that on this subject I was often indulging in an Utopian dream, rather
than a well-founded opinion. I have been concerned at finding that
these fine estates were too often involved, and mortgaged, or placed
in the hands of creditors, and the owners exiled from their paternal
lands. There is an extravagance, I am told, that runs parallel with
wealth; a lavish expenditure among the great; a senseless competition
among the aspiring; a heedless, joyless dissipation among all the
upper ranks, that often beggars even these splendid establishments,
breaks down the pride and principles of their possessors, and makes
too many of them mere place-hunters, or shifting absentees. It is thus
that so many are thrown into the hands of government; and a court,
which ought to be the most pure and honourable in Europe, is so often
degraded by noble, but importunate time-servers. It is thus, too, that
so many become exiles from their native land, crowding the hotels of
foreign countries, and expending upon thankless strangers the wealth
so hardly drained from their laborious peasantry. I have looked upon
these latter with a mixture of censure and concern. Knowing the almost
bigoted fondness of an Englishman for his native home, I can conceive
what must be their compunction and regret, when, amidst the sunburnt
plains of France, they call to mind the green fields of England; the
hereditary groves which they have abandoned; and the hospitable roof
of their fathers, which they have left desolate, or to be inhabited by
strangers. But retrenchment is no plea for abandonment of country.
They nave risen with the prosperity of the land; let them abide its
fluctuations, and conform to its fortunes. It is not for the rich to
fly, because the country is suffering: let them share, in their
relative proportion, the common lot; they owe it to the land that has
elevated them to honour and affluence. When the poor have to diminish
their scanty morsels of bread; when they have to compound with the
cravings of nature, and study with how little they can do, and not be
starved; it is not then for the rich to fly, and diminish still
farther the resources of the poor, that they themselves may live in
splendour in a cheaper country. Let them rather retire to their
estates, and there practise retrenchment. Let them return to that
noble simplicity, that practical good sense, that honest pride, which
form the foundation of true English character, and from them they may
again rear the edifice of fair and honourable prosperity.
On the rural habits of the English nobility and gentry, on the manner
in which they discharge their duties of their patrimonial possessions,
depend greatly the virtue and welfare of the nation. So long as they
pass the greater part of their time in the quiet and purity of the
country; surrounded by the monuments of their illustrious ancestors;
surrounded by every thing that can inspire generous pride, noble
emulation, and amiable and magnanimous sentiment; so long they are
safe, and in them the nation may repose its interests and its honour.
But the moment that they become the servile throngers of court
avenues, and give themselves up to the political intrigues and
heartless dissipations of the metropolis, that moment they lose the
real nobility Of their natures, and become the mere leeches of the
country.
That the great majority of nobility and gentry in England are endowed
with high notions of honour and independence, I thoroughly believe.
They have evidenced it lately on very important questions, and have
given an example of adherence to principle, in preference to party and
power, that must have astonished many of the venal and obsequious
courts of Europe. Such are the glorious effects of freedom, when
infused into a constitution. But it seems to me, that they are apt to
forget the positive nature of their duties, and to fancy that their
eminent privileges are only so many means of self-indulgence. They
should recollect, that in a constitution like that of England, the
titled orders are intended to be as useful as they are ornamental, and
it is their virtues alone that can render them both. Their duties are
divided between the sovereign and the subjects; surrounding and giving
lustre and dignity to the throne, and at the same time tempering and
mitigating its rays, until they are transmitted in mild and genial
radiance to the people. Born to leisure and opulence, they owe the
exercise of their talents, and the expenditure of their wealth, to
their native country. They may be compared to the clouds; which, being
drawn up by the sun, and elevated in the heavens, reflect and magnify
his splendour; while they repay the earth, from which they derive
their sustenance, by returning their treasures to its bosom in
fertilizing showers.
A BACHELOR'S CONFESSIONS.
"I'll live a private, pensive single life."
--_The Collier of Croydon_.
