It is something to make a part, however small, of such a nation. It is something to feel that you have such a scope of power and beneficence in the earth. But when you add to this, the food laid up for the heart and the intellect in this island—the wealth of literature and science; the spirit of freedom in which they are nourished, and by which they are prosecuted; the sound religious feeling which has always distinguished it as a nation; the philanthropic institutions that exist in it—every true heart must felicitate itself that its lot is cast in this kingdom.
Such are the moral, political, and intellectual advantages of English life, which must make any noble-minded and reflecting man feel, as he considers his position in the scale of humanity, that he is “a citizen of no mean city.” But our social advantages are not a whit behind these. Can any state of society be well conceived, on which the arts and sciences, literature, and general knowledge, can shed more social conveniences and refined enjoyments? In our houses, in our furniture, in all the materials for our dresses, in the apparatus for our tables and the endless variety of good things by which they are supplied, for which every region has been traversed, and every art in bringing them home, or raising them at home, has been exerted; in books and paintings; in the wonderful provision and accumulation of every article in our shops, that the real wants or the most fanciful desires of men or women may seek for; in our gardens, roads, the beautiful and affluent cultivation of the country,—what nation is there, or has there been, which can for a moment bear a comparison with England?
Ye miserable ancients, had ye these?
And this we may ask, not merely as it respects gas, steam, the marvellous developments of chemistry and electro-magnetism, by which the mode and embellishment of our existence have been so much changed already, and which promise yet changes too vast to be readily familiarized to the imagination,—but of a thousand other privileges and conveniences in which England is pre-eminent. It is, however, to our rural life that we are about to devote our attention; and it is in rural life that the superiority of England is, perhaps, more striking, than in any other respect. Over the whole face of our country the charm of a refined existence is diffused. There is nothing which strikes foreigners so much as the beauty of our country abodes, and the peculiarity of our country life. The elegances, the arts, and refinements of the city, are carried out and blended, from end to end of the island, so beautifully with the peaceful simplicity of the country, that nothing excites more the admiration of strangers than those rural paradises, the halls, castles, abbeys, lodges, and cottages, in which our nobility and gentry spend more or less of every year. Let Prince Pückler Muskau, Washington Irving, Willis, Count Pecchio, Rice, and others, tell you how beautiful, in their eyes, appeared the parks, lawns, fields, and the whole country of England, cultivated like a garden. It is true that our climate is not to be boasted of for its perpetual serenity. It has had no lack of abuse, both from our own countrymen and others. We are none of us without a pretty lively memory of its freaks and changes, its mists and tempests; its winters wild as some of late, and its springs that are often so tardy in their arrival, that they find summer standing in the gate to tell them they are no longer wanted. All this we know; yet which of us is not ready to forgive all this, and to say with a full heart,
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!
Which of us is not grateful and discerning enough to remember, that even our fickle and imperfect climate has qualities to which England owes much of its glory, and we, many a proud feeling and victorious energy? Which of us can forget, that this abused climate, is that which has not enervated by its heats, has not seduced by its amenities, has not depopulated by its malaria, so that under its baneful influence we have become feeble, listless, reckless of honour or virtue; the mean, the slothful, the crouching slaves of barbarians, or even effeminate despots: it is that which has done none of these things; produced no such effects as these; but it is that which has raised millions of frames strong and muscular and combatant, and enduring as the oaks of its rocky hills; that has nerved those frames to the contempt alike of danger and effeminacy; and has quickened them with hearts full of godlike aspirations after a virtuous glory. What a long line—what ages after ages, of invincible heroes, of dauntless martyrs for freedom and religion, of solemn sages and lawgivers, of philosophers and poets, men sober, and prescient, and splendid in all their endowments as any country ever produced;—what a line of these has flourished amid the glooms and severities of this abused climate; and while Italy has sunk into subjection, and Greece has lain waste beneath the feet of the Turk—has piled up by a succession of matchless endeavours the fame and power of England, to the height of its present greatness.
In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung
Of earth’s best blood, have titles manifold.
And will any man tell me that the spirit of our climate has had nothing to do with begetting and nourishing the energy which has borne on to immortality these great men; which has quickened us with “earth’s best blood;” which has given us “titles manifold?” The gloom and desolate majesty of autumn—the wild magnificence of thunder-storms, with their vivid lightnings, their awful uproar, the lurid darkness of their clouds, and the outshining of rainbows—have these had no effect on the meditations of divines and the songs of poets? Has the soul-concentrating power of winter driven our writers into their closets in vain? Have the fireside festivities of our darkest season; have the blazing yule-clog, and the merriment of the old English hall—things which have grown out of the very asperity of the climate, left no traces in our literature? Did Milton, Bacon, Spenser, Shakspeare, and such spirits, walk through our solemn halls, whether of learning, or religion, or baronial pomp, all of which have been raised by the very genius of a pensive climate; or did they climb our mountains, and roam our forests, amid winds that roared in the boughs and whirled their leaves at their feet, and gather thence no imagery, no similes, no vigour of thought and language, such as still skies and flowery meadows could not originate? Let us turn to the lays and romances of Scott and Byron, and see whether brown heaths and splintered mountains; the savage ruins of craggy coasts, moaning billows, mists, and rains; the thunder of cataracts, and the sleep of glens, all seen and felt under the alternations of seasons and of weather, such only as an unsettled climate could shew,—have not tinged their spirits, and therefore their works, with hues of an immortal beauty, the splendid product of a boisterous climate. Why, they are these influences which have had no small share in the creation of such men as Burns, Bloomfield, Hogg, and Clare—the shepherd-poets of a free land, and an out-of-door life. Yes, we are indebted to our climate for a mass of good, a host of advantages of which we little dream, till we begin to count them up.
And are all our experiences of the English climate those of gloom? Are there no glorious sunsets, no summer evenings, balmy as our dreams of heaven, no long sunny days of summer, no dewy mornings, whose freshness brings with it ideas of earth in its youth, and the glades of Paradise trod by the fair feet of Eve? Have we no sweet memories of youth and friendship, in which such hours, such days, in which fields of harvest, hay-harvest and corn-harvest, with all their rejoicing rustic companies, lie in the sunshine? Are there none of excursions through the mountains, along the sea shores, of sailing on fair lakes, or lying by running waters in green and flowery dales, while overhead shone out skies so blue and serene that they seemed as though they could never change? In every English bosom there lie many such sweet memories; and if we look through the whole of one of the worst seasons that we have, what intervals of pleasant weather we find in it. One of the great charms of this country too, dependent on its climate, is that rich and almost perpetual greenness, of which strangers always speak with admiration.
But what of climate? There are other claims on our affections for this noble country, which, were its climate the most splendid under heaven, would yet cast that far into the shade. What binds us closely to it, next to our living ties, is that every inch of English ground is sanctified by noble deeds, and intellectual renown; but on this topic Mrs. Howitt has, in her Wood-Leighton, put into the mouth of a worthy clergyman of Staffordshire, words that will better express my feelings, than any I can now use.