no worse than any we have discussed yet. Never mind! It was a dreary,
cant-ridden one, and if you don’t think those England’s palmy days,
neither do I. There’s the previous reign then. During the first part of
it, there was the king endeavouring to assert arbitrary power. During
the latter, the Parliament were fighting against him in the open field.
What ultimately became of him I need not say. At what stage of King
Charles the First’s career did the good old times exist, Mr. Alderman? I
need barely mention the Star Chamber and poor Prynne; and I merely
allude to the fate of Strafford and of Laud. On consideration, should
you fix the good old times anywhere thereabouts?’
‘I am afraid not, indeed, Sir,’ Mr. Blenkinsop responded, tapping his
forehead.
‘What is your opinion of James the First’s reign? Are you enamoured of
the good old times of the Gunpowder Plot? or when Sir Walter Raleigh was
beheaded? or when hundreds of poor miserable old women were burnt alive
for witchcraft, and the royal wiseacre on the throne wrote as wise a
book, in defence of the execrable superstition through which they
suffered?’
Mr. Blenkinsop confessed himself obliged to give up the times of James
the First.
‘Now, then,’ continued the Statue, ‘we come to Elizabeth.’
‘There I’ve got you!’ interrupted Mr. Blenkinsop, exultingly. ‘I beg
your pardon, Sir,’ he added, with a sense of the freedom he had taken;
‘but everybody talks of the times of Good Queen Bess, you know!’
‘Ha, ha!’ laughed the Statue, not at all like Zamiel, or Don Guzman, or
a paviour’s rammer, but really with unaffected gaiety. ‘Everybody
sometimes says very foolish things. Suppose Everybody’s lot had been
cast under Elizabeth! How would Everybody have relished being subject to
the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Commission, with its power of
imprisonment, rack, and torture? How would Everybody have liked to see
his Roman Catholic and Dissenting fellow-subjects, butchered, fined, and
imprisoned for their opinions; and charitable ladies butchered, too, for
giving them shelter in the sweet compassion of their hearts? What would
Everybody have thought of the murder of Mary Queen of Scots? Would
Everybody, would Anybody, would _you_, wish to have lived in these days,
whose emblems are cropped ears, pillory, stocks, thumb-screws, gibbet,
axe, chopping-block, and Scavenger’s daughter? Will you take your stand
upon this stage of History for the good old times, Mr. Blenkinsop?’
‘I should rather prefer firmer and safer ground, to be sure, upon the
whole,’ answered the worshipper of antiquity, dubiously.
‘Well, now,’ said the Statue, ‘’tis getting late, and, unaccustomed as I
am to conversational speaking, I must be brief. Were those the good old
times when Sanguinary Mary roasted bishops, and lighted the fires of
Smithfield? When Henry the Eighth, the British Bluebeard, cut his wives’
heads off, and burnt Catholic and Protestant at the same stake? When
Richard the Third smothered his nephews in the Tower? When the Wars of
the Roses deluged the land with blood? When Jack Cade marched upon
London? When we were disgracefully driven out of France under Henry the
Sixth, or, as disgracefully, went marauding there, under Henry the
Fifth? Were the good old times those of Northumberland’s rebellion? Of
Richard the Second’s assassination? Of the battles, burnings, massacres,
cruel tormentings, and atrocities, which form the sum of the Plantagenet
reigns? Of John’s declaring himself the Pope’s vassal, and performing
dental operations on the Jews? Of the Forest Laws and Curfew under the
Norman kings? At what point of this series of bloody and cruel annals
will you place the times which you praise? Or do your good old times
extend over all that period when somebody or other was constantly
committing high treason, and there was a perpetual exhibition of heads
on London Bridge and Temple Bar?’
It was allowed by Mr. Blenkinsop that either alternative presented
considerable difficulty.
‘Was it in the good old times that Harold fell at Hastings, and William
the Conqueror enslaved England? Were those blissful years the ages of
monkery; of Odo and Dunstan, bearding monarchs and branding queens? Of
Danish ravage and slaughter? Or were they those of the Saxon Heptarchy,
and the worship of Thor and Odin? Of the advent of Hengist and Horsa? Of
British subjugation by the Romans? Or, lastly, must we go back to the
Ancient Britons, Druidism, and human sacrifices; and say that those were
the real, unadulterated, genuine, good old times when the true-blue
natives of this island went naked, painted with woad?’
