In spite of all this, you, my Julia, would hardly bring yourself to ride across this dam, which is indeed better fitted for foot-passengers. It is, as I have already said, twenty feet high, and consists of rude, angular, and jagged blocks of stone, heaped on one another. The road at the top is only four ells wide, without any thing like a railing. On one side the breakers dash furiously against it; and if your horses shyed at them, you would infallibly be thrown on the points of rocks which bristle like pikes on the other. The mountain horses alone can cross such a road with safety, as they seem to estimate the danger and to be familiar with it: nevertheless a carriage is seldom seen here. Wagons of stone cross the dam on a railroad, which makes it still worse for all other vehicles. Tremadoc itself stands on land formerly redeemed by a similar process. The resemblance which this land, reclaimed some centuries since, has to the sandy banks of northern Germany, which were gained from the sea perhaps a thousand years ago, is very striking: the little town itself and its inhabitants—as if like soil produced like character of people—as completely resembled the melancholy villages of that country. It is dreary, neglected, and dirty; the men ill-clad; the inn not better than a Silesian one, nor less filthy; and, that nothing might be wanting, the post-horses out at field, so that I had to wait an hour and a half for them. When they appeared, their condition, the wretched state of their tackle, and the dress of the postilion, were all perfectly true to their model. This applies only to the part redeemed from the sea: as soon as you have gone four or five miles further, and reached the surrounding heights, the country changes to the fruitful and the beautiful. It had, indeed, lost its wild and gigantic character; but after so long a stay among the rocks, this change refreshed me, especially as the most brilliant and lovely evening shone over the landscape.
The sun gleamed so brightly on the emerald meadows, woody hills lay so peacefully as if at rest around the crystal stream, and scattered cottages hung so temptingly on their shady sides, that I felt as if I could have staid there forever. I had dismounted from the carriage; and throwing myself on the soft moss under a large nut-tree, I gave myself up with delight to my dreams. The evening light glittered like sparks through the thick-leaved branches, and a hundred gay insects sported in its ruddy light; while the gentle wind sighed in its topmost boughs, in melodies which are understood and felt by the initiated.
The carriage arrived. Once more I cast a longing glance on the dark blue sea; once more I drank in the fragrance of the mountain flowers, and the horses bore the loiterer quickly to the plains.
From this point the romantic wholly ceases; I rode along a well-tilled country till the towers of Caernarvon castle rose in the twilight above the trees.—Here I intend to rest some days, having performed seventy-four English miles to-day, partly on foot, between four in the morning and ten at night.
August 1st.
This morning I received letters from you, which make me melancholy.—Yes, indeed, you are right; it was a hard destiny which troubled the calmest and cheerfullest happiness, the most perfect mutual understanding, and tore asunder the best suited minds (both too in the full enjoyment of their respective tastes and pursuits), as a storm troubles and tears up the peaceful sea. At one time, indeed, this was well-nigh destruction to both; condemning the one to restless wandering, the other to comfortless solitude; both to grief, anxiety, and vain longings. But was not this storm necessary for the dwellers on the deep? would not, perhaps, the stagnant and motionless air have been yet more destructive to them? Let us not therefore give way to excessive grief: let us never regret the past, which is always vain; let us only stretch forward to what is better, and even in the worst exigencies let us be true to ourselves. How often are the evils created by our own imaginations the hardest to bear! What burning pains are caused by wounded vanity! what agonizing shame by notions of false honour! I am not much the better for perceiving this, and am often tempted to wish for Falstaff’s philosophy. Nature has however endowed me with one precious gift, which I would most gladly share with you. In every situation, I promptly, and as it were by instinct, discover the good side of things and enjoy it, be it what it may, with a freshness of feeling, a childlike Christmas-day delight in trifles, which I am convinced will never grow old in me.
And in what situation does not the good, in the long run, outweigh the evil?—this persuasion is the ground-work of my piety. The gifts of God are infinite; and we might almost say we are inexcusable if we are not happy. How often indeed we have it in our power to be so, every one may see, who looks back at his past life;—he cannot escape the conviction that he might easily have turned almost every evil to good. As I have long ago and often said to you, We are the makers of our own destiny. It is true, however, that ourselves we have not made, and therein lies a wide unknown Past, concerning which we perplex our spirits in vain: our speculations can lead to no practical end. Let every one only do his utmost to be of good courage, and to regard the outward things of this world, without exception, as of light moment,—for the things of this world are really light and unimportant, in good as in evil. There is no better weapon against unhappiness; only we must not on that account cross our hands, and do nothing.
Your womanish fault, my dear Julia, is, in evil times to abandon yourself to Heaven and its assistance, as ‘Deus ex machinâ,’ with a feeble and helpless sort of piety. For if this assistance fails us, our ruin is then certain and inevitable.
Both, pious hope and energetic action, consist perfectly well together, and indeed mutually aid each other. No man can doubt that the former greatly lightens the latter: for if that sort of piety which is common in the world,—that confident expectation of earthly and peculiar protection from above, that supplication for good and against evil,—is merely a self-delusion, still it is a beneficent one, and perhaps grounded in our very nature, subject as we are to so many illusions, which, when they take fast hold on our minds, become to us individual truth. It appears that our nature has the power of creating to itself a factitious reality, as a sort of auxiliary support, where reality itself is unattainable. Thus a pious confidence in special interpositions, though but a form of superstition, gives courage. A man who goes into battle with a talisman which he believes renders him invulnerable, will see bullets rain around him with indifference. But still more powerful and exalting is the enthusiasm excited by ideas which place us above the external world; thus religious fanatics have frequently been seen animated by a spirit which enabled them to brave the most horrible bodily tortures with truly miraculous power:—thus do the afflicted and oppressed create to themselves blissful hopes of a future state of felicity, which indemnify them even here. All these are effects of the potent instinct of self-preservation in its widest sense,—which brings the abovenamed power of our nature into operation wherever it is needed. Hence, lastly, in feeble characters, those death-bed conversions, useless indeed in themselves, but tranquillizing.
Every being must pay his tribute to this want in one form or other: every one creates to himself his earthly god; and thus is the descent of God to us under human attributes ever repeated.