Various

“ It is on the fat meadows near Aberdeen that a portion of those innumerable flocks and droves are raised which have so great a reputation in the London market. These are the two extremes, but between them there is every variety of Highland scenery. He who has seen the banks of Dee has seen, as in an epitome or abridgment, all that the north of Scotland has to show. In the midst of variety one thing is constant, whatever landscape you may be passing through: you always have the great hill masses on the horizon. Thus the Dee is a typical Highland river. ”

“ As Stirling presides over the “Links of Forth,” and the upper courses of the river, Edinburgh Rock with its Castle appears the Guardian Genius of the Firth. Round the base of this “Bass Rock upon land,” the masses of buildings seem to swirl and surge like a tide-race of human life, and to climb, in broken wave upon wave, crested by the spires and roofs of the Old Town, and overhung by the murky spray of its proverbial “reek,” all up the steep slope to the battlements of the Castle. Stirling itself is scarcely its peer for dignity of situation or for renown. ”

“ The gardens and grounds themselves are a triumph of arboriculture and landscape gardening; and who is there that has not heard of their avenues of quaintly clipped trees? The church tower and castle rise above a forest of patrician trees, while umbrageous aisles of green give vistas of scenes “where Boccaccio might have wooed and Watteau painted.” These poetic perspectives look upon rockery and statuary, lawn and fountain, borders and beds of flowers. There is an avenue of elms a mile in length, framing at the extremity a view of the Gotham hills. ”

“ Nowhere in all its course is it more picturesque than at Belper bridge. Above the weirs it is lake-like in its wide expanse, reflecting the green verdure at its side, the undulating uplands beyond, and the hillside cemetery that by its delectable situation seems to render Death beautiful. The weirs make the water a live thing. One of these is a merry sluice, with several gates liberating the flood above, which comes down like Southey’s torrent at Lodore. The large weir is of great width, and of crescent shape, with a wooded island at its foot. ”

“ Below the bridge at Middleton the Tees leaves behind it the stern Yorkshire moorlands and scaurs, the hills on either bank withdrawing themselves that it may glitter in the sunbeams over a pebbly bed. Henceforth, until it approaches the large towns, and when it encounters the sea-tides, it flows, broad and open, past richly-wooded banks. In all England there is no more pleasant valley than that which the Tees waters between Middleton and Pierce Bridge. There is an almost equal beauty in the valleys of its numerous tributaries. ”

“ A streak of brighter and fresher green than any that is visible on the hillsides indicates where a hidden thread of water percolates the moss. Then there is a glint of silver here and there. Finally, the eye lights upon a sedgy pool, in the centre of which there is perceptible that throbbing movement which tells of the presence of a spring. This, then, is the source of the South Tyne. Before its waters have travelled far from here they will be crossed by a rude, ancient bridge, and swollen by many a little tributary from the hills. ”

“ Yonder it skirts, in a roofless monastery, a memorial of its treachery; here it has turned for generations the waterwheel of a mill that has never failed to find grist from a peaceful farming community. If in one place it sweeps round one of the great battlefields of our country, in another it flows in undisturbed seclusion between wooded slopes where the overhanging trees hide the sunlight from its waters, and dark rock-sheltered pools provide a safe retreat for the otter. Not anywhere, in fact, is the Wharfe devoid of interest or beauty. ”

“ Romance works with a charm more powerful than that of History itself in attracting visitors to the head-waters of the Forth and Teith, and in enhancing the marvellous natural beauties of their lake and mountain scenery. True, few except stout pedestrians and ardent anglers follow up the Duchray Water, past ivied Duchray Castle, to the corries that seam the base of Ben Lomond. But the path from Inversnaid, that skirts Loch Chon and the more famous and more beautiful northern head-stream of the Forth that issues from it, is not so unfrequented. ”