I was sitting in my room, a morning or two since, reading, when some
one tapped at the door, and Master Simon entered. He had an unusually
fresh appearance; he had put on a bright green riding-coat, with a
bunch of violets in the button-hole, and had the air of an old
bachelor trying to rejuvenate himself. He had not, however, his usual
briskness and vivacity; but loitered about the room with somewhat of
absence of manner, humming the old song--"Go, lovely rose, tell her
that wastes her time and me;" and then, leaning against the window,
and looking upon the landscape, he uttered a very audible sigh. As I
had not been accustomed to see Master Simon in a pensive mood, I
thought there might be some vexation preying on his mind, and I
endeavoured to introduce a cheerful strain of conversation; but he was
not in the vein to follow it up, and proposed that we should take a
walk.
It was a beautiful morning, of that soft vernal temperature, that
seems to thaw all the frost out of one's blood, and to set all nature
in a ferment. The very fishes felt its influence; the cautious trout
ventured out of his dark hole to seek his mate; the roach and the dace
rose up to the surface of the brook to bask in the sunshine, and the
amorous frog piped from among the rushes. If ever an oyster can really
fall in love, as has been said or sung, it must be on such a morning.
The weather certainly had its effect even upon Master Simon, for he
seemed obstinately bent upon the pensive mood. Instead of stepping
briskly along, smacking his dog-whip, whistling quaint ditties, or
telling sporting anecdotes, he leaned on my arm, and talked about the
approaching nuptials; from whence he made several digressions upon the
character of womankind, touched a little upon the tender passion, and
made sundry very excellent, though rather trite, observations upon
disappointments in love. It was evident that he had something on his
mind which he wished to impart, but felt awkward in approaching it. I
was curious to see to what this strain would lead; but was determined
not to assist him. Indeed, I mischievously pretended to turn the
conversation, and talked of his usual topics, dogs, horses, and
hunting; but he was very brief in his replies, and invariably got
back, by hook or by crook, into the sentimental vein.
At length we came to a clump of trees that overhung a whispering
brook, with a rustic bench at their feet. The trees were grievously
scored with letters and devices, which had grown out of all shape and
size by the growth of the bark; and it appeared that this grove had
served as a kind of register of the family loves from time immemorial.
Here Master Simon made a pause, pulled up a tuft of flowers, threw
them one by one into the water, and at length, turning somewhat
abruptly upon me, asked me if I had ever been in love. I confess the
question startled me a little, as I am not over-fond of making
confessions of my amorous follies; and above all, should never dream
of choosing my friend Master Simon for a confidant. He did not wait,
however, for a reply; the inquiry was merely a prelude to a confession
on his own part, and after several circumlocutions and whimsical
preambles, he fairly disburthened himself of a very tolerable story of
his having been crossed in love.
The reader will, very probably, suppose that it related to the gay
widow who jilted him not long since at Doncaster races;--no such
thing. It was about a sentimental passion that he once had for a most
beautiful young lady, who wrote poetry and played on the harp. He used
to serenade her; and, indeed, he described several tender and gallant
scenes, in which he was evidently picturing himself in his mind's eye
as some elegant hero of romance, though, unfortunately for the tale, I
only saw him as he stood before me, a dapper little old bachelor, with
a face like an apple that has dried with the bloom on it.
What were the particulars of this tender tale, I have already
forgotten; indeed, I listened to it with a heart like a very
pebble-stone, having hard work to repress a smile while Master Simon
was putting on the amorous swain, uttering every now and then a sigh,
and endeavouring to look sentimental and melancholy.
All that I recollect is that the lady, according to his account, was
certainly a little touched; for she used to accept all the music that
he copied for her harp, and all the patterns that he drew for her
dresses; and he began to flatter himself, after a long course of
delicate attentions, that he was gradually fanning up a gentle flame
in her heart, when she suddenly accepted the hand of a rich,
boisterous, fox-hunting baronet, without either music or sentiment,
who carried her by storm after a fortnight's courtship.
