Ill'' ^-m |i!,n;iii':il |i. !|il ip!.'!,;!j !!!*' y''''i' ^0xana lE^tuts iBabni^y ^anta Barbara formal ^cl|ool .-.X9X3... w.\ S r THE RECREATIONS or CHRISTOPHER NORTH. ^o\ COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, AND COMPANY NEW YORK: JAMES C. DERBY. 1854. UKIVrnSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BAP.BAPwA COLLEGE LIBRARY Stzv 51184 IZSf CONTENTS. Page CHRISTOPHER IN HIS S?ORTING JACKET, ^ Fttte Fihst Fttte Second Fttte THinu A TALE OF EXPIATION ^/ 44 MORNING MONOLOGUE THE FIELD OF FLOWERS J^ COTTAGES AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY ^^ INCH CRUIN A DAY AT WINDERMERE THE MOORS, , ^^g Phologce _ Flight First— Gles Etite Flight Secoxii— The Coves of Chuachait Flight Thibd — Still Life Flight Foubth— Down Riveb and up Loch HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM ^^^ THE HOLY CHILD ^^^ OUR PARISH jgg MAY-DAY SACRED POETRY, ^^^ Chapter I jgg Chapter II jgg Chapter III 200 Chapter IV CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY, ^^^ First Canticle ^^^^ 2^3 Second Canticle ^^^ 222 Third Canticle 228 Fourth Canticle DR. KITCHINER, 234 First Course 238 Second Course 241 Third Course 245 Fourth Course SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS, ^49 First Rhapsody 255 Second Rhapsody 260 A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON 267 THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT •••••• ^^^ CHRISTMAS DREAMS 278 OUR WINTER QUARTERS STROLL TO GRASSMERE, 287 First Saunter 297 Second Saunter 303 L'ENVOY 3* EECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHEH NORTH. ClffilSTOPIIER IN HIS SPOUTING JACKET. FYTTE FIRST. TiitnE is a fine and beautiful alliance between all pastimes pursued on flood, field, and fell. The principles in human nature on which they depend, are in all the same ; but those princi- ples are subject to infinite modifications and varieties, according to the difference of indi- vidual and national character. All such pas- times, whether followed merely as pastimes, or as professions, or as the immediate means of sustaining life, require sense, sagacity, and knowledge of nature and nature's laws; nor less, patience, perseverance, courage even, and bodily strength or activity, while the spirit which animates and supports them is a spirit of anxiety, doubt, fear, hope, joy, exultation, and triumph— in the heart of the j'oung a fierce passion — in the heart of the old a passion still, but subdued and tamed down, without, however, being much dulled or dead- ened, by various experience of all the myste- ries of the calling, and by the gradual subsid- ing of all impetuous impulses in the frames of all mortal men beyond perhaps threescore, when the blackest head will be becoming gray, the most nervous knee less firmly knit, the most steely-springed instep less clastic, the keenest eye less of a far-keeker, and, above all, the most boiling heart less like a caldron or a crater — yea, the whole man subject to some dimness or decay, and, consequentl)-, the whole duty of man like the new edition of a book, from which many passages that formed the chief glory of the aliiio princeps have been expunged — the whole character of the style corrected wiihoutbeing thereby improved— just like the later editions of the Pleasures of Ima- gination, which were written by Akenside when he was about twenty-one, and altered by him at forty — to the exclusion or destruction of many most spkndida vitia, by which process the poem, in our humble opinion, was shorn of its brightest beams, and suffered disastrous twilight and eclipse— perplexing critics. Now, seeing that such pastimes are in num- ber almost infinite, and infinite the varieties of human character, pray what is there at all stir- prising in your being madly fond of shooting — and your brother Tom just as foolish about fishing — arid cousin Jack perfectly insane on fox-hunting— while the old gentleman your fa- ther, in spite of wind and weather, perennial gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing of the white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire wolds— and uncle Ben, as if just escaped from Bedlam or St. Luke's, with Dr. Haslam at his heels, or with a few hundred yards' start of Dr. Warburton, is seen galloping, in a Welsh wig and strange apparel, in the rear of a pack of Lilliputian beagles, all barking as if they were as mad as their master, supposed to be in chase of an invisible animal that keeps eternally doubling in field and forest— " still hoped for, never seen," and well christened by the name of Escape 1 Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All people have thirty-three faculties. Now there are but twenty-four letters in the alpha- bet ; yet how many languages— some six-thou- sand we believe, each of which is susceptible of many dialects ! No wonder, then, that you might as well try to count all the sands on the sea-shore as all the species of sportsmen. There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man with a large and sound development from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and deer-stalking— from being, in short, a univer- sal genius in sports and pastimes. Heaven has made us such a man. Yet there seems to be a natural course or progress in pastimes. We do not now speak of marbles— or knuckling down at taw— or trundling a hoop— or pall-lall— or pitch and toss— or any other of the games of the school playground. We restrict ourselves to what, somewhat inaccurately perhaps, are called field-sports. Thus angling seems the earliest of them all in the order of nature. There the new-breeched urchin stands on the low bridge of the little bit burnie ! and with crooked pin, baited with one unwrilhing ringof adead worm, and attached to a yarn-thread— for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut— his rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will A 2 5 6 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. he s:*and during all his play-hours, as forget- ful of his primer as if the weary art of print- ing had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soul- engrossing hope of some time or other catch- ing a minnow or abeardie! A tug — a tug ! With face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull away at the monster — and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans and the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, two inches long ! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, and sisters and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush of cold blood on his small fumy fingers. He carries about with him, up- stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate ; he will not wash his hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw — and at night, "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep — a thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams ! From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful day-dream, haunted by the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a realitj' — an art — a science — of which the flaxen-headed school- boy feels himself to be master — a mystery in which he has been initiated; and off he goes now all alone, in the power of successful pas- sion to the distant brook — brook a mile ofl^ — with fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a huge forest of six acres, be- tween it and the house in which he is-boarded or was born ! There flows on the slender music of the shadowy shallows — there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The scared water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. And oh ! how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yel- lowing along the braes, whore leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of sunshine ! His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod in two pieces — yes, his line is of hair twisted — plaited by his own soon-instructed little fingers. By Heavens, he is fishing with the fly ! And the Fates, who, grim and grisly as they are painted to be by full-grown, ungrateful, lying poets, smile like ansjels upon thepaidler in the brook, winnowing the air M'ith their wings into western breezes, while at the very first throw the yellow trout forsakes his fistness beneath the bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a race like lightning, changes at once the child into the boy, and shoots through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstasy of a new life expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden brightens up the sky. Fortnna fnvcl fnrtihus — and with one long pull, and strong pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelve- incher on the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the only bay in all the burn where such an exploit was possible, and dashing upon him like an osprey, soars up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries off to a spot of safety twenty yards from the pool, and then flinging him down on a heath-surrounded plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with un- frequent and feeble motions, bright and beauti- ful, and glorious with all his yellow light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly splendour, beneath a sun that never shone before so dazzingly : but now the ra- diance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow-sailing mass of clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine. Springs, summers, autumns, winters — each within itself longer, by many times longer than the whole year of grown-up life, that slips at last through one's fingers like a knotless thread — pass over the curled darling's brow ; and look at him now, a straight and strengthy strip- ling, in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after rock-ledge, nor heeding aught as he plashes knee-deep, or waistband- high, through river-feeding torrents, to the glo- rious music of his running and ringing reel, after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white breakers of the sea. No hazel or willow wand, no half-crown rod of ash framed by village Wright, is now in his practised hands, of which the veri- left is dexterous ; but a twenty-feet rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and a-glitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the at- tenuating line itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant's proboscis — the hiccory and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw — from butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautilully less," the beau-ideal of a rod by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses materialized! A fish — fat, fair, and forty ! "She is a salmon, therefore to be woo'd — she is a salmon, therefore to be won" — but shy, timid, capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now full of fear, like any other female Avhom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in spite of all her strug?line, will bring to the a;asp at last ; and then with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead or worse than dead, fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the lustre of her beauty, insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perish- able things in a world of perishing ! — But the salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to spring to the plunging-stone. There, suddenly, instinct with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver bullion ; and, re- lasping into the flood, is in another moment at the very head of the waterfall! Give her the butt — give her the butt — or she is gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep! — Now comes the trial of your tackle — and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge of clifl^or cataract 1 Her snout is southwards — richt up the middle of the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very course where she was spawned ! She stiJl swims swift, and strong, and deep — and the line goes steady, boys, steady — stifl!'and steady as a Tory CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal fin — danger in the flap of her tail — and yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. Why the river was yesterday in spate, and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or obstruction —the course is clear — no tree-roots here — no floating branches — for during the night they have all been swept down to the salt loch. In medio tniissimas ibis — ay, now you feel she begins to fail — the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What ! another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea- cook ! — you in the tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds ? — Ha ! Watty Ritchie, my man, is that you 1 God bless your honest laughinG; phiz ! What Watty, would you think of a Fish like that about Peebles 1 Tam Grieve never gruppit sae heavy a ane since first he bclangcd to the Council. — Curse that colley ! Ay ! well done, Watty ! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks — if that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straighl-up tail, come bellowing by between us and the river, then, " Madam ! all is lost, except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at seven. Our will is made — ten thousand to the Foundlin? — ditto to the Thames Tunnel ha — ha — my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if all further resistance now were vain, and grace- fully thou wert surrendering thyself to death ! No faith in female — she trusts to the last trial of her tail — sweetly workcst thou, Reel of Reels ! and on thy smooth axle spinning slecp'st, even.as Milton describes her, like our own worthy planet. Scrope — Bainbridge — Maule — princes among Anglers — oh ! that you were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphry] At his retort] By mysterious sympathy — far oflf at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing the noblest fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, en- tranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Ab- botsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! I'oor Sandv — why on thvpale face that melan- choly smile !— Peter ! the Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and al- most with a swirl — whitening as she nears the sand — there she has it — struck right into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Mi- nerva, or Venus — and lies at last in all her glo- rious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before the Flood ! "The child is father of the man. And I would wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety!" So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he begins with his pipe-gun, formed of the last year's growth of a branch of the plane- tree — the beautiful dark-green-leaved and fra- grant-flowered plane-tree — that stands straight in stem and round in head, visible and audible too from afar the bee-resounding umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in sheltered in- land vale, still loving the roof of the fisher- man's or peasant's cottage. Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in shape like a very musket, such as soldiers bear — a Christmas present from parent, once a colonel of volunteers — nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley-shot, formidable to face and eyes ; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hin- der-end of playmate, scornfully yet fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon tires of such ineffectual trigger — and his soul, as well as his hair, is set on fire by that extraordinary compound — Gunpowder. He begins with burn- ing off his eyebrows on the King's birthday; squibs and crackers follow, and all the plea- sures of the pluff". But he soon longs to let off a gun — " and follow to the field some war- like lord" — in hopes of being allowed to dis- charge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto has made his last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking among the trees. This is his first practice in fire arms, and from that hour he is — a Shooter. Then there is in most rural parishes — and of rural parishes alone do we condescend to speak — a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver on the butt — perhaps one that originally served in the Scots Greys. It is bought, or borrowed, by the young shooter, who begins firing first at barn-doors, then at trees, and then at living things — a strange cur, who, from his lolling tongue may be supposed to have the hydrophobia — a cat that has purred herself asleep on the sunny churchyard wall, or is watching mice at their hole-mouths among the graves — a water- rat in the mill-lead — or weasel that, running to his retreat in the wall, always turns round to look at you — a goose wandered from his common in disappointed love — or brown duck, easily mistaken by the unscrupulous for a wild one, in pond remote from human dwelling, or on meadow by the river side, away from the clack of the muter-mill. The corby-crow, too, shout- ed out of his nest on some tree lower than usual, is a good flying mark to the more ad- vanced class : or morning magpie, a-chatter at skreigh of day close to the cottage door among the chickens ; or a flock of pigeons wheeling overhead on the stubble field, or sit- ting so thick together, that every stock is blue with tempting plumage. But the pistol is discharged for a fowling piece — brown and rusty, with a slight crack probably in the muzzle, and a lock out of all proportion to the barrel. Then the young shooter aspires at halfpennies thrown up into the air — and generally hit, for there is never wanting an apparent dent in copper metal ; and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming swallow, a household bird, and there- fore to be held sacred, but shot at on the excuse of its being next to impossible to hit him — an opinion strengthened into belief by several summers' practice. But the small brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the many-holed red sand-bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game — and still more, the longed-winged legless black RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. devilet, that, if it falls to the ground, cannot rise again, and therefore screams wheeling round the corners and battlements of towers and cas- tles, or far out even of cannon shot, gambles in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle's flight. It seems to boy- ish eyes, that the creatures near the earth, when but little blue sky is seen between the specks and the wallflowers growing on the coign of vantage— the signal is given to fire ; but the devilets are too high in heaven to smell the sulphur. The starling whips with a shrill cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground bnt a tiny bit of mossy mortar inhabited by a spider ! But the Day of Days arrives at last, when the school-boy, or rather the college boy-, return- ing to his rural vacation, (for in Scotland college winters tread close, too close, on the heels of academies,) has a gun — a gun in a case — a double-barrel too — of his own — and is provided with a license, probably without any other qualification than that of hit or miss. On some portentous morning he efTulges with the sun in velveteen jacket and breeches of the same — many-buttoned gaiters, and an unker--* chiefed throat. 'Tis the fourteenth of Septem- ber, and lo ! a pointer at his heels — Ponto, of course — a game-bag like a beggar's wallet at his side — destined to be at eve as full of charity — and all the paraphernalia of an accomplished sportsman. Proud, were she to see the sight, would be the "mother that bore him;" the heart of that old sportsman, his daddy, would sing for joy ! The chained mastiff in the yard yowls his admiration ; the servant lasses uplift the pane of their garret, and, with suddenly withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in their rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab Roger, who has been cleaning out the barn, comes forth to partake of the caulker; and away go the footsteps of the old poacher and his pupil through the autumnal rime, ofl" to the uplands, where — for it is one of the ear- liest of harvests — there is scarcely a single acre of standing corn. The turnip fields are bright green with hope and expectation — and coveys are couching on lazy beds beneath the potato-shaw. Every high hedge, ditch- guarded on either side, shelters its own brood — imagination hears the whir shaking the dew- drops from the broom on the brae— and first one bird, and then another, and then the re- maining number, in itself no contemptible co- vey, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in the clouds, from the coppice brushwood with here and there an intercepting standard tree. Poor Ponto is much to b&-, pitied. Either having a cold in his nose, or having ante-break- fasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent nothing short of a badger, and, every other field, he starts in horror, shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his points, enclosed in a whirring cove)\ He is still duly taken between those inexorable 'knees; out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy enough for a horse ; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole ■parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised M'fants to their breasts ; and the schoolmaster. fastening a knowing eye on dunce and ne'er- do-weel, holds up, in silent warning, the terror of the taws. Frequent flogging will cowe the spirit of the best man and dog in Britain. Ponto travels now in fear and trembling but a few yards from his tyrant's feet, till, rousing himself to the sudden scent of something smell- ing strongly, he draws slowly and beautifully, and "There fix'd, a perfect semicirle stands." Up runs the Tyro ready-cocked, and, in his eagerness, stumbling among the stubbl«,when, hark and lo ! the gabble of grey goslings, and the bill-protruded hiss of goose and gander ! Bang goes the right-hand barrel at Ponto, who now thinks it high time to be ofi" to the tune of "ower the hills and far awa'," while the young gentleman, half-ashamed and half-in- censed, half-glad and half-sorry, discharges the left-hand barrel, with a highly improper curse, at the father of the feathered family before him, who receives the shot like a ball in his breast, throws a somerset quite surprising for a bird of his usual habits, and after biting the dast with his bill, and thumping it with his bottom, breathes an eternal farewell to this sublunary scene — and leaves himself to be paid for at the rate of eighteenpence a pound to his justly irritated owner, on whose farm he had led a long and not only harmless, but honourable and useful life. It is nearly as impossible a thing as we know, to borrow a dog about the time the sun has reached his meridian, on the First Day of the Partridges. Ponto by this lime has sneaked, unseen by human eye, into his kennel, and coiled himself up into the anns of " tired Na- ture's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer makes offer of a colley, who, from numbering among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, is quite a Don in his way among the cheepers, and has been known in a turnip field to stand in an altitude very similar to that of setting. Luath has no objection to a frolic over the fields, and plays the part of Ponto lo perfection. At last he catches sight of a covey basking, and, leaping in upon them open-mouthed, de- spatches them right and left, even like the fa- mous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at West- minster. The birds are bagged with a genile remonstrance, and Luath's exploit rewarded with a whang of cheese. Elated by the pres- sure on his shoulder, the young gentleman laughs at the idea of pointing ; and fires away, like winking, at every uprise of birds, near or remote; M'orks a miracle bybringing down three at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be crossing, and wearied wiih such slaughter, lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who can mark down to an inch, and walks up to the dropped pout as if he could kick her up with his foot ; and thus the bag in a few hours is half full of feathers; while, to close with eclat the sport of the day, the cunning elder takes him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edge of the wood, and returning the gun into his hands, shows him poor pussy sitting with open eyes, fast asleep ! The pellets are in her brain, and turning herself over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece of untwisting Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 9 ponch of ihc jacket, yet unstained by blood, yawns lo icceive her — and in she goes plump ; paws, ears, bod}', feet, fud, and all — while Luath, all the way home to the Mains, keeps snoking at the red drops oozing through ; for well he knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, the smell of pussy, whether sitting beneath a tuft of withered grass on the brae, or burrowed beneath a snow wreath. A hare, we certainly must say, in spite of haughtier sportsman's scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory shot. But let us trace no further thus, s'tep by step, the Pilgrim's Progress. Look at him now — a finished sportsman — on the moors — the bright black botindless Dalwhinnie moors, stretching away, by long Loch Erric^t side, into the dim and distant day that han?s,with all its clouds, over the bosom of far Loch Rannoch. Is that the piuffer at partridge-pouts who had nearly been the death of poor Ponto ? Lord Kennedy himself might take a lesson now from the straight and steady stj'le in which on the moun- tain brow, and up to the middle in heather, he brings his Manton to the deadly level ! More un- erring eye never glanced along brown barrel ! Finer foiefinger never touched a trigger ! Fol- low him a whole day, and not one wounded bird. All most beautifully arrested on their flight by instantaneous death ! Down dropped right and left, like lead on the heather — old cock and hen, singled out among the orphaned brood, as calmly as a cook would do it in the larder from among a pile of plumage. No random shot within — no needless shot out of distance — covered every feather before stir of finger — and body, back, and brain, pierced, broken, shattered ! And what perfect pointers ! There they stand, as siill as death — yet instinct with life — the whole half dozen ! Mungo, the black- tanned — Don, the red-spotted — Clara, the snow- while — Primrose, the pale j-ellow — Basto, the bright brown, and Nimrod, in his coat of many colours, often seen afar through the mists like a meteor. So much for the Angler's and the Shooter's Progress — now briefly for the Hunter's. Hunt- ing, in this country, unquestionably com.mences with cats. Few cottages without a cat. If you do not find her on the mouse watch at the gable end of the house just at the corner, take a solar observation, and by it look for her on bank or brae — somewhere about the premises — if un- successful, peep into the byre, and up through a hole among the dusty divots of the roof, and chance is you see her eyes glittering far-ben in the gloom; but if she be not there either, into the barn and up on the mow, and surely she is on the straw or on the baulks below the kipples. No. Well, then, let )'our eye travel along the edge of that little wood behind the cottage — ay, yonder she is ! — but she sees both you and your two terriers — one rough and the other smooth — and, slinking away through a gap in the old hawthorn hedge in among the hazels, she either lies perdu, or is up a fir-tree almost as high as the magpie's orcorby's nest. Now — observe — shooting cats is one thing — and hunting them is another — and shooting and hunting, though they may be united, are here treated separately ; so, in the present case, the cat makes her escape. But get her watch- 2 ing birds — ^young larks, perhaps, walking on the lea — or young linnets hanging on the broom — down by yonder in the holm lands, where there are no trees, except indeed that one glorious sin- gle tree, the Golden Oak, and he is guarded by Glowrer, and then what a most capital chase ! Stretching herself up with crooked back, as if taking a yawn — off she jumps, with tremen- dous spangs, and tail, thickened with fear and anger, perpendicular. Youf — youf — youf — go the terriers — head over heels perhaps in their fury — and are not long in turning her — and bringing her to bay at the hedge-root, all ablaze and abristle. A she-devil incarnate ! — Hark — all at once now strikes up a trio — Ca- talani caterwauling the treble — Glowrer taking the bass — and Tearer the tenor — a cruel con- cert cut short by a squalling throttler. Away — away along the holm — and over the knowe — and into the wood — for lo ! the gudewife, bran- dishing a besom, comes flying demented with- out her mutch down to the murder of her tabby — her son, a stout stripling, is seen skirting the potato-field to intercept our flight — and, most formidable of all foes, the Man of the House himself, in his shirt-sleeves and flail in his hand, bolts from the barn, down the croft, across the burn, and up the brae, to cut us off from the Manse. The hunt's up — and 'tis a capital steeple chase. Disperse — disperse ! Down the hill, Jack — up the hill, Gill — dive the dell. Kit — thread the wood, Pat — a hun- dred yards' start is a great matter — a stern chase is always a long chase — schoolboys are generally in prime wind — the old man begins lo puff and blow, and snort, and put his paws to his paunch — the son is thrown out by a double of dainty Davy's — and the "sair be- grutten mithcr" is gathering up the tTn and tattered remains of Tortoise-shell Tabby, and invoking the vengeance of heaven and earth on her pitiless murderers. Some slight relief to her bursting and breaking heart to vow, that she will make the minister hear of it on the deafest side of his head — a)', even if she have to break in upon him sitting on Saturday night, getting aff by rote his fushionless sermon, in his ain study- Now, gentle reader, again observe, that though we have now described, con amorc, a most cruel case of cat-killing, in which Ave certainly did play a most aggravated part, some Sixty Years since, far indeed are we from recommending such wanton barbarity to the rising generation. We are not inditing a homily on humanity to animals, nor have we been appointed to succeed the Rev. Dr. Somerville of Currie, the great Patentee of the Safety Double Bloody Barrel, to preach the annual Gibsonian sermon on that subject — we are simply stating certain matters of fact, illustrative of the rise and progress of the love of pastime in the soul, and leave our readers to draw the moral. But may we be permitted to say, that the naughtiest schoolboys often make the most pious men ; that it does not follow according to the wise saws and modern instances of prophetic old women of both sexes, that he who in boyhood has worried a cat with terriers, will, in manhood, commit murder on one of his own species ; or that peccadilloes 10 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. are the progenitors of capital crimes. Nature alloM's to growing lads a certain range of wick- edness, sans-peur et sans reprochc. She seems, indeed, to whistle into their ear, to mock an- cient females — to laugh at Quakers — to make mouths at a descent man and his wife riding double to church — the matron's thick legs lu- dicrously bobbing from the pillion, kept firm on Dobbin's rump by her bottom, '' ponckribiis librata suis," — to tip the wink to young women during sermon on Sunday — and on Saturday, most impertinently to kiss them, whether they will or no, on high-road or by-path — and to per- petrate many other little nameless enormities. No doubt, at the time, such things will wear rather a suspicious character ; and the boy who is detected in the fact, must be punished by pawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from play. But when punished, he is of course left free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found that he sleeps a whit the less soundly, or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his dreams. Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong to guilt. But fun and frolic, even when tres- passes, are not guilt ; and though a cat have nine lives, she has but one Ghost — and that will haunt no house where there are terriers. What ! surely if you have the happiness of being a parent you would not wish your only boy — your son and heir — the blended image of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beaut)' — to be a smug, smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his forehead, hands always unglaiired, and without spot or blemish on his white-thread stockings'? You would not wish him, surely, to be always moping and musing in a corner with a good book held close to his nose — bo- tanizing with his maiden aunts — doing the pretty at tea-tables with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and attend- ing to the kettle — telling tales on all naughty boys and girls — laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny pig — keeping all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumblcd drawer — having his own peg for his uncrushcd hat — saying his prayers precisely as the clock strikes nine, while his companions are 3'et at blind-man's bufT— and pufled up every Sabbath- eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon memory for a sermon — while all the other boys are scolded for having fallen asleep before Tenthly 1 You would not wish him, surely, to write sermons himself at his tender years, nay — even to be able to give you chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible ? No. Better far that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even of his Sun- day clothes — blottinghis copv — impiously pin- ning pieces of paper to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father— going to the fish- ing not only without leave but against orders- bathing in the forbidden pool, where the tai- lor was drowned— drying powder before the school-room fire, and blowing himself and two crack-sculled cronies to the ceiling — tyinir kettles to the tails of dogs— shooting an old woman's laying hen— galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps— climbing frees 10 the slenderest twig on which bird could build, PJid up the tooth-of-time-intended sides of old castles after wall-flowers and starlings — being run away with in carts by colts against turn- pike gates — buying bad ballads from young gipsy-girls, who, on receiving a sixpence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take your change out of that;" — on a borrowed broken-knee'd pon)', with a switch-tail — a de- vil for galloping — not only attending country- races for a saddle and collar, but entering for and winning the prize — dancing like a devil in bams at kirns — seeing his blooming partner home over the blooming heather, most perilous adventure of all in which virgin-puberty can be involved — fighting with a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn beneath a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen blue — and, to conclude " this strange eventful his- tory," once brouglit home at one o'clock in the morring, God knows whence or by whom, and found by the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the moonlight, dead-drunk on the gravel at the gate I Nay, start not, parental reader — nor, in the terror of anticipation, send, without loss of a single day, for your son at a distant academy, mayhap pursuing even such another career. Trust thou to the genial, gracious, and benign via 7iie(liriitri.r naturir. What though a few clouds bedim and deform "the innocent brightness of the new-born day?" Lo! how splendid the meridian ether! What though the frost seem to blight the beauty of the budding and blow- ing rose 1 Look how she revives beneath dew, rain, and sunshine, till your eyes can even scarce endure the lustre! What though the waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute the snow of the swan ? They fall off from her ex- panded wings, and, pure as a spirit, she soars away, and descends into her own silver lake, stainless as the water-lilies floating round her breast. .And shall the immortal soul suffer lasting contamination from the transient chances of its nascent state — in this, less fa- voured than material and immaterial things that perish ? No — it is undergoing endless transmigrations, — every hour a being differ- ent, yet the same — dark stains blotted out — rueful inscriptions effaced — many an erasure of impressions once thought permanent, but soon altogether forgotten — and vindicating, in the midst of the earthly corruption in which it is immersed, its own celestial origin, charac- ter, and end, often flickering, or seemingly blown out, like a taper in the wind, but all at once self-reillumined, and shinin<: in inextin- guishable and self-fed radiance — like a star in heaven. Therefore, bad as boys too often are — and a disgrace to the mother who bore them — the cradle in which they were rocked — the nurse by whom they were suckled — the schoolmas- ter by whom they were flogged — and the hang- man by whom it was prophesied they were tc be executed — wait patiently for a few years, and you will see them all transfigured— one into a preacher of such winning eloquence, that he almost persuades all men to be Chris- tians — another into a parliamentar}- orator, who commands the applause of listening sen- ates, and "Reads his history in a nation's «ye«," CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET, 11 —one into a painter, before whose thunderous heavens the storms of Poussin " pale their inef- fectual fires" — another into a poet composing and playing, side by side, on his own peculiar harp, in a concert of vocal and instrumental music, with Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth — one into a great soldier, who, when Welling- ton is no more, shall, for the freedom of the world, conquer a future Waterloo — another who hoisted his flag on the " mast of some tall amrairal," shall, like Eiiab Harvey in the Te- meraire, lay two three-deckers on board at once, and clothe some now nameless peak or promontory in immortal glory, like that shining on Trafalgar. Well, then, after cat-killing comes Coursing. Cats have a look of hares — ^kittens of leverets — and they are all called Pussy. The terriers are useful still, preceding the line like skirmish- ers, and with finest noses startling the mawkin from bracken-bush or rush bower, her sky- light garret in the old quarry, or her brown study in the brake. Away with your coursing on Marlborough downs, where huge hares are seen squatted from a distance, and the sleek dogs, disrobed of their gaudy trappings, are let slip by a Tryer, running for cups and collars before lords and ladies, and squires of high and low degree — a pretty pastime enough, no doubt, in its way, and a splendid cavalcade. But will it for a mopient compare with the sudden and all-unlooked-for start of the "auld witch" from the bunweed-covered lea, when the throat of every pedestrian is privileged to cry " halloo — halloo — halloo" — and whipcord- tailed greyhound and hairy lurcher, without any invidious distinction of birth or bearing, lay their deep breasts to the sward at the same moment, to the same instinct, and brattle over the brae after the disappearing Ears, laid flat at the first sight of her pursuers, as with re- troverted eyes she turns her face to the moun- tain, and seeks the cairn only a little lower than the falcon's nest. What signifies any sport in the open air, except in congenial scenery of earth and heaven ? Go, thou gentle Cockney! and angle in the New River ; — but, bold Englishman, come with us and try a salmon-cast in the old Tay. Go, thou gentle Cockney ! and course a suburban hare in the purlieus of Blackheath ; — but, bold Englishman, come with us and course an animal that never heard a city-bell, by day a hare, by night an old woman, that loves the dogs she dreads, and, hunt her as you will with a leash and a half of lightfoots, still returns at dark to the same form in the turf-dike of th^ garden of the mountain cottage. The children, who love her as their own eyes —for she has been as a pet about the family, summer and winter, since that chubby-cheeked urchin, of some five years old, first began to swing in his self-rocking cradle — will scarcely care to see her started — nay, one or two of the wickedest among them will join in the halloo; for often, ere this, " has she cheated the very jowlers, and lauched ower her shouther at the lang dowgs walloping ahint her, sair forfa- quhen, up the benty brae — and it's no the day that she's gaun to be killed by Rough Robin, or smooth Spring, or the red Bick, or the hairy Lurcher — though a' fowr be let lowse on her at ance, and ye surround her or she rise." What are your great, big, fat, lazy English hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who have the food brought to their verj^ mouth in preserves, and are out of breath with five minutes' scamper among themselves — to the middle-sized, hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steel- legged, long-winded mawkins of Scotland, that scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the wee moorland j'ardie that shelters them, but prey in distant fields, take a breathing every gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired as }'oung eagles ringing the sky for pastime, and before the dogs seem not so much scour- ing for life as for pleasure, with such an air of freedom, liberty, and independence, do they fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they to the spine — strong in bone, and sound in bottom — see, see how Tickler clears that twenty-feet moss-hag at a single spang like a bird — tops that hedge that would turn any hunter that ever stabled in Melton Mowbray — and then, at full speed northward, moves as upon a pivot within his own length, and close upon his haunches, without losing a foot, off within a point of due south. A kennel! He never was and never will be in a kennel all his free joyful days. He has walked and run — and leaped and swam about — at his own Avill, ever since he was nine days old — and he would have done so sooner had he had any eyes. None of your stinking cracklets for him — he takes his meals with the family, sit- ting at the right hand of the master's eldest son. He sleeps in any bed of the house he chooses; and, though no Methodist, he goes every third Sunday to church. That is the education of a Scottish greyhound — and the consequence is, that you may pardonably mis- take him for a deer dog from Badenoch or Lochaber, and no doubt in the world that he would rejoice in a glimpse of the antlers on the weather gleam, " Whpre the hunter of deer and the warrior trode To his hills that encircle the sea." This may be called roughing it — slovenly — coarse — rude — artless — unscientific. But we say no — it is )'our only coursing. Gods ! with what a bounding bosom the schoolboy salutes the dawning of the cool — clear — crisp, yes, crisp October morn, (for there has been a slight frost, and the almost leafless hedgerows are all glittering with rime;) and, little time lost at dress or breakfast, crams the luncheon into his pouch, and away to the Trysting-hill Farmhouse, which he fears the gamekeeper and his grews will have left ere he can run across the two long Scotch miles of moor be- tween him and his joy ! With steps elastic, he feels flying along the sward as from a spring-board ; like a roe, he clears the burns and bursts his way through the brakes ; pant- ing, not from breathlessness but anxiety, he lightly leaps the garden fence without a pole, and lo, the green jacket of one huntsman, the red jacket of another, on the plat before the door, and two or three tall rawboned poachers — and there is mirth and music, fun and frolic, and the very soul of enterprise, adventure, and EECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 12 desperation, in that word— while tall and graceful stand the black, the brindled, and the yellow breed, with keen yet quiet eyes, pro- phetic of their destined prey, and though mo- tionless now as stone statues of hounds at the feet of Meleager, soon to launch like lightning at the loved halloo ! Out comes the gudewife with her own bottle from the press in the spence, with as big a belly and broad a bottom as her own, and they are no trifle— for the worthy woman has been making much beef for many years, is more- over in the family way, and surely this time there will be twins at least— and pours out a canty caulker for each crowing crony, begin- ning with the gentle, and ending with the semple, that is our and herself; and better speerit never steamed in sma' still. She offers another with " hinny," by way of Athole brose ; but it is put off" till evening, for coursing re- quires a clear head, and the same sobrietj' then adorned our youth that now dignifies our old age. The gudeman, although an elder of the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits that solemn office, needs not much persuasion to let the flail rest for one day, anxious though he be to show the first aits in the market ; and donning his broad blue bonnet, and the short- est-tailed auld coat he can find, and taking his kent in his hand, he gruffly gives WuUy his orders for a' things about the place, and sets off" with the yonkers for a holyday. Not a man on earth who has not his own pastime, depend on't, austere as he may look ; and 'twould be well for this wicked world if no elder in it had a "sin that maist easily beset him," worse than what Gibby Watson's wife used to call his " awfu' fondness for the Grews !" And who that loves to walk or wander over the green earth, except indeed it merely be 8ome sonnetteer or ballad-monger, if he had time and could afford it, and lived in a toler- ably open country, would not keep, at the very least, three greyhounds'? No better eating than a hare, though old blockhead Barton — and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever there was one in this world — in his Anatomy, chooses to call it melancholy meat. Did he ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commence- ment, swallow a tureen of hare-soup with half a peck of mealy potatoes 1 If ever he did — and notwithstanding called hare melancholy meat, there can be no occasion whatever for now wishing him any further punishment. If he never did — then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. England — as you love us and yourself — cultivate hare-soup, without for a moment dreaming of giving up roasted hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly sauce being handed round on a large trencher. But there is no such thing as melancholy meat — neither fish, flesh, nor fowl — provided only there be enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even dauner- ing about the home farm seeking for a hare ? It is quite an art or science. You must con- sult not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the night before — and of ever}' day and night back to last Sunday, when probably you were prevented by the rain from going to church. Then hares shift the sites of their country seats everj' season. This month they love the fallow field— that, the stubble; this, you will see them, almost without looking for them, big and brown on the bare stony upland lea — that, you must have a hawk's eye in your head to discern, discover, detect them, like birds in their nests, embowered below the bunweed or the bracken ; they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet or wind — that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover ; now you may depend on finding madam at home in the sulks within the very heart of a bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the airts; — in short, he who knows at all times where to find a hare, even if he knew not one single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot be called an ignorant man — is probably a better-informed man in the long run than the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the Greeks, the Portugals, and all thai sort of thing, giving himself the lie on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet knew an old courser, (him of the Sporting .