“ On the one hand is Sir George Douglas’s place, Springwood Park, the entrance dignified by some glorious bronze beeches; on the other are the stately ruins of the Abbey; and beyond, the town, neat and clean, gleaming white in the sunshine. Up stream, full in front, stands the palatial Floors Castle, not far from where the Teviot pours its hurrying tide into the Tweed; below bridge the spacious current ripples between thickly wooded banks. The town itself has many interests, modern as well as ancient. ”

“ Beyond all these comes a wilder and barer district, where the hills draw closer to the river, and cultivation and population become more rare, and where at length, over the massive and rounded outlines of the fells, as we rise towards the great “dorsal ridge” of England, we catch glimpses of the Cumberland Mountains and of the Cheviots.
To trace the Wear upwards or downwards is like ascending or descending the stream of English history; from the busy present we move back into the feudal age, and at length into the quietude of primitive Nature. ”

“ Ovington is a right sweet and pleasant and prosperous village, much beloved of anglers, there being abundant fish. Nowhere is the Tees more shaded and beautiful, with its stream broken up into many currents by a series of wooded islands, on which the easy-going inadventurous fisher may lie under the leafy branches through torrid summer days.
CROFT. / BLACKWELL BRIDGE.
Ovington is a village with a maypole in the middle of its green—a maypole with tattered garlands still clinging to its iron crown. ”

“ From Hickling it is a long sail down to Thurne mouth, where we regain the main stream of the Bure, and the scenery is thoroughly characteristic of East Anglia. Truly there is nothing like it elsewhere in this country. League upon league we steal along the placid waterway, between rustling sedge, flag, reed, and coarse grasses, protecting all the aquatic flowers in their season. Sleek cattle graze upon the low, fat, boundless pastures; everywhere weather-worn windmills catch the breeze, and work devoted to the perpetual service of pumping out the intersecting dykes. ”

“ Scarped cliffs of grey sandstone support the gardens and terraces of the castle, in the rear of which the town rises from the valley in alternating lines of trees and houses, broken here and there by the steeple or tower of a church. But in olden times, when the valley plain was free from railways, factories, and chimneys, Nottingham must have been a singularly picturesque town. Then the view from the valley of the Trent, especially from near the influx of the Leen, must have been a worthy subject for an artist. ”

“ Having its origin on the slopes of the Cam mountain, in the north-west of the county, it traverses, in the sixty or seventy miles of its course to the Ouse, almost every description of the scenery for which this great division of England is famous. Over moorland and meadowland, rushing madly down precipitous rocks and flowing placidly along fertile plains, shut up in some parts within deep gorges and at other points spreading out to river-like dimensions, it has an ever-varying charm to all who trace its progress. ”

“ The streams which presently unite to form the Witham traverse more than ordinarily pretty pastoral scenery—a region now shelving, now almost hilly, of meadow and pasture, cornfield and copse, where is many a mansion pleasantly situated in its wooded park, and many a comely village clustered round a church, which is often both interesting and beautiful—till we arrive at Grantham, once a quiet market town, now rapidly developing into a very important manufacturing centre. ”

“ This is Scone Palace, the magnificent mansion of the Earls of Mansfield, standing almost on the site of the ancient Abbey and royal residence of Scone. Modern Scone and all its surroundings are stately and spacious, but the relics of its early grandeur have disappeared from the landscape, and almost the only memorials of the days when it was the meeting-place of parliaments and councils, the crowning-place of kings, “the Windsor of Scotland,” are the mound of the “Motehill,” the sycamore tree planted by Queen Mary, and the cross which marks the place where stood the old “City of Scone.” ”

“ Below Barnard Castle there is an open space of greensward extending over a few acres, and then the river, after falling over Creswick’s salmon pass, plunges once more into the woods. Between this point and the village of Wycliffe lies the most lovely scenery of the Tees. At about a mile from Barnard Castle, on the Yorkshire side, Thor’s Gill flows into the river through a deep ravine, and out of the neighbouring trees rise the impressive ruins of Egliston Abbey. Tired indeed of the world must have been those who came to this wild and lonely place for service and prayer. ”

