AFTER LONDON.*
Ix is far easier to attempt to realise the changes of the past than to imagine those of the future, yet these are none the less sure. However remote it may be, the time must come when England will lose her place in the van of progress and civilisa- tion, when her population will dwindle and her cities decay. The fate that has befallen other realms will overtake her. "Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, where are they P" and some day England's name must stand in the same category. If nothing else happens, when her coal-measures are exhausted an enormous diminution in the number of her inhabitants must ensue, accompanied by the shrinking, if not the total disap- pearance, of many towns and cities that now exist in virtue of their manufactures alone. Not for all time will Eng- land remain, to use Mr. Ruskin's forcible words, " a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable crowds." In the present day, even, it must be admitted that there are still lovely districts left pure and sweet, untainted by the breath of the furnace, and into which the contemplative man may fly or steam away, and be at rest. The day must arrive when the town will cease to encroach on the country, and the country begin to drive back the town. For a Londoner, who sees his vast city stretching her arms in every direction, adding mile after mile to her streets, it may be impossible to imagine the change that-is so inevitable. But our great cities, like our little systems, "have their day, and cease to be." Nor is this an altogether painful thought. Passing through the desolating and contemptible ugliness of many parts of London, it is, or ought to be, a consolation to look forward to the time when the hideous streets will have disappeared, and the country once more have resumed its sway. What quickly crumbling mounds the half-baked bricks of which so many of the London suburbs are built will make ! There is comfort to be found in the very badness of the buildings, they will so quickly vanish, and the sweet pastoral country, now so scarred and desecrated, which once prevailed round London, will appear again. The day may even come when some wayfarer, not with the eye of fancy, as Wordsworth's " Poor Susan," but with living, actual vision, may see that,— " Bright volumes of vapour thro' Lothbary glide, And a river flows down thro' the vale of Cheapside." What will be the end of London no man can venture to say. That it must end, all will admit. Whether an earthquake—and one a little stronger than the recent one in Essex would lay a vast proportion of London in ruins—followed by the inevitable fire, will prove the final catastrophe, or whether some utter collapse of the system of sewage, or of the water or food supply, will occur, or whether London will simply dwindle, as it * After London ; or, Wild England. By Richard Jefferies. London : Cassell and Co. 1885.
has grown, with slow step but sure, these are all matters for ingenious speculation. With them Mr. Jefferies does not greatly concern himself. He gives himself up to endeavour- ing to imagine what would happen in England if the hand of man, in counteracting the forces of Nature, were suddenly with- drawn, and things were left generally to themselves. The first part of his book is headed " The Relapse into Barbarism," and is supposed to be written by a future inhabitant, but at so remote a period that the history of the catastrophe had become mere tradition. What it was that happened is not by any means clear ; but the passage of a dark body of enormous size through space, its attraction tem- porarily inclining the orbit of the earth more than before, is suggested. Other tradition asserts that the food-supply from abroad suddenly stopping, all who had the means sailed away to escape starvation, leaving only the poorest and most ignorant behind. Whither they went no one knows, and none has ever
returned to say. After they were gone, the whole country very soon became green, and, in the second year, weeds obtained a com- plete mastery over the grass and crops that had been left. Foot- paths and roads were soon covered and lost; while the hedgerows, untrimmed, increased rapidly, so that by the thirtieth year no open space was left where a man could walk save in the tracks of wild animals, except on the hills. The brooks and streams, uncared-for and unconfined, with their dams pierced by myriads of rats, soon forced their banks and carried away their hatches, forming ever-increasing swamps and morasses. Soon, lands
adjacent to streams went back to marsh; whilst the waters, kept back by obstructions they brought down and piled against the weirs, sometimes burst these, and in their furious course carried away the bridges of stone and iron that the ancients had built, and silted up their foundations with sand and gravel. Thus the sites of low-lying towns and villages were covered and concealed by water and mud, and in a few years nothing could be seen from the hills but endless forest and marsh :-
" On the level ground and plains, the view was limited to a short distance, because of the thickets and the saplings which had now become young trees. The downs only were still partially open, yet it was not convenient to walk upon them except in the tracks of animals, because of the long grass which, being no more regularly grazed upon by sheep, as was once the case, grew thick and tangled. Furze, too, and heath covered the slopes, and in places vast quantities of fern. There had always been copses of fir and beech and nut-tree covers, and these increased and spread, while bramble, briar, and hawthorn extended around them. By degrees, the trees of the vale seemed, as it were, to invade and march up the hills, and, as we see in our time, in many places the downs are hidden altogether with a stunted kind of forest. But all the above happened in the time of the first generation."
