Country Pleasures; The Chronicle of a Year Chiefly in a Garden (1893)

8/3/2019 Country Pleasures; The Chronicle of a Year Chiefly in a Garden (1893)

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S 521.M65Cornell Uniiversity

Library


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Cornell UniversityLibrary

The original of this book is inthe Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions inthe United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924000946008


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COUNTRY PLEASURES


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ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS


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COUNTRY PLEASURESTHE CHRONICLE OF A YEAR

CHIEFLY IN A GARDEN

GEORGE MILNER

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i ' -MmNEW EDITION

LONDONLONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET

1893[All rights reserved^


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MY WIFE,WHO SHARED WITH ME

THESE "COUNTRY PLEASURES,THIS VOLUME

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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.The Country Notes presented to the reader inthis volume were written at the several placesand upon the successive dates which aresuperscribed. They record, therefore, notafterthoughts, but immediate impressions andsuch moods of mind, whether transient or per-manent, as were actually induced by the scenesportrayed. As will be observed, the greaterpart of them have reference to a garden situatedin an ancient parish on the south-eastern sideof Lancashire. Although this parish or town-ship .is already threatened on one of its bordersby the fast-approaching outworks of a greatcity, it retains some nooks of sylvan greenness,and a few places where rural quiet and com-parative seclusion still remain. Like that parishin which Chaucer's good parson laboured, it


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viii Preface.

might even yet be fitly described as 'wide,'with 'houses fer asondur.'Of the garden itself it may be said that it

possesses no especial advantages either of soilor of climate ; but it is large and oldextendingover several acres and having considerablevariety in the shape of wood and water, orchardand lawn, dingle and meadow. The readerwho cares to know anything of the adjacentcountrywhich is not usually thought to beattractivewill find it described in some of thelater Notes, and particularly in those headed'The Glen,' 'The Clough,' and 'The Moss.'It would have been better, perhaps, ifthese could have appeared in the earlierpages ; but, having been written at specialseasons, the arrangement of the book re-quired that they should remain where theynow are.To make the repetition of places and dates

unnecessary, it may be explained here that theyear referred to throughout is that of 1878;and that, where no locality is given, the writer's


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Preface. ix

own homestead and garden at Moston are tobe inferred.A word of explanation, and, in some sense,of apology, may be added with reference to thenumerous quotations in this book. The readeris asked to regard them not as excrescences,nor even as extraneous gems selected for theenrichment of the text, but as something corre-lative with, and indeed essential to, the ideaand plan of that which has been attempted. Ithas been the writer's habit to associate certainpassages of literature with certain scenes ofnatural beauty, or with particular phases ofcountry life, in such an intimate way that thepleasure given by the one was in no smalldegree dependent upon the existence andrecognition of the other ; and as the writer'schief object has been to convey to the readeras completely as possible the delight which hehimself felt, it became not only desirable, butnecessary, to insert such passages as werealready connected in his own mind with thethings described. It remains only to say that


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x Preface.

the division of the work into months and weekswill facilitate its use as a Year-book of ruralseasons ; and that it is hoped it will, at least,show how far it is possible, even in the neigh-bourhood of a large town, to study the commonaspects of Nature, and to interest the circle ofa family in the simple pleasures and home-bredobservances of a country life.

In order to avoid encumbering the text, theQuotation-references, and a few explanatorynotes, have been placed at the end of thevolume.


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PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.That another edition of this bookthe thirdin England *should be called for is a pleasantproof of its acceptability. The English peoplehave an inbred love for such records of rurallife and are not ungrateful to those who furnishthem.

Since the first edition appeared in 1881 thewriter has had abundant evidence of thegratification which his workwith all its short-comingshas afforded to many readers indifferent parts of the world. That his bookshould have secured admirers is but little ; thatit should have made friends for him both athome and abroad is much more. From personsof English descent in America, Australia, andIndia, whose thoughts revert to the old country

1 An edition was also published at Boston, America.


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xii Preface.

with singular affection, as well as from English-men temporarily exiled, he has received manywarm acknowledgments of indebtedness.

In the present edition a few corrections havebeen made, but the plan of the work forbadethe addition of new material.

April, 1893.


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CONTENTS.JANUARY.

PAGEI. Spring Days in January 2

II. Returning Winter 4III. A Fall of Snow 6

FEBRUARY.IV. The White Fog ioV. A Frosty Morning 13

VI. Snowdrops 16VII. The Crocus 20

MARCH.VIII. Spring-time in the Lake-Country 25

IX. Shrovetide 32X. Daffodils - 36

XI. Spring-time on the Coast 43


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xiv Contents.

APRIL. PAGEXII. Mid-Lent and All-Fools' 48

XIII. The Lesser Celandine 53XIV. The Daisy 59XV. On the Moorland - 95

MAY.XVI. May-day 72XVII. The History of a Throstle's Nest 77XVIII. The White-thorn 83XIX. Bees and Blossoms 88XX. Still Days : the Chronicle of a Hedge-war-

bler's Nest g3

JUNE.XXI. More about Birds : Meadow-pipit and Black-

bird ggXXII. Whitsuntide : the Skylark 106

XXIII. Summer in the Midlands iioXXIV. Midsummer Nights and Days 117

JULY.XXV. Tropical Summer : In the Hayfield 123XXVI. The Foxglove Garden 128XXVII. The Summer Woods 133XXVIII. Hot Summer again : a Gossip about Birds 139XXIX. The Old-fashioned Garden 145


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Contents. xv

AUGUST.PAGEXXX. On the Coast of Arran : Wild Flowers and

the First Aspect 153XXXI. Corrie and Glen-Sannox 159XXXII. By the Sea 167XXXIII. On the Mountain 175

SEPTEMBER.XXXIV. Reminiscences : Ben-Ghoil and Loch-Ranza 183XXXV. The Beginning of Autumn 194XXXVI. The Wild West Wind 200XXXVII. Autumn on the Welsh Hills - 205

OCTOBER.XXXVIII. Autumn on the Welsh Hills (continued) 213XXXIX. Echoes of the Spring 221

XL. Aspects of Autumn in the Garden and theWood 226

XLI. The Indian Summer 232XLII. The Glen 238

NOVEMBER.XLIII. The First Week of Winter : Red-letter

Days - 245XLIV. A Snow-storm 252XLV. The Clough - 257XLVI. November Fog 266


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Contents.

PAGEDECEMBER and JANUARY.

XLVII. The Moss "272XLVIII. Winter in the Lake-Country 280XLIX. Winter in the Lake-Country {continued) 286

L. An Old-fashioned Winter 298LI. Christmas-Eve 306LII. Conclusion : The Old Year ended, and the

New Year begun 314

An Index of Quotations 327Miscellaneous NotesGeneral Index

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COUNTRY PLEASURES.JANUARY.Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege,Through all the years of this our life, to leadFrom joy to joy : for she can so informThe mind that is within us, so impressWith quietness and beauty, and so feedWith lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor allThe dreary intercourse of daily life,Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturbOur cheerful faith, that all which we beholdIs full of blessings. Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.

'Tis born with all : the love of Nature's worksIt is a flame that dies not even there,Where nothing feeds it. Neither business, crowds,Nor habits of luxurious city-life,Whatever else they smother of true worthIn human bosoms, quench it or abate. *

Cowper, The Winter Evening.


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Country Pleasures.

I.SPRING DAYS IN JANUARY.January 17.

It almost seems as if we were to have no winterthis year, or only winter in its mildest form. And yetone cannot help having forebodings of what may stillcome upon us. I imagine that just as we usuallyhave our short Indian summer, coming in the lateautumn, so we have our ante-springour premonitoryawakening. However, we had better take what wehave got with thankfulness, and ward off the approachof pessimism by averaging the joys and sorrows ofexistence. To-day has had all the characteristics ofopening springno clear sunlight, indeed, but a hazytone of blue diffused over everythingseen in the skyand hanging about the moist ground. Those lines ofWordsworth, addressed to his sister in 1798, havebeen running in my head ever since morning:

No joyless forms shall regulateOur living calendar :We from to-day, my Friend, will dateThe opening of the year.

One moment now may give us moreThan years of toiling reason :Our minds shall drink at every poreThe spirit of the season.

Sorne silent laws our hearts will make,Which they shall long obey :We for the year to come may takeOur temper from to-day.


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January. 3

And from the blessed power that rollsAbout, below, above,

We'll frame the measure of our souls :They shall be tuned to love.

