CHEAP PLEASURES OF COUNTRY LIFE.
To the real lover of the country there needs no great events, no
exciting circumstances to effect his happiness. The freshness of the
country, and the profoundness of its quiet, are to him full of
happiness. The whole round of the seasons, the passage of every day, the
still walk amongst fields and woods, and by running waters, are to him
sources of perpetual pleasures. When “the winter is over and gone,” he
sees with joy the increased light amongst the breaking clouds and
dispersing fogs; he feels with delight the milder temperature; he passes
by, and observes the first bursting from the warm southern banks of
green, luxuriant plants,--the arum, the mercury, the crisp chervil, the
wrinkled leaves of the primrose, the blossomed branch of the apricot and
peach on the sunny walls of the cottage, and the almond in the garden
and shrubbery, like a tree of rosy sunshine, ere a leaf is yet seen;
these things he sees with a feeling that has more true delight in it
than ever was known to city drawing-room or palace. To me, the most
ordinary walk in the country is, and always has been a luxury. I
remember what joy these things gave me when a boy, and now they give me
again a boy’s heart. I remember the enjoyment I experienced, when an old
sportsman used to take his gun on his arm on a Saturday afternoon, when
my village school made holiday, and led me up long lanes, between high
mossy banks, where the little runnels come rushing and chiming along,
between high, overhanging hedges; and through wide, still, shady woods;
and across fields deep with greenest grass, and bright with sunshine,
and all the glory of spring; and everywhere pointed out to me the nests
of birds, each built in its peculiar situation; the robin and the
yellow-hammer on the bank; blackbirds and throstles in the hedges, or
under the roots of some old tree overhanging a stream, or set amongst
the boughs of the young fir-trees in the plantations. I remember how I
used to delight in the depth of rich grass and flowery weeds in the open
fields and along the sunshiny hedges; in the hedges themselves, all clad
in their young leaves, sprinkled with glittering morning dews, and
perhaps waving with the utmost prodigality of hawthorn bloom. I remember
too, with what earnest delight I used to gaze on the bushes of the
wild-rose briar, and admire the singular beauty of its finely-cut and
emerald-green leaves, amongst which the whitethroat framed its gauzy
nest. All this I remember: and while I think of it, I seem to hear the
lark singing in the clear air above me, as he used to do, with a
Joy we never can come near:
and I now see more clearly what it was that produced such an effect
upon me. It was that beauty, that wide-spreading, cheering,
heart-strengthening beauty--which God hath showered on the face of the
earth, to make us feel his presence in his works; and to learn to love
him as we go along the most solitary paths, and to rejoice in his
goodness, where the world comes not between us and the perception of it.
It was that beauty, which is indeed a revelation from heaven, that then
made itself felt in my young heart, and has only grown more dear to me
every year and every day, and I trust has not been wanting of all that
good effect which it is intended it should produce, by weaning us from
worldly pleasures, by bringing us to feel habitually the presence of
love, and providence, and divine purity, as we go along in solitude and
thought; in short, in keeping alive in our hearts the freshness of their
feelings and the strength of their better hopes. All this I remember,
and it is like the light of a perpetual summer morning in the far-off
horizon of memory; and I say, all these delicious feelings have gone
with me through life, and do, and will, go with all those who love
nature with a filial love.
The first glimpses of spring have in our eyes and hearts an
indescribable charm. There is a freshness and a mellowness in the earth
then, after the frosts and rains of winter, that give a beauty to it
that it possesses at no other period of the year. I never see it, and
smell the odour of the upturned soil, without seeming to feel renewed
our ancient kinship with the earth whence we sprung, which gives us such
manifold blessings all our natural lives, and takes us to its peaceful
bosom when we lie down wearied, wasted, and heart-worn. When the
labourer cuts his ditches, and piles up his banks anew, there is a
beauty in the dark, clear, smooth earth, which his spade cleaves so
shiningly. As the children of the village hunt over the steep banks for
violets or snail-shells, or the early robin’s nest, your eye is made
conscious of the beauty of those banks, with their crumbling mould and
springing plants. As the drainer cuts his drain in the greensward of the
meadows; as the ploughman turns up the broad lea, all is rich and
beautiful. And then, as the hedges and trees clothe themselves in their
new and delicate foliage; as the winds come singing sonorously; as the
grass and flowers spring beneath your feet; as April now smiles out
joyously and bright, and now broods still and beneficent, with a gloom
in its sky so unlike the gloom of autumn or winter--a gloom casting a
dark shade on the distant landscape, while, in other quarters, the light
comes bursting and gushing through the thinner places of the clouds; and
fields lie hushed amid light mists, and scattered with a silvery dew in
such a living, prolific greenness, that you feel that the birth of
millions of flowers is rapidly maturing; that violets _must_ be
springing in legions along the hedges and in the copses; and that the
old, yellow English daffodil is nodding in tufts in village crofts, and
over the margins of mossy wells.
