Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

by John Wilson

Companion of the Crutch! hast thou been a loving observer of the weather of our island-clime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth been in the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we live, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticed that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such a thunder-plump falls down in a deluge, that, returning home by water and steam, they take to bed, and on the ninth day fever hurries them off, victims to their confidence in that treacherous tube. But we mean to ask have you an eye, an ear, and a sixth sense, anonymous and instinctive, for all the prognosticating sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, of nature? Have you studied, in silence and solitude, the low, strange, and spirit-like whisperings, that often, when bird and bee are mute, come and go, here and there, now from crag, now from coppice, and now from moor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded landscape? Have you listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them prophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as that you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour when grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? And know ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Are the Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac? When a mile-square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loads every tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as when one raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenly off with a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in the lofty distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the blue of a midsummer's meridian day?

Forgive these friendly interrogatories. Perhaps you are weather-wiser than ourselves; yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man of the Mountains;" and, though no great linguists, we hope that we know somewhat more than the vocabulary of the languages of calm and storm. Remember that we are now at Ambleside—and one week's residence there may let you into some of the secrets of the unsteady Cabinet of St Cloud.

One advice we give you, and by following it you cannot fail to be happy at Ambleside, and everywhere else. Whatever the weather be, love, admire, and delight in it, and vow that you would not change it for the atmosphere of a dream. If it be close, hot, oppressive, be thankful for the faint air that comes down fitfully from cliff and chasm, or the breeze that ever and anon gushes from stream and lake. If the heavens are filled with sunshine, and you feel the vanity of parasols, how cool the sylvan shade for ever moistened by the murmurs of that fairy waterfall! Should it blow great guns, cannot you take shelter in yonder magnificent fort, whose hanging battlements are warded even from the thunder-bolt by the dense umbrage of unviolated woods? Rain—rain—rain—an even-down pour of rain, that forces upon you visions of Noah and his ark, and the top of Mount Ararat—still, we beseech you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; the thing is impossible. Even this very afternoon will the rainbow span the blue entrance into Rydal's woody vale, as if to hail the westering sun on his approach to the mountains—and a hundred hill-born torrents will be seen flashing out of the upfolding mists. What a delightful dazzle on the light-stricken river! Each meadow shames the lustre of the emerald; and the soul wishes not for language to speak the pomp and prodigality of colours that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the grove-girdled Fairfield, who has just tossed off the clouds from his rocky crest.

You will not imagine, from anything we have ever said, that we are enemies to early rising. Now and then, what purer bliss than to embrace the new-wakened Morn, just as she is rising from her dewy bed! At such hour, we feel as if there were neither physical nor moral evil in the world. The united power of peace, innocence, and beauty subdues everything to itself, and life is love.

Forgive us, loveliest of Mornings! for having overslept the assignation hour, and allowed thee to remain all by thyself in the solitude, wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairest phantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven us—for not clouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead: the unreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us—a loving murmur steals into our heart from thine—and pure as a child's, daughter of Heaven! is thy breath.

In the spirit of that invocation we look around us, and as the idea of morning dies, sufficient for our happiness is "the light of common day"—the imagery of common earth. There has been rain during the night—enough, and no more, to enliven nature—the mists are ascending composedly with promise of gentle weather—and the sun, so mild that we can look him in the face with unwinking eyes, gives assurance that as he has risen so will he reign, and so will he set in peace.

