Dull must he be of soul who could make the journey from Liverpool to the
metropolis in the month of June, and not be lifted above himself by the
surpassing loveliness of dear mother Nature. Even if he were chained to
a ledger and cash book--if he never had a thought or wish beyond the
broker's board, and his entire reading were the prices current--he must
forget them all, and feel for the time what a miserable sham his life
is--or he does not deserve the gift of sight. It is Thackeray, I think,
who speaks somewhere of the "charming friendly English landscape that
seems to shake hands with you as you pass along"--and any body who has
seen it in June will say that this is hardly a figurative expression. I
used to think that it was my enthusiastic love for the land of the great
Alfred which made it seem so beautiful to me when I was younger; but I
find that it wears too well to be a mere fancy of my own brain. People
may complain of the humid climate of England, and curse the umbrella
which must accompany them whenever they walk out; but when the sun does
shine, it shines upon a scene of beautiful fertility unequalled
elsewhere in the world, and which the moist climate produces and
preserves. And then, too, it seems doubly grateful to the eyes of one
just come from sea. The bright freshness of the whole landscape, the
varied tints of green, the trim hedges, the luxuriant foliage which
springs from the very trunks of the trees, and the high state of
cultivation which makes the whole country look as if it had been swept
and dusted that morning,--all these things strike an American, for he
cannot help contrasting them with the parched fields of his own land in
summer, surrounded by their rough fences and hastily piled-up stone
walls. The solidity of the houses and cottages, which look as if they
were built, not for an age, but for all time, makes him think of the
country houses of America, which seem to have grown up in a night, like
our friend Aladdin's, and whose frailty is so apparent that you cannot
sneeze in one of them without apprehending a serious calamity. Then the
embankments of the railways present not only a pleasant sight to the eye
of the traveller, but a pretty little hay crop to the corporation; and
at every station, and bridge, and crossing, wherever there is a switch
to be tended, you see the neat cottages of the keepers, and the gardens
thereof--the railway companies having learned that the expenditure of a
few hundred pounds in this way saves an expenditure of many thousands in
surgeons' bills and damages, and is far more satisfactory to all
concerned.
What a charming sight is a cow--what a look of contentment she
has--ambitious of nothing beyond the field of daily duty, and never
looking happier than when she comes at night to yield a plenteousness of
that fluid without which custards were an impossibility! Wordsworth says
that "heaven lies about us in our infancy"--surely he must mean that
portion of the heavens called by astronomers the Milky Way. It is
pleasant to see a cow by the side of a railway--provided she is fenced
from danger--to see her lift her head slowly as the train goes whizzing
by, and gaze with those mild, tranquil eyes upon the noisy,
smoke-puffing monster,--just as the saintly hermits of olden times might
have looked from their serene heights of contemplation upon the dusty,
bustling world. The taste of the English farmers for fine cattle is
attested by a glance at any of their pastures. On every side you see the
representatives of Alderney's bovine aristocracy; and scores of cattle
crop the juicy grass, rivalling in their snowy whiteness any that ever
reclined upon Clitumno's "mild declivity of hill," or admired their
graceful horns in its clear waters. Until I saw them, I never
comprehended what farmers meant when they spoke of "neat cattle."
What an eloquent preacher is an old church-tower! Moss-crowned and
ivy-robed, it lifts its head, unshaken by the tempests of centuries, as
it did in the days when King John granted the Great Charter or the holy
Edward ruled the realm, and tells of the ages when England was one in
faith, and not a poor-house existed throughout the land. Like a faithful
sentinel, it stands guard over the humbler edifices around it, and warns
their inhabitants alike of their dangers and their duties by the music
of its bells. Erect in silent dignity, it receives the first beams of
the morning, and when twilight has begun to shroud every thing in its
neighbourhood, the flash of sunset lingers on its gray summit. It looks
down with sublime indifference upon the changing scene below, as if it
would reproach the actors there with their forgetfulness of the
transitoriness of human pursuits, and remind them, by its
unchangeableness, of the eternal years.
At last we draw near London. A gentleman, whose age I would not attempt
to guess,--for he was very carefully made up, and boasted a deportment
which would have excited the envy of Mr. Turveydrop, senior,--so far
forgot his dignity as to lean forward and inform me that the place we
were passing was "'Arrow on the 'Ill," which made me forget for the
moment both his appearance and his uncalled-for "exasperation of the
haitches." Not long after, I found myself issuing from the magnificent
terminus of the North Western Railway, in Euston Square, in a cab marked
V. R. 10,276. The cab and omnibus drivers of London are a distinct race
of beings. Who can write their natural history? Who is competent to such
a task? The researches of a Pritchard, a Pickering, a Smyth, would seem
to cover the whole subject of the history of the human species from the
anthropophagi and bosjesmen to the drinkers of train oil in the polar
regions; but the cabmen are not included. They would require a master
mind. The subject would demand the patient investigation of a Humboldt,
the eloquence of a Macaulay, and the humour of a Dickens--and even then
would fall short, I fear, of giving an adequate idea of them. Your
London cab driver has no idea of distance; as, for instance, I ask one
the simple question,--
"How far is it to the Angel in Islington?"
"Wot, sir?"