Part 3

We have instanced this economically-constructed line, because we have seen it in operation, and can place reliance on the facts connected with its financial affairs. Other lines, however, more or less advanced, seem to have prospects equally hopeful. A similar branch is about to be made from the same main line to the town of Leven. One is projected to branch from the Eskbank station of the North British line to Peebles--a pretty town on the Tweed, which, up till the present time, has been secluded from general intercourse, and will now, for the first time, have its beautiful environs laid open to public observation. The entire cost of this line, rather more than 18 miles in length, is to be only L.70,000, or about L.3600 per mile. Another branch from the same line is projected to go to Lauder. One, of the same cheap class, is to connect Aberdeen with Banchory on the Dee. Another will be constructed between Blairgowrie and a point on the Scottish Midland. For such adventures, St Andrews is a model.[1]

The time is probably not far distant when single branch-lines will radiate over the country, developing local resources, as well as uniting the whole people in friendly and profitable intercourse. To be done rightly, however, rational foresight and the plain principles of commerce must inspire the projectors. It will be necessary to avoid all parliamentary contests; to do nothing without a general movement of the district in favour of the line, so that no parties may be sacrificed for the benefit of others; to hold rigorously to an economical principle of construction; to launch out into no extravagant plans in connection with the main object contemplated. These being attended to, we can imagine that, in a few years hence, there will be a set of modest little railways which will be the envy of all the great lines, simply because they enjoy the distinction denied to their grander brethren, of _paying_, and which will not only serve important purposes in the industrial economy of the country, but vastly promote the moral wellbeing of the community, in furnishing a means of harmless amusement to those classes whose lot it is to spend most of their days in confinement and toil.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Since the materials of this brief paper were obtained, another short line has been opened, extending between Elgin and Lossie-mouth. It is said to have also enjoyed in its first few weeks an amount of traffic far beyond the calculations of the shareholders.

THE HUMOUR OF SOUTHEY.

Some of the critics of 'Robert the Rhymer, who lived at the lakes,' seem to be of opinion, that his 'humour' is to be classed with such nonentities as the philosopher's stone, pigeon's milk, and other apocryphal myths and unknown quantities. In analysing the character of his intellect, they would assign to the 'humorous' attribute some such place as Van Troil did to the snaky tribe in his work on Iceland, wherein the title of chapter xv. runs thus: 'Concerning Snakes in Iceland' and the chapter itself thus: 'There are no snakes in Iceland.' Accordingly, were they to have the composition of this article, they would abbreviate it to the one terse sentence: 'Robert Southey had no humour.' Now, we have no inclination to claim for the Keswick bard any prodigious or pre-eminent powers of fun, or to give him place beside the rollicking jesters and genial merry-makers, whose humour gives English literature a distinctive character among the nations. But that he is so void of the comic faculty as certain potent authorities allege, we persistently doubt. Mr Macaulay affirms that Southey may be always read with pleasure, except when he tries to be droll; that a more insufferable jester never existed; and that, often as he attempts to be humorous, he in no single occasion has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. Another reviewer warned the author of the _Doctor_, that there is no greater mistake than that which a grave person falls into, when he fancies himself humorous; adding, as a consolatory corollary to this proposition, that unquestionably the doctor himself was in this predicament. But Southey was not so rigorously grave a person as his graver writings might seem to imply. 'I am quite as noisy as ever I was,' he writes to an old Oxford chum, when in sober manhood. 'Oh, dear Lightfoot, what a blessing it is to have a boy's heart! it is as great a blessing in carrying one through this world, as to have a child's spirit will in fitting us for the next.' On account of this boyish-heartedness, he is compared by Justice Talfourd to Charles Lamb himself: 'In a certain primness of style, bounding in the rich humour which overflowed it, they were nearly akin; both alike reverenced childhood, and both had preserved its best attributes unspotted from the world.' In the fifty-fifth year of his age, he characterised himself as a man

----by nature merry, Somewhat Tom-foolish, and comical, very; Who has gone through the world, not unmindful of pelf, Upon easy terms, thank Heaven, with himself, Along bypaths, and in pleasant ways, Caring as little for censure as praise; Having some friends, whom he loves dearly, And no lack of foes, whom he laughs at sincerely; And never for great, nor for little things, Has he fretted his guts[2] to fiddle-strings. He might have made them by such folly Most musical, most melancholy.