Would that we might preserve such a temper andframe such a measure for the whole year long

I have just come in from the garden ; and, thoughit is near midnight, the air is as balmy as if it wereMay ; and in the grey moonlight the whole land-scape is softened down to an exquisite harmony.

For the last few days the signs of spring have beenvery manifest. The Christmas-roses are not gone yet,though they have been with us for more than sixweeks ; but they are beginning to look forlorn, andare drooping on the beds. Perhaps the most joyousthing we have now is a yellow-jasmine. It is trainedon a brick wall, in a warm corner facing the south-west, and is in full bloom. It is leafless, and haslittle or no fragrance, but the bright colour is enough.And then there are already three clumps of primrosesin flower. They are on a sloping bank, looking north-west, but sheltered by a thorn-hedge some eight orten feet high, which in a little while will be full ofnewly-made birds' nests.

If we want to enjoy the approach of spring wemust look for leaves as well as flowers. There are

B 2


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Country Pleasures.

already plenty of dry twigs tipped with that reddishbrown which means bursting life ; but the pleasantestthing to me is the foxglove foliage, the inner leavesof which are now of a bright green. It needs butlittle imagination to see, rising months hence fromthis vivid centre, the ' foxglove spire 'grandest ofour English wild flowers.

II.RETURNING WINTER.January 23.

Since I last wrote we have had continuance ofthe mild spring weather until yesternight, when itbecame cold and boisterous. About midnight thesky was a line sight. The gibbous moon, rising late,seemed to be scudding through the deeps, now beam-ing out of a clear space, and anon plunging into agulf of clouds. The wind was then in the westduring the night it must have got into the north, forthis morning there were little wreaths of snow in re-mote corners of the garden. Still the advent of lifeand verdure proceeds. The scrubby elder-bushes are,as usual, most forward, their new leaves being alreadyuncurling ; and I notice that the crocus and snowdropare pushing their spear-like points of foliage throughthe soil. The yellow-jasmine in the warm corner has


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January. 5

not lost a petal yet. Those who love the sun and livein places where there is not too much of his lightshould cultivate yellow flowers, especially such asgrow in masses like the jasmine and the laburnum.They give a feeling of sunshine on cloudy days.

By the way I should mention that our garden isrich in corners and alleys. This would follow uponsaying that it is large and old-fashioned. The ancientpleasure-ground and the ancient house are always fullof shady retreats and embayed recesses in which menmeditate, and use devotion, and commune with friends,and, indeed, take all their highest pleasures. ' For theSide Grounds,' says Lord Bacon, thinking of somesuch places, 'you are to fill them with Varietie ofalleys. Private, to give a full Shade ; Some of them,wheresoever the Sun be. You are to frame some ofthem likewise for Shelter, that when the Wind blowsSharpe, you may walke, as in a Gallery.' In theparticular corner of which I have been speaking,where we always get out of the sharp wind, thereare, besides the yellow-jasmine, a few rose-bushesa shapely thorn with a seat under it made of a largeroot sawn in two ; and a little Dutch-garden inwhich the tulips and crocuses will first be seen.

In one of Mr. Ruskin's Oxford Lectures there isa noticeable passage about the dove, where he says


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Country Pleasures.

that the plumage of that bird when watched carefullyin the sunshine is ' the most exquisite, in the modestyof it's light, and in the myriad mingling of its hue, ofall plumage.' I know how wonderfully beautiful thesefeathers are when in motion, for I often watch aflock of doves as they are feeding on the lawn ; butI am not sure Mr. Ruskin would have spoken so abso-lutely if he had remembered the plumage of the pea-cock's neck. We have one of these birds, which comesand stands by an open window and eats from my hand,so that I have abundant opportunity of observing hisglorious colour. To me its splendid glancing andvanishing of green and blue, yellow and purple, seemfiner than that of the dove ; and yet it is also ' modest,'for the homely brown feathers, over which thecoloured ones are thrown like a delicate scarf, playthrough, and tone down, what might otherwise seemcomparatively coarse and gaudy.

III.A FALL OF SNOW.January 30.

Winter, as I expected he would, has been re-asserting himself. Our primroses have been coveredup with snow, and we have turned from thoughts ofspring to those of the time


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January.

When birds dieIn the deep forests ; and the fishes lieStiffened in the translucent ice, which makesEven the mud and slime of the warm lakesA wrinkled clod, as hard as brick ; and whenAmong their children, comfortable menGather about great fires, and yet feel cold.

The snow was grand while it lasteda dry, dusty,frozen snow. The children were hilarious. Hardlyanything produces such keen enjoyment, such ' tipsyjollity ' in a healthy and unspoiled childor, for thatmatter, in a child-like man as the sight of new-fallen snow. Our little sledge was got out, and ranbravely along the paths, making the powdered snowfly before it in clouds : there was even rough skatingto be had on the beaten track in the lane, and beforeevening there was a snow-man on the lawnat leastthe thing, by courtesy, was called a ' man,' but thesculpture was certainly pre-artistic. I could find hishead, and perhaps his nose, but his legs were nomore discoverable than those of bold Widdrington atthe battle of Chevy Chase.

The week has been notable for its fine sunrisingsand its clear nights. This is the time of year towatch the sun come up : in summer we are too lateabed to enjoy his appearing. It was very delightfulto see the first rosy colour flush the snow-furrows


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Country Pleasures.

while the moon was fading away in the south-west,the sky being entirely clear under the influence of awhistling north wind. No other wind gives the shrillwhistle that the north does. The south sighs, thesouth-west sobs, the north-west blusters, but the truenorth seems to blow a thin, keen note through ahigh-pitched reed.

Under the influence of frost, the birds, as usual,become bolder and more persistent. They flutterabout the windows, and perch on the rhododendrons,waiting for their accustomed crumb-breakfast. Therobin takes his seat on a pear-tree branch which hasbecome loosened from the wall : this coign of vantageenables him to look into the room. We are moreglad, I think, of the chance of seeing him even thanhe is of seeing us. It is at night, however, that thefeeling of winter is most strong ; and the dumbness ofit is the first thing that strikes you : there is muchto see, but nothing to hear. The watercourses arefrozen"; the birds are all hiddenwho knows where ?and the winds are still ; but how beautiful are thewhite leaning roofs of our old homestead, and the redglimmer in the windows of the neighbouring farm,seen across a long stretch of snow ; and how mar-vellously the stars seem to dance among the blackbranches of the trees !


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January. 9

Last night, I imagine, the cold was more intensethan at any time this season, if one may judge fromthe frost-tracery on the windows. Would it not bepossible to get a ' nature-printed ' photograph of thismimic representation of tropical fern and palm-jungle ? As all hope of flowers, out of doors, isgone for the present, we naturally turn to the green-house for the beauty of colour. There we get, justnow, bright pots of the Chinese-primrose ; camellias,white, damask, and pink; the deutzia, covered thicklywith blossoms ; and the delicate, crimson-tipped cy-clamen.


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io Country Pleasures.

FEBRUARY.When the shining sunne laugheth once,

You deemen the Spring is come attonceTho gynne you, fond flyes ! the cold to scorne,And, crowing in pypes made of greene come,You thinken to be Lords of the yeareBut eft, when you count you freed from feare,Comes the breme Winter with chamfred browes,Full of wrinckles and frostie furrowes,Drerily shooting his stormy darte,Which cruddles the blood and pricks the harte.

Spenser, The Shephcards Calender, Fcbruarie.

IV.THE WHITE FOG. February 6.The thermometer just too high for freezing, and

yet low enough to starve the blood ; the spectraltrees glimmering through a white fog ; your horizononly some twenty yards distant ;under such con-ditions the Earth is not a cheerful place to live in.And, to make it worse, this state of things came aftera clear and beautiful day. In the morning the skywas barred with luminous clouds, the ice was over an


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February. ninch thick on the pond, and at night we had a wholehemisphere of starsa rare thing with usnot a ragof cloud or suspicion of smoke to be detected by anyscrutiny. At eight o'clock Venus had just gone downin the west, brilliant enough, I should think, to cast ashadow, certainly irradiating perceptibly a consider-able arc of sky, and making all the stars in hervicinage look pale ; the jewelled belt of Orion wassparkling in the south ; the Seven Sisters lambentoverhead ; and the tail of the Bear pointing down-ward to north-east. At such a time a curious feelingcomes up in the mind which it is difficult to expressa feeling that we are not merely isolated dwellersupon the Earth ; but interested spectators of, and,indeed, participators in, the larger and grander systemby which we are surrounded.

