Forget not when you sow the grain, to mindThat a boy follows with a rake behind;And strictly charge him, as you drive, with careThe seeds to cover, and the birds to scare.Works and Days, B. 2.
Forget not when you sow the grain, to mindThat a boy follows with a rake behind;And strictly charge him, as you drive, with careThe seeds to cover, and the birds to scare.
Works and Days, B. 2.
The harrow, an implement well known to King David, for he put the subjected Ammonites under it, was unknown then in Greece! Theyrakedin the grain. That was but the second stage in the progress of tillage; the first undoubtedly being that in which their plough was a pointed stick, and their harrow a bush; as the most ancient drawing of hay-forks shews that they were forked sticks cut from the thicket. But to leave those primitive times of Greece,—there is no nation that at once acquired so vast a military renown and yet retained such a passion for the peaceful pursuits of agriculture as Rome. Nothing is so soon familiarized to the mind of the school-boy as the fact of their generals, dictators, and emperors tilling their own lands—leaving them with reluctance for state honours, and retiring to them with gladness to end their days in meditative tranquillity. Cicero tells us that couriers were first introduced by them, to run between the capitol and their farms, that they themselves might leave them only on most important occasions. Almost every one of their writers on rural affairs, whose works have reached us, were men of distinction in the state. Varro was consul; Cato, the most remarkable man of his time, filled the highest offices; Columella and Palladius were men of note; and Pliny, a patrician officer, was governor of Spain. But what is more remarkable even is, that such men as Virgil, Horace, and Cicero, men of imaginativegenius, and so involved in court life, or the business of government, should be such passionate lovers of rural concerns. Everyone knows how their writings overflow with the praises of country life, and what delight they took in their farms and villas. Cicero seems as though he could never have done with telling us of the pleasure he took in farming. “I might expatiate,” he says, “on the beauty of verdant groves and meadows, on the charming aspects of vineyards and olive-yards, but to say all in one word, there cannot be a more pleasing, or a more profitable scene than that of a well-cultivated farm. In my opinion, indeed, no kind of occupation is more fraught with happiness, not only as the business of husbandry is of singular utility to mankind, but, as I have said, being attended with its own peculiar pleasures. I will add too, as a further recommendation, and let it restore me to the good graces of the voluptuous, that it supplies both the table and the altar with the greatest variety and abundance. Accordingly, the magazines of the skilful and industrious farmer are plentifully stored with wine and oil, with milk, cheese, and honey; as his yards abound with poultry, and his fields with flocks and herds of kids, lambs, and porkets. The garden also furnishes him with an additional source of delicacies, in allusion to which the farmers pleasantly call a certain piece of ground allotted to that particular use, theirdessert. I must not omit, likewise, that in the intervals of their more important business, and in order to heighten the relish of the rest, the sports of the field claim a share of their amusements. * * * Of country occupations I profess myself a warm admirer. They are pleasures perfectly consistent with every degree of advanced years, as they approach the nearest of all others to those of the purely philosophical kind. They are derived from observing the nature and properties of their own earth, which yields a ready obedience to the cultivator’s industry, and returns with interest what he deposits in her charge.”—De Senectute.
He then goes on to tell us what delight he took in the cultivation of the vine; in watching the springing and progress of corn; the green blade pushing forth, shooting into a knotted stem, nourished and supported by the fibres of the root, terminated in the ear in which the grain is lodged in regular order, and defended from the depredations of birds by its bearded spikes.He tells us that he could name numbers of his most distinguished friends and neighbours, and some of them at very advanced ages, who take such interest in all that is going on at their farms, that they will be present at every important agricultural operation—many of them engaged in improvements of which they will see neither the benefit nor the end. “And what,” says he, “do these noble husbandmen, when they are asked for what purpose they dig and plant, reply,—‘In obedience to the immortal gods, by whose bountiful providence we received these fields from our ancestors, and whose will it is that we should deliver them down with improvement to posterity!’” And this generous and high sense of duty it was which animated the Romans during the better portion of their republic, and kept alive their virtue and their simplicity of life, so far as to give them power to despise wealth, and to command the fortunes of other men. Cicero is delighted with this noble principle, and he reverts with enthusiasm to the picture of Manlius Curius, who, after having conquered the Samnites, the Sabines, and even Pyrrhus himself, passed the honourable remainder of his age in cultivating his farm. He adds, “I can never behold his villa without reflecting with the highest degree of admiration both on the singular moderation of his mind, and the general simplicity of the age in which he flourished. Here it was, while sitting by his fireside, that he nobly rejected the gold which was offered him on the part of the Samnites, and rejected it with this memorable saying, ‘that he placed his glory, not on the abundance of his own wealth, but in commanding those amongst whom it abounded.’” With equal exultation he refers to the enthusiasm into which Xenophon in his treatise ofŒconomicsbreaks forth in the praise of agriculture, and relates the interview of Lysander, the Spartan ambassador, with Cyrus the younger, as told by Socrates to his friend Critobulus, in which Cyrus assures Lysander that all the trees, shrubs, etc., which he admired in his garden, were planted by his own hand.
