assembled at that spot which a gregarious instinct has marked out
for the ice-fair, and approaching it speed must be slackened.
Sounds of merry laughter, and the 'knock, knock' of the
hockey-sticks arise. Ladies are gracefully gliding hither and
thither. Dancing-parties are formed, and thus among friends the
short winter's day passes too soon, and sunset is at hand. But how
beautiful that sunset! Under the level beams of the sun the ice
assumes a delicate rosy hue; yonder the white snow-covered hills to
the eastward are rosy too. Above them the misty vapour thickening in
the sky turns to the dull red the shepherd knows to mean another
frost and another fine day. Westwards where the disc has just gone
down, the white ridges of the hills stand out for the moment sharp
against the sky, as if cut by the graver's tool. Then the vapours
thicken; then, too, behind them, and slowly, the night falls.
Come back again in a few hours' time. The laugh is still, the noise
has fled, and the first sound of the skate on the black ice seems
almost a desecration. Shadows stretch out and cover the once
gleaming surface. But through the bare boughs of the great oak
yonder the moon--almost full--looks athwart the lake, and will soon
be high in the sky.
MARLBOROUGH FOREST
The great painter, Autumn, has just touched with the tip of his
brush a branch of the beech-tree, here and there leaving an orange
spot, and the green acorns are tinged with a faint yellow. The
hedges, perfect mines of beauty, look almost red from a distance, so
innumerable are the peggles.[1] Let not the modern Goths destroy our
hedges, so typical of an English landscape, so full of all that can
delight the eye and please the mind. Spare them, if only for the
sake of the 'days when we went gipsying--a long time ago'; spare
them for the children to gather the flowers of May and the
blackberries of September.
[1] A Wiltshire name for hawthorn-berries.
When the orange spot glows upon the beech, then the nuts are ripe,
and the hawthorn-bushes are hung with festoons of the buff-coloured,
heart-shaped leaves of a once-green creeper. That 'deepe and
enclosed country of Northe Wiltes,' which old Clarendon, in his
famous 'Civill Warre,' says the troops of King Charles had so much
difficulty to hurry through, is pleasant to those who can linger by
the wayside and the copse, and do not fear to hear the ordnance
make the 'woods ring again,' though to this day a rusty old
cannon-ball may sometimes be found under the dead brown leaves of
Aldbourne Chase, where the skirmish took place before 'Newbury
Battle.'
Perhaps it is because no such outbursts of human passions have
swept along beneath its trees that the 'Forest' is unsung by
the poet and unvisited by the artist. Yet its very name is
poetical--Savernake--_i.e._, savernes-acres--like the God's-acres
of Longfellow. Saverne--a peculiar species of sweet fern;
acre--land.' So we may call it 'Fern-land Forest,' and with truth,
for but one step beneath those beeches away from the path plunges
us to our shoulders in an ocean of bracken.
The yellow stalks, stout and strong as wood, make walking through
the brake difficult, and the route pursued devious, till, from the
constant turning and twisting, the way is lost. For this is no
narrow copse, but a veritable forest in which it is easy to lose
oneself; and the stranger who attempts to pass it away from the
beaten track must possess some of the Indian instinct which sees
signs and directions in the sun and wind, in the trees and humble
plants of the ground.
And this is its great charm. The heart has a yearning for the
unknown, a longing to penetrate the deep shadow and the winding
glade, where, as it seems, no human foot has been.
High overhead in the beech-tree the squirrel peeps down from behind
a bough, his long bushy tail curled up over his back, and his bright
eyes full of mischievous cunning. Listen, and you will hear the
tap, tap of the woodpecker, and see! away he goes in undulating
flight with a wild, unearthly chuckle, his green and gold plumage
glancing in the sun, like the parrots of far-distant lands. He will
alight in some open space upon an ant-hill, and lick up the red
insects with his tongue. In the fir-tree there, what a chattering
and fluttering of gaily-painted wings!--three or four jays are
quarrelling noisily. These beautiful birds are slain by scores
because of their hawk-like capacities for destruction of game, and
because of the delicate colours of their feathers, which are used in
fly-fishing.
