WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. NUTTING. if wood can entitle a country to be called Le Bocage, none can have a better right to the name. Even this pretty snug farm-house on the hill-side, with its front covered with the rich vine, which goes wreathing up to the very top of the clustered chimney, and its sloping orchard full of fruit-even this pretty quiet nest can hardly peep out of its leaves. Ah! they are gathering in the orchard harvest. Look at that young rogue in the old mossy weight of its golden rennets-see how he pelts his little sister beneath with apples as red and as round as her own cheeks, while she, with her outstretched frock, is trying to catch them, and laughing and offering to pelt again as often as one bobs against her; and look at that still younger imp, who, as grave as a judge, is creeping on hands and knees under the tree, picking up the apples as they fall so deedily, and depositing them so honestly in the great basket on the grass, already fixed so firmly and opened so widely, and filled almost to overflowing by the brown rough fruitage of the golden-rennet's next neighbour the russeting; and see that smallest urchin of all seated SEPTEMBER 26th.-One of those delicious autumnal days, when the air, the sky, and the earth, seem lulled into an universal calm, softer and milder even than May. We sallied forth for a walk, in a mood congenial to the weather and the season, avoiding, by mutual consent, the bright and sunny common, and the gay high road, and stealing through shady un-apple-tree-that great tree, bending with the frequented lanes, where we were not likely to meet any one, not even the pretty family procession, which in other years we used to contemplate with so much interest-the father, mother, and children, returning from the wheat field, the little ones laden with bristling closetied bunches of wheat-ears, their own gleanings, or a bottle and a basket which had contained their frugal dinner, whilst the mother would carry her babe hushing and lulling it, and the father and an elder child trudged after with the cradle, all seeming weary, and all happy. We shall not see such a procession as this to-day; for the harvest is nearly over, the fields are deserted, the silence may almost be felt. Except the wintry notes of the red-apart in infantine state on the turfy bank, with breast, nature herself is mute. But how beautiful, how gentle, how harmonious, how rich! The rain has preserved to the herbage all the freshness and verdure of spring, and the world of leaves has lost nothing of its midsummer brightness, and the harebell is on the banks and the woodbine in the hedges, and the low furze, which the lambs cropped in the spring, has burst again into its golden blossoms. All is beautiful that the eye can see; perhaps the more beautiful for being shut in with a forest-like closeness. We have no prospect in this labyrinth of lanes, cross-roads, mere cart-ways, leading to the innumerable little farms into which this part of the parish is divided. Uphill or down, these quiet woody lanes scarcely give us a peep at the world, except when, leaning over a gate, we look into one of the small enclosures, hemmed in with hedgerows, so closely set with growing timber, that the meady opening looks almost like a glade in a wood, or when some cottage, planted at a corner of one of the little greens formed by the meeting of these cross-ways, almost startles us by the unexpected sight of the dwellings of men in such a solitude. But that we have more of hill and dale, and that our cross-roads are excellent in their kind, this side of our parish would resemble the description given of La Vendée, in Madame Larochejacquelin's most interesting book. I am sure An almost equally interesting account of that very peculiar and interesting scenery, may be found in The Maid of La Vendée," an English novel, remarkable for its simplicity and truth of painting, written by Mrs. Le Noir, the daughter of Christopher Smart, and inheritrix of much of his talent. Her works deserve to be better known. Is not that toothsome piece of deformity a crumpling +"Deedily,"—I am not quite sure that this word is good English; but it is genuine Hampshire, and is used by the most correct of female writers, Miss Austen. It means (and it is no small merit that it has no exact synonyme) any thing done with a profound and plodding attention, an action which engrosses all the powers of mind and body. 1 ing; for we are quite hidden by the high bank, and a spreading hawthorn-bush that overtops it, though between the lower branches and the grass we have found a convenient peep-hole. "Willy!" The voice sounds to him like some fairy dream, and the black eyes are raised from the ground with sudden wonder, the long silky eye-lashes thrown back till they rest on the delicate brow, and a deeper blush is burning in those dark cheeks, and a smile is dimpling about those scarlet lips. But the voice is silent now, and the little quiet boy, after a moment's pause, is gone coolly to work again. He is indeed a most lovely child. I think some day or other he must marry Lizzy; I shall propose the match to their respective mammas. At present the parties are rather too young for a weddingthe intended bridegroom being, as I should judge, six, or