ページの画像
PDF
ePub

which in good truth is floating there for ever on the bosom of nature.

That description, perhaps, is not so very much amiss; but should you think otherwise, be so good as give us a better-meanwhile let us descend from The Station-and its stained windows-stained into setting sunlight-frost and snow-the purpling autumn-and the first faint vernal green—and re-embark at the Ferry-House pier. Berkshire Island is fair-but we have always looked at it with an evil eye since unable to weather it in our old schooner, one day when the Victory, on the same tack, shot by it to windward like a salmon. But now we are half-way between Storr's Point and Rawlinson's Nab-so, my dear Garnet, down with the helm and let us put about (who is that catching crabs?) for a fine front view of the Grecian edifice. It does honour to the genius of Gandy -and say what people choose of a classic clime, the light of a Westmoreland sky falls beautifully on that marblelike stone, which, whether the heavens be in gloom or glory, "shines well where it stands," and flings across the lake a majestic shadow. Methought there passed along the lawn the image of one now in his tomb! The memory of that bright day returns, when Windermere glittered with all her sails in honour of the great Northern Minstrel, and of him the Eloquent, whose lips are now mute in the dust. Methinks we see his smile benignthat we hear his voice silver-sweet!

"But away with melancholy,
Nor doleful changes ring”—

as such thoughts came like shadows, like shadows let them depart-and spite of that which happeneth to all men-"this one day we give to merriment." Pull, Billy, pull-or we will turn you round—and in that case there is no refreshment nearer than Newby-bridge. The Naiad feels the invigorated impulse-and her cut-water murmurs to the tune of six knots through the tiny cataract foaming round her bows. The woods are all running down the lake—and at that rate, by two post meridiem will be in the sea.

Commend us-on a tour-to lunch and dinner in one. 'Tis a saving both of time and money-and of all the dinner-lunches that ever were set upon a sublunary table, the facile principes are the dinner-lunches you may devour in the White Lion, Bowness. Take a walk-and a seat on the green that overlooks the village, almost on a level with the lead-roof of the venerable church-while Hebe is laying the cloth for a repast fit for Jove, Juno, and the other heathen gods and goddesses-and if you must have politics-why, call for the Standard or Sun, (heavens! there is that Whig already at the Times,) and devote a few hurried and hungry minutes to the new French Revolution. Why, the green of all greens-often traced by us of yore beneath the midnight moonlight-till a path was worn along the edge of the low wall, still called "North's Walk"-is absolutely converted into a reading-room, and our laking party into a political club. There is Louisa with the Leeds Intelligencer-and Matilda with the Morning Herald-and Harriet with that York paper worth them all put together-for it tells of Priam, and the Cardinal, and St. Nicholas,-but, hark! a soft footstep! And then a soft voice-no dialect or accent pleasanter than the Westmoreland-whispers that the dinner-lunch is on the table-and no reading article like a cold round of beef—or a veal-pie! Let the Parisians settle their constitution as they will-meanwhile let us strengthen ours-and after a single glass of Madeira— and a horn of home-brewed-let us off on foot-on horseback-in gig-car-and chariot-to Troutbeck.

It is about a couple of miles, we should think, from Bowness to Cook's House along the turnpike roadhalf the distance lying embowered in the Rayrig woods -and half open to lake, cloud, and sky. It is pleasant to lose sight now and then of the lake along whose banks you are travelling, especially if during separation you become a Druid. The water woos you at your return with her bluest smile, and her whitest murmur. Some of the finest trees in all the Rayrig woods have had the good sense to grow by the roadside, where they can see all that is passing, and make their own observations on us deciduous plants. Few of them seem

to be very old-much older than Christopher North —and, like him, they wear well, trunk sound to the core, arms with a long sweep, and head in fine proportions of cerebral developement, fortified against all storms-perfect pictures of oaks in their prime. You may see one-without looking for it-near a farm-house called Miller-ground—himself a grove. His trunk is clothed in a tunic of moss, which shows the ancient silvan to great advantage-and it would be no easy matter to give him a fall. Should you wish to see Windermere in all her glory, you have but to enter a gate a few yards on this side of his shade, and ascend an eminence called by us Greenbank-but you had as well leave your red mantle in the carriage, for an enormous white, long-horned Lancashire bull has for some years established his head-quarters there, and you would not wish your wife to become a widow, with six fatherless children. But the royal road of poetry is often the most splendid and by keeping the turnpike, you soon find yourself on a terrace to which there was nothing to compare in the hanging gardens of Babylon. There is the widest breadth of water-the richest foreground of wood-and the most magnificent background of mountains-not only in Westmoreland, but-believe us-in all the world. That blue roof is Calgarth-and no traveller ever pauses on this brow without giving it a blessing for the sake of the illustrious dead-for there long dwelt in the body of Bishop Watson, the defender of the faith, and there within the shadow of his memory still dwell those dearest on earth to his beatified spirit. So pass along in high and solemn thought, till you lose sight of Calgarth in the lone road that leads by St. Catherines, and then relapse into pleasant fancies and picturesque dreams. This is the best way by far of approaching Troutbeck. No ups and downs in this life were ever more enlivening-not even the ups and downs of a bird learning to fly. Sheep-fences, seven feet high, are admirable contrivances for shutting out scenery; and by shutting out much scenery, why, you confer an unappreciable value on the little that remains visible, and feel as if you could hug it to your heart. But sometimes one does feel

