MORAL INTEREST OF TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS. LOCAL ATTACHMENT.
Let none our Author rudely blame
Who from the story has thus long digrest;
But for his righteous pains may his fair fame
For ever travel, whilst his ashes rest.
SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.
Reader, if thou carest little or nothing for the Yorkshire river Don
and for the town of Doncaster, and for the circumstances connected
with it, I am sorry for thee. My venerable friend the Doctor was of a
different disposition. He was one who loved, like Southey
———uncontrolled, as in a dream
To muse upon the course of human things;
Exploring sometimes the remotest springs,
Far as tradition lends one guiding gleam;
Or following upon Thought's audacious wings
Into Futurity the endless stream.
He could not only find
———tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing,—[1]
but endeavoured to find all he could in them, and for that reason
delighted to enquire into the history of places and of things, and to
understand their past as well as their present state. The revolutions
of a mansion house within his circuit were as interesting to him as
those of the Mogul Empire; and he had as much satisfaction in being
acquainted with the windings of a brook from its springs to the place
where it fell into the Don, as he could have felt in knowing that the
Sources of the Nile had been explored, or the course and termination
of the Niger.
[Footnote 1: SHAKESPEAR.]
Hear, Reader, what a journalist says upon rivers in the newest and
most approved style of critical and periodical eloquence! He says, and
he regarded himself no doubt with no small complacency while so
saying,
“An acquaintance with” Rivers “well deserves to be erected into a
distinct science. We hail _Potamology_ with a cordial greeting, and
welcome it to our studies, parlours, schools, reading-rooms,
lecture-rooms, mechanics' institutes and universities. There is no end
to the interest which Rivers excite. They may be considered
physically, geographically, historically, politically, commercially,
mathematically, poetically, pictorially, morally, and even
religiously—In the world's anatomy they are its veins, as the
primitive mountains, those mighty structures of granite, are its
bones; they minister to the fertility of the earth, the purity of the
air, and the health of mankind. They mark out nature's kingdoms and
provinces, and are the physical dividers and subdividers of
continents. They welcome the bold discoverer into the heart of the
country, to whose coast the sea has borne his adventurous bark. The
richest freights have floated on their bosoms, and the bloodiest
battles have been fought upon their banks. They move the wheels of
cotton mills by their mechanical power, and madden the souls of poets
and painters by their picturesque splendor. They make scenery and are
scenery, and land yields no landscape without water. They are the best
vehicle for the transit of the goods of the merchant, and for the
illustration of the maxims of the moralist. The figure is so familiar,
that we scarcely detect a metaphor when the stream of life and the
course of time flow on into the ocean of Eternity.”
Hear, hear, oh hear!
_Udite—
Fiumi correnti, e rive,—
E voi—fontane vive!_[2]
Yet the person who wrote this was neither deficient in feeling, nor in
power; it is the epidemic vice prevailing in an age of journals that
has infected him. They who frame their style _ad captandum_ fall into
this vein, and as immediate effect is their object they are wise in
their generation. The public to which they address themselves are
attracted by it, as flies swarm about treacle.
[Footnote 2: GIUSTO DE' CONTE.]
We are advanced from the Age of Reason to the Age of Intellect, and
this is the current eloquence of that age!—let us get into an
atmosphere of common sense.
Topographical pursuits, my Doctor used to say, tend to preserve and
promote the civilization of which they are a consequence and a proof.
They have always prospered in prosperous countries, and flourished
most in flourishing times when there have been persons enough of
opulence to encourage such studies, and of leisure to engage in them.
Italy and the Low Countries therefore took the lead in this branch of
literature; the Spaniards and Portugueze cultivated it in their better
days; and beginning among ourselves with Henry 8th, it has been
continued with encreasing zeal down to the present time.
Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to
individual and national character. Our home,—our birth place,—our
native land,—think for a while what the virtues are which arise out of
the feelings connected with these words; and if thou hast any
intellectual eyes thou wilt then perceive the connection between
topography and patriotism.
Shew me a man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will
shew you in that same person one who loves nothing but himself. Beware
of those who are homeless by choice! You have no hold on a human being
whose affections are without a tap-root. The laws recognize this truth
in the privileges which they confer upon freeholders; and public
opinion acknowledges it also, in the confidence which it reposes upon
those who have what is called a stake in the country. Vagabond and
rogue are convertible terms; and with how much propriety any one may
understand who knows what are the habits of the wandering classes,
such as gypsies, tinkers and potters.
The feeling of local attachment was possessed by Daniel Dove in the
highest degree. Spurzheim and the crazyologists would have found out a
bump on his head for its local habitation;—letting that quackery pass,
it is enough for me to know that he derived this feeling from his
birth as a mountaineer, and that he had also a right to it by
inheritance, as one whose ancestors had from time immemorial dwelt
upon the same estate. Smile not contemptuously at that word, ye, whose
domains extend over more square miles than there were square roods
upon his patrimony! To have held that little patrimony unimpaired, as
well as unenlarged, through so many generations implies more
contentment, more happiness, and a more uniform course of steadiness
and good conduct, than could be found in the proudest of your
genealogies!
The most sacred spot upon earth to him was his father's hearth-stead.
