DARTMOOR.

BY W. F. COLLIER.

(Read at Ashburton, July, 1876.)

DARTMOOR is a theme which to every Devonian is a romance. Dartmoor is wild, rugged, mountainous, and grand. The hills are high, and are crowned with granite tors, which impart to them a power to excite feelings of reverence. Like crowned monarchs, when there is a cloud upon their brow we fear the storm that follows the frown, and when their aspect is clear and bright we bask in the sunshine of their royal favour.

Beneath them is the deep valley and the stream in its rocky bed, roaring or murmuring in response to the frown or the smile of the ruling power above; the roar sounding like the threat of a destroyer; the murmur, soothing, gentle, and persuasive.

From the heights of the tors to the depths of the valleys ever-varying contrasts present themselves. The green turf, the purple heather, the graceful fern, the golden furze, the black bog, the granite boulders relieved with gay moss and lichen, lie before us, stretched in irregular expanse as far as the eye can reach. The whole effect rouses the feelings, stirs our emotions, and awakens in us the sense of the sublime grandeur which nature in a wild state impresses upon those who indulge themselves by contemplating her in her simple purity.

To admire nature apart from civilization is not to be uncivilized. It is so much the contrary, that it may be questioned whether uncivilized men admire nature at all To them nature is a severe task-mistress, imposing upon them unceasing labour and numberless hardships in whatever climate they may live. To civilized men she is a delight, a relief, and a rest; a pure unalloyed enjoyment, drawing their thoughts away from the toil of civilized life, putting the sense of beauty into the mind of the jaded worker in dry, ugly detail, and restoring tone to the nerves of the exhausted student of hard facts.

Nature still remains dominant on Dartmoor; but how much longer she will so remain in her glory and her power-a healing, restoring, softening influence-is a serious and alarming question which I am exceedingly desirous to bring before the Devonshire Association.

There is a conflict on Dartmoor between two opposing forces, and the stronger of them is fast gaining ground on the weaker, shortly to occupy the camp of the beaten power. There has been a slow, persistent, determined advance by the invader on the territories of the native possessor, and the aggressor is fast becoming, as usual, the conqueror. In other words, and in homely common phrase, Dartmoor is in danger of being civilized off the face of the earth. I want to raise the cry of "Devonshire to the rescue!"

The two opposing forces are, not civilization ranged against uncivilization, but one phase of civilization ranged against another phase; the hard, grinding, unsympathetic, worldlywise, wealth-seeking, dull side of the shield of the knighterrant of civilization, in opposition to the bright, glistening, glorious, and lovely side. It is the lower civilization seizing nature by force and making a slave of her, putting her in chains and confining her in prisons, against the higher civilization, making a friend, a mother of her, placing her at the head of our affairs, choosing her for our queen.

To put this question in a more practical shape: Are supposed economical laws to supersede all other laws, and are the beauties of Dartmoor to fall before the spade and the plough, for the sake of the miserable pittance that can be wrung from her granite and bog?

When the invasion of the native soil takes place, the first step in the advance of the aggressive force is a fortress in the shape of an enclosure; no spade, no plough, no abomination can make progress without an enclosure.

As a Devonshire man, a member of this Association, a lover of nature and her beauties, I lift up my voice and cry, "What right has any man to enclose any part of Dartmoor?" I will not, like Brutus, pause for a reply, because I well know that I shall get none. I well know also that no such right exists, and I equally well know that the enclosure of Dartmoor will go on in spite of all rights to the contrary, unless indeed I move you to take the field in support of the native defending forces, in whom, as oppressed, virtuous, noble, and beautiful indigenous occupants of the country, I have a great wish to enlist your sympathies.

It is Dartmoor in the state of nature that I admire; the

rivers, streams, and brooks, as clear as the clearest crystal; the far and wide space, as if fresh from Nature's workshop, with no straight lines, no geometrical angles, and not a square suggested. Nature in her glory, free from science, free from art, free from economy and utility, free from geology, archæology, and every human device for making her other than what she is.

"Where all, save the spirit of man, is divine."

It is this Dartmoor that I wish to bring before you, that I want you to admire and love, to adopt as something requiring your protection and care, something for the sake of which you have associated yourselves, and to be regarded by you as a special subject demanding at your hands deep and permanent consideration.

