Blue Cornflower. _Centaurea Cyanus._
Dedicated to _St. Irenæus_.
NOW,
_A hot day_.
Now the rosy- (and lazy-) fingered Aurora, issuing from her saffron
house, calls up the moist vapours to surround her, and goes veiled with
them as long as she can; till Phœbus, coming forth in his power, looks
every thing out of the sky, and holds sharp uninterrupted empire from
his throne of beams. Now the mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more
slowly, and resorts oftener to the beer. Now the carter sleeps a-top of
his load of hay, or plods with double slouch of shoulder, looking out
with eyes winking under his shading hat, and with a hitch upward of one
side of his mouth. Now the little girl at her grandmother’s cottage-door
watches the coaches that go by, with her hand held up over her sunny
forehead. Now labourers look well, resting in their white shirts at the
doors of rural alehouses. Now an elm is fine there, with a seat under
it; and horses drink out of the trough, stretching their yearning necks
with loosened collars; and the traveller calls for his glass of ale,
having been without one for more than ten minutes; and his horse stands
wincing at the flies, giving sharp shivers of his skin, and moving to
and fro his ineffectual docked tail; and now Miss Betty Wilson, the
host’s daughter, comes streaming forth in a flowered gown and earrings,
carrying with four of her beautiful fingers the foaming glass, for
which, after the traveller has drank it, she receives with an
indifferent eye, looking another way, the lawful two-pence: that is to
say, unless the traveller, nodding his ruddy face, pays some gallant
compliment to her before he drinks, such as “I’d rather kiss you, my
dear, than the tumbler,”--or “I’ll wait for you, my love, if you’ll
marry me;” upon which, if the man is good-looking and the lady in
good-humour, she smiles and bites her lips, and says “Ah--men can talk
fast enough;” upon which the old stage-coachman, who is buckling
something near her, before he sets off, says in a hoarse voice, “So can
women too for that matter,” and John Boots grins through his ragged red
locks, and doats on the repartee all the day after. Now grasshoppers
“fry,” as Dryden says. Now cattle stand in water, and ducks are envied.
Now boots and shoes, and trees by the road side, are thick with dust;
and dogs rolling in it, after issuing out of the water, into which they
have been thrown to fetch sticks, come scattering horror among the legs
of the spectators. Now a fellow who finds he has three miles further to
go in a pair of tight shoes, is in a pretty situation. Now rooms with
the sun upon them become intolerable; and the apothecary’s apprentice,
with a bitterness beyond aloes, thinks of the pond he used to bathe in
at school. Now men with powdered heads (especially if thick) envy those
that are unpowdered, and stop to wipe them up hill, with countenances
that seem to expostulate with destiny. Now boys assemble round the
village pump with a ladle to it, and delight to make a forbidden splash
and get wet through the shoes. Now also they make suckers of leather,
and bathe all day long in rivers and ponds, and follow the fish into
their cool corners, and say millions of “_my_ eyes!” at “tittlebats.”
Now the bee, as he hums along, seems to be talking heavily of the heat.
Now doors and brick-walls are burning to the hand; and a walled lane,
with dust and broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a thing not
to be thought of. Now a green lane, on the contrary, thick-set with
hedge-row elms, and having the noise of a brook “rumbling in
pebble-stone,” is one of the pleasantest things in the world. Now youths
and damsels walk through hay-fields by chance; and the latter say, “ha’
done then, William;” and the overseer in the next field calls out to
“let thic thear hay thear bide;” and the girls persist, merely to plague
“such a frumpish old fellow.”
Now, in town, gossips talk more than ever to one another, in rooms, in
doorways, and out of windows, always beginning the conversation with
saying that the heat is overpowering. Now blinds are let down, and doors
thrown open, and flannel waistcoats left off, and cold meat preferred to
hot, and wonder expressed why tea continues so refreshing, and people
delight to sliver lettuces into bowls, and apprentices water doorways
with tin-canisters that lay several atoms of dust. Now the water-cart,
jumbling along the middle of the streets, and jolting the showers out of
its box of water, really does something. Now boys delight to have a
waterpipe let out, and set it bubbling away in a tall and frothy volume.
