CHAPTER IX.
THE LONG LINE AND THIS BOOK END.
The time was at hand which should bring the antagonism of Sir Roger Rockville to our friends in this history to an end. The severity which he had for so many years exercised towards all sorts of offenders, independent of his unconquerable repugnance to all the views and principles of advancing society, had made him the object of deepest vengeance. Eyes watched for him, ears listened for him, dark hearts burned in murderous breasts in lonely places, to discharge upon his head the collected fury of a thousand injuries. In a lonely hollow of his woods, watching at midnight with two of his men, there came a sturdy knot of poachers. An affray ensued.The men perceived that their old enemy, Sir Roger, was there, and the blow of a hedge-stake stretched him on the earth. His keepers fled. And thus ignominiously terminated the long line of the Rockvilles. The actual nature of the catastrophe was concealed at the time from the public, and the conservative newspaper of Castleborough announced that Sir Roger had died suddenly in his bed. It was true that he died in his bed, but it was from the lingering effects of the injury received in the wood. Sir Roger was the last of his line, but not of his class. There is a feudal art of sinking, which requires no study, and the Rockvilles are but one family amongst thousands who have perished in its practice.
Scarcely had Sir Roger breathed his last, when his title and estate fell into litigation. Owing to two generations having passed with no other issue of the Rockville family than a single son and heir, the claims, though numerous, were so mingled with obscuringcircumstances, and so equally balanced, that the lawyers raised quibbles and difficulties enough to keep it in chancery till they had not only consumed all the ready money and rental, but had made frightful inroads into the estate itself. To save the remnant, the contending parties came to a compromise. A neighbouring squire, whose grandfather had married a Rockville, was allowed to secure the title, on the condition that the residuum of the estate should be divided amongst the whole of the claimants. The woods and lands of Rockville were accordingly announced for sale.
It was at this juncture that old William Watson reminded Simon Degge of a conversation in the great grove at Rockville which they had held at the time that Sir Roger was endeavouring to drive the people thence.
“What a divine pleasure,” said Mr. Degge, “might this man enjoy if he had a heart capable of letting others enjoy themselves. Ifhe could but see that the laws of property should be maintained in consistency with the laws of God: that He has given the rentals of the earth to individuals, but that He has never repealed his great law which gives the whole earth to the undivided race of man: that the rentals may be enjoyed by the individual possessors without infringement of the general enjoyment of the pleasures of nature by society at large. These different kinds of possession may surely co-exist without one interfering with the other.”
“But we talk without the estate,” William Watson had said; “what might we do if we were tried with it?”
Mr. Degge, when reminded of this conversation, was silent for a moment, and then replied, that there was sound philosophy in William’s remark. He said no more, but went away, and the next day announced to the astonished old man that he had purchased the groves and the whole ancient estate of Rockville.
Simon Degge, the last of a long line of paupers, had become the possessor of the noble estate of Sir Roger Rockville of Rockville, the last of a long line of aristocrats! It may be imagined what was the consternation of the whole Bullockshed and Tenterhook clan; what the delightful amazement of Woodburn, Cotmanhaye, and all Castleborough. To the squirearchy of the old school, the audacity of this purchase surpassed the range of their limited imaginations. This daring and fortunate quondam pauper, and present manufacturing millionaire, squatted down, as they expressed it, amid all the woods and lands, amid all the ancient honours of the line of Rockville. To them it portended something very like the end of the world. They saw all the old fixedness of ancestry and soil broken up, and the despised men of spindles and looms invading everything which to them was sacred. It seemed that Sir Roger and all his ghostly forefathers and foremothers must riseup and scare, in the midnight hours, the plebeian new comers from their hall and possessions of nearly a thousand years. It seemed as if those stately monuments and procumbent effigies of so many Rockvilles in armour, ruffs, and farthingales, must start up from their tombs in the old church, saturated as it was with the presence and emblazoned with the arms and glorious epitaphs of the Rockvilles. But they all remained perfectly quiescent; neither chiselled stone nor ancestral spirit moved. Nature received theseterræ filiiwith as much equanimity and indifference as it had received the Norman hordes before. There was neither storm-wind nor earthquake, but the still small voice of reason was heard whispering in many quarters, that whenever man puts forth his powers he makes himself the lord of the circumstances around him; whenever he sinks into sloth and imbecility, nature throws him from her weird shoulders, as the vigorous but interlopingyoung cuckoo throws the hedge-sparrow from its parental nest. The earth is for the bold.
