Charles Fairbanks - My Unknown Chum - Aguecheek

The captain's prognostications prove correct. Our appetites at dinner bear witness to them; and before sunset we find our ship (curtailed of its fair proportion, it is true, by the loss of its main-top-gallant-mast) is under full sail once more. The next day we have a few hours' calm, and when a light breeze does spring up, it comes from the old easterly quarter. It begins to seem as if we were fated to sail forever, and never get any where. But patience wears out even a head wind, and at last the long-looked-for change takes place. The wind slowly hauls to the south, and many are the looks taken at the compass to see how nearly the ship can come up to her course. Then our impatience is somewhat allayed by speaking a ship which has been out twelve days longer than our own – for, if it be true, as Rochefoucauld says, that "there is something not unpleasing to us in the misfortunes of our best friends," – how keen must be the satisfaction of finding a stranger-companion in adversity. The wind, though steady, is not very strong, and many fears are expressed lest it should die away and give Eurus another three weeks' chance. But our forebodings are not realized, and a sunshiny day comes when we are all called up from dinner to see a long cloud-like affair, (very like a whale,) which, we are told, is the Old Head of Kinsale. Straightway all begin to talk of getting on shore the next day; but when that comes, we find that we are drawing towards Holyhead very rapidly, as our favourable wind has increased to a gale – so that when we have got round Holyhead, and have taken our pilot, (that burly visitor whose coming every one welcomes, and whose departure every one would speed,) the aforesaid pilot heaves the ship to, and, having a bed made up on the cabin floor, composes himself to sleep. The next morning finds the gale abated, and early in the forenoon we are running up to the mouth of the river. The smoke (that first premonitory symptom of an English town) hangs over Liverpool, and forms a strong contrast with the bright green fields and verdant hedges which deck the banks of the Mersey. The ship, after an immense amount of vocal power has been expended in that forcible diction which may be termed the marine vernacular, is got into dock, and in the afternoon a passage of thirty-three days is concluded by our stepping once more upon the "inviolate island of the sage and free," and following our luggage up the pier, with a swing in our gait which any stage sailor would have viewed with envy. The examination at the Custom House is conducted with a politeness and despatch worthy of imitation among the officials of our Uncle Samuel. The party of passengers disperses itself about in various hotels, without any circumstance to hinder their progress except falling in with an exhibition of Punch and Judy, which makes the company prolific in quotations from the sayings of Messrs. Codlin and Short, and at last the family which never had its harmonious unity disturbed by any thing, is broken up forever.

Liverpool wears its old thriving commercial look – perhaps it is a few shades darker with smoke. The posters are on a more magnificent scale, both as regards size and colour, than ever before, and tell not only of the night's amusements, but promise the acquisition of wealth outrunning the dreams of avarice in lands beyond the farthest Thule. Melbourne and Port Philip vie in the most gorgeous colours with San Francisco; and the United States seem to have spread wide their capacious arms to welcome the down-trodden Irishman. Liverpool seems to be the gate to all the rest of the world. I almost fear to walk about lest I should find myself starting off, in a moment of temporary insanity, for Greenland's icy mountains, or India's coral strand.

Dull must he be of soul who could make the journey from Liverpool to the metropolis in the month of June, and not be lifted above himself by the surpassing loveliness of dear mother Nature. Even if he were chained to a ledger and cash book – if he never had a thought or wish beyond the broker's board, and his entire reading were the prices current – he must forget them all, and feel for the time what a miserable sham his life is – or he does not deserve the gift of sight. It is Thackeray, I think, who speaks somewhere of the "charming friendly English landscape that seems to shake hands with you as you pass along" – and any body who has seen it in June will say that this is hardly a figurative expression. I used to think that it was my enthusiastic love for the land of the great Alfred which made it seem so beautiful to me when I was younger; but I find that it wears too well to be a mere fancy of my own brain. People may complain of the humid climate of England, and curse the umbrella which must accompany them whenever they walk out; but when the sun does shine, it shines upon a scene of beautiful fertility unequalled elsewhere in the world, and which the moist climate produces and preserves. And then, too, it seems doubly grateful to the eyes of one just come from sea. The bright freshness of the whole landscape, the varied tints of green, the trim hedges, the luxuriant foliage which springs from the very trunks of the trees, and the high state of cultivation which makes the whole country look as if it had been swept and dusted that morning, – all these things strike an American, for he cannot help contrasting them with the parched fields of his own land in summer, surrounded by their rough fences and hastily piled-up stone walls. The solidity of the houses and cottages, which look as if they were built, not for an age, but for all time, makes him think of the country houses of America, which seem to have grown up in a night, like our friend Aladdin's, and whose frailty is so apparent that you cannot sneeze in one of them without apprehending a serious calamity. Then the embankments of the railways present not only a pleasant sight to the eye of the traveller, but a pretty little hay crop to the corporation; and at every station, and bridge, and crossing, wherever there is a switch to be tended, you see the neat cottages of the keepers, and the gardens thereof – the railway companies having learned that the expenditure of a few hundred pounds in this way saves an expenditure of many thousands in surgeons' bills and damages, and is far more satisfactory to all concerned.

What a charming sight is a cow – what a look of contentment she has – ambitious of nothing beyond the field of daily duty, and never looking happier than when she comes at night to yield a plenteousness of that fluid without which custards were an impossibility! Wordsworth says that "heaven lies about us in our infancy" – surely he must mean that portion of the heavens called by astronomers the Milky Way. It is pleasant to see a cow by the side of a railway – provided she is fenced from danger – to see her lift her head slowly as the train goes whizzing by, and gaze with those mild, tranquil eyes upon the noisy, smoke-puffing monster, – just as the saintly hermits of olden times might have looked from their serene heights of contemplation upon the dusty, bustling world. The taste of the English farmers for fine cattle is attested by a glance at any of their pastures. On every side you see the representatives of Alderney's bovine aristocracy; and scores of cattle crop the juicy grass, rivalling in their snowy whiteness any that ever reclined upon Clitumno's "mild declivity of hill," or admired their graceful horns in its clear waters. Until I saw them, I never comprehended what farmers meant when they spoke of "neat cattle."

What an eloquent preacher is an old church-tower! Moss-crowned and ivy-robed, it lifts its head, unshaken by the tempests of centuries, as it did in the days when King John granted the Great Charter or the holy Edward ruled the realm, and tells of the ages when England was one in faith, and not a poor-house existed throughout the land. Like a faithful sentinel, it stands guard over the humbler edifices around it, and warns their inhabitants alike of their dangers and their duties by the music of its bells. Erect in silent dignity, it receives the first beams of the morning, and when twilight has begun to shroud every thing in its neighbourhood, the flash of sunset lingers on its gray summit. It looks down with sublime indifference upon the changing scene below, as if it would reproach the actors there with their forgetfulness of the transitoriness of human pursuits, and remind them, by its unchangeableness, of the eternal years.