\nnals included,) who was not a man both of abilities and virtues. But where were we 1 — at the Trj-sting-hill Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger-ihcm-Out. Line is formed, and with measured steps we march towards the hills — for we ourselves are the schoolboy, bold, bright, and blooming as the rose — fleet of foot almost as the very ante- lope — Oh ! now, alas ! dim and withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all the blossoms — slow as the sloth along the ground — spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered pantaloon ! " O hcavpn ! that from our bright and shinlnK ycart Ape wmilfl hut take the thitig* youth needed not :" An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping rushy ascent to the hills — and putting his brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, in- timates that she is in her old form behind the dike — and the noble dumb animals, with pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware that her hour is come. Plash, plash, through the marsh, and then on tho dr)- furze beyond, jou sec her large dark-brown eyes — Soho, soho, soho — Holloo, halloo, halloo— for a mo- ment the seemingly horned creature appears to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on her shoulder, and away, like thoughts pursuing thoughts — away fly hare and hounds towards the mountain. Stand all still for a minute — for not a bush the height of our knee to break our view — and is not that brattling burst up the brae "beauti- ful exceedingly." and sufficient to chain in ad- miration the beatings of the rudest gazer's heart] Yes; of all beautiful sights — none more, none so much so, as the miraculous motion of a four-footed wild animal, changed at once, from a seeming inert sod or stone, into flight fleet as that of the falcon's wing ! In- stinct against instinct! fear and ferocity in one flight! Pursuers and pursued bound together, in ever)- turning and twisting of their career, by the operation of two headlong pas- sions ! Now they are all three upon her — and CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 13 she dies ! No ! glancing aside, like a bullet from a wall, she bounds almost at a right angle from her straight course — and, for a moment, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting headlong one over the other, all three, with erected tails, suddenly bring themselves up — like racing barks when down goes the helm, and one after another, bowsprit and boom almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and again bears up on the starboard tack upon a wind — and in a close line, head to heel, so that you might cover them all with a sheet — again, all open-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over the cliff. We are all on foot — and pray what horse could gallop through among all these quag- mires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, overall the water-cressy and puddocky ditches, sinking soft on hither and thither side, even to the two-legged leaper's ankle or knee — up that hill on the perpendicular strewn with flint- shivcrs^-down these loose-hanging cliffs — through that brake of old stunted birches with stools hard as iron — over that mile of quaking muir where the plover breeds — and — finally — up— up — up to where the dwarfed heather dies away among the cinders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptarmigan fur a patch of snow ] The thing is impossible — so we are all on foot — and the fleetest keeper that ever footed it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles give us sixty yards. " Ha ! Peter the wild boy, how are you off for wind T" — we exult- ingiy exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by on the bent. But see — see — they are bringing her back again down the Red Mount — glancing aside, she throws them all three out — yes, all three, and few enow too, though fair play be a jewel — and ere they can lecover, she is a-head a hundred yards up the hill. There is a beauti- ful trial of bone and bottom ! Now one, and then another, takes almost imperceptibly the lead; but she steals away from them inch by inch — beating them all blind — and, suddenly disappearing — Heaven knows how — leaves them all in the lurch. With out-lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping tails, they come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat sheepish, and then lie down together on their sides, as if indeed about to die in defeat. She has carried away her cocked fud unscathed for the third time, from Three of the Best in all broad Scotland — nor can there any longer be the smallest doubt in the ■world, in the minds of the most skeptical, that she is — what all the country-side have long known her to be — a Witch. From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy in the order of na- ture — and so it is from coursing to Fox-Hunt- ing — by means, however, of a small intefme- diate step— the Harriers. Musical is a pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melo- diously they ring changes in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains ! A level country we have already consigned to merited contempt, (though there is no rule without an exception; and as we shall see by and by, there is one too here,) and commend us, even with harriers, to the ups and downs of the pas- toral or silvan heights. If old or indolent, take your station on a heaven-kissing hill, and hug the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will ride, then let it be on a nimble galloway of some four- teen hands, that can gallop a good pace on the road, and keep sure footing on bridle paths, ot upon the pathless braes — and by judicious horsemanship, you may meet the pack at many a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far out at the death. But the schoolboy and the shep- herd — and the whipper-in — as each hopes for favour from his own Diana — let them all be on foot — and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that can occur in the winter's campaign. One often hears of a cunning old fox — but the cunningest old fox is a simpletou to the most guileless young hare. What deceit in every double ! What calculation in every squat ! Of what far more complicated than Cretan Labyrinth is the creature, now hunted for the first time, sitting in the centre ! a listen- ing the baffled roar ! Now into the pool she plunges, to free herself from the fatal scent that lures on death. Now down the torrent course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from her poor paws, fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping of stone walls she crawls and scrambles — and now ventures from the wood along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty little garden of the wayside, or even the village cot, she creeps, as if to implore protec- tion from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuar)' of the cradle. The terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among the num- ber — and to the winding horn thai echoes reply from the walls of the house of worship — and now, in momentary contrition, "Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen !* and we bethink ourselves — alas ! all in vain for "JiTaturam ezpcllas furcd, tamen usque recurret" — of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanity : — "One lesson reader, let us two divide, Taught by what nature shows and what conceals. Never to blend our pleasure and our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice — so let us conclude with a pane- gyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime is the very strongest that can possess the heart — nor, of all the heroes of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. His Avhole character is given, and his whole history, in two words — Mighty Hun- ter. That he hunted the fox is not probable ; for the sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate — that would have been cut- ting his own throat — but to thin man-devour- ing wild beasts — the Pards — with Leo at their head. But in a land like this, where not even a wolf has existed for centuries — nor a wild boar — the same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw of the B u RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as never neighed before the flood, nor " summered high in bliss" on the sloping pastures of undeluged Ararat— and gathers them together in gallant array on the edge of the cover, " When first the hunter's startling horn is heard Upon the golden hills." What a squadron of cavalry ! What fiery eyes and flaming nostrils— betokening with what ardent passion the noble animals will revel in the chase ! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut sorrel, gray— of all shades and hues— and every courser distinguished by his own peculiar character of shape and form — yet all blending harmoniously as they crown the mount; so that a painter would only have to group and colour them as they stand, nor lose, if able to catch them, one of the dazzling lights or deep- ening shadows streamed on them from that sunny, yet not unstormy sky. You read in books of travels and romances, of Barbs and Arabs galloping in the desert — and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at the head of his Saracenic chivalry; but take our word for it, great part of all such descrip- tions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the devil's name should dwellers in the desert always be going at full speed 1 And how can that full speed be any thing more than a slow heavy hand-gallop at the best, the barbs being up to the belly at every stroke 1 They are always, it is said, in high condition — but we, who know something about horse-flesh, give that assertion the lie. They have seldom any thing either to eat or drink ; they are as lean as church mice; and covered with clammy sweat before they have ambled a league from tne tent. And then such a set of absurd riders, ■with knees up to their noses, like so many tailors riding to Brentford, via the deserts of Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and such saddles ! But the whole set-out, rider and rid- den, accoutrements and all, is too much for one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent laugh to the wild ass as he goes braying un- harnessed by. But look there ! .\rabian blood, and British bone ! Not bred in and in, to the death of all the fine stnmg animal spirits — but blood intermingled and interfused by twenty crosses, nature exulting in each succes- sive produce, till her power can no further go, and in yonder glorious grey, "Gives the world assurance of a horse :" Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but for the silver-laced blue, the gorge- ous uniform of the Hussars of England — con- found all cuirasses and cuirassiers ! — let the trumpet sound a charge, and ten thousand of the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be op- posed with spear and scimitar— and through their snow-ranks will the Three Hundred go like thaw — splitting them into dissolution with the noise of thunder. The proof of the pudding is in the eating of It; and where, we ask, were the British cavalry ever overthrown ] And how could the great north-country horsc-coupers perform their con- tracts, but for the triumphs of the Turf 1 Blood —blood there must be, either for strength, or speed, or endurance. The ver)- heaviest ca- valry—the Life Guards and the Scots Greys, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found 1 Such pastimes nerve one of the arms of the nation when in battle ; but for thera 'twould be palsied. What better education, too, not only for a horse, but his rider, before playing a bloodier game in his first war cam- paign ] Thus he becomes demicorpsed with the noble animal ; and what easy, equable motion to him is afterwards a charge over a wide level plain, with nothing in the way but a few regiments of flying Frenchmen ! The hills and dales of merrj' England have been the best riding-school to her gentlemen — her gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease — bi-t, with Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, have left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful pastimes pursued among the silvan scenery, to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross swords with the vaunted Gallic chivair)'; and still have they been in the shock victorious; witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon at Saldanha — the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo ! " Well, do you know, that, aAer all you have said, Mr. North, I cannot understand the passion and the pleasure of fojt-hunting. It seems to me both cruel and dangerous." Cruelty ! Is their cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and delivering them up to the transport of their high condiuon — for every throbbing vein is visible — at the first full burst of that maddening cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts! Danger! What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those of their riders ! .\nd what right have you to complain of that, lying all your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half-asleep on a ^ofa, sufticunt to sicken a whole street! What though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue ! After the first Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon^-once, perhaps, in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a com- mon. It IS an Idea that is pursued, on a whirl- wind of horses, to a storm of canine music — worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors, sleeping at midinght by an extinguished fire on the African sands. There is, we verily believe it. nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred. Once ofl^and away — while wood and welkin rines — and nothing is felt — nothing is imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dikes, ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all the impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, in an inclosed, cultivated, civilized, and Chris- tian country. There they g.>— prince and peer, baronet and squire — the nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each on such a steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son — for could we imagine CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 16 Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his way dis- mounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gar- dens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the country are dispersed the scarlet run- ners — and a hundred villages pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase ruars by, or disparted runlets float wea- ried and all astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber of the five- barred gate — away over the ears flies the ex- rough-rider in a surprising somerset — after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant Grey on knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow — Friendship is a fine thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed — but Py lades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands to his ear, and with a " hark forward, tantivy !" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure — and ere the fallen has risen and shaken him- self, is round the corner of the white village- church, down the dell, over the brook and close on the heels of the straining pack, all a- yell up the hill crowned by the .Stjuirc's Folly. "Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder ? since man and horse arc mortal ; but death loves better a wide soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened win- dows in a still room, the clergyman in one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility of the dying Chnstian's escape. Let oak branch smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's ; let faithless bank give way, and bur>- in the brook ; let hidden drain yield to fore feet and work a sudden wreck ; let old coal-pit, with brier}' mouth, betray ; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to cliff's unscalable by the very Welch goat ; let duke's or earl's son go sheer over a quarry twenty feet deep, and as many high ; yet " Without stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage — lo ! all that remains together of the pack, in far more dreadflil madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up n the general growl ; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the cover — he is now piece- meal in about thirty distinct stomachs ; and is he not, pray, well ofl" for sepulture 1 FYTTE SECOND. We are always unwilling to speak of our- selves, lest we should appear egotistical — for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must naturally be anxious to know something of our early historj' — and their anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed some rare advantages and oppor- tunities in our boyhood regarding field sports, and grew up, even from that first great era in every Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only a fisher but a fowler ; and it is necessary that we enter into some interesting details. There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in the Manse, a duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, according to an old tradition, had been out both in the Seventeen and Forty-five. There were ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to gun or musket, each boy retaining possession for a single day only ; but then the shooting season continued all the year. They must have been of admirable materials and work- manship; for neither of them so much as once burst during ihe Seven Years' War. The mus- ket, who, we have often since thought, must surely rather have been a blunderbuss in dis- guise, was a perfect devil for kicking when she received her discharge ; so much so indeed, that it was reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down by the recoil. She had a very wide mouth — and was thought by us "an awfu' scatierer;" a qualification which we considered of the very highest merit. She carried any thing we choose to put iuto her — there still being of all her performances a loud and favourable report — balls, buttons, chucky-stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but two faults — she had got addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burning priming, and to another of hanging fire ; habits of which it was impossible, for us at lea.st, to break her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new series of flints; but such was the high place she justly occupied in the aflection andadmira tion of us all, that faults like these did not in th«! least detract from her general character. Our delight, when she did absolutely and positively and bond fide go off, was in proportion to the comparative rarity of that occurrence ; and as to hanging fire — why we used to let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scot- tish females, took things leisurely, went off" at last with an explosion like the blowing up of a rock. The " Lang gun," again, was of much gen- tler disposition, and, instead of kicking, ran into the opposite extreme on being let off", in- clining forwards as if she would follow the shot. We believe, however, this apparent peculiarity arose from her extreme length, which rendered it difficult for us to hold her horizontally — and hence the muzzle being at- tracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of the Shooter. That such 16 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. is the true theory of the phenomenon seems to be proved by this— that when the " Lang Gun" was, in the act of firing, laid across the shoul- ders of two boys standing about a yard the one before the other, she kicked every bit as well us the blunderbuss. Her lock was of a very peculiar construction. It was so contrived that, When on full cock, the dog-head, as we used to call it, stood back at least seven inches, and unless the flint was put in to a nicety, by pull- ing the trigger you by no means caused any uncovering of the pan, but things in general remained in statu quo — and there was perfect silence. She had a worm-eaten stock into which the barrel seldom was able to get itself fairly inserted ; and even with the aid of cir- cumvoluting twine, 'twas always coggly. Thus, too, the vizy {Jnglice sight) generally inclined unduly to one side or the other, and was the cause of all of us every day hitting and hurting objects of whose existence even'we were not aware, till alarmed by the lowing or the gal- loping of cattle on the hills ; and we hear now the yell of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who shook her staff at us like a witch, with the blood running down the furrows of her face, and with many oaths maintained that she was murdered. The " Lang Gun" had cer- tainly a strong vomit — and, with slugs or swan-shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing. Bob Howie, at that distance arrested the career of a mad dog — a single slug having been sent through the eye into the brain. We wonder if one or both of those companions of our boyhood be yet alive — or, like many other great guns that have since made more noise in the world, fallen a silent prey to the rust of oblivion. Not a boy in the school had a game certifi- cate — or, as it was called in the parish — " a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow in- dividually — on the contrary, we loved him, and had a tame one — a fellow of infinite fancy — with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a gamecock. But thviir numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the hu- manest of boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse garden in myriads, midge-like ; and then out any two of us, whose day it hap- pened' to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun, charged two hands and a finger ; and with a loud shout, startling them from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let drive into the whir — a shower of feathers was instantly seen swim- ming in the air, and flower-bed and onion bed covered with scores of the mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and the pride of the eaves laid low be- fore their first crop of peas ! Never was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House- spouts were of no use in rainv weather— for they were all choked up by spra'uch-nests. At each particular barn-door, when the farmerj were at work, you might have thought you saw the entire sparrow population of the parish Seldom a Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon foi their sakes, all a-huddle and a-chirp in the bel fry and among the old loose slates. On every stercoraceous deposit on coach, cart, or bridle road, they were busy on grain and pulse ; and. in spite of cur and cat, legions embrowned every cottage garden. Emigration itself ia many million families would have left no per- ceptible void; and the ineiterminable multi- tude would have laughed at the Plague. The other small birds of the parish began to feel their security from our shot, and sung their best, unscared on hedge, bush, and tree. Per- haps, too, for sake of their own sweet strains, wt spared the lyrists of Scotland, the linnet and the lark, the one in the yellow broom, the other beneath the rosy cloud — while there was ever a sevenfold red shield before Robin'.s breast, whether flitting silent as a falling leaf, or trilling his autumnal lay on the rigging or pointed gable-end of barn or brye. Now and tnen the large bunting, conspicuous on a top- twig, and proud of his rustic psalmody, tempted his own doom— or the cunning stone-chat, glancing about the old dikes usually shot at in vain — or yellow-hammer, under the ban of the national superstition, with a drop of the devil's blood beneath his pretty crest, pretty in spite of that cruel crecd^-or green-finch, too rich in plumage for his poorer song— ^r shilfa, the beautiful nesl-builder, shivering his white- plumed wings in shade and sunshine, in y>y the most rapturous, in grief the most despairing of all the creatures of Uie air— or fedpole, ba- lanced on the down of the thistle or flower of the bunwecd on the old clovery lea— ^r, haply twice seen in a season, the very goldfinch himself, a radiant and gorgeous spirit brought on the breeze from afar, and worthy, if only slightly wounded, of being enclosed within a silver cage from Fairy Land. But we waxed more ambitious as we grew old — and then wo to the rcokcr)- on the elm- tree grove ! Down dropt the dark denizens in dozens, rebounding with a thud and a skraigh from the velvet moss, which under that um- brage formed firm floor for Titania's feet — while others kept dangling dead or dying by the claws, cheating the crusted pie, and all the blue skies above were intercepted by cawing clouds of distracted parents, now dipping down in despair almost within a shot, and now, as if sick of this world, soaring away up into the very heavens, and disappearing to return no more — till sunset should bring silence, and the night air roll off the horrid smell of sulphur from the desolated bowers; and then indeed would they come all flying back upon their strong instinct, like black-sailed barks before the wind, some from the depth of far-off fir- woods, where they had lain quacking at the ceaseless cannonade, some from the furrows of the new-braided fields aloof on the uplands, some from deep dell close at hand, and some from the middle of the moorish wilderness. Happiest of all human homes, beautiful CHRISTOPHER EN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 17 Craig-Hall ! For so even now dost thou ap- ! pear to be — in the rich, deep, mellow, green : light of imagination trembling on tower and tree — art thou yet undilapidated and undeca3'ed, in thy old manorial solemnity almost majesti- cal, though even then thou hadst long been tenanted but by an humble farmer's family — people of low degree ? The evening-festival of the First Day of the Rooks — naj', scoff not at such an anniversary — was still held in thy ample kitchen — of old the bower of brave lords and ladies bright — while the harper, as he sung his song of love or war, kept his eyes fixed on her who sat beneath the deas. The days of chivalry were gone — and the days had come of curds and cream, and, preferred by some people though not by us, of cream-cheese. Old men and old women, widowers and widows, yet all alike cheerful and chatty at a great age, for often as they near the dead, how more life- like seem the living! Middle-as^ed men and middle-aged women, husbands and wives, those sedate, with hair combed straight on their fore- heads, sun-burnt faces, and horny hands esta- blished on their knees — these serene, with countenances many of them not unlovely — comely all — and with arms decently folded beneath their matronly bosoms — as they sat 'in their holyilay dresses, feeling as if the season of youth had hardly yet flown by, or were, on such a merry meeting, fur a blink restored ! Boys and virgins — those bold even in their bashfulncss — these blushing whenever eSes met eyes — nor would they — nor could they — have spoken in the hush to save their souls ; yet ere the evening star arose, many a pretty maiden had, down looking and playing with the hem of her garment, sung linnet-like her ain favourite auld Scottish sang ! and many a sweet sang even then delighted Scotia's spirit, though Robin Bums was but a youth — walking mute anidng the wild-flowers on the moor — nor aware of the immortal melodies soon to breathe from his impassioned heart! Of all the year's holydays, not even except- ing the First of May, this was the most delight- ful. The First of May, longed for so passion- ately from the first peep of the primrose, sometimes came deformed with mist and cloud, or cheerless with whistling winds, or winter-like with a sudden fall of snow. And thus all our hopes were dashed — the roomy hay-wagon remained in its shed — the preparations made fur us in the distant moorland farmhouse were vain — the fishing- rods hung useless on the nails — and discon- solate schoolboys sat moping in corners, sorry, ashamed, and angry with Scotland's springs. But though the "leafy month of June" be fre- quently showery, it is almost alwaj's sunny too. Every half hour there is such a radiant blink that the youns: heart sings aloud for joy ; sum- mer rain makes the hair grow, and hats are little or no use towards the Longest Day ; there is something cheerful even in thunder, if it be not rather too near ; the lark has not yet ceased altogether to sing, for he soars over his second nest, unappalled beneath the sablest cloud ; the green earth repels from her reful- gent bosom the blackest shadows, nor will suffer herself to be saddened in the fulness and brightness of her contentment ; through the heaviest flood the blue skies will still be making their appearance with an impatient smile, and all the riv'ers and burns, with the multitude of their various voices, sing praises unto Heaven. Therefore, bathing our feet in beauty, we went bounding over the flowery fields and broomy braes to the grove-girdled Craig-Hall. During the long noisy daj', we thought not of the coming evening, happy as we knew it was to be ; and during the long and almost as noisy evening, we forgot all the pastime of the da3% Weeks before, had each of us engaged his partner for the first country dance, by right his own when supper came, and to sit close to him with her tender sid", with waist at first stealthily arm-encirclej, and at last boldly and almost with proud d. splay. In the churchyard, before or after Sabbath-service, a word whis- pered into the ear of blooming and blushing rustic sufficed ; or if that opportunity failed, the angler had but to step into her father's burn-side cottage, and with the contents of his basket leave a tender request, and from be hind the gable-end carry away a word, a smile a kiss, and a waving farewell. Many a high-roofed hall have we, since those days, seen, made beautiful with festoons and garlands, beneath the hand of taste and genius decorating, for some splendid festival, the abode of the noble expecting a still nobler guest. But oh ! what pure bliss, and what profound, was then breathed into the bosom of boyhood from that glorious branch of hawthorn, in the chim- ney — itself almost a tree, so thick — so deep — so rich its load of blossoms — so like its fra- grance to something breathed from heaven — and so transitor}'' in its sweetness too, that as she approached to inhale it, down fell many a snow-flake to the virgin's breath — in an hour all melted quite away ! No broom that now-a- days grows on the brae, so yellow as the broom — the golden broom — the broom that seemed still to keep the hills in sunlight long after the sun himself had sunk — the broom in which we first found the lintwhite's nest — and of its petals, more precious than pearls, saw framed a wreath for the dark hair of that dark-eyed girl, an orphan, and melancholy even in her merriment — dark-haired and dark-eyed indeed, but whose forehead, whose bosom, were yet whiter than the driven snow. Greenhouses — conservatories — orangeries — are exquisitely balmy still — and, in presence of these strange plants, one could believe that he had been transported to some rich foreign clime. But now we carry the burden of our years along- with us — and that consciousness bedims the blossoms, and makes mournful the balm, as from flowers in some fair burial-place, breath- ing of the tomb. But oh ! that Craig-Hall haw- thorn ! and oh ! that Craig-Hall broom ! they send their sweet rich scent so far into the hushed air of memory, that all the weary worn- out weaknesses of age drop from us like a garment, and even now — the flight of that swal- lowseems more aerial — more alive with blisshis clay-built nest — the ancient long-ago blue of the sky returns to heaven — not for many a, many a long year have we seen so fair — so frail — so b2 18 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. transparent and angel-mantle-looking a cloud ! The very viol speaks — the very dance responds in Craig-Hall : this— this is the very festival of the First Day of the Rooks— Mary Mather, the pride of the parish — the county — the land — ihe earth — is our partner — and long mayest thou, O moon ! remain behind thy cloud — when the parting kiss is given — and the love- ,etter, at that tenderest moment, dropped into her bosom ! But we have lost the thread of our discourse, and must pause to search for it, even like a spinster of old, in the disarranged spindle of one of those pretty little wheels now heard no more in the humble ingle, hushed by machi- nery clink-clankiug with power-looms in every town and city of the land. Another year, and we often found ourselves — alone — or with one chosen comrade ; for even then we began to have our sympathies and antipathies, not only with roses and lilies, or to cats and cheese, but with or to the eyes, and looks, and foreheads, and hair, and voices, and motions, and silence, and rest of human beings, loving them with a perfect love — we must not say hating them with a perfect hatred — alone or with a friend, among the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, the Whawp ! At first sight of his long bill aloft above the rushes, we could hear our heart beating quick time in the desert; at the turn- ing of his neck, the body being yet still, our heart ceased to beat altogether — and we grew sick with hope when near enough to see the wild beauty of his eye. Unfolded, like a thought, was then the brown silence of the shy creature's ample wings — and with a warning cry he wheeled away upon the wind, unharmed by our ineflectual hail, seen falling far short of tlie deceptive distance, while his mate that had lain couched — perhaps in her nest of eggs or young, exposed yet hidden — within killing range, half-running, half-tly- ing, flapped herself into flight, simulating lame leg and wounded wing; and the two disappearing together behind the hills, left us in our vain reason thwarted by instinct, to resume with live hopes rising out of the ashes of the dead, our daily-disappointed quest over the houseless mosses. Yet now and then to our steady aim the bill of the whawp disgorged blood — and as we felt the feathers in our hand, and from tip to tip eyed the outstretched wings. Fortune, we felt, had ■no better boon to bestow, earth no greater tri- umph. Hush— stoop— kneel — crawl — for by all our hopes of mercy — a heron — a heron ! An eel dangling across his bill ! And now the water- serpent has disappeared ! From morning dawn hath the fowl been fishing here— perhaps on that very stone— for it is one of those days when eels are a-roaming in the shallows, and the heron knows that they are as likely to pass by that stone as any other— from morning dawn —and 'tis now past meridian, half-past two ! Be propitious, oh ye Fates ! and never— never -—shall he again fold his wings on the edge of his gaping nest, on the trees^that overtop the only tower left of the old castle. Another eel • and we too can crawl silent as the sinuous i serpent. Flash ! Bang ! over he goes dead- • no, not dead — but how unlike that unavailing flapping, as head over heels he goes spinning over the tarn, to the serene unsettling of him- self from sod or stone, when, his hunger sated, and his craw filled with fish for his far-off brood, he used to lift his blue bulk into the air, and with long depending legs, at first floated away like a wearied thing, but soon, as his plumes felt the current of air homewards flowing, urged swifter and swifter his easy course — laggard and lazy no more — leaving leagues behind him, ere you had shifted your motion in watching his cloudlike career, soon invisible among the woods ! The disgorged eels are returned — some of them alive — to their native element — the mud. And the dead heron floats away before small winds and waves into the middle of the tarn. Where is he — the matchless Newfoundlander — nomine gaudens Fno, because white as the froth of the sea 1 Off with a colley. So— stript with the first intention, we plunge from a rock, and, "Thoueh in the scowl of heaven, the tam Cruwd itark us wc are swinimin)!," Draco-like, breast-high, we stem the surge, and with the heron floating before us, return to the heather-fringed shore, and give three cheers that startle the echoes, asleep from year's end to year's end, in the Grey-Linn Cairn. Into the silent twilight of many a wild rock- and-river scene, beautiful and bewildering as the fairy work of sleep, will he find himself brought who knows where to seek the heron in all his solitary haunts. For often when the moors are storm-swept, and his bill would be battled by the waves of tarn and loch, he sails away from his swingin<,Mrec, and through some open siade dipping down to the secluded stream, alights within the calm chasm, sind folds his wings in the breezeless air. The clouds are driving fast aloft in a carrj' from the sea — but they are all reflected in that pel- lucid pool — so perfect the clilf-guardcd repose. A better day — a better hour — a better minute for fishing could not have been chosen by Mr. Heron, who is already swallowing a par. Another — and another — but something falls from the rock into the water; and suspicious, though unalarmed, he leisurely addresses him- self to a short flight up the channel — round that tower-like cliff standing strangely by itself, with a crest of sell-sown flowering shrubs; and lo! another vista, if possible, just a degree more silent — more secluded — more solitary — beneath the mid-day night of woods ! To shoot thee there — would be as impious as to have killed a sacred Ibis stalking in the shade of an Egyptian temple. Yet it is fortu- nate for thee — folded up there, as thou art, as motionless as thy sitting-stone — that at this moment we have no fire-arms — for we had heard of a fish-like trout in that ver>- pool, and this — O Heron — is no gun but a rod. Thou believest thyself to be' in utter solitude — no sportsman but thyself in the chasm — for the otter, thou knowest, loves not such very rocky rivers; and fish with bitten shoulder seldom lies here— that epicure's tasted prsj. I'ct CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 19 within ten yards of thee lies couched thy enemy, who once had a design upon thee, even in the very egg. Our mental soliloquy disturbs not thy watchful sense — for the air stirs not when the soul thinks, or feels, or fancies about man, bird, or beast. We feel, Heron ! that there is not only humanity — but poetry, in our being. Imagination haunts and possesses us in our pastimes, colouring them even with serious — solemn — and sacred light — and thou assuredly hast something priest-like and an- cient in thy look — and about thy light-blue plume robes, which the very elements admire and reverence — the waters wetting them not — nor the winds ruffling — and moreover we love thee — Heron — for the sake of that old castle, beside whose gloom thou utteredst thy first feeble cry! A Ruin nameless, traditionless — sole, undisputed property of Oblivion ! Hurra ! — Heron — hurra ! whj', that was an awkward tumble — and very nearly had we hold of thee by the tail ! Didst thou take us for a water-kelpie 1 A fright like that is enough to leave thee an idiot all the rest of thy life. 'Tis a wonder thou didst not go into fits — but thy nerves must be sorely shaken — and what an account of this adventure will certainly be shrieked unto thy mate, to the music of the creaking boughs ! Not, even wert thou a secular bird of ages, wouldst thou ever once again revisit this dreadful place. For fear has a wondrous memory in all dumb creatures — and rather wouldst thou see thy nest die of famine, than seek for fish in this man- monster-haunted pool ! Farewell! farewell! Many arc the hundreds of hill and mountain lochs to us as familiarly known, round all their rushy or rocky margins, as that pond there in the garden of Buchanan Lodge. That pond has but one goose and one gander, and nine goslings — about half-a-dozen trouts, if in- deed they have not sickened and died of Nos- talgia, missing in the stillness the gurgle of Iheir native Tweed — and a brace of perch, now nothing but prickle. But the lochs — the hill, the mountain lochs now in our mind's e3-e and our mind's ear, — heaven and earth ! Ihe bogs are black with duck, teal, and widgeon — up there "comes for food or play" to the holla of the winds, a wedge of wild geese, piercing the marbled heavens with clamour — and lo ! in the very centre of the mediterranean, the Roj'al Familv of the Swans ! Up springs the silver sea-trout in the sunshine — see Sir Humphrey! — a salmon — a salmon fresh run in love and glory from the sea ! For how many admirable articles are there themes in the above short paragraph ! Duck, teal, and widgeon, wild-geese, swans ! And first, duck, teal, and widgeon. There they are, all collected together, without regard to party politics, in their very best attire, as thick as the citizens of Edinburgh, therr wives, sweet- hearts, and children, on the Sfelton Hill, on the first day of the king's visit to Scotland. As thick, but not so steady — for what swimming about in circles — what ducking and diving is there ! — all the while accompanied with a sort of low, thick, gurgling, not unsweet, nor un- musical quackery, the expression of the intense joy of feeding, freedom, and play. Oh ! Muc- kle-mou'd Meg! neither thou nor the "Lang Gun" are of any avail here — for that old drake> who, together -with his shadow, on which he seems to be sitting, is almost as big as a boat in the water, the outermost landward sentinel, near as he seems to be in the deception of the clear frosty air, is yet better than three hun- dred 3'ards from the shore — and, at safe dis- tance, cocks his eye at the fowler. There is no boat on the loch, and knowing that, how templing in its unapproachable reeds and rushes, and hut-crested knoll — a hut built per- haps by some fowler, in the olden time — yon central Isle ! But be still as a shadow — fo-r lo ! a batch of Whig-seceders, paddling all by themselves towards that creek — and as surely as our name is Christopher, in another quarter of an hour, they will consist of killed, wounded, and missing. On our belly — with unhatted head justpeeringover the kno we — and Muckle- mou'd Meg slowly and softly stretched out on the rest, so as not to rustle a windle-strae, we lie motionless as a mawkin, till the coterie collects together for simultaneous dive down to the aquatic plants and insects of the fast- shallowing bay; and, just as they are upon the turn with their tails, a single report, loud as a volley, scatters the unsparing slugs about their doups, and the still clear water, in sudden dis- turbance, is afloat with scattered feathers, and stained with blood. Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro — who with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged by a catapulta, and first with immense and enor- mous high-and-far leaps, and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down the brae, to dash, all fours, like a flying squir- rel fearlessly from his tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water line, to mouth first that murdered maw- sey of a mallard, lying as still as if she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards heaven — then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale gray, and his back delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky lines — precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling art — next— nobly done, glorious Fro— that cream colour crowned widgeon, with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the indescribable and changeable green beauty- spot of his wings — and now, if we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name — finally, that exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means and appliances to boot, carved finely— most finely — by razor-like knife, in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide— tasted by a tongue and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning 20 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. rose -swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its intense delight— and received into a stomach yawning with greed and gratitude,— oh ! