CHAPTER V.—THE MARRIAGE.

Fontanel received a considerable party of guests for the marriage. Miss

Laura and Miss Lydia, who were to be at the head of affairs while the

new Mrs Summerhayes was absent on her wedding tour, arrived two days

before, that they might get into the ways of the place, and know what

was required of them, which was not very much, for Mary was but a

languid housekeeper. Then there were two aunts, an uncle, and some

cousins of Mrs Clifford, none of whom in the least approved of the

match, though decorum and curiosity and kindness prompted them to

countenance poor Mary in her foolishness, notwithstanding their general

surprise, like Miss Harwood, that she had not the sense to know when she

was well off. Then there was Charley from Eton, who had grown so much

lately, that his mother blushed more than ever when he kissed her and

said something kind about her marriage. These were not pleasant days for

poor Mrs Clifford. She knew in her heart that nobody particularly

approved of her, not even Tom’s sisters—that people were saying it was

just what was to be expected, and that a woman left at her age with so

much property in her hands was sure to make a fool of herself. She knew

that the ladies when they got together had little conversations over

her—that one wondered why she could not make herself happy with these

dear children, and another with this fine place—and that a third mused

what poor Mr Clifford would have said could he have known. Poor Mary was

very thankful when the day dawned on her wedding-morning—she was glad,

as brides seldom are, of the arrival of the fated moment which was to

place things beyond the reach of censure or criticism, and relieve her

from her purgatory. The Rector of Summerhayes had not been called on to

do that piece of duty. The bridegroom luckily had a friend whose

privilege it was; and still more luckily there was a little old disused

church within the grounds of Fontanel in which the ceremony was to be

performed, without the necessity of encountering the gaze and remarks of

the village. It was not intended to be a pretty wedding or to put on

those colours of joy which become the espousals of youth. Mingled and

complicated, as are the thoughts of middle age, were the feelings of the

two who stood side by side before the bare rural altar. The bridegroom

was slight and tall in figure, with a careless languid air, through

which occasionally a little gleam of excitement sparkled. If you watched

him closely you could see that his mind was no way absorbed in the

ceremonial of his marriage. The quick sudden glance here and there under

his eyelids, of those cold but clear grey eyes, turned inquiringly to

everything within his range. He read in the looks of the clergyman, even

while he pronounced the nuptial blessing, what his opinion was of the

entire transaction. He penetrated the mask of propriety in which the

bride’s relations concealed their feelings—he investigated with

oft-repeated momentary glances the face of Charley, who stood in his

Etonian certainty of manhood, premature but not precocious, near his

mother’s side. Mr Summerhayes even scanned, when all was over, the

downcast countenance of Loo, who stood behind, watching with stout

endurance, and resolute not to cry during the entire ceremony. What was

the meaning which lay in those quick furtive darts of the bridegroom’s

eye it was impossible to say; his closest friend could not have

elucidated this strange secret by-play, of which nobody in the company

was conscious, except, perhaps, one child; but one thing it proved at

any rate, that his heart at this special moment was not engrossed, to

the exclusion of everything else, by his bride.

Mary was much less mistress of herself. She cried quietly under her veil

as she stood and listened to the familiar words. She repeated those that

fell to her with a little shiver. In her heart she could not but feel

what a terrible act she was completing as she vowed her love and

obedience over again, and separated her future from her past. But Mary,

with her downcast eyes, was insensible to everybody’s opinion at that

moment. Had she been standing in a wilderness she could not have felt

more isolated. She was conscious only of her new husband by her side—of

an indistinct figure before her—of God above and around, a kind of awful

shadow looking on. Mr Summerhayes was aware of her tears, and they moved

him so that his colour heightened involuntarily, and he pressed her hand

with a warning pressure when it came to that part of the ceremony. But

Mary herself was not aware that she was crying till she felt this touch

of remonstrance, which startled her back into consciousness. Such was

this marriage, at which, as at other marriages, people looked on with

various shades of sympathy and criticism, and which, with all its

concealed terrors and outward rejoicing, was the free act of hearts

uncoerced and acting only at their own pleasure—a free act, suggested by

no third party, unless, perhaps, it might happen to be a certain grim

inflexible Fate who, if the reins are but yielded to her for a moment,

pursues her victim through a throng of inevitable consequences. But

perhaps, when a woman is being married like Mary Clifford, it is a kind

of comfort to her to feel as if she could not help herself, rather than

to know that she is entering all these new dangers voluntarily, and in

obedience to nobody’s will but her own.

“Well, I am sure, I wish them every comfort in life,” said Miss Harwood,

as she stood leaning on her brother’s arm at the hall door of Fontanel,

watching the carriage drive off which contained the happy pair. “She

can’t feel much like a bride, poor thing, leaving all these children

behind her. I am sure I wish her every happiness. I hope she’ll never

live to repent it,” said Miss Harwood, with a sigh.

“Don’t be spiteful,” said the Rector. “This is not a time for such

ill-omened wishes. It’s a very suitable match, and I wish them joy.”

“Oh, Mr Harwood,” said Miss Laura, taking up her position at the

Rector’s other side, thus effecting a natural separation from Mary’s

relations, who were comparing sentiments a little apart from the

Summerhayes party—“a suitable match! when dear Tom is well known to

represent the oldest family in the county, and might have married

anybody—not to say a word against dear Mary, who is our sister now, and

such a sweet creature. But oh, Mr Harwood,” cried Miss Lydia, who had

interposed, as usual, “to talk of a suitable match!”

“There are no suitable matches nowadays. I don’t believe in ’em, by

Jove!” said Major Aldborough, who, with eyes slightly reddened by

champagne, was watching the carriage just then disappearing down the

avenue.

“But there might be, Major,” said Miss Lydia, so softly that her sister

could not take up the meek remark.

The Major only answered “By Jove!” under his breath. He was startled by

the close vicinity—the gentle look—the mild suggestion. He moved a

little away in a momentary panic. There was never any telling, as he

said to himself, what these women might mean.

“It is so strange to be left in charge of the house,” said Miss Laura,

“it gives one such a funny feeling. I don’t know how in the world we

shall do with all the responsibility; but dear Mary insisted upon it,

you know—though I am sure Mrs Tansey would have been much more suitable

for the head of the table than one of us, who are so inexperienced,”

cried Miss Lydia; “but dear Mary thought it best for the children’s

sake. I hope, dear Mrs Tansey, you don’t mind being our guest,”

proceeded the sisterly duet; “dear Mary thought it of such importance

that the children should get used to us—though they know us perfectly

well, still things are all so different; though otherwise, of course,

she would so much have preferred you.”

“Oh, pray, don’t think it necessary to apologise for my niece to me,

Miss Summerhayes,” said the offended aunt. “Mary has consulted her own

inclinations, and so long as she is happy, that is all _we_ can

_possibly_ want of her. I think she is _quite_ right to make friends, if

she can, in her new family. She knows she can always calculate upon _us_

if she ever wants any service,” added the bride’s relation, with a

slight heightening of colour and the ghost of a curtsy. The Miss

Summerhayes were not unequal to the emergency.

“We all know how much poor dear Mary is liked among her own friends,”

cried Miss Lydia. “Your dear girls were so fond of her last year when

they spent such a long time at Fontanel; and dear Mary has such a taste

in presents,” said Miss Laura, coming in so eagerly that she began out

of breath. “We have gone shopping with her often when she was buying her

little souvenirs. I hope you don’t think it will make any difference now

she is married again. She is _so_ affectionate; but as for wanting

services from anybody, that is very unlikely,” resumed the elder sister,

“now she has dear Tom. Dear Tom is so very devoted,” said Miss Laura,

breaking in headlong. “You would think she was only eighteen to see all

the attention he pays her. It is quite sweet to see them, like two

turtle-doves.”

Such being the conversation that succeeded immediately upon the

departure of the bridal pair, it is not to be supposed that the

dinner-table was spread with a very joyful feast, or that the evening

was spent in much happiness. Mary’s relations, who had up to this time

felt themselves much at ease at Fontanel, kept greatly by themselves

during the remainder of the wedding-day. Their occasional minglings with

the Summerhayes party called forth bursts of smart dialogue, more

exciting than amiable, and the opposing sides contended much for the

notice of Loo and the other children, when they came down-stairs in

their new dresses after dinner. It made little Loo’s heart sick to feel

herself enfolded in the embraces of Miss Lydia and Laura on one side,

and then to be talked to and admonished by Aunt Tansey on the other, who

hoped she would be a good girl, and a great comfort to her poor mother.

The children could not tell what to make of the aspect of affairs. Mamma

gone, who was the sun and centre of the domestic world, and already a

new rule and vague possibilities of change in the startled house.

Down-stairs among the servants, though the means of merry-making were

plentiful, this threatening cloud was even more apparent. A new master,

known to like “his own way,” was an alarming shadow impending over the

little community hitherto mildly and liberally governed by the mistress,

whom her servants could scarcely forgive for the step she had taken.

“With five lovely children and every blessin’ as this world could

afford,” as the housekeeper said, shaking her troubled head. The new

husband by no means ranked among the blessings of Providence to the

mistress of Fontanel in anybody’s judgment, and nowhere was Mary’s rash

act resented more warmly than in the servants’ hall.

