Chapter 29

So charmed have we been with the sound of our own voice--of all sounds on earth the sweetest surely to our ears--and, therefore, we so dearly love the monologue, and from the dialogue turn averse, impatient of him ycleped the interlocutor, who, like a shallow brook, will keep prattling and babbling on between the still deep pools of our discourse, which nature feeds with frequent waterfalls--so charmed have we been with the sound of our own voice, that, scarcely conscious the while of more than a gentle ascent along the sloping sward of a rural Sabbath-day's journey, we perceive now that we must have achieved a Highland league--five miles--of rough uphill work, and are standing tiptoe on the Mountain-top. True that his altitude is not very great--somewhere, we should suppose, between two and three thousand feet--much higher than the Pentlands--somewhat higher than the Ochils--a middle-sized Grampian. Great painters and poets know that power lies not in mere measurable bulk. Atlas, it is true, is a giant, and he has need to be so, supporting the globe. So is Andes; but his strength has never been put to proof, as he carries but clouds. The Cordilleras--but we must not be personal--so suffice it to say, that soul, not size, equally in mountains and in men, is and inspires the true sublime. Mont Blanc might be as big again; but what then, if without his glaciers?

These mountains are neither immense nor enormous--nor are there any such in the British Isles. Look for a few of the highest on Riddell's ingenious Scale--in Scotland Ben-nevis, Helvellyn in England, in Ireland the Reeks; and you see that they are mere mole-hills to Chimborazo. Nevertheless, they are the hills of the Eagle. And think ye not that an Eagle glorifies the sky more than a Condor? That Vulture--for Vulture he is--flies league-high--the Golden Eagle is satisfied to poise himself half a mile above the loch, which, judged by the rapidity of its long river's flow, may be based a thousand feet or more above the level of the sea. From that height methinks the Bird-Royal, with the golden eye, can see the rising and the setting sun, and his march on the meridian, without a telescope. If ever he fly by night--and we think we have seen a shadow passing the stars that was on the wing of life--he must be a rare astronomer.

"High from the summit of a craggy cliff Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frown On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds, The Royal Eagle rears his vigorous young, Strong-pounced and burning with paternal fire. Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own He drives them from his fort, the towering seat For ages of his empire; which in peace Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea He wings his course, and preys in distant isles."

Do you long for wings, and envy the Eagle? Not if you be wise. Alas! such is human nature, that in one year's time the novelty of pinions would be over, and you would skim undelighted the edges of the clouds. Why do we think it a glorious thing to fly from the summit of some inland mountain away to distant isles? Because our feet are bound to the dust. We enjoy the eagle's flight far more than the eagle himself driving headlong before the storm; for imagination dallies with the unknown power, and the wings that are denied to our bodies are expanded in our souls. Sublime are the circles the sun-staring creature traces in the heavens, to us who lie stretched among the heather bloom. Could we do the same, we should still be longing to pierce through the atmosphere to some other planet; and an elevation of leagues above the snows of the Himalayas would not satisfy our aspirations. But we can calculate the distances of the stars, and are happy as Galileo in his dungeon.

Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of You our Scottish mountains, as you are of Us. Stretch yourself up to your full height as we now do to ours--and let "Andes, giant of the Western Star," but dare to look at us, and we will tear the "meteor standard to the winds unfurled" from his cloudy hands. There you stand--and were you to rear your summits much higher into heaven, you would alarm the hidden stars.

Yet we have seen you higher--but it was in storm. In calm like this you do well to look beautiful--your solemn altitude suits the sunny season, and the peaceful sky. But when the thunder at mid-day would hide your heads in a night of cloud, you thrust them through the blackness, and show them to the glens, crowned with fire.

Are they a sea of mountains! No--they are mountains in a sea. And what a sea! Waves of water, when at the prodigious, are never higher than the foretop of a man-of-war. Waves of vapour--they alone are seen flying mountains high--dashing, but howling not--and in their silent ascension, all held together by the same spirit, but perpetually changing its beautiful array, where order seems ever and anon to come in among disorder, there is a grandeur that settles down in the soul of youthful poet roaming in delirium among the mountain glooms, and "pacifies the fever of his heart."

Call not now these vapours waves; for movement there is none among the ledges, and ridges, and roads, and avenues, and galleries, and groves, and houses, and churches, and castles, and fairy palaces--all framed of mist. Far up among and above that wondrous region, through which you hear voices of waterfalls deepening the silence, behold hundreds of mountain-tops--blue, purple, violet--for the sun is shining straight on some and aslant on others--and on those not at all; nor can the shepherd at your side, though he has lived among them all his life, till after long pondering tell you the names of those most familiar to him; for they seem to have all interchanged sites and altitudes, and Black Benhun himself, the Eagle-Breeder, looks so serenely in his rainbow, that you might almost mistake him for Ben Louey or the Hill of Hinds.

