Corpus Christi Coll., November 7th, 1872.
My Friends,
I shall not call you so any more, after this Christmas; first, because
things have chanced to me, of late, which have made me too sulky to
be friends with anybody; secondly, because in the two years during
which I have been writing these letters, not one of you has sent me a
friendly word of answer; lastly, because, even if you were my friends,
it would be waste print to call you so, once a month. Nor shall I sign
myself "faithfully yours" any more; being very far from faithfully
my own, and having found most other people anything but faithfully
mine. Nor shall I sign my name, for I never like the look of it; being,
I apprehend, only short for "Rough Skin," in the sense of "Pig-skin";
(and indeed, the planet under which I was born, Saturn, has supreme
power over pigs,)--nor can I find historical mention of any other
form of the name, except one I made no reference to when it occurred,
as that of the leading devil of four,--Red-skin, Blue-skin--and I
forget the skins of the other two--who performed in a religious play,
of the fourteenth century, which was nearly as comic as the religious
earnest of our own century. So that the letters will begin henceforward
without address; and close without signature. You will probably know
whom they come from, and I don't in the least care whom they go to.
I was in London, all day yesterday, where the weather was as dismal
as is its wont; and, returning here by the evening train, saw, with
astonishment, the stars extricate themselves from the fog, and the moon
glow for a little while in her setting, over the southern Berkshire
hills, as I breathed on the platform at the Reading station;--(for
there were six people in the carriage, and they had shut both the
windows).
When I got to Oxford, the sky was entirely clear; the Great Bear was
near the ground under the pole, and the Charioteer high over-head,
the principal star of him as bright as a gas-lamp.
It is a curious default in the stars, to my mind, that there is
a Charioteer among them without a chariot; and a Waggon with no
waggoner; nor any waggon, for that matter, except the Bear's stomach;
but I have always wanted to know the history of the absent Charles,
who must have stopped, I suppose to drink, while his cart went on,
and so never got to be stellified himself. I wish I knew; but I can
tell you less about him than even about Theseus. The Charioteer's
story is pretty, however:--he gave his life for a kiss, and did not
get it; got made into stars instead. It would be a dainty tale to
tell you under the mistletoe: perhaps I may have time next year:
to-day it is of the stars of Ariadne's crown I want to speak.
But that giving one's life for a kiss, and not getting it, is indeed
a general abstract of the Greek notion of heroism, and its reward;
and, by the way, does it not seem to you a grave defect in the
stars, at Christmas time, that all their stories are Greek--not one
Christian? In all the east, and all the west, there is not a space of
heaven with a Christian story in it; the star of the Wise men having
risen but once, and set, it seems, for ever; and the stars of Foolish
men--innumerable, but unintelligible, forming, I suppose, all across
the sky that broad way of Asses' milk; while a few Greek heroes and
hunters, a monster or two, and some crustaceous animals, occupy,
here in the north, our heaven's compass, down to the very margin of
the illuminated book. A sky quite good enough for us, nevertheless,
for all the use we make of it, either by night or day--or any hope
we have of getting into it--or any inclination we have, while still
out of it, to "take stars for money."
Yet, with all deference to George Herbert, I will take them for
nothing of the sort. Money is an entirely pleasant and proper thing
to have, itself; and the first shilling I ever got in my life, I
put in a pill-box, and put it under my pillow, and couldn't sleep
all night for satisfaction. I couldn't have done that with a star;
though truly the pretty system of usury makes the stars drop down
something else than dew. I got a note from an arithmetical friend the
other day, speaking of the death of "an old lady, a cousin of mine,
who left--left, because she could not take it with her--200,000l. On
calculation, I found this old lady, who has been lying bedridden for
a year, was accumulating money (i.e. the results of other people's
labour,) at the rate of 4d. a minute; in other words, she awoke in the
morning ten pounds richer than she went to bed." At which, doubtless,
and the like miracles throughout the world, "the stars with deep amaze,
stand fixed with steadfast gaze;" for this is, indeed, a Nativity of
an adverse god to the one you profess to honour, with them, and the
angels, at Christmas, by over-eating yourselves.
