Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
MADAM HOW AND LADY WHY
or, FIRST LESSONS IN EARTH LORE FOR CHILDREN
DEDICATION
To my son Grenville Arthur, and to his school-fellows at Winton House
This little book is dedicated.
PREFACE
My dear boys,--When I was your age, there were no such children's books
as there are now. Those which we had were few and dull, and the pictures
in them ugly and mean: while you have your choice of books without
number, clear, amusing, and pretty, as well as really instructive, on
subjects which were only talked of fifty years ago by a few learned men,
and very little understood even by them. So if mere reading of books
would make wise men, you ought to grow up much wiser than us old fellows.
But mere reading of wise books will not make you wise men: you must use
for yourselves the tools with which books are made wise; and that is--your
eyes, and ears, and common sense.
Now, among those very stupid old-fashioned boys' books was one which
taught me that; and therefore I am more grateful to it than if it had
been as full of wonderful pictures as all the natural history books you
ever saw. Its name was _Evenings at Home_; and in it was a story called
"Eyes and no Eyes;" a regular old-fashioned, prim, sententious story; and
it began thus:--
"Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon?" said Mr.
Andrews to one of his pupils at the close of a holiday.
Oh--Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round by Camp Mount, and home
through the meadows. But it was very dull. He hardly saw a single
person. He had much rather have gone by the turnpike-road.
Presently in comes Master William, the other pupil, dressed, I suppose,
as wretched boys used to be dressed forty years ago, in a frill collar,
and skeleton monkey-jacket, and tight trousers buttoned over it, and
hardly coming down to his ancles; and low shoes, which always came off in
sticky ground; and terribly dirty and wet he is: but he never (he says)
had such a pleasant walk in his life; and he has brought home his
handkerchief (for boys had no pockets in those days much bigger than key-
holes) full of curiosities.
He has got a piece of mistletoe, wants to know what it is; and he has
seen a woodpecker, and a wheat-ear, and gathered strange flowers on the
heath; and hunted a peewit because he thought its wing was broken, till
of course it led him into a bog, and very wet he got. But he did not
mind it, because he fell in with an old man cutting turf, who told him
all about turf-cutting, and gave him a dead adder. And then he went up a
hill, and saw a grand prospect; and wanted to go again, and make out the
geography of the country from Cary's old county maps, which were the only
maps in those days. And then, because the hill was called Camp Mount, he
looked for a Roman camp, and found one; and then he went down to the
river, saw twenty things more; and so on, and so on, till he had brought
home curiosities enough, and thoughts enough, to last him a week.
Whereon Mr. Andrews, who seems to have been a very sensible old
gentleman, tells him all about his curiosities: and then it comes out--if
you will believe it--that Master William has been over the very same
ground as Master Robert, who saw nothing at all.
Whereon Mr. Andrews says, wisely enough, in his solemn old-fashioned
way,--
"So it is. One man walks through the world with his eyes open, another
with his eyes shut; and upon this difference depends all the superiority
of knowledge which one man acquires over another. I have known sailors
who had been in all the quarters of the world, and could tell you nothing
but the signs of the tippling-houses, and the price and quality of the
liquor. On the other hand, Franklin could not cross the Channel without
making observations useful to mankind. While many a vacant thoughtless
youth is whirled through Europe without gaining a single idea worth
crossing the street for, the observing eye and inquiring mind find matter
of improvement and delight in every ramble. You, then, William, continue
to use your eyes. And you, Robert, learn that eyes were given to you to
use."
So said Mr. Andrews: and so I say, dear boys--and so says he who has the
charge of you--to you. Therefore I beg all good boys among you to think
over this story, and settle in their own minds whether they will be eyes
or no eyes; whether they will, as they grow up, look and see for
themselves what happens: or whether they will let other people look for
them, or pretend to look; and dupe them, and lead them about--the blind
leading the blind, till both fall into the ditch.
I say "good boys;" not merely clever boys, or prudent boys: because using
your eyes, or not using them, is a question of doing Right or doing
Wrong. God has given you eyes; it is your duty to God to use them. If
your parents tried to teach you your lessons in the most agreeable way,
by beautiful picture-books, would it not be ungracious, ungrateful, and
altogether naughty and wrong, to shut your eyes to those pictures, and
refuse to learn? And is it not altogether naughty and wrong to refuse to
learn from your Father in Heaven, the Great God who made all things, when
he offers to teach you all day long by the most beautiful and most
wonderful of all picture-books, which is simply all things which you can
see, hear, and touch, from the sun and stars above your head to the
mosses and insects at your feet? It is your duty to learn His lessons:
and it is your interest. God's Book, which is the Universe, and the
reading of God's Book, which is Science, can do you nothing but good, and
teach you nothing but truth and wisdom. God did not put this wondrous
world about your young souls to tempt or to mislead them. If you ask Him
for a fish, he will not give you a serpent. If you ask Him for bread, He
will not give you a stone.
