A COUNTRY DIARY.* THE Selborne vein is the most inexhaustible
in English letters, and no generation passes without many an instance of its successful working. And yet no manner is more difficult for high success. It is so easy to be tolerably good, so hard to produce from the large material of the seasons and the life of the wilds something which may be a real and memorable interpretation. One class of essayist, who bespatters Nature with his epithets, may with difficulty know a thrush from a crow; while the genuine naturalist, if he records his observations, will too often adopt the bald methods of the gazetteer. Or if we find the two standpoints conjoined. ankthe_artist's eye for beauty controlled by the brain and instinct of the scientist, then the venue may be too limited, oi the manner monotonous. It is not given to all to make a living book, out of the trivial round of country life, and at the same time it must be the country round to make the country book, for if a man travels widely an alien interest creeps in, and the result may be good, but not in the class we desire. Sir Herbert Maxwell in the second series of his Memories of the Months seems to have come very near this success, if- he has not actually attained it. All the proper Selborne qualities are here. • We have the little details, the -close watching of the seasons,' which Gilbert White loved; a style of much vigour and grace; the ardour of the trained naturalist; and, above all things, that love of gardens and homely natural surround- ings of which the traveller, pure and simple, knows nothing. But in addition there is a chronicle of sport of many kinds, and, the scene changes from London to Caithness, from Surrey to Galloway, from the Tweed to the Loire, and even to the meadows of Denmark. No pocket appellation fits the book, for we have the country diary broken in upon by sporting ex- peditions, and at times by excursions in literature. It is a volume of excellent gossip, the note-book of a well-informed and high-spirited student of Nature and his fellows, where the sportsman's ardour is tempered- always with the sympathy of the lover of wild things, and the naturalist's interest is leavened with the humour of a cultivated man of the world.
The themes, though they fall under months in orderly sequence, have the varied and episodic character of good eountry-house talk. The prevailing temper is one of a keen zest for the simpler joys of life. The author, as the imposing array of his works bears witness, has seen men and cities and followed many learned pursuits, mid yet we have him writing of country sights and the incidents of sport with the gaiety and enthusiasm of one who had no other distraction. The book, indeed; as he explains, is a record of pleasure, "that word fainted so grossly in human handling," written to recall the hone serenz of the country. "Many a weary and anxious mind," he says, "would derive refreshment from reflection upon the moments when it was agreeably employed upon small -matters, did it but possess an easy clue through the labyrinth of retrospect." And so, while most of the book is good talk, but talk Only', there are a dozen incidents which are set down because in them the narrator was supremely happy. Clever and well- informed though the other chapters are, we prefer the interludee, whether spring-fishing on the grey Caithness wafers, 'or by the Cree, or in may-fly season among the chalk streams, or bicycling among the Loire orchards, or stalking in Rannoch, or casting a fly in the dark November days among the many haunted pools of Tweed. Elsewhere we have much excellent common-sense on the morality of sport and the sinfulness of slaying beautiful birds. Hunting, he says rightly, is the only thing which will preserve a fine animal from extinction. You protect the deer or the pheasant from his natural enemies, who would soon make an end of him as things are nowadays, and in return you exact toll of a certain number of lives taken in a manner which gives
• Memories of the Months. Second Series. By the Right Hon. Sir Herbert
Harwell, F.R.S. London : E. Amold. [71. 641.]
health and pleasure to a large number of human beings. But Sir Herbert Maxwell has more than a sane view of sport; he has an unfailing sympathy for all beautiful created things and the true naturalist's desire to see them unmolested. Here is an incident:—
" At the beginning of the great frost in February, 1895, I was fishing in the Thurso. A brace of beautiful wild swans came up the river and offered to light on the pool beside which I was standing, but on seeing me they flew on. My gillie said he thought they would settle at a place higher up the river, and urged me to get a gun, for I would get a fine chance at them. I turned and said, 'Do you know that if I were to get twenty guineas for every swan I bagged, I ,never would fire at one of them?' He looked half amused, half incredulous, but many sportsmen will understand my feelings."
Most sportsmen, we fancy, will be grateful to the author for this and many other things in the book, which seem to us illustrations of the sportsmanlike temper at its highest. We
like, too, the February scene on the Helmsdale, when the stream ran black between frozen banks, and the fly had to be sucked clear of ice. And better still is March in Galloway: the wet streets of the little town in the early morning, the roar of the Cree at its cauld, the birk-clad, blackeock-hautited waterside, and then—a blank day, but for the ubiquitous and assertive kelt. And so the' months pass till it is July, and the scene changes to Loch Nevis and sea-trout. Sir Herbert Maxwell belongs to the happy race who can choose their time, and it is unkind to gloat over the unfortunates who . have to spend July in town. "The true sweet o' the year comes in the mid-months of summer, when
the light lingers long in the northern sky, when the deep meadow grass is full of humming things, and starred with pink and white orchis, golden bog asphodel, globe-flower, and forget:me-not." In August we are still-in the North, but now it is Loch Arkaig and the salmo feroz, and some untraceable
Amhuinn Aoidh and salmon. With September it is Corrour and deer-stalking, in bitter weather, but with good success , and much bodily fatigue. We learn of the existence and the increase of the true wild cat and the pine-marten among the
wood-clad steeps of Knoydart, and Sir Herbert Maxwell wonders why no Highland proprietor has adopted the Old. Spectator suggestion of a fur farm, considering the prodigious prices given for marten skins. The late autumn brings us to the angler's holy land, T-weedside, where every name-- Craigover, the Hazy Weil, the Dark Shore—is classical from Scott and ScrOpe and Stoddart. The author has in a high degree the feeling for locality, and he contrives successfully to repro- duce something of the romance of the most romantic of waters. And so December finds him, very properly after a well-spent year, browsing in the library of the House of Commons and extracting from Montaigne a philosophy to make him forget the Whips and the division bell.
In thus following the author through the months we have omitted many of his most pleasing passages. There are two admirable notes on Scrope and Sir Edward _ Grey's Fly- hing ; there is a stirring account of the death- of an old, raiding fox on a Galloway railway; and there is an account of a Scottish country funeral, a slight sketch, yet done with remarkable delicacy and power. And there are half-a- hundred jottings on natural history, from golden eagles to cryptogams, and divers excursions into anthropology and still more distant realms. Sir Herbert Maxwell has written a book which has more in it of the true insight and joy in Nature than a shelf of inflated essays and tortuous poetry.
We trust that these memories will not be the last, but that his note-book may yield another such harvest of wise and witty observation.
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