Lowly Amaryllis. _Amaryllis humilis_.
Dedicated to _St. Remigius_.
[336] Annual Register, 1769.
~October 2.~
_Feast of the Holy Angel-Guardians._ _St. Thomas_, Bp. of Hereford, A.
D. 1282. _St. Leodegarius_, or _Leger_, A. D. 678.
_Guardian-Angels._
The festival of “the Holy Angel-Guardians” as they are called by Butler,
is this day kept by his church. He says that, “according to St. Thomas,”
when the angels were created, the lowest among them were enlightened by
those that were supreme in the orders. It is not to be gathered from him
how many orders there were; but Holme says, that “after the fall of
Lucifer the bright star and his company, there remained still in heaven
more angels then ever there was, is, and shall be, men born in the
earth.” He adds, that they are “ranked into nine orders or chorus,
called the nine quoires of holy angels;” and he ranks them thus:--
1. The order of _seraphims_.
2. The order of _cherubims_.
3. The order of _archangels_.
4. The order of _angels_.
5. The order of _thrones_.
6. The order of _principalities_.
7. The order of _powers_.
8. The order of _dominions_.
9. The order of _virtues_.
Some authors put them in this sequence: 1. seraphims; 2. cherubims; 3.
thrones; 4. dominions; 5. virtues; 6. powers; 7. principalities; 8.
archangels; 9. angels. Holme adds, that “God never erected any order,
rule, or government, but the devil did and will imitate him; for where
God hath his church, the devil will have his synagogue.” The latter part
of this affirmation is versified by honest Daniel De Foe. He begins his
“True-born Englishman” with it:--
Wherever God erects a house of prayer
The devil’s sure to have a chapel there.
* * * * *
_Angel_, in its primitive sense, denotes a _messenger_, and frequently
signifies men, when, from the common notion of the term, it is conceived
to denote ministering spirits. Angels, as celestial intelligences, have
been the objects of over curious inquiry, and of worship. Paul prohibits
this: “Let no man,” he says, “beguile you of your reward, in a voluntary
humility, and the worshipping of angels, intruding into those things
which he hath not seen.”[337] An erudite and sincere writer remarks,
that “The worship, which so many christians pay to angels and saints,
and images and relics, is really a false worship, hardly distinguishable
from idolatry. When it is said, in excuse, that ‘they worship these only
as mediators,’ that alters the case very little; since to apply to a
false mediator is as much a departure from Jesus Christ, our only
advocate, as to worship a fictitious deity is withdrawing our faith and
allegiance from the true God.”[338]
* * * * *
Amid the multiplicity of representations by Roman catholic writers
concerning angels, are these by Father Lewis Henriques, “That the
streets of Paradise are adorned with tapestry, and all the histories of
the world are engraven on the walls by excellent sculptors; that the
angels have no particular houses, but go from one quarter to another for
diversity; that they put on women’s habits, and appear to the saints in
the dress of ladies, with curles and locks, with waistcoats and
fardingales, and the richest linens.”
This occupation of the _angels_ agrees with the occupations that
Henriques assigns to the _saints_; who, according to him, are to enjoy,
with other pleasures, the recreation of bathing: “There shall be
pleasant bathes for that purpose; they shall swim like fishes, and sing
as melodious as nightingales; the men and women shall delight
themselves with muscarades, feasts and ballads; women shall sing more
pleasantly than men, that the delight may be greater; and women shall
rise again with very long hair, and shall appear with ribands and laces
as they do upon earth.” Father Henriques was a Jesuit, and communicates
this information in a book entitled, “_The Business of the Saints in
Heaven_,” published by the written authority of Father Prado, the
Provincial of the order of Jesuits at Castille, dated at Salamanca,
April 28th, 1631.[339]
[Illustration: ~Hannah Want.~]
“For _Age_ and _Want_ save while you may
No morning sun lasts a whole day.”