But if such were the charms which agriculture had for the Roman nobility, how much greater ought it to possess for the nobles and gentlemen of England! Amid all the advantages and recreations which have been pointed out in the preceding chapters as surrounding the country life of modern England, that of scientificfarming is certainly one of the greatest. It is a pursuit full of interest and variety, at once natural, philosophical, and dignified. It is difficult to imagine a man of wealth and education more usefully or honourably employed than in directing the culture and improvement of his estate. Agriculture is now become, indeed, as Cicero termed it in his day, “the nearest of all employments to the purely philosophical kind.” It is a science which requires a first-rate education to prosecute it to its full capability, to make the other arts and sciences of modern times bear upon it, and co-operate with it, so as to add something to its progression, or even to apply beneficially the knowledge of its already established principles and practices.[1]It is no longer an occupation which requires a man to forego the refined pleasures of society, to bury himself amid woods and wildernesses in some obscure hamlet far from the enjoyments and intelligence of the world. As we have already seen, locate himself where he will in these islands, the arts, the elegances, the news and knowledge of civilized life, will penetrate to him by swift agencies, and give him all the real advantages of the city in the peace and fulness of his retirement. And what a noble art is agriculture now become! Look at the manner it is now practised by the most skilful of its professors. Let any one just turn over the leaves of Mr. Loudon’s Encyclopædia of Agriculture, and trace the progress of its implements only, from the plough of the ancients in the shape of a mere pick, to the almost endless machines which the active brains of men and their advancing knowledge of mechanics have given to the scientific farmer. Let any one turn to the list of engravings of farming apparatus in the same excellent work, amounting to about 300, and he will obtain some idea of the amount of science and invention now devoted to the use of the agriculturist. There are no men who have availed themselves of the progress of the arts and of general knowledge more than they. Mechanics, chemistry, hydraulics, steam, all have been seized upon, to develope the principles, orfacilitate the operations of agriculture. Within the last century the strides which have been made in this interesting department of knowledge are admirable. The Netherlands may be said to have been the mother of our modern agriculture—Scotland its nurse. Tull’s system of horse-hoeing and drill husbandry has been introduced by Dawson, and has brought after it a numerous train of drills, dibbling-machines, horse-hoes, ploughs, rollers, scufflers, scarifiers, watering-machines, brakes, drill-harrows, etc., which we now see almost everywhere where the old system of plain ploughing, harrowing, and broad-cast sowing prevailed to the infinite loss of seed and growth of weeds. Then comes the thrashing machine invented by Menzies, and improved by Meikle from stage to stage, successively adapted to horses, wind, water, and eventually the giant power of steam, thus giving to the operations of the barn a rapidity equal to the skill and neatness displayed in the field. The scientific genius of Sir Humphry Davy, Thompson, Fourcroy, Parmentier, Kirwan, Gay Lussac, and many other eminent chemists, have been employed to investigate more accurately the real nature of soils and manures, and a vast increase of productive power has been the result. Bones, a source of fertility till of late entirely wasted, have done wonders; rape-dust, malt-dust, oil, fish, salt, wood and peat ashes, soot, gypsum, and many other substances, have been made the active agents of human subsistence. The best mixture of crops has been determined by numerous experiments; and the benefits of stall-feeding clearly demonstrated. Mangel-würzel, trifolium incarnatum—a plant which from its rich crimson hue would be an ornament of our fields even were it not a profitable production—and other vegetables, have been added to that plenteous growth of clover, dills, lucerne, rape, turnips, etc., with which modern tillage has enriched both summer and winter stalls. The improvement of the breed of cattle and sheep by Bakewell of Dishly, and the Culleys; the growth of finer and better wools by the introduction and crossing with the Merino by Lord Somerville and others, have been as remarkable as the superior cultivation of the soil. The science of draining has found devotees equally ardent, and has produced the most striking consequences. In many instances the mere act of draining has quadrupled the produce of land. In the weald of Kent, land which produced only a rental of five shillingsan acre, has been raised by this process to five-and-twenty. And all these objects have been watched over, canvassed, and stimulated by the establishment of agricultural societies, agricultural journals and newspapers, and ploughing matches. Agricultural associations are now to be found in almost every county, and in different districts of the same county, which offer premiums on the best specimens of horses, cattle, and sheep; the best ploughing, and the most steady and industrious farm and household servants. It is a new feature in rural life, to see the whole farming population of a district hastening on a given day, gentlemen, farmers, and farm-servants all in their best array, to some one spot where the cattle are shewn, the ploughing is done, the prizes are awarded by umpires chosen from the most skilful, and the different parties then going to a good dinner, and a long talk and hearty toasting of all the interests of agriculture.
[1]This education is now likely to be extended to the great body of farmers. In Ireland, at Templemoyle, a college is established where the sons of farmers are instructed in every branch of science which can enable them to pursue agriculture successfully, while they daily work certain hours on the farm attached, thus making a familiar practical acquaintance with all the best processes of cultivation under the ablest professors. Similar colleges are also contemplated for England.
[1]This education is now likely to be extended to the great body of farmers. In Ireland, at Templemoyle, a college is established where the sons of farmers are instructed in every branch of science which can enable them to pursue agriculture successfully, while they daily work certain hours on the farm attached, thus making a familiar practical acquaintance with all the best processes of cultivation under the ablest professors. Similar colleges are also contemplated for England.
It is really too, as curious to see on our scientific farms the vast variety of implements and machines which these causes have produced;—ploughs—about a dozen and a half swing-ploughs, and upwards of a dozen wheel-ploughs of different constructions, and by different patentees; harrows, drills, cultivators. Every species of soil and crop has its peculiar apparatus; in the field and the farm-yard; for getting seed into the ground, clearing and dressing when there, for thrashing it out and cleaning it for market; for sowing peas, beans, turnips, carrots, parsnips, etc., for chopping, slicing, and preparing them for cattle; their machines for tedding hay, for stacking it with least possible risk, for cutting and steaming it; for ploughing up weeds, ploughing up moorlands, and even roads; for reaping by wholesale, and raking by wholesale; for tapping deep springs, and guttering the surface for the escape of top-water; there are their machines for paring and levelling lumpy lands; for cross-cutting furrows to make rough mossy land take seed better; their channels, sluices, and schemes for irrigation. And then, who shall tell all their implements for hay-binding, rope-twisting, furze-pounding for cattle; their novel churns, their ratteries, their new-fangled mole-traps, their poultry-feeders, and pheasant-feeders, by which those birds are enabled to help themselves from tin boxes supplied with grain for them, without feathered depredators being able to go shares with them. TrulySolomon might say that men now-a-days have sought out many inventions!
But who shall calculate all the thoughts and the labours of such men as Fitzherbert, Tusser, Gooch, Platt, Hartlib, Weston, Markham, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Norden, John Evelyn, Worlidge, Stillingfleet, Harte, Arthur Young, Maxwell, Lord Kaimes, Sir John Sinclair, etc. etc.? Who shall aggregate and estimate the numerous and valuable suggestions and articles of anonymous writers in the journals; and the personal labours and fostering influence of such men as the late Dukes of Buccleugh, and of Bedford, the Duke of Portland, Earl Spencer, the late Lord Somerville, Mr. Coke of Holkham, now the Earl of Leicester, and many other noblemen and gentlemen who have spent their lives in the unostentatious but most meritorious endeavour to perfect the agricultural science of England? With the exception of naturalists, there are no men whose pursuits seem to me to yield them so much real happiness as intelligent agriculturists whose hearts are in the business; and though there are men whose offices or professions place them more in the public eye, there are none who are more truly the benefactors of their country. Such were Lord Somerville and the Duke of Buccleugh, as described by Sir Walter Scott; and there is a passage in his memoir of the latter nobleman well worth the notice of those who propagate or believe in the nonsense of the economists on the non-influence of absenteeism. “In the year 1817, when the poor stood so much in need of employment, a friend asked the Duke why his Grace did not prepare to go to London in the spring? By way of answer, the Duke shewed him a list of day-labourers then employed in improvements on his different estates, the number of whom, exclusive of his regular establishments, amounted tonine hundred and forty-seven persons. If we allow to each labourer two persons, whose support depended on his wages, the Duke was in a manner foregoing, during this severe year, the privilege of his rank, in order to provide with more convenience for a little army of nearly three thousand persons, many of whom must otherwise have found it difficult to obtain subsistence. The result of such conduct is twice blessed; both in the means which it employs, and in the end which it attains in the general improvement of the country. This anecdoteforms a good answer to those theorists who pretend that the residence of proprietors on their estates is a matter of indifference to the inhabitants of that district. Had the Duke been residing, and spending his revenue elsewhere, one half of these poor people would have wanted employment and food; and would probably have been little comforted by any metaphysical arguments upon population, which could have been presented to their investigation.”—Scott’s Prose Works, vol. 4.
