"Men of all climes—attach'd to none—were there;"
"Men of all climes—attach'd to none—were there;"
—a desperate race—robbers and reavers, and ruffians and rapers, and pirates and murderers—mingled with the heroes who, fired by freedom, had fought for the land of lilies, with its vine-vales and "hills of sweet myrtle"—doomed to die in captivity, immured in that doleful mansion on the sullen moor. There thousands pined and wore away and wasted—and when not another groan remained within the bones of their breasts, they gave up the ghost. Young heroes prematurely old in baffled passions—life's best and strongest passions, that scorned to go to sleep but in the sleep of death. These died in their golden prime. With them went down into unpitied and unhonoured graves—for pity and honour dwell not in houses so haunted—veterans in their iron age—some self-smitten with ghastly wounds that let life finally bubbleout of sinewy neck or shaggy bosom—or the poison-bowl convulsed their giant limbs unto unquivering rest. Yet there you saw a wild strange tumult of troubled happiness—which, as you looked into its heart, was transfigured into misery. There volatile spirits fluttered in their cage, like birds that seem not to hate nor to be unhappy in confinement, but, hanging by beak or claws, to be often playing with the glittering wires—to be amusing themselves, so it seems, with drawing up, by small enginery, their food and drink, which soon sickens, however, on their stomachs, till, with ruffled plumage, they are often found in the morning lying on their backs, with clenched feet, and neck bent as if twisted, on the scribbled sand, stone-dead. There you saw pale youths—boys almost like girls, so delicate looked they in that hot infected air which, ventilate it as you will, is never felt to breathe on the face like the fresh air of liberty—once bold and bright midshipmen in frigate or first-rater, and saved by being picked up by the boats of the ship that had sunk her by one double-shotted broadside, or sent her in one explosion splintering into the sky, and splashing into the sea, in less than a minute the thunder silent, and the fiery shower over and gone—there you saw such lads as these, who used almost to weep if they got not duly the dear-desired letter from sister or sweetheart, and when they did duly get it, opened it with trembling fingers, and even then let drop some natural tears—there we saw them leaping and dancing, with gross gesticulations and horrid oaths obscene, with grim outcasts from nature, whose mustached mouths were rank with sin and pollution—monsters for whom hell was yawning—their mortal mire already possessed with a demon. There, wretched, woe-begone, and wearied out with recklessness and desperation, many wooed Chance and Fortune, who they hoped might yet listen to their prayers—and kept rattling the dice—cursing them that gave the indulgence—even in their cells of punishment for disobedience or mutiny. There you saw some, who in the crowded courts "sat apart retired,"—bringing the practised skill that once supported, or the native genius that once adorned life, to bear on beautiful contrivances and fancies elaborately executed with meanest instruments, till they rivalled or outdid the work of art assisted by all the ministries of science. And thus won they a poor pittance wherewithalto purchase some little comfort or luxury, or ornament to their persons; for vanity had not forsaken some in their rusty squalor, and they sought to please her, their mistress or their bride. There you saw accomplished men conjuring before their eyes, on the paper or the canvass, to feed the longings of their souls, the lights and the shadows of the dear days that far away were beautifying some sacred spot of "la belle France"—perhaps some festal scene, for love in sorrow is still true to remembered joy, where once with youths and maidens
"They led the dance beside the murmuring Loire."
"They led the dance beside the murmuring Loire."
There you heard—and hushed then was all the hubbub—some clear silver voice, sweet almost as woman's, yet full of manhood in its depths, singing to the gay guitar, touched, though the musician was of the best and noblest blood of France, with a master's hand, "La belle Gabrielle!" And there might be seen, in the solitude of their own abstractions, men with minds that had sounded the profounds of science, and, seemingly undisturbed by all that clamour, pursuing the mysteries of lines and numbers—conversing with the harmonies and lofty stars of heaven, deaf to all the discord and despair of earth. Or religious still even more than they—for those were mental, these spiritual—you beheld there men, whose heads before their time were becoming grey, meditating on their own souls, and in holy hope and humble trust in their Redeemer, if not yet prepared, perpetually preparing themselves for the world to come!
To return to Birds in Cages;—they are, when well, uniformly as happy as the day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no, to burst out into song—to hop about so pleased and pert—to play such fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs—to sleep so soundly, and to awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing to get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage been flung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the hand inserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had not the slightest idea of what he was saying; and had he been up to the meaning of his words, would have been shocked at hisungrateful folly. Look at Canaries, and Chaffinches, and Bullfinches, and "the rest," how they amuse themselves for a while flitting about the room, and then, finding how dull a thing it is to be citizens of the world, bounce up to their cages, and shut the door from the inside, glad to be once more at home. Begin to whistle or sing yourself, and forthwith you have a duet or a trio. We can imagine no more perfectly tranquil and cheerful life than that of a Goldfinch in a cage in spring, with his wife and his children. All his social affections are cultivated to the utmost. He possesses many accomplishments unknown to his brethren among the trees;—he has never known what it is to want a meal in times of the greatest scarcity; and he admires the beautiful frostwork on the windows, when thousands of his feathered friends are buried in the snow, or, what is almost as bad, baked up into pies, and devoured by a large supper-party of both sexes, who fortify their flummery and flirtation by such viands, and, remorseless, swallow dozens upon dozens of the warblers of the woods.
Ay, ay, Mr Goldy! you are wondering what we are now doing, and speculating upon the scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as if you would know the subject of his lucubrations. What the wiser or better wouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thine goes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts his inquisitive nose within the wires—or when a strange cat glides round and round the room, fascinating thee with the glare of his fierce fixed eyes;—but what is all that to the woes of an Editor?—Yes, sweet simpleton! do you not know that we are the editor ofBlackwood's Magazine—Christopher North! Yes, indeed, we are that very man—that self-same much-calumniated man-monster and Ogre. There, there!—perch on our shoulder, and let us laugh together at the whole world.
The golden eagle leads the van of our Birds of Prey—and there she sits in her usual carriage when in a state of rest. Her hunger and her thirst have been appeased—her wings are folded up in a dignified tranquillity—her talons, grasping a leafless branch, are almost hidden by the feathers of her breast—her sleepless eye has lost something of its ferocity—and the Royal Bird is almost serene in her solitary state in the cliff. The gorcock unalarmed crows among the moors and mosses—the blackbird whistles in the birken shaw—and the cony erects his ears at the mouth of his burrow, and whisks away frolicsome among the whins or heather.
There is no index to the hour—neither light nor shadow—no cloud. But from the composed aspect of the Bird, we may suppose it to be the hush of evening after a day of successful foray. The imps in the eyrie have been fed, and their hungry cry will not be heard till the dawn. The mother has there taken up her watchful rest, till in darkness she may glide up to her brood—the sire is somewhere sitting within her view among the rocks—a sentinel whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, in exquisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on whom rarely, and as if by a miracle, can steal the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, to wreak vengeance with his rifle on the spoiler of sheep-walk and forest-chase.
