HUGH MILLER'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND AND ITS PEOPLE.
A DOZEN years ago, Hugh Miller, then a labouring stone-mason, or just emerged from journey-work, published his Sketches and Traditions of Cromarty ; a little book remarkable for the elegance of its style, the good- ness of its taste, the broad and elevated character of the writer's mind. Since that time, Hugh Miller has taken to study geology, and produced a book of some repute called The Old Red Sandstone. He has also advanced himself in life ; and it seems that he takes a holyday in the autumn. He intended to make a geological voyage to the Orkney Islands in the autumn of 1845' but he had overworked himself in the previous winter and spring, and was unequal to scientific labour : he therefore relinquished the project, and instead of studying the rocks of Orkney, he determined to visit England, and observe the country and the people for the first time.
We need not follow the tourist's route in detail : Newcastle, Durham, York, Manchester, Birmingham, and London, with a detour pilgrimage to Olney as the residence of Cowper, were the principal towns he visited ; and they sufficiently indicate his field of inspection. His first desire was to observe the people; and he travelled as a middle-class traveller ; or, so vague is that term in England where there are so many subdivisions of the middle class, that it would be more specific to say at once, he travelled in second or third-class railway carriages, put up at the hum- bler hotels or publics, (" temperance," when to be found,) mixed a great deal with the lower class of middle life or the superior kind of artisans, and a little with the peasantry. He found every one much "franker," he says, than the same or any class in Scotland. He often fell in with Dissenters of various denominations' with whom he had discussions, or it may be disputations; and we think he overrates their numbers and gene- ral predominance among the middle class. This is perhaps to be ex- plained from his having, when he could, put up at the more serious houses, and also to a species of religious freemasonry, which might make him more at home with Dissenters, and render them more communicative than would be the ease with members of the Church. Perhaps, too, the wish might be father to the thought.
But man is not Hugh Miller's only study. The landscapes of Eng- land were looked at with the eye of a connoisseur in the beauties of na- ture; Bagley, the seat of the Lyttletons, and Leasowes, famous as the creation of Shenstone, were visited, partly perhaps from a taste for land- scape gardening, but chiefly, we think, to gratify some association of ideas ; for Shenstone was a favourite book with Hugh Miller when books were scarce with him, and he is acquainted with the history of the Lyttle- ton family. Geology, too, is a constant theme. Sometimes a whole chapter is devoted to the visits he paid to particular districts or fields : sometimes the subject only receives a passing remark,—as that such a character of scenery arises from such a formation.
First Impressions of England and its People is an interesting book of pleasing description and shrewd observation, relieved by such little incidents as would occur to a man travelling, like our author, to see the people as one of the people. It is also agreeably written. The main attraction, however, consists in its peculiarity as exhibiting the opinion of an observing, able, well-read, shrewd Scotchman, accustomed to take large and speculative views, and applying his powers to what seems the strange task of examining a strange people. We are so accustomed to consider the island as one, and Scotclunen as differing only as Englishmen differ among themselves in character, with a broader pronunciation, (which may, however, be more than matched in some of the provinces,) that it seems odd to have a Scot coming among us and speculating upon us as a sort of" foreigners." Yet there are differences : a great distinction struck our author as soon as he had crossed the Border.
Everything seemed as Scottish as ever—the people, the dwelling-houses, the country-. I could scarce realize the fact, that the little gray parish-church with the square tower which we had just passed was a church in which a curate read the Prayer-book every Sunday; and that I had left behind me the Scottish law, under which I had been living all life-long till now, on the top of the hill. I had proof, however, at our first English stage, that such was actually the case. 'Is all right?' asked the coachman of stall lanky Northumbrian, who had busied himself in changing the horses. Yes, all roit,' was the reply; 'rit as the Church of England: I was, it was evident, on Presbyterian ground no longer."
