Opening
Transcriber’s Notes
Text printed in italics has been transcribed between underscores, text printed in Fraktur has been transcribed between ~tildes~. Small capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.
THE RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND.
BY WILLIAM HOWITT, AUTHOR OF THE “BOOK OF THE SEASONS,” ETC.
SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED AND REVISED. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD BY BEWICK AND S. WILLIAMS.
LONDON: LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS. 1840.
LONDON: PRINTED BY MANNING AND MASON, IVY-LANE, ST. PAUL’S.
Preparing for Publication, in One Volume, 8vo.
THE BALLAD POETRY OF MRS. HOWITT.
To be beautifully embellished with Wood Engravings from original Designs.
TO THOMAS AND PHEBE HOWITT, OF HEANOR, IN THE COUNTY OF DERBY.
MY DEAR PARENTS,
There are no living persons to whom this Volume can be with so much propriety inscribed as to you. To you my heart desires to present some visible token of that affection and gratitude which animate it in reviewing all the good it has derived from you. It was to your inculcations, but far more to the spirit of your daily life,--to the purity, integrity, independent feeling, and simple religion,--in fact, to the pervading and perpetual atmosphere of your house, that I owe every thing which has directed me onward in life: scorning whatever is mean; aspiring after whatever is generous and noble; loving the poor and the weak, and fearless of the strong; in a word, every thing which has not only prolonged life but blessed and sanctified it. Following your counsels and example, I have striven not so much for wealth as for an independent spirit and a pure conscience. Do I not owe you much for these? But besides this, it was under your roof that I passed a childhood and youth the happiest that ever were passed; it was there that I imbibed that love of nature, which must live though it cannot die with me. But beyond this, the present volume is descriptive of that rural life, to which your ancestors for many generations, and yourselves to an honourable old age, have been invariably and deeply attached. To you, therefore, for these and a thousand other kindred reasons,
THE PRESENT VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, BY YOUR AFFECTIONATE SON, THE AUTHOR.
O, dear Britain! O my mother isle! Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy To me, a son, a brother, and a friend, A husband, and a father! who revere All bonds of natural love, and find them all Within the limits of thy rocky shores. O native Britain! O my mother isle! How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy To me, who from thy lakes and mountain rills, Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas, Have drank in all my intellectual life, All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts, All adoration of the God in nature, All lovely and all honourable things, Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel The joys and greatness of its future being. There lives not form nor feeling in my soul Unborrowed from my country. O divine And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole And most magnificent temple, in the which I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs, Loving the God who made me.
Coleridge.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The kind and most cordial greeting which this work has received from the public, and by which a very large impression has been speedily exhausted, demands a prompt and grateful acknowledgement. After all, the highest gratification which an author can derive from his writings, next to the persuasion that he has effected some good to his fellow-creatures, is felt in the generous echo of his own sentiments, which reaches him from the amiable and intelligent of his countrymen and countrywomen, on all sides and of every class, and in the nearer sympathy and communication into which he is brought with such minds. With respect to the opinions of the Press, there is one fact connected with this work which I state with peculiar gratification, because it does honour to human nature,--and that is, that the very warmest approbation has been, in the greater number of instances, bestowed upon it by those critics to whom the author is most decidedly opposed in political opinion. I cannot, either, refrain from observing, that though I did hope to find a quick response in the hearts of Englishmen on a subject in which both the author and his countrymen are alike so deeply interested, I could not anticipate the delight which Americans have manifested in it; and I must take this opportunity, as it is the only one afforded me, to express my sense of the interesting letter of “An American Lady--a stranger in this country,” with a copy of Bryant’s Poems.
Many evidences of the interest felt in this work by my English readers, known and unknown, and of the benefit thence derived to the work by most valuable corrections and novel information, will become apparent in the progress of perusal.
I have only to add, chiefly from the preface to the former edition, that my object in this volume has been to present to the reader a view of the Rural Life of England at the present period, as seen in all classes and all parts of the country. For this purpose I have not merely depended upon my acquaintance with rural life, which has been that of a great portion of my own life from boyhood, but I have literally travelled, and a great deal of it on foot, from the Land’s-End to the Tweed, penetrating into the retirements, and witnessing the domestic life of the country in primitive seclusions and under rustic roofs. If the mountains and valleys, the fair plains and sea-coasts, the halls and farm-houses, the granges, and cottages of shepherds, miners, peasants, or fishermen, be visited in this volume with a tenth part of the enjoyment with which I have visited them in their reality, it must be a delightful book indeed; for no moments of my existence have been more deliciously spent, than those in which I have wandered from spot to spot of this happy and beautiful island, surveying its ancient monuments, and its present living men and manners.
The embellishments of this volume are both designed and engraved by Samuel Williams: the only exceptions being, that I am indebted to our accomplished friend the late Miss Twamley of Birmingham, now Mrs. Meredith, of Australia, for the sketch on the title-page; for those of the Charcoal-burner’s Hut, and Morgan Lewis’s last View of the Fairies, to our excellent young friend Miss Tregellis, of Neath Abbey; that of Purkiss’s Hut, New Forest, to Mrs. Southey; and to the amiable family of the late FATHER OF MODERN WOOD-ENGRAVING--the unrivalled THOMAS BEWICK, for the Otter-Hunt, at page 302, and the Street-Scene at page 324 of this work, left at his death by that eminent artist unpublished. Both pieces will be found characteristic of the hand from which they come; and the Street-Scene, in particular, is full of those happy satirical sallies which give such piquancy to many of his productions.
W. H.
_West-end Cottage, Esher, Surrey, April 16th, 1840._
LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS.
Page 1. Vignette: Summer-house, near Claremont Title 2. Old English Hall 1 3. Grouse-Shooting in the Highlands 29 4. Oxen Ploughing 58 5. A Garden Scene 67 6. The Solitary House 139 7. Cattle in the Shade 164 8. Sir Roger de Coverley and the Gipsies 165 9. Ladies personating Gipsies 195 10. Daleswomen going to a Shout 221 11. Old Dalesman and Traveller 248 12. Figures on a Screen in Annesley Hall 286 13. The Otter Hunt, by Bewick 302 14. Classical Rural Scenes 305 15. Scene in a Town Street, by Bewick 324 16. Wild Horses in New Forest 366 17. Purkiss’s Cottage, New Forest 376 18. Charcoal-burners’ Hut 379 19. Wild English Cattle in Chillingham Park 395 20. Woman driving Geese 431 21. Procession of Village Maidens at Whitsuntide 444 22. Morgan Lewis shewing the last haunt of the Fairies 479 23. The Village Inn 480 24. A Sea Scene 502 25. A Donkey Race 515 26. Bird-catching 573 27. Tickling Trout 615
I. Page
Pre-eminence of England as a Place of Country Residence -- Its Political and Moral Position -- the Conveniences conferred by the Perfection of the Arts on Social Life -- Its Literature, Spirit of Freedom, Religious Feeling, and Philanthropic Institutions -- the Delightfulness of its Country Residences; with its Parks, Lawns, Woods, Gardens, etc. -- the Variety of Scenery in a small compass -- Advantages of its Climate, notwithstanding all just cause of complaint -- Its Soil sanctified by Noble Deeds, and Intellectual Renown -- Real Superiority of England as a Place of Residence; shewn by its Effects on Foreigners -- Willis’s Description of its Effect on him 1
Chapter II
Enviable Position of the English Country Gentleman as regards all the Pleasures and Advantages of Life -- every Art and Energy exerted in his Favour -- by them his House surrounded with Delights -- the News and the Luxuries of the World brought to his Table -- Books, Music, Paintings at his command -- Farming, Gardening, Planting, Field-sports all within his grasp -- Scenes which offer themselves to extend his Pleasures -- the Service of his Country open to him -- Facilities for Travel -- Pursuits and Pleasures afforded by Country Life to Ladies 10
Chapter III
Life of the Gentry in the Country -- Effect of the Annual Visit of the Aristocracy to Town -- Pleasure of re-assembling at their Country Houses -- Impressions of our Country Houses and Country Life on Foreigners -- the German Prince’s Description of the Dairy at Woburn Abbey -- Willis’s Description of the Mode of Life at Gordon Castle -- The peculiar Charms of this kind of Life 18
Chapter IV
Routine of Country Sports -- Hunting, Shooting, Coursing, pursued in a different Style to that of our Ancestors -- each its own Season, Apparatus, and Appointments -- English Sportsmen communicate their Knowledge through the Press -- the Extinction of Falconry -- the Perfection of Fox-hunting in this Country -- Manner in which some Old Sportsmen amuse themselves during the Summer -- Favour into which Angling has risen of late years -- our Tourist-Anglers -- Grouse-Shooting: its exciting Nature -- Symptoms of the approach of 12th of August in England, the same as exhibited in Scotland -- Sportsmen on their way to the Highlands by the Packet -- the Contrast between them and Pedestrianizing Students -- Tom Oakleigh’s Description of the Commencement of Grouse-Shooting on the Moors -- other Features of it, both there and in Scotland -- Return from Partridge-Shooting -- a Word with the Too-Sensitive 29
Chapter V
Scientific Farming: Its State, Implements, and Admirers, Ancient and Modern -- Agricultural Pursuits delighted in by the greatest Men of all Ages -- Attachment of the Roman Nobility to them -- Cicero’s enthusiastic Encomiums on Country Affairs -- Farming now practised as a Science -- Vast Improvements during the last Century -- Multiplicity of its Modern Implements -- Benefits derived from Chemistry and Mechanics -- Progressive Improvements in Tillage, Breed of Cattle, Wool, Machinery, etc. by Tull, Menzies, Bakewell, Lord Somerville, Coke, Duke of Bedford, the Culleys, etc. -- by Periodicals and Associations -- Men to whom Agricultural Interests are peculiarly Indebted -- Characters of the Duke of Buccleugh and Lord Somerville, by Sir Walter Scott -- Anecdote of the Duke of Portland 49
Chapter VI
Planting: Its Pleasures -- Vast Effect of the Writings of Evelyn in England, and Dr. Johnson in Scotland -- Evidences of the Growth of the Planting Spirit in all Parts of the Kingdom -- Wordsworth’s Complaint of the Larch in the Lake Country -- Larch Plantations of the Duke of Athol -- His calculated Profits -- Monteith of Stirling’s Calculations of the Profits of 100 Acres of Oak Planting in seventy years -- Anecdote of an extensive Planter 59
Chapter VII
Gardens -- Pleasures of them -- Retrospective View of English Gardens -- Influence of our Imaginative Writers on their Character -- Writers before the Reign of Elizabeth -- the Roman Style of Gardens under the name of Italian, French and Dutch Gardens, prevalent till the 18th Century, overturned by the Writings of Addison, Pope, and Walpole, and by the Works of Bridgman, Kent, and Brown -- Gardens of Hampton Court, Nonsuch, Theobalds, etc., as described by Hentzner in 1598 -- the Old Style of Gardens appropriate to the Old Houses and the Character of the Times -- Advantages of the Prevalence of different Tastes at different Periods pointed out -- Laborious Lives and Travels of our earlier Gardeners and Botanists -- our Old Gardens interesting objects in different parts of the Kingdom -- their Classical Antiquity pleaded in their favour 67
Chapter VIII
Country Excitements -- Diminution of the Enjoyment of Country Life by Petty Rivalries and Jealousies; and by the Neglect of Walking -- Racing a great cause of excitement to the Gentry in the Country -- the Present State of the Turf, as shewn by Nimrod -- Variety afforded by Race and Country Balls, Musical Festivals, etc. -- Confirmation -- Parade of Assize Time -- the Sheriff’s Pageant 77
Chapter I
The English Farmer: his Character, and Mode of Life -- Picture of the approach to a Market-Town on a Market-Day -- Farmers going in and coming out -- Contrast between the Space occupied by the Concerns of the Farmer and the City Trader -- Enviable Aspect of the Farmer’s Abode -- his Life and Soul in his Profession -- his Conversation -- a great Charm in Nature working with him -- Delight which Poets and Great Men have found in Farming -- the Intellectual Grade of the Farmer -- Pressing Hospitalities of Farmers and their Wives -- a Sketch of one Day’s Feasting at a Farm-House -- Dinner, and its chaos of Good Things -- Tea, and the arrival of Fresh Guests -- who they are -- Traits of Character both of Men and Women of this Class -- the Dance, and the Departure 87
Chapter II
The English Farmer as operated upon by Modern Circumstances -- Complaint of Cobbett that the Farmer is spoiled by Modern Refinement -- In what Degree this is true -- Men of all Ranks to be found amongst Farmers -- the Old Farmer in retired Parts of England as Rustic as ever -- Effects of Political Economy -- Evils of the Large Farm System -- the Farmer in a Healthy State of the Country -- Drawbacks on the Pleasantness of Farm Houses -- the Remedy easy -- Advantages and Disadvantages of Large Farms stated -- Instance of the Success of a Small Farmer, and its obvious Causes -- Just Equilibrium of Interests, an open field for Enterprise necessary to National Prosperity 99
Chapter III
Farm-Servants, and their Mode of Life -- a Peak-of-Derbyshireman’s Address to his Guest -- the Plodding Farmer and his Wife -- the Journal of a Farmer’s Day, by Mr. Robinson of Cambridge -- Mode in which Farm-Servants, both Men and Women, are brought up -- Ordinary Course of the Farmer-Man’s Life -- the same in Harvest -- Sketch of him as preparing for Plough, or for the Team -- Custom of going out with the Wagon to deliver Corn, etc. -- Anecdote of a “Statesman’s” Wife in Cumberland 107
Chapter IV
The Bondage System of the North of England -- Manner in which it strikes a Stranger from the South -- Bands of Women working in the Fields -- Mode of Maintaining the Hinds -- Description of their Cottages -- Cottage of the Herd of Middleton -- Cobbett’s Surprise on discovering the Bondage System -- his View of its Effects on the Population and Productiveness of the Country -- Curious Coach Scene near Morpeth -- Cobbett’s Address to the Chopsticks of the South on the State of the Bondage District -- Bondage Farms and Farm-yards -- Lodgings of the Hinds -- their Allowance of Corn and Pease -- the Schoolmaster paid in Meal -- Precarious Nature of the Tenure of their Houses -- Enormous Rent of the Land -- the Farm-yards, Corn Factories -- Scantiness of the Population compared with the Agricultural Districts of the South -- Hardships of the System on the Hinds -- a Certificate required from the last Master -- the same Custom in the Collieries of the Midland Counties -- Statements of Mr. and Mrs. Grey, Mr. Dodds, etc. -- Concluding Remarks 119
Chapter V
The Terrors of a Solitary House -- Sense of Insecurity which a Townsman feels in a Solitary House at Night -- Wide Difference in our Feeling of such a Place by Day and by Night -- Nervous Fancies excited by them on Stormy Nights -- Decrease of Burglaries and Highway Robberies through Modern Improvements -- Noble Defence of his House by Colonel Purcell -- Attack of the House of a Welsh Gentleman, Mr. Powell, and his Murder -- Fact related by a Minister of the Society of Friends -- Sturdy Rogues -- Fright of an Old Gentleman with one -- Cowardice inspired by living in a Solitary House -- Superstitions generated by such Places -- Concluding Remarks 139
Chapter VI
Midsummer in the Fields -- the Spiritual Effect of Green Fields at Midsummer -- True Wisdom of Izaak Walton -- Delicious Haunts of the Angler at this Season -- Profound Repose of Trees -- Rich Mosaic of Fields -- Sound of Birds at this Season -- Mowers at work -- Delights of Brooksides, with their Plants and Insects -- Curious Metamorphosis of Midges -- Beauty of Dragon-flies -- Summer Birds -- Feelings connected with this fleeting Season 159
Chapter I
Gipsies: their History and present State -- Gipsies Part and Parcel of the English Landscape -- an essential Portion of our Poetry and Literature -- Uses made of them by many kinds of Writers -- Gipsy Adventure of Sir Roger de Coverley -- Gipsy Sketches by Wordsworth, Cowper, Crabbe, and others -- Inquiries after their Origin -- the Notion of the Ettrick Shepherd of it -- Arab-like Character of Gipsies -- Researches of Grellman and Buttner into the Gipsy Origin -- Account of their Numbers, Treatment, and Habits in all Nations -- their Language -- various Names by which they are and have been known -- M. Hasse’s Theory of their Antiquity -- pointed out by Herodotus and Strabo -- Causes of their more numerous Appearance in Western Europe about the year 1400 -- their first entry into France in 1427, as described by Pasquin -- Banished by Proclamation -- the same Policy pursued in other Countries -- Cruelties practised on them in Spain -- Order to drive them from France with Fire and Sword -- Attempt to expel them from Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and England -- Entry respecting them in the Parish Records of Uttoxeter -- the Inquiries of Mr. Hoyland into their History and Condition -- his Visits to their Haunts at Norwood and London -- their Annual Progresses from London through various Counties -- Mr. Hoyland’s Researches in Scotland -- the Border-Country their chief Resort -- Letter of Sir Walter Scott respecting them -- Remarkable Scene with them at Riding the Marches near Yetholm -- Sir Walter Scott’s recognition of one of them at Kelso Fair -- the Family of the Faas -- Old Will Faa, the Gipsy King’s Journey to see the Laird on his Death-bed -- Meg Merrilies one of their Clan -- the Author’s Visit to Yetholm -- the Gipsy Houses -- the Feud between them and the Shepherds -- Old Will Faa, the present King -- the Importance given him by Sir Walter Scott’s Writings -- his Smuggling and Fighting -- his Portrait by Sir Martin Arthur Shee -- General Review of their Numbers and Condition in these Kingdoms -- Camp near Nottingham, and Death of the Gipsy King -- Peculiarities of the whole Race -- their estimated Numbers in Europe -- Children sent to School in London -- Gipsy Wife reading her Bible to her Children -- Feelings naturally presented by the sight of a Gang -- Gipsies of New Forest -- Exertions of Mr. Crabbe and the Home Missionary Society -- Gipsies’ Advocate published -- Mrs. Southey’s Account of the New Forest Gipsies, and particularly the Stanley family -- Anecdote of George III. and the dying Gipsy -- Curious Accidental Meeting of the Author with two Ladies of Rank acting the Gipsies in Surrey 165
Chapter II
Nooks of the World, or a Peep into the Back Settlements of England -- Beauty and Repose of many such Places to the eye -- their Intellectual Slumber -- Wordsworth’s Description of a Farmer-lad -- the Books generally to be found in primitive Cottages -- Worst State of Morals in Districts partly Agricultural and partly Manufacturing -- Exertions of the Methodists -- the Effect of Political Pressure on the Working Class -- Necessity of sound Education -- the Effect of it in Scotland -- Rural Book Societies recommended -- An Example of the Effect of Reading on a Working Man -- Sordid Character of the People of some Property in obscure Hamlets -- A Physician living in a Dove-Cote -- Sketch of a Country Proprietor and his Family -- the Farmer Brothers -- the Land Agent’s account of a curious Dinner Scene at the Squire’s -- a worthy Example of the Old School of Country Gentlemen -- Education the great need of the Rural Districts 196
Chapter III
Nooks of the World: Part II. -- Life in the Dales of Lancashire and Yorkshire -- Wide Contrast between the Aspect and Condition of the Agricultural and Manufacturing Districts -- Poverty and Rudeness of some Parts of Lancashire -- Half-wild Children in the Lancashire Hills -- Old Factory System -- Wild Country between Lancashire and the Yorkshire Dales -- General Character of the Dales -- Primitive Simplicity of the People -- Formerly much visited by George Fox -- a Friend’s Meeting -- Dent Dale -- Singular Appearance of the Bed of the River Dent -- Rural Occupation and Vehicles -- Population of a Dale divided into little Communities -- Customs at a Birth -- Knitting Parties -- Knitting Songs -- other Particulars of their Knitting Habits -- Instances of Eccentricities of Character -- Dislike of Factories -- Every Person and House has its Name -- Singular Story of Deception practised on a rich Widow -- Peculiar Customs of the Dales -- their Hospitality 221
Chapter IV
Old English Houses -- General Impression of them -- the strong Historic Interest connected with them -- a delightful Record of such Abodes might be written -- Feelings that arise in passing through them -- their various Styles, Furniture, Pictures, Tapestry, and Arms, Memorials of the Changes of National Power and Manners -- Passages of most Tragical Interest indicated by many of our Family Pictures -- Treasures of Ancient Art collected in our Noble Houses -- Horace Walpole’s Wish, that all our Noble Mansions were congregated in London -- beneficial Influence of the Country Residence of the Aristocracy -- Feelings of Horace Walpole on visiting his Father’s House at Houghton 249
Chapter V
Hardwicke Hall -- the Author’s Visit to it on the present Duke’s coming of Age -- Scenes which presented themselves -- a Second Visit with a Party of Friends -- a Third Visit after the lapse of Twenty Years -- Present Aspect of the Place -- Building Mania of Bess of Hardwicke -- Remains of the Old Hall of Hardwicke -- Gog and Magog -- Arabella Stewart, and Queen of Scots imprisoned there -- Chapel -- Old Tapestry -- Family Gallery -- Good Taste by which the House is kept in its Original State -- Statue of the Queen of Scots -- Mrs. Jameson’s Account of Hardwicke -- the Duke there -- his Apartments -- Contrast of different Ages presented by such Houses as Hardwicke, Haddon, and Chatsworth 257
Chapter VI
Annesley Hall, and Hucknall -- Annesley Hall, the abode of Mary Chaworth, most singularly overlooked by Visiters to Newstead -- Tomb and Funeral of Lord Byron -- Scene in the Vault on the Evening of the Funeral -- Moore’s Visit to the Tomb -- Variety of Visiters shewn by the Book kept by the Clerk -- Inscription by Lord Byron’s Sister -- Interesting Signatures -- ANNESLEY HALL -- the Hill mentioned by Byron in “The Dream” -- Curious Mistake by Moore -- the “Diadem of Trees in circular array,” cut down by Mary Chaworth’s Husband -- a Mechanic’s Exclamation on hearing of it -- Interesting Aspect of the Old Place in its Woods -- State of Desolation in which it was found by the Author -- the Old Housekeeper -- Description of the Interior -- Superstitions of the Place -- Paper Cuttings on the Drawing-room Screen -- Likeness of Mary Chaworth thereon -- Fine Old Terrace -- Scene of Lord Byron’s last Interview with Mary Chaworth -- her melancholy after-life here -- Impressions during the Visit to this Place 268
Chapter VII
Newstead Abbey -- Picturesque Approach to it -- Recollection of a former Visit -- the Desolation of the Place then -- Byron’s own Description of it -- the Gallery -- the Library -- Sculls and Crucifix -- Dog’s Tomb -- the Satyr Statues -- Eccentric Character of the former Lord Byron -- Anecdotes of Lord Byron’s Minority -- Paintings connected with the Poet’s History -- General good Taste displayed by the present Possessor of the Abbey -- Exceptions to this Taste -- General Description of the Abbey from Don Juan -- Houses of Fletcher and Rushton -- Tree inscribed by Lord Byron -- Demolition of the Mill -- Concluding Remarks on the Old Houses of England, and List of the most remarkable 290
Chapter VIII
Characteristics of Park Scenery 302
Part IV
CAUSES OF THE STRONG ATTACHMENT OF THE ENGLISH TO COUNTRY LIFE.