“But, Loo,” said Etonian Charley, next morning, when Aunt Tansey and all

her belongings had left Fontanel, and everything had fallen under the

restless sway of the Miss Summerhayes, “I’m not going to put up with all

this. You said we were to stand up for mamma; you mean we are only to

pretend to stand up for mamma, you little humbug. Now that’s not my

meaning,” said the heir of Fontanel. “I’m not going to make-believe that

I think she’s done right, when I don’t. I am going to swallow cousin Tom

right out,” cried the boy, not without a little flush on his face. “It’s

a little awkward, to be sure, to know what to call him—but look here,

Loo—I mean to stand by my mother without any humbug. I mean to think

she’s done the very best for us all, and for herself too; and if she

don’t think the same when she comes back, I’ll try to make her; and if

you look black, as you’re looking, you are not the little brick I took

you for, and I won’t have anything more to do with you, Loo.”

“Oh, Charley, I am not half so good as you are,” cried the admiring

little sister, looking up to him with tearful eyes. Charley’s resolution

acted like a charm upon the house in general; and so, with a gradually

improving temper, though much pressed and fretted by Miss Laura and Miss

Lydia, the nursery and the servants’ hall, and all the dependencies of

Fontanel, waited for the advent of the new master and the return of Mrs

Summerhayes.

AN ENGLISH VILLAGE—IN FRENCH.[1]

The old pictures of village life in England will hardly suit for these

modern times. The pleasant little social circle which either existed, or

more often was imagined to exist, as in Miss Austen’s charming fictions,

in the large well-to-do country village, is to be found there no longer.

No one condescends in these days to live in the country, unless he can

either do so, or affect to do so, more or less _en grand seigneur_. A

change has passed over ‘Our Village,’ even since Mary Russell Mitford so

admirably sketched it. The half-pay naval lieutenant or army captain (if

any such survive) has retired into the back street of a cheap

watering-place, not to the improvement either of his position or his

happiness. The village surgeon is no longer an oracle; railways have

brought “the first advice” (at any rate, in the county town) within the

reach of almost all his patients; and he has either disappeared

altogether, or, if he still exists as the “Union Doctor,” badly paid and

little respected, he is seldom now a gentleman. Village lawyers—happily

or unhappily—are become things unknown: and as for any gentleman’s

family of independent but moderate means condescending to that kind of

rural seclusion, it is unheard of. If there is any educated resident in

any country village not fixed there by some local interest or

occupation, he is apt to have something suspicious about his character

or antecedents—to be a refugee from his lawful creditors, or his lawful

wife, or something of that sort.

So that English village life now resolves itself mainly into that of the

parson; for the squire, even if he be resident, scarcely forms part of

the same social circle. And as to the rest, between the university

graduate, of more or less refinement and education, and the opulent

farmer such as he is at present, there lies a gulf which no fancy can

exaggerate, and which the best intentions on both sides fail to bridge

over. Where village spires stand thick together, where the majority of

the rectors or vicars are men of the same way of thinking, and where it

is the fashion of the country to be social, there is a good deal of

pleasant intercourse, no doubt, between the parsons’ families, and as

much “society,” in the real if not in the conventional sense, as is

needful to keep the higher elements of humanity from stagnating; but

where parishes spread far and wide over a poor or thinly-populated

district, or, worse still, where religious sectarianism reckons its

clergy into “High” and “Low,” and the Rector of A. shakes his head and

lifts his eyebrows when any allusion is made to the Vicar of B.—there,

the man whose lot has been cast in a country parsonage had need have

abundant resources within himself, and be supremely indifferent to the

stir of human interests without. He will, in many cases, have almost as

far to ride in search of a congenial neighbour as though he were in the

bush of Australia; he will find something like the solitude of the old

monastery, without the chance of its peace and quietness.

Not that such a life is dull or uninteresting, by any means, unless in

the unfortunate case of the man finding no interest in his duties. One

of this world’s many compensations is, that the busy man, be he what

else he may, is never dull, and seldom discontented. So it is, almost

always, in the country parsonage; without claiming any high standard of

zeal or self-devotion for its occupants, there is probably at least as

much quiet enjoyment, and as little idle melancholy or fretful

discontent, to be found among them, as among any other class of educated

men.

Still, it is a life which it would be very difficult for a foreigner to

appreciate or understand. The relation of the English country rector to

his villagers is totally unlike that of the Lutheran or Roman Catholic

priest. Not claiming—or at least not being in a position to

maintain—anything like the amount of spiritual authority which is

exercised by the pastor under both these other systems, he wields, in

point of fact, an amount of influence superior to either. He cannot

command the servile and terrified obedience in externals which is often

paid by the Irish and Italian peasant to his spiritual guide; but he

holds a moral power over his parishioners—even over those who

professedly decline his ministrations—of the extent of which neither he

nor they are always conscious, but to the reality of which the enemies

of the Established Church in England are beginning to awake.

The reading world has perhaps been rather over-supplied, of late years,

with novelettes in which the village parson, with some of the very white

or very black sheep of his flock, have been made to walk and talk more

or less naturally for their amusement and edification; but the sight of

a little French book on the subject struck us as something new. It is

very desirable that our good friends across the Channel should know

something about our ways of going on at home; and that not only in the

public life of large towns, or on the highways of travel and commerce,

but in our country villages and rural districts. But French attempts at

English domestic sketches have not, on the whole, been successful. It

is, indeed, most difficult for a foreign visitor to draw pictures of

society in any country which would pass muster under the critical

examination of a native. We took up this ‘Vie de Village en Angleterre’

with some notion of being amused by so familiar a subject treated by a

Frenchman; but we soon found we were in very safe hands. The writer

knows us well, and describes us admirably, very much as we are; the

foreign element is just strong enough to be occasionally amusing, but

never in any way ridiculous; and we should be as much surprised at the

correctness of the writer’s observation as charmed with the candour and

good taste of the little volume, if we had not heard it credibly

whispered that, although written for French readers (and in undeniable

French), it may be claimed as the production of an English pen.

Whatever may be the secret of the authorship, the little book will repay

the reader of either nation. It is written in the person of a political

refugee, who, armed with one or two good introductions, comes to pass a

period of exile in England. While previously travelling in Switzerland,

he has made acquaintance with a Mr Norris, an energetic country parson

of the modern “muscular” type. He it is who persuades the wanderer to

study in detail, by personal observation, that “inner life” of England

which, he has already learnt to believe, and rightly, forms and shapes,

more than anything else, her national and political character. Hitherto,

as he confesses to his new acquaintance, the coldness and reserve of

such English as he has met with have rather frightened him; yet he has

always admired in them that _solidarité_—which we will not attempt to

translate. The hostility between the labouring classes in France and

those above them has always appeared to him the great knot of political

difficulties in that country—a source of more danger to real liberty and

security than any other national evil.

He determines, therefore, to see and study this domestic character of

England for himself—“not in her political institutions, which we

Frenchmen have been too much accused of wishing to copy, but in that

social life which may very possibly explain the secret of her strength

and her liberty.”—(P. 22.)

It was not his first visit to London; and, arriving in the month of

March, he finds the climate as bad, and the great city as dingy and

dirty, as ever. He does not appear to have noticed our painful efforts

to consume our own smoke, or our ambitious designs in modern street

architecture. On the other hand, he mercifully ignores—if he saw it—our

Great Exhibition. The crowded gin-palaces, and the state of the

Haymarket by night, disgust him, as well they might; and he escapes from

the murky Babylon, as soon as he has taken a few lessons to improve his

colloquial English, to pay the promised visit to his friend Mr Norris at

his parsonage at Kingsford; stopping on his way to deliver a letter of

introduction to an English countess, an old friend of his family, who

has a seat close to Lynmere, a sort of pet village, where the ornamented

cottages form a portion of the park scenery.

In his walk from the station, he makes the acquaintance of a “Madame

Jones,” whose cottage, with its wooden paling and scarlet geraniums,

abutting on the pleasant common, has its door invitingly open. He pauses

to admire the little English picture as he passes by. Good Mrs Jones

observes him, and begs him to walk in; partly, we must hope (and we

trust all foreign readers will believe), out of genuine English

hospitality—though we doubt if all village dames in Surrey would take

kindly to a Frenchman on the tramp—partly, it must be confessed, with

the British female’s natural eye to business. “Perhaps Monsieur was

looking out for a ‘_petit logement_?’” For Mrs Jones has two rooms to

let; and even a foreigner’s money, paid punctually, is not to be

despised. Monsieur was looking out for nothing of the kind, but he takes

the rooms forthwith; and indeed any modest-minded gentleman, French or

English, who wanted country board and lodging on a breezy common in

Surrey, could not have done better. Here is what our traveller gets for

twenty-two shillings a-week; we only hope it will stop the mouths of all

foreigners who rail at the dearness of English living, when they read

here the terms on which a _petit logement_ may be found in a pleasant

situation in the home counties—two rooms, “fresh and clean,” comfortably

furnished (with a picture of the Queen and a pot of musk into the

bargain), and board as follows:—

“For breakfast she gave me tea with good milk, excellent

bread-and-butter, accompanied either by a rasher of broiled bacon or

fresh eggs. For dinner there were often ‘_ragouts avec force oignons_’

(Irish stew?), boiled mutton, or sometimes a beef-steak ‘_très-dur_,’

potatoes and boiled cabbage, with a glass of good beer and a bit of

cheese. No dessert, but occasionally a pudding. On Sundays, roast-beef

and plum-pudding were apparently the rule without exception, for they

never failed to appear. The tea in the evening was much the same as

the breakfast. If I had wished for supper, I might have had cold meat,

bread, a lettuce, and a glass of beer.”

