In the case of commonplace screws, if they do their work well, it

is for the most part in spite of their being screws. It is because

they are sound in the main, in those portions of their mental

constitution which their daily work calls into play; and because

they are seldom required to do those things which their unsoundness

makes them unfit to do. You know, if a horse never fell lame except

when smartly trotted down a hill four miles long, you might say that

for practical purposes that horse was never lame at all. For the

single contingency to which its powers are unequal would hardly ever

occur. In like manner, if the mind of a tradesman is quite equal

to the management of his business and the respectable training of

his family, you may say that the tradesman's mind is for practical

purposes a sound and good one; although if called to consider some

important political question, such as that of the connexion of

Church and State, his judgment might be purely idiotical. You see,

he is hardly ever required to put his mind (so to speak) at a hill

at which it would break down. I have walked a mile along the road

with a respectable Scotch farmer, talking of country matters; and

I have concluded that I had hardly ever conversed with a shrewder

and more sensible man. But having accidentally chanced to speak of

a certain complicated political question, I found that quoad hoc

my friend's intellect was that of a baby. I had just come upon the

four-mile descent which would knock up the horse which for ordinary

work was sound.

Yes, reader, in the case of commonplace screws, if hey do their

work well, it is in spite of their being screws. But in the case of

great geniuses who are screws, it is often because of their unsoundness

that they do the fine things they do. It is the hectic beauty which

his morbid mind cast upon his page, that made Byron the attractive

and fascinating poet that he is to young and inexperienced minds.

Had his views been sounder and his feeling healthier, he might

have been but a commonplace writer after all. In poetry, and in

all imaginative writing, we look for beauty, not for sense; and we

all know that what is properly disease and unsoundness sometimes

adds to beauty. You know the delicate flush, the bright eyes, the

long eyelashes, which we often see in a young girl on whom consumption

is doing its work. You know the peachy complexion which often goes

with undeveloped scrofula. And had Charles Lamb not been trembling

on the verge of insanity, the Essays of Elia would have wanted great

part of their strange, undefinable charm. Had Ford and Massinger led

more regular lives and written more reasonable sentiments, what a

caput mortuum their tragedies would be! Had Coleridge been a man

of homely common-sense, he would never have written Christabel. I

remember in my boyhood reading The Ancient Mariner to a hard-headed

lawyer of no literary taste. He listened to the poem, and merely

remarked that its author was a horrible fool.

There is no doubt that physical unsoundness often is a cause of

mental excellence. Some of the best women on earth are the ugliest.

Their ugliness cut them off from the enjoyment of the gaieties of

life; they did not care to go to a ball-room and sit all the evening

without once being asked to dance; and so they learned to devote

themselves to better things. You have seen the pretty sister, a

frivolous, silly flirt; the homely sister, quietly devoting herself

to works of Christian charity. Ugly people, we often hear it said,

cry up the beauties of the mind. It may be added, that ugly people

possess a very large proportion of those beauties. And a great deal

of the best intellectual work is done by men who are physically

screws; by men who are nearly blind, broken-winded, lame, and

weakly. We all know what the Apostle Paul was physically; we know

too what the world owes to that dwarfish, bald, stammering man. I

never in my life read anything more touching than the story of that

poor weakly creature, Dr. George Wilson, the Professor of Technology

in the University of Edinburgh. Poor weakly creature, only in a

physical sense; what a noble intellectual and moral nature dwelt

within that slender frame! You remember how admirably he did his

work, though in a condition of almost ceaseless bodily weakness

and suffering; how he used to lecture often with a great blister

on his chest; how his lungs and his entire system were the very

poorest that could just retain his soul. I never saw him; but I

have seen his portrait. You see the intellectual kindly face; but

it is but the weakly shadow of a physical man. But it was only

physically that George Wilson was a poor type of humanity. What noble

health and excellence there were in that noble mind and heart! So

amiable, so patient, so unaffectedly pious, so able and industrious;

a beautiful example of a great, good, memorable and truly loveable

man. Let us thank God for George Wilson: for his life and his

example. Hundreds of poor souls ready to sink into morbid despair

of ever doing anything good, will get fresh hope and heart from

his story. It is well, indeed, that there have been some in whom

the physical system equals the moral; men like Christopher North

and Sydney Smith,--men in whom the play of the lungs was as good

as the play of the imagination, and whose literal heart was as

excellent as their metaphysical. We have all seen examples in which

the noblest intellect and kindest disposition were happily blended

with the stoutest limbs and the pleasantest face. And the sound mind

in the sound body is doubtless the perfection of the human being.

I have walked many miles and many hours over the heather, with one

of the ablest men in Britain: a man whom at fourscore his country

can heartily trust with perhaps the gravest charge which any British

subject can undertake. And I have witnessed with great delight

the combination of the keenest head and best heart, with physical

strength and activity which quite knock up men younger by forty

years.

When I was reading Dr. Forbes Winslow's book, already named, a very

painful idea was impressed upon me. Dr. Winslow gives us to understand

that madness is for the most part a condition of most awful suffering.

I used to think that though there might be dreadful misery on the

way to madness, yet once reason was fairly overthrown, the suffering

was over. This appears not to be so. All the miserable depression

of spirits, all the incapacity to banish distressing fears

and suspicions, which paved the way to real insanity, exist in

even intensified degree when insanity has actually been reached.

The poor maniac fancies he is surrounded by burning fires, that

he is encircled by writhing snakes, that he is in hell, tormented

by devils; and we must remember that the misery caused by firmly

believing a thing which does not exist, is precisely the same as that

which would be occasioned to a sane person if the things imagined

were facts. It seems, too, that many insane people are quite aware

that they are insane, which of course aggravates what they have to

endure. It must be a dreadful thing when the mind passes the point

up to which it is still useful and serviceable, though unsound, and

enters upon the stage of recognized insanity. It must be dreadful

to feel that you are not quite yourself; that something is wrong;

that you cannot discard suspicions and fears which still you are

aware are foolish and groundless. This is a melancholy stage, and

if it last long a very perilous one. Great anxiety, if continued

for any length of time, is almost certain to lead to some measure

of insanity. The man who night and day is never free from the

thought of how he is to pay his way, to maintain his children, is

going mad. It is thoroughly evil when one single thought conies to

take entire possession of the mind. It shows the brain is going.

It is no wonder, my friendly reader, that so many men are mentally

screws! There is something perfectly awful in reading what are the

premonitory symptoms of true insanity. Read this, my friend, and

be afraid of yourself. Here are what Dr. Winslow says indicates

that insanity is drawing near. Have you never seen it? Have you

never felt it?

The patient is irritable, and fractious, peevish, and pettish. He

is morbidly anxious about trifles: slight ruffles on the surface,

and trivial annoyances in the family circle or during the course

of business, worry, flurry, tease and fret him, nothing satisfying

or soothing his mind, and everything, to his distempered fancy,

going wrong within the sacred precincts of domestic life. He is

quick at fancying affronts, and greatly exaggerates the slightest

and most trifling acts of supposed inattention. The least irregularity

on the part of the domestics excites, angers, and vexes him.

He is suspicious of and quarrels with his nearest relations, and

mistrusts his best, kindest, and most faithful friends. While in

this premonitory stage of mental derangement, bordering closely

on an attack of acute insanity, he twists, distorts, misconceives,

misconstrues, and perverts in a most singular manner every look,

gesture, action, and word of those closely associated, and nearly

related to him.

Considering that Dr. Winslow does really in that paragraph sketch

the moral characteristics of at least a score of people known to

every one of us, all this is alarming enough. And considering, too,

how common a thing sleeplessness is among men who go through hard

mental work, or who are pressed by many cares and anxieties, it is

even more alarming to read, that--

Wakefulness is one of the most constant concomitants of some types

of incipient brain disease, and in many cases a certain forerunner

of insanity. It is an admitted axiom in medicine, that the brain

cannot be in a healthy condition while a state of sleeplessness

exists.

But I pass away from this part of my subject. I do not believe that

it is good for either my readers or myself to look from a medical

point of view at those defects or morbid manifestations in our mental

organization which stamp us screws. We accept the fact, generally;

without going into details. It is a bad thing for a man to be always

feeling his pulse after every little exertion, and fancying that

its acceleration or irregularity indicates that something is wrong.

Such a man is in the fair way to settled hypochondria. And I think

it is even worse to be always watching closely the play of the

mental machine, and thinking that this process or that emotion is

not as it ought to be. Let a man work his mind fairly and moderately,

and not worry himself as to its state. The mind can get no more

morbid habit than that of continually watching itself for a stumble.

Except in the case of metaphysicians, whose business it is to watch

and analyse the doings of the mind, the mind ought to be like the

stomach. You know that your stomach is right, because you never

feel that you have one; but the work intended for that organ is

somehow done. And common folk should know that they have minds,

only by finding the ends fairly attained, which are intended to be

attained by that most sensitive and ticklish piece of machinery.

I think that it is a piece of practical wisdom in driving the

mental screw, to be careful how you allow it to dwell too constantly

upon any one topic. If you allow yourself to think too much of any

subject, you will get a partial craze upon that; you will come to

vastly overrate its importance. You will make yourself uncomfortable

about it. There once was a man who mused long upon the notorious

fact that almost all human beings stoop consider ably. Few hold

themselves as upright as they ought. And this notion took such

hold upon the poor man's mind, that, waking or sleeping, he could

not get rid of it; and he published volume after volume to prove the

vast extent of the evils which come of this bad habit of stooping,

and to show that to get fairly rid of this bad habit would be the

regeneration of the human race, physically and morally. We know how

authors exaggerate the claims of their subject; and I can quite

imagine a very earnest man feeling afraid to think too much and

long about any existing evil, for fear it should greaten on his view

into a thing so large and pernicious, that he should be constrained

to give all his life to wrestling with that one thing, and attach

to it an importance which would make his neighbours think him a

monomaniac. If you think long and deeply upon any subject, it grows

in apparent magnitude and weight; if you think of it too long, it

may grow big enough to exclude the thought of all things besides.

If it be an existing and prevalent evil you are thinking of, you

may come to fancy that if that one thing were done away, it would

be well with the human race: all evil would go with it. I can conceive

the process by which, without mania, without anything worse than

the workable unsoundness of the practically sound mind, one might

come to think as the man who wrote against stooping thought. For

myself, I feel the force of this law so deeply, that there are certain

evils of which I am afraid to think much, for fear I should come

to be able to think of nothing else and nothing more. I remember,

when I was a boy, there was a man in London who constantly advertised

himself in the newspapers as the Inventor of the only Rational

System of Writing in the Universe. His system was, I believe, to

move in writing, not the fingers merely, but the entire arm from

the shoulder. This may be an improvement perhaps: and that man had

brooded over the mischiefs of moving the fingers in writing till

these mischiefs shut out the view of the rest of creation, or at

least till he saw nothing but irrationality in writing otherwise.

