Part 6

It is remarkable that there is in Bunyan's writings so little of local colouring. His fields, hills and valleys are not of earth. The "wilderness of this world" through which he wandered was something quite apart from the Bedfordshire flats, although indeed "the den" on which he lighted is but too truthful a representation of the prison on the old Ouse Bridge. Even where familiar scenes may have supplied the groundwork of the picture, incidental touches show that his soul was beyond them. His hillsides are covered with "vineyards;" the meadows by the riverside are fair with "lilies;" the fruits in the orchard have mystic healing virtue. The scenery of Palestine rather than of Bedfordshire is present to his view, and his well-loved Bible has contributed as much to his descriptions as any reminiscences of his excursions around his native place. *

* It has recently been argued, with some plausibility, that Bunyan may have derived some of his pictures of scenery from his preaching excursions to the Surrey hills and the Sussex Weald (see pp. 33-35), where he would often cross the track of "the Canterbury pilgrims." "It is said that he frequently selected the hilly districts of South Surrey as his hiding- place; two houses, one on Quarry Hill, Guildford, and the other known as Horn Hatch, on Shalford Common, being pointed out as among those he occupied.".... "The struggles of the pedestrian through the Shalford swamp might have given Bunyan the original idea of the _Slough of Despond_; the Surrey Hills he loved so well might be called the _Delectable Mountains_; St. Martha's Hill would answer perfectly his description of the _Hill Difficulty_; the Vale of Albury, amid the picturesque scenery of which he passed so many days of true humiliation, might be considered the _Valley of Humiliation_; and lastly, the name _Doubting Castle_ actually exists to this day, near the Pilgrims' Way, being approached, as its namesake was supposed lo be, by a path near Box Hill. It is right, however, to state that the antiquity of the last name quoted is not verified."--Notes on the Pilgrims' Way in West Surrey; by Captain E. Renouard James, R.E. Stanford, 1871.

But it was after all in no earthly walks or haunts of men that he found the prototypes of his immortal pictures. They are idealised experiences, and from the Wicket gate to the Land of Beulah they all represent what he had seen and felt only in his soul.* No doubt the people are in many cases less abstract. A very remarkable edition of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, published some years ago by an artist of rare promise, since deceased, portrayed the personages of the allegory in the very guise in which Bunyan must often have met their originals up and down in Bedfordshire. Such faces may be seen to-day. We ourselves thought we saw Mr. Honesty, in a brown coat, looking at some bullocks in the Bedford market-place. Ignorance tried to entice us into a theological discussion at the little country-side inn where we rested for the night: the next morning, as we passed along, Mercy was knitting at a farmhouse door, while young Mr. Brisk, driving by in his gig, made her an elaborate bow, of which we were glad to see she took the slightest possible notice.

* The impression made upon a passing traveller through Bunyan's Country is well expressed in some verses entitled

Bedford is now at least rich in memorials of its illustrious citizen and prisoner for conscience' sake. The Bunyan Statue, presented by the Duke of Bedford, was erected in 1874, and is one of the noblest and most characteristic out-of-door monuments in England. It has indeed been suggested that Bunyan might more appropriately have been represented in the attitude of writing than in that of preaching; but it should be remembered that the latter was the work he chose and loved, and that his greatest works were penned during the period of enforced silence. It is therefore with a fine appropriateness that he is represented as standing, as if in the presence of some vast congregation, the Bible in his hand, his eyes uplifted to heaven, while upon the pedestal are carved his own words, expressive of his own highest ideal.

"THROUGH BEDFORDSHIRE BY RAIL.

"Far behind we leave the clangour of the smoky northern town; Now' we hurry through a country all brown-green and sweet grey-brown: Landscapes gently undulating where light shadows softly pass, Quiet rivers silent flowing through the rarely-trodden grass.

Here and there a few sheep grazing 'neath the hedgerow poplars tall. Here and there a brown-thatched homestead or a rustic cottage small; As we rush on road or iron through the fields on either hand, In the autumn twilight gravely smiles John Bunyan's land.

More than all the fells and mountains we have passed upon our way, More than e'en that giant city we shall greet ere close of day, Touches us the tender beauty, soft, harmonious, simple, quaint, Of these fields and winding bye-lanes where yet linger, sweet and faint, Echoes of long-vanished ages, rustic homes one might have seen In the old days when John Bunyan played at cat on Elstow Green, Meadows still as when he wandered seeking God; while on each hand, Gravely smiling in the twilight, lay John Bunyan's land.

