DO NOT WEEP. I ONCE was young, but now am old: I once was fair, now gray: Not more unruly sure was I than petted children are, A picture hung within the hall-'twas of the Holy Child- Sometimes, with childish ills opprest-in frowardness or pain- My heart received the portraiture, though oft it disappears, As years bring sorrow in their train-dim smiles, and stifled sighs- A haunting voice yet seems to say-"Be patient-do not weep: TALKS ABOUT MANY TOWNS; OR ROSA'S SUMMER WANDERINGS. CHAPTER VII. WESTMORELAND was also noted for its schools. Edward VI. patronised the school at Kendal; and Queen Elizabeth founded schools at Appleby, Kirkby Stephen, and Kirkby Lonsdale. From these institutions many learned and valuable men were distributed over England, some of whom, having risen to high eminence in the literary world, established schools in their native villages, in order to confer on others those advantages whence their own prosperity had been derived; so that, before the conclusion of the seventeenth century, almost every parish possessed its seminary, and education for Holy Orders and for the learned professions became, among the Westmoreland yeomanry, a favourite method of bringing up younger sons. The discipline of these grammar schools must have been severe; the hours of attendance lasted from six in the morning till six in the evening, with the exception of an hour for breakfast between eight and nine, and two hours for dinner between twelve and two. Prayers were said every morning by the master, and all red-letter days were half-holidays. The roll was regularly called over, and the truant and the idler seldom escaped punishment. The vacations, which occurred at Christmas and at Pentecost, rarely lasted longer than a fortnight. Perhaps some "brave, free-hearted, careless boy," tossing his noble head in all his "dread of books and love of fun," will protest against such lack of holidays! His teeming fancy would prefer visions of long, sunny, afternoon rambles, of beech-wood trees to be climbed, of tufted hill-tops to be mounted, of breezy commons to be made the scene of many an adventurous feat. And truly it is an invigorating sight to see a troop of right merry boys, in all the wild exuberance of recent emancipation from the thraldom of Latin primers and intricate problems. Who shall say that then, even then, amid the riot of that shouted play, the spirit of poesy may not waft upon the sighing wind some breath of intellectual inspiration, so oft invoked in vain amid the formularies of classic hours? ""Tis strange how thoughts upon a child When foot and hand, and ear and eye, And on its silent wing, How with the clouds he'll float away, As wandering and as lost as they." What is this mysterious presence? Is it the aspiration of genius, the thirst after excellence, the yearning for honourable fame? Must not such longings have haunted the raftered schoolroom, where studious lads were assisted in the ascent up the ladder of renown by the discipline which admitted so little relaxation, and where all the youths of a neighbourhood, rich and poor, were instructed together?—a system which kept alive a plain familiarity of intercourse between different classes, exalting the intellectual, and inspiring the lowly with independence of sentiment, whilst it repressed any display of undue consequence among those who could boast no higher distinction N. P. Willis. than wealth, and nurtured in the minds of the scholars feelings of humility and brotherly kindness befitting students, many of whom were destined to enter the Priesthood in that Church of GOD, which is "the home and sanctuary of His poor, where rich and poor meet together, not as rich and poor, but as one in the blessed equality of brotherhood in CHRIST." Were it not that the education of daughters seems to have been systematically neglected, one would almost wish to call back again those days of Westmoreland simplicity, when yeomen and shepherds used to "enliven their festivities with recitations from the bucolics of Virgil, the idyls of Theocritus, or the wars of Troy," ere the utilitarian stroke of commerce had warned the genii of the classics to flee the mountain moorlands. For, about the year 1760, a change came over the spirit of the period: merchandise was spoken of as the highway to wealth, gold seemed suddenly transfused into a magnet, and Greek and Latin reluctantly gave way to an education of mere reading, writing, and arithmetic. Hence began a silent revolution in the character of the schools, and in the manners of the county; a different standard of excellence gave rise to different training; intercourse with the world produced (as, alas! it still produces in many an unsophisticated heart) a desire after conformity with its fashions; roads were planned across the hitherto almost trackless moors; in 1774 a stage coach, called the Fly, commenced running from London, over Stainmoor, and by the then newly-formed road between Bowes and Brough, to Glasgow; and in 1786 the mail began to travel along the Kendal and Shap Road, over Ermont Bridge, to Carlisle. Coaches produced travellers, and travellers brought with them new ideas. And so the picture of the old domestic life faded into a dim memory; the venerable father, the silver-haired mother, indeed retained their primeval guise, but a generation, moulded after the model of more peopled districts, now replaced the learned peasant lads and the untutored mountain lasses of other days. The son dedicated to the Church had generally received preferment at a distance from his native village, and had therefore been forbidden, by the calls of a higher destiny, to claim again a home beneath the parental roof; but the merchant, bound by no such ties of duty, pined for the landscape hallowed by childhood, and eventually returned "to die at home at last," introducing new riches, new habits, new manners, among his kindred. And so the country-folk of Westmoreland became