Part 11

There is hardly a greater difference between these old bone skates and the “acmés” and club skates of to-day, than there is between the skating of the middle ages and the artistic and graceful movements of good performers of to-day. Indeed, skating as a fine art is entirely a thing of modern growth. So little thought of was the exercise that up to the Restoration days it appears to have been an amusement confined chiefly to the lower classes, among whom it never reached any very high pitch of art. “It was looked upon,” says a writer in the _Saturday Review_ in 1865, “much with the same view that the boys on the Serpentine even now seem to adopt, as an accomplishment, the acmé of which was reached when the performer could succeed in running along quickly on his skates and finishing off with a long and triumphant slide on two feet in a straight line forward. A gentleman would probably then have no more thought of trying to execute different figures on the ice than he would at the present day of dancing in a drawing-room on the tips of his toes.”

During all this time, when skating was struggling into notice in Britain, in its birth-place it continued to be cultivated as the one great winter amusement. In Holland, too, where it is looked upon less as a pastime than a necessity, nothing has so frequently struck travelers as the wonderful change the advent of ice brings about on the bearing of the inhabitants. “Heavy, massive, stiff creatures during the rest of the year,” says Pilati, in his “Letters on Holland,” “become suddenly active, ready and agile, as soon as the canals are frozen,” and they are able to glide along the frozen surface with the speed and endurance for which their skating has been so long renowned, though these very qualities are bought at the expense of the elegance and grace we nowadays look for in the accomplished skater. Thomson thus graphically describes the enlivening effects of frost on the Dutch:

Now in the Netherlands, and where the Rhine Branched out in many a long canal, extends, From every province swarming, void of care, Batavia rushes forth; and as they sweep, On sounding skates, a thousand different ways In circling poise, swift as the winds along, The then gay land is maddened all to joy. Nor less the northern courts, wide o’er the snow, Pour a new pomp. Eager on rapid sleds, Their vigorous youth in bold contention wheel The long resounding course. Meantime to raise The manly strife, with highly-blooming charms Flushed by the season, Scandinavia’s dames Or Russia’s buxom daughters glow around.

Though the poet of the “Seasons” speaks of Russia here, it is curious to note that skating is not a national amusement of the Russians, but is entirely of foreign and quite recent introduction. It is quite unknown in the interior, and no Russian—except a few who have picked up the art in St. Petersburg—ever thinks of availing himself of the many pieces of water annually frozen hard in so cold a country.

Perhaps it is in Friesland that the skate is most especially a necessary of life. What stilts are to the peasant of the Landes, skates are to the Frisian. The watercourses of the summer are his highways when winter sets in. “He goes to market on skates; he goes to church on skates,” we are told; “he goes love-making on skates.” Indeed, it may be doubted if this province could be inhabited if the art of skating were unknown, for without it the inhabitants would be confined to home for several months of each year. Frisians of both sexes actually skate more than they walk, says M. Depping; no sooner is an infant able to stand upright than the irons are fastened on his feet; his parents lead him on to the ice, and teach him how to move along. At six years most of the young skaters have attained great proficiency, but in Frisian opinion even the best performers improve up to thirty.

Here, as elsewhere in Holland, ice races are of frequent occurrence during the winter. “The races on the ice,” says Pilati, “are the carnivals of the Dutch: they are their fêtes, their operas, their dissipations;” naturally, therefore, the people manifest the greatest interest in them; skate long distances to be present, and cherish the names of distinguished winners in a way we should never expect from such an unemotional people as the Hollanders appear when the ice is gone and when most travelers see them.

The women have races of their own; but most interesting of all the contests are those in which the sturdy dames, whom their own painters delight in depicting as gliding along to market with baskets on their heads and knitting-needles in their busy fingers, are matched against the best of the other sex. Though, as a rule, these “Atalantas of the North” excel the men rather in beauty of style than in speed, yet the prize often enough goes to one of them.

Frequently on the Continent skates have proved themselves excellent engines of war, both in actual fighting—as when a Dutch army on skates once repulsed a force of Frenchmen on the Scheldt—and as a rapid means of communication. During the winter of 1806, Napoleon, after the battle of Jena, wished to send an order with the utmost dispatch, to Marshal Mortier, directing him to make himself master, without delay, of the Hanseatic towns. The officer charged with this order found himself at the mouth of the Elbe at a point where it was seven and a half miles from bank to bank. To cross in a boat was impossible, as the river was coated with a surface of newly-frozen ice; to get over by a bridge would necessitate a detour of more than twenty miles. The officer, knowing how precious time was, determined to skate over the thin ice; and though it was too weak to bear a man walking, he skimmed along so rapidly that he got across in safety, gaining great honor for the ingenuity and boldness that enabled him to deliver his despatch six hours sooner than he possibly could have done by the ordinary route.

