau- quently such simplicity, that though the protiful-and beautiful every verse of poetry that duction of a fine and finished scholar, we cannot thence draws its inspiration. Thus in the pale doubt that it will some day or other find its way and almost ghostlike countenance of decay, our into many of the dwellings of humble life. hearts are not touched by the remembrance Such descent, if descent it be, must be of all alone of beauty which is departed, and by the receptions the most delightful to the heart of a near extinction of loveliness which we behold Christian poet. As intelligence spreads more fading before our eyes-but a beauty, fairer widely over the land, why fear that it will and deeper far, lies around the hollow eye and deaden religionS Let us believe that it will the sunken cheek, breathed from the calm air rather vivify and quicken it; and that in time of the untroubled spirit that has heard resigned true poetry, such as this, of a character some the voice that calls it away from the dim shades what higher than probably can be yet felt, un of mortality. Well may that beauty be said to derstood, and appreciated by the people, wil, be religious; for in it speaks the soul, con- come to be easy and familiar, and blended with scious, in the undreaded dissolution of its all the other benign influences breathed over earthly frame, of a being destined to everlast- their common existence by books. Meanwhile ing bliss. With every deep emotion arising the "Christian Year" will be finding its way from our contemplation of such beauty as this into many houses where the inmates read from -religious beauty beaming in the human coun- the love of reading-not for mere amusement tenapnce, whether in joy or sadness, health or only, but for instruction and a deeper delight; decay-there is profoundly interfused a sense and we shall be happy if our recommendation of the soul's spirituality, which silently sheds causes its pages to be illumined by the gleams over the emotion something celestial and di- of a few more peaceful hearths, and to be revine, rendering it not only different in degree, hearsed by a few more happy voices in the but altogether distinct in kind, from all the feel- "parlour twilight." ings that things merely perishable can inspire- We cannot help expressing the pleasure it so that the spirit is fully satisfied, and the feel- has given us to see so much true poetry coming ing of beauty is but a vivid recognition of its from Oxford. It is delightful to see that clas., own deathless being and ethereal essence. This sical literature, which sometimes, we know not is a feeling of beauty which was but faintly how, certainly has a chilling effect on poetical known to the human heart in those ages of the feeling, there warming it as it ought to do, and world when all other feelings of beauty were causing it to produce itself in song. Oxford most perfect; and accordingly we find, in the has produced many true poets; Collins, Warmost pathetic strains of their elegiac poetry, ton, Bowles, Heber, Milman, and now Keblelamentations over the beauty intensely wor- are all her own-her inspired sons. Their -hipped in the dust, which was to lie for ever strains are not steeped in "port and prejudice;".ver its now beamless head. But to the Chris- but in the-Isis. Heaven bless Iffley and God. tian who may have seen the living lustre leave stow-and many another sweet old ruined the eye of some beloved friend, there must have place-secluded, but not far apart from her shone a beauty in his latest smile, which spoke own inspiring Sanctities. And those who vve. not alone of a brief scene closed, but of an end- her not, never may the Muses love! less scene unfolding; while its cessation, in 200 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. gether, and such as ought to be expunged CHAPTER IV. from all paper. But that is not all we have to say against it Ix his Poem, entitled "The Omnipresence -it is radically and essentially bad, aecause it of the Deity," Mr. Robert Montgomery writes either proves nothing of what it is meant to thus:- prove-or what no human being on earth ever " Lo! there, in yonder fancy-haunted room, disputed. Be fair-be just in all that concerns What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom, Take te best, the most moral, if the When pale, and shiv'ring, and bedew'd with fear, religion. Take the best, the most moral, if the The dying skeptic felt his hour drew near! word can be used, the most enlightened Skep. From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell, tic, and the true Christian, and compare their No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell; As the last throes of death convulsed his cheek, death-beds. That of the Skeptic will be disHe gnash'd, and scowl'd, and raised a hideous shriek. turbed or disconsolate-that of the Christian Rounded his eyes into a ghastly glare, confiding or blessed. But to contrast the Lock'd his white lips-and all was mute despair! Go, child of darkness, see a Christian die; death-bed of an absolute maniac, muttering No horror pales his lip, or rolls his eye; curses, gnashing and scowling, and " raising a TheNo dreadful doubts, or dreamy terrors start hideous shriek," and "rounding his eyes with The hope Religion pillows on his heart, When with a dying hand he waves adieu a ghastly glare," and convulsed, too, with se. To all who love so well, and weep so true: vere bodily throes-with that of a convinced, Meek, as an infant to the mother's breast confding, and conscientious Christian, a calm, Turns fondly longing for its wonted rest, confiding, and conscientious Christian, a calm, Ie pants for where congenial spirits stray, meek, undoubting believer, happy in the "hope Turns to his God, and sighs his soul away." religion pillows on his heart," and enduring no First, as to the execution of this passage. fleshly agonies, can serve no purpose under;Fancy-haunted" may do, but it is not a suffi- the sun. Men who have the misery of being ciently strong expression for the occasion. In unbelievers, are at all times to be pitied —nost every such picture as this, we demand appro- of all in their last hours; but though theirs be priate vigour in every word intended to be then dim melancholy, or dark despair, they ex vigorous, and which is important to the effect press neither the one state nor the other by of the whole. mutterings, curses, and hideous shrieks. Such "From his parch'd tongue no sainted murnmurs fell, a wretch there may sometimes be-like him No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell." "who died and made no sign;" but there is no How could they?-The line but one before is, more sense in seeking to brighten the character of the Christian by its contrast with that of "What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom." such an Atheist, than by contrast with a fiend This, then, is purely ridiculous, and we cannot to brighten the beauty of an angel. doubt that Mr. Montgomery will confess that it Finally, are the deathbeds of all good Chrisis so; but independently of that, he is describ- tians so calm as this-and do they all thus ing the death-bed of a person who, ex hypothesi, meekly could have no bright hopes, could breathe no sainted murmurs. He might as well, in a de- "Pant for where congenial spirits stray," scription of a negress, have told us that she a line, besides its other vice, most unscriptu. had no long, smooth, shining, yellow locks — ral? Congenial spirit is not the language of no light-blue eyes-no ruddy and rosy cheeks the New Testament. Alas! for poor weak -nor yet a bosom white as snow. The exe- human nature at the dying hour! Not even cution of the picture of the Christian is not can the Christian always then retain unquakmuch better-it is too much to use, in the ing trust in his Saviour! "This is the blood sense here given to them, no fewer than three that was shed for thee," are words whose mys. verbs —" pales" - "rolls"-" starts," in four tery quells not always nature's terror. The lines. Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is renewed in "The hope Religion pillows on the heart," vain —and he remembers, in doubt and disis not a good line, and it is a borrowed one. may, words that, if misunderstood, would apis not a good line, and it is a borrowed one.,, pal all the Christian world-" My God-my " When with a dying hand he waves adieu," God-why hast thou forsaken me?' Perhaps, conveys an unnatural image. Dying men do before the Faith, that has waxed dim and died not act so. Not thus are taken eternal fare- in his brain distracted by pain, and disease, wells. The motion in the sea-song was more and long sleeplessness, and a weight of wonatural- for he is a father who strove in vain to burst those silken ties, that winding all round and "She waed adie, and kss'dhabout his very soul and his very body, bound "Tereps so true," means nothing, nor is it him to those dear little ones, who are of the English. The grammar is not good of, same spirit and the same flesh, —we say, be. " He pants for where congenial spirits"- fore that Faith could, by the prayers of holy Neither is the word pants by any means the men, be restored and revivified, and the Chris. right one; and in such an awful crisis, admire tian, once more comforted by thinking on Him, rwho may the simile of the infant longing for who for all. human beings did take upon him its mother's breast, we never can in its present the rueful burden and agonies of the Cross — shape; while there is in the line, Death may have come for his prey, and left "Turns towhise Gode iad sigths hisse, athe chamber, of late so hushed and silent, at Turnsto his God, andsighs hissoul away;" full liberty to weep! Enough to know, that s prettiness we very much dislike-alter one though Christianity be divine, we are human, -word, and it would be voluptuous —nor do we — that the vessel is weak in which that glorihesitate to call the passage a puling one alto- i ous light may be enshrined-weak as the pot. SACRED POETRY. 201 ter's clay-and that though Christ died to save crowded in silence, as beneath the shado w of sinners, sinners who believe in Him, and there- a thunder-cloud, to see some one single human fore shall not perish, may yet lose hold of the being die-or swaying and swinging back belief when their understandings are darkened wards and forwards, and to and fro, to hail a by the shadow of death, and, like Peter losing victorious armament returning from the war faith and sinking in the sea, feel themselves of Liberty, with him who hath "taken the descending into some fearful void, and cease start of this majestic world" conspicuous from here to be, ere they find voice to call on the afar in front, encircled with music, and with name of the Lord-" Help, or I perish!" the standard of his unconquered country afloat What may be the nature of the thoughts and above his head. Thus, and by many thousand feelings of an Atheist, either when in great other potent influences for ever at work, and joy or great sorrow, full of life and the spirit from which the human heart can never make of life, or in mortal malady and environed its safe escape-let it ftlee to the uttermost parts with the toils of death, it passes the power of of the earth, to the loneliest of the multitude our imagination even dimly to conceive; nor of the isles of the sea —are men, who vainly are we convinced that there ever was an utter dream that they are Atheists, forced to feel Atheist. The thought of a God will enter in, God. Nor happens this but rarely-nor are barred though the doors be, both of the under- such " angel-visits few and far between." As standing and the heart, and all the windows the most cruel have often, very often, thoughts supposed to be blocked up against the light. tender as dew, so have the most dark often, The soul, blind and deaf as it may often be, very often, thoughts bright as day. The sun's cannot always resist the intimations all life golden finger writes the name of God on the long, day and night, forced upon it from the clouds, rising or setting, and the Atheist, falseouter world; its very necessities, nobler far ly so called, starts in wonder and in delight, than those of the body, even when most de- which his soul, because it is immortal, cannot graded, importunate when denied their manna, resist, to behold that Bible suddenly opened are to it oftentimes a silent or a loud revela- before his eves on the sky. Or some old, tion. Then, not to feel and think as other decrepit, grayhaired crone, holds out her shribeings do with "discourse of reason," is most veiled hand, with dim eyes patiently fixed on hard and difficult indeed, even for a short time, his, silently asking charity-silently, but in the and on occasions of very inferior moment. holy name of God; and the Atheist, taken unBeing men, we are carried away, willing or awares, at the very core of his heart bids " God unwilling, and often unconsciously, by the bless her," as he relieves her uncomplaining great common instinct; we keep sailing with miseries. the tide of humanity, whether in flow or ebb- If then Atheists do exist, and if their deathfierce as demons and the sons of perdition, if beds may be described for the awful or melanthat be the temper of the congregating hour- choly instruction of their fellow-men, let them mild and meek as Pity, or the new-born babe, be such Atheists as those whom, let us not when the afflatus of some divine sympathy hesitate to say it, we may blamelessly love has breathed through the multitude, nor one with a troubled affection; for our Faith may creature escaped its influence, like a spring- not have preserved us from sins from which day that steals through a murmuring forest, till they are free-and we may give even to many not a single tree, even in the darkest nook, is of the qualities of their most imperfect and without some touch of the season's sunshine. unhappy characters almost the name of virtues. Think, then, of one who would fain be an No curses on their death-beds will they be Atheist, conversing with the " sound, healthy heard to utter. No black scowlings-no horrid children of the God of heaven!" To this rea- gnashing of teeth-no hideous shriekings will son, which is his solitary pride, arguments there appal the loving ones who watch and might in vain be addressed, for he exults in weep by the side of him who is dying disconbeing "an Intellectual All in All," and is a solate. He will hope, and he will fear, now bold-browed sophist to daunt even the eyes of that there is a God indeed everywhere present Truth-eyes which can indeed " outstare the -visible now in the tears that fall, audible now eagle" when their ken is directed to heaven, in the sighs that breathe for his sake-in the but which are turned away in aversion from still small voice. That Being forgets not those the human countenance that would dare to by whom he has been forgotten; least of all, deny God. Appeal not to the intellect of such the poor " Fool who has said in his heart there a man, but to his heart; and let not even that is no God," and who knows at last that a God appeal be conveyed in any fixed form of words there is, not always in terror and trembling, -but let it be an appeal of the smiles and tears but as often perhaps in the assurance of forof affectionate and loving lips and eyes —of giveness, which undeserved by the best of the common joys and common griefs, whose con- good, may not be withheld even from the worst tagion is often felt, beyond prevention or cure, of the bad, if the thought of a God and a Sa. where two or three are gathered together- viour pass but for a moment through the dark. among families thinly sprinkled over the wil- ness of the departing spirit —like a dove shoot. derness, where, on God's own day, they repair ing swiftly, with its fair plumage, through the o God's own house, a lowly building on the deep but calm darkness that follows the sub. brae, which the Crea or of suns and sYstems sided storm. despiseth not, nor yet the beatings of the few So, too, with respect to Deists. Of untle contrite hearts therein assembled to worship lievers in Christianity there are many kinds- him.-in the cathedral's "long-drawn aisles the reckless, the ignorant, the callous, the con and fretted vaults" —in mighty multitudes all firmed, the melancholy, the doubting, the de 202 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. spairing-the good. At their death-beds, too, down or straw-stretched, a-ready a skeleton, may the Christian poet, in imagination, take and gnashing-may it be in senselessness, for nis stand-and there may he even hear otherwise what pangs are these!-gnashing his " The still sad music of humanity, teeth, within lips once so eloquent, now white Not harsh nor grating, but of airplest power with foam and slaver; and the whole mouth, To soften and subdue!" of yore so musical, grinning ghastly, like the Oftener all the sounds and sights there will fleshless face of fear-painted death! Is that be full of most rueful anguish; and that an- Voltaire 1 He who, with wit, thought to shear guish will groan in the poet's lays when his the Son of God of all his beams-with wit, to human heart, relieved from its load of painful loosen the dreadful fastenings of the Cross?sympathies, shall long afterwards be inspired with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, with the pity of poetry, and sing in elegies, while the blood and water came from the wound sublime in their pathos, the sore sufferings and in his blessed side? —with wit to drive away the dim distress that clouded and tore the dying those Shadows of Angels, that were said to spirit, longing, but all unable-profound though have rolled off the stone from the mouth of the its longings be-as life's daylight is about to sepulchre of the resurrection?-with wit, to close upon that awful gloaming, and the night deride the ineffable glory of transfigured Godof death to descend in oblivion-to believe in head on the Mount, and the sweet and solemn the Redeemer. semblance of the Man Jesus in the garden?Why then turn but to such death-bed, if in- with wit, to darken all the decrees of Provideed religion, and not superstition, described dence?-and with wit, that scene-as that of Voltaire? Or even "To shut the gates of Mercy on mankind!" Rousseau, whose dying eyes sought, in the last Nor yet will the Christian poet long dwell in passion, the sight of the green earth, and the his religious strains, though awhile he may blue skies, and the sun shining so brightly, linger there, "and from his eyelids wipe the when all within the brain of his worshipper tears that sacred pity hath engendered," beside was fast growing dimmer and more dim-when the dying couch of Jean Jaques Rousseau-a all the unsatisfied spirit, that scarcely hoped a couch of turf beneath trees-for he was ever a future life, knew not how it could ever take lover of Nature, though he loved all things farewell of the present with tenderness enough, living or dead as madmen love. His soul, and enough of yearning and craving after its while most spiritual, was sensual still, and disappearing beauty, and when as if the whole with tendrils of flesh and blood embracedearth were at that moment beloved even as his even as it did embrace the balm-breathing form small peculiar birthplace — of voluptuous woman-the very phantoms of "Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos." his most etherealized imagination. Vice stained all his virtues-as roses are seen, in some The Christian poet, in his humane wisdom, certain soils, and beneath some certain skies, will, for instruction's sake of his fellow-men, always to be blighted, and their fairest petals and for the discovery and the revealment of to bear on them something like blots of blood. ever-sacred truth, keep aloof from such death- Over the surface of the mirror of his mind, beds as these, or take his awful stand beside which reflected so much of the imagery of man them to drop the perplexed and pensive tear. and nature, there was still, here and there, on For we know not what it is that we either hear the centre or round the edges, rust-spots, that or see; and holy Conscience, hearing through gave back no image, and marred the propora confused sound, and seeing through an ob- tions of the beauty and the grandeur that yet scure light, fears to condemn, when perhaps shone over the rest of the circle set in the rich she ought only to pity —to judge another, whe carved gold. His disturbed, and distracted, and perhaps it is her duty but to use that inward defeated friendships, that all vanished in insane eye for her own delinquencies. He, then, who suspicions, and seemed to leave his soul as designs to benefit his kind by strains of high well satisfied in its fierce or gloomy void, as instruction, will turn from the death-bed of when it was filled with airy and glittering vithe famous Wit, whose brilliant fancy hath sions, are all gone for evernow. Those many waxed dim as that of the clown —whose ma- thoughts and feelings-so melancholy, yet still lignant heart is quaking beneath the Power fair, and lovely, and beautiful-which, like it had so long derided, with terrors over which bright birds encaged, with ruffled and drooping his hated Christian triumphs-and whose in- wings, once so apt to soar, and their music tellect, once so perspicacious that it could see mute, that used to make the wide woods to ring, but too well the motes that are in the sun, the were confined within the wires of his jealous specks and stains that are on the flowing robe heart-have now all flown away, and are at of nature herself-prone, in miserable contra- rest! Who sits beside the wild and wondrous diction to its better being, to turn them as genius, whose ravings entranced the world? proofs against the power and goodness of the who wipes the death-sweat from that capacious Holy One who inhabiteth eternity-is now pal- forehead, once filled with such a multitude of:;y-stricken as that of an idiot, and knows not disordered but aspiring fancies Who, that even the sound of the name of its once vain his beloved air of heaven may kiss and cool it and proud possessor —when crowded theatres for the last time, lays open the covering that had risen up with one rustle to honour, and hides the marble sallowness of Rousseau's the.:, with deafening acclamaticns, sin-and-sorrow-haunted breast One of Na" Raised a mortal to the skies!" ture's least gifted children-to whose eyes nor There he is-it matters not now whether on i earth nor heaven ever beamed with beauty CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 203 lo whose heart were known but the meanest No great moral or religious lesson can well charities of nature; yet mean as they were, be drawn, or say rather so well, from such how much better in such an hour, than all his anomalous death-beds, as from those of corn imaginings most magnificent! For had he not mon unbelievers. To show, in all its divine suffered his own offspring to pass away from power, the blessedness of the Christian's faith, his eyes, even like the wood-shadows, only less it must be compared, rather than contrasted, beloved and less regretted 1 And in the very with the faith of the best and wisest of Deists. midst of the prodigality of love and passion, The ascendency of the heavenly over the which he had poured outover the creations of his earthly will then be apparent-as apparent as ever-distempered fancy, let his living children, the superior lustre of a star to that of a lighthis own flesh and blood, disappear as paupers ed-up window in the night. For above all:n a chance-governed world?-A world in other things in which the Christian is ha;,pier which neither parental nor filial love were than the Deist-with the latter, the life beyontr more than the names of nonentities-Father, the grave is but a dark hope-to the former, Son, Daughter, Child, but empty syllables, "immortality has been brought to light by the which philosophy heeded not-or rather loved Gospel." That difference embraces the whole them in their emptiness, but despised, hated, spirit. It may be less felt-less seen when or feared them, when for a moment they life is quick and strong: for this earth alone seemed pregnant with a meaning from heaven, has much and many things to embrace and and each in its holy utterance signifying enchain our being —but in death the difference God! is as between night and day. CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. FIRST CANTICLE. in the most perfect harmony and order. Neo. phytes now range for themselves, according to THE present Age, which, after all, is a very their capacities and opportunities, the fields, pretty and pleasant one, is feelingly alive and waor;ds, rivers, lakes, and seas; and proficients, widely awake to the manifold delights and ad- no longer confining themselves to mere vantages with which the study of Natural nomenclature, enrich their works with anecHistory swarms, and especially that branch of dotes and traits of character, which, without it which unfolds the character and habits, phy- departure from truth, have imbued bird-biosical, moral, and intellectual, of those most in- graphy with the double charm of reality and teresting and admirable creatures-Birds. It romance. is familiar not only with the shape and colour Compare the intensity and truth of any naof beak, bill, claw, talon, and plume, but with tural knowledge insensibly acquired by obthe purposes for which they are designed, and servation in very early youth, with that corwith the instincts which guide their use in the responding to it picked up in later life from beautifil economy of all-gracious Nature. We books! In fact, the habit of distinguishing remember the time when the very word Orni- between things as different, or of similar forms, thology would have required interpretation in colours, and characters, formed in infancy, and mixed company; when a naturalist was looked childhood, and boyhood, in a free intercourse on as a sort of out-of-the-way but amiable and communion with Nature, while we are r:aonster. Now, one seldom meets with man, merely seeking and finding the divine joy of woman, or child, who does not know a hawk novelty and beauty, perpetually occurring be. from a handsaw, or even, to adopt the more fore our eyes in all her haunts, may be made learned reading, from a heron-shewi a black the foundation of an accuracy of judgment of swan is no longer erroneously considered a inappreciable value as an intellectual erdowrara avis any more than a black sheep; while ment. So entirely is this true, that we know the Glasgow Gander himself, no longer apocry- many observant persons, that is, observant in phal, has taken his place in the national creed, all things intimately related with their own belief in his existence being merely blended pursuits, and with the experience of their own with wonder at his magnitude, and some sur- early education, who, with all the pains they prise perhaps among the scientific, that he could take in after-life, have never been able should. be as yet the sole specimen of that to distinguish by name, when they saw them, enormous Anser. above half-a-dozen, if so many, of our British The chief cause of this advancement of singing-birds; while as to knowing them by knowledge in one of its most delightful depart- their song, that is wholly beyond the reach of ments, has been the gradual extension of its their uninstructed ear, and a shilfa chants to study from stale books written by men, to that them like a yellow yoldrin. On seeing a smatll book ever fresh from the hand of God. And bird peeping out of a hole in the eaves, and the second-another yet the same-has been especially on hearing himchatter,they shrewdly the gradual change wrought by a philosophical suspect him to be a sparrow, though it does spirit in the observation, delineation, and ar- not by any means follow that their suspicions rangement of the facts and laws with which are always verified; and though, when sitting the science is conversant, and which it exhibits with nher white breast so lovely out of the 204 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTI.'auld clay bigging" in the window-corner, he silk, and the captive remains for ever happy cannot mistake Mistress Swallow, yet when in its bright prison-house. On this principle, flitting in fly-search over the stream, and ever it is indeed surprising at how early an age and anon dipping her wing-tips in the lucid children can be instructed in the most interest. coolness,'tis an equal chance that he misnames ing parts of natural history-ay, even a babs her Miss Marten. in arms. Remember Coleridge's beautiful lip, What constant caution is necessary during to the Nightingale:-'he naturalist's perusal even of the very best "That strain again! books! From the very best we can only ob- Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe, tain knowledge at second-hand, and this, like Who, capable of no articulate sound, a story circulated among village gossips, is Mars all things wplaithce his imitative isear, more apt to gain in falsehood than in truth, as His little hand, the small forefinger up, it passes from one to another; but in field And bid us listen! and Ideem it wise study we go at once to the fountain-head, and To make him Jature's child." obtain our facts pure and unalloyed by the How we come to I ire the Birds of Bewick, theories and opinions of previous observers. and White, and the two Wilsons, and Montaga, hence it is that the utility of books becomes and Mudie, and Knapp, and Selby, and Swain. obvious. You witness with your own eyes son, and Audubon, and many others familiar some puzzling, perplexing, strange, and un- with their haunts and habits, their affections accountable-fact; twenty different statements arid their passions, till we feel that they are of it have been given by twenty different orni- indeed our fellow-creatures, and part of one thologists; you consult them all, and getting a wise and wonderful system! If there be serhint from one, and a hint from another, here a mons in stones, what think ye of the hymns glimmer of light to be followed, and there a and psalms, matin and vesper, of the lark, who gloom of darkness to be avoided-why, who at heaven's gate sings-of the wren, who pipes knows but that in the end you do yourself her thanksgivings as the slant sunbeamshoots solve the mystery, and absolutely become not athwart the mossy portal of cave, in whose only happy but illustrious? People sitting in fretted roof she builds her nest above the water. their own parlour with their feet on the fender, fall! In cave-roof? Yea-we have seen it so or in the sanctum of some museum, staring at -just beneath the cornice. But most frequent. stuffed specimens, imagine themselves natural- ly we have detected her procreant cradle on ists; and in their presumptuous and insolent old mossy stump, mouldering walls or living ignorance, which is often total, scorn the wis- rock-sometimes in cleft of yew-tree or hawdom of the wanderers of the woods, who have thorn —for hang the globe with its imperceptifor many studious and solitary years been ble orifice in the sunshine or the storm, and making themselves familiar with all the beauti- St. Catharine sits within heedless of the outer ful mysteries of instinctive life. Take two world, counting her beads with her sensitive boys, and set them respectively to pursue the breast that broods in bliss over the priceless two plans of study. How puzzled and per- pearls. plexed will be the one who pores over the Ay, the men we have named, and many "interminable terms" of a system in books, other blameless idolaters of Nature, have worhaving meanwhile no access to, or communion shipped her in a truly religious spirit, and have with nature! The poor wretch is to be pitied taught us their religion. All our great poets -nor is he any thing else than a slave. But have loved the Minnesingers of the woodsthe young naturalist who takes his first lessons Thomson, and Cowper, and Wordsworth, as in the fields, observing the unrivalled scene dearly as Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton, which creation everywhere displays, is per- From the inarticulate language of the groves, petually studying in the power of delight and they have inhaled the enthusiasm that inspired wonder, and laying up knowledge which can some of the finest of their own immortal be derived from no other source. The rich strains. "Lonely wanderer of Nature" must boy is to be envied, nor is he any thing else every poet be-and though often self-wrapt his than a king. The one sits bewildered among wanderings through a spiritual world of his words, the other walks enlightened among own, yet as some fair flower silently asks his things; the one has not even the shadow, eye to look on it, some glad bird his ear solicits the other more than the substance-the very with a song, how intense is then his percep essence and life of knowledge; and at twelve tion-his emotion how profound-while his years old he may be a better naturalist than spirit is thus appealed to, through all its hu. ever the mere bookworm will be, were he to man sensibilities, by the beauty and the joy outlive old Tommy Balmer. perpetual even in the most solitary places! In education-late or early —for heaven's Our moral being owes deep obligation to all sake let us never separate things and words! who assist us to study nature aright; for beThey are married in nature; and- what God lieve us, it is high and rare knowledge to know hath put together let no man put asunder-'tis and to have the true and full use of our eyes. a fatal divorce. Without things, words ac- Millions go to the grave in old age without ever cumulated by misery in the memory, had far having learned it; they were just beginning, better die than drag out an useless existence in perhaps, to acquire it, when they sighed to think the dark; without words, their stay and sup- that "they who look out of the windows were port, things unaccountably disappear out of darkened;" and that while they had been in. the storehouse, and may be for ever lost. But structed how to look, sad shadows had fallen bind a thing with a word, a strange link, on the whole face cf Nature, and that the time stronger than any steel, and softer than any for those intuitions was gone for ever. But the CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 205 science of seeing has now found favour in our builders, the first spring of their full-fledged eyes; and blessings be with them who can dis- lives; with no other tools but a bill, unless we cover, discern, and describe the least as the count their claws, which however seem, and greatest of nature's works-who can see as that only in some kinds, to be used but in distinctly the finger of God in the lustre of the carrying materials. With their breasts and humming-bird murmuring round a rose-bush, whole bodies, indeed, most of them round off as in that of the star of Jove shining sole in the soft insides of their procreant cradles, till heaven. they fit each brooding bunch of feathers to a Take up now almost any book you may on hair's-breadth, as it sits close and low on eggs any branch of Natural History, and instead of or eyeless young, a leetle higher raised up above the endless, dry details of imaginary systems their gaping babies, as they wax from downy and classifications, in which the ludicrous lit- infancy into plumier childhood, which they do tlenesses of man's vain ingenuity used to be how swiftly, and how soon have they flown! set up as a sort of symbolical scheme of reve- You look some sunny morning into the bush, ation of the sublime varieties of the inferior- and the abode in which they seemed so cozey as we choose to call it-creation of God, you the day before is utterly forsaken by the joyfind high attempts in an humble spirit rather to ous ingrates —now feebly fluttering in the narillustrate tendencies and uses, and harmonies, row grove, to them a wide world filled with snd order, and design. With some glorious delight and wonder-to be thought of never exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the day more. With all the various materials used by gone by showed us a science that was but a them in building their different domiciles, the skeleton-little but dry bones; with some in- Bishop is as familiar as with the sole material glorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of of his own wig-though, by the by, last time the day that is now, have been desirous to show we had the pleasure of seeing and sitting by us a living, breathing, and moving body-to him, he wore his own hair —"but that not explain, as far as they might, its mechanism much;" for, like our own, his sconce was and its spirit. Ere another century elapse, bald, and, like it, showed the organ of conhow familiar may men be with all the families structiveness as fully developed as Christopher of the flowers of the field, and the birds of the or a Chaffinch. He is perfectly well acquaintair, with all the interdependencies of their cha- ed, too, with all the diversities of their modes racters and their kindreds, perhaps even with of building —their orders of architecture-and the mystery of that instinct which is now seen eke with all those of situation chosen by the working wonders, not only beyond the power kinds-whether seemingly simple, in cunning of reason to comprehend, but of imagination to that deceives by a show of carelessness and conceive! heedlessness of notice, or with craft of concealHow deeply enshrouded are felt to be the ment that baffles the most searching eyemysteries of nature, when, thousands of years hanging their beloved secret in gloom not imafter Aristotle, we hear Audubon confess his pervious to sun and air-or, trustful in man's utter ignorance of what migrations and non- love of his own home, affixing the nest beneath migrations mean-that'tis hard to understand the eaves, or in the flowers of the lattice, kept why such general laws as these should be- shut for their sakes, or half-opened by fair though their benign operation is beautifully hands of virgins whose eyes gladden with seen in the happiness provided alike for all- heartborn brightness as each morning they whether they reside in their own comparatively mark the growing beauty of the brood, till they small localities, nor ever wish to leave them- smile to see one almost as large as its parents or at stated seasons instinctively fly away over sitting on the rim of the nest, when all at once thousands of miles, to drop down and settle for it hops over, and, as it flutters away like a leaf, a while on some spot adapted to their necessi- seems surprised that it can fly! ties, of which they had prescience afar off, Yet there are still a few wretched quacks though seemingly wafted thither like leaves among us whom we may some day perhaps upon the wind! Verily, as great a mystery is drive down into the dirt. There are idiots that Natural Religion by the theist studied in who will not even suffer sheep, co-ws, horses, woods and on mountains and by sea-shores, as and dogs, to escape the disgusting perversions that Revelation which philosophers will not of their anile anecdotage-who, by all manner believe because they do not understand-" the of drivelling lies, libel even the common doblinded bigot's scorn" deriding man's highest mestic fowl, and impair the reputation of the and holiest happiness-Faith! bantam. Newspapers are sometimes so in We must not now go a bird-nesting, but the fested by the trivial trash, that in the nostrils first time we do we shall put Bishop Mant's of a naturalist they smell on the breakfast "Months" in our pocket. The good Bishop- table like rotten eggs; and there are absolutely who must have been an indefatigable bird- volumes of the slaver bound in linen, and letnester in his bovhood-though we answer for tered with the names of the expectorators on him that he never stole but one egg out of four, the outside, resembling annuals-we almos' and left undisturbed the callow young-treats fear with prints. In such hands, the ass loses of those beauteous and wondrous structures in his natural attributes, and takes the character a style that might make Professor Rennie jea- of his owner; and as the anecdote-monger is lous, who has written like a Vitruvius on the seen astride on his cuddy, you wonder what architecture of birds. He expatiates with un- may be the meaning of the apparition, for we controlled delight on the unwearied activity of defy you to distinguish the one donk from the.he architects, who, without any apprenticeship other, the rider from the ridden, except by the to the trade, are journeymen, nay, master- more inexpressive countenance of the one, an,! Z0f6 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. the ears of the other in uncomputed longitude with awe, solemn but sweet, by the incompre. dangling or erect. hensible, yet in part comprehended, magnifiWe can bear this libellous gossip least pa- cence of Truth. The writings of such men tiently of all with birds. If a ninny have some are the gospel of nature-and if e apocrypha stories about a wonderful goose, let him out be bound up along with it-'tis well; for in with them, and then waddle away with his fat it, too, there is felt to be inspiration-and friend into the stackyard-where they may when, in good time, purified from error, the take sweet counsel together in the "fause- leaves all make but one Bible. house." Let him, with open mouth and grozet Hark to the loud, clear, mellow, bold song eyes, say what he chooses of" Pretty Poll," as of the BLACKBIRD. There he flits along upon she clings in her cage, by beak or claws, to a strong wing, with his yellow bill visible in stick or wire, and in her naughty vocabulary distance, and disappears in the silent wood. let him hear the impassioned eloquence of an Not long silent. It is a spring-day in our Aspasia inspiring a Pericles. But, unless his imagination-his clay-wall nest holds his mate crowh itch for the Crutch, let him spare the at the foot of the Silver-fir, and he is now linnet on the briery bush among the broom- perched on its pinnacle. That thrilling hymn the laverock on the dewy braird or in the rosy will go vibrating down the stem till it reaches cloud-the swan on her shadow-the eagle in her brooding breast. The whole vernal air is his eyrie, in the sun, or at sea. filled with the murmur anc the glitter of inThe great ornithologists and the true are the sects; but the blackbird's song is over all authorities that are constantly correcting those other symptoms of love and life, and seems to errors of popular opinion about the fowls of call upon the leaves to unfold into happiness. the air, which in every country, contrary to It is on that one Tree-top, conspicuous among the evidence of the senses, and in spite of ob- many thousands on the fine breast of woodservations that may be familiar to all, gain here and there, a pine mingling not unmeetly credence with the weak and ignorant, and in with the prevailing oak-that the forest-min. process of time compose even a sort of system strel sits in his inspirations. The rock above of the vilest superstition. It would be a very is one which we have often climbed. There curious inquiry to trace the operation of the lies the glorious Loch and all its islands-one causes that, in different lands, have produced dearer than the rest to eye and imagination, with respect to birds national prejudices of with its old Religious House —year after year admiration or contempt, love or even hatred; crumbling away unheeded into more entire and in doing so, we should have to open up ruin. Far away, a sea of mountains, with all some strange views of the influence of ima- their billowing summits distinct in the sky, and gination on the head and heart. It may be now uncertain and changeful as the clouds. remarked that an excuse will be generally Yonder Castle stands well on the peninsula found for such fallacies in the very sources among the trees which the herons inhabit. from which they spring; but no excuse can Those coppice-woods on the other shore, stealbe found-on the contrary, in every sentence ing up to the heathery rocks and sprinkled the fool scribbles, a glaring argument is shown birches, are the haunts of the roe. That great in favour of his being put to a lingering and glen, that stretches sullenly away into the discruel death-the fool -who keeps gossiping tant darkness, has been for ages the birth and every week in the year, penny-a-line-wise, the death-place of the red-deer. The cry of with a gawky face and a mawkish mind, an Eagle! There he hangs poised in the sunabout God's creatures to whom reason has light, and now he flies off towards the sea. been denied, but instinct given, in order that But again the song of our BLACKBIRD rises they may be happy on moor and mountain, in like "a steam of rich distilled perfumes," and the hedge-roots and on the tops of heaven- our heart comes back to him upon the pinnakissing trees-by the side of rills whose sweet cle of his own Home-tree. The. source of low voice gives no echo in the wild, and on song is yet in the happy creature's heart-but the hollow thunder of seas on which they sit the song itself has subsided, like a rivulet that in safety around the sinking ship, or from all has been rejoicing in a sudden shower among her shrieks flee away to some island and are the hills; the bird drops down.among the at rest. balmy branches, and the other faint songs Turn to the true Ornithologist, and how which that bold anthem had drowned, are beautiful, each in the adaptation of its own heard at a distance, and seem to encroach structure to its own life, every bird that walks every moment on the silence. the land, wades the water, or skims the air! You say you greatly prefer the song of the In his pages, pictured by pen or pencil, all is TIItavsa. Pray, why set such delightful singwondrous-as nature ever is to ers by the ears? We dislike the habit that "1 The quiet eye very many people have of trying every thing That broods and sleeps on its own heart," by a scale. Nothing seems to them to be good positively-only relatively. Now, it is even while gazing on the inferior creatures true wisdom to be charmed with what is charmof that creation to which we belong, and are ing, to live in it for the time being, and compare linked in being's mysterious chain-till our the emotion with no former emotion whateverbreath, like theirs, expire. All is wondrous unless it be unconsciously in the working of -but nothing monstrous in his delineations- an imagination set agoing by delight. Al. fbr the rore we know of nature in her infinite though, therefore, we cannot say that we prevarieties, her laws reveal themselves to us in fer the Thrush to the Blackbird, yet we agree more majestic simplicity, and we are inspired with vou in thinking him a most delightful CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 207 bird. Where a Thrush is, we defy you to an- thine, thou fairest region of nature! happier ticipate his song in the morning. He is in- than when we rippled in our pinnace through deed an early riser. By the way, Chanticleer the billowy moonlight-than when we sat alone is far from being so. You hear him crowing on the mountain within the thunder-cloud. away from shortly after midnight, and, in your Why do the songs of the Blackbird and simplicity, may suppose him to be up and Thrush make us think of the songless SToa. strutting about the premises. Far from it; — LIGo It matters not. We do think of him, and he is at that very moment perched in his see him too-a loveable bird, and. his abode is polygamy, between two of his fattest wives. majestic. What an object of won(ler and aweis The sultan will perhaps not stir a foot for anoldCastletoaboyishimagination! Itsheight several hours to come; while all the time the how dreadful! up to whose mouldering edges Thrush, having long ago rubbed his eyes, is his fear carries him, and hangs him over the on his topmast twig, broad awake, and charm- battlements! Whatbeautyinthose unapproaching the ear of dawn with his beautiful vocifera- able wall-flowers, that cast a brightness on the tion. During mid-day he disappears, and is old brown stones of the edifice, and make the mute; but again, at dewy even, as at dewy horror pleasing? That sound so far below, is morn, he pours his pipe like a prodigal, nor the sound of a stream the eye cannot reachceases sometimes when night has brought the of a waterfall echoing for ever among the black moon and stars. rocks and pools. The school-boy knows but Best beloved, and most beautiful of all little of the history of the old Castle-but that Thrushes that ever broke from the blue-spot- little is of war, and witchcraft, and imprisonted shell!