tempted to shove down a few roods of intercepting stonewall higher than the horse-hair on a cuirassier's casque -though sheep should eat the suckers and scions, protected as they there shoot, at the price of the concealment of the picturesque and the poetical from beauty-searching eyes. That is a long lane, it is said, which has never a turning; so, this must be a short one, which has a hundred. You have turned your back on Windermereand our advice to you is, to keep your face to the moun tains. Troutbeck is a jewel-a diamond of a streambut bobbin-inills have exhausted some of the most lustrous pools, changing them into shallows, where the minnows rove. Deep dells are his delight-and he loves the rugged scaurs that intrench his wooded banks-and the fantastic rocks that tower-like hang at intervals over his winding course, and seem sometimes to block it upbut the miner works his way out beneath galleries and arches in the living stone-sometimes silent-sometimes singing-and sometimes roaring like thunder-till subsiding into a placid spirit, ere he reaches the woodenbridge in the bonny holms of Calgarth, he glides graceful as the swan that sometimes sees its image in his breast, and through alder and willow banks murmurs away his life in the lake.

Yes-that is Troutbeck Chapel-one of the smallest— and to our eyes the very simplest—of all the chapels among the hills. Yet will it be remembered when more pretending edifices are forgotten-just like some mild, sensible, but perhaps somewhat too silent person, whose acquaintanceship-nay, friendship-we feel a wish to cultivate we scarce know why-except that he is mild, sensible, and silent-whereas we would not be civil to the brusque, upsetting, and loquacious puppy at his elbow, whose information is as various as it is profound, were one word or look of courtesy to save him from the flames. For heaven's sake, Louisa, don't sketch Troutbeck Chapel! There is nothing but a square tower-a horizontal roof-and some perpendicular walls. The outlines of the mountains here have no specific character. That bridge is but a poor feature-and the stream here very commonplace.

Put them not on paper. Yet alive

-is not the secluded scene felt to be most beautiful? It has a soul. The pure spirit of the pastoral age is breathing here-in this utter noiselessness there is the oblivion of all turmoil—and as the bleating of flocks comes on the ear, along the fine air, from the green pastures of the Kentmere range of soft undulating hills, the stilled heart whispers to itself "this is peace."

The worst of it is, that of all the people that on earth do dwell, your Troutbeck statesmen are the most litigious -and most quarrelsome about straws. Not a footpath in all the parish that has not cost a hundred pounds in lawsuits. The most insignificant stile is referred to a full bench of magistrates. That gate was carried to the Quarter Sessions. No branch of a tree can shoot six inches over a march-wall without being indicted for a trespass. And should a frost-loosened stone tumble from some skrees down upon a neighbour's field, he will be served with a notice to quit before next morning. Many of the small properties hereabouts have been mortgaged over head and ears to fee rascally attorneys. Yet the last hoop of apples will go to the land-sharks-and the statesman, driven at last from his paternal fields, will sue for something or another in formâ pauperis, were it but the worthless wood and secondhand nails that may be destined for his coffin. This is a pretty picture of pastoral life-but we must take pastoral life as we find it. Nor have we any doubt that things were every whit as bad in the times of the Patriarchs-else, whence the satirical sneer, "sham Abraham?" Yonder is the village straggling away up along the hillside, till the farthest house seems a rock fallen with trees from the mountain. The cottages stand for the most part in clusters of twos or threes with here and there what in Scotland we should call a clachan-many a sma' toun within the ae lang toun-but where in ail braid Scotland is a mile-long scattered congregation of rural dwellings, all dropt down where the painter and the poet would have wished to plant them, on knolls, and in dells, and on banks and braes, and below tree-crested rocks, and all bound together in picturesque confusion, by old groves of ash,

« 前へ次へ »