POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART Fifth Series ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832 No. 55.-VOL. II. SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 1885. OUTSIDE LONDON. BY RICHARD JEFFERIES, AUTHOR OF THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME,' ETC. PRICE 1d. above flying in and out, yellow leaves twirling down, the blue peacocks with their crests, the red barn behind, the golden sun afar shining low through the trees of the park, the brown autumn sward, a gray horse, orange maple bushes. There was the quiet tone of the coming eveningthe early evening of October-such an evening as the rook had seen many a time from the tops of the trees. A man dies, and the crowd goes on passing under the window along the street without a thought. The rook died, and his friends, who had that day been with him in the oaks feasting on acorns, who had been with him in the fresh-turned furrows, born perhaps in the same nest, utterly forgot him before he was dead. With a great common caw-a common shout— they suddenly left the tree in a bevy and flew towards the park. The peacocks having brought in their verdict, departed, and the dead bird was left alone. THERE was something dark on the grass under an elm in the field by the barn. It rose and fell; and we saw that it was a wing-a single black wing, striking the ground instead of the air; indeed, it seemed to come out of the earth itself, the body of the bird being hidden by the grass. This black wing flapped and flapped, but could not lift itself a single wing of course could not fly. A rook had dropped out of the elm and was lying helpless at the foot of the tree-it is a favourite tree with rooks; they build in it, and at that moment there were twenty or more perched aloft, cawing and conversing comfortably, without the least thought of their dying comrade. Not one of all the number descended to see what was the matter, nor even fluttered half-way down. This elm is their clubhouse, where they meet every afternoon as the sun gets low to discuss the scandals of the day, before retiring to roost in the avenues and tree-groups of the park adjacent. While we looked, a peacock came round the corner of the barn; he had caught sight of the flapping wing, and approached with long deliberate steps and outstretched neck. 'What's this? What's this?' he inquired in bird-language. 'My These peacocks are the best 'rain-makers' in friends, see here!' Gravely, and step by step, he the place; whenever they cry much, it is sure came nearer and nearer, slowly, and not without to rain; and if they persist day after day, the some fear, till curiosity had brought him within a yard. In a moment or two a peahen followed and also stretched out her neck-the two long necks pointing at the black flapping wing. A second peacock and peahen approached, and the four great birds stretched out their necks towards the dying rook-a 'crowner's quest' upon the unfortunate creature. If any one had been at hand to sketch it, the scene would have been very grotesque, and not without a ludicrous sadness. There was the tall elm tinted with yellow, the black rooks high In falling out of the elm, the rook had alighted partly on his side and partly on his back, so that he could only flutter one wing, the other being held down by his own weight. He had probably died from picking up poisoned grain somewhere, or from a parasite. The weather had been open, and he could not have been starved. At a distance, the rook's plumage appears black; but close at hand it will be found a fine blue-black, glossy, and handsome. rain is equally continuous. From the wall by the barn, or the elm-branch above them, 'Pa-ong, pa-ong' resounds like the wail of a gigantic cat, and is audible half a mile or more. In the summer, I found one of them, a peacock in the full brilliance of his colours, on a rail in the hedge under a spreading maple bush. His rich-hued neck, the bright light and shadow, the tall green meadow grass, brought together the finest colours. It is curious that a bird so distinctly foreign, plumed for the Asiatic sun, should fit so well with English meads. His splendid neck immediately pleases, pleases the first time it is seen, and on the fiftieth occasion. I see these every day, and always stop to look at them; the colour excites the sense of beauty in the eye, and the shape satisfies the idea of form. The undulating curve of the neck is at once approved by the intuitive judgment of the mind, and it is a pleasure to the mind to reiterate that judgment frequently. It needs no teaching to see its beauty-the feeling comes of itself. How different with the turkey-cock which struts round the same barn! A fine big bird he is, no doubt; but there is no intrinsic beauty about him; on the contrary, there is something fantastic in his style and plumage. He has a way of drooping his wings as if they were armour-plates to shield him