I suppose that is the quite essential part of the religion of
Christmas; and, indeed, it is about the most religious thing you do
in the year; and if pious people would understand, generally, that,
if there be indeed any other God than Mammon, He likes to see people
comfortable, and nicely dressed, as much as Mammon likes to see them
fasting and in rags, they might set a wiser example to everybody
than they do. I am frightened out of my wits, every now and then,
here at Oxford, by seeing something come out of poor people's houses,
all dressed in black down to the ground; which, (having been much
thinking of wicked things lately,) I at first take for the Devil, and
then find, to my extreme relief and gratification, that it's a Sister
of Charity. Indeed, the only serious disadvantage of eating, and fine
dressing, considered as religious ceremonies, whether at Christmas,
or on Sunday, in the Sunday dinner and Sunday gown,--is that you don't
always clearly understand what the eating and dressing signify. For
example: why should Sunday be kept otherwise than Christmas, and be
less merry? Because it is a day of rest, commemorating the fulfilment
of God's easy work, while Christmas is a day of toil, commemorating
the beginning of His difficult work? Is that the reason? Or because
Christmas commemorates His stooping to thirty years of sorrow, and
Sunday His rising to countless years of joy? Which should be the
gladdest day of the two, think you, on either ground? Why haven't
you Sunday pantomimes?
It is a strait and sore question with me, for when I was a child, I
lost the pleasure of some three-sevenths of my life because of Sunday;
for I always had a way of looking forward to things, and a lurid shade
was cast over the whole of Friday and Saturday by the horrible sense
that Sunday was coming, and inevitable. Not that I was rebellious
against my good mother or aunts in any wise; feeling only that we
were all crushed under a relentless fate; which was indeed the fact,
for neither they nor I had the least idea what Holiness meant, beyond
what I find stated very clearly by Mr. David--the pious author of "The
Paradezeal system of Botany, an arrangement representing the whole
globe as a vast blooming and fruitful Paradise,"--that "Holiness is
a knowledge of the Ho's."
My mother, indeed, never went so far as my aunt; nor carried
her religion down to the ninth or glacial circle of Holiness,
by giving me cold dinner; and to this day, I am apt to over-eat
myself with Yorkshire pudding, in remembrance of the consolation
it used to afford me at one o'clock. Good Friday, also, was partly
"intermedled," as Chaucer would call it, with light and shade, because
there were hot-cross-buns at breakfast, though we had to go to church
afterwards. And, indeed, I observe, happening to have under my hand the
account in the 'Daily Telegraph' of Good Friday at the Crystal Palace,
in 1870, that its observance is for your sakes also now "intermedled"
similarly, with light and shade, by conscientious persons: for in that
year, "whereas in former years the performances had been exclusively of
a religious character, the directors had supplemented their programme
with secular amusements." It was, I suppose, considered "secular" that
the fountains should play (though I have noticed that natural ones
persist in that profane practice on Sunday also), and accordingly,
"there was a very abundant water-supply, while a brilliant sun gave
many lovely prismatic effects to the fleeting and changeful spray"
(not careful, even the sun, for his part, to remember how once he
became "black as sackcloth of hair"). "A striking feature presented
itself to view in the shape of the large and handsome pavilion of Howe
and Cushing's American circus. This vast pavilion occupies the whole
centre of the grand terrace, and was gaily decorated with bunting
and fringed with the show-carriages of the circus, which were bright
with gilding, mirrors, portraits, and scarlet panels. The out-door
amusements began"--(the English public always retaining a distinct
impression that this festival was instituted in the East)--"with an
Oriental procession"--(by the way, why don't we always call Wapping
the Oriental end of London?)--"of fifteen camels from the circus,
mounted by negroes wearing richly coloured and bespangled Eastern
costume. The performances then commenced, and continued throughout
the day, the attractions comprising the trained wolves, the wonderful
monkeys, and the usual scenes in the circle."
"There was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour." I often
wonder, myself, how long it will be, in the crucifixion afresh, which
all the earth has now resolved upon, crying with more unanimous shout
than ever the Jews, "Not this man, but Barabbas"--before the Ninth
Hour comes.