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the apex of Apician luxury; and able, were any thing on the face of this feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium ! How nobly, like a craken or sea-serpent, Fro reareth his massy head above the foam, his gathered prey seized— all four— by their limber necks, and brightening, like a bunch of flowers, as they glitter towards the shore! With one bold body-shake, felt to the point of each particular hair, he scatters the water from his coat like mist, reminding one of that glorious line in Shakspeare, "Like dewdrops from the Lion's mane," advancing with sinewy legs seemingly length- ened by the drenching flood, and dripping tail stretched out in all its broad longitude, with hair almost like white hanging plumes— mag- nificent as tail of the Desert-Born at the head of his seraglio in the Arabian Sands. Halfway his master meets his beloved Fro on the slope ; and first proudly and haughtily pausing to mark our eye, and then humbly, as beseemelh one whom nature, in his boldest and brightest bearing, hath yet made a slave — he lays the ofiering at our feet, and having felt on his capacious forehead the approving pressure of our hand, "Wliile, like Ilie murmur of n drojim. He hears us breathe his name," he suddenly flings himself round with a wheel of transport, and in many a widening circle pursues his own uncontrollable ecstasies with whirlwind speed ; till, as if utterly joy-ex- hausted, he brings his snow-while bulk into dignified repose on a knoll, that very moment illuminated by a burst of sunshine ! Not now — as fades upon our pen the solemn light of the dying day — shall we dare to decide, whether or not Nature — most matchless creature of thy kind ! — gave ihee, or gave thee not, the gift of an immortal soul ! Better such creed — fond and foolish though it may be — yet scarcely unscriptural, for in each word of scripture there are many meanings, even when each sacred syllable is darkest to be read, — better such creed than that of the atheist or skeptic, distracted ever in his seemingly sullen apathy, by the dim, dark duom of dust." Belter that Fro sliould live, than that Newton should die— for ever. What though the benevolent Howard devoted his days to visit the dungeon's gloom, and by intercession Avith princes, to set the prisoners free from the low damp-dripping stone roof of the deep-dug cell beneath the foundation rocks of the citadel, to the high dewdropping vault of heaven, too, too daz- zlmgly illumined by the lamp of theinsuflerable sun! There reason triumphed— those were the works of glorified humanity. But thou— a creature of mere instinct— according to Descartes, a machine, an automaton— hadsi yet a constant light of thought and of nficction in thine eyes— nor wert thou without some Rhmmenng and mysterious notions— and what more have we ourselves? — of life and of death ! Why fear to say that thou wert di- vinely commissioned and inspired — on that most dismal and shrieking hour, when little Harry Seymour, that bright English boy, "whom ail that looked on loved," entangled among the cruel chains of those fair water- lilies, all so innocently yet so murderously floating round him, was, by all standing or running about theie with clenched hands, or kneeling on the sod— given up to inextricable death 1 We were no: present to save the dear boy, who had been delivered to our care as to that of an elder brother, by the noble lady who, in her deep widow's weeds, kissed her sole darling's sunny head, and disappeared. We were not present— ic clan in all the level land of Lud, travelling all by him- self in ahorse and gig, and with a black boy in a cockaded glazed hat, through the Heelands o* Scotland. passingi>f course, at the vent* least,for a captain of Hussars ! Then Scotchmen caniiii keep their backs siraught, it seems, and are al- ways booin' antl booin' afore a great man. Cannot they, indeed ? Do they, indeed 1 As- cend with that Scottish shepherd yon moun- tain's breast — swim with him that mountain loch — a bottle of Glenlivet, who first stands in shallow water, on the Oak Isle — and whose back will be straughtest, that of the Caledo- nian or the Cockney? The little Luddite will be puking amonc: the heather, about some five hundred feet above the level of the sea — higher for the first time in his life than Si. Paul's, and nearer than he will a^ain be. either in the spirit or the llesh, to heaven. The little Luddite will be puking in the hitherto unpolluted loch. CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 25 after some seven strokes or so, with a strong Scottish weed twisted like an eel round its thigh, and shrieking out for the nearest resus- citating machine in a country, where, alas ! there is no Humane Society. The back of the shepherd — even in presence of that " great man" — will be as straught as — do not tremble. Cockney — this Crutch. Conspicuous from afar like a cairn, from the inn-door at Arrochar, in an hour he will be turning up his little finger so — on the Cobbler's head ; or, in twenty mi- nutes, gliding like a swan, or shooting like a salmon, his back being still straught — leaving Luss, he will be shaking the dewdrops from his brawny body on the silver sand of Inch Morren. And happy were we, Christopher North, happy were we in the parish in which Fate de- livered us up to Nature, that, under her tuition, our destinies might be fulfilled. A parish ! Why it was in itself a kingdom — a world. Thirty miles long by twenty at the broadest, and five at the narrowest; and is not that a kingdom — is not that a world worthy of any monarch that ever wore a crown? Was it level 1 Yes, league-long levels were in it of greensward, hard as the sand of the sea-shore, yet springy and elastic, fit training ground for Childers, or Eclipse, or Ilambletonian, or Smo- lensko, or fur a charge of cavalry in some great pitched battle, while artillery might keep play- ing against artillery from innumerous aflVont- ing hills. Was it boggy? Yes, black bogs were there, which extorted a panegyric from the roving Irishman in his richest brogiie — bogs in which forests had of old been buried, and armies with all their banners. Was it hilly 1 Ay, there the white sheep nibbled, and the back cattle grazed ; there they baa'd and they lowed upon a thousand hills — a crowd of cones, all green as emerald. Was it moun- tainous 1 Give answer from afar, ye mist- shrouded summits, and ye clouds cloven by the eagle's wing ! But whether ye be indeed mountains, or whether ye be clouds, who can tell, bedazzled as are his eyes by that long- lingering sunset, that drenches heaven and earth in one indistinguishable glory, setting the West on fire, as if the final conflagration were begun ! Was it woody 1 Hush, hush, and you will hear a pine-cone drop in the central silence of a forest — a silent and soli- tary wilderness — in which you may wander a whole day long, unaccompanied but by the cushat, the corby, the falcon, the roe, and they are all shy of human feet, and, like thoughts, j)ass away in a moment ; so if you long for less fleeting farewells from the native dwellers in the wood, lo ! the bright brown queen of the butterflies, gay and gautly in her glancings through the solitude, the dragon-fly whirring bird-like over the pools in the glade ; and if your ear desire music, the robin and the wren may haply trill you a few notes among the briery rocks, or the bold blarkbird open wide his yellow bill in his hoUy-vree, and set the squirrels a-leaping all within reach of his ringing roundelay. Any rivers? one — to whom a thousand torrents are tributarj^ — as he him- self is tributary to the sea. Any lochs? How many we know not — for we never counted them twice alike — omitting perhaps some forgotten tarns, or counting twice over some one of our more darling waters, worthy to dash their waves against the sides of ships — alone wanting to the magnificence of those inland seas ! Yes — it was as level, as boggy, as hilly, as mountainous, as woody, as lochy, and as rivery a parish, as ever laughed to scorn Colonel Mudge and his Trigonometrical Survey. Was not that a noble parish for apprentice- ship in sports and pastimes of a great master? No need of any teacher. On the wings of joy we were borne over the bosom of nature, and learnt all things worthy and needful to be learned, by instinct first, and afterwards by reason. To look at a wild creature — winged with feathers, or mere feet — and not desire to destroy or capture it — is impossible to passion — to imagination — to fancy. Thus had we longed to feel and handle the glossy plumage of the beaked bird — the wide-winged Birds of Prey — before our finger had ever touched a trigger. Their various flight, in various wea- ther, we had watched and noted with some- thing even of the eye of a naturalist — the wonder of a poet ; for among the brood of boys there are hundreds and thousands of poets who never see manhood, — the poetry dying away — the boy growing up into mere prose ; — yet to some even of the paragraphs of these Three Fyttes do we appeal, that a few sparks of the sacred light are yet alive within us ; and sad to our old ears would be the sound of " Put out the light, and then — put out the light!" Thus were we impelled, even when a mere child, far away from the manse, for miles, into the moors and woods. Once it was feared that poor wee Kit was lost; for haA'ing set off all by himself, at sunrise, to draw a night-line from the distant Black Loch, and look at a trap set for a glead, a mist overtook him on the moor on his homeward way, with an eel as long as himself hanging over his shoulder, and held him prisoner for many hours within its shifting walls, frail indeed, and opposing no resistance to the hand, yet impenetrable to the feet of fear as the stone dungeon's thraldom. If the mist had remained, that would have been nothing; only a still cold wet seat on a stone ; but as " a trot becomes a gallop soon, in spite of curb and rein," so a Scotch mist becomes a shower — and a shower a flood — and a flood a storm — and a storm a tempest — and a tempest thunder and lightning — and thunder and lightning heaven-quake and earth-quake — till the heart of poor wee Kit quaked, and almost died within him in the desert. In this age of Confessions, need we be ashamed to own, in the face of the whole world, that we sat us down and cried ! The small brown Moorland bird, as dry as a toast, hopped out of his heather-hole, and cheerfully cheeped comfort. With crest just a thought lowered by the rain, the green-backed, white- breasted peaseweep, walked close by us in the mist; and sight of wonder, that made even in that quandary by the quagmire our heart beat with joy — lo ! never seen before, and seldom since, three wee peaseweeps, not three days old, little bigger than shrew-mice, all covered with blackish down, interspersed with long C S6 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. white hair, running after their mother! But the large hazel eye of the she peaseweep, rest- less even in the most utter solitude, soon spied us glowering at her, and her young ones, through our tears; and not for a moment doubting — Heaven forgive her for the shrewd but cruel suspicion ! — that we were Lord Eg- linton's gamekeeper — with a sudden shrill cry that thrilled to the marrow in our cold back- bone — flapped and fluttered herself away into the mist, while the little black bits of down disappeared, like devils, into the moss. The croaking of the frogs grew terrible. And worse and worse, close at hand, seeking his lost cows through the mist, the bellow of the notorious red bull ! We began saying our prayers; and just then the sun forced himself out into the open day, and, like the sudden opening of the shutters of a room, the whole world was filled with light. The frogs seemed to sink among the pow-hcads — as for the red bull Avho had tossed the tinker, he was cantering away, with his tail towards us, to a lot of cows on the hill ; and hark — a long, a loud, an oft-repeated halloo ! Rab Ro- ger, honest fellow, and Leezy Muir, honest lass, from the manse, in search of our dead body! Rab pulls our ears lightly, and Lcczy kisses us from the one to the other — wrings the rain out of our long yellow hair — (a pretty contrast to the small gray sprig now on the crown of our pericranium, and the thin tail a-cock behind) — and by and by stepping into Hazel-Deanhcad for a drap and a "chiitrrin' piece," by the time we reach the manse we arc as dry as a whistle — take our scold and our pawmies from the minister — and, by way of punishment and penance, after a little hot whisky toddy, with brown sugar and a bit of bun, are bundled off" to bed in the dayliine! Thus we grew up a Fowler, ere a loaded gun was in our hand — and often guided the city-fowler to the haunts of the curlew, the plover, the moorfowl, and the falcon. The falcon ! yes — in the higher region of clouds and cliffs. For now we had shot up into a stripling — and how fast had we so shot up you may know, by taking notice of the school- boy on the play-green, and two years after- wards discovering, perhaps, that he is that fine tall ensign carrying the colours among the light-bobs of the regiment, to the sound of clarion and flute, cymbal and great drum, marching into the city a thousand strong. We used in early boyhood, deceived by some uncertainty in size, not to distinguish between a kite and a buzzard, which was very stupid, and unlike us— more like Poietes in Salmonia. The flight of the buzzard, as may be seen in Selby, is slow— and except durin? the season of incubation, when it often soars to a considerable height, it seldom remains long on the wing. It is indeed a heaw, inac- tive bird, both in disposition and appearance, and is generally seen perched upon some old and decayed tree, such beina; its favourite haunt. Him we soon thought little or nothing about— and the last one we shot, it was. we remember, just as he was coming out of the deserted nest of a crow, which he had taken possession of out of pure laziness ; and we killed him for not building a house of his own in a country where there was no want of sticks. But the kite or glead, as the same dis- tinguished ornithologist rightly says, is pro- verbial for the ease and gracefulness of its flight, which generally consists of large and sweeping circles, performed with a motionless wing, or at least with a slight and almost im- perceptible stroke of its pinions, and at very distant intervals. In this manner, and direct- ing its course by its tail, which acts as a rud- der, whose slightest motion produces eflect, it frequently soars to such a height as to become almost invisible to the human eye. Hira we loved to slay, as a bird worthy of our barrel. Him and her have we watched for days, like a lynx, till we were led, almost as if by an instinct, to their nest in the heart of the forest — a nest lined with wool, hair, and other soft materials, in the fork of some large tree. They will not, of course, utterly forsake their nest, when they have young, fire at them as you will, thouirh they become more wary, and seem &•< if they heard a leaf fall, so suddenly will ihey start and soar to heaven. We re- member, from an ambuscade in a briery dell in the forest, shooting one flyinir overhead to its nest ; and, on gi>ing up to him as he lay on his back, with clenched talons and fierce eyes, absolutely shrickin? and yelling with fear, and ra^e, and pain, we intended to spare his life, and only take him prisoner, when wc beheld beside him on the sod, a chicken from the brood of famous dinger piles, then, all but his small self, following the feet of their clucking uKither at the manse ! With visage all in- flamed, we gave him the bull on his double organ of dcstructiveness, then only known to us by the popular name of " back o' the head," exclaiming " T'nllnn tp hoc vulncrp. Paling liiitiiiilal" Quivered every feather, from beak to tail and talon, in his last convulsion, " Vitaquc cum gcinilu fugit indignota siib umbras '." In the season of love what combats have we been witness to — Umpire — between birds of prey ! The Female Falcon, she sat aloof like a sultana, in her soft, sleek, glossy plumes, the iris in her eye of wilder, more piercing, fier}', cruel, fascinating, and maddening lustre, than ever lit the face of the haughtiest human queen, adored by princes on her throne of dia- monds. And now her whole plumage shivers — and is ruflled — for her own Gentle Peregrine appears, and they two will enjoy their dalli- ance on the edge of the cli(T-ch.asm — and the Bride shall become a wife in that stormy sun- shine on the loftiest precipice of all these our Alps. But a sudden sujjh sweeps down from heaven, and a rival Hawk comes rushing in his ra?e from his widowed cyry, and will win and wear this his second selected bride — for her sake, tearing, or to be torn, to pieces. Both struck down from heaven, fall a hundred fathom to the heather, talon-locked, in the mu- tual gripe of death. Fair play, gentlemen, and attend to the Umpire. It is, we unde stand, to be an up-and-down fight. Allow us to disen tangle you — and without giving advantage to CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 27 either — elbow-room to both. Neither of you ever saw a human face so near before — nor ever were captive in a human hand. Both fasten their momentarily frightened eyes on us, and, holding back their heads, emit a wild ringing cry. But now they catch sight of each other, and in an instant are one bunch of torn, bloody plumes. Perhaps their wings are broken, and they can soar no more — so up we fling them both into the air — and wheeling each within a short circle, clash again go both birds together, and the talons keep tearing throats till they die. Let them die, then, for both are for ever disabled to enjoy their lady- love. She, like some peerless llower in the days of chivalry at a fatal tournament, seeing her rival lovers dying for her sake, nor ever to wear her glove or scarf in the front of bat- tle, rising to leave her canopy in tears of grief and pride — even like such Angelica, the Fal- con unfolds her wings, and flies slowly away from her dying ravishers, to bewail her vir- ginity on the mountains. " Frailty ! thy name is woman !" A third Lover is already on the wing, more fortunate than his preced- ing peers — and Angelica is won, woo'd, and sitting, about to lay an egg in an old eyry, soon repaired and furbished up for the honej'- weck, with a number of small birds lying on the edge of the hymeneal couch, with which, when wearied with love, and yawp with hun- ger, Angelica may cram her maw till she be ready to burst, by her bridegroom's breast. Forgotten all human dwellings, and all the thoughts and feelings that abide by firesides, and doorways, and rooms, and roofs — delight- ful was it, during the long, long midsummer holyday, to lie all alone, on the green-sward of some moor-surrounded mount, not far from the foot of some range of clitlV, and with our face up to the sky, wait, unwearj-ing, till a speck was seen to cross the blue cloudless lift, and steadying itself after a minute's qui- vering into motionless rest, as if hung sus- pended there by the counteracting attraction of heaven and earth, known to be a Falcon ! Balanced far above its prey, and, soon as the right moment came, ready to pounce down, and lly away with the treasure in its talons to its crying eyry ! If no such speck were for hours visible in the ether, doubtless dream upon dream, rising unbidden, and all of their own wild accord, congenial with the wilder- ness, did, like phantasmagoria, pass to and fro, backwards and forwards, along the dark- ened curtain of our imagination, all the lights of reason being extinguished or removed ! In that trance, not unheard, although scarcely noticed, was the cry of the curlew, the murmur of the little moorland burn, or the din, almost like dashing, of the far-off loch. 'Twas thus that the senses, in their most languid slate, ministered to the fancy, and fed her for a fu- ture day, when all the imagery then received so impertectly, and in broken fragments, into her mysterious keeping, was to arise in order- ly array, and to form a world more lovely and more romantic even than the reality, which then lay hushed or whispering, glittering or gloomy, in the outward air. For the senses hear and see all things in their seeming slum- bers, from all the impulses that come to them in solitude gaining more, far more than they have lost ! When we are awake, or half awake, or almost sunk into a sleep, they are ceaselessly gathering materials for the think- ing and feeling soul — and it is hers, in a deep delight formed of memory and imagination, to put them together by a divine plastic power, in which she is almost, as it were, a very cre- ator, till she exult to look on beauty and on grandeur such as this earth and these heavens never saw, products of her own immortal and immaterial energies, and deixg once, to be for ever, when the universe, with all its suns and systems, is no more ! But ofiener we and our shadows glided along the gloom at the foot of the cliffs, ear-led by the incessant cry of the young hawks in their nest, ever hungry except when asleep. Left to themselves, when the old birds are hunting, an hour's want of food is felt to be famine, and you hear the cry of the callow creatures, angry with one another, and it may be, fighting with soft beak and pointless claws, till a living lump of down tumbles over the rock-ledge, soon to be picked to the bone by insects, who likewise all live upon prey ; for example. Ants of carrion. Get you behind that briery bield, that wild-rose hanging rock, far and wide scenting the wilderness with a faint perfume; or into that cell, almost a parlour, with a Gothic roof formed by large stones leaning one against the other and so arrested, as they tumbled from the frost-riven breast of the precipice. Wait there, though it should be for hours — but it will not be for hours ; for both the old hawks are circling the sky, one over the marsh and one over the wood. She comes — she comes — the female Sparrowhawk, twice the size of her mate; "and while he is plain in his dress, as a cunning and cruel Quaker, she is gay and gaudy as a Demirep dressed for the pit of the Opera — deep and broad her bosom, with aa air of luxury in her eyes that glitter like a serpent's. But now she is a mother, and plays a mother's pari — greedier, even than for her- self, for her greedy young. The lightning flashes from the caVe-mouth, and she comes tumbling, and dashing, and rattling through the dwarf bushes on the cliff-face, perpendicu- lar and plumb-down, within three yards of her murderer. Her husband will not visit his nest thisday— no— nor all night long; for a father's is not "as a mother's love. Your only chance of killing him, too, is to take a 13'nx-eyed cir- cuit round about all the moors within half a league; and possibly you may see him sitting on some cairn, or stone, or tree-slump, afraid to fly either hither or thither, perplexed by the sudden death he saw appearing amoug the un- accountable smoke, scenting it yet with his fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of 3'our ap- proach. Hazard a long shot— for you are right behind him — and a slug may hit him on the. head, and, following the feathers, split his skull-cap and scatter his brains. 'Tis done — and the eyry is orphan'd. Let the small brown moorland birds twitter lo Pean, as they hang balanced on the bulrushes— let the stone-chat glance less fearfully within shelter of the old gray cairn — let the "cushat coo his joyous grati 28 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. tude in the wood — and the lark soar up to hea- ven, afraid no more of a demon descending from the cloud. As for the imps in the e3-ry, let them die of rage and hunger — for there must always be pain in the world ; and 'tis well when its endurance by the savage is the cause of pleasure to the sweet — when the gore- yearning cry of the cruel is drowned in the song of the kind at feed or play — and the tribes of the peace-loving rejoice in the des- pair and death of the robbers and shedders of blood! Not one fowler of fifty thousand has in all his days shot an Eagle. That royal race seems nearly extinct in Scotland. Gaze as you will over the wide circumference of a Highland heaven, calm as the bride's dream of love, or disturbed as the shipwrecked sailor's vision of a storm, and all spring and summer long )'ou may not chance to see the shadow of an Eagle in the sun. The old kings of the air are some- times yet seen by the shepherds on clilfor be- neath cloud; but their offspring are rarely allowed to get full fledged in spite of the rifle always lying loaded in the shieling. But in the days of our boyhood there were many glori- ous things on earth and air that now no more seem to exist, and among these were the Eagles. One pair had from time immemorial built on the Echo-cliff, and you could see with a telescope the eyry, with the rim of its cir- cumference, six feet in diameter, strewn with partridges, moorfowl, and leverets — their feathers and their skeletons. But the Echo- clifl' was inaccessible. " Hither the rainlmw comes, the rloud, Ami mists that spread the flyiiis shroud, And siinbeains, and the flyinK l)lapt. That if it could, would liiirry past, lUil that enormous barrier binds it fast." . No human eye ever saw the birds within a thousand feet of the lower earth ; yet how often must they have stooped down on lamb and leveret, and struck the cushat in her verv yew-tree in the centre of the wood ! Perhaps they preyed at midnight, by the light of the waning moon — at mid-day, in the night of sun-hiding tempests — or afar off, in even more solitary wilds, carried thither on the whirlwind of their own wings, they swept off their prey from uninhabited isles, "Placed far amid the melancholy main," or vast inland glens, where not a summer shieling smiles beneath the region of eternal snows. But eagles are subject to diseases in flesh, and bone, and blood, just like the veriest poultry that die of croup and consumption on the dunghill before the byre-door. Sickness blinds the eye that God framed to pierce the eas, and weakens the wing that dallies with the tempest. Then the eagle feels how vain IS the doctrine of the divine right of kings. He IS hawked at by the mousing owl, whose mstmct instructs him that these talons have I lost their grasp, and these pinions their death- blow. The eagle lies f,.r weeks famished in his eyry, and hunger-driven over the Icd^c, I •eaves it to ascend no more. He is dethroned, ' and wasted to mere bones— a bunch of feathers ' — his flight is now slower than that of the uuxzard— he floats himself along now with i difficulty from knoll to knoll, pursued by the shrieking magpies, buffeted by the corby, and lying on his back, like a recreant, before the beak of the raven, who, a month ago, was ter- rified to hop round the carcass till the king of the air was satiated, and gave his permission to croaking Sooty to dig into the bowels he himself had scorned. Yet he is a noble aim to the fowler still ; you break a wing and a le?, but fear to touch him with your hand; Fro feels the iron-clutch of his talons con- stricted in the death-pang; and holding him up. you wonder that such an anatomy — for his weight is not more than three pounds — could drive his claws through that shaggy hide till blood sprung to the blow — inextricable but to yells of pain, and leaving gashes hard to heal, for virulent is the poison of rage in a dying bird of prey. Sublime solitude of our boyhood! where each stone in the desert was sublime, unasso- ciated though it was with dreams of memorj', in its own simple native power over the human heart! Each sudden breath of wind passed by us like the voice of a spirit. There were strange meanings in the clouds^-oficn so like human forms and faces threatening us off, or beckoning us on, with long black arms, back into the iong-withdrawing wilderness of hea- ven. We wished then, with quaking bosoms, that we had not been all alone in the desert — that there had been another heart, whose beat- ings might have kept time with our own, that we might have gathered courage in the silent and sullen gloom from the light in a brother's eye — the smile on a brother's countenance. .\nd often had we such a friend in these our far-off wanderings over moors and mountains, by the edge of lochs, and through the umbrage of the old pinewoods. .\ friend from whom " we had received his heart, and given him back ourown," — such a friendship as the most fortunate and the most happy — and at that time we were both — are sometimes permitted by Providence, with all the passionate devo- tion of young and untamed imagination, to enjoy, during a bright dreamy world of which that friendship is as the Polar star. Emilius Godfrey! for ever holy be the name! a boy when we were but a child — when we were hut a youth, a man. We felt stronger in the sha- dow of his arm — happier, bolder, better in the light of his countenance. He was the pro- tector — the guardian of our moral being. In our pastimes we bounded with wilder glee — at our studies we sat with intenser earnestness, by his side. He it was that taught us how to feel all those glorious sunsets, andembuedour young spirit with the love and worship of na- ture. He it was that taught us to feel that our evening prayer was no idle ceremony to be hastily gone throueh — that we might lay down our head on the pillow, then soon smoothed in sleep, but a command of God, which a response from nature summoned the humble heart to obey. He it was who for ever had at com- mand wit for the sportive, wisdom for the se- rious hour. Fun and frolic flowed in the merry music of his lips — they lightened from the gay glancing of his eyes — and then, all at once, when the one changed its measures, and the CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 29 other gathered, as it were, a mist or a cloud, an answering sympathy chained our own tongue, and darkened our own countenance, in intercommunion of spirit fell to be indeed divine ! It seemed as if we knew but the words of language — that he was a scholar who saw into their very essence. The books we read together were, every page, and every sen- tence of every page, all covered over with light. Where his eye fell not as we read, all was dim or dark, unintelligible or with imper- fect meanings. Whether we perused with him a volume writ by a nature like our own, or the volume of the earth and the sky, or the volume revealed from Heaven, next day we always knew and felt that something had been added to our being. Thus imperceptibly we grew up in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer moral and religious air, with all our finer affections towards other human beings, all our kindred and our kind, touched with a dearer domestic tenderness, or with a sweet benevo- lence that seemed to our ardent fancy to em- brace the dwellers in the uttermost regions of the earth. No secret of pleasure or pain — of joy or grief — of fear or hope — had our heart to withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw it as it beat within our bosom, with all its imperfections — may we venture to say, with ail its virtues. A repented fully — a confessed fault — a sin for which we were truly contrite — a vice (lung from us with loathing and with shame — in such moods as these, happier were we to see his serious and his solemn smile, than when in mirth and merriment we sat by his side in the social hour on a knoll in the open sunshine, and the whole school were in ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his genius, even like a flock of birds chirping in their joy all newly-alighted in a vernal land. In spite of that diflerencc in our years — or oh ! say rather because that very difference did touch the one heart with tenderness and the other with reverence, how often did we two wander, like elder and younger brother, in the sunlight and the moonlight solitudes ! Woods — into whose inmost recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, in his company were glad as gardens, through their most awful umbrage; and there was beauty in the shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts — in whose lonesome thunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, we durst not by ourselves have faced the spray — in his presence, dinn'd with a merry music in the desert, and cheerful was the thin mist they cast sparkling up into the air. Too severe for our uncompanioned spirit, then easily overcome with awe, was the soli- tude of those remote inland lochs. But as we walked with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet the calm of both blue depths — how magnificent the white-crested waves tumbling beneath the black thunder- cloud! More beautiful, because our e3'es gazed on it along with his, at the beginning or the ending of some sudden storm, the Apparition of the Rainbow ! Grander in its wildness, that seemed to sweep at once all the swinging and stooping woods, to our ear, because his too listened, the concerto by winds and waves playai at midnight, when not one star was in the sky. With him we first followed the Fal- con in her flight — he showed us on the Echo- cliff the Eagle's eyry. To the thicket he led us where lay couched the lovely-spotted Doe, or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing on the glade with her two fawns at her side. But for him we should not then have seen the antlers of the red-deer, for the Forest was 'indeed a most savage place, and haunted — such was the superstition at which they who scorned it trembled — haunted by the ghost of a huntsman whom a jealous rival had mur- dered as he stooped, aller the chase, at a little mountain well that ever since oozed out blood. What converse passed between us two in all those still shadowy solitudes ! Into what depths of human nature did he teach our won- dering eyes to look down ! Oh ! what was to become of us, we sometimes thought in sad- ness that all at once made our spirits sink — like a lark falling suddenly to earth, struck by the fear of some unwonted shadow from above — what was to become of us when the man- date should arrive fur him to leave the Manse for ever, and sail away in a ship to India never more to return ! Ever as that dreaded day drew nearer, more frequent was the haze in our eyes; and in our blindness, we knew not that such tears ought to have been far more rueful still, for that he then lay under orders for a longer and more lamentable voyage — a voyage over a narrow streight to the eternal shore. All — all at once he drooped; on one fatal morning the dread decay began — with no forewarning, the springs on which his being had so lightly — so proudly — so grandly moved, gave way. Between one Sabbath and another his bright eyes darkened — and while all the people were assembled at the sacrament, the soul of Emilius Godfrey soared up to Heaven. It was indeed a dreadful death, serene and sainted though it were — and not a hall — not a house — not a hut — not a shieling within all the circle of those wide mountains, that did not on that night mourn as if it had lost a son. AH the vast parish attended his funeral — Low- landers and Highlanders in their own garb of grief. And have time and tempest now black- ened the white marble of that monument — is that inscription now hard to be read — the name of Emilius Godfrey in green obliteration — nor haply one surviving M'ho ever saw the light of the countenance of him there interred ! Forgotten as if he had never been ! for few were that glorious orphan's kindred — and they lived in a foreign land — forgotten but by one heart, faithful through all the chances and changes of this restless world! And therein enshrined among all its holiest remembrances, shall be the image of Emilius Godfrey, till it too, like his, shall be but dust and ashes ! Oh ! blame not boys for so soon forgetting one another — in absence or in death. Yet for- getting is not just the very word ; call it rather a reconcilement to doom and destiny — in thus obeying a benign law of nature that soon streams sunshine over the shadows of the grave. Not otherwise could all the ongoings of this world be continued. The nascent spirit outgrows much in which it once found all de- light ; and thoughts delightful still, thoughts c2 30 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. of the faces and the voices of the dead, perish not, lying sometimes in slumber — sometimes in sleep. It belongs not to the blessed season and genius of youth, to hug to its heart useless and unavailing griefs. Images of the well- beloved, when they themselves are in the mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, through the meditative hush of solitude. But our main business — our prime joys and our prime sorrows — ought to be — must be with the living. Duty demands it; and Love, who would pine to death over the bones of the dead, soon fastens upon other objects with eyes and voices to smile and whisper an answer to all his vows. So was it with us. Ere the mid- summer sun had withered the flowers that spring had sprinkled over our Godfrey's grave, youth vindicated its own right to happiness ; and we felt that we did wrong to visit too often that corner in the kirkyard. No fears had we of any too oblivious tendencies ; in our dreams we saw him — most often all alive as ever — sometimes a phantom away from that grave ! If the morning light was frequently hard to be endured, bursting suddenly upon us ali)ng with the feeling that he was dead, it more frequent- ly cheered and gladdened us with resignation, and sent us forth a fit playmate to the dawn that rang with all sounds of J03'. A^ain we found ourselves angling down the river, or along the loch — once more following the flight of the Falcon along the woods — eying the Eagle on the Echo-ClUf. Days .passed by, with- out so much as one thought of Emilius God- frey — pursuing our pastime with all our pas- sion, reading our books intently — just as if he had never been ! But often and often, too, we thought we saw his figure coming down the hill straight towards us — his verj' figure — we could not be deceived — but the love-raised ghost disappeared on a sudden — the grief- woven spectre melted into the mist. The strength, that formerly had come from his counsels, now began to grow up of itself with- in our own unassisted being. The world of nature became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and fancies ; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from the sprinkled cottages, and read the faces of the mountaineers on their way to their work, or commg and going to the house of God. Then this was to be our last year in the parish — now dear to us as our birth-place; nay, itself our very birth-place — for in it from the darkness of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away from the region of cloud and mountain, we felt that most pro- bably never more should we return. For others, who thought they knew us better than we did ourselves, had chalked out a future life for young Christopher North— a life that was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a splendid name. Therefore we determined with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of pas- sion, to make the most— the best— of the few months that remained to us, of thai our wild, free, and romantic existence, as yet untram- melled by those inexorable laws, which, once launched into the worid, all alilce— young and old— must obey. Our books were flung aside— nor did our old master and minister frown — for he grudged not to the boy he loved the remnant of the dream about to be rolled away like the dawn's rosy clouds. We demanded with our eye — not with our voice — one long holyday, throughout that our last autumn, on to the pale farewell blossoms of the Christ- mas rose. With our rod we went earlier to the loch or river; but we had not known tho- roughly our own soul — for now we angled less passionately — less perseveringly than was our wont of yore — sitting in a pensive — a melan- choly — a miserable dream, by the dashing waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our gun we plunffcd earlier in the morning into the forest, and we returned later at eve — but less earnest — less eaecr were we to h,car the cushat's moan from his yew-tree — 10 see the hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft on the sky. A thousand dead thoughts came to life again in the gloom of the woods — and we sometimes did wring our hands in an agony of jjrief. to know that our eyes should not behold the birch-tree brightening there with another spring. Then every visit we paid to cottage or to shielinc was felt to be a farewell ; there was somethin? mournful in the smiles on the sweet faces of the ruddy rustics, with their silken snoods, to whom we used to whisper harmless love-meanings, in which there was no evil ffuile; we regarded the solemn toil-and-care- worn countenances of the old with a profounder emotion than had ever touched our hearts in the hour of our more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those dwellers among the woods, and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to us far more aflccting now that wc saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung from the conviction that the time was close at hand when we should mingle with it no more. The thoughts that possessed our most secret bosom failed not by the least observant to be discovered in our open eyes. They who had liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our follies, the insolencies of our reckless boy- hood, were all forgotten ; whatever had been our sins, pride towards the poor was never among the number; wc had shunned not stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; our mite had been given to the widow who had lost her own ; quarrelsome with the young we might sometimes have been, for boyblood is soon heated, and boils before a defying eye ; but in one thing at least we were Spartans, we revered the head of old age. And many at least were the kind — some the sod farewells, ere long whispered by us at gloaming amortg the glens. Let them rest for ever silent amidst that music in the memory which is felt, not heard — its blessing mute though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! But to Thee — O palest Phantom — clothed in white raiment, not like unto a ghost risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph descending from the skies to bless — unto Thee will we dare to speak, as through the mist of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming us, while we cannot choose but weep with the selfsame vision that often glided before us long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 31 «f our voice would pause for a little while, and then pass by, like a white bird from the sea, floating unscared close by the shepherd's head, or alighting to trim its plumes on a knoll far np an inland glen! Death seems not to have touched that face, pale though it be — lifelike is the waving of those gentle hands — and the soft, sweet, low music which now we hear, steals not sure from lips hushed by the burial mould ! Restored by the power of love, she stands before us as she stood of yore. Not one of all the hairs of her golden head was singed by the lightning that shivered the tree under which the chi'd had run for shelter from the flashing sky. But in a moment the blue light in her dewy eyes was dimmed — and never again did she behold either flower or star. Yet all the images of all the things she bad loved remained in her memory, clear and distinct as the things thenTselves before unex- tinguished eyes — and ere three summers had flown over her head, which, like the blossom of some fair perennial flower, in heaven's gracious dew and sunshine each season lifted its loveliness higher and higher in the litrht — she could trip her singing way through the wide wilderness, all by her joyful self, led, as all believed, nor erred they in so believing, by an angel's hand ! When the primroses peeped through the reviving grass upon the vernal braes, they seemed to give themselves into her fingers; and 'twas thought they hung longer unfaded round her neck or forehead than if they had been left to drink the dew on their native bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, though her garment touched the broom-stalk on which they sang. The cushat, as she thrid her way through the wood, continued to croon in her darksome tree — and the lark, although just dropped from the cloud, was cheered by her presence into a new passion of song, and mounted over her head, as if it were his first matin hymn. All the creatures of the earth and air manifestly loved the Wanderer of the Wilderness — and as for human beings, she was named, in their pity, their wonder, and their delight, the Blind Beauty of the Moor! She was an only child, and her mother had died in giving her birth. And now her father, stricken by one of the many cruel diseases that shorten the lives of shepherds on the hills, was bed-ridden — and he was poor. Of all words ever syllabled by human lips, the most blessed is — Charily. No manna now in the wilderness is rained from heaven — for the mouths of the hungry need it not in this our Christian land. A few goats feeding among the rocks gave them milk, and there was bread for them in each neighbour's hAtse — neighbour though miles afar — as the sacred duty came round — and the unrepining poor sent the grate- ful child away with their prayers. One evening, returning to the hut with her tisual song, she danced up to her father's face on his rushy bed, and it was cold in death. If she shrieked — if she fainted — there was but one Ear that heard, one Eye that saw her in her swoon. Not now floating light like a small moving cloud unwilling to leave the flowery braes, though it be to melt in heaven, but driven along like a shroud of flying mist before the tempest, she came upon us in the midst of that dreary moss ; and at the sound of our voicC; fell down with clasped hands at our feet — "My father's dead!" Had the hut put already on the strange, dim, desolate look of mortality 1 For people came walking fast down the braes, and in a little while there was a group round us, and we bore her back again to her dwelling in our arms. As for us, we had been on our way to bid the fair creature and her father farewell. How could she have lived — an letter orphan — in such a world ! The holy power that is in Innocence would for ever have remained with her; but Innocence longs to be away when her sister Joy has de- parted ; and it is sorrowful to see the one on earth, when the other has gone to Heaven ! This sorrow none of us had long to see ; for though a flower, when withered at the root, and doomed ere eve to perish, may yet look to the careless eye the same as when it blossomed in its pride — yet its leaves, still green, are not as once they were — its bloom, though fair, is faded — and at set of sun, the dews shall find it in decay, and fall unfelt on its petals. Ere Sabbath came, the orphan child was dead. Methinks we see now her little funeral. Her birth had been the humbles, of the humble; and though all in life had loved her, it was thought best thai none should be asked to the funeral of her and her father but two or three friends; the old clergyman himself walked at the head of the father's coffin— we at the head of the daughter's— for this was granted unto our exceeding love; — and thus passed away for ever the Blind Beauty of the Moor ! Yet sometimes to a more desperate passion than had ever before driven us over the wilds, did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue our pastime like one doomed to be a wild huntsman under some spell of magic. Let us, ere we go away from these high haunts and be no more seen — let us away far up the Great Glen, beyond the Echo-Cliff, and with our rifle — 'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey — let us stalk the red-deer. In that chase or forest the antlers lay not thick as now they lie on the Athole Braes; they were still a rare sight— and often and often had Godfrey and we gone' up and down the Glen, without a single glimpse of buck or doe rising up from among the hea- ther. But as the true angler will try every cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has reason to know that but one single fish has run up from the sea— so we, a true hunter, neither grudged nor wearied to stand for hours, still as the h'eron by the stream, hardly in hope, but satisfied with the possibility, that a deer might pass by us in the desert. Steadiest and strong- est is self-fed passion springing in spite of cir- cumstance. When blows the warm showery south-west wind, the trouts turn up their yellow sides at every dropping of the fly upon the curl ing water — and the angler is soon sated with the perpetual play. But once— twice— thrice during a long blustering day — the sullen plunge of a salmon is suflicieiit for that day's joy. Still, therefore, still as a cairn that stands for ever on the hill, or rather as the shadow on a dial, that though it moves is never seen to move, day after day were we on our station in 32 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. the Great Glen. A 'oud, wild, wrathful, and savage cry from some huge animal, made our heart leap to our mouth, and bathed our fore- head in sweat. We looked up — and a red- deer — a stag of ten — the king of the forest — stood with all his antlers, snuffing the wind, but yet blind to our figure overshadowed by a rock. The rifle-ball pierced his heart — and leaping up far higher than our head, he tum- bled in terrific death, and lay stone-still before our starting eyes amid the rustling of the strong-bented heather ! There we stood sur- veying him for a long triumphing hour. Ghastly were his glazed eyes — and ghastlier his long bloody tongue, bitten through at the very root in agony. The branches of his ant- lers pierced the sward like swords. His bulk seemed mightier in death even than when it was crowned with that kingly head, snuffing the north wind. In other two hours we were down at Moor-edge and up again, with an eager train, to the head of the Great Glen, coming and going a distance of a dozen long miles. A hay-wagon forced its way through the bogs and over the braes — and on our return into the inhabited country, we were met by shoals of peasants, men, women, and children, huzzaing over the Prey ; for not for many years — 'never since the funeral of the old lord — had the antlers of a red-deer been seen by them trailing along the heather. Fifty years and more — and oh ! my weary soul! half a century took a long long lime to die away, in gloom and in glory, in pain and pleasure, in storms through which Mere afraid to fly even the spirit's most eagle-winged rap- tures, in calms that rocked all her feelings like azure-plumed halcyons to rest — though now to look back upon it, what seems it all but a transitory dream of toil and trouble, of which the smiles, the sighs, the tears, the groans, were all alike vain as the forgotten sunbeams and the clouds ! Fifty years and more are gone — and this is the Twelfth of August, Eighteen hundred and twentv-eight ; and all the Highland mountains have since dawn been astir, and thundering to the impetuous sports- men's joys! Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and our feet must brush the heather no more. Lo ! how beautifully these fast-travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's breast! intersecting it into parallelograms, and squares, and circles, and now all astoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death ! Higher up among the rocks, and clitTs, and stones, we see a stripling, whose ambition it is to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan, now in their variegated summer- dress, seen even among the unmelted snows. The scene shifts — and high up on the heath above the Linn of Dee, in the Forest of Brae- mar, the Thane — God bless him— has stalked the red-deer to his lair, and now lays his un- erring rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's Oak. Never shall Eld deaden our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow men any more than with their highest raptures, their pro- foundest grief. Blessings on the head of every true sportsman on flood, or field, or fell ; nor shall we take it at all amiss should any one of them, in return for the pleasure he may have enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in smoky cabin during a rainy day, to the peat- reek flavour of the glorious Glenlivet, send us, by the Inverness coach, Aberdeen steam-pack- et, or any other rapid conveyance, a basket of game, red, black, or brown, or peradvenlure a haunch of the red-deer. Reader! be thou a male, bold as the Tercel Gentle — or a female, fair as, the Falcon — a male, stern as an old Stag — or a female, soft as a young Doc — we entreat thee to think kindly of Us and of our Article — and to look in love or in friendship on Christopher in his Sporting Jacket, now come to the close of his Three F'yttes, into which he had fallcn^-out of one into another — and from which he has now been revived by the application of a little salt to his mouth, and then a caulker. Nor think that, rambling as we have been, somewhat after the style of thinking common in sleep, there has been no method in our madness, no htriilus ordo in our dream. All the pages are instinct with one spirit — our thoughts and our feelings have all followed one another, ac- cording to the most approved principles of association — and a fine proportion has been unconsciously preserved. The article may be likened to some nctble tree, which — al- though here and there a branch have somewhat overgrown its brother above or below it, an arm stretched itself out into further gloom on this side than on that, so that there are irregu- larities in the umbrage — is still disfigured not by those sports and freaks of nature working on a great scale, and stands, magnificent ob- ject ! equal to an old castle, on the clifl" above the cataract. Wo and shame to the sacriSe- gious hand that would lop away one budding bough! Undisturbed let the tame and wild creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, find shelter or shade under the calm circum- ference of its green old age. TALE OF EXPIATION. 