It seemed as if at last we were really going tohave that long, long frost which somebody hadprophesied. The antiquarian member of our circlewent over the well-worn story of the frozen Thames,the fair, and the roasted ox, and the rest of it ; andour boys were planning a fire in the winter-house, anda grand bout of torch-light skating on the pond. But'the best-laid schemes gang aft a-gley,' a mildercounsel prevailed among the winds, the south chose


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12 Country Pleasures.

to blow, and down upon us came both the fog and apartial thaw.Is anything worse than fog in winter ? Dante,

with a proper insight, makes the Inferno foggyTo no great distance could our sight

Through the thick fog and darken'd air discern ;and again

Now let thy visual nerve direction takeAlong that ancient foam, and where abideThe densest fogs.

Of course, there is a fog in the Ancient Mariner.Coleridge could not have missed such an opportunity ;and, mark, it is a white fog, the most ghastly kind,and that from which we have been suffering :

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,It perched for vespers nine ;

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,Glimmered the white Moon-shine.

Tennyson, too, has made good use of this same whitefog. In the sad opening of Guinevere we have it :

The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still

and in the Passing of A rthur, when that last battle ofthe west was going on, and when friend and foe wereall as shadows, we are told that

A deathwhite mist slept over land and sea :Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drewDown with his blood, till all his heart was coldWith formless fear.


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February. 13

This is bad enough ; but there are always compensa-tions. In the cheerless twilight I was walking in ourlittle wood, when all at once a robin started from abough in front of me, and, as he will do even in thedead of winter, piped forth his flute solo. The chillhad not been drawn down into his blood. But it wassoon over : the short song and the last flicker of day-light both died away together.

V.A FROSTY MORNING.February 13.

There are few appearances of winter more pleasantthan the typical ' frosty morning.' I have not seenTurner's picture of that name ; but the spectacle ofwhich I am thinking could not have been paintedeven by him ; nor by any could it be adequately de-scribed. We had such a morning yesterday. Thesky was not clouded, but it was covered with a hazewhich was itself so full of light that it might be saidto have had the quality of brightness. The sun roseonly two or three fields away : he was a near neigh-bour ; his light streamed through the hedges ; heseemed to be set in the middle of the landscape, and tobe turning everything to his own substance and colour.A hardy white-rose bush, conspicuous for its forward


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leafage, glittered all over with pearl-like drops offrozen moisture, which were mingled curiously withthe little green buds. Very beautiful also were thelong shadows of the trees stretching across the hoar-frosted lawn. My own shadow

Spindling into longitude immense,In spite of gravity, and sage remarkThat I myself was but a fleeting shade,Provoked me to a smile. With eye askanceI saw the muscular proportioned limbTransformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,As they design'd to mock me, at my sideTook step for step.

The weather notes of the week would furnish arecord of the most various and diverse character;frost and thaw, rain and fog, sunshine and gloom,alternating and contrasting sharply with each other.The seasons have seemed out of joint, and' the charac-teristics of November have prevailed rather than thoseof February. And yet there are abundant signs thatspring progresses. It is curious to note, indeed, towhat an extent the resuscitation of life goes on, inde-pendently of exterior conditions. The mere lapse oftime, 'the process of the suns,' apart from the accidentsof heat and cold, seems to advance the march ofexistence, as it is said to ' widen the thoughts of men.'

Walking at noon in the lanes when the frost hadmelted a little on the hedge-banks, although the ice


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February. 15

was still thick in the ditch below, I could detect theopening leaves of a ranunculus and of two or threebright little trefoils. In the open garden the onlynew flower is the hardy polyanthus, some tufts ofwhich are just ready to break into bloom. In thegreenhouse there is a new pleasure : the many-coloured hyacinths are open, and load the air withtheir delicious odour ; there is also the delicateblossom of the Scilla-amoena, a dainty bit of aerialblue, more exquisite even than that of our Englishforget-me-not. In the hot-house the most strikingthings are the begonias, with their pale-pink andeccentrically-shaped flowers ; and in the fernery wehave a myriad-twinkling of green, an unfolding ofwoolly crook-shaped and caterpillar-like buds ; and,best of all, a row of hart's-tongue, the new leaves ofwhich look like six or seven white eggs laid in agreen nest. Some of the old fronds of these are overtwo feet in length. I think those were not muchlarger which one used to see growing so luxuriantlyon the sides of the draw-well in the courtyard ofConway Castle.

That the birds have not had a hard winter isobvious from the clusters of red berries which I stillfind hanging on the hawthorn bushes. Every daynow they become more noisy, more demonstratively


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busy and officious ; but one must admit that eventheir elementary twittering brings a joy to the heartsuch as the most elaborate music would not give.

In the dove-cote I see that nest-building is goingon with energy ; but I do not find that there are anyeggs yet. The statutory time for these, I am told, isthe feast of St. Valentine.

I am much interested in an ancient-lookingsparrow which comes and sits in a large thorn overmy head while I am feeding the doves and peacocks.After the larger creatures have gone to a respectfuldistance he drops down, and in a very self-satisfiedmanner picks up the morsels that remain. He is aphilosopher. If he cannot have first, and best; hetakes what he can get with dignity and composure.

VI.SNOWDROPS.February 20.

These first flowers of springwhat a graciouscharm they have, a charm which is all their own !The meanest and poorest little blossom is more to usto-day than a whole parterre of gaily-coloured, summerfavourites will be a few months hence. ' I only wishto live till the snowdrops come again ; ' one can under-


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February. ij

stand that line better if one has ever seen the face ofa sick child, who has been imprisoned all the winter,light up at the sight of an early spring flower. Oursnowdrops came out on the nineteenth. I found thefirst one at the foot of the yellow-jasmine, whoseflowers, by the way, are almost quite fallen. Ithought it was aloneonly a forerunnerbut I soondiscovered that they were out all round, in the wild-garden, and along the beds. What a perfect pieceof work it is ; and what a delicate harmony is theresult of its snow-whiteness streaked with palegreen ! No wonder it should stand for us as anemblem of unsullied purity :

Make Thou my spirit pure and clearAs are the frosty skies,

Or this first snowdrop of the yearThat in my bosom lies.

The sunshine which brought out the snowdropsremoved the final remains of our snow-man, for thelast vestige of him disappeared on the same day.One of my little people came to me with quite apiteous face to say that the ' man ' was all gone.However, he had an existence of three weeks, andhis end was classical. He was himself his ownmonument ; and, in a certain sense, he may be saidto have been disposed of by cremation.


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Country Pleasures.

Lord Bacon held that all life was larger and morevigorous ' upon the full of the moon.' I have noticedthis week that one or two of our nights, lighted bythe full moon, have been in great contrast with ourdays. The latter were common-place, colourless anddrearythe sky blotted with featureless clouds ; butat night, a wind springing up, as is often the case,existence became a grander thing. I saw the moonroll up out of the eastand what a roll there is inher motion when she is near the earthof such abreadth as to make her appearance startling andphenomenal. And then began her slow ascentthrough a clear sky. Could I help reverting tothose magical lines in the old sonnet

With how sad steps, O Moone, thou clim'st the skiesHow silently, and with how wanne a facebut when, at last, she reached the zenith, the senti-ment seemed to change ; she was now regnant, andI said to myself

The Moon doth with delightLook round her when the heavens are bare ;

and againThe moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.It was a glorious picture ; and the note of it was

unity and simplicity ; no stars to lead away the mind,no clouds, and hardly any shadow ; only the moon


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February. 19

and the sky which held her, and the receptive earth.How still and quiet the old house looked with onlyits one light glimmering a home of sleep standingin the midst of its moonlit belt of evergreens !

After this came some real spring weather. Thesun for the first time in the year could be felt as asource of perceptible warmth, that warmth which, likewine, makes glad the heart of man. A brisk windmade a pleasant noise, and tossed about the barebranches of the trees ; the short, new blades of grasscould be seen in the meadows, distinguishable bytheir freshness from those which have been compara-tively green all through the winter ; the strawberryleaves began to unfold their fans, and the gooseberrybushes were covered with leaf-buds, which lookedlike , pin-points of light. Towards evening the sunhad done his work of calling forth the new stream ofinsect life : and in the level beams one could see thestrange dance of gnats going on the curiouslymonotonous pirouetting up and down a two-feetspace of air. A short life, I suppose, and a merryone.

c 2


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Mil.THE CROCUS.February 27.