In how many a quarter of this island of late years has this same revolution been developing itself? The sons of industry, risen by it to wealth, in how many of the seats of the old aristocracy, decayed through luxury and indolence, do we find them planted? Perhaps the new blood thus infusing itself may reinvigorate and thus perpetuate the old race; but at any rate, new ideas, new sentiments, and a more popular spirit must follow these transformations.Novi hominescannot rest on their laurels, and to rest solely on their money were too odious; they must, therefore, proclaim a newer and more popular creed; and so the world moves on its spiral course.
To the inmates of Woodburn Grange, of Cotmanhaye Manor, of Fair Manor, and of the whole population of Castleborough, this was a delightful event. The old odious antagonism was at an end. The more earthysquirearchy receded into the distance, and a spirit of a more genial nature took possession of all this pleasant neighbourhood.
The following summer, when the hay was lying in fragrant cocks in the great meadows below Rockville, and on the little islands of the river, Simon Degge held a grand fête on the occasion of his coming to reside at Rockville Hall, henceforth the family seat of the Degges. Simon Degge remained plain Simon Degge. On occasion of going up to London with an address to the King on some great occasion, the honour of knighthood had been offered him; and further, it had been communicated to him through his friend, Lord Netherland, the Recorder of Castleborough, that his majesty, in consideration of his great wealth and his public spirit, was disposed graciously to create him a baronet. Both these intended honours Simon Degge as graciously declined. He declared that he preferred the simple unadorned name whichhe had ever borne, and he desired no honours but such as naturally sprung from the exercise of virtue and benevolence.
For the present occasion his house and gardens had all been restored in the most consummate style. For years Mr. Degge had been a great purchaser of works of art and literature—painting, statuary, books, and articles of antiquity, including rich armour and precious works in ivory and gold. As Mrs. Degge had a particular weakness for beautiful china, he had gratified her eyes with a grand array of the most exquisite specimens of the ceramic art.
First and foremost, he now gave a great banquet to his wealthy friends—and no man with a million and a half is without them, and in abundance. In the second place, he gave a substantial dinner to all his tenantry, from the wealthy farmer of five hundred acres to the tenant of a cottage. On this occasion he said, “Game is a subject of great heart-burnings,and of great injustice to the country. It was the bane of my predecessor, let us take care that it is not ours. Let every man kill the game on the land that he rents, then he will neither destroy it utterly, nor allow it to grow into a nuisance. I am fond of a gun myself, and my sons probably will be more so; but we shall find game enough in our own fields and woods for our destructive propensities, without fostering such a swarm of these animals as may lead us to degenerate into game-butchers. Gentlemen, I should as soon think of setting up to kill my own oxen, as to kill game merely for the sake of killing it. The healthy excitement of the chase vanishes when a very inundation of the animals pursued rolls under our feet, and a satiating slaughter takes the place of a keen and vigorous search after it. To hunt!—yes, the word expresses what field-sports once were—the game had to be hunted out. Now the foreign name best designates it—battu,beat it up, and knock it ignobly on the head. Gentlemen, whenever we may occasionally extend our pursuit of game beyond the fields of the home-farm and the woods, across the lands of our tenants, it shall not be to carry off the first-fruits of their feeding, and we will still hold the enjoyment as a favour.”
We need not say that this speech was applauded most vociferously.