All the millions who wrote by the fingers were cracked. The

writing-master, in short, though possibly a reasonable man on other

subjects, was certainly unsound upon this. You may allow yourself

to speculate on the chance of being bitten by a mad dog, or of

being maimed by a railway accident, till you grow morbid on these

points. If you live in the country, you may give in to the idea

that your house will be broken into at night by burglars, till,

every time you wake in the dark hours, you may fancy you hear the

centre-bit at work boring through the window-shutters down stairs.

A very clever woman once told me, that for a year she yielded so

much to the fear that she had left, a spark behind her in any room

into which she had gone with a lighted candle, which spark would set

the house on fire, that she could not be easy till she had groped

her way back in the dark to see that things were right. Now, ye

readers whose minds must be carefully driven (I mean all the readers

who will ever see this page), don't give in to these fancies. As

you would carefully train your horse to pass the corner he always

shies at, so break your mind of this bad habit. And in breaking

your mind of the smallest bad habit, I would counsel you to resort

to the same kindly Helper whose aid you would ask in breaking

your mind of the greatest and worst. It is not a small matter,

the existence in the mind of any tendency or characteristic which

is unsound. We know what lies in that direction. You are like the

railway-train which, with breaks unapplied, is stealing the first

yard down the incline at the rale of a mile in two hours; but if

that train be not pulled up, in ten minutes it may be tearing down

to destruction at sixty miles an hour.

I have said that almost every human being is mentally a screw;

that all have some intellectual peculiarity, some moral twist, away

from the normal standard of Tightness. Let it, be added, that it

is little wonder that the fact should be as it is. I do not think

merely of a certain unhappy warping, of an old original wrench,

which human nature long ago received, and from which it never has

recovered. I am not writing as a theologian; and so I do not suggest

the grave consideration that human nature, being fallen, need not

be expected to be the right-working machinery that it may have

been before it fell. But I may at least say, look how most people

are educated; consider the kind of training they get, and the

incompetent hands that train them: what chance have they of being

anything but screws? Ah, my reader, if horses were broken by people

as unfit for their work as most of the people who form human minds,

there would not be a horse in the world that would not be dead lame.

You do not trust your thorough-bred colt, hitherto unhandled, to

any one who is not understood to have a thorough knowledge of the

characteristics and education of horses. But in numberless instances,

even in the better classes of society, a thing which needs to be

guarded against a thousand wrong tendencies, and trained up to a

thousand right things from which it is ready to shrink, the most

sensitive and complicated thing in nature, the human soul, is left

to have its character formed by hands as hopelessly unfit for the

task as the Lord Chancellor is to prepare the winner of the next

St. Leger. You find parents and guardians of children systematically

following a course of treatment calculated to bring out the very

worst tendencies of mind and heart that are latent in the little

things given to their care. If a young horse has a tendency to shy,

how carefully the trainer seeks to win him away from the habit. But

if a poor little boy has a hasty temper, you may find his mother

taking the greatest pains to irritate that temper. If the little

fellow have some physical or mental defect, you have seen parents

who never miss an opportunity of throwing it in the boy's face;

parents who seem to exult in the thought that they know the place

where a touch will always cause to wince,--the sensitive, unprotected

point where the dart of malignity will never fail to get home. If a

child has said or done some wrong or foolish thing, you will find

parents who are constantly raking up the remembrance of it, for

the pure pleasure of giving pain. Even so would a kindly man, who

knows that his horse has just come down and cut himself, take pains

whenever he came to a bit of road freshly macadamized to bring down

the poor horse on the sharp stones, again with his bleeding knees.

And even where you do not find positive malignity in those entrusted

with the training of human minds, you find hopeless incornpetcncy

exhibited in many other ways; outrageous silliness and vanity,

want of honesty, and utter want of sense. I say it deliberately,

instead of wondering that most minds are such screws, I wonder with

indescribable surprise that they are not a thousand times worse.

For they are like trees pruned and trained into ugliness and

barrenness. They are like horses carefully tutored to shy, kick,

rear, and bite. It says something hopeful as to what may yet be

made of human beings, that most of them are no worse than they are.

Some parents, fancying too that they are educating their children

on Christian principles, educate them in such fashion that Ihe only

wonder is that the children do not end at the gallows.

Let us recognise the fact in all our treatment of others, that we

have to deal with screws. Let us not think, as some do, that by

ignoring a fact you make it cease to be a fact. I have seen a man

pulling his lame horse up tight, and flicking it with his whip,

and trying to drive it as if it were not lame. Now, that won't do.

The poor horse makes a desperate effort, and runs a step or two as

if sound. But in a little the heavy head falls upon the bit at each

step, and perhaps the creature comes down bodily with a tremendous

smash. If it were only his idiotic master that was smashed, I should

not mind. So have I seen parents refusing to see or allow for the

peculiarities of their children, insisting on driving the poor screw

as though it were perfect in wind and limb. So have I seen people

refusing to see or allow for the peculiarities of those around them;

ignoring the depressed spirits, the unhappy twist, the luckless

perversity of temper, in a servant, an acquaintance, a friend,

which, rightly managed, would still leave them most serviceable

screws; but which, determinedly ignored, will land in uselessness

and misery. I believe there are people who (in a moral sense), if

they have a crooked stick, fancy that by using it as if it were

straight, it will become straight. If you have got a rifle that

sends its ball somewhat to the left side, you (if you are not a

fool) allow for that in shooting. If you have a friend of sterling

value, but of crotchety temper, you (if you are not a fool) allow

for that. If you have a child who is weak, desponding, and early

old, you (if you are not a hopeless idiot) remember that, and allow

for it, and try to make the best of it. But if you be an idiot, you

will think it deep diplomacy, and adamantine firmness, and wisdom

beyond Solomon's, to shut your eyes to the state of facts; to tug

sharply the poor screw's mouth, to lash him violently, to drive him

as though he were sound. Probably you will come to a smash: alas!

that the smash will probably include more than you.

Not, reader, that all human beings thus idiotically ignore the fact

that it is with screws they have to deal. It is very touching to

see, as we sometimes see, people trying to make the best of awful

screws. You are quite pleased if your lame horse trots four or five

miles without showing very gross unsoundness, though of course this

is but a poor achievement. And even so, I have been touched to see

the child quite happy at having coaxed a graceless father to come

for once to church; and the wife quite happy when the blackguard

bully, her husband, for once evinces a little kindness. It was not

much they did, you see: but remember what wretched screws did it,

and be thankful if they do even that little. I have heard a mother

repeat, with a pathetic pride, a connected sentence said by her

idiot boy. You remember how delighted Miss Trotwood was, in Mr.

Dickens's beautiful story, with Mr. Dick's good sense, when he said

something which in anybody else would have been rather silly. But

Mr. Dick, you see, was just out of the Asylum, and no more. How

pleased you are to find a relation, who is a terrific fool, merely

behaving like anybody else!

Yes: there is a good deal of practical resignation in this world.

We get reconciled to having and to being screws. We grow reconciled

to the fact that our possessions, our relations, our friends, are

very far indeed from being what we could wish. We grow reconciled

to the fact, and we try to make the best of it, that we ourselves

are screws: that in temper, in judgment, in talent, in tact, we

are a thousand miles short of being what we ought; and that we can

hope for little more than decently, quietlv, sometimes wearily and

sadly, to plod along the path in life which God in his kindness

and wisdom has set us. We come to look with interest, but without

a vestige of envy, at those who are cleverer and better off than

ourselves. A great many good people are so accustomed to things going

against them, that they are rather startled when things go as they

could have desired: they can stand disappointment, but success puts

them out, it is so unwonted a thing. The lame horse, the battered

old gig,--they feel at home with these; but they would be confused if

presented with my friend Smith's drag, with its beautiful steeds,

all but thoroughbred, and perfectly sound. To struggle on with

a small income, manifold worries, and lowly estimation,--to these

things they have quietly reconciled themselves. But give them

wealth, and peace, and fame (if these things can be combined), and

they would hardly know what to do. Yesterday I walked up a very long

flight of steps in a very poor part of the most beautiful city in

Britain. Just before me, a feeble old woman, bent down apparently

by eighty years, was slowly ascending. She had a very large bundle

on her back, and she supported herself by a short stick in her

withered, trembling hand. If it had been in the country, I should

most assuredly have carried up the poor creature's bundle for her;

but I am sorry to say I had not moral courage to offer to do so

in town: for a parson with a great sackcloth bundle on his back,

would be greeted in that district with depreciatory observations.

But I kept close by her, to help her if she fell; and when I got

to the top of the steps I passed her and went on. I looked sharply

at the poor old face in passing; I see it yet. I see the look of cowed,

patient, quiet, hopeless submission: I saw she had quite reconciled

her mind to bearing her heavy burden, and to the far heavier load

of years, and infirmities, and poverty, she was bearing too. She

had accepted those for her portion in this life. She looked for

nothing better. She was like the man whose horse has been broken-winded

and lame so long, that he has come almost to think that every horse

is a screw. I see yet the quiet, wearied, surprised look she cast

up at me as I passed: a look merely of surprise to see an entire

coat in a place where my fellow-creatures (every one deserving as

much as me) for the most part wear rags. I do not think she even

wished to possess an equally entire garment: she looked at it with

interest merely as the possession of some one else. She did not

even herself (as we Scotch say) to anything better than the rags

she had worn so long. Long experience had subdued her to what she

is.

But short experience does so too. We early learn to be content with

screws, and to make the best of imperfect means. As I have been

writing that last paragraph, I have been listening to a colloquy

outside my study door, which is partly open. The parties engaged

in the discussion were a certain little girl of five years old,

and her nurse. The little girl is going out to spend the day at

the house of a little companion; and she is going to take her doll

with her. I heard various sentences not quite distinctly, which

conveyed to me a general impression of perplexity; and at length,

in a cheerful, decided voice, the little girl said, 'The people will

never know it has got no legs!' The doll, you see, was unsound.

Accidents had brought it to an imperfect state. But that wise

little girl had done what you and I, my reader, must try to do very

frequently: she had made up her mind to make the best of a screw.

I learn a lesson, as I close my essay, from the old woman of eighty,

and the little girl of five. Let us seek to reconcile our minds

both to possessing screws, and (harder still) to being screws. Let

us make the best of our imperfect possessions, and of our imperfect

selves. Let us remember that a great deal of good can be done by

means which fall very far short of perfection; that our moderate

abilities, honestly and wisely husbanded and directed, may serve

valuable ends in this world before we quit it,--ends which may

remain after we are gone. I do not suppose that judicious critics,

in pointing out an author's faults, mean that he ought to stop

writing altogether. There are hopeless cases in which he certainly

ought: cases in which the steed passes being a screw, and is fit

only for the hounds. But in most instances the critic would be

quite wrong, if he argued what because his author has many flaws

and defects, he should write no more. With all its errors, what he

writes may be much better than nothing; as the serviceable screw is

better than no horse at all. And if the critic's purpose is merely

to show the author that the author is a screw,--why, if the author

have any sense at all, he knows that already. He does not claim to

be wiser than other men; and still less to be better: yet he may

try to do his best. With many defects and errors, still fair work

may be turned off. I will not forget the lame horses that took the

coach so well to Inverary. And I remember certain words in which

one who is all but the greatest English poet declared that under

the heavy visitation of God he would do his utmost still. Here is

the resolution of a noble screw:--

I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot

Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

Right onward!