So use your eyes and your intellect, your senses and your brains, and
learn what God is trying to teach you continually by them. I do not mean
that you must stop there, and learn nothing more. Anything but that.
There are things which neither your senses nor your brains can tell you;
and they are not only more glorious, but actually more true and more real
than any things which you can see or touch. But you must begin at the
beginning in order to end at the end, and sow the seed if you wish to
gather the fruit. God has ordained that you, and every child which comes
into the world, should begin by learning something of the world about him
by his senses and his brain; and the better you learn what they can teach
you, the more fit you will be to learn what they cannot teach you. The
more you try now to understand _things_, the more you will be able
hereafter to understand men, and That which is above men. You began to
find out that truly Divine mystery, that you had a mother on earth,
simply by lying soft and warm upon her bosom; and so (as Our Lord told
the Jews of old) it is by watching the common natural things around you,
and considering the lilies of the field, how they grow, that you will
begin at least to learn that far Diviner mystery, that you have a Father
in Heaven. And so you will be delivered (if you will) out of the tyranny
of darkness, and distrust, and fear, into God's free kingdom of light,
and faith, and love; and will be safe from the venom of that tree which
is more deadly than the fabled upas of the East. Who planted that tree I
know not, it was planted so long ago: but surely it is none of God's
planting, neither of the Son of God: yet it grows in all lands and in all
climes, and sends its hidden suckers far and wide, even (unless we be
watchful) into your hearts and mine. And its name is the Tree of
Unreason, whose roots are conceit and ignorance, and its juices folly and
death. It drops its venom into the finest brains; and makes them call
sense, nonsense; and nonsense, sense; fact, fiction; and fiction, fact.
It drops its venom into the tenderest hearts, alas! and makes them call
wrong, right; and right, wrong; love, cruelty; and cruelty, love. Some
say that the axe is laid to the root of it just now, and that it is
already tottering to its fall: while others say that it is growing
stronger than ever, and ready to spread its upas-shade over the whole
earth. For my part, I know not, save that all shall be as God wills. The
tree has been cut down already again and again; and yet has always thrown
out fresh shoots and dropped fresh poison from its boughs. But this at
least I know: that any little child, who will use the faculties God has
given him, may find an antidote to all its poison in the meanest herb
beneath his feet.
There, you do not understand me, my boys; and the best prayer I can offer
for you is, perhaps, that you should never need to understand me: but if
that sore need should come, and that poison should begin to spread its
mist over your brains and hearts, then you will be proof against it; just
in proportion as you have used the eyes and the common sense which God
has given you, and have considered the lilies of the field, how they
grow.
C. KINGSLEY.
CHAPTER I--THE GLEN
You find it dull walking up here upon Hartford Bridge Flat this sad
November day? Well, I do not deny that the moor looks somewhat dreary,
though dull it need never be. Though the fog is clinging to the
fir-trees, and creeping among the heather, till you cannot see as far as
Minley Corner, hardly as far as Bramshill woods--and all the Berkshire
hills are as invisible as if it was a dark midnight--yet there is plenty
to be seen here at our very feet. Though there is nothing left for you
to pick, and all the flowers are dead and brown, except here and there a
poor half-withered scrap of bottle-heath, and nothing left for you to
catch either, for the butterflies and insects are all dead too, except
one poor old Daddy-long-legs, who sits upon that piece of turf, boring a
hole with her tail to lay her eggs in, before the frost catches her and
ends her like the rest: though all things, I say, seem dead, yet there is
plenty of life around you, at your feet, I may almost say in the very
stones on which you tread. And though the place itself be dreary enough,
a sheet of flat heather and a little glen in it, with banks of dead fern,
and a brown bog between them, and a few fir-trees struggling up--yet, if
you only have eyes to see it, that little bit of glen is beautiful and
wonderful,--so beautiful and so wonderful and so cunningly devised, that
it took thousands of years to make it; and it is not, I believe, half
finished yet.