In our Calendar of flowers this must be the week ofthe crocus, as the last was that of the snowdrop. Thetwo flowers are always pretty near to each other inpoint of time. The colder and paler blossom comesfirst, but the warm crocus is never long after it. Bythe ' warm crocus ' I mean, of course, the deepyellow one, which is the most characteristic and themost precious, because it looks like sunshine on theground, now, when sunshine is scarce. The yellowis indeed wonderfully brilliantbrilliant almost as aflame. Tennyson quite appropriately makes CEnonesay-

Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower,And at their feet the crocus brake like fire.

One must not despise, however, the other two colours,the lilac and the white, which are beautiful enoughin themselvesthe white especially, when it is fullyopened and shows its large saffron-coloured stigma.

That would be no starved or unlovely garlandwhich one might make of flowers culled entirelyfrom the pages of our lesser and almost unknownpcets. The other day I lighted upon the followingdainty fancy by Sebastian Evans :


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February. 21

Come, gather the crocus-cups with me,And dream of the summer coming :

Saffron, and purple, and snowy white,All awake to the first bees humming.

The white is there for the maiden-heart,And the purple is there for sorrow :

The saffron is there for the true true love,And they'll all be dead to-morrow.Like many other good things, the crocus is a giftfrom the east ; and Milton appropriately puts theflower into his Paradise.

Under foot the violet,Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlayBroidered the ground, more coloured than with stoneOf costliest emblem.Finding the crocus out in my own garden, I

strolled towards an old house, not far distant, where Iknew I should see them in greater profusion. Passingunder a row of beech trees, I descend a steep lanepaved in the middle with the old-fashioned cobble,and at the side with larger stones as a causeway.On the banks here, when I was a boy, I used togather the speedwell and the violet ; but they aregone now, and I fear are not destined to return. Atthe bottom, in what is locally called ' The Hollows,'are three or four cottages which lean fraternally to-gether. Two or three streamlets gather into a brook ;and as each water-course has its own tiny valley, the


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conformation, for so small an area, is singularly varied.A tall wood overhangs and makes, from most points,a fine background. The cottages are white, butweather-stained ; the roof-lines bend and waver ; andon each gable there is the old ball-and-pinnacledecoration. Long ago there was a water-wheel anda mill here. Allusion is made to this in an inscrip-tion, couched in questionable Latin, over the porcheddoor of one of the cottages :

T.S. S.

Hanc domum 1713Condebant Molam 1714Homo Viviscit TuncFabricat MoxOccumbit.

Ascending, again, by another short and steep lane,I come upon the old mansion ; and on the grassybrow in front I see the crocuses again, as I have seenthem now, never failing in their season, for moreyears than one would care to name. They are notall out yet, but a few sunny days will bring them intofull bloom ; and then many a pale mechanic will beseen wandering out from the town in the evening,with his children by the hand, to look at the familiarsight. It is a good thing to plant crocuses, as thesehave been planted, in the grass, after they have


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flowered one year in the beds : they need no moreremoving and multiply themselves without troubleby throwing off new bulbs.

Few of those who come to look at the crocuseswill now see the ancient lady of the house, who, how-ever, still watches over the flowers. Charles Lambwould have delighted to sketch both her form andcharacter. She is a survival from a statelier agethan ours ; sweet in manner and yet reserved ; anaristocrat without a title ; careless of the rich, butkind to the poor, and curiously reverenced by such ofthem as are native to the soil, who always speak ofher, by an affectionate courtesy, as ' the Lady Mary.'Alas ! here, too, all is changing, and she must oftenlook out sadly enough on the ordered files of modernhouses which are marching with ominous rapiditytowards the once secluded home of her childhood.The weather this week has been for the most partdim and rainy; and yet the sky has not been withoutbeauty, especially towards duskthe beauty of softgrey cloud breaking into many shades, as the lightmoved behind it, and woven across by the darkbranches of the trees. At six o'clock in the eveningI heard the thrush singing for the first time in thewood : for a few minutes there was quite a chorus ofbirds, but his note, mellow and yet loud, overpowered


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them all. The house-pigeons are sitting. In theopen air the birds are beginning to mate, but there isno nest-building yet.

A leafless mezereon which stands in the orchardhousewhere there is no artificial heat but only pro-tection from exterior cold is in full bloom ; and apear-tree on a south-west wall is covered with yellowand glutinous-looking leaf-buds. At the foot of thesame tree there is a bunch of ' living green,' which,later on, will climb higher up the bole, and arrayitself in the delicate blossoms of the sweet-pea.


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MARCH.Slayer of the winter, art thou here again ?welcome, thou that bring'st the summer nigh !

The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain,Nor will we mock thee for thy faint, blue sky.Welcome, O March ! whose kindly days and dryMake April ready for the throstle's song,Thou first redresser of the winter's wrong !

William Morris, The Earthly Paradise.

VIII. -SPRING-TIME IN THE LAKE-COUNTRY.Legberthwaite : March 4.We shift the basis of our Country Notes this week

from Moston to Thirlmere and the Vale of SaintJohn. It is a 'far cry,' and our journey hither wasnot over till after midnighta rainy and a murkymidnight. At first a certain fascination arises frompassing in the dark along roads and through scenes,every turn and aspect of which have become familiarto you ; but at length this becomes wearisome ; weare jaded ; we hear only the monotonous clatter of


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the horses' feet, see only the tree-trunks hurryingpast, and now and then the white foam on the lakesbut once in-doors and there is a right hospitablewelcome and a blazing fire.

In the morning the rain had passed away, andonly to look out through the chamber-window waspeace. We are sojourning in an old country-house,built in the early part of the seventeenth century, andlike all such houses, quaint and rambling, but every-where suggestive of repose. A smooth lawn slopesdown gently to the lake's edge ; but on the furthershore are the savage fells, and behind us is the breastof Helvellyn. The rooms are not large, but theyhave been built for comfort ; and, just as in some ofour old cathedrals, one finds every style and randomfancy of architecture, from the earliest arch to thelatest reredos ; so here one sees, either in the struc-ture itself or in its furniture, something which willmark for us every quarter-century, perhaps, since thefoundation was laid. The floors are polished : thestaircase is of black oak, with twisted rails ; one smallpiece of painted, ancestral glass adorns the landinggrates and mantelpieces are Georgianthey makeyou think of the wigs which many a night must havenodded over them ; and up and down the apartmentsthere are dainty-looking black chairs, with traces of


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faded gilding upon them ; queer mahogany cabinets,obese and bow-legged, adorned with lacquered metal-work; water-colour sketches very early and very pale;ingenious devices in silver, almost worn away by muchpolishing ; implements of sport and of the field-saddle and bridle, boot and spur, hook and net ; and,last, many an old foliosermon or history or devo-tionresting still in its ponderous and musty calf-binding.

It is not difficult to shape for oneself the kind oflife which people must have led in an ancient houselike this long before the poet Gray had so much asdiscovered the country. What delightful summerdays they must have had, when the old-fashionedgarden with all its sweet posies was in bloom, andwhen the bees were out on the fells ; and what wildwinter nights, when even Keswick would be cut off,and when Dunmail Raise was blocked with snowA lonely, leisurely, uneventful, and yet, withal, aneminently comfortable life. Among the bookishtreasures which I turned over here, perhaps the mostfruitful in making the past familiar to me was amanuscript volume of cookery recipes, the ' painfulrecord left by some notable housewife of the lastcentury. It bears the date 1721, and is written in thelarge, upright, and ornate hand of the period. There


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was at any rate no stint of cunningly-devised daintiesin those days. We read of how to make ' strongmead ' and how to make ' small mead,' along withmany other comforting drinks ; and how to make' rare sweet water.' Think what water it must havebeen when this was the initial process : ' Take mar-joram, lavender, rosemary, muscovy, thyme, walnut-leaves, damask roses, and pinks.' And here is arecipe in full, which I give with all its quaintness andsingularity of spelling :

To make Gelles of Current.Pull ye Currens when they are Drye and pick them, and

put a few Rasps to it, if you have them ; and Sufuse them inan Earthen pott all night over the fire in a Cettle full of water;but mind that ye water Do not gett into ye pott ; then squesethem in your hands and strain them through a Cloth, takingcare of ye seeds that they goe not in ; and to Every pint ofSerrip a pound of Double Refined Shugar, and beat it ; putyour Shugar in ; Set it over Clear Coals and Lett it boyle up,and Scum it, if there be need, then put in your Serrip, Letting itnot boyle ; Always stirring it till you think it will Cette, whichyou may Know by Dropping A Little upon a plate, and Lett itStand till it be cold ; but take care you let it not be over Stif,and when you think it is Right, then take it of ye fire and putit in your Glases hott, this will serve for any other Gelles.