Tender as the closing music of the Mighty Dreamer's lay, Lies the country gently round us, all brown-green and soft brown-grey. Tender are our thoughts towards it, as we ponder o'er the book That has travelled through the wide world from this homely, rural nook.

Tenderly we name John Bunyan, martyr, poet, hero, saint, Faithful pastor, strong and loving, like his Bedford, simple, quaint. Ah! the happy tears half blind us as we gaze on either hand O'er the gravely smiling beauty of John Bunyan's land."--Lizzie Aldridge.

No visitor to Bedford will neglect the rapidly accumulating Bunyan Museum, comprising not only some simple relics of his lifetime, as his staff, jug, and the like, with books bearing his autograph--his priceless Bible and Foxes Martyrs--but the various editions of his works, and in particular a collection of the illustrations of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, from the first rude designs to the latest products of artistic skill. These are stored with reverent care, in connexion with the place of worship occupied by the Christian Church to which he ministered, and now known as Bunyan Meeting. To this edifice, likewise, a pair of massive bronze gates have been contributed by the Duke of Bedford, with panels illustrative of scenes from the allegory.

Altogether, if we have found in the neighbourhood of Bedford no Delectable Mountains, nor Valley of Humiliation, nor Land of Beulah, we have at least seen much pleasant English scenery, a fertile, well-cultivated country, and in the very absence of more outwardly exciting prospects, have had the more "leisure of thought" to dwell in the ideal world which Bunyan has made as familiar to us as our own home.

From Bedford to Olney the distance by rail is between ten and eleven miles; by "the sinuous Ouse" probably between thirty and forty.

Few travellers, therefore, will care to ascend by the river banks, and the frequent shallows preclude the thought of a boating excursion, which otherwise would by its leisurely length be some preparation for our exchange of the associations of the seventeenth century for those of the eighteenth. One hundred and three years separated the birthday of Bunyan from that of Cowper.

The interval marks the greatest advance that had ever been made in the history of English thought and freedom. But in the essentials of faith and teaching the two men were one; nor in some of their experiences were they very dissimilar. Both were sensitive, conscientious, and often in the midst of their holiest longings after God were most terror-stricken by thoughts of the wrath to come. Some pages of Bunyan's Autobiography may compare in their passionate anxiety with the annals of Cowper's despair. The great dreamer soon escaped from Doubting Castle to the Delectable Mountains; but for the poet, the dungeon bars remained unloosed until the final summons came to the everlasting hills. *

* "From the moment of Cowper's death, till the coffin was closed," writes his friend and relative Mr. Johnson, "the expression with which his countenance had settled was that of calmness and composure, mingled, as it were, with _holy surprise."--Southey's Life._

The sensitiveness of Cowper to external influences was so great, as to raise the doubt whether other scenes and a different atmosphere might not have prevented many of his sorrows.

On the death of his father, when the poet had reached the age of twenty-five, he touchingly and expressively tells us that it had never till then occurred to him "that a parson has no fee-simple in the house and glebe he occupies. There was," he says, "neither tree, nor gate, nor stile in all that country to which I did not feel a relation, and the house itself I preferred to a palace." To Huntingdon, where he first made acquaintance with the Ouse, and became an inmate with the Unwins, he clung very lovingly, although he does not rate the charms of the neighbourhood very highly. "My lot is cast in a country where we have neither woods nor commons nor pleasant prospects: all flat and insipid; in the summer adorned only winter covered with a flood." But it was at Olney that Cowper found such scenery as he could appreciate and love. "He does not," in the words of Sir James Mackintosh, "describe the most beautiful scenes in nature; he discovers what is most beautiful in ordinary scenes."

In fact, Cowper saw very few beautiful scenes, but his poetical eye, and his moral heart, detected beauty in the sandy flats of Buckinghamshire." The walk, especially, from the quiet little town to the village of Weston Underwood, he has made classic among English scenes by the description in the first book of the _Task_.

Leaving Olney, where, in truth, there is not much to detain us, save the poet's home--the same in outward aspect, at least, as during the twenty years spent by him within its walls,--and the summer-house in the garden where he sat and wrote, while Mrs. Unwin knitted, and Puss, Tiny, and Bess sported upon the grass--we may climb the little eminence above the river, and with an admiration like that of the poet ninety years ago, "dwell upon the scene." "Here is the "distant plough slow moving," and

"Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er, Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted.

There, fast rooted in their bank, Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms. That screen the herdsman's solitary hut; While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedgerow beauties numberless, square tower, Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear; Groves, heathes and smoking villages remote."