Assuming, however, that, for the nonce, trained wolves and wonderful
monkeys are proper entertainments on Good Friday, pantomimes on
Boxing-day, and sermons on Sunday, have you ever considered what
observance might be due to Saturday,--the day on which He "preached
to the spirits in prison"? for that seems to me quite the part of
the three days' work which most of us might first hope for a share
in. I don't know whether any of you perceive that your spirits are in
prison. I know mine is, and that I would fain have it preached to, and
delivered, if it be possible. For, however far and steep the slope may
have been into the hell which you say every Sunday that you believe
He descended into, there are places trenched deep enough now in all
our hearts for the hot lake of Phlegethon to leak and ooze into:
and the rock of their shore is no less hard than in Dante's time.
And as your winter rejoicings, if they mean anything at all, mean that
you have now, at least, a chance of deliverance from that prison, I
will ask you to take the pains to understand what the bars and doors
of it are, as the wisest man who has yet spoken of them tells you.
There is first, observe, this great distinction in his mind between the
penalties of the Hell, and the joy of Paradise. The penalty is assigned
to definite act of hand; the joy, to definite state of mind. It is
questioned of no one, either in the Purgatory or the Paradise, what
he has done; but only what evil feeling is still in his heart, or
what good, when purified wholly, his nature is noble enough to receive.
On the contrary, Hell is constituted such by the one great negative
state of being without Love or Fear of God;--there are no degrees
of that State; but there are more or less dreadful sins which can
be done in it, according to the degradation of the unredeemed Human
nature. And men are judged according to their works.
To give a single instance. The punishment of the fourth circle in
Hell is for the Misuse of Money, for having either sinfully kept it,
or sinfully spent it. But the pain in Purgatory is only for having
sinfully Loved it: and the hymn of repentance is, "My soul cleaveth
unto the dust; quicken thou me."
Farther, and this is very notable. You might at first think that
Dante's divisions were narrow and artificial, in assigning each circle
to one sin only, as if every man did not variously commit many. But
it is always one sin, the favourite, which destroys souls. That
conquered, all others fall with it; that victorious, all others
follow with it. Nevertheless, as I told you, the joiner's work, and
interwoven walls of Dante's Inferno, marking double forms of sin,
and their overlapping, as it were, when they meet, is one of the
subtlest conditions traceable in his whole design.
Look back to the scheme I gave you in last number. The Minotaur,
spirit of lust and anger, rules over the central hell. But the sins
of lust and anger, definitely and limitedly described as such, are
punished in the upper hell, in the second and fifth circles. Why is
this, think you?
Have you ever noticed--enough to call it noticing seriously--the
expression, "fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the
mind"? There is one lust and one anger of the flesh only; these,
all men must feel; rightly feel, if in temperance; wrongly, if in
excess; but even then, not necessarily to the destruction of their
souls. But there is another lust, and another anger, of the heart;
and these are the Furies of Phlegethon--wholly ruinous. Lord of these,
on the shattered rocks, lies couched the Infamy of Crete. For when
the heart, as well as the flesh, desires what it should not, and
the heart, as well as the flesh, consents and kindles to its wrath,
the whole man is corrupted, and his heart's blood is fed in its veins
from the lake of fire.
Take for special example, this sin of usury with which we have
ourselves to deal. The punishment in the fourth circle of the
upper hell is on Avarice, not Usury. For a man may be utterly
avaricious,--greedy of gold--in an instinctive, fleshly way, yet not
corrupt his intellect. Many of the most good-natured men are misers:
my first shilling in the pill-box and sleepless night did not at all
mean that I was an ill-natured or illiberal boy; it did mean, what
is true of me still, that I should have great delight in counting
money, and laying it in visible heaps and rouleaux. I never part
with a new sovereign without a sigh: and if it were not that I am
afraid of thieves, I would positively and seriously, at this moment,
turn all I have into gold of the newest, and dig a hole for it in my
garden, and go and look at it every morning and evening, like the
man in Æsop's Fables, or Silas Marner: and where I think thieves
will not break through nor steal, I am always laying up for myself
treasures upon earth, with the most eager appetite: that bit of gold
and diamonds, for instance (IV. 8.), and the most gilded mass-books,
and such like, I can get hold of; the acquisition of a Koran, with
two hundred leaves richly gilt on both sides, only three weeks since,
afforded me real consolation under variously trying circumstances.
