Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 | Page 2

the hill-summit pause, ourselves the only spectator of a
panorama painted by Spring, for our sole delight--or plunge into the old
wood's magnificent exclusion from sky--where, at midsummer, day is
as night--though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms;
and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and the
sunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month
will be cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck
the dead when the vault door is closed and all is silence.
What! shall we linger here within a little mile of the MANSE, wherein
and among its pleasant bounds our boyish life glided murmuring away,
like a stream that never, till it leaves its native hills, knows taint or
pollution, and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest-like it is built,

and guarded by some wonderful felicity of situation equally against all
the winds? No. Thither as yet have we not courage to direct our
footsteps--for that venerable Man has long been dead--not one of his
ancient household now remains on earth. There the change, though it
was gradual and unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of nature, has
been entire and complete. The "old familiar faces" we can dream of,
but never more shall see--and the voices that are now heard within
those walls, what can they ever be to us, when we would fain listen in
the silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed years? It is an
appalling trial to approach a place where once we have been
happier--happier far than ever we can be on this earth again; and a
worse evil doth it seem to our imagination to return to Paradise, with a
changed and saddened heart, than at first to be driven from it into the
outer world, if still permitted to carry thither something of that spirit
that had glorified our prime.
But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the
hill--the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for stony as
seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled roots, they
draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which the sun so
delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore, and
almost as early as the alder or the birch--the GLORY OF MOUNT
PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a
banner. You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling--for
eaves, roof, and chimneys all disappeared--and then, when you stood
beneath, was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea
itself, continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the
tide of life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence!
MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou deserve the name,
bestowed on thee perhaps long ago, not by any one of the humble
proprietors, but by the general voice of praise, all eyes being won by
thy cheerful beauty. For from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision
of fields and meadows, knolls, braes, and hills, uncertain gleamings of
a river, the smoke of many houses, and glittering perhaps in the
sunshine, the spire of the House of God! To have seen Adam Morrison,
the Elder, sitting with his solemn, his austere Sabbath-face, beneath the

pulpit, with his expressive eyes fixed on the Preacher, you could not
but have judged him to be a man of a stern character and austere
demeanour. To have seen him at labour on the working days, you might
almost have thought him the serf of some tyrant-lord, for into all the
toils of the field he carried the force of a mind that would suffer
nothing to be undone that strength and skill could achieve; but within
the humble porch of his own house, beside his own board, and his own
fireside, he was a man to be kindly esteemed by his guests, by his own
family tenderly and reverently beloved. His wife was the comeliest
matron in the parish, a woman of active habits and a strong mind, but
tempering the natural sternness of her husband's character with that
genial and jocund cheerfulness, that of all the lesser virtues is the most
efficient to the happiness of a household. One daughter only had they,
and we could charm our heart even now, by evoking the vanished from
oblivion, and imaging her over and over again in the light of words; but
although all objects, animate and inanimate, seem always tinged with
an air of sadness when they are past--and as at present we are resolved
to be cheerful--obstinately to resist all access of melancholy--an enemy
to the pathetic--and a scorner of shedders of tears--therefore let