MacMillan's Reading Books Part 21

The March breeze is chilly: but I can be always warm if I like in my winter-garden. I turn my horse's head to the red wall of fir-stems, and leap over the furze-grown bank into my cathedral, wherein if there be no saints, there are likewise no priestcraft and no idols; but endless vistas of smooth red green-veined shafts holding up the warm dark roof, lessening away into endless gloom, paved with rich brown fir-needle--a carpet at which Nature has been at work for forty years. Red shafts, green roof, and here and there a pane of blue sky--neither Owen Jones nor Willement can improve upon that ecclesiastical ornamentation,--while for incense I have the fresh healthy turpentine fragrance, far sweeter to my nostrils than the stifling narcotic odour which fills a Roman Catholic cathedral. There is not a breath of air within: but the breeze sighs over the roof above in a soft whisper. I shut my eyes and listen.

Surely that is the murmur of the summer sea upon the summer sands in Devon far away. I hear the innumerable wavelets spend themselves gently upon the sh.o.r.e, and die away to rise again. And with the innumerable wave-sighs come innumerable memories, and faces which I shall never see again upon this earth. I will not tell even you of that, old friend. It has two notes, two keys rather, that Eolian-harp of fir-needles above my head; according as the wind is east or west, the needles dry or wet.

This easterly key of to-day is shriller, more cheerful, warmer in sound, though the day itself be colder: but grander still, as well as softer, is the sad soughing key in which the south-west wind roars on, rain-laden, over the forest, and calls me forth--being a minute philosopher--to catch trout in the nearest chalk-stream.

The breeze is gone a while; and I am in perfect silence--a silence which may be heard. Not a sound; and not a moving object; absolutely none. The absence of animal life is solemn, startling. That ring-dove, who was cooing half a mile away, has hushed his moan; that flock of long-tailed t.i.tmice, which were twinging and pecking about the fir-cones a few minutes since, are gone: and now there is not even a gnat to quiver in the slant sun-rays. Did a spider run over these dead leaves, I almost fancy I could hear his footfall. The creaking of the saddle, the soft step of the mare upon the fir-needles, jar my ears. I seem alone in a dead world. A dead world: and yet so full of life, if I had eyes to see! Above my head every fir-needle is breathing--breathing for ever; currents unnumbered circulate in every bough, quickened by some undiscovered miracle; around me every fir-stem is distilling strange juices, which no laboratory of man can make; and where my dull eye sees only death, the eye of G.o.d sees boundless life and motion, health and use.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

ASPECTS OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN COUNTRIES.

The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have thrown into a narrow s.p.a.ce the expression of a vast amount of knowledge, but I have never yet seen any pictorial enough to enable the spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical character which exists between northern and southern countries. We know the differences in detail, but we have not that broad glance or grasp which would enable us to feel them in their fulness. We know that gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apennines; but we do not enough conceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic of the world's surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between the district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun; here and there an angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burning field; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its circle of ashes; but for the most part a great peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among ma.s.ses of laurel and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of the porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pa.s.s farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands; and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty ma.s.ses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas beaten by storm, and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, death-like, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight.

And, having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris of the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life: the mult.i.tudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and scarlet.

Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and s.h.a.ggy covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of Paradise with the osprey; and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being, let us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in the statues of the lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths with soft sculpture the jasper pillars that are to reflect a ceaseless sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky; but not with less reverence let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, he smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from among the moss of the moor-land, and heaves into the darkened air the pile of iron b.u.t.tress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them.

JOHN RUSKIN.

THE TROSACHS.

The western waves of ebbing day Rolled o'er the glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire.

But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path, in shadow hid, Bound many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; Bound many an insulated ma.s.s, The native bulwarks of the pa.s.s, Huge as the tower which builders vain Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.

The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement.

Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as paG.o.d ever decked, Or mosque of eastern architect.

Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dew-drop's sheen, The briar-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, Waved in the west wind's summer sighs.

Boon nature scattered, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain's child.

Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Foxglove and nightshade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain, The weather-beaten crags retain.

With boughs that quaked at every breath, Grey birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And higher yet the pine tree hung His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrowed sky Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, Where glistening streamers waved and danced, The wanderer's eye could barely view The summer heaven's delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream.

Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep A narrow inlet still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim, As served the wild duck's brood to swim; Lost for a s.p.a.ce, through thickets veering, But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark blue mirror trace; And farther as the hunter stray'd, Still broader sweep its channels made.

The s.h.a.ggy mounds no longer stood, Emerging from entangled wood, But, wave-encircled, seemed to float, Like castle girdled with its moat; Yet broader floods extending still, Divide them from their parent hill, Till each, retiring, claims to be An islet in an inland sea.

And now, to issue from the glen, No pathway meets the wanderer's ken, Unless he climb, with footing nice, A far projecting precipice.

The broom's tough roots his ladder made, The hazel saplings lent their aid; And thus an airy point he won.

Where, gleaming with the setting sun, One burnish'd sheet of living gold, Loch-Katrine lay beneath him rolled; In all her length far winding lay, With promontory, creek, and bay, And islands that, empurpled bright, Floated amid the livelier light; And mountains, that like giants stand, To sentinel enchanted land.

High on the south, huge Benvenue Down to the lake in ma.s.ses threw Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world; A wildering forest feathered o'er His ruined sides and summit h.o.a.r.

While on the north, through middle air, Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

SCOTT.

LOCHIEL'S WARNING.

_Seer_. Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!

For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight, And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight; They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown; Wo, wo to the riders that trample them down!

Proud c.u.mberland prances, insulting the slain, And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.

But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war, What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?

'Tis thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await, Like a love-lighted watchfire, all night at the gate.

A steed comes at morning; no rider is there; But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.

Weep, Albyn, to death and captivity led!

O weep, but thy tears cannot number the dead; For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave, Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.

_Lochiel_. Go preach to the coward, thou death- telling seer!

Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear, Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

_Seer_. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?

Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn!

Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth From his home, in the dark-rolling clouds of the north?

Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode Companionless, bearing destruction abroad; But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!

Ah! home let him speed, for the spoiler is nigh.

Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?

'Tis the fire shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven From his eyrie that beacons the darkness of heaven.

Oh, crested Lochiel! the peerless in might, Whose banners arise on the battlements' height, Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn: Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!

For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood, And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.

_Lochiel_. False wizard, avaunt! I have marshalled my clan-- Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!

They are true to the last of their blood and their breath, And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.

Then welcome be c.u.mberland's steed to the shock!

Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!

But we to his kindred, and we to his cause, When Albyn her claymore indignantly draws; When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd, Clanra.n.a.ld the dauntless, and Moray the proud; All plaided and plumed in their tartan array----

_Seer_.----Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day!

For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, But man cannot cover what G.o.d would reveal.

'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before.

I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring, With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.

Lo! anointed by heaven with the vials of wrath, Behold, where he flies on his desolate path!