There darts across the glade a scared rabbit, straining each little
limb for speed, almost rushing against us, a greater terror
overcoming the less. In a moment there darts forth from the dried
grass a fierce red-furred hunter, a very tiger to the rabbit tribe,
with back slightly arched, bounding along, and sniffing the scent;
another, and another, still a fourth--a whole pack of stoats (elder
brothers of the smaller weasels). In vain will the rabbit trust to
his speed, these untiring wolves will overtake him. In vain will he
turn and double: their unerring noses will find him out. In vain the
tunnels of the 'bury,' they will as surely come under ground as
above. At last, wearied, panting, frightened almost to death, the
timid creature will hide in a cul-de-sac, a hole that has no outlet,
burying its head in the sand. Then the tiny bloodhounds will steal
with swift, noiseless rush, and fasten upon the veins of the neck.
What a rattling the wings of the pigeons make as they rise out of
the trees in hot haste and alarm! As we pass a fir-copse we stoop
down and look along the ground under the foliage. The sharp
'needles' or leaves which fall will not decay, and they kill all
vegetation, so that there is no underwood or herbage to obstruct the
view. It is like looking into a vast cellar supported upon
innumerable slender columns. The pheasants run swiftly away
underneath.
High up the cones are ripening--those mysterious emblems sculptured
in the hands of the gods at Nineveh, perhaps typifying the secret of
life. More bracken. What a strong, tall fern! it is like a miniature
tree. So thick is the cover, a thousand archers might be hid in it
easily. In this wild solitude, utterly separated from civilization,
the whistle of an arrow would not surprise us--the shout of a savage
before he hurled his spear would seem natural, and in keeping. What
are those strange, clattering noises, like the sound of men fighting
with wooden 'backswords'? Now it is near--now afar off--a spreading
battle seems to be raging all round, but the combatants are out of
sight. But, gently--step lightly, and avoid placing the foot on dead
sticks, which break with a loud crack--softly peep round the trunk
of this noble oak, whose hard furrowed bark defends it like armour.
The red-deer! Two splendid stags are fighting--fighting for their
lady-love, the timid doe. They rush at each other with head down and
horns extended; the horns meet and rattle; they fence with them
skilfully. This was the cause of the noise. It is the tilting
season--these tournaments between the knights of the forest are
going on all around. There is just a trifle of danger in approaching
these combatants, but not much, just enough to make the forest still
more enticing; none whatever to those who use common caution. At the
noise of our footsteps away go the stags, their 'branching antlers'
seen high above the tall fern, bounding over the ground in a series
of jumps, all four feet leaving the earth at once. There are immense
oaks that we come to now, each with an open space beneath it, where
Titania and the fairies may dance their rings at night. These
enormous trunks--what _time_ they represent! To us, each hour is of
consequence, especially in this modern day, which has invented the
detestable creed that time is money. But time is not money to
Nature. She never hastens. Slowly from the tiny acorn grew up this
gigantic trunk, and spread abroad those limbs which in themselves
are trees. And from the trunk itself to the smallest leaf, every
infinitesimal atom of which it is composed was perfected slowly,
gradually--there was no hurry, no attempt to discount effect. A
little farther and the ground declines; through the tall fern we
come upon a valley. But the soft warm sunshine, the stillness, the
solitude, have induced an irresistible idleness. Let us lie down
upon the fern, on the edge of the green vale, and gaze up at the
slow clouds as they drift across the blue vault.
The subtle influence of Nature penetrates every limb and every vein,
fills the soul with a perfect contentment, an absence of all wish
except to lie there, half in sunshine, half in shade, for ever in a
Nirvana of indifference to all but the exquisite delight of simply
_living_. The wind in the tree-tops overhead sighs in soft music,
and ever and anon a leaf falls with a slight rustle to mark time.
The clouds go by in rhythmic motion, the ferns whisper verses in the
ear, the beams of the wondrous sun in endless song, for he, also,
In his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim,
Such harmony is in immortal souls!
Time is to us now no more than it was to the oak; we have no
consciousness of it. Only we feel the broad earth beneath us, and as
to the ancient giant, so there passes through us a strength renewing
itself, of vital energy flowing into the frame. It may be an hour,
it may be two hours, when, without the aid of sound or sight, we
become aware by an indescribable, supersensuous perception that
living creatures are approaching. Sit up without noise and look:
there is a herd of deer feeding down the narrow valley close at
hand, within a stone's-throw. And these are deer indeed--no puny
creatures, but the 'tall deer' that William the Conqueror loved 'as
if he were their father.' Fawns are darting here and there, frisking
round the does. How many may there be in this herd? Fifty, perhaps
more. Nor is this a single isolated instance, but dozens more of
such herds may be found in this true old English forest, all running
free and unconstrained.