-thou who, for five springs, hast ment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer "hung thy procreant cradle" among the roses of antiquity appals him-he visits the ruin and honeysuckles, and ivy, and clematis that only with a companion, and at mid-day. There embower in bloom the lattice of our Cottage- and then it was that we first saw a Starling. study-how farest thou now in the snow? Con- We heard something wild and wonderful in sider the whole place as your own, my dear their harsh scream, as they sat upon the edge bird; and remember, that when the gardener's of the battlements, or flew out of the chinks children sprinkle food for you and yours all and crannies. There were Martens too, sc along your favourite haunts, that it is done by different in their looks from the pretty Houseour orders. And when all the earth is green Swallows-Jack-daws clamouring afresh at again, and all the sky blue, you will welcome every time we waved our caps, or vainly us to our rural domicile, with light feet run- slung a pebble towards their nests-and one ning before us among the winter leaves, and grove of elms, to whose top, much lower than then skim away to your new nest in the old the castle, came, ever and anon, some noiseless spot, then about to be somewhat more cheerful Heron from the Muirs. in the undisturbing din of the human life with- Ruins! Among all the external objects of in the flowery walls. imagination, surely they are most affecting! Nay-how can we forget what is for ever Some sumptuous edifice of a former age, still before our eyes! Blessed be Thou-on thy standing in its undecayed strength, has unshadowy bed, belonging equally to earth and doubtedly a great command over us, from the heaven-O Isle! who art called the Beautiful! ages that have flowed over it; but the mouland who of thyself canst malre all the Lake dering edifice which Nature has begun to win one floating Paradise-even were her shore- to herself, and to dissolve into her own bosom, llills silvan no more-groveless the bases of all is far more touching to the heart, and more her remoter mountains-effaced that loveliest awakening to the spirit. It is beautiful in its splendour, sun-painted on their sky-piercing decay-not merely because green leaves, and cliffs. And can it be that we have forsaken wild flowers, and creeping mosses soften its Thee! Fairy-land and Love-land of our youth! rugged frowns, but because they have sown Hath imagination left our brain, and passion themselves on the decay of greatness; they are our heart, so that we can bear banishment monitors to our fancy, like the flowers on a from Thee and yet endure life! Such loss not grave, of the untroubled rest of the dead. Batyet is ours-witness these gushing tears. But tlements riven by the hand of time, and cloisDuty, " stern daughter of the voice of God," tered arches reft and rent, speak to us of the dooms us to breathe our morning and evening warfare and of the piety of our ancestors, of orisons far from hearing and sight of Thee, the pride of their might, and the consolations whose music and whose light continue glad- of their sorrow: they revive dim shadows of dening other ears and other eyes-as if ours departed life, evoked from the land of forgethad there never listened-and never gazed. fulness; but they touch us more deeply when As if thy worshipper-and sun! moon! and the brightness which the sun flings on the stars! he asks ye if he loved not you and your broken arches, and the warbling of birds that images-as if thy worshipper-O Windermere! are nestled in the chambers of princes, and the were-dead! And does duty dispense no re- moaning of winds through the crevices of ward to them who sacrifice at her bidding what towers, round which the surges of war were was once the very soul of life? Yes! an ex- shattered and driven back, lay those phantoms ceeding great reward-ample as the heart's again to rest in their silent bed, and show us, desire-for contentment is born of obedience in the monuments of human life and power, — where no repinings are, the wings of thought the visible footsteps of Time and Oblivion are imped beyond the power of the eagle's coming on in their everlasting and irresistible plumes; and happy are we now-with the hu- career, to sweep down our perishable race, man smiles and voices we love even more than and to reduce all the forms of our momentary 208 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. being into the undistinguishable elements of visions are sublime-conscious even amongst their original nothing. saddest ruin of her own immortality. What is there below the skies like the place Higher and higher than ever rose the tower of mighty and departed cities? the vanishing of Belus, uplifted by ecstasy, soars the LARI, or vanished capitals of renowned empires? the lyrical poet of the sky. Listen, listen! and There is no other such desolation. The soli- the more remote the bird the louder seems his tudes of nature may be wild and drear, but hymn in heaven. He seems, in such altitude, they are not like the solitude from which hu- to have left the earth for ever, and to have forman glory is swept away. The overthrow or de- gotten his lowly nest. The primroses and the cay of mighty human power is, of all thoughts daisies, and all the sweet hill-flowers, must be that can enter the mind, the most overwhelm- unremembered in that lofty region of light. ing. The whole imagination is at once stirred But just as the Lark is lost-he and his song by the prostration of that, round which so together-as if his orisons had been accepted many high associations have been collected -both are seen and heard fondly wavering for so many ages. Beauty seems born but to earthwards, and in a little while he is walking perish, and its fragility is seen and felt to be with his graceful crest contented along the inherent in it by a law of its being. But pow- furrows of the brairded corn, or on the clover er gives stability, as it were, to human thought, lea that in man's memory has not felt the and we forget our own perishable nature in the ploughshare; or after a pause, in which he spectacle of some abiding and enduring great- seems dallying with a home-sick passion, ness. Our own little span of years-our own dropping down like one dead, beside his mate confined region of space-are lost in the en- in her shallow nest. durance and far-spread dominion of some Of all birds to whom is given dominion over mighty state, and we feel as if we partook of the air, the Lark alone lets loose the power its deep-set and triumphant strength. When, that is in his wings only-for the expression of therefore, a great and ancient empire falls into love and gratitude. The eagle sweeps in paspieces, or when fragments of its power are sion of hunger-poised in the sky his ken is heard rent asunder, like column after column searching for prey on sea or sward-his flight disparting from some noble edifice, in sad con- is ever animated by destruction. The dove viction, we feel as if all the cities of men were seems still to be escaping from something that built on foundations beneath which the earth- pursues-afraid of enemies even in the dangerquake sleeps. The same doom seems to be less solitudes where the old forests repose in imminent over all the other kingdoms that still primeval peace. The heron, high over housestand; and in the midst of such changes, and less moors, seems at dusk fearful in her ladecays, and overthrows-or as we read of them borious flight, and weariedly gathers her long of old-we look, under such emotions, on all wings on the tree-top, as if thankful that day power as foundationless, and in our wide im- is done, and night again ready with its rest. agination embrace empires covered only with "The blackening trains o' craws to their rethe ruins of their desolation. Yet such is the pose" is an image that affects the heart of pride of the human spirit, that it often uncon- " mortal man who liveth here by toil," through sciously, under the influence of such imagina- sympathy with creatures partaking with him a tion, strives to hide from itself the utter no- common lot. The swallow, for ever on the thingness of its mightiest works. And when wing, and wheeling fitfully before fancy's eyes all its glories are visibly crumbling into dust, in element adapted for perpetual pastime, is it creates some imaginary power to overthrow flying but to feed-for lack of insects prepares' the fabrics of human greatness —and thus at- to forsake the land of its nativity, and yearns tempts to derive a kind of mournful triumph for the blast to bear it across the sea. Thou even in its very fall. Thus, when nations have alone, 0 Lark! hast wings given thee that faded away in their sins and vices, rotten at thou mayest be perfectly happy-none other the heart and palsied in all their limbs, we bird but thou can at once soar and sing-and strive not to think of that sad internal decay, heavenward thou seemest to be borne, not but imagine some mighty power smiting em- more by those twinkling pinions than by the pires and cutting short the records of mortal ever-varying, ever-deepening melody effusing magnificence. Thus, Faith and Destiny are from thy heart. said in our imagination to lay our glories low. How imagination unifies! then most intenThus, even the calm and silent air of Oblivion sive when working with and in the heart. has been thought of as an unsparing Power. Who thinks, when profoundly listening with Time, too, though in moral sadness wisely his eyes shut to the warbling air, that there is called a shadow, has been clothed with terrific another lark in creation? The lark-sole as attributes, and the sweep of his scythe has the season-or the rainbow. We can fancy shorn the towery diadem of cities. Thus the he sings to charm our own particular ear-to mere sigh in which we expire, has been please us descends into silence-for our sakes changed into active power —and all the nations erects his crest as he walks confidingly near have with one voice called out "Death!" And our feet. Not till the dream-circle, of which while mankind have sunk, and fallen, and dis- ourselves are the centre, dissolves or subsides, appeared in the helplessness of their own mor- do the fairest sights and sweetest sounds in tal being, we have stirl spoken of powers ar- nature lose their relationship to us the beholder rayed against them-powers that are in good and hearer, and relapse into the common protruth only another name for their own weak- perty of all our kind. To self appertains the nesses. Thus imagination is for ever fighting whole sensuous as well as the whole spiritual against truth-and even when humbled, her world. Egoism is the creator of all beauty CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 209 aknd all bliss, of all hope and of all faith. Even very cloudy the song of some lark or other thus doth imagination unify Sabbath worship. was still warbling aloft, and made a part of our All our beloved Scotland is to the devout happiness. The creature could not have been breast. on that day one House of God. Each more joyful in the skies than we were on the congregation-however far apart-hears but greensward. We, too, had ourwings, andflew one hymn-sympathy with all is an all-com- through our holiday. Thou soul of glee! who prehensive self-and Christian love of our still leddest our flight in all our pastimes —rebrethren is evolved from the conviction that presentative child of Erin! —wildest of the we have ourselves a soul to be saved or lost. wild-brightest of the bright-boldest of the Yet, methinks, imagination loveth just as bold!-the lark-loved vales in their stillness well to pursue an opposite process, and to fur- were no home for thee. The green glens of nish food to the heart in separate picture after ocean, created by swelling and subsiding separate picture, one and all imbued not with storms, or by calms around thy ship transthe same but congenial sentiment, and there- formed into immeasurable plains, they filled fore succeeding one another at her will, be her thy fancy with images dominant over the mewill intimated by mild bidding or imperial mories of the steadfast earth. The petterel command. In such mood imagination, in still and the halcyon were the birds the sailor series, visions a thousand parish-kirks, each loved, and he forgot the songs of the inland with its own characteristic localities, Sabbath- woods -in the moanings that haunt the very sanctified; distributes the beauty of that hal- heart of the tumultuous sea. Of that ship nolowed day in allotments all over the happy thing was ever known but that she perished. land-so that in one Sabbath there are a thou- He, too, the grave and thoughtful English boy, sand Sabbaths. whose exquisite scholarship we all so enthusiKeep caroling, then, altogether, ye countless astically admired, without one single particle Larks, till heaven is one hymn! Imagination of hopeless envy-and who accompanied us thinks she sees each particular field that sends on all our wildest expeditions, rather from afup its own singer to the sky-that the spot of fection to his playmates than any love of their each particular nest. And of the many hearts sports-he who, timid and unadventurous as all over loveliest Scotland in the sweet vernal he seemed to be, yet rescued little Marian of season a-listening your lays, she is with the the Brae from a drowning death when so many quiet beatings of the happy, with the tumult in grown-up men stood aloof in selfish fearthem that would wish to break! The little gone, too, for ever art thou, our beloved Edmaiden by the well in the brae-side above the ward Harrington! and, after a few brilliant cottage, with the Bible on her knees, left in years in the oriental clime, tendance of an infant —the palsied crone — "on Hoogley's banks afar, placed safely in the sunshine till after service Looks down on thy lone tomb the Evening Star." -the sickly student meditating in the shade, and somewhat sadly thinking that these spring How genius shone o'er thy fine features, yet flowers are the last his eyes may see-lovers how pale thou ever wast! thou who sat'st then walking together on the Sabbath before their by the Sailor's side, and listened to his sallies marriage to the house of God —life-wearied with a mournful smile-friend! dearest to our wanderers without a home-remorseful nien soul! loving us far better than we deserved; touched by the innocent happiness they cannot for though faultless thou, yet tolerant of all our help hearing in heaven-the skeptic-the un- frailties —and in those days of hope from thy believer-the atheist to whom " hope comes not lips how elevating was praise! Yet how selthat comes to all." What different meanings dom do we think of thee! For months-years to such different auditors hath the same music -not at all-not once-sometimes not even at the same moment filling the same sky! when by some chance we hear your name! Does the Lark ever sing in winter? Ay, It meets our eyes written on books that once sometimes January is visited with a May-day belonged to you and that you gave us-and hour; and in the genial glimpse, though the yet of yourself it recalls no image. Yet we earth be yet barer than the sky, the Lark, mute sank down to the floor on hearing thou wast for months, feels called on by the sun to sing, dead-ungrateful to thy memory for many not so near to heaven's gate, and a shorter than years we were not-but it faded away till we vernal lyric, or during that sweetest season forgot thee utterly, except when sleep showed when neither he nor you can say whether it is thy grave! summer or but spring. Unmated yet, nor of Methinks we hear the song of the GRAt mate solicitous, in pure joy of heart he cannot LINTIE, the darling bird of Scotland. None refrain from ascent and song; but the snow- other is more tenderly sung of in our old ballads. clouds look cold, and ere he has mounted as When the simple and fervent love-poets of our high again as the church-spire, the aimless pastoral times first applied to the maiden ths impulse dies, and he comes wavering down words, " my bonnie burdie," they must have silently to the yet unprimrosed brae. been thinking of the Gray Lintie-its plumage In our boyish days, we never felt that the ungaudy and soberly pure-its shape elegant Spring had really come till the clear-singing yet unobtrusive-and its song various without Lark went careering before our gladdened eyes any effort-now rich, gay, sprightly, but neve away up to heaven. Then all the earth wore rude nor riotous-now tender, almost mourna vernal look, and the ringing sky said, " win- ful, but never gloomy or desponding. So, too, ter is over and gone." As we roamed, on a are all its habits, endearing and delightful. It. holiday, over the wide pastoral moors, to angle is social, yet not averse to solitude, singing in the lochs and pools, unless the day were often in groups, and as often lkv itself in the; 14 210 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. furze brake, or on the briery knoll. You often ignorant of deceit or dishonour, and with a find the lintie's nest in the most solitary places heart open to the eyes of all as to the gates of -in some small self-sown clump of trees by heaven? What music was in that stream! the brink of a wild hill-stream, or on the tan- Could "Sabean odours from the spicy shores gled edge of a forest; and just as often you of Araby the Blest" so penetrate our soul, as find it in the hedgerow of the cottage garden that breath, balmier than the broom on which or in a bower within, or even in an old goose- we sat, forgetful of all other human life! berry bush that has grown into a sort of tree. Father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, and One wild and beautiful place we well re- aunts, and cousins, and all the tribe of friends member-ay, the very bush in which we first that would throw us off-if we should be se found a gray lintie's nest-for in our parish, base and mad as to marry a low-born, low from some cause or other, it was rather a bread, ignorant, uneducated, crafty, ay, crafty rarish bird. That far-away day is as distinct and designing beggar-were all forgotten in as the present sow. Imagine, friend, first, a our delirium-if indeed it were delirium-and little well surrounded with wild cresses on the not an everlastingly-sacred devotion to nature moor; something like a rivulet flows from it, and to truth. For in what were we deluded? or rather you see a deep tinge of verdure, the A voice-a faint and dewy voice-deadened line of which, you believe, must be produced by the earth that fills up her grave, and by the by the oozing moisture-yo l follow it, and by turf that, at this very hour, is expanding its and by there is a descent palpable to your feet primroses to the dew of heaven-answers, " In -then you find yourself between low broomy nothing!" knolls, that, heightening every step, become "Ha! ha! ha!" exclaims some reader in erelong banks, and braes, and hills. You are derision. " Here's an attempt at the pathetic! surprised now to see a stream, and look round -a miserable attempt indeed; for who cares for its source-and there seem now to be a about the death of a mean hut girl? -we are hundred small sources in fissures and spring on sick of low life." Why, as to that matter, who every side —you hear the murmurs of its course cares for the death of any one mortal being! over beds of sand and gravel-and hark, a Who weeps for the death of the late Emperor waterfall! A tree or two begins to shake its of all the Russias. Who wept over Napoleon tresses on the horizon-a birch or a rowan. the Great l When Chatham or Burke, Pitt or You get ready your angle-and by the time Fox died-don't pretend to tell lies about a you have panniered three dozen, you are at a nation's tears. And if yourself, who, pe-haps, wooden bridge-you fish the pool above it with are not in low life, were to die in half an hour, the delicate dexterity of a Boaz, capture the (don't be alarmed,) all who knew youl-except mona"-h of the flood, and on lifting your eyes two or three of your bosom friends, who, partly from inls utarry side as he gasps his last on the from being somewhat dull, and partly from silvery shore, you behold a Cottage, at one wishing to be decent, might whine-would gable-end an ash, at the other a sycamore, and walk along George's Street, at the fashionable standing perhaps at the lonely door, a maiden hour of three, the very day after your funeral. like a fairy or an angel. Nor would it ever enter their heads to abstain This is the Age of Confessions; and why, from a dinner at the Club, ordered perhaps by therefore, may we not make a confession of y'ourself a fortnight ago, at which time you first-love. We had finished our sixteenth were in rude health, merely because you hadI year-and we were almost as tall as we are foolishly allowed a cold to fasten upon your now; for our figure was then straight as an lungs, and carry you off in the prime and proarrow, and almost like an arrow in its flight. mise of your professional life. In spite of all We had given over bird-nesting-but we had your critical slang, therefore, Mr. Editor, or not ceased to visit the dell where first we found Master Contributor to some Literary Journal, the Gray Lintie's brood. Tale-writers are told sai:, though a poor Scottish Herd, was most by critics to remember that the young shepherd- beautiful; and when, but a week after taking csses of Scotland are not beautiful as the fiction farewell of her, we went, according to our of a poet's dream. But SHE was beautiful beyond tryst, to fold her in our arms, and was told by poetry. She was so then, when passion and her father that she was dead,-ay, dead-that imagination were young-and her image, her she had no existence-that she was in a coffin, undying, unfading image, is so now, when -when we awoke from the dead-fit in which passion and imagination are old, and when we had lain on the floor of that cottage, and fiom eye and soul have disappeared much of saw her in her grave-clothes within an hour to the beauty and glory both of nature and life. be buried-when we stood at her burial-and We loved her from the first moment that our knew that never more were we or the day to eyes met-and we see their light at this mo- behold her presence-we learned then how imment-the same soft, burning light, that set measurably misery can surpass happinessbody and soul on fire. She was but a poor that the soul is ignorant of its own being, till shepherd's daughter; but what was that to us, all at once a thunder-stone plunges down its when we heard her voice singing one of her depths, and groans gurgle upwards upbraiding old plaintive ballads among the braes.-When Heaven. we sat down beside her-when the same plaid How easily can the heart change its mood was drawn over our shoulders in the rain-storm from the awful to the solemn-from the solemn -when we asked her for a kiss, and was not to the sweet-and from the sweet to the gay-'refused-for what had she to fear in her beauty, while the mirth of this careless moment is un-:and her innocence, and her filial piety.-and consciously tempered by the influence of that,were we nct a mere boy, in the bliss of passion, holy hour that has subsided but not died, and CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 11L continues to colour the most ordinary emotion, and-tens of thousands are few; but the ornias the common thincs of earth look all lovelier thologist knows the seasons when death is in imbibed light, even after the serene moon that least afflictive-he is merciful in his wisdom had yielded it is no more visible in her place! -for the spirit of knowledge is gentle-and Most gentle are such transitions in the calm "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," of nature and of the heart; all true poetry is reconcile him to the fluttering and ruffled plu. full of them; and in music how pleasant are mage blood-stained by death.'Tis hard, for they or how affecting! Those alternations of example, to be obliged to shoot a Zenaida tears and smiles, of fervent aspirations and of dove! Yet a Zenaida dove must die for Auduquiet thoughts! The organ and the 2Eolian bon's Illustrations. How many has he loved harp! As the one has ceased pealing praise, in life, and tenderly preserved! And how we can list the other whispering it-nor feels many more pigeons of all sorts, cooked in all the soul any loss of emotion in the change- styles, have you devoured-ay twenty for, his still true to itself and its wondrous nature- one-you being a glutton and epicure in the just as it is so when from the sunset clouds it same inhuman form, and he being contented at turns its eyes to admire the beauty of a dew- all times with the plainest fare-a salad perdrop or an insect's wing. haps of water-cresses plucked from a spring in Now, we hear many of our readers crying the forest glade, or a bit of pemmican, or a waout against the barbarity of confining the free fer of portable soup melted in the pot of some denizens of the air in wire or wicker Cages. squatter-and shared with the admiring chilGentle readers, do, we pray, keep your com- dren before a drop has been permitted to touch passion for other objects. Or, if you are dis- his own abstemious lips. posed to be argumentative with us, let us just The intelligent author of the "Treatise on walk down-stairs to the larder, and tell the British Birds" does not condescend to justify public truly what we there behold-three brace the right we claim to encage them; but he of partridges, two ditto of moorfowl, a cock shows his genuine humanity in instructing us pheasant, poor fellow,-a man and his wife of how to render happy and healthful their imthe aquatic or duck kind, and a woodcock, prisonment. He says very prettily, "What are vainly presenting his long Christmas bill- town gardens and shrubberies in squares, but "Some sleeping kill'd- an attempt to ruralize the city l So strong is All murder'd." the desire in man to participate in country Why, you are indeel a most logical reasoner, pleasures, that he tries to bring some of them and a most considerate Christian, when you even to his room. Plants and birds are sought launch out into an invective against the cru- after with avidity, and cherished with delight. elty exhibited in our Cages. Let us leave this With flowers he endeavours to make his apartden of murder, and have a glass of our home- ments resemble a garden; and thinks of groves made frontignac in our own Sanctum. Come, and fields, as he listens to the -wild sweet mecome, sir-look on this newly-married couple lody of his little captives. Those who keep of CNAIRIEs.-The architecture of their nest and take an interest in song-birds, are often at is certainly not of the florid order, but my Lady a loss how to treat their little warblers during Yellowlees sits on it a well-satisfied bride. illness,:;r to prepare the proper food best suitCome back in a day or two, and you will see ed to their various constitutions; but that her nursing triplets. Meanwhile, hear the knowledge is absolutely necessary to preserve ear-piercing fife of the bridegroom!-Where these little creatures in health; for want of it, will you find a set of happier people, unless young amateurs and bird-fanciers have often perhaps it be in our parlour, or our library, or seen, with regret, many of their favourite birds our nursery! For, to tell you the truth, there perish." is a cage or two in almost every room of the Now, here we confess is a good physician. house. Where is the cruelty-here, or in your In Edinburgh we understand there are about blood-stained larder? But you must eat, you five hundred medical practitioners on the hureply. We answer-not necessarily birds. man race-and we have dog-doctors and horseThe question is about birds-cruelty to birds; doctors, who come out in numbers-but we and were that sagacious old wild-goose, whom have no bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, one single moment of heedlessness brought when the whole house rings, from garret to last Wednesday to your hospitable board, at cellar, with the cries of children teething, or in this moment alive, to bear a part in our con- the hooping-cough, the little linnet sits silent versation, can you dream that, with all your on his perch, a moping bunch of feathers, and ingenuity and eloquence, you could persuade then falls down dead, when his lilting life him-the now defunct and dissected-that you might have been saved by the simplest medihad been under the painful necessity of eating cinal food skilfully administered. Surely if him with stuffing and apple-sauce? we have physicians to attend our treadmills, It is not in nature that an ornithologist and regulate the diet and day's work of mercishould be cruel-he is most humane. Mere less ruffians, we should not suffer our innocent skin-stuffers are not ornithologists-and we and useful prisoners thus to die unattended. have known more than one of that tribe who Why do not the Ladies of Edinburgh form would have had no scruple in strangling their themselves into a Society for this purpose? own mothers, or reputed fathers. Yet if your Not one of all the philosophers in the world true ornithologist cannot catch a poor dear has been able to tell us what is happiness. bird alive, he must kill it —and leave you to Sterne's Starling is weakly supposed to have weep for its death. There must be a few vic- been miserable. Probably he was one of the tims out of myriads of millions-and thousands most contented birds in the universe. Does 212 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOF IER NORTH. confinement-the closest, most unaccompanied ing therr.selves, so it seems, with drawing up, confinement-make one of ourselves unhappy? by small enginery, their food and drink, which Is the shoemaker, sitting with his head on his soon sickens, however, on their stomachs, till, knees, in a hole in the wall from morning to with ruffled plumage, they are often found in night, in any respect to be pitied. Is the so- the morning lying on their backs, with clenchlilary orphan, that sits all day sewingin a gar- ed feet, and neck bent as if twisted, on the ret, while the old woman for whom she works scribbled sand, stone-dead. Ther.e you saw is out washing, an object of compassion? or pale youths —boys almost like girls, so delicate the widow of fourscore, hurkling over the em- looked they in that hot infected air which bers, with a stump of a pipe in her toothless ventilate it as you will, is never felt to breathe mouth? Is it so sad a thing indeed to be alone? on the face like the fresh air of liberty-once or to have one's motions circumscribed within bold and bright midshipmen in frigate or first. the narrowest imaginable limits.? Nonsense rater, and saved by being picked up by the all! boats of the ship that had sunk her by one Then, gentle reader, were you ever in a double-shotted broadside, or sent her in one Highland shieling? Often since you read our explosion splintering into the sky, and splashRecreations: It is built of turf, and is literally ing into the sea, in less than a minute thethun. alive; for the beautiful heather is blooming, der silent, and the fiery shower over and gone wild-flowers and walls and roof are one sound -there you saw such lads as these, who used of bees. The industrious little creatures must almost to weep if they got not duly the dearhave come several long miles for their balmy desired letter from sister or sweetheart, and spoil. There is but one human creature in when they did duly get it, opened it with trem. that shieling, but he is not at all solitary. He bling fingers, and even then let drop some nano more wearies of that lonesome place than tural tears-there we saw them leaping and do the sunbeams or the shadows. To himself dancing, with gross gesticulations and horrid alone he chaunts his old Gaelic songs, or oaths obscene, with grim outcasts from nature, frames wild ditties of his own to the raven or whose mustached mouths were rank with sin the red-deer. Months thus pass on; and he and pollution-monsters for whom hell was descends again to the lower country. Perhaps yawning-their mortal mire already possessed he goes to the wars-fights —bleeds-and re- with a demon. There, wretched, wo-begone, turns to Badenoch or Lochaber; and once and wearied out with recklessness and despemore, blending in his imagination the battles ration, many wooed Chance and Fortune, who of his own regiment, in Egypt, Spain, or Flan- they hoped might yet listen to their prayers - ders, with the deeds done of yore by Ossian and kept rattling the dice-cursing them that sung, sits contented by the door of the same gave the indulgence-even in their cells of shieling, restored and beautified, in which he punishment for disobedience or mutiny. There had dreamt away the summers of his youth. you saw some, who in the crowded courts What has become-we wonder-of Dart., "sat apart retired," —bringinig the practised moor Prison. During that long war its huge skill that once supported, or the native genius and hideous bulk was filled with Frenchmen- that once adorned life, to bear on beautiful ay- contrivances and fancies elaborately executed "Men of all climes-attach'd to none-were there'* with meanest instruments, till they rivalled or outdid the work of art assisted by all the mi. -a desperate race-robbers and reavers, and nistries of science. And thus won they a pool ruffians and rapers, and pirates and murderers pittance wherewithal to purchase some little mingled with the heroes who, fired by freedom, comfort or luxury, or ornament to their per had fought for the land of lilies, with its vine- sons for vanity had not forsaken some in theil vales and " hills of sweet myrtle"-doomed to rusty squalor, and they sought to please her, die in captivity, immured in that doleful man- their mistress or their bride. There you saNw sion on the sullen moor. There thousands accomplished men conjuring before their eyes, pined and wore away and wasted-and when on the paper or the canvas, to feed the long not another groan remained within the bones ings of their souls, the lights and the shadows of of their breasts, they gave up the ghost. Young the dear days that far away were beautifying heroes prematurely old in baffled passions — some sacred spot of " la belle France"-perhaps life's best and strongest passions, that scorned some festal scene, for love in sorrow is still to go to sleep but in the sleep of death. These true to remembered joy —where once with died in their golden prime. With them went youths andmaidens down into unpitied and unhonoured graves-s "They led the dance beside the murmuring Loire." for pity and honour dwell not in houses so haunted-veterans in their iron age-some There you heard-and hushed then was all the self-smitten with ghastly wounds that let life hubbub-some clear silver voice, sweet almost finally bubble out of sinewy neck or shaggy as woman's, yet full of manhood in its depths, bosom-or the poison-bowl convulsed their singing to the gay guitar, touched, though the giant limbs unto unquivering rest. Yet there musician was of the best and noblest blood of you saw a wild strange tumult of troubled hap- France, with a master's hand, "La belle Gapiness-which, as you looked into his heart, brielle!" And there might be seen, in the so was transfigured into misery. Their volatile litude of their own abstractions, men with -spirits fluttered in their cage, like birds that minds that had sounded the profounds of seem not to hate nor to be happy in confine- science, and, seemingly undisturbed by all that -ment, but, hanging by beak or claws, to be often clamour, pursuing the mysteries of lines and playing with the glittering wires-to be amus- numbers-conversing with the harmonious CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 213 aIlid lofty stars of heaven, deaf to all the diseorc. and despair of earth. Or religious still SECOND CANTICLE. ever, more than they-for those were mental, \ these spiritual-you beheld there men, whose Tar. GOLDEN EAGLE leads the van of out heads before their time were becoming gray, Birds of Prey —and there she sits in her usual meditating on their own souls, and in holy carriage when in a state of rest. Her hunger hope and humble trust in their Redeemer, if and her thirst have been appeased —her wings not yet prepared, perpetually preparing them- are folded up in a dignified tranquillity-her selves for the world to come! talons, grasping a leafltess branch, are almost To return to Birds in Cages;-they are, hidden by the feathers of her breast-her sleep. when well, uniformly as happy as the day is less eye has lost something of its ferocity —and long. What else could oblige them, whether the Royal Bird is almost serene in her solitary they will or no, to burst out into song-to hop state on the cliff. The gorcock unalarmed about so pleased and pert-to play such fan- crows among the moors and mosses-the tastic tricks, like so many whirligigs —to sleep blackbird whistles in the birken shaw —and so soundly, and to awake into a small, shrill, the cony erects his ears at the mouth of his compressed twitter cf joy at the dawn of light! burrow, and whisks away frolicsome among So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the the whins or heather. other sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he There is no index to the hour —neither light absurdly opined was wishing to get out, would nor shadow-no cloud. But from the comrnnot have stirred a peg had the door of his cage posed aspect of the Bird, we may suppose it to been flung wide open, but would have pecked be the hush of evening after a day of successlike a very game-cock at the hand inserted to ful foray. The imps in the eyrie have been give him his liberty. Depend upon it that fed, and their hungry cry will not be heard till Starling had not the slightest idea of what he the dawn. The mother has there taken up her was saying; and had he been up to the mean- watchful rest, till in darkness she may glide up ing of his words, would have been shocked at to her brood-the sire is somewhere sitting his ungrateful folly. Look at Canaries, and within her view among the rocks-a sentinel Chaffinches, and Bullfinches, and "the rest," whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, in exhow they amuse themselves for a while flitting quisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on about the room, and then, finding how dull a whom rarely, and as if by a miracle, can steal thing it is to be citizens of the world, bounce the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, to up to their cages, and shut the door from the wreak vengeance with his rifle on the spoiler inside, glad to be once more at home. Begin of sheep-walk and forest-chase. to whistle or sing yourself, and forthwith you Yet sometimes it chanceth that the yellow have a duet or a trio. We can imagine no lustre of her keen, wild, fierce eye is veiled, more perfectly tranquil and cheerful life than even in daylight, by the film of sleep. Perhaps that of a Goldfinch in a cage in spring, with sickness has been at the heart of -the dejected his wife and his children. All his social af- bird, or fever wasted her wing. The sun may fections are cultivated to the utmost. He have smitten her, or the storm driven her possesses many accomplishments unknown to against a rock. Then hunger and thirsthis brethren among the trees;-he has never which, in pride of plumage she scorned, and known what it is to want a meal in times of which only made her fiercer on the edge of her the greatest scarcity; and he admires the unfed eyrie, as she whetted her beak on the beautiful frost-work on the windows, when flint-stone, and clutched the strong heatherthousands of his feathered friends are buried stalks in her talons, as if she were anticipating in the snow, or, what is almost as bad, baked prey-quell her courage, and in famine she up into pies, and devoured by a large supper- eyes afar off the fowls she is unable to pursue, party of both sexes, who fortify their flummery and with one stroke strike to earth. Her flight and flirtation by such viands, and, remorseless, is heavier and heavier each succeeding dayswallow dozens upon dozens of the warblers she ventures not to cross the great glens with of the woods. or without lochs-but flaps her way from rock Ay, ay, Mr. Goldy! you are wondering what to rock, lower and lower down along the same wve are now doing, and speculating upon the mountain-side-and finally, draw:, by her scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as weakness into dangerous descent,.he is dis. if you would know the subject of his lucubra- covered at gray dawn far below the region of tions. What the wiser or better wouldst thou snow, assailed and insulted by the meanest be of human knowledge Sometimes that carrion; till a bullet whizzing through her little heart of thine goes pit-a-pat, when a great heart, down she topples, and soon is despatchugly, staring contributor thrusts his inquisi- ed by blows from the rifle-butt, the shepherd tive nose within the wires-or when a strange stretching out his foe's carcass on the sward, cat glides round and round the room, fascinat- eight feet from wing tip to wing tip, with leg ing thee with the glare of his fierce fixed eyes; thick as his own wrist, and foot broad as his but what is all that to the woes of an Editor? - own hand. Yes, sweet simpleton! do you not know that But behold the Golden Eagle, as she has we are the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine- pounced, and is exulting over her prey! With Christopher North! Yes, indeed, we are that her head drawn back between the crescent of very mnan-that selfsame much-calumniiated her uplifted wings, which she will not fold till man-monster and Ogre. There, there!-perch that prey be devoured, eye glaring cruel joy, on our shoulder, and let us laugh together at neck-plumage bristling, tail-feathers fan-spread, the whole world. and talons driven through the victim's entrails 214 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. and heart-there she is new-lighted on the chapter might be introduced, setting forth hov ledge of a precipice, and fancy hears her yell he and other youngsters of the Blood Roya, and its echo. Beak and talons, all her life were wont to take an occasional game at High long, have had a stain of blood, for the mur- Jinks, or tourney in air lists, the champions on deress observes no Sabbath, and seldom dips opposite sides flying from the Perthshire and them in loch or sea, except when dashing from the Argyleshire mountains, and encoundown suddenly among the terrified water-fowl tering with a clash in the azure common, six from her watch-tower in the sky. The week- thousand feet high. But the fever of love old fawn had left the doe's side but for a mo- burned in his blood, and flying to the mounmentary race along the edge of the coppice; a tains of another continent, in obedience to the rustle and a shadow-and the burden is borne yell of an old oral tradition, he wooed and won off to the cliffs of Benevis. In an instant the his virgin bride-a monstrous beauty, widersmall animal is dead-after a short exultation winged than himself, to kill or caress, and torn into pieces, and by eagles and eaglets de- bearing the proof of her noble nativity in the voured, its unswallowed or undigested bones radiant Iris that belongs in perfection of fiercemingle with those of many other creatures, ness but to the Sun-starers, and in them is encumbering the eyrie, and strewed around it found, unimpaired by cloudiest clime, over the over the bloody platform on which the young uttermost parts of the earth. The bridegroom demons crawl forth to enjoy the sunshine. and his bride, during the honey-moon, slept on Oh for the Life of an Eagle written by him- the naked rock-till they had built their eyrie self! It would outsell the Confessions even beneath its cliff-canopy on the mountain-brow. of the English Opium-Eater. Proudly would When the bride was "as Eagles wish to be he, or she, write of birth and parentage. On who love their lords" —devoted unto her was the rock of ages he first opened his eyes to the the bridegroom, even as the cushat murmuring sun, in noble instinct affronting and outstaring to his brooding mate in the central pine-grove the light. The Great Glen of Scotland-hath of a forest. Tenderly did he drop from his it not been the inheritance of his ancestors for talons, close beside her beak, the delicate spring many thousand years? No polluting mixture lamb, or the too early leveret, owing to the of ignoble blood, from intermarriages of neces- hurried and imprudent marriage of its parents sity or convenience with kite, buzzard, hawk, before March, buried in a living tomb on or falcon. No, the Golden Eagle of Glen-Fal- April's closing day. Through all thy glens,.och, surnamed the Sun-starers, have formed Albin! hadst thou reason to mourn, at the alliances with the Golden Eagles of Cruachan, bursting of the shells that Queen-bird had been Benlawers, Shehallion, and Lochnagair —the cherishing beneath her bosom. Aloft in heaven Lightning-Glints, the Flood-fallers, the Storm- wheeled the Royal Pair, from rising to setting wheelers, the Cloud-cleavers, ever since the sun. Among the bright-blooming heather they deluge. The education of the autobiographer espied the tartan'd shepherd, or hunter creephad not been intrusted to a private tutor. Pa- ing like a lizard, and from behind the vain rental eyes, beaks, and talons, provided sus- shadow of a rock watching with his rifle the tenance for his infant frame; and in that capa- flight he would fain see shorn of its beams. cious eyrie, year after year repaired by dry The flocks were thinned-and the bleating of branches from the desert, parental advice was desolate dams among the woolly people heard yelled into him, meet for the expansion of his from many a brae. Poison was strewn over instinct, as wide and wonderful as the reason the glens for their destruction, but the Eagle, of earth-crawling man. What a noble natu- like the lion, preys not on carcasses; and the ralist did he, in a single session at the College shepherd dogs howled in agony over the carof the Cliff, become! Of the customs, and rion in which they devoured death. Ha! was habits, and haunts of all inferior creatures, he not that a day of triumph to the Sun-starers of speedily made himself master-ours included. Cruachan, when sky-hunting in couples, far Nor was his knowledge confined to theory, but down on the greensward before the ruined reduced to daily practice. He kept himself in gateway of Kilchurn Castle, they saw, left all constant training —taking a flight of a couple to himself in the sunshine, the infant heir of of hundred miles before breakfast-paying a the Campbell of Breadalbane, the child of the forenoon visit to the farthest of the Hebride Lord of Glenorchy and all its streams! Four Isles, and returning to dinner in Glenco. In talons in an instant were in his heart. Too one day he has flown to Norway on a visit to late were the outcries from all the turrets; for his uncle by the mother's side, and returned ere the castle-gates were flung open, the golden the next to comfort his paternal uncle, lying head of the royal babe was lying in gore, in sick at the Head of the Cambrian Dee. He the Eyrie on the iron ramparts of Ben Slarive soon learned to despise himself for having once — his blue eyes dug out-his rosy cheeks torn yelled for food, when food was none; and to -and his brains dropping from beaks that sit or sail, on rock or through ether, athirst and revelled-yelling within the skull!-Such are a an hungered, but mute. The virtues of pa- few hints for "Some Passages in the Life of tience, endurance, and fortitude, have become the Golden Eagle, written by Himself,"-in with him, in strict accordance with the Aris- one volume crown octavo-Blackwoods, Edintotelian Moral Philosophy-habits. A Peri- burgh and London. patetic Philosopher he could hardly be called 0 heavens and earth! —forests and barn. -properly speaking, he belongs to the Solar yards! what a difference with a distinction School-an airy sect, who take very high between a GOLDEN EAGLE and a GREEN GOOSE! ground, indulge in lofty flights, and are often There, all neck and bottom, splay. footed, and ()qt in the clouds. Now and then a light hissing in miserable imitation of a serpent CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 215'o.lling from side to side, up and down like an of men on earth shooting eagles with theit ill-trimmed punt, the downy gosling waddles mouths; because the thing is impossible, ever through the green mire, and, imagining that had their mouthpieces had percussion-locksKing George the Fourth is meditating mischief had they been crammed with ammunition to against him, cackles angrily as he plunges the muzzle. Had a stray sparrow been flut. into the pond. No swan that "on still St. tering in the air, he would certainly have got Mary's lake floats double, swan and shadow," a fright, and probably a fall-nor would there so proud as he! He prides himself on being have been any hope for a tom-tit. But an a gander, and never forgets the lesson instilled eagle-an eagle ever so many thousand feet into him by his parents, soon as he chipt the aloft-poo, poo!