At first swarms of mice appeared, and legions of rats came out of the old cities, and devoured every grain of corn that had been left. But in a few years hawks, owls, weasels, and foxes increased, and these, w ith the forest cats and the wild dogs, brought the vermin within bounds. Two kinds of cattle roam through the forests, the white and the black, whilst pigs of four varieties are found, some haunting by preference the moist, low-lying lands. Wild sheep and wild horses, with immense herds of red and fallow deer, exist in the vast tracts of woodland, which are also peopled by bush-hens, galenas, peacocks, wood-turkeys, and white ducks and geese, " all of which, though now wild as the hawk, are well known to have been once tame." Of men, we are told of the Bushmen, descendants of the tramps of our day, who wander to and fro with no apparent object, stopping their " camp," or tribal family, where they please, and moving on when the fancy takes them. These wretched beings, who cultivate nothing and have nothing, are "the thieves, the human vermin of the woods." They maintain a deadly fend with the Romany or Zingari, who continue in exactly the same state as in civilised times, but have greatly increased in numbers. Then there are the house- folk, who live by agriculture or in towns, and are divided into numerous provinces, kingdoms, and republics, constantly at war with each other. Their towns and cities, often bearing the names of the old towns and cities of the ancients, are little more than settlements fortified by stockades. Slavery is rife among them ; the arts of peace and war alike are mostly lost, and only the nobles, and under special licence, the merchants, know, or are allowed to learn, how to read and write. One great physical change Mr. Jefferies describes as having taken place, viz., the formation of a vast freshwater lake in the centre of the island. This extends from the ancient site of London in the east to the Red Rocks, near Bristol, on the west, the entrance from the sea being by the channel of the Avon. This lake was caused by the waters of the Severn and of the Thames being pent back,—those of the Severn by vast banks which formed across its estuary, possibly through some change in the relative levels, of land and sea. In the case of the Thames, its waters were greatly stayed by the crumbling ruins of London ; the lower parts of the ancient city are now foetid swamps, stagnant and miasmatic, exhaling a vapour, fatal to all life, from the rottenness of a thousand years which festers beneath the waters. The waters of these foul swamps are divided by a partial barrier from the sweet waters of the lake, on whose shores the towns and settlements of the people are placed :—
" A beautiful sea it is, clear as crystal, exquisite to drink, abounding with fishes of every kind, and adorned with green islands. There is nothing more lovely in the world than when, upon a calm evening, the sun goes down across the level and gloaming water, where it is so wide that the eye can but just distinguish a low and dark cloud, as it were, resting upon the horizon, or perhaps, looking lengthways, cannot distinguish any ending to the expanse. Some- times it is blue, reflecting the noonday sky ; sometimes white from the clouds, again green and dark as the wind rises and the waves roll. Storms, indeed, come up with extraordinary swiftness, for which reason the ships, whenever possible, follow the trade route, as it is called, behind the islands, which shelter them like a pro- tecting reef. They drop equally quickly, and thus it is not uncommon for the morning to be calm, the midday raging in waves dashing resistlessly upon the beach, and the evening still again. The Irish, who are accustomed to the salt ocean, say, in the suddenness of its storms and the shifting winds, it is more dangerous than the sea itself. But then there are almost always islands, behind which a vessel can be sheltered. Beneath the surface of the lake there must be con- cealed very many ancient towns and cities, of which the names are lost. Sometimes the anchors bring up even now fragments of rusty iron and old metal, or black beams of timber. It is said, and with probability, that when the remnant of the ancients found the water gradually encroaching (for it rose very slowly), as they were driven back year by year, they considered that in time they would be all swept away and drowned. But after extending to its present limits, the lake rose no farther, not even in the wettest seasons, but always remains the same. From the position of certain quays we know that it has thus remained for the last hundred years at least. Never, as I observed before, was there so beautiful an expanse of water. How much mast we sorrow that it has so often proved only the easiest mode of bringing the miseries of war to the doors of the unoffending. Yet men are never weary of sailing to and fro upon it, and most of the cities of the present time are upon its shore. And in the evening we walk by the beach, and from the rising grounds look over the waters, as if to gaze upon their loveliness were reward to us for the labour of the day."
In his descriptions of scenery, in his local touches, and in what he has to say of the ways of wild creatures, Mr. Jefferies, as is his wont, excels. He gives an air of actual existence to the future aspect of England that he has conjured up. It is when he attempts to portray persons that his hand fails ; but although the men and women of his creation are vague and fanciful, the situations are so new and so unexpected, that one is compelled to read on. The second part of the book, on " Wild England," is an account of the adventures of a certain Felix Aquila, of his visit to the site of Ancient London, and of his exploration of the unknown recesses of the Lake; but the story is an unfinished one. In spite of the noticeable tinge of unreality which pervades his characters, we have read the whole book with much interest, which would have been increased, had Mr. Jefferies given a map showing the changes he supposes to have taken place, with the route of Felix's journey. Perhaps when he completes the tale, he may be induced to do so.
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