Now fruiterers’ shops and dairies look pleasant, and ices are the only
things to those who can get them. Now ladies loiter in baths; and people
make presents of flowers; and wine is put into ice; and the after-dinner
lounger recreates his head with applications of perfumed water out of
long-necked bottles. Now the lounger, who cannot resist riding his new
horse, feels his boots burn him. Now buckskins are not the lawn of Cos.
Now jockies, walking in great coats to lose flesh, curse inwardly. Now
five fat people in a stage coach, hate the sixth fat one who is coming
in, and think he has no right to be so large. Now clerks in offices do
nothing, but drink soda-water and spruce-beer, and read the newspaper.
Now the old clothes-man drops his solitary cry more deeply into the
areas on the hot and forsaken side of the street; and bakers look
vicious; and cooks are aggravated: and the steam of a tavern kitchen
catches hold of one like the breath of Tartarus. Now delicate skins are
beset with gnats; and boys make their sleeping companion start up, with
playing a burning-glass on his hand; and blacksmiths are
super-carbonated; and coblers in their stalls almost feel a wish to be
transplanted; and butter is too easy to spread; and the dragoons wonder
whether the Romans liked their helmets; and old ladies, with their
lappets unpinned, walk along in a state of dilapidation; and the
servant-maids are afraid they look vulgarly hot; and the author, who has
a plate of strawberries brought him, finds that he has come to the end
of his writing.--_Indicator._
* * * * *
In the “Miscellanies,” published by the Spalding Society of Antiquaries
there is a poem of high feeling and strong expression against “man’s
cruelty to man:”--
Why should mans high aspiring mind
Burn in him, with so proud a breath;
When all his haughty views can find
In this world, yields to death;
The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,
The rich, the poor, and great, and small,
Are each, but worms anatomys,
To strew, his quiet hall.
Power, may make many earthly gods,
Where gold, and bribery’s guilt, prevails;
But death’s, unwelcome honest odds,
Kicks oer, the unequal scales.
The flatter’d great, may clamours raise
Of Power,--and, their own weakness hide,
But death, shall find unlooked for ways
To end the Farce of pride.--
An arrow, hurtel’d ere so high
From e’en a giant’s sinewy strength,
In time’s untraced eternity,
Goes, but a pigmy length--
Nay, whirring from the tortured string,
With all its pomp, of hurried flight,
Tis, by the Skylarks little wing,
Outmeasured, in its height.
Just so, mans boasted strength, and power,
Shall fade, before deaths lightest stroke;
Laid lower, than the meanest flower--
Whose pride, oertopt the oak.
And he, who like a blighting blast,
Dispeopled worlds, with wars alarms,
Shall be himself destroyed at last,
By poor, despised worms.
Tyrants in vain, their powers secure.
And awe slaves’ murmurs, with a frown;
But unawed death, at last is sure,
To sap the Babels down--
A stone thrown upward, to the skye,
Will quickly meet, the ground agen:
So men-gods, of earths vanity,
Shall drop at last, to men;
And power, and pomp, their all resign
Blood purchased Thrones, and banquet Halls.
Fate, waits to sack ambitions shrine
As bare, as prison walls,
Where, the poor suffering wretch bows down,
To laws, a lawless power hath past;--
And pride, and power, and King, and Clown,
Shall be death’s slaves at last.
Time, the prime minister of death,
There’s nought, can bribe his honest will
He, stops the richest Tyrants breath,
And lays, his mischief still:
Each wicked scheme for power, all stops,
With grandeurs false, and mock display,
As Eve’s shades, from high mountain tops.
Fade with the rest, away.
Death levels all things, in his march,
Nought, can resist his mighty strength;
The Pallace proud,--triumphal arch,
Shall mete, their shadows length:
The rich, the poor, one common bed,
Shall find, in the unhonoured grave,
Where weeds shall crown alike, the head,
Of Tyrant, and of Slave.
_Marvel._
~June 29.~
Holiday at the Public Offices, except Excise, Stamp, and Custom.
_St. Peter_, the Apostle. _St. Hemma_, A. D. 1045.
