SAGE cynic Carlyle, "cut and come again." From roaring Oh! to warn thee thou art rash. Even now, A YEAR AT AMBLESIDE. NOVEMBER. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. Ir this is the gloomiest month of the year throughout the British Islands, it is eminently so in our district; at least the latter half of it, when St. Martin's Summer is over, and the wintry gales and floods come upon us. It is our fever month; and the fever is very threatening this year. Of all the men in the place, of those who could least be spared, John Newton was first down in it. He was to have come to me about some Building Society business, but sent one of the children to say that he was unwell, and must keep his bed for that day, but hoped to come on the next. He did not, however. In my walk before daylight, I did not now, as usual, meet him going forth, apparatus in hand, to sweep a neighbour's chimney; or, playing with his rule, evidently meditating some building scheme. I used to think him the most active man in the place, by the way in which he went forth in the morning-cheerful, wide-awake-while some other men moved slowly, as if they cared for the cold; and one, now and then, was so tipsy, that it was mournful to see his attempts to touch his hat to me, and to walk straight while in my sight. At first we were told that Newton had caught cold; but it came out in time that he had been out hunting, and that implies conviviality after the sport. It was soon evident that it would be weeks before he could leave his bed. At the same time, Edward H., a young carpenter, lay down in the fever; and for thirteen weeks his mother and sister were watching him night and day, getting little rest but in an easy-chair, during all that time. It was very affecting to hear the poor fellow in his delirium, incessantly talking of the sanitary matters on which he and his neighbours had been receiving new knowledge. May that new knowledge do something for us before another year; for our state this year is terrible. In D.'s, the fishmonger's, low, damp cottage, the children are down in scarlet fever; and there are four cases of fever in houses next the churchyard-cases with which the surgeon declares he can do nothing. In two of the houses, the lower rooms have to be shut up on account of the putrid dribble from the burial-ground which trickles down the walls. If we, who live in airy, dry houses, built on the rock, our wells always swimming with the sweetest water, feel some depression from the gloom and heaviness of the season, what must it be to those who are spending the passing weeks in the sick room! It is good to cheer ourselves with out-door spectacles as long as the Martinmas Summer allows. The grand spectacle of the season is the Martinmas hiring-the half-yearly engagement of farm-servants, both lads and lasses. Those who wish to be hired, stand about the market-cross, with a sprig of green, or a straw in their mouths. The days are short now; but before it is dusk, the young women move off to see the shops,--a grand sight, however few they be, to the dwellers in the dales. The young men follow them; and now begins the great match-making of the year. Each youth invites his sweetheart to the dancing-room, and plies her with cake, and punch or wine, little regarding the expenditure of his half-year's wages in such a cause. Jealous quarrels, and sometimes desperate fights take place in the intervals of the dancing; and it is said that the women fight sometimes almost as well as the men, when on behalf of a lover. Strange and fearful as this appears, we must remember how rare are these occasions of excitement, and that the monotony of a year, or at least of a half-year, has to be worked off this night. There is little doubt that some weddings will follow; but for many months, only unbroken dulness has preceded. On occasion of such meetings as these, offenders against domestic morals are liable to be punished by a sentence of public opinion. Unfaithful husbands and wives, and men who beat their wives, are made to ride the stang. The stang is the pole on which loads are hung, when carried on men's shoulders. It is the ancient "cowl-staff." "Where is the cowlstaff?" cries Mrs. Ford, one of the Merry Wives of Windsor, when about to despatch Sir John Falstaff to his ducking among the dirty clothes, in the ditch on Datchet Mead. Delinquent husbands here have as much cause to dread the stang as the fat knight. They are liable to be hoisted on it among the savage jeers of the crowd, and to be carried through event. Leaving such scenes, there are still tranquil pleasures to be had as winter is about to lower on our mountain tops. One of the most interesting spectacles in the high uplands, is a Sunday harvesting, here and there. I never saw this anywhere else; and in this region it appears a remarkable exception to the general strictness of observance. This month of No wind month; and there are special winds which the husbandman has reason to dread, if the weather has compelled him to leave his oats or barley out on the uplands till now; and it seems to be granted among us that a genial day is not to be lost because it happens to be Sunday. and through the town, till they are half dead with shame and fear. It is a terrible sight, this punishment by lynch-law in our old-fashioned district. If the coward who beats his wife, succeeds in hiding himself, a substitute is placed on the stang, who incessantly proclaims, in a ribald rhyme, that it is not himself who is the delinquent, and who it is that he represents. This is, perhaps, our greatest bar-vember, was called by our Saxon ancestors, barism. There is another which revolts one's feelings too; but it is common throughout the kingdom, and may be said to be borrowed from London:—the Guy Fawkes celebration, on the fifth of this month. Those who are busiest in the preparation for it, probably know least what it means; and it is to be hoped that those who have most reason to know-the Catholic residents-care less for it than some of their Protestant neighbours do on their account. To boys, and other holiday-lovers, Pope-day (as they sometimes call it), is a