The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon

by Washington Irving

  RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.

  Oh! friendly to the best pursuits of man, Friendly to thought, to virtue and to peace, Domestic life in rural pleasures past! COWPER.

  THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the English character,must not confine his observations to the metropolis. He must go forthinto the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he must visitcastles, villas, farm-houses, cottages; he must wander through parksand gardens; along hedges and green lanes; he must loiter about countrychurches; attend wakes and fairs, and other rural festivals; and copewith the people in all their conditions, and all their habits andhumors.

  In some countries, the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion ofthe nation; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant and intelligentsociety, and the country is inhabited almost entirely by boorishpeasantry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis is a meregathering-place, or general rendezvous, of the polite classes, wherethey devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gayety anddissipation, and, having indulged this kind of carnival, return again tothe apparently more congenial habits of rural life. The various ordersof society are therefore diffused over the whole surface of the kingdom,and the more retired neighborhoods afford specimens of the differentranks.

  The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling. Theypossess a quick sensibility to the beauties of nature, and a keen relishfor the pleasures and employments of the country. This passion seemsinherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, born and brought upamong brick walls and bustling streets, enter with facility into ruralhabits, and evince a tact for rural occupation. The merchant has hissnug retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis, where he often displaysas much pride and zeal in the cultivation of his flower-garden, and thematuring of his fruits, as he does in the conduct of his business,and the success of a commercial enterprise. Even those less fortunateindividuals, who are doomed to pass their lives in the midst of din andtraffic, contrive to have something that shall remind them of the greenaspect of nature. In the most dark and dingy quarters of the city, thedrawing-room window resembles frequently a bank of flowers; every spotcapable of vegetation has its grass-plot and flower-bed; and everysquare its mimic park, laid out with picturesque taste, and gleamingwith refreshing verdure.

  Those who see the Englishman only in town, are apt to form anunfavorable opinion of his social character. He is either absorbed inbusiness, or distracted by the thousand engagements that dissipate time,thought, and feeling, in this huge metropolis. He has, therefore, toocommonly, a look of hurry and abstraction. Wherever he happens to be, heis on the point of going somewhere else; at the moment he is talkingon one subject, his mind is wandering to another; and while paying afriendly visit, he is calculating how he shall economize time so as topay the other visits allotted to the morning. An immense metropolis,like London, is calculated to make men selfish and uninteresting.In their casual and transient meetings, they can but deal briefly incommonplaces. They present but the cold superfices of character--itsrich and genial qualities have no time to be warmed into a flow.

  It is in the country that the Englishman gives scope to his naturalfeelings. He breaks loose gladly from the cold formalities and negativecivilities of town; throws off his habits of shy reserve, and becomesjoyous and free-hearted. He manages to collect round him all theconveniences and elegancies of polite life, and to banish itsrestraints. His country-seat abounds with every requisite, either forstudious retirement, tasteful gratification, or rural exercise. Books,paintings, music, horses, dogs, and sporting implements of all kinds,are at hand. He puts no constraint, either upon his guests or himself,but, in the true spirit of hospitality, provides the means of enjoyment,and leaves every one to partake according to his inclination.

  The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what iscalled landscape gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied Natureintently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms andharmonious combinations. Those charms which, in other countries, shelavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts ofdomestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, andspread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes.

  Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English parkscenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, with hereand there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich piles of foliage.The solemn pomp of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping insilent herds across them; the hare, bounding away to the covert; or thepheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing. The brook, taught to wind innatural meanderings, or expand into a glassy lake--the sequestered pool,reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on itsbosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters; whilesome rustic temple, or sylvan statue, grown green and dank with age,gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion.

  These are but a few of the features of park scenery; but what mostdelights me, is the creative talent with which the English decorate theunostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest habitation, the mostunpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands of an Englishman oftaste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicely discriminating eye,he seizes at once upon its capabilities, and pictures in his mind thefuture landscape. The sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand;and yet the operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely tobe perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the cautiouspruning of others; the nice distribution of flowers and plants of tenderand graceful foliage; the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf;the partial opening to a peep of blue distance, or silver gleam ofwater;-all these are managed with a delicate tact, a pervading yet quietassiduity, like the magic touchings with which a painter finishes up afavorite picture.

  The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country, hasdiffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descendsto the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage andnarrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge,the grass-plot before the door, the little flower-bed bordered with snugbox, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossomsabout the lattice; the pot of flowers in the window; the holly,providently planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness,and to throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fireside; allthese bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources,and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever Love, aspoets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of anEnglish peasant.

