RAMBLES IN NORTHUMBERLAND AND ON THE SCOTTISH BORDER WILLIAM ANDREW CHATTO CHAPTER I. Of Foreign travel, its advantages and its disadvantages, much may be said on both sides ; but of Home travel, " of journeying through the land to which a man owes his birth, education, and means of living, " the pleasures and advantages are at once so obvious and direct, that to enter into a long dissertation to prove them, would be like a logical argument to demonstrate that health is a blessing, and a contented mind a possession above all price. To a man who feels them, no argument can make the impression deeper or more vivid ; and to him who does not, no process of reasoning can convey that full and perfect conviction which is the result of feeling. Lord Eldon, in 1771, then John Scott, of University College, Oxford, wrote an Essay, " On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Foreign travel" which was ho- noured with a prize ; and judging from his Loidship's own practice " for he has never been out of Britain " we may conclude that in his mind the disadrantages were preponderant. It is perfectly useless to recommend travellings either at home or abroad, to a person in whom ill-temper and discontent are chronic diseases of the mind. Such unhappy persons ought to keep themselves dose at home since to extend their circuit would be only to increase their liability to anaoyance. At some second rate inn they might not have silver forks ; a lefl-legged fellow of a waiter might be officiously annoying ; fOling a glass of ale unasked, bringing in a wet newspaper, carrying luggage to a wrong room, or daring to suggest places in the neighbourhood worth seeing without his counsel being required, for all which high offences the peevish tourist, professedly a man of liberal sentiments and an abolitionist, would, if he had his own way, send the offender for a month to the tread-mill. It is truly ludicrous to observe a fretful gentleman, who is dissatis fied with every thing he sees or meets with, making what is in his case most erroneously called a " Tour of Pleasure," but which is in reality to him nothing more than a round of annoyances and disappointments. At the first stage where he has occasion to take a post- chaise he quarrels with the post-y " generally a little, bow-legged man, about hj years of {e, in a blue, red, or yellow jacket, with dirty leather or corduroy breeches, and top-boots to correspond " dismisses him without the customary fee, and discovers at night that the said post-boy has omitted, in all likelihood wilfully, to bring in the portable sketching- stool and umbrella, which were more especially committed to his charge. The landlord of every inn at which he stops, is an ex- tortioBer and the servants careless or impertinent ; and whatever is offered to him to eat or drink he finds unfit to enter the stomach of any civilised being. At break- &8t the bread is little better than half-baked dongh, the butter rancid and fall of hairs; the cream sour; the eggs stale ; the coffee no better than roasted com, and the tea a yillanous mixture of the leaves of some unknown herb from China with sloe leaves of our own growth. The dinner that is provided for him " accord- ing to his account, fish which has been at least a fort- night a8h(He, chickens so tough that there is no rending them either with tooth or nail, ewe mutton, and bull beef " is rendered more intolerable by the muiner in which it is dressed by a sluttish cook. He cannot make a meal of such &re, and desires to see what the house irda cold ; and lo ! there is set before him a lump of dry, hard beef, the last uneatable remains of a round which had been dressed for an agricultural dinner ten days previously, flanked, for uniformity's sake, with a pigeon pie " made of young rooks " of the same mature age. After such a dinner it cannot be expected that our tourist should enjoy a sail on Windermere, or a walk from Ambleside to Keswick; a view of York Minster, or a visit to Fountains Abbey. At night he is crammed into one of the worst bed- rooms of the house, where there is scarcely space " to swing a cat ;" and after a night either sleepless or disturbed with frightful dreams, owing to the indigestible material on which he was obliged to feed at dinner, he awakes in a cold shiver, and feels satisfied that he will be a martyr to rheumatism for the rest of his life, in conse- quence of having slept in damp sheets. On his depar- ture, he bears with him the malediction of the whole household; and as he leaves the door the landlord informs him that he will feel obliged by his making choice of some oth house, should he ever come that way again. Peevish, petted, dissatisfied being I there are at this moment in the yeiy same house a dozen guests whose dwellings when at home afford every convenience, and whose fare is of the best that the country affords, who are perfectly satisfied both with board and bed ; and a lively, sylph-like young lady of seventeen ate a slice of that individual round the next day at dinner, while her mother, a lady of exquisite taste, made an unco' hole" in the pigeon pie, which she pronounced '< de- lightful." As the discontented man pursues his weari- some journey he is never free from annoyance of some kind or other ; one day the sun is too bright and the weather too warm ; the next day is too cloudy ; and on a third, when he had been tempted by the flattering appearance of the morning to take a long walk, he is thoroughly drenched in a showet of rain, which brings on a fit of doleful lamentation, as if he had been a mined and hopeless agriculturist, whose stock and crop, " sheep, horses, cows, and corn " had ben swept away by a flood. Wherever he goes he sees Httle to admire but much to condemn ; and he can no more escape from the gloom with which his own discontent invests all objects than he can from his own shadow. He is charmed with nothing ; to the beauties of the country " of hill and dale ; com field, meadow, and pasture ; of woods and streams, and lakes and mountains, by dawn, or noon, or stilly eve " he is blind ; with the spirit that speaks from them he holds no communion ; and he returns from his tour neither a wiser nor a better man. He should have recollected " if indeed he had ever known " that travel presents indeed a change of scene, but alters not the traveller's disposition. BONA NOTABILIA. 5 Nature is but a mirror to the mind. If this be clear, the rock becomes a palace ; If this be dull, the purest air of Heaven Is dark and cheerless as a prison's gloom. Every tourist who intends to communicate his obser- vations to the public, and who wishes that his book should become popular, will do well to provide himself with letters of introduction to such eminent men as may reside within his proposed circuit. On presenting his credentials, he will be invited to break&st, dinner,. or tea, or perhaps to spend a few days, as a matter of course ; and the opportunity thus afforded of making remarks on his entertainers domestic economy no observant tourist ought to let slip. He will also, if he have a. black-lead pencil with him, " and what tourist has not? " contrive to sketch his host's portrait on the back of a card ; and will diligently note in the tablet of his memory, every word that he utters, to be transferred at leisure to his memorandum book. Should the person visited be a married man, our tourist will take particular notice of his family ; wife, sons, and daughters ; and if ke be a bachelor, then the appearance, dress, manners, and probable age of his housekeeper, must be carefully noted down. All the interesting particulars which may thus be gleaned, let the tourist piquantly serve up in his book ; and in immortal prose or verse, as his gift may be, repay his entertainer's hospitality. Should it, for various reasons, be indiscreet to pullish such obser- vations and remarks during the life-time of the person to whom they relate, still there is no harm in making them, and in haying them always ready, cut and dry, for the press. The person whose retaliatory horse-whip or pen may he dreaded, is sure to die some time, and then either, the writer or his heirs will enjoy the benefit of survivorship. How delightful, after your great literary friend is in his grave, to tell the public with what cold- ness, or rather with what a sneer, he introduced you to his wife, pointing to her over his shoulder with his thumb as she entered the room I The man who has a series of such personal memoranda, ready to produce as each of his dear friends departs, may have his own price for the article. The antiquary journeying from the south towards the Scottish border for the purpose of visiting the grave of the " mighty Minstrel" at Dryburgh, and viewing Melrose Abbey by moonlight, cannot do better, when he arrives at York, than follow the route which was always pursued by the late Rev.