Book: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

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RECREATIONS

OF

CHRISTOPHER NORTH


_A NEW EDITION IN TWO VOLUMES_

VOL. II.


WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXVIII




CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


PAGE
MAY-DAY 1

SACRED POETRY:--

CHAPTER I., 38

CHAPTER II., 53

CHAPTER III., 75

CHAPTER IV., 88

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY:--

FIRST CANTICLE, 98

SECOND CANTICLE, 125

THIRD CANTICLE, 149

FOURTH CANTICLE, 165

DR KITCHINER:--

FIRST COURSE, 182

SECOND COURSE, 194

THIRD COURSE, 203

FOURTH COURSE, 212

SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS:--

FIRST RHAPSODY, 224

SECOND RHAPSODY, 239

A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON, 253

THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT, 274

CHRISTMAS DREAMS, 285

OUR WINTER QUARTERS, 304

STROLL TO GRASSMERE:--

FIRST SAUNTER, 327

SECOND SAUNTER, 355

L'ENVOY 369

* * * * *

REMARKS ON THE SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS, 385




RECREATIONS

OF

CHRISTOPHER NORTH.




MAY-DAY.


Art thou beautiful, as of old, O wild, moorland, sylvan, and pastoral
Parish! the Paradise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the glorious
dawning of life--can it be, beloved world of boyhood, that thou art
indeed beautiful as of old? Though round and round thy boundaries in
half an hour could fly the flapping dove--though the martens, wheeling
to and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of a Castle, central in its
own domain, seem in their more distant flight to glance their crescent
wings over a vale rejoicing apart in another kirk-spire, yet how rich in
streams, and rivulets, and rills, each with its own peculiar murmur--art
Thou with thy bold bleak exposure, sloping upwards in ever lustrous
undulations to the portals of the East! How endless the interchange of
woods and meadows, glens, dells, and broomy nooks, without number, among
thy banks and braes! And then of human dwellings--how rises the smoke,
ever and anon, into the sky, all neighbouring on each other, so that the
cock-crow is heard from homestead to homestead; while as you wander
onwards, each roof still rises unexpectedly--and as solitary, as if it
had been far remote. Fairest of Scotland's thousand parishes--neither
Highland, nor Lowland--but undulating--let us again use the descriptive
word--like the sea in sunset after a day of storms--yes, Heaven's
blessing be upon thee! Thou art indeed beautiful as of old!

The same heavens! More blue than any colour that tinges the flowers of
earth--like the violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The stillness of those
lofty clouds makes them seem whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! to
thy grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded corn, for thy
brooding mate can no longer hear thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there
is little or no change on these coppice-woods, with their full budding
branches all impatient for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-hook
levelled them with the mossy stones, since among the broomy and briery
knolls we sought the grey linnet's nest, or wondered to spy, among the
rustling leaves, the robin-redbreast, seemingly forgetful of his winter
benefactor, man. Surely there were trees here in former times, that now
are gone--tall, far-spreading single trees, in whose shade used to lie
the ruminating cattle, with the small herd-girl asleep. Gone are they,
and dimly remembered as the uncertain shadows of dreams; yet not more
forgotten than some living beings with whom our infancy and boyhood held
converse--whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead--hands so often
grasped--arms linked in ours, as we danced along the braes--have long
ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so
much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the
holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery of
time.

It is MAY-DAY, and we shall be happy as the season. What although some
sad and solemn thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is not at
nightfall felt to have been the less delightful, because shadows now and
then bedimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush,
took possession of field or forest. We are all alone--a solitary
pedestrian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, whose motives are
changeable as the cameleon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly
along to the merry music of streams--or linger by the silent shores of
lochs--or upon the hill-summit pause, ourselves the only spectator of a
panorama painted by Spring, for our sole delight--or plunge into the old
wood's magnificent exclusion from sky--where, at midsummer, day is as
night--though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms;
and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and the
sunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month will
be cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck the
dead when the vault door is closed and all is silence.

What! shall we linger here within a little mile of the MANSE, wherein
and among its pleasant bounds our boyish life glided murmuring away,
like a stream that never, till it leaves its native hills, knows taint
or pollution, and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest-like it is
built, and guarded by some wonderful felicity of situation equally
against all the winds? No. Thither as yet have we not courage to direct
our footsteps--for that venerable Man has long been dead--not one of his
ancient household now remains on earth. There the change, though it was
gradual and unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of nature, has
been entire and complete. The "old familiar faces" we can dream of, but
never more shall see--and the voices that are now heard within those
walls, what can they ever be to us, when we would fain listen in the
silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed years? It is an
appalling trial to approach a place where once we have been
happier--happier far than ever we can be on this earth again; and a
worse evil doth it seem to our imagination to return to Paradise, with a
changed and saddened heart, than at first to be driven from it into the
outer world, if still permitted to carry thither something of that
spirit that had glorified our prime.