It seems to me that the spring is less advancedhere than at home. The snowdrops are plentiful andvery lovely, growing, not as with us in single tufts,


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but thickly together in white patches, like daisies,under the trees and on the grass. There are largebunches of them set on the table at meals ; they lookwintry, but the smell of them, faint like the primrose,is very charming. The only other plant which I candiscover in flower is the gorse, and that is but justbreaking its bud. In the woods there is no newleafage yet. The whole landscape might be paintedin three coloursbrown, green, and grey. The sprayof the trees is brown, the bracken on the mountains isbrown, and the deep drift of leaves and beech-nuts inthe hollows and under the hedges is brown ; the grass,and the ubiquitous moss, and the laurels are green ;while the tree-stems and the skies are grey.

Sailing on the lake, we see that there are stillstreaks of snow on Helvellyn Low Man. The windis north-west, and the sky is clouded ; but sometimesthere is a bit of fleeting blue ; and now and then amomentary and unexplained gleam of sunlight lyingon the broad shoulder of some distant mountainmakes one think of Bunyan's Land of Beulah.

The birds are plentiful. They seem to have finecovert under the thick, round bushes of laurel ; thereare many finches, the green-finch being most beautifuland conspicuous. I saw several flocks of wild duckscross the lake ; there was also the black-and-white-


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winged gooseander, and two or three herons ; one ofthese lighted upon a fir-tree, and a queer object helooked, swinging about and stretching forth his longneck. I must not forget to mention a little wren, nobigger than a plum, who was standing on the top ofa pollard-willow. He nodded to me as I passed, asif to say 'good morning,' and then turned into hishouse, which was a hole in the tree.

The tourist, who is making the usual rush fromGrasmere to Keswick, seldom gets more than aglimpse of the Vale of St. John ; but no valley in thedistrict would better repay quiet and careful exami-nation. It is wide enough for a vale, yet in placesit has the romantic character of a gorge, and verygrandly is it walled in by the pyramidal forms ofSaddleback. Sir Walter Scott calls it

The narrow valley of Saint John,Down sloping to the western sky.

And his further description is not inapt :Paled in by many a lofty hill,The narrow dale lay smooth and still,And, down its verdant bosom led,A winding brooklet found its bed.But, midmost of the vale, a moundArose, with airy turrets crown'd,Buttress, and rampire's circling bound,

And mighty keep and tower.


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We found this vale full of refreshing contrast andhealing influence as we wandered along it on Sundaymorning to the small church at the farther or northernend. There was a little sunshine on the hedges, andI could detect the new leaves of the wild-strawberry,the celandine, and the wood-sorrel. How perfect wasthe stillnessperfect because broken, but broken onlyby the fall of distant water, the low chirp of birds,and the sough of the wind. The church, as usualin this country, is a lowly building. You enter theyard under an arch of thick holly and boxthe hollystill carries its red berriesand there is a willowtrained round the porch ; the graves are mostlynameless, but the snowdrop carries its white memo-rial over rich and poor alike.

To-day I have been to Rydal, and looked in uponan old artist friend, who now, wisely enough, makeshis home there. We found him lovingly at work ona sprig of willow, trying to realise the poet's descrip-tion of the

Satin-shining palmOn sallows in the windy gleams of March.

Happy painter ! his life is his work, and his workis only the religious love of nature expressed in actThere was misty rain on the hills, but Rydal cannotbe spoiled, and everything was touched with quiet


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beauty. We walked together to the margin of theMere, and then up to Wordsworth's old house, where,on the famous terrace, we found cowslips and daisies,mingled with snowdrop and crocus ; and, under theporch, in pots, carefully tended as a' kind of votiveoffering to the dead, there was the lesser celandine,his own chosen and favourite flower.

IX.SHROVETIDE.March 12.

In the Third Book of Kenelm Digby's Broad Stoneof Honour, there is an eloquent passage in which thewriter, trying to set forth, as is his wont, the attrac-tive side of the Middle Ages, shows how the commonlife was then beautified by the mingling of the naturaland the ecclesiastical seasons. Without accepting infull these romantic and sentimental views, one mayadmit the wisdom of breaking the dead monotony ofmodern existence by observing, especially for thesake of the young, such simple festivals as yet remainin vogue. Since I last wrote, the feast of Shrovetidehas been duly honoured among us, in the old-fashioned country style, with all customary rites andceremonies, aesthetic and culinary.

The first thing is to take down the ' Christmas,' as


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the decorative evergreens are always called in Lanca-shire. We never allow this to be done until Shrovetidehas come in, and then the doing of it is not anoperation but a ceremony. It marks a point in thehistory of the year, when, even if we look back withsome regret on the in-door festivities of Christmas, weare also looking forward to the out-door pleasures ofspring. And so there was much seasonable merrimentand boisterous shouting as the ladder was carriedabout, and the great bunches were hauled down andtaken by many willing hands to an open space in thegarden. Then, when all had been heaped up, a livecoal was put underneath, and the dry but yet resinousmass of holly and ivy, laurel and fir burst into such afire that the light of it, for a few minutes, might havebeen seen for miles over the dark fields. It was a finething to watch the sharp, arrowy flames darting outfrom the central mass like living creatures, as if insearch of something to devour. When we went in-doors again we found the house filled with the sweetscent of the burnt branches. I must not omit tomention that a bough of mistletoe was saved andlaid up with the yule-log brand to be kept until nextyear.

And then came the scene in the kitchen, whereone who will not wear that symbol again, at any rate


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for a twelvemonth, donned the cook's apron, wieldedthe hissing pan, and tossed the savoury cakes intothe air. Herrick has a quaint little poem on thetaking down of the evergreens, but he fixes the timefor it as Candlemas Eve, not Shrovetide :

Down with the rosemary, and soDown with the bays and misletoe ;Down with the holly, ivy, allWherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hallThat so the superstitious findNo one least branch there left behind ;For look, how many leaves there beNeglected there, maids, trust to me,So many goblins you shall see.

Our maid carefully gathered up the scattered leaves,and so, even in the old oak-room after midnight,there were no goblins to be seen. The hall looksnaked enough now the accustomed garnishing is gonebut to-morrow we shall put up the orthodox branchof green box, and that will hold its place till Eastercomes round.

The weather has been quite March-like in charac-ter. We have had some rain, a little light frost atnight, and much heavy wind, rising on one occasion atleast into a gale. At sunset there was a momentarygleam of crimson, over which the clouds suddenlyswirled and it was dark : a little while after, throughanother rift in the vapour, there was a vision of the


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new moon with the old moon in her armsthestrange, spectral disk, with the thin bright crescentat its edge

O say na sae, my master deir,For I fear a deadlie storme.Late late yestreen I saw the new mooneWi' the auld moon in hir arme ;And I feir, I feir, my deir master,That we will com to harme.

No doubt, as Coleridge has itThe bard was weather-wise, who madeThe grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.

At any rate, soon after this there was a great roar-ing in the wood, and a tossing and smiting togetherof branches, which continued through the night.The next morning the dead twigs of winter werestrewn all over the ground.

The leafage is increasing in the garden, and is nowfor the first time beginning to be perceptible as acloud of green. The fruit-treescurrant, gooseberry,cherry, and pear-treeare most forward. The labur-num shows its white leaf-bud, and the lilac its darkgreen. The flowering currant is in bloom. In thegreenhouse the camellias, which have been makinga great show with their scarlet and white, rose-redand blush-pink, are now nearly over. By the waya friend gives me intelligence from Cornwall whichD 2


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makes our latitude seem cold and bare indeed. There,he tells me, the camellias are flowering in the openair, the primroses are by thousands in the hedge-banks, and men lie on their backs in the sun.

The birds are hard at work on the lawn in amorning. They seem to get an ample breakfast withmarvellous rapidity. To-day I counted fourteenstarlings in a flock, 'feeding like one'the sun shin-ing on their metallic-looking plumage as they strucktheir long, yellow bills into the ground. A littleapart from the crowd were three or four throstles, lessbold, and feeding more daintily. The starlings, Ithink, have begun to build. We see them carryingsticks and straws under the eaves of the barn.The plumage of this bird, though subdued, is verybeautiful if carefully examined. The feathers areblue, green, black, and a lightish purple, and someof them are curiously tipped with buff. As the birdmoves in the sun these colours mingle, and producethat steely appearance to which I have already alluded.

