246 
NATURE NOTES. 
THE PLEASURES OF RAMBLES. 
( concluded from p. 226.) 
ND small but pleasant associations connected with the 
people’s love of music and song used to meet one 
everywhere. At that house up the dough, or out of 
doors in the corner of this field, met the people in 
former days to practise music and singing, many of them 
walking miles to the place of assembly ; or from this cottage, 
two youths, with an enthusiasm for music, walked all the 
way to Manchester to hear Malibran sing on that memorable 
occasion when the marvellous vocalisation of the dying singer 
became almost miraculous, and, as the general excitement 
increased, she improvised a final cadence which was the climax 
of her triumph and her life. Even lectures were often en- 
livened by song. In my walks over the hills I was often 
amazed to see, in the most out-of-the-way places, where, for 
instance, I could see no houses, but only a Methodist chapel 
standing in a field, such an announcement as that a lecture 
would be given on Jerusalem, by a Fellow of the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society, and that the Choral Society of the place, 
wherever it was — I could only learn that it was called “Top o’t 
Clough ’’ (but they all had Choral Societies) — would enliven the 
proceedings by singing selections from Judas Maccabeus ! 
My rambles used to extend from the Swale, with its elder 
and lovely Richmond on the north, to the Wye and Derwent, 
with their beautiful houses of Haddon Hall and Chatsworth on 
the south. Within these limits I used to find every type of 
moorland scenery, many spots of historic or literary interest, 
hills of all lovely colours, types of Yorkshire life and character 
of daily increasing interest, and an over-abundance, in general, 
of north-east breezes and gales. In my earlier life I was wont 
to think the southerly breezes were the only genial or endurable 
ones ; but at last I got to acknowledge that Kingsley, himself a 
fellow-Devonian, was not far out when he apostrophized the 
north-east wind as follows : — 
“ Let the luscious south-wind breathe in lovers’ sighs, 
While the lazy gallants bask in ladies’ eyes ; 
What does he but soften heart alike and pen ? 
’Tis the hard grey weather breeds hard Lngli.shmen. 
’Tis the bleak north-easter, through the snowstorm hurled, 
Drives our English hearts of oak seaward round the world. 
Come, as came our fathers, heralded by thee ; 
Conquering from the eastward, lords by land and sea ; 
Come, and strong within us, stir the Vikings’ blood ; 
Bracing brain and sinew ; blow thou wind of God ! ” 
It was a bleak and cold region ; my Devonian temperamen 
had to get acclimatised; but 1 never was in such a region fo 
work. You had to work, and you could work, to keep in health 