No one can dip into the _Doctor_ without being convinced of this buoyancy of spirit, quickness of fancy, and blitheness of heart. It even vents its exuberance in bubbles of levity and elaborate trifling, so that all but the _very_ light-hearted are fain to say: Something too much of this. Compared with our standard humorists--the peerage, or Upper House, who sit sublimely aloft, like 'Jove in his chair, of the sky my lord mayor'--Southey may be but a dull commoner, one of the third or fourth estate. But for all that, he has a comfortable fund of the _vis comica_, upon which he rubs along pleasantly enough, hospitably entertaining not a few congenial spirits who can put up with him as they find him, relish his simple and often racy fare, and enjoy a decent quantum of jokes of his own growing, without pining after the brilliant banquets of comedy spread by opulent barons of the realm.

To support this apology for the worthy doctor by plenary proof, would involve a larger expenditure of space and letter-press than befits the economy of a discreet hebdomadal journal. We can but allude, and hint, and suggest, and illustrate our position in an 'off-at-a-tangent' sort of way. Look, for instance, at his ingenious quaintness in the matter of _onomatology_. What a name, he would say, is Lamb for a soldier, Joy for an undertaker, Rich for a pauper, or Noble for a tailor; Big for a lean or little person, and Small for one who is broad in the rear and abdominous in the van; Short for a fellow six feet without his shoes, or Long for him whose high heels barely elevate him to the height of five; Sweet for one who has either a vinegar face, or a foxy complexion; Younghusband for an old bachelor; Merryweather for any one in November or February, a black spring, a cold summer, or a wet autumn; Goodenough for a person no better than he should be; Toogood for _any_ human creature; and Best for a subject who is perhaps too bad to be endured. Amusing, too, are the doctor's reasons for using the customary _alias_ of female Christian names--never calling any woman Mary, for example, though _Mare_, being the sea, was, he said, too emblematic of the sex; but using a synonyme of better omen, and Molly therefore was to be preferred as being soft. 'If he accosted a vixen of that name in her worst mood, he _mollified_ her. Martha he called Patty, because it came pat to the tongue. Dorothy remained Dorothy, because it was neither fitting that women should be made Dolls nor Idols. Susan with him was always Sue, because women were to be sued; and Winifred Winny, because they were to be won.' Or refer to that pleasant bit of erudite trifling upon the habits of rats, beginning with the remark, that wheresoever Man goes Rat follows or accompanies him, town or country being equally agreeable to him; entering upon your house as a tenant-at-will--his own, not yours--working out for himself a covered-way in your walls, ascending by it from one storey to another, and leaving you the larger apartments, while he takes possession of the space between floor and ceiling, as an _entresol_ for himself. 'There he has his parties, and his revels, and his gallopades--merry ones they are--when you would be asleep, if it were not for the spirit with which the youth and belles of Rat-land keep up the ball over your head. And you are more fortunate than most of your neighbours, if he does not prepare for himself a mausoleum behind your chimney-piece or under your hearthstone, retire into it when he is about to die, and very soon afford you full proof that though he may have lived like a hermit, his relics are not in the odour of sanctity. You have then the additional comfort of knowing, that the spot so appropriated will thenceforth be used as a common cemetery or a family-vault.' In the same vein, homage is paid to Rat's imitation of human enterprise: shewing how, when the adventurous merchant ships a cargo for some foreign port, Rat goes with it; how, when Great Britain plants a colony at the antipodes, Rat takes the opportunity of colonising also; how, when ships are sent out on a voyage of discovery, Rat embarks as a volunteer; doubling the stormy Cape with Diaz, arriving at Malabar with Gama, discovering the New World with Columbus, and taking possession of it at the same time, and circumnavigating the globe with Magellan, and Drake, and Cook.

Few that have once read will forget the Doctor's philological contributions towards an amended system of English orthography. Assuming the propriety of discarding all reference to the etymology of words, when engaged in spelling them, and desirous, as a philological reformer, to establish a truly British language, he proposes introducing a distinction of genders, in which the language has hitherto been defective. Thus, in anglicising the orthography of _chemise_, he resolves that foreign substantive into the home-grown neologisms, masculine and feminine, of Hemise and Shemise. Again, in letter-writing, every person, he remarks, is aware that male and female letters have a distinct sexual character; they should, therefore, be generally distinguished thus--Hepistle and Shepistle. And as there is the same marked difference in the writing of the two sexes, he proposes Penmanship and Penwomanship. Erroneous opinions in religion being promulgated in this country by women as well as men, the teachers of such false doctrines he would divide into Heresiarchs and Sheresiarchs. That troublesome affection of the diaphragm, which every person has experienced, is, upon the same principle, to be called, according to the sex of the patient, Hecups and Shecups; which, upon the above principle of making our language truly British, is better than the more classical form of _Hicc_ups and _Hoe_ccups; and then in its objective use we have Hiscups and Hercups; and in like manner Histerics should be altered into Herterics, the complaint never being masculine.

