nooks of the world;
or, a peep into the back settlements of england.
there are thousands of places in this beautiful kingdom, which if you could change their situation—if you could take some plain, monotonous, and uninteresting tracts from the neighbourhood of large cities, from positions barren and of daily observance, and place these in their stead—would acquire an incalculable value; while the common spots would serve the present inhabitants of those sweet places just as well, and often far better, for the ordinary purposes of their lives—for walking over in the day, sleeping in during the night, and raising grass, cattle, and corn upon. the dwellers of cities—the men who have made fortunes, or are making them, and yet long for the quietness and beauty of the country—but especially the literary, the nature-loving, the poetical—would, to use a common expression, jump at them; and, if it were in their power to secure them, would make heavens-upon-earth of them. yes! they are such spots as thousands are longing for; as the day-dreaming young, and the world-weary old, are yearning after, and painting to their mind’s eye, daily in great cities; and the dull, the common-place, the unpercipient of their beauty and their glory, are dwelling in them;—paradisiacal fields and magnificent mountains; or cloudy hollows in their mottled sides; or little cleuchs and glens, hidden and green—overhung[197] with wild wood—rocky, and resounding with dashing and splashing streams;—places, where the eye sees the distant flocks and their slowly-stalking shepherds—the climbing goat, the soaring eagle: and the ear catches their far-off cries; whence a thousand splendours and pageants, changing aspects, and kindling and dying glories, in earth and sky, are witnessed; the cheerful arising of morning—the still, crimson, violet, purple, azure, dim grey, and then dark fading away of day into night, are watched; where the high and clear grandeur and solitude of night, with its moon and stars, and wandering breezes, and soul-enwrapping freshness, are seen and felt. such places as these, and the brown or summer-empurpled heath, with its patch of ancient forest; its blasted, shattered, yet living old trees, greeting you with feelings and fancies of long-past centuries; the clear, rushing brook; the bubbling and most crystalline spring; and the turf that springs under your feet with a delicious elasticity, and sends up to your senses a fresh and forest-born odour; or cottages perched in the sides of glades, or on eminences by the sea—the soul-inspiring sea—with its wide views of coming and going ships, its fresh gales, and its everlasting change of light and life, on its waters, and on its shores; its sailors, and its fishermen, with all their doings, families, and dependencies—every one of them thoroughly covered and saturated with the spirit of picturesque and homely beauty; or inland hollows and fields, and old hamlets, lying amid great woods and slopes of wondrous loveliness;—if we could but turn things round, and bring these near us, and unite, at once, city advantages, city society, and them! but it never can be! and there are living in them, from generation to generation, numbers of people who are not to be envied, because they know nothing at all of the enviableness of their situation.
we are continually labouring to improve society—to diffuse education—to confer higher and ampler religious knowledge; but these people know little of all this—experience little of its effect; for their abodes, and natural paradises, lie far from the great tracks of travel and commerce; far from our great roads; in the most out-of-the-world places—the very nooks of the world.
if you come by chance upon them, you are struck with their admirable beauty, their solemn repose, their fresh and basking[198] solitude. you cannot help exclaiming, what happy people must these be! but, when you come to look closer into them, the delusion vanishes. they do not, in fact, see any beauty that you see. their minds have never been stirred from the sluggish routine of their daily life; their mental eye has never been unsealed, and directed to survey the advantages of their situation. they have been occupied with other things. like the farmer’s lad mentioned by wordsworth, their souls have become encrusted in their own torpor.
a sample should i give
of what this stock produces, to enrich
the tender age of life, ye would exclaim,
“is this the whistling plough-boy whose shrill notes
impart new gladness to the morning air?”
forgive me, if i venture to suspect
that many, sweet to hear of in soft verse,
are of no finer frame;—his joints are stiff;
beneath a cumbrous frock that to the knees
invests the thriving churl, his legs appear,
fellows to those that lustily upheld
the wooden-stools, for everlasting use,
whereon our fathers sate. and mark his brow!
under whose shaggy canopy are set
two eyes, not dim, but of a healthy stare;
wide, sluggish, blank, and ignorant and strange;
proclaiming boldly that they never drew
a look or motion of intelligence,
from infant conning of the christ-cross-row,
or puzzling through a primer, line by line,
till perfect mastery crown the pains at last.
the excursion, b. 8.
this, however, is one of the worst specimens of the most stupified class—farm-servants. wordsworth himself makes his good and wise wanderer, a shepherd in his youth, and describes him, when a lad, as impressed with the deepest sense of nature’s majesty. he represents him, in one of the noblest passages of the language, as witnessing the sun rise from some bold headland, and
rapt into still communion that transcends
the imperfect offices of prayer and praise.
and, indeed, the mountaineer must be generally excepted from[199] that torpor of mind i have alluded to. the forms of nature that perpetually surround him, are so bold and sublime, that they almost irresistibly impress, excite, and colour his spirit within him; and those legends and stirring histories which generally abound in them, co-operate with these natural influences. this unawakened intellect dwells more generally amid the humbler and quieter forms of natural beauty; in the “sleepy hollows” of more champaign regions.