We are now at the upper corner of the Throckmorton Park. Pursuing our way, we listen to the music of "nature inanimate," of rippling brook or sighing wind, and of "nature animate," of "ten thousand warblers" that so soothed the poet's soul. A dip in the walk from where the elms enclose the upper park, and the chestnuts spread their shade, brings us into a grassy dell where by "a rustic bridge" we cross to the opposite slope, reascend to the "alcove," survey from the "speculative height" the pasture with its "fleecy tenants," the "sunburnt hayfield," the "woodland scene," the trees, each with its own hue, as so exquisitely depicted by the poet, while Ouse in the distance "glitters in the sun." At length the great avenue is reached.

"How airy and how light the graceful arch, Yet awful as the consecrated roof Re-echoing pious anthems! while beneath, The chequered earth seems restless as a flood Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance, Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick, And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves Play wanton, every moment, every spot.

Such were the scenes dearest to Cowper, and dear to many still for his sake. T rue, they are not unlike others. A thousand scenes are as beautiful, and many an avenue up and down in English parks is of a nobler stateliness. Yet may this be visited with a special delight, for its own sake and for Cowper's. It is something to be able to look with a poet's eye, to have his thoughts and words so familiar to memory as to blend with the current of our own, as if spontaneously. We learn anew how to observe, and our emotions become almost unconsciously ennobled and refined.

It is characteristic of Cowper's mind that scenery of a loftier and more exciting order had a disquieting effect upon him. Of his journey to Eastham, in Sussex, to visit his friend Hayley, he writes: "I indeed myself was a little daunted by the tremendous height of the Sussex hills, in comparison with which all that I had seen elsewhere are dwarfs. But I only was alarmed; Mrs. Unwin had no such sensations, but was always cheerful from the beginning of our expedition to the end of it." And again: "The charms of the place, uncommon as they are, have not in the least alienated my affections from Weston. The genius of that place, suits me better; it has an air of snug concealment, in which a disposition like mine feels peculiarly gratified, whereas here, I see from every window woods like forests, and hills like mountains--a wildness, in short, that rather increases my natural melancholy." A little while before, on Mr. Newton's return from the glories of Cheddar, Cowper writes: "I would that I could see some of the mountains which you have seen, especially because Dr. Johnson has pronounced that no man is qualified to be a poet who has never seen a mountain. But mountains I shall never see, unless perhaps in a dream, or unless there are such in heaven. Nor those," the poor, heart-stricken poet makes haste to add, "unless I receive twice as much mercy as ever yet was shown to any man."

The last sentence prepares us for East Dereham, with its sad associations. But even from these we need not shrink. The homely Norfolk town brought to the troubled soul deliverance. Few, it may be, would turn aside to visit the place for its own sake; but the remembrance of the poet may well attract. The house in which he died has been replaced by a Congregational Church bearing his name--twin brother, so to speak, though with scarcely the same appropriateness, to Bunyan Chapel in Bedford. But it is in the church where he lies buried, and in the tomb raised to his memory, that the true interest lies. Never was death more an angel of mercy than to this darkly-shadowed spirit. We all know the words in which the most gifted of poetesses, at "Cowper's Grave," has set the thoughts of many Christian hearts to words that deserve to be immortal:

"Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses, And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses: That turns his fevered eyes around--_My mother! where's my mother?_ As if such tender words and looks could come from any other! The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him, Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him! Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic eyes, which closed in death to save him! Thus? oh, not thus! no type of earth could image that awaking, Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs round him breaking, Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted, But fell those eyes alone, and knew. My Saviour! not deserted!"

THE PEAK OF DERBYSHIRE

|THE traveller into Derbyshire, unaccustomed to the district, may not unnaturally inquire for "the Peak," which he has been taught to consider one of the chief English mountains, and the name of which has always suggested to him something like a pyramid of rock,--an English Matterhorn. He will be soon undeceived, and then may paradoxically declare the peculiarity of "the Peak District" to be that there is no Peak! The range so called is a bulky mass of millstone grit, rising irregularly from the limestone | formation which occupies the southern part of Derbyshire, and extending in long spurs, or arms, north and north-east into Yorkshire as far as Sheffield, and west and south into Cheshire and Staffordshire. The plateau is covered by wild moorland, clothed with fern, moss and heather, and broken up by deep hollows and glens, through which streamlets descend, each through its own belt of verdure, from the spongy morasses above, forming in their course many a minute but picturesque waterfall. The pedestrian who establishes himself in the little inn at Ashopton, will have the opportunity of exploring many a breezy height and romantic glen; while, if he has strength of limb and of lungs to make his way to Kinderscout, the highest point of all, he will breathe, at the elevation of not quite two thousand feet, as fresh and exhilarating an atmosphere as can be found anywhere in these islands; the busy smoky city of Manchester being at a distance, "as the crow flies," of little more than fifteen miles! It is no wonder that a select company of hard-worked men, who have lighted on this nook among the hills, having a taste for natural history, resort hither year after year, finding a refreshment in the repeated visit equal at least to that which their fellow-citizens enjoy, at greater cost, in the terraces of Buxton, or on the gigantic slope of Matlock Bank.