Chapter I
Love of the Sublime and Beautiful in Nature more eminently developed in Modern than in Classical Literature -- the Fact striking, that the Love of Nature is so conspicuous in our Literature, more faint in that of the Continent, still more in that of the Ancients -- this Affection only developed in proportion to the Intellectual Culture of our Nature -- the same Objects pursued in Art as in Literature, the Sublime and Beautiful -- the Greek Poets more cognizant of the Amenities than the Sublimity of Nature -- Homer the greatest Exception -- Instances of his higher Perceptions -- Hesiod nearly destitute of it -- Theocritus most alive to the Picturesque -- his Picture of the Two Fishermen, of King Anycus, of a Drinking-cup -- his luxurious Sense of Out-of-door Enjoyment -- Love of Nature amongst the Romans -- one Cause of the continuance of their Simplicity of Life -- instanced in Virgil, Horace, and Cicero -- Modern Literature a New World of Feeling and Sentiment -- Difference between Longinus and Burke -- Love of Nature in the Ancients, incidental -- Ours a perpetual Affection -- Instanced in Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron -- Originating cause to be found in Christianity -- Development of it in the Hebrew Literature -- Completion of it in the Christian Revelation -- Proofs of this 305
Chapter II
Development of the Love of the Country greater in English than in Continental Literature -- Comparison of our Literature, in various Departments, with the Continental -- German Literature kindred to the English -- The Idylls of Voss -- Testimony of a French Writer to our greater Love of Nature -- the Influence of the Writings of John Wilson in Blackwood’s Magazine, and of Bewick’s Wood-cuts 324
Chapter III
Influence of Wood-engraving on the Love of the Picturesque in the Country -- Introduction of Stereotyping Wood-cuts in the Cheap Magazines -- Probable Results from the Use of the Art -- in what respects Wood is superior to Copper or Steel -- Causes that prevent the Successors of Bewick equalling him in Knowledge of Nature -- how this Defect is to be remedied 341
Chapter I
The Forests of England -- Our Forests amongst our most interesting Objects -- Scenery of England as we may suppose it in the Feudal Ages, and as it is now -- Charms with which our Imaginations and Town Restraints have invested the Feudal Times -- Antiquity of our Forests -- Derivation of the Name -- New Forest created by the Conqueror; Sixty-seven Forests previously existing -- Various Opinions respecting the Origin of New Forest -- the Ravages of William, and Death of his two Sons and Grandson in it -- Number of Forests, Chases, and Parks formerly belonging to the Crown -- Forest System an Imperium in Imperio -- Its Courts, Laws, and Officers -- Consequences of the few Judges, and long Intervals between Trials -- Severity of both Laws and Oaths on the Officers -- Freeholds granted in Forests subject to the Forest Laws -- Forest Boundaries of a peculiar Description -- Drifts of the Forest -- Barbarous Penalties for killing Deer decreed by the Norman Kings -- these softened by successive Monarchs -- Preamble of the Assise of the Forest of Edward I. -- Law of Attachment of Offenders in the Forest expressed in an old Rhyme -- Lawing of Dogs; in what it consisted -- Other curious Provisions of the Assises of the Forests -- Regarders appointed by Henry II. -- their Duties -- Inquisitions into the State of Forests by Elizabeth -- the Forest Laws disused after the Revolution -- List of the Ancient Forests 348
Chapter II
New Forest -- Retains more of its Forest Character than any other -- Boundaries now nearly the same as in Charles II.’s time -- Places in the Forest -- Its Features as you pass through it -- as compared with other Forests -- not the Ruin of a Forest, but a Forest in its Prime -- the Cause of this -- Picturesque Style of the Cottages and small Enclosures in its Neighbourhood -- a Day’s Stroll through it by the Author -- Feelings inspired by its Solitude and Air of Antiquity -- Forest Farms, Swine, Cattle and their Bells -- Spot where Rufus was killed, near Stony-Cross -- the Descendants of Purkess, who conveyed the body of Rufus to Winchester -- Tradition of the Cart-wheel -- Gilpin’s Parsonage and School -- his Opinion of the Origin of the New Forest Horses -- Wild Population of the Forest -- Adventure of a Physician with them -- Forest Walks and Lodges -- Stirrup of Rufus preserved at Lyndhurst -- the Forest Court a singular Scene, as described by Mr. Stewart Rose 366
Chapter III
Sherwood Forest -- In a very different State to New Forest -- Celebrated as the Scene of Robin Hood’s Exploits -- the Norman Kings, especially John, fond of Hunting there -- Formerly of great Extent; containing Nottingham, Mansfield, Annesley, Newstead, etc. -- Its Constitution and Affairs -- Curious Fact regarding the Byrons and Chaworths -- Present Extent of the Forest -- Bilhaghe an unique and impressive Remains of a Portion of it -- Birkland a beautiful Tract of Birch Woodland -- Its Fairyland Character -- Concluding Remarks 380
Chapter IV
Forest Enclosures -- Injuries to the Arts, Manufactures, and the Intellectual Taste of the Public to be apprehended from such Enclosures -- Logic of Lawyers and Land-Surveyors -- Open Lands needed for Public Enjoyment -- that Open Lands are Unproductive, shewn to be a very false Notion -- the Unchristian Principle on which Enclosures have been conducted -- Enclosures inimical to our National Interests -- Numbers who seek the Refreshment of Summer Visits to our Forests, Coasts, Moors, and Mountains -- the Utilitarian Enclosures of certain Lands recommended 388
Chapter V
Wild English Cattle -- Places where they still exist -- Bewick’s Description of them -- the Author’s Visit to Chillingham Park in 1836, to see the great Herd -- Lord Tankerville’s Account of them 393
Chapter I
Cottage Life -- Wide Space between the Life of the Hall and that of the Cottage -- the Routine of the Labourer’s Life -- a Blow aimed at his Domestic Security -- a Highland Hut -- a Night passed in one -- Abodes of Poverty called Rookeries -- the Beauty of English Cottages in some Parts of England -- a Thought on seeing such by Professor Wilson -- Delightfulness of some of the Cottages of the Wealthy and Refined 402
Chapter II
Popular Festivals and Festivities -- Sketch of their History -- of Catholic Origin -- The great Change in the Public Taste regarding them traced to the Reformation -- Subsequent co-operating Causes pointed out -- the Intellectual Character of the Popular Taste still Progressive 414
Chapter III
May-Day Festivities -- Formerly celebrated with more Gaiety than any others -- Came down from Pagan Antiquity in all their Arcadian Beauty -- It was the Festival of the Poets -- None now more entirely obsolete -- Washington Irving’s Delight at seeing Plough-bullocks and May-poles in the Neighbourhood of Newstead -- great Decline of these things during the last Thirty Years even there -- a few May-poles still to be found in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire -- May-dances quite gone by -- May day celebrated with enthusiasm by the Poets -- European Observance of May derived from the Roman Festival of Flora -- Saxon Customs of this period of the year -- Druid Customs -- Blowing of Horns at Oxford and other places -- Custom mentioned by Erasmus, of placing a Deer’s Horns on St. Paul’s Altar -- Custom of the Hindus -- Beltane in Ireland and Scotland -- May-feast of Northumberland -- Fishing for the Wedding-ring -- Roman Feast of Flora imitated in France and England -- Various Additions here of Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, etc. -- Spenser and Herrick’s description of May-day Festivities -- Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James I.’s going a-Maying -- Sheriffs and Aldermen of London going a-Maying -- Congratulated by Lydgate the Poet -- In 1644, all May-poles pulled down -- In 1654 Maying again, in presence of the Lord Protector -- Great May-pole in the Strand raised again at the Restoration -- Aubrey’s Account of the May-booms in Holland -- Complaints of Aubrey and Evelyn of Injury done to the Woods by Mayers -- May Customs that yet remain 421
Chapter IV
Easter Festivities -- May the Festival of the Young, Easter that of the Church -- Celebration of Easter in Catholic Countries -- Royal Distribution of Alms on Maunday Thursday at Whitehall, still kept up -- Easter at Moscow, Jerusalem, Rome, and other Places -- Eating Hot-cross buns, and going to Church the sole remaining Ceremonies in England -- Easter Morning as described by Goethe -- Strange Plays acted in Churches by the Monks at Easter -- Churchwardens’ Accounts at Reading for such Expenses -- Paschal Lights -- Lighting the Annual Fire at the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem -- Easter Customs in various Countries -- Paschal Eggs -- Peculiar Privileges attached to their Presentation in Russia -- Courts shut, and Business suspended formerly in London -- Still a Time of great Recreation to Mechanics there -- Less observed in Country Towns -- Pace-eggs still given in some Countries -- Heaving, or Lifting -- Ball Play 432
Chapter V
Whitsuntide Festivities -- Sole Religious Festival that continues a Popular one -- this partly owing to Friendly Societies -- Joyous Aspect of this Village Fete -- Whitsuntide Village Processions as seen by the Author in his Youth -- fine Subject for a Painter -- these Love-Feasts of the People very appropriate to this Period, being that of the AGAPAI, or Love-Feasts of the early Christians -- Objections to their being held at Public Houses -- this remediable -- Whitsuntide as witnessed at Warsop in Nottinghamshire -- Concluding Remarks 444
Chapter VI
Christmas Festivities -- the Festival of the Fireside -- Its Ancient Usages made familiar by our Popular Writers -- Burton’s Account of Christmas Games -- Withers’ Poetical Description of Christmas 200 years ago -- Scott’s View of them as seen in the past -- Pageants at this Season in Catholic Countries, as at Rome, Naples, and in Spain -- Interesting Domestic Custom in Germany -- Christmas as now passed by the Poor, and by the Middle and Higher Classes -- the Waits -- Christmas Visiting and Country Games -- Christmas Carols, as sung about Manchester, collected by the late Miss Jewsbury -- Christmas Customs still kept up -- George and the Dragon -- Blessing Orchards, etc. -- Concluding Remarks on the Present State of Popular Festivals 451
Chapter VII
The Fairy Superstitions -- Fairies all vanished from the Country -- gone in Chaucer’s Days -- Bishop Corbett’s Farewell to them -- Hogg their last Poet -- Fairies of Caldon-Low -- Made Immortal by Milton and Shakspeare -- Belief of them yet lingering in Wales -- Robin Goodfellow and the Lubberfiend of Milton thrown out of employ by the Thrashing Machine -- Fairie’s-Waterfall at Aberpergum -- Morgan Lewis the Neath Guide’s Account of their positive Departure 473
Chapter VIII
The Village Inn -- the Old-fashioned Village Inn a very different place to the New Beer-Shop -- its General Aspect -- its Old Tree -- Remarkable Tree of this kind at the Golden Grove, near Chertsey -- the Country Inn Kitchen -- Description of Landlords by which such Inns are kept -- their Cleanness and Rural Plenty -- Patronized by all Classes, from the Squire downwards -- Humorous Characters often found there -- Curious Scene once witnessed by the Author at a Country Inn in Yorkshire -- The New Beer-Shops a universal Nuisance 480
Chapter IX
Popular Places of Resort -- Wakes, Statutes, and Fairs -- the Wake, the Feast of the Dedication of the Parish Church, now dwindled into a Village Holiday -- Anticipation of it by the Rural People -- Wake Festivities -- the Wake, in some places yet connected with Church-rites. -- STATUTES: Meetings by Legal Statute for the Hiring of Servants -- Attendance of Farmers, their Wives, and Men and Women Servants -- their Appearance -- Shepherds, Ploughmen, Milkmaids, and their Insignia -- Earnest-Money -- Afternoon Jollification -- in the Northern Counties the Bondage Girls hired at similar Meetings -- FAIRS: Places of both Business and Pleasure to all Classes of Country People -- Nottingham Great October and Goose Fair taken as a specimen -- Preparations for its Attendance -- Fair Scenery and Characters -- Proclamation of the Fair -- Corporation Procession -- Gig Fair -- Peculiar Tastes and Pleasures of Fair-goers -- Good Subjects for the Painter presented 493
Chapter X
Popular Places of Resort, continued -- The Rural Watering Place 502
Chapter XI
Sports and Pastimes of the People -- History of their Changes and Present State -- Sports generated by the Feudal Habits -- Sports introduced by the Catholic Church -- the mere brutal Portion of both these remaining in the last Century -- many of these now abolished, and a better Class encouraged -- Sports and Pastimes prevalent in Farming Districts and obscure Hamlets -- Prevalence of Cricket -- Description of a Cricket-Match between Nottingham and the Sussex Club -- Auguries drawn from the Present Popular Taste 515
Chapter XII
WRESTLING: Its History and present Practice -- this Exercise, formerly so general, now confined to a few Counties -- Cornwall and Devon, Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmoreland -- these Counties possessing Practices peculiar to themselves -- Grand Annual Wrestling in Clerkenwell, formerly attended by the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London -- Curious Anecdote of a Minister of the Society of Friends of that day -- West of England and Westmoreland and Cumberland Clubs in London -- Attempt of Sir Thomas Parkyn to establish Wrestling in Nottinghamshire -- Cornish Wrestling -- Fuller’s Opinion of it -- Account of it by an Eye-witness -- Champions of Cornwall and Devon -- Games established at St. Ives in Cornwall by John Knill -- the Canns of Dartmoor, and Widdicombs of the Moors -- Description of a Match at the Eagle Tavern Green, City Road, in 1826, between Devon and Cornwall 531
Chapter XIII
Favourite Pursuits of English Cottagers and Workmen -- the Genius of the Working Class -- its Effects on the Happiness of that Class -- almost every Man his Hobby -- Pigeon-fanciers, Dog-fanciers, Lovers of Music, Singing, Bellringing, Poaching, Bird-stuffing, Bird-catching -- A Caveat against kidnapping of Nightingales -- Interior of a Bird-catcher’s House -- Anecdote of a Bird catcher -- Angling, its effect on the Spirits -- Lovers of Gardens and Bees -- Anecdote of a Bee-lover and the Abbess of Caverswall -- Florists -- Entomologists -- Crabbe’s Description of some known to him -- Artisan’s Gardens -- Account of 5000 of these at Nottingham -- Happiness to be diffused through the Working-class by sound Legislation 541
Chapter XIV
Sunday in the Country -- Goethe’s Description of a Sunday in Germany -- Applicable in a great degree to Sunday here -- Trip to Richmond by the Steamer, and its Result -- Passing of Sunday by many Inhabitants of large Towns -- the Street Preacher -- the Sailor’s Chapel -- the Irvingite Street-Preacher -- A Camp-meeting -- Profound Air of Repose in the Country on this Day -- The Farmer and his Household -- Groups going Churchward -- the Country Church a Place congenial to Worship -- Social Pleasures of Sunday Evening -- Millions who enjoy the Blessings of a Day of Rest -- Holy Influence of Sunday -- Evening Walk 555
Chapter XV
Cheap Pleasures of Country Life -- No great Events needed by the Lover of Nature to render him Happy -- Recollections of early Delight in the Country -- Objects of Pleasurable Observation as they present themselves in the course of the Seasons -- Splendid Pictures presented by Nature -- the Spirit of Peace and Gladness inspired by Nature, which renders so delightful the Writings of White, Evelyn, Walton, etc. -- Testimonies of Coleridge and Sir Henry Wotton to the profound Satisfaction to be found in Country Life 574
Chapter XVI
Lingering Customs -- Rapid Disappearance of Old English Customs -- the Beautiful Custom of Hanging Garlands in Village Churches at the Funerals of Young Maidens, nearly extinct -- Character of the Primitive Times lingers in the Village Church -- Old-fashioned Congregations -- Genuine Old Village Clerk -- Circumstances occurring to the Author in Village Churches -- their Superstitions -- Village Notions of Angels and Cherubims -- Country Customs at Funerals -- Poetical Procession of Rush-bearing -- Sanding at Knutsford -- Eggs and Salt given to Children -- Eating Simnel Cake -- Riding Stang, May Bushes and their Significance -- Homage to the New Moon -- Charms -- Superstitions connected with the Foxglove, the Dog-rose, the Cuckoo, Pigeon’s Feathers, etc. -- Closing of Churchyards of late years -- Richard Howitt’s Remarks on this Practice 582
Chapter XVII
Education of the Rural Population -- what Education is doing, and leaving undone in the Poetry of Village Life -- Peculiar Social Condition of Surrey -- its Effect on the Peasantry -- Need of Schools -- Mr. Allen’s School of Industry at Lindfield in Sussex -- Schools of Industry established by the Earl of Lovelace, and Lady Noel Byron -- School of Lady Noel Byron, at Ealing, Middlesex -- School of the Earl of Lovelace, at Oakham, Surrey 593
Chapter XVIII
Concluding Chapter -- an extensive Observation of our own Country recommended -- Every Part presents some Variety of Beauty, Custom, or other Object worthy of Notice -- Some of these to be found on a Summer’s Route from London to Devon and Cornwall -- Others in Routes of the Solitary Pedestrian through the Western, Midland, and Northern Counties -- the wide Growth of the Spirit of Enjoyment in such Excursions -- Numbers which throng to all our Places of Natural Beauty, or Historic Interest -- Concluding Remarks 603
Part I
RURAL LIFE, PURSUITS, AND ADVANTAGES OF THE GENTRY OF ENGLAND.
I. PRE-EMINENCE OF ENGLAND AS A PLACE OF COUNTRY RESIDENCE
Let every man who has a sufficiency for the enjoyment of life, thank heaven most fervently that he lives in this country and age. They may tell us of the beauty of southern skies, and the softness of southern climates; but where is the land which a man would rather choose to call himself a native of--because it combines more of the requisites for a happy and useful existence; more of the moral, social, and intellectual advantages, without which fair skies or soft climates would become dolorous, or at best, indifferent? I say, let every man gratefully rejoice, who has the means of commanding the full blessings of English life,--for alas! there are thousands and millions of our countrymen who possess but a scanty portion of these; whose lives are too long and continuous a course of toil and anxiety to permit them even to look round them and see how vast are the powers of enjoyment in this country, and how few of those sources of ease, comfort, and refined pleasure are within their reach. I trust a better day is coming to this portion of our population; that many circumstances are working together to confer on the toiling children of these kingdoms the social rewards which their unwearied industry so richly merits; but for those who already hold in their hands the golden key, where is the country like England? If we are naturally proud of making a portion of a mighty and a glorious kingdom, where is the kingdom like England? It is a land of which the most ambitious or magnanimous spirit may well say with a high emotion--“That is my country!” Over what an extent of the earth it stretches its territories; over what swarming and diversified millions it extends its sceptre! On every side of the globe, lie its outspread regions; under every aspect of heaven, walk its free or tributary people. In the West Indies; in the vaster dominions of the East; in America and Australia; through each wide continent, and many a fair island! But its political and moral power extends even far beyond these. What nation is there, however great, that does not look with breathless anxiety to the movements of England; what country is not bound up with it in the strongest interests and hopes; what country is there which does not feel the influence of its moral energy? Through all the cities and forests of Republican America, the spirit of England, as well as its language, lives and glows. France, Germany, and even Russia to the depths of its frozen heart, feel the emanations of its free and popular institutions. Every pulse of love which beats here--every principle of justice that is more clearly recognised--every sentiment of Christianity that is elevated on the broad basis of the human heart, hence spreads through the earth as from a centre of moral life, and produces in the remotest regions its portion of civilization.
Hence do I love my country!--and partake Of kindred agitations for her sake; She visits oftentimes my midnight dream; Her glory meets me with the earliest beam Of light, which tells that morning is awake.--Wordsworth.
It is something to make a part, however small, of such a nation. It is something to feel that you have such a scope of power and beneficence in the earth. But when you add to this, the food laid up for the heart and the intellect in this island--the wealth of literature and science; the spirit of freedom in which they are nourished, and by which they are prosecuted; the sound religious feeling which has always distinguished it as a nation; the philanthropic institutions that exist in it--every true heart must felicitate itself that its lot is cast in this kingdom.
