An old English home and its dependencies : Illustrated by F. Bligh Bond

V

OPHELIA FOWLER DI1IMK

U'-Sfn Old English Home and its Dependencies. By S. Baring-
| Gould. Illustrated by F. Bligh Bond. (Methuen and Co.) —
Mr. Baring-Gould's antiquarian gossip about old English homes
and their dependencies is very pleasant, and Mr. Bligh Bond's
illustrations are charming. But — perhaps because the subject is
one of such infinite fascination that expectation pitches itself too
high — we are a little disappointed in the book as a whole. It
produces the impression of having been too hurriedly written.
Some chapters terribly want cutting, — for instance, we could very
well spare a good many of the stories in the too well-known vein
of the jocular parson at a clerical meeting in a rural district, into
which the author allows the dangerous topic of the pulpit to lead
him astray. And, on the other hand, we could have done with a
great many more particulars about ancient manor-houses, manor-
mills, church-inns, and squatters' cots. The chapter about inns
is exceedingly interesting. We fancy comparatively few
people know that the church-inn used to be a very necessary
and much-respected part of the parish constitution, — a place
where the congregation waited under cover and ate their dinners
between matins and vespers. Meat, it seems, was brought from
home, but ale was supplied on the premises at the cost of the
parson, who appears in a general way to have done his part of
host only too well. The description of the livery-cupboard is cal-
culated to give a new impetus to the zeal of the collector of old
oak. And here is a delightful bit of Devonshire talk about
screen-doors, involving a very interesting point in the theory of

ecclesiastical architecture. Mr. Baring-Gould visited last year
the parish church of Coombe Martyn, and made the discovery
that it possesses in addition to a very fine rood-screen that has
neither been demolished nor restored, " something else of interest
— a very intelligent, quaint old parish clerk " : — " As I was admir-
ing the screen, the old man, who was dusting in the church, came
up to me and said : ' Please, your honour, have y* ever heard
tell why the screen-doors niver shut ? ' I expressed my doubt
that this was so. ' Now do y' go and look at ivery old church
screen you seez,' said the clerk. ' If it ho'n't been medelled wi'
by them blessed restorers, you'll find for sure sartain that the
oak doors won't shut. Zur, see here. Here be the doors. Try
'em ; they can't be made to shut.' I answered that the wood
had swelled, and the joinery was imperfect. ' No, your
honour,' said the old man. ' If you look close, you'll see it was

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si emojaq QIWI eqj; 'AJO^B inj^qSipp ^psej « si

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si ^i pura 'seuo^s eABq oq. eiB eM. ji seouepiouioo
^snm e^ t sSuiq^ esaq^ 30 unqdraoo o^ SuioS si* oqM.
g; -suisnou pesoddns jeq raoaj paeiq jeq^ouu jo A*isnoiAqo
91IS ,,'A'3S9 j „ Aiysdx si „ ^SSapj „ ^Bq^ SuisseuS ut Suo\
9cl ^ou III^ Bjap^ea jo peouoiaadxe %BVdi eq^ 'esanoo JQ— ('°0

Presented to the
LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by

PROFESSOR B.M.
CORRIGAN

EDITION IMPORTED BY

NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY

156 FIFTH AVENUE, : NEW YORK

AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA

THE QUEEN OF LOVE

URITH

CHEAP JACK ZITA

MRS. CURGENVEN OF CURGENVEN

ARMINELL

KITTY ALONE

MARGERY OF QUETHER

JACQUETTA

NOEMI

THE BROOM-SQUIRE

DARTMOOR IDYLLS

THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS

GUAVAS THE TINNER

BLADYS OF THE STEWPONEY

AN

OLD ENGLISH HOME

AND ITS DEPENDENCIES

S. BARING-GOULD

ILLUSTRATED BY F. BLIGII BONO

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.

LONDON

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PACK

I. PATERNAL ACRES . i

II. THE MANOR HOUSE . . . . 29

III. THE DOMESTIC HEARTH . . . . 49

IV. OLD FURNITURE . . 68
V. CEILINGS . . ... 85

VI. THE PARISH CHURCH . . . . 98

VII. THE VILLAGE INN . . . . 153

VIII. THE MANOR MILL . . . . 175

IX. THE FARMHOUSE . . . . 190

X. COTTAGES . . . . 216

XI. THE VILLAGE DOCTOR . ... 243

XII. SCAPEGRACES . . ... 269

XIII. HEDGES . . ... 290

XIV. UNDERGROUND RIGHTS . . . . 307

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

An Old English Home . . . Frontispiece

Marianne's Cottage . . ... 3

The Cottage of the " Savages " . . . . 1 1

The Manor House, South Wraxall, Wiltshire . . .31

Chateau de Tumilhac . . . 41

Battlemented Transom . . ... 45

A Chimney-piece (End of Seventeenth Century) . . -5'

The Settle . . . • • • 57

The Chimney-top, Ancient and Modern . . . 63

Fireplace and Chimney-piece, York . . . . 65

Chair (1840) . . . ... 69

Chair (Sixteenth Century) . . ... 70

A Chest of Drawers (1652) . . • • • 75

The Livery Cupboard . . . • • 77

Portion of an Old Plaster Ceiling near Leeds . . . 85

The Drawing-room, Dunsland, Devon . . . . 87

The Old Pulpit, Kenton . . ... 101

The Modern-Gothic Pulpit, Kenton . ... 104

Staverton Rood Screen . . . . . 131

Inside the Village Inn . . . . . 155

The Old George Inn, Glastonbury . ... 169

Old Mill in Cornwall . . . . . 183

Plan of Buildings at Anseremme . . 193

Anseremme, on the Meuse . . . . . 197

An Essex Farmhouse . . ... 207

Old Cottages at Henbury . . . . . 219

Wonson Manor . . ... 279

Alabaster Slab with Footprints, Vatican, Rome . . . 295

Devonshire Hedges . . ... 306

CHAPTER I.

THERE lives in my neighbourhood a
venerable dame, in an old bacon box
in a fallen cottage, whose condition will be
best understood by the annexed illustration.

Fifteen years ago the house was in habitable
condition, that is to say to such as are not
particular. It was true that the thatched roof
had given way in places ; but the proprietress
obtained shelter for her head by stuffing up
the chimney of the bedroom fireplace with a
sack filled with chaff, and pushing her bed to
the hearth and sleeping with her head under
the sack.

2 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

But access to this bedroom became difficult,
as the stairs, exposed to rain, rotted, and she
was compelled to ascend and descend by an
improvised ladder.

After a while the ladder collapsed.

Then the old lady descended for good and
all, and took up her abode on the ground floor
—kitchen, and parlour, and dining-room, and
bedroom all in one.

"And terr'ble warm and comfortable it
be," said she, when the roof fell in bodily, and
covered the floor overhead.

But when the walls were exposed, rain and
frost told on them, and also on the beam
ends sustaining the floor, and the next stage
was that one side of the floor gave way wholly.

" Tes best as it be," said the old woman ;
"now the rain runs off more suant."

But in falling the floor blocked the fireplace
and the doorway. The consequences are —
now we come to the present condition of
affairs — that the old lady has had to do without
a fire for certainly three winters, amongst
others that bitter one of 1893-4, and her only
means of egress and ingress is through the

PATERNAL ACRES 5

window. Of that not one half of the panes
are whole ; the gaps are stopped with rags.

And now the floor is rotted through over-
head by the mouldering thatch that covers it
in part, and the rain drips through.*

Accordingly my lady has taken refuge in an
old chest, and keeps the lid up with a brick.

" Tes terr'ble cosy," says she.