Yet sometimes it chanceth that the yellow lustre of her keen, wild, fierce eye is veiled, even in daylight, by the film of sleep. Perhaps sickness has been at the heart of the dejected bird, or fever wasted her wing. The sun may have smitten her, or the storm driven her against a rock. Then hunger and thirst—which in pride of plumage she scorned, and which only made her fiercer on the edge of her unfedeyrie, as she whetted her beak on the flint-stone, and clutched the strong heather-stalks in her talons, as if she were anticipating prey—quell her courage, and in famine she eyes afar off the fowls she is unable to pursue, and with one stroke strike to earth. Her flight is heavier and heavier each succeeding day—she ventures not to cross the great glens with or without lochs—but flaps her way from rock to rock, lower and lower down along the same mountain-side—and finally, drawn by her weakness into dangerous descent, she is discovered at grey dawn far below the region of snow, assailed and insulted by the meanest carrion; till a bullet whizzing through her heart, down she topples, and soon is despatched by blows from the rifle-butt, the shepherd stretching out his foe's carcass on the sward, eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, with leg thick as his own wrist, and foot broad as his own hand.
But behold the Golden Eagle, as she has pounced, and is exulting over her prey! With her head drawn back between the crescent of her uplifted wings, which she will not fold till that prey be devoured, eye glaring cruel joy, neck-plumage bristling, tail-feathers fan-spread, and talons driven through the victim's entrails and heart—there she is new lighted on the ledge of a precipice, and fancy hears her yell and its echo. Beak and talons, all her life long, have had a stain of blood, for the murderess observes no Sabbath, and seldom dips them in loch or sea, except when dashing down suddenly among the terrified water-fowl from her watch-tower in the sky. The week-old fawn had left the doe's side but for a momentary race along the edge of the coppice; a rustle and a shadow—and the burden is borne off to the cliffs of Benevis. In an instant the small animal is dead—after a short exultation torn into pieces, and by eagles and eaglets devoured, its unswallowed or undigested bones mingle with those of many other creatures, encumbering the eyrie, and strewed around it over the bloody platform on which the young demons crawl forth to enjoy the sunshine.
Oh for the life of an eagle written by himself! It would outsell the Confessions even of the English Opium-Eater. Proudly would he, or she, write of birth and parentage. On the rock of ages he first opened his eyes to the sun, in noble instinct affronting and outstaring the light. The Great Glenof Scotland—hath it not been the inheritance of his ancestors for many thousand years? No polluting mixture of ignoble blood, from intermarriages of necessity or convenience with kite, buzzard, hawk, or falcon. No, the Golden Eagles of Glen-Falloch, surnamed the Sun-starers, have formed alliances with the Golden Eagles of Cruachan, Benlawers, Shehallion, and Lochnagair—the Lightning-Glints, the Flood-fallers, the Storm-wheelers, the Cloud-cleavers, ever since the deluge. The education of the autobiographer had not been intrusted to a private tutor. Parental eyes, beaks, and talons, provided sustenance for his infant frame; and in that capacious eyrie, year after year repaired by dry branches from the desert, parental advice was yelled into him, meet for the expansion of his instinct, as wide and wonderful as the reason of earth-crawling man. What a noble naturalist did he, in a single session at the College of the Cliff, become! Of the customs, and habits, and haunts of all inferior creatures, he speedily made himself master—ours included. Nor was his knowledge confined to theory, but reduced to daily practice. He kept himself in constant training—taking a flight of a couple of hundred miles before breakfast—paying a forenoon visit to the farthest of the Hebride Isles, and returning to dinner in Glenco. In one day he has flown to Norway on a visit to his uncle by the mother's side, and returned the next to comfort his paternal uncle, lying sick at the Head of the Cambrian Dee. He soon learned to despise himself for having once yelled for food, when food was none; and to sit or sail, on rock or through ether, athirst and an hungered, but mute. The virtues of patience, endurance, and fortitude, have become with him, in strict accordance with the Aristotelian Moral Philosophy—habits. A Peripatetic Philosopher he could hardly be called—properly speaking, he belongs to the Solar School—an airy sect, who take very high ground, indulge in lofty flights, and are often lost in the clouds. Now and then a light chapter might be introduced, setting forth how he and other youngsters of the Blood Royal were wont to take an occasional game at High-Jinks, or tourney in air lists, the champions on opposite sides flying from the Perthshire and from the Argyllshire mountains, and encountering with a clash in the azure common, six thousand feet high. But the fever of love burned in his blood, and flying to the mountainsof another continent, in obedience to the yell of an old oral tradition, he wooed and won his virgin bride—a monstrous beauty, wider-winged than himself, to kill or caress, and bearing the proof of her noble nativity in the radiant Iris that belongs in perfection of fierceness but to the Sun-starers, and in them is found, unimpaired by cloudiest clime, over the uttermost parts of the earth. The bridegroom and his bride, during the honey-moon, slept on the naked rock—till they had built their eyrie beneath its cliff-canopy on the mountain-brow. When the bride was "as Eagles wish to be who love their lords"—devoted unto her was the bridegroom, even as the cushat murmuring to his brooding mate in the central pine-grove of a forest. Tenderly did he drop from his talons, close beside her beak, the delicate spring lamb, or the too early leveret, owing to the hurried and imprudent marriage of its parents before March, buried in a living tomb on April's closing day. Through all thy glens, Albyn! hadst thou reason to mourn, at the bursting of the shells that Queen-bird had been cherishing beneath her bosom. Aloft in heaven wheeled the Royal Pair, from rising to setting sun. Among the bright-blooming heather they espied the tartan'd shepherd, or hunter creeping like a lizard, and from behind the vain shadow of a rock watching with his rifle the flight he would fain see shorn of its beams. The flocks were thinned—and the bleating of desolate dams among the woolly people heard from many a brae. Poison was strewn over the glens for their destruction, but the Eagle, like the lion, preys not on carcasses; and the shepherd dogs howled in agony over the carrion in which they devoured death. Ha! was not that a day of triumph to the Sun-starers of Cruachan, when sky-hunting in couples, far down on the greensward before the ruined gateway of Kilchurn Castle, they saw, left all to himself in the sunshine, the infant heir of the Campbell of Breadalbane, the child of the Lord of Glenorchy and all its streams! Four talons in an instant were in his heart. Too late were the outcries from all the turrets; for ere the castle-gates were flung open, the golden head of the royal babe was lying in gore, in the Eyrie on the iron ramparts of Ben-Slarive—his blue eyes dug out—his rosy cheeks torn—and his brains dropping from beaks that revelled yelling within the skull!—Such are a few hints for "Some Passages in the Life of the Golden Eagle, written by Himself,"—in one volume crown octavo—Blackwoods, Edinburgh and London.
O heavens and earth!—forests and barn-yards! what a difference with a distinction between aGolden Eagleand aGreen Goose! There, all neck and bottom, splay-footed, and hissing in miserable imitation of a serpent, lolling from side to side, up and down like an ill-trimmed punt, the downy gosling waddles through the green mire, and, imagining that King George the Fourth is meditating mischief against him, cackles angrily as he plunges into the pond. No swan that "on still St Mary's lake floats double, swan and shadow," so proud as he! He prides himself on being a gander, and never forgets the lesson instilled into him by his parents, soon as he chipt the shell in the nest among the nettles, that his ancestors saved the Roman Capitol. In process of time, in company with swine, he grazes on the common, and insults the Egyptians in their roving camp. Then comes the season of plucking—and this very pen bears testimony to his tortures. Out into the houseless winter is he driven—and, if he escapes being frozen into a lump of fat ice, he is crammed till his liver swells into a four-pounder—his cerebellum is cut by the cruel knife of a phrenological cook, and his remains buried with a cerement of apple sauce in the paunches of apoplectic aldermen, eating against each other at a civic feast! Such are a few hints for "Some Passages in the Life of a Green Goose," written by himself—in foolscap octavo—published by Quack and Co., Ludgate Lane, and sold by all booksellers in town and country.