CHAPTER VII.

CONCERNING SOLITARY DAYS.

Let me look back, this New Year's time, over nine years. Let me try

to revive again the pervading atmosphere of the days when I used

to live entirely alone. All days crush up into very little in the

perspective. The months and years which were long as they passed

over, are but a hand-breadth in remembrance. Five or ten years may

be packed away into a very little corner in your mind; and in the

case of a man brought up from childhood in a large family, who

spends no more than three or four years alone before he again sees

a household beginning to surround him, I think those lonely years

seem especially short in the retrospect. Yet possibly in these he

may have done some of the best work of his life; and possibly none,

of all the years he has seen, have produced so great an impression on

his character and on his temperament. And the impression left may

be most diverse in nature. I have known a man remarkably gentle, kind,

and sympathetic; always anxious to say a pleasant and encouraging

word; discerning by a wonderful intuition whenever he had presented

a view or made a remark that had caused pain to the most sensitive,

and eager to efface the painful feeling; and I have thought that

in all this I could trace the result of his having lived entirely

alone for many years. I have known a man insufferably arrogant,

conceited, and self-opinionated; another morbidly suspicious and

ever nervously anxious; another conspicuously devoid of common

Eense; and in each of these I have thought I could trace the result

of a lonely life. But indeed it depends so entirely on the nature

of the material subjected to the mill what the result turned off

shall be, that it is hard to say of any human being what shall be

the effect produced upon his character by almost any discipline you

can think of. And a solitary life may make a man either thoughtful

or vacant, either humble or conceited, either sympathetic or selfish,

either frank or shrinkingly shy.

Great numbers of educated people in this country live solitary lives.

And by a solitary life I do not mean a life in a remote district

of country with hardly a neighbour near, but with your house well

filled and noisy with, children's voices. By a solitary life I

mean a life in which, day after day and week after week, you rise

in the morning in a silent dwelling, in which, save servants,

there are none but yourself; in which you sit down to breakfast by

yourself, perhaps set yourself to your day's work all alone, then

dine by yourself, and spend the evening by yourself. Barristers living

in chambers in some cases do this; young lads living in lodgings,

young clergymen in country parsonages, old bachelors in handsome

town houses and beautiful country mansions, old maids in quiet

streets of country towns, old ladies once the centre of cheerful

families, but whose husband and children are gone--even dukes

in palaces and castles, amid a lonely splendour which must, one

would think, seem dreary and ghastly. But you know, my reader, we

sympathize the most completely with that which we have ourselves

experienced. And when I hear people talk of a solitary life, the

picture called up before me is that of a young man who has always

lived as one of a household considerable in numbers, who gets a

living in the Church, and who, having no sister to keep house for

him, goes to it to live quite alone. How many of my friends have

done precisely that! Was it not a curious mode of life? A thing is

not made commonplace to your own feeling by the fact that hundreds

or thousands of human beings have experienced the very same. And

although fifty Smiths have done it (all very clever fellows), and

fifty Robinsons have done it (all very commonplace and ordinary

fellows), one does not feel a bit the less interest in recurring

to that experience which, hackneyed as it may be, is to you of

greater interest than all other experience, in that it is your own.

Draw up a thousand men in a row, all dressed in the same dark-green

uniform of the riflemen; and I do not think that their number,

or their likeness to one another, will cause any but the most

unthinking to forget that each is an individual man as much as if

he stood alone in the desert; that each has his own ties, cares,

and character, and that possibly each, like to all the rest as he

may appear to others, is to several hearts, or perhaps to one only,

the one man of all mankind.

Most clergymen whom I have known divide their day very much in the

same fashion. After breakfast they go into their study and write

their sermon for two or three hours; then they go out and visit

their sick or make other calls of duty for several hours. If they

have a large parish, they probably came to it with the resolution

that before dinner they should always have an hour's smart walk at

least; but they soon find that duty encroaches on that hour, and

finally eats it entirely up, and their duty calls are continued

till it is time to return home to dinner. Don't you remember, my

friend, how short a time that lonely meal lasted, and how very far

from jovial the feast was? As for me, that I might rest my eyes

from reading between dinner and tea (a thing much to be desired in

the case of every scholar), I hardly ever, failed, save for a few

weeks of midwinter, to go out in the twilight and have a walk--a

solitary and very slow walk. My hours, you see, were highly

unfashionable. I walked from half-past five to half-past six: that

was my after-dinner walk. It was always the same. It looks somewhat

dismal to recall. Do you ever find, in looking back at some great

trial or mortification you have passed through, that you are

pitying yourself as if you were another person? I do not mean to

say that those walks were a trial. On the contrary, they were always

an enjoyment--a subdued quiet enjoyment, as are the enjoyments of

solitary folk. Still, now looking back, it seems to me as if I

were watching some one else going out in the cold February twilight,

and walking from half-past five to half-past six. I think I see

a human being, wearing a very thick and rough great-coat, got for

these walks, and never worn on any other occasion, walking very

slowly, bearing an extremely thick oak walking-stick (I have it

yet) by the shore of the bleak gray sea. Only on the beach did I

ever bear that stick; and by many touches of the sand it gradually

wore down till it became too short for use. I see the human being

issuing from the door of a little parsonage (not the one where there

are magnificent beeches and rich evergreens and climbing roses),

and always waiting at the door for him there was a friendly dog,

a terrier, with very short legs and a very long back, and shaggy

to that degree that at a cursory glance it was difficult to decide

which was his head and which his tail. Ah, poor old dog, you

are grown very stiff and lazy now, and time has not mellowed your

temper. Even then it was somewhat doubtful. Not that you ever offered

to bite me; but it was most unlucky, and it looked most invidious,

that occasion when you rushed out of the gate and severely tore

the garments of the dissenting minister! But he was a worthy man:

and I trust that he never supposed that upon that day you acted by

my instigation. You were very active then; and so few faces did you

see (though a considerable town was within a few hundred yards),

that the appearance of one made you rush about and bark tremendously.

Cross a field, pass through a hedgerow of very scrubby and stunted

trees, cross a railway by a path on the level, go on by a dirty

track on its further side; and you come upon the sea-shore. It is

a level, sandy beach; and for a mile or two inland the ground is

level, and the soil ungenial. There are sandy downs, thinly covered

with coarse grass. Trees will hardly grow; the few trees there are,

are cut down by the salt winds from the Atlantic. The land view,

in a raw twilight of early spring, is dreary beyond description;

but looking across the sea, there is a magnificent view of mountain

peaks. And if you turn in another direction, and look along the

shore, you will see a fine hill rising from the sea and running

inland, at whose base there flows a beautiful river, which pilgrims

come hundreds of miles to visit. How often, O sandy beach, have these

feet walked slowly along you! And in these years of such walks, I

did not meet or see in all six human beings. A good many years have

passed since I saw that dismal beach last; I dare say it would look

very strange now. The only excitement of those walks consisted in

sending the dog into the sea, and in making him run after stones.

How tremendously he ran; what tiger-like bounds he made, as he

overtook the missile! Just such walks, my friends, many of you have

taken. Homines estis. And then you have walked into your dwelling

again, walked into your study, had tea in solitude, spent the

evening alone in reading and writing. You have got on in life, let

it be hoped; but you remember well the aspect and arrangement of

the room; you remember where stood tables, chairs, candles; you

remember the pattern of the grate, often vacantly studied. I think

every one must look back with great interest upon such days. Life

was in great measure before you, what you might do with it. For

anything you knew then, you might be a great genius; whereas if

the world, even ten years later, has not yet recognized you as a

great genius, it is all but certain that it never will recognize

you as such at all. And through those long winter evenings, often

prolonged far into the night, not only did you muse on many problems,

social, philosophical, and religious, but you pictured out, I dare

say, your future life, and thought of many things which you hoped

to do and to be.

A very subdued mood of thought and feeling, I think, creeps gradually

over a man living such a solitary life. I mean a man who has been

accustomed to a house with many inmates. There is something odd in

the look of an apartment in which hardly a word is ever spoken. If

you speak while by yourself, it is in a very low tone; and though

you may smile, I don't think any sane man could often laugh heartily

while by himself. Think of a life in which, while at home, there

is no talking and no laughing. Why, one distinctive characteristic

of rational man is cut off when laughing ceases. Man is the only

living creature that laughs with the sense of enjoyment. I have

heard, indeed, of the laughing hyena; but my information respecting it

is mainly drawn from Shakspeare, who was rather a great philosopher

and poet than a great naturalist. 'I will laugh like a hyen,'

says that great man; and as these words are spoken as a threat,

I apprehend the laughter in question is of an unpleasant and

umnirthful character. But to return from such deep thoughts, let

it be repeated, that the entire mood of the solitary man is likely

to be a sobered and subdued one. Even if hopeful and content, he

will never be in high spirits. The highest degree in the scale he

will ever reach, may be that of quiet lightheartedness; and that

will come seldom. Jollity, or exhilaration, is entirely a social

thing. I do not believe that even Sydney Smith could have got into

one of his rollicking veins when alone. He enjoyed his own jokes,

and laughed at them with extraordinary zest; but he enjoyed them

because he thought others were enjoying them too. Why, you would

be terrified that your friend's mind was going, if before entering

his room you heard such a peal of merriment from within, as would

seem a most natural thing were two or three cheerful companions

together. And gradually that chastened, subdued stage comes, in

which a man can sit for half an hour before the fire as motionless

as marble; even a man who in the society of others is in ceaseless

movement. It is an odd feeling, when you find that you yourself,

once the most restless of living creatures, have come to this. I

dare say Robinson Crusoe often sat for two or three hours together

in his cave, without stirring hand or foot. The vital principle

grows weak when isolated. You must have a number of embers together

to make a warm fire; separate them, and they will soon go out and

grow cold. And even so, to have brisk, conscious, vigorous life,

you must have a number of lives together. They keep each other warm.