Last year, having a Scottish gentleman
staying with me, I took him over to call on
" Marianne." We had a long interview. As
we left, he turned to me with a look of dismay
and said. " Good heavens ! in the wildest parts
of the Highlands such a thing would be im-
possible— and in England !"•— he did not finish
the sentence.

I went back to Marianne and said, " Now,
tell me why you will go on living in this
ruin ? "

" My dear," said she, "us landed proprietors
must hold on to our houses and acres. Tes
a thing o' principle."

There is perhaps a margin of exaggeration

* In the illustration the place occupied by the old woman is
beneath the heap on the right hand side.

6 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

in this — in speaking of acres, as I believe the
said estate spreads over hardly a quarter of
an acre.

Hoiv was it, and how were similar little
properties acquired ?

By squatting.

Formerly there was a considerable amount
of common land, on which the peasants turned
out their asses and geese. Then some
adventuresome man, who took a wife and
had no house into which to put her, annexed
a piece of the common, just enough for a
cottage and a garden, and none said him
Nay. There was still plenty for all, and so,
in time, it became his own, and was lost to
the rest of the parishioners. Little by little
the commons were thus encroached upon.
Then, again, formerly there was much open
ground by the sides of the roads. Cattle
were driven along the highways often for
great distances, and the turf and open spaces
by the sides of the roads were provision made
for their needs.

But squatters took portions of this open
ground, enclosed, and built on it. There was

PATERNAL ACRES 7

no one to object. The lord of the manor
might have done so, but he was a little doubt-
ful as to his right to forbid this annexation
of ground on the side of the highway, and
he and the parishioners generally agreed to
let be. It might save the man coming on
the rates if he had a garden and house — no
harm was done. There was still plenty of
food for the flocks and herds driven along.
So we find thousands and tens of thousands
of these cottages thus planted by the road-
sides, with their gardens — all appropriations
by squatters.

A curious thing happened to me when I was
Rector of East Mersey in Essex. At the edge
of the Marshes were a couple of cottages near
a copious spring of limpid water. They had
been built, and a tract of garden enclosed,
some two hundred years ago, and occupied,
rent free, by the descendants of the original
appropriator. During my tenure of the
rectory, the last representatives left, in fact
abandoned the tenements. The Rector was
lord of the manor. Accordingly these
cottages, in very bad repair, fell to me, and

8 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

I suddenly found myself responsible for them.
Should I leave I could be come upon for
dilapidations, and it would have cost me
something like three hundred pounds to put
these houses to right, from which I had not
received a penny. Moreover, when rebuilt,
no one would have rented them, so aguish
and unhealthy was the spot. Accordingly
I had to obtain, at some cost, a faculty to
enable me to pull them down.

Some years ago Mr. Greenwood drew
attention to the " North Devon Savages."
These were squatters, or rather descendants
of squatters, who held a piece of land and
occupied a ruinous habitation, and lived in
a primitive condition as to clothing and
matrimonial arrangements.

A lady, who was very kind to the family,
wrote to me relative to them, in 1889 : " Some
fifteen or sixteen years ago there was a good
deal of talk about the Cheritons, or Savages
as they were called. The family had been
long known as worthy of this latter name,
by the manner in which they lived, and their
violence and depredations, real and supposed,

PATERNAL ACRES 9

which caused them to be regarded with a
great deal of dread and almost superstitious
awe. The article in the newspaper, written
by a correspondent, had called attention to
them, and roused their bitter resentment, and
some of my menservants said that on one
occasion, when they tarried from curiosity
on the confines of their little property, they
were almost surrounded by the family,
young and old, and some almost naked, with
pitchforks and sticks, and that they had to
continue on their way with haste. I do not
know from what cause, but I think on account
of some leniency he had showed them as a
magistrate on one occasion, they had not as
inimical a feeling towards my husband as
towards the other landowners. One evening,
on his return home from hunting, he told me
he had heard a sad story of the head of the
family, I suppose a man of thirty-eight or
forty, having wounded himself badly in the
foot, when shooting or poaching, and that he
stoutly refused to see or have any help from
clergyman or any other person ; that the
doctor declared it was necessary the foot

io AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

should be amputated, but that the man had
protested that he would sooner die as he was,
and had bid him depart ; that he was lying
in a most miserable state. I then settled
I would go to him, and if necessary stay the
night there, and supposing I could persuade
him to permit the operation, that I would
nurse him through it, and then obtain further
help. As Lord — knew that this might
be permitted by the savages, possibly, to one
of his family, and as I was determined in
the matter, I took a carriage and one of my
little children, who could look after the horse
(as it was deemed most inexpedient to have
any servant with us) ; also all that we could
think of for the comfort of an invalid ; and I
knew I could arrange to send back the child
and trap with an escort, if I had to stay.

" When we reached that part of the road
to Nymet Rowland where their field touched,
we stopped, and in a moment some very
angry, excited women and children rushed
out. I bade them be quiet and hear what
I had to say, and then told them that Lord
- had asked me to bring these comforts

PATERNAL ACRES 13

to the sick man, and that I was come to offer
him my services in his illness. They were
instantly pacified and pleased, and begged me
to come to what they called the farm — a place
with half a roof and three walls. There were,
I should think, three generations who lived
in this place. An old woman, not altogether
illiterate, the wounded man, his son, and his
wife, and three or four children, and one or
two sisters of his, children of the old woman.

" I did not see anything that answered to
a bed there ; the man was lying on two settles
or sets of stools, with, I think, a blanket and
something which might, or might not, have
been a mattress under him.

" In order to get his head under some
certain shelter, it was resting on a settle in
the chimney, side by side with a fire ; his body
and legs were on a settle in the room, if you
could call a place with only three walls and
half a roof by that name, and I think that the
floor was in many places bare earth, and that
the grass grew on it. The family were all
pleasant enough — rough but grateful — and I
found that though the doctor had thought

i4 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

amputation necessary, he now believed it
might be avoided — that the man had decided
against it, but allowed the doctor to continue
to visit him. They were delighted with all
I brought, and begged me to return soon to
them, which I promised to do, and to send
my children when I could not come. The
old woman was a character, and quoted Scrip-
ture— certainly at random — but with some
shrewdness.

" After that time I and mine were always
welcome. One of the married sisters of the
wounded Cheriton, who quite recovered, had
bad bronchitis, and some of my family visited
her continually, and on one occasion found her
sitting on the thatched bit of roof, against the
chimney, for ' change of air ' in her con-
valescence. She was a big powerful woman,
who had on one occasion knocked down a
policeman who was taking her brother to
Exeter gaol, and her mother, the old woman,
told me with pride that they had had to send
a cart and three men to take her away. She
afterwards married a labourer. The rest of
the family sold their property, and only the

PATERNAL ACRES 15

other day when I revisited the place for the
first time after many years, I found a smart
house erected in the place of the old
'Cheritons.' The women became great beg-
gars till the death of the old mother, and
the dispersion on the sale of the property.

" I remember once meeting the man
Cheriton in the lane. He had decorated
the collar of his horse that he was driving

o

with horrible entrails of a sheep or pig.
This was just the kind of savage ornament
that would suit them.

"In the case of the woman who married
the labourer, this was brought about by the
Rector of Nymet, but I fancy, according to
any usually received ideas, that was the one
marriage ; and that my use of the words wife,
etc., would not stand legal interpretation."