Truly, my soul cleaves to the dust of such things. But I have not so
perverted my soul, nor palsied my brains, as to expect to be advantaged
by that adhesion. I don't expect, because I have gathered much,
to find Nature or man gathering for me more:--to find eighteenpence
in my pill-box in the morning, instead of a shilling, as a "reward
for continence;" or to make an income of my Koran by lending it to
poor scholars. If I think a scholar can read it,--(N.B., I can't,
myself,)--and would like to--and will carefully turn the leaves by the
outside edge, he is welcome to read it for nothing: if he has got into
the habit of turning leaves by the middle, or of wetting his finger,
and shuffling up the corners, as I see my banker's clerks do with
their ledgers, for no amount of money shall he read it. (Incidentally,
note the essential vulgarism of doing anything in a hurry.)
So that my mind and brains are in fact untainted and unwarped by lust
of money, and I am free in that respect from the power of the Infamy
of Crete.
I used the words just above--Furies of Phlegethon. You are beginning
to know something of the Fates: of the Furies also you must know
something.
The pit of Dante's central hell is reserved for those who have actually
committed malicious crime, involving mercilessness to their neighbour,
or, in suicide, to themselves. But it is necessary to serpent-tail
this pit with the upper hell by a district for insanity without deed;
the Fury which has brought horror to the eyes, and hardness to the
heart, and yet, having possessed itself of noble persons, issues in no
malicious crime. Therefore the sixth circle of the upper hell is walled
in, together with the central pit, as one grievous city of the dead;
and at the gates of it the warders are fiends, and the watchers Furies.
Watchers, observe, as sleepless. Once in their companionship,
Nor poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owed'st yesterday.
Sleepless and merciless; and yet in the Greek vision of them which
Æschylus wrote, they are first seen asleep; and they remain in the
city of Theseus, in mercy.
Elsewhere, furies that make the eyes evil and the heart hard. Seeing
Dante from their watch-tower, they call for Medusa. "So will we make
flint of him" ("enamel," rather--which has been in the furnace first,
then hardened); but Virgil puts his hands over his eyes.
Thus the upper hell is knitted to the central. The central is half
joined to the lower by the power of Fraud: only in the central hell,
though in a deeper pit of it, (Phlegethon falls into the abyss in a
Niagara of blood) Fraud is still joined with human passion, but in
the nether hell is passionate no more; the traitors have not natures
of flesh or of fire, but of earth; and the earth-giants, the first
enemies of Athena, the Greek spirit of Life, stand about the pit,
speechless, as towers of war. In a bright morning, this last midsummer,
at Bologna, I was standing in the shade of the tower of Garisenda,
which Dante says they were like. The sun had got just behind its
battlements, and sent out rays round them as from behind a mountain
peak, vast and grey against the morning sky. I may be able to get
some picture of it, for the January 'Fors,' perhaps; and perchance
the sun may some day rise for us from behind our Towers of Treachery.
Note but this farther, and then we will try to get out of Hell for
to-day. The divisions of the central fire are under three creatures,
all of them partly man, partly animal. The Minotaur has a man's body,
a bull's head, (which is precisely the general type of the English
nation to-day). The Centaur Chiron has a horse's body; a man's head
and breast. The Spirit of Fraud, Geryon, has a serpent's body, his
face is that of a just man, and his breast chequered like a lizard's,
with labyrinthine lines.
All these three creatures signify the mingling of a brutal instinct
with the human mind; but, in the Minotaur, the brute rules, the
humanity is subordinate; in the Centaur, the man rules, and the brute
is subordinate; in the third, the man and the animal are in harmony;
and both false.
Of the Centaurs, Chiron and Nessus, one, the type of human gentleness,
justice, and wisdom, stooping to join itself with the nature of
animals, and to be healed by the herbs of the ground,--the other, the
destruction of Hercules,--you shall be told in the 'Fors' of January:
to-day I must swiftly sum the story of Theseus.
His conquest of the Minotaur, the chief glory of his life, is possible
only to him through love, and love's hope and help. But he has no joy
either of love or victory. Before he has once held Ariadne in his arms,
Diana kills her in the isle of Naxos. Jupiter crowns her in heaven,
where there is no following her. Theseus returns to Athens alone.
The ship which hitherto had carried the Minotaur's victim's only,
bore always a black sail. Theseus had received from his father a
purple one, to hoist instead, if he returned victorious.