None but a 'humorist' would have announced the decease of a cat in such mingled terms and tones of jest and earnest as the following:--'Alas! Grosvenor,' writes Southey to his friend Mr Bedford (1823), 'this day poor old Rumpel was found dead, after as long and happy a life as cat could wish for, if cats form wishes on that subject. His full titles were: "The Most Noble the Archduke Rumpelstiltzchen, Earl Tomlemagne,[3] Baron Raticide, Waowhler and Skaratch." There should be a court mourning in Catland; and if the Dragon [a cat of Mr Bedford's] wear a black ribbon round his neck, or a band of crape _à la militaire_ round one of the fore-paws, it will be but a becoming mark of respect.... I believe we are, each and all, servants included, more sorry for this loss than any of us would like to confess. I should not have written to you at present had it not been to notify this event.' The notification of such events, in print too, appears to some thinkers _too_ absurd. Others find a special interest in these 'trifles light as air,' because presenting 'confirmation strong' of the kindly nature of the man, taking no unamiable or affected part in the presentment of _Every Man in His Humour_. His correspondence is, indeed, rich in traits of quiet humour, if by that word we understand a 'humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence'--the very 'juice of the mind oozing from the brain, and enriching and fertilising wherever it falls'--and seldom far removed from its kindred spirit, pathos, with which, however, it is _not_ too closely akin to marry; for pathos is bound up in mysterious ties with humour--bone of its bone, and flesh of its flesh.

Nor can we assent to the assertion, that in his ballads, metrical tales, and rhyming _jeux-d'esprit_, Southey's essay to be comic results in merely 'quaint and flippant dulness.' Smartly enough he tells the story of the Well of St Keyne, whereof the legend is, that if the husband manage to secure a draught before his good dame, 'a happy man henceforth is he, for he shall be master for life.' But if the wife should drink of it first--'God help the husband _then_!' The traveller to whom a Cornishman narrates the tradition, compliments him with the assumption that _he_ has profited by it in his matrimonial experience:--

'You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes,' He to the Cornishman said; But the Cornishman smiled as the stranger spake, And sheepishly shook his head.

'I hastened as soon as the wedding was done, And left my wife in the porch; But, i' faith, she had been wiser than me, For she took a bottle to church.'

And with all their extravagances of expression and questionable taste, the numerous stories which Southey delighted to versify on themes demoniac and diabolical, from the _Devil's Walk_ to the _True Ballad of St Antidius_, are fraught with farcical import, and have an individual ludicrousness all their own. That he could succeed tolerably in the mock-heroic vein, may be seen in his parody on Pindar's _ariston men hydor_, entitled _Gooseberry Pie_, and in some of the occasional pieces called _Nondescripts_. Nor do we know any one of superior ingenuity in that overwhelming profusion of epithets and crowded creation of rhymes, which so tickle the ear and the fancy in some of his verses, and of which we have specimens almost unrivalled in the celebrated description of the cataract of Lodore, and the vivaciously ridiculous chronicle of Napoleon's march to Moscow.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Southey was no purist in his phraseology at times. The not very refined monosyllable in the text may, however, be tolerated as having a technical relation to the fiddle-strings by hypothesis.

[3] This patrician Bawdrons is not forgotten in Southey's verse; thus--

Our good old cat, Earl Tomlemagne, Is sometimes seen to play, Even like a kitten at its sport, Upon a warm spring-day.

TRACKS OF ANCIENT ANIMALS IN SANDSTONE.

Many of our readers must have heard of the interest excited a few years ago by the discovery, that certain marks on the surface of slabs of sandstone, raised from a quarry in Dumfriesshire, were the memorials of extinct races of animals. The amiable and intelligent Dr Duncan, minister of Ruthwell, who had conferred on society the blessing of savings-banks for the industrious poor, was the first to describe to the world these singular chronicles of ancient life. The subject was afterwards brought forward in a more popular style by Dr Buckland, in his lively book, the Bridgewater Treatise on Geology. Since then, examples of similar markings have been found in several other parts of Europe, and a still greater number in America.

Dumfriesshire is still the principal locality of these curious objects in our island; and they are found not only in the original spot--the quarry of Corncockle Muir, but in another quarry at Craigs, near the town of Dumfries. Ample collections of them have been made by Sir William Jardine, the famed naturalist, who happens to be proprietor of Corncockle Quarry, and by Mr Robert Harkness of Dumfries, a young geologist, who seems destined to do not a little for the illustration of this and kindred subjects. Meanwhile, Sir William Jardine has published an elegant book, containing a series of drawings, in which the slabs of Corncockle are truthfully represented.[4]