I remember these savages between forty
and fifty years ago, and then their manner
of life was the same ; the only clothes they
wore were what they could pick from hedges
where they had been put out after a wash
to dry. A policeman told me he had seen
one of the women in a condition of absolute

16 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

nudity sitting in a hedge of their garden,
suckling a child. The curate of the parish
incurred their resentment because he en-
deavoured to interfere with their primitive
ways. One night, as he was riding up a lane
in the dark, he thought he observed a shadow
move in the darkness and steal into the hedge.
Suspicious of evil, as he was near the habita-
tion of the Cheritons, he dismounted and led
his horse, and found that a gate had been
taken off its hinges and laid across the way
so as to throw his horse, and possibly break
his neck. He at once made a dash to arrest
the shadow that lurked in the hedge, but it
made a bolt over the bank, and by its naked-
ness and fluttering rags, he was certain that
the figure was that of one of the savages.

The old man, or one of the old men,
finished his days -not on the paternal acres,
but in a barrel littered with straw, chained
to a post in an outhouse in an adjoining
parish. I used him up in my story of "John
Herring."

The usual end of these little holdings is
that the proprietor either gets into some

PATERNAL ACRES 17

poaching affray, or quarrels with a neighbour,
and so makes the acquaintanceship of a local
lawyer, and this acquaintance leads to a loan
of a little money, when the holder of the land
is short of cash, on the security of the tene-
ment. The sequel need not be further
described than by saying that the property
changes hands.

These are instances of paternal bits of acre
rather than of acres, and such pieces are very
liable to pass away, as not enough in them-
selves to support a family. But these are
instances in small of the manner in which
the manors were formed in ancient times.
The manor was that estate which a man was
able to get his hand upon and to hold and
work through his serfs.

There is an idyllic old English home that
belonged to an ancient family of the same
name, the Penfounds of Penfound, in the
parish of Pounclstock, on the north Cornish
coast.

This coast is wind-swept, yet the winds from
the sea are never cold, so that wherever there
is shelter there trees, shrubs, and flowers

i8 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

luxuriate. In a dip in the land, at the
source of a little stream, snuggling into the
folds of the down, bedded in foliage, open to
the sun, hummed about by bees, twinkled
over by butterflies, lies this lovely old house.
The neighbourhood has been modernized and
vulgarized distressingly, but as yet this dear
old house has not been trodden out of
existence. It remains on the verge of ruin,
with its old hall, old garden, and stately granite
doorway into the latter. A sad record belongs
to this venerable manor. The family pedigree
goes back to before the Wars of the Roses.
The Penfounds mated with the bluest blood
of the west, the Trevillians, the Kelloways,
the Darells, the Pollards, the Grenvilles,
the diamonds, the Pollexfens — and the last
Penfound who sat on the paternal acres died
in the poorhouse of his native parish, Pound-
stock, in 1847, leaving issue, now poor labour-
ing people tilling the land at so much a week
—where for centuries they were manorial
lords.

In ancient British times the whole country
belonged to tribes, and the tribes owntd their

PATERNAL ACRES 19

several districts. At the head of each tribe
was the chief. He claimed and was given
right to free maintenance by the tribesmen,
and he distributed the land among the house-
holders of the tribe. These householders
owed no allegiance to any other authority
than the chief, on whom they depended for
everything and to whom they owed implicit
obedience.

Every man who was not a tribesman was
an enemy. If the tribe increased beyond
what the land could maintain, it fought another
tribe and wrested from it the land and drove
it away or exterminated it, with complete
indifference to the fact that this dispossessed
tribe spoke the same tongue, had the same
social organism, was of the same blood.

The tribal system from which the Celt never
freed himself entirely was the curse of the
Celtic race, predooming it to ruin. The
history of the Welsh, the Irish, the High-
landers, is just the same as that of the Gauls,
one of internecine feud, no political cohesion,
no capacity for merging private interests, for-
getting private grudges for a patriotic cause.

20 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

And at the bottom of all this lay the absence
among the clansmen of the principle of private
property. The land was possessed by all in
common, subject to allotment by the chief,
and among the tribal chiefs there was no link ;
each coveted the lands of the other. This it
was which made the Celt to be everywhere a
prey to such races as knew how to put self-
interest in the background.

When the Jutes, Angles, Saxons, came to
Britain they brought with them another social
system altogether. They were possessed with
the sense of the importance of private property.
So deficient had the Britons been in this that
they had not other than the most elementary
notions of house building. Timber and
wattle sufficed for them, but the Saxon, and
afterwards the Norman, had a higher concep-
tion of the home, and he began at once to
fashion himself a permanent abode, and to
make it not solid only but beautiful. And he
did more than that, he brought the idea of
hedges with him wherewith to enclose the
land he chose to consider his own.

Saxon, Angle, or Jute put his hand down on

PATERNAL ACRES 21

the tribal territory, after having destroyed the
tribal organization, leaving only a portion of
wild moor and a tract of forest land, also a little
arable land, for the members of the community
whom he converted into serfs. They tilled the
land, kept flocks and herds, and supplied him
with what meat, wool, yarn, and grain he
required ; they met under his presidency in
the hall at his courts. The tenants were of
various sorts ; some were bordarii or cotters,
rendering occasional service for the use of
their houses and bits of land ; others, the
villains, in complete servitude.

At the Norman Invasion, the Saxon thanes
were themselves humbled in turn ; the manors
were given a more legal character and trans-
ferred to favourites of William the Conqueror.
But the old Saxon chiefs in each manor were
probably very rarely turned out neck and crop,
but were retained as holders of the estate
subject to the new lords, managing them and
rendering to their masters certain dues.

In Saxon times there were book-land and
folk-land, the former the private property
of thanes and churls, the latter common

22 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

land of the community. But after the
Norman Conquest most, if not all, of the
latter fell under the hand of the lord of
the manor. Here and there the village
community still continued to exercise its
right to grant tracts to be enclosed, but
usually the manorial lord claimed and exer-
cised this right. At the present time, in my
own county, this is being done in a certain
parish that possessed a vast tract of common
land on the confines of Dartmoor Forest.
The farmers and cottagers are enclosing at a
rapid rate, paying the lord of the manor
a trifling fine, and thus making the land their
own for ever. There can be no question
that originally the fine would have gone into
the parish cash-box ; now it goes into the
landlord's pocket.

" There is much that is primitive and simple
to be met with, but nothing of barbarism in
the land institutions of Saxon England, unless,
indeed, an excessive love for it, and an almost
exaggerated deference for its possession may
be so classed. In an age when freedom was
the exceptional condition, the ownership of

PATERNAL ACRES 23

land was the mark of a free man, and ample
territory the inseparable appanage of rank.
No amount of gold or chattel property con-
ferred the franchise : land alone was recognized
as the vehicle of all personal privilege, and
the basis of civil rank. Centuries have not
obliterated these features in their descendants
to this day ; the love of land, its estimation
above all other forms of property, and its
political preponderance." *

Reformers have roundly abused, and striven
to break down our land system, especially the
right of primogeniture, and to resolve the land
into small holdings to be cultivated by small
owners. There are, as in all social and
political questions, two sides to this. I do
not deny for a moment that much is to be
said in favour of equal partition of land
among all the children, and of the multipli-
cation of peasant proprietors. But I venture
to think that the system that has prevailed
in England has produced results that could
have been attained by no other. In this

* WREN HOSKINS, in Systems of Land Tenure in Various
Countries, London, 1870, p. 100.

24 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

especially, that it has provided at once a
stable core, with a body of fluid, migratory,
and energetic young people, who have not
been bound to the clod.

A man, knowing that his land will descend
to his son and son's son, will plant and im-
prove, and spend his money most unselfishly
on the land, for the family advantage. But
if he thinks that it will go into other hands,
will he for this purpose deny himself present
luxuries and amusements ?

