Volume 20 — English And Scotch Scenes.

The home life of England has ever been a favorite topic with American writers. The first thing that strikes an American travelling through England is the age of everything he sees, the roots by which every existing institution, custom, or pleasure is intimately connected with its real, tangible prototype in the past. He sees, too, how the people live a thoroughly characteristic life—that which consists in identification with everything that is national. No one is so unadaptive as the pure-bred Briton, and it has truly been said that an Englishman carries his country with him wherever he goes. You never see an Englishman to advantage except at home; but, once enthroned amid his local surroundings, there is a sturdy native dignity in him which none can help admiring. He is no politician in the mercenary, personal, business-like sense of the word, but he takes a pride in following the course of his country's progress, in bearing a hand in all reforms, in exercising his right of censure—or, as some foreigners plainly call it, “grumbling”—and especially in watching closely over the well-being of his own county and neighborhood. By this minute division of labor every county becomes, as it were, a self-governed little nation, jealous and tenacious of its rights, keenly alive to its interests, intensely vigorous, and occasionally aggressive. Political and social life are closely intermingled, and personal disinterestedness is almost everywhere the rule. The varied traditions of different neighborhoods and the strong individuality shown by the different sections of the country, contribute a picturesque element to modern life, and often make the most inherently prosaic actions take on a mask of romance.

Elections to Parliament afford a multiplicity of such scenes, and form one of the greatest periodical excitements that stir up country towns. The candidate is generally one of the sons of some family well known in the county, or sometimes the chief proprietor of the neighborhood, if he be still under fifty. The county constituencies almost always return a member of this class; the commercial representatives come from the great manufacturing towns, where they have slowly toiled to make their fortunes, and risen, by earnest application to business, from the rank of a vestryman to that of lord mayor. The country town in which the hustings and polling-booths are erected is as animated as it would have been at a great fair of the middle ages or an extraordinary sale of wool, which in Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire was a great article of trade in the XIVth century. Everything in the shape of bunting, evergreens, allegorical pictures, flaming posters, and unlimited ale has been done by both sides to enhance their popularity with the electors and non-electors. Indeed, the latter are quite as important as the former, for from their ranks are recruited the bands [pg 530] of music and the array of stalwart supporters, ready to fight, if required, and to shout at the top of their lungs, so as to bewilder the voters and claim or surprise their votes. The canvassing that goes before an English election is neither a pleasant nor a creditable thing to dwell on; when subjected to the analysis of uncompromising morality, it resolves itself into deliberate and organized “humbug”; for it includes every species of flattery under the sun, not to speak of direct bribery. Very funny incidents sometimes occur to break the monotony of the usual routine. For instance, in canvassing a large seaport town, the Liberal candidate bethinks himself of his yacht—a gem in every way—and organizes a large party, to which are invited the voting citizens and their wives and daughters. A splendid luncheon is provided, and each dame and damsel goes home with the conviction that her smiles have won the heart of the candidate, and that he has sworn them by a tacit but flattering contract to further his claims with their all-powerful husbands and fathers. “Honi soit qui mal y pense.” The latter are as proud of the expectant M.P.'s notice of the female members of their households as the ladies themselves, and the issue is trembling in the balance, when an announcement goes forth that the Conservative candidate has had his drag and four horses sent down from London, and proposes parading the young ladies and the more fearless married women on the roof of this ultra-fashionable vehicle. The invitations are of course more limited than those for the yacht, but promises of repeating them, until all the free electors' families have been included, cheer up the spirits of those not asked the first day. The Liberal pits his yacht against his rival's drag, and invites the maids and matrons to another sail. Apparently, Neptune does not intend to vote for him, for a slight breeze arises, and the waves roll more than landsmen find pleasant. The cabin fills rapidly, and faces once rosy and saucy, turn pale and shrunken; the return against wind and tide is a wretched journey. The poor candidate, in despair, tries to become nurse and doctor, as well as consoler; but he, too, feels his cheeks blanch, not at the lurching of the vessel, but at the fear of the effect of this accident upon the votes which he was already reckoning up so confidently. As the forlorn party lands, the drag sweeps by, drawn by its four fiery horses, the whip cracking, the smart grooms grinning at the windows (in these carriages, made like a mail-coach, the servants sit inside and the master drives, while his guests are packed on the outside seats at the top), the women huddling under cloaks and umbrellas, but all giggling with delight at the adventure, neither damped nor dismayed by water that cannot drown them, and wind that cannot make them sea-sick. The next day those who have recovered from their marine excursion are invited to try the drag, and the Liberal candidate's chances fall as visibly as the barometer did yesterday. When the great day comes, the drag has done its work, and the Conservative is returned by a triumphant majority.

