“Broad shadows o’er the passage fell,Deeper and narrower grew the dell;It seemed some mountain, rent and riven,A channel for the stream had given,So high the cliffs of limestone greyHung beetling o’er the torrent’s way,Yielding along their rugged baseA flinty foot-path’s niggard space;Where he who winds ’twixt rock and wave,May hear the headlong torrent rave,And like a steed in frantic fit,That flings the froth from curb and bit,May view her chafe her waves to sprayO’er every rock that bars her way.”
“Broad shadows o’er the passage fell,Deeper and narrower grew the dell;It seemed some mountain, rent and riven,A channel for the stream had given,So high the cliffs of limestone greyHung beetling o’er the torrent’s way,Yielding along their rugged baseA flinty foot-path’s niggard space;Where he who winds ’twixt rock and wave,May hear the headlong torrent rave,And like a steed in frantic fit,That flings the froth from curb and bit,May view her chafe her waves to sprayO’er every rock that bars her way.”
“Broad shadows o’er the passage fell,Deeper and narrower grew the dell;It seemed some mountain, rent and riven,A channel for the stream had given,So high the cliffs of limestone greyHung beetling o’er the torrent’s way,Yielding along their rugged baseA flinty foot-path’s niggard space;Where he who winds ’twixt rock and wave,May hear the headlong torrent rave,And like a steed in frantic fit,That flings the froth from curb and bit,May view her chafe her waves to sprayO’er every rock that bars her way.”
“I have lately read two facts,” Mary said, “which shew the depth of those remarkably abrupt ravines that intersect these craggy mountains in the moorlands of Staffordshire. In Narrowdale, the sun is never seen by the inhabitants for the three winter months; and even when it is visible, it does not rise to them till one o’clock in the afternoon. The other circumstance is this—at Leck, the sun at a certain time of the year, seems to set twice in the same evening: for, after it sinks beneath the top of a high intervening mountain, it again breaks out from behind the steep northern side before it reaches the horizon.”
7th.—My uncle shewed me to-day a hard black substance of very close grain. I did not know what it could be, for it evidently was not coal, nor flint. He told me, that the soil which covers the great northern coal-field appears to be alluvial, and that it contains masses of all the different rocks that compose the whole district; and among them, portions of this hard blackbasaltare found every where in abundance.
“I shew you this,” he said, “because the ancient inhabitants of Britain formed the heads of their battle-axes, which are commonly calledcelts, from this stone. They resemble in shape the tomahawks of the South Sea islands. Barbed arrow-heads, neatly finished, and made of palecoloured flint, are also frequently picked up on the moors, and are calledelf-bolts.”
I asked, if those things were often found in other parts of England, as they must be very interesting in tracing the history of our early ancestors.
“Yes,” said he, “in all parts of Great Britain; and not only weapons, but various utensils; besides other articles, of which the uses have not been ascertained. For instance, at Kimmeridge, on the coast of Dorsetshire, where there are beds of a kind of stony coal, there has been found on the tops of the cliff’s, what the country people call ‘coal money.’ The pieces are round, and about two inches and a half in diameter, by a quarter of an inch in thickness; one side is convex, with mouldings, and the other is flat and plain, but with two, or sometimes with four small round holes in the surface. They are, in general, two or three feet below the surface, inclosed between two stones, set edgeways, and covered by a third; and the bones of some animal are always found along with them. A little deposit of this coal-money was also discovered in a shallow bowl of the same material.”
“And was coal ever really used as money, uncle? It would make rather a bulky currency.”
“Some people imagine that they were amulets;others, that they were connected with the ancient Druidical rites; and many suppose them to have been coin. Perhaps the cant, or vulgar expression, ‘down with your coal,’ which means ‘pay your money,’ may assist you in choosing which of these hypotheses you like best.”
8th.—The back gate of the garden is not often unlocked, and to-day when the gardener was going to open it, the key-hole appeared to be so stopped up, that he took off the lock, and finding a little nest in the inside, he brought it to my uncle.
It proved to be the nest of a species of bee, calledapis manicata. The cells are formed of two or three layers of a silky membrane, which seems to be composed of a kind of glue secreted by the insect; it resembles gold-beater’s-leaf, but so thin and transparent, that you can distinguish through it the colour of the smallest object. As soon as each cell is completed, I am told that the bee deposits an egg in it, and then nearly fills it with a mixture of pollen and honey; and so proceeds till all the cells are finished and filled. As the situation is rather cold for the grubs, we found the cells plastered over with the same composition, and even a warm outer coating of wool was stuck to this paste to preserve them from any change of temperature. The wool appeared to be the down of some plant; and my uncle says,they have been observed to scrape the down from the leaves of the woolly hedge-nettle, and the common rose campion, with their mandibles; while with their fore legs they roll it into a little ball and carry it to the nest.