I suppose such an alternative as this has
presented itself to many a landowner. " I
ought to spend from ^150 to ^200 in plant-
ing this autumn. Shall I do it, or run up to
town, go to the opera, eat, drink, and enjoy
myself, and spend the money on myself?"

There is, surely, something very beautiful
and wholesome in the manner in which an
Englishman of means lives for, and cares
for the family, as a whole — the generations
unborn, as well as his own children — and
builds, plants, provides for the future, fur-
nishing it with a lovable centre, from which
it may radiate into all lands.

PATERNAL ACRES 25

It was, unless I am greatly mistaken, the
principle of equal subdivision, or of gavel-
kind, that existed among the Welsh, which
ruined their cause. The Celt has more
originality, genius, energy than the Saxon,
but he was paralyzed in his attempts to
resist the invader by the interminable
break-up of power and of property at the
death of every prince. The kinglet of
Glamorgan had ten sons — one became a
monk, and the rest parcelled up his lands
and his authority over men. A great prince
like Howel Dda was able to consolidate the
nation, but only for his lifetime ; at his death
it was torn into petty factions by his sons. It
was this that maimed the Briton before the
Saxon, not the superiority in genius, numbers,
character in the latter ; and it was this again
which threw Wales at the feet of the Norman
kings.

Now look at almost all the farm-buildings
in France. Everything there is in ruin, all
the outward tokens of decay are manifest.
Why is this ? Because no owner cares to
spend money on putting the place to rights.

26 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Everything will be divided at his death, and
he must hoard his money for division among
those children who do not take the farm. So
one gets a tumble-down tenement, and the
rest the money that might make it habitable.
Moreover, this continued to the next genera-
tion ends in the disappearance of the family
from its paternal acres. In the Limousin
there is hardly a family that retains its hold
on its land over the third generation.

I know four delightful old ladies, all un-
married, inheriting a well-known and honoured
name in Perigord. On the father's death
everything was divided. One took the
chateau, without having the money to repair
it, and she lives under the ruins. The second
took a farm and lives with the paysan and
paysanne. The third took the family plate and
china and family portraits, and lives over a
modiste in small lodgings, and is obliged to
sell her ancestral goods piecemeal to keep
herself going. The fourth took some shares
the father had in a Pate de Foix gras factory ;
it failed, and she has to scramble on upon the
alms of her sisters.

PATERNAL ACRES 27

Among the peasants the tenure of small
holdings is mischievous ; they are chained
to the soil, whereas, if set free, they might
emigrate and become energetic colonists, or
go into the towns and become intelligent,
active artisans. It is just when a young
man ought to be starting on a career that
he acquires a few acres, and at once he is
paralyzed. Those acres hold him, he cannot
do justice to them, he has not the means.
He does not like to part with them, and he
spends his life bowed over them. Worse than
this, unable to avert the further dismember-
ment of his estate on his death, he resolves
in compact with his wife to have no more
than one, or at the most two children. Now,
with us, the younger son of a landed pro-
prietor knows he must push his way in the
world, and from the moment his intelligence
begins to act he looks about him for openings.
Our labourers also, unchained to the soil, go
about wherever work may be had. Where
there is a market for their abilities, thither they
go, but go they would not, if they owned their
little plot of land and house.

28 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

And, if I am not much mistaken, it is this
early developed sense of independence that
has been the making of Englishmen all over
the world ; but, then, it is the conservative
element, the holding to the paternal acres,
that has made of dear old England one great
garden and park, the proprietor spending his
money on the land, instead of on his pleasures
or self, as elsewhere.

CHAPTER II.

AS every circle has its centre, so had every
manor its hall, the centre of its organiza-
tion, the heart whence throbbed the vital force
through the district, and to which it returned.
The hall was not merely the place where the
lord lived, for he did not always occupy it, but
it was the gathering place of the courts leet
and baron.

It is the fashion to hold that land was
originally held in common, and that private
proprietorship in land is an encroachment on
the public rights.

That was, no doubt, the case with the Celt,
and it has been fatal to his ever taking a

lead among the nations ; it has so eaten into

29

30 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

his habits of mind as to have rendered him
incapable of being other than a subject under
the control of another people, which had
happily got beyond such infantile notions.

It is the case with individuals, starting on
the battle of life, that they sometimes, by
chance, take a wrong- direction, and then, once
involved therein, have not the power or will
or chance to turn back and take another.
That is how some men make a botch of their
lives, whereas others, perhaps their inferiors
in ability, by mere accident strike on a course
which leads to power, prosperity, and a name.

It is so amono- nations, races — and among;

o o

these the highly-gifted Celt went wrong at the
outstart, and that is it which has been his bane
through centuries. Now the time for recovery
is past. He is forced to take a lower room.

The French, that is to say the Gauls under
Frank domination, were forcibly put right. I
do not deny that feudalism led to gross abuses,
and that it was well to have these swept away,
but that which I think was fatal to France at
the Revolution was reversion to the Celtic
principle of subdivision. This is inevitably

THE MANOR HOUSE 33

and inexorably killing France ; it is reducing
its population, extinguishing its life.

Between 1831 and 1840 there were in
France but three departments in which the
mortality exceeded the natality, now there are
between forty-five to sixty departments in this
condition.

"If we traverse France rapidly in train
from the Channel to the Pyrenees, there is
one observation that may be made from the
carriage windows. Between the Loire and
the Garonne, in departments where the soil
is poor, there the houses are smiling and well
kept — there is evidence of comfort. But, on
the contrary, in the departments formerly the
richest, there are crumbling walls and empty
houses. . . . The rich departments are being
depopulated, and in the poor ones there the
population remains stationary or only slowly
decreases."*

The population in the rich departments is
dwindling at the rate of 50 per cent, in half a
century.

* DUMONT, "La depopulation," in Revue de r£cole d'
Anthropologie, Jan., 1897.

34 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Why is this ? Because all property is sub-
divided. In the poor districts, too, land will
not support all those born, and therefore some
take up trades or go as labourers and artisans.

The increase in population in France per
thousand in the year is i '8, whereas in Prussia
it is 13.

I was much amused last summer with the
remark of a little fellow of twelve, who was
showing me the way across some fields, as a
short cut. I remarked on the beauty of the
place, and the fertility of the soil. " Yes," said
he, " but I think it is time for me to be moving,
and look out for some place for myself."

Such a thought, springing up in an English
child's mind, would not occur to a French
child. But it is just this which has made us
successful colonists, and it is the absence of
this which makes French colonies dead failures.
Whereas we and the Germans pour forth tens
of thousands of emigrants, France sends to
her North African Settlements just over six
hundred persons per annum — and they are
nearly all officials.

The maker of pottery, after having tempered

THE MANOR HOUSE 35

his clay, puts into it particles of grit, of sand,
and about these the clay crystallizes, and it is
the making these centres of crystallization that
gives to pottery its cohesion. Without these
particles it goes to pieces in burning, it breaks
up with the least pressure. And our manor
houses are these particles of grit, centres of
crystallization to our people, that make us so
tough and so cohesive a race — at least, I
think it is one very important element in the
manufacture.

If we desire to study the organization of a
manor as set about by one of the branches of
the great Scandinavian -Teutonic stock, we
cannot do better than observe the conduct of
the settlers in Iceland at the end of the ninth
century.

When the Norsemen came to Iceland they
brought with them their thralls, and they
proceeded to make their claims to land, till
they had portioned out all the soil worth
having among the great heads of families.
The land thus fell into shares, such as we
should call manors, and each share was under
a chief, who planted on the soil his kinsmen,

36 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

and any others who applied to him for allot-
ments. No freeman, if he could help it, would
accept the land as a gift, for the reception of
a gift entailed responsibility to the giver, a
sort of dependence that the free spirit of the
race greatly disliked.

