C^tM^me^^ 
 
 University of California • Berkeley 
 
 From the Collection of 
 
 Joseph Z. Todd 
 
 Gift of 
 
 Hatherly B. Todd 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 Vol. XII 
 
 AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
^THE TRAVELS AND 
 ESSAYS OF ROBERT 
 LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 l\ TRAVELS WITH A 
 DONKEY fe EDINBURGH 
 
 SePUBLISHED IN 
 NEW YORK BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S 
 SONS Sg g 1907 $ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AN INLAND VOYAGE ' . . i 
 
 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE 
 
 CEVENNES 139 
 
 EDINBURGH, PICTURESQUE NOTES . . 281 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ANTWERP TO BOOM 3 
 
 ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 8 
 
 THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 14 
 
 AT MAUBEUGE 20 
 
 ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED: TO aUARTES .... 21 
 
 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE : — 
 
 We are Pedlars 31 
 
 The Travelling Merchant 37 
 
 ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED: TO LANDRECIES ... 42 
 
 AT LANDRECIES 48 
 
 SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS .... 53 
 
 THE OISE IN FLOOD 59 
 
 ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOiTE: — 
 
 A By-day 67 
 
 The Company at Table 74 
 
 DOWN THE OISE: TO MOV 81 
 
 LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 87 
 
 DOWN THE OISE: THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY . 93 
 
 NOYON CATHEDRAL . 96 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DOWN THE OlSE: TO COMPIEGNE loi 
 
 AT COMPIEGNE 104 
 
 CHANGED TIMES 109 
 
 DOWN THE OlSE: CHURCH INTERIORS 116 
 
 PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 123 
 
 BACK TO THE WORLD -134 
 
 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 VELAY 
 
 The Donkey, the Pack, and the Pack-saddle . . . .143 
 
 The Green Donkey-driver 150 
 
 I HAVE A Goad 160 
 
 UPPER GEVAUDAN 
 
 A Camp in the Dark 171 
 
 Cheylard and Luc 183 
 
 OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 
 
 Father Apollinaris 191 
 
 The Monks 197 
 
 The Boarders 206 
 
 UPPER GEVAUDAN (continued) 
 
 Across the Goulet 215 
 
 A Night among the Pines 219 
 
 THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 
 
 Across the Lozere 227 
 
 Pont de Montvert 233 
 
 In the Valley of the Tarn 241 
 
 Florac 252 
 
 viii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In the Valley of the Mimente 256 
 
 The Heart of the Country 261 
 
 The Last Day 269 
 
 Farewell, Modestine 275 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 281 
 
 OLD TOWN— THE LANDS 289 
 
 THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE 297 
 
 LEGENDS 304 
 
 GREYFRIARS 312 
 
 NEW TOWN — TOWN AND COUNTRY 321 
 
 THE VILLA QUARTERS 329 
 
 THE CALTON HILL 332 
 
 WINTER AND NEW YEAR 340 
 
 TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 348 
 
 9^ 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half 
 afraid, to sin against proportion. But a preface is more 
 than an author can resist, for it is the reward of his labours. 
 When the foundation stone is laid, the architect appears 
 with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public 
 eye. So with the writer in his preface: he may have 
 never a word to say, but he must show himself for a 
 moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an ur- 
 bane demeanour. 
 
 It is best, in such circumstance, to represent a delicate 
 shade of manner between humility and superiority : as 
 if the book had been written by some one else, and you 
 had merely run over it and inserted what was good. 
 But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to that 
 perfection ; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth 
 of my sentiments towards a reader; and if 1 meet him on 
 the threshold, it is to invite him in with country cor- 
 diality. 
 
 To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this 
 little book in proof than I was seized upon by a dis- 
 tressing apprehension. 
 
 It occurred to me that I might not only be the first to 
 read these pages, but the last as well; that I might have 
 
PREFACE 
 
 pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain, 
 and find not a soul to follow in my steps. The more I 
 thought, the more I disliked the notion ; until the dis- 
 taste grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into 
 this Preface, which is no more than an advertisement for 
 readers. 
 
 What am I to say for my book ? Caleb and Joshua 
 brought back from Palestine a formidable bunch of 
 grapes; alas! my book produces naught so nourishing; 
 and for the matter of that, we live in an age when 
 people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit. 
 
 I wonder, would a negative be found enticing } for, 
 from the negative point of view, I flatter myself this 
 volume has a certain stamp. Although it runs to con- 
 siderably upwards of two hundred pages, it contains 
 not a single reference to the imbecility of God's uni- 
 verse, nor so much as a single hint that I could have 
 made a better one myself, — I really do not know where 
 my head can have been. I seemed to have forgotten all 
 that makes it glorious to be man. Tis an omission that 
 renders the book philosophically unimportant; but I am 
 in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles. 
 
 To the friend who accompanied me I owe many 
 thanks already, indeed I wish I owed him nothing else; 
 but at this moment I feel towards him an almost ex- 
 aggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my 
 reader — if it were only to follow his own travels along- 
 side of mine. 
 
 R. L. S. 
 
ANTWERP TO BOOM 
 
 WE made a great stir in Antwerp Docks, A steve- 
 dore and a lot of dock porters took up the two 
 canoes, and ran witli them for the slip. A crowd of 
 children followed cheering. The Cigarette went off in 
 a splash and a bubble of small breaking water. Next 
 moment the Arethusa was after her. A steamer was 
 coming down, men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse 
 warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling 
 from the quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes were 
 away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers, 
 and stevedores, and other 'long-shore vanities were left 
 behind. 
 
 The sun shone brightly; the tide was making — four 
 jolly miles an hour; the wind blew steadily, with occa- 
 sional squalls. For my part, I had never been in a canoe 
 under sail in my life ; and my first experiment out in 
 the middle of this big river was not made without some 
 trepidation. What would happen when the wind first 
 caught my little canvas ? I suppose it was almost as 
 trying a venture into the regions of the unknown as to 
 publish a first book, or to marry. But my doubts were 
 not of long duration; and in five minutes you will not 
 be surprised to learn that I had tied my sheet. 
 
 3 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 I own I was a little struck by this circumstance my- 
 self; of course, in company with the rest of my fellow- 
 men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but 
 in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with 
 these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find my- 
 self follow the same principle; and it inspired me with 
 some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is 
 certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened ; but 1 
 had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco 
 against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the com- 
 fortable pipe. It is a commonplace, that we cannot 
 answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it 
 is not so common a reflection, and surely more consol- 
 ing, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver 
 and better than we thought. I believe this is every one's 
 experience: but an apprehension that they may belie 
 themselves in the future prevents mankind from trum- 
 peting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish sincerely, 
 for it would have saved me much trouble, there had 
 been some one to put me in a good heart about life when 
 I was younger; to tell me how dangers are most por- 
 tentous on a distant sight; and how the good in a man's 
 spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or 
 never deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all 
 for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not 
 a man among us will go to the head of the march to 
 sound the heady drums. 
 
 It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went 
 past laden with hay. Reeds and willows bordered the 
 stream ; and cattle and gray, venerable horses came and 
 hung their mild heads over the embankment. Here and 
 there was a pleasant village among trees, with a noisy 
 
 4 
 
ANTWERP TO BOOM 
 
 shipping yard ; here and there a villa in a lawn. The 
 wind served us well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the 
 Rupel; and we were running pretty free when we be- 
 gan to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long 
 way on the right bank of the river. The left bank was 
 still green and pastoral, with alleys of trees along the 
 embankment, and here and there a flight of steps to 
 serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with 
 her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman with a 
 staff and silver spectacles. But Boom and its brickyards 
 grew smokier and shabbier with every minute ; until a 
 great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over 
 the river, indicated the central quarters of the town. 
 
 Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for 
 one thing: that the majority of the inhabitants have a 
 private opinion that they can speak English, which is 
 not justified by fact. This gave a kind of haziness to 
 our intercourse. As for the Hotel de la Navigation, I 
 think it is the worst feature of the place. It boasts of a 
 sanded parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on the 
 street; and another sanded parlour, darker and colder, 
 with an empty bird-cage and a tricolor subscription box 
 by way of sole adornment, where we made shift to dine 
 in the company of three uncommunicative engineer ap- 
 prentices and a silent bagman. The food, as usual in 
 Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional character; in- 
 deed 1 have never been able to detect anything in the 
 nature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem 
 to peck and trifle with viands all day long in an amateur 
 spirit: tentatively French, truly German, and somehow 
 falling between the two. 
 
 The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 no trace of the old piping favourite, save where two 
 wires had been pushed apart to hold its lump of sugar, 
 carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer 
 apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor in- 
 deed to the bagman ; but talked low and sparingly to 
 one another, or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of 
 spectacles. For though handsome lads, they were all 
 (in the Scotch phrase) barnacled. 
 
 There was an English maid in the hotel, who had 
 been long enough out of England to pick up all sorts of 
 funny foreign idioms, and all sorts of curious foreign 
 ways, which need not here be specified. She spoke to 
 us very fluently in her jargon, asked us information as 
 to the manners of the present day in England, and oblig- 
 ingly corrected us when we attempted to answer. But 
 as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps our infor- 
 mation was not so much thrown away as it appeared. 
 The sex likes to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its 
 superiority. It is good policy, and almost necessary in 
 the circumstances. If a man finds a woman admires 
 %^^ him, were it only for his acquaintance with geography, 
 he will begin at once to build upon the admiration. It 
 is only by unintermittent snubbing that the pretty ones 
 can keep us in our place. Men, as Miss Howe or Miss 
 Marlowe would have said, *' are such encroachers. " For 
 my part, I am body and soul with the women ; and after 
 a well-married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in 
 the world as the myth of the divine huntress. It is 
 no use for a man to take to the woods; we know 
 him ; Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and 
 had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is 
 this about some women, which overtops the best gym- 
 
 6 
 
ANTWERP TO BOOM 
 
 nosophist among men, that they suffice to themselves, 
 and can walk in a high and cold zone without the 
 countenance of any trousered being. I declare, although 
 the reverse of a professed ascetic, 1 am more obliged to 
 women for this ideal than I should be to the majority 
 of them, or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous 
 kiss. There is nothing so encouraging as the spectacle 
 of self-sufficiency. And when I think of the slim and 
 lovely maidens, running the woods all night to the 
 note of Diana's horn ; moving among the old oaks, as 
 fancy-free as they ; things of the forest and the starlight, 
 not touched by the commotion of man's hot and tur- 
 bid life — although there are plenty other ideals that I 
 should prefer — 1 find my heart beat at the thought of 
 this one. 'Tis to fail in life, but to fail with what a 
 grace ! That is not lost which is not regretted. And 
 where — here slips out the male — where would be 
 much of the glory of inspiring love, if there were no 
 contempt to overcome ? 
 
ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 
 
 Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek 
 Canal, the rain began heavy and chill. The water of 
 the canal stood at about the drinking temperature of 
 tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface was cov- 
 ered with steam. The exhilaration of departure, and 
 the easy motion of the boats under each stroke of the 
 paddles, supported us through this misfortune while it 
 lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun came 
 out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay- 
 at-home humours. A good breeze rustled and shivered 
 in the rows of trees that bordered the canal. The leaves 
 flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous masses. 
 It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; but down be- 
 tween the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and 
 desultory puffs. There was hardly enough to steer by. 
 Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocu- 
 lar person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the 
 tow-path with a "' C'estvite, mats c' est long.'' 
 
 The canal was busy enough. Every now and then 
 we met or overtook a long string of boats, with great 
 green tillers; high sterns with a window on either side 
 of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one 
 of the windows ; a dingy following behind ; a woman 
 
 8 
 
ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 
 
 busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children. 
 These barges were all tied one behind the other with 
 tow ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty; and 
 the line was headed and kept in motion by a steamer 
 of strange construction. It had neither paddle-wheel 
 nor screw ; but by some gear not rightly comprehensi- 
 ble to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its bow 
 a small bright chain which lay along the bottom of the 
 canal, and paying it out again over the stern, dragged 
 itself forward, link by link, with its whole retinue of 
 loaded scows. Until one had found out the key to the 
 enigma, there was something solemn and uncomfortable 
 in the progress of one of these trains, as it moved gently 
 along the water with nothing to mark its advance but 
 an eddy alongside dying away into the wake. 
 
 Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal 
 barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It may 
 spread its sails, and then you see it sailing high above 
 the tree-tops and the wind-mill, sailing on the aqueduct, 
 sailing through the green corn-lands : the most pictur- 
 esque of things amphibious. Or the horse plods along 
 at a foot-pace as if there were no such thing as business 
 in the world ; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees 
 the same spire on the horizon all day long. It is a mys- 
 tery how things ever get to their destination at this rate ; 
 and to see the barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords 
 a fine lesson of how easily the world may be taken. 
 There should be many contented spirits on board, for 
 such a life is both to travel and to stay at home. 
 
 The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; 
 the banks of the canal slowly unroll their scenery to 
 contemplative eyes; the barge floats by great forests 
 
 9 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 and through great cities with their public buildings and 
 their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating 
 home, ''travelling abed," it is merely as if he were 
 listening to another man's story or turning the leaves 
 of a picture book in which he had no concern. He may 
 take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the 
 banks of the canal, and then come home to dinner at his 
 own fireside. 
 
 There is not enough exercise in such a life for any 
 high measure of health ; but a high measure of health is 
 only necessary for unhealthy people. The slug of a fel- 
 low, who is never ill nor well, has a quiet time of it in 
 life, and dies all the easier. 
 
 I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any 
 position under Heaven that required attendance at an 
 office. There are few callings, I should say, where a 
 man gives up less of his liberty in return for regular 
 meals. The bargee is on shipboard; he is master in 
 his own ship; he can land whenever he will; he can 
 never be kept beating off a lee-shore a whole frosty 
 night when the sheets are as hard as iron ; and so far as 
 I can make out, time stands as nearly still with him as 
 is compatible with the return of bedtime or the dinner- 
 hour. It is not easy to see why a bargee should ever 
 die. 
 
 Half-way between IVillebroek and Villevorde, in a 
 beautiful reach of canal like a squire's avenue, we went 
 ashore to lunch. There were two eggs, a junk of bread, 
 and a bottle of wine on board the Arethusa; and two 
 eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the Ciga- 
 rette. The master of the latter boat smashed one of the 
 eggs in the course of disembarkation; but observing 
 
 lO 
 
ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 
 
 pleasantly that it might still be cooked d la papier, he 
 dropped it into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish 
 newspaper. We landed in a blink of fine weather; but 
 we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind 
 freshened into half a gale, and the rain began to patter 
 on our shoulders. We sat as close about the Etna as 
 we could. The spirits burned with great ostentation ; 
 the grass caught flame every minute or two, and had 
 to be trodden out ; and before long there were several 
 burnt fingers of the party. But the solid quantity of 
 cookery accomplished was out of proportion with so 
 much display ; and when we desisted, after two appli- 
 cations of the fire, the sound egg was a little more than 
 loo-warm ; and as for d la papier, it was a cold and sor- 
 did fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg-shell. We 
 made shift to roast the other two by putting them close 
 to the burning spirits, and that with better success. 
 And then we uncorked the bottle of wine, and sat down 
 in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees. It 
 rained smartly. Discomfort, when it is honestly un- 
 comfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the 
 contrary, is a vastly humorous business; and people 
 well steeped and stupefied in the open air are in a good 
 vein for laughter. From this point of view, even egg d 
 la papier offered by way of food may pass muster as a 
 sort of accessory to the fun. But this manner of jest, 
 although it may be taken in good part, does not invite 
 repetition ; and from that time forward the Etna voyaged 
 like a gentleman in the locker of the Cigarette. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch 
 was over and we got aboard again and made sail, the 
 wind promptly died away. The rest of the journey to 
 
 ii 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 yUlevorde we still spread our canvas to the unfavoring 
 air, and with now and then a puff, and now and then 
 a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock be- 
 tween the orderly trees. 
 
 It was a fine, green, fat landscape, or rather a mere 
 green water-lane going on from village to village. 
 Things had a settled look, as in places long lived in. 
 Crop-headed children spat upon us from the bridges as 
 we went below, with a true conservative feeling. But 
 even more conservative were the fishermen, intent upon 
 their floats, who let us go by without one glance. They 
 perched upon sterlings and buttresses and along the 
 slope of the embankment, gently occupied. They were 
 indifferent like pieces of dead nature. They did not 
 move any more than if they had been fishing in an old 
 Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, 
 but they continued in one stay, like so many churches 
 established by law. You might have trepanned every 
 one of their innocent heads and found no more than so 
 much coiled fishing line below their skulls. I do not 
 care for your stalwart fellows in India-rubber stockings 
 breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod ; but 
 I do dearly love the class of man who plies his un- 
 fruitful art forever and a day by still and depopulated 
 waters. 
 
 At the lock just beyond Villevorde there was a lock 
 mistress who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us 
 we were still a couple of leagues from Brussels. At the 
 same place the rain began again. It fell in straight, par- 
 allel lines, and the surface of the canal was thrown up 
 into an infinity of little crystal fountains. There were 
 no beds to be had in the neighbourhood. Nothing for it 
 
ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 
 
 but to lay the sails aside and address ourselves to steady 
 paddling in the rain. 
 
 Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines 
 of shuttered windows, and fine old trees standing in 
 groves and avenues, gave a rich and sombre aspect in 
 the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of the 
 canal. I seem to have seen something of the same effect 
 in engravings: opulent landscapes, deserted and over- 
 hung with the passage of storm. And throughout we 
 had the escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily 
 along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform dis- 
 tance in our wake. 
 
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTiaUE 
 
 The rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was al- 
 ready down ; the air was chill ; and we had scarcely a 
 dry stitch between the pair of us. Nay, now we found 
 ourselves near the end of the AMe Verte, and on the 
 very threshold oi Brussels we were confronted by a seri- 
 ous difficulty. The shores were closely lined by canal 
 boats waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere was 
 there any convenient landing place; nowhere so much 
 as a stable-yard to leave the canoes in for the night. 
 We scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet where 
 some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord. 
 The landlord was pretty round with us ; he knew of no 
 coach-house or stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and 
 seeing we had come with no mind to drink, he did not 
 conceal his impatience to be rid of us. One of the sorry 
 fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in the corner 
 of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and some- 
 thing else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but 
 hopefully construed by his hearers. 
 
 Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the 
 basin ; and at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boat- 
 ing clothes. The Arethusa addressed himself to these. 
 One of them said there wculd be no difficulty about a 
 
 M 
 
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 
 
 night's lodging for our boats; and the other, taking a 
 cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made by 
 Searle &- Son. The name was quite an introduction. 
 Half a dozen other young men came out of a boat-house 
 bearing the superscription Royal Sport Nautiq.ue, and 
 joined in the talk. They were all very polite, voluble, 
 and enthusiastic; and their discourse was interlarded 
 with English boating terms, and the names of English 
 boat-builders and English clubs. I do not know, to my 
 shame, any spot in my native land where I should have 
 been so warmly received by the same number of people. 
 We were English boating-men, and the Belgian boat- 
 ing-men fell upon our necks. I wonder if French Hu- 
 guenots were as cordially greeted by English Protest- 
 ants when they came across the Channel out of great 
 tribulation. But, after all, what religion knits people so 
 closely as common sport ? 
 
 The canoes were carried into the boat-house; they 
 were washed down for us by the club servants, the 
 sails were hung out to dry, and everything made as 
 snug and tidy as a picture. And in the mean while we 
 were led up-stairs by our new-found brethren, for so 
 more than one of them stated the relationship, and made 
 free of their lavatory. This one lent us soap, that one a 
 towel, a third and fourth helped us to undo our bags. 
 And all the time such questions, such assurances of re- 
 spect and sympathy ! I declare I never knew what glory 
 was before. 
 
 "Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is the oldest club 
 in Belgium.'' 
 
 ** We number two hundred." 
 
 *'We" — this is not a substantive speech, but an ab- 
 
 J5 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 stract of many speeches, the impression left upon my 
 mind after a great deal of talk; and very youthful, pleas- 
 ant, natural, and patriotic it seems to me to be — '* We 
 have gained all races, except those where we were 
 cheated by the French." 
 
 **You must leave all your wet things to be dried." 
 
 " O ! entre freres ! In any boat-house in England we 
 should find the same." (1 cordially hope they might.) 
 
 ''En Angleterre, vous employe^ des sliding seats, 
 nest-ce pas?" 
 
 "We are all employed in commerce during the day; 
 but in the evening, voye^-vous, nous sommes serieux." 
 
 These were the words. They were all employed 
 over the frivolous mercantile concerns of Belgitim during 
 the day ; but in the evening they found some hours for 
 the serious concerns of life. I may have a wrong idea 
 of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark. 
 People connected with literature and philosophy are 
 busy all their days in getting rid of second-hand notions 
 and false standards. It is their profession, in the sweat 
 of their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover their old 
 fresh view of life, and distinguish what they really and 
 originally like from what they have only learned to 
 tolerate perforce. And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen 
 had the distinction still quite legible in their hearts. 
 They had still those clean perceptions of what is nice 
 and nasty, what is interesting and what is dull, which 
 envious old gentlemen refer to as illusions. The night- 
 mare illusion of middle age, the bear's hug of custom 
 gradually squeezing the life out of a man's soul, had not 
 yet begun for these happy-star'd young Belgians, They 
 still knew that the interest they took in their business was 
 
 i6 
 
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 
 
 a trifling affair compared to their spontaneous, long-suf- 
 fering affection for nautical sports. To know what 
 you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the 
 world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept 
 your soul alive. Such a man may be generous ; he may 
 be honest in something more than the commercial sense; 
 he may love his friends with an elective, personal sym- 
 pathy, and not accept them as an adjunct of the station 
 to which he has been called. He may be a man, in short, 
 acting on his own instincts, keeping in his own shape 
 that God made him in ; and not a mere crank in the 
 social engine house, welded on principles that he does 
 not understand, and for purposes that he does not care for. 
 For will any one dare to tell me that business is more 
 entertaining than fooling among boats? He must have 
 never seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so. 
 And for certain the one is a great deal better for the 
 health. There should be nothing so much a man's busi- 
 ness as his amusements. Nothing but money-grubbing 
 can be put forward to the contrary ; no one but 
 
 Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
 From Heaven, 
 
 durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying cant that 
 would represent the merchant and the banker as people 
 disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most use- 
 ful when they are most absorbed in their transactions ; 
 for the man is more important than his services. And 
 when my Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far 
 fallen from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up 
 an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I venture 
 to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and 
 
 »7 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a 
 couple of drenched Englishmen paddling into Brmsels 
 in the dusk. 
 
 When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a 
 glass of pale ale to the club's prosperity, one of their 
 number escorted us to a hotel. He would not join us 
 at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass of wine. 
 Enthusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to understand 
 why prophets were unpopular in Judcea, where they 
 were best known. For three stricken hours did this 
 excellent young man sit beside us to dilate on boats and 
 boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough to 
 order our bedroom candles. 
 
 We endeavoured now and again to change the sub- 
 ject; but the diversion did not last a moment: the Royal 
 Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied, answered the ques- 
 tion, and then breasted once more into the swelling tide 
 of his subject. I call it his subject; but I think it was he 
 who was subjected. The Arethusa, who holds all rac- 
 ing as a creature of the devil, found himself in a pitiful 
 dilemma. He durst not own his ignorance for the honour 
 of old England, and spoke away about English clubs and 
 English oarsmen whose fame had never before come to 
 his ears. Several times, and once, above all, on the ques- 
 tion of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of exposure. 
 As for the Cigarette, who has rowed races in the heat 
 of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his wanton 
 youth, his case was still more desperate; for the Royal 
 Nautical proposed that he should take an oar in one of 
 their eights on the morrow, to compare the English with 
 the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend perspiring in 
 his chair whenever that particular topic came up. And 
 
 i8 
 
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 
 
 there was yet another proposal which had the same effect 
 on both of us. It appeared that the champion canoeist of 
 Europe (as well as most other champions) was a Royal 
 Nautical Sportsman. And if we would only wait until 
 the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be so conde- 
 scending as to accompany us on our next stage. Neither 
 of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of the sun 
 against Apollo. 
 
 When the young man was gone, we countermanded 
 our candles, and ordered some brandy and water. The 
 great billows had gone over our head. The Royal 
 Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a 
 man would wish to see, but they were a trifle too young 
 and a thought too nautical for us. We began to see 
 that we were old and cynical ; we liked ease and the 
 agreeable rambling of the human mind about this and 
 the other subject; we did not want to disgrace our na- 
 tive land by messing at eight, or toiling pitifully in the 
 wake of the champion canoeist. In short, we had re- 
 course to flight. It seemed ungrateful, but we tried to 
 make that good on a card loaded with sincere compli- 
 ments. And indeed it was no time for scruples; we 
 seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our 
 necks. 
 
 19 
 
AT MAUBEUGE 
 
 Partly from the terror we had of our good friends 
 the Royal Nauticals, partly from the fact that there were 
 no fewer than fifty-five locks between Brussels and 
 Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by train 
 across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five locks in a 
 day's journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging 
 the whole distance on foot, with the canoes upon our 
 shoulders, an object of astonishment to the trees on the 
 canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking 
 children. 
 
 To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult 
 matter for the Arethusa, He is, somehow or other, a 
 marked man for the official eye. Wherever he journeys^ 
 there are the officers gathered together. Treaties are 
 solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and 
 consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru, and the 
 Union Jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under 
 these safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mistresses, 
 gentlemen in gray tweed suits, and all the ruck and 
 rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, Murray in 
 hand, over the railways of the Continent, and yet the 
 slim person of the Arethusa is taken in the meshes, 
 while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If he 
 
AT MAUBEUGE 
 
 travels without a passport, he is cast, without any 
 figure about the matter, into noisome dungeons : if his 
 papers are in order, he is suffered to go his way indeed, 
 but not until he has been humiliated by a general in- 
 credulity. He is a born British subject, yet he has never 
 succeeded in persuading a single official of his nation- 
 ality. He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet 
 he is rarely known for anything better than a spy, and 
 there is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood 
 but has been attributed to him in some heat of official 
 or popular distrust. . . . 
 
 For the life of me I cannot understand it. I, too, have 
 been knolled to church and sat at good men's feasts, but 
 I bear no mark of it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian 
 to their official spectacles. I might come from any part 
 of the globe, it seems, except from where I do. My 
 ancestors have laboured in vain, and the glorious Con- 
 stitution cannot protect me in my walks abroad. It is 
 a great thing, believe me, to present a good normal type 
 of the nation you belong to. 
 
 Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to 
 Maubeuge, but I was ; and although I clung to my rights, 
 I had to choose at last between accepting the humilia- 
 tion and being left behind by the train. I was sorry to 
 give way, but I wanted to get to Maubeuge. 
 
 Maubeuge is a fortified town with a very good inn, 
 the Grand Cerf. It seemed to be inhabited principally 
 by soldiers and bagmen ; at least, these were all that we 
 saw except the hotel servants. We had to stay there 
 some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us, 
 and at last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until 
 we went back to liberate them. There was nothing to 
 
 21 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 do, nothing to see. We had good meals, which was a 
 great matter, but that was all. 
 
 The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a charge of 
 drawing the fortifications : a feat of which he was hope- 
 lessly incapable. And besides, as I suppose each belli- 
 gerent nation has a plan of the other's fortified places 
 already, these precautions are of the nature of shutting 
 the stable door after the steed is away. But I have no 
 doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home. It is 
 a great thing if you can persuade people that they are 
 somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them 
 feel bigger. Even the Freemasons, who have been 
 shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of pride ; and not 
 a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and 
 empty-headed he may feel himself to be at bottom, but 
 comes home from one of their coenacula with a porten- 
 tous significance for himself 
 
 It is an odd thing how happily two people, if there 
 are two, can live in a place where they have no acquain- 
 tance. I think the spectacle of a whole life in which you 
 have no part paralyses personal desire. You are content 
 to become a mere spectator. The baker stands in his 
 door; the colonel with his three medals goes by to the 
 cap at night; the troops drum and trumpet and man 
 the ramparts as bold as so many lions. It would task 
 language to say how placidly you behold all this. In a 
 place where you have taken some root you are provoked 
 out of your indifference; you have a hand in the game, 
 — your friends are fighting with the army. But in a 
 strange town, not small enough to grow too soon famil- 
 iar, nor so large as to have laid itself out for travellers, 
 you stand so far apart from the business that you posi- 
 
AT MAUBEUGE 
 
 tively forget it would be possible to go nearer; you have 
 so little human interest around you that you do not re- 
 member yourself to be a man. Perhaps in a very short 
 time you would be one no longer. Gymnosophists go 
 into a wood with all nature seething around them, with 
 romance on every side; it would be much more to the 
 purpose if they took up their abode in a dull country 
 town where they should see just so much of humanity 
 as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale 
 externals of man's life. These externals are as dead to 
 us as so many formalities, and speak a dead language in 
 our eyes and ears. They have no more meaning than 
 an oath or a salutation. We are so much accustomed 
 to see married couples going to church of a Sunday that 
 we have clean forgotten what they represent ; and nov- 
 elists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when 
 they wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a 
 man and a woman to live for each other. 
 
 One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me some- 
 thing more than his outside. That was the driver of 
 the hotel omnibus : a mean enough looking little man, 
 as well as I can remember, but with a spark of some- 
 thing human- in his soul. He had heard of our little 
 journey, and came to me at once in envious sympathy. 
 How he longed to travel! he told me. How he longed 
 to be somewhere else, and see the round world before 
 he went into the grave! "Here I am," said he. *'I 
 drive to the station. Well. And then I drive back 
 again to the hotel. And so on every day and all the 
 week round. My God, is that life } " I could not say I 
 thought it was — for him. He pressed me to tell him 
 where I had been, and where I hoped to go ; and as he 
 
 23 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might not this 
 have been a brave African traveller, or gone to the In- 
 dies after Drake ? But it is an evil age for the gypsily 
 inclined among men. He who can sit squarest on a 
 three-legged stool, he it is who has the wealth and 
 glory. 
 
 1 wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for 
 the Grand Cerf ! Not very likely, I believe; for I think 
 he was on the eve of mutiny when we passed through, 
 and perhaps our passage determined him for good. 
 Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and 
 mend pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under 
 trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day above a 
 new horizon. I think I hear you say that it is a respect- 
 able position to drive an omnibus .^ Very well. What 
 right has he who likes it not to keep those who would 
 like it dearly out of this respectable position } Suppose 
 a dish were not to my taste, and you told me that it was 
 a favourite among the rest of the company, what should 
 I conclude from that.? Not to finish the dish against 
 my stomach, I suppose. 
 
 Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it 
 does not rise superior to all considerations, I would 
 not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of 
 taste ; but I think I will go as far as this : that if a posi- 
 tion is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, 
 and superfluously useless, although it were as respect- 
 able as the Church of England, the sooner a man is out 
 of it, the better for himself, and all concerned. 
 
 24 
 
ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
 
 TO QUARTES 
 
 About three in the afternoon the whole establishment 
 of the Grand Cerf accompanied us to the water's edge. 
 The man of the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. 
 Poor cage-bird ! Do I not remember the time when I 
 myself haunted the station, to watch train after train 
 carry its complement of freemen into the night, and 
 read the names of distant places on the time-bills with 
 indescribable longings ? 
 
 We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain 
 began. The wind was contrary, and blew in furious 
 gusts ; nor were the aspects of nature any more clement 
 than the doings of the sky. For we passed through a 
 blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but hand- 
 .somely enough diversified with factory chimneys. We 
 landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and 
 there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the 
 wind blew so hard we could get little else to smoke. 
 There were no natural objects in the neighbourhood, but 
 some sordid workshops. A group of children, headed 
 by a tall girl, stood and watched us from a little dis- 
 tance all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder what 
 they thought of us. 
 
 At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the 
 
 25 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 landing place being steep and high, and the launch at a 
 long distance. Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us 
 a hand. They refused any reward ; and, what is much 
 better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any 
 sense of insult. ** It is a way we have in our country- 
 side," said they. And a very becoming way it is. In 
 Scotland, where also you will get services for nothing, 
 the good people reject your money as if you had been 
 trying to corrupt a voter. When people take the trou- 
 ble to do dignified acts, it is worth while to take a little 
 more, and allow the dignity to be common to all con- 
 cerned. But in our brave Saxon countries, where we 
 plod threescore years and ten in the mud, and the wind 
 keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial, we do 
 our good and bad with a high hand and almost offen- 
 sively ; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and 
 an act of war against the wrong. 
 
 After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the 
 wind went down ; and a little paddling took us beyond 
 the iron works and through a delectable land. The river 
 wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun was 
 at our backs and sometimes it stood right ahead, and 
 the river before us was one sheet of intolerable glory. 
 On either hand meadows and orchards bordered, with a 
 margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the river. 
 The hedges were of great height, woven about the 
 trunks of hedgerow elms ; and the fields, as they were 
 often very small, looked like a series of bowers along 
 the stream. There was never any prospect; sometimes 
 a hill-top with its trees would look over the nearest 
 hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky; 
 but that was all. The heaven was bare of clouds. The 
 
 26 
 
ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
 
 atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purit}?. 
 The river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip 
 of mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the 
 flowers shaking along the brink. 
 
 In the meadows wandered black and white cattle 
 fantastically marked. One beast, with a white head 
 and the rest of the body glossy black, came to the edge 
 to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me as 
 I went by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in 
 a play. A moment after I heard a loud plunge, and, 
 turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling to shore. 
 The bank had given way under his feet. 
 
 Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a 
 few birds and a great many fishermen. These sat along 
 the edges of the meadows, sometimes with one rod, 
 sometimes with as many as half a score. They seemed 
 stupefied with contentment; and, when we induced 
 them to exchange a few words with us about the 
 weather, their voices sounded quiet and far away. 
 There was a strange diversity of opinion among them 
 as to the kind of fish for which they set their lures ; al- 
 though they were all agreed in this, that the river was 
 abundantly supplied. Where it was plain that no two 
 of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, we could 
 not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them 
 had ever caught a fish at all. I hope, since the afternoon 
 was so lovely, that they were one and all rewarded; 
 and that a silver booty went home in every basket for 
 the pot. Some of my friends would cry shame on me 
 for this ; but I prefer a man, were he only an angler, to 
 the bravest pair of gills in all God's waters. I do not 
 affect fishes unless when cooked in sauce ; whereas an 
 
 27 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 angler is an important piece of river scenery, and hence 
 deserves some recognition among canoeists. He can 
 always tell you v^here you are, after a mild fashion ; and 
 his quiet presence serves to accentuate the solitude and 
 stillness, and remind you of the glittering citizens below 
 your boat. 
 
 The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among 
 his little hills that it was past six before we drew near 
 the lock at Quartes. There were some children on the 
 tow-path, with whom the Cigarette fell into a chafFmg 
 talk as they ran along beside us. It was in vain that 
 I warned him. In vain I told him in English that boys 
 were the most dangerous creatures ; and if once you be- 
 gan with them, it was safe to end in a shower of stones. 
 For my own part, whenever anything was addressed to 
 me, I smiled gently and shook my head, as though I 
 were an inoffensive person inadequately acquainted with 
 French. For, indeed, I have had such an experience at 
 home that I would sooner meet many wild animals than 
 a troop of healthy urchins. 
 
 But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young 
 Hainaulters. When the Cigarette went off to make in- 
 quiries, I got out upon the bank to smoke a pipe and 
 superintend the boats, and became at once the centre of 
 much amiable curiosity. The children had been joined 
 by this time by a young woman and a mild lad who had 
 lost an arm ; and this gave me more security. When I 
 let slip my first word or so in French, a little girl nodded 
 her head with a comical grown-up air. " Ah, you see," 
 she said, ** he understands well enough now; he was 
 just making believe." And the little group laughed 
 together very good-naturedly. 
 
 28 
 
ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
 
 They were much impressed when they heard we came 
 from England; and the little girl proffered the informa- 
 tion that England was an island "and a far way from 
 here — bien loin d'ici." 
 
 *' Ay, you may say that, a far way from here," said 
 the lad with one arm. 
 
 I was nearly as homesick as ever I was in my life; 
 they seemed to make it such an incalculable distance to 
 the place where I first saw the day. 
 
 They admired the canoes very much. And I observed 
 one piece of delicacy in these children which is worthy 
 of record. They had been deafening us for the last 
 hundred yards with petitions for a sail; ay, and they 
 deafened us to the same tune next morning when we 
 came to start; but then, when the canoes were lying 
 empty, there was no word of any such petition. Deli- 
 cacy } or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank 
 a vessel } I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do 
 the devil ; unless perhaps, the two were the same thing } 
 And yet 'tis a good tonic ; the cold tub and bath-towel 
 of the sentiments ; and positively necessary to life in 
 cases of advanced sensibility. 
 
 From the boats they turned to my costume. They 
 could not make enough of my red sash ; and my knife 
 filled them with awe. 
 
 ''They make them like that in England," said the 
 boy with one arm. I was glad he did not know how 
 badly we make them in England nowadays. "They 
 are for people who go away to sea," he added, " and to 
 defend one's life against great fish." 
 
 I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure 
 to the little group at every word. And so I suppose I 
 
 29 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 was. Even my pipe, although it was an ordinary French 
 clay, pretty well ''trousered," as they call it, would 
 have a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming from so 
 far away. And if my feathers were not very fine in 
 themselves, they were all from over seas. One thing 
 in my outfit, however, tickled them out of all polite- 
 ness; and that was the bemired condition of my canvas 
 shoes. I suppose they were sure the mud at any rate 
 was a home product. The little girl (who was the 
 genius of the party) displayed her own sabots in com- 
 petition; and I wish you could have seen how grace- 
 fully and merrily she did it. 
 
 The young woman's milk-can, a great amphora of 
 hammered brass, stood some way off upon the sward. 
 I was glad of an opportunity to divert public attention 
 from myself and return some of the compliments I had 
 received. So I admired it cordially both for form and 
 color, telling them, and very truly, that it was as beau- 
 tiful as gold. They were not surprised. The things 
 were plainly the boast of the country-side. And the 
 children expatiated on the costliness of these amphorce, 
 which sell sometimes as high as thirty francs apiece ; 
 told me how they were carried on donkeys, one on 
 either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in themselves; 
 and how they were to be seen all over the district, and 
 at the larger farms in great number and of great size. 
 
 30 
 
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
 
 WE ARE PEDLARS 
 
 The Cigarette returned with good news. There were 
 beds to be had some ten minutes' walk from where 
 we were, at a place called Pont We stowed the canoes 
 in a granary, and asked among the children for a guide. 
 The circle at once widened round us, and our offers of 
 reward were received in dispiriting silence. We were 
 plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children ; they might 
 speak to us in public places, and where they had the 
 advantage of numbers ; but it was another thing to ven- 
 ture off alone with two uncouth and legendary charac- 
 ters, who had dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet 
 this quiet afternoon, sashed and beknived, and with a 
 flavour of great voyages. The owner of the granary 
 came to our assistance, singled out one little fellow, and 
 threatened him with corporalities ; or I suspect we 
 should have had to find the way for ourselves. As it 
 was, he was more frightened at the granary man than 
 the strangers, having perhaps had some experience of 
 the former. But I fancy his little heart must have been 
 going at a fine rate, for he kept trotting at a respectful 
 distance in front, and looking back at us with scared 
 eyes. Not otherwise may the children of the young 
 world have guided Jove or one of his Olympian com- 
 peers on an adventure. 
 
 3« 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 A miry lane led us up from Quartes, with its church 
 and bickering wind-mill. The hinds were trudging 
 homewards from the fields. A brisk little old woman 
 passed us by. She was seated across a donkey between 
 a pair of glittering milk-cans, and, as she went, she 
 kicked jauntily with her heels upon the donkey's side, 
 and scattered shrill remarks among the wayfarers. It 
 was notable that none of the tired men took the trouble 
 to reply. Our conductor soon led us out of the lane 
 and across country. The sun had gone down, but the 
 west in front of us was one lake of level gold. The 
 path wandered a while in the open, and then passed 
 under a trellis like a bower indefinitely prolonged. On 
 either hand were shadowy orchards ; cottages lay low 
 among the leaves and sent their smoke to heaven ; every 
 here and there, in an opening, appeared the great gold 
 face of the west. 
 
 I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic frame of 
 mind. He waxed positively lyrical in praise of country 
 scenes. I was little less exhilarated myself; the mild air 
 of the evening, the shadows, the rich lights, and the si- 
 lence made a symphonious accompaniment about our 
 walk ; and we both determined to avoid towns for the 
 future and sleep in hamlets. 
 
 At last the path went between two houses, and turned 
 the party out into a wide, muddy high-road, bordered, 
 2& far as the eye could reach on either hand, by an un- 
 sightly village. The houses stood well back, leaving a 
 ribbon of waste land on either side of the road, where 
 there were stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish 
 heaps, and a little doubtful grass. Away on the left, a 
 gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street. What it 
 
 32 
 
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
 
 had been in past ages I know not: probably a hold in 
 time of war; but nowadays it bore an illegible dial-plate 
 in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron letter- 
 box. 
 
 The inn to which we had been recommended at 
 Ouartes was full, or else the landlady did not like our 
 looks. I ought to say, that with our long, damp india- 
 rubber bags, we presented rather a doubtful type of civ- 
 ilization : like rag-and-bone men, the Cigarette imagined. 
 ''These gentlemen are pedlars ?" — Ces messieurs sont 
 des marchands ? — asked the landlady. And then, with- 
 out waiting for an answer, which I suppose she thought 
 superfluous in so plain a case, recommended us to a 
 butcher who lived hard by the tower and took in trav- 
 ellers to lodge. 
 
 Thither went we. But the butcher was flitting, and 
 all his beds were taken down. Or else he didn't like 
 our look. As a parting shot, we had, ''These gentle- 
 men are pedlars ?" 
 
 It began to grow dark in earnest. We could no longer 
 distinguish the faces of the people who passed us by 
 with an inarticulate good evening. And the household- 
 ers of Pont seemed very economical with their oil, for 
 we saw not a single window lighted in all that long vil- 
 lage. I believe it is the longest village in the world ; 
 but I daresay in our predicament every pace counted 
 three times over. We were much cast down when we 
 came to the last auberge, and, looking in at the dark 
 door, asked timidly if we could sleep there for the 
 night. A female voice assented, in no very friendly 
 tones. We*<:lapped the bags down and found our way 
 to chairs. 
 
 33 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in 
 the chinks and ventilators of the stove. But now the 
 landlady lit a lamp to see her new guests; I suppose the 
 darkness was what saved us another expulsion, for I 
 cannot say she looked gratified at our appearance. We 
 were in a large, bare apartment, adorned with two al- 
 legorical prints of Music and Painting, and a copy of 
 the Law against Public Drunkenness. On one side there 
 was a bit of a bar, with some half a dozen bottles. Two 
 labourers sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme wea- 
 riness ; a plain-looking lass bustled about with a sleepy 
 child of two, and the landlady began to derange the 
 pots upon the stove and set some beefsteak to grill. 
 
 ** These gentlemen are pedlars?" she asked sharply; 
 and that was all the conversation forthcoming. We 
 began to think we might be pedlars, after all. I never 
 knew a population with so narrow a range of conjecture 
 as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre. But manners 
 and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes. 
 You have only to get far enough out of your beat, and 
 all your accomplished airs will go for nothing. These 
 Hainaulters could see no difference between us and the 
 average pedlar. Indeed, we had some grounds for re- 
 flection while the steak was getting ready, to see how 
 perfectly they accepted us at their own valuation, and 
 how our best politeness and best efforts at entertain- 
 ment seemed to fit quite suitably with the character of 
 packmen. At least it seemed a good account of the 
 profession in France, that even before such judges we 
 could not beat them at our own weapons. 
 
 At last we were called to table. The twp hinds (and 
 one of them looked sadly worn and white in the face, 
 
 34 
 
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
 
 as though sick with over-work and under-feeding) sup- 
 ped off a single plate of some sort of bread-berry, some 
 potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee sweet- 
 ened with sugar candy, and one tumbler of swipes. 
 The landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid took the 
 same. Our meal was quite a banquet by comparison. 
 We had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might have 
 been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass 
 of the swipes, and white sugar in our coffee. 
 
 You see what it is to be a gentleman, — I beg your 
 pardon, what it is to be a pedlar. It had not before oc- 
 curred to me that a pedlar was a great man in a 
 labourer's alehouse; but now that I had to enact the 
 part for the evening, I found that so it was. He has in 
 his hedge quarters somewhat the same pre-eminency as 
 the man who takes a private parlour in a hotel. The 
 more you look into it the more infinite are the class dis- 
 tinctions among men ; and possibly, by a happy dispen- 
 sation there is no one at all at the bottom of the scale; 
 no one but can find some superiority over somebody 
 else, to keep up his pride withal. 
 
 We were displeased enough with our fare. Particu- 
 larly the Cigarette; for I tried to make believe that I was 
 amused with the adventure, tough beefsteak and all. 
 According to the Lucretian maxim, our steak should 
 have been flavoured by the look of the other people's 
 bread-berry; but we did not find it so in practice/^'^You 
 may have a head knowledge that other people live more 
 poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable — I was go- 
 ing to say, it is against the etiquette of the universe — to 
 sit at the same table and pick your own superior diet from 
 among their crusts. I had not seen such a thing done 
 
 y:> 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 since the greedy boy at school with his birthday cake. 
 It was odious enough to witness, I could remember; and 
 I had never thought to play the part myself. But there, 
 again, you see what it is to be a pedlar. 
 
 There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our coun- 
 try are much more charitably disposed than their supe- 
 riors in wealth. And I fancy it must arise a great deal 
 from the comparative indistinction of the easy and the 
 not so easy in these ranks. A workman or a pedlar 
 cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable 
 neighbours. If he treats himself to a luxury, he must 
 do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what 
 should more directly lead to charitable thoughts ? . . . 
 Thus the poor man, camping out in life, sees it as it is, 
 and knows that every mouthful he puts in his belly has 
 been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry. 
 
 But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon 
 ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of 
 clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden 
 from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly bod- 
 ies, all in admirable order and positively as good as new. 
 He finds himself surrounded in the most touching man- 
 ner by the attentions of Providence, and compares him- 
 self involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks. He 
 does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so 
 unassuming in his open Landau ! If all the world dined 
 at one table, this philosophy would meet with some rude 
 knocks. 
 
 36 
 
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE ] 
 
 THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT 
 
 Like the lackeys in Moltere's farce, when the true no- 
 bleman broke in on their high life below stairs, we were 
 destined to be confronted with a real pedlar. To make 
 the lesson still more poignant for fallen gentlemen like 
 us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration than 
 the sort of scurvy fellows we were taken for; like a lion 
 among mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon two 
 cock-boats. Indeed, he did not deserve the name of 
 pedlar at all ; he was a travelling merchant. 
 
 1 suppose it was about half past eight when this 
 worthy, Monsieur Hector GiUiard, of Maubeuge, turned 
 up at the alehouse door in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, 
 and cried cheerily on the inhabitants. He was a lean, 
 nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the 
 look of an actor and something the look of a horse jockey. 
 He had evidently prospered without any of the fa- 
 vours of education, for he adhered with stern simplicity 
 to the masculine gender, and in the course of the even- 
 ing passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of 
 architecture. With him came his wife, a comely young 
 woman, with her hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their 
 son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse and military kepi. 
 It was notable that the child was many degrees better 
 
 37 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 dressed than either of the parents. We were informed 
 he was already at a boarding school ; but the holidays 
 having just commenced, he was off to spend them with 
 his parents on a cruise. An enchanting holiday occu- 
 pation, was it not.^ to travel all day with father and 
 mother in the tilt cart full of countless treasures; the 
 green country rattling by on either side, and the children 
 in all the villages contemplating him with envy and 
 wonder. It is better fun, during the holidays, to be the 
 son of a travelling merchant, than son and heir to the 
 greatest cotton spinner in creation. And as for being a 
 reigning prince, — indeed, I never saw one if it was not 
 Master Gilliard! 
 
 While M. Hector and the son of the house were put- 
 ting up the donkey and getting all the valuables under 
 lock and key, the landlady warmed up the remains of 
 our beefsteak and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and 
 Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had 
 come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled by the 
 light. He was no sooner awake than he began to pre- 
 pare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, 
 and cold potatoes, with, so far as I could judge, positive 
 benefit to his appetite. 
 
 The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke 
 her own little girl, and the two children were confronted. 
 Master Gilliard looked at her for a moment, very much 
 as a dog looks at his own reflection in a mirror before 
 he turns away. He was at that time absorbed in the 
 galette. His mother seemed crestfallen that he should 
 display so little inclination towards the other sex, and 
 expressed her disappointment with some candour and 
 a very proper reference to the influence of years. 
 
 3^ 
 
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
 
 Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more 
 attention to the girls, and think a great deal less of his 
 mother ; let us hope she will like it as well as she seemed 
 to fancy. But it is odd enough ; the very women who 
 profess most contempt for mankind as a sex seem to 
 find even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high- 
 minded in their own sons. 
 
 The little girl looked longer and with more interest, 
 probably because she was in her own house, while he 
 was a traveller and accustomed to strange sights. And, 
 besides, there was no galette in the case with her. 
 
 All the time of supper there was nothing spoken of 
 but my young lord. The two parents were both ab- 
 surdly fond of their child. Monsieur kept insisting on 
 his sagacity ; how he knew all the children at school by 
 name, and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was 
 cautious and exact to a strange degree, and if asked 
 anything, he would sit and think — and think, and if he 
 did not know it, " my faith, he wouldn't tell you at all 
 — ma foi, il ne vous le dira pas." Which is certainly 
 a very high degree of caution. At intervals, M. Hector 
 would appeal to his wife, with his mouth full of beef- 
 steak, as to the little fellow's age at such or such a time 
 when he had said or done something memorable; and 
 I noticed that Madame usually poohpoohed these in- 
 quiries. She herself was not boastful in her vein ; but 
 she never had her fill of caressing the child; and she 
 seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was 
 fortunate in his little existence. No school-boy could 
 have talked more of the holidays which were just be- 
 ginning and less of the black school-time which must 
 inevitably follow after. She showed, with a pride per- 
 
 39 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 haps partly mercantile in origin, his pockets preposter- 
 ously swollen with tops, and whistles, and string. 
 When she called at a house in the way of business, it 
 appeared he kept her company; and, whenever a sale 
 was made, received a sou out of the profit. Indeed, 
 they spoiled him vastly, these two good people. But 
 they had an eye to his manners, for all that, and reproved 
 him for some little faults in breeding which occurred 
 from time to time during supper. 
 
 On the whole, 1 was not much hurt at being taken for 
 a pedlar. I might think that I ate with greater delicacy, 
 or that my mistakes in French belonged to a different 
 order; but it was plain that these distinctions would be 
 thrown away upon the landlady and the two labourers. 
 In all essential things we and the GilUards cut very much 
 the same figure in the alehouse kitchen. M. Hector was 
 more at home, indeed, and took a higher tone with the 
 world; but that was explicable on the ground of his 
 driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped 
 afoot. I dare say the rest of the company thought us 
 dying with envy, though in no ill sense, to be as far up 
 in the profession as the new arrival. 
 
 And of one thing I am sure ; that everyone thawed 
 and became more humanized and conversible as soon as 
 these innocent people appeared upon the scene. I would 
 not very readily trust the travelling merchant with any 
 extravagant sum of money, but I am sure his heart was 
 in the right place. In this mixed world, if you can find 
 one or two sensible places in a man ; above all, if you 
 should find a whole family living together on such pleas- 
 ant terms, you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest 
 for granted ; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make 
 
 40 
 
PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
 
 Up your mind that you can do perfectly well without 
 the rest, and that ten thousand bad traits cannot make a 
 single good one any the less good. 
 
 It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lantern and 
 went off to his cart for some arrangements, and my 
 young gentleman proceeded to divest himself of the 
 better part of his raiment and play gymnastics on his 
 mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, with accom- 
 paniment of laughter. 
 
 ''Are you going to sleep alone?" asked the servant 
 /ass. 
 
 ''There's little fear of that," says Master Gilliard. 
 
 "You sleep alone at school," objected his mother. 
 " Come, come, you must be a man." 
 
 But he protested that school was a different matter 
 from the holidays ; that there were dormitories at school, 
 and silenced the discussion with kisses, his mother smil- 
 ing, no one better pleased than she. 
 
 There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear 
 that he should sleep alone, for there was but one bed 
 for the trio. We, on our part, had firmly protested 
 against one man's accommodation for two; and we had 
 a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished, 
 beside the beds, with exactly three hat pegs and one 
 table. There was not so much as a glass of water. 
 But the window would open, by good fortune. 
 
 Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the 
 sound of mighty snoring; the Gilliards, and the labour- 
 ers, and the people of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with 
 one consent. The young moon outside shone very 
 clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the ale- 
 house where all we pedlars were abed. 
 
 4' 
 
ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
 
 TO LANDRECIES 
 
 In the morning, when we came down-stairs the land- 
 lady pointed out to us two pails of water behind the 
 street door. " Foild de I'eau pour vous debarbouiller,'' 
 says she. And so there we made a shift to wash our- 
 selves, while Madame GiUiard brushed the family boots 
 on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, 
 arranged some small goods for the day's campaign in a 
 portable chest of drawers, which formed a part of his 
 baggage. Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo 
 crackers all over the floor. 
 
 I wonder, by the by, what they call Waterloo crackers 
 in France; perhaps A usterlit:^ crackers. There is a great 
 deal in the point of view. Do you remember the French- 
 man who, travelling by way of Southampton, was put 
 down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive across 
 Waterloo Bridge } He had a mind to go home again, 
 it seems. 
 
 Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten 
 minutes' walk from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary 
 kilometres by water. We left our bags at the inn and 
 walked to our canoes through the wet orchards unen- 
 cumbered. Some of the children were there to see us 
 off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the 
 
 42 
 
ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
 
 night before. A departure is much less romantic than 
 an unexplained arrival in the golden evening. Although 
 we might be greatly taken at a ghosf s first appearance, 
 we should behold him vanish with comparative equa- 
 nimity. 
 
 The good folks of the inn at Ponty when we called 
 there for the bags, were overcome with marvelling. At 
 the sight of these two dainty little boats, with a flut- 
 tering Union Jack on each, and all the varnish shining 
 from the sponge, they began to perceive that they had 
 entertained angels unawares. The landlady stood upon 
 the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little ; 
 the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbours to 
 enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a 
 crowd of rapt observers. These gentlemen pedlars, in- 
 deed ! Now you see their quality too late. 
 
 The whole day was showery, with occasional drench- 
 ing plumps. We were soaked to the skin, then partially 
 dried in the sun, then soaked once more. But there 
 were some calm intervals, and one notably, when we 
 were skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to 
 the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell. 
 It looked solemn along the river-side, drooping its boughs 
 into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of 
 leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full 
 of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is 
 nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the 
 citizens themselves are the houses and public monu- 
 ments? There is nothing so much alive and yet so 
 quiet as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging 
 past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by com- 
 parison. 
 
