[Illustration: 0195]
|IT is not to the manufacturing districts of England that the traveller
in search of the picturesque would most naturally repair. To him they
are often a region of tall chimneys and squalid-looking habitations,
with a canopy of smoke above and black refuse of coal and iron on the
banks of polluted rivers below. Something of this impression is due to
the economy of railway companies, which, for the most part, have chosen
to enter great towns by their least attractive suburbs, where land is
cheapest. Hence, it is not from the carriage-windows of the train that
Leeds or Sheffield, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, or Manchester should be
judged. The traveller who will alight and explore may find a wealth of
natural beauty which would astonish him.
Nowhere, perhaps, is the contrast--due chiefly, no doubt, to geological
structure--more apparent than on the edge of the "Black Country"
in Staffordshire. From Dudley Castle the views are more curiously
contrasted than in almost any other part of England. By night the whole
country is lighted up on one side by the flames from the furnaces, which
cover the country for many miles. By day the din of hammers and
the clank of wheels, the roar of traffic and the shriek of the
steam-whistles surge up, through the pall of smoke, upon the ear.
Descend, and between the ironworks and coalpits the ground is unsightly
with refuse heaps, while its frequent inequalities, and the bending,
tottering buildings, show it to be honeycombed with mines. Vegetation
is rare; what there is, is blackened and stunted; black also are the
outsides of churches, chapels, schools. For inhabitants of such a
district to gain any sense of natural beauty, they must be able at
frequent intervals to escape; and, happily, to do this is within the
reach of most. Railway communication with every part of England is
constant and easy; and to know the difference that a few miles' journey
will make in the scene, one has only to reascend to Dudley Castle, where
it lies in the midst of its fair wooded domain.. Look from it to the
north, east, or south, and all is smoke and flame; but turn to the west,
and though the traces of unresting labour are still discernible, they
soon give way to a country of richly diversified charm: glimpses are
obtained of the beautiful valley of the Severn, the Wrekin towers
grandly not many miles away, and the Malvern hills are dim and blue in
the distance.
In other manufacturing centres, if the contrast is not so marked, yet
there is a similar accessibility to many a sequestered and lovely scene.
The nearness of the wildest and grandest Derbyshire scenery to busy,
unromantic Manchester has been pointed out in a previous chapter; and
the neighbourhood of the great Yorkshire centres of industry is full of
picturesque beauty. A little way out of Leeds, for instance, where the
Liverpool Canal passes over an embankment near to the river Aire, may
be found the scene of one of Turner's most charming sketches; and though
the locality bears evident marks of the great industrial invasion, much
of the beauty still remains. In the same valley, not far off, are the
stately ruins of Kirkstall Abbey, while the broad reach of river that
encloses it, and the green meadows on the bank, with the low wooded
heights on either side of the valley, suggest the memories of a day when
the surroundings of the old ecclesiastical building were such as the
monks most dearly loved; while Esholt Hall, some few miles higher up
the river, at the extremity of a noble avenue of elm trees, was, in
its time, a nunnery on low-lying ground, circled by an amphitheatre of
hills, in a vale even now rich and beautiful, and which once must have
seemed the very abode of tranquillity and peace.
It is, indeed, no small boon to the artizans of Leeds, Bradford, and
many other crowded hives of industry in this part of England, that they
are within so easy a distance of scenes which, in natural beauty, may
vie with almost any in the land. Ivirkstall, as we have said, is close
by the former town; and its grounds are thronged on every holiday by
busy workers, who, whether intent or not on learning the appropriate
lesson from the mouldering walls and tower, are at least fully alive to
the advantages of fresh air, and of wide scope and range for healthful
amusement. The like may be said of other places, lying only a little
further off. There is Roundhay Park, for instance, one of the most
splendid domains in England, now, through the wise liberality of the
Leeds Corporation, the property of the people; while the public parks
of many other towns, as Bradford, Halifax, Barnsley, with Manchester,
Liverpool, Blackburn, gratify not only the instinct for recreation, but
the desire for beauty.
