nearly a thousand miles in this country without seeing anything like a
mountain and hardly a precipice except the chalky cliffs of the sea
shore. Nearly every acre I have seen is susceptible of cultivation, and
of course either cultivated, built upon, or devoted to wood. A few steep
banks of streams or ravines, almost uniformly wooded, and some small
marshes, mainly on the sea-coast, are all the exceptions I remember to
the general capacity for cultivation. Usually, the aspect of the country
is pleasant--beautiful, if you choose--but nowise calculated to excite
wonder or evoke enthusiasm. The abundance of evergreen hedges is its
most striking characteristic. I judge that two-thirds of England is in
Grass (meadow or pasture), very green and thrifty, and dotted with noble
herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. They are anxious to finish
Hay-making throughout the region we traversed yesterday; but as there
has been scarcely an hour of very bashful sunshine during the last six
days, more than half of which have been rainy, the operation is one
rather trying to human patience. Some of the cut grass looks as if it
were Flax spread out to rot, and all of it evinces a want of shelter.
This morning is almost fair, though hazy, so that the necessity of
taking in and drying the hay by a fire may be obviated, but a great deal
of it must be seriously damaged. (_P. S. 10 o'clock._--It is cloudy and
raining again.)
Wheat covers perhaps an eighth of all Central England, is now ripening
and generally heavy, but much of it is beaten down by the wind and rain,
and looks as if a herd of buffaloes had been chased through it by a
tribe of mounted Indians. If the weather should be mainly fair
henceforth, the crop may be saved, but it must already have received
material damage, and the process of harvesting it must be tedious.
Barley is considerably grown, and has also been a good deal prostrated.
Oats have suffered less, being more backward.--Potatoes look vigorous,
though not yet out of danger from blight or rot. Not a patch of Indian
Corn is to be seen throughout. Considerable grass-land has been plowed
up for Wheat next season, and some Turnips are just visible; but it is
evident that Grass and Stock, under the influence of the low prices of
Grain produced by the repeal of the Corn-laws, are steadily gaining upon
Tillage, of course throwing tens of thousands of Agricultural laborers
out of employment, and driving them to emigration, to manufactures, or
the poor-house. Thus the rural population of England is steadily and
constantly decreasing.
The best feature of English landscape is formed by its Trees. Though
rarely relied on for fuel, there is scarcely an area of forty acres
without them, while single trees, copses, more rarely rows, and often
petty forests, are visible in all quarters. The trees are not the
straight, tall, trim, short-limbed, shadeless Poplars, &c., of France
and Italy, but wide-spreading, hospitable Oaks, Yews and other sturdy
battlers with wind and storm, which have a far more genial and
satisfactory appearance. And the trees of England have a commercial as
well as a less measurable value; for timber of all sorts is in demand in
the collieries, manufactories and mines, and bears a high price, the
consumption far exceeding the domestic supply. But for the trees, these
sullen skies and level grounds would render England dreary enough.
Newcastle is the location of one of those immense structures which
illustrate the Industrial greatness and pecuniary strength of Britain,
and illustrate also the meagerness of her Railroad dividends. The Tyne
is here a furlong wide or more, running through a narrow valley or wide
ravine perhaps 150 feet below the average level of the great plain which
encloses it, and hardly more than half a mile wide at the top. Across
this river and gorge is thrown a bridge of iron, with abutments and
piers of hewn stone, the arches of said bridge having a total length of
1,375 feet, with 512 feet water-way, while the railway is 112 1/2 feet
above high-water mark, with a fine carriage and footway underneath it
at a hight of 86 feet, and a total hight from river-bed to parapet of
132 1/2 feet. The gigantic arches have a span of over 124 feet each, and
the total cost of the work was L304,500, or about $1,500,000. Near this
is a Central Railway Station (there are two others in the place), built
entirely, including the roof, of cut stone, save a splendid row of glass
windows on either side--said depot being over 592 feet long, the
passengers' department being 537 by 183 feet, and the whole costing over
$500,000. Here, then, are about $2,000,000 expended on a single mile of
railroad, in a city of by no means primary importance. If any one can
see how fair dividends could be paid on railroads constructed at such
expense, the British shareholders generally would be glad to avail
themselves of his sagacity. And it is stated that the Law Expenses of
several of the British roads, including procurement of charter and right
of way, have exceeded $2,500,000. Add to this rival lines running near
each other, and often three where one should suffice, and you have the
explanation of a vast, enormous and ruinous waste of property. Let the
moral be heeded.