-he would merely have muted shell in the nest among the nettles, that his on the roaring multitude, and given Sardanaancestors saved the Roman Capitol. In pro- palus an additional epauiette. Why, had a cess of time, in company with swine, he grazes string of wild-geese at the time been warping on the common, and insults the Egyptians in their way on the wind, they would merely have their roving camp. Then comes the season shot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, of plucking-and this very pen bears testi- and answered the earth-born shout with an rmony to his tortures. Out into the houseless air-born gabble-clangour to clangour. Where winter is he driven-and, if he escapes being were Mr. Atherstone's powers of ratiocination, frozen into a lump of fat ice, he is crammed and all his acoustics Two shouts slew an till his liver swells into a four-pounder-his eagle. What became of all the other denizens cerebellum is cut by the cruel knife of a phre- of air-especially crows, ravens, and vultures, nological cook, and his remains buried with a who, seeing two millions of men, must have cerement of apple sauce in the paunches of come flocking against a day of battle. Every apoplectic aldermen, eating against each other mother's son of them must have gone to pot. at a civic feast! Such are a few hints for Then what scrambling among the allied troops: "Some Passages in the Life of a Green And what was one eagle doing byhimself "upGoose," written by himself-in foolscap oc- by yonderl" Was he the only eagle in Assytavo-published by Quack and Co., Ludgate ria-the secular bird of ages. Who was Lane, and sold by all booksellers in town and looking at him, first a speck-then falteringcountry. then fluttering and wildly screaming-then Poor poets must not meddle with eagles. plump down like a stone Mr. Atherstone In the Fall of Nineveh, Mr. Atherstone describes talks as if he saw it. In the circumstances a grand review of his army by Sardanapalus. he had no business with his " sunny eye growTwo million men are put into motion by the ing dark." That is entering too much into moving of the Assyrian flag-staff in the hand the medical, or rather anatomical symptoms of the king, who takes his station on a mount of his apoplexy, and would be better for a meconspicuous to all the army. This flag-staff, dical journal than an epic poem. But to be though "tall as a mast"-Mr. Atherstone does done with it-two shouts that slew an eagle a not venture to go on to say with Milton, mile up the sky, must have cracked all the "hewn on Norwegian hills," or "of some tall tympana of the two million shouters. The ammiral," though the readers' minds supply entire army must have become as deaf as a the deficiency-this mast was, we are told, for post. Nay, Sardanapalus himself, on the " two strong men a task;" but it must have been mount, must have been blown into the air as so for twenty. To have had the least chance by the explosion of a range of gunpowderof being all at once seen by two million of mills; the campaign taken a new turn; and a men, it could not have been less than fifty feet revolution been brought about, of which, at high —and if Sardanapalus waved the royal this distance of place and time, it is not easy standard of Assyria round his head, Samson for us to conjecture what might have been the or O'Doherty must have been a joke to him. fundamental features on which it would have However, we shall suppose he did; and what hinged-and thus an entirely new aspect given was the result l Such shouts arose that the to all the histories of the world. solid walls of Nineveh were shook, "and the What is said about the lion, is.o our minds firm ground made tremble." But this was equally picturesque and absurd. He was not all. among the "far-off hills." How far, pray? "At his height, Twenty miles If so then, without a silver A speck scarce visible, the eagle heard, ear-trumpet he could not have heard the huzAnd felt his strong wing falter: terror-struck, ear-trumpet he could not have heard the huz Fluttering and wildly screaming, down he sank- zas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh Down through the quivering air: another shout,- as t allow the lion to hear the huzzas even His talons droop-his sunny eye grows darkHis strengthless pennons fail-plump down he falls, in his sleep, the epithet "far-off" should be. Even like a stone. Amid the far-off hills, altered, and the lion himself brought from the With eye of fire, and shaggy mane uprear'd, interior. But we cannot believe that lions The sleeping lion in his den sprang up; Listened awhile-then laid his monstrous mouth were permitted to live in dens within ear-shot Close to the floor, and breath'd hot roarings out of Nineveh. Nimrod had taught them "never In fierce reply." to come there no more"-and Semiramis looked What think ye of that, John Audubon, sharp after the suburbs. But, not to insist unCharles Bonaparte, J. Prideaux Selby, James duly upon a mere matter of police, is it the ~ ison, Sir William Jardine, and ye other Eu- nature of lions, lying in their dens among farropean and American ornithologists? Pray, off hills, to start up from their sleep, and Mr. Atherstone, did you ever see an eagle-a "breathe hot roarings out" in fierce reply to spelk in the sky. Never again suffer your- the shouts of armies? All stuff! Mr. Ather. self, oh, dear sir! to believe old women's tales stone shows off his knowledge of natural hi3s 216 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. tory, in telling us that the said lion, in roaring, Vauxhall. Besides, an eagle does not, when "'laid his monstrous mouth close to the floor." descending on her prey, fall like a rock. There We believe he does so; but did Mr. Atherstone is nothing like the "vis inertiae" in her prelearn the fact from Cuvier or from Wombwell? cipitation. You still see the self-willed energy It is always dangerous to a poet to be too of the ravenous bird, as the mass of plumes picturesque; and in this case, you are made, flashes in the spray —of which, by the by, there whether you will or no, to see an old, red, lean, never was, nor will be, a column so raised. mangy monster, called a lion, in his unhappy She is as much the queen of birds as she sinks den in a menagerie, bathing his beard in the as when she soars-her trust and her power saw-dust, and from his toothless jaws "breath- are still seen and felt to be in her pinions, ing hot roarings out," to the terror of servant- whether she shoots to or from the zenith-to girls and children, in fierce reply to a man in a falling star she might be likened —just as a hairy cap and full suit of velveteen, stirring any other devil-either by Milton or Wordshim up with a long pole, and denominating worth-for such a star seems to our eye and him by the sacred nameiof the great asserter our imagination ever instinct with spirit, not of Scottish independence. to be impelled by exterior force, but to be selfSir Humphry Davy-in his own science the shot from heaven. first man of his age-does not shine in his Upon our word, we begin to believe that we "' Salmonia"-pleasant volume though it be- ourselves deserve the name of Poietes much as an ornithologist. Let us see. better than the gentleman who at threescore "PoIET.-The scenery improves as we ad- had never seen an eagle. "She has fallen vance nearer the lower parts of the lake. The from a great height," quoth the gentlemanmountains become higher, and that small " What an extraordinary sight!" he continueth island or peninsula presents a bold craggy -while we are mute as the oar suspended by outline; and the birch-wood below it, and the the up-gazing Celt, whose quiet eye brightens pines above, make a scene somewhat Alpine as it pursues the Bird to her eyrie in the cliff in character. But what is that large bird over the cove where the red-deer feed. soaring above the pointed rock, towards the Poietes having given vent to his emotions end of the lake? Surely it is an eagle! in such sublime exclamations —" Look at the " HAL.-You are right; it is an eagle, and bird!" "What an extraordinary sight!" might of a rare and peculiar species-the gray or have thenceforth held his tongue, and said no silver eagle, a noble bird! From the size of more about eagles. But Halieus cries, " There I! the animal, it must be the female; and her you see her rise with a fish in her talons"eyrie is that high rock. I dare say the male and Poietes, very simply, or rather like a is not far off." simpleton, returns for answer, "She gives an Sir Humphry speaks in his introductory interest which I hardly expected to have found in pages of Mr. Wordsworth as a lover of fishing this scene. Pray, are there many of these animals and fishermen; and we cannot help thinking in this country." A poet hardly expecting to and feeling that he intends Poietes as an image find interest in such a scene as a great Highof that great Poet. What! William Words- land loch —Loch Maree! "Pray, are there many worth, the very high-priest of nature, repre- of these hanissals in this country?" Loud cries of sented to have seen an eagle for the first time Oh! oh! oh! No doubt an eagle is an aniin his life only then, and to have boldly ven- mal; like Mr. Cobbett or Mr. O'Connell "a tured on a conjecture that such was the name very fine animal;" but we particularly, and and nature of the bird! "But what is that earnestly, and anxiously, request Sir Humphry large bird soaring above the pointed rock, to- Davy not to call her so again-but to use the wards the end of the lake? Surely it is an term bird, or any other term he chooses, exeagle!" "Yes, you are right-it is an eagle." cept animal. Animal, a living creature, is too Ha-ha-ha-ha-bha-ha! Sir Humphry- general, too vague by far; and somehow or Sir Humphry-that guffaw was not ours —it other it offends our ear shockingly when apcame from the Bard of Rydal-albeit unused plied to an eagle. We may be wrong, but in to the laughing mood-in the haunted twilight a trifling matter of this kind Sir Humphry of that beautiful-that solemn Terrace. surely will not refuse our supplication. Let Poietes having been confirmed, by the au- him call a horse an animal, if he chooses-or thority of Halieus, in his belief that the bird an ass-or a cow —but not an eagle-as he is an eagle, exclaims, agreeably to the part he loves us, not an eagle; —let him call it a bird plays, " Look at the bird! She dashes into the -the Bird of Jove-the Queen or King of the water, falling like a rock and raising a column Sky-or any thing else he chooses-but not an of spray-she has fallen from a great height. animal-no-no-no-not an animal, as he And now she rises again into the air-what an hopes to prosper, to be praised in Maga, em. extraordinary sight I" Nothing is so annoying balmed and immortalized. as to be ordered to look at a sight which, un- Neither ought Poietes to have asked if there less you shut your eyes, it is impossible for were "many of these animals" in this country. you not to see. A person behaving in a boat He ought to have known that there are not like Poietes, deserved being flung overboard. many of these animals in any country. Eagles " Look at the bird!" Why, every eye was are proud-apt to hold their heads very high already upon her; and if Poietes had had a -and to make themselves scarce. A great single spark of poetry in his composition, he many eagles all flying about together would would have been struck mute by such a sight, look most absurd. They are aware of that, instead of bawling out, open-mouthed and and flyin "ones and twos"-a couple perhaps goggle-eyed, like a Cockney to a rocket at to acounty. Poietes might as well haveasked CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 217 Mungo Park if there were a great many lions tus,) which is rather a large fishing-hawk than in Africa. Mungo; we think, saw but one; an eagle, there are two kinds, viz.-the Go;LDn) and that was one too much. There were pro- EAGLE, (F. Chrysadtos,)j and the WHITE-TAILTEI bably a few more between Sego and Timbuc- or CINEROUS EAGLE, (F. Albicilla.) The other too-but there are not a "great many of those two nominal species are disposed of in the fol. animals in that country"-though quite suffi- lowing manner:-First, the RING-TAILED EAcient for the purpose. How the Romans con- GLE (F. Fulvus) is the young of the Golden trived to get at hundreds for a single show, Eagle, being distinguished in early life by perplexes our power of conjecture. having the basal and central portion of the tail Halieus says-with a smile on his lip surely white, which colour disappears as the bird at-in answer to the query of Poietes —" Of this tains the adult state. Second, the SEA EAGLE, species I have seen but these two; and, I be- (F. Ossifragus,) commonly so called, is the lieve, the young ones migrate as soon as they young of the White-tailed Eagle above named, can provide for themselves; for this solitary from which it differs in having a brown tail; bird requires a large space to move and feed for in this species the white of the tail bein, and does not allow its offspring to partake comes every year more apparent as the bird its reign, or to live near it." This is all pretty increases in age, whereas, in the Golden Eatrue, and known to every child rising or risen gle, the white altogether disappears in the six, except poor Poietes. He had imagined adult. that there were " many of these animals in this It is to the RING-TAILED EAGLE, and, by concountry," that they all went a-fishing together sequence, to the GOLiDEN EAGLE, that the name as amicably as five hundred sail of Manksmen of BLACK EAGLE is applied in the Highlands. among a shoal of herrings. The White-tailed or Sea Eagle, as it beThroughout these Dialogues we have ob- comes old, attains, in addition to the pure tail, served that Ornither rarely opens his mouth. a pale or bleached appearance, from which it Why so taciturn? On the subject of birds he may merit and obtain the name of Gray or ought, from his name, to be well informed; SILVER EAGLE, as Sir Humphry Davy chooses and how could he let slip an opportunity, such to call it; but it is not known among naturalas will probably never be afforded him again ists by that name. There is no other species, in this life, of being eloquent on the Silver however, to which the name can apply; and, Eagle? Ornithology is surely the department therefore, Sir Humphry has committed the very of Ornither. Yet there is evidently something gross mistake of calling the Gray or Silver odd and peculiar in his idiosyncrasy; for we Eagle (to use his own nomenclature) a very observe that he never once alludes to "these rare Eagle, since it is the most common of all animals," birds, during the whole excursion. the Scots, and also-a fortiori-of all the EnHe has not taken his gun with him into the glish Eagles-being in fact the SEA EAGLE of Highlands, a sad oversight indeed in a gentle- the Highlands. man who "is to be regarded as generally fond It preys often on fish dead or alive; but not of the sports of the field." Flappers are plen- exclusively, as it also attacks young lambs, tiful over all the moors about the middle of and drives off the ravens from carrion prey, July; and hoodies, owls, hawks, ravens, make being less fastidious in its diet than the GOLDE.N all first-rate shooting to sportsmen not over EAGLE, which probably kills its own meatanxious about the pot. It is to be presumed, and has been known to carry off children; for too, that he can stuffbirds. What noble spe- a striking account of one of which hay-field cimens might he not have shot for Mr. Selby! robberies you have but a few minutes to wait. On one occasion, "the SILVER EAGLE" is As to its driving off its young, its habits are preying in a pool within slug range, and there probably similar in this respect to other birds is some talk of shooting him-we suppose with of prey, none of which appear to keep together an oar, or the butt of a fishing-rod, for the party in families after the young can shift for themhave no fire-arms-but Poietes insists on spar- selves; but we have never met with any one ing his life, because "these animals" are a who has seen them in the act of driving. It is picturesque accompaniment to the scenery, stated vaguely, in all books, of all eagles. and "give it an interest which he had not ex- As to its requiring a large range to feed in pected to find" in mere rivers, lochs, moors, -we have only to remark that, from the pow. and mountains. Genus Falco must all the erful flight of these birds, and the wild and while have been laughing in his sleeve at the barren nature of the countries which they inwhole party-particularly at Ornither —who, habit, there can be no doubt that they fly far, to judge from his general demeanour, may be and "prey in distant isles"-as Thomson has a fair shot with number five at an old news- it; but Halieus needed not have stated this cirpaper expanded on a barn-door twenty yards cumstance as a character of this peculiar eagle off, but never could have had the audacity to -for an eagle with a small range does not think in his most ambitious mood of letting exist; and therefore it is to be presumed that off his gun at an Eagle. they require a large one. But further, Halieus, before he took upon Further, all this being the case, there seems him to speak so authoritatively about eagles, to be no necessity for the old eagles giving should have made himself master of their themselves the trouble to drive off the young names and natures. He is manifestly no sci- ones, who by natural instinct will fly off of entific ornithologist. We are. The general their own accord, as soon as their wings can question concerning Eagles in Scotland may bear them over the sea. If an eagle were so now be squeezed inta very small compass. partial to his native vale, as never on any Exclusive of the true Osprey, (Falco Haliae- account, hungry or thirsty, drunk or sober, to 2I8 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. venture into the next parish, why then the old swan, half rowing, half sailing, and half flying people would be forced, on the old principle of adown a river-now like an eagle afloat in the self-preservation, to pack off their progeny to blue ocean of heaven, or shooting sunwards, bed and board beyond Benevis. But an eagle invisible in excess of light-and bidding fareis a Citizen of the World. I-e is friendly to well to earth and its humble shadows. " the views of Mr. Huskisson on the Wool Trade, that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee the Fisheries, and the Colonies-and acts upon away and be at rest!" Who hath not, in some the old adage, heavy hour or other, from the depth of his very "Every bird for himself, and God for us all!" soul, devoltly —passionately —hopelessly —breathed that wish to escape beyond the limits l'o conclude, for the present, this branch of of wo and sin-not into the world of dreamour subject, we beg leave humbly to express less death; for weary though the immortal our belief, that Sir Humphry Davy never saw pilgrim may have been, never desired he the the Eagle, by him called the Gray or Silver, doom of annihilation, untroubled although it hunting for fish in the style described in Sal- be, shorn of all the attributes of being-but he monia. It does not dislike fish-but it is not has prayed for the wings of the dove, because its nature to keep hunting for them so, not in that fair creature, as she wheeled herself away the Highlands at least, whatever it may do on from the sight of human dwellings, has seemed American continent or isles. Sir Humphry to disappear to his imagination among old talks of the bird dashing down repeatedly upon glimmering forests, wherein she foldeth her a pool within shot of the anglers. We have wing and falleth gladly asleep-and therefore angled fifty times in the Highlands for Sir in those agitated times when the spirits of men Humphry's once, but never saw nor heard of acknowledge kindred with the inferior creasuch a sight. He has read of such things, and tures, and would fain interchange with them introduced them into this dialogue for the sake powers and qualities, they are willing even to of effect-all quite right to do-had his reading lay down their intelligence, their reason, their lain among trustworthy Ornithologists. The conscience itself, so that they could but be common Eagle-which he ignorantly, as we blessed with the faculty of escaping from all have seen, calls so rare-is a shy bird, as all the agonies that intelligence, and reason, and shepherds know-and is seldom within range conscience alone can know, and beyond the of the rifle. Gorged with blood, they are some- reach of this world's horizon to flee away and times run in upon and felled with a staff or be at rest! club. So perished, in the flower of his age, Puck says he will put a girdle round about that Eagle whose feet now form handles to the the earth in forty minutes. At what rate is bell-ropes of our Sanctum at Buchanan Lodge that per second, taking the circumference of -- and are the subject of a clever copy of the earth at 27,000 miles, more or less There verses by Mullion, entitled "All the Talons." is a question for the mechanics, somewhat WVe said in " The Moors," that we envied not about as difficult of solution as Lord Brough. the eagle or any other bird his wings, and am's celebrated one of the Smuggler and the showed cause why we preferred our own feet. Revenue Cutter-for the solution of which he Had Puck wings 1 If he had, we retract, and recommended the aid of algebra. It is not so -%would sport Puck. quick as you would imagine. We forget the Oberon. usual rate of a cannon-ball in good condition "Fetch me this herb-and be thou here again, when he is in training-and before he is at all Ere the Leviathan can swim a league." blown. So do we forget, we are sorry to con ErCheitaawmale fess, the number of centuries that it would take Puck. a good, stout, well-made, able-bodied cannon. "I'll put a girdle suond about the earth ball, to accomplish a journey to our planet from one of the fixed stars. The great diffiHow infinitely more poetical are wings like culty, we confess, would be to get him safely these than seven-league boots! We declare, conveyed thither. If that could be done, we on our conscience, that we would not accept should have no fear of his finding his way the present of a pair of seven-league boots to- back, if not in our time, in that of our poster. morrow-or, if we did, it would be out of mere ity. However red-hot he might have been on politeness to the genie who might press them starting, he would be cool enough, no doubt, on us, and the wisest thing we could do would on his arrival at the goal; yet we should have be to lock them up in a drawer out of the reach no objection to back him against Time for a of the servants. Suppose that we wished to trifle-Time, we observe, in almost all matches walk from Clovenford to Innerleithen —why, being beat, often indeed by the most miserable with seven-league boots on, one single step hacks, that can with difficulty raise a gallop. would take us up to Posso, seven miles above Time, however, possibly runs booty; for when Peebles! That would never do. By mincing he does make play, it must be confessed that one's steps, indeed, one might contrive to stop he is a spanker, and that nothing has been aeen at Innerleithen; but suppose a gad-fly were to with such a stride since Eclipse. sting one's hip at the Pirn-one unintentional 0 beautiful and beloved Highland Parish! in stride would deposit Christopher at Drummel- whose dashing glens our beating heart first felt zier, and another over the Cruik, and far away the awe of solitude, and learned to commune down Annan water! Therefore, there is (alas! to what purpose?) with the tumult of nothing like wings. On wings you can flutter its own thoughts! The circuit of thy skies -and glide-and float and soar-now like a was indeed a glorious arena spread over the humming-bird among the flowers-now like a mountain-tops for the combats of the great CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 219 birds of prey! One wild cry or another was with laughter, whistle, and song. But the Tree. in the lift-of the hawk, or the glead,.or the gnomons threw the shadow of "one o'clock' raven, or the eagle —or when those fiends slept, on the green dial-face of the earth-the horses of the peaceful heron, and sea-bird by wander- were unyoked, and took instantly to grazinging boys pursued in its easy flight, till the groups of men, women, lads, lasses, and chilsnow-white child of ocean wavered away far dren collected under grove, and bush, and inland, as if in search of a steadfast happiness hedge-row-graces were pronounced, some of unknown on the restless waves. Seldom did them rather too tedious in presence of the mant. the eagle stoop to the challenge of the inferior lingmilk-cans, bullion-bars of butter, and crack, fowl;'but when he did, it was like a mailed ling cakes; and the great Being who gave them knight treading down unknown men in battle. that day their daily bread, looked down from The hawks, and the gleads, and the ravens, his Eternal Throne, well-pleased with the piety and the carrion-crows, and the hooded-crows, of his thankful creatures. and the rooks, and the magpies, and all the The great Golden Eagle, the pride ant the rest of the rural militia, forgetting their own pest of the parish, stooped down, and away feuds, sometimes came sallying from all quar- with something in his talons. One single sudters, with even a few facetious jackdaws from den female shriek —and then shouts and outthe old castle, to show fight with the monarch cries as if a church spire had tumbled down of the air. Amidst all that multitude of wings on a congregation at a sacrament. " Hannah winnowing the wind, was heard the sough and Lamond's bairn! Hannah Lamond's bairn!" whizz of those mighty vans, as the Royal Bird, was the loud fast-spreading cry. " The Eagle's himself an army, performed his majestic evo- ta'en aff Hannah Lamond's bairn!" and many ]utions with all the calm confidence of a master' hundred feet were in another instant hurrying in the art of aerial war, now shooting up half- towards the mountain. Two miles of hill and a-thousand feet perpendicular, and now sud- dale, and copse and shingle, and many interdenly plumb-down into the rear of the croak- secting brooks, lay between; but in an increding, cawing, and chattering battalions, cutting ibly short time the foot of the mountain was off their retreat to the earth. Then the rout alive with people. The eyrie was well known, became general, the missing, however, far out- and both old birds were visible on the rocknumbering the dead. Keeping possession of ledge. But who shall scale that dizzy cliff, the field of battle, hung the eagle for a short which Mark Steuart the sailor, who had been while motionless-till with one fierce yell of at the storming of many a fort, once attempted triumph he seemed to seek the' sun, and dis- fn vain? All kept gazing, or weeping, or appear like a speck in the light, surveying wringing of hands, rooted to the ground, or half of Scotland at a glance, and a thousand running back and forwards, like so many ants of her isles. essaying their new wings, in discomfiture. Some people have a trick of describing in- " What's the use-what's the use o' ony puir cidents as having happened within their own human means? We have nae power but in observation, when in fact they were at the time prayer!" And many knelt down-fathers and lying asleep in bed, and disturbing the whole mothers thinking of their own babies-as if house with the snore of their dormitory. Such they would force the deaf heavens to hear. is too often the character of the eye-witnesses Hannah Lamond had all this while been sit. of the present age. Now, we would not claim ting on a stone, with a face perfectly white, personal acquaintance with an incident we had and eyes like those of a mad person, fixed on not seen-no, not for a hundred guineas per the eyrie. Nobody noticed her; for strong as sheet; and, therefore, we warn the reader not all sympathies with her had been at the swoop to believe the following little story about an of the Eagle, they were now swallowed up in eagle and child (by the way, that is the Derby the agony of eyesight. "Only last Sabbath crest, and a favourite sign of inns in the north was my sweet wee wean baptized in the name of England) on our authority. "I tell the tale o' the Father, and the Son, and the Holy as't*as told to me," by the schoolmaster of Ghost!" and on uttering these words, she flew Naemanslaws, in the shire of Ayr; and if the off through the brakes and over the huge incident never occurred, then must he have stones, up-up-up-faster than ever huntsbeen one of the greatest liars that ever taught man ran in to the death-fearless as a goat the young idea how to shoot. For our single playing among the precipices. No one doubtselves, we are by nature credulous. Many ed, no one could doubt, that she would soon be extraordinary things happen in this life, and dashed to pieces. But have not people who though "seeing is believing," so likewise "be- walk in their sleep, obedient to the mysterious lieving is seeing," as every one must allow who guidance of dreams, clomb the walls of old reads these our Recreations. ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, Almost all the people in the parish were along the edge of unguarded battlements, and leading in their meadow-hay (there were not in down dilapidated stair-cases deep as draw all its ten miles square twenty acres of rye- wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, grass) on the same day of midsummer, so dry- fixed, and unseeing eyes, unharmed to their ing was the sunshine and tne wind,-and huge beds at midnight? It is all the work of the heaped-up wains, that almost hid from view soul, to' whom the body is a slave; and shall the horses that drew them along the sward, not the agony of a mother's passion-who sees beginning to get green with second growth, her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her were moving in all directions towards the snug breast, hurried off by a demon to a hideous farmyards. Never had the parish seemed be- death-bear her limbs aloft wherever there is fore so populous. Jocund was the balmy air dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, 220 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. and fiercer and more furious than any bird of not far off, on a small platform. Her chili prey that ever bathed its beak in blood, throttle was bound upon her shoulders-she knew not the fiends that with their heavy wing would how or when-but it was safe —and scarcely fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her daring to open her eyes, she slid down the child in deliverance? shelving rocks, and found herself on a small No stop-no stay-she knew not that she piece of firm root-bound soil, with the tops of drew her breath. Beneath her feet Providence bushes appearing below. With fingers sud fastened every loose stone, and to her hands denly strengthened into the power of iron, she strengthened every root. How was she ever swung herself down by brier, and broom, and to descend? That fear, then, but once crossed heather, and dwarf-birch. There, a loosened her heart, as up-up-up-to the little image stone leapt over a ledge, and no sound was made of her own flesh and blood. "The God heard, so profound was its fall. There, the who holds me now from perishing-will not shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesithe same God save me when my child is at tated not to follow. Her feet bounded against my breast?" Down came the fierce rushing the huge stone that stopped them; but she felt of the Eagles' wings-each savage bird dash- no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. ing close to her head, so that she saw the yel- Steep as the wall of a house was now the side low of their wrathful eyes. All at once they of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy quailed, and were cowed. Yelling, they flew centuries old-long ago dead, and without a off to the stump of an ash jutting out of a cliff, single green leaf-but with thousands of arma thousand feet above the cataract; and the thick stems petrified into the rock, and coverChristian mother, falling across the eyrie, in ing it as with a trellice. She felt her baby on.he midst of bones and blood, clasped her child Aer neck, and with hands and feet clung to that -dead-dead-no doubt —but unmangled and fearful ladder. Turning round her head, and antorn-and swaddled up just as it was when looking down, she saw the whole population she laid it down asleep among the fresh hay in of the parish-so great was the multitude —on a nook of the harvest-field. Oh! what pang their knees. She heard the voice of psalmsof perfect blessedness transfixed her heart a hymn breathing the spirit of one united from that faint, feeble cry-" It lives! it lives! prayer. Sad and solemn was the strain-but it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loud nothing dirge-like-sounding not of death, but laughter, and eyes dry as stones, she felt the deliverance. Often had she sung that tune — lips sf the unconscious innocent once more perhaps the very words-but them she heard murmuring at the fount of life and love. " 0, not-in her own hut, she and her mother-or thou great and thou dreadful God! whither in the kirk, along with all the congregation. hast thou brought me-one of the most sinful An unseen-hand seemed fastening her fingers of thy creatures! Oh! save me lest I perish, to the ribs of ivy, and in sudden inspiration, even for thy own name's sake! 0 Thou, who believing that her life was to be saved, she bedied to save sinners, have mercy upon me!" came almost as fearless as if she had been Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skele- changed into a winged creature. Again her tons of old trees-far-far down-and dwindled feet touched stones and earth-the psalm was into specks a thousand creatures of her own hushed-but a tremulous sobbing voice was kind, stationary or running to and fro! Was close beside her, and a she-goat with two little that the sound of the waterfall, or the faint kids at her feet. " Wild heights," thought she, roar of voices 1 Is that her native strath?- "do these creatures climb-but the dam will and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in lead down her kids by the easiest paths; for which stands the cradle of her child!l Never in the brute creatures holy is the power of a more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here mother's love!" and turning round her head, must she die —and when her breast is exhaust- she kissed her sleeping baby, and for the first ed-her baby too. And those horrid beaks, time she wept. and eyes, and talons, and wings will return, Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, and her child will be devoured at last, even never touched before by human hand or foot. within the dead arms that can protect it no No one had ever dreamt of scaling it, and the more. Golden Eagles knew that well in their instinct, Where, all this while, was Mark Bteuart, the as, before they built their eyrie, they had brushed sailor Halfway up the cliffs. But his eyes it with their wings. But the downwards part had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart of the mountain-side, though scared, and sick-and he who had so often reefed the top- seamed, and chasmed, was yet accessiblegallant sail, when at midnight the coming of and more than one person in the parish had the gale was heard afar, covered his face with reached the bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many his hands, and dared look no longer on the were now attempting it-and ere the cautious swimming heights. "And who will take care mother had followed her dumb guides a hunof my poor bedridden mother " thought Han- dred yards, through among dangers that, alnah, who, through exhaustion of so many pas- though enough to terrify the stoutest heart, sions, could no more retain in her grasp the were traversed by her without a shudder, the hope she had clutched in despair. A voice head of one man appeared, and then the head whispered "God." She looked round expect- of another, and she knew that God had deli-:lig to see a spirit; but nothing moved except vered her and her child into the care of their a rotten branch, that, under its own weight, fellow-creatures. Not a word was spokenbroke off from the crumbling rock. Her eye she hushed her friends with her hands-and -by some secret sympathy with the inanimate with uplifted eyes pointed to the guides sent,)njec' -vatched its fall and it seemed to stop, to her by Heaven. Small green plats, where CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 2't those creatures nibble the wild-flowers, became and soiled it with the ashes cf repentance-. now more frequent-trodden lines, almost as walking with her eyes on the ground as she plain as sheep-paths, showed that the dam again entered the kirk-yet not fearing to lift had not led her young into danger; and now them up to heaven during the prayer. Her the brushwood dwindled away into straggling sadness inspired a general pity-she was exshrubs, and the party stood on a little eminence cluded from no house she had heart to visitabove the stream, and forming part of the no coarse comment, no ribald jest accomstrath. panied the notice people took of her baby-no There had been trouble and agitation, much licentious rustic presumed on her frailty; for sobbing and many tears, among the multitude, the pale, melancholy face of the nursing while the mother was scaling the cliffs-sub- mother, weeping as she sung the lullaby, lime was the shout that echoed afar the mo- forbade all such approach —and an universal ment she reached the eyrie-then had suc- sentiment of indignation drove from the parish ceeded a silence deep as death-in a little the heartless and unprincipled seducer-if al. while arose that hymning prayer, succeeded had been known, too weak word for his crime by mute supplication —the wildness of thank- -who left thus to pine in sorrow, and in ful and congratulatory joy had next its sway- shame far worse than sorrow, one who till her and now that her salvation was sure, the great unhappy fall had been held up by every crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And mother as an example to her daughters. for whose sake was all this alternation of agony? Never had she striven to cease to love her A poor humble creature, unknown to many betrayer-but she had striven-and an apeven by name-one who had had but few peased conscience had enabled her to do sofriends, nor wished for more-contented to to think not of him now that he had deserted work all day, here-there-anywhere-that her for ever. Sometimes his image, as well she might be able to support her aged mother in love as in wrath, passed before the eye of and her child-and who on Sabbath took her her heart-but she closed it in tears of blood, seat in an obscure pew, set apart for paupers, and the phantom disappeared. Thus all the in the kirk. love towards him that slept-but was not dead "' Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the -arose in yearnings of still more' exceeding old minister of the parish; and the ring of love towards her child. Round its head was close faces widened round her lying as in gathered all hope of comfort —of peace-of death. " Gie me the bonny bit bairn into my reward of her repentance. One of its smiles arms," cried first one mother and then another, was enough to brighten up the darkness of a and it was tenderly handed round the circle of whole day. In her breast-on her knee-in its kisses, many of the snooded maidens bathing cradle, she regarded it with a perpetual prayer. its face in tears. " There's no a single scratch And this feeling it was, with all the overwhelmabout the puir innocent, for the Eagle, you see, ing tenderness of affection, all the invigorat. maun hae struck its talons into the lang claes ing power of passion, that, under the hand of and the shawl. Blin', blin' maun they be who God, bore her up and down that fearful mounsee not the finger o' God in this thing!" tain's brow, and after the hour of rescue and HanULah started up from her swoon-and, deliverance, stretched her on the greensward looking wildly round cried, "Oh! the Bird- like a corpse. the Bird! —the Eagle —the Eagle!-The Eagle The rumour of the miracle circled the has carried off my bonny wee Walter-is there mountain's base, and a strange story without nane to pursue?" A neighbour put her baby names had been told to the Wood-ranger of the into her breast; and shutting her eyes, and Cairn-Forest, by a wayfaring man. Anxious smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered to know what truth there was in it, he crossed creature said in a low voice, " Am I wauken- the hill, and making his way through the sul oh! tell me if I'm wauken-or if a' this be but len crowd, went up to the eminence, and be the wark o' a fever." held her whom he had so wickedly ruined, Hannah Lamond was not yet twenty years and so basely deserted. Hisses, and groans, old, and although she was a mother-and you and hootings, and fierce eyes, and clenched may guess what a mother —yet-frown not, hands assailed and threatened him on every fair and gentle reader-frown not, pure and side. stainless as thou art-to her belonged not the His heart died within him, not in fear, but sacred name of wife-and that baby was the in remorse. What a worm he felt himself to child of sin and shame-yes —" the child of be! And fain would he have become a worm misery, baptized in tears!" She had loved- that, to escape all that united human scorn, he trusted-been betrayed —and deserted. In sor- might have wriggled away in slime into some row and solitude-uncomforted and despised- hole of the earth. But the meek eye of Hanshe bore her burden. Dismal had been the nah met his in forgiveness-an un-upbraiding hour of travail-and she feared her mother's tear-a faint smile of love. All his better naheart would have broken, even when her own ture rose within him, all his worse nature was was cleft in twain. But how healing is for- quelled. "Yes, good people, you do right to giveness-alike to the wounds of the forgiving cover me with your scorn. But what is your and the forgiven! And then Hannah knew scorn to the wrath of God? The Evil One that, although guilty before God, her guilt was has often been with me in the woods; the not such as her fellow-creatures deemed it- same voice that once whispered me to murder for there were dreadful secrets which should her-but here I am-not to offer retributionaever pass her lips against the father of her for that may not —will not-rmust not be-guilt child. So she bowed iown her young head, must not mate with innocence. But here 1 222 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. proclaim that innocence. I deserve death, and twenty-four hours' purchase. Never was there.1 am willing here, on this spot, to deliver my- a single hound in all Lord Darlington's packs self into the hands of justice. Allan Calder since his lordship became a mighty hunter — I call on you to seize your prisoner." with nostrils so fine as those of that feathered The moral sense of the people, when in- fiend, covered though they be with strong hairs structed by knowledge and enlightened by re- or bristles, that grimly adorn a bill of formiligion, what else is it but the voice of God! dable dimensions, and apt for digging out eyeTheir anger subsided into a stern satisfaction socket and splitting skull-suture of dying man -and that soon softened, in sight of her who, or beast. That bill cannot tear in pieces like alone aggrieved, alone felt nothing but forgive- the eagle's beak, nor are its talons so powerful ness, into a confused compassion for the man to smite as to compress-but a better bill for who, bold and bad as he had been, had under- cut-and-thrust —push, carte, and tierce-the gone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen dig dismal and the plunge profound —belongs in his uncompanioned misery into the power to no other bird. It inflicts great gashes; nor of the Prince of Darkness. The old clergy- needs the wound to be repeated on the same man, whom all reverenced, put the contrite spo.t. Feeder foul and obscene! to thy nostril man's hand in hers, whom he swore to love upturned "into the murky air, sagacious of and cherish all his days. And, ere summer thy quarry from afar," sweeter is the scent of was over, Hannah was the mistress of a fami- carrion, than to the panting lover's sense and ly, in a house not much inferior to a Manse. soul the fragrance of his own virgin's breath Her mother, now that not only her daughter's and bosom, when, lying in her innocence in reputation was freed from stain, but her inno- his arms, her dishevelled tresses seem laden cence also proved, renewed her youth. And with something more ethereally pure than although the worthy schoolmaster, who told "Sabean odours from the spicy shores of us the tale so much better than we have been Araby the Blest." able to repeat it, confessed that the wood- The Raven dislikes all animal food that has ranger never became altogether a saint-nor not a deathy smack. It cannot be thought acquired the edifying habit of pulling down that he has any reverence or awe of the mys. the corners of his mouth, and turning up the tery of life. Neither is he a coward; at least, whites of his eyes-yet he assured us, that he not such a coward as to fear the dying kick never afterwards heard any thing very seri- of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his vicously to his prejudice-that he became in due tim can stand, or sit, or lie in a strong struggle, time an elder of the kirk-gave his children a the raven keeps aloof-hopping in a circle religious education-erring only in making that narrows and narrows as the sick animal's rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, nostrils keep dilating in convulsions, and its whom, even when grown up to manhood, he eyes grow dimmer and more dim. When the never called by any other name than the prey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps Eaglet. 