How do I know all that? Because a fairy told it me; a fairy who lives up
here upon the moor, and indeed in most places else, if people have but
eyes to see her. What is her name? I cannot tell. The best name that I
can give her (and I think it must be something like her real name,
because she will always answer if you call her by it patiently and
reverently) is Madam How. She will come in good time, if she is called,
even by a little child. And she will let us see her at her work, and,
what is more, teach us to copy her. But there is another fairy here
likewise, whom we can hardly hope to see. Very thankful should we be if
she lifted even the smallest corner of her veil, and showed us but for a
moment if it were but her finger tip--so beautiful is she, and yet so
awful too. But that sight, I believe, would not make us proud, as if we
had had some great privilege. No, my dear child: it would make us feel
smaller, and meaner, and more stupid and more ignorant than we had ever
felt in our lives before; at the same time it would make us wiser than
ever we were in our lives before--that one glimpse of the great glory of
her whom we call Lady Why.
But I will say more of her presently. We must talk first with Madam How,
and perhaps she may help us hereafter to see Lady Why. For she is the
servant, and Lady Why is the mistress; though she has a Master over her
again--whose name I leave for you to guess. You have heard it often
already, and you will hear it again, for ever and ever.
But of one thing I must warn you, that you must not confound Madam How
and Lady Why. Many people do it, and fall into great mistakes
thereby,--mistakes that even a little child, if it would think, need not
commit. But really great philosophers sometimes make this mistake about
Why and How; and therefore it is no wonder if other people make it too,
when they write children's books about the wonders of nature, and call
them "Why and Because," or "The Reason Why." The books are very good
books, and you should read and study them: but they do not tell you
really "Why and Because," but only "How and So." They do not tell you
the "Reason Why" things happen, but only "The Way in which they happen."
However, I must not blame these good folks, for I have made the same
mistake myself often, and may do it again: but all the more shame to me.
For see--you know perfectly the difference between How and Why, when you
are talking about yourself. If I ask you, "Why did we go out to-day?"
You would not answer, "Because we opened the door." That is the answer
to "How did we go out?" The answer to Why did we go out is, "Because we
chose to take a walk." Now when we talk about other things beside
ourselves, we must remember this same difference between How and Why. If
I ask you, "Why does fire burn you?" you would answer, I suppose, being a
little boy, "Because it is hot;" which is all you know about it. But if
you were a great chemist, instead of a little boy, you would be apt to
answer me, I am afraid, "Fire burns because the vibratory motion of the
molecules of the heated substance communicates itself to the molecules of
my skin, and so destroys their tissue;" which is, I dare say, quite true:
but it only tells us how fire burns, the way or means by which it burns;
it does not tell us the reason why it burns.
But you will ask, "If that is not the reason why fire burns, what is?" My
dear child, I do not know. That is Lady Why's business, who is mistress
of Mrs. How, and of you and of me; and, as I think, of all things that
you ever saw, or can see, or even dream. And what her reason for making
fire burn may be I cannot tell. But I believe on excellent grounds that
her reason is a very good one. If I dare to guess, I should say that one
reason, at least, why fire burns, is that you may take care not to play
with it, and so not only scorch your finger, but set your whole bed on
fire, and perhaps the house into the bargain, as you might be tempted to
do if putting your finger in the fire were as pleasant as putting sugar
in your mouth.
My dear child, if I could once get clearly into your head this difference
between Why and How, so that you should remember them steadily in after
life, I should have done you more good than if I had given you a thousand
pounds.
But now that we know that How and Why are two very different matters, and
must not be confounded with each other, let us look for Madam How, and
see her at work making this little glen; for, as I told you, it is not
half made yet. One thing we shall see at once, and see it more and more
clearly the older we grow; I mean her wonderful patience and diligence.
Madam How is never idle for an instant. Nothing is too great or too
small for her; and she keeps her work before her eye in the same moment,
and makes every separate bit of it help every other bit. She will keep
the sun and stars in order, while she looks after poor old Mrs. Daddy-
long-legs there and her eggs. She will spend thousands of years in
building up a mountain, and thousands of years in grinding it down again;
and then carefully polish every grain of sand which falls from that
mountain, and put it in its right place, where it will be wanted
thousands of years hence; and she will take just as much trouble about
that one grain of sand as she did about the whole mountain. She will
settle the exact place where Mrs. Daddy-long-legs shall lay her eggs, at
the very same time that she is settling what shall happen hundreds of
years hence in a stair millions of miles away. And I really believe that
Madam How knows her work so thoroughly, that the grain of sand which
sticks now to your shoe, and the weight of Mrs. Daddy-long-legs' eggs at
the bottom of her hole, will have an effect upon suns and stars ages
after you and I are dead and gone. Most patient indeed is Madam How. She
does not mind the least seeing her own work destroyed; she knows that it
must be destroyed. There is a spell upon her, and a fate, that
everything she makes she must unmake again: and yet, good and wise woman
as she is, she never frets, nor tires, nor fudges her work, as we say at
school. She takes just as much pains to make an acorn as to make a
peach. She takes just as much pains about the acorn which the pig eats,
as about the acorn which will grow into a tall oak, and help to build a
great ship. She took just as much pains, again, about the acorn which
you crushed under your foot just now, and which you fancy will never come
to anything. Madam How is wiser than that. She knows that it will come
to something. She will find some use for it, as she finds a use for
everything. That acorn which you crushed will turn into mould, and that
mould will go to feed the roots of some plant, perhaps next year, if it
lies where it is; or perhaps it will be washed into the brook, and then
into the river, and go down to the sea, and will feed the roots of some
plant in some new continent ages and ages hence: and so Madam How will
have her own again. You dropped your stick into the river yesterday, and
it floated away. You were sorry, because it had cost you a great deal of
trouble to cut it, and peel it, and carve a head and your name on it.