If Mrs Jones be not as entirely fictitious as Mrs Harris, and would

enclose us a few cards, we think we could undertake that her lodgings

(with a countess and a pet village, too, close by) should not be

untenanted for a week in summertime. We feel sure, however, that the

good lady is _not_ a creature of mere imagination: when we read the

description of her, we recall her as an old acquaintance, though we

cannot remember her address:—

“As for this good woman’s personal appearance, she had nothing

attractive about her except her scrupulous cleanliness. Her age

belonged to that mysterious epoch comprised between forty and sixty.

She had an intelligent countenance; but what was most marked about her

was a slightly military air, and a black silk bonnet which, planted on

the top of her head, tilted forward over her face, and usually

concealed half of it. The two strings were carefully pinned back over

the brim, and the ends fluttered on each side the bonnet, like the

plume of a _chasseur de Vincennes_. That bonnet, she never left it off

for a moment; and my indiscreet imagination went so far as to

speculate what could possibly become of it at night.... Though I had

begged her to consider herself absolute mistress in all domestic

matters—and though, moreover, I should have found considerable

difficulty in ordering my own dinner—she never failed to come in every

morning at breakfast-time ‘for orders,’ as she called it. It was a

little ruse of hers to secure a moment for the active exercise of her

somewhat gossiping tongue. I was enabled to endure the torrent of

words of which good Mrs Jones disburdened herself on such occasions

the more philosophically, inasmuch as she was nowise exacting in the

matter of an answer, and now and then gave me some interesting bits of

information.”

The contrast which follows is drawn from a shrewd observation of

national characteristics on both sides of the Channel:—

“This respectable dame possessed in a high degree the good qualities

and the defects of her class of Englishwomen. In France, the manners

of women of her order are full of expansion and sympathy; and a small

farmer’s wife, however ignorant she may be, will always find means to

interest you in her affairs, and to enter into yours. In England, on

the contrary, with all her gossiping upon trifling subjects, she will

maintain the strictest reserve, so far as you are concerned, upon

matters of any importance. She serves you much better than a

Frenchwoman would, because she looks upon you in the light of a

master—a guest whose rank and character she makes the most of, because

that rank and character raise her in her own estimation; but it is

only in some very exceptional case that she will talk to you about

anything which touches her personally, or that she will venture to

confess that she is thinking about your concerns—that would be, in her

eyes, a breach of proper respect.

“This is the peculiar feature in the relations between the different

classes of society in England. Society there is profoundly

aristocratic; there is no tradesman, be he ever so professed a

Radical, who does not become a greater man in his own eyes by

receiving the most commonplace act of courtesy from a lord; no servant

who does not feel an additional satisfaction in waiting on a master

whose manners have a touch of haughtiness, because such manners strike

him as a mark of superiority. It is just as Rousseau says: ‘Clara

consoles herself for being thought less of than Julia, from the

consideration that, without Julia, she would be thought even less of

than she is.’ The singular feature is, that this kind of humility,

which would seem revolting to us in France, is met with in England

amongst precisely those persons who are remarkable for their moral

qualities and for their self-respect. It is because in them this

deference becomes a sort of courtesy, a social tact, of which only a

gentleman can understand all the niceties—which, besides, implies in

their case nothing like servility—the respect paid to superiors in

rank is kept within the limits of the respect due to themselves. This

peculiarity in English manners struck me the more forcibly, because it

offers such a remarkable contrast to what goes on among ourselves.”

There follows, at some length, a truthful and well-written exposition of

the healthful influence exercised upon a nation by an aristocracy like

that of England—which we must not stop to quote. ‘_Revenons_‘—as the

author writes, asking pardon for so long a digression—‘_Revenons à

Madame Jones_.’

That excellent landlady is careful not only of the diet and other

creature-comforts of her new lodger, but of his moral and religious

wellbeing also. A week of wet weather—which the foreign visitor finds

sufficiently _triste_—is succeeded by a lovely Sunday morning. The

Frenchman sallies out after breakfast for a morning walk, with his book

under his arm—we are sorry to say it was a ‘Tacitus’—with the intention,

we are left to suppose, of worshipping nature on the common. But Mrs

Jones, though totally innocent as to her lodger’s heretical intentions,

takes care to lead him in the way that he should go.

“‘Church is at eleven,’ Mrs Jones called out to me, not doubting for

an instant that I should go there. I went out; she followed me close,

locked all the doors, and, stopping for a moment at the cottage next

door to call for a neighbour, continued her way. I was taking another

path, but was very soon arrested by the hurried approach of Mrs Jones,

who, fancying I had mistaken my way, came after me to show me the road

to church. Such perseverance on her part made it evident that I should

risk the loss of her good opinion if I did not profit by her

instructions; so I walked down the hill with her by a road which wound

between broad verges of green turf overshadowed by lofty trees.”

Thus fairly captured and led to church in triumph, his behaviour there

was on the whole very decorous. The impression likely to be made on the

mind of an intelligent and well-disposed foreigner by the simple and yet

impressive service in a well-ordered village church is very nicely

described. It is true that Mrs Jones’s prisoner, according to his own

account, mingles with the very proper reflections natural to such a

place “those inspired by the volume of Tacitus which he held open before

him for decency’s sake” (and which, we fear, must have imposed itself

upon the good lady as a French prayer-book); a little touch which,

whether written by a Frenchman or not, and whether meant for truth or

satire, is very French indeed. He finds time also to notice the features

of the building itself, and its arrangements. The “tribune” in the

gallery where the Countess performs her devotions, and the high

enclosure with drawn curtains—“a sort of _petit salon_”—which protects

the family of Mr Mason, the squire, from the more vulgar worshippers, do

not strike the visitor, we rejoice to say, as happy illustrations of the

aristocratic feeling in Englishmen; and it is evidently with a quiet

satisfaction that he learns subsequently that “_puséisme_” is trying to

do away with such distinctions.

An invitation to dinner from the Countess gives him at once the _entrée_

to the best society in Lynmere and its neighbourhood. He finds his first

English dinner-party a very dull affair; but he was surely peculiarly

unfortunate in his company, if we are to take his account of the

after-dinner conversation amongst the gentlemen: “At the end of a short

time, two of the guests were asleep, and I would willingly have followed

their example.” The remarks which follow, however, touch with more truth

upon one of the defects in our social intercourse:—

“These dinners of ceremony (and there are scarcely any other kind of

entertainments in the country amongst the higher classes) take place

between neighbours, usually about twice in the year: scarcely any one

except the clergyman enjoys the privilege of being received with less

of etiquette. It follows that it is very possible to pass one’s life

for ten years in the same spot, without having any really intimate

association with any one of one’s neighbours. There are very few

English people who do not regret it. Yet such is the despotism of

custom, that it is rare to find any family which dreams of freeing

itself from the trammels of this etiquette.”

Here and there, of late, the links of this social despotism, under which

we have groaned so long, show symptoms of giving way. The advance of

fashion has done good service in one respect, that the modern service _à

la Russe_, adopted in all good houses, has struck a decisive blow at the

old English heavy dinner; and just as the fashion has long died out of

pressing one’s guests to eat more than they wish, so the fashion is

coming in of not thinking it necessary to put upon the table three times

more than can by any possibility be eaten. When small dinners become

“the thing” even amongst the great people, there is hope that their

lesser imitators will follow the example. And whenever the mistresses of

small families will learn that good and careful cookery is quite as

cheap as bad, and much more wholesome, and will condescend to go back

not only to their great-grandmothers’ hoops, but to their household

receipt-books, they may venture to invite their personal friends without

compunction to a pleasant family-dinner, to the great furtherance of

real sociability, and get rid for ever of those annual or biennial

festivals which are a burden to the weary souls of guests and

entertainers.

The foreign visitor becomes, in a very short time, established on a

footing of intimacy with the family of Mr Mason, a magistrate and landed

proprietor residing in the parish, in whose household Mrs Jones has

formerly lived as nurse. The introduction through the Countess on the

one part, and on the other the warm eulogies of good Mrs Jones (who is

never tired of sounding the praises of her old master and the young

ladies whom she has brought up), may serve in some degree to explain the

somewhat rapid adoption of “Monsieur” as a family friend into the

thrice-guarded circle of an English household. On his part, indeed, we

soon discover quite a sufficient attraction. There is a pale pensive

sentimental “Miss Mary,” quite the sort of young lady, we should say, to

take the fancy of a romantic Frenchman in exile; but as she does not

happen to take ours especially, we confess to have found no particular

interest in this new version of ‘Love in a Village,’ and shall leave our

younger readers to enjoy the romance of the little book for themselves,

without forestalling, even by a single hint, its course or its

conclusion. So far as relates to Monsieur himself, we repeat, we can

quite understand how readily he responded to the warm adoption of his

new English friends.