 43 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 And, surely, of all smells in the world the smell of 
 many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea 
 has a rude pistolling sort of odour, that takes you in the 
 nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of 
 open water and tall ships; but the smell of a forest, 
 which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses 
 it by many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, 
 the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a 
 forest is infinitely changeful ; it varies with the hour of 
 the day, not in strength merely, but in character; and the 
 different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the 
 wood to another, seem to live among different kinds of 
 atmosphere. Usually the rosin of the fir predominates. 
 But some woods are more coquettish in their habits; 
 and the breath of the forest Mornial, as it came aboard 
 upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with 
 nothing less delicate than sweetbrier. 
 
 I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees 
 are the most civil society. An old oak that has been 
 growing where he stands since before the Reformation, 
 taller than many spires, more stately than the greater 
 part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to sick- 
 nesses and death, like you and me: is not that in itself 
 a speaking lesson in history } But acres on acres full of 
 such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green tops 
 billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings push- 
 ing up about their knees ; a whole forest, healthy and 
 beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to 
 the air; what is this but the most imposing piece in na- 
 ture's repertory .^ Heine wished to lie like Merlin under 
 the oaks of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with 
 one tree ; but if the wood grew together like a banyan 
 
 44 
 
ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
 
 grove, 1 would be buried under the tap-root of the 
 whole; my parts should circulate from oak to oak; and 
 my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the 
 forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of 
 green spires, so that it, also, might rejoice in its own 
 loveliness and dignity. I think I feel a thousand squir- 
 rels leaping from bough to bough in my vast mauso- 
 leum; and the birds and the winds merrily coursing 
 over its uneven, leafy surface. 
 
 Alas ! the forest oiMormal is only a little bit of a wood, 
 and it was but for a little way that we skirted by its 
 boundaries. And the rest of the time the rain kept com- 
 ing in squirts and the wind in squalls, until one's heart 
 grew weary of such fitful, scolding weather. It was odd 
 how the showers began when we had to carry the boats 
 over a lock and must expose our legs. They always 
 did. This is a sort of thing that readily begets a per- 
 sonal feeling against nature. There seems no reason 
 why the shower should not come five minutes before 
 or five minutes after, unless you suppose an intention to 
 affront you. The Cigarette had a mackintosh which 
 put him more or less above these contrarieties. But I 
 had to bear the brunt uncovered. I began to remember 
 that nature was a woman. My companion, in a rosier 
 temper, listened with great satisfaction to my jeremiads, 
 and ironically concurred. He instanced, as a cognate 
 matter, the action of the tides, '* which," said he, ** was 
 altogether designed for the confusion of canoeists, except 
 in so far as it was calculated to minister to a barren van- 
 ity on the part of the moon." 
 
 At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I 
 refused to go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by 
 
 45 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 the side of the bank, to have a reviving pipe. A viva- 
 cious old man, whom I took to have been the devil, drew 
 near, and questioned me about our journey. In the ful- 
 ness of my heart I laid bare our plans before him. He said 
 it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of. Why, 
 did I not know, he asked me, that it was nothing but 
 locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not to mention 
 that, at this season of the year, we would find the Oise 
 quite dry? ''Get into a train, my little young man," 
 said he, ''and go you away home to your parents." I 
 was so astounded at the man's malice that I could only 
 stare at him in silence. A tree would never have spoken 
 to me like this. At last I got out with some words. 
 We had come from Antwerp already, I told him, which 
 was a good long way; and we should do the rest in 
 spite of him. Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, 
 I would do it now, just because he had dared to say we 
 could not. The pleasant old gentleman looked at me 
 sneeringly, made an allusion to my canoe, and marched 
 off, wagging his head. 
 
 I was still inwardly fuming when up came a pair of 
 young fellows, who imagined I was the Cigarette's 
 servant, on a comparison, I suppose, of my bare jersey 
 with the other's mackintosh, and asked me many ques- 
 tions about my place and my master's character. I said 
 he was a good enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage 
 on the head. "Oh, no, no," said one, "you must not 
 say that ; it is not absurd ; it is very courageous of him. " 
 I believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me 
 heart again. It was truly fortifying to reproduce all the 
 old man's insinuations, as if they were original to me in 
 my character of a malcontent footman, and have them 
 
 46 
 
ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
 
 brushed away like so many flies by these admirable 
 young men. 
 
 When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, ''They 
 must have a curious idea of how English servants be- 
 have," says he, dryly, "for you treated me like a brute 
 beast at the lock." 
 
 I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had 
 suffered, it is a fact 
 
 47 
 
AT LANDRECIES 
 
 At Landrectes the rain still fell and the wind still 
 blew; but we found a double-bedded room with plenty 
 of furniture, real water-jugs with real water in them, 
 and dinner, a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. 
 After having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt 
 for the elements during the whole of the next day, these 
 comfortable circumstances fell on my heart like sunshine. 
 There was an English fruiterer at dinner, travelling with 
 a Belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the cafe we 
 watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money at 
 corks, and I don't know why, but this pleased us. 
 
 It turned out that we were to see more of Landrecies 
 than we expected ; for the weather next day was simply 
 bedlamite. It is not the place one would have chosen 
 for a day's rest, for it consists almost entirely of fortifica- 
 tions. Within the ramparts, a few blocks of houses, a 
 long row of barracks, and a church figure, with what 
 countenance they may, as the town. There seems to be 
 no trade, and a shop-keeper from whom I bought a six- 
 penny flint and steel was so much affected that he filled 
 my pockets with spare flints into the bargain. The 
 only public buildings that had any interest for us were 
 the hotel and the cafe. But we visited the church. 
 
 48 
 
AT LANDRECIES 
 
 There lies Marshal Clarke. But as neither of us had 
 ever heard of that military hero, we bore the associations 
 of the spot with fortitude. 
 
 In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveilles, and 
 such like, make a fine, romantic interlude in civic busi- 
 ness. Bugles, and drums, and fifes are of themselves 
 most excellent things in nature, and when they carry the 
 mind to marching armies and the picturesque vicissi- 
 tudes of war they stir up something proud in the heart. 
 But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little 
 else moving, these points of war made a proportionate 
 commotion. Indeed, they were the only things to re- 
 member. It was just the place to hear the round going 
 by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp of 
 men marching, and the startling reverberations of the 
 drum. It reminded you that even this place was a 
 point in the great warfaring system of Europe, and might 
 on some future day be ringed about with cannon smoke 
 and thunder, and make itself a name among strong 
 towns. 
 
 The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and not- 
 able physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous 
 and comical shape, stands alone among the instruments 
 of noise. And if it be true, as I have heard it said, that 
 drums are covered with asses' skin, what a picturesque 
 irony is there in that! As if this long-suffering animal's 
 hide had not been sufficiently belaboured during life, 
 now by Lyonnese costermongers, now by presumptu- 
 ous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from his poor 
 hinder quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and 
 beaten night after night round the streets of every gar- 
 rison town in Europe, And up the heights of Alma 
 
 49 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag 
 a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the can- 
 nons, there also must the drummer boy, hurrying with 
 white face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this 
 slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys. 
 
 Generally a man is never more uselessly employed 
 than when he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. 
 We know what effect it has in life, and how your dull 
 ass will not mend his pace with beating. But in this 
 state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when 
 the hollow skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, 
 and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and 
 puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses 
 which we, in our big way of talking, nickname Hero- 
 ism, — is there not something in the nature of a revenge 
 upon the donkey's persecutors ? Of old, he might say, 
 you drubbed me up hill and down dale and I must en- 
 dure; but now that I am dead those dull thwacks that 
 were scarcely audible in country lanes have become stir- 
 ring music in front of the brigade, and for every blow 
 that you lay on my old great-coat, you will see a com- 
 rade stumble and fall. 
 
 Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, the Ci- 
 garette and the Arethusa began to grow sleepy, and set 
 out for the hotel, which was only a door or two away. 
 But although we had been somewhat indifferent to 
 Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to us. 
 All day, we learned, people had been running out be- 
 tween the squalls to visit our two boats. Hundreds of 
 persons, so said report, although it fitted ill with our 
 idea of the town, — hundreds of persons had inspected 
 them where they lay in a coal-shed. We were becom- 
 
 50 
 
AT LANDRECIES 
 
 ing lions in Landrecies, who had been only pedlars the 
 night before in Pont 
 
 And now, when we left the cafe, we were pursued 
 and overtaken at the hotel door by no less a person than 
 the Juge de Paix ; a functionary, as far as I can make 
 ■out, of the character of a Scotch Sheriff Substitute. He 
 gave us his card and invited us to sup with him on the 
 spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do 
 these things. It was for the credit of Landrecies, said 
 he ; and although we knew very well how little credit 
 we could do the place, we must have been churlish fel- 
 lows to refuse an invitation so politely introduced. 
 
 The house of the judge was close by ; it was a well- 
 appointed bachelor's establishment, with a curious col- 
 lection of old brass warming-pans upon the walls. Some 
 of these were most elaborately carved. It seemed a 
 picturesque idea for a collector. You could not help 
 thinking how many nightcaps had wagged over these 
 warming-pans in past generations; what jests may have 
 been made and kisses taken while they were in ser- 
 vice; and how often they had been uselessly paraded 
 in the bed of death. If they could only speak, at what 
 absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not 
 been present ? 
 
 The wine was excellent. When we made the judge 
 our compliments upon a bottle, "I do not give it you 
 as my worst," said he. I wonder when Englishmen 
 will learn these hospitable graces. They are worth 
 learning; they set off life and make ordinary moments 
 ornamental. 
 
 There were two other Landrecienses present. One 
 'Was the collector of something or other, I forget what; 
 
 5i 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 the other, we were told, was the principal notary of the 
 place. So it happened that we all five more or less fol- 
 lowed the law. At this rate, the talk was pretty certain 
 to become technical. The Cigarette expounded the poor 
 laws very magisterially. And a little later I found my- 
 self laying down the Scotch law of illegitimacy, of which 
 I am glad to say 1 know nothing. The collector and the 
 notary, who were both married men, accused the judge, 
 who was a bachelor, of having started the subject. He 
 deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air, 
 just like all the men I have ever seen, be they French or 
 English, f How strange that we should all, in our un- 
 guarded moments, rather^ like to be thought a bit of a 
 rogue with the women ! 
 
 As the evening went on the wine grew more to my 
 taste; the spirits proved better than the wine; the com- 
 pany was genial. This was the highest water mark of 
 popular favour on the whole cruise. After all, being in 
 a judge's house, was there not something semi-official 
 in the tribute ? And so, remembering what a great 
 country France is, we did full justice to our entertain- 
 ment. Landrecies had been a long while asleep before 
 we returned to the hotel; and the sentries on the ram- 
 parts were already looking for daybreak. 
 
 52 
 
SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 
 
 CANAL BOATS 
 
 Next day we made a late start in the rain. The judge 
 politely escorted us to the end of the lock under an um- 
 brella. We had now brought ourselves to a pitch of 
 humility, in the matter of weather, not often attained 
 except in the Scotch Highlands. A rag of blue sky or 
 a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when 
 the rain was not heavy we counted the day almost 
 fair. 
 
 Long lines of barges lay one after another along the 
 canal, many of them looking mighty spruce and ship- 
 shape in their jerkin of Archangel tar picked out with 
 white and green. Some carried gay iron railings and 
 quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children played on the 
 decks, as heedless of the rain as if they had been broughV 
 up on Loch Caron side ; men fished over the gunwale, 
 some of them under umbrellas; women did their wash- 
 ing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way 
 of watch-dog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, 
 running alongside until he had got to the end of his own 
 ship, and so passing on the word to the dog aboard the 
 next. We must have seen something like a hundred 
 of these embai kations in the course of that day's paddle, 
 
 53 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 ranged one after another like the houses in a street; and 
 from not one of them were we disappointed of this ac- 
 companiment. It was like visiting a menagerie, the 
 Cigarette remarked. 
 
 These little cities by the canal side had a very odd 
 effect upon the mind. They seemed, with their flower- 
 pots and smoking chimneys, their washings and din- 
 ners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene ; and yet if 
 only the canal below were to open, one junk after an- 
 other would hoist sail or harness horses and swim away 
 into all parts of France; and the impromptu hamlet 
 would separate, house by house, to the four winds. 
 The children who played together to-day by the Sambre 
 and Oise Canal, each at his own father's threshold, when 
 and where might they next meet } 
 
 For some time past the subject of barges had occupied 
 a great deal of our talk, and we had projected an old age 
 on the canals of Europe. It was to be the most lei- 
 surely of progresses, now on a swift river at the tail of a 
 steamboat, now waiting horses for days together on 
 some inconsiderable junction. We should be seen pot- 
 tering on deck in all the dignity of years, our white 
 beards falling into our laps. We were ever to be busied 
 among paint-pots, so that there should be no white 
 fresher and no green more emerald than ours, in all the 
 navy of the canals. There should be books in the cabin, 
 and tobacco jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a 
 November sunset and as odorous as a violet in April. 
 There should be a flageolet whence the Cigarette, with 
 cunning touch, should draw melting music under the 
 stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice — 
 somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there 
 
 54 
 
SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 
 
 a quaver, or call it a natural grace note — in rich and 
 solemn psalmody. 
 
 All this simmering in my mind set me wishing to go 
 aboard one of these ideal houses of lounging. I had 
 plenty to choose from, as I coasted one after another and 
 the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant. At last 1 saw a nice 
 old man and his wife looking at me with some interest, 
 so I gave them good day and pulled up alongside. 1 
 began with a remark upon their dog, which had some- 
 what the look of a pointer; thence I slid into a compli- 
 ment on Madame's flowers, and thence into a word m 
 praise of their way of life. 
 
 If you ventured on such an experiment in England you 
 would get a slap in the face at once. The life would be 
 shown to be a vile one, not without a side shot at your 
 better fortune. Now, what I like so much in France is 
 the clear, unflinching recognition by everybody of his 
 own luck. They all know on which side their bread is 
 buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to others, 
 which is surely the better part of religion. And they 
 scorn to make a poor mouth over their poverty, which 
 I take to be the better part of manliness. I have heard 
 a woman in quite a better position at home, with a good 
 bit of money in hand, refer to her own child with a hor- 
 rid whine as "a poor man's child." I would not say 
 such a thing to the Duke of Westminster. And the 
 French are full of this spirit of independence. Perhaps 
 it is the result of republican institutions, as they call 
 them. Much more likely it is because there are so few 
 people really poor that the whiners are not enough to 
 keep each other in countenance. 
 
 The people on the barge were delighted to hear that 
 
 55 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 I admired their state. They understood perfectly well, 
 they told me, how Monsieur envied them. Without 
 doubt Monsieur was rich, and in that case he might 
 make a canal-boat as pretty as a villa — joH comme un 
 chateau. And with that they invited me on board their 
 own water villa. They apologized for their cabin ; they 
 had not been rich enough to make it as it ought to be. 
 
 "The fire should have been here, at this side," ex- 
 plained the husband. "Then one might have a writ- 
 ing-table in the middle — books — and" (comprehen- 
 sively) "all. It would be quite coquettish — ca set ait 
 tout-d-fait coquet. ' ' And he looked about him as though 
 the improvements were already made. It was plainly 
 not the first time that he had thus beautified his cabin 
 in imagination ; and when next he makes a hit, I should 
 expect to see the writing-table in the middle. 
 
 Madame had three birds in a cage. They were no 
 great thing, she explained. Fine birds were so dear. 
 They had sought to get a HoUandais last winter in Rouen 
 {Rouen, thought I; and is this whole mansion, with its 
 dogs, and birds, and smoking chimneys, so far a trav- 
 eller as that, and as homely an object among the cliffs 
 and orchards of the Seine as on the green plains oiSam- 
 bre ?) — they had sought to get a HoUandais last winter 
 in Rouen; but these cost fifteen francs apiece — picture 
 it — fifteen francs ! 
 
 " Pour un tout petit oiseau — For quite a little bird," 
 added the husband. 
 
 As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, 
 and the good people began to brag of their barge and 
 their happy condition in life, as if they had been Em- 
 peror and Empress of the Indies. It was, in the Scotch 
 
 56 
 
SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 
 
 phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good-humour 
 with the world. If people knew what an inspiriting 
 thing it is to hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts 
 of what he really has, I believe they would do it more 
 freely and with a better grace. 
 
 They began to ask about our voyage. You should 
 have seen how they sympathised. They seemed half 
 ready to give up their barge and follow us. But these 
 canaletti are only gypsies semi-domesticated. The 
 semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form. 
 Suddenly Madame's brow darkened. '* Cependant/' 
 she began, and then stopped ; and then began again by 
 asking me if I were single. 
 
 "Yes," said I. 
 
 ** And your friend who went by just now ? " 
 
 He also was unmarried. 
 
 Oh, then, all was well. She could not have wives 
 left alone at home ; but since there were no wives in 
 the question, we were doing the best we could. 
 
 **To see about one in the world," said the husband, 
 ''// ny a que ga — there is nothing else worth while. 
 A man, look you, who sticks in his own village like 
 a bear," he went on, "very well, he sees nothing. 
 And then death is the end of all. And he has seen 
 nothing." 
 
 Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who 
 had come up this canal in a steamer. 
 
 "Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene," I suggested. 
 
 "That's it," assented the husband. "He had his 
 wife and family with him, and servants. He came 
 ashore at all the locks and asked the name of the 
 villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and 
 
 57 
 
AN INLAND VuYAGE 
 
 then he wrote, wrote them down. Oh, he wrote enor- 
 mously ! I suppose it was a wager." 
 
 A wager was a common enough explanation for our 
 own exploits, but it seemed an original reason for tak- 
 ing notes. 
 
 58 
 
THE OISE IN FLOOD 
 
 Before nine next morning the two canoes were in- 
 stalled on a light country cart at Etreux; and we were 
 soon following them along the side of a pleasant valley 
 full of hop-gardens and poplars. Agreeable villages lay 
 here and there on the slope of the hill: notably, Tu- 
 pigny, with the hop-poles hanging their garlands in the 
 very street, and the houses clustered with grapes. There 
 was a faint enthusiasm on our passage; weavers put 
 their heads to the windows; children cried out in ecstasy 
 at sight of the two '' boaties " — barquettes; and bloused 
 pedestrians, who were acquainted with our charioteer, 
 jested with him on the nature of his freight. 
 
 We had a shower or two, but light and flying. The 
 air was clean and sweet among all these green fields and 
 green things growing. There was not a touch of autumn 
 in the weather. And when, at Vadencourt, we launched 
 from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and 
 set all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise. 
 
 The river was swollen with the long rains. From 
 Vadencourt all the way to Origny it ran with ever- 
 quickening speed, taking fresh heart at each mile, and 
 racing as though it already smelt the sea. The water 
 was yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy 
 
 59 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 among half-submerged willows, and made an angry- 
 clatter along stony shores. The course kept turning and 
 turning in a narrow and well-timbered valley. Now the 
 river would approach the side, and run gliding along 
 the chalky base of the hill, and show us a few open colza 
 fields among the trees. Now it would skirt the garden- 
 walls of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through 
 a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the checkered sun- 
 light. Again, the foliage closed so thickly in front that 
 there seemed to be no issue; only a thicket of willows 
 overtopped by elms and poplars, under which the river 
 ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past 
 like a piece of the blue sky. On these different mani- 
 festations the sun poured its clear and catholic looks. 
 The shadows lay as solid on the swift surface of the 
 stream as on the stable meadows. The light sparkled 
 golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills 
 into communion with our eyes. And all the while the 
 river never stopped running or took breath ; and the reeds 
 along the whole valley stood shivering from top to toe. 
 There should be some myth (but if there is, I know 
 it not) founded on the shivering of the reeds. There 
 are not many things in nature more striking to man's 
 eye. It is such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and 
 to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanc- 
 tuary in every nook along the shore is enough to infect 
 a silly human with alarm. Perhaps they are only acold, 
 and no wonder, standing waist deep in the stream. 
 Or, perhaps, they have never got accustomed to the 
 speed and fury of the river's flux, or the miracle of its 
 continuous body. Pan once played upon their fore- 
 fathers ; and so, by the hands of his river, he still plays 
 
 60 
 
THE OISE IN FLOOD 
 
 Upon these later generations down all the valley of the 
 Oise; and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to 
 tell us of the beauty and the terror of the world. 
 
 The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took it 
 up and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a 
 Centaur carrying off a nymph. To keep some com- 
 mand on our direction required hard and diligent plying 
 of the paddle. The river was in such a hurry for the 
 sea! Every drop of water ran in a panic, like so many 
 people in a frightened crowd. But what crowd was 
 ever so numerous or so single-minded } All the objects 
 of sight went by at a dance measure ; the eyesight raced 
 with the racing river; the exigencies of every moment 
 kept the pegs screwed so tight that our being quivered 
 like a well-tuned instrument, and the blood shook off 
 its lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and 
 byways of the veins and arteries, and in and out of the 
 heart, as if circulation were but a holiday journey and 
 not the daily moil of threescore years and ten. The 
 reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with trem- 
 ulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was 
 strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy un- 
 derneath the willows. But the reeds had to stand where 
 they were; and those who stand still are always timid 
 advisers. As for us, we could have shouted aloud. If 
 this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of 
 death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously 
 outwitted himself with us. I was living three to the 
 minute. I was scoring points against him every stroke 
 of my paddle, every turn of the stream. I have rarely 
 had better profit of my life. 
 
 For I think we may look upon our little private war 
 61 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 with death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he 
 will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will 
 have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all 
 his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves. \^- 
 And above all, where, instead of simply spending, he 
 makes a profitable investment for some of his money, 
 when it will be out of risk of loss. 'So every bit of brisk 
 living, and above all when it is healthful, is just so much 
 gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall 
 have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomachs, 
 when he cries. Stand and deliver. A swift stream is a 
 favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a com- 
 fortable thing per annum ; but when he and I come to 
 settle our accounts I shall whistle in his face for these 
 hours upon the upper Otse. 
 
 Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the 
 sunshine and the exhilaration of the pace. We could 
 no longer contain ourselves and our content. The 
 canoes were too small for us; we must be out and 
 stretch ourselves on shore. And so in a green meadow 
 we bestowed our limbs on the grass, and smoked dei- 
 fying tobacco, and proclaimed the world excellent. It 
 was the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it 
 with extreme complacency. 
 
 On one side of the valley, high upon the chalky sum- 
 mit of the hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and 
 disappeared at regular intervals. At each revelation he 
 stood still for a few seconds against the sky, for all the 
 world (as the Cigarette declared) like a toy Burns who 
 had just ploughed up the Mountain Daisy. He was 
 the only living thing within view, unless we are to 
 count the river. 
 
 62 
 
THE OISE IN FLOOD 
 
 On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs 
 and a belfry showed among the foliage. Thence some 
 inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon musical on a 
 chime of bells. There was something very sweet and 
 taking in the air he played, and we thought we had 
 never heard bells speak so intelligibly or sing so melo- 
 diously as these. It must have been to some such meas- 
 ure that the spinners and the young maids sang, *' Come 
 away, Death," in the Shakespearian lllyria. There is 
 so often a threatening note, something blatant and me- 
 tallic, in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully 
 more pain than pleasure from hearing them ; but these, 
 as they sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with 
 a plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the burden 
 of a popular song, were always moderate and tunable, 
 and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, rustic places, 
 like the noise of a waterfall or the babble of a rookery in 
 spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer for his bless- 
 ing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so 
 gently to the time of his meditations. I could have 
 blessed the priest or the heritors, or whoever may be 
 concerned with such affairs in France, who had left 
 these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not 
 held meetings, and made collections, and had their 
 names repeatedly printed in the local paper, to rig up a 
 peal of brand-new, brazen, Birmtngbam-hearted substi- 
 tutes, who should bombard their sides to the provoca- 
 tion of a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of 
 the valley with terror and riot. 
 
 At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun 
 withdrew. The piece was at an end; shadow and 
 silence possessed the valley of the Oise. We took to 
 
 63 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 the paddle with glad hearts, like people who have sat 
 out a noble performance and return to work. The river 
 was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies 
 were more sudden and violent. All the way down we 
 had had our fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir 
 which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and 
 full of stakes that we must withdraw the boats from the 
 water and carry them round. But the chief sort of ob- 
 stacle was a consequence of the late high winds. Every 
 two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the 
 river, and usually involved more than another in its fall. 
 Often there was free water at the end, and we could 
 steer round the leafy promontory and hear the water 
 sucking and bubbling among the twigs. Often, again, 
 when the tree reached from bank to bank, there was 
 room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, 
 canoe and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get out 
 upon the trunk itself and pull the boats across; and 
 sometimes, where the stream was too impetuous for 
 this, there was nothing for it but to land and "carry 
 over." This made a fine series of accidents in the day's 
 career, and kept us aware of ourselves. 
 
 Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading 
 by a long way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit 
 in honour of the sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, 
 the river made one of its leonine pounces round a corner, 
 and I was aware of another fallen tree within a stone- 
 cast. I had my back-board down in a trice, and aimed 
 for a place where the trunk seemed high enough above 
 the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip 
 below. When a man has just vowed eternal brother- 
 hood with the universe he is not in a temper to take 
 
 64 
 
THE OISE IN FLOOD 
 
 great determinations coolly, and this, which might have 
 been a very important determination for me, had not 
 been taken under a happy star. The tree caught me 
 about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to make 
 less of myself and get through, the river took the mat- 
 ter out of my hands and bereaved me of my boat. The 
 Arethvsa swung round broadside on, leaned over, 
 ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and, 
 thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, 
 and went merrily away down stream. 
 
 I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on 
 to the tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer 
 than I cared about. My thoughts were of a grave and 
 almost sombre character, but I still clung to my paddle. 
 The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could 
 pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to 
 have all the water of the Oise in my trousers' pockets. 
 You can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a 
 river makes against a man. Death himself had me by 
 the heels, for this was his last ambuscade, and he must 
 now join personally in the fray. And still I held to my 
 paddle. At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on 
 the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a min- 
 gled sense of humour and injustice. A poor figure I must 
 have presented to Burns upon the hill-top with his team. 
 But there was the paddle in my hand. On my tomb, 
 if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed : 
 ** He clung to his paddle." 
 
 The Cigarette had gone past awhile before; for, as I 
 might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased 
 with the universe at the moment, there was a clear way 
 round the tree-top at the farther side. He had offered 
 
 65 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 his services to haul me out, but, as I was then already 
 on my elbows, I had declined and sent him down stream 
 after the truant Arethusa. The stream was too rapid for 
 a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon 
 his hands. So 1 crawled along the trunk to shore, and 
 proceeded down the meadows by the river-side. I was 
 so cold that my heart was sore. 1 had now an idea of 
 my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered. I could 
 have given any of them a lesson. The Cigarette re- 
 marked, facetiously, that he thought 1 was "taking ex- 
 ercise " as 1 drew near, until he made out for certain 
 that I was only twittering with cold. I had a rub-down 
 with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india- 
 rubber bag. But I was not my own man again for the 
 rest of the voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore 
 my last dry clothes upon my body. The struggle had 
 tired me; and, perhaps, whether 1 knew it or not, 1 was 
 a little dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the 
 universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley 
 quickened by a running stream. The bells were all very 
 pretty in their way, but I had heard some of the hollow 
 notes of Pan's music. Would the wicked river drag 
 me down by the heels, indeed } and look so beautiful 
 all the time ? Nature's good-humour was only skin deep, 
 after all. 
 
 There was still a long way to go by the winding course 
 of the stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell 
 was ringing in Origny Sainte-Benoite when we arrived. 
 
 66 
 
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 A BY-DAY 
 
 The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had 
 little rest; indeed, I do not think I remember anywhere 
 else so great a choice of services as were here offered to 
 the devout. And while the bells made merry in the 
 sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting 
 among the beets and colza. 
 
 In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the 
 street at a foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable 
 music, '* O France, mes amours." It brought everybody 
 to the door; and when our landlady called in the man to 
 buy the words, he had not a copy of them left. She was 
 not the first nor the second who had been taken with 
 the song. There is something very pathetic in the love 
 of the French people, since the war, for dismal patriotic 
 music-making. I have watched a forester from Alsace 
 while some one was singing ' 'Les malheurs dela France, " 
 at a baptismal party in the neighbourhood of Fontaine- 
 bleau. He arose from the table and took his son aside, 
 close by where I was standing. "Listen, listen," he 
 said, bearing on the boy's shoulder, ''and remember 
 this, my son." A little after he went out into the 
 garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing in the 
 darkness. 
 
 67 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace 
 and Lorraine made a sore pull on the endurance of this 
 sensitive people; and their hearts are still hot, not so 
 much against Germany as against the Empire. In what 
 other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the 
 world into the street? But affliction heightens love; 
 and we shall never know we are Englishmen until we 
 have lost India. Independent America is still the cross 
 of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer George with- 
 out abhorrence; and I never feel more warmly to my 
 own land than when I see the stars and stripes, and re- 
 member what our empire might have been. 
 
 The hawker's little book, which I purchased, was a 
 curious mixture. Side by side with the flippant, rowdy 
 nonsense of the Paris music-halls there were many 
 pastoral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I thought, 
 and instinct with the brave independence of the poorer 
 class in France. There you might read how the wood- 
 cutter gloried in his axe, and the gardener scorned to be 
 ashamed of his spade. It was not very well written, 
 this poetry of labor, but the pluck of the sentiment re- 
 deemed what was weak or wordy in the expression. 
 The martial and the patriotic pieces, on the other hand, 
 were tearful, womanish productions one and all. The 
 poet had passed under the Caudine Forks; he sang for 
 an army visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms 
 reversed ; and sang not of victory, but of death. There 
 was a number in the hawker's collection called Conscrits 
 Francais, which may rank among the most dissuasive 
 war-lyrics on record. It would not be possible to fight 
 at all in such a spirit. The bravest conscript would turn 
 pale if such a ditty were struck up beside him on the 
 
 6S> 
 
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 morning of battle; and whole regiments would pile 
 their arms to its tune. 
 
 \i Fletcher oi Saltoun is in the right about the influence 
 of national songs, you would say France was come to a 
 poor pass. But the thing will work its own cure, and a 
 sound-hearted and courageous people weary at length 
 of snivelling over their disasters. Already Paul Deroulede 
 has written some manly military verses. There is not 
 much of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir a 
 man's heart in his bosom ; they lack the lyrical elation, 
 and move slowly; but they are written in a grave, 
 honourable, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers 
 far in a good cause. One feels as if one would like to 
 trust Deroulede with something. It will be happy if he 
 can so far inoculate his fellow-countrymen that they may 
 be trusted with their own future. And, in the mean time, 
 here is an antidote to ''French Conscripts" and much 
 other doleful versification. 
 
 We had left the boats over night in the custody of 
 one whom we shall call Carnival. I did not properly 
 catch his name, and perhaps that was not unfortunate 
 for him, as I am not in a position to hand him down with 
 honourto posterity. To this person's premises we strolled 
 in the course of the day, and found quite a little deputa- 
 tion inspecting the canoes. There was a stout gentle- 
 man with a knowledge of the river, which he seemed 
 eager to impart. There was a very elegant young 
 gentleman in a black coat, with a smattering of English, 
 who led the talk at once to the Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge boat race. And then there were three handsome 
 girls from fifteen to twenty; and an old gentleman 
 in a blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and a strong 
 
 69 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 country accent. Quite the pick of Origny, I should 
 suppose. 
 
 The Cigarette had some mysteries to perform with his 
 rigging in the coach-house; so I was left to do the pa- 
 rade single-handed. I found myself very much of a hero 
 whether I would or not. The girls were full of little 
 shudderings over the dangers of our journey. And I 
 thought it would be ungallant not to take my cue from 
 the ladies. My mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand 
 way, produced a deep sensation. It was OtheUo over 
 again, with no less than three Desdemonas and a sprink- 
 ling of sympathetic senators in the background. Never 
 were the canoes more flattered, or flattered more adroitly. 
 
 "It is like a violin," cried one of the girls in an ec- 
 stasy. 
 
 "I thank you for the word, mademoiselle,*' said I. 
 ** All the more since there are people who call out to me 
 that it is like a coffm." 
 
 "Oh! but it is really like a violin. It is finished like 
 a violin," she went on, 
 
 "And polished like a violin," added a senator. 
 
 "One has only to stretch the cords," concluded an- 
 other, "and then tum-tumty-tum " ; he imitated the re- 
 sult with spirit. 
 
 Was not this a graceful little ovation ? Where this 
 people finds the secret of its pretty speeches I cannot 
 imagine, unless the secret should be no other than a sin- 
 cere desire to please. But then no disgrace is attached 
 in France to saying a thing neatly ; whereas in England, 
 to talk like a book is to give in one's resignation to so- 
 ciety. 
 
 The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach- 
 
 70 
 
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 house, and somewhat irrelevantly informed the Cigarette 
 that he was the father of the three girls and four more; 
 quite an exploit for a Frenchman. 
 
 **You are very fortunate," answered the Cigarette 
 politely. 
 
 And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his 
 point, stole away again. 
 
 We all got very friendly together. The girls proposed 
 to start with us on the morrow, if you please. And, 
 jesting apart, every one was anxious to know the hour 
 of our departure. Now, when you are going to crawl 
 into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however 
 friendly, is undesirable, and so we told them not before 
 twelve, and mentally determined to be off by ten at 
 latest. 
 
 Towards evening we went abroad again to post some 
 letters. It was cool and pleasant; the long village was 
 quite empty, except for one or two urchins who fol- 
 lowed us as they might have followed a menagerie ; the 
 hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides through 
 the clear air, and the bells were chiming for yet another 
 service. 
 
 Suddenly we sighted the three girls, standing, with a 
 fourth sister, in front of a shop on the wide selvage of 
 the roadway. We had been very merry with them a 
 little while ago, to be sure. But what was the etiquette 
 of Origny ? Had it been a country road, of course we 
 should have spoken to them ; but here, under the eyes 
 of all the gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow ? 
 I consulted the Cigarette. 
 
 " Look," said he. 
 
 I looked. There were the four girls on the same spot ; 
 7« 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 but now four backs were turned to us, very upright and 
 conscious. Corporal Modesty had given the word of 
 command, and the well-disciplined picket had gone 
 right-about-face like a single person. They maintained 
 this formation all the while we were in sight; but we 
 heard them tittering among themselves, and the girl 
 whom we had not met laughed with open mouth, and 
 even looked over her shoulder at the enemy. I wonder 
 was it altogether modesty after all, or in part a sort of 
 country provocation ? 
 
 As we were returning to the inn we beheld some- 
 thing floating in the ample field of golden evening sky, 
 above the chalk cliffs and the trees that grow along 
 their summit. It was too high up, too large, and too 
 steady for a kite ; and, as it was dark, it could not be 
 a star. For, although a star were as black as ink and 
 as rugged as a walnut, so amply does the sun bathe 
 heaven with radiance that it would sparkle like a point 
 of light for us. The village was dotted with people 
 with their heads in air; and the children were in a bus- 
 tle all along the street and far up the straight road that 
 climbs the hill, where we could still see them running 
 in loose knots. It was a balloon, we learned, which 
 had left Saint Quentin at half past five that evening. 
 Mighty composedly the majority of the grown people 
 took it. But we were English, and were soon running 
 up the hill with the best. Being travellers ourselves in 
 a small way, we would fain have seen these other trav- 
 ellers alight. 
 
 The spectacle was over by the time we gained the 
 top of the hill. All the gold had withered out of the 
 sky, and the balloon had disappeared. Whither? I 
 
 72 
 
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? or 
 come safely to land somewhere in that blue, uneven dis- 
 tance, into which the roadway dipped and melted before 
 our eyes ? Probably the aeronauts were already warm- 
 ing themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold 
 in these unhomely regions of the air. The night fell 
 swiftly. Roadside trees and disappointed sightseers, 
 returning through the meadows, stood out in black 
 against a margin of low, red sunset. It was cheerfuller 
 to face the other way, and so down the hill we went, 
 with a full moon, the colour of a melon, swinging high 
 above the wooded valley, and the white cliffs behind 
 us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk-kilns. 
 
 The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being 
 made in Origny Sainte-Benoite by the river. 
 
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 THE COMPANY AT TABLE 
 
 Although we came late for dinner, the company at 
 table treated us to sparkling wine. "That is how we 
 are in France," said one. *' Those who sit down with 
 us are our friends." And the rest applauded. 
 
 They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass 
 the Sunday with. 
 
 Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of 
 the north. One ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with 
 copious black hair and beard, the intrepid hunter of 
 France, who thought nothing so small, not even a lark 
 or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its 
 capture. For such a great, healthy man, his hair flour- 
 ishing like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red 
 blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced 
 a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a steam- 
 hammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, 
 subdued person, blond, and lymphatic, and sad, with 
 something the look of a Dane: ** Tristes Utes de Da- 
 noisl" as Gaston Lafenestre used to say. 
 
 I must not let that name go by without a word for 
 the best of all good fellows, now gone down into the 
 dust. We shall never again see Gaston in his forest 
 costume, — he was Gaston with all the world, in affec- 
 
 74 
 
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 tion, not in disrespect, — nor hear him wake the echoes 
 of Fontainebleau with the woodland horn. Never again 
 shall his kind smile put peace among all races of artistic 
 men, and make the Englishman at home in France. 
 Never more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent 
 at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his industrious 
 pencil. He died too early, at the very moment when he 
 was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts and blossom 
 into something worthy of himself; and yet none who 
 knew him will think he lived in vain. I never knew a 
 man so little, for whom yet I had so much affection ; 
 and I find it a good test of others, how much they had 
 learned to understand and value him. His was, indeed, 
 a good influence in life while he was still among us ; he 
 had a fresh laugh; it did you good to see him; and, 
 however sad he may have been at heart, he always 
 bore a bold and cheerful countenance and took fortune's 
 worst as it were the showers of spring. But now his 
 mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, 
 where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and pe- 
 nurious youth. 
 
 Many of his pictures found their way across the Chan- 
 nel ; besides those which were stolen, when a dastardly 
 Yankee left him alone in London with two English pence, 
 and, perhaps, twice as many words of English. If any 
 one who reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, 
 in the manner oi Jacques, with this fine creature's sig- 
 nature, let him tell himself that one of the kindest and 
 bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate his lodging. 
 There may be better pictures in the National Gallery ; 
 but not a painter among the generations had a better 
 heart. Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, 
 
 75 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 the Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints. It had 
 need to be precious; for it is very costly, when, by a 
 stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the peace-maker 
 and peace-looker of a whole society is laid in the ground 
 with CcBsar and the Twelve Apostles. 
 
 There is something lacking among the oaks of Fon- 
 tainebleau; and when the dessert comes in at Barbi^on, 
 people look to the door for a figure that is gone. 
 
 The third of our companions at Origny was no less a 
 person than the landlady's husband ; not properly the 
 landlord, since he worked himself in a factory during 
 the day, and came to his own house at evening as a 
 guest; a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual ex- 
 citement, with baldish head, sharp features, and swift, 
 shining eyes. On Saturday, describing some paltry ad- 
 venture at a duck hunt, he broke a plate into a score of 
 fragments. Whenever he made a remark he would look 
 all round the table with his chin raised and a spark of 
 green light in either eye, seeking approval. His wife 
 appeared now and again in the doorway of the room, 
 where she was superintending dinner, with a ""Henri, 
 you forget yourself," or a "'Henri, you can surely talk 
 without making such a noise." Indeed, that was what 
 the honest fellow could not do. On the most trifling 
 matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his 
 voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder. I never saw 
 such a petard of a man; I think the devil was in him. 
 He had two favourite expressions, **It is logical," or 
 illogical, as the case might be ; and this other thrown 
 out with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a 
 banner, at the beginning of many a long and sonorous 
 story: " I am a proletarian, you see." Indeed, we saw 
 
 76 
 
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 it very well. God forbid that ever I should find him 
 handling a gun in Paris streets. That v^ill not be a good 
 moment for the general public. 
 
 I thought his two phrases very much represented the 
 good and evil of his class, and, to some extent, of his 
 country. It is a strong thing to say what one is, and not 
 be ashamed of it ; even although it be m doubtful taste 
 to repeat the statement too often in one evening. I 
 should not admire it in a duke, of course ; but as times 
 go the trait is honourable in a workman. On the other 
 hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put one's reliance 
 upon logic ; and our own logic particularly, for it is gen- 
 erally wrong. We never know where we are to end 
 if once we begin following words or doctors. There is 
 an upright stock in a man's own heart that is trustier 
 than any syllogism ; and the eyes, and the sympathies, 
 and appetites know a thing or two that have never yet 
 been stated in controversy. Reasons are as plentiful as 
 blackberries ; and, like fisticuffs, they serve impartially 
 with all sides. Doctrines do not stand or fall by their 
 proofs and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly 
 put. An able controversialist no more than an able gen- 
 eral demonstrates the justice of his cause. But France 
 is all gone wandering after one or two big words ; it 
 will take some time before they can be satisfied that 
 they are no more than words, however big; and, when 
 once that is done, they will perhaps find logic less 
 diverting. 
 
 The conversation opened with details of the day's 
 shooting. When all the sportsmen of a village shoot 
 over the village territory pro indiviso, it is plain that 
 many questions of etiquette and priority must arise. 
 
 77 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 " Here now," cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, 
 '*here is a field of beet-root. Well. Here am I, then. 
 I advance, do I not ? Eb bien ! sacristi ; ' ' and the state- 
 ment, waxing louder, rolls off into a reverberation of 
 oaths, the speaker glaring about for sympathy, and 
 everybody nodding his head to him in the name of 
 peace. 
 
 The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own 
 prowess in keeping order : notably one of a Marquis. 
 
 ''Marquis," I said, *'if you take another step I fire 
 upon you. You have committed a dirtiness. Marquis." 
 
 Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap 
 ^nd withdrew. 
 
 The landlord applauded noisily. " It was well done," 
 he said. "He did all that he could. He admitted he 
 was wrong." And then oath upon oath. He was no 
 marquis-lover, either, but he had a sense of justice in 
 him, this proletarian host of ours. 
 
 From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a 
 general comparison of Paris and the country. The pro- 
 letarian beat the table like a drum in praise of Paris. 
 *' What is Paris ? Paris is the cream of France. There 
 are no Parisians ; it is you, and I, and everybody who 
 are Parisians. A man has eighty chances per cent, to 
 get on in the world in Paris. ' ' And he drew a vivid 
 sketch of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog- 
 hutch, making articles that were to go all over the 
 world. '*Eh bien, quoi, c'estmagnifique, ^a!" cried he. 
 
 The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant's 
 life ; he thought Paris bad for men and women. "Cen- 
 tralization," said he 
 
 But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. It 
 78 
 
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 was all logical, he showed him, and all magnificent. 
 '* What a spectacle! What a glance for an eye! " And 
 the dishes reeled upon the table under a cannonade of 
 blows. 
 
 Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise 
 of the liberty of opinion in France. I could hardly have 
 shot more amiss. There was an instant silence and a 
 great wagging of significant heads. They did not fancy 
 the subject, it was plain, but they gave me to under- 
 stand that the sad Northman was a martyr on account 
 of his views. ''Ask him a bit," said they. "Just ask 
 him." 
 
 "Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, answering me, 
 although I had not spoken, "1 am afraid there is less 
 liberty of opinion in France than you may imagine." 
 And with that he dropped his eyes and seemed to con- 
 sider the subject at an end. 
 
 Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How, or 
 why, or when was this lymphatic bagman martyred ? 
 We concluded at once it was on some religious ques- 
 tion, and brushed up our memories of the Inquisition, 
 which were principally drawn from Poe's horrid story, 
 and the sermon in Tristram Shandy, 1 believe. 
 
 On the morrow we had an opportunity of going fur- 
 ther into the question ; for when we rose very early to 
 avoid a sympathising deputation at our departure, we 
 found the hero up before us. He was breaking his fast 
 on white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the 
 character of martyr, 1 conclude. We had a long conver- 
 sation, and made out what we wanted in spite of his 
 reserve. But here was a truly curious circumstance. It 
 seems possible for two Scotchmen and a Frenchman to 
 
 19 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 discuss during a long half-hour, and each nationality 
 have a different idea in view throughout. It was not 
 till the very end that we discovered his heresy had been 
 political, or that he suspected our mistake. The terms 
 and spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs were, 
 in our eyes, suited to religious beliefs. And vice versa. 
 
 Nothing could be more characteristic of the two coun- 
 tries. Politics are the religion of France; as Nanty 
 
 Ewart would have said, "A d d bad religion," 
 
 while we, at home, keep most of our bitterness for all 
 differences about a hymn-book or a Hebrew word 
 which, perhaps, neither of the parties can translate. 
 And perhaps the misconception is typical of many others 
 that may never be cleared up ; not only betv/een people 
 of different race, but between those of different sex. 
 
 As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Communist, 
 or perhaps only a Communard, which is a very differ- 
 ent thing, and had lost one or more situations in conse- 
 quence. I think he had also been rejected in marriage ; 
 but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering 
 business which deceived me. He was a mild, gentle 
 creature, any way, and I hope he has got a better situ- 
 ation and married a more suitable wife since then. 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 TO MOY * 
 
 Carnival notoriously cheated us at first Finding us 
 easy in our ways, he regretted having let us off so 
 cheaply, and, taking me aside, told me a cock-and-bull 
 story, with the moral of another five francs for the nar- 
 rator. The thing was palpably absurd ; but I paid up, 
 and at once dropped all friendliness of manner and kept 
 him in his place as an inferior, with freezing British dig- 
 nity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far 
 and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he 
 would have refunded if he could only have thought of 
 a decent pretext. He wished me to drink with him, 
 but I would none of his drinks. He grew pathetically 
 tender in his professions, but I walked beside him in 
 silence or answered him in stately courtesies, and, when 
 we got to the landing-place, passed the word in Eng- 
 lish slang to the Cigarette. 
 
 In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day 
 before, there must have been fifty people about the 
 bridge. We were as pleasant as we could be with all 
 but Carnival, We said good-by, shaking hands with 
 the old gentleman who knew the river and the young 
 gentleman who had a smattering of English, but never 
 a word for Carnival. Poor Carnival, here was a humili- 
 
 8i 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 ation. He who had been so much identified with the 
 canoes, who had given orders in our name, who had 
 shown off the boats and even the boatmen like a private 
 exhibition- of his own, to be now so publicly shamed by 
 the lions of his caravan! I never saw anybody look 
 more crestfallen than he. He hung in the background, 
 coming timidly forward ever and again as he thought 
 he saw some symptom of a relenting humour, and fall- 
 ing hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. 
 Let us hope it will be a lesson to him. 
 
 I would not have mentioned Carmval's peccadillo^had 
 not the thing been so uncommon in France. This, for 
 instance, was the only case of dishonesty or even sharp 
 practice in our whole voyage. We talk very much 
 about our honesty in England. It is a good rule to be 
 on your guard wherever you hear great professions 
 about a very little piece of virtue. If the English could 
 only hear how they are spoken of abroad, they might 
 confine themselves for a while to remedying the fact, 
 and perhaps even when that was done, give us fewer of 
 their airs. 
 
 The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not 
 present at our start; but when we got round to the sec- 
 ond bridge, behold, it was black with signt-seers ! We 
 were loudly cheered, and for a good way below young 
 lads and lasses ran along the bank, still cheering. What 
 with current and paddling, we were flashing along like 
 swallows. It was no joke to keep up with us upon the 
 woody shore. But the girls picked up their skirts, as 
 if they were sure they had good ankles, and followed 
 until their breath was out. The last to weary were the 
 three graces and a couple of companions ; and just as 
 
 82 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 they, too, had had enough, the foremost of the three 
 leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her hand to the 
 canoeists. Not Diana herself, although this was more 
 of a Venus, after all, could have done a graceful thing 
 more gracefully. " Come back again 1 " she cried ; and 
 all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny re- 
 peated the words, ''Come back." But the river had 
 us round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone 
 with the green trees and running water. 
 
 Come back } There is no coming back, young ladies, 
 on the impetuous stream of life. 
 
 The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
 The ploughman from the sun his season takes. 
 
 And we must all set our pocket watches by the clock of 
 fate. There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears 
 away man with his fancies like straw, and runs fast in 
 time and space. It is full of curves like this, your wind- 
 ing river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant 
 pastorals ; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns 
 at all. For though it should revisit the same acre of 
 meadow in the same hour, it will have made an ample 
 sweep between whiles; many little streams will have 
 fallen in ; many exhalations risen towards the sun ; and 
 even although it were the same acre, it will not be the 
 same river Oise. And thus, O graces of Origny, al- 
 though the wandering fortune of my life should carry 
 me back again to where you await death's whistle by 
 the river, that will not be the old I who walks the street; 
 and those wives and mothers, say, will those be you ? 
 There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a 
 matter of fact. In these upper reaches it was still in a 
 
 83 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 prodigious hurry for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, 
 through all the windings of its channel, that I strained 
 my thumb fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle 
 all the rest of the way with one hand turned up. Some- 
 times it had to serve mills ; and being still a little river, 
 ran very dry and shallow in the mean while. We had 
 to put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves off 
 the sand of the bottom with our feet. And still it went 
 on its way singing among the poplars, and making a 
 green valley in the world. After a good woman, and 
 a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so agree- 
 able on earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt on my 
 life ; which was, after all, one part owing to the unruly 
 winds of heaven that had blown down the tree, one part 
 to my own mismanagement, and only a third part to 
 the river itself, and that not out of malice, but from its 
 great preoccupation over its own business of getting to 
 the sea. A difficult business, too; for the detours it had 
 to make are not to be counted. The geographers seem to 
 have given up the attempt; for I found no map represent 
 the infinite contortion of its course. A fact will say 
 more than any of them. After we had been some hours, 
 three, if I mistake not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, 
 breakneck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet and 
 asked where we were, we had got no further than four 
 kilometres (say two miles and a half) from Origny. If 
 it were not for the honour of the thing (in the Scotch 
 saying), we might almost as well have been standing 
 still. 
 
 We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of 
 poplars. The leaves danced and prattled in the wind 
 ail round about us. The river hurried on meanwhile, 
 
 84 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 and seemed to chide at our delay. Little we cared. The 
 river knew where it was going; not so we; the less our 
 hurry, where we found good quarters, and a pleasant 
 theatre for a pipe. At that hour stock-brokers were 
 shouting in Paris Bourse for two or three per cent ; but 
 we minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sac- 
 rificed a hecatomb of minutes to the gods of tobacco and 
 digestion. Hurry is the resource of the faithless. Where 
 a man can trust his own heart, and those of his friends, 
 to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in the 
 mean while, why, then, there he dies, and the question 
 is solved. 
 
 We had to take to the canal in the course of the after- 
 noon ; because where it crossed the river there was, not 
 a bridge, but a siphon. If it had not been for an excited 
 fellow on the bank we should have paddled right into 
 the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more. 
 We met a man, a gentleman, on the towpath, who was 
 much interested in our cruise. And I was witness to a 
 strange seizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette; who, 
 because his knife came from Norway, narrated all sorts 
 of adventures in that country, where he has never been. 
 He was quite feverish at the end, and pleaded demoni- 
 acal possession. 
 
 Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little village, 
 gathered round a chateau in a moat. The air was per- 
 fumed with hemp from neighbouring fields. At the 
 Golden Sheep we found excellent entertainment. Ger- 
 man shells from the siege of La Fere, Nilrnberg figures, 
 gold-fish in a bowl, and all manner of knick-knacks, 
 embellished the public room. The landlady was a stout, 
 plain, short-sighted, motherly body, with something not 
 
 85 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 far short of a genius for cookery. She had a guess of 
 her excellence herself. After every dish was sent in, she 
 would come and look on at the dinner for a while, with 
 puckered, blinking eyes. '"Cestbon, n'est-cepas ?'' she 
 would say; and, when she had received a proper an- 
 swer, she disappeared into the kitchen. That common 
 French dish, partridge and cabbages, became a new thing 
 in my eyes at the Golden Sheep; and many subsequent 
 dinners have bitterly disappointed me in consequence. 
 Sweet was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Mqy. 
 
 86 
 
LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 
 
 We lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for we 
 were fond of being philosophical, and scorned long 
 journeys and early starts on principle. The place, more- 
 over, invited to repose. People in elaborate shooting 
 costumes sallied from the chateau with guns and game- 
 bags ; and this was a pleasure in itself, to remain behind 
 while these elegant pleasure-seekers took the first of the 
 morning. In this way all the world may be an aristo- 
 crat, and play the duke among marquises, and the reign- 
 ing monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them 
 in tranquillity. An imperturbable demeanour comes from 
 perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or 
 frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their 
 own private pace, like a clock during a thunder-storm. 
 
 We made a very short day of it to La Fere; but the 
 dusk was falling- and a small rain had begun before we 
 stowed the boats. La Fere is a fortified town in a plain, 
 and has two belts of rampart. Between the first and 
 the second extends a region of waste land and cultivated 
 patches. Here and there along the wayside were posters 
 forbidding trespass in the name of military engineering. 
 At last a second gateway admitted us to the town itself. 
 Lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs of comfort- 
 
 87 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 able cookery came abroad upon the air. The town was 
 full of the military reserve, out for the French Autumn 
 manoeuvres, and the reservists walked speedily and wore 
 their formidable great-coats. It was a fine night to be 
 within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the 
 windows. 
 
 The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently congratulate 
 each other on the prospect, for we had been told there 
 was a capital inn at La Fere. Such a dinner as we were 
 going to eat! such beds as we were to sleep in! and all 
 the while the rain raining on houseless folk over all the 
 poplared country-side. It made our mouths water. 
 The inn bore the name of some woodland animal, stag, 
 or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I shall never forget 
 hov/ spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as 
 we drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not 
 by intention, but from the mere superfluity of fire and 
 candle in the house. A rattle of many dishes came to 
 our ears; we sighted a great field of tablecloth ; the 
 kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of 
 things to eat. 
 
 Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of 
 a hostelry, with all its furnaces in action and all its 
 dressers charged with viands, you are now to suppose 
 us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and- 
 bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his 
 arm. I do not believe I have a sound view of that 
 kitchen ; I saw it through a sort of glory, but it seemed 
 to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all 
 turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with 
 surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady, how- 
 ever; there she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry 
 
 88 
 
LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 
 
 woman, full of affairs. Her I asked politely — too po- 
 litely, thinks the Cigarette — if we could have beds, she 
 surveying us coldly from head to foot. 
 
 "You will find beds in the suburb," she remarked. 
 ** We are too busy for the like of you." 
 
 If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, 
 and order a bottle of wine, I felt sure we could put 
 things right; so said I, "If we cannot sleep, we may at 
 least dine," — and was for depositing my bag. 
 
 What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which 
 followed in the landlady's face ! She made a run at us 
 and stamped her foot. 
 