Such are the moral, political, and intellectual advantages of English life, which must make any noble-minded and reflecting man feel, as he considers his position in the scale of humanity, that he is “a citizen of no mean city.” But our social advantages are not a whit behind these. Can any state of society be well conceived, on which the arts and sciences, literature, and general knowledge, can shed more social conveniences and refined enjoyments? In our houses, in our furniture, in all the materials for our dresses, in the apparatus for our tables and the endless variety of good things by which they are supplied, for which every region has been traversed, and every art in bringing them home, or raising them at home, has been exerted; in books and paintings; in the wonderful provision and accumulation of every article in our shops, that the real wants or the most fanciful desires of men or women may seek for; in our gardens, roads, the beautiful and affluent cultivation of the country,--what nation is there, or has there been, which can for a moment bear a comparison with England?
Ye miserable ancients, had ye these?
And this we may ask, not merely as it respects gas, steam, the marvellous developments of chemistry and electro-magnetism, by which the mode and embellishment of our existence have been so much changed already, and which promise yet changes too vast to be readily familiarized to the imagination,--but of a thousand other privileges and conveniences in which England is pre-eminent. It is, however, to our rural life that we are about to devote our attention; and it is in rural life that the superiority of England is, perhaps, more striking, than in any other respect. Over the whole face of our country the charm of a refined existence is diffused. There is nothing which strikes foreigners so much as the beauty of our country abodes, and the peculiarity of our country life. The elegances, the arts, and refinements of the city, are carried out and blended, from end to end of the island, so beautifully with the peaceful simplicity of the country, that nothing excites more the admiration of strangers than those rural paradises, the halls, castles, abbeys, lodges, and cottages, in which our nobility and gentry spend more or less of every year. Let Prince Pückler Muskau, Washington Irving, Willis, Count Pecchio, Rice, and others, tell you how beautiful, in their eyes, appeared the parks, lawns, fields, and the whole country of England, cultivated like a garden. It is true that our climate is not to be boasted of for its perpetual serenity. It has had no lack of abuse, both from our own countrymen and others. We are none of us without a pretty lively memory of its freaks and changes, its mists and tempests; its winters wild as some of late, and its springs that are often so tardy in their arrival, that they find summer standing in the gate to tell them they are no longer wanted. All this we know; yet which of us is not ready to forgive all this, and to say with a full heart,
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!
Which of us is not grateful and discerning enough to remember, that even our fickle and imperfect climate has qualities to which England owes much of its glory, and we, many a proud feeling and victorious energy? Which of us can forget, that this abused climate, is that which has not enervated by its heats, has not seduced by its amenities, has not depopulated by its malaria, so that under its baneful influence we have become feeble, listless, reckless of honour or virtue; the mean, the slothful, the crouching slaves of barbarians, or even effeminate despots: it is that which has done none of these things; produced no such effects as these; but it is that which has raised millions of frames strong and muscular and combatant, and enduring as the oaks of its rocky hills; that has nerved those frames to the contempt alike of danger and effeminacy; and has quickened them with hearts full of godlike aspirations after a virtuous glory. What a long line--what ages after ages, of invincible heroes, of dauntless martyrs for freedom and religion, of solemn sages and lawgivers, of philosophers and poets, men sober, and prescient, and splendid in all their endowments as any country ever produced;--what a line of these has flourished amid the glooms and severities of this abused climate; and while Italy has sunk into subjection, and Greece has lain waste beneath the feet of the Turk--has piled up by a succession of matchless endeavours the fame and power of England, to the height of its present greatness.
In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung Of earth’s best blood, have titles manifold.
And will any man tell me that the spirit of our climate has had nothing to do with begetting and nourishing the energy which has borne on to immortality these great men; which has quickened us with “earth’s best blood;” which has given us “titles manifold?” The gloom and desolate majesty of autumn--the wild magnificence of thunder-storms, with their vivid lightnings, their awful uproar, the lurid darkness of their clouds, and the outshining of rainbows--have these had no effect on the meditations of divines and the songs of poets? Has the soul-concentrating power of winter driven our writers into their closets in vain? Have the fireside festivities of our darkest season; have the blazing yule-clog, and the merriment of the old English hall--things which have grown out of the very asperity of the climate, left no traces in our literature? Did Milton, Bacon, Spenser, Shakspeare, and such spirits, walk through our solemn halls, whether of learning, or religion, or baronial pomp, all of which have been raised by the very genius of a pensive climate; or did they climb our mountains, and roam our forests, amid winds that roared in the boughs and whirled their leaves at their feet, and gather thence no imagery, no similes, no vigour of thought and language, such as still skies and flowery meadows could not originate? Let us turn to the lays and romances of Scott and Byron, and see whether brown heaths and splintered mountains; the savage ruins of craggy coasts, moaning billows, mists, and rains; the thunder of cataracts, and the sleep of glens, all seen and felt under the alternations of seasons and of weather, such only as an unsettled climate could shew,--have not tinged their spirits, and therefore their works, with hues of an immortal beauty, the splendid product of a boisterous climate. Why, they are these influences which have had no small share in the creation of such men as Burns, Bloomfield, Hogg, and Clare--the shepherd-poets of a free land, and an out-of-door life. Yes, we are indebted to our climate for a mass of good, a host of advantages of which we little dream, till we begin to count them up.
And are all our experiences of the English climate those of gloom? Are there no glorious sunsets, no summer evenings, balmy as our dreams of heaven, no long sunny days of summer, no dewy mornings, whose freshness brings with it ideas of earth in its youth, and the glades of Paradise trod by the fair feet of Eve? Have we no sweet memories of youth and friendship, in which such hours, such days, in which fields of harvest, hay-harvest and corn-harvest, with all their rejoicing rustic companies, lie in the sunshine? Are there none of excursions through the mountains, along the sea shores, of sailing on fair lakes, or lying by running waters in green and flowery dales, while overhead shone out skies so blue and serene that they seemed as though they could never change? In every English bosom there lie many such sweet memories; and if we look through the whole of one of the worst seasons that we have, what intervals of pleasant weather we find in it. One of the great charms of this country too, dependent on its climate, is that rich and almost perpetual greenness, of which strangers always speak with admiration.
But what of climate? There are other claims on our affections for this noble country, which, were its climate the most splendid under heaven, would yet cast that far into the shade. What binds us closely to it, next to our living ties, is that every inch of English ground is sanctified by noble deeds, and intellectual renown; but on this topic Mrs. Howitt has, in her Wood-Leighton, put into the mouth of a worthy clergyman of Staffordshire, words that will better express my feelings, than any I can now use.
“I know not how it is; I cannot comprehend the feeling, with which many quit this noble country for ever for strange lands. And yet it may be said, that hundreds do it every day; and for thousands it may indeed be well. For those who have had no prospect but the daily struggle for existence; for those whose minds have not been opened and quickened into a sense of the higher and more spiritual enjoyments which this country affords; for the labouring many, the valleys of Australia or the vast forests and prairies of America may be alluring. But to me,--and therefore, it seems, equally to other men with like tastes and attachments--to quit England, noble, fearless, magnanimous, and Christian England, would be to cut asunder life, and hope, and happiness at once. No! till I voyage to ‘the better land,’ I could never quit England. What! after all the ages that have been spent in making it habitable, and home-like; after all the blood shed in its defence, and for the maintaining of its civil polity; after all the consumption of patriotic thought and enterprise, the labours of philosophers, divines, and statesmen, to civilize and Christianize it; after the time, the capital, the energies employed, from age to age, to cultivate its fields, dry up marshes, build bridges, and lay down roads, raise cities, and fill every house with the products of the arts and the wealth of literature; can there be a spot of earth that can pretend to a tithe of its advantages, or a spot that creates in the heart that higher tone necessary for their full enjoyment? Why, every spot of this island is sanctified, not only by the efforts of countless patriots, but as the birth-place and abode of men of genius. Go where you will, places present themselves to your eyes which are stamped with the memory of some one or other of those ‘burning and shining lights,’ that have illuminated the atmosphere of England with their collective splendour, and made it visible to the men of farthest climates. Even in this secluded district, which, beautiful as it is, is comparatively little known or spoken of, amongst the generality of English people, how many literary recollections surround you! To say nothing of the actors in great historical scenes; the Talbots, Shrewsburys, Dudleys, and Bagots of former ages; or the Ansons, Vernons, St. Vincents, and Pagets of the later and present ones; in this county were born those excellent bishops, Hurd and Newton, and the venerable antiquary and herald, Elias Ashmole. To say nothing of the amount of taste and knowledge that exist in the best classes of society hereabout, we have to-day passed the houses of Thomas Gisborne and Edward Cooper, clergymen who have done honour to their profession by their talents and the liberality of their sentiments. In that antiquated Fauld Hall, once lived old Squire Burton, the brother of the author of the ‘Anatomy of Melancholy;’ and there is little doubt that some part of that remarkable work was written there. By that Dove, Izaak Walton, that pious old man, that lover of the fields, and historian of the worthies of the church, used to stroll and meditate, or converse with his friend Charles Cotton, a Staffordshire man too. In the woods of Wotton, which are very visible hence by daylight, once wandered a very different, but very distinguished person, the wayward Rousseau. In Uttoxeter, that great, but ill-used, and ill-understood astronomer, Flamstead, received the greater part of his education; and from Lichfield, the spires of whose cathedral we have seen to-day, went out Johnson and Garrick, each to achieve supremacy in his own track of distinction. And there, too, lived Anna Seward, who, with all her egotism and faults of taste, was superior to the women of her age, and had the sagacity to perceive amongst the very first, the dawning fame of Southey and Sir Walter Scott.
“If this comparatively obscure district can thus boast of having given birth or abode to so many influential intellects, what shall not England--entire and glory-crowned England? And who shall not feel proud to own himself of its race and kindred; and, if he can secure for himself a moderate share of its common goods, be happy to live and die in it!”
Thus it is all England through. There is no part of it, in which you do not become aware that there some portion of our national glory has originated. The very coachmen as you traverse the highways, continually point out to you spots made sacred by men and their acts. There say they, was born, or lived, Milton or Shakspeare, Locke or Bacon, Pope or Dryden; that was the castle of Chaucer; there, now, lives Wordsworth, Southey, or Moore. There Queen Elizabeth was confined in her youth, here she confined Mary of Scotland in her age. There Wickliffe lived, and here his ashes were scattered in the air by his enemies. There Hooker watched his sheep while he pondered on his Ecclesiastical Polity. Here was born Cromwell, or Hampden--here was the favourite retreat of Chatham, Fox, Pitt, or other person, who in his day exerted a powerful influence on the mind or fortunes of this country. These perpetual monitions that we are walking in a land filled from end to end with glorious reminiscences, make country residence in England so delightful. But the testimony of foreigners is more conclusive than our own; and therefore, we will close this chapter with the impression which the entrance into England made on two Americans--Washington Irving and Mr. Willis. Irving’s mind was full of the inspiration of the character of England as he had found it in books. “There is to an American, a volume of associations with the very name. It is the land of promise, teeming with every thing of which his childhood has heard, or on which his studious years have pondered. The ships of war, that prowled like guardian giants along the coast; the headlands of Ireland, stretching out into the Channel; the Welsh mountains, towering into the clouds; all were objects of intense interest. As we sailed up the Mersey, I reconnoitred the shores with a telescope. My eye dwelt with delight on neat cottages, with their trim shrubberies and green grass-plots. I saw the mouldering ruin of an abbey overrun with ivy, and the taper spire of a village church rising from the brow of a neighbouring hill--all were characteristic of England.” That is the feeling of an American, arriving here directly from his own country: this is that of one coming from the European Continent. Mr. Willis says, on landing at Dover: “My companion led the way to an hotel, and we were introduced by English waiters (I had not seen such a thing in three years, and it was quite like being waited on by gentlemen) to two blazing coal fires in the coffee-room of the ‘Ship.’ O, what a comfortable place it appeared! A rich Turkey carpet snugly fitted; nicely rubbed mahogany tables; the morning papers from London; bell-ropes that would ring the bell; doors that would shut; a landlady that spoke English, and was kind and civil; and, though there were eight or ten people in the room, no noise above the rustle of a newspaper, and positively rich red damask curtains, neither second-hand nor shabby, to the windows! A greater contrast than this, to the things that answer to them on the Continent, could scarcely be imagined. The fires were burning brilliantly, and the coffee-room was in the nicest order when we descended to our breakfast at six the next morning. The tea-kettle singing on the hearth, the toast was hot, and done to a turn, and the waiter was neither sleepy nor uncivil,--all, again, very unlike a morning at an hotel in La belle France. England is described always very justly, and always in the same words, ‘it is all one garden.’ There is scarce a cottage, between Dover and London (seventy miles) where a poet might not be happy to live. I saw a hundred little spots I coveted with quite a heart-ache. Everybody seemed employed, and everybody well-made and healthy. The relief from the deformity and disease of the way-side beggars of the Continent was very striking.”
It is through this England, thus worthy of our love, whether as seen by our own eyes, or the eyes of intelligent foreigners, that we are about to make our progress, visiting plain and mountain, farm and hamlet, and making acquaintance with the dwellings, habits, and feelings of both gentle and simple.
Chapter II
ENVIABLE POSITION OF THE ENGLISH COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, AS REGARDS ALL THE PLEASURES AND ADVANTAGES OF LIFE.
Alexander of Macedon said if he were not Alexander, he would choose to be Diogenes; Alexander of Russia also said if he were not Alexander, he would choose to be an English gentleman. And truly, it would require some ingenuity to discover any earthly lot like that of the English gentleman. The wealth and refinement at which this country has arrived, have thrown round English rural life every possible charm. Every art and energy is exerted in favour of the English gentleman. Look at the ancient castle, or the mansion of later ages, and then at the dwelling of the private gentleman now, and what a difference! The castle with its dungeon-like apartments, its few loop-holes for windows, its walls, mounds, moats, drawbridges, and other defences to keep out the hostile prowlers which a semi-savage state of society brought, ever and anon, around it. Look at its naked walls, its massy, lumbering doors, its floors spread with rushes, and the rude style in which bed and board were constructed and served; and then turn your eyes on the modern mansion of the country gentleman. What a lovely sight is that! What a bright and pleasant abode, instead of that heavy, martial pile! What a fair country--what a peaceful, well-ordered population surround it, instead of dreary forests, and savage hordes! And look again at the mansion of the feudal ages; see its large, cheerless, tapestried halls, its ill-fitting doors and windows, through which the wintry winds come whistling and careering. What naked, or rush-strewn floors still; what rude fashion of furniture, and vessels for the table; what a rude style of cookery; what a dearth of books; what a miserable and scanty display of portraits on the walls, making those they are intended to represent, look grim and hard as a generation of ogres. Then again, look at the modern mansion. What a snug and silken nest of delight is that. See what the progress of the arts and civilization has done for it. How light and airily it rises in some lovely spot. How it is carpeted, and draped with rich hangings and curtains. What soft and elegant beds; what a superior grace in the fashion of furniture, and all household utensils. Silver and gold, brass and steel, porcelain and glass, into what rich and beautiful shapes have they been wrought by skilful hands for all purposes. See what a variety of rooms; what a variety of inventions in those rooms, which artificial and refined wants have called into existence. What books enrich the fair library; what glorious paintings grace its delicately-papered walls. Hark! music is issuing from instruments of novel and most ingenious construction. And all around what a splendidly cultivated country! What lovely gardens, in which flowers from every region are blowing. Here is a vast change!--a vast advance from the rude life of our ancestors; and the more we look into the present state of domestic life, the more we shall perceive the admirable perfection of its economy and arrangements. What was the life of our great nobility formerly in their country halls? With little intercourse with the capital; in the midst of huge forests, and almost impassable roads; hunting and carousing were their chief pleasures and employments, amid a throng of rude retainers. Look now at the mode of life of a private gentleman of no extraordinary revenue. When he comes down in a morning, he finds on his breakfast-table the papers which left London probably on the previous evening, bringing him the news of the whole world. There is nothing which is going on in Parliament, in the courts of law, in public meetings in the capital, or in any town of the kingdom; no birth, marriage, death, or any occurrence of importance, but they are all laid before him; there is nothing done or said in the mercantile, the literary, the scientific world, nothing which can affect the interests of his country in the most remote degree; nothing, indeed, which can thoroughly affect the well-being of men all the world over, but there it is too. He sits in the midst of his woods and groves, in the quietness of the country a hundred miles from the capital, and is as well acquainted with the movements and incidents of society as a reigning prince could have been some years ago, by couriers, correspondents, spies, fast-sailing packets, and similar agencies, maintained by all the aid and revenues of a nation. And for his morning meal, China and the Indies, east and west, send him their tea, coffee, sugar, chocolate, and preserved fruits. Lapland sends its reindeer tongues; Westphalia its hams; and his own rich land abundance of rural dainties. When breakfast is over, if he ask himself how he shall pass the day, what numerous and inexhaustible resources present themselves to his choice. Will he have music? The ladies of his family can give it him, in a high style of excellence. Does he love paintings? His walls, and those of his wealthy neighbours, are covered with them. There are said to be more of the works of the great masters accumulated in our English houses than in all the world besides. Is he fond of books? What a mass of knowledge is piled up around him! Greece, Rome, Palestine, Arabia, India, France, Germany, Italy, every country, ancient or modern, which has distinguished itself by its genius and intelligence, has poured into his halls its accumulated wealth of heart and imagination. There is hoarded up in his library, food for the most insatiate spirit for an eternity. In the literature and science merely of this country, he possesses more than the enjoyment of a life. Think only of the works of our historians and divines, of our travellers,--our natural, moral, and scientific philosophers; of the wit, the pathos, the immense extent of inventions and facts in our general literature; of the glorious and ennobling themes of our great poets. What a mighty difference is there between the existence of one of our old baronial ancestors, who could not read, but as he sate over his winter fire solaced his spirit with the lays of a wandering minstrel; and of him who has at his command all the intellectual splendour, power and wit, the satire, the joyous story, the humour, the elegance of phrase and of mind, the profound sentiment and high argument of such men as Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Steele, Pope, Sam Johnson, Goldsmith, Cowper, and the noble poets of the present day. Is it possible that ennui can come near a man who can at any moment call to his presence our Jeremy Taylors and Tillotsons, our Barrows, Burnets, and Stillingfleets--our travellers from every corner of the earth, and our great novelists with their everlasting inventions? Why, there is more delight in one good country library, than any one mortal life can consume. If a man’s house were situated in a desert of sand, the magic of this divine literature were enough to raise around him an elysium of perpetual greenness.
But it is not merely within doors that the singular privileges of an English gentleman lie. He need only step out, and he sees them surrounding him on every side. His gardens--by the labours and discoveries of centuries, by the genius of some men who have blended the spirit of nature most happily with that of art, and by the researches of others who have collected into this country the vegetable beauty and wealth of the whole world--have been made more delightful than those of Alcinous or Armida. Look at his glazed walls, his hot and green houses, which supply his table with the most delicious dessert. But go on--advance beyond the boundaries of his gardens, and the pleasant winding walks of his shrubberies, and where are you? In the midst of his park, his farms, his woods, and plantations. Now every one knows the healthful and perpetual recreation to be found in any one of these places; the intense delight which many of our country gentlemen take in them, and the beauty and pre-eminence of our English parks, farms, and woods, in consequence. We shall speak more particularly of them presently; but it must not here be forgotten what a boundless field of enjoyment, and increase of wealth, science has of late years opened to the amateur farmer, and to the country gentlemen in general. To their fields, agricultural chemistry, mineralogy, botany, vegetable physiology, entomology, etc., have brought new and inexhaustible charms. They have, in a manner, enlarged the territories of the smallest proprietor into kingdoms of boundless extent and interest. In the study of soils, their defects and remedies; in the selection of plants most consonant to the earth in which they are to grow, or the adaptation of the earth to them; in the inquiry into the mineral wealth that lies below the surface; in cultivating an acquaintance with the various animals, and especially insects, on whose presence or absence depends in a great degree the proper growth or destruction of crops and young woods: in all these the country gentleman has a source of noble and profitable employment for the main part unknown to his ancestors, and worthy of his most earnest pursuit.
But, if all these means of happiness were not enough to satisfy his desires, or did not chime in with his taste, see what another field of animating and praiseworthy endeavour lies before him still, in the official service of his country. Retaining his character of a country gentleman, he can accept the office of a magistrate, and become, if so disposed, a real benefactor and peacemaker to his neighbourhood. But he need not stop here. There is no country, not excepting British America, where the path of public service lies so open to a man of fortune, or is so wide in its reach. He can enter Parliament; and residing part of the year in the country, can during the other part take his place in an assembly, that for the importance of its discussions and acts has no fellow; for there is no other legislative assembly in the whole world where, with similar freedom of constitution, the same mighty mass of human interests is concerned--to which the same vast extent of influence is appended. I need do no more in proof of this, than merely point to the position of England amid the nations of the earth; her wealth and activity at home; her enormous territories abroad. Over all this,--over this extent of country, over these millions of beings, there is not a single country gentleman who has the ambition, but who may be called to exercise an influence. Here is a field of labour, enough of itself to fill the amplest desires, and by which, if he have the talent, any man of fortune may rise to the highest pitch of rank and distinction.