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 THIRD CANTICLE. as to get entangled and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and TRE RAVEI.! In a solitary glen sits down on turned a little first to one side and then to ana stone the roaming pedestrian, beneath the other, all the while a self-congratulatory leer hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then folds not yet begun to growl, and hears no sounds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubibut that of an occasional big rain-drop plash- ous how to begin to gratify his lust of blood; ing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead and frequently, when just on the brink of consometimes utters a sullen groan —the pilgrim, summation, jumps off side, back, or throat, starting, listens, and the noise is repeated, but and goes dallying about, round and round, instead of a groan, a croak —croak-croak! and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almanifestly from a thing with life. A pause most snorting, the smell of the blood runniLg of silence! and hollower and hoarser the cold, colder, and more cold. At last the poor croak is heard from the opposite side of the wretch is still; and then, without waiting till glen. Eyeing the black sultry heaven, he it is stiff, he goes to work earnestly and pasfeels the warm plash on his face, but sees no sionately, and taught by horrid instinct how to bird on the wing. By and by, something black reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, lifts itself slowly and heavily up from a preci- and preserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and pice, in deep shadow; and before it has cleared brain, for the last course of his meal, gorged the rock-range, and entered the upper region to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, of air, he knows it to be a Raven. The crea- and with difficulty able either to croak or ture seems wroth to be disturbed in his soli- to fly. tude, and in his strong straight-forward flight The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of aims at the head of another glen; but he living upwards of a hundred years, perhaps a wheels round at the iron barrier, and, alight- couple of centuries. Children grow into girls, ing allung the heather, folds his huge massy girls into maidens, maidens into wives, wives wings, and leaps about as if in anger, with into widows, widows into old decrepit crones, the same savage croak-croak-croak! No and crones into dust; and the Raven who other bird so like a demon-and should you wons at the head of the glen, is aware of all chance to break a leg in the desert, and be the births, baptisms, marriages, death-beds, unable to crawl to a hut, your life is not worth and funerals. Certain it is-at least so mrn CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 223 say —that he is aware of the death-beds and insheathed! First a drab duffie cloak-then a the funerals. Often does he flap his wings drab wraprascal-then a drab broad-cloth coat, against door and window of hut, when the made in the oldest fashion-then a drab waistwretch within is in extremity, or, sitting on coat of the same-then a drab under-waistcoat the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying of thinner mould-then a linen-shirt, somedream. As the funeral winds its way towards what drabbish-then a flannel-shirt, entirely the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft in the so, and most odorous to the nostrils of the air-or, swooping down nearer to the bier, members of the Red Tarn Club. All thi" precedes the corpse like a sable sauley. must have taken a couple of days at the least While the party of friends are carousing in so, supposing the majority of members assem the house of death, he, too, scorning funeral- bled about eight A.:r. on the Sabbath morning baked meats, croaks hoarse hymns and dismal it must have been well on to twelve o'clock on dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the Monday night before the club could have comlittle grandchild of the deceased. The shep- fortably sat down to supper. During these two herds maintain that the Raven is sometimes denudingdays,we canwellbelievethatthePresiheard to laugh. Why not, as well as the dent must have been hard put to it to keep the hyena? Then it is that he is most diabolical, secretary, treasurer, chaplain, and other officefor he knows that his laughter is prophetic of bearers, ordinary and extraordinary members, human death. True it is, and it would be in- from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, so justice to conceal the fact, much more to deny tempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of it, that Ravens of old fed Elijah; but that was the first corruption. Dead bodies keep well in punishment of some old sin committed by Two frost; but the subject had in this case probawho before the Flood bore the human shape, and bly fallen from a great height, had his bones who, soon as the ark rested on Mount Ararat, broken to smash, his flesh bruised and mangled. flew off to the desolation of swamped forests The President, therefore, we repeat it, even and the disfigured solitude of the drowned though a raven of great age and authority, glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from must have had inconceivable difficulty in condaylight in burial-places among the rocks, and trolling the Club. The croak of' Order!are seen hobbling into their tombs, as if driven order!-Chair!-chair!"-must have been thither by a flock of fears, and crouching un- frequent; and had the office not been hereditary, der a remorse that disturbs instinct, even as the old gentleman would no doubt have thrown if it were conscience. So sings and says it up, and declared the chair vacant. All ob the Celtic superstition-muttered to us in a stacles and obstructions having been by inde dream-adding that there are Raven ghosts, fatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the well believe, was made by the seneschal to forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emit- place the guests according to their rank, above ting a last feeble croak at the blush of dawn, or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuousand then all at once invisible. ly down to a late supper. Not a word was uttered There can be no doubt that that foolish during the first half hour, till a queer-looking Quaker, who some twenty years ago perished mnortal, who had spent severalyears of his prime. at the foot of a crag near Red Tarn, "far in of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a the bosom of Helvyllyn," was devoured by tolerable command ofthe Westmoreland dialect ravens. We call him foolish, because no ad- by means of the Hamiltonian system, exclaimherent of that sect was ever qualified to find ed, "I'se weel nee brussen-there be's Mister his way among mountains when the day was Wudsworth-Ho, ho, ho!" It was indeed the shortish, and the snow, if not very deep, yet bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterwreathed and pit-falled. In such season and dale to Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red weather, no place so fit for a Quaker as the Tarn Club, afraid of having their orgies put fireside. Not to insist, however, on that point, into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragwith what glee the few hungry and thirsty old ments beneath the moon and stars. Ravens belonging to the Red Tarn Club must But over the doom of one true Lover of Nahave flocked to the Ordinary! Without ask- ture let us shed a flood of rueful tears; for at ing each other to which part this, that, or the what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the other croaker chose to be helped, the maxim tale of youthful genius and virtue shrouded which regulated their behaviour at table was suddenly in a winding-sheet wreathed of snow doubtless, "First come, first served." Forth- by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of with each bill was busy, and the scene became solitude, he hurried like a fast travelling shadow animated in the extreme. There must have into the silence of the frozen mountains, all been great difficulty to the most accomplished beautifully encrusted with pearls, and jewels, of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his and diamonds, beneath the resplendent nightdrab. The broad-brim had probably escaped heavens. The din of populous cities had long with the first intention, and after going before stunned his brain, and his soul had sickened the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, cap- in the presence of the money-hunting eyes of sized, filled, and sunk. Picture to yourself'so selfish men, all madly pursuing their multifamany devils, all in glossy black feather coats rious machinations in the great mart of com. and dark breeches, with waistcoats inclining merce. The very sheeted masts of ships, to blue, pully-hawlying away at the unresisting bearing the flags of foreign countries, in all figure of the follower of Fox, and getting first their pomp and beauty sailing homeward or vexed and then irritated with the pieces of outward-bound, had become hateful to his choking soft armour in which, five or six ply spirit-for what were they but the floating enthick, his inviting carcass was so provokingly ginery of Mammon? Tr:Lth, integrity honour, 224 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. were all recklessly sacrificed to gain by the stretched away in all directions through among friends he loved and had respected most-sa- the mountains to distant vales. No more fear crificed without shame and without remorse or thought had he'of being lost in the wilder. -repentance being. with them a repentance ness, than the ring-dove that flies from forest only over ill-laid schemes of villany-plans to forest in the winter season, and, without the for the ruination of widows and orphans, aid even of vision, trusts to the instinctive blasted in the bud of their iniquity. The bro- wafting of her wings through the paths of ether. ther of his bosom made him a bankrupt-and As he continued gazing on the heavens, the for a year the jointure of his widow-mother moon all at once lost something of her brightwas unpaid. But she died before the second ness-the stars seemed fewer in number-and Christmas-and he was left alone in the world. the lustre of the rest as by mist obscured. The Poor indeed he was, but not a beggar. A lega- blue ethereal frame grew discoloured with cy came to him from a distant relation-almost streaks of red and yellow-and a sort of dim the only one of his name-who died abroad. darkness deepened and deepened on the air, Small as it was, it was enough to live on-and while the mountains appeared higher, and at his enthusiastic spirit gathering joy from dis- the same time further off, as if he had been tress, vowed to dedicate itself in some profound transported in a dream to another region of solitude to the love of Nature, and the study the earth. A sound was heard, made -up of farof her Great Laws. PHe bade an eternal fare- mustering winds, echoes from caves, swinging well to cities at the dead of midnight, beside of trees, and the murmur as of a great lake or his mother's grave, scarcely distinguishable sea beginning to break on the shore. A few among the thousand flat stones, sunk, or sink- flakes of snow touched his face, and the air ing into the wide churchyard, along which a grew cold. A clear tarn had a few minutes begreat thoroughfare of life roared like the sea. fore glittered with moonbeams, but now it had And now, for the first time, his sorrow flung disappeared. Sleet came thicker and faster, from him like a useless garment, he found and ere long it was a storm of snow. "O God! himself alone among the Cumbrian mountains, my last hour is come!" and scarcely did he and impelled in strong idolatry almost to kneel hear his own voice in the roaring tempest. down and worship the divine beauty of the Men have died in dungeons-and their skelemoon, and "stars that are the poetry of hea- tons been found long years afterwards lying ven." on the stone floor, in postures that told through Not uninstructed was the wanderer in the what hideous agonies they had passed into the lore that links the human heart to the gracious world of spirits. But no eye saw, nor ear heard, form and aspects of the Mighty Mother. In and the prison-visitor gathers up, as he shudders, early youth he had been intended for the but a dim conviction of some long horror from Church, and subsequent years of ungrateful the bones. One day in spring, long after the and ungenial toils had not extinguished the snows were melted-except here and there a fine scholarship that native aptitude for learn- patch like a flock of sheep on some sunless ing had acquired in the humble school of the exposure-a huge Raven rose heavily, as if village in which he was born. He had been gorged with prey, before the feet of a shepherd, ripe for College when the sudden death of his who, going forward to the spot where the bird father, who had long been at the head of a great had been feeding, beheld a rotting corpse! A mercantile concern, imposed it upon him, as a dog, itself almost a skeleton, was lying near, sacred duty owed to his mother and sisters, to and began to whine at his approach. On its embark in trade. Not otherwise could he hope collar was the name of its master-a name ever to retrieve their fortunes-and for ten unknown in that part of the country-and years for their sake he was a slave, till ruin weeks elapsed before any person could be set him free. Now he was master of his own heard of that could tell the history of the sufdestiny-and sought some humble hut in that ferer. A stranger came and went-taking the magnificent scenery, where he might pass a faithful creature with him that had so long blameless life, and among earth's purest joys watched by the dead-but long before his arprepare his soul for heaven. Many such hum- rAval the remains had been interred; and you ble huts had he seen during that one bold, may see the grave, a little way on from the bright, beautiful spring-winter day. Each south gate, on your right hand as you enter, wreath of smoke from the breathing chimneys, not many yards from the Great Yew-Tree in while the huts themselves seemed hardly the churchyard of, not far from the foot awakened from sleep in the morning-calm, led of Ullswater. his imagination up into the profound peace of Gentle reader.! we have given you two verthe sky. In any one of those dwellings, peep- sions of the same story-and pray, which do ing from sheltered dells, or perched on wind- you like the best? The first is the most funny, swept eminences, could he have taken up his the second the most affecting. We have obabode, and sat down contented at the board of served that the critics are not decided on the their simple inmates. But in the very delirium question of our merits as a writer; some mainof a new bliss, the day faded before him-twi- taining that we are strongest in humourlight looked lovelier than dream-land in the others, that our power is in pathos. The jureflected glimmer of the snow —and thus had dicious declare that our forte lies in both-in mridnight found him, in a place so utterly lone- the two united, or alternating with each other. some in its remoteness from all habitations, "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims somo that even in summer no stranger sought it scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to without the guidance of some shepherd fami. hear so very serious an affair as the death of a lar with the many bewildering passes that Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 22L5 Fwith such heartless levity? The man who melancholy-not a drunkard-not blind-not wrote that description, sir, of the Ordinary of stupid; as much as it would be prudent to say the Red Tarn Club, would'hot scruple to cornm- of any man, whether editor or contributor, in mit murder!" Why, if killing a scribbler be her Majesty's dominions. murder, the writer of that-this-article con- We really have no patience with people who fesses that he has more than once committed persist in all manner of misconceptions re. that capital crime. But no intelligent jury, garding the character of birds. Birds often taking into consideration the law as well as appear to such persons, judging from, of, and the fact —and it is often their duty to do so, let by themselves, to be in mind and manners the high authorities say what they will-would for reverse of their real character. They judge a moment hesitate, in any of the cases alluded the inner bird by outward circumstances into, to bring in a verdict of "Justifiable homi- accurately observed. There is the owl. How cide." The gentleman or lady who has honour- little do the people of England know of himed us so far with perusal, knows enough of even of him the barn-door and domestic owlhuman life, and of their own hearts, to know yea, even at this day —we had almost said the also that there is no other subject which men Poets! Shakspeare, of course, and his freres, of genius-and who ever denied that we are knew him to be a merry fellow-quite a madmen',f genius — have been accustomed to cap-and so do now all the Lakers. But view in so many ludicrous lights as this same Cowper had his doubts about it; and Gray, as subject of death; and the reason is at once ob- every schoolboy knows, speaks of him like an vious-yet recherche-videlicet, Death is, in it- old wife. The force of folly can go no further, self and all that belongs to it, such a sad, cold, than to imagine an owl complaining to the wild, dreary, dismal, distracting, and dreadful moon of being disturbed by people walking in thing, that at times men talking about it can- a country churchyard. And among all our not choose but laugh! present bardlings, the owl is supposed to be Too-hoo - too-hoo - too-whit-too-hoo!-we constantly on the eve of suicide. If it were have got among the OWLS. Venerable per- really so, he ought in a Christian country to sonages, in truth, they are-perfect Solomons! be pitied, not pelted, as he is sure to be when The spectator, as in most cases of very solemn accidentally seen in sunlight-for melancholy characters, feels himself at first strongly dis- is a misfortune, especially when hereditary and posed to commit the gross indecorum of burst- constitutional, as it is popularly believed to be ing out a-laughing in their face. One does in the Black-billed Bubo, and certainly was in not see the absolute necessity either of man or Dr. Johnson. In young masters and misses bird looking at all times so unaccountably we can pardon any childishness; but we canwise. Why will an Owl persist in his stare? not pardon the antipathy to the owl entertained Why will a Bishop never lay aside his wig? by the manly minds of grown-up English clodPeople ignorant of Ornithology will stare hoppers, ploughmen, and threshers. They keep like the Bird of Wisdom himself on being told terriers to kill rats and mice in barns, and they that an OWL is an Eagle. Yet, bating a little shoot the owls, any one of whom we would inaccuracy, it is so. Eagles, kites, hawks, and cheerfullyback against the famous Billy. "The owls, all belong to the genus Falco. We hear very commonest observation teaches us," says a great deal too much in poetry of the moping the author of the " Gardens of the Menagerie," Owl, the melancholy Owl, the boding Owl, "that they are in reality the best and most effiwhereas he neither mopes nor bodes, and is cient protectors of our cornfields and granano more melancholy than becomes a gentle- ries from the devastating pillage of the swarms man. We also hear of the Owl being addicted of mice and other small rodents." Nay, by their to spirituous liquors; and hence the expres- constant destruction of these petty but dangersion, as drunk as an Owl. All this is mere ous enemies, the owls, he says, "earn an unWhiS, personality, the Owl being a Tory of the questionable title to be regarded as among the old school, and a friend of the ancient estab- most active of the friends of man; a title which. lishments of church and state. Nay, the same only one or two among them occasionally forpolitical party, although certainly the most feit by their aggressions on the defenceless sh-lrt-sighted of God's creatures, taunt the Owl poultry." Roger or Dolly beholds him in thew.;:h being blind. As blind as an Owl is a act of murdering a duckling, and, like other libel in firequent use out of ornithological so- light-headed, giddy, unthinking creatures, they ciety. Shut up Lord Jeffrey himself in a hay- forget all the service he has done the farm, the barn with a well-built mow, and ask him in parish, and the state; he is shot in the act, and the darkness to catch you a few mice, and he nailed, wide-extended in cruel spread-eagle, on will tell you whether or not the Owl be blind. the barn-door. Others again call him dull and This would be just as fair as to expect the short-sighted-nay, go the length of asserting Owl to see, like Lord Jeffrey, through a case that he is stupid-as stupid as an owl. Why, in the Parliament House during daylight. Nay, our excellent fellow, when you have the tithe we once heard a writer in Taylor and Hessey of the talent of the common owl, and know call the Owl stupid, he himself having longer half as well how to use it, you may claim the ears than any species of Owl extant. What is medal. the positive character of the Owl may perhaps The eagles, kites, and hawks, hunt by day. appear by and by; but we have seen that, de- The Owl is the Nimrod of the Night. Then, scribing his character by negations, we may like one who shall be nameless, he sails about say that, he resembles Napoleon Bonaparte seeking those whom he may devour. To do much more than Joseph Hume or Alderman him justice, he has a truly ghost-like head and Wood. He is not moping-not boding-not shoulders of his own. What horror to the 15 226 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. "small birds rejoicing in spring's leafy bow- half stifled, and little likely to heave up from ers," fast-locked we were going to say in each above him a six-feet-deep load of earth-to say other's arms, but sitting side by side in the nothing of the improbability of his being able same cozey nuptial nest, to be startled out of to unscrew the coffin from the inside. Be that their love-dreams by the great lamp-eyed, as it may, we cleared about a dozen of decent beaked face of a horrible monster with horns, tombstones at three jumps-the fourth took us picked out of feathered bed, and wafted off in over a wall five feet high within and about one bunch, within talons, to pacify a set of fifteen without, and landed us, with a squash, hissing, and snappish, and shapeless powder- in a cabbage-garden inclosed on the other three puffs, in the loophole of a barn? In a house sides by a house and a holly-hedge. The house where a cat is kept, mice are much to be pitied. was the sexton's, who, apprehending the straThey are so infatuated with the smell of a re- mash to proceed from a resurrectionary surspectable larder, that to leave the premises, geon mistaken in his latitude, thrust out a long they confess, is impossible. Yet every hour- duck-gun from a window in the thatch, and nay, every minute of their lives-must they be swore to blow out our brains if we did not inin the fear of being leaped out upon by four stantly surrender ourselves, and deliver up the velvet paws, and devoured with kisses from a corpse. It was in vain to cry out our name, whiskered mouth, and a throat full of that in- which he knew as well as his own. He was comprehensible music-a purr. Life, on such deaf to reason, and would not withdraw his terms, seems to us any thing but desirable. patterero till we had laid down the corpse. He But the truth is, that mice in the fields are not swore that he saw the sack in the moonlight. a whit better off. Owls are cats with wings. This was a horse-cloth with which we had inSkimming along the grass tops, they stop in a tended to saddle the " cowte," and that had remomentary hover, let drop a talon, and away mained, during the supernatural agency under with Mus, his wife, and small family of blind which we laboured, clutched unconsciously children. It is the white, or yellow, or barn, or and convulsively in our grasp. Long was it church, or Screech-Owl, or Gilley-Howlet, that ere Davie Donald would see us in our true behaves in this way; and he makes no bones light-but at length he drew on his Kilmarof a mouse, uniformly swallowing him alive. nock nightcap, and, coming out with a bouet, Our friend, we suspect, though no drunkard, is let us through the trance and out of the front somewhat of a glutton. In one thing we agree door, thoroughly convinced, till we read Bewith him, that there is no sort of harm in a wick, that old Southfield was not dead, although heavy supper. There, however, we are guilty in a very bad way indeed. Let this be a lesson of some confusion of ideas; for what to us, to schoolboys not to neglect the science of nawho rise in the morning, seems a supper, is to tural history, and to study the character of the him who gets up at evening twilight, a break- White Owl. fast. We therefore agree with him in think- OwI.s-both White and common Brown, are ing that there is no sort of harm in a heavy not only useful in a mountainous country, but breakfast. After having passed a pleasant highly ornamental. How serenely beautiful night in eating and flirting, he goes to bed be- their noiseless flight; a flake of snow is not times, about four o'clock in the morning; and, winnowed through the air more softly-silent! as Bewick observes, makes a blowing, hissing Gliding along the dark shadows of a wood, noise, resembling the snoring of a man. In- how spiritual the motion-how like the thought deed, nothing can be more diverting to a per- of a dream! And then, during the hushed son annoyed by blue devils, than to look at a midnight hours, how jocund the whoop and White Owl and his wife asleep. With their hollo from the heart of sycamore —gray rock, heads gently inclined towards each other, there or ivyed Tower! How the Owls of Winderthey keep snoring away like any Christian mere must laugh at the silly Lakers, that under couple. Should the one make a pause, the the garish eye of day, enveloped in clouds of other that instant awakes, and, fearing some- dust, whirl along in rattling post-shays in pur thing may be wrong with his spouse, opens a suit of the picturesque! Why, the least imapair of glimmering winking eyes, and inspects ginative Owl that ever hunted mice by moonthe adjacent physiognomy with the scrutiniz- light on the banks of Windermere, must know ing stare of a village apothecary. If all be the character of its scenery better than any right, the concert is resumed, the snore some- poetaster that ever dined on char at Bowness times degenerating into a snort of snivel, and or Lowood. The long quivering lines of light the snivel into a blowing hiss. First time we illumining some silvan isle —the evening-star heard this noise was in a churchyard when we shining from the water to its counterpart in the were mere boys, having ventured in after dark sky-the glorious phenomenon of the double to catch the minister's colt for a gallop over to moon-the night-colours of the woods-and, the parish-capital, where there was a dancing- once in the three years perhaps, that loveliest school ball. There had been a nest of Owls and most lustrous of celestial forms, the lunar in some hole in the spire; but we never rainbow-all these and many more beauteous doubted for a moment that the noise of snor- and magnificent sights are familiar to the Owls ing, blowing, hissing, and snapping proceeded of Windermere. And who know half so well from a testy old gentleman that had been buried as they do the echoes of Furness, and Apple. that forenoon, and had come alive again a day thwaite, and Loughrigg, and Langdale, all the after the fair. Had we reasoned the matter a way on to Dungeon-Gill and Pavey-Ark, Scaw. little, we must soon have convinced ourselves fell and the Great Gable, and that sea of mounthat there was no ground for alarm to us at tains, of which every wave has a name? Mid. least, for the noise was like that of sonie one night-when asleep so still and silent-seems CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 247 inspired with the joyous spirit of the Owls in tral table in the Palace of Stuffed Birds, you their revelry-and answers to their mirth and may admire his outward very self-the sem. merriment through all her clouds. The Mop- blance of the Owl he was when he used to eye ing Owl, indeed!-the Boding Owl, forsooth! the moon shining over the Northern Sea:-the Melancholy Owl, you blockhead!-why, but if you would see the noble and beautiful they are the most cheerful-joy-portending- Creature himself, in all his living glory, you and exulting of God's creatures! Their flow must seek him through the long summer twi. of animal spirits is incessant-crowing-cocks light among the Orkney or the Shetland Isles. are a joke to them-blue devils are to them The Snowy Owl dearly loves the snow-and unknown-not one hypochondriac in a thou- there is, we believe, a tradition among them, sand barns-and the Man-in-the-Moon acknow- that their first ancestor and ancestress rose up ledges that he never heard one of them utter a together from a melting snow-wreath on the complaint. very last day of a Greenland winter, when all But what say ye to an Owl, not only like an at once the bright fields re-appear. The race eagle in plumage, but equal to the largest eagle still inhabits that frozen coast-being comin size-and therefore named, from the King mon, indeed, through all the regions of the of Birds, the EAGLE OWL. Mr. Selby! you have Arctic Circle. It is numerous on the shores done justice to the monarch of the Bubos. We of Hudson's Bay, in Norway, Sweden, and hold ourselves to be persons of tolerable cou- Lapland-but in the temperate parts of Europe rage, as the world goes —but we could not and America, "rara avis in terris, nigroque answer for ourselves showing fight with such simillima cygno." a customer, were he to waylay us by night in We defy all the tailors on the face of the a wood. In comparison, Jack Thurtell looked habitable globe; and what countless crossharmless. No-that bold, bright-eyed mur- legged fractional parts of men-who, like the derer, with Horns on his head like those on beings of whom they are constituents, are Michael Angelo's statue of Moses, would never thought to double their numbers every thirty have had the cruel cowardice to cut the wea- years-must not the four quarters of the earth, sand, and smash out the brains of such a mis- in their present advanced state of civilization, *rable wretch as Weare! True he is fond of contain!-we defy, we say, all the tailors on blood-and where's the harm in that! It is the face of the habitable globe to construct his nature. But if there be any truth in the such a surtout as that of the Snowy Owl, coscience of Physiognomy-and be that of Phre- vering him, with equal luxury and comfort, in nology what it will, most assuredly there is summer's heat and winter's cold. The eletruth in it-the original of that Owl, for whose ments, in all their freezing fury, cannot reach portrait the world is indebted to Mr. Selby, and the body of the bird through that beautiful Sir Thomas Lawrence never painted a finer down-mail. Well guarded are the openings one of Prince or Potentate of any Holy or Un- of those great eyes. Neither the driving dust, holy Alliance, must have despised Probert from nor the searching sleet, nor the sharp frozen the very bottom of his heart. No prudent snow-stoure, give him the ophthalmia. Gutta Eagle but would be exceedingly desirous of Serena is to him unknown-no snowy Owl keeping on good terms with him-devilish shy, was ever couched for cataract-no need has i' faith, of giving him any offence by the least he for an oculist, should he live an hundred hauteur of manner, or the slightest violation of years; and were they to attempt any operation etiquette. An Owl of this character and cali- on his lens or iris, how he would hoot at Alexbre, is not afraid to show his horns at mid-day ander and Wardrope! on the mountain. The Fox is not over and Night, doubtless, is the usual season of his above fond of him-and his claws can kill a prey; but he does not shun the day, and is cub at a blow. The Doe sees the monster sit- sometimes seen hovering unhurt in the sunting on the back of her fawn, and maternal shine. The red or black grouse flies as if instinct overcome by horror, bounds into the pursued by a ghost; but the Snowy Owl, little brake, and leaves the pretty creature to its slower than the eagle,in dreadful silence overfate. Thank Heaven, he is, in Great Britain, takes his flight, and then death is sudden and a rare bird! Tempest-driven across the North- sure. Hawking is, or was, a noble pastimeern Ocean from his native forests in Russia, and we have now prevented our eyes from an occasional visitant he "frightens this Isle glancing at Jer-falcon, Peregrine, or Goshawk - from its propriety," and causes a hideous but Owling, we do not doubt, would be noways screaming through every wood he haunts. inferior sport; andwereit to become prevalent Some years ago, one was killed on the upland in modern times, as Hawking was in times of moors in the county of Durham-and, of old, why, eachlady, as Venus already fair, with course, paid a visit to Mr. Bullock's Museum. an Owl on her wrist, would look as wise as Eagle-like in all its habits, it builds its nest on Minerva. high rocks-sometimes on the loftiest trees- But our soul sickens at all those dreams of and seldom lays more than two eggs. One is blood! and fain would turn away from fierce one more than enough —and we who fly by eye, cruel beak, and tearing talon-war-wea. night trust never to fall in with a live speci- pons of them that delight in wounds and death men of the Strix-Bubo of Linnaeus. -to the contemplation of creatures whose But largest and loveliest of all the silent characteristics are the love of solitude-shy night-gliders-the Sxowx OWL! Gentle reader gentleness of manner —the tender devotion of -if you long to see his picture, we have told mutual attachment-and, in field or forest, a you where it may be found; —and in the Col- lifelong passion for peace. ege Museum, within a glass vase on the cen 228 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. of eight and nine ante-meridian. Happily, how FOURTH CANTICLE. ever, for our future peace of mind, and not improbably for the whole conformation of our WELCOME then the RING-Dovy —the QUEST character, our Guardian Genius-(every boy -or CUSHAT, for that is the very bird we have has one constantly at his side, both during had in our imagination. There is his full- school and play hours, though it must be con length portrait, stealthily sketched as the Soli- fessed sometimes a little remiss in his duty, tary was sitting on a tree. You must catch for the nature even of angelical beings is imhim napping, indeed, before he will allow you perfect)-always so contrived it, that with all an opportunity of colouring him on the spot our cunning we never could kill a Cushat. from nature. It is not that he is more jealous Many a long hour-indeed whole Saturdaysor suspicious of man's approach than other have we lain perdue anlong broom and whins, bird; for never shall we suffer ourselves to the beautiful green and yellow skirting of believe that any tribe of the descendants of the sweet Scotia's woods, watching his egress cr Dove that brought to the Ark the olive tidings ingress, our gun ready cocked, and finger on of re-appearing earth, can in their hearts hate trigger, that on the flapping of his wings not a or fear the race of the children of man. But moment might be lost in bringing him to the Nature has made the Cushat a lover of the ground. But couch where we might, no Cushat still forest-gloom; and therefore, when his ever came near our insidious lair. Now and lonesome haunts are disturbed or intruded on, then a Magpie-birds who, by the by, when he flies to some yet profounder, some more they suspect you of any intention of shooting central solitude, and folds his wing in the them, are as distant in their manners as hermitage.of a Yew, sown in the time of the Cushats themselves, otherwise as impudent ancient Britons. as Cockneys-would come, hopping in conIt is the Stock-Dove, we believe, not the tinual tail-jerks, with his really beautiful plumRing-Dove, from whom are descended all the age, if one could bring one's-self to think it so, varieties of the races of Doves. What tenderer and then sport the pensive within twenty praise can we give them all, than that the yards of the muzzle ofBrown-Bess, impatient to Dove is the emblem of Innocence, and that the let fly. But our soul burned, our heart panted name of innocence-not of frailty-is Woman? for a Cushat; and in that strong fever-fit of When Hamlet said the reverse, he was think- passion, could we seek to slake our thirst for ing, you know, of the Queen-not of Ophelia. that wild blood with the murder of a thievish Is not woman by nature chaste as the Dove- eavesdropper of a Pye l The Blackbird, too, as the Dove faithful? Sitting all alone with often dropt out of the thicket into an open her babe in her bosom, is she not as a Dove glade in the hazel-shaws, and the distinctness devoted to her own nest? Murmureth she not of his yellow bill showed he was far within a pleasant welcome to her wearied home-re- shot-range. Yet, let us do ourselves justice, turned husband, even like the Dove among the we never in all our born days dreamt of shootwoodlands when her mate re-alights on the ing a Blackbird.-him that scares away sadpine! Should her spouse be taken from her ness from the woodland twilight gloom, at and disappear, doth not her heart sometimes morn or eve; whose antnem, even in those break, as they say it happens to the Dove? dim days when Nature herself it might be well But oftener far, findeth not the widow that her thought were melancholy, forceth the firmaorphans are still fed by her own hand, that is ment to ring with joy. Once "the snow-white filled with good things by Providence; till cony sought its evening meal," unconscious grown up, and able to shift for themselves, of our dangerous vicinity, issuing with erected away they go-just as the poor Dove lamenteth ears from the wood edge. That last was, we for her mate in the snare of the fowler, yet confess, such a temptation to touch the trigger, feedeth her young continually through the that had we resisted it we must have been whole day, till away too go they —alas, in either more or less than boy. We fired; and neither case, perhaps, ever more to return! kicking up his heels, doubtless in fright, but We dislike all favouritism, all foolish and as it then seemed to us, during our disappointcapricious partiality for particular bird or ment, much rather in frolic-nay, absolute beast; but dear, old, sacred associations, will derision-away bounced Master Rabbit to his tell upon all one thinks or feels towards any burrow, without one particle of soft silvery place or person in this world of ours, near or wool on sward or bush, to bear witness to our remote. God forbid we should criticise the unerring aim. As if the branch on which he C(ushat! We desire to speak of him as tender- had been sitting were broken, away then went ly as of a friend buried in our early youth. the crashing Cushat through the intermingling Too true it is, that often and oft, when school- sprays. The free flapping of his wings was boys, have we striven to steal upon him in his soon heard in the air above the tree-tops, and solitude, and to shoot him to death. In morals, ere we could recover from our almost bitter and in religion, it would be heterodox to deny amazement, the creature was murmuring to that the will is as the deed. Yet in cases of his mate on her shallow nest-a far-off murhigh and low-way robbery and murder, there mur, solitary and profound —to reach unto does seem, treating the subject not in philoso- which, through thetangled mazes of the forest phical but popular style, to be some little dif- would have required a separate sense, instinct, ference between the two; at least we hope so, or faculty, which we did not possess. So, for otherwise we can with difficulty imagine skulking out of our hiding-place, we made no vne person not deserving to be ordered for ex- comment on the remark of a homeward-plodecuti m, on Wednesday next, between the hours ding labourer, who had heard the report, and CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 229 now smelt the powder —" Cushats are gayan' all well knowing that their fresh meal on the kittle birds to kill" —but returned, with our tender herbage will not be broken in upon be. shooting-bag as empty as our stomach, to the fore the dews of next morning, ushering in a Manse. new day to them of toil or travel. "Why do the birds sing on Sunday?" said So much for our belief in the knowledge, once a little boy to us-and we answered him instinctive or from a sort of reason, posss:;ed, in a lyrical ballad, which we have lost. But by the creatures of the inferior creation, of the although the birds certainly do sing on Sunday heaven-appointed Sabbath to man and beast. -behaviourthatwith our smallgentle Calvinist, But it is also true that we transfer our in. who dearly loved them, caused some doubts of ward feelings to their outward condition, and their being so innocent as during the week- with our religious spirit imbue all the ongoings days they appeared to be-we cannot set down of animated and even inanimated life. There their fault to the score of ignorance. Is it in is always a shade of melancholy, a tinge of the holy superstition of the world-wearied heart pensiveness, a touch of pathos, in all profound that man believes the inferior creatures to be rest. Perhaps because it is so much in contrast conscious of the calm of the Sabbath, and that with the turmoil of our ordinary being. Per. they know it to be the day of our rest? Or haps because the soul, when undisturbed, will, is it that we transfer the feeling of our inward from the impulse of its own divine nature, have calm to all the goings-on of Nature, and thus high, solemn, and awful thoughts. In such imbue them with a character of reposing state it transmutes all things into a show sanctity,existing only in ourown spirits? Both of sympathy with itself. The church-spire, solutions are true. The instincts of those rising high above the smoke and stir of a creatures we know only in their symptoms town, when struck. by the sun-fire, seems, on and their effects, in the wonderful range of market-day, a tall building in the air, that may action over which they reign. Of the instincts serve as a guide to people from a distance -hemselves-as feelings or ideas —we know flocking into bazaars. The same church-spire, not any thing, nor ever can know; for an im- were its loud-tongued bell to call from aloft on passable gulf separates the nature of those that the gathering multitude below, to celebrate the may be to perish, from ours that are to live for anniversary of some great victory, Waterloo ever. But their power of memory, we must or Trafalgar, would appear to stretch up its believe is not only capable of minutest reten- stature triumphantly into the sky-so much tion, but also stretches back to afar-and some the more triumphantly, if the standard of Eng. power or other they do possess, that gathers up land were floating from its upper battlements. the past experience into rules of conduct that But to the devout eye of faith, doth it not seem guide them in their solitary or gregarious life. to express its own character, when on the SabWhy, therefore, should not the birds of Scot- bath it performs no other office than to point land know the Sabbath-day? On that day the to heaven? Water-Ouzel is never disturbed by angler So much for the second solution. But in among the murmurs of his own water-fall; dependently of both, no wonder that all na and as he flits down the banks and braes of the ture seems to rest on the Sabbath; for it doth burn, he sees no motion, he hears no sound rest-all of it, at least, that appertains to man about the cottage that is the boundary of his and his condition. I~ f the Fourth Command furthest flight-for "the dizzying mill-wheel ment be kept-at rest is all the householdrests." The merry-nodding rooks, that in and all the fields round it are at rest. Calm spring-time keep following the very heels flows the current of human life, on that graof the ploughman-may they not know it to cious day, throughout all the glens and valleys be Sabbath, when all the horses are standing of Scotland, as a stream that wimples in the idle in the field, or taking a gallop by them- morning sunshine, freshened but not flooded selves round the head-rigg? Quick of hearing with the soft-falling rain of a summer-night. are birds-one and all-and in every action The spiral smoke-wreath above the cottage is of their lives are obedient to sounds. May they not calmer than the motion within. True, that not, then-do they not connect a feeling of per- the wood-warblers do not cease their songs; fec; safety with the tinkle of the small kirk- but the louder they sing, the deeper is the stillbe\.? The very jay himself is not shy of peo- ness. And what perfect blessedness, when it ple on their way to worship. The magpie, is only joy that is astir in rest! that never sits more than a minute at a time Loud-flapping Cushat! it was thou that in, in the same place on a Saturday, will on the spiredst these solemn fancies; and we have Sabbath remain on the kirryard wall with all only to wish thee, for thy part contributed to the composure of a dove. The whole feath- our Recreations, now that the acorns of autumn ered creation know our hours of sleep. They must be wellnigh consumed, many a plentiful awake before us; and ere the earliest labourer repast, amid the multitude of thy now congrehas said his prayers, have not the woods and gated comrades in the cleared stubble landsvalleys been ringing with their hymns? Why, as severe weather advances, and the ground therefore, may not they, who know, each week- becomes covered with snow, regales undisday, the hour of our lying down and our rising turbed by fowler, on the tops of turnip, rape, up, know also the day of our general rest? and other cruciform plants, which all of thy The animals whose lot is labour, shall they race affect so passionately-and soft blow the not know it? Yes; the horse on that day sea-breezes on thy unruffled plumage, wheh sleeps in shade or sunshine without fear of thou takest thy winter's walk with kindred being disturbed-his neck forgets the galling myriads on the shelly shore, and for a season collar, "and there are forty feeding like one," minglest with gull and seamew-apart every t30 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. tribe, one from the other, in the province of its bodies —the chamber where the spirit breathed own peculiar instinct —yet all mysteriously its final farewell-the spot of its transitory love taught to feed or sleep together within the roar and delight, or of its sin and sorrow-to gaze or margin of the main. with troubled tenderness on the eyes that once Sole-sitting Cushat! We see thee through they worshipped-with cold ear to drink the the yew-tree's shade, on some day of the olden music of the voices long ago adored; and in time, but when or where we remember not- all their permitted visitations, to express, if but for what has place or time to do with the vision by the beckoning of the shadow of a hand, of a dream! That we see thee is all we know, some unextinguishable longing after the con. and that serenely beautiful thou art! Most verse of the upper world, even within the gates pleasant is it to dream, and to know we dream! of the grave. By sweet volition we keep ourselves half A change comes over us. Deep and still as asleep and half awake; and all our visions of is the solitude, we are relieved of our awe, and thought, as they go swimming along, partake out of the forest-gloom arise images of beauty at once of reality and imagination. Fiction that come and go, gliding as on wings, or staand truth-clouds, shadows, phantoms and tue-like, stand in the glades, like the sylvan phantasms-ether, sunshine, substantial forms deities to whom of old belonged, by birthright, and sounds that have a being, blending together all the regions of the woods. On-on-on!in a scene created by us, and partly impressed further into the Forest!-and let the awe of upon us, and which one motion of the head on imagination be still further tempered by the the pillow may dissolve, or deepen into more delight breathed even from any one of the oppressive delight! In some such dreaming lovely names sweet-sounding through the fastate of mind are we now; and, gentle reader, mous fables of antiquity. Dryad, Hamadryad! if thou art awake, lay aside the visionary vo- Faunus! Sylvanus!-Now, alas! ye are but lume, or read a little longer, and likely enough names, and no more! Great Pan himself is is it that thou too mayest fall half asleep. If so, dead, or here he would set up his reign. But let thy drowsy eyes still pursue the glimmering what right has such a dreamer to dream of the paragraphs —and wafted away wilt thou feel dethroned deities of Greece? The language thyself to be into the heart of a Highland fo- they spoke is not his language; yet the words rest, that knows no bounds but those of the of the great poets who sang of gods and demiuncertain sky. gods, are beautiful in their silent meanings as Away from our remembrance fades the noisy they meet his adoring eyes; and, mighty Lyworld of men into a silent glimmer-and now rists! has he not often floated down the templeit is all no more than a mere faint thought. crowned and altar-shaded rivers of your great On-on-on! through briery brake —matted Choral Odes? thicket-grassy glade-On-on-on! further On-on-on!