The rock above us
rang with the thunder-peals; and the lightning, which might have
fallen miles away, seemed to our dazzled eyes to dive into the
glittering river at our feet. We sat silent some half-hour,
listening to the voice of One more mighty than ourselves; and it was
long after the uproar had rolled away among the hills, and a steady,
sighing sheet of warmer rains, from banks of low grey fog, had
succeeded the rattling of the hail upon the crisp heather, that I
turned to Claude.
'And now, since your heart is softened towards these wild, stag-
hunting, trout fishing, jovial west-countrymen, consider whether it
should not be softened likewise toward those old outlaw ballads which
I have never yet been able to make you admire. They express feelings
not yet extinct in the minds of a large portion of the lower orders,
as you would know had you lived, like me, all your life in poaching
counties, and on the edges of one forest after another,--feelings
which must be satisfied, even in the highest development of the
civilization of the future, for they are innate in every thoughtful
and energetic race,--feelings which, though they have often led to
crime, have far oftener delivered from swinish sensuality; the
feelings which drove into the merry greenwood "Robin Hood, Scarlet,
and John;" "Adam Bell, and Clym of the Cleugh, and William of
Cloudislee;" the feelings which prompted one half of his inspiration
to the nameless immortal who wrote the "Nutbrown Maid;"--feelings
which could not then, and cannot now, be satisfied by the drudgery of
a barbaric agriculture, which, without science, economy, or
enterprise, offers no food for the highest instincts of the human
mind, its yearnings after Nature, after freedom, and the noble
excitement of self-dependent energy.
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