Seriously, it may be urged that the refined tastes, arts, and genius of the present day do not develop themselves symmetrically or simultaneously in this matter. Here are connoisseurs and enthusiasts in vegetable nature hunting up and down all the earth’s continents for rare trees, plants, shrubs, and flowers. They are bringing them to England and America in shiploads, to such extent and variety, that nearly all the dead languages and many of the living are ransacked to furnish names for them. Llamas, dromedaries, Cashmere goats, and other strange animals, are brought, thousands of miles by sea and land, to be acclimatised and domesticated to these northern countries. Artificial lakes are made for the cultivation of fish caught in Antipodean streams. That is all pleasant and hopeful and proper. The more of that sort of thing the better. But why not do the other thing, too? Vattemare made it the mission of his life to induce people of different countries to exchange books, or unneeded duplicates of literature. We need an Audubon or Wilson, not to make new collections of feathered skeletons, and new volumes on ornithology, but to effect an exchange of living birds between Europe and America; not for caging, not for Zoological gardens and museums, but for singing their free songs in our fields and forests. There is no doubt that the English lark would thrive and sing as well in America as in this country. And our bobolink would be as easily acclimatised in Europe. Who could estimate the pleasure which such an exchange in the bird-world would give to millions on both sides of the Atlantic?
There are some English birds which we could not introduce into the feathered society of America, any more than we could import a score of British Dukes and Duchesses, with all their hereditary dignities and grand surroundings, into the very heart and centre of our democracy. For instance, the grave and aristocratic rooks, if transported to our country, would turn up their noses and caw with contempt at our institutions—even at our oldest buildings and most solemn and dignified oaks. It is very doubtful if they would be conciliated into any respect for the Capitol or The White House at Washington. They have an intuitive and most discriminating perception of antiquity, and their adhesion to it is invincible. Whether they came in with the Normans, or before, history does not say. One thing would seem evident. They are older than the Order of the Garter, and belonged to feudalism. They are the living spirits of feudalism, which have survived its human retainers by several hundred years, and now represent the defunct institution as pretentiously as in King Stephen’s day. They are as fond of old Norman castles, cathedrals, and churches, as the very ivy itself, and cling to them with as much pertinacity. For several hundred generations of bird-life, they and their ancestors have colonised their sable communities in the baronial park-trees of England, and their descendants promise to abide for as many generations to come. In size, form, and color they differ but little from the American crow, but are swifter on the wing, with greater “gift of the gab,” and less dignified in general deportment, though more given to aristocratic airs. Although they emigrated from France long before “La Democratic Sociale” was ever heard of in that country, they may be considered the founders of the Socialistic theory and practice; and to this day they live and move in phalansteries, which succeed far better than those attempted by the American “Fourierites” some years ago. As in human communities, the collision of mind with mind contributes fortuitous scintillations of intelligence to their general enlightenment; so gregarious animals, birds and bees seem to acquire especial quick-wittedness from similar intercourse. The English rook, therefore, is more astute, subtle, and cunning than our American crow, and some of his feats of legerdemain are quite vulpine.
The jackdaw is to the rook what the Esquimaux is to the Algonquin Indian; of the same form, color, and general habits, but smaller in size. They are as fond of ancient abbeys and churches as ever were the monks of old. Indeed, they have many monkish habits and predilections, and chatter over their Latin rituals in the storied towers of old Norman cathedrals, and in the belfries of ivy-webbed churches in as vivicacious confusion.
