A Spring Walk
On the Surrey Hills.
To the Editor of the Every-Day Book.
Sir,—Having, like Falstaff, “babbled o’ green fields,” I resolved to visit them; and a few mornings ago, taking with me a certain talisman with his majesty’s head thereon, I bent my steps through the now populous town of Walworth, famous, like London, for its “Sir William,” and in whose history are many things well worthy your notice. Proceeding thence through Camberwell, I ascended the hill at whose foot quietly stands the Sunday resort of many town immured beings, the public-house yclept “the Fox-under-the-Hill.” Here the works of man are intruding on the country in villas of various shapes and dimensions, the sight of which would make the former possessors of the land, if they loved their fields, and could look around them, feel as did the American chief, who dining one day with some British officers at a house which commanded a view of the vast lakes and forests formerly the inheritance of his fathers, was observed to eye the scene before him with melancholy scrutiny.—“Chieftain,” remarked General ——, “you are sad!” “I am;” was his answer, “and how can I be otherwise, when I think of the time when all I look on was the property of my nation; but ’tis gone; the white men have got it, and we are a houseless and a homeless people. The white man came in his bark, and asked leave to tie it to a tree; it was given him—he then asked to build him a hut; it was granted—but how was our kindness repaid? his hut became a fort, his bark brought in her womb the children of the thunder to our shores—they drove us from forest to forest, from mountain to mountain, they destroyed our habitations and our people, they rooted up our trees, and have left us but the desert—I am sad; and how can I be otherwise?” I return from this digression to ascend Herne Hill, the Elysium of many of our merchants and traders, whose dwellings look the abodes of happy mortals,—beings, seeking, in retirement from the busy world, to repay themselves for the anxieties and fatigues of life with peace and competence.
O, how blest is he who here
Can calmly end life’s wild career;
He who in the torrid zone,
Hath the spirit’s wasting known,
Or pin’d where winter ’neath the pole,
Through the body wrings the soul,
Losing in this peaceful spot
Memory of his former lot.
And O, how happy were it mine,
To build me here, ere life decline,
A cot, ’mid these sequestered grounds,
With every year three hundred pounds.
Gentlemen of Herne Hill I envy you—but I am not a money-getting man, so it is useless to wish for such a treasure. Proceeding onward, I wind down the southern declivity of this lovely Olympus—it has been, ere now, to me, a Parnassus, but that is past, and the hoofs of Lancefield’s steeds have superseded those of Pegasus.—On the left a quiet green lane, such as Byron would have loved, leads to Dulwich, famous for its college, and the well paid and well fed inhabitants thereof, and its gallery of pictures. On the right is an opening as yet unprofaned by brick and mortar—the only place now left, from whence a traveller can view the soft scenery around. I go down this vista, and am rewarded with a beauteous prospect of variegated hills, vallies, meadows, &c. &c. I again approach the steep, retracing my path; and descending further, green fields and still greener hedges are on each side of me, studded with various wild flowers. At every step I hear the rich music of nature; the sky-lark is above me singing, heedless if the gled[142] be in the blue cloud; and at least a score of robins with their full bright eyes, and red bosoms, hopping about me, singing as stout as if it was winter, and looking quite as bold. There is a mixture of cheerfulness and melancholy in their song, which to me is pleasing; now loud and shrill, and now a long rolling sound like the rising of the wind. Advancing, I come in sight of the New Church of Norwood with its unsightly steeple. Ichabod! the glory of the church has departed. I never observe the new churches on the Surrey side of the river, without imagining their long bodies and short steeples look, from a distance, like the rudders of so many sailing barges. Where is the grand oriel—the square tower? what have we in their stead? a common granary casement, and a shapeless spire. I again move onward rather tired, and turning to the left, after a short uphill journey with a charming view on all sides, arrive at “the Woodman,” where the talisman I spoke of showed its power, by instantly procuring me good eating and other refreshing solace. Here a man might sit for an hour unwearied, better in head and heart from the loveliness of the scenery beneath him; and here I repose,—
Inhaling as the news I read
The fragrance of the Indian weed.
You are, I have heard, no smoker; yet there is “a something” in a pipe which produces that tranquillity of mind you so much need; if alone it is a companion, bringing quiet thoughts and pleasing visions; it is a good friend if not abused, and is, above all, a promoter of digestion—no bad quality. Below me, yet wearing its livery of brown, lies the wood, the shadowy haunt of the gypsey tribe ere magisterial authority drove them away. Many a pleasant hour have I spent in my younger days with its Cassandras, listening to their prophetic voices, and looking at their dark eyes.
O, the dusky hands are ne’er forgot,
That my palm trac’d,
Of her I clasp’d, in that calm spot,
Around the waist;
I feel the thrill
Of her fingers still,
Her dark eyes on me beam,
O, what joyous thoughts my bosom fill
Of that sweet dream.
But—as the song says—
“Farewell to Glenowen
For I must be going.”