from a shot. The ornaments upon his head and beak are in the most awkward position. He was put together in a dream, of uneven and odd pieces that live and move, but do not fit. Ponderously gawky, he steps as if the world was his, like a motley' crowned in sport. He is good eating, but he is not beautiful. After the eye has been accustomed to him for some time-after you have fed him every day and come to take an interest in himafter you have seen a hundred turkey-cocks, then he may become passable, or, if you have the fancier's taste, exquisite. Education is requisite first; you do not fall in love at first sight. The same applies to fancy-pigeons, and indeed many pet animals, as pugs, which come in time to be animated with a soul in some people's eyes. Compare a pug with a greyhound straining at the leash. Instantly he is slipped, he is gone as a wave let loose. His flexible back bends and undulates, arches and unarches, rises and falls as a wave rises and rolls on. His pliant ribs open; his whole frame 'gives' and stretches, and closing again in a curve, springs forward. Movement is as easy to him as to the wave, which melting, is re-moulded, and sways onward. The curve of the greyhound is not only the line of beauty, but a line which suggests motion; and it is the idea of motion, I think, which so strongly appeals to the mind. We are often scornfully treated as a nation by people who write about art, because they say we have no taste; we cannot make art jugs for the mantelpiece, crockery for the bracket, screens for the fire; we cannot even decorate the wall of a room as it should be done. If these are the standards by which a sense of art is to be tried, their scorn is to a certain degree just. But suppose we try another standard. Let us put aside the altogether false opinion that art consists alone in something actually made, or painted, or decorated, in carvings, colourings, touches of brush or chisel. Let us look at our lives. I mean to say that there is no nation so thoroughly and earnestly artistic as the English in their lives, their joys, their thoughts, their hopes. Who loves nature like an Englishman? Do Italians care for their pale skies? I never heard so. We go all over the world in search of beauty-to the keen north, to the cape whence the midnight sun is visible, to the extreme south, to the interior of Africa, gazing on the vast expanse of Tanganyika or We the marvellous falls of the Zambesi. We admire the temples and tombs and palaces of India; we speak of the Alhambra of Spain almost in whispers, so deep is our reverent admiration; we visit the Parthenon. There is not a picture climb the mountains for their views and the nor a statue in Europe we have not sought. sense of grandeur they inspire; we roam over the wide ocean to the coral islands of the far Pacific; we go deep into the woods of the West; and we stand dreamily under the Pyramids of the East. What part is there of the English year which has not been sung by the poets? all of all, Shakspeare, carries, as it were, armfuls of of whom are full of its loveliness; and our greatest violets, and scatters roses and golden wheat across his pages, which are simply fields written with human life. St This is art indeed-art in the mind and soul, infinitely deeper, surely, than the construction of crockery, jugs for the mantelpiece, dados, or even of paintings. The lover of nature has the highest art in his soul. So, I think, the bluff English farmer who takes such pride and delight in his dogs and horses, is a much greater man of art than any Frenchman preparing with cynical dexterity of hand some coloured presentment of flashy beauty for the salon. The English girl who loves her horse-and English girls do love their horses most intensely-is infinitely more artistic in that fact than the cleverest painter on enamel. They who love nature are the real artists; the artists' are copyists. John the naturalist, when exploring the recesses of the Highlands, relates how he frequently came in contact with men living in the rude Highland way-forty years since, no education then-whom at first you would suppose to be morose, unobservant, almost stupid. But when they found out that their visitor would stay for hours gazing in admiration at their glens and mountains, their demeanour changed. Then the truth appeared: they were fonder than he was himself of the beauties of their hills and lakes; they could see the art there, though perhaps they had never seen a picture in their lives, certainly not any blue and white crockery. The Frenchman flings his fingers dexterously over the canvas, but he has never had that in his heart which the rude Highlander had. The path across the arable field was covered with a design of birds' feet. The reversed broad arrow of the fore-claws, and the straight line of the hinder claw, trailed all over it in curving lines. In the dry dust, their feet were marked as clearly as a seal on wax-their