But the sun gets low. Following this broad green drive, it leads us
past vistas of endless glades, going no man knows where, into
shadow and gloom; past grand old oaks; past places where the edge
of a veritable wilderness comes up to the trees--a wilderness of
gnarled hawthorn trunks of unknown ages, of holly with shining
metallic-green leaves, and hazel-bushes. Past tall trees bearing the
edible chestnut in prickly clusters; past maples which in a little
while will be painted in crimson and gold, with the deer peeping out
of the fern everywhere, and once, perhaps, catching a glimpse of a
shy, beautiful, milk-white doe. Past a huge hollow trunk in the
midst of a greensward, where merry picnic parties under the 'King
Oak' tread the social quadrille, or whirl waltzes to the harp and
flute. For there are certain spots even in this grand solitude
consecrated to Cytherea and Bacchus, as he is now worshipped in
champagne. And where can graceful forms look finer, happy eyes more
bright, than in this natural ballroom, under its incomparable roof
of blue, supported upon living columns of stately trees? Still
onward, into a gravel carriage-road now, returning by degrees to
civilization, and here, with happy judgment, the hand of man has
aided Nature. Far as the eye can see extends an avenue of beech,
passing right through the forest. The tall, smooth trunks rise up to
a great height, and then branch overhead, looking like the roof of a
Gothic cathedral. The growth is so regular and so perfect that the
comparison springs unbidden to the lip, and here, if anywhere, that
order of architecture might have taken its inspiration. There is a
continuous Gothic arch of green for miles, beneath which one may
drive or walk, as in the aisles of a forest abbey. But it is
impossible to even mention all the beauties of this place within so
short a space. It must suffice to say that the visitor may walk for
whole days in this great wood, and never pass the same spot twice.
No gates or jealous walls will bar his progress. As the fancy seizes
him, so he may wander. If he has a taste for archaeological studies,
especially the prehistoric, the edge of the forest melts away upon
downs that bear grander specimens than can be seen elsewhere.
Stonehenge and Avebury are near. The trout-fisher can approach very
close to it. The rail gives easy communication, but has not spoilt
the seclusion.
Monsieur Lesseps, of Suez Canal fame, is reported to have said that
Marlborough Forest was the finest he had seen in Europe. Certainly
no one who had not seen it would believe that a forest still existed
in the very heart of Southern England so completely recalling those
woods and 'chases' upon which the ancient feudal monarchs set such
store.
VILLAGE CHURCHES
The black rooks are busy in the old oak-trees, carrying away the
brown acorns one by one in their strong beaks to some open place
where, undisturbed, they can feast upon the fruit. The nuts have
fallen from the boughs, and the mice garner them out of the ditches;
but the blue-black sloes cling tight to the thorn-branch still. The
first frost has withered up the weak sap left in the leaves, and
they whirl away in yellow clouds before the gusts of wind. It is the
season, the hour of half-sorrowful, half-mystic thought, when the
past becomes a reality and the present a dream, and unbidden
memories of sunny days and sunny faces, seen when life was all
spring, float around:
Dim dream-like forms! your shadowy train
Around me gathers once again;
The same as in life's morning hour,
Before my troubled gaze you passed.
* * * * *
Forms known in happy days you bring,
And much-loved shades amid you spring,
Like a tradition, half expired,
Worn out with many a passing year.
In so busy a land as ours there is no place where the mind can, as
it were, turn in upon itself so fully as in the silence and solitude
of a village church.