Many such things may be daily heard of the present Duke of Portland, in the neighbourhood of Welbeck Abbey, in Nottinghamshire; which convince you that he is one of those men that contrive to pass through life without much noise, but reaping happiness and respect in abundance, and while gratifying the taste for rural occupation, conferring the most lasting benefits upon the country. I shall close this section of this chapter with thesubstanceof one such act, related to me some years ago. In the manner of relation it may therefore differ somewhat from that in which originally told, but in fact I believe it to be perfectly correct. The Duke found that one of his tenants, a small farmer, was falling, year after year, into arrears of rent. The steward wished to know what should be done. The Duke rode to the farm; saw that it was rapidly deteriorating, and the man, who was really an experienced and industrious farmer, totally unable to manage it, from poverty. In fact, all that was on the farm was not enough to pay the arrears. “John,” said the Duke, as the farmer came to meet him as he rode up to the house, “I want to look over the farm a little.” As they went along,—“Really,” said he, “every thing is in very bad case. This won’t do. I see you are quite under it. All your stock and crops won’t pay the rent in arrear. I will tell you what I must do. I must take the farm into my own hands. You shall look after it for me, and I will pay you your wages.” Of course there was no saying nay,—the poor man bowed assent. Presently there came a reinforcement of stock, then loads of manure,—at the proper time, seed, and wood from the plantations for repairing gates and buildings. The Duke rode over frequently. The man exerted himself, and seemed really quite relieved from a load of care by the change. Things speedily assumed a new aspect. The crops and stock flourished; fences and outbuildings were putinto good order. In two or three rent days, it was seen by the steward’s books that the farm was paying its way. The Duke on his next visit, said, “Well, John, I think the farm does very well now. We will change again. You shall be tenant again; and as you now have your head fairly above water, I hope you will be able to keep it there.” The Duke rode off at his usual rapid rate. The man stood in astonishment; but a happy fellow he was, when on applying to the steward he found that he was actually re-entered as tenant to the farm just as it stood in its restored condition;—I will venture to say, however, that the Duke himself was the happier man of the two.
Oxen ploughing
“Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, whenye’re sleeping.”—Heart of Mid-Lothian.
“Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, whenye’re sleeping.”—Heart of Mid-Lothian.
What we have just said of the pleasures and benefit of scientific farming, may be said also of planting; it is but another interesting mode of employing time by landed proprietors, at once for recreation and the improvement of their estates. What, indeed, can be more delightful than planning future woods, where, perhaps, now sterile heather, or naked declivities present themselves; clothing, warming, diversifying in imagination your vicinity; then turning your visions into realities, and watching the growth of your forests? Since John Evelyn wrote his eloquent Sylva, and displayed the deplorable condition of our woodlands, and since Dr. Johnson penned his sarcastic Tour to the Hebrides, both England and Scotland have done much to repair the ravages made in the course of ages in our woods. A strong spirit on the subject has grown up in the minds of our landed gentry, and vast numbers of trees of all kinds suitable to our climate have been planted in different parts of the island. The Commissioners of Woods and Forests have made extensive plantations of oak in the New Forest, and other places. In the neighbourhood of all gentlemen’s houses we see evidences of liberal planting: and the rich effect of these young woods is well calculated to strengthen the love of planting.In this part of Surrey, wood, indeed, seems the great growth of the country. Look over the landscape from Richmond Hill, from Claremont, from St. George’s or St. Anne’s Hill, and it is one wide sea of wood. The same is the case in the bordering regions of Buckingham and Berk shires. Richmond Park, Hampton-Court Park, Bushy Park, Claremont and Esher Parks, Oatlands, Painshill, Windsor, Ockham, Bookham—the whole wide country is covered with parks, woods, and fields, the very hedge-rows of which are dense, continuous lines of trees. Look into the part of Kent approaching the metropolis from the heights of Norwood, and the prospect is the same. Many of the extensive commons hereabout, as Bookham and Streatham commons, are scattered with fine oaks, some of them very ancient, and diversified with thickets and green glades, and rather resemble old forests and parks, than commons as seen elsewhere. Then again, the sandy heaths of Surrey are covered in many places with miles of Scotch firs. There certainly is no want of wood in these parts. In the sandy wastes of Old Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, many thousand acres, principally of larch, have been planted on the estates of the Dukes of Portland and Newcastle, Lord Scarborough, Earl Manvers, Colonels Need, Wildman, and other proprietors. Even the cold hills of the Peak of Derbyshire have been planted in some parts extensively; and lands in those districts which were literally unproductive, are now a source of considerable income from the thinning of the woods. In Scotland the same change is very visible. All along the borders the good lands are beautifully cultivated, the bad extensively planted. From the dreary flats about Gretna Green to the borders of Northumberland and Berwickshire, this is the case. Passing into Scotland by the Cheviots, we saw extensive woods on the border lands of the Duke of Northumberland, Earl Tankerville, Mr. Collingwood, Mr. St. Paul, etc. The cold and wild tract between Kelso and Edinburgh presents cheering appearances of the extension of the planting spirit. In the counties of Argyle, Ross, and Inverness, which Monteith of Stirling, in his Forester’s Guide, particularly points out as wanting wood, we were struck with the great extent of planting already done. Every summer tourist up the Clyde sees how much the woods round Roseneath have sheltered and beautified it—and the woods around Inverary Castle are, to agreat extent, very splendid—while all the way thence to Oban you pass through mountain glens and over moorlands enriched with woods. The Duke of Athol, about Athol and Dunkeld, has planted upwards of 15,000 acres. The Duke of Montrose has been a great planter. Sir Walter Scott was a diligent planter, as the young woods round Abbotsford testify; and there are no moments of his life in which we can imagine him happier than when mounted on his pony he progressed through his plantations at his leisure, with his pruning-knife in his hand. But what he did on his own estate is trivial to what he did by his writings. He may be said to have planted more trees by his pen than any man alive has with his spade. He himself tells us that the simple words put into the mouth of the Laird of Dumbiedikes, and placed as a motto at the head of this chapter, induced a certain Earl to plant a large tract of country.
In the neighbourhood of Dingwall, Beuley, Beaufort,—from Inverness to Culloden,—in short, in almost every part of the Highlands,—you find extensive young woods of larch and pine. Many of these, it must be confessed, have apparently been made with more regard to profit than beauty. In many of the sweet straths, and along the feet of the mountains, the long monotonous reaches of larch—an unbroken, unvaried succession of pointed pyramids—present but an indifferent contrast to the free slopes of beauty which the native growth of the birches exhibits; dotting glens and embosoming lochs with a fairyland loveliness. As they become large, and are thinned properly, or rather, where they are planted thinly, on the plan of the Duke of Athol, this defect may be remedied. Scotch firs, when large, assume a wild forest majesty; and larches in mountainous situations, of an ancient growth, have an Alpine sweep of boughs that is extremely picturesque and graceful; but young crowded firs of any kind are too formal for beauty.
