There is my essay. It is a short one, freely given; for I must confess to a certain liking for the Quakers, after all. Their charities are noble and generous; their views on many points eminently liberal and enlightened; and though themselves enslaved to crotchets, they have shown bravely and practically that they abhor slavery; and their recent mission to Finland demonstrates the bounty and tenderness with which they seek to mitigate the evils of war. There is in Oxfordshire a little Quaker burial-ground, on the brow of a hill looking far away into the west country, where I have asked leave to have my grave dug, when the time comes: that is, if the sedate folk will admit among them even a dead Philistine.
I saw the Quaker above-mentioned standing at his door: we were total strangers to each other, but my Bainbridge friend had told him there was a chance of my visiting Aysgarth, and he held out his hand. Soon tea was made ready, and after that he called his son, and led me across the hill-slopes to get the best views, and by short cuts down to Aysgarth Force, a mile below the village, where the Ure rushes down three great breaks or steps in the limestone which stretch all across the river. The water is shallow, and falling as a white curtain over the front of each step, shoots swiftly over the broad level to the next plunge, and the next, producing, even in dry weather, a very pleasing effect. But during a flood the steps disappear, and the whole channel is filled by one great rapid, almost terrific in its vehemence. The stony margin of the stream is fretted and worn into many curious forms, and for a mile or more above and below the bed is stone—nothing but stone—while on each side the steep banks are patched and clothed with trees and bush. The broken ground above the Force, interspersed with bush, is a favourite resort of picnic parties, and had been thronged a few days before by a multitude of festive teetotallers.
The bridge which crosses the river between the Force and the village, with its arch of seventy-one feet span springing from two natural piers of limestone, is a remarkably fine object when viewed from below. Above, the river flows noisily from ledge to ledge down a winding gorge.
Drunken Barnaby, who, by the way, was a Yorkshireman, named Richard Braithwaite, came to Wensleydale in one of his itineraries. “Thence,” says the merry fellow—
“Thence to Wenchly, valley-seated,
For antiquity repeated;
Sheep and sheep-herd, as one brother,
Kindly drink to one another;
Till pot-hardy, light as feather,
Sheep and sheep-herd sleep together.
“Thence to Ayscarthe from a mountaine,
Fruitfull valleys, pleasant fountaine,
Woolly flocks, cliffs steep and snewy,
Fields, fens, sedgy rushes, saw I;
Which high mount is called the Temple,
For all prospects an example.”
The church stands in a commanding position, whence there is a good prospect down the dale. Besides the landscape, there are times when the daring innovations made by fashion on the old habits may be observed. Wait in the churchyard on Sunday when service ends, and you will see many a gay skirt, hung with flounces and outspread by crinoline, come flaunting forth from the church. And in this remote village, Miss Metcalfe and Miss Thistlethwaite must do the bidding of coquettish Parisian milliners, even as their sisters do in May Fair.