trails wound this way and that, and crossed as their quick eyes had led them to turn to find something. For fifty or sixty yards the path was worked with an inextricable design; it was a pity to step on it and blot out the traces of those little feet. Their hearts so happy, their eyes so observant, the earth so bountiful to them with its supply of food, and the late warmth of the autumn sun lighting up their life. They know and feel the different loveliness of the seasons as much as we do. Every one must have noticed their joyousness in spring; they are quiet, but so very, very busy in the height of summer; as autumn comes on they obviously delight in the occasional hours of warmth. The marks of their little feet are Journal almost sacred-a joyous life has been there-do not obliterate it. It is so delightful to know that something is happy. Ruskin thinks so much of, could ever draw that intertangled mass of lines. Nor could you easily draw the leaves and head of the great parsleycommonest of hedge-plants-the deep indented leaves, and the shadow by which to express them. There was work enough in that short piece of hedge by the potato-field for a good pencil every day the whole summer. And when done, you would not have been satisfied with it, but only have learned how complex and how thoughtful and far-reaching, Nature is in the simplest of things. But with a straight-edge or ruler, any one could draw the iron railings in half an hour, and a surveyor's pupil could make them look as well as Millais himself. Stupidity to stupidity, genius to genius; any hard fist can manage iron railings; a hedge is a task for the greatest. The hawthorn hedge that glints down the slope is more coloured than the hedges in the sheltered plain. Yonder, a low bush on the brow is a deep crimson; the hedge as it descends varies from brown to yellow, dotted with red haws, and by the gateway has another spot of crimson. The lime-trees turn yellow from top to bottom, all the leaves together; the elms by one or two branches at a time. A lime-tree thus entirely coloured stands side by side with an elm, their boughs intermingling; the elm is green except a line at the outer extremity of its branches. A red light as of fire plays in the beeches, so deep is their orange tint in which the sunlight is caught. An oak is dotted with buff, while yet the main body of the foliage is untouched. With Those, therefore, who really wish their gardens these tints and sunlight, nature gives us so much or grounds, or any place, beautiful, must get that more than the tree gives. A tree is nothing but greatest of geniuses, Nature, to help them, and a tree in itself; but with light and shadow, green give their artist freedom to paint to fancy, for leaves moving, a bird singing, another moving it is Nature's imagination which delights usto and fro-in autumn with colour-the boughs as I tried to explain about the tree, the imaginaare filled with imagination. There then seems tion, and not the fact of the timber and sticks. so much more than the mere tree; the timber For these white bryony leaves and slender spirals of the trunk, the mere sticks of the branches, the and exquisitely defined flowers, are full of imawooden framework is animated with a life. High gination, products of a sunny dream, and tinted above, a lark sings, not for so long as in spring-so tastefully, that although they are green, and the October song is shorter-but still he sings. all about them is green too, yet the plant is If you love colour, plant maple; maple bushes quite distinct, and in no degree confused or lost colour a whole hedge. Upon the bank of a pond, in the mass of leaves under and by it. It the brown oak-leaves which have fallen are stands out, and yet without violent contrast. reflected in the still deep water. All these beauties of form and colour surround the place, and try, as it were, to march in and take possession, but are shut out by straight iron railings. Wonderful it is that education should make folk tasteless! Such, certainly, seems to be the case in a great measure, and not in our own country only, for those who know Italy tell us that the fine old gardens there, dating back to the days of the Medici, are being despoiled of ilex and made formal and straight. Is all the world to be Versaillised? It is from the hedges that taste must be learned. A garden abuts on these fields, and being on slightly rising ground, the maple bushes, the brown and yellow and crimson hawthorn, the limes and elms, are all visible from it; yet it is surrounded by stiff straight iron railings, unconcealed even by the grasses, which are carefully cut down with the docks and nettles, that do their best, three or four times in the summer, to hide the blank iron. Within these iron railings stands a row of arbor vitæ, upright, and Scarcely two hundred yards from these cold stiff likewise, and among them a few other ever-iron railings, which even nettles