They encourage and support each other. I dare say the solitary man,

sitting at the close of a long evening by his lonely fireside, has

sometimes felt as though the flame of life had sunk so low that a

very little thing would be enough to put it out altogether. From

the motionless limbs, from the unstrung hands, it seemed as though

vitality had ebbed away, and barely kept its home in the feeble

heart. At such a time some sudden blow, some not very violent shock,

would suffice to quench the spark for ever. Reading the accounts

in the newspapers of the cold, hunger, and misery which our poor

soldiers suffered in the Crimea, have you not thought at such a time

that a hundredth part of that would have been enough to extinguish

you? Have you not wondered at the tenacity of material life, and

at the desperate grasp with which even the most wretched cling to

it? Is it worth the beggar's while, in the snow-storm, to struggle

on through the drifting heaps towards the town eight miles off,

where he may find a morsel of food to half-appease his hunger, and

a stone stair to sleep in during the night? Have not you thought,

in hours when you were conscious of that shrinking of life into

its smallest compass--that retirement of it from the confines of

its territory, of which we have been thinking--that in that beggar's

place you would keep up the fight no longer, but creep into some

quiet corner, and there lay yourself down and sleep away into

forgetfulness? I do not say that the feeling is to be approved, or

that it can in any degree bear being reasoned upon; but I ask such

readers as have led solitary lives, whether they have not somelimes

felt it? It is but the subdued feeling which comes of loneliness

carried out to its last development. It is the highest degree of

that influence which manifests itself in slow steps, in subdued

tones of voice, in motionless musings beside the fire.

Another consequence of a lonely life in the case of many men, is an

extreme sensitiveness to impressions from external nature. In the

absence of other companions of a more energetic character, the scenes

amid which you live produce an effect on you which they would fail

to produce if you were surrounded by human friends. It is the rule

in nature, that the stronger impression makes you unconscious of

the weaker. If you had charged with the Six Hundred, you would not

have remarked during the charge that one of your sleeves was too tight.

Perhaps in your boyhood, a companion of a turn at once thoughtful

and jocular, offered to pull a hair out of your head without your

feeling it. And this he accomplished, by taking hold of the doomed

hair, and then giving you a knock on the head that brought tears

to your eyes. For, in the more vivid sensation of that knock you

never felt the little twitch of the hair as it quitted its hold.

Yes, the stronger impression makes you unaware of the weaker. And

the impression produced either upon thought or feeling by outward

scenes, is so much weaker than that produced by the companionship

of our kind, that in the presence of the latter influence, the former

remains unfelt, even by men upon whom it would tell powerfully in

the absence of another. And so it is upon the lonely man that skies

and mountains, woods and fields and rivers, tell with their full

effect; it is to him that they become a part of life; it is in

him that they make the inner shade or sunshine, and originate and

direct the processes of the intellect. You go out to take a walk

with a friend: you get into a conversation that interests and

engrosses you. And thus engrossed, you hardly remark the hedges

between which you walk, or the soft outline of distant summer hills.

After the first half-mile, you are proof against the influence of

the dull December sky, or the still October woods. But when you go

out for your solitary walk, unless your mind be very much preoccupied

indeed, your feeling and mood are at the will of external nature.

And after a few hundred yards, unless the matter which was in your

mind at starting be of a very worrying and painful character, you

begin gradually to take your tone from the sky above you, and the

ground on which you tread. You hear the birds, which, walking with

a sympathetic companion, you would never have noticed. You feel

the whole spirit of the scene, whether cheerful or gloomy, gently

pervading you, and sinking into your heart. I do not know how far all

this, continued through months or years of comparative loneliness,

may permanently affect character; we can stand a great deal of

kneading without being lastingly affected, either for better or

worse; but there can be no question at all, that in a solitary life

nature rises into a real companion, producing upon our present mood

a real effect. As more articulate and louder voices die away upon

our ear, we begin to hear the whisper of trees, the murmur of

brooks, the song of birds, with a distinctness and a meaning not

known before.

The influence of nature on most minds is likely to be a healthful

one; still, it is not desirable to allow that influence to become

too strong. And there is a further influence which is felt in a

solitary life, which ought never to be permitted to gain the upper

hand. I mean the influence of our own mental moods. It is not

expedient to lead too subjective a life. We look at all things,

doubtless, through our own atmosphere; our eyes, to a great extent,

make the world they see. And no doubt, too, it is the sunshine

within the breast that has most power to brighten; and the thing

that can do most to darken is the shadow there. Still, it is not

fit that these mental moods should be permitted to arise mainly

through the mind's own working. It is not fit that a man should

watch his mental moods as he marks the weather; and be always

chronicling that on such a day and such another he was in high or

low spirits, he was kindly-disposed or snappish, as the case may be.

The more stirring influence of intercourse with others, renders men

comparatively heedless of the ups and downs of their own feelings;

change of scenes and faces, conversation, business engagements,

may make the day a lively or a depressed one, though they rose at

morning with a tendency to just the opposite thing. But the solitary

man is apt to look too much inward; and to attach undue importance

to the fancies and emotions which arise spontaneously within his

own breast; many of them in great measure the result of material

causes. And as it is not a healthy thing for a man to be always

feeling his pulse, and fearing that it shows something amiss; it

is not a healthy thing to follow the analogous course as regards

our immaterial health and development. And I cannot but regard those

religious biographies which we sometimes read, in which worthy

people of little strength of character record particularly from

day to day all the shifting moods and fancies of their minds as

regards their religious concerns, as calculated to do a great deal

of mischief. It is founded upon a quite mistaken notion of the spirit

of true Christianity, that a human being should be ever watching

the play of his mind, as one might watch the rise and fall of the

barometer; and recording phases of thought and feeling which it

is easy to see are in some cases, and in some degree, at least,

the result of change of temperature, of dyspepsia, of deranged

circulation of the blood, as though these were the unquestionable

effects of spiritual influence, either supernal or infernal. Let us

try, in the matter of these most solemn of all interests, to look

more to great truths and facts which exist quite independently of

the impression they may for the time produce upon us; and less to

our own fanciful or morbid frames and feelings.

It cannot be denied that, in some respects, most men are better men

alone than in the society of their fellows. They are kinder-hearted;

more thoughtful; more pious. I have heard a man say that he always

acted and felt a great deal more under the influence of religious

principle while living in a house all by himself for weeks and months,

than he did when the house was filled by a family. Of course this

is not saying much for the steadfastness of a man's Christian

principle. It is as much as to say that he feels less likely to go

wrong when he is not tempted to go wrong. It is as though you said

in praise of a horse, that he never shies when there is nothing to

shy at. No doubt, when there are no little vexatious realities to

worry you, you will not be worried by them. And little vexatious

realities are doubtless a trial of temper and of principle. Living

alone, your nerves are not jarred by discordant voices; you are to

a great degree free from annoying interruptions; and if you be of

an orderly turn of mind, you are not put about by seeing things

around you in untidy confusion. You do not find leaves torn out of

books; nor carpets strewn with fragments of biscuits; nor mantelpieces

getting heaped with accumulated rubbish. Sawdust, escaped from

maimed dolls, is never sprinkled upon your table-covers; nor ink

poured over your sermons; nor leaves from these compositions cut up

for patterns for dolls' dresses. There is an audible quiet which

pervades the house, which is favourable to thought. The first

evenings, indeed, which you spent alone in it, were almost awful

for their stillness; but that sort of nervous feeling soon wears

off. And then you have no more than the quiet in which the mind's

best work must be done, in the case of average men.

And there can be little doubt, that when you gird up the mind, and

put it to its utmost stretch, it is best that you should be alone.

Even when the studious man comes to have a wife and children, he

finds it needful that he should have his chamber to which he may

retire when he is to grapple with his task of head-work; and he

finds it needful, as a general rule, to suffer no one to enter that

chamber while he is at work. It is not without meaning that this

solitary chamber is called a study: the word reminds us that hard

mental labour must generally be gone through when we are alone.

Any interruption by others breaks the train of thought; and the

broken end may never be caught again. You remember how Maturin,

the dramatist, when he felt himself getting into the full tide of

composition, used to stick a wafer on his forehead, to signify to

any member of his family who might enter his room, that he must

not on any account be spoken to. You remember the significant

arrangement of Sir Walter's library, or rather study, at Abbotsford;

it contained one chair, and no more. Yes, the mind's best work, at

the rate of writing, must be done alone. At the speed of talking,

the case is otherwise. The presence of others will then stimulate

the mind to do its best; I mean to do the best it can do at that rate

of speed. Talking with a clever man, on a subject which interests

you, your mind sometimes produces material which is (for you) so good,

that you are truly surprised at it. And a barrister, addressing a

judge or a jury, has to do hard mental work, to keep all his wits

awake, to strain his intellect to the top of its bent, in the

presence of many; but, at the rate of speed at which he does this,

he does it all the better for their presence. So with an extempore

preacher. The eager attention of some hundreds of his fellow-creatures

spurs him on (if he be mentally and physically in good trim) to do

perhaps the very best he ever does. I have heard more than two or

three clergymen who preach extempore (that is, who trust to the

moment for the words entirely, for the illustration mainly, and

for the thought in some degree), declare that they have sometimes

felt quite astonished at the fluency with which they were able

to express their thoughts, and at the freshness and fulness with

which thoughts crowded upon them, while actually addressing a great

assemblage of people. Of course, such extemporaneous speaking is

an uncertain thing. It is a hit or a miss. A little physical or

mental derangement, and the extempore speaker gets on lamely enough;

he flounders, stammers, perhaps breaks down entirely. But still, I

hold that though the extempore speaker may think and say that his

mind often produces extempore the best material it ever produces,

it is in truth only the best material which it can produce at the

rate of speaking: and though the freshly manufactured article,

warm from the mind that makes it, may interest and impress at the

moment, we all know how loose, wordy, and unsymmetrical such a

composition always is: and it is unquestionable that the very best

product of the human soul must be turned off, not at the rate of

speaking, but at the much slower rate of writing: yes, and oftentimes

of writing with many pauses between the sentences, and long musing

over individual phrases and words. Could Mr. Tennyson have spoken

off in half-an-hour any one of the Idylls of the Kingt Could he

have said in three minutes any one of the sections of In Memoriam?

And I am not thinking of the mechanical difficulty of composition

in verse: I am thinking of the simple product in thought. Could

Bacon have extemporized at the pace of talking, one of his Essays?

Or does not Ben Jonson sum up just those characteristics which

extempore composition (even the best) entirely wants, when he tells

us of Bacon that 'no man ever wrote more neatly, more pressly; nor

suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in that he uttered?' I take

it for granted, that the highest human composition is that which

embodies most thought, experience, and feeling; and that must be

produced slowly and alone.

