The Recreations of Christopher North

LIBRARY foiversity of California* IRVINE THE RECREATIONS CHRISTOPHER NORTH. EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY n AM. ANTYNE AND HUfiHF.S, PAUL'S WORK, OANONT.ATE. V 5 o o THE RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON. M.DCCC.XLII. r/- '- 3 CONTENTS. Ta-'e I. CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIAKY FIRST CANTICLE ..... 1 SECOND CANTICLE . 42 THIRD CANTICLE . .77 FOURTH CANTICLE ...... 100 II. DR KITCHINER FIRST COURSE . 123 SECOND COURSE . 143 THIRD COURSE . .153 FOURTH COURSE . H'9 III. SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS FIRST RHAPSODY . .186 SECOND RHAPSODY ..... 209 IV. A FEW "WORDS ON THOMSON . 2r9 V. THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT . 259 VI. CHRISTMAS DREAMS . .275 VII. OUR WINTER QUARTERS . 303 VIII. STROLL TO GRASSMERE FIRST SAUNTER ..... 33(3 SECOND SAUNTER ...... 377 IX. L'ENVOY US 3 CHKISTOPHEK NORTH. CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. FIRST CANTICLE. THE present Age, which, after all, is a very pretty and pleasant one, is feelingly alive and widely awake to the manifold delights and advantages with which the study of Natural History swarms, and especially that branch of it which unfolds the character and habits, physical, moral, and intellectual, of those most interest- ing and admirable creatures Birds. It is familiar not of only with the shape and colour beak, bill, claw, talon, and plume, but with the purposes for which they are designed, and with the instincts which guide their use in the beautiful economy of all-gracious Nature. We remember the time when the very word Ornithology VOL. III. A 2 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. would have required interpretation in mixed company; when a naturalist was looked on as a sort of out-of-the- way but amiable monster. Now, one seldom meets with man, woman, or child, who does not know a hawk from a handsaw, or even, to adopt the more learned from a heron-shew a black swan is no reading, ; longer erroneously considered a rara avis any more than a black while the Gander no sheep ; Glasgow himself, longer apocryphal, has taken his place in the national creed, belief in his existence being merely blended with wonder at his magnitude, and some surprise perhaps among the scientific, that he should be as yet the sole specimen of that -enormous Anser. The chief cause of this advancement of knowledge in one of its most delightful departments, has been the gradual extension of its study from stale books written by men, to that book ever fresh from the hand of God. And the second another yet the same has been the gradual change wrought by a philosophical spirit in the observation, delineation, and arrangement of the facts and laws with which the science is conversant, and which it exhibits in the most perfect harmony and order. Neophytes now range for themselves, according to their capacities and opportunities, the fields, woods, rivers, lakes, seas and no and ; proficients, longer confining themselves to mere nomenclature, enrich their works with anecdotes and traits of character, which, without departure from truth, have imbued bird-biography with the double charm of reality and romance. Compare the intensity and truth of any natural know- CHRISTOPHER IX HIS AVIARY. O ledge insensibly acquired by observation in very early youth, with that corresponding to it picked up in later life from books ! In fact, the habit of distinguishing between things as different, or of similar forms, colours, and characters, formed in infancy, and childhood, and boyhood, in a free intercourse and communion with Nature, while we are merely seeking and finding the divine joy of novelty and beauty, perpetually occurring before our eyes in all her haunts, may be made the foundation of an accuracy of judgment of inappreciable value as an intellectual endowment. So entirely is this true, that we know many observant persons, that is, observant in all things intimately related \\ ith their own pursuits, and with the experience of their own early education, who, with all the pains they could take in after life, have never been able to distinguish by name, when they saw them, above half-a-dozen, if so many, of British -birds while as to them our singing ; knowing by their song, that is wholly beyond the reach of their uninstructed ear, and a shilfa chants to them like a yellow yoldrin. On seeing a small bird peeping out of a hole in the eaves, and especially on hearing him chat- ter, they shrewdly suspect him to be a sparrow, though it does not by any means follow that their suspicions are verified and when with her always ; though, sitting " " white breast so lovely out of the auld clay bigging in the window-corner, he cannot mistake Mistress Swallow, yet when flitting in fly-search over the stream, and ever and anon dipping her wing-tips in the lucid coolness, 'tis an equal chance that he misnames her Miss Marten. 