CONCLUDING CHAPTER.  
She smiles, including in her wide embrace
City, and town, and tower, and sea with ships
Sprinkled; be our companion while we track
Her rivers populous with gliding life;
While, free as air, o’er printless sands we march,
Or pierce the gloom of her majestic woods;
Roaming, or resting under grateful shade,
In peace and meditative cheerfulness.
Wordsworth.
 
We have now taken a comprehensive view of the rural life of England; of the mode in which “gentle and simple,” rich and poor, pass their life in the country; of the sports, the pastimes, the labours and various pursuits which fill up the round of rural existence; of the charms and advantages which there await the lovers of peace, of poetry, of natural beauty, and of pure thoughts: and I think it must be confessed that though other countries may boast a more brilliant climate, none can offer a more varied and attractive beauty; other modes of life may be more exciting, but none can be more calmly delightful, none more conducive to a healthful and manly spirit.
The more we see of our own country, the more do we love it; and it is for this reason, that in closing this volume, I cannot take leave of my readers without advising them to do as I have done,—see as much of it as they can. There is no part of it but is filled[604] with some high historical or literary association: it is the land where brave men have contended and poets sung, and philosophers and politicians have meditated works and measures, of which the world is now reaping the honour and enjoyment; there is no part of it but has some trace of those manners and dialects which belong to the living of a thousand years ago, and therefore are most interesting motives to our tracing back the stream of time, and beholding the growth of our country’s fortunes from age to age; there is no part of it, but has its swarming cities, or its fields smiling like a garden beneath the triumphant effect of British tillage,—or its wild hills and forests, that, untouched by the plough, are left to be fruitful of free thoughts, of poetic feelings, of picturesque beauty and magnificence, of health to the hearts and spirits of our countrymen and countrywomen, necessary to generate those high thoughts and maintain those endeavours that shall yet lead noble England to the height of its destined honour.
It is glorious, indeed, to visit the countries of ancient art and renown—Greece, Italy, Egypt, or sacred Palestine—my spirit kindles at the very mention of them,—yet whether it were my privilege or not to traverse those glorious regions, I should still wish to wander over every hill, and through every busy city of my native land. To me, I repeat, there is no part of this illustrious country but opens some new feeling of affection. As I pass over her plains, I am filled with admiration of that skill and indefatigable industry which have covered them with such affluence of cattle, such exuberant grass, such depths of waving corn; as I pass by her rural halls and hamlet abodes, I find myself perpetually on classic ground, amid the homes of poets and patriots; when I enter her cities, I am struck with all their busy and swarming children, with their endless manufactures; their institutions for rebutting human evils, and raising the human character; with rich men carrying on gigantic enterprises of commerce or national improvement, and poor men associating to ascertain and defend their rights. These are all animating objects of notice; and I will tell those who may not hope to see much of foreign regions, that there is enough in merry England to fill the longest life with delight, go where they will. I would have those who are young and able, to take their knapsacks on their backs, and with a stick in their hand, they may[605] find pleasures worth enjoying, go which way they will in these islands, though they do as many an adventurer has done, set up their staff as an indicator, and march off in the direction in which it falls.[36]
[36] Jamais je n’ai tant pensé, tant existé, tant vécu, tant été moi, si j’ose ainsi dire, que dans ceux voyages que j’ai faits seul et à pied. La marche a quelque chose qui anime et avive mes idées; je ne puis presque penser quand je reste en place; il faut que mon corps soit en branle pour y mettre mon esprit. La vue de la campagne, la succession des aspects agréables, le grand air, le grand appétit, la bonne santé que je gagne en marchant, la liberté du cabaret, l’éloignement de tout ce qui me fait sentir ma dépendance, de tout ce qui me rappelle à ma situation, tout cela dégage mon ame, me donne une plus grande audace de penser, me jette en quelque sorte dans l’immensité des êtres pour les combiner, les choisir, me les approprier sans gêne et sans crainte. Je dispose en ma?tre de la nature entière; mon c?ur, errant d’objet en objet, s’unit, s’identifie à ceux qui le flattent, s’entoure d’images charmantes, s’enivre de sentiments délicieux. Si pour les fixer je m’amuse à les décrire en moimême, quelle vigueur de pinceau, quelle fra?cheur de coloris, quelle énergie d’expression je leur donne!—Rousseau.