I have been excessively busy putting my garden in order before we set out. Indeed, I have become so wonderfully active, that you would scarcely know your little indolent girl; and I am often inclined to sing the old nursery song to myself, “Sure this is none of I.” Among other things, I have performed a grand operation in my hyacinth beds. Lady Binning, you know, is a great florist; I heard her speak of the manner in which her gardener manages the hyacinths, for which her garden is remarkable; and I determined to try it. As soon as the leaves become all yellow, he takes up the bulbs, removes the loose skins and offsets and all the fibres that are decayed, and immediately replants them in a bed of fresh compost. Her ladyship told us, that when treated in this manner, they equal the Dutch hyacinths in strength.
All this was duly executed yesterday. I had been watching the leaves for some time, as I wanted them to be quite yellow; and I now flatter myself with having a very grand display next year.
I had also many cuttings to make, and seedlings to plant out, as well as layers of pinks andcarnations, and various plants to trim and tie up; besides the daily occupations of weeding, watering, pruning, and earthing.
9th.—I have just found the most curious miniature cocoons of yellow cotton, sticking on a chrysalis of the cabbage caterpillar. Some time ago I put up two of these caterpillars in paper boxes; they were regularly fed, and made quite comfortable; and now though one is a perfectly sound chrysalis, the other is only an empty skin. In the little book which I have so often mentioned, Mary shewed me the cause of this in the dialogue between Lucy and her mother onichneumons; it was from their eggs, which were deposited in the body of the caterpillar, that the maggots proceeded who destroyed it, and then spun those pretty little yellow cocoons. It is a great pleasure, mamma, to have traced a curious fact of this kind for myself, and actually to have seen one chrysalis dwelling in another. These ichneumons must be very useful in thus destroying other mischievous insects: Reaumur found, that out of thirty common cabbage caterpillars which he put into a glass to feed, twenty-five were killed by an ichneumon; and my aunt says, that if the myriads of caterpillars which prey on our vegetables, are compared with the small number of butterflies that they usually produce, it will appear that they aredestroyed in a still larger proportion. This is one of the innumerable instances of the goodness of Providence, which balances the necessary evils of one tribe of animals by the instinctive efforts of another.
My aunt told me, that in St. Domingo the cassada and indigo plantations are materially injured by a large caterpillar. When it changes to its last robe of sea-green, its tortures begin; a swarm of ichneumon flies fasten themselves all over the poor victim, drive their stings into the skin, and then deposit their eggs in the wounds they have made. The caterpillar swells and becomes of a deeper green, and in a fortnight, when the eggs are hatched, it appears covered with little worms, which start out of every pore. The existence of these worms is but short; after raising themselves on one end, shaking their heads, and swinging themselves in every direction, each of them begins to form its cocoon; and in two hours the caterpillar is completely clothed in a white robe. In eight days the ichneumon flies are hatched, and the little cocoons they leave behind are composed of a very fine silky cotton of the most dazzling whiteness, which may be used without any preparation, as soon as the flies have quitted them.
The quantity of this glossy substance, produced by the millions of those little parasites, isso great, that it is said a single person has collected a bushel in two hours. But the chief importance of their services is, the keeping within bounds the mischievous cassada caterpillars; and as these caterpillars are destroyed by heavy rain, it has even been proposed to collect and put them under cover as soon as the ichneumon’s eggs are deposited, in order to multiply these useful insects.
10th.—June is really a most lovely month here;—the trees are clothed in foliage of the freshest green, and flowers are scattered everywhere in profusion. Mowing is just beginning, and everybody looks busy, active, and cheerful.
I was very happy yesterday; we went to see the sheep-shearing at Farmer Moreland’s; it seemed to be almost a festival, and was conducted with a degree of regularity and ceremony that was quite amusing. Caroline delights in these rural employments; and we were all allowed to go there early in the morning. We found the sheep enclosed in a fold under the shade of an ash-grove, and the shearers seated on the knotted roots of some of the old trees. Dame Moreland gave us some brown bread and new milk; and before the day grew very hot we returned home. In the evening, however, having dined early, we returned to the pretty grove and the poor bleating sheep, whom I couldnot help pitying when thrown down to be shorn; though they looked a great deal more comfortable as soon as they were relieved from their thick hot clothing.
I saw some of them washed a day or two before the shearing began; their fleeces were well rubbed and rinced in the stream, and then the poor creatures ran to a sunny bank,
Where, bleating loud, they shook their dripping locks.
Where, bleating loud, they shook their dripping locks.
Where, bleating loud, they shook their dripping locks.
My uncle told me that England has been always famous for its sheep and their rich fleeces, the various qualities of which are so well suited to the different branches of our woollen manufactures; but it is the Downs of Dorsetshire, and all the southern and western counties, which supply those sheep whose fleeces are employed in making the finest broad cloth.
We stayed till the men ceased working, and till we had seen the shearers and all their assistants sitting down to a comfortable supper, with abundance of cider; we then left them, and came home by a long winding path. We were quite in the dark for some of the last part of the walk, which gave me an opportunity of seeing the English glow-worm on the dry banks at the edge of the forest.
When evening closes Nature’s eye,The glow-worm lights her little sparkTo captivate her favourite fly,And tempt the rover through the dark.Conducted by a sweeter star,Than all that decks the skies above,He fondly hastens from afar,To soothe her solitude with love.