[Illustration: 0197]
Or again, our traveller, in his pause at Leeds, may take the opportunity
of visiting Ilkley, with its fine open moorland, where the brain-wearied
worker may range at will. Then, a little way beyond Ilkley, lie the fair
woods and noble heights encircling Bolton Abbey, where the Wharfe comes
down, as yet unpolluted, from the moorland beyond; while the form of the
White Doe of Rylstone, or the memory of the ill-fated heir of Egremont,
seems yet to haunt the scene.
A little further again, our astonished friend comes upon a _Clapham
Junction_, but it is amid the silence of the hills! Ingleborough, with
its marvellous caves, too little known, with its companion heights,
Pen-y-gant and Whernside, rise from the valley: and every path is full
of beauty, especially that which leads into the heart of Craven, where
bold limestone scars, deep glens, and upland moors, with one deep,
lonely tarn, dear alike to dreamers and to anglers, yield a succession
of pictures, of which, among their many charms, not the least is their
easy accessibility from the neighbourhood of clanking mills and inky
streams. For Ilkley, Bolton, Harrogate, Craven, Clapham may all be
reached by the busy worker of Leeds or Bradford, and much of their
beauty enjoyed, in the leisure of a summer Saturday afternoon, or on a
"Bank holiday." He who would be free from excursionists, with their loud
talk, their demonstrative ways, their baskets and their bottles, must go
another time; but even in those holiday-hours there is much to interest.
The "trippers" may be an interruption to the dreamer, an annoyance to
the sensitive; but it is good that people whose lives are usually so
hard-pressed and monotonous should have the means of ennobling enjoyment
within easy reach; and though occasionally there may be an element of
roughness or even intemperance in the recreation, we should be unjust
were we not to record our impression, from what we have often seen,
that there is a decided improvement in these respects, and that the free
access to hill and moor, to fine scenery and pure air, has its part in
checking those vices which spring up like evil weeds in the unwholesome
dwellings of a crowded population.
[Illustration: 0198]
The "Excursion Season," no doubt, has its drawbacks in Lancashire,
Yorkshire, London, and everywhere else. There are holidays that depress
rather than invigorate: the spirit of self-indulgence may adopt the
pretext of needed recreation, and the Lord's day is too often heedlessly
or wilfully disregarded; but on the whole it is good that God's fair
world should be thrown open to all who can enjoy its beauties; and that,
as we have seen, some of its richest beauties should lie at the very
threshold of the hardest workers in the most unromantic scenes.
[Illustration: 8199]
The topic is almost inexhaustible; and the selection of places to be
visited in reasonable time, from these "centres of industry," would be
invidious to make. A little way beyond Leeds, as every one knows, lies
Harrogate, the high table-land where medicinal waters have for long
generations given to the place the fame of a true "city of Hygeia,"
while we ourselves would still give the chief credit to the
invigorating, stimulating air, and to the almost inexhaustible interest
of the neighbourhood, occupying the mind of the visitor with a round of
healthful delights. The visit to Studley Park and Fountains Abbey
will probably rank among the chief of these. Again, as in the cases of
Kirkstall and Bolton, reverting to the past, we admire the taste and
wisdom shown by the cowled brotherhoods in mediæval times, in their
choice of dwelling-places. Something, indeed, of the beauty which we now
see may have been the result of their assiduous culture. It was part
of their work to "make the wilderness to smile;" but they had a rare
faculty for lighting upon scenes which, if not already beautiful,
possessed an evident capability for becoming so. At Fountains
both nature and art seem to vie with each other; and in the modern
arrangement of the domain, the art may occasionally be the more
apparent. The artistic yields to the artificial; the ruins have been
maintained at the due stage of picturesqueness by careful oversight and
repair; and the carefully prepared "surprise," which awaits the visitor
at one stage of his progress through the grounds, is too theatrical to
permit even one of the fairest of pictures to have its full effect. But,
perhaps, all this is hypercritical, and, with every deduction, this old
Cistercian abbey is one of the most beautiful, as it is one of the most
complete mediæval monastic buildings in England. The tower, unlike that
of its sister abbey at Kirkstall, is little impaired by the ravages
of time, the plan of the edifice is easy to be traced; and the light
pillars and lofty arches of the Ladye Chapel give to the whole a
finishing touch of stateliness and grace. Then how pleasant to wander
through the noble avenues of Studley, to gaze upwards to the gigantic
spruce firs, or to climb the mound where linger the decaying forms of
the rugged yew trees--remnants, it is said, of the "seven sisters" that
spread their shade over the founders of the abbey, more than six hundred
years ago!