Madam How was not sorry, though she had taken a great deal more trouble
with that stick than ever you had taken. She had been three years making
that stick, out of many things, sunbeams among the rest. But when it
fell into the river, Madam How knew that she should not lose her sunbeams
nor anything else: the stick would float down the river, and on into the
sea; and there, when it got heavy with the salt water, it would sink, and
lodge, and be buried, and perhaps ages hence turn into coal; and ages
after that some one would dig it up and burn it, and then out would come,
as bright warm flame, all the sunbeams that were stored away in that
stick: and so Madam How would have her own again. And if that should not
be the fate of your stick, still something else will happen to it just as
useful in the long run; for Madam How never loses anything, but uses up
all her scraps and odds and ends somehow, somewhere, somewhen, as is fit
and proper for the Housekeeper of the whole Universe. Indeed, Madam How
is so patient that some people fancy her stupid, and think that, because
she does not fall into a passion every time you steal her sweets, or
break her crockery, or disarrange her furniture, therefore she does not
care. But I advise you as a little boy, and still more when you grow up
to be a man, not to get that fancy into your head; for you will find
that, however good-natured and patient Madam How is in most matters, her
keeping silence and not seeming to see you is no sign that she has
forgotten. On the contrary, she bears a grudge (if one may so say, with
all respect to her) longer than any one else does; because she will
always have her own again. Indeed, I sometimes think that if it were not
for Lady Why, her mistress, she might bear some of her grudges for ever
and ever. I have seen men ere now damage some of Madam How's property
when they were little boys, and be punished by her all their lives long,
even though she had mended the broken pieces, or turned them to some
other use. Therefore I say to you, beware of Madam How. She will teach
you more kindly, patiently, and tenderly than any mother, if you want to
learn her trade. But if, instead of learning her trade, you damage her
materials and play with her tools, beware lest she has her own again out
of you.
Some people think, again, that Madam How is not only stupid, but
ill-tempered and cruel; that she makes earthquakes and storms, and famine
and pestilences, in a sort of blind passion, not caring where they go or
whom they hurt; quite heedless of who is in the way, if she wants to do
anything or go anywhere. Now, that Madam How can be very terrible there
can be no doubt: but there is no doubt also that, if people choose to
learn, she will teach them to get out of her way whenever she has
business to do which is dangerous to them. But as for her being cruel
and unjust, those may believe it who like. You, my dear boys and girls,
need not believe it, if you will only trust to Lady Why; and be sure that
Why is the mistress and How the servant, now and for ever. That Lady Why
is utterly good and kind I know full well; and I believe that, in her
case too, the old proverb holds, "Like mistress, like servant;" and that
the more we know of Madam How, the more we shall be content with her, and
ready to submit to whatever she does: but not with that stupid
resignation which some folks preach who do not believe in lady Why--that
is no resignation at all. That is merely saying--
"What can't be cured
Must be endured,"
like a donkey when he turns his tail to a hail-storm,--but the true
resignation, the resignation which is fit for grown people and children
alike, the resignation which is the beginning and the end of all wisdom
and all religion, is to believe that Lady Why knows best, because she
herself is perfectly good; and that as she is mistress over Madam How, so
she has a Master over her, whose name--I say again--I leave you to guess.
So now that I have taught you not to be afraid of Madam How, we will go
and watch her at her work; and if we do not understand anything we see,
we will ask her questions. She will always show us one of her lesson
books if we give her time. And if we have to wait some time for her
answer, you need not fear catching cold, though it is November; for she
keeps her lesson books scattered about in strange places, and we may have
to walk up and down that hill more than once before we can make out how
she makes the glen.
Well--how was the glen made? You shall guess it if you like, and I will
guess too. You think, perhaps, that an earthquake opened it?
My dear child, we must look before we guess. Then, after we have looked
a little, and got some grounds for guessing, then we may guess. And you
have no ground for supposing there ever was an earthquake here strong
enough to open that glen. There may have been one: but we must guess
from what we do know, and not from what we do not.