it might be supposed that these nooks of the world would, in their seclusion, possess very much one moral character; but nothing can be more untrue. universally, they may seem old-fashioned, and full of a sweet tranquillity; but their inhabitants differ widely in character in different parts of the country—widely often in a short space, and in a manner that can only be accounted for by their less or greater communion with towns, less or greater degree of education extended to them—and the kind extended. where they are far from towns, and hold little intercourse with them, and have no manufactory in them, they may be dull, but they are seldom very vicious. if they have had little education, they lead a very mechanical sort of life; are often very boorish, and have very confined notions and contracted wishes; are rude in manner, but not bad in heart. i have been in places—ay, in this newspaper-reading age, where a newspaper never comes; where they have no public-house, no school, no church, and no doctor; and yet the district has been populous. but, in similarly situated places, where yet they had a simple, pious pastor—some primitive patriarch, like the venerable robert walker, of whom so admirable an account is given by wordsworth; where they have been blest with such a man amongst them, and where they have had a school; where they knew little of what was going on in the world, and where yet you were sure to find, in some crypt-like hole in the wall, or in a little fireside window, about half a dozen books—the bible, “hervey’s meditations among the tombs,” “baxter’s saint’s everlasting rest,” “romaine’s life of faith,” or his “drop of honey from the rock christ,” “macgowan’s life of christ,” or “drelincourt on death,” and such like volumes; or “robinson crusoe,” “philip quarle,” “the history of henry the earl of moreland,” “pilgrim’s progress,” or “pamela;”—have[200] you found a simplicity of heart and manner, a quiet prosperity, a nearer approach to the arcadian idea of rural life, than anywhere else in this country. there are yet such places to be found in our island, notwithstanding the awful truth of what was said by coleridge, that “care, like a foul hag, sits on us all; one class presses with iron foot upon the wounded heads beneath, and all struggle for a worthless supremacy, and all, to rise to it, move shackled by their expenses.”
but these are now few and far between; and they are certainly “nooks of the world,” far from manufacturing towns; for my experience coincides with that of captain lloyd, as given in his “field sports of the north:”—“manufactures, of whatever nature they may be, may certainly tend to enrich individuals, but, to my mind, they add little to the happiness of the community at large. in what parts of any country in the world, are such scenes of vice and squalid misery to be witnessed, as in manufacturing districts?” what he adds is very true—that, though it may appear singular, yet it is a fact, that the farther we retreat from great towns and manufactories, a greater degree of comfort is generally to be observed amongst the peasantry. it is, indeed, a strange relief to the spirit of one who has known something of the eager striving of the world, to come upon a spot where the inhabitants are passing through life, as it were, in a dreamlike pilgrimage, half unconscious of its trials and evils—an existence which, if it have not the merit of great and triumphant virtue, has that absence of selfish cunning, pride, sorrow, and degradation, which one would seek for in vain amid more bustling scenes. to find the young, soberly and cheerfully fulfilling their daily duties—nowhere affluence, but everywhere plenty and comfort observable—and the old, in their last tranquil days, seated in their easy chairs, or on the stone bench at their doors, glad to chat with you on all they have known on earth and hoped for in heaven—why, it would be more easy to scathe such a place with the evil spirit of the town, than to raise it in the scale of moral life. the experiment of improvement there, you feel, would be a hazardous one. it were easy and desirable to give more knowledge: but not easy to give it unaccompanied by those blighting contaminations that at present cling to it.
[201]
it is in those rural districts into which manufactories have spread—that are partly manufacturing and partly agricultural—that the population assumes its worst shape. the state of morals and manners amongst the working population of our great towns is terrible—far more so than casual observers are aware of. after all that has been done to reform and educate the working class, the torrent of corruption rolls on. the most active friends of education, the most active labourers in it, are ready to despair, and sometimes exclaim,—“what have we done, after all!” there, the spirit of man is aroused to a marvellous activity; but it is an unhealthful activity, and overpowers, in its extravagance, all attempts to direct it aright. “evil communications corrupt good manners” faster than good communications can counteract them; and where the rural population, in its simplicity, comes in contact with this spirit, it receives the contagion in its most exaggerated form—a desolating moral pestilence; and suffers in person and in mind. there, spread all the vice and baseness of the lowest grade of the town, made hideous by still greater vulgarity and ignorance, and unawed by the higher authorities, unchecked by the better influences which there prevail, in the example and exertions of a higher caste of society.
the methodists have done much to check the progress of demoralization in these districts. they have given vast numbers education; they have taken them away from the pot-house and the gambling-house; from low haunts and low pursuits. they have placed them in a certain circle, and invested them with a degree of moral and social importance. they have placed them where they have a character to sustain, and higher objects to strive after; where they have ceased to be operated upon by a perpetual series of evil influences, and have been brought under the regular operation of good ones. they have rescued them from brutality of mind and manners, and given them a more refined association on earth, and a warm hope of a still better existence hereafter. if they have not done all that could be desired, with such materials, they have done much, and the country owes them much. the thorough mastery of the evil requires the application of yet greater power—it requires a national power. the evil lies deeper than the surface; it lies in the distorted nature of our[202] social relations; and, before the population can be effectually reformed, its condition must be physically ameliorated!
