CORRE SP ON DENCE.
A LAZY JOURNEY.—VI.
TT had been my full intention, with Mrs. Balbus's approval— and indeed, she often indicates to me the line my thoughts should take—to begin this chapter with a powerful description of the Mount, and to observe the precept of continuify. Yet circumstances again drive me into digression. When I came home last night, my favourite cat bit me to the bone —affected, as I think, by the inhuman stubbornness of the weather—and I have to write with my left hand poulticed, or in hot water. Dim visions of hydrophobia, too, will haunt one's weakness, at such times. The rain, finally, is something BO entirely beyond experience, and hides its beneficence, if bene- ficent it be, with such a mastery of deception, that I find even my resolute optimism shaken at last, and relapse into a certain Manichinie superstition, which gets the better of my weaker moments, do what I will. And so it falls out that, instead of seeing the Archangel's Mount in its glory as it appeared to us, I fancy myself looking at it now, in a ceaseless monotony of damp depression, fighting in vain with an umbrella, infdin of impar, while the rain constantly drips from my clothing,— loathing, not loving. But let me not indulge in digres- sion any more, then, but to my story. Some five-and- twenty years ago, to become orthodox at once, two cavaliers of different ages might have been seen, if they hap- pened to he there, riding in close conversation along the coast of the Archangel's Bay. They were the pioneers of civilisation from Belle-ttoile, the first members and promoters of the Drying-up Company, which has since existed, flourished, and prospected, with the object of reclaiming the land and making money out of the waters of the bay. As we floundered along the narrow, sandy causeway which, except at the high tides, connects Mount and shore, a queer old Ciderland farmer, who was travelling with his wife on a sort of silver-wedding honeymoon, pointed out to us a few slips of marshy green, and a few very damp sheeplets making believe to graze thereon, as the last triumph of civilisation in that region. " Juequlici," he said, "Jo trouve qu'ou n'a pas beaucoup dessi5ch6." When at evening's fall my wife and I—to the astonishment of the bright landlady of the Mount, who could not believe that Nature could present us with anything so attractive as her table d'hote, while her dishes were at their first warmth—stood on a point of rock watching the marvellous sight shown in that mighty estuary by the rising of the tide, we felt that the Drying-up Company has still a good deal to do before the winds and waves will thoroughly consent to be civilised. How they gallop in, those strong white horses, in that neck-and-neck race! While the tide is still low, and miles of sand, broken by little streams, lie sleeping round the Mount, it is possible to have some faith in the Drying-up Company. The fishermen, with their nets and dogs, speck and dot the prospect here and there, making their way to the pools where their treasures are hidden. A busy hive of navvies swarms about the causeway, building and rebuilding what a sudden tide swept away in one stormy night a few months ago, leaving the Company to begin drying again ; and the Archangel's Mount seems part of the laud. Then comes the turn : and the fishermen gather up their nets in all haste, having timed it to the last moment. In twos and twos they hurry back across the sands to the shelter of
the mountain, wading through the streams, already deepening, and shoeing themselves in the strong sabots which they had left upon the nearer side, before climbing the rocky slopes. The navvies gather up their tools and disappear, leaving one sentinel behind them, to walk up and down the causeway, and keep guard over the small slice of it which now surmounts the water at high tide. Carefully near, as it seemed to us, did he keep to the protection of the Mount. The belated visitors from the mainland—bearers of letters, provisions, and. mer- chandise of many kinds—make their homeward way along the causeway in knots and parties, the last of them giving us a feeling almost of fear that the tide, will out them off. For it is coming in apace, the tide, leaping over the bits of rock and flooding the sweeps of sand, pouring up the narrow channels and wiping out all distinction between ground and stream, coming in army-wise in unbroken line, with a front rank of white uniform. It seems but a few minutes before what was all land is all water, and the grim Mount of the Archangel stands a solitary watcher in the mid-sea, crowned by the grand basilica, which seems to signal out, to us the mariners, where Rest and firm ground are to be found. We watched the scene to the last, Mrs. Balbus and I, and found, in the memory of its strange transformations a consolation even for the cold furnishing-forth of the tables to which we sat down.
It was the essence of our plan to linger, so we were in no hurry to be gone. Fellow-tourists flashed by us, appearing and disappearing at one place after another in the odd way in which travellers on the same line keep meeting and parting. Mrs. Mincing was not attracted by the Mount, but went afield in search of fashion, with Miss Mincing, her daughter, whose wearied face bore the impress of many table-d'hôte flirtations and biddings for male sympathy. We found her again later, well installed in promising platonics with an opposite neighbour, a fair young compatriot, who was rather, I thought, following the sport faute de rdeno. When Mrs. Balbus arrived and. sat next him, his attentions wandered markedly. Both she and. I had been speculating on the pair with inward. amusement ; and the manner in which Miss Mincing, whose dress was a master- piece of incongruities, looked Mrs. Balbus up and down, as one prepared for instant action, was delightful. It was a spice of feminine mischief which induced Mrs. Balbus to encourage the willing youth to stray, and indeed her conversation had the better of it ; while I, for my part, sat and enjoyed the fun thoroughly. It was a still better touch of womanly kindliness. which made her take pity on poor Miss Mincing's crestfallen coun- tenance, and after a time devote all her attentions to her husband,. to whom I am thankful to say that she grudges them not. The youth after a time returned to his allegiance, and we left him in the toils. But I think he broke loose in the end, for we fell in with him on our homeward way at All Saints' Isle, without the Mincings. He was very glad to meet Mrs. Balbus, but looked at us shamefacedly, as ranch as to ask us what we thought about it. I know few things more characteristic of the Grumble- islander than his conscious air of guilt before people who have detected him in a flirtation. The Terre-follese ignores it altogether.
