FIRST IMPRESSIONS

OF

ENGLAND AND ITS PEOPLE.

CHAPTER I.

Led to convert an intended voyage to Orkney into a journey to England-Objects of the journey-Carter Fell-The Border Line-Well for England it should have been so doggedly maintained by the weaker country-Otterburn-The Mountain Limestone in England, what it is not in Scotland, a true Mountain Limestone-Scenery changes as we enter the Coal Measures-Wretched weather-Newcastle-Methodists-Controversy on the Atonement-The popular mind in Scotland mainly developed by its theology-Newcastle Museum; rich in its Geology and its Antiquities; both branches of one subject-Geologic history of the Roman invasion-Durham Cathedral-The monuments of Nature greatly more enduring than those of man-Cyathophyllum Fungites-The spotted tubers, and what they indicated-The destiny of a nation involved in the growth of a minute fungus.

I HAD purposed visiting the Orkneys, and spending my few weeks of autumn leisure in exploring the Old Red Sandstone of these islands along the noble coast sections opened up by the sea. My vacations during the five previous seasons had been devoted to an examination of the fossiliferous deposits of Scotland. I had already in some degree acquainted myself with the Paleozoic and Secondary formations of the northern half of the kingdom and the Hebrides. One vacation more would have acquainted me with those of Orkney also, and completed my survey of Scotland to the north of the Grampians; and I would have reckoned at least half my self-imposed task at an end. When labouring professionally, however, during the previous winter and spring, I had, I am afraid, sometimes failed to re

member what the old chivalric knights used never to forget, that "man is but of mould ;" and I had, in consequence, subjected the "mould" to a heavier pressure than, from its yielding nature, it is suited to bear. And now that play-time had once more come round, I found I had scarce health and strength enough left me to carry me in quest of more. I could no longer undertake, as formerly, long journeys a-foot in a wild country; nor scramble, with sure step, and head that never failed, along the faces of tall precipices washed by the sea. And so, for the time at least, I had to give up all thoughts of visiting Orkney.

"I will cross the Border," I said, "and get into England. I know the humbler Scotch better than most men-I have at least enjoyed better opportunities of knowing them; but the humbler English I know only from hearsay. I will go and live among them for a few weeks, somewhere in the midland districts. I shall lodge in humble cottages, wear a humble dress, and see what is to be seen by humble men only-society without its mask. I shall explore, too, for myself, the formations wanting in the geologic scale of Scotland—the Silurian, the Chalk, and the Tertiary; and so, should there be future years in. store for me, I shall be enabled to resume my survey of our Scottish deposits with a more practised eye than at present, and with more extended knowledge." August was dragging on to its close, through a moist and cloudy atmosphere; every day had its shower, and some days half a dozen; but I hoped for clearer skies and fairer weather in the south; and so, taking my seat at Edinburgh on the top of the Newcastle coach, I crossed Carter Fell a little after mid-day, and found myself for the first time in England. The sun on the Scottish side - looked down clear and kindly on languid fields surcharged with moisture, that exhibited greener and yet greener tints as we ascended from the lowland districts to the uplands; while on the southern side, though all was fair in the foreground, a thick

sullen cloud hung low over the distant prospect, resembling the smoke of some vast city.