Master Simon could not help concluding by some observation about
"modest merit," and the power of gold over the sex. As a remembrance
of his passion, he pointed out a heart carved on the bark of one of
the trees; but which, in the process of time, had grown out into a
large excrescence; and he showed me a lock of her hair, which he wore
in a true-lover's knot, in a large gold brooch.
I have seldom met with an old bachelor that had not, at some time or
other, his nonsensical moment, when he would become tender and
sentimental, talk about the concerns of the heart, and have some
confession of a delicate nature to make. Almost every man has some
little trait of romance in his life, which he looks back to with
fondness, and about which he is apt to grow garrulous occasionally. He
recollects himself as he was at the time, young and gamesome; and
forgets that his hearers have no other idea of the hero of the tale,
but such as he may appear at the time of telling it; peradventure, a
withered, whimsical, spindle-shanked old gentleman. With married men,
it is true, this is not so frequently the case: their amorous romance
is apt to decline after marriage; why, I cannot for the life of me
imagine; but with a bachelor, though it may slumber, it never dies. It
is always liable to break out again in transient flashes, and never so
much as on a spring morning in the country; or on a winter evening
when seated in his solitary chamber stirring up the fire and talking
of matrimony.
The moment that Master Simon had gone through his confession, and, to
use the common phrase, "had made a clean breast of it," he became
quite himself again. He had settled the point which had been worrying
his mind, and doubtless considered himself established as a man of
sentiment in my opinion. Before we had finished our morning's stroll,
he was singing as blithe as a grasshopper, whistling to his dogs, and
telling droll stories: and I recollect that he was particularly
facetious that day at dinner on the subject of matrimony, and uttered
several excellent jokes, not to be found in Joe Miller, that made the
bride elect blush and look down; but set all the old gentlemen at the
table in a roar, and absolutely brought tears into the general's eyes.
ENGLISH GRAVITY.
"Merrie England!"
--_Ancient Phrase_.
There is nothing so rare as for a man to ride his hobby without
molestation. I find the Squire has not so undisturbed an indulgence in
his humours as I had imagined; but has been repeatedly thwarted of
late, and has suffered a kind of well-meaning persecution from a Mr.
Faddy, an old gentleman of some weight, at least of purse, who has
recently moved into the neighbourhood. He is a worthy and substantial
manufacturer, who, having accumulated a large fortune by dint of
steam-engines and spinning-jennies, has retired from business, and set
up for a country gentleman. He has taken an old country-seat, and
refitted it; and painted and plastered it, until it looks not unlike
his own manufactory. He has been particularly careful in mending the
walls and hedges, and putting up notices of spring-guns and man-traps
in every part of his premises. Indeed, he shows great jealousy about
his territorial rights, having stopped up a footpath that led across
his fields, and given warning, in staring letters, that whoever was
found trespassing on those grounds would be prosecuted with the utmost
rigour of the law. He has brought into the country with him all the
practical maxims of town, and the bustling habits of business; and is
one of those sensible, useful, prosing, troublesome, intolerable old
gentlemen, that go about wearying and worrying society with excellent
plans for public utility.
He is very much disposed to be on intimate terms with the Squire, and
calls on him every now and then, with some project for the good of the
neighbourhood, which happens to run diametrically opposite to some one
or other of the Squire's peculiar notions; but which is "too sensible
a measure" to be openly opposed. He has annoyed him excessively, by
enforcing the vagrant laws; persecuting the gipsies, and endeavouring
to suppress country wakes and holiday games; which he considers great
nuisances, and reprobates as causes of the deadly sin of idleness.
There is evidently in all this a little of the ostentation of
newly-acquired consequence; the tradesman is gradually swelling into
the aristocrat; and he begins to grow excessively intolerant of every
thing that is not genteel. He has a great deal to say about "the
common people;" talks much of his park, his preserves, and the
necessity of enforcing the game-laws more strictly; and makes frequent
use of the phrase, "the gentry of the neighbourhood."
