Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

NORTH

And let it slide away into the still recesses of Memory – the Present has its privileges – and they may be blamelessly, wisely, virtuously enjoyed – and without irreverence to the sanctity of the Past. Let it slide away – but not into oblivion – no danger, no fear of oblivion – even joys will return on their wings of gossamer; – sorrows may be buried, but they are immortal.

SEWARD

I see not the slightest change on this Grove of Sycamores. Twenty years tell not on boles that have for centuries been in their prime. Yes – that one a little way down – and that one still farther off —have grown – and those striplings, then but saplings, may now be called Trees.

BULLER

I never heard such a noise.

NORTH

A cigar in your mouth at four o'clock in the morning! Well – well.

BULLER

There, my dear sir, keep me in countenance with a Manilla.

NORTH

The Herb! You have high authority – Spenser's – for "noise."

BULLER

I said Noise – because it is Noise. Why, the hum of bees overhead is absolutely like soft sustained thunder – and yet no bees visible in the umbrage. The sound is like that of one single bee, and he must be a giant. Ay – there I see a few working like mad – and I guess there must be myriads. The Grove must be full of bees' nests.

NORTH

Not one. Hundreds of smokes are stealing up from hidden or apparent cottages – for the region is not unpopulous, and not a garden without its hives – and early risers though we be, the matutinæ apes are still before us, and so are the birds.

BULLER

They, too, are making a noise. Who says a shilfa cannot sing? Of the fifty now "pouring his throat," as the poet well says, I defy you to tell which sings best. That splendid fellow on the birch-tree top – or yonder gorgeous tyke on the yellow oak – or —

NORTH

"In shadiest covert hid" the leader of the chorus that thrills the many-nested underwood with connubial bliss.

SEWARD

Not till this moment heard I the waterfall.

BULLER

You did, though, all along – a felt accompaniment.

NORTH

I know few dens more beautiful than Cladich-Cleugh!

BULLER

Pardon me, sir, if I do not attempt that name.

NORTH

How mellifluous! – Cladich-Cleugh!

BULLER

Great is the power of gutturals.

NORTH

It is not inaccessible. But you must skirt it till you reach the meadow where the cattle are beginning to browse. And then threading your way through a coppice, where you are almost sure to see a roe, you come down upon a series of little pools, in such weather as this so clear that you can count the trouts; and then the verdurous walls begin to rise on either side and right before you; and you begin to feel that the beauty is becoming magnificence, for the pools are now black, and the stems are old, and the cliffs intercept the sky, and there are caves, and that waterfall has dominion in the gloom, and there is sublimity in the sounding solitude.

BULLER

Cladick-Cloock.

NORTH

A miserable failure.

BULLER

Cladig-Cloog.

NORTH

Worser and worser.

SEWARD

Any footpath, sir?

NORTH

Yes – for the roe and the goat.

BULLER

And the Man of the Crutch.

NORTH

Good. But I speak of days when the Crutch was in its tree-bole —

BULLER

As the Apollo was in its marble block.

NORTH

Not so good. But, believe me, gentlemen, I have done it with the Crutch.

SEWARD

Ay, sir, and could do it again.

NORTH

No. But you two are yet boys – on the sunny side of fifty – and I leave you, Seward, to act the guide to Buller up Cladich-Cleugh.

BULLER

Pray, Mr North, what may be the name of that sheet of water?

NORTH

In Scotland we call it Loch-Owe.

BULLER

I am so happy – sir – that I talk nonsense.

NORTH

Much nonsense may you talk.

BULLER

'Twas a foolish question – but you know, sir, that by some strange fatality or another I have been three times called away from Scotland without having seen Lock-Owe.

NORTH

Make good use of your eyes now, sirrah, and you will remember it all the days of your life. That is Cruachan – no usurper he – by divine right a king. The sun is up, and there is motion in the clouds. Saw you ever such shadows? How majestically they stalk! And now how beautifully they glide! And now see you that broad black forest, half-way up the mountain?

BULLER

I do.

NORTH

You are sure you do.

BULLER

I am.

NORTH

You are mistaken. It is no broad black forest – it is mere gloom – shadow that in a minute will pass away, though now seeming steadfast as the woods.

BULLER

I could swear it is a forest.

NORTH

Swear not at all. Shut your eyes. Open them. Where now your wood?

BULLER

Most extraordinary ocular deception.