funny holiday, with a bonfire at the end of it. For some time before, we have to look to our fences, our old trees, our outside shutters, our palings, our wood-piles; for keen eyes are on the lookout for drooping branches, hedge-stakes, loose pales, unhinged shutters, unprotected casks, and everything that will burn. Such booty is secreted, and watched as hidden treasure. On the morning of the 5th of November, we meet a Guy here and there, in all frequented places -a boy dressed up in paper ruffles, and paper mitre, old clothes, and a horrible mask, with a dark-lantern in one hand, and a spread bundle of matches in the other-all ready for blowing up the King and the Parliament, little as he knows about either. Some people give halfpence, and somebody always bestows a tarbarrel. As soon as it is dark, the gentle little Catholic lady who lives just outside my gate, and the kind-hearted Catholic gentleman on the other side of the valley, who does some helpful act for somebody every day of the year, may hear the far-off shouts of the crowds who are met to light the bonfire. If they look out, they may see the bright flame on three or four conspicuous points of the high-grounds, looking yellow under the silver stars, or turning the November fog into a ruddy, rolling cloud. If I were a clergyman or schoolmaster, I would take this matter in hand, explain to the people how terrible the story of the Gunpowder Plot really was, how much too serious to have ever become a jest and a festival, and how fit now to be practically forgotten in our intercourse with our Catholic neighbours, and out of respect for their feelings. It would be an excellent thing if we could transfer the merrymaking to the date of Catholic emancipation; but I fear that even yet our society is not able generally to enter into the full enjoyment of that great I have said that this is the wind month of the Saxons. In some parts of this district we have a wind of our own; on the signs of which, the husbandmen in certain valleys keep a careful watch. This is the celebrated local gale called the Helm wind, which comes to us over Cross Fell. The mildest breath of east wind ascending the fell which bounds us on the east, becomes cooled when it enters the cap or helm of the mountains, and rushes down to displace the warmer air of the valleys to the west. It roars fearfully in the fissures and ravines of the range; but the great conflict has to come. When it becomes rarefied by the warmth it finds at a certain distance down the slopes, it begins to rush aloft again, encounters the current from the west, discharges the moisture it carries on again reaching the cold region, and thus presents the appearance of a singular sky. The sudden cloud it emits (called the Helm Bar), seems pulled into wisps-indeed, the whole heaven seems pulled into wisps-by the contending currents. In the calmest weather, if it be growing colder, the husbandman casts a glance at the eastern heights, and is easy if all be clear. If, while not a breath of wind seems to be stirring, a little cloud forms on the ridge, and spreads north and south, he says "the Helm is on," and dreads the event if he has produce out in the fields, or fruit left on his trees. Down comes the blast in a few minutes-here unroofing a house, there whirling away a stack into the air, and scattering its contents far and wide, tearing up trees by the roots, blowing the astonished horseman from his saddle, and upsetting a laden cart into beck or ditch. The Bar sometimes opens, and discloses a stratum of higher clouds, perfectly motionless; while fragments of itself are torn off, and whirled this way and that in the opposing currents. It is said that this wind blows sometimes for nine successive days without a moment's lull; by the end of which time, I should think those who live near its range must be wellnigh distracted, for its sound is that of a roaring sea. There is a high average of health in the valleys subject to the Helm wind; but the injury done to vegetation is great. People find their spirits rise, they say, under its invigorating influence, even while they see such grain as is out, and the last foliage of the year, turned black and beaten down by this cataract of air. Stranger tricks than these are played by the elements in a region like ours. Nature sends us spectres to scare the ignorant, and puzzle the wise. Two persons, whose word no one would dispute, once saw on Souterfell, a man with a dog pursuing horses at so prodigious a rate, as to be altogether astounding; and not appearing for a moment only, but traversing the whole length of the mountain, disappearing at the further end. The witnesses agreed that the horses must have cast their shoes in such a gallop, and the man must have broken his wind, and died of the exertion; so they went early the next morning to pick up the horseshoes and the man's body, if they could find it. They found nothing but a range so steep, that neither man nor horse could traverse it at any pace. For a year this incident burdened their minds; when twenty-six more persons were placed in their predicament of witnessing a wholly incredible thing. For upwards of two hours, and till darkness shrouded the fell, troops of horsemen were seen riding along the mountain side, in close ranks, and pretty rapidly; and frequently the last but one in a troop galloped on to the front, and there put himself into line. Everybody knew that the thing could not be real. supposition which first presented itself was, that this was a refracted and multiplied image of some troop of horsemen, soldiers, or others, who might be riding somewhere within the range of the light. But it never could be ascertained that they were such; and the length of time which elapsed, the two hours occupied by the passage of this equestrian host, would still have remained unaccounted for. The facts were formally attested by a sufficiency of witnesses; and they remain to be explained. Similar appearances among our mountain districts, towards the close of the last century, were confidently pronounced by some pious persons, to be the rebuke of Heaven for our war with