"The period during which the settlement of
Iceland was going on lasted about sixty years.
At the end of that time the island was as fully
peopled as it has ever been since. During all
that period each chief, and his children after
him, had lived on his holding, which proved
a little kingdom of itself, allotting his land to
new comers, whose kinship, turn of mind, or
inferiority in rank allowed them to accept the
gift, marrying and inter- marrying with the
families of neighbouring chiefs, setting up his
children in abodes of their own, putting his
freed men and thralls out in farms and hold-
ings, fulfilling the duties of the priesthood in
his temple, and otherwise exercising what we
should call the legitimate influence on those
around him, to which he was entitled by his
strength of arm, or birth, or wealth."^

* DASENT, History of Brunt Ntal, 1861, vol. i. p. xiv.

THE MANOR HOUSE 37

This is just what took place in the conquest
of Britain by the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles.
They portioned out the land among them, and
turned the original inhabitants into serfs ; to
some of these they gave tenements to hold
subject to service : these are now represented
by our tenant farmers ; to others, kinsmen,
they gave lands free of charge, but under
their own lordship : such are the ancestors of
our yeomen.

Now an Icelandic chief was magistrate and
priest in one. He was called the Godi — the
Good man. Hard by his hall was the sacred
circular temple, and he offered sacrifice there-
in. In his hall were assembled the free
householders, to consult relative to the affairs
of the district. This was the husting, or house
council. We had precisely the same condition
of affairs in England. Where a manor is
there is the hall, and in that hall were held
the courts, which all free holders attended.

Very probably each Anglo-Saxon lord
had his temple adjoining his hall, but when
England became Christian, several manors,
when small, combined to keep a priest

38 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

between them ; but when the church adjoins
the manor house, then almost certainly it
occupies the site of the old heathen Saxon
temple ; except in Wessex, which was sub-
jugated by Christianised Saxons.

The hall was the social and political centre
of each community. There the lord showed
hospitality, administered justice, appointed his
thralls their tasks, and received the dues of
his tenants.

In the earliest period, in it he and his
house-churls and family slept, as well as
ate and worked. But the women had a
separate apartment, which in time became
the with-drawing room. Bedrooms, kitchens,
parlours, were aftergrowths, as men sought
more comfort or privacy, and these were
grouped about the hall. Nevertheless, the
custom of sleeping in the hall continued till
Tudor times.

It is instructive to notice the difference
between the residence of the feudal lord on
the Continent and that occupied by him in
England. In the former his place of abode
is a castle, chateau, derived from castellum,

THE MANOR HOUSE 39

schloss, from schliesen, a place into which the
lord might lock himself in and from whence
lock out all enemies. But the English terms
— mansion, manor-house, hall, court, imply
nothing military, give token of no exclusive-
ness, make no threat. The chronic warfare
and petty disturbances that prevailed on the
continent of Europe obliged the lords of the
soil to perch their residences on inaccessible
and barren rocks, whereas in England they
are seated comfortably in valleys, in the midst
of the richest land. In France, in Germany,
in Italy, each feudal owner quarrelled with his
neighbour, and made war on him when he
listed. There was nothing of that kind in
England. With the exception of the struggle
between Stephen and Matilda, and the Wars
of the Roses, we were spared serious inter-
necine strife, and the hand of the king was
strong enough to put down private feuds.

The castle was an importation into England,
brought in by the Norman and Angevin kings,
and it was only the foreign favourites to whom
the king granted vast numbers of manors who
had castles. But the castles never affected

40 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

English domestic architecture ; on the con-
trary, the English sense of comfort, peace,
and goodwill prevailed over the fortress, broke
holes in it for immense windows and for wide
doorways ; and nothing remained of menace
and power except the towers and battlements.

On the Continent, however, till the eighteenth
century, the type of fortress prevailed ; the
angle towers became turrets, but were in-
dispensable wherever a gentleman had a
chateau. As to the English noble or
squire, his only tower was the dove-cot, and
the holes in it not for muskets and cross-
bows, but for the peaceful pigeon to fly in
and out.

The pedigree of a castle is this :

The stronghold in France in Merovingian
days consisted of an adaptation of the Roman
camp. It was an earthwork with a stockade
on top, enclosing a level tract on the top of
a hill, if a suitable hill could be found ; within
was a mound, a motte ; on this stood a great
round tower of woodwork, in which lived the
chief. The earthwork surrounding the camp
had mounds at intervals, and in the space

THE MANOR HOUSE 43

within the stockade were similar constructions,
a hall and storehouses.

Now the mediaeval castle was precisely this,
with the one exception — that stone took the
place of wood, and the tower on a mound
became the keep.

When the Normans came to England they
translated to our island the type of castle they
had been accustomed to in France. They had
to bring their architects, in some cases their
material, from France. But, whereas this
became the type of the chateau in France, it
had nothing to do with the genesis of the
manor-house in old England. Our manor-
houses did not pass out of lordly castles, but
out of halls. The very situation of our old
manorial mansions shows that they were never
thought of as fortresses.

The Anglo - Saxon did no building of
domestic architecture save with wood. The
English lord lived in his great wooden hall,
with his tenants and bonders about him. If
he squeezed them, it was gently, as a man
milks his cow. Of the Norman it was said,
Quot domini castellorum, tot tyranni.

44 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

In France the fortress of the peasant was
the church, and the tower his keep, and in times
of trouble he conveyed his goods to the
church, and the entire building became to him
a city of refuge. That is why wells, bake-
houses, and other conveniences are found in
connection with many foreign churches.

The battlements of our churches and their
towers may perhaps point to these having
been regarded in something the same light
by the inhabitants of a parish in England,
but more probably they came into use when
the roofs were not steep, and instead of being
slated or shingled, were covered with lead.
To a lead roof, a parapet is necessary, or
rather advisable ; and the parapet not only
finishes it off above the wall, but also serves
to conceal the ugliness of a low-pitched roof.
And the parapet was broken into battlements
to enable the gutter to . be readily cleaned,
by throwing over accumulations of snow and
leaves.

The battlement became a mere ornament —
almost a joke to English architects; they even
battlemented the transoms of windows, and

THE MANOR HOUSE

45

the caps of pillars. It would seem as though,
in the sense of security in which the English
were, they took a pleasure in laughing at the
grave precautions employed on the Continent,

BATTLEMENTED TRANSOM

where the battlement was something far too
serious and important to be treated as an
ornament.

The poor old hall has shrunk and been
degraded into a mere lobby, in which to

46 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

hang up great coats and hats and sticks and
umbrellas. Originally it was the main feature
of the manor-house, to which everything else
was subsidiary ; then it was ceiled over, a floor
put across it, and it became a reception-room,
and now a reception-room for overcoats only.

But let it be borne in mind where a real hall
is in place and where it is not. It belongs
to a manor and to a manor only ; it is in-
congruous in a villa residence, and wholly out
of place in a town dwelling. Many a modern
gentleman's place in the country is designed
to look very pretty and very mediaeval or
Tudor ; but this is all so much ornament stuck
on, and the organic structure agreeth not
therewith.

The hall, so far from excluding people, was
so open-doored as to invite not people only but
all the winds of heaven to blow into and
through it.

Very usually the front door of the house
under the porch opened into it, and immedi-
ately opposite was the door out of the hall
into the court. Naturally the wind marched
through.