gradually assimilated with the more polished, though less purely simple, inhabitants of other counties; the revolution in buildings, dress, furniture, manners, &c., attained its height, and (I suppose) but few vestiges of the old customs are now extant. Primitive wooden shoes are, however, still in use among the *Bishop of Oxford. ruder peasantry, being well adapted for a mountainous and rainy country; and, as we travelled, we could not help remarking the great infrequency of wheat-fields, the few corn-enclosures being chiefly oats or barley. From Brough we proceeded through the vale of the Eden, towards Appleby and Penrith, under the chain of wild mountains stretching along the eastern frontier of Westmoreland and Cumberland. Cross Fell, the loftiest mountain in this range, rises to the height of 2,901 feet, and is said to have been formerly called Fiend's Fell, from the evil spirits that haunted its summit. Their nightly orgies were confounded through the instrumentality of S. Austin, who, having ascended the mountain, planted a cross, erected an altar, and celebrated the Holy Eucharist thereon, when the demons, unable to abide the Sacred Presence, departed in dismay. Since this remarkable event, the mountain has borne the name of Cross-Fell. The memory of the tradition is preserved by a heap of stones, denominated the “Altar on Cross-Fell." The mossy plain on the top of this mountain (several hundred acres in extent) commands a comprehensive view, more than one hundred miles in diameter; but the ascent, which is described as extremely steep in some parts, and dangerously quaggy in others, must be difficult. About a quarter of a mile below the summit is a well called the Gentlemen's well, the temperature of which seldom varies more than ten degrees in any season. Upon this and the adjoining mountains occurs the phenomenon called the Helm Wind, which is peculiar to this district, though it occasionally arises around Ingleborough and Pendle, and sometimes also on Wildboar Fell. It prevails chiefly from October to April; its approach is announced by the appearance of a great white cloud, like a vast float of ice standing on edge, which covers, as with a helmet, the range of mountains between Brough in Westmoreland and Brampton in Cumberland; and it is usually accompanied with an awful noise, louder than the roaring of the ocean. Above this cloud (which sometimes reaches half way down the mountain sides, always keeping an exact parallelism with every plane, depression, and elevation of the summit) the blue sky is surmounted by a smaller white cloud, which is called the Helm Bar, because it forms a barrier beyond which the storm cannot pass, by preventing the wind from rushing further westward; for at the other side of the Helm Bar the wind flows eastward, whilst underneath it there is either a dead calm, or a gush of wind from all quarters. Thus these heights affect the weather in a manner similar to what the inhabitants of the Malabar and Coromandel coasts experience; so that the tempests which scour the country on one side of the chain, seldom affect the other. The hurricane mostly comes in gusts, howling along the hills, and frequently extending two or three miles from their sides: beyond the line of its fury, the air is usually serene. Sometimes the storm rages with unabated wrath for twenty-four hours, and continues its agitating influences at intervals for five or six weeks.* The phenomenon is usually terminated by rain, which tempers the extreme coldness produced in the atmosphere by the blowing of the Helm Wind. It must surely be fearful to stand on the mountains alone with this terrible wind, which is described as rushing down the declivities with such amazing strength, that it is exceedingly difficult for a human being to stand against it. The subtle element knows its errand: what is man that he should impede its progress, or arrest its speed? Nay! it obeys not mortal agency; it bears in its bosom the storm-spirits commissioned to execute the behests of the Most High, and it heeds neither man nor demon whilst accomplishing the purposes of Him Whose breath awakened it into tumultuous life, and at Whose bidding it will die away into a dreamless trance, when its mission is fulfilled. Appleby (so called on account of its having originally arisen from a Roman station named Abalbaba, though some think the name signifies the "Apple Town") is a remarkably clean village town, almost surrounded by the River Eden, consisting principally of one broad street, built on the slope of a hill, at the upper end of which is the Castle, and at the lower end the parish Church of S. Lawrence. The Church of S. Michaelt stands in the village of Bondgate, which is only separated from Appleby by the Eden, and must certainly have changed its character since the period when it received the name of "Old Spilby, where the bondmen dwell;" for it is now a particularly pretty village, and the neat cottages and pleasant-looking houses indicate that many of its present inhabitants are far from being unprovided with the wealth that increases in scattering. At the north end of Bondgate is Battlebarrow, (or Battleburgh,) called in Latin records "Vicus le Fyte," where was, anciently, a priory for the Carmelites, (or White Friars,) founded in 1281 by the Lords Clifford, Percy, and Vesey. A little further was a lazar-house, called the hospital of S. Nicholas. A bridge over the Eden unites Bondgate to Appleby. This bridge once supported a little chapel on its west end, the chaplain probably subsisting on the alms of passengers. By a strange perversion, this sacred edifice, and the oratory above it, were for a considerable period used as the county gaol, the assizes being held in the Town Hall till, in 1771, a proper gaol and court-house were *See "History of Cumberland," vol. i. p. 267. † Both these churches were granted by Ranulph de Meschiens to the Abbot and Convent of S. Mary, at York. |