To return to our country town in its holiday attire. No great arts are resorted to here; the common kind of canvassing will do for these quiet, agricultural people, and the only day that is worth mentioning is that of the election itself. The [pg 531] festive look of the place does not portend any very desperate contest, although there is a free display of the two opposite colors—blue (Conservative) and yellow (Liberal). The rivals come down from their neighboring seats in gay carriages full of the ladies of their families, wearing their respective colors. The horses and postilions wear bunches of blue or yellow ribbon; even the whip has its conspicuous knot of color. Brass bands clash forth a whole host of discords; the hired partisans good-humoredly shout for one or the other party; an air of great good-will prevails. The whole thing looks more like the welcoming home of a bride than a serious political gathering. The candidates ascend the hustings, or platform for speeches, and cordially shake hands with one another. They think it fun to be opposed to each other in public, whereas in private they are friends, companions, and neighbors; they have had the same training, the same education, the same associations, the same local interests, and the question that will decide their election will more likely be their reputation as farmers and their popularity as landlords than their political opinions as to the affairs of the nation at large. Talking of bribery and undue influence in elections, there is a law yet in force (though, of course, its effect is merely nominal) which forbids any peer to be present at an election. His presence is, by a legal fiction, supposed to hamper the freedom of the voters, and the law thus provides against the appearance of coercion or intimidation. The candidates for the counties are almost invariably the sons, brothers, or nephews of peers; but, however near the relationship, no member of the House of Lords is allowed to infringe on this rule. A contested election, one in which party spirit runs high and the passions of the people are artfully fanned and excited on both sides, is a scene worth witnessing once; but the excitement is of too rough a sort to make one wish for a second edition of it. A foreigner once said that the two best sights which England had to offer to a stranger were an Oxford “commemoration” and a contested election. The latter seldom takes place in the peaceful neighborhoods of the midland counties, and the only other species of elections, as distinguished from the festive one which we have just sketched, is, as a remnant of old-time indifferentism, a curiosity in its way. There are no longer what were called “rotten boroughs” and “pocket boroughs,” the former representing what had once been a populous town or large village, now reduced to half a dozen ruinous tenements and an old, disused parish church, but still retaining the right to return one or more members to Parliament; the second being a village still worthy of the name, but from time immemorial voting strictly in accordance with the wishes of the “lord of the manor,” whether peer or commoner. These were also called “close boroughs.” The Reform Bill of 1830 did away with all such transparent abuses, but family influence, exerted in a milder form, still remains an important element in all agricultural counties; and it sometimes happens that for a whole generation, no one will think it worth his while to oppose a candidate whose good working qualities are recognized by friend and foe, and whose personal popularity, joined with his powerful connections, [pg 532] makes his success almost absolutely certain. Such was the case in the election at O——, for which the same member has run unopposed for at least a quarter of a century. The nomination was made by the high sheriff and the magistrates of the county, assembled in the town-hall. This is a portion of a ruined castle or abbey, the Norman windows of which still assert their identity, though they have been shamefully mutilated and forced to conform to the ugly, shallow openings called windows in our days. The inside showed no signs of beauty. It was a huge barn, with grim-looking benches or pews at one end, towering amphitheatre-wise one above the other. Public business of all kinds was transacted there. The decoration of the hall is somewhat peculiar, consisting of nothing but horse-shoes. From time immemorial the custom of the county has been that every peer setting foot within the little town should put up a horse-shoe in this hall, or give an equivalent in money, which is spent by authority of the town council in buying a horse-shoe in his name. There is some dispute as to when and how the custom originated. The common belief is that Queen Elizabeth, passing through O——, stopped to get one of her horses shod, and, in perpetual memory of her royal visit, gave the town the privilege of exacting the tribute of a horse-shoe from every peer setting foot within the county. By an anachronism, which at any rate does honor to O——'s public spirit, there are horse-shoes bearing dates far more remote than the XVIth century, and some one has actually put the Conqueror himself under contribution, and unblushingly labelled a very antique shoe with his mighty name and the eventful date, 1066. During the last three hundred years genuine historical horse-shoes have abounded; some plain as the real thing, some gold or silvered, some painted with heraldic devices, some immense as children's hoops, some minute as the shoe of a Shetland pony. Whether the thousand-year-old superstition of the connection between luck and a horse-shoe, and the belief in the power of the latter against witches, has anything to do with the custom, we do not know for certain, but it is not unlikely.

In this remarkable town-hall were assembled the electors and magistrates one November morning. All the prominent country “gentlemen” and many farmers and tradesmen were present, besides a few ladies, come to see the proceedings. The member who had been re-elected every time that an election took place for the previous twenty years was the brother of one of the great land-owners of the neighborhood, and a Conservative. No one thought of opposing him. His friends and constituents mostly appeared in riding-boots, some in “pink.”121 One young magistrate got up and proposed him formally to the electors in a girlish, awkward speech; another seconded him in a still briefer address, and the question was asked: “Has any one any objections to make or any candidate to oppose?” A squeaky voice at the end of the hall propounded a query in this form:

“Would the honorable member vote for universal suffrage and cry down church rates?”