Guess again. Perhaps it was there always, from the beginning of the
world? My dear child, you have no proof of that either. Everything
round you is changing in shape daily and hourly, as you will find out the
longer you live; and therefore it is most reasonable to suppose that this
glen has changed its shape, as everything else on earth has done.
Besides, I told you not that Madam How had made the glen, but that she
was making it, and as yet has only half finished. That is my first
guess; and my next guess is that water is making the glen--water, and
nothing else.
You open your young eyes. And I do not blame you. I looked at this very
glen for fifteen years before I made that guess; and I have looked at it
some ten years since, to make sure that my guess held good. For man
after all is very blind, my dear boy, and very stupid, and cannot see
what lies under his own feet all day long; and if Lady Why, and He whom
Lady Why obeys, were not very patient and gentle with mankind, they would
have perished off the face of the earth long ago, simply from their own
stupidity. I, at least, was very stupid in this case, for I had my head
full of earthquakes, and convulsions of nature, and all sorts of
prodigies which never happened to this glen; and so, while I was trying
to find what was not there, I of course found nothing. But when I put
them all out of my head, and began to look for what was there, I found it
at once; and lo and behold! I had seen it a thousand times before, and
yet never learnt anything from it, like a stupid man as I was; though
what I learnt you may learn as easily as I did.
And what did I find?
The pond at the bottom of the glen.
You know that pond, of course? You don't need to go there? Very well.
Then if you do, do not you know also that the pond is always filling up
with sand and mud; and that though we clean it out every three or four
years, it always fills again? Now where does that sand and mud come
from?
Down that stream, of course, which runs out of this bog. You see it
coming down every time there is a flood, and the stream fouls.
Very well. Then, said Madam How to me, as soon as I recollected that,
"Don't you see, you stupid man, that the stream has made the glen, and
the earth which runs down the stream was all once part of the hill on
which you stand." I confess I was very much ashamed of myself when she
said that. For that is the history of the whole mystery. Madam How is
digging away with her soft spade, water. She has a harder spade, or
rather plough, the strongest and most terrible of all ploughs; but that,
I am glad to say, she has laid by in England here.
Water? But water is too simple a thing to have dug out all this great
glen.
My dear child, the most wonderful part of Madam How's work is, that she
does such great things and so many different things, with one and the
same tool, which looks to you so simple, though it really is not so.
Water, for instance, is not a simple thing, but most complicated; and we
might spend hours in talking about water, without having come to the end
of its wonders. Still Madam How is a great economist, and never wastes
her materials. She is like the sailor who boasted (only she never
boasts) that, if he had but a long life and a strong knife, he would
build St. Paul's Cathedral before he was done. And Madam How has a very
long life, and plenty of time; and one of the strongest of all her tools
is water. Now if you will stoop down and look into the heather, I will
show you how she is digging out the glen with this very mist which is
hanging about our feet. At least, so I guess.
For see how the mist clings to the points of the heather leaves, and
makes drops. If the hot sun came out the drops would dry, and they would
vanish into the air in light warm steam. But now that it is dark and
cold they drip, or run down the heather-stems, to the ground. And
whither do they go then? Whither will the water go,--hundreds of gallons
of it perhaps,--which has dripped and run through the heather in this
single day? It will sink into the ground, you know. And then what will
become of it? Madam How will use it as an underground spade, just as she
uses the rain (at least, when it rains too hard, and therefore the rain
runs off the moor instead of sinking into it) as a spade above ground.
Now come to the edge of the glen, and I will show you the mist that fell
yesterday, perhaps, coming out of the ground again, and hard at work.
You know of what an odd, and indeed of what a pretty form all these glens
are. How the flat moor ends suddenly in a steep rounded bank, almost
like the crest of a wave--ready like a wave-crest to fall over, and as
you know, falling over sometimes, bit by bit, where the soil is bare.
Oh, yes; you are very fond of those banks. It is "awfully jolly," as you
say, scrambling up and down them, in the deep heath and fern; besides,
there are plenty of rabbit-holes there, because they are all sand; while
there are no rabbit-holes on the flat above, because it is all gravel.
Yes; you know all about it: but you know, too, that you must not go too
far down these banks, much less roll down them, because there is almost
certain to be a bog at the bottom, lying upon a gentle slope; and there
you get wet through.
