amusement. I have all my life delighted in travelling, though I have
never enjoyed that pleasure upon a large scale. It was a propensity
which I sometimes indulged so unduly as to alarm and vex my parents.
Wood, water, wilderness itself had an inexpressible charm for me, and
I had a dreamy way of going much farther than I intended, so that
unconsciously my return was protracted, and my parents had sometimes
serious cause of uneasiness. For example, I once set out with Mr
George Abercromby (son of the immortal general), Mr William Clerk,
and some others, to fish in the lake above Howgate, and the stream
which descends from it into the Esk. We breakfasted at Howgate, and
fished the whole day; and while we were on our return next morning, I
was easily seduced by William Clerk, then a great intimate, to visit
Pennycuik House, the seat of his family. Here he and John Irving, and
I for their sake, were overwhelmed with kindness by the late Sir John
Clerk and his lady, the present Dowager Lady Clerk. The pleasure of
looking at fine pictures, the beauty of the place, and the flattering
hospitality of the owners, drowned all recollection of home for a day
or two. Meanwhile our companions, who had walked on without being aware
of our digression, returned to Edinburgh without us, and excited no
small alarm in my father's household. At length, however, they became
accustomed to my escapades. My father used to protest to me on such
occasions that he thought I was born to be a strolling pedlar; and
though the prediction was intended to mortify my conceit, I am not sure
that I altogether disliked it. I was now familiar with Shakespeare, and
thought of Autolycus's song:
"Jog on, jog on the footpath way
And merrily hent the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a."
_Sir Walter Scott._
A Stout Pedestrian
Let the reader conceive to himself a clear frosty November morning,
the scene an open heath, having for the background that huge chain of
mountains in which Skiddaw and Saddleback are preeminent; let him look
along that _blind road_, by which I mean the track so slightly marked
by the passengers' footsteps that it can but be traced by a slight
shade of verdure from the darker heath around it, and, being only
visible to the eye when at some distance, ceases to be distinguished
while the foot is actually treading it--along this faintly-traced path
advances the object of our present narrative. His firm step, his erect
and free carriage, have a military air, which corresponds well with his
well-proportioned limbs, and stature of six feet high. His dress is so
plain and simple that it indicates nothing as to rank--it may be that
of a gentleman who travels in this manner for his pleasure, or of an
inferior person of whom it is the proper and usual garb. Nothing can
be on a more reduced scale than his travelling equipment. A volume
of Shakespeare in each pocket, a small bundle with a change of linen
slung across his shoulders, an oaken cudgel in his hand, complete our
pedestrian's accommodations, and in this equipage we present him to our
readers.
Brown had parted that morning from his friend Dudley, and began his
solitary walk towards Scotland.
The first two or three miles were rather melancholy, from want of the
society to which he had of late been accustomed. But this unusual mood
of mind soon gave way to the influence of his natural good spirits,
excited by the exercise and the bracing effects of the frosty air. He
whistled as he went along, not "from want of thought," but to give vent
to those buoyant feelings which he had no other mode of expressing.
For each peasant whom he chanced to meet, he had a kind greeting or
a good-humoured jest; the hardy Cumbrians grinned as they passed,
and said, "That's a kind heart, God bless un!" and the market-girl
looked more than once over her shoulder at the athletic form, which
corresponded so well with the frank and blithe address of the stranger.
A rough terrier dog, his constant companion, who rivalled his master
in glee, scampered at large in a thousand wheels round the heath, and
came back to jump up on him, and assure him that he participated in
the pleasure of the journey. Dr Johnson thought life had few things
better than the excitation produced by being whirled rapidly along in
a post-chaise; but he who has in youth experienced the confident and
independent feeling of a stout pedestrian in an interesting country,
and during fine weather, will hold the taste of the great moralist
cheap in comparison.
Part of Brown's view in choosing that unusual tract which leads through
the eastern walls of Cumberland into Scotland, had been a desire to
view the remains of the celebrated Roman Wall, which are more visible
in that direction than in any other part of its extent. His education
had been imperfect and desultory; but neither the busy scenes in which
he had been engaged, nor the pleasures of youth, nor the precarious
state of his own circumstances, had diverted him from the task of
mental improvement.--"And this then is the Roman Wall," he said,
scrambling up to a height which commanded the course of that celebrated
work of antiquity: "What a people! whose labours, even at this
extremity of their empire, comprehended such space, and were executed
upon a scale of such grandeur! In future ages, when the science of
war shall have changed, how few traces will exist of the labours of
Vauban and Coehorn, while this wonderful people's remains will even
then continue to interest and astonish posterity! Their fortifications,
their aqueducts, their theatres, their fountains, all their public
works, bear the grave, solid, and majestic character of their language;
while our modern labours, like our modern tongues, seem but constructed
out of their fragments." Having thus moralised, he remembered that he
was hungry, and pursued his walk to a small public-house at which he
proposed to get some refreshment.
