On the dyke-top here, the clover, with great ball-blooms of rich pink, is growing beside the purple-toothed vetch and the small yellow stars of another unknown flower. In the hedge, among the heavy-scented privet blossoms, are flowers of pink wild-rose delicate as the bloom of a girl’s cheek, with full pouting buds red as lips that would be kissed. White brier-roses there are, too, as large as crown pieces; and great velvety humble-bees are busy botanising among their stamens. The bees prefer the newly opened ones, however, whose hearts are still a rich golden yellow. Below, among the woodland grasses, the white dome-clusters of the dim-leaved yarrow are flowering amid a miniature forest of green mare’s-tails and the downy stalks of hemlock. Gardeners are only now beginning to see the beauty of the yarrow for deep borders, as they are beginning to see the beauty of the foxglove and the glory of the broom. Over there in the side of the wood-ditch are springing delicate tufts of spleenwort; and already the flower-fronds of the hard-fern are rising from the nest of their dark-spread fellows. The graceful heart-shaped nettle leaf appears there too, with its purple stem, beside the tall magenta-coloured flowers of the bastard-thistle.
A pleasant retreat, indeed, is the spot; and through the tangled wood-depth, of a moonlight night, might be expected to come the revel court of Titania. Is not that one of her furry steeds, with velvet ears erect and bright wide eyes, cropping the green blade in the grassy lane path? Her sleek chorister, too, the blackbird, has forgotten to be timid as he hops across the ruts there, waiting doubtless for her coming. Whirr! What a rush of wings! It is a flight of starlings disturbed from the grass-field below; for these birds bring their young out to the fields this month in flocks of hundreds to feed. Round and round they wheel in the air, as if delighting in their power of wing, before finally settling on the grassy knoll a hundred yards away.
A sunny knoll that is, where the birds feed undisturbed to-day—a small point in the landscape; yet it has a page of history to itself. On its summit once stood a Scottish queen, surrounded by a little group of nobles, watching, a mile to the north, the die of her fate being cast, the arbiter of life or death. Two armies lay before her. Far off about the little village in the bosom of yonder hill she saw two dark masses gathered, with a battery line of guns between them. Those were her enemies; and one of the horsemen behind them—it was only a mile away—she knew was her own half-brother. Nearer, on the lower rising ground, which the railway cuts through now, she saw her own troops gathering, a larger force, but without the advantage of position. And the queen watched and waited; it was about nine o’clock of the morning. Presently, a cloud of smoke sprang out between the armies, and immediately was heard the roar of cannon. The duel of the artillery had begun. During half an hour little could be seen for the smoke, and there was a constant explosion of ordnance. It must have been an anxious time. Suddenly, however, the firing ceased, the smoke rolled away, and the battlefield could be made out. The queen’s cavalry had formed into line, had charged, and were driving the enemy’s horse before them. Then a tear sprang to the queen’s eye as she saw her vanguard leave the hill, cross the open ground among the furze, and, with their gallant leader at their head, rush to storm the village. They disappeared in the narrow lane, where the new church stands now in the hollow of the hill, and there could only be heard faintly their shout as they closed with their opponents, and the shot-reports of the enemy’s hagbutters firing at them from the hedge-gardens and the village roofs. How was the day going? See! the enemy’s wing was wavering, was giving way. Fight on, brave fellows! brave vanguard! press them hard. A few moments longer, and the day is yours.
But look! A horseman gallops to the other wing of the enemy, where the Regent is riding. It stirs: it moves down upon the village. Ah, where now is the queen’s reserve. Why does it remain inactive and aloof? Are its rival leaders quarrelling over petty precedence, or is there treachery in its ranks? The battle closes again about the narrow lane. The vanguard is attacked on either flank—it is overborne—it gives way. See! they are broken; they pour back out of the lane. Wounded, weaponless, they are fleeing, and with a yell their foes are upon them, cutting them down. But the reserve is moving at last; it may bring help; it may yet retrieve the hour. Ah, cowards! it breaks and scatters. The day is lost. Away! then, away, poor hapless queen! Ply whip and spur for thy life. Neither here nor anywhere in all thy fathers’ kingdom of Scotland is there safe tarrying-place for thee now. And may Heaven help thee in the hour of need, for thou wilt find small help in man or woman!
The starlings are feeding this afternoon on the Court Knowe, the hillock there, undisturbed; and it is three hundred and twenty-eight years since the stricken queen rode away through the hollow of the hills where the green corn is growing. The suburbs of the city are spreading even over the battlefield itself. But ever and again, upon a summer day, there comes a pilgrim to stand a while in pitying silence on the little knoll under the trees, and to recall something of these “old, unhappy, far-off things,” as he reads upon the stone there the royal monogram, and the date, May 13, 1568.
SCHOOL-DAYS.
As a means of awakening the genial after-dinner humour of most men past middle age, no subject, perhaps, equals the memory of early school-days. Let the topic but be started by an anecdote of some long dead dominie, it is as if the spigot had been drawn from a butt of old vintage, and the stream of recollection will flow forth rich and sparkling with the mellowed light of years. Strange is the charm of a word! For a lifetime a man has been painfully toiling up the Alps of circumstance; it may be he has gained the object of his desire—the glittering ice-crystal on the peak which long ago dazzled his upward-looking eyes; and now, toying with the walnuts and the wine, someone says “I remember:”—lo! the years are forgotten; the greybeard is back in the sunny valley of his boyhood, wandering the field-paths with chubby companions long since dust, and filling his heart once more with the sweet scent of hayricks, of the hedges in hawthorn-time. It is not for nothing that rustic children day after day, as they start for school, hear the low of the farmyard kine coming in to the milking, and that day after day, as they tread the long miles of moorland path, they see the grouse whirr off to the mountain, and the trout dart away from the sunny shallows; and it is not for nothing that they spend long truant afternoons by ferny lanes and harebell copses in the seasons of bird-nesting and bramble-gathering. These make the fragrant memories of after years! And again and again, in later life, to the man jaded with anxiety and care, the old associations come back, laden with pleasant regrets—a breath from the clover-fields of youth.
School life in town, notwithstanding its more sophisticated surroundings, has also its memories; for in what circumstances will not the boyish mind create a charmed world of its own! Apart from the actual events of class-room and play-ground, the streets and the shop windows, and the things in them to be desired, all furnish absorbing interests; and a half-amused envy in later years attends the memory of the fearful joy with which, after much contriving of ways and means, and much final screwing-up of courage to face the shopman, the long-coveted percussion pistol, or the wonderful and still more expensive model locomotive, was acquired and smuggled home. But school life in the city has a certain precocity which detracts from the poetry of its remembrance—an aroma is lacking which forms the subtlest charm of the associations of rustic childhood. What has the city-bred man to compare to the memory of that hot afternoon in July, when, escaped from the irksome thrall of desk and rod, in the clear river pool at the bottom of some deep-secluded dingle, the urchins of the rural pedagoguy learned to swim? Such a scene remains in a man’s mind, a possession and a “joy for ever.” Far off in some city den, gas-lit and fog-begrimed, his eyes may grow dim, poring over ledgers that are not his own, and his heart may grow heavy and sick with hope deferred; but at a word, a suggestion, it will all come back; he will be standing again on that grassy margin, the joyous voices of his comrades will be ringing in his ears, while the sunshine once more beats warmly on his head, and at his feet sparkle over their sandy bottom the pellucid waters of the woodland pool.