In this aspect of Dartmoor, which may be called the emotional and poetical aspect, many who have taken an interest in Dartmoor hitherto may find themselves thrown into the shade. From this glorious Dartmoor, in a pure state of nature, who would care to turn for the purpose of searching for celts, flint instruments, and other relics of a departed race of savages that lived in this country a few years ago, a very few years in comparison with the ages of the tors? Who would care to speculate on the works of a Druid, when he can contemplate the granite towers (tor is Saxon for tower) of Vixen Tor or Hay-tor? Who would care to grovel in a barrow in search of a vase, or a ring, or a spear, which everybody knows that everybody used a very few thousand years ago, when he can seat himself on Mist-tor, and, looking moorward, see nothing but the sublimity of nature uncontaminated by the hand of man? How pitiable it is to be scratching the surface of the delicate turf, disturbing its look of quiet and repose, merely to search for that which every one knows may be there, but which would surprise no one whether it were there or not there! How frivolous it is to gloat on the circular rows of stones, which some people delight in calling villages! Whether they are three hundred or three thousand years old signifies nothing. Grant that they are the work of man, what then? in comparison to the work of nature all interest in them vanishes. What do they tell us of the history of man? Absolutely nothing. There is as good reason to suppose them to be three hundred years old as three thousand. The only tale they tell is that man defaced the features of nature when they were made as he does now, but not nearly so much, and that is all. The

pyramids of Egypt, St. Peter's at Rome, the Cathedral at Exeter, are far more creditable to man, as an artist, than these circles of stones; and we may thank our good fortune that he has so far left Vixen Tor alone. Kent's Cavern tells us a history of man that Dartmoor can never tell; and a history of nature too which is sublime in its significance. Dartmoor does not tell us anything like this; but it can sing us an epic poem descriptive of nature as she is, and as she would be if untouched by the hand of man. It is a superfluous work to ask Dartmoor to tell us what is well known, and what Kent's Cavern and other evidences of the past can tell us very much better. It is well to look at what relics Dartmoor may have; but it is destructive to disturb them, to dig at them, or to carry them away in order to put them in glass cases and museums. Any amount of nonsense can be said or written about them without doing much harm, as long as a morbid curiosity be not excited that ends in digging.

Those with whom I have just been remonstrating, archæologists let them be called, are lovers of Dartmoor, and are by no means enemies of the native powers. They are only indiscreet and too enthusiastic friends, who admire Dartmoor in a mistaken spirit; more, perhaps, for the qualities that it has not than for those it has-not an uncommon symptom of being in love. They have fallen in love with Dartmoor, and are like a lover, who would in taking locks of hair from his sweetheart leave bald places on her beautiful head, and doting on the hair, become forgetful of the sweetheart.

There are others who seem to be altogether insensible to the charms of Dartmoor, who are at the present moment, and have been for some time past, gradually destroying its beauty utterly and for ever. It is these whom I wish, not to oppose, for opposition in such a case is misplaced, but to convert to a more reverential state of mind, to inspire with some feeling for the glories that surround them, to elevate above the common level of life, as the tors themselves have been elevated, and to lead to the enjoyment of a far greater and more intense pleasure than can be obtained from any work that involves the destruction of wild and grand beauty.

I mean those who cut the granite out of Dartmoor to metamorphose it into such things as the Thames embankment or Dover pier. Why should London be enriched by the spoils of Dartmoor? Has it not spoils enough from all countries and people that it must take from us even our tors?

I mean also those who pollute the rivers of Dartmoor, cut artificial channels for their waters, deface the appearance of the

country, and efface all expression of wild and artless grandeur by their straight-cut water-courses, turning the bright stream into a dirty opaque white, brown, or yellow liquid, unworthy of the name of water, stolen from the rocky torrent, revolting alike to the senses as ugly, and to the sentiments as a theft.

I mean those also who vainly dig for gold on Dartmoor. They may as well dig for gold directly as indirectly in the form of a profit on any other metal. There is as much profit as gold to be got from mining on Dartmoor, and no more; a very consoling thought-consoling only because it may eventually lead to a happier and more ennobling state of things. The treasures of Dartmoor are on its untouched surface. Why cause unhappy shareholders to curse Dartmoor, when, as beings free from the cares of shareholding, they might bless it as "a thing of beauty, and a joy for ever"? Though all other corners of the earth be given up to the worship of mammon, let us have Dartmoor free from the woeful rites of that great religion. Leave us our altars on the high places of Dartmoor, built by Nature herself, and let us worship nature there if nowhere else. We will not quarrel over our ritual; it will be too simple to provoke casuistry; we only ask that our altars may be spared to us undefiled.

I mean those also who flatter themselves (and gross flattery it is) that they can farm on Dartmoor. It is this unhappy delusion that leads to the destruction of vast and really serious portions of Dartmoor by means of that most abominable of all abominations, the enclosures. As in the case of mining, there is no consolation in knowing that enclosing Dartmoor is a losing concern, that the land enclosed is not worth the cost of the enclosures. It is, on the contrary, an addition to the vexation that an act of spoliation causes to know that there is no compensating advantage to be set off against the loss, no comfort at all to be got out of the evil thing. That one man's gain should be another man's loss is bad enough; but when one man's gain is imaginary only, and the loss is in reality on all sides, not only another man's, but everybody's, a pitiful state of things is brought about. In contemplating the glories of Dartmoor, we not only look from a higher point of view than the ordinary level of the earth, but we feel higher and nobler impulses. The sublimity of nature would be as nothing if it did not excite sublimity of feeling. And as high as the tors are above the plains that groan under the plough ought the lovers of wild Dartmoor to be above the miserable feelings that would induce them to rejoice at the