33 TALE or EXPIATION. Maiicahet BunxsiDE was an orphan. Her parents, who had been the poorest people in the parish, had died when she was a mere child ; and as they had left no near relatives, there were few or none to care much about the desolate creature, who might be well said to have been left friendless in the world. True that the feeling of charity is seldom wholly wanting in any heart; but it is generally but a cold feeling among hard-working folic, towards objects out of the narrow circle of their own family affections, and selfishness has a ready and strong excuse in necessity. There seems, indeed, to be a sort of chance in the lot of the orphan offspring of paupers. On some the eye of Christian benevolence falls at the very first moment of their uttermost destitution — and their worst sorrows, instead of beginning, terminate with the tears shed over their pa- rents' graves. They are taken by the hands, as soon as their hands have been stretched out for protection, and admitted as inmates into households, whose doors, had their fathers and mothers been alive, they would never have darkened. The light of comfort falls upon tlicm during the gloom of grief, and attends them all their days. Others, again, are overlooked at the first fall of affliction, as if by some unaccountable fatality; the wretch- edness with which all liavc become familiar, no one very tenderly pities ; and thus the or- phan, reconciling herself to the extreme hard- ships of her condition, lives on uncheered by those sympathies out of which grow both happiness and virtue, and yielding by degrees to the constant pressure of her lot, becomes poor in spirit as in estate, and either vegetates like an almost worthless weed that is care- lessly trodden on by every foot, or if by nature born a flower, in time loses her lustre, and all her days leads the life not so much of a ser- vant as of a slave. Such, till she was twelve years old, had been the fate of Margaret Burnside. Of a slender form and weak constitution, she had never been able for much work; and thus from one discontented and harsh master and mistress to another, she had been transferred from house to house — always the poorest — till she came to be looked on as an encumbrance rather than a help in any family, and thought hardly worth her bread. Sad and sickly she sat on the braes herding the kine. It was supposed that she was in a consumption — and as the shadow of death seemed to lie on the neglected creature's face, a feeling something like love was awa- kened towards her in the heart of pity, for which she showed her gratitude by still attend- ing to all household tasks with an alacrity be- yond her strength. Few doubted that she was dying — and it \,as plain that she thought so herself; for the Bible, which, in her friendless- ness, she had always read more than other children who were too happy to reflect often ou the Word of that Being from whom their 5 happiness flowed, was now, when leisure per- mitted, seldom or never out of her hands ; and in lonely places, where there was no human ear to hearken, did the dying girl often support her heart, when quaking in natural fears of the grave, by singing to herself hymns and psalms. But her hour was not yet come — though by the inscrutable decrees of Provi- dence doomed to be hideous with almost inex- piable guilt. As for herself — she was innocent as the linnet that sang beside her in the broom, and innocent was she to be up to the last throbbings of her religious heart. When the sunshine fell on the leaves of her Bible, the orphan seemed to see in the holy words, brightening through the radiance, assurances of f^orgiveness of all her sins — small sins in- deed — yet to her humble and contrite heart exceeding great — and to be pardoned only by the intercession of Him who died for us on the tree. Often, when clouds were in the sky, and blackness covered the Book, hope died away from the discoloured page — and the lonely creature wept and sobbed over the doom de- nounced on all who sin, and repent not — whether in deed or in thought. And thus reli- gion became within her an awful thing — till, in her resignation, she feared to die. But look on that flower by the hill-side path, withered, as it seems, beyond the power of sun and air ^nd dew and rain to restore it to life. Next day, you happen to return to the place, its leaves are of a dazzling green, its blossoms of a dazzling crimson. So was it with this Orphan. Nature, as if kindling towards her in sudden love, not only restored her in a few weeks to life—but to perfect health ; and ere-long she, whom few had looked at, and for whom still fewer cared, was acknowledged to be the fair- est girl in all the parish— while she continued to sit, as she had always done from her very childhood, on the poor's form in the lobby of the kirk. Such a face, such a figure, and such a manner, in one so poorly attired and so meanly placed, attracted the eyes of the young Ladies in the Patron's Gallery. Margaret Burnside was taken under their especial protection- sent for two years to a superior school, where she was taught all things useful for persons in humble life— and while yet scarcely fiileen, returning to her native parish, was appointed teacher of a small school of her own, to which were sent all the girls who could be spared from home, from those of parents poor as her own had been, up to those of the farmers and small proprietors, who knew the blessings of a good education — and that without it, the minister may preach in vain. And thus Mar- garet Burnside grew and blossomed like the lily of the field— and every eye blessed her— and she drew her breath in gratitude, piety, and peace. Thus a few happy and useful years passed by— and it was forgotten by all— but herself— that Margaret Burnside was an orphan. But 34 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. to be without one near and dear blood-relative in all the world, must often, even to the happy heart of youthf^ul innocence, be more than a pensive — a painful thought; and therefore, though Margaret Burnside was always cheer- ful among her little scholars, yet in the retire- ment of her own room, (a pretty parlour, with a window looking into a flower-garden,) and on her walks among the braes, her mien was somewhat melancholy, and her eyes wore that touching expression, which seems doubtfully to denote — neither joy nor sadness — but a habit of soul which, in its tranquillity, still partakes of the mournful, as if memory dwelt often on past sorrows, and hope scarcely ventured to indulge in dreams of future repose. That profound orphan-feeling embued her whole character; and sometimes, when the young Ladies from the Castle smiled praises upon her, she retired in gratitude to her chamber — and wept. Among the friends at whose houses she visited were the family at Moorside, the high- est hill-farm in the parish, and on which her father had been a hind. It consisted of the master, a man whose head was gray, his son and daughter, and a grandchild, her scholar, whose parents were dead. Gilbert Adamson had long been a widower — indeed his wife had never been in the parish, but had died abroad. He had been a soldier in his youth and prime of manhood ; and when he came to settle at Moorside, he had been looked at with no vcrj* friendly eyes ; for evil rumours of his charac- ter had preceded his arrival there — and in that peaceful pastoral parish, far removed from the world's strife, suspicions, without any good reason perhaps, had attached themselves to the morality and religion of a man, who had seen much foreign service, and had passed the best years of his life in the wars. It was long before these suspicions faded away, and with some they still existed in an invincible feeling of dislike or even aversion. But the natural fierceness and ferocity which, as these peaceful dwellers among the hills imagined, had at first, in spite of his efforts to control them, often dangerously exhibited themselves in fiery out- breaks, advancing age had gradually subdued ; Gilbert Adamson had grown a hard-w' man under ac- cusation of crinje should be held innocent till he is proved to be guilty. Nay, a human tribu- nal might condemn him, and yet might he stand acquuled before the tribunal of God. There were various accounts of the beha- viour of the prisoner. Some said that he was desperately hardened — others, sunk in sullen apathy and indilference — and one or two per- sons belonging lo the parish who had seen him, declared that he seemed to care not for himself, but to be plunged in profound melan- choly for the fate of Margaret Burnside, whose name he involuntarily mentioned, and then bowed his head on his knees and wept. His guilt he neitlier admitted at that inter^'iew, nor denied; but he conf<*ssed that some circum- stances bore hard against him, and that he was prepared for the event of his trials-condemna- tion and death. " But if you are not guilty, Ludovic, trhn ran lit the viunlfrcr ' Not the slightest shade of suspicion has fallen on any other person — and did not, alas ! the body bleed when" The unhappy wretch sprang up from the bed, it was said, at these words, and hurried like a madman back and forward along the stone floor of his ceil. "Yea — yea!" ai last he crieil, "the mouth and nostrils of my Margaret did indeed bleed when th'^y pressed down my hand on her cold bosom. It is God's truth !" " God's truth ?" — " Yes — (iod's truth. I saw first one drop, and then another, trickle towards me — and I prayed to our Saviour to wipe them off before other eyes might behold the dreadful witnesses against me ; but at that hour Heaven was most unmerciful — for those two small drop'^ — as all of you saw — soon be- came a very stream — and all her face, neck, and brea,*;t — you saw it as well as I miserable — were at last drenched in blood. Then I may have confessed that I was guilty— r I remember nothing distinctly ; — but if I did — the judgment of offended Heaven, then punishing mo for my sins, had made me worse than mad — and so had all your abhorrent eyes; and, men. if I did confess, it was the cruelty of God that drove me to it — and your cruelty — which was great; for no pity had any one for me that day, though Margaret Burnsi(ie l.iy before me a murdered corpse — and a hoarse whisper came to my ear urging me to confess — 1 well believe from no human lips, but from the Father of Lies, who, at that hour, was suffered to leave the pit to ensnare my soul." Such was said to have been the main sense of what he utfred in iho TALE OF EXPIATION. 89 presence of two or three who had formerly been among his most intimate friends, and who knew not, on leaving his cell and coming into the open air, whether to think him innocent or guilty. As long as they thought they saw his eyes regarding them, and that they heard his voice speaking, they believed him innocent ; but when the expression of the tone of his voice, and of the look of his eyes — which they had felt belonged to innocence — died away from their memory — then arose against him the strong, strange, circumstantial evidence, which, wisely or unwisel}' — law)-ers and judges have said cannot lie — and then, in their hearts, one and all of them pronounced him guilty. But had not his father often visited the pris- oner's cell? Once — and once only; for in obedience to his son's passionate prayer, be- seeching him — if there were any mercy left either on earth or in heaven — never more to enter that dungeon, the miserable parent had not again entered the prison; but he had been seen one morning at dawn, by one who knew his person, walking round and round the walls, Staring up at the black building in distraction, especially at one small grated window in the north tower — and it is most probable that he had been pacing his rounds there during all the night. Nobody could conjecture, however dimly, what was the meaning of his banish- ment from his son's cell. Gilbert Adamson, so stern to others, even to his own only daugh- ter, had been always but too indulgent to his Ludovic — and had that lost wretch's guilt, so exceeding great, changed his heart into stone, and made the sight of his old father's gray hairs hateful to his eyes I But then the jailer, who had heard him imploring — beseeching — com- manding his father to remain till after the trial at Moorside, said, that all the while the prison- er sobbed and wept like a child ; and that when he unlocked the iloor of the cell, to let the old man out, it was a hard thing to tear away the arms and hands of Ludovic from his knees, while the father sat like a stone image on the bed, and kept his tearless eyes fixed sternly upon the wall, as if not a soul had been pre- sent, and he himself had been a criminal con- demned next day to die. The father had obeyed, riUs:iont'ly, that miser- able injunction, and from religion it seemed he had found comfort. For Sabbath after Sab- bath he was at the kirk — he stood, as he had been wont to do for years, at the poor's plate, and returned grave salutations to those who dropt their mile into the small sacred treasury —his eyes calml\', and even critically, regard- ed the pastor during prayer and sermon — and his deep bass voice was heard, as usual, through all the house of God in the Psalms. On week-days, he was seen by passers-by to drive his flocks afield, and to overlook his sheep on the hill-pastures, or in the pen-fold ; and as it was still spring, and seed-time had been late this season, he was observed holding ihe plough, as of yore; nor had his skill de- serted him — for the furrows were as straight as if drawn by a rule on paper — and soon oright and beautiful was the braird on all the low lands of his farm. The Comforter was with him, and, sorely as he had been tried, his heart was not yet wholly broken ; and it was believed that, for years, he might outlive the blow that at first had seemed more than a mortal man might bear and be ! Yet that his wo, though hidden, was dismal, all erelong knew, from certain tokens that intrenched his face — cheeks shrunk and fallen — brow not so much furrowed as scarred, eyes quenched, hair thinner and thinner far, as if he himself had torn it away in handfuls during the soli- tude of midnight — ai^d now absolutely as white as snow; and over the whole man an inde- scribable ancientness far beyond his years — though they were many, and most of them had been passed in torrid climes — all showed how grief has its agonies as destructive as those of guilt, and those the most wasting when they work in the heart and in the brain, unrelieved by the shedding of one single tear — when the very soul turns dry as dust, and life is im- prisoned, rather than mingled, in the decaying — the mouldering body ! The Day of Trial came, and all labour was suspended in the parish, as if it had been a mourning fast. Hundreds of people from this remote district poured into the circuit-town, and besieged the court-house. Horsemen were in readiness, soon as the verdict should be re- turned, to carry the intelligence — of life or death — to all those glens. A few words will suffice to tell the trial, the nature of the evi- dence, and its issue. The prisoner, who stood at the bar in black, appeared — though miser- ably changed from a man of great muscular power and activity, a magnificent man, into a tall thin shadow — perfectly unappalled; but in a face so white, and wasted, and wo-begone, the most profound physiognomist could read not one faintest symptom either of hope or fear, trembling or trust, guilt or innocence. He hardly seemed to belong to this world, and stood fearfully and ghastily conspicuous be- tween the officers of justice, above all the crowd that devoured him with their eyes, all leaning towards the bar to catch the first sound of his voice, when to the indictment he should plead "Not Guilty." These words he did ut- ter, in a hollow voice altogether passionless, and then was suffered to sit down, which he did in a manner destitute of all emotion. Dur- ing all the many long hours of his trial, he never moved head, limbs, or body, except once, when he drank some water, which he had not asked for, but which was given to him by a friend. The evidence was entirely circum- stantial, and consisted of a few damning facts, and of many of the very slightest sort, which, taken singly, seemed to mean nothing, but which, wheii considered all together, seemed to mean something against him— how much or how little, there were among the agitated audience many differing opinions. But slight as they were, either singly or together, they told fearfully against the prisoner, when coi. nected with the fatal few which no ingenuity could ever explain away; and though inge nuity did all it could do, -when wielded by eloquence of the highest order— and as the prisoner's counsel sat down, there went a rustle and a buzz through the court, and a com- munication of looks and whispers, that seemed 40 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. to denote that there were hopes of his acquit- tal — yet, if such hopes there were, they were deadened by the recollection of the calm, clear, logical address to the jury by the counsel for the crown, and destroyed by the judge's charge, which amounted almost to demonstration of guilt, and concluded with a confession due to his oath and conscience, tliat he saw not how the jury could do their duty to their Creator and their fellow-creatures, but by returning one verdict. They retired to consider it; and, dur- ing a deathlike silence, all eyes were bent on a deatlilike image. It had appeared in evidence, that the murder had been committed, at least all the gashes in- flicted — for there were also finger-marks of strangulation — with a bill-hook, such as for- esters use in lopping trees; and several wit- nesses swore that the bill-hook which was shown them, stained with blood, and with hair sticking on the haft — belonged to Ludovic Adamson. It was also given in evidence — though some doubts rested on the nature of the precise words — that on that day, in the room with the corpse, he had given a wild and in- coherent denial to the question then put to him in the din, " What he had done with the hill- hook]" Nobody had seen it in his possession since the spring before; but it had been found, after several weeks' search, in a hag in the moss, in the direction that he would have most probably taken — had he been the murderer — when (lying from the spot lo the Inch where he was seized. The shoes which he had on when taken, fitted the foot-marks on the ground, not far from the place of the murder, but not so perfectly as another pair which were found in the house. But that other pair, it was proved, belonged'to the old man; and therefore the correspondence between the footmarks and the prisoner's shoes, though not perfect, was a cir- cumstance of much suspicion. But a far stronger fact, in this part of the evidence, was sworn to against the prisoner. Though there was no blood on his shoes — when apprehended his legs were bare — though that circumstance, strange as it may seem, had never been noticed till he was on the way to prison! His stock- ings had been next day found lying on the sward, near the shore of the loch, manifestly after having been washed and laid out lo drv in the sun. At mention of this circumstance a cold shudder ran through the court; but neither that, nor indeed any other circumstance in the evidence — not even the account of the appearance which the murdered body exhibit- ed when found on the moor, or wlien after- wards laid on the bed— extorted from the pri- soner one groan — one sigh — or touched the imperturbable dealhliness of his countenance. It was proved, that when searched— in prison, and not before ; for the agitation that rei-incd over all assembled in the room at Moorside that dreadful day, had confounded even those accustomed to deal with suspected criminals --there were found in his pocket a small French gold watch, and also a gold brooch, which the ladies of the Castle had given to Margaret Burnside. On these being taken from him, he had said nothing, but looked aghast. A C'.i'c.c of torn and bloody paper, which had , been picked up near the body, was sworn to be in his handwriting; and though the mean- ing of the words— yet legible — was obscure, they seemed to express a request that Margaret would meet him on the moor on that Saturday afternoon she was murdered. The words "Saturday" — "meet me" — "last time," — were not indistinct, and the paper was of the same quality and colour with some found in a drawer in his bed-room at Moorside. It was proved that he had been drinking with some dissolute persons — poachers and the like — in a public house in a neighbouring parish all Saturday, till well on in the afternoon, when he left them in a state of intoxication — and was then seen running along the hill side in the direction of the moor. Where he passed the night between the Saturday and the Sabbath, he could give no account, except once when unasked, and as if spiiking to himself, he was overheard by the jailer to mutter, "Oh! that fatal night — that fatal night!" And then, when suddenly inter- rogated, "Where were you?" he answered, " Asleep on thf hill;" and immediately relapsed into a state of mental abstraction. These were the chief circumstances against him, which his counsel had striven lo explain away. That most eloquent person dwell with afTccling earnestness on the wickedness of (tutting any evil construction on the distracted behaviour of the wretched man when brought without warning upon the sudden sight of the mangled corpse of the beautiful girl, whom all allowed he had most passionately and tenderly loved ; and he strove lo prove — as he did prove to the conviction of many — that such beliaviour was incompatible with such guilt, and almost of itself established his innocence. AH thai was sworn to a'^iiin$t him, as having passed in that dreadful room, was in truth for him — unless all our knowledge of ihe best and of the worst of human nature were not, as folly, to be given to the winds. He beseeched the jury, there- fore, to litdk at all the other circumstances thai did indeed seem to bear hard upon the pri- soner, in the li^ht of his inncKence. and not of his guilt, and that they wou'd all fade into nothing. What mattered his possession of the watch and other trinkets? Lovers as they were, initrht not the unhappy girl have given them to him for temporary keepsakes 1 d* might he not have taken them from her in some playful mood, or received them — (and the brooch was cracked, and the mainspring of the watch broken, though the glass was whole) — to get them repaired in the town, wliich he often visited, and she never ? Could human credulity for one moment believe, thai such a man as the prisoner al the bar had been sworn to be by a host of witnesses — and especially by that witne>;s, who, with such overwhelming solemnity, had declared he loved him as his own son, and would have been proud if Hea- ven had given him such a son — he who liad bap- tized him. and known him well ever since a child — that such a man could rob the body of her whom he had violated and murdered ! If, under the instigation of the devil, he had rio- lated and murdered her, and for a moment were made the hideous supposition, did vast hell hold that demon whose voice would have TALE OF EXPIATION. 41 tempted the violator arid murderer — suppose him both — yea, that man at the bar — sworn to by all the parish, if need were, as a man of tenderest charities, and generosity unbounded —in the lust of lucre, consequent on the satiat- ing of another lust — to rob his victim of a few trinkets ! Let loose the wildest imagination into the realms of wildest wickedness, and yet they dared not, as they feared God, to credit for a moment the union of such appalling and such paltry guilt, t« that man who now trembled not before them, but who seemed cut off from all the sensibilities of this life by the scythe of Misery that had shorn him down ! But why try to recount, however feebl)', the line of defence taken by the speaker, who on that day seemed all but inspired. The sea may over- turn rocks, or fire consume them till they split in pieces; but a crisis there sometimes is in man's destiny, which all the powers ever lodged in the lips of man, were they touched with a coal from heaven, cannot avert, and when even he who strives to save, feels and knows that he is striving all in vain — ay, vain, as a worm — to arrest the tread of Fate about to trample down its victim into the dust. All hoped — many almost believed — that the pri- soner would be acquitted — that a verdict of "Not Proven," at least, if not of " Not Guilty," would be returned; but they had not been sworn to do justice before man and before God — and, if need were, to seal up even the fountains of mercy in their hearts — flowing, and easily set a-flowing, by such a spectacle as that bar presented — a man already seeming to belong unto the dead ! In about a quarter of an hour the jury re- turned to the box — and the verdict, having been sealed with black wax, was handed up to the Judge, who read, "We unanimously find the prisoner Guilty." He then stood up to receive the sentence of death. Not a dry eye was in the court during the Judge's solemn and aflect- ing address to the criminal — except those of the Shadow on whom had been pronounced the doom. " Your body will be hung in chains on the moor^-on a gibbet erected on the spot where you murdered the victim of your unhal- lowed lust, and there will your bones bleach in the sun, and rattle in the wind, after the in- sects and the birds of the air have devoured your flesh ; and in all future times, the spot on which, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, you perpetrated that double crime, at which all hu- manity shudders, will be looked on from afar by the traveller passing through that lonesome wild with a sacred horror !" Here the voice of the Judge faltered, and he covered his face with his hands; but the prisoner stood unmov- ed in figure, and in face untroubled — and when all was closed, was removed from the bar, the same ghostlike and unearthly phantom, seem- ingly unconscious of what had passed, or even of his own existence. Surely now he will suffer his old father to visit him in his cell ! " Once more only — only once more let me see him before I die ! " were his words to the clergyman of the parish, whose Manse he had so often visited when a young and happy boy. That servant of Christ had not forsaken him whom now all the world had forsaken. As free from sin himself as might be mortal and fallen man — mortal be- cause fallen — he knew from Scripture and from nature, that in " the lowest deep there is still a lower deep" in wickedness, into which all of woman born may fall, unless held back by the arm of the Almighty Being, whom they must serve steadfastly in holiness and truth. He knew, too, from the same source, that man can- not sin beyond the reach of God's mercy — il the worst of all imaginable sinners seek, in a Bible-breathed spirit at last, that mercy through the Atonement of the Redeemer. Daily — and nightly — he visited that cell ; nor did he fear to touch the hand — now wasted to the bone — which at the temptation of the Prince of the Air, who is mysteriously suffered to enter in at the gates of every human heart that is guard- ed not by the flaming sword of God's own Ser- aphim — was lately drenched in the blood of the most innocent creature that ever looked on the day. Yet a sore trial it was to his Christi- anity to find the criminal so obdurate. He would make no confession. Yet said that it was fit — that it was far best that he should die — that he deserved death ! But ever when the deed without a name was alluded to, his tongue was tied; and once in the midst of an impassioned prayer, beseeching him to listen to conscience and confess — he that prayed shuddered to behold him frown, and to hear bursting out in terrible energy, "Cease — cease to torment me, or you will drive me to deny my God ! " No father came to visit him in his cell. On the day of trial he had been missing from Moorside, and was seen next morning — (where he had been all night never was known — though it was afterwards rumoured that one like him had been seen silting, as the gloaming darkened, on the very spot of the murder) — wandering about the hills, hither and thither, and round and round about, like a man strick- en with blindness, and vainly seeking to find his home. When brought into the house, his senses were gone, and he had lost the power of speech. All he could do was to mutter some disjointed syllables, which he did contin- ually, without one moment's cessation, one un- intelligible and most rueful moan ! The figure of his daughter seemed to cast no image on his eyes — blind and dumb he sat.where he had been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, with his shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his forehead, and the fixed orbs — though stone- blind at least to all real things — beneath them flashing fire. He had borne up bravely — al- most to the last — but had some tongue sylla- bled his son's doom in the solitude, and at that instant had insanity smitten him! Such utter prostration of intellect had been expected by none ; for the old man, up to the very night before the Trial, had expressed the most confident trust of his son's acquittal. Nothing had ever served to shake his convic- tion of his innocence — tnough he had always forborne speaking about the circumstances of the murder — and had communicated to nobody any of the grounds dn which he more than hoped in a case so hopeless ; and though a trouble in his eyes often gave the lie to his lip ■ d2 43 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. when he used to say to the silent neighbours, "We shall soon see him back at Moorside." Had his belief in his Ludovic's innocence, and his trust in God that that innocence would be established and set free, been so sacred, that the blow, when it did come, struck him like a hammer, and felled him to the ground, from •which he had risen with a riven brain ? In whatever way the shock had been given, it had been terrible; for old Gilbert Adamson was now a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in Moorside — not keepers from a mad-house — for his daughter could not afford such tendence — but two of her brother's friends, who sat up with him alternately, night and day, while the arms of the old man, in his distraction, had to be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning was at an end now ; but the echoes of the hills responded to his yells and shrieks; and people were afraid to go near the house. It was pro- posed among the neighbours to take Alice and little Ann out of it ; and an asylum for them was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at any thing could have been seen, had been shut fast against all horrid sights — and the horses' hoofs and the wheels must have been muffled that had brought that hideous Framework to the Moor. Bui there it now stood — a dreadful Tree ! The sun moved higher and higher up the sky, and all the eyes of that congregatioQ were at once turned towards the east, for a dull sound, as of rumbling wheels and trampling feet, seemed shaking the Moor in that direc- tion ; and lo ! surrounded with armed men on horseback, and environed with halberds, came on a cart, in which three persons seemed to be sitting, he in the middle all dressed in white — the death-clothes of the murderer — the unpily- ing shedder of most innocent blood. There was no bell to toll there — but at the very moment he was ascending the scaffold, a black cloud knelled thunder, and many hun- dreds of people all at once fell down upon their knees. The man in white lifted up his eyes, and said. " O Lonl God of Heaven ! and Thou his blessed Son, who died to save sinners ! ac- all their entreaties ; and as, in such a case, it cept this sacrifice !" would have been too shocking to tear her away [ Not one in all that immense crowd could by violence, she was suffered to remain with have known that that white apparition was him who knew her not, but who often — it was • Ludovic Adamson. His hair, that had been said — stared distractedly upon her, as if she almost jel-Mack, was now while as his face — had been some fiend sent in upon his insanity ' as his figure, dressed, as it scemetl, for the from the place of punishment. Weeks pass- grave. Are they going lo execute ihe mur- ed on, and still she was there — hiding herself i derer in his shroud? Stone-blind, and stone- at times from those terrifying eyes ; and from : deaf, there he slood — yet had he. without help, her watching corner, waiting from morn till walked up the steps of ihe sca- and hope, be confident in the cause i>f Freedom. " Great men have Utn among us — better none ;" and can it be said that »i"ir there is "a want of books and men," or that those we have, are mere dwarfs and duodecimos 1 Is there no energy, no spirit of adventure and enterprise, no passion in the character of our country 1 Has not wide over earth " Encland jont tier men, of men the rhirf. To plant the Tree of Life, to plant fair Freedom's Tree 1" Has not she, the Heart of Europe and the (jueen, kindled .\merica into life, and raised up in the New World a power to balance the Old, star steadying star in their unconflicting courses! You can scarce see her shores for ships; her inland groves are crested with towers and temples ; and mists brooding at in MORNING MONOLOGUE. 4S tervals over her far-extended plains, tell of towns and cities, their hum unheard by the gazer from her glorious hills. Of such a land it would need a gifted eye to look into all that is passing within the mighty heart ; but it needs no giAed eye, no gifted ear, to see and hear there the glare and the groaning of great an- guish, as of lurid breakers tumbling in and out of the caves of the sea. But is it or is it not a land where all the faculties of the soul are free as they ever were since the. Fall ? Grant that there are tremendous abuses in all departments of public and private life; that rulers and legislators have often been as deaf to the "still small voice" as to the cry of the mil- lion; that they whom they have ruled, and for whom they have legislated often so unwisely or wickedly, have been as often untrue to them- selves, and in self-imposed idolatry "Flave bow'd their knees To despicable gods ;" Yet base, blind and deaf (and better dumb) must be he who would deny, that here Genius has had, and now has her noblest triumphs ; that Poetry has here kindled purer fires on loftier altars than ever sent up their incense to Grecian skies ; that Philosophy has sounded depths in which her torch was not extinguish- ed, but, though bright, could pierce not the " heart of the mystery" into which it sent some strong illuminations ; that Virtue here has had chosen champions, victorious in their martyr- dom; and Religion her ministers and her ser- vants not unworthy of her whose title is from heaven. Causes there have been, are, and ever will be, why often, even here, the very highest fa- culties " rot in cold obstruction." But in all the ordinary affairs of life, have not the best the best chance to win the day ? Who, in general, achieve competence, wealth, splen- dour, magnificence, in their condition as citi- zens I The feeble, the ignorant, and the base, or the strong, the instructed, and the bold 1 Would you, at the oflstarl, back mediocrity with alien influence, against Jiigh talent with none but its own — the native " might that slumbers in a peasant's arm," or, nobler far, that which neither sleeps nor slumbers in a peasant's heart? There is something abhorrent from every sentiment in man's breast to see, as we too often do, imbecility advanced to high S laces by the mere accident of high birth, lut how our hearts warm within us to behold the base-born, if in Britain we may use the word, by virtue of their own irresistible ener- gies, taking precedence, rightful and gladly granted of the blood of kings ! Yet we have heard it whispered, insinuated, surmised, spo- ken, vociferated, howled, and roared in a voice of small-beer-souring thunder, that Church and State, Army and Navy, are all officered by the influence of the Back-stairs — that few or none but blockheads, by means of brass only, mount from the Bar which they have disturb- ed to that Bench which they disgrace ; and that mankind intrust the cure of all diseases their flesh is heir to, to the exclusive care of every here and there a handful of old women. Whether overstocked or not, 'twould be hard to say, but all professions are full — from that of Peer to that of Beggar. To live is the most many of us can do. Why then complain 1 Men should not complain when it is their duty as men to work. Silence need not be sullen — but better sullenness than all this outrageous outer}-, as if words the winds scatter, were to drop into the soil and grow up grain. Proces- sions ! is this a time for full-grown men in holj'day shows to play the part of children? If they desire aflvancement, let them, like their betters, turn to and work. All men worth mentioning in this country belong to the work- ing classes. What seated Thurlow, and Wed- derburne, and Scott, and Erskine, and Copley, and Brougham on the woolsack? Work. What made Wellington ? For seven years war all over Spain, and finally at Waterloo — work — bloody and glorious work. Yet still the patriot cry is of sinecures. Let the few sluggards that possess but cannot enjoy them, doze away on them till sinecures and sinecurists drop into the dust. Shall such creatures disturb the equanimity of the mag- nanimous working-classes of England? True to themselves in life's great relations, they need not grudge, for a little while longer, the paupers a few paltry pence out of their earn- ings; for they know a sure and silent death- blow has been struck against that order of things by the sense of the land, and that all who receive wages must henceforth give work. All along that has been the rule — these are the exceptions ; or say, that has been the law — these are its revolutions. Let there be high rewards, and none grudge them — in honour and gold — for high work. And men of high talents — never extinct — will reach up theii hands and seize them, amidst the acclama- tions of a people who have ever taken pride in a great ambition. If the competition is to be in future more open than ever, to know it is so will rejoice the souls of all who are not slaves. But clear the course! Let not the crowd rush in — for by doing so, they Avill bring down the racers, and be themselves trampled to death. Now we say that the race is — if not always — ninety-nine times in a hundred — to the swif\, and the battle to the strong. We may have been fortunate in our naval and military friends; but we cannot charge our memory with a single consummate ass holding a disi tinguished rank in either service. That such consummate asses are in both, we have been credibly informed, and believe it ; and we have sometimes almost imagined that we heard their bray at no great distance, and the flapping of their ears. Poor creatures enough do rise by seniority or purchase, or if anybody knows how else, we do not; and such will be the case to the end of the chapter of human acci- dents. But merit not only makes the man, but the ofiicer on shore and at sea. They are as noble and discontented a set of fellows all, as ever boarded or stormed; and they will continue so, not till some change in the Ad- miralty, or at the Horseguards, for Sir James Grahame does his duty, and so does Lord Hill; but till a change in humanity, for 'tis no moif. than Adam did, and we attribute whatever may be amiss or awry, chiefly to the Fall. Let the 416 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. radicals set poor human nature on her legs again, and what would become of them? In the French service there is no rising at all, it seems, but by merit ; but there is also much running away ; not in a disgraceful style, for our natural enemies, and artificial friends are a brave race, but in mere indignation and dis- gust to see troops so shamefully ill-ofRcered as ours, which it would be a disgrace to look in the face on the field, either in* column or line. Therefore they never stand a charge, but are off in legions of honour, eagles and all, before troops that have been so uniformly flogged from time immemorial, as to have no other name but raw lobsters, led on by officers all shivering or benumbed under the " cold shade of aristocracy," like Picton and Pack. We once thought of going ourselves to the English Bar, but were dissuaded from doing so by some judicious friends, who assured us we should only be throwing away our great talents and unexampled eloquence ; for that ] success depended solely on interest, and we had none we knew of, either in high places or in low, and had then never seen an attorney. We wept for the fate of many dear friends in wigs, and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On our return from Palestine and other foreign parts, behold them all bending under briefs, bound by retaining fees, or like game-hawks, wheeling in airy circuits over the rural pro- vinces, and pouncing down on their prey, away to their eyries with talon-fulls, which they devoured at their luxurious leisure, un- troubled by any callow young! They now compose the Bench. Ere we set off for Salem, we had thoughts of entering the Church, and of becoming Bi- shops. But 'twas necessary, we were told, first to be tutor to a lord. That, in our pride, we could not stomach ; but if ours had not been the sin by which Satan fell, where now had been the excellent Howley? All our habits in youth led us to associate much with intending divines. A few of them arc still curates; but 'twere vain to try to count the vicars, rectors, canons, deans, archdeacons, and bishops, with whom, when we were all under-graduates together at Oxford, we used to do nothing but read Greek all dav. and Latin all night. Yet you hear nothing but abuse'of such a Church ! and are told to look at the Dissenters. We do look at them, and an uglier set we never saw ; not one in a hundred, in his grimness, a gentleman. Not a single scholar have they got to show, and now that Hall IS mute, not one orator. Their divinity IS of the dust— and their discourses drv bones. Down with the old Universities— up with new. The old are not yet down, but the new are up ; and how dazzling the contrast, even to the purblmd! You may hew down trees, but not towers ; and Granta and Rhedicvna will show their temples to the sun, ages afiersuch struc- tures shall have become hospitals. Thev en- lighten the land. Beloved are they by ail the gentlemen of England. Even the plucked think of them with tears of filial reverence, and having renewed their plumage, clap their ■wings and crow defiance to all their foes. \ man, you say, can get there no education to fit him for life. Bah ! Tell that to the marines. Now and then one meets a man eminent in a liberal profession, who has not been at any place that could easily be called a College. But the great streams of talent in England keep perpetually flowing from the gates of her glorious Universities — and he who would deny it in any mixed company of leading men in London, would only have to open his eyes in the hush that rebuked his folly, to see that he was a Cockney, clever enough, perhaps, in his own small way, and the author of some sonnets, but even to his own feelings painfully out of place among men who had not studied at the Surrey. We cannot say that we have any fears, this fine clear September morning, for the Church of England in England. In Ireland, deserted and betrayed, it has received a dilapidating 1 shock. Fain would seven millions of " the ' finest people on the earth," and likewise the I most infatuated, who are so proud of the ver- I dure of their isle, that they love to make "the green one red," see the entire edifice over- thrown, not one stone left upon another; and its very name smothered in a smoky cloud of I asccndinir dust. They have lold us so in yells, over winch has still been heard " the wolf's long howl," the savage cr)' of the O'Connell. And Ministers who pretend to be Protestants, and in reform have not yet declared against the Reformation, have tamely yielded, recreants from the truth, to brawlers who would pull down her holiest altars, and given up " pure religion, breathing household laws," a sacrifice to superstition. But there is a power enshrined in England which no Govornmrnt dare seek to desecrate — in the hearts of the good and wise, grateful to an establishment that has guarded Christianity from corruption, and is venerated by all the most enlightened spirits who con- scientiously worship without its pale, and know that in the peaceful shadow of its strength repose their own humbler and un- troubled altars. We have be«i taking a cheerful — a hopeful view of our surrounding world, as it is in- closed within these our seas, whose ideal mur- mur seemed awhile to breathe in unison with our Monologue. We have been believing, that in this our native land, the road of merit is the road to success — say happiness. And is not the law the same in the world of Litera- ture and the Fine Arts ? Give a great genius any thing like fair play, and he will gain glory, nay bread. True, he may be before his age, and may have to create his worshippers. But how few such ! And is it a disgrace to an age to produce a genius whose grandeur it cannot all at once comprehend ! The works of genius are surely not often incomprehensible to the highest contemporary minds, and if they win their admiration, pity not the poor Poet. But pray syllable the living Poet's name who has had reason to complain of having fallen on evil days, or who is with " darkness and with danger compassed round." From humblest birth-places in the obscurest nooks frequently have we seen "The (\ilgeiit bead Star-bright appear;" MORNING MONOLOGUE. 4V from unsuspected rest among the water-lilies of the mountain-mere, the snow-white swan in full plumage soar into the sky. Hush ! no nonsense about Wordsworth. " Far-off his coming shone ;" and what if, for a while, men knew not whether 'twas some mirage-glimmer, or the dawning of a new " orb of song !" We have heard rather too much even from that great poet about the deafness and blind- ness of the present time. No Time but the future, he avers, has ears or eyes for divine music and light. Was Homer in his own day obscure, or Shakspeare ? But Heaven forbid we should force the bard into an argument ; we allow him to sit undisturbed by us in the bower nature delighted to build for him, with small help from his own hands, at the dim end of that alley green, among lake-murmur and mountain-shadow, for ever haunted by enno- bling visions. But we love and respect present Time — partly, we confess, because he has shown some little kindly feeling for ourselves, whereas we fear Future Time may forget us among many others of his worthy father's friends, and the name of Christopher North "Die on his ears a faint unheeded sound." But Present Time has not been unjust to Wil- liam Wordsworth. Some small temporalities •were so ; imps running about the feet of Pre- sent Time, and sometimes making him stum- ble : but on raising his eyes from the ground, he saw something shining like an Apparition on the mountain top, and he hailed, and with a friendly voice, the advent of another true Poet of nature and of man. We must know how to read that prophet, be- fore we preach from any text in his book of revelations. "We pnotfi In our youth b«rin in gladness. But tln-reof romei in the end despondency and madness." Why spoke he thus ? Because a deep dark- ness had fallen upon him all alone in a moun- tain-cave, and he quaked before the mystery of man's troubled life. "lie thought of rhatlcrton, the marvellous boy. The sli'rplfiis soul that perish'd in his pride ; Of him who walk'd in clory and in joy. Following his plough upon ihe mountain side ;" and if they died miserably, " How may I perish !" But they wanted wisdom. There- fore the marvellous boy drank one bowl drug- ged with sudden, and the glorious ploughman many bowls drugged with lingering death. If we must weep over the woes of Genius, let us know for whom we may rightly shed our tears. With one drop of ink you may write the names of all " The mighty Poets in their misery dead." Wordsworth wrote those lines, as we said, in the inspiration of a profound but not permanent melancholy ; and they must not be profaned by being used as a quotation in defence of accusations against human society, which, in some lips, become accusations against Providence. The mighty Poets have been not only wiser, but happier than they knew; and what glory from heaven and earth was poured over their inward life, up to the very moment it darkened away into the gloom of the grave ! Many a sad and serious hour have we read D'lsraeli, and many a lesson may all lovers of literature learn from his well-instructed books. But from the unhappy stories therein so feel- ingly and eloquently narrated, has many "a famous ape" drawn conclusions the very reverse of those which he himself leaves to be drawn by all minds possessed of any philoso- phy. Melancholy the moral of these moving tales ; but we must look for it, not into the society that surrounds us, though on it too we must keep a watchful, and, in spite of all its sins, a not irreverent eye, but into our own hearts. There lies the source of evil which some evil power perhaps without us stirs up till it wells over in misery. Then fiercely turns the wretch first against " the world and the world's law," both sometimes iniquitous, and last of all against the rebellious spirit in his own breast, but for whose own innate cor- ruption his moral being would have been vic- torious against all outward assaults, violent or insidious, "and to the end persisting safe arrived." Many men of genius have died without their fame, and for their fate we may surely mourn, without calumniating our kind. It was thejr lot to die. Such was the will of God. Many such have come and gone, ere they knew them- selves what they were ; their brothers, and sisters, and friends knew it not; knew it not their fathers and mothers ; nor the village maidens on whose bosoms they laid their dying heads. Many, conscious of the divine llame, and visited by mysterious stirrings that would not let them rest, have like vernal wild-flowers withered, or been cut down like young trees in the season of leaf and blossom. Of this our mortal life what are these but beautiful evan- ishings ! Such was our young Scottish Poet, Michael Bruce — a fine scholar, who taught a little wayside school, and died, a mere lad, of consumption. Loch Leven Castle, where Mary Stuart was imprisoned, looks not more melan- choly among the dim waters for her than for its own Poet's sake ! The linnet, in its joy among the yellow broom, sings not more sweetly than did he in his sadness, sitting beside his unopened grave, " one song that will not die," though the dirge but draw now and then a tear from some simple heart. " Now spring returns— but not to me returns The vernal joy my better years have known ; Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns. And all the joys of life with health are flown." To young Genius to die is often a great gain. The green leaf was almost hidden in blossoms, and the tree put forth beautiful promise. Cold winds blew, and clouds inter- cepted the sunshine; but it felt the dews of heaven, and kept flourishing fair even in the moonlight, deriving sweet sustenance from the stars. But would all those blossoms ha7elves, while they have been happy to send their sons to be instructed in (he noblest lore, by men whose boyhood they had rescued from the darkness of despair, and clothed it with the warMith and light of hope. And were we to speak of endowments in schools and colleges, in which so many fine scholars have been broueht up from among the humbler classes, who but for them had been bred to some mean hantlicrafi, we should show better reason still for believing that moral and intellectual worth is not overlooked, or left to pine neglected in obscure places, as it is too much the fashion with a certain set of discontented declaimers to give out; but that in no other country has such provision been made for the meritorious children of the enlightened poor as in England. But we fear that the talent and the genius which, according to them, have been so often left or sent to beggary, to the great reproach even of our national character, have not been of a kind which a thoughtful humanity would in its benefactions have recognised ; for it looks not with very hopeful eyes on mere ir- regular sallies of fancy, least of all when spurn- ins; prudence and propriety, and symptomatic of a mental constitution easily excited, but averse to labour, and insensible to the delight labour brings with it, when the faculties are all devoted in steadfastness of purpose to the ac- quisition of knowledge and the attainment of truth. 