‘Upon my word, Sir,’ said Mr. Blenkinsop, ‘after the observations that I
have heard from you this night, I acknowledge that I _do_ feel myself
rather at a loss to assign a precise period to the times in question.’
‘Shall I do it for you?’ asked the Statue.
‘If you please, Sir. I should be very much obliged if you would,’
replied the bewildered Blenkinsop, greatly relieved.
‘The best times, Mr. Blenkinsop,’ said the Statue, ‘are the oldest. They
are the wisest; for the older the world grows the more experience it
acquires. It is older now than ever it was. The oldest and best times
the world has yet seen are the present. These, so far as we have yet
gone, are the genuine good old times, Sir.’
‘Indeed, Sir?’ ejaculated the astonished Alderman.
‘Yes, my good friend. These are the best times that we know of—bad as
the best may be. But in proportion to their defects, they afford room
for amendment. Mind that, Sir, in the future exercise of your municipal
and political wisdom. Don’t continue to stand in the light which is
gradually illuminating human darkness. The Future is the date of that
happy period which your imagination has fixed in the Past. It will
arrive when all shall do what is right; hence none shall suffer what is
wrong. The true good old times are yet to come.’
‘Have you any idea when, Sir?’ Mr. Blenkinsop inquired, modestly.
‘That is a little beyond me,’ the Statue answered. ‘I cannot say how
long it will take to convert the Blenkinsops. I devoutly wish you may
live to see them. And with that, I wish you good night, Mr. Blenkinsop.’
‘Sir,’ returned Mr. Blenkinsop with a profound bow, ‘I have the honour
to wish you the same.’
Mr. Blenkinsop returned home an altered man. This was soon manifest. In
a few days he astonished the Corporation by proposing the appointment of
an Officer of Health to preside over the sanitary affairs of Beetlebury.
It had already transpired that he had consented to the introduction of
lucifer-matches into his domestic establishment, in which, previously,
he had insisted on sticking to the old tinder-box. Next, to the wonder
of all Beetlebury, he was the first to propose a great new school, and
to sign a requisition that a county penitentiary might be established
for the reformation of juvenile offenders. The last account of him is
that he has not only become a subscriber to the mechanics’ institute,
but that he actually presided thereat, lately, on the occasion of a
lecture on Geology.
The remarkable change which has occurred in Mr. Blenkinsop’s views and
principles, he himself refers to his conversation with the Statue, as
above related. That narrative, however, his fellow townsmen receive with
incredulous expressions, accompanied by gestures and grimaces of like
import. They hint, that Mr. Blenkinsop had been thinking for himself a
little, and only wanted a plausible excuse for recanting his errors.
Most of his fellow aldermen believe him mad; not less on account of his
new moral and political sentiments, so very different from their own,
than of his Statue story. When it has been suggested to them that he has
only had his spectacles cleaned, and has been looking about him, they
shake their heads, and say that he had better have left his spectacles
alone, and that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and a good deal
of dirt quite the contrary. _Their_ spectacles have never been cleaned,
they say, and any one may see they don’t want cleaning.
The truth seems to be, that Mr. Blenkinsop has found an altogether new
pair of spectacles, which enable him to see in the right direction.
Formerly, he could only look backwards; he now looks forwards to the
grand object that all human eyes should have in view—progressive
improvement.
BAPTISMAL RITUALS.
The subject of baptism having recently been pressed prominently upon
public attention, it has been thought that a few curious particulars
relating exclusively to the rite as anciently performed would be
interesting.
In the earliest days of the Christian Church those who were admitted
into it by baptism were necessarily not infants but adolescent or adult
converts. These previously underwent a course of religious instruction,
generally for two years. They were called during their pupilage,
‘catechumens,’[2] a name afterwards transferred to all infants before
baptism. When such candidates were judged worthy to be received within
the pale of the Church, their names were inscribed at the beginning of
Lent, on a list of the competent or ‘illuminated.’ On Easter or
Pentecost eve they were baptised, by three solemn immersions, the first
of the right side, the second of the left, and the third of the face.