“Mr Mason consulted me about his son’s studies, Mrs Mason confided to

me her anxieties as the mother of a family; and Mary—whose ardent and

poetic soul felt the need of an intellectual sympathy which failed her

in her own family—threw into her conversation with me an openness and

vivacity which surprised her relatives.”

Nothing of the sort surprises us. What we were rather surprised at was,

that Mr Mason _père_, a grave county dignitary and practical man of

business, should have taken to his bosom, in this ardent and gushing

fashion, the most agreeable, most intellectual, and most amiable

foreigner that ever lived. At first we thought it a mistake—a patent

defect and improbability in an otherwise sensible and natural book. The

author’s casual attempt to account for it by the fact that Mr Mason was

fond of billiards and of backgammon, and found in his new acquaintance

an idle man generally ready to play a game, does not in the least

harmonise with the usual character and habits of country gentlemen past

sixty, or of Mr Mason in particular. But when we read that this

excellent individual, like so many others of his class, has gone largely

into turnips—and that his French visitor, wishing to know all about

English country life, and knowing that such a life is nothing without

turnips, determined, amongst his other travelling studies, to study an

English model farm, and, when his host proposed a visit to that beloved

establishment, accepted the invitation with “_empressement_,” and

listened for hours to bucolic talk with “_un grand interest_,”—then we

no longer wonder for an instant at the eternal friendship which the

English member of the “Royal Agricultural” suddenly and silently vowed

to his guest. Long and painful experience of visits paid to these

excellent people in the country—reminiscences of the inevitable walk

over ploughed fields—the plunging into long dark galleries where

unfortunate beasts were immured for life to be turned into beef, a

process which should be mercifully hidden from the eyes of every good

Christian—the yawns unsuccessfully stifled—the remarks answered at

random—the senseless questions desperately volunteered out of politeness

on the visitor’s part, betraying the depth of his incapacity and

ignorance;—these must rise before many a reader’s mind as well as our

own, and make them feel what a treasure the scientific agriculturist had

found in the inquiring Frenchman, who walked and talked and listened,

not only without a complaint or a yawn, but positively because he liked

it. Enterprising foreigners have been said to have tried to make their

way into English country society, before now, through the introduction

of the hunting-field, not always with success; perhaps they may be

inclined to take a hint from this little book, and, in quiet family

cases, try the turnips.

The visits to Mr Mason’s farm-cottages give the traveller the

opportunity of drawing a contrast between the habits and aspirations of

agricultural labourers in the two countries:—

“That passion for becoming proprietors, so widely spread in our own

country districts, is unknown, and probably will long continue so,

amongst the agricultural classes in England. The example of Ireland

[it might have been added, of Wales], where the land has been very

much subdivided, and where the population which maintains itself on it

has become excessive, has strengthened the opinion amongst large

landed proprietors in England as to the evil effects of small

holdings. I think I scarcely exaggerate when I say that certainly, in

the southern counties of England, a peasant possessing an acre of land

would be a rarity. Probably it is to this impossibility of becoming

small proprietors that we must attribute the taste which the labouring

classes in England show for ornamenting their houses. If a working man

has saved any money, he will employ it in buying a set of furniture,

and making his cottage look gay; whereas, in France, he would have

laid it aside in the hope of acquiring a bit of land; so that nothing

can be more different than the wretched cabins of our own rural

districts and the cottage of an English labourer, with its many little

appliances of comfort and even luxury. In general the English peasant

lives much less sparingly, and spends upon his meal twice as much as

the French: it is true that the climate requires a more substantial

style of diet.”

These observations would have been more strictly true if they had been

made a few years ago. Within that time the passion for property has

sprung up not only amongst those who call themselves “operatives”

(journeymen weavers, shoemakers, &c.), but even, to a certain extent,

amongst farm-labourers. Recent alterations in the laws of partnership

have encouraged what are called “co-operative societies,” who not only

open “stores” for the sale of all the necessaries of life, on the

joint-stock principle of division of profits, but build cottages which,

by certain arrangements, may become the property of the tenant. A whole

village has just been built in Yorkshire, on this principle of the

tenants becoming eventually the landlords. Not only this, but the same

desire for independence—an excellent feeling in itself—is leading the

same class to purchase cottage property whenever it comes into the

market. If this ambition to become a purchaser were confined to a desire

upon every man’s part to feel himself absolute master of the home he

lived in, then, whatever large proprietors or able political economists

might have to say, it would be an object which would deserve the very

highest respect. But, unfortunately, the feeling is not altogether that

of desiring to live in peace under one’s own vine and fig-tree: it is

the wish to have a tenement to let out to others. It is comparatively

seldom that a small piece of land, suited to the sum at such a

purchaser’s command, is thrown into the market. Cottages, on the other

hand, are continually advertised for sale; the working-man, eager to

secure his bit of real property, gives for them a sum far beyond their

value—a sum which the capitalist or large proprietor will not give; and

in order to make his purchase pay, he either proceeds at once to divide

a comfortable dwelling into two, or raises the rent upon his more needy

tenant. The evil consequences are twofold; the neighbouring landowner,

who ought to have the cottages for his own labourers, who would keep

them in good repair, and let them at moderate rents, has been driven out

of the market; and either a lower class of tenant, continually changing

and being “sold up,” is introduced; or the honest labourer is compelled

to pay to this new landlord of his own class a rent out of all

proportion to the accommodation supplied him.

It is to be hoped that this growing evil (for evil it is) may be met by

the increased liberality of landed proprietors in building good and

sufficient cottages for the labourers on their own estates. In the case

of the humbler artisans, in towns especially, one does not see the

remedy except in the questionable shape of legislative restrictions.

But we have almost forgotten our foreign exile’s travelling

acquaintance, Mr Norris, the hearty and genial English clergyman at

whose invitation he first set himself to study English life. Before

finally taking up his quarters at Lynmere, he has paid the promised

visit to his friend in his parsonage at Kingsford; “a pretty Gothic

_chateau_,” furnished with the taste of a gentleman and a scholar; a

residence whose somewhat luxurious belongings, its ample library, and

the well-chosen prints which grace its walls, when contrasted in the

writer’s mind with the humble abode of the French village _curé_, give

rise to reflections “not wholly to the disadvantage of the latter.” We,

on the other hand, must warn any foreign reader who may draw the

contrast for himself, that Kingsford Parsonage is a very exceptional

case indeed. Mr Norris is discovered, somewhat to his French visitor’s

surprise, clad in “a strange costume of white flannel,” not altogether

sacerdotal; “_Je suis habillé en cricketer_,” is the parson’s

explanation. The fact is, he has just been playing cricket with his

pupils, half-a-dozen young men in preparation for the Universities. The

simple and orderly habits of the household, the breakfast at eight, the

dinner at one, the kindly intercourse between the tutor and his pupils,

and the prosperity of a well-ordered village under an energetic pastor,

are well described, and will give our French neighbours a very fair idea

of such a life. A little, a very little “_triste_,” our visitor finds

it, this English rural life, with its rich green meadows and grey sky,

and slowly-winding river, half hidden by its banks. One needs, he

considers, in order to find happiness in such scenes, a hearty love for

simple nature, and a heart “warmed with the sentiment of duty

fulfilled;” in short, he is of Dr Johnson’s opinion, though he puts it

into much more complimentary language—that “those who are fond of the

country are fit to live in the country.”

But if we cannot allow our French friends to imagine that all English

country clergymen have their lot cast in the pleasant places of

Kingsford and Lynmere, still less, we fear, must they consider them (or

their wives) such wonderful economists as, like Mr Norris, to maintain

all the quiet elegancies of a gentleman’s establishment in a handsome

Gothic chateau (and to travel in Switzerland besides), upon an

ecclesiastical income scarcely exceeding, after all necessary

deductions, two hundred pounds a-year. True, Mr Norris takes pupils and

writes for reviews—highly respectable vocations, and profitable enough

in some hands, but scarcely open to the majority of his brethren, and

not safe to be depended upon, as a supplementary income, by young

clergymen on small preferments who may feel no vocation for celibacy. Mr

Norris, indeed, is peculiarly favoured in many respects as regards money

matters; for he has been fortunate enough to have enjoyed an exhibition

at Oxford in days when the word “exhibition” (as we are informed in a

note) meant “a gratuitous admission to the University.” Here we are

certainly stepping out of the ground of real English life, where the

writer has so pleasantly guided us, into a highly imaginative state of

things. It would have been a noble boast, indeed, for us to have made to

foreigners, if it could have been made truly, that Oxford, out of her

splendid endowments, offered, even occasionally, “gratuitous admissions”

to poor and deserving scholars. It was what the best of her founders and

benefactors intended and desired—what they thought they had secured for

ever by the most stringent and solemn enactments; but what, unhappily,

the calm wisdom of the University itself has been as far from carrying

out as the busy sweeping of a Reform Commission.

