CONCLUDING CHAPTER.
She smiles, including in her wide embrace
City, and town, and tower, and sea with ships
Sprinkled; be our companion while we track
Her rivers populous with gliding life;
While, free as air, o’er printless sands we march,
Or pierce the gloom of her majestic woods;
Roaming, or resting under grateful shade,
In peace and meditative cheerfulness.
_Wordsworth._
We have now taken a comprehensive view of the rural life of England; of
the mode in which “gentle and simple,” rich and poor, pass their life in
the country; of the sports, the pastimes, the labours and various
pursuits which fill up the round of rural existence; of the charms and
advantages which there await the lovers of peace, of poetry, of natural
beauty, and of pure thoughts: and I think it must be confessed that
though other countries may boast a more brilliant climate, none can
offer a more varied and attractive beauty; other modes of life may be
more exciting, but none can be more calmly delightful, none more
conducive to a healthful and manly spirit.
The more we see of our own country, the more do we love it; and it is
for this reason, that in closing this volume, I cannot take leave of my
readers without advising them to do as I have done,--see as much of it
as they can. There is no part of it but is filled with some high
historical or literary association: it is the land where brave men have
contended and poets sung, and philosophers and politicians have
meditated works and measures, of which the world is now reaping the
honour and enjoyment; there is no part of it but has some trace of those
manners and dialects which belong to the living of a thousand years ago,
and therefore are most interesting motives to our tracing back the
stream of time, and beholding the growth of our country’s fortunes from
age to age; there is no part of it, but has its swarming cities, or its
fields smiling like a garden beneath the triumphant effect of British
tillage,--or its wild hills and forests, that, untouched by the plough,
are left to be fruitful of free thoughts, of poetic feelings, of
picturesque beauty and magnificence, of health to the hearts and spirits
of our countrymen and countrywomen, necessary to generate those high
thoughts and maintain those endeavours that shall yet lead noble England
to the height of its destined honour.
It is glorious, indeed, to visit the countries of ancient art and
renown--Greece, Italy, Egypt, or sacred Palestine--my spirit kindles at
the very mention of them,--yet whether it were my privilege or not to
traverse those glorious regions, I should still wish to wander over
every hill, and through every busy city of my native land. To me, I
repeat, there is no part of this illustrious country but opens some new
feeling of affection. As I pass over her plains, I am filled with
admiration of that skill and indefatigable industry which have covered
them with such affluence of cattle, such exuberant grass, such depths of
waving corn; as I pass by her rural halls and hamlet abodes, I find
myself perpetually on classic ground, amid the homes of poets and
patriots; when I enter her cities, I am struck with all their busy and
swarming children, with their endless manufactures; their institutions
for rebutting human evils, and raising the human character; with rich
men carrying on gigantic enterprises of commerce or national
improvement, and poor men associating to ascertain and defend their
rights. These are all animating objects of notice; and I will tell those
who may not hope to see much of foreign regions, that there is enough in
merry England to fill the longest life with delight, go where they will.
I would have those who are young and able, to take their knapsacks on
their backs, and with a stick in their hand, they may find pleasures
worth enjoying, go which way they will in these islands, though they do
as many an adventurer has done, set up their staff as an indicator, and
march off in the direction in which it falls.[36]
[36] Jamais je n’ai tant pensé, tant existé, tant vécu, tant été moi,
si j’ose ainsi dire, que dans ceux voyages que j’ai faits seul et à
pied. La marche a quelque chose qui anime et avive mes idées; je ne
puis presque penser quand je reste en place; il faut que mon corps
soit en branle pour y mettre mon esprit. La vue de la campagne, la
succession des aspects agréables, le grand air, le grand appétit, la
bonne santé que je gagne en marchant, la liberté du cabaret,
l’éloignement de tout ce qui me fait sentir ma dépendance, de tout ce
qui me rappelle à ma situation, tout cela dégage mon âme, me donne une
plus grande audace de penser, me jette en quelque sorte dans
l’immensité des êtres pour les combiner, les choisir, me les
approprier sans gêne et sans crainte. Je dispose en maître de la
nature entière; mon cœur, errant d’objet en objet, s’unit, s’identifie
à ceux qui le flattent, s’entoure d’images charmantes, s’enivre de
sentiments délicieux. Si pour les fixer je m’amuse à les décrire en
moimême, quelle vigueur de pinceau, quelle fraîcheur de coloris,
quelle énergie d’expression je leur donne!--_Rousseau._
What a summer’s delight there lies in any one such progress. Suppose you
took your route from the metropolis through the south and west. How