But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the
hill--the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for
stony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled
roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which
the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore,
and almost as early as the alder or the birch--the GLORY OF MOUNT
PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner.
You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling--for eaves,
roof, and chimneys all disappeared--and then, when you stood beneath,
was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea itself,
continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the tide
of life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence!

MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou deserve the name, bestowed on
thee perhaps long ago, not by any one of the humble proprietors, but by
the general voice of praise, all eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty.
For from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision of fields and
meadows, knolls, braes, and hills, uncertain gleamings of a river, the
smoke of many houses, and glittering perhaps in the sunshine, the spire
of the House of God! To have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting with
his solemn, his austere Sabbath-face, beneath the pulpit, with his
expressive eyes fixed on the Preacher, you could not but have judged him
to be a man of a stern character and austere demeanour. To have seen him
at labour on the working days, you might almost have thought him the
serf of some tyrant-lord, for into all the toils of the field he carried
the force of a mind that would suffer nothing to be undone that strength
and skill could achieve; but within the humble porch of his own house,
beside his own board, and his own fireside, he was a man to be kindly
esteemed by his guests, by his own family tenderly and reverently
beloved. His wife was the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman of
active habits and a strong mind, but tempering the natural sternness of
her husband's character with that genial and jocund cheerfulness, that
of all the lesser virtues is the most efficient to the happiness of a
household. One daughter only had they, and we could charm our heart even
now, by evoking the vanished from oblivion, and imaging her over and
over again in the light of words; but although all objects, animate and
inanimate, seem always tinged with an air of sadness when they are
past--and as at present we are resolved to be cheerful--obstinately to
resist all access of melancholy--an enemy to the pathetic--and a scorner
of shedders of tears--therefore let Mary Morrison rest in her grave, and
let us paint a pleasant picture of a May-Day afternoon, and enjoy it as
it was enjoyed of old, beneath that stately Sycamore, with the
grandisonant name of THE GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT.

There, under the murmuring shadow round and round that noble stem, used
on MAY-DAY to be fitted a somewhat fantastic board, all deftly arrayed
in home-spun drapery, white as the patches of unmelted snow on the
distant mountain-head; and on various seats--stumps, stones, stools,
creepies, forms, chairs, armless and with no spine, or high-backed and
elbowed, and the carving-work thereof most intricate and
allegorical--took their places, after much formal ceremony of scraping
and bowing, blushing and curtsying, old, young, and middle-aged, of high
and low degree, till in one moment all were hushed by the Minister
shutting his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a blessing. And "well
worthy of a grace as lang's a tether," was the MAY-DAY meal spread
beneath the shadow of the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT. But the Minister
uttered only a few fervent sentences, and then we all fell to the curds
and cream. What smooth, pure, bright burnished beauty on those
horn-spoons! How apt to the hand the stalk--to the mouth how apt the
bowl! Each guest drew closer to his breast the deep broth-plate of
delft, rather more than full of curds, many million times more
deliciously desirable even than blanc-mange, and then filled to
overflowing with a blessed outpouring of creamy richness that
tenaciously descended from an enormous jug, the peculiar expression of
whose physiognomy, particularly the nose, we will carry with us to the
grave! The dairy at MOUNT PLEASANT consisted of twenty cows--almost all
spring calvers, and of the Ayrshire breed--so you may guess what cream!
The spoon could not stand in it,--it was not so thick as that--for that
was too thick,--but the spoon, when placed upright in it, retained its
perpendicularity for a while, and then, when uncertain on which side to
fall, was grasped by the hand of hungry schoolboy, and steered with its
fresh and fragrant freight into a mouth already open in wonder. Never
beneath the sun, moon, and stars, were such oatmeal cakes, pease-scones,
and barley-bannocks, as at MOUNT PLEASANT. You could have eaten away at
them with pleasure, even although not hungry--and yet it was impossible
of them to eat too much--Manna that they were!! Seldom indeed is butter
yellow on May-day. But the butter of the gudewife of Mount
Pleasant--such, and so rich was the old lea-pasture--was coloured like
the crocus, before the young thrushes had left the nest in the
honey-suckled corner of the gavel-end. Not a single hair in the churn.
Then what honey and what jam! The first, not heather, for that is too
luscious, especially after such cream, but the pure white virgin honey,
like dew shaken from clover, but now _querny_ after winter keep; and oh!
over a layer of such butter on such barley bannocks was such honey, on
such a day, in such company, and to such palates, too divine to be
described by such a pen as that now wielded by such a writer! The Jam!
It was of gooseberries--the small black hairy ones--gathered to a very
minute from the bush, and boiled to a very moment in the pan! A bannock
studded with some dozen or two of such grozets was more beautiful than a
corresponding expanse of heaven adorned with as many stars. The
question, with the gaucy and generous gudewife of Mount Pleasant, was
not--"My dear laddie, which will ye hae--hinny or jam?" but, "Which will
ye hae first?" The honey, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs,
or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half-a-dozen white cans of more moderate
dimensions, from whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper was
withdrawn, while, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, rose a fruity
fragrance, that blended with the vernal balminess of the humming
Sycamore. There the bees were all at work for next May-day, happy as
ever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold,
happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song;
for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gave
forth tones almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips of
Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall that
ever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desire
in any one of Scotland's ancient melodies.