The foreign visitor is naturally very much impressed by an English

cricket-match. The puzzled admiration which possesses him on the

occasion of his “assisting” at a “_fête du cricket_” is very amusingly

expressed. Throughout all his honest admiration of the English

character, there peeps out a confession that this one peculiar habit of

the animal is what he has failed to account for or comprehend. He tries

to philosophise on the thing; and, like other philosophical inquirers

when they get hold of facts which puzzle them, he feels bound to present

his readers with a theory of cause and effect which is evidently as

unsatisfactory to himself as to them. He falls back for an explanation

on that tendency to “solidarity” in the English temperament which he has

admired before.

“The explanation of the great popularity of the game of cricket is

that, being always a challenge between two rival bodies, it produces

emulation and excites that spirit of party which, say what we will, is

one of the essential stimulants of public life, since in order to

identify one’s self with one’s party one must make a sacrifice to a

certain extent of one’s individuality. The game of cricket requires

eleven persons on each side, and each of the players feels that he is

consolidated (_solidaire_) with his comrades, in defeat as well as in

victory.... That which makes the charm of the game is, above all, the

_solidarity_ which exists between the players.”

This is a very pretty theory, but scarcely the true one. In the

public-school matches, no doubt, and in some matches between

neighbouring villages, the _esprit de corps_ goes for much; but, as a

rule, we fear the cricketer is a much more selfish animal. His ambition

is above all things to make a good score, and to appear in ‘Bell’s Life’

with a double figure to his name. Just as the hunting man, so that he

himself can get “a good place,” cares exceedingly little for the general

result of the day’s sport; so the batsman at Lord’s, so long as he makes

a good innings, or the bowler so long as he “takes wickets” enough to

make a respectable figure on the score, thinks extremely little, we are

sorry to say, of “solidarity.” Whether the match is won or lost is of as

little comparative importance as whether the fox is killed or gets away.

We notice the difference, because it is a great pity it should be so.

The Frenchman’s principle is by far the finer one; and the gradual

increase of this intense self-interest in the cricket-field is going far

to nullify the other good effects of the game as a national amusement.

One reason why the matches between the public schools are watched with

such interest by all spectators is, that the boys do really feel and

show that identification of one’s self with one’s party which the author

so much respects; the Harrow captain is really much more anxious that

Harrow should beat Eton, than that he himself should get a higher score

than Jones or Thompson of his own eleven; and the enthusiastic chairing

of the hero of the day is not, as he knows, a personal ovation to the

player, as to a mere exhibition of personal skill, but to his having

maintained the honour of the school.

Our national ardour for this game seems always incomprehensible to a

Frenchman. There is a little trashy, conceited book now before us, in

which a French writer, professing to enlighten his countrymen upon

English life, dismisses this mysterious amusement in a definition, the

point and elegance of which it would be a pity to spoil by

translation—“_un exercice consistant à se fatiguer et à donner d’autant

plus de plaisir qu’il avait fait répandre d’autant plus de sueur_.”[2]

He is careful, at the same time, to suggest that even cricket is

probably borrowed from his own nation—the “_jeu de paume_” of the days

of the Grand Monarque. But the inability of so shrewd and intelligent an

observer, as the foreign spectator with whom we have to do at present,

to comprehend the real points of the game, is an additional testimony to

its entirely English character. The Etonian’s mamma, who, as he relates

with a sort of quiet wonder, sat for five hours on two days successively

on a bench under a hot sun, to watch the match between her son’s eleven

and Harrow, would have given a much better account of the game. The

admiring visitor does not pretend, as he observes, to go into the

details of a game which has thirty-eight rules; but he endeavours to

give his French readers some general idea of the thing, which may

suffice for unprofessional lookers-on. It is unnecessary to say that the

idea is very general indeed. The “consecrated” ground on which the

“_barrières_” are erected, and where the “_courses_” take place, are a

thoroughly French version of the affair. The “ten fieldsmen

precipitating themselves in pursuit of the ball when struck” would be

ludicrous enough to a cricketer’s imagination, if the thought of the

probable consequences were not too horrible. Even such headlong zeal on

the part of two fieldsmen only, with their eye on the same ball, has

resulted, before now, in a collision entailing the loss of half-a-dozen

front teeth and other disfigurements. It was unnecessary to exaggerate

the perils of a game which, as our author observes, has its dangers; and

if the fieldsmen at Lynmere conducted themselves after this headlong

fashion when he was watching them, we can quite understand his surprise

that, when the day concludes with the inevitable English dinner, men who

had spent the whole day “in running, striking, and receiving blows from

the ball to the bruising of their limbs” (and precipitating themselves

against each other) should still show themselves disposed to drink

toasts and make speeches for the rest of the evening. The conversation

which he has with the parish schoolmaster, an enthusiastic cricketer, is

good in its way:—

“‘I hope you have enjoyed the day?’ said he to me. ‘You have had an

opportunity of seeing what cricket is. It’s a noble game, is it not?’

“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘it is a fine exercise; and I think highly of those

amusements which bring all classes together under the influence of a

common feeling.’

“‘It is not only that,’ replied the excellent man: ‘but nothing

moralises men like cricket.’

“‘How?’ said I, rather astonished to hear him take such high ground.

“‘Look here,’ he replied; ‘a good cricketer is bound to be sober and

not frequent the public-house, to accustom himself to obey, to

exercise restraint upon himself; besides, he is obliged to have a

great deal of patience, a great deal of activity; and to receive those

blows of the ball without shrinking, requires, I assure you, some

degree of courage.’”

We suspect that these remarks belong of right at least as much to the

French philosopher as to the English national schoolmaster; but they

bring forward in an amusing way the tendency of one-ideaed

philanthropists, which the author elsewhere notices, to attribute to

their own favourite hobby the only possible moral regeneration of

society:

“Every Englishman who is enthusiastic in any particular cause never

fails to see in that the greatness and the glory of his country; and

in this he is quite serious. In this way I have heard the game of

cricket held up to admiration as one of the noblest institutions of

England, an institution which insures to the country not only an

athletic, but an orderly and moral population. I have seen the time

when the same honour was ascribed to horse-racing; but since this

sport has crossed the Channel, and it has been found by experience

that it does not always preserve a country from revolutions and _coups

d’état_, it has lost something of its prestige in England.”

There is always some moral panacea in the course of advertisement, like

a quack medicine, to cure all diseases: mechanics’ institutes, cheap

literature, itinerant lecturers, monster music-classes, have all had

their turn; and just at present the ‘Saturday Review’ seems to consider

that the salvation of England depends upon the revival of

prize-fighting.

We cannot follow the writer into all the details of village institutions

and village politics, which are sketched with excellent taste and great

correctness. It will be quite worth while for the foreigner who wants to

get a fair notion of what goes on here in the country—or indeed for the

English reader who likes to see what he knows already put into a

pleasant form, all the more amusing because the familiar terms look odd

in French—to go with our French friend to the annual dinner of “_Le Club

des Odd-Fellows_,” with its accompaniment “_de speechs, de hurrahs, et

de toasts_”—without which, he observes, no English festival can take

place; to accompany him in his “_Visite au Workhouse_,” subscribe with

him to the “_Club de Charbon_,” or, better still, sit with him in the

village Sunday-school, even if we cannot take the special interest which

he did (for his own private reasons) in “_le classe de Miss Mary_.” Very

pleasant is the picture—not overdrawn, though certainly taken in its

most sunshiny aspect—of the charitable intercourse in a well-ordered

country village between rich and poor. One form, indeed, there is of

modern educational philanthropy which the writer notices, of the success

of which we confess to have our doubts. The good ladies of Lynmere set

up an “_Ecole managère_”—a school of domestic management, we suppose we

may call it—where the village girls were to learn cooking and other good

works. Now a school of cookery, admirable as it is in theory—the amount

of ignorance on that subject throughout every county in England being

blacker than ever was figured in educational maps—presents considerable

difficulties in actual working. To learn to cook, it is necessary to

have food upon which to practise. Final success, in that art as in

others, can only be the result of a series of experimental failures. And

here was the grand stumbling-block which presented itself, in the case

of a cooking-school set up with the very best intentions, under

distinguished patronage, in a country village within our own knowledge.

Some half-dozen girls, who had left school and were candidates for

domestic service, were caught and committed to the care and instruction

of an experienced matron; not without some murmuring on the part of

village mothers, who considered such apprenticeship a waste of time,—all

girls, in their opinion, being born cooks. From this culinary college

the neighbouring families were to be in course of time supplied with

graduates. Great were the expectations formed by the managers, and by

the credulous portion of the public. There were to be no more tough

beef-steaks, no more grumbling masters and scolding mistresses, no more

indigestion. But this admirable undertaking split upon a rock which its

originators had not foreseen. It had been proposed that the village

families should in turn send dishes to be operated upon by the pupils;

but the English village mind is not given to experiments, culinary or

other, and preferred boiling its mutton one day and eating it cold the

next. Then the bachelor curate, who had a semi-official connection with

the new establishment, reading prayers there as “chaplain and visitor,”

who was presumed to have a healthy appetite, and was known to have

complained of the eternal mutton-chops provided by his landlady, was

requested to undergo a series of little dinners cooked for him gratis.

The bashful Oxonian found it impossible to resist the lady patronesses’

invitation, and consented—for the good of the institution. But it ended

in the loss to the parish of a very excellent working parson. For a few

weeks, the experimental ragouts and curries sent in to his lodgings had

at least the advantage of being a change: but as the presiding matron

gradually struck out a bolder line, and fed him with the more ambitious

efforts of her scholars, it became too much even for clerical patience,

and he resigned his cure. Out of delicacy to the ladies’ committee, he

gave out that it was “the Dissenters;” but all his intimate friends knew

that it was the cooking-school.