In Holland, regiments have regular parades on the ice; but Norway is probably the only country where it has been considered necessary to embody a special corps of skaters. In this regiment, “the men are furnished,” says Mr. Russell, in his translation of Guillaume Depping’s book, “with the skates in ordinary use in the North, that fixed on the right foot being somewhat longer than that on the left. Furnished with these, the soldiers descend steep slopes with incredible rapidity, re-ascend them as quickly, cross rivers and lakes, and halt at the slightest signal, even while moving at the highest speed.”

Skating has had many enthusiastic votaries, but probably none more so than the two illustrious names that continental skaters are so proud to reckon in their guild.

Klopstock, even in his old age, was so ardent a lover of it that, after skimming over the ice of Altona for hours, “to call back that warmth of blood which age and inactivity had chilled,” he retired to his study and wrote fiery lyrics in its praise. His friend and great successor, Goethe, took to skating under peculiar circumstances. He sought relief in violent exercise from embittered memories of a broken-off love affair. He tried in vain riding and long journeys on foot; at length he found relief when he went to the ice and learned to skate, an exercise of which he was devotedly fond to the last. “It is with good reason,” he writes, “that Klopstock has praised this employment of our physical powers which brings us in contact with the happy activity of childhood, which urges youth to exert all its suppleness and agility, and which tends to drive away the inertia of age. We seem, when skating, to lose entirely any consciousness of the most serious objects that claim our attention. It was while abandoning myself to these aimless movements that the most noble aspirations, which had too long lain dormant within me, were reawakened; and I owe to these hours, which seemed lost, the most rapid and successful development of my poetical projects.”

That skating has been in certain circumstances something more than mere elegant accomplishment, is well illustrated by two anecdotes, told by the author of some entertaining “Reminiscences of Quebec,” of two settlers in the far West, who saved their lives by the aid of their skates. In one case the backwoodsman had been captured by Indians, who intended soon after to torture him to death. Among his baggage there happened to be a pair of skates, and the Indians’ curiosity was so excited that their captive was told to explain their use. He led his captors to the edge of a wide lake, where the smooth ice stretched away as far as the eye could see, and put on the skates. Exciting the laughter of the Indians by tumbling about in a clumsy manner, he gradually increased his distance from the shore, till he at length contrived to get a hundred yards from them without arousing their suspicion, when he skated away as fast as he could, and finally escaped.

“The other settler is said to have been skating alone one moonlight night, and, while contemplating the reflection of the firmament in the clear ice, and the vast dark mass of forest surrounding the lake and stretching away in the background, he suddenly discovered, to his horror, that the adjacent bank was lined with a pack of wolves. He at once ‘made tracks’ for home, followed by these animals; but the skater kept ahead, and one by one the pack tailed off; two or three of the foremost, however, kept up the chase, but when they attempted to close with the skater, by adroitly turning aside, he allowed them to pass him. And after a few unsuccessful and vicious attempts on the part of the wolves, he succeeded in reaching his log hut in safety.”

BOOK KNOWLEDGE AND MANNERS.

By LORD CHESTERFIELD.

I have this evening been tired, jaded, nay, tormented, by the company of a most worthy, sensible and learned man, a near relation of mine, who dined and passed the evening with me. This seems a paradox, but is a plain truth, he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, no address; far from talking without book, as is commonly said of people who talk sillily, he only talks by book; which in general conversation is ten times worse. He has formed in his own closet, from books, certain systems of everything, argues tenaciously upon those principles, and is both surprised and angry at whatever deviates from them. His theories are good, but, unfortunately, are all impracticable. Why? because he has only read, and not conversed. He is acquainted with books, and an absolute stranger to men. Laboring with his matter, he is delivered of it with pangs; he hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always expresses himself inelegantly. His actions are all ungraceful; so that, with all his merit and knowledge, I would rather converse six hours with the most frivolous tittle-tattle woman, who knew something of the world, than with him. The preposterous notions of a systematical man, who does not know the world, tire the patience of a man who does. It would be endless to correct his mistakes, nor would he take it kindly; for he has considered everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is in the right. Impropriety is a characteristic, and a never-failing one, of these people. Regardless, because ignorant, of customs and manners, they violate them every moment. They often shock, though they never mean to offend; never attending either to the general character, nor the particular distinguishing circumstances of the people to whom, or before whom they talk; whereas the knowledge of the world teaches one, that the very same things which are exceedingly right and proper in one company, time and place, are exceedingly absurd in others. In short, a man who has great knowledge, from experience and observation, of the characters, customs, and manners of mankind, is a being as different from, and as superior to, a man of mere book and systematical knowledge, as a well-managed horse is to an ass. Study, therefore, cultivate and frequent, men and women; not only in their outward, and consequently guarded, but in their interior, domestic, and consequently less disguised, characters and manners. Take your notions of things as by observation and experience you find they really are, and not as you read that they are or should be; for they never are quite what they should be.