And if a man's whole heart be in his work, whether it be to write

a book, or to paint a picture, or to produce a poem, he will be

content to make his life such as may tend to make him do his work

best, even though that mode of life should not be the pleasantest

in itself. He may gay to himself, I would rather be a great poet

than a very cheerful and happy man; and if to lend a very retired

and lonely life be the likeliest discipline to make me a great poet,

I shall submit to that discipline. You must pay a price in labour

and self-denial to accomplish any great end. When Milton resolved

to write something 'which men should not willingly let die,' he knew

what it would cost him. It was to be 'by labour and intent study,

which I take to be my portion in this life.' When Mr. Dickens wrote

one of his Christmas Books, he shut himself up for six weeks to

do it; he 'put his whole heart into it, and came out again looking

as haggard as a murderer.' There is a substratum of philosophic

truth in Professor Aytoun's brilliant burlesque of Firmilian. That

gentleman wanted to be a poet. And being persuaded that the only

way to successfully describe tragic and awful feelings was to have

actually felt them, he got into all kinds of scrapes of set purpose,

that he might know what were the actual sensations of people

in like circumstances. Wishing to know what are the emotions of a

murderer, he goes and kills somebody. He finds, indeed, that feelings

sought experimentally prove not to be the genuine article: still,

you see the spirit of the true artist, content to make any sacrifice

to attain perfection in his art. The highest excellence, indeed,

in some one department of human exertion is not consistent with

decent goodness in all: you dwarf the remaining faculties when

you develop one to abnormal size and strength. Thus have men been

great preachers, but uncommonly neglectful parents. Thus have men

been great statesmen, but omitted to pay their tradesmen's bills.

Thus men have been great moral and social reformers, whose own lives

stood much in need of moral and social reformation. I should judge

from a portrait I have seen of Mr. Thomas Sayers, the champion of

England, that this eminent individual has attended to his physical

to the neglect of his intellectual development. His face appeared

deficient in intelligence, though his body seemed abundant in

muscle. And possibly it is better to seek to develop the entire

nature--intellectual, moral, and physical-than to push one part of

it into a prominence that stunts and kills the rest. It is better

to be a complete man than to be essentially a poet, a statesman,

a prize-fighter. It is better that a tree should be fairly grown

all round, than that it should send out one tremendous branch to

the south, and have only rotten twigs in every other direction;

better, even though that tremendous branch should be the very

biggest that ever was seen. Such an inordinate growth in a single

direction is truly morbid. It reminds one of the geese whose livers

go to form that regal dainty, the pate de foie gras. By subjecting

a goose to a certain manner of life, you dwarf its legs, wings,

and general muscular development; but you make its liver grow as

large as itself. I have known human beings who practised on their

mental powers a precisely analogous discipline. The power of

calculating in figures, of writing poetry, of chess-playing, of

preaching sermons, was tremendous; but all their other faculties

were like the legs and wings of the fattening goose.

Let us try to be entire human beings, round and complete; and if

we wish to be so, it is best not to live too much alone. The best

that is in man's nature taken as a whole is brought out by the

society of his kind. In one or two respects he may be better in

solitude, but not as the complete man. And more especially a good

deal of the society of little children is much to be desired. You

will be the better for having them about you, for listening to their

stories, and watching their ways. They will sometimes interrupt you

at your work, indeed, but their effect upon your moral development

will be more valuable by a great deal than the pages you might have

written in the time you spent with them. Read over the following

verses, which are among the latest written by Longfellow. I do not

expect that men who have no children of their own will appreciate

them duly; but they seem to me among the most pleasing and touching

which that pleasing poet ever wrote. Miserable solitary beings,

see what improving and softening influences you miss!

Between the dark and the daylight,

When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day's occupations

That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall-stair,

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:

Yet I know by their merry eyes

They are plotting and planning together

To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret,

O'er the arms and back of my chair:

If I try to escape, they surround me;

They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old moustache as I am

Is not a match for you all?

I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeons,

In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

And moulder in dust away!

What shall be said as to the effect which a solitary life will

produce upon a man's estimate of himself? Shall it lead him to fancy

himself a man of very great importance? Or shall it tend to make

him underrate himself, and allow inferior men of superior impudence

to take the wall of him? Possibly we have all seen each effect

follow from a too lonely mode of life. Each may follow naturally

enough. Perhaps it is natural to imagine your mental stature to

be higher than it is, when you have no one near with whom you may

compare yourself. It no doubt tends to take down a human being

from his self-conceit, to find himself no more than one of a large

circle, no member of which is disposed to pay any special regard

to his judgment, or in any way to yield him precedence. And the

young man who has come in his solitary dwelling to think that he

is no ordinary mortal, has that nonsense taken out of him when he

goes back to spend some days in his father's house among a lot of

brothers of nearly his own age, who are generally the very last of

the race to believe in any man. But sometimes the opposite effect

comes of the lonely life. You grow anxious, nervous, and timid; you

lose confidence in yourself, in the absence of any who may back up

your failing sense of your own importance. You would like to shrink

into a corner, and to slip quietly through life unnoticed. And all

this without affectation, without the least latent feeling that

perhaps you are not so very insignificant after all. Yet, even

where men have come well to understand how infinitely little they

are as regards the estimation of mankind, you will find them, if

they live alone, cherishing some vain fancy that some few people,

some distant friends, are sometimes thinking of them. You will

find them arranging their papers, as though fancying that surely

somebody would like some day to see them; and marshalling their

sermons, as though in the vague notion that at some future time

mortals would be found weak enough to read them. It is one of the

things slowly learnt by repeated lessons and lengthening experience,

that nobody minds very much about you, my reader. You remember the

sensitive test which Dr. Johnson suggested as to the depth of one

mortal's feeling for another. How does it affect his appetite?

Multitudes in London, he said, professed themselves extremely

distressed at the hanging of Dr. Dodd; but how many on the morning

he was hung took a materially worse breakfast than usual? Solitary

dreamer, fancying that your distant friends feel deep interest in

your goings-on, how many of them are there who would abridge their

dinner if the black-edged note arrived by post which will some day

chronicle the last fact in your worldly history?

You get, living alone, into little particular ways of your own.

You know how, walking along a crowded street, you cannot keep a

straight line: at every step you have to yield a little to right or

left to avoid the passers by. This is no great trouble: you do it

almost unconsciously, and your journey is not appreciably lengthened.

Even so, living in a family, walking along the path of life in the

same track with many more, you find it needful scores of times each

day to give up your own fancies and wishes and ways, in deference

to those of others. You cannot divide the day in that precise

fashion which you would yourself like best. You must, in deciding

what shall be the dinner-hour, regard what will suit others as well

as you. You cannot sit always just in the corner or in the chair

you would prefer. Sometimes you must tell your children a story

when you are weary, or busy; but you cannot find it in your heart

to cast a shadow of disappointment on the eager little faces that

come and ask you. You have to stop writing many a time, in the

middle of a sentence, to open your study door at the request of a

little voice outside; and to admit a little visitor who can give

no more definite reason for her visit than that she has come to see

you, and tell you she has been a good girl. And all this is well

for you It breaks in hour by hour upon your native selfishness. And

it cosfs you not the slightest effort to give up your own wish to

that of your child. Even if to middle age you retain the innocent

taste for sweetmeats, would you not have infinitely greater pleasure

in seeing your little boy or girl eating up the contents of your

parcel, than in eating them yourself? It is to me a thoroughly

disgusting sight to see, as we sometimes do, the wife and children

of a family kept in constant terror of the selfish bashaw at the

head of the house, and ever on the watch to yield in every petty

matter to his whims and fancies. Sometimes, where he is a hard-wrought

and anxious man, whose hard work earns his children's bread, and

whose life is their sole stay, it is needful that he should be

deferred to in many things, lest the overtasked brain and overstrained

nervous system should break down or grow unequal to their task. But

I am not thinking of such cases. I mean cases in which the head

of the family is a great fat, bullying, selfish scoundrel; who

devours sullenly the choice dishes at dinner, and walks into all

the fruit at dessert, while his wife looks on in silence, and the

awe-stricken children dare not hint that they would like a little

of what the brutal hound is devouring. I mean cases in which the

contemptible dog is extremely well dressed, while his wife and

children's attire is thin and bare; in which he liberally tosses

about his money in the billiard-room, and goes off in autumn for

a tour on the Continent by himself, leaving them to the joyless

routine of their unvaried life. It is sad to see the sudden hush

that falls upon the little things when he enters the house; how

their sports are cut short, and they try to steal away from the

room. Would that I were the Emperor of Russia, and such a man my

subject! Should not he taste the knout? Should not I make him howl?

That would be his suitable punishment: for he will never feel what

worthier mortals would regard as the heavier penalty by far, the

utter absence of confidence or real affection between him and his

children when they grow up. He will not mind that there never was

a day when the toddling creatures set up a shout of delight at

his entrance, and rushed at him and scaled him and searched in his

pockets, and pulled him about; nor that the day will never come

when, growing into men and women, they will come to him for sympathy

and guidance in their little trials and perplexities. Oh, woful to

think that there are parents, held in general estimation too, to

whom their children would no more think of going for kindly sympathy,

than they would think of going to Nova Zembla for warmth!

But this is an excursus: I would that my hand were wielding a

stout horsewhip rather than a pen! Let me return to the point of

deviation, and say that a human being, if he be true-hearted, by

living in a family, insensibly and constantly is gently turned from

his own stiff track; and goes through life sinuously, so to speak.

But the lonely man settles into his own little ways. He is like

the man who walks through the desert without a soul to elbow him

for miles. He fixes his own hours; he sits in his own corner, in

his peculiar chair; he arranges the lamp where it best suits himself

that it should stand; he reads his newspaper when he pleases, for

no one else wants to see it; he orders from the club the books

that suit his own taste. And all this quite fitly: like the Duke

of Argyle's attacks upon Lord Derby, these things please himself,

and do harm to nobody. It is not selfishness not to consult the

wishes of other people, if there be no other people whose wishes

you can consult. And, though with great suffering to himself, I

believe that many a kind-hearted, precise old bachelor, stiffened

into his own ways through thirty solitary years would yet make an

effort to give them up, if he fancied that to yield a little from

them was needful to the comfort of others. He would give up the corner

by the fire in which he Las sat through the life of a generation:

he would resign to another the peg on which his hat has hung through

that long time. Still, all this would cost a painful effort; and

one need hardly repeat the common-place, that if people intend ever

to get married, it is expedient that they should do so before they

have settled too rigidly into their own ways.

It is a very touching thing, I think, to turn over the repositories

of a lonely man after he is dead. You come upon so many indications

of all his little ways and arrangements. In the case of men who

have been the heads of large families, this work is done by those

who have been most nearly connected with them, and who knew their

ways before; and such men, trained hourly to yield their own wishes

in things small and great, have comparatively few of those little

peculiar ways in which so much of their individuality seems to

make its touching appeal to us after they are gone. But lonely men

not merely have very many little arrangements of their own, but

have a particular reserve in exhibiting these: there is a strong

sensitiveness about them: you know how they would have shrunk in

life from allowing any one to turn over their papers, or even to

look into the arrangements of their wardrobe and their linen-press.

I remember once, after the sudden death of a reserved old gentleman,

being one of two or three who went over all his repositories. The

other people who did so with me were hard-headed lawyers, and did

not seem to mind much; but I remember that it appeared to me a

most touching sight we saw. All the little ways into which he had

grown in forty lonely years; all those details about his property

(a very large one), which in life he had kept entirely to himself--all

these we saw. I remember, lying on the top of the documents contained

in an iron chest, a little scrap of paper, the back of an ancient

letter, on which was written a note of the amount of all his wealth.