The Rector of Lynmere is a Mr Leslie—a clergyman of the refined and

intellectual type, intended, probably, as an artistic contrast to Mr

Norris in his cricket flannels. He is, we are expressly told, “an

aristocrat”—indeed, a nephew of the Countess aforesaid. He is reserved,

nervous, and diffident, although earnest and single-hearted. The vulgar

insolence of the Baptists at the vestry-meetings is gall and wormwood to

him; and he suffers scarcely less under the fussy interference of a

Madam Woodlands, one of the parish notables, of Low-Church views and

energetic benevolence, who patronises the church and the rector, and

holds him virtually responsible for all the petty offences and

indecorums which disturb the propriety of the village. This lady is very

slightly sketched, but the outline can be filled up from many a parish

clergyman’s mental notebook. We do not wonder that Mr Leslie, with his

shrinking sensibilities, had as great a horror of her as of Mr Say, the

Nonconformist agitator, who led the attack at the church-rate meetings.

Only we would remark, that if the author thinks that the unfitness of

the Rector of Lynmere to contend with a body of political Dissenters, or

his want of tact in dealing with so very excellent and troublesome a

parishioner as Mrs Woodlands, is at all explained by his being “an

aristocrat,” he is encouraging them in a very common and very

unfortunate mistake. It is true that it is not pleasant for a man of

cultivated mind and refined tastes, be he priest or layman, to be

brought into contact with opponents whose nature and feelings, and the

manner in which they express those feelings, are rude and vulgar; but if

he possess, in addition to his refinement and cultivation, good sound

sense, a moderate amount of tact, and, above all, good temper, he will

find, in the fact of his being “a gentleman,” an immense weight of

advantage over his antagonists. We remember to have seen protests, in

the writings of a modern school of English Churchmen, against what they

are pleased to term “the gentleman heresy;” representing it as dangerous

to the best interests of both priests and people, that the former should

attempt to combine with their sacred office the manners, the habits, and

the social position of the gentleman. Without entering here into the

serious question whether a special clerical caste, as it were, standing

between the lower ranks and the higher of the laity, distinct from both,

and having its separate habits and position, is a desirable institution

to recommend; without discussing the other equally important question,

whether the aristocracy of a Christian nation have not also _their_

religious needs, and whether these also have not a right to be

consulted, and whether they will bear to be handed over to a priesthood

which, if not plebeian itself, is to have at least no common interests

or feelings with the higher classes—a question, this latter, to which

history will give us a pretty decided answer;—it is quite enough to say

that the working-classes themselves would be the foremost to demand—if

the case were put before them fairly—that the ministers of religion

should be “gentlemen” in every sense of the word. They will listen, no

doubt, with gaping mouths and open ears, to a flow of rhodomontade

declamation from an uneducated preacher: an inspired tinker will fill a

chapel or a village-green, while the quiet rector goes through the

service to a half-empty church. But inspired tinkers are rare in any

age; and it is not excitement or declamation which go to form the really

religious life of England. This—which we must not be supposed to confine

within the limits of any Church establishment—depends for its support on

sources that lie deeper and quieter than these. In trouble, in sickness,

in temptation, these things miserably fail. And the dealing of “a

gentleman” with these cases—a gentleman in manners, in thoughts, in

feeling, in respect for the feelings of others—is as distinct in kind

and in effect, as the firm but delicate handling of the educated surgeon

(who goes to the bottom of the matter nevertheless) differs from the

well-meant but bungling axe-and-cautery system of our forefathers. The

poor understand this well. They know a gentleman, and respect him; and

they will excuse in their parish minister the absence of some other very

desirable qualities sooner than this. The structure of English society

must change—its gentry must forfeit their character as a body, as they

never have done yet—before this feeling can change. When you officer

your regiments from any other class than their natural superiors, then

you may begin to officer your national Church with a plebeian clergy.

There is another point connected with the legitimate influence of the

higher classes on which the writer speaks, we fear, either from a theory

of what ought to be, or from some very exceptional cases:—

“The offices of magistrate, of poor-law guardian, or even of

churchwarden, are so many modes of honourable employment offered to

those who feel in themselves some capacity for business and some wish

to be useful. It will be understood that a considerable number of

gentlemen of independent income, retired tradesmen, and officers not

employed on service, having thus before them the prospect of a useful

and active life, gather round an English village, instead of remaining

buried in the great towns, as too often is the case in our own

country.”

We fear the foreign reader will be mistaken if he understands anything

of the sort. The county magistracy offers, without doubt, a position

both honourable and useful; but it is seldom open to the classes

mentioned. We do not say that the offices of parish guardian and

churchwarden are highly attractive objects of ambition; but we do think

that in good hands they might become very different from what they are;

immense benefit would result in every way to many country parishes, if

men of the class whom the writer represents as filling them would more

often be induced to do so, instead of avoiding them as troublesome and

ungrateful offices, and leaving them to be claimed by the demagogues and

busybodies of the district. It may not be pleasant for a gentleman to

put himself in competition for an office of this kind; but it may be his

duty to do so. The reproach which the writer addresses to the higher

classes in France is only too applicable to those in England also:—

“If all those whose education, whose intelligence, whose habits of

more elevated life, give them that authority which constitutes a true

aristocracy, would but make use of their high position to exercise an

influence for good upon public matters—if only the honest and sensible

party in our country would shake off its apathy and fulfil all the

duties of citizens—our institutions would have a life and power which

at present are too often wanting.”

True words for the conservative spirit both in the English Church and in

the English nation to lay to heart; for, so long as education and

refinement are too nice to stain themselves with the public dust of the

arena, they have no right to complain if candidates, less able but less

scrupulous, parade themselves as victors.

If our neighbours over the water read (as we hope many of them will)

these little sketches of an English village, drawn in their own

language, if not by one of themselves, yet by one who is evidently no

stranger to their national sympathies, and who writes manifestly with

the kindest feelings towards both, it is well, perhaps, that they should

bear in mind that it is a picture purposely taken under a sunny aspect.

Rural England is not all Arcadia. All English landladies, even in the

country, are not Mrs Joneses, nor are all English families as hospitable

as the Masons. There are villages where there is no “Miss Mary” to teach

the children or to talk sentiment. There are less fascinating

“strangers’ guides” which could take him into the public-houses and the

dancing-rooms as well as to rural fêtes and lectures, and show him what

goes on there. But while we are far from claiming to be judged by our

bright side only, we are glad that foreigners should see our bright side

sometimes. It has not been too often painted in French colours; and we

trust they will give the present artist’s work a fair hanging in their

National Gallery.

LORD MACKENZIE’S ROMAN LAW.[3]

It has sometimes been suspected that, in the noble delineation of the

Roman character ascribed to Anchises in the sixth book of the ‘Æneid,’

Virgil was induced, by unworthy motives, to depreciate unduly the

oratory of his countrymen as compared with that of the Greeks; and

undoubtedly the inferiority of Cicero to Demosthenes, as a mere forensic

pleader, is not so clear or decided as to demand imperatively from a

Latin poet the admission there unreservedly made by the blunt and almost

prosaic expression, “Orabunt causas melius.” Possibly, however, it was

the poet’s true object, by yielding the most liberal concessions on

other points, to enforce the more strongly his emphatic assertion, not

merely of the superiority of the Romans in the arts of ordinary

government, but of their exclusive or peculiar possession of the powers

and faculties fitted for attaining and preserving a mighty empire. It is

certain that he has justly and vividly described the great

characteristic of that people, and the chief source and secret of their

influence in the history of the world, when he makes the patriarch

exclaim,—

“Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;

Hæ tibi erunt artes.”

In aid of the high moral and intellectual qualities which led to their

success as the conquerors and rulers of the world, it is most material

to notice the structure and genius of the language in which the Roman

people expressed and embodied their political, legislative, and judicial

determinations. Every national language is more or less the reflex of

the national mind; and in no instance is this correspondence more

conspicuous than in the case we are now considering.

The Latin language is inferior to the Greek in subtlety and refinement

of expression, and is therefore far less adapted for metaphysical

speculation or poetical grace—for analysing the nicer diversities of

thought, or distinguishing the minuter shades of passion; but in the

enunciation of ethical truths and of judicial maxims, it possesses a

clearness, force, and majesty, to which no other form of speech can

approach. The great foundations of law are good morals and good sense,

and these, however simple and plain in their elements, are not mean or

common things. On the contrary, they are susceptible of the greatest

dignity of expression when embodied in words; and the language in which

their principles shall be clothed may be of the utmost importance in

rendering them both more portable in the memory and more impressive on

the heart. The Roman jurists of the later period of the Republic were

not careless students of the Greek philosophy; but they used it in their

juridical writings with a wise discretion, and in special reference to

the object of law, which is to lay down the broad rules of human conduct

and personal rights in a form easily understood, and capable of being

easily followed and faithfully observed by the mass of mankind.

