"Look at them with your face from between your opened legs, holding the skirts away, and running at them thus backwards, of course head below, stern exposed, and above all growling angrily; most dogs, seeing so strange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes below the mouth, &c., are so dismayed, that, with their tails between their legs, they are glad to scamper away, some even howling with affright. I have never tried it with a thorough-bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them; though I have practised it, and successfully, with most of the other kinds; it might fail with these, still I cannot say it will."
Thus armed against the canine species, the Traveller, according to our Oracle, must also provide himself with a portable case of instruments for drawing—a sketch and note-book—paper—ink—andPINS—NEEDLES—AND THREAD! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by Doughty, No. 10, Great Ormond Street—pencils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street—a folding one-foot rule, divided into eighths, tenths, and twelfths of inches—a hunting-watch with seconds, with a detached lever or Dupleix escapement, in good strong silver cases—a Dollond's achromatic opera-glass—a night-lamp—a tinder-box—two pair of spectacles, with strong silverframes—an eye-glass in a silver ring slung round the neck—a traveller's knife, containing a large and a small blade, a saw, hook for taking a stone out of a horse's shoe, turnscrew, gun-picker, tweezers, and long corkscrew—galoches or paraloses—your own knife and fork, and spoon—a Welsh wig—a spare hat—umbrella—two great-coats, one for cool and fair weather (i.e.between 45° and 55° of Fahrenheit), and another for cold and foul weather, of broad cloth, lined with fur, and denominated a "dreadnought."
Such are a few of the articles with which every sensible traveller will provide himself before leavingDulce Domumto brave the perils of a Tour through the Hop-districts.
"If circumstances compel you," continues the Doctor, "to ride on the outside of a coach, put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, turn up the collar of your great-coat, and tie a handkerchief round it, and have plenty of dry straw to set your feet on."
In our younger days we used to ride a pretty considerable deal on the outside of coaches, and much hardship did we endure before we hit on the discovery above promulgated. We once rode outside from Edinburgh to London, in winter, without a great-coat, in nankeen trouserssansdrawers, and all other articles of our dress thin and light in proportion. That we are alive at this day, is no less singular than true—no more true than singular. We have known ourselves so firmly frozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required the united strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, to separate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel. All at once the device of the double shirt flashed upon us—and it underwent signal improvements before we reduced the theory to practice. For, first, we endued ourselves with a leather shirt—then with a flannel one—and then, in regular succession, with three linen shirts. This concluded the Series of Shirts. Then commenced the waistcoats. A plain woollen waistcoat without buttons—with hooks and eyes—took the lead, and kept it; it was closely pressed by what is, in common palaver, called an under-waistcoat—the body being flannel, the breast-edges bearing a pretty pattern of stripes or bars—then came a natty red waistcoat, of which we were particularly proud, and of which the effect on landlady, bar-maid, and chamber-maid,we remember was irresistible—and, fourthly and finally, to complete that department of our investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre—the double-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine—so that between our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said of our dress—"Novies interfusa coercet." At this juncture of affairs began the coats, which—as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats—never exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had lived to moralise over the mutability of human affairs—thread-bare—napless—and what ignorant people might have called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest, unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat—and not, perhaps, of the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty, what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in Princes Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-coloured great-coat—not braided and embroideredà la militaire—for we scorned to sham travelling-captain—butsimplex munditiis, plain in its neatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokening that its wearer was up to snuff—and to close this strange eventful history, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with the sleets and snows—held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus, and "the rest"—and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole.
The same principle of accumulation was made applicable to the neck. No stock. Neckcloth above neckcloth—beginning with singles—and then getting into the full uncut squares—the amount of the whole being somewhere about a dozen: The concluding neckcloth worn cravat-fashion, and flowing down the breast in a cascade, like that of an attorney-general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving the lips at liberty to breathe and imbibe, was wreathed, in undying remembrance of the bravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher Fogle—and beneath the cravat-cascade a comforter netted by the fair hands of her who had kissed us at our departure, and was sighing for our return. One hat we always found sufficient—and that a black beaver—for a lily castor suits not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a limited constitutional and hereditary monarchy."
