BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCVIII. OCTOBER, 1849. VOL. LXVI.
CONTENTS.
THE CAXTONS.--PART THE LAST, 391
LYNMOUTH REVISITED, 412
WHAT HAS REVOLUTIONISING GERMANY ATTAINED? 424
THE GREEN HAND--A "SHORT" YARN. PART V. 436
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, 456
CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS.--A REMEDY, 471
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH, OR THE GLORY OF MOTION, 485
DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS, 501
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCVIII. OCTOBER, 1849. VOL. LXVI.
THE CAXTONS.--PART THE LAST.
CHAPTER CI.
Adieu, thou beautiful land! Canaan of the exiles, and Ararat to many a
shattered ark! Fair cradle of a race for whom the unbounded heritage
of a future, that no sage can conjecture, no prophet divine, lies afar
in the golden promise-light of Time!--destined, perchance, from the
sins and sorrows of a civilisation struggling with its own elements of
decay, to renew the youth of the world, and transmit the great soul
of England through the cycles of Infinite Change. All climates that
can best ripen the products of earth, or form into various character
and temper the different families of man, "rain influences" from the
heaven, that smiles so benignly on those who had once shrunk, ragged,
from the wind, or scowled on the thankless sun. Here, the hardy air of
the chill Mother Isle, there the mild warmth of Italian autumns, or the
breathless glow of the tropics. And with the beams of every climate,
glides subtle HOPE. Of her there, it may be said as of Light itself, in
those exquisite lines of a neglected poet--
"Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea,
Which open all their pores to thee
Like a clear river thou dost glide--
* * * * *
All the world's bravery, that delights our eyes,
Is but thy several liveries;
Thou the rich dye on them bestowest;
Thy nimble pencil paints the landscape as thou goest."[1]
Adieu, my kind nurse and sweet foster-mother!--a long and a last adieu!
Never had I left thee but for that louder voice of Nature which calls
the child to the parent, and woos us from the labours we love the best
by the chime in the Sabbath-bells of Home.
No one can tell how dear the memory of that wild Bush-life becomes to
him who has tried it with a _fitting spirit_. How often it haunts him
in the commonplace of more civilised scenes! Its dangers, its risks,
its sense of animal health, its bursts of adventure, its intervals of
careless repose--the fierce gallop through a very sea of wide rolling
plains--the still saunter, at night, through woods never changing
their leaves--with the moon, clear as sunshine, stealing slant through
their clusters of flowers. With what an effort we reconcile ourselves
to the trite cares and vexed pleasures, "the quotidian ague of frigid
impertinences," to which we return! How strong and black stands my
pencil-mark in this passage of the poet from which I have just quoted
before!--
"We are here among the vast and noble scenes of Nature--we are there
among the pitiful shifts of policy; we walk here, in the light and open
ways of the Divine Bounty--we grope there, in the dark and confused
labyrinth of human malice."[2]
But I weary you, reader. The New World vanishes--now a line--now a
speck: let us turn away, with the face to the Old.
Among my fellow-passengers, how many there are returning home
disgusted, disappointed, impoverished, ruined, throwing themselves
again on those unsuspecting poor friends, who thought they had done
with the luckless good-for-naughts for ever. For don't let me deceive
thee, reader, into supposing that every adventurer to Australia has the
luck of Pisistratus. Indeed, though the poor labourer, and especially
the poor operative from London and the great trading towns, (who
has generally more of the quick knack of learning--the _adaptable
faculty_--required in a new colony, than the simple agricultural
labourer,) are pretty sure to succeed, the class to which I belong is
one in which failures are numerous, and success the exception--I mean
young men with scholastic education and the habits of gentlemen--with
small capitals and sanguine hopes. But this, in ninety-nine times out
of a hundred, is not the fault of the colony, but of the emigrants. It
requires, not so much intellect as a peculiar turn of intellect, and
a fortunate combination of physical qualities, easy temper, and quick
mother-wit, to make a small capitalist a prosperous Bushman.[3] And if
you could see the sharks that swim round a man just dropped at Adelaide
or Sydney, with one or two thousand pounds in his pocket! Hurry out of
the towns as fast as you can, my young emigrant; turn a deaf ear, for
the present at least, to all jobbers and speculators; make friends with
some practised old Bushman; spend several months at his station before
you hazard your capital; take with you a temper to bear everything and
sigh for nothing; put your whole heart in what you are about; never
call upon Hercules when your cart sticks in the rut, and, whether you
feed sheep or breed cattle, your success is but a question of time.
But, whatever I owed to nature, I owed also something to fortune.
I bought my sheep at little more than 7s. each. When I left, none
were worth less than 15s., and the fat sheep were worth £1.[4] I had
an excellent shepherd, and my whole care, night and day, was the
improvement of the flock. I was fortunate, too, in entering Australia
before the system miscalled "The Wakefield"[5] had diminished the
supply of labour and raised the price of land. When the change came,
(like most of those with large allotments and surplus capital,) it
greatly increased the value of my own property, though at the cost
of a terrible blow on the general interests of the colony. I was
lucky, too, in the additional venture of a cattle station, and in the
breed of horses and herds, which, in the five years devoted to that
branch establishment, trebled the sum invested therein, exclusive
of the advantageous sale of the station.[6] I was lucky, also, as I
have stated, in the purchase and resale of lands, at Uncle Jack's
recommendation. And, lastly, I left in time, and escaped a very
disastrous crisis in colonial affairs, which I take the liberty of
attributing entirely to the mischievous crotchets of theorists at
home, who want to set all clocks by Greenwich time, forgetting that it
is morning in one part of the world at the time they are tolling the
curfew in the other.