He came to the Hall lately, with a face full of business, that he and
the Squire, to use his own words, "might lay their heads together," to
hit upon some mode of putting a stop to the frolicking at the village
on the approaching May-day. It drew, he said, idle people together
from all parts of the neighbourhood, who spent the day fiddling,
dancing, and carousing, instead of staying at home to work for their
families.
Now, as the Squire, unluckily, is at the bottom of these May-day
revels, it may be supposed that the suggestions of the sagacious Mr.
Faddy were not received with the best grace in the world. It is true,
the old gentleman is too courteous to show any temper to a guest in
his own house; but no sooner was he gone, than the indignation of the
Squire found vent, at having his poetical cobwebs invaded by this
buzzing, bluebottle fly of traffic. In his warmth, he inveighed
against the whole race of manufacturers, who, I found, were sore
disturbers of his comfort. "Sir," said he, with emotion, "it makes my
heart bleed, to see all our fine streams dammed up, and bestrode by
cotton-mills; our valleys smoking with steam-engines, and the din of
the hammer and the loom scaring away all our rural delight. What's to
become of merry old England, when its manor-houses are all turned into
manufactories, and its sturdy peasantry into pin-makers and
stocking-weavers? I have looked in vain for merry Sherwood, and all
the greenwood haunts of Robin Hood; the whole country is covered with
manufacturing towns. I have stood on the ruins of Dudley Castle, and
looked round, with an aching heart, on what were once its feudal
domains of verdant and beautiful country. Sir, I beheld a mere _campus
phlegrae_; a region of fire; reeking with coal-pits, and furnaces, and
smelting-houses, vomiting forth flames and smoke. The pale and ghastly
people, toiling among vile exhalations, looked more like demons than
human beings; the clanking wheels and engines, seen through the murky
atmosphere, looked like instruments of torture in this pandemonium.
What is to become of the country, with these evils rankling in its
very core? Sir, these manufacturers will be the ruin of our rural
manners; they will destroy the national character; they will not leave
materials for a single line of poetry!"
The Squire is apt to wax eloquent on such themes; and I could hardly
help smiling at this whimsical lamentation over national industry and
public improvement. I am told, however, that he really grieves at the
growing spirit of trade, as destroying the charm of life. He considers
every new shorthand mode of doing things, as an inroad of snug sordid
method; and thinks that this will soon become a mere matter-of-fact
world, where life will be reduced to a mathematical calculation of
conveniences, and every thing will be done by steam.
He maintains, also, that the nation has declined in its free and
joyous spirit, in proportion as it has turned its attention to
commerce and manufactures; and that, in old times, when England was an
idler, it was also a merrier little island. In support of this
opinion, he adduces the frequency and splendour of ancient festivals
and merry-makings, and the hearty spirit with which they were kept up
by all classes of people. His memory is stored with the accounts given
by Stow, in his Survey of London, of the holiday revels at the inns of
court, the Christmas mummeries, and the masquings and bonfires about
the streets. London, he says, in those days, resembled the continental
cities in its picturesque manners and amusements. The court used to
dance after dinner, on public occasions. After the coronation dinner
of Richard II, for example, the king, the prelates, the nobles, the
knights, and the rest of the company, danced in Westminster Hall to
the music of the minstrels. The example of the court was followed by
the middling classes, and so down to the lowest, and the whole nation
was a dancing, jovial nation. He quotes a lively city picture of the
times, given by Stow, which resembles the lively scenes one may often
see in the gay city of Paris; for he tells us that on holidays, after
evening prayers, the maidens in London used to assemble before the
door, in sight of their masters and dames, and while one played on a
timbrel, the others danced for garlands, hanged athwart the street.