And this was the famous Border-line, made good by the weaker against the stronger nation-at how vast an amount of blood and suffering!—for more than a thousand years. It wore to-day, in the quiet sunshine, a look of recluse tranquillity, that seemed wholly unconscious of the past. A tumbling sea of dark green hills, delicately chequered with light and shadow, swelled upwards on either side towards the line of boundary, like the billows of opposing tide-ways, that rise over the general level where the currents meet; and passing on and away from wavetop to wave-top, like the cork baulk of a fisherman's net afloat on the swell, ran the separating line. But all was still and motionless, as in the upper reaches of the Baltic, when the winter frost has set in. We passed on the Scottish side a group of stalwart shepherds—solid, grave-featured men, who certainly did not look as if they loved fighting for its own sake; and on the English side, drove by a few stout, ruddy hinds, engaged in driving carts, who seemed just as little quarrelsome as their Scottish neighbours. War must be intrinsically mischievous. It must be something very bad, let us personify it as proudly as we may, that could have set on these useful, peaceable people— cast in so nearly the same mould, speaking the same tongue, possessed of the same common nature, loveable, doubtless, in some points, from the development of the same genial affections to knock one another on the head, simply because the one-half of them had first seen the light on the one side of the hill, and the other half on the other side. And yet such was the state of things which obtained in this wild district for many hundred years. It seems, however, especially well for England, since the quarrel began at all, that it should have been so doggedly maintained by the weaker people—so well maintained, that the border hamlet, round which they struggled, in the days of the first Edward, as a piece of doubtful property, is a piece of doubtful pro

perty still, and has, in royal proclamation and act of Parliament, its own separate clause assigned to it, as the "town called Berwick-upon-Tweed." It is quite enough for the English, as shown by the political history of modern times, that they conquered Ireland; had they conquered Scotland also, they would have been ruined utterly. "One such victory more, and they would have

been undone."

Men have long suspected the trade of the hero to be a bad one; but it is only now they are fairly beginning to learn, that of all great losses and misfortunes, his master achievement the taking of a nation-is the greatest and most incurably calamitous.

The line of boundary forms the water-shed in this part of the island; the streams on the Scottish side trot away northwards toward the valley of the Tweed; while on the English side they pursue a southerly course, and are included in the drainage of the Tyne. The stream which runs along the bare open valley on which we had now entered, forms one of the larger tributaries of the latter river. But every thing seemed as Scottish as ever the people, the dwelling-houses, the country. I could scarce realize the fact, that the little grey parish church with the square tower, which we had just passed, was a church in which the curate read the Prayer-Book every Sunday, and that I had left behind me the Scottish law, under which I had been living all life long till now, on the top of the hill. I had proof, however, at our first English stage, that such was actually the "Is all right?" asked the coachman, of a tall lanky Northumbrian who had busied himself in changing the horses. "Yez, all roit,” was the reply; "roit as the Church of England." I was, it was evident, on Presbyterian ground no longer.

case.

We passed, as the country began to open, a spot marked by two of the crossed swords of our more elaborate maps; they lie thick on both sides of the Border, to indicate where the old battle-fields were stricken; and the crossed swords of this especial locality are celebrated in chronicle and song. A rude,

straggling village runs for some one or two hundred yards along both sides of the road. On the left there is a group of tall trees, elevated on a ridge, which they conceal; and a bare, undulating, somewhat wild country spreads around. All is quiet and solitary; and no scathe on the landscape corresponds with the cross swords on the map. There were a few children at play, as we passed, in front of one of the cottages, and two old men sauntering along the road. And such now is Otterburna name I never associated before, save with the two noble ditties of Chevy Chase, the magnificent narrative of Froissart, and the common subject of both ballads and narrative, however various their descriptions of it-that one stern night's slaughter, four hundred years ago,

"When the dead Douglas won the field."

It was well for the poor victors they had a Froissart to celebrate them. For though it was the Scotch who gained the battle, it was the English who had the writing of the songs; and had not the victors found so impartial a chronicler in the generous Frenchman, the two songs, each a model in its own department, would have proved greatly an overmatch for them in the end.

The wilder tracts of Northumberland are composed of the Millstone Grit and Mountain Limestone; and never before had I seen this latter deposit developed in a style that so bears out the appropriateness of its name. It is in Northumberland, what it is rarely or never in Scotland, a true Mountain Limestone, that rises into tall hills, and sinks into deep valleys, and spreads laterally over a vast extent of area. The ocean of the Carboniferous era in England must have been greatly more persistent and extended than the ocean whose deposits form the base of the Coal Measures in the sister country: it appears to have lain further from the contemporary land, and to have been much less the subject of alternate upheavals and depressions. We were several hours in driving over the formation.

As we