THE MANOR HOUSE 47

As a bit of shelter a screen was run up, but
only of timber, and the passage boxed in.
Above was the minstrels' gallery ; and in the
screen were, of course, doors into the hall,
and a buttery hatch, as on the further side
of the passage was either kitchen or cellar,
or both.

To almost every hall was a slit or eye and
earlet hole communicating with a lady's
chamber. The tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse
had a prison which was so constructed that
every whisper in it from one prisoner to
another was carried through a tube to his
private apartment, where he sat and listened
to what his captives said.

The slit above mentioned was the Dionysius's
ear of that domestic tyrant, the lady of the
house. She sat in her room, with her ear to
this opening, when her good lord revelled and
joked in the hall with his boon companions,
and afterwards — behind the curtains — his words
were commented on and his jokes submitted to
searching criticism. Moreover, through this
slit her eye raked the hall when the servants
were there, and she could see if they attended

48 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

to their work or romped with the men, or idled
gossiping.

We have so far advanced that the ear is no
longer employed — but the domestic tyrant is, I
am credibly informed, still with us, advancing
triumphant through ages, and like a snowball
acquiring force, consistency, and hardness in
progress.

CHAPTER III.

IN 1891 I was excavating a village at the
edge of Trewortha Marsh, on the Bodmin
Moors, in Cornwall. There were a number
of oblong huts, but one seemed to have been
occupied by more than one family, as it was
divided into stalls, by great slabs of granite
set up on edge, and in front of each stall
was a hearth on the soil, and the soil burnt
brick-red from heat.

The pottery found strewn about was all
wheel - turned, but early and rude, and no
trace of glass could be found. These habita-

E 49

50 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

tions belonged to a period after the Roman
invasion, and probably to Britons.

The hearth is the centre of family life,
what the hall is to the manor. About it
gather all who are bound together by com-
munity of blood and interest, and this is still
recognized, for it is counted an unwarrantable
presumption in a stranger to poke your fire.

But how small and degenerate is our fire
from what it once was. Coal having taken
the place of logs, the hearth has been reduced
and the grate has supplanted the dogs or and-
irons, and the gaping fireplace is closed in.

I know an old Elizabethan mansion where
the chimney-stack containing three flues
descends into the hall and has in it three
fireplaces, so that simultaneously three fires
could burn in the same room, and the family
circle could fold about the three hearths com-
bined into one in an almost complete circle.

And what chimneys those were in old times !
Bacon-sides were hung in them, so large were
they, and not infrequently a ladder could be
put up them to communicate with a little door
that gave access to a secret place.

A CHIMNEY-PIECE
End of Seventeenth Century

THE DOMESTIC HEARTH 53

I was looking not long ago at the demoli-
tion of a good yeoman's dwelling in Cornwall.
By the side of the hearth, opening into the
kitchen-hall, was a walled-up door, against
which usually a dresser or cupboard stood.
This walled-up door communicated with a
goodly chamber or cellar formed in the thick-
ness of the chimney, and without an opening
to the light 'outside. Access to this chamber
could, however, always be had by means of
a hand-ladder placed when required in the
chimney. This admitted through a door in
the chimney to the receptacle for kegs — for
that was the real purpose of the concealed
place, it was the yeoman's cellar of spirits
that had never paid customs. When a fresh
supply was taken in, the door into the kitchen
was unwalled and the cellar filled with kegs,
then walled up again and plastered over. But
as spirits were wanted they were got by means
of the ladder — keg by keg.

It was in such a chamber in the wall, to
which access was alone obtainable through the
chimney, that Garnet and Oldcorne were con-
cealed after the Gunpowder Plot. This is

54 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

how Ainsworth describes the place of retreat :
" Mrs. Abindon conducted the two priests
to one of the large fireplaces. A raised
stone about two feet high occupied the
inside of the chimney, and upon it stood an
immense pair of iron dogs. Obeying Mrs.
Abindon's directions, Garnet got upon the
stone, and setting his foot on the large iron
knob on the left, found a few projections in
the masonry on the side, up which he mounted,
and opening a small door made of planks of
wood, covered with bricks and coloured black,
so as not to be distinguishable from the walls
of the chimney, crept into a recess contrived
in the thickness of the wall. This cell was
about two feet wide and four high, and was
connected with another chimney at the back
by means of three or four small holes. Across
its sides ran a narrow stone shelf, just wide
enough to afford an uncomfortable seat."

But these wide chimneys, if they allowed
ascent, also permitted descent, and many a
house was entered and burgled by this means.

There was in my own neighbourhood, about
a century ago, a man who lived in a cave

THE DOMESTIC HEARTH 55

above the Tamar, in Dunterton Wood, whose
retreat was known to none, and who was a
terror to the neighbourhood. He was wont
during the night to visit well-to-do persons'
houses within reach, get over the roof to the
chimney of the hall, and descend it. Once in
the house he collected what he listed, unbarred
the door, and walked away with his spoil.

So great was the terror inspired by this man
in the neighbourhood that all householders who

o

had anything to lose had spiked contrivances
of iron put into their chimneys, so that the
burglar in descending at a rapid pace stood
a chance of being impaled. The other day,
in repairing my hall chimney, I came on this
contrivance.

The end of the man was this. Colonel
Kelly, of Kelly, was out one day with his
pack of foxhounds, when they made a set at
the cave, and so it was discovered with the
man in it and a great accumulation of plunder.
I believe he was hung.

The same cave was employed as a place
of refuge for an escaped convict some fifty
years ago. After that, the late Mr. Kelly

56 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

blew up the cave with gunpowder, and its
place is now occupied by the ruins of the rock
above. It can conceal no more lawbreakers.

There was something very pleasant in the
old evening round the great fire. If one of
wood, then, in a farm-house, the grandfather
in the ingle-corner was an indispensable
feature. A wood fire requires constant
attention, and it was his place to put the
logs together as they burnt through ; and he
knew he was useful, and when the farmer's
wife or his granddaughter came to the hearth
for a bit of cooking she had always a pleasant
word for the old man.

The settle was another feature.

There is a species much used formerly in
Somersetshire and Devon, and perhaps else-
where. It was a multum-in-parvo. The
back opened and disclosed a place in which
sides of bacon were hung. Above was a long
narrow cupboard for the groceries. The seat
lifted — for what think you ? As a place where
the baby could be placed in greatest security
whilst the mother was engaged at the fire.
I believe that dealers now call them monks'

THE DOMESTIC HEARTH 57

seats. Monks' seats ! they belonged to women
and babies. But a dealer knows how to hum-
bug his customers.

I was once in a certain county, I will not
say which, and visited a gentleman who had
bought and built a fine house, very modern,
but very handsome. Then the fancy took

58 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

him to be possessed of old oak, so he went
to a dealer.

" My dear sir," said Lazarus, " I have the
very thing for you — a superb antique oak
mantelpiece and sideboard — the finest in
England of the date of Henry VIII. But
they are all in an ancient mansion, a black-
timbered hall in Cheshire or Shropshire —
I forget which. Would you care to go down
and see it ? The house is to be pulled down,
and I must remove the contents."

Of course Mr. Greenhorn went, bought all
at a fabulous price, and brought them to his
mansion. Well, anyone with the smallest
knowledge of old oak would see at a glance
that this was all Belgian stuff, made up of
bits from old churches, put together higgledy-
piggledy without any unity of design — -stuff
that no ancient would have designed, for there
was no design in it. And the dealer kept this
Cheshire or Shropshire black-timbered house
regularly supplied with this detestable rubbish,
and regularly took greenhorns to it to pay
down heavy gold for what was worth nothing
but a few Belgian francs.

THE DOMESTIC HEARTH 59

At the risk of branching away from my
topic, I must have another word relative to
dealers.