All round these hills, from here to Aldershot in one direction, and from
here to Windsor in another, you see the same shaped glens; the wave-crest
along their top, and at the foot of the crest a line of springs which run
out over the slopes, or well up through them in deep sand-galls, as you
call them--shaking quagmires which are sometimes deep enough to swallow
up a horse, and which you love to dance upon in summer time. Now the
water of all these springs is nothing but the rain, and mist, and dew,
which has sunk down first through the peaty soil, and then through the
gravel and sand, and there has stopped. And why? Because under the
gravel (about which I will tell you a strange story one day) and under
the sand, which is what the geologists call the Upper Bagshot sand, there
is an entirely different set of beds, which geologists call the
Bracklesham beds, from a place near the New Forest; and in those beds
there is a vein of clay, and through that clay the water cannot get, as
you have seen yourself when we dug it out in the field below to puddle
the pond-head; and very good fun you thought it, and a very pretty mess
you made of yourself. Well: because the water cannot get though this
clay, and must go somewhere, it runs out continually along the top of the
clay, and as it runs undermines the bank, and brings down sand and gravel
continually for the next shower to wash into the stream below.
Now think for one moment how wonderful it is that the shape of these
glens, of which you are so fond, was settled by the particular order in
which Madam How laid down the gravel and sand and mud at the bottom of
the sea, ages and ages ago. This is what I told you, that the least
thing that Madam How does to-day may take effect hundreds and thousands
of years hence.
But I must tell you I think there was a time when this glen was of a very
different shape from what it is now; and I dare say, according to your
notions, of a much prettier shape. It was once just like one of those
Chines which we used to see at Bournemouth. You recollect them? How
there was a narrow gap in the cliff of striped sands and gravels; and out
of the mouth of that gap, only a few feet across, there poured down a
great slope of mud and sand the shape of half a bun, some wet and some
dry, up which we used to scramble and get into the Chine, and call the
Chine what it was in the truest sense, Fairyland. You recollect how it
was all eaten out into mountain ranges, pinnacles, steep cliffs of white,
and yellow, and pink, standing up against the clear blue sky; till we
agreed that, putting aside the difference of size, they were as beautiful
and grand as any Alps we had ever seen in pictures. And how we saw (for
there could be no mistake about it there) that the Chine was being
hollowed out by the springs which broke out high up the cliff, and by the
rain which wore the sand into furrowed pinnacles and peaks. You
recollect the beautiful place, and how, when we looked back down it we
saw between the miniature mountain walls the bright blue sea, and heard
it murmur on the sands outside. So I verily believe we might have done,
if we had stood somewhere at the bottom of this glen thousands of years
ago. We should have seen the sea in front of us; or rather, an arm of
the sea; for Finchampstead ridges opposite, instead of being covered with
farms, and woodlands, and purple heath above, would have been steep
cliffs of sand and clay, just like those you see at Bournemouth now;
and--what would have spoilt somewhat the beauty of the sight--along the
shores there would have floated, at least in winter, great blocks and
floes of ice, such as you might have seen in the tideway at King's Lynn
the winter before last, growling and crashing, grubbing and ploughing the
sand, and the gravel, and the mud, and sweeping them away into seas
towards the North, which are now all fruitful land. That may seem to you
like a dream: yet it is true; and some day, when we have another talk
with Madam How, I will show even a child like you that it was true.
But what could change a beautiful Chine like that at Bournemouth into a
wide sloping glen like this of Bracknell's Bottom, with a wood like
Coombs', many acres large, in the middle of it? Well now, think. It is
a capital plan for finding out Madam How's secrets, to see what she might
do in one place, and explain by it what she has done in another. Suppose
now, Madam How had orders to lift up the whole coast of Bournemouth only
twenty or even ten feet higher out of the sea than it is now. She could
do that easily enough, for she has been doing so on the coast of South
America for ages; she has been doing so this very summer in what hasty
people would call a hasty, and violent, and ruthless way; though I shall
not say so, for I believe that Lady Why knows best. She is doing so now
steadily on the west coast of Norway, which is rising quietly--all that
vast range of mountain wall and iron-bound cliff--at the rate of some
four feet in a hundred years, without making the least noise or
confusion, or even causing an extra ripple on the sea; so light and
gentle, when she will, can Madam How's strong finger be.