  The fondness for rural life among the higher classes of the English hashad a great and salutary effect upon the national character. I do notknow a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of thesoftness and effeminacy which characterize the men of rank in mostcountries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, a robustnessof frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attributeto their living so much in the open air, and pursuing so eagerly theinvigorating recreations of the country. The hardy exercises producealso a healthful tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness andsimplicity of manners, which even the follies and dissipations of thetown cannot easily pervert, and can never entirely destroy. In thecountry, too, the different orders of society seem to approach morefreely, to be more disposed to blend and operate favorably upon eachother. The distinctions between them do not appear to be so markedand impassable as in the cities. The manner in which property has beendistributed into small estates and farms has established a regulargradation from the noblemen, through the classes of gentry, small landedproprietors, and substantial farmers, down to the laboring peasantry;and while it has thus banded the extremes of society together, hasinfused into each intermediate rank a spirit of independence. This, itmust be confessed, is not so universally the case at present as it wasformerly; the larger estates having, in late years of distress, absorbedthe smaller, and, in some parts of the country, almost annihilated th
esturdy race of small farmers. These, however, I believe, are but casualbreaks in the general system I have mentioned.

  In rural occupation, there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a manforth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to theworkings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevatingof external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but hecannot be vulgar. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothingrevolting in an intercourse with the lower orders in rural life, as hedoes when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities. He laysaside his distance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions ofrank, and to enter into the honest, heartfelt enjoyments of common life.Indeed, the very amusements of the country bring, men more and moretogether; and the sound hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony.I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are morepopular among the inferior orders in England than they are in any othercountry; and why the latter have endured so many excessive pressures andextremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distributionof fortune and privilege.

  To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributedthe rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequentuse of illustrations from rural life; those incomparable descriptions ofNature, that abound in the British poets--that have continued down from"The Flower and the Leaf," of Chaucer, and have brought into our closetsall the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoralwriters of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature anoccasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but theBritish poets have lived and revelled with her--they have wooed her inher most secret haunts--they have watched her minutest caprices. Aspray could not tremble in the breeze--a leaf could not rustle to theground--a diamond drop could not patter in the stream--a fragrance couldnot exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimsontints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned anddelicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality.

  The effect of this devotion of elegant minds to rural occupations hasbeen wonderful on the face of the country. A great part of the islandis rather level, and would be monotonous, were it not for the charmsof culture; but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, with castles andpalaces, and embroidered with parks and gardens. It does not abound ingrand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of ruralrepose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm-house and moss-growncottage is a picture; and as the roads are continually winding, andthe view is shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by acontinual succession of small landscapes of captivating loveliness.

  The great charm, however, of English scenery, is the moral feeling thatseems to pervade it. It is associated in the mind with ideas of order,of quiet, of sober well-established principles, of hoary usage andreverend custom. Every thing seems to be the growth of ages of regularand peaceful existence. The old church of remote architecture, with itslow, massive portal; its Gothic tower; its windows rich with traceryand painted glass, in scrupulous preservation; its stately monuments ofwarriors and worthies of the olden time, ancestors of the present lordsof the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdyyeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same fields, and kneel at thesame altar;--the parsonage, a quaint irregular pile, partlyantiquated, but repaired and altered in the tastes of various ages andoccupants;--the stile and foot-path leading from the churchyard, acrosspleasant fields, and along shady hedgerows, according to an immemorialright of way;--the neighboring village, with its venerable cottages,its public green sheltered by trees, under which the forefathers of thepresent race have sported;--the antique family mansion, standing apartin some little rural domain, but looking down with a protecting air onthe surrounding scene; all these common features of English landscapeevince a calm and settled security, a hereditary transmission ofhomebred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchinglyfor the moral character of the nation.

  It is a pleasing sight, of a Sunday morning, when the bell is sendingits sober melody across the quiet fields, to behold the peasantry intheir best finery, with ruddy faces, and modest cheerfulness, throngingtranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is still morepleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottagedoors, and appearing to exult in the humble comforts and embellishmentswhich their own hands have spread around them.

  It is this sweet home-feeling, this settled repose of affection in thedomestic scene, that is, after all, the parent of the steadiest virtuesand purest enjoyments; and I cannot close these desultory remarksbetter, than by quoting the words of a modern English poet, who hasdepicted it with remarkable felicity:

  Through each gradation, from the castled hall, The city dome, the villa crowned with shade, But chief from modest mansions numberless, In town or hamlet, shelt'ring middle life, Down to the cottaged vale, and straw-roof'd shed; This western isle has long been famed for scenes Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling-place; Domestic bliss, that, like a harmless dove, (Honor and sweet endearment keeping guard,) Can centre in a little quiet nest All that desire would fly for through the earth; That can, the world eluding, be itself A world enjoyed; that wants no witnesses But its own sharers, and approving Heaven; That, like a flower deep hid in rock cleft, Smiles, though 't is looking only at the sky.*

  * From a poem on the death of the Princess Charlotte, by the Reverend Rann Kennedy, A.M.