thereabout, and the fair bride barely five,-but at least we might have a betrothment after the royal fashion,-there could be no harm in that. Miss Lizzy, I have no doubt, would be as demure and coquettish as if ten winters more had gone over her head, and poor Willy would open his innocent black eyes, and wonder what was going forward. They would be the very Oberon and Titania of the village, the fairy king and queen. Ah! here is the hedge along which the periwinkle wreathes and twines so profusely, with its evergreen leaves shining like the myrtle, and its starry blue flowers. It is seldom found wild in this part of England; but, when we do meet with it, it is so abundant and so welcome, the very robin-red-breast of flowers, a winter friend. Unless in those unfrequent frosts which destroy all vegetation, it blossoms from September to June, surviving the last lingering crane's-bill, forerunning the earliest primrose, hardier even than the mountain daisy,-peeping out from beneath the snow, looking at itself in the ice, smiling through the tempests of life, and yet welcoming and enjoying the sunbeams. Oh, to be like that flower! The little spring that has been bubbling under the hedge all along the hill side, begins, now that we have mounted the eminence and are imperceptibly descending, to deviate into a capricious variety of clear deep pools and channels, so narrow and so choked with weeds, that a child might overstep them. The hedge has also changed its character. It is no longer the close compact vegetable wall of hawthorn and maple, and briar roses, intertwined with bramble and woodbine, and crowned with large elms or thickly set saplings. No! the pretty meadow which rises high above us, backed and almost surrounded by a tall coppice, needs no defence on our side but its own steep bank, garnished with tufts of broom, with pollard oaks wreathed with ivy, and here and there with long patches of hazel over hanging the water. "Ah there are still nuts on that bough!" and in an instant my dear companion, active and eager and delighted as a boy, has hooked down with his walkingstick one of the lissome hazel stalks, and cleared it of its tawny clusters, and in another moment he has mounted the bank, and is in the midst of the nuttery, now transferring the spoil from the lower branches into that vast variety of pockets which gentlemen carry about them, now bending the tall tops into the lane, holding them down by main force, so that I might reach them and enjoy the pleasure of collecting some of the plunder myself. A very great pleasure he knew it would be. I doffed my shawl, tucked up my flounces, turned my straw bonnet into a basket, and began gathering and scrambling-for manage it how you may, nutting is scrambling work,those boughs, however tightly you may grasp them by the young fragrant twigs and the bright green leaves, will recoil and burst away; but there is a pleasure even in that: so on we go, scrambling and gathering with all our might and all our glee. Oh what an enjoyment! All my life long I have had a passion for that sort of seeking which implies finding, (the secret, I believe, of the love of field-sports, which is in man's mind a natural impulse.)-therefore I love violeting,-therefore, when we had a fine garden I used to love to gather strawberries, and cut asparagus, and, above all, to collect the filberts from the shrubberies: but this hedge-row nutting beats that sport all to nothing. That was a make-believe thing compared with this; there was no surprise, no suspense, no unexpectedness-it was as inferior to this wildnutting, as the turning out of a bag fox is to unearthing the fellow in the eyes of a staunch foxhunter. Oh what an enjoyment this nut-gathering is!-They are in such abundance, that it seems as if there were not a boy in the parish, nor a young man nor a young woman,—for a basket of nuts is the universal tribute of country gallantry; our pretty damsel Harriet has had at least half a dozen this season; but no one has found out these. And they are so full too, we lose half of them from over-ripeness; they drop from the socket at the slightest motion. If we lose, there is one who finds.May is as fond of nuts as a squirrel, and cracks the shell and extracts the kernel with equal dexterity. Her white glossy head is upturned now to watch them as they fall. See how her neck is thrown back like that of a swan, and how beautifully her folded ears quiver with expectation, and how her quick eye follows the rustling noise, and her light feet dance and pat the ground, and leap up with eagerness, seeming almost sustained in the air, just as I have seen her when Brush is beating a hedgerow, and she knows from his questing that there is a hare afoot. See, she has caught that nut just before it touched the water; but the water would have been no defence,-she that she is Aunt Martha still. I have heard hints of an early engagement broken by the fickleness of man;-and there is about her an aversion to love in one particular directionthe love matrimonial-and an overflowing of affection in all other channels, that it seems as if the natural course of the stream had been violently dammed up. She has many lovers fishes them from the bottom, she delves after them amongst the matted grass-even my bonnet-how beggingly she looks at that! "Oh what a pleasure nutting is!