-further into the Forest!into the Forest! What a confusion of huge unless, indeed, thou dreadest that the limbs stones, rocks, knolls, all tumbled together into that bear on thy fleshly tabernacle may fail, a chaos-not without its stern and sterile and the body, left to itself, sink down and die. beauty! Still are there, above, blue glimpses Ha! such fears thou laughest to scorn; for of the sky-deep though the umbrage be, and from youth upwards thou hast dallied with the wide-flung the arms of the oaks, and of pines wild and perilous: and what but the chill dein their native wilderness gigantic as oaks, light in which thou hast so often shivered in and extending as broad a shadow. Now the threatening solitude brought thee here! These firmament has vanished-and all is twilight. dens are not dungeons, nor are we a thrall. Immense stems, " in number without number Yet if dungeons they must be called-and they numberless,"-bewildering eye and soul-all are deep, and dark, and grim-ten thousand still-silent —steadfast-and so would they be gates hath this great prison-house, and wide in a storm. For what storm-let it range aloft open are they all. So on —on-on! —further as it might, till the surface of the forest toss into the Forest! But who shall ascend to its and roar like the sea-could force its path summit? Eagles and dreams. Round its base through these many million trunks? The we go, rejoicing in the new-found day, and thunder-stone might split that giant there- once more cheered and charmed with the muhow vast! how magnificent! —but the brother sic of birds. Say whence came, ye scientific by his side would not tremble; and the sound world-makers, these vast blocks of granite? -in the awful' width of the silence-what Was it fire or water, think ye, that hung in the more would it be than that of the woodpecker air the semblance of yon Gothic cathedral, alarming the insects of one particular tree! without nave, or chancel, or aisle-a mass of Poor wretch that we are!-to us the uncom- solid rock? Yet it looks like the abode of panioned silence of the solitude hath become Echoes; and haply when there is thunder, terrible. More dreadful is it than the silence rolls out its lengthening shadow of sound to of the tomb; for there, often arise responses to the ear of the solitary shepherd afar off on the unuttered soliloquies of the pensive heart. Cairngorm. But this is as the silence, not of Time, but of On-on-on!-further into the Forest! Now Eternity. No burial heaps-no mounds —no on all sides leagues of ancient trees surroupd cairns! It is not as if man had perished here, us, and we are safe as in the grave from the and been forgotten; but as if this were a world persecuting love or hatred of friends or foes in which there had been neither living nor dy- The sun shall not find us by day, nor the moon ing. Too utter is the solitariness even for the by night. Were our life forfeited to what are ghosts of the dead! For they are thought to called the laws, how could the laws dtiscover haunt the burial-places of what once was their the criminal? How could they drag us front CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 231 the impenetrable gloom of this silvan sanctu- the degradation of sin that his soul deplores-i ary. And if here we chose to perish by sui- it is the guilt which he would expiate, if poscide or natural death —and famine is a natural sible, in torments; it is the united sense of death-what eye would ever look on our bones? wrong, sin, guilt, degradation, shame, and reRaving all; but so it often is with us in sever- morse, that renders a moment's pang of the est solitude-our dreams will be hideous with conscience more terrible to the good than sin and death. years of any other punishment-and it thus is Hideous, said we, with sin and death? the power of the human soul to render its Thoughts that came flying against us like vul- whole life miserable by its very love of that tures, like vultures have disappeared, disap- virtue which it has fatally violated. This is a pointed of their prey, and afraid to fix their passion which the soul could not suffer-un-' talons in a thing alive. Hither-by some se- less it were immortal. Reason, so powerful cret and sacred impulse within the soul, that in the highest minds, would escape from the often knoweth not the sovereign virtue of its vain delusion; but it is in the highest minds own great desires-have we been led as into a where reason is most subjected to this awful penitentiary, where, before the altar of nature, power-they would seek reconcilement with we may lay down the burden of guilt or re- offended Heaven by the loss of all the happimorse, and walk out of the Forest a heaven- ness that earth ever yielded-and would repardoned man What guilt?-O my soul! joice to pour out their heart's blood if it could canst thou think of Him who inhabiteth eter- wipe away from the conscience the stain of nity, and ask what guilt? What remorse?- one deep transgression! These are not the For the dereliction of duty every day since high-wrought and delusive states of mind of thou receivedst from Heaven the understand- religious enthusiasts, passing away with the ing of good and of evil. All our past existence bodily agitation of the dreamer; but they are gathers up into one dread conviction, that the feelings of the loftiest of men's sons-and every man that is born of woman is a sinner, when the troubled spirit has escaped from their and worthy of everlasting death. Yet with the burden, or found strength to support it, the same dread conviction is interfused a know- conviction of their reasonableness and of their ledge, clear as the consciousness of present awful reality remains; nor can it be removed being, that the soul will live for ever. What from the minds of the wise and virtuous, withwas the meaning, 0 my soul! of all those out the obliteration from the tablets of memory transitory joys and griefs-of all those fears, of all the moral judgments which conscience hopes, loves, that so shook, each in its own has there recorded. fleeting season, the very foundations on which It is melancholy to think that even in our thy being in this life is laid? Anger, wrath, own day, a philosopher, and one of high name hatred, pride, and ambition —what are they all too, should have spoken slightingly of the unibut so many shapes of sin coeval with thy versal desire of immortality, as no argument birth? That sudden entrance of heaven's light at all in proof of it, because arising inevitably into the Forest, was like the opening of the from the regret with which all men must reeye of God! And our spirit stands ashamed gard the relinquishment of this life. By thus of its nakedness, because of the foulness and speaking of the desire as a delusion necessapollution of sin. But the awful thoughts that rily accompanying the constitution of mind have travelled through its chambers have ven- which it has pleased the Deity to bestow on tilated, swept, and cleansed them-and let us us, such reasoners but darken the mystery break away from beneath the weight of con- both of man and of Providence. But this defession. sire of immortality is not of the kind they say Conscience! Speak not of weak and fantas- it is, nor does it partake, in any degree, of the tic fears-of abject superstitions-and of all character of a blind and weak feeling of regret that wild brood of dreams that have for ages at merely leaving this present life. "I would been laws to whole nations; though we might not live alway," is a feeling which all men speak of them-and, without violation of the understand-but who can endure the momenspirit of true philosophy, call upon them to tary thought of annihilation? Thousands, and bear testimony to the truth. But think of the tens of thousands-awful a thing as it is to die calm, purified, enlightened, and elevated con- -are willing to do so-" passing through nascience of the highest natures-from which ture to eternity"-nay, when the last hour objectless fear has been excluded-and which comes, death almost aiways, finds his victim hears, in its stillness, the eternal voice of God. ready, if not resigned. To leave earth, and What calm celestial joy fills all the being of all the light both of the sun and of the soul, is a good man, when conscience tells him he is a sad thought to us all-transient as are human obeying God's law! What dismal fear and sud- smiles, we cannot bear to see them no moreden remorse assail him, whenever he swerves and there is a beauty that binds us to life in but one single step out of the right path that is the tears of tenderness that the dying man sees shining before his feet! It is not a mere self- gushing for his sake. But between that regret ish terror-it is not the dread of punishment for departing loves and affections, and all the only that appals him-for, on the contrary, he gorgeous or beautiful shows of this earth-becan calmly look on the punishment which he tween that love and the dread of annihilation, knows his guilt has incurred, and almost de- there is no connection. The soul can bear to sires that it should be inflicted, that the in- part with all it.loves-the soft voice-the censed power may be appeased. It is the kindling smile-the starting tear-andthe pro consciousness of offence that is unendurable foundest sighs of all by whom it is beloved -not the fear of consequent suffering; it is but it cannot bear to part with its existence 23J2 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH It cannot even believe the possibility of that vision of man, and lifts up his eye undoubting which yet it may darkly dread. Its loves-its at the very moment when it again comes glo. passions-its joys-its agonies are o7t itself. rious on its predicted return. Were the EterThey may perish, but it is imperishable. Strip nal Being to slacken the course of a planet, of it of all it has seen, touched, enjoyed, or suf- increase even the distance of the fixed stars, fered-still it seems to survive-bury all it the decree would be soon known on earth knew, or could know in the grave-but itself Our ignorance is great, because so is our cannot be trodden down into the corruption. knowledge; for it is from the mightiness and It sees nothing like itself in what perishes, ex- vastness of what we do know that we imagine cept in dim analogies that vanish before its the illimitable unknown creation. And to last profound self-meditation-and though it whom has God made these revelations? To parts with its mortal weeds at last, as with a a worm that next moment is to be in darkgarment, its life is felt at last to be something ness? To a piece of earth momentarily raised not even in contrast with the death of the body, into breathing existence? To a soul perish. but to flow on like a flood, that we believe con- able as the telescope through which it looks tinues still to flow after it has entered into the into the gates of heaven? unseen solitude of some boundless desert. "Oh! star-eyed science, hast thou wander'd there " IBehind the cloud of death, To waft us home-the message of despair?" Once, I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt No; there is no despair in the gracious light That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold. How the grave's altered! fathomless as hell! of heaven. As we travel through those orbs, A real hell to those who dream'd of heaven, w-e feel indeed that we have no power, but we ANNIHILATION I IHow it yawns before inse feel that we have mighty knowledge. We can Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense, The privilege of angels and of worms, create nothing, but we can dimly understand An outcast from existence! and this spirit, all. It belongs to God only to create, but it is This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul, given to man t -and that knowledge is This particle of energy divine,' given to man to know-and that knowledge is This particle of energy divine, Which travels nature, flies from star to star, itself an assurance of immortality. And visits gods, and emulates their powers, For ever is extinguish'd." "Renounce St. Evremont, and read St. Paul. If intellect be, indeed, doomed utterly to Ere rapt by miracle, by reason wing'd, His mounting mind made long abode in heaven. perish, why may not we ask God, in that deep This is freethinking, unconfined to parts, despair which, in that case, must inevitably To send the soul, on curious travel bent, flow from the consciousness of those powers Through all the provinces of human thought:' flOW from the consciousness of those powers To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man; with which he has at once blessed and cursed Of this vast universe to make the tour; us-why that intellect, whose final doom is In each recess of space and time, at home; within a moment, Familiar with their wonders: diving deep; death, and that final doom within a moment, And like a prince of boundless interests there, finds no thought that can satisfy it but that of Still most ambitious of the most remote; Life, and no idea in which its flight can be To look on truth unbroken, and entire; Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths; lost but that of Eternity? If this earth were By truths enlighten'd and sustain'd, afford at once the soul's cradle and her tomb, why An archlike, strong foundation, to support should that cradle have been hun.g amid the Th' incumbent weight of absolute, complete iluind t eternal Conviction: here, the more we press, we stand stars, and that tomb illumined by their eternal Mtore firm; who most examine, most believe., light? If, indeed, a child of the clay, was not Parts, like half-sentences, confound: the whole this earth, with all its plains, forests, moun- Conveys the sense, and GOD is understood, Who not in fragments writes to human race. tains, and seas, capacious enough for the Read his whole volume, skeptic! then reply." dreams of that creature whose course was finally to be extinguished in the darkness of Renounce St. Evremont! Ay, and many a its bosom? What had we to do with planets, Deistical writer of higher repute now in the and suns, and spheres, "and all the dread world. But how came they by the truths they magnificence of heaven?" Were we framed did know? Not by the work of their own unmerely that we might for a few years rejoice assisted faculties-for they lived in a Christian in the beauty of the stars, as in that of the country; they had already been imbued with flowers beneath our feet? And ought we to many high and holy beliefs, of which-had be grateful for those transitory glimpses of they willed it-they could never have got rid; the heavens, as for the fading splendour of the and to the very last the light which they, in earth? But the heavens are not an idle show, their pride, believed to have emanated from the hung out for the gaze of that idle dreamer inner shrine-the penetralia of PhilosophyMan. They are the work of the Eternal God, came from the temples of the living God. and he has given us power therein to read They walked all their lives long-thoigh they and to undeand nd his glory. It is not our knew it not, or strived to forget it-in the light eyes only that are dazzled by the face of hea- of revelation, which, though often darkened to ven-our souls can comprehend the laws by men's eyes by clouds from earth, was still'which that face is overspread by its celestial shining strong in heaven. Had the New Tessmiles. The dwelling-place of our spirits is tament never been —think ye that men in their already in the heavens. Well are we entitled pride, though to give names unto the stars; for we knowPoorsonsofaday," the moment of their rising and their setting, could have discerned the necessity of framing and can be with them at every part of their for themselves a religion of humility? No. As shining journey through the boundless ether. by pride, we are told the angels fell-so by While generations of men have lived, died, pride man, after his miserable fall, strove to and are buried, the astronomer thinks of the lift up his helpless being from the dust; and golden orb that shone centuries ago within the though trailing himself, soul and body, along CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 233 the soiling earth, and glorying it his own cor- now a noise as of "thunder heard remote." ruption, sought to eternize here his very sins Waterfalls-hundreds of waterfalls sounding bly naming the stars of heaven after heroes, for ever-here-there-everywhere-among conquerors, murderers, violators of the man- the remoter woods. Northwards one fierce dates of the Maker whom they had forgotten, torrent dashes through the centre-but no vilor whose attributes they had debased by their lages —only a few woodmen's shielings wil, own foul imaginations. They believed them- appear on its banks; for it is a torrent of pre. selves, in the delusion of their own idolatries, cipices, where the shrubs that hang midway to be "Lords of the world and Demigods of from the cleft are out of the reach of the spray Fame," while they were the slaves of their of its cataracts, even when the red Garroch ie own sins and their own sinful Deities. Should in flood. we have been wiser in our generation than Many hours have we been in the wilderness, they, but for the Bible 1 If in moral specula- and our heart yearns again for the cheerful tion we hear but little-too little-of the con- dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, fesslon of what it owes to the Christian reli- that flows by our feet without a murmur, so gion-in all the Philosophy, nevertheless, that shallow are yet thy waters —wilt thou-short is pure and. of good report, we see that "the as hitherto has been thy journeying-wilt thou day-spring from on high has visited it." In be our guide out into the green valleys and all philosophic inquiry there is, perhaps, a ten- the blue heaven, and the sight once more of dency to the soul's exaltation of itself-which the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? the spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. No other clue to the labyrinth do we seek but It is not sufficient to say that a natural sense that small, thin, pure, transparent thread of of our own infirmities will do so-for seldom silver, which neither bush nor brier will break, indeed have Deists been lowly-minded. They and which will wind without entanglement have talked proudly of humility. Compare round the roots of the old trees, and the bases their moral meditations with those of our great of the shaggy rocks. As if glad to escape divines. Their thoughts and feelings are of from its savage birthplace, the small rivulet the "earth earthy;" but when we listen to those now gives utterance to a song; and sliding others, we feel that their lore has been God- down shelving rocks, so low in their mossy given. verdure as hardly to deserve that name, glides "It is as if an angel shook his wings." along the almost level lawns, here and there disclosing a little hermit flower. No danger Thus has Christianity glorified Philosophy; now of its being imbibed wholly by the thirsty its celestial purity is now the air in which in- earth; for it has a channel and banks of its tellect breathes. In the liberty and equality own-and there is a waterfall! Thenceof that religion, the soul of the highest Philo- forwards the rivulet never loses its merry sopher dare not offend that of the humblest voice-and in an hour it is a torrent. What peasant. Nay, it sometimes stands rebuked beautiful symptoms now of its approach to the before it-and the lowly dweller in the hut, or edge of the Forest! Wandering lights and the shieling on the mountain side, or in the whispering airs are here visitants-and there forest, could abash the proudest son of Science, the blue eye of a wild violet looking up from by pointing to the Sermon of our Saviour on the ground! The glades are more frequentthe Mount-and saying, "I see my duties to more frequent open spaces cleared by the man and God here!" The religious establish- woodman's axe-and the antique Oak-Tree all ments of Christianity, therefore, have done alone by itself, itself a grove. The torrent more not only to support the life of virtue, but may be called noble now; and that deep blue to show all its springs and sources, than all atmosphere-or say rather, that glimmer of the works of all the Philosophers who have purple air-lies over the Strath in which a ever expounded its principles or its practice. great River rolls along to the Sea. Ha! what has brought thee hither, thou Nothing in all nature more beautiful than wide-antlered king of the red-deer of Braemar, the boundary of a great Highland Forest. from the spacious desert of thy hills of storm? Masses of rocks thrown together in magnifi. Ere now we have beheld thee, or one stately cent confusion, many of them lichened and as thee, gazing abroad, from a rock over the weather-stained with colours gorgeous as the heather, to all the points of heaven; and soon eyed plumage of the peacock, the lustre of the as our figure was seen far below, leading the rainbow, or the barred and clouded glories of van of the flight thou went'st haughtily away setting suns-some towering aloft with trees into the wilderness. But now thou glidest sown in the crevices by bird or breeze, and softly and slowly through the gloom-no watch- checkering the blue sky-others bare, black, fulness, no anxiety in thy large beaming eyes; abrupt, grim as volcanoes, and shattered as if and, kneeling among the hoary mosses, layest by the lightning-stroke. Yet interspersed, thyself down in unknown fellowship with one places of perfectpeace-circles among the tall of those human creatures, a glance of whose heather, or taller lady-fern, smoothed into velb. eye, a murmur of whose voice, would send vet, it is there easy to believe, by Fairies' feet thee belling through the forest, terrified by the -rocks where the undisturbed linnet hangs flash or sound that bespoke a hostile nature her nest among the blooming briars, all float. wont to pursue thy race unto death.-The ing with dew draperies of honeysuckle alive hunter is upon thee-away-away! Sudden with bees-glades green as emerald, where lie as a shooting-star up springs the red-deer, and the lambs in tempered sunshine, or haply a in the gloom as suddenly is ost. lovely doe reposes with her fawn; and further On —on-on! further into he Forest!-and down, where the fields half belong to the moun. 234 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. tain and half to the strath, the smoke of hidden Was there ever such a descriptive dream of huts-a log-bridge flung across the torrent-a a coloured engraving of the Cushat, Quest, oe hanging garden, and a little broomy knoll, with Ring-Dove, dreamt before. Poor worn-out a few laughing children at play, almost as wild- and glimmering candle!-whose wick of light looking as the wanderers of the woods! and life in a few more flickerings will be no Turn your eyes, if you can, from that lovely more-what a contrast dost thou present with wilderness, and behold down along a mile- thyself of eight hours ago! Then, truly, wert broad Strath, fed by a thousand torrents, flow- thou a shining light, and high aloft in the roometh the noblest of Scotia's rivers, the strong- gloaming burned thy clear crest like a starsweeping Spey! Let Imagination launch her during its midnight silence, a memiento mori of canoe, and be thou a solitary steersman-for which our spirit was not afraid. Now thou art need is none of oar or sail; keep the middle dying —dying-dead! Our cell is in darkness. course while all the groves go by, and But methinks we see another-a purer-a ere the sun has sunk behind yon golden clearer light-one more directly from Heaven. mountains-nay, mountains they are not, but We touch but, a spring in a wooden shuttera transitory pomp of clouds-thou mayest and lo! the full blaze of day. Oh! why should list the roaring, and behold the foaming of we mortal beings dread that night-prison-the the Sea. Grave I DR. KITCHINIER. FIRS'.-I' COURSE. here is the same as if one accustomed to drink water, should, all at once, begin to drink wine." IT greatly grieved us to think that Dr. Kitch- Had the Doctor been alive, we should have iner should have died before our numerous asked him what he meant by "long and vioavocations had allowed us an opportunity of lent jolting?" Jolting is now absolutely undining with him, and subjecting to the test-act known in England, and it is of England the of our experienced palate his claims to immor- Doctor speaks. No doubt, some occasional tality as a Cook and a Christian. The Doctor jolting might still be discovered among the had, we know, a dread of Us —not altogether lanes and cross-roads; but, though violent, unallayed by delight; and on the dinner to Us, it could not be long: and we defy the most sewhich he had meditated for nearly a quarter dentary gentleman living to be more so, when of a century, he knew and felt must have hung sitting in an easy chair by his parlour fireside, his reputation with posterity-his posthumous than in a cushioned carriage spinning along fame. We understand that there is an unfin- the turnpike. But for the trees and hedgeished sketch of that Dinner among the Doctor's rows all galloping by, he would never know papers, and that the design is magnificent. that he was himself in motion. The truth is, Yet, perhaps, it is better for his glory that that no gentleman can be said, now-a-days, to Kitchiner should have died without attempting lead a sedentary life, who is not constantly to imbody in forms the Idea of that Dinner. It travelling before the insensible touch of might have been a failure. How liable to im- M'Adam. Look at the first twenty people that perfection the meate'iel on which he would have come towering by on the roof of a Highflier or had towork! Howdefective theinstruments! a Defiance. What can be more sedentary? Yes-yes!-happier far was it for the good old Only look at that elderly gentleman with the man that he should have fallen asleep with the wig, evidently a parson, jammed in between a undimmed idea of that unattempted Dinner in brace of buxom virgins on their way down to his imagination, than, vainly contending with Doncaster races. Could he be more sedentary, the physical evil inherent in matter, have de- during the psalm, in his own pulpit 1 tected the Bishop's foot in the first course, and We must object, too, to the illustration of died of a broken heart! wine and water. Let no man who has been so "Travelling," it is remarked by our poor unfortunate as to be accustomed to drink dear dead Doctor in his Traveller's Oracle, " is water, be afraid all at once to begin to drink a recreation to be recommended, especially to wine. Let him, without fear or trembling, those whose employments are sedentary-who boldly fill bumpers to the Throne-the Navyare engaged in abstract studies-whose minds and the Army. These three bumpers will have been sunk in a state of morbid melan- have made him a new man. We have no obcholy by hypochondriasis, or, by what is worst jection whatever to his drinking, in animated of all, a lack of domestic felicity. Nature, succession, the Apotheosis of the Whigs-the however, will not suffer any sudden transition; Angler's delight —the Cause of Liberty all over and therefore it is improper for people accus- the World-Christopher North —Maga the Im. tomed to a sedentary life to undertake sudden- mortal. "Nature will not suffer any sudden ly a journey, during which they will be ex- transition!" Will she not? Look at our posed to long and violent jolting. The case water drinker now! His very own mother DR. KITCHINER. 255 could not know him-he has lost all resem- ing that he should spend his honeymoon among blance to his twin-brother, from whom, two the gravel beds of Kinnaird or Moulenearn, or short hours ago, you could not have distin- the rocky sofas of the Tummel, or the green guished him but for a slight scar on his brow marble couches of the Tilt. What has be-so completely is his apparent personal iden- come now of " the sense of satiety in eating?' tity lost, that it would be impossible for him John-the castors!-mustard-vinegar-cayto establish an alibi. He sees a figure in the enne-catchup-peas and potatoes, with a very mirror above the chimney-piece, but has not little butter-the biscuit called "rusk"-and the slightest suspicion that the rosy-faced Bac- the memory of the hotch-potch is as that of chanal is himself, the water-drinker; but then Babylon the Great. That any gigot of mutton, he takes care to imitate the manual exercise exquisite though much of the five-year-old of the phantom-lifting his glass to his lips at blackfaced must assuredly be, can, with any the very same moment, as if they were both rational hopes of success, contend against a moved by one soul. haunch of venison, will be asserted by no deThe Doctor then wisely remarks, that it is vout lover of truth. Try the two by alternate "impossible to lay down any rule by which to platefuls, and you will uniformly find that you regulate the number of miles a man may jour- leave off after the venison. That " sense of ney in a day, or to prescribe the precise num- satiety in eating," of which Dr. Kitchiner ber of ounces he ought to eat; but that nature speaks, was produced by the Tay salmon dehas given us a very excellent guide in a sense voured above-but of all the transitory feelof lassitude, which is as unerring in exercise ings of us transitory creatures on our transit as the sense of satiety is in eating." through this transitory world, in which the We say the Doctor wisely remarks, yet not Doctor asserts nature will not suffer any sudaltogether wisely; for the rule does not seem den transitions, the most transitory ever expeto hold always good either in exercise or in rienced by us is " the sense of satiety in eateating. What more common than to feel one's- ing." Therefore, we have now seen it for a self very much fatigued-quite done up as it moment existing on the disappearance of the were, and unwilling to stir hand or foot. Up hotch-potch —dying on the appearance of the goes a lark in heaven-tira-lira-or suddenly Tay salmon-once more noticeable as the last the breezes blow among the clouds, who forth- plate of the noble fish melted away-extinwith all begin campaigning in the sky-or, guished suddenly by the vision of the venison quick as lightning, the sunshine in a moment -again felt for an instant, and but for an inresuscitates a drowned day-or tripping along, stant-for a brace and a half of as fine grouse all by her happy self, to the sweet accompani- as ever expanded their voluptuous bosoms to ment of her joy-varied songs, the woodman's be devoured by hungry love! Sense of satiety daughter passes by on her way, with a basket in eating, indeed! If you please, my dear in her hand, to her father in the forest, who friend, one of the backs-pungent with the has already laid down his axe on the meridian most palate-piercing, stomach-stirring, heartshadow darkening one side of the straight stem warming, soul-exalting of all tastes-the wild of an oak, beneath whose grove might be drawn bitter-sweet. up five score of plumed chivalry! Where is But the Doctor returns to the subject of your "sense of lassitude now, nature's un- travelling-and fatigue. "Whenone begins," erring guide in exercise " You spring up he says,'to be low-spirited and dejected, to from the mossy wayside bank, and renewed yawn often and be drowsy, when the appetite both in mind and body, " rejoicing in Nature's is impaired, when the smallest movement ocjoy," you continue to pass over houseless casions a fluttering of the pulse, when the moors, by small, single, solitary, straw-roofed mouth becomes dry, and is sensible of a bitter huts, through villages gathered round Stone taste, seek refreshment and repose, if you wish to Cross, Elm Grove, or old Monastic Tower, till, PREVENT ILLsxESS, already beginning to take unwearied in lith and limb, you see sunset place." Why, our dear Doctor, illness in such beautifying all the west, and drop in, perhaps, a deplorable case as this, is just about to end, among the hush of the Cottar's Saturday Night and death is beginning to take place. Thank -for it is in sweet Scotland we are walking in Heaven, it is a condition to which we do not our dream-andknow not, till wehave stretched remember having very nearly approximated! ourselves on a bed of rushes or of heather, Who ever saw us yawn? or drowsy? cr with that " kind Nature's sweet restorer, balmy our appetite impaired, except on the withdrawal sleep," is yet among the number of our bosom of the table-cloth. or low-spirited, but when friends-alas! daily diminishing beneath fate the Glenlivet was at ebb. Who dare declare fortune, the sweeping scythe-stroke of death, that he ever saw our mouth dry. or sensible or the whisper of some one poor, puny, idle, of a bitter taste, since we gave over munchand unmeaning word! ing rowans? Put your finger on our wrist, at Then, as to "the sense of satiety in eating." any moment you choose, from June to JanuIt is produced in us by three platefuls of hotch- ary, from January to June, and by its pulsation potch-and, to the eyes of an ordinary ob- you may rectify Harrison's or Kendal's chroserver, our dinner would seem to be at an end. nometer. But no-strictly speaking, it is just going to But the Doctor proceeds —" By raising the begin. About an hour ago did we, standing on temperature of my room to about 650, a broth the very beautiful bridlge of Perth, see that diet, and taking a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts identical salmon, with his back-fin just visible in half a pint of warm water, and repeating i' above the translucent tide, arrowing up the every half hour till it moees the bowels twicJ Tay, bold as a bridegroom, and nothing doubt- or thrice, and retiring to rest an hour or tws 236 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. sooner than usual, I have often very speedily country looks dismal-nature is, as it were, got rid of colds, &c." half dead. The summer corrects all these in Why, there may be no great harm in acting conveniences." Paradoxical as this doctrine as above; although we should far rather re- may at first sight appear-yet we have verifiess commend a screed of the Epsoms. A tea- it by experience-having for many years found, spoonful of Epsom salts in half a pint of warm without meeting with one single exception, that water, reminds one, somehow or other, of Tims. the fine, long, warm days of summer are an A small matter works a Cockney. It is not so agreeable and infallible corrective of the in.. easy-and that the Cockneys well know-to conveniences attending the foul, short, cold move the bowels of old Christopher North. days of winter-a season which is surly withWe do not believe that a tea-spoonful of any out being sincere, blustering rather than boldthing in this world would have any serious an intolerable bore-always pretending to be effect on old "Ironsides." We should have no taking his leave, yet domiciliating himself in hesitation in backing him against so much another man's house for weeks together-and, corrosive sublimate. He would dine out on to be plain, a season so regardless of truth, the day he had bolted that quantity of arsenic; that nobody believes him till frost has hung an -and would, we verily believe, rise triumphant ice-padlock on his mouth, and his many-river'd from a tea-spoonful of Prussic acid. voice is dumb under the wreathed snows. We could mention a thousand cures for "Cleanliness when travelling," observes the "colds, et cetera," more efficacious than a Doctor, "is doubly necessary; to sponge the broth diet, a warm room, a tea-spoonful of body every morning with tepid water, and then Epsom salts, or early roosting. What say rub it dry with a rough towel, will greatly conyou, our dear Dean, to half a dozen tumblers tribute to preserve health. To put the feet of hot toddy? Your share of a brown jug to into warm water for a couple of minutes just the same amount? Or an equal quantity, in before going to bed, is very refreshing, and its gradual decrease revealing deeper and inviting to sleep; for promoting tranquillity, deeper still the romantic Welsh scenery of both mental and corporeal, a clean skin may the Devil's Punch-Bowl?.Jdde tot small- be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conbearded oysters, all redolent of the salt-sea science." foam, and worthy, as they stud the AmbrQsial Far be it from us to seek to impugn such brodd, to be licked off all at once by the lam- doctrine. A dirty dog is a nuisance not to be bent tongue of Neptune. That antiquated borne. But here the question arises-who — calumny against the character of toasted what-is a dirty dog. Now there are men cheese-that, forsooth, it is indigestible —has Zno women) naturally — necessarily- dirty. been trampled under the march of mind; and, They are not dirty by chance-or accidenttherefore, you may tuck in a pound of double say twice or thrice per diem; but they are alGloucester. Other patients, labouring under ways dirty-at all times and in all places-and catarrh, may, very possibly, prefer the roasted never and nowhere more disgustingly so'than how-towdy-or the green goose from his first when figged out for going to church. It is in stubble-field-or why not, by way of a little the skin, in the blood —in the flesh, and in the variety, a roasted mawkin, midway between bone-that with such the disease of dirt more hare and leveret, tempting as maiden between especially lies. We beg pardon, no less in the woman and girl, or, as the Eastern poet says, hair. Now, such persons do not know that between a frock and a gown? Go to bed-no they are dirty-that they are unclean beasts. need of warming pans-about a quarter before On the contrary, they often think themselves one;-you will not hear that small hour strike pinks of purity-incarnations of carnations-you will sleep sound till sunrise, sound as impersonations of moss-roses-the spiritual the Black Stone at Scone, on which the Kings essences of lilies, " imparadised in form of of Scotland were crowned of old. And if you that sweet flesh." Now, were such persons contrive to carry a cold about you next day, to change their linen every half hour, night you deserve to be sent to Coventryby all sen- and day, that is, were they to put on fortysible people-and may, if you choose, begin eight clean shirts in the twenty-four hourstaking, with Tims, a tea-spoonful of Epsom and it might not be reasonable, perhaps, to salts in a half-pint of warm water every half demand more of them under a government hour, till it moves your bowels twice or thrice; somewhat too whiggish-yet though we cheerbut if you do, be your sex, politics, or religion fully grant that one and all of the shirts would what they may, never shall ye be suffered to be dirty, we as sulkily deny that at any given contribute even a bit of Balaam to the AMaga- moment from sunrise to sunset, and over zine. again, the wearer would be clean. He would The Doctor then treats of the best Season for be just every whit and bit as dirty as if he had travelling, and very judiciously observes that known but one single shirt all his life-and't is during these months when there is no oc- firmly believed his to be the only shirt in the easion for a fire-that is, just before and after universe. he extreme heat. In winter, Dr. Kitchiner, Men again, on the other hand, there are-and wno was a man of extraordinary powers of thank God, in great numbers-who are naturabservation, observed, " that the ways are ally so clean, that we defy you to make them generally bad, and often dangerous, especially bond fide dirty. You may as well drive down in hillv countries, by reason of the snow and a duck into a dirty puddle, and expect lasting ice. The days are short-a traveller comes stains on its pretty plumage. Pope says the late to his lodging, and is often forced to rise same thing of swans-that is, Poets-when befcre the sun in the morning-besides, the speaking of Aaron Hill diving into the litch DR. KITCHINER. 237 "He bears no tokens of the sabler streams, braided, and unbounded beauty, is the morning But soars far off among the swans of Thames." sky! Pleasant people of this kind of constitution Irishmen are generally men of the kind thus you see going about of a morning rather in illustrated-generally sweet-at least in their dishabille-hair uncombed haply-face and own green Isle; and that was the best arguhands even unwashed-and shirt with a some- ment in favour of Catholic Emancipation.-So what day-before-yesterdayish hue. Yet are are Scotsmen. Whereas, blindfolded, take a they, so far from being dirty, at once felt, seen, London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow Cockney', and smelt, to be among the very cleanest of her hand, immediately after it has been washed Majesty's subjects. The moment you shake and scented, and put it to your nose-and you hands with them, you feel in the firm flesh of winl begin to be apprehensive that some pracpalm and finger that their heart's-blood circu- tical wit has substituted in lieu of the sonnetlates purely and freely from the point of the scribbling bunch of little fetid fives, the body highest hair on the apex of the pericranium, to of some chicken-butcher of a weasel, that died the edge of the nail on the large toe of the of the plague. We have seen as much of what right foot. Their eyes are as clear as un- is most ignorantly and malignantly denomiclouded skies-the apples on their cheeks are nated dirt-one week's earth —washed off the like those on the tree-what need, in either feet of a pretty young girl on a Saturday night, at case, of rubbing off dust or dew with a towel. a single sitting in the little rivulet that runs What though, from sleeping without a night- almost round about her father's hut, as would cap, their hair may be a little toosey? It is have served him to raise his mignionette in, or not dim-dull-oily-like half-withered sea- his crop of cresses. How beautifully glowed weeds! It will soon comb itself with the fin- the crimson snow of the singing creature's new gers of the west wind-that tent-like tree its washed feet! First as they shone almost motoilette-its mirror that pool of the clear-flow- tionless beneath the lucid waters-and then, ing Tweed. fearless of the hard bent and rough roots of Some streams, just like some men, are al- the heather, bore the almost alarming Fairy ways dirty-you cannot possibly tell why- dancing away from the eyes of the stranger; unproducible to good pic-nic society either in till the courteous spirit that reigns over all the dry or wet weather. In dry, the oozy wretches Highland wilds arrested her steps knee-deep in are weeping among the slippery weeds, infest- bloom, and bade her bow her auburn head, as ed with eels and powheads. In wet, they are blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelic like so many common sewers, strewn with accents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing dead cats and broken crockery, and threaten- through the heart of the Sassenach, nearly being with their fierce fulzie to pollute the sea. nighted, and wearied sore with the fifty glorious The sweet, soft, pure rains, soon as they touch mountain-miles that intermit at times their the flood are changed into filth. The sun sees frowning forests from the correis of Cruachan his face in one of the pools, and is terrified out to the cliffs of Cairngorm. of his senses. He shines no more that day. It will be seen from these hurried remarks, The clouds have no notion of being carica- that there is more truth than, perhaps, Dr. tured, and the trees keep cautiously away from Kitchiner was aware of, in his apothegm - the brink of such streams-save, perchance, ",that a clean skin may be regarded as next in now and then, here and there, a weak, well- efficacy to a clear conscience." But the Docmeaning willow-a thing of shreds and patches tor had but a very imperfect notion of the -its leafless wands covered with bits of old meaning of the words "clean skin"-his obworsted stockings, crowns of hats, a bauchle, servation being not even skin-deep. A wash(see Dr. Jamieson,) and the remains of a pair hand basin, a bit of soap, and a coarse towel, of corduroy breeches, long hereditary in the he thought would give a Cockney on Ludgatefamily of the Blood-Royal of the Yetholm hill a clean skin-just as many good people Gipsies. think that a Bible, a prayer-book, and a long Some streams, just like some men, are al- sermon, can give a clear conscience to a criways clean-you cannot well tell why-produ- minal in Newgate. The cause of the evil, in cible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet both cases, lies too deep for tears., Millions of weather. In dry, the pearly waters are sing- men and women pass through nature to eter.'ng among the freshened flowers-so that the nity clean-skinned and pious —with slight ex trout, if he chooses, may breakfast upon bees. pense either in soap or sermons; while mil In wet, they grow, it is true, dark and drumly lions more, with much weekday bodily scrub— and at midnight, when heaven's candles are bing, and much Sabbath spiritual sanctificaput out, loud and oft the angry spirit of the wa- tion, are held in bad odour here, while they ter shrieks. But Aurora beholds her face in live, by those who happen to sit near them, the clarified pools and shallows-far and wide and finally go out like the stink of a candle. glittering with silver or with gold. All the Never stir, quoth the Doctor, "without banks and braes re-appear green as emerald paper, pen, and ink, and a note-book in your from the subsiding current-into which look pocket. Notes made by pencils are easily obhwith the eye of an angler, and you behold a literated by the motion of travelling. Commit Fish-a twenty pounder —steadying himself- to paper whatever you see, hear, or read, that like an uncertain shadow; and oh! for George is remarkable, with your sensations on ob. Scougal's leister to strike him through the serving it-do this upon the spot, if possible, spine! Yes, these are the images of trees, far at the moment it first strikes you-at all events Iown as if in another world; and whether you do not delay it beyond the first convenient op lok up or look down, alike in all its blue, portunity." 