The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 331, September 13, 1828

ENGLISH LIBERTY

Our liberty is neither Greek nor Roman; but essentially English. It has a character of its own,—a character which has taken a tinge from the sentiments of the chivalrous ages, and which accords with the peculiarities of our manners, and of our insular situation. It has a language, too, of its own, and a language too singularly idiomatic, full of meaning to ourselves, scarcely intelligible to strangers. —Ibid.

SENSUALITY

How different is the night of Nature from that of man, and the repose of her scenes from the misrule of his sensual haunts; what a contrast between the refreshing return of her morning, and the feverish agonies of his day-dreams. —Cameleon Sketches.

THE FLIMSY AGE

Poets sing of the "golden age," the "silver age," and the "iron age," but were they to celebrate this, I think they should call it the flimsy age, for every thing seems made to suit a temporary purpose, without any regard to the sound and substantial. From printed calico to printed books, from Kean's acting to Nash's architecture, all is made to catch the eye, to gratify the appetite for novelty, without regard to real and substantial excellence. —Blackwood.

VILLAGE CHURCHES

We find very few monasteries founded after the twelfth century; the great majority, which rose through the kingdom "like exhalations," were founded between the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and in all county histories and authentic records, we scarce find a parish church, with the name of its resident rector recorded, before the twelfth century. The first notice of any village church occurs in the Saxon Chronicle, after the death of the conqueror, A.D. 1087. They are called, there, "upland churches." "Then the king did as his father bade him ere he was dead; he then distributed treasures for his father's soul to each monastery that was in England; to some ten marks of gold, to some six; to each upland church sixty pence."—Ingram's Saxon Chronicle. Gibson's note on the passage is, "unicuique ecclesiae rurali." These rare rural churches, after the want of them was felt, and after the lords of manors built, endowed, and presented to them, spread so rapidly, that in 1200 in almost every remote parish there was an "upland church," if not a resident minister, as at this day.

The convents, however, still remained in their pristine magnificence, though declining in purity of morals and in public estimation. In place of new foundations of this august description, the—

"Village parson's modest mansion rose,"

gracefully shewing its unostentatious front, and, at length, humbly adorning almost all the scattered villages of the land.—Bowles's History of Bremhill.

It was pleasantly observed by a sentimental jockey, who lost by a considerable length the first race he ever rode, "I'll never ride another race as long as I live. The riders are the most selfish, narrow minded creatures on the face of the earth. They kept riding and galloping as fast as they could, and never had once the kindness or civility to stop for me."—Penelope.

IRELAND

It has lately been proved by indisputable evidence, that the present condition of the peasantry of Ireland is much superior, to that of the population of the same island some centuries ago, when the number of people did not exceed one million. Spenser describes them as inhabiting "sties rather than houses, which is the chiefest cause of the farmer's so beastly manner of living and savage condition, lying and living together with his beast, in one house, in one room, in one bed, that is clean straw, or rather a foul dunghill."

In 1712, Dobbs, a man particularly conversant with the general condition of Ireland, estimated that its population had increased 200,000. He states that "the common people are very poorly clothed, go barelegged half the year, and very rarely taste of that flesh meat with which we so much abound, but are pinched in every article of life."

In 1762, Sir William Petty computed that the inhabitants of Ireland amounted to about one million three hundred thousand. Their habitations, he says, "are lamentable wretched cabins, such as themselves could make in three or four days, not worth five shillings the building, and filthy and disgusting to a degree, which renders it necessary for us to refrain from quoting his description. Out of the 200,000 houses of Ireland," says he, "160,000 are wretched cabins, without chimney, window, or door shut, even worse than those of the savages of America." Their food at the same period, consisted "of cakes, whereof a penny serves for each a week; potatoes from August till May; mussels, cockles, and oysters, near the sea; eggs and butter made very rancid by keeping in bogs; as for flesh they seldom eat it; they can content themselves with potatoes."

SELF KNOWLEDGE

We often hear people call themselves fools. Now a man ought to know whether he is a fool or not, and he would not say it if he did not believe it; and there is also a degree of wisdom in the discovery that one has been a fool, for thereby it is intimated that the season of folly is over. Whosoever therefore actually says that he was a fool formerly, virtually says that he is not a fool now.—Penelope.

THE MAIDEN'S CHOICE

Genteel in personage,
Conduct and equipage,
Noble by heritage,
Generous and free;
Brave, not romantic,
Learn'd, not pedantic,
Frolic, not frantic,
This must he be.