and docks would greens; and that is all the shelter the lawn and hide if they could, and thistles strive to conceal, flower-beds have from the east wind, blowing but are not permitted, there is an old cottage by for miles over open country; or from the glowing the roadside. The roof is of old tile, once red, sun of August. This garden belongs to a gentle- now dull from weather; the walls some tone of man who would certainly spare no moderate yellow; the folk are poor. Against it there expense to improve it, and yet there it remains, grows a vigorous plant of jessamine, a still finer the blankest, barest, most miserable-looking square rose, a vine covers the lean-to at one end, and of ground the eye can find; the only piece of tea-plant the corner of the wall; besides these, ground from which the eye turns away; for even there is a yellow-flowering plant, the name of the potato-field close by, the common potato- which I forget at the moment, also trained to field, had its colour in bright poppies, and there the walls; and ivy. Altogether, six plants grow were partridges in it, and at the edges, fine up the walls of the cottage; and over the wicketgrowths of mallow and its mauve flowers. Wild gate there is a rude arch-a framework of tall parsley, still green in the shelter of the hazel sticks-from which droop thick bunches of hops. stoles, is there now on the bank, a thousand times It is a very commonplace sort of cottage; nothing sweeter to the eye than bare iron and cold ever- artistically picturesque about it, no effect of gable greens. Along that hedge, the white bryony wound or timber-work; it stands by the roadside in the itself in the most beautiful manner, completely most commonplace way, and yet it pleases. They covering the upper part of the thick brambles, a have called in Nature, that great genius, and let robe thrown over the bushes; its deep cut leaves, the artist have his own way. In Italy, the artits countless tendrils, its flowers, and presently the country, they cut down the ilex trees, and get berries, giving pleasure every time one passed it. the surveyor's pupil with straight-edge and ruler Indeed, you could not pass without stopping to to put it right and square for them. Our overlook at it, and wondering if any one ever so educated and well-to-do people set iron railings skilful, even those sure-handed Florentines Mr round about their blank pleasure-grounds, which the potato-field laughs at in bright poppies; and actually one who has some fine park-grounds has lifted up on high a mast and weather-vane! a thing useful on the sea-board at coastguard stations for signalling, but oh! how repellent and straight and stupid among clumps of graceful elms ! A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. CHAPTER III. As it turned out, Frances had not the courage. Mr Waring strolled into the loggia shortly after Miss Durant had left her. He smiled when he heard of her visit, and asked what news she had brought. Tasie was the recognised channel for news, and seldom appeared without leaving some little story behind her. 'I don't think she had any news to-day; except that there had been a great many at the Sunday school last Sunday. Fancy, papa, twelve children! She is quite excited about it.' "That is a triumph,' said Mr Waring with a laugh. He stretched out his long limbs from the low basket-chair in which he had placed himself. He had relaxed a little altogether from the tension of the morning, feeling himself secure and at his ease in his own house, where no one could intrude upon him or call up ghosts of the past. The air was beyond expression sweet and tranquillising, the sun going down in a mist of glory behind the endless peaks and ridges that stretched away towards the west, the sea lapping the shore with a soft cadence that was more imagined than heard on the heights of the Punto, but yet added another harmony to the scene. Near at hand, a faint wind rustled the long leaves of the palm-trees, and the pale olive woods lent a softness to the landscape, tempering its brightness. Such a scene fills up the weary mind, and has the blessed quality of arresting thought. It was good for the breathing too-or at least so this invalid thought-and he was more amiable than usual, with no harshness in voice or temper to introduce a discord. 'I am glad she was pleased,' he said. 'Tasie is a good girl, though not perhaps so much of a girl as she thinks. Why she goes in for a Sunday school where none is wanted, I can't tell; but anyhow I am glad she is pleased. Where did they come from, the twelve children? Poor little beggars! how sick of it they must have been.' 'A number of them belonged to that English family, papa' I suppose they must all belong to English families, he said calmly; 'the natives are not such fools.' 