Thirdly, and lastly, Mr. Degge gave a grand entertainment to all his work-people, both of the town and country. His house and grounds were thrown open to the inspection of the whole concourse. The delighted crowd admired the pictures and pleasant gardens. On the lawn, lying betwixt the great grove and the hall, an enormous tent was pitched, or rather a vast canvas canopy erected, open on all sides, in which was laid a charming banquet. A military band from Castleborough Barracks played during the time. Here Simon Degge, leaning his hand on the shoulder ofhis happy mother,—his worthy father-in-law, Spires, was gone to his rest,—surveyed the scene with the utmost delight. His mother, fresh and hale as ever, was seated with William Watson and her old Castleborough neighbours about her; and as her son there stood, he made a speech which was as rapturously applauded as that delivered to the farmers. It was to the effect that all the old privileges of wandering in the groves, of angling and boating on the river, were restored. The inn was already rebuilt in a handsome Elizabethan style, larger than before, and to prevent it ever becoming a fane of intemperance, he had there placed as landlord, he hoped for many years to come, his old friend and benefactor, William Watson. William Watson, he was sure, would protect the inn from riot, and they themselves the groves and river banks from injury.
Long and loud was the applause which this announcement occasioned. The youngpeople turned out upon the green for a dance, and in the evening, after an excellent tea, the whole company descended the river in boats and barges decorated with green boughs and flowers, and singing a song made by William Watson for the occasion, called, “The Health of Simon Degge, the last and first of his line!”
Years have rolled on. The groves and river banks, and islands of Rockville are still greatly frequented, but are never known to be injured. Poachers are never known, for excellent reasons: nobody would like to annoy the good Mr. Degge. Game is not very numerous there; there is no fun in killing it, where there is no resistance, and it is vastly more amusing to kill it where it is abundant, and is jealously watched and guarded by the proprietor of the demesnes, and where there is the chance of a good spree with the keepers.
And with what different feelings does the good Simon Degge look down from his loftyeyrie over the princely expanse of meadows, and over the glittering river, and over the stately woods to where Great Castleborough still stretches farther and farther its red-brick walls, its red-tiled roofs, and its tall, smoke-emitting chimneys! There he sees no haunts of crowded men, enemies to himself or to any one. No upstarts, no envious opponents, but a vast family of human beings, all toiling for the good of their families and their country. All advancing, some faster, some slower, to a better education, a better social condition, a better conception of the principles of art and commerce, a clearer recognition of their rights and duties, and a more cheering faith in the upward tendency of humanity.
Looking on this interesting scene from his distant and quiet home, Simon Degge sees what blessings flow—and deeply he feels them in his own case—from the circulation not only of trade but of human reciprocities. How this corrects the mischiefs, moral and physical,of false systems and rusty prejudices, and he ponders not on poachers and encroachers, but on schemes of no ordinary beauty and beneficence yet to reach his beloved town through him. He sees lecture halls and academies, means of sanitary purification and delicious recreation, in which baths and wash-houses and airy homes figure largely, whilst the public walks round the town are still farther extended, including woods, hills, meadows, and rivers, in a circuit of many miles. There he lives and labours, around him a noble family of sons and daughters to perpetuate his labours and his virtues.
And what a change has fallen on all the country and the families, rich and poor, around! The friends of Sir Roger have fallen out of the circuit, as it were. The old leaven of heart-burnings and conflicting principles has died out from amongst those in whom we are most interested. In that lovely little district, which includes Cotmanhaye, Woodburn,Rockville, Bilts’ Farm, Fair Manor, and Castleborough, the abodes of the Claverings, the Woodburns, Degges, and Heritages, the old sunny and Arcadian days have returned. Young families are springing up here and there, bringing with them new floods of happiness, and a spirit of peace and harmony floats over all that charmed region, and from no cause more conspicuously than from the simple circumstance of the providential removal of one single man out of so many thousands—THE LAST OF A LONG LINE.
No longer antagonist—no longer mutually irritant, the towers and woods of Rockville look down with an affectionate smile on the russet roof and green paddocks ofWoodburn Grange.