There is still in England a good deal of
good plain old oak ; old cradles, old standing
clock cases, old bureaus, etc., without any
carving on them, but fine in their lines and
in their simplicity. These wretches buy them
up and give them into the hands of mechanical
carvers to adorn in " Elizabethan style," and
then they sell these good old articles of furni-
ture— defaced and spoiled and rendered all
but worthless.

" Good heavens ! " said I to one of these
gentry ; " you have utterly, irrevocably ruined
that noble wardrobe."

" Well, sir, I couldn't sell it for one-tenth of
the price hadn't I done this. The buyers like
this, and I have to suit their taste."

To return to the hearth and to the settle.

A friend one day saw a screen of carved
oak in a cottage. He bought it for half a
guinea, and then called me into consultation
on it. With a little study it revealed itself
to be the back of a settle of Henry VI I. 's

6o AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

reign. The mortices for the arms and for the
seat were there ; also nail marks showing that
stamped leather had been fastened to the back
below the sculpture. There were pegs show-
ing where had been the pilasters sustaining
the canopy, and one scrap of canopy still
extant. I show the restoration (p. 57).

Fine though this be, I know something

o o

better still — not in art, but for cosiness, and
that is the curved settle, it is constructed in
an arc. In a farm-house I know well are two
such settles, and they are connected by a
curved iron rod fastened to the ceiling, and
there are green baize curtains depending from
this rod.

On a winter evening, the farmer and his
wife and the serving maidens and young men
come into the kitchen, and the circle is com-
pleted with chairs or stools, the curtains are
drawn, the fire is made up, and a very jolly
evening is spent with cakes and cider, and
tales and jokes and song.

I was at a sale one day — a very small farm
but an old one. A farmer bid for the settle—
a small one. One of his daughters was there.

THE DOMESTIC HEARTH 61

She turned to her sister and said : " I say,
Nan, vaither he 've gone and bought the settle,
and it's lovely ; it will hold only two."

"Well, Jane," said her sister, "I reckon-
that depends. You must have the right one
beside y' ; then it 's just large enough, and
you don't want no more."

When I was a child, some sixty years ago,
the mat before the fire was the line of de-
marcation, beyond which a youngster might
not go.

" My clear," said my grandmother, " fires
are made to be seen — not felt."

Oh, how we shivered beyond the mat ! I
used to look at a patent bacon-toaster, and
resolve, when I was a man and independent,
to have a curved settle formed of burnished
tin, and to sit before a roaring fire in the
focus of all the converging rays, and never
stir therefrom from Michaelmas till Lady Day.
But the curved settle answers the purpose.

Among the troubles and irritations of life,
one of the worst is a smoky chimney, and
among all the hideousness of modern con-
trivances nothing surpasses the cowl.

62 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

It is very curious that architects should set
themselves to work to violate first principles,
and so involve us in these troubles. In the
first place, to ensure that a chimney shall not
smoke, the flue must be made large enough
to carry the smoke. This is a principle very
generally neglected. Next it is necessary that
the chimney should not have a flat top, for
then the wind beats against the broad surface,
and, of course, prevents the smoke from rising,
and much of it is deflected down the flue.

What our forefathers did was to reduce the
top to a thin edge that could not arrest and
drive the smoke down, but would, on the
contrary, assist it in rising. Or else they
covered over the orifice with a roof, open
at the sides, that prevented the wind from
descending, and enabled the smoke to get
away whichever way the wind blew.

In order to illustrate what I mean, I have
simply taken my pencil and gone outside
my house, and have drawn an old and a new
chimney-top.

The chimney-piece or overmantel is the
reredos of the family altar, and should

THE DOMESTIC HEARTH 63

contain the arms of the family or the
portraits of ancestors.

No portion of an old manor-house was so

THE CHIMNEY-TOP, ANCIENT AND MODERN

decorated and enriched as this ; and the hall
fireplace received pre-eminent attention.

Happily we have in England numerous and
splendid examples ; but a vast number were
sacrificed at the end of last century and the

64 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

beginning" of the present, when large looking-
glasses came into fashion, and to make place
for them the glorious old sculptured wood was
ruthlessly torn down. If the reader is happy
enough to possess a copy of Dr. Syntax's
Tours, he will see the period of transition.
In the second Tour is a plate representing
the doctor visiting the Widow Hopefull at
York. The room is panelled with oak, the
ceiling is of plaster beautifully moulded, the
chimney-piece is of oak carved, but painted
over, and the large open hearth has been
closed in, reduced, and a little grate inserted.

In the same volume is a picture of Dr.
Syntax making his will. Here the large
open fireplace remains, lined with Dutch
tiles, and the fire is on dogs. All the lower
portion of the mantel decoration remains, but
above the shelf everything has been removed
to make way for the mirror.

In the same volume is Dr. Syntax painting
a portrait, and here again is a lovely panelled
room with plaster ceiling and a simple but
charming chimney-piece of excellent design.

Now turn to the first Tour, and look at

THE DOMESTIC HEARTH 67

Dr. Syntax mistaking a gentleman's house
for an inn. Here we have the chimney-
piece supported on vulgar corbels, all of the
period when Rowlandson drew ; above the
shelf is a painting in the worst description of
frame. When Rowlandson made his drawings,
he was absolutely incapable of appreciating
Gothic design, and whenever he attempted
this he failed egregiously, but the feeling for
what was later, Elizabethan and Jacobean,
was by no means dead in him, and he drew
the details with a zest that shows he loved
the style.

CHAPTER IV.

TO my taste old furniture in a modern
jerry-built villa residence is as out of
place as modern gim-crack chairs and tables
and cabinets in an ancient mansion. In the
first instance you have solidly constructed
furniture in a case that is thin, and not
calculated to last a century. With regard to
the second, happily we have now excellently
designed furniture, well constructed on old
models ; and what I mean by gim-crack stuff
is that which was turned out by upholsterers
to within the last fifteen years.

68

OLD FURNITURE

69

Look at the construction of a chair, and see
what I mean.

Full well do I recall the introduction into
my father's house of these chairs. Only a
fragment of one now remains. Observe the
legs ; they curve out below, and are as un-

calculated to re-
sist the pressure
downward of a
heavy person sit-
ting on them, as
could well be con-
trived. Then again
the braces — look
at them ; they are
spindles with the
ends let into holes
drilled half-way through the legs. Old braces
were braces, these are mere sources of weak-
ness, they do not brace ; when weight is
applied to the seat the tendency is to drive
the legs apart, then out falls the brace. No
mortice holds it, it has no function to fulfil.
In the old chair how firm all the joints are
made ! Stout oak pegs are driven through

CHAIR (1840)

70 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

every mortice, and every precaution is taken
to prevent gaping at the joints, to resist strain
put on them.

Mention has been made of the great looking-
glass, which was
the occasion of the
destruction of so
many carved chim-
ney-pieces. There
was another intro-
duction, and that
into the drawing-
room, which pro-
duced a disfiguring
effect, and that was
the large circular
rosewood table.

At the beginning
of this century it
entered our parlour,
settled there, and
uncomfortable. By
furniture could the drawing- room be given
a cosy look. The table got in the way of
visitors, it prevented the formation of pleasant

made the room look
no arrangement of the

OLD FURNITURE 71

groups ; it was a very barrier to friendship, and
a block to conversation.

One evening, in the South of France, I
received intimation from a M. Dols, avocat,
that he would be pleased to receive me. I
had sent word to him before that I should
like to call on him and see some interesting
flint swords and celts in his possession. He
asked me to call in the evening at 8 p.m.
Accordingly I went to his door, and was
ushered into the salon. The centre was
occupied by a table, of considerable size, and
the family was seated beyond the table.