delightful are the richly cultivated fields, the green hop-grounds, the
hanging woods of Kent; how pleasant the heathy hills and scattered
woodlands of Surrey; the thickly-strewn villas of the wealthy, the
vine-covered cottages and village greens of the poor. Are not the
flowery lanes and woody scenery of Berkshire, and the open downs of
Wiltshire worth traversing? What a sweet sylvan retirement in the one;
what an airy, wide-spreading amplitude of vision in the other! It were
worth somewhat to read Miss Mitford’s living sketches in her own sweet
neighbourhood; it were worth a great deal more to meet Miss Mitford
herself, as she lives amongst her simple neighbours, who know how much
she is their friend, or amongst her wealthy and educated ones, who know
how much she deserves of their esteem and admiration. Would it be
nothing to ramble amongst the ancient walls of Winchester, every spot of
which is as thickly strown with historical recollections as it is
venerable in presence? Would it be nothing to climb those downs, and see
around far-spreading greenness, sinking and swelling in the softest
lines of beauty; and below, vales, stretching in different directions,
contrasting their rich woodiness most strikingly with the bare
solitudes of the down? To see the venerable cathedral lifting its hoary
head from the vale, and numbers of subject churches shewing their
humbler towers and spires all along the valleys; and catch the glitter
of those streams which water those valleys, as they wind to the sun. I
have trodden these downs and dales in summer weather with feelings of
buoyant delight, that admit of no description. There is Stonehenge,
standing in the midst of Salisbury Plain, which is worth a long
pilgrimage to see. To see! Yes, and to feel in all its lonely grandeur,
with all its savage and mysterious antiquity upon it. It is a walk from
Salisbury, that, on a spring or autumn day, with a congenial spirit,
were enough to make that a life’s pleasant memory. Ascend first from
that truly old English city, along whose streets and past almost every
door run living streams of most beautiful water from the sweet brimful
Avon--to the ramparts of Old Sarum. What a stupendous work of antiquity
you stand upon; what a scene lies all around you! How beautifully rises
that noble cathedral above the subject city; how finely the magnificent
spire above the fabric itself! And _en passant_, what a feature of fair
and solemn dignity is the cathedral in our English cities! As you
approach them, and see afar off these noble monuments of past science
towering aloft in sublime dignity, you are at once reminded that you are
on classic ground; that you are about to enter a place where our
ancestors worked out some portion of the national fame; and are thereby
awakened from other thoughts to look about you for all that is worthy of
notice. But this is but a passing tribute to the grave beauty of those
glorious old piles--they deserve more; but other objects now call us on.
See what green and watered valleys allure you forward. See where the
downs stretch their solitary heads amid the clear and spiritual hues of
the sky. And as you go on, the chime of flocks, and the discovery of
sweet hamlets, and the voices of their children at play, and the tinkle
of the plough-team bells, shall make you feel that the rural peace and
delight of Old England are as strong in her heart as ever. For myself,
the smallest peculiarity of rural fashions and habits in different parts
of the country attracts my attention, and gives me a certain degree of
pleasure. The sight of herds of swine grazing in the wide fields of
Berkshire and Hampshire as orderly as sheep do, is what, at the first
view, gives an agreeable surprise to the man from the midland and
northern counties, where it is never seen. The sight of the clematis,
which flings its flowery masses over hedges and copses; of myrtles,
hydrangeas, fuchias, and other tender plants, blossoming in the gardens
of the south: the appearance of different birds and insects, as the
chough, the nightingale in greater frequency, the woodlark sending its
voice from the distant uplands; the large stag-beetle, and other
insects; these, and other things observed in one part of the island
which are never met with in another, small matters though they be in
themselves, all give a novel interest to some new spot, and some
agreeable hour. Nay to me, I say, the very varying of rural costumes and
implements are objects of interest. Those odd ladders in Berkshire,
stretching at the feet to a width of sometimes two yards, and then
tapering up rapidly; as if Berkshire peasants could not stand on such
ladders as all England beside stands on. The light wagons and carts in
the south, so different from the heavy ones of the midland counties; and
some of them so painted and adorned in front with large roses, and other
flowers; and their teams, with bells at their bridles, and frames of
bells over the leader’s head, and barbaric top-knots on their heads, and
scarlet fringes and tassels on their gears; and tails all bound up with
ribbons, and curious platting. The wagoners, each in his straw hat and
white slop, with
His carter’s-whip, that on his shoulder rests,
In air high towering with a boorish pomp,
The sceptre of his sway.