THE END.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
The History of Discovery in Australia, Tasmania,and New Zealand, from the earliest date to thepresent day.By William Howitt, Author of “TwoYears in Victoria,” etc. etc. With Maps of the RecentExplorations, from Official Sources. In 2 Vols. 20s. London,Longman and Co.
NOTICES OF THE PRESS.
Times, Dec. 8, 1865.
We welcome these volumes as giving a full account of the Enterprises by which Australia has been explored, and as calculated to enlarge our knowledge respecting this vast and important region. They are careful, accurate, and succinct epitomes of Australian discovery, and the results it has produced, and contain a great deal of valuable information.
Athenæum, May 6, 1865.
Mr. Howitt’s volumes comprise the history of Tasmania and New Zealand as well as that of the Australian Continent. We recommend them to those who wish for a convenient book of reference on Australian discovery and exploration, or those who wish to know all that has been done towards our present acquaintance with New Holland and the adjacent islands.
Illustrated News.
Mr. Howitt in this work does, as it seems to us, all the justice in his power to every gallant explorer; enlivens his history with many anecdotes, and has enriched his work with excellent maps.
London Review, July 22, 1865.
Mr. Howitt possesses a sort of family claim to write on the topics contained in his book. He has been in Australia; one of his sons, Alfred, commanded the expedition sent out in quest of Burke and Wills, whose remains he found and buried; and another, Charlton, was drowned in New Zealand while trying to make his way across the country from Canterbury to the Western Coast over the Southern Alps. The history of the exploration of the New Zealand group is briefly told, and well.
Bell’s Messenger, June 17, 1865.
Mr. William Howitt, of all travellers, is perhaps the very best person that could have been encouraged to give a history of those vast colonies, which in little more than a quarter of a century have vied with the mother country in progress and prosperity. For some time a resident in one or more of the three great dependencies whose growth he describes, he is perhaps better adapted than even many a permanent settler to solve the question so often asked, “How is it that these enormous districts became annexed to England?” His object in going thither was not to trade, not to seek for gold at the “diggings,” not to dispossess a single Maori of his vast pasturage, and grow his own wool, tallow, and mutton thereon, to the ruin of the original native holder. He crossed the broad seas, not as a cosmopolitan, but as a keen observer, a patient investigator, and an honest student, bent rather upon gathering information that might do more good to others, in a pecuniary point of view, than to himself, since the remuneration for his literary work could never bring to him the return, which the facts he had collected may be the means of recommending to others. The subject he undertook to deal with is large; but he has had the power to grasp it; and the simple-minded manner in which he relates the trials of the first adventurers, the difficulties they had to surmount, and the results which have followed upon their enterprise, adds a charm to the book, which will ensure its popularity. To those desirous of trying their fortune at the antipodes this will be a book indeed of very considerable usefulness; not because it abounds with advice to such individuals, or tells them what to do, and what to avoid, but because it is suggestive of a host of things that will enable a prudent man to judge rightly, and act accordingly. Whilst however, the value of Mr. William Howitt’s experience will do good service in this particular, it is also calculated to assist the merchant and manufacturer at home, to tell them many truths it were well for them to know.
Examiner, April 15, 1865.
An old friend of the public’s, Mr. William Howitt, who has been himself to Australia, and whose son has made a name for himself there in the history of exploration, now adds one more to the number of the histories of “Discovery in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand.” His book, a history in two octavo volumes, begins at the beginning and brings down its story to the present day. It is a story that will bear many a telling, and who will not gladly hear it told by William Howitt in sympathy with the strong interest he feels in it, of which he writes, “Having had one son engaged in these researches in Australia, as the successful discoverer of the lost expedition of Burke and Wills, and the recoverer of their remains, and having lost another in assisting to open up the interior of New Zealand, he has entered on the undertaking as a labour of love.” Such a book from his hands cannot fail to be attractive.
Examiner, April 22, 1865.
