CHAPTER XIX.

Harrow-on-the-Hill. - Descent through the Formations from the Tertiary to the Coal Measures. - Journey of a Hundred and Twenty Miles Northwards identical, geologically, with a journey of a Mile and a Quarter Downwards. - English very unlike Scottish Landscape in its Geologic Framework. Birmingham Fair. - Credulity of the Rural English; striking Contrast which they furnish, in this Respect, to their Countrymen of the Knowing Type. - The English Grades of Intellectual Character of Immense Range; more in Extremes than those of the Scotch. Front Rank of British Intellect in which there stands no Scotchman; probable Cause. - A Class of English, on the other Hand, greatly lower than the Scotch; naturally less Curious; acquire, in Consequence, less of the Developing Pabulum. -- The main Cause of the Difference to be found, however, in the very dissimilar Religious Character of the two Countries. The Scot naturally less independent than the Englishman; strengthened, however, where his Character most needs Strengta, by ais Religion. The Independence of the Englishman subjected at the present Time to two distinct Adverse Influences, --the Modern Poor Law and the Tenant-at-will System. - Walsall. -- Liverpool. -- Sort of Loaging-houses in which one is sure to meet many Dissenters.

Ox the fifth morning I quitted London on my way north, without having once seen the sun shine on the city or its environs. But the weather at length cleared up; and as the train passed Harrow-on-the-Hill, the picturesque buildings on the acclivity, as they looked out in the sunshine, nest-like, from amid their woods just touched with yellow, made a picture not unworthy of those classic recollections with which the place is so peculiarly associated.

The railway, though its sides are getting fast covered over with grass and debris, still furnishes a tolerably adequate section of the geology of this part of England. We pass, at an

early stage of our journey, through the London Clay, and then see rising from under it the Chalk, - the first representative of an entirely different state of things from that which obtained in the Tertiary, and the latest written record of that Secondary dynasty at whose terminal line, if we except one or two doubtful shells, on which it is scarce safe to decide, all that had previously existed ceased to exist forever. The lower members of the Cretaceous group are formed of materials of too yielding a nature to be indicated in the section; but the Oolite, on which they rest, is well marked; and we see its strata rising from beneath, as we pass on to lower and yet lower depths, till at length we reach the Lias, its base, and then enter on the Upper New Red Sandstone. Deeper and yet deeper strata emerge; and at the commencement of the Lower New Red we reach another great terminal line, where the Secondary dynasty ends, and the Palæozoic begins. We still pass downwards; encounter at Walsall a misplaced patch of Silurian, a page transferred from the earlier leaves of the volume, and stuck into a middle chapter; and then enter on the Coal Measures, the extremest depth to which we penetrate, in regular sequence, on this line. Our journey northwards from London to Wolverhampton has been also a journey downwards along the geologic scale; but while we have travelled northwards along the surface about a hundred and twenty miles, we have travelled downwards into the earth's crust not more than a mile and a quarter. Our descent has been exceedingly slow, for the strata have lain at very low angles. And hence the flat character of the country, so essentially different from that of Scotland. The few hills which we pass, - if hills they may mere flat ridges, that stretch, rib-like, athwart the - are, in most cases, but harder beds of rock, intercalated with the softer ones, and that, relieved by the denuding

be termed,

landscape,

agenc es, stand up in bolder prominence over the general level. Not an eruptive rock appears in the entire line on to Walsall. How very different the framework of Scottish landscape, as exhibited in the section laid bare by the Edinburgh and Glas. gow Railway! There, almost every few hundred yards in the line brings the traveller to a trap-rock, against which he finds the strata tilted at every possible angle of elevation. Here the beds go up, there they go down; in this eminence they are elevated, saddle-like, on the back of some vast eruptive mass ; in yonder hill, overflown by it. The country around exists as a tumultuous sea, raised into tempest of old by the fiery groundswell from below; while on the skirts of the prospect there stand up eminences of loftier altitude, characteristically marked in profile by their terrace-like precipices, that rise over each other step by step, their trap-stairs of trappean rock,- for to this scenic peculiarity the volcanic rocks owe their generic

name.