there never was a more momentous and sure truth pronounced, than that pronounced by christ,—“they who take the sword, shall fall by the sword.” if they do not fall by its edge, they will by its hilt. it is under this evil that we are now labouring. as a nation we have fallen, through war, into all our present misery and crime. it is impossible that the great european kingdoms, with their present wealth and cultivated surfaces, in their present artificial state of society, can carry on war without enduring evils far more extensive, tremendous, and lasting, than the mere ravaging of lands, the destruction of towns, or even of human lives. we are, as a nation, an awful proof of this at this moment. by the chances of war, at one time manufacturing and farming almost for the world; prospering, apparently, on the miseries of whole kingdoms wrapt in one wide scene of promiscuous carnage and anarchy, our tradesmen and agriculturists commanded their own terms; and hence, on the one hand, they accumulated large fortunes, while, on the other, the nation, by its enormous military preparations—its fleets and armies marching and sailing everywhere, prepared to meet emergencies at all points and in all climes; by its aids and subsidies abroad; by its wasteful expenditure at home—piled up the most astounding debt ever heard of in the annals of the world. a vast working population was not merely demanded by this unnatural state of excitement, but might be said to be forced into existence, to supply all manner of articles to realms too busy in mutual slaughter to be able to manufacture or plough for themselves. every thing assumed a new and wonderful value. all classes, the working classes as well as the rest, with the apparent growing prosperity, advanced into habits of higher refinement and luxury. the tables of mechanics were heaped with loads of viands of the best quality, and of the highest price, as earliest in the market; their houses were crowded with furniture, till they themselves could scarcely turn round in them—clocks, sometimes two or three in one house; chests of drawers and tables thronged into the smallest rooms; looking-glasses, tea-trays, and prints, stuck on every possible space on the walls; and, from the ceiling depending hams, bags, baskets, fly-cages of many colours, and a miscellaneous congregation of other articles, that gave their[203] abodes more the aspect of warerooms or museums, than the dwellings of the working class. dress advanced in the same ratio; horses and gigs were in vast request; and the publicans and keepers of tea-gardens made ample fortunes.
the war ceased. commerce was thrown open to the competition of the world. the continental nations began to breathe, and to look round on their condition. their poverty and their spirit of emulation, the sight of their own stripped condition, and of england apparently enriched beyond calculation at their expense, set them rapidly about helping themselves. this could not but be quickly and deeply felt here. to maintain our position, all manner of artificial means were adopted. every class, feeling the tide of wealth changing its course, strove to keep what it had got. the working class, as individually the weakest, because they had spent their gains as they came, went to the ground. the value of every necessary of life was kept up as much as possible by legal enactments. the rate of wages fell. the manufacturers, impelled by the same necessity of struggling for the maintenance of their rank, were plunged into the most eager competition; the utmost pressure of reduction fell on the labour of the operatives, who, with their acquired habits, were ill able to bear it. they were thrust down to a condition the most pitiful and morally destructive—to excessive labour, to semi-starvation, to pauperism. they could not send their children to school—not so much from the expense of schooling—for that was made light by public contribution, and new plans of facility in teaching large numbers—but because they wanted every penny their children could earn, by any means, to aid in the common support. hence, mere infants were crowded in pestilent mills when they should have been growing in the fresh air, and were stunted and blighted in body and in mind—a system, the evil of which became so enormous as to call loudly upon the attention of the legislature, and the indignant wonder of the nation. the parents themselves had not a moment’s time to watch over their welfare or their morals; at least sixteen hours’ unremitting daily labour being necessary to the most miserable existence. evils accumulated on all sides. the working class considered themselves cast off from the sympathies of the upper classes, regarded and valued but as tools and machines; their children grew into ignorant[204] depravity, in spite of all efforts of law or philanthropy to prevent them. these causes still operate wherever manufacturing extends: and till the condition of this great class, whether in towns or villages, can be amended; till time for domestic relaxation can be given to the man, and a christian, rather than a literary, education to the boy—an inculcation of the beauty and necessity of the great christian principles; the necessity of reverencing the laws of god; doing, in all their intercourse with their fellow men, as they would be done by; the necessity of purity of life and justice of action, rather than the cant of religious feeling, and the blind mystery of sectarian doctrine,—the law and the philanthropy must be in vain.
to the simple, and yet uncontaminated parts of the country, there is yet a different kind of education that i should rejoice to see extended. it should be, to open the eyes of the rural population to the advantages of their situation;—to awaken a taste for the enjoyment of nature;—to give them a touch of the poetical;—to teach them to see the pleasantness of their quiet lives,—of their cottages and gardens,—of the freshness of the air and country around them, especially as contrasted with the poor and squalid alleys where those of their own rank, living in towns, necessarily take up their abode,—of the advantages in point of health and purity afforded to their children by their position,—of the majestic beauty of the day, with its morning animation, its evening sunsets, and twilights almost as beautiful; its nightly blue altitude, with its moon and stars:—all this might be readily done by the conversation of intelligent people, and by the diffusion of cheap publications amongst them; and done, too, without diminishing the relish for the daily business of their lives. airy and dreamy notions—notions of false refinement, and aspirations of soaring beyond their own sphere—are not inspired by sound and good intelligence, but by defective and bad education.
the sort of education i mean has long been realized in scotland, and with the happiest results. there, large towns and manufactories have produced their legitimate effect, as with us; but, in the rural districts, every child, by national provision, has a sound, plain education given him. he is brought up in habits of economy, and sentiments of rational religion, and the most solemn and thorough morality. the consequence is, that almost all grow[205] up with a sense of self-respect; a sense of the dignity of human nature; a determined resolve of depending on their own exertions: and though no people are so national, because they are made sensible of the beauty of their country and the honourable deeds of their forefathers, yet, if they cannot find means of living at home without degradation, and, indeed, without bettering their condition, they soberly march off, and find some place where they can, though it be at the very ends of the earth.