* * * * *

A man of the best parts, and the greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd; and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will probably be so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue. Full of his own matter and uninformed of, or inattentive to, the particular circumstances and situations of the company, he vents it indiscriminately; he puts some people out of countenance; he shocks others; and frightens all, who dread what may come out next. The most general rule that I can give you for the world, and which your experience will convince you of the truth of is, never to give the tone to the company, but to take it from them; and labor more to put them in conceit with themselves, than to make them admire you. Those whom you can make like themselves better, will, I promise you, like you very well.

A system-monger, who, without knowing any thing of the world by experience, has formed a system of it in his dusty cell, lays it down, for example, that (from the general nature of mankind) flattery is pleasing. He will therefore flatter. But how? Why, indiscriminately. And instead of repairing and heightening the piece judiciously, with soft colors and a delicate pencil; with a coarse brush, and a great deal of white-wash, he daubs and besmears the piece he means to adorn. His flattery offends even his patron; and is almost too gross for his mistress. A man of the world knows the force of flattery as well as he does; but then he knows how, when, and where to give it; he proportions his dose to the constitution of the patient. He flatters by application, by inference, by comparison, by hint; and seldom directly. In the course of the world there is the same difference, in everything, between system and practice.

UNDER THE AUTUMN SKIES.

By MRS. EMILY J. BUGBEE.

The clouds hung loose and gray, Across the autumn sky, And at my feet in golden piles, The dead leaves, drifting lie. No voice of summer song, I hear from copse or tree, The perfume of no summer flower, Comes floating up to me.

Death’s silence over all, Where music was, and bloom, Enfolded all the sun-kissed hills, In drapery of gloom. I walk as in a dream, Beneath the brooding sky, While faded, as these autumn leaves, Life’s hopes around me lie.

The keen and cruel frost Has touched my world with blight, And dark on all its splendors lie, The shadows of the night. The memory of its joy, Like billows of the sea, Come surging up the silver strand, Then backward moaning flee.

Amid this sombre calm, Beneath these skies of gray, And drifting of the yellow leaves I walk alone to-day, And scarce can look beyond The shadows cold and drear, That fold, away from mortal sight, The summer of my year.

In the eternal spring, Beyond time’s changing skies, Beyond the chilling frost of death, A resurrection lies. I can not tell how long, The snow shall wrap their tomb, But sometime, shall life’s blighted flowers Burst into splendid bloom.

EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.

By WALLACE BRUCE.

III.

One hundred years have passed away since Richard the Lion-hearted, Ivanhoe and Robin Hood met at the “Joyous passage of arms at Ashby.” Our next story, “Castle Dangerous,” opens upon days even more bitter and warlike; Scotland is rent with bitter feuds. The daughter of King Alexander the Third died in 1291, and no fewer than twelve persons claimed the throne. King Edward of England was chosen arbiter. He took advantage of sectional discord and endeavored to make Scotland subject to the English crown. He found a willing instrument in the person of John Baliol, who basely acknowledged himself vassal and subject. King Edward further demanded the surrender of three powerful castles, Berwick, Roxburgh and Jedburgh; but the people murmured and Baliol was compelled to do battle with Edward. Under this weak and treacherous leader the Scottish army was defeated in a great battle near Dunbar in 1296. Edward marched through Scotland at the head of a powerful army. He removed to London the records of the Scottish Kingdom, carried the great stone of Scone, upon which the Scottish Kings had been crowned for centuries, to Westminster Abbey, and placed the government of Scotland in the hands of John de Warrene, Earl of Surrey.

At this juncture a leader arose in the person of Sir William Wallace, the son of a private gentleman, and in no way related to the nobility of the kingdom. His glorious struggle kept alive the spark of Scottish liberty. He gathered to himself a band of brave men, and defeated the English army near Stirling. The Scottish people, as they had no king, chose him Protector, and he was titled Sir William Wallace, Governor of the Scottish Nation. He was defeated, captured by a traitor, brought to trial in the great hall of William Rufus in Westminster, sentenced to death as an outlaw, his body divided into four quarters and placed on London bridge.