X.- DAFFODILS.March 20.

In the early part of the past week there have beensome nights of keen frost ; the thermometer marked


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a minimum of five degrees below freezing, and wehad fields and roof-tiles whitened in the morning;but later the weather has grown more genial. Therehas been but little rain, and in the middle of the daywe have even seen clouds of dustthat dust which,as the old saying has it, is, in March, worth a king'sransom. The soil is what the gardener calls ' mellow,'turning over without sticking to the spade: and in thekitchen-plots we are beginning to put in plants andseeds.

Can anything be more delightful than these springmornings are ? Even the shadows lie softly andtenderly along the ground, which is yet moist withnewly melted rime ; the doves flutter down from thecote, and their wings glance in the sun as they flylow about one's head ; and then, there is the flickerall round you of bright, new buds coming from theirsheaths in a virgin purity untouched as yet by smokeor grime. But best of all there are now the daffodilsa glorious sight ! We have them by hundreds inour little wood and in the old perennial flower-garden.They look best under the trees, growing withoutorder or arrangement. To my thinking they areperfect both in form and colour. The form is classicand might be put into a Greek picture without modi-fication ; and the colourwell, no wonder that some


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of our artists are enraptured with it ! Only look howthe rich, deep green of the foliage passes through atinge of the same colour on the outer petals into thetwo harmonious yellows which make the inner partof the flower. Some of them are still in bud, butboth wind and sun are acting upon them, and not afew have shaken out their corollas to the breeze.

The daffodil is eminently a flower of the wind.When you see it rudely tossed about you are notpained but gladdened. This must have been justthe feeling which Wordsworth had when he wrote,in 1804, that nameless poem which is among hisbest

I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host of golden daffodils ;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle o'er the Milky Way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay :Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.The waves beside them danced; but theyOutdid the sparkling waves in glee :A poet could not but be gay,In such a jocund companyI gazedand gazedbut little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought.


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For oft, when on my couch I lie,In vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude ;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.

It was by the shore of Ullswater, in the woodsbelow Gowbarrow Park, that Wordsworth saw thecrowd of daffodils which suggested this poem. Howmuch he owed to his gifted sister Dora one may judgeafter reading her description of the same sight, asgiven in her prose diary :

' I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grewamong the mossy stones about them : some restedtheir heads on these stones as on a pillow : the resttossed, and reeled, and danced, and seemed as if theyverily laughed with the wind, they looked so gay andglancing.'

It is interesting to observe that while Wordsworthwas indebted for the body of this poem to his sister,he also owed the crown of it to his wife. He himselfsaid :

'The two best lines in it are by M. W. Thedaffodils grew, and still grow, on the margin of Ulls-water, and probably may be seen to this day asbeautiful in the month of March, nodding their goldenheads beside the dancing and foaming waves.'


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rather than the joyous side of the daffodil, and moral-ises upon it with a sweet severity :

Fair Daffadils, we weep to seeYou haste away so soon ;

As yet the early-rising sunHas not attained his noon.

Stay, stay,Until the hasting dayHas run

But to the even-songAnd having prayed together, we

Will go with you along.Shakspere's IVrarch flowers are the daffodil and

the violet. Autolycus, in the Winter's Tale, sings :When daffodils begin to peer,With heigh I the doxy over the dale,

Why, then comes in the sweet o' the yearFor the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

And Perdita in the same play says :Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and takeThe winds of March with beauty ; violets dim,But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyesOr Cytherea's breath.

This last passage is probably the most perfectlyfelicitous piece of expression in the language, andour best example of discreet and faultless art, co-existing with the flowing opulence of an apparentlyspontaneous evolution. Much of the exquisite har-


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4Z Country Pleasures.

mony of the lines will be found to depend on theway in which alliteration, not too conspicuous, iscarried from line to line, and on the fact that, per-haps with one exception, there are not in any oneline two accented feet carrying the same vowel-sound.

We have no violets yet to match with our daffodilshere ; but a friend sent me the other day a packet ofthem from Hereford. They had been gathered in thelanes, and are, I think, viola odorataShakspere'sviolet. The corolla is white, but there is a dash ofyellow on the nectary, and the calyx is pale blue. Iput them into a shallow vessel of water and theyrevived, and have given us in the room for days thescent of ' Cytherea's breath.'

It is pleasant to see flowers so plentiful in thetown now. In the market-place there are bunches oflilac and baskets of wallflowers for sale ; children cryprimroses and violets in the street, the country cartscome in with wreaths of daffodils about the horses'heads ; and, to-day, I met in the heart of the city astately girlshe might have been Herrick's Juliacarrying, somewhat proudly, a great bunch of daffo-dils in front of her. If Burne Jones or GabrielRossetti or Frederick Shields had seen the thingthey would have made a picture of it and called it' The Lady of the Daffodils.'


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XI. -SPRING-TIME ON THE COAST.March 27.

After a mild morning on the twenty-first the frostset in again with great severity at night and lasted forsome days. The fickleness of our English spring isproverbial :

As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleetsDeform the day delightless.

More than once we have had snow. On the twenty-second a few ' fortuitous atoms ' came wavering downin the early morning : we wondered if it could besnow ; then followed the large woolly flakes, and afterthat a whirling drift. The birds seemed quite startled.In half-an-hour the landscape was transformedwewere in mid-winter : in an hour it was all gone again,with the exception of a few flakes which looked likewhite blossom on the green of a budding elder. Onthe twenty-fourth there was a heavier fall. The snowwas piled up on the window-sills ; there were iciclesa foot long ; and all day there was a strip of snowplastered on the north-west sides of the trees. Thecold has brought the robin to the window again andmy gentleman-sparrow sits on the thorn waiting forhis crumbs. The throstles seek their food not on the


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lawn but on the softer ground under the rhododen-drons. In the orchard-house the peaches are showingtheir delicate pink blossom. In the greenhouse thehyacinths are over, but their place has been taken bythe barbaric colour of the tulips,

Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew.I had opportunity last week of comparing notes

of the country life here with that in a Lancashire sea-side village in the parish of North Meols. Althoughvegetation was not much further advanced, the airwas, of course, milder than in this neighbourhood,and the sky wore that soft and humid blue which isthe prime characteristic of spring. In an old Rectorygarden, neglected and weedy, but beautiful in itsnegligence, I found the daffodils in full bloom, shakingtheir golden heads over an embroidery of crocus andprimrose, or flaming like torches down some dark andgrass-grown alley. Overhead the rooks were at workpatching and mending their old nests. Some wereslowly making wing with material from adjoiningfields, some were sitting in the half-formed nests,looking uncomfortably large for their habitations, andothers were perched on the swinging branches, ap-parently watching or superintending the progress ofrepairs. It is curious to find how few people there


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but the cows stand in it to drink, and the duckspaddle about and dive for worms. In the farm-yardswere some odd-looking and curiously leaning stacksof bean-straw. It was pleasant to hang over thefences and look into the cottage-gardensgardens ofthe old sort-a little bush of silver-edged holly, acrooked willow in a corner with one primrose at itsroot, a tuft of polyanthus, a few crimson daisies, abed of sage and thyme, and a bit of fresh, greenparsley.

Knowing that some friends were in the neighbour-hood, I inquired for them from a girl who was leaningagainst a cottage porch. Had she seen anyone paint-ing ? Yes ; and I should hear of them at the inn.At the inn I discovered one of my friends working fromthe figure. His picture might be called ' The Toilersof the Sea,'a group of fisher-folk coming up sadlyfrom the shore, bending under their burdens, theback-ground a wild and gleaming evening sky. Theother was down in the meadows, south of the village.I found him painting a green bank and a willow-hedge behind the figure of a womana cockle-gatherer ;

Blowzed with health, and wind, and rain,And labour ;

a piece of genuine life, real and true both in colour


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and form, and yet touched with poetic feeling. Inthese warm meadows we wandered until nightfall.We looked at the old Meols Hall, now a farm-house,where, in the days of Queen Mary, lived a certainDame Mary Hesketh, who in later times was castinto prison for making converts to the ' papist faythe 'we noted the lovely colour of the budding willowswhich are everywhere about, bending back from thesea in groves and in hedgerowsa soft, light brown,with a touch of pink in it, harmonising perfectly withthe spring sky ; we found our first daisies in the grass,and the little shepherd's-purse on the banks ; andthen, turning westward, we could see the undulatingdunes of sand, a strip of the blue estuary, and a fleetof boats laid up for the weekly rest from labour. Thecostumes of the locality are still finequite Breton incharacter. The men have not learned the hatefulprison-fashion of cropping their heads ; they havetheir hair long and wear bright blue jerseys. Thewomen are stalwart, solid, ' dour ' persons ; they stillkeep to the short petticoat, and have lilac hoods, withstiff, outstanding frills; and both their hands andtheir faces tell of a hard life by land and on the sea.


