Two Years Ago, Volume I | Page 4

as she slides, with divided streams, through bright water-meadows, and stately groves of poplar, and abele, and pine; while, far aloft upon the left, the downs rise steep, crowned with black fir spinnies, and dotted with dark box and juniper.
Soon they pass old Whitford Priory, with its numberless gables, nestling amid mighty elms, and the Nunpool flashing and roaring as of old, and the broad shallow below sparkling and laughing in the low, but bright December sun.
"So slides on the noble river, for ever changing, and yet for ever the same--always fulfilling its errand, which yet is never fulfilled," said Stangrave,--he was given to half-mystic utterances, and hankerings after Pagan mythology, learnt in the days when he worshipped Emerson, and tried (but unsuccessfully) to worship Margaret Fuller Ossoli,--"Those old Greeks had a deep insight into nature, when they gave to each river not merely a name, but a semi-human personality, a river-god of its own. It may be but a collection of ever-changing atoms of water;--what is your body but a similar collection of atoms, decaying and renewing every moment? Yet you are a person; and is not the river, too, a person--a live thing? It has an individual countenance which you love, which you would recognise again, meet it where you will; it marks the whole landscape; it determines probably the geography and the society of a whole district. It draws you, too, to itself by an indefinable mesmeric attraction. If you stop in a strange place, the first instinct of your idle half-hour is, to lounge by the river. It is a person to you; you call it--Scotchmen do, at least--she, and not it. How do you know that you are not philosophically correct, and that the river has a spirit as well as you?"
"Humph!" said Claude, who talks mysticism himself by the hour, but snubs it in every one else. "It has trout, at least; and they stand, I suppose, for its soul, as the raisins did for those of Jean Paul's gingerbread bride and bridegroom and peradventure baby."
"Oh you materialist English! sporting-mad all of you, from the duke who shooteth stags to the clod who poacheth rabbits!"
"And who therefore can fight Russians at Inkermann, duke and clod alike, and side by side; never better (says the chronicler of old) than in their first battle. I can neither fight nor fish, and on the whole agree with you: but I think it proper to be as English as I can in the presence of an American."
A whistle--a creak--a jar; and they stop at the little Whitford station, where a cicerone for the vale, far better than Claude was, made his appearance, in the person of Mark Armsworth, banker, railway director, and de facto king of Whitbury town, long since elected by universal suffrage (his own vote included) as permanent locum tenens of her gracious Majesty.
He hails Claude cheerfully from the platform, as he waddles about, with a face as of the rising sun, radiant with good fun, good humour, good deeds, good news, and good living. His coat was scarlet once; but purple now. His leathers and boots were doubtless clean this morning; but are now afflicted with elephantiasis, being three inches deep in solid mud, which his old groom is scraping off as fast as he can. His cap is duntled in; his back bears fresh stains of peat; a gentle rain distils from the few angles of his person, and bedews the platform; for Mark Armsworth has "been in Whit" to-day.
All porters and guards touch their hats to him; the station-master rushes up and down frantically, shouting, "Where are those horse-boxes? Now then, look alive!" for Mark is chairman of the line, and everybody's friend beside; and as he stands there being scraped, he finds time to inquire after every one of the officials by turns, and after their wives, children, and sweethearts beside.
"What a fine specimen of your English squire!" says Stangrave.
"He is no squire; he is the Whitbury banker, of whom I told you."
"Armsworth!" said Stangrave, looking at the old man with interest.
"Mark Armsworth himself. He is acting as squire, though, now; for he has hunted the Whitford Priors ever since poor old Lavington's death."
"Now then--those horse-boxes!"...
"Very sorry, sir; I telegraphed up, but we could get but one down."
"Put the horses into that, then; and there's an empty carriage! Jack, put the hounds into it, and they shall all go second class, as sure as I'm chairman!"
The grinning porters hand the strange passengers in, while Mark counts the couples with his whip-point,--
"Ravager--Roysterer; Melody--Gay-lass; all right. Why, where's that old thief of a Goodman?"
"Went over a gate as soon as he saw the couples; and wouldn't come in at any price, sir," says the huntsman. "Gone home by himself, I expect."
"Goodman, Goodman, boy!" And