 "Out with you, — out of the door!" she screeched. 
 *' Sorte^! sorte:^^ ! sorte^ par la porte ! ' ' 
 
 I do not know how it happened, but next moment 
 we were out in the rain and darkness, and I was curs- 
 ing before the carriage entry like a disappointed mendi- 
 cant. Where were the boating men of Belgium ? where 
 the judge and his good wines ? and where the graces 
 of Origny ? Black, black was the night after the firelit 
 kitchen, but what was that to the blackness in our 
 heart ? This was not the first time that I have been re- 
 fused a lodging. Often and often have I planned what I 
 should do if such a misadventure happened to me again. 
 And nothing is easier to plan. But to put in execution, 
 with the heart boiling at the indignity ? Try it; try it 
 only once, and tell me what you did. 
 
 It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. 
 Six hours of police surveillance (such as I have had) or 
 one brutal rejection from an inn door change your views 
 upon the subject like a course of lectures. As long as 
 you keep in the upper regions, with all the world bow- 
 
 89 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 ing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very 
 handsome air; but once get under the wheels and you 
 wish society were at the devil. I will give most re- 
 spectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I will 
 offer them twopence for what remains of their morality. 
 
 For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or 
 the Hind, or whatever it was, I would have set the 
 temple of Diana on fire if it had been handy. There 
 was no crime complete enough to express my disap- 
 proval of human institutions. As for the Cigarette, I 
 never knew a man so altered. "We have been taken 
 for pedlars again," said he. '' Good God, what it must 
 be to be a pedlar in reality ! " He particularised a com- 
 plaint for every joint in the landlady's body. Timon 
 was a philanthropist alongside of him. And then, when 
 he was at the top of his maledictory bent, he would sud- 
 denly break away and begin whimperingly to commis- 
 erate the poor. " I hope to God,'' he said, — and I trust 
 the prayer was answered, — ''that I shall never be un- 
 civil to a pedlar." Was this the imperturbable Ciga- 
 rette ? This, this was he. Oh, change beyond report, 
 thought, or belief ! 
 
 Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads ; and the 
 windows grew brighter as the night increased in dark- 
 ness. We trudged in and out of La Fere streets ; we 
 saw shops, and private houses where people were copi- 
 ously dining; we saw stables where carters' nags had 
 plenty of fodder and clean straw; we saw no end of 
 reservists, who were very sorry for themselves this wet 
 night, I doubt not, and yearned for their country homes ; 
 but had they not each man his place in La Fere barracks ? 
 And we, what had we ? 
 
 90 
 
LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 
 
 There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. 
 People gave us directions, which we followed as best 
 we could, generally with the effect of bringing us out 
 again upon the scene of our disgrace. We were very- 
 sad people indeed, by the time we had gone all over 
 La Fere; and the Cigarette had already made up his 
 mind to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. 
 But right at the other end, the house next the town- 
 gate was full of light and bustle. '* Ba^in, aubergiste, 
 loge d pied" was the sign. ''A la Croix de Malte.'' 
 There were we received. 
 
 The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and 
 smoking ; and we were very glad indeed when the drums 
 and bugles began to go about the streets, and one and 
 all had to snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks. 
 
 Ba:{in was a tall man, running to fat; soft-spoken, 
 with a delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share 
 our wine; but he excused himself, having pledged re- 
 servists all day long. This was a very different type of 
 the workman-innkeeper from the bawling, disputatious 
 fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had 
 worked as a decorative painter in his youth. There 
 were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he 
 said. And if any one has read Zola's description of the 
 workman's marriage party visiting the Louvre they 
 would do well to have heard Ba:!(in by way of antidote. 
 He had delighted in the museums in his youth. "One 
 sees there little miracles of work," he said; "that is 
 what makes a good workman; it kindles a spark." 
 We asked him how he managed in La F^re. "I am 
 married," he said, "and I have my pretty children. 
 But frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night 
 
 9' 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 I pledge a pack of good-enough fellows who know 
 nothing." 
 
 It faired as the night went on, and the moon came 
 out of the clouds. We sat in front of the door, talking 
 softly with Baiin. At the guard-house opposite the 
 guard was being forever turned out, as trains of field 
 artillery kept clanking in out of the night or patrols of 
 horsemen trotted by in their cloaks. Madame Baiin 
 came out after a while; she was tired with her day's 
 work, 1 suppose; and she nestled up to her husband 
 and laid her head upon his breast. He had his arm 
 about her and kept gently patting her on the shoulder. 
 I think Baiin was right, and he was really married. Of 
 how few people can the same be said ! 
 
 Little did the Baims know how much they served 
 us. We were charged for candles, for food and drink, 
 and for the beds we slept in. But there was nothing 
 in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk; nor for the 
 pretty spectacle of their married life. And there was 
 yet another item uncharged. For these people's polite- 
 ness really set us up again in our own esteem. We 
 had a thirst for consideration ; the sense of insult was 
 still hot in our spirits ; and civil usage seemed to restore 
 us to our position in the world. 
 
 How little we pay our way in life! Although we 
 have our purses continually in our hand, the better part 
 of service goes still unrewarded. But I like to fancy 
 that a grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. Perhaps 
 the Basins knew how much I liked them ? perhaps they, 
 also, were healed of some slights by the thanks that I 
 gave them in my manner ? 
 
 92 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 
 
 Below La Fere the river runs through a piece of open 
 pastoral country; green, opulent, loved by breeders; 
 called the Golden Valley. In wide sweeps, and with a 
 swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of water 
 visits and makes green the fields. Kine, and horses, 
 and little humorous donkeys browse together in the 
 meadows, and come down in troops to the river-side to 
 drink. They make a strange feature in the landscape ; 
 above all when startled, and you see them galloping to 
 and fro, with their incongruous forms and faces. It 
 gives a feeling as of great, unfenced pampas, and the 
 herds of wandering nations. There were hills in the 
 distance upon either hand; and on one side, the river 
 sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy and 
 St. Gobain. 
 
 The artillery were practising at La Fere ; and soon the 
 cannon of heaven joined in that loud play. Two con- 
 tinents of cloud met and exchanged salvos overhead ; 
 while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and 
 clear air upon the hills. What with the guns and the 
 thunder, the herds were all frightened in the Golden 
 Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and 
 running to and fro in timorous indecision ; and when 
 
 93 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed 
 the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we could 
 hear their hoofs thundering abroad over the meadows. 
 It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And alto- 
 gether, as far as the ears are concerned, we had a very 
 rousing battle piece performed for our amusement. 
 
 At last, the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun 
 shone on the wet meadows ; the air was scented with 
 the breath of rejoicing trees and grass ; and the river kept 
 unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace. There was 
 a manufacturing district about Chauny ; and after that 
 the banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent coun- 
 try, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one 
 willow after another. Only here and there we passed 
 by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon 
 the bank would stare after us until we turned the cor- 
 ner. I daresay we continued to paddle in that child'** 
 dreams for many a night after. 
 
 Sun and shower alternated like day and night, mak 
 ing the hours longer by their variety. When the show- 
 ers were heavy I could feel each drop striking througl^ 
 my jersey to my warm skin ; and the accumulation of 
 small shocks put me nearly beside myself. I decided I 
 should buy a mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get 
 wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold 
 all over my body at the same instant of time made me 
 flail the water with my paddle like a madman. The 
 Cigarette was greatly amused by these ebullitions. It 
 gave him something else to look at besides clay banks 
 and willows. 
 
 All the time the river stole away like a thief in straight 
 places, or swung round corners with an eddy; the wil- 
 
 94 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 lows nodded and were undermined all day long; the 
 clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which had been so 
 many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to 
 have changed its fancy and be bent upon undoing its 
 performance. What a number of things a river does by 
 simply following Gravity in the innocence of its heart! 
 
NOYON CATHEDRAL 
 
 Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little 
 plain surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an 
 eminence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, 
 straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers. As we 
 got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble up- 
 hill one upon another, in the oddest disorder; but for all 
 their scrambling they did not attain above the knees of 
 the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all. 
 As the streets drew near to this presiding genius, through 
 the market-place under the Hotel de ViUe, they grew 
 emptier and more composed. Blank walls and shut- 
 tered windows were turned to the great edifice, and 
 grass grew on the white causeway. " Put off thy shoes 
 from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is 
 holy ground." The Hotel du Nord, nevertheless, lights 
 its secular tapers within a stone-cast of the church ; and 
 we had the superb east end before our eyes all morning 
 from the window of our bedroom. I have seldom looked 
 on the east end of a church with more complete sym- 
 pathy. As it flanges out in three wide terraces, and 
 settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop 
 of some great old battle-ship. Hollow-backed buttresses 
 •carry vases, which figure for the stern lanterns. There 
 
 96 
 
NOYON CATHEDRAL 
 
 is a roll in the ground, and the towers just appear above 
 the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were bow- 
 ing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it 
 might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the 
 next billow. At any moment a window might open, 
 and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat and pro- 
 ceed to take an observation. The old admirals sail 
 the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken 
 up, and live only in pictures ; but this, that was a church 
 before ever they were thought upon, is still a church, 
 and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise. The 
 cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things 
 for miles around ; and certainly they have both a grand 
 old age. 
 
 The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, 
 and showed us the five bells hanging in their loft. From 
 above the town was a tessellated pavement of roofs and 
 gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly traceable; 
 and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, 
 in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the tow- 
 ers of Chateau Coucy. 
 
 I find I never weary of great churches. It is my fa- 
 vourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never 
 so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing 
 as single and specious as a statue to the first glance, and 
 yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest 
 in detail. The height of spires cannot be taken by trigo- 
 nometry ; they measure absurdly short, but how tall they 
 are to the admiring eye! And where we have so many 
 elegant proportions, growing one out of the other, and 
 all together into one, it seems as if proportion tran- 
 scended itself and became something different and more 
 
 97 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 imposing. I could never fathom how a man dares to 
 lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. What is he to 
 say that will not be an anti-climax ? For though I have 
 heard a considerable variety of sermons, I never yet 
 heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral. 'T is 
 the best preacher itself, and preaches day and night; not 
 only telling you of man's art and aspirations in the past, 
 but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies ; or 
 rather, like all good preachers, it sets you preaching to 
 yourself,— and every man is his own doctor of divinity 
 in the last resort. 
 
 As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the after- 
 noon, the sweet, groaning thunder of the organ floated 
 out of the church like a summons. I was not averse, 
 liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two of the 
 play, but I could never rightly make out the nature of 
 the service I beheld. Four or five priests and as many 
 choristers were singing Miserere before the high altar 
 when 1 went in. There was no congregation but a few 
 old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pave- 
 ment. After a while a long train of young girls, walk- 
 ing two and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, 
 and all dressed in black with a white veil, came from 
 behind the altar and began to descend the nave; the 
 four first carrying a Virgin and Child upon a table. The 
 priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed 
 after, singing ** Ave Mary" as they went. In this or- 
 der they made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice 
 before me where I leaned against a pillar. The priest 
 who seemed of most consequence was a strange, down- 
 looking old man. He kept mumbling prayers with his 
 lips; but, as he looked upon me darkling, it did not 
 
 9^ 
 
NOYON CATHEDRAL 
 
 seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart. Two 
 others, who bore the burden of the chant, were stout, 
 brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, over- 
 fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled 
 forth *' Ave Mary " like a garrison catch. The little girls 
 were timid and grave. As they footed slowly up the 
 aisle, each one took a moment's glance at the English- 
 man; and the big nun who played marshal fairly stared 
 him out of countenance. As for the choristers, from first 
 to last they misbehaved as only boys can misbehave, 
 and cruelly marred the performance with their antics. 
 
 I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went 
 on. Indeed, it would be difficult not to understand the 
 Miserere, which I take to be the composition of an athe- 
 ist. If it ever be a good thing to take such despondency 
 to heart, the Miserere is the right music and a cathedral 
 a fit scene. So far I am at one with the Catholics, — 
 an odd name for them, after all! But why, in God's 
 name, these holiday choristers ? why these priests who 
 steal wandering looks about the congregation while they 
 feign to be at prayer } why this fat nun, who rudely 
 arranges her procession and shakes delinquent virgins 
 by the elbow ? why this spitting, and snuffing, and 
 forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one little mis- 
 adventures that disturb a frame of mind, laboriously 
 edified with chants and organings } In any play-house 
 reverend fathers may see what can be done with a little 
 art, and how, to move high sentiments, it is necessary 
 to drill the supernumeraries and have every stool in its 
 proper place. 
 
 One other circumstance distressed me. I could bear 
 a Miserere myself, having had a good deal of open-air 
 
 99 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 exercise of late; but I wished the old people somewhere 
 else. It was neither the right sort of music nor the right 
 sort of divinity for men and women who have come 
 through most accidents by this time, and probably have 
 an opinion of their own upon the tragic element in life. 
 A person up in years can generally do his own Miserere 
 for himself ; although I notice that such an one often 
 prefers Jubilate Deo for his ordinary singing. On the 
 whole, the most religious exercise for the aged is prob- 
 ably to recall their own experience; so many friends 
 dead, so many hopes disappointed, so many slips and 
 stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling 
 providences ; there is surely the matter of a very elo- 
 quent sermon in all this. 
 
 On the whole I was greatly solemnised. In the little pic- 
 torial map of our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy 
 still preserves, and sometimes unrolls for the amusement 
 of odd moments, Noyon cathedral figures on a most 
 preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as the 
 department. I can still see the faces of the priests as if 
 they were at my elbow, and hear Ave Maria, ora pro 
 nobis sounding through the church. All Noyon is blotted 
 out for me by these superior memories; and I do not 
 care to say more about the place. It was but a stack of 
 brown roofs at the best, where I believe people live very 
 reputably in a quiet way; but the shadow of the church 
 falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five bells are 
 heard in all quarters, telling that the organ has begun. 
 If ever I join the church of Rome I shall stipulate to be 
 Bishop of Noyon on the Oise. 
 
 lOO 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 TO COMPIEGNE 
 
 The most patient people grow weary at last with being 
 continually wetted with rain ; except, of course, in the 
 Scotch Highlands, where there are not enough fine in- 
 tervals to point the difference. That was like to be our 
 case the day we left Noyon. I remember nothing of 
 the voyage; it was nothing but clay banks, and wil- 
 lows, and rain ; incessant, pitiless, beating rain ; until we 
 stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimpre:^, where the 
 canal ran very near the river. We were so sadly 
 drenched that the landlady lit a few sticks in the chim- 
 ney for our comfort ; there we sat in a steam of vapour 
 lamenting our concerns. The husband donned a game- 
 bag and strode out to shoot ; the wife sat in a far corner 
 watching us. I think we were worth looking at. We 
 grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere ; we forecast 
 other La Feres in the future, — although things went 
 better with the Cigarette for spokesman ; he had more 
 aplomb altogether than I ; and a dull, positive way of 
 approaching a landlady that carried off the india-rubber 
 bags. Talking of La Fere put us talking of the reservists. 
 
 ** Reservery," said he, "seems a pretty mean way to 
 spend one's autumn holiday." 
 
 "About as mean," returned I, dejectedly, "as ca- 
 noeing." 
 
 lOI 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 ''These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?" asked 
 the landlady, with unconscious irony. 
 
 It was too much. The scales fell from our eyes. An- 
 other wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats 
 into the train. 
 
 The weather took the hint. That was our last wetting. 
 The afternoon faired up; grand clouds still voyaged in 
 the sky, but now singly, and with a depth of blue 
 around their path ; and a sunset, in the daintiest rose 
 and gold, inaugurated a thick night of stars and a month 
 of unbroken weather. At the same time, the river began 
 to give us a better outlook into the country. The banks 
 were not so high, the willows disappeared from along 
 the margin, and pleasant hills stood all along its course 
 and marked their profile on the sky. 
 
 In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, 
 began to discharge its water houses on the Oise; so 
 that we had no lack of company to fear. Here were all 
 our own friends ; the Deo Gratias of Condd and the Four 
 Sons of Aymon journeyed cheerily down the stream 
 along with us; we exchanged waterside pleasantries 
 with the steersman perched among the lumber, or the 
 driver hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the 
 children came and looked over the side as we paddled 
 by. We had never known all this while how much we 
 missed them ; but it gave us a fillip to see the smoke from 
 their chimneys. 
 
 A little below this junction we made another meeting 
 of yet more account. For there we were joined by 
 the Aisne, already a far-travelled river and fresh out of 
 Champagne. Here ended the adolescence of the Oise; this 
 was his marriage day ; thenceforward he had a stately, 
 
 102 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 brimming march, conscious of his own dignity and 
 sundry dams. He became a tranquil feature in the scene. 
 The trees and towns saw themselves in him, as in a 
 mirror. He carried the canoes lightly on his broad 
 breast; there was no need to work hard against an eddy, 
 but idleness became the order of the day, and mere 
 straightforward dipping of the paddle, now on this side, 
 now on that, without intelligence or effort. Truly we 
 were coming into halcyon weather upon all accounts, 
 and were floated towards the sea like gentlemen. 
 
 We made Compiegne as the sun was going down : a 
 fine profile of a town above the river. Over the bridge 
 a regiment was parading to the drum. People loitered 
 on the quay, some fishing, some looking idly at the 
 stream. And as the two boats shot in along the water, 
 we could see them pointing them out and speaking one 
 to another. We landed at a floating lavatory, where the 
 washerwomen were still beating the clothes. 
 
 103 
 
AT COMPI^GNE 
 
 We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where 
 nobody observed our presence. 
 
 Reservery and general militarismus (as the Germans 
 call it) was rampant. A camp of conical white tents 
 without the town looked like a leaf out of a picture Bible ; 
 sword-belts decorated the walls of the cafes, and the 
 streets kept sounding all day long with military music. 
 It was not possible to be an Englishman and avoid a 
 feeling of elation ; for the men who followed the drums 
 were small and walked shabbily. Each man inclined at 
 his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience as he 
 went. There was nothing of the superb gait with which 
 a regiment of tall Highlanders moves behind its music, 
 solemn and inevitable, like a natural phenomenon. 
 Who, that has seen it, can forget the drum-major pacing 
 in front, the drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swing- 
 ing plaids, the strange, elastic rhythm of the whole 
 regiment footing it in time, and the bang of the drum 
 when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes taking up 
 the martial story in their place ? 
 
 A girl at school in France began to describe one of 
 our regiments on parade to her French schoolmates, 
 and as she went on, she told me the recollection grew 
 
 104 
 
AT COMPIEGNE 
 
 SO vivid, she became so proud to be the country-woman 
 of such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another country, 
 that her voice failed her and she burst into tears. I 
 have never forgotten that girl, and I think she very 
 nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young lady, 
 with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an 
 insult. She may rest assured of one thing, although she 
 never should marry a heroic general, never see any great 
 or immediate result of her life, she will not have lived 
 in vain for her native land. 
 
 But though French soldiers show to ill-advantage on 
 parade, on the march they are gay, alert, and willing, 
 like a troop of fox-hunters. I remember once seeing a 
 company pass through the forest of Fontainebleau, on 
 the Chailly road, between the Bas Breaii and the Reine 
 Blanche. One fellow walked a little before the rest, and 
 sang a loud, audacious marching song. The rest be- 
 stirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in time. 
 A young officer on horseback had hard ado to keep his 
 countenance at the words. You never saw anything so 
 cheerful and spontaneous as their gait; school-boys do 
 not look more eagerly at hare and hounds; and you 
 would have thought it impossible to tire such willing 
 marchers. 
 
 My great delight in Compiegne was the town hall. I 
 doted upon the town hall. It is a monument of Gothic 
 insecurity, all turreted, and gargoyled, and slashed, and 
 bedizened with half a score of architectural fancies. 
 Some of the niches are gilt and painted; and in a great 
 square panel in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground, 
 Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip, 
 and head thrown back. There is royal arrogance in 
 
 105 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 every line of him ; the stirrupped foot projects insolently 
 from the frame; the eye is hard and proud; the very 
 horse seems to be treading with gratification over pros- 
 trate serfs, and to have the breath of the trumpet in his 
 nostrils. So rides forever, on the front of the town hall, 
 the good king Louis XII., the father of his people. 
 
 Over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, appears 
 the dial of a clock ; and high above that, three little me- 
 chanical figures, each one with a hammer in his hand, 
 whose business it is to chime out the hours, and halves, 
 and quarters for the burgesses of Compiegne. The cen- 
 tre figure has a gilt breastplate ; the two others wear gilt 
 trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping 
 hats like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches they turn 
 their heads and look knowingly one to the other; and 
 then, kling go the three hammers on three little bells 
 below. The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from 
 the interior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest 
 from their labours with contentment. 
 
 I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their ma- 
 noeuvres, and took good care to miss as few performances 
 as possible; and I found that even the Cigarette, while 
 he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was more or 
 less a devotee himself. There is something highly ab- 
 surd in the exposition of such toys to the outrages of 
 winter on a housetop. They would be more in keep- 
 ing in a glass case before a Nilrnberg clock. Above all, 
 at night, when the children are abed, and even grown 
 people are snoring under quilts, does it not seem imper- 
 tinent to leave these gingerbread figures winking and 
 tinkling to the stars and the rolling moon } The gar- 
 goyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads ; fitly 
 
 !06 
 
AT COMPIEGNE 
 
 enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a 
 centurion in an old German print of the Via Dolorosa; 
 but the toys should be put away in a box among some 
 cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are abroad 
 again to be amused. 
 
 In Compiegne post-ofFice a great packet of letters 
 awaited us ; and the authorities were, for this occasion 
 only, so polite as to hand them over upon application. 
 
 In some way, our journey may be said to end with 
 this letter-bag at Compiegne. The spell was broken. 
 We had partly come home from that moment. 
 
 No one should have any correspondence on a journey; 
 it is bad enough to have to write; but the receipt of 
 letters is the death of all holiday feeling. 
 
 ''Out of my country and myself I go." I wish to 
 take a dive among new conditions for a while, as into 
 another element. I have nothing to do with my friends 
 or my affections for the time ; when I came away, 1 left 
 my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward with 
 portmanteau to await me at my destination. After my 
 journey is over, I shall not fail to read your admirable 
 letters with the attention they deserve. But I have paid 
 all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, 
 for no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you 
 keep me at home with your perpetual communications. 
 You tug the string, and I feel that I am a tethered bird. 
 You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations 
 that 1 came away to avoid. There is no discharge in 
 the war of life, I am well aware ; but shall there not be 
 so much as a week's furlough } 
 
 We were up by six, the day we were to leave. They 
 had taken so little note of us that I hardly thought they 
 
 107 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 would have condescended on a bill. But they did, w^ith 
 some smart particulars, too; and we paid in a civilized 
 manner to an uninterested clerk, and went out of that 
 hotel, with the india-rubber bags, unremarked. No one 
 cared to know about us. It is not possible to rise be- 
 fore a village; but Compiegne was so grown a town 
 that it took its ease in the morning ; and we were up and 
 away while it was still in dressing-gown and slippers. 
 The streets were left to people washing door-steps; no- 
 body was in full dress but the cavaliers upon the town 
 hall ; they were all washed with dew, spruce in their 
 gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense of profes- 
 sional responsibility. Kling went they on the bells for 
 the half past six, as we went by. I took it kind of 
 them to make me this parting compliment; they never 
 were in better form, not even at noon upon a Sunday. 
 
 There was no one to see us off but the early washer- 
 women, — early and late, — who were already beating 
 the linen in their floating lavatory on the river. They 
 were very merry and matutinal in their ways ; plunged 
 their arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock. 
 It would be dispiriting to me, this early beginning and 
 first cold dabble of a most dispiriting day's work. But 
 I believe they would have been as unwilling to change 
 days with us as we could be to change with them. 
 They crowded to the door to watch us paddle away into 
 the thin sunny mists upon the river; and shouted 
 heartily after us till we were through the bridge. 
 
 1 08 
 
CHANGED TIMES 
 
 There is a sense in which those mists never rose from 
 off our journey ; and from that time forth they lie very 
 densely in my note-book. As long as the Oise was a 
 small, rural river it took us near by people's doors, and 
 we could hold a conversation with natives in the ripa- 
 rian fields. But now that it had grown so wide, the life 
 along shore passed us by at a distance. It was the same 
 difference as between a great public highway and a 
 country bypath that wanders in and out of cottage gar- 
 dens. We now lay in towns, where nobody troubled 
 us with questions; we had floated into civilized life, 
 where people pass without salutation. In sparsely in- 
 habited places we make all we can of each encounter; 
 but when it comes to a city, we keep to ourselves, and 
 never speak unless we have trodden on a man's toes. 
 In these waters we were no longer strange birds, and 
 nobody supposed we had travelled farther than from the 
 last town. I remember, when we came into L'Isle 
 Adam, for instance, how we met dozens of pleasure- 
 boats outing it for the afternoon, and there was nothing 
 to distinguish the true voyager from the amateur, ex- 
 cept, perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail. The com- 
 pany in one boat actually thought they recognised me 
 
 109 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 for a neighbour. Was there ever anything more wound- 
 ing ? All the romance had come down to that. Now, 
 on the upper Oise, where nothing sailed, as a general 
 thing, but fish, a pair of canoeists could not be thus vul- 
 garly explained away ; we were strange and picturesque 
 intruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort of 
 light and passing intimacy all along our route. There is 
 nothing but tit for tat in this world, though sometimes it 
 be a little difficult to trace : for the scores are older than 
 we ourselves, and there has never yet been a settling- 
 day since things were. You get entertainment pretty 
 much in proportion as you give. As long as we were 
 a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and followed 
 like a quack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of 
 amusement in return ; but as soon as we sank into com- 
 monplace ourselves, all whom we met were similarly 
 disenchanted. And here is one reason of a dozen why 
 the world is dull to dull persons. 
 
 In our earlier adventures there was generally some- 
 thing to do, and that quickened us. Even the showers 
 of rain had a revivifying effect, and shook up the brain 
 from torpor. But now, when the river no longer ran in 
 a proper sense, only glided seaward with an even, out- 
 right, but imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled 
 upon us day after day without variety, we began to slip 
 into that golden doze of the mind which follows upon 
 much exercise in the open air. I have stupefied myself 
 in this way more than once: indeed, I dearly love the 
 feeling ; but I never had it to the same degree as when 
 paddling down the Oise. It was the apotheosis of stu- 
 pidity. 
 
 We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes, when ! 
 no 
 
CHANGED TIMES 
 
 found a new paper, I took a particular pleasure in read- 
 ing a single number of the current novel; but I never 
 could bear more than three instalments; and even the 
 second was a disappointment. As soon as the tale be- 
 came in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit in my 
 eyes ; only a single scene, or, as is the way with these 
 feuilletons, half a scene, without antecedent or conse- 
 quence, like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing 
 my interest. The less I saw of the novel the better I 
 liked it : a pregnant reflection. But for the most part, 
 as I said, we neither of us read anything in the world, 
 and employed the very little while we were awake be- 
 tween bed and dinner in poring upon maps. I have 
 always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas 
 with the greatest enjoyment. The names of places are 
 singularly inviting ; the contour of coasts and rivers is 
 enthralling to the eye; and to hit in a map upon some 
 place you have heard of before makes history a new 
 possession. But we thumbed our charts, on those 
 evenings, with the blankest unconcern. We cared not 
 a fraction for this place or that. We stared at the sheet 
 as children listen to their rattle, and read the names of 
 towns or villages to forget them again at once. We 
 had no romance in the matter; there was nobody so 
 fancy-free. If you had taken the maps away while we 
 were studying them most intently, it is a fair bet whether 
 we might not have continued to study the table with 
 the same delight. 
 
 About one thing we were mightily taken up, and 
 that was eating. I think I made a god of my belly. I 
 remember dwelling in imagination upon this or that 
 dish till my mouth watered ; and long before we got 
 
 II I 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 in for the night my appetite was a clamant, instant an- 
 noyance. Sometimes we paddled alongside for a while 
 and whetted each other with gastronomical fancies as 
 we went. Cake and sherry, a homely refection, but 
 not within reach upon the Oise, trotted through my 
 head for many a mile; and once, as we were approach- 
 ing Verherie, the Cigarette brought my heart into my 
 mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne. 
 
 I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is 
 played in life by eating and drinking. The appetite is 
 so imperious that we can stomach the least interesting 
 viands, and pass off a dinner hour thankfully enough on 
 bread and water; just as there are men who must read 
 something, if it were only ^radshaw' s Guide. But 
 there is a romance about the matter, after all. Probably 
 the table has more devotees than love; and I am sure 
 that food is much more generally entertaining than 
 scenery. Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would 
 say, that you are any the less immortal for that } The 
 true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. To 
 detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human 
 perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sun- 
 set. 
 
 Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at the 
 proper inclination, now right, now left; to keep the head 
 down stream ; to empty the little pool that gathered in 
 the lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes against the 
 glittering sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and 
 again to pass below the whistling tow-rope of the Deo 
 Gratias of Conde, or Four Sons of Aymon, — there was 
 not much art in that; certainly silly muscles managed 
 it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile the brain 
 
CHANGED TIMES 
 
 had a whole holiday, and went to sleep. We took in 
 at a glance the larger features of the scene, and beheld, 
 with half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling washer- 
 women on the bank. Now and again we might be half 
 wakened by some church spire, by a leaping fish, or by 
 a trail of river grass that clung about the paddle and had 
 to be plucked off and thrown away. But these luminous 
 intervals were only partially luminous. A little more of 
 us was called into action, but never the whole. The 
 central bureau of nerves, what in some moods we call 
 Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without disturbance, like 
 a Government Office. The great wheels of intelligence 
 turned idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no 
 grist. I have gone on for half an hour at a time, count- 
 ing my strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I flatter 
 myself the beasts that perish could not underbid that, as 
 a low form of consciousness. And what a pleasure it 
 was ! What a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about ! 
 There is nothing captious about a man who has attained 
 to this, the one possible apotheosis in life, the Apothe- 
 osis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and 
 longevous like a tree. 
 
 There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics 
 which accompanied what 1 may call the depth, if I must 
 not call it the intensity, of my abstraction. What phi- 
 losophers call me and not me, ego and non ego, preoc- 
 cupied me whether 1 would or no. There was less me 
 and more not me than 1 was accustomed to expect. I 
 looked on upon somebody else, who managed the pad- 
 dling; I was aware of somebody else's feet against the 
 stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more inti- 
 mate relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the 
 
 113 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 river banks. Nor this alone : something inside my mind, 
 a part of my brain, a province of my proper being, had 
 thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or perhaps 
 for the somebody else who did the paddling. I had 
 dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner of myself. 
 I was isolated in my own skull. Thoughts presented 
 themselves unbidden ; they were not my thoughts, they 
 were plainly some one else's; and I considered them 
 like a part of the landscape. I take it, in short, that I 
 was about as near Nirvana as would be convenient in 
 practical life ; and, if this be so, I make the Buddhists 
 my sincere compliments; 't is an agreeable state, not 
 very consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly prof- 
 itable in a money point of view, but very calm, golden, 
 and incurious, and one that sets a man superior to 
 alarms. It may be best figured by supposing yourself 
 to get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it. I 
 have a notion that open-air laborers must spend a large 
 portion of their days in this ecstatic stupor, which ex- 
 plains their high composure and endurance. A pity to go 
 to the expense of laudanum when here is a better para- 
 dise for nothing ! 
 
 This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voy- 
 age, take it all in all. It was the farthest piece of travel 
 accomplished. Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths 
 of language that I despair of getting the reader into 
 sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my 
 condition ; when ideas came and went like motes in a 
 sunbeam ; when trees and church spires along the bank 
 surged up from time to time into my notice, like solid 
 objects through a rolling cloud-land; when the rhyth- 
 mical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a 
 
 114 
 
CHANGED TIMES 
 
 cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep ; when a piece of 
 mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, 
 and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the object 
 of pleased consideration ; and all the time, with the river 
 running and the shores changing upon either hand, I 
 kept counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds, 
 the happiest animal in France, '^ 
 
 1*3 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 CHURCH INTERIORS 
 
 We made our first stage below Compi^gne to Pont 
 Sainte Maxence. I was abroad a little after six the next 
 morning. The air was biting and smelt of frost. In an 
 open place a score of women wrangled together over 
 the day's market; and the noise of their negotiation 
 sounded thin and querulous, like that of sparrows on a 
 winter's morning. The rare passengers blew into their 
 hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the 
 blood agog. The streets were full of icy shadow, al- 
 though the chimneys were smoking overhead in golden 
 sunshine. If you wake early enough at this season of 
 the year, you may get up in December to break your 
 fast in June, 
 
 I found my way to the church, for there is always 
 something to see about a church, whether living wor- 
 shippers or dead men's tombs ; you find there the dead- 
 liest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where 
 it is not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out 
 some contemporary gossip. It was scarcely so cold in 
 the church as it was without, but it looked colder. The 
 white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the 
 tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn 
 than usual in the solitude and the bleak air. Two priests 
 
 ii6 
 
DOWN THE OlSE 
 
 sat in the chancel reading and waiting penitents ; and out 
 in the nave one very old woman was engaged in her de- 
 votions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her 
 beads when healthy young people were breathing in 
 their palms and slapping their chest; but though this 
 concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by the nature 
 of her exercises. She went from chair to chair, from 
 altar to altar, circumnavigating the church. To each 
 shrine she dedicated an equal number of beads and an 
 equal length of time. Like a prudent capitalist with a 
 somewhat cynical view of the commercial prospect, she 
 desired to place her supplications in a great variety of 
 heavenly securities. She would risk nothing on the 
 credit of any single intercessor. Out of the whole 
 company of saints and angels, not one but was to sup- 
 pose himself her champion elect against the Great As- 
 sizes! 1 could only think of it as a dull, transparent 
 jugglery, based upon unconscious unbelief. 
 
 She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no 
 more than bone and parchment, curiously put together. 
 Her eyes, with which she interrogated mine, were va- 
 cant of sense. It depends on what you call seeing, 
 whether you might not call her blind. Perhaps she had 
 known love: perhaps borne children, suckled them, and 
 given them pet names. But now that was all gone by, 
 and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best 
 she could do with her mornings was to come up here 
 into the cold church and juggle for a slice of heaven. It 
 was not without a gulp that I escaped into the streets 
 and the keen morning air. Morning ? why, how tired 
 of it she would be before night! and if she did not sleep, 
 how then ? It is fortunate that not many of us are 
 
 117 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 brought up publicly to justify our lives at the bar of three- 
 score years and ten ; fortunate that such a number are 
 knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the 
 flower of their years, and go away to suffer for their 
 follies in private somewhere else. Otherwise, between 
 sick children and discontented old folk, we might be 
 put out of all conceit of life. 
 
 I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's 
 paddle : the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely. But 
 I was soon in the seventh heaven of stupidity ; and knew 
 nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe, while 
 I was counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds. 
 I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember the 
 hundreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; 
 but the terror was chimerical, they went out of my 
 mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the 
 man in the moon about my only occupation. 
 
 At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we, left the ca- 
 noes in another floating lavatory, which, as it was high 
 noon, was packed with washerwomen, red-handed and 
 loud-voiced ; and they and their broad jokes are about 
 &11 1 remember of the place. I could look up my history 
 books, if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or 
 two; for it figured rather largely in the English wars. 
 But I prefer to mention a girls' boarding-school, which 
 had an interest for us because it was a girls' boarding- 
 school, and because we imagined we had rather an in- 
 terest for it. At least, there were the girls about the 
 garden; and here were we on the river; and there was 
 more than one handkerchief waved as we went by. It 
 caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should 
 have wearied and despised each other, these girls and I, 
 
DOWN THE OlSE 
 
 if we had been introduced at a croquet party ! But this 
 is a fashion I love : to kiss the hand or wave a handker- 
 chief to people I shall never see again, to play with pos- 
 sibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It 
 gives the traveller a jog, reminds him that he is not a 
 traveller everywhere, and that his journey is no more 
 than a siesta by the way on the real march of life. 
 
 The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the 
 inside, splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, 
 and picked out with medallions of the Dolorom Way. 
 But there was one oddity, in the way of an ex voto, 
 which pleased me hugely : a faithful model of a canal 
 boat, swung from the vault, with a written aspiration 
 that God should conduct the Saint Nicholas of Creil to 
 a good haven. The thing was neatly executed, and 
 would have made the delight of a party of boys on the 
 water-side. But what tickled me was the gravity of the 
 peril to be conjured. You might hang up the model of 
 a sea-going ship, and welcome: one that is to plough 
 a furrow round the world, and visit the tropic or the 
 frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle 
 and a mass. But the Saint Nicholas of Cm/, which 
 was to be tugged for some ten years by patient draught 
 horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chattering 
 overhead, and the skipper whistling at the tiller; which 
 was to do all its errands in green inland places, and 
 never got out of sight of a village belfry in all its cruis- 
 ing; why, you would have thought if anything could 
 be done without the intervention of Providence, it would 
 be that! But perhaps the skipper was a humourist: or 
 perhaps a prophet, reminding people of the seriousness 
 of life by this preposterous token. 
 
 119 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 At Creily as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite 
 saint on the score of punctuality. Day and hour can be 
 specified ; and grateful people do not fail to specify them 
 on a votive tablet, when prayers have been punctually and 
 neatly answered. Whenever time is a consideration, 
 Saint Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took a sort 
 of pleasure in observing the vogue he had in France, 
 for the good man plays a very small part in my religion 
 at home. Yet I could not help fearing that, where the 
 saint is so much commended for exactitude, he will be 
 expected to be very grateful for his tablet. 
 
 This is foolishness to us Protestants ; and not of great 
 importance any way. Whether people's gratitude for 
 the good gifts that come to them be wisely conceived 
 or dutifully expressed is a secondary matter, after all, so 
 long as they feel gratitude. The true ignorance is when 
 a man does not know that he has received a good gift, 
 or begins to imagine that he has got it for himself. The 
 self-made man is the funniest windbag after all ! There 
 is a marked difference between decreeing light in chaos, 
 and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlour with 
 a box of patent matches ; and, do what we will, there 
 is always something made to our hand, if it were only 
 our fingers. 
 
 But there was something worse than foolishness pla- 
 carded in Creil Church. The Association of the Living Ro- 
 sary (of which I had never previously heard) is responsible 
 for that. This association was founded, according to the 
 printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Six- 
 teenth, on the 17th oi January, 1832: according to a 
 colored bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, some 
 time or other, by the Virgin giving one rosary to Saint 
 
DOWN THE OISE 
 
 Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving another to Saint 
 Catherine of Sienna. Pope Gregory is not so imposing, 
 but he is nearer hand. I could not distinctly make out 
 whether the association was entirely devotional, or had 
 an eye to good works ; at least it is highly organised : 
 the names of fourteen matrons and misses were filled in 
 for each week of the month as associates, with one 
 other, generally a married woman, at the top for Zela- 
 trice, the choragus of the band. Indulgences, plenary 
 And partial, follow on the performance of the duties of 
 the association. "The partial indulgences are attached 
 to the recitation of the rosary." On ''the recitation of 
 the rt(\\i\xt6. di^aine," a. partial indulgence promptly fol- 
 lows. When people serve the kingdom of Heaven with 
 a pass-book in their hands, I should always be afraid 
 lest they should carry the same commercial spirit into 
 their dealings with their fellow-men, which would make 
 a sad and sordid business of this life. 
 
 There is one more article, however, of happier import. 
 ''All these indulgences," it appeared, "are applicable to 
 souls in purgatory." For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, 
 apply them all to the souls in purgatory without delay ! 
 Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring 
 to serve his country out of unmixed love. Suppose you 
 were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if 
 the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some 
 souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none 
 the worse either here or hereafter. 
 
 I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, 
 whether a Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to 
 understand these signs, and do them what justice they 
 deserve ; and I cannot help answering that he is not. 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 They cannot look so merely ugly and mean to the faith- 
 ful as they do to me. I see that as clearly as a proposi- 
 tion in Euclid. For these believers are neither weak 
 nor wicked. They can put up their tablet commending 
 Saint Joseph for his despatch as if he were still a village 
 carpenter; they can "recite the required di^aine,'' and 
 metaphorically pocket the indulgences as if they had 
 done a job for heaven ; and then they can go out and 
 look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing 
 by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, 
 which are themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers 
 greater than the Oise, I see it as plainly, I say, as a 
 proposition in Euclid, that my Protestant mind has 
 missed the point, and that there goes with these defor- 
 mities some higher and more religious spirit than I 
 dream. 
 
 I wonder if other people would make the same allow- 
 ances for me } Like the ladies of Creil, having recited 
 my rosary of toleration, I look for my indulgence on the 
 spot. 
 
 122 
 
pr6cy and the marionettes 
 
 We made Precy about sundown. The plain is rich 
 with tufts of poplar. In a wide, luminous curve the 
 Oise lay under the hillside. A faint mist began to rise 
 and confound the different distances together. There 
 was not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in 
 some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a cart 
 down the long road that descends the hill. The villas 
 in their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed 
 to have been deserted the day before ; and 1 felt inclined 
 to walk discreetly as one feels in a silent forest. All of 
 a sudden we came round a corner, and there, in a little 
 green round the church, was a bevy of girls in Parisian 
 costumes playing croquet. Their laughter and the hol- 
 low sound of ball and mallet made a cheery stir in the 
 neighbourhood ; and the look of these slim figures, all 
 corseted and ribboned, produced an answerable dis- 
 turbance in our hearts. We were within sniff of Paris^ 
 it seemed. And here were females of our own species 
 playing croquet, just as if Pr^cy had been a place in real 
 life instead of a stage in the fairy-land of travel. For, 
 to be frank, the peasant-woman is scarcely to be counted 
 as a woman at all, and after having passed by such a 
 succession of people in petticoats digging, and hoeing, 
 
 123 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 and making dinner, this company of coquettes under 
 arms made quite a surprising feature in the landscape, 
 and convinced us at once of being fallible males. 
 
 The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. Not 
 even in Scotland have I found worse fare. It was kept 
 by a brother and sister, neither of whom was out of their 
 teens. The sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us ; 
 and the brother, who had been tippling, came in and 
 brought with him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we 
 ate. We found pieces of loo-warm pork among the 
 salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in the 
 ragout. The butcher entertained us with pictures of 
 Parisian life, with which he professed himself well ac- 
 quainted ; the brother sitting the while on the edge of 
 the billiard table, toppling precariously, and sucking the 
 stump of a cigar. In the midst of these diversions bang 
 went a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began 
 issuing a proclamation. It was a man with marionettes 
 announcing a performance for that evening. 
 
 He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on 
 another part of the girls' croquet green, under one of 
 those open sheds which are so common in France to 
 shelter markets ; and he and his wife, by the time we 
 strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the 
 audience. 
 
 It was the most absurd contention. The show-peo- 
 ple had set out a certain number of benches ; and all who 
 sat upon them were to pay a couple of som for the ac- 
 commodation. They were always quite full — a bum- 
 per house — as long as nothing was going forward ; but 
 let the show-woman appear with an eye to a collection, 
 and at the first rattle of the tambourine the audience 
 
 124 
 
PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 
 
 slipped off the seats and stood round on the outside, 
 with their hands in their pockets. It certainly would 
 have tried an angel's temper. The showman roared 
 from the proscenium ; he had been all over France, and 
 nowhere, nowhere, **not even on the borders of Ger- 
 many/' had he met with such misconduct. Such 
 thieves, and rogues, and rascals as he called them ! And 
 now and again the wife issued on another round, and 
 added her shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked here, 
 as elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind 
 in the material of insult. The audience laughed in high 
 good-humour over the man's declamations; but they 
 bridled and cried aloud under the woman's pungent sal- 
 lies. She picked out the sore points. She had the honour 
 of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her an- 
 grily out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort 
 for their trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, who 
 had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and in- 
 dignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the 
 impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as the 
 show-woman caught a whisper of this she was down upon 
 them with a swoop ; if mesdames could persuade their 
 neighbours to act with common honesty, the mounte- 
 banks, she assured them, would be polite enough ; mes- 
 dames had probably had their bowl of soup, and, per- 
 haps, a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks, 
 also, had a taste for soup, and did not choose to have 
 their little earnings stolen from them before their eyes. 
 Once, things came as far as a brief personal encounter 
 between the showman and some lads, in which the 
 former went down as readily as one of his own mario- 
 nettes to a peal of jeering laughter. 
 
 125 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I 
 am pretty well acquainted with the ways of French 
 strollers, more or less artistic; and have always found 
 them singularly pleasing. Any stroller must be dear to 
 the right-thinking heart; if it were only as a living pro- 
 test against offices and the mercantile spirit, and as 
 something to remind us that life is not by necessity the 
 kind of thing we generally make it. Even a German 
 band, if you see it leaving town in the early morning 
 for a campaign in country places, among trees and mea- 
 dows, has a romantic flavour for the imagination. There 
 is nobody under thirty so dead but his heart will stir a 
 little at sight of a gypsies' camp. ** We are not cotton- 
 spinners all"; or, at least, not all through. There is 
 some life in humanity yet; and youth will now and 
 again find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and 
 throw up a situation to go strolling with a knapsack. 
 
 An Englishman has always special facilities for inter- 
 course with French gymnasts ; for England is the natural 
 home of gymnasts. This or that fellow, in his tights 
 and spangles, is sure to know a word or two of English, 
 to have drunk English aff-n-aff, and, perhaps, performed 
 in an English music hall. He is a countryman of mine 
 by profession. He leaps like the Belgian boating-men 
 to the notion that 1 must be an athlete myself 
 
 But the gymnast is not my favourite ; he has little or 
 no tincture of the artist in his composition ; his soul is 
 small and pedestrian, for the most part, since his pro- 
 fession makes no call upon it, and does not accustom 
 him to high ideas. But if a man is only so much 
 of an actor that he can stumble through a farce, he is 
 made free of a new order of thoughts. He has some- 
 
 126 
 
PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 
 
 thing else to think about beside the money-box. He 
 has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more 
 importance, he has an aim before him that he can 
 never quite attain. He has gone upon a pilgrimage 
 that will last him his life long, because there is no 
 end to it short of perfection. He will better himself 
 a little day by day; or, even if he has given up the 
 attempt, he will always remember that once upon a 
 time he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a 
 time he fell in love with a star. *"T is better to have 
 loved and lost. " Although the moon should have nothing 
 to say to Endymion, although he should settle down 
 with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would 
 move with a better grace and cherish higher thoughts 
 to the end } The louts he meets at church never had a 
 fancy above Audrey's snood ; but there is a reminiscence 
 in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it fresh and 
 haughty. 
 
 To be even one of the outskirters of art leaves a fine 
 stamp on a man's countenance. I remember once din- 
 ing with a party in the inn at Chateau Landon, Most 
 of them were unmistakable bagmen ; others well-to-do 
 peasantry; but there was one young fellow in a blouse, 
 whose face stood out from among the rest surprisingly. 
 It looked more finished ; more of the spirit looked out 
 through it; it had a living, expressive air, and you could 
 see that his eyes took things in. My companion and I 
 wondered greatly who and what he could be. It was 
 fair time in Chdteau Landon, and when we went along 
 to the booths we had our question answered ; for there 
 was our friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper 
 to. He was a wandering violinist. 
 
 127 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 A troop of strollers once came to the inn where 
 I was staying, in the department of Seine et Marne. 
 There were a father and mother; two daughters, brazen, 
 blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without an idea 
 of how to set about either; and a dark young man, like 
 a tutor, a recalcitrant house-painter, who sang and acted 
 not amiss. The mother was the genius of the party, so 
 far as genius can be spoken of with regard to such a 
 pack of incompetent humbugs; and her husband could 
 not find words to express his admiration for her comic 
 countryman. " You should see my old woman," said 
 he, and nodded his beery countenance. One night they 
 performed in the stable-yard with flaring lamps: a 
 wretched exhibition, coldly looked upon by a village 
 audience. Next night, as soon as the lamps were lighted, 
 there came a plump of rain, and they had to sweep 
 away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off to 
 the barn, where they harboured, cold, wet, and supper- 
 less. In the morning a dear friend of mine, who has as 
 warm a heart for strollers as I have myself, made a little 
 collection, and sent it by my hands to comfort them for 
 their disappointment. I gave it to the father ; he thanked 
 me cordially, and we drank a cup together in the kitch- 
 en, talking of roads and audiences, and hard times. 
 
 When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off 
 with his hat. "I am afraid," said he, ''that Monsieur 
 will think me altogether a beggar; but I have another 
 demand to make upon him." I began to hate him on 
 the spot. "We play again to-night," he went on. 
 ''Of course I shall refuse to accept any more money 
 from Monsieur and his friends, who have been already 
 so liberal. But our programme of to-night is something 
 
 128 
 
PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 
 
 truly creditable; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur 
 will honour us with his presence." And then, with a 
 shrug and a smile : * ' Monsieur understands, — the van- 
 ity of an artist!" Save the mark! The vanity of an 
 artist! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to 
 life: a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the 
 manners of a gentleman and the vanity of an artist, to 
 keep up his self-respect I 
 
 But the man after my own heart is M. de yauversin. 
 It is nearly two years since I saw him first, and indeed 
 I hope I may see him often again. Here is his first pro- 
 gramme as I found it on the breakfast-table, and have 
 
 kept it ever since as a relic of bright days : 
 
 * ' Mesdames et Messieurs, 
 
 " Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de yauversin auront 
 thonneur de chanter ce soir Ics morceaux suivants. 
 
 *' Mademoiselle Ferrario chanter a — Mignon — Oiseaux 
 Legers — France — Des Franfais dorment la — le cha- 
 teau bleu — 0/i voule^-vous alter ? 
 
 '' M. de yauversin — Madame Fontaine etM, Rohinet 
 — Les plongeurs a cheval — Le Mart mecontent — Tais- 
 toiy gamin — Man voisin I' original — Heureux comme 
 fa — comme on est trompe." 
 
 They made a stage at one end of the salle-d-manger. 
 And what a sight it was to see M. de Vauversin, with 
 a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a guitar, and follow- 
 ing Mademoiselle Ferrario's eyes with the obedient, 
 kindly look of a dog ! The entertainment wound up 
 with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets : an admi- 
 rable amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, 
 and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your ea- 
 gerness ; for there, all is loss ; you make haste to be out 
 
 129 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 of pocket; it is a competition who shall lose most money 
 for the benefit of M. de Vauversin and Mademoiselle 
 Ferrario. 
 
 M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of 
 black hair, a vivacious and engaging air, and a smile 
 that would be delightful if he had better teeth. He was 
 once an actor in the Chdtelet; but he contracted a ner- 
 vous affection from the heat and glare of the foot-lights, 
 which unfitted him for the stage. At this crisis Made- 
 moiselle Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of the 
 AlcaT^ar, agreed to share his wandering fortunes. **I 
 could never forget the generosity of that lady," said he. 
 He wears trousers so tight that it has long been a prob- 
 lem to all who knew him how he manages to get in and 
 out of them. He sketches a little in water-colours, he 
 writes verses ; he is the most patient of fishermen, and 
 spent long days at the bottom of the inn-garden fruit- 
 lessly dabbling a line in the clear river. 
 
 You should hear him recounting his experiences over 
 a bottle of wine; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, 
 with a ready smile at his own mishaps, and every now 
 and then a sudden gravity, like a man who should hear 
 the surf roar while he was telling the perils of the deep. 
 For it was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that 
 the receipts only amounted to a franc and a half to cover 
 three francs of railway fare and two of board and lodg- 
 ing. The Maire, a man worth a million of money, sat 
 in the front seat, repeatedly applauding Mile. Ferrario, 
 and yet gave no more than three som the whole even- 
 ing. Local authorities look with such an evil eye upon 
 the strolling artist. Alas ! I know it well, who have 
 been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on 
 
 130 
 
PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 
 
 the Strength of the misapprehension. Once, M. de yau- 
 versin visited a commissary of police for permission to 
 sing. The commissary, who was smoking at his ease, 
 politely doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance. '' Mr. 
 Commissary," he began, "I am an artist." And on 
 went the commissary's hat again. No courtesy for the 
 companions oi Apollo 1 ' ' They are as degraded as that, " 
 said M. de Vawversin, with a sweep of his cigarette. 
 
 But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, 
 when we had been talking all the evening of the rubs, 
 indignities, and pinchings of his wandering life. Some 
 one said it would be better to have a million of money 
 down, and Mile. Ferrario admitted that she would pre- 
 fer that mightily. ''Eh Men, mot non; — not I," cried 
 De Fauversin, striking the table with his hand. '*If 
 any one is a failure in the world, is it not I ? I had an 
 art, in which I have done things well, — as well as some, 
 better, perhaps, than others ; and now it is closed against 
 me. I must go about the country gathering coppers 
 and singing nonsense. Do you think I regret my life ? 
 Do you think I would rather be a fat burgess, like a calf? 
 Not I! I have had moments when I have been ap- 
 plauded on the boards: I think nothing of that; but I 
 have known in my own mind sometimes, when I had 
 not a clap from the whole house, that I had found a true 
 intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then, 
 messieurs, I have known what pleasure was^ what it 
 was to do a thing well, what it was to be an artist. 
 And to know what art is, is to have an interest forever, 
 such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns. Tene:(^, 
 messieurs, je vats vous le dire, — it is like a religion." 
 
 Such, making some allowance for the tricks of mem- 
 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 ory and the inaccuracies of translation, was the profes- 
 sion of faith of M. de Vauversin. I have given him his 
 own name, lest any other wanderer should come across 
 him, with his guitar and cigarette, and Mademoiselle 
 Ferrario; for should not all the world delight to honour 
 this unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses ? May 
 Apollo send him rhymes hitherto undreamed of; may 
 the river be no longer scanty of her silver fishes to his. 
 lure; may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides, 
 nor the village jack-in-office affront him with unseemly 
 manners ; and may he never miss Mademoiselle Ferra- 
 rio from his side, to follow with his dutiful eyes and 
 accompany on the guitar! 
 
 The marionettes made a very dismal entertainment. 
 They performed a piece called Pyramus and Thisbe, in 
 five mortal acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully as 
 long as the performers. One marionette was the king; 
 another the wicked counsellor; a third, credited with 
 exceptional beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there 
 were guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking gentle- 
 men. Nothing particular took place during the two or 
 three acts that I sat out; but you will be pleased to learn 
 that the unities were properly respected, and the whole 
 piece, with one exception, moved in harmony with 
 classical rules. That exception was the comic country- 
 man, a lean marionette in wooden shoes, who spoke in 
 prose and in a broad patois much appreciated by the 
 audience. He took unconstitutional liberties with the 
 person of his sovereign ; kicked his fellow-marionettes 
 in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever 
 none of the versifying suitors were about, made love to 
 Thisbe on his own account in comic prose. 
 