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APRIL.Proud-pied April dress'd in all his trimHath put a spirit of youth in every thing,That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.

Shakspere, Sonnets, xcviii.Oh, to be in EnglandNow that April's there,And whoever wakes in EnglandSees, some morning, unaware,That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheafRound the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,While the chaffinch sings on the orchard boughIn Englandnow !

Robert Browning, Home Thoughtsfrom Abroad.

XII.MID-LENT AND ALL-FOOLS'.April 3.

' Comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb,'is the old saw about the month of March. Whateverrude and leonine blasts he might have indulged induring his early days, certainly his going out hadnothing in it of a lamb-like character. I do not remem-ber a pleasanter or a more seasonable March than this


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has been ; but the last day of it was one of the vilestof the yeara bitter, biting, inclement, and dreary day.Every half hour there was a wild drift of sleet, andthe frost was just severe enough to put that thin coat-ing of ice on pond and pool which gives you a senseof uncomfortable starving such as you don't get evenin a much lower temperature. Cheerless, however, asthe day was out of doors, we made the night cheerfulenough within. We had a roaring coal fire and satround it, remembering that it was the festival of Mid-Lent. Our ancestors certainly deserve much credit fortheir ingenuity in devising of festivals. Shakspere's' merry Shrovetide ' is hardly out of sight before wefind ourselves baiting, as it were, by the way at alittle intermedial feasta feast in the middle of afast. Of course we partook of that mysterious cake simanellus, simnel, or simblinthe last is our ordinaryLancashire pronunciationwhose history and the ety-mology of whose name are both vague enough to formthe subject of constant warfare among our antiquarianpundits. Also, we compounded and passed round asa loving-cup the proper beverage for the day, theancient braggat bragawd of the Welshancient asChaucer

Hir mouth was sweete as bragat is or meth,Or hoord of apples, layd in hay or heth ;E


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more ancient still, for is it not found some eight cen-turies earlier in Taliesin and Aneurin ?

I do not profess to have any great skill in thesematters, but I think our braggat was fairly mixed,and a right pleasant drink. The curious may care toknow that it consists of new-laid eggs well beaten,sugar or honey, hot ale, and a dash of nutmeg orother spice. I suppose it must be something likethat 'egg-hot,' of which dear old Lamb was so fond,and to which he makes such frequent allusion. Writ-ing to Coleridge, he says : ' I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking Oronooko, associated circumstanceswhich ever forcibly recall to my mind our eveningsand nights at the Salutation.'

This festival, besides being known as SimnelSunday, Mid-Lent Sunday, and Braggat Sunday, isalso called by the singular name of Mothering Sun-day. The designation had probably a purely eccle-siastical origin ; but in later times it fitted itself to apleasant social observance, and in country places theday is still known as a time when children revisittheir parents, taking with them as a gift a simnelor other confection. Herrick, in one of his manypoems addressed to Dianeme, alludes to thiscustom :


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I'le to thee a simnell bring,'Gainst thou go'st a mothering ;So that when she blesseth thee,Half that blessing thou'lt give me.

During the latter half of last month there wasfrost nearly every night, the thermometer beingoften down to twenty-five degrees ; but as a compen-sation, we had bracing air and much noble sky-scenery :the half moon riding through those undu-lating fields of white and grey cloud which make themost capacious-looking heaven we ever see ; or thesun, setting large and bright in. a translucent westpale green and of infinite depth and barred only bya few streaks of violet cloudor overhung sometimesby threatening masses of vapour which are best de-scribed in the old Bible-phrase as like ' garmentsrolled in blood.'

The changes of temperature have been very great,and show what we have to prepare ourselves forduring what we are pleased to call spring weather.In the afternoon of one day the thermometer roseto 51 in the sun ; while it had been down in the pre-vious night to nineteen degrees. It is wonderful howwell the birds stand the cold. Going out on starrynights before the moon had risen, and walking with-out noise under a high bank, I have seen them sit-ting in the bare hedge against the sky by five or six

E 2


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together ; and, even when the snow has been on thetrees, they have seemed merry enough, fluttering overthe old nests and scattering the flakes about withtheir wings. The starlings, however, during theseverest weather, relinquished their nest-building,and were seen going about in flocks again.

It is interesting also to note how little the vegeta-tion is injuredit is, of course, retardedby the cold.I have seen the tenderest half-uncurled leaf-buds fillednight after night with snow or congealed moisture,and yet they show no blackening or sign of decay.The worst thing the frost did for us was to lay downthe daffodils : but part of them rose again, and manyare still only in bud ; and, some bright morning, erelong, there will be a new and glorious display. Theonly perceptible fruit-blossom out of doors is thatof the pear-trees. It is formed but not opened orcoloured, and it has been quite stationary now formore than a fortnight. In the garden the commonelm is in flower, the bright yellow leaf-buds of thehorse-chestnut are conspicuous when the sun is onthe trees, and in the vinery the dry-looking canes arebreaking all over into fresh green.

Monday, the first of April, was signalised by apretty smart fall of snow in the early morning. Whenone considers what the poets have written about


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' ethereal mildness ' and the like, this seems to be anot inappropriate occurrence for the day. As I havealready quoted from Charles Lamb, I may as wellconclude with another extract from his delightfulpagesan extract which I take the liberty of apply-ing to my own uses :

' The compliments of the season to my worthymasters, and a merry first of April to us all ! ...Take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told ityou, if you please, that he who hath not a dram offolly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worsematter in his composition. . . . And what arecommonly the world's received fools, but suchwhereof the world is not worthy? And what havebeen some of the kindliest patterns of our speciesbut so many darlings of absurdity, minions of thegoddess, and her white boys ? Reader, if you wrestmy words beyond their fair construction, it is you,and not I, that are the April Fool.'

XIII.THE LESSER CELANDINE.April 10.

The flower of the week is the bright little celan-dine, the beautiful but plebeian blossom of the fieldsand hedges. Crossing a meadow near the house you


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come to a runnel of water between two grassy banks,and there, under a thorn, gleaming in the sun, isWordsworth's flower.

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,Let them live upon their praisesLong as there's a sun that sets,Primroses will have their gloryLong as there are violets,They will have a place in storyThere's a flower that shall be mine,'Tis the little Celandine.

Ere a leaf is on a bush,In the time before the thrushHas a thought about her nest,Thou wilt come with half a call,Spreading out thy glossy breastLike a careless ProdigalTelling tales about the sun,When we've little warmth, or none.

Wordsworth, in his annotation of the poem, thetwo finest verses of which I have given above, says :' It is remarkable that this flower, coming out soearly in the spring as it does, and so bright andbeautiful, and in such profusion, should not have beennoticed earlier in English verse. What adds much tothe interest that attends it, is its habit of shuttingitself up and opening out according to the degree oflight and temperature of the air.'

I suppose Wordsworth is right in his inference


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April. 55

that the flower had not been mentioned by any poetbefore himself; nor, indeed, has it been much alludedto in later verse. Its colour is against it. To thecareless observer it would be - ' merely a buttercup,'but the loving student of nature despises nothing,overlooks nothing, and to him nothing is ' commonor unclean ' ; he dare not doubt, and his reward isto find beauty lurking in the humblest forms. Youmust bend low over the celandine before you can seeits loveliness, then you discern how brilliant is itsburnished yellow, and how symmetrical are its ray-like petals and its heart-shaped leaves. We had anamusing instance the other day of its habit of shuttingitself up quickly. One of my boys came running totell me, with some pride, that he had found the firstcelandine in our little dell. I went with him tolook at his prize. He had marked the exact spot andwas sure he had left it there : but to his great mystifi-cation the flower was gone from sight. The day hadworn a little towards evening and the petals hadsuddenly folded themselves tightly up. I found it forhim snugly tucked away among the leaves. The sensi-tiveness of the plant is shown not only by its openingand shutting the corolla according to the temperature,but also by a change of colour. It may often be foundwith the yellow petals blanched white by a cold wind.