Poor poets must not meddle with eagles. In the "Fall of Nineveh," Mr Atherstone describes a grand review of his army by Sardanapalus. Two million men are put into motion by the moving of the Assyrian flag-staff in the hand of the king, who takes his station on a mount conspicuous to all the army. This flag-staff, though "tall as a mast"—Mr Atherstone does not venture to go on to say with Milton, "hewn on Norwegian hills," or "of some tall ammiral," though the readers' minds supply the deficiency—this mast was, we are told, for "two strong mena task;" but it must have been so for twenty. To have had the least chance of being all at once seen by two million of men, it could not have been less than fifty feet high—and if Sardanapalus waved the royal standardof Assyria round his head, Samson or O'Doherty must have been a joke to him. However, we shall suppose he did; and what was the result? Such shouts arose that the solid walls of Nineveh were shook, "and the firm ground made tremble." But this was not all.
"At his height,A speck scarce visible, the eagle heard,And felt his strong wing falter: terror-struck,Fluttering and wildly screaming, down he sank—Down through the quivering air: another shout,—His talons droop—his sunny eye grows dark—His strengthless pennons fail—plump down he falls,Even like a stone. Amid the far-off hills,With eye of fire, and shaggy mane uprear'd,The sleeping lion in his den sprang up;Listen'd awhile—then laid his monstrous mouthClose to the floor, and breathed hot roarings outIn fierce reply."
"At his height,A speck scarce visible, the eagle heard,And felt his strong wing falter: terror-struck,Fluttering and wildly screaming, down he sank—Down through the quivering air: another shout,—His talons droop—his sunny eye grows dark—His strengthless pennons fail—plump down he falls,Even like a stone. Amid the far-off hills,With eye of fire, and shaggy mane uprear'd,The sleeping lion in his den sprang up;Listen'd awhile—then laid his monstrous mouthClose to the floor, and breathed hot roarings outIn fierce reply."
What think ye of that, John Audubon, Charles Buonaparte, J. Prideaux Selby, James Wilson, Sir William Jardine, and ye other European and American ornithologists? Pray, Mr Atherstone, did you ever see an eagle—a speck in the sky? Never again suffer yourself, oh, dear sir! to believe old women's tales of men on earth shooting eagles with their mouths; because the thing is impossible, even had their mouthpieces had percussion-locks—had they been crammed with ammunition to the muzzle. Had a stray sparrow been fluttering in the air, he would certainly have got a fright, and probably a fall—nor would there have been any hope for a tom-tit. But an eagle—an eagle ever so many thousand feet aloft—poo, poo!—he would merely have muted on the roaring multitude, and given Sardanapalus an additional epaulette. Why, had a string of wild-geese at the time been warping their way on the wind, they would merely have shot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, and answered the earth-born shout with an air-born gabble—clangour to clangour. Where were Mr Atherstone's powers of ratiocination, and all his acoustics? Two shouts slew an eagle. What became of all the other denizens of air—especially crows, ravens, and vultures, who, seeing two millions of men, must have come flocking against a day of battle? Every mother's son of themmust have gone to pot. Then what scrambling among the allied troops! And what was one eagle doing by himself "up-by yonder?" Was he the only eagle in Assyria—the secular bird of ages? Who was looking at him, first a speck—then faltering—then fluttering and wildly screaming—then plump down like a stone? Mr Atherstone talks as if he saw it. In the circumstances he had no business with his "sunny eye growing dark." That is entering too much into the medical, or rather anatomical symptoms of his apoplexy, and would be better for a medical journal than an epic poem. But to be done with it—two shouts that slew an eagle a mile up the sky, must have cracked all the tympana of the two million shouters. The entire army must have become as deaf as a post. Nay, Sardanapalus himself, on the mount, must have been blown into the air as by the explosion of a range of gunpowder-mills; the campaign taken a new turn; and a revolution been brought about, of which, at this distance of place and time, it is not easy for us to conjecture what might have been the fundamental features on which it would have hinged—and thus an entirely new aspect given to all the histories of the world.
What is said about the lion, is to our minds equally picturesque and absurd. He was among the "far-off hills." How far, pray? Twenty miles? If so, then without a silver ear-trumpet he could not have heard the huzzas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh as to allow the lion to hear the huzzas even in his sleep, the epithet "far-off" should be altered, and the lion himself brought from the interior. But we cannot believe that lions were permitted to live in dens within ear-shot of Nineveh. Nimrod had taught them "never to come there no more"—and Semiramis looked sharp after the suburbs. But, not to insist unduly upon a mere matter of police, is it the nature of lions, lying in their dens among far-off hills, to start up from their sleep, and "breathe hot roarings out" in fierce reply to the shouts of armies? All stuff! Mr Atherstone shows off his knowledge of natural history, in telling us that the said lion, in roaring, "laid his monstrous mouth close to the floor." We believe he does so; but did Mr Atherstone learn the fact from Cuvier or from Wombwell? It is always dangerous to a poet to be too picturesque; and in this case, you are made, whether you willor no, to see an old, red, lean, mangy monster, called a lion, in his unhappy den in a menagerie, bathing his beard in the sawdust, and from his toothless jaws "breathing hot roarings out," to the terror of servant-girls and children, in fierce reply to a man in a hairy cap and full suit of velveteen, stirring him up with a long pole, and denominating him by the sacred name of the great asserter of Scottish independence.
Sir Humphry Davy—in his own science the first man of his age—does not shine in his "Salmonia"—pleasant volume though it be—as an ornithologist. Let us see.
"Poiet.—The scenery improves as we advance nearer the lower parts of the lake. The mountains become higher, and that small island or peninsula presents a bold craggy outline; and the birch-wood below it, and the pines above, make a scene somewhat Alpine in character. But what is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the end of the lake? Surely it is an eagle!
"Hal.—You are right; it is an eagle, and of a rare and peculiar species—the grey or silver eagle, a noble bird! From the size of the animal, it must be the female; and her eyrie is in that high rock. I dare say the male is not far off."
Sir Humphry speaks in his introductory pages of Mr Wordsworth as a lover of fishing and fishermen; and we cannot help thinking and feeling that he intends Poietes as an image of that great Poet. What! William Wordsworth, the very high-priest of nature, represented to have seen an eagle for the first time of his life only then, and to have boldly ventured on a conjecture that such was the name and nature of the bird! "But what is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the end of the lake? Surely it is an eagle!" "Yes, you are right—it is an eagle." Ha—ha—ha—ha—ha—ha! Sir Humphry—Sir Humphry—that guffaw was not ours—it came from the Bard of Rydal—albeit unused to the laughing mood—in the haunted twilight of that beautiful—that solemn Terrace.