When evening closes Nature’s eye,The glow-worm lights her little sparkTo captivate her favourite fly,And tempt the rover through the dark.Conducted by a sweeter star,Than all that decks the skies above,He fondly hastens from afar,To soothe her solitude with love.
When evening closes Nature’s eye,The glow-worm lights her little sparkTo captivate her favourite fly,And tempt the rover through the dark.
Conducted by a sweeter star,Than all that decks the skies above,He fondly hastens from afar,To soothe her solitude with love.
My uncle told me that Dr. Macartney, who has investigated the subject of luminous insects with great ability, has ascertained, that in the glow-worm, part of the light proceeds from a yellow substance lying underneath a transparent part of the skin. Besides this, he observed in the last segment of the body, two minute oval sacks, formed of an elastic fibre, wound spirally, and containing a yellow substance also, but of a closer texture, and giving a more permanent light. This light seemed less under the control of the insect than the other, which it has the power of voluntarily extinguishing, and which ceases to shine when extracted from living glow-worms; but the two sacks, when taken out, continue to give light for some hours.
11th, Sunday.—“I think, father,” said Mary, “that in reflecting on the three dispensations, it appears, that neither the Jews, nor the religious people of the patriarchal ages had that clear and distinct knowledge of the doctrine of future rewards and punishments which we Christians possess; nor that full conviction of the immortality of the soul which now cheers mankind.”
“True,” said my uncle, “those awful truths had indeed been early opened to them, and theywere gradually unfolded with increasing clearness by the later prophets; but at the best they were obscurely understood, or, in the language of St. Paul, they were seen as ‘through a glass, darkly.’ It was reserved for our Saviour to throw such a clear and steady light upon the doctrine of immortality, that ‘we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast[9].’
“This beautiful simile,” continued my uncle, “which compares hope to an anchor, was first used by St. Paul. The ancient poets described Hope as a nymph, decorated with smiles and flowers, and soothing the labours of man with the idea of distant pleasures; but St. Paul represents hope as the stay and anchor of the soul; and so striking is the figure, that it has been since adopted into every language. He does not allude to the vain wishes arising from a heated imagination, but to the stedfast hope which springs from faith: as the vessel is kept firm at her anchor, in defiance of storms and currents, so the Christian is ‘not moved away from the hope of the Gospel,’ by adversities and temptations.
“You are all acquainted with the ancient fable of Pandora’s box; at the bottom of which it is said that, as the only means of supporting the human race under the multiplied evils thatwere about to issue from it, Jupiter placed the last and best blessing of Hope. It is not improbable that this fable was founded on a tradition of the original promise of the future seed; the hope of which could alone have sustained the virtuous part of mankind amidst the general corruption that followed the transgression of Adam.
“But an unsettled kind of hope will be of little avail; to be useful it must be grounded on faith; on that entire faith which not only believes in the authenticity of our Saviour’s sacrifice, and in the importance of the doctrines he taught, but which fully and gratefully confides in the sufficiency of his atonement. Then hope indeed helps us to anticipate the glorious future; we view him as risen triumphantly to heaven; and we feel that we shall partake in the happiness of the hereafter, which He has promised.
“That the hopes of a future state are natural to the mind may be inferred from the craving and dissatisfied feeling which accompanies our very enjoyments, and which always more or less clouds them with fresh wishes and indefinite hopes. These hopes, it is true, in the worldly man, are set upon pleasures, business, or ambition; or on some of those bustling objects of life, which, from their vicinity to the human eye, assume a false magnitude. But the true Christian learns that heavenly objects, which from their distanceappear comparatively faint, swell upon the sight of those who earnestly study them; while the others fade away, and elude the grasp. Religion assists him in correcting those illusions of vision; faith helps him in assigning the proper direction to his hopes; and he makes it his continual care to preserve the enlightened views, which, through the divine mercy, he has obtained. This awful truth has sunk deeply into his mind, ‘The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal;’ and a just impression of their relative value enables him to maintain a happy composure in all the vicissitudes of life.”
Before my uncle dismissed us, he said, “This, my dear little friends, is the last quiet home Sunday that we shall have for some time. Before we return, many unforeseen changes may occur; we are going, as it were, to launch into the world; we may be separated; and our regular habits must be unavoidably interrupted. But in every situation we can cultivate and strengthen in our hearts the Christian hope; and though we may perhaps no longer give each other mutual aid, we can, at least, each of us watch over our own hearts. Let me then intreat your attention to a few practical hints.
“Never allow yourselves to consider religion as a painful restraint, but rather as the performance of a grateful duty. Whenever that duty has theleast appearance of being irksome, search and you will find that some incompatible but favourite pursuit entices away your thoughts: throw it then aside, however blameless it may otherwise be, or however innocent may be its pleasures. Remember with whom St. Paul classes those who are ‘lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.’
“Frequently examine the state of your moral and religious feelings, and when you perceive a deficiency in any point, beware of lowering the standard of virtue to meet your practice; instead of endeavouring to rise to the level of your duty.