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a slight but delicious odouran odour which doesnot destroy but mingles with the scent of otherblossoms. In the open air the leafage of the apple-tree is making itself conspicuous, and the throstlesare building in good earnest. I wish this bird wereas cunning as the starling, or that I could teach itprudence. Here is the starling creeping through asmall hole in the tiles to his snug nest. He is out ofthe reach of boys and safe even from the maraudingcat. His sense of security makes him impudent ; hestands and looks at you with his head cocked up, andgoes in and out of his house with an unnecessaryfrequency, as if he would say : ' This is where I live,and I don't care if you know it. You can't follow mea starling's nest is his castle.' But the poor foolishthrostle, in spite of what, in our ornamental way, wecall unerring instinct, will persist in putting his nest,year after year, where those who seek can both seeand reach. On the fifth I observed a throstle gather-ing dry grass under a pear-tree ; it pulled and tuggeduntil it had got so large a bunch in its mouth that itlooked absurd and could hardly fly away. The nextday I found its nest completed, in a low bush ofbroad-leaved holly. This bird has a taste for letters,for among the grass and slender twigs there wasinwoven a considerable piece of a London paper.


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Although the outside was rough, the interior was neatlyand smoothly plastered with clay, which, when I sawit, was yet moist from the bill of the artificer. On thesame day I found another similar nest just finished.The roof of our garden winter-house projects and issupported on rough-hewn posts, which are coveredwith ivy ; against one of these posts the nest is built.It is dexterously worked into the hanging stems ofivy ; but it is so low that I can look into it as I pass,and so much exposed that I have tied the tendrils ofthe ivy more closely round it, both for protection andconcealment. It has been plastered with mud, and itis also linedas a piece of luxury, I supposewiththe soft fibres of some decayed wood. Yesterday Ifound that the first little blue egg had been droppedinto the nest which the prescient birdprescient inpreparation if not in selection of placehad finishedthree days before.

And here, too, was beauty, the little-regardedbeauty of the bird's eggbeauty of form and ofcolour, perfect elementary form and delicately simplecolourlavished upon a corner where no eye mightever have seen itwhere, probably, by no other eyethan my own will it ever be seen.


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XIV.THE DAISY.April 17.

Our native flora here is not so abounding invariety as to permit of our disregarding the adventof the simplest flower. I pass, therefore, this weekfrom the common celandine to the still commonerbellis perenniseven its scientific name is a sweet onethe daisy, the flower of the children and of all thepoets.

Of course we have this flower in every season ;like the poor, it is always with us. I have seldomfailed to find one, even at Christmas, on a bankunder a privet hedge facing the south-west. In sucha situation I have seen the hardy little blossom livingon and on, through frost and snow, on dark days andon bright, opening timidly at noon, and closing uptightly at three or four o'clock, when the early nightwas approaching. Under these conditions a singleflower is tenderly dwelt upon ; it becomes a friend ;and an almost sentient recognition seems to passbetween you.

But now the 'dog-daisy,' as we call it, is begin-ning to show itself in multitudes. During thepresent week, for the first time, it has forced itselfupon our notice as a salient feature in the earth's


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6o Country Pleasures.

floral decoration. By the little water runnel in themeadow we find it mingling with the celandines ; inthe dell at the bottom of the garden it is- side by sidewith another yellow and somewhat despised, butbrilliant flower, the now leafless coltsfoot ; along thewalks it is seen creeping up between the gravel andthe grass border ; and on the lawns it is beginning,as usual, to spread itself in patches. The daisy isalways in greater numbers than you think. In onesmall plot I have just counted more than a hundred :if I had been asked to guess I should have said therewere twenty. It is now the first thing which I see inthe morning. A few days ago I thought the brightlittle specks, as yet unopened, were only great dropsof dew. In fact, the flower, while yet moist, glitterslike a pearl in the first beams of the sun. It is nowonder that the children should love the daisy. Itslowliness of situation, its simplicity of shape and ofcolour, its prodigal profusion, will all commend theflower to them. Is the reader happy enough toremember the time when, as a child, his eyes firstfell upon a field of daisies ; can he recall the delightwhich welled up within him when he first found thatthey were his to enjoy with impunity, even to gatherwithout reproach ?

Chaucer, whowas the sworn knight and impassioned


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April. 6

lover of the daisy, makes its place in the year a littlelater than now. With him it is always the flower ofMayMay and the daisy are joint symbols of spring.It has been said that Chaucer's many words aboutthe daisy were merely conventional. I do not thinkthere is any proof of that. His love of the flowerwas both singular and sincere. Shrewd man of theworld as he was, courtier and scholar as he was, theheart of the. childthe poet's sign, was always presentwith him. From what we know of him he was justthe man to feel about the daisy exactly what hehas told us. At the same time there is, of course,occasionally a strain of hyperbole in his languagewhich can only be explained on the supposition that hewas speaking of some exalted lady under the figure ofhis favourite flower. Like a student, he would leave hisbed, or the amusements of his time, for the companyof his books; like a poet he would leave his books forthe companionship of nature. In the prologue to theLegende of Goode Women, he tells us that whenthe month of May is come, and he hears the songof birds, and sees the flowers begin to spring, then

Farwel my boke, and my devocion !Now have I thanne such a condicion,That of al the floures in the mede,Thanne love I most these floures white and rede,Such as men callen daysyes in our toune.


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To them, he says, he has so great an affection that inthis month of May the day never dawns upon his bedthat he is not up and walking in the meadow tosee this flower spreading itself against the sun ; itsrising is such a blissful sight that it dispels all hissorrow ; he offers to it his greatest reverence, and hislove is so hot that when evening comes he runs forthto see how it will go to rest ; and, he adds

Alias, that I ne had Englyssh, ryme, or prose,Suffisant this flour to preyse aright IAnd doune on knees anoon ryght I me sette,And as I koude, this fressh flour I grette,Knelyng alway, til it unclosed was,Upon the smale, softe, swote gras.

Chaucer, as I have said, connects the daisywith the month of May : Shakspere makes it anApril flower. In Lucrece there, is this exquisiteimage :

Without the bed her other fair hand was,On the green coverlet ; whose perfect whiteShow'd like an April daisy on the grass.

And in the song which concludes the play of Love'sLabour's Lost, the white and red of the flower isalluded to :

Daisies pied and violets blueAnd lady-smocks all silver-white.

In L'Allegro Milton uses Shakspere's phrase:


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Meadows trim, with daisies pied ;Shallow brooks and rivers wide ;

and in Comus he speaks of the daisies, not themeadows, being ' trim '

The wood nymphs, decked with daisies trim.This last expression is quite accurate, for the floweris neat and trim even to demureness, especially if wetake it in bud, when the little yellow centre is sur-rounded by a circlet of crimson, and that again by aring of white, each being pressed closely upon theother.

The anthology of the daisy would be very incom-plete without Herrick's felicitous contribution. Hislittle poem is based upon what I have already alludedtothe daisy's habit of folding itself up early for thenight :

Shut not so soon ; the dull-ey'd nightHas not as yet begunneTo make a seisure on the light,Or to seale up the sun.

No marigolds yet closed are,No shadowes great appeare ;

Nor doth the early shepheard's starreShine like a spangle here.

Stay but till my Julia closeHer life-begetting eye ;And let the whole world then disposeIt selfe to live or dye.


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There is one line of Burns, which has made im-mortal that mountain daisy which he turned downwith his plough in April 1786. It is the first and thebest line in his poem :

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower.I must not omit Shelley's accurate and beautiful de-scription of the flower :

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,The constellated flower that never sets.

Wordsworth, who desired to bring back to the flowerits ' long-lost praise 'the praise which, he says, ithad in Chaucer's timewrote many poems on thedaisy. With him it was the ' cheerful flower,' the' poet's darling,' the ' child of the year,' and ' nature'sfavourite ' ; but the lines of his on this subject whichwill be longest remembered are these :

Sweet silent creatureThat breath'st with me in sun and air,Do thou, as thou art wont, repairMy heart with gladness, and a. share

Of thy meek nature !

During the last few days we have had perfectApril weathera warm temperature, with sun, wind,and rain alternate and commingled. The throstle'snest in the ivy has now three eggs in it ; and the henis sitting closely. The first egg, as I mentioned last


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Lancashire, crosses a narrow tongue of Cheshire,and finishes in Derbyshire with the great buttressof Kinder Scout. To many people in the South ofEngland it is a subject of wonder why we in theNorth should make so little use of this grand recrea-tion ground. We often run much further

Documents

Country Pleasures; The Chronicle of a Year Chiefly in a Garden (1893)