Poietes having been confirmed, by the authority of Halieus, in his belief that the bird is an eagle, exclaims, agreeably to the part he plays, "Look at the bird! She dashes into the water,falling like a rockand raising a column of spray—she hasfallen from a great height. And now she rises again into the air—what an extraordinary sight!" Nothing is so annoying as to be ordered to look at a sight which, unless you shut your eyes, it is impossible for you not to see. A person behaving in a boat like Poietes, deserved being flung overboard. "Look at the bird!" Why, every eye was already upon her; and if Poietes had had a single spark of poetry in his composition, he would have been struck mute by such a sight, instead of bawling out, open-mouthed and goggle-eyed, like a Cockney to a rocket at Vauxhall. Besides, an eagle does not, when descending on her prey, fall like a rock. There is nothing like the "vis inertiæ" in her precipitation. You still see the self-willed energy of the ravenous bird, as the mass of plumes flashes in the spray—of which, by the by, there never was, nor will be, a column so raised. She is as much the queen of birds as she sinks as when she soars—her trust and her power are still seen and felt to be in her pinions, whether she shoots to or from the zenith—to a falling star she might be likened—just as any other devil—either by Milton or Wordsworth—for such a star seems to our eye and our imagination ever instinct with spirit, not to be impelled by exterior force, but to be self-shot from heaven.
Upon our word, we begin to believe that we ourselves deserve the name of Poietes much better than the gentleman who at threescore had never seen an eagle. "She has fallen from a great height," quoth the gentleman—"What an extraordinary sight!" he continueth—while we are mute as the oar suspended by the up-gazing Celt, whose quiet eye brightens as it pursues the Bird to her eyrie in the cliff over the cove where the red-deer feed.
Poietes having given vent to his emotions in such sublime exclamations—"Look at the bird!" "What an extraordinary sight!" might have thenceforth held his tongue, and said no more about eagles. But Halieus cries, "There! you see her rise with a fish in her talons"—and Poietes, very simply, or rather like a simpleton, returns for answer, "Shegives an interest which I hardly expected to have found in this scene. Pray, are theremany of these animalsin this country?" A poet hardly expecting to find interest in such a scene as a great Highland loch—Loch Maree! "Pray, are there manyof these hanimals in this country?" Loud cries of Oh! oh! oh! No doubt an eagle is an animal; like Mr Cobbett or Mr O'Connell—"a very fine animal;" but we particularly, andearnestly, and anxiously, request Sir Humphry Davy not to call her so again—but to use the term bird, or any other term he chooses, except animal. Animal, a living creature, is too general, too vague by far; and somehow or other it offends our ear shockingly when applied to an eagle. We may be wrong, but in a trifling matter of this kind Sir Humphry surely will not refuse our supplication. Let him call a horse an animal, if he chooses—or an ass—or a cow—but not an eagle—as he loves us, not an eagle; let him call it a bird—the Bird of Jove—the Queen or King of the Sky—or anything else he chooses—but not an animal—no—no—no—not an animal, as he hopes to prosper, to be praised in Maga, embalmed and immortalised.
Neither ought Poietes to have asked if there were "manyof these animals" in this country. He ought to have known that there are notmanyof these animals in any country. Eagles are proud—apt to hold their heads very high—and to make themselves scarce. A great many eagles all flying about together would look most absurd. They are aware of that, and fly in "ones and twos"—a couple perhaps to a county. Poietes might as well have asked Mungo Park if there were a great many lions in Africa. Mungo, we think, saw but one; and that was one too much. There were probably a few more between Sego and Timbuctoo—but there are not a "great many of those animals in that country"—though quite sufficient for the purpose. How the Romans contrived to get at hundreds for a single show, perplexes our power of conjecture.
Halieus says—with a smile on his lip surely—in answer to the query of Poietes—"Of this species I have seen but these two; and, I believe, the young ones migrate as soon as they can provide for themselves; for this solitary bird requires a large space to move and feed in, and does not allow its offspring to partake its reign, or to live near it." This is all pretty true, and known to every child rising or risen six, except poor Poietes. He had imagined that there were "many of these animals in this country," that they all went a-fishing together as amicably as five hundred sail of Manksmen among a shoal of herrings.
Throughout these Dialogues we have observed that Ornither rarely opens his mouth. Why so taciturn? On the subjectof birds he ought, from his name, to be well informed; and how could he let slip an opportunity, such as will probably never be afforded him again in this life, of being eloquent on the Silver Eagle? Ornithology is surely the department of Ornither. Yet there is evidently something odd and peculiar in his idiosyncrasy; for we observe that he never once alludes to "these animals," birds, during the whole excursion. He has not taken his gun with him into the Highlands, a sad oversight indeed in a gentleman who "is to be regarded as generally fond of the sports of the field." Flappers are plentiful over all the moors about the middle of July; and hoodies, owls, hawks, ravens, make all first-rate shooting to sportsmen not over anxious about the pot. It is to be presumed, too, that he can stuff birds. What noble specimens might he not have shot for Mr Selby! On one occasion, "theSilver Eagle" is preying in a pool within slug range, and there is some talk of shooting him—we suppose with an oar, or the butt of a fishing-rod, for the party have no firearms—but Poietes insists on sparing his life, because "these animals" are a picturesque accompaniment to the scenery, and "give it an interest which he had not expected to find" in mere rivers, lochs, moors, and mountains. Genus Falco must all the while have been laughing in his sleeve at the whole party—particularly at Ornither—who, to judge from his general demeanour, may be a fair shot with number five at an old newspaper expanded on a barn-door twenty yards off, but never could have had the audacity to think in his most ambitious mood of letting off his gun at an Eagle.
But further, Halieus, before he took upon him to speak so authoritatively about eagles, should have made himself master of their names and natures. He is manifestly no scientific ornithologist. We are. The general question concerning Eagles in Scotland may now be squeezed into very small compass. Exclusive of the true Osprey (Falco Haliætus), which is rather a larger fishing-hawk than an eagle, there are two kinds, viz.—theGolden Eagle(F. Chrysaëtos), and theWhite-TailedorCinerous Eagle(F. Albicilla). The other twonominalspecies are disposed of in the following manner:—First, theRing-Tailed Eagle(F. Fulvus) is the young of the Golden Eagle, being distinguished in early life by having the basal and central portion of the tail white, which colourdisappears as the bird attains the adult state. Second, the$1(F. Ossifragus), commonly so called, is the young of the White-tailed Eagle above named, from which it differs in having a brown tail; for in this species the white of the tail becomes every year more apparent as the bird increases in age, whereas, in the Golden Eagle, the white altogether disappears in the adult.
It is to theRing-Tailed Eagle, and, by consequence, to the$1, that the name ofBlack Eagleis applied in the Highlands.
The White-tailed or Sea Eagle, as it becomes old, attains, in addition to the pure tail, a pale or bleached appearance, from which it may merit and obtain the name of Grey orSilver Eagle, as Sir Humphry Davy chooses to call it; but it is not known among naturalists by that name. There is no other species, however, to which the name can apply; and, therefore, Sir Humphry has committed the very gross mistake of calling the Grey or Silver Eagle (to use his own nomenclature) a very rare Eagle, since it is the most common of all the Scots, and also—a fortiori—of all the English Eagles—being in fact theSea Eagleof the Highlands.
It preys often on fish dead or alive; but not exclusively, as it also attacks young lambs, and drives off the ravens from carrion prey, being less fastidious in its diet than theGolden Eagle, which probably kills its own meat—and has been known to carry off children; for a striking account of one of which hay-field robberies you have but a few minutes to wait.