 132 
 
PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 
 
 This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in 
 which the showman made a humorous eulogium of his 
 troop, praising their indifference to applause and hisses, 
 and their single devotion to their art, were the only cir- 
 cumstances in the whole affair that you could fancy 
 would so much as raise a smile. But the villagers of 
 Precy seemed delighted. Indeed, so long as a thing is 
 an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain 
 to amuse. If we were charged so much a head for sun- 
 sets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns 
 came in flower, what work should we not make about 
 their beauty ! But these things, like good companions, 
 stupid people early cease to observe; and the Abstract 
 Bagman tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively 
 not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery 
 of the weather overhead. 
 
 »53 
 
BACK TO THE WORLD 
 
 Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, 
 and nothing whatever in my note-book. The river 
 streamed on steadily through pleasant river-side land- 
 scapes. Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in blue 
 blouses, diversified the green banks; and the relation 
 of the two colours was like that of the flower and the 
 leaf in the forget-me-not. A symphony in forget-me- 
 not; I think TMophile Gautier might thus have charac- 
 terised that two days' panorama. The sky was blue 
 and cloudless ; and the sliding surface of the river held 
 up, in smooth places, a mirror to the heaven and the 
 shores. The washerwomen hailed us laughingly; and 
 the noise of trees and water made an accompaniment to 
 our dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream. 
 
 The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the 
 river, held the mind in chain. It seemed now so sure 
 of its end, so strong and easy in its gait, like a grown 
 man full of determination. The surf was roaring for it 
 on the sands of Havre. For my own part slipping along 
 this moving thoroughfare in my fiddle-case of a canoe, 
 I also was beginning to grow aweary for my ocean. To 
 the civilised man there must come, sooner or later, a de- 
 sire for civilisation. I was weary of dipping the paddle ; 
 
 134 
 
BACK TO THE WORLD 
 
 I was weary of living on the skirts of life ; I wished to 
 be in the thick of it once more ; I wished to get to work ; 
 I wished to meet people who understood my own 
 speech, and could meet with me on equal terms, as a 
 man, and no longer as a curiosity. 
 
 And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew 
 up our keels for the last time out of that river of O^^ that 
 had faithfully piloted them, through rain and sunshine, 
 for so long. For so many miles had this fleet and foot- 
 less beast of burden charioted our fortunes that we 
 turned our back upon it with a sense of separation. 
 We had a long detour out of the world, but now we 
 were back in the familiar places, where life itself makes 
 all the running, and we are carried to meet adventure 
 without a stroke of the paddle. Now we were to re- 
 turn, like the voyager in the play, and see what rearrange- 
 ments fortune had perfected the while in our surround- 
 ings; what surprises stood ready made for us at home; 
 and whither and how far the world had voyaged in our 
 absence. You may paddle all day long; but it is when 
 you come back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar 
 room, that you find Love or Death awaiting you beside 
 the stove; and the most beautiful adventures are not 
 those we go to seek. 
 
 135 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 IN THE CAYENNES 
 
My dear Sidney Colvin, 
 
 The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable 
 and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of 
 luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls 
 the wilderness of this world, — all, too, travellers with a donkey; and 
 the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortu- 
 nate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. 
 They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of 
 ourselves; and, when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent. 
 
 Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of 
 him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private 
 messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude dropped for 
 them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who de- 
 frays the postage. Yet, though the letter is directed to all, we have 
 an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of 
 what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, 
 my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affection- 
 ately yours, R. L. S. 
 
VELAY 
 
 *• Many are the mighty things, and 
 nought is more mighty than 
 man. . , . He masters by his 
 devices the tenant of the fields. " 
 — Antigone. 
 
 •• Who hath loosed the bands of the 
 wiid ass f " — Job. 
 
VELAY 
 
 THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE 
 
 IN a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant high- 
 land valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about 
 a month of fine days. Monastier is notable for the mak- 
 ing of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, 
 and for unparalleled political dissension. There are ad- 
 herents of each of the four French parties — Legitimists, 
 Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republicans — in this little 
 mountain-town; and they all hate, loathe, decry, and 
 calumniate each other. Except for business purposes, 
 or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have 
 laid aside even the civility of speech. ' Tis a mere moun- 
 tain Poland. In the midst of this Babylon I found my- 
 self a rallying-point ; every one was anxious to be kind 
 and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from 
 the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from 
 the surprise with which I was regarded as a man living 
 of his own free will in Monastier, when he might just 
 as well have lived anywhere else in this big world ; it 
 arose a good deal from my projected excursion south- 
 ward through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was 
 a thing hitherto unheard of in that district. I was looked 
 upon with contempt, like a man who should project a 
 journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful interest, 
 
 143 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONF^Y 
 
 like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All were 
 ready to help in my preparations ; a crowd of sympathis- 
 ers supported me at the critical moment of a bargain ; 
 not a step was taken but was heralded by glasses round 
 and celebrated by a dinner or a breakfast. 
 
 It was already hard upon October before I was ready 
 to set forth, and at the high altitudes over which my 
 road lay there was no Indian summer to be looked for. 
 I was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have the 
 means of camping out in my possession; for there is 
 nothing more harassing to an easy mind than the necessity 
 of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospitality of a 
 village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by those 
 who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary 
 traveller, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to 
 strike again ; and even on the march it forms a conspic- 
 ous feature in your baggage. A sleeping-sack, on the 
 other hand, is always ready — you have only to get into 
 it ; it serves a double purpose — a bed by night, a port- 
 manteau by day ; and it does not advertise your intention 
 of camping out to every curious passer-by. This is a 
 huge point. If the camp is not secret, it is but a troubled 
 resting-place; you become a public character; the con- 
 vivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and 
 you must sleep with one eye open, and be up before the 
 day. I decided on a sleeping-sack ; and after repeated 
 visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and 
 my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, 
 and triumphally brought home. 
 
 This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, 
 exclusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by 
 night and as the top and bottom of the sack by day. I 
 
 144 
 
THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE 
 
 call it '* the sack," but it was never a sack by more than 
 courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green 
 waterproof cart cloth without and blue sheep's fur 
 within. It was commodious as a valise, warm and dry 
 for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for one ; 
 and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I could 
 bury myself in it up to the neck ; for my head I trusted 
 to a fur cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears and 
 a band to pass under my nose like a respirator; and in 
 case of heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little 
 tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones, 
 and a bent branch. 
 
 It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this 
 huge package on my own, merely human, shoulders. 
 It remained to choose a beast of burden. Now, a horse 
 is a fine lady among animals, flighty, timid, delicate in 
 eating, of tender health ; he is too valuable and too res- 
 tive to be left alone, so that you are chained to your 
 brute as to a fellow galley-slave ; a dangerous road puts 
 him out of his wits ; in short, he's an uncertain and ex- 
 acting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of the 
 voyager. What I required was something cheap and 
 small and hardy, and of a stolid and peaceful temper; 
 and all these requisites pointed to a donkey. 
 
 There dwelt an old man in Monastter, of rather un- 
 sound intellect according to some, much followed by 
 street-boys, and known to fame as Father Adam. Father 
 Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive she- 
 ass, not much bigger than a dog, the color of a mouse, 
 with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There 
 was something neat and high-bred, a quakerish ele- 
 gance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot. 
 
 '45 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 Our first interview was in Monastier market-place. To 
 prove her good temper, one child after another was set 
 upon her back to ride, and one after another went head 
 over heels into the air; until a want of confidence began 
 to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was 
 discontinued from a dearth of subjects. I was already 
 backed by a deputation of my friends ; but as if this were 
 not enough, all the buyers and sellers came round and 
 helped me in the bargain ; and the ass and I and Father 
 Adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. 
 At length she passed into my service for the considera- 
 tion of sixty-five francs and a glass of brandy. The sack 
 had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer; 
 so that Modestine, as I instantly baptised her, was upon 
 all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that was as it 
 should be; for she was only an appurtenance of my 
 mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four castors. 
 
 I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard- 
 room at the witching hour of dawn, when I adminis- 
 tered the brandy. He professed himself greatly touched 
 by the separation, and declared he had often bought 
 white bread for the donkey when he had been content 
 with black bread for himself; but this, according to the 
 best authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. He 
 had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass ; 
 yet it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear made a 
 clean mark down one cheek. 
 
 By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad 
 was made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle; 
 and I thoughtfully completed my kit and arranged my 
 toilette. By way of armoury and utensils, I took a re- 
 volver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some 
 
 146 
 
THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE 
 
 halfpenny candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. 
 The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm 
 clothing — besides my travelling wearof country velvet- 
 een, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer — some books, and 
 my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, 
 made me a double castle for cold nights. The perma- 
 nent larder was represented by cakes of chocolate and 
 tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I carried 
 about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin 
 bag; and by good fortune I threw in my empty knap- 
 sack, rather for convenience of carriage than from any 
 thought that I should want it on my journey. For more 
 immediate needs, I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle 
 of Beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg- 
 beater, and a considerable quantity of black bread and 
 white, like Father Adam, for myself and donkey, only 
 in my scheme of things the destinations were reversed. 
 Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had 
 agreed in threatening me with many ludicrous misad- 
 ventures, and with sudden death in many surprising 
 forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the nocturnal 
 practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my 
 attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent 
 danger was left out. Like Christian, it was from my 
 pack 1 suffered by the way. Before telling my own 
 mishaps, let me, in two words, relate the lesson of my 
 experience. If the pack is well strapped at the ends, 
 and hung at full length — not doubled, for your life — 
 across the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle 
 will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our 
 transitory life ; it will assuredly topple and tend to over- 
 set; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man 
 
 147 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to over- 
 balance with a well-adjusted stone. 
 
 On the day of my departure I was up a little after five ; 
 by six, we began to load the donkey ; and ten minutes 
 after, my hopes were in the dust. The pad would not 
 stay on Modesttne's back for half a moment. I returned 
 it to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a 
 passage that the street outside was crowded from wall 
 to wall with gossips looking on and listening. The pad 
 changed hands with much vivacity ; perhaps it would 
 be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each 
 other's heads ; and, at any rate, we were very warm and 
 unfriendly, and spoke with a deal of freedom. 
 
 I had a common donkey pack-saddle — a harde, as 
 they call it — -fitted upon Modcstine; and once more 
 loaded her with my effects. The doubled sack, my 
 pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk in my 
 waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open 
 basket containing the white bread, the mutton, and the 
 bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate sys- 
 tem of knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous 
 content. In such a monstrous deck-cargo, all poised 
 above the donkey's shoulders, with nothing below to 
 balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not yet 
 been worn to fit the animal, and fastened with brand- 
 new girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken 
 by the way, even a very careless traveller should have 
 seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system of knots, 
 again, was the work of too many sympathisers to be 
 very artfully designed. It is true they tightened the 
 cords with a will ; as many as three at a time would 
 have a foot against Modcstine' s quarters, and be hauling 
 
 148 
 
THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE 
 
 with clenched teeth ; but I learned afterwards that one 
 thoughtful person, without any exercise of force, can 
 make a more solid job than half a dozen heated and en- 
 thusiastic grooms. I was then but a novice ; even after 
 the misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my 
 security, and 1 went forth from the stable-door as an ox 
 goeth to the slaughter. 
 
 149 
 
THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 
 
 The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got 
 quit of these preliminary troubles and descended the hill 
 through the common. As long as I was within sight of 
 the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some laugh- 
 able defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. 
 She tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober 
 daintiness of gait; from time to time she shook her ears 
 or her tail ; and she looked so small under the bundle that 
 my mind misgave me. We got across the ford without 
 difficulty — there was no doubt about the matter, she 
 was docility itself — and once on the other bank, where 
 the road begins to mount through pine-woods, I took in 
 my right hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking 
 spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up 
 her pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into 
 her former minuet. Another application had the same 
 effect, and so with the third. I am worthy the name of 
 an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience to lay 
 my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her 
 all over from head to foot; the poor brute's knees were 
 trembling and her breathing was distressed ; it was plain 
 that she could go no faster on a hill. God forbid, thought 
 I, that I should brutalise this innocent creature; let her 
 go at her own pace, and let me patiently follow. 
 
 150 
 
THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 
 
 What that pace was, there is no word mean enough 
 to describe; it was something as much slower than a 
 walk as a walk is slower than a run ; it kept me hang- 
 ing on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five 
 minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all 
 the muscles of the leg. And yet I had to keep close at 
 hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers ; for if I 
 dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on a few yards 
 ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to 
 browse, The thought that this was to last from here to 
 Alais nearly broke my heart. Of all conceivable jour- 
 neys, this promised to be the most tedious. I tried to 
 tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried to charm my 
 foreboding spirit with tobacco ; but I had a vision ever 
 present to me of the long, long roads, up hill and down 
 dale, and a pair of figures ever infmitesimally moving, 
 foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like things en- 
 chanted in a nightmare, approaching no nearer to the 
 goal. 
 
 In the mean time there came up behind us a tall peas- 
 ant, perhaps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy 
 countenance, and arrayed in the green tail-coat of the 
 country. He overtook us hand over hand, and stopped 
 to consider our pitiful advance. 
 
 " Your donkey," says he, '* is very old } " 
 
 I told him, I believed not. 
 
 Then, he supposed, we had come far. 
 
 I told him, we had but newly left Monmtier. 
 
 " Etvous marches comme ^a! " cried he; and, throw- 
 ing back his head, he laughed long and heartily. I 
 watched him, half prepared to feel offended, until he had 
 satisfied his mirth; and then, ''You must have no pity 
 
 151 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 on these animals," said he; and, plucking a switch out 
 of a thicket, he began to lace Modestine about the stern- 
 works, uttering a cry. The rogue pricked up her ears 
 and broke into a good round pace, which she kept up 
 without flagging, and without exhibiting the least symp- 
 tom of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside us. 
 Her former panting and shaking had been, I regret to 
 say, a piece of comedy. 
 
 My deu8 ex machina, before he left me, supplied some 
 excellent, if inhumane, advice ; presented me with the 
 switch, which he declared she would feel more tenderly 
 than my cane ; and finally taught me the true cry or ma- 
 sonic word of donkey-drivers, ** Proot! " All the time, 
 he regarded me with a comical incredulous air, which 
 was embarrassing to confront; and smiled over my 
 donkey-driving, as I might have smiled over his orthog- 
 raphy, or his green tail-coat. But it was not my turn 
 for the moment. 
 
 I was proud of my new lore, and thought I had learned 
 the art to perfection. And certainly Modestine did won- 
 ders for the rest of the forenoon, and I had a breathing 
 space to look about me. It was Sabbath ; the mountain- 
 fields were all vacant in the sunshine ; and as we came 
 down through St Martin de Frugeres, the church was 
 crowded to the door, there were people kneeling with- 
 out upon the steps, and the sound of the priest's chant- 
 ing came forth out of the dim interior. It gave me a 
 home feeling on the spot ; for I am a countryman of the 
 Sabbath, so to speak, and all Sabbath observances, like 
 a Scotch accent, strike in me mixed feelings, grateful 
 and the reverse. It is only a traveller, hurrying by like 
 a person from another planet, who can rightly enjoy the 
 
 152 
 
THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 
 
 peace and beauty of the great ascetic feast. The sight 
 of the resting country does his spirit good. There is 
 something better than music in the wide unusual silence; 
 and it disposes him to amiable thoughts, like the sound 
 of a little river or the warmth of sunlight. 
 
 In this pleasant humour I came down the hill to where 
 GoudetstsLuds in the green end of a valley, with Chdteau 
 Beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, 
 as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between them. 
 Above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the 
 stones, an amiable stripling of a river, which it seems ab- 
 surd to call the Loire. On all sides, Goudet is shut in by 
 mountains ; rocky footpaths, practicable at best for don- 
 keys, join it to the outer world of France; and the men and 
 women drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up 
 at the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold of 
 their homes, in an isolation, you would think, like that 
 of Homer's Cyclops. But it is not so; the postman 
 reaches Goudet ^\X\\ the letter-bag; the aspiring youth 
 of Goudet are within a day's walk of the railway at Le 
 Puy ; and here in the inn you may find an engraved 
 portrait of the host's nephew, Regis Senac, " Professor 
 of Fencing and Champion of the two Americas/* a. dis- 
 tinction gained by him, along with the sum of five hun- 
 dred dollars, at Tammany Hall, New York, on the loth 
 April, 1876. 
 
 I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth 
 again. But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill 
 upon the other side, *'Proot!" seemed to have lost its 
 virtue. I prooted like a lion, I prooted mellifluously like 
 a sucking-dove ; but Modestine would be neither soft- 
 ened nor intimidated. She held doggedly to her pace; 
 
 153 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 nothing but a blow would move her, and that only for a 
 second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly bela- 
 bouring. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and 
 she relapsed into her own private gait. 1 think 1 never 
 heard of any one in as mean a situation. I must reach 
 the lake of Bouchet, where I meant to camp, before sun- 
 down, and, to have even a hope of this, 1 must instantly 
 maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The sound of my 
 own blows sickened me. Once, when I looked at her, 
 she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaint- 
 ance who formerly loaded me with kindness ; and this 
 increased my horror of my cruelty. 
 
 To make matters worse, we encountered another 
 donkey, ranging at will upon the roadside; and this 
 other donkey chanced to be a gentleman. He and Mo- 
 destine met nickering for joy, and I had to separate the 
 pair and beat down their young romance with a renewed 
 and feverish bastinado. If the other donkey had had 
 the heart of a male under his hide, he would have fallen 
 upon me tooth and hoof; and this was a kind of conso- 
 lation — he was plainly unworthy of Modestine's affec- 
 tion. But the incident saddened me, as did everything 
 that spoke of my donkey's sex. 
 
 It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehe- 
 ment sun upon my shoulders ; and I had to labour so con- 
 sistently with my stick that the sweat ran into my eyes. 
 Every five minutes, too, the pack, the basket, and the 
 pilot-coat would take an ugly slew to one side or the 
 other; and I had to stop Modestine, just when I had got 
 her to a tolerable pace of about two miles an hour, to 
 tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load. And at 
 last, in the village of Ussel, saddle and all, the whole 
 
 154 
 
THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 
 
 hypothec turned round and grovelled in the dust below 
 the donkey's belly. She, none better pleased, inconti- 
 nently drew up and seemed to smile; and a party of one 
 man, two women, and two children came up, and, 
 standing round me in a half-circle, encouraged her by 
 their example. 
 
 I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted; 
 and the instant I had done so, without hesitation, it 
 toppled and fell down upon the other side. Judge if I 
 was hot! And yet not a hand was offered to assist me. 
 The man, indeed, told me I ought to have a package of 
 a different shape. I suggested, if he knew nothing bet- 
 ter to the point in my predicament, he might hold his 
 tongue. And the good-natured dog agreed with me 
 smilingly. It was the most despicable fix. I must 
 plainly content myself with the pack for Modesttne, and 
 take the following items for my own share of the 
 portage: a cane, a quart flask, a pilot-jacket heavily 
 weighted in the pockets, two pounds of black bread, 
 and an open basket full of meats and bottles. I believe 
 I may say I am not devoid of greatness of soul ; for I 
 did not recoil from this infamous burden. I disposed 
 it, Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and 
 then proceeded to steer Modesttne through the village. 
 She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter 
 every house and every courtyard in the whole length ; 
 and, encumbered as I was, without a hand to help my- 
 self, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A 
 priest, with six or seven others, was examining a church 
 in process of repair, and he and his acolytes laughed 
 loudly as they saw my plight. I remembered having 
 laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling 
 
 '55 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 with adversity in the person of a jackass, and the recol* 
 lection filled me with penitence. That was in my old 
 light days, before this trouble came upon me. God 
 knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. 
 But O, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in 
 it! 
 
 A little out of the village, Modestine, filled with the 
 demon, set her heart upon a by-road, and positively re- 
 fused to leave it. I dropped all my bundles, and, 1 am 
 ashamed to say, struck the poor sinner twice across the 
 face. It was pitiful to see her lift up her head with shut 
 eyes, as if waiting for another blow. I came very near 
 crying ; but I did a wiser thing than that, and sat squarely 
 down by the roadside to consider my situation under 
 the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of brandy. 
 Modestine, in the mean while, munched some black 
 bread with a contrite hypocritical air. It was plain that 
 I must make a sacrifice to the gods of shipwreck. I 
 threw away the empty bottle destined to carry milk ; I 
 threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to 
 act by general average, kept the black bread for Modes- 
 tine; lastly, I threw away the cold leg of mutton and 
 the egg-whisk, although this last was dear to my heart. 
 Thus I found room for everything in the basket, and 
 even stowed the boating-coat on the top. By means 
 of an end of cord I slung it under one arm ; and although 
 the cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung almost to 
 the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened that I 
 set forth again. 
 
 I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, and cru- 
 elly I chastised her. If I were to reach the lakeside be- 
 fore dark, she must bestir her little shanks to some tune. 
 
 156 
 
THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 
 
 Already the sun had gone down into a windy-looking 
 mist ; and although there were still a few streaks of gold 
 far off to the east on the hills and the black fir-woods, 
 all was cold and gray about our onward path. An in- 
 finity of little country by-roads led hither and thither 
 among the fields. It was the most pointless labyrinth. 
 I could see my destination overhead, or rather the peak 
 that dominates it; but choose as I pleased, the roads al- 
 ways ended by turning away from it, and sneaking back 
 towards the valley, or northward along the margin of 
 the hills. The failing light, the waning colour, the naked, 
 unhomely, stony country through which I was travel- 
 ling, threw me into some despondency. I promise you, 
 the stick was not idle; I think every decent step that 
 Modestine took must have cost me at least two emphatic 
 blows. There was not another sound in the neighbour- 
 hood but that of my unwearying bastinado. 
 
 Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once 
 more bit the dust, and, as by enchantment, all the cords 
 were simultaneously loosened, and the road scattered 
 with my dear possessions. The packing was to begin 
 again from the beginning ; and as I had to invent a new 
 and better system, I do not doubt but I lost half an hour. 
 It began to be dusk in earnest as I reached a wilderness 
 of turf and stones. It had the air of being a road which 
 should lead everywhere at the same time; and I was 
 falling into something not unlike despair when I saw 
 two figures stalking towards me over the stones. They 
 walked one behind the other like tramps, but their pace 
 was remarkable. The son led the way, a tall, ill-made, 
 sombre, Scotch-looking man ; the mother followed, all 
 in her Sunday's best, with an elegantly-embroidered 
 
 157 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and proffer- 
 ing, as she strode along with kilted petticoats, a string 
 of obscene and blasphemous oaths. 
 
 I hailed the son and asked him my direction. He 
 pointed loosely west and north-west, muttered an inau- 
 dible comment, and, without slacking his pace for an 
 instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my 
 path. The mother followed without so much as rais- 
 ing her head. I shouted and shouted after them, but 
 they continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf 
 ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by her- 
 self, I was constrained to run after them, hailing the 
 while. They stopped as I drew near, the mother still 
 cursing; and I could see she was a handsome, motherly, 
 respectable-looking woman. The son once more an- 
 swered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting 
 out again. But this time I simply collared the mother, 
 who was nearest me, and, apologising for my violence, 
 declared that I could not let them go until they had put 
 me on my road. They were neither of them offended 
 — rather mollified than otherwise ; told me I had only 
 to follow them ; and then the mother asked me what I 
 wanted by the lake at such an hour. I replied, in the 
 Scotch manner, by inquiring if she had far to go her- 
 self. She told me, with another oath, that she had an 
 hour and a half s road before her. And then, without 
 salutation, the pair strode forward again up the hillside 
 in the gathering dusk. 
 
 I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward, 
 and, after a sharp ascent of twenty minutes, reached the 
 edge of a plateau. The view, looking back on my day's 
 journey, was both wild and sad. Mount M^^enc and the 
 
 158 
 
THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 
 
 peaks beyond St. Julien stood out in trenchant gloom 
 against a cold glitter in the east ; and the intervening field 
 of hills had fallen together into one broad wash of shadow, 
 except here and there the outline of a wooded sugar-loaf 
 in black, here and there a white irregular patch to rep- 
 resent a cultivated farm, and here and there a blot where 
 the Loire, the Ga:(eille, or the Lausonne wandered in a 
 gorge. 
 
 Soon we were on a high-road, and surprise seized on 
 my mind as I beheld a village of some magnitude close 
 at hand; for I had been told that the neighbourhood of 
 the lake was uninhabited except by trout. The road 
 smoked in the twilight with children driving home 
 cattle from the fields; and a pair of mounted stride- 
 legged women, hat and cap and all, dashed past me at 
 a hammering trot from the canton where they had been 
 to church and market. I asked one of the children where 
 I was. At Bouchet St. Nicolas, he told me. Thither, 
 about a mile south of my destination, and on the other 
 side of a respectable summit, had these confused roads 
 and treacherous peasantry conducted me. My shoulder 
 was cut, so that it hurt sharply ; my arm ached like tooth- 
 ache from perpetual beating; I gave up the lake and my 
 design to camp, and asked for the auberge. 
 
 >59 
 
I HAVE A GOAD 
 
 The auherge of Boucbet St Nicolas was among the least 
 pretentious I have ever visited; but I saw many more of 
 the like upon my journey. Indeed, it was typical of 
 these French highlands. Imagine a cottage of two stories, 
 with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a 
 suite, so that Modestine and I could hear each other din- 
 ing; furniture of the plainest, earthen floors, a single bed- 
 chamber for travellers, and that without any convenience 
 but beds. In the kitchen cooking and eating go forward 
 side by side, and the family sleep at night. Any one 
 who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the 
 common table. The food is sometimes spare ; hard fish 
 and omelette have been my portion more than once ; the 
 wine is of the smallest, the brandy abominable to man ; 
 and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and 
 rubbing against your legs, is no impossible accompani- 
 ment to dinner. 
 
 But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, 
 show themselves friendly and considerate. As soon as 
 you cross the doors you cease to be a stranger; and al- 
 though this peasantry are rude and forbidding on the 
 highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when 
 you share their hearth. At Boucbet, for instance, I un- 
 
 160 
 
I HAVE A GOAD 
 
 corked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to 
 join me. He would take but little. 
 
 * ' I am an amateur of such wine, do you see ? " he said, 
 '*and I am capable of leaving you not enough." 
 
 In these hedge-inns the traveller is expected to eat 
 with his own knife; unless he ask, no other will be 
 supplied : with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron 
 fork, the table is completely laid. My knife was cor- 
 dially admired by the landlord of Bouchet, and the spring 
 filled him with wonder. 
 
 ** I should never have guessed that," he said. ** I 
 would bet," he added, weighing it in his hand, "that 
 this cost you not less than five francs." 
 
 When I told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw 
 dropped. 
 
 He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, 
 astonishingly ignorant. His wife, who was not so 
 pleasant in her manners, knew how to read, although 
 I do not suppose she ever did so. She had a share of 
 brains and spoke with a cutting emphasis, like one who 
 ruled the roast. 
 
 '*My man knows nothing," she said, with an angry 
 nod; "he is like the beasts." 
 
 And the old gentleman signified acquiescence with 
 his head. There was no contempt on her part, and no 
 shame on his ; the facts were accepted loyally, and no 
 more about the matter. 
 
 I was tightly cross-examined about my journey; and 
 the lady understood in a moment, and sketched out 
 what I should put into my book when I got home. 
 "Whether people harvest or not in such or such a place; 
 if there were forests ; studies of manners ; what, for ex- 
 
 i6i 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 ample, I and the master of the house say to you; the 
 beauties of Nature, and all that." And she interrogated 
 me with a look. 
 
 'Mt is just that," said I. 
 
 ** You see," she added to her husband, *'I understood 
 that." 
 
 They were both much interested by the story of my 
 misadventures. 
 
 "In the morning," said the husband, *'I will make 
 you something better than your cane. Such a beast as 
 that feels nothing; it is in the proverb — dtir comma un 
 dne; you might beat her insensible with a cudgel, and 
 yet you would arrive nowhere." 
 
 Something better! I little knew what he was offering. 
 
 The sleeping-room was furnished with two beds. I 
 had one; and I will own 1 was a little abashed to find a 
 young man and his wife and child in the act of mount- 
 ing into the other. This was my first experience of the 
 sort ; and if I am always to feel equally silly and extra- 
 neous, I pray God it be my last as well. I kept my eyes 
 to myself, and know nothing of the woman except that 
 she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit abashed by 
 my appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was 
 more trying to me than to the pair. A pair keep each 
 other in countenance ; it is the single gentleman who has 
 to blush. But I could not help attributing my senti- 
 ments to the husband, and sought to conciliate his tol- 
 erance with a cup of brandy from my flask. He told 
 me that he was a cooper of Alais travelling to St. 
 Etienne in search of work, and that in his spare mo- 
 ments he followed the fatal calling of a maker of matches. 
 Me he readily enough divined to be a brandy merchant. 
 
 162 
 
I HAVE A GOAD 
 
 I was up first in the morning {Monday, September 
 2jd), and hastened my toilet guiltily, so as to leave a 
 clear field for madam, the cooper's wife. I drank a bowl 
 of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood of 
 Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a gray, windy, wintry 
 morning; misty clouds flew fast and low ; the wind 
 piped over the naked platform ; and the only speck of 
 colour was away behind Mount Me^enc and the eastern 
 hills, where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn. 
 
 It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet 
 above the sea; and I had to bury my hands in my pockets 
 and trot. People were trooping out to the labours of the 
 field by twos and threes, and all turned round to stare 
 upon the stranger. I had seen them coming back last 
 night, I saw them going afield again ; and there was the 
 life oi Bouchet in a nutshell. 
 
 When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the 
 landlady was in the kitchen combing out her daughter's 
 hair; and I made her my compliments upon its beauty. 
 
 **0 no," said the mother; ''it is not so beautiful as 
 it ought to be. Look, it is too fine." 
 
 Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under ad- 
 verse physical circumstances, and, by a startling demo- 
 cratic process, the defects of the majority decide the type 
 of beauty. 
 
 "And where," said I, "is monsieur?" 
 
 "The master of the house is up-stairs," she answered, 
 " making you a goad." 
 
 Blessed be the man who invented goads ! Blessed 
 the innkeeper of Bouchet St. Nicolas, who introduced 
 me to their use! This plain wand, with an eighth of 
 an inch of pin, was indeed a sceptre when he put it 
 
 163 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 in my hands. Thenceforward Modestine was my slave. 
 A prick, and she passed the most inviting stable- 
 door. A prick, and she broke forth into a gallant little 
 trotlet that devoured the miles. It was not a remarkable 
 speed, when all was said ; and we took four hours to 
 cover ten miles at the best of it. But what a heavenly 
 change since yesterday! No more wielding of the ugly 
 cudgel ; no more flailing with an aching arm ; no more 
 broadsword exercise, but a discreet and gentlemanly 
 fence. And what although now and then a drop of 
 blood should appear on Modestine's mouse-colored 
 wedge-like rump .? I should have preferred it other- 
 wise, indeed; but yesterday's exploits had purged my 
 heart of all humanity. The perverse little devil, since 
 she would not be taken with kindness, must even go 
 with pricking. 
 
 It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade 
 of stride-legged ladies and a pair of post-runners, the 
 road was dead solitary all the way to Pradelles. I scarce 
 remember an incident but one. A handsome foal with 
 a bell about his neck came charging up to us upon a 
 stretch of common, sniffed the air martially as one about 
 to do great deeds, and, suddenly thinking otherwise in 
 his green young heart, put about and galloped off as he 
 had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long 
 while afterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, 
 and heard the note of his bell; and when I struck the 
 high-road, the song of the telegraph-wires seemed to 
 continue the same music. 
 
 Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the A liter, 
 surrounded by rich meadows. They were cutting after- 
 math on all sides, which gave the neighbourhood, this 
 
 164 
 
I HAVE A GOAD 
 
 gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of hay. On 
 the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting 
 for miles to the horizon : a tanned and sallow autumn 
 landscape, with black blots of fir-wood and white roads 
 wandering through the hills. Over all this the clouds 
 shed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat 
 menacing, exaggerating height and distance, and throw- 
 ing into still higher relief the twisted ribbons of the high- 
 way. It was a cheerless prospect, but one stimulating 
 to a traveller. For I was now upon the limit of Velay, 
 and all that I beheld lay in another county — wild Ge- 
 vaudan, mountainous, uncultivated, and but recently 
 disforested from terror of the wolves. 
 
 Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveller's 
 advance ; and you may trudge through all our comfort- 
 able Europe, and not meet with an adventure worth the 
 name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the fron- 
 tiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever-memor- 
 able Beast, the Napoleon 'Buonaparte of wolves. What 
 a career was his ! He lived ten months at free quarters 
 in Ghaudan and Vivarah; he ate women and children 
 and ** shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty ;" he pur- 
 sued armed horsemen ; he has been seen at broad noon- 
 day chasing a post-chaise and outrider along the king's 
 high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at 
 the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender, 
 and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. And 
 yet, when he was shot and sent to Versailles, behold ! a 
 common wolf, and even small for that. "Though I 
 could reach from pole to pole," sang Alexander Pope; 
 the little corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves had 
 been as this wolf, they would have changed the history 
 
 165 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 of man. M. Elie ^erthet has made him the hero of a 
 novel, which I have read, and do not wish to read again. 
 
 I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the 
 landlady's desire that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, 
 ''who performed many miracles, although she was of 
 wood;" and before three quarters of an hour I was 
 goading Modestine down the steep descent that leads to 
 Langogne on the AUier. On both sides of the road, in 
 big dusty fields, farmers were preparing for next spring. 
 Every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked stolid oxen 
 were patiently haling at the plough. I saw one of these 
 mild, formidable servants of the glebe, who took a 
 sudden interest in Modestine and me. The furrow down 
 which he was journeying lay at an angle to the road, 
 and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those of 
 caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he screwed 
 round his big honest eyes and followed us with a 
 ruminating look, until his master bade him turn the 
 plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all 
 these furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, 
 from a labourer here and there who was breaking the 
 dry clods with a hoe, the wind carried away a thin 
 dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy, breath- 
 ing, rustic landscape; and as I continued to descend, 
 the highlands of Gevaudan kept mounting in front of 
 me against the sky. 
 
 I had crossed the Loire the day before ; now I was to 
 cross the AUier; so near are these two confluents in 
 their youth. Just at the bridge of Langogne, as the long- 
 promised rain was beginning to fall, a lassie of some 
 seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, 
 ' * D'oU'st que vous vene^ ? " She did it with so high an 
 
 1 66 
 
I HAVE A GOAD 
 
 air that she set me laughing; and this cut her to the 
 quick. She was evidently one who reckoned on respect, 
 and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I crossed 
 the bridge and entered the county of Gevaudan, 
 
 i«7 
 
UPPER GEVAUDAN 
 
 ' The way also here was very weari- 
 some through dirt and slabbi- 
 ness ; nor was there on all this 
 ground so much as one inn or 
 victualling-house wherein to re- 
 fresh the feebler sort." — Pil- 
 grim's Progress. 
 
UPPER GfiVAUDAN 
 
 A CAMP IN THE DARK 
 
 THE next day ( Tuesday, September 24th), it was two 
 o'clock in the afternoon before I got my journal 
 written up and my knapsack repaired, for I was deter- 
 mined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no 
 more ado with baskets ; and half an hour afterwards I 
 set out for Le C hey lard VEveqiie, a place on the borders 
 of the forest of Mercoire. A man, I was told, should 
 walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought it scarce 
 too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with 
 a donkey might cover the same distance in four hours. 
 All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained 
 and hailed alternately ; the wind kept freshening stead- 
 ily, although slowly; plentiful hurrying clouds — some 
 dragging veils of straight rain-shower, others massed 
 and luminous, as though promising snow — careered 
 out of the north and followed me along my way. I 
 was soon out of the cultivated basin of the AUter, and 
 away from the ploughing oxen, and such-like sights of 
 the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and 
 pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yel- 
 low, here and there a few naked cottages and bleak 
 fields, — these were the characters of the country. Hill 
 and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and 
 
 171 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 Stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, 
 split into three or four, died away in marshy hollows, 
 and began again sporadically on hillsides or at the bor- 
 ders of a wood. 
 
 There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no 
 easy affair to make a passage in this uneven country and 
 through this intermittent labyrinth of tracks. It must 
 have been about four when I struck Sagnerousse, and 
 went on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. 
 Two hours afterwards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull 
 of the wind, I issued from a fir-wood where I had long 
 been wandering, and found, not the looked-for village, 
 but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble 
 hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of 
 cattle-bells ahead ; and now, as I came out of the skirts 
 of the wood, I saw near upon a dozen cows and per- 
 haps as many more black figures, which I conjectured 
 to be children, although the mist had almost unrecog- 
 nisably exaggerated their forms. These were all silently 
 following each other round and round in a circle, now 
 taking hands, now breaking up with chains and rever- 
 ences. A dance of children appeals to very innocent 
 and lively thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, 
 the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. Even I, 
 who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer, felt a sort 
 of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The next, 1 
 was pricking Modestine forward, and guiding her like 
 an unruly ship through the open. In a path, she went 
 doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind ; 
 but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute 
 became demented. The tendency of lost travellers to 
 go round in a circle was developed in her to the degree 
 
 172 
 
A CAMP IN THE DARK 
 
 of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to keep 
 even a decently straight course through a single field. 
 
 While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, 
 children and cattle began to disperse, until only a pair 
 of girls remained behind. From these I sought direction 
 on my path. The peasantry in general were but little 
 disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil simply 
 retired into his house, and barricaded the door on my 
 approach ; and I might beat and shout myself hoarse, he 
 turned a deaf ear. Another, having given me a direc- 
 tion which, as 1 found afterwards, I had misunderstood, 
 complacently watched me going wrong without adding 
 a sign. He did not care a stalk of parsley if I wandered 
 all night upon the hills ! As for these two girls, they 
 were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought 
 but mischief. One put out her tongue at me, the other 
 bade me follow the cows ; and they both giggled and 
 jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of Gevaudan ate 
 about a hundred children of this district; I began to think 
 of him with sympathy. 
 
 Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and 
 got into another wood and upon a well-marked road. 
 It grew darker and darker. Modestine, suddenly be- 
 ginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own 
 accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. 
 It was the first sign of intelligence I had occasion to re- 
 mark in her. At the same time, the wind freshened into 
 half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain came 
 flying up out of the north. At the other side of the 
 wood I sighted some red windows in the dusk. This 
 was the hamlet of Fou:(ilhic; three houses on a hillside, 
 near a wood of birches. Here I found a delightful old 
 
 >73 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put 
 me safely on the road for Cheylard, He would hear of 
 no reward ; but shook his hands above his head almost 
 as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly, in un- 
 mitigated patois. 
 
 All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn 
 upon dinner and a fireside, and my heart was agreeably 
 softened in my bosom. Alas, and I was on the brink 
 of new and greater miseries! Suddenly, at a single 
 swoop, the night fell. I have been abroad in many a 
 black night, but never in a blacker. A glimmer of 
 rocks, a glimmer of the track where it was well beaten, 
 a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a tree, 
 — this was all that 1 could discriminate. The sky was 
 simply darkness overhead ; even the flying clouds pur- 
 sued their way invisibly to human eyesight. I could not 
 distinguish my hand at arm's length from the track, nor 
 my goad, at the same distance, from the meadows or 
 the sky. 
 
 Soon the road that I was following split, after the 
 fashion of the country, into three or four in a piece of 
 rocky meadow. Since Modestine had shown such a 
 fancy for beaten roads, I tried her instinct in this predic- 
 ament. But the instinct of an ass is what might be 
 expected from the name; in half a minute she was 
 clambering round and round among some boulders, as 
 lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have 
 camped long before had I been properly provided; but 
 as this was to be so short a stage, I had brought no 
 wine, no bread for myself, and a little over a pound for 
 my lady-friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were 
 both handsomely wetted by the showers. But now, if 
 
 >74 
 
A CAMP IN THE DARK 
 
 I could have found some water, I should have camped 
 at once in spite of all. Water, however, being entirely- 
 absent, except in the form of rain, I determined to re- 
 turn to Fouiilhic, and ask a guide a little further on my 
 way — "a little farther lend thy guiding hand." 
 
 The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. 
 In this sensible roaring blackness I was sure of nothing 
 but the direction of the wind. To this I set my face ; 
 the road had disappeared, and I went across country, 
 now in marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable 
 to Modestine, until I came once more in sight of some 
 red windows. This time they were differently disposed. 
 It was not Fou^ilhic, but FouT^ilhac, a hamlet little dis- 
 tant from the other in space, but worlds away in the 
 spirit of its inhabitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and 
 groped forward, stumbling among rocks, plunging mid- 
 leg in bog, until I gained the entrance of the village. In 
 the first lighted house there was a woman who would 
 not open to me. She could do nothing, she cried to me 
 through the door, being alone and lame; but if I would 
 apply at the next house, there was a man who could 
 help me if he had a mind. 
 
 They came to the next door in force, a man, two wo- 
 men, and a girl, and brought a pair of lanterns to examine 
 the wayfarer. The man was not ill-looking, but had a 
 shifty smile. He leaned against the door-post, and heard 
 me state my case. All I asked was a guide as far as 
 Cheylard, 
 
 "' C est que, voye^-vous, ilfaitnoir/' said he. 
 
 I told him that was just my reason for requiring help. 
 
 "I understand that," said he, looking uncomfortable; 
 " mais — c'est — de la peine, ' ' 
 
 »75 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 I was willing to pay, I said. He shook his head. I 
 rose as high as ten francs ; but he continued to shake his 
 head. "Name your own price, then," said I. 
 
 " Ce n est pas ga/' he said at length, and with evident 
 difficulty; "but I am not going to cross the door — mais 
 je ne sortiraipas de la porta." 
 
 I grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed 
 that I should do. 
 
 " Where are you going beyond Cheylard .? '' he asked 
 by way of answer. 
 
 "That is no affair of yours," I returned, for I was not 
 going to indulge his bestial curiosity ; " it changes nothing 
 in my present predicament." 
 
 " C'est mai, ga," he acknowledged, with a laugh; 
 "■ oui, c'est vrai. Et d'ou vene^-vous ? ' ' 
 
 A better man than I might have felt nettled. 
 
 " O," said I, " I am not going to answer any of your 
 questions, so you may spare yourself the trouble of 
 putting them. I am late enough already ; I want help. 
 If you will not guide me yourself, at least help me to 
 find some one else who will." 
 
 " Hold on," he cried suddenly. " Was it not you who 
 passed in the meadow while it was still day } " 
 
 "Yes, yes," said the girl, whom I had not hitherto 
 recognised; "it was monsieur; I told him to follow the 
 cow." 
 
 "As for you, mademoiselle," said I, "you are a/^r- 
 ceuse,'' 
 
 "And," added the man, "what the devil have you 
 done to be still here } " 
 
 What the devil, indeed! But there I was. "The 
 great thing," said I, "is to make an end of it;" and 
 
 176 
 
A CAMP IN THE DARK 
 
 once more proposed that he should help me to find a 
 guide. 
 
 " C'estquCj'' he said again, "c' est que — ilfait noir, " 
 ** Very well," said I; "take one of your lanterns." 
 **No," he cried, drawing a thought backward, and 
 again intrenching himself behind one of his former 
 phrases; " I will not cross the door." 
 
 I looked at him. I saw unaffected terror struggling 
 on his face with unaffected shame ; he was smiling piti- 
 fully and wetting his lip with his tongue, like a detected 
 schoolboy. I drew a brief picture of my state, and asked 
 him what I was to do. 
 
 " I don't know," he said ; '* I will not cross the door." 
 Here was the Beast of Gevaudan, and no mistake. 
 **Sir," said I, with my most commanding manners, 
 *'you are a coward." 
 
 And with that I turned my back upon the family 
 party, who hastened to retire within their fortifications ; 
 and the famous door was closed again, but not till I had 
 overheard the sound of laughter. Filta barbara pater 
 barbarior. Let me say it in the plural : the Beasts of 
 Givaudan. 
 
 The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I 
 ploughed distressfully among stones and rubbish-heaps. 
 All the other houses in the village were both dark and 
 silent; and though I knocked at here and there a door, 
 my knocking was unanswered. It was a bad business ; 
 I gave up Fou^^ilhac with my curses. The rain had 
 stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, began 
 to dry my coat and trousers. ** Very well," thought I, 
 *' water or no water, I must camp." But the first thing 
 was to return to Modestine. I am pretty sure I was 
 
 177 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 twenty minutes groping for my lady in the dark ; and 
 if it had not been for the unkindly services of the bog, 
 into which I once more stumbled, I might have still 
 been groping for her at the dawn. My next business 
 was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was 
 cold as well as boisterous. How, in this well-wooded 
 district, I should have been so long in finding one, is 
 another of the insoluble mysteries of this day's adven- 
 tures ; but I will take my oath that I put near an hour to 
 the discovery. 
 
 At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, 
 suddenly crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated 
 blackness right in front. I call it a cave without exag- 
 geration ; to pass below that arch of leaves was like en- 
 tering a dungeon. I felt about until my hand encoun- 
 tered a stout branch, and to this I tied Modestine, a. hag- 
 gard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then I lowered 
 my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of the road, 
 and unbuckled the straps. I knew well enough where 
 the lantern was ; but where were the candles ? I groped 
 and groped among the tumbled articles, and, while I 
 was thus groping, suddenly I touched the spirit-lamp. 
 Salvation! This would serve my turn as well. The 
 wind roared unwearyingly among the trees ; I could hear 
 the boughs tossing and the leaves churning through 
 half a mile of forest; yet the scene of my encampment 
 was not only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered. 
 At the second match the wick caught flame. The light 
 was both livid and shifting ; but it cut me off from the 
 universe, and doubled the darkness of the surrounding 
 night. 
 
 I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and 
 178 
 
A CAMP IN THE DARK 
 
 broke up half the black bread for her supper, reserving 
 the other half against the morning. Then I gathered 
 what I should want within reach, took off my wet boots 
 and gaiters, which I wrapped in my waterproof, ar- 
 ranged my knapsack for a pillow under the flap of my 
 sleeping-bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, and 
 buckled myself in like a bambino. I opened a tin of 
 Bologna sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that 
 was all 1 had to eat. It may sound offensive, but I ate 
 them together, bite by bite, by way of bread and meat. 
 All I had to wash down this revolting mixture was neat 
 brandy : a revolting beverage in itself. But I was rare 
 and hungry ; ate well, and smoked one of the best ciga- 
 rettes in my experience. Then I put a stone in my straw 
 hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap over my neck and 
 eyes, put my revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled 
 well down among the sheepskins. 
 
 I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart 
 beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excite- 
 ment to which my mind remained a stranger. But as 
 ^oon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue leaped be- 
 tween them, and they would no more come separate. 
 
 The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Some- 
 times it sounded for minutes together with a steady even 
 rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would swell 
 .and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees 
 would patter me all over with big drops from the rain 
 of the afternoon. Night after night, in my own bed- 
 room in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing 
 concert of the wind among the woods; but whether it 
 was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or 
 because I was myself outside and in the midst of it, the 
 
 179 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among 
 these woods of Ghaudan. I hearkened and hearkened ; 
 and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my 
 body and subdued my thoughts and senses; but still 
 my last waking effort was to listen and distinguish, and 
 my last conscious state was one of wonder at the foreign 
 clamour in my ears. 
 
 Twice in the course of the dark hours — once when a 
 stone galled me underneath the sack, and again when 
 the poor patient Modestine, growing angry, pawed and 
 stamped upon the road — I was recalled for a brief while 
 to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and 
 the lace-like tdgt of the foliage against the sky. When 
 I awoke for the third time {Wednesday, September 2^ tb), 
 the world was flooded with a blue light, the mother of 
 the dawn. I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and 
 the ribbon of the road ; and, on turning my head, there 
 was Modestine tied to a beech, and standing half across the 
 path in an attitude of inimitable patience. I closed my 
 eyes again, and set to thinking over the experience of 
 the night. I was surprised to find how easy and pleas- 
 ant it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The 
 stone which annoyed me would not have been there, 
 had I not been forced to camp blindfold in the opaque 
 night; and 1 had felt no other inconvenience, except 
 when my feet encountered the lantern or the second 
 volume of Pey rat's Pastors of the Desert among the 
 mixed contents of my sleeping-bag; nay more, I had 
 felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with unusually 
 lightsome and clear sensations. 
 
 With that, I shook myself, got once more into my 
 boots and gaiters, and, breaking up the rest of the bread 
 
 180 
 
A CAMP IN THE DARK 
 
 for Modestine, strolled about to see in what part of the 
 world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and with 
 a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleas- 
 antly astray. I have been after an adventure all my life, 
 a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and 
 heroic voyagers ; and thus to be found by morning in a 
 random woodside nook in Gevaudan — not knowing 
 north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the 
 first man upon the earth, an inland castaway — was to 
 find a fraction of my day-dreams realised. I was on the 
 skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few 
 beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir; and 
 in front, it broke up and went down in open order into 
 a shallow and meadowy dale. All around there were 
 bare hill-tops, some near, some far away, as the per- 
 spective closed or opened, but none apparently much 
 higher than the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The 
 golden specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiver- 
 ingly. Overhead the sky was full of strings and shreds 
 of vapour, flying, vanishing, reappearing, and turning 
 about an axis like tumblers, as the wind hounded them 
 through heaven. It was wild weather and famishing 
 cold. I ate some chocolate, swallowed a mouthful of 
 brandy, and smoked a cigarette before the cold should 
 have time to disable my fingers. And by the time I had 
 got all this done, and had made my pack and bound it 
 on the pack-saddle, the day was tiptoe on the thresh- 
 hold of the east. We had not gone many steps along 
 the lane, before the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow 
 of gold over some cloud mountains that lay ranged along 
 the eastern sky. 
 The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly 
 
 i8i 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 forward. I buttoned myself into my coat, and walked 
 on in a pleasant frame of mind with all men, when sud- 
 denly, at a corner, there was Fouiilhic once more in 
 front of me. ' Nor only that, but there was the old gentle- 
 man who had escorted me so far the night before, run- 
 ning out of his house at sight of me, with hands upraised 
 in horror. 
 
 " My poor boy! " he cried, " what does this mean ?" 
 
 I told him what had happened. He beat his old 
 hands like clappers in a mill, to think how lightly he 
 had let me go ; but when he heard of the man of Fou- 
 Tiilhac, anger and depression seized upon his mind. 
 
 "This time, at least," said he, ''there shall be no 
 mistake." 
 
 And he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for 
 about half a mile, and until I was almost within sight of 
 Cheylard, the destination I had hunted for so long. 
 
 183 
 
CHEYLARD AND LUC 
 
 Candidly, it seemed little worthy of all this searching. 
 A few broken ends of village, with no particular street, 
 but a succession of open places heaped with logs and 
 fagots ; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine to our Lady 
 of all Graces on the summit of a little hill ; and all this, 
 upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a naked 
 valley. What went ye out for to see t thought I to my- 
 self. But the place had a life of its own. I found a 
 board commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard for 
 the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive 
 and tottering church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabi- 
 tants subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes for the 
 ' ' Work of the Propagation of the Faith. " Some of this, 
 I could not help hoping, would be applied to my native 
 land. Cheylard scrapes together halfpence for the dark- 
 ened souls in Edinburgh; while Balquidder and Dun- 
 rossness bemoan the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to the 
 high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each other 
 with evangelists, like school-boys bickering in the snow. 
 
 The inn was again singularly unpretentious. The 
 whole furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the 
 kitchen : the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate-rack, 
 the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest. 
 
 183 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 There were five children, one of whom was set to its 
 morning prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, 
 and a sixth would erelong be forthcoming. I was kindly 
 received by these good folk. They were much interested 
 in my misadventure. The wood in which I had slept 
 belonged to them ; the man of Fouiilhac they thought 
 a monster of iniquity, and counselled me warmly to 
 summon him at law — "because I might have died." 
 The good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink over 
 a pint of uncreamed milk. 
 
 *'You will do yourself an evil," she said. *' Permit 
 me to boil it for you." 
 
 After I had begun the morning on this delightful 
 liquor, she having an infinity of things to arrange, I was 
 permitted, nay requested, to make a bowl of chocolate 
 for myself My boots and gaiters were hung up to dry, 
 and, seeing me trying to write my journal on my knee, 
 the eldest daughter let down a hinged table in the 
 chimney-corner for my convenience. Here I wrote, 
 drank my chocolate, and finally ate an omelette before I 
 left. The table was thick with dust; for, as they ex- 
 plained, it was not used except in winter weather. I 
 had a clear look up the vent, through brown agglomera- 
 tions of soot and blue vapour, to the sky ; and whenever 
 a handful of twigs was thrown on to the fire, my legs 
 were scorched by the blaze. 
 
 The husband had begun life as a muleteer, and when 
 I came to charge Modestine showed himself full of the 
 prudence of his art. "You will have to change this 
 package," said he; "it ought to be in two parts, and 
 then you might have double the weight." 
 
 I explained that I wanted no more weight; and for 
 184 
 
CHEYLARD AND LUC 
 
 no donkey hitherto created would I cut my sleeping- 
 bag in two. 
 
 **It fatigues her, however," said the innkeeper; **it 
 fatigues her greatly on the march. Look." 
 
 Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw 
 beef on the inside, and blood was running from under 
 her tail. They told me when I left, and I was ready to 
 believe it, that before a few days I should come to love 
 Modestine like a dog. Three days had passed, we had 
 shared some misadventures, and my heart was still as cold 
 as a potato towards my beast of burden. She was pretty 
 enough to look at; but then she had given proof of dead 
 stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated 
 by flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. 
 And I own this new discovery seemed another point 
 against her. What the devil was the good of a she-ass 
 if she could not carry a sleeping-bag and a few neces- 
 saries ? I saw the end of the fable rapidly approaching, 
 when I should have to carry Modestine. yEsop was the 
 man to know the world ! I assure you I set out with 
 heavy thoughts upon my short day's march. 
 
 It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that 
 weighted me upon the way ; it was a leaden business 
 altogether. For first, the wind blew so rudely that I had 
 to hold on the pack with one hand from Cbeylard to 
 Luc; and second, my road lay through one of the most 
 beggarly countries in the world. It was like the worst 
 of the Scotch Highlands, only worse; cold, naked, and 
 ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life. 
 A road and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and 
 the line of the road was marked by upright pillars, to 
 serve in time of snow. 
 
 185 
 
TRAVELS WITH a uONKEY 
 
 Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or 
 Cheylard is more than my much-inventing spirit can 
 suppose. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, 
 but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is 
 to move ; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more 
 nearly ; to come down off this feather-bed of civiliza- 
 tion, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn 
 with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are 
 more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a 
 thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon 
 a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is 
 no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy 
 and compose the mind. And when the present is so 
 exacting, who can annoy himself about the future ? 
 
 I came out at length above the AUier, A more un- 
 sightly prospect at this season of the year it would be 
 hard to fancy. Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, 
 here dabbled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks 
 alternately naked and hairy with pines. The colour 
 throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in 
 the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impu- 
 dently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall 
 white statue of our Lady, which, I heard with interest, 
 weighed fifty quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 
 6th of October, Through this sorry landscape trickled 
 the AUier and a tributary of nearly equal size, which 
 came down to join it through a broad nude valley in 
 yivarais. The weather had somewhat lightened, and 
 the clouds massed in squadron; but the fierce wind still 
 hunted them through heaven, and cast great ungainly 
 splashes of shadow and sunlight over the scene. 
 
 Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged 
 186 
 
CHEYLARD AND LUC 
 
 between hill and river. It had no beauty, nor was there 
 any notable feature, save the old castle overhead with 
 its fifty quintals of brand-new Madonna. But the inn 
 was clean and large. The kitchen, with its two box- 
 beds hung with clean check curtains, with its wide stone 
 chimney, its chimney-shelf four yards long and garnished 
 with lanterns and religious statuettes, its array of chests 
 and pair of ticking clocks, was the very model of what 
 a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama kitchen, suitable 
 for bandits or noblemen in disguise. Nor was the scene 
 disgraced by the landlady, a handsome, silent, dark old 
 woman, clothed and hooded in black like a nup. Even 
 the public bedroom had a character of its own, with the 
 long deal tables and benches, where fifty might have 
 dined, set out as for a harvest-home, and the three box- 
 beds along the wall. In one of these, lying on straw 
 and covered with a pair of table-napkins, did I do pen- 
 ance all night long in goose-flesh and chattering teeth, 
 and sigh from time to time as I awakened for my sheep- 
 skin sack and the lee of some great wood. 
 
 187 
 
OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 
 
 " / behold 
 The House, the Brotherhood austere— 
 And what am /, that I am here f " 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 
 
 FATHER APOLLINARIS 
 
 NEXT morning ( Thursday, 26th September) I took the 
 road in a new order. The sack was no longer 
 doubled, but hung at full length across the saddle, a green 
 sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging 
 out of either end. It was more picturesque, it spared 
 the donkey, and, as I began to see, it would insure sta- 
 bility, blow high, blow low. But it was not without a 
 pang that I had so decided. For although I had pur- 
 chased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, 
 I was yet jealously uneasy lest the flaps should tumble 
 out and scatter my effects along the line of march. 
 
 My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the 
 march of Vivarak and Ghaudan. The hills of Givau- 
 dan on the right were a little more naked, if anything, 
 than those of Vivarais upon the left, and the former had 
 a monopoly of a low dotty underwood that grew thickly 
 in the gorges and died out in solitary burrs upon the 
 shoulders and the summits. Black bricks of fir-wood 
 were plastered here and there upon both sides, and here 
 and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside 
 the river; the only bit of railway in Gevaudan, although 
 there are many proposals afoot and surveys being made, 
 and even, as they tell me, a station standing ready- 
 built in Mende, A year or two hence and this may be 
 
 191 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 another world. The desert is beleaguered. Now may 
 some Languedocian Wordsworth turn the sonnet into 
 patois : * * Mountains and vales and floods, heard ye that 
 whistle ? " 
 
 At a place called La Baztide I was directed to leave 
 the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left 
 among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardeche; for 
 I was now come within a little way of my strange des- 
 tination, the Trappist monastery of our Lady of the Snows, 
 The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, 
 and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the 
 south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed 
 the view, and between these lay- ridge upon ridge, 
 heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, 
 the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as 
 God made them at the first. There was not a sign of 
 man's hand in all the prospect; and indeed not a trace 
 of his passage, save where generation after generation 
 had walked in twisted footpaths, in and out among the 
 beeches, and up and down upon the channelled slopes. 
 The mists, which had hitherto beset me, were now 
 broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and shone brightly 
 in the sun. I drew a long breath. It was grateful to 
 come, after so long, upon a scene of some attraction for 
 the human heart. I own I like definite form in what 
 my eyes are to rest upon ; and if landscapes were sold, 
 like the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny 
 plain and twopence coloured, I should go the length of 
 twopence every day of my life. 
 
 But if things had grown better to the south, it was 
 still desolate and inclement near at hand. A spidery 
 cross on every hill-top marked the neighbourhood of a 
 
 192 
 
FATHER APOLLINARIS 
 
 religious house; and a quarter of a mile beyond, the 
 outlook southward opening out and growing bolder 
 with every step, a white statue of the Virgin at the cor- 
 ner of a young plantation directed the traveller to our 
 Lady of the Snows. Here, then, I struck leftward, and 
 pursued my way, driving my secular donkey before me, 
 and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters, towards 
 the asylum of silence. 
 
 I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me 
 the clanging of a bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell 
 why, my heart sank within me at the sound. I have 
 rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror 
 than the monastery of our Lady of the Snows. This it 
 is to have had a Protestant education. And suddenly, 
 on turning a corner, fear took hold on me from head to 
 foot — slavish superstitious fear; and though I did not 
 stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man 
 who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and 
 strayed into the country of the dead. For there upon 
 the narrow new-made road, between the stripling pines, 
 was a mediaeval friar, fighting with a barrowful of turfs. 
 Every Sunday of my childhood I used to study the 
 Hermits of Marco Sadeler — enchanting prints, full of 
 wood and field and mediaeval landscapes, as large as a 
 county, for the imagination to go a-travelling in; and 
 here, sure enough, was one of Marco Sadeler' s heroes. 
 He was robed in white like any spectre, and the hood 
 falling back, in the instancy of his contention with the 
 barrow, disclosed a pate as bald and yellow as a skull. 
 He might have been buried any time these thousand 
 years, and all the lively parts of him resolved into earth 
 and broken up with the farmer's harrow. 
 
 193 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. 
 Durst I address a person who was under a vow of 
 silence ? Clearly not. But drawing near, I doffed my 
 cap to him with a far-away superstitious reverence. He 
 nodded back, and cheerfully addressed me. Was I go- 
 ing to the monastery ? Who was I ? An Englishman ? 
 Ah, an Irishman, then ? 
 
 *'No," I said, "a Scotsman." 
 
 A Scotsman ? Ah, he had never seen a Scotsman be- 
 fore. And he looked me all over, his good, honest, 
 brawny countenance shining with interest, as a boy 
 might look upon a lion or an alligator. From him I 
 learned with disgust that I could not be received at our 
 Lady of the Snows; I might get a meal, perhaps, but 
 that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and it 
 turned out that I was not a pedlar, but a literary man, 
 who drew landscapes and was going to write a book, 
 he changed his manner of thinking as to my reception 
 (for I fear they respect persons even in a Trappist mon- 
 astery), and told me I must be sure to ask for the Father 
 Prior, and state my case to him in full. On second 
 thoughts he determined to go down with me himself; 
 he thought he could manage for me better. Might he 
 say that I was a geographer ? 
 
 No ; I thought, in the interests of truth, he positively 
 might not. 
 
 ''Very well, then" (with disappointment), *'an 
 author." 
 
 It appeared he had been in a seminary with six young 
 Irishmen, all priests long since, who had received news- 
 papers and kept him informed of the state of ecclesias- 
 tical affairs in England. And he asked me eagerly after 
 
 194 
 
FATHER APOLLINARIS 
 
 Dr. Pusey, for whose conversion the good man had con- 
 tinued ever since to pray night and morning. 
 
 "I thought he was very near the truth," he said; 
 **and he will reach it yet; there is so much virtue in 
 prayer." 
 
 He must be a stiff ungodly Protestant who can take 
 anything but pleasure in this kind and hopeful story. 
 While he was thus near the subject, the good father 
 asked me if I were a Christian ; and when he found 1 was 
 not, or not after his way, he glossed it over with great 
 good-will. 
 
 The road which we were following, and which this 
 stalwart father had made with his own two hands within 
 the space of a year, came to a corner, and showed us 
 some white buildings a little further on beyond the 
 wood. At the same time, the bell once more sounded 
 abroad. We were hard upon the monastery. Father 
 ApoUinarh (for that was my companion's name) 
 stopped me. 
 
 **I must not speak to you down there," he said. 
 ** Ask for the Brother Porter, and all will be well. But 
 try to see me as you go out again through the wood, 
 where I may speak to you. I am charmed to have made 
 your acquaintance." 
 
 And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fin- 
 gers, and crying out twice, **I must not speak, I must 
 not speak ! " he ran away in front of me, and disappeared 
 into the monastery-door. 
 
 1 own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good 
 way to revive my terrors. But where one was so good 
 and simple, why should not all be alike ? I took heart 
 of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as Mo- 
 
 195 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 destine, who seerrred to have a disaffection for monas- 
 teries, would permit. It was the first door, in my ac- 
 quaintance of her, which she had not shown an indecent 
 haste to enter. I summoned the place in form, though 
 with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the Father Hos- 
 pitaller, and a pair of brown-robed brothers came to the 
 gate and spoke with me awhile. I think my sack was 
 the great attraction ; it had already beguiled the heart of 
 poor ApoUinaris, who had charged me on my life to 
 show it to the Father Prior. But whether it was my 
 address, or the sack, or the idea speedily published 
 among that part of the brotherhood who attend on stran- 
 gers that I was not a pedlar after all, I found no difficulty 
 as to my reception. Modestine was led away by a lay- 
 man to the stables, and I and my pack were received 
 into our Lady of the Snows, 
 
 190 
 
THE MONKS 
 
 Father Michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, 
 perhaps of thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave 
 me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner. We had 
 some talk, or rather I should say he listened to my 
 prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air, 
 like a spirit with a thing of clay. And truly when 1 re- 
 member that I descanted principally on my appetite, 
 and that it must have been by that time more than 
 eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as 
 broken bread, I can well understand that he would 
 find an earthly savour in my conversation. But his 
 manner, though superior, was exquisitely gracious ; and 
 I find I have a lurking curiosity as to Father Michael's 
 past. 
 
 The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in 
 the monastery garden. This is no more than the main 
 court, laid out in sandy paths and beds of party-coloured 
 dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of the 
 Virgin in the centre. The buildings stand around it 
 four-square, bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years and 
 weather, and with no other features than a belfry and a 
 pair of slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers in 
 brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; and 
 
 197 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 when I first came out, three hooded monks were kneel- 
 ing on the terrace at their prayers. A naked hill com- 
 mands the monastery upon one side, and the wood 
 commands it on the other. It lies exposed to wind; 
 the snow falls off and on from October to May, and 
 sometimes lies six weeks on end ; but if they stood in 
 Eden, with a climate like heaven's, the buildings them- 
 selves would offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect; 
 and for my part, on this wild September day, before I 
 was called to dinner, I felt chilly in and out. 
 
 When I had eaten well and heartily. Brother Ambrose, 
 a hearty conversable Frenchman (for all those who wait 
 on strangers have the liberty to speak), led me to a lit- 
 tle room in that part of the building which is set apart 
 for MM. les retraitants. It was clean and white- 
 washed, and furnished with strict necessaries, a cruci- 
 fix, a bust of the late Pope, the Imitation in French, a 
 book of religious meditations, and the life of Eliiabeth 
 Seton, evangelist, it would appear, of North America 
 and of New England in particular. As far as my experi- 
 ence goes, there is a fair field for some more evangeli- 
 sation in these quarters; but think of Cotton Mather ! 
 I should like to give him a reading of this little work in 
 heaven, where 1 hope he dwells; but perhaps he knows 
 all that already, and much more; and perhaps he and 
 Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and gladly unite 
 their voices in the everlasting psalm. Over the table, 
 to conclude the inventory of the room, hung a set of 
 regulations for MM. les retraitants : what services they 
 should attend, when they were to tell their beads or 
 meditate, and when they were to rise and go to rest. 
 At the foot was a notable N. B. : ""Le temps libre est em- 
 
THE MONKS 
 
 plqye a Vexamen de conscience, a la confession, d faire 
 de bonnes resolutions, ' ' etc. To make good resolutions, 
 indeed ! You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair 
 grow on your head. 
 
 I had scarce explored my niche when Brother Am- 
 brose returned. An English boarder, it appeared, would 
 like to speak with me. 1 professed my willingness, and 
 the friar ushered in a fresh, young little Irishman of fifty, 
 a deacon of the Church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and 
 wearing on his head what, in default of knowledge, I 
 can only call the ecclesiastical shako. He had lived 
 seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in Belgium, 
 and now five at our Lady of the Snows; he never saw 
 an English newspaper; he spoke French imperfectly, 
 and had he spoken it like a native, there was not much 
 chance of conversation where he dwelt. With this, he 
 was a man eminently sociable, greedy of news, and 
 simple-minded like a child. If I was pleased to have a 
 guide about the monastery, he was no less delighted 
 to see an English face and hear an English tongue. 
 
 He showed me his own room, where he passed his 
 time among breviaries, Hebrew bibles, and the Waverley 
 novels. Thence he led me to the cloisters, into the 
 chapter-house, through the vestry, where the brothers' 
 gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with 
 his religious name upon a board, — names full of legen- 
 dary suavity and interest, such as Basil, Hilarion, Ra- 
 phael, or Pacifique; into the library, where were all the 
 works of VeuiUot and Chateaubriand, and the Odes et 
 Ballades, if you please, and even Moliere, to say nothing 
 of innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and 
 general historians. Thence my good Irishman took me 
 
 199 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 round the workshops, where brothers bake bread, and 
 make cart-wheels, and take photographs; where one 
 superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a 
 gallery of rabbits. For in a Trappist monastery each 
 monk has an occupation of his own choice, apart from 
 his religious duties and the general labours of the house. 
 Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, 
 and join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir; but 
 in his private hours, although he must be occupied, he 
 may be occupied on what he likes. Thus I was told 
 that one brother was engaged with literature; while 
 Father ApoUinaris busies himself in making roads, and 
 the Abbot employs himself in binding books. It is not 
 so long since this Abbot was consecrated, by the way ; 
 and on that occasion, by a special grace, his mother 
 was permitted to enter the chapel and witness the cere- 
 mony of consecration. A proud day for her to have a 
 son a mitred abbot; it makes you glad to think they let 
 her in. 
 
 In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers 
 and brethren fell in our way. Usually they paid no more 
 regard to our passage than if we had been a cloud ; but 
 sometimes the good deacon had a permission to ask of 
 them, and it was granted by a peculiar movement of the 
 hands, almost like that of a dog's paws in swimming, or 
 refused by the usual negative signs, and in either case 
 with lowered eyelids and a certain air of contrition, as 
 of a man who was steering very close to evil. 
 
 The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still 
 taking two meals a day ; but it was already time for 
 their grand fast, which begins somewhere in September 
 and lasts till Easter, and during which they eat but once 
 
THE MONKS 
 
 in the twenty-four hours, and that at two in the after- 
 noon, twelve hours after they have begun the toil and 
 vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but even of 
 these they eat sparingly; and though each is allowed a 
 small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. 
 Without doubt, the most of mankind grossly overeat 
 themselves ; our meals serve not only for support, but as 
 a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of life. 
 Although excess may be hurtful, I should have thought 
 this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, 
 as i look back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness 
 of manner of all whom I beheld. A happier nor a 
 healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have 
 ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and 
 with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an 
 uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at our 
 Lady of the Snows. This, at least, was what was told me. 
 But if they die easily, they must live healthily in the 
 mean time, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in 
 colour; and the only morbid sign that I could observe, 
 an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one that served rather 
 to increase the general impression of vivacity and 
 strength. 
 
 Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweet- 
 tempered, with what I can only call a holy cheerfulness 
 in air and conversation. There is a note, in the direction 
 to visitors, telling them not to be offended at the curt 
 speech of those who wait upon them, since it is proper 
 to monks to speak little. The note might have been 
 spared; to a man the hospitallers were all brimming 
 with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the mon- 
 astery, it was easier to begin than to break off a conver- 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 sation. With the exception oi Father Michael, who was 
 a man of the world, they showed themselves full of kind 
 and healthy interest in all sorts of subjects — in politics, 
 in voyages, in my sleeping-sack — and not without a cer- 
 tain pleasure in the sound of their own voices. 
 
 As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only 
 wonder how they bear their solemn and cheerless iso- 
 lation. And yet, apart from any view of mortification, 
 I can see a certain policy, not only in the exclusion of 
 women, but in this vow of silence. I have had some 
 experience of lay phalansteries, of an artistic, not to say 
 a bacchanalian, character; and seen more than one asso- 
 ciation easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. 
 With a Cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted 
 longer. In the neighbourhood of women it is but a 
 touch-and-go association that can be formed among de- 
 fenceless men ; the stronger electricity is sure to triumph ; 
 the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are aban- 
 doned after an interview often minutes, and the arts and 
 sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once 
 for two sweet eyes and a caressing accent. And next 
 after this, the tongue is the great divider. 
 
 I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism 
 of a religious rule; but there is yet another point in 
 which the Trappist order appeals to me as a model of 
 wisdom. By two in the morning the clapper goes upon 
 the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter 
 by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so infmitesimally 
 is the day divided among different occupations. The 
 man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his 
 hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory, 
 all day long : every hour he has an office to sing, a duty 
 
 202 
 
THE MONKS 
 
 to perform; from two, when he rises in the dark, till 
 eight, when he returns to receive the comfortable gift of 
 sleep, he is upon his feet and occupied with manifold 
 and changing business. I know many persons, worth 
 several thousands in the year, who are not so fortu- 
 nate in the disposal of their lives. Into how many 
 houses would not the note of the monastery-bell, divid- 
 ing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of 
 mind and healthful activity of body ? We speak of hard- 
 ships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool, and 
 permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish 
 manner. 
 
 From this point of view, we may perhaps better un- 
 derstand the monk's existence. A long novitiate, and 
 every proof of constancy of mind and strength of body 
 is required before admission to the order; but I could 
 not find that many were discouraged. In the photog- 
 rapher's studio, which figures so strangely among the 
 outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of 
 a young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This 
 was one of the novices, who came of the age for service, 
 and marched and drilled and mounted guard for the 
 proper time among the garrison of Algiers. Here was 
 a man who had surely seen both sides of life before de- 
 ciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service he 
 returned to finish his novitiate. 
 
 This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. 
 When the Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he 
 lies in the bed of death as he has prayed and laboured 
 in his frugal and silent existence ; and when the Libera- 
 tor comes, at the very moment, even before they have 
 carried him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel 
 
 203 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 among continual chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if 
 for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim 
 throughout the neighbourhood that another soul has 
 gone to God. 
 
 At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I 
 took my place in the gallery to hear compline and Salve 
 Regina, with which the Cistercians bring every day to 
 a conclusion. There were none of those circumstances 
 which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in 
 the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, height- 
 ened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly 
 to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the 
 hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately oc- 
 cluded and revealed, the strong manly singing, the 
 silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in 
 prayer, and then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, 
 breaking in to show that the last office was over and 
 the hour of sleep had come; and when I remember, I 
 am not surprised that I made my escape into the court 
 with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man 
 bewildered in the windy starry night. 
 
 But I was weary ; and when I had quieted my spirits 
 with Eliiabeth Seton's memoirs — a dull work — the 
 cold and the raving of the wind among the pines — for 
 my room was on that side of the monastery which ad- 
 joins the woods — disposed me readily to slumber. I 
 was wakened at black midnight, as it seemed, though 
 it was really two in the morning, by the first stroke 
 upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to 
 the chapel ; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were 
 already beginning the uncomforted labours of their day. 
 The dead in life — there was a chill reflection. And the 
 
 204 
 
THE MONKS 
 
 words of a French song came back into my memory, 
 telling of the best of our mixed existence : — 
 
 " Que t'as de belles filles, 
 Girofle! 
 Girofla! 
 Que t'as de belles filles, 
 L' Amour Us comptera ! " 
 
 And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to 
 hope, and free to love. 
 
 205 
 
THE BOARDERS 
 
 But there was another side to my residence at our 
 Lady of the Snows. At this late season there were not 
 many boarders ; and yet I was not alone in the public 
 part of the monastery. This itself is hard by the gate, 
 with a small dining-room on the ground floor, and a 
 whole corridor of cells similar to mine up-stairs. I have 
 stupidly forgotten the board for a regular retraitant; but 
 it was somewhere between three and five francs a day, 
 and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors like 
 myself might give what they chose as a free-will offer- 
 ing, but nothing was demanded. I may mention that 
 when I was going away, Father Michael refused twenty 
 francs as excessive. I explained the reasoning which 
 led me to offer him so much; but even then, from a 
 curious point of honour, he would not accept it with his 
 own hand. " I have no right to refuse for the monas- 
 tery," he explained, ''but I should prefer if you would 
 give it to one of the brothers." 
 
 I had dined alone, because I arrived late; but at sup- 
 per I found two other guests. One was a country 
 parish priest, who had walked over that morning from 
 the seat of his cure near Mende to enjoy four days of 
 solitude and prayer. He was a grenadier in person, 
 
 206 
 
THE BOARDERS 
 
 with the hale color and circular wrinkles of a peasant; 
 and as he complained much of how he had been im- 
 peded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy 
 portrait of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with 
 kilted cassock, through the bleak hills of Gevaudan. 
 The other was a short, grizzling, thick-set man, from 
 forty-five to fifty, dressed in tweed with a knitted spen- 
 cer, and the red ribbon of a decoration in his buttonhole. 
 This last was a hard person to classify. He was an old 
 soldier, who had seen service and risen to the rank of 
 commandant; and he retained some of the brisk deci- 
 sive manners of the camp. On the other hand, as soon 
 as his resignation was accepted, he had come to our 
 Lady of the Snows as a boarder, and after a brief ex- 
 perience of its ways, had decided to remain as a novice. 
 Already the new life was beginning to modify his ap- 
 pearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the 
 quiet and smiling air of the brethren ; and he was as yet 
 neither an officer nor a Trappist, but partook of the 
 character of each. And certainly here was a man in an 
 interesting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and 
 trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still 
 country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly 
 in their grave-clothes, and, like phantoms, communi- 
 cate by signs. 
 
 At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, 
 when I am in France, to preach political good-will and 
 moderation, and to dwell on the example of Poland, 
 much as some alarmists in England dwell on the ex- 
 ample of Carthage. The priest and the Commandant 
 assured me of their sympathy with all I said, and made a 
 heavy sighing over thebitternessof contemporary feeling. 
 
 207 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 " Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which 
 he does not absolutely agree," said I, *'but he flies up 
 at you in a temper." 
 
 They both declared that such a state of things was 
 antichristian. 
 
 While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue 
 stumble upon but a word in praise oi Gambetta' s mod- 
 eration. The old soldier's countenance was instantly 
 suffused with blood; with the palms of his hands he 
 beat the table like a naughty child. 
 
 "' Comment, monsieur ? " he shouted. ''Comment? 
 Gambetta moderate? Will you dare to justify these 
 words } " 
 
 But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. 
 And suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier 
 found a warning look directed on his face; the ab- 
 surdity of his behaviour was brought home to him in a 
 flash ; and the storm came to an abrupt end, without 
 another word. 
 
 It was only in the morning, over our coffee {Friday, 
 September 2yth), that this couple found out I was a 
 heretic. I suppose I had misled them by some admir- 
 ing expressions as to the monastic life around us ; and 
 it was only by a point-blank question that the truth 
 came out. I had been tolerantly used, both by simple 
 Father ApoUinaris and astute Father Michael; and the 
 good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious weak- 
 ness, had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, 
 "You must be a Catholic and come to heaven." But I 
 was now among a different sect of orthodox. These 
 two men were bitter and upright and narrow, like the 
 worst of Scotsmen, and indeed, upon my heart, I fancy 
 
 208 
 
THE BOARDERS 
 
 they were worse. The priest snorted aloud like a bat- 
 tle-horse. 
 
 " Et vous pretendei mourir dans cette espece de crqy- 
 ance?" he demanded; and there is no type used by 
 mortal printers large enough to qualify his accent. 
 
 I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing. 
 
 But he could not away with such a monstrous atti- 
 tude. "No, no," he cried; "you must change. You 
 have come here, God has led you here, and you must 
 embrace the opportunity." 
 
 I made a slip in policy ; I appealed to the family affec- 
 tions, though I was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two 
 classes of men circumstantially divorced from the kind 
 and homely ties of life. 
 
 ' ' Your father and mother } " cried the priest. ' ' Very 
 well ; you will convert them in their turn when you go 
 home." 
 
 I think I see my father's face ! I would rather tackle 
 the Gaetulian lion in his den than embark on such an 
 enterprise against the family theologian. 
 
 But now the hunt was up ; priest and soldier were in 
 full cry for my conversion ; and the Work of the Propaga- 
 tion of the Faith, for which the people of Cheylard sub- 
 scribed forty-eight francs ten centimes during 1877, was 
 being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd 
 but most effective proselytising. They never sought to 
 convince me in argument, where I might have attempted 
 some defence ; but took it for granted that I was both 
 ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me 
 solely on the point of time. Now, they said, when 
 God had led me to our Lady of the Snows, now was the 
 appointed hour. 
 
 209 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 "Do not be withheld by false shame," observed the 
 priest, for my encouragement. 
 
 For one who feels very similarly to all sects of reli- 
 gion, and who has never been able, even for a moment, 
 to weigh seriously the merit of this or that creed on the 
 eternal side of things, however much he may see to 
 praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the 
 situation thus created was both unfair and painful. 1 
 committed my second fault in tact, and tried to plead 
 that it was all the same thing in the end, and we were 
 all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and 
 undiscriminating Friend and Father. That, as it seems 
 to lay-spirits, would be the only gospel worthy of the 
 name. But different men think differently; and this 
 revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest with 
 all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing 
 details of hell. The damned, he said — on the author- 
 ity of a little book which he had read not a week before, 
 and which, to add conviction to conviction, he had fully 
 intended to bring along with him in his pocket — were 
 to occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the 
 midst of dismal tortures. And as he thus expatiated, 
 he grew in nobility of aspect with his enthusiasm. 
 
 As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out 
 the Prior, since the Abbot was from home, and lay my 
 case immediately before him. 
 
 " Cest mon conseil comme ancien militaire, ' ' observed 
 the Commandant ; "' et celui de monsieur comme pretre. 
 
 "'Out," added the cure, sententiously nodding; 
 "comme ancien militaire — et comme pretre. *' 
 
 At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed 
 how to answer, in came one of the monks, a little brown 
 
 210 
 
THE BOARDERS 
 
 fellow, as lively as a grig, and with an Italian accent, 
 who threw himself at once into the contention, but in a 
 milder and more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these 
 pleasant brethren. Look at htm, he said. The rule was 
 very hard; he would have dearly liked to stay in his 
 own country, Italy — it was well known how beautiful 
 it was, the beautiful Italy; but then there were no Trap- 
 pists in Italy; and he had a soul to save ; and here he 
 was. 
 
 I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful In- 
 dian critic has dubbed me, *' a faddling hedonist; " for 
 this description of the brother's motives gave me some- 
 what of a shock. I should have preferred to think he 
 had chosen the life for its own sake, and not for ulterior 
 purposes ; and this shows how profoundly I was out of 
 sympathy with these good Trappists, even when I was 
 doing my best to sympathise. But to the cure the ar- 
 gument seemed decisive. 
 
 ''Hear that!" he cried. ''And I have seen a mar- 
 quis here, a marquis, a marquis" — he repeated the 
 holy word three times over — " and other persons high 
 in society ; and generals. And here, at your side, is this 
 gentleman, who has been so many years in armies — 
 decorated, an old warrior. And here he is, ready to 
 dedicate himself to God." 
 
 I was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that I 
 pleaded cold feet, and made my escape from the apart- 
 ment. It was a furious windy morning, with a sky 
 much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine; 
 and I wandered until dinner in the wild country to- 
 wards the east, sorely staggered and beaten upon by 
 the gale, but rewarded with some striking views. 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith 
 was recommenced, and on this occasion still more dis- 
 tastefully to me. The priest asked me many questions 
 as to the contemptible faith of my fathers, and received 
 my replies with a kind of ecclesiastical titter. 
 
 ** Your sect," he said once; "for I think you will ad- 
 mit it would be doing it too much honour to call it a 
 religion." 
 
 " As you please, monsieur," said I. ''La parole est a 
 votes. ' ' 
 
 At length I grew annoyed beyond endurance; and 
 although he was on his own ground, and, what is more 
 to the purpose, an old man, and so holding a claim upon 
 my toleration, I could not avoid a protest against this 
 uncivil usage. He was sadly discountenanced. 
 
 "I assure you," he said, "I have no inclination to 
 laugh in my heart. I have no other feeling but interest 
 in your soul." 
 
 And there ended my conversion. Honest man! He 
 was no dangerous deceiver; but a country parson, full 
 of zeal and faith. Long may he tread G^vaudan with 
 his kilted skirts — a man strong to walk and strong to 
 comfort his parishioners in death ! I dare say he would 
 beat bravely through a snow-storm where his duty 
 called him ; and it is not always the most faithful be- 
 liever who makes the cunningest apostle. 
 
 212 
 
UPPER GEVAUDAN 
 
 {continued). 
 
 The bed was made, the room wasJU, 
 By punctual eve the stars were lit ; 
 The air was sweet, the water ran ; 
 No need was therefor maid or man. 
 When we put up, my ass and /, 
 At God's green caravanserai" 
 
 Old Play. 
 
UPPER GfiVAUDAN 
 
 (continued) 
 
 ACROSS THE GOULET 
 
 THE wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained 
 clear; so it was under better auspices that I loaded 
 Modestine before the monastery-gate. My Irish friend 
 accompanied me so far on the way. As we came through 
 the wood, there was Pere ApoUinaire hauling his bar- 
 row ; and he too quitted his labours to go with me for 
 perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand between 
 both of his in front of him. I parted first from one and 
 then from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with 
 the glee of the traveller who shakes off the dust of one 
 stage before hurrying forth upon another. Then Modes- 
 tine and 1 mounted the course of the AUier, which here 
 led us back into Gevaudan towards its sources in the 
 forest of Mercoire. It was but an inconsiderable burn 
 before we left its guidance. Thence, over a hill, our 
 way lay through a naked plateau, until we reached 
 Chmserades at sundown. 
 
 The company in the inn-kitchen that night were all 
 men employed in survey for one of the projected rail- 
 ways. They were intelligent and conversable, and we 
 decided the future of France over hot wine, until the 
 state of the clock frightened us to rest. There were 
 four beds in the little up-stairs room ; and we slept six. 
 
 2>5 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 But I had a bed to myself, and persuaded them to leave 
 the window open. 
 
 ''He, bourgeois; it est cinq heures! " was the cry 
 that wakened me in the morning {Saturday, September 
 28th). The room was full of a transparent darkness, 
 which dimly showed me the other three beds and the 
 five different nightcaps on the pillows. But out of the 
 window the dawn was growing ruddy in a long belt 
 over the hill-tops, and day was about to flood the pla- 
 teau. The hour was inspiriting; and there seemed a 
 promise of calm weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. 
 I was soon under way with Modestine. The road lay 
 for a while over the plateau, and then descended through 
 a precipitous village into the valley of the Cbasse:(^ac. 
 This stream ran among green meadows, well hidden 
 from the world by its steep banks ; the broom was in 
 flower, and here and there was a hamlet sending up its 
 smoke. 
 
 At last the path crossed the Chasse:(ac upon a bridge, 
 and, forsaking this deep hollow, set itself to cross the 
 mountain of La Goulet. It wound up through Lestampes 
 by upland fields and woods of beech and birch, and 
 with every corner brought me into an acquaintance with 
 some new interest. Even in the gully of the Chasse^ac 
 my ear had been struck by a noise like that of a great 
 bass bell ringing at the distance of many miles; but 
 this, as I continued to mount and draw nearer to it, 
 seemed to change in character, and I found at length 
 that it came from some one leading flocks afield to the 
 note of a rural horn. The narrow street of Lestampes 
 stood full of sheep, from wall to wall — black sheep 
 and white, bleating like the birds in spring, and each 
 
 216 
 
ACROSS THE GOULET 
 
 one accompanying himself upon the sheep-bell round 
 his neck. It made a pathetic concert, all in treble. A 
 little higher, and I passed a pair of men in a tree with 
 pruning-hooks, and one of them was singing the music 
 of a bourree. Still further, and when I was already 
 threading the birches, the crowing of cocks came cheer- 
 fully up to my ears, and along with that the voice of 
 a flute discoursing a deliberate and plaintive air from 
 one of the upland villages. I pictured to myself some 
 grizzled, apple-cheeked, country schoolmaster fluting 
 in his bit of a garden in the clear autumn sunshine. 
 All these beautiful and interesting sounds filled my heart 
 with an unwonted expectation ; and it appeared to me 
 that, once past this range which I was mounting, I should 
 descend into the garden of the world. Nor was I de- 
 ceived, for I was now done with rains and winds and a 
 bleak country. The first part of my journey ended here ; 
 and this was like an induction of sweet sounds into the 
 other and more beautiful. 
 
 There are other degrees oifeyness, as of punishment, 
 besides the capital; and I was now led by my good 
 spirits into an adventure which I relate in the interest of 
 future donkey-drivers. The road zigzagged so widely 
 on the hillside that I chose a short cut by map and com- 
 pass, and struck through the dwarf woods to catch the 
 road again upon a higher level. It was my one serious 
 conflict with Modestine. She would none of my short 
 cut; she turned in my face, she backed, she reared; she, 
 whom I had hitherto imagined to be dumb, actually 
 brayed with a loud hoarse flourish, like a cock crowing 
 for the dawn. I plied the goad with one hand ; with 
 the other, so steep was the ascent, I had to hold on the 
 
 217 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 pack-saddle. Half a dozen times she was nearly over 
 backwards on the top of me; half a dozen times, from 
 sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly giving it up, and 
 leading her down again to follow the road. But I took 
 the thing as a wager, and fought it through. I was sur- 
 prised, as I went on my way again, by what appeared 
 to be chill rain-drops falling on my hand, and more than 
 once looked up in wonder at the cloudless sky. But it 
 was only sweat which came dropping from my brow. 
 Over the summit of the Goulet there was no marked 
 road — only upright stones posted from space to space 
 to guide the drovers. The turf underfoot was springy 
 and well scented. I had no company but a lark or two, 
 and met but one bullock-cart between Lestampes and 
 Bleymard. In front of me I saw a shallow valley, and 
 beyond that the range of the Latere, sparsely wooded 
 and well enough modelled in the flanks, but straight 
 and dull in outline. There was scarce a sign of culture; 
 only about Bleymard, the white high-road from yiUe- 
 fort to Mende traversed a range of meadows, set with 
 spiry poplars, and sounding from side to side with the 
 bells of flocks and herds. 
 
 ai8 
 
A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 
 
 From Bleymard after dinner, although it was already; 
 late, I set out to scale a portion of the Loiere. An ill- 
 marked stony drove-road guided me forward ; and I met 
 nearly half a dozen bullock-carts descending from the 
 woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the win- 
 ter's firing. At the top of the woods, which do not 
 climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck leftward 
 by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of green 
 turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some 
 stones to serve me for a water-tap. "In a more sacred 
 or sequestered bower — nor nymph nor faunus haunted. " 
 The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the 
 glade: there was no outlook, except north-eastward 
 upon distant hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; 
 and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. 
 By the time I had made my arrangements and fed Mo- 
 destine, the day was already beginning to decline. I 
 buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made 
 a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I 
 pulled my cap over my eyes and fell asleep. 
 
 Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but 
 in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and 
 dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by 
 
 219 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of 
 temporal death to people choked between walls and 
 curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man 
 who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature 
 breathing deeply and freely ; even as she takes her rest 
 she turns and smiles ; and there is one stirring hour un- 
 known to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful 
 influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and 
 all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that 
 the cock first crows, not this time to announce the 
 dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course 
 of night. Cattle awake on the meadows ; sheep break 
 their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair 
 among the ferns; and houseless men, who have lain 
 down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold 
 the beauty of the night. 
 
 At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of 
 Nature, are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same 
 hour to life ? Do the stars rain down an influence, or 
 do we share some thrill of mother earth below our rest- 
 ing bodies ? Even shepherds and old country-folk, who 
 are the deepest read in these arcana, have not a guess as 
 to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection. 
 Towards two in the morning they declare the thing 
 takes place ; and neither know nor inquire further. And 
 at least it is a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in 
 our slumber only, like the luxurious Montaigne, ' * that 
 we may the better and more sensibly relish it." We 
 have a moment to look upon the stars, and there is a 
 special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we 
 share the impulse with all out-door creatures in our 
 neighbourhood, that we have escaped out of the Bastille 
 
A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 
 
 of civilisation, and are become, for the time being, a 
 mere kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock. 
 
 When that hour came to me among the pines, I wak- 
 ened thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of 
 water. I emptied it at a draught; and feeling broad 
 awake after this internal cold aspersion, sat upright to 
 make a cigarette. The stars were clear, coloured, and 
 jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood 
 for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points 
 stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the 
 pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and 
 round at the length of her tether; I could hear her stead- 
 ily munching at the sward ; but there was not another 
 sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel 
 over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the 
 colour of the sky, as we call the void of space, from 
 where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines to 
 where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. 
 As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This 
 I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the 
 cigarette ; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was 
 illuminated, and became for a second the highest light 
 in the landscape. 
 
 A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a 
 stream of air, passed down the glade from time to time; 
 so that even in my great chamber the air was being re- 
 newed all night long. I thought with horror of the inn 
 2X Chasserades and the congregated nightcaps; with 
 horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, 
 of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. I have 
 not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, 
 nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer 
 
 221 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed 
 after all a gentle habitable place ; and night after night a 
 man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in 
 the fields, where God keeps an open house. I thought 
 1 had re-discovered one of those truths which are re- 
 vealed to savages and hid from political economists : at 
 the least, I had discovered a new pleasure for myself. 
 And yet even while I was exulting in my solitude I be- 
 came aware of a strange lack. I wished a companion 
 to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but 
 ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet 
 even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is 
 solitude made perfect. ' And to live out of doors with the 
 woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete 
 and free. 
 
 As I thus lay, between content and longing, a faint 
 noise stole towards me through the pines. I thought, 
 at first, it was the crowing of cocks or the barking of 
 dogs at some very distant farm ; but steadily and gradu- 
 ally it took articulate shape in my ears, until I became 
 aware that a passenger was going by upon the high- 
 road in the valley, and singing loudly as he went. 
 There was more of good-will than grace in his perform- 
 ance; but he trolled with ample lungs; and the sound 
 of his voice took hold upon the hillside and set the air 
 shaking in the leafy glens. I have heard people passing 
 by night in sleeping cities; some of them sang; one, I 
 remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I have heard 
 the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly after 
 hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within 
 the range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a ro- 
 mance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and 
 
A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 
 
 with something of a thrill we try to guess their business. 
 But here the romance was double : first, this glad pas- 
 senger, lit internally with wine, who sent up his voice 
 in music through the night; and then I, on the other 
 hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the 
 pine-woods between four and five thousand feet to- 
 wards the stars. 
 
 When 1 awoke again {Sunday, 29th September), many 
 of the stars had disappeared ; only the stronger com- 
 panions of the night still burned visibly overhead ; and 
 away towards the east I saw a faint haze of light upon 
 the horizon, such as had been the Milky Way when I 
 was last awake. Day was at hand. I lit my lantern, 
 and by its glowworm light put on my boots and gait- 
 ers ; then I broke up some bread for Modestine, filled my 
 can at the water-tap, and lit my spirit-lamp to boil my- 
 self some chocolate. The blue darkness lay long in the 
 glade where I had so sweetly slumbered ; but soon there 
 was a broad streak of orange melting into gold along the 
 mountain-tops of ^tvarais, A solemn glee possessed 
 my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of 
 day. I heard the runnel with delight; I looked round 
 me for something beautiful and unexpected; but the 
 still black pine-trees, the hollow glade, the munching 
 ass, remained unchanged in figure. Nothing had al- 
 tered but the light, and that, indeed, shed over all a 
 spirit of life and of breathing peace, and moved me to a 
 strange exhilaration. 
 
 I drank my water chocolate, which was hot if it was 
 not rich, and strolled here and there, and up and down 
 abdut the glade. While I was thus delaying, a gush of 
 steady wind, as long as a heavy sigh, poured direct out 
 
 223 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 of the quarter of the morning. It was cold, and set me 
 sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed their black 
 plumes in its passage ; and I could see the thin distant 
 spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to 
 and fro against the golden east. Ten minutes after, the 
 sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering 
 shadows and sparkles, and the day had come com- 
 pletely. 
 
 1 hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep 
 ascent that lay before me; but I had something on my 
 mind. It was only a fancy ; yet a fancy will sometimes be 
 importunate. I had been most hospitably received and 
 punctually served in my green caravanserai. The room 
 was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called 
 me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries or the 
 inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I com- 
 manded from the windows ; but I felt I was in some 
 one's debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it 
 pleased me, in a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of 
 money on the turf as I went along, until I had left enough 
 for my night's lodging. I trust they did not fall to some 
 rich and churlish drover. 
 
 224 
 
THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 
 
 We travelled in the print of olden wars ; 
 
 Yet all the land was green ; 
 
 A nd love we found, attd peace. 
 
 Where fire and war had been. 
 They pass and smile, the children oftJu sword-^ 
 
 No more the sword they wield ; 
 
 And O, how deep the com 
 
 Along the battlefield! " 
 
 W. P. Bannatyne. 
 
THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 
 
 ACROSS THE LOZ^RE 
 
 THE track that I had followed in the evening soon 
 died out, and I continued to follow over a bald turf 
 ascent a row of stone pillars, such as had conducted me 
 across the Goulet. It was already warm. I tied my 
 jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat. 
 Modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her 
 own accord, for the first time in my experience, into a 
 jolting trot that sent the oats swashing in the pocket of 
 my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gtvaudan, 
 extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, 
 appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, 
 and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of 
 the morning. A multitude of little birds kept sweeping 
 and twittering about my path ; they perched on the stone 
 pillars, they pecked and strutted on the turf, and I saw 
 them circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, from 
 time to time, translucent flickering wings between the 
 sun and me. 
 
 Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint 
 large noise, like a distant surf, had filled my ears. Some- 
 times I was tempted to think it the voice of a neighbour- 
 ing waterfall, and sometimes a subjective result of the 
 utter stillness of the hill. But as I continued to advance, 
 
 227 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 the noise increased and became like the hissing of an 
 enormous tea-urn, and at the same time breaths of cool 
 air began to reach me from the direction of the summit. 
 At length I understood. It was blowing stiffly from the 
 south upon the other slope of the Lo^ere, and every step 
 that I took I was drawing nearer to the wind. 
 
 Although it had been long desired, it was quite unex- 
 pectedly at last that my eyes rose above the summit. A 
 step that seemed no way more decisive than many other 
 steps that had preceded it — and, 'Mike stout Corte^ 
 when, with eagle eyes, he stared on the Pacific," I 
 took possession, in my own name, of a new quarter of 
 the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf rampart 
 I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy 
 air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my 
 feet. 
 
 The Lo^ere lies nearly east and west, cutting Gdvaii- 
 dan into two unequal parts ; its highest point, this Pic 
 de Finiels, on which 1 was then standing, rises upwards 
 of five thousand six hundred feet above the sea, and in 
 clear weather commands a view over all lower Langue- 
 doc to the Mediterranean Sea. I have spoken with peo- 
 ple who either pretended or believed that they had seen, 
 from the Pic de Finiels, white ships sailing by Mont- 
 pellier and Cette. Behind was the upland northern coun- 
 try through which my way had lain, peopled by a dull 
 race, without wood, without much grandeur of hill- 
 form, and famous in the past for little beside wolves. 
 But in front of me, half-veiled in sunny haze, lay a 
 new Gdvaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious for stirring 
 events. Speaking largely, 1 was in the C^vennes at 
 Monastier, and during all my journey; but there is a 
 
 228 
 
ACROSS THE LOZERE 
 
 Strict and local sense in which only this confused and 
 shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and 
 in this sense the peasantry employ the word. These are 
 the Cevennes with an emphasis : the Cevennes of the 
 Cevenncs. In that undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a 
 war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two 
 years between the Grand Monarch with all his troops 
 and marshals on the one hand, and a few thousand 
 Protestant mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and 
 eighty years ago, the Camisards held a station even on 
 the Loiere, where I stood; they had an organisation, 
 arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy ; their affairs 
 were *' the discourse of every coffee-house " in London; 
 England sent fleets in their support ; their leaders pro- 
 phesied and murdered ; with colours and drums, and the 
 singing of old French psalms, their bands sometimes 
 affronted daylight, marched before walled cities, and 
 dispersed the generals of the king; and sometimes at 
 night, or in masquerade, possessed themselves of strong 
 castles, and avenged treachery upon their allies and 
 cruelty upon their foes. There, a hundred and eighty 
 years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, '' Count and Lord 
 Roland, generalissimo of the Protestants in France, ' ' 
 grave, silent, imperious, pock-marked ex-dragoon, 
 whom a lady followed in his wanderings out of love. 
 There was Cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a genius 
 for war, elected brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to 
 die at fifty-five the English governor oi Jersey. There 
 again was Castanet, a partisan leader in a voluminous 
 peruke and with a taste for controversial divinity. 
 Strange generals, who moved apart to take counsel 
 with the God of Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set 
 
 229 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 sentinels or slept in an unguarded camp, as the Spirit 
 whispered to their hearts! And there, to follow these 
 and other leaders, was the rank and file of prophets and 
 disciples, bold, patient, indefatigable, hardy to run upon 
 the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, 
 eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the 
 oracles of brainsick children, and mystically putting a 
 grain of wheat among the pewter balls with which they 
 charged their muskets. 
 
 I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in 
 the track of nothing more notable than the child-eating 
 Beast of Gevaudan, the Napoleon Buonaparte of wolves. 
 But now I was to go down into the scene of a romantic 
 chapter — or, better, a romantic foot-note — in the his- 
 tory of the world. What was left of all this bygone 
 dust and heroism ? I was told that Protestantism still 
 survived in this head seat of Protestant resistance; so 
 much the priest himself had told me in the monastery 
 parlour. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, 
 or a lively and generous tradition. Again, if in the 
 northern Cevennes the people are narrow in religious 
 judgments, and more filled with zeal than charity, what 
 was 1 to look for in this land of persecution and reprisal 
 — in a land where the tyranny of the Church produced 
 the Camisard rebellion, and the terror of the Camisards 
 threw the Catholic peasantry into legalised revolt upon 
 the other side, so that Camisard and Florentin skulked 
 for each other's lives among the mountains ? 
 
 Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look 
 before me, the series of stone pillars came abruptly to 
 an end; and only a little below, a sort of track appeared 
 and began to go down a breakneck slope, turning like 
 
 230 
 
ACROSS THE LOZfiRE 
 
 a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley between 
 falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of 
 corn, and floored further down with green meadows. 
 I followed the track with precipitation ; the steepness of 
 the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of de- 
 scent, and the old unwearied hope of finding something 
 new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. 
 Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself 
 together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad 
 noise among the hills. Sometimes it would cross the 
 track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which Modes- 
 tine refreshed her feet. 
 
 The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly 
 was it accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere 
 the valley had closed round my path, and the sun beat 
 upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere. 
 The track became a road, and went up and down in 
 easy undulations. I passed cabin after cabin, but all 
 seemed deserted ; and I saw not a human creature, nor 
 heard any sound except that of the stream. I was, how- 
 ever, in a different country from the day before. The 
 stony skeleton of the world was here vigorously dis- 
 played to sun and air. The slopes were steep and 
 changeful. Oak-trees clung along the hills, well grown, 
 wealthy in leaf, and touched by the autumn with strong 
 and luminous colours. Here and there another stream 
 would fall in from the right or the left, down a gorge of 
 snow-white and tumultuary boulders. The river in 
 the bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collect- 
 ing on all hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed 
 awhile in desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the 
 most enchanting sea-green shot with watery browns. 
 
 231 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so 
 changeful and delicate a hue ; crystal was not more clear, 
 the meadows were not by half so green ; and at every 
 pool I saw I felt a thrill of longing to be out of these hot, 
 dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body 
 in the mountain air and water. All the time as I went 
 on I never forgot it was the Sabbath ; the stillness was 
 a perpetual reminder; and I heard in spirit the church- 
 bells clamouring all over Europe, and the psalms of a 
 thousand churches. 
 
 At length a human sound struck upon my ear — a cry 
 strangely modulated between pathos and derision ; and 
 looking across the valley, I saw a little urchin sitting in 
 a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and dwarfed 
 to almost comical smallness by the distance. But the 
 rogue had picked me out as I went down the road, from 
 oak-wood on to oak-wood, driving Modestine; and he 
 made me the compliments of the new country in this 
 tremulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises 
 are lovely and natural at a sufficient distance, this also, 
 coming through so much clean hill air and crossing all 
 the green valley, sounded pleasant to my ear, and seemed 
 a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river. 
 
 A little after, the stream that I was following fell into 
 the Tarn, at Pont de Montvert of bloody memory. 
 
 2^2 
 
PONT DE MONTVERT 
 
 One of the first things I encountered in Pont de Mont- 
 vert was, if I remember rightly, the Protestant temple ; 
 but this was but the type of other novelties. A subtle 
 atmosphere distinguishes a town in England from a 
 town in France, or even in Scotland. At Carlisle you 
 can see you are in one country ; at Dumfries, thirty 
 miles away, you are as sure that you are in the other. I 
 should fmd it difficult to tell in what particulars Pontde 
 Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or even 
 Bleymard ; but the difference existed, and spoke elo- 
 quently to the eyes. The place, with its houses, its 
 lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an indescribable air of 
 the South. 
 
 All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the pub- 
 lic-house, as all had been Sabbath peace among the 
 mountains. There must have been near a score of us 
 at dinner by eleven before noon ; and after I had eaten 
 and drunken, and sat writing up my journal, I suppose 
 as many more came dropping in one after another, or 
 by twos and threes. In crossing the Lo^dre I had not 
 only come among new natural features, but moved into 
 the territory of a different race. These people, as they 
 hurriedly despatched their viands in an intricate sword- 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 play of knives, questioned and answered me with a de- 
 gree of intelligence which excelled all that I had met, 
 except among the railway folk at Chasserades. They 
 had open telling faces, and were lively both in speech 
 and manner. They not only entered thoroughly into 
 the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, 
 if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on 
 such another." 
 
 Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had 
 not seen a pretty woman since I left Monastier, and there 
 but one. Now of the three who sat down with me to 
 dinner, one was certainly not beautiful — a poor timid 
 thing of forty, quite troubled at this roaring table d'hote, 
 whom I squired and helped to wine, and pledged and 
 tried generally to encourage, with quite a contrary effect; 
 but the other two, both married, were both more hand- 
 some than the average of women. And Clarisse? 
 What shall I say of Clarisse ? She waited the table with 
 a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; 
 her great gray eyes were steeped in amourous languor; 
 her features, although fleshy, were of an original and 
 accurate design ; her mouth had a curl ; her nostril spoke 
 of dainty pride ; her cheek fell into strange and interest- 
 ing lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and, 
 with training, it offered the promise of delicate senti- 
 ment. It seemed pitiful to see so good a model left to 
 country admirers and a country way of thought. Beauty 
 should at least have touched society, then, in a moment, 
 it throws off a weight that lay upon it, it becomes con- 
 scious of itself, it puts on an elegance, learns a gait and 
 a carriage of the head, and, in a moment, patet dea. 
 Before I left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. 
 
 234 
 
PONT DE MONTVERT 
 
 She took it like milk, without embarrassment or won- 
 der, merely looking at me steadily with her great eyes ; 
 and I own the result upon myself was some confusion. 
 If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add 
 that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a 
 case for stays ; but that may perhaps grow better as she 
 gets up in years. 
 
 Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we might 
 say at home, is a place memorable in the story of the 
 Camisards. It was here that the war broke out; here 
 that those southern Covenanters slew their Archbishop 
 Sharpe. The persecution on the one hand, the febrile 
 enthusiasm on the other, are almost equally difficult to 
 understand in these quiet modern days, and with our 
 easy modern beliefs and disbeliefs. The Protestants 
 were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and 
 sorrow. They were all prophets and prophetesses. 
 Children at the breast would exhort their parents to good 
 works. "A child of fifteen months at Quissac spoke 
 from its mother's arms, agitated and sobbing, distinctly 
 and with a loud voice." Marshal l^illars has seen a 
 town where all the women ''seemed possessed by the 
 devil," and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies 
 publicly upon the streets. A prophetess of Vivarais 
 was hanged at MontpeUier because blood flowed from 
 her eyes and nose, and she declared that she was weep- 
 ing tears of blood for the misfortunes of the Protestants. 
 And it was not only women and children. Stalwart 
 dangerous fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield 
 the forest axe, were likewise shaken with strange par- 
 oxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and streaming 
 tears. A persecution unsurpassed in violence had lasted 
 
 235 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 near a score of years, and this was the result upon the 
 persecuted; hanging, burning, breaking on the wheel, 
 had been vain ; the dragoons had left their hoof-marks 
 over all the country-side; there were men rowing in the 
 galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church; 
 and not a thought was changed in the heart of any up- 
 right Protestant. 
 
 Now the head and forefront of the persecution — after 
 Lamoignon de Bavile — Francois de Langlade du Chayla 
 (pronounced Cheila), Archpriest of the Cevennes and 
 Inspector of Missions in the same country, had a house 
 in which he sometimes dwelt in the town of Pont de 
 Montvert. He was a conscientious person, who seems 
 to have been intended by nature for a pirate, and now 
 fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned all the 
 moderation of which he is capable. A missionary in 
 his youth in China, he there suffered martyrdom, was 
 left for dead, and only succoured and brought back to life 
 by the charity of a pariah. We must suppose the pa- 
 riah devoid of second sight, and not purposely malicious 
 in this act. Such an experience, it might be thought, 
 would have cured a man of the desire to persecute ; but 
 the human spirit is a thing strangely put together; and, 
 having been a Christian martyr, Du Chayla became a 
 Christian persecutor. The Work of the Propagation of 
 the Faith went roundly forward in his hands. His house 
 in Pont de Montvert served him as a prison. There he 
 plucked out the hairs of the beard, and closed the hands 
 of his prisoners upon live coals, to convince them that 
 they were deceived in their opinions. And yet had not 
 he himself tried and proved the inefficacy of these carnal 
 arguments among the Boodhists in China ? 
 
 236 
 
PONT DE MONTVERT 
 
 Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but 
 flight was rigidly forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer, 
 and well acquainted with the mountain-paths, had al- 
 ready guided several troops of fugitives in safety to 
 Geneva; and on him, with another convoy, consisting 
 mostly of women dressed as men, Du Chayla, in an evil 
 hour for himself, laid his hands. The Sunday following, 
 there was a conventicle of Protestants in the woods of 
 Altefage upon Mont Bouges; where there stood up one 
 Seguier — Spirit Seguier, as his companions called him 
 — z wool-carder, tall, black-faced, and toothless, but a 
 man full of prophecy. He declared, in the name of God, 
 that the time for submission had gone by, and they must 
 betake themselves to arms for the deliverance of their 
 brethren and the destruction of the priests. 
 
