What can have become of the old world I remember long long ago--almost
twenty years ago? It is a weary look backward, and the distance hides
it. This is not the world I was born in. I remember when the old men
used to show me the ways they walked in, scores of years before, and the
very corners and the footpaths through the fields. Here they met an old
friend--there they took shelter from a storm. On this lake they skated
all day--from that hill they saw the ships returning with victory from
foreign war. Men walked quietly together then in silence or friendly
talk, and did not jostle each other from the way; they went to bed and
rose as the sun did; they followed in their fathers’ ways--read the same
books, laughed at the same fine old jokes, and believed their posterity
would do the same. Old men then wore grey hairs, and saw their children’s
children, and were venerable. But they are all gone; and could they look
out of their graves (if indeed their very graves be spared), they would
not know the old world they used to live in.
It is all changed now with us old fellows of five-and-twenty. We are
left doting among the ruins of our youth. There is nothing left to us of
our early days. The old crooked grassy byeways where we went to gather
blackberries and idle away a summer day, have been gone over by the
surveyor’s chain, and some straight cut, with prim, bare fences, has run
it down. The little stream has been piped over, and, where it “babbled o’
green fields,” is a noisy, muddy thoroughfare. Over the green glen where
the hazels nourished their brown clusters, strides a cursed viaduct; the
execrable railway has frighted the linnets from the boughs, and a bird’s
nest shall never more be found. In the lonely bay where we used to gather
shells, thinking ourselves in fairy land, and wondering what lay beyond
the dim horizon, the steamboat roars and splashes. Riot and swearing and
slang and vice of cities have usurped the quiet haunts of country calm
and charity.
It is for a coming age all these things are preparing: to us is allotted
only the vexation and bewilderment. I have no associations to link me
to these horrors, and I prefer the old repose to all the luxuries they
bring. What is it to me that I can go to East or West in so many days
sooner, or even if the sun that sets on me to-night should rise for me
to-morrow by the Ganges? Here is my “fortunate isle;” this is my home
where my heart is. I have no business with Egypt or the Nile. I wish to
sit undisturbed by my own fireside, to walk under the old trees, to look
on my own fields, to be warmed by my own sun. But they will dig a canal
through my silent walks, and the infernal city will pour through these
banks its restless impurity, and make them echo with the laughter of
brutal debauchery.
It is something for a man to look on the same scenes he looked on in
his childhood, among the same fields and trees and household ways his
forefathers tilled and planted, and knew before him. There is a sanctity
grows round them year by year, enriching the heart, that cannot be broken
through nor profaned without a loss never to be repaired. The exile can
still listen to the whispering of the woods and the sound of the streams,
but he remembers the woods and waters of his native land with tears. In
twenty years I have grown old and an exile where I was born. Huge piles
have covered the green where I played. The roar of busy streets insults
the memory of the green lanes where I strolled at evening.
There is no country now. The city has invaded the solitude, and vice and
impudent folly march in its rear. The bumpkin imitates the swagger of the
citizen--the ploughman talks politics--the haymaker shakes the swathe and
discourses of political economy--the reaper questions the revenue.
The mountains yet remain! I can see them, still, from my door; I can see
them from the city streets. I can climb up their rugged sides still, and
bless God that no discoverer as yet has uprooted the hills.
My heart is with them, for they have not changed. With them I have still
a sovereign sympathy, for I can look on them and renew the fancies of my
infancy. There is not a torrent pouring down their sides, not a crag nor
a bramble, that is not reverend in my eye.
The world is drunk, and raves. Come away from these reeling bacchanals,
and let us fare among the hills! Long ago, before the time of history,
some naked savage here has worshipped the sunrise; some Druid sacrificed
his victims; some barbarian Spartacus, lurking among the wild deer and
the wolves, has defied his nation; some young warrior, with tears on his
hardy cheek, has pointed up thither, whispering to one beside him dearer
than his name, his clan, or his life, and sped away on the wings of love
to the peace and safety of the mountains.
These noble fronts have never varied. The clouds float here over the same
ridges on which the eyes of our childhood rested, and of the men of old
time. The clank of monstrous engines has never yet dismayed the primeval
stillness.
The skeleton of creation is visible here, and we see the beginnings of
the world. This solid granite sparkled in the sun when “the evening and
the morning were the first day,” and was as firm and solid to the centre
when the world was “without form and void.” This whinstone rock has been
hardened in some earthquake furnace long since then, and these flints are
new, though they held fire before Prometheus suffered. This soft soil is
the relics of the life and death of a thousand green years, and the fresh
bloom that feeds on its decay will nourish succeeding blossoms.
The Western nations look here for the dawn, and the people of the East
for sunset. Young children look up here from cottage doors at evening,
and see the portals of Paradise opened, gazing through vistas brighter
than imagination, unfolding far into the heart of heaven, and hold their
breath, waiting for the passage of the archangels. This is a glorified
soil. On these peaks hang the morning and the evening stars. The sun and
the moon come here to do them honour; and they clothe themselves with
gold and azure, and purple, deeper than the Tyrian, to receive their
celestial guests.
High up here in this blessed solitude there is life, and liberty of
heart, and sacred peace. No fenced-in space confines me here. I breathe
in a domain as wide as the horizon, as high as the planets and the sun.