4 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. What constant caution is necessary during the naturalist's perusal even of the very best books! From the very best we can only obtain knowledge at second- hand, and this, like a story circulated among village gossips, is more apt to gain in falsehood than in truth, as it from one to another but in field passes ; study we go at once to the fountain-head, and obtain our facts pure and unalloyed by the theories and opinions of previous observers. Hence it is that the utility of books becomes obvious. You witness with your own eyes some puzzling, perplexing, strange, and unaccount- able fact different statements of it have been ; twenty different consult given by twenty ornithologists ; you them all, and getting a hint from one, and a hint from another, here a glimmer of light to be followed, and there a gloom of darkness to be avoided why, who knows but that in the end you do yourself solve the mystery, and absolutely become not only happy but illustrious? People sitting in their own parlour with their feet on the fender, or in the sanctum of some museum, staring at stuffed specimens, imagine themselves naturalists; and in their presumptuous and insolent ignorance, which is often total, scorn the wisdom of the wanderers of the woods, who have for many studious and solitary years been making themselves familiar with all the beautiful mysteries of instinctive life. Take two boys, and set them respectively to pursue the two plans of study. How puzzled and perplexed will be the one who pores over the "interminable terms" of a system in books, having meanwhile no access to, or communion CHRISTOPHER IX HIS AVIARY. 5 with nature ! The poor wretch is to be pitied nor is he any thing else than a slave. But the young naturalist who takes his first lessons in the fields, observing the unrivalled scene which creation every where displays, is perpetually studying in the power of delight and wonder, and laying up knowledge which can be derived from no other source. The rich boy is to be envied, nor is he any thing else than a king. The one sits bewildered the other walks among words, enlightened among things ; the one has not even the shadow, the other more than the substan.ce the very essence and life of knowledge ; and at twelve years old he may be a better naturalist than ever the mere bookworm will be, were he to outlive old Tommy Balmer. In education late or early for heaven's sake let us never separate things and words ! They are married in nature; and what God hath put together let no man put asunder 'tis a fatal divorce. Without things, words accumulated by misery in the memory, had far better in die than drag out an useless existence the dark ; without words, their stay and support, things unaccount- ably disappear out of the storehouse, and may be for ever lost. But bind a thing with a word, a strange link, stronger than any steel, and softer than any silk, and the captive remains for ever happy in its bright prison- house. On this principle, it is indeed surprising at how early an age children can be instructed in the most inte- resting parts of natural history ay, even a babe in arms. Remember Coleridge's beautiful lines to the Nightingale : 6 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. " That strain again ! Full fain it would delay mo ! My dear babe, Who, capable of no articulate sound, Mars all things with his imitative lisp, How he would place his hand beside his ear, His little hand, the small forefinger up, And bid us listen ! and I deem it wise To make him Nature's child." How we come to love the Birds of Bewick, and White, and the two Wilsons, and Montagu, and Mudie, and Knapp, and Selby, and Swainson, and Audubon, and many others familiar with their haunts and habits, their affections and their passions, till we feel that they are indeed our fellow-creatures, and part of one wise and wonderful system ! If there be sermons in stones, what think ye of the hymns and psalms, matin and vesper, of the lark, who at heaven's gate sings of the wren, who pipes her thanksgivings as the slant sun- beam shoots athwart the mossy portal of the cave, in whose fretted roof she builds her nest above the water- fall ! In cave-roof? Yea we have seen it so just beneath the cornice. But most frequently we have detected her procreant cradle on old mossy stump, mouldering walls or living rock sometimes in cleft of yew-tree or hawthorn for hang the globe with its imperceptible orifice in the sunshine or the storm, and St Catharine sits within heedless of the outer world, counting her beads with her sensitive breast that broods in bliss over the priceless pearls.

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