There is no ponderous vastness, no oppressive weight of gloomy roof,
no weird cavernous crypts, as in the cathedral; only a _visible_
silence, which at once isolates the soul, separates it from external
present influences, and compels it, in falling back upon itself, to
recognize its own depth and powers. In daily life we sit as in a
vast library filled with tomes, hurriedly writing frivolous letters
upon 'vexatious nothings,' snatching our food and slumber, for ever
rushing forward with beating pulse, never able to turn our gaze away
from the goal to examine the great storehouse, the library around
us. Upon the infinitely delicate organization of the brain
innumerable pictures are hourly painted; these, too, we hurry by,
ignoring them, pushing them back into oblivion. But here, in
silence, they pass again before the gaze. Let no man know for what
real purpose we come here; tell the aged clerk our business is with
brasses and inscriptions, press half a crown into his hand, and let
him pass to his potato-digging. There is one advantage at least in
the closing of the church on week-days, so much complained of--to
those who do visit it there is a certainty that their thoughts will
not be disturbed. And the sense of man's presence has departed from
the walls and oaken seats; the dust here is not the dust of the
highway, of the quick footstep; it is the dust of the past. The
ancient heavy key creaks in the cumbrous lock, and the iron
latch-ring has worn a deep groove in the solid stone. The narrow
nail-studded door of black oak yields slowly to the push--it is not
easy to enter, not easy to quit the present--but once close it, and
the living world is gone. The very style of ornament upon the door,
the broad-headed nails, has come down from the remotest antiquity.
After the battle, says the rude bard in the Saxon chronicle,
The Northmen departed
In their nailed barks,
and, earlier still, the treacherous troop that seized the sleeping
magician in iron, Wayland the Smith, were clad in 'nailed armour,'
in both instances meaning ornamented with nails. Incidentally, it
may be noted that, until very recently, at least one village church
in England had part of the skin of a Dane nailed to the door--a
stern reminder of the days when 'the Pagans' harried the land. This
narrow window, deep in the thick wall, has no painted magnificence
to boast of; but as you sit beside it in the square, high-sided pew,
it possesses a human interest which even art cannot supply.
The tall grass growing rank on the graves without rustles as it
waves to and fro in the wind against the small diamond panes, yellow
and green with age--rustles with a melancholy sound; for we know
that this window was once far above the ground, but the earth has
risen till nearly on a level--risen from the accumulation of human
remains. Yet, but a day or two before, on the Sunday morning, in
this pew, bright, restless children smiled at each other, exchanged
guilty pushes, while the sunbeams from the arrow-slit above shone
upon their golden hair.
Let us not think of this further, but dimly through the window, 'as
through a glass darkly,' see the green yew with its red berries, and
afar the elms and beeches, brown and yellow. The steep down rises
over them, and the moving grey patch upon it is a flock of sheep.
The white wall is cold and damp, and the beams of the roof overhead,
though the varnish is gone from them, are dark with slow decay.
In the recess lies the figure of a knight in armour, rudely carved,
beside his lady, still more rudely rendered in her stiff robes, and
of him an ill-spelt inscription proudly records that he 'builded ye
greate howse at'--no matter where; but history records that cruel
war wrapped it in flames before half a generation was gone, so that
the boast of his building great houses reads as a bitter mockery.
There stands opposite a grander monument to a mighty earl, and over
it hangs a breastplate and gauntlets of steel.
The villagers will tell that in yonder deep shady 'combe' or valley,
in the thick hazel-bushes, when the 'beetle with his drowsy hum'
rises through the night air, there comes the wicked old earl,
wearing this very breastplate, these iron gloves, to expiate one
evil deed of yore. And if we sit in this pew long enough, till the
mind is magnetized with the spirit of the past, till the early
evening sends its shadowy troops to fill the distant corners of the
silent church, then, perhaps, there may come to us forms gliding
noiselessly over the stone pavement of the aisles--forms not
repelling or ghastly, but filling us with an eager curiosity. Then
through the slit made for that very purpose centuries since, when
the pew was in a family chapel--through the slit in the pillar, we
may see cowled monks assemble at the altar, muttering as magicians
might over vessels of gold. The clank of scabbards upon the stones
is stilled, the rustle of gowns is silent; if there is a sound, it
is of subdued sobs, as the aged monk blesses the troop on the eve of
their march. Not even yet has the stern idol of war ceased to demand
its victims; even yet brave hearts and noble minds must perish, and
leave sterile the hopes of the elders and the love of woman. There
is still light enough left to read the few simple lines on the plain
marble slab, telling how 'Lieutenant ----,' at Inkerman, at Lucknow,
or, later still, at Coomassie, fell doing his duty. And these plain
slabs are dearer to us far than all the sculptured grandeur, and the
titles and pomp of belted earl and knight; their simple words go
straighter to our hearts than all the quaint curt Latin of the olden
time.