'But, papa, I mean-the people we met-the people you knew.' He made no reply for a few minutes, and then he said calmly: What an ass the man must be, not only to travel with children, but to send them to poor Tasie's Sunday school! You must do me the justice, Fan, to acknowledge that I never attempted to treat you in that way.' 'No; but, papa-perhaps the gentleman is a very religious man.' And you don't think I am? Well, perhaps I laid myself open to such a retort.' 'O papa!' Frances cried, with tears starting to her eyes, 'you know I could not mean that.' It is 'If you take religion as meaning a life by rule, which is its true meaning, you were right enough, my dear. That is what I never could do. It might have been better for me if I had. always better for one to put one's self in harmony with received notions and the prejudices of society. Tasie would not have her Sunday school but for that. It is the right thing. I have you a leaning towards the right thing, my little girl, yourself.' 'I don't like to be particular, papa, if that is what you mean.' think 'Always keep to that,' her father said with a smile. And then he opened the book which he had been holding all this time in his hand. Such a thing had happened, when Frances was in high spirits and very courageous, as that she had pursued him even into his book; but it was a very rare exercise of valour, and to-day she shrank from it. If she only had the courage; but she had not the courage. She had given up her drawing, for the sun no longer shone on the group of palms. She had no book, and indeed at any time was not much given to reading, except when a happy chance threw a novel into her hands. She watched the sun go down by imperceptible degrees, yet not slowly, behind the mountains. When he had quite disappeared, the landscape changed too; the air, as the Italians say, grew brown; a little momentary chill breathed out of the sky. It is always depressing to a solitary watcher when this change takes place. Frances was not apt to be depressed, but for the moment she felt lonely and dull, and a great sense of monotony took hold upon her. It was like this every night; it would be like this, so far as she knew, every night to come, until perhaps she grew old, like Tasie, without becoming aware that she had ceased to be a girl. It was not a cheering prospect. And when there is any darkness or mystery surrounding one's life, these are just the circumstances to quicken curiosity, and turn it into something graver, into an anxious desire to know. Frances did not know positively that there was a mystery. She had no reason to think there was, she said to herself. Her father preferred to live easily on the Riviera, instead of living in a way that would trouble him at home. Perhaps the gentleman they had met was a bore, and that was why Mr Waring avoided all mention of him. He frequently thought people were bores, with whom Frances was very well satisfied. Why should she think any more of it? Oh, how she wished she had the courage to ask plainly and boldly: Who are we? Where do we come from? Have we any friends? But she had not the courage. She looked towards him, and trembled, imagining within herself what would be the consequence if she interrupted his reading, plucked him out of the quietude of the hour and of his book, and demanded an explanation-when very likely there was no explanation! when, in all probability, everything was quite simple, if she only knew. The evening passed as evenings generally did pass in the Palazzo. Mr Waring talked a little at dinner quite pleasantly, and smoked a cigarette in the loggia afterwards in great good-humour, telling Frances various little stories of people he had known. This was a sign of high satisfaction on his part, and very agreeable to her, and no doubt he was entirely unaware of the perplexity in her mind and the questions she was so desirous of asking. The air was peculiarly soft that evening, and he sat in the loggia till the young moon set, with an overcoat on his shoulders and a rug on his knees, sometimes talking, sometimes silent-in either way a very agreeable companion. Frances had never been cooped up in streets, or exposed to the chill of an English spring; so she had not that keen sense of contrast which doubles the enjoyment of a heavenly evening in such a heavenly locality. It was all quite natural, common, and everyday to her; but no one could be indifferent to the sheen of the young moon, to the soft circling of the darkness, and the reflections on the sea. It was all very lovely, and yet there was something wanting. What was wanting? She thought it was knowledge, acquaintance with her own position, and relief from this strange bewildering sensation of being cut off from the race altogether, which had risen within her mind so quickly and with so little cause. But many beside Frances have felt the wistful call for happiness more complete, which comes in the soft darkening of a summer night; and probably it was not explanation, but something else, more common to human nature, that she wanted. The voices