It was on a beautiful morning, in quite the beginning of May, that, leaving the Globe Hotel, on the Beacon Hill, Exmouth, I strolled forth at a very early hour, determining to ramble wherever chance might lead. There was no fear of my missing any particularly lovely spot in following this determination. The very watering-places combine all the charms of sea and country to an extent peculiar to this lovely county. Ten minutes suffice to bear the wanderer to such seeming solitude of hill and dale, and glen and wood—will scatter around him such a profusion of ever-varying yet ever beautiful scenery, that it is difficult to believe that all those artificial luxuries and pleasures necessary to the trifler and the fashionest, would we seek them, are close at hand.
Every season has its own charm in England. Even winter, in its stern, rude aspect, its brawling voice of winds and storms, has, in the deep, still haunts of nature, its own peculiar beauty. Spring, with its young, fresh joyousness, its sparkling glory of earth and sky—its gushing atmosphere; for, as the breeze comes laughing and dancing along, we can give it no other term. Summer, with its still and deeper feeling, as if the dancing light and glittering love of the youthful year had sobered into a being deeper, stronger, more fervid and intense. Then autumn, decking decay with such bright beauty, shedding a parting halo on the fading year; concentrating all of loveliness in that sweet, dreamy pensiveness, which, while it lingers almost mournfully on earth’s parting glories, looks through their passing light into their renovated being, reading in the death and resurrection of nature the spirit’s immortality.
One charm, indeed, spring possesses beyond those of the other seasons; it is, that almost every hour of the day is equally delicious; in the morning, noon, afternoon, or evening, we may come forth and make acquaintance with her in every variety of aspect, each one as lovely as the other. Evening indeed is the hour of that delicious musing which, in the very blessedness of the PRESENT, unconsciously recalls the loveliest images of the PAST, and adumbrates the FUTURE, by the thrilling whisper of our immortal goal. It is then that, as Wordsworth says—
“We are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul.”
But these are not the sensations of the morning; then life is infused with the PRESENT alone. We can neither recall, nor think, nor hope; we do but believe, and love, and feel, conscious only of the blessing of Existence, of the omnipotence of Love!
It was with all the elastic joyousness of such sensations I hastened up the Beacon Hill, pausing involuntarily on the top to gaze beneath me. There lay Old Ocean, slumbering in the early sunshine as a lake of molten gold, tinged here and there with the shadow of overhanging rocks, and ever and anon fringed with a snowy crest, as a passing breeze rocked the waves into heavier swell. The broad and graceful river, rushing boldly and proudly into its parent sea; its undulating course visible for miles up the land; its shores skirted with towns half buried in foliage; churches, towers, and villages coming forth in the glowing light from their background of hills dark with verdure; headlands, bold, rugged, and broken into every diversity of form; Powder-ham’s castellated mansion glancing through magnificent plantations, with their glades and lawns of emerald issuing from the deeper shadows as jewels of the sunshine. Mamhead just visible through its dark, dense woods; and farther still in the distance, woody uplands and barren rocks towering above the broken summits of the headlands, taking every grotesque form from the clouds lingering above them, and at length fading into ether, changing like phantasmagoria beneath the magic influence of light and shade, and mist and sun.
My path now lay across one or two fields, inlaid with a perfect mosaic of gold, and white and green, formed by the patches of grass, kingcup, and daisy, leading into those narrow, luxuriant lanes, with their gurgling streamlets and clustering flowers which mark at once the county of Devon.
The hedges rose high above my head, and from them sprung forth the oak, and elm, and beech, and ash, bearing the weight of centuries on their lofty trunks and far-spreading branches; the hawthorn, with its blossoms just tipping its rich green as with a shower of snow; and the holly standing forth, dark and stern, amid the more tender foliage of the early spring. Every field-gate or occasional break in the hedge disclosed a complete mass of hill, and wood, and orchard; on one side bounded by sea and sky, on the other stretching farther and farther inland, till hills met the sky, and seemed to close around the landscape. Every shade of green, from the darkest to the lightest, was visible in the tender foliage—some as if already clothed in the intenser hues of summer; others so lightly, so delicately shaded, that their exquisite tracery was distinctly marked against the clear blue sky. The orchards already lay as patches of snow in their verdant dells, and primroses and violets by thousands clustered on the banks of the clear, trickling streamlet which skirted the deep green hedge as a fringe of silver.
I do so love the primrose; there is something so sad and pensive in her meek, pale flowers, gleaming forth as silent stars from their darkly-closing leaves, and bending over the laughing waters, as if their very mirth were sad to her. And the deep purple violet, shrouding itself in silence, yet seeming in its very scent, to smile and whisper joy. And the speedwell, with its full blue petals and delicate stems, which literally bend beneath their weight of blossom, light and fragile as they are; the deep-red campion, with its gorgeous clusters, looking proudly down on its humbler brethren, rejoicing in its lofty home, that it may fade unplucked upon its stem; these and countless other flowers gemmed the hedge a very garniture of love.
There was no sound save the delicious music of the fresh springy breeze, as it wantoned with the glistening leaves, or played with the gushing waters, inciting them to break in tiny waves against the hedge; and the rich thrilling melody of the happy birds, calling to each other from tree to tree, or sending forth such a gush of song, such a trilling flow of rapture, that their slender throats seemed quivering with the effort; then would come silence, as startled and hushed by their own joy; and then a low twittering, with perhaps the distant call of the lonely cuckoo, and a burst of melody again.
After rambling amid such scenes and sounds for about two miles, a thick grove of lofty trees, interspersed with thatched roofs, ivy-clad and smoke-dyed walls, and chimneys of every architecture, marked its termination. The lane narrowed, and hastening onwards, a rustic gate opened into an old churchyard, surrounding a village church of such extreme old age, and so picturesque, that it sent me back in fancy centuries at once. There was the low, square belfry, indented and fractured, with lichen and moss, and flowering weeds springing from every crevice; the long and rambling choir, roofed with copper; the slender buttresses; the small-paned windows, some of Saxon, some of Tudor architecture; the large square porch or entrance, with its grotesque carvings, that could only belong to the middle ages. The very trees, massive alike in root, and trunk, and branch; yews so dark and thick, they seemed in the distance more as solid masonry than trees—looked as if they had stood there grim guardians of the holy dead for centuries; and grassy graves and quaint old tombs, so battered with age and atmosphere as wholly to obliterate their inscriptions—though some bore date as far back as 1500—strewed the ground, so closely congregated that there was no space for a foot between.
The very birds seemed imbued with the spirit of the place, for they were silent, either flying noiselessly over the graves, or winging their way to less sacred groves. A sudden sound awoke me from my musing, and transported me at once from past to present; a joyous peal burst forth from the old belfry, and a kindly voice accosted me with—“Maybe, you’d like to walk in, sir, and see the old place? You’d ha’ time to look round ye afore the wedding party comes; and if not, there’ll be time enow during the service.”
The offer was accepted so eagerly as to delight my old guide; for if one place in the country be more interesting to me than any other, it is an old village church, so buried in its own beautiful site that the roar of the railroad can never reach it; where we can stand still and breathe, apart from the rush and the turmoil, and the haste, still pressing onward—onward, in the vain strife for man’s intellect to keep pace with the giant he has raised, which is now the constant accompaniment of the neighbourhood of towns. The interior betrayed still greater age than the exterior; the windows were painted rud............