_St. Peter._
From this apostle the Romish church assumes to derive her authority, and
appoints this his anniversary, which she splendidly celebrates. The
illuminations at Rome on this day would astonish the apostle were he
alive. From the account of a recent traveller, they appear to be more
brilliant than an Englishman can well imagine; he witnessed them, and
describes them in these words:--
“At Ave Maria we drove to the piazza of St. Peter’s. The lighting of the
lanternoni, or large paper lanterns, each of which looks like a globe of
ethereal fire, had been going on for an hour, and, by the time we
arrived there, was nearly completed. As we passed the Ponte San Angelo,
the appearance of this magnificent church, glowing in its own
brightness--the millions of lights reflected in the calm waters of the
Tiber, and mingling with the last golden glow of evening, so as to make
the whole building seem covered with burnished gold, had a most striking
and magical effect.
“Our progress was slow, being much impeded by the long line of carriages
before us; but at length we arrived at the piazza of St. Peter’s, and
took our station on the right of its farther extremity, so as to lose
the deformity of the dark, dingy Vatican palace. The gathering shades of
night rendered the illumination every moment more brilliant. The whole
of this immense church--its columns, capitals, cornices, and
pediments--the beautiful swell of the lofty dome, towering into heaven,
the ribs converging into one point at top, surmounted by the lantern of
the church, and crowned by the cross,--all were designed in lines of
fire; and the vast sweep of the circling colonnades, in every rib, line,
mould, cornice, and column, were resplendent in the same beautiful
light.
“While we were gazing upon it, suddenly a bell chimed. On the cross of
fire at the top waved a brilliant light, as if wielded by some celestial
hand, and instantly ten thousand globes and stars of vivid fire seemed
to roll spontaneously along the building, as if by magic; and
self-kindled, it blazed in a moment into one dazzling flood of glory.
Fancy herself, in her most sportive mood, could scarcely have conceived
so wonderful a spectacle as the instantaneous illumination of this
magnificent fabric: the agents by whom it was effected were unseen, and
it seemed the work of enchantment. In the first instance, the
illuminations had appeared to be complete, and one could not dream that
thousands and tens of thousands of lamps were still to be illumined.
Their vivid blaze harmonized beautifully with the softer, milder light
of the lanternoni; while the brilliant glow of the whole illumination
shed a rosy light upon the fountains, whose silver fall, and
ever-playing showers, accorded well with the magic of the scene.
“Viewed from the Trinità de’ Monti, its effect was unspeakably
beautiful: it seemed to be an enchanted palace hung in air, and called
up by the wand of some invisible spirit. We did not, however, drive to
the Trinità de’ Monti till after the exhibition of the girandola, or
great fire-works from the castle of St. Angelo, which commenced by a
tremendous explosion that represented the raging eruption of a volcano.
Red sheets of fire seemed to blaze upwards into the glowing heavens, and
then to pour down their liquid streams upon the earth. This was followed
by an incessant and complicated display of every varied device that
imagination could figure--one changing into another, and the beauty of
the first effaced by that of the last. Hundreds of immense wheels turned
round with a velocity that almost seemed as if demons were whirling
them, letting fall thousands of hissing dragons, and scorpions, and
fiery snakes, whose long convolutions, darting forward as far as the eye
could reach in every direction, at length vanished into air. Fountains
and jets of fire threw up their blazing cascades into the skies. The
whole vault of heaven shone with the vivid fires, and seemed to receive
into itself innumerable stars and suns, which, shooting up into it in
brightness almost insufferable, vanished, like earth-born hopes. The
reflection in the depth of the calm clear waters of the Tiber, was
scarcely less beautiful than the spectacle itself; and the whole ended
in a tremendous burst of fire, that, while it lasted, almost seemed to
threaten conflagration to the world.
“The expense of the illumination of St. Peter’s, and of the girandola,
when repeated two successive evenings, as they invariably are at the
festival of St. Peter, is one thousand crowns; when only exhibited one
night they cost seven hundred. Eighty men were employed in the
instantaneous illuminations of the lamps, which to us seemed the work of
enchantment: they were so posted as to be unseen.”[201]
* * * * *
Dr. Forster, in certain remarks on the excitement of the imagination,
cites some “Verses by a modern poet, on an appearance beheld in the
clouds,” which may aptly come after the glowing description of the
illumination of St. Peter’s:--
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city--boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth
Far sinking into splendour, without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt
With battlements, that on their restless fronts
Bore stars--illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves,
And mountain steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded--taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.