The alehouse, for it was no better, was situated in the bottom of a
little dell, through which trilled a small rivulet. It was shaded by
a large ash-tree, against which the clay-built shed, that served the
purpose of a stable, was erected, and upon which it seemed partly to
recline. In this shed stood a saddled horse, employed in eating his
corn. The cottages in this part of Cumberland partake of the rudeness
which characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house
promised little for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign,
where a tankard of ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler,
and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of
"good entertainment for man and horse." Brown was no fastidious
traveller--he stooped and entered the cabaret.
The first object which caught his eye in the kitchen was a tall, stout,
country-looking man, in a large jockey great-coat, the owner of the
horse which stood in the shed, who was busy discussing huge slices of
cold boiled beef, and casting from time to time an eye through the
window, to see how his steed sped with his provender. A large tankard
of ale flanked his plate of victuals, to which he applied himself by
intervals. The good woman of the house was employed in baking. The
fire, as is usual in that country, was on a stone hearth, in the midst
of an immensely large chimney, which had two seats extended beneath the
vent. On one of these sat a remarkably tall woman, in a red cloak and
slouched bonnet, having the appearance of a tinker or beggar. She was
busily engaged with a short black tobacco-pipe.
At the request of Brown for some food, the landlady wiped with her
mealy apron one corner of the deal table, placed a wooden trencher and
knife and fork before the traveller, pointed to the round of beef,
recommended Mr Dinmont's good example, and, finally, filled a brown
pitcher with her home-brewed. Brown lost no time in doing ample credit
to both. For a while, his opposite neighbour and he were too busy to
take much notice of each other, except by a good-humoured nod as each
in turn raised the tankard to his head. At length, when our pedestrian
began to supply the wants of little Wasp, the Scotch store-farmer,
for such was Mr Dinmont, found himself at leisure to enter into
conversation.
_Sir Walter Scott,--"Guy Mannering."_
Lake Scenery
The morning was clear and cheerful after a night of sharp frost. At ten
o'clock we took our way on foot towards Pooley Bridge on the same side
of the lake we had coasted in a boat the day before.--Looked backwards
to the south from our favourite station above Blowick. The dazzling
sunbeams striking upon the church and village, while the earth was
steaming with exhalations not traceable in other quarters, rendered
their forms even more indistinct than the partial and flitting veil
of unillumined vapour had done two days before. The grass on which
we trod, and the trees in every thicket, were dripping with melted
hoar-frost. We observed the lemon-coloured leaves of the birches, as
the breeze turned them to the sun, sparkle, or rather _flash_, like
diamonds, and the leafless purple twigs were tipped with globes of
shining crystal.
The day continued delightful, and unclouded to the end. I will not
describe the country which we slowly travelled through nor relate our
adventures; and will only add, that on the afternoon of the thirteenth
we returned along the banks of Ulswater by the usual road. The lake
lay in deep repose after the agitations of a wet and stormy morning.
The trees in Gowbarrow park were in that state when what is gained by
the exposure of their bark and branches compensates, almost, for the
loss of foliage, exhibiting the variety which characterises the point
of time between autumn and winter. The hawthorns were leafless; their
round heads covered with rich scarlet berries, and adorned with arches
of green brambles, and eglantines hung with glossy hips; and the grey
trunks of some of the ancient oak, which in the summer season might
have been regarded only for their venerable majesty, now attracted
notice by a pretty embellishment of green mosses and fern intermixed
with russet leaves retained by those slender outstarting twigs which
the veteran tree would not have tolerated in his strength.
The smooth silver branches of the ashes were bare; most of the alders
as green as the Devonshire cottage-myrtle that weathers the snows of
Christmas.--Will you accept it as some apology for my having dwelt so
long on the woodland ornaments of these scenes--that artists speak
of the trees on the banks of Ulswater, and especially along the bays
of Stybarrow crags, as having a peculiar character of picturesque
intricacy in their stems and branches, which their rocky stations and
the mountain winds have combined to give them?
At the end of Gowbarrow park a large herd of deer were either moving
slowly or standing still among the fern.
I was sorry when a chance-companion, who had joined us by the way,
startled them with a whistle, disturbing an image of grave simplicity
and thoughtful enjoyment; for I could have fancied that those natives
of this wild and beautiful region were partaking with us a sensation
of the solemnity of the closing day. The sun had been set some time;
and we could perceive that the light was fading away from the coves of
Helvellyn, but the lake under a luminous sky, was more brilliant than
before. After tea at Patterdale, set out again:--a fine evening; the
seven stars close to the mountain-top; all the stars seemed brighter
than usual. The steeps were reflected in Brotherswater, and, above the
lake appeared like enormous black perpendicular walls. The Kirkstone
torrents had been swoln by the rain, and now filled the mountain pass
with their roaring, which added greatly to the solemnity of our walk.