What a summer’s delight there lies in any one such progress. Suppose you took your route from the metropolis through the south and west. How delightful are the richly cultivated fields, the green hop-grounds, the hanging woods of Kent; how pleasant the heathy hills and scattered woodlands of Surrey; the thickly-strewn villas of the wealthy, the vine-covered cottages and village greens of the poor. Are not the flowery lanes and woody scenery of Berkshire, and the open downs of Wiltshire worth traversing? What a sweet sylvan retirement in the one; what an airy, wide-spreading amplitude of vision in the other! It were worth somewhat to read Miss Mitford’s living sketches in her own sweet neighbourhood; it were worth a great deal more to meet Miss Mitford herself, as she lives amongst her simple neighbours, who know how much she is their friend, or amongst her wealthy and educated ones, who know how much she deserves of their esteem and admiration. Would it be nothing to ramble amongst the ancient walls of Winchester, every spot of which is as thickly strown with historical recollections as it is venerable in presence? Would it be nothing to climb those downs, and see around far-spreading greenness, sinking and swelling in the softest lines of beauty; and below, vales, stretching in different directions, contrasting their rich woodiness most strikingly with the bare solitudes[606] of the down? To see the venerable cathedral lifting its hoary head from the vale, and numbers of subject churches shewing their humbler towers and spires all along the valleys; and catch the glitter of those streams which water those valleys, as they wind to the sun. I have trodden these downs and dales in summer weather with feelings of buoyant delight, that admit of no description. There is Stonehenge, standing in the midst of Salisbury Plain, which is worth a long pilgrimage to see. To see! Yes, and to feel in all its lonely grandeur, with all its savage and mysterious antiquity upon it. It is a walk from Salisbury, that, on a spring or autumn day, with a congenial spirit, were enough to make that a life’s pleasant memory. Ascend first from that truly old English city, along whose streets and past almost every door run living streams of most beautiful water from the sweet brimful Avon—to the ramparts of Old Sarum. What a stupendous work of antiquity you stand upon; what a scene lies all around you! How beautifully rises that noble cathedral above the subject city; how finely the magnificent spire above the fabric itself! And en passant, what a feature of fair and solemn dignity is the cathedral in our English cities! As you approach them, and see afar off these noble monuments of past science towering aloft in sublime dignity, you are at once reminded that you are on classic ground; that you are about to enter a place where our ancestors worked out some portion of the national fame; and are thereby awakened from other thoughts to look about you for all that is worthy of notice. But this is but a passing tribute to the grave beauty of those glorious old piles—they deserve more; but other objects now call us on. See what green and watered valleys allure you forward. See where the downs stretch their solitary heads amid the clear and spiritual hues of the sky. And as you go on, the chime of flocks, and the discovery of sweet hamlets, and the voices of their children at play, and the tinkle of the plough-team bells, shall make you feel that the rural peace and delight of Old England are as strong in her heart as ever. For myself, the smallest peculiarity of rural fashions and habits in different parts of the country attracts my attention, and gives me a certain degree of pleasure. The sight of herds of swine grazing in the wide fields of Berkshire and Hampshire as orderly as sheep do, is what, at[607] the first view, gives an agreeable surprise to the man from the midland and northern counties, where it is never seen. The sight of the clematis, which flings its flowery masses over hedges and copses; of myrtles, hydrangeas, fuchias, and other tender plants, blossoming in the gardens of the south: the appearance of different birds and insects, as the chough, the nightingale in greater frequency, the woodlark sending its voice from the distant uplands; the large stag-beetle, and other insects; these, and other things observed in one part of the island which are never met with in another, small matters though they be in themselves, all give a novel interest to some new spot, and some agreeable hour. Nay to me, I say, the very varying of rural costumes and implements are objects of interest. Those odd ladders in Berkshire, stretching at the feet to a width of sometimes two yards, and then tapering up rapidly; as if Berkshire peasants could not stand on such ladders as all England beside stands on. The light wagons and carts in the south, so different from the heavy ones of the midland counties; and some of them so painted and adorned in front with large roses, and other flowers; and their teams, with bells at their bridles, and frames of bells over the leader’s head, and barbaric top-knots on their heads, and scarlet fringes and tassels on their gears; and tails all bound up with ribbons, and curious platting. The wagoners, each in his straw hat and white slop, with
His carter’s-whip, that on his shoulder rests,
In air high towering with a boorish pomp,
The sceptre of his sway.