[pg 533]

A laugh ran through the crowd, and an impatient movement stirred the knot of magistrates. Year after year some wag of this kind mounted the Radical hobby, and rode it in this unoffending fashion at the steady-going “churchman” and loyal upholder of the constitution who represented the county in Parliament. The uneasy movement continues, and horses are heard neighing and pawing outside. Men in red coats take out their watches and put on long faces. It is nearly twelve o'clock, and the business of the nation is delaying the “meet.” The hounds are waiting not far off, and candidate, sheriff, magistrates, and electors are all alike anxious to be off. The hall is soon cleared and the election quietly over—a very secondary matter in the consideration of those who have been kept from kennel and field for two long hours. They rush out with all the zest of school-boys let loose to play, and the hunt that day has twice its ordinary success, or at least its members think so, because the beloved sport has been intermitted, and requires extra enthusiasm as a peace-offering at their hands. So with redoubled vigor the search after foxes goes on, and not till long after sundown will the candidate, magistrates, and constituents return to their homes.

Very different are those elections whose surroundings remind us rather of a clan gathering to the standard of their chief than a modern constituency crowding to the polling-booths. The mere description of these election scenes through Great Britain and Ireland would form an interesting chapter in contemporaneous history. The political differences need not even be alluded to; the contrast of outer circumstances is suggestive enough. In an agricultural neighborhood, such as that round the town of O——, a certain kind of torpidity exists among the prosperous and contented farmers. Not a hundred miles from the palace of the people at Westminster the interest in politics is subordinate to that excited by a cattle-show or the prospect of a drought; in a word, there is so little local change called for which could be beneficial to the county that the passive but deep-rooted clinging to old traditions, which is so characteristic of the genuine Englishman, is in this case rather a matter of course than a virtue or a meritorious turning away from temptation.

Life is hard to the masses in a city. Sharp ills require sharp remedies, say the demagogues; and straightway the voters adopt the extremest doctrine they can find, and fancy it a panacea for all ills. An English paper recently defined this kind of voter as the man “who has just learned sufficient to be sure that there can only be one side to a question.” The Irish elections, proverbial for their storminess, are of another nature; appealing to our sympathy by the wild earnestness of the voters, and governed by feelings which, though often misdirected, are yet noble in their origin. Religion and patriotism are the prime movers of the passions of Irish constituents; they often look upon their exercise of the franchise as a protest against tyranny and a confession of faith. And indeed the “tyranny” is no mere political scarecrow to them. It is very tangible; it strikes home to them, for its immediate result may be eviction and starvation. The wild, humorous individuality of the people of the western baronies [pg 534] of Ireland redeems much that is reprehensible from vulgarity in the faction fight—a not infrequent concomitant of the election. There is a rough romance left in these fights, making them the direct counterparts of the sudden encounters between the clans of the various kings of Celtic history; and what is best and most palliative is this: that sordid considerations are almost wholly absent from the voters' minds. If men must fight, let them do it for anything rather than money; and, to do these electors justice, we will say that there is less bribery in all the Irish country districts put together than in one English manufacturing town. You will say there is intimidation instead; but, even that is better than bribery, for it is less degrading to a human being to barter away his vote, in view of the threats of his landlord to turn his wife and children out of doors, than to sell it for money. But there are other elections to speak of—those in the Highlands of Scotland.

Education is more universal among the humbler classes in Scotland than in either of the sister countries, and by nature the Scotchman is more reflective than the Englishman or Irishman. There is less of collective life in his country; the land is poor and barren, the northern parts are broken up by lochs and treacherous estuaries, and many counties include rocky islands among the billows of the Atlantic. In Inverness-shire the elector is far removed from all common external influence. He thinks slowly and seriously, working out his own problems, answering his own questions by the aid of his strong native sense. He and many of his fellow-voters are shepherds or “keepers.” They inhabit an isolated cottage in some remote glen—a cottage that is only approached by some faint sheep-track. Australia or the Territories of the United States are hardly less solitary; but, on the other hand, the Scottish Highlands, if solitary, are not barbarous. In newly-settled countries, where the population is only gradually fusing into a national people, there is lawlessness to contend with; the school and the church are yet open to the attack of ruffianly bands, and dependent on a few respectable though equally rough settlers to stop the brigandage of their unruly neighbors. An old country, however sparsely peopled, has the past to guide it; its hermit settlers are the heirs, not the founders, of a state and a history. So it is with ancient Scottish shires, and thus you will find their electors sober, silent, reflective men, conscious of their dignity as clansmen of the old families whose names are in the records of Scotland from the VIIIth and IXth centuries; and perfectly aware of their personal, political value as present electors to the joint Parliament of a great empire. In England there were serfs, but in Scotland (and in Ireland also) there were clansmen—not slaves, but sons by adoption; freemen with the right to bear arms; protected, not owned, by the great chiefs of the North. They were used to a certain degree of power and responsibility, and their descendants were not intoxicated by a sudden rise to independence, as were the corresponding classes in England when the franchise was extended to them.