NORTH

Quite common. Yet no poet has described it. See again. The same forest a mile off. No need of trees – sun and cloud make our visionary mountains sylvan: and the grandest visions are ever those that are transitory – ask your soul.

BULLER

Your Manilla is out, my dear sir. There is the case.

NORTH

Caught like a cricketer. You must ascend Cruachan. "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day;" you cannot do better than take time by the forelock, and be off now. Say the word – and I will myself row you over the Loch. No need of a guide: inclining to the left for an hour or two after you have cleared yonder real timber and sap wood – and then for an hour or two, to the right – and then for another hour or two straight forwards – and then you will see the highest of the three peaks within an hour or two's walk of you – and thus, by mid-day, find yourself seated on the summit.

BULLER

Seated on the summit!

NORTH

Not too long, for the air is often very sharp at that altitude – and so rare, that I have heard tell of people fainting.

BULLER

I am occasionally troubled with a palpitation of the heart —

NORTH

Pooh, nonsense. Only the stomach.

BULLER

And occasionally with a determination of blood to the head —

NORTH

Pooh, nonsense. Only the stomach. Take a calker every two hours on your way up – and I warrant both heart and head —

BULLER

Not to-day. It looks cloudy.

NORTH

Why, I don't much care though I should accompany you —

BULLER

I knew you would offer to do so, and I feel the delicacy of putting a decided negative on the proposal. Let us defer it till to-morrow. For my sake, my dear sir, if not for your own, do not think of it; it will be no disappointment to me to remain with you here – and I shudder at the thought of your fainting on the summit. Be advised, my dear sir, be advised —

NORTH

Well then, be it so – I am not obstinate; but such another day for the ascent there may not be during the summer. On just such a day I made the ascent some half-century ago. I took it from Tyanuilt – having walked that morning from Dalmally, some dozen miles, for a breathing on level ground, before facing the steepish shoulder that roughens into Loch Etive. The fox-hunter from Gleno gave me his company with his hounds and terriers nearly half-way up, and after killing some cubs we parted – not without a tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well —

BULLER

A tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well!

NORTH

Yea – a tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well. Now I am a total-abstinent —

BULLER

A total-abstinent!

NORTH

By heavens! he echoes me. Pleasant, but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past! A tinful of the unchristened creature to the health of the Silent People. Oh! Buller, there are no Silent People now.

BULLER

In your company, sir, I am always willing to be a listener.

NORTH

Well, on I flew as on wings.

BULLER

What! Up Cruackan?

NORTH

On feet, then, if you will; but the feet of a deer.

BULLER

On all-fours?

NORTH

Yes – sometimes on all-fours. On all-fours, like a frog in his prime, clearing tiny obstructions with a spang. On all-fours, like an ourang-outang, who, in difficult places, brings his arms into play. On all-fours, like the —

BULLER

I cry you mercy.

NORTH

Without palpitation of the heart; without determination of blood to the head; without panting; without dizziness; with merely a slight acceleration of the breath, and now and then something like a gasp after a run to a knowe which we foresaw as a momentary resting-place – we felt that we were conquering Cruachan! Lovely level places, like platforms – level as if water had formed them, flowing up just so far continually, and then ebbing back to some unimaginable sea – awaited our arrival, that on them we might lie down, and from beds of state survey our empire, for our empire it was felt to be, far away into the lowlands, with many a hill between – many a hill, that, in its own neighbourhood, is believed to be a mountain – just as many a man of moderate mental dimensions is believed by those who live beneath his shade to be of the first order of magnitude, and with funeral honours is interred.

BULLER

Well for him that he is a hill at all – eminent on a flat, or among humbler undulations. All is comparative.

NORTH

Just so. From a site on a mountain's side – far from the summit – the ascender hath sometimes a sublimer – often a lovelier vision – than from its most commanding peak. Yet still he has the feeling of ascension – stifle that, and the discontent of insufficiency dwarfs and darkens all that lies below.

BULLER

Words to the wise.

NORTH

We fear to ascend higher lest we should lose what we comprehend: yet we will ascend higher, though we know the clouds are gathering, and we are already enveloped in mist. But there were no clouds – no mist on that day – and the secret top of Cruachan was clear as a good man's conscience, and the whole world below like the promised land.

BULLER

Let us go – let us go – let us go.

