Page:A century of Birmingham life- or, A chronicle of local events, from 1741 to 1841 (IA centuryofbirming02lang).pdf/710

664 Sheep were on this common, descendants in the tenth generation, perhaps, of my old friends, bobbing their noses into, and nibbling the short soft grass—soft and slippery is that grass, on a sunny day, as my lady's velvet pelisse, or the tip of her ear. There, too, stood yet, the circle of aged firs, a vegetated druidical temple of firs. They were none of your prim, straight, smirking looking things, that you see 'stuck in a modern shrubbery,' like a string of boarding-school misses, ranged at question and answer; but stout, hearty, jolly old fellows, sturdy in the chest and waist, and such muscular and sinewy arms thrown out, as if they would knock the wind down. You may see something like them at Guy's Cliff, in the avenue, which they form; but, oh, they are babies compared with those on my common. Well, so they stood, solemnly waving their dark garments in the breeze, or motionless in their silent and deep worship of nature. Magnificence dreaming. Nothing there was touched by the hand of civilization, thank God. Yes, one change had been made, and I felt that the milk of human kindness was not all soured within me. This was a fanciful and beautiful improvement. An extensive old gravel-pit had been spread with productive earth and mould, without diminishing its depth perceptibly, or changing its outlines in the least—all the abruptness, hillocks, undulations, hollows, and projections were carefully preserved, then turfed and planted with shrubs, roots. and moss, which, when I saw them, were flourishing with seventeen years of glory, making one of the most perfect specimens of romantic solitude I ever enjoyed. Who did it? Take nine-tenths of the saints out of the calendar to make room for him."

Such was Charles Reece Pemberton, his life, and works. His is a name which Birmingham, at least, ought not willingly to let die. In the words of his favourite author—