Terminus of the Southampton Railroad at Vauxhall.—Truth and Falsehood.—Reaping flint in straw.—The river Mole.—The Wey.—Canals and Locks.—Poppies and Opium.—Limestone and Chalk.—Gleaners.—Ruins at Basingstoke.—Southampton.—The Bar.—Sir Bevis and the Giant Ascabart.

On Monday morning Agnes did not fail to awake in time, and after an early breakfast the party proceeded to the railroad. It was a very long ride from Bayswater to the station at Nine Elms, and Agnes thought it longer than it really was. At length, however, they arrived, and Agnes watched with considerable anxiety her black leather portmanteau taken off the carriage with the rest of the luggage. She was once going to tell the porter to take particular care of it, but observing that her mother did not speak she also remained silent, and followed Mrs. Merton into a large room, in which a man stood behind a kind of counter, receiving money and giving tickets. When it was Mrs. Merton’s turn, the man fixed his eyes on Agnes, and said abruptly, “How old are you?”

“I was ten last October,” replied Agnes, very much surprised at this question. Mrs. Merton then laid three sovereigns on the counter, which the man took up, giving her three tickets in return, with which she walked away in silence, and joining Mr. Merton they both walked to the railway carriages followed by Agnes, who could not at all understand the meaning of what had taken place. She did not like to ask any questions, as she had promised not to be troublesome, but she could not help thinking of the man’s strange behaviour; and when her mamma, who saw her puzzled look, asked what she was thinking about, she ventured to inquire what the man meant by speaking to her only, and why he took any interest in knowing her age. “I suppose,” said she, “he must have some little girls of his own, and that he wanted to know if I were the same age; but I wonder whether he thought me short or tall.” Mrs. Merton smiled, and replied that she really believed the man had never thought about it.

“Why did he ask my age, then?” inquired Agnes, rather vexed at her mamma’s indifference.

“To know how much you were to pay for your place,” replied Mrs. Merton. “If you had been under ten, I should have paid only half price for you.”

“But why did he not ask you such a question as that?”

“He was probably afraid that I should not tell him the truth.”

“But surely, mamma,” cried Agnes, her face flushing, and her eyes sparkling with indignation, “the man could never think you would demean yourself so much as to tell a falsehood for the sake of ten shillings.”

“If he had known me,” replied Mrs. Merton quietly, “I hope he would not have suspected me of telling a falsehood for the sake of any sum.”

An old gentleman who was their fellow-traveller, was very much amused at Agnes’s indignation, and began to tease her by telling her that her mamma was in the habit of telling stories every day; and when Agnes indignantly denied his assertion, he asked her if she thought her mamma had never written “your humble servant” at the end of a letter, without meaning that she was ready to act as a servant to the person she addressed; and whether she did not often say she was glad or sorry to hear some particular piece of news, when she did not, in fact, care much about it. Agnes began to look puzzled, and Mrs. Merton, not liking this mocking style of conversation, as she knew the necessity of keeping a strict line in a child’s mind between truth and falsehood, tried to turn her daughter’s attention to the objects they were passing. It is very strange that sensible and well-informed men should often take as much pleasure in confusing the thoughts of a poor innocent child, as vicious boys do in tormenting a harmless dog. This gentleman, whose name they afterwards found was Mr. Bevan, was a well-intentioned, good-hearted man, who would have been shocked at the thought of hurting Agnes by treading on her foot, or pushing her down; and yet, while he would have shrunk from wilfully inflicting on her a trifling bodily hurt which could only have caused a temporary suffering, he had no hesitation in doing a serious injury to her mind. It is true he only wished to amuse himself by watching the play of her countenance, without thinking of the consequences; and that if she had been his child he would have been the first to correct her for telling a falsehood: but his mocking strain roused the first doubt that had ever crossed the mind of Agnes as to whether it was possible to tell a falsehood without meaning any harm. Hitherto she had been truth itself, and still nothing would have induced her to tell a falsehood wilfully: but she was puzzled, as she was not old enough to distinguish between positive assertions, and mere conventional phrases, to which nobody attaches any precise meaning; and that perfect confidence in the holiness and power of truth, which is so beautiful a feature in the youthful mind, was shaken. Mrs. Merton wished to prevent her daughter’s mind from dwelling on the subject, and pointing to a corn-field, she asked Agnes, if she knew what corn it was. Before, however, the child could answer, a young man who sat opposite told her with a patronizing air, that it was wheat.