Nowhere else, in the history of modern discovery,—save in those Arctic explorations which have had for chief promoters more than one man schooled to hardship and perseverance in this southern field of adventure,—was there so much room for unflinching heroism, with such abundance of dangers to be overcome and substantial victories to be gained over the treacherous elements. Names like those of Oxley, Cunningham, King, Grey, Eyre, Sturt, Stuart, Burke, and Wills have, in the annals of the present century, a dignity akin to that which makes the lives of Willoughby and Frobisher, Gilbert, Raleigh, and a crowd of others, illustrious in Tudor history. Best known, and noblest of all, is the story of the disastrous expedition of Burke and Wills in 1860 and 1861, followed, while the fate of the missing adventurers was unknown, by several memorable journies in quest of them. Two of these, undertaken by Mr. McKinlay and Mr. Landsborough, have been described in recent publications. Two others, led by Mr. Howitt’s own son, are here for the first time made known in detail.
Observer, April 16, 1865.
This book contains a most complete and faithful summary of the various discoveries that have been made in Australia during the last 260 years, commencing with those made by the Portuguese in the north west of Australia before the discovery of the north of Australia by the Dutch in 1605. It shows, however, that even these early navigators were not the first discoverers; and that it is difficult to decide how long Australia had been previously known to the Chinese. In fact indications exist from the most remote antiquity of unrecorded voyages, which led the ancients to speak of countries lying beyond the regions of any positive knowledge then remaining, and our author cites the passage from Mænilius, who lived in the time of Tiberius or Augustus, in which the rotundity of the earth and the existence of antipodes were distinctly referred to.
Literary Gazette, June 10, 1865.
We are greatly impressed with the value of this work, and cannot doubt but that it will take rank as a standard authority on all that pertains to the history of our trans-Pacific possessions. Maps of Australia, Van Diemen’s Land, and New Zealand, compiled from official and authentic information, accompany the volumes, which abound in pictures new and strange, and contain a large number of facts illustrative of countries which seem destined to become centres of a new and extensive civilization.
Australian and New Zealand Gazette, April 20, 1865.
The want of a connected history of the progress of discovery in Australia has long been felt, but we are glad to find that the delay has been amply compensated for in the very excellent work which has just been published by William Howitt, who, in addition to his other literary claims, has the advantage of not only being personally connected with the colonies, but also with the subject, for his sons enjoy a conspicuous position in the illustrious phalanx of Australian explorers. In conclusion, we can only say that Mr. Howitt is entitled to the best thanks of the public, both at home and in the colonies, for the manner in which he has executed his task.
Morning Advertiser, April 17, 1865.
As a graphic and vigorous writer, one who deals with his subject in an earnest manner, William Howitt requires no eulogy from the pen of any critic. His present work is the best and most comprehensive which has yet appeared on the countries it treats of. The author’s personal knowledge of several of the colonies, and the possession of documents not yet given to the public, have achieved for his work greater accuracy than would otherwise have been the case.
Guardian, Sept. 1, 1865.
The two handsome volumes before us, are really standard, useful works, and in some respects exhaustive of their subject. There are, we imagine, few, if any, points of information for which the intending emigrant, the settler, or the student need search this history in vain. The maps are clearly and accurately drawn, and are founded on the most recent discoveries, with which Mr. Howitt has made himself fully acquainted. The whole subject is well handled, but perhaps Australia with the greatest fullness and success, as presenting scenes of danger and of wild romance, of heroic daring and devoted deaths, such as few countries have to show.
Daily News, June 5, 1865.
The author of these volumes has well qualified himself to write upon the subject to which they are devoted. He has had a personal acquaintance with the country, and written a delightful book about it: he has had access to all the sources of information in the possession of both the colonial and home government, and the better half of his heart has been long given to the great southern land, upon which he has bestowed two noble sons. One of Mr. Howitt’s sons perished in an attempt to explore the interior of New Zealand; the other still lives, and has had the triumph of discovering the remains of poor Burke and Wills, who perished in the centre of Australia on their return after having traversed the continent. The history of this remarkable, and in many respects, anomalous land, could not have fallen into better hands. It is a work which engages Mr. William Howitt’s affections as well as his very great talents, and with his long practised pen the reader may be sure that the interest of the subject is not diminished by him.