-Is it not, May? But the pockets are almost full, and so is the basket-bonnet, and that bright watch the sun says it is late; and after all it is wrong to rob the poor boys-is it not, May ?" May-admirers I should say,-for there is, amidst shakes her graceful head denyingly, as if she understood the question." And we must go home now-must we not? But we will come nutting again some time or other-shall we not, my May ?" AUNT MARTHA. ONE of the pleasantest habitations I have ever known is an old white house, built at right angles, with the pointed roofs and clustered chimneys of Elizabeth's day, covered with roses, vines, and passion-flowers, and parted by a green sloping meadow from a straggling picturesque village street. In this charming abode resides a more charming family a gentleman, "Polite as all his life in courts had been. And good as he the world had never seen;" two daughters full of sweetness and talent; and aunt Martha-the most delightful of old maids! She has another appellation I suppose, she must have one; but I scarcely know it: Aunt Martha is the name that belongs to her-the name of affection. Such is the universal feeling which she inspires, that all her friends, all her acquaintances, (in this case the terms are almost synonymous,) speak of her like her own family:-she is every body's Aunt Martha-and a very charming Aunt Martha she is. her good-humoured gaiety, a coyness that forbids their going farther; a modesty almost amounting to shyness, that checks even the laughing girls, who sometimes accuse her of stealing away their beaux. I do not think any man on earth could tempt her into wedlock; it would be a most unpardonable monopoly if any one should; an intolerable engrossing of a general blessing; a theft from the whole community. Her usual home is the white house covered with roses; and her station in the family is rather doubtful. She is not the mistress, for her charming nieces are old enough to take and to adorn the head of the table; nor the house-keeper, though, as she is the only lady of the establishment who wears pockets, those ensigns of authority, the keys, will sometimes be found, with other strays, in that goodly receptacle: nor a guest; her spirit is too active for that lazy post; her real vocation there, and every where, seems to be comforting, cheering, welcoming, and spoiling every thing that comes in her way; and, above all, nursing and taking care. Of all kind employments, these are her favourites. Oh the shawlings, the cloakings, the cloggings! the cautions against cold, or heat, or rain, or sun! the remedies for diseases not arrived! colds uncaught! incipient tooth-aches! rheumatisms to come! She loves nursing so well, that we used to accuse her of inventing maladies for other people, that she might have the pleasure of curing them; and when they really comeas come they will sometimes in spite of Aunt First of all, she is, as all women should be Martha-what a nurse she is! It is worth if they can, remarkably handsome. She may while to be a little sick to be so attended. All be-it is a delicate matter to speak of a lady's the cousins, and cousins' cousins of her conage!-she must be five-and-forty; but few nection, as regularly send for her on the occabeauties of twenty could stand a comparison sion of a lying-in, as for the midwife. I supwith her loveliness. It is such a fulness of pose she has undergone the ceremony of bloom, so luxuriant, so satiating; just tall dandling the baby, sitting up with the new enough to carry off the plumpness which at mamma, and dispensing the caudle, twenty forty-five is so becoming; a brilliant com- times at least. She is equally important at plexion; curled pouting lips! long, clear, weddings or funerals. Her humanity is inbright grey eyes-the colour for expression, exhaustible. She has an intense feeling of that which unites the quickness of the black fellowship with her kind, and grieves or rewith the softness of the blue; a Roman re-joices in the sufferings or happiness of others gularity of feature; and a profusion of rich brown hair.-Such is Aunt Martha.. Add to this a very gentle and pleasant speech, always kind, and generally lively; the sweetest temper; the easiest manners; a singular rectitude and singleness of mind; a perfect open-heartedness; and a total unconsciousness of all these charms; and you will wonder a little with a reality as genuine as it is rare. Her accomplishments are exactly of this sympathetic order; all calculated to administer much to the pleasure of her companions, nothing to her own importance or vanity. She leaves to the sirens, her nieces, the higher enchantments of the piano, the harp, and the guitar, and that noblest of instruments, the human voice; ambitious of no other musical fame than such as belongs to the playing of quadrilles and waltzes for their little dances, in which she is indefatigable: she neither caricatures the face of man nor of nature under pretence of drawing figures or landscapes; but she ornaments the reticules, bell-ropes, ottomans, and chair-covers of all her acquaintance, with flowers as rich and luxuriant as her own beauty. She draws patterns for the ignorant, and works flounces, frills, and babylinen, for the idle; she