The clouds are my fellow-wanderers here, and enjoy with me the liberal
bosom of the air. Their ethereal hills and dales invite my fancy to a
real heaven, where I gather all I love around me. Their shadows cover me
as they pass over, and I bid them “God speed” as they carry cool showers
down to the thirsting land. No miserable moan of want or sickness, no sob
of long-breaking hearts, no choked sigh of cheated hope, nor any human
woe, alarms me here. I see no loathsome household, plague-stricken with
poverty, and festering in filth, despised of men, and famishing into
horrors and crime: no form of woman (black shame before God!) wading in
fœtid rags through mire and snow, with those awful human (!) children of
hers, debased as the swine with whom they sleep (for charity!) and on
whom the rich man looks--poor unreckoning fool!--and never pauses to
think and tremble.
Here the wild bee sings among the rich fragrance of the heather-bells
and thyme, gathering pure honey, fresh from the breath of the immediate
sunrise. The larks have their nests among the heath by thousands, and
make the whole mountain musical. Many strange insects, born and dying
in the hour, that live on dew-drops, buzz by, and a thousand unknown
creatures, gifted with voice, inhabiting small twigs in labyrinths of
greenest moss, join in the hymn. The invisible wind, like a ruler of the
strings, pours in a sovereign master-note that blends in all one solemn
harmony, filling the air till the valleys sing for joy.
Here is Solitude, unforced, and free as the wandering wind. Here is peace
like the summer life of untrodden blossoms. Here is a lofty quiet as of
the dreams of the heart over its holy memories. Here are everlasting
rocks, steadfast as honour, and true. Here is wealth for Fancy, and a
dwelling for Imagination. Wide and far as the peaks can seek the heavens,
there is no place for Envy or Hate, where the glens are vocal, and the
holy silence compels the heart to adoration, making a haven for religion
among the mighty hills.
What throes of central agony heaved up these huge mountains, twisting and
folding each into each away as far as the eye can follow! What pangs and
convulsions at the heart! What startling from chaotic trance, long before
man or his mammoth ancestors, at the creative song of some wandering
star-messenger, millions of years upon its way!
My heart enlarges here, and recognises an aërial amity with the sky. I
am filled with celestial promptings. I shake off all incumbrance of the
earth. I stretch out my arms to the blue heaven, and its breath comes
into my bosom as a friend. The stir of humanity is dumb beneath me. I
leap among the heathy knolls. I sing beside the infant rivers. I shout,
and hear answers from the lurking echoes, like the mysterious voices of
infinite years. I drink in unused air with
“Fair creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live,
And play i’ the plighted clouds.”
I stand wrapt in mute visions, growing into the majesty of the mountains.
I spurn Decay and Time. I share the enduring strength, and carry lightly
the burden of centuries.
The mountains swell up around me like a sea with billows. My footfall is
inaudible, and I fleet to and fro like the unbodied soul of a great poet
that makes the worlds it sees. There are no furrows on this soil: the
curse has not fallen here. The sweat of the brow has not dropped here,
nor aught save the rain and the dew of heaven. I am still nearer to the
angels, and my spirit begins to put forth unaccustomed wings.
The ancient gods still linger here, and Antiquity has not yet grown old.
The world has not yet heard “the voice of one crying in the wilderness,”
nor has Paul yet preached. Here I am a devout Pagan. I am the friend of
Plato; I remember the voice of Socrates. I worship the Gods reverently,
and have come up hither with sacrifice according to the voice of the
oracle.
I have drunk with the muses at this fountain. Here, under the hanging ivy
from the rock, I behold the real Castaly; and wherever the stream may
wander, it will carry music on its way from divinest voices. From this
clump I have listened to Apollo teaching the shepherds. Yea, I feel my
veins tingling with a more celestial liquor; I own invulnerable limbs,
and am myself a God!
It was not Mercury, but I, who passed swiftly down yon green declivity
with feathered feet, and away over the hill-tops like the shadow of a
cloud. Those cattle brousing in the thicket, far down the ravine, I stole
from Pieria. I bear the imperial mandates, and the breeze carries the
sound of my eloquence through all the forests.
But I aspire to loftier seats. This is the high Olympus; Saturn is
baffled, and immortal Jove laughs at the terrible prophecies of the
enduring Titan. Let him rend his rivets. Let him melt the heart of
Caucasus, or appease the Vulture! Would that I could as easily escape the
reproaches of Juno, or overcome Danäe! But it shall rain gold to-morrow
in her lap, and Leda shall fondle in her snowier bosom a snowy swan.
Meanwhile let the nectar be poured! The laughing gods surround me, and I
know immortal vigour. How Mercury jeered at the grinning Vulcan erewhile
as he writhed his iron sinews, when I held him over the edge of heaven!
Here I compel the clouds around me; I sit throned, and thunder.
Lo! to my ears comes up a solemn strain, and the Eagle shrieks and flies.
The thunderbolt withers from my hand:--
“The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the archéd roof with words deceiving;
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving;
No nightly trance, or breathéd spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest in his prophetic cell.”
A louder thunder has been heard than Jove’s. There is a mountain more
venerable than Olympus. Moses went up there to talk with God, and came
down with the brightness of the sun in his countenance that could not
be looked upon, bearing in his hand an eternal law. That thunder still
echoes which shook Babylon, and quelled the Assyrian. The Persian rolled
away before it like a cloud. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, have fled
from it for ever.
But a greater than Moses has made the mountains holy. A greater
hierophant opened up there the law and the prophets. On a mountain
Satan confessed his conqueror. Who shall conceive of that tremendous
hour, pregnant with the fate of man, when “Jesus went up alone into the
mountain to pray!” And we know what deed was done on Calvary.