Never had Mary Morrison heard the old ballad-airs sung, except during
the mid-day hour of rest, in the corn or hay field--and rude singers are
they all--whether male or female voices--although sometimes with a touch
of natural pathos that finds its way to the heart. But as the
nightingale would sing truly its own variegated song, although it never
were to hear any one of its own kind warbling from among the
shrub-roots, and the lark, though alone on earth, would sing the hymn
well known at the gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the nature
within her, and inspired by her own delightful genius alone, did Mary
Morrison feel all the measures of those ancient melodies, and give them
all an expression at once simple and profound. People who said they did
not care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so monotonous
and insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three notes of
the simplest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintly
blushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her little
hands playing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed on the ground,
or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would
most people say, "she is but a very ordinary girl--but her musical turn
is really very singular indeed;"--but her happy father and mother knew,
that in all common things--that is, in all the duties of an humble and
innocent life, their Mary was by nature excellent as in the melodies and
harmonies of song--and that while her voice in the evening-psalm was as
angel's sweet, so was her spirit almost pure as an angel's, and nearly
inexperienced of sin.

Proud, indeed, were her parents on that May-day to look upon her--and to
listen to her--as their Mary sat beside the young English boy--admired
of all observers--and happier than she had ever been in this world
before, in the charm of their blended music, and the unconscious
affection--sisterly, yet more than sisterly, for brother she had
none--that towards one so kind and noble was yearning at her heart.

Beautiful were they both; and when they sat side-by-side in their music,
insensible must that heart have been by whom they were not both admired
and beloved. It was thought that they loved one another too, too well;
for Harry Wilton was the grandson of an English Peer, and Mary Morrison
a peasant's child; but they could not love too well--she in her
tenderness--he in his passion--for, with them, life and love was a
delightful dream, out of which they were never to be awakened. For as by
some secret sympathy, both sickened on the same day--of the same
fever--and died at the same hour;--and not from any dim intention of
those who buried them, but accidentally, and because the burial-ground
of the Minister and the Elder adjoined, were they buried almost in the
same grave--for not half a yard of daisied turf divided them--a curtain
between the beds on which brother and sister slept.

In their delirium they both talked about each other--Mary Morrison and
Harry Wilton--yet their words were not words of love, only of common
kindness; for although on their death-beds they did not talk about
death, but frequently about that May-day Festival, and other pleasant
meetings in neighbours' houses, or in the Manse. Mary sometimes rose up
in bed, and in imagination joined her voice to that of the flute which
to his lips was to breathe no more; and even at the very self-same
moment--so it wonderfully was--did he tell all to be hushed, for that
Mary Morrison was about to sing the Flowers of the Forest.

Methinks that no deep impressions of the past, although haply they may
sleep for ever, and seem as if they had ceased to be, are ever utterly
obliterated; but that they may, one and all, reappear at some hour or
other however distant, legible as at the very moment they were first
engraven on the memory. Not by the power of meditation are the long-ago
vanished thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which we found delight
or disturbance; but of themselves do they seem to arise, not undesired
indeed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come unexpectedly floating up
into some inland vale, because, unknown to us who wonder at them, the
tide is flowing and the breezes blow from the main. Bright as the living
image stands now before us the ghost--for what else is it than the
ghost--of Mary Morrison, just as she stood before us on one particular
day--in one particular place, innumerable years ago! It was at the close
of one of those midsummer days which melt away into twilight, rather
than into night, although the stars are visible, and bird and beast
asleep. All by herself, as she walked along between the braes, was she
singing a hymn,--

"And must this body die?
This mortal frame decay?
And must these feeble limbs of mine
Lie mouldering in the clay?"