As to our lower extremities—One pair only of roomy shoes—one pair of stockings of the finest lamb's-wool—another ofcommon close worsted, knit by the hand of a Lancashire witch—thirdly, Shetland hose. All three pair reaching well up towards the fork—each about an inch-and-a-half longer than its predecessor. Flannel drawers—one pair only—within the lamb's-wool, and touching the instep—then one pair of elderly casimeres, of yore worn at balls—one pair of Manchester white cords—ditto of strong black quilt trousers, "capacious and serene"—and at or beneath the freezing-point, overalls of the same stuff as "Johnny's grey breeks"—neat but not gaudy—mud-repellers—themselves a host—never in all their lives "thoroughly wet through"—frost-proof—and often mistaken by the shepherd on the wold, as the Telegraph hung for a moment on the misty upland, for the philibeg of Phœbus in his dawn-dress, hastily slipt on as he bade farewell to some star-paramour, and, like a giant about to run a race, devoured the cerulean course of day, as if impatient to reach the goal set in the Western Sea.
Pray, reader, do you know what line of conduct you ought to pursue if you are to sleep on the road? "The earlier you arrive," says the Doctor, "and the earlier after your arrival you apply, the better the chance of getting a good bed—this done, order your luggage to your room. A travelling-bag, or a 'sac de nuit,' in addition to your trunk, is very necessary; it should be large enough to contain one or two changes of linen—a night-shirt—shaving apparatus—comb, clothes, tooth and hair brushes, &c. Take care, too, to see your sheets well aired, and that you can fasten your room at night. Carry firearms also, and take the first unostentatious opportunity of showing your pistols to the landlord. However well-made your pistols, however carefully you have chosen your flint, and however dry your powder, look to the priming and touch-hole every night. Let your pistols be double-barrelled, and with spring bayonets."
Now, really, it appears to us, that in lieu of double-barrelled pistols with spring bayonets, it would be advisable to substitute a brace of black-puddings for daylight, and a brace of Oxford or Bologna sausages for the dark hours. They will be equally formidable to the robber, and far safer to yourself. Indeed we should like to see duelling black-puddings, or sausages, introduced at Chalk-Farm;—and, that etiquette might not be violated, each party might take his antagonist's weapon, and the seconds, as usual, see them loaded. Surgeons will have to attend as usual. Far more blood, indeed, would be thus spilt, than according to the present fashion.
The Doctor, as might be expected, makes a mighty rout—a prodigious fuss—all through the Oracle, about damp sheets; he must immediately see the chambermaid, and overlook theairing with his own hands and eyes. He is also an advocate of the warming-pan—and for the adoption, indeed, of every imaginable scheme for excluding death from his chamber. He goes on the basis of everything being as it should not be in inns—and often reminds us of our old friend Death-in-the-Pot. Nay, as Travellers never can be sure that those who have slept in the beds before them were not afflicted with some contagious disease, whenever they can they should carry their own sheets with them—namely, a "light eider-down quilt, and two dressed hart-skins, to be put on the mattresses, to hinder the disagreeable contact. These are to be covered with the traveller's own sheets—and if an eider-down quilt be not sufficient to keep him warm, his coat put upon it will increase the heat sufficiently. If the traveller is not provided with these accommodations, it will sometimes be prudent not to undress entirely; however, the neckcloth, gaiters, shirt, and everything which checks the circulation, must be loosened."
Clean sheets, the Doctor thinks, are rare in inns; and he believes that it is the practice to "take them from the bed, sprinkle them with water, fold them down, and put them into a press. When they are wanted again, they are, literally speaking, shown to the fire, and, in a reeking state, laid on the bed. The traveller is tired and sleepy, dreams of that pleasure or business which brought him from home, and the remotest thing from his mind is, that from the very repose which he fancies has refreshed him, he has received the rheumatism. The receipt, therefore, to sleep comfortably at inns, is to take your own sheets, to have plenty of flannel gowns, and to promise, and take care to pay, a handsome consideration for the liberty of choosing your bed."
Now, Doctor, suppose all travellers behaved at inns on such principles, what a perpetual commotion there would be in the house! The kitchens, back-kitchens, laundries, drying-rooms, would at all times be crammed choke-full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Authors, Lords, Baronets, Squires, Doctors of Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-pay Officers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chambermaids to death, and in the headlong gratification of their passion for well-aired sheets, setting fire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insurance to a ruinous height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the principal establishments in Great Britain. But shutting our eyes, for a moment, to such general conflagration and bankruptcy, and indulging ourselves in the violent supposition that some inns might still continue to exist, think, O think, worthy Doctor, to what other fatal results this system, if universally acted upon, would, in a very few years of the transitory life of man, inevitably lead! In the first place, in a country where all travellers carried with them their own sheets, none would be kept in inns except for the use of the establishment's own members. This would be inflicting a vital blow, indeed, on the inns of a country. For mark, in the second place, that the blankets would not be long of following the sheets. The blankets would soon fly after the sheets on the wings of love and despair. Thirdly, are you so ignorant, Doctor, of this world and its ways, as not to see that the bed-steads would, in the twinkling of an eye, follow the blankets? What a wild, desolate, wintry appearance would a bedroom then exhibit!