'Tis not easy to know, seeing it so diflScult to define it, whether this or that youth who thinks he has genius, has it or not; the oolj MORNING MONOLOGUE. 49 proof he may have given of it is perhaps a few copies of verses, which breathe the animal gladness of young life, and are tinged with tints of the beautiful, which joy itself, more imaginative than it ever again will be, steals from the sunset? but sound sense, and judg- ment, and taste, which is sense ahd judg- ment of all finest feelings and thoughts, and the love of light dawning on the intellect, and ability to gather into knowledge facts near and from afar, till the mind sees systems, and in them understands the phenomena which, when looked at singly, perplexed the pleasure of the sight — these, and aptitudes and capacities and powers such as these, are indeed of promise, and more than promise; they are already per- formance, and justify in minds thus gified, and in those who watch their workings, hopes of a wiser and happier future when the boy shall be a man. Perhaps too much honour, rather than too little, has been shown by his age to mediocre poetry and other works of fiction. A few gleams of genius have tjivrn some writers of little worth a considerable reputation; and great waxed the pride of poetasters. But true poetry burst in beauty over the land, and we became intolerant of "false glitter." Fresh sprang its flowers from the " daedal earth." or seemed, they were so surpassinjjiy beautiful, as if spring had indeed descended from heaven, "veiled in a shower of shadowing roses," and no longer Could we sutler yountj gentlemen and ladies, treading among the profusion, to cfaiher the glorious scatterings, and weaving them into fantastic or even tasteful carlands, to present them to us, as if they had been raised from the seed of their own genius, and entitled therefore "to bear their name in the wild woods." This flower-gathering, pretty pas- time though it be, and altogether innocent, fell into disrepute ; and then all such florists be- gan to complain of being neglected, or de- spised, or persecuted, and their friends to la- ment over their fate, the fate of all genius, " in amorous ditiies all a summer's day." Besides the living poets of highest rank, are there not many whose claims to join the sacred band have been allowed, because their lips, too, have sometimes been touched with a fire from heaven 1 Second-rate indeed! Ay, well for those who are third, fourth, or fifth- rate — knowing where sit Homer, Shakspeare, and Milton. Round about Parnassus run many parallel roads, with forests "of cedar and branching palm between," overshadowing the sunshine on each magnificent level with a sense of something more sublime still nearer the forked summit; and each band, so that they be not ambitious overmuch, in their own region may wander or repose in grateful bliss. Thousands look up with envy from " the low- lying fields of the beautiful land" immediately without the line that goes wavingly asweep round the base of the holy mountain, separating it from the common earth. What clamour and what din from the excluded crowd ! Many are heard there to whom nature has been kind, but they have not yet learned " to know them- selves," or they would retire, but not afar off, and in silence adore. And so they do erelong, 7 and are happy in the sight of " the beauty still more beauteous" revealed to their fine percep- tions, though to them was not given the faculty that by combining in spiritual passion creates. But what has thither brought the self-deceived, who will not be convinced of their delusion, even were Homer or Milton's very self to frown on them with eyes no longer dim, but angry in their brightness like lowering stars 1 But we must beware — perhaps too late — of growing unintelligible, and ask you. in plainer tefms, if you do not think that by far the great- est number of all those who raise an outcry against the injustice of the world to men of genius, are persons of the meanest abilities, who have all their lives been foolishly fighting with their stars 1 Their demons have not whispered to them "have a taste," but "you have genius," and the world gives the demons the lie. Thence anger, spife, rancour, and envy eat their hearts, and they " rail against the Lord's anointed." They set up idols of clay, and fall down and worship them — or idols of brass, more worthless than clay ; or they perversely, and in hatred, not in love, pretend reverence for the Fair and Good, because, for- sooth, placed bj' man's ingratitude too far in the shade, whereas man's pity has, in deep compassion, removed the objects of their love, because of their imperfections not blameless, back in among that veiling shade, that their beauty might still be visible, while their de- formities were hidden in " a dim religious light." Let none of the sons or daughters of genius hearken to such outcry but with contempt — and at all times with suspicion, when they find themselves the objects of such lamentations. The world is not — at least does not wish to be, an unkind, ungenerous, and unjust world Many who think themselves neglected, are far more thousht of than they suppose; just as many, who imagine the world ringing with their name, are in the world's ears nearly anony- mous. Only one edition or two of your poems have sold — but is it not pretty well that five hundred or a thousand copies have been read, or glanced over, or looked at, or skimmed, or skipped, or fondled, or petted, or tossed aside, "between malice and true love," by ten times that number of j'our fellow-creatures, not one of whom ever saw your face ; while many mil- lions of men, nearly your equals, and not a few millions your superiors far, have contentedly dropt into the grave, at the close of a long life, without having once " invoked the Muse," and who would have laughed in your face had you talked to them, even in their greatest glee, about their genius. There is a glen in the Highlands (dearly be- loved Southrons, call on us, on j-our way through Edinburgh, and we shall delight to instruct you how to walk our mountains) called Glencro — very unlike Glenco. A good road winds up the steep ascent, and at the summit there is a stone seat, on which you read, " Rest and be thankful." You do so — and are not a little proud — if pedestrians — of your achievement. Looking up, you see cliffs high above your head, (not the Cobbler,) and in the clear sky, as far above them, a balanced bird. E 50 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. You envy him his seemingly motionless wings, and wonder at his air-supporters. Down he darts, or aside he shoots, or right up he soars, and you wish you were an Eagle. You have reached Rest-and-be-thankful, yet rest you will not, and thankful you will not be, and you scorn the mean inscription, which many a worthier wayfarer has blessed, while sitting on that stone he has said, " give us this day our daily bread," eat his crust, and then walked away contented down to Cairndow. Just so it has been with you sitting at your appointed place — pretty high up — on the road to the summit of the Biforked Hill. You look up and see Byron — there "sitting where you may not soar," — and wish you were a great Poet. But you are no more a great Poet than an Eagle eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip — and will not rest-and-be-thankful that you are a man and a Christian. Nay, you are more, an author of no mean repute; and your prose is allowed to be excellent, belter far than the best para- graph in this our Morning Monologue. But you are sick of walking, and nothing will sa- tisfy you but to fly. Be contented, as we are, with feet, and weep not for wings ; and let us take comfort together from a cheering quota- tion from the philosophic Graj- — "For they that crrep, and they that fly. Just end where tbey began." THE FIELD OF FLOWERS. A May-jiohn-ixb on Ulswater and the banks of Ulswater — commingled earth and heaven ! Spring is many-coloured as Autumn ; but now Joy scatters the hues daily brightening into greener life, then Melancholy dropt them daily dimming into yellower death. The fear of Winter then — but now the hope of Summer; and Nature rings with hymns hailing the visi- ble advent of the perfect year. If for a mo- ment the woods are silent, it is but to burst forth anew into louder song. The rain is over and gone — but the showery sky speaks in the streams on a hundred hills; and the wide mountain gloom opens its heart to the sun- shine, that on many a dripping precipice burns like fire. Nothing seems inanimate. The very clouds and their shadows look alive — the trees, never dead, are wide-awakened from their sleep — families of flowers are frequentin? all the dewy places — old walls are splendid with the light of lichens — and birch-crowned cliffs up among the coves send down their fine fragrance to the Lake on every bolder breath that whitens with breaking wavelets the blue of its breezy bosom. Nor mute the voice of man. The shepherd is whooping on the hill — the ploughman calling .to his team some- where among the furrows in some small late field, won from the woods ; and you hear the laughter and the echoes of the laughter — one sound— of children busied in half-work, half- play; for what else in vernal sunshine is the occupation of young rustic life 1 Tis no Arcadia— no golden age. But a lovelier scene -in the midst of all its grandeur— is not in merry and majestic England; nor did the hills of this earth ever circumscribe a pleasanter dwelling for a nobler peasantrv, than these Cumbrian ranges of rocks and pastures, where the raven croaks in his own region, unre- garded in theirs by the fleecy flocks. How beautiful the Church Tower! On a knoll not far from the shore, and not nigh above the water, yet bv an especial feli- cty of^Aaze gently commanding all that reach of the Lake with all its ranges of mountains — every single tree, every grove, and all the woods seeming to show or to conceal the scene at ihe bidding of the Spirit of Beauty — reclined two Figures — the one almost rustic, but vene- rable in the simplicity of old age — the other no longer young, but still in the prime of life — and though plainly apparelled, wilh form and bearing such as are pointed out in cities, because belonging to distinguished men. The old man behaved towards him with deference but not humility; and between them too — in many things unlike — it was clear even from their silence that there was Friendship. A little way ofl", and sometimes almost run- ning, now up and now down the slopes and hollows, was a girl about eight years old — whether beautiful or not you could not know, C>r her face was either half-hidden in golden hair, or when she tossed the tresses from her brow, it was so bright in the sunshine that you saw no features, only a gleam of joy. Now she was chasing the butterflies, not to hurt them, but to get a nearer sight of iheir delicate gauze wings — the first that had come — she wondered whence — to waver and wanton for a little while in the spring-sunshine, and then, she felt, as wondrously. one and all as by con- sent, to vanish. And now she stooped as if to pull some little wild-flower, her hand for a moment withheld by a loving sense of its loveliness, but ever and anon adding some new colour to the blended bloom intended to glad- den her father's eyes — though the happy child knew full well, and sometimes wept to know, that she herself had his entire heart. Yet glidinc, or tripping, or dancing along, she touched not with fair)' foot one while clover- flower on which she saw working the silent bee. Her father looked too oflen sad, and she feared — though what it was, she imagined not even in dreams — that some great misery must have befallen him before they came to live in the glen. And such, too, she had heard from a chance whisper, was the belief of their neigh THE FIELD OF FLOWERS. M bours. But momentary the shadows on the light of childhood ! Nor was she insensible to her own beauty, that with the innocence it en- shrined combined to make her happy ; and first met her own eyes every morning, when most beautiful, awakening from the hushed awe of her prayers. She was clad in russet, like a cottager's child ; but her air spoke of finer breeding than may be met with among those mountains — though natural grace accompanies there many a maiden going with her pitcher to the well — and gentle blood and old flows there in the veins of now humble men — who, but for the decay of families once high, might have lived in halls, now dilapidated, and scarcely distinguished through masses of ivy from the circumjacent rocks ! The child stole close behind her father, and kissing his cheek, said, " Were there ever such lovely flowers seen on Ulswater before, father? I do not believe that they will ever die." And she put them in his breast. Not a smile came to his countenance — no look of love — no faint recognition — no gratitude for the gift which at other limes might haply have drawn a tear. She stood abashed in the sternness of his eyes, which, though fixed on her, seemed to see her ^lot ; and feeling that her glee was mistimed — for with such gloom she was not unfamiliar — the child fell as if her own happiness had been sin, and, retiring into a glade among the broom, sat down and wept. " Poor wretch, belter far that she never had been born !" The old man looked on his friend with com- passion, but with no surprise; and only said, "God will dry up her tears." These few simple words, uttered in a solemn voice, but without one fone of reproach, seemed somewhat to calm the other's trouble, who first looking towards the spot where his child was sobbing to herself, though he heard it not, and then looking up to heaven, ejacu- lated for her sake a broken prayer. He then would have fain called her to him; but he was ashamed that even she should see him in such a passion of grief — and the old man went to her of his own accord, and bade her, as from her father, again to take her pastime among the flowers. Soon was she dancing in her happiness as before; and, that her father might hear she was obeying him, singing a song. "For five years every Sabbath have I at- tended divine service in your chapel — yet dare I not call myself a Christian. I have prayed for faith — ncr, wretch that I am, am I an un- believer. But I fear tc /ling myself at the foot of the cross. God be merciful to me a sin- ner!" The old man opened not his lips ; for he felt that there was about to be made some confes- sion. Yet he doubled not that the sufferer had been more sinned against than sinning; for the goodness of the stranger — so called still after five years' residence among the moun- tains — was'known in many a vale — and the Pastor knew that charity covcreth a multitude of sins — and even as a moral virtue prepares the heart for heaven. So sacred a thing is solace in this woful world. " We have walked together, many hundred times, for great part of a day, by ourselves two, over long tracts of uninhabited moors, and yet never once from my lips escaped one word about my fates or fortunes — so frozen was the secret in my heart. Often have I heard the sound of your voice, as if it were that of the idle wind ; and often the words I did hear seemed, in the confusion, to have no relation to us, to be strange syllablings in the wilderness, as from the hauntings of some evil spirit instigating me to self-destruction." " I saw that your life was oppressed by some perpetual burden; but God darkened not your mind while j'our heart was disturbed so griev- ously ; and well pleased were we all to think, that in caring so kindly for the griefs of others, you might come at last to forget your own ; or if that were impossible, to feel, that with the alleviations of time, and sympathy, and re- ligion, yours was no more than the common lot of sorrow." They rose — and continued to walk in silence — but not apart — up and down that small silvan enclosure overlooked but by rocks. The child saw her father's distraction — no unusual sight to her; yet on each recurrence as mournful and full of fear as if seen for the first time — and pretended to be playing aloof with her face pale in tears. " That child's mother is not dead. Where she is now I know not — perhaps in a foreign country hiding her guilt and her shame. All say that a lovelier child was never seen than that wretch — God bless her — how beautiful is the poor creature now in her happiness sing- ing over her flowers ! Just such another must her mother have been at her age. She is now an outcast — and an adulteress." The pastor turned away his face, for in the silence he heard groans, and the hollow voice again spoke : — "Through many dismal days and nights have I striven to forgive her, but never for many hours together have I been enabled to repent my curse. For on my knees I implored God to curse her — her head — her eyes — her breast — her body — mind, heart, and soul — and that she might go down a loathsome leper to the grave." « Remember what He said to the woman — * Go, and sin no more !' " " The words have haunted me all up and down the hills — his words and mine; but mine have always sounded liker justice at last — for my nature was created human — and human are all the passions that pronounced that holy or unholy curse!" "Yet you would not curse her now — were she laying here at your feet — or if you were standing by her death-bed 1" "Lying here at my feet! Even here — on this very spot — not blasted, but green through all the year — within the. shelter of these two rocks — she did lie at my feet in her beauty — and as I thought her innocence — my own hap ■ py bride ! Hither I brought her to be blest- and blest I was even up to the measure of my misery. This world is hell to me now— but then it was heaven !" " These awful names are of ihe mybterie^- beyond the grave." 62 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. " Hearme and judge. Shewas an orphan ; all her father's and mother's relations were dead, but a few who were very poor. . I married her, and secured her life against this heartless and wicked world. That child was born— and while it grew like a floAver — she left it — and its father — we who loved her beyond light and life, and would have given up both for her sake." " And have not yet found heart to forgive her — miserable as she needs must be— seeing she has been a great sinner !" " Who forgives 1 The father his profligate son, or disobedient daughter ? No ; he disin- herits his first-born, and suffers him to perish,, perhaps by an ignominious death. He leaves his only daughter to drag out her days in penury — a widow with orphans. The world may condemn, but is silent ; he goes to church every Sabbath, but no preacher denounces punishment on the unrelenting, the unforgiving parent. Yet how easily might he have taken them both back to his heart, and loved them better than ever! But she poisoned my cup of life when it seemed to overllow with hea- ven. Had God dashed it from my lips, I could have borne my doom. But with her own hand which I had clasped at the altar — and with our Lucy at her knees — she gave me that loath- some draught of shame and sorrow ; — I drank it to the dregs — and it is burning all through my being — now — as if it had been hell-firc from the hands of a fiend in the shape of an angel. In what page of the New Testament am I told to forgive her? Let me see the verse — and then shall I knoAV that Christianity is an imposture; for the voice of God within me — the conscience which is his still small voice — commands me never from my memory to obliterate that curse — never to forgive her, and her wickedness — not even if we should see each other's shadows in a future state, after the day of judgment." His countenance gr?w ghastly — and stagger- ing to a stone, he sat down and eyed the skies with a vacant stare, like a man whom dreams carry about in his sleep. His face was like ashes — and he gasped like one about to fall into a fit. " Bring me water" — and the old man motioned on the child, who, giving ear to him for a mo- ment, flew away to the Lake-side with an urn she had brought with her for flowers ; and held it to her father's lips. His eyes saw it not; — there was her sweet pale face all wet with tears, almost touching his own — her in- nocent mouth breathiiiig that pure balm that seems to a father's soul to be inhaled from the bowers of paradise. He took her into his bosom — and kissed her dewy eyes — and begged her to cease her sobbing— to smile— to laugh— to sing— to dance away into the sunshine— /o l,c happy! And Lucy afraid, not of her father, but of his kindne&s-jfor the simple creature was not able to understand his wild utterance of blessings— returned to the glade but not to her pastime, and couching like a fawn among the fern, kept her eyes on her father, and leH her flowers to fade unheeded beside her empty urn. " Unintelligible mystery of wickedness ! That child was just three years old the very day it was forsaken — she abandoned it and me on its birih-day! Twice had that day been observed by us — as the sweetest — the most sacred of holydays ; and now that it had again come round — but I not presenj-t-for I w'&s on foreign service — thus did she observe it — and disappeared with her paramour. It so happened that we went that day into action — and I committed her and our child to the mercy of God in fervent prayers; for love made me religious — and for their sakes I feared though I shunned not death. I lay all night among the wounded on the field of battle — and it was a severe frost. Pain kept me from sleep, but I saw them as distinctly as in a dream — the mother lying with her child in her bosom in our own bed. Was not thai vision mockery enough to drive me mad ? After a few weeks a letter came to me from herscl'' — and I kissed it and pressed it to my heart ; for no black seal was there — and I knew that little Lucy was alive. No meaning for a while seemed to be in the words — and then thoy began to blacken into ghastly cha- racters — till at last I eathercd from the horrid revelation that she was sunk in sin and shame, steeped for evermore in utmost pollu- tion. ' " A friend was with me — and I pave it to him to read — for in my anguish at first I felt no shame — and I watched his face as he read it, that I might see corroboration of the incre- dilile truth, which continued to look like false- hood, even while it pierced my heart with auonizing pangs. 'It may be a fi>rgpry,' was all he could utter — aHer long agitation ; but the shape of each letter was tuo familiar to my eyes — the way in which the paper was folded — and I knew my doom was sealed. Hours must have ppssed, for the room grew dark — and I asked him to leave me for the night. He kissed my forehead — for we had been as brothers. I saw him next morning — dead^-cut nearly in two — yet had he left a paper for me, written an hnnr before he fell, so filled with holiest friendship, that oh! how even in my agony I wept for him, now but a lump of cold clay and blood, and envied him at the same time a soldier's grave! "And has the time indeed come that lean thus speak calmly of all that horror! The body was brought into my room, and it lay all day and all night close to my bed. But false was I to all our life-long friendship — and almost with indifference I looked upon the corpse. Momentary starts of affection seized me — but I cared little or nothing for [ the death of him, the tender and the true, the j crentle and the brave, the pious and the noble- hearted; my anguish was all for her, the cruel and the fiiithless, dead to honour, to religion dead— dead to all the sanctities of nature — for her, and for her alone, I suflTered all ghastliest agonies — nor any comfort came to me in my despair, from the conviction that she was worthless; for desperately wicked as she had shown herself to be — oh ! crowding came back upon me all our hours of happiness — all her sweet smiles — all her loving looks- all her afleciionate words — all her conjugal and maternal tendernesses ; and the loss of THE FIELD OF FLOWERS. 53 all that bliss — the change of it all into strange, sudden, shameful, and everlasting misery, smote me till I swooned, and was delivered up to a trance in which the rueful reality was liiixed up with fantasms more horrible than man's mind can suffer out of the hell of sleep ! " Wretched coward that I was to outlive that night! But my mind was weak from great loss of blood — and the blow so stunned me that I had not strength of resolution to die. I might have torn off the bandages — for nobody watched me — and my wounds were thought mortal. But the love of life had not welled out with all those vital streams; and as I began to recover, another passion took possession of me — and I vowed that there should be atonement and revenge. I was not obscure. My dishonour was known through the whole army. Not a tent — not a hut — in which my name was not bandied about — a jest in the mouths of profligate poltroons — pronounced with pity by the compassionate brave. I had commanded my men with pride. No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I looked on our colours ; but no wretch led out to execution for desertion or cowardice ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight of human faces arrayed around him, with more shame and horror than did I when, on my way to a transport, I came suddenly on my ()wn corps, marching to music as if they were taking up a position in the line of battle — as they had often done with me at their head — all sternly silent before an approaching storm of fire. What brought them there? To do mc honour! Me, smeared with infamy, and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. Honour had been the idol I worshipped — alas ! too, too passionately far — and now I lay in my litter like a slave sold to stripes — and heard as if a legion of demons were mocking mc and with loud and long huzzas; and then a confused murmur of blessings on our noble commander, so they called me — me. despica- ble in my own esteem — scorned — insulted — forsaken — mc, who could not bind to minif the bosom that for years had touched it — a wretch so poor in power over a woman's heart, that no sooner had I left her to her own thoughts than she felt that she had never loved me, and, opening her fair breast to a new-born bliss, sacrificed me without remorse — nor could bear to think of me any more as her husband — not even for sake of that child whom I knew she loved — for no hypocrite was she there; and oh ! lost creature though she was — even now I wonder over that unaccountable deser- tion — and much she must have suffered from the image of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child 1 Have I fright- ened her away into the wood by my unfather- Iv looks ? She too will come to hate me — oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's, gliding through among the broom ! Sorrow has no business with her — nor she with sorrow. Yet — even her how often have I made ween! All the unhappincss she has I but leave her alone to herself in her affec- tionate innocence, the smile that always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there— only brighter— all the time her eyes are awake ; but I dash it away by my unhal- lowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble, wonder to think how sad can. be the countenance even of a little child. God of mercy ! what if she were to die !" "She will not die — she will live," said the pitying pastor — " and many happy years — my son — are 3-et in store even for you — sorely as you have been tried ; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life — and has he not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of Life ! Let not then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it produce there resignation — if need be, contri- tion — and, above all, forgiveness." " Yes ! I had a hope to live for — mangled as I was in body, and racked in mind — a hope that was a faith — and bitter-sweet it was in imagined foretaste of fruition — the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his blood ? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the as- sassin had already stabbed my soul? Satis- faction ! I tell you that I was for revenge. JJfot that his blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed — and hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon woman's breast — let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his heart's bloodf at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retri- buiiou dealt out to him by the hand of him whom he had degraded in the eyes of the whole world beneath the condition even of a felon, and delivered over in my misery to contempt and scorn. I found him out; — there he was before me — in all that beauty by women so beloved — graceful as Apollo; and with a haughty air, as if proud of an achievement that adorned his name, he saluted me — her hiis- Ixmd — on the field, — and let the wind play with his raven tresses — his curled love-locks — and then presented himself to my aim in an attitude a statuary would have admired. I shot him through the heart." The good old man heard the dreadful words with a shudder — yet they had come to his ears not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had graduallj' been growing black with wrath, long before he ended in an avowal of murder. Nor, on ceasing his wild words and distracted de- meanour, did it seem that his heart was touched with an}' remorse. His eyes retained their savage glare — his teeth were clenched — and he feasted on his crime. " Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revela- tion," solemnly said his aged friend, "can sub- due the evil passions of our nature, or enable conscience itself to see and repent of sin Your wrongs were indeed great — but without ever known "has all come from me ; and would | a change wrought in all your spirit, alas ! my e3 54 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. son ! you cannot hope to see the kingdom of heaven." " Who dares to condemn the deed 1 He de- served death — and whence was doom to come but from me the Avenger? I took his life — but once I saved it. I bore him from the battlements of a fort stormed in vain — after ■we had all been blown up by the springing of a mine; and from bayonets that had drunk my blood as well as his — and his widowed mother blessed me as the saviour of her son. I told my wife to receive him as a brother — and for my sake to feel towards him a sister's love. Who shall speak of temptation — or frailty — or infatuation to me 1 Let the fools hold their peace. His wounds became dearer to her abandoned heart than mine had ever been ; yet had her cheek lain many a night on the scars that seamed this breast — for I was not backward in battle, and our place was in the j van. I was no coward, that she who loved [ heroism in him should have dishonoured her husband. True, he was younger by some | years than me — and God had given him per- nicious beauty — and she was young, too — oh ! j the brightest of all mortal creatures the day \ she became my bride — nor less bright with that baby at her bosom — a matron in girlhood's I resplendent spring ! Is youth a plea for wicked- 1 ness? And was I old? I, who in spite of all [ I have suffered, feel the vital blood yet boiling as to a furnace; but cut off fi>r ever by her crime from fame and glory — and fro;n a soldier [ in his proud career, covered with honour in . the eyes of all my countrymen, changed in an hour into an outlawed and nameless slave. My name has been borne by a race of heroes j — the blood in my veins has flowed down a long line of illustrious ancestors — and here ' am I now — a hidden, disguised hypocrite — j dwelling among peasants — and afraid — ay, afraid, because ashamed, to lift my eyes freely , from the ground even among the solitudes of ; the mountains, lest some wandering stranger should recognise me, and see the brand of , ignominy her hand and his — accursed buth — , burnt in upon my brow. She forsook this bosom — but tell me if it was in disgust with these my scars V ! And as he bared it, distractcdl)', that noble chest was seen indeed disfigured with many a gash — on which a wife might well have rested lier head with gratitude not less devout be- ! cause of a lofty pride mingling with life-deep affection. But the burst of passion was gone by -and, covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child. "Oh! cruel — cruel was her conduct to me; yet what has mine been to her — for so many years! I could not tear her image from my memory — not an hour has it ceased to haunt me; since I came among these mountains, her ghost is for ever at my side. I have striven to drive it away with curses, but still there is the phantom. Sometimes— beautiful as on our marriage day— all in purest white— adorned with flowers— it wreathes its arms around my neck — and offers its mouth to my kisses — and then all at once is changed into a leering ■wretch, retaining a likeness of my bride— then into a corpse. And perhaps she is dead- dead of cold and hunger : she whom I cherished in all luxury — whose delicate frame seemed to bring round itself all the purest air and sweet- est sunshine — she may have expired in the very mire — and her body been huddled into some hole called a pauper's grave. And I have suffered all this to happen her ! Or have I suffered her to become one of the miserable multitude who support hated and hateful life by prostitution] Black ■was her crime; yet hardly did she deserve to be one of that howl- ing crew — she whose voice was once so sweet, her eyes so pure, and her soul so innocent — for up to the hour I parted with her weeping, no evil thought had ever been hers; — then why, ye eternal Heavens ! why fell she from that sphere where she shone like a star? Let that mystery that shrouds ray mind in darkness be lightened — let me see into its heart — and know but the meaning of her guilt — and then may I be able to forgive it ; but for five years, day and night, it has troubled and confounded me — and from blind and baffled wrath with an iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night through which I cannot grope my way, no refuge can I find — and nothing is left me but to tear my hair out by handfuls — as, like a madman, I have done — to curse her by name in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon her the curse of God. O wicked — most wicked ! Yet He who' judges the hearts of his creatures, knows that I have a thousand and a thousand times forgiven her, but thai a chasm lay be- tween us, from which, the moment that I came to its brink, a voice drove me back — I know not whether of a good or evil spirit — and bade me leave her to her fate. But she must be dead — and needs not now ray tears. O friend ! judge me not too sternly — from this my con- fession ; for all my wild words have imper- fectly expressed to you but parts of my miser- able being-r-and if I could lay it all before you, you would pity me perhaps as much as con- demn — for my worst passions only have now found utterance — all my better feelings will not return nor abide for words — even I myself have forgotten them ; but your pitying face seems to say, that they will be remembered at the Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And with these words he fell down on his knees, and prayed loo for pardon to his own sins. The old man encouraged him not to despair — it needed but a motion of his hand to bring the child from her couch in the cover, and Lucy was folded to her father's heart. The forgive- ness was felt to be holy in that embrace. The day had brightened up into more perfect beauty, and showers were sporting with sun- shine on the blue air of Spring. The sky showed something like a rainbow — and the Lake, in some parts quite still, and in some breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments of wood and rock, and waves that would have murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat suddenly hoisting a sail. .'Vnd such a very boat appeared round a promontory that stretch- ed no great way into the water, and formed with a crescent of low meadow-land a bay that was the first to feel the wind coming down Glencoin. The boatman was rowing heed- lessly along, when a sudden squall struck the COTTAGES. 55 sail, and in an instant the skiff was upset and vent down. No shrieks were heard — and the boatman swam ashore ; but a figure was seen struggling where the sail disappeared — and starting from his knees, he who knew not fear plunged into the Lake, and after desperate ex- ertions brought the drowned creature to the side — a female meanly attired — seemingl}'^ a stranger — and so attenuated that it was plain she must have been in a dying state, and had she not thus perished, would have had but few days to live. The hair was gray — but the face though withered was not old — and, as she lay on the greensward, the features were beautiful as well as calm in the sunshine. He stood over her awhile — as if struck mo- tionless — and then kneeling beside the body, tissed its lips and eyes — and said only, " It is Lucy !" The old man was close by — and so was that child. They too knelt — and the passion of the mourner held him dumb, with his face close to the face of death — ghastly its glare beside the sleep that knows no waking, and is forsaken by all dreams. He opened the bosom — wasted to the bone — in the idle thought that she might yet breathe — and a paper dropt out into his hand, which he read aloud to himself — uncon- scious that any one was near. " I am fast dying — and desire to die at your feet. Per- haps you will spurn me — it is right j'ou should ; but you will see how sorrow has killed the ■wicked wretch who waa once your wife. I have lived in humble servitude for five years, and have suflered great hardships. I think 1 am a penitent — and have been told by reli- gious persons that I may hope for pardon from Heaven. Oh ! that you would forgive me too ! and let me have one look at our Lucy. I will linger about the Field of Flowers — perhaps you will come there, and see me lie down and die on the very spot where we passed a sum- mer day the week of our marriage." " Not thus could I have kissed thy lips — Lucy — had they been red with life. White are they — and white must they long have been ! No pollution on them — nor on that poor bosom now. Contrite tears had long since washed out thy sin. A feeble hand traced these lines — and in them an humble heart said nothing but God's truth. Child — behold your mother. Art thou afraid to touch the dead!" "No — father — I am not afraid to kiss her lips — as you did now. Sometimes, when you thought me asleep, I have heard you praying for my mother." " Oh ! child ! cease — cease — or my heart will burst." People began to gather about the body — but awe kept them aloof; and as for removing it to a house, none who saw it but knew such care would have been vain, for doubt there could be none that there lay death. So the groups remained for a while at a distance — even the old pastor went a good many paces apart ; and under the shadow of that tree the father and child composed her limbs, and closed her eyes, and continued to sit beside her, as still as if they had been watching over one asleep. That death was seen by all to be a strange calamity to him who had lived long among them — had adopted many of their customs — and was even as one of themselves — so it seemed — in the familiar intercourse of man with man. Some dim notion that this was the dead body of his wife was entertained by many, they knew not why; and their clergyman felt that then there needed to be neither conceal- ment nor avowal of the truth. So in solemn sympathy they approached the body and its watchers ; a bier had been prepared : and walking at the head, as if it had been a funeral, the Father of little Lucy, holding her hand, silently directed the procession towards his own house — out of the Field of Flowers. COTTAGES. Have you any intention, dear reader,of build- ing a house in the country] If you have, pray, for your own sake and ours, let it not be a Cottage. We presume that you are obliged to live, one-half of the year at least, in a town. Then why change altogether the character of your domicile and )-our establishment ? You are an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and have a house in the Circus, or Heriot Row, or Aber- cromby Place, or Queen Street. The said house has five or six stories, and is such a palace as one might expect in the Cit)' of Pa- laces. Your drawing-rooms can, at a pinch, hold some ten score of modern Athenians — your dining-room might feast one-half of the contributors to Blackwood's Magazine — your "placens uxor" has her boudoir — your eldest daughter, now verging on womanhood, her music-room — your boys their own studio — the governess her retreat — and the tutor his den — the housekeeper sits like an overgrown spider in her own sanctum— the butler bargains for his dim apartment — and the four maids must have their front-area window. In short, from cellarage to garret, all is complete, and Num- ber Forty-two is really a splendid mansion. Now, dear reader, far be it from us to ques- tion the propriety or prudence of such an es- tablishment. Your house was not built for nothing — it was no easy thing to get the paint- ers out — the furnishing thereof was no trifle — the feu-duty is really unreasonable — and taxes are taxes still, notwithstanding the principles of free trade, and the universal prosperity of the countr5^ Servants are wasteful, and their wa?es absurd— and the whole style of living, with long-necked bottles, most extravagant. But still we do not object to your estebli^h- 56 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. ment — far from it, we admire it much ; nor is there a single house in town where we make ourselves more agreeable to a late hour, or that we leave Avith a greater quantity of wine of a good quality under our girdle. Few things would give us more temporary uneasi- ness, than to hear of any embarrassment in your money concerns. We are not people to forget good fare, we assure you; and long and far may all shapes of sorrow keep aloof from the hospitable board, whether illuminated by gas, oil, or mutton. But what we were going to say is this — that the head of such a house ought not to live, when ruralizing, in a Cottage. He ought to be consistent. Nothing so beautiful as consis- tency. What then is so absurd as to cram yourself, your wife, your numerous progeny, and your scarcely less numerous menials, into a concern called a Cottage 1 The ordinary heat of a baker's oven is very few degrees above that of a bnnvn study, during the month of July, in a substantial, low-roofed Cottage, yhen the smell of the kitchen ! How it aggra- vates the sultry closeness ! A strange, com- pounded, inexplicable smell of animal, vegeta- ble, and mineral matter. It is at the worst during the latter part of the forenoon, when every thing has been got into preparation for cookery. There is then nothing savoury about the smell — it is dull, dead — almo>t catacom- bish. A small back-kitchen has it in its power to destroy the sweetness of any Cottage. .\dd a scullery, and the three are omnipotent. Of the eternal clashing of pots, pans, plates, trench- ers, and general crockery, we now say no- thing; indeed, the sound somewhat relieves the smell, and the ear comes occasionally in to the aid of the nose. Such noises are wind- falls ; but not so the scolding of cook and but- ler — at first low and tetchy, with pauses — then sharp, but still interrupted — by and by, loud and ready in reply — finally a discMrdaiit gab- ble of vulgar fury, like maniacs quarrelling in bedlam. Hear it you must — you and all the strangers. To explain it away is impossible ; and your fear is, that Alecto, Tisiphone, or MegKra, will come flying into the parlour with a bloody cleaver, dripping with the butler's brains. During the time of the quarrel the spit has been standing still, and a gigot of the five-year-old black-face burnt on one side to cin- der. — "To dinner witn n'hat appetite you may." It would be quite unpardonable to forget one especial smell Avhich irretrievably ruined our happiness during a whole summer — the smell of a dead rat. The accursed vermin died somewhere in the Cottage; but whether be- neath a floor, within lath and plaster, or in roof, baffled the conjectures of the most saga- cious. The whole familv used to walk about the Cottage for hours every dav. snufling on a travel of discovery; and we distinctly remem- ber the face of one elderly maiden-lady at the moment she thought she had traced the source of the fumee to the wall behind a window- shutter. But even at the very same instant we ourselves had proclaimed it with open J.ostril from a press in an opposite corner. Terriers were procured— but the dog Billv iraself would have been at fault. To puil down the whole Cottage would have been diffi- cult — at least to build it up again would have been so; so we had to submit. Custom, they say, is second nature, but not when a dead rat is in the house. No, none can ever become accustomed to that ; yet good springs out of evil — for the live rats could not endure it, and emigrated to a friend's house, about a mile off, who has never had a sound night'b rc^l from that day. We have not revisited our Cottage for several years ; but time does wonders, ami we were lately told by a person of some ve- racity, that the smell was then nearly gone — but our informant is a gentleman of blunted olfactory nerves, having been engaged from seventeen to seventy in a soap-work. Smoke too! More especially that mysteri- ous and infernal sort, called back-smoke ! The old proverb, "No smoke without fire," is a base )■>. We have seen smoke without fire in every room in a most delightful Collage we inhabited during ihe dog-days. The moment you ru.shed for refuge even into a closet, you were blinded and stilled; nor shall we ever for- get our horror on being within an ace of smoth- eration in the cellar. At last, we groped our way into the kitchen. Neither cook nor jack was visible. We heard, indeed, a whirring and revolving noise — and then suddenly Grizie swearing through liie mist. Vet all this while people were admiring our cottage from a dis- tance, and especially this self-same accursed back-sinokc, some portions of which had made an excursion up the chimneys, and was waver- ing away in a spiral form to the sky, in a style captivating to Mr. Price on the Picturesque. No doubt, there are many things very roman- tic about a Cottage. Creepers, for example. Why, sir, these creepers are the most mis- chievous nuisance that can afllict a family. There is no occasion for mentioning names, but — devil take all parasites. Some of the rogues will actually grow a couple of inches upon you in one day's lime ; and when all other honest plants are asleep, the creepers are hard at it all night long, stretching out their toes and their fingers, and catching an inextricable hold of every wall they can reach, till, finally, you see them ihrusiing their impudent heads through the very slates. Then, like other low-bred creatures, they are covered with vermin. All manner of moths — the most grievous grubs — slimy slugs — s,piders spinning toils to ensnare the caterpillar — earwigs and slaters, that would raise the gorge of a country curate — wood- lice — the slaver of gowk's-spittle — midges — jocks-with-ihe-many-legs : in short, the whole plague of insects infesi that — Virgin's bower. Open ihe lattice for half an hour, and you find yourself in an entomological museum. Then, there are no pins fixing down the specimens. .Ml these beetles are alive, more especially the enormous blackguard crawling behind your ear. A moth plumps into yourtumbler of cold negus, and goes whirling around in meal, till he makes absolute porritch. As you open your mouth in amazement, ihe large blue-bottle fly, having made his escape from the spiders, and seeing that not a moment is to be losl, precipi- tatps himself head-foremost down your throat, and is felt, after a few ineffectual struggles, COTTAGES. 