nothing is better known than the intelligence and order that distinguish a great portion of the rural population of scotland. no people are more diligent and persevering in their proper avocations; and yet none are more alive to the delights of literature. amid wild mountain tracks and vast heaths, where you scarcely see a house as you pass along for miles, and where you could not have passed two generations ago without danger of robbery or the dirk, they have book societies, and send new books to and fro to one another, with an alacrity and punctuality that are most delightful. when i have been pedestrianizing in that country, i have frequently accosted men at their work, or in their working dress—perhaps with their axe or their spade in their hands, and three or four children at their heels—and found them well acquainted with the latest good publications, and entertaining the soundest notions of them, without the aid of critics. such men in england would probably not have been able to read at all. they would have known nothing but the routine of their business, the state of the crop, and the gossip of the neighbourhood: but there, sturdy and laborious men, tanned with the sun, or smeared with the marl in which they had been delving, have not only been able to give all the knowledge of the district; its histories and traditions; the proprietorships, and other particulars of the neighbourhood; but their eyes have brightened at the mention of their great patriots, reformers, and philosophers, and their tongues have grown perfectly eloquent in discussing the works of their poets and other writers. the names of wallace, bruce, knox, fletcher of saltoun, the covenanters, scott, burns, hogg, campbell, wilson, and others, have been spells that have made them march away miles with me, when they could not get me into their own houses, and find it difficult to turn back.
[206]
now, why should not this be so in england? why should not similar means produce similar effects? they must and would; and by imbuing the rural population with a spirit as sound and rational, we should not only raise it in the social scale to a degree of worth and happiness at present not easily imaginable, but render the most important service to the country, by attaching “a bold peasantry, the country’s pride,” to their native soil, by the most powerful of ties, and rendering them both able and more determined to live in honourable dependence on self-exertion. book societies, under local management, should do for the country what mechanics’ libraries are doing for the towns—building up those habits, and perfecting those healthful tastes, for which popular education is but the bare foundation.
wordsworth gives an account of the early years of his wanderer, which, under such a system, might be that of thousands.
early had he learned
to reverence the volume that displays
the mystery, the life which cannot die:—
what wonder if his being thus became
sublime and comprehensive! low desires,
low thoughts, there had no place; yet was his heart
lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,
oft as he called those ecstasies to mind,
and whence they flowed; and from them he acquired
wisdom, which works through patience:—hence he learned
in oft-recurring hours of sober thought
to look on nature with a humble heart,
self-questioned, where it did not understand,
and with a superstitious eye of love.
so passed the time; yet to the nearest town
he duly went, with what small overplus
his earnings might supply, and brought away
the book that most had tempted his desires,
while at the stall he read. among the hills
he gazed upon that mighty orb of song,
the divine milton. lore of different kind,
the annual savings of a toilsome life,
his schoolmaster supplied; books that explain
the purer elements of truth, involved,
in lines and numbers, and, by charm severe,
(especially perceived where nature droops,
and feeling is suppressed) preserve the mind
busy in solitude and poverty.
[207]yet still uppermost,
nature was at his heart, as if he felt,
though yet he knew not how, a wasting power
in all things that from her sweet influence
might tend to wean him. therefore, with her hues,
her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,
he clothed the nakedness of austere truth,
while yet he lingered in the rudiments
of science, and among her simplest laws,
his triangles—they were the stars of heaven,
the silent stars! oft did he take delight
to measure th’ altitude of some tall crag
that is the eagle’s birthplace, or some peak
familiar with forgotten years.——
in dreams, in study, and in ardent thought,
thus was he reared; much wanting to assist
the growth of intellect, yet gaining more,
and every moral feeling of his soul
strengthened and braced, by breathing in content
the keen, the wholesome air of poverty,
and drinking from the well of homely life.
the excursion, b. 1.
such a process i should rejoice to see producing such characters in england. yes! milton, thomson, cowper, the pious and tender montgomery, and bloomfield, one of their own kind, would be noble and enriching studies for the simplest cottage, and cottage-garden, and field-walk. some of our condensed historians, our best essayists and divines, travellers, naturalists in a popular shape, and writers of fiction, as scott, and edgeworth, and de foe, might be with vast advantage diffused amongst them. let us hope it will one day be so. and already i know some who have reaped those blessings of an awakened heart and intellect, too long denied to the hard path of poverty, and which render them not the less sedate, industrious, and provident, but, on the contrary, more so. they have made them, in the humblest of stations, the happiest of men; quickened their sensibilities towards their wives and children; converted the fields, the places of their daily toil, into places of earnest meditative delight—schools of perpetual observation of god’s creative energy and wisdom.
it was but the other day that the farming-man of a neighbouring lady having been pointed out to me as at once remarkably fond of reading and attached to his profession, i entered into[208] conversation with him; and it is long since i experienced such a cordial pleasure as in the contemplation of the character that opened upon me. he was a strong man; not to be distinguished by his dress and appearance from those of his class, but having a very intelligent countenance; and the vigorous, healthful feelings, and right views, that seemed to fill not only his mind but his whole frame, spoke volumes for that vast enjoyment and elevation of character which a rightly directed taste for reading would diffuse amongst our peasantry. his sound appreciation of those authors he had read—some of our best poets, historians, essayists, and travellers—was truly cheering, when contrasted with the miserable and frippery taste which distinguishes a large class of readers; where a-thousand-times-repeated novels of fashionable life, neither original in conception nor of any worth in their object—the languid offspring of a tinsel and exotic existence—are read because they can be read without the labour of thinking. while such works are poured in legions upon the public, like a host of dead leaves from the forest, driven along in mimic life by a mighty wind—and while such things are suffered to swell the puffiads of publishers, and shoulder away, or discourage, the substantial labours of high intellect—it is truly reviving to see the awakening of mind in the common people. it is, i am persuaded, from the people that a regenerating power must come—a new infusion of better blood into our literary system. the inanities of fashion must weary the spirit of a great nation, and be thrown off; strong, native genius, from the measureless, unploughed regions of the popular mind—robust, gigantic, uneffeminated by luxury, glitter, and sloth—will rise up, and put all soulless artificialities to shame; and already mighty are the symptoms of such a change manifested, in an array of names that might be adduced. but i must not be led farther away by this seducing topic.