But if the country gentleman have not the ambition, or the love of so active a life; if he desire to enjoy himself in a different way, there is yet abundant choice. He may travel, if he please; and what a rich expanse of pleasures and interests lies before him in that direction. In our own islands there is a variety of scenery not to be rivalled in the same space in any other part of the world. The mountains, the lakes, the rivers of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, those of Cumberland and Derbyshire; the rich plains; the busy cities, with all their arts and curious manufactures; our ports, with all their interesting scenes; the various historical and antiquarian objects; the numerous breeds of cattle, sheep, and horses; the varied kinds of vegetable products, and modes of farming;--these, to a mind of any taste and intelligence, offer plentiful matter of observation in short summer excursions. And what splendid roads, fleet horses, convenient carriages, and excellent inns, are ready to convey him on the way, or receive him for refreshment. If he is disposed to go abroad, who has the money, or the education, to give facility and advantage to travel in every region like the English gentleman?--Such are the privileges and pleasures attendant on the country gentleman of England. In all these he has, or may have, the society of women whose beauty and intelligence are everywhere acknowledged; and for the ladies of England living in the country, there are books, music, the garden, the conservatory--an abundance of elegant and womanly occupations. There are drives through woods and fields of the most delicious character; there is social intercourse with neighbouring wealthy families, and a host of kind offices to poor ones, which present the sweetest sources of enjoyment.
I think the extraordinary blessings and privileges of English rural life have never been sufficiently considered. It is only when we begin to count them up that we become aware of their amount, and surpassing character. What is there of divine sentiment or earthly knowledge, of physical, intellectual, or religious good; what is there of generous, social, reflective, retiring or aspiring; what is there of freshness and beauty; of luxurious in life, or preparatory to a peaceful death; what is there that can purify the spirit, ennoble the heart, and prompt men to a wise and extensive beneficence, which may not be found in English rural life? It has every thing in it which is beautiful, and may become glorious and godlike.
Such golden deeds lead on to golden days, Days of domestic peace--by him who plays On the great stage how uneventful thought; Yet with a thousand busy projects fraught, A thousand incidents that stir the mind To pleasure, such as leaves no sting behind! Such as the heart delights in--and records Within how silently--in more than words! A Holiday--the frugal banquet spread On the fresh herbage, near the fountain-head. With quips and cranks--what time the woodlark there Scatters his loose notes on the sultry air; What time the kingfisher sits hushed below, Where silver-bright the water-lilies blow:-- A Wake--the booths whitening the village green, Where Punch and Scaramouch aloft are seen; Sign beyond sign in close array unfurled, Picturing at large the wonders of the world; And far and wide, over the Vicar’s pale, Black hoods and scarlet crossing hill and dale, All, all abroad, and music in the gale:-- A Wedding Dance--a dance into the night, On the barn-floor, when maiden feet are light; When the young bride receives the promised dower, And flowers are flung, herself a fairer flower: A Morning-visit to the poor man’s shed, (Who would be rich while one was wanting bread?) Where all are emulous to bring relief, And tears are falling fast--but not for grief;-- A Walk in Spring--GRATTAN, like those with thee By the heath-side (who had not envied me?) When the sweet limes, so full of bees in June, Led us to meet beneath their boughs at noon: And thou didst say which of the great and wise, Could they but hear and at thy bidding rise, Thou would’st call up and question. Graver things Come in their turn. Morning and evening brings Its holy office; and the sabbath bell, That over wood and wild, and mountain-dell, Wanders so far, chasing all thoughts unholy, With sounds most musical, most melancholy, Not on his ear is lost. Then he pursues The pathway leading through the aged yews, Nor unattended; and when all are there, Pours out his spirit in the House of Prayer,-- That House with many a funeral-garland hung, Of virgin white--memorials of the young; The last yet fresh when marriage chimes were ringing, And hope and joy in other hearts were springing;-- That House where age led in by filial love,-- Their looks composed, their thoughts on things above, The world forgot, or all its wrongs forgiven-- Who would not say they trod the path to Heaven?
Rogers’ Human Life.
III. LIFE OF THE GENTRY IN THE COUNTRY
One of the chief features of the life of the nobility and gentry of England, is their annual visit to the metropolis; and it is one which has a most essential influence upon the general character of rural life itself. The greater part of the families of rank and fortune flock up to town annually, as punctually as the Jews flocked up to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover; and it may be said for the purpose of worship too, though worship of a different kind--that of fashion. A considerable portion of them being, more or less, connected with one or other House of Parliament, go up at the opening of Parliament, generally in February, and remain there till the adjournment, often in July; but the true season does not commence till April.
When April verdure springs in Grosvenor Square, Then the furred beauty comes to winter there.--Rogers.
Much has been said of the evil effect of this aristocratic habit, of spending so much time in the metropolis; of the vast sums there spent in ostentatious rivalry, in equipage and establishments; in the dissipations of theatres, operas, routes, and gaming-houses; and unquestionably, there is much truth in it. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that this annual assembling together has some advantages. A great degree of knowledge and refinement results from it, amid all the attendant folly and extravagance. The wealthy are brought into contact with vast numbers of their equals and superiors, and that sullen and haughty habit of reserve is worn off, which is always contracted by those who live in solitary seclusion, in the midst of vast estates, with none but tenants and dependents around them. They are also brought into contact with men of talent and intelligence. They move amongst books and works of art, and are induced by different motives to become patrons and possessors of these things. If they spend large sums in splendid houses and establishments in town, such houses and such establishments become equally necessary to them in the country; and it is by this means that, instead of old and dreary castles and chateaux, we have such beautiful mansions, so filled with rich paintings and elegant furniture, dispersed all over England. From these places, as centres existing here and there, similar tastes are spread through the less wealthy classes, and the elegances of life flow into the parsonages, cottages, and abodes of persons of less income and less intercourse with society. In town, undoubtedly, a vast number of the aristocracy spend their time and money very foolishly; but it is equally true, that many others spend theirs very beneficially to the country. Men of fortune from all quarters of the kingdom there meet, and every thing which regards the improvement of their estates is discussed. They hear of different plans pursued in different parts of the kingdom. They make acquaintances, and these acquaintances lead to visits, in which they observe, and copy all that can add to the embellishment of their abodes, and the value and productiveness of their gardens and estates. If many acquire a relish only for Newmarket, and the gaming club, and a strong distaste for the quiet enjoyments of the country; many, on the other hand, come down to their estates after a season of hurry and over-excitement, with a fresh feeling for the beauty and repose of their country abodes. The possessors of great houses and estates, invite a party to spend the recess, or especially the shooting season, with them. Thus the world of fashion is broken up and scattered from the metropolis into a multitude of lesser circles, and into every corner of the empire. I can conceive nothing which bears on its surface the aspect of the perfection of human society, so much as this assembling of a choice party of those who have nothing to do but to enjoy life, in the house of some hospitable wealthy man, in some one of the terrestrial paradises of this kingdom,--far off, in some retired vale of England, where the country and its manners remain almost as simple and picturesque as they did ages ago. In some fine Elizabethan mansion, some splendid baronial castle, as Warwick, Alnwick, or Raby; or in some rich old abbey; amid woods and parks, or seated on one of our wild coasts; or amid the mountains of Wales or Scotland, with all their beautiful scenery, rocks, hanging cliffs, dashing waterfalls, rapid rivers, and fairy wildernesses around them. Here, assembled from the crush and rush of London in its fulness, with new books and new music brought down with them; with plenty of topics suggested by the incidents of the past season in the saloons of the fashionable, and in Parliament; with every luxury before them; with fine shrubberies and parks, and with every vehicle and facility for riding and driving through field or forest, or sailing on river or ocean; if people are not happy in such circumstances, where is the fault?
And imagine the possessor of a noble estate coming down to receive his friends there. To a high and generous mind there must be something very delightful in it. When he enters his own neighbourhood, he enters his own kingdom. The very market-town through which he last passes, is, probably, totally or three-fourths of it his property. If he be a kind and liberal man, the respect which is there testified towards him, has in it the most cordial of flatteries. When he touches his own land, every thing acknowledges his absolute sway. On all sides he sees symptoms of welcome. Wherever he looks, they are the woods, the parks, the fields of his ancestors, and now his own, that meet his eyes. The freshness and greenness of the fields, the sombre grandeur of the woods, the peaceful elegance of his house, all the odours of flowers breathing through the rooms, and the sight of rich fruits on his walls and in his hothouses; after the heat, dust, crowding, noise, political contention, and turning night into day, of London, must be peculiarly grateful. Here he is sole lord and master; and from him, he feels, flow the good of his dependent people, and the pleasures of his distinguished guests. The same where
Far to the south a mountain vale retires, Rich in its groves, and glens, and village spires; Its upland lawns, and cliffs with foliage hung, Its wizard stream, nor nameless nor unsung; And through the various year, the various day, Where scenes of glory burst and melt away.--Rogers.
The hamlet, which shews its thatched roofs and lowly smoking chimneys near, is all his own; nay, the rustic church is part and parcel of the family estate. It was probably built and endowed by his ancestors. The living is in his gift, and is perhaps enjoyed by a relative, or college chum. The very churchyard, with its simple headstones, and green mounds, is separated often only by a sunk fence from his grounds. It blends into them, and the old grey tower lifts itself amongst trees which form one majestic mass with his own. The sabbath-bell rings, and he enters that old porch with his guests; he sees the banner of some brave ancestor float above his head, and the hatchments and memorial inscriptions of others on the walls. What can be more delicately flattering to all the feelings of a human creature; what lot can be more perfect?
The ease and perfect freedom from ceremony in these rural gatherings is a feature which has always excited the admiration of foreigners. Every guest has his own apartment, where he can retire at pleasure, and after taking his meals in common can spend the day as he chooses. But, as I have before said, we see our own customs and manners better in the descriptions of foreigners, because they are described by them as they are seen, with the freshness of novelty. Prince Pückler Muskau speaks with enthusiasm of the country-houses and park scenery of England. His book, indeed, is full of such pictures of country life and scenery. The beautiful dairies which he sometimes found in noblemen’s parks delighted him extremely. Thus he speaks of the one at Woburn Abbey:--“The dairy is a prominent and beautiful object. It is a sort of Chinese temple, decorated with a profusion of white marble, and coloured glasses; in the centre is a fountain, and round the walls hundreds of large dishes and bowls, of Chinese and Japan porcelain of every form and colour, filled with new milk and cream. The ‘consoles’ upon which these vessels stand, are perfect models for Chinese furniture. The windows are of ground-glass, with Chinese painting, which shews fantastically enough by the dim light.”
But the testimony of Mr. Willis as an American, and therefore accustomed to a life and sentiment more allied to our own, is still stronger. His account of his visit to Gordon Castle is a perfect example of all such scenes, and is an exact counterpart of the German Prince’s description of the English “vie de château,” in his third volume, p. 311.
“The immense iron gate, surmounted by the Gordon arms; the handsome and spacious stone lodges on either side; the canonically fat porter, in white stockings and grey livery, lifting his hat as he swung open the massive portal, all bespoke the entrance to a noble residence. The road within was edged with velvet sward, and rolled to the smoothness of a terrace walk; the winding avenue lengthened away before with trees of every variety of foliage; light carriages passed me, driven by gentlemen or ladies, bound on their afternoon airing; a groom led up and down two beautiful blood-horses, prancing along with side-saddles and morocco stirrups; and keepers with hounds and terriers, gentlemen on foot, idling along the walks, and servants in different liveries hurrying to and fro, betokened a scene of busy gaiety before me. I had hardly noted these various circumstances, before a sudden curve in the road brought the castle into view,--a vast stone pile with castellated wings; and in another moment I was at the door, where a dozen lounging and powdered menials were waiting on a party of ladies and gentlemen to their several carriages. It was the moment for the afternoon drive.
“The last phaeton dashed away, and my chaise advanced to the door. A handsome boy, in a kind of page’s dress, immediately came to the window, addressed me by name, and informed me that his Grace was out deer-shooting, but that my room was prepared, and he was ordered to wait on me. I followed him through a hall lined with statues, deers’ horns, and armour, and was ushered into a large chamber looking out on a park, extending with its lawns and woods to the edge of the horizon. A more lovely view never feasted human eye.
“‘Who is at the castle?’ I asked, as the boy busied himself in unstrapping my portmanteau. ‘O, a great many, sir’--he stopped in his occupation, and began counting on his fingers a long list of lords and ladies. ‘And how many sit down to dinner?’ ‘Above ninety, sir, besides the Duke and Duchess.’ ‘That will do;’ and off tripped my slender gentleman, with his laced jacket, giving the fire a terrible stir-up in his way out, and turning back to inform me that the dinner hour was seven precisely.
“It was a mild, bright afternoon, quite warm for the end of an English September, and with a fire in the room, and a soft sunshine pouring in at the windows, a seat at the open casement was far from disagreeable. I passed the time till the sun set, looking out on the park. Hill and valley lay between my eye and the horizon; sheep fed in picturesque flocks; and small fallow-deer grazed near them; the trees were planted, and the distant forest shaped by the hand of taste; and broad and beautiful as was the expanse taken in by the eye, it was evidently one princely possession. A mile from the castle-wall, the shaven sward extended in a carpet of velvet softness, as bright as emerald, studded by clumps of shrubbery, like flowers wrought elegantly in tapestry; and across it bounded occasionally a hare, and the pheasants fed undisturbed near the thickets, or a lady with flowing riding-dress and flaunting feather, dashed into sight upon her fleet blood-palfrey, and was lost the next moment in the woods, or a boy put his pony to its mettle up the ascent, or a gamekeeper idled into sight with his gun in the hollow of his arm, and his hounds at his heels. And all this little world of enjoyment and luxury and beauty lay in the hand of one man, and was created by his wealth in those northern wilds of Scotland, a day’s journey almost from the possession of another human being! I never realized so forcibly the splendid results of wealth and primogeniture.
“The sun set in a blaze of fire among the pointed firs crowning the hills; and by the occasional prance of a horse’s feet on the gravel, and the roll of rapid wheels, and now and then a gay laugh and many voices, the different parties were returning to the Castle. Soon after, a loud gong sounded through the galleries, the signal to dress, and I left my musing occupation unwillingly to make my toilet for an appearance in a formidable circle of titled aristocrats, not one of whom I had ever seen, the Duke himself a stranger to me, except through the kind letter of invitation lying on the table.
“I was sitting by the fire, imagining forms and faces for the different persons who had been named to me, when there was a knock at the door, and a tall, white-haired gentleman, of noble physiognomy, but singularly cordial address, entered with a broad red ribbon across his breast, and welcomed me most heartily to the castle. The gong sounded at the next moment, and in our way down, he named over his other guests, and prepared me, in a measure, for the introductions which followed. The drawing-room was crowded like a soirée. The Duchess, a tall and very handsome woman, with a smile of the most winning sweetness, received me at the door, and I was presented successively to every person present. Dinner was announced immediately, and the difficult question of precedence being sooner settled than I had ever seen it before in so large a party, we passed through files of servants to the dining-room. It was a large and very lofty hall, supported, at the ends, by marble columns, within which was stationed a band of music playing delightfully. The walls were lined with full-length family pictures, from old knights in armour to the modern dukes in kilt of the Gordon plaid; and on the sideboards stood services of gold plate, the most gorgeously massive, and the most beautiful in workmanship I have ever seen. There were, among the vases, several large coursing-cups, won by the Duke’s hounds, of exquisite shape and ornament.
“I fell into my place between a gentleman and a very beautiful woman, of perhaps, twenty-two, neither of whose names I remembered, though I had but just been introduced. The Duke probably anticipated as much, and as I took my seat, he called out to me, from the top of the table, that I had on my right, Lady ----, ‘the most agreeable woman in Scotland.’ It was unnecessary to say that she was the most lovely.
“I have been struck everywhere in England with the beauty of the higher classes, and as I looked around me upon the aristocratic company at the table, I thought I had never seen ‘Heaven’s image double-stamped as man, and noble,’ so unequivocally clear. * * * The band ceased playing when the ladies left the table; the gentlemen closed up, conversation assumed a merrier cast, coffee and liqueurs were brought in when the wines began to be circulated more slowly, and at eleven there was a general move to the drawing-room. Cards, tea, music, filled up the time till twelve, and then the ladies took their departure, and the gentlemen sat down to supper. I got to bed somewhere about two o’clock; and thus ended an evening, which I had anticipated as stiff and embarrassing, but which is marked in my tablets as one of the most social and kindly I have had the good fortune to record on my travels.
“I arose late in the morning, and found the large party already assembled about the breakfast table. I was struck on entering, with the different air of the room. The deep windows opening out upon the park, had the effect of sombre landscapes in oaken frames; the troops of liveried servants, the glitter of plate, the music, that had contributed to the splendour of the scene the night before, were gone. The Duke sat laughing at the head of the table, with a newspaper in his hand, dressed in a coarse shooting-jacket and coloured cravat; the Duchess was in a plain morning dress and cap of the simplest character; and the high-born women about the table, whom I had left glittering with jewels, and dressed in all the attractions of fashion, appeared in the simplest coiffure and a toilet of studied plainness. The ten or twelve noblemen present were engrossed with their letters or newspapers over tea and toast,--and in them, perhaps, the transformation was still greater. The soigné man of fashion of the night before, faultless in costume and distinguished in his appearance--in the full force of the term--was enveloped now in a coat of fustian, with a coarse waistcoat of plaid, a gingham cravat, and hob-nailed shoes, for shooting; and in place of the gay hilarity of the supper-table, wore a face of calm indifference, and eat his breakfast, and read the paper in a rarely broken silence. I wondered as I looked about me, what would be the impression of many people in my own country, could they look in upon that plain party, aware that it was composed of the proudest nobility and the highest fashion of England.
“Breakfast in England is a confidential and unceremonious hour, and servants are generally dispensed with. This is to me, I confess, an advantage it has over every other meal. I detest eating with twenty tall fellows standing opposite, whose business it is to watch me. The coffee and tea were on the table, with toast, muffins, oat-cakes, marmalade, jellies, fish, and all the paraphernalia of a Scotch breakfast; and on the sideboard stood cold meats for those who liked them, and they were expected to go to it and help themselves. Nothing could be more easy, unceremonious, and affable, than the whole tone of the meal. One after another rose and fell into groups in the windows, or walked up and down the long room, and, with one or two others, I joined the duke at the head of the table, who gave us some interesting particulars of the salmon-fisheries of the Spey. The privilege of fishing the river within his lands is bought of him at the pretty sum of eight thousand pounds a-year.
“The ladies went off unaccompanied to their walks in the park and other avocations; those bound for the covers, joined the gamekeepers, who were waiting with their dogs in the leash at the stables; and some paired off to the billiard-room. Still suffering from lameness, I declined all invitations to the shooting parties, who started across the park, with the dogs leaping about them in a frenzy of delight, and accepted the duke’s kind offer of a pony phaeton to drive down to the kennels. The duke’s breed, both of setters and hounds, is celebrated throughout the kingdom. They occupy a spacious building in the centre of a wood, a quadrangle enclosing a court, and large enough for a respectable farm-house. The chief huntsman and his family, and perhaps a gamekeeper or two, lodge on the premises, and the dogs are divided by palings across the court. I was rather startled to be introduced into the same enclosure with a dozen gigantic bloodhounds, as high as my breast, the keeper’s whip in my hand, the only defence. I was not easier for the man’s assertion, that, without it, they would ‘have the life out of me in a crack.’ They came around me very quietly, and one immense fellow, with a chest like a horse, and a head of the finest expression, stood up and laid his paws on my shoulders, with the deliberation of a friend about to favour me with some grave advice. One can scarce believe that these noble creatures have not reason like ourselves. Those slender, thoroughbred heads, large speaking eyes, and beautiful limbs and graceful action, should be gifted with more than mere animal instinct. The greyhounds were the beauties of the kennel, however; I never had seen such perfect creatures. The setters were in the next division, and really they were quite lovely. The rare tan and black dog of this race, with his silky floss hair, intelligent muzzle, good-humoured face, and caressing fondness, quite excited my admiration. There were thirty or forty of these, old and young, and a friend of the duke’s would as soon ask him for a church living, as for the present of one of them. The former would be by much the smaller favour. Then there were terriers of four or five breeds; of one family of which, long-haired, long-bodied, short-legged, and perfectly white little wretches, the keeper seemed particularly fond. * * * *
“The routine of Gordon Castle was what each one chose to make it. Between breakfast and lunch, the ladies were generally invisible, and the gentlemen rode or shot, or played billiards, or kept in their rooms. At two o’clock, a dish or two of hot game and a profusion of cold meats were set on the small tables in the dining-room, and every body came in for a kind of lounging half-meal, which occupied perhaps an hour. Thence all adjourned to the drawing-room, under the windows of which were drawn up carriages of all descriptions, with grooms, outriders, footmen, and saddle-horses for gentlemen and ladies. Parties were then made up for driving or riding, and from a pony-chaise to a phaeton-and-four, there was no class of vehicle which was not at your disposal. In ten minutes the carriages were usually all filled, and away they flew, some to the banks of the Spey, or the sea-side, some to the drives in the park, and with the delightful consciousness, that, speed where you would, the horizon scarce limited the possession of your host, and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental gates flying open at your approach, miles distant from the castle; the herds of red-deer trooping away from the sound of wheels in the silent park; the stately pheasants feeding tamely in the immense preserves; the hares scarcely troubling themselves to get out of the length of the whip; the stalking gamekeepers lifting their hats in the dark recesses of the forest,--there was something in this, perpetually reminding you of privileges; which, as a novelty, was far from disagreeable. I could not at the time bring myself to feel, what perhaps would be more poetical and republican, that a ride in the wild and unfenced forest of my own country would have been more to my taste.