Horses at plough, harnessed with a simple collar of straw, and a few
ropes. Oxen with their heavy wooden yokes ploughing in one part of the
country as primitively as they did in the days of Alfred, ay, or of King
David; and shepherds with their crooks in another, shew to those who
never saw them but in books, that some of our oldest practices still
remain.
The various constructions of billhooks, shovels, and wheelbarrows which
prevail in different quarters of the island, contribute to the
picturesque: from the clumsy rudiment of a barrow seen in Cornwall,
which lies on the ground without legs, and the sides of which are cut
out of two pieces of wood, rudely tapering off into handles; through all
the various shapes of that little vehicle, up to its most perfect one.
The shovels used by the labourers in the West of England, with handles
as tall as themselves, would make the men of the midland counties stare;
and again, the billhook of the midland counties, with a back edge as
well as a front one, would be equally strange to the chopsticks of
Surrey and Sussex. The various modes of country employment promote the
same effect. The ploughman whistling after his team; the shepherds on
the downs, driving their white flocks before them like a rolling cloud
to evening fold or morning pasture; the dwellers on heaths and moors,
paring the turf for fuel, or cutting from the peat-beds their black
bricks, and piling their black pyramids on the waste. Every different
district displays its peculiar employment. Durham and Northumberland
exhibit their extensive and curious coal mines; Yorkshire and Lancashire
their weaving and spinning; the hills of Derbyshire their lead mines;
Nottingham and Leicester shires their coals again; Lincoln and Norfolk
their vast corn farms; the Southern downs their shepherds; Devon and
Cornwall their tin and copper mines; Gloucester and Somerset display
their fields of teazles again, indicating that there our finest
broad-cloths are made; Stafford and Warwick shires swarm with
collieries, iron-founderies, and potteries; and so on. Each district has
its peculiar pursuit and occupation pointed out by nature, and all these
things give variety to the country and its inhabitants, and scatter
everywhere interesting subjects of inquiry for the passer-by.
I say then, cross only the south of England, and how delightful were the
route to him who has the love of nature and of his country in his heart;
and no imperious cares to dispute it with them. Walk up, as I have said,
from Salisbury to Stonehenge. Sit down amid that solemn circle, on one
of its fallen stones:--contemplate the gigantic erection, reflect on its
antiquity, and what England has passed through and become while those
stones have stood there. Walk forth over that beautiful and immense
plain,--see the green circles, and lines, and mounds, which ancient
superstition or heroism have everywhere traced upon it, and which nature
has beautified with a carpet of turf as fine and soft as velvet. Join
those simple shepherds, and talk with them. Reflect, poetical as our
poets have made the shepherd and his life,--what must be the monotony of
that life in lowland counties--day after day, and month after month,
and year after year,--never varying, except from the geniality of summer
to winter; and what it must be then; how dreary its long reign of cold,
and wet and snow!
When you leave them, plunge into the New Forest in Hampshire. There is a
region where a summer month might be whiled away as in a fairyland.
There, in the very heart of that old forest you find the spot where
Rufus fell by the bolt of Tyrell, looking very much as it might look
then. All around you lie forest and moorland for many a mile. The fallow
and red deer in thousands herd there as of old. The squirrels gambol in
the oaks above you; the swine rove in the thick fern and the deep glades
of the forest as in a state of nature. The dull tinkle of the cattle
bell comes through the wood; and ever and anon, as you wander forward,
you catch the blue smoke of some hidden abode curling over the tree
tops; and come to sylvan bowers, and little bough-overshadowed cottages,
as primitive as any that the reign of the Conqueror himself could have
shewn. What haunts are in these glades for poets: what streams flow
through their bosky banks, to soothe at once the ear and eye enamoured
of peace and beauty. What glades for endless grouping and colourings for
the painter.