As to its driving off its young, its habits are probably similar in this respect to other birds of prey, none of which appear to keep together in families after the young can shift for themselves; but we have never met with any one who has seen them in the act of driving. It is stated vaguely, in all books, of all eagles.
As to its requiring a large range to feed in—we have only to remark that, from the powerful flight of these birds, and the wild and barren nature of the countries which they inhabit, there can be no doubt that they fly far, and "prey in distant isles"—as Thomson has it; but Halieus needed not have stated this circumstance as a character of this peculiar eagle—for an eagle with a small range does not exist; and therefore it is to be presumed that they require a large one.
Further, all this being the case, there seems to be no necessity for the old eagles giving themselves the trouble to drive off the young ones, who by natural instinct will fly off of their own accord, as soon as their wings can bear them over the sea. If an eagle were so partial to his native vale, as never on any account, hungry or thirsty, drunk or sober, to venture into the next parish, why then the old people would be forced, on the old principle of self-preservation, to pack off their progeny to bed and board beyond Benevis. But an Eagle is a Citizen of the World. He is friendly to the views of Mr Huskisson on the Wool Trade, the Fisheries, and the Colonies—and acts upon the old adage,
"Every bird for himself, and God for us all!"
"Every bird for himself, and God for us all!"
To conclude, for the present, this branch of our subject, we beg leave humbly to express our belief, that Sir Humphry Davy never saw the Eagle, by him called the Grey or Silver, hunting for fish in the style described in "Salmonia." It does not dislike fish—but it is not its nature to keep hunting for them so, not in the Highlands at least, whatever it may do on American continent or isles. Sir Humphry talks of the bird dashing down repeatedly upon a pool within shot of the anglers. We have angled fifty times in the Highlands for Sir Humphry's once, but never saw nor heard of such a sight. He has read of such things, and introduced them into this dialogue for the sake of effect—all quite right to do—had his reading lain among trustworthy Ornithologists. The common Eagle—which he ignorantly, as we have seen, calls so rare—is a shy bird, as all shepherds know—and is seldom within range of the rifle. Gorged with blood, they are sometimes run in upon and felled with a staff or club. So perished, in the flower of his age, that Eagle whose feet now form handles to the bell-ropes of our Sanctum at Buchanan Lodge—and are the subject of a clever copy of verses by Mullion, entitled "All the Talons."
We said in "The Moors," that we envied not the eagle or any other bird his wings, and showed cause why we preferred our own feet. Had Puck wings? If he had, we retract, and would sport Puck.
Oberon."Fetch me this herb—and be thou here again,Ere the Leviathan can swim a league."Puck."I'll put a girdle round about the earthIn forty minutes."
Oberon.
"Fetch me this herb—and be thou here again,Ere the Leviathan can swim a league."
Puck.
"I'll put a girdle round about the earthIn forty minutes."
How infinitely more poetical are wings like these than seven-league boots! We declare, on our conscience, that we would not accept the present of a pair of seven-league boots to-morrow—or, if we did, it would be out of mere politeness to the genie who might press them on us, and the wisest thing we could do would be to lock them up in a drawer out of the reach of the servants. Suppose that we wished to walk from Clovenford to Innerleithen—why, with seven-league boots on, one single step would take us up to Posso, seven miles above Peebles! That would never do. By mincing one's steps, indeed, one might contrive to stop at Innerleithen; but suppose a gad-fly were to sting one's hip at the Pirn—one unintentional stride would deposit Christopher at Drummelzier, and another over the Cruik, and far away down Annan water! Therefore, there is nothing like wings. On wings you can flutter—and glide—and float and soar—now like a humming-bird among the flowers—now like a swan, half rowing, half sailing, and half flying adown a river—now like an eagle afloat in the blue ocean of heaven, or shooting sunwards, invisible in excess of light—and bidding farewell to earth and its humble shadows. "O that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest!" Who hath not, in some heavy hour or other, from the depth of his very soul, devoutly—passionately—hopelessly—breathed that wish to escape beyond the limits of woe and sin—not into the world of dreamless death; for weary though the immortal pilgrim may have been, never desired he the doom of annihilation, untroubled although it be, shorn of all the attributes of being—but he has prayed for the wings of the dove, because that fair creature, as she wheeled herself away from the sight of human dwellings, has seemed to disappear to his imagination among old glimmering forests, wherein she foldeth her wing and falleth gladly asleep—and therefore, in those agitated times when the spirits of men acknowledge kindred with the inferior creatures, and would fain interchange with them powers and qualities, they are willing even to lay down their intelligence, their reason, their conscience itself,so that they could but be blessed with the faculty of escaping from all the agonies that intelligence, and reason, and conscience alone can know, and beyond the reach of this world's horizon to flee away and be at rest!
Puck says he will put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. At what rate is that per second, taking the circumference of the earth at 27,000 miles, more or less? There is a question for the mechanics, somewhat about as difficult of solution as Lord Brougham's celebrated one of the Smuggler and the Revenue Cutter—for the solution of which he recommended the aid of algebra. It is not so quick as you would imagine. We forget the usual rate of a cannon-ball in good condition, when he is in training—and before he is at all blown. So do we forget, we are sorry to confess, the number of centuries that it would take a good, stout, well-made, able-bodied cannon-ball, to accomplish a journey to our planet from one of the fixed stars. The great difficulty, we confess, would be to get him safely conveyed thither. If that could be done, we should have no fear of his finding his way back, if not in our time, in that of our posterity. However red-hot he might have been on starting, he would be cool enough, no doubt, on his arrival at the goal; yet we should have no objection to back him against Time for a trifle—Time, we observe, in almost all matches being beat, often indeed by the most miserable hacks, that can with difficulty raise a gallop. Time, however, possibly runs booty; for when he does make play, it must be confessed that he is a spanker, and that nothing has been seen with such a stride since Eclipse.
O beautiful and beloved Highland Parish! in whose dashing glens our beating heart first felt the awe of solitude, and learned to commune (alas! to what purpose?) with the tumult of its own thoughts! The circuit of thy skies was indeed a glorious arena spread over the mountain-tops for the combats of the great birds of prey! One wild cry or another was in the lift—of the hawk, or the glead, or the raven, or the eagle—or when those fiends slept, of the peaceful heron, and sea-bird by wandering boys pursued in its easy flight, till the snow-white child of ocean wavered away far inland, as if in search of a steadfast happiness unknown on the restless waves. Seldom did the eagle stoop to the challenge of theinferior fowl; but when he did, it was like a mailed knight treading down unknown men in battle. The hawks, and the gleads, and the ravens, and the carrion-crows, and the hooded-crows, and the rooks, and the magpies, and all the rest of the rural militia, forgetting their own feuds, sometimes came sallying from all quarters, with even a few facetious jackdaws from the old castle, to show fight with the monarch of the air. Amidst all that multitude of wings winnowing the wind, was heard the sough and whizz of those mighty vans, as the Royal Bird, himself an army, performed his majestic evolutions with all the calm confidence of a master in the art of aerial war, now shooting up half-a-thousand feet perpendicular, and now suddenly plump-down into the rear of the croaking, cawing, and chattering battalions, cutting off their retreat to the earth. Then the rout became general, the missing, however, far outnumbering the dead. Keeping possession of the field of battle, hung the eagle for a short while motionless—till with one fierce yell of triumph he seemed to seek the sun, and disappear like a speck in the light, surveying half of Scotland at a glance, and a thousand of her isles.