Mr. Wordsworth, in his Guide to the Lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland, complains grievously of the injury done to the scenery there, by the injudicious planting of larch. “Larch and fir plantations have been spread, not merely with a view to profit, but in many instances for the sake of ornament. To those who plant for profit, and are thrusting every other tree out of the way,to make room for their favourite, the larch, I would utter first a regret, that they should have selected these lovely vales for their vegetable manufactory, when there is so much barren and irreclaimable land in the neighbouring moors, and in other parts of the island, which might have been had for this purpose at a far cheaper rate.—It must be acknowledged that the larch, till it has outgrown the size of a shrub, shews, when looked at singly, some elegance of form and appearance, especially in spring, decorated, as it then is, by the pink tassels of its blossoms; but, as a tree, it is less than any other pleasing. Its branches—for boughs it has none—have no variety in the youth of the tree, and little dignity even when it attains its full growth;leavesit cannot be said to have, consequently affords neither shade nor shelter. In spring, the larch becomes green long before the native trees, and its green is so peculiar and vivid, that, finding nothing to harmonize with it, wherever it comes forth a disagreeable speck is produced. In summer, when all other trees are in their pride, it is of a dingy, lifeless hue; in autumn, of a spiritless unvaried yellow; and in winter, it is still more lamentably distinguished from any other deciduous tree of the forest, for they seem only to sleep, but the larch seems absolutely dead. If an attempt be made to mingle thickets, or a certain proportion of other forest trees, with the larch, its horizontal branches intolerantly cut them down, as with a scythe, or force them to spindle up to keep pace with it. The terminating spike renders it impossible that the several trees, where planted in numbers, should ever blend together so as to form a mass, or masses of wood. Add thousands to tens of thousands, and the appearance is still the same—a collection of separate individual trees, obstinately presenting themselves as such; and which, from whatever point they are looked at, if but seen, may be counted upon the fingers. Sunshine, or shadow, has little power to adorn the surface of such a wood; and the trees not carrying up their heads, the wind raises amongst them no majestic undulations.”
There is much truth in these remarks, and they cannot be too much borne in mind by all planters where picturesque beauty is an object. On dreary moors, where the larch is planted merely for profit, and where thetout-ensemblecannot readily be attained, woods of it often present a great degree of pleasantness by contrast.They give you green glades and narrow footpaths, between heath and fern, their slender boughs hanging above you, especially in the freshness of their foliage, very agreeably. As a matter of profit, and for the value of its timber, few species of wood can compete with it. The following extract from the Transactions of the Highland Society, gives a very striking view of its importance. “Larch will supply ship-timber at a great height above the region of the oak; and while a seventy-four gun ship will require the oak timber of seventy-five acres, it will not require more than the timber of ten acres of larch; the trees, in both cases being sixty-eight years old. The larch, at Dunkeld, grows at the height of 1300 feet above the level of the sea; the spruce at 1200; the Scotch pine at 700; and deciduous trees at not higher than 500. The larch, in comparison with the Scotch pine, is found to produce three and three-quarter times more timber, and that timber of seven times more value. The larch also, being a deciduous tree, instead of injuring the pasture under it, improves it. The late Duke of Athol, John the Second, planted in the last year of his life, 6500 Scotch acres of mountain ground solely with the larch, which in the course of seventy-two years from the time of planting will be a forest of timber fit for the building of the largest class of ships in her majesty’s navy. It will have been thinned out to about 400 trees per acre. Each tree will contain at the least fifty cubic feet, or one load of timber, which, at the low price of one shilling the cubic foot, only one half of its present value, will give 1000l.per acre, or in all, a sum of 6,500,000l.sterling. Besides this there will have been a return of 7l.per acre from the thinnings, after deducting all expense of thinning, and the original outlay of planting. Further still, the land on which the larch is planted, is not worth above ninepence or one shilling per acre. After the thinnings of the last thirty years, the larch will make it worth at least ten shillings per acre by the improvement of the pasturage, on which cattle can be kept summer and winter.”
That is pretty well. This calculation is made upon land stated at 1s.per acre, planted with larch; but Monteith, an experienced timber planter and valuer, gives us for oak planted on land of 1l.per acre yearly rent, the following statement.
“If the proprietor, for instance, plants 100 acres of ground,the trees being placed four feet distant from each other, each acre will contain 3422 plants. If it be planted with hard woods, chiefly oaks, and a few firs to nurse them up, supposing it is a plantation purely for profit,
Hitherto the amount of gain is comparatively small, but this calculation continued according to the growth of the trees for ten years more, will leave the balance no less than 23,667l.And to the end of forty years from first planting, the round sum of 41,000l.“These calculations,” says Monteith, “may, to those who have paid no attention to the subject, excite wonder if notdoubt, but in making them the author has been careful to lessen rather than exaggerate the profits: and if the plantation shall have been carried to the age of sixty or seventy years, and properly thinned, etc., the value will be double what it was at forty years.” Thus, if 100 acres in seventy years will yield 80,000l.planted with oak, 6000 acres will yield about 5,000,000l.; while 6000 acres of the larch plantations of Athol in the same period are calculated to yield about 6,000,000l.There is sufficient agreement to lead us to suppose the calculations probably accurate, and what a splendid inducement to judicious planting do these calculations present!
The following facts, given in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” (vol. i., art. Agriculture), are also particularly interesting to the planter. Mr. Pavier, in the fourth volume of the Bath Papers, computes the value of fifty acres of oak timber in 100 years to be 12,100l., which is nearly 2l.10s.annually per acre; and if we consider that this is continually accumulating, without any of that expense or risk to which annual crops are subject, it is probable that timber-planting may be accounted one of the most profitable departments of husbandry. Evelyn calculates the profit of 1000 acres of oak land in 150 years at no less than 670,000l.
The following table shews the increase of trees from their first planting. It was taken from the Marquis of Lansdowne’s plantation, begun in the year 1765, and the calculation made in 1786. It is about six acres in extent, the soil partly a swampy meadow upon a gravelly bottom. The measures were taken at five feet above the surface of the ground; the small trees having been occasionally drawn for posts and rails, as well as rafters for cottages, and when peeled of the bark will stand well for seven years.
From this table it appears that the planting of timber trees, when the return can be waited for twenty years, will undoubtedly repay the original cost of planting as well as the interest of the money laid out, which is better worth the attention of the proprietor of land, as the ground on which they grow may be supposed good for cattle also.
In Argyleshire, there are probably 40,000 acres of natural coppice wood which are cut periodically; commonly every nineteen or twenty years, and are understood to return about 1l.an acre annually. Very extensive plantations have been formed by the Duke of Argyle, and other proprietors. About thirty years ago those of his Grace were reckoned to contain 2,000,000 trees, worth then 4s.each amounting to the enormous sum of 400,000l.
I knew a certain old military officer who during his early years was a captain in a militia regiment. His brother officers were a gay set of fellows, and were continually drawing on their private incomes, and often coming to him to borrow money; but he made it a rule never to spend more than his own pay, and as to money, he never had any to lend. He went down to his estate every spring and autumn, and planted as many acres of trees as his rental would allow him. His planting gave him a perpetual plea of poverty. At a certain age he retired on his half-pay. A large family was growing around him, but his woods were growing too. Many a time have I seen him, mounted on an old brood mare, with a sort of capacious game-bag across her loins, with his gun slung at his shoulder, his saws and pruning-knives strapped behind his saddle, going away into his woods: and keeping the calculations of Monteith, and of the larch plantations of Athol, in mind, I can now imagine the profound satisfaction which the old gentleman, through a long course of years, must have felt in the depths of his forest solitudes. He is still living, at an advanced age. His family is large, and has been expensive; but his woods were large too, and no doubt theirthinningshave proved very gratefulthinningsof his family charges.