The common and senseless story is that he forgot to hoist it. Forgot! A
sail is so inconspicuous a part of a ship! and one is so likely to
forget one's victory, returning, with home seen on the horizon! But
he returned not victorious, at least for himself;--Diana and Death
had been too strong for him. He bore the black sail. And his father,
when he saw it, threw himself from the rock of Athens, and died.
Of which the meaning is, that we must not mourn for ourselves, lest
a worse thing happen to us,--a Greek lesson much to be remembered by
Christians about to send expensive orders to the undertaker: unless,
indeed, they mean by their black vestments to tell the world that
they think their friends are in hell. If in Heaven, with Ariadne and
the gods, are we to mourn? And if they were fit for Heaven, are we,
for ourselves, ever to leave off mourning? Yet Theseus, touching the
beach, is too just and wise to mourn there. He sends a herald to the
city to tell his father he is safe; stays on the shore to sacrifice
to the gods, and feast his sailors. He sacrifices; and makes pottage
for them there on the sand. The herald returns to tell him his father
is dead also. Such welcome has he for his good work, in the islands,
and on the main.
In which work he persists, no less, and is redeemed from darkness by
Hercules, and at last helps Hercules himself in his sorest need--as you
shall hear afterwards. I must stop to-day at the vegetable soup,--which
you would think, I suppose, poor Christmas cheer. Plum-pudding is
an Egyptian dish; but have you ever thought how many stories were
connected with this Athenian one, pottage of lentils? A bargain of
some importance, even to us, (especially as usurers); and the healing
miracle of Elisha; and the vision of Habakkuk as he was bearing their
pottage to the reapers, and had to take it far away to one who needed
it more; and, chiefly of all, the soup of the bitter herbs, with its
dipped bread and faithful company,--"he it is to whom I shall give the
sop when I have dipped it." The meaning of which things, roughly, is,
first, that we are not to sell our birth-rights for pottage, though
we fast to death; but are diligently to know and keep them: secondly,
that we are to poison no man's pottage, mental or real: lastly, that
we look to it lest we betray the hand which gives us our daily bread.
Lessons to be pondered on at Christmas time over our pudding; and
the more, because the sops we are dipping for each other, and even
for our own children, are not always the most nourishing, nor are
the rooms in which we make ready their last supper always carefully
furnished. Take, for instance, this example of last supper--(no,
I see it is breakfast)--in Chicksand Street, Mile End:--
On Wednesday an inquest was held on the body of Annie Redfern,
aged twenty-eight, who was found dead in a cellar at 5, Chicksand
Street, Mile End, on the morning of last Sunday. This unfortunate
woman was a fruit-seller, and rented the cellar in which she
died at 1s. 9d. per week--her only companion being a little boy,
aged three years, of whom she was the mother. It appeared from
the evidence of the surgeon who was summoned to see the deceased
when her body was discovered on Sunday morning that she had been
dead some hours before his arrival. Her knees were drawn up and
her arms folded in such a position as to show that she died with
her child clasped in her arms. The room was very dark, without any
ventilation, and was totally unfit for human habitation. The cause
of death was effusion of serum into the pericardium, brought on
greatly by living in such a wretched dwelling. The coroner said
that as there were so many of these wretched dwellings about, he
hoped the jurymen who were connected with the vestry would take
care to represent the case to the proper authorities, and see that
the place was not let as a dwelling again. This remark from the
coroner incited a juryman to reply, "Oh, if we were to do that we
might empty half the houses in London; there are thousands more
like that, and worse." Some of the jurors objected to the room
being condemned; the majority, however, refused to sign the papers
unless this was done, and a verdict was returned in accordance
with the evidence. It transpired that the body had to be removed
to save it from the rats. If the little child who lay clasped in
his dead mother's arms has not been devoured by these animals,
he is probably now in the workhouse, and will remain a burden on
the ratepayers, who unfortunately have no means of making the
landlord of the foul den that destroyed his mother answerable
for his support.