i found this countryman was a member of our artisans’ library, and every saturday evening he walked over to the town to exchange his books. i asked him whether reading did not make him less satisfied with his daily work; his answer deserves universal attention:—“before he read, his work was weary to him; for, in the solitary fields, an empty head measured the time out tediously, to double its length; but, now, no place was so sweet as the solitary[209] fields: he had always something pleasant floating across his mind; and the labour was delightful, and the day only too short.” seeing his ardent attachment to the country, i sent him the last edition of “the book of the seasons;” and i must here give a verbatim et literatim extract from the note in which he acknowledged its receipt, because it not only contains an experimental proof of the falsity of a common alarm on the subject of popular education, but shews at what a little cost much happiness may be conveyed to a poor man:—“believe me, dear sir, this kind act has made an impression on my heart that time will not easily erase. there are none of your works, in my opinion, more valuable than this. the study of nature is not only the most delightful, but the most elevating. this will be true in every station of life. but how much more ought the poor man to prize this study! which if prized and pursued as it ought, will enable him to bear, with patient resignation and cheerfulness, the lot by providence assigned him. o sir! i pity the working man who possesses not a taste for reading. ’tis true, it may sometimes lead him to neglect the other more important duties of his station; but his better and more enlightened judgment will soon correct itself in this particular, and will enable him, while he steadily and diligently pursues his private studies, and participates in intellectual enjoyment, to prize, as he ought, his character as a man in every relative duty of life.”
what a nation would this be, filled with a peasantry holding such views, and possessing such a consequent character as this!
the sources of enjoyment in nature have been too long closed to the poor. the rich can wander from side to side of the island, and explore its coasts, its fields, and forests—but the poor man is fettered to the spot. the rich can enter the galleries and exhibitions of cities, and contemplate all the great works of art; the poor ought to be taught to know that, if they cannot see the works of art—statues and paintings—they can see those of god;—if they cannot gaze on the finest forms of beauty from the chisel of the sculptor, they may be taught to distinguish the beauty of all living forms;—if they cannot behold splendid paintings of landscapes, of mountains, of sea-coasts, of sunrises and sunsets; they can see, one or other of them, all the originals of these—originals to whose magnificence and glory the copies never can approach. to the poor,[210] but properly educated man, every walk will become a luxury, a poem, a painting—a source of the sweetest feelings and the most elevating reflections.
but there is one class in these back settlements of england to whom a liberal education is most requisite, and to whom it would be most difficult to give it—the class of smaller resident proprietors. the effect of the possession of property in such places is singular and most lamentable. it produces the most impenetrable hardness of nature—the most selfish and sordid dispositions. everywhere, the tendency of accumulation is to generate selfishness: but, in towns, there are many counteracting influences; the emulative desire of vying, in mode of life, with equals and superiors—the greater spread of information—the various objects of pleasure and association, which keep open the avenues of expenditure, not only in the purse, but in the heart. here there are none. amusements and dissipations are self-gratulatingly denounced as gross follies and sins; objects of display, as pride. the consequence is, that habits of the strangest parsimony prevail—the rudest furniture, the rudest style of living. men who, in a town or its neighbourhood, would appear as gentlemen, and, perhaps, keep a carriage, there wear often clouted shoes, threadbare and patched clothes, and a hat not worth a farthing; and all in a fashion of the most awkward rusticity. all wisdom is supposed to lie in penuriousness. they have abundance of maxims for ever in their mouths, full of that philosophy; as “penny-wise and pound-foolish”—“a penny saved is a penny got”—“a pin a-day’s a groat a-year.” all ideas seem absorbed in the one grand idea of accumulating coin, that will never be of more value to them than so many oyster-shells. such a thing as a noble or generous sentiment would be a surprise to their own souls. of such men are made the hardest overseers of the poor; whose screwing, iron-handed administration of relief is the boast of the parish, and has led to the most monstrous abuses. to them all objects are alike; they have no discrimination; the old and young, the idle and industrious, the sturdy vagabond, and the helpless and dying!—they deem it a virtue to deny them all, till a higher power forces the reluctant doit from their gripe. they are surly, yet proud churls, living wrapped in a sense of their own importance; for they see nobody above them, except there be a squire or a lord[211] in the parish; and they see little of him, and then only to make their passing obsequious bow; for they are at once
tyrants to the weak, and cowards to the strong.
any education, any change, would be a blessing to these men, that would bring them into collision with those of their own supposed standing, but with better education and more liberal views and habits. the excess to which these causes operate in some of these out-of-the-world places, is scarcely to be credited: they produce the strangest scenes and the strangest characters. let us take a specimen or two from one parish, that would be easily paralleled in many others.