America. Others, however, thought we were rebuked enough by a more substantial instrumentality than these aerial armies. The But to revert to commoner incidents of the region and the month,-now is the time to enjoy the last sweetness of sunny rambles before looking for the sublimity of winter. The stillness of the woods is gone. Already the regular, alternate strokes of the woodmen's axes are heard, succeeded by the crash and shock of the falling tree. In the coppices, the young men are cutting down the underwood which has stood its sixteen years—the oak, ash, alder, birch, and hazel, which must now be brought down for use. Little or no charcoal will be made; for this wood is wanted for the bobbin-mill at Ambleside, where some of the Yorkshire and Lancashire mills are supplied; and for hoops, which will find their way to Liverpool; and for hurdles, and corals, and the peculiar kind of baskets, called twills. When we pass a dwelling which is blessed with an orchard, we may see the inhabitants busy collecting the last of their walnuts, and of their apples, and of the damsons that purple the trees on which they grow. The voices sound cheerful from among the trees, whose yellow leaves come dancing down at every shaking of the air. At regular intervals sounds the flail from within the barn. The fowls are exceedingly busy about the barn-door, while so much grain is scattered about; and the sparrows are on the watch for what they can get. A few more birds are lingering with us, flitting among the hips and haws in the hedges. If we wander on to the spring-heads, or stand to watch the flow of the beck among the stones in its channel, we may see the jerking wagtails, now perching on a stone, and now actually wading into the coldest water, in search of the maggots which they will never allow to become insects. If we wander further, and enter or coast any of the deer-parks of the district, we shall see the robin perched on some point of the paling, letting the passing air ruffle the scarlet feathers of his breast; and if we look up into the belt of trees, our eyes are met by that somewhat pathetic sight, the deserted nests among the leafless boughs. To the boy, this may be a gay sight, promising the sport of speckled eggs hereafter, and furtive climbing, and all the delights of birdnesting; but to older persons, it is a mournful sight, reminding us of the hushed songs of the vanishing year. The wood-pigeons may, however, be heard on calm days at this season; and also a much more remarkable sound,the cry of the stag wooing the hind, amidst the thick-fallen leaves in the depths of the wood. If one mount higher, even to the ridges, while the calm Martinmas weather permits, we may come upon something as interesting as anything the district can disclose,—an assignation of Science with Nature. In the wildest scenes of Nature, Science here finds a quiet field. A rain-guage is seen on the most desolate spot of the least known ridge, carefully secured against the force of the gales. I know of five such; and I have seen the aged shepherd who has them in charge, proceeding on his monthly round of visitation. As I watched the tall old man with his staff, passing out of sight on the vast mountain slope, I thought that knowledge and wisdom were as appropriate and beautiful here in the wilderness as anywhere else on earth. These solitudes are no scene for the busy handiwork of man, in their toil for bread and convenience; but neither are they a tomb where no knowledge or device is found." Alas! these words, sounding in one's mind at the very farthest point of a mountain ramble, carry one's imagination back to the dreary graveyard below, and the sick who are lying all round about it. There was little comfort to be had by hovering about there, and asking how all went on. The mere sight of John Newton's house almost decided his fate, to my expectation, so foul was the stable-yard at the corner of his dwelling, and so did the causes of unhealthiness abound in all its surroundings. Yet it startled me when the surgeon told me that he thought he could not get through: "I will not say that he cannot live," he declared, "but I own I have no expectation of it." It was even so. Clear as his mind was throughout, quiet and tractable as he was in illness, so as to beguile his wife and friends with hopes to the very last, he was cut off in his vigour, arrested in the midst of many schemes, removed from his tribe of nine children, whom he left destitute, and taken from us just when he had become the most important man in the place, to the general health and improvement. It was a heavy blow to many; and the harder to bear, because there was no natural call to him to die thus early. But for such gross violations of the laws of nature as we are guilty of here, and in most places where men congregate, he would have been living now, and a great misfortune would have been saved to us all. The day of his funeral was most dreary. I went, though the rain was coming down like a waterfall. The procession was long; for the club of Odd Fellows, to which he belonged, all attended, according to custom. I did not like the spirit-drinking on assembling, nor the levity of manner of some of the members,-encouraged, perhaps, by the obligation to attend frequent funerals, as the brethren die off; but it was some comfort to know that by the rules of the Society, the widow and children would not be allowed to come to actual want. I saw the coffin lowered into the putrid hole dug for it, and watched the last of the train away, before I left the sodden churchyard, where he and I had agreed that it was murder to survivors, and a disrespect to the dead, to deposit more corpses. There I left him, with the wintry downpour splashing upon his grave. Since that, my other agent and comrade in sanitary matters, T. C., has sunk; and I hardly know where to turn next. But such bereavements must quicken our zeal. UNREST. BY EDITH MAY. REST for a while! I'm tempest-tossed to-day. Oh, sweet chrism of God! Strengthen me with thy strength! Lo! where she stands, Who drifts out seaward, seeing the dim shore Thought widening around thought, till all grows vague. |