To continue our description of the local surroundings of the Inverness-shire voters—men removed from the ordinary circumstances which make most elections pretty much the same dull, time-worn, vulgarized [pg 535] sight—we quote from a recent article in an English publication: “The nearest neighbors on one side are beyond a great mountain-range, while for miles upon miles on the other there stretch the unpeopled solitudes of a deer-forest. The nearest carriage-road is eight miles off, and that is travelled only three days in the week by a mail-cart that carries passengers. The church and school are at twice the distance; so the children must trust to the parents for their education, and the father can only occasionally join in the Sunday gossip, in the parish churchyard, that expands the ideas of some of his fellow-parishioners. His cottage is ten miles from the nearest hovel where they sell whiskey. His work is arduous; he is afoot among his sheep from the early morning until dusk. In the best of times and in the height of summer it is but seldom that a stray copy of the county paper finds its way to the head of the glen. He is thoughtful by nature, as you may see in his face, which has much the same puzzled expression of intelligence that you remark in the venerable rams of his flock. No doubt he thinks much, after a fashion of his own, as he goes ‘daundering’ about after his straggling sheep, or stretches himself to bask in the hot sunshine, while he leaves his collies (sheep-dogs) to look after his charge.”

This is a very true picture. Of course, in such a situation, it is impossible for the Highland shepherd to follow the questions that affect the fate of ministries. He can know nothing of foreign affairs, probably never heard of the Alabama, and would be at sea on the subject of the Franco-Prussian war. Mr. Gladstone's financial schemes are not only puzzles but terra incognita to his mind. He knows nothing of the extension of the suffrage in counties, and even local rates are indifferent to him, as the only one that concerns him is the dog tax—concerns him, but does not affect him; for his master pays the tax, and he himself is more or less exempted from extra trouble, according to the number of sheep-dogs for which that master chooses to pay. His interest in the man who represents him in Parliament is therefore either purely theoretical or, what happens oftener, purely personal. There are country gentlemen everywhere who, though no newspaper may blow the trumpet of their fame, are nevertheless known throughout a wide expanse as good men and true, kind yet just landlords, upright magistrates, and sound economists. Their names are household words; their memory is always associated with some generous deed; they are looked up to and honored in the county. They are generally scions of the old historical families of the land—of those families to which the Scotchman clings with a proud affection, and which have been perpetuated by the very institutions that some coiners of new political creeds find so deleterious to the human race. The shepherd probably turns his mind to some such man of whom nothing but good has ever been recorded, and willingly entrusts to his safe-keeping the interests of himself, his clan, and his country. Judging from the particular to the general, he concludes that, since this candidate has always been a kind master and a good landlord to his own folks, he is likely to be a conscientious law-maker and an earnest protector of the nation's liberties. Questions of detail may fairly be trusted to him; the main thing is [pg 536] that no widow or orphan has ever had any complaint to make of him.

This is the aspect on the voter's side. Let us see what it is on that of the candidate. There is no question here of bill-sticking, of distributing cockades, or of having bands of music and hired groups of partisans in your wake. Canvassing means “posting long distances in dog-carts, seeking relays at widely-separated inns, where the stable establishments are kept on a peace footing, except during the tourist season. In winter the roads are carried across formidable ferries, where, if you bribe the boatman to imprudence, your business being urgent, you are not unlikely to meet the fate of Lord Ullin's daughter.” But this is not all; for when you have braved the floods, and arrive famished and half-frozen at some out-of-the-way hamlet whence the scattered cottages may be gained, there is yet the ordeal of the interviews before you. The Scottish hermit can hardly be expected to forego or shorten such a rare opportunity of contact with the outside world. He will tax your ingenuity with the shrewdest, perhaps politically inconvenient, questions; and never doing anything in a hurry himself, he will resent his visitor's seeming to be pressed for time. No hasty and transparent condescensions will do for him. He will not be satisfied, like the comfortable trader of the towns, with the candidate's kissing his youngest born and promising his eldest son a rocking-horse. Smiles and hand-shakings are cheap gifts; but he wants no gifts, only pledges. He wishes to be met as an intelligent being, a man who, if worth winning, must be worth convincing. He expects a straightforward, if short, explanation of your general opinions; and though the sense of his own dignity as a voter is great, he does not forget that political does not entail social equality. Grave and earnest, he will resent flippancy as an insult to his understanding; and a joke that would win over a dozen votes in a small commercial town will very probably lose you his vote, and his good opinion too.