THE BORDER--SCOTLAND.
EDINBURGH, July 29--_Evening_.
From Newcastle to the Tweed (70 miles) the country continues level and
mainly fertile, but the Grain is far more backward than in the vicinity
of London, and very little of it has been blown down. More Wheat and far
less Grass are grown here than below York, while Barley, Oats and
Potatoes cover a good share of the ground, and the Turnip is often seen.
All look well, but the Potato, though late, is especially hearty and
thrifty. Shade-trees in the cultivated fields are rare; in fact, wood is
altogether rarer than at the south, though small forests are generally
within sight. I should judge from what I see and feel that shade is
seldom wanting here, except as a shield from the rain. Desperate
attempts at Hay-making engross the thoughts and efforts of a good many
men and women, though the skies are black, rain falls at intervals, and
a chill, heavy mist makes itself disagreeably familiar, while a thin,
drifting fog limits the vision to a square mile or so. Some of the
half-made hay in the meadows looks as though it had been standing out to
bleach for the last fortnight. Even the Grass-land is often ridged so as
to shed the water quickly, while deep ditches or drains do duty for
fences. Fruit-trees are rarely seen; they were scarce from London to
York, but now have disappeared. Our road runs nearer and nearer the
North Sea, which at length is close beside us on the right, but no town
of any importance is visible until we cross the Tweed on a long, high,
costly stone bridge just above Berwick of historic fame, and are in
SCOTLAND.
Here the growing crops are much the same as throughout the North of
England--Wheat, Potatoes, Barley, Oats, and Grass--save that the Turnip
has become an article of primary importance. From some points, hundreds
of acres of the Swedish and French may be seen, and they are rarely or
never out of view. They are sown in rows or drills, some eighteen inches
or two feet apart, so as to admit of cultivation by the plow, which is
now in progress. The most forward of the plants now display a small
yellow blossom. All are healthy and promising, and are kept thoroughly
clear of weeds. I infer that they are mainly grown for feeding cattle,
and this seems a good idea, since they can be harvested in defiance of
rain and mist, which is rather more difficult with Hay. They become more
and more abundant as we approach this city, and are grown up to its very
doors. Heavy stone walls laid in mortar and copses or little forests of
Oak are among the characteristics of the rural district around
Edinburgh, whereof the culture is widely famed for its excellence. The
only Scottish town of any note we pass is Dunbar, by the sea-side,
though Dunse, Haddington and Dalkeith lie but a few miles inland from
our road, with which they are connected by branches. We reached this
city about 3 P. M. or in five hours from Newcastle, 130 miles.
EDINBURGH.
I knew this was a city of noble and beautiful structures, but the
reality surpasses my expectation. The old town was mainly built in a
deep valley running northward into the Firth of Forth, with the Royal
Palace of Holyrood in its midst, the port of Leith on the Firth a few
miles northward, and the Castle on a commanding crag overlooking the old
town from the west. The Canongate and High-street lead up to the
esplanade of the Castle from the east, but its other sides are
precipitous and inaccessible, a deep valley skirting it on the north,
while the south end of the old town fills the other side. The former or
more northern valley has for the most part been kept clear of buildings,
the spacious Prince's-street Gardens and the grounds of several
charitable institutions having had possession of it, until they were
recently required to surrender a part for the Railroads running south to
Berwick, &c., and west to Glasgow for a General Depot. Across this deep
valley or chasm, northward, rises the eminence on which the new town of
Edinburgh is constructed, with the deep chasm in which runs the rapid
mill-stream known as the "Water of Leith," separating it from a like,
though lower, hill still further north and west, on which a few fine
buildings and very pleasant gardens are located. The new town is thus
perhaps 150 feet above the old town, a mile and a half long by half a
mile wide, commanding magnificent views of the old town, the port of
Leith, the broad, ocean-like Firth of Forth, and the finely cultivated
country stretching southward; and, as if these were not enough to secure
its salubrity, it has more gardens and public squares than any other
city of its size in the world. Its streets are broad and handsome; its
houses built almost wholly of stone, and I never saw so many good ones
with so few indifferent. If I were to choose from all the world a city
wherein to make an effort for longevity, I would select the new town of
Edinburgh; but I should prefer to live fewer years where there is more
sunshine.