Garden scene
We must now wind up, in a few words, what we have to say of the country life of the gentry, and these words must be on their gardens. In these, as in all those other sources of enjoyment that surround them, perfection seems to be reached. They live in the midst of scenes which, while they appear nature itself, are the result of art consummated only by ages of labour, research, science, travel, and the most remarkable discoveries. Nothing can be more delicious than the rural paradises which now surround our country houses. Walks, waters, lawns of velvet softness, trees casting broad shadows, or whispering in the stirrings of the breeze; seclusion and yet airiness; flowers from all regions, besides all the luxuries which the kitchen-garden, the orchard, conservatories, hothouses, and sunny walls pour upon our tables, are so blended and diffusedaround our dwellings, that nothing on earth can be more delectable. It is impossible, without looking back through many ages of English life, to form any idea of the real advantages which we enjoy of this kind,—of the immense stride we have made from the bare and rigid life of our ancestors. How many of the fruits or flowers, or culinary vegetables, which we possess in such excellence and perfection, did this country originally produce? Few, indeed, of our indigenous flowers are retained in our gardens, few of our vegetables besides the cabbage and the carrot; and what were the ancient British fruits besides the crab and the bullace? But we have only to look back to the feudal times to see the wide difference between our gardens and those then existing; for all that could be enjoyed of a garden must be compressed within the narrow boundary of the castle moat. Every thing without was subject to continual ravage and destruction; and though orchards were planted without, and suffered to take their chance, the ladies’ little parterre occupied some sheltered nook of the court, or space between grim towers:
Now was there maide fast by the touris wall,A garden faire, and in the corneris setAn herbere grew; with wandis long and small,Railit about, and so with treeis setWas all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,That lyfe was now, walkyng there for bye,That myght within scarce any wight espye.The Quair, by James I. of Scotland.
Now was there maide fast by the touris wall,A garden faire, and in the corneris setAn herbere grew; with wandis long and small,Railit about, and so with treeis setWas all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,That lyfe was now, walkyng there for bye,That myght within scarce any wight espye.
The Quair, by James I. of Scotland.
And the plot of culinary herbs occupied some sheltered spot within the moat; which when it is recollected how many other requisites of existence and defence were also compressed into the same space—soldiers, arms, and machines of war; sleeping and eating rooms; room for the stabling and fodder of horses, and often of cattle; space for daily exercise, martial or recreative; bowls, tilting or tennis,—when cooped up by their enemies, or made cautious by critical times, small indeed must have been the space or the leisure for gardens. Even in 1540, Leland in his Itinerary, tells us that our nobility still dwelt in castles, and there retained the usual defences of moats, and drawbridges. This was especially the case, the nearer they approached to the Scotch or Welsh borders; though in the vicinity of London villas and palaceshad long sprung up. At Wressel Castle, near Howden, in Yorkshire, he says, “The gardens within the mote, and the orchardes without, were exceeding fair. And yn the orchardes were mounts,opere topiario, writhen about with degrees like the turnings in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payn.” The career, indeed, by which our gardens have reached their present condition, has been, as I have said, the career of many ages, revolutions, and stupendous events. It is not only curious, but most interesting to trace all those circumstances which have contributed to raise horticulture to its present eminence,—the great national events, the extension of discovery, of the arts, of general knowledge; the deep ponderings in cells and fields; the achievements of genius, of enterprise; the combinations of science, and the variations of taste which have brought it to what it is. The history of our gardening is, in fact, the history of Europe. The monks, whose religious character gave them an extraordinary security, as they were the first restorers of agriculture, so they were the first extenders and improvers of our gardens. Their long pilgrimages from one holy shrine to another, through France, Germany, and Italy, made them early acquainted with a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs, and with various fruits; and amongst the ruins of abbeys we still find a tribe of plants that they thus naturalized. The crusades gave the next extension to horticultural knowledge; the growing commerce and wealth of Europe fostered it still farther; and the successive magnificent discoveries of the Indies, America, the isles of the Pacific and Australia, with all their new and splendid and invaluable productions, raised the desire for such things to the highest pitch; and made our gardens and greenhouses affluent beyond all imagination. What hosts of new and curious plants do they still send us every season! From every corner of the earth are they daily reaching us: the average value of the plants in Loddige’s gardens is calculated at 200,000l.But what a blank would they now be but for the mighty spirit of commerce, the thirst of discovery, and of traversing distant regions, which animate such numbers of our countrymen, and send them out to extend our geography, geology, and natural history, or to prosecute astronomical and philosophical science under every portion of the heavens? And besides these causes, how much is yet to beaccounted for by the tastes of peculiar ages—out of the peculiar studies of the times, and the singular genius of particular men thence arising. The influence of poets and imaginative writers upon the character of our gardens has been extreme. Whether an age were poetical or mathematical, made a mighty difference in the garden-style of the time. C. Matius, the favourite of Augustus Cæsar, introduced the fashion at Rome of clipping trees into shapes of animals and other grotesque forms; Pliny admired the invention, and celebrated it under the name of topiary-work; and so strongly did it take hold on the spirits of men, that it descended to all the nations of Europe, and was not exploded by us till the last century. Sir Henry Wotton, the tasteful and poetical courtier of Queen Elizabeth, and ambassador of James to Venice, with notions of the fitness of a garden far beyond his age, yet thought it “a graceful and natural conceit” in Michael Angelo to make a fountain-figure in the shape of “a sturdy washerwoman, washing and winding of linen clothes, in which act she wrings out the water which made the fountain.” And again Addison, followed by Pope and Walpole, overturned this ancient fondness for pleached walks, and tonsured trees, and quaint fountain-figures, whether of Neptunes, Niles, or washerwomen. Then the great change of the social system, from the feudal and military to civil and domestic, produced a correspondent change in the culture of gardens. While the country was rent to pieces by contentions for the crown, there could be little leisure or taste for gardens; but when men became peaceful, and collected their habitations into clusters, they naturally began to embellish both them and their environs.
