RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.docx

1、RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND 1819-20 THE SKETCH BOOK RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND by Washington Irving Oh! friendly to the best pursuits of man, Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace, Domestic life in rural pleasures past! COWPER. THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the Englishcharacter must n

2、ot confine his observations to the metropolis. He mustgo forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; hemust visit castles, villas, farm-houses, cottages; he must wanderthrough parks and gardens; along hedges and green lanes; he mustloiter about country churches; attend wakes and

3、 fairs, and other ruralfestivals; and cope with the people in all their conditions and alltheir habits and humors. In some countries the large cities absorb the wealth and fashionof the nation; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant andintelligent society, and the country is inhabited almost enti

4、rely byboorish peasantry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis is amere gathering-place, or general rendezvous, of the polite classes,where they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gayety anddissipation, and, having indulged this kind of carnival, returnagain to the apparently mo

5、re congenial habits of rural life. Thevarious orders of society are therefore diffused over the wholesurface of the kingdom, and the most retired neighborhoods affordspecimens of the different ranks. The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling.They possess a quick sensibility to

6、 the beauties of nature, and a keenrelish for the pleasures and employments of the country. Thispassion seems inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, bornand brought up among brick walls and bustling streets, enter withfacility into rural habits, evince a tact for rural occupation. Themerc

7、hant has his snug retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis, wherehe often displays as much pride and zeal in the cultivation of hisflower-garden, and the maturing of his fruits, as he does in theconduct of his business, and the success of a commercial enterprise.Even those less fortunate individual

8、s, who are doomed to pass theirlives in the midst of din and traffic, contrive to have something thatshall remind them of the green aspect of nature. In the most darkand dingy quarters of the city, the drawing-room window resemblesfrequently a bank of flowers; every spot capable of vegetation has it

9、sgrassplot and flower-bed; and every square its mimic park, laid outwith picturesque taste, and gleaming with refreshing verdure. Those who see the Englishman only in town are apt to form anunfavorable opinion of his social character. He is either absorbedin business, or distracted by the thousand e

10、ngagements thatdissipate time, thought, and feeling, in this huge metropolis. He has,therefore, too commonly a look of hurry and abstraction. Wherever hehappens to be, he is on the point of going somewhere else; at themoment he is talking on one subject, his mind is wandering to another;and while pa

11、ying a friendly visit, he is calculating how he shalleconomize time so as to pay the other visits allotted in themorning. An immense metropolis, like London, is calculated to make menselfish and uninteresting. In their casual and transient meetings,they can but deal briefly in commonplaces. They pre

12、sent but the coldsuperficies of character- its rich and genial qualities have no timeto be warmed into a flow. It is in the country that the Englishman gives scope to hisnatural feelings. He breaks loose gladly from the cold formalities andnegative civilities of town; throws off his habits of shy re

13、serve, andbecomes joyous and free-hearted. He manages to collect round him allthe conveniences and elegancies of polite life, and to banish itsrestraints. His country-seat abounds with every requisite, eitherfor studious retirement, tasteful gratification, or rural exercise.Books, paintings, music,

14、horses, dogs, and sporting implements ofall kinds, are at hand. He puts no constraint either upon his guestsor himself, but in the true spirit of hospitality provides the meansof enjoyment, and leaves every one to partake according to hisinclination. The taste of the English in the cultivation of la

15、nd, and in whatis called landscape gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied natureintently, and discover an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms andharmonious combinations. Those charms, which in other countries shelavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts ofdomestic life.

16、 They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces,and spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes. Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English parkscenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, withhere and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich pi

17、les offoliage: the solemn pomp of groves and woodland glades, with thedeer trooping in silent herds across them; the hare, bounding awayto the covert; or the pheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing; thebrook, taught to wind in natural meanderings or expand into a glassylake; the sequestered pool,

18、reflecting the quivering trees, with theyellow leaf sleeping on its bosom, and the trout roaming fearlesslyabout its limpid waters; while some rustic temple or sylvan statue,grown green and dank with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to theseclusion. These are but a few of the features of park s

19、cenery; but what mostdelights me, is the creative talent with which the English decoratethe unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest habitation, themost unpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands of anEnglishman of taste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicelydiscriminating eye,

20、he seizes at once upon its capabilities, andpictures in his mind the future landscape. The sterile spot grows intoloveliness under his hand; and yet the operations of art which producethe effect are scarcely to be perceived. The cherishing and trainingof some trees; the cautious pruning of others; t

21、he nice distributionof flowers and plants of tender and graceful foliage; the introductionof a green slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep of bluedistance, or silver gleam of water: all these are managed with adelicate tact, a pervading yet quiet assiduity, like the magictouchings with

22、 which a painter finishes up a favorite picture. The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country hasdiffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy, thatdescends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatchedcottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embe

23、llishment. Thetrim hedge, the grassplot before the door, the little flower-bedbordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall,and hanging its blossoms about the lattice, the pot of flowers inthe window, the holly, providently planted about the house, to cheatwinter of its dreariness

24、, and to throw in a semblance of greensummer to cheer the fireside: all these bespeak the influence oftaste, flowing down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levelsof the public mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, delights to visit acottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant. The f

25、ondness for rural life among the higher classes of theEnglish has had a great and salutary effect upon the nationalcharacter. I do not know a finer race of men than the Englishgentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterizethe men of rank in most countries, they exhibit a union

26、of eleganceand strength, a robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, whichI am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air,and pursuing so eagerly the invigorating recreations of the country.These hardy exercises produce also a healthful tone of mind andspirits, and a manlin

27、ess and simplicity of manners, which even thefollies and dissipations of the town cannot easily pervert, and cannever entirely destroy. In the country, too, the different orders ofsociety seem to approach more freely, to be more disposed to blend andoperate favorably upon each other. The distinction

28、s between them donot appear to be so marked and impassable as in the cities. The mannerin which property has been distributed into small estates and farmshas established a regular gradation from the nobleman, through theclasses of gentry, small landed proprietors, and substantialfarmers, down to the

29、 laboring peasantry; and while it has thusbanded the extremes of society together, has infused into eachintermediate rank a spirit of independence. This, it must beconfessed, is not so universally the case at present as it wasformerly; the larger estates having, in late years of distress,absorbed th

30、e smaller, and, in some parts of the country, almostannihilated the sturdy race of small farmers. These, however, Ibelieve, are but casual breaks in the general system I have mentioned. In rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads aman forth among scenes of natural grandeur and b

31、eauty; it leaves himto the workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest andmost elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple andrough, but he cannot be vulgar. The man of refinement, therefore,finds nothing revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders inrural life, as he

32、does when he casually mingles with the lowerorders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, and isglad to waive the distinctions of rank, and to enter into thehonest, heartfelt enjoyments of common life. Indeed the veryamusements of the country bring men more and more together; and thesound of hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believethis is one great reason w