238 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Suppose all people behaved in this way- are easily obliterated by the motion of travel and what an absurd world we should have of ling; but, then, Doctor, notes made by the it-every man, woman, and child who could Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature g.'T es write, jotting away at their note-books! This all her children who have also discourse of committing to paper of whatever you see, hear, Reason, are with the slightest touch, easilier or read, has, among many other bad effects, far than glass by the diamond, traced en the this one especially-in a few years it reduces tablets that disease alone seems to deface, you to a state of idiocy. The memory of all death alone to break, but which, ineffaceable, men who commit to paper becomes regularly and not to be broken, shall with all their misextinct, we have observed, about the age of cellaneous inscriptions endure for ever-yea, thirty. Now, although the Memory does not even to the great Day of Judgment. bear a very brilliant reputation among the If men will but look and listen, and feel and faculties, a man finds himself very much at a think —they will never forget any thing worth stand who is unprovided with one; for the being remembered. Do we forget "our chilImnagination, the Judgment, and the Reason dren, that to our" eyes are dearer than the walk off in search of the Memory-each in sun?" Do we forget our wives-unreasonopposite directions; and the Mind, left at able and almost downright disagreeable as home by itself, is in a very awkward predica- they sometimes will be? Do we forget our ment-gets comatose-snores loudly, and ex- triumphs-our defeats-our ecstasies, our agopires. For our own part, we would much nies-the face of a dear friend, or "dearest rather lose our Imagination and our Judg- foe"-the ghostlike voice of conscience at ment-nay, our very Reason itself —than our midnight arraigning us of crimes-or her Memory-provided we were suffered to retain seraph hymn, at which the gates of heaven a little Feeling and a little Fancy. Commit- seem to expand for us that we may enter in ters to paper forget that the Memory is a tablet, among the white-robed spirits, and or they carelessly fling that mysterious tablet ", Summer high in bliss upon the hills of God?" away, soft as wax to receive impressions, and harder than adamant to retain and put their What are all the jottings that ever were jotted trust in a bit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old down on his jot-book, by the most inveterate rags. jotter that ever reached a raven age, in com The observer who instantly jots down every parison with the Library of Useful Knowabject he sees, never, properly speaking, saw ledge, that every man-who is a man-carries an object in his life. There has always been within the Ratcliffe-the Bodleian of his own in the creature's mind a feeling alien to that breast? which the object would, of its pure self, have What are you grinning at in the corner excited. The very preservation of a sort of there, you little ugly Beelzebub of a Printer's style in the creature's remarks, costs him an Devil? and have you dropped through a seam effort which disables him from understanding in the ceiling? More copy do you want? what is before him, by dividing the small at- There, you imp-vanished like a thought! tention 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 SECOND COURSE. has never known that all real knowledge, either of men or things, must be gathered up ABOVE all things, continues Dr. Kitchiner, by operations which are in their very. being "avoid travelling through the night, which, by spontaneous and free-the mind being even interrupting sleep, and exposing the body to unconscious of them as they are going on- the night air, is always prejudicial, even in the while the edifice has all the time been slentiy mildest weather, and to the strongest constiturising up under the unintermitting labours of tions." Pray, Doctor, what ails you at the those silent workers-Thoughts; and is finally night air? If the night air be, even in the seen, not without wonder, by the Mind or Soul mildest weather, prejudicial to the strongest itself, which, gentle reader, was all along constitutions, what do you think becomes of Arch:tect and Foreman-had not only origi- the cattle on a thousand hills? Why don't all nally planned, but had even daily superintend- the bulls in Bashan die of the asthma-or look el the building of the Temple. interesting by moonlight in a galloping conVere Dr. Kitchiner not dead, we should sumption? Nay, if the night air be so very just put to him this simple question-Could fatal, how do you account for the longevity of you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the owls? Have you never read of the Chaldean most various dinner at which you ever assist- shepherds watching the courses of the stars 1 ed, down to the obscurest kidney, without Or, to come nearer our own times, do you not committing every item to your note-book? know that every blessed night throughout Yes, Doctor, you could. Well, then, all the the year, thousands of young lads and lasscs. oniverse is but one great dinner. Heaven meet, either beneath the milk-white thorn-or and earth, what a show of dishes! From a on the lea-rig, although the night be ne'er sae sun to a salad-a moon to a mutton-chop-a wet, and they be ne'er sae weary-or under a comet to a curry-a planet to a pAte! What rock on the hill —or-no uncommon casegross ingratitude to the Giver of the feast, not beneath a frozen stack-not of chimneys, tut to be able, with the memory he has given us, of corn-sheaves-or on a couch of snow —and to remember his bounties! It is true, what that they are all as warm as so many pies ihz Doctor says, that notes made with pencils while, instead of feeling what you call " the DR. KITCHINER. 239 lack of vigour attendant on the lo0s of sleep, his mouth so deranged by tippling that h. which is as enfeebling and as distressing as simultaneously snorts, stutters, slavers and the languor that attends the want of food," snores-pot-bellied-shanked like a spindles they are, to use a homely Scotch expression, strae-and bidding fair to be buried on or be. " neither to baud nor bind;" the eyes of the fore Saturday week;-Be it a half-daunk horseyoung lads being all as brisk, bold, and bright cowper, swinging to and fro in a wraprascal as the stars in Charles's Wain, while those of on a bit of broken-down blood that once won the young lasses shine with a soft, faint, ob- a fifty, every sentence, however short, having scure, but beautiful lustre, like the dewy but two intelligible words, an oath and a liePleiades, over which nature has insensibly his heart rotten with falsehood, nd his bowels been breathing a mist almost waving and burned up with brandy, so that sudden death wavering into a veil of clouds? may pull him from his saddle before he put Have you, our dear Doctor, no compassion spurs to his sporting filly that she may bilk for those unfortunate blades, who, nolentes- the turnpike man, and carry him more spec lily volentes, must remain out perennially all night home to beat or murder his poor, pale, in-we mean the blades of grass, and also the dustrious char-woman of a wife;-Be it-not flowers? Their constitutions seem often far a beggar, for beggars are prohibited from this from strong; and shut your eyes on a frosty parish-but a pauper in the sulks, dying on night, and you will hear them-we have done so her pittance from the poor-rates, which altomany million times-shivering, ay, absolutely gether amount in merry England but to about shivering under their coat of hoar-frost! If the paltry sum of, more or less, six millions a the night air be indeed what Dr. Kitchiner has year-her son, all the while, being in a thrivJeclared it to be-Lord have mercy on the ing way as a general merchant in the capital vegetable world! What agonies in that field of the parish, and with clear profits from his of turnips! Alas, poor Swedes! The imagina- business of ~300 per annum, yet suffering the tion recoils from the condition of that club of mother that bore him, and suckled him, and winter cabbages-and of what materials, pray, washed his childish hands, and combed the must the heart of that man be made, who bumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a could think but for a moment on the case of cup when her dear Johnny-raw had the bellythose carrots, without bursting into a flood of ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and tears! as obviously as one is seen going down a The Doctor avers that the firm health and stair with a feeble hold of the banisters, and fine spirits of persons who live in the country, stumbling every footfall, down that other are not more from breathing a purer air, than flight of steps that consist of flags that are from enjoying plenty of sound sleep; and the mortal damp and mortal cold, and lead to most distressing misery of "this Elysium of nothing but a parcel of rotten planks, and bricks and mortar," is the rareness with which overhead a vault dripping with perpetual moiswe enjoy "the sweets of a slumber unbroke." ture, green and slobbery, such as toads delight Doctor-in the first place, it is somewhat in crawling heavily through with now and doubtful whether or not persons who live in then a bloated leap, and hideous things more the country have firmer health and finer spirits worm-like, that go wriggling briskly in and out than persons who live in towns-even in Lon- among the refuse of the coffins, and are heard, don. What kind of persons do you mean? by imagination at least, to emit faint angry You must not be allowed to select some dozen sounds, because the light of day has hurt their or two of the hairiest among the curates-a eyes, and the air from the upper world weal.few chosen rectors whose faces have been but ened the rank savoury smell of corruption, lately elevated to the purple-a team of pre- clothing, as with a pall, all the inside walls of bends issuing sleek from their golden stalls- the tombs;-Be it a man yet in the prime of a picked bishop —a sacred band the elite of the life as to years, six feet and an inch high, and squirearchy-with a corresponding sprinkling measuring round the chest forty-eight inches, of superior noblemen from lords to dukes — (which is more, reader, than thou dost by six, and then to compare them, cheek by jowl, with we bet a sovereign, member although thou an equal number of external objects taken even be'st of the Edinburgh Six Feet Club,) to from the common run of Cockneys. This, whom Washington Irving's Jack Tibbuts was Doctor, is manifestly what you are ettling at- but a Tims —but then ever so many gamebut you must clap your hand, Doctor, without keepers met him all alone in my lord's pheadiscrimination, on the great body of the rural sant preserve, and though two of them died population of England, male and female, and within the month, two within the year, and take whatever comes first-be it a poor, wrin- two are now in the workhouse —one a mere kled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag, -totter- idiot, and the other a madman —both shadows ing horizontally on a staff, under the load of a -so terribly were their bodies mauled, and so premature old age, (for she is not yet fifty,) sorely were their skulls fractured; —yet the brought on by annual rheumatism and pe- poacher was taken, tried, hulked; and there he renniai poverty; —Be it a young, ugly, un- sits now, sunning himself on a bank by the married woman, faradvancedin pregnancy, and edge of a wood whose haunts he must thread sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet the no more-for the keepers were grim boneoverseer of the parish poor, who, enraged with breakers enough in their way-and when they the unborn bastard, is about to force the parish had gotten him on his back, one gouged him bully to marry the parish prostitute;-Be it a like a Yankee, and the other bit off his nose landlord of a rural inn, with pig eyes peering like a Bolton Trotter-and one smashed his over his ruby cheeks, the whole machinery of I os fi-ontis with the nailed heel of a two-pounld 24e0 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. wooden clog, a Preston Purrer; —so that Master pectation of the Tailor who played the princl Allonby is now far from being a beauty, with pal part-and sense, feeling, memory, imagina. a face of that description attached to a head tion, and reason, were all felled by one blow wagging from side to side under a powerful of fear-as butcher felleth ox —while by one palsy, while the Mandarin drinks damnation of those mysteries, which neither we, nor you, to the Lord of the.Manor in a horn of eleemo- nor anybody else, can understand, life resynary ale, handed to him by the village black- mained not only unimpaired, but even insmith, in days of old not the worst of the gang, vigorated; and there she sits, like a clock and who, but for a stupid jury, a merciful wound up to go a certain time, the machinery judge, and something like prevarication in the of which being good, has not been altogether circumstantial evidence, would have been deranged by the shock that sorely cracked the hanged for a murderer-as he was-dissected, case, and will work till the chain is run down, and and hung in chains;-Be it a red-haired wo- then it will tick no more; —Be it that tall, fair, man, with a pug nose, small fiery eyes, high lovely girl, so thin and attenuated that all wonder cheekbones, bulging lips, and teeth like swine- she can walk by herself-that she is not blown tusks,-bearded-flat-breasted as a man-tall, away even by the gentle summer breeze that scambling in her gait, but swift, and full of wooes the hectic of her cheek-dying all see wild motions in her weather-withered arms, all -and none better than her poor old motherstarting with sinews like whipcord-the Pedes- and yet herself thoughtless of the coming trian Post to and fro the market town twelve doom, and cheerful as a nest-building birdmiles off-and so powerful a pugilist that she while her lover, too deep in despair to be behit Grace Maddox senseless in seven minutes — trayed into tears, as he carries her to her couch, tried before she was eighteen for child-murder, each successive day feels the dear and dread. but not hanged, although the man-child, of ful burden lighter and lighter in his arms. which the drab was self-delivered in a ditch, Small strength will it need to support her bier! was found with blue finger-marks on its wind- The coffin, as if empty, will be lowered unfelt pipe, bloody mouth, and eyes forced out of their by the hands that hold those rueful cords! sockets, buried in the dunghill behind her In mercy to our readers and ourselves, we father's hut-not hanged, because a surgeon, shall endeavour to prevent ourselves from puroriginally bred a sow-gelder, swore that he be- suing this argument any further-and perhaps lieved the mother had unconsciously destroyed quite enough has been said to show that Dr. her offspring in the throes of travail, if ifideed Kitchiner's assertion, that persons who live in it had ever breathed, for the lungs would not the country have firmer health and finer spirits swim, he swore, in a basin of water-so the in- than the inhabitants of towns-is exceedingly cestuous murderess was let loose; her brother problematical. But even admitting the fact to got hanged in due time after the mutiny at the be as the Doctor has stated it, we do not think Nore-and her father, the fishmonger-why, he has attributed the phenomenon to the right he went red raving mad as if a dog had bitten cause. He attributes it to "their enjoying him-and died, as the same surgeon and sow- plenty of sound sleep." The worthy Doctor is gelder averred, of the hydrophobia, foaming at entirely out in his conjectulre. The working the mouth, gnashing his teeth, and some said classes in the country enjoy, we don't doubt it, cursing, but that was a calumny, for something sound sleep-but not plenty of it. They have seemed to be the matter with his tongue, and but a short allowance of sleep-and whether he could not speak, only splutter-nobody it be sound or not, depends chiefly on themventuring, except his amiable daughter-and selves; while as to the noises in towns and in that particular act of filial affection she was cities, they are nothing to what one hears in amiable-to hold in the article of death the the country-unless, indeed, you perversely old man's head;-Be it that moping idiot that prefer private lodgings at a pewterer's. Did would sit, were she suffered, on, on, on-night we wish to be personal, we could name a single and day for ever, on the selfsame spot, what- waterfall who, even in dry weather, keeps all ever that spot might be on which she hap- the visiters from town awake within a circle pened to squat at morning, mound, wall, or of four miles diameter; and in wet weather, stone-motionless, dumb, and, as a stranger not only keeps them all awake, but impresses would think, also blind, for the eyelids are them with a constantly recurring conviction still shut-never opened in sun or storm;-yet during the hours of night, that there is somethat figure-that which is now, and has for thing seriously amiss about the foundation of years been, an utter and hopeless idiot, was the river, and that the whole parish is about once a gay, laughing, dancing, singing girl, to be overflowed, up to the battlements of the whose blue eyes seemed full of light, whether old castle that overlooks the linn. Then, on they looked on earth or heaven, the flowers or another point, we are certain —namely, that the stars-her sweet-heart-a rational young rural thunder is many hundred times more man, it would appear-having leapt out upon powerful than villatic. London porter is above her suddenly, as she was passing through the admiration-but London thunder below conchurchyard at night, from behind a tomb-stone tempt. An ordinary hackney-coach beats it in a sack which she, having little time for hollow. But, my faith! a thunder-storm in the consideration, and being naturally supersti- country-especially if it be mountainous, with tious, supposed to be a shroud, and the wearer a few fine Woods and Forests, makes you inthereof, who was an active stripling of sound evitably think of that land from whose bourne flesh and blood, to be a ghost or skeleton, all no traveller returns; and even our town rehdone horrid rattle of bones; so that the trick ers will acknowledge that country thunder succeeded far beyond the most sanguine ex- much more frequently proves mortal than the DR. KITCHINER. 241 lsunder you meet with in cities. In the coun- him, who had sat all day with his feet on the fry, few thunder-storms are contented to pass fender, to gobble up, at six o'clock of the ever without killing at least one horse, some afternoon, as enormous a dinner as we who mnilch-kine, half-a-dozen sucking pigs or tur- had walked since sunrise forty or fifty miles? aeys, an old woman or two, perhaps the Minis- Because our stimulus had been greater, was ter of the parish, a man about forty, name our nourishment to be less. We don't care a unknown, and a nursing mother at the ingle, curse about stimulus. What we want, in such the child escaping with singed eye-brows, and a case, is lots of fresh food; and we hold that, a singular black mark on one of its great toes. under such circumstances, a man with a sound We say nothing of the numbers stupified, who Tory Church-and-King stomach ahd constituawake the day after, as from a dream, with tion cannot over-eat himself-no, not for his strange pains in their heads, and not altogether immortal soul. sure about the names or countenances of the We had almost forgot to take the decease. somewhat unaccountable people whom they Doctor to task for one of the most free-andsee variously employed about the premises, easy suggestions ever made to the ill-disposed, -and making themsel ves pretty much at home. how to disturb and destroy the domestic happiIn towns, not one thunder-storm in fifty that ness of eminent literary characters. "An performs an exploit more magnanimous than introduction to eminent authors may be obknocking down an old wife from a chimney- tained," quoth he slyly, "from the booksellers top-singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, who publish their works." knit in an ill-starr'd hour, when the sun had The booksellers who publish the works of entered Aries, had been hung out to dry on a eminent authors have rather more common line in the back-yard, or garden as it is called sense and feeling, it is to be hoped, than this -or cutting a few inches off the tail of an old comes to-and know better what is the prowhig weathercock that for years had been vince of their profession. Any one man may, pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind if he chooses, give any other man an intro*:an blaw, greedy of some still higher prefer- duction to any third man in this world. Thus nent. the tailor of any eminent author-or his bookOur dear deceased author proceeds to tell his seller —or his parish minister-or his butcher'rraveller how to eat and drink; and remarks, -or his baker-or his "man of business""' that people are apt to imagine that they may or his house-builder-may, one and all, give indulge a little more in high living when on a such travellers as Dr. Kitchiner and others, journey. Travelling itself, however, acts as a letters of introduction to the said eminent stimulus; therefore less nourishment is re- author in prose or verse. This, we have heard, quired than in a state of rest. What you might is sometimes done-but fortunately we cannot not consider intemperate at home, may occa- speak from experience, not being ourselves an sion violent irritation, fatal inflammations, &c., eminent author. The more general the interin situations where you are least able to obtain course between men of taste, feeling, cultivamedical assistance." tion, learning, genius, the better; but that All this is very loosely stated, and must be intercourse should be brought about freely and set to rights. If you shut yourself up for of its own accord, as fortunate circumstances some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach, that permit, and there should be no impertinent keeps wheeling along at the rate of ten miles interference of selfish or benevolent go-bean hour, and changes horses in half a minute, tweens. It would seem that Dr. Kitchiner certainly for obvious reasons the less you eat thought the commonest traveller, one who was and drink the better; and perhaps an hourly almost, as it were, bordering on a Bagman, had hundred drops of laudanum, or equivalent nothing to do but call on the publisher of any grain of opium, would be advisable, so that the great writer, and get a free admission into his transit from London to Edinburgh might be house. Had the Doctor not been dead, we performed in a phantasma. But the free agent should have given him a severe rowing and ought to live well on his travels-some degrees blowing-up for this vulgar folly; but as he is better, without doubt, than when at home. dead, we have only to hope that the readers of People seldom live very well at home. There the Oracle who intend to travel will not degrade is always something requiring to be eaten up, themselves, and disgust "authors of emi. that it may not be lost, which destroys the nence," by thrusting their ugly or comely faces. soothing and satisfactory symmetry of an un- -both are equally odious-into the privacy of exceptionable dinner. We have detected the gentlemen who have done nothing to excludesame duck through many unprincipled dis- themselves from the protection of the laws of guises, playing a different part in the farce of civilized society —or subject their firesides to; domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to be infested by one-half of the curious men of nave been expected in one of the most gene- the country, two-thirds of the clever, and alt. rally despised of the web-footed tribe. When the blockheads. 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 lishes. True that travelling may act as a HAVING thus briefly instructed travellers how, stimulus-but false that therefore less nourish- to get a look at Lions, the Doctor suddenly ex ment is required. Would Dr. Kitchiner, if claims-" ImPRIMIS, BEWAARE OF DOGS!" "There new alive, presume to say that it was right for have," he says, "been many arguments, pro. 16 242 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. an d con, on Lhe dreadful disease their bite pro- with stiles or turnpikes-metropolitan streets duces —it is enough to prove that multitudes and suburban paths-and at all seasons of the of men, women, and children have died in revolving year and clday; but never, as we pad. consequence of having been bitten by dogs. ded the hoof along, met we nor were overtaken What does it matter whether they were the by greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hy. victims of bodily disease or mental irritation? drophobia. We have many million times seen rhe life of the most humble human being is them with their tongues lolling out about a of more value than all the dogs in the world- yard-their sides pating-flag struck-and the dare the most brutal cynic say otherwise!" whole dog showing symptoms of severe disDr. Kitchiner always travelled, it appears, tress. That such travellers were not mad, we in chaises; and a chaise of one kind or other do not assert-they may have been mad —but he recommends to all his brethren of man- they certainly were fatigued; and the differ. kind. Why, then, this intense fear of the ence, we hope, is often considerable between canine species? Who ever saw a mad dog weariness and insanity. Dr. Kitchiner, had he leap into the mail-coach, or even a gig? The seen such dogs as we have seen, would have creature, when so afflicted, hangs his head, fainted on the spot. He would have raised and goes snapping right and left at pedestrians. the country against the harmless jog-trotter. Poor people like us, who must walk, may well Pitchforks would have gleamed in the setting fear hydrophobia-though, thank Heaven, we sun, and the flower of the agricultural youth have never, during the course of a tolerably of a midland country, forming a levy en Tmasse, long and well-spent life, been so much as once would have offered battle to a turnspit. The bitten by " the rabid animal!" But what have Doctor, sitting in his coach-like Napoleon at rich authors, who loll in carriages, to dread Waterloo-would have cried " Tout est perdu from dogs, who always go on foot We can- -sauve qui peut!"-and re-galloping to a pronot credit the very sweeping assertion, that vincial town, would have found refuge under multitudes of men, women, and children have the gateway of the Hen and Chickens. died in consequence of being bitten by dogs. "The life of the most humble human being," Even the newspapers do not run up the amount quoth the Doctor, "is of more value than all above a dozen per annum, from which you may the dogs in the world-dare the most brutal safely deduct two-thirds. Now, four men, wo- cynic say otherwise?" men and children, are not " a multitude." Of This question is not put to us; for so far those four, we may set down two as problema- from being the most brutal Cynic, we do not tical-having died, it is true, in, but not of belong to the Cynic school at all-being an hydrophobia-states of mind and body wide Eclectic, and our philosophy composed chiefly as the poles asunder. He who drinks two of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Peripateticism bottles of pure spirit every day he buttons and — with a fine, pure, clear, bold dash of Platoniunbuttons his breeches, generally dies in a cism. The most brutal Cynic, if now alive state of hydrophobia-for he abhorred water, and snarling, must therefore answer for him and knew instinctively the jug containing that self —while we tell the Doctor, that so far from insipid element. But he never dies at all of holding, with him, that the life of the most hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove humble human being is of more value than all that for twenty years he had drunk nothing but the dogs in the world, we, on the contrary: brandy. Suppose we are driven to confess the verily believe that there is many an humble dog other two-why, one of them'was an old wo- whose life far transcends in value the lives of man of eighty, who was dying as fast as she many men, women, and children. Whether or -could hobble, at the very time she thought her- not dogs have souls, is a question in philoso. self bitten-and the other a nine-year-old brat, phy never yet solved; although we have our in hooping-cough and measles, who, had there selves no doubt on the subject, and firmly benot been such a quadruped as a dog created, lieve that they have souls. But the question, would have worried itself to death before eve- as put by the Doctor, is not about souls, but ning, so lamentably had its education been about lives; and as the human soul does not neglected, and so dangerous an accomplish- die when the human body does, the death of ment is an impish temper. The twelve cases an old woman, middle-aged man, or young for the year of that most horrible disease, hy- child, is no such very great calamity, either to drophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been themselves or to the world. Better, perhaps, satisfactorily disposed of-eight of the alleged that all the dogs now alive should be massadeceased being at this moment engaged at cred, to prevent hydrophobia, than that a huvarious handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but man soul should be lost;-but not a single hustill such as enable the industrious to live- man soul is going to be lost, although the two having died of drinking-one of extreme whole canine species snould become insane old age, and one of a complication of com- to-morrow. Now, would the Doctor have laid plaints incident to childhood, their violence one hand on his heart and the other on his having, in this particular instance, been aggra- Bible, and taken a solemn oath that rather vated by neglect and a devilish temper. Where than that one old woman of a century and a now the "multitude" of men, women, and chil- quarter should suddenly be cut off by the bite dren, who have died in consequence of being of a mad dog, he would have signed the warbitten by mad dogs. rant of execution of all the packs of harriers and Gentle reader —a mad dog is a bugbear; we fox-hounds, all the pointers, spaniels, setters, have walked many hundred times the diame- and cockers, all the stag-hounds, greyhounds, ter and the circumference of this our habitable and lurchers, all the Newfoundlanders, shep.,globe-along all roads, public and private- herd-dogs, mastiffs, bull-dogs, and terriers, the DR. KITCHINER. 243 infinite generation of mongrels and crosses in- Enemy: when the door was opened, he de, eluded, in Great Britain and Ireland-to say no- sired, if there was any Dog, that it might be thing of the sledge-drawers in Kamschatka, and shut up till he was gone, and would not enter in the realms slow-moving near the Pole 1 To the House till it was. clench the argument at once —What are all the "Sword and Tuck Sticks, as commonly made. oid women in Europe, one-half of the men, and are hardly so good a weapon as a stout Stick one-third of the children, when compared, in va- -the Blades are often inserted into the Hanlue, with any one of Christopher North's New- dies in such a slight manner, that one smart foundland dogs-Fro-Bronte-or O'Bronte? blow will break them out;-if you wish for a Finally, does he include in his sweeping con- Siword-Cane, you must have one made with a detonation the whole brute creation, lions, ti- good Regulation Blade, which alone will cost gers, panthers, ounces, elephants, rhinoceroses, more than is usually charged for the entire hippopotami, camelopardales, zebras, quaggas, Stick.-I have seen a Cane made by Mr. PRICE, cattle, horses, asses, mules, cats, the ichneu- of the Stick and Umbrella Warehouse, 221, in the mon, cranes, storks, cocks-of-the-wood, geese, Strand, near Temple Bar, which was exceland how-towdies? lently put together. "Semi-drowning in the sea "-he continues "A powerful weapon, and a very smart and -"and all the pretended specifics, are mere light-looking thing, is an Iron Stick of about delusions-there is no real remedy but cutting four-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a Hook the part out immediately. If the bite be near next the Hand, and terminating at the other a bloodvessel, that cannot always be done, nor end in a Spike about five inches in length, when done, however well done, will it always which is covered by a Ferrule, the whole prevent the miserable victim from dying the painted the colour of a commonswalking-stick; most dreadful of deaths. Well might St. Paul it has a light natty appearance, while it is in tell us to'beware of dogs.' First Epistle to fact a most formidable Instrument." Philippians, chap. iii. v. 2." We cannot charge our memory with this inSemi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad strument, yet had we seen one once, we hardly specific, and difficult to be administered. It is think we could have forgot it. But Colonel de not possible to tell, a priori, how much drown- Berenger in his Helps and Hints prefers the ing any particular patient can bear. What is umbrella. Umbrellas are usually carried, we mere semi-drowning to James, is total drown- believe, in wet weather, and dogs run mad, if ing to John; —Tom is easy of resuscitation- ever, in dry. So the safe plan is to carry one Bob will not stir a muscle for all the Humane all the year through, like the Duke. Societies in the United Kingdoms. To cut a "I found it a valuable weapon, although by pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager, mere chance; for walking alone in the rain who turns sixteen stone, is within the practi- a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly cal skill of the veriest bungler in the anatomy turned upon me, out of a street which I had of the human frame —to scarify the fleshless just approached; by instinct more than by spindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress, who judgment, I gave point at him severely, opened lives on a small annuity, might be beyond the as the umbrella was, which, screening me at scalpel of an Abernethy or a Liston. A large the same time, was an article from which he dia bloodvessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an not expect thrussts; but which, although made at awkward neighbour to the wound made by the guess, for I could not see him, turned him over bite of a mad dog, " when a new excision has and over, and before he could recover himself, to be attempted"-but will any Doctor living his pursuers had come up immediately to desinform us how, in a thousand other cases be- patch him; the whole being the work of even sides hydrophobia, "the miserable victim may few seconds; but for the umbrella the horrors always be prevented from dying?" There are, of hydrophobia might have fallen to my lot." probably, more dogs in Britain than horses; There is another mode, which, with the yet a hundred men, women, and children are omission or alteration of a word or two, looks killed by kicks of sane horses, for one by bites feasible, supposing we had to deal not with a of insane dogs. Is the British army, therefore, bull-dog, but a young lady of our own species. to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry. Is " If," says the Colonel, " you can seize a dog's there to be no flying artillery? What is to be- front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it come of the horse-marines? sharply, he cannot bite you till you cease to Still the Doctor, though too dogmatical, and squeeze it;, therefore, by keeping him thus weJl rather puppyish above, is, at times, sensible pinched, you may lead him wherever you like - on dogs. or you may, with the other hand, seize him by "Therefore," quoth he, "never travel with- the skin of the neck, to hold him thus without out a good tough Black Thorn in your Fist, danger, provided your strength is equal to his not less than three feet in length, on which efforts at extrication." But here comes the may be marked the Inches, and so it may serve Colonel's infallible vadc-Inecum. for a measure. " Look at them with your face from between "Pampered Dogs, that are permitted to your open legs, holding the skirts away, and prance about as they please, when they hear a running at them thus backwards, of course knock, scamper to the door, and not seldom head below, stern exposed and above, and snap at unwary visiters. Whenever Counsel- growling angrily, most dogs, seeing so strange lor Cautious went to a house, &c., where he was an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes be. not quite certain that there was no Dog, after low the mouth, &c., are so dismayed, that, with ne had rapped at the door, he retired three or their tails between their legs, they are glad to four yards from it, and prepared against the scamper away, some even howling with af 244 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. fright. I have never tried it with a thorough- proud, and of which the effect on landlady bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them; bar-maid, and chamber-maid, we remember though I have practised it, and successfully, was irresistible-and, fourthly and finally, to with most of the other kinds; it might fail with complete that department of our investiture, these, still I cannot say it will." shone with soft yet sprightly lustre-the don. Thus armed against the canine species, the ble-breasted bright-buttoned -Buff. Five and Traveller, according to our Oracle, must also four are nine-so that between our carcass and nrovide himself with a portable case of in- our coat, it might have been classically said of truments for drawing-a sketch and note our dress-" Novies interfusa coercet." At this book-paper-ink-and PINS —KvEEDLES-A- D juncture of affairs began the coats, which, as THREAD! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by it is a great mistake to wear too many coatsDoughty, No. 10, Great Ormond Street-pen- never exceeded six. The first used genera.le cils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street-a to be a pretty old coat that had lived to moralfolding one~foot rule, divided into eighths, ize over the mutability of human affairstenths, and twelfths of inches-a hunting watch threadbare-napless-and what ignorant peowith seconds, with a detached lever or Du- ple might have called shabby-genteel. It was pleix's escapement, in good strong silver cases followed by a plain, sensible, honest, unpre -Dollond's achromatic opera-glass-a night- tending, common-place, every day sort of a lamp-a tinder-box-two pair of spectacles, coat-and not, perhaps, of the very best meriwith strong silver frames-an eye-glass in a no. Over it was drawn, with some little diffisilver ring slung round the neck-a traveller's culty, what had, in its prime of life, attracted knife, containing a large and small blade, a universal admiration in Prince's Street, as a saw, hook for. taking a stone out of a horse's blue surtout. Then came your regular oliveshoe, turnscrew, gunpicker, tweezers, and long coloured great-coat-not braided and embroicorkscrew-galoches or paraloses-your own dered d la militaire-for we scorned to sham knife and fork, and spoon-a Welsh wig-a travelling-captain —but simplex munditiis, plain spare hat-umbrella-two great-coats, one for in its neatness; not wanting then was your cool and fair weather, (i. e. between 450 and shag-hued wraprascal, betokening that its and 550 of Fahrenheit,) and another for cold wearer was up to snuff-and to close this and foul weather, of broadcloth, lined with fur, strange eventful history, the seven-caped and denominated a " dreadnought." Dread-nought, that loved to dally with the sleets Such are a few of the articles with which and snows-held in calm contempt Boreas, every sensible traveller will provide himself Notus, Auster, Eurus, and " the rest" —and before leaving Dulce Domum to brave the pe- drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole. rils of a Tour through the Hop-districts. The same principle of accumulation was " If circumstances compel you," continues made applicable to the neck. No stock. Neckthe Doctor, " to ride on the outside of a coach, cloth above neckcloth-beginning with singles put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, -and then. getting into the full uncut squares turn up the collar of your great-coat, and tie a -the amount of the whole being somewhere handkerchief round it, and have plenty of dry about a dozen. The concluding neckcloth straw to set your feet on." worn cravat-fashion, and flowing down the In our younger days we used to ride a pretty breast in a cascade, like that of an attorneyconsiderable deal on the outside of coaches, and general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving much hardship did we endure before we hit on the lips at liberty to breathe and imbibe, was the discovery above promulgated. We once wreathed, in undying remembrance of the rode outside from Edinburgh to London, in bravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher foglewinter without a great-coat, in nankeen trou- and beneath the cravat-cascade a comforter sers sans drawers, and all other articles of our netted by the fair hands of her who had kissed dress thin and light in proportion. That we us at our departure, and was sighing for our are alive at this day, is no less singular than return. One hat we always found sufficienttrue-no more true than singular. We have and that a black beaver-for a lily castor suits known ourselves so firmly frozen to the lea- not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a lithem ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required mited constitutional and hereditary monarchy." the united strength of coachman, guard, and As to our lower extremities-One pair only the other three outsides, to separate us from of roomy shoes-one pair of stockings of the the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and finest lamb's-wool-another of common close. parcel. All at once the device of the double worsted, knit by the hand of a Lancashire shirt flashed upon us-and it underwent signal witch-thirdly, Shetland hose. All three pair improvements before we reduced the theory to reaching well up towards the fork-each about practice. For, first, we endued ourselves with an inch-and-a-half longer than its predecessor. a leather shirt-then with a flannel one —and Flannel drawers-one pair only-within the then, in regular succession, with three linen lamb's-wool, and touching the instep-then one shirts. This concluded the Series of Shirts. pail of elderly cassimeres, of yore worn a' Then commenced the waistcoats. A plain balls-one pair of Manchester white cordswoollen waistcoat without buttons-with hooks ditto of strong black quilt trousers, " capacious and eyes —took the lead, and kept it; it was and serene"-and at or beneath the freezing closely pressed by what is, in common pala- point, overalls of the same stuff as "Johnny's ver, called an under-waistcoat-the body being gray breeks"-neat but not gaudy-mud-repelflannel, the breast-edges bearing a pretty pat- ]ers-themselves a host-never in all their tern of stripes cr bars-then came a natty red lives " thoroughly wet through"-frost-proofwaistcoat, of which we were particularly and often mistaken by the shepherd on the DR. KITCIIINER. 245 wold, as the Telegraph hung for a moment on accommodations, it will sometimes be pIudent the misty upland, for the philibeg of Phoebus not to undress entirely; however, the neck in his dawn-dress, hastily slipt on as he bade cloth, gaiters, shirt, and every thing which farewell to some star-paramour, and, like a checks the circulation, must be loosened." giant about to run a race, devoured the ceru- Clean sheets, the Doctor thinks, are rare in lean course of day, as if impatient to reach inns; and he believes that it is the practice tc.he goal set in the Western Sea. "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 PRAY, reader, do you know what line of business which brought him from home, and conduct you ought to pursue if you are to the remotest thing from his mind is, that from sleep on the road. " The earlier you arrive," the very repose which he fancies has refreshed says the Doctor, "and the earlier after your him, he has received the rheumatism. The arrival you apply, the better the chance of receipt, therefore, to sleep comfortably at inns, getting a good bed-this done, order your lug- is to take your own sheets, to have plenty of gage to your room. A travelling-bag, or a' sac flannel gowns, and to promise, and take care to de nuit,' in addition to your trunk, is very ne- pay, a handsome consideration for the liberty cessary; it should be large enough to contain of choosing your bed." one or two changes of linen-a night-shirt — Now, Doctor, suppose all travellers behaved shaving apparatus —comb, clothes, tooth and at inns upon such principles, what a perpetual hair brushes, &c. Take care, too, to see your commotion there would be in the house! The sheets well aired, and that you can fasten your kitchens, back-kitchens, laundries, drying room at night. Carry fire-arms also, and take rooms, would at all times be crammed choke, the first unostentatious opportunity of showing full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Auyour pistols to the landlord. However well- thors, Lords, Baronets, Squires, Doctors of made your pistols, however carefully you have Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-pay Ofchosen your flint, and however dry your pow- ficers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chamberder, look to the priming and touch-hole every maids to death, and in the headlong gratificanight. Let your pistols be double-barrelled, tion of their passion for well-aired sheets, setand with spring bayonets." ting fire so incessantly to public premises as Now, really, it appears to us, that in lieu of to raise the rate of insurance to a ruinous double-barrelled pistols with spring bayonets, height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the it would be advisable to substitute a brace of principal establishments in Great Britain. black-puddings for daylight, and a brace of But shutting our eyes, for a moment, to such Oxford or Bologna sausages for the dark hours. general conflagration and bankruptcy, and in. They will be equally formidable to the robber, dulging ourselves in the violent supposition and far safer to yourself. Indeed we should that some inns might still continue to exist, like to see duelling black-puddings, or sausages, think, 0 think, worthy Doctor, to what other introduced at Chalk-Farm;-and, that etiquette fatal results this system, if universally acted might not be violated, each party might take upon, would, in a very few years of the transihis antagonist's weapon, and the seconds, as tory life of man, inevitably lead! In the firs' usual, see them loaded. Surgeons will have place, in a country where all travellers carried to attend as usual. Far more blood, indeed, with them their own sheets, none would be would be thus spilt, than according to the pre- kept in inns except for the use of the esta sent fashion. blishment's own members. This would be The Doctor, as might be expected, makes a inflicting a vital blow, indeed, on the inns of a mighty rout-a prodigious fuss-all through country. For mark, in the second place, that the Oracle, about damp sheets; —he must im- the blankets would not be long of following the mediately see the chamber-maid, and overlook sheets. The blankets would soon fly after the the airing with his own hands and eyes. He sheets on the wings of love and despair. is also an advocate of the warming-pan-and Thirdly, are you so ignorant, Doctor, of this for the adoption, indeed, of every imaginable world and its ways, as not to see that the bed. scheme for excluding death from his chamber. steads would, in the twinkling of an eye, fol. He goes on the basis of every thing being as low the blankets? What a wild, desolate it should not be in inns-and often reminds us wintry appearance would a bed-room then ex of our old friend Death-in-the-Pot. *Nay, as hibit! Travellers never can be sure that those who The foresight of such consequences as these have slept in the beds before them were not may well make a man shudder. We have n%' afflicted with some contagious disease, when- objections, however, to suffer the Doctor him ever they can they should carry their own self, and a few other occasional damp-dreading sheets with them-namely, a " light eider-down old quizzes, " to see the bed-clothes put to the quilt, and two dressed hart skins, to be put on fire in their presence," merely at the expense the mattrasses, to hinder the disagreeable con- of subjugating themselves to the derision of tact. These are to be covered with the travel- all the chambermaids, cooks, scullions, boots, ler's own sheets-and if an eider-down quilt ostlers, and painters. (The painter is the artbe not sufficient to keep him warm, his coat ist who is employed in inns to paint the butput upon it will increase the heat sufficiently. tered toast. He always works in oils. As the If the traveller is not provided with these Director General would say-he deals in but U46 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH tery touches.) Their feverish and restless where concealment is possible-of course, al. anxiety about sheets, and their agitated dis- though the Doctor forgets to suggest it, into this course on damps and deaths, hold them up to chimney. A friend of the Doctor's used to vulgar eyes in the light of lunatics. They be- place a bureau against the door, and "thereon come the groundwork of practical jokes —per- he set a basin and ewer in such a position at haps are bitten to death by fleas; for a cham- easily to rattle, so that, on being shook, they bermaid, of a disposition naturally witty and instantly became molto agitato.". Upon one cruel, has a dangerous power put into her alarming occasion this device frightened away harnds, in the charge of blankets. The Doctor's one of the chambermaids, or some other Pauwh,'_e soul and body are wrapt up in well-aired lina Pry, who attempted to steal on the virgin sheets; but the insidious Abigail, tormented by sleep of the travelling Joseph, who all the time his flustering, becomes in turn the tormentor — was hiding his head beneath the bolster. Joand selecting the yellowest, dingiest, and dir- seph, however, believed it was a horrible midtiest pair of blankets to be found throughout the night assassin, with mustaches and a dagger. whole gallery of garrets, (those for years past "The chattering of the crockery gave the used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews,) alarm, and the attempt, after many attempts, with a wicked leer that would lull all suspi- was abandoned." cion asleep in a man of a far less inflammable With all these fearful apprehensions in his temperament, she literally envelopes him in mind, Dr. Kitchiner must have been a man of vermin, and after a night of one of the plagues great natural personal courage and intrepidity, of Egypt, the Doctor rises in the morning, from to have slept even once in his whole lifetime top to bottom absolutely tattooed! from home. What dangers must we have The Doctor, of course, is one of those tra- passed, who used to plump in, without a thought vellers who believe, that unless they use the of damp in the bed, or scamp below it-closet most ingenious precautions, they will be uni- and chimney uninspected, door unbolted and formly robbed and murdered in inns. The unscrewed, exposed to rape, robbery, and mur. villains steal upon you during the midnight der! It is mortifying to think thatwe should be hour, when all the world is asleep. They alive at this day. Nobody, male or female, leave their shoes down stairs, and leopard-like, thought it worth their while to rob, ravish, or ascend with velvet, or —what is almost as noise- murder us! There we lay, forgotten by the less-worsted steps, the wooden stairs. True, whole world-till the crowing of cocks, or the that your breeches are beneath your bolster- ringing of bells, or blundering Boots insistbut that trick of travellers has long been "as ing on it that we were a Manchester Bagman, notorious as the sun at noonday;" and although who had taken an inside in the Heavy at five, you are aware of your breeches, with all the broke our repose, and Sol laughing in at the ready money perhaps that you are worth in this unshuttered and uncurtained window showed world, eloping from beneath your parental eye, us the floor of our dormitory, not streaming you in vain try to cry out-for a long, broad, with a gore of blood. We really know not iron hand, with ever so many iron fingers, is whether to be most proud of having been the on your mouth; another, with still more nume- favourite child of Fortune, or the neglected rous digits, compresses your windpipe, while a brat of Fate. One only precaution did we ever low hoarse voice, in a whisper to which Sarah use to take against assassination, and all the Siddons's was empty air, on pain of instant other ills that flesh is heir to, sleep where one death enforces silence from a man unable for may, and that was to say inwardly a short ferhis life to utter a single word; and after pull- vent prayer, humbly thanking our Maker for ing off all the bed-clothes, and then clothing all the happiness-let us trust it was innocent you with curses, the ruffians, whose accent -of the day; and humbly imploring his blessbetrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you ing on all the hopes of to-morrow. For, at the (livers wanton wounds with a blunt instrument, time we speak of we were young-and every probably a crow-bar-swearing by Satan and morning, whatever the atmosphere might be, all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your rose bright and beautiful with hopes that, far body before daybreak, they will instantly re- as the eyes of the soul could reach, glittered turn, cut your throat, knock out your brains, on earth's, and heaven's, and life's horizon! sack you,' and carry you off for sale to a sur- But suppose that after all this trouble to get geon. Therefore you must use pocket door- himself bolted and screwed into a paradisaical bolts, which are applicable to almost all sorts tabernacle of a dormitory, there had suddenly of doors, and on many occasions save the pro- rung through the house the cry of FIRE-FIRE —perty and life of the traveller. The corkscrew FIRE! how was Dr. Kitchiner to get out I Tables, door-fastening the Doctor recommends as the bureaus, benches, chairs, blocked up the only simplest. This is screwed in between the door-all laden with wash-hand basins and door and the door-post, and unites them so other utensils, the whole crockery shepherd. firmly, that great power is required to force a esses of the chimney-piece, double-barrelled door so fastened. They are as portable as pistols with spring bayonets ready to shoot and common corkscrews, and their weight does stab, without distinction of persons, as their not exceed an ounce and a half. The safety proprietor was madly seeking to escape the of your bed-room should always be carefully roaring flames! Both windows are iron-bound, examined; and in case of bolts not being at with all their shutters, and over and above hland, it will be useful to hinder entrance into tightly fastened with "the corkscrew-fasten. the room by putting a table and a chair upon ing, the simplest that we have seen." The it against the door. Take a peep below the wind-board is in like manner, and by the same bed, and into the closets, and every place unhappy contrivance, firmly jammed into the DR. KITCHINER. 