From the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry VIII. we look over a large space, and find but slight improvement in horticulture, and scanty traces of its literature. A bushel of onions in Richard II.’s reign cost twelve shillings of our present money: Henry VII. records himself, in a MS. preserved in the Remembrance Office, that apples were in his day one and two shillings each, a red one fetching the highest price; and Henry VIII.’s queen, Catherine, when she wanted a salad, sent to Flanders for it. The very first book which was written on the culture of the soil in this country, appears to be Walter de Henly’s—“De Yconomia sive Housbandria,” Then came Nicholas Bollar’s books, “De ArborumPlantatione,” and “De Generatione Arborum et Modo Generandi et Plantandi,” and some other MS. writings. Richard II. rewarded botanical skill in the person of John Bray with a pension. Henry Calcoensis in the fifteenth century composed a Synopsis Herbaria, and translated Palladius de Re Rustica into Gaelic. In the sixteenth century William Horman, Vice-Provost of Eton, wrote Herbarum Synonyma and Indexes to Cato, Varro, Columella, and Palladius; and in the same century Wynkin de Worde printed “Mayster Groshede’s Boke of Husbandry,” which contained instructions for planting and grafting of trees and vines. Arnold’s Chronicle in 1521, had a chapter on the same subject, and how to raise a salad in an hour; and Pynson published the “Boke of Surveying and Improvements.” Then came Dr. Bulleyn, Dodoneus, Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, and Tusser; and that is the history of gardens and their literature till the time of Henry VIII.; but thence to the eighteenth century,—to the days of Bridgman and Kent, what multitudes of grand, quaint, and artificial gardens were spread over the country. Nonsuch, Theobalds, Greenwich, Hampton-Court, Hatfield, Moor-Park, Chatsworth, Beaconsfield, Cashiobury, Ham, and many another, stood in all that stately formality which Henry and Elizabeth admired, and in which our Surreys, Leicesters, Essexes; the splendid nobles of the Tudor dynasty, the gay ladies and gallants of Charles II.’s court, had walked and talked, fluttered in glittering processions, or flirted in green alleys and bowers of topiary-work; and amid figures, in lead or stone, fountains, cascades, copper trees dropping sudden showers on the astonished passers under, stately terraces with gilded balustrades, and curious quincunx, obelisks, and pyramids—fitting objects of the admiration of those who walked in high-heeled shoes, ruffs and fardingales, with fan in hand, or in trunk-hose and laced doublets.
“The palace of Nonsuch,” said Hentzner in 1598, “is encompassed with parks full of deer, delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets of verdure (summer-houses, or seats cut in yew), and walls so embowered with trees, that it seems to be a place pitched upon by pleasure herself to dwell in along with health. In the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of marble; two fountains that spout water, one round, the other like a pyramid, upon which are perched smallbirds that stream water out of their bills. In the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with Actæon turned into a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and the nymphs, with inscriptions. Here is, besides, another pyramid of marble full of concealed pipes, which spurt upon all who come within their reach.” In the gardens of Lord Burleigh, at Theobalds, he tells us are nine knots, artificially andexquisitelymade, one of which was set for the likeness of the king’s arms. One might walk two miles in the walks before he came to the end.
In Hampton-Court, was a fountain with syrens and other statues by Fanelli. At Kensington were bastions and counterscarps of clipped yew and variegated holly, being the objects of wonder and admiration under the name of the siege of Troy. At Chatsworth the temporary cascade, the water-god, the copper-tree, and the jets-d’eau, still remain in all their glory.
The hands of Bridgman, Kent and Brown, and the pens of Addison, Pope, and Walpole, have put all this ancient glory of Roman style to the flight; and driven us, perhaps, into danger of going too far after nature. The winding walks, the turfy lawns, the bowery shrubberies, the green slopes to the margin of waters, the retention of rocks and thickets where they naturally stood,—all this is very beautiful, and many a sweet elysian scene do they spread around our English houses. But in imitating nature we are apt to imitate her as she appears in her rudest places, and not as she would modify herself in the vicinity of human habitations. We are apt to make too little difference between the garden and the field; between the shrubbery and the wood. We are come to think that all which differs from wild nature is artificial, and therefore absurd. Something too much of this, I think, we are beginning to feel we have had amongst us. It has been the fashion to cry down all gardens as ugly and tasteless, which are not shaped by our modern notions. The formalities of the French and Dutch have been sufficiently condemned. For my part, I like even them in their place. One would no more think of laying out grounds now in this manner, than of wearing Elizabethan ruffs, or bag-wigs and basket-hilted swords; yet the old French and Dutch gardens, as the appendages of a quaint old house, are in my opinion, beautiful. They are like many other things—not so much beautiful inthemselves, as beautiful by association—as memorials of certain characters and ages. A garden, after all, is an artificial thing; and though formed from the materials of nature, may be allowed to mould them into something very different from nature. There is a wild beauty of nature, and there is a beauty in nature linked to art: one looks for a very different kind of beauty in fields and mountains, to what one does in a garden. The one delights you by a certain rude freedom and untamed magnificence; the other, by smoothness and elegance—by velvet lawns, bowery arbours, winding paths, fair branching shrubs, fountains, and juxta-position of many rare flowers.
It appears to me that it is an inestimable advantage as it regards our gardens, that the former taste of the nation has differed so much from its present one. Without this, what a loss of variety we should have suffered! If the taste of the present generation had been that of all past ages, what could there have been in the gardens of our past kings, nobles, and historical characters to mark them as strongly and emphatically as they are now marked? They now, indeed, seem to belong to men and things gone by; and I would as soon almost see one of our venerable cathedrals rased with the ground, as one of those old gardens rooted up. There is something in them of a sombre and becoming melancholy. They are in keeping with the houses they surround, and the portraits in the galleries of those houses. When we wander through the pleached alleys, and by the time-stained fountains of these old gardens, perished years indeed seem to come back again to us. In the centre of some vast avenue of majestic elms or limes, sweeping their boughs to the ground, “the dial-stone aged and green” arrests our attention, and points not to the present hour, but to the past. Our historic memories are intimately connected with such places. Our Howards, Essexes, Surreys, and Wolseys, were the magnificent founders and creators of such places; and in such, Shakspeare and Spenser, Milton and Bacon, and Sidney mused. It is astonishing what numbers of our poets, philosophers, and literati, are connected with the history of our gardens by their writings, or love of them. Sir Henry Wotton, Parkinson, Ray, John Evelyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, Bacon, Addison, Pope, Sir William Temple, who not only wrote “the Garden of Epicurus,” butso delighted in gardening that he directed in his will that his heart should be buried beneath the sun-dial in his garden at Moor-Park in Surrey, where it accordingly was deposited in a silver box: Horace Walpole, Locke, Cowley, Shenstone, Charles Cotton, Waller, Bishop Fleetwood, Spence, the author of Polymetis, Gilpin of the Forest Scenery, Mason, Dr. Darwin, Cowper, and many others, have their fame linked to the history or the love of gardens.