This habit or faculty of noting small things which mark a national (less than a mere provincial) difference attends him everywhere; though it must be observed that the contrast almost wholly relates to matters which have their origin in religion. Thus, at Manchester he went to see a Sunday holyday train come in, and be strikes out a new view upon the Sunday travelling question as regards Scotland : but Mr. Miller is very strongly Presbyterian, and greatly against Sabbath-travelling. Just as the evening was setting in, I sauntered down to the gate by which a return train was discharging its hundreds of passengers, fresh from the Sabbath amusements of the country, that I might see how they looked. There did not seem ninth of enjoyment about the wearied and somewhat draggled groups; they wore, on the contrary, rather an unhappy physiognomy, as if they had missed spending the day quite to their minds, and were now returning, sad and disap- pointed, to the round of toil from which it ought to have proved a sweet interval of relief. A congregation just dismissed from hearing a vigorous evening dis- course would have borne to a certainty a more cheerful air. There was not much actual drunkenness among the crowd—thanks to the preference which the Eng- lishman gives to his ale over ardent spirits; not a tithe of what I would have witnessed on a similar occasion in my own country. A few there were, however, evidently muddled; and I saw one positive scene. A young man considerably in liquor had quarrelled with his mistress, and, threatening to throw himself into the Irwell, off he had bolted in the direction of the river. There was a shriek of agony from the young woman, and a cry of Stop Lim, stop him!' to which a tall bulky Englishman, of the true John Bull type, had coolly responded by thrusting forth his foot as he passed and tripping him at full length on the pavement; and for a few minutes all was hubbub and confusion. With, however, this exception, the aspect of the numerous passengers had a sort of animal decency about it, which one might in vain look for among the Sunday travellers on a Scotch rail- way. Sunday seems greatly less connected with the fourth commandment in the humble English mind than in that of Scotland; and so a less disreputable portion of the people go abroad. There is a considerable difference, too, between masses of men simply ignorant of religion and nurses of men broken loose from it; and the Sabbath-contemning Scotch belong to the latter category. With the humble Englishman, trained up to no regular habit of church-going, Sabbath is pudding- day, and clean-shirt-day, and a day for lolling on the grass opposite the sun; and if there be a river or canal hard by, for trying how the gudgeons bite; or if in the neighbourhood of a railway, for taking a short trip to some country inn famous for its cakes and ale: but to the humble Scot become English in his Sabbath views, the day is in most cases a time of sheer recklessness and dissipation. There is much truth in the shrewd remark of Sir Walter Scott, that the &etch, once metamorphosed into Englishmen, make very mischievous Englishmen indeed." In reviewing the Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, in 1835, we observed that some of the "personal opinions" of the writer could have been spared, and hinted a warning against "overdoing." These two tendencies seem to have rather grown upon Hugh since 1835; and they form the faults of the present volume. A topic started, is pur- sued a long way, if not absolutely run down ; and the composition, though very good, passes occasionally into too much of writing. Where the subject has a practical interest, and consequently bears a good deal, this is not felt ; but the descriptions of Leasowes and Hagley are in sooth rather overdone. The book is not devoid, either, of the usual resources of literary tourists, that of writing from books or preconceived opinions. In Miller's case, however, the practice is seldom tedious, or affected, be- cause the scene naturally introduces the subject : thus, the notice of the dis- sipated Lord Lyttleton and his singular death is appropriate enough at his house and grave (for he has no epitaph); and the Leasowes naturally ad- mits a notice of the life and poetical character of Shenstone. The other defect is a species of oracular or at least very decided mode of pro- nouncing upon things, in a way which is best expressed by the word opinionative. It is not that the view is wrong, still less narrow : it is often true, always probable, sometimes very shrewd, and is not dog- matically offensive in tone. But there is too much of "an air" about it, as if Mr. Miller could penetrate to the core by glancing at the outside, or settle offhand, during a morning walk, questions connected with English society, dependent upon a knowledge of facts that can scarcely be obtained at all, much leas from facts seen or picked up daring a two-months run- ning trip.
Previous page