At Boldre you may find a spot worth seeing, for it is the parsonage once
inhabited by the venerable William Gilpin, the descendant of Barnard
Gilpin, the apostle of the north; the author of “Forest Scenery,”--and
near it is the school, which he built and endowed for the poor from the
sale of his drawings. Not very distant from this, stands the rural
dwelling for many years, and till lately, the residence of one of
England’s truest-hearted women, Caroline Bowles, now Mrs. Southey--and
not far off you have the woods of Netley Abbey--the Isle of Wight, the
Solent, and the open sea.
But still move on through the fair fields of Dorset and Somerset, to the
enchanted land of Devon. If you want stern grandeur, follow its
north-western coast; if peaceful beauty, look down into some one of its
rich vales, green as an emerald, and pastured by its herds of red
cattle; if all the summer loveliness of woods and rivers, you may ascend
the Tamar or the Tavy, or many another stream; or you may stroll on
through valleys that for glorious solitudes, or fair English homes, amid
their woods and hills, shall leave you nothing to desire. If you want
sternness you may pass into Dartmoor. There are wastes and wilds, crags
of granite, views into far-off districts, and the sound of waters
hurrying away over their rocky beds, enough to satisfy the largest
hungering and thirsting after poetical delight. I shall never forget the
feelings of delicious entrancement with which I approached the outskirts
of Dartmoor. I found myself among the woods near Haytor Crags. It was an
autumn evening. The sun, near its setting, threw its yellow beams
amongst the trees, and lit up the ruddy tors on the opposite side of the
valley into a beautiful glow. Below, the deep dark river went sounding
on its way with a melancholy music, and as I wound up the steep road
beneath the gnarled oaks, I ever and anon caught glimpses of the winding
valley to the left, all beautiful with wild thickets and half shrouded
faces of rock, and still on high those glowing ruddy tors standing in
the blue air in their sublime silence. My road wound up, and up, the
heather and the bilberry on either hand shewing me that cultivation had
never disturbed the soil they grew in; and one sole woodlark from the
far-ascending forest to the right, filled the wide solitude with his
wild autumnal note. At that moment I reached an eminence, and at once
saw the dark crags of Dartmoor high aloft before me, and one large
solitary house in the valley beneath the woods. So fair, so silent, save
for the woodlark’s note and the moaning river, so unearthly did the
whole scene seem--that my imagination delighted to look upon it as an
enchanted land,--and to persuade itself that that house stood as it
would stand for ages, under the spell of silence, but beyond the reach
of death and change.
But even there you need not rest--there lies a land of grey antiquity,
of desolate beauty still before you--Cornwall. It is a land almost
without a tree. That is, all its high and wild plains are destitute of
them, and the bulk of its surface is of this character. Some sweet and
sheltered vales it has, filled with noble wood, as that of Tresilian
near Truro; but over a great portion of it extend grey heaths. It is a
land where the wild furze seems never to have been rooted up, and where
the huge masses of stone that lie about its hills and valleys are clad
with the lichen of centuries. And yet how does this bare and barren land
fasten on your imagination! It is a country that seems to have retained
its ancient attachments longer than any other. The British tongue here
lingered till lately--as the ruins of King Arthur’s palace still crown
the stormy steep of Tintagel; and the saints that succeeded the heroic
race, seem to have left their names on almost every town and village.
It were well worth a journey there merely to see the vast mines which
perforate the earth, and pass under the very sea; and the swarming
population that they employ. It were a beautiful sight to see the bands
of young maidens, that sit beneath long sheds, crushing the ore and
singing in chorus. But far more were it worth the trip to stand at the
Land’s-End, on that lofty, savage, and shattered coast, with the
Atlantic roaring all round you. The Hebrides themselves, wild and
desolate, and subject to obscuring mists as they are, never made me feel
more shipped into a dream-land than that scenery. At one moment the sun
shining over the calm sea, in whose transparent depths the tawny rocks
were seen far down. Right and left extend the dun cliffs and cavernous
precipices, and at their feet the white billows playing gracefully to
and fro over the nearly sunken rocks, as through the manes of huge
sea-lions. At the next moment all wrapt in the thickest obscurity of
mist; the sea only cognizable by its sound; the dun crags looming
through the fog vast and awfully, and all round you on the land nothing
visible, as you trace back your way, but huge grey stones that strew the
whole earth. In the midst of such a scene I came to a little deserted
hut, standing close by a solitary mere amongst the rocks, and the dreamy
effect became most perfect. What a quick and beautiful contrast was it
to this, as the very same night I pursued my way along the shore, the
clear moon hanging on the distant horizon, the waves of the ocean on one
hand coming up all luminous and breaking on the strand in billows of
fire, and on the other hand the sloping turf sown with glowworms for
some miles, thick as the stars overhead.