I miss, out of the column of the 'Pall Mall' for the 1st of this
month, one paragraph after this, and proceed to the next but one,
which relates to the enlightened notion among English young women,
derived from Mr. J. Stuart Mill,--that the "career" of the Madonna is
too limited a one, and that modern political economy can provide them,
as the 'Pall Mall' observes, with "much more lucrative occupations
than that of nursing the baby." But you must know, first, that the
Athenians always kept memory of Theseus' pot of vegetable soup, and
of his sacrifice, by procession in spring-time, bearing a rod wreathed
with lambs'-wool, and singing an Easter carol, in these words:--
"Fair staff, may the gods grant, by thee, the bringing of figs to us,
and buttery cakes, and honey in bulging cups, and the sopping of oil,
and wine in flat cups, easy to lift, that thou mayest" (meaning that
we may, but not clear which is which,) "get drunk and sleep."
Which Mr. Stuart Mill and modern political economy have changed into
a pretty Christmas carol for English children, lambs for whom the
fair staff also brings wine of a certain sort, in flat cups, "that
they may get drunk, and sleep." Here is the next paragraph from the
'Pall Mall':--
One of the most fertile causes of excessive infant mortality is
the extensive practice in manufacturing districts of insidiously
narcotising young children that they may be the more conveniently
laid aside when more lucrative occupations present themselves than
that of nursing the baby. Hundreds of gallons of opium in various
forms are sold weekly in many districts for this purpose. Nor
is it likely that the practice will be checked until juries can
be induced to take a rather severe view of the suddenly fatal
misadventures which this sort of chronic poisoning not unfrequently
produces. It appears, however, to be very difficult to persuade
them to look upon it as other than a venial offence. An inquest
was recently held at Chapel Gate upon the body of an infant who had
died from the administration, by its mother, of about twelve times
the proper dose of laudanum. The bottle was labelled carefully
with a caution that "opium should not be given to children under
seven years of age." In this case five drops of laudanum were given
to a baby of eighteen months. The medical evidence was of a quite
unmistakable character, and the coroner in summing up read to the
jury a definition of manslaughter, and told them that "a lawful
act, if dangerous, not attended with such care as would render
the probability of danger very small, and resulting in death,
would amount to manslaughter at the least. Then in this case they
must return a verdict of manslaughter unless they could find any
circumstance which would take it out of the rule of law he had
laid down to them. It was not in evidence that the mother had used
any caution at all in administering the poison." Nevertheless,
the jury returned, after a short interval, the verdict of homicide
by misadventure.
"Hush-a-bye, baby, upon the tree top," my mother used to sing to me:
and I remember the dawn of intelligence in which I began to object
to the bad rhyme which followed:--"when the wind blows, the cradle
will rock." But the Christmas winds must blow rudely, and warp the
waters askance indeed, which rock our English cradles now.
Mendelssohn's songs without words have been, I believe, lately
popular in musical circles. We shall, perhaps, require cradle songs
with very few words, and Christmas carols with very sad ones, before
long; in fact, it seems to me, we are fast losing our old skill in
carolling. There is a different tone in Chaucer's notion of it (though
this carol of his is in spring-time indeed, not at Christmas):--
Then went I forth on my right hand,
Down by a little path I found,
Of Mintës full, and Fennel greene.
Sir Mirth I found, and right anon
Unto Sir Mirth gan I gone,
There, where he was, him to solace:
And with him, in that happy place,
So fair folke and so fresh, had he,
That when I saw, I wondered me
From whence such folke might come,
So fair were they, all and some;
For they were like, as in my sight
To angels, that be feathered bright.
These folke, of which I tell you so,
Upon a karole wenten tho, [35]
A Ladie karoled them, that hight [36]
Gladnesse, blissful and light.
She could make in song such refraining
It sate her wonder well to sing,
Her voice full clear was, and full sweet,
She was not rude, nor unmeet,
But couth [37] enough for such doing,
As longeth unto karolling;
For she was wont, in every place,
To singen first, men to solace.
For singing most she gave her to,
No craft had she so lefe [38] to do.
Mr. Stuart Mill would have set her to another craft, I fancy (not but
that singing is a lucrative one, now-a-day, if it be shrill enough);
but you will not get your wives to sing thus for nothing, if you send
them out to earn their dinners (instead of earning them yourselves
for them), and put their babies summarily to sleep.