The foresight of such consequences as these may well make a man shudder. We have no objections, however, to suffer the Doctor himself, and a few other occasional damp-dreading old quizzes, "to see the bed-clothes put to the fire in their presence," merely at the expense of subjugating themselves to the derision of all the chambermaids, cooks, scullions, boots, ostlers, and painters. (The painter is the artist who is employed in inns, to paint the buttered toast. He always works in oils. As the Director-General would say—he deals in buttery touches.) Their feverish and restless anxiety about sheets, and their agitated discourse on damps and deaths, hold them up to vulgar eyes in the light of lunatics. They become the groundwork of practical jokes—perhaps are bitten to death by fleas; for a chambermaid, of a disposition naturally witty and cruel, has a dangerous power put into her hands, in the charge of blankets. The Doctor's whole soul and body are wrapt up in well-aired sheets; but the insidious Abigail, tormented by his flustering, becomes in turn the tormentor—and selecting the yellowest, dingiest, and dirtiest pair of blankets to be found throughout the whole gallery of garrets (those for years past used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews), with a wicked leer that would lull all suspicion asleep in a man of a far less inflammable temperament, she literally envelopes him in vermin, and after a night of one of the plagues of Egypt,the Doctor rises in the morning, from top to bottom absolutely tattooed!
The Doctor, of course, is one of those travellers who believe that unless they use the most ingenious precautions, they will be uniformly robbed and murdered in inns. The villains steal upon you during the midnight hour, when all the world is asleep. They leave their shoes down stairs, and leopard-like, ascend with velvet, or—what is almost as noiseless—worsted steps, the wooden stairs. True, that your breeches are beneath your bolster—but that trick of travellers has long been "as notorious as the sun at noonday;" and although you are aware of your breeches, with all the ready money perhaps that you are worth in this world, eloping from beneath your parental eye, you in vain try to cry out—for a long, broad, iron hand, with ever so many iron fingers, is on your mouth; another, with still more numerous digits, compresses your windpipe, while a low hoarse voice, in a whisper to which Sarah Siddons's was empty air, on pain of instant death enforces silence from a man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling off all the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians, whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wanton wounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar—swearing by Satan and all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body before daybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out your brains, sack you, and carry you off for sale to a surgeon: Therefore you must use pocket door-bolts, which are applicable to almost all sorts of doors, and on many occasions save the property and life of the traveller. The corkscrew door-fastening the Doctor recommends as the simplest. This is screwed in between the door and the door-post, and unites them so firmly, that great power is required to force a door so fastened. They are as portable as common cork-screws, and their weight does not exceed an ounce and a half. The safety of your bedroom should always be carefully examined; and in case of bolts not being at hand, it will be useful to hinder entrance into the room by putting a table and chair upon it against the door. Take a peep below the bed, and into the closets, and every place where concealment is possible—of course, although the Doctor forgets to suggest it, into the chimney. A friend of the Doctor's used to place a bureauagainst the door, and "thereon he set a basin and ewer in such a position as easily to rattle, so that, on being shook, they instantly becamemolto agitato." Upon one alarming occasion this device frightened away one of the chambermaids, or some other Paulina Pry, who attempted to steal on the virgin sleep of the travelling Joseph, who all the time was hiding his head beneath the bolster. Joseph, however, believed that it was a horrible midnight assassin, with mustaches and a dagger. "The chattering of the crockery gave the alarm, and the attempt, after many attempts, was abandoned."
With all these fearful apprehensions—in his mind, Dr Kitchiner must have been a man of great natural personal courage and intrepidity, to have slept even once in his whole lifetime from home. What dangers must we have passed, who used to plump in, without a thought of damp in the bed, or scamp below it—closet and chimney uninspected, door unbolted and unscrewed, exposed to rape, robbery, and murder! It is mortifying to think that we should be alive at this day. Nobody, male or female, thought it worth their while to rob, ravish, or murder us! There we lay, forgotten by the whole world—till the crowing of cocks, or the ringing of bells, or blundering Boots insisting on it that we were a Manchester Bagman, who had taken an inside in the Heavy at five, broke our repose, and Sol laughing in at the unshuttered and uncurtained window showed us the floor of our dormitory, not streaming with a gore of blood. We really know not whether to be most proud of having been the favourite child of Fortune, or the neglected brat of Fate. One only precaution did we ever use to take against assassination, and all the other ills that flesh is heir to, sleep where one may, and that was to say inwardly a short fervent prayer, humbly thanking our Maker for all the happiness—let us trust it was innocent—of the day; and humbly imploring his blessing on all the hopes of to-morrow. For, at the time we speak of, we were young—and every morning, whatever the atmosphere might be, rose bright and beautiful with hopes that, far as the eyes of the soul could reach, glittered on earth's, and heaven's, and life's horizon!
