First impressions of England and its people / By Hugh Miller.

  • Hugh Miller
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First impressions of England and its people / By Hugh Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/440 page 2
    pleted my survey of Scotland to the north of the Grampians; and I would have reckoned at least half my self-imposed task at an end. When labouring professionally, however, during the previous winter and spring, I had, I am afraid, sometimes failed to remember, what the old chivalric knights used never to forget, that “ man is hut of mould /’ and I had, in consequence, subjected the “mould” to a heavier pressure than, from its yielding nature, it is suited to bear; and now that play-time had once more come round, I found I had scarce health and strength enough left me to carry me in quest of more. I could no longer undertake, as formerly, long journeys a-foot in a wild country; nor scramble, with sure step, and head that never failed, along the faces of tall precipices washed by the sea. And so, for the time at least, I had to give up all thought of visiting Orkney. “ I shall cross the Border,” I said, “ and get into England. I know the humbler Scotch better than most men,—I have at least enjoyed better opportunities of knowing them; but the humbler English I know only from hearsay. I shall go and live among them for a few weeks, somewhere in the midland districts. I shall lodge in humble cottages, wear a humble dress, and see what is to he seen by humble men only,— society without its mask. I shall explore, too, for myself, the formations wanting in the geologic scale of Scotland,—the Silurian, the Chalk, and the Tertiary ; and so, should there be future years in store for me, I shall he enabled to resume my survey of our Scottish deposits with a more practised eye than at present, and with more extended knowledge.” August was dragging on to its close through a moist and cloudy atmo¬ sphere ; every day had its shower, and some days half a dozen ; but I hoped for clearer skies and fairer weather in the south ; and so, taking my seat at Edinburgh on the top of the New-
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