And then, Madam, do not the poor bones which have been strewn, for ages, over the rolling earth, play sometimes a nobler part in their decay than in their prime? The incrusted fragments, carefully treasured up in halls of science, reveal to the broadening intelligence of man the story of earth in its young days of mighty struggle, and tell of the sandy shores, the rolling waters, the waving woods of a primeval time. Turning back the stony tablets time has firmly bound, he views upon their wrinkled sides its nature-printed figures,—relics that have there remained, locked in the rocky sepulchre, built of crumbling mountains, washed and worn by tides that ebbed and flowed a million years ago. Now, opened to the eye of human thought, their crumbling forms bring tidings of a distant, wondrous past, when they were all in all of sentient life on earth. The thought they could not know, their dead remains have wakened in the minds of a far nobler race, which was not born when they lay down and died.
When travellers over far-reaching deserts are lost in the great waste that shows no friendly, guiding sign, they sometimes find, half buried in the shifting sands, the bleaching bones of some poor creature which has fainted and fallen, left to its fate by the companions of its journey. Then, taking heart, they cheerier move along, secure in the forgotten path these silent relics show. Thus over life's drear desert do we move, seeking the path that leads us on direct, and often guided in our wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose sad remains our errant footsteps cross. Not always clad in soft, warm, beating life do our bones perform their noblest purpose. Beauty may lure to ruin, but, the witching charm removed, decay may waken sober thought and high resolve. Poor Yorick might have set King Hamlet's table in a roar and been forgot, if, from his unknown grave, the sexton had not brought him forth, to teach an unborn age philosophy.
My dear Madam, I am really getting too serious, philosophic, and melancholic. I had no idea, when I asked you down to the Natural History Society rooms to see the great Megatherium, that I was either to bury or resuscitate you in imagination. But I must have my moral, if I draw it from such a lean text as crumbling bones. Let us hope that what we leave behind us, when our journey over the drear expanse of mortal life shall cease, may serve to guide some future wanderer in the devious way, and lead him to the bright oasis of eternal life and rest.
AN ENGLISHMAN IN NORMANDY.
A tour in Normandy is a very commonplace thing; and mine was not even a tour in Normandy. In the six weeks which I spent there, I did not see as many sights as an ordinary English tourist sees in ten days, or an American, perhaps, in five. Going abroad in need of rest, I rambled slowly about, sojourning at each place as long as I found it agreeable, then moving on to another, avoiding the railroads, the tyranny of the timetable, the flurry of packing up every morning. My time was divided between some seven or eight places; and I stayed longest where there was least, according to the guide-books, to be seen.
Travelling in this way, you at all events see something of the people; that is, if you will live among them and fall in with their ways.
Normandy—at least the sequestered part of it in which most of my time was passed—is a good country for a traveller minded as I was. The scenery is not grand. It does not exact the highest admiration; but it is, perhaps, not on that account the less suitable for the purpose of those who seek repose. The country is very like the most rich and beautiful parts of England. Its lanes and hedge-rows are indeed so thoroughly English, as to suggest that it was laid out under influences similar to those which determined the aspect of the country in England, and unlike those which determined it in other parts of France. It is well wooded; and as the trees stand not in masses, but in lines along the hedge-rows, you see distinctly the form of each tree. This is one of its characteristic features. The number of poplars interspersed with the trees of rounder outline is another, and very grateful to the eye. The general greenness rivals that of England. The valleys are wide, and the views from the hill-tops very extensive. I am speaking chiefly of the western part of Normandy: the parts about Caen approach more nearly to the flatness, monotony, and dreary treelessness of ordinary French and German scenery. The air is pure and bracing,—especially in the little towns built on old castled heights. Why do we not always build our towns, when we can, on heights, in what Shakespeare calls nimble and sweet air?
The Norman towns are full of grand old churches, old castles, historic memories, shadows of the past. In these, where I spent most of my holiday, there are no garrisons, no Zouaves, no fanfares, no signs of the presence of the empire, except occasionally the abode of a sous-préfet. The province retains a good deal of its old character. In the great towns, such as Rouen and Caen, the people are French; but in the country they are Normans still. The French are sensible of the difference, and do the Normans the honor (as, if I were a Norman, I should think it) of acknowledging it by habitual flouts and sneers at the "heavy" race who inhabit "the land of cider."
If you do not mind outward appearances,—if you have the resolution to penetrate beyond a very dirty entrance, perhaps through the kitchen, into the rooms within,—you may make yourself extremely comfortable in a little Norman inn. You have only to behave to your landlord and landlady as a guest, not as a customer, and you will find yourself treated with the utmost civility and kindness. You will get a large, airy room, not so tidy as an English room, but with a better bed, and excellent fare, beginning with a delicious cup of café au lait in the early morning,—that is, if you choose to breakfast and dine at the table d'hôte; for, if, like many English travellers, you insist on living in English privacy, and taking your meals at English hours, all the resources of the little establishment being expended on the public meals, you will probably pay the penalty of your patriotic and stoical adherence to the customs of your country.