But suppose that after all this trouble to get himself bolted and screwed into a paradisaical tabernacle of a dormitory, there had suddenly rung through the house the cry ofFire—Fire—Fire! how was Dr Kitchiner to get out? Tables,bureaus, benches, chairs, blocked up the only door—all laden with wash-hand basins and other utensils, the whole crockery shepherdesses of the chimney-piece, double-barrelled pistols with spring bayonets ready to shoot and stab, without distinction of persons, as their proprietor was madly seeking to escape the roaring flames! Both windows are iron-bound, with all their shutters, and over and above tightly fastened with "the cork-screw fastening, the simplest that we have seen." The wind-board is in like manner, and by the same unhappy contrivance, firmly jammed into the jaws of the chimney, so egress to the Doctor up the vent is wholly denied—no fire-engine in the town—but one under repair. There has not been a drop of rain for a month, and the river is not only distant but dry. The element is growling along the galleries like a lion, and the room is filling with something more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice is heard crying—"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive! Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctor falls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless length fainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord, landlady, chambermaid, and boots—each in a different key—from manly bass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or a madman—for, gentle reader, it has been a—Dream.
We must hurry to a close, and shall perform the short remainder of our journey on foot. The first volume of the Oracle concludes with "Observations on Pedestrians." Here we are at home—and could, we imagine, have given the Doctor a mile in the hour in a year-match. The strength of man, we are given distinctly to understand by the Doctor, is "in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, which is as the quantity and quality of what he puts into his stomach, the energy of that organ, and the quantity of exercise he takes." This statement of the strength of man may be unexceptionably true, and most philosophical to those who are up to it—but to us it resembles a definition we have heard of thunder, "the conjection of the sulphur congeals the matter." It appears to us that a strong stomach is not the sole constituent of a strong man—but that it is not much amiss to be provided with a strong back, a strong breast, strong thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. With a strong stomach alone—yea, even thestomach of a horse—a man will make but a sorry Pedestrian. The Doctor, however, speedily redeems himself by saying admirably well, "that nutrition does not depend more on the state of the stomach, or of what we put into it, than it does on the stimulus given to the system by exercise, which alone can produce that perfect circulation of the blood which is required to throw off superfluous secretions, and give the absorbents an appetite to suck up fresh materials. This requires the action of every petty artery, and of the minutest ramifications of every nerve and fibre in our body." Thus, he remarks, a little further on, by way of illustration, "that a man, suffering under a fit of the vapours, after half an hour's brisk ambulation, will often find that he has walked it off, and that the action of the body has exonerated the mind."
The Doctor warms as he walks—and is very near leaping over the fence of Political Economy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes materials, but expects that we should work them up for ourselves. The earth must be laboured before it gives its increase, and when it is forced to produce its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ more than nineteen persons out of twenty; and as for those who are, by the condition in which they are born, exempted from work, they are more miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they daily and duly employ themselves in thatVOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAME OF EXERCISE." Inflexible justice, however, forces us to say, that although the Doctor throws a fine philosophical light over the most general principles of walking, as they are involved in "that voluntary labour which goes by the name of exercise," yet he falls into frequent and fatal error when he descends into the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. Thus, he says, that no person should sit down to a hearty meal immediately after any great exertion, either of mind or body—that is, one might say, after a few miles of Plinlimmon, or a few pages of the Principia. Let the man, quoth he, "who comes home fatigued by bodily exertion, especially if he feel heated by it, throw his legs upon a chair, and remain quite tranquil and composed, that the energy which has been dispersed to the extremities may have time to return to the stomach, when it is required." To all this we say—Fudge! The sooner you get hold ofa leg of roasted mutton the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly with a pot of porter—then leisurely on with a clean shirt—wash your face and hands in gelid—none of your tepid water. There is no harm done if you should shave—then keep walking up and down the parlour rather impatiently, for such conduct is natural, and in all things act agreeably to nature—stir up the waiter with some original jest by way of stimulant, and to give the knave's face a well-pleased stare—and never doubting "that the energy which has been dispersed to the extremities" has had ample time to return to the stomach, in God's name fall to! and take care that the second course shall not appear till there is no vestige left of the first—a second course being looked on by the judicious moralist and pedestrian very much in the light in which the poet has made a celebrated character consider it,—
"Nor fame I slight—nor for her favours call—She comes unlook'd for—if she comes at all."