in one part of this secluded neighbourhood, you approach extensive woods, and behold amongst them a house of corresponding air and dimensions—a mansion befitting a large landed proprietor. if you choose to explore the outbuildings belonging to it, you will find there a regularly educated and authorized physician, living in a dovecot, and writing prescriptions for any that choose to employ him, for a crown, or even half-a-crown, which he spends in drink. paternal example and inculcations made him what he is; unfitted him for success in his profession, and left him dependent on his elder brother, who affords him the asylum of his dovecot, yet so grudgingly that he has even attempted to dislodge him by pulling off the roof; and the poor doctor owes his retreat, not to his brother’s good-will, but to his own possession of a brace of formidable bull-dogs, that menace the destruction of any assailant. the dogs lie in his chamber when you enter, with their noses on the ground, and their dark glittering eyes fixed steadily upon you, and are ready, at a signal, to spring on you, and tear you to pieces. the doctor’s free potations have now deprived him of the power of locomotion; he cannot quit his pigeon-house; but one of his bull-dogs he has trained to act as his emissary, and with a note suspended to his neck by a tape, he goes to certain houses in the neighbouring village, and so communicates his wishes to certain cronies of his, who are in the habit of attending to them. the dog would tear any one to pieces that attempted to stop him while on his master’s errands, being a very strong and fierce creature; but, if he is not molested, he goes very[212] civilly along to his place of destination, and, when the note is taken off his neck by the proper hands, returns with great punctuality and decorum.
it must be said of this curiosity of a physician, that he is the descendant of a very curious family; whose history for the last three generations would be a regular series of eccentricities; and the first of whom, here resident, was a celebrated piratical captain, who is said to have come hither disguised as a peasant, seeking as secluded a country as he could find, and driving before him an ass loaded with gold. it is certain that he purchased very extensive estates, and that one of his descendants was lately in parliament, who, partaking of the family qualities, excited more surprise and more laughter in the house, than, perhaps, any man since the days of sir thomas lethbridge.
not far thence, stands another residence. at some distance it appears a goodly manor-house. it is large; with white walls and many antique gables; a stately avenue of elms in front; tall pines about it, the landmark of the whole country round: a spacious garden, with a summer-house on the wall, seeming to have been built when there was some taste there for those rural enjoyments which such a place is calculated to afford to the amiable, country-loving, and refined. as you come near, there appear signs of neglect and decay. old timber, litter, and large stones lie about; there are broken windows, unpainted and rotting wood-work: every thing looks forlorn, as if it were the residence of poverty on the verge of utter destitution.
the fact is, the owner has landed property worth from thirty to forty thousand pounds. but see the man himself! there he goes, limping across his yard, having permanently injured one of his legs in some of his farming operations. there he goes—a tall hard-featured, weather-beaten man, dressed in the garb of the most rustic husbandman: strong clouted ankle-boots, blue or black ribbed worsted stockings; corduroy small-clothes; a yellow striped waistcoat, and a coat of coarse grey cloth, cut short, in a rude fashion, and illustrated with metal buttons; a hat that seems to have been originally made of coarse wool or dog’s hair—to have cost some four-and-sixpence some dozen years ago—brown, threadbare, and cocked up behind, by propping on his coat collar.
[213]
he has brought up a family of three sons, and never spent on their education three pounds. the consequence has been just what might be expected. they came to know, as they grew up, “for quickly comes such knowledge,” their expectations; and they turned out rude, savage, and drunken. one married a servant girl, and she dying, the son brought himself and several children to the old man’s to live. warned by this—for, with all his clownish parsimony, he has pride—the pride of property—he has put the others on farms, and they have married farmer’s daughters: but, always living in expectation of the old man’s death, they attend to no business; always looking forward to the possession of his wealth, they have already condemned a good part of it. if any man could be punished that man is, for sparing the expense of their education, and for the example set before them; for, what he has made the sole object of all his thoughts and labours, he sees them squandering, and knows that they will squander it all. but he himself is not guilty of all this; he is but the victim of his own education, and the maxims and manners of his ancestors. if he could have seen the usefulness of education to his sons, he could not have found in his heart to spend the necessary money; but he could not see it: anything further than to be able to sign a receipt, and reckon a sum of money in their heads, he called trash and nonsense.
when his sons were growing towards men, i have chanced to pass his farm-yard, and seen him and two of them filling a manure-cart; labouring, puffing and blowing, and perspiring, as if their lives depended on their labour; and the old man was urging them on with continual curses—“curse thy body, dick! curse thy body, ben!—ben! dick! ben! dick! work, lads, work!” and these hopeful sons were repaying their father’s curses with the same horrible earnestness.
a gentleman once told me that, having to call on this man about some money transaction, he was detained till twelve o’clock, and desired to stay dinner, that being his hour. out of curiosity he consented. every thing about the house was in the rudest and most desolate state. i do not know whether they had a cloth spread on the sturdy oak table, which supported a set of pewter plates, a roasted fowl, and a pudding in a huge brown earthen dish.[214] the wife, stripped to her stays and quilted petticoat, was too busy making cheese and scolding the servants to come to dinner. the pater familias and his guest sat down together. as he cut up the fowl, the two great lads, dick and ben, then about twelve and fourteen years of age, came with their wild eyes staring sharply out of their bushy heads of wild hair, and hung over their father’s chair, one on each side, with an eager expression of voracity; for they were not asked to sit down. the father, as if he expected them to pounce on the dinner and carry it off, kept a sharp look-out on them; and though, out of deference to his guest, he restrained his curses, he kept vociferating, as he turned first to one and then to the other, and then gave a cut at the fowl—“ben! dick! get away, lads! get away! get away! get away!” but the moment a leg and a wing were cut off, the lads made a sudden spring, and each seizing a joint, bounded out of the apartment, leaving the old man in wonder at the unmanageableness of his sons. from such an education who can doubt the result?—a brood of savages, the nuisance of the neighbourhood, and torment of the old man’s days. to such a height has the old man’s agony arisen at times, as he saw the wasteful conduct of his sons, that it is a pretty well established fact, that on one occasion he threw himself down in a ditch in one of his own fields, and—did not pray to die, for he never knew the beginning, middle, or end of a prayer, but he tried to die; but, after a long and weary endeavour, finding it in vain, he got up and hobbled off home again, saying—“well, i see it is as hard to die as to live. i can’t die! i can’t die! i must even bear it, till these lads kill me by inches—and that must be a plaguy while first; for i measure two yards of bad stuff, and i think i’m as hard as a nur,[5] and as tough as whit-leather.”