The Annandale footmarks are impressed on slabs of the New Red Sandstone--a formation not long subsequent to the coal, and remarkable for its comparative deficiency of fossils, as if there had been something in its constitution unfavourable to the preservation of animal remains. It is curious to find that, while this is the case, it has been favourable to the preservation of what appears at first sight a much more accidental and shadowy memorial of life--the mere impression which an animal makes on a soft substance with its foot. Yet such fully appears to be the fact. The sandstone slabs of Corncockle, lying in their original place with a dip of about 33 degrees to the westward, and separating with great cleanness and smoothness, present impressions of such liveliness, that there is no possibility of doubt as to their being animal foot-tracks, and those of the tortoise family. A thin layer of unctuous clay between the beds has proved favourable to their separation; and it is upon this intervening substance that the marks are best preserved. Slab after slab is raised from the quarry--sometimes a foot thick, sometimes only a few inches--and upon almost every one of them are impressions found. What is very remarkable, the tracks or series of footprints pass, almost without exception, in a direction from west to east, or upwards against the dip of the strata. It is surmised that the strata were part of a beach, inclining, however, at a much lower angle, from which the tide receded in a westerly direction. The animals, walking down from the land at recess of tide, passed over sand too soft to retain the impressions they left upon it; but when they subsequently returned to land, the beach had undergone a certain degree of hardening sufficient to receive and retain impressions, 'though these,' says Sir William, 'gradually grow fainter and less distinct as they reach the top of the beds, which would be the margin of drier sands nearer the land.' He adds: 'In several instances, the tracks on one slab which we consider to have been impressed at the same time, are numerous, and left by different animals travelling together. They have walked generally in a straight line, but sometimes turn and wind in several directions. This is the case in a large extent of surface, where we have tracks of above thirty feet in length uncovered, and where one animal had crossed the path of a neighbour of a different species. The tracks of two animals are also met with, as if they had run side by aide.'

With regard to the nature of the evidence in question, Dr Buckland has very justly remarked, that we are accustomed to it in our ordinary life. 'The thief is identified by the impression which his shoe has made near the scene of his depredations. The American savage not only identifies the elk and bison by the impression of their hoofs, but ascertains also the time that has elapsed since the animal had passed. From the camel's track upon the sand, the Arab can determine whether it was heavily or lightly laden, or whether it was lame.' When, therefore, we see upon surfaces which we know to have been laid down in a soft state, in a remote era of the world's history, clear impressions like those made by tortoises of our own time, it seems a legitimate inference, that these impressions were made by animals of the tortoise kind, and, consequently, such animals were among those which then existed, albeit no other relic of them may have been found. From minute peculiarities, it is further inferred, that they were tortoises of different species from any now existing. Viewing such important results, we cannot but enter into the feeling with which Dr Buckland penned the following remarks:--'The historian or the antiquary,' he says, 'may have traversed the fields of ancient or of modern battles; and may have pursued the line of march of triumphant conquerors, whose armies trampled down the most mighty kingdoms of the world. The winds and storms have utterly obliterated the ephemeral impressions of their course. Not a track remains of a single foot, or a single hoof, of the countless millions of men and beasts whose progress spread desolation over the earth. But the reptiles that crawled upon the half-finished surface of our infant planet, have left memorials of their passage, enduring and indelible. No history has recorded their creation or destruction; their very bones are found no more among the fossil relics of a former world. Centuries and thousands of years may have rolled away between the time in which those footsteps were impressed by tortoises upon the sands of their native Scotland, and the hour when they were again laid bare and exposed to our curious and admiring eyes. Yet we behold them, stamped upon the rock, distinct as the track of the passing animal upon the recent snow; as if to shew that thousands of years are but as nothing amidst eternity--and, as it were, in mockery of the fleeting, perishable course of the mightiest potentates among mankind.'

The formation of the slabs, and the preservation of the footprints, are processes which the geologist can easily explain. A beach on which animals have left the marks of their feet, becomes sufficiently hardened to retain the impressions; another layer of sand or mud is laid down by perhaps the next tide, covering up the first, and protecting it from all subsequent injury. Thousands of years after, the quarryman breaks up the layers, and finds on the one surface the impression of the animal, while the lower face of the superincumbent layer presents a cast of that impression, thus giving us in fact a double memorial of one event. At Wolfville, on the Bay of Fundy, Sir Charles Lyell some years ago observed a number of marks on the surface of a red marly mud which was gradually hardening on the sea-shore. They were the footprints of the sand-piper, a bird of which he saw flights daily running along the water's edge, and often leaving thirty or more similar impressions in a straight line, parallel to the borders of the estuary. He picked up some slabs of this dried mud, and splitting one of them up, found a surface within which bore two lines of the same kind of footprints. Here is an example before our living eyes, of the processes concerned in producing and preserving the fossil footprints of the New Red Sandstone.