There you saw at once a secret which in life he would have confided

to no one. I remember the precise arrangement of all the little

piles of papers, so neatly tied up in separate parcels. I remember

the pocket-handkerchiefs, of several different kinds, each set

wrapped up by itself in a piece of paper. It was curious to think

that he had counted and sorted those, handkerchiefs; and now he

was so far away. What a contrast, the little cares of many little

matters like that, and the solemn realities of the unseen world!

I would not on any account have looked over these things alone.

I should have had an awe-stricken expectation that I should be

interrupted. I should have expected a sudden tap on the shoulder,

and to be asked what I was doing there. And doubtless, in many such

cases, when the repositories of the dead are first looked into by

strangers, some one far away would be present, if such things could

be.

Solitary men, of the class which I have in my mind, are generally

very hard-wrought men, and are kept too busy to allow very much

time for reverie. Still, there is some. There are evening hours

after the task is done, when you sit by the fire, or walk up and

down your study, and think that you are missing a great deal in

this lonely life; and that much more might be made of your stay in

this world, while its best years are passing over. You think that

there are many pleasant people in the world, people whom you would

like to know, and who might like you if they knew you. But you and

they have never met; and if you go on in this solitary fashion, you

and they never will meet. No doubt here is your comfortable room;

there is the blazing fire and the mellow lamp and the warmly-curtained

windows; and pervading the silent chamber, there is the softened

murmur of the not distant sea. The backs of your books look out at

you like old friends; and after you are married, you won't be able

to afford to buy so many. Still, you recall the cheerful society

in which you have often spent such hours, and you think it might

be well if you were not so completely cut off from it. You fancy

you hear the hum of lively conversation, such as gently exhilarates

the mind without tasking it; and again you think what a loss it

is to live where you hardly ever hear music, whether good or bad.

You think of the awkward shyness and embarrassment of manner which

grows upon a man who is hardly ever called to join in general

conversation. Yes, He knew our nature best who said that it is

not good that man should be alone. We lean to our kind. There is

indeed a solitariness which is the condition of an individual soul's

being, which no association with others can do away; but there is

no reason why we should add to that burden of personality which the

Bishop of Oxford, in one of his most striking sermons, has shown to

be truly 'an awful gift.' And say, youthful recluse (I don't mean

you, middle-aged bachelor, I mean really young men of five or six

and twenty), have you not sometimes, sitting by the fireside in

the evening, looked at the opposite easy chair in the ruddy glow,

and imagined that easy chair occupied by a gentle companion--one who

would bring out into double strength all that is good in you--one

who would sympathize with you and encourage you in all your work--one

who would think you much wiser, cleverer, handsomer, and better

than any mortal has ever yet thought you--the Angel in the House,

in short, to use the strong expression of Mr. Coventry Patmore?

Probably you have imagined all that: possibly you have in some

degree realized it all. If not, in all likelihood the fault lies

chiefly with yourself.

It must be a dismal thing for a solitary man to be taken ill: I mean

so seriously ill as to be confined to bed, yet not so dangerously

ill as to make some relation or friend come at all sacrifices to

be with you. The writer speaks merely from logical considerations:

happily he never experienced the case. But one can see that in

that lonely life, there can be none of those pleasant circumstances

which make days in bed, when acute pain is over, or the dangerous

turning-point of disease is happily past, as quietly enjoyable days

as any man is ever likely to know. No one should ever be seriously

ill (if he can help it) unless he be one of a considerable household.

Even then, indeed, it will be advisable to be ill as seldom as may

be. But to a person who when well is very hard-worked, and a good

deal worried, what restful days those are of which we are thinking!

You have such a feeling of peace and quietness. There you lie,

in lazy luxury, when you are suffering merely the weakness of a

serious illness, but the pain and danger are past. All your wants

are so thoughtfully and kindly anticipated. It is a very delightful

sensation to lift your head from the pillow, and instantly to find

yourself giddy and blind from loss of blood, and just drop your

head down again. It is not a question, even for the most uneasily

exacting conscience, whether you are to work or not: it is plain

you cannot. There is no difficulty on that score. And then you

are weakened to that degree that nothing worries you. Things going

wrong or remaining neglected about the garden or the stable, which

would have annoyed you when well, cannot touch you here. All you

want is to lie still and rest. Everything is still. You faintly

hear the door-bell ring; and though you live in a quiet country

house where that phenomenon rarely occurs, you feel not the least

curiosity to know who is there. You can look for a long time quite

contentedly at the glow of the fire on the curtains and on the

ceiling. You feel no anxiety about the coming in of the post; but

when your letters and newspapers arrive, you luxuriously read them,

a very little at a time, and you soon forget all you have read.

You turn over and fall asleep for a while; then you read a little

more. Your reviving appetite makes simple food a source of real

enjoyment. The children come in, and tell you wonderful stories of

all that has happened since you were ill. They are a little subdued

at first, but soon grow noisy as usual; and their noise does not

in the least disturb you. You hear it as though it were miles off.

After days and nights of great pain, you understand the blessing

of ease and rest: you are disposed to be pleased with everything,

and everybody wants to please you. The day passes away, and the

evening darkness comes before you are aware. Everything is strange,

and everything is soothing and pleasant. The only disadvantage is,

that you grow so fond of lying in bed, that you shrink extremely

from the prospect of ever getting up again.

Having arrived at this point, at 10.45 on this Friday evening, I

gathered up all the pages which have been written, and carried them

to the fireside, and sitting there, I read them over; and I confess,

that on the whole, it struck me that the present essay was somewhat

heavy. A severe critic might possibly say that it was stupid. I

fancied it would have been rather good when it was sketched out;

but it has not come up to expectation. However, it is as good as

I could make it; and I trust the next essay may be better. It is

a chance, you see, what the quality of any composition shall be.

Give me a handle to turn, and I should undertake upon every day

to turn it equally well. But in the working of the mental machine,

the same pressure of steam, the same exertion of will, the same

strain of what powers you have, will not always produce the same

result. And if you, reader, feel some disappointment at looking

at a new work by an old friend, and finding it not up to the mark

you expected, think how much greater his disappointment must have

been as the texture rolled out from the loom, and he felt it was

not what he had wished. Here, to-night, the room and the house are

as still as in my remembrance of the Solitary Days which are gone.

But they will not be still to-morrow morning; and they are so now

because sleep has hushed two little voices, and stayed the ceaseless

movements of four little pattering feet. May those Solitary Days

never return. They are well enough when the great look-out is

onward; but, oh! how dreary such days must be to the old man whose

main prospect is of the past! I cannot imagine a lot more completely

beyond all earthly consolation, than that of a man from whom wife

and children have been taken away, and who lives now alone in the

dwelling once gladdened by their presence, but now haunted by their

memory. Let us humbly pray, my reader, that such a lot may never

be yours or mine.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONCERNING GLASGOW DOWN THE WATER.

Upon any day in the months of June, July, August, and September, the

stranger who should walk through the handsome streets, crescents,

and terraces which form the West End of Glasgow, might be led to

fancy that the plague was in the town, or that some fearful commercial

crash had brought ruin upon all its respectable families,--so

utterly deserted is the place. The windows are all done up with

brown paper: the door-plates and handles, ere-while of glittering

brass, are black with rust: the flights of steps which lead to the

front-doors of the houses have furnished a field for the chalked

cartoons of vagabond boys with a turn for drawing. The more fashionable

the terrace or crescent, the more completely is it deserted: our

feet waken dreary echoes as we pace the pavement. We naturally

inquire of the first policeman we meet, What is the matter with

Glasgow,--has anything dreadful happened? And we receive for answer

the highly intelligible explanation, that the people are all Down

the Water.

We are enjoying (shall we suppose) our annual holiday from the

turmoil of Westminster Hall and the throng of London streets; and

we have taken Glasgow on our way to the Highlands. We have two or

three letters of introduction to two or three of the merchant-princes

of the city; and having heard a great deal of the splendid hospitalities

of the Western metropolis of the North, we have been anticipating

with considerable satisfaction stretching our limbs beneath their

mahogany, and comparing their cuisine and their cellar with the

descriptions of both which we have often heard from Mr. Allan

M'Collop, a Glasgow man who is getting on fairly at the bar. But

when we go to see our new acquaintances, or when they pay us a

hurried visit at our hotel, each of them expresses his deep regret

that he cannot ask us to his house, which he tells us is shut up,

his wife and family being Down the Water. No explanation is vouchsafed

of the meaning of the phrase, which is so familiar to Glasgow folk

that they forget how oddly it sounds on the ear of the stranger. Our

first hasty impression, perhaps, from the policeman's sad face (no

cold meat for him now, honest man), was that some sudden inundation

had swept away the entire wealthier portion of the population,--at

the same time curiously sparing the toiling masses. But the pleasant

and cheerful look of our mercantile friend, as he states what has

become of his domestic circle, shows us that nothing very serious

is amiss. At length, after much meditation, we conclude that the

people are at the sea-side; and as that lies down the Clyde from

Glasgow, when a Glasgow man means to tell us that his family and

himself are enjoying the fresh breezes and the glorious scenery of

the Frith of Clyde, he says they are Down the Water.

Everybody everywhere of course longs for the country, the sea-side,

change of air and scene, at some period during the year. Almost every

man of the wealthier and more cultivated class in this country has

a vacation, longer or shorter. But there never was a city whence the

annual migration to the sea-side is so universal or so protracted

as it is from Glasgow. By the month of March in each year, every

house along the coast within forty miles of Glasgow is let for the

season at a rent which we should say must be highly remunerative.

Many families go to the coast early in May, and every one is down

the water by the first of June. Most people now stay till the end

of September. The months of June and July form what is called 'the

first season;' August and September are 'the second season.' Until

within the last few years, one of these 'seasons' was thought to

furnish a Glasgow family with vigour and buoyancy sufficient to

face the winter, but now almost all who can afford it stay at the

sea-side during both. And from the little we have seen of Glasgow,

we do not wonder that such should be the case. No doubt Glasgow is

a fine city on the whole. The Trongate is a noble street; the park

on the banks of the Kelvin, laid out by Sir Joseph Paxton, furnishes

some pleasant walks; the Sauchyhall-road is an agreeable promenade;

Claremont, Crescent and Park Gardens consist of houses which would

be of the first class even in Belgravia or Tyburnia; and from the

West-end streets, there are prospects of valley and mountain which

are worth going some distance to see. But the atmosphere, though

comparatively free from smoke, wants the exhilarating freshness of

breezes just arrived from the Atlantic. The sun does not set in

such glory beyond Gilmore-hill, as behind the glowing granite of

Goatfell; and the trunks of the trees round Glasgow are (if truth

must be spoken) a good deal blacker than might be desired, while

their leaves are somewhat shrivelled up by the chemical gales of

St. Rollox. No wonder, then, that the purest of pure air, the bluest

of blue waves, the most picturesque of noble hills, the most purple

of heather, the greenest of ivy, the thickest of oak-leaves, the

most fragrant of roses and honeysuckle, should fairly smash poor

old Glasgow during the summer months, and leave her not a leg to

stand on.