“Watch vigilantly yoursmallfaults. You will find the unhesitating sacrifice of any one of them productive of the purest satisfaction; and each victory will make the next struggle more easy. But, in doing this, be careful to resist that most seductive propensity of all minds, the looking back with too much complacency at the faults we have conquered, or at the virtues we possess, instead of fixing our eyes on the sins we have yet to overcome, and the improvement we have yet to achieve.
“And, lastly, arm yourselves with a determined resolution not to rate human estimation beyond its true value. No one should affect a needless singularity; but to aim at things which in their nature are inconsistent, to seek to please bothGod and the world, where their commands are really at variance, is the way neither to be respectable, nor good, nor happy.”
Fernhurst, for the last time.
12th.—The corn fields are coming into ear, the hay harvest is going on, new flowers are springing up; and all the walks, and gardens, and shrubberies, are in the highest beauty, and yet we are going to leave this dear place! To-morrow we are to quit Fernhurst and all its happiness! But that is a silly feeling, for we all go together, and surely we may make ourselves happy any where, even in Ireland. A year ago I was just leaving my dear mamma, and the happy home to which I had been so long accustomed, to place myself among strangers;—and now I am going among still greater strangers—among the Irish. But my uncle says they are a warm-hearted, hospitable people, and that the country is so full of objects of interest, that I shall not have to regret the employments of Fernhurst, nor even my favourite gardening experiments.
I am happy to tell you, that most of these experiments have succeeded very well as yet: particularly one I have been trying on my dahlias, by budding them on the roots. They have already produced some very flourishing plants, and as the bearing buds were employed, they will blossom this year. I must make you acquainted also with a little bower, which we have all assisted in making in a charming spot; it is canopied with woodbine, and lined with moss; and you might say of it—
Is this Titania’s bower, where fairies playTheir antique revels in the glow-worm’s light?Moss and wild thyme are all the weeds which strayTo pave her palace with a green delight.
Is this Titania’s bower, where fairies playTheir antique revels in the glow-worm’s light?Moss and wild thyme are all the weeds which strayTo pave her palace with a green delight.
Is this Titania’s bower, where fairies playTheir antique revels in the glow-worm’s light?Moss and wild thyme are all the weeds which strayTo pave her palace with a green delight.
As we were taking our last walk late this evening, we saw the goat-sucker, which is nearly allied to the swallow in its form and habits; though generally larger in size. Frederick, who is my chief preceptor in everything relating to the feathered race, tells me, that, except on very dark, gloomy days, these birds are seldom seen till twilight. That is the time the insects come out which form their principal food; and, he says, it is probable that the extreme sensibility of eyes calculated for that period of the day, could not bear the dazzling light of the sun. Their mode of perching is singular, as they place themselves lengthways on a branch, and not in a cross direction like most other birds. The mouth is uncommonly large, fringed with bristles, and moistened by a glutinous fluid, to which the smaller insects adhere; and you may therefore conceive the destructive powers of this bird, for it flies through their swarms with its voracious jaws wide open, darts in every direction at its larger prey, and swallows all, withoutever closing its bill. It is in this last circumstance that it chiefly differs from the martin, the swift, and the rest of the swallow tribes; for they never open their bills, in flying, but to snap at their prey, and they shut them with a sharp peculiar noise, which every one must have observed.
There is no end to the variety of names which this bird has acquired in different parts of England—goat-sucker—goat-owl—fern-owl—churn-owl—wheel-bird—dor-hawk—night-jar, &c. In most of these names there is some allusion to its peculiar habits, its haunts, its motions, or its noises, except in the first, which is the commonest and the most absurd of all, as if a goat would allow itself to be sucked by a bird! And yet, however ridiculous, my uncle shewed Frederick, in Aristotle and Pliny, that the ancients gave it a similar name.
I understand that it is not a very common bird here; but we saw it for a considerable time rapidly wheeling round and round a large oak tree, and hawking among the branches in pursuit of the fern-chafer, its favourite food. The hawking of this bird reminds me of an amusing passage in the Persian Sketches:—
“At Shiraz, the Elchee (envoy) received a present of a royal falcon. Before going out, we had been amused at seeing our head falconer put upon this bird a pair of leathers, which hefitted to its thighs with as much care as if he had been the tailor of a fashionable horseman. I inquired the reason of so unusual a proceeding. ‘You will learn that,’ said the consequential master of hawks, ‘when you see our sport.’
“The first hare seized by the falcon was very strong, and the ground rough. While the bird kept the claws of one foot fastened in the back of its prey, the other was dragged along the ground till it had an opportunity to lay hold of a tuft of grass, by which it was enabled to stop the course of the hare, whose efforts to escape would have torn the hawk asunder, if it had not been provided with the leather defences which I have mentioned.
“The next time the falcon was flown gave us a proof of that extraordinary courage which its whole appearance, particularly the eye, denoted. It had stopped and quite disabled a hare by the first pounce, when two greyhounds, which had been slipped by mistake, came up, and endeavoured to seize its prize. They were, however, quickly repulsed by the falcon, and with a boldness that excited our admiration and astonishment.”