Some people have a trick of describing incidents as having happened within their own observation, when in fact they were at the time lying asleep in bed, and disturbing the whole house with the snore of their dormitory. Such is too often the character of the eyewitnesses of the present age. Now, we would not claim personal acquaintance with an incident we had not seen—no, not for a hundred guineas per sheet; and, therefore, we warn the reader not to believe the following little story about an eagle and child (by the way, that is the Derby crest, and a favourite sign of inns in the north of England) on our authority. "I tell the tale as 'twas told to me," by the schoolmaster of Naemanslaws, in the shire of Ayr; and if the incident never occurred, then must he have been one of the greatest liars that ever taught the young idea how to shoot. For our single selves, we are by nature credulous. Many extraordinary things happen in this life, and though "seeing is believing," so likewise "believing is seeing," as every one must allow who reads these our Recreations.
Almost all the people in the parish were leading in their meadow-hay (there were not in all its ten miles square twentyacres of ryegrass) on the same day of midsummer, so drying was the sunshine and the wind,—and huge heaped-up wains, that almost hid from view the horses that drew them along the sward, beginning to get green with second growth, were moving in all directions towards the snug farmyards. Never had the parish seemed before so populous. Jocund was the balmy air with laughter, whistle, and song. But the Tree-gnomons threw the shadow of "one o'clock" on the green dial-face of the earth—the horses were unyoked, and took instantly to grazing—groups of men, women, lads, lasses, and children collected under grove, and bush, and hedgerow—graces were pronounced, some of them rather too tedious in presence of the mantling milk-cans, bullion-bars of butter, and crackling cakes; and the great Being who gave them that day their daily bread, looked down from his Eternal Throne, well pleased with the piety of his thankful creatures.
The great Golden Eagle, the pride and the pest of the parish, stooped down, and away with something in his talons. One single sudden female shriek—and then shouts and outcries as if a church spire had tumbled down on a congregation at a sacrament. "Hannah Lamond's bairn! Hannah Lamond's bairn!" was the loud fast-spreading cry. "The Eagle's taen aff Hannah Lamond's bairn!" and many hundred feet were in another instant hurrying towards the mountain. Two miles of hill and dale, and copse and shingle, and many intersecting brooks, lay between; but in an incredibly short time the foot of the mountain was alive with people. The eyrie was well known, and both old birds were visible on the rock-ledge. But who shall scale that dizzy cliff, which Mark Steuart the sailor, who had been at the storming of many a fort, once attempted in vain? All kept gazing, or weeping, or wringing of hands, rooted to the ground, or running back and forwards, like so many ants, essaying their new wings, in discomfiture. "What's the use—what's the use o' ony puir human means? We have nae power but in prayer!" And many knelt down—fathers and mothers thinking of their own babies—as if they would force the deaf heavens to hear.
Hannah Lamond had been all this while sitting on a stone, with a face perfectly white, and eyes like those of a mad person, fixed on the eyrie. Nobody noticed her; for strong as all sympathies with her had been at the swoop ofthe Eagle, they were now swallowed up in the agony of eyesight. "Only last Sabbath was my sweet wee wean baptised in the name o' the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" and on uttering these words, she flew off through the brakes and over the huge stones, up—up—up—faster than ever huntsman ran in to the death—fearless as a goat playing among the precipices. No one doubted, no one could doubt, that she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not people who walk in their sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, clomb the walls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the edge of unguarded battlements, and down dilapidated stair-cases deep as draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, and unseeing eyes, unharmed, to their beds at midnight? It is all the work of the soul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the agony of a mother's passion—who sees her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her breast, hurried off by a demon to a hideous death—bear her limbs aloft wherever there is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and fiercer and more furious than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in blood, throttle the fiends that with their heavy wing would fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her child in deliverance?
No stop—no stay—she knew not that she drew her breath. Beneath her feet Providence fastened every loose stone, and to her hands strengthened every root. How was she ever to descend? That fear, then, but once crossed her heart, as up—up—up—to the little image made of her own flesh and blood. "The God who holds me now from perishing—will not the same God save me when my child is at my breast?" Down came the fierce rushing of the Eagle's wings—each savage bird dashing close to her head, so that she saw the yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at once they quailed, and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of an ash jutting out of a cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and the Christian mother, falling across the eyrie, in the midst of bones and blood, clasped her child—dead—dead—no doubt—but unmangled and untorn, and swaddled up just as it was when she laid it down asleep among the fresh hay in a nook of the harvest-field. Oh! what pang of perfect blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint, feeblecry—"It lives! it lives! it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loud laughter, and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconscious innocent once more murmuring at the fount of life and love. "O, thou great and thou dreadful God! whither hast thou brought me—one of the most sinful of thy creatures? Oh! save me lest I perish, even for thy own name's sake! O Thou, who died to save sinners, have mercy upon me!" Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of old trees—far—far down—and dwindled into specks a thousand creatures of her own kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Was that the sound of the waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her native strath?—and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in which stands the cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here must she die—and when her breast is exhausted—her baby too. And those horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings will return, and her child will be devoured at last, even within the dead arms that can protect it no more.
Where, all this while, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half-way up the cliffs. But his eyes had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart sick—and he who had so often reefed the topgallant-sail, when at midnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights. "And who will take care of my poor bedridden mother?" thought Hannah, who, through exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in her grasp the hope she had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God." She looked round expecting to see a spirit; but nothing moved except a rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling rock. Her eye—by some secret sympathy with the inanimate object—watched its fall; and it seemed to stop, not far off, on a small platform. Her child was bound upon her shoulders—she knew not how or when—but it was safe—and scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down by brier, and broom, and heather, and dwarf-birch. There, a loosened stone leapt over a ledge and no sound was heard, so profound wasits fall. There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them; but she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep as the wall of a house was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy centuries old—long ago dead, and without a single green leaf—but with thousands of arm-thick stems petrified into the rock, and covering it as with a trellice. She felt her baby on her neck—and with hands and feet clung to that fearful ladder. Turning round her head, and looking down, she saw the whole population of the parish—so great was the multitude—on their knees. She heard the voice of psalms—a hymn breathing the spirit of one united prayer. Sad and solemn was the strain—but nothing dirge-like—sounding not of death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that tune—perhaps the very words—but them she heard not—in her own hut, she and her mother—or in the kirk, along with all the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy, and in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth—the psalm was hushed—but a tremulous sobbing voice was close beside her, and a she-goat, with two little kids at her feet. "Wild heights," thought she, "do these creatures climb—but the dam will lead down her kids by the easiest paths; for in the brute creatures holy is the power of a mother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping baby, and for the first time she wept.
Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never touched before by human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamt of scaling it, and the Golden Eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their eyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But the downwards part of the mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and chasmed, was yet accessible—and more than one person in the parish had reached the bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it—and ere the cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, through among dangers that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, andthen the head of another, and she knew that God had delivered her and her child into the care of their fellow-creatures. Not a word was spoken—she hushed her friends with her hands—and with uplifted eyes pointed to the guides sent to her by Heaven. Small green plats, where those creatures nibble the wildflowers, became now more frequent—trodden lines, almost as plain as sheep-paths, showed that the dam had not led her young into danger; and now the brushwood dwindled away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little eminence above the stream, and forming part of the strath.