“The second afternoon of my arrival, I took a seat in the carriage with Lord A., and we followed the duchess, who drove herself in a pony-chaise, to visit a school on the estate. Attached to a small gothic chapel, a five minutes’ drive from the castle, stood a building in the same style, appropriated to the instruction of the children of the duke’s tenantry. There were a hundred and thirty little creatures, from two years to five or six, and like all infant schools, in these days of improved education, it was an interesting and affecting sight. The last one I had been in, was at Athens, and though I missed here the dark eyes and Grecian faces of the Ægean, I saw health and beauty, of a kind which stirred up more images of home, and promised, perhaps, more for the future. * * * *
“The number at the dinner-table of Gordon Castle was seldom less than thirty; but the company was continually varied by departures and arrivals. No sensation was made by either one or the other. A travelling-carriage dashed up to the door, was disburdened of its load, and drove round to the stables, and the question was seldom asked, ‘Who is arrived?’ You are sure to see at dinner--and an addition of half a dozen to the party, made no perceptible difference in any thing. Leave-takings were managed in the same quiet way. Adieus were made to the duke and duchess, and to no one else, except he happened to encounter the parting guest upon the staircase, or were more than a common acquaintance. In short, in every way the gêne of life seemed weeded out, and if unhappiness or ennui found its way into the castle, it was introduced in the sufferer’s own bosom. For me, I gave myself up to enjoyment with an abandon I could not resist. With kindness and courtesy in every look, the luxuries and comforts of a regal establishment at my freest disposal; solitude when I pleased, company when I pleased,--the whole visible horizon fenced in for the enjoyment of a household, of which I was a temporary portion, and no enemy except time and the gout, I felt as if I had been spirited into some castle of felicity, and had not come by the royal mail-coach at all.”
This is one of the most perfect and graphic descriptions of English aristocratical life in the country, which was ever written. It is, indeed, on the highest and broadest scale, and is not to be equalled by every country gentleman; but in kind and in degree, the same character and spirit extend to all such life, and I have therefore taken the liberty of transcribing Mr. Willis’s sketch as completely as my limits would admit. Nothing, were a volume written on the subject, could bring it more palpably and correctly before the mind of the reader; and I think that if there be a perfection in human life, it is to be found, so far as all the goods of providence and the easy elegances of society can make it so, in the rural life of the English nobility and gentry.
IV. THE ROUTINE OF COUNTRY SPORTS
In my last chapter I took a view of the variety given to rural life by the annual visit to town: but if a gentleman have no desire so to vary his existence; if he love the country too well to leave it at all, most plentiful are the resources which offer themselves for pleasantly speeding on the time. If he be attached merely to field sports, not a moment of the whole year but he may fill up with his peculiar enjoyment. Racing, hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing, all offer themselves to his choice; and rural sports, as every thing else in English life, are so systematized; every thing belonging to them is so exactly regulated; all their necessary implements and accessories, are brought to such an admirable pitch of perfection by the advancement of the arts, that the pleasures of the sportsman are rendered complete, and are diffused over every portion of the year. Field sports have long ceased to be followed in that rude and promiscuous manner which they were when forests overrun the greater part of Europe, and hunting was almost necessary to existence. Parties of hunters no longer go out with dogs of various kinds--greyhounds, hounds, spaniels, and terriers, all in leash, as our ancestors frequently did, ready to slip them on any kind of game which might present itself, and with bows also ready to make more sure of their prey. We have no battues, such as are still to be found in some parts of the continent, and which used to be the common mode of hunting in the Highlands, when the beasts of a whole district were driven into a small space, and subjected to a promiscuous slaughter; a scene such as Taylor the water-poet describes himself as witnessing in the Braes of Mar; nor such as those perpetrated by the King of Naples in Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia, in which he killed 5 bears, 1820 boars, 1950 deer, 1145 does, 1625 roebucks, 1121 rabbits, 13 wolves, 17 badgers, 16,354 hares, 354 foxes, 15,350 pheasants, and 12,335 partridges. Such scenes are not to be witnessed in this country. Every field sport is here become a science. Hunting, coursing, shooting, each has its own season, its well-defined bounds, its peculiar horses, dogs, and weapons. Our horses and dogs, by long and anxious attention to the preservation of their specific characters, and to the improvement of their breed, are become pre-eminent, each in their own department. Our sporting nobility and gentry have not contented themselves with becoming thoroughly skilful in every thing relating to field diversions; but have many of them communicated their knowledge through the press to their countrymen, and have thus furnished our libraries with more practical information of this kind than ever was possessed by any one country at any one time; and contributed to make these pursuits as effective, elegant, and attractive as possible. It is not my province to go into the details of any particular sports; for them I refer the reader to Daniel, Beckford, Col. Thornton, Sir John Sebright, Col. Hawker, Tom Oakleigh, Nimrod, and the sporting magazines. My business is to shew how gentlemen may and do spend their time in the country. And in the mere catalogue of out-of-door sports, are there not racing, hunting, coursing, shooting, angling? Hawking once was an elegant addition to this list; but that has nearly fallen into disuse in this country, and may be said to exist only in the practice of Sir John Sebright, and the grand falconer of England, the Duke of St. Albans. Archery too, once the great boast of our forests, and the constant attendant on the hunt, has, as a field exercise, followed hawking. It has of late years been revived and practised by the gentry as a graceful amusement, and an occasion for assembling together at certain periods in the country; but as an adjunct of the field sports it is past for ever. Racing, every one knows, is a matter of intense interest with a great portion of the nobility, gentry, and others; and those who delight in it, know where to find Newmarket, Epsom, Ascot Heath, Doncaster, and other places, often to their cost: almost every county and considerable town, has its course and annual races. These, however, to the country gentleman, unless he be one whose great and costly passion is for breeding and betting on race-horses, are but occasional excitements: the rest run their round of seasons as regularly as the seasons themselves; and place a lover of field sports in the country at any point of the year, and one or more of them are ready for his enjoyment. Is it winter? He has choice of all, except it be angling. Hunting, coursing, shooting, are all in their full season. Hunting, as I have said, is more confined in its range than it was anciently; but it is more regular, less fatiguing, less savage in its character, more complete in its practice and appointments. There is now neither the boar, the bear, nor the wolf, to try the courage of our youth, and stag and buck hunting may be considered as rare and almost local amusements,--but we may quote the words of a great authority as to the position which hunting occupies amongst the rural sports of England. “There is certainly no country in the world, where the sport of hunting on horseback is carried to such a height as in Great Britain at the present day, and where the pleasures of a fox-chase are so well understood, and conducted on such purely scientific principles. It is considered the beau idéal of hunting by those who pursue it. There can be no doubt, that it is infinitely superior to stag-hunting, for the real sportsman can only enjoy that chase, when the deer is sought for, and found like other game which are pursued by hounds. In the case of finding an out-lying fallow-deer, which is unharboured in this manner, great sport is frequently afforded; but this is rarely to be met with in Great Britain: so that fox-hunting is now the chief amusement of the true British sportsman: and a noble one it is--the artifices and dexterity employed by this lively, crafty animal, to avoid the dogs, are worthy of our admiration, as he exhibits more devices for self-preservation than any other beast of the chase. In many parts of this and the sister island, hare-hunting is much followed, but fox-hunters consider it as a sport only fit for women and old men,--but, although it is less arduous than that of the fox-chase, there are charms attached to it which compensate for the hard riding of the other.”
I do not enter here into the question of cruelty in this sport, nor into the other question of injury resulting from it to crops and fences, on which grounds many so strongly object to hunting, and on the former ground, indeed, to all field sports. Lord Byron, for instance, thought hunting a barbarous amusement, fit only for a barbarous country. It is not my intention to undertake the defence of this old English sport from the standing charge against it, we here have only to deal with it as a feature of rural life; and though one cannot say much in praise of its humanity, it cannot be denied that it is a pursuit of a vigorous and exciting character. A fine field of hunters in their scarlet coats, rushing over forest, heath, fence or stream, on noble steeds, and with a pack of beautiful dogs in full cry, is a very picturesque and animating spectacle.
Through the winter, then, up to the very approach of spring, hunting offers whatever charms it possesses; pheasant, woodcock and snipe shooting, in the woods and by the streams, are in all their glory. It is the time for pursuing all manner of wild fowl, in fens and along the sea-coast; and if any one would know what are the eager and adventurous pleasures of that pursuit, let him join some old fowler for a week amongst the reeds of Cambridge, Huntingdon, or Lincolnshire,--now laying his traps and springes, now crouching amongst the green masses of flags and other water plants, or crawling on hands and knees for a shot at teal, widgeon, or wild duck; now visiting the decoys, or shooting right and left amongst the rising and contorting snipes. Or let him read Col. Hawker’s delightful description of swivel shooting on the coasts, the mud-launchers and followers of the sea flocks by night. Those are sports which require a spice of enthusiasm and love of adventure far above the pitch of the ordinary sportsman.
When spring arrives, and warns the shooter to give rest to the creatures of his pursuit, that they may pair, produce, and rear their broods; as he lays down the gun, he can take up the angle. Many a keen and devoted old sportsman, however, never knows when to lay down the gun. Though he will no longer fire at game, he likes through the spring and summer months to carry his gun on his arm through the woods, to knock down what he calls vermin,--stoats, weazels, polecats, jays, magpies, hawks, owls; all those creatures that destroy game, or their young broods, or suck their eggs. He is fond of spying out the nests of partridges and pheasants, and from time to time marking their progress. It is a grand anticipative pleasure to him when, passing along the furrow of the standing corn, his old pointer, or favourite spaniel starts the young birds just able to take the wing, and he counts them over with a silent exultation. He is fond of seeing to the training of his young dogs, of selecting fresh ones, of putting his fowling-pieces and all his shooting gear in order. There are some old sportsmen of my acquaintance, who, during what they call this idle time, have made collections of curious birds and small animals which might furnish some facts to natural history. An old uncle of mine in Derbyshire, who has shot away a fine estate, I scarcely ever recollect to have seen out of doors without his gun. I saw him lately, when in that county, a feeble, worn-out old man, just able to totter about, but still with the gun on his arm. For those, however, who can find it in their hearts to lay aside the gun at the prescribed time, and yet long for rural sports, what can so delightfully fill up the spring and summer as the fishing-rod? There is no rural art, except that of shooting, for which modern science and invention have done so much as angling. Since Izaak Walton gave such an impetus to this taste by his delicious old book, it has gradually assumed a new and fascinating character. A host of contrivances have been expended on fishing tackle. What splendid rods for simple angling, trolling, or fly-fishing, are now offered to the admiring eyes of the amateur! what a multitude of apparatus of one kind or other! what silver fish and endless artificial flies Angling has become widened and exalted in its sphere with the general expansion of knowledge and the improvement of taste. It has associated itself with the pleasures and refinements of literature and poetry. All those charms which worthy Izaak threw round it, have continued to cling to it, and others have grown up around them. The love of nature, the love of travel have intertwined themselves with the love of angling. Angling has thence become, as it were, a new and more attractive pursuit--a matter of taste and science as well as of health and pleasure. It is found that it may not only be followed by the tourist without diverting him from his primal objects, but that it adds most essentially to the delights of a summer excursion. Since Wordsworth and John Wilson set up their “Angler’s Tent” on the banks of Wast-Water, “at the head of that wild and solitary lake, which they had reached by the mountain-path that passes Barn-Moor-Tarn from Eskdale,” making an angling excursion of seven days amongst the mountains of Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cumberland, having “their tent, large panniers filled with its furniture, provisions, etc., loaded upon horses, which, while the anglers, who separated every morning, pursued each his own sport up the torrents, were carried over the mountains to the appointed place, by some lake or stream, where they were to meet again in the evening;” and
that solitary trade, Mid rural peace in peacefulness pursued, Through rocky glen, wild moor, and hanging wood, White flowering meadow, and romantic glade;
since Sir Humphry Davy went angling and philosophising in the mountain tarns, and along the trout and salmon streams not only of Scotland and Ireland, but of France and Switzerland, the enthusiasm for angling has grown into a grand and expansive passion. We have our “Anglers in Wales,” our “Anglers in Ireland;” Stephen Oliver has flourished his lines over the streams of the north, Jesse over the gentle and majestic Thames. The only wonder is, that, as our countrymen walk to and fro through all known regions of the earth, we do not hear of anglers in the Danube--the Ister--the Indus--the Joliba,--of trolling in La Plata, and fly-fishing in South Africa and Australia. All that will come in its own good time: meanwhile let us remind our country friends of the further blessings which await them, even should all the rapid streams of our mountain rivers and rivulets, Loch Leven trout, Loch Fine herrings, and salmon pulled flouncing from the crystal waters of the Teith or the Shannon, to be crimped and grilled by most delicious art, satiate them before the summer is over. The 12th of August approaches! the gun is roused from its slumber--the dogs are howling in ecstasy on their release from the kennel--the heather is burst into all its crimson splendour on the moors and the mountains, and grouse-shooting is at hand once more!
That sentence is enough to make a sportsman start to his feet if it were but whispered to him in his deepest after-dinner doze. In “The Book of the Seasons” I asserted that sportsmen felt the animating influence of nature and its beauty in their pursuits. For that passage many have been the gentle lectures of the tender-hearted; but that it was a true passage has been shewn by the thanks which many sportsmen have given me for that simple vindication, and by the repeated quotation of the whole article in their books. That they do feel it, is plainly shewn in many papers of the sporting magazines; but nowhere more vividly than in “The Oakleigh Shooting Code.” If the unction with which the paper on grouse-shooting is written in that book were more diffused through works of the like nature, vain would be all arguments to check the love of shooting. The feeling on this subject has been evidenced by the avidity with which that part of the book has been quoted far and wide. But the spirit of the picturesque is not more prominent in these chapters than in the description of Oakleigh Hall, and of the “wide-ranging treeless view of the smooth-turfed limestone hills, the white rocks breaking out in patches, so characteristic of Derbyshire.”
But we are pausing on our way to the Highlands; and surely nothing can be so inspiring and exciting in the whole circle of sporting scenes as a trip to the moors and mountains of the north, in the height of summer--in the beauty of summer weather, and in the full beauty of the scenery itself. If the season is fine--the roads are dry--the walks are dry--the bogs are become, many of them, passable, the heather is in full bloom, the fresh air of the mountains, or the waters in sailing thither, the rapid changes of scene, the novel aspects of life and nature in progressing onward, by the carriage, the railway, the steamer, with all their varying groups of tourists and pleasure-seekers, of men of business and men of idleness, are full of enjoyment. To the man from the rich monotonous Lowlands, from the large town, from the heart of the metropolis perhaps, from the weary yoke of business, public or private, of law, of college study, of parliament and committees, what can be more penetrating and delicious than the breathing of the fresh buoyant air, the pleasant flitting of the breeze, the dash of sunny waters, the aspect of mountains and moors in all their shadow and gloom, or in their brightness as they rise in their clear still beauty into the azure heavens, or bask broad and brown in the noon-sun? There go the happy sportsmen; seated on the deck of some fast-sailing steamer, with human groups around them; they are fast approaching the “land of the mountain and the flood.” They already seem to tread the elastic turf, to smell the heather bloom, and the peat fire of the Highland hut; to climb the moory hill, to hear the thunder of the linn, or pace the pebbly shore of the birch-skirted lake. They have left dull scenes or dry studies behind, and a volume of Walter Scott’s novels is in their hands, living with all the character and traditions of the mountain-land before them. Well then, is it not a blessed circumstance that our poets and romancers have kindled the spirit of these things in the heart of our countrymen, that such places lie within our own island, and that science has so quickened our transit to them? Let us just note a few of the symptoms which shew us that this memorable 12th of August is at hand. In the market towns you see the country sportsman hastening along the streets, paying quick visits to his gunsmith, ammunition dealer, tailor, draper, etc. He is getting all his requisites together. His dogs are at his heels. Then you see him already invested in his jacket and straw hat, driving off in his gig, phaeton, or other carriage, with keeper or companion, and perhaps a couple of dogs stowed away with him. You see the keeper and the dog-cart on their way too. As you get northward these signs thicken. In large towns, as Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, you see keeper-like looking men, with pointers and setters for sale tied up to some palisade, or lamp-post, at the corner of a street. But woe to those who have to purchase dogs under such circumstances. It is ten to one but they are grievously gulled; or if they should chance to stumble upon a tolerable dog, there is not time for that mutual knowledge to grow up which should exist between the sportsman and his companion of the field. He that sees beforehand his trip to the hills, should beforehand have all in readiness: he who on a summer ramble is smitten with a sudden desire of grouse-shooting, must however, do the best he can.
When you pass into Scotland, the signals of the time grow more conspicuous. In the newspapers, you see everywhere advertisements of Highland tracts to be let as shooting-grounds. When you get into the Highlands themselves, you find in all the inns maps of the neighbouring estates, divided into shooting-grounds for letting. It is very probable that the income derived from this source by the Highland proprietors frequently far exceeds the rental of the same estates for the grazing of sheep and cattle. The waters and the heaths seem to be the most profitable property of a great part of the Highlands. Almost every stream and loch is carefully preserved and let as a trout or salmon fishery, many of them for enormous sums; and so far is this carried, that sportsmen who are not inclined to pay eighty or a hundred pounds a-year for a shooting ground, complain that Ireland is the only country now for shooting in any degree of freedom. Sometimes several gentlemen join at a shooting ground; and it is a picturesque sight to see them, and their dogs and keepers, drawing towards their particular locations as the day approaches.
On the 10th of August, 1836, we sailed up the Grand Caledonian Canal from Fort William to Inverness in the steam-packet with a large party of these gentlemen. Of their number, principally military men--
Captains, and colonels, and men at arms;
some notion may be formed from the fact that we had on board upwards of seventy dogs, mostly beautiful setters; a perfect pyramid of gun-cases was piled on the deck, and dog-carts and keepers completed the scene.
One of the singular features of English life at the present moment is the swarming of summer tourists in all interesting quarters. In these Highland regions the consequent effect is often truly ludicrous. Into one miserable village, or one poor solitary inn, pour, day after day, the summer through, from seventy to a hundred people. The impossibility of such a place accommodating such a company is the first thing which strikes every one. The moment, therefore, that the vessel touches the quay, out rushes the whole throng, and a race commences to the house or village to secure beds for the night. Such is the impetus of the rush that the first arrivers are frequently driven by the “pressure from without” up the stairs to the very roof. A scene of the most laughable confusion is exhibited. All are clamouring for beds; nobody can be heard or attended to; and generally all who can, burst into rooms which are not locked up, and take forcible possession. Such scenes, any one who has gone up this canal, or to the Western Isles must have seen,--at Oban, at Tobermory, and at Inverness, which last place boasts three inns, and where, on our arrival with a hundred fellow-passengers, we found three hundred others had just landed from a London steamer! Our sportsmen, however, who were well aware of the statistics of the north, had written beforehand, and secured bed-rooms at all the sleeping-places, which were duly locked up against their arrival, and they sate very composedly to witness the race of worse-informed mortals.
On this occasion a very characteristic contrast was presented between the sportsmen and a number of students who were on board at the time. These students, many of whom spend the college recess in pedestrianizing through the Highlands, have a character almost as peculiar to themselves as the German Bürschen. In twos and threes, with their knapsacks on their backs, they may be seen rambling on, wherever there is fine scenery or spots of note to be visited. They step on board a packet at one place, and go off at another, steering away into the hills; ready to take up their quarters at such abode as may offer--the road-side inn or the smoky hut of the Gael. Wherever you see them, they are all curiosity and enthusiasm; all on fire with the sublime and beautiful--athirst for knowledge; historical, antiquarian, traditionary, botanical, geological--anything in the shape of knowledge. They are the first to climb the hill, to reach the waterfall, to crowd round every spot of tragic interest; everywhere they go agog with imagination, and everywhere they lament that they do not feel adequately, the power, and beauty, and grandeur of the objects of their attention. Such a group we had on board. On the other hand, the sportsmen had but one object, which absorbed all their interests and faculties. They cared not at that moment for the Fall of Foyers, saw scarcely the splendid mountains and glens around. Their souls were in the brown hills of their shooting grounds--the fever of the 12th of August was upon them. They kept together, talking of guns, dogs, grouse, roebucks; all their conversation was larded and illustrated with the phraseology of their own favourite pursuit. They were, many of them, clad in a close jacket and trousers of shepherd’s tartan, with their telescope slung at their backs. They seemed to look on the students as so many hair-brained and romantic striplings--the students on them, as so many creatures of the chase. As we proceeded, the fiery Nimrods were, one after another, put out at the opening of beautiful glens, and at the foot of wild mountains where their huts lay, and the vessel received a considerable accession of silence by the departure of their keepers, who, having found a Highland piper on board, got up a dance in the steerage cabin, and kept that end of the vessel pretty well alive both day and night. Having thus brought them to their grounds, there can be no better narrator of what passes there than Thomas Oakleigh.