And now, dear mamma, I must go and pack up my pretty writing-box which my uncle has given me; it holds paper, and pens, and ink, and pencils, my journal and account-book, and every thingone can want; even a nice little red leather case for colours, which Caroline made for me; and yet it is not above two inches deep. It is quite flat—but I can make a desk of the lid, and as it is to lie in the bottom of the carriage, under our feet, I have put it in a green cloth cover. I was afraid it might be troublesome; but my uncle and aunt know how to make every one comfortable without inconvenience to others.
This is my last line from dear, happy Fernhurst!
13th June, Worcester.
This morning, at seven o’clock, we set out on our journey. Everything had been arranged and packed the day before, so there were no delays in the morning; all were punctual, and I assure you, mamma, that I was ready, and my work-box and travelling-book in my hands, before my uncle gave the first summons for assembling. We have several books in the carriage, but no loose parcels; and within-side it does not look as if it was prepared for a long journey.
Poor little Grace has been left with the Maudes, in whom my uncle and aunt have the most perfect confidence.
We have seen the fine old cathedral in this city, and the porcelain manufactory, both of which I had intended to describe to you; but myaunt recommends us to go to bed, as we are to be up very early to-morrow morning, in order that there may be full time for seeing the carpet manufactory at Kidderminster, on our way to Shrewsbury, where we are to sleep. So, good-night, though it is scarcely yet dark. What charming long days there are in this country compared with those of Rio.
14th June, Shrewsbury.
Sweet is the dubious boundOf night and morn, when spray and plant are drenchedIn dew.
Sweet is the dubious boundOf night and morn, when spray and plant are drenchedIn dew.
Sweet is the dubious boundOf night and morn, when spray and plant are drenchedIn dew.
Everything was in that state when we set out early this morning from Worcester; it reminded me of all my uncle had told me about dew, and I took the opportunity of asking him if dew is formed in the morning—“it continues to form in shaded places, after sun-rise,” said he; “but there is a shorter interval between sun-rise and its ceasing to form, than between its first appearance in the afternoon and sun-set; though Dr. Wells thinks, that if the weather be favourable, more dew forms a little before and a little after sun-rise, in shaded places, than at any other time.”
My aunt remarked, that a few years ago, while in constant attendance on a sick child from July to September, she rose every morning at day-break; and had an opportunity of observing,that about an hour before sun-rise the dew was particularly abundant. The window was frequently kept a little open at night, when the room was close, and the weather still; but the air became so chilly just as this heavy dew came on, that she was always obliged to shut it; yet during the night the chill was never perceived; which corroborates what Dr. Wells says, “that the cold of the atmosphere is greater in the latter than the prior part of the night.”
In the course of Dr. Wells’ observations, he found that dew does not form readily on gravel-walks; and that if the atmosphere be clear, neither the road or pavement are moistened with dew, though the grass on the road side, and painted doors and windows, are frequently wet. He found also, that wool, though highly attractive of dew, was prevented, if placed on a gravel-walk, from acquiring as much dew as an equal parcel of wool, if laid upon grass.
I asked why Dr. Wells used wool in these experiments, and my uncle told me, that at first he had only compared the quantities of dew on bodies having smooth surfaces; but that he found wool much better adapted to collect dew from the atmosphere, as it readily admits the moisture amongst its fibres, and retains what it receives very firmly. Filamentous and downy substances are by far the most productive ofcold, such as wool, cotton, and flax, and still more fine raw silk and swan-down; all these were more steadily cold upon clear nights than even the grass; but swan-down showed the greatest cold.
“I have already explained to you,” continued my uncle, “that the surface of the earth, and all substances upon it, radiate back into the sky, at night, the heat which they receive in the day; and that, when this radiation is unobstructed by clouds, the cold it produces is proportionably greater. But the degree of cold is very much augmented when the form or situation of these substances prevents their deriving fresh supplies of heat from warmer bodies in contact with them, or in their neighbourhood. Most of the substances which I have named are not only naturally bad conductors of heat, but their form scarcely permits them to transmit from fibre to fibre any heat they might acquire. This is the reason why dew appears in greater quantity on shavings of wood, than on a thick piece of wood; and why filamentous substances become colder than all others.
“On a dewy evening the Doctor depressed a small tumbler into the soft garden mould, so that the brim was level with the ground; and he placed another standing on the surface of the mould: in the morning the former was dry in the inside, while that which stood on the surfacewas dewed; and the thermometer being applied to each, the heat of the depressed one was found to be 56°, while the other was only 49°; for not only had the upper glass more readily parted with its heat by radiation, but the other had received a constant supply of heat from the surrounding earth. In the same manner it may be explained, why the prominent parts of bodies are often encrusted with hoar frost, while the more solid and retired parts are free from it.”
I then inquired, why there is less dew of a windy evening; for one would suppose, that wind, instead of preventing the radiation of heat, would rather help to promote it.