247 jaws of the chimney, so egress to the Doctor those who are, by the condition in which they up the vent is wholly denied-no fire-engine are born, exempted from work, they are more in the town —but one under repair. There miserable than the rest of mankind, unless has not been a drop of rain for a month, and they daily and duly employ themselves in that the river is not only distant but dry. The VOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAXE element is growling along the galleries like OF ExERCISE." Inflexible justice, however, a lion, and the room is filling with something forces us to say, that although the Doctor more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice throws a fine philosophical light over the most is heard crying —" Number 5 will be burned general principles of walking, as they are inalive! Number 5 will be burned alive! Is volved in "that voluntary labour which goes there n.? )ssibility of saving the life of Num- by the name of exercise," yet he falls into freber 5 "' rhe Doctor falls down before the quent and fatal error when he descends into barricado, and is stretched all his hapless the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. length fainting on the floor. At last the door Thus, he says that no person should sit down is burst open, and landlord, landlady, chamber- to a hearty meal immediately after any great maid, and boots-each in a different key- exertion, either of mind or body-that is, one from manly bass to childish treble, demand of might say, after a few miles of Plinlimnon, or Number 5 if he be a murderer or a madman- a few pages of the Principia. Let the mnan, for, gentle reader, it has been a-Dream. quoth he, " who comes home fatigued by bodily We must hurry to a close, and shall per- exertion, especially if he feel heated by it, throw form the short remainder of our journey on his legs upon a chair, and remain quite tranfoot. The first volume of the Oracle concludes quil and composed, that the energy which has with "Observations on Pedestrians." Here been dispersed to the extremities may have we are at home-and could, we imagine, have time to return to the stomach, when it is regiven the Doctor a mile in the hour in a year- quired." To all this we say-Fudge! The match. The strength of man, we are given sooner you get hold of a leg of roasted mutton distinctly to understand by the Doctor, is " in the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly with a pot the ratio of the performance of the restorative of porter-then leisurely on with a clean shirt process, which is as the quantity and quality — wash your face and hands in gelid-none of of what he puts into his stomach, the energy your tepid water. There is no harm done if of that organ, and the quantity of exercise he you should shave-then keep walking up and takes." This statement of the strength of man down the parlour rather impatiently, for such may be unexceptionably true, and most philo- conduct is natural, and in all things act agreesophical to those who are up to it-but to us it ably to nature-stir up the waiter with some resembles a definition we have heard of thun- original jest by way of stimulant, and to give der, "the conjection of the sulphur congeals the knave's face a well-pleased stare-and the matter." It appears to us that a strong never doubting "that the energy which has stomach is not the sole constituent of a strong been dispersed to the extremities" has had man-but that it is not much amiss to be pro- ample time to return to the stomach, in God's vided with a strong back, a strong breast, strong name fall to! and take care that the second thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. With course shall not appear till there is no vestige a strong stomach alone-yea, even the stomach left of the first —a second course being looked of a horse-a man will make but a sorry Pe- on by the judicious moralist and pedestrian destrian. The Doctor, however, speedily re- very much in the light in which the poet has deems himself by saying admirably well, "that made a celebrated character consider itnutrition does not depend more on the state "Nor fame I slight-nor for her favours callof the stomach, or of what we put into it, than She comes unlook'd for-if she comes at all." it does on the stimulus given to the system by To prove how astonishingly our strength exercise, which alone can produce that perfect may be diminished by indolence, the Doctor circulation of the blood which is required to tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had throw off superfluous secretions, and give the lately returned from India, to his inquiry after absorbents an appetite to suck up fresh ma- his health he replied, "Why, better-better, terials. This requires the action of every thank ye-I think I begin to feel some symppetty artery, and of the minutest ramifications toms of the return of a little English energy. of every nerve and fibre in our body." Thus, Do you know that the day before yest:rday I he remarks, a little further on, by way of illus- was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I tration, " that a man suffering under a fit of the actually put on one of my stockings myself." yapours, after half an hour's brisk ambulation, The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been will often find that he has walked it off, and that repeatedly proved that a man can travel further the action of the body has exonerated the mind." for a week or a month than a horse." On readThe Doctor warms as he walks-and is very ing this sentence to Will Whipcord —" Yes, near leaping over the fence of Political Eco- sir," replied that renowned Profess:or of the nomy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir materials, but expects that we should work -a man can beat a horse!" them up for ourselves. The earth must be Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his laboured before it gives its increase, and when opinion, and a man may beat a horse. But it t is forced to produce its several products, never has been tried: There is no match of rt-w many hands must they pass through be- pedestrianism on record between a first-rate fore they are fitforuse! Manufactures, trade, man and a first-rate horse; and as soon as Ad agriculture, naturally employ more than there is, we shall lay our money on the horse itacteen persons out of twenty, and as for -only mind, the horse carries no weight, and 248 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTh. he must be allowed to do his work on turf. frightened by Mr. Shepherd's pictureofa storl We know that Arab horses will carry their in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation rider, provision and provender, arms and ac- of one great inconvenience of pedestrianizing coutrements, (no light weight,) across the de- " Persons," quoth he, " who take a pedestrian sert, eighty miles a-day, for many days-and excursion, and intend to subject themselves to that for four days they have gone a hundred the uncertainties of accommodation, by going miles a-day. That would have puzzled Cap- across the country and visiting unfrequented tain Barclay in his prime, the Prince of Pe- paths, will act wisely to carry with them a destrians. However, be that as it may, the piece of oil-skin to sit upon while taking recomparative pedestrian powers of man and freshments out of doors, which they will often horse have never yet been ascertained by any find needful during such excursions." To save accredited match in England. trouble, the breech of the pedestrian's breeches The Doctor then quotes an extract from a should be a patch of oil-skin. Here a question Pedestrian Tour in Wales by a Mr. Shepherd, of great difficulty and importance ariseswho, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, Breeches or trousers? Dr. Kitchiner is dethough we shall be happy to find ourselves in cidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he, error. Mr. Shepherd, speaking of the incon- "should be below the knee, and breeches are veniencies and difficulties attending a pedes- much better than trowsers. The general adoptrian excursion, says, " that at one time the tion of those which, till our late wars, were exroads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that elusively used by'the Lords of the Ocean,' it is almost impossible to proceed;"-" at other has often excited my astonishment. However times you are exposed to the inclemency of the convenient trousers may be to the sailor who weather, and by wasting time under a tree or has to cling to slippery shrouds, for the lands. a hedge are benighted in your journey, and man nothing can be more inconvenient. They again reduced to an uncomfortable dilemma." are heating in summer, and in winter they are "Another disadvantage is, that your track is collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessarily more confined-a deviation of ten necessity for wearing garters. Breeches are, or twelve miles makes an important difference, in all respects, much more convenient. These which, if you were on horseback, would be should have the knee-band three quarters of considered as trivial." "Under all these cir- an inch wide, lined on the upper side with a cumstances," he says, "it may appear rather piece. of plush, and fastened with a buckle, remarkable that we should have chosen a pe- which is much easier than even double strings, destrian excursion-in answer to which, it may and, by observing the strap, you always know be observed, that we were not apprized of these things the exact degree of tightness that is required till we had experienced them." What! Mr. Shep- to keep up the stocking; any pressure beyond herd, were you, who we presume have reached that is prejudicial, especially to those who the age of puberty, not apprized, before you walk long distances." penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality, We are strongly inclined to agree with the that " roads are rendered muddy by the rain 2" Doctor in his panegyric on breeches. True, Had you never met, either in your experience that in the forenoons, especially if of a dark of life, or in the course of your reading, proof colour, such as black, and worn with white, or positive that pedestrians "are exposed to the even gray or bluish, stockings, they are apt, in inclemency of the weather." That, if a man the present state of public taste, to stamp you will linger too long under a tree or a hedge a schoolmaster, or a small grocer in full dress, when the sun is going down, "he will be be- or an exciseman going to a ball. We could nighted." Under what serene atmosphere, in dispense too with the knee-buckles and plush what happy clime, have you pursued your lining-though we allow the one might be preparatory studies sub dio? But, our dear ornamental, and the other useful. But what Mr. Shepherd, why waste time under the shel- think you, gentle reader, of walking with a ter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, Pedometer? A Pedometer Is an instrument our young and unknown friend. What the cunningly devised to tell you how far and how worse would you have been of being soaked to fast you walk, and is, quoth the Doctor, a the skin? Besides, consider the danger you "perambulator in miniature." The box conran of being killed by lightning, had there been taining the wheels is made of the size of a a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what watch-case, and goes into the breeches-pocket, will become of you, if you addict yourself on and by means of a string and hook, fastened every small emergency to trees and hedges, at the waistband or at the knee, the number when the country you walk through happens of steps a man takes, in his regular paces, are to be as bare as the palm of your hand? But- registered from the action of the string upon ton your jacket, good sir-scorn an umbrella the internal wheelwork at every step, to the -emerge boldly from the silvan shade, snap amount of 30,000. It is necessary to ascertain your fingers at the pitiful pelting of the pitiless the distance walked, that the average length storm-poor spite indeed in Densissimus Im- of one pace be precisely known, and that mulber-and we will insure your life for a pre- tiplied by the number of steps registered cn senta'*on copy of your Tour against all the the dial-plate. diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not All this is very ingenious; and we know only till you have reached the Inn at Capel- one tolerable pedestrian who is also a PedomeCerig, but your own home in England, (we trist. But no Pedometrician will ever make a fobrget the county,)-ay, till your marriage, and fortune in a mountainous island, like Great thie baptism of your first-born. Britain, where pedestrianism is indigenous to Dr. Kitchiner seems to have been mucb I the soil. A good walker is as regular in his SOLILOU/UY ON THE SEASONS. 249 going as clock-work. He has his different glimmering eyes with honey-dew, and stretches paces-three, three and a half-four, four and out, under the loving hands of nourrice Nature, a half-five, five and a half-six miles an hour the whole elongated animal economy, steeped toe and heel. A common watch, therefore, in rest divine from the organ of veneration to a, to him, in the absence of milestones, as good the point of the great toe, be it on a bed of as a Pedometer-with this great and indis- down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall, putable advantage, that a common watch con- hotel, or hut! If in an inn, nobody interferes tinues to go even after you have yourself with you in meddling officiousness; neither stopped, whereas, the moment you sit down on landlord, bagman, waiter, chambermaid, boots your oil-skin patch, why, your Pedometer -you are left to yourself without being neg(which indeed, from its name and construction, lected. Your bell may not be emulously is not unreasonable) immediately stands still. answered by all the menials on the establish. Neither, we believe, can you accurately note ment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer the pulse of a friend in a fever by a Pedometer. appears in good time; and if mine host may What pleasure on this earth transcends a not always dignify your dinner by the deposi breakfast after a twelve-mile walkS Or is tion of the first dish, yet, influenced by the there in this sublunary scene a delight superior rumour that soon spreads through the pro. to the gradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness mises, he bows farewell at your departure, that, at the close of a long summer day's with a shrewd suspicion that you are a noblejourney up hill and down dale, seals up the man in disguise. SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS. FIRST RHAPSODY. expectant of our "golden opinions," when all eyes are turned to the speechless "old mall No weather more pleasant than that of a eloquent," and you might hear a tangle dismild WINTER day. So gracious the season, hevelling itself in Neaera's hair. But all alone that HIyems is like Ver-Januarius like Chris- by ourselves, in the country, amongtrees, stand. topher North. Art thou the Sun of whom ing still among untrodden leaves-as nowMilton said, how we do speak! All thoughts-all feelings "Looks through the horizontal misty air, -desire utterance; left to themselves they are Shorn of his beams," not happy till they havze evolved into wordsan imageof disconsolate obscuration? Bright winged words that sometimes settle on the art thou as at meridian on a June Sabbath; ground, like moths on flowers-sometimes but effusing a more temperate lustre, not unfelt seek the sky, like eagles above the clouds. by the sleeping, though not insensate earth. No such soliloquies in written poetry as She stirs in her sleep, and murmurs —the these of ours-the act of composition is fatal mighty mother; and quiet as herself, though as frost to their flow; yet composition there is broad awake, her old ally the ship-bearing sea. at such solitary times going on among the What though the woods be leafless-they look moods of the mind, as among the clouds on a as alive as when laden with umbrage; and still but not airless sky, perpetual but imperwho can tell what is going on now within the ceptible transformations of the beautiful, obeheart of that calm oak grove? The fields dient to the bidding of the spirit of beauty. laugh not now-but here and there they smile. Who but Him who made it knoweth aught If we see no flowers we think of them-and of the Laws of Spirit? All of us may know less of the perished than of the unborn; for much of what is " wisest, virtuousest, discreetregret is vain, and hope is blest; in peace est, best," in obedience to them; but leaving there is the promise of joy —and therefore in the open day, we enter at once into thickest the silent pastures a perfect beauty how re- night. Why at this moment do we see a spct storative to man's troubled heart! once only visited by us-unremembered f~c The Shortest Day in all the year-yet is it ever so many flights of black or bright winged lovelier than the Longest. Can that be the years-see it in fancy as it then was in nature, voice of birds? With the laverock's lyric our with the same dew-drops on that wondrous fancy filled the sky —with the throstle's rounde- myrtle beheld but on that morning-such a lay it awoke the wood. In the air life is audi- myrtle as no other eyes beheld ever on this ble-circling unseen. Such serenity must be earth but ours, and the eyes of one now in inhabited by happiness. Ha! there thou art, heaven? our Familiar-the selfsame Robin Redbreast Another year is about to die-and how wag, that pecked at our nursery window, and used the world? "What great events are on the to warble from the gable of the school-house gale?" Go ask our statesmen. But their rule his sweet winter song! -their guidance is but over the outer world, In company we are silent-in solitude we and almost powerless their folly or their wis soliloquize. So dearly do we love our own dom over the inner region in which we mor voice that we cannot bear to hear it mixed tals live, and move, and have our being, where with that of others-perhaps drowned; and the fall of a throne makes no more noise than then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in the hush I that of a leaf! 250 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NOR'I H. Thank Heaven! Summer and Autumn are during all that wavering visitation, to be of al. both dead and buried at last, and white lies the sights the most evanescent, and yet inspirasnow on their graves! Youth is the season of tive of a beauty-born belief, bright.as the sun all sorts of insolence, and therefore we can for- that flung the image on the cloud-profound as give and forget almost any thing in SPRING. the gloom it illumines-that it shone and is He has always been a privileged personage; shining there at the bidding of Him who inand we have no doubt that he played his habiteth eternity.-The grim noon of Saturday, pranks even in Paradise. To-day, he meets after a moaning morning, and one silent intf: vou unexpectedly on the hill-side; and was mediate lour of grave-like stillness, begins.A. there ever a face in'.his world so celestialized gleam fitfully with lightning like a maniac's by smiles! All the features are framed of eye; and is not that light. Gaze into his eyes, and you feel that in the untroubled lustre there is something more Of thunder heard remote sublime than in the heights of the cloudless heavens, or in the depths of the waveless seas. On earth wind there is none-not so much as More sublime, because essentially spiritual, a breath. But there is a strong wind in heaThere stands the young Angel, entranced in ven-for see how that huge cloud-city, a night the conscious mystery of his own beautiful within a day, comes moving on along the hidand blessed being; and the earth becomes all den mountain-tops, and hangs over the loch all at once fit region for the sojourn of the Son of at once black as pitch, except that here and the Morning. So might some great painter there a sort of sullen purple heaves upon the image the First-born of the Year, till nations long slow swell, and here and there along the adored the picture.-To-morrow you repair, shores-how caused we know not-are seern, with hermit steps, to the Mount of the Vision, but heard not, the white melancholy breakers! and, Is no one smitten blind? No! Thank God! "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell," But ere the thanksgiving has been worded, an Spring clutches you by the hair with the fingers airquake has split asunder the cloud-city, the of frost; blashes a storm of sleet in your face, night within the day, and all its towers and and finishes, perhaps, by folding you in a wind- temples are disordered along the firmament, to ing-sheet of snow, in which you would infalli- a sound that might waken the dead. Where bly perish but for a pocket-pistol of Glenlivet. are ye, ye echo-hunters, that grudge not to -The day after to-morrow, you behold him- purchase gunpowder explosions on Lowood Spring —walking along the firmament, sad, but bowling-green at four shillings the blast? See! not sullen-mournful, but not miserable-dis- there are our artillerymen stalking from batturbed, but not despairing-now coming out tery to battery-all hung up aloft facing the towards you in a burst of light-and now fad- west-or "each standing by his gun" with ing away from you in a gathering of gloom- lighted match, moving or motionless Shadoweven as one might figure in his imagination a figures, and all clothed in black-blur uniform, fallen Angel. On Thursday, confound you if with blood-red facings portentously glancing you know what the deuse to make of his in the sun, as he strives to struggle into heaSpringship. There he is, stripped to the buff ven. The Generalissimo of all the forces, who -playing at hide-and-seek, hare-and-hound, is he but-Spring? —Hand in hand with Spring, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, Sabbath descends from heaven unto earth; and swandown waistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lod- are not their feet beautiful on the mountains? brog or Winter. You turn up the whites of Small as is the voice of that tinkling bell from your eyes, and the browns of your hands in that humble spire, overtopped by its coeval amazement, till the Two, by way of change trees, yet is it heard in the heart of infinitude. of pastime, cease their mutual vagaries, and So is the bleating of these silly sheep on the like a codple of hawks diverting themselves braes-and so is that voice of psalms, all at with an owl, in conclusion buffet you off the once rising so spirit-like, as if the very kirir premises. You insert the occurrence, with were animated, and singing a joyous song in suitable reflections, in your Meteorological the wilderness to the ear of the Most High. Diary, under the head-Spring. On Friday, For all things are under his care-those that, nothing is seen of you but the blue tip of your as we dream, have no life —the flowers, and nose, for you are confined to bed by rheuma- the herbs, and the trees-those that some dim tism, and nobody admitted to your sleepless scripture seems to say, when they die, utterly sanctum but your condoling Mawsey.'Tis a perish-and those that all bright scripture, pity. For never since the flood-greened earth whether written in the book of God, or the on ner first resurrection morn laughed around book of Nature, declares will live for ever! Ararat, spanned was she by such a Rainbow! If such be the character and conduct of By all that is various and vanishing, the arch Spring during one week, wilt thou not forget stems many miles broad, and many miles high, and forgive-with us-much occasional conand all creation to be gladly and gloriously duct on his part that appears not only inexgathered together without being crowded- plicable, but incomprehensible 1 But we canplains, woods, villages, towns, hills, and not extend the same indulgence to Summer clouds, beneath the pathway of Spring, once and to Autumn. SUMMER is a season come to more an Angel-an unfallen Angel! While the the years of discretion, and ought to conduct tinge that trembles into transcendent hues fad- himself like a staid, sober, sensible, middleing and fluctuating-deepening and dying — aged man, not past, but passing, his prime. now gone, as if for ever-and now back again Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often in an instant, as if breathing and alive-is felt, behaves in a way to make his best friends SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS. 251 ashamed of him-in a way absolutely dis- like iLto a still more mysterious night! Long graceful to a person of his time of life. Hav- as a Midsummer Day is, it has gone by like a ing picked a quarrel with the Sun-his bene- Heron's flight. The sun is setting! —and let factor, nay, his father-what else could he him set without being scribbled upon by expect but that that enlightened Christian Christopher North. We took a pen-and-ink would altogether withhold his countenance sketch of him in a "Day on Windermere." from so undutiful and ungrateful a child, and Poor nature is much to be pitied among paintleave him to travel along the mire and beneath ers and poets. They are perpetually falling the clouds? For some weeks Summer was into sulky-and sullenly scorned to shed a tear. "Such perusal of her face His eyes were like ice. By and by, like a As they would draw it." great school-boy, he began to whine and And often must she be sick of the Curious Im whimper-and when he found that would not pertinents. But a Curious Impertinent are do, he blubbered like the booby of the lowest not we-if ever there was one beneath the form. Still the Sun would not look on him- skies, a devout worshipper of Nature; and fir if he did,'twas with a sudden and short though we often seem to heed not her shrine — half-scowl that froze the ingrate's blood. At it stands in our imagination, like a temple in a last the Summer grew contrite, and the Sun perpetual Sabbath. forgiving; the one burst out into a flood of It was poetically and piously said by the tears, the other into a flood of light. In sim- Ettrick Shepherd, at a Noctes, that there is no ple words, the Summer wept and the Sun such thing in nature as bad weather. Take smiled-and for one broken month there was Summer, which early in our soliloquy we a perpetual alternation of rain and radiance! abused in good set terms. Its weather was How beautiful is penitence! How beautiful broken, but not bad; and much various beauty forgiveness! For one week the Summer was and sublimity is involved in the epithet restored to his pristine peace and old luxuri- "broken," when applied to the "season of the ance, and the desert blossomed like the rose. year." Common-place people, especially townTherefore ask we the Summer's pardon for dwellers, who flit into the country for a few thanking Heaven that he was dead. V%'ould months, have a silly and absurd idea of Sumthat he were alive again, and buried not for mer, which all the atmospherical phenomena ever beneath the yellow forest leaves! O thou fail to drive out of their foolish fancies. They first, faint, fair, finest tinge of dawning Light insist on its remaining with us for half a year that streaks the still-sleeping yet just-waking at least, and on its being dressed in its Sunface of the morn, Light and no-Light, a sha- day's best every day in the week as long as dowy Something, that as we gaze is felt to be they continue in country quarters. The Sun growing into an emotion that must be either must rise, like a labourer, at the very earliest Innocence or Beauty, or both blending together hour, shine all day, and go to bed late, else into devotion before Deity, once more duly they treat him contumeliously, and declare visible in the divine colouring that forebodes that he is not worth his meat. Should he reanother day to mortal life-before Thee what tire occasionally behind a cloud, which it seems holy bliss to kneel upon the greensward in most natural and reasonable for one to do who some forest glade, while every leaf is a-tremble lives so much in the public eye, why a whole with dewdrops, and the happy little birds are watering-place, uplifting a face of dissatisfied beginning to twitter, yet motionless among the expostulation to heaven, exclaims, "Where is boughs-before Thee to kneel as at a shrine, the Sun? Are we never to have any Sun." and breathe deeper and deeper-as the lustre They also insist that there shall be no rain of waxeth purer and purer, brighter and more more than an hour's duration in the daytime, bright, till range after range arise of crimson but that it shall all fall by night. Yet when clouds in altitude sublime, and breast above the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidbreast expands of yellow woods softly glitter- ding, and is shining, as he supposes, to their ing. in their far-spread magnificence-then heart's content, up go ahundred green parasols what holy bliss to breathe deeper and deeper in his face, enough to startle the celestial unto Him who holds in the hollow of his hand steeds in his chariot. A brokcn summer for the heavens and the earth, our high but most us. Now and then a few continuous dayshumble orisons! But now it is Day, and perhaps a whole week-but, if that be denied, broad awake seems the whole joyful world. now and then, The clouds-lustrous no nfTre-are all an- " Like angel visits, few and far between," chored on the sky, white as fleets waiting for one single Day - blue-spread over heaven, the wind. Time is not felt-and one might green-spread over earth-no cloud above, no dream that the Day was to endure for ever. shade below, save that dove-coloured martle Yet the great river rolls on in the light-and lying motionless like the mansions of peace, why will he leave those lovely inland woods and that pensive gloom that falls from some for the naked shores' Why-responds some old castle or venerable wood-the stillness of voice-hurry we on our lives-impetuous and a sleeping joy, to our heart profounder than passionate far more than he with all his cata- that of death, in the air, in the sky, and resting racts-as if anxious to forsake the regions of on our mighty mother's undisturbed breastthe upper day for the dim place from which no lowing on the hills, no bleating on the braes we yet recoil in fear-the dim place which -the rivers almost silent as 2ochs, and the imagination sometimes seems to see even lochs, just visible in their aerala purity, float through the sunshine, beyond the bourne of ing dream-like between earth and sky, imbued this our unintelligible being, stretching sea- with the beauty of both, and seeming to belong 252 RECREATIONS OF CHRIST( PHER NORTH. to either, as the heart melts to human tender- athwart the sunny mountain gloom, while eve' ness, or beyond all mortal loves the imagina- as they descend on earth, lift up the streams tion soars! Such days seem now to us-as along the wilderness louder and louder a choral memory and imagination half restore and half song. Look now at the heather-and smile create the past into such weather as may have whenever hencefortf you hear people talk of shone over the bridal morn of our first parents purple. You have been wont to call a gold -n Paradise —to have been frequent-nay, to guinea or a sovereign yellow —but if you have have lasted all the Summer long-when our got one in your pocket, place it on your palm, boyhood was bright from the hands of God. and in the light of that broom is it not a dirty Each of those days was in itself a life! Yet brown? You have an emerald ring on your all those sunny lives melted into one Summer finger-but how gray it looks beside the green -and all those Summers formed one continu- of those brackens, that pasture, that wood I ous bliss. Storms and snows vanished out of Purple, yellow, and green, you have now seen, our ideal year; and then morning, noon. and sir, for the first time in your life. Widening night, wherever we breathed, we felt, what now and widening over your head, all the while we but know, the inmost meaning of that pro- you have been gazing on the heather, the found verse of Virgil the Divine- broom, thebracken, the pastures, and the woods, "Devenere locos lntos, et amcena vireta have the eternal heavens been preparing for Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas. you a vision of the sacred Blue. Is not that Largior htc campos mather et lumine vestit an Indigo Divine? Or, if you scorn that merPurpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt." cantile and manufacturing image, steal that Few-no such days as those seem now ever blue from the sky, and let the lady of your love to be born. Sometimes we indeed gaze through tinge but her eyelids with one touch, and a the face into the heart of the sky, and for a saintlier beauty will be in her upward looks as moment feel that the'ancient glory of the she beseeches Heaven to bless thee in her heavens has returned on our dream of life. prayers! Set slowly-slowly-slowly-O Sun But to the perfect beatitude of the skies there of Suns! as may be allowed by the laws of comes from the soul within us a mournful re- Nature. For not long after Thou hast sunk sponse, that betokens some wide and deep- behind those mountains into the sea, will that some everlasting change. Joy is not now what celestial ROSY-RED be tabernacled in the heajoy was of yore; like a fine diamond with a vens! flaw is now Imagination's eye; other motes Meanwhile, three of the dozen showers have than those that float through ether cross be- so soaked and steeped our old crazy carcass tween its orb and the sun; the " fine gold has in refreshment, and restoration, and renewal of become dim," with which morning and evening youth, that we should not be surprised were of old embossed the skies; the dewdrops are we to outlive that raven croaking in pure gaietd not now the pearls once they were, left on du carur on the cliff. Threescore and ten years! Poo —'tis a pitiful span! At a hundred we "Flowers, and weeds as beautiful as flowers," Poo-'tis a pitiful span! At a hundred we shall cut capers-for twenty years more keep by angels' and by fairies' wings; knowledge, to the Highland fling-and at the close of other custom, experience, fate, fortune, error, vice, twenty, jig it into the grave to that matchless and sin, have dulled, and darkened, and dead- strathspey, the Reel of Tullochgorum! ened all things; and the soul, unable to bring Having thus made our peace with last Sumover the Present the ineffable bliss and beauty mer, can we allow the Sun to go down on our of the Past, almost swoons to think what a wrath towards the ATTUMN, whose back we ghastly thunder-gloom may by Providence be yet see on the horizon, before he turn about to reserved for the Future! bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! meet Nay-nay-things are not altogether so bad us half way in yonder immense field of potawith us as this strain-sincere though it be as toes, our worthy season, and among these a stream from the sacred mountains-might peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, seem to declare. We can yet enjoy a broken shall we two smoke together the calumet or Summer. It would do your heart good to see cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell, and us hobbling with our crutch along the High- the folk feared famine. The people whined land hills, sans great-coat or umbrella, in a over the smut in wheat, and pored pale on the summer-shower, aiblins cap in hand that our Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny greener and greener-reapers stood at the blooming heather, or clambering, like an old crosses of villages, towns, and cities, passing goat, among the cliffs. Nothing so good for from one to another comfortless quechs of sma' gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, yill, with their straw-bound sickles hanging while the thermometer keeps ranging between idle across their shoulders, and with unhired630~ and 70~, three times a-day. What refresh- looking faces, as ragged as if you were tc ment in the very sound-Soaking! Old bones dream of a Symposium of Scarecrows. Alarmwax dry-nerves numb-sinews stiff-flesh ed imagination beheld harvest; treading on the frail-and there is a sad drawback on the heels of Christmas, Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'wester blows "caller" on our craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths when, whew! to dash the dismal predictions at the approach of rain. Look but at those of foolish and false prophets, came rustling dozen downward showers, all denizens of from all the airts, far, far and wide over the heaven, how black, and blue, and bright they rain-drenched kingdom, the great armament in their glee are streaming, and gleaming of the Autumnal Winds! Groaned the grain. SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS. 239 as in sudden resurrection it lifted up its nead, like that of Joseph, is a coat of many colours and knew that again the Sun was in Heaven. Call it patchwork if you choose, Death became Life; and the hearts of the hus- "And be yourself the great sublime you draw." bandmen sang aloud for joy. Like Turks, the Some people look on nature with a milliner's reapers brandished their sickles in the breezy or a mantua-maker's eye-arraying her in light, and every field glittered with Christian furbelows and flounces. Buc use your own crescents. Auld wives and\bits o' weans min- eyes and ours, and from beneath TaE. SYcagled on the rig-kilted to the knees, like the MORE let us two, sitting togethner in amity, comely cummers, and the handsome hizzies, look lovingly on the SPnING. Felt ever your and the lusome lassies wi' their silken snoods heart before, with such an emotion of harmo-among the heather-legged Highlandmen, and nious beauty, the exquisitely delicate distincthe bandy Irishers, brawny all, and with hook, tions of Gharacter among the lovely tribes of scythe, or flail, inferior to noneof the children trees! That is BELLE ISLE. Earliest to sa. of men. The scene lies in Scotland-but now, lute the vernal rainbow, with a glow of green too, is England "Merry England" indeed, and gentle as its own, is the lake-loving ALDER, outside passengers on a thousand coaches see whose home, too, is by the flowings of all the stooks rising like stacks, and far and wide, streams. Just onedegree fainterin itshue-or over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoice in shall we rather say brighter-for we feel the the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest- difference without knowing in what it lieshome. Intervenes the rest of two sunny Sab- stands,by the Alder's roundedsoftness,the spiral baths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give LARCH, all hung over its limber sprays, were you the last ripeness to the overladen stalks that, near enough to admire them, with cones of the top-heavy with aliment, fall over in their yel- Tyrian dye. The stem, white as silver, and towy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. smooth as silk, seen so straight in the green Few fields now-but here and there one thin silvan light, and there airily overarching the and greenish, of cold, unclean, or stony soil- coppice with lambent tresses, such as fancy are waving in the shadowy winds; for all are might picture for the mermaid's hair, pleasant cleared, but some stooked stubbles from which as is her life on that Fortunate Isle, is yet the stooks are fast disappearing, as the huge said by us, who vainly attribute our own sadwains seem to halt for a moment, impeded by ness to unsorrowing things-to belong to a the gates they hide, and then, crested perhaps Tree that weeps;-though a weight, of joy it is, with laughing boys and girls, and of exceeding gladness, that thus depresses "Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings," the BIRcii's pendent beauty, till it droops-as nt n r ~aswe think-like that of a being overcome no —not rings-for Beattie, in that admirable with grief! Seen standing all along by themline, lets us hear a cart going out empty in selves, with something of a foreign air and an the morning-but with a cheerful dull sound, exotic expression, yet not unwelcome or obploughing along the black soil, the clean dirt trusive among our indigenous fair forest-trees, almost up to the axletree, and then, as the twinkling to the touch of every wanderingwind, wheels, rimmed you might always think with and restless even amidst what seemeth now silver, reach the road, macadamized till it to be everlasting rest, we cannot choose acts like a railway, how glides along downhill but admire that somewhat darker grove of the moving mountain! And see now, the columnar Lombardy POPLARS. How comes growing Stack glittering with a charge of it that some SYCAMORES so much sooner pitchforks! The trams fly up from Dobbin's than others salute the spring! Yonder are back, and a shoal of sheaves overflows the some but budding, as if yet the frost lay on the mire. Up they go, tossed from sinewy arms honey-dew that protects the beamy germs. like feathers, and the Stack grows before There are others warming into expansion, halfyour eyes, fairly proportioned as a beehive, budded and half-leaved, with a various light without line or measure, but shaped by the of colour visible in that sun-glint distinctly look and the feel, true almost as the spring in- from afar. And in that nook of the still sunstinct of the nest-building bird. And are we nier south, trending eastward, a few are alnot heartily ashamed of ourselves, amidst this most in their full summer foliage, and soon general din of working mirthfulness, for will the bees be swarming among their flowers. having, but an hour ago, abused the jovial A HORSE CHESTNUT has a grand oriental air, and generous Autumn, and thanked Heaven and like a satrap uplifts his green banner yel. that he was dead? Let us retire into the barn lowing in the light-that shows he belongs to with Shoosy, and hide our blushes. the line of the Prophet. ELMS are then most Comparisons are odoriferous, and therefore magnificent-witness Christ-Church walkfcr one paragraph let us compare AUTUMN when they hang overhead in heaven like the with SPRING. Suppose ourselves sitting be- chancel of a cathedral. Yet here, too, are they neath THE SYCAMORE of Windermere! Poets august-and methinks "a dim religious light" call Spring Green-Mantle — and true it is that the is in that vault of branches just vivifying to groundwork of his garbis green-even like that the Spring, and though almost bare, tinged of the proud peacock's changeful neck, when with a coming hue that erelong will be mathe creature treads in the circle of his own jestic brightness. Those old OAKS seem sul splendour, and the scholar who may have for- len in the sunshine, and slow to put forth their gotten his classics, has yet a dream of Juno power, like the Spirit of the Land they emblem. and of her watchful Argus with his hundred, But they, too, are relaxing from their wonted his thousand eyes. But the coat of Spring, sternness —soon will that faint green:e a glo 2154 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. rious yellow; and while the gold-laden boughs one, accompanying that large wood-boat on its stoop boldly to the storms with which they slow voyage from Ambleside to Bowness, the love to dally, bounds not the heart of every metropolitan port of the Queen of the Lakes. Briton to the music of his national anthem, The water has lost, you see, its summer sunnl " Rule, Britannia, ness, yet it is as transparent as ever it was in Britannia, rule the waves!" summer; and how close together seem, with lThe AsII is a manly tree, but "dreigh and their almost meeting shadows, the two oppodour" in the leafing; and yonder stands an site shores! But we wish you to look at BELLA Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles ISLE, though we ourselves are almost afraid to like the docks of Liverpool. Yet like the town do so, so transcendently glorious is the sight of Kilkenny the dock of Livrpool.Ytlikehetownthat we know will disturb us with an emotion of Kilkenny too deep to be endured. Could you not think ". It shines well where it stands;" It shines well where it stands that a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragand the bare gray-blue of the branches, apart ments on the Isle called Beautiful, and set it but not repulsive, like some cunning discord all a-blaze! The woods are on fire, yet they in music deepens the harmony of the Isle of burn not; beauty subdues while it fosters the Groves. Contrast is one of the finest of all flame; and there, as in a many-tented taberthe laws of association, as every philosopher, nacle, has Colour pitched his royal residence, poet, and peasant kens. At this moment it and reigns in glory beyond that of any Orienbrings, by the bonds of beauty, though many tal king. What are all the canopies, and balglades intervene, close beside that pale gray- conies, and galleries of human state, all hung blue, leafless Ash Clump, that bright black- with' the richest drapery that ever the skill of green PINE Clan, whose "leaf fadeth never," Art, that Wizard, drew forth in gorgeous folds a glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in the from his enchanted loom, if ideally suspended English woods. Though many glades inter- in the air of imagination beside the sun-andvene, we said; for thou seest that BELLE ISLE storm-stained furniture of these Palaces of is not all one various flush of wood, but be- Autumn, framed by the Spirit of the Season, dropt all over-bedropt and besprinkled with of living and dying umbrage, for his latest degrass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, some tree- light, ere he move in annual migration, with shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some lumi- all his Court, to some foreign clime far beyond nous as small soil-suns, on which as the eye the seas! No names of trees are remembered alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, and — a glorious confusion comprehends in one the gifted with a profounder power to see into the whole leafy race-orange, and purple, and mystery of the beauty of nature. But what scarlet, and crimson, are all seen to be there, are those living Hills of snow, or of some sub- and interfused through the silent splendour is stance purer in its brightness even than any aye felt the presence of that terrestrial green, snow that fades in one night on the mountain- native and unextinguishable in earth's bosom, top! Trees are they-fruit-trees-The WILD as that,,elestial blue is that of the sky. That CHERRnY, that grows stately and wide spreading trance goes by, and the spirit, gradually filled even as the monarch of the wood-and can with a stiller delight, takes down all those tents that be a load of blossoms! Fairer never grew into pieces, and contemplates the encampment before poet's eye of old in the fabled Hesperides. with less of imagination, and with more of See how what we call snow brightens into love. It knows and blesses each one of those pink-yet still the whole glory is white, and many glorious groves, each becoming, as it fadeth not away the purity of the balmy snow- gazes, less and less glorious, more and more blush. Ay, balmy as the bliss breathing from beautiful; till memory revives all the happiest virgin lips, when, moving in the beauty left by and holiest hours of the Summer and the her morning prayers, a glad fond daughter Spring, and re-peoples the melancholy umrnsteals towards him on the feet of light, and as brage with a thousand visions of joy, that may his arms open to receive and return the bless- return never more! Images, it may be, of ing, lays her innocence with smiles that are forms and faces now mouldering in the dust! almost tears, within her father's bosom. For as human hearts have felt, and all human " As when to those who sail lips have declared-melancholy making poets iBeyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past of us all, ay, even prophets-till the pensive Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow Sabion odours from the spicy shore air of Autumn has been filled with the music Of Araby the blest; with such delay of elegiac and foreboding hymns-as is the Well pleased they slack their course, and many a Race of Leaves-now old Homer speaks-so league, Ch(er'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles." is the Race of.Men! Nor till time shall have an end, insensate will be any creature enShut your eyes-suppose five months gone dowed "with discourse of reason" to those -and lo! BELLE ISLE in Autumn, like a scene mysterious misgivings, alternating with tri-,n another hemisphere of our globe. There is umphant aspirations more mysterious still,.a slight frost in the air, in the sky, on the lake, when the Religion of nature leans in awe on and midday is as still as midnight. But, the Religion of God, and we hear the voice of though still, it is cheerful.; for close at hand both in such strains as these-the earthly, in Robin Redbreast-God bless him!