Honour maintaining,
Meanness disdaining.
Still entertaining,
Engaging and new:
Neat, but not finical,
Sage, but not cynical,
Never tyrannical,
But ever true.

Old MS

CUNNING

In England, no class possesses so much of that peculiar ability which is required for constructing ingenious schemes, and for obviating remote difficulties, as the thieves and the thief-takers. Women have more of this dexterity than men. Lawyers have more of it than statesmen; statesmen have more of it than philosophers.

STORY-TELLING

A friend of mine has one, and only one, good story, respecting a gun, which he contrives to introduce upon all occasions, by the following simple, but ingenious device. Whether the company in which he is placed be numerous or select, addicted to strong potations, or to long and surprising narratives; whatever may happen to be the complexion of their character or conversation, let but a convenient pause ensue, and my friend immediately hears, or pretends to hear, the report of a gun. Every body listens, and recalls his late impressions, upon which "the story of a gun" is naturally, and as if by a casual association, introduced thus—"By the by, speaking of guns, that puts me in mind of a story about a gun;" and so the gun is fixed in regular style, and the company condemned to smell powder for twenty minutes to come! To the telling of this gun story, it is not, you see, at all necessary that there should be an actual explosion and report; it is sufficient that there might have been something of the kind.

PLEASURES OF TRAVELLING

Dover quite full—horrible place! Shocking, the inns! Amphibious wretches, the population. Ashore (from steam-packet) at four in the morning. Fires out at The Ship. No beds! Think of it! Had to wait till a party got up—going off at six. Six came—changed their minds (lazy!) wouldn't go! Woke the whole house with ringing the bells, however—took care they shouldn't sleep. Filthy breakfast! Bad butter—vile chops—eggs! I never got an egg properly boiled in my life! Royal Society ought to give a premium. Set off, starved and shuddering—roads heavy—four horses. Ruined with the expense. Man wanted to take half. Fat—looked greasy. Thought ruin best. Got up to Pagliano's a petrifaction! Worthy creature, the cook! Tossed me up such a "Saumon, Tartare"—"Vol au vent"—"Maccaroni"—all light. Coffee—liqueur—no wine for fear of fever—went to bed quite thawed in body and mind; and walked round Leicester-square next morning like "a giant refreshed!"—Blackwood.

A woman's true dowry is virtue, modesty, and desires restrained; not that which is usually so called.

DOMESDAY

Mr. Bowles in his History of Bremhill, makes a few observations suggested by the account in Domesday Book, on the wages, and some of the prices of agricultural produce on the farms where the villani and servi, literally slaves and villans, laboured. When we find two oxen sold for seventeen shillings and four-pence, we must bear in mind that one Norman shilling was as much in value as three of ours; when we find that thirty hens were sold for three farthings each, we must bear in mind the same proportion. The price of a sheep was one shilling, that is three of ours. Wheat was six shillings a-quarter; that would be, according to our scale, two shillings and three-pence a-bushel. Now, at the time of this calculation, everything must have borne a greater price, reckoning by money, than at the time of Domesday; for the prices of articles now set down (from an authentic document of the accounts of the Duke of Cornwall, first published from the original by Sir R.C. Hoare, in his History of Mere,) bear date somewhat more than two hundred years afterwards, in the reign of Edward the First, 1299. But at that time, what were the wages of the labourer? The ploughman's wages were about five shillings a-year, fifteen shillings by the present scale; a maid for making "pottage" received a penny a week!

THE SKETCH BOOK

STRIKING INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF A MIDSHIPMAN

I have read some theories, or rather hypotheses, of apparitions, in which the authors attempt to account for the appearance of those unsubstantial shadows, resembling the forms of living men, by circumstances connected with the physical laws of matter. But I am rather inclined to hold, with another class of inquirers, that the origin of such marvels must be looked for in the mind of the seers; although I do not go the length of their scepticism, and deny the actual existence of the ghostly show, as a real and visible spectacle, before the eyes.

These observations will derive some illustration at least, if not entire confirmation, from the following narrative, which is deemed to be authentic in the neighbourhood in which the scene is laid; and the application of which the judicious reader will, no doubt, be able to make for himself.