He replied, “all bodies exposed in a clear night must undoubtedly radiate as much of their heat during a storm as in the most perfect calm; but, whenever radiation is going on, the air is more or less warmed by it; and consequently wind, which is only air in motion, serves to bring a continual stream of its warm particles into contact with those bodies. This restores almost as much heat as they had lost, and prevents the deposition of dew; for, you know, dew is nothing but the moisture of the atmosphere condensed by meeting with colder substances; and, therefore, whatever tends to equalize the temperature of the air, and of those substances, must obstruct the formation of dew.”
We breakfasted at Kidderminster, and sawevery part of the carpet manufactory; but the chief interest of the day has been a magnificentinclined planeon the Shropshire canal, which my uncle was so good as to go out of the direct road to shew us. It is a slope of 350 yards in length, with a fall of 70 yards, connecting the canal on the high ground with the canal on the lower level; and the boats, being placed in a kind of cradle upon wheels, are allowed to roll gently down the inclined plane, or are drawn up by the power of a small steam engine. By this contrivance three great savings are effected, he said. First, the prodigious expense of building twenty-onelocks, which would be required for that height; secondly, the time occupied in passing through all those locks; and, thirdly, the quantity of water which is wasted every time a lock is opened, and which, in some parts of the country, it is very difficult to replace in a dry summer.
Wood Lodge.
16th.—So far our journey has been most agreeable in every way. My uncle and aunt not only stop wherever there is any thing to see, but they tell me what to observe, because they know that, through ignorance, I might overlook the things which deserve the most attention. Only think, mamma, of their having actually come into Cheshire, in order to shew me a salt-mine. My uncle promised it many months ago, and he neverforgets a promise to any of us, even about a trifle. Some old friends of theirs, Mr. and Mrs. L., live at this pretty place, where we arrived yesterday evening. We were received with warm affection; and I was considered as one of my aunt’s children, and treated with equal kindness.
As soon as an early breakfast was over, we all drove or rode to Northwich, about five miles from this; and between the fineness of the day, the good nature of both new and old friends, and the complete novelty of going down into a mine, it has been a delightful expedition indeed. By the way, I must tell you, that there was some little hesitation about the ladies going down: there are few mines, my uncle says, that would be very suitable to such visits; but when it can be effected with propriety, he approves of their learning the realities of life. We are such imaginative beings, he says, that truth is necessary to steady our minds.
By my uncle’s directions, I put on an old dress of one of the miner’s wives, over my own, to prevent it from being soiled by the iron chain and the bucket in which we were let down. By the time I was near the bottom, I began to hear the confused sound of the people below, and to see the indistinct flickering of candles; and on looking up, the day light admitted from above by the opening through which we had descended looked smaller than the moon. The walls, andpillars left occasionally to support the roof of the mine, quite disappointed my imagination; for they are of a dirty brown colour, instead of the brilliant white I had expected. In a few places, indeed, they sparkled a little in the gleams of the candles which we carried.
After walking about in various directions, and feeling as if in the crypt of some large church, we came to where the men were working. They were just going to light the train to blast off a rock of salt; and I assure you it was very near the place where we stood; but we were secured behind a projecting point. The roof, there, was not above twenty feet high, and the sound was very grand, continuing to reverberate at intervals for a minute and a half.
The salt lies in strata, from between which water is always trickling; and the white salt used for eating is made from this water, which is pumped up above ground, either by steam or horse power. It is then put into what are called preparing pans, where it is brought to the degree of heat requisite for separating the earthy impurities. These subside to the bottom, and leave the brine clear, and ready to be afterwards evaporated in the salting pans, which are shallow, and I am sure twenty or thirty feet long.
Some years ago the excise duty was twenty-five times the actual value of the salt; butthat is now taken off, and therefore great additional quantities are raised for agricultural or other purposes. I hope this will benefit the workmen, who seem to be very poor, for their cottages are very wretched; each of them, however, is surrounded by a nice little garden; and my aunt made me observe, that the thrift, or sea-pink, flourishes there, as well as where it grows naturally in the salt atmosphere near the seashore.
I can write no more now. We continue here to-morrow, I believe; and the next day we shall go on to Llangollen.
Penrhyn Arms, Bangor.
20th.—Our whole journey through Wales has enchanted me; the mountains, rocky streams, and wooded banks, have more than realized all I had heard and read of its wild and impressive scenery.
My uncle took us to see the celebrated aqueduct of Pontcysylte, near Llangollen, which conducts the Ellesmere canal across the valley of the river Dee, at a great height from the bottom; and therefore saves the immense expense and loss of time that would have been occasioned by a series oflockson each side of the valley. It is one thousand feet long, and supported on twenty stone piers, which rise to one hundred and thirty feet above the bed of the river; and heshewed us that the water-course, which in general is built of stone and made tight with clay, is, in this aqueduct, composed of plates of cast-iron, that rest on great iron ribs; the sides and bottom being screwed together, and the joinings filled with cement.
Having arrived in good time at Llangollen, we all went out to walk, and by some accident, my uncle entered into conversation with a very intelligent Scotchman, who was erecting some power looms. Machinery was, of course, the subject, and I think you will be amused by his description of an improved method of singeing off the small fibres of patent lace, so as to give it the properwiryappearance. He was so good as first to explain to us the common mode of destroying the rough knap upon calico.