Public Monuments would seem to be the grand passion of the Edinburghers.
The most conspicuous are those of Lord Nelson on Calton Hill (next to
the Castle, if not before it, the most commanding location in the city)
and of Walter Scott on Prince's-street, nearly opposite the Castle,
across the glen, in full sight of all who arrive in Edinburgh by
Railroad, as also from the Castle and its vicinity, as well as from the
broad and thronged street beside which it is located. But there are
Monuments also to Pitt, to Lord Melville, and some twenty or thirty
other deceased notables. These are generally located in the higher
squares or gardens which wisely occupy a large portion of the
ground-plot of the new town. Public Hospitals and Infirmaries are also a
prominent feature of the Scottish capital, there being several spacious
and fine edifices devoted to the healing of the sick, most if not all of
them founded and endowed by private munificence. There are several
Bridges across the two principal and more on the secondary or cross
valleys, ravines or gorges which may well attract attention. These
Bridges are often several hundred feet long, and from thirty to eighty
feet high, and you look down from their roadway upon the red-tiled roofs
of large eight or nine-story houses beside and below them. Nearly or
quite every house in Edinburgh is built of stone, which is rather
abundant in Scotland, and often of a fair, free, easily worked quality.
Many even of the larger houses, especially in the old town, are built
of coarse, rough, undressed stone, often of round, irregular boulders,
made to retain the places assigned them by dint of abundant and
excellent mortar. In the better buildings, however, the stone is of a
finer quality, and handsomely cut, though almost entirely of a brown or
dark gray color. The winding drive to the summit of Calton Hill, looking
down upon large, tall, castle-like houses of varied material and
workmanship, with the prospect from the summit, are among the most
impressive I have seen in Europe.
I was interested this afternoon in looking around from one to another of
the edifices with which History or the pen of the Wizard of the North
has rendered us all familiar--the Tolbooth, the Parliament House, the
Castle, the house of John Knox, the principal Churches, &c., &c. I spent
most time of all in the Palace of Holyrood, which, though unwisely
located, never gorgeously furnished, and long since abandoned of Royalty
to dilapidation and decay, still wears the stamp of majesty and will be
regal even when crumbled into ruins. Its tapestries are faded and
rotten; its paintings, never brilliant specimens of the art, have also
felt the tooth of Time; its furniture, never sumptuous, would but poorly
answer at this day the needs of an ordinary family; its ball-room is now
a lumber-room; its royal beds excite premonitions of rheumatism: its
boudoir says nought of Beauty but that it passeth away. Yet the
carefully preserved ivory miniature of the hapless Queen of Scots is
still radiant with that superlative loveliness which seems unearthly and
prophetic of coming sorrows; and it were difficult to view without
emotion the tapestry she worked, the furniture she brought over from
France, some mementoes of her unwise marriage, the little room in which
she sat at supper with Rizzio and three or four friends when the
assassins rushed in through a secret door, stabbed her ill-starred
favorite, and dragged him bleeding through her bed-room into an outer
audience chamber, and there left him to die, his life-blood oozing out
from fifty-six wounds. The partition still stands which the Queen caused
to be erected to shut off the scene of this horrible tragedy from that
larger portion of the reception-room which she was obliged still to
occupy, therein to greet daily those whom public cares and duties
constrained her to confer with and listen to, though Murder had stained
ineffaceably the floor of that regal hall. Alas! unhappy Queen!--and yet
not all unhappy. Other sovereigns have their little day of pomp and
adulation, then shrivel to dust and are forgotten; but she still lives
and reigns wherever Beauty finds admirers or Suffering commands
sympathy. Other Queens innumerable have lived and died, and their
scepters crumbled to dust even sooner than their clay; but Mary is still
Queen of Scots, and so will remain forever.
XXXIX.
SCOTLAND.
THE CLYDE, Wednesday, July 30, 1851.