_The Times_ and other journals report the “obit” of this female. “On the
2nd of October, 1825, died Mrs. Hannah Want, at Ditchingham, Norfolk,
in the 106th year of her age. She was born on the 20th of August, 1720,
and throughout this long life enjoyed a state of uninterrupted health;
and retained her memory and perception to the end with a clearness truly
astonishing. Till the day previous to her decease she was not confined
to her bed; and on the 105th anniversary of her birth, entertained a
party of her relatives who visited her to celebrate the day: she lived
to see a numerous progeny to the fifth generation, and at her death
there are now living children, grand-children, great-grand-children, and
great-great-grand-children to the number of one hundred and twenty-one.”
An intelligent correspondent writes: “As it is _not_ an ‘_every-day_’
occurrence for people to live so long, perhaps you may be pleased to
immortalize Hannah Want, by giving her a leaf of your _Every-Day Book_.”
That the old lady may live as long after her death as this work shall be
her survivor the Editor can promise, “with remainder over” to his
survivors.
Hannah Want, in common with all long-livers, was an early riser. The
following particulars are derived from a correspondent. She was seldom
out of bed after nine at night, and even in winter; and towards the last
of her life, was seldom in it after six in the morning. Her sleep was
uniformly sound and tranquil; her eye-sight till within the last three
years was clear; her appetite, till two days before her death, good; her
memory excellent; she could recollect and discourse on whatever she knew
during the last century. Her diet was plain common food, meat and
poultry, pudding and dumpling, bread and vegetables in moderate
quantities; she drank temperately, very temperately, of good, very good,
mild home-brewed beer. During the last twenty years she had not taken
tea, though to that period she had been accustomed to it. She never had
the small pox, and never had been ill. Her first seventy-five years were
passed at Bungay in Suffolk, her last thirty at the adjoining village of
Ditchingham in Norfolk. She was the daughter of a farmer named
Knighting. Her husband, John Want, a maltster, died on Christmas-day,
1802, at the age of eighty-five, leaving Hannah ill provided for, with
an affectionate and dutiful daughter, who was better than house and
land; for she cherished her surviving parent when “age and want, that
ill-matched pair, make countless thousands mourn.”
Hannah Want was of a serious and sedate turn; not very talkative, yet
cheerfully joining in conversation. She was a plain, frugal, careful
wife and mother; less inclined to insist on rights, than to perform
duties; these she executed in all respects, “and all without hurry or
care.” Her stream of life was a gentle flow of equanimity, unruffled by
storm or accident, till it was exhausted. She was never put out of her
way but once, and that was when the house wherein she lived at Bungay
was burned down, and none of the furniture saved, save one featherbed.
In answer to a series of questions from the Editor, respecting this aged
and respectable female, addressed to another correspondent, he says,
“What a work you make about an old woman! ‘I’ll answer none of your
silly questions; ax Briant!’ as a neighbouring magistrate said to sir
Edmund Bacon, who was examining him in a court of justice. The old woman
was well enough. There is nothing more to be learned about her, than how
long a body may crawl upon the earth, and think nothing worth
thinking--as if ‘thinking was but an idle waste of thought;’ and how
long a person to whom ‘naught is every thing, and every thing is
nothing’, did nothing worth doing. I suppose that the noted H. W. knew
as much of life in 105 hours, as Hannah Want did in 105 years. All I
know or can learn about her is nothing, and if you can make any thing of
it you may. Some of our _free-knowledgists_, ‘with a pale cast of
thought’ have taken a cast of her head, and discovered that her organ of
self-destructiveness was harmonized by the organ of long-livitiveness.”
This latter correspondent is too hard upon Hannah; but he encloses
information on another subject that may be useful hereafter, and
therefore what he amusingly says respecting her, is at the service of
those readers who are qualified to make something of nothing.
A portrait of Hannah Want, in 1824, when she was in her 104th year,
taken by Mr. Robert Childs, “an ingenious gentleman” of Bungay, and
etched by him, furnishes the present engraving of her.
* * * * *