“You may know it,” continued he; “by its close heads. Barley and rye have long bristles, and oats have loose heads.”

Agnes now began to be interested in the wheat-fields they were passing; and her mamma made her observe the curious curved knife called a sickle, which is used in reaping corn; and the manner in which the corn was tied up in sheaves after it was cut, and the sheaves afterwards placed together in shocks, with their heads leaning towards each other, and a sheaf reversed over the top to keep the grain dry.

“But why do women reap?” asked Agnes; “you told me mowing was too difficult for them, and surely it is nobler to cut corn than grass.”

“Reaping requires less strength than mowing, as the sickle is neither so heavy nor so cumbrous as the scythe.”

“What part of the wheat produces the flour?”

“Can you not guess?”

Agnes hesitated, and then said, timidly and blushing, “I am not quite sure, but I think it is the seed.”

“Right,” cried Mr. Merton, who, being an excellent botanist himself, was always glad to turn his daughter’s attention to the peculiarities of plants. “Now tell me if you know any thing particular about the straw.”

“I believe it is hollow and jointed.”

“It is; and, what is more, it is not composed entirely of vegetable matter, but partly of stone; for every wheat straw contains enough flint to make a glass bead.”

“Oh, papa,” cried Agnes, “now you must be joking.”

“Indeed I am not. If a wheat straw be held in the flame of a candle, it will first turn to white ashes; and, if these ashes be still exposed to the flame, they will gradually melt into an imperfect sort of glass. When hay-ricks are burnt, there is always left a mass of dark, flinty matter, which closely resembles the dross sometimes thrown out of a glass-house.”

“How very curious!” cried Agnes.

“Did you ever see wheat in flower, my dear,” asked Mr. Bevan.

“Never, sir,” replied Agnes; and then, turning to her father, she said: “I suppose the gentleman wishes to make game of me; for wheat has no flowers,—has it papa?”

“Certainly, it has flowers, for it has perfect seeds; and all plants that have perfect seeds must have flowers. The flowers of the wheat are, however, inconspicuous, as they have no petals.”

While this conversation was passing, the train had kept whirling on, and Mrs. Merton had remarked two or three things that she thought worthy of the notice of her little daughter: she now called her attention to the windings of the river Mole, which has received its strange name from the manner in which it creeps along, and occasionally appears to bury itself under ground, as its waters are absorbed by the spongy and porous soil through which it flows. Agnes was very anxious to hear more of this curious river.

“It is remarkable,” said Mrs. Merton, “that it is not navigable in any part of its long course of forty-two miles; and that occasionally when the weather has been dry a long time, it disappears altogether. At the foot of Box-Hill, near Dorking, with regard to this phenomenon, it is supposed that there are cavities, or hollow places, under ground, which communicate with the bed of the river, and which are filled with water in ordinary seasons, but, in times of drought, become empty, and absorb the water from the river to refill them. When this is the case, the bed of the river becomes dry, and Burford bridge often presents the odd appearance of a bridge over land dry enough to be walked on. The river, however, always rises again about Letherhead, and suffers no further interruption in its course.”

While Mrs. Merton was speaking, the train had continued whirling on, and they had long passed the sluggish Mole, and had caught a glance of the more useful Wey; a river of about the same length as the Mole, but which has the advantage of being navigable for a great part of its course; and Agnes had watched the inhabitants of the little cottages which bordered the line of the railway trimming their gardens, and spreading their seeds out to dry in the sun. She had been amused, in one place, observing the careful manner in which a stack of faggots had been thatched, to keep it from the rain; and, in another, by observing the delight of a number of pigs, which had been turned into a stubble field, from which the corn had just been carried; and which ran about, grunting and capering, in a manner which none but pigs could ever accomplish. The train now passed another stream; and Agnes asked what river it was. “It is not a river,” said Mrs. Merton, “but the Basingstoke canal.”

“How do you know it is a canal, mamma?” asked Agnes.

“Its banks are straight and regular,” said Mrs. Merton, “which shows that they have been formed artificially; and the water is as deep close to the bank as it is in the centre: whereas, in rivers, the banks are generally irregular, and the water is shallower near them. Besides, there can be no doubt about this being a canal, for there, you see, is a lock.”

“Now, mamma,” said Agnes, “you have told me a great many things that I do not understand. I thought a canal had been only to supply the place of a river; and, if that is the case, I do not see why its banks should be different; and I do not know what you mean by a lock.”