"Nor fame I slight—nor for her favours call—She comes unlook'd for—if she comes at all."
To prove how astonishingly our strength may be diminished by indolence, the Doctor tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had lately returned from India, to his inquiry after his health he replied, "Why, better—better, thank ye—I think I begin to feel some symptoms of the return of a little English energy. Do you know that the day before yesterday I was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I actually put on one of my stockings myself?"
The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been repeatedly proved that a man can travel further for a week or a month than a horse." On reading this sentence to Will Whipcord—"Yes, sir," replied that renowned Professor of the Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir—a man can beat a horse!"
Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his opinion, and a man may beat a horse. But it never has been tried: There is no match of pedestrianism on record between a first-rate man and a first-rate horse; and as soon as there is, we shall lay our money on the horse—only mind, the horse carries no weight, and he must be allowed to do his work on turf. We know that Arab horses will carry their rider, provision and provender, arms and accoutrements (no light weight) across the desert, eighty miles a-day, for many days—and that forfour days they have gone a hundred miles a-day. That would have puzzled Captain Barclay in his prime, the Prince of Pedestrians. However, be that as it may, the comparative pedestrian powers of man and horse have never yet been ascertained by any accredited match in England.
The Doctor then quotes an extract from a Pedestrian Tour in Wales by a Mr Shepherd, who, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, though we shall be happy to find ourselves in error. Mr Shepherd, speaking of the inconveniencies and difficulties attending a pedestrian excursion, says, "that at one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that it is almost impossible to proceed;"—"at other times you are exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or a hedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to an uncomfortable dilemma." "Another disadvantage is, that your track is necessarily more confined—a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes an important difference, which, if you were on horseback, would be considered as trivial." "Under all these circumstances," he says, "it may appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen a pedestrian excursion—in answer to which, it may be observed, that we were not apprised of these things till we had experienced them." What! Mr Shepherd, were you, who we presume have reached the age of puberty, not apprised, before you penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality, that "roads are rendered muddy by the rain?" Had you never met, either in your experience of life, or in the course of your reading, proof positive that pedestrians "are exposed to the inclemency of the weather?" That, if a man will linger too long under a tree or a hedge when the sun is going down, "he will be benighted?" Under what serene atmosphere, in what happy clime, have you pursued your preparatory studiessub dio? But, our dear Mr Shepherd, why waste time under the shelter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, our young and unknown friend. What the worse would you have been of being soaked to the skin? Besides, consider the danger you ran of being killed by lightning, had there been a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what will become of you, if you addict yourself on every small emergency to trees and hedges, when the country you walk through happens to be as bare as the palm of your hand? Button your jacket,good sir—scorn an umbrella—emerge boldly from the sylvan shade, snap your fingers at the pitiful pelting of the pitiless storm—poor spite indeed in Densissimus Imber—and we will insure your life for a presentation copy of your Tour against all the diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not only till you have reached the Inn at Capel-Cerig, but your own home in England (we forget the county)—ay, till your marriage, and the baptism of your first-born.
Dr Kitchiner seems to have been much frightened by Mr Shepherd's picture of a storm in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation of one great inconvenience of pedestrianising. "Persons," quoth he, "who take a pedestrian excursion, and intend to subject themselves to the uncertainties of accommodation, by going across the country and visiting unfrequented paths, will act wisely to carry with them apiece of oil-skinto sit upon while taking refreshments out of doors, which they will often find needful during such excursions." To save trouble, the breech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Here a question of great difficulty and importance arises—Breeches or trousers? Dr Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he, "should be below the knee, and breeches are much better than trousers. The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, were exclusively used by 'the Lords of the Ocean,' has often excited my astonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who has to cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be more inconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they are collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearing garters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. These should have the knee-band three quarters of an inch wide, lined on the upper side with a piece of plush, and fastened with a buckle, which is much easier than even double strings, and, by observing the strap, you always know the exact degree of tightness that is required to keep up the stocking; any pressure beyond that is prejudicial, especially to those who walk long distances."