NORTH

All knowledge, my dear boy, may be likened to stupendous ranges of mountains – clear and clouded, smooth and precipitous; and you or I in youth assail them in joy and pride of soul, not blind but blindfolded often, and ignorant of their inclination; so that we often are met by a beetling cliff with its cataract, and must keep ascending and descending ignorant of our whereabouts, and summit-seeking in vain. Yet all the while are we glorified. In maturer mind, when experience is like an instinct, we ascertain levels without a theodolite, and know assuredly where dwell the peaks. We know how to ascend – sideways or right on; we know which are midway heights; we can walk in mist and cloud as surely as in light, and we learn to know the Inaccessible.

BULLER

I fear you will fatigue yourself —

NORTH

Or another image. You sail down a stream, my good Buller, which widens as it flows, and will lead through inland seas – or lochs – down to the mighty ocean: what that is I need not say: you sail down it, sometimes with hoisted sail – sometimes with oars – on a quest or mission all undefined; but often anchoring where no need is, and leaping ashore, and engaging in pursuits or pastimes forbidden or vain —with the natives—

BULLER

The natives!

NORTH

Nay, adopting their dress – though dress it be none at all – and becoming one of themselves – naturalised; forgetting your mission clean out of mind! Fishing and hunting with the natives —

BULLER

Whom?

NORTH

The natives – when you ought to have been pursuing your voyage on – on – on. Such are youth's pastimes all. But you had not deserted – not you: and you return of your own accord to the ship.

BULLER

What ship?

NORTH

The ship of life – leaving some to lament you, who knew you only as a jolly mariner, who was bound afar! They believed that you had drawn up your pinnace for ever on that shore, in that lovely little haven, among reeds and palms – unknowing that you would relaunch her some day soon, and, bounding in her over the billows, rejoin your ship, waiting for you in the offing, and revisit the simple natives no more!

BULLER

Methinks I understand now your mysterious meaning.

NORTH

You do. But where was I?

BULLER

Ascending Cruackan, and near the summit.

NORTH

On the summit. Not a whit tired – not a bit fatigued; strong as ten – active as twenty ownselves on the flat – divinely drunk on draughts of ether – happier a thousand times, greater and more glorious, than Jupiter, with all his gods, enthroned on Olympus.

BULLER

Moderately speaking.

NORTH

In imagination I hear him barking now as he barked then – a sharp, short, savage, angry and hungry bark —

BULLER

What? A dog? A Fox?

NORTH

No – no – no. An Eagle – the Golden Eagle from Ben-Slarive, known – no mistaking him – to generations of Shepherds for a hundred years.

BULLER

Do you see him?

NORTH

Now I do. I see his eyes – for he came – he comes sughing close by me – and there he shoots up in terror a thousand feet into the sky.

BULLER

I did not know the Bird was so timid —

NORTH

He is not timid – he is bold; but an Eagle does not like to come all at once within ten yards of an unexpected man – any more than you would like suddenly to face a ghost.

BULLER

What brought him there?

NORTH

Wings nine feet wide.

BULLER

Has he no sense of smell?

NORTH

What do you mean, sir?

BULLER

No offence.

NORTH

He has. But we have not always all our senses about us, Buller, nor our wits either – he had been somewhat scared, a league up Glen Etive, by the Huntsman of Gleno – the scent of powder was in his nostrils; but fury follows fear, and in a minute I heard his bark again – as now I hear it – on the highway to Benlura.

BULLER

He must have had enormous talons.

NORTH

My hand is none of the smallest —

BULLER

God bless you, my dear sir, – give me a grasp.

NORTH

There.

BULLER

Oh! thumbikins!

NORTH

And one of his son's talons – whom I shot – was twice the length of mine; his yellow knobby loof at least as broad – and his leg like my wrist. He killed a man. Knocked him down a precipice, like a cannon-ball. He had the credit of it all over the country – but I believe his wife did the business, for she was half-again as big as himself; and no devil like a she-devil fighting for her imp.

BULLER

Did you ever rob an Eyrie, sir?

NORTH

Did you over rob a Lion's den? No, no, Buller. I never – except on duty – placed my life in danger. I have been in many dangerous-looking places among the Mountains, but a cautious activity ruled all my movements – I scanned my cliff before I scaled him – and as for jumping chasms – though I had a spring in me – I looked imaginatively down the abyss, and then sensibly turned its flank where it leaned on the greensward, and the liberated streamlet might be forded, without swimming, by the silly sheep.

