224 
NATURE NOTES. 
paths, hardly any fields, and no hedges ; none of the things in 
which I had all my life taken delight ; and I seemed to be 
everywhere surrounded by tall chimneys, stone walls, the 
unfragrant factory-oil and the busy din of machinery. How- 
ever, the first thing that reassured me was to find, as I soon 
did, that I had got into a land of song. The second night I 
spent there I was awakened in the “ wee short hours ayont 
the twal,” by what I thought at first were angels singing round 
my bed ; but on looking out into the clear moonlight I saw 
that these awakeners were a band of well-dressed people singing 
in a little front garden, a short way off, in perfect time and 
tune, and with fine expression, the glee “ Hail, smiling morn.” 
And on the first long walk that 1 took, I stood to listen with 
pleasure to a gay group that were singing very sweetly among 
the heather some hymns about welcoming the pilgrims of the 
night, and a day’s march nearer home ; and this was, I learnt, 
a wedding party of Ranters, out for the day, and spending the 
holiday in this delightful way in the heather. My respect for 
the people began to increase, and in this regard it never ceased 
to do so. For, though I found that they were, in general, not 
very easily moved, and very undemonstrative, yet in the matter 
of music and song they rose to ecstasy — put their whole heart 
into it — and thus could not fail to raise any lover of music to 
an ecstasy of delight along with them. Once when I went to 
a concert, to a reserved place, I seemed conscious of a rather 
peculiar smell near me, of which, for awhile, I could not find 
the cause, till by and by my neighbour, a man in dress that 
seemed better than my own, told me quite confidentially, after 
some fine piece of music, that these were his “ mates,” and 
that he had but just time to get out of the dye-house and put 
on his coat to come there ; thus the effluvium was explained as 
that of the dye-house. As the concert went on, my friend got 
more and more excited ; as Wordsworth said — 
“ Could he keep himself still if he would ? No, not he, 
The music stirred in him like wind in a tree.” 
He would turn to me and say “ Eh ! but that’s grand ! ” and at 
last I saw the tears pouring down his cheeks ; yet this was but 
a choir and band from one of the mills, and they had been 
discoursing the music of Wagner, then made known to me for 
the first time. 
One got, by degrees, to love the people ; what music-lover 
could help it ? And then I got to love their land, which was, 
I found, of the type of those “ honest grey hills,” heather-clad, 
which Scott told a complainer, Washington Irving, that he 
loved to get back to, and could not live without seeing at least 
once a year. 
You are there among dales hardly a bit inferior to those of 
Cumberland and Westmoreland, and beside some of the very 
finest rock-scenery in England. Across the middle of the 