 The next night, 24i\\July, 1702, a sound disturbed 
 the Inspector of Missions as he sat in his prison-house at 
 Pont de Montvert; the voices of many men upraised in 
 psalmody drew nearer and nearer through the town. It 
 was ten at night; he had his court about him, priests, 
 soldiers, and servants, to the number of twelve or fif- 
 teen ; and now dreading the insolence of a conventicle 
 below his very windows, he ordered forth his soldiers 
 to report. But the psalm-singers were already at his 
 door, fifty strong, led by the inspired Seguier, and 
 breathing death. To their summons, the archpriest 
 made answer like a stout old persecutor, and bade his 
 garrison fire upon the mob. One Camisard (for, accord- 
 ing to some, it was in this night's work that they came 
 by the name) fell at this discharge ; his comrades burst 
 in the door with hatchets and a beam of wood, overran 
 the lower story of the house, set free the prisoners, and 
 
 237 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 finding one of them in the vine, a sort of Scavenger's 
 Daughter of the place and period, redoubled in fury 
 against Du Chayla, and sought by repeated assaults to 
 carry the upper floors. But he, on his side, had given 
 absolution to his men, and they bravely held the stair- 
 case. 
 
 *' Children of God," cried the prophet, ''hold your 
 hands. Let us burn the house, with the priest and the 
 satellites of Baal. ' ' 
 
 The fire caught readily. Out of an upper window Du 
 Chayla and his men lowered themselves into the garden 
 by means of knotted sheets ; some escaped across the 
 river under the bullets of the insurgents ; but the arch- 
 priest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl 
 into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second 
 martyrdom drew near } A poor, brave, besotted, hate- 
 ful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to 
 his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at 
 least one telling word to say in his defence; for when 
 the roof fell in and the upbursting flames discovered his 
 retreat, and they came and dragged him to the public 
 place of the town, raging and calling him damned — 
 " If 1 be damned," said he, " why should you also damn 
 yourselves } " 
 
 Here was a good reason for the last; but in the course 
 of his inspectorship he had given many stronger which 
 all told in a contrary direction ; and these he was now to 
 hear. One by one, Seguier first, the Camisards drew 
 near and stabbed him. "This," they said, "is for my 
 father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the 
 galleys. That for my mother or my sister imprisoned in 
 your cursed convents." Each gave his blow and his 
 
 238 
 
PONT DE MONTVERT 
 
 reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around 
 the body till the dawn. With the dawn, still singing, 
 they defiled away towards Frugeres, further up the 
 Tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance, leaving Du 
 Chayla's prison-house in ruins, and his body pierced 
 with two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place. 
 
 Tis a wild night's work, with its accompaniment of 
 psalms; and it seems as if a psalm must always have a 
 sound of threatening in that town upon the Tarn, But 
 the story does not end, even so far as concerns Pont de 
 Montvert, with the departure of the Camisards. The 
 career of Siguier was brief and bloody. Two more 
 priests and a whole family at Ladeveie, from the father 
 to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders ; and 
 yet he was but a day or two at large, and restrained all 
 the time by the presence of the soldiery. Taken at 
 length by a famous soldier of fortune. Captain Pout, he 
 appeared unmoved before his judges. 
 
 ** Your name .?" they asked. 
 
 '' Pierre Seguier. ' ' 
 
 '* Why are you called Spirit} " 
 
 '* Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me.'* 
 
 ** Your domicile .?" 
 
 ** Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven." 
 
 *'Have you no remorse for your crimes .^" 
 
 *' I have committed none. My soul is like a garden 
 full of shelter and of fountains. 
 
 At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, he had 
 his right hand stricken from his body, and was burned 
 alive. And his soul was like a garden ? So perhaps 
 was the soul of Du Cbayla, the Christian martyr. And 
 perhaps if you could read in my soul, or I could read in 
 
 239 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 yours, our own composure might seem little less sur- 
 prising. 
 
 Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, 
 beside one of the bridges of the town ; and if you are 
 curious you may see the terrace-garden into which he 
 dropped. 
 
 240 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 
 
 A NEW road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florae by 
 the valley of the Tarn; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs 
 about half-way between the summit of the cliffs and the 
 river in the bottom of the valley ; and I went in and out, 
 as I followed it, from bays of shadow into promontories 
 of afternoon sun. This was a pass like that of KiUie- 
 crankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the 
 Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and 
 craggy summits standing in the sunshine high above. 
 A thin fringe of ash-trees ran about the hill-tops, like 
 ivy on a ruin ; but on the lower slopes and far up every 
 glen the Spanish chestnut-trees stood each four-square 
 to heaven under its tented foliage. Some were planted 
 each on its own terrace, no larger than a bed; some, 
 trusting in their roots, found strength to grow and 
 prosper and be straight and large upon the rapid slopes 
 of the valley ; others, where there was a margin to the 
 river, stood marshalled in a line and mighty like cedars 
 of Lebanon. Yet even where they grew most thickly 
 they were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a herd 
 of stalwart individuals; and the dome of each tree stood 
 forth separate and large, and as it were a little hill, from 
 among the domes of its companions. They gave forth 
 a faint sweet perfume which pervaded the air of the 
 
 241 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 afternoon ; autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in 
 the green ; and the sun so shone through and kindled 
 the broad foliage, that each chestnut was relieved against 
 another, not in shadow, but in light. A humble sketcher 
 here laid down his pencil in despair. 
 
 I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these 
 noble trees ; of how they strike out boughs like the oak, 
 and trail sprays of drooping foliage like the willow ; of 
 how they stand on upright fluted columns like the pil- 
 lars of a church ; or like the olive, from the most shat- 
 tered bole can put out smooth and youthful shoots, and 
 begin a new life upon the ruins of the old. Thus they 
 partake of the nature of many different trees ; and even 
 their prickly top-knots, seen near at hand against the 
 sky, have a certain palm-like air that impresses the 
 imagination. But their individuality, although com- 
 pounded of so many elements, is but the richer and the 
 more original. And to look down upon a level filled 
 with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old un- 
 conquerable chestnuts cluster 'Mike herded elephants" 
 upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts 
 of the powers that are in Nature. 
 
 Between Modestine's laggard humour and the beauty 
 of the scene, we made little progress all that afternoon ; 
 and at last finding the sun, although still far from setting, 
 was already beginning to desert the narrow valley of the 
 Tarn, I began to cast about for a place to camp in. This 
 was not easy to find ; the terraces were too narrow, and 
 the ground, where it was unterraced, was usually too 
 steep for a man to lie upon. I should have slipped all 
 night, and awakened towards morning with my feet or 
 my head in the river. 
 
 242 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 
 
 After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the 
 road, a little plateau large enough to hold my sack, and 
 securely parapeted by the trunk of an aged and enormous 
 chestnut. Thither, with infinite trouble, 1 goaded and 
 kicked the reluctant Modestine, and there I hastened to 
 unload her. There was only room for myself upon the 
 plateau, and I had to go nearly as high again before I 
 found so much as standing room for the ass. It was on 
 a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly 
 not five feet square in all. Here 1 tied her to a chestnut, 
 and having given her corn and bread and made a pile of 
 chestnut-leaves, of which I found her greedy, I descended 
 once more to my own encampment. 
 
 The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two 
 carts went by upon the road ; and as long as daylight 
 lasted I concealed myself, for all the world like a hunted 
 Camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut trunk ; 
 for I was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of 
 jocular persons in the night. Moreover, I saw that I 
 must be early awake; for these chestnut gardens had 
 been the scene of industry no farther gone than on the 
 day before. The slope was strewn with lopped branches, 
 and here and there a great package of leaves was propped 
 against a trunk ; for even the leaves are serviceable, and 
 the peasants use them in winter by way of fodder for 
 their animals. I picked a meal in fear and trembling, 
 half lying down to hide myself from the road ; and I 
 daresay I was as much concerned as if I had been a 
 scout from Joani's band above upon the Lo^ere or from 
 Salomon's across the Tarn in the old times of psalm- 
 singing and blood. Or, indeed, perhaps more; for the 
 Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God ; and a 
 
 243 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 tale comes back into my memory of how the Count of 
 Gevaudan, riding with a party of dragoons and a notary 
 at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the 
 country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and 
 found Cavalier and his men at dinner, gaily seated on 
 the grass, and their hats crowned with box-tree gar- 
 lands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the 
 stream. Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date 
 Antony Watteau would be painting similar subjects. 
 
 This was a very different camp from that of the night 
 before in the cool and silent pine-woods. It was warm 
 and even stifling in the valley. The shrill song of frogs, 
 like the tremolo note of a whistle with a pea in it, rang 
 up from the riverside before the sun was down. In the 
 growing dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro 
 among the fallen leaves ; from time to time a faint chirp- 
 ing or cheeping noise would fall upon my ear; and from 
 time to time I thought I could see the movement of 
 something swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. 
 A profusion of large ants swarmed upon the ground ; 
 bats whisked by, and mosquitoes droned overhead. 
 The long boughs with their bunches of leaves hung 
 against the sky like garlands; and those immediately 
 above and around me had somewhat the air of a trellis 
 which should have been wrecked and half overthrown 
 in a gale of wind. 
 
 Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids ; and just as I 
 was beginning to feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and 
 settling densely on my mind, a noise at my head startled 
 me broad awake again, and, I will frankly confess it, 
 brought my heart into my mouth. It was such a noise 
 as a person would make scratching loudly with a finger- 
 
 244 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 
 
 nail, it came from under the knapsack which served me 
 for a pillow, and it was thrice repeated before I had time 
 to sit up and turn about. Nothing was to be seen, 
 nothing more was to be heard, but a few of these mys- 
 terious rustlings far and near, and the ceaseless accom- 
 paniment of the river and the frogs. I learned next day 
 that the chestnut gardens are infested by rats ; rustling, 
 chirping, and scraping were probably all due to these; 
 but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, and I had 
 to compose myself for sleep, as best I could, in won- 
 dering uncertainty about my neighbours. 
 
 I was wakened in the gray of the morning {Monday, 
 ^oth September) by the sound of footsteps not far off 
 upon the stones, and opening my eyes, I beheld a peas- 
 ant going by among the chestnuts by a footpath that I 
 had not hitherto observed. He turned his head neither 
 to the right nor to the left, and disappeared in a few 
 strides among the foliage. Here was an escape! But 
 it was plainly more than time to be moving. The peas- 
 antry were abroad; scarce less terrible to me in my non- 
 descript position than the soldiers of Captain Pout to an 
 undaunted Camisard. I fed Modestine with what haste 
 I could ; but as I was returning to my sack, I saw a man 
 and a boy come down the hillside in a direction cross- 
 ing mine. They unintelligibly hailed me, and I replied 
 with inarticulate but cheerful sounds, and hurried for- 
 ward to get into my gaiters. 
 
 The pair, who seemed to be father and son, came 
 slowly up to the plateau, and stood close beside me for 
 some time in silence. The bed was open, and I saw 
 with regret my revolver lying patently disclosed on the 
 blue wool. At last, after they had looked me all over, 
 
 245 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 he went on to tell me; not many, but a few. " Many 
 are called," he quoted, *'and few chosen." 
 
 " My father," said I, "it is not easy to say who know 
 the Lord; and it is none of our business. Protestants 
 and Catholics, and even those who worship stones, may 
 know Him and be known by Him ; for He has made all." 
 
 I did not know I was so good a preacher. 
 
 The old man assured me he thought as I did, and re- 
 peated his expressions of pleasure at meeting me. * ' We 
 are so few," he said. **They call us Moravians here; 
 but down in the department of Card, where there are 
 also a good number, they are called Derbists, after an 
 English pastor." 
 
 I began to understand that I was figuring, in question- 
 able taste, as a member of some sect to me unknown ; 
 but I was more pleased with the pleasure of my com- 
 panion than embarrassed by my own equivocal position. 
 Indeed I can see no dishonesty in not avowing a differ- 
 ence; and especially in these high matters, where we 
 have all a sufficient assurance that, whoever may be in 
 the wrong, we ourselves are not completely in the right. 
 The truth is much talked about; but this old man in a 
 brown nightcap showed himself so simple, sweet, and 
 friendly that I am not unwilling to profess myself his 
 convert. He was, as a matter of fact, a Plymouth 
 Brother. Of what that involves in the way of doctrine 
 I have no idea nor the time to inform myself; but I 
 know right well that we are all embarked upon a 
 troublesome world, the children of one Father, striving 
 in many essential points to do and to become the same. 
 And although it was somewhat in a mistake that he 
 shook hands with me so often and showed himself so 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 
 
 ready to receive my words, that was a mistake of the 
 truth-finding sort. For charity begins blindfold ; and only 
 through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at 
 length into a settled principle of love and patience, and 
 a firm belief in all our fellow-men. If 1 deceived this 
 good old man, in the like manner I would willingly go on 
 to deceive others. And if ever at length, out of our 
 separate and sad ways, we should all come together into 
 one common house, I have a hope, to which I cling 
 dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother will hasten 
 to shake hands with me again. 
 
 Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, 
 he and I came down upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was 
 but a humble place, called La Vernede, with less than a 
 dozen houses, and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. Here 
 he dwelt; and here, at the inn, I ordered my breakfast. 
 The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stone- 
 breaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engag- 
 ing girl. The village school-master dropped in to speak 
 with the stranger. And these were all Protestants — a fact 
 which pleased me more than I should have expected; 
 and, what pleased me still more, they seemed all upright 
 and simple people. The Plymouth Brother hung round 
 me with a sort of yearning interest, and returned at least 
 thrice to make sure I was enjoying my meal. His be- 
 haviour touched me deeply at the time, and even now 
 moves me in recollection. He feared to intrude, but he 
 would not willingly forego one moment of my society ; 
 and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand. 
 
 When all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, 
 I sat for near half an hour with the young mistress of 
 the house, who talked pleasantly over her seam of the 
 
 249 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 chestnut harvest, and the beauties of the Tarn, and old 
 family affections, broken up when young folk go from 
 home, yet still subsisting. Hers, I am sure, was a sweet 
 nature, with a country plainness and much delicacy un- 
 derneath ; and he who takes her to his heart will doubt- 
 less be a fortunate young man. 
 
 The valley below La Vernede pleased me more and 
 more as I went forward. Now the hills approached 
 from either hand, naked and crumbling, and walled in 
 the river between cliffs; and now the valley widened 
 and became green. The road led me past the old castle 
 of Miral on a steep; past a battlemented monastery, 
 long since broken up and turned into a church and par- 
 sonage; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of 
 Cocures, sitting among vineyards and meadows and 
 orchards thick with red apples, and where, along the 
 highway, they were knocking down walnuts from the 
 roadside trees, and gathering them in sacks and baskets. 
 The hills, however much the vale might open, were still 
 tall and bare, with cliffy battlements and here and there 
 a pointed summit; and the Tarn still rattled through 
 the stones with a mountain noise. I had been led, by 
 bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a hor- 
 rific country after the heart of Byron; but to my Scotch 
 eyes it seemed smiling and plentiful, as the weather still 
 gave an impression of high summer to my Scotch body ; 
 although the chestnuts were already picked out by the 
 autumn, and the poplars, that here began to mingle with 
 them, had turned into pale gold against the approach of 
 winter. 
 
 There was something in this landscape, smiling al- 
 though wild, that explained to me the spirit of the South- 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 
 
 ern Covenanters. Those who took to the hills for con- 
 science' sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled 
 thoughts ; for once that they received God's comfort they 
 would be twice engaged with Satan ; but the Camisards 
 had only bright and supporting visions. They dealt 
 much more in blood, both given and taken ; yet I find 
 no obsession of the Evil One in their records. With a 
 light conscience, they pursued their life in these rough 
 times and circumstances. The soul of Siguier, let us 
 not forget, was like a garden. They knew they were 
 on God's side, with a knowledge that has no parallel 
 among the Scots; for the Scots, although they might 
 be certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the 
 person. 
 
 " We flew," says one old Camisard, "when we heard 
 the sound of psalm-singing, we flew as if with wings. 
 We felt within us an animating ardour, a transporting 
 desire. The feeling cannot be expressed in words. It 
 is a thing that must have been experienced to be under- 
 stood. However weary we might be, we thought no 
 more of our weariness and grew light, so soon as the 
 psalms fell upon our ears." 
 
 The valley of the Tarn and the people whom I met 
 at La Verriede not only explain to me this passage, but 
 the twenty years of suffering which those, who were so 
 stiff and so bloody when once they betook themselves 
 to war, endured with the meekness of children and the 
 constancy of saints and peasants. 
 
 351 
 
FLORAC 
 
 On a branch of the Tarn stands Florae, the seat of a 
 subprefecture, with an old castle, an alley of planes, 
 many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling 
 from the hill. It is notable, besides, for handsome 
 women, and as one of the two capitals, Alais being the 
 other, of the country of the Camisards. 
 
 The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to 
 an adjoining cafe, where I, or rather my journey, became 
 the topic of the afternoon. Every one had some sug- 
 gestion for my guidance; and the subprefectorial map 
 was fetched from the subprefecture itself, and much 
 thumbed among coffee-cups and glasses of liqueur. 
 Most of these kind advisers were Protestant, though I 
 observed that Protestant and Catholic intermingled in a 
 very easy manner; and it surprised me to see what 
 a lively memory still subsisted of the religious war. 
 Among the hills of the south-west^ by Mauchline, Cum- 
 nock, or Carsphairn, in isolated farms or in the manse, 
 serious Presbyterian people still recall the days of the 
 great persecution, and the graves of local martyrs are 
 still piously regarded. But in towns and among the 
 so-called better classes, I fear that these old doings have 
 become an idle tale. If you met a mixed company in 
 
 252 
 
FLORAC 
 
 the King's Arms at Wigtown, it is not likely that the 
 talk would run on Covenanters. Nay, at Muirkirk of 
 Glenluce, I found the beadle's wife had not so much as 
 heard of Prophet Peden. But these Cevenols were proud 
 of their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was 
 their chosen topic; its exploits were their own patent 
 of nobility ; and where a man or a race has had but one 
 adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and pardon 
 some prolixity of reference. They told me the country 
 was still full of legends hitherto uncollected; I heard 
 from them about Cavalier's descendants — not direct 
 descendants, be it understood, but only cousins or neph- 
 ews — who were still prosperous people in the scene of 
 the boy-general's exploits ; and one farmer had seen the 
 bones of old combatants dug up into the air of an after- 
 noon in the nineteenth century, in a field where the an- 
 cestors had fought, and the great-grandchildren were 
 peaceably ditching. 
 
 Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors was so 
 good as to visit me : a young man, intelligent and po- 
 lite, with whom I passed an hour or two in talk. Flo- 
 rae, he told me, is part Protestant, part Catholic; and 
 the difference in religion is usually doubled by the dif- 
 ference in politics. You may judge of my surprise, 
 coming as I did from such a babbling purgatorial Po- 
 land of a place as Monastier, when I learned that the 
 population lived together on very quiet terms ; and there 
 was even an exchange of hospitalities between house- 
 holds thus doubly separated. Black Camisard and 
 White Camisard, militiaman and Miquelet and dragoon, 
 Protestant prophet and Catholic cadet of the White 
 Cross, they had all been sabring and shooting, burning, 
 
 253 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 pillaging and murdering, their hearts hot with indig- 
 nant passion; and here, after a hundred and seventy 
 years, Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catho- 
 lic, in mutual toleration and mild amity of life. But the 
 race of man, like that indomitable nature whence it 
 sprang, has medicating virtues of its own; the years 
 and seasons bring various harvests; the sun returns 
 after the rain ; and mankind outlives secular animosities, 
 as a single man awakens from the passions of a day. 
 We judge our ancestors from a more divine position; 
 and the dust being a little laid with several centuries, 
 we can see both sides adorned with human virtues and 
 fighting with a show of right. 
 
 I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it 
 daily even harder than I thought. I own I met these 
 Protestants with delight and a sense of coming home. 
 I was accustomed to speak their language, in another 
 and deeper sense of the word than that which distin- 
 guishes between French and English ; for the true babel 
 is a divergence upon morals. And hence I could hold 
 more free communication with the Protestants, and 
 judge them more justly, than the Catholics. Father 
 ApoUtnaris may pair off with my mountain Plymouth 
 Brother as two guileless and devout old men ; yet I ask 
 myself if I had as ready a feeling for the virtues of the 
 Trappist; or had I been a Catholic, if I should have felt so 
 warmly to the dissenter of La l^ernede. With the first 
 I was on terms of mere forbearance; but with the other, 
 although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping 
 on selected points, it was still possible to hold converse 
 and exchange some honest thoughts. In this world of 
 imperfection we gladly welcome even partial intimacies. 
 
 254 
 
FLORAC 
 
 If we find but one to whom we can speak out of our 
 heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and sim- 
 plicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of 
 quarrel with the world or God. 
 
 255 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 
 
 On Tuesday, ist October, we left Florae late in the 
 afternoon, a tired donkey and tired donkey-driver. A 
 little way up the Tarnon, a covered bridge of wood in- 
 troduced us into the valley of the Mimente. Steep rocky 
 red mountains overhung the stream; great oaks and 
 chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in stony terraces; 
 here and there was a red field of millet or a few apple- 
 trees studded with red apples ; and the road passed hard 
 by two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to 
 please the heart of the tourist. 
 
 It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my en- 
 campment. Even under the oaks and chestnuts the 
 ground had not only a very rapid slope, but was heaped 
 with loose stones ; and where there was no timber the 
 hills descended to the stream in a red precipice tufted 
 with heather. The sun had left the highest peak in 
 front of me, and the valley was full of the lowing sound 
 of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into the 
 stable, when I spied a bight of meadow some way be- 
 low the roadway in an angle of the river. Thither I de- 
 scended, and, tying Modestine provisionally to a tree, 
 proceeded to investigate the neighbourhood. A gray 
 pearly evening shadow filled the glen ; objects at a little 
 
 25<r 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 
 
 distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into each 
 other; and the darkness was rising steadily like an ex- 
 halation. I approached a great oak which grew in the 
 meadow, hard by the river's brink; when to my dis- 
 gust the voices of children fell upon my ear, and 1 beheld 
 a house round the angle on the other bank. I had half 
 a mind to pack and be gone again, but the growing 
 darkness moved me to remain. I had only to make no 
 noise until the night was fairly come, and trust to the 
 dawn to call me early in the morning. But it was hard 
 to be annoyed by neighbours in such a great hotel. 
 
 A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I 
 had fed Modestine and arranged my sack, three stars 
 were already brightly shining, and the others were be- 
 ginning dimly to appear. I slipped down to the river, 
 which looked very black among its rocks, to fill my 
 can ; and dined with a good appetite in the dark, for I 
 scrupled to light a lantern while so near a house. The 
 moon, which I had seen, a pallid crescent, all afternoon, 
 faintly illuminated the summit of the hills, but not a ray 
 fell into the bottom of the glen where 1 was lying. The 
 oak rose before me like a pillar of darkness ; and over- 
 head the heartsome stars were set in the face of the 
 night. No one knows the stars who has not slept, as 
 the French happily put it, i la belle etoile. He may 
 know all their names and distances and magnitudes, 
 and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns mankind, 
 their serene and gladsome influence on the mind. The 
 greater part of poetry is about the stars ; and very justly, 
 for they are themselves the most classical of poets. 
 These same far-away worlds, sprinkled like tapers or 
 shaken together like a diamond dust upon the sky, had 
 
 257 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, when, in 
 the words of the latter, they had " no other tent but the 
 sky, and no other bed than my mother earth." 
 
 All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the 
 acorns fell pattering over me from the oak. Yet, on 
 this first night of October, the air was as mild as May, 
 and I slept with the fur thrown back. 
 
 I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an 
 animal that 1 fear more than any wolf. A dog is vastly 
 braver, and is besides supported by the sense of duty. 
 If you kill a wolf, you meet with encouragement and 
 oraise ; but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of prop- 
 erty and the domestic affections come clamouring round 
 you for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp, 
 cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance; 
 and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary 
 and respectable world in its most hostile form. There 
 is something of the clergyman or the lawyer about this 
 engaging animal; and if he were not amenable to stones, 
 the boldest man would shrink from travelling afoot. I 
 I respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the 
 highway or sleeping afield, 1 both detest and fear them. 
 
 1 was wakened next morning {Wednesday, October 
 2d) by the same dog — for I knew his bark — making a 
 charge down the bank, and then, seeing me sit up, re- 
 treating again with great alacrity. The stars were not 
 yet quite extinguished. The heaven was of that en- 
 chanting mild gray-blue of the early morn. A still clear 
 light began to fall, and the trees on the hillside were 
 outlined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered 
 more to the north, and no longer reached me in the 
 glen ; but as I was going on with my preparations, it 
 
 258 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 
 
 drove a white cloud very swiftly over the hill-top ; and 
 looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with 
 gold. In these high regions of the air, the sun was al- 
 ready shining as at noon. If only the clouds travelled 
 high enough, we should see the same thing all night 
 long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space. 
 
 As I began to go up the valley, a draught of wind 
 came down it out of the seat of the sunrise, although 
 the clouds continued to run overhead in an almost con- 
 trary direction. A few steps farther, and 1 saw a whole 
 hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little beyond, be- 
 tween two peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy appeared 
 floating in the sky, and I was once more face to face 
 with the big bonfire that occupies the kernel of our 
 system. 
 
 I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark 
 military-looking wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a 
 baldric; but he made a remark that seems worthy of 
 record. For when I asked him if he were Protestant or 
 Catholic 
 
 * * O, " said he, "I make no shame of my religion. I am 
 a Catholic." 
 
 He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of 
 natural statistics ; for it is the language of one in a mi- 
 nority. I thought with a smile of Bavile and his dra- 
 goons, and how you may ride rough-shod over a religion 
 for a century, and leave it only the more lively for the 
 friction. Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still 
 Protestant. It is not a basketful of law-papers, nor the 
 hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, that can 
 change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts. Outdoor 
 rustic people have not many ideas, but such as they have 
 
 259 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 are hardy plants and thrive flourishingly in persecution. 
 One who has grown a long while in the sweat of 
 laborious noons, and under the stars at night, a fre- 
 quenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, 
 has, in the end, a sense of communion with the powers 
 of the universe, and amicable relations towards his God. 
 Like my mountain Plymouth Brother, he knows the 
 Lord. His religion does not repose upon a choice of 
 logic ; it is the poetry of the man's experience, the phi- 
 losophy of the history of his life. God, like a great 
 power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to this 
 simple fellow in the course of years, and become the 
 ground and essence of his least reflections ; and you may 
 change creeds and dogmas by authority, or proclaim a 
 new religion with the sound of trumpets, if you will; 
 but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will 
 stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. He is a 
 Catholic, a Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the same 
 indefeasible sense that a man is not a woman, or a wo- 
 man not a man. For he could not vary from his faith, 
 unless he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in 
 a strict and not a conventional meaning, change his 
 mind. 
 
 260 
 
THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 
 
 I WAS now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of 
 black roofs upon the hillside, in this wild valley, among 
 chestnut gardens, and looked upon in the clear air by 
 many rocky peaks. The road along the Mimente is yet 
 new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise 
 when the first cart arrived at Cmsagnas. But although 
 it lay thus apart from the current of men's business, this 
 hamlet had already made a figure in the history of 
 France, Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was 
 one of the five arsenals of the Camisards ; where they 
 laid up clothes and corn and arms against necessity, 
 forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves gun- 
 powder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in 
 kettles. To the same caves, amid this multifarious in- 
 dustry, the sick and wounded were brought up to heal; 
 and there they were visited by the two surgeons, Cha- 
 brier and Tavatiy and secretly nursed by women of the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 Of the five legions into which the Camisards were di- 
 vided, it was the oldest and the most obscure that had 
 its magazines by Cassagnas. This was the band of 
 Spirit Seguier; men who had joined their voices with 
 his in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by night 
 on the archpriest of the Cevennes. Seguier, promoted 
 
 261 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc, whom 
 Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain-general to the 
 whole army of the Camisards. He was a prophet; a 
 great reader of the heart, who admitted people to the 
 sacrament or refused them by '' intentively viewing 
 every man" between the eyes; and had the most of the 
 Scriptures off by rote. And this was surely happy; 
 since in a surprise in August, 1703, he lost his mule, his 
 portfolios, and his Bible. It is only strange that they 
 were not surprised more often and more effectually ; for 
 this legion oiCa^sagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory 
 of war, and camped without sentries, leaving that duty 
 to the angels of the God for whom they fought. This 
 is a token, not only of their faith, but of the trackless 
 country where they harboured. M. de Caladon, taking 
 a stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their 
 midst, as he might have walked into **a flock of sheep 
 in a plain," and found some asleep and some awake and 
 psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no recommenda- 
 tion to insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond 
 *'his faculty of singing psalms;" and even the prophet 
 Salomon ' * took him into a particular friendship. ' ' Thus, 
 among their intricate hills, the rustic troop subsisted; 
 and history can attribute few exploits to them but sac- 
 raments and ecstasies. 
 
 People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I 
 have just been saying, prove variable in religion; nor 
 will they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external 
 conformity like that of Naaman in the house of Rimmon. 
 When Louis XFL, in the words of the edict, ''convinced 
 by the uselessness of a century of persecutions, and 
 rather from necessity than sympathy," granted at last a 
 
 262 
 
THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 
 
 royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was still Protestant ; 
 and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed, 
 one family that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catho- 
 lic. It is that of a Catholic cure in revolt, who has taken 
 to his bosom a schoolmistress. And his conduct, it's 
 worth noting, is disapproved by the Protestant villagers. 
 
 "\t is a bad idea for a man," said one, "to go back 
 from his engagements." 
 
 The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a 
 countrified fashion, and were all plain and dignified in 
 manner. As a Protestant myself, I was well looked 
 upon, and my acquaintance with history gained me far- 
 ther respect. For we had something not unlike a reli- 
 gious controversy at table, a gendarme and a merchant 
 with whom I dined being both strangers to the place 
 and Catholics. The young men of the house stood 
 round and supported me; and the whole discussion was 
 tolerantly conducted, and surprised a man brought up 
 among the infinitesimal and contentious differences of 
 Scotland. The merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, 
 and was far less pleased than some others with my his- 
 torical acquirements. But the gendarme was mighty 
 easy over it all. 
 
 "It's a bad idea for a man to change," said he; and 
 the remark was generally applauded. 
 
 That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at 
 our Lady of the Snows. But this is a different race ; and 
 perhaps the same great-heartedness that upheld them to 
 resist, now enables them to differ in a kind spirit. For 
 courage respects courage ; but where a faith has been 
 trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow pop- 
 ulation. The true work of Bruce and Wallace was the 
 
 263 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 union of the nations ; not that they should stand apart 
 a while longer, skirmishing upon their borders ; but that, 
 when the time came, they might unite with self-respect. 
 The merchant was much interested in my journey, and 
 thought it dangerous to sleep afield. 
 
 "There are the wolves," said he; *'and then it is 
 known you are an Englishman. The English have al- 
 ways long purses, and it might very well enter into 
 some one's head to deal you an ill blow some night." 
 
 I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents ; 
 and at any rate judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms 
 or consider small perils in the arrangement of life. Life 
 itself, I submitted, was a far too risky business as a 
 whole to make each additional particular of danger 
 worth regard. ''Something," said I, " might burst in 
 your inside any day of the week, and there would be 
 an end of you, if you were locked into your room with 
 three turns of the key." 
 
 " Cependant/' said he, "" coucber dehors! '* 
 
 ''God," said I, "is everywhere." 
 
 " Cependant, coucher dehors! " he repeated, and his 
 voice was eloquent of terror. 
 
 He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw 
 anything hardy in so simple a proceeding; although 
 many considered it superfluous. Only one, on the 
 other hand, professed much delight in the idea; and 
 that was my Plymouth Brother, who cried out, when I 
 told him I sometimes preferred sleeping under the stars 
 to a close and noisy alehouse, "Now I see that you 
 know the Lord!" 
 
 The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was 
 leaving, for he said I should be something to talk of in 
 
 264 
 
THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 
 
 the future, and desired me to make a note of his request 
 and reason ; a desire with which I have thus complied. 
 
 A little after two I struck across the Mtmente.sind took a 
 rugged path southward up a hillside covered with loose 
 stones and tufts of heather. At the top, as is the habit of 
 the country, the path disappeared ; and I left my she-ass 
 munching heather, and went forward alone to seek a road. 
 
 I was now on the separation of two vast watersheds ; 
 behind me all the streams were bound for the Garonne 
 and the Western Ocean ; before me was the basin of the 
 Rhone. Hence, as from the Lo^ere, you can see in clear 
 weather the shining of the Gulf of Lyons; and perhaps 
 from here the soldiers of Salomon may have watched for 
 the topsails of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and the long-prom- 
 ised aid from England. You may take this ridge as ly- 
 ing in the heart of the country of the Camisards ; four of 
 the five legions camped all round it and almost within 
 view — Salomon and Joani to the north, Castanet and 
 Roland to the south ; and when Julien had finished his 
 famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, 
 which lasted all through October and "November, 1703, 
 and during which four hundred and sixty villages and 
 hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly subverted, 
 a man standing on this eminence would have looked 
 forth upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. 
 Time and man's activity have now repaired these ruins ; 
 Cassagnas is once more roofed and sending up domestic 
 smoke; and in the chestnut gardens, in low and leafy 
 corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, when the 
 day's work is done, to his children and bright hearth. 
 And still it was perhaps the wildest view of all my 
 journey. Peak upon peak, chain upon chain of hills 
 
 265 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 ran surging southward, channelled and sculptured by 
 the winter streams, feathered from head to foot with 
 chestnuts, and here and there breaking out into a coro- 
 nal of cliffs. The sun, which was still far from setting, sent 
 a drift of misty gold across the hill-tops, but the valleys 
 were already plunged in a profound and quiet shadow. 
 
 A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and 
 wearing a black cap of liberty, as if in honour of his 
 nearness to the grave, directed me to the road for St. 
 Germain de Calberte. There was something solemn in 
 the isolation of this infirm and ancient creature. Where 
 he dwelt, how he got upon this high ridge, or how he 
 proposed to get down again, were more than I could 
 fancy. Not far off upon my right was the famous Plan 
 de Font Morte, where Pout with his Armenian sabre 
 slashed down the Camisards of Seguier. This, me- 
 thought, might be some Rip van Winkle of the war, 
 who had lost his comrades, fleeing before Poul, and 
 wandered ever since upon the mountains. It might be 
 news to him that Cavalier had surrendered, or Roland 
 had fallen fighting with his back against an olive. And 
 while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him 
 hailing in broken tones, and saw him waving me to 
 come back with one of his two sticks. I had already 
 got some way past him; but, leaving Modestine once 
 more, retraced my steps. 
 
 Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gen- 
 tleman had forgot to ask the pedlar what he sold, and 
 wished to remedy this neglect. 
 
 I told him sternly, "Nothing." 
 
 '* Nothing?" cried he. 
 
 I repeated "Nothing," and made off. 
 266 
 
THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 
 
 It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as in- 
 explicable to the old man as he had been to me. 
 
 The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a 
 hamlet or two below me in the vale, and many lone 
 houses of the chestnut farmers, it was a very solitary 
 march all afternoon ; and the evening began early under- 
 neath the trees. But I heard the voice of a woman sing- 
 ing some sad, old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed 
 to be about love and a bel amoureux, her handsome 
 sweetheart; and I wished I could have taken up the 
 strain and answered her, as I went on upon my invisi- 
 ble woodland way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem, my 
 own thoughts with hers. What could I have told her ? 
 Little enough ; and yet all the heart requires. How the 
 world gives and takes away, and brings sweethearts 
 near, only to separate them again into distant and strange 
 lands ; but to love is the great amulet which makes the 
 world a garden; and "hope, which comes to all," out- 
 wears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous 
 hand beyond the grave and death. Easy to say : yea, but 
 also, by God's mercy, both easy and grateful to believe ! 
 
 We struck at last into a wide white high-road, car- 
 peted with noiseless dust. The night had come; the 
 moon had been shining for a long while upon the op- 
 posite mountain ; when on turning a corner my donkey 
 and 1 issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out 
 my brandy at Florae, for 1 could bear the stuff no longer, 
 and replaced it with some generous and scented Volnay ; 
 and now I drank to the moon's sacred majesty upon the 
 road. It was but a couple of mouthfuls ; yet I became 
 thenceforth unconscious of my limbs, and my blood 
 flowed with luxury. Even Modcstine was inspired by 
 
 367 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 this purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her little 
 hoofs as to a livelier measure. The road wound and 
 descended swiftly among masses of chestnuts. Hot dust 
 rose from our feet and flowed away. Our two shadows 
 — mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically be- 
 stridden by the pack — now lay before us clearly out- 
 lined on the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went 
 off into the ghostly distance, and sailed along the moun- 
 tainlike clouds. From time to time a warm wind rustled 
 down the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling their 
 bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled with 
 whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. 
 And next moment the breeze had gone by, and in 
 all the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet. 
 On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of 
 the mountain were faintly designed in the moonshine; 
 and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned 
 one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge 
 field of sad nocturnal colouring. 
 
 At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many 
 acute angles, the moon disappeared behind the hill; and 
 I pursued my way in great darkness^ until another turn- 
 ning shot me without preparation into St Germain de 
 Calberte. The place was as'eep and silent, and buried 
 in opaque night. Only from a single open door, some 
 lamplight escaped upon the road to show me I was 
 come among men's habitations. The two last gossips 
 of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed 
 me to the inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to 
 bed; the fire was already out, and had, not without 
 grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and I 
 must have gone supperless to roost. 
 
 268 
 
THE LAST DAY 
 
 When I awoke ( Thursday, ^d October), and, hearing 
 a great flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented 
 hens, betook me to the window of the clean and com- 
 fortable room where I had slept the night, I looked 
 forth on a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of chestnut 
 gardens. It was still early, and the cockcrows, and the 
 slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me 
 to be out and look round me. 
 
 5/. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues 
 round about. At the period of the wars, and imme- 
 diately before the devastation, it was inhabited by two 
 hundred and seventy-five families, of which only nine 
 were Catholic ; and it took the cure seventeen September 
 days to go from house to house on horseback for a cen- 
 sus. But the place itself, although capital of a canton, 
 is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies terraced across 
 a steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. The 
 Protestant chapel stands below upon a shoulder; in the 
 midst of the town is the quaint old Catholic church. 
 
 It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, 
 kept his library and held a court of missionaries ; here 
 he had built his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful 
 population whom he had redeemed from error; and 
 hither on the morrow of his death they brought the 
 
 269 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 this purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her little 
 hoofs as to a livelier measure. The road wound and 
 descended swiftly among masses of chestnuts. Hot dust 
 rose from our feet and flowed away. Our two shadows 
 — mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically be- 
 stridden by the pack — now lay before us clearly out- 
 lined on the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went 
 off into the ghostly distance, and sailed along the moun- 
 tainlike clouds. From time to time a warm wind rustled 
 down the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling their 
 bunches of foliage and fruit ; the ear was filled with 
 whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. 
 And next moment the breeze had gone by, and in 
 all the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet. 
 On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of 
 the mountain were faintly designed in the moonshine; 
 and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned 
 one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge 
 field of sad nocturnal colouring. 
 
 At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many 
 acute angles, the moon disappeared behind the hill; and 
 I pursued my way in great darkness^ until another turn- 
 ning shot me without preparation into St Germain de 
 Calberte. The place was asleep and silent, and buried 
 in opaque night. Only from a single open door, some 
 lamplight escaped upon the road to show me I was 
 come among men's habitations. The two last gossips 
 of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed 
 me to the inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to 
 bed; the fire was already out, and had, not without 
 grumbling, to be rekindled ; half an hour later, and I 
 must have gone supperless to roost. 
 
 268 
 
THE LAST DAY 
 
 When I awoke ( Thursday, }d October), and, hearing 
 a great flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented 
 hens, betook me to the window of the clean and com- 
 fortable room where I had slept the night, I looked 
 forth on a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of chestnut 
 gardens. It was still early, and the cockcrows, and the 
 slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me 
 to be out and look round me. 
 
 St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues 
 round about. At the period of the wars, and imme- 
 diately before the devastation, it was inhabited by two 
 hundred and seventy-five families, of which only nine 
 were Catholic ; and it took the cure seventeen September 
 days to go from house to house on horseback for a cen- 
 sus. But the place itself, although capital of a canton, 
 is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies terraced across 
 a steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. The 
 Protestant chapel stands below upon a shoulder; in the 
 midst of the town is the quaint old Catholic church. 
 
 It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, 
 kept his library and held a court of missionaries ; here 
 he had built his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful 
 population whom he had redeemed from error; and 
 hither on the morrow of his death they brought the 
 
 269 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 body, pierced with two-and-fifty wounds, to be interred. 
 Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in the 
 church. The cure, taking his text from Second Samuel, 
 twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, "And Amasa wal- 
 lowed in his blood in the highway," preached a rousing 
 sermon, and exhorted his brethren to die each at his 
 post, like their unhappy and illustrious superior. In the 
 midst of this eloquence there came a breeze that Spirit 
 Seguier was near at hand ; and behold ! all the assem- 
 bly took to their horses' heels, some east, some west, 
 and the cur^ himself as far as Alais. 
 
 Strange was the position of this little Catholic me- 
 tropolis, a thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and con- 
 trary neighbourhood. On the one hand, the legion of 
 Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas; on the other, it 
 was cut off from assistance by the legion of Roland at 
 Mialet. The cure, Louvrelenil, although he took a 
 panic at the archpriest's funeral, and so hurriedly de- 
 camped to Alais, stood well by his isolated pulpit, and 
 thence uttered fulminations against the crimes of the 
 Protestants. Salomon besieged the village for an hour 
 and a half, but was beat back. The militiamen, on 
 guard before the curb's door, could be heard, in the 
 black hours, singing Protestant psalms and holding 
 friendly talk with the insurgents. And in the morning, 
 although not a shot had been fired, there would not be 
 a round of powder in their flasks. Where was it gone.^ 
 All handed over to the Camisards for a consideration. 
 Untrusty guardians for an isolated priest ! 
 
 That these continual stirs were once busy in 5/. Ger- 
 main de Calberte, the imagination with difficulty re- 
 ceives; all is now so quiet, the pulse of human life now 
 
 270 
 
THE LAST DAY 
 
 beats so low and still in this hamlet of the mountains. 
 Boys followed me a great way off, like a timid sort of 
 lion-hunters ; and people turned round to have a second 
 look, or came out of their houses, as I went by. My 
 passage was the first event, you would have fancied, 
 since the Camisards. There was nothing rude or for- 
 ward in this observation ; it was but a pleased and won- 
 dering scrutiny, like that of oxen or the human infant; 
 yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me from the 
 street. 
 
 1 took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly 
 carpeted with sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil 
 the inimitable attitudes of the chestnuts as they bear up 
 their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a little wind went 
 by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light and 
 dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin 
 fall of great hailstones ; but there went with it a cheer- 
 ful human sentiment of an approaching harvest and farm- 
 ers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I could see the 
 brown nut peering through the husk, which was already 
 gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an 
 amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and green with leaves. 
 
 1 have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved 
 in an atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet 
 and content. But perhaps it was not the place alone 
 that so disposed my spirit. Perhaps some one was 
 thinking of me in another country; or perhaps some 
 thought of my own had come and gone unnoticed, and 
 yet done me good. For some thoughts, which sure 
 would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can 
 rightly scan their features; as though a god, travelling 
 by our green highways, should but ope the door, give 
 
 271 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 one smiling look into the house, and go again forever. 
 Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love with folded wings ? 
 Who shall say? But we go the lighter about our 
 business, and feel peace and pleasure in our hearts. 
 
 I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the 
 condemnation of a young man, a Catholic, who had 
 married a Protestant girl and gone over to the religion 
 of his wife. A Protestant born they could understand 
 and respect; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of 
 an old Catholic woman, who told me that same day 
 there was no difference between the two sects, save that 
 *' wrong was more wrong for the Catholic," who had 
 more light and guidance ; but this of a man's desertion 
 filled them with contempt. 
 
 *Mt is a bad idea for a man to change," said one. 
 
 It may have been accidental, but you see how this 
 phrase pursued me; and for myself, I believe it is the 
 current philosophy in these parts. I have some difficulty 
 in imagining a better. It's not only a great flight of 
 confidence for a man to change his creed and go out of 
 his family for heaven's sake ; but the odds are — nay, and 
 the hope is — that, with all this great transition in the 
 eyes of man, he has not changed himself a hair's-breadth 
 to the eyes of God. Honour to those who do so, for 
 the wrench is sore. But it argues something narrow, 
 whether of strength or weakness, whether of the pro- 
 phet or the fool, in those who can take a sufficient in- 
 terest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or 
 who can quit a friendship for a doubtful process of the 
 mind. And I think I should not leave my old creed for 
 another, changing only words for other words ; but by 
 some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and 
 
 272 
 
THE LAST DAY 
 
 find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other 
 communions. 
 
 ThQphylloxera was in the neighbourhood ; and instead 
 of wine we drank at dinner a more economical juice of 
 the grape — la Parisienne, they call it. It is made by 
 putting the fruit whole into a cask with water ; one by one 
 the berries ferment and burst; what is drunk during the 
 day is supplied at night in water; so, with ever another 
 pitcher from the well, and ever another grape exploding 
 and giving out its strength, one cask of Parisienne may 
 last a family till spring. It is, as the reader will anticipate, 
 a feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste. 
 
 What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three 
 before I left St. Germain de Calberte. I went down 
 beside the Gardon of Mialet, a great glaring water- 
 course devoid of water, and through St. Etienne de 
 VaUie Frangaise, or Fat Francesque, as they used to 
 call it; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of 
 5/. Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. Behind me 
 an empty carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept 
 hard upon my tracks, and near the summit overtook me. 
 The driver, like the rest of the world, was sure I was a 
 pedlar; but, unlike others, he was sure of what I had to 
 sell. He had noticed the blue wool which hung out of 
 my pack at either end ; and from this he had decided, 
 beyond my power to alter his decision, that I dealt in 
 blue-wool collars, such as decorate the neck of the 
 French draught-horse. 
 
 I had hurried to the topmost powers of Modestine, for 
 I dearly desired to see the view upon the other side be- 
 fore the day had faded. But it was night when I reached 
 the summit; the moon was riding high and clear; and 
 
 273 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 only a few gray streaks of twilight lingered in the west. 
 A yawning valley, gulfed in blackness, lay like a hole in 
 created nature at my feet; but the outline of the hills 
 was sharp against the sky. There was Mount Aigoal, 
 the stronghold of Castanet. And Castanet, not only as 
 an active undertaking leader, deserves some mention 
 among Camisards ; for there is a spray of rose among 
 his laurel ; and he showed how, even in a public tragedy, 
 love will have its way. In the high tide of war he mar- 
 ried, in his mountain citadel, a young and pretty lass 
 called Mariette. There were great rejoicings ; .and the 
 bridegroom released five-and-twenty prisoners in hon- 
 our of the glad event. Seven months afterwards Mariette, 
 the Princess of the Cevennes, as they called her in deri- 
 sion, fell into the hands of the authorities, where it was 
 like to have gone hard with her. But Castanet was a 
 man of execution, and loved his wife. He fell on Valle- 
 raugue, and got a lady there for a hostage; and for the 
 first and last time in that war there was an exchange of 
 prisoners. Their daughter, pledge of some starry night 
 upon Mount Aigoat, has left descendants to this day. 
 
 Modestine and I — it was our last meal together — had 
 a snack upon the top of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones, 
 she standing by me in the moonlight and decorously 
 eating bread out of my hand. The poor brute would 
 eat more heartily in this manner; for she had a sort of 
 affection for me, which I was soon to betray. 
 
 It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Card, and we 
 met no one but a carter, visible afar off by the glint of 
 the moon on his extinguished lantern. 
 
 Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper; 
 fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours ! 
 
 274 
 
FAREWELL, MODESTINE 
 
 On examination, on the morning of October 4th, Mo^ 
 define was pronounced unfit for travel She would 
 need at* least two days' repose according to the ostler; 
 but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters ; and, 
 being in a civilized country of stage-coaches, I deter- 
 mined to sell my lady-friend and be off by the diligence 
 that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with the testi- 
 mony of the driver who had pursued us up the long hill 
 of St. Pierre, spread a favourable notion of my donkey's 
 capabilities. Intending purchasers were aware of an 
 unrivalled opportunity. Before ten I had an offer of 
 twenty-five francs; and before noon, after a desperate 
 engagement, I sold her, saddle and all, for five-and- 
 thirty. The pecuniary gain is not obvious, but I had 
 bought freedom into the bargain. 
 
 5/. Jean du Gard is a large place and largely Protes- 
 tant. The maire, a. Protestant, asked me to help him 
 in a small matter which is itself characteristic of the 
 country. The young women of the Cevennes profit by 
 the common religion and the difference of the language 
 to go largely as governesses into England; and here was 
 one, a native of Mialet, struggling with English circu- 
 lars from two different agencies in London. I gave what 
 
 275 
 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
 
 help I could ; and volunteered some advice, which struck 
 me as being excellent. 
 
 One thing more I note. The phylloxera has ravaged 
 the vineyards in this neighbourhood; and in the early 
 morning, under some chestnuts by the river, I found a 
 party of men working with a cider-press. I could not 
 at first make out what they were after, and asked one 
 fellow to explain. 
 
 "Making cider," he said. "Qui, c'est comme ^a. 
 Comme dans le nord I ' ' 
 
 There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice ; the country 
 was going to the devil. 
 
 It was not until I was fairly seated by the driver, and 
 rattling through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that 
 I became aware of my bereavement. I had lost Modes- 
 tine. Up to that moment I had thought I hated her; 
 but now she was gone, 
 
 "And, o, 
 The difference to me ! " 
 
 For twelve days we had been fast companions ; we 
 had travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, 
 crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with 
 our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy by- 
 road. After the first day, although sometimes I was 
 hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; 
 and as for her, poor soul ! she had come to regard me 
 as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was 
 patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, 
 and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race 
 and sex; her virtues were her own. Farewell, and if 
 
 forever 
 
 276 
 
FAREWELL, MODESTINE 
 
 Father Adam wept when he sold her to me ; after I 
 had sold her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his 
 example; and being alone with a stage-driver and four 
 or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate to yield 
 to my emotion. 
 
 277 
 
EDINBURGH 
 
 Picturesque Notes 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits 
 overlooking a windy estuary from the slope and 
 summit of three hills. No situation could be more com- 
 manding for the head city of a kingdom ; none better 
 chosen for noble prospects. From her tall precipice 
 and terraced gardens she looks far and wide on the sea 
 and broad champaigns. To the east you may catch at 
 sunset the spark of the May lighthouse, where the Firth 
 expands into the German Ocean ; and away to the west, 
 over all the carse of Stirling, you can see the first snows 
 upon Ben Ledi. 
 
 But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of 
 the vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be 
 beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched 
 with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, 
 and powdered with the snow as it comes flying south- 
 ward from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and 
 boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and 
 a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring. 
 The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak 
 winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted 
 to envy them their fate. For all who love shelter and 
 the blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather and 
 
 281 • 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 perpetual tilting against squalls, there could scarcely be 
 found a more unhomely and harassing place of resi- 
 dence. Many such aspire angrily after that Somewhere- 
 else of the imagination, where all troubles are supposed 
 to end. They lean over the great bridge which joins 
 the New Town with the Old — that windiest spot, or 
 high altar, in this northern temple of the winds — and 
 watch the trains smoking out from under them and 
 vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies. 
 Happy the passengers who shake off the dust of Edin- 
 burgh, and have heard for the last time the cry of the 
 east wind among her chimney-tops ! And yet the place 
 establishes an interest in people's hearts ; go where they 
 will, they find no city of the same distinction ; go where 
 they will, they take a pride in their old home. 
 