There is something very interesting too, in the biography of our old patriarchs of English gardening. There is scarcely one of those large nurseries and gardens round London but is connected with them, as their founders, or improvers—as the Tradescants of Lambeth,—London and Wise of Brompton,—Philip Miller of Chelsea,—Gray of Fulham,—Furber of Kensington,—Lee of Hammersmith. It is cheering to observe how much our monarchs, from Henry VIII. to George III. were, with their principal nobility, almost to a man, whatever was their character in other respects, not even excepting the dissipated Charles II., munificent patrons of gardening, and founders of grand gardens. It is interesting to read of the giant labours, and now apparently curious locations of our early gardeners and herbalists. How Dr. Turner imbibed botanical knowledge from Lucas Ghinus at Bologna, and came and established a “garden of rare plants” at Kew; while Mrs. Gape had another at Westminster, which furnished the first specimens for Chelsea garden. How Ray, and Lobel, and Penny, roamed everywhere in search of new plants. How Didymus Mountain published his “Gardener’s Labyrinth:” how Sir Hugh Platt, of Lincoln’s-Inn, gentleman, wrote the Jewel House of Art and Nature, the Paradise of Kew, and the Garden of Eden, and had, moreover, a garden in St. Martin’s Lane. How the “Rei Rusticæ” of Conrad Heresbach, counsellor to the Duke of Cleve, was translated by Barnaby Googe, and reprinted by Gervase Markham, gentleman, of Gotham in Nottinghamshire. How old John Gerarde travelled, when young, up the Baltic, and had his “Physick Garden” in Holborn. How John Parkinson travelled forty years before he wrote his “Paradisus,” and was appointed by Charles I. for his Theatre of Plants, Botanicus Regius Primarius. How Gabriel Plattes, though styled by his cotemporaries, “an excellent genius,” and “of an adventurous casteof mind,” died miserably in the streets. How Walter Blythe of Oliver Cromwell’s army wrote the “Survey of Husbandry,” which Professor Martyn pronounces “an incomparable work.” How Samuel Hartlib, the son of a Polish merchant, the friend of Milton, of Archbishop Usher and Joseph Meade, wrote his “Legacy,” and assisted in establishing the embryo Royal Society; how John Tradescant was in Russia, and accompanied the fleet sent against the Algerines in 1620, and collected on that occasion plants in Barbary, and in the isles of the Mediterranean; and how his son John, afterwards made a voyage in pursuit of plants to Virginia, “and brought many new ones back with him.” How their Museum, established in South Lambeth, and called “Tradescant’s Ark,” was the constant resort of the great and learned; how it fell into the hands of Elias Ashmole, and became theAshmoleanMuseum.
These, and such facts, shew us by what labours and steps our present garden-wealth has been raised; and diffuse an interest over a number of places familiar to us. Go, indeed, into what part of the island we will, we find some object of attraction and curiosity in the gardens attached to our old houses. As the coach passes the residence of Colonel Howard, at Leven’s Bridge in Westmoreland, it stops, the passengers get out, and mount upon its top, and there behold a fine old Elizabethan house, standing in the midst of a garden of that age, with all its topiary-work, its fountains, statues, and lawns. At Stonyhurst in Lancashire, now a Jesuit’s College, I was delighted to find a beautiful old garden of this description, which I have elsewhere described; and at Margam Abbey in South Wales, I found a fine assemblage of orange trees, the very trees which Sir Henry Wotton sent from Italy as a present to James I. These trees had been thrown ashore here by the wreck of the vessel, and the owner of the place, by the king’s permission, built a splendid orangery to receive them, which stood in the centre of a garden surrounded on three sides by woody hills; and in which fuchsias, at least ten feet high, with stems thick as a man’s arm, were growing in the open air, and tulip-trees large as the forest trees around. But what gave a still greater charm to this garden was, that the ruins of a fine old abbey stood here and there on its lawn; arches, overgrown withbushes, and the graceful pillars of a noble chapter-house, around whose feet lay stones of ancient tombs and curious sculpture. These are the things which give so delicious a variety to our English gardens: and when we bear in mind that many of those artifices and figures which we have been accustomed to treat with contempt asDutch, are in realityRoman; that such things once stood in the magnificent gardens of Lucullus and Sallust; that the Romans gathered them again from the Eastern nations; that they are not only classical, but that, like many of the rites of our church and religious festivals, they are the reliques of the most ancient times, I think we shall be inclined to regard them with a greater degree of interest—not as objects to imitate or to place in any competition with our own more natural style, but as things which are of the most remote antiquity, and give a curious diversity to our country abodes. For my part, when I see even a fantastic peacock spreading its tail in yew in some old cottage or farm-house garden I think of Pliny and his admiration of such topiary-work, and would not have it cut down for the world. Even those summer-houses built in trees, such as that built by the King of Belgium, in Winter-Down wood, near Claremont; a sketch of which is presented in the title-page—were Roman fancies; were formed, Pliny tells us, amid the branches of any monarch trees that grew within their grounds, and that even Caligula had one in a plane-tree, near his villa at Velitræ, which he called his Nest.
Here then to all the sweet nests of English gardens, new or old, we bid adieu, with blessings on their pleasantness.
Before closing this department of my work, I must just glance at a few occurrences which serve to give an occasional variety to rural life, and may be classed under the head of Country Excitements. These are races, race-balls, county-balls, concerts, musical festivals, elections, assizes, and confirmations. It will not be requisite to do more than merely mention the greater part of these, for, to describe at length the race-ball and county-balls, the winter concerts of the county town and the musical festivals, would require a separate volume, and they indeed, after all, belong more to the town than to the country. Having, therefore, simply pointed them out as sources of occasional variety to wealthy families during their stay in the country, I shall confine myself in these concluding remarks, to those few particulars which belong more entirely to my subject. Balls and musical exhibitions are sufficiently alike everywhere, to need no distinct details here. It is enough that they serve to break the rural torpor of those who regard existence as only genuine during the London season. The application of the profits both of these balls, and of the musical festivals that have of late years been held in different places, to the support of infirmaries, and to other public objects of benevolence, deserves the highest commendation. Thus dismissing these amusements, neither I nor my readers, I am sure, would wish to have the uproar and exasperation of the county election introduced into this peaceful volume; enough that when it does come to the country Hall, it comes, often as a hurricane, and frequently shakes it to the foundation, leavingin its track debts and mortgages, shyness between neighbours, and rancour amongst old friends.
It would not be giving a faithful view of country life, however, were we to keep out of sight all agitating causes, and all existing drawbacks to the felicity for which such ample materials exist in it. Surveying those splendid materials, as displayed in the preceding chapters,—those abundant means and opportunities, which the wealthy possess for enjoying their lives in the country;—it would be giving a most one-sided view of the rural life of the rich, if we left it to be inferred that “the trail of the serpent” was not to be perceived at times on the fair lawns, and up the marble steps of rural palaces; that the great “Bubbly-Jock,” (Turkey-Cock) which Scott contended that every man found in his path did not shew himself there. The Serpent and the Bubbly-Jock which disturb and poison the rural life of the educated classes in England, are the very same which dash with bitter all English society in the same classes. They are the pride of life, and the pride of the eye. They are that continual struggle for precedence, and those jealousies which are generated by a false social system. Every man lives now-a-day for public observation. He builds his house, and organizes his establishment, so as to strike public opinion as much as possible. Every man is at strife with his neighbour in the matter of worldly greatness. The consequence is, that a false standard of estimation, both of men and things, is established—shew is substituted for real happiness; and no man is valued for his moral or intellectual qualities, so much as for the grandeur of his house, the style of his equipage, the richness of his dinner service, and the heavy extravagance of his dinners. The result of this is, that most are living to the full extent of their means, many beyond it, and few are finding, in the whole round of their life, that alone, which better and higher natures seek—the interchange of heart and mind, which yields present delight, creates permanent attachments, and fills the memory with enduring satisfaction.
