The late Henry Kirke White, in a fragment of a poem on “Time,”
beautifully imagines the slumbers of the sorrowful. Reader, bear with
its melancholy tone. A summer’s day is not less lovely for a passing
cloud.
Behold the world
Rests, and her tired inhabitants have paused
From trouble and turmoil. The widow now
Has ceased to weep, and her twin-orphans lie
Lock’d in each arm, partakers of her rest.
The man of sorrow has forgot his woes;
The outcast that his head is shelterless,
His griefs unshared. The mother tends no more
Her daughter’s dying slumbers, but surprised
With heaviness, and sunk upon her couch,
Dreams of her bridals. Even the hectic lull’d
On Death’s lean arm to rest, in visions wrapt,
Crowning with Hope’s bland wreath his shuddering nurse,
Poor victim! smiles.--Silence and deep repose
Reign o’er the nations; and the warning voice
Of Nature utters audibly within
The general moral;--tells us that repose,
Deathlike as this, but of far longer span,
Is coming on us--that the weary crowds,
Who now enjoy a temporary calm,
Shall soon taste lasting quiet, wrapt around
With grave-clothes; and their aching restless heads
Mouldering in holes and corners unobserved
Till the last trump shall break their sullen sleep.
[Illustration: ~The Sluice-house.~]
Ye who with rod and line aspire to catch
Leviathans that swim within the stream
Of this fam’d _River_, now no longer _New_,
Yet still so call’d, come hither to the Sluice-house.
Here, largest gudgeons live, and fattest roach
Resort, and even barbel have been found.
Here too doth sometimes prey the rav’ning shark
Of streams like this, that is to say, a jack.
If fortune aid ye, ye perchance shall find
Upon an average within one day,
At least a fish, or two; if ye do not,
This will I promise ye, that ye shall have
Most glorious nibbles: come then, haste ye here,
And with ye bring large stock of baits and patience.
From Canonbury tower onward by the New River, is a pleasant summer
afternoon’s walk. Highbury barn, or, as it is now called, Highbury
tavern, is the first place of note beyond Canonbury. It was anciently a
barn belonging to the ecclesiastics of Clerkenwell; though it is at
present only known to the inhabitants of that suburb, by its capacity
for filling them with good things in return for the money they spend
there. The “barn” itself is the assembly-room, whereon the old roof
still remains. This house has stood in the way of all passengers to the
Sluice-house, and turned many from their firm-set purpose of fishing in
the waters near it. Every man who carries a rod and line is not an Isaac
Walton, whom neither blandishment nor obstacle could swerve from his
mighty end, when he went forth to kill fish.
He was the great progenitor of all
That war upon the tenants of the stream,
He neither stumbled, stopt, nor had a fall
When he essay’d to war on dace, bleak, bream,
Stone-loach or pike, or other fish, I deem.
The Sluice-house is a small wooden building, distant about half a mile
beyond Highbury, just before the river angles off towards Newington.
With London anglers it has always been a house of celebrity, because it
is the nearest spot wherein they have hope of tolerable sport. Within it
is now placed a machine for forcing water into the pipes that supply the
inhabitants of Holloway, and other parts adjacent. Just beyond is the
Eel-pie house, which many who angle thereabouts mistake for the
Sluice-house. To instruct the uninformed, and to gratify the eye of some
who remember the spot they frequented in their youth, the preceding
view, taken in May 1825, has been engraved. If the artist had been also
a portrait painter, it would have been well to have secured a sketch of
the present keeper of the Sluice-house; his manly mien, and mild
expressive face, are worthy of the pencil: if there be truth in
physiognomy, he is an honest, good-hearted man. His dame, who tenders
Barcelona nuts and oranges at the Sluice-house door for sale, with
fishing-lines from two-pence to six-pence, and rods at a penny each, is
somewhat stricken in years, and wholly innocent of the metropolis and
its manners. She seems of the times--
“When our fathers pluck’d the blackberry
And sipp’d the silver tide.”
* * * * *
An etching of the eccentric individual, from whence the present
engraving is taken, was transmitted by a respectable “Cantab,” for
insertion in the _Every-Day Book_, with the few particulars ensuing:--
James Gordon was once a respectable solicitor in Cambridge, till “love
and liquor”
“Robb’d him of that which once enriched him,
And made him poor indeed!”
He is well known to many resident and non-resident sons of _alma mater_,
as a _déclamateur_, and for ready wit and repartee, which few can
equal. One or two instances may somewhat depict
[Illustration: ~Jemmy Gordon.~]
Gordon meeting a gentleman in the streets of Cambridge who had recently
received the honour of knighthood, Jemmy approached him, and looking him
full in the face, exclaimed,
“The king, by merely laying sword on,
Could make a knight of Jemmy Gordon.”
At a late assize at Cambridge, a man named Pilgrim was convicted of
horse-stealing, and sentenced to transportation. Gordon seeing the
prosecutor in the street, loudly vociferated to him, “You, sir, have
done what the pope of Rome cannot do; you have put a stop to _Pilgrim’s
Progress_!”
Gordon was met one day by a person of rather indifferent character, who
pitied Jemmy’s forlorn condition, (he being without shoes and
stockings,) and said, “Gordon, if you will call at my house, I will give
you a pair of shoes.” Jemmy, assuming a contemptuous air, replied, “No,
sir! excuse me, I would not stand in your shoes for all the world!”
Some months ago, Jemmy had the misfortune to fall from a hay-loft,
wherein he had retired for the night, and broke his thigh; since then he
has _reposed_ in a workhouse. No man’s life is more calculated
“To adorn a moral, and to point a tale.”