1 found Birmingham amid the bustle of its annual fair, and much bent on gayety and sight-seeing. There were double rows of booths along the streets, a full half-mile in length, gingerbread booths, and carraway and barley-sugar booths, and nut and apple booths, and booths rich in halfpenny dolls and penny trumpets, and booths not particularly rich in anything that seemed to have been run up on speculation. There were shows, too, of every possible variety of attraction, shows of fat boys, and large ladies, and little men, and great serpents and wise ponies; and shows of British disaster in India, and of British successes in China; madcap-minded merry-andrews, who lived on their wits, nor wished for more; agile tumblers, glittering in tinsel; swings, revolvers, and roundabouts; and old original Punch, in all his glory. But what formed by far

*Trap-stairs Scotice, a stair of one flight.

the best part of the exhibition were the round, ruddy, unthinking faces of the country-bred English, that had poured into town, to stare, wonder, purchase, and be happy. It was worth while paying one's penny for a sight of the fat boys and the little men, just to see the eager avidity with which they were seen, and the total want of suspicion with which all that was told regarding them was received. The countrywoman who, on seeing a negro for the first time, deemed him the painted monster of a show, and remarked that "mony was the way tried to wyle awa' the penny," betrayed her country not less by her suspicion than by her tongue. An Englishwoman of the true rural type would have fallen into the opposite mistake, of deeming some painted monster a reality. Judging, however, from what the Birmingham fair exhibited, I am inclined to hold that the preponderance of enjoyment lies on the more credulous side. I never yet encountered a better-pleased people the very spirit of the fair seemed embodied in the exclamation of a pretty little girl from the country, whom I saw clap her hands as she turned the corner of a street where the prospect first burst upon her, and shriek out, in a paroxysm of delight, "O, what lots of lots of shows!" And yet, certainly, the English character does lie very much in extremes. Among the unthinking, unsuspicious, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned, honest Saxons that crowded the streets, I could here and there detect, in gangs and pairs, some of the most disagreeably smartlooking men I almost ever saw, men light of finger and sharp of wit, full of all manner of contrivance, and devoid

of all sort of moral principle.

Nothing in the English character so strikingly impressed me as its immense extent of range across the intellectual scale. It resembles those musical instruments of great compass, such as the pianoforte and the harpsichord, that sweep over the entire

:

gamut, from the lowest note to the highest; whereas the intellectual character of the Scotch, like instruments of a narrower range, such as the harp and the violin, lies more in the middle of the scale. By at least one degree it does not rise so high; by several degrees it does not sink so low. There is an order of English mind to which Scotland has not attained our first. men stand in the second rank, not a foot-breadth behind the foremost of England's second-rank men; but there is a front rank of British intellect in which there stands no Scotchman. Like that class of the mighty men of David, to which Abishai and Benaiah belonged, - great captains, who went down into pits in the time of snow and slew lions, or "who lifted up the spear against three hundred men at once, and prevailed,”they attain not, with all their greatness, to the might of the first class. Scotland has produced no Shakspeare ; — Burns and Sir Walter Scott united would fall short of the stature of the giant of Avon. Of Milton we have not even a representative. A Scotch poet has been injudiciously named as not greatly inferior; but I shall not do wrong to the memory of an ingenious young man, cut off just as he had mastered his powers, by naming him again in a connection so perilous. He at least was guiltless of the comparison; and it would be cruel to involve him in the ridicule which it is suited to excite. Bacon is as exclusively unique as Milton, and as exclusively English; and though the grandfather of Newton was a Scotchman, we have certainly no Scotch Sir Isaac. I question, indeed, whether any Scotchman attains to the powers of Locke: there is as much solid thinking in the "Essay on the Human Understanding," greatly as it has become the fashion of the age to depreciate it, and notwithstanding its fundamental error, as in the works of all our Scotch metaphysicians put together. It is, however, a curious fact, and worthy, certainly, of careful