Have you not seen sunsets in which the mountains were imbedded in masses of clouds all burning and blazing--yes, blazing--with unimaginable mixtures of all the colours that ever were born--intensifying into a glory that absolutely became insupportable to the soul as insufferable to the eyes--and that left the eyes for hours after you had retreated from the supernatural scene, even when shut, all filled with floating films of cross-lights, cutting the sky-imagery into gorgeous fragments? And were not the mountains of such sunsets, whether they were of land or of cloud, sufficiently vast for your utmost capacities and powers of delight and joy longing to commune with the Region then felt to be in very truth Heaven? Nor could the spirit, entranced in admiration, conceive at that moment any Heaven beyond--while the senses themselves seemed to have had given them a revelation, that as it was created could be felt but by an immortal spirit.

It elevates our being to be in the body near the sky--at once on earth and in heaven. In the body? Yes--we feel at once fettered and free. In Time we wear our fetters, and heavy though they be, and painfully riveted on, seldom do we welcome Death coming to strike them off--but groan at sight of the executioner. In eternity we believe that all is spiritual--and in that belief, which doubt sometimes shakes but to prove that its foundation lies rooted far down below all earthquakes, endurable is the sound of dust to dust. Poets speak of the spirit, while yet in the flesh, blending, mingling, being absorbed in the great forms of the outward universe, and they speak as if such absorption were celestial and divine. But is not this a material creed? Let Imagination beware how she seeks to glorify the objects of the senses, and having glorified them, to elevate them into a kindred being with our own, exalting them that we may claim with them that kindred being, as if we belonged to them and not they to us, forgetting that they are made to perish, we to live for ever!

But let us descend the mountain by the side of this torrent. What a splendid series of translucent pools! We carry "The Excursion" in our pocket, for the use of our friends; but our own presentation-copy is here--we have gotten it by heart. And it does our heart good to hear ourselves recite. Listen, ye Naiads, to the famous picture of the Ram:--

"Thus having reach'd a bridge, that overarch'd The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalm'd In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw A twofold image; on a grassy bank A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood Another and the same! Most beautiful On the green turf, with his imperial front Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb, The breathing creature stood; as beautiful Beneath him, show'd his shadowy counterpart; Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky, And each seem'd centre of his own fair world. Antipodes unconscious of each other, Yet, in partition, with their several spheres Blended in perfect stillness to our sight. Ah! what a pity were it to disperse Or to disturb so fair a spectacle, And yet a breath can do it."

Oh! that the Solitary, and the Pedlar, and the Poet, and the Priest and his Lady, were here to see a sight more glorious far than that illustrious and visionary Ram. Two Christopher Norths--as Highland chieftains--in the Royal Tartan--one burning in the air--the other in the water--two stationary meteors, each seeming native to its own element! This setting the heather, that the linn on fire--this ablaze with war, that tempered into truce; while the Sun, astonied at the spectacle, nor knowing the refulgent substance from the resplendent shadow, bids the clouds lie still in heaven, and the winds all hold their breath, that exulting nature may be permitted for a little while to enjoy the miracle she unawares has wrought--alas! gone as she gazes, and gone for ever! Our bonnet has tumbled into the Pool--and Christopher--like the Ram in "The Excursion"--stands shorn of his beams--no better worth looking at than the late Laird of Macnab.

Now, since the truth must be told, that was but a Flight of Fancy--and our apparel is more like that of a Lowland Quaker than a Highland chief. 'Tis all of a snuffy brown--an excellent colour for hiding the dirt. Single-breasted our coatee--and we are in shorts. Were our name to be imposed by our hat, it would be Sir Cloudesly Shovel. On our back a wallet--and in our hand the Crutch. And thus, not without occasional alarm to the cattle, though we hurry no man's, we go stalking along the sward and swimming across the stream, and leaping over the quagmires--by no means unlike that extraordinary pedestrian who has been accompanying us for the last half-hour, far overhead up-by yonder, as if he meant mischief; but he will find that we are up to a trick or two, and not easily to be done brown by a native, a Cockney of Cloud-Land, a long-legged awkward fellow with a head like a dragon and proud of his red plush, in that country called thunder-and-lightning breeches, hot very, one would think, in such sultry weather--but confound us if he has not this moment stript them off, and be not pursuing his journey _in puris naturalibus_--yes, as naked as the minute he was born--our Shadow on the Clouds!