The unequalled talent of the Roman people for political organisation is

evinced by the manner in which the imperial authority was maintained,

after the personal character of the nominal sovereigns had degenerated

to the very lowest point of profligacy and imbecility. Our Teutonic

ancestors had the wisdom to appreciate and adopt much of the machinery

which they thus found in operation; and the municipal governments, as

well as the judicial constitutions of Europe, are at this day influenced

by the models which were thus left. The Popedom itself, on whose

probable endurance for the future it would be hazardous to speculate,

but whose marvellous ascendancy in time past is beyond dispute, was

little else than an adaptation of the imperial organisation to

ecclesiastical objects. But the influence of the Roman law on other

nations was pre-eminently seen in the wide adoption of its general

scheme, as well as of its special rules and maxims. Even the law of

England—of all European systems perhaps the least indebted to the civil

law—is deeply imbued with the Roman spirit in some of the most important

departments of jurisprudence; and where the authority of the Roman law

cannot claim a submissive allegiance, it is yet listened to as the best

manifestation of the _Recta Ratio_ that can anywhere be found. The vast

experience of human transactions, and the endless complexities of social

relations, which the Roman empire presented, afforded the best materials

for maturing a science which was cultivated for noble objects by minds

of the highest order, and embodied in propositions of unrivalled power

and precision.

Independently of its influence on individual municipal systems, the

Roman law deserves to be carefully studied, as affording the easiest

transition, and the best introduction, from classical and philosophical

pursuits to the technical rules and scientific principles of general

jurisprudence. From Aristotle’s Ethics, or from Cicero De Officiis, the

passage is plain and the ascent gentle to the Institutes of Gaius and

Justinian; and these, again, are the best preparation for the perusal of

Blackstone or Erskine. It ought, indeed, to be considered as a great

privilege of the law-student that his path lies for so great a portion

of its early way through a region which has been rendered so pleasing

and attractive by the labours of the eminent men whom we have now named,

and who combine so much charm of style and correctness of taste with so

much practical wisdom and useful philosophy.

Hitherto, we think, there has been a great, or rather an utter, want in

this country of any good Institute of the civil law, that could safely

and efficiently guide the student in his early labours, or assist him in

his more advanced progress. The elegant and admirable summary given by

Gibbon in his History, cannot, without much comment and expansion, be

made a book of instruction; but we feel assured that this want which we

have noticed is supplied by the work now before us. Lord Mackenzie’s

book, though bearing the popular and modest title of ‘Studies in Roman

Law,’ is truly an Institute, or didactic Exposition, of that system,

where its elements and leading principles are laid down and illustrated

as fully as a student could require, while a reference is made at every

step to texts and authorities, which will enable him to extend and

confirm his views by a full examination of original sources. The

enunciation of the legal principles is everywhere given with great

brevity, but with remarkable clearness and precision, and in a manner

equally pleasing and unpretending. The comparison which is at the same

time presented between the Roman system and the laws of France, England,

and Scotland, add greatly to the attraction as well as to the usefulness

of the work.

At the risk of appearing to resemble the man in Hierocles who carried a

brick about with him as a sample of his house, we shall here offer a few

extracts in illustration of the character of the work and its style of

execution, premising that the passages we have selected have reference

to topics more of a popular than of a scientific kind.

The interest attaching at present to questions of international law, and

to the rights of belligerents, will recommend the passages on those

subjects which here follow:—

“If all the states of Europe were to concur in framing a general code

of international law, which should be binding on them all, and form

themselves into a confederacy to enforce it, this might be regarded as

a positive law of nations for Europe. But nothing of this sort has

ever been attempted. The nearest approach to such international

legislation is the general regulations introduced into treaties by the

great Powers of Europe, which are binding on the contracting parties,

but not on the states that decline to accede to them.

“To settle disputes between nations on the principles of justice,

rather than leave them to the blind arbitrament of war, is the primary

object of the European law of nations. When war has broken out, it

regulates the rights and duties of belligerents, and the conduct of

neutrals.

“As the weak side of the law of nations is the want of a supreme

executive power to enforce it, small states are exposed to great

disadvantages in disputes with their more powerful neighbours. But the

modern political system of Europe for the preservation of the balance

of power forms a strong barrier against unjust aggression. When the

power of one great state can be balanced, or kept in check, by that of

another, the independence of smaller states is in some degree secured

against both; for neither of the great Powers will allow its rival to

add to its strength by the conquest of the smaller states....

“By the declaration of 16th April 1856, the Congress of Paris, held

after the Crimean war, adopted four principles of international law.

1. Privateering is and remains abolished. 2. The neutral flag covers

the enemy’s merchandise, with the exception of contraband of war. 3.

Neutral merchandise, with the exception of contraband of war, is not

liable to seizure under an enemy’s flag. 4. Blockades, in order to be

binding, must be effective; that is to say, must be maintained by a

force really sufficient to prevent approach to an enemy’s coast. This

declaration was signed by the plenipotentiaries of the seven Powers

who attended the Congress, and it was accepted by nearly all the

states of the world. But the United States of America, Spain, and

Mexico, refused their assent, because they objected to the abolition

of privateering. So far as these Powers are concerned, therefore,

privateering—that is, the employment of private cruisers commissioned

by the state—still remains a perfectly legitimate mode of warfare.

Britain and the other Powers who acceded to the declaration, are bound

to discontinue the practice in hostilities with each other. But if we

should have the misfortune to go to war with the United States, we

should not be bound to abstain from privateering, unless the United

States should enter into a similar and corresponding engagement with

us....

“The freedom of commerce, to which neutral states are entitled, does

not extend to contraband of war; but, according to the principles laid

down in the declaration of Paris of April 1856, it may now be said

that ‘a ship at sea is part of the soil of the country to which it

belongs,’ with the single exception implied in the right of a

belligerent to search for contraband. What constitutes contraband is

not precisely settled; the limits are not absolutely the same for all

Powers, and variations occur in particular treaties; but, speaking

generally, belligerents have a right to treat as contraband, and to

capture, all munitions of war and other articles directly auxiliary to

warlike purposes. The neutral carrier engages in a contraband trade

when he conveys official despatches from a person in the service of

the enemy to the enemy’s possessions; but it has been decided that it

is not illegal for a neutral vessel to carry despatches from the enemy

to his Ambassador or his Consul in a neutral country. The penalty of

carrying contraband is confiscation of the illegal cargo, and

sometimes condemnation of the ship itself.

“The affair of the Trent, West Indian mail, gave rise to an important

question of maritime law deeply affecting the rights of neutrals. In

November 1861, Captain Wilkes, of the American war-steamer San

Jacinto, after firing a roundshot and a shell, boarded the English

mail-packet Trent, in Old Bahama Channel, on its passage from Havannah

to Southampton, and carried off by force Messrs Mason and Slidell, two

Commissioners from the Confederate States, who were taken on board as

passengers bound for England. The Commissioners were conveyed to

America, and committed to prison; but, after a formal requisition by

Britain, declaring the capture to be illegal, they were surrendered by

the Federal Government.

“The seizure of the Commissioners was attempted to be justified by

American writers on two grounds: 1st, That the Commissioners were

contraband of war, and that in carrying them the Trent was liable to

condemnation for having committed a breach of neutrality; 2d, That, at

all events, Captain Wilkes was entitled to seize the Commissioners

either as enemies or rebels. Both these propositions are plainly

untenable....

“In an able despatch by the French. Government to the Cabinet of

Washington, M. Thouvenel declared that the seizure of the

Commissioners in a neutral ship, trading from a neutral port to a

neutral port, was not only contrary to the law of nations, but a

direct contravention of the principles which the United States had up

to that time invariably avowed and acted upon. Russia, Austria, and

Prussia officially intimated their concurrence in that opinion.

“To argue the matter on the legal points in opposition to the

disinterested and well-reasoned despatch of the French Minister was a

hopeless task. In an elaborate state-paper, Mr Seward, the American

Secretary of State, professed to rest the surrender of the

Commissioners upon a mere technicality—that there had been no formal

condemnation of the Trent by a prize-court; but, apart from this point

of form, the seizure was indefensible on the merits as a flagrant

violation of the law of nations; and if the principle was not so

frankly acknowledged by Mr Seward as it ought to have been, some

allowance must be made for a statesman who was trammelled by the

report of his colleague, Mr Welles, the Secretary of the Navy,

approving of Captain Wilkes’s conduct, and still more by the necessity

of adopting a policy directly contrary to the whole current of popular

opinion in the Northern States.”

The law of marriage and of divorce is very fully treated by Lord

Mackenzie, and the peculiarities of the different European systems are

well pointed out. The subject, however, is too extensive and important

to admit of being incidentally noticed; and we shall confine our

extracts here to a single passage describing a Roman form of

cohabitation less honourable than matrimony, and such as we trust is

never likely, to be legalised among ourselves:—

“Under Augustus, concubinage—the permanent cohabitation of an

unmarried man with an unmarried woman—was authorised by law. The man

who had a lawful wife could not take a concubine; neither was any man

permitted to take as a concubine the wife of another man, or to have

more than one concubine at the same time. A breach of these

regulations was always condemned, and fell under the head of

_stuprum_. In later times the concubine was called _amica_. Between

persons of unequal rank concubinage was not uncommon; and sometimes it

was resorted to by widowers who had already lawful children and did

not wish to contract another legal marriage, as in the cases of

Vespasian, Antoninus Pius, and M. Aurelius.