Not that the child had any thought of death, for she was as full of life
as the star above her was of lustre--tamed though they both were by the
holy hour. At our bidding she renewed the strain that had ceased as we
met, and continued to sing it while we parted, her voice dying away in
the distance, like an angel's from a broken dream. Never heard we that
voice again, for in three little weeks it had gone, to be extinguished
no more, to join the heavenly choirs at the feet of the Redeemer.

Did both her parents lose all love to life, when their sole daughter was
taken away? And did they die finally of broken hearts? No--such is not
the natural working of the human spirit, if kept in repair by pure and
pious thought. Never were they so happy indeed as they had once
been--nor was their happiness of the same kind. Oh! different far in
resignation that often wept when it did not repine--in faith that now
held a tenderer commerce with the skies! Smiles were not very long of
being again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan cousin of Mary's--they had
been as sisters--took her place, and filled it too, as far as the living
can ever fill the place of the dead. Common cares continued for a while
to occupy the Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to whom their
substance was to be a blessing. Ordinary observers could not have
discerned any abatement of his activities in field or market; but others
saw that the toil to him was now but a duty that had formerly been a
delight. Mount Pleasant was let to a relative, and the Morrisons retired
to a small house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from the kirk. Let
him be strong as a giant, infirmities often come on the hard-working man
before you can well call him old. It was so with Adam Morrison. He broke
down fast, we have been told, in his sixtieth year, and after that
partook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of fiction alone do those who
have long loved and well, lay themselves down and die in each other's
arms. Such happy deaths are recorded on humble tombstones; and there is
one on which this inscription may be read--"HERE LIE THE BODIES OF ADAM
MORRISON AND OF HELEN ARMOUR HIS SPOUSE. THEY DIED ON THE 1ST OF MAY
17--. HERE ALSO LIES THE BODY OF THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY MORRISON, WHO DIED
JUNE 2, 17--." The headstone is a granite slab--as they almost all are
in that kirkyard--and the kirk itself is of the same enduring material.
But touching that grave is a Marble Monument, white almost as the very
snow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry of death, adorned with the
armorial bearings belonging to a family of the high-born.

Sworn Brother of our soul! during the bright ardours of boyhood, when
the present was all-sufficient in its own bliss, the past soon
forgotten, and the future unfeared, what might have been thy lot,
beloved Harry Wilton, had thy span of life been prolonged to this very
day? Better--oh! far better was it for thee and thine that thou didst so
early die; for it seemeth that a curse is on that lofty lineage; and
that, with all their genius, accomplishments, and virtues, dishonour
comes and goes, a familiar and privileged guest, out and in their house.
Shame never veiled the light of those bold eyes, nor tamed the
eloquence of those sunny lips, nor ever for a single moment bowed down
that young princely head that, like a fast-growing flower, seemed each
successive morning to be visibly rising up towards a stately manhood.
But the time was not far distant, when to thee life would have undergone
a rueful transformation. Thy father, expatriated by the spells of a
sorceress, and forced into foreign countries, to associate with vice,
worthlessness, profligacy, and crime! Thy mother, dead of a broken
heart! And that lovely sister, who came to the Manse with her jewelled
hair--But all these miserable things who could prophesy, at the hour
when we and the weeping villagers laid thee, apart from the palace and
the burial-vault of thy high-born ancestors, without anthem or
organ-peal, among the humble dead? Needless and foolish were all those
floods of tears. In thy brief and beautiful course, nothing have we who
loved thee to lament or condemn. In few memories, indeed, doth thy image
now survive; for in process of time what young face fadeth not away from
eyes busied with the shows of this living world? What young voice is not
bedumbed to ears for ever filled with its perplexing din? Yet thou,
Nature, on this glorious May-day, rejoicing in all the plenitude of thy
bliss--we call upon thee to bear witness to the intensity of our
never-dying grief! Ye fields, that long ago we so often trode together,
with the wind-swept shadows hovering about our path--Ye streams, whose
murmur awoke our imaginations, as we lay reading, or musing together in
day-dreams, among the broomy braes--Ye woods, where we started at the
startled cushat, or paused, without a word, to hear the creature's
solitary moans and murmurs deepening the far-off hush, already so
profound--Ye moors and mosses, black yet beautiful, with your
peat-trenches overshadowed by the heather-blossoms that scented the
wilderness afar--where the little maiden, sent from the shieling on
errands to town or village in the country below, seemed, as we met her
in the sunshine, to rise up before us for our delight, like a fairy from
the desert bloom--Thou loch, remote in thy treeless solitude, and with
nought reflected in thy many-springed waters but those low pastoral
hills of excessive green, and the white-barred blue of heaven--no
creature on its shores but our own selves, keenly angling in the
breezes, or lying in the shaded sunshine, with some book of old
ballads, or strain of some Immortal yet alive on earth--one and all bear
witness to our undying affection, that silently now feeds on grief! And,
oh! what overflowing thoughts did that shout of ours now awaken from the
hanging tower of the Old Castle--"Wilton, Wilton!" The name of the
long-ago buried faintly and afar-off repeated by an echo!