BULLER

And are all those stories lies?

NORTH

All. I have sometimes swam a loch or a river in my clothes – but never except when they lay in my way, or when I was on an angling excursion – and what danger could there possibly be in doing that?

BULLER

You might have taken the Cramp, Sir.

NORTH

And the Cramp might have taken me – but neither of us ever did – and a man, with a short neck or a long one, might as well shun the streets in perpetual fear of apoplexy, as a good swimmer evade water in dread of being drowned. As for swimming in my clothes – had I left them on the hither, how should I have looked on the thither side?

BULLER

No man, in such circumstances, could, with any satisfaction to himself, have pursued his journey, even through the most lonesome places.

BULLER

Describe the view from the summit.

NORTH

I have no descriptive power – but, even though I had, I know better than that. Why, between Cruachan and Buchail-Etive lie hundreds on hundreds of mountains of the first, second, and third order – and, for a while at first, your eyes are so bewildered that you cannot see any one in particular; yet, in your astonishment, have a strange vision of them all – and might think they were interchanging places, shouldering one another off into altering shapes in the uncertain region, did not the awful stillness assure you that there they had all stood in their places since the Creation, and would stand till the day of doom.

BULLER

You have no descriptive power!

NORTH

All at once dominion is given you over the Whole. You gradually see Order in what seemed a Chaos – you understand the character of the Region – its Formation – for you are a Geologist, else you have no business – no right there; and you know where the valleys are singing for joy, though you hear them not – where there is provision for the cattle on a hundred hills – where are the cottages of Christian men on the green braes sheltered by the mountains – and where may stand, beneath the granite rocks out of which it was built, the not unfrequent House of God.

BULLER

To-morrow we shall attend Divine Service —

NORTH

At Dalmally.

BULLER

I long ago learned to like the ritual of the Kirk. I should like to believe in a high-minded purified Calvinist, who could embrace, in his brotherly heart, a high-minded purified English Bishop, with all his Episcopacy.

NORTH

And why should he not, if he can recognise the Divine Spirit flowing through the two sets of sensible demonstrations? He can; unless the constitution of the Anglican Christian Religion wars, either by its dogmas or by its ecclesiastical ordinances, against his essential intelligence of Christianity.

BULLER

And who shall say it does?

NORTH

Many say it – not I.

BULLER

And you are wise and good.

NORTH

Many thousands – and hundreds of thousands, wiser and better. I can easily suppose a Mind – strong in thought, warm in feeling, of an imagination susceptible and creative – by magnanimity, study, and experience of the world, disengaged from all sectarian tenets – yet holding the absolute conviction of religion – and contemplating, with reverence and tenderness, many different ways of expression which this inmost spiritual disposition has produced or put on – having a firmest holding on to Christianity as pure, holy, august, divine, true, beyond all other modes of religion upon the Earth – partly from intuition of its essential fitness to our nature – partly from intense gratitude – partly, perhaps, from the original entwining of it with his own faculties, thoughts, feelings, history, being. Well, he looks with affectionate admiration upon the Scottish, with affectionate admiration on the English Church – old affection agreeing with new affection – and I can imagine in him as much generosity required to love his own Church – the Presbyterian – as yours the Episcopalian – and that, Latitudinarian as he may be called, he loves them both. For myself, you know how I love England – all that belongs to her – all that makes her what she is – scarcely more – surely not less – Scotland. The ground of the Scottish Form is the overbearing consciousness, that religion is immediately between man and his Maker. All hallowing of things outward is to that consciousness a placing of such earthly things as interpositions and separating intermediates in that interval unavoidable between the Finite and the Infinite, but which should remain blank and clear for the immediate communications of the Worshipper and the Worshipped.

BULLER

I believe, sir, you are a Presbyterian?

NORTH

He that worships in spirit and in truth cannot endure – cannot imagine, that anything but his own sin shall stand betwixt him and God.

BULLER

That, until it be in some way or another extinguished, shall and must.

NORTH

True as Holy Writ. But intervening saints, images, and elaborate rituals – the contrivance of human wit – all these the fire of the Spirit has consumed, and consumes.

BULLER

The fire of the Presbyterian spirit?

NORTH

Add history. War and persecution have afforded an element of human hate for strengthening the sternness —

BULLER

Of Presbyterian Scotland.

NORTH

Drop that word – for I more than doubt if you understand it.