We are strongly inclined to agree with the Doctor in his panegyric on breeches. True, that in the forenoons, especially if of a dark colour, such as black, and worn with white, or even grey or bluish, stockings, they are apt, in the presentstate of public taste, to stamp you a schoolmaster, or a small grocer in full dress, or an exciseman going to a ball. We could dispense too with the knee-buckles and plush lining—though we allow the one might be ornamental and the other useful. But what think you, gentle reader, of walking with a Pedometer? A Pedometer is an instrument cunningly devised to tell you how far and how fast you walk, and is, quoth the Doctor, a "perambulator in miniature." The box containing the wheels is made of the size of a watch-case, and goes into the breeches pocket, and by means of a string and hook, fastened at the waistband or at the knee, the number of steps a man takes, in his regular paces, are registered from the action of the spring upon the internal wheel-work at every step, to the amount of 30,000. It is necessary, to ascertain the distance walked, that the average length of one pace be precisely known, and that multiplied by the number of steps registered on the dial-plate.
All this is very ingenious; and we know one tolerable pedestrian who is also a Pedometrist. But no Pedometrician will ever make a fortune in a mountainous island, like Great Britain, where pedestrianism is indigenous to the soil. A good walker is as regular in his going as clock-work. He has his different paces—three, three and a half—four, four and a half—five, five and a half—six miles an hour—toe and heel. A common watch, therefore, is to him, in the absence of milestones, as good as a Pedometer, with this great and indisputable advantage, that a common watch continues to go even after you have yourself stopped, whereas, the moment you sit down on your oil-skin patch, why, your Pedometer (which, indeed, from its name and construction, is not unreasonable) immediately stands still. Neither, we believe, can you accurately note the pulse of a friend in a fever by a Pedometer.
What pleasure on this earth transcends a breakfast after a twelve-mile walk? Or is there in this sublunary scene a delight superior to the gradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness that, at the close of a long summer day's journey up hill and down dale, seals up the glimmering eyes with honey-dew, and stretches out, under the loving hands of nourrice Nature, the whole elongated animal economy, steeped in rest divine from the organ of veneration to the point of the great toe, beit on a bed of down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall, hotel, or hut? If in an inn, nobody interferes with you in meddling officiousness; neither landlord, bagman, waiter, chambermaid, boots;—you are left to yourself without being neglected. Your bell may not be emulously answered by all the menials on the establishment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer appears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify your dinner by the deposition of the first dish, yet, influenced by the rumour that soon spreads through the premises, he bows farewell at your departure, with a shrewd suspicion that you are a nobleman in disguise.
No weather more pleasant than that of a mildWinterday. So gracious the season, that Hyems is like Ver—Januarius like Christopher North. Art thou the Sun of whom Milton said,—
"Looks through the horizontal misty air,Shorn of his beams,"
"Looks through the horizontal misty air,Shorn of his beams,"
an image of disconsolate obscuration? Bright art thou as at meridian on a June Sabbath; but effusing a more temperate lustre, not unfelt by the sleeping though not insensate earth. She stirs in her sleep, and murmurs—the mighty mother; and quiet as herself, though broad awake, her old ally the ship-bearing sea. What though the woods be leafless—they look as alive as when laden, with umbrage; and who can tell what is going on now within the heart of that calm oak grove? The fields laugh not now—but here and there they smile. If we see no flowers we think of them—and less of the perished than of the unborn; for regret is vain, and hope is blest; in peace there is the promise of joy—and therefore in the silent pastures a perfect beauty how restorative to man's troubled heart!
The Shortest Day in all the year—yet is it lovelier than the Longest. Can that be the voice of birds? With the laverock's lyric our fancy filled the sky—with the throstle's roundelay it awoke the wood. In the air life is audible—circling unseen. Such serenity must be inhabited by happiness. Ha! there thou art, our Familiar—the self-same Robin Redbreast that pecked at our nursery window, and used to warble from the gable of the school-house his sweet winter song!
In company we are silent—in solitude we soliloquise. So dearly do we love our own voice that we cannot bear to hearit mixed with that of others—perhaps drowned; and then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in the hush expectant of our "golden opinions," when all eyes are turned to the speechless "old man eloquent," and you might hear a tangle dishevelling itself in Neæra's hair. But all alone by ourselves, in the country, among trees standing still among untrodden leaves—as now—how we do speak! All thoughts—all feelings—desire utterance; left to themselves they are not happy till they have evolved into words—winged words that sometimes settle on the ground, like moths on flowers—sometimes seek the sky, like eagles above the clouds.