The Picture of the Ram has been declared by sumphs in search of the sublime to border on the Burlesque. They forget that a sumph may just as truly be said to border on a sage. All things in heaven and on earth, mediately and immediately, border on one another--much depends on the way you look at them--and Poets, who are strange creatures, often love to enjoy and display their power by bringing the burlesque into the region of the sublime. Of what breed was the Tup? Cheviot, Leicester, Southdown? Had he gained the Cup at the Great North Show? We believe not, and that his owner saw in him simply a fine specimen of an ordinary breed--a shapely and useful animal. In size he was not to be named on the same day with the famous Ram of Derby, "whose tail was made a rope, sir, to toll the market-bell." Jason would have thought nothing of him compared with the Golden Fleece. The Sun sees a superior sire of flocks as he enters Aries. Sorry are we to say it, but the truth must be spoken, he was somewhat bandy-legged, and rather coarse in the wool. But heaven, earth, air, and water conspired to glorify him, as the Poet and his friends chanced to come upon him at the Pool, and, more than them all united, the Poet's own soul; and a sheep that would not have sold for fifty shillings, became Lord Paramount of two worlds, his regal mind all the time unconscious of its empiry, and engrossed with the thought of a few score silly ewes.

Seldom have we seen so serene a day. It seems to have lain in one and the same spirit over all the Highlands. We have been wandering since sunrise, and 'tis now near sunset; yet not an hour without a visible heaven in all the Lochs. In the pure element overflowing so many spacious vales and glens profound, the great and stern objects of nature have all day long been looking more sublime or more beautiful in the reflected shadows, invested with one universal peace. The momentary evanescence of all that imagery at a breath touches us with the thought that all it represents, steadfast as seems its endurance, will as utterly pass away. Such visions, when gazed on in that wondrous depth and purity on a still slow-moving day, always inspire some such feeling as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be all things, when the setting sun is seen to sink behind the mountain, and all the golden pomp at the same instant to evanish from the Loch.

Evening is preparing to let fall her shades--and Nature, cool, fresh, and unwearied, is laying herself down for a few hours' sleep. There had been a long strong summer drought, and a week ago you would have pitied--absolutely pitied the poor Highlands. You missed the cottage-girl with her pitcher at the well in the brae, for the spring scarcely trickled, and the water-cresses were yellow before their time. Many a dancing hill-stream was dead--only here and there one stronger than her sisters attempted a _pas-seul_ over the shelving rocks; but all choral movements and melodies forsook the mountains, still and silent as so much painted canvass. Waterfalls first tamed their thunder, then listened alarmed to their own echoes, wailed themselves away into diminutive murmurs, gasped for life, died, and were buried at the feet of the green slippery precipices. Tarns sank into moors; and there was the voice of weeping heard and low lament among the water-lilies. Ay, millions of pretty flowerets died in their infancy, even on their mother's breast; the bee fainted in the desert for want of the honey-dew, and the ground-cells of industry were hushed below the heather. Cattle lay lean on the brownness of a hundred hills, and the hoof of the red-deer lost its fleetness. Along the shores of lochs great stones appeared, within what for centuries had been the lowest water-mark; and whole bays, once bright and beautiful with reed-pointed wavelets, became swamps, cracked and seamed, or rustling in the aridity with a useless crop, to the sugh of the passing wind. On the shore of the sea alone you beheld no change. The tides ebbed and flowed as before--the small billows racing over the silver sands to the same goal of shells, or climbing up to the same wildflowers that bathe the foundation of some old castle belonging to the ocean.

But the windows of heaven were opened,--and, like giants refreshed with mountain-dew, the rivers flung themselves over the cliffs with roars of thunder. The autumnal woods are fresher than those of summer. The mild harvest-moon will yet repair the evil done by the outrageous sun; and, in the gracious after-growth, the green earth far and wide rejoices as in spring. Like people that have hidden themselves in caves when their native land was oppressed, out gush the torrents, and descend with songs to the plain. The hill-country is itself again when it hears the voice of streams. Magnificent army of mists! whose array encompasses islands of the sea, and who still, as thy glorious vanguard keeps deploying among the glens, rollest on in silence more sublime than the trampling of the feet of horses, or the sound of the wheels of chariots, to the heath-covered mountains of Scotland, we bid thee hail!

In all our wanderings through the Highlands, towards night we have always found ourselves at home. What though no human dwelling was at hand? We cared not--for we could find a bedroom among the casual inclinations of rocks, and of all curtains the wild-brier forms itself into the most gracefully-festooned draperies, letting in green light alone from the intercepted stars. Many a cave we know of--cool by day, and warm by night--how they happen to be so, we cannot tell--where no man but ourselves ever slept, or ever will sleep; and sometimes, on startling a doe at evening in a thicket, we have lain down in her lair, and in our slumbers heard the rain pattering on the roofing birk-tree, but felt not one drop on our face, till at dawning we struck a shower of diamonds from the fragrant tresses. But to-night we shall not need to sleep among the sylvans; for our Tail has pitched our Tent on the Moor--and is now sweeping the mountain with telescope for sight of our descending feet. Hark! signal-gun and bagpipe hail our advent, and the Pyramid brightens in its joy, independent of the sunlight, that has left but one streak in the sky.