I speak of the delight which a solitary man may gather up for ever from
such excursions; that will come before him again and again in all their
beauty from his past existence, into many a crowd and many a solitary
room; but how much more may be reaped by a congenial band of
affectionate spirits in such a course. To them, a thousand different
incidents or odd adventures, flashes of wit and moments of enjoyment,
combine to quicken both their pleasures and friendship. The very flight
from a shower, or the dining on a turnip-pie, no very uncommon dish in
the rural inns of Cornwall, may furnish merriment for the future. And if
this one route would be a delicious summer’s ramble, with all its
coasting and its sea-ports into the bargain, how many such stretch
themselves in every direction through England. The fair orchard-scenes
of Hereford and Worcester, in spring all one region of bloom and
fragrance,--the hills of Malvern and the Wrekin. The fairy dales of
Derbyshire; the sweet forest and pastoral scenes of Staffordshire; the
wild dales, the scars and tarns of Yorkshire; the equally beautiful
valleys and hills of Lancashire, with all those quaint old halls that
are scattered through it, memorials of past times, and all connected
with some incident or other of English history. And then there is
Northumberland--the classic ground of the ancient ballad--the country of
the Percy--of Chevy Chace--of the Hermit of Warkworth--of Otterburn and
Humbledown--of Flodden, and many another stirring scene. And besides all
these are the mountain regions of Cumberland, of Wales, of Scotland, and
Ireland, that by the power of steam are being brought every day more
within the reach of thousands. What an inexhaustible wealth of beauty
lies in those regions! These, if every other portion of the kingdom were
reduced by ploughing and manufacturing and steaming to the veriest
common-place, these, in the immortal strength of their nature, bid
defiance to the efforts of any antagonist, or reducing spirit. These
will still remain wild and fair, the refuge and haunt of the painter and
the poet--of all lovers of beauty, and breathers after quiet and
freshness. Nothing can pull down their lofty and scathed heads; nothing
can dry up those everlasting waters, that leap down their cliffs, and
run along their vales in gladness; nothing can certainly exterminate
those dark heaths, and drain off those mountain lakes, where health and
liberty seem to dwell together; nothing can efface the loveliness of
those regions, save the hand of Him who placed them there. I rejoice to
think that while this great nation remains, whatever may be the
magnitude of the designs for the good of the world in which Providence
purposes to employ it,--however populous it may be necessary for it to
become,--whatever the machinery and manufactories that may be needfully
at work in it; that while Cumberland, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland
continue, there will continue regions of indestructible beauty--of free
and unpruned nature, so fair that those who are not satisfied therewith,
would not be satisfied with the whole universe. More sublimity other
countries may boast, more beauty has fallen to the lot of none on God’s
globe. And what a satisfaction it is, to see that our poetry of late
years has awakened the public mind to a full sense of our natural
advantages. It may be said that many traverse the continent who never
see their own country, but it cannot be said that the beauty of our own
fair islands is overlooked. On the contrary, every one who travels
through them himself, sees how increasing are the numbers who do the
same. To many a point of beauty and historic interest I have been, from
the very Land’s-End to John O’Groat’s; and I do not know one spot of any
claims to attention, which I did not find numerously visited from the
earliest spring to late in the year. I once was at Loch Katrine early in
April, and there were arrivals of several carriages a day. I was at the
Land’s-End late in October, and as I reached the Logan Rock, a very
interesting party of young people were just coming away from it. As I
have said, I walked up to Stonehenge from Salisbury in order to enjoy it
in all its solitude. This was late in the autumn; yet I found a large
party there, and the shepherds assured me that every day, and all day
long, it would continue so till severe weather set in. When Dr. Johnson
went as far as the Hebrides, it was reckoned a rare thing. In the summer
of 1836, I visited Staffa and Iona in company with seventy persons; and
all summer long, three or four times a-week, do those places see
scarcely less than a hundred English people land upon them.