“On the 11th of August the sportsman arrives at his shooting quarters; probably some isolated tavern, ‘old as the hills,’--if such a house as the grouse-shooter occasionally locates himself in, in the northern or midland counties of England, or in Scotland, where oatcake and peat supply the place of bread and fuel, can be called a tavern. The place, humble in character, has been the immemorial resort of sportsmen in August, although during the rest of the year, sometimes many months elapse ere a customer, save some itinerant salesman calling for his mug of beer, ‘darkens the door.’ * * * At the house will be found all the keepers, and tenters, and poachers, and young men from the country round, assembled, amounting in the whole to not more than some eight or ten persons, all knowing ones, each anxious to display his knowledge of the number and locality of the broods, but each differing, wide as the poles asunder, in his statement, except on four points, in which all are agreed, viz.--That the hatching season has been finer than was ever known before! That the broods are larger and more numerous than were ever counted before! That the birds are heavier and stronger than were ever seen before! and that they will, on the following day, lie better than they ever did on any previous opening day in the recollection of the oldest person present! Each successive season being, in their idea, more propitious than its precursor! Anxiety and expectation are now arrived at a climax. At night, the blithe and jocund peasantry mingle with their superiors: their pursuits are for once something akin. In the field-sports they can sympathize together: the peasant and the peer associate; the plough-boy and the squire talk familiarly together; it is the privilege of the former, his prescriptive right. The circling cup, and lighthearted and hilarious laugh promiscuously go round! This night distinctions are unknown--and would that it were oftener so! * * * Long before midnight, all who can obtain beds retire, though not an eye is drowsy. The retainers lie on sofas, elbow-chairs, or whatever else presents itself; but sleep is almost a stranger during the night. The soldier before battle, is not more anxious as to the result of the morrow, than is the sportsman on the night of the 11th of August! Morning dawns, ‘and heavily with mists comes on the day.’ The occupiers of benches and chairs are first on the alert: the landlady is called; breakfast is prepared--the dogs are looked at; all is tumult, noise, and confusion. Reckless must he be that can rest longer in bed--‘the cootie moor-cocks crowsely crow;’ breakfast is hastily dispatched--next is heard the howling and yelping of dogs, the cracking of whips, the snapping of locks, the charging, and flashing, and firing of guns, and every other note of preparation. The march is sounded, and away they wind for the heather and hills, true peep-o’-day boys, far, far from the busy, money-getting world, to breathe empyreal air; to enjoy a sport that should be monopolized by princes--if, indeed, princes could be found deserving of such a monopoly! Every person the shooter meets with seems this day to have thrown off his sordid cloak, and to be divested of those meaner passions which render life miserable: all are now warm, open-hearted, frank, sincere, and obliging. The sportsman’s shooting-dress is a sibboleth, which introduces him alike to his superiors, to his fellows, and his inferiors: an acquaintance is formed at first sight: there are no distant looks, no coldness, no outpouring of arrogance, or avarice, or pride; but a happy rivalry exists, to eclipse each other in the number and size of birds killed--the chief object of emulation being to kill the finest old cock. Let us be understood to express that this happy state of things subsists only so long as the shooter’s peregrinations are circumscribed by the limits of his own or friend’s manor. The moment he becomes a borderer, a very different reception awaits him! To the sportsman in training, full of health and strength, and well appointed, it is of little consequence whether there be game or not. The inspiriting character of the sport, and the wild beauty of the scenery, so different from what he is elsewhere in the habit of contemplating, hold out a charm that dispels fatigue! He feels not the drudgery. To him the hills are lovely in every aspect; whether beneath a hot, autumnal sun, with not a cloud to intercept the torrid beam, or beneath the dark canopy of thunder-clouds; whether in the frosty morn or in the dewy eve--whether, when through the clear atmosphere he surveys, as it were in a map, the countries that lie stretched around and beneath him, or when he wanders darkly on, amidst eternal mists that roll continuously past him--still a charm pervades the hills. The sun shines brighter, and the storm rages more furiously than in the valleys! The very sterility pleases: and to him who has been brought thither by the rapid means of travelling now adopted, from some bustling mart of trade or vortex of fashion, the novelty of loneliness is agreeably exciting! The stillness that reigns around is as wonderful to him as the solidity of land to the stranded sailor! Scarcely is there a change of scene--stillness and solitude, hill and ravine, sky and heather, everywhere magnificent, the outline everywhere bold, and where the view terminates amid rocks and crags, frequently sublime! At noonday, near some rocky summit, perchance on the shepherd’s stone, the shooter seats himself, and shares his last sandwich with his panting dogs. We will suppose him to be on the boundary of the muir-lands: on one hand he sees an unbounded expanse of heathery hills, by no means monotonous if he will look upon them with the eye of a painter, for there is every shade of yellow, green, brown, and purple,--the last is the prevailing colour at this season, the heather being in bloom: nor are the hills monotonous, if he looks at them with the eye of a sportsman, for by this time (we suppose him to have been shooting all the morning) he will have performed many feats, or at any rate will have met with several adventures, and the ground before him is the field of his fame. He now looks with interest on many a rock, and cliff, and hill, which lately appeared but as one of so many ‘crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurled!’ He contemplates the site of his achievements, as a general surveys a field of battle during an interval of strife; the experience of the morning has taught him a lesson, and he plans a fresh campaign for the afternoon, or the morrow, or probably the next season, should the same hills be again destined to be the scene of his exploits. The shooter looks down on the other hand from his rocky summit, and, in the bright relief, through the white rents in the clouds, sees the far-off meadows and hamlets, the woods, the rivers, and the lake. He rises, and renews his task. The invigorating influence of the bracing wind on the heights, lends the sportsman additional strength--he puts forth every effort, every nerve is strained--he feels an artificial glow after nature is exhausted, and returns to the cot where he had previously spent a sleepless night, to enjoy his glass of grog, and such a snooze as the citizen never knew!”
This is a graphic and true picture of the outset of grouse-shooting; but it is but one amongst many of the exciting situations and picturesque positions which this fine sport presents. There is a wide difference, too, between the grouse-shooting of the north of England and of the Highlands. On the English moors, the majority of shooters who assemble there, are the friends or acquaintances of the proprietors, or of their friends and acquaintances, who have received invitations, or procured the favour to shoot for a day or two at the opening of the season. The outbreak on the morning of the 12th, is therefore proportionably multitudinous and bustling. The throng of the people on the preceding evening, crowded into the inns and cottages in the neighbourhood where the best shooting lies, is often amazing. Many sportsmen, who on other occasions would think scorn to enter such a hovel, or jostle in such a crowd, may be seen waiting in patient endurance, in a situation in which a beggar would not envy them. Others will be seen stretched on their cloaks on the floor, while their dogs are occupying their beds, or the soft bottom of a huge old chair; their great anxiety being, to have their dogs fresh and able for the coming day. At the faintest peep of dawn, which is about three o’clock at that season, loud is the sound of guns on all sides, going off farther and farther in the distance. At noon, on some picturesque and breezy hill, you may see a large party congregated to luncheon, where provisions and drink have been conveyed by appointment. There, ten or a dozen sportsmen seated on the ground, all warm in body and mind--their dogs watching eagerly for their share of the feast, which is thrown them with liberal hand--their guns reared against some rock--their game thrown picturesquely on the moorland turf--Flibbertigibbets, with their asses who have brought up the baskets of provisions, the keg of beer, and bottles of porter, are running about and acting the waiters in a style of genuine originality; while keepers and markers are at once lunching and keeping an eye on the dogs, lest they are too troublesome to their masters; who are all talking together with inconceivable ardour of their individual achievements. The situation, the mixture of men and animals, of personages and costumes, all go to make up a striking picture. On the English moorlands, however, grouse-shooting is but as it were a brilliant and passing flash. As the enjoyment of the sport is generally a matter of grace and friendship, and is sought by numbers who can only devote to the excursion, at the best, a few days, it is a scene of animation and havoc for a week or ten days, and then its glory is over. During this time, however, the keepers on many estates make a rich harvest, by presents from gentlemen for attendance and guidance to the best haunts of the game--by the loan of dogs at good interest to such as have not come well provided, or have met with accidents, or whose dogs, as is sometimes the case, unused to this kind of sport and scenery, have bolted and disappeared at the first general discharge of guns; and by furnishing, sub rosâ, grouse at a guinea a brace to certain luckless braggadocios, who have boastingly promised to various friends at home plenty of game from the moors; and have not been able to ruffle a single feather! In the Highlands the scene is different. The grounds are more generally rented by individuals or parties; they are wider and wilder, and both from their extent and distance from the populous districts of England are more thinly scattered with shooters. There, some of the sportsmen take their families to their cottages on their shooting-ground, and on which they have probably bestowed some trouble and expense, to render them sufficiently comfortable and convenient for a few months’ occasional summer sojourn, and what in nature can afford a more delicious change from the ordinary course and place of life? Up far amongst the wild mountains and moorlands, amid every fresh and magnificent object--amid fairyland glens of birch and hills of pine, the sight of crystal, rapid, sunny streams, and the sound of waterfalls, in the lands of strange and startling traditions. To intelligent children full of the enjoyment of life and healthful curiosity, in such scenery every thing is wonderful and delightful; to ladies of taste, such a life for a brief season must be equally pleasant. There are some ladies, indeed, of the highest rank, who are in the regular habit of spending a certain portion of every year in the Highlands; and one in particular, of ducal rank, who at that season rambles far and wide amongst the cottages and the beautiful scenery of her native hills, telling her daughters, that if they there indulge in English luxuries, they must prepare them themselves,--such is the simplicity of her mountain residence and establishment; and they take their Cook’s Oracle, and wonderfully enjoy the change. The language and costume of the inhabitants are those of a foreign country; every object has its novelty, and the little elegancies of books, music, and furniture, which can be conveyed to such an abode, strike all the more from the stern nature without. Then there is the finest fishing in the lochs and mountain-streams, the most delightful sailing in many places, and in the woods there are the shy roebuck and sometimes the red-deer to be pursued. The grouse and black-cock shooting season is, therefore, longer and steadier there; but the full perfection of its enjoyment is to be found, perhaps, after all, only by the happy mortal who makes one of the select party collected at one of the great Highland houses of the aristocracy, where the best shooting, every requisite of horses, dogs, attendants, etc., are furnished--and where, after the fatigues of the day, the sportsman returns to his own clean room, to an excellent dinner, music, and refined society. But, amid all these seductions, nothing will make the thorough English sportsman forget the first of September. Back he comes, and enters on that regular succession of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, and wild-fowl shooting, of hunting and coursing, which diversify and fill up the autumn and winter of English rural life. To these pleasures then we leave him.
A WORD WITH THE TOO SENSITIVE.
I have not attempted to defend the hunter, the courser, or even the shooter, in the preceding chapter, from the charge of cruelty which is perpetually directed against them--they are a sturdy, and now a very intelligent people; often numbering amongst them many of our principal senators, authors, and men of taste, and very capable of vindicating themselves; but I must enact the shield-bearer for a moment, for that very worthy and much-abused old man, Izaak Walton, and the craft which he has made so fashionable. Spite even of Lord Byron’s jingle about the hook and gullet, and a stout fish to pull it, they may say what they will of the old man’s cruelty and inconsistency--the death of a worm, a frog, or a fish, is the height of his infliction, and what is that to the ten thousand deaths of cattle, sheep, lambs, fish, and fowl of all kinds, that are daily perpetrated for the sustenance of these same squeamish cavillers! They remind me of a delicate lady, at whose house I was one day, and on passing the kitchen door at ten in the morning, saw a turkey suspended by its heels, and bleeding from its bill, drop by drop. Supposing it was just in its last struggles from a recent death-wound, I passed on, and found the lady lying on her sofa overwhelmed in tears over a most touching story. I was charmed with her sensibility; and the very delightful conversation which I held with her, only heightened my opinion of the goodness of her heart. On accidentally passing by the same kitchen door in the afternoon, six hours afterwards, I beheld, to my astonishment, the same turkey suspended from the same nail, still bleeding, drop by drop, and still giving an occasional flutter with its wings! Hastening to the kitchen, I inquired of the cook, if she knew that the turkey was not dead. “O yes, sir,” she replied, “it won’t be dead, may-happen, these two hours. We always kill turkeys that way, it so improves their colour; they have a vein opened under the tongue, and only bleed a drop at a time!” “And does your mistress know of this your mode of killing turkeys?” “O yes, bless you sir, it’s our regular way; missis often sees ’em as she goes to the gardens--and she says sometimes, ‘Poor things! I don’t like to see ’em, Betty; I wish you would hang them where I should not see ’em!’” I was sick! I was dizzy! It was the hour of dinner, but I walked quietly away,
And ne’er repassed that bloody threshold more!
I say, what is Izaak Walton’s cruelty to this, and to many another such perpetration on the part of the tender and sentimental? What is it to the grinding and oppression of the poor that is every day going on in society,--to the driving of wheels and the urging of steam-engines, matched against whose iron power thousands daily waste their vital energies? What is it to the laying on of burdens of expense and trouble by the exactions of law, of divinity, of custom,--burdens grievous to be borne, and which they who impose them, will not so much as touch with one of their little fingers?
They sit at home and turn an easy wheel, And set sharp racks to work to pinch and peel.--John Keats.
These things are done and suffered by human beings, and then go the very doers of these things, and cry out mightily against the angler for pricking the gristle of a fish’s mouth!
I do not mean to advocate cruelty--far from it! I would have all men as gentle and humane as possible; nor do I argue that because the world is full of cruelty, it is any reason that more cruelty should be tolerated: but I mean to say, that it is a reason why there should not be so much permission to the greater evils, and so much clamour against the less. Is there more suffering caused by angling than by taking fishes by the net? Not a thousandth,--not a ten thousandth part! Where one fish is taken with a hook, it may be safely said that a thousand are taken with the net: for daily are the seas, lakes, and rivers swept with nets; and cod, haddock, halibut, salmon, crabs, lobsters, and every species of fish that supplies our markets, are gathered in thousands and ten thousands--to say nothing of herrings and pilchards by millions. Over these there is no lamentation; and yet their sufferings are as great--for the suffering does not consist so much in the momentary puncture of a hook, as in the dying for lack of their native element. Then go these tender-hearted creatures and feast upon turtles that have come long voyages nailed to the decks of ships in living agonies; upon crabs, lobsters, prawns, and shrimps, that have been scalded to death; and thrust oysters alive into fires; and fry living eels in pans, and curse poor anglers before their gods for cruel monsters, and bless their own souls for pity and goodness, forgetting all the fish-torments they have inflicted!
“Ay, but”--they turn round upon you suddenly with what they deem a decisive and unanswerable argument--“Ay, but they cannot approve of making the miseries of sentient creatures a pleasure.” What! is there no pleasure in feasting upon crabs that have been scalded, and eels that have been fried alive? In sucking the juices of an oyster, that has gaped in fiery agony between the bars of your kitchen grate? But the whole argument is a sophism and a fallacy. Nobody does seek a pleasure, or make an amusement of the misery of a living creature. The pleasure is in the pursuit of an object, and the art and activity by which a wild creature is captured, and in all those concomitants of pleasant scenery and pleasant seasons that enter into the enjoyment of rural sports;--the suffering is only the casual adjunct, which you would spare to your victim if you could, and which any humane man will make as small as possible. And over what, after all, do these very sensitive persons lament? Over the momentary pang of a creature, which forms but one atom in a living series, every individual of which is both pursuing and pursued, is preying, or is preyed upon. The fish is eagerly pursuing the fly, one fish is pursuing the other, and so it is through the whole chain of living things; and this is the order and system established by the very centre and principle of love, by the beneficent Creator of all life. The too sensitively humane, will again exclaim--“Yes, this is right in the inferior animals: it is their nature, and they only follow the impulse which their Maker has given them.” True; but what is right in them, is equally right in man;--the argument applies with double force in his case. For, is there no such impulse implanted in him? Let every sportsman answer it; let the history of the world answer it; let the heart of every nine-tenths of the human race answer it. Yes, the very fact that we do pursue such sports, and enjoy them, is an irrefragable answer. The principle of chase and taking of prey, which is impressed on almost all living things, from the minutest insect to the lion of the African desert, is impressed with double force on man. By the strong dictates of our nature, by the very words of the Holy Scriptures, every creature is given us for food; our dominion over them, is made absolute. The amiable Cowper asserted that dogs would not pursue game, if they were not taught to do so. We admit the excellent nature of the man, but every day proves that, in this instance, he was talking beyond his knowledge. Every one who knows anything of dogs, knows, that if you bring them up in a town, and keep them away from the habits of their own class to their full growth, the moment they get into the country they will pursue each their peculiar game, with the utmost avidity, and after their own manner. There is then, unquestionably, an instinctive propensity in one animal to prey upon another--in man pre-eminently so--and it is not the work of wisdom to quench this tendency, but to follow it with all possible gentleness and humanity.
V. SCIENTIFIC FARMING
Res rustica, sine dubitatione, proxima, et quasi consanguinea Sapientiæ est.
Columella De Re Rustica.
Oh, blessed, who drinks the bliss that Hymen yields, And plucks life’s roses in his quiet fields.--Ebenezer Elliot.
There may be a difference of opinion as to the strict utility or wisdom of the pursuits noticed in the last chapter;--of the excellence and rationality of those which form the subject of this, there can be none. Nothing can be more consonant to nature, nothing more delightful, nothing more beneficial to the country, or more worthy of any man, than the Georgical occupations which form so prominent a feature in the rural life of England. Whether a country gentleman seek profit or pleasure in them, he can, at any time, find them. While he is increasing the value of his estate, he is in the midst of health, peace, and a series of operations which have now become purely scientific, and have called in to their accomplishment various other sciences and arts. In every age of the world agricultural pursuits have formed the delight of the greatest nations and the noblest men. Some of the most illustrious kings and prophets of Israel were taken from the fold or the plough. David and Elisha are great names in the history of rural affairs. King Uzziah “built towers in the desert, and digged many wells, for he had much cattle both in the low country and in the plains; husbandmen also, and vinedressers in the mountains, and in Carmel, for he loved husbandry.” How delightful are the associations which the literature of Greece and Rome has thrown around country affairs! Homer, Hesiod, and Theocritus--how elysian are the glimpses they give us into rural life! how simple, how peaceful, how picturesque! Laertes, that venerable old monarch, pruning his vines, and fetching young stocks from the woods for his fences. Eumeus, at his rustic lodge, entertaining his prince and his king. Hesiod himself, wandering at the feet of Helicon, less impressed with the sublimity of the poet than with the spirit of the husbandman! He shews us the very infancy of agriculture:
Forget not when you sow the grain, to mind That a boy follows with a rake behind; And strictly charge him, as you drive, with care The seeds to cover, and the birds to scare.
Works and Days, B. 2.
The harrow, an implement well known to King David, for he put the subjected Ammonites under it, was unknown then in Greece! They raked in the grain. That was but the second stage in the progress of tillage; the first undoubtedly being that in which their plough was a pointed stick, and their harrow a bush; as the most ancient drawing of hay-forks shews that they were forked sticks cut from the thicket. But to leave those primitive times of Greece,--there is no nation that at once acquired so vast a military renown and yet retained such a passion for the peaceful pursuits of agriculture as Rome. Nothing is so soon familiarized to the mind of the school-boy as the fact of their generals, dictators, and emperors tilling their own lands--leaving them with reluctance for state honours, and retiring to them with gladness to end their days in meditative tranquillity. Cicero tells us that couriers were first introduced by them, to run between the capitol and their farms, that they themselves might leave them only on most important occasions. Almost every one of their writers on rural affairs, whose works have reached us, were men of distinction in the state. Varro was consul; Cato, the most remarkable man of his time, filled the highest offices; Columella and Palladius were men of note; and Pliny, a patrician officer, was governor of Spain. But what is more remarkable even is, that such men as Virgil, Horace, and Cicero, men of imaginative genius, and so involved in court life, or the business of government, should be such passionate lovers of rural concerns. Everyone knows how their writings overflow with the praises of country life, and what delight they took in their farms and villas. Cicero seems as though he could never have done with telling us of the pleasure he took in farming. “I might expatiate,” he says, “on the beauty of verdant groves and meadows, on the charming aspects of vineyards and olive-yards, but to say all in one word, there cannot be a more pleasing, or a more profitable scene than that of a well-cultivated farm. In my opinion, indeed, no kind of occupation is more fraught with happiness, not only as the business of husbandry is of singular utility to mankind, but, as I have said, being attended with its own peculiar pleasures. I will add too, as a further recommendation, and let it restore me to the good graces of the voluptuous, that it supplies both the table and the altar with the greatest variety and abundance. Accordingly, the magazines of the skilful and industrious farmer are plentifully stored with wine and oil, with milk, cheese, and honey; as his yards abound with poultry, and his fields with flocks and herds of kids, lambs, and porkets. The garden also furnishes him with an additional source of delicacies, in allusion to which the farmers pleasantly call a certain piece of ground allotted to that particular use, their dessert. I must not omit, likewise, that in the intervals of their more important business, and in order to heighten the relish of the rest, the sports of the field claim a share of their amusements. * * * Of country occupations I profess myself a warm admirer. They are pleasures perfectly consistent with every degree of advanced years, as they approach the nearest of all others to those of the purely philosophical kind. They are derived from observing the nature and properties of their own earth, which yields a ready obedience to the cultivator’s industry, and returns with interest what he deposits in her charge.”--De Senectute.