67 settling in despair at the very bottom of your stomach. Still, no person will be so unreason- able as to deny that creepers on a Cottage are most beautiful. For the sake of their beauty, some little sacrifices must be made of one's comforts, especially as it is only for one-half of the year, and last really was a most delightful summer. How truly romantic is a thatch roof! The eaves how commodious for sparrows! What a paradise for rats and mice ! What a comfort- able colony of vermin ! They all bore their own tunnels in every direction, and the whole interior becomes a Cretan labyrinth. Frush, frush becomes the whole cover in a few sea- sons ; and not a bird can open his wing, not a rat switch his tail, without scattering the straw like chaff. Eternal repairs ! Look when you will, and half-a-dozen thatchers are riding on the rigging : of all operatives the most inoper- ative. Then there is always one of the num- ber descending the ladder for a horn of ale. Without warning, the straw is all used up; and no more fit for the purpose can be got within twenty miles. They hint heather — and you sighi'or slate — the beautiful sky-blue, sea- green, liallahulish slate ! But the summer is nearly over and gone, and you must be flitting back to the city ; so you let the job stand over to spring, and the soaking rains and snows of a long winter search the Cottage to its hearl's- core, and every floor is erelong laden with a crop of fungi — the bed-posts are ornamented curiously with lichens, and mosses bathe the walls with their various and inimitable lustre. Every thing is romantic that is pastoral — and what more pastoral than sheep ? .\ccord- ingly, living in a Cottage, you kill your own mutton. Great lubberly Leicesters or South- Downs are not worth the mastication, so you keep the small black-face. Stone walls are ugly things, you think, near a Cottage, so you have rails or hurdles. Day and night are the small black-face, out of pure spite, bouncing through or over all impediments, after an ad- venturous leader, and, despising the daisied turf, keep nibbling away at all your rare flow- ering shrubs, till your avenue is a desolation. Every twig has its little ball of wool, and it is a rare time for the nest-makers. You purchase a colley, but he compromises the affair with the fleecy nation, and contents himself with barking all night long at the moon, if there hap- pen to be one, if not, at the firmament of his kennel. You are too humane to hang or drown Luath, so you give him to a friend. But Luath is in love with the cook, and pays her nightly visits. Afraid of being entrapped should he step into the kennel, he takes up his station, af- ter supper, on a knoll within ear-range, and pointing his snout to the stars, joins the music of the spheres, and is himself a perfect Sirius. The gardener at last gets orders to shoot him — and the gun being somewhat rusty, bursts and blows off his left hand — so that Andrew Fairservice retires on a pension. Of all breeds of cattle we most admire the Alderney. They are slim, delicate, wild-deer- looking creatures, that give an air to a Cottage. But they are most capricious milkers. Of course j'ou make your own butter; that is 8 to say, with the addition of a dozen purchased pounds weekly, you are not very often out of that commodity. Then, once or twice in a summer, they suddenly lose their temper, and chase the governess and your daughters over the edge of a gravel-pit. Nothing they like so much as the tender sprouts of cauliflower, nor do they abhor green pease. The garden-hedge is of privet, a pretty fence, and fast growing, but not formidable to a four-year-old. On going to eat a few gooseberries by sunrise, you start a covey of cows, that in their alarm plunge into the hot-bed with a smash, as if all the glass in the island had been broken — and rushing out at the gate at the critical instant little Tommy is tottering in, they leave the heir-apparent, scarcely deserving that name, half hidden in the border. There is no sale for such outlandish animals in the home- market, and it is not Martinmas, so you must make a present of them to the president or five silver-cupman of an agricultural society, and , you receive in return a sorry red round, des- perately saltpetred, at Christmas. What is a Cottage in the country, unless "your banks are all furnished with bees, whose murmurs invite one to sleep 1" There the hives stand, like four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row. Not a more harmless insect in all this world than a bee. Wasps are devils incarnate, but bees are fleshly sprites, as amiable as industrious. You are strolling along, in de- lightful mental vacuity, looking at a poem of Barry Cornwall's, when smack comes an in- furiated honey-maker against your eyelid, and plunges into you the fortieth part of an inch of sting saturated in venom. The wretch clings to your lid like a burr, and it feels as if he had a million claws to hold him on while he is darting his weapon into your eyeball. Your banks are indeed well furnished with bees, but their murmurs do not invite you to sleep ; on the contrary, away you fly like a madman, bolt into your wife's room, and roar out for the recipe. The whole of one side of your face is most absurdly swollen, while the other is in statu quo. One eye is dwindled away to almost nothing, and is peering forth from its rainbow-coloured envelope, while the other is open as day to melting charity, and shining over a cheek of the purest crimson. Infatuated man ! Why could you not purchase your honey"! Jemmy Thomson, the poet, would have let you have it, from Habbie's- Howe, the true Pentlaud elixir, for five shil- lings the pint; for during this season both the heather and the clover were prolific of the honey-dew, and the Skeps rejoiced over all Scotland on a thousand hills. We could tell many stories about bees, but that would be leading us away from the main argument. We remember reading in an American newspaper, some years ago, that the United States lost one of their most upright and erudite judges by bees, which stung him to death in a wood while he was going the circuit. About a year afterwards, we read in the same newspaper, " We are afraid we have lost another judge by bees ;" and then followed a somewhat affrightful description of the as- sassination of another American Blackstone 68 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. by the same insects. We could not fail to sympathize with both sufferers ; for in the summer of the famous comet we ourselves had nearly shared the same fate. Our Newfound- lander upset a hive in his vagaries — and the whole swarm unjustly attacked us. The buzz was an absolute roar — and for the first time in our lives we were under a cloud. Such bizzing in our hair ! and of what avail were fifty-times-washed nankeen breeches against the Polish Lancers? With our trusty crutch we made thousands bile the dust — but the wounded and dying crawled up our legs, and stung us cruelly over the lower regions. At last we took to flight, and found shelter in the ice-house. But it seemed as if a new hive had been disturbed in that cool grotto. Again we sallied out stripping off garment after garment, till in pi(ris nnlnralibus, we leaped into a win- dow, which happened to be that of the draw- ing-room, where a large party of ladies and gentlemen were awaiting the dinner-bell — but fancy must dream the rest. We now offer a Set of Blackwood's Maga- zine to any scientific character who will answer this seemingly simple question — what is Damp 1 Quicksilver is a joke to it, for get- ting into or out of any place. Capricious as damp is, it is faithful in its affection lo ail Cottages orn^es. What more pleasant than a bow-window? You had better, however, not sit with your back against the wall, for it is as blue and ropy as that of a charnel-house. Probably the wall is tastily papered — a vine- leaf pattern perhaps — ^or something spriir^y — or in the aviary line — or, mayhap, hay-makers, or shepherds piping in the dale. But all dis- tinctions are levelled in the mould — Phyllis has a black patch over her eye, and Sirephon seems to be playing on a pair of bellows. Damp delights to descend chimneys, and is one of smoke's most powerful auxiliaries. It is a thousand pities you hung up — just in that unlucky spot — Grecian Williams's Thebes — for now one of the finest water-colour paint- ings in the world is not worth six-and-eighl- pence. There is no living in the country without a librarj'. Take down, with all due caution, that enormous tome, the Excursion, and let us hear something of the Pedlar. There is an end to the invention of printing. Lo and behold, blank verse indeed ! You cannot help turning over twenty leaves at once, for they are all amalgamated in must and mouldiness. Lord Byron himself is no better than an Egyptian mummy; and the Great Unknown addresses you in hieroglyphics. We have heard different opinions maintained on the subject of damp sheets. For our own part, we always wish to feel the difference between sheets and cerements. We hate every thing clammy. It is awkward, on leap- ing out of bed to admire the moon, to drag along with you, glued round the bodv and members, the whole paraphernalia of the couch. It can never be good for rheumatism —problematical even for fever. Now, be can- did—did you ever sleep in perfectly drj- sheets in a Cottage ornee? You would not like to say " No, never," in the morning— privately, U) host or hostess. But confess publicly, and trace your approaching retirement from all the troubles of this life, to the dimitj-curtained cubiculum on Tweedside. We know of few events so restorative as the arrival of a coachful of one's friends, if the house be roomy. But if every thing there be on a small scale, how tremendous a sudden importation of live cattle ! The children are all trundled away out of the cottage, and their room given up to the young ladies, with all its enigmatical and emblematical wall-tracery. The captain is billeted in the boudoir, on a shake-down. My lady's maid must positively pass the night in the butler's pantry, and the valet makes a dormitory of the store-room. Where the old gentleman and his spouse have been disposed of. remains as controversial a point as the authorship of Junius ; but next morning at the breakfast-table, it appears that all ha/e fiur\ived the night, and the hospitable hostess remarks, with a self-complacent smile, that small as the cottage appears, it has won- derful accommodation, and could have easily admitted half a dozen more patients. The visiters politely request to be favoured with a plan of so very commodious a cottage, but silently swear never again to sleep in a house of one story, till life's brief tale be told. But not one half the comforts of a cottage have yet been enumerated — nor shall they be by us at the present juncture. Suffice it to add, that the strange coachman had been per- suaded to put up his horses in the outhouses, instead of taking them to an excellent inn about two miles olf. The old black long-tailed steeds, that had dragged the vehicle for nearly twenty years, had been lodged in what was called the stable, and the horse behind had been introduced \n\o the byre. As bad luck would have it, a small, sick, and surly shelty was in his stall ; and without the slightest provocation, he had, during the night-watches, so handled his heels against Mr. Fox, that he had not left the senior a leg to stand upon, while he had bit a lump out of the bul- locks of Mr. Put little less than an orange. A cow, afraid of her calf, had committed an as- sault on the roadster, and tore up his tlank with her crooked horn as clean as if it had been a ripping chisel. The party had to proceed with post-horses; and although Mr. Dick be at once one of the most skilful and most moderate of veterinary surgeons, his bill at the end of autumn was necessarily as long as that of a proctor. .Mr. Fox gave up the ghost — Mr. Pitt was put on the superannuated list — and Jo- seph Hume, the hack, was sent to the dogs. To this condition, ihen, we must come at last, that if you build at all in the country, it must be a mansion three stories high, at the lowest — large airy rooms — roof of slates and lead — and walls of the freestone or the Roman cement. No small black-faces, no Alderneys, no beehives. Buy all your vivres, and live like a gentleman. Seldom or never be with- out a houseful of company. If you manage your family matters properly, you may have your time nearly as much at your own dis- posal as if you were the greatest of hunkses, and never gave but unavoidable dinners. Let the breakfast-gong sound at ten o'clock — quite COTTAGES. 59 soon enough. The young people will have been romping about the parlours or the pur- lieus for a couple of hours — and will all make their appearance in the beauty of high health and high spirits. Chat away as long as need be, after muffins and mutton-ham, in small groups on sofas and settees, and then slip you away to your library, to add a chapter to your novel, or your history, or to any other task- that is to make you immortal. Let gigs and curricles draw up in the circle, and the wooing and betrothed wheel away across a few pa- rishes. Let the pedestrians saunter off into the woods or to the hillside — the anglers be off to loch or river. No great harm even in a game or two at billiards — if such be of any the cue — sagacious spinsters of a certain age, staid dowagers, and bachelors of sedentary habits, may have recourse, without blame, to the chess or backgammon board. At two lunch — and at six the dinner-gong will bring the whole Hock together, all dressed — mind that — all dressed, for slovenliness is an abomination. Let no elderly gentleman, however bilious and rich, seek to monopolize a young lad)^ — but study the nature of things. Champagne of course, and if not all the delicacies, at least all the substantialities of the season. Join the ladies in about two hours — a little elevated or so — almost imperceptibly — but still a little elevated or so; then music — whispering in corners — if moonlight and stars, then an hour's out-of-door study of astronomy — no very regu- lar supper — but an appearance of plates and tumblers, and to bed, to happy dreams and slumbers light, at the witching hour. Let no gentleman or lady snore, if it can be avoided, lest they annoy tlie crickets ; and if you hear any extraordinary noise round and round about the mansion, be not alarmed, for why should not the owls choose their own hour of revelry ! Fond as we are of the country, we would not, had we our oitlion, live there all the year round. We should just wish to linger into the winter about as far as the middle of December — then to a city — say at once Edinburgh. There is as good skating-ground. and as good curling- ground, at Lochend and Uuddingstone, as any where in all Scotland — nor is there anywhere else better beef and greens. There is no per- fection anywhere, but Edinburgh society is excellent. We are certainly agreeable citi- zens; with just a sufficient spice of party spirit to season the feast of reason and the flow of soul, and to prevent society from be- coming drowsily unanimous. Without the fillip of a little scandal, honest people M'ould fall asleep; and surely it is far preferable to that to abuse one's friends with moderation. Even Literature and the Belles Lettres are not entirely useless ; and our Human Life would not be so delightful as that of Mr. Rogers, without a few occasional Noctes Ambro- sianae. But the title of our article recalls our wan- dering thoughts, and our talk must be of Cot- tages. Now, think not, beloved reader, that we care not for Cottages, for that would indeed be a gross mistake. But our very affections are philosophical; our sympathies have all their source in reason ; and our admiration is alwaj's built on the foundation of truth. Taste, and feeling, and thought, and experience, and knowledge of this life's concerns, are all indis- pensable to the true delights the imagination experiences in beholding a beautiful bond fide Cottage. It must be the dwelling of the poor; and it is that which gives it its whole character. By the poor, we mean not paupers, beggars ; but families who, to eat, must work, and who, by working, may still be able to eat. Plain, coarse, not scanty, but unsuperfluous fare is theirs from year's-end to year's-end, excepting some decent and grateful change on chance holydays of nature's own appointment — a wed- ding, or a christening, or a funeral. Yes, a funeral; for when this mortal coil is shuffled off, why should the hundreds of people that come trooping over muirs and mosses to see the body deposited, walk so many miles, and lose a whole day's work, without a dinner? And, if there be a dinner, should it not be a good one? And if a good one, will the com- pany not be social! But this is a subject for a future paper, nor need such paper be of other than a cheerful character. Poverty, then, is the builder and beautifier of all huts and cot- tages. But the views of honest poverty are always hopeful and prospective. Strength of muscle and strength of mind form a truly Holy Alliance; and the future brightens before the steadfast eyes of trust. Therefore, when a house is built in the valley, or on the hillside — be it that of the poorest cottar — there is some little room, or nook, or spare place, which hope consecrates to the future. Better times may come — a shilling or two may be added to the week's wages — parsimony may accumulate a small capital in the Savings bank sufficient to purchase an old eight-day clock, a chest of drawers for the wife, a curtained bed for the lumber-place, which a little labour will convert into a bed-room. It is not to be thought that the pasture-fields become every year greener, and the corn-fields every harvest more yellow — that the hedgerows grow to thicker fragrance, and the birch-tree waves its tresses higher in the air, and expands its white-rinded stem almost to the bulk of a tree of the forest — and yet that there shall be no visible progress from irood to better in the dwelling of those whose hands and hearts thus cultivate the soil into rejoicing beauty. As the whole land prospers, so does each individual dwelling. Every ten years, the observing eye sees a new expressirou on the face of the silent earth ; the law of la- bour is no melancholy lot; for to industry the yoke is easy, and content is its own exceeding great reward. Therefore, it does our heart good to look on a Cottage. Here the objections to straw-roofs have no application. A few sparrows chirp- ing and fluttering in the eaves can do no great harm, and they serve to amuse the children. The very baby in the cradle, when all the fa mily are in the fields, mother and all, hears the cheerful twitter, and is reconciled to solitude. The quantity of corn that a few sparrows can eat — greedy creatures as they are — cannot be very deadly; and it is chiefly in the winter time that they attack the stacks, when there is 60 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. much excuse to be made on the ple.a of hunger. As to the destruction of a little thatch, why, there is not a boy about the house, above ten years, who is not a thatchcr, and there is no expense in such repairs. Let the honeysuckle too steal up the wall, and even blind unchecked a corner of the kitchen-window. Its fragrance will often cheer unconsciously the labourer's heart, as, in the midday-hour of rest, he sits dandling his child on his knee, or converses with the passing pedlar. Let the moss-rose tree llourish, that its bright blush-balls may dazzle in the kirk the eyes of the lover of fair Helen Irwin, as they rise and fall with every movement of a bosom yet happy in its virgin innocence. Nature docs not spread in vain her flowers in flush and fragrance over every obscure nook of earth. Simple and pure is the delight they inspire. Not to the poet's eye alone is their language addressed. The beauti- ful symbols are understond by lowliest minds; and while the philosophical Wordsworth speaks of the meanest flower that blows givinjr a jov too deep for tears, so do all mankind feel the exquisite truth of Burns's more simple address to the mountain-daisy which his ploughshare had upturned. The one touches sympathies too profound to be general— the other speaks as a son of the soil affected by the fate of the most familiar flower that springs from the bosom of our common dust. Generally speaking, there has been a spirit of improvement at work, durine these last twenty years, iipon all the Cottages in Scot- land. The villages are certainly much neater and cleaner Xlian formerly, and in very few respects, if any, positively offensive. Perhaps none of them have — nor ever will have the exquisite trimness, the habitual and hereditary rustic elegance, of the best villages of England. There, even the idle and worthless have an in- stinctive love of what is decent, and orderly, and pretty in their habitations. The very drunkard must have a well-sanded floor, a clean-swept hearth, clear-polished furniture, and uncobwebbed walls to the room in which he quaffs, guzzles, and smokes himself into stupidity. His wife may be a scold, but seldom a slattern— his children ill taught, but well apparelled. Much of this is observable even among the worst of the class ; and, no doubt, such things must alsn have their effect in tempering and restraining excesses. Where- as, on the other hand, the house of a well- behaved, well-doing English- villatrer is a perfect model of comfort and propriety. In Scotland, the houses of the dissolute are alwavs dens of din, and disorder, and distraction. All ordmary goings-on are inextricably confused —meals eaten in different nooks, nnd at no re- gular hour— nothing in its right place or time —the whole abode as if on the eve of a flittin- • wnile, with few exceptions, even in the dw.-Il- ! ings of the best families in the village, one may ' detect occasional forgetfulness of triilin'- mat-' ters, that, if remembered, would be 7ound greatly conducive to comfort— occasional in- sensibilities to what would be graceful in their condition, and might be secured at little ex- pense and less trouble— occasional blindness tr. minute deformities that mar the aspect of the household, and which an awakened eye would sweep away as absolute nuisances. Perhaps the very depth of their affections — the solem- nity of their religious thought — and the re- flective spirit in which they carry on the warfare of life — hide from them the percep- tion of what, after all, is of such very inferior moment, and even create a sort of austerity of character which makes them disregard, too much, trifles that appear to have no influence or connection with the essence of weal or wo. Yet if there be any truth in this, it affords, we confess, an explanation rather than a justifi- cation. Our business at present, however, is rather with single Cottages than with villages. We Scottish people have, for some years past, been doing all we could to make ourselves ridicu- lous, by claiming for our capital the name of Model a .\thens, and talking all manner of nonsense about a city which stands nobly on its own proper foundation; while we have kept our mtiuths comparatively shut about the beauty of our hills and vales, and the rational happiness that everywhere overflows our na- tive land. Our chamcter is to be found in the C(Uintry; and therefore, gentle reader, behold along with us a specimen of Scottish scenery. It is not above some four miles long — its breadth somewhere about a third of its length; a fair oblong, sheltered and secluded by a line of varied einiiienccs, on some of which lies the power of cultivation, and over others the vivid verdure peculiar to a pastoral region; while, telling of disturbed times past for ever, stand yoniler the nuns of an f)ld fortalice or keep, picturesque in its deserted decay. The plough has stopped at the edge of the profitable and beautiful coppice-woods, and encircled the tall elm-grove. The rocky pasturage, with its do- very and daisied turf, is alive with sheep and cattle — its briery knolls with birds — its broom and whins with bees — and its wimpling burn with trouts and minnows glancing through the shallows, or leaping among the cloud of in- serts that glitter over its pools. Here and there a cottage — not above twenty in all — one low down in the holm, another on a cliff beside the waterfall: that is the mill — another break-" ing the horizon in its more ambitiou!»-stalion — and another far up at the hill-foot, where there is not a single tree, only shrubs and brackens. On a bleak day, there is but little beauty in such a ijlen ; but when the sun is cloudless, and all the light serene, it is a plarr; where poet or painter may see visions, and dream lireams, of the very a^e of gold. At such sea- sons, there is a homefelt feeling of humble re- ality, blending with the emotions of imagina- tion. In such pinces. the low-born, high-souled poets of old breathed forth their songs, and hymns, and elegies — the undying lyrical poetry of the heart of Scotland. Take the remotest cottage first in order, Hn.i.K(niT, and hear who are its inmates — the Schoolmaster and his spouse. The school- house stand- on a little unappropriated piece of ground — at least it seems to be so — quite at the head of the glen ; for there the hills sink down on each side, and afford an easy access to the scat of learning from two neighbouring COTTAGES. 61 vales, both in the same parish. Perhaps fifty scholars are there tanghl — and with their small fees, and his small salary, Allan Easton is con- tented. Allan was originally intended for the Church; but some peccadilloes obstructed his progress with the Presbytery, and he never was a preacher. That disappointment of all his hopes was for many years grievously felt, and somewhat soured his mind with the world. It is often impossible to recover one single false step in the slippery road of life — and Al- lan Easton, year after year, saw himself falling farther and farther into the rear of almost all his contemporaries. One became a minister, and got a manse, with a stipend of twenty chalders; another grew into an East India Nabob ; one married the laird's widow, and kept a pack of hounds ; another expanded into a colonel; one cleared a plum by a cotton- mill ; another became the Croesus of a bank — while Allan, who had beat them all hollow at all the classes, wore second-hand clothes, and lived on the same fare with llie poorest hind in the parish. He had married, rather too late, the partner of his frailties — and after many trials, and, as he Ihnught, net a few persecu- tions, he got settled at last, when his head, not very old, was getting gray, and his face some- what wrinkled. His wife, during his worst poverty, had gone again into service — the lot, indeeil, to which she had been born ; and Allan had struggled and starved upon private teach- ing. His appointment to the parish-school had, therefore, been to them both a blessed elevation. The oflice was respectable — and loftier ambition had long been dead. IS'ow they arc old people — consideral)ly upwards of sixty — and twenty years' professional life have converted Allan Easton, once the wild and eccentric genius, into a staid, solemn, formal, and pedantic pedagogue. All his scholars love him, for even in the discharge of such ver)' humble duties, talents make themselves felt and respected; and the kindness of an aflectionatc and once sorely wounded but now healed lieart, is never lost upon tlie susceptible imaginations of the young. .Mian has some- times sent out no contemptible scholars, as scholars go in Scotland, to the universities; and his heart has warmed within him when he has read their names, in the newspaper from the manse, in the list of successful competitors for prizes. During vacation-time, Allan and his spouse leave their cottage locked up, and disappear, none know exactly whither, on visits to an old friend or two, who have not altogether forgotten them in their obscurit)'. During the rest of the year, his only out-of- doors amusement is an afternoon's angling, an art in which it is universally allowed he excels all mortal men, both in river and loch; and often, during the long winter nights, when the shepherd is walking by his dwelling, to visit his " ain lassie," down the burn, he hears Allan's fiddle playing, in the solitary silence, some one of those Scottish melodies, that we know not whether it be cheerful or plaintive, but soothing to every heart that has been at all acquainted with grief. Rumour says too, bat rumour has not a scrupulous conscience, that the Schoolmaster, when he meets with plca-int company, either at home or a friend's house, is not averse to a hospitable cup, and that then the memories of other days crowd upon his brain, and loosen his tongue into eloquence. Old Susan keeps a sharp warning eye upon her husband on all such occasions ; but Allan braves its glances, and is forgiven. We see only the uncertain glimmer of their dwelling through the low-lying mist: and therefore we cannot describe it, as if it were clearly before our eyes. But should you ever chance to angle your way up to Hillfoot, ad- mire Allan Easton's flower-garden, and the jargonel pear-tree on the southern gable. The climate is somewhat high, but it is not cold; and, except when the spring-frosts come late ahd sharp, there do all blossoms and fruits abound, on every shrub and tree native to Scotland. You will hardly know how to dis- tinguish — or rather, to speak in clerkly phrase, to analyze the sound prevalent over the fields and air; for it is made np of that of the burn, of bees, of old Susan's wheel, and the hum of the busy school. Hut now it is the play-hour, and Allan Easton comes into his kitchen for his frugal dinner. Brush up your Latin, and out with a few of the largest trouts in your pannier. Susan fries them in fresh butter and oatmeal — the grayhaired pedagogue asks a blessing — and a merrier man, within the limits of becoming mirth, you never passed an hour's talk withal. So much for Allan Easton and Susan his spouse. You look as if you wished to ask who in- habits the Cottage — on the left hand yonder — that stares upon us with four front windows, and pricks up its ears like a new-started harel Why, sir, that was once a Shooting-box. It was built about twenty years ago, by a sport- ing gentleman of two excellent double-bar- relled guns, and three stanch pointers. He attempted to live there, several times, from the 12th of August till the end of September, and went pluffing disconsolately among the hills from sunrise to sunset. He has been long dead and buried; and the Box, they say, is now haunted. It has been attempted to be let furnished, and there is now a board to that effect hung out like an escutcheon. Pictur- esque people say it ruins the whole beauty of the glen ; but we must not think so, fi)r it is not in the power of the ugliest house that ever was built to do that, although, to effect such a purpose, it is unquestionably a skilful contci- vance. The window-shutters have been closed for several years, and the chimneys look as if they had breathed their last. It stands in a perpetual eddv, and the ground shelves so all around it, that there is barely room for a bar- rel to catch the rain-drippings from the slate- eaves. If it be indeed haunted, pity the poor ghost ! You may have it on a lease, short or long, for merely paying the taxes. Every yeat it costs some pounds in advertisement. What a jointure-house it would be for a relict ! By name, Windy-knowk. Nay, let us not fear to sketch the character of its "last inhabitant, for we desire but to speak the truth. Drunkard, stand forward, that we may have a look at you, and draw your pic ture. There he stands! The mouth of iho 63 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. drunkard, you may observe, contracts a sin- gularly sensitive appearance — seemingly red and rawish ; and he is perpetually licking or smacking his lips, as if his palate were dry and adust. His is a thirst that water will not quench. He might as well drink air. His whole being burns for a dram. The whole world is contracted into a caulker. He would sell his soul in such extremity, were the black bottle denied him, for a gulp. Not to save his soul from eternal fire, would he, or rather could he, if left alone with it, refrain from pull- ing out the plug, and sucking away at destruc- tion. What a snout he turns up to the morning air, intiamed, pimpled, snubby, and snorty, and with a nob at the end on't like one carved out of a stick by the knife of a schoolboy — rough and hot to the very eye — a nose which, rather than pull, you would submit even to be in some degree insulted. A perpetual cough ha- rasses and exhausts him, and a perpetual ex- pectoration. How his hand trembles ! It is an effort even to sign his name: one of his sides is certainly not by any means as sound as the other; there has been a touch of palsy there; and the next hint will draw down his chin to his collar-bone, and convert him, a month before dissolution, into a slavering idiot. There is no occupation, small or great, insignificant or important, to which he can turn, for any length of time, his hand, his heart, or his head. He cannot angle — for his fingers refuse to tie a knot, much more to busk a fly. The glimmer and the glow of the stream would make his brain dizzy — to wet his feet r.ow would, he fears, be death. Yet he thinks that he will go out — during that sunny blink of a showery day — and try the well-known pool in which he used to bathe in boyhood, with the long, matted, green-trailin? water- plants depending on the slippery rocks, and the water-ousel gliding from beneath the arch that hides her " procreant cradle," and then sinking like a stone suddenly in the limpid stream. He sits down on the bank, and fum- bling in his pouch for his pocket-book, brings out, instead, a pocket-pistol. Turning his fiery face towards the mild, blue, vernal skv, he pours the gurgling brandy down his throat- first one dose, and then another — till, in an hour, stupefied and dazed, he sees not the sil- very crimson-spotted trouts, shooting, and leaping, and tumbling, and plunging in deep and shallow; a day on which, with one of Captain CoHey's March-Browns, in an hour we could fill our pannier. Or, if it be autumn or wmter, he calls, perhaps, with a voice at once gruff and feeble, on old Ponto, and will take a pluff at the partridges. In former days, down they used to go, right and left, in potaioe or turnip-field, broomy brae or stubble — but now his sight is dim and wavering, and his touch trembles on the trigger. The covev whirs off, unharmed in a single feather— and po(.r Ponto, remembering better days, cannot conceal his melancholy, falls in at his master's heel, and will range no more. Out, as usual, comes the brandy-bottle- he is still a good shot when his mouth is the mark ; and havin'- emptied the fatal flask, he staggers homewards, "With the muzzles of his double-barrel fre- quently pointed to his ear, both being on full cock, and his brains not blown out only by a miracle. He tries to read the newspaper — just arrived — but cannot find his spectacles. Then, by way of variety, he attempts a tune on the fiddle ; but the bridge is broken, and j her side cracked, and the bass-string snapped — and she is restored to her peg among the cobwebs. In comes a red-headed, stockingless lass, with her carrots in papers, and lays the cloth for dinner — salt beef and greens. But the Major's stomach scunners at the Skye-stot — his eyes roll eagerly for the hot-water — and in a couple of hours he is dead-drunk in his chair, or stoitering and staggering, in aimless dalliance with the scullion, among the pots and pans of an ever-disorderly and dirty kitchen. Mean people, in shabby sporting velveteen dresses, rise up as he enters from the dresser covered with cans, jugs, and quechs, and take off their rusty and greasy napless hats to the Major; and, to conclude the day worthily and consistently, he squelches himself down among the reprobate crew, takes his turn at smutty jest and smuttier song, which drive even the jade« out of the kitchen — falls back insensible, exposed to gross and indecent practical jokes from the vilest of the unhanged — and finally is carried to bed on a hand-bar- row, with hanging head and heels, like a calf across a butcher's cart, and, with glazed eyes and lolling tongue, is tumbled upon the quilt — if ever to awake it is extremely doubtful ; but if awake he do, it is to the same wretched round of brutal degradation — a career, of which the inevitable close is an unfriended death-bed and a pauper's grave. O hero ! six feet high, and onf^ with a brawn like Hercu- les — in the prime of life too^well born and well bred — once bearing the king's commis- sion — and on that glorious morn, now forgot- ten or bitterly remembered, thanked on the field of ballle by Picton, though he of the fight- ing division was a hero of few words — is that a death worthy of a man — a soldier — and a Christian? A dram-drinker! Faugh! faugh! j Look over — lean over that stile, where a pig lies wallowing in mire — and a voice, faint and feeble, and far off, as if it came from some dim and remote world within your lost soul will cry, that of the two beasts, thai bristly one, agrunt in sensual sleep, with its snout snoring \ across the husk trough, is, as a physical, moral j and intellectual being, superior to you, late [ Major in his Majesty's regiment of foot, : now dram-drinker, drunkard, and dotard, and ! self-doomed to a disgraceful and disgusting i death ere you shall have completed your thirtieth j-ear. What a changed being from ; that day when you carried the colours, and I were found, the bravest of the brave, and the most beautiful of the beautiful, with the glori- , ous tatters wrapped round your body all drench- ed in blood, your hand grasping the broken sabre, and two grim Frenchmen lying hacked and hewed at your feet ! Your father and your mother saw your name in the "Great Lord's" Despatch ; and it was as much as he could do to keep her from falling on the floor, for " her joy was like a deep affright !" Both are dead now; and better so, for the sight of that blotched COTTAGES. 63 face and those glazed eyes, now and then glittering in fitful frenzy, would have killed them both, nor, after such a spectacle, could their old bones have rested in the grave. Alas, Scotland — ay, well-educated, moral, religious Scotland can show, in the bosom of her bonny banks and braes, cases worse than this ; at which, if there be tears in heaven, the angels weep. Look at that grayheaded man, of threescore and upwards, sitting by the way- side ! He was once an Elder of the Kirk, and a pious man he was, if ever piety adorned the temples — " the lyart haffets, wearing thin and bare," of a Scottish peasant. What eye be- held the many hundred steps, that one by one, with imperceptible gradation, led him down — down — down to the lowest depths of shame, suffering, and ruin 1 For years before it was bruited abroad through the parish that Gabriel Mason was addicted to drink, his wife used to sit weeping alone in the spence when her sons and daughters were out at their work in the fields, and the infatuated man, fierce in the excitement of raw ardent spirits, kept cause- lessly raging and storming through every nook of that once so peaceful tenement, which for many happy years had never been disturbed by the loud voice of anger or reproach. His eyes were seldom turned on his unhappy wife except with a sullen scowl, or fiery wrath; but when they did look on her with kindness, there was also a rueful self-upbraiding in their expression, on account of his cruelty; and at sight of such transitory tenderness, her heart would overflow with forgiving affection, and her sunk eyes with unendurable tears. But neither domestic sin nor domestic sorrow will conceal from the eyes and the ears of.men ; and at last Gabriel Mason's name was a by- word in the mouth of the scofler. One Sab- bath he entered the kirk in a slate of miserable abandonment, and from that day he was no longer an elder. To regain his character seemed to him, in his desperation, beyond the power of man, and against the decree of God. 80 he delivered himself up, like a slave, to that one appetite, and in a few years his whole household had gone to destruction. His wife was a matron, almost in the prime of life, when she died ; but as she kept wearing away to the other world, her face told that she felt her years had been too many in this. Her eldest son, unable, in pride and shame, to lift up his eyes at kirk or market, went away to the city, and enlisted into a regiment about to embark on foreign service. His two sisters went to take farewell of him, but never re- turned ; one, it is said, having died of a fever in the Infirmary, just as if she had been a pauper ; and the other — for the sight of sin, and sorrow, and shame, and suffering, is ruin- ous to the soul — gave herself up, in her beauty, an easy prey to a destroyer, and doubtless has run her course of agonies, and is now at peace. The rest of the family dropt down, one by one, out of sight, into inferior situations in far-off places ; but there was a curse, it was thought, hanging over the family, and of none of them did ever a favourable report come to their na- tive parish; while he, the infatuated sinner, whose vice seemed to have worked all the wo, remained in the chains of his tyrannical pas- sion, nor seemed ever, for more than the short term of a day, to cease hugging them to his heart. Semblance of all that is most venera- ble in the character of Scotland's peasantry ! Image of a perfect patriarch, walking out to meditate at eventide ! What a noble fore- head ! Features how high, dignified, and com- posed ! There, sitting in the shade of that old wayside tree, he seems some religious Mis- sionary, travelling to and fro over the face of the earth, seeking oiit sin and sorrow, that he may tame them under the word of God, and change their very being into piety and peace. Call him not a hoary hypocrite, for he cannot help that noble — that venerable — that aposto- lic aspect — that dignified figure, as if bent gently by Time, loath to touch it with too heavy a hand — that holy sprinkling over his furrowed temples of the silver-soft, and the snow-white hair — these are the gifts of gra- cious Nature all — and Nature will not reclaim them, but in the tomb. That is Gabriel Mason — the Drunkard ! And in an hour you may, if your eyes can bear the sight, see and hear him staggering up and down the village, curs- ing, swearing, preaching, praying — stoned by blackguard boys and girls, who hound all the dogs and curs at his heels, till, taking refuge in the smithy or the pot-house, he becomes the sport of grown clowns, and, after much idiot laughter, ruefully mingled with sighs, ani groans, and tears, he is suffered to mount upon a table, and urged, perhaps, by reckless folly to give out a text from the Bible, which is nearly all engraven on his memory — so much and so many other things effaced for ever — and there, like a wild Itinerant, he stammers forth unintentional blasphemy, till the liquor he has been allowed or instigated to swallow, smites him suddenly senseless, and, falling down, he is huddled off into a corner of some lumber-room ; and left to sleep — better far for such a wretch were it to death. Let us descend, then, from that most incle- ment front, into the lown boundaries of the Holm. The farm-steading covers a goodly portion of the peninsula shaped by the burn, that here looks almost like a river. With its outhouses it forms three sides of a square, and the fourth is composed of a set of jolly stacks, that will keep the thrashing-machine at work during all the winter. The interior of the square rejoices in a glorious dung-hill, (Oh, breathe not the name I) that will cover every field with luxuriant harvests — twelve bolls of oats to the acre. There the cattle — oxen yet " lean, and lank, and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand," will, in a ftw months, eat them- selves up, on straw and turnip, into obesity. There turkeys walk demure — there geese wad- dle, and there the feathery-legged king of Bantam struts among his seraglio, keeping pertly aloof from double-combed Chanticleer, that squire of dames, crowing to his partlets. There a cloud of pigeons often descends among the corny chaff, and then whirs ofi^ to the uplands. No chained mastiff looking grimly from the kennel's mouth, but a set of cheerful and sagacuus colleys are seen sit- ting on their hurdies, or "worrying ilher in 64 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. diversion." A snagg)' colt or two, and a brood mare, with a spice of blood, and a foal at her heels, know their shed, and evidently are favourites with the family. Out comes the master, a rosy-cheeked carle, upwards of six feet high, broad-shouldered, with a blue bonnet and velveteen breeches — a man not to be jostled on the crown o' the causey, and a match for any horse-couper from Bewcastle, or gipsy from Yetholm. But let us into the kitchen. There's the wife — a bit tidy bodj' — and pretty withal — more authoritative in her quiet demeanour than the most tyrannical mere housekeeper that ever thumped a ser- vant lass with the beetle. These three are her daughters. First, Girzie, the eldest, seemingly older than her mother — for she is somewhat hard-favoured, and strong red hair dangling over a squint eye, is apt to give an expression of advanced years, even to a 5"outhful virgin. Vaccination was not known in Girzie's baby- hood, but she is, nevertheless, a clean-skinned creature, and her full bosom is white as snow. She is what is delicately called a strapper, rosy-armed as the morning, and not a little of an Aurora about the ankles. She makes her way, in all household affairs, through every impediment, and will obviously prove, when- ever the experiment is made, a most excellent ■wife. Mysie, the second daughter, is more composed, more genteel, and sits sewing, with her a favourite occupation, for she has very neat hands; and is, in fact, the milliner and mantua-makcr for all the house. She could no more lift that enormous pan of boiling water off the fire than she could fly, which in the grasp of Girzie is safely landed on the hearth. Mysie has somewhat of a pensive look, as if in love — and we have heard that she is betrothed to young Mr. Rentoul, the di- vinity student, who lately made a speech be- fore the Anti-patronage Societ)', and therefore may reasonably expect very soon to get a kirk. But look — there comes dancing in from the ewe-bughts the bright-eyed Bessy, the flower of the flock, the most beautiful girl in Almondale, and fit to be bosom-burd Of the Gentle Shepherd himself! Oh that we were a poet, to sing the innocence of her budding breast! But — Heaven preserve us! — what is the angelic creature about? Making rumblc- de-thumps ! Now she pounds the" potatoes and cabbages as with pestle and mortar! Ever and anon licking the butter off her fin- gers, and then dashing in the salt ! Mcthinks her laugh is out of all bounds loud— and. un- less my eyes deceived me, tiiat stout lout whispered in her delicate ear some coarse jest, that made the eloquent blood mount up into her not undelighted countenance. Hea- vens and earth !