Yet we cannot help thinking it somewhat remarkable, that, to the best of our memory, never once were we the very first out into the dawn. We say nothing of birds—for they, with their sweet jargoning, anticipate it, and from their bed on the bough feel the forerunning warmth of the sunrise; neither do we allude to hares, for they are "hirpling hame," to sleep away the light hours, open-eyed, in the briery quarry in the centre of the trackless wood. Even cows and horses we can excuse being up before us, for they have bivouacked; and the latter, as they often sleep standing, are naturally somnambulists. Weasels, too, we can pardon for running across the road before us, and as they reach the hole-in-the-wall, showing by their clear eyes that they have been awake for hours, and have probably breakfasted on leveret. We have no spite at chanticleer, nor the hooting owls against whom he is so lustily crowing hours before the orient; nor do we care although we know that is not the first sudden plunge of the tyrant trout into the insect cloud already hovering over the tarn. But we confess that it is a little mortifying to our pride of time and place, to meet an old beggar-woman, who from the dust on her tattered brogues has evidently marched miles from her last night's wayside howf, and who holds out her withered palm for charity, at an hour when a cripple of fourscore might have been supposed sleeping on her pallet of straw. A pedlar, too, who has got through a portion of the Excursion before the sun has illumed the mountain-tops, is mortifying, with his piled pack and ellwand. There, as we are a Christian, is Ned Hurd, landing a pike on the margin of the Reed-pool, on his way from Hayswater, where he has been all night angling, till his creel is as heavy as a sermon; and a little further on, comes issuing like a Dryad's daughter, from the gate in the lane, sweet little Alice Elleray, with a basket dangling beneath her arm, going in her orphan beauty to gather, in their season, wild strawberries or violets in the woods.

Sweet orphan of Wood-edge! what would many a childless pair give for a creature one-half so beautiful as thou, to break the stillness of a home that wants but one blessing to make it perfectly happy! Yet there are few or none to lay a hand on that golden head, or leave a kiss upon its ringlets. The father of Alice Elleray was a wild and reckless youth, and, going to the wars, died in a foreign land. Her mother soon faded away of a broken heart;—and who was to care for the orphan child of the forgotten friendless? An old pauper who lives in that hut, scarcely distinguishable from the shielings of the charcoal-burners, was glad to take her from the parish for a weekly mite that helps to eke out her own subsistence. For two or three years the child was felt a burden by the solitary widow; but ere she had reached her fifth summer, Alice Elleray never left the hut without darkness seeming to overshadow it—never entered the door without bringing the sunshine. Where can the small, lonely creature have heard so many tunes, and airs, and snatches of old songs—as if some fairy bird had taught her melodies of fairyland? She is now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her solitude. Do you wish for a flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge will wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted the dew on leaf or petal. Will you be for carrying away with you to the far-off city some pretty little sylvan toy, to remind you of Ambleside and Rydal, and other beautiful names of beautiful localities near the lucid waters of Windermere? Then, Lady! purchase, at little cost, from the fair basket-maker, an ornament for your parlour, that will not disgrace its fanciful furniture, and, as you sit at your dreamy needlework, will recall the green forest glades of Brathy or Calgarth. Industrious creature! each day is to thee, in thy simplicity, an entire life. All thoughts, all feelings, arise and die in peace between sunrise and sunset. What carest thou for being an orphan! knowing, as thou well dost, that God is thy father and thy mother, and that a prayer to Him brings health, food, and sleep to the innocent.

Letting drop a curtsy, taught by Nature, the mother of the Graces, Alice Elleray, the orphan of Wood-edge, without waiting to be twice bidden, trills, as if from a silver pipe, a wild, bird-like warble, that in its cheerfulness has now and then a melancholy fall, and, at the close of the song, hers are the only eyes that are not dimmed with the haze of tears. Then away she glides with a thankful smile, and dancing over the greensward, like an uncertain sunbeam, lays the treasure, won by her beauty, her skill, and her industry, on the lap of her old guardian, who blesses her with the uplifting of withered hands.

Meanwhile, we request you to walk away with us up to Stockgill-force. There has been a new series of dry weather, to be sure; but to our liking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the noise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified till your head splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn-door—we are speaking to you, sir—and roar into a friend's ear all in vain a remark on the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are as completely drenched in spray as if you had fallen out of a boat—and descend to dinner with a toothache that keeps you in starvation in the presence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dry weather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead of tumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why, it slides and slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks, and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose foam-bells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headache have you—speak in a whisper, and not a syllable of your excellent observation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dewdrops have been shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of the cushat—and as for toothache interfering with dinner, you eat as if your tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss nuts, upper-and-lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the county. And all this comes of looking at Stockgill-force, or any other waterfall, in dry weather, after a few refreshing and fertilising showers that make the tributary rills to murmur, and set at work a thousand additional feeders to every Lake.