The Morning Herald, April 25, 1865.
The title page of this book rather startles us at first, by the very magnitude of its subject, being no less than a chronicle of three hundred years of discovery. But Mr. Howitt is an old and able hand at condensing, and is able to give us an excellent summary of all that is really worth knowing.
The Globe, May 29, 1865.
The peculiar fitness of the writer for his task—his “labour of love,” as he himself styles it—need hardly be dilated on. His long residence in the country, the country as distinguished from the town—the services and discoveries of his son Alfred, who brought back the remains of Burke and Wills for honourable burial, and the loss of his youngest son, Charlton, in the work of exploration and improvement in New Zealand, add a personal and family interest to that of the mere encyclopædias of other men’s labours.
Standard, April 25, 1865.
This is a story of labours and adventures, of romantic daring and noble endurance, such as few, if any other countries have to show. The names of such men as Tasman, Dampier, Cook, King, Fitzroy, Lushington, Austin, Babbage, Kennedy, Burke and Wills, Howitt and Walker, suggest to all that are acquainted with Australian discovery a host of scenes in which Englishmen took a noble and brave part, and made their names as famous in the wilderness as they have since become in the world. And when we call to mind that the peoples of Australia are almost entirely of our own race and kindred, bound to us by the closest ties of blood, commerce, and common fortunes, it is clear that a good sketch of their history must possess a deep and lasting interest for the public. Mr. Howitt is well fitted to be their historian, not simply by his natural gifts as a writer, but by his wide and varied experience as a traveller, and by the occupation of his two sons, one as an explorer in Australia and the other in New Zealand. He had omitted no fair research or exertion to render his sketch attractive and complete, and we are bound to add that his efforts are crowned with success.
The Morning Post, April 25, 1865.
The title of this work opens up a vista of adventure, enterprise, and daring which is without parallel in the world of fiction and romance. Its heroes are travellers by land and by water, “men of might and high achievement,” and great pioneers, who made their age and country famous, and all succeeding time their debtors. For all sorts and conditions of men the work possesses attractions. The studious will find it a storehouse of information, carefully collected and imparted with a graceful and graphic pen; those who have not outlived the sympathies of youth will, while they peruse its pages, recall the pleasurable emotions with which in the days gone by they followed heroic voyagers into seas over which a cloud of mystery had theretofore hung, and traced their perilous progress from land to land; while the younger reader will have in the history an instructive and delightful study. To all it will be a source of interest to watch the growth of an Anglo-Saxon empire at the antipodes from feeble infancy to robust youth, and to speculate upon the probable greatness of its future from the rapid development which has taken place during its brief career.
These are examples of the opinions of the general press, which, without exception, have been of the most unexampled commendatory character.
Billing, Printer, Guildford.
Transcriber’s Notespg 2 Added period to: Mr Woodburn, howeverpg 47 Added period to: her and Mrpg 59 Changed no suspicion cou to: couldpg 77 Changed and reach Indianopolis to: Indianapolispg 79 Added single quote after: can do a little.pg 99 Changed ready to issue to th to: thepg 102 Changed had not at th to: thepg 107 Removed duplicate word we from: we we will set aboutpg 111 Changed Tom then too to: tookpg 112 Added single quote after: have your nap outpg 114 Changed that it wont to: won’tpg 127 Changed if I dont to: don’tpg 149 Added quote after: some of the money.pg 248 Changed he shouted down-stairs to: downstairspg 276 Changed at a very ow to: lowpg 296 Changed present manufacturing millionnaire to: millionairepg 302 Added period after: ignobly on the headCatalog pg 1 Changed The ubject he undertook to: subjectCatalog pg 3 Changed Mr. Howitt it to: isHyphenated and non-hyphenated word combinations left as written.