The Rural Life of England

by William Howitt

It is to be hoped that the English poetry will always maintain this character; will always remain the powerful ally of the love of the country: one great means of preserving those features of English rural life so delightfully described in the foregoing extract. Amid the fascinations and temptations to a corruption of taste, from the mighty wealth and political influence of this country, it is to the combined effect of real, simple Christianity, the love of nature, and of that literature which is in alliance with those great conservative powers, that we must look for the maintenance of a sound national heart and intellect; and consequently, of that great moral ascendency, and genuine glory, that as a nation we have obtained. I long with a most earnest longing, for our stability in this respect; for the preservation of those pure, simple, holy tastes which have led our countrymen in all ages, since reading and civilization came upon them, to delight in the pleasant fields, in the pleasant country houses, in the profound peace of noble woods, so favourable to high and solemn musings; and in all those healthful and animating sports and pursuits that belong to such a life. It has been through the influence of these tastes, and of these home-born but exalted pleasures, by the strong human sympathies engendered by living amongst our manly and high-minded peasantry—the hardy sons and bold defenders of their natal soil,—the strong-hearted old fathers,—the fair and modest daughters of uncorrupted England; by living amongst them as their leaders, counsellors, and protectors; by musing over the inspiring annals of the past days of England; on the solid tomes of our legislators, our divines, philosophers and poets, in the calm twilight of ancient halls, or in the sunny seats of their broad bay-windows, looking out on fields purchased by the blood of patriots, and hoary forests, that have witnessed the toils of their ancestors, or perhaps received them to their dim bosoms in times of danger; it is by such aliment that the British heart has been nourished, and grown to its present greatness, when its pulsations are felt to the very ends of the earth, and by millions of confiding or submissive men, whose destinies depend upon its motions. Our arms may have been wielded in many a mighty battle for the accomplishment of this magnificent end, but it was here that the power of victory grew: our counsels may have, wearily, and stroke by stroke, worked out this ample breadth of glory; but it is here, and it was thus, that the wisdom, and the prudence, and the irresistible fortitude sprung, increased, and gave to those brave men and high measures their vigour and stability; here that they were born, and fostered to their beneficent fulness.

Therefore would I have every thing which may tend to keep alive this genuine spirit of England, may keep open all the sources of its strength and its inspiration, encouraged: every taste for the sweet serenity, the animating freshness, the preserving purity of country life, promoted; every thing which can embellish or render it desirable. For this cause I delight in the every-day spreading attachment to all branches of Natural History; in the great encouragement given to all books on country affairs; and in the advancing love of landscape-painting, by which the most enchanting views of our mountains, coasts, wild lakes, forests, and pastoral downs will be brought into our cities, and spread in sunshine and in poetry along their walls. For this I am thankful, with a deep thankfulness, for the mighty strains of poetry that have been poured out in this age, brimmed and gushing over with the august spirit of nature: for Wordsworth and Coleridge; Rogers and Campbell; for Shelley and Byron and Keats, and for many another noble bard; for the Romances of Scott, which have pre-eminently piled quenchless fuel on this social flame, by sanctifying many of the most beautiful scenes in the kingdom with the highest historical remembrances; and not less, for that wonderful series of articles by Wilson, in Blackwood’s Magazine,—in their kind, as truly amazing, and as truly glorious, as the romances of Scott, or the poetry of Wordsworth. Far and wide and much as these papers have been admired, wherever the English language is read, I still question whether any one man has a just idea of them as a whole. Whatever may be our opinion of the side which this powerful journal has taken in politics, it must be admitted that while it has fought the battles of Toryism with vigour, it has fought them in a noble spirit. There was a day when a foul influence had crept into it; when it was personal, rancorous, and apt to descend to language and details below the dignity of its strength; but that day is gone by, and it has been seen with lively satisfaction by all parties that it has purged itself of this evil nature, and as it has become peerless in fame,—it has become more and more generous, forgiving, and superior to every petty nature and narrow feeling. Its politics are ultra, but they are full of intellect; and they who desire to see what can be said on the Tory side, see it there. But the great attraction to literary men has long been, that splendid series of ample, diffuse, yet overflowing papers, in which every thing relating to poetry and nature find a place. These are singly, and in themselves, specimens of transcendent power; but taken altogether, as a series, are, in the sure unity of one great and correct spirit, such a treasury of criticism as is without a parallel in the annals of literature. For, while they are full of the soundest opinions, because they are the offspring of a deeply poetical mind—a mind strong in the guiding instincts of nature; they are preserved from the dryness and technicality of ordinary criticism by this very poetic temperament. They come upon you like some abounding torrent, streaming on, amid the wildest and noblest scenes; amid mountains and forests and flowery meadows; and bringing to your senses, at once, all their freshness of odours, dews, and living sounds. They are the gorgeous outpourings of a wild, erratic eloquence, that, in its magnificent rush, throws out the most startling, and apparently conflicting dogmas, yet all bound together by a strong bond of sound sense and incorruptible feeling.