There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing and many tears, among the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs—sublime was the shout that echoed afar the moment she reached the eyrie—then had succeeded a silence deep as death—in a little while arose that hymning prayer, succeeded by mute supplication—the wildness of thankful and congratulatory joy had next its sway—and now that her salvation was sure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And for whose sake was all this alternation of agony? A poor humble creature, unknown to many even by name—one who had had but few friends, nor wished for more—contented to work all day, here—there—anywhere—that she might be able to support her aged mother and her child—and who on Sabbath took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for paupers, in the kirk.
"Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the old minister of the parish; and the ring of close faces widened round her lying as in death. "Gie me the bonny bit bairn into my arms," cried first one mother and then another, and it was tenderly handed round the circle of kisses, many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's no a single scratch about the puir innocent, for the Eagle, you see, maun hae stuck its talons into the lang claes and the shawl. Blin', blin' maun they be who see not the finger o' God in this thing!"
Hannah started up from her swoon—and, looking wildly round, cried, "Oh! the Bird—the Bird!—the Eagle—the Eagle!—the Eagle has carried off my bonny wee Walter—is there nane to pursue?" A neighbour put her baby into her breast; and shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered creature said in a low voice, "Am I wauken—oh! tell me if I'm wauken—or if a' this be but the wark o' a fever."
Hannah Lamond was not yet twenty years old, and although she was a mother—and you may guess what a mother—yet—frown not, fair and gentle reader—frown not, pure and stainless as thou art—to her belonged not the sacred name of wife—and that baby was the child of sin and of shame—yes—"the child of misery, baptised in tears!" She had loved—trusted—been betrayed—and deserted. In sorrow and solitude—uncomforted and despised—she bore her burden. Dismal had been the hour of travail—and she feared her mother's heart would have broken, even when her own was cleft in twain. But how healing is forgiveness—alike to the wounds of the forgiving and the forgiven! And then Hannah knew that, although guilty before God, her guilt was not such as her fellow-creatures deemed it—for there were dreadful secrets which should never pass her lips against the father of her child. So she bowed down her young head, and soiled it with the ashes of repentance—walking with her eyes on the ground as she again entered the kirk—yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her sadness inspired a general pity—she was excluded from no house she had heart to visit—no coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the notice people took of her baby—no licentious rustic presumed on her frailty; for the pale, melancholy face of the nursing mother, weeping as she sung the lullaby, forbade all such approach—and an universal sentiment of indignation drove from the parish the heartless and unprincipled seducer—if all had been known, too weak word for his crime—who left thus to pine in sorrow, and in shame far worse than sorrow, one who till her unhappy fall had been held up by every mother as an example to her daughters.
Never had she striven to cease to love her betrayer—but she had striven—and an appeased conscience had enabled her to do so—to think not of him now that he had deserted her for ever. Sometimes his image, as well in love as in wrath, passed before the eye of her heart—but she closed it in tears of blood, and the phantom disappeared. Thus all the love towards him that slept—but was not dead—arose in yearnings of still more exceeding love towards his child. Round its head was gathered all hope of comfort—of peace—of rewardof her repentance. One of its smiles was enough to brighten up the darkness of a whole day. In her breast—on her knee—in its cradle, she regarded it with a perpetual prayer. And this feeling it was, with all the overwhelming tenderness of affection, all the invigorating power of passion, that, under the hand of God, bore her up and down that fearful mountain's brow, and after the hour of rescue and deliverance, stretched her on the greensward like a corpse.
The rumour of the miracle circled the mountain's base, and a strange story without names had been told to the Wood-ranger of the Cairn-Forest, by a wayfaring man. Anxious to know what truth there was in it, he crossed the hill, and making his way through the sullen crowd, went up to the eminence, and beheld her whom he had so wickedly ruined, and so basely deserted. Hisses, and groans, and hootings, and fierce eyes, and clenched hands assailed and threatened him on every side.
His heart died within him, not in fear, but in remorse. What a worm he felt himself to be! And fain would he have become a worm, that, to escape all that united human scorn, he might have wriggled away in slime into some hole of the earth. But the meek eye of Hannah met his in forgiveness—an un-upbraiding tear—a faint smile of love. All his better nature rose within him, all his worse nature was quelled. "Yes, good people, you do right to cover me with your scorn. But what is your scorn to the wrath of God? The Evil One has often been with me in the woods; the same voice that once whispered me to murder her—but here I am—not to offer retribution—for that may not—will not—must not be—guilt must not mate with innocence. But here I proclaim that innocence. I deserve death, and I am willing here, on this spot, to deliver myself into the hands of justice. Allan Calder—I call on you to seize your prisoner."
The moral sense of the people, when instructed by knowledge and enlightened by religion, what else is it but the voice of God! Their anger subsided into a stern satisfaction—and that soon softened, in sight of her who alone aggrieved alone felt nothing but forgiveness, into a confused compassion for the man who, bold and bad as he had been, had undergone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen in his uncompanioned misery into the power of the Prince of Darkness.The old clergyman, whom all reverenced, put the contrite man's hand in hers, whom he swore to love and cherish all his days. And, ere summer was over, Hannah was the mistress of a family, in a house not much inferior to a Manse. Her mother, now that not only her daughter's reputation was freed from stain, but her innocence also proved, renewed her youth. And although the worthy schoolmaster, who told us the tale so much better than we have been able to repeat it, confessed that the wood-ranger never became altogether a saint—nor acquired the edifying habit of pulling down the corners of his mouth, and turning up the whites of his eyes—yet he assured us that he never afterwards heard anything very serious laid to his prejudice—that he became in due time an elder of the Kirk—gave his children a religious education—erring only in making rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up to manhood, he never called by any other name than the Eaglet.
The Raven! In a solitary glen sits down on a stone the roaming pedestrian, beneath the hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has not yet begun to growl, and hears no sounds but that of an occasional big rain-drop, plashing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead sometimes utters a sullen groan—the pilgrim, starting, listens, and the noise is repeated, but instead of a groan, a croak—croak—croak! manifestly from a thing with life. A pause of silence! and hollower and hoarser the croak is heard from the opposite side of the glen. Eyeing the black sultry heaven, he feels the warm plash on his face, but sees no bird on the wing. By-and-by something black lifts itself slowly and heavily up from a precipice, in deep shadow; and before it has cleared the rock-range, and entered the upper region of air, he knows it to be a Raven. The creature seems wroth to be disturbed in his solitude, and in his strong straight-forward flight aims at the head of another glen; but he wheels round at the iron barrier, and, alighting among the heather, folds his huge massy wings, and leaps about as if in anger, with the same savage croak—croak—croak! No other bird so like a demon—and should you chance to break a leg in the desert, and be unable to crawl to a hut, your life is not worth twenty-four hours' purchase. Never was there a single hound in Lord Darlington's packs, since his lordship became a mighty hunter, with nostrils so fine as those of that feathered fiend, covered though they be with strong hairs or bristles, that grimly adorn a bill of formidable dimensions, and apt for digging out eye-socket and splitting skull-structure of dying man or beast. That bill cannot tear in pieces like the eagle's beak, nor are its talons so powerful to smite as to compress—but a better billfor cut-and-thrust—- push, carte, and tierce—the dig dismal and the plunge profound—belongs to no other bird. It inflicts great gashes; nor needs the wound to be repeated on the same spot. Feeder foul and obscene! to thy nostril upturned "into the murky air, sagacious of thy quarry from afar," sweeter is the scent of carrion, than to the panting lover's sense and soul the fragrance of his own virgin's breath and bosom, when, lying in her innocence in his arms, her dishevelled tresses seem laden with something more ethereally pure than "Sabean odours from the spicy shores of Araby the Blest."