At the Archangel's Mount, we consorted chiefly with the stout Ciderland farmer, who had been in Grumble Island. for a week, some twenty years ago, and had been regarded as an authority about us in his district, ever since. He was thoroughly
well-to-do, but his comfortable and richly-dressed wife wore the cap of the district, and would not part with it. She wanted to come to Babylon, to see the wax-works, she said (the first time I ever believed in the reality of that attraction to strangers ; but it was the one thing she spoke of), but she could not come in her cap, she thought, and did not know how she could wear anything else. The farmer averred. that he understood. our language, and bestowed. his hearty approval on many of our conjugal con- fidences by signs, without committing himself to a verbal share in the matter. He was a very pleasant companion, who could tell us all about trade and farming in the Ciderlands, describe the wonderful " catches " of quails, made at night in the old times by netting on the coast of the bay, long after it was for- bidden by law ; and could enter heart and soul into the beauty and interest of the monastery and. cathedral of the Mount. That cathedral, all allowance made for the larger abbeys, is the glory of them all, I think. The imagination is impressed, to start with,
by its position at the top of rock and monastery, reached after long climbing, through vaulted corridors and huge echoing re- fectories, where once the great Archangel brotherhood kept both fast and cheer. They are but vast cenotaphs of story, now ; but I could not help reflecting on the number of houseless heads that those stoutly built walls and comfortable chambers might serve to shelter, without losing sight of the old purpose of the building, but rather keeping it well in sight. The glories of monkhood have departed, but the poor are always with us ; and to devote the great halls to their service, with very little modern improving, would be no unworthy sequel to the good Bishop's vow to Michael the Archangel. His temple above the monastery is, indeed, a noble one. The great spring of the granite arches, whose red-brown colouring is a relief of contrast, after a succession of stone churches of one shade and tone, recalls the linos of Bober about the tall palm and the noiseless fabric, or Scott's glorious description of the handless building of the Castle of St. John. They might have burst from the earth like a fountain, at the bidding of the Archangel. The church is smaller, of course, than the great cathedrals, but perfect in its majesty of height and accident of proportion. I have only seen one other to vie with it in that, the chapel of grim King Philip's Palace of the Gridiron. " Cela relay° Panic," said the farmer reverently and thoughtfully, as we stood by the fair silver altar, which is a worthy modern attribute of the old place, and looked upward. And very surely it does. If men had been able to do these things of themselves in those days, they would, be better worth meeting by this time than most of them are.
It rained the night before we drove away, and it rained during the few hours of our drive to the nearest railway-station. I sat by the driver, and got wet, and speculated on the capa- cities of man for drying up the ocean, while we toiled over the causeway. We stuck in the sand at every step, and time was precious, for we carried the post-bag. The little near-horse worked like a Trojan ; his companion would not work at all, but jibbed heroically. The driver entreated, wept, swore, and at last thrashed till I waxed wroth with him, believing the weight to be beyond the beast's power. The animals and I are always friends, and of all –the evils of the day, I most abhor vivisection. "In humaikity's name," say the Bishops and the Professors. Bah They take the name of God, through his highest child, in vain. Cruelty, the worst human vice, in that it punishes others for yourself, is the child of Anger, in its hot-blooded form. In its cold-blooded and worst, it is the child of Curiosity. And Curiosity's youngest child, of that breed, is called Vivisection. It is worse than its elders in this,—that though animals may suffer less than men, which seems to me by no means proven, they are powerless to unite on their own part against us. Organised cruelty to men implies some cowardice on the side of those who, as a body, submit. To animals, it is the other y It might be well for the gentlemen who address the Associations of the day to reflect how they may stand in the opinion of others besides so-called "sentimentalists." There are some of them whose orations I have just read, who are enshrined in my memory as ideal dastards for evermore. This especial little horse, however, was a humbug, if a character. He was just as obstinate on the high-road as on the sand, presuming, as I believe, manlike, upon the sympathy which he thought lie had secured from me. I transferred. that to the driver, who had to catch a train tinder a heavy penalty, and became quite pathetic. He had loved that horse; he had chosen him out of a hundred, treated him like his child, and had never been served such a trick before. Upon our fixed principle of laziness, Mrs. Hakim and I were quite indifferent on our own account whether we caught the train or no ; but on his I became quite excited before the journey's end, when it had become a race against time, our horse fighting against Its. We won, however, by two minutes, after such a jolting of the limbs, wearing of the mind, and soaking of the clothes as I have rarely experienced. On our drive from Eau-qui-dort to the Mount, I had held my own against civilisation, and argued against rail- ways in a convincing manner against Mrs. Balbus and the farmer, who had not, indeed, attempted argument. To-day- when we were comfortably housed in a first-class carriage, and rolling smoothly through the CiderlandsI held my tongue. " Vivent lea chemins-de-fer !" cried the farmer; and he said no more. "After all;" said Mrs. Balbus placidly, "there is a good
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