better than conclude with them, after the manner of

Addison :

"But fare ye well, auld Nickie Ben,

O wad ye tak a thought an' men'.
Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken—
Still hae a stake:

I'm wae to think upo' yon den
"Ev'n for your sake."

CHAPTER XXIX

ISLE OF MAN

"Bold words affirmed, in days when faith was strong,
And doubts and scruples seldom teased the brain,
That no adventurer's bark had power to gain

These shores if he approached them bent on wrong."
-WORDSWORTH.1

THE question was often put to me, Why should the Manchester inspectors visit the Isle of Man? They have to cross the territory of at least three friendly colleagues to reach it, and surely they have enough to do at home? But the satisfying answer was that with no less inducement could the Manchester staff be kept together. When I was transferred to that City of Dreadful Night, I was inclined to think that The Island, as we affectionately called it, was a Heligoland, a Philippine Island: let who will, take it. But the Manchester staff soon undeceived me. "We work," said they, with tears in their manly eyes, “in smoke, fog, and gas-light for five or six months in the year if it were not for the Island we should die : keep the brightest jewel in your diadem." And, therefore,

1 One of my colleagues was unable to land on the Island, and was carried on to Barrow. Till I had seen these lines, I fully believed that it was the ordinary result of an easterly gale. Now I see that he was after no good.

when the Board hinted that I was overpeopled, and that without the I.O.M. I should be poorer but happier, I replied with the familiar Terentian words,

"HUMANI nihil a me alienum puto."

(All that is of Man, is mine.)

In the following May came my first Essay on Man. Certainly, as the crew of Ulysses sang, "Our island home is distant far." There is a great gulf fixed between Liverpool and Douglas, and out of the tourist season, when only the smaller boats are running, one is tempted to think that the Liverpool inspector, who probably examines night schools in "The Principles of Navigation," is a fitter man for the post than one whose nautical ideas are limited by the Ship Canal and the Pennine Range. But the sight of Douglas Bay, the clear sky, the pure air, and the quiet of the night-before the trippers arrivebring consolation, and then content.

A classical friend hailed me as avag avspev, King of Man, but that really was an exaggeration. I had no pretensions to the rank of Agamemnon. The island belongs to the British Crown: there is a governor, and some deemsters, besides Mr. Hall Caine, and a secondclass bishop. All these dignitaries, and others, take precedence of H.M.I.

It is somewhat of a mild coincidence that I began my inspecting career in the Welsh Mona, and, thirty-five years later, ended with the Northern Mona. The latter is not a large island, about twenty-five miles from north to south, and about twelve across. The more familiar Isle of Wight is about two-thirds of the size, but has nearly double the population. This inequality is, doubtless, partly due to the fact that the census is taken on the first

Monday in April, when Wight is full and Man is empty. If the first Monday in August could have been substituted, Man would have made a braver show. Thus is the dignity of Man sacrificed to a pedantic love of

accuracy.

And while comparing the two, let me pause to note that WIHTGARESBYRIG, the old name of the southern isle, had presumably nothing to do with a wight, or man, and that Mannin, the old name of our isle, had nothing to do with a man or wight; but that the forces of erosion and attrition have made one into a Wight and the other into a Man.

To the ordinary tourist the island is unknown. A lady whom I asked whether she knew it, enquired with some surprise if it was a place to which people went. But, in the summer, trippers from Lancashire and Cheshire come in hundreds of thousands; there is the pleasing punishment of a four hours' sea voyage; on the island there is cheap board and lodging, with magnificent air and varied scenery. Our visits were, perforce, concluded before the mass of the trippers arrived, and rather before the warm weather set in; but it was a delightful break in the monotony of town work. Our school journeys did not take us into the Glens, which are the pride of the Manxman; and the rest of the country is rather pretty than beautiful. But in May and June we had all the charm of wild flowers: the fresh green of the beeches, and the splendour of the gorse and the broom. Song birds abounded in the plantations, and on the coast sea-birds did their best to prove that personal beauty is compatible with the entire absence of a musical faculty.

Walter Scott makes the island the scene of part of Peveril of the Peak; but it does not appear from his life, or from his journal-still less does the novel show— that he ever set foot there. Wordsworth wrote some fine sonnets on the island, from one of which I have borrowed the lines at the head of the chapter. Mr. Hall Caine, of course, has done ample justice to the traditions and local colour. It is some years since I read, and much enjoyed, The Manxman and The Deemster, and at the times of reading I was in blackest ignorance of the scenery. To me the Sacred Bard of the island was T. E. Brown, whose letters,1 and especially those from the island, I read and re-read. I skimmed through a great deal of his poetry also, in the hope of finding something suitable for the Manx children to learn, but there was little or nothing of that special kind, and the teachers would have none of it. We are told that Browning, George Eliot, Max Müller, and W. E. Henley united in praising his poetry very highly, but his dialect poems are the most admired, and teachers wage war against dialect. I wonder whether Scotch children learn Burns?

The Letters, however, are a priceless treasure; and the island which produced him, and introduced me to them, earns from me a double share of gratitude. Dip into vol. i. if you see no chance of personally inspecting

his haunts:

The island blooms like a rose. Primroses make no secret of it now they are everywhere, and begin to bring with them young blue-bells," ter❜ble shoy," but they'll soon get over that. I went up Sulby Glen a bit the other day: the gorse there, as elsewhere, is a mass of golden flame; and I heard the cuckoo

1 "Letters of T. E. Brown" 2 vols. (Constable.)