At such times, so deeply do we feel the entrancing influence of spring,
that we cannot help breaking out into an affectionate apostrophe in
praise of her:
All sadness from my heart is gone--
All sadness, and all fears,
Till I forget that thou art one
Who metest out our years.
And then, when May comes in, and we walk abroad some fine, sunshiny,
breezy, yet balmy day,--balmy in hollows and dells, and along southern
uplands; fresh blowing on the ridges of the downs--breezy in the forest
glades; and hear the ringing notes of the blackbird and thrush, and the
lark calling to high heaven itself in uncontrolable joy; and see
peasants out in fields and gardens, women, from the lady of the hall to
the dame of the cottage, drawn out to be genial lookers-on, and
directors in the renewal of flower-borders, in the sowing of seeds and
planting of shrubs; and see old men sitting on stone or wooden benches
on the warm side of the house, or leading some little child by the hand
down the lane,--two links come strangely together, from the extremities
of the chain of human life; one not having yet arrived at the troubles
of humanity, the other past them; yet what a wide, dark care-land lying
between them!--to see groups of children scattered here and there over
the happy fields, tracing the hedge-sides, or the clear streams, or
running to secure the first cowslips, while their clear voices come
ringing from the distant steeps and hill-tops, why--there is happiness
to the nature-loving and man-loving spirit, that is as far beyond the
power of human expression, as God’s goodness is beyond mortal
comprehension.
There is a season of early spring marked by a succession of flowers that
has something in it to me more tenderly poetical than any other part of
the year. It is that between the appearance of the snowdrop and the
cowslip, with all the intermediate links of the crocus, the violet, the
primrose, the anemone, and the bluebell. They have, in themselves, such
delicate grace, and are surrounded in our minds by so many poetical
associations, and they mark the fleet passing of a period of so much
anticipation, that they are seen with a delight at their re-appearance,
and a regret that they must so soon be gone by. Then, too, they have the
world almost all to themselves. They are the few beloved children of the
early time. All their more gorgeous and joyous kindred are still
slumbering in the earth. They come forth and salute us amid the naked
landscape, amid wild, chill winds and beating rain. When the cowslip
disappears it is no longer so; all is greenness and sunshine; a thousand
blossoms hang on the forest bough, or flutter on the earth; and the
delicacy of our perceptions is lost in the profusion of beauty.
But then, in that calmer season, when May has put on all its wealth and
splendour; when the fields are deep with grass, and golden and purple
with flowers; when the hawthorn is a miracle of beauty and sweetness,
perfuming the whole air, what paradises of delight are gardens--warm,
flowery, odorous--happy with the hum of bees: and old orchards, where
you may witness what Coleridge so feelingly describes in a noble
blank-verse letter to his brother:--
As now, on some delicious eve,
We in our sweet sequestered orchard plot
Sit on the tree crooked earthward; whose old boughs,
That hang above us in an arborous roof,
Stirred by the faint gale of departing May,
Send their loose blossoms slanting o’er our heads!
And thus it is through every season. In June and July, the glow and
perpetual beauty of the country; the abundance of grass and flowers; the
charm of river sides, of angling in woodland streams; the magnificence
of thunder-storms; the breaking out of coolness and freshness after
them; the delights of running waters; bathing and sailing; the fragrance
of fields and gardens; the beauty of summer moonlight; the picturesque
cheerfulness of hay-harvest; the enjoyment of rich mountain scenery;
rambling amongst the brightness of morning dews, along valleys, past the
outstretched feet of heathy hills; lying on some moorland slope
conscious of all the singular hush and glow of noon; watching all the
varying lights and hues, listening to the varied sounds of evening in
glens, now basking in the yellow calm sunshine, now deep in gloom; amid
towering crags, by the dash of waters, or on some airy ridge that
catches the last glow of heaven, taking in a vast stretch of scenes that
defy alike the power of pen and pencil.
Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wild landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; a living thing
Which acts upon the mind, and with such hues
As clothe the Almighty Spirit when he makes
Spirits perceive his presence.
_Coleridge._
And then the corn-harvest, with all its happy human groups, and rich
colours; the calm, steady splendour of autumn days; the deepening
silence of the decaying year, its returning storms and pictorial tints;
the very gloom and awfulness with which the year retreats, sending the
spirit inwards. In all these scenes and changes, the soul of the lover
of Nature luxuriates; and even finds beauty and strength in the stern
visitations of winter. He goes with Nature in all her rounds, and
rejoices with her in all. There needs for him no great event, no
combination of stirring circumstances; it is not even necessary to him
that he be poet, or painter, or sportsman; if he have not the skill or
faculty of any, he has the spirit of all. For him there are spread out
in earth and heaven, pictures such as never graced the galleries of art.
He sees splendours, and scenes painted by the hand of the Almighty, for
whose faintest imitations the connoisseur would pay the price of an
estate. To him every landscape presents beauty; to him every gale
breathes pleasure; and every change of scene or season is a new
unfolding of enjoyment. He knows nothing of the heart-burnings and
jealousies which infest crowded places. He is not saddened by the sight
of wickedness, or the experience of ingratitude and deceit. He is exempt
from the _ennui_ of polished society; the sneers of its unkindly
criticism; and the hollowness of its professions. He converses with the
Great Spirit which lives through the universe, and fills the hearts that
open to its influence with purity, humanity, the sweetest sympathies,
the most holy desires; and overshadows them with that profound peace and
that inward satisfaction, which are themselves the most substantial
happiness.
That these are no vain imaginations, but positive realities, scattered
abroad for universal acceptance as much as the blessings of air and
sunshine, we have only to open the works of our best writers to be
convinced of;--to see how the expression of their happiness breaks from
them continually. It is this overflowing and irrepressible gladness of a
heart resting on nature which gives such a charm to the writings of
White and Evelyn, and good old Izaak Walton. And the poets--they are
full of it. Listen to them, and then consider the nobility of their
views, and the lofty purity of their souls, and then admit the power and
depth of that influence which lives in Nature and speaks in
Christianity.
So shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language which thy God
Utters; who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,--
Whether the summer clothe the genial earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the turfs of snow in the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall,
Heard only in the traces of the blast;
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.
_Coleridge._
And for the cordial, substantial, heart-filling contentment which is
gathered from the quietness of rural life, hear what Sir Henry Wotton, a
most accomplished man, who had seen much of court life, both at home and
abroad, says,
Would the world now adopt me for her heir;
Would beauty’s queen entitle me the fair;
Fame speak me Fortune’s minion; could I vie
Angels[31] with India; with a speaking eye,
Command bare heads, bowed knees; strike justice dumb.
As well as blind and lame; or give a tongue
To stones by epitaphs; be called “great master”
In the loose rhymes of every poetaster--
Could I be more than any man that lives,
Great, fair, rich, wise, all in superlatives;
Yet I more freely would these gifts resign,
Than ever fortune would have made them mine;
And hold one minute of this holy leisure
Beyond the riches of this empty pleasure.
Welcome pure thoughts! welcome ye silent groves!
These guests, these courts my soul most dearly loves.
Now the winged people of the sky shall sing
My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring;
A prayer-book now shall be my looking-glass,
In which I will adore sweet virtue’s face.
Here dwell no hateful looks, no palace cares,
No broken vows dwell here, no pale-faced fears;
Then here I’ll sit, and sigh my hot love’s folly,
And learn to affect a holy melancholy:
And if contentment be a stranger then,
I’ll ne’er look for it but in heaven again.
[31] Piece of money value ten shillings.
Such are the pleasures that lie in the path of the lover of the country;
pleasures like the blessings of the Gospel, to be had without money, and
without price. There are many, no doubt, who will deem them dull and
insignificant; but the peace which they bring “passeth understanding,”
and we can make a triumphant appeal from the frivolous and the
dissipated, to the wise and noble of every country and age.