 Venice, it has been said, differs from all other cities in 
 the sentiment which she inspires. The rest may have 
 admirers ; she only, a famous fair one, counts lovers in 
 her train. And indeed, even by her kindest friends, 
 Edinburgh is not considered in a similar sense. These 
 like her for many reasons, not any one of which is satis- 
 factory in itself. They like her whimsically, if you will, 
 and somewhat as a virtuoso dotes upon his cabinet. 
 Her attraction is romantic in the narrowest meaning of 
 the term. Beautiful as she is, she is not so much beau- 
 tiful as interesting. She is pre-eminently Gothic, and 
 all the more so since she has set herself off with some 
 Greek airs, and erected classic temples on her crags. In 
 a word, and above all, she is a curiosity. The Palace of 
 Holyrood has been left aside in the growth of Edinburgh ; 
 and stands grey and silent in a workman's quarter and 
 among breweries and gas works. It is a house of many 
 
 282 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 memories. Great people of yore, kings and queens, 
 buffoons and grave ambassadors, played their stately 
 farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, 
 dancing has lasted deep into the night, murder has been 
 done in its chambers. There Prince Charlie held his 
 phantom levees, and in a very gallant manner represented 
 a fallen dynasty for some hours. Now, all these things 
 of clay are mingled with the dust, the king's crown it- 
 self is shown for sixpence to the vulgar; but the stone 
 palace has outlived these changes. For fifty weeks to- 
 gether, it is no more than a show for tourists and a mu- 
 seum of old furniture ; but on the fifty-first, behold the 
 palace re-awakened and mimicking its past. The Lord 
 Commissioner, a kind of stage sovereign, sits among 
 stage courtiers; a coach and six and clattering escort 
 come and go before the gate; at night, the windows are 
 lighted up, and its near neighbours, the workmen, may 
 dance in their own houses to the palace music. And in 
 this the palace is typical. There is a spark among the 
 embers; from time to time the old volcano smokes. 
 Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and still wears, in 
 parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a capital and 
 half a country town, the whole city leads a double ex- 
 istence; it has long trances of the one and flashes of the 
 other; like the king of the Black Isles, it is half alive and 
 half a monumental marble. There are armed men and 
 cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see the troops 
 marshalled on the high parade; and at night after the 
 early winter evenfall, and in the morning before the lag- 
 gard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edin- 
 burgh the sound of drums and bugles. Grave judges 
 sit bewigged in what was once the scene of imperial de- 
 
 283 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 liberations. Close by in the High Street perhaps the 
 trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon ; and you 
 see a troop of citizens in tawdry masquerade; tabard 
 *ibove, heather-mixture trouser below, and the men 
 themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic 
 bystanders. The grooms of a well-appointed circus 
 tread the streets with a better presence. And yet these 
 are the Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland, who are 
 about to proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom be- 
 fore two score boys, and thieves, and hackney-coach- 
 men. Meanwhile every hour the bell of the University 
 rings out over the hum of the streets, and every hour a 
 double tide of students, coming and going, fills the deep 
 archways. And lastly, one night in the springtime — 
 or say one morning rather, at the peep of day — late folk 
 may hear the voices of many men singing a psalm in 
 unison from a church on one side of the old High Street; 
 and a little after, or perhaps a little before, the sound of 
 many men singing a psalm in unison from another church 
 on the opposite side of the way. There will be some- 
 thing in the words about the dew of Hermon, and how 
 goodly it is to see brethren dwelling together in unity. 
 And the late folk will tell themselves that all this singing 
 denotes the conclusion of two yearly ecclesiastical par- 
 liaments — the parliaments of Churches which are bro- 
 thers in many admirable virtues, but not specially like 
 brothers in this particular of a tolerant and peaceful life. 
 Again, meditative people will find a charm in a cer- 
 tain consonancy between the aspect of the city and its 
 odd and stirring history. Few places, if any, offer a 
 more barbaric display of contrasts to the eye. In the 
 very midst stands one of the most satisfactory crags in 
 
 284 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 nature — a Bass Rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden, 
 shaken by passing trains, carrying a crown of battle- 
 ments and turrets, and describing its warlike shadow 
 over the liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of the New 
 Town. From their smoky beehives, ten stories high, 
 the unwashed look down upon the open squares and 
 gardens of the wealthy; and gay people sunning them- 
 selves along Princes Street, with its mile of commercial 
 palaces all beflagged upon some great occasion, see, 
 across a gardened valley set with statues, where the 
 washings of the old town flutter in the breeze at its high 
 windows. And then, upon all sides, what a clashing 
 of architecture ! In this one valley, where the life of the 
 town goes most busily forward, there may be seen, 
 shown one above and behind another by the accidents 
 of the ground, buildings in almost every style upon the 
 globe. Egyptian and Greek temples, Venetian palaces 
 and Gothic spires, are huddled one over another in a 
 most admired disorder; while, above all, the brute mass 
 of the Castle and the summit of Arthur's Seat look down 
 upon these imitations with a becoming dignity, as the 
 works of Nature may look down upon the monuments of 
 Art. But Nature is a more indiscriminate patroness than 
 we imagine, and in no way frightened of a strong effect. 
 The birds roost as willingly among the Corinthian cap- 
 itals as in the crannies of the crag; the same atmosphere 
 and daylight clothe the eternal rock and yesterday's imi- 
 tation portico ; and as the soft northern sunshine throws 
 out everything into a glorified distinctness — or easterly 
 mists, coming up with the blue evening, fuse all these 
 incongruous features into one, and the lamps begin to 
 flitter along the street, and faint lights to burn in the 
 
 285 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 high windows across the valley — the feeling grows 
 upon you that this also is a piece of nature in the most 
 intimate sense ; that this profusion of eccentricities, this 
 dream in masonry and living rock, is not a drop-scene 
 in a theatre, but a city in the world of every-day reality, 
 connected by railway and telegraph-wire with all the 
 capitals of Europe, and inhabited by citizens of the fa- 
 miliar type, who keep ledgers, and attend church, and 
 have sold their immortal portion to a daily paper. By 
 all the canons of romance, the place demands to be half 
 deserted and leaning towards decay; birds we might 
 admit in profusion, the play of the sun and winds, and 
 a few gipsies encamped in the chief thoroughfare ; but 
 these citizens, with their cabs and tramways, their trains 
 and posters, are altogether out of key. Chartered tour- 
 ists, they make free with historic localities, and rear their 
 young among the most picturesque sites with a grand 
 human indifference. To see them thronging by, in 
 their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and 
 with a little air of possession that verges on the absurd, 
 is not the least striking feature of the place.* 
 
 And the story of the town is as eccentric as its ap- 
 pearance. For centuries it was a capital thatched with 
 heather, and more than once, in the evil days of English 
 invasion, it has gone up in flame to heaven, a beacon to 
 
 * These sentences have, I hear, given offence in my native town, and 
 a proportionable pleasure to our rivals of Glasgow. I confess the news 
 caused me both pain and merriment. May I remark, as a balm for 
 wounded fellow-townsmen, that there is nothing deadly in my accu- 
 sations? Small blame to them if they keep ledgers: 'tis an excellent 
 business habit. Churchgoing is not, that ever I heard, a subject of re- 
 proach; decency of linen is a mark of prosperous affairs, and conscious 
 moral rectitude one of the tokens of good living. It is not their fault 
 
 286 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 ships at sea. It was thejousting-ground of jealous no- 
 bles, not only on Greenside or by the King's Stables, 
 where set tournaments were fought to the sound of 
 trumpets and under the authority of the royal presence, 
 but in every alley where there was room to cross swords, 
 and in the main street, where popular tumult under the 
 Blue Blanket alternated with the brawls of outlandish 
 clansmen and retainers. Down in the palace John Knox 
 reproved his queen in the accents of modern democracy. 
 In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so 
 many swallows' nests among the buttresses of the old 
 Cathedral, that familiar autocrat, James VI., would gladly 
 share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the goldsmith. 
 Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on 
 the Castle with the city lying in waves around it, those 
 mad and dismal fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard 
 from long exposure on the moors, sat day and night 
 with "tearful psalms " to see Edinburgh consumed with 
 fire from heaven, like another Sodom or Gomorrah. 
 There, in the Grass-market, stiff-necked, covenanting 
 heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but not less 
 honourable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent 
 farewell to sun, moon, and stars, and earthly friend- 
 ships, or died silent to the roll of drums. Down by yon 
 outlet rode Grahame of Claverhouse and his thirty dra- 
 
 if the city calls for something more specious by way of inhabitants. A 
 man in a frock-coat looks out of place upon an Alp or Pyramid, al- 
 though he has the virtues of a Peabody and the talents of a Bentham. 
 And let them console themselves — they do as well as anybody else; 
 the population of (let us say) Chicago would cut quite as rueful a figure 
 on the same romantic stage. To the Glasgow people 1 would say only 
 one word, but that is of gold: / have not yet written a hook about 
 Glasgow. 
 
 287 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 goons, with the town beating to arms behind their 
 horses' tails — a sorry handful thus riding for their lives, 
 but with a man at the head who was to return in a dif- 
 ferent temper, make a dash that staggered Scotland to 
 the heart, and die happily in the thick of fight. There 
 Aikenhead was hanged for a piece of boyish incredulity ; 
 there, a few years afterwards, David Hume ruined Phil- 
 osophy and Faith, an undisturbed and well-reputed citi- 
 zen ; and thither, in yet a few years more, Burns came 
 from the plough-tail, as to an academy of gilt unbelief 
 and artificial letters. There, when the great exodus was 
 made across the valley, and the new town began to 
 spread abroad its draughty parallelograms and rear its 
 long frontage on the opposing hill, there was such a flit- 
 ting, such a change of domicile and dweller, as was 
 never excelled in the history of cities : the cobbler suc- 
 ceeded the earl ; the beggar ensconced himself by the 
 judge's chimney; what had been a palace was used as 
 a pauper refuge ; and great mansions were so parcelled 
 out among the least and lowest in society, that the 
 hearthstone of the old proprietor was thought large 
 enough to be partitioned off into a bedroom by the 
 new. 
 
 288 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 OLD TOWN — THE LANDS 
 
 The Old Town, it is pretended, is the chief character- 
 istic, and, from a picturesque point of view, the liver- 
 wing of Edinburgh. It is one of the most common 
 forms of depreciation to throw cold water on the whole 
 by adroit over-commendation of a part, since everything 
 worth judging, whether it be a man, a work of art, or 
 only a fine city, must be judged upon its merits as a 
 whole. The Old Town depends for much of its effect 
 on the new quarters that lie around it, on the sufficiency 
 of its situation, and on the hills that back it up. If you 
 were to set it somewhere else by itself, it would look 
 remarkably like Stirling in a bolder and loftier edition. 
 The point is to see this embellished Stirling planted in 
 the midst of a large, active, and fantastic modern city ; 
 for there the two re-act in a picturesque sense, and the 
 one is the making of the other. 
 
 The Old Town occupies a sloping ridge or tail of 
 diluvial matter, protected, in some subsidence of the 
 waters, by the Castle cliffs which fortify it to the west. 
 On the one side of it and the other the new towns of the 
 south and of the north occupy their lower, broader, and 
 more gentle hill-tops. Thus, the quarter of the Castle 
 overtops the whole city and keeps an open view to sea 
 
 289 
 
PICTURESQyE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 and land. It dominates for miles on every side; and 
 people on the decks of ships, or ploughing in quiet coun- 
 try places over in Fife, can see the banner on the Castle 
 battlements, and the smoke of the Old Town blowing 
 abroad over the subjacent country. A city that is set 
 upon a hill. It was, I suppose, from this distant aspect 
 that she got her nickname of Auld Reekie. Perhaps it 
 was given her by people who had never crossed her 
 doors : day after day, from their various rustic Pisgahs, 
 they had seen the pile of building on the hill-top, and 
 the long plume of smoke over the plain; so it appeared 
 to them ; so it had appeared to their fathers tilling the 
 same field ; and as that was all they knew of the place, it 
 could be all expressed in these two words. 
 
 Indeed, even on a nearer view, the Old Town is prop- 
 erly smoked; and though it is well washed with rain 
 all the year round, it has a grim and sooty aspect among 
 its younger suburbs. It grew, under the law that reg- 
 ulates the growth of walled cities in precarious situa- 
 tions, not in extent, but in height and density. Public 
 buildings were forced, wherever there was room for 
 them, into the midst of thoroughfares; thoroughfares 
 were diminished into lanes ; houses sprang up story 
 after story, neighbour mounting upon neighbour's 
 shoulder, as in some Black Hole of Calcutta, until the 
 population slept fourteen or fifteen deep in a vertical di- 
 rection. The tallest of these lands, as they are locally 
 termed, have long since been burnt out; but to this 
 day it is not uncommon to see eight or ten windows 
 at a flight; and the cliff of building which hangs im- 
 minent over Waverley Bridge would still put many 
 natural precipices to shame. The cellars are already 
 
 290 
 
OLD TOWN— THE LANDS 
 
 high above the gazer's head, planted on the steep hill- 
 side; as for the garret, all the furniture may be in the 
 pawnshop, but it commands a famous prospect to the 
 Highland hills. The poor man may roost up there in 
 the centre of Edinburgh, and yet have a peep of the 
 green country from his window ; he shall see the quar- 
 ters of the well-to-do fathoms underneath, with their 
 broad squares and gardens ; he shall have nothing over- 
 head but a few spires, the stone top-gallants of the city ; 
 and perhaps the wind may reach him with a rustic 
 pureness, and bring a smack of the sea, or of flowering 
 lilacs in the spring. 
 
 It is almost the correct literary sentiment to deplore 
 the revolutionary improvements of Mr. Chambers and 
 his following. It is easy to be a conservator of the dis- 
 comforts of others ; indeed, it is only our good qualities 
 we find it irksome to conserve. Assuredly, in driving 
 streets through the black labyrinth, a few curious old 
 corners have been swept away, and some associations 
 turned out of house and home. But what slices of sun- 
 light, what breaths of clean air, have been let in ! And 
 what a picturesque world remains untouched! You 
 go under dark arches, and down dark stairs and alleys. 
 The way is so narrow that you can lay a hand on either 
 wall ; so steep that, in greasy winter weather, the pave- 
 ment is almost as treacherous as ice. Washing dangles 
 above washing from the windows; the houses bulge 
 outwards upon flimsy brackets ; you see a bit of sculp- 
 ture in a dark corner; at the top of all, a gable and a 
 few crowsteps are printed on the sky. Here, you come 
 into a court where the children are at play and the 
 grown people sit upon their doorsteps, and perhaps a 
 
 291 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 church spire shows itself above the roofs. Here, in the 
 narrowest of the entry, you find a great old mansion 
 still erect, with some insignia of its former state — some 
 scutcheon, some holy or courageous motto, on the lin- 
 tel. The local antiquary points out where famous and 
 well-born people had their lodging; and as you look 
 up, out pops the head of a slatternly woman from 
 the countess's window. The Bedouins camp within 
 Pharaoh's palace walls, and the old war-ship is given 
 over to the rats. We are already a far way from the 
 days when powdered heads were plentiful in these 
 alleys, with jolly, port- wine faces underneath. Even in 
 the chief thoroughfares Irish washings flutter at the win- 
 dows, and the pavements are encumbered with loiterers. 
 These loiterers are a true character of the scene. 
 Some shrewd Scotch workmen may have paused on 
 their way to a job, debating Church affairs and politics 
 with their tools upon their arm. But the most part are 
 of a different order — skulking jail-birds; unkempt, bare- 
 foot children; big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort 
 of uniform of striped flannel petticoat and short tartan 
 shawl : among these, a few supervising constables and 
 a dismal sprinkling of mutineers and broken men f)"ora 
 higher ranks in society, with some mark of better days 
 upon them, like a brand. In a place no larger than 
 Edinburgh, and where the traffic is mostly centred in 
 five or six chief streets, the same face comes often under 
 the notice of an idle stroller. In fact, from this point 
 of view, Edinburgh is not so much a small city as the 
 largest of small towns. It is scarce possible to avoid 
 observing your neighbours; and 1 never yet heard of 
 any one who tried. It has b^en my fortune, in this 
 
 292 
 
OLD TOWN— THE LANDS 
 
 anonymous accidental way, to watch more than one of 
 these downward travellers for some stages on the road 
 to ruin. One man must have been upwards of sixty 
 before I first observed him, and he made then a decent, 
 personable figure in broadcloth of the best. For three 
 years he kept falling — grease coming and buttons going 
 from the square-skirted coat, the face puffmg and pim- 
 pling, the shoulders growing bowed, the hair falling 
 scant and grey upon his head ; and the last that ever I 
 saw of him, he was standing at the mouth of an entry 
 with several men in moleskin, three parts drunk, and 
 his old black raiment daubed with mud. I fancy that I 
 still can hear him laugh. There was something heart- 
 breaking in this gradual declension at so advanced an 
 age ; you would have thought a man of sixty out of the 
 reach of these calamities ; you would have thought that 
 he was niched by that time into a safe place in life, 
 whence he could pass quietly and honourably into the 
 grave. 
 
 One of the earliest marks of these degringolades is, that 
 the victim begins to disappear from the New Town 
 thoroughfares, and takes to the High Street, like a 
 wounded animal to the woods. And such an one is 
 the type of the quarter. It also has fallen socially. A 
 scutcheon over the door somewhat jars in sentiment 
 where there is a washing at every window. The old 
 man, when I saw him last, wore the coat in which he 
 had played the gentleman three years before ; and that 
 was just what gave him so pre-eminent an air of wretch- 
 edness. 
 
 It is true that the over-population was at least as dense 
 in the epoch of lords and ladies, and that now-a-days 
 
 293 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 some customs which made Edinburgh notorious of yore 
 have been fortunately pretermitted. But an aggregation 
 of comfort is not distasteful like an aggregation of the 
 reverse. Nobody cares how many lords and ladies, 
 and divines and lawyers, may have been crowded into 
 these houses in the past — perhaps the more the merrier. 
 The glasses clink around the china punch-bowl, some 
 one touches the virginals, there are peacocks' feathers 
 on the chimney, and the tapers burn clear and pale in 
 the red fire-light. That is not an ugly picture in itself, 
 nor will it become ugly upon repetition. All the better 
 if the like were going on in every second room ; the 
 land would only look the more inviting. Times are 
 changed. In one house, perhaps, two score families 
 herd together; and, perhaps, not one of them is wholly 
 out of the reach of want. The great hotel is given over 
 to discomfort from the foundation to the chimney-tops ; 
 everywhere a pinching, narrow habit, scanty meals, and 
 an air of sluttishness and dirt. In the first room there 
 is a birth, in another a death, in a third a sordid drink- 
 ing-bout, and the detective and the Bible-reader cross 
 upon the stairs. High words are audible from dwelling 
 to dwelling, and children have a strange experience from 
 the first; only a robust soul, you would think, could 
 grow up in such conditions without hurt. And even if 
 God tempers his dispensations to the young, and all the 
 ill does not arise that our apprehensions may forecast, 
 the sight of such a way of living is disquieting to people 
 who are more happily circumstanced. Social inequality 
 is nowhere more ostentatious than at Edinburgh. I have 
 mentioned already how, to the stroller along Princes 
 Street, the High Street callously exhibits its back garrets. 
 
 294 
 
OLD TOWN — THE LANDS 
 
 It is true there is a garden between. And although 
 nothing could be more glaring by way of contrast, some- 
 times the opposition is more immediate; sometimes the 
 thing lies in a nutshell, and there is not so much as a 
 blade of grass between the rich and poor. To look 
 over the South Bridge and see the Cowgate below full 
 of crying hawkers, is to view one rank of society from 
 another in the twinkling of an eye. 
 
 One night I went along the Cowgate after every one 
 was a-bed but the policeman, and stopped by hazard 
 before a tall land. The moon touched upon its chim- 
 neys, and shone blankly on the upper windows; there 
 was no light anywhere in the great bulk of building; 
 but as I stood there it seemed to me that I could hear 
 quite a body of quiet sounds from the interior; doubt- 
 less there were many clocks ticking, and people snoring 
 on their backs. And thus, as I fancied, the dense life 
 within made itself faintly audible in my ears, family after 
 family contributing its quota to the general hum, and 
 the whole pile beating in tune to its time-pieces, like a 
 great disordered heart. Perhaps it was little more than 
 a fancy altogether, but it was strangely impressive at 
 the time, and gave me an imaginative measure of the 
 disproportion between the quantity of living flesh and 
 the trifling walls that separated and contained it. 
 
 There was nothing fanciful, at least, but every circum- 
 stance of terror and reality, in the fall of the land in the 
 High Street. The building had grown rotten to the 
 core; the entry underneath had suddenly closed up so 
 that the scavenger's barrow could not pass ; cracks and 
 reverberations sounded through the house at n-ight ; the 
 inhabitants of the huge old human bee-hive discussed 
 
 295 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 their peril when they encountered on the stair; some 
 had even left their dwellings in a panic of fear, and re- 
 turned to them again in a fit of economy or self-respect ; 
 when, in the black hours of a Sunday morning, the 
 whole structure ran together with a hideous uproar and 
 tumbled story upon story to the ground. The physical 
 shock was felt far and near ; and the moral shock trav- 
 elled with the morning milkmaid into all the suburbs. 
 The church-bells never sounded more dismally over 
 Edinburgh than that grey forenoon. Death had made 
 a brave harvest; and, like Samson, by pulling down one 
 roof destroyed many a home. None who saw it can 
 have forgotten the aspect of the gable : here it was plas- 
 tered, there papered, according to the rooms ; here the 
 kettle still stood on the hob, high overhead ; and there 
 a cheap picture of the Queen was pasted over the chim- 
 ney. So, by this disaster, you had a glimpse into the 
 life of thirty families, all suddenly cut off from the re- 
 volving years. The land had fallen ; and with the land 
 how much ! Far in the country, people saw a gap in 
 the city ranks, and the sun looked through between the 
 chimneys in an unwonted place. And all over the 
 world, in London, in Canada, in New Zealand, fancy 
 what a multitude of people could exclaim with truth: 
 ** The house that I was born in fell last night! " 
 
 %96 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE 
 
 Time has wrought its changes most notably around 
 the precinct of St. Giles's Church. The church itself, if 
 it were not for the spire, would be unrecognisable; the 
 Krames are all gone, not a shop is left to shelter in its 
 buttresses; and zealous magistrates and a misguided 
 architect have shorn the design of manhood, and left it 
 poor, naked, and pitifully pretentious. As St. Giles's 
 must have had in former days a rich and quaint appear- 
 ance now forgotten, so the neighbourhood was bustling, 
 sunless, and romantic. It was here that the town was 
 most overbuilt ; but the overbuilding has been all rooted 
 out, and not only a free fairway left along the High Street 
 with an open space on either side of the church, but a 
 great porthole, knocked in the main line of the lands, 
 gives an outlook to the north and the New Town. 
 
 There is a silly story of a subterranean passage be- 
 tween the Castle and Holyrood, and a bold Highland 
 piper who volunteered to explore its windings. He 
 made his entrance by the upper end, playing a strathspey ; 
 the curious footed it after him down the street, follow- 
 ing his descent by the sound of the chanter from below; 
 until all of a sudden, about the level of St. Giles's, the 
 music came abruptly to an end, and the people in the 
 street stood at fault with hands uplifted. Whether he 
 
 297 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 was choked with gases, or perished in a quag, or was 
 removed bodily by the Evil One, remains a. point of 
 doubt ; but the piper has never again been seen or heard 
 of from that day to this. Perhaps he wandered down 
 into the land of Thomas the Rhymer, and some day, 
 when it is least expected, may take a thought to revisit 
 the sunlit upper world. That will be a strange mo- 
 ment for the cabmen on the stance besides St. Giles's, 
 when they hear the drone of his pipes reascending from 
 the bowels of the earth below their horses' feet. 
 
 But it is not only pipers who have vanished, many a 
 solid bulk of masonry has been likewise spirited into 
 the air. Here, for example, is the shape of a heart let 
 into the causeway. This was the site of the Tolbooth, 
 the Heart of Midlothian, a place old in story and name- 
 father to a noble book. The walls are now down in 
 the dust; there is no more squalor career is for merry 
 debtors, no more cage for the old acknowledged prison- 
 breaker; but the sun and the wind play freely over the 
 foundations of the jail. Nor is this the only memorial 
 that the pavement keeps of former days. The ancient 
 burying ground of Edinburgh lay behind St. Giles's 
 Church, running downhill to the Cowgate and covering 
 the site of the present Parliament House. It has dis- 
 appeared as utterly as the prison or the Luckenbooths ; 
 and for those ignorant of its history, I know only one 
 token that remains. In the Parliament Close, trodden 
 daily underfoot by advocates, two letters and a date 
 mark the resting-place of the man who made Scotland 
 over again in his own image, the indefatigable, undis- 
 suadable John Knox. He sleeps within call of the 
 church that so often echoed to his preaching. 
 
THE PARLIAMENT CLO^E 
 
 Hard by the reformer, a bandy-legged and garlanded 
 Charles Second, made of lead, bestrides a tun-bellied 
 charger. The King has his back turned, and, as you 
 look, seems to be trotting clumsily away from such a 
 dangerous neighbour. Often, for hours together, these 
 two will be alone in the Close, for it lies out of the way 
 of all but legal traffic. On one side the south wall of 
 the church, on the other the arcades of the Parliament 
 House, enclose this irregular bight of causeway and de- 
 scribe their shadows on it in the sun. At either end, 
 from round St. Giles's buttresses, you command a look 
 into the High Street with its motley passengers; but the 
 stream goes by, east and west, and leaves the Parlia- 
 ment Close to Charles the Second and the birds. Once 
 in a while, a patient crowd may be seen loitering there 
 all day, some eating fruit, some reading a newspaper; 
 and to judge by their quiet demeanour, you would think 
 they were waiting for a distribution of soup-tickets. 
 The fact is far otherwise; within in the Justiciary Court 
 a man is upon trial for his life, and these are some of the 
 curious for whom the gallery was found too narrow. To- 
 wards afternoon, if the prisoner is unpopular, there will 
 be a round of hisses when he is brought forth. Once in 
 a while, too, an advocate in wig and gown, hand upon 
 mouth, full of pregnant nods, sweeps to and fro in the 
 arcade listening to an agent ; and at certain regular hours 
 a whole tide of lawyers hurries across the space. 
 
 The Parliament Close has been the scene of marking 
 incidents in Scottish history. Thus, when the Bishops 
 were ejected from the Convention in 1688, '' all fourteen 
 of them gathered together with pale faces and stood in 
 a cloud in the Parliament Close : " poor episcopal person- 
 
 299 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 ages who were done with fair weather for life ! Some 
 of the west-country Societarians standing by, who would 
 have " rejoiced more than in great sums " to be at their 
 hanging, hustled them so rudely that they knocked their 
 heads together. It was not magnanimous behaviour to 
 dethroned enemies ; but one, at least, of the Societari- 
 ans had groaned in the bootSj and they had all seen their 
 dear friends upon the scaffold. Again, at the " woeful 
 Union," it was here that people crowded to escort their 
 favourite from the last of Scottish parliaments: people 
 flushed with nationality, as Boswell would have said, 
 ready for riotous acts, and fresh from throwing stones 
 at the author of ''Robinson Crusoe" as he looked out 
 of window. 
 
 One of the pious in the seventeenth century, going to 
 pass his trials (examinations as we now say) for the 
 Scottish Bar, beheld the Parliament Close open and had 
 a vision of the mouth of Hell. This, and small wonder, 
 was the means of his conversion. Nor was the vision 
 unsuitable to the locality; for after an hospital, what 
 uglier piece is there in civilisation than a court of law ? 
 Hither come envy, malice, and all uncharitableness to 
 wrestle it out in public tourney ; crimes, broken fortunes, 
 severed households, the knave and his victim, gravitate 
 to this low building with the arcade. To how many 
 has not St. Giles's bell told the first hour after ruin ? 1 
 think I see them pause to count the strokes, and wander 
 on again into the moving High Street, stunned and sick 
 at heart. 
 
 A pair of swing doors gives admittance to a hall with 
 a carved roof, hung with legal portraits, adorned with 
 legal statuary, lighted by windows of painted glass, and 
 
 300 
 
THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE 
 
 warmed by three vast fires. This is the Salle des pas 
 perdm of the Scottish Bar. Here, by a ferocious cus- 
 tom, idle youths must promenade from ten till two. 
 From end to end, singly or in pairs or trios, the gowns 
 and wigs go back and forward. Through a hum of 
 talk and footfalls, the piping tones of a Macef announce 
 a fresh cause and call upon the names of those con- 
 cerned. Intelligent men have been walking here daily 
 for ten or twenty years without a rag of business or a 
 shilling of reward. In process of time, they may per- 
 haps be made the Sheriff-Substitute and Fountain of Jus- 
 tice at Lerwick or Tobermory. There is nothing re- 
 quired, you would say, but a little patience and a taste 
 for exercise and bad air. To breathe dust and bomba- 
 zine, to feed the mind on cackling gossip, to hear three 
 parts of a case and drink a glass of sherry, to long with 
 indescribable longings for the hour when a man may slip 
 out of his travesty and devote himself to golf for the rest 
 of the afternoon, and to do this day by day and year 
 after year, may seem so small a thing to the inexperi- 
 enced! But those who have made the experiment are 
 of a different way of thinking, and count it the most ar- 
 duous form of idleness. 
 
 More swing doors open into pigeon-holes where 
 Judges of the First Appeal sit singly, and halls of au- 
 dience where the supreme Lords sit by three or four. 
 Here, you may see Scott's place within the bar, where 
 he wrote many a page of Waverley novels to the drone 
 of judicial proceeding. You will hear a good deal of 
 shrewdness, and, as their Lordships do not altogether 
 disdain pleasantry, a fair proportion of dry fun. The 
 broadest of broad Scotch is now banished from the 
 
 301 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 bench ; but the courts still retain a certain national 
 flavour. We have a solemn enjoyable way of lingering 
 on a case. We treat law as a fine art, and relish and 
 digest a good distinction. There is no hurry: point 
 after point must be rightly examined and reduced to 
 principle; judge after judge must utter forth his obiter 
 dicta to delighted brethren. 
 
 Besides the courts, there are installed under the same 
 roof no less than three libraries: two of no mean order; 
 confused and semi-subterranean, full of stairs and gal- 
 leries; where you may see the most studious-looking 
 wigs fishing out novels by lanthorn light, in the very 
 place where the old Privy Council tortured Covenanters. 
 As the Parliament House is built upon a slope, although 
 it presents only one story to the north, it measures half- 
 a-dozen at least upon the south ; and range after range 
 of vaults extend below the libraries. Few places are 
 more characteristic of this hilly capital. You descend 
 one stone stair after another, and wander, by the flicker 
 of a match, in a labyrinth of stone cellars. Now, you 
 pass below the Outer Hall and hear overhead, brisk but 
 ghostly, the interminable pattering of legal feet. Now, 
 you come upon a strong door with a wicket: on the 
 other side are the cells of the police office and the trap- 
 stair that gives admittance to the dock in the Justiciary 
 Court. Many a foot that has gone up there lightly enough, 
 has been dead-heavy in the descent. Many a man's life 
 has been argued away from him during long hours in 
 the court above. But just now that tragic stage is empty 
 and silent like a church on a week-day, with the bench 
 all sheeted up and nothing moving but the sunbeams on 
 the wall. A little farther and you strike upon a room, 
 
 302 
 
THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE 
 
 not empty like the rest, but crowded with productions 
 from bygone criminal cases: a grim lumber: lethal wea- 
 pons, poisoned organs in a jar, a door with a shot hole 
 through the panel, behind which a man fell dead. I 
 cannot fancy why they should preserve them, unless it 
 were against the Judgment Day. At length, as you con- 
 tinue to descend, you see a peep of yellow gaslight and 
 hear a jostling, whispering noise ahead; next moment 
 you turn a corner, and there, in a whitewashed passage, 
 is a machinery belt industriously turning on its wheels. 
 You would think the engine had grown there of its own 
 accord, like a cellar fungus, and would soon spin itself 
 out and fill the vaults from end to end with its mysteri- 
 ous labours. In truth, it is only some gear of the steam 
 ventilator; and you will find the engineers at hand, and 
 may step out of their door into the sunlight. For all 
 this while, you have not been descending towards the 
 earth's centre, but only to the bottom of the hill and the 
 foundations of the Parliament House; low down, to be 
 sure, but still under the open heaven and in a field of 
 grass. The daylight shines garishly on the back win- 
 dows of the Irish quarter ; on broken shutters, wry 
 gables, old palsied houses on the brink of ruin, a crum- 
 bling human pig-sty fit for human pigs. There are few 
 signs of life, besides a scanty washing or a face at a win- 
 dow: the dwellers are abroad, but they will return at 
 night and stagger to their pallets. 
 
 303 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 LEGENDS 
 
 The character of a place is often most perfectly ex- 
 pressed in its associations. An event strikes root and 
 grows into a legend, when it has happened amongst 
 congenial surroundings. Ugly actions, above all in ugly 
 places, have the true romantic quality, and become an 
 undying property of their scene. To a man like Scott, 
 the different appearances of nature seemed each to con- 
 tain its own legend ready made, which it was his to call 
 forth : in such or such a place, only such or such events 
 ought with propriety to happen ; and in this spirit he 
 made the Lady of the Lake for Ben Venue, the Heart of 
 Midlothian for Edinburgh, and the Pirate, so indiffer- 
 ently written but so romantically conceived, for the deso- 
 late islands and roaring tideways of the North. The com- 
 mon run of mankind have, from generation to genera- 
 tion, an instinct almost as delicate as that of Scott ; but 
 where he created new things, they only forget what is 
 unsuitable among the old ; and by survival of the fittest, 
 a body of tradition becomes a work of art. So, in the 
 low dens and high-flying garrets of Edinburgh, people 
 may go back upon dark passages in the town's adven- 
 tures, and chill their marrow with winter's tales about 
 the fire ; tales that are singularly apposite and character- 
 
 304 
 
LEGENDS 
 
 istic, not only of the old life, but of the very constitu- 
 tion of built nature in that part, and singularly well 
 qualified to add horror to horror, when the wind pipes 
 around the tall lands, and hoots adown arched passages, 
 and the far-spread wilderness of city lamps keeps qua- 
 vering and flaring in the gusts. 
 
 Here, it is the tale of Begbie the bank-porter, stricken 
 to the heart at a blow and left in his blood within a step 
 or two of the crowded High Street. There, people hush 
 their voices over Burke and Hare; over drugs and vio- 
 lated graves, and the resurrection-men smothering their 
 victims with their knees. Here, again, the fame of 
 Deacon Brodie is kept piously fresh. A great man in 
 his day was the Deacon; well seen in good society, 
 crafty with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who 
 could sing a song with taste. Many a citizen was proud 
 to welcome the Deacon to supper, and dismissed him 
 with regret at a timeous hour, who would have been 
 vastly disconcerted had he known how soon, and in 
 what guise, his visitor returned. Many stories are told 
 of this redoubtable Edinburgh burglar, but the one I 
 have in my mind most vividly gives the key of all the 
 rest. A friend of Brodie's, nested some way towards 
 heaven in one of these great lands, had told him of a 
 projected visit to the country, and afterwards detained 
 by some affairs, put it off and stayed the night in town. 
 The good man had lain some time awake ; it was far on 
 in the small hours by the Tron bell ; when suddenly 
 there came a creak, a jar, a faint light. Softly he clam- 
 bered out of bed and up to a false window which looked 
 upon another room, and there, by the glimmer of a 
 thieves' lantern, was his good friend the Deacon in a 
 
 305 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 mask. It is characteristic of the town and the town's 
 manners that this little episode should have been quietly 
 tided over, and quite a good time elapsed before a great 
 robbery, an escape, a Bow Street runner, a cock-fight, 
 an apprehension in a cupboard in Amsterdam, and a last 
 step into the air off his own greatly-improved gallows 
 drop, brought the career of Deacon William Brodie to 
 an end. But still, by the mind's eye, he may be seen, a 
 man harassed below a mountain of duplicity, slinking 
 from a magistrate's supper-room to a thieves' ken, and 
 pickeering among the closes by the flicker of a dark 
 lamp. 
 
 Or where the Deacon is out of favour, perhaps some 
 memory lingers of the great plagues, and of fatal houses 
 still unsafe to enter within the memory of man. For in 
 time of pestilence the discipline had been sharp and sud- 
 den, and what we now call "stamping out contagion" 
 was carried on with deadly rigour. The officials, in 
 their gowns of grey, with a white St. Andrew's cross 
 on back and breast, and a white cloth carried before 
 them on a staff, perambulated the city, adding the terror 
 of man's justice to the fear of God's visitation. The 
 dead they buried on the Borough Muir; the living who 
 had concealed the sickness were drowned, if they were 
 women, in the Quarry Holes, and if they were men, were 
 hanged and gibbeted at their own doors; and wherever 
 the evil had passed, furniture was destroyed and houses 
 closed. And the most bogeyish part of the story is 
 about such houses. Two generations back they still 
 stood dark and empty; people avoided them as they 
 passed by; the boldest schoolboy only shouted through 
 the keyhole and made off; for within, it was supposed, 
 
 •'06 
 
LEGENDS 
 
 the plague lay ambushed like a basilisk, ready to flow 
 forth and spread blain and pustule through the city. 
 What a terrible next-door neighbour for superstitious 
 citizens! A rat scampering within would send a shud- 
 der through the stoutest heart. Here, if you like, was 
 a sanitary parable, addressed by our uncleanly forefathers 
 to their own neglect. 
 
 And then we have Major Weir; for although even his 
 house is now demolished, old Edinburgh cannot clear 
 herself of his unholy memory. He and his sister lived to- 
 gether in an odour of sour piety. She was a marvellous 
 spinster; he had a rare gift of supplication, and was 
 known among devout admirers by the name of An- 
 gelical Thomas. "He was a tall, black man, and 
 ordinarily looked down to the ground; a grim coun- 
 tenance, and a big nose. His garb was still a cloak, 
 and somewhat dark, and he never went without his 
 staff." How it came about that Angelical Thomas was 
 burned in company with his staff, and his sister in 
 gentler manner hanged, and whether these two were 
 simply religious maniacs of the more furious order, or 
 had real as well as imaginary sins upon their old-world 
 shoulders, are points happily beyond the reach of our 
 intention. At least, it is suitable enough that out of 
 this superstitious city some such example should have 
 been put forth: the outcome and fine flower of dark 
 and vehement religion. And at least the facts struck 
 the public fancy and brought forth a remarkable family 
 of myths. It would appear that the Major's staff went 
 upon his errands, and even ran before him with a 
 lantern on dark nights. Gigantic females, ' ' stentoriously 
 laughing and gaping with tehees of laughter" at un- 
 
 307 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 seasonable hours of night and morning, haunted the 
 purlieus of his abode. His house fell under such a load 
 of infamy that no one dared to sleep in it, until muni- 
 cipal improvement levelled the structure with the ground. 
 And my father has often been told in the nursery how 
 the devil's coach, drawn by six coal-black horses with 
 fiery eyes, would drive at night into the West Bow, 
 and belated people might see the dead Major through 
 the glasses. 
 
 Another legend is that of the two maiden sisters. A 
 legend I am afraid it may be, in the most discreditable 
 meaning of the term; or perhaps something worse — a 
 mere yesterday's fiction. But it is a story of some 
 vitality, and is worthy of a place in the Edinburgh cal- 
 endar. This pair inhabited a single room; from the 
 facts, it must have been double-bedded; and it may 
 have been of some dimensions : but when all is said, it 
 was a single room. Here our two spinsters fell out — 
 on some point of controversial divinity belike : but fell 
 out so bitterly that there was never a word spoken be- 
 tween them, black or white, from that day forward. 
 You would have thought they would separate : but no ; 
 whether from lack of means, or the Scottish fear of 
 scandal, they continued to keep house together where 
 they were. A chalk line drawn upon the floor separated 
 their two domains; it bisected the doorway and the 
 fireplace, so that each could go out and in, and do her 
 cooking, without violating the territory of the other. 
 So, for years, they coexisted in a hateful silence ; their 
 meals, their ablutions, their friendly visitors, exposed to 
 an unfriendly scrutiny ; and at night, in the dark watches, 
 each could hear the breathing of her enemy. Never did 
 
 308 
 
LEGENDS 
 
 four walls look down upon an uglier spectacle than 
 these sisters rivalling in unsisterliness. Here is a canvas 
 for Hawthorne to have turned into a cabinet picture — 
 he had a Puritanic vein, which would have fitted him 
 to treat this Puritanic horror; he could have shown 
 them to us in their sicknesses and at their hideous twin 
 devotions, thumbing a pair of great Bibles, or praying 
 aloud for each other's penitence with marrowy em- 
 phasis; now each, with kilted petticoat, at her own 
 corner of the fire on some tempestuous evening; now 
 sitting each at her window, looking out upon the sum- 
 mer landscape sloping far below them towards the firth, 
 and the field-paths where they had wandered hand in 
 hand; or, as age and infirmity grew upon them and 
 prolonged their toilettes, and their hands began to trem- 
 ble and their heads to nod involuntarily, growing only 
 the more steeled in enmity with years ; until one fine 
 day, at a word, a look, a visit, or the approach of 
 death, their hearts would melt and the chalk boundary 
 be overstepped for ever. 
 
 Alas ! to those who know the ecclesiastical history of 
 the race — the most perverse and melancholy in man's 
 annals — this will seem only a figure of much that is 
 typical of Scotland and her high-seated capital above the 
 Forth — a figure so grimly realistic that it may pass with 
 strangers for a caricature. We are wonderful patient 
 haters for conscience' sake up here in the North. I spoke, 
 in the first of these papers, of the Parliaments of the 
 Established and Free Churches, and how they can hear 
 each other singing psalms across the street. There is 
 but a street between them in space, but a shadow be- 
 tween them in principle; and yet there they sit, en- 
 
 309 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 chanted, and in damnatory accents pray for each other's 
 growth in grace. It would be well if there were no 
 more than two ; but the sects in Scotland form a large 
 family of sisters, and the chalk lines are thickly drawn, 
 and run through the midst of many private homes. 
 Edinburgh is a city of churches, as though it were a place 
 of pilgrimage. You will see four within a stone-cast at 
 the head of the West Bow. Some are crowded to the 
 doors; some are empty like monuments; and yet you 
 will ever find new ones in the building. Hence that 
 surprising clamour of church bells that suddenly breaks 
 out upon the Sabbath morning, from Trinity and the 
 sea-skirts to Morningside on the borders of the hills. 
 I have heard the chimes of Oxford playing their sym- 
 phony in a golden autumn morning, and beautiful it was 
 to hear. But in Edinburgh all manner of loud bells 
 join, or rather disjoin, in one swelling, brutal babblement 
 of noise. Now one overtakes another, and now lags 
 behind it; now five or six all strike on the pained tym- 
 panum at the same punctual instant of time, and make 
 together a dismal chord of discord; and now for a 
 second all seem to have conspired to hold their peace. 
 Indeed, there are not many uproars in this world more 
 dismal than that of the Sabbath bells in Edinburgh : a 
 harsh ecclesiastical tocsin ; the outcry of incongruous 
 orthodoxies, calling on every separate conventicler to put 
 up a protest, each in his own synagogue, against ''right- 
 hand extremes and left-hand defections." And surely 
 there are few worse extremes than this extremity of zeal ; 
 and few more deplorable defections than this disloyalty 
 to Christian love. Shakespeare wrote a comedy of 
 ' * Much Ado about Nothing. " The Scottish nation made 
 
 310 
 
LEGENDS 
 
 a fantastic tragedy on the same subject. And it is for the 
 success of this remarkable piece that these bells are 
 sounded every Sabbath morning on the hills above the 
 Forth. How many of them might rest silent in the 
 steeple, how many of these ugly churches might be de- 
 molished and turned once more into useful building 
 material, if people who think almost exactly the same 
 thoughts about religion would condescend to worship 
 God under the same roof! But there are the chalk lines. 
 And which is to pocket pride, and speak the foremost 
 word? 
 
 311 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 GREYFRIARS 
 
 It was Queen Mary who threw open the gardens of 
 the Grey Friars : a new and semi-rural cemetery in those 
 days, although it has grown an antiquity in its turn and 
 been superseded by half-a-dozen others. The Friars 
 must have had a pleasant time on summer evenings; 
 for their gardens were situated to a wish, with the tall 
 castle and the tallest of the castle crags in front. Even 
 now, it is one of our famous Edinburgh points of view ; 
 and strangers are led thither to see, by yet another in- 
 stance, how strangely the city lies upon her hills. The 
 enclosure is of an irregular shape ; the double church of 
 Old and New Greyfriars stands on the level at the top \ 
 a few thorns are dotted here and there, and the ground 
 falls by terrace and steep slope towards the north. The 
 open shows many slabs and table tombstones ; and all 
 round the margin, the place is girt by an array of aristo- 
 cratic mausoleums appallingly adorned. 
 
 Setting aside the tombs of Roubilliac, which belong to 
 the heroic order of graveyard art, we Scotch stand, to 
 my fancy, highest among nations in the matter of grimly 
 illustrating death. We seem to love for their own sake 
 the emblems of time and the great change; and even 
 around country churches you will find a wonderful ex- 
 
 312 
 
GREYFRIARS 
 
 hibition of skulls, and crossbones, and noseless angels, 
 and trumpets pealing for the Judgment Day. Every 
 mason was a pedestrian Holbein : he had a deep con- 
 sciousness of death, and loved to put its terrors pithily 
 before the churchyard loiterer; he was brimful of rough 
 hints upon mortality, and any dead farmer was seized 
 upon to be a text. The classical examples of this art are 
 in Greyfriars. In their time, these were doubtless costly 
 monuments, and reckoned of a very elegant proportion 
 by contemporaries; and now, when the elegance is not 
 so apparent, the significance remains. You may per- 
 haps look with a smile on the profusion of Latin mottoes 
 — some crawling endwise up the shaft of a pillar, some 
 issuing on a scroll from angels' trumpets — on the em- 
 blematic horrors, the figures rising headless from the 
 grave, and all the traditional ingenuities in which it 
 pleased our fathers to set forth their sorrow for the dead 
 and their sense of earthly mutability. But it is not a 
 hearty sort of mirth. Each ornament may have been 
 executed by the merriest apprentice, whistling as he plied 
 the mallet; but the original meaning of each, and the 
 combined effect of so many of them in this quiet en- 
 closure, is serious to the point of melancholy. 
 
 Round a great part of the circuit, houses of a low class 
 present their backs to the churchyard. Only a few 
 inches separate the living from the dead. Here, a win- 
 dow is partly blocked up by the pediment of a tomb ; 
 there, where the street falls far below the level of the 
 graves, a chimney has been trained up the back of a 
 monument, and a red pot looks vulgarly over from be- 
 hind. A damp smell of the graveyard finds its way into 
 houses where workmen sit at meat. Domestic life on 
 
 3J3 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 a small scale goes forward visibly at the windows. The 
 very solitude and stillness of the enclosure, which lies 
 apart from the town's traffic, serves to accentuate the 
 contrast. As you walk upon the graves, you see chil- 
 dren scattering crumbs to feed the sparrows ; you hear 
 people singing or washing dishes, or the sound of tears 
 and castigation ; the linen on a clothespole flaps against 
 funereal sculpture; or perhaps the cat slips over the lintel 
 and descends on a memorial urn. And as there is nothing 
 else astir, these incongruous sights and noises take hold 
 on the attention and exaggerate the sadness of the place. 
 
 Greyfriars is continually overrun by cats. I have seen 
 one afternoon, as many as thirteen of them seated on 
 the grass beside old Milne, the Master Builder, all sleek 
 and fat, and complacently blinking, as if they had fed 
 upon strange meats. Old Milne was chaunting with 
 the saints, as we may hope, and cared little for the com- 
 pany about his grave ; but I confess the spectacle had an 
 ugly side for me ; and I was glad to step forward and 
 raise my eyes to where the Castle and the roofs of the 
 Old Town, and the spire of the Assembly Hall, stood, 
 deployed against the sky with the colourless precision 
 of engraving. An open outlook is to be desired from a 
 churchyard, and a sight of the sky and some of the 
 world's beauty relieves a mind from morbid thoughts. 
 
 I shall never forget one visit. It was a grey, dropping 
 day ; the grass was strung with raindrops ; and the peo- 
 ple in the houses kept hanging out their shirts and pet- 
 ticoats and angrily taking them in again, as the weather 
 turned from wet to fair and back again. A grave-dig- 
 ger, and a friend of his, a gardener from the country, 
 accompanied me into one after another of the cells and 
 
 314 
 
GREYFRIARS 
 
 little courtyards in which it gratified the wealthy of old 
 days to enclose their old bones from neighbourhood. 
 In one, under a sort of shrine, we found a forlorn human 
 effigy, very realistically executed down to the detail of 
 his ribbed stockings, and holding in his hand a ticket 
 with the date of his demise. He looked most pitiful and 
 ridiculous, shut up by himself in his aristocratic pre- 
 cinct, like a bad old boy or an inferior forgotten deity 
 under a new dispensation ; the burdocks grew familiarly 
 about his feet, the rain dripped all round him ; and the 
 world maintained the most entire indifference as to who 
 he was or whither he had gone. In another, a vaulted 
 tomb, handsome externally but horrible inside with 
 damp and cobwebs, there were three mounds of black 
 earth and an uncovered thigh bone. This was the place 
 of interment, it appeared, of a family with whom the 
 gardener had been long in service. He was among old 
 acquaintances. "This'll be Miss Marg'et's," said he, 
 
 giving the bone a friendly kick. "The auld ! " 1 
 
 have always an uncomfortable feeling in a graveyard, 
 at sight of so many tombs to perpetuate memories best 
 forgotten; but I never had the impression so strongly 
 as that day. People had been at some expense in both 
 these cases : to provoke a melancholy feeling of derision 
 in the one, and an insulting epithet in the other. The 
 proper inscription for the most part of mankind, 1 began 
 to think, is the cynical jeer, eras tibi. That, if anything, 
 will stop the mouth of a carper; since it both admits the 
 worst and carries the war triumphantly into the enemy's 
 camp. 
 
 Greyfriars is a place of many associations. There was 
 one window in a house at the lower end, now demol- 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 ished, which was pointed out to me by the gravedigger 
 as a spot of legendary interest. Burke, the resurrection 
 man, infamous for so many murders at five shillings 
 a head, used to sit thereat, with pipe and nightcap, to 
 watch burials going forward on the green. In a tomb 
 higher up, which must then have been but newly fin- 
 ished, John Knox, according to the same informant, had 
 taken refuge in a turmoil of the Reformation. Behind 
 the church is the haunted mausoleum of Sir George 
 Mackenzie: Bloody Mackenzie, Lord Advocate in the 
 Covenanting troubles and author of some pleasing senti- 
 ments on toleration. Here, in the last century, an old 
 Heriot's Hospital boy once harboured from the pursuit 
 of the police. The Hospital is next door to Greyfriars 
 — a courtly building among lawns, where, on Founder's 
 Day, you may see a multitude of children playing Kiss- 
 in-the-Ring and Round the Mulberry-bush. Thus, 
 when the fugitive had managed to conceal himself in 
 the tomb, his old schoolmates had a hundred opportu- 
 nities to bring him food ; and there he lay in safety till a 
 ship was found to smuggle him abroad. But his must 
 have been indeed a heart of brass, to lie all day and night 
 alone with the dead persecutor; and other lads were far 
 from emulating him in courage. When a man's soul is 
 certainly in hell, his body will scarce lie quiet in a tomb 
 however costly ; some time or other the door must open, 
 and the reprobate come forth in the abhorred garments 
 of the grave. It was thought a high piece of prowess 
 to knock at the Lord Advocate's mausoleum and chal- 
 lenge him to appear. '* Bluidy Mackingie, come oot if 
 ye dar' I " sang the foolhardy urchins. But Sir George 
 had other affairs on hand ; and the author of an essay on 
 
 316 
 
GREYFRIARS 
 
 toleration continues to sleep peacefully among the many 
 whom he so intolerantly helped to slay. 
 
 For this infelix campus^ as it is dubbed in one of its 
 own inscriptions — an inscription over which Dr. John- 
 son passed a critical eye — is in many ways sacred to 
 the memory of the men whom Mackenzie persecuted. 
 It was here, on the flat tombstones, that the Covenant 
 was signed by an enthusiastic people. In the 'png arm 
 of the churchyard that extends to Lauriston, the pris- 
 oners from Both well Bridge — fed on bread and water 
 and guarded, life for life, by vigilant marksmen — lay 
 five months looking for the scaffold or the plantations. 
 And while the good work was going forward in the 
 Grassmarket, idlers in Greyfriars might have heard the 
 throb of the military drums that drowned the voices of 
 the martyrs. Nor is this all: for down in the corner 
 farthest from Sir George, there stands a monument de- 
 dicated, in uncouth Covenanting verse, to all who lost 
 their lives in that contention. There is no moorsman 
 shot in a snow shower beside Irongray or Co'monell; 
 there is not one of the two hundred who were drowned 
 off the Orkneys ; nor so much as a poor, over-driven. 
 Covenanting slave in the American plantations; but can 
 lay claim to a share in that memorial and, if such things 
 interest just men among the shades, can boast he has a 
 monument on earth as well as Julius Caesar or the Pha- 
 raohs. Where they may all lie, I know not. Far-scat- 
 tered bones, indeed I But if the reader cares to learn 
 how some of them — or some part of some of them — 
 found their way at length to such honourable sepulture, 
 let him listen to the words of one who was their com- 
 rade in life and their apologist when they were dead. 
 
 317 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 Some of the insane controversial matter I omit, as well 
 as some digressions, but leave the rest in Patrick Walker's 
 language and orthography : — 
 
 "The never to be forgotten Mr. James Renwick told me, that he was 
 Witness to their Public Murder at the Gallowlee, between Leith and 
 Edinburgh, when he saw the Hangman hash and hagg off all their 
 Five Head^ with Patrick Foreman's Right Hand: Their Bodies were 
 all burjri at the Gallows Foot; their Heads, with Patrick's Hand, 
 were brc jj^^it and put upon five Pikes on the Pleasaunce-Port. . . . 
 Mr. Renwick told me also that it was the first public Action that his 
 Hand was at, to conveen Friends, and lift their murthered Bodies, and 
 carried them to the West Churchyard of Edinburgh," — not Greyfriars, 
 this time, — " and buried them there. Then they came about the City 
 .... and took down these Five Heads and that Hand; and Day be- 
 ing come, they went quickly up the Pleasaunce; and when they came 
 to Lauristoun Yards, upon the South-side of the City, they durst not 
 venture, being so light, to go and bury their Heads with their Bodies, 
 which they designed; it being present Death, if any of them had been 
 found. Alexander Tweedie, a Friend, being with them, who at that 
 Time was Gardner in these Yards, concluded to bury them in his Yard, 
 being in a Box (wrapped in Linen), where they lay 45 Years except 3 
 Days, being executed upon the loth of October 1681, and found the 7th 
 Pay of October 1 726. That Piece of Ground lay for some Years un- 
 laboured; and trenching it, the Gardner found them, which affrighted 
 him; the Box was consumed. Mr. Schaw, the Owner of these Yards, 
 caused lift them, and lay them upon a Table in his Summer-house: 
 Mr. Schaw's mother was so kind, as to cut out a Linen-cloth, and 
 cover them. They lay Twelve Days there, where all had Access to 
 see them. Alexander Tweedie, the foresaid Gardner, said, when dy- 
 ing, There was a Treasure hid in his Yard, but neither Gold nor Silver. 
 Daniel Tweedie, his Son, came along with me to that Yard, and told 
 me that his Father planted a white Rose-bush above them, and farther 
 down the Yard a red Rose-bush, which were more fruitful than any 
 other Bush in the Yard. . . . Many came " — to see the heads — "out 
 of Curiosity; yet I rejoiced to see so many concerned grave Men and 
 Women favouring the Dust of our Martyrs. There were Six of us con- 
 
 318 
 
GREYFRIARS 
 
 eluded to bury them upon the Nineteenth Day of October 1 726, and 
 every One of us to acquaint Friends of the Day and Hour, being IVed- 
 nesdajy, the Day of the Week on which most of them were executed, 
 and at 4 of the Clock at Night, being the Hour that most of them went 
 to their resting Graves. We caused make a compleat Coffm for them 
 in Black, with four Yards of fine Linen, the way that our Martyrs 
 Corps were managed. . . . Accordingly we kept the aforesaid Day 
 and Hour, and doubled the Linen, and laid the Half of it below them, 
 their nether Jaws being parted from their Heads; but being young Men, 
 their Teeth remained. All were Witness to the Holes in each of their 
 Heads, which the Hangman broke with his Hammer; and according to 
 the Bigness of their Sculls, we laid the Jaws to them, and drew the 
 other Half of the Linen above them, and stufft the Coffm with Shav- 
 ings. Some prest hard to go thorow the chief Parts of the City as was 
 done at the Revolution; but this we refused, considering that it looked 
 airy and frothy, to make such Show of them, and inconsistent with the 
 solid serious Observing of such an affecting, surprizing unheard-of Dis- 
 pensation: But took the ordinary Way of other Burials from that Place, 
 to wit, we went east the Back of the Wall, and in at Bristo-Port, and 
 down the Way to the Head of the Cowgate, and turned up to the 
 Church-yard, where they were interred closs to the Martyrs Tomb, 
 with the greatest Multitude of People Old and Young, Men and 
 Women, Ministers and others, that ever I saw together." 
 
 And SO there they were at last, in "their resting 
 graves." So long as men do their duty, even if it be 
 greatly in a misapprehension, they will be leading pat- 
 tern lives ; and whether or not they come to lie beside 
 a martyrs' monument, we may be sure they will find a 
 safe haven somewhere in the providence of God. It is 
 not well to think of death, unless we temper the thought 
 with that of heroes who despised it. Upon what ground, 
 is of small account; if it be only the bishop who was 
 burned for his faith in the antipodes, his memory lightens 
 the heart and makes us walk undisturbed among graves. 
 And so the martyrs' monument is a wholesome heart- 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 some spot in the field of the dead ; and as we look upon 
 it, a brave influence comes to us from the land of those 
 who have won their discharge and, in another phrase 
 of Patrick Walker's, got ** cleanly off the stage." 
 