BULLER

I beg pardon, sir.

NORTH

The Scottish service, Mr Buller, comprehends Prayer, Praise, Doctrine – all three necessary verbal acts amongst Christians met, but each in utmost simplicity.

BULLER

Episcopalian as I am, that simplicity I have felt to be most affecting.

NORTH

The Praise, which unites the voices of the congregation, must be written. The Prayer, which is the burning towards God of the soul of the Shepherd upon the behalf of the Flock, and upon his own, must be unwritten – unpremeditated – else it is not Prayer. Can the heart ever want fitting words? The Teaching must be to the utmost, forethought, at some time or at another, as to the Matter. The Teacher must have secured his intelligence of the Matter ere he opens his mouth. But the Form, which is of expediency only, he may very loosely have considered. That is the Theory.

BULLER

Often liable in practice, I should fear, to sad abuse.

NORTH

May be so. But it presumes that capable men, full of zeal, and sincerity, and love – fervent servants and careful shepherds – have been chosen, under higher guidance. It supposes the holy fire of the new-born Reformation – of the newly-regenerated Church —

BULLER

Kirk.

NORTH

Of the newly-regenerated Church, to continue undamped, inextinguishable.

BULLER

And is it so?

NORTH

The Fact answers to the Theory more or less. The original Thought – simplicity of worship – is to the utmost expressed, when the chased Covenanters are met on the greensward, between the hillside and the brawling brook, under the coloured or uncoloured sky. Understand that, when their descendants meet within walls and beneath roofs, they would worship after the manner of their hunted ancestors.

BULLER

I wish I were better read than I am, in the history of Scotland, civil and ecclesiastical.

NORTH

I wish you were. I say, then, my excellent friend, that the Ritual and whole Ordering of the Scottish Church is moulded upon, or issues out of, the human spirit kindling in conscious communication of the Divine Spirit. The power of the Infinite – that is, the Sense of Infinitude, of Eternity – reigns there; and the Sense in the inmost soul of the sustaining contact with Omnipotence, and self-consciousness intense, and elation of Divine favour personally vouchsafed, and joy of anticipated everlasting bliss, and triumph over Satan, death, and hell, and immeasurable desire to win souls to the King of the Worlds.

BULLER

In England we are, I am ashamed to say it, ill informed on —

NORTH

In Scotland we are, I am ashamed to say it, ill informed on —

BULLER

But go on, sir.

NORTH

What place is there for Forms of any kind in the presence of these immense overpowering Realities? For Forms, Buller, are of the Imagination; the Faculty that inhales and lives by the Unreal. But some concession to the humanity of our nature intrudes. Imagination may be subordinated, subjugated, but will not, may not, forego all its rights. Therefore, Forms and hallowing associations enter.

BULLER

Into all Worship.

NORTH

Form, too, is, in part, Necessary Order.

BULLER

Perhaps, sir, you may be not unwilling to say a few words of our Ritual.

NORTH

I tremble to speak of your Ritual; for it appears to me as bearing on its front an excellence which might be found incompatible with religious truth and sincerity.

BULLER

I confess that I hardly understand you, sir.

NORTH

The Liturgy looks to be that which the old Churches are, the Work of a Fine Art.

BULLER

You do not urge that as an objection to it, I trust, sir?

NORTH

A Poetical sensibility, a wakeful, just, delicate, simple Taste, seems to have ruled over the composition of each Prayer, and the ordering of the whole Service.

BULLER

You do not urge that as an objection to it, I trust, sir?

NORTH

I am not urging objections, sir. I seldom – never, indeed – urge objections to anything. I desire only to place all things in their true light.

BULLER

Don't frown, sir – smile. Enough.

NORTH

The whole composition of the Service is copious and various. Human Supplication, the lifting up of the hands of the creature knowing his own weakness, dependence, lapses, and liability to slip – man's own part, dictated by his own experience of himself, is the basis. Readings from the Old and New Volume of the Written Word are ingrafted, as if God audibly spoke in his own House; the Authoritative added to the Supplicatory.

BULLER

Finely true. We Church of England men love you, Mr North – we do indeed.

NORTH

The hymns of the sweet Singer of Israel, in literal translation, adopted as a holier inspired language of the heart.

BULLER

These, sir, are surely three powerful elements of a Ritual Service.

NORTH

Throughout, the People divide, the service with the Minister. They have in it their own personal function.