But there are also other constituents to be called upon. The numerous islands on the east coast of Scotland afford a still larger field for the danger and romance of canvassing. The islanders are very sensitive, and feel terribly hurt at the insinuation that their home lies out of the world. If their votes are necessary, is the courtesy to ask for them superfluous? They lead hazardous, daring lives themselves, and do not understand how any man can shrink from the danger that may be incurred in nearing their rocky island. If he does, what is he worth? they will argue; for the natural man readily judges of his fellow-man's mental qualities by his physical endurance. Then (we quote again the graphic sketch above referred to), “that island canvass means chartering some crank little screw, beating out into the fogs among the swells and the breakers, taking flying shots at low reefs of inhabited rock, enveloped in mists and unprovided with lighthouses. Landing-places are almost as scarce as light-towers, and you may have to bob about under the ‘lee of the land’ in impatient expectation of establishing communications with it. When you do get to shore, you must be hospitably fêted by the minister and the schoolmaster, the doctor and the principal tacksmen, until what with sea-squeamishness and the strong [pg 537] spirits, it becomes simply heroic to preserve the charm of your manners. Moreover, you had better not make your visit at all than cut it uncivilly short. Our friend the shepherd may have made up his mind to support you; but you may rely upon it that he will promise nothing until you have set yourself down for a solemn ‘crack’ with him.” The day of the election itself is a suitable ending to this romantic episode in the life of an ordinary, drudging M.P. When a Highlander sets about a thing, he never gives in before it is accomplished. Honor binds him to redeem a promise, whether made to another or to himself; pride compels him to prove himself superior to circumstances, almost to nature herself; and he doggedly goes on his way, undeterred by any wayside temptation to turn into smoother and pleasanter paths. So the voters “climb over mountains and plod over snow-fields, wade mountain streams, navigate lochs in crank cobles, and cross raging estuaries in rickety, flat-bottomed ferry-boats; so that, should the winds and the weather interfere too seriously with the exercise of the electors' political rights, the polling of a great Highland constituency may possibly have a gloomily dramatic finale.”122

While we are on the subject of Scotland, we may mention the various occasions on which national gatherings draw together thousands of picturesquely-clad men and women. The games are the most characteristic of these meetings. They take place in various places, mostly during the months of August and September. They are generally held under the patronage and supervision of some great family of the neighborhood. Something of old clan feeling is revived. The men often march in in bodies, preceded by their pipers, and wearing their individual tartan, with distinctive badges. The villages for fifty miles around send their group of representatives and their athletes and champions in the games. Vehicles of primitive build with rough, wiry little ponies bring in their load of farmers and petty freeholders. The country-houses and shooting-boxes fill with guests from England; and in the neighborhood of Balmoral, to which we more particularly allude, there is of course the additional attraction of royal countenance and patronage. The queen and the royal family sometimes become the guests of their subjects on these occasions, and an almost German simplicity reigns for a few days among those to whom etiquette must be so sore a chain. The princes wear the Highland dress, and the queen (that is, before her widowhood) something of tartan in her plain toilet. The national sports, such as throwing the hammer, lifting heavy weights and supporting them on the outstretched hand, etc., require both strength and dexterity, and the champions who contend in these games are generally “professionals.” Sometimes, however, some village athlete ambitiously enters the lists against the trained champions, and occasionally bears off a prize. A competition of pipers is often a feature of the day, and these worthies make a brave appearance in their velvet jackets covered with a breast-plate of medals, severally won in various contests. The shrill, clarion-like tones of the bagpipes are not agreeable to the untrained ear, but to the Highlanders, whose national associations are proudly entwined [pg 538] with this wild, primitive music of the hills, they are naturally sweeter than the most sublime strains of the old masters. No one, even though not Highland-bred, can listen to the pipes, playing a pibroch among the echoes of the mountains, without feeling that the soul of the people is in it; that the spirits of “the Flood and the Fell” which Walter Scott so graphically introduces in his Lay of the Last Minstrel might have used just such tones for their fateful, wailing speech; and no one having more than common ties binding him to Scottish traditions and Scottish homes can think of the wild dirges or stirring war-calls of the pipes without sympathy and loving regret. Not quite so inspiring, however, is this music when the piper marches round a small dining-room, and plays the distinctive tune of the host's clan to the guests assembled over their wine and dessert. The narrow space makes the music harsh and grating, just as a confined room takes from the Tyrolese jodel all its romance, and turns the sounds into the caricature of a loud roulade. The games often last for three days, and a sort of encampment springs up by magic to supply the deficiencies of the crowded inns of the neighborhood. At the end of that time there is a ball given at one of the principal country-seats, and a torch-light dance for the people. The queen and the royal family accompany their host and hostess, and are content with a hasty dinner, served with a delightful relaxation from etiquette; for this is their holiday from political anxieties and social duties, and the more informal this assembly, the better it pleases them. The ball-room is not very large, and its simple decorations are in keeping with the character of the feast and the style of the lodge or cottage in which it is given. There are flowers in abundance, flags and evergreen garlands, Highland badges and emblems, and stags' heads with branching antlers—the trophies of the host's skill in stalking the red deer. Outside the house is a wide space, destined for the torch-light dance. Great iron holders and pans lifted on rude tripods contain the torches and the resinous fluid which, when set on fire, burns steadily for many hours. To and fro flit the kilted Highlanders, with their jewelled dirks or daggers, and their hairy sporrans decorated with silver plates the size of large coins. The champions of the games are there, the rival pipers, the mountain shepherds, the gillies or game-keepers, all the household servants and those of the guests; the women wearing tartan ribbons of different clans, and Scotch flowers, blue-bell, heather or bog-myrtle, in their caps or bodices. The pipes strike up the music of the sword-dance; a noted dancer comes forward, and lays two naked swords of ordinary length on the ground, crossing them at right angles. Within the four narrow spaces between the points of this cross he then begins a series of marvellous steps, leaping high in the air, shuffling, crossing his feet, and invariably alighting in the right spot, within a few inches of the swords, always in these four interstices, but never touching nor even grazing the blades. If he were to touch one ever so lightly, and but for an instant, his reputation would be gone. Another succeeds him, and so on, till all the famous dancers have exhibited their skill. No novice appears; they take care never to dance in public till they are [pg 539] perfect in this feat. Scotch reels for the most part take up the rest of the night, and are danced by four people, two men and two women, the former standing back to back, and their partners opposite. Various figures follow each other, the figure eight being the most frequent. This is managed by the four dancers locking arms and giving a swing round, then passing on to the next person; arms are locked again, and another turn given, and so on till the four have changed places, and in doing so have described the figure eight. Of course, in this dance, it is the men who show to most advantage, as they perform a series of regular steps, snapping their fingers meanwhile, and, as soon as they get excited and enter into the spirit of the national dance, uttering a peculiar sort of cry. The women mostly walk and jump through their evolutions. The less characteristic dancing in the ball-room, but in which reels are also mingled with quadrille and waltz, ceases about two o'clock in the morning, and the musicians are at liberty to join the fun outside. The Highlanders sometimes take possession of the deserted ball-room, and continue their own revels there till daybreak, when the torches flicker out and the spell is broken. Another national dance is the strathspey, which we never had the good fortune to see performed.

