ASHORE

The first day or half day ashore is, of course, the most novel and

exciting; but who, as Mr. Higginson says, can describe his sensations

and emotions this first half day? It is a page of travel that has not

yet been written. Paradoxical as it may seem, one generally comes out

of pickle much fresher than he went in. The sea has given him an

enormous appetite for the land. Every one of his senses is like a

hungry wolf clamorous to be fed. For my part, I had suddenly emerged

from a condition bordering on that of the hibernating animals--a

condition in which I had neither eaten, nor slept, nor thought, nor

moved, when I could help it--into not only a full, but a keen and

joyous, possession of my health and faculties. It was almost a

metamorphosis. I was no longer the clod I had been, but a bird exulting

in the earth and air, and in the liberty of motion. Then to remember it

was a new earth and a new sky that I was beholding,--that it was

England, the old mother at last, no longer a faith or a fable, but an

actual fact there before my eyes and under my feet,--why should I not

exult? Go to! I will be indulged. Those trees, those fields, that bird

darting along the hedge-rows, those men and boys picking blackberries

in October, those English flowers by the roadside (stop the carriage

while I leap out and pluck them), the homely, domestic looks of things,

those houses, those queer vehicles, those thick-coated horses, those

big-footed, coarsely clad, clear-skinned men and women, this massive,

homely, compact architecture,--let me have a good look, for this is my

first hour in England, and I am drunk with the joy of seeing! This

house-fly even, let me inspect it [Footnote: The English house-fly

actually seemed coarser and more hairy than ours.]; and that swallow

skimming along so familiarly,--is he the same I saw trying to cling to

the sails of the vessel the third day out? or is the swallow the

swallow the world over? This grass I certainly have seen before, and

this red and white clover, but this daisy and dandelion are not the

same; and I have come three thousand miles to see the mullein

cultivated in a garden, and christened the velvet plant.

As we sped through the land, the heart of England, toward London, I

thought my eyes would never get their fill of the landscape, and that I

would lose them out of my head by their eagerness to catch every object

as we rushed along! How they reveled, how they followed the birds and

the game, how they glanced ahead on the track--that marvelous

track!--or shot off over the fields and downs, finding their delight in

the streams, the roads, the bridges, the splendid breeds of cattle and

sheep in the fields, the superb husbandry, the rich mellow soil, the

drainage, the hedges,--in the inconspicuousness of any given feature,

and the mellow tone and homely sincerity of all; now dwelling fondly

upon the groups of neatly modeled stacks, then upon the field

occupations, the gathering of turnips and cabbages, or the digging of

potatoes,--how I longed to turn up the historic soil, into which had

passed the sweat and virtue of so many generations, with my own

spade,--then upon the quaint, old, thatched houses, or the cluster of

tiled roofs, then catching at a church spire across a meadow (and it is

all meadow), or at the remains of tower or wall overrun with ivy.

Here, something almost human looks out at you from the landscape;

Nature here has been so long under the dominion of man, has been taken

up and laid down by him so many times, worked over and over with his

hands, fed and fattened by his toil and industry, and, on the whole,

has proved herself so willing and tractable, that she has taken on

something of his image, and seems to radiate his presence. She is

completely domesticated, and no doubt loves the titillation of the

harrow and plow. The fields look half conscious; and if ever the cattle

have "great and tranquil thoughts," as Emerson suggests they do, it

must be when lying upon these lawns and meadows. I noticed that the

trees, the oaks and elms, looked like fruit trees, or as if they had

felt the humanizing influences of so many generations of men, and were

betaking themselves from the woods to the orchard. The game is more

than half tame, and one could easily understand that it had a keeper.

But the look of those fields and parks went straight to my heart. It

is not merely that they were so smooth and cultivated, but that they

were so benign and maternal, so redolent of cattle and sheep and of

patient, homely farm labor. One gets only here and there a glimpse of

such in this country. I see occasionally about our farms a patch of an

acre or half acre upon which has settled this atmosphere of ripe and

loving husbandry; a choice bit of meadow about the barn or orchard, or

near the house, which has had some special fattening, perhaps been the

site of some former garden, or barn, or homestead, or which has had the

wash of some building, where the feet of children have played for

generations, and the flocks and herds have been fed in winter, and

where they love to lie and ruminate at night,--a piece of sward thick

and smooth, and full of warmth and nutriment, where the grass is

greenest and freshest in spring, and the hay finest and thickest in

summer.