“It is true,” said Mrs. Merton, “that a canal is intended to supply the place of a river, in as far as it is useful for carrying boats; but most rivers are only deep enough in the centre for this purpose, and a great deal of ground is lost on both sides: but, when a canal is dug, it is an object to save as much ground as possible; and, therefore, the trench that is dug is equally deep in all its parts, and perfectly level at the bottom. Now, when a country is hilly, the only way in which the canal can be kept level at the bottom is, by having it in two or more parts, of different levels, each one distinct from the other; as, otherwise, all the water from the high part would run into the low part: and these little canals are joined together by means of what are called locks. Each lock is a kind of oblong well, with a pair of strong, water-tight gates at each end; the lock being just the same depth as the difference between the higher and lower parts of the canal. When a boat comes along the higher part of the canal, the gates at that end of the lock are opened, and a sufficient quantity of water flows in, to allow the boat to float in at the same level. As soon as the boat is completely within the lock, the upper gates are closed, and the gates which communicate with the lower level of the canal are opened, when the water flows out, and the boat sinks gradually down to the lower level.”

“See, mamma,” cried Agnes, “there is a boat coming close to a lock; but it is in the lower part of the canal: what will they do now?”

“They will open the lower gates of the lock till the water has descended to the level of that part of the canal which contains the boat, which will then float in; and, I suppose, you can guess what will then take place.”

“Oh yes,” said Agnes, “the lower gates will be closed as soon as the boat is completely within the lock, and the upper ones opened.”

“You are quite right,” said her mother: “and, in this way the boat will be raised to the higher level of the canal.”

“I do declare, they are opening the gate now,” cried Agnes, leaning out of the window of the railway carriage as far as she possibly could. “How I do wish the train would stop a moment, and let me see the boat float in.”

But it was of no use: the train whirled on; and poor Agnes, instead of watching the machinery of the lock, was obliged to sit down, and listen to a lecture from her mamma, on the impropriety of hanging out at the windows of any carriage, and of those belonging to rail-roads more particularly. Some time passed almost in silence, till at last Mr. Bevan asked Agnes if she did not admire the pretty flowers in the corn-fields they were passing.

“Those poppies are very pretty, certainly,” said Agnes; “and I should admire them very much in a garden; but I do not like them in a corn field, because papa says they are a proof of bad farming.”

The old gentleman laughed at this, and asked Agnes if she knew the use of poppies, and that opium was made from them.

“Not from that kind, I believe, sir,” said Agnes. “It is the white poppy, is it not, mamma, that produces the opium?”

“Yes,” returned Mrs. Merton; “and it requires a hotter and drier climate than that of England to produce it in perfection. The best opium,” continued Mrs. Merton, “is obtained from Turkey; and, in that country, there are whole fields covered with poppies; and there are people whose principal business it is to watch when the petals of the flowers are falling, and then to wound the unripe capsule of each flower with a double-bladed lancet, so that the milky juice may exude. This milky juice becomes candied by the heat of the sun; and, being scraped off the following morning, forms what is called opium.”

They now passed through a deep cutting of a grey, partially-shining rock, which Mrs. Merton told Agnes was limestone. A little further the rocks became chalky, with narrow rows of flints embedded in them; which looked as though the high bank had been originally a chalk wall, with a row of broken bottles along the top, on which other chalk walls of a similar description had been built. Farther on, the banks of the cutting were formed of more crumbly materials, and appeared to consist entirely of loose sand and powdered chalk.

“What a variety of soils we are going through!” said Agnes.

“Not so great as you imagine,” returned her mother. “Chalk is but another form of limestone, and flint but another form of sand; and these two earths are almost always found together.”

They had now reached the Basingstoke station; and, while some of the passengers were getting down, Agnes amused herself in counting the number of gleaners in a field from which the corn had just been carried.

“There are eighty-two,” said she, after a short pause.

“Eighty-two what?” asked her mother.

“Gleaners,” said Agnes, directing her mother’s attention to the field, which, indeed, was nearly filled with people. The attention of the other passengers was now turned towards the field; and they all agreed that the corn must have been carried in a very careless manner to have left so many ears behind.

“It is a good thing for the poor people in the neighbourhood,” said Mr. Bevan.

“But,” said Mr. Merton, “it is hard for the farmer, who has been at the expense of ploughing and manuring, harrowing and sowing, and who is now deprived of his just profits by the negligence of his servants.”