[Illustration: 9200]
Still pursuing our way northwards, we reach the country of the Yorkshire
Dales, where the Swale, passing by Richmond, the Tees, on the edge of
Durham, and many smaller streams, descend from the eastern slope of the
Westmoreland moors. Both abound in wild and charming scenery: the upper
Tees-dale especially is singularly impressive. The river runs in
its deep rocky bed through alpine-looking green meadows, with clean
whitewashed cottages scattered here and there. Trees there are few or
none, except a small kind of fir; and in place of hedges, low stone
walls mark the boundaries of the fields. About five or six miles
below its source, there forms the striking waterfall "High Force,"
tumbling over a black basaltic precipice, fifty feet high; while yet
higher up the stream, where it issues from a gloomy tarn on the edge
of the Westmoreland moors, descending for some two hundred feet over a
steep, irregular staircase, so to speak, of basalt, the weird wildness
of the scene, in the midst of its hilly amphitheatre, approaches
sublimity. Caldron Snout is the quaint name of this unique rapid, and
the curious in geology, as well as the lover of the picturesque, will be
well repaid by a visit.
But by this time we have wandered some distance from our manufacturing
centres. If, however, we have left the Yorkshire district behind, we are
approaching the yet more black and busy coal districts.
[Illustration: 0201]
Teesdale itself has two sets of associations, and the same stream, whose
rocks and dales are so romantic in its earlier course, becomes, by
the time it reaches Stockton, a broad and inky flood, and so passes
by Middlesborough--that wonderfully progressive seat of the iron
manufacture--to the sea. We now pass on from town to town along the
coast, each busier, blacker than the last, but with glimpses of rich
beauty between, while the city of Durham, as seen from the rail, is one
of the noblest views of rock and river, cathedral, castle, and town, on
which the traveller's eye has ever rested. This river is the Weir;
then the Tyne is reached, and Newcastle, the "capital of the north," is
entered over its splendid High-Level Bridge.
We can imagine no better route for a pedestrian excursion than the way
from Denton Hall to Thirlwall Castle--about thirty-four miles; or, if
the tourist wishes to see the whole, let him put Dr. Bruce's Condensed
Guide and an Ordnance map into his knapsack, devote a week to the
exploration, and proceed by leisurely stages from Wallsend, on the Tyne,
to Bowness, on the Solway, a distance of seventy-three miles and a half.
But our chief object in visiting these great centres of industry is to
explore their neighbourhoods. Few towns in England are better worth a
prolonged visit than Newcastle-upon-Tyne; but its attraction to us now
is, that we can, at so short a distance from its busy streets, place
ourselves amid rural scenes of surpassing interest, as well on their own
account as for their historical associations.
[Illustration: 0202]
First and foremost, of course, there is the Roman Wall, with its long
line of remains, still magnificent, and so varied from place to place,
while the scenery that surrounds them is so striking, that sea to sea
classic ground.
[Illustration: 0203]
A stranger might suppose that, after the lapse of long centuries, all
these works, granting their existence once, must have disappeared. It is
not so: save in the western portion, there is scarcely an acre without
distinct traces; in many places all the lines sweep on together, parts
in wondrous preservation; while many of the recent excavations present
structures several feet high, giving one the idea of works in progress,
so fresh that we are tempted to think of the builders as away but for an
hour, perhaps to the noonday meal. To traverse the line of the wall is
to pass along one continuous platform, whence the visitor revels in a
succession of glorious panoramas.
Returning to the busy east coast, very charming is the transition from
the Tyne to the Coquet, loveliest of Northumbrian streams, as it flows
down, interesting glimpses into the past opened up at every stage. Few
persons, indeed, who have not visited the scene, have any notion of the
variety and value of the remains which have withstood the wear and tear
of sixteen centuries, during a great part of which period the wall was
used as a quarry by the dwellers in the district.