They were confirmed at the same time, often, in addition, receiving the
sacrament. Sprinkling was only resorted to in cases of the sick and
bedridden, who were called _clinics_,[3] because they received the rite
in bed. Baptism was at that early period accompanied by certain
symbolical ceremonies long since disused. For example, milk and honey
were given to the new Christian to mark his entrance into the land of
promise, and as a sign of his spiritual infancy in being ‘born again;’
for milk and honey were the food of children when weaned. The three
immersions were made in honour of the three persons of the Trinity; but
the Arians having found in that ceremony an argument favouring the
notion of distinction and plurality of natures in the Deity, Pope
Gregory by a letter addressed to St. Leander of Seville, ordained that
in Spain, the then stronghold of Arianism, only one immersion should be
practised. This prescription was preserved and applied to the Church
universal by the 6th canon of the Council of Toledo in 633. The triple
immersion was, however, persisted in in Ireland to the 12th century.
Infants were thus baptised by their fathers, or indeed by any other
person at hand, either in water or in milk; but the custom was abolished
in 1172 by the Council of Cashel.
Footnote 2:
From the participle of a Greek verb, expressing the act of receiving
rudimentary instruction.
Footnote 3:
From a Greek word signifying a bed, whence we derive the word
_clinical_.
The African churches obliged those who were to be baptised on Easter eve
to bathe on Good Friday, ‘in order,’ says P. Richard, in his _Analyse
des Conciles_, ‘to rid themselves of the impurities contracted during
the observance of Lent before presenting themselves at the sacred font.’
The bishops and priesthood of some of the Western churches, as at Milan,
in Spain, and in Wales, washed the feet of the newly baptised, in
imitation of the humiliation of the Redeemer. This was forbidden in 303
by the 48th canon of the Council of Elvira.
The Baptistery of the early church was one of the _exedræ_, or
out-buildings, and consisted of a porch or ante-room, where adult
converts made their confession of faith, and an inner room, where the
actual baptism took place. Thus it continued till the sixth century,
when baptisteries began to be taken into the church itself. The font was
always of wood or stone. Indeed, we find the provincial council held in
Scotland, in 1225, prescribing those materials as the only ones to be
used. The Church in all ages discouraged private baptism. By the 55th
canon of the same Council, the water which had been used to baptise a
child out of church was to be thrown into the fire, or carried
immediately to the parish baptistery, that it might be employed for no
other purpose; in like manner, the vessel which, had held it was to be
either burnt or consecrated for church use. For many centuries
superstitious virtues were attributed to water which had been used for
baptism. The blind bathed their eyes in it in the hope of obtaining
their sight. It was said to ‘drown the devil,’ and to purify those who
had recourse to it.
Baptism was by the early Church strictly forbidden during Lent. The
Council of Toledo, held in 694, ordered by its 2nd canon, that, from the
commencement of the fast to Good Friday, every baptistery should be
closed, and sealed up with the seal of the bishop. The Council held at
Reading, Berkshire, in 1279, prescribed that infants born the week
previous to each Easter and Pentecost, should be baptised only at those
festivals. There is no restriction of this kind preserved by the
Reformed Church; but we are admonished in the rubric that the most
acceptable place and time for the ceremony is in church, no later than
the first or second Sunday after birth. Sundays or holidays are
suggested, because ‘the most number of people come together,’ to be
edified thereby, and be witnesses of the admission of the child into the
Church. Private baptism is objected to, except when need shall compel.
The practice of administering the Eucharist to the adult converts to
Christianity after baptism, was in many churches improperly, during the
fourth century, extended to infants. The priest dipped his fore-finger
into the wine, and put it to the lips of the child to suck. This abuse
of the Holy Sacrament did not survive the twelfth century. It was
repeatedly forbidden by various Councils of the Church, and at length
fell into desuetude.
Christening fees originated at a very early date. At first, bishops and
those who had aided in the ceremony of baptism were entertained at a
feast. This was afterwards commuted to an actual payment of money. Both
were afterwards forbidden. The 48th canon of the Council of Elvira, held
in 303, prohibits the leaving of money in the fonts, ‘that the ministers
of the Church may not appear to sell that which it is their duty to give
gratuitously.’ This rule was, however, as little observed in the Middle
Ages as it has been since. Strype says, that in 1560 it was enjoined by
the heads of the Church that, ‘to avoid contention, let the curate have
the value of the “Chrisome,” not under 4_d._, and above as they can
agree, and as the state of the parents may require.’ The Chrisome was
the white cloth placed by the minister upon the head of a child, which
had been newly anointed with chrism, or hallowed ointment composed of
oil and balm, always used after baptism. The gift of this cloth was
usually made by the mother at the time of Churching. To show how
enduring such customs are, even after the occasion for them has passed
away, we need only quote a passage from Morant’s ‘Essex.’ ‘In Denton
Church there has been a custom, time out of mind, at the churching of a
woman, for her to give a white cambric handkerchief to the minister as
an offering.’ The same custom is kept up in Kent, as may be seen in
Lewis’s History of the Isle of Thanet.