Now, if the mouth of that Chine at Bournemouth was lifted twenty feet out
of the sea, one thing would happen,--that the high tide would not come up
any longer, and wash away the cake of dirt at the entrance, as we saw it
do so often. But if the mud stopped there, the mud behind it would come
down more slowly, and lodge inside more and more, till the Chine was half
filled-up, and only the upper part of the cliffs continue to be eaten
away, above the level where the springs ran out. So gradually the Chine,
instead of being deep and narrow, would become broad and shallow; and
instead of hollowing itself rapidly after every shower of rain, as you
saw the Chine at Bournemouth doing, would hollow itself out slowly, as
this glen is doing now. And one thing more would happen,--when the sea
ceased to gnaw at the foot of the cliffs outside, and to carry away every
stone and grain of sand which fell from them, the cliffs would very soon
cease to be cliffs; the rain and the frost would still crumble them down,
but the dirt that fell would lie at their feet, and gradually make a
slope of dry land, far out where the shallow sea had been; and their
tops, instead of being steep as now, would become smooth and rounded; and
so at last, instead of two sharp walls of cliff at the Chine's mouth, you
might have--just what you have here at the mouth of this glen,--our Mount
and the Warren Hill,--long slopes with sheets of drifted gravel and sand
at their feet, stretching down into what was once an icy sea, and is now
the Vale of Blackwater. And this I really believe Madam How has done
simply by lifting Hartford Bridge Flat a few more feet out of the sea,
and leaving the rest to her trusty tool, the water in the sky.
That is my guess: and I think it is a good guess, because I have asked
Madam How a hundred different questions about it in the last ten years,
and she always answered them in the same way, saying, "Water, water, you
stupid man." But I do not want you merely to depend on what I say. If
you want to understand Madam How, you must ask her questions yourself,
and make up your mind yourself like a man, instead of taking things at
hearsay or second-hand, like the vulgar. Mind, by "the vulgar" I do not
mean poor people: I mean ignorant and uneducated people, who do not use
their brains rightly, though they may be fine ladies, kings, or popes.
The Bible says, "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good." So do
you prove my guess, and if it proves good, hold it fast.
And how can I do that?
First, by direct experiment, as it is called. In plain English--go home
and make a little Hartford Bridge Flat in the stable-yard; and then ask
Mrs. How if she will not make a glen in it like this glen here. We will
go home and try that. We will make a great flat cake of clay, and put
upon it a cap of sand; and then we will rain upon it out of a watering-
pot; and see if Mrs. How does not begin soon to make a glen in the side
of the heap, just like those on Hartford Bridge Flat. I believe she
will; and certainly, if she does, it will be a fresh proof that my guess
is right. And then we will see whether water will not make glens of a
different shape than these, if it run over soils of a different kind. We
will make a Hartford Bridge Flat turned upside down--a cake of sand with
a cap of clay on the top; and we will rain on that out of our watering-
pot, and see what sort of glens we make then. I can guess what they will
be like, because I have seen them--steep overhanging cliffs, with very
narrow gullies down them: but you shall try for yourself, and make up
your mind whether you think me right or wrong. Meanwhile, remember that
those gullies too will have been made by water.
And there is another way of "verifying my theory," as it is called; in
plain English, seeing if my guess holds good; that is, to look at other
valleys--not merely the valleys round here, but valleys in clay, in
chalk, in limestone, in the hard slate rock such as you saw in
Devonshire--and see whether my guess does not hold good about them too;
whether all of them, deep or shallow, broad or narrow, rock or earth, may
not have been all hollowed out by running water. I am sure if you would
do this you would find something to amuse you, and something to instruct
you, whenever you wish. I know that I do. To me the longest railroad
journey, instead of being stupid, is like continually turning over the
leaves of a wonderful book, or looking at wonderful pictures of old
worlds which were made and unmade thousands of years ago. For I keep
looking, not only at the railway cuttings, where the bones of the old
worlds are laid bare, but at the surface of the ground; at the plains and
downs, banks and knolls, hills and mountains; and continually asking Mrs.
How what gave them each its shape: and I will soon teach you to do the
same. When you do, I tell you fairly her answer will be in almost every
case, "Running water." Either water running when soft, as it usually is;
or water running when it is hard--in plain words, moving ice.
About that moving ice, which is Mrs. How's stronger spade, I will tell
you some other time; and show you, too, the marks of it in every gravel
pit about here. But now, I see, you want to ask a question; and what is
it?
Do I mean to say that water has made great valleys, such as you have seen
paintings and photographs of,--valleys thousands of feet deep, among
mountains thousands of feet high?
Yes, I do. But, as I said before, I do not like you to take my word upon
trust. When you are older you shall go to the mountains, and you shall
judge for yourself. Still, I must say that I never saw a valley, however
deep, or a cliff, however high, which had not been scooped out by water;
and that even the mountain-tops which stand up miles aloft in jagged
peaks and pinnacles against the sky were cut out at first, and are being
cut and sharpened still, by little else save water, soft and hard; that
is, by rain, frost, and ice.
Water, and nothing else, has sawn out such a chasm as that through which
the ships run up to Bristol, between Leigh Wood and St. Vincent's Rocks.