Behind us, when we had climbed to a great height, we saw one light very
distant in the vale, like a large red star--a solitary one in the
gloomy region. The cheerfulness of the scene was in the sky above us.
Reached home a little before midnight.
_William Wordsworth._
Walking, and the Wild
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness,
as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,--to regard man
as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member
of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an
emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilisation: the
minister and the school committee, and every one of you will take care
of that.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,--who had
a genius, so to speak, for _sauntering_: which word is beautifully
derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle
Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going _‡ la Sainte
Terre_," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes
a _Sainte-Terrer_," a Saunterer--a Holy-Lander. They who never go to
the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers
and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good
sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from _sans
terre_, without land or a home, which therefore, in the good sense,
will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere.
For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still
in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the
saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering
river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course
to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable
derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter
the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the
hands of the Infidels.
It is true we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers,
nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our
expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old
hearth-side from which we set out. Half the work is but retracing our
steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the
spirit of undying adventure, never to return--prepared to send back our
embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are
ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and
child and friends, and never see them again--if you have paid your
debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free
man, then you are ready for a walk.
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes
have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new,
or rather an old, order--not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters
or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honourable class,
I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the
Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the
Walker,--not the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth
estate, outside of Church and State and People.
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practised this noble art;
though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be
received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but
they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and
independence, which are the capital in this profession. It comes only
by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven
to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers.
_Ambulator nascitur, non fit._ Some of my townsmen, it is true, can
remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten
years ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for
half-an-hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined
themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may
make to belong to this select class. No doubt they were elevated for a
moment as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when
even they were foresters and outlaws.
"When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.
"It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,
That I was last here;
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere."
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I
spend four hours a day at least--and it is commonly more than
that--sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields,
absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A
penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am
reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not
only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed
legs, so many of them--as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not
to stand or walk upon--I think that they deserve some credit for not
having all committed suicide long ago.
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring
some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the
eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the
day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with
the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned
for,--I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to
say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbours who confine
themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months,
ay, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they
are of--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if
it were three o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the
three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage
which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over
against one's self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out
a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I
wonder that about this time, or say between four and five o'clock in
the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for the
evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the
street, scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and
whims to the four winds for an airing--and so the evil cure itself.
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand
it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not
_stand_ it at all. When, early in the summer afternoon, we have been
shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making
haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have
such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably
about these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that
I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself
never turns in, but for ever stands out and erect, keeping watch over
the slumberers.
No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do
with it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow
indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as
the evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just
before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half-an-hour.
But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking
exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated
hours--as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the
enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in
search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumb-bells
for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures
unsought by him!
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only
beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveller asked Wordsworth's
servant to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his
library, but his study is out of doors."
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce
a certain roughness of character--will cause a thicker cuticle to
grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face
and hands, or as severe manual labour robs the hands of some of
their delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand,
may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin,
accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps
we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our
intellectual and moral growth if the sun had shone and the wind blown
on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion
rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that
will fall off fast enough--that the natural remedy is to be found in
the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the
summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air
and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the labourer are
conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch
thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere
sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from
the tan and callus of experience.
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would
become of us if we walked only in the garden or a mall? Even some sects
of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to
themselves, since they did not go to the woods. "They planted groves
and walks of Platanes," where they took _subdiales ambulationes_ in
porticos open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our
steps to the woods if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when
it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily without
getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all
my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes
happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some
work will run in my head, and I am not where my body is--I am out of
my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business
have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so
implicated even in what are called good works--for this may sometimes
happen.
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I
have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together,
I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great
happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours'
walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see.
A single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good
as the dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of
harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within
a circle of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and
the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite
familiar to you.
Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of
houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees,
simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
A people who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest
stand! I saw the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle
of the prairie, and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after
his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not
see the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old posthole
in the midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the
middle of a boggy, stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found
his bounds without a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been
driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his
surveyor.
I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing
at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road
except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and
then the brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square
miles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can
see civilisation and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their
works are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows.
Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce,
and manufactures and agriculture, even politics, the most alarming of
them all,--I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the
landscape. Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower
highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveller thither.
If you would go to the political world, follow the great road--follow
that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you
straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not occupy
all space. I pass from it as from a beanfield into the forest, and
it is forgotten. In one half-hour I can walk off to some portion of
the earth's surface where a man does not stand from one year's end to
another and there, consequently, politics are not, for they are but as
the cigar-smoke of a man.