Among the followers of William Wallace were two powerful barons, Robert Bruce and John Comyn, whose claims were about equal, by descent, to the Scottish throne. They met before the high altar in the Church of Dumfries. What passed betwixt them is not known; but they quarrelled and Bruce slew him with his dagger. Scott puts a defence of this high-handed deed in the mouth of Robert Bruce which we will quote later. Having committed an act which would bring down upon his head the fierce anathema of the Romish Church, which would moreover arouse the King of England and the powerful family of Comyn, Bruce determined to put them all to defiance, and was crowned King of Scotland at the Abbey of Scone the 29th of May, 1306. Among his devoted friends was James, Lord of Douglas. His castle was on the border of Scotland, and it is in the vicinity of this castle, known as Castle Dangerous, that the scene of our romance is laid. So much for the historical preface which may be of service to the reader in connection with the incidents under our consideration.

In the old chronicles and poems of Scottish history, notably that of Barbour, considerable space is devoted to the adventures of Douglas. His castle was captured again and again by the English; but the victors held it at such hazard against the attacks of the adventurous Douglas, that it was considered a perilous and uncertain piece of property. With a romantic enthusiasm, in keeping with those chivalrous times, Lady Augusta, a wealthy English heiress, distinguished for her beauty, promised her hand and fortune to the knight, who would show his courage by defending the castle against the Scots “for a year and a day.” A brave knight, John de Walton, started up and said “that for the love of that lady he was willing to keep the Perilous Castle for a year and a day if the King pleased to give him leave.” The King gladly gave his consent, being well pleased to get so brave a knight for such an important fortress.

There was an old prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer, that as often as the Castle of Douglas should be destroyed it would arise grander and stronger than ever from its ruins. The prophecy had already been fulfilled and its great walls seemed able to withstand the most powerful siege. Some manuscripts of Thomas the Rhymer were also preserved in the Castle, and our first chapter opens with a description of two travelers, showily dressed in the fashion of the wandering minstrels of the day, apparently father and son, making a pilgrimage to the castle with the avowed purpose of finding some of the papers or books of the old poet. They are lodged at the house of one Thomas Dickson. They arouse the suspicion of two English soldiers who are quartered at the Dickson farm-house. The elder minstrel is conducted to the castle and imprisoned; the younger is placed in a neighboring convent. By this time the reader begins to suspect that the younger minstrel is no other than the fair Lady Augusta, making a trip under disguise of a minstrel-boy to see how her knight is prospering. Attended by her father’s minstrel she reminds one of Rosalind in “As You Like It,” under the guidance of the faithful Touchstone. During her detention at the convent she confessed her secret to Sister Ursula, and they escape by night through a trap-door and subterraneous passage, although the convent is strongly guarded. They separate, and by rather an unnatural process again meet at the Douglas Kirk, where the services of Palm Sunday are converted into a warlike controversy. A hand-to-hand conflict, worthy of the Homeric heroes, is recorded between Lord Douglas and De Walton. In the midst of the fray a herald arrives, announcing the defeat of the English army, and the first triumph of Robert Bruce. De Walton surrenders to Douglas, who allows him without ransom to return to England with the Lady Augusta, and unlike the seven years’ toil of Jacob for Rachel, the daughter of Laban, which was lengthened to fourteen years, the one year and a day was shortened, no doubt to the great delight of the interested parties.

The most dramatic incident in the story is the midnight interview between the English knight, De Valence, and the old sexton in the ruined burial-place of the Douglas Kirk. The story throughout is chivalrous and romantic; but “Castle Dangerous” does not rank with other stories of the Waverley series in power, incident or dramatic unity. I have already alluded to “Count Robert of Paris” as the last of the Waverley Novels written by the great magician, and it is so regarded, as “Castle Dangerous” was never really completed by the author; but it serves as a connecting link in the great chain, and, in spite of its incompleteness, gives a graphic description of years eloquent with prowess and manly courage.

There are five poems of Sir Walter which I deem worthy of association with the Waverley Novels, viz: “The Lord of the Isles,” “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” “The Lady of the Lake,” “Marmion,” and “Rokeby,” which I propose to consider, each in its place.

“The Lord of the Isles” is associated with the same stirring events as “Castle Dangerous,” and presents a faithful portrayal of the adventures and history of Robert Bruce. It opens at Ardtornish Castle whose ruins still rise bold and towering on the coast of Morven. I saw it once in the gray gloamin’ of an August evening, on my return from Staffa and Iona; and the opening canto of the poem was impressed upon my mind at that time, in lines never to be effaced. As I sat upon the deck of the steamer I heard the minstrel song again echoing among the crags—“Wake Maid of Lorn”—prelude to the wedding festivities already arranged but destined to be long delayed. I saw Lord Ronald’s fleet again sweep by

“Streamered with silk and tricked with gold, Manned with the noble and the bold Of Island chivalry.”

I saw the solitary skiff, bearing the hope and pride of Scotland, making slow and toilsome progress, with rent sail and gaping planks, and heard above the roar of the tempest the calm reply of King Robert to his impatient brother:

“In man’s most dark extremity Oft succor dawns from heaven.”