The ladies and children of the multitudinous families that go down

the water, remain there permanently, of course: most of the men

go up to business every morning and return to the sea-side every

night. This implies a journey of from sixty to eighty miles daily;

but the rapidity and the cheapness of the communication, render

the journey a comparatively easy one. Still, it occupies three or

four hours of the day; and many persons remain in town two or three

nights weekly, smuggling themselves away in some little back parlour

of their dismantled dwellings. But let us accept our friend's

invitation to spend a few days at his place down the water, and

gather up some particulars of the mode of life there.

There are two ways of reaching the coast from Glasgow. We may

sail all the way down the Clyde, in steamers generally remarkably

well-appointed and managed; or we may go by railway to Greenock,

twenty-three miles off, and catch the steamer there. By going

by railway we save an hour,--a great deal among people with whom

emphatically time is money,--and we escape a somewhat tedious sail

down the river. The steamer takes two hours to reach Greenock,

while some express trains which run all the way without stopping,

accomplish the distance in little more than half an hour. The sail

down the Clyde to Greenock is in parts very interesting. The banks

of the river are in some places richly wooded: on the north side

there are picturesque hills; and the huge rock on which stands the

ancient castle of Dumbarton, is a striking feature. But we have

never met any Glasgow man or woman who did not speak of the sail

between Glasgow and Greenock as desperately tedious, and by all means

to be avoided. Then in warm summer weather the Clyde is nearly as

filthy as the Thames; and sailing over a sewer, even through fine

scenery, has its disadvantages. So we resolve to go with our friend

by railway to Greenock, and thus come upon the Clyde where it has

almost opened into the sea. Quite opened into the sea, we might say:

for at Greenock the river is three miles broad, while at Glasgow

it is only some three hundred yards.

'Meet me at Bridge-street station at five minutes to four,' says

Mr. B--, after we have agreed to spend a few days on the Clyde.

There are a couple of hours to spare, which we give to a basin of

very middling soup at McLerie's, and to a visit to the cathedral,

which is a magnificent specimen of the severest style of Gothic

architecture. We are living at the Royal Hotel in George Square,

which we can heartily recommend to tourists; and when our hour

approaches, Boots brings us a cab. We are not aware whether there

is any police regulation requiring the cabs of Glasgow to be extremely

dirty, and the horses that draw them to be broken-winded, and lame

of not more than four nor less than two legs. Perhaps it is merely

the general wish of the inhabitants that has brought about the

present state of things. However this may be, the unhappy animal

that draws us reaches Bridge-street station at last. As our carriage

draws up we catch a glimpse of half-a-dozen men, in that peculiar

green dress which railway servants affect, hastening to conceal

themselves behind the pillars which decorate the front of the building,

while two or three excited ticket-porters seize our baggage, and

offer to carry it up-stairs. But our friend with Scotch foresight

and economy, has told us to make the servants of the Company do

thein work. 'Hands off,' we say to the ticket-porters; and walking

up the steps we round a pillar, and smartly tapping on the shoulder

one of the green-dressed gentlemen lurking there, we indicate

to him the locality of our port-manteau. Sulkily he shoulders it,

and precedes us to the booking-office. The fares are moderate;

eighteen-pence to Greenock, first class: and we understand that

persona who go daily, by taking season tickets, travel for much

less. The steamers afford a still cheaper access to the sea-side,

conveying passengers from Glasgow to Rothesay, about forty-five

miles, for sixpence cabin and three-pence deck. The trains start

from a light and spacious shed, which has the very great disadvantage

of being at an elevation of thirty or forty feet above the ground

level. Railway companies have sometimes spent thousands of pounds

to accomplish ends not a tenth part so desirable as is the arranging

their stations in such a manner as that people in departing, and

still more in arriving, shall be spared the annoyance and peril of

a break-neck staircase like that at the Glasgow railway station. It

is a vast comfort when cabs can draw up alongside the train, under

cover, so that people can get into them at once, as at Euston-square.

The railway carriages that run between Glasgow and Greenock have a

rather peculiar appearance. The first-class carriages are of twice

the usual length, having six compartments instead of three. Each

compartment holds eight passengers; and as this accommodation is

gained by increasing the breadth of the carriages, brass bars are

placed across the windows, to prevent any one from putting out his

head. Should any one do so, his head would run some risk of coming

in collision with the other train; and although, from physiological

reasons, tome heads might receive no injury in such a case, the

carriage with which they came in contact would probably suffer.

The expense of painting is saved by the carriages being built of

teak, which when varnished has a cheerful light-oak colour. There

is a great crowd of men on the platform, for the four o'clock train

is the chief down-train of the day. The bustle of the business-day

is over; there is a general air of relief and enjoyment. We meet our

friend punctual to the minute; we take our seat on the comfortable

blue cushions; the bell rings; the engine pants and tugs; and we

are off 'down the water.'

We pass through a level country on leaving Glasgow: there are the

rich fields which tell of Scotch agricultural industry. It is a

bright August afternoon: the fields are growing yellow; the trees

and hedges still wear their summer green. In a quarter of an hour

the sky suddenly becomes overcast. It is not a cloud: don't be afraid

of an unfavourable change of weather; we have merely plunged into

the usual atmosphere of dirty and ugly Paisley. Without a pause,

we sweep by, and here turn off to the right. That line of railway

from which we have turned aside runs on to Dumfries and Carlisle;

a branch of it keeps along the Ayrshire coast to Ardrossan and Ayr.

In a little while we are skimming the surface of a bleak, black

moor; it is a dead level, and not in the least interesting: but,

after a plunge into the mirk darkness of a long tunnel, we emerge

into daylight again; and there, sure enough, are the bright waters

of the Clyde. We are on its south side; it has spread out to the

breadth of perhaps a couple of miles. That rocky height on its north

shore is Dumbarton Castle; that great mass beyond is Ben Lomond,

at whose base lies Loch Lomond, the queen of Scottish lakes, now

almost as familiar to many a cockney tourist as a hundred years since

to Rob Roy Macgregor. We keep close by the water's edge, skirting

a range of hills on which grow the finest strawberries in Scotland.

Soon, to the right, we see many masts, many great rafts of timber,

many funnels of steamers; and there, creeping along out in the middle

of the river, is the steamer we are to join, which left Glasgow

an hour before us. We have not stopped since we left Glasgow;

thirty-five minutes have elapsed, and now we sweep into a remarkably

tasteless and inconvenient station. This is Greenock at last; but,

as at Glasgow, the station is some forty feet above the ground. A

railway cart at the foot of a long stair receives the luggage of

passengers, and then sets off at a gallop down a dirty little lane.

We follow at a run; and, a hundred and fifty yards off, we come

on a long range of wharf, beside which lie half-a-dozen steamers,

sputtering out their white steam with a roar, as though calling

impatiently for their passengers to come faster. Our train has

brought passengers for a score of places on the Frith; and in the

course of the next hour and a half, these vessels will disperse

them to their various destinations. By way of guidance to the

inexperienced, a post is erected on the wharf, from which arms

project, pointing to the places of the different steamers. The idea

is a good one, and if carried out with the boldness with which it

was conceived, much advantage might be derived by strangers. But a

serious drawback about these indicators is, that they are invariably

pointed in the wrong direction, which renders them considerably less

useful than they might otherwise be. Fortunately we have a guide,

for there is not a moment to lose. We hasten on board, over an

awkward little gangway, kept by a policeman of rueful countenance,

who punches the heads of several little boys who look on with awe.

Bareheaded and bare-footed girls offer baskets of gooseberries

and plums of no tempting appearance. Ragged urchins bellow 'Day's

Penny Paper! Glasgow Daily News!' In a minute or two, the ropes

are cast off, and the steamers diverge as from a centre to their

various ports.

We are going to Dunoon. Leaving the ship-yards of Greenock echoing

with multitudinous hammerings, and rounding a point covered with

houses, we see before us Gourock, the nearest to Greenock of the

places 'down the water.' It is a dirty little village on the left

side of the Frith. A row of neat houses, quite distinct from the

dirty village, stretches for two miles along the water's edge.

The hills rise immediately behind these. The Frith is here about

three miles in breadth. It is Renfrewshire on the left hand; a few

miles on, and it will be Ayrshire. On the right are the hills of

Argyleshire. And now, for many miles on either side, the shores of

the Frith, and the shores of the long arms of the sea that run up

among those Argyleshire mountains, are fringed with villas, castles,

and cottages--the retreats of Glasgow men and their families. It

is not, perhaps, saying much for Glasgow to state that one of its

greatest advantages is the facility with which one can get away

from it, and the beauty of the places to which one can get. But

true it is, that there is hardly a great city in the world which

is so well off in this respect. For six-pence, the artisan of

Bridgeton or Calton can travel forty miles in the purest air, over

as blue a sea, and amid as noble hills, as can be found in Britain.

The Clyde is a great highway: a highway traversed, indeed, by a

merchant navy scarcely anywhere surpassed in extent; but a highway,

too, whose gracious breezes, through the summer and autumn time,

are ever ready to revive the heart of the pale weaver, with his

thin wife and child, arid to fan the cheek of the poor consumptive

needlewoman into the glow of something like country health and

strength.

After Greenock is passed, and the river has grown into the Frith,

the general features of the scene'remain very much the same for

upwards of twenty miles. The water varies from three to seven or

eight miles in breadth; and then suddenly opens out to a breadth

of twenty or thirty miles. Hills, fringed with wood along their

base, and gradually passing into moorland as they ascend, form, the

shores on either side. The rocky islands of the Great and Little

Cumbrae occupy the middle of the Frith, about fourteen or fifteen

miles below Greenock: to the right lies the larger island of Bute;

and further on the still larger island of Arran. The hills on the

Argyleshire side of the Frith are generally bold and precipitous:

those on the Ayrshire side are of much less elevation. The character

of all the places'down the water' is almost identical: they consist

of a row of houses, generally detached villas or cottages, reaching

along the shore, at only a few yards' distance from the water,

with the hills arising immediately behind. The beach is not very

convenient for bathing, being generally rocky; though here and

there we find a Btrip of yellow sand. Trees and shrubs grow in the

richest way down to the water's edge. The trees are numerous, and

luxuriant rather than large; oaks predominate; we should say few of

them are a hundred years old. Ivy and honeysuckle grow in profusion;

for several miles along the coast, near Largs, there is a perpendicular

wall of rock from fifty to one hundred feet in height, which follows

the windings of the shore at a distance of one hundred and fifty

yards from the water, enclosing between itself and the sea a long

ribbon of fine soil, on which shrubs, flowers, and fruit grow

luxuriantly; and this natural rampart, which advances and retreats

as we pursue the road at its base, like the bastions and curtains

of some magnificent feudal castle, is in many places clad with ivy,

so fresh and green that we can hardly believe that for months in

the year it is wet with the salt spray of the Atlantic. Here and

there, along the coast, are places where the land is capable of

cultivation for a mile or two inland; but, as the rule, the hill

ascends almost from the water's edge, into granite and heather.