— perhaps an assignation in the barn, or byre, or bush aboon^Traquair. But the long dresser is set out with dinner— the gudeman's bonnet is reverently laid aside -and if any stomach assembled tliere be now empty, U is not likely, judging from appear- ances, that a will be in that state again before next Sabbath— and it is now but the middle of the week. Was it not my Lord Bvron who liked not to see women eat! Poo— poo non- sense ! We like to see them not only eat- but devour. Not a set of teeth round that kitchen-dresser that is not white as the driven snow. Breath too, in spite of syboes, sweet as dawn-dew — the whole female frame full of health, freshness, spirit, and animation ! Away all delicate wooers, thrice-high-fantasti- cal ! The diet is wholesome — and the sleep will be sound ; therelbre eat away, Bessy — nor fear to laugh, although your pretty mouth be full — for we are no poet to madden into misanthropy at your mastication ; and, in spite of the heartiest meal ever virgin ate, to us these lips are roses still, " thy ej-es are lode- stars, and thy breath sweet air." Would for thy sake we had been born a shepherd-groom ! No — no — no! For some few joyous years mayest thou wear thy silken snood unharmed, and silence with thy songs the linnet among the broom, at the sweet hour of prime. And then mayesi thou plight thy truth — in all the warmth of innocence — to some ardent yet thoughtful youth, who will carry his bride exullingly to his own low-roofed home — toil for her and the children at her knees, through summer's heat and winter's cold — and sit with her in the kirk, when long j'ears have gone by, a comely matron, attended by daugliters acknowledged to be fair — but neither so fair, nor so good, nor so pious, as their mother. What a contrast to the jocund Hohn is the RowAX-TiiEE-HvT — so still, and seemingly so desolate! It is close upon the public road, and yet so low, that you might pass il without observing its lurf-roof. There live old Aggy Robinson, the carrier, and her consumptive daughter. Old Aggy has borne that epithet for twenty years, and her daughter is not much undef sixty. That poor creature is bedridden and helpless, and has to be fed almost like a child. Old Aggy has for many years had the same white pony — well named Samson — that she drives three limes a-wcek, all the year round, to and from the nearest market-town, carrying all sorts of articles to nearly twenty diflcrent families, living miles apart. Every other day in the week — for there is but one Sabbath either to herself or Samson — she drives coals, or peat, or wood, or lime, or stones for the roads. She is clothed in a man's coat, an old rusty beaver, and a red petticoat. Aggy never was a beauty, and now she is al- most frightful, with a formidable beard, and a rough voice — and violent gestures, encourag- ing tjie overladen enemy of the Philistines. But as soon as she enters her hut, she is silent, patient, and affectionate, at her daughterslbed- side. They sleep on the same chaff-mattress, and she hears, during the dead of the night, her daughter's slightest moan. Her voice is not rough at all when the poor old creature is saying her prayers; nor, we may be well as- sured, is its lowest whisper unheard in hea- ven. Your eyes are wandering away to the eastern side of the vale, and they have fixed themselves on the Cottage of the Seven Oaks. The grove is a noble one ; and, indeed, those are the only timber-trees in the valley. There is a tradition belonging to the grove, but we shall'tell it some other time; now, we have to do with that mean-looking Cottage, all unworthy of such COTTAGES. 65 magnificent shelter. With its ragged thatch it has a cold cheerless look — almost a look of indigence. The walls are sordid in the streaked ochre-wash — a wisp of straw supplies the place of a broken pane — the door seems as if it were inhospitable — and every object about is in untended disorder. The green pool in front, with its floating straws and feathers, and miry edge, is at once unhealthy and need- less ; the hedgerows are full of gaps, and open at the roots ; the few garments spread upon them seem to have stiffened in the weather, forgotten by the persons who placed them there; and half-starved young cattle are stra)'- ing about in what once was a garden. Wretched sight it is ; for that dwelling, althoueh never beautiful, was once the tidiest and best-kept in all the district. But what has misery to do with the comfort of its habitation 1 The owner of that house was once a man well to do in the world ; but he minded this world's goods more than it was fitting to do, and made Mammon his god. Abilities he possessed far beyond the common run of men, and he applied them all. with all the energy of a strong mind, to the accumulation of wealth. Every rule of his life had that for its ultimate end ; and he despised a bargain unless he outwitted his neighbour. Without any acts of downright knavery, he was not an honest man — hard to the poor — and a tyrannical master, lie sought to wring from the very soil more than it could produce; his servants, among whom were his wife and daughter, he kept at work, like slaves, from twilight to twilight; and was a forestaller and a regrater — a character which, when Political Economy was unknown, was of all the most odious in the judgment of simple husbandmen. His spirits rose with the price of meal, and every handful dealt out to the beggar was paid like a tax. What could the Bible teach to such a man 1 What good could he derive from the calm air of the house of worship] He sent his only son to the city, with injunctions in- stilled into him to make the most of all trans- actions, at every hazard but that of his money ; and the consequence was, in a few years, shame, ruin, and expatriation. His only daughter, im- prisoned, dispirited, enthralled, fell a prey to a vulgar seducer; and being driven from her father's house, abandoned herself, in hopeless misery, to a life of prostitution. His wife, heartbroken by cruelly and affliction, was never afterwards altogether in her right mind, and now sits weeping by the hearth, or wanders off to distant places, lone houses and villages, almost in the condition of an idiot — wild-eyed, loose-haired, and dressed like a very beggar. Speculation after speculation failed — with farm-yard crowded with old stacks, he had to curse three successive plentiful harvests — and his mailing was now destitute. The unhappy man grew sour, stern, fierce, in his calamity; and, when his brain was inflamed with liquor, a dangerous madman. He is now a sort of cattle-dealer — buys and sells miserable horses • — and at fairs associates with knaves and re- probates, knowing that no honest man will deal with him except in pity or derision. He has more than once attempted to commit suicide ; but palsy has stricken him — and in a few weeks he will totter into the grave. There is a Cottage in that hollow, and you see the smoke — even the chimney-top, but you could not see the Cottage itself, unless you were within fifty yards of it, so surrounded is it with knolls and small green eminences, in a den of its own, a shoot or scion from the main stem of the valley. It is called The BRtMor, and there is something singular, and not uninteresting, in the history of. its owner. He married very early in life, indeed when quite a boy, which is not, by the way, very unusual among the peasantry of Scotland, prudent and calculating as is their general character. David Drysdale, before he was thirty years of age, had a family of seven children, and a pretty family they were as might be seen in all the parish. His life was in theirs, and his mind never wandered far from his fireside. His wife was of a consump- tive family, and that insidious and fatal disease never showed in her a single symptom during ten years of marriage; but one cold evening awoke it at her very heart, and in less than two months it hurried her into the grave. Poor creature, such a spectre! When her husband used to carry her, for the sake of a little temporary relief, from chair to couch, and frt)m her couch back again to her bed, twenty times in a day, he hardly could help weeping, with all his consideration, to feel her frame as light as a bundle of leaves. The medical man said, that in all his practice he never had known soul and body keep together in such utter attenuation. But her soul was as clear as ever while racking pain was in her flesh- less bones. Even he, her loving husband, was relieved from wo when she expired; for no sadness, no sorrow, could be equal to the misery of groans from one so patient and so resigned. Perhaps consumption is infectious — so, at least, it seemed here; for first one child began to droop, and then another — the elder ones first; and, within the two following years, there were almost as many funerals from this one house as from all the others in the parish. Yes — they all died — of the whole family not one was spared. Two, indeed, were thought to have pined away in a sort of fear- ful foreboding — and a fever took off a third — but four certainly died of the same hereditary complaint with the mother; and now not a voice was heard in the house. He did not desert the Broom ; and the farm-work -was still carried on, nobody could tell how. The ser- vants, to be sure, knew their duty, and often performed it without orders. Sometimes the master put his hand to the plough, but oftener he led the life of a shepherd, and was by him- self among the hills. He never smiled — and at every meal he still sat like a man about to be led out to die. But what will not retire away — recede — disappear from the vision of the souls of us mortals ! Tenacious as we art of our griefs, even more than of our joys, both elude our grasp. We gaze after them witlv longings or self-upbraiding aspirations for their return ; but they are shadows, and like shadows vanish. Then human duties, lowly though, they may be, have their sanative and salutary 66 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. influence on ourwhole frame of being. Without their performance conscience cannot be still; with it, conscience brings peace in extremity of evil. Then occupation kills grief, and in- dustry abates passion. No balm for sorrow like the sweat of the brow poured into the furrows of the earth, in the open air, and beneath the sunshine of heaven. These truths were felt by the childless widower, long before they were understood by him ; and when two years had gone drearily, ay dismally, almost despairingly, by — he began at times to leel something like happiness again when sitting among his friends in the kirk, or at their fire- sides, or in the labours of the field, or even on the market-day, among this world's con- cerns. Thus, they Avho knew him and his sufferings, were pleased to recognise what might be called resignation and its grave tranquillity; while strangers discerned in him nothing more than a staid and solemn demean- our, which might be natural to many a man never severely tried, and offering no interrup- tion to the cheerfulness that pervaded iheir ordinary life. He had a cousin a few years younger than himself, who had also married when a girl, and when little more than a girl had been left a widow. Her parents were both dead, and she had lived for a good many years as an upper servant, or rather companion and friend, in the house of a relation. As cousins, they had all their lives been familiar and affectionate, and Alice Gray had frequently lived months at a time at the Broom, taking care of the children, and in all respects one of the family. Their conditions were now almost equally desolate, and a deep sympathy made them now more firmly attached than they ever could have been in better days. Siill, nothing ai all resembling love was in either of their hearts, nor did the thought of marriage ever pass across their ima- ginations. They found, however, increasing satisfaction in each other's company ; and looks and words of sad and sober endearment gradually bound them together in affection stronger far than either could have believed. Their friends saw and spoke of the attach- iment, and of its probable result, long before they were aware of its full nature; and no- body was surprised, but, on the contrary, all Were well pleased, when it was understood that they were to be man and wife. There was something almost mournful in their marriage — rio rejoicing — no merry-making — but yet visible symptoms of gratitude, contentment, and peace. An air of cheerfulness was not long of investing the melancholy Broom— the very swallows twittered more gladly from the wmdow-corners, and there was joy in the coo- ing of the pigeons on the sunny roof. The farm awoke through all its fields, and the farm- servants once more sang and whistled at their work. The wandering begcjar, who remem- bered the charity of other years, looked with no cold expression on her who now dealt out his dole; and, as his old eyes were dimmed for the sake of those who were gone, gave a fervent blessing on the new mistress 'of the house, and prayed that she might long be spared The neighbours, even they who had best loved the dead, came in with cheerful countenances, and acknowledged in theirhearts that since change is the law of life, there was no one, far or near, whom they could have borne to see sitting in that chair but Alice Gray. The husband knew their feelings from their looks, and his fireside blazed once more with a cheerful lustre. O gentle reader, young perhaps, and inex- perienced of this world, wonder not at this so great change ! The heart is full, perhaps, of a pure and holy aflfection, nor can it die, even for an hour of sleep. May it never die but in the grave ! Yet die it may, and leave thee blameless. The lime may come when that bosom, now thy Elysium, will awaken not, with all its heaving beauty, one single pas- sionate or adoring sigh. Those eyes, that now stream agitation and bliss into thy throbbing heart, may, on some not very distant day, be cold IV thy imagination, as the distant and un- heeded stars. That voice, now thrilling through every nerve, may fall on thy ear a disregarded sound. Other hopes, other fears, other troubles, may possess thee wholly — and that more than angel of Heaven seem to fade away into a shape of earth's most common clay. But here there was no change — no forgeifulness — no oblivion — no faithlessness to a holy trust. The melancholy man often saw his Hannah, and all his seven sweet children — now fair in life — now pale in death. S' heart. How many duties un- discharged • How many opportunities neglect- ed'! How many pleasures devoured ! How many sins hugged ! How many wickednesses perpetrated! The desert looks more grim — the heaven lowers — and the sun, like God's own eye, stares in upon your conscience ! But such is not the solitude of our beaulfiul young shepherd-girl of the Hut of the Three Torrents. Her soul is as clear, as calm as the pool pictured at times by the floating clouds that let fall their shadows through among the overhanging birch-trees. What harm could she ever do 1 What harm could she ever think. She may have wept — for there is sorrow with- out sin ; may have wept even at her prayers— for there is penitence free from guilt, and in- nocence itself often kneels in contrition. Down the long glen she accompanies the stream to the house of God — sings her psalms — and re- turns wearied to her heather-bed. She is, in- deed, a solitary child ; the eagle, and the raven, and the red-deer see that she is so — and echo knows it when from her airy cliff she repeats the happy creature's song. Her world is within this one glen. .In this one glen she may live all her days — be wooed, won, wedded, buried. Buried— said M^e ? Oh, why think of burial when gazing on that resplendent head ? Inter- minaWe tracts of the shining day await her, the lonely darling of nature ; nor dare Time ever eclipse the lustre of those wild-beaming e^-es ! Her beauty shall be immortal, like that of her country's fairies. So, Flower of the Wilderness, we wave towards thee a joyfu'— though an everlasting farewell. Where are we now? There is not on this round green earth a lovelier Loch than Achray. About a mile above Loch Vennachar and as 70 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. we approach the Brigg of Turk, we arrive at the summit of an eminence, whence we descry the sudden and wide prospect of the windings of the river that issues from Loch Achray — and the Loch itself reposing — sleeping — dream- ing on its pastoral, its silvan bed. Achray, being interpreted, signifies the "Level Field," and gives its name to a delightful farm at the west end. On " that happy, rural seat of va- rious view," could we lie all day long; and as all the beauty tends towards the west, each afternoon hour deepens and also brightens it into mellower splendour. Not to keep con- stantly seeing the lovely Loch is indeed im- possible — yet its still waters soothe the soul, without holding it away from the woods and cliffs, that forming of themselves a perfect pic- ture, are yet all united with the mountainous region of the setting sun. Many long years have elapsed — at our lime of life ten are many — since we passed one delightful evening in the hospitable house that stands near the wooden bridge over the Teiih, just wheeling into Loch Achray. What a wilderness of wooded rocks, containing a thousand little mossy glens, each large enough for a fairy's kingdom! Between and Loch Katrine is the Place of Roes — nor need the angler try to pe- netrate the underwood; for every shallow, every linn, every pool is overshaded by its own canopy, and the living fly and moth alone ever dip their wings in the chequered waters. Safe there are all the little singing birds, from hawk or glead — and it is indeed an Aviary in the wild. Pine-groves stand here and there amid the natural woods — and among their tall gloom the cushat sits crooning in beloved solitude, rarely startled by human footstep, and bearing at his own pleasure through the forest the sound of his flapping wings. But let us arise from the greensward, and be- fore we pace along the sweet shores of Loch Achray, for its nearest murmur is yet more than a mile off, turn away up from the Brigg of Turk into Glenfinglas. A strong mounlain- torrcnt, in which a painter, even with the soul of Salvator Rosa, might find studies inexhaust- ible for years, tumbles on the left of a ravine, in which a small band of warriors might stop the march of a numerous host. With what a loud voice it brawls through the silence, fresh- ening the hazels, the birches, and the oaks, that in that perpetual spray need not the dew's refreshment. But the savage scene softens as you advance, and you come out of that silvan prison into a plain of meadows and corn-fields, alive with the peaceful dwellings of indus- trious men. Here the bases of the mountains, and even their sides high up, are without neather— a rich sward, with here and there a deep bed of brackens, and a little sheep-shel- tenng grove. Skeletons of old trees of prodi- gious size lie covered with mosses and wild- flowers, or stand with their barkless trunks and white hmbs unmoved when the tempest blows. Glenfinglas was anciently a deer-forest of the Kings of Scotland; but hunter's horn no more awakens the echoes of Benledi. A more beautiful vale never inspired pas- toral pc't in Arcadia, nor did Sicilian shep- lirr ds of old ever pipe to each other for prize of oaten reed, in a lovelier nook than where yonder cottage stands, shaded, but scarcely sheltered, by a few birch-trees. It is iu truth not a cottage — but a very Shielixg, part of the knoll adhering to the side of the mountain. Not another dwelling — even as small as itself— within a mile in any direction. Those goats that seem to walk where there is no footing along the side of the clifl', go of themselves to be milked at evening to a house beyond the hill, without any barking dog to set them home. There are many footpaths, but all of sheep, ex- cept pne leading through the coppice-wood to the distant kirk. The angler seldom disturbs those shallows, and the heron has them to him- self, watching often with motionless neck all day long. Yet the Shieling is inhabited, and has been so by the same person for a good many years. You might look at it for hours, and yet see no one so much as moving to the door. But a little smoke hovers over it — verj- faint if it be smoke at all — and nothing else tells that within is life. It is inhabited by a widow, who once was the happiest of wives, and lived far down the glen, where it is richly cultivated, in a house astir with many children. It so happened, that in the course of nature, without any extraordi- nary bereavements, she outlived all the house- hold, except one, on whom fell the saddest aflliction lliat can befall a human being — the utter loss of reason. For some years after the death of her husband, and all lier other children, this son was her support; and there was no occasion to pity them in their poverty, where all were poor. Her natural cheerfalncss never forsook her; and althoneh fallen back in the world, and obliged in her age to live without many comforts she once had known, yet all the past gradually was softened into peace, and the widow and her son were in that shieling as happy as any family in the parish. He worked at all kinds of work without, and she sat spin- ning from morning to night within — a constant occupation, soothing to one before wliose mind past times might otherwise have come too often, and that creates contentment by its undisturbed sameness and invisible progression. If not always at meals, the widow saw her son for an hour or two every nisrht, and throughout the whole Sabbath-day. They slept, too, under one roof; and she liked the stormy weather when the rains were on — for then he found some in- genious employment within the shieling, or cheered her with some book lent by a friend, or with the lively or plaintive mnsic of his native hills. Sometimes, in her gratitude, she said that she was happier now than when she had so many other causes to be so; and when occasionally an acquaintance dropt in upon her, her face gave a welcome that spoke more than resignation; nor was she averse to par- take the socially of the other huts, and sat sedate among youthful merriment, when sum- mer or winter festival came round, and poverty rejoiced in the riches of content and innocence. But her trials, creat as they had been, were not yet over; for this her only son was laid prostrate by fever — and, when it left his body, he survived hopelessly stricken in mind. His eyes, so clear and intelligent, were now fixed COTTAGES. 71 in idiocy, or rolled about unobserving of all objects living or dead. To him all weather seemed the same, and if suffered, he would have lain down like a creature void of under- standing, in rain or on snow, nor been able to find his way back for many paces from the hut. As all thought and feeling had left him, so had speech, all but a moaning as of pain or wo, which none but a mother could bear to hear without shuddering — but she heard it during night as well as day, and only sometimes lifted up her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer was made to send him to a place where the afflicted were taken care of; but she beseeched charity for the first time for such alms as would enable her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to keep her son in the shieling; and the means were given her from many quarters to do so decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes observed, but of which the poor object him- self was insensible and unconscious. Hence- forth, it may almost be said, she never more saw the sun, nor heard the torrents roar. She wer.t not to the kirk, but kept her Sabbath where the paralytic lay — and there she sung the lonely psalm, and said the lonely prayer, unheard in Heaven as many repining spirits would have thought — but it was not so; for in two years there came a meaning to his eyes, and he found a few words of imperfect speech, among which was that of " Mother." Oh! how her heart burned within her, to know that her face was at last recognised! To feel that her kiss was returned, and to see the first tear that trickled from eyes that long had ceased to weep ! Day after day, the darkness that co- vered his brain grew less and less deep — to her that bewilderment gave the blessedness of hope; for her son now knew that he had an immortal soul, and in the evening joined faintly and feebly and crringly in prayer. For weeks afterwards he remembered only events and scenes long past and distant — and believed that his father, and all his brothers and sisters, were yet alive. He called upon them by their names to come and kiss him — on them, who bad all long been buried in the dust. But his soul struggled itself into reason and remem- brance — and he at last said, " Mother ! did some accident befall me yesterday at my work down the glen 1 — I feel weak, and about to die !" The shadows of death were indeed around him; but he lived to be told much of what had hap- pened — and rendered up a perfectly unclouded spirit into the mercy of his Saviour. His mother felt that all her prayers had been granted in that one boon — and, when the coffin was borne away from the shieling, she re- mained in it with a friend, assured that in this world there could for her be no more grief. And there in that same shieling, now that years have gone by, she still lingers, visited as often as she wishes by her poor neighbours — for to the poor sorrow is a sacred thing — who, by turns, send one of their daughters to stay with her, and cheer a life that cannot be long, but that, end when it may, will be laid down with- out one impious misgiving, and in the humility of a Christian's faith. The scene shifts of itself, and we are at the head of Glenetive. Who among all the High- land maidens that danced on the greenswards among the blooming heather on the mountains of Glenetive — who so fair as Flora, the only daughter of the King's Forester, and grand- child to the Bard famous for his songs of Fai- ries in the Hill of Peace, and the Mermaid- Queen in her Palace of Emerald floating far down beneath the foam-waves of the seal And who, among all the Highland youth that went abroad to the bloody wars from the base of Benevis, to compare with Ranald of the Red- Clifl^, whose sires had been soldiers for centu- ries, in the days of the dagger and Lochaber axe — stately in his strength amid the battle as the oak in a storm, but gentle in peace as the birch-tree, that whispers with all its leaves to the slightest summer-breath ] If their love was great when often fed at the light of each other's eyes, what was it when Ranald was far oflT among the sands of Egypt, and Flora left an orphan to pine away in her native glen 1 Be- neath the shadow of the Pyramids he dreamt of Dalness and the deer forest, that was the dwelling of his love — and she, as she stood by the murmurs of that sea-loch, longed for the wings of the osprey, that she might flee away to the war-teats beyond the ocean, and be at rest! But years — a few years — long and lingering as they might seem to loving hearts separated by the roar of seas — y-et all too, too short when 'tis thought how small a number lead from the cradle to the grave — brought Ranald and Flora once more into each other's arms. Alas ! for the poor soldier! for never more was he to behold that face from which he kissed the trickling tears. Like many another gallant )'outh, he had lost his eyesight from the sharp burning sand — and was led to the shieling of his love like a wandering mendicant who obeys the hand of a child. Nor did his face bear that smile of resignation usually so affect- ing on the calm countenances of the blind. Seldom did he speak — and his sighs wore deeper, longer, and more disturbed than those which almost any sorrow^ ever wrings from the young. Could it be that he groaned in remorse over some secret crime 1 Happ} — completely happy, would Flora have been to have tended him like a sister all his dark life long, or, like a daughter, to have sat beside the bed of one whose hair was getting fast gray, long before its time. Almost all her relations were dead, and almost all her friends away to other glens. But he had returned, and blindness, for which there was no hope, must bind his steps for ever within little room. But they had been betrothed almost from her childhood, and would she — if he desired it — fear to become his wife now, shrouded as he was, now and for ever in the helpless dark? From his lips, however, her maidenly modesty required that the words should come, nor could she sometimes help wondering, in half- upbraiding sorrow, that Ranald joyed not in his great affliction to claim her for his wife. Poor were they to be sure — yet not so poor as to leave life without its comforts; and in every glen of her native Highlands, were there nc worthy families far poorer than they? Bur weeks, months, passed on, and Ranald rf 72 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER IS-OKTH. mained in a neighbouring hut, shunning the sunshine, and moaning, it ^vas said, when he thought none were near, both night and day. Sometimes he had been overheard muttering to himself lamentable words — and, blind as his eyes were to all the objects of the real world, it was rumoured up and down the glen, that he saw visions of woful events about to befall one whom he loved. One midnight he found his way, unguided, like a man walking in his sleep — but although in a hideous trance, he was yet broad awake — to the hut where Flora dwelt, and called on her, in a dirge-like voice, to speak a few words with him ere he died, 'i'hey sat down together among the heather, on the very spot where the farewell embrace had been given the morning he went awa)' to the wars ; and Flora's heart died within her, when he told her that the Curse under which his forefathers had sulfer- ed, had fallen upon him; and that he had seen his wraith pass by in a shroud, and heard a voice whisper the very day he was to die. And was it Ranald of the Red-Clifl", the bravest of the brave, that thus shuddered in .he fear of death like a felon at the tolling .of ,he great prison-belll Ay, death is dreadful when foreseen by a ghastly superstition. He felt the shroud already bound round his limbs and body with gentle folds, beyond the power of a giant to burst; and day and night the same vision yawned before him — an open grave in the corner of the hill burial-ground without any kirk. Flora knew that his days were indeed num- bered ; for when had he ever been afraid of death — and could his spirit have quailed thus under a mere common dream 1 Soon was she to be all alone in this world ; yei when Ranald should die, she felt that her own days would not be many, and there was sudden and strong comfort in the belief that they would be buried in one grave. Such were her words to the dying man ; and all at once he took her in his arms, and asked her " If she had no fears of the narrow house?" His whole nature seemed to undergo a change untler the calm voice of her reply ; and he said, " Dost thou fear not then, my Flora, to hear the words of doom 1" "Blessed will ihey be, if in death we be not disunited." "Thou too, my wife — for my wife thou now art on earth, and mayest be so in heaven — thou too. Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." It was a gentle and gracious summer night — so clear, that the shepherds on the hills were scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And there, at earliest daylight, were Ranald and Flora found, on the greensward, among the tall heather, lying side by side, with their calm faces up to heaven, and never more to smile or weep in this mortal world. ANHOUR^S TALK ABOUT POETRY. OuHs is a poetical age ; but has it produced one Great Poem 1 Not one. Just look at them for a moment. There is the Pleasures of Memory — an elegant, grace- ful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, which it does one's eyes good to gaze on — one's ears good to listen to — one's very fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove paper. Never will the Pleasures of Memory be forgotten till the world is in its dotage. But is it a Great Poem ? About as much so as an ant-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a moun- tain purple with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection — in the shape of a cone — and the apex points heavenwards ; but 'tis not a sky-piercer. You take it at a nop — and pursue your journey. Yet it en- dures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs, and the sunshine, love the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and delightfully; you hardly know whether a work of art or a work of nature. Then, there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not very popular. ' If so, then neither IS human life. For of all our poets, he has most skilfully woven the web and woven the woof of all his compositions with the materials of human life — homespun indeed ; but though often coarse, always strong — and though set to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently exceed- ing fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay — hold up the product of his loom between your eye and the light, and it plows and glim- mers like the peacock's back or the breast of the rainbow. Sometimes it seems to be but of the "hodden gray;" when sunbeam or shadow smites if, and lo ! it is hurni>hed like the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger ever produce a Great Poem ? You might as well ask if he built St. Paul's. Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No wonder that his old eyes are still so lustrous ; for they possess the sacred gift of beautifying creation, by shedding over it the charm of melancholy. "Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the me- mory of joys that are past" — is the text we should choose were we about to preach on his genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, does his spirit now breathe over the still re- ceding Past. But time-sanctified are all the sho%vs that arise before his pensive imagina- tion ; and the common light of day, once gone, in his poetry seems to shine as if it had all been dying sunset or moonlight, or the new- born dawn. His human sensibilities are so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his Sonnets have oeen dear to poets — having in them " more than meets the ear" — spiritual breathings thai hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, too, have they been beloved by all AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. 73 natural hearts who, having not the "faculty divine," have yet the " vision" — that is, the power of seeing and of hearing the sights and the sounds which genius alone can awaken, bringing them from afar out of the dust and dimness of evanishment. Mr. Bowles has been a poet for good fifty years ; and if his genius do not burn quite so bright as it did some lustres bygone — yet we do not say there is any abatement even of its brightness : it shines with a mellower and also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he was perhaps rather too pensive — too melan- chol)' — too pathetic — too wo-begone — in too great bereavement. Like the nightingale, he sung with a thorn at his breast — from which one wondered the point had not been broken off by perpetual pressure. Yet, though rather monotonous, his strains were most musical as well as melancholy ; feeling was often re- lieved by fancy ; and one dreamed, in listening to his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, and of the yellow sands of dim-imaged seas murmuring round "the shores of old Ro- mance." A fine enthusiasm too was his — in those youthful years — inspired by the poetry of Greece and Rome; and in some of his hap- piest inspirations there was a delightful and original union — to be found nowhere else that we can remember— of the spirit of that an- cient song — the pure classical spirit that mur- mured by the banks of the Eu rotas and Ilissus with that of our own poetry, that like a noble Naiad dwells in the " clear well of English un- defiled." In almost all his strains you felt the scholar; but his was no affected or pedantic scholarship — intrusive most when least re- quired ; but the growth of a consummate clas- sical education, of which the career was not inglorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles was a pupil of the Wartons — Joe and Tom — God bless their souls ! — and his name may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs — and with Mason's, and (Jray's, and Collins's — academics all ; the works of them all showing a delicate and exqui.site colouring of classical art, enrich- ing their own English nature. Bowles's muse is always loath to forget — wherever she roam or linger — Winchester and Oxford — the Itchin and the Isis. None educated in those delight- ful and divine haunts will ever forget them, who can read Homer and Pindar, and Sopho- cles, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, in the original ; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons are those alone who pursued their poetical studies — in translations. They never knew the nature of the true old Greek Sre. But has Bowles written a Great Poem 1 If he has, publish it, and we shall make him a Bishop. What shall we say of the Pleasures of Hope 1 That the harp from which that music breathed, was an ^Eolian harp placed in the window of a high hall, to catch airs from heaven when heaven was glad, as well she might be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a magnificent aurora borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic march — now it swells into a holy 10 hymn — and now it dies away elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, dream-like, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night — and we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so 1 — In his youth Campbell lived where " distant isles could hear the loud Corbrechtan roar;" and some- times his poetry is like that whirlpool — the sound as of the wheels of many chariots. Yes, happy was it for him that he had liberty to roam along the many-based, hollow-rumbling western coast of that unaccountable county Argyleshire. The sea-roar cultivated his natu- rally fine musical ear, and it sank too into his heart. Hence is his prime Poem bright with hope as is the sunny sea when sailor's sweet- hearts on the shore are looking out for ships; and from a foreign station down comes the fleet before the wind, and the very shells be- neath their footsteps seem to sing for joy. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if she were our own only daughter — filling our life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through those giant woods ! As for Lochiel's Warn- ing, there was heard the voice of the Last of the Seers. The Second Sight is now extin- guished in the Highland glooms — the Lament wails no more, "That man may not hide what God would reveal !" The Navy owes much to " Ye mariners of England." Sheer hulks often seemed ships till that strain arose — but ever since in our imagination have they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we say, after that, that Camp- bell has never written a Great Poem ] Yes — in the face even of the Metropolitan ! It was said many long years ago in the Edinburgh Review, that none but maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed that James Montgomery was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner — and Christopher North a sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian ; and though he as- sures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in his own belief, yet in ours. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are the most simple- minded, pure-hearted, and high-souled — and these qualities shine serenely in the Pelican Island. In earnestness and fervour, that poem is by fe\<' or none excelled ; it is embalmed in sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away; neither shall it moulder — not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a fair form laid asleep in immortality — its face wearing, day and night, summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly — a celestial smile. That is a true image; but is the Pelican Island a Great Poem 1 We pause not for a reply. Lyrical Poetry, we opine, hath many branches — and one of them " beautiful exceedingly" with bud, blossom, and fruit of balm and bright- ness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward when the air is calua^ 74 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. and ever and anon, when blow the fitful breezes, it is uplifted in the sunshine, and glows wav- ingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the loftiest region of the Tree which is Amaranth. That is a fanciful, perhaps foolish form of expres- sion, employed at present to signify Song-writ- ing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever ■warbled, or chanted, or sung, the best, in our estimation, is verily none other than Thomas Moore. True that Robert Burns has indited many songs that slip into the heart, just like light, no one knows how, filling its chambers sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing more to desire for perfect contentment. Or let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird in the brake, a laverock in the sky. They sing in the fulness of their joy, as nature teaches them — and so did he ; and the man, woman, or child, who is delighted not with such singing, be their virtues what they may, must never hope to be in Heaven. Gracious Providence placed Burns in the midst of the sources of Lyrical Poetry — when he was born a Scfittish peasant. Now, Moore is an Irishman, and was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, and translated — after a fashion — Anncrenn. And Moore has lived much in towns and cities — and in that society whch will sulT'cr none else to be called good. Some Jidvantages he has enjoyed which Burns never did — but then how many disadvantages has he undergone, from which the Ayrshire Ploughman, in the bondage of his poverty, was free ! You see all that at a single glance into their poetry. But all in humble life is not high — all in hi^h life is not low; and there is as much to guard against in hovel as in hall — in " auld clay- bigging" as in marble palace. Burns some- times wrote like a mere boor — Moore has too often written like a mere man of fashion. But take them both at their best — and both are ini- mitable. Both are national poets — and who •ihall say, that if Moore had been born and bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland had been such a land of knowledge, and virtue, and religion as Scotland is — and surely, with- out offence, wc may say that it never was, and never will be — though we love the Green Island well — that with his fine fancy, warm heart, and exquisite sensibilities, he might not have been as natural a lyrist as Burns; while, take him as he is, who can deny that in rich- ness, in variety, in grace, and in the power of art, he is superior to the ploughman. Of Lal- lah Rookh and the Loves of the Angels, wc defy you to read a page without admiration; but the question recurs, and it is easily an- swered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a Great Poem ? Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rvdal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard ! Here is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of Trinity. Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, Diopr. and stars, but "To miirrmir Iiy tlip liviiic tunoks A music sweeter thiin their own." What has been the result? Seven volumes (oh ! why not seven more ?) of poetry, as beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and of Apollo. The earth — the middle air — the sky — the heaven — the heart, mind, and soul of man — are "the haunt and main region of his song." In describing external nature as she is, no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworth — not even Thomson; in embuingher and mak- ing her pregnant with spiritualities, till the mighty mother teems with "beauty far more beauteous" than she had ever rejoiced in till such communion — he excels all the brother- hood. Therein lies his special glory, and therein the immorliil evidences of the might of his creative imagination. All men at times " muse on nature with a poet's eye," — but Wordsworth ever — and his soul has grown more and more reliirious from such worship. Every rock is an altar — ever)' grove a shrine We fear that there will be sectarians even in this Natural Religion till the end of time. But he is the High Priest of Nature — or, to use his own words, or nearly so, he is the High Priest "in the metropolitan temple built in the heart of mighty poets." But has he — even he — ever written a Great Poem ? If he has — it is not the Excursion. Nay, the Excursiun is not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, all swimming in the light of poetry; some of them sweet and simple, some elegant and graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some of " strength and state," some majestic, some magnificent, some sublime. But though it has an opening, it has no beginning; you can discover the middle only by the numerals on the page; and the most serious apprehensions have been ver>- generally entertained that it has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary breathe the vital air, may the Excursion, stop where it will, be renewed ; and as in its pre- sent shajjc it comprehends but a Three Days* Walk, wc have but to think of an Excursion of three weeks, three months, or three years, to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life of man is not always limited to the term of threescore and ten years. What a Jonrnal mitrht it prove at last! Poetry in profusion till the land overflowed; but whether in one volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, not a Great Poem — nay, not a Poem at all — nor ever to be so esteemed, till the principles on which Great Poets bnild the lofty rhyme are exploded, and the verj' names of .Art and Science smoth- ered and lost in the bosom of Nature from which they arose. Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, pro- vided only he be alive and hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and snh jected for a few minutes to the ethereal influ- ence of that wonderful man's monologue, and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The barren wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will seem, or rather feel to do so, un- der the lustre of an imagination exhausilessas the sun. You mav have seen perhaps rocks suddenly so glorified by sunlight with colours manifold, that the bees seek them, deluded by the show of flowers. The sun. you know, does not always show his orb even in the daytime— and people are often ignorant of his place ia AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. T5 the firmament. But he keeps shining away at his leisure, as you would know were he to suf- fer eclipse. Perhaps he — the sun — is at no other time a more delightful luminary than when he is pleased to dispense his influence through a general haze, or mist — softening all the day till meridian is almost like the after- noon, and the grove, anticipating gloaming, bursts into "dance and minstrelsy" ere the god go down into the sea. Clouds too become him well — whether thin and fleecy and braided, or piled up all round about him castle-wise and cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of temples and other metropolitan structures; nor is il rea- sonable to find fault with him, when, as naked as the hour he was born, " he flames on the forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur too of his appearance on setting, has become quite proverbial. Now in all this he resem- bles Coleridge. It is easy to talk — not very difficult to speechify — hard to speak ; but to "discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Hea- ven on mortal man. Coleridge has it in per- fection. While he is discoursing, the world loses all its commonplaces, and you and your wife imagine yourself .