A pensive shade has fallen across MAY-DAY; and while the sun is behind
those castellated clouds, our imagination is willing to retire into the
saddest places of memory, and gather together stories and tales of
tears. And many such there are, annually sprinkled all round the humble
huts of our imaginative and religious land, even like the wildflowers
that, in endless succession, disappearing and reappearing in their
beauty, Spring drops down upon every brae. And as ofttimes some one
particular tune, some one pathetic but imperfect and fragmentary part of
an old melody, will nearly touch the heart, when it is dead to the
finest and most finished strain; so now a faint and dim tradition comes
upon us, giving birth to uncertain and mysterious thoughts. It is an old
Tradition. They were called the BLESSED FAMILY! Far up at the head of
yonder glen of old was their dwelling, and in their garden sparkled the
translucent well that is the source of the stream that animates the
parish with a hundred waterfalls. Father, mother, and daughter--it was
hard to say which of the three was the most beloved! Yet they were not
native here, but brought with them, from some distant place, the soft
and silvery accents of the pure English tongue, and manners most
gracious in their serene simplicity; while over a life composed of acts
of charity was spread a stillness that nothing ever disturbed--the
stillness of a thoughtful pity for human sins and sorrows, yet not
unwilling to be moved to smiles by the breath of joy. In those days the
very heart of Scotland was distracted--persecution scattered her
prayers--and during the summer months, families remained shut up in fear
within their huts, as if the snowdrifts of winter had blocked up and
buried their doors. It was as if the shadow of a thunder-cloud hung over
all the land, so that men's hearts quaked as they looked up to
heaven--when, lo! all at once, Three gracious Visitants appeared!
Imagination invested their foreheads with a halo; and as they walked on
their missions of mercy, exclaimed--How beautiful are their feet! Few
words was the Child ever heard to speak, except some words of prayer;
but her image-like stillness breathed a blessing wherever it smiled, and
all the little maidens loved her, when hushed almost into awe by her
spiritual beauty, as she knelt with them in their morning and evening
orisons. The Mother's face, too, it is said, was pale as a face of
grief, while her eyes seemed always happy, and a tone of thanksgiving
was in her voice. Her Husband leant upon her on his way to the
grave--for his eye's excessive brightness glittered with death--and
often, as he prayed beside the sick-bed, his cheek became like ashes,
for his heart in a moment ceased to beat, and then, as if about to burst
in agony, sounded audibly in the silence. Journeying on did they all
seem to heaven; yet as they were passing by, how loving and how full of
mercy! To them belonged some blessed power to wave away the sword that
would fain have smitten the Saints. The dewdrops on the greensward
before the cottage door, they suffered not to be polluted with blood.
Guardian Angels were they thought to be, and such indeed they were, for
what else are the holy powers of innocence?--Guardian Angels sent to
save some of God's servants on earth from the choking tide and the
scorching fire. Often, in the clear and starry nights, did the dwellers
among all these little dells, and up along all these low hill-sides,
hear music flowing down from heaven, responsive to the hymns of the
Blessed Family. Music without the syllabling of words--yet breathing
worship, and with the spirit of piety filling all the Night-Heavens. One
whole day and night passed by, and not a hut had been enlightened by
their presence. Perhaps they had gone away without warning as they had
come--having been sent on another mission. With soft steps one maiden,
and then another, entered the door, and then was heard the voice of
weeping and of loud lament. The three lay, side by side, with their pale
faces up to heaven. Dora, for that is the name tradition has handed
down--Dorothea, the gift of God, lay between her Father and her Mother,
and all their hands were lovingly and peacefully entwined. No agonies
had been there--unknown what hand, human or divine, had closed their
eyelids and composed their limbs; but there they lay as if asleep, not
to be awakened by the burst of sunshine that dazzled upon their smiling
countenances, cheek to cheek, in the awful beauty of united death.

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