Who indeed does not know how every pleasant place on our coasts, how the
Peak of Derbyshire, how all Wales, the Highlands of Scotland and many
parts of Ireland are annually thronged with people, who break away from
towns and trade to refresh their spirits with the invigorating spirit of
the mountains, and with the sights and sounds of ocean? Nay, such is the
pressure of the tourist current, that whatever place steam-vessels reach
in the mountain districts--it is one of the most ludicrous scenes
imaginable to see a packet come to the pier, and its whole swarm of
passengers leap ashore and proceed at full gallop to storm the inns for
beds and accommodation. I have myself, as I believe I have before
stated, been forced in the throng up to the very attics of one of these
inns by the rush of people, who filled the whole staircase, and indeed
house, calling out for beds, while the poor landlady was wringing her
hands in despair of reducing the clamorous chorus into some sort of
order.
Ludicrous as this recital however is, the spirit which occasions it is
an excellent one. It is full of health and good moral feeling. It is one
which, if it goes on, hand in hand with our machinery and our
literature, must produce the happiest effects. I trust that this volume
will add its quota to that love of the country which I would desire to
see possessing a corner of every human being’s heart. While that is
there, I am sure there must be an undecayed portion of the original
heart of humanity,--a remnant, at least, of that tone of spirit which
makes heaven desirable, and which is capable of enjoying it. He that
loves the country as God has made it, in all its varying beauty and
immortal freshness, must love God and man too; and while he seeks in
mountain solitudes and on sea shores, relief from the weariness of too
long jostling in the crowd, will find with delight how this very
solitude will quicken his appetite for human society, and his perception
of the comforts and home-pleasures of towns. I declare, that when I have
been for weeks roaming amongst forests and mountain wastes, I feel, on
coming into a city, a sense of its life, activity, and social condition
which was before become comparatively dim. As I have entered one in the
early morning, and have seen the neat young housemaids rubbing the
knockers and cleaning down the steps of their masters’ doors, and have
caught glimpses, as I passed along, of well oil-clothed passages, and
well carpeted rooms, and fires already burning cheerfully,--I have felt
a sense of the comforts and pleasantness of English homes that I have
rarely felt besides. Or at evening, as we pass where blinds are yet
undrawn, and where fires are seen warmly illumining fair rooms, and
happy faces are congregated around them, who has not felt the same
thing?
But we must now close this volume; and how can that be more fitly done
than by ending as we began, and acknowledging with a rejoicing
thankfulness, “that the lines have indeed fallen to us in pleasant
places,” in a land which it would be difficult to pronounce more blessed
in its literature, its religious spirit, or in the splendid dowry of its
natural beauty.
[Illustration]
London; Printed by Manning and Mason, Ivy Lane.
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
VISITS TO REMARKABLE PLACES;
~Old halls, Battle-fields,~
AND SCENES ILLUSTRATIVE OF STRIKING PASSAGES
IN ENGLISH HISTORY AND POETRY.
With Forty Illustrations by S. WILLIAMS, price One Guinea.
CONTENTS.
I.--Visit to Penshurst in Kent; the Ancient Seat of the Sidneys.
II.--Visit to the Field of Culloden. III.--Visit to Stratford-on-Avon;
and the Haunts of Shakspeare--Charlecote Hall--Clopton Hall, etc.
IV.--Visit to Combe Abbey, Warwickshire, as connected with Elizabeth of
Bohemia, and the Gunpowder Plot. V.--Visit to Lindisfarne, Flodden
Field, and the Scenery of Marmion. VI.--Visit to Bolton Priory, and
Scenes of the White Doe of Rylston. VII.--Visit to Hampton Court.
VIII.--Visits to Compton-Winyates, Warwickshire, a solitary old Seat
of the Marquis of Northampton. IX.--A Day-Dream at Tintagel. X.--Visit
to Staffa and Iona. XI.-Visit to Edge-Hill. XII.--Visit to the
Great Jesuits’ College at Stonyhurst, in Lancashire. XIII.--Visit
to the Ancient City of Winchester. XIV.--Visit to Wotton Hall,
Staffordshire--Alfieri and Rousseau in England--Traditions of Rousseau
at Wotton. XV.--Sacrament Sunday Kilmorac in the Highlands.