They are all poetry:—sometimes, in its weakest and most diluted form; again, gushing into the most melting pathos; and then again playing and frolicking like a happy boy, half beside himself with holiday freedom and sunshine; then vapouring, and rhodomontading, and reeling along in the very drunkenness of a luxuriant fancy, intoxicated at the ambrosia-fountains of the heart; and then, like a strong man, all at once recovering his power and self-possession—if self-possession that can be called, which, in the next moment, gives way to a new impulse, and soars up into the highest regions of eloquence, pouring forth the noblest sentiments and most fervid imaginations, as from an oracle of quenchless inspiration.

It is in this manner, and this spirit, that the writer has—reviewed shall I say? no, not reviewed, but proclaimed, trumpeted to the farthest regions, idealized, etherealized, and made almost more glorious than they are in their own solemn grandeur, the poems of Wordsworth, of Milton, of Shakspeare, of Spenser, of Homer, and of many another genuine bard. And it is thus that he has led you over the heathy mountains and along the fairy glens of the north, to many a sweet secluded loch, into many a Highland hut. It is thus that he loves to make you observe the noble peasant striding along in his prime of youth—in his sedate manhood—in his hoary age, more beautiful than youth, for then he is crowned with the wisdom of his simple experience of the trials and vanity of life, and of the feeling that he draws near to eternity. It is thus that he bids you stand, and mark the fair young maiden busied about the door of her parental hut, more graceful and happy in the engrossment of her simple duties, beneath the sun and the blue heavens, than the very daughter of the palace in the lap of her artificial enchantments. It is thus he shews you the young mother tossing her laughing infant in the open air, while her two elder children are rolling on the sunny sward, or scrambling up the heathy brae; and her mother sits silently by the door, in the basking tranquillity of age. It is thus that he fills you with the noblest sympathies, with the purest human feelings; and then astonishes you with some sudden feat of leaping, running, or wrestling; and as suddenly is gone with rod in hand, following the course of a clear rapid stream, eagerly intent upon trout or salmon. And then he is the poet again, every atom of him, meek as a bard of nineteen, or of ninety; all tenderness, purity, and holiness; the poet of the City of the Plague, or of the Children’s Dance, forcing you to forget that he ever swaggered in an article, or rollocked in a Noctes. He is now basking in the shine of a May-day, amid the sparkling dews, the waving flowers, the running waters, and all the delights of earth, air, and the blue o’erspanning sky.

These are papers that have already done infinite service to the cause of poetry and nature; and therefore do I rejoice in their existence, and addition to all that sublime accumulation of fervid poetry and prose in the praise and love of the country, with which our English literature, above all others, is enriched.

But there is one person to whom I must still give a separate mention; an individual to whom we owe a signal increase of country delight,—Thomas Bewick. Every painter of landscape is a friend to the best feelings and tastes of humanity; but Bewick has, in a manner, created a new art. He has struck out a peculiar mode of embellishing books with snatches of rural scenery, that will, if pursued in the true spirit, do more to diffuse a love of the country than all other modes of engraving put together. To see what may be done, let us only see what he has done. Through his revival of the art of wood-cutting, we have now hundreds of wood-engravers, and thousands of wood-embellished books: yet lay your hands on any one of these volumes, and, with all deference to the great talent evinced, the great beauty produced,—till you open Bewick you shall not know what wood-cutting is capable of doing for books on the country.

I have heard some wood-engravers speak with contempt of Bewick, and say—“Why he was very well for his time of day, but we have scores that can excel him now.” To such men I have only one reply—“you don’t understand the country. I grant you there are many who can produce a more showy print; but it was not show which Bewick aimed at,—it was truth: and if you will know which is most excellent, take the one and the other; and let them be both opened before some country family of taste, and you will see that your print will dazzle the eye for a moment; it will be a moment of surprise and delight; but when the moment is past, the eye will fall on Bewick, and there it will be riveted; and there, the longer it dwells the stronger will be its fascination, and it will be the beginning of an everlasting love.” And why is this? Simply because we have in one, splendour of style; in the other, Nature! pure, faithful, and picturesque Nature,—Nature in her most felicitous, or most solemn moments. I have heard those who loved the country, and loved it because they knew it, say, that the opening of Bewick was a new era in their lives. I have seen how his volumes are loved, and treasured, and reverted to, time after time, in many a country house; the more familiar, the more prized; the oftener seen, the oftener desired.

And why should it not be so? It is not so much as a triumph of art, as a triumph of genius, that they are love-worthy. Yet as specimens of art they have eminent merit. See, in what a small space he gives you a whole landscape—a whole wide heath, or stormy coast, with their appropriate objects. See, with a single line, a single touch, what a world of effect he has achieved! But it is the spirit of the conception, and the sacred fidelity to Nature, which stamp their value upon his works. They are the works of an eye which sees in a moment what in a scene advances beyond common-place; what in it has a story, a moral, a sarcasm, or touch of transcendent beauty. They are the works of a heart bound by a bond of indissoluble love to the sweetness and peace of nature; rich in recollections of all her forms and hues; and of a spirit which cherished no ambition, no hope on earth, superior to that of throwing into his transcriptions the express image of his beloved Nature.