Water, and nothing else, has shaped those peaks of the Matterhorn, or the
Weisshorn, or the Pic du Midi of the Pyrenees, of which you have seen
sketches and photographs. Just so water might saw out Hartford Bridge
Flat, if it had time enough, into a labyrinth of valleys, and hills, and
peaks standing alone; as it has done already by Ambarrow, and Edgbarrow,
and the Folly Hill on the other side of the vale.
I see you are astonished at the notion that water can make Alps. But it
was just because I knew you would be astonished at Madam How's doing so
great a thing with so simple a tool, that I began by showing you how she
was doing the same thing in a small way here upon these flats. For the
safest way to learn Madam How's methods is to watch her at work in little
corners at commonplace business, which will not astonish or frighten us,
nor put huge hasty guesses and dreams into our heads. Sir Isaac Newton,
some will tell you, found out the great law of gravitation, which holds
true of all the suns and stars in heaven, by watching an apple fall: and
even if he did not find it out so, he found it out, we know, by careful
thinking over the plain and commonplace fact, that things have weight. So
do you be humble and patient, and watch Madam How at work on little
things. For that is the way to see her at work upon all space and time.
What? you have a question more to ask?
Oh! I talked about Madam How lifting up Hartford Bridge Flat. How could
she do that? My dear child, that is a long story, and I must tell it you
some other time. Meanwhile, did you ever see the lid of a kettle rise up
and shake when the water inside boiled? Of course; and of course, too,
remember that Madam How must have done it. Then think over between this
and our next talk, what that can possibly have to do with her lifting up
Hartford Bridge Flat. But you have been longing, perhaps, all this time
to hear more about Lady Why, and why she set Madam How to make
Bracknell's Bottom.
My dear child, the only answer I dare give to that is: Whatever other
purposes she may have made it for, she made it at least for this--that
you and I should come to it this day, and look at, and talk over it, and
become thereby wiser and more earnest, and we will hope more humble and
better people. Whatever else Lady Why may wish or not wish, this she
wishes always, to make all men wise and all men good. For what is
written of her whom, as in a parable, I have called Lady Why?
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of
old.
"I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth
was.
"When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no
fountains abounding with water.
"Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth:
"While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest
part of the dust of the world.
"When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compass upon
the face of the depth:
"When He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains
of the deep:
"When He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His
commandment: when He appointed the foundations of the earth:
"Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His
delight, rejoicing always before Him:
"Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and my delights were with
the sons of men.
"Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that
keep my ways."
That we can say, for it has been said for us already. But beyond that we
can say, and need say, very little. We were not there, as we read in the
Book of Job, when God laid the foundations of the earth. "We see," says
St. Paul, "as in a glass darkly, and only know in part." "For who," he
asks again, "has known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His
counsellor? . . . For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all
things: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." Therefore we must
not rashly say, this or that is Why a thing has happened; nor invent what
are called "final causes," which are not Lady Why herself, but only our
little notions of what Lady Why has done, or rather what we should have
done if we had been in her place. It is not, indeed, by thinking that we
shall find out anything about Lady Why. She speaks not to our eyes or to
our brains, like Madam How, but to that inner part of us which we call
our hearts and spirits, and which will endure when eyes and brain are
turned again to dust. If your heart be pure and sober, gentle and
truthful, then Lady Why speaks to you without words, and tells you things
which Madam How and all her pupils, the men of science, can never tell.
When you lie, it may be, on a painful sick-bed, but with your mother's
hand in yours; when you sit by her, looking up into her loving eyes; when
you gaze out towards the setting sun, and fancy golden capes and islands
in the clouds, and seas and lakes in the blue sky, and the infinite rest
and peace of the far west sends rest and peace into your young heart,
till you sit silent and happy, you know not why; when sweet music fills
your heart with noble and tender instincts which need no thoughts or
words; ay, even when you watch the raging thunderstorm, and feel it to
be, in spite of its great awfulness, so beautiful that you cannot turn
your eyes away: at such times as these Lady Why is speaking to your soul
of souls, and saying, "My child, this world is a new place, and strange,
and often terrible: but be not afraid. All will come right at last. Rest
will conquer Restlessness; Faith will conquer Fear; Order will conquer
Disorder; Health will conquer Sickness; Joy will conquer Sorrow; Pleasure
will conquer Pain; Life will conquer Death; Right will conquer Wrong. All
will be well at last. Keep your soul and body pure, humble, busy,
pious--in one word, be good: and ere you die, or after you die, you may
have some glimpse of Me, the Everlasting Why: and hear with the ears, not
of your body but of your spirit, men and all rational beings, plants and
animals, ay, the very stones beneath your feet, the clouds above your
head, the planets and the suns away in farthest space, singing eternally,
"'Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power, for
Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were
created."'