There is no country in the world of the same size that has so many birds in it as England; and there are none so musical and merry. They all sing here congregationalwise, just as the people do in the churches and chapels of all religious denominations. As these buildings were fashioned in early times after the Gothic order of elm and oak-tree architecture, so the human worshippers therein imitated the birds, as well as the branches, of those trees, and learned to sing their Sabbath hymns together, young and old, rich and poor, in the same general uprising and blending of multitudinous voices. I believe everything sings that has wings in England. And well it might, for here it is safe from shot, stones, snares, and other destructives. “Young England” is not allowed to sport with firearms, after the fashion of our American boys. You hear no juvenile popping at the small birds of the meadow, thicket, or hedge-row, in Spring, Summer, or Autumn. After travelling and sojourning nearly ten years in the country, I have never seen a boy throw a stone at a sparrow, or climb a tree for a bird’s-nest. The only birds that are not expected to die a natural death are the pheasant, partridge, grouse, and woodcock; and these are to be killed according to the strictest laws and customs, at a certain season of the year, and then only by titled or wealthy men who hold their vested interest in the sport among the most rigid and sacred rights of property. Thus law, custom, public sentiment, climate, soil, and production, all combine to give bird-life a development in England that it attains in no other country. In no other land is it so multitudinous and musical; in none is there such ample and varied provision for housing and homing it. Every field is a great bird’s-nest. The thick, green hedge that surrounds it, and the hedge-trees arising at one or two rods’ interval, afford nesting and refuge for myriads of these meadow singers. The groves and thickets are full of them and their music; so full, indeed, that sometimes every leaf seems to pulsate with a little piping voice in the general concert. Nor are they confined to the fields, groves, and hedges of the quiet country. If the census of the sparrows alone in London could be taken, they would count up to a larger figure than all the birds of a New England county would reach. Then there is another interesting feature of this companionship. A great deal of it lasts through the entire year. There are ten times as many birds in England as in America in the winter. Here the fields are green through the coldest months. No deep and drifting snows cover a frozen earth for ten or twelve weeks, as with us. There is plenty of shelter and seeds for birds that can stand an occasional frost or wintry storm, and a great number of them remain the whole year around the English homesteads.
If such a difference were a full compensation, our North American birds make up in dress what they fall short of English birds in voice and musical talent. The robin redbreast and the goldfinch come out in brighter colors than any other beaux and belles of the season here; but the latter is only a slender-waisted brunette, and the former a plump, strutting, little coxcomb, in a mahogany-colored waistcoat. There is nothing here approaching in vivid colors the New England yellow-bird, hang-bird, red-bird, indigo-bird, or even the bluebird. In this, as well as other differences, Nature adjusts the system of compensation which is designed to equalise the conditions of different countries.
CHAPTER IV.
TALK WITH AN OLD MAN ON THE WAY—OLD HOUSES IN ENGLAND—THEIR AMERICAN RELATIONSHIPS—ENGLISH HEDGES AND HEDGE-ROW TREES—THEIR PROBABLE FATE—CHANGE OF RURAL SCENERY WITHOUT THEM.
From Tiptree I had a pleasant walk to Coggeshall, a unique and antique town, marked by the quaint and picturesque architecture of the Elizabethan regime. On the way I met an old man, eighty-three years of age, busily at work with his wheel-barrow, shovel, and bush-broom, gathering up the droppings of manure on the road. I stopped and had a long talk with him, and learned much of those ingenious and minute industries by which thousands of poor men house, feed, and clothe themselves and their families in a country super-abounding with labor. He had nearly filled his barrow, after trundling it for four miles. He could sell his little load for 4d. to a neighboring farmer; but he intended to keep it for a small garden patch allotted to him by his son, with whom he lived. These few square yards of land constituted the microscopic point of his attachment to that great globe still holding in reserve unmeasured territories of productive soil, on which nor plough, nor spade, nor human foot, nor life has ever left a lasting mark. These made his little farm, as large to him and to his octogenarian sinews and ambitions as was the Tiptree Estate to Alderman Mechi. It filled his mind with as busy occupation and as healthy a stimulus. That rude barrow, with its clumsy wheel, thinly rimmed with an iron hoop, was to him what the steam engine, and two miles of iron tubing, and all its hose-power were to that eminent agriculturist, of whom he spoke in terms of high esteem as a neighbor, and even as a competitor. Proportionately they were on the same footing; the one with his 170 square acres, the other with his 170 square feet. It was pleasant and instructive to hear him speak with such sunny and cheery hope of his earthly lot and doings. His son was kind and good to him. He could read, and get many good books. He ate and slept well. He was poor but comfortable. He went to church on Sunday, and thought much of heaven on week days. His cabbages were a wonder; some with heads as large as a half-bushel measure. He did something very respectable in the potato and turnip line. He had grown beans and beets which would show well in any market. He always left a strip or corner for flowers. He loved to grow them; they did him good, and stirred up young-man feelings in him. He went on in this way with increased animation, following the lead of a few questions I put in occasionally to give direction to the narrative of his experience. How much I wished I could have photographed him as he stood leaning on his shovel, his wrinkled face and gray, thin hair, moistened with perspiration, while his coat lay inside out on one of the handles of his barrow! The July sun, that warmed him at his work, would have made an interesting picture of him, if some one could have held a camera to its eye at the moment. I added a few pennies to his stock-in-trade, and continued my walk, thinking much of that wonderful arrangement of Providence by which the infinite alternations and gradations of human life and condition are adjusted; fitting a separate being, experience, and attachment to every individual heart; training its tendrils to cling all its life long to one slightly individualised locality, which another could never call home; giving itself and all its earthly hopes to an occupation which another would esteem a prison discipline; sucking the honey of contentment out of a condition which would be wormwood to another person on the same social level.