-is war- its sadness, momentarily deadening the dibling on the copestone of that old barn gable; vine:and though Millar-Ground Bay is h'alf a mile "But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn rf,; how distinct the clank of the two oars like Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave *" SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS. 255 especially while, on turning round your heads SECOND RHAPSODY. you behold a big blockhead o'a vulga.r bag man, with his coat-tails over his arms, warm HIAVE we not been speaking of all the Sea- ing his loathsome hideousness at a fire that sons as belonging to the masculine genderS would roast an ox. They are generally, we believe, in this country, Such are the Seasons! And though we have painted in petticoats, apparently by bagmen, spoken of them, as mere critics on art, someas may be daily seen in the pretty prints that what superciliously, yet there is almost always bedeck the paper-walls of the parlours of inns. no inconsiderable merit in all prints, pictures, Spring is always there represented as a spanker paintings, poems, or prose-works, that-pardon in a blue symar, very pertly exposing her bud- our tautology —are popular with the people.. ding breast, arid her limbs from feet to fork, in The emblematical figments now alluded to, a style that must be very offensive to the mealy- have been the creations of persons of genius, mouthed members of that shamefaced corpo- who had never had access to the works of the ration, the Society for the Suppression of Vice. old masters; so that, though the conception is She holds a flower between her finger and her good, the execution is, in general, far from perthumb, crocus,violet, or primrose; and though feet. Yet many a time, when lying at our we verily believe she means no harm, she no ease in a Wayside Inn, stretched on three doubt does look rather leeringly upon you, like wooden chairs, with a little round deal-table one of the frail sisterhood of the Come-atables. before us, well laden with oat-meal cakes and Summer again is an enormous and monstrous cheese and butter, nor, you may be sure, withmawsev, in puris naturalibus, meant to image out its "tappit hen"-have we after a long Musidora, or the Medicean, or rather the Hot- day's journey-perhaps the longest daytentot Venus. "Through moors and mosses many, 0," "So stands the statue that enchants the world " regarded with no imaginative spirit-when She seems, at the very lightest, a good round Joseph and his brethren'were wanting-even half hundred heavier than Spring; and, when such symbols of the Seasons as these-while you imagine her plunging into the pool, you arose to gladden us many as fair an image as think you hear a porpus. May no Damon run ever nature sent from her woods and wilderaway with her clothes, leaving behind in ex- nesses to cheer the heart of her worshipper *:hange his heart! Gadflies are rife in the dog- who, on his pilgrimage to her loftiest shrines, lays, and should one " imparadise himself in and most majestic temples, spared not to stoop form of that sweet flesh," there will be a cry his head below the lowest lintel, and held all in the woods that will speedily bring to her men his equal who earned by honest industry assistance Pan and all his Satyrs. Autumn is the scanty fare which they never ate without a motherly matron, evidently enceilnte, and, like those holy words of supplication and thanksLove and Charity, who probably are smiling giving, "Give us this day our daily bread!" on the opposite wall, she has a brace of bounc- Our memory is a treasure-house of written ing babies at her breast-in her right hand a and unwritten poetry-the ingots, the gifts of formidable sickle, like a Turkish scymitar — the great bards, and the bars of bullion-much in her left an extraordinary utensil, bearing, of the coin our own-some of it borrowed we believe, the heathenish appellation of mayhap, hut always on good security, and cornucopia-on her back a sheaf of wheat- repaid with interest-a legal transaction, of and on her head a diadem-planted there by which even a not unwealthy man has no need John Barleycorn. She is a fearsome dear; as to be ashamed-none of it stolen, nor yet found ugly a customer as a lonely man would wish where the Highlandman found the tongs. But to encounter beneath the light of a September our riches are like those that encumbered the moon. On her feet are bauchles-on her legs floor of the Sanctum of the Dey of Algiers, not huggers-and the breadth of her soles, and the very tidily arranged; and we are frequently thickness of her ankles, we leave to your own foiled in our efforts to lay our hand, for imconjectures. Her fine bust is conspicuous in mediate use or ornament, on a ducat or a diaan open laced boddice-and her huge hips are mond, a pistole or a pearl, a sovereign, or only set off to the biggest advantage, by a jacket his crown. We feel ourselves at this moment that she seems to have picked up by the way- in that predicament, when trying to recollec side, after some jolly tar, on his return from a the genders of Thom;soa's " Seasons "long voyage, had there been performing his ome, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come, "Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come, toilet, and, by getting rid of certain incum- And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, brances, enabled to pursue his inland journey While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower with less resemblance than before to a walk- Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend!" ing scarecrow. Winter is a withered old That picture is indistinctly and obscurely beau beldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on tiful to the imagination, and there is not a sylher hunkers over a feeble fire of sticks, ex- lable about sex-though "ethereal mildness," tinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in which is an Impersonation, and hardly an Im. the melted snow which all around that un- personation, must be, it is felt, a Virgin God housed wretchedness is indurated with frost; I dess, whom all the divinities that dwell be while a blue pool close at hand is chained in twmeen heaven and earth must love. Never iL iciness, and an old stump, half buried in the our taste-but our taste is inferior to our feel drift. Poor old, miserable, cowering crone! ing and our genius-though you will seldom One cannot look at her without unconsciously go far wrong even in trusting it-never had a putting one's hand in his pocket, and fumbling poem a more beautiful beginning. It is not for a tester. Yes, there is pathos in the picture, simple-nor ought it to be-it is rich, and even .tw' i5 6 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTHI. gorgeous —for the Bard came to his subject round and round a rose-bush, and then sett!ing full of inspiration; and as it was the inspira- himself down seriously to work, as mute as a tion, here, not of profound thought, but of mouse, among the half-blown petals. How passionate emotion, it was right that music at ever, we are not now writing our Confessions the very first moment should overflow the -and what we wished to say about this pas. page, and that it should be literally strewed sage is, that in it the one sex is represented as with roses. An imperfect Impersonation is turning away the face from that of the other, often proof positive of the highest state of which may be all natural enough, though poetical enthusiasm. The forms of nature polite on the gentleman's part we can never undergo a half humanizing process under the call it; and, had the female virgin done so, we intensity of our love, yet still retain the cha- cannot help thinking it would have read better racter of the insensate creation, thus affecting in poetry. But for Spring to avert his blushful us with a sweet, strange, almost bewildering, face from the ardent looks of Summer, has on blended emotion that scarcely belongs to either us the effect of making both Seasons seem simseparately, but to both together clings as to a pletons. Spring, in the character of " ethereal phenomenon that only the eye of genius sees, mildness," was unquestionably a female; but because only the soul of genius can give it a here she is "unsexed from the crown to the presence-though afterwards all eyes dimly toe," and changed into an awkward hobbleterecognise it, on its being shown to them, as hoy, who, having passed his boyhood in the something more vivid than their own faint ex- country, is a booby who blushes black at the perience, yet either kindred to it, or virtually gaze of his own brother, and if brought into one and the same. Almost all human nature the company of the lasses, would not fail to can, in some measure, understand and feel faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt the most exquisite and recondite image which a pitcherful of cold water. only the rarest genius could produce. Were "Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf, it not so, great poets might break their harps, While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain, and go drown themselves in Helicon. Comes jovialon, &c., "From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed, is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is Child of the Sun, refillgent SUMMER comes, complete, and though the sex of Autumn is In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth: not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be He comes attended by the sultry hours, male. So far, there is nothing amiss either And ever-fanning breezes, on his way; While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring one way or another. But "nodding o'er the Averts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,tatement of a fact in All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves." nature-and descriptive of the growing and Here the Impersonation is stronger-and ripening or ripened harvest-whereas it is perhaps the superior strength liesinthewords applied here to Autumn, as a figure who " child of the Sun." And here in the words " comes jovial on." This is not obscurity-or describing Spring, she too is more of an Im- indistinctness-which, as we have said before, personation than in the other passage-avert- is often a great beauty in Impersonation; but ing her blushful face from the Summer's ardent it is an inconsistency and a contradiction-and look. The poet having made Summer mascu- therefore indefensible on any ground either of line, very properly makes Spring feminine; conception or expression. and'ti3 a jewel of a picture-for ladies should There are no such essential vices as this in always avert their blushful faces from the the "' Castle of Indolence"-for by that time ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed, Thomson had subjected his inspiration to elsewhere says of an enamoured youth over- thought-and his poetry, guided and guarded powered by the loving looks of his mistress,- by philosophy, became celestial as an angel's From the keen gaze her lover turns away, song. Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick WiFull of th e dear ecstatic power, andnt." " See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year, Sullen and sad, with all his rising train, This, we have heard, from experienced per- Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme, sons of both sexes, is as delicate as it is These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought, sons of both sexes, is as delicate as it is And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms! natural; but for our own simple and single Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent'foot, selves, we never remember having got sick on Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life, any such occasion. Much a~gitated, we can- When nursed by careless Solitude I lived, any scoca c, w And sung-of Nature with unceasing joy, not deny-if we did, the most credulous would Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain I not credit us-much agitated we have been- Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure; when our lady-love, not contented with fixing Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst; Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd upon us her dove-eyes, began billing and coo- In the grim evening sky. Thus pass'd the time, ing in a style from which the cushat might Till through the lucid chambers of the south have taken a lesson with advantage, that she Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!" might the better perform her innocent part on Divine inspiration indeed! Poetry, that if read her first assignation with her affianced in the by the bedside of a dying lover of nature, pine-grove on St. Valentine's day; but never might in all our long lives got we absolutely sick — "Create a soul,nr even squeamish-never were we obliged to Under the ribs of death!" turn away with our hand to our mouth-but, What in the name of goodness makes us on the contrary, we were commonly as brisk suppose that a mean and miserable November as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be too day, even while we are thus Rhapsodizing, is luscious a simile, as brisk as that same won- drizzling all Edinburgh with the worst of all ilerful insect murmuring for a few moments imaginable Scottish mists-an Easterly Harr! SOLILOQLY ON THE SEASONS. 257 We know that he infests all the year, but shows Let us then, and all our friends, believe, with his poor spite in its bleakest bitterness in Coleridge, in his beautifulpoem of the "NightMarch and in November. Earth and heaven ingale," that are not only not worth looking at in an East- " In Nature there is nothing melancholy," erly Harr, but the Visible is absolute wretched- not even November. The disease of the body ness, and people wonder why they were born. may cause disease in the soul; yet not the less The visitation begins with a sort of character- trust we in the mercy of the merciful-not the less haze, waxing more and more wetly ob- less strive we to keep feeding and trimming scure, till you know not whether it be rain, that spiritual lamp which is within us, even snow, or sleet, that drenches your clothes in when it flickers feebly in the dampy gloom, dampness, till you feel it in your skin, then in like an earthly lamp left in a vaulted sepulyour flesh, then in your bones, then in your chre, about to die among the dead. Heaven marrow, and then in your mind. Your blink- seems to have placed a power in our Will as ing eyes have it too-and so, shut it as you mighty as it is mysterious. Call it not Liberty, will, has your moping mouth. Yet the streets, lest you should wax proud; call it not Necesthough looking blue, are not puddled, and the sity, lest you should despair. But turn from dead cat lies dry in the gutter. There is no the oracles of man-still dim even in their eaves-dropping-no gushing of water-spouts. clearest responses-to the Oracles of God, To say it rained would be no breach of vera- which are never dark; or if so, but city, but a mere misstatement of a melancholy "Dark with excessive bright " fact. The truth is, that the weather cannot rain, to eyes not constantly accustomed to sustain but keeps spit, spit, spitting, in a style suffi- the splendour. Bury all your books, when cient to irritate Socrates-or even Moses him- you feel the night of skepticism gathering self; and yet true, veritable, sincere, genuine, around you-bury them all, powerful though and authentic -Rain could not-or if he could you may have deemed their spells to illumiwould not-so thoroughly soak you and your nate the unfathomable-open your Bible, and whole wardrobe, were you to allow him a day all the spiritual world will be as bright as day. to do it, as that shabby imitation of a tenth- The disease of the body may cause disease rate shower, in about the time of an usual to the soul. Ay, madness. Some rapture in sized sermon. So much cold and so much the soul makes the brain numb, and thence wet, with so little to show for it, is a disgrace sudden or lingering death; —some rupture in to the atmosphere, which it will take weeks of the brain makes the soul insane, and thence the sunniest the weather can afford to wipe off. life worse than death, and haunted by horrors But the stores of sunniness which it is in the beyond what is dreamt of the grave and all power of Winter in this northern latitude to its corruption. Perhaps the line fullest of' accumulate, cannot be immense; and there- meaning that ever was written, isfore we verily believe that it would be too " sana in corpore san much to expect that it ever can make amends muforch te hideous horrors of this Ea sterly Harr.n make amends When nature feels the flow of its vital blood for the hideous horrors of this Easterly Harr. pure and unimpeded, what unutterable gladThe Cut-throat! pure and unimpeded, what unutterable gladOn such days suicides rush to judgment. ness bathes the spirit in that one feeling ofOnt such days ysuicider s rush to judent. health! Then the mere consciousness of exThat sin is mysterious as insanity-their istence is like that emotion which Milton graves are unintelligible as the cells in Bedlam. Oh! the brain and the heart of man! speaks of as breathed from the bowers of PaTherein is the only Hell. Small these regions radisein space, and of narrow room —but haunted All sadnelht and jos, ale to drive ~~~~~~~.may they be with all the Fiends and all thespair may they be with all the Fiends and all the It does more-for despair itself cannot prevail Furies. A few nerves transmit to the soul deagainst it. What a dawn of bliss rises upon spair or bliss. At the touch of something-light, when our life is us with the dawn of light, when our life is whence and wherefore sent, who can say- healthful as the sun! Then something that serenes or troubles, soothes or jars-she soars up into life and light, just as you iIt feels that it is greater than it knows." may have seen a dove suddenly cleave the sun- God created the earth and the air beautiful shine-or down she dives into death and dark- through the senses; and at the uplifting of a'ness, like a shot eagle tumbling into the sea! little lid, a whole flood of imagery is let in Materialism! Immaterialism! Why should upon the spirit, all of which becomes part of mortals, whom conscience tells that they are its very self, as if the enjoying and the enjoyed, immortals, bewildered and bewildering ponder were one. Health flies away like an ange[, upon the dust! Do your duty to God and man, and her absence disenchants the earth. What and fear not that, when that dust dies, the spirit shadows then pass over the ethereal surface that breathed by it will live for ever. Feels of the spirit, from the breath of disordered matnot that spirit its immortality in each sacred ter!-from the first scarcely-felt breath of dethought' When did ever religious soul fear spondency, to the last scowling blackness of annihilation? Or shudder to think that, hav- despair! Often men know not what power ing once known, it could ever forget God? placed the fatal fetters upon them-they see Such forgetfulness is in the idea of eternal even that a link maybe open, and that one effbrt death. Therefore is eternal death impossible might fling off the bondage; but their souls are to us who can hold communion with our Ma- in slavery, and will not be free. Till'something ker. Our knowledge of Him-dim and remote like a fresh wind, or a sudden sunbeam, comes though it be-is a God-given pledge that he across them, and in a moment their whole ex will redeem us from the doom of the grave. istence is changed, and they see the very va 17 258 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. nishing of their most dismal and. desperate pie of Apollo or Plutus, we smile at ihe idea dream. of surmounting, so molehillish do they look. "Somewhat too much of this"-so let us and we kick them aside like an old footstool, strike the chords to a merrier measure-to a Let the country ask us for a scheme to pay off "'livelier lilt"-as suits the variable spirit of the national debt-there she has it; do you recur Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the quest us to have the kindness to leap over the sole certain way of getting rid of the blue moon-here we go; excellent Mr. Blackwood devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. has but to say the word, and a ready-made You would not suppose that we are subject to Leading Article is in his hand, promotive of the blue devils? Yet we are sometimes their the sale of countless numbers of "my Maga. very slave. When driven to it by their lash, zine," and of the happiness of countless num. every occupation, which when free we resort bers of mankind. We feel-and the feeling to as pastime, becomes taskwork; nor will proves the fact-as bold as Joshua the son of these dogged masters suffer us to purchase Nun-as brave as David the son of Jesse-as emancipation with the proceeds of the toil of wise. as Solomon the son of David-and as our groaning genius. But whenever the proud as Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nebopo worst comes to the worst, and we almost wish lazzar. We survey our image in the mirrorto die so that we might escape the galling and think of Adam. We put ourselves itc pressure of our chains, we sport buff, and into the posture of the Belvidere Apollo. the shower-bath. Yet such is the weakness "Then view the Lord of the unerring bow, of poor human nature, that like a criminal on The God of life, and poesy, and light, the scaffold, shifting the signal kerchief from The Sun in human arms array'd, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight. hand to hand, much to the irritation of his ex- The shaft hbath just been shot-the arrow bright cellency the hangman, one of the most impa- With an immortal vengeance; in his eye tient of men-and more to the satisfaction of And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty flash their full lightnings by, the crowd, the most patient of men and wo- Developing in that one glance the Deity." men-we often stand shut up in that sentrymelooking canvas box, dexofteroun stlyand shut up in that senty- Up four flight of stairs we fly —for the bath is rlooking canvas box, dextrerously and sinis- in the double-sunk story-ten steps at a bound trously fingering the string, perhaps for five trosly fingering the -and in five minutes have devoured one quarshrinking, and shuddering, and grueing minutes, tern loaf, six eggs, and a rizzar, washing all ere we can summon up desperation to pull down over with a punch-bowl of congou and a teal upon curselves the rushing waterfall! Soon as bowl of coffee, the agopy is over, we bounce out the colour of " Enormous breakfast, beet-root, and survey ourselves in a five-foot Wild without rule or art! Where nature plays mirror, with an amazement that, on each su- Her virgin fancies." cessive exhibition, is still as when we first ex- And then, leaning back on our Easy-chair, we perienced it, perform an exploit beyond the reach of Euclid'In life's morning march, whenour spirits were young." -why, wE SvUARE THE CIncLE, and to the utter demolition of our admirable friend Sir By and by, we assume the similitude of an David Brewster's diatribe, in a late number of immense boiled lobster that has dleapt out of the Quarterly Review, in a late numbdifference of the Quarterly Review, on the indifference of the pan-and then, seeming for a while to be an emblematical or symbolical representation government to men of science, chuckle over anremblematicaltor symbolical representation our nobly-won order, K. C. C. r., Knight Comof the setting Sun, we sober down into a faint our nobly-won order, K. C. C. B., Knight Conpink, like that of the Morn, and finally subside panion of the Cold Bath. into our own permanent flesh-light, which, as Many analogies between the seasons of the we turn our back upon ourselves, after the year and the seasons of life, being natural, have fashion of some of his majesty's ministers, re- been a frequent theme of poetry in all countries. minds us of that line in Cowper descriptive of Had the gods made us poetical, we should now the November Moon-o have poured forth a few exquisite illustrations of some that are very affecting and impressive. "Resplendent less, but of an ampler round." It has, however, often been felt by us, that not Like that of the eagle, our youth is renewed- a few of those one meets with in the lamenta. we feel strong as the horse in Homer-a di- tions of whey-faced sentimentalists, are false vine glow permeates our being, as if it were or fantastic, and do equal violence to all the the subdued spiritual essence of caloric. An seasons, both of the year and of life. These intense feeling of self-not self-love, mind gentry have been especially silly upon the siye, and the farthest state imaginable in this militude of Old Age to Winter. Winter, in wide world from selfishness-elevates us far external nature, is not the season of decay. up above the clouds, into the loftiest regions An old tree, for example, in the very dead of of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an winter, as it is figuratively called, though bare atmosphere, of which every glorious gulp is of leaves, is full of life. The sap, indeed, has inspiration. Despondency is thrown to the sunk down from his bole and branchesdogs. Despair appears in his true colours, a down into his toes or roots. But there it is, more grotesque idiot than Grimaldi, and we ready, in due time, to reascend. Not so treat him with a guffaw. All ante-bath diffi- with an old man-the present company alculties seem now-what they really are-faci- ways excepted; —his sap is not sunk down to lities of which we are by far too much elated his toes, but much of it is gone clean out of the to avail ourselves; dangers that used to ap- system-therefore, individual naturalobjects in pear appalling are felt now to be lulling se- Winter are not analogically emblematical of curities-obstacles, like mountains, lying in people stricken in years. Far less does the cour way of life as we walked towards the tem- Winter itself of the year, considered as a sea. SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS. 259 son, resemble the old age of life considered as est, gentlest, mildest, meekest, modestest, soft. a season. To what peculiarities, pray, in the est, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creacharacter and conduct of aged gentlemen in tures that steal along the face of the earth? So general, do rain, sleet, hail, frost, ice, snow, are we. So much for our similitude-a staring winds, blasts, storms, hurricanes, and occa- and striking one-to Spring. But were you sional thunder and lightning, bear analogy? to stop there, what an inadequate idea would We pause for a reply. Old men's heads, it is you have of our character! For only ask your true, are frequently white, though more fre- senses, and they will tell you that we are much quently bald, and their blood is not so hot as liker Summer. Is not Summer often infernally when they were springalds. But though there hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimes be no great harm in likening a sprinkling of cool as its own cucumbers? So are we. Does white hair on mine ancient's temples to the not summer love the shade? So do we. Is sappearance of the surface of the earth, flat or not Summer, nevertheless, somewhat "too mountainous, after a slight fall of snow-and much i' the sun." So are we. Is not Sum. indeed, in an impassioned state of mind, we mer famous for its thunder and lightning 1 So feel a moral beauty in such poetical expres- are we. Is not summer, when he chooses, sion as "sorrow shedding on the head of still, silent, and serene as a sleeping seraph 1 youth its untimely snows"-yet the natural And so too-when Christopher chooses-are propriety of such an image, so far from justi- not we? Though, with keen remorse we con. fying the assertion of a general analogy be- fess it, that, when suddenly wakened, we are tween Winter and Old Age, proves that the too often more like a fury or a fiend-and that analogies between them are in fact very few, completes the likeness; for all who know a and felt to be analogies at all, only when Scottish Summer, with one voice exclaimtouched upon very seldom, and very slightly, "So is he!" But our portrait is but halfZnd, for the most part, very vaguely —the truth drawn; you know but a moiety of our characIbeing, that they scarcely exist at all in reality, ter. Is Autumn jovial?-ask Thomson —so blut have an existence given to them by the are we. Is Autumn melancholy? —ask Alison lower of creative passion, which often works and Gillespie-so are we. Is Autumn bright? like genius. Shakspeare knew this well-as -ask the woods and groves-so are we, le knew every thing else; and, accordingly, he Is Autumn rich?-ask the whole world[ives us Seven Ages of Life-not Four Sea- so are we. Does Autumn rejoice in the Ions. But how finely does he sometimes, by yellow grain and the golden vintage, that, the mere use of the names of the Seasons of stored up in his great Magazine of Nathe Year, intensify to our imagination the ture, are lavishly thence dispensed to all that mental state to which they are for the moment hunger, and quench the thirst of the nations? felt to be analogous?- So do we. After that, no one can be so purNow is the winter of our discontent and-bat-blind as not see that North is, in very Made glorious summer by the sun of York " truth, Autumn's gracious self, rather than his That will do. The feeling he wished to inspire, Likeness or Eidolon. But is inspired; and the further analogical images "Lo, Winter comes to rule thl' inverted year!" which follow add nothing to our feelings, though they show the strength and depth of his into whose lips they are put. A bungler would " Sullen and sad, with all his rising trainhave bored us with ever so many ramifications Vapours, and clouds, and storms!" of the same idea, on one of which, in our wea- So are we. The great author of the "Seariness, we might have wished him hanged by sons" says, that Winter and his train the neck till he was dead. We are an Old Man, and though single not And Exalt the soul to solemn thought, And heavenly musing!" singular; yet, without vanity, we think ourselves entitled to say, that we are no more like So do we. And, " lest aught less great should Winter, in particular, than we are like Spring, stamp us mortal," here we conclude the comSummer, or Autumn. The truth is, that we parison, dashed off in few lines by the hand of are much less like any one of the Seasons, a great master, and ask, Is not North, Winter? than we are like the whole Set. Is not Spring Thus, listener after our own heart! Thou feelsharp? So are we. Is not Spring snappish? est that we are imaged aright in all our atSo are we. Is not Spring boisterous? So are tributes neither by Spring, nor Summer, nor we Is not Spring "beautiful exceedingly?" Autumn, nor Winter; but that the character So are we, Is not Spring capricious? So are of Christopher is shadowed forth and reflected we. Is no; Spring, at times, the gladdest, gay- by the Entire Year. 260 RECREATIONS OF CHRiSTOPHER NORTH A FEW WORDS ON THOMISON. POETRY, one might imagine, must be full of I and where he seems to us to have overshoot his Snow-scenes. If so, they have almost all dis- mark, and to have ceased to be perfectly natusolved —melted away from our memory-as ral. Thusthe transiencies in nature do which they cold- "Drooping, the ox ly pictured. Thomson's " Winter," of course, Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands we do not include in our obliviousness-and The fruit of all his toil." from Cowper's " Task" we might quote many a The image of the ox is as good as possible. most picturesque Snow-piece. But have frost We see him, and could paint him in oils. But, and snow been done full justice to by them to our mind, the notion of his "demanding the or any other of our poets? They have been fruit of all his toils"-to which we freely acwell spoken of by two-Southey and Coleridge knowledge the worthy animal was well en-of whose most poetical compositions respec- titled-sounds, as it is here expressed, rather tively, "Thalaba" and the "Ancient Mariner," fantastical. Call it doubtful-for Jemmy was in some future volume we may dissert. Thom- never utterly in the wrong in any sentiment. son's genius does not so often delight us by Againexquisite minute touches in the description of "The bleating kind nature as that of Cowper. It loves to paint Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth, on a great scale, and to dash objects off sweep- With looks of dumb despair." ingly by bold strokes-such, indeed, as have The second line is perfect; but the Ettrick Shepalmost always distinguished the mighty mas- herd agreed with us-one night at Ambrose's ters of the lyre and the rainbow. Cowper sets -that the third was not quite right. Sheep, nature before your eyes-Thomson before your he agreed with us, do not deliver themselves imagination. Which do you preferS Both. up to despair under any circumstances; and Be assured that both poets had pored night and here Thomson transferred what would have day upon her-in all her aspects-and that been his own feeling in a corresponding conshe had revealed herself fully to both. But dition, to animals who dreadlessly follow their they, in their religion, elected different modes of instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what worship-and both were worthy of the mighty immediately succeedsmother. In one mood of mind we love Cowper "Then, sad dispersed, best, in another Thomson. Sometimes the Sea- Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow." sons are almost a Task, and sometimes the Task For, as they disperse, they do look very sadis out of Season. There is delightful distinct- and no doubt are so; but had they been in ness in all the pictures of the Bard of Olney- despair, they would not so readily, and conglorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of stantly, and uniformly, and successfully, have the Bard of Ednam. Cowper paints trees- taken to the digging, but whole flocks had perThomson woods. Thomson paints, in a few ished. wondrous lines, rivers from source to sea, like You will not, we are confident, be angry the mighty Burrampooter —Cowper, in many with us for quoting a few lines that occur soon no very wondrous lines, brightens up one bend after, and which are a noble example of the of a stream, or awakens our fancy to the mur- sweeping style of description which, we said mur of some single waterfall. But a truce to above, characterizes the genius of this sublime antithesis-a deceptive style of criticism-and poet:see how Thomson sings of Snow. Why, in "From the bellowing east the following lines, as well as Christopher In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing North in his Winter Rhapsody — Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks, "The cherish'd fields Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills, Plt on their winter-robe of purest white. The billowy tempest whelms; till upward urged,'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts The valley to a shining mountain swells, Along the mazy current." Tipp'd with a wreath high-curling in the slky." Nothing can be more vivid.'Tis of the nature Well might the bard, with such a snow-storm of an ocular spectrum. in his imagination, when telling the shepherds Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note to be kind to their helpless charge, address the beauty of the epithet "brown," where all them in a language which, in an ordinary that is motionless is white- mood, would have been bombast. "Shep" The foodless wilds herds," says he, " baffle the raging year!" How? Pour forth their brown inhabitants." Why merely by filling their pens with food, But the whirlwind was upThat one word proves the poet. Does it not? s The entire description from which these two Far offits coming graa'd," sentences are selected by memory-a critic and the poet was inspired. Had he not been you may always trust to-is admirable; ex- so, he had not cried, "Baffle the raging year;" cept in one or two places where Thomson and if you be not so, you will think it a most seems to have striven to be strongly pathetic, absurd expression. A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON. 261 Did you ever see water beginning to change great work was his first. He had not p';losc. itself into ice? Yes. Then try to describe phized his poetical language, as Wordsworth the sight. Success in that trial will prove you himself has done, after long years of profound a poet. People do not prove themselves poets est study of the laws of thought and speech, only by writing long poems. A line-two /But in such study, while much is gained, may words-may show that they are the Muse's not something be lostl And is there not a sons. How exquisitely does Burns picture charm in the free, flowing, chartered libertin. to our eyes moonlight water undergoing an ism of the diction and versification of the ice-change! "Seasons"-above all, in the closing strains "'The chilly frost beneath the silver beam, of the "Winter," and in the whole of the Crept, gently crusting o'er the glittering stream!" " Hymn," which inspires a delight and wonder Thomson does it with an almost finer spirit seldom breathed upon us-glorious poem, on of perception-or conception-or memory- the whole, as it is-from the more measured or whatever else you choose to call it; for our march of the " Excursion?" part, we call it genius — All those children of the Pensive Public who have been much at school, know Thomson's "An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool d Breathes a bluefilm, and in its mid career description of the wolves among the Alps, Arrests the bickering stream." Apennines, and Pyrenees, And afterwards, having frozen the entire ("Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave! stream into a crystal paveent," how strong- Burning for blood, bony and gaunt and grim!" &c. stream into a' crystal pavement," how strongly doth he conclude thus- The first fifteen lines are equal to any thing in the whole range of English descriptive poetry; but the last ten are positively bad. Here they Here, again,'tis pleasant to see the peculiar aregenius of Cowper contrasted with that of "The godlike face of man avails him nought! Thomson. The gentle Cowper delighting, for Even beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance the most part, in tranquil images-for his life The'generous lion stands in soften'd gaze, Now bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey. was passed amidst tranquil nature; the enthu- But if, apprized of the severe attack, siastic Thomson, more pleased with images of The country be shut up, lured by the scent, On churchyard drear, (inhuman to relate!) power. Cowper says- The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig "On the flood, The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which, Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they how!!' Lies undissolved, while silently beneath,,Wild beasts do not like the look of the human nd unperceived, the current steals awayeye-they think us ugly customers-and someHow many thousand times the lines we are times stand shilly-shallying in our presence, in now going to quote have been quoted, nobody an awkward but alarming attitude, of hunger can tell; but we quote them once more for the mixed with fear. A single wolf seldom or purpose of asking you, if you think that any never attacks a man. He cannot stand the one poet of this age could have written them — face. But a person would need to have a could have chilled one's very blood with such godlike face indeed to terrify therewith an intense feeling of coldI Not one. army of wolves some thousand strong. It "In these fell regions, in Arzina caught, would be the height of presumption in any nd to the stony deep his idle ship man, though beautiful as Moore thought Byron, Immediate seal'd, he, with his hapless crew, Each full exerted at his several task, to attempt it. If so, then Froze into statues; to the cordage glued The sailor, and the pilot to the helm!" Tl~e sailor, and the pilot to the he~ln i'" " The godlike face of man avails him nought," The oftener-the more we read the " Winter" is, under the circumstances, ludicrous. Still -especially the last to r three hundred more so is the trash about "beauty, force diespecially the last two or three hundred vine!" It is too much to expect of an army lines-the angrier is our wonder with Words- of wolves some t housand strong, "ad hungry worth for asserting that Thomson owed the of wolves some thousand strong, and hungry n ational popularity that This o Win ter" imme- as the grave," that they should all fall down dnational popularity that his "Winter" imme- on their knees before a sweet morsel of flesh diately won, to his "commonplace sentiment- and blood, merely because the young lady was alities, and his vicious style!" Yet true it is, so beautiful that she might have sat to Sir that he was sometimes guilty of both; and, Thomas Lawrence for a frontispiece to Mr. but for his transcendent genius, they might Watts's Souvenir.'Tis all stuff, too, about the have obscured the lustre of his fame. But such sins acure not very frequ ent in the "Se. But generous lion standing in softened gaze at such sins are not very frequent in the " Se- beauty'sbe sons," and were all committed in the glow of glance. True, he has been sons," an were a ll committed in the glow ofknown to look with a certain sort of soft surthat fine and bold enthusiasm, which to his li imagination arrayed all things, and all words, pas t without eating her-but simply beca use, past without eating her-but simply because, in a light that seemed to him at the time to be an hour or two before, he had dined on a Hotpoetry —though sometimes it was but "flse tentot Venus. The secret lay not in his heart, glitter." Admitting, then, that sometimes the but in his stomach. Stillthe notion is apopu. style of the " Seasons" is somewhat too florid, lar one, and how exquisitely has Spenser we must not criticise single and separate pas- changed it into th e divinest poetry in the cha sages, without holding in mind the character racter of the attendant lion of of the poet's genius and his inspirations. He luxuriates-he revels-he wantons-at once "heavenly Una, with her milkwhite lamb!" with an imaginative and a sensuous delight in But Thomson, so far from making poetry of it nature. Besides, he was but you ng; and his in this passage, has vulgarized and blurred by 262 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. it the natural and inevitable emotion of terror the shower, and join the hymn of earth ti and pity. Famished wolves howking up the heavendead is a dreadful image-but " inhumav to re- "The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard late," is not an expression heavily laden with By such as wander through the forest walks, Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaves. meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, But who can hold the shade, while heaven descends as we feel, unnatural introduction of ideas In universal bounty, shedding herbs, purely superstitious, at the close, is revolting, And fruits, and flowers, on Nature's ample lap I Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth; and miserably mars the terrible truth. And, while the milky nutriment distils, Beholds the kindling country colour round." "Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl." Thomson, they say, was too fond of epithets, Why, pray, are the shades foul, and the ghosts Not he indeed. Strike out