The belfry door is ajar--those winding stairs are not easy of
access. The edges are worn away, and the steps strewn with small
sticks of wood; sticks once used by the jackdaws in building their
nests in the tower. It is needful to take much care, lest the foot
should stumble in the semi-darkness. Listen! there is now a slight
sound: it is the dull ticking of the old, old clock above. It is the
only thing with motion here; all else is still, and even its motion
is not life. A strange old clock, a study in itself; all the works
open and visible, simple, but ingenious. For a hundred years it has
carried round the one hour-hand upon the square-faced dial without,
marking every second of time for a century with its pendulum. Here,
too, are the bells, and one, the chief bell, is a noble tenor, a
mighty maker of sound. Its curves are full and beautiful, its colour
clear; its tone, if you do but tap it, sonorous, yet not harsh. It
is an artistic bell. Round the rim runs a rhyme in the monkish
tongue, which has a chime in the words, recording the donor, and
breathing a prayer for his soul. In the day when this bell was made
men put their souls into their works. Their one great object was not
to turn out 100,000 all alike, it was rarely they made two alike.
Their one great object was to construct a work which should carry
their very spirit in it, which should excel all similar works, and
cause men in after-times to inquire with wonder for the maker's
name, whether it was such a common thing as a knife-handle, or a
bell, or a ship. Longfellow has caught the spirit well in the saga
of the 'Long Serpent,' where the builder of the vessel listens to
axe and hammer:
All this tumult heard the master,
It was music to his ear;
Fancy whispered all the faster,
'Men shall hear of Thorberg Skafting
For a hundred year!'
Would that there were more of this spirit in the workshops of our
day! They did not, when such a work was finished, hasten to blaze it
abroad with trumpet and shouting; it was not carried to the topmost
pinnacle of the mountain in sight of all the kingdoms of the earth.
They were contented with the result of their labour, and cared
little where it was placed or who saw it; and so it is that some of
the finest-toned bells in the world are at this moment to be found
in village churches; and for so local a fame the maker worked as
truly, and in as careful a manner, as if he had known his bell was
to be hung in St. Peter's, at Rome. This was the true spirit of art.
Yet it is not altogether pleasant to contemplate this bell; the mind
cannot but reflect upon the length of time it has survived those to
whose joys or sorrows it has lent a passing utterance, and who are
dust in the yard beneath.
For full five hundred years I've swung
In my old grey turret high,
And many a changing theme I've sung
As the time went stealing by.
Even the 'old grey turret' shows more signs of age and of decay than
the bell, for it is strengthened with iron clamps and rods to bind
its feeble walls together. Of the pavements, whose flagstones are
monuments, the dates and names worn by footsteps; of the vaults
beneath, with their grim and ghastly traditions of coffins moved out
of place, as was supposed, by supernatural agency, but, as
explained, by water; of the thick walls, in which, in at least one
village church, the trembling victim of priestly cruelty was immured
alive--of these and a thousand other matters that suggest themselves
there is no time to speak.
But just a word must be spared to notice one lovely spot where two
village churches stand not a hundred yards apart, separated by a
stream, both in the hands of one Vicar, whose 'cure' is,
nevertheless, so scant of souls that service in the morning in one
and in the evening in the other church is amply sufficient. And
where is there a place where springtime possesses such a tender yet
melancholy interest to the heart as in a village churchyard, where
the budding leaves and flowers in the grass may naturally be taken
as symbolical of a still more beautiful springtime yet in store for
the soul?
BIRDS OF SPRING
The birds of spring come as imperceptibly as the leaves. One by one
the buds open on hawthorn and willow, till all at once the hedges
appear green, and so the birds steal quietly into the bushes and
trees, till by-and-by a chorus fills the wood, and each warm shower
is welcomed with varied song. To many, the majority of spring-birds
are really unknown; the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the swallow,
are all with which they are acquainted, and these three make the
summer. The loud cuckoo cannot be overlooked by anyone passing even
a short time in the fields; the nightingale is so familiar in verse
that everyone tries to hear it; and the swallows enter the towns and
twitter at the chimney-top. But these are really only the principal
representatives of the crowd of birds that flock to our hedges in
the early summer; and perhaps it would be accurate to say that no
other area of equal extent, either in Europe or elsewhere, receives
so many feathered visitors. The English climate is the established
subject of abuse, yet it is the climate most preferred and sought by
the birds, who have the choice of immense continents.