“As regards the father, the children born in concubinage were not

under his power, and were not entitled to succeed as children by a

legal marriage; but they had an acknowledged father, and could demand

support from him, besides exercising other rights. As regards the

mother, their rights of succession were as extensive as those of her

lawful children.

“Under the Christian emperors concubinage was not favoured; but it

subsisted as a legal institution in the time of Justinian. At last Leo

the Philosopher, Emperor of the East, in a.d. 887, abrogated the laws

which permitted concubinage, as being contrary to religion and public

decency. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘should you prefer a muddy pool, when you can

drink at a purer fountain?’ The existence of this custom, however, was

long prolonged in the West among the Franks, Lombards, and Germans;

and it is notorious that the clergy for some time gave themselves up

to it without restraint.”

The practice of adoption prevailing in ancient Rome is well known, but

an account of it as it is retained in the French law may be thought

curious:—

“In France the usage of adoption was lost after the first race of

kings: it disappeared, not only in the customary provinces, but also

in the provinces governed by the written law. Re-established in 1792,

adoption is now sanctioned by the Civil Code. Adoption, however, is

only permitted to persons of either sex above the age of fifty, having

neither children nor other lawful descendants, and being at least

fifteen years older than the individual adopted. No married person can

adopt without the consent of the other spouse. The privilege can only

be exercised in favour of one who has been an object of the adopter’s

care for at least six years during minority, or of one who has saved

the life of the adopter in battle, from fire, or from drowning. In the

latter case the only restriction respecting the age of the parties is,

that the adopter shall be older than the adopted, and shall have

attained his majority. In no case can adoption take place before the

majority of the person proposed to be adopted.

“The form of adoption consists of a declaration of consent by the

parties before a justice of the peace for the place where the adopter

resides, after which the transaction requires to be approved of by the

tribunal of first instance. After adoption, the adopted person retains

all his rights as a member of his natural family. He acquires no right

of succession to the property of any relation of the adopter; but in

regard to the property of the adopter himself, he has precisely the

same rights as a child born in marriage, even although there should be

other children born in marriage after his adoption. The adopted takes

the name of the adopter in addition to his own. No marriage can take

place between the adopter and the adopted, or his descendants, and in

certain other cases specified.

“The practice of adoption, which is better suited to some states of

society than to others, still prevails among Eastern nations. It has

never been recognised as a legal institution in England or Scotland.”

In ancient Rome, as at one time in Modern Athens, there was a practice

of throwing or emptying things out of window not without danger or

damage to the passer-by. This was the law on that point:—

“If anything was thrown from the windows of a house near a public

thoroughfare, so as to injure any one by its fall, the inhabitant or

occupier was, by the Roman law, bound to repair the damage, though it

might be done without his knowledge by his family or servants, or even

by a stranger. This affords an illustration of liability arising

_quasi ex delicto_.

“In like manner, when damage was done to any person by a slave or an

animal, the owner might in certain circumstances be liable for the

loss, though the mischief was done without his knowledge and against

his will; but in such a case, if no fault was directly imputable to

the owner, he was entitled to free himself from all responsibility by

abandoning the offending slave or animal to the person injured, which

was called _noxæ dare_. Though these noxal actions are not classed by

Justinian under the title of obligations _quasi ex delicto_, yet, in

principle, they evidently fall within that category.

“All animals _feræ naturæ_, such as lions, tigers, bears, and the

like, must be kept in a secure place to prevent them from doing

mischief; but the same vigilance is not required in the case of

animals _mansuetæ naturæ_, the presumption being, that no harm will

arise in leaving them at large, unless they are known to be vicious or

dangerous. So, where a foxhound destroyed eighteen sheep belonging to

a farmer, it was decided by the House of Lords in an appeal from

Scotland, that the owner of the dog was not liable for the loss, there

being no evidence necessarily showing either knowledge of the vicious

propensities of the dog or want of due care in keeping him; and it was

observed that, both according to the English and the Scotch law, ‘the

_culpa_ or negligence of the owner is the foundation on which the

right of action against him rests.’”

The subject of succession is treated by Lord Mackenzie in a very ample

and satisfactory discussion. In particular, the chapter on ‘Intestate

Succession in France, England, and Scotland’ will be found highly useful

to the international jurist. Lord Mackenzie has not failed to observe

here the striking peculiarity of the Scotch law, by which, with some

qualifications very recently introduced, intestate succession, whether

in real or personal estate, goes entirely to the agnates or paternal

relations, and not at all to cognates or those on the mother’s side.

This was the law of the Twelve Tables, but it was wholly altered in

process of time, and, under Justinian’s enactments, paternal and

maternal relations were equally favoured. In retaining the old

distinction, the law of Scotland seems now to stand alone. The

peculiarity may perhaps be explained by the strong feelings of family

connection or clanship which so long prevailed in Scotland, and which

bound together the descendants of the same paternal ancestor by so many

common interests. But it is certainly singular that it should have

continued to the present day with such slender modifications; and it is

no small anomaly that, while a man may succeed to any of his maternal

relations, none of his maternal relations can in general succeed to him,

even in property which he may have inherited from the mother’s side.

The portion of the work devoted to actions and procedure introduces a

clear light into a subject extremely technical, and often made very

obscure by the mode in which it is treated. We have only room for a

short extract as to the _remedium miserabile_ of Cessio Bonorum:—

“The _cessio bonorum_ has been adopted in France as well as in

Scotland. By the ancient law of France, every debtor who sought the

benefit of _cessio_ was obliged by the sentence to wear in public a

green bonnet (_bonnet vert_) furnished by his creditors, under the

penalty of being imprisoned if he was found without it. According to

Pothier, this was intended as a warning to all citizens to conduct

their affairs with prudence, so as to avoid the risk of exposing

themselves to such ignominy; but he explains that in his time, though

the condition was inserted in the sentence, it was seldom acted on in

practice, except at Bordeaux, where it is said to have been rigidly

enforced.

“Formerly, a custom somewhat similar prevailed in Scotland. Every

debtor who obtained the benefit of _cessio_ was appointed to wear ‘the

dyvour’s habit,’ which was a coat or upper garment, half yellow and

half brown, with a cap of the same colours. In modern times this usage

was discontinued. ‘According to the state of public feeling, it would

be held a disgrace to the administration of justice. It would shock

the innocent; it would render the guilty miserably profligate.’ For a

considerable time it had become the practice in the judgment to

dispense with the dyvour’s habit, and by the statute of Will. IV. it

is utterly abolished.”

The work concludes with a very agreeable chapter on the Roman bar, from

which we shall borrow a couple of passages. A certain portion of time

was generally allowed to advocates for their speeches, but which varied

before different judges and at different periods.

“A clepsydra was used in the tribunals for measuring time by water,

similar in principle to the modern sand-glass. When the judge

consented to prolong the period assigned for discussion, he was said

to give water—_dare aquam_. ‘As for myself,’ says Pliny, ‘whenever I

sit upon the bench (which is much oftener than I appear at the bar), I

always give the advocates as much water as they require; for I look

upon it as the height of presumption to pretend to guess before a

cause is heard what time it will require, and to set limits to an

affair before one is acquainted with its extent, especially as the

first and most sacred duty of a judge is patience, which, indeed, is

itself a very considerable part of justice. But the advocate will say

many things that are useless. Granted. Yet is it not better to hear

too much than not to hear enough? Besides, how can you know that the

things are useless till you have heard them?’

“Marcus Aurelius, we are told, was in the habit of giving a large

measure of water to the advocates, and even permitting them to speak

as long as they pleased.

“By a constitution of Valentinian and Valens, A.D. 368, advocates were

authorised to speak as long as they wished, upon condition that they

should not abuse this liberty in order to swell the amount of their

fees.”

The history of Roman practice, and, in particular, of the Cincian Law on

the subject of advocates’ fees, is ably condensed; and the law of France

and Scotland on the subject is thus stated:—

“In France, ancient laws and decisions, as well as the opinions of the

doctors, allowed an action to advocates to recover their fees; but

according to the later jurisprudence of the Parliament of Paris, and

the actual discipline of the bar now in force, no advocate was or is

permitted to institute such an action. In like manner barristers in

England are held to exercise a profession of an honorary character,

‘and cannot, therefore, maintain an action for remuneration for what

they have done, unless the employer has expressly agreed to pay them.’

Upon this point the authorities in the law of Scotland are not very

precise. Lord Bankton says, ‘Though action be competent for such

gratification, advocates who regard their character abhor such

judicial claims, and keep in their mind the notable saying of Ulpian

upon the like occasion, _Quœdam enim tametsi honeste accipiantur,

inhoneste tamen petuntur_.’ But it is maintained by others, whose

opinion is entitled to great weight, that no action lies for such

fees—the presumption, in the absence of an express paction, being,

that the advocate has ‘either been satisfied, or agreed to serve

_gratis_.’”

What the law of England is on this most important question will probably

be definitively settled in a _cause célèbre_ now depending. We do not

conceal our earnest hope that the principles laid down in the recent

judgment of Chief-Justice Erle will never be departed from.