He then goes on to tell us what delight he took in the cultivation of the vine; in watching the springing and progress of corn; the green blade pushing forth, shooting into a knotted stem, nourished and supported by the fibres of the root, terminated in the ear in which the grain is lodged in regular order, and defended from the depredations of birds by its bearded spikes. He tells us that he could name numbers of his most distinguished friends and neighbours, and some of them at very advanced ages, who take such interest in all that is going on at their farms, that they will be present at every important agricultural operation--many of them engaged in improvements of which they will see neither the benefit nor the end. “And what,” says he, “do these noble husbandmen, when they are asked for what purpose they dig and plant, reply,--‘In obedience to the immortal gods, by whose bountiful providence we received these fields from our ancestors, and whose will it is that we should deliver them down with improvement to posterity!’” And this generous and high sense of duty it was which animated the Romans during the better portion of their republic, and kept alive their virtue and their simplicity of life, so far as to give them power to despise wealth, and to command the fortunes of other men. Cicero is delighted with this noble principle, and he reverts with enthusiasm to the picture of Manlius Curius, who, after having conquered the Samnites, the Sabines, and even Pyrrhus himself, passed the honourable remainder of his age in cultivating his farm. He adds, “I can never behold his villa without reflecting with the highest degree of admiration both on the singular moderation of his mind, and the general simplicity of the age in which he flourished. Here it was, while sitting by his fireside, that he nobly rejected the gold which was offered him on the part of the Samnites, and rejected it with this memorable saying, ‘that he placed his glory, not on the abundance of his own wealth, but in commanding those amongst whom it abounded.’” With equal exultation he refers to the enthusiasm into which Xenophon in his treatise of ŒCONOMICS breaks forth in the praise of agriculture, and relates the interview of Lysander, the Spartan ambassador, with Cyrus the younger, as told by Socrates to his friend Critobulus, in which Cyrus assures Lysander that all the trees, shrubs, etc., which he admired in his garden, were planted by his own hand.
But if such were the charms which agriculture had for the Roman nobility, how much greater ought it to possess for the nobles and gentlemen of England! Amid all the advantages and recreations which have been pointed out in the preceding chapters as surrounding the country life of modern England, that of scientific farming is certainly one of the greatest. It is a pursuit full of interest and variety, at once natural, philosophical, and dignified. It is difficult to imagine a man of wealth and education more usefully or honourably employed than in directing the culture and improvement of his estate. Agriculture is now become, indeed, as Cicero termed it in his day, “the nearest of all employments to the purely philosophical kind.” It is a science which requires a first-rate education to prosecute it to its full capability, to make the other arts and sciences of modern times bear upon it, and co-operate with it, so as to add something to its progression, or even to apply beneficially the knowledge of its already established principles and practices.[1] It is no longer an occupation which requires a man to forego the refined pleasures of society, to bury himself amid woods and wildernesses in some obscure hamlet far from the enjoyments and intelligence of the world. As we have already seen, locate himself where he will in these islands, the arts, the elegances, the news and knowledge of civilized life, will penetrate to him by swift agencies, and give him all the real advantages of the city in the peace and fulness of his retirement. And what a noble art is agriculture now become! Look at the manner it is now practised by the most skilful of its professors. Let any one just turn over the leaves of Mr. Loudon’s Encyclopædia of Agriculture, and trace the progress of its implements only, from the plough of the ancients in the shape of a mere pick, to the almost endless machines which the active brains of men and their advancing knowledge of mechanics have given to the scientific farmer. Let any one turn to the list of engravings of farming apparatus in the same excellent work, amounting to about 300, and he will obtain some idea of the amount of science and invention now devoted to the use of the agriculturist. There are no men who have availed themselves of the progress of the arts and of general knowledge more than they. Mechanics, chemistry, hydraulics, steam, all have been seized upon, to develope the principles, or facilitate the operations of agriculture. Within the last century the strides which have been made in this interesting department of knowledge are admirable. The Netherlands may be said to have been the mother of our modern agriculture--Scotland its nurse. Tull’s system of horse-hoeing and drill husbandry has been introduced by Dawson, and has brought after it a numerous train of drills, dibbling-machines, horse-hoes, ploughs, rollers, scufflers, scarifiers, watering-machines, brakes, drill-harrows, etc., which we now see almost everywhere where the old system of plain ploughing, harrowing, and broad-cast sowing prevailed to the infinite loss of seed and growth of weeds. Then comes the thrashing machine invented by Menzies, and improved by Meikle from stage to stage, successively adapted to horses, wind, water, and eventually the giant power of steam, thus giving to the operations of the barn a rapidity equal to the skill and neatness displayed in the field. The scientific genius of Sir Humphry Davy, Thompson, Fourcroy, Parmentier, Kirwan, Gay Lussac, and many other eminent chemists, have been employed to investigate more accurately the real nature of soils and manures, and a vast increase of productive power has been the result. Bones, a source of fertility till of late entirely wasted, have done wonders; rape-dust, malt-dust, oil, fish, salt, wood and peat ashes, soot, gypsum, and many other substances, have been made the active agents of human subsistence. The best mixture of crops has been determined by numerous experiments; and the benefits of stall-feeding clearly demonstrated. Mangel-würzel, trifolium incarnatum--a plant which from its rich crimson hue would be an ornament of our fields even were it not a profitable production--and other vegetables, have been added to that plenteous growth of clover, dills, lucerne, rape, turnips, etc., with which modern tillage has enriched both summer and winter stalls. The improvement of the breed of cattle and sheep by Bakewell of Dishly, and the Culleys; the growth of finer and better wools by the introduction and crossing with the Merino by Lord Somerville and others, have been as remarkable as the superior cultivation of the soil. The science of draining has found devotees equally ardent, and has produced the most striking consequences. In many instances the mere act of draining has quadrupled the produce of land. In the weald of Kent, land which produced only a rental of five shillings an acre, has been raised by this process to five-and-twenty. And all these objects have been watched over, canvassed, and stimulated by the establishment of agricultural societies, agricultural journals and newspapers, and ploughing matches. Agricultural associations are now to be found in almost every county, and in different districts of the same county, which offer premiums on the best specimens of horses, cattle, and sheep; the best ploughing, and the most steady and industrious farm and household servants. It is a new feature in rural life, to see the whole farming population of a district hastening on a given day, gentlemen, farmers, and farm-servants all in their best array, to some one spot where the cattle are shewn, the ploughing is done, the prizes are awarded by umpires chosen from the most skilful, and the different parties then going to a good dinner, and a long talk and hearty toasting of all the interests of agriculture.
[1] This education is now likely to be extended to the great body of farmers. In Ireland, at Templemoyle, a college is established where the sons of farmers are instructed in every branch of science which can enable them to pursue agriculture successfully, while they daily work certain hours on the farm attached, thus making a familiar practical acquaintance with all the best processes of cultivation under the ablest professors. Similar colleges are also contemplated for England.
It is really too, as curious to see on our scientific farms the vast variety of implements and machines which these causes have produced;--ploughs--about a dozen and a half swing-ploughs, and upwards of a dozen wheel-ploughs of different constructions, and by different patentees; harrows, drills, cultivators. Every species of soil and crop has its peculiar apparatus; in the field and the farm-yard; for getting seed into the ground, clearing and dressing when there, for thrashing it out and cleaning it for market; for sowing peas, beans, turnips, carrots, parsnips, etc., for chopping, slicing, and preparing them for cattle; their machines for tedding hay, for stacking it with least possible risk, for cutting and steaming it; for ploughing up weeds, ploughing up moorlands, and even roads; for reaping by wholesale, and raking by wholesale; for tapping deep springs, and guttering the surface for the escape of top-water; there are their machines for paring and levelling lumpy lands; for cross-cutting furrows to make rough mossy land take seed better; their channels, sluices, and schemes for irrigation. And then, who shall tell all their implements for hay-binding, rope-twisting, furze-pounding for cattle; their novel churns, their ratteries, their new-fangled mole-traps, their poultry-feeders, and pheasant-feeders, by which those birds are enabled to help themselves from tin boxes supplied with grain for them, without feathered depredators being able to go shares with them. Truly Solomon might say that men now-a-days have sought out many inventions!
But who shall calculate all the thoughts and the labours of such men as Fitzherbert, Tusser, Gooch, Platt, Hartlib, Weston, Markham, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Norden, John Evelyn, Worlidge, Stillingfleet, Harte, Arthur Young, Maxwell, Lord Kaimes, Sir John Sinclair, etc. etc.? Who shall aggregate and estimate the numerous and valuable suggestions and articles of anonymous writers in the journals; and the personal labours and fostering influence of such men as the late Dukes of Buccleugh, and of Bedford, the Duke of Portland, Earl Spencer, the late Lord Somerville, Mr. Coke of Holkham, now the Earl of Leicester, and many other noblemen and gentlemen who have spent their lives in the unostentatious but most meritorious endeavour to perfect the agricultural science of England? With the exception of naturalists, there are no men whose pursuits seem to me to yield them so much real happiness as intelligent agriculturists whose hearts are in the business; and though there are men whose offices or professions place them more in the public eye, there are none who are more truly the benefactors of their country. Such were Lord Somerville and the Duke of Buccleugh, as described by Sir Walter Scott; and there is a passage in his memoir of the latter nobleman well worth the notice of those who propagate or believe in the nonsense of the economists on the non-influence of absenteeism. “In the year 1817, when the poor stood so much in need of employment, a friend asked the Duke why his Grace did not prepare to go to London in the spring? By way of answer, the Duke shewed him a list of day-labourers then employed in improvements on his different estates, the number of whom, exclusive of his regular establishments, amounted to nine hundred and forty-seven persons. If we allow to each labourer two persons, whose support depended on his wages, the Duke was in a manner foregoing, during this severe year, the privilege of his rank, in order to provide with more convenience for a little army of nearly three thousand persons, many of whom must otherwise have found it difficult to obtain subsistence. The result of such conduct is twice blessed; both in the means which it employs, and in the end which it attains in the general improvement of the country. This anecdote forms a good answer to those theorists who pretend that the residence of proprietors on their estates is a matter of indifference to the inhabitants of that district. Had the Duke been residing, and spending his revenue elsewhere, one half of these poor people would have wanted employment and food; and would probably have been little comforted by any metaphysical arguments upon population, which could have been presented to their investigation.”--Scott’s Prose Works, vol. 4.
Many such things may be daily heard of the present Duke of Portland, in the neighbourhood of Welbeck Abbey, in Nottinghamshire; which convince you that he is one of those men that contrive to pass through life without much noise, but reaping happiness and respect in abundance, and while gratifying the taste for rural occupation, conferring the most lasting benefits upon the country. I shall close this section of this chapter with the substance of one such act, related to me some years ago. In the manner of relation it may therefore differ somewhat from that in which originally told, but in fact I believe it to be perfectly correct. The Duke found that one of his tenants, a small farmer, was falling, year after year, into arrears of rent. The steward wished to know what should be done. The Duke rode to the farm; saw that it was rapidly deteriorating, and the man, who was really an experienced and industrious farmer, totally unable to manage it, from poverty. In fact, all that was on the farm was not enough to pay the arrears. “John,” said the Duke, as the farmer came to meet him as he rode up to the house, “I want to look over the farm a little.” As they went along,--“Really,” said he, “every thing is in very bad case. This won’t do. I see you are quite under it. All your stock and crops won’t pay the rent in arrear. I will tell you what I must do. I must take the farm into my own hands. You shall look after it for me, and I will pay you your wages.” Of course there was no saying nay,--the poor man bowed assent. Presently there came a reinforcement of stock, then loads of manure,--at the proper time, seed, and wood from the plantations for repairing gates and buildings. The Duke rode over frequently. The man exerted himself, and seemed really quite relieved from a load of care by the change. Things speedily assumed a new aspect. The crops and stock flourished; fences and outbuildings were put into good order. In two or three rent days, it was seen by the steward’s books that the farm was paying its way. The Duke on his next visit, said, “Well, John, I think the farm does very well now. We will change again. You shall be tenant again; and as you now have your head fairly above water, I hope you will be able to keep it there.” The Duke rode off at his usual rapid rate. The man stood in astonishment; but a happy fellow he was, when on applying to the steward he found that he was actually re-entered as tenant to the farm just as it stood in its restored condition;--I will venture to say, however, that the Duke himself was the happier man of the two.
VI. PLANTING
“Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye’re sleeping.”--Heart of Mid-Lothian.
What we have just said of the pleasures and benefit of scientific farming, may be said also of planting; it is but another interesting mode of employing time by landed proprietors, at once for recreation and the improvement of their estates. What, indeed, can be more delightful than planning future woods, where, perhaps, now sterile heather, or naked declivities present themselves; clothing, warming, diversifying in imagination your vicinity; then turning your visions into realities, and watching the growth of your forests? Since John Evelyn wrote his eloquent Sylva, and displayed the deplorable condition of our woodlands, and since Dr. Johnson penned his sarcastic Tour to the Hebrides, both England and Scotland have done much to repair the ravages made in the course of ages in our woods. A strong spirit on the subject has grown up in the minds of our landed gentry, and vast numbers of trees of all kinds suitable to our climate have been planted in different parts of the island. The Commissioners of Woods and Forests have made extensive plantations of oak in the New Forest, and other places. In the neighbourhood of all gentlemen’s houses we see evidences of liberal planting: and the rich effect of these young woods is well calculated to strengthen the love of planting. In this part of Surrey, wood, indeed, seems the great growth of the country. Look over the landscape from Richmond Hill, from Claremont, from St. George’s or St. Anne’s Hill, and it is one wide sea of wood. The same is the case in the bordering regions of Buckingham and Berk shires. Richmond Park, Hampton-Court Park, Bushy Park, Claremont and Esher Parks, Oatlands, Painshill, Windsor, Ockham, Bookham--the whole wide country is covered with parks, woods, and fields, the very hedge-rows of which are dense, continuous lines of trees. Look into the part of Kent approaching the metropolis from the heights of Norwood, and the prospect is the same. Many of the extensive commons hereabout, as Bookham and Streatham commons, are scattered with fine oaks, some of them very ancient, and diversified with thickets and green glades, and rather resemble old forests and parks, than commons as seen elsewhere. Then again, the sandy heaths of Surrey are covered in many places with miles of Scotch firs. There certainly is no want of wood in these parts. In the sandy wastes of Old Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, many thousand acres, principally of larch, have been planted on the estates of the Dukes of Portland and Newcastle, Lord Scarborough, Earl Manvers, Colonels Need, Wildman, and other proprietors. Even the cold hills of the Peak of Derbyshire have been planted in some parts extensively; and lands in those districts which were literally unproductive, are now a source of considerable income from the thinning of the woods. In Scotland the same change is very visible. All along the borders the good lands are beautifully cultivated, the bad extensively planted. From the dreary flats about Gretna Green to the borders of Northumberland and Berwickshire, this is the case. Passing into Scotland by the Cheviots, we saw extensive woods on the border lands of the Duke of Northumberland, Earl Tankerville, Mr. Collingwood, Mr. St. Paul, etc. The cold and wild tract between Kelso and Edinburgh presents cheering appearances of the extension of the planting spirit. In the counties of Argyle, Ross, and Inverness, which Monteith of Stirling, in his Forester’s Guide, particularly points out as wanting wood, we were struck with the great extent of planting already done. Every summer tourist up the Clyde sees how much the woods round Roseneath have sheltered and beautified it--and the woods around Inverary Castle are, to a great extent, very splendid--while all the way thence to Oban you pass through mountain glens and over moorlands enriched with woods. The Duke of Athol, about Athol and Dunkeld, has planted upwards of 15,000 acres. The Duke of Montrose has been a great planter. Sir Walter Scott was a diligent planter, as the young woods round Abbotsford testify; and there are no moments of his life in which we can imagine him happier than when mounted on his pony he progressed through his plantations at his leisure, with his pruning-knife in his hand. But what he did on his own estate is trivial to what he did by his writings. He may be said to have planted more trees by his pen than any man alive has with his spade. He himself tells us that the simple words put into the mouth of the Laird of Dumbiedikes, and placed as a motto at the head of this chapter, induced a certain Earl to plant a large tract of country.
In the neighbourhood of Dingwall, Beuley, Beaufort,--from Inverness to Culloden,--in short, in almost every part of the Highlands,--you find extensive young woods of larch and pine. Many of these, it must be confessed, have apparently been made with more regard to profit than beauty. In many of the sweet straths, and along the feet of the mountains, the long monotonous reaches of larch--an unbroken, unvaried succession of pointed pyramids--present but an indifferent contrast to the free slopes of beauty which the native growth of the birches exhibits; dotting glens and embosoming lochs with a fairyland loveliness. As they become large, and are thinned properly, or rather, where they are planted thinly, on the plan of the Duke of Athol, this defect may be remedied. Scotch firs, when large, assume a wild forest majesty; and larches in mountainous situations, of an ancient growth, have an Alpine sweep of boughs that is extremely picturesque and graceful; but young crowded firs of any kind are too formal for beauty.
Mr. Wordsworth, in his Guide to the Lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland, complains grievously of the injury done to the scenery there, by the injudicious planting of larch. “Larch and fir plantations have been spread, not merely with a view to profit, but in many instances for the sake of ornament. To those who plant for profit, and are thrusting every other tree out of the way, to make room for their favourite, the larch, I would utter first a regret, that they should have selected these lovely vales for their vegetable manufactory, when there is so much barren and irreclaimable land in the neighbouring moors, and in other parts of the island, which might have been had for this purpose at a far cheaper rate.--It must be acknowledged that the larch, till it has outgrown the size of a shrub, shews, when looked at singly, some elegance of form and appearance, especially in spring, decorated, as it then is, by the pink tassels of its blossoms; but, as a tree, it is less than any other pleasing. Its branches--for boughs it has none--have no variety in the youth of the tree, and little dignity even when it attains its full growth; leaves it cannot be said to have, consequently affords neither shade nor shelter. In spring, the larch becomes green long before the native trees, and its green is so peculiar and vivid, that, finding nothing to harmonize with it, wherever it comes forth a disagreeable speck is produced. In summer, when all other trees are in their pride, it is of a dingy, lifeless hue; in autumn, of a spiritless unvaried yellow; and in winter, it is still more lamentably distinguished from any other deciduous tree of the forest, for they seem only to sleep, but the larch seems absolutely dead. If an attempt be made to mingle thickets, or a certain proportion of other forest trees, with the larch, its horizontal branches intolerantly cut them down, as with a scythe, or force them to spindle up to keep pace with it. The terminating spike renders it impossible that the several trees, where planted in numbers, should ever blend together so as to form a mass, or masses of wood. Add thousands to tens of thousands, and the appearance is still the same--a collection of separate individual trees, obstinately presenting themselves as such; and which, from whatever point they are looked at, if but seen, may be counted upon the fingers. Sunshine, or shadow, has little power to adorn the surface of such a wood; and the trees not carrying up their heads, the wind raises amongst them no majestic undulations.”
There is much truth in these remarks, and they cannot be too much borne in mind by all planters where picturesque beauty is an object. On dreary moors, where the larch is planted merely for profit, and where the tout-ensemble cannot readily be attained, woods of it often present a great degree of pleasantness by contrast. They give you green glades and narrow footpaths, between heath and fern, their slender boughs hanging above you, especially in the freshness of their foliage, very agreeably. As a matter of profit, and for the value of its timber, few species of wood can compete with it. The following extract from the Transactions of the Highland Society, gives a very striking view of its importance. “Larch will supply ship-timber at a great height above the region of the oak; and while a seventy-four gun ship will require the oak timber of seventy-five acres, it will not require more than the timber of ten acres of larch; the trees, in both cases being sixty-eight years old. The larch, at Dunkeld, grows at the height of 1300 feet above the level of the sea; the spruce at 1200; the Scotch pine at 700; and deciduous trees at not higher than 500. The larch, in comparison with the Scotch pine, is found to produce three and three-quarter times more timber, and that timber of seven times more value. The larch also, being a deciduous tree, instead of injuring the pasture under it, improves it. The late Duke of Athol, John the Second, planted in the last year of his life, 6500 Scotch acres of mountain ground solely with the larch, which in the course of seventy-two years from the time of planting will be a forest of timber fit for the building of the largest class of ships in her majesty’s navy. It will have been thinned out to about 400 trees per acre. Each tree will contain at the least fifty cubic feet, or one load of timber, which, at the low price of one shilling the cubic foot, only one half of its present value, will give 1000_l._ per acre, or in all, a sum of 6,500,000_l._ sterling. Besides this there will have been a return of 7_l._ per acre from the thinnings, after deducting all expense of thinning, and the original outlay of planting. Further still, the land on which the larch is planted, is not worth above ninepence or one shilling per acre. After the thinnings of the last thirty years, the larch will make it worth at least ten shillings per acre by the improvement of the pasturage, on which cattle can be kept summer and winter.”
That is pretty well. This calculation is made upon land stated at 1_s._ per acre, planted with larch; but Monteith, an experienced timber planter and valuer, gives us for oak planted on land of 1_l._ per acre yearly rent, the following statement.
“If the proprietor, for instance, plants 100 acres of ground, the trees being placed four feet distant from each other, each acre will contain 3422 plants. If it be planted with hard woods, chiefly oaks, and a few firs to nurse them up, supposing it is a plantation purely for profit, the expense of plants and planting,
per acre, will be 6_l._ £ 600 0 0
Rent of land for ten years, at 1_l._ per acre, per annum 1000 0 0
Interest on rent 225 0 0
Expenses of thinning, pruning, and training up for 10 years, at 1_l._ per acre per annum 1000 0 0 ---------- Total expenditure £ 2825 0 0
Deduct produce of 1000 trees thinned from each acre, during the first 10 years, at 2_l._ per acre £ 200 0 0
Deduct value of 2422 trees left on the ground after the first 10 years, at 7_l._ 10_s._ per acre 750 0 0 950 0 0 ---------- Total outlay at the end of 10 years £ 1875 0 0
To which add expense of thinning and pruning for the next 10 years, at 2_l._ per acre £ 200 0 0
Rent of the land for the same period at 1_l._ per acre per annum 1000 0 0
Interest on the rent for the same period 275 0 0
Interest on 1875_l._ for 10 years 937 0 0 2412 0 0 ---------- Total outlay for 20 years £ 4287 0 0
Deduct produce of 1000 trees thinned out during the last 10 years, from each acre, at 6_d._ each, or 25_l._ per acre £ 2500 0 0
Deduct for 1422 trees which fall to be enhanced in value during the last 10 years, and will come to at least 35_l._ 11_s._ per acre 3555 0 0 6055 0 0 ---------- £ 1768 0 0
Deduct from this the value of these 1000 trees as they were first estimated at the end of the first 10 years, at 3_l._ 2_s._ per acre 310 0 0 ---------- Thus leaving a balance in favour, of £ 1458 0 0”
Hitherto the amount of gain is comparatively small, but this calculation continued according to the growth of the trees for ten years more, will leave the balance no less than 23,667_l._ And to the end of forty years from first planting, the round sum of 41,000_l._ “These calculations,” says Monteith, “may, to those who have paid no attention to the subject, excite wonder if not doubt, but in making them the author has been careful to lessen rather than exaggerate the profits: and if the plantation shall have been carried to the age of sixty or seventy years, and properly thinned, etc., the value will be double what it was at forty years.” Thus, if 100 acres in seventy years will yield 80,000_l._ planted with oak, 6000 acres will yield about 5,000,000_l._; while 6000 acres of the larch plantations of Athol in the same period are calculated to yield about 6,000,000_l._ There is sufficient agreement to lead us to suppose the calculations probably accurate, and what a splendid inducement to judicious planting do these calculations present!