This is the character of the whole of England that I saw. I had been

told I should see a garden, but I did not know before to what an extent

the earth could become a living repository of the virtues of so many

generations of gardeners. The tendency to run to weeds and wild growths

seems to have been utterly eradicated from the soil; and if anything

were to spring upspontaneously, I think it would be cabbage and

turnips, or grass and grain.

And yet, to American eyes, the country seems quite uninhabited, there

are so few dwellings and so, few people. Such a landscape at home would

be dotted all over with thrifty farmhouses, each with its group of

painted outbuildings, and along every road and highway would be seen

the well-to-do turnouts of the independent freeholders. But in England

the dwellings of the people, the farmers, are so humble and

inconspicuous and are really so far apart, and the halls and the

country-seats of the aristocracy are so hidden in the midst of vast

estates, that the landscape seems almost deserted, and it is not till

you see the towns and great cities that you can understand where so

vast a population keeps itself.

Another thing that would be quite sure to strike my eye on this my

first ride across British soil, and on all subsequent rides, was the

enormous number of birds and fowls of various kinds that swarmed in the

air or covered the ground. It was truly amazing It seemed as if the

feathered life of a whole continent must have been concentrated on this

island. Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the birds of the

United States into any two of the largest States would people the earth

and air more fully. There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a rook, a

blackbird, and a sparrow to every square yard of ground. They know the

value of birds in Britain,--that they are the friends, not the enemies,

of the farmer. It must be the paradise of crows and rooks. It did me

good to see them so much at home about the fields and even in the

towns. I was glad also to see that the British crow was not a stranger

to me, and that he differed from his brother on the American side of

the Atlantic only in being less alert and cautious, having less use for

these qualities.

Now and then the train would start up some more tempting game. A brace

or two of partridges or a covey of quails would settle down in the

stubble, or a cock pheasant drop head and tail and slide into the

copse. Rabbits also would scamper back from the borders of the fields

into the thickets or peep slyly out, making my sportsman's fingers

tingle.

I have no doubt I should be a notorious poacher in England. How could

an American see so much game and not wish to exterminate it entirely as

he does at home? But sporting is an expensive luxury here. In the first

place a man pays a heavy tax on his gun, nearly or quite half its

value; then he has to have a license to hunt, for which he pays

smartly; then permission from the owner of the land upon which he

wishes to hunt; so that the game is hedged about by a triple safeguard.

An American, also, will be at once struck with the look of greater

substantiality and completeness in everything he sees here. No

temporizing, no makeshifts, no evidence of hurry, or failure, or

contract work; no wood and little paint, but plenty of iron and brick

and stone. This people have taken plenty of time, and have built broad

and deep, and placed the cap-stone on. All this I had been told, but it

pleased me so in the seeing that I must tell it again. It is worth a

voyage across the Atlantic to see the bridges alone. I believe I had

seen little other than wooden bridges before, and in England I saw not

one such, but everywhere solid arches of masonry, that were refreshing

and reassuring to behold. Even the lanes and byways about the farm, I

noticed, crossed the little creeks with a span upon which an elephant

would not hesitate to tread, or artillery trains to pass. There is no

form so pleasing to look upon as the arch, or that affords so much food

and suggestion to the mind. It seems to stimulate the volition, the

will-power, and for my part I cannot look upon a noble span without a

feeling of envy, for I know the hearts of heroes are thus keyed and

fortified. The arch is the symbol of strength and activity, and of

rectitude.

In Europe I took a new lease of this feeling, this partiality for the

span, and had daily opportunities to indulge and confirm it. In London

I had immense satisfaction in observing the bridges there, and in

walking over them, firm as the geological strata and as enduring.

London Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Blackfriars, clearing the river in a

few gigantic leaps, like things of life and motion,--to pass over one

of these bridges, or to sail under it, awakens the emotion of the

sublime. I think the moral value of such a bridge as the Waterloo must

be inestimable. It seems to me the British Empire itself is stronger

for such a bridge, and that all public and private virtues are

stronger. In Paris, too, those superb monuments over the Seine,--I

think they alone ought to inspire the citizens with a love of

permanence, and help hold them to stricter notions of law and

dependence. No doubt kings and tyrants know the value of these things,

and as yet they certainly have the monopoly of them.