THE MOORS.

FLIGHT FIRST.--GLEN-ETIVE.

Yes! all we have to do is to let down their lids--to will what our eyes shall see--and, lo! there it is--a creation! Day dawns, and for our delight in soft illumination from the dim obscure floats slowly up a visionary loch--island after island evolving itself into settled stateliness above its trembling shadow, till, from the overpowering beauty of the wide confusion of woods and waters, we seek relief, but find none, in gazing on the sky; for the east is in all the glory of sunrise, and the heads and the names of the mountains are uncertain among the gorgeous colouring of the clouds. Would that we were a painter! Oh! how we should dash, on the day and interlace it with night! That chasm should be filled with enduring gloom, thicker and thicker, nor the sun himself suffered to assuage the sullen spirit, now lowering and threatening there, as if portentous of earthquake. Danger and fear should be made to hang together for ever on those cliffs, and half-way up the precipice be fixed the restless cloud ascending from the abyss, so that in imagination you could not choose but hear the cataract. The Shadows should seem to be stalking away like evil spirits before angels of light--for at our bidding the Splendours should prevail against them, deploying from the gates of Heaven beneath the banners of morn. Yet the whole picture should be harmonious as a hymn--as a hymn at once sublime and sweet--serene and solemn; nor should it not be felt as even cheerful--and sometimes as if there were about to be merriment in Nature's heart--for the multitude of the isles should rejoice--and the new-woke waters look as if they were waiting for the breezes to enliven them into waves, and wearied of rest to be longing for the motion already beginning to rustle by fits along the sylvan shores. Perhaps a deer or two--but we have opened a corner of the fringed curtains of our eyes--the idea is gone--and Turner or Thomson must transfer from our paper to his canvass the imperfect outline--for it is no more--and make us a present of the finished picture.

Strange that, with all our love of nature and of art, we never were a Painter. True that in boyhood we were no contemptible hand at a Lion or a Tiger--and sketches by us of such cats springing or preparing to spring in keelivine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, might well make Edwin Landseer stare. Even yet we are a sort of Salvator Rosa at a savage scene, and our black-lead pencil heaps up confused shatterings of rocks, and flings a mountainous region into convulsions, as if an earthquake heaved, _in a way that is no canny_, making people shudder as if something had gone wrong with this planet of ours, and creation were falling back into chaos. But we love scenes of beautiful repose too profoundly ever to dream of "transferring them to canvass." Such employment would be felt by us to be desecration--though we look with delight on the work when done by others--the picture without the process--the product of genius without thought of its mortal instruments. We work in words, and words are, in good truth, images, feelings, thoughts; and of these the outer world, as well as the inner, is composed, let materialists say what they will. Prose is poetry--we have proved _that_ to the satisfaction of all mankind. Look! we beseech you--how a little Loch seems to rise up with its tall heronry--a central isle--and all its sylvan braes, till it lies almost on a level with the floor of our Cave, from which in three minutes we could hobble on our crutch down the inclining greensward to the Bay of Waterlilies, and in that canoe be afloat among the Swans. All birches--not any other kind of tree--except a few pines, on whose tops the large nests repose--and here and there a still bird standing as if asleep. What a place for Roes!

The great masters, were their eyes to fall on our idle words, might haply smile--not contemptuously--on our ignorance of art--but graciously on our knowledge of nature. All we have to do, then, is to learn the theory and practice of art--and assuredly we should forthwith set about doing so, had we any reasonable prospect of living long enough to open an exhibition of pictures from our own easel. As it is, we must be contented with that Gallery, richer than the Louvre, which our imagination has furnished with masterpieces beyond all price or purchase--many of them touched with her own golden finger, the rest the work of high but not superior hands. Imagination, who limns in air, has none of those difficulties to contend with that always beset, and often baffle, artists in oils or waters. At a breath she can modify, alter, obliterate, or restore; at a breath she can colour vacuity with rainbow hues--crown the cliff with its castle--swing the drawbridge over the gulf profound--through a night of woods roll the river along on its moonlit reach--by fragmentary cinctures of mist and cloud, so girdle one mountain that it has the power of a hundred--giant rising above giant, far and wide, as if the mighty multitude, in magnificent and triumphant disorder, were indeed scaling heaven.