In winter curling is the favorite game; it is played on the ice with heavy round stones, about eight or nine inches in diameter, and three to three and a half inches thick. These stones are neither rolled nor thrown at the line and mark, but propelled, by the strength of wrist of the player, along the surface of the ice, and aimed to displace the stones already set up by the opposite side. Whichever side, at the end of the game, has most stones near the line which serves as a mark, is declared by the umpire to be the winner. Miniature curling-boards are very common in Scotch country-houses, with stones two or three inches in diameter; it is an amusing game on a rainy day, and, though so small, no little skill is required to guide these stones aright.

The same house to which we have taken the reader to be present at the torch-light dance is a very pretty specimen of Scotch hunting-lodges. Built at various times, it consists of several cottages, once detached, but now irregularly connected by picturesque galleries, verandas, and staircases. One part has much the appearance of a Swiss châlet; another that of a river-side villa on the Thames, with its glass doors opening on to a lawn, and its rustic porch smothered in climbing roses. Though so straggling, it is a very comfortable house. Nothing is wanting—billiard-room, smoking-room, boudoir, and innumerable pigeonholes for guests—a charming house for persons of sporting tastes; the halls carpeted with deer-skins, and the walls hung with antlers, bearing each the date of the death of the stag to which they belonged; equally charming to the delicate London beauty wearied with her social triumphs, for here she finds the thousand elegances of a rococo drawing-room, the luxurious arm-chairs, the rare china, the velvet screen hung with miniatures, and little gilt brackets, each supporting a tiny cup or a porcelain shepherdess—in a word, every pretty refinement of the latest fashion. The neighborhood is famous for stalking—that is, following the red deer through moor and forest alone, with your rifle and your slight bag containing [pg 540] some biscuits and a pocket-flask. You may have to trudge over miles and miles of heather, watching every turn of the breeze, lest it betray your whereabouts to your beautiful victim; making immense détours to reach him from some convenient cover; creeping along on all fours, or even flat on the ground; often taking a long, cold bath in the mountain burn (stream), wading through it, or waiting in it, so as not to let him scent your trail. If for no other reason, this sport is superior to any because it demands solitude; though it is hard to discover why one should not be privileged to take a twelve hours' walk or saunter without the pretext of the rifle slung at one's back, and also without incurring the charge of eccentricity. A forest in Scotland is treeless; the term is applied to a wide expanse of mountain, covered knee-deep with heather, and perhaps here and there with a few stunted bushes or clumps of graceful birches. Here the red deer feeds in herds, and you sometimes come across six or seven of these “monarchs of the glen.” The sportsman, however, seldom pursues or kills more than one in a day. A moor is much the same in appearance as a forest, but that term is reserved for those tracts of heather-land where the grouse and the black-cock abide. These are often rented to Englishmen, the forests seldom; so that the Southron, if he have a taste for deer-stalking, generally depends for his chance of indulging it on the hospitality of some Scottish friend.