No such soliloquies in written poetry as these of ours—the act of composition is fatal as frost to their flow; yet composition there is at such solitary times going on among the moods of the mind, as among the clouds on a still but not airless sky, perpetual but imperceptible transformations of the beautiful, obedient to the bidding of the spirit of beauty.
Who but Him who made it knoweth aught of the Laws of Spirit? All of us may know much of what is "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," in obedience to them; but leaving the open day, we enter at once into thickest night. Why at this moment do we see a spot once only visited by us—unremembered for ever so many flights of black or bright winged years—see it in fancy as it then was in nature, with the same dewdrops on that wondrous myrtle beheld but on that morning—such a myrtle as no other eyes beheld ever on this earth but ours, and the eyes of one now in heaven?
Another year is about to die—and how wags the world? "What great events are on the gale?" Go ask our statesmen. But their rule—their guidance is but over the outer world, and almost powerless their folly or their wisdom over the inner region in which we mortals live, and move, and have our being, where the fall of a throne makes no more noise than that of a leaf!
Thank Heaven! Summer and Autumn are both dead and buried at last, and white lie the snow on their graves! Youth is the season of all sorts of insolence, and therefore we can forgive and forget almost anything inSpring. He has always been a privileged personage; and we have no doubt that he played his pranks even in Paradise. To-day, he meets you unexpectedly on the hill-side; and was there ever a face inthis world so celestialised by smiles! All the features are framed of light. Gaze into his eyes, and you feel that in the untroubled lustre there is something more sublime than in the heights of the cloudless heavens, or in the depths of the waveless seas. More sublime, because essentially spiritual. There stands the young Angel, entranced in the conscious mystery of his own beautiful and blessed being; and the earth becomes all at once fit region for the sojourn of the Son of the Morning. So might some great painter image the First-born of the Year, till nations adored the picture.—To-morrow you repair, with hermit steps, to the Mount of the Vision, and,
"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"
"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"
Spring clutches you by the hair with the fingers of frost; blashes a storm of sleet in your face, and finishes, perhaps, by folding you in a winding-sheet of snow, in which you would infallibly perish but for a pocket-pistol of Glenlivet.—The day after to-morrow, you behold him—Spring—walking along the firmament, sad, but not sullen—mournful, but not miserable—disturbed, but not despairing—now coming out towards you in a burst of light—and now fading away from you in a gathering of gloom—even as one might figure in his imagination a fallen Angel. On Thursday, confound you if you know what the deuce to make of his Springship. There he is, stripped to the buff—playing at hide-and-seek, hare-and-hound, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, swan-down waistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lodbrog or Winter. You turn up the whites of your eyes, and the browns of your hands in amazement, till the Two, by way of change of pastime, cease their mutual vagaries, and, like a couple of hawks diverting themselves with an owl, in conclusion buffet you off the premises. You insert the occurrence, with suitable reflections, in your Meteorological Diary, under the head—Spring.—On Friday, nothing is seen of you but the blue tip of your nose, for you are confined to bed by rheumatism, and nobody admitted to your sleepless sanctum but your condoling Mawsey. 'Tis a pity. For never since the flood-greened earth on her first resurrection morn laughed around Ararat, spanned was she by such a Rainbow! By all that is various and vanishing, the arch seems many miles broad, and many miles high, and all creation to be gladly and gloriously gathered together without being crowded—plains, woods, villages, towns, hills,and clouds, beneath the pathway of Spring, once more an Angel—an unfallen Angel! While the tinge that trembles into transcendent hues fading and fluctuating—deepening and dying—now gone, as if for ever—and now back again in an instant, as if breathing and alive—is felt, during all that wavering visitation, to be of all sights the most evanescent, and yet inspirative of a beauty-born belief, bright as the sun that flung the image on the cloud—profound as the gloom it illumines—that it shone and is shining there at the bidding of Him who inhabiteth eternity.—The grim noon of Saturday, after a moaning morning, and one silent intermediate lour of grave-like stillness, begins to gleam fitfully with lightning like a maniac's eye; and is not that
"The soundOf thunder heard remote?"
"The soundOf thunder heard remote?"