The following facts, given in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” (vol. i., art. Agriculture), are also particularly interesting to the planter. Mr. Pavier, in the fourth volume of the Bath Papers, computes the value of fifty acres of oak timber in 100 years to be 12,100_l._, which is nearly 2_l._ 10_s._ annually per acre; and if we consider that this is continually accumulating, without any of that expense or risk to which annual crops are subject, it is probable that timber-planting may be accounted one of the most profitable departments of husbandry. Evelyn calculates the profit of 1000 acres of oak land in 150 years at no less than 670,000_l._
The following table shews the increase of trees from their first planting. It was taken from the Marquis of Lansdowne’s plantation, begun in the year 1765, and the calculation made in 1786. It is about six acres in extent, the soil partly a swampy meadow upon a gravelly bottom. The measures were taken at five feet above the surface of the ground; the small trees having been occasionally drawn for posts and rails, as well as rafters for cottages, and when peeled of the bark will stand well for seven years.
Circumference in Feet in height. Feet. Inches.
Lombardy Poplar 60 to 80 4 8 Abeel 50-70 4 6 Plane 50-60 3 6 Acacia 50-60 2 4 Elm 40-60 3 6 Chestnut 30-50 2 9 Weymouth Pine 30-50 2 5 Chester ditto 30-50 2 5 Scotch Fir 30-50 2 10 Spruce 30-50 2 2 Larch 50-60 3 10
From this table it appears that the planting of timber trees, when the return can be waited for twenty years, will undoubtedly repay the original cost of planting as well as the interest of the money laid out, which is better worth the attention of the proprietor of land, as the ground on which they grow may be supposed good for cattle also.
In Argyleshire, there are probably 40,000 acres of natural coppice wood which are cut periodically; commonly every nineteen or twenty years, and are understood to return about 1_l._ an acre annually. Very extensive plantations have been formed by the Duke of Argyle, and other proprietors. About thirty years ago those of his Grace were reckoned to contain 2,000,000 trees, worth then 4_s._ each amounting to the enormous sum of 400,000_l._
I knew a certain old military officer who during his early years was a captain in a militia regiment. His brother officers were a gay set of fellows, and were continually drawing on their private incomes, and often coming to him to borrow money; but he made it a rule never to spend more than his own pay, and as to money, he never had any to lend. He went down to his estate every spring and autumn, and planted as many acres of trees as his rental would allow him. His planting gave him a perpetual plea of poverty. At a certain age he retired on his half-pay. A large family was growing around him, but his woods were growing too. Many a time have I seen him, mounted on an old brood mare, with a sort of capacious game-bag across her loins, with his gun slung at his shoulder, his saws and pruning-knives strapped behind his saddle, going away into his woods: and keeping the calculations of Monteith, and of the larch plantations of Athol, in mind, I can now imagine the profound satisfaction which the old gentleman, through a long course of years, must have felt in the depths of his forest solitudes. He is still living, at an advanced age. His family is large, and has been expensive; but his woods were large too, and no doubt their thinnings have proved very grateful thinnings of his family charges.
VII. GARDENS
We must now wind up, in a few words, what we have to say of the country life of the gentry, and these words must be on their gardens. In these, as in all those other sources of enjoyment that surround them, perfection seems to be reached. They live in the midst of scenes which, while they appear nature itself, are the result of art consummated only by ages of labour, research, science, travel, and the most remarkable discoveries. Nothing can be more delicious than the rural paradises which now surround our country houses. Walks, waters, lawns of velvet softness, trees casting broad shadows, or whispering in the stirrings of the breeze; seclusion and yet airiness; flowers from all regions, besides all the luxuries which the kitchen-garden, the orchard, conservatories, hothouses, and sunny walls pour upon our tables, are so blended and diffused around our dwellings, that nothing on earth can be more delectable. It is impossible, without looking back through many ages of English life, to form any idea of the real advantages which we enjoy of this kind,--of the immense stride we have made from the bare and rigid life of our ancestors. How many of the fruits or flowers, or culinary vegetables, which we possess in such excellence and perfection, did this country originally produce? Few, indeed, of our indigenous flowers are retained in our gardens, few of our vegetables besides the cabbage and the carrot; and what were the ancient British fruits besides the crab and the bullace? But we have only to look back to the feudal times to see the wide difference between our gardens and those then existing; for all that could be enjoyed of a garden must be compressed within the narrow boundary of the castle moat. Every thing without was subject to continual ravage and destruction; and though orchards were planted without, and suffered to take their chance, the ladies’ little parterre occupied some sheltered nook of the court, or space between grim towers:
Now was there maide fast by the touris wall, A garden faire, and in the corneris set An herbere grew; with wandis long and small, Railit about, and so with treeis set Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet, That lyfe was now, walkyng there for bye, That myght within scarce any wight espye.
The Quair, by James I. of Scotland.
And the plot of culinary herbs occupied some sheltered spot within the moat; which when it is recollected how many other requisites of existence and defence were also compressed into the same space--soldiers, arms, and machines of war; sleeping and eating rooms; room for the stabling and fodder of horses, and often of cattle; space for daily exercise, martial or recreative; bowls, tilting or tennis,--when cooped up by their enemies, or made cautious by critical times, small indeed must have been the space or the leisure for gardens. Even in 1540, Leland in his Itinerary, tells us that our nobility still dwelt in castles, and there retained the usual defences of moats, and drawbridges. This was especially the case, the nearer they approached to the Scotch or Welsh borders; though in the vicinity of London villas and palaces had long sprung up. At Wressel Castle, near Howden, in Yorkshire, he says, “The gardens within the mote, and the orchardes without, were exceeding fair. And yn the orchardes were mounts, opere topiario, writhen about with degrees like the turnings in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payn.” The career, indeed, by which our gardens have reached their present condition, has been, as I have said, the career of many ages, revolutions, and stupendous events. It is not only curious, but most interesting to trace all those circumstances which have contributed to raise horticulture to its present eminence,--the great national events, the extension of discovery, of the arts, of general knowledge; the deep ponderings in cells and fields; the achievements of genius, of enterprise; the combinations of science, and the variations of taste which have brought it to what it is. The history of our gardening is, in fact, the history of Europe. The monks, whose religious character gave them an extraordinary security, as they were the first restorers of agriculture, so they were the first extenders and improvers of our gardens. Their long pilgrimages from one holy shrine to another, through France, Germany, and Italy, made them early acquainted with a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs, and with various fruits; and amongst the ruins of abbeys we still find a tribe of plants that they thus naturalized. The crusades gave the next extension to horticultural knowledge; the growing commerce and wealth of Europe fostered it still farther; and the successive magnificent discoveries of the Indies, America, the isles of the Pacific and Australia, with all their new and splendid and invaluable productions, raised the desire for such things to the highest pitch; and made our gardens and greenhouses affluent beyond all imagination. What hosts of new and curious plants do they still send us every season! From every corner of the earth are they daily reaching us: the average value of the plants in Loddige’s gardens is calculated at 200,000_l._ But what a blank would they now be but for the mighty spirit of commerce, the thirst of discovery, and of traversing distant regions, which animate such numbers of our countrymen, and send them out to extend our geography, geology, and natural history, or to prosecute astronomical and philosophical science under every portion of the heavens? And besides these causes, how much is yet to be accounted for by the tastes of peculiar ages--out of the peculiar studies of the times, and the singular genius of particular men thence arising. The influence of poets and imaginative writers upon the character of our gardens has been extreme. Whether an age were poetical or mathematical, made a mighty difference in the garden-style of the time. C. Matius, the favourite of Augustus Cæsar, introduced the fashion at Rome of clipping trees into shapes of animals and other grotesque forms; Pliny admired the invention, and celebrated it under the name of topiary-work; and so strongly did it take hold on the spirits of men, that it descended to all the nations of Europe, and was not exploded by us till the last century. Sir Henry Wotton, the tasteful and poetical courtier of Queen Elizabeth, and ambassador of James to Venice, with notions of the fitness of a garden far beyond his age, yet thought it “a graceful and natural conceit” in Michael Angelo to make a fountain-figure in the shape of “a sturdy washerwoman, washing and winding of linen clothes, in which act she wrings out the water which made the fountain.” And again Addison, followed by Pope and Walpole, overturned this ancient fondness for pleached walks, and tonsured trees, and quaint fountain-figures, whether of Neptunes, Niles, or washerwomen. Then the great change of the social system, from the feudal and military to civil and domestic, produced a correspondent change in the culture of gardens. While the country was rent to pieces by contentions for the crown, there could be little leisure or taste for gardens; but when men became peaceful, and collected their habitations into clusters, they naturally began to embellish both them and their environs.
From the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry VIII. we look over a large space, and find but slight improvement in horticulture, and scanty traces of its literature. A bushel of onions in Richard II.’s reign cost twelve shillings of our present money: Henry VII. records himself, in a MS. preserved in the Remembrance Office, that apples were in his day one and two shillings each, a red one fetching the highest price; and Henry VIII.’s queen, Catherine, when she wanted a salad, sent to Flanders for it. The very first book which was written on the culture of the soil in this country, appears to be Walter de Henly’s--“De Yconomia sive Housbandria,” Then came Nicholas Bollar’s books, “De Arborum Plantatione,” and “De Generatione Arborum et Modo Generandi et Plantandi,” and some other MS. writings. Richard II. rewarded botanical skill in the person of John Bray with a pension. Henry Calcoensis in the fifteenth century composed a Synopsis Herbaria, and translated Palladius de Re Rustica into Gaelic. In the sixteenth century William Horman, Vice-Provost of Eton, wrote Herbarum Synonyma and Indexes to Cato, Varro, Columella, and Palladius; and in the same century Wynkin de Worde printed “Mayster Groshede’s Boke of Husbandry,” which contained instructions for planting and grafting of trees and vines. Arnold’s Chronicle in 1521, had a chapter on the same subject, and how to raise a salad in an hour; and Pynson published the “Boke of Surveying and Improvements.” Then came Dr. Bulleyn, Dodoneus, Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, and Tusser; and that is the history of gardens and their literature till the time of Henry VIII.; but thence to the eighteenth century,--to the days of Bridgman and Kent, what multitudes of grand, quaint, and artificial gardens were spread over the country. Nonsuch, Theobalds, Greenwich, Hampton-Court, Hatfield, Moor-Park, Chatsworth, Beaconsfield, Cashiobury, Ham, and many another, stood in all that stately formality which Henry and Elizabeth admired, and in which our Surreys, Leicesters, Essexes; the splendid nobles of the Tudor dynasty, the gay ladies and gallants of Charles II.’s court, had walked and talked, fluttered in glittering processions, or flirted in green alleys and bowers of topiary-work; and amid figures, in lead or stone, fountains, cascades, copper trees dropping sudden showers on the astonished passers under, stately terraces with gilded balustrades, and curious quincunx, obelisks, and pyramids--fitting objects of the admiration of those who walked in high-heeled shoes, ruffs and fardingales, with fan in hand, or in trunk-hose and laced doublets.
“The palace of Nonsuch,” said Hentzner in 1598, “is encompassed with parks full of deer, delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets of verdure (summer-houses, or seats cut in yew), and walls so embowered with trees, that it seems to be a place pitched upon by pleasure herself to dwell in along with health. In the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of marble; two fountains that spout water, one round, the other like a pyramid, upon which are perched small birds that stream water out of their bills. In the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with Actæon turned into a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and the nymphs, with inscriptions. Here is, besides, another pyramid of marble full of concealed pipes, which spurt upon all who come within their reach.” In the gardens of Lord Burleigh, at Theobalds, he tells us are nine knots, artificially and exquisitely made, one of which was set for the likeness of the king’s arms. One might walk two miles in the walks before he came to the end.
In Hampton-Court, was a fountain with syrens and other statues by Fanelli. At Kensington were bastions and counterscarps of clipped yew and variegated holly, being the objects of wonder and admiration under the name of the siege of Troy. At Chatsworth the temporary cascade, the water-god, the copper-tree, and the jets-d’eau, still remain in all their glory.
The hands of Bridgman, Kent and Brown, and the pens of Addison, Pope, and Walpole, have put all this ancient glory of Roman style to the flight; and driven us, perhaps, into danger of going too far after nature. The winding walks, the turfy lawns, the bowery shrubberies, the green slopes to the margin of waters, the retention of rocks and thickets where they naturally stood,--all this is very beautiful, and many a sweet elysian scene do they spread around our English houses. But in imitating nature we are apt to imitate her as she appears in her rudest places, and not as she would modify herself in the vicinity of human habitations. We are apt to make too little difference between the garden and the field; between the shrubbery and the wood. We are come to think that all which differs from wild nature is artificial, and therefore absurd. Something too much of this, I think, we are beginning to feel we have had amongst us. It has been the fashion to cry down all gardens as ugly and tasteless, which are not shaped by our modern notions. The formalities of the French and Dutch have been sufficiently condemned. For my part, I like even them in their place. One would no more think of laying out grounds now in this manner, than of wearing Elizabethan ruffs, or bag-wigs and basket-hilted swords; yet the old French and Dutch gardens, as the appendages of a quaint old house, are in my opinion, beautiful. They are like many other things--not so much beautiful in themselves, as beautiful by association--as memorials of certain characters and ages. A garden, after all, is an artificial thing; and though formed from the materials of nature, may be allowed to mould them into something very different from nature. There is a wild beauty of nature, and there is a beauty in nature linked to art: one looks for a very different kind of beauty in fields and mountains, to what one does in a garden. The one delights you by a certain rude freedom and untamed magnificence; the other, by smoothness and elegance--by velvet lawns, bowery arbours, winding paths, fair branching shrubs, fountains, and juxta-position of many rare flowers.
It appears to me that it is an inestimable advantage as it regards our gardens, that the former taste of the nation has differed so much from its present one. Without this, what a loss of variety we should have suffered! If the taste of the present generation had been that of all past ages, what could there have been in the gardens of our past kings, nobles, and historical characters to mark them as strongly and emphatically as they are now marked? They now, indeed, seem to belong to men and things gone by; and I would as soon almost see one of our venerable cathedrals rased with the ground, as one of those old gardens rooted up. There is something in them of a sombre and becoming melancholy. They are in keeping with the houses they surround, and the portraits in the galleries of those houses. When we wander through the pleached alleys, and by the time-stained fountains of these old gardens, perished years indeed seem to come back again to us. In the centre of some vast avenue of majestic elms or limes, sweeping their boughs to the ground, “the dial-stone aged and green” arrests our attention, and points not to the present hour, but to the past. Our historic memories are intimately connected with such places. Our Howards, Essexes, Surreys, and Wolseys, were the magnificent founders and creators of such places; and in such, Shakspeare and Spenser, Milton and Bacon, and Sidney mused. It is astonishing what numbers of our poets, philosophers, and literati, are connected with the history of our gardens by their writings, or love of them. Sir Henry Wotton, Parkinson, Ray, John Evelyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, Bacon, Addison, Pope, Sir William Temple, who not only wrote “the Garden of Epicurus,” but so delighted in gardening that he directed in his will that his heart should be buried beneath the sun-dial in his garden at Moor-Park in Surrey, where it accordingly was deposited in a silver box: Horace Walpole, Locke, Cowley, Shenstone, Charles Cotton, Waller, Bishop Fleetwood, Spence, the author of Polymetis, Gilpin of the Forest Scenery, Mason, Dr. Darwin, Cowper, and many others, have their fame linked to the history or the love of gardens.
There is something very interesting too, in the biography of our old patriarchs of English gardening. There is scarcely one of those large nurseries and gardens round London but is connected with them, as their founders, or improvers--as the Tradescants of Lambeth,--London and Wise of Brompton,--Philip Miller of Chelsea,--Gray of Fulham,--Furber of Kensington,--Lee of Hammersmith. It is cheering to observe how much our monarchs, from Henry VIII. to George III. were, with their principal nobility, almost to a man, whatever was their character in other respects, not even excepting the dissipated Charles II., munificent patrons of gardening, and founders of grand gardens. It is interesting to read of the giant labours, and now apparently curious locations of our early gardeners and herbalists. How Dr. Turner imbibed botanical knowledge from Lucas Ghinus at Bologna, and came and established a “garden of rare plants” at Kew; while Mrs. Gape had another at Westminster, which furnished the first specimens for Chelsea garden. How Ray, and Lobel, and Penny, roamed everywhere in search of new plants. How Didymus Mountain published his “Gardener’s Labyrinth:” how Sir Hugh Platt, of Lincoln’s-Inn, gentleman, wrote the Jewel House of Art and Nature, the Paradise of Kew, and the Garden of Eden, and had, moreover, a garden in St. Martin’s Lane. How the “Rei Rusticæ” of Conrad Heresbach, counsellor to the Duke of Cleve, was translated by Barnaby Googe, and reprinted by Gervase Markham, gentleman, of Gotham in Nottinghamshire. How old John Gerarde travelled, when young, up the Baltic, and had his “Physick Garden” in Holborn. How John Parkinson travelled forty years before he wrote his “Paradisus,” and was appointed by Charles I. for his Theatre of Plants, Botanicus Regius Primarius. How Gabriel Plattes, though styled by his cotemporaries, “an excellent genius,” and “of an adventurous caste of mind,” died miserably in the streets. How Walter Blythe of Oliver Cromwell’s army wrote the “Survey of Husbandry,” which Professor Martyn pronounces “an incomparable work.” How Samuel Hartlib, the son of a Polish merchant, the friend of Milton, of Archbishop Usher and Joseph Meade, wrote his “Legacy,” and assisted in establishing the embryo Royal Society; how John Tradescant was in Russia, and accompanied the fleet sent against the Algerines in 1620, and collected on that occasion plants in Barbary, and in the isles of the Mediterranean; and how his son John, afterwards made a voyage in pursuit of plants to Virginia, “and brought many new ones back with him.” How their Museum, established in South Lambeth, and called “Tradescant’s Ark,” was the constant resort of the great and learned; how it fell into the hands of Elias Ashmole, and became the Ashmolean Museum.
These, and such facts, shew us by what labours and steps our present garden-wealth has been raised; and diffuse an interest over a number of places familiar to us. Go, indeed, into what part of the island we will, we find some object of attraction and curiosity in the gardens attached to our old houses. As the coach passes the residence of Colonel Howard, at Leven’s Bridge in Westmoreland, it stops, the passengers get out, and mount upon its top, and there behold a fine old Elizabethan house, standing in the midst of a garden of that age, with all its topiary-work, its fountains, statues, and lawns. At Stonyhurst in Lancashire, now a Jesuit’s College, I was delighted to find a beautiful old garden of this description, which I have elsewhere described; and at Margam Abbey in South Wales, I found a fine assemblage of orange trees, the very trees which Sir Henry Wotton sent from Italy as a present to James I. These trees had been thrown ashore here by the wreck of the vessel, and the owner of the place, by the king’s permission, built a splendid orangery to receive them, which stood in the centre of a garden surrounded on three sides by woody hills; and in which fuchsias, at least ten feet high, with stems thick as a man’s arm, were growing in the open air, and tulip-trees large as the forest trees around. But what gave a still greater charm to this garden was, that the ruins of a fine old abbey stood here and there on its lawn; arches, overgrown with bushes, and the graceful pillars of a noble chapter-house, around whose feet lay stones of ancient tombs and curious sculpture. These are the things which give so delicious a variety to our English gardens: and when we bear in mind that many of those artifices and figures which we have been accustomed to treat with contempt as Dutch, are in reality Roman; that such things once stood in the magnificent gardens of Lucullus and Sallust; that the Romans gathered them again from the Eastern nations; that they are not only classical, but that, like many of the rites of our church and religious festivals, they are the reliques of the most ancient times, I think we shall be inclined to regard them with a greater degree of interest--not as objects to imitate or to place in any competition with our own more natural style, but as things which are of the most remote antiquity, and give a curious diversity to our country abodes. For my part, when I see even a fantastic peacock spreading its tail in yew in some old cottage or farm-house garden I think of Pliny and his admiration of such topiary-work, and would not have it cut down for the world. Even those summer-houses built in trees, such as that built by the King of Belgium, in Winter-Down wood, near Claremont; a sketch of which is presented in the title-page--were Roman fancies; were formed, Pliny tells us, amid the branches of any monarch trees that grew within their grounds, and that even Caligula had one in a plane-tree, near his villa at Velitræ, which he called his Nest.
Here then to all the sweet nests of English gardens, new or old, we bid adieu, with blessings on their pleasantness.