This neighborhood is full of romantic glens and hollows where mountain streams gurgle through narrow channels of rock, where tiny waterfalls splash under bridges mossy with old age, and where real forests of pine and birch and rowan, or mountain ash, make a variegated network across the blue horizon. In one little gorge tradition says that a hunted partisan of Charles Edward took refuge after the fatal battle of Culloden, in 1745, and lived there concealed for several weeks. The particular place where he hid was under a projecting ledge or table of rock, overhanging the brown, foaming waters of the mimic torrent, which, though not large in volume, might yet have strength enough to dash you in pieces, if you fell into the narrow bed bristling with sharp, rocky points and irregular boulders, round which the water boils and hisses, as if chafing at its imprisonment. The rocks incline their jagged sides so far forward over the stream as almost to meet in an arch above it, and the chasm can be easily, almost safely, leaped. Indeed, the rift is invisible from the road, which passes within a few yards of it. Its sides are fringed with heather, and are undistinguishable, except when one is standing close upon them.

The North of England, with its mountains and its lakes, its solitary tarns (pools or smaller lakes) and its becks, has a family likeness to Scotch scenery. Its people, too, are akin to the Lowland Scotch in their taciturnity, their hardy, physical nature, and their language; yet to those who know both well the difference is very perceptible. In olden times Lancashire and Yorkshire, lying to the west of the Lake country, were emphatically the land of the church, one vast net-work of beautiful abbeys with their immense possessions. Even after the Reformation these two counties remained the stronghold of Catholicity, and to this day they contain more Catholics (exclusive of the large modern [pg 541] towns and their population) than any other part of England. The favorite sport of Lancashire is otter-hunting.

A certain breed of hounds, having very long bodies and short legs, is kept for the purpose; the streams abound in otters, and the hunt is very exciting. The gentlemen wear preternaturally thick boots, covering even the thighs, as they often have to wade in after the otter, whose teeth are so sharp that they can take off a hound's leg at one bite. These animals dive dexterously under the banks, and generally lead the hunt a pretty chase; but, never having seen this sport ourselves, it is difficult to describe it graphically. The dialect of this part of the country is almost as much a language as Provençal; the people have their own literature, and one of their poets (a humorous one) has been styled, par excellence, the “Lancashire Poet.” Lancashire people are desperately clannish, quite despise the southern English, and obstinately adhere to their own customs, as something immeasurably more dignified than the finical fashions of the Southron. The gentlemen all talk the dialect when speaking with their farmers, game-keepers, or servants, and speak it with genuine gusto too. A Lancashire kitchen is a heart-warming sight; it is emphatically the room of a farm, an inn, or any middle-class dwelling. The fire blazes in the depths of a cavernous chimney, with settles on each side, on which two men can sit abreast, while from the low roof hang endless strings of fine onions and dozens of hams and flitches of bacon. At another part of the ceiling is fixed an immense rack, over which hangs the oatmeal cake in large sheets, of which any one is at liberty to break off a piece for his supper unrebuked and without question of repayment. Hospitality is a cardinal virtue here, but it is not that voluble, fussy hospitality which worries its recipient and makes him feel the obligation; you are welcome to go in and sit down, eat and drink, warm and dry yourself at the hearth, and go out again, without being assailed by impertinent questions or bored by long domestic revelations. A Lancashire host respects your mind while he refreshes your body, and silently makes you at home. Those kitchens of the north are the very type of comfort, with their vast corner-cupboards, their cleanliness—you might literally eat off the brick floors; they are always paved with brick—their long oat-cake racks and tempting meat, all home-cured, hung from the ceiling. The temptation may be too great for you some night, if you happen to return to your lodgings, very hungry, at the late hour of twelve—that is dissipation in Lancashire—for you may wander in, and see no harm in hunting in the cupboard for eggs and flour, and in slicing off whatever will conveniently detach itself from a hanging flitch, in order to flavor some appetizing sauce of which you possess the secret. Perhaps the midnight raid ends fatally, and you stumble over the pots and pans, or find the embers hardly hot enough to cook the sauce, or give it up at last in despair, with a ridiculous foreboding of what the landlady will say to-morrow morning when she contemplates the ragged appearance of the best flitch! Let us hope that you will honestly own your delinquencies, and not affirm that “it must have been the mice, ma'am!” It will be the easier as [pg 542] you happen to know the house well, and its inmates long ago agreed to overlook your little eccentricities with regard to sauces!