“Written with the enthusiasm of a poet and the knowledge of an
antiquary.”--_Monthly Chronicle._
THE BOY’S COUNTRY BOOK;
BEING THE REAL LIFE OF A COUNTRY BOY,
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF;
EXHIBITING ALL
THE AMUSEMENTS, PLEASURES, AND PURSUITS OF CHILDREN
IN THE COUNTRY.
1 vol. fcap. 8vo., with about 40 Woodcuts by S. WILLIAMS, 8s. cloth
lettered.
CONTENTS.
I.--Sketch of his Life. II.--Peter Scroggins the Pony, and the Coal
Pits. III.--Journey into the Peak--Peak Scenery and Mines. IV.--Village
Trades, and Companions. V.--Spring and Summer Pleasures.--Birds,
Gardening, etc. VI.--Summer, Autumn, and Winter Pleasures.--Bathing,
Angling, Haymaking; Nutting, Acorn-gathering, Crab and Apple-gathering;
Woodmen, Charcoal-burners, and Wood Scenery; Amusements in Frost and
Snow. VII.--Domestic Animals, and their Treatment; Horsemanship;
Rabbit-keeping; Pigeons; Dogs, and their Exploits. VIII.--Juvenile
Mechanics. IX.--Occupations of the Children of the Poor. X.--Days at my
Grandfather’s. XI.--Fireside Amusements and Stories. XII.--Fireside
Tales--Seeking a Fortune, etc. XIII.--Fireside Amusements, and Village
Stories. XIV.--Philosophical Experiments and Sleight-of-hand Feats.
XV.--School Days. XVI.--School Days continued--Ackworth Scenes and
Characters. XVII.--A Summer-day’s Adventure of Three School Boys.
XVIII.--School Adventures at Tamworth. XIX.--Further Scenes and Events
at Tamworth. XX.--Rent-Night Suppers and Cousin John’s Stories.
XXI.--Conclusion; and Recollections of Early Life.
“One of the most fascinating fictions, for young or old, that has ever
graced our literature.”--_Monthly Chronicle._
COLONIZATION AND CHRISTIANITY;
A POPULAR HISTORY OF THE TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES,
IN ALL THEIR COLONIES, BY THE EUROPEANS.
1 vol. post 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._ cloth lettered.
“We have no hesitation in pronouncing this the most important and
valuable work that Mr. Howitt has produced.”--_Tait’s Magazine._
Preparing for Publication, in one Volume, 8vo.
THE BALLAD POETRY OF MRS. HOWITT.
To be beautifully Embellished by Wood Engravings from Original Designs.
Transcriber’s Notes
The original language has been retained (including inconsistent and
erroneous spelling, use of diacriticals, capitalisation and
hyphenation), except as mentioned below.
Depending on the hard- and software used and their settings, not all
elements may display as intended.
Page 38, Bürschen: should be either Burschen (plural) or Bürschchen
(diminutive plural).
Page 171, Ziguene: should be Zigeuner.
Page 555, ahndungsvoll: should be ahnungsvoll.
Changes made
Footnotes have been moved to under the paragraph or poem to which they
refer.
Some obvious minor punctuation and typographical errors have been
corrected silently.
Most of the corrections made have been verified with later editions of
the same book.
Page xi: Embellishment numbers added
Page xviii: part title CAUSES OF THE STRONG ATTACHMENT OF THE ENGLISH
TO COUNTRY LIFE. inserted cf. text
Page xx: Purkiss changed to Purkess cf. text
Page 28: géne changed to gêne
Page 31: beau ideal changed to beau idéal
Page 64: closing quote mark inserted at the end of the calculation
Page 165: part title PICTURESQUE AND MORAL FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY
inserted cf. table of contents
Page 173: overrun the country changed to overran the country
Page 301: closing quote mark inserted after list of houses
Page 348: part title THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND inserted cf. table of
contents
Page 358/359: the lay-out of the quoted sources has been standardised
Page 371: salvage genius changed to savage genius
Page 376: this forests abounds changed to this forest abounds
Page 414-415, footnote 26: the footnote marker was missing from the
source document; a later (1841) corrected edition has the footnote
marker after ... jousts and tourneys
Page 491: closing quote mark inserted after verse
Page 493: closing quote mark inserted after at the wake
Page 587: opening quote mark inserted before What sort of a corpse.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Rural Life of England, by William Howitt