I am leaving Scotland without having seen half enough of it. My chief
reasons are a determination to run over a good part of Ireland and an
engagement to leave Europe in my favorite ship Baltic next week; but,
besides these, this continual prevalence of fog, mist, cloud, drizzle
and rain diminish my regret that I am unable to visit the Highlands. My
friends who, having a day's start of me, went up the Forth from
Edinburgh to Stirling, thence visiting Lochs Lomond and Katrine, thence
proceeding by boat to Glasgow, were unable to see aught of the mountains
but their bases, their heads being shrouded in vapor; and, being landed
from a steamboat at the head of Lake navigation on Loch Lomond, found
five miles of land-carriage between them and a comfortable shelter, and
only vehicles enough to take the women and part of the men; the rest
being obliged to make the distance on foot in a drenching rain, with
night just at hand. Such adventures as this,--and they are common in
this region,--console me for my disappointment in not having been able
to see the Heather in its mountain home. The Gorse, the Broom, the
Whins, not to speak of the Scottish Thistle, have been often visible by
the roadside, and the prevalence of evergreens attests the influence of
a colder clime than that of England; indeed, the backwardness of all the
crops argues a difference of at least a fortnight in climate between
Edinburgh and London. Wheat has hardly filled yet in the Scottish
Lowlands; Oats are barely headed; and the Grass is little more than half
cut and not half dried into Hay; on the contrary, it now looks as if it
must winter on the ground or be taken in thoroughly water-soaked. Being
so much later, the crops are far less blown down here than they are in
England; but neither Grass nor Grain is generally heavy, while Potatoes
and Turnips, though backward, looked remarkably vigorous and promising.
Beautifully farmed is all this Lowland country, well fenced, clear of
weeds, and evidently in the hands of intelligent, industrious,
scientific cultivators. Wood is quite plentiful, Oak especially, though
shade-trees are not so frequent in cultivated fields as in England; but
rough, rocky, precipitous spots are quite common here, though in the
Lowlands, and these are wisely devoted to growing timber. Belgium is
more genial and more fertile, but I have rarely seen a tract of country
better farmed than that stretching westward from Edinburgh to Glasgow
(48 miles) and thence down the Clyde to Greenock, some 22 miles further.
The farmers in our Mohawk Valley ought to pass through this gloomy,
chilly, misty country, and be shamed into a better improvement of their
rare but misused advantages.
Traveling is useful in that it gives us a more vivid idea of the immense
amount of knowledge we yet lack. I supposed till to-day that, by virtue
of a Scotch-Irish ancestry (in part) and a fair acquaintance with the
works of Walter Scott, Burns, Hogg, &c., I knew the Lowland Scotch
dialect pretty thoroughly; and yet a notice plainly posted up, "This Lot
To _Feu_," completely bothered me. On inquiry, I learned that _to feu_ a
lot means to let or lease it for building purposes--in other words, to
be built upon on a ground-rent. I suppose I learned this years ago, but
had entirely forgotten it.
The Clyde, though a fair stream at Glasgow, is quite narrow for twelve
to fifteen miles below that city, seeming hardly equal to the
Connecticut at Hartford, or the Hudson at Waterford; but then it has a
good tide, which helps the matter materially, and has at great expense
been dredged out so as to be navigable for vessels of several hundred
tuns. We passed a fine American packet-ship with a very wholesome
looking body of Scotch emigrants, hard aground some ten miles below
Glasgow, and I was informed that a large vessel, even though towed by a
steamboat, is seldom able to get down into deep water upon a single
tide, but is stopped half way to wait for another. This river fairly
swarms with small steamboats, of which there are regular lines
connecting Glasgow with Londonderry, Belfast, Dublin, Fleetwood
(north-west of England), Liverpool, London, &c. We met four or five
boats returning from Excursion parties crowded with the better paid
artisans and laborers of Glasgow, their wives and children.