reads aloud to the sick, plays at cards with the old, and loses at chess to the unhappy. Her gift in gossiping, too, is extraordinary; she is a gentle newsmonger, and turns her scandal on the sunny side. But she is an old maid still; and certain small peculiarities hang about her. She is a thorough hoarder; whatever fashion comes up, she is sure to have something of the sort by heror, at least, something thereunto convertible. She is a little superstitious; sees strangers in her tea-cup, gifts in her finger-nails, letters and winding-sheets in the candle, and purses and coffins in the fire; would not spill the salt "for all the worlds that one ever has to give ;" and looks with dismay on a crossed knife and fork. Moreover, she is orderly to fidgetiness; that is her greatest calamity!-for young ladies now-a-days are not quite so tidy as they should be,-and ladies' maids are much worse; and drawers are tumbled, and drawing-rooms in a litter. Happy she to whom a disarranged drawer can be a misery! Dear and happy Aunt Martha! WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. THE VISIT. OCTOBER 27th.-A lovely autumnal day; the air soft, balmy, genial; the sky of that softened and delicate blue upon which the eye loves to rest, the blue which gives such relief to the rich beauty of the earth, all around glowing in the ripe and mellow tints of the most gorgeous of the seasons. Really such an autumn may well compensate our English climate for the fine spring of the south, that spring of which the poets talk, but which we so seldom enjoy. Such an autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year and I have been tempted forth into a wider range of enjoyment than usual. This walk (if I may use the Irish figure of speech called a bull) will be a ride. A very dear friend has beguiled me into accompanying her in her pretty equipage to her beautiful home, four miles off; and having sent forward in the style of a running footman the servant who had driven her, she assumes the reins, and off we set. My fair companion is a person whom nature and fortune would have spoiled if they could. She is one of those striking women whom a stranger cannot pass without turning to look again: tall and finely proportioned, with a bold Roman contour of figure and feature, a delicate English complexion, and an air of distinction altogether her own. Her beauty is duchess-like. She seems born to wear feathers and diamonds, and to form the grace and ornament of a court; and the noble frankness and simplicity of her countenance and manner confirm the impression. Destiny has however dealt more kindly by her. She is the wife of a rich country gentleman of high descent and higher attainments, to whom she is most devotedly attached, the mother of a fine little girl as lovely as herself, and the delight of all who have the happiness of her acquaintance, to whom she is endeared not merely by her remarkable sweetness of temper and kindness of heart, but by the singular ingenuousness and openness of character which communicate an indescribable charm to her conversation. She is as transparent as water. You may see every colour, every shade of a mind as lofty and beautiful as her person. Talking with her is like being in the Palace of Truth, described by Madame de Genlis; and yet so kindly are her feelings, so great the indulgence to the little failings and foibles of our common nature, so intense her sympathy with the wants, the wishes, the sorrows, and the happiness of her fellow-creatures, that with all her frank-speaking, I never knew her to make an enemy or lose a friend. But we must get on. What would she say if she knew I was putting her into print? We must get on up the hill. Ah! that is precisely what we are not likely to do! This horse, this beautiful and high-bred horse, well fed, and fat and glossy, who stood prancing at our gate like an Arabian, has suddenly turned sulky. He does not indeed stand quite still, but his way of moving is little better-the slowest and most sullen of all walks. Even they who ply the hearse at funerals, sad-looking beasts, who totter under black feathers, go faster. It is of no use to admonish him by whip or rein, or word. The rogue has found out that it is a weak and tender hand that guides him now. Oh for one pull, one stroke of his old driver, the groom! How he would fly! But there is the groom half-a-mile before us, out of earshot, clearing the ground at a capital rate, beating us hollow. He has just turned the top of the hill;-and in a moment-ay, now he is out of sight, and will undoubtedly so continue till he meets us at the lawn gate. Well! there is no great harm. It is only prolonging the pleasure of enjoying together this charming scenery in this fine weather. If once we make up our minds not to care how slowly our steed goes, not to fret ourselves by vain exertions, it is no matter what his pace may be. There is little doubt of his getting home by sunset, and that will content us. He is, after all, a fine noble animal; and perhaps when he finds that we are determined to give him his way, he may relent and give us ours. All his sex are sticklers for dominion, though when it is undisputed, some of them are generous enough to abandon it. Two or three of the most discreet wives of my acquaintance