[5] nur—a hard knot of wood used by boys at bandy instead of a ball.
ben, now upwards of forty years of age, still lives with the old man, working as a labourer on his farm, and is maintained with his children. money he never sees: but his father allows him to sell bundles of straw; and he may be seen, in an evening, with two bundles of straw under each arm, proceeding to the alehouse in the next village, where he barters them for the evening cup. nay, the other night, a person encountered, as he supposed, a[215] thief, issuing from the old man’s yard, with a huge beam on his shoulder. it was ben, going to turn it into ale; who desired his neighbour to say nothing. nothing can more strikingly close this account than the old man’s usual description of his three sons. “my son dick has cain’s mark on his forehead; ben, if ale was a guinea a-pint, and he had but one guinea in the world, would buy a pint of ale; and, as for simon—he is a gentleman! he takes a certificate to shoot. he runs with those long legs of his over three parishes, and comes slinging home with a crow, or a pinet[6]—ay, ay, simon is a gentleman!”
[6] magpie.
in this same nook of the world might be seen, some years ago, two brothers, stout farmers—farmers of their own property—heaping curses and recriminations on each other about their possessions, in so loud a voice that they have been heard half a mile off. this enmity outlasted the elder, and burned in the breast of the younger for years after. for it was some years after, that he attended the funeral of a niece whom he left through life to the charity of another. when the funeral was over, they adjourned with the parson to the public-house; and here the person who had cared for the neglected niece, urged the uncle now to pay some part of the funeral charges. “yes,” said he, “thou hast been at a deal of cost,” (these country people still retain the use of thou and thee), “and here is sixpence for the parson’s glass of brandy and water.” the astonished man pushed back the sixpence with contempt; but, at this moment, in came a lad to tell them that the grave being made too near that of the deceased brother, the earth had suddenly fallen in, and broken in the lid of the old man’s coffin. at this, the living brother started up in evident delight, and exclaimed—“why, has it? why, has it? thou tells me summut, lad! thou tells me summut!” and he gave him the sixpence he had generously destined for the parson’s glass.
a scene, described to me by a professional land-agent, would seem to belong to the generation of parson adams and squire western, but it actually occurred but the other day, and only seven miles from one of our largest county towns. this land-agent was sent for on business by an old gentleman of large landed estate in that county. as the gentleman’s house was in a secluded situation,[216] off the highways, and it was a fine, cool, autumnal day, he took a footpath which led the whole way across delightful fields, and after enjoying his walk through meadows and woods, arrived at the hall with a most vigorous appetite, just as the squire and his housekeeper were sitting down to dinner. of course, nothing less could take place than an invitation for him to join them; which he was not in the disposition by any means to decline. i need scarcely say that the fact of the squire and his housekeeper sitting at the same table indicates the ancient gentleman as one of the real old school. he was, in fact, a tall, gaunt, meagre old fellow, whose sole pleasure was putting out his rents on good security, and whose sole family consisted of his housekeeper and one old amphibious animal, who, if he had as many heads as occupations, would have carried at least four more than janus—occupying his talents, as he did, as gardener, groom, serving-man, and three or four other personages. the whole house and every thing about it bore amplest marks of neglect and antiquity. not a gate, or a door, or a window, or a carpet, or any other piece of furniture, but was just as his father left it fifty years before, except for the work which time, and such tying and patching as were absolutely needful to keep certain things together, had done. our agent looked with some curiosity at the two covers on the table before them, which being removed revealed a single partridge and three potatoes. the housekeeper having cut the partridge into quarters, gave each of the gentlemen one, and took the third herself. our worthy land-agent supposing this to be but a slight first course, was astounded to hear the squire say, he hoped mr. mapleton would make a dinner—for he saw what there was! on this significant hint mr. mapleton made haste to dispatch his quarter of bird, and cast eager looks on the remaining quarter in the dish. the housekeeper, indeed, was just proceeding to extend the knife and fork towards it, saying, perhaps mr. mapleton would take the other quarter, when the old gentleman said very smartly; “don’t urge mr. mapleton unpleasantly—don’t overdo him—i dare say he knows when he has had enough, without so much teasing. i have made an excellent dinner indeed!”