About the middle of the last war, the Polly, tender, commanded by lieutenant Watts, came swooping up one evening to the small town of Auchinbreck, in Scotland, and, resolving to pounce, without warning, upon her prey, as soon as she had anchored in the roads, sent ashore the press-gang to pick up as many of the stout boat-builder lads as they could catch. The towns-people, however, were not so unprepared as the captain of the tender imagined; some of those, indeed, who were fit for sea, ran up into the hills, but by far the greater number collected about the corner of a building-shed as you go on to the main street, and, when the signal of hostility was given, by the capture of a man by the press-gang, they rushed down upon them in a body, every one with his axe on his shoulder like a troop of Indians with their tomahawks. It had now become so dark that the sailors had much to do to keep their footing upon the loose stones of the beach, which was just at this time rendered a still more troublesome passage by the scattered materials of a pier, then beginning to be built; and, besides, their number was so small compared to the townspeople, that, after a few strokes of the cutlas, and as many oaths as would have got a line-of-battle ship into action and out again, they were fain to retreat to their boat, pursued by the boat-builders, young and old, like furies. A midshipman, sitting in the stern, whose name was William Morrison, a fine lad of fifteen, observed the fate of the action with feelings in which local and professional spirit struggled for the mastery. One moment he would rub his hands with glee, and the next unsheath his dagger in anger, as he saw the axe of a fellow-townsman descend on the half-guarded head of a brother sailor; but, when the combatants came within oar's length of the boat, and the retreat began to resemble a flight, the esprit de corps got the upper hand in the Auchinbrecken midshipman's feelings, and, unsheathing his dagger, he jumped nimbly ashore and joined in the fray. At last the sailors got fairly into their boat without a single man being either missing or killed, although the list of the wounded included the whole party; and the landsmen, apparently pretty much in the same circumstances, although unable, from their number and the darkness, to reckon as instantaneously the amount of the loss or damage, after giving three cheers of triumph, retired in good order.

William Morrison, after discharging his duty so manfully, was permitted to go on shore the same evening, to visit his friends; and, indeed, the captain could not have known before that he belonged to the place, as he surely would not have confided to the lad so unpopular a task as that of kidnapping his own relations and acquaintances. He was landed at the point of Scarlough, to prevent the necessity of going through the streets, which might have been dangerous in the excited state of the people's minds; and, stretching across the fields, and along the side of the hill, he steered steadily on in the direction of his paternal home, which was about a mile and a half from the Point, but only one mile from the town. The moon had now risen, but was only visible in short glimpses through the clouds that were hurrying across the sky; and the tall, strange shadows of the willows and yews that skirted the churchyard, appearing and disappearing as he passed, probably by recalling the associations of his earlier years, made William shrink, and almost tremble. His own shadow, however, was a more pleasing thing to look at. The dress, which, grown familiar by usage, he would not have noticed elsewhere, was here brilliantly contrasted in his recollection with the more clownish and common garb of his boyhood—for he already reckoned himself a man; and the dagger, projecting smartly from his belted side, gave, in his opinion, a finish quite melodramatic to his air. He drew out the tiny blade from its sheath, and its sparkle in the moonlight seemed to be reflected in his eyes as he gazed on it from hilt to point; but the expression of those eyes was changed as they discovered that its polish in one place was dimmed by blood. This could easily be accounted for by the affray on the beach—and at any other time and place it would have been thought nothing of;—but at this moment, and on this spot, he was as much startled by the sight, as if his conscience had accused him of a deliberate murder. The impressions his mind had received while passing the churchyard, now returned upon him with added gloom; a kind of misgiving came over him; and a thousand boding thoughts haunted him like spirits, and hanging, as it were, on his heart, dragged it down farther and farther at every step. He bitterly regretted that he had not remained in the boat, as he had at first resolved, a neutral spectator of the strife. How did he know that his hand had not been raised against the life of his own brother? As far as he could see or learn, indeed, no fatal accident had occurred; but there have been instances of people walking cheerily off the field of battle, and dying of their wounds after all. And yet it was not likely—it was hardly possible—that John could have been in the affray, his indentures protecting him from the impress. These cogitations were speedily followed by others of as gloomy a character; for the thoughts breed faster than we can perceive them, and each multiplies after his kind. It was a year since he had heard from his friends, and five years since he had seen them. Who could tell what changes had taken place in that time? Who could tell whether poor John had even lived to be killed by the pressgang? His father, his mother, and his sisters—were they dead, were they living, were they sick, or in health? His sister had been always a delicate girl, one of those gentle and fragile flowers of mortality that are sure not to live till the summer; perhaps consumption, with the deceitful beauty of his smile, had already led his fair partner down the short dance of life.