Rhine, Rhone, Danube, Thames or Tyber, the mighty Ganges or the
mightier Maranon, even Jordan itself, affected his imagination less
than the Greta, or Wease as he was wont to call it, of his native
fields; whose sounds in his boyhood were the first which he heard at
morning and the last at night, and during so many peaceful and happy
years made as it were an accompaniment to his solitary musings, as he
walked between his father's house and his schoolmaster's, to and fro.
Next to that wild river Wease whose visible course was as delightful
to the eye and ear, as its subterranean one was to the imagination, he
loved the Don. He was not one of those refined persons who like to
lessen their admiration of one object by comparing it with another. It
entered as little into his mind to depreciate the Don because it was
not a mountain stream, as it did into Corporal Trim's or Uncle Toby's
to think the worse of Bohemia because it has no sea coast. What if it
had no falls, no rapids or resting-places, no basins whose pellucid
water might tempt Diana and the Oreades to bathe in it; instead of
these the Don had beauties of its own, and utilities which give to
such beauties when combined with them an additional charm. There was
not a more pleasing object in the landscape to his eyes than the broad
sail of a barge slowly moving between the trees, and bearing into the
interior of England the produce of the Baltic, and of the East and
West.
The place in the world which he loved best was Ingleton, because in
that little peaceful village, as in his childhood it was, he had once
known every body and every body had known him; and all his
recollections of it were pleasurable, till time cast over them a
softening but a pensive hue. But next to Ingleton he loved Doncaster.
And wherefore did he thus like Doncaster? For a better reason than the
epigrammatist could give for not liking Dr. Fell, though perhaps many
persons have no better than that epigrammatist had in this case, for
most of their likings and dislikings. He liked it because he must have
been a very unreasonable man if he had not been thankful that his lot
had fallen there—because he was useful and respected there, contented,
prosperous, happy; finally because it is a very likeable place, being
one of the most comfortable towns in England: for it is clean,
spacious, in a salubrious situation, well-built, well-governed, has no
manufactures, few poor, a greater proportion of inhabitants who are
not engaged in any trade or calling, than perhaps any other town in
the kingdom, and moreover it sends no members to parliament.
INTERCHAPTER III.
THE AUTHOR QUESTIONS THE PROPRIETY OF PERSONIFYING CIRCUMSTANCE,
DENIES THE UNITY AND INDIVISIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC, AND MAY EVEN BE
SUSPECTED OF DOUBTING ITS OMNISCIENCE AND ITS INFALLIBILITY.
_Ha forse
Testa la plebe, ove si chiuda in vece
Di senno, altro che nebbia? o forma voce
Chi sta più saggia, che un bebù d'armerito?_
CHIABRERA.
“What a kind of Being is circumstance!” says Horace Walpole in his
atrocious tragedy of the Mysterious Mother.—A very odd kind of Being
indeed. In the course of my reading I remember but three Beings
equally remarkable,—as personified in prose and verse. Social-Tie was
one; Catastrophe another; and Inoculation, heavenly Maid! the third.
But of all ideal Beings the most extraordinary is that which we call
the Public. The Public and Transubstantiation I hold to be the two
greatest mysteries in, or out of nature. And there are certain points
of resemblance between them.—For as the Priest creates the one
mystery, so the author, or other appellant to the said Public, creates
the other, and both bow down in worship, real or simulated, before the
Idol of their own creation. And as every fragment of the wafer break
it into as many as you may, contains in itself the whole entire
mystery of Transubstantiation, just in the same manner every
fractional part of the Public assumes to itself the powers, privileges
and prerogatives of the whole, as virtually, potentially and
indefeasably its own. Nay, every individual who deems himself a
constituent member of the said Public arrogates them also, and when he
professes to be acting _pro bono publico_, the words mean with him all
the good he can possibly get for himself.
The old and famous illustration of Hermes may be in part applied to
the Public; it is a circle of which the centre is every where: in part
I say, for its circumference is defined. It is bounded by language,
and has many intercircles. It is indeed a confused multiplicity of
circles intersecting each other, perpetually in motion and in change.
Every man is the centre of some circle, and yet involved in others; he
who is not sometimes made giddy by their movements, has a strong head;
and he who is not sometimes thrown off his balance by them, stands
well upon his legs.
Again, the Public is like a nest of patent coffins packed for
exportation, one within another. There are Publics of all sizes, from
the _genus generalissimum_, the great general universal Public, whom
London is not large enough to hold, to the _species specialissima_,
the little Thinking Public, which may find room in a nutshell.
There is the Fashionable Public, and the Religious Public, and the
Play-going Public, and the Sporting Public, and the Commercial Public,
and the Literary Public, and the Reading Public, and Heaven knows how
many Publics more. They call themselves Worlds sometimes,—as if a
certain number of worldlings made a World!
He who pays his homage to any or all of these Publics, is a Publican
and a Sinner.
“_Nunquam valui populo placere; nam quæ ego scio non probat populus;
quæ probat populas, ego nescio._”[1]
“_Bene et ille, quisquis fuit, (ambigitur enim de auctore,) cum
quæreretur ab illo, quo tanta diligentia artis spectaret ad
paucissimos perventuræ? Satis sunt, inquit, mihi pauci; satis est
unus; satis est nullus._”[2]
[Footnote 1: SENECA, 2, 79.]
[Footnote 2: IB, _ib._ 17.]