The train soon moved on a little, and Agnes’s attention being attracted by the ruins of a church which stood on a little eminence near the road, she eagerly asked what it was.

“Those,” said the old gentleman, “are the ruins of a chapel, dedicated to the Holy Ghost, which is said to have been erected in the reign of Edward IV., and to which a school was formerly attached; but the school was shut up during the Civil Wars, and the building reduced to the state in which you now see it.”

“It is a fine ruin,” said Mrs. Merton.

“Yes,” returned the old gentleman; “and there is some fine carving about it, (if you were near enough to see it,) which was added in the reign of Henry VIII.”

“Was it not at Basingstoke,” asked Mr. Merton, “that Basing-House stood, so celebrated for its defence against Cromwell?”

“That was at Old Basing,” replied Mr. Bevan, “which was formerly a town, and a larger place than this: the word stoke signifying a hamlet. But things are reversed now; for Old Basing has become a hamlet, and Basingstoke a town.”

Agnes was very much interested in this conversation; as she had seen Mr. Charles Landseer’s beautiful painting of the taking of Basing house; and she now found how much a little knowledge of the subject adds to the interest you feel in a picture.

“Is the population of Basingstoke large?” asked Mr. Merton.

“There are about four thousand inhabitants, I think,” said the old gentleman, “rather less than more.” He then added, “I believe we are now only about thirty miles from Southampton.”

“Only thirty!” The distance is nothing on a rail-road,—an affair of about an hour or so; but how different it would be to a feeble mother, carrying a heavy child! How different to an exhausted wanderer, struggling to reach his longed-for home! Then, indeed, a distance of thirty miles would seem an undertaking almost heart-breaking, and scarcely to be accomplished; but time and space are always relative, and, in measuring them, we are apt to judge by our feelings, rather than by the reality.

After leaving Basingstoke, the train proceeded with great rapidity. Andover was the next station; and here numerous carriages were waiting to convey passengers to Salisbury, Exeter, and all the intermediate towns. Winchester next appeared in sight; and soon that ancient city, with its fine cathedral and antique cross, lay below them. Then they reached, and passed, the river Itchen, which winds backwards and forwards, like a broad riband floating in the wind. They were now within a few miles of Southampton; and, as they rapidly advanced, they began to feel the fresh breeze from the water. They still hurried on, and soon the masts of the shipping appeared in sight. The train now stopped, that the passengers might give up their tickets. This was soon done; and the train whirled on again to Southampton. They descended at the terminus; and having their luggage conveyed to the pier, they had it placed on board one of the steam-packets, which, they were told, would sail in about an hour. Having finished this business, Mr. Merton sat down on one of the seats on the pier, while Mrs. Merton and Agnes walked back to take a glance at the town.

The town of Southampton consists principally of one long, broad street, which ascends from the sea up a hill. This street is divided nearly in the middle by a curious old gate, called the bar; and which was, in fact, one of the gates of the ancient town. Towards this monument of antiquity, Mrs. Merton and Agnes bent their steps; and Mrs. Merton explained to her daughter, that bar was the Saxon name of gate.

“Oh, yes,” cried Agnes, “you know we say Temple Bar; and I remember that the gates in York are called bars: but mamma, what are those curious figures in front?”

“They are said to be the figures of a knight, renowned in romance, called Sir Bevis, of Hampton, and of Ascabart, a giant whom he slew.”

“The giant Ascabart is alluded to in the first canto of Scott’s Lady of the Lake; and many legends are told of his conqueror Sir Bevis, who appears to have resided near Southampton, at a place still called Sir Bevis’s Mount.”

“I suppose these figures below are Sir Bevis’s arms,” said Agnes; “if there ever was such a person.”

“I do not wonder that you have not full faith in Sir Bevis,” said Mrs. Merton, smiling; “but for my own part, I believe that all the heroes of romance we hear about in different places are real personages, though their deeds have been so exaggerated as to make us doubt their existence.”

“But the arms, mamma,” repeated Agnes,—“whose do you think they are?”

“Most of them are probably those of the persons who have repaired the gate, at different times; and I think those of Queen Elizabeth are in the centre. The queer-looking animals that sit below, however, most probably belonged to Sir Bevis, as they appear of the same date as his figure.”

They now took a rapid glance at the very handsome shops which lined the High-street on both sides, and returned to the pier, where they found the steam-packet just ready to start.