The number of sponsors for each child was prescribed by the 4th Canon of
the Council of York, in 1196, to be _no more_ than three persons;—two
males and one female for a boy, and two females and one male for a
girl;—a rule which is still preserved. A custom sprung up afterwards,
which reversed the old state of things. By little and little, large
presents were looked for from sponsors, not only to the child but to its
mother; the result was that there grew to be a great difficulty in
procuring persons to undertake so expensive an office. Indeed, it
sometimes happened that fraudulent parents had a child baptised thrice,
for the sake of the godfather’s gifts. To remedy these evils, a Council
held at l’Isle, in Provence, in 1288, ordered that thenceforth nothing
was to be given to the baptised but a white robe. This prescription
appears to have been kept for ages; Stow, in his Chronicle of King
James’s Reign, says, ‘At this time, and for many ages, it was not the
use and custom (as now it is) for godfathers and godmothers to give
plate at the baptism of children, but only to give _christening shirts_,
with little bands and cuffs, wrought either with silk or blue thread,
the best of them edged with a small lace of silk and gold.’ Cups and
spoons have, however, stood their ground as favourite presents to babies
on such occasions, ever since. ‘Apostle spoons’—so called because a
figure of one of the apostles was chased on the handle of each—were
anciently given: opulent sponsors presenting the whole twelve. Those in
middling circumstances gave four, and the poorer sort contented
themselves with the gift of one, exhibiting the figure of any saint, in
honour of whom the child received its name. Thus, in the books of the
Stationers’ Company, we find under 1560, ‘a spoone the gift of Master
Reginald Woolf, all gilte, with the picture of St. John.’
Shakspeare, in his Henry VIII., makes the king say, when Cranmer
professes himself unworthy to be sponsor to the young princess:—
‘Come, come, my lord, you’d spare your spoons.’
Again, in Davenant’s Comedy of ‘The Wits,’ (1639):
‘My pendants, cascanets, and rings;
My christ’ning caudle-cup and spoons,
Are dissolved into that lump.’
The coral and bells is an old invention for baptismal presents. Coral
was anciently considered an amulet against fascination and evil spirits.
It is to be regretted that, at the present time, the grave
responsibilities of the sponsors of children is too often considered to
end with the presentation of some such gifts as we have enumerated. It
is not to our praise that the ties between sponsors and god-children,
were much closer, and held more sacredly in times which we are pleased
to call barbarous. God-children were placed not only in a state of
pupilage with their sureties, but also in the position of relations. A
sort of relationship was established even between the Godfathers and
Godmothers; insomuch, that marriage between any such parties was
forbidden under pain of severe punishment. This injunction, like many
others, had it appears been sufficiently disobeyed to warrant a special
canon (12th) of the Council of Compiègne, held so early as 757, which
enforced the separation of all those sponsors and God-children of both
sexes who had intermarried, and the Church refused the rites of marriage
to the women so separated. A century after (815) the Council of Mayence
not only reinforced these restrictions and penalties, but added others.
ARCTIC HEROES.
A FRAGMENT OF NAVAL HISTORY.
SCENE, _a stupendous region of icebergs and snow. The bare mast of a
half-buried ship stands among the rifts and ridges. The figures of
two men, covered closely with furs and skins, slowly emerge from
beneath the winter-housing of the deck, and descend upon the snow
by an upper ladder, and steps cut below in the frozen wall of
snow. They advance._
_1st Man._ We are out of hearing now. Give thy heart words.
[_They walk on in silence some steps further, and then pause._
_2nd Man._ Here ‘midst the sea’s unfathomable ice,
Life-piercing cold, and the remorseless night
Which never ends, nor changes its dead face,
Save in the ’ghast smile of the hopeless moon,
Must slowly close our sum of wasted hours;
And with them all the enterprising dreams,
Efforts, endurance, and resolve, which make
The power and glory of us Englishmen.
_1st Man._ It _may_ be so.
_2nd Man._ Oh, doubt not but it must.