On reaching Coggeshall, I became again the guest of a Friend, who gave me the same old welcome and hospitality which I have so often received from the members of that society. After tea, he took me about the town, and showed me those buildings so interesting to an American—low, one-story houses, with thatched roofs, clay-colored, wavy walls, rudely-carved lintels, and iron-sash windows opening outward on hinges like doors, with squares of glass 3 inches by 4;—houses which were built before the keel of the Mayflower was laid, which conveyed the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock. Here, now! see that one on the other side of the street, looking out upon a modern and strange generation through two ivy-browed eyes just lighted up to visible speculation by a single candle on the mantel-piece! A very animated and respectable baby was carried out of that door in its mother’s arms, and baptised in the parish church, before William Shakespeare was weaned. There is a younger house near by, which was a century old when Washington was born. These unique, old dwellings of town, village, and hamlet in England, must ever possess an interest to the American traveller which the grand and majestic cathedrals, that fill him with so much admiration, cannot inspire. We link the life of our nation more directly to these humbler buildings. Our forefathers went out of these houses to the New World. The log huts they first erected served them and their families as homes for a few years; then were given to their horses and cattle for stabling; then were swept away, as too poor for either man or beast. The second generation of houses made greater pretensions to comfort, and had their day, then passed away. They were nearly all one-story, wooden buildings, with a small apartment on each side of a great chimney, and a little bed-roomage in the garret for children. Then followed the large, red, New England mansion, broadside to the road, two stories high in front, with nearly a rood of back roof declining to within five or six feet of the ground, and covering a great, dark kitchen, flanked on one side by a bed-room, and on the other by the buttery. A ponderous chimney arose out of the middle of the building, giving a fire-place of eight feet back to the kitchen, and one of half the dimensions to each of the other two large rooms—the north and south. For, like the republic they founded, its forefathers and ours divided their dwellings by a kind of Mason and Dixon’s Line, into two parts, giving them these sectional appellations which have represented such antagonisms and made us such trouble. Every one of these old-fashioned houses had its “North” and “South” rooms on the ground-floor, and duplicates, of the same size and name, above, divided by the massive, hollow tower, called a chimney. A double front door, with panels, scrolled with rude carving, opened right and left into the portly building, which, in the tout ensemble, looked like a New England gentleman of the olden time, in his cocked hat, and hair done up in a queue. These were the houses built “when George the Third was King.” In these were born the men of the American Revolution. They are the oldest left in the land; and, like the Revolutionary pensioners, they are fast disappearing. In a few years, it will be said the last of them has been levelled to the ground, just as the paragraph will circulate through the newspapers that the last soldier of the War of Independence is dead.
Thus, the young generation in America, now reciting in our schools the rudimental facts of the common history of the English-speaking race, will come to the meridian of manhood at a time when the three first generations of American houses shall have been swept away. But, travelling over a space of three centuries’ breadth, they will see, in these old English dwellings, where the New World broke off from the Old—the houses in which the first settlers of New England were born; the churches and chapels in which they were baptised, and the school-houses in which they learned the alphabet of the great language that is to fill the earth with the speech of man’s rights and God’s glory. One hundred millions, speaking the tongue of Shakespeare and Milton on the American continent, and as many millions more on continents more recently settled by the same race, across the ocean, and across century-seas of time, shall moor their memories to these humble dwellings of England’s hamlets, and feel how many taut and twisted liens attach them to the motherland of mighty nations.