There is a smooth iron cylinder set horizontally over a furnace, the heat of which can be nicely regulated. A reel is so placed on each side of it, that the cloth which is rolled round the one, when wound off on the other, is lightly drawn over the cylinder, and comes in contact with its red-hot surface, with just sufficient velocity to allow the loose woolly filaments to be burned without injuring the cloth. The finest muslins are made to go through this operation, and with such precision as to be very seldom damaged. But in lace it is not enough to remove the projecting fibres, all those that are inside the texturemust also be destroyed, as the beauty of the lace is greatly increased by the hard crisp look of the main thread; and to effect this, the lace is usually drawn over a line of gas flame, so as to pass a current of heat through the open spaces. It has been found, however, that even the combustible net-work of lace stops the ascent of the flame, in the same manner that the wire-gauze in Sir Humphry Davy’s beautiful lamp prevents it from communicating with the inflammable gas in a mine. In the new method, to overcome this difficulty, a horizontal tube is placed a little above the lace, with a narrow slit just over the line or sheet of flame; and an air-pump being applied to the tube and rapidly worked, a strong draft is produced into the slit to replace the exhausted air. This draft draws up the flame along with it, in spite of the intervening meshes of the lace, and thus singes away the useless fibres within, as well as without.
In the course of our journey from Llangollen to this place, my uncle frequently made us observe the judgment with which the new road has been laid out by Mr. Telford, the same engineer who constructed the Llangollen aqueduct. In such a mountainous country it was impossible to avoid all hills; but by gradually winding up their sides, or by cutting the road out of the face of almost perpendicular cliffs, he has preserved one uniform and easy slope to the top of the highest ground, over which it passes; and yet at the sametime he has shortened it by several miles. And besides all this, he has shown so much taste in the line he adopted, that my aunt says, one would think his only object had been to display the romantic scenery of North Wales to the best advantage.
We often went out of the carriage, and strolled about to look at the pretty water-falls and rocky passes; and we stopped for some time at the iron-bridge of Bettws. It is a single arch of more than one hundred feet span. The iron work that supports the road-way, consists of the emblems of the three kingdoms and Wales; the rose, thistle, shamrock, and leek; and along the lower rib of the whole arch, there is the following inscription in open iron letters, each of which is about two feet high:—
“This bridge was constructed the same year the battle of Waterloo was fought.”
All this road was new to my aunt; she admired some of the views exceedingly, and was, I think, particularly struck by a very wild spot where Ogwen Lake is pent up by a circle of dark, rugged, misty hills. In approaching this town we were amused by the various uses to which slate is applied—palings, stiles, gate-posts, tables, benches, troughs, milk-bowls, and many others; and as the famous Penrhyn slate quarries are within a few miles, my uncle proposes to remain here to-morrow, in order to visit them.
Penrhyn Arms, Bangor.
21st.—Well, mamma, we have been to those famous quarries, and they are indeed wonderful. But to me the most striking thing about them is, that such prodigious excavations should have been made in so short a period; for we were attended by an old man who actually remembers the first opening of the large quarry. It also seemed astonishing that they should have been the work of men who appeared so diminutive, when compared with the huge blocks of slate round which I saw them clustering and bustling like a colony of little ants round a straw.
Every thing is done here by a kind of task work. A piece of the rock is bought by a party of men, who agree to work together; they convert it into as great a number of slates as they can, and the overseer purchases them at stated prices. Their first operation is to blast off a large block: this is done by making a round hole about two or three feet deep, with a pointed iron crow; a pound of gunpowder is then poured in, and the hole is rammed full of clay or broken slate. A thick wire, which was kept in the hole while the ramming was going on, is now withdrawn, and a straw filled with fine powder is introduced into its place with a bit of match-paper fixed to the upper end. All is now ready—a man calls out with a loud voice that he is going to fire—the workmen scamper away and hidethemselves in the hollows of the rock—and he then lights the slow-match, and escapes as fast as he can. I saw several of these explosions, or “shots,” as they call them, each of them cracking the rock to a great distance, and carrying up in the air a frightful shower of fragments, which, my uncle says, reminded him of the stones he saw thrown out of Mount Vesuvius, in one of the great eruptions. The masses that were cracked by the explosion are now detached with levers and wedges, and broken into pieces of a proper size, which are then split into slates, while the blasters are preparing fresh materials; so that no one is idle for a moment.
The names given to the different sizes of slates will amuse you; they are taken from all ranks of our sex; queens, duchesses, countesses and ladies; and each size has its peculiar thickness. I was very much interested by the quickness and expertness with which the splitters did their part of the business: the workman gently drives a chisel, or thin wedge, with his mallet into the edge of the block—you see the crack running slowly along—and then by a certain motion of the chisel he separates the whole surface as neatly as a carpenter splits a piece of straight deal into laths. I was surprised at seeing some of these thin leaves of slate bending considerably while the splitter was forcing them off; but my uncle says, that all stones have more or lesselasticity, and that a small marble ball will rebound to a considerable height, if dropped on a hard substance. Some kinds of stone have a disposition to warp or bend permanently, as he made me recollect was the case in one of the slabs of marble in the dining-room fire-place at Fernhurst; and, he says, that the flags in many of the streets of London, are hollow on the upper surface from their having been originally too thin, and from being supported only at the edges, they have yielded in the middle.