Day after day, week crawling after week,
So slowly that they scarcely seem to move,
Nor we to know it, till our calendar
Shows us that months have lapsed away, and left
Our drifting time, while here our bodies lie
Like melancholy blots upon the snow.
Thus have we lived, and gradually seen,
By calculations which appear to mock
Our hearts with their false figures, that ’tis now
Three years since we were cut off from the world
By these impregnable walls of solid ocean!
_1st Man._ All this is true: the physical elements
We thought to conquer, are too strong for man.
_2nd Man._ We have felt the crush of battle side by side;
Seen our best friends, with victory in their eyes,
Suddenly smitten down, a mangled heap,
And thought our own turn might be next; yet never
Drooped we in spirit, or such horror felt
As in the voiceless tortures of this place,
Which freezes up the mind.
_1st Man._ Not yet.
_2nd Man._ I feel it.
Death, flying red-eyed from the cannon’s mouth,
Were child’s play to confront, compared with this.
Inch by inch famine in the silent frost—
The cold anatomies of our dear friends,
One by one carried in their rigid sheets
To lay beneath the snow—till he that’s last,
Creeps to the lonely horror of his berth
Within the vacant ship, and while the bears
Grope round and round, thinks of his distant home—
Those dearest to him—glancing rapidly
Through his past life—then with a wailful sigh
And a brief prayer, his soul becomes a blank.
_1st Man._ This is despair—I’ll hear no more of it.
We have provisions still.
_2nd Man._ And for how long?
_1st Man._ A flock of wild birds may pass over us,
And some our shots may reach.
_2nd Man._ And by this chance
Find food for one day more.
_1st Man._ Yes, and thank God;
For the next day may preservation come,
And rescue from old England.
_2nd Man._ All our fuel
Is nearly gone; and as the last log burns
And falls in ashes, so may we foresee
The frozen circle sitting round.
_1st Man._ Nay, nay—
Our boats, loose spars, our masts, and half our decks
Must serve us ere that pass. But, if indeed
Nothing avail, and no help penetrate
To this remote place, inaccessible
Perchance for years, except to some wild bird—
We came here knowing all this might befal,
And set our lives at stake. God’s will be done.
I, too, have felt the horrors of our fate:
Jammed in a moving field of solid ice,
Borne onward day and night we knew not where,
Till the loud cracking sounds reverberating
Far distant, were soon followed by the rending
Of the vast pack, whose heaving blocks and wedges,
Like crags broke loose, all rose to our destruction
As by some ghastly instinct. Then the hand
Of winter smote the all-congealing air,
And with its freezing tempest piled on high
These massy fragments which environ us:—
Cathedrals many-spired, by lightning riven—
Sharp-angled chaos-heaps of palaced cities,
With splintered pyramids, and broken towers
That yawn for ever at the bursting moon
And her four pallid flame-spouts. Now, appalled
By the long roar o’ the cloud-like avalanche—
Now, by the stealthy creeping of the glaciers
In silence tow’rds our frozen ships. So Death
Hath often whispered to me in the night;
And I have seen him in the Aurora-gleam
Smile as I rose and came upon the deck;
Or when the icicle’s prismatic glance—
Bright, flashing,—and then, colourless, unmoved ice—
Emblem’d our passing life, and its cold end.
Oh, friend in many perils, fail not now!
Am I not, e’en as thou art, utterly sick
Of my own heavy heart, and loading clothes?—
A mind—that in its firmest hour hath fits
Of madness for some change, that shoot across
Its steadfastness, and scarce are trampled down.
Yet, friend, I will not let my spirit sink,
Nor shall mine eyes, e’en with snow-blindness veiled,
Man’s great prerogative of inward sight
Forego, nor cease therein to speculate
On England’s feeling for her countrymen;
Whereof relief will some day surely come.
_2nd Man._ I well believe it; but perhaps too late.
_1st Man._ Then, if too late, one noble task remains,
And one consoling thought. We, to the last,
With firmness, order, and considerate care,
Will act as though our death-beds were at home,
Grey heads with honour sinking to the tomb;
So future times shall record bear that we,
Imprisoned in these frozen horrors, held
Our sense of duty, both to man and God.
_The muffled beat of the ship’s bell sounds for evening prayers._
_The two men return: they ascend the steps in the snow—then the
ladder—and disappear beneath the snow-covered housing of the
deck._
A CORONER’S INQUEST.