Let us try to remember the names of the places which reach along

the Frith upon either hand: we believe that a list of them will

show that not without reason it is said that Glasgow is unrivalled

in the number of her sea-side retreats. On the right hand, as we

go down the Frith, there are Helensburgh, Row, Roseneath, Shandon,

Gareloch-head, Cove, Kilcreggan, Lochgoil-head, Arrochar, Ardentinny,

Strone, Kilmun, Kirn, Dunoon, Inellan, Toward, Port Bonnatyne,

Rothesay, Askog, Colintrave, Tynabruach. Sometimes these places

form for miles one long range of villas. Indeed, from Strone to

Toward, ten or twelve miles, the coast is one continuous street.

On the left hand of the Frith are Gourock, Ashton, Inverkip, Wemyss

Bay, Skelmorlie, Largs, Fairlie: then comes a bleak range of sandy

coast, along which stand Ardrossan, Troon, and Ayr. In the island

of Cumbrae is Millport, conspicuously by the tall spire which marks

the site of an Episcopal chapel and college of great architectural

beauty, built within the last few years. And in Arran are the

villages of Lamlash and Brodick. The two Cumbrae islands constitute

a parish. A simple-minded clergyman, not long deceased, who held

the cure for many years, was wont, Sunday by Sunday, to pray (in the

church service) for 'the islands of the Great and Little Cumbrae,

and also for the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland.'

But all this while the steam has been fiercely chafing through the

funnel as we have been stopping at Gourock quay. We are away at

last, and are now crossing the Frith towards the Argyleshire side.

A mile or two down, along the Ayrshire side, backed by the rich woods

of Ardgowan, tall and spectral-white, stands the Cloch lighthouse.

We never have looked at it without thinking how many a heart-broken

emigrant must be remembering that severely simple white tower as

almost the last thing he saw in Scotland when he was leaving it

for ever. The Frith opens before us as we advance: we are running

at the rate (quite usual among Clyde steamers) of sixteen or

seventeen miles an hour. There, before us, is Cumbrae: over Bute

and over Cumbrae look the majestic mountains of Arran; that great

granite peak is Goat-fell. And on a clear day, far out, guarding

the entrance to the Frith, rising sheer up from the deep sea, at

ten miles' distance from the nearest land, looms Ailsa, white with

sea-birds, towering to the height of twelve or thirteen hundred

feet. It is a rocky islet of about a mile in circumference, and

must have been thrown up by volcanic agency; for the water around

it is hundreds of feet in depth.

Out in the middle of the Frith we can see the long, low, white

line of buildings on either side of it, nestling at the foot of

the hills. We are drawing near Dunoon. That opening on the right

is the entrance to Loch Long and Loch Goyle; and a little further

on we pass the entrance to the Holy Loch, on whose shore is

the ancient burying-place of the family of Argyle. How remarkably

tasteful many of these villas are! They are generally built in the

Elizabethan style: they stand in grounds varying from half an acre

up to twenty or thirty acres, very prettily laid out with shrubbery

and flowers; a number (we can see, for we are now skirting the

Argyleshire coast at the distance of only a few hundred yards) have

conservatories and hot-houses of more or less extent: flagstaffs

appear to be much affected (for send a landsman to the coast, and

he is sure to become much more marine than a sailor): and those

pretty bow-windows, with the crimson fuchsias climbing up them--those

fantastic gables and twisted chimneys--those shining evergreens

and cheerful gravel walks--with no lack of pretty girls in round

hats, and sportive children rolling about the trimly-kept grass

plots--all seen in this bright August sunshine--all set off against

this blue smiling expanse of sea--make a picture so gay and inviting,

that we really do not wonder any more that Glasgow people should

like to 'go down the water.'

Here is Dunoon pier. Several of the coast places have, like Dunoon,

a long jetty of wood running out a considerable distance into the

water, for the accommodation of the steamers, which call every

hour or two throughout the day. Other places have deep water close

in-shore, and are provided with a wharf of stone. And several of

the recently founded villages (and half of those we have enumerated

have sprung up within the last ten years) have no landing-place

at which steamers can touch; and their passengers have to land

and embark by the aid of a ferry-boat. We touch the pier at last:

a gangway is hastily thrown from the pier to the steamer, and in

company with many others we go ashore. At the landward end of the

jetty, detained there by a barrier of twopence each of toll, in

round hats and alpaca dresses, are waiting our friend's wife and

children, from whom we receive a welcome distinguished by that

frankness which is characteristic of Glasgow people. But we do not

intend so far to imitate the fashion of some modern tourists and

biographers, as to give our readers a description of our friend's

house and family, his appearance and manners. We shall only say of

him what will never single him out--for it may be said of hundreds

more--that he is a wealthy, intelligent, well-informed, kind-hearted

Glasgow merchant. And if his daughters did rather bore us by

their enthusiastic descriptions of the sermons of 'our minister,'

Mr. Macduff, the still grander orations of Mr. Caird, and the

altogether unexampled eloquence of Dr. Gumming, why, they were only

showing us a thoroughly Glasgow feature; for nowhere in Britain,

we should fancy, is there so much talk about preaching and preachers.

In sailing down the Frith, one gets no just idea of the richness

and beauty of its shores. We have said that a little strip of fine

soil,--in some places only fifty or sixty yards in breadth,--runs

like a ribbon, occasionally broadening out to three or four times

that extent, along the sea-margin; beyond this ribbon of ground come

the wild moor and mountain. In sailing down the Frith, our eye is

caught by the large expanse of moorland, and we do not give due

importance to the rich strip which bounds it, like an edging of

gold lace (to use King James's comparison) round a russet petticoat.

When we land we understand things better. We find next the sea,

at almost any point along the Frith, the turnpike road, generally

nearly level, and beautifully smooth. Here and there, in the

places of older date, we find quite a street of contiguous houses;

but the general rule is of detached dwellings of all grades, from

the humblest cottage to the most luxurious villa. At considerable

intervals, there are residences of a much higher class than even

this last, whose grounds stretch for long distances along the shore.

Such places are Ardgovvan, Kelly, Skelmorlie Castle, and Kelburne,

on the Ayrshire side; and on the other shore of the Frith, Roseneath

Castle, Toward Castle, and Mountstuart. [Footnote: Ardgowan, residence

of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart; Kelly, Mr. Scott; Skelmorlie, the Earl

of Eglinton; Kelburne, the Earl of Glasgow; Roseneath, the Duke of

Argyle; Toward, Mr. Kirkwall Finlay Mountstuart, the Marquis of

Bute.] And of dwellings of a less ambitious standing than these

really grand abodes, yet of a mark much above that suggested by

the word villa, we may name the very showy house of Mr. Napier, the

eminent maker of marine steam-engines, on the Gareloch, a building

in the Saracenic style, which cost we are afraid to say how many

thousand pounds; the finely-placed castle of Wemyss, built from

the design of Billings; and the very striking piece of baronial

architecture called Knock Castle, the residence of Mr. Steel, a

wealthy shipbuilder of Greenock. The houses along the Frith are,

in Scotch fashion, built exclusively of stone, which is obtained

with great facility. Along the Ayrshire coast, the warm-looking

red sandstone of the district is to be had everywhere, almost on

the surface. One sometimes sees a house rising, the stone being

taken from a deep quarry close to it: the same crane often serving

to lift a block from the quarry, and to place it in its permanent

position upon the advancing wall. We have said how rich is vegetation

all along the Frith, until we reach the sandy downs from Ardrossan

to Ayr. All evergreens grow with great rapidity: ivy covers dead

walls very soon. To understand in what luxuriance vegetable life

may be maintained close to the sea-margin, one must walk along the

road which leads from the West Bay at Dunoon towards Toward. We

never saw trees so covered with honeysuckle; and fuchsias a dozen

feet in height are quite common. In this sweet spot, in an Elizabethan

house of exquisite design, retired within grounds where fine taste

has done its utmost, resides, during the summer vacation (and the

summer vacation is six months!), Mr. Buchanan, the Professor of

Logic in the University of Glasgow. It must be a very fair thing

to teach logic at Glasgow, if the revenue of that chair maintains

the groves and flowers, and (we may add) the liberal hospitalities,

of Ardflllane.

One pleasing circumstance about the Frith of Clyde, which we remark

the more from its being unhappily the exception to the general rule

in Scotland, is the general neatness and ecclesiastical character

of the churches. The parish church of Dunoon, standing on a wooded

height, rising from the water, with its grey tower looking over

the trees, is a dignified and commanding object. The churches of

Roseneath and Row, which have been built within a year or two, are

correct and elegant specimens of ecclesiastical Gothic: indeed they

are so thoroughly like churches, that John Knox would assuredly have

pulled them down had they been standing in his day. And here and

there along the coast the rich Glasgow merchants and the neighbouring

proprietors have built pretty little chapels, whose cross-crowned

gables, steep-pitched roofs, dark oak wood-work, and stained windows,

are pleasant indications that old prejudice lias given way among

cultivated Scotchmen; and that it has come to be understood that

it is false religion as well as bad taste and sense to make God's

house the shabbiest, dirtiest, and most uncomfortable house in the

parish. Some of these sea-side places of worship are crowded in

summer by a fashionable congregation, and comparatively deserted

in winter when the Glasgow folks are gone.

A very considerable number of the families that go 'down the

water' occupy houses which are their own property. There must be,

one would think, a special interest about a house which is one's

own. A man must become attached to a spot where he himself planted

the hollies and yews, and his children have marked their growth year

by year. Still, many people do not like to be tied to one place,

and prefer varying their quarters each season. Very high rents are

paid for good houses on the Frith of Clyde. From thirty to fifty

pounds a month is a common charge for a neat villa at one of the

last founded and most fashionable places. A little less is charged

for the months of August and September than for June and July; and

if a visitor takes a house for the four months which constitute

the season, he may generally have it for May and October without

further cost, Decent houses or parts of houses (flats as they are

called), may be had for about ten pounds a month; and at those places

which approach to the character of a town, as Largs, Eothesay, and

Dunoon, lodgings may be obtained where attendance is provided by

the people of the house.

A decided drawback about the sea-side places within twenty miles

from Greenock, is their total want of that fine sandy beach, so firm

and dry and inviting when the tide is out, which forms so great an

attraction at Ardrossan, Troon, and Ayr. At a few points, as for

instance the West Bay at Dunoon, there is a beautiful expanse of

yellow sand: but as a rule, where the shore does not consist of

precipitous rocks, sinking at once into deep water, it is made of

great rough stones, which form a most unpleasant footing for bathers.

In front of most villas a bathing place is formed by clearing the

stones away. Bathing machines, we should mention, are quite unknown

upon the Frith of Clyde.