of the peaceful people outside, the old men and women who caine out to sit on the benches upon the Punto, or on the stone seat under the wall of the Palazzo, and compare their experiences, and enjoy the cool of the evening, sounded pleasantly from below. There was a softened din of children playing, and now and then a sudden rush of voices, when the young men who were strolling about got excited in conversation, and stopped short in their walk for the delivery of some sentence more emphatic than the rest; and the mothers chattered over their babies, cooing and laughing. The babies should have been in bed, Frances said to herself, half laughing half crying, in a sort of tender anger with them all for being so familiar and so much at home. They were entirely at home where they were; they knew everybody, and were known from father to son, and from mother to daughter, all about them. They did not call a distant and unknown country by that sweet name, nor was there one among them who had any doubt as to where he or she was born. This thought made Frances sigh, and then made her smile. After all, if that was all! And then she saw that Domenico had brought the lamp into the salone, and that it was time to go indoors. Next morning, she went out between the early coffee and the mid-day breakfast, to do some little household business, on which, in consideration that she was English, and not bound by the laws that are so hard and fast with Italian girls, Mariuccia consented to let her go alone. It was very seldom that Mr Waring went out, or indeed was visible at that hour, the expedition of the former day being very exceptional. Frances went down to the shops to do her little commissions for Mariuccia. She even investigated the Savona pots of which Tasie had spoken. In her circum stances, it was scarcely possible not to be more or less of a collector. There is nobody in these regions who does not go about with eyes open to anything there may be to pick up.' And after this she walked back through the olive woods, by those distracting little terraces which lead the stranger so constantly out of his way, but are quite simple to those who are to the manner born-until she reached once more the broad piece of unshadowed road which leads up to the old town. At the spot at which she and her father had met the English family yesterday, she made a momentary pause, recalling all the circumstances of the meeting, and what the stranger had said: "A fellow that stuck by you all through.' All through what? she asked herself. As she paused to make this little question, to which there was no response, she heard a sound of voices coming from the upper side of the wood, where the slopes rose high into more and more olive gardens. 'Don't hurry along so; I'm coming,' some one said. Frances looked up, and her heart jumped into her mouth as she perceived that it was once more the English family whom she was about to meet on the same spot. The father was in advance this time, and he was hurrying down, she thought, with the intention of addressing her. What should she do? She knew very well what her father would have wished her to do; but probably for that very reason a contradictory impulse arose in her. Without doubt, she wanted to know what this man knew and could tell her. Not that she would ask him anything, she was too proud for that. To betray that she was not acquainted with her father's affairs, that she had to go to a stranger for information, was a thing of which she was incapable. But if he wished to speak to her-to send, perhaps, some message to her father? Frances quieted her conscience in this way. She was very anxious, excited by the sense that there was something to find out; and if it was anything her father would not approve, why, then, she could shut it up in her own breast and never let him know it to trouble him. And it was right at her age that she should know. All these sophistries hurried through her mind more rapidly than lightning during the moment in which she paused hesitating, and gave the large Englishman, overwhelmed with the heat, and hurrying down the steep path with his white umbrella over his head, time to make up to her. He was rather out of breath, for though he had been coming down hill, and not going up, the way was steep. 'Miss Waring, Miss Waring,' he cried as he approached, 'how is your father? I want to ask for your father,' taking off his straw hat and exposing his flushed countenance under the shadow of the green-lined umbrella, which enhanced all its ruddy tints; then, as he came within reach of her, he added hastily: 'I am so glad I have met you. How is he? for he did not give me any address.' Papa is quite well, thank you,' said Frances with the habitual response of a child. 'Quite well? Oh, that is a great deal more than I expected to hear. He was not quite well yesterday, I am sure. He is dreadfully changed. It was a sort of guesswork my recognising him |