\damandEve listenins to the aflable archangel Raphael in the Gar den of Eden. You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for awhile, than you would a river that "imposes silence with a stil- ly sound." Whether you understand two con- secutive sentences, we shall not stop too curi- ously to inquire ; but you do-something belter, you feel the whole just like any other divine music. And 'tis your own fault if you do not "A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." Reason is said to be one faculty, and Imagina- tion another — but there cannot be a grosser mistake ; they are one and indivisible ; only in most cases ihey live like cat and dog, in mutual worrying, or haply sue for a divorce ; whereas in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as well as one flesh, and keep billing and cooing in a perpetual honey-moon. Then his mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and Romans ; and though we have heard simpletons say that he knows nothing of science, we have heard him on chemistry puzzle Sir Humphrey Davy — and prove to his own entire satisfaction, that Leib- nitz and Newton, though good men, were but indifi'erent astronomers. Besides, he thinks nothing of inventing a new science, with a complete nomenclature, in a twinkling — and •should you seem sluggish of apprehension, he «*ndows )'ou with an additional sense or two. over and above the usual seven, till you are no longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music of fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy piece of poetry. All the faculties, both of soul and sense, seem amicably to interchange their functions and their provinces ; and you fear not that the dream may dissolve, persuaded that you are in a future state of permanent enjoyment. Nor are we now using any exag- geration ; for if you will but think how unut- terably dull are all the ordinary sayings and doings of this life, spent as it is with ordinary people, you may imagine how in sweet deliri- um you may be robbed of yourself by a se- raphic tongue that has fed since first it lisped on "honey-dew," and by lips that have "breath- ed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic language, which, all the while that it is Eng- lish, is as grand as Greek and as soft as Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is the alchymist that in his crucible melts dowa hours to moments— and lo! diamonds sprinkled on a plate of gold. W'hat a world would this be were all its in- habitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Du- crow, discourse like Coleridge, and do every thing else in a style of equal perfection ! But pray, how does a man write poetry with a pea upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring it from his inspired lipsl Read the Ancient .Mariner, the Nightingale, and Genevieve. la the first, you shudder at the superstition of the sea — in the second, you thrill with the melo- dies of the woods — in the third, earth is like heaven ; — for you are made to feel that "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred liume ;" Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great Poem 1 No ; for besides the Regions of the Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is another up to which his wing might not soar; though the plumes are strong as soft. But why should he who loveth to take " the wings of a dove that he may flee away" to the bo- som of beauty, though there never for a mo- ment to be at rest — why should he, like an eagle, soar into the storms that roll above this visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual thunder ? Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remon- strates, rather angrily, with the Public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into one class, himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the Art Poetical ; and among his Lyrical Ballads he admitted the three finest compositions of his illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, is not to blame in taking him at his word, even if she had discerned no family likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less than Coleridge does ; but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphi- losophical though pensive Public that link of connection should be allowed to be sufficient, even were there no other less patent and ma- terial than the Macadamized turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our living Poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory ;" for he alone of them all has ad- ventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, the difllerent characters, customs, and manners of nations. Joan of Arc is an English and French story — Thalaba, Arabian — Kehama, In- dian — Madoc, Welsh and American — and Ro derick, Spanish and Moorish ; nor would it be easy lo say (setting aside the first, which was a very youthful work) in which of these noble Poems Mr. Southey has most successfully per- formed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any but the highest genius. In Ma- 76 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. doc, and especially in Roderick, he has relied on the truth of nature — as it is seen in the his- tory of great national transactions and events. In Thalaba and in Kehama, though in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost bound- less lore, he follows the leading of Fancy and Imagination, and walks in a world of wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same Poet exhibited such power in such different kinds of Poetry— in Truth a Master, and in Fiction a Magician. It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast stores of knowledge gathered from books — and that we have but to look at the multifiirious accumulation of notes appended to his great Poems to see that they are not Inventions. The materials of poetry indeed are there— c^ftcn the raw materials — seldom more ; but the Ima- gination that moulded them into beautiful, or magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his own — and has shown itself most creative. Southey never was among the Arabians nor Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travel- lers. But had he not been a Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen "Tlie palm-grove inlanded amid tlie waste,'' where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent " How happily the years of Thnlaba went by !" In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the Destroyer into the Dom- daniel Caves ? And who showed him the Swcrga's Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with ail its palaces that submarine City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial thunder of the sea ? The greatness as well as the originality of Southcy's genius is seen in the conceptiim of every one of his Five Chief Works — with the exception of Joan of Arc, which was written in very early youth, and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthu- siasm. They are one and all National Poems — wonderfully true to the customs and charac- ters of the inhabitants of the countries in which are laid the scenes of all their various adven- tures and enterprises — and the Poet has en- tirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each representative of a race. Thala- ba is a true Arab — Madoc a true Briton — King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Keha- ma is a personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindoslan. Sir Walter con- fined himself in his poetry to Scotland— except in Rokeby — and his might then went not with him across the Border ; though in his novels and romances he was at home when abroad — and nowhere else more gloriously than with Saladin in the Desert. Lalla Rookh is full of orilliant poetry; and one of the series — the Fire Worshippers — is Moore's highest effort; but the whole is too elaborately Oriental — and often in pure weariness of all that accumula- tion of the gorgeous imagery of the East, we shut up the false glitter, and tliank Heaven that we are in one of the bleakest and barest corners of the West. But Southey's magic is .nore potent — and he was privileged to ex- claim — " Come, listen to a tale of times of old ! Come, for ye know me. lam he who framed- Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song. Come listen to my lay. and ye shall hear How Madoc from'lhf- shores of Britain spread The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path, And qucll'd barbaric power, and overthrew The bloody altars of idolatry. And platited on its fanes triumphantly The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay." Of all his chief Poems the conception and the execution are original ; in much faulty and im- perfect both ; but bearing throughout the im- press of original power ; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest and some- times even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them for ever froin oblivion, embalm- ing them in the spirit of delight and of love. Fairy Tales — or tales of witchcraft and en- chantment, seldom stir the holiest and deepest feelings of the heart; but Thalaba and Keha- ma do so; "the still sad mu^ic of humanity" is ever with us among all most wonderful and wild ; and of all the spells, and charms, and ta- lismans that are seen working strange effects before our eyes, the strongest arc ever felt to be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures of domestic alFection and bliss ! what sanctity and devotion ! Meek as a child is Innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether matron or maid, mother or daughter — in joy or sorrow — as they appear before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and dutiful," with Faith, Hope and Charity their guardian angels, nor Fear ever once crossing their path ! We feel, in perusing such pic- tures — " Purity! thy name is woman !" and are not these Great Poems 1 We are silent. But should you answer "yes," from us in our pre- sent mood you shall receive no contradiction. The transition always seems to us, we scarcely know why, as natural as delightful from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the poets of the day have produced poems in which are pictured and narrated, epicly, national cha- racters, and events, and actions, and catastro- phes. Southey has heroically invaded foreign countries; Scott as heroically brought his power to bear on his own people; and both have achieved immortal triumphs. But Scot- land is proud of her great national minstrel — and as long as she is Scotland, will wash and warm the laurels round his brow, with rains and winds that will for ever keep brightening their glossy verdure. Whereas England, un- grateful ever to her men of genius, already often forgets the poetry of Southey; while Little Britain abuses his patriotism in his po- litics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten her own history till Sir W'alter burnished it all up till it glowed again — it is hard to say whe- ther in his poetry or in his prose the brightest — and the past became the present. We know now the character of our own people as it showed .itself in war and peace— *in palace, castle, hall, hut, hovel, and shieling — through centuries of advancing civilization, from the time when Edinburgh was first ycleped .\ulJ Reekie, down to the period when the bright idea first occurred to her inhabitants to call her the Modern .\thens. This he has effected by means of about one hundred volumes, each exhibiting to the life about fifty characters, and each character not only an individual in him- self or herself, but the renresentative — so we AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT TOETRY. 77 offer to prove if jou be skeptical — of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the Mo- narch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the Gipsy, from the Bruce to the Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennisoun. We shall never say that Scott is Shakspeare; but we shall say that he has conceived and created — you know the meaning of these words — as many characters — real living flesh-and-blood human beings — naturally, truly, and consist- ently, as Shakspeare; who, always transcend- antly great in pictures of the passions — out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all rational being — was — nay, do not threaten to murder us — not seldom an imperfect delinea- tor of human life. All the world believed that Sir Walter had not only exhausted his own ge- nius in his poetry, but that he had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life — he and Burns to- gether — and that no more ground unturned-up lay on this side of the Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for a while — and shared in the general and natural delusion. But one morn- ing before breakfast it occurred to him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothing — though more for Scotland than any other of her poets — except the Ploughman — and that it would not be much amiss to commence aNew Century of Inventions. Hence the Prose Tales — Novels — and Romances — fresh floods of ligtit pouring all over Scotland — and occasionally illuminating England, France, and Germany, and even Palestine — whatever land had been ennobled by Scottish enterprise, genius, va- lour, and virtue. Up to the era of Sir Waller, living people had some vague, general, indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing cen- turies ago, in regular kirkyards and chance burial-places, "'mang muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that difhcultly-dis- tinguished and very debatable district called the Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts, some in woodmen's dresses — most in warrior's mail: green arches leaped forth with yew-bows and quivers — and giants stalked shaking spears. The gray chronicler smiled; and, taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for the first time, knew the character of its ances- tors ; for those were not spectres — not they indeed — nor phantoms of the brain — but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious; — base- born cottage churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high- born lineage of palace-kings. The worst of Sir Waller is, that he has harried all Scotland. Never was there such a freebooter. He hurries all men's cattle — kills themselves off" hand, and makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he disturbed and illuminated all the land as with the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie with their islands distinct by midnight as by mid-day; wide woods glow gloriously in the gloom ; and by the stormy splendour you even see ships, with all sails set, far at sea. His favourite themes in prose or numerous verse, are still "Knights and Lords and mighty Earls," and their Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish — of kings that fought for fame or freedom — of fatal Flod- den and bright Bannockburn — of the de- liverer. If that be not national to the teeth, Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtceus not sprung from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. Let Abbolsford, then, be cognomed by those that choose it, the Ariosto of the North — we shall continue to call him plain Sir Walter. Now, we beg leave to decline answering our own question — has he ever written a Great Poem] We do not care one straw whether he has or not; for he has done this — he has ex- hibited human life in a greater variety of forms and lights, all definite and distinct, than any other man whose name has reached our ears; and therefore, without fear or trembling, we tell the world to its face, that he is, out of all sight, the greatest genius of the age, not for- getting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr. Faustus. " What ] Scott a greater genius than Byron !" Yes — beyond compare. Byron had a vivid and strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw things as they are, occasionally standing pro- minently and boldly out from the flat surface of this world ; and in general, when his soul was up, he described them with a master's might. We speak now of the external world — of nature and of art. Now observe how he dealt with nature. In his early poems he be- trayed no passionate love of nature, though we do not doubt that he felt it; and even in the first two cantos of Childe Harold he was an unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at her shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarm- ness; but simply stating a fact. He had some- thing else to think of, it would appear; and proved himself a poet. But in the third canto, "a change came over the spirit of his dream," and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and mountains. Unfortunately, however, for his originality, that canto is almost a cento — his model being Wordsworth. His merit, what- ever it may be, is limited therefore to that of imitation. And observe, the imitation is not merely occasional or verbal ; but all the de- scriptions are conceived in the spirit of Words- worth, coloured by it and shaped — from it they live, and breathe, and have their being; and, that so entirely, that had the Excursion and Lyrical Ballads never been, neither had any composition at all resembling, either in con- ception or execution, the third canto of Childe Harold. His soul, however, having been awakened by the inspiration of the Bard of Nature, never afterwards fell asleep, nor got drowsy over her beauties or glories ; and much fine description pervades most of his subse- quent works. He afterwards made much of what he saw his own — and even described it after his own fashion ; but a greater in that domain was his instructor and guide — nor in his noblest efforts did he ever make any close approach to those inspired passages, which he had manifestly set as models before his imagi- nation. With all the fair and great objects in the world of art, again, Byron dealt like a poel of original genius. They themselves, and not descriptions of them, kindled it up; and thus "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," do almost entirely compose the fourth canfc o 2 78 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. which is worth, ten times over, all the rest. The impetuosity of his career is astonishing; never for a moment does his wing flag; ever and anon he stoops but to soar again with a more majestic sweep; and you see how he glo- ries in his flight — that he is proud as Lucifer. The first two cantos are frequently cold, cum- brous, stifle, heavy, and dull ; and, with the ex- ception of perhaps a dozen stanzas, and these far from being of first-rate excellence, they are found wofully wanting in the true fire. Many passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, after all, was right in thinking — at first — but poorly of these cantos ; and so was the friend, not Mr. Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon them in manuscript. True, they " made a pro- digious sensation," but biiter-bad stuff has often done that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had they been suf- fered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no belter than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most certainly damned. Hut, fortu- nately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing, stealing, and rob- bing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must have amazed the plundered; but inter- mingling with the spoil riches fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature, who loved her wayward, her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is Childe Harold, then, a Great Poem? What! with one half of it little above mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in execution swarm- ing with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his talcs — the Giaour, Corsair, Lara, BrideofAbydos,Siegeof Corinth, and so forth — they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate performances — sometimes nobly and some- times meanly versified — but displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assu- redly no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnifi- cent — and in many of his smaller poems, pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhi- bits almost every kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect. But there is another glory belonging to this age, and almost to this age alone of our poetry — the glory of Female Genius. We have heard and seen it seriously argued whether or not women are equal to men ; as if there could be a moment's doubt in any mind unbesottcd by sex, that they are infinitely superior; not iii understanding, thank Heaven, nor in intellect, out in all other "impulses of soul and sense" that dignify and ailorn human beings, and make them worthy of living on this delightful earth. Men for the most part are such worth- less wretches, that we wonder how women condescended to allow the world to be carried on; and we attribute that phenomenon solely to the hallowed yearnings of maternal afl"ec- tion, which breathes as strongly in maid as in matron, and may be beautifully seen in the child fondling its doll in its blissful bosom. Fbiloprogenitiveness ! But not to pursue that interesting speculation, suflice it for the pre- sent to say, that so far from having no souls — a whim of Mahomet's, who thought but of their bodies — women are the sole spiritual beings that walk the earth not unseen; they alone, without pursuing a complicated and scientific system of deception and hypocrisy, are privileged from on high to write poetrj'. We — men we mean — may affect a virtue, though we have it not, and appear to be in- spired by the divine afflatus. Nay, we some- times — often — are truly so inspired, and write like Gods. A few of us are subject to fits, and in them utter oracles. But the truth is too glaring to be denied, that all male rational creatures are in the long run vile, corrupt, and polluled; and that the best man that ever died in his bed within the arms of his distracted wife, is wickeder far than the worst woman that was ever iniquilously hanged for murder- ing what was called her poor husband, who in all cases righteously deserved his fate. Purity of mind is incompatible with manhood; and a monk is a monster — so is every Fellow of a College, and every Roman Catholic Priest, from Father O'Li'ar)' to Dr. Doyle. Confes- sions, indeed I W^hy, had Joseph himself con- fessed all he ever felt and thought to Poliphar's wife, she would have frowned him from her presence in all the chaste dignity of virtuous indignation, and so far from tearing ofl" his garment, would not have touched it for the whole world. But all women — fill men by marriage, or by something, if that be possible, wnrse even than marriage, try in vain to re- duce them nearly to their own level — are pure as dcwdrops or moonbeams, and know not the meaning of evil. Their genius conjectures it; and in that there is no sin. But their genius loves best to image forth good, for 'tis the blessing of their life, its power, and its glory ; and hence, when they write poetry, it is re- ligious, sweet, soft, solemn, and divine. • Observe, however — to prevent all mistakes — that we speak but of British women — and of British women of the present age. Of the (Jerman Fair Sex we know little or nothing; but daresay that the Baroness la Motic Fouqu6 is a worthy woman, and as vapid as the Baron. Neither make we any allusion to Madame Gen- lis, or other illustrimis Lemans of the French school, who charitably adopted their own na- tural daughters, while other less pious ladies, who had become mothers without being wives, sent theirs to Foundling Hospitals. We restrict ourselves to the Maids and Matrons of this Island — and of this Age ; and as it is of poeti- cal genius that we speak — we name the names of Joanna Baillie, Mary Tighe, Felicia He- mans, Caroline Bowles, Mary Howitt, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and the Lovely Norton ; while we pronounce several other sweet-sound- ing Christian surnames in whispering under- tones of aflection. almost as inaudible as the sound of the growing of grass on a dewy evening. Corinna and Sapphomu; t have been women of transcendant genius so to move Greece. For though the Greek character was most im- pressible and combustible, it was so only to the finest finger and fire. In that delightful land dunces were all dumb. W'here genius AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY 79 alone spoke and suns: poctr\% how hard to ex- cel ! Corinna and Sappho did excel — the one, it is said, conquering Pindar — and the other all the world but Phaon. But our own Joanna has been visited with a still loftier inspiration. She has created tragedies which Sophocles — or Euripides — nay, even ^iSschj'lus himself, might have fear- ed, in competition for the crown. She is our Tragic Queen ; but she belongs to all places as to all times; and Sir Walter truly said — let Ihem who dare deny it — that he saw her Ge- nius in a sister shape sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna loves to pace the pastoral mead; and then we are made to think of the tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, past among the tail cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lone- some heart of the dark Strathaven Muirs. Plays on the Passions ! " How absurd !" said one philosophical writer. "This will ne- ver do. It has done — perfectly. What, pray, is the aim of all tragedy ? The Stagyrite has told us — to purify the passions by pity and terror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul — till its atmosphere is like that of a calm, bright summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on the Passions. And all that Joanna intended — and it was a great intention greatly effected — was in her Series of Dramas to steady her pur- poses by ever keeping one great end in view, of which the perpetual perception could not fail to make all the means harmonious, and therefore majestic. One passion was, there- lore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each glorious tragedy — sovereign sometimes by di- vine right — sometimes an usurper — generally a tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid reign of Hate. But in his sister — the seraphic sway of Love. Darkness and light sometimes opposed in sublime contrast — and sometimes the light swallowing 'up the darkness — or "smoothing its raven down till it smiles." Finally, all is black as night and the grave — for the light, unextinguished, glides away into some far-off world of peace. Count Basil ! A woman only could have imagined that divine drama. How different the love Basil feels for Victoria from Anthony's for Cleopatra ! Pure, deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on it we see him borne away to shame, destruc- tion, and death. It is indeed his ruling pas- sion. But up to the day he first saw her face his ruling passion had been the love of glory. And the hour he died by his own hand was troubled into madness by many passions; for are they not all mysteriously linked together, sometimes a dreadful brotherhood ] Do you wonder how one mind can have such vivid consciousness of the feelings of another, while their characters are cast in such dilTercnt moulds? It is, indeed, wonderful — but the power is that of sympathy and genius. The dramatic poet, whose heart breathes love to all living things, and whose overflowing tender- ness diffuses itself over the beauty even of unliving nature, may yet paint with his cre- ative hand the steeled heart of him who sits on a throne of blood — the lust of crime in a mind polluted with wickedness — the remorse of acts which could never pass in thought through his imagination as his own. For. in the act of imagination, he can suppress in his mind its own peculiar feelings — its good and gracious aflections — call up from their hidden places those elements of our being, of which the seeds were sown in him as in all — give them unna- tural magnitude and power — conceive the dis- order of passions, the perpetration of crimes, the tortures of remorse, or the scorn of that human weakness, from which his own gentle bosom and blameless life are pure and free. He can bring himself, in short, into an imagi- nary and momentary sympathy with the wick- ed, just as his mind falls of itself into a natural and true sympathy with those whose character is accordant with his own; and watching the emotions and workings of his mind in the spontaneous and in the forced sympathy, he knows and understands from himself what passes in the minds of others. What is done in the highest degree by the highest genius, is done by all of ourselves in lesser degree, and unconsciousl}', at every moment, in our inter- course with one another. To this kind of sym- pathy, so essential to our knowledge of the human mind, and without which there can be neither poetry nor philosophy, are necessary a largeness of heart which willingly yields itself to conceive the feelings and states of others whose character is utterly unlike its own, and freedom from any inordinate overpowering passion which quenches in the mind the feel- ings of nature it has already known, and places it in habitual enmity to the affections and hap- piness of its kind. To paint bad passions, is not to praise them : they alone can paint them well who hate, fear, or pity them; and there- fore Baillie has done so — nay start not — better than Byron. Well may our land be proud of such women. None such ever before adorned her poetical annals. Glance over that most interesting volume, "Specimens of British Poetesses," by that amiable, ingenious, and erudite man, the Reverend Alexander Dyce, and what effulgence begins to break towards the close of the eighteenth century! For ages on ages the genius of English women had ever and anon been shining forth in song; but faint though fair was the lustre, and struggling imprisonea in clouds. Some of the sweet singers of those days bring tears to our eyes by their simple pathos — for their poetry breathes of their own sorrows, and sho\ys that they were but too fa- miliar with grief. But their strains arc mere melodies "sweetly played in tune." The deeper harmonies of poetry seem to have been beyond their reach. The range of their power was limited. Anne, Countess of Winchelsea — Catherine Phillips, known by the name of Orinda— and Mrs. Anne Killigrew, who, as Dryden says, was made an angel, " in the last promotion to the skies," — showed, as they sang on earth, that they were all worthy to sing in heaven. But what were their hymns to those that are now warbled around us from many sister spirits, pure in their lives as they, but brighter far in their genius, and more fortunate in Its nurture. Poetry from female lips was then half a wonder and half a reproach. But now 'tis no longer rare— not even the highest-- 80 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. yes, the highest — for Innocence and Purity are of the highest hierarchies; and the thnughts and feelings they inspire, though breathed in ■words and tones, "gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman," are yet lofty as the stars, and humble too as the flowers beneath our feet. We have not forgotten an order of poets, pe- culiar, we believe, to our own enlightened land — a high order of poets sj)rung from the lower orders of the people — and not only sprung from them, but bred as well as born in "the huts where poor men lie," and glorifying their condition by the light of sung. Such glory be- longs — we believe — exclusively to this country and to this age. Mr. Southey, who in his own high genius and fame is never insensible to the virtues of his fellow-men, however humble and obscure the sphere in which they may move, has sent forth a volume — and a most interesting one — on the uneducated pdets; nor shall we presume to gainsay one of his bene- volent words. But this we do say, that all the verse-writers of whom he there treats, and all the verse-writers of the same sort uf whom he does not treat, that ever existed on the face of the earth, shrink up into a lean and shrivelled bundle of leaves or sticks, compared with these Five — Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Bloomfield, and Clare. It must be a strong soil — the soil of this Britain — which sends up such products ; and we must not complain of the clime beneath which they grow to such height, and bear such fruitage. The spirit of domestic life mu^'t be sound — the natural knowledge of good and evil high — the religion true — the laws just — and the government, on the whole, good, methinks, that have all conspired to educate thc^e chil- dren of genius, whose souls Nature had framed of the finer clay. Such men seem to us more clearly and cer- .ainly men of genius, than many who, under different circumstances, may have effecied higher achievements. For though they en- joyed in their condition inelfable blessings to (^ilate their spirits, and touch them with all tenderest thoughts, it is not easy to imagine, on the other hand, the deadening or degrading influences to which by that condition they were inevitably exposed, and which keep down the heaven-aspiring flame of genius, or ex- tinguish it wholly, or hold it smouldering under all sorts of rubbish. Only look at the attempts in verse of the common run of clodhoppers. Buy a few ballads from the wall or stall — and you groan to think that you have been born — such is the mess of mire and filth which often, without the slightest intention of offence, those rural, city, or suburban bards of the lower orders prepare for boys, virgins, and matrons, who all devour it greedily, without suspicion. Strange it is that even in that mural minstrelsy, occasionally occurs a phrase or line, and even stanza, sweet and simple, and to nature true; but consider it in the light of poetry read, re- cited, and sung by the people, and you might well be appalled by the revelation tlierein made of the tastes, feelings, and thoughts of the lower orders. And yet in the midst of all the popularity of such productions, the best of Burns' poems, his Cottar's Saturday Night, and most delicate of his songs, are still more popu- lar, and read by the same classes with a still greater eagerness of delight. Into this mystery we shall not now inquire; but we mention it now merely to show how divine a thing true genius is, which, burning within the bosoms of a few favourite sons of nature, guards them from all such pollution, lifts them up above it all, purifies their whole being, and without consuming their family affections or friend- ships, or making them unhappy with their lot, and disgusted with all about them, reveals to them all that is fair and bright and beautiful in feeling and in imagination, makes them very poets indeed, and should fortune favour, and chance and accident, gains for them wide over the world, the glory of a poet's name. From all such evil influences incident to their condition — and we are now speaking but of the evil — The Five emerged; and first and foremost — Burns. Our dearly beloved Thomas Carlyle is reported to have said at a dinner given to Allan Cunningham in Dumfries, that Burns was not only one of the greatest of poets, but likewise of philosophers. We hope not. What he did may be told in one short sentence. His genius purified and ennobled in his imagination and in his heart the cha- racter and condition of the Scottish peasantry — and reflected them, ideally true to nature, in the living waters of Song. That is what he did ; bnt to do that, did not require the highest powers of the poet and the philosopher. Nay, had he marvellously possessed ihem, he never would have written a single line of the poetry of the late Robert Burns. Thank Heaven for not having made him such a man — but merely the .Ayrshire Ploughman. He was called into existence for a certain work, for the fulness of time was come — but he was neither a iShak- speare, nor a sScott, nor a Goethe ; and therefore he rejoiced in writing tlje Saturday Night, and the Twa Dogs, and the Holy Fair, and O' a' the Airis the Win' can blaw, and eke the Vision. But forbid it, all ye (Jracious Powers! that we should quarrel with Thomas Carlyle — and that, too, for calling Robert Burns one of the greatest poets and philosophers. Like a strong man rejoicing to run a race, we behold Burns in his golden prime; and glory gleams from the Peasant's head, far and wide over Scotland. See the shadow loitering to the iomb I frenzied with fears of a prison — for some five pound debt^-existing, perhaps, but in his diseased imagination — for, alas ! sorely diseased it was, and he too, at last, seemed somewhat insane. He esca])es that disgrace in the grave. Buried with his bones be all remembrances of his miseries ! But the spirit of song, which was his true spirit, un- polluted and unfallen, lives, and breathes, and has its being, in the peasant-life of Scotland; his songs, which are as household and sheep- fold words, consecrated by the charm that is in all the heart's purest affectiims, love and pity, and the joy of grief, shall never decay, till among the people have decayed the virtues which they celebrate, and by which they were inspired; and should some dismal change in the skies ever overshadow the sunshine of our national character, and savage storms end in sullen stilluciis, which is moral death, in (be AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. 81 poetry of Burns the natives of happier lands will see how noble was once the degenerated race that may then be looking down disconso- lately on the dim grass of Scotland with the unuplified eyes of cowards and slaves. The truth ought always to be spoken ; and therefore we say that in fancy James Hogg — in spite of his name and his teeth — was not inferior to Robert Burns — and why not 1 The Forest is a better school-room for Fancy than ever Burns studied in ; it overflowed with poetical traditions. But comparisons are always odious; and the great glory of James is, that he is as unlike Robert as ever one poet was unlike another. Among hills that once were a forest, and still bear that name, and by the side of a river not unknown in song, lying in his plaid on a brae among the "woolly people," behold that true son of genius — "The Ettrick Shepherd." We are never so happy as when praising James; but pastoral poets are the most incom- prehensible of God's creatures; and here is one of the best of them all, who confesses the Chaldec and denies the JVoctes ! The Queen's Wake is a garland of fair forest flowers, bound with a band of rushes from the moor. It is not a poem — not it — nor was it intended to be so; you mii;ht as well call a bright bouquet of flowers a flower, which, by the by, we do in Scotland. Some of the ballads are very beautiful ; one or two even splendid; most of them spirited; and the worst far better than the best that ever was written by any bard in danger of being a blockhead. "Kilmeny" alone jilaces our (ay, oi(r) Shepherd among the Un whom fat<' may have given sovereign power over his whole life. Well, then — or rather ill, then — Burns behaved as most men do in misery — and the farm going to ruin — that is, crop and stock to pay the rent — he desired to be — and was made — an Ex- ciseman. And for that — you ninny — you are whinnying scornfully at Scotland ! Many a better man than yourself — beg your pardon — has been, and is now. an Exciseman. Nay, to be plain with you — we doubt if your educa- tion has been sufliciently intellectual for an Exciseman. We never heard it said of )-ou, "And even the story rnn that he could gauge." Burns then was made what he desired to be — what he was fit for — though you are not — and what \yas in itself respectable — an Exciseman. His salary was not so large certainly as that of the Bishop of Durham — or even of London — but it was certainly larger than that of many a curate at that time doing perhaps double or treble duly in those dioceses, without much audible complaint on their part, or outcry from Scotland against blind and brutal English bi- shops, or against beggarly England, for starving AN HOUR'S TALK ABOTTT POETRY. 87 her pauper-curates, by whatever genius or erudition adorned. Burns died an Exciseman, it is true, at the age of thirty-seven ; on the same day died an English curate we could name, a surpassing scholar, and of stainless virtue, blind, palsied, "old and miserably poor" — without as much money as would bury him; and no wonder, for he never had the salary of a Scotch Exciseman. Two blacks — nay twenty — won't make a white. True — but one black is as black as another — and the Southern Pot, brazen as it is, must not abuse with impunity the North- ern Pan. But now to the right nail, and let us knock it on the head. What did England do for her own Bloomfield 1 He was not in ge- nius to be spoken of in the same year with Burns — but he was beyond all compare, and out of all sight, the best poet that had arisen produced by England's lower orders. He was the most spiritual shoemaker that ever handled an awl. The Farmer's Boy is a wonderful poem — and will live in the poetry of England. Did England, then, keep Bloomfield in comfort, and scatter (lowers along the smooth and sunny path that led him to the grave! No. He had given him, by some minister or other, we believe Lord Sidmouth, a paltry place in some office or other — most uncongenial with all his nature and all his habits — of which the shabby salary was insufficient to purchase for his family eveu the bare necessaries of life. He thus dragged out for many long obscure years a sickly existence, as miserable as the existence of a good man can be made by narrowest circumstances — and all the while Englishmen were scoffingly scorning, with haughty and bitter taunts, the patronage that, at his own earnest desire, made Burns an Ex- ciseman. Nay, when Southey, late in Bloom- field's life, and when it was drawing mourn- fully to a close, proposed a contribution for his behoof, and put down his own five pounds, how many purse-strings were untied 1 how much fine gold was poured out for the indi- gent son of genius and virtue! Shame shuffles the sum out of sight — for it was not sufficient to have bought the manumission of an old negro slave. It was no easy matter to deal rightly with such a man as Burns. In those disturbed and distracted times, still more difficult was it to carry into execution any designs for his good — and much was there even to excuse his coun- trymen then in power for looking upon him with an evil eye. But Bloomfield led a pure, peaceable, and blameless life. Easy, indeed, would it have been to make him happy — but he was as much forgotten as if he had been dead ; and when he died — did England mourn over him — or, after having denied him bread, give him so much as a stone 1 No. He dropt into the grave with no other lament we ever heard of but a few copies of poorish verses in some of the Annuals, and seldom or never now does one hear a whisper of his name. O fie ! well may the white rose blush red — and the red rose' turn pale. Let England then leave Scotland to her sh;ime about Burns ; and, think- ing of her own treatment of Bloomfield, cover her own face with both her hands, and con- fess that it was pitiful. At least, if she will n&. hang down her head in humiliation for her own neglect of her own "poetic child," let her not hold it high over Scotland for the neglect of hers — palliated as that neglect was by many things — and since, in some measure, expiated by a whole nation's tears shed over her great poet's grave. What ! not a word for Allan Ramsay 1 The- ocritus was a pleasant Pastoral, and Sicilia sees him among the stars. But all his dear Idyls together are not equal in worth to the single Gentle Shepherd. Habbie's How is a hallowed place now among the green airy Pentlands. Sacred for ever the solitary murmur of that waterfa' ! " A flowerie howm, between twa verdant l)raes, Where lassies use to wash and bleach their claes; A trotting bnrnie, wimpling through the frround. It's channel pebbles, shining, smooth, and round: Here view twa baretoct beauties, clean and clear, 'Twill please your eye, then gratify your ear; While Jenny what she wishes discommends. And Meg, with better sense, true love defends !" "About them and siclike," is the whole poem. Yet " faithful loves shall memorize the song." Without any scenery but that of rafters, which overhead fancy may suppose a grove, 'tis even yet sometimes acted by rustics in the barn, though nothing on this earth will ever persuade a low-born Scottish lass to take a part in a play; while delightful is felt, even by the lords and ladies of the land, the simple Drama of humble life ; and we ourselves have seen a high-born maiden look " beautiful exceedingly" as Patie's Betrothed, kilted to the knee in the kirtle of a Shepherdess. We have been gradually growing national overmuch, and are about to grow even more so, therefore ask you to what era, pray, did Thomson belong? To none. Thomson had no precursor — and till Cowper no follower. He efTulged all at once sunlike — like Scotland's storm-loving, mist-enamoured sun, which till you have seen on a day of thunder, you can- not be said ever to have seen the sun. Cow- per followed Thomson merely in time. We should have had the Task, even had we never had the Seasons. These two were "Heralds of a mighty train ensuing;" add them, then, to the worthies of our own age, and they belong to it — and all the rest of the poetry of the mo- dern world — to which add that of the ancient — if multiplied by ten in quantity — and by twenty in quality — would not so variously, so vigor- ously, and so truly image the form and pres- sure, the life and spirit of the mother of us all Nature. Are then the Seasons and the Task Great Poems! Yes,— Why ! What! Do you need to be told that that Poem must be great, which was the first to paint the rolling mystery of the year, amd to show that all its Seasons are but the varied God ! The idea was original and sublime ; and the fulfilment thereof so complete, that some six thousand years having elapsed between the creation of the world and of that poem, some sixty thou- sand, we prophesy, will elapse between the ap- pearance of that poem and the publication of another equally great, on a subject external to the mind, equally magnificent. We furtlier presume, that you hold sacr'^d the Hearth. 88 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Now, in the Task, the Hearth is the heart of the poem, just as it is of a happy house. No other poem is so full of domestic happiness — humble and high ; none is so breathed over by the spirit of the Christian religion. Poetry, which, though not dead, had long been sleeping in Scotland, was restored to waking life by Thomson. His genius was na- tional ; and so, too, was the subject of his first and greatest song. By saying that his genius was national, we mean that its temperament was enthusiastic and passicmatc, and that, though highly imaginative, the sources of its power lay in the heart. The Castle of Indo- lence is distinguished by purer taste and finer fancy; but with all its exquisite beauties, that poem is but the vision of a dream. The Sea- sons are glorious realities ; and the charm of the strain that sings the " rolling year" is its truth. But what mean we by saying that the Seasons are a national subject 1 — do we assert that they are solely Scottish ? That would be too bold, even for us; but we scruple not to assert, that Thomson has made them so, as far as might be without insult, injury, or injustice, to the rest of the globe. His suns rise and set in Scottish heavens; his "deep-fermentmg tempests are brewed in grim evening" Scot- tish skies ; Scottish is his thunder of cloud and cataract ; his " vapours, and snows, and storms" are Scottish ; and, strange as the assertion would have sounded in the ears of Samuel Johnson, Scottish are his woods, their sugh, and their roar; nor less their stillness, more awful amidst the vast multitude of steady stems, than when all the sullen pine-tops are swinging to the hurricane. A dread love of his native land was in his heart when he cried in the solitude — "Hail, kindrcil glooms! conpciiial horrors liail!" The genius of Home was national — and so, too, was the subject of his justly famous Tra- gedy of Douglas. He had studied the old Bal- lads ; their simplicities were sweet to him as wall-flowers on ruins. On the story of Gill Morice, who was an Earl's son, he founded the Tragedy, which surely no Scottish eyes ever witnessed without tears. Are not these most Scottish lines?— " Ye woods anil wilds, whose melancholy gloom Accords with my soul's sadness I" And these even more so — "Red came the river down, and lovid and oft The anpry Spirit of the water shriek'd :" The Scottish Tragedian in an evil hour crossed the Tweed, riding on horseback all the way to London. His genius got .\nslificd. took a con- sumption, and perished in the priine of life.' But nearly half a century afterwards, on see- ing the Siddons in Lady Rnndolj.h, and hearing her low, deep, wild, ws-begone voice exclaim, "My beautiful! my brave!" "the aged harp- er's soul awoke," and his dim eyes were again lighted up for a moment with the fires of ge- nius — say rather for a moment bedewed with the tears of sensibility re-awakened from decay and dotage. The genius of Beattie was national, and so was the subject of his charming song — The Minstrel. For what is its design 1 He Tells us, (> trace the progress of a poetical genius, born in a rude age, from the first dawning of reason and fancy, till that period at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a Scottish Minstrel; that is, as an* itinerant poet and musician — a character which, accord- ing to the notions of our forefathers, was not only respectable, but sacred. "There lived in Gothic days, as legends ti-ll, A shepherd swain, a man of low decree ; Whose sires perchance in Fairyland might dwell, .Sicilian groves and vales of Arcady ; But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie ; A nation famed for song and beauty's charms; Zealous, yet modest ; innocent, though free; Patient of toil, serene amid alarms ; Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms. "The shepherd swain, of whom I mention made. On .Scotia's mountains (vd his little flock ; The sickle, scythe, or plough he never sway'd; An honest heart was almost all his stock; Ilis drink the living waters from the rock ; The milky dams supplied his board, and lent Their kiu