In these respects George Woodburn was a most beneficial companion for Harry Thorsby, for George’s unequivocal dislike of anything dissipated, his equally unmistakeable enjoyment of the simplest pleasures of the country, struck Thorsby with wonder; and when he saw George’s real pleasure in the moderate number of friends that he mixed with, and his enormous capacity for enduring exertion, he wondered the more. In their shooting excursions he would have tired down a horse, and never appeared to know what fatigue was in himself.
“George,” said Thorsby, “how I do envy you your philosophical contempt for the pleasures of gay society, for you seem to enjoy what you do like with such a genuine gusto.”
“But it is no merit, my dear fellow,” George would reply; “for all those things that you call jollities and gaieties are my aversion. To spring out of bed on a summer’s morning, and see the sun shining over the beauteous landscape, steaming and smoking in the ascending dew; to hear the cuckoo calling me in her quaint foreign tongue, the thrushes and blackbirds shouting out their delight, some scores of them, as if they had not hearts big enough for their joy; to hear all the varied sounds of life, from the larks in the sky, from the creatures in the yard; to see the cattle and the flocks all luxuriating in the green or golden fields; to hear human voices making up the concert of nature, and, above all, the merry tongue of Letty, and the grave, loving tones of Ann, already out in the garden; to mount my horse, and ride away through fields and woods amid all the gladness of heaven and earth; to feel the fulness of life beating in my veins and gushing through my heart—Ah! what are all your simpering fine people, and your candle-light companies to me! Thorsby, I see men solitarily passing their lives in the lonely fields, or felling and fagoting in the lonely woods, whose very existence will never be known beyond their own hamlet; and do you think they are miserable? I tell you, no—so long as they can earn a decent reward for their labour. I often talk with these men, the Crusoes of the fields, of whom you fine people never think, or value them more than the sheep which graze beside them, and I find that God has breathed into them, frequently, in His silent language, of the sun, the moon, and stars, of the whispering breezes of evening, the colours of the sky, and the odours of turf and forest—things the haunters of crowds and lamplit festivities never dream of. These humble creatures, amid all their ignorance, in all their unvalued life, go home at night to loving hearts, and taste a happiness in communion with a few loved objects, which never can come to those whose affections are dissipated by running over countless forms and faces without settling on any. I would rather be one of these poor, despised, unknown, uncared-for creatures than the finest, wealthiest man or woman who lives the mere life of fashion and conventionalism.
“Our philosophical poet Wordsworth has exactly hit my idea of the philosophy of existence:—
“‘Yet life, you say, is life; we have seen and see,
And with a living pleasure we describe;
And fits of sprightly malice do but bribe
The languid mind into activity.
Sound sense, and love itself, and mirth and glee,
Are fostered by the comment and the gibe.
Even be it so: yet still among your tribe,
Our daily world’s true worldlings, rank not me.
“Nor can I not believe but that hereby
Great gains are mine: for thus I live remote
From evil-speaking; rancour never sought,
Comes to me not; malignant truth, or lie.
Hence have I genial seasons; hence have I
Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous
thought.’”
Had George Woodburn been an austere or moping sort of young man, such conversations as these would not have surprised Harry Thorsby; but when he saw, that in everything George Woodburn found a pleasure as fresh as a mountain spring, that he was at home in the evening, all fun and playfulness, with his sisters, listened with delight to their music and singing, though he took no share in these things himself; with what sound sense and early wisdom he entered into the conversation with his parents and friends on any topic of domestic or public concern, he was deeply struck by it, and entertained a profound respect and esteem for so uncommon a specimen of modern youth.
There was one person, however, in the Woodburn Grange family, who looked on the introduction of Harry Thorsby on so familiar a footing as a real misfortune, and that was Betty Trapps. From the first moment of his entering the house, she regarded him with a cold and unwelcome eye. “Well,” said she, when asked whether she did not think him a very pleasant man, “he is not one of my men. I say, if I must speak my mind, dunna put much faith in him. Beware, I say, beware of cockatrices.”
“Oh, Betty!” exclaimed the stern Ann, “how can you be so uncharitable? Mr. Thorsby is a most respectable gentleman, known to be so to all Castleborough. Surely a friend of the Degges and of the Heritages cannot be a very bad man.”
“I did not say he was a bad man,” said Betty. “I only said he wasna one of my sort.”
“Why no,” said Letty, indignantly, “he is not a Methodist; but for all that, it does not follow that he is a cockatrice. What do you mean by cockatrices?”