contrive to manage their husbands sufficiently with no better secret than this seeming submission; and in our case the example has the more weight since we have no possible way of helping ourselves. Thus philosophising, we reached the top of the hill, and viewed with "reverted eyes" the beautiful prospect that lay bathed in golden sunshine behind us. Cowper says, with that boldness of expressing in poetry the commonest and simplest feelings, which is perhaps one great secret of his originality, its past and future glories; for, alas! cricket is over for the season. Ah! it is Ben Kirby, next brother to Joe, king of the youngsters, and probably his successor-for this Michaelmas has cost us Joe. He is promoted from the farm to the mansion-house, two miles off: there he cleans shoes, rubs knives, and runs upon errands, and is, as his mother expresses it, "a sort of 'prentice to the footman."-I should not wonder if Joe, some day or other, should overtop the footman, and rise to be butler; and his splendid prospects must be our consolation for the loss of this great favourite. In the mean time we have Ben. Ben Kirby is a year younger than Joe, and the schoolfellow and rival of Jem Eusden. To be sure his abilities lie in rather a different line: Jem is a scholar; Ben is a wag: Jem is great in figures and writing; Ben in faces and mischief. His master says of him, that, if there were two such in the school, he "Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily seen, must resign his office: and, as far as my obPlease daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years." servation goes, the worthy pedagogue is right. Ben is, it must be confessed, a great corrupter Every day I walk up this hill-every day I of gravity. He hath an exceeding aversion pause at the top to admire the broad winding to authority and decorum, and a wonderful road with the green waste on each side, unit- boldness and dexterity in overthrowing the ing it with the thickly timbered hedgerows; one and puzzling the other. His contortions the two pretty cottages at unequal distances, of visage are astounding. His "power over placed so as to mark the bends; the village his own muscles and those of other people," beyond, with its mass of roofs and clustered is almost equal to that of Liston: and indeed chimneys peeping through the trees; and the original face, flat and square and Chinese the rich distance, where cottages, mansions, in its shape, of a fine tan complexion, with a churches, towns, seem embowered in some snub nose, and a slit for a mouth, is nearly as wide forest, and shut in by blue shadowy hills. comical as that matchless performer's. When Every day I admire this most beautiful land-aided by Ben's singular mobility of feature, scape; yet never did it seem to me so fine or so glowing as now. All the tints of the glorious autumn, orange, tawny, yellow, red, are poured in profusion amongst the bright greens of the meadows and turnip fields, till the eye is satiated with colour; and then before us we have the common with its picturesque roughness of surface, tufted with cottages, dappled with water, edging off on one side into fields and farms and orchards, and terminated on the other by the princely oak avenue. What a richness and variety the wild broken ground gives to the luxuriant cultivation of the rest of the landscape! Cowper has described it for me. How perpetually, as we walk in the country, his vivid pictures recur to the memory! Here is his common and mine! "The common overgrown with fern, and rough With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deform'd And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom, And decks itself with ornaments of gold;there the turf Smells fresh, and, rich in odoriferous herbs And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense With luxury of unexpected sweets.' The description is exact. There, too, to the left is my cricket-ground; (Cowper's common wanted that finishing grace ;) and there stands one solitary urchin, as if in contemplation of his knowing winks and grins and shrugs and nods, together with a certain dry shrewdness, a habit of saying sharp things, and a marvelous gift of impudence, it forms as fine a specimen as possible of a humorous country boy, an oddity in embryo. Every body likes Ben, except his butts; (which may comprise half his acquaintance;) and of them no one so thoroughly hates and dreads him as our parish school-master, a most worthy King Log, whom Ben dumfounds twenty times a day. He is a great ornament of the cricket-ground, has a real genius for the game, and displays it after a very original manner, under the disguise of awkwardness-as the clown shows off his agility in a pantomime. Nothing comes amiss to him.-By the by, he would have been the very lad for us in our present dilemma; not a horse in England could master Ben Kirby. But we are too far from him now-and perhaps it is as well that we are so. I believe that the rogue has a kindness for me in remembrance of certain apples and nuts, which my usual companion, who delights in his wit, is accustomed to dole out to him. But it is a Robin Goodfellow, nevertheless, a perfect Puck that loves nothing on earth so well as mischief. Perhaps the horse may be the safer conductor of the two. |