It is curious how our English feeling seems to be changed also towards
two other innocent kind of creatures. In nearly all German pictures
of the Nativity, (I have given you an Italian one of the Magi for a
frontispiece, this time,) the dove is one way or other conspicuous,
and the little angels round the cradle are nearly always, when they
are tired, allowed by the Madonna to play with rabbits. And in the
very garden in which Ladie Gladness leads her karol-dance, "connis,"
as well as squirrels, are among the happy company; frogs only, as
you shall hear, not being allowed; the French says, no flies either,
of the watery sort! For the path among the mint and fennel greene
leads us into this garden:--
The garden was by measuring,
Right even and square in compasing:
It was long as it was large,
Of fruit had every tree his charge,
And many homely trees there were, [39]
That peaches, coines, [40] and apples bare.
Medlers, plommes, peeres, chesteinis,
Cherise, of which many one faine [41] is,
With many a high laurel and pine
Was ranged clean all that gardene.
There might men Does and Roes see,
And of Squirrels ful great plentee
From bough to bough alway leping;
Connis there were also playing
And maden many a tourneying
Upon the fresh grass springing.
In places saw I wells there
In which no frogges were.
There sprang the violet all new
And fresh pervinke, rich of hue,
And flowers yellow, white and rede,
Such plenty grew there never in mede,
Full gay was all the ground, and quaint,
And poudred, as men had it peint
With many a fresh and sundry flour
That castes up full good savour.
So far for an old English garden, or "pleasance," and the pleasures
of it. Now take a bit of description written this year of a modern
English garden or pleasance, and the pleasures of it, and newly
invented odours:--
In a short time the sportsmen issued from the (new?) hall,
and, accompanied by sixty or seventy attendants, bent their
steps towards that part of the park in which the old hall is
situate. Here were the rabbit covers--large patches of rank fern,
three or four feet in height, and extending over many acres. The
doomed rabbits, assiduously driven from the burrows during the
preceding week by the keepers, forced from their lodgings beneath
the tree-roots by the suffocating fumes of sulphur, and deterred
from returning thither by the application of gas-tar to the "runs,"
had been forced to seek shelter in the fern patch; and here they
literally swarmed. At the edge of the ferns a halt was called, and
the head gamekeeper proceeded to arrange his assistants in the most
approved "beating" fashion. The shooting party, nine in number,
including the prince, distributed themselves in advance of the
line of beaters, and the word "Forward!" was given. Simultaneously
the line of beaters moved into the cover, vigorously thrashing the
long ferns with their stout sticks, and giving vent to a variety
of uncouth ejaculations, which it was supposed were calculated
to terrify the hidden rabbits. Hardly had the beaters proceeded
half-a-dozen yards when the cover in front of them became violently
agitated, and rabbits were seen running in all directions. The
quantity of game thus started was little short of marvellous--the
very ground seemed to be alive. Simultaneously with the appearance
of the terrified animals the slaughter commenced. Each sportsman
carried a double-barrelled breechloader, and an attendant followed
him closely, bearing an additional gun, ready loaded. The shooter
discharged both barrels of his gun, in some cases with only the
interval of a second or two, and immediately exchanged it for a
loaded one. Rabbits fell in all directions. The warning cry of
"Rabbit!" from the relentless keepers was heard continuously, and
each cry was as quickly followed by the sharp crack of a gun--a
pretty sure indication that the rabbit referred to had come to
an untimely end, as the majority of the sportsmen were crack shots.
Of course all this is quite natural to a sporting people who have
learned to like the smell of gunpowder, sulphur, and gas-tar, better
than that of violets and thyme. But, putting the baby-poisoning,
pigeon-shooting, and rabbit-shooting of to-day in comparison with
the pleasures of the German Madonna, and her simple company; and
of Chaucer and his carolling company: and seeing that the present
effect of peace upon earth, and well-pleasing in men, is that every
nation now spends most of its income in machinery for shooting the
best and bravest men, just when they were likely to have become of
some use to their fathers and mothers, I put it to you, my friends
all, calling you so, I suppose, for the last time, (unless you are
disposed for friendship with Herod instead of Barabbas,) whether
it would not be more kind and less expensive, to make the machinery
a little smaller; and adapt it to spare opium now, and expenses of
maintenance and education afterwards, (besides no end of diplomacy)
by taking our sport in shooting babies instead of rabbits?
Believe me, Faithfully yours,