This, it must be confessed, is a wretched state of things; but it is one which every person conversant with society knows to exist, and which intelligent foreigners witness with unfeigned surprise. The worst of it is that this unnatural system of life becomesthe most sensibly felt in the country. In large towns every man finds a sufficient circle after his own taste: there the petty influences of locality are broken up by the multitude of objects, and the ample choice in association. But in small towns, and country neighbourhoods, where wealthy or educated families are thinly scattered, nothing can be more lamentable, and, were it not lamentable, nothing could be more ludicrous, than the state of rivalry, heart-burning, jealousy, personal mortification, or personal pride, from mere accidents of condition or favour. The titled have a fixed rank, and are comparatively at their ease, but in the great mass of those who have wealth, more or less, without title, what a mighty and eating sore is the struggle for distinction. In the little town, or thinly-scattered neighbourhood, every one is measuring out his imaginary dignity to see if it does not exceed, at least by some inches, that of one or other of his neighbours. The lower you descend in the scale, the more exacting becomes the spirit of exclusiveness. The professions look down upon the trades; the trades on one another. Everywhere the same uneasy spirit shews itself. Nothing can be more ludicrous, or amusing to the philosophic spectator, than to observe how leadership is assumed in every country neighbourhood by certain wealthy families; how carefully that leadership is avoided and opposed by other families. How the majority of families aspire to move in one or the other circle; what wretched and anomalous animals those feel themselves that are not recognised by either. How the man who drives his close carriage looks down upon him who only drives his barouche or phaeton; how both contemn the poor occupier of a gig. I have heard of a gentleman of large fortune who, for some years after his residence in a particular neighbourhood, did not set up his close carriage, but afterwards feeling it more agreeable to do so, was astonished to find himself called upon by a host of carriage-keeping people, who did not seem previously aware of his existence; and rightly deeming the calls to be made upon his carriage, rather than himself, sent round his empty carriage to deliver cards in return. It was a biting satire on a melancholy condition of society, the full force of which can only be perceived by such as have heard the continual exultations of those who have dined with such a great person on such a day, and the equally eager complaints of others, of thepride and exclusiveness they meet with; who have listened to the long catalogue of slights, dead cuts, and offences, and witnessed the perpetual heart-burnings incident to such a state of things. These are the follies that press the charm of existence out of the hearts of thousands, and make the country often a purgatory where it might be a paradise.
There is another cause which diminishes in a great degree the enjoyment that might be found in the country, and that is, the almost total cessation of walking amongst the wealthy. Since the universal use of carriages, for anything I can see, thousands of people might just as well be born without legs at all. It would be easy to move them from the bed to the carriage,—thence to the dinner-table, and again to bed. In the country, and especially in the country not far from towns, how rarely do you see the rich except in their luxurious carriages! How rarely do you meet them walking, or even on horseback, as you used to do! Sir Roger de Coverley rode on horseback to the assizes in his day—were he living now, he would roll there in his carriage—lest some one should imagine that he had mortgaged his estate, and laid down his carriage in retrenchment. During the twelve months that I have resided in this neighbourhood—a neighbourhood studded all over with wealthy houses, nothing has surprised me, and the friends who have visited me here, so much as the great rarity of seeing any of the wealthy classes on their legs. With the exception of the Queen and her attendant ladies, who during the then Princess’s abode at Claremont, might be every day met in the winter, walking in frost and snow, and facing the sharpest winds of the sharpest weather, I scarcely remember to have met half-a-dozen of the wealthy classes on foot a mile from their residences. And yet what splendid, airy heaths, what delicious woods, what nooks of bowery foliage, what views into far landscapes, are there all around! It is true, as some of them have observed, that they walk in their own grounds; but what grounds, however beautiful, can compensate for the fresh feeling of the heath and the down; for the dim solemnity of the wild wood; for open, breezy hills, the winding lane, the sight of rustic cottages by the forest side, the tinkle of the herd or the sheep-bell, and all the wild sounds and aspects of earth and heaven, to be met with only in the free regions of nature? They who neglect towalk, or confine their strolls merely to the lawn and the shrubbery, lose nine-tenths of the enjoyment of the country. Those young men, whom it is a pleasure to see with their knapsacks on their backs ranging over moor and mountain, by lake or ocean, in Scotland or Wales, taste more of the life of life in a few summer months than many dwellers in the country ever dream of through their whole existence. I speak advisedly, for I traverse the country in all directions, let me be where I will; and if anyladiesthink themselves too delicate for walking, I can point them out delicate ladies too that have made excursions on foot through mountain regions of five hundred miles at a time, and recur to those seasons as amongst the most delightful of their lives.
But my desire that all should make their country life as happy as it is capable of being made—which must be by living more to nature and less to fashion—by using both their physical and moral energies; by respecting themselves, and leaving the respect of others to follow as the natural result of a true and pure tone of spirit—is detaining me too long. I must hasten on; and amongst the most prominent of the country excitements, give a passing word to racing. If any one wishes to know how far the turf influences the course of country life, he has only to read the following passage from Nimrod. “Deservedly high as Newmarket stands in the history of the British turf, it is but as a speck on the ocean when compared with the sum total of our provincial meetings, of which there are about one hundred and twenty in England, Scotland, and Wales—several of them twice in the year. Epsom, Ascot, York, Doncaster, and Goodwood, stand first in respect of the value of the prizes, the rank of the company, and the interest attached to them in the sporting world; although several other cities and towns have lately exhibited very tempting bills of fare to owners of good race-horses. In point of antiquity we believe the Roodee of Chester claims pre-eminence of all country race-meetings;—and certainly it has long been in high repute. Falling early in the racing year—always the first Monday in May—it is most numerously attended by the families of the extensive and very aristocratic neighbourhood in which it is placed; and always continues five days.”—The Turf, p. 246.
Every one who has seen the crowds of wealthy people who flock to a celebrated race-meeting, and throng the stand and the carriagestations, with brilliant dresses and gay equipages, may imagine, then, how much excitement is spread through that class of society during their stay in the country; by one hundred and twenty race-meetings in one quarter or other of the island; especially as the greater part of these occur during the months that they are absent from town. So having read the passage quoted from Nimrod, he has only to turn to the volume itself—a volume written with great ability; and, making allowance for the author’s sporting predilections, in an excellent spirit, and he will thus find that course described as such a horrible resort of blacklegs and desperadoes, of traitorous jockeys andpoisoningtrainers, as makes one at once recoil from the recital, and wonder that our young nobles and gentlemen should commit themselves and their fortunes to such hands; or that the fair and the refined should consent to gaze on such a scene of infamy. Hear Nimrod’s own words—“How many fine domains have been shared amongst these hosts of rapacious sharks, during the last two hundred years! and unless the system be altered—how many more are doomed to fall into the same gulf! For, we lament to say, the evil has increased; all heretofore, indeed, has been ‘tarts and cheesecakes’ to the villanous proceedings of the last twenty years on the English turf.” Let us move on to less repulsive scenes.
Amongst these may be reckoned the periodical arrivals of the bishops and the judges. The arrival of the bishop to perform the ceremony of confirmation, is but a triennial occurrence, but it is one of the most imposing of the rites of the church. The flocking of the clergy and their families to town; the processions of country children on foot, and led by the parish clerk or schoolmaster, or in carts and other rustic vehicles; the gathering of the children of the rich towards the church in their white dresses, and in gay carriages; the assembling of all classes in the common temple of their religion; the solemnity of the address and the imposition of hands by the prelate; the stately music of the organ, and the silent looking on of the congregated people—all combine to produce a very striking spectacle—a spectacle which to those who believe in its essentiality and efficacy, has something in it touching and beautiful.