Australian views of England/Letter 11
LETTER XI.
RURAL ENGLAND AND THE RAILWAYS.
ONE consequence of railways was expected to be the letting loose into all corners of England such a flood of visitors that the rural seclusion in which our forefathers lived would no longer be found. The pictures of country life must be sought in the poets of a bygone age. Hodge, and his thatched cottage, could never withstand the shrieking engine and the crowded train. The landscape, made up of primitive forms of life, would melt away before the iron road and its rude cutting, unsightly embankment, and gloomy tunnel. And, undeniably, the English railways have produced a wondrous change in the life and manners of the English nation.
But in some respects the English railways have been followed by a more charming state of rural quietude and beauty. They have not opened the country to the foot as they have opened it to the eye of the traveller. He may see the morning sun gilding the young wheat on the field of Bannockburn, and he may watch the sunset of the same spring day from Cæsar's Tower at Kenilworth. But his step may not so readily intrude upon the repose of many a pleasant hamlet within sight of the flashing train. And many a child of those hamlets grows up regarding the railway train as he regards the squire's house or the squire's coach—a thing with which he has nothing to do, and which it is part of his lot to look upon from a distance. It is, perhaps, several miles to the nearest station, and a journey of several miles which lies out of his yearly round of occupation is a serious undertaking. The chance wayfarers who looked in upon the village from the old turnpike road were more numerous than the "pilgrims of nature" in the great stream of life ever rushing past, who find occasion to diverge from their course between the great centres of life and trade.
Having left England when only two railways were in operation, I returned to my native country with the impression I had carried away, that the beautiful forms of country life would be all defaced by the iron locomotives. I was undeceived, with a "glad surprise," by the flowers and foliage that coated the embankments and deep cuttings of the London and North-western, on the occasion of my first trip by that line, through the midland counties, on a bright autumn day. A short time afterwards, when travelling by the Midland Railway through Worcestershire, I was delighted to see a family of partridges enjoying the sunshine on the grassy embankment, not in the least disturbed by the whizzing train. Since then I have discovered, by frequent observation, that the wild creatures of the field and copse have made acquaintance with the steam horse as a thing that never meddles with them, however he may shriek and flame, and that they seldom leave their haunts or quicken their pace at his coming. In Cheshire and Shropshire this spring, I have often seen the "timid hare" standing on her hind feet and listening to the train as it rushed past with its hundred passengers. On one occasion I saw several pheasants not twenty yards from the rail, in a field of young wheat, and not one of the birds raised its head from its plunder of the poor farmer. A few miles below Tamworth, in the Trent Valley, a fox made its burrow, and brought forth a family of cubs, in the railway embankment The creatures seem to be assured of their safety by seeing those mighty things ever rushing past, and never stopping in their course nor deviating from the given line. The railway team is the same to them as the winds and the lightnings.
But the flowers, the sweet familiar flowers of an English spring! They have seized upon the railways as part of their rightful heritage In all directions the deep slopes, where the railway spans some valley, are thickly starred with the pale primrose, and the maidenly cowslips nod to the passengers from the brows of the cutting through the gentle hills. In Worcestershire—I think between King's Norton and Bromsgrove—the Midland line runs through a deep cutting, with the rocky side almost perpendicular, and it would be difficult to find a more beautiful picture of cliff variegated with moss, bramble, gorse, and clinging flowers. In Scotland the fir is frequently planted above the railway slopes, and in a few years some of the lines will run through complete spinneys of fir. The lines from Glasgow, down both banks of the Clyde, are everywhere beautiful As you travel on one side you see the train on the other, now darting in behind some severed spur of the hills, and now bursting out upon the more even shore, and ever filling its wreath of white steam behind it, as if waving an adieu to the vessels on the old historical river. The railways do no more than run their fine lines through the rural landscape, making sunny banks for the flowers and shrubs most loved by the English people. Though places which have a name in history are undoubtedly visited by a larger number of strangers than formerly, I am inclined to think there are many nooks and corners of rural England which are more secluded from the world now than when the world's travellers had to journey by the common road. Certainly, these nooks and corners have lost nothing of their rural beauty.
London, Aug. 24, 1862.