After the slates are split, they are squared and cut to the various shapes and sizes used in roofing; this is generally done in a rough but expeditious manner with a sort of a chopper, but some of the larger and finer kinds are cut with frame-saws, so as to be precisely of the same dimensions, and to have nice smooth edges. These are calledmilledslates, because the saws are worked by a water-mill. Of course, we went to see this operation: a fine mountain stream turns the wheel which gives motion to more than a dozen pair of long frame-saws; each pair is set to the distance required for the length or the breadth of the slate, so that the parallel sides are cut by the same stroke; and, as the saws move forward and backward, water is kept constantly dripping into the cut, and sand is thrown in by boys. The saws, we were told, would make but slow progress without the assistance of sand—thesharp grains of which are carried forward by the jagged teeth of the saw, and are thus made to tear away the slate.
“It is on this principle,” said my uncle, “that precious stones are cut by a thin circular plate of iron, with emery, or diamond powder. And a seal engraver’s apparatus is only a sort of lathe, to which he can attach small copper-wheels that are made to revolve with great rapidity. To the plain edge of one of these wheels, he applies oil, with a little diamond powder, which soon cuts into the hardest stone; and thus by the form and size of the wheel, and the direction in which the stone is pressed against it, he can accomplish any device either in relief or intaglio. In all these cases, the particles of sand, emery, or diamond, bed themselves in the soft metal, and grind away the harder surface opposed to them; and, what will appear rather singular at first sight, when two hard substances rub against each other, it is the hardest which wears away the most. For instance, the highly tempered steelknife-edges, by which some pendulums are suspended, for experimental purposes, are less liable to wear than the still harder agate planes, on which they work: for the minute atoms of dust, conveyed by the air, adhere to the steel, and in the course of time act upon the agate.”
But to return to our mill. Solid blocks, thick enough to make about twenty slates, are thussawed first, and afterwards split in the usual manner. Here also, we saw an immense number of little writing-slates; they are made from the finest grained part of the quarry; and their smooth surface is produced by an operation very like that of planing a board.
The great blocks are carried from the quarry to the mill, and the slates, when dressed and finished, are also conveyed to the sea-side, by little waggons oniron railways. It is wonderful what a load a horse will draw in this manner when compared with the utmost work he can do on the best common road; and yet a railway appears to be a very simple contrivance. Two parallel lines of flat iron bars are laid along the road; the horse walks between them, and thus the wheels of the waggon in rolling along the bars, neither meet with the stones and obstacles which would impede their motion on a road, nor do they sink into its hollows, and soft places. The bars are scarcely broader than the rim of the wheels, which would, therefore, slip off, but for a little raised ledge, or, as it is called aflange, along one edge of each bar. When railways are intended to carry heavy weights, both going and coming, they must be laid perfectly level: but at these quarries, as all the weight goesdownto the Port for embarkation, the same horse that draws several loaded waggons hooked together down hill, can return up hill with an equal number of empty ones.
From the mill we drove to the Port of Penrhyn, which is just behind this house, and where all the slates are shipped. A prettier spot cannot be seen—the sea to the northward—the Strait of Menai—the blue hills of Wales—the town of Beaumaris, on the opposite coast of Anglesea—and the quay or pier embosomed by the surrounding high banks, with a few patches of trees on their summits. The whole harbour was full of vessels waiting their turn for loading, and the busy appearance of waggons, horses, and drivers, ships, boats, and sailors, all in motion, presented a most interesting scene.
Before I go to bed, I must add a curious coincidence that occurred this evening. My uncle had brought with him, as his travelling book, the Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford; and, after he had been explaining to me the history and the importance of rail roads, he opened his book, and I sat down to my journal. But he had scarcely begun to read, when he came to a passage describing a road, nicely levelled, and laid with long boards—to all intents arailway: and this was used for conveying coals from one of the pits at Newcastle, so long ago as the year 1670. Yet it was not, my uncle remarked, till 1767, thatironrailways were invented. Mr. W. Reynolds of Coalbrook-dale first adopted them; and his example was quickly followed in all parts of Great Britain, and indeed all over the world.
One word more, dear mamma, and then I will go to bed; but my uncle has just read to us such an interesting passage from that same Lord Keeper’s life, that I really must tell it to you. The children of the family at Badminton were bred with philosophical care; no inferior servants were permitted to talk to them for fear of their imbibing some mean sentiments; and he mentions the following anecdote as a proof of their high principles. Lord Arthur, who was then little more than five years old, reproached the Chief Justice Hales with his cruelty in condemning men to be hanged. The judge told him, that if they were not hanged, they would continue to kill and steal. “No,” replied the boy, “you should make them promise upon their honour that they would not.”
What a fine sense of honour that child had!
June 22nd.—
Mona Inn.