Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 9.pdf/99

88 Pilgrimage

88

to

from the writer as such, but from the man

behind the writer.

Old Boston.

[Jan nary,

though with many babyish fancies, many melmu-holies

or barbarous

of

He who dwells aloft amid the deathless orient imaginations of the human race, easily inhabiting their

the blood compounded. carries neverthe less some refrain of divine hilarity, that

atmosphere as his native element,—about and him only, are the halos and

beguiles men of their sordidness, their sullenness, and low cares, they know not

dawns of immortal

how nor why.

him,

youth; and his speech,

and vices

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. We set out at a little past eleven, and made our ﬁrst stage to Manchester. Wc were by this time suﬂiciently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and sun ny one ; although the May sunshine was mingled with water, as it were, and dis tempered with a very bitter east-wind. Lancashire is a dreary county, (all, at least, except its hilly portions,) and it without have never passed through

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wishing myself anywhere but in that par ticular spot where then happened to A few places along our route were be.

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historically interesting; as, for example, Bolton, which was the scene of many re markable events in the Parliamentary War, and in the market-square of which one of the Earls of Derby was beheaded.

We

saw, along the way-side,

the never

The scenery grew rather better than that which we had hitherto passed, though still by no means very striking; for (except in the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or Derbyshire) Eng lish scenery is not particularly well worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a through

It has a real, homely charm of picture. its own, no doubt ; and the rich verdure,

ﬁnish added by human art, are perhaps as attractive to an Amer ican eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, between Man chester and Sheﬁield was not through a rich tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a rampart, and across black moorlands with here and there a plan Sometimes there were tation of trees. long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, and the thorough

failing green ﬁelds,’hedges, and other mo notonous features of an ordinary Eng and desolate, conveying the very impres lish landscape. There were little factory sion which the reader gets from many novels, and villages, too, or larger towns, with their passages of Miss Bronté’s still more from those of her two sisters. tall chimneys, and their pennons of black Old stone or brick farm-houses, and, once smoke, their uglinesses of brick-work, in a while, an old chunh-tower, were vis and their heaps of refuse matter from ible : but these are almost too common ob the furnace, which seems to be the only kind of stuﬂ’ which Nature cannot take Mjects to be noticed in an English land back to herself and resolve into the ele scape. On a railway, ments, when man has thrown it aside. suspect, what little we These hillocks of waste and effete min do see of the country is semi quite amiss, eral always disﬁgure the neighborhood because it was never intended to he look ed at from any point of view in that of ironmongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are hardly made straight line; so that it is like looking at the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. decent with a little grass. The old highways and footpaths were as At a quarter to two we left Manches ter by the Sheﬂield and Lincoln Railway. natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapt

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