Horses at plough, harnessed with a simple collar of straw, and a few ropes. Oxen with their heavy wooden yokes ploughing in one part of the country as primitively as they did in the days of Alfred, ay, or of King David; and shepherds with their crooks in another, shew to those who never saw them but in books, that some of our oldest practices still remain.
The various constructions of billhooks, shovels, and wheelbarrows which prevail in different quarters of the island, contribute to the picturesque: from the clumsy rudiment of a barrow seen in Cornwall, which lies on the ground without legs, and the sides of which are cut out of two pieces of wood, rudely tapering off into handles; through all the various shapes of that little[608] vehicle, up to its most perfect one. The shovels used by the labourers in the West of England, with handles as tall as themselves, would make the men of the midland counties stare; and again, the billhook of the midland counties, with a back edge as well as a front one, would be equally strange to the chopsticks of Surrey and Sussex. The various modes of country employment promote the same effect. The ploughman whistling after his team; the shepherds on the downs, driving their white flocks before them like a rolling cloud to evening fold or morning pasture; the dwellers on heaths and moors, paring the turf for fuel, or cutting from the peat-beds their black bricks, and piling their black pyramids on the waste. Every different district displays its peculiar employment. Durham and Northumberland exhibit their extensive and curious coal mines; Yorkshire and Lancashire their weaving and spinning; the hills of Derbyshire their lead mines; Nottingham and Leicester shires their coals again; Lincoln and Norfolk their vast corn farms; the Southern downs their shepherds; Devon and Cornwall their tin and copper mines; Gloucester and Somerset display their fields of teazles again, indicating that there our finest broad-cloths are made; Stafford and Warwick shires swarm with collieries, iron-founderies, and potteries; and so on. Each district has its peculiar pursuit and occupation pointed out by nature, and all these things give variety to the country and its inhabitants, and scatter everywhere interesting subjects of inquiry for the passer-by.
I say then, cross only the south of England, and how delightful were the route to him who has the love of nature and of his country in his heart; and no imperious cares to dispute it with them. Walk up, as I have said, from Salisbury to Stonehenge. Sit down amid that solemn circle, on one of its fallen stones:—contemplate the gigantic erection, reflect on its antiquity, and what England has passed through and become while those stones have stood there. Walk forth over that beautiful and immense plain,—see the green circles, and lines, and mounds, which ancient superstition or heroism have everywhere traced upon it, and which nature has beautified with a carpet of turf as fine and soft as velvet. Join those simple shepherds, and talk with them. Reflect, poetical as our poets have made the shepherd and his life,—what must be the monotony of that life in lowland counties—day after day, and[609] month after month, and year after year,—never varying, except from the geniality of summer to winter; and what it must be then; how dreary its long reign of cold, and wet and snow!
When you leave them, plunge into the New Forest in Hampshire. There is a region where a summer month might be whiled away as in a fairyland. There, in the very heart of ............