Where the limestone emerges from under the mass of grit, the scenery altogether changes. For roughly-rounded, dark-coloured rocks, covered with ling and bracken, now appear narrow glens, bold escarped edges, cliffs splintered into pinnacles and pierced by wonderful caves traversed by hidden streams. Of these caves the "Peak Cavern" at Castleton is the largest, that of the "Blue John Mine" the most beautiful, from its veins of Derbyshire spar.

The tourist, however, who confines himself to the Peak District proper, with its immediately outlying scenery, will have a very inadequate view of the charms of Derbyshire. He can scarcely do better than begin at the other extremity, ascending the Dove through its limestone valley as far as Buxton, thence taking rail to Chapel-en-le-Frith, expatiating over the Peak moorlands according to time and inclination, descending to the limestone region again at Castleton, and following the Derwent in its downward course to Ambergate, pausing in his way to visit Chatsworth and Haddon Hall, and to stay awhile at Matlock.

Having thus planned our own journey, our starting-point was Ashbourne, a quiet, pretty little town at the extremity of a branch railway. There was not much in the town itself to detain us: we could only pay a hurried visit to the church, whose beautiful spire, 212 feet high, is sometimes called the Pride of the Peak. There are some striking monuments; and among them one with an inscription of almost unequalled mournfulness. It is to an only child, a daughter: "She was in form and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate parents ventured their all on this frail bark, and the wreck was total." Never was plaint of sorrowing despair more touching. Let us hope, both that the parents' darling was a lamb in the Good Shepherd's fold, and that the sorrowing father and mother found at length that there can be no total wreck to those whose treasure is in heaven!

A night's refreshing rest at the inn, where several nationalities oddly combine to make up one complex sign--the fierce Saracen, the thick-lipped negro, the English huntsman in his coat of Lincoln green!--and we sallied forth on a glorious day of early autumn to make our first acquaintance with Dovedale. Leaving the town at the extremity furthest from the railway station, we found ourselves on a well-kept, undulating road, skirted by fair pastures on either hand; the absence of cornfields being a very marked feature in the landscape. Turning into pleasant country lanes to the left, we soon reached the garden gate of a finely-situated rural inn, the "Peveril ut' the Peak," whence a short cut would have led us over the brow of the hill into Dovedale; but we were anxious to visit Ilam, and therefore made a détour as far as the "Izaak Walton," so well known to brothers of the "gentle craft." A little farther, and we were in the identical Happy Valley of Rasselas, where we found a charming little village, with schoolhouse and drinking-fountain, park and hall and church, and every cottage a picture.

Two little rivers meet here, one of them the Manifold, the other and larger the Dove; and after a hurried view of the lovely vale, we lost no time in making our way to the entrance of the far-famed Dale. As most of our readers will know, the Dove divides Staffordshire from Derbyshire: we took the Derbyshire side, entering at a little gate on the river bank, and leisurely and with many a pause pursued a walk with which surely in England there are few to compare. The river is a shallow, sparkling stream, with many a pool dear to the angler, and hurrying down, babbling over pebbles, and broken in its course by many a tiny waterfall. On both sides rise tall limestone cliffs, splintered into countless fantastic forms--rocky walls, towers, and pinnacles, and in one place a natural archway near the summit, leading to the uplands beyond. And all up the sloping sides, and wherever root-hold could be obtained on pinnacle and crag, were clustered shrubs and trees of every shade of foliage, with the first touch of autumn to heighten the exquisite variety by tints which as yet suggested only afar off the thought of decay. The solitude of the scene served but to enhance its loveliness. For that road by the river side is no broad well-beaten track. No vehicle can pass, and even the pedestrian has sometimes to pick his way with difficulty. The stillness, on the day of our visit, was unbroken save for the murmur of the water, the twitter of the birds, and the rustling of the branches in the gentle breeze. The blue sky overhead, and the sunlight casting shadows upon the cliffs and the stream, completed the picture; and if the memory of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton haunted their favourite stream, it so happened that we encountered none of their disciples.