Tormenting himself with such speculations, he arrived at his father's house. Here he was surprised, bewildered, almost shocked, to observe a new and handsome farm-house in place of the old one. On looking farther on, however, he did detect the ancient habitation of his family, in its original site; but it seemed, from the distance where he stood, to be falling into ruins. His whole race must either be dead or banished, and a new tribe of successors settled in their place; or else uncle William must be deceased, and have left his father money enough to build a new house. He walked up to the door, where he stood trembling for some minutes, without courage to put his hand to the latch, and at last went round to the window, and, with a desperate effort, looked in. How his heart bounded! His father was there, still a stout healthy man of middle life, his hair hardly beginning to be grizzled, by the meddling finger of the old painter Time; and his mother, as handsome as ever, and her face relieved by the smile either of habitual happiness, or of some momentary cause of joyful excitation, from the Madonna cast which had distinguished it in less prosperous days; and his sister, with only enough left of her former delicacy of complexion to chasten the luxuriant freshness of health on the ripe cheeks of nineteen. John, indeed, was not there; but a vacant chair stood by the table ready to receive him, and another—a second chair, beside it, only nearer the fire—for whom?—for himself. His heart told him that it was. Some one must have brought the tidings of his arrival; the family circle were at that moment waiting to receive him; he could see his old letters lying on the table before them, and recognised the identical red splash he had dropped, as if accidentally, on the corner of one—the dispatch he had written after his first action—although he had taken the trouble to go to the cock-pit to procure, for the occasion, this valorous token of danger and glory. But John—it was so late for him to be from home!—and, as a new idea passed across his mind, he turned his eyes upon the old house, which was distant about a hundred yards. It was probable, he thought, nay, more than probable, that his father, when circumstances enabled him to build a new house for himself, had given the old one to his eldest son; and John, doubtless, was established there as the master of the family, and perhaps at this moment was waiting anxiously for a message to require his presence on the joyful occasion of his brother's arrival. He did not calculate very curiously time or ages, for his brother was only his senior by two years; he felt that he was himself a man long ago, and thought that John by this time must be almost an old man.

While these reflections were passing through his mind, he observed a light in the window of the old house; but he could not well tell whether it was merely the reflection of a moonbeam on the glass, or a candle in the interior. He walked forward out of curiosity; but the scene, as he approached the building, was so gloomy, and the air so chill, that he wished to turn back; however, he walked on till he reached the door, and there, sure enough, his brother was waiting on the threshold to receive him. They shook hands in silence, for William's heart was too full to speak, and he followed John into the house; and an ill-cared-for house it was. He stumbled among heaps of rubbish in the dark passage; and, as he groped along the wall, his hand brought down patches of old lime, and was caught in spiders' webs almost as strong as if the spinner had meant to go a-fowling. When they had got into the parlour, he saw that the building was indeed a ruin; there was not a whole pane of glass in the window, nor a plank of wood in the damp floor; and the fireplace, without fire, or grate to hold it, looked like the entrance to a burying-vault. John, however, walked quietly in, and sat down on a heap of rubbish by the ingleside; and William, following his example, sat down over-against him. His heart now began to quake, and he was afraid, without knowing what he had to fear. He ran over in his mind the transactions of the evening—his walk, his reflections, his anxieties—embracing the whole, as if in one rapid and yet detailed glance of the soul, and then turned his eyes upon his brother both in fear and curiosity. What fearful secret could John have to communicate in a place like this? Could he not have spoken as well in the open air, where it was so much warmer, and in the blessed light of the moon? No one was dead, or likely to die, that he cared for; his dearest and almost only friends were at this moment talking and laughing round their social table, and near a bright fire, expecting his arrival, and John and he were—here! At length, repressing by a strong effort the undefined and undefinable feelings that were crowding upon him, he broke the silence, which was now beginning to seem strange and embarrassing.

"And how have you been, John?" said he, in the usual form of friendly inquiries; "and how have you got on in the world since we parted?"

"I have been well." replied John; "and I have got on as well as mortal man could desire."

"Yet you cannot be happy; you must have something to say—something I am almost afraid to hear. Out with it, in God's name! and let us go home."

"Yes," said John, "I have something to say; but it will not take long to hear, and then we shall both go home. I was apprenticed to the boat-building four years ago."