The Raven dislikes all animal food that has not a deathy smack. It cannot be thought that he has any reverence or awe of the mystery of life. Neither is he a coward; at least, not such a coward as to fear the dying kick of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his victim can stand, or sit, or lie in a strong struggle, the raven keeps aloof—hopping in a circle that narrows and narrows as the sick animal's nostrils keep dilating in convulsions, and its eyes grow dimmer and more dim. When the prey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps upon the breathing carcass, and whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about, round and round, and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almost snorting, the smell of the blood running cold, colder, and more cold. At last the poor wretch is still; and then, without waiting till it is stiff, he goes to work earnestly and passionately, and taught by horrid instinct how to reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, and preserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and brain, for the last course of his meal, gorged to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, and with difficulty able either to croak or to fly.
The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of living upwards of a hundred years, perhaps a couple of centuries. Childrengrow into girls, girls into maidens, maidens into wives, wives into widows, widows into old decrepit crones, and crones into dust; and the Raven who wons at the head of the glen, is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages, deathbeds, and funerals. Certain it is—at least so men say—that he is aware of the deathbeds and the funerals. Often does he flap his wings against door and window of hut, when the wretch within is in extremity, or, sitting on the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying dream. As the funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft in the air—or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse like a sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in the house of death, he too, scorning funeral-baked meats, croaks hoarse hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the little grandchild of the deceased. The shepherds maintain that the Raven is sometimes heard to laugh. Why not, as well as the hyena? Then it is that he is most diabolical, for he knows that his laughter is prophetic of human death. True it is, and it would be injustice to conceal the fact, much more to deny it, that Ravens of old fed Elijah; but that was the punishment of some old sin committed by Two who before the Flood bore the human shape, and who, soon as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat, flew off to the desolation of swamped forests and the disfigured solitude of the drowned glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from daylight in burial-places among the rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs, as if driven thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorse that disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings and says the Celtic superstition—muttered to us in a dream—adding that there are Raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croak at the blush of dawn, and then all at once invisible.
There can be no doubt that that foolish Quaker, who some twenty years ago perished at the foot of a crag near Red Tarn, "far in the bosom of Helvyllyn," was devoured by ravens. We call him foolish, because no adherent of that sect was ever qualified to find his way among mountains when the day was shortish, and the snow, if not very deep, yet wreathed and pit-falled. In such season and weather, no place so fit for a Quaker as the fireside. Not to insist, however, on that point,with what glee the few hungry and thirsty old Ravens belonging to the Red Tarn Club must have flocked to the Ordinary! Without asking each other to which part this, that, or the other croaker chose to be helped, the maxim which regulated their behaviour at table was doubtless, "First come, first served." Forthwith each bill was busy, and the scene became animated in the extreme. There must have been great difficulty to the most accomplished of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his drab. The broad-brim had probably escaped with the first intention, and after going before the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, capsized, filled, and sunk. Picture to yourself so many devils, all in glossy black feather coats and dark breeches, with waistcoats inclining to blue, pully-hawlying away at the unresisting figure of the follower of Fox, and getting first vexed and then irritated with the pieces of choking soft armour in which, five or six ply thick, his inviting carcass was so provokingly insheathed! First a drab duffle cloak—then a drab wraprascal—then a drab broadcloth coat, made in the oldest fashion—then a drab waistcoat of the same—then a drab under-waistcoat of thinner mould—then a linen-shirt, somewhat drabbish—then a flannel-shirt, entirely so, and most odorous to the nostrils of the members of the Red Tarn Club. All this must have taken a couple of days at the least; so, supposing the majority of members assembled about eightA.M.on the Sabbath morning, it must have been well on to twelve o'clock on Monday night before the club could have comfortably sat down to supper. During these two denuding days, we can well believe that the President must have been hard put to it to keep the secretary, treasurer, chaplain, and other office-bearers, ordinary and extraordinary members, from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, so tempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of first corruption. Dead bodies keep well in frost; but the subject had in this case probably fallen from a great height, had his bones broken to smash, his flesh bruised and mangled. The President, therefore, we repeat it, even although a raven of great age and authority, must have had inconceivable difficulty in controlling the Club. The croak of "Order!—order!—Chair!—chair!"—must have been frequent; and had the office not been hereditary, the old gentleman would no doubt have thrown it up, and declared the chair vacant. All obstaclesand obstructions having been by indefatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may well believe, was made by the seneschal to place the guests according to their rank, above or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuously down to a late supper. Not a word was tittered during the first half-hour, till a queer-looking mortal, who had spent several years of his prime of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a tolerable command of the Westmoreland dialect by means of the Hamiltonian system, exclaimed, "I'se weel nee brussen—there be's Mister Wudsworth—Ho, ho, ho!" It was indeed the bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterdale to Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red Tarn Club, afraid of having their orgies put into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragments beneath the moon and stars.
But over the doom of one true Lover of Nature let us shed a flood of rueful tears; for at what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the tale of youthful genius and virtue shrouded suddenly in a winding-sheet wreathed of snow by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of solitude, he hurried like a fast-travelling shadow into the silence of the frozen mountains, all beautifully encrusted with pearls, and jewels, and diamonds, beneath the resplendent night-heavens. The din of populous cities had long stunned his brain, and his soul had sickened in the presence of the money-hunting eyes of selfish men, all madly pursuing their multifarious machinations in the great mart of commerce. The very sheeted masts of ships, bearing the flags of foreign countries, in all their pomp and beauty sailing homeward or outward-bound, had become hateful to his spirit—for what were they but the floating enginery of Mammon? Truth, integrity, honour, were all recklessly sacrificed to gain by the friends he loved and had respected most—sacrificed without shame and without remorse—repentance being with them a repentance only over ill-laid schemes of villany—plans for the ruination of widows and orphans, blasted in the bud of their iniquity. The brother of his bosom made him a bankrupt—and for a year the jointure of his widow-mother was unpaid. But she died before the second Christmas—and he was left alone in the world. Poor indeed he was, but not a beggar. A legacy came to him from a distant relation—almost the only one of his name—who died abroad. Small as it was, it was enough to live on—and hisenthusiastic spirit gathering joy from distress, vowed to dedicate itself in some profound solitude to the love of Nature, and the study of her Great Laws. He bade an eternal farewell to cities at the dead of midnight, beside his mother's grave, scarcely distinguishable among the thousand flat stones, sunk, or sinking into the wide churchyard, along which a great thoroughfare of life roared like the sea. And now, for the first time, his sorrow flung from him like a useless garment, he found himself alone among the Cumbrian mountains, and impelled in strong idolatry almost to kneel down and worship the divine beauty of the moon, and "stars that are the poetry of heaven."