[Illustration: 8203]
In many places the traveller, especially if aided by some competent
guide, may discern the whole outline of the structure. It consisted
of seven parts, viz., the Roman Wall proper, comprising ditch on the
extreme northern side; (1) the military road; then the earthwork,
consisting of (2) a wall; then (3) a space more or less wide from
thirty feet to half-a-mile, middle of vallum, along of (4) a mound, or
rampart, the largest of three; (5) a second ditch; (6) another mound,
the smallest; and (7) yet another mound. The following section exhibits
all in one view. Nor is this all, at every three or four miles we have
fortified camps of several acres each, at every mile a castle, and
between the castles watch-towers. Moreover, there are roads and bridges,
traces of villas, gardens, and burial-places, making almost every inch
from Thirlmoor, on the verge of the Cheviots, at the foot of heathery
hills and through richly wooded vales, to Rothbury--already a famous
place of resort from the district, and evidently destined to become
more frequented from its surpassing beauty of situation, encircled by
romantic hills, with the bright river running swiftly between.
[Illustration: 0204]
Thence the Coquet descends in many a winding by scenes of the richest
sylvan loveliness to Warkworth, renowned for its hermitage, which is
still, as the old Percy ballad describes it, "deep hewn within a craggy
cliff, and overhung with wood." And so we reach the sea, where Coquet
Island, with its lighthouse, lies amid the gleaming waters, scarcely
suggesting, as we gaze upon it in the fair sunshine, how terribly the
storm sometimes there rages, or how those dark rocks are chafed by the
angry billows!
But for the full splendour of cliff and ocean scenery we journey still
a little northward, and come to Dunstanborough Castle. Here a dark ridge
of basalt rises in pillared form sheer from the sea, and in the words of
Alarmion, "the whitening breakers," surging with ceaseless thunder into
the caves which pierce the cliffs, "sound near,"
"As boiling through the rocks they roar
On Dunstanborough's caverned shore."
[Illustration: 0205]
The view from the "Lilburn's Tower" in this ruined castle, commanding
landwards the broad purple moors, extending in many an undulation to the
rounded Cheviots, glimmering blue in the distance, and looking seawards
over the restless ocean, beating ever at the foot of the black columns,
while sea-birds are ceaselessly wheeling in mid air with shrill
outcries, not unfairly vies with the wild magnificence of Tintagel, as
described in our earlier pages.
The two coast scenes are, perhaps, unequalled in the British Islands:
the difference is that, while the Cornish scene lies in far-away
seclusion, this of Northumberland is close by one of the chief lines of
traffic, and within accessible distance of crowded populations. Yet even
Cornwall is a great industrial centre. Its mining industries are never
far away from us. Its wildest cliffs are pierced by shafts and adits
leading down, as in the Botallack Mine, to labyrinthine passages far
under the bed of the sea, where the miners can hear overhead the rush of
the waves and the grinding together of the huge boulders.
We have now reached the limit of our purpose, which was to show how near
to the doors of the million is some of the most striking scenery of
our land. Else from Dunstanborough Castle we could have pursued our way
northwards at least as far as Bamborough Castle, not so much for the
sake of admiring its noble ramparts and towers--once a fortress, now a
temple of charity--or of gazing again upon the glories of cliff and sea,
as of looking out across the waters to those rocky isles which, in our
own time, have witnessed one of those deeds of unconscious heroism which
do honour to our nature. For it was from one of those sea-beaten crags
that, on the 5th of September, 1838, Grace Darling set forth upon her
errand of mercy amid the raging waters, to rescue the survivors of the
shipwrecked Forfarshire. "Her musical name," it has been said, "is the
burden of a beautiful story of that love of man which is the love of
Christ translated into human language and deeds." Four years after that
great exploit the brave and gentle maiden died of consumption, brought
on, it is said, by a visit to her brother, keeper of the lighthouse on
Coquet Island: but she has left among our island race an imperishable
name. Let us conclude these random rovings by a visit to her monument
in Bamborough churchyard. Her figure lies as it were in slumber, an oar
upon her shoulder, beneath a Gothic canopy, within sight and hearing of
the waves. On the bright day of our visit the waves were murmuring and
sparkling far below: the craggy islets in the distance were touched with
sunlight, and we turned away, reminded less of the heroism that braved
the storm, than of the heavenly home and the everlasting rest. "I saw
a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth
were passed away; and there was no more sea."
[Illustration: 0206]