"Where will we meet with such merry groups now-a-days?" the Squire
will exclaim, shaking his head mournfully;--"and then as to the gayety
that prevailed in dress throughout all ranks of society, and made the
very streets so fine and picturesque: 'I have myself,' says Gervaise
Markham, 'met an ordinary tapster in his silk stockings, garters deep
fringed with gold lace, the rest of his apparel suitable, with cloak
lined with velvet!' Nashe, too, who wrote in 1593, exclaims at the
finery of the nation: 'England, the player's stage of gorgeous attire,
the ape of all nations' superfluities, the continual masquer in
outlandish habiliments.'"
Such are a few of the authorities quoted by the Squire, by way of
contrasting what he supposes to have been the former vivacity of the
nation with its present monotonous character. "John Bull," he will
say, "was then a gay cavalier, with his sword by his side and a
feather in his cap; but he is now a plodding citizen, in
snuff-coloured coat and gaiters."
By the by, there really appears to have been some change in the
national character, since the days of which the Squire is so fond of
talking; those days when this little island acquired its favourite old
title of "merry England." This may be attributed in part to the
growing hardships of the times, and the necessity of turning the whole
attention to the means of subsistence; but England's gayest customs
prevailed at times when her common people enjoyed comparatively few of
the comforts and conveniences that they do at present. It may be still
more attributed to the universal spirit of gain, and the calculating
habits that commerce has introduced; but I am inclined to attribute it
chiefly to the gradual increase of the liberty of the subject, and the
growing freedom and activity of opinion.
A free people are apt to be grave and thoughtful. They have high and
important matters to occupy their minds. They feel that it is their
right, their interest, and their duty, to mingle in public concerns,
and to watch over the general welfare. The continual exercise of the
mind on political topics gives intenser habits of thinking, and a more
serious and earnest demeanour. A nation becomes less gay, but more
intellectually active and vigorous. It evinces less play of the fancy,
but more power of the imagination; less taste and elegance, but more
grandeur of mind; less animated vivacity, but deeper enthusiasm.
It is when men are shut out of the regions of manly thought, by a
despotic government; when every grave and lofty theme is rendered
perilous to discussion and almost to reflection; it is then that they
turn to the safer occupations of taste and amusement; trifles rise to
importance, and occupy the craving activity of intellect. No being is
more void of care and reflection than the slave; none dances more
gayly, in his intervals of labour; but make him free, give him rights
and interests to guard, and he becomes thoughtful and laborious.
The French are a gayer people than the English. Why? Partly from
temperament, perhaps; but greatly because they have been accustomed to
governments which surrounded the free exercise of thought with danger,
and where he only was safe who shut his eyes and ears to public
events, and enjoyed the passing pleasure of the day. Within late
years, they have had more opportunity of exercising their minds; and
within late years, the national character has essentially changed.
Never did the French enjoy such a degree of freedom as they do at this
moment; and at this moment the French are comparatively a grave people.
GIPSIES.
What's that to absolute freedom; such as the very beggars have;
to feast and revel here to-day, and yonder to-morrow; next day
where they please; and so on still, the whole country or
kingdom over? There's liberty! the birds of the air can take
no more.
--_Jovial Crew_.
Since the meeting with the gipsies, which I have related in a former
paper, I have observed several of them haunting the purlieus of the
Hall, in spite of a positive interdiction of the Squire. They are part
of a gang that has long kept about this neighbourhood, to the great
annoyance of the farmers, whose poultry-yards often suffer from their
nocturnal invasions. They are, however, in some measure patronized by
the Squire, who considers the race as belonging to the good old times;
which, to confess the private truth, seem to have abounded with
good-for-nothing characters.
This roving crew is called "Starlight Tom's Gang," from the name of
its chieftain, a notorious poacher. I have heard repeatedly of the
misdeeds of this "minion of the moon;" for every midnight depredation
that takes place in park, or fold or farm-yard, is laid to his charge.
Starlight Tom, in fact, answers to his name; he seems to walk in
darkness, and, like a fox, to be traced in the morning by the mischief
he has done. He reminds me of that fearful personage in the nursery
rhyme:
Who goes round the house at night?
None but bloody Tom!
Who steals all the sheep at night?
None but one by one!