 320 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 NEW TOWN — TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 
 It is as much a matter of course to decry the New 
 Town as to exalt the Old ; and the most celebrated au- 
 thorities have picked out this quarter as the very emblem 
 of what is condemnable in architecture. Much may be 
 said, much indeed has been said, upon the text; but to 
 the unsophisticated, who call anything pleasing if it only 
 pleases them, the New Town of Edinburgh seems, in 
 itself, not only gay and airy, but highly picturesque. 
 An old skipper, invincibly ignorant of all theories of 
 the sublime and beautiful, once propounded as his most 
 radiant notion for Paradise : ''The new town of Edin- 
 burgh, with the wind the matter of a point free." He 
 has now gone to that sphere where all good tars are 
 promised pleasant weather in the song, and perhaps his 
 thoughts fly somewhat higher. But there are bright 
 and temperate days — with soft air coming from the in- 
 land hills, military music sounding bravely from the 
 hollow of the gardens, the flags all waving on the 
 palaces of Princes Street — when I have seen the town*' 
 through a sort of glory, and shaken hands in sentiment 
 with the old sailor. And indeed, for a man who has 
 been much tumbled round Orcadian skerries, what scene 
 could be more agreeable to witness ? On such a day, 
 
 321 
 
PICTURESQLIE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 the valley wears a surprising air of festival. It seems (I 
 do not know how else to put my meaning) as if it were 
 a trifle too good to be true. It is what Paris ought to 
 be. It has the scenic quality that would best set off a 
 life of unthinking, open-air diversion. It was meant by 
 nature for the realisation of the society of comic operas. 
 And you can imagine, if the climate were but towardly, 
 how all the world and his wife would flock into these 
 gardens in the cool of the evening, to hear cheerful 
 music, to sip pleasant drinks, to see the moon rise from 
 behind Arthur's Seat and shine upon the spires and 
 monuments and the green tree-tops in the valley. Alas! 
 and the next morning the rain is splashing on the win- 
 dow, and the passengers flee along Princes Street be- 
 fore the galloping squalls. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the original design was faulty 
 and short-sighted, and did not fully profit by the capa- 
 bilities of the situation. The architect was essentially a 
 town bird, and he laid out the modern city with a view 
 to street scenery, and to street scenery alone. The coun^ 
 try did not enter into his plan; he had never lifted his 
 eyes to the hills. If he had so chosen, every street 
 upon the northern slope might have been a noble ter- 
 race and commanded an extensive and beautiful view. 
 But the space has been too closely built; many of the 
 houses front the wrong way, intent, like the Man with 
 the Muck-Rake, on what is not worth observation, and 
 standing discourteously back-foremost in the ranks ; and 
 in a word, it is too often only from attic windows, or 
 here and there at a crossing, that you can get a look 
 beyond the city upon its diversified surroundings. But 
 perhaps it is all the more surprising, to come suddenly 
 
 322 
 
NEW TOWN — TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 
 on a corner, and see a perspective of a mile or more of 
 falling street, and beyond that woods and villas, and a 
 blue arm of sea, and the hills upon the farther side. 
 
 Fergusson, our Edinburgh poet, Burns's model, once 
 saw a butterfly at the Town Cross; and the sight in- 
 spired him with a worthless little ode. This painted 
 countryman, the dandy of the rose garden, looked far 
 abroad in such a humming neighbourhood ; and you can 
 fancy what moral considerations a youthful poet would 
 supply. But the incident, in a fanciful sort of way, is 
 characteristic of the place. Into no other city does the 
 sight of the country enter so far; if you do not meet a 
 butterfly, you shall certainly catch a glimpse of far-away 
 trees upon your walk; and the place is full of theatre 
 tricks in the way of scenery. You peep under an arch, 
 you descend stairs that look as if they would land you 
 in a cellar, you turn to the back-window of a grimy 
 tenement in a lane: — and behold! you are face-to-face 
 with distant and bright prospects. You turn a corner, 
 and there is the sun going down into the Highland hills. 
 You look down an alley, and see ships tacking for the 
 Baltic. 
 
 For the country people to see Edinburgh on her hill- 
 tops, is one thing ; it is another for the citizen, from the 
 thick of his affairs, to overlook the country. It should 
 be a genial and ameliorating influence in life; it should 
 prompt good thoughts and remind him of Nature's un- 
 concern : that he can watch from day to day, as he trots 
 ofiTiceward, how the Spring green brightens in the wood 
 or the field grows black under a moving ploughshare. 
 I have been tempted, in this connection, to deplore the 
 slender faculties of the human race, with its penny- 
 
 323 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 whistle of a voice, its dull ears, and its narrow range of 
 sight. If you could see as people are to see in heaven, 
 if you had eyes such as you can fancy for a superior 
 race, if you could take clear note of the objects of vision, 
 not only a few yards, but a few miles from where you 
 stand: — think how agreeably your sight would be 
 entertained, how pleasantly your thoughts would be 
 diversified, as you walked the Edinburgh streets ! For 
 you might pause, in some business perplexity, in the 
 midst of the city traffic, and perhaps catch the eye of a 
 shepherd as he sat down to breathe upon a heathery 
 shoulder of the Pentlands; or perhaps some urchin, 
 clambering in a country elm, would put aside the leaves 
 and show you his flushed and rustic visage ; or a fisher 
 racing seawards, with the tiller under his elbow, and the 
 sail sounding in the wind, would fling you a salutation 
 from between Anst'er and the May. 
 
 To be old is not the same thing as to be picturesque; 
 nor because the Old Town bears a strange physiog- 
 nomy, does it at all follow that the New Town shall look 
 commonplace. Indeed, apart from antique houses, it is 
 curious how much description would apply commonly 
 to either. The same sudden accidents of ground, a 
 similar dominating site above the plain, and the same 
 superposition of one rank of society over another, are to 
 be observed in both. Thus, the broad and comely 
 approach to Princes Street from the east, lined with 
 hotels and public offices, makes a leap over the gorge of 
 the Low Calton ; if you cast a glance over the parapet, 
 you look direct into that sunless and disreputable con- 
 fluent of Leith Street; and the same tall houses open 
 upon both thoroughfares. This is only the New Town 
 
 524 
 
NEW TOWN — TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 
 passing overhead above its own cellars ; walking, so to 
 speak, over its own children, as is the way of cities and 
 the human race. But at the Dean Bridge, you may be- 
 hold a spectacle of a more novel order. The river runs 
 at the bottom of a deep valley, among rocks and be- 
 tween gardens; the crest of either bank is occupied by 
 some of the most commodious streets and crescents in 
 the modern city; and a handsome bridge unites the two 
 summits. Over this, every afternoon, private carriages 
 go spinning by, and ladies with card-cases pass to and 
 fro about the duties of society. And yet down below, 
 you may still see, with its mills and foaming weir, the 
 little rural village of Dean. Modern improvement has 
 gone overhead on its high-level viaduct; and the ex- 
 tended city has cleanly overleapt, and left unaltered, 
 what was once the summer retreat of its comfortable 
 citizens. Every town embraces hamlets in its growth ; 
 Edinburgh herself has embraced a good few ; but it is 
 strange to see one still surviving — and to see it some 
 hundreds of feet below your path. Is it Torre del Greco 
 that is built above buried Herculaneum ? Herculaneum 
 was dead at least; but the sun still shines upon the roofs 
 of Dean ; the smoke still rises thriftily from its chimneys ; 
 the dusty miller comes to his door, looks at the gurgling 
 water, hearkens to the turning wheel and the birds 
 about the shed, and perhaps whistles an air of his own 
 to enrich the symphony — for all the world as if Edin- 
 burgh were still the old Edinburgh on the Castle Hill, 
 and Dean were still the quietest of hamlets buried a mile 
 or so in the green country. 
 
 It is not so long ago since magisterial David Hume 
 lent the authority of his example to the exodus from the 
 
 325 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 Old Town, and took up his new abode in a street which 
 is still (so oddly may a jest become perpetuated) known 
 as Saint David Street. Nor is the town so large but a 
 holiday schoolboy may harry a bird's nest within half a 
 mile of his own door. There are places that still smell 
 of the plough in memory's nostrils. Here, one had heard 
 a blackbird on a hawthorn; there, another was taken 
 on summer evenings to eat strawberries and cream ; and 
 you have seen a waving wheatfield on the site of your 
 present residence. The memories of an Edinburgh boy 
 are but partly memories of the town. I look back with 
 delight on many an escalade of garden walls ; many a 
 ramble among lilacs full of piping birds ; many an ex- 
 ploration in obscure quarters that were neither town nor 
 country ; and I think that both for my companions and 
 myself, there was a special interest, a point of romance, 
 and a sentiment as of foreign travel, when we hit in our 
 excursions on the butt end of some former hamlet, and 
 found a few rustic cottages embedded among streets 
 and squares. The tunnel to the Scotland Street Station, 
 the sight of the trains shooting out of its dark maw with 
 the two guards upon the brake, the thought of its length 
 and the many ponderous edifices and open thoroughfares 
 above, were certainly things of paramount impressive- 
 ness to a young mind. It was a subterranean passage, 
 although of a larger bore than we were accustomed to 
 in Ainsworth's novels; and these two words, "subter- 
 ranean passage," were in themselves an irresistible at- 
 traction, and seemed to bring us nearer in spirit to the 
 heroes we loved and the black rascals we secretly as- 
 pired to imitate. To scale the Castle Rock from West 
 Princes Street Gardens, and lay a triumphal hand against 
 
 326 
 
NEW TOWN — TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 
 the rampart itself, was to taste a high order of romantic 
 pleasure. And there are other sights and exploits which 
 crowd back upon my mind under a very strong illu- 
 mination of remembered pleasure. But the effect of not 
 one of them all will compare with the discoverer's joy, 
 and the sense of old Time and his slow changes on the 
 face of this earth, with which I explored such corners 
 as Cannonmills or Water Lane, or the nugget of cot- 
 tages at Broughton Market. They were more rural than 
 the open country, and gave a greater impression of an- 
 tiquity than the oldest land upon the High Street. They 
 too, like Fergusson's butterfly, had a quaint air of having 
 wandered far from their own place ; they looked abashed 
 and homely, with their gables and their creeping plants, 
 their outside stairs and running mill-streams ; there were 
 corners that smelt like the end of the country garden 
 where I spent my Aprils ; and the people stood to gos- 
 sip at their doors, as they might have done in Colinton 
 or Cramond. 
 
 In a great measure we may, and shall, eradicate this 
 haunting flavour of the country The last elm is dead 
 in Elm Row; and the villas and the workmen's quar- 
 ters spread apace on all the borders of the city. We 
 can cut down the trees ; we can bury the grass under 
 dead paving-stones ; we can drive brisk streets through 
 all our sleepy quarters ; and we may forget the stories 
 and the playgrounds of our boyhood. But we have 
 some possessions that not even the infuriate zeal of 
 builders can utterly abolish and destroy. Nothing can 
 abolish the hills, unless it be a cataclysm of nature which 
 shall subvert Edinburgh Castle itself and lay all her florid 
 structures in the dust. And as long as we have the 
 
 327 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 hills and the Firth, we have a famous heritage to leave 
 our children. Our windows, at no expense to us, are 
 mostly artfully stained to represent a landscape. And 
 when the Spring comes round, and the hawthorn be- 
 gins to flower, and the meadows to smell of young 
 grass, even in the thickest of our streets, the country 
 hill-tops find out a young man's eyes, and set his heart 
 beating for travel and pure air. 
 
 528 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE VILLA aUARTERS 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's denunciation of the New Town of Edin- 
 burgh includes, as I have heard it repeated, nearly all 
 the stone and lime we have to show. Many however 
 find a grand air and something settled and imposing in 
 the better parts; and upon many, as I have said, the 
 confusion of styles induces an agreeable stimulation of 
 the mind. But upon the subject of our recent villa ar- 
 chitecture, I am frankly ready to mingle my tears with 
 Mr. Ruskin's, and it is a subject which makes one envi- 
 ous of his large declamatory and controversial eloquence. 
 
 Day by day, one new villa, one new object of offence, 
 is added to another; all around Newington and Morn- 
 ingside, the dismallest structures keep springing up like 
 mushrooms; the pleasant hills are loaded with them, 
 each impudently squatted in its garden, each roofed and 
 carrying chimneys like a house. And yet a glance of 
 an eye discovers their true character. They are not 
 houses; for they were not designed with a view to 
 human habitation, and the internal arrangements are, as 
 they tell me, fantastically unsuited to the needs of man. 
 They are not buildings ; for you can scarcely say a thing 
 is built where every measurement is in clamant dispro- 
 portion with its neighbour. They belong to no style of 
 art, only to a form of business much to be regretted. 
 
 329 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 Why should it be cheaper to erect a structure where 
 the size of the windows bears no rational relation to the 
 size of the front ? Is there any profit in a misplaced 
 chimney-stalk ? Does a hard-working, greedy builder 
 gain more on a monstrosity than on a decent cottage of 
 equal plainness ? Frankly, we should say, No. Bricks 
 may be omitted, and green timber employed, in the con- 
 struction of even a very elegant design ; and there is no 
 reason why a chimney should be made to vent, because 
 it is so situated as to look comely from without. On 
 the other hand, there is a noble way of being ugly : a 
 high-aspiring fiasco like the fall of Lucifer. There are 
 daring and gaudy buildings that manage to be offensive, 
 without being contemptible; and we know that ''fools 
 rush in where angels fear to tread. " But to aim at mak- 
 ing a common-place villa, and to make it insufferably 
 ugly in each particular; to attempt the homeliest achieve- 
 ment and to attain the bottom of derided failure ; not to 
 have any theory but profit and yet, at an equal expense, 
 to outstrip all competitors in the art of conceiving and 
 rendering permanent deformity; and to do all this in 
 what is, by nature, one of the most agreeable neighbour- 
 hoods in Britain : — what are we to say, but that this 
 also is a distinction, hard to earn although not greatly 
 worshipful ? 
 
 Indifferent buildings give pain to the sensitive; but 
 these things offend the plainest taste. It is a danger 
 which threatens the amenity of the town; and as this 
 eruption keeps spreading on our borders, we have ever 
 the farther to walk among unpleasant sights, before we 
 gain the country air. If the population of Edinburgh 
 were a living, autonomous body, it would arise like 
 
 330 
 
THE VILLA QUARTERS 
 
 one man and make night hideous with arson ; the build- 
 ers and their accomplices would be driven to work, like 
 the Jews of yore, with the trowel in one hand and the 
 defensive cutlass in the other; and as soon as one of 
 these masonic wonders had been consummated, right- 
 minded iconoclasts should fall thereon and make an end 
 of it at once. 
 
 Possibly these words may meet the eye of a builder 
 or two. It is no use asking them to employ an architect ; 
 for that would be to touch them in a delicate quarter, 
 and its use would largely depend on what architect 
 they were minded to call in. But let them get any 
 architect in the world to point out any reasonably well- 
 proportioned villa, not his own design; and let them 
 reproduce that model to satiety. 
 
 331 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CALTON HILL 
 
 The east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy 
 hill, of no great elevation, which the town embraces. 
 The old London road runs on one side of it; while the 
 New Approach, leaving it on the other hand, completes 
 the circuit. You mount by stairs in a cutting of the rock 
 to find yourself in a field of monuments. Dugald Stewart 
 has the honours of situation and architecture ; Burns is 
 memorialised lower down upon a spur; Lord Nelson, as 
 befits a sailor, gives his name to the topgallant of the Gal- 
 lon Hill. This latter erection has been differently and yet, 
 in both cases, aptly compared to a telescope and a butter- 
 churn ; comparisons apart, it ranks among the vilest of 
 men's handiworks. But the chief feature is an unfinished 
 range of columns, "the Modern Ruin" as it has been 
 called, an imposing object from far and near, and giv- 
 ing Edinburgh, even from the sea, that false air of a Mod- 
 ern Athens which has earned for her so many slighting 
 speeches. It was meant to be a National Monument; 
 and its present state is a very suitable monument to cer- 
 tain national characteristics. The old Observatory — a 
 quaint brown building on the edge of the steep — and 
 the new Observatory — a classical edifice with a dome 
 — occupy the central portion of the summit. All these 
 
 332 
 
THE CALTON HILL 
 
 /ire scattered on a green turf, browsed over by some 
 sheep. 
 
 The scene suggests reflections on fame and on man's 
 injustice to the dead. You see Dugald Stewart rather 
 more handsomely commemorated than Burns. Imme- 
 diately below, in the Canongate churchyard, lies Robert 
 Fergusson, Burns's master in his art, who died insane 
 while yet a stripling; and if Dugald Stewart has been 
 somewhat too boisterously acclaimed, the Edinburgh 
 poet, on the other hand, is most unrighteously forgotten. 
 The votaries of Burns, a crew too common in all ranks 
 in Scotland and more remarkable for number than dis- 
 cretion, eagerly suppress all mention of the lad who 
 handed to him the poetic impulse and, up to the time 
 when he grew famous, continued to influence him in 
 his manner and the choice of subjects. Burns himself 
 not only acknowledged his debt in a fragment of auto- 
 biography, but erected a tomb over the grave in Can- 
 ongate churchyard. This was worthy of an artist, but 
 it was done in vain ; and although I think I have read 
 nearly all the biographies of Burns, I cannot remember 
 one in which the modesty of nature was not violated, 
 or where Fergusson was not sacrificed to the credit of 
 his follower's originality. There is a kind of gaping ad- 
 miration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon 
 into one, to have a bigger thing to gape at ; and a class 
 of men who cannot edit one author without disparaging 
 all others. They are indeed mistaken if they think to 
 please the great originals ; and whoever puts Fergusson 
 right with fame, cannot do better than dedicate his la- 
 bours to the memory of Burns, who will be the best 
 delighted of the dead. 
 
PICTURESQyE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 Of all places for a view, this Calton Hill is perhaps 
 the best; since you can see the Castle, which you lose 
 from the Castle, and Arthur's Seat, which you cannot 
 see from Arthur's Seat. It is the place to stroll on one 
 of those days of sunshine and east wind which are so 
 common in our more than temperate summer. The 
 breeze comes off the sea, with a little of the freshness, 
 and that touch of chill, peculiar to the quarter, which is 
 delightful to certain very ruddy organizations and greatly 
 the reverse to the majority of mankind. It brings with 
 it a faint, floating haze, a cunning decolouriser, although 
 not thick enough to obscure outlines near at hand. But 
 the haze lies more thickly to windward at the far end of 
 Musselburgh Bay ; and over the Links of Aberlady and 
 Berwick Law and the hump of the Bass Rock it assumes 
 the aspect of a bank of thin sea fog. 
 
 Immediately underneath upon the south, you com- 
 mand the yards of the High School, and the towers and 
 courts of the new Jail — a large place, castellated to the 
 extent of folly, standing by itself on the edge of a steep 
 cliff, and often joyfully hailed by tourists as the Castle. 
 In the one, you may perhaps see female prisoners tak- 
 ing exercise like a string of nuns; in the other, school- 
 boys running at play and their shadows keeping step 
 with them. From the bottom of the valley, a gigantic 
 chimney rises almost to the level of the eye, a taller and 
 a shapelier edifice than Nelson's Monument. Look a 
 little farther, and there is Holyrood Palace, with its Gothic 
 frontal and ruined abbey, and the red sentry pacing 
 smartly to and fro before the door like a mechanical fig- 
 ure in a panorama. By way of an outpost, you can 
 single out the little peak-roofed lodge, over which Riz- 
 
 334 
 
THE CALTON HILL 
 
 zio's murderers made their escape and where Queen 
 Mary herself, according to gossip, bathed in white wine 
 to entertain her loveliness. Behind and overhead, lie the 
 Queen's Park, from Muschat's Cairn to Dumbiedykes, 
 St. Margaret's Loch, and the long wall of Salisbury Crags ; 
 and thence, by knoll and rocky bulwark and precipitous 
 slope, the eye rises to the top of Arthur's Seat, a hill for 
 magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design. This 
 upon your left. Upon the right, the roofs and spires of 
 the Old Town climb one above another to where the 
 citadel prints its broad bulk and jagged crown of basti- 
 ons on the western sky. Perhaps it is now one in the 
 afternoon ; and at the same instant of time, a ball rises 
 to the summit of Nelson's flagstaff close at hand, and, 
 far away, a puff of smoke followed by a report bursts 
 from the half-moon battery at the Castle. This is the 
 time-gun by which people set their watches, as far as 
 the sea coast or in hill farms upon the Pentlands. To 
 complete the view, the eye enfilades Princes Street, black 
 with traffic, and has a broad look over the valley be- 
 tween the Old Town and the New : here, full of railway 
 trains and stepped over by the high North Bridge upon 
 its many columns, and there, green with trees and gar- 
 dens. 
 
 On the north, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt in 
 itself nor has it so exceptional an outlook ; and yet even 
 here it commands a striking prospect. A gully sepa- 
 rates it from the New Town. This is Greenside, where 
 witches were burned and tournaments held in former 
 days. Down that almost precipitous bank, Bothwell 
 launched his horse, and so first, as they say, attracted 
 the bright eyes of Mary. It is now tesselated with sheets 
 
 335 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 and blankets out to dry, and the sound of people beat- 
 ing carpets is rarely absent. Beyond all this, the sub- 
 urbs run out to Leith ; Leith camps on the seaside with 
 her forest of masts ; Leith roads are full of ships at an- 
 chor; the sun picks out the white pharos upon Inch- 
 keith Island ; the Firth extends on either hand from the 
 Ferry to the May; the towns of Fifeshire sit, each in its 
 bank of blowing smoke, along the opposite coast; and 
 the hills inclose the view, except to the farthest east, 
 where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea. 
 There lies the road to Norway : a dear road for Sir Pat- 
 rick Spens and his Scots Lords ; and yonder smoke on 
 the hither side of Largo Law is Aberdour, from whence 
 they sailed to seek a queen for Scotland. 
 
 " O lang, lang, may the ladies sit, 
 Wi' their fans into their hand. 
 Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spens 
 Come sailing to the land! " 
 
 The sight of the sea, even from a city, will bring 
 thoughts of storm and sea disaster. The sailors' wives 
 of Leith and the fisherwomen of Cockenzie, not sitting 
 languorously with fans, but crowding to the tail of the 
 harbour with a shawl about their ears, may still look 
 vainly for brave Scotsmen who will return no more, or 
 boats that have gone on their last fishing. Since Sir 
 Patrick sailed from Aberdour, what a multitude have 
 gone down in the North Sea! Yonder is Auldhame, 
 where the London smack went ashore and wreckers cut 
 the rings from ladies' fingers; and a few miles round 
 Fife Ness is the fatal Inchcape, now a star of guidance; 
 
 336 
 
THE CALTON HILL 
 
 and the lee shore to the east of the Inchcape, is that For- 
 farshire coast where Mucklebackit sorrowed for his son. 
 
 These are the main features of the scene roughly 
 sketched. How they are all tilted by the inclination of 
 the ground, how each stands out in delicate relief 
 against the rest, what manifold detail, and play of sun 
 and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture, is a 
 matter for a person on the spot, and turning swiftly on 
 his heels, to grasp and bind together in one comprehen- 
 sive look. It is the character of such a prospect, to be 
 full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity 
 embarrasses the eye; and the mind, among so much, 
 suffers itself to grow absorbed with single points. You 
 remark a tree in a hedgerow, or follow a cart along a 
 country road. You turn to the city, and see children, 
 dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban 
 doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare 
 where people are densely moving; you note ridge after 
 ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind 
 another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of 
 roofs. At one of the innumerable windows, you watch 
 a figure moving; on one of the multitude of roofs, you 
 watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a 
 run and scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and 
 near, faint and loud, to tell the hour; or perhaps a bird 
 goes dipping evenly over the housetops, like a gull 
 across the waves. And here you are in the meantime, 
 on this pastoral hillside, among nibbling sheep and 
 looked upon by monumental buildings. 
 
 Return thither on some clear, dark, moonless night, 
 with a ring of frost in the air, and only a star or two set 
 sparsedly in the vault of heaven ; and you will find a 
 
 337 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 sight as stimulating as the hoariest summit of the Alps. 
 The solitude seems perfect; the patient astronomer, flat 
 on his back under the Observatory dome and spying 
 heaven's secrets, is your only neighbour; and yet from 
 all round you there come up the dull hum of the city, 
 the tramp of countless people marching out of time, the 
 rattle of carriages and the continuous keen jingle of the 
 tramway bells. An hour or so before, the gas was 
 turned on; lamplighters scoured the city; in every 
 house, from kitchen to attic, the windows kindled and 
 gleamed forth into the dusk. And so now, although the 
 town lies blue and darkling on her hills, innumerable 
 spots of this bright element shine far and near along the 
 pavements and upon the high fa9ades. Moving lights 
 of the railway pass and re-pass below the stationary 
 lights upon the bridge. Lights burn in the Jail. Lights 
 burn high up in the tall lands and on the Castle turrets, 
 they burn low down in Greenside or along the Park. 
 They run out one beyond the other into the dark country. 
 They walk in a procession down to Leith, and shine 
 singly far along Leith Pier. Thus, the plan of the city 
 and her suburbs is mapped out upon the ground of 
 blackness, as when a child pricks a drawing full of pin- 
 holes and exposes it before a candle; not the darkest 
 night of winter can conceal her high station and fanciful 
 design ; every evening in the year she proceeds to illu- 
 minate herself in honour of her own beauty ; and as if to 
 complete the scheme — or rather as if some prodigal 
 Pharaoh were beginning to extend to the adjacent sea and 
 country — half way over to Fife, there is an outpost of 
 light upon Inchkeith, and far to seaward, yet another on 
 the May. 
 
 338 
 
THE CALTON HILL 
 
 And while you are looking, across upon the Castle 
 Hill, the drums and bugles begin to recall the scattered 
 garrison ; the air thrills with the sound ; the bugles sing 
 aloud ; and the last rising flourish mounts and melts into 
 the darkness like a star: a martial swan-song, fitly 
 rounding in the labours of the day. 
 
 539 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 WINTER AND NEW YEAR 
 
 The Scotch dialect is singularly rich in terms of re- 
 proach against the winter wind. Snell, hlae, nirly, and 
 scowfhering, are four of these significant vocables ; they 
 are all words that carry a shiver with them ; and for my 
 part as I see them aligned before me on the page, I am 
 persuaded that a big wind comes tearing over the Firth 
 from Burntisland and the northern hills; I think I can 
 hear it howl in the chimney, and as I set my face north- 
 wards, feel its smarting kisses on my cheek. Even in 
 the names of places there is often a desolate, inhospi- 
 table sound ; and I remember two from the near neigh- 
 bourhood of Edinburgh, Cauldhame and Blaw-weary, 
 that would promise but starving comfort to their inhabi- 
 tants. The inclemency of heaven, which has thus en- 
 dowed the language of Scotland with words, has also 
 largely modified the spirit of its poetry. Both poverty 
 and a northern climate teach men the love of the hearth 
 and the sentiment of the family ; and the latter, in its 
 own right, inclines a poet to the praise of strong waters. 
 In Scotland, all our singers have a stave or two for blaz- 
 ing fires and stout potations: — to get indoors out of the 
 wind and to swallow something hot to the stomach, 
 are benefits so easily appreciated where they dwelt ! 
 
 340 
 
WINTER AND NEW YEAR 
 
 And this is not only so in country districts where the 
 shepherd must wade in the snow all day after his flock, 
 but in Edinburgh itself, and nowhere more apparently 
 stated than in the works of our Edinburgh poet, Fer- 
 gusson. He was a delicate youth, I take it, and will- 
 ingly slunk from the robustious winter to an inn fire- 
 side. Love was absent from his life, or only present, 
 if you prefer, in such a form that even the least serious 
 of Burns's amourettes was ennobling by comparison; 
 and so there is nothing to temper the sentiment of in- 
 door revelry which pervades the poor boy's verses. Al- 
 though it is characteristic of his native town, and the 
 manners of its youth to the present day, this spirit has 
 perhaps done something to restrict his popularity. He 
 recalls a supper-party pleasantry with something akin 
 to tenderness ; and sounds the praises of the act of drink- 
 ing as if it were virtuous, or at least witty, in itself. The 
 kindly jar, the warm atmosphere of tavern parlours, and 
 the revelry of lawyers' clerks, do not offer by themselves 
 the materials of a rich existence. It was not choice, so 
 much as an external fate, that kept Fergusson in this 
 round of sordid pleasures. A Scot of poetic temperament, 
 and without religious exaltation, drops as if by nature 
 into the public-house. The picture may not be pleasing ; 
 but what else is a man to do in this dog's weather ? 
 
 To none but those who have themselves suffered the 
 thing in the body, can the gloom and depression of our 
 Edinburgh winter be brought home. For some consti- 
 tutions there is something almost physically disgusting 
 in the bleak ugliness of easterly weather ; the wind 
 wearies, the sickly sky depresses them ; and they turn 
 back from their walk to avoid the aspect of the unre- 
 
 341 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 fulgent sun going down among perturbed and pallid 
 mists. The days are so short that a man does much of 
 his business, and certainly all his pleasure, by the hag- 
 gard glare of gas lamps. The roads are as heavy as a 
 fallow. People go by, so drenched and draggle-tailed 
 that I have often wondered how they found the heart to 
 undress. And meantime the wind whistles through the 
 town as if it were an open meadow ; and if you lie awake 
 all night, you hear it shrieking and raving overhead with 
 a noise of shipwrecks and of falling houses. In a word, 
 life is so unsightly that there are times when the heart 
 turns sick in a man's inside ; and the look of a tavern, or the 
 thought of the warm, fire-lit study, is like the touch of 
 land to one who has been long struggling with the seas. 
 As the weather hardens towards frost, the world be- 
 gins to improve for Edinburgh people. We enjoy superb, 
 sub-arctic sunsets, with the profile of the city stamped 
 in indigo upon a sky of luminous green. The wind may 
 still be cold, but there is a briskness in the air that stirs 
 good blood. People do not all look equally sour and 
 downcast. They fall into two divisions : one, the knight 
 of the blue facQ and hollow paunch, whom Winter has 
 gotten by the vitals ; the other well lined with New- 
 year's fare, conscious of the touch of cold on his peri- 
 phery, but stepping through it by the glow of his in- 
 ternal fires. Such an one 1 remember, triply cased in 
 grease, whom no extremity of temperature could van- 
 quish. * ' Well, " would be his jovial salutation, * ' here's 
 a sneezer ! " And the look of these warm fellows is tonic, 
 and upholds their drooping fellow-townsmen. There 
 is yet another class who do not depend on corporal ad- 
 vantages, but support the winter in virtue of a brave and 
 
 342 
 
WINTER AND NEW YEAR 
 
 merry heart. One shivering evening, cold enough for 
 frost but with too high a wind, and a little past sun- 
 down, when the lamps were beginning to enlarge their 
 circles in the growing dusk, a brace of barefoot lassies 
 were seen coming eastward in the teeth of the wind. 
 If the one was as much as nine, the other was certainly 
 not more than seven. They were miserably clad ; and 
 the pavement was so cold, you would have thought no 
 one could lay a naked foot on it unflinching. Yet they 
 came along waltzing, if you please, while the elder sang 
 a tune to give them music. The person who saw this, 
 and whose heart was full of bitterness at the moment, 
 pocketed a reproof which has been of use to him ever 
 since, and which he now hands on, with his good 
 wishes, to the reader. 
 
 At length, Edinburgh, with her satellite hills and all 
 the sloping country, are sheeted up in white. If it has 
 happened in the dark hours, nurses pluck their children 
 out of bed and run with them to some commanding 
 window, whence they may see the change that has 
 been worked upon earth's face. "A' the hills are cov- 
 ered wi' snaw," they sing, "and Winter's noo come 
 fairly ! " And the children, marvelling at the silence 
 and the white landscape, find a spell appropriate to the 
 season in the words. The reverberation of the snow 
 increases the pale daylight, and brings all objects nearer 
 the eye. The Pentlands are smooth and glittering, with 
 here and there the black ribbon of a dry-stone dyke, and 
 here and there, if there be wind, a cloud of blowing 
 snow upon a shoulder. The Firth seems a leaden creek, 
 that a man might almost jump across, between well- 
 powdered Lothian and well-powdered Fife. And the 
 
 343 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 effect is not, as in other cities, a thing of half a day ; the 
 streets are soon trodden black, but the country keeps 
 its virgin white ; and you have only to lift your eyes and 
 look over miles of country snow. An indescribable 
 cheerfulness breathes about the city ; and the well-fed 
 heart sits lightly and beats gaily in the bosom. It is 
 New-year's weather. 
 
 New-year's Day, the great national festival, is a time 
 of family expansions and of deep carousal. Sometimes, 
 by a sore stroke of fate for this Calvinistic people, the 
 year's anniversary falls upon a Sunday, when the public- 
 houses are inexorably closed, when singing and even 
 whistling is banished from our homes and highways, 
 and the oldest toper feels called upon to go to church. 
 Thus pulled about, as if between two loyalties, the 
 Scotch have to decide many nice cases of conscience, 
 and ride the marches narrowly between the weekly and 
 the annual observance. A party of convivial musicians, 
 next door to a friend of mine, hung suspended in this 
 manner on the brink of their diversions. From ten 
 o'clock on Sunday night, my friend heard them tuning 
 their instruments ; and as the hour of liberty drew near, 
 each must have had his music open, his bow in readi- 
 ness across the fiddle, his foot already raised to mark 
 the time, and his nerves braced for execution ; for hardly 
 had the twelfth stroke sounded from the earliest steeple, 
 before they had launched forth into a secular bravura. 
 
 Currant-loaf is now popular eating in all households. 
 For weeks before the great morning, confectioners dis- 
 play stacks of Scotch bun — a dense, black substance, 
 inimical to life — and full moons of shortbread adorned 
 with mottoes of peel or sugar-plum, in honour of the 
 
 344 
 
WINTER AND NEW YEAR 
 
 season and the family affections. " Frae Auld Reekie," 
 '' A guid New Year to ye a'," ''For the Auld Folk at 
 Hame," are among the most favoured of these devices. 
 Can you not see the carrier, after half-a-day's journey on 
 pinching hill-roads, draw up before a cottage in Teviot- 
 dale, or perhaps in Manor Glen among the rowans, and 
 the old people receiving the parcel with moist eyes and 
 a prayer for Jock or Jean in the city ? For at this season, 
 on the threshold of another year of calamity and stub- 
 born conflict, men feel a need to draw closer the links 
 that unite them ; they reckon the number of their friends, 
 like allies before a war ; and the prayers grow longer in 
 the morning as the absent are recommended by name 
 into God's keeping. 
 
 On the day itself, the shops are all shut as on a Sunday ; 
 only taverns, toyshops, and other holiday magazines, 
 keep open doors. Every one looks for his handsel. 
 The postmen and the lamplighters have left, at every 
 house in their districts, a copy of vernacular verses, ask- 
 ing and thanking in a breath ; and it is characteristic of 
 Scotland that these verses may have sometimes a touch 
 of reality in detail or sentiment and a measure of strength 
 in the handling. All over the town, you may see com- 
 forter'd schoolboys hasting to squander their half- 
 crowns. There are an infinity of visits to be paid ; all 
 the world is in the street, except the daintier classes; 
 the sacramental greeting is heard upon all sides ; Auld 
 Lang Syne is much in people's mouths; and whisky and 
 shortbread are staple articles of consumption. From an 
 early hour a stranger will be impressed by the number 
 of drunken men; and by afternoon drunkenness has 
 spread to the women. With some classes of society, 
 
 345 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 it is as much a matter of duty to drink hard on New- 
 year's Day as to go to church on Sunday. Some have 
 been saving their wages for perhaps a month to do the 
 season honour. Many carry a whisky-bottle in their 
 pocket, which they will press with embarrassing effu- 
 sion on a perfect stranger. It is inexpedient to risk 
 one's body in a cab, or not, at least, until after a pro- 
 longed study of the driver. The streets, which are 
 thronged from end to end, become a place for delicate 
 pilotage. Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others 
 noisy and quarrelsome, the votaries of the New-year go 
 meandering in and out and cannoning one against an- 
 other; and now and again, one falls and lies as he has 
 fallen. Before night, so many have gone to bed or the 
 police office, that the streets seem almost clearer. And 
 asguisards dind first-footers are now not much seen ex- 
 cept in country places, when once the New Year has 
 been rung in and proclaimed at the Tron railings, the 
 festivities begin to fmd their way indoors and something 
 like quiet returns upon the town. But think, in these 
 piled lands, of all the senseless snorers, all the broken 
 heads and empty pockets ! 
 
 Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic 
 snowballing; and one riot obtained the epic honours of 
 military intervention. But the great generation, I am 
 afraid, is at an end ; and even during my own college 
 days, the spirit appreciably declined. Skating and slid- 
 ing, on the other hand, are honoured more and more; 
 and curling, being a creature of the national genius, is 
 little likely to be disregarded. The patriotism that leads 
 a man to eat Scotch bun will scarce desert him at the 
 curling-pond. Edinburgh, with its long, steep pave- 
 
 346 
 
WINTER AND NEW YEAR 
 
 ments, is the proper home of sliders; many a happy 
 urchin can slide the whole way to school ; and the pro- 
 fession of errand boy is transformed into a holiday amuse- 
 ment. As for skating, there is scarce any city so hand- 
 somely provided. Duddingstone Loch lies under the 
 abrupt southern side of Arthur's Seat; in summer, a 
 shield of blue, with swans sailing from the reeds; in 
 winter, a field of ringing ice. The village church sits 
 above it on a green promontory ; and the village smoke 
 rises from among goodly trees. At the church gates, is 
 the historical ybz^^, a place of penance for the neck of de- 
 tected sinners, and the historical louping-on stane, from 
 which Dutch-built lairds and farmers climbed into the 
 saddle. Here Prince Charlie slept before the battle of 
 Prestonpans ; and here Deacon Brodie, or one of his 
 gang, stole a plough coulter before the burglary in 
 Chessel's Court. On the opposite side of the loch, the 
 ground rises to Craigmillar Castle, a place friendly to 
 Stuart Mariolaters. It is worth a climb, even in sum- 
 mer, to look down upon the loch from Arthur's Seat; 
 but it is tenfold more so on a day of skating. The sur- 
 face is thick with people moving easily and swiftly and 
 leaning over at a thousand graceful inclinations; the 
 crowd opens and closes, and keeps moving through it- 
 self like water; and the ice rings to half a mile away, 
 with the flying steel. As night draws on, the single 
 figures melt into the dusk, until only an obscure stir and 
 coming and going of black clusters, is visible upon the 
 loch. A little longer, and the first torch is kindled and 
 begins to flit rapidly across the ice in a ring of yellow 
 reflection, and this is followed by another and another, 
 until the whole field is full of skimming lights. 
 
 347 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 
 
 On three sides of Edinburgh, the country slopes down- 
 ward from the city, here to the sea, there to the fat farms 
 of Haddington, there to the mineral fields of Linlithgow. 
 On the south alone, it keeps rising until it not only out- 
 tops the Castle but looks down on Arthur's Seat. The 
 character of the neighbourhood is pretty strongly marked 
 by a scarcity of hedges ; by many stone walls of varying 
 heights; by a fair amount of timber, some of it well 
 grown, but apt to be of a bushy, northern profile and 
 poor in foliage ; by here and there a little river, Esk or 
 Leith or Almond, busily journeying in the bottom of its 
 glen ; and from almost every point, by a peep of the sea 
 or the hills. There is no lack of variety, and yet most 
 of the elements are common to all parts ; and the south- 
 ern district is alone distinguished by considerable sum- 
 mits and a wide view. 
 
 From Boroughmuirhead, where the Scottish army en- 
 camped before Flodden, the road descends a long hill, 
 at the bottom of which and just as it is preparing to 
 mount upon the other side, it passes a toll-bar and issues 
 at once into the open country. Even as I write these 
 words, they are being antiquated in the progress of 
 events, and the chisels are tinkling on a new row of 
 
 348 
 
TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 
 
 houses. The builders have at length adventured beyond 
 the toll which held them in respect so long, and proceed 
 to career in these fresh pastures like a herd of colts turned 
 loose. As Lord Beaconsfield proposed to hang an ar- 
 chitect by way of stimulation, a man, looking on these 
 doomed meads, imagines a similar example to deter the 
 builders ; for it seems as if it must come to an open fight 
 at last to preserve a corner of green country unbedevilled. 
 And here, appropriately enough, there stood in old days 
 a crow-haunted gibbet, with two bodies hanged in 
 chains. 1 used to be shown, when a child, a flat stone 
 in the roadway to which the gibbet had been fixed. 
 People of a willing fancy were persuaded, and sought 
 to persuade others, that this stone was never dry. And 
 no wonder, they would add, for the two men had only 
 stolen fourpence between them. 
 
 For about two miles the road climbs upwards, a long 
 hot walk in summer time. You reach the summit at a 
 place where four ways meet, beside the toll of Fairmile- 
 head. The spot is breezy and agreeable both in name 
 and aspect. The hills are close by across a valley : Kirk 
 Yetton, with its long, upright scars visible as far as Fife, 
 and Allermuir the tallest on this side: with wood and 
 tilled field running high upon their borders, and haunches 
 all moulded into innumerable glens and shelvings and 
 variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly 
 and sweetly off the hills, pure from the elevation and 
 rustically scented by the upland plants ; and even at the 
 toll, you may hear the curlew calling on its mate. At 
 certain seasons, when the gulls desert their surfy fore- 
 lands, the birds of sea and mountain hunt and scream 
 together in the same field at Fairmilehead. The winged, 
 
 349 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 wild things intermix their wheelings, the seabirds skim 
 the tree tops and fish among the furrows of the plough. 
 These little craft of air are at home in all the world, so 
 long as they cruise in their own element; and like sai- 
 lors, ask but food and water from the shores they coast. 
 Below, over a stream, the road passes Bow Bridge, 
 now a dairy-farm, but once a distillery of whisky. It 
 chanced, some time in the past century, that the dis- 
 tiller was on terms of good-fellowship with the visiting 
 officer of excise. The latter was of an easy, friendly 
 disposition and a master of convivial arts. Now and 
 again, he had to walk out of Edinburgh to measure the 
 distiller's stock ; and although it was agreeable to find his 
 business lead him in a friend's direction, it was unfor- 
 tunate that the friend should be a loser by his visits. 
 Accordingly, when he got about the level of Fairmile- 
 head, the gauger would take his flute, without which he 
 never travelled, from his pocket, fit it together, and set 
 manfully to playing, as if for his own delectation and 
 inspired by the beauty of the scene. His favourite air, 
 it seems, was "Over the hills and far away." At the 
 first note, the distiller pricked his ears. A flute at Fair- 
 milehead ? and playing "Over the hills and far away ? '* 
 This must be his friendly enemy, the gauger. Instantly, 
 horses were harnessed, and sundry barrels of whisky 
 were got upon a cart, driven at a gallop round Hill End, 
 and buried in the mossy glen behind Kirk Yetton. In 
 the same breath, you may be sure, a fat fowl was put 
 to the fire, and the whitest napery prepared for the back 
 parlour. A little after, the gauger, having had his fill 
 of music for the moment, came strolling down with the 
 most innocent air imaginable, and found the good peo- 
 
 350 
 
TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 
 
 pie at Bow Bridge taken entirely unawares by his ar- 
 rival, but none the less glad to see him. The distiller's 
 liquor and the ganger's flute would combine to speed 
 the moments of digestion ; and when both were some- 
 what mellow, they would wind up the evening with 
 "Over the hills and far away " to an accompaniment of 
 knowing glances. And at least, there is a smuggling 
 story, with original and half-idyllic features. 
 
 A little further, the road to the right passes an upright 
 stone in a field. The country people call it General 
 Kay's monument. According to them, an officer of that 
 name had perished there in battle at some indistinct 
 period before the beginning of history. The date is re- 
 assuring; for I think cautious writers are silent on the 
 General's exploits. But the stone is connected with one 
 of those remarkable tenures of land which linger on into 
 the modern world from Feudalism. Whenever the reign- 
 ing sovereign passes by, a certain landed proprietor is 
 held bound to climb On to the top, trumpet in hand, and 
 sound a flourish according to the measure of his know- 
 ledge in that art. Happily for a respectable family, 
 crowned heads have no great business in the Pentland 
 Hills. But the story lends a character of comicality to 
 the stone ; and the passer-by will sometimes chuckle to 
 himself 
 
 The district is dear to the superstitious. Hard by, at 
 the back-gate of Comiston, a belated carter beheld a lady 
 in white, ''with the most beautiful, clear shoes upon 
 her feet," who looked upon him in a very ghastly man- 
 ner and then vanished; and just in front is the Hunters' 
 Tryst, once a roadside inn, and not so long ago haunted 
 by the devil in person. Satan led the inhabitants a piti- 
 
 351 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 ful existence. He shook the four corners of the building 
 with lamentable outcries, beat at the doors and win- 
 dows, overthrew crockery in the dead hours of the 
 morning, and danced unholy dances on the roof. Every 
 kind of spiritual disinfectant was put in requisition ; 
 chosen ministers were summoned out of Edinburgh 
 and prayed by the hour; pious neighbours sat up all 
 night making a noise of psalmody; but Satan minded 
 them no more than the wind about the hill-tops ; and it 
 was only after years of persecution, that he left the 
 Hunters' Tryst in peace to occupy himself with the re- 
 mainder of mankind. What with General Kay, and the 
 white lady, and this singular visitation, the neighbour- 
 hood offers great facilities to the makers of sun-myths; 
 and without exactly casting in one's lot with that dis- 
 enchanting school of writers, one cannot help hearing a 
 good deal of the winter wind in the last story. " That 
 nicht," says Burns, in one of his happiest moments, — 
 
 That nicht a child might understand 
 The deil had btisiness on his hand." 
 
 And if people sit up all night in lone places on the hills, 
 with Bibles and tremulous psalms^ they will be apt to 
 hear some of the most fiendish noises in the world: the 
 wind will beat on doors and dance upon roofs for them, 
 and make the hills howl around their cottage with a 
 clamour like the judgment-day. 
 
 The road goes down through another valley, and then 
 finally begins to scale the main slope of the Pentlands. A 
 bouquet of old trees stands round a white farmhouse ; 
 and from a neighbouring dell, you can see smoke rising 
 
 352 
 
TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 
 
 and leaves ruffling in the breeze. Straight above, the 
 hills climb a thousand feet into the air. The neighbour- 
 hood, about the time of lambs, is clamorous with the 
 bleating of flocks ; and you will be awakened, in the 
 grey of early summer mornings, by the barking of a dog 
 or the voice of a shepherd shouting to the echoes. This, 
 with the hamlet lying behind unseen, is Swanston. 
 
 The place in the dell is immediately connected with 
 the city. Long ago, this sheltered field was purchased 
 by the Edinburgh magistrates for the sake of the springs 
 that rise or gather there. After they had built their 
 water-house and laid their pipes, it occurred to them 
 that the place was suitable for junketing. Once enter- 
 tained, with jovial magistrates and public funds, the idea 
 led speedily to accomplishment; and Edinburgh could 
 soon boast of a municipal Pleasure House. The dell was 
 turned into a garden; and on the knoll that shelters it 
 from the plain and the sea winds, they built a cottage 
 looking to the hills. They brought crockets and gar- 
 goyles from old St. Giles's which they were then restor- 
 ing, and disposed them on the gables and over the door 
 and about the garden ; and the quarry which had sup- 
 plied them with building material, they draped with 
 clematis and carpeted with beds of roses. So much for 
 the pleasure of the eye ; for creature comfort, they made 
 a capacious cellar in the hillside and fitted it with bins 
 of the hewn stone. In process of time, the trees grew 
 higher and gave shade to the cottage, and the evergreens 
 sprang up and turned the dell into a thicket. There, 
 purple magistrates relaxed themselves from the pursuit of 
 municipal ambition ; cocked hats paraded soberly about 
 the garden and in and out among the hollies; authori- 
 
 353 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 tative canes drew ciphering upon the path ; and at night, 
 from high upon the hills, a shepherd saw lighted win- 
 dows through the foliage and heard the voice of city 
 dignitaries raised in song. 
 
 The farm is older. It was first a grange of Whitekirk 
 Abbey, tilled and inhabited by rosy friars. Thence, after 
 the Reformation, it passed into the hands of a true-blue 
 Protestant family. During the Covenanting troubles, 
 when a night conventicle was held upon the Pentlands, 
 the farm doors stood hospitably open till the morning; 
 the dresser was laden with cheese and bannocks, milk 
 and brandy; and the worshippers kept slipping down 
 from the hill between two exercises, as couples visit the 
 supper-room between two dances of a modern ball. In 
 the Forty-five, some foraging Highlanders from Prince 
 Charlie's army fell upon Swanston in the dawn. The 
 great-grandfather of the late farmer was then a little 
 child; him they awakened by plucking the blankets 
 from his bed, and he remembered, when he was an old 
 man, their truculent looks and uncouth speech. The 
 churn stood full of cream in the dairy, and with this 
 they made their brose in high delight. ''It was braw 
 brose," said one of them. At last, they made off, laden 
 like camels with their booty; and Swanston Farm has 
 lain out of the way of history from that time forward. 
 1 do not know what may be yet in store for it. On 
 dark days, when the mist runs low upon the hill, the 
 house has a gloomy air as if suitable for private tragedy. 
 But in hot July, you can fancy nothing more perfect 
 than the garden, laid out in alleys and arbours and 
 bright, old-fashioned flower-plots, and ending in a 
 miniature ravine, all trellis-work and moss and tinkling 
 
 354 
 
TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 
 
 waterfall, and housed from the sun under fathoms of 
 broad foliage. 
 
 The hamlet behind is one of the least considerable of 
 hamlets, and consists of a few cottages on a green be- 
 side a burn. Some of them (a strange thing in Scot- 
 land) are models of internal neatness ; the beds adorned 
 with patchwork, the shelves arrayed with willow- 
 pattern plates, the floors and tables bright with scrub- 
 bing or pipeclay, and the very kettle polished like silver. 
 It is the sign of a contented old age in country places, 
 where there is little matter for gossip and no street 
 sights. Housework becomes an art; and at evening, 
 when the cottage interior shines and twinkles in the 
 glow of the fire, the housewife folds her hands and con- 
 templates her finished picture; the snow and the wind 
 may do their worst, she has made herself a pleasant 
 corner in the world. The city might be a thousand 
 miles away: and yet it was from close by that Mr. 
 Bough painted the distant view of Edinburgh which has 
 been engraved for this collection : and you have only to 
 look at the cut, to see how near it is at hand. But hills 
 and hill people are not easily sophisticated; and if you 
 walk out here on a summer Sunday, it is as like as not 
 the shepherd may set his dogs upon you. But keep an 
 unmoved countenance; they look formidable at the 
 charge, but their hearts are in the right place ; and they 
 will only bark and sprawl about you on the grass, un- 
 mindful of their master's excitations. 
 
 Kirk Yetton forms the north-eastern angle of the 
 range; thence, the Pentlands trend off to south and 
 west. From the summit you look over a great expanse 
 of champaign sloping to the sea and behold a large vari- 
 
 355 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 ety of distant hills. There are the hills of Fife, the hills 
 of Peebles, the Lammermoors and the Ochils, more or 
 less mountainous in outline, more or less blue with dis- 
 tance. Of the Pentlands themselves, you see a field of 
 wild heathery peaks with a pond gleaming in the midst; 
 and to that side the view is as desolate as if you were 
 looking into Galloway or Applecross. To turn to the 
 other, is like a piece of travel. Far out in the lowlands 
 Edinburgh shows herself, making a great smoke on clear 
 days and spreading her suburbs about her for miles ; the 
 Castle rises darkly in the midst; and close by, Arthur's 
 Seat makes a bold figure in the landscape. All around, 
 cultivated fields, and woods, and smoking villages, and 
 white country roads, diversify the uneven surface of the 
 land. Trains crawl slowly abroad upon the railway 
 lines ; little ships are tacking in the Firth ; the shadow 
 of a mountainous cloud, as large as a parish, travels be- 
 fore the wind; the wind itself ruffles the wood and 
 standing corn, and sends pulses of varying colour across 
 the landscape. So you sit, like Jupiter upon Olympus, 
 and look down from afar upon men's life. The city is 
 as silent as a city of the dead : from all its humming 
 thoroughfares, not a voice, not a footfall, reaches you 
 upon the hill. The sea surf, the cries of ploughmen, 
 the streams and the mill-wheels, the birds and the wind, 
 keep up an animated concert through the plain; from 
 farm to farm, dogs and crowing cocks contend together 
 in defiance ; and yet from this Olympian station, except 
 for the whispering rumour of a train, the world has fallen 
 into a dead silence and the business of town and country 
 grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the 
 bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass, seem 
 
TO THE PENTLAND HILLS 
 
 not SO much to interrupt, as to accompany, the stillness ; 
 but to the spiritual ear, the whole scene makes a music 
 at once human and rural, and discourses pleasant reflec- 
 tions on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable city, 
 ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and the 
 straight highways, tell visibly of man's active and com- 
 fortable ways; and you may be never so laggard and 
 never so unimpressionable, but there is something in the 
 view that spirits up your blood and puts you in the vein 
 for cheerful labour. 
 
 Immediately below is Fairmilehead, a spot of roof and 
 a smoking chimney, where two roads, no thicker than 
 packthread, intersect beside a hanging wood. If you 
 are fanciful, you will be reminded of the gauger in the 
 story. And the thought of this old exciseman, who 
 once lipped and fingered on his pipe and uttered clear 
 notes from it in the mountain air, and the words of the 
 song he affected, carry your mind "Over the hills and 
 far away " to distant countries ; and you have a vision 
 of Edinburgh not, as you see her, in the midst of a little 
 neighbourhood, but as a boss upon the round world 
 with all Europe and the deep sea for her surroundings. 
 For every place is a centre to the earth, whence high- 
 ways radiate or ships set sail for foreign ports ; the limit 
 of a parish is not more imaginary than the frontier of an 
 empire ; and as a man sitting at home in his cabinet and 
 swiftly writing books, so a city sends abroad an influ- 
 ence and a portrait of herself. There is no Edinburgh 
 emigrant, far or near, from China to Peru, but he or she 
 carries some lively pictures of the mind, some sunset 
 behind the Castle cliffs, some snow scene, some maze 
 of city lamps, indelible in the memory and delightful 
 
 357 
 
PICTURESQUE NOTES ON EDINBURGH 
 
 to Study in the intervals of toil. For any such, if this 
 book fall in their way, here are a few more home pic- 
 tures. It would be pleasant, if they should recognise 
 a house where they had dwelt, or a walk that they had 
 taken. 
 
 358 
 
V. IZ-