hereupon the housekeeper’s arms and weapons were drawn back abruptly; the old gentleman rang the bell, and the shuffling[217] old serving-man entered and cleared all away. as the cloth and the housekeeper disappeared, the squire also opened a tall cupboard on one side of the fireplace, and mr. mapleton began to please his fancy with a forthcoming apparition of wine. having sate, however, some time, and hearing from behind the tall door, which was drawn partly after the old squire so as to conceal him, certain sounds as of decanting liquor, and as of a knife coming in contact with a plate, sounds particularly familiar and exciting to hungry ears, he contrived to lean back so far in his chair as to catch a view of the tall figure of the squire standing with a large plum-cake upon the shelf before him, into which he had made a capacious incision; and a glass of wine, moreover, at a little distance. this discovery naturally making our land-agent extremely restless, he began to indicate his presence by sundry hems, shuffles, coughs, and drummings on his chair, which immediately produced this consequence. the old squire’s head protruded from behind the cupboard door with an inquiring look; and finding the eyes of mr. mapleton as inquiringly fixed on him, he said—“mr. mapleton, will you take a glass of wine?” “certainly, sir, with the greatest pleasure.” the wine was carefully poured out, making various cluckings or sobbings in the throat of the bottle, as very loath to leave it, and was set on the table before mr. mapleton. no invitation, however, to a participation of the cake came; and after sitting perhaps a quarter of an hour longer, listening to the same inviting sounds of scraping plate and decantation, he was compelled again to shuffle, hem, and drum. this had a similar happy effect to the former attempt; out popped the squire’s head, with a—“would you take another glass, mr. mapleton?” “certainly, sir, with the greatest pleasure, i feel thirsty with my walk.” the bottle was produced and the glass filled, but to put an end to any further intimations of thirst, the door was instantly closed, the key dropped into the squire’s capacious pocket, and the old gentleman forthwith entered upon business, which, in fact, concerned thousands of pounds.
before closing this gallery of country oddities, i must say that, in some instances, much goodness of heart is mixed up with this wild growth of queerness. there are very many who will know of whom i am speaking, when i say that there was in the last generation[218] a gentleman in one of the midland counties, who was affected with this singular species of monomania: at every execution at the county-town he purchased the rope or ropes of jack ketch. these ropes, duly labelled with the name of the culprit, the date of his execution, and the crime for which he suffered, were hung round a particular room. on one occasion, arriving at the town, and being told that the criminal was reprieved, he exclaimed—“gracious heavens, then i have lost my rope!” the son of this gentleman still displays a good deal of hereditary eccentricity, but has destroyed these ropes. nevertheless, i am told, that the carving-knife used in his kitchen is the very sword with which lord byron killed chaworth. he still lives in the same house, and, old bachelor as he is, maintains the old english style and hospitality in a degree not often to be witnessed now. his personal appearance is unique. he is tall, with a ruddy countenance, with white whiskers, white waistcoat, white breeches, and white lining to his coat. he always appears most scrupulously and delicately clean. his estate is large; and whoever goes to his house on business, finds bread and cheese and ale set before him. his housekeeper is said to receive no regular wages, but every now and then a fifty-pound note is put into her hands, so that she has grown tolerably rich. it is a standing order in the house, that every poor person, come whence he may, who has lost a cow, and is seeking to get another, shall receive a sovereign. i have heard a gentleman say, who knows him well, that his benevolence, particularly to young tradesmen, is most extraordinary: and that being himself once supposed to be on his death-bed, this worthy man came, sate down by him, cried like a child, and told him if he had not provided for his children just as he wished, that he had only to tell him what he would have done, and then and there it should be done. no relationship whatever existed; and this noble offer was not accepted. the same gentleman told me that it is the regular habit of this worthy example of old english simplicity and goodness of heart, every evening, before he retires to rest, to sit quietly for a certain time in his easy chair, endeavouring to discover whether he has done any thing wrong during the day, or has possibly hurt any one’s feelings; and if he fancies he has, he hastens the next morning to set all right. it is delightful to have to record proofs[219] of the yet existing spirit of ancient hospitality and simple worth of character.[7]
[7] since the first edition was published, this worthy but eccentric gentleman is dead.
in conclusion,—let me observe that some of the foregoing cases are shocking ones; but they are only too true; and such are but the events of every day in those sleepy hollows, where public opinion has no weight, and where ignorance and avarice are handed down from age to age. i have seen hundreds of such things in such places. and what mode of regeneration shall reach this class of people, who have the rust of whole ages in their souls? you cannot offer to them education, as you do to the poor. you cannot reason with them, as with the poor. they have too much pride. it can only be by educating all around them, that you can reach them. when they feel the effect of the education of the poor, their pride will compel them to educate their children. this will be one of the many good results that will flow from the education of the poor in the back settlements of england. let us, then, direct the stream of knowledge into the remotest of these obscure places. if the penny periodicals were, by some means, made to circulate there, as they circulate in towns—the penny magazine, and saturday magazine, with their host of wood-cuts and useful facts; and chambers’ edinburgh journal, with its more refined and poetical spirit,—they would work a great change. prints and cuts from good originals would awaken a better taste; higher ideas of the beauty of created forms: for i say with rogers,
be mine to bless the more mechanic skill
that stamps, renews, and multiplies at will;
and cheaply circulates through distant climes,
the fairest relics of the purest times.
we blame our populace for not possessing the same refined taste as the french and italians; for being brutal and destructive; that parks, public walks, and public buildings, cannot be thrown open to them without receiving injury. we ought not to blame them for this; for is not this the english spirit that has been praised in parliament? for the encouragement of which, bull-baitings, dog-fightings, cock-fightings, and boxings have been pleaded for by senators, as its proper aliment? and the romans,[220] with their gladiatorial shows, quoted as good precedents? forgetting that while the romans were a growing and conquering people, they were a simple and domestic people. when they had their amphitheatres and their bloody shows of battling-men and beasts, they fell under imperial despotism, and thence into national destruction. if we will have a better spirit, we must take better means to produce it. we can never make our rural population too well informed. ireland, with all manner of horrible outrages, england with its rick-burnings, and scotland with its orderly peasantry, all point towards the evils of ignorance and oppression, and the national advantage and individual happiness that are to be reaped from the spread of sound knowledge through our rural districts.