This is the great secret of the delight in his wood-cuts. They are full of all those beauties, those fine yet impressive beauties, that arrest the gaze of the lovers of nature; and they are so faithful that they never deceive, or disappoint the experienced eye. The vignettes of his Natural History are in themselves a series of stories so clearly told that they require no explanation, and are full of the most varied human interest. He delights in the picturesque and beautiful in nature, and the grotesque in life. Whatever he introduces, its genuine characteristics are all about it; beast or bird, there it is in the very scenery, and amid the very concomitants that you see it surrounded by in nature. You miss nothing that you find in the same situation in the real scene and circumstance; and, what is of more consequence, you never see a single thing introduced which has no business there. He is the very Burns of wood-engraving. He has the same intense love of nature; his bold freedom of spirit; his flashes of indignant feeling; his love of satire; and his ridicule of human vanity and cant. In his landscapes, he gives you every thing the most poetical:—wide, wild moors; the desolation of winter; the falling fane, and the crumbling tower; wild scenes on northern shores, with their rocks and sea-fowl, their wrecks and tempests. In his village scenes you have every feature of village life given with a precision and a spirit equally admirable. He delights to seize hold on humanity even in some of its degradations, as drunkenness and gluttony, and Hogarth-like, to excite your disgust against the abuse of God’s good things and man’s high nature. He delights equally to exhibit those ragged rapscallions that abound in the streets of towns, and the purlieus of villages; uncultivated, neglected, and therefore graceless, reckless—vulgarity and wickedness stamped on their features, and even in their strong, close-cut, thick-set heads of hair; full of mischief and cruelty from top to toe. There you have them, just in the commission of those barbarities or depredations that speak volumes for the necessity of better popular education: and as for beggars, strollers with bear and monkey, lame soldiers, and all the groups of tatterdemalions that are scattered all over this country, there is no end of them. At times he is full of whim; at others half in jest, and half in solemn earnest. Again, he touches you with pity for the aged and forlorn; and often rises into a tone of deep moral warning, and into actual demonstrations of the sublime and beautiful.

The elements in their majesty are made to laugh to scorn the inflated vanity of man. A stately church has sometime been reared on a pleasant and commanding mount near the sea. You are made to call to mind the pride and the gratulation in which it was erected in the palmy days of the Catholic faith. You see it in its newness, with all its fair proportions and noble completeness—a beautiful temple to the Christian Deity. You see how the country people come in awe and wonder to behold it; into what a silence of veneration they drop as they approach; with what a prostration of astonishment of heart they enter, while the new and merry bells sound above their heads; and all abroad the glad sunshine of summer is pouring, and casts its light into the glorious interior; and the sea-breeze comes fluttering with a full delight; and every thing seems to speak of triumph, stability, and enduring joy. You know with what solemn pomp the prelate, in full canonicals, and followed by his train of clerical brethren in their becoming robes, and surrounded by the powerful and the beautiful of the neighbourhood, proceeds to perform the rites of consecration. And with what pride the great family, who have given the land to God, and expended the revenues of ample estates for many years in erecting this goodly fabric, see all, hear all, and find hard work to conceal the inward swell of gratified ambition. How they look on all the accomplished miracle of the place; the lofty, arched roof above; the stately columns along the aisles; the priest in his pulpit; the people in their seats. With what proud gratulation they hear the voices of the choristers break forth, and fill “this house which they have built.” With what a high, elating, intoxicating feeling, with what a proud joy they kneel down on the silken cushions, and open the golden clasps of their richly-painted missals! All this we see; and then the dream of strength and glory and endurance is gone;—is gone from them and you. There stands the ancient church! Ancient? Yes, it is now ancient. All that dream of delight, all that throng of wondering people, have long passed away. Yes! the very founders, whose hearts beat in pride, are now dust and ashes beneath your feet;—ay, and their children and children’s children to the sixth or seventh generation. That noble fabric, then so fair of hue; so admirable in its workmanship; so sharp in all its mouldings, and delicate in its tracery; that temple in which so many prayers were put up for the mariner tossed on that wilderness of mighty waters on which it looked—is a ruin! The winds and the tempests of ages have blown and beaten upon it. The ocean has come in fury, and rent away its western front, that so gloriously used to fling back the splendours of the setting sun; and the very mound of the dead is rifled by the billows. What is that which I read upon a fallen stone, over which the waves, at every returning tide, wash with insulting strength? “This stone is erected to perpetuate the memory of ——.” O pride! O vanity and swelling confidence of “man that is a worm”—what a rebuke! But what is this? Another stone fallen—and fallen yet lower;—“Custos Rotulorum, of the County of ——.” And have time and tide not spared even this great man? Is the very keeper of the Rolls gone, and his monument after him? Where then is human stability? The waves, and that ransacked monument, and that stately ruin of a church, all say, not on earth; not in the works of man. The very house which he had raised, the very ground which he had consecrated, are pulled down by the elements; and even the bones of himself and children are swept into the great deep. I do not know, in the catalogue of the paintings with which this country is enriched, one that speaks with a more sublime power to the imagination than this wood-cut of the littleness of human pride; and of the only sure hope of honour and endurance, in the eternity of virtue.