On earth wind there is none—not so much as a breath. But there is a strong wind in heaven—for see how that huge cloud-city, a night within a day, comes moving on along the hidden mountain-tops, and hangs over the loch all at once black as pitch, except that here and there a sort of sullen purple heaves upon the long slow swell, and here and there along the shores—how caused we know not—are seen, but heard not, the white melancholy breakers! Is no one smitten blind? No! Thank God! But ere the thanksgiving has been worded, an airquake has split asunder the cloud-city, the night within the day, and all its towers and temples are disordered along the firmament, to a sound that might waken the dead. Where are ye, ye echo-hunters, that grudge not to purchase gunpowder explosions on Lowood bowling-green at four shillings the blast? See! there are our artillerymen stalking from battery to battery—all hung up aloft facing the west—or "each standing by his gun" with lighted match, moving or motionless, Shadow-figures, and all clothed in black-blue uniform, with blood-red facings portentously glancing in the sun, as he strives to struggle into heaven. The Generalissimo of all the forces, who is he but—Spring?—Hand in hand with Spring, Sabbath descends from heaven unto earth; and are not their feet beautiful on the mountains? Small as is the voice of that tinkling bell from that humble spire, overtopped by its coeval trees, yet is it heard in the heart of infinitude. So is the bleating of these silly sheepon the braes—and so is that voice of psalms, all at once rising so spirit-like, as if the very kirk were animated, and singing a joyous song in the wilderness to the ear of the Most High. For all things are under his care—those that, as we dream, have no life—the flowers, and the herbs, and the trees—those that some dim scripture seems to say, when they die, utterly perish—and those that all bright scripture, whether written in the book of God, or the book of Nature, declares will live for ever!
If such be the character and conduct of Spring during one week, wilt thou not forget and forgive—with us—much occasional conduct on his part that appears not only inexplicable, but incomprehensible? But we cannot extend the same indulgence to Summer and to Autumn.Summeris a season come to the years of discretion, and ought to conduct himself like a staid, sober, sensible, middle-aged man, not past, but passing, his prime. Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often behaves in a way to make his best friends ashamed of him—in a way absolutely disgraceful to a person of his time of life. Having picked a quarrel with the Sun—his benefactor, nay, his father—what else could he expect but that that enlightened Christian would altogether withhold his countenance from so undutiful and ungrateful a child, and leave him to travel along the mire and beneath the clouds? For some weeks Summer was sulky—and sullenly scorned to shed a tear. His eyes were like ice. By-and-by, like a great school-boy, he began to whine and whimper—and when he found that would not do, he blubbered like the booby of the lowest form. Still the Sun would not look on him—or if he did, 'twas with a sudden and short half-smile half-scowl that froze the ingrate's blood. At last the Summer grew contrite, and the Sun forgiving, the one burst out into a flood of tears, the other into a flood of light. In simple words, the Summer wept and the Sun smiled—and for one broken month there was a perpetual alternation of rain and radiance! How beautiful is penitence! How beautiful forgiveness! For one week the Summer was restored to his pristine peace and old luxuriance, and the desert blossomed like the rose.
Therefore ask we the Summer's pardon for thanking Heaven that he was dead. Would that he were alive again, and buried not for ever beneath the yellow forest leaves! O thou first,faint, fair, finest tinge of dawning Light that streaks the still-sleeping yet just-waking face of the morn, Light and no-Light, a shadowy Something, that as we gaze is felt to be growing into an emotion that must be either Innocence or Beauty, or both blending together into devotion before Deity, once more duly visible in the divine colouring that forebodes another day to mortal life—before Thee what holy bliss to kneel upon the greensward in some forest glade, while every leaf is a-tremble with dewdrops, and the happy little birds are beginning to twitter, yet motionless among the boughs—before Thee to kneel as at a shrine, and breathe deeper and deeper—as the lustre waxeth purer and purer, brighter and more bright, till range after range arise of crimson clouds in altitude sublime, and breast above breast expands of yellow woods softly glittering in their far-spread magnificence—then what holy bliss to breathe deeper and deeper unto Him who holds in the hollow of his hand the heavens and the earth, our high but most humble orisons! But now it is Day, and broad awake seems the whole joyful world. The clouds—lustrous no more—are all anchored on the sky, white as fleets waiting for the wind. Time is not felt—and one might dream that the Day was to endure for ever. Yet the great river rolls on in the light—and why will he leave those lovely inland woods for the naked shores? Why—responds some voice—hurry we on our own lives—impetuous and passionate far more than he with all his cataracts—as if anxious to forsake the regions of the upper day for the dim place from which we yet recoil in fear—the dim place which imagination sometimes seems to see even through the sunshine, beyond the bourne of this our unintelligible being, stretching sea-like into a still more mysterious night! Long as a Midsummer Day is, it has gone by like a Heron's flight. The sun is setting!—and let him set without being scribbled upon by Christopher North. We took a pen-and-ink sketch of him in a "Day on Windermere." Poor nature is much to be pitied among painters and poets. They are perpetually falling into