Among the principal country festivities which draw large parties to the neighboring houses in many parts of England, are the local cattle-shows. The breeding of cattle is a topic of almost as universal interest in England as fox-hunting, especially among country gentlemen. The secret of this apparent interest lies rather in the intense pride with which they naturally regard everything connected with their homes, than in downright personal liking for fat oxen and prize pigs. Not even the farmers who exhibit the cattle can outmatch the ladies of the neighborhood in their solicitude for the honor of the county, and, besides this, the gentlemen themselves sometimes enter the lists, and exhibit some choice specimen, thus giving their households special reasons for pride and anxiety. Most of the houses fill with guests for the occasion, and, despite the lateness of the season (the shows are generally late in the autumn, the one to which we refer taking place in November), the weather is usually propitious. Let us take a peep in at the window of yonder large Tudor house, with its cedars, sentinel-like, guarding the approaches to the hall-door, and an old gabled, ivied ruin overlooking the gay mosaic of the parterre. There is plenty of water here—ponds where huge old beeches droop over the banks and moor-fowl swish through the rushes on the margin, and ponds fringed with late roses, and lifting up in their midst islands with rustic arbors and a wilderness of creeping plants. Within the house is the usual amount of family portraits and antique carved furniture, with a more than ordinary display of hot-house flowers. A little earlier in the season you would find in the drawing-room two immense marble vases, in each of which blossoms a queenly azalea, snowy or ruddy, as the case may be. On the tables lie islands of moss, relieving and framing three or four star-shaped, blood-red cactus-blooms. Round the high chimney-piece, where a wood-fire burns merrily (a luxury in England), is assembled a family party, neither stiff nor yet free, and picturesque, if nothing else; for the girls are dressed in the square-cut bodices and pale-hued, brocaded overskirts of a more picturesque age. Perhaps they are discussing art matters or weaving personal romances.... No, for here, as elsewhere, you cannot take the bit in your mouth; it is the only penalty of decorous country life in old England. They are talking of to-morrow's agricultural fair, the annual cattle show, which takes place in the country town. There is a large party in the house for it; it is the event of the week. Most country ladies pretend to be, and some are, poultry fanciers; so there is an additional department allotted to the prize poultry. The carriages draw up in a wide field near the tents and sheds, where a view of the race-course can be had. The men circulate among the cattle; the “judges” sit in a tribune provided for them. It is difficult to get up any enthusiasm about this kind of thing, but the adjuncts are quite as enjoyable as are most outdoor pleasures that you cannot enjoy alone. The last day of the fair closes with a dinner, when the prize beasts and their owners are commented upon and the general political situation discussed. One of the farmers is a born orator; at [pg 543] least he delights in the sound of his own flowery periods. He quotes Shakespeare and Tennyson, and feels sure he has made a hit. As all professions are represented, there is room for all kinds of toasts, and under the veil of sociability the opportunities for speaking home-truths are not neglected. Around the hall are galleries that serve for spectators, both male and female, and from this point many a ludicrous incident is revealed to you that escapes the “grave and reverend seigniors” below. This is what a spectator once saw: The dinner takes place once a year, and it is impossible to have nothing but trained waiters. Many of the gentlemen on this occasion brought their own servants with them; but even this was not sufficient, and the supplementary waiters were “legion.” The dinner was not as orderly as it might be. There was a great deal of hurrying and skurrying, orders angrily given and awkwardly executed, wine liberally spilt before reaching its destination, etc. Suddenly some one gave an order from the far end of the hall, and an unlucky bumpkin, eager to show his agility, made a dart forward, but came to an abrupt stand-still in the middle of a lake of soup that spread warm and moist about his feet. In his haste he had stepped into the soup-tureen, which another waiter, in clumsy hurry, had momentarily deposited in this conspicuous place. The braying of the band, whose conductor was naturally not a little exhilarated by the copious “refreshment” distributed during the day, drowned these “asides”; but we cannot help thinking that the position of a spectator, alive to these incidents behind the scenes, was preferable to that of the unhappy actors and speakers, nailed for four or five hours to the table, and condemned to drink the execrable wine usually furnished on such occasions.

With this we will close this somewhat lengthy sketch of some of the incidents of rural life in the old mother-country—a subject so dear to Washington Irving, so attractive to Longfellow, and so heart-stirring to many who, on this side of the Atlantic, have not yet lost in the turmoil of business or the hurry of politics the fond, poetic remembrance of the land of their forefathers. It is a restful picture; the soul grows young again in the contemplation of that healthy, even placid home-life, diversified by so many local interests, and disturbed by so few dangerous excitements. In such an atmosphere it is no wonder if scholars, poets, and gentlemen develop quietly, as the fruit ripens on the sunny garden wall; nor is it strange to find these men, so accomplished and so learned, filling the unobtrusive and secluded walks of life, as well as the councils of the nation, the cabinet, the bar, and the Parliament. Happy is the nation that attains to a green old age; happy the country that keeps all that is poetic in the past, without relinquishing the practical and the useful in the present. It is a good thing to be able to look back proudly on a long line of doughty forefathers, but better still to be able to look forward as proudly to a goodly line of worthy descendants.

[pg 544]