“ The spell by which these stately arches and massive towers rose, and which, in other centuries, drew towards Durham great crowds of pilgrims, and wealth and secular and ecclesiastical power unequalled in the North, is not yet wholly broken. To this day the town stands somewhat aside, with an air of proud seclusion, from the rush and din of the great highways of commerce that pass so near. It gives, indeed, a part of its mind and time to the manufacture of mustard and carpets and the raising of coal, but it does not give its whole heart, like its neighbour cities, to trade. ”

“ Very rich in interest and beauty are some of the glens through which these mountain rivulets flow, with sudden precipices, and narrow defiles, and rock-strewn gorges, and the charm of moss and fern and overhanging tree. Knaresdale Hall, which is no more than a farmhouse in these days, is some distance lower down the South Tyne than the spot at which the Knar Burn brings its contribution to the constantly broadening stream. It dates back to rough seventeenth century times, and was as strongly built as became the home of the doughty lairds of Knaresdale. ”

“ For two miles there is a succession of beautiful cascades, which sing their wilful tune under a dappled archway of clinging shrubs and bending trees. Bellingham Castle has disappeared, like the family by which it was erected, but the old church, with its strong stone roof, bears witness of how in the days of the Border feuds even the House of God had need to be built so that it might be defended against wary and ruthless foes. The structure is in the early Norman style. The stone roof was probably added after the church had been twice fired by the Scots. ”

“ To visit Durham, or even to see its three great square towers rising in stern and severe majesty over the Wear and the masses of houses and foliage clustered beneath, is to feel that the Age of Miracle is not yet past. Or, if the ancient phases of faith and life be indeed dead or dying, there has nowhere in England been left a more solid and impressive memorial of their former strength than the Cathedral of Durham. ”

“ All up the valley of the Wear, to Bishop Auckland and Witton, and to Wolsingham and Stanhope, commerce has pushed its way, and the very sources of the stream have been probed by the lead-mining prospector. But beauty is there also, and in possession—the beauty of stately woods, embowering princely piles, like Brancepeth Castle, the very stones of which are part of the national history; of clear reaches of the river, sweeping under fragments of religious houses, such as Finchale Priory, gently draped by time with moss, lichen, and ivy ”

“ One can imagine the time—but yesterday in the geologist’s record—when the broad valley of the river was filled with the sea, back to the roots of the Grampians, and when Stirling Rock, with its neighbour bluffs, the Abbey Craig and Craigforth, rose as islands or peninsulas over the waters, each with its slope towards the east and its front to the west. The sea has long receded, and Stirling now dominates the green and level floor of its fertile carse. Through the middle of the landscape meanders the Forth, in immense loops and folds—“a foiled circuitous wanderer” ”

“ Beyond the marshes, undulating country swells gently to picturesque and distant woods; square church-towers peep above the trees. There are cornfields and patches of turnip surrounding the ruddy buildings of many a happy homestead. Hour after hour we silently move between margins gay with the bold purple loosestrife, the free-blossoming willow-herb, the fragrant meadow-sweet, and the dark glossy-leaved alder, which never thrives so well as when its feet are in the water, and which seems to be most strong in the sap when other trees are on the verge of decay. ”

“ The Ipswich of to-day, however, with its water and steam mills, its export business in boots and shoes, its great ironworks, is, in East Anglia, the conspicuous type of go-aheadness, and when the Orwell is at high tide the outlook from the heights is of extreme beauty. The estuary then is a lovely stretch of scenery; gently rising hills laid out with grounds and country seats, diversified by woods and high cultivation, appear on either side, and the estuary from grassy shore to grassy shore is covered with water, dotted with white-sailed yachts and craft of more serious order. ”

“ Below Rogerley and Frosterley the valley begins to open; the bare heathy hills withdraw to a more respectful distance; and between them and the river there interpose fine stretches of rich woodland and cultivated fields. For the scarped faces of limestone and marble quarries and the crushing-mill of the lead-mine, one begins to see rising here and there the pit-head machinery of the colliery and the smoke of the iron furnace; from a moorland stream the Wear changes to a lowland river. ”