The Life of John Sterling | Page 9

in search of some more
generous field of enterprise. Stormy brief efforts at energetic husbandry,

at agricultural improvement and rapid field-labor, alternated with
sudden flights to Dublin, to London, whithersoever any flush of bright
outlook which he could denominate practical, or any gleam of hope
which his impatient ennui could represent as such, allured him. This
latter was often enough the case. In wet hay-times and harvest-times,
the dripping outdoor world, and lounging indoor one, in the absence of
the master, offered far from a satisfactory appearance! Here was, in fact,
a man much imprisoned; haunted, I doubt not, by demons enough;
though ever brisk and brave withal,--iracund, but cheerfully vigorous,
opulent in wise or unwise hope. A fiery energetic soul consciously and
unconsciously storming for deliverance into better arenas; and this in a
restless, rapid, impetuous, rather than in a strong, silent and deliberate
way.
In rainy Bute and the dilapidated Kaimes Castle, it was evident, there
lay no Goshen for such a man. The lease, originally but for some three
years and a half, drawing now to a close, he resolved to quit Bute; had
heard, I know not where, of an eligible cottage without farm attached,
in the pleasant little village of Llanblethian close by Cowbridge in
Glamorganshire; of this he took a lease, and thither with his family he
moved in search of new fortunes. Glamorganshire was at least a better
climate than Bute; no groups of idle or of busy reapers could here stand
waiting on the guidance of a master, for there was no farm here;--and
among its other and probably its chief though secret advantages,
Llanblethian was much more convenient both for Dublin and London
than Kaimes Castle had been.
The removal thither took place in the autumn of 1809. Chief part of the
journey (perhaps from Greenock to Swansea or Bristol) was by sea:
John, just turned of three years, could in after-times remember nothing
of this voyage; Anthony, some eighteen months older, has still a vivid
recollection of the gray splashing tumult, and dim sorrow, uncertainty,
regret and distress he underwent: to him a "dissolving-view" which not
only left its effect on the plate (as all views and dissolving-views
doubtless do on that kind of "plate"), but remained consciously present
there. John, in the close of his twenty-first year, professes not to
remember anything whatever of Bute; his whole existence, in that
earliest scene of it, had faded away from him: Bute also, with its
shaggy mountains, moaning woods, and summer and winter seas, had

been wholly a dissolving-view for him, and had left no conscious
impression, but only, like this voyage, an effect.
Llanblethian hangs pleasantly, with its white cottages, and orchard and
other trees, on the western slope of a green hill looking far and wide
over green meadows and little or bigger hills, in the pleasant plain of
Glamorgan; a short mile to the south of Cowbridge, to which smart
little town it is properly a kind of suburb. Plain of Glamorgan, some ten
miles wide and thirty or forty long, which they call the Vale of
Glamorgan;--though properly it is not quite a Vale, there being only
one range of mountains to it, if even one: certainly the central
Mountains of Wales do gradually rise, in a miscellaneous manner, on
the north side of it; but on the south are no mountains, not even land,
only the Bristol Channel, and far off, the Hills of Devonshire, for
boundary,--the "English Hills," as the natives call them, visible from
every eminence in those parts. On such wide terms is it called Vale of
Glamorgan. But called by whatever name, it is a most pleasant fruitful
region: kind to the native, interesting to the visitor. A waving grassy
region; cut with innumerable ragged lanes; dotted with sleepy unswept
human hamlets, old ruinous castles with their ivy and their daws, gray
sleepy churches with their ditto ditto: for ivy everywhere abounds; and
generally a rank fragrant vegetation clothes all things; hanging, in rude
many-colored festoons and fringed odoriferous tapestries, on your right
and on your left, in every lane. A country kinder to the sluggard
husbandman than any I have ever seen. For it lies all on limestone,
needs no draining; the soil, everywhere of handsome depth and finest
quality, will grow good crops for you with the most imperfect tilling.
At a safe distance of a day's riding lie the tartarean copper-forges of
Swansea, the tartarean iron-forges of Merthyr; their sooty battle far
away, and not, at such safe distance, a defilement to the face of the
earth and sky, but rather an encouragement to the earth at least;
encouraging the husbandman to plough better, if he only would.
The peasantry seem indolent and stagnant, but peaceable and
well-provided; much given to