The banks of the Clyde for some miles below Glasgow are low and marshy,
much of the intervale being devoted to pasturage, while a rude
embankment has been interposed on either side, consisting of stones of
five to fifty pounds each, intended to prevent the washing away of the
banks by the ripple raised by the often-passing steamboats. The end is
fairly though not cheaply subserved. As we descend, the shores become
bolder; the rugged hills, at first barely visible on the right, come
near and nearer the water: low rocks begin to lift their heads above the
surface of the stream, while others have their innate modesty
overpowered by wooden fixtures lifting their heads above the highest
tides to warn the mariner of his danger. At length a gigantic cone of
rock rises out of the water on the right of the channel to a height of
fifty or sixty feet, resembling some vast old cathedral: this is
Dumbarton Castle, with the anciently famous but now decaying town of
Dumbarton lying at the head of a small bay behind it. A little lower on
the left is Port Glasgow, the head of navigation for very large
vessels; and three miles lower still is Greenock, quite a stirring
seaport, somewhat addicted to ship-building. Here our boat, which had
left Glasgow (22 miles above) at 4 P. M. held on till 8 for the train
which left the same port at 7 with the mail and additional passengers;
and then laid her course directly across the channel to Belfast, 138
miles from Glasgow, where she is due at 5 to-morrow morning.
GLASGOW.
Looks more American than any other city I have seen in Europe. Half of
Pittsburgh spliced on to half of Philadelphia would make a city very
like Glasgow. Iron is said to be made cheaper here than elsewhere in the
world, the ore being alloyed with a carbonaceous substance which
facilitates the process and reduces the cost of melting. Tall chimneys
and black columns of smoke are abundant in the vicinity. The city is
about twice the size of Edinburgh, with more than double the trade of
that capital, and has risen rapidly from relative insignificance. New
rows of stately houses have recently been built, and the "court end" of
the city is extending rapidly toward the West. A brown or dark gray
stone, as in Edinburgh, is the principal material used, and gives the
city a very substantial appearance. Most of the town, being new, has
wide and straight streets; in the older part, they are perverse and
irrational, as old concerns are apt obstinately to be. They have an old
Cathedral here (now Presbyterian) of which the citizens seem quite
proud, I can't perceive why. Architecturally, it seems to me a sad waste
of stone and labor. The other churches are also mainly Presbyterian,
and, while making less pretensions, are far more creditable to the taste
of their designers. The town is built on both sides of the Clyde, which
is crossed by fine stone bridges, but seven-eighths of it lie on the
north. Ancient Glasgow, embracing the narrow and crooked streets, lies
nearly in the center, and is crowded with a squalid and miserable
population, at least half the women and children, including mothers with
children in their arms, and grandmothers, or those who might well be
such, being without shoes or stockings in the cold and muddy streets.
Intemperance has many votaries here, as indeed, throughout Scotland;
"Dealers in Spirits," or words to that effect, being a fearfully common
sign. I am afraid the good cause of Total Abstinence is making no
headway here--Glasgow has a daily paper (the first in Scotland) and many
weeklies, one of the best of them being a new one, "The Sentinel," which
has a way of going straight to the core of public questions, and
standing always on the side of thorough Reform. Success to it, and a
warm good-bye to the rugged land of Song and Story--the loved home of
Scott and Burns.
XL.
IRELAND--ULSTER.
DUBLIN, Thursday, July 31, 1851.
Though the night was thick, the wind was light, and we had a very good
passage across the North Channel, though our boat was very middling, and
I was nearly poisoned by some of my fellow-sleepers in the gentlemen's
cabin insisting that every window should be closed. O to be Pope for one
little week, just long enough to set half a million pulpits throughout
the world to ringing the changes on the importance, the vital necessity,
of pure, fresh air! The darkness, or rather the general misapprehension,
which prevails on this subject, is a frightful source of disease and
misery. Nine-tenths of mankind have such a dread of "a draught" or
current of air that they will shut themselves up, forty together, in a
close room, car or cabin, and there poison each other with the
exhalations of their mutual lungs, until disease and often death are the
consequences. Why won't they study and learn that a "draught" of pure
air will injure only those who by draughts of Alcoholic poison or some
other evil habit or glaring violation of the laws of life, have rendered
themselves morbidly susceptible, and that even a cold is better than the
noxiousness of air, already exhausted of its oxygen by inhalation?
Nothing physical is so sorely needed by the great majority as a
realizing sense of the blessedness, the indispensable necessity of pure,
fresh air.
We landed at Belfast at 5 this morning under a pouring rain, which
slacked off two hours later, but the skies are still clouded, as they
have been since Tuesday of last week, and there has been some sprinkling
through the day.