E B A c D
• • • • •

G •

TABLE.

M. Dols occupied B ; Mme. Dols occupied c ;
M. Dols' mother was planted at D ; and the
maiden sister of Mme. Dols at E. M. Gaston
Dols, the son, was at G, and Mile. Eulalie
Dols, the daughter, at F. The chair A was left
vacant for the visitor.

72 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

But conceive the situation ! To be introduced
like a criminal before six judges, then, when
one had reached the seat allotted, to be planted
one in a row, and to have to distribute remarks
right and left ; to address the ancestress at D
across the shirtfront of M. Dols at B, and to
say something pretty to the old maid at E
athwart the swelling bosom of Mme. Dols
at B !

If only that detestable table could have been
got rid of, we would have gravitated together
into a knot and been happy — but to be lively
and chatty in espalier was impossible.

Well ! it was almost as bad in the old days,
when we had large round tables in our drawing-
rooms ; and one of the great achievements of
modern — I mean quite recent — times has been
the bundling of that old rosewood table out.
That gone, the rest of the furniture gets
together into comfortable groups, and every-
thing finds its place. Before, all were over-
awed and sent to the wall in deference to the
round table.

A word or two is due to the chest of drawers.
This, I conceive, is a development of the old

OLD FURNITURE 73

oak chest, in which the valuables, or the linen,
or the sundry garments of the family were
kept. Countless specimens of these oak chests
remain ; some very fine, some plain. There
is, moreover, the spruce chest, made of cypress
wood, that was thought to preserve silk and
cloth from the moth. Oak chests are usually
carved, more or less ; cypress chests are
sketched over with red-hot iron.

Now there was an inconvenience in the
chest. A hasty and untidy person turned its
contents upside down to find what he or she
particularly wanted, and which was, of course,
at the bottom. If the husband did this, he
had words cast at him that made him miserable
for the rest of the day.

So it was clearly advisable that husband and
wife and each child should have a separate
chest. But that did not suffice ; one was
needed for bed linen, one for table linen, a
third for personal linen. The result would
have been an accumulation of chests, when,
happily, the notion struck someone that drawers
would solve the difficulty. Let the top of the
chest remain immovable, and break up the

74 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

front into parallel strips, each strip having a
drawer behind it.

An old chest of drawers can be known by
the way in which the drawers are made to
run. They have a groove let into their sides
corresponding with a strip of oak or runner on
each side of the case ; thus they do not rest
the one on the other, but on their runners.
When each drawer was separately cased in,
then the need for runners came to an end.

It is deserving of observation how slowly
and cautiously our forefathers multiplied the
drawers. At first, two were thought quite as
many as could be ventured upon, but after
about a century the makers grew bolder and
multiplied them.

Does it chance that there be a reader of
this chapter who possesses a cupboard, partly
open in front, with small balustrades in the
door between which the contents of the cup-
board can be seen ? If he or she has, ten
to one but it has been converted into a
receptacle for china, or glass, and then china
and glass are not only imperfectly exhibited,
but become rapidly covered with dust. The

OLD FURNITURE

75

possessor of such a little cabinet or cupboard
owns something now become very rare, the
significance of which is understood by a few
only.

A CHEST OF DRAWERS (1652)

Let me describe one in my possession. The
height is two feet eight inches, by two feet
one inch, and the depth eight and a half
inches. There are two doors in front : the

;6 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

upper is perforated and has eight little balus-
trades in it ; the lower door is solid ; but this
lower door, instead of engrossing the entire
front of the cabinet, is small, six inches square,
and occupies one compartment of the three,
into which the lower portion of the front is
divided. Each door gives access to a separate
compartment.

Now, what is this droll little article of
furniture ? What was its original use ?

c?

When I answer that it was a livery cup-
board, I have little doubt that the majority
of my readers will think, as did someone
I know who asked about it and received this
answer, that it was intended for livery badges
— the metal plates with coats of arms engraved
on them — worn anciently by servants upon
their left arms in a nobleman's and gentleman's
household.

But no. A livery cupboard had not this
signification. It was the cupboard in which
was kept that portion of food and of wine
or ale delivered over to each person in the
household by the lady of the house for night
consumption. Anciently — in the days of Good

OLD FURNITURE

77

Queen Bess and of James I. — there was no
meal between supper at 7 p.m. and breakfast
at 10 a.m., and when each person retired for

THE LIVERY- CUPBOARD

78 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

the night he or she carried off a portion of
food, served out, if not by the hands of
the hostess, then under her eye ; and this
" delivery " was carried upstairs to the bed-
room and was stowed away in the cupboard
appropriated to its use, that on waking in the
night, or early in the morning for a hunt or
a hawking, or a journey, the food and refresh-
ing draught might be handy, and stay the
stomach till all met for the common meal
served in the hall at ten o'clock.

We still speak of livery stables, but this
does not mean that there coachmen and
grooms who wear livery attend to horses,
but that the horses themselves receive there
their livrte — delivery of so many feeds of
oats. This is made clear enough by a
passage in Spenser's account of the state of
Ireland, written in the middle of the sixteenth
century. He says: "What livery is, we by
common use in England know well enough,
namely, that it is an allowance of horse-meat ;
as they commonly use the word stabling, as
to keep horses at livery ; the which word, I
guess, is derived of livering or delivering forth

OLD FURNITURE 79

their nightly food ; so in great houses, the
livery is said to be served up for all night —
that is, their evening allowance for drink."

Another reference to the custom of serving
liveries for all night is made by Cavendish
in his Life of Wolsey, where, in giving a
description of the Cardinal's Embassy to
Charles V. at Bruges, he says: "Also the
Emperor's officers every night went through
the town, from house to house, where as many
Englishmen lay or resorted, and there served
their liveries for all night, which was done
in this manner : first, the Emperor's officers
brought into the house a cake of fine manchet
bread, two great silver pots, with wine, and
a pound of fine sugar ; white lights and
yellow ; a bowl or goblet of silver to drink
in ; and every night a staff torch. This was
the order of their liveries."

These little livery cupboards usually stood
on another, from which they were detached,
and which was the " court-cupboard." In this
the inmate of the room kept his valuables.

Now let me bid my readers keep a sharp
eye on the furniture of cottages when they

8o AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

visit them, for these livery cupboards may
still be occasionally found in them, and then
they go by the name of " bread and cheese
cupboards." I remember many years ago
picking up one in a labourer's cottage, that
was used for cheese, and it did not lose this
smell for a long time afterwards.

But these livery cupboards may also be seen
in some churches where doles of bread are
given on certain days ; and in them, under
lock and key, the loaves remain on the day
of distribution till given away.

As already intimated, these livery cup-
boards are now scarce, and it behoves any-
one who has one such to treasure it, and
anyone who can procure such a cupboard to
get it.

There is another cupboard that should be
valued — the dear old corner-cupboard. This
also has a pedigree.

It was not always put in the corner. Its
proper place was in the dining-room, and
there it contained the conserves, the distilled
waters, the home-made wines that testified to
the skill of the housewife. It contained more

OLD FURNITURE 81

than that — the nutmegs, the cinnamon, the
mace, the pepper, all the precious spices that
came from the blessed islands over the sea,
and were costly and highly esteemed. In
most dining-rooms of the reign of Charles
II. or Queen Anne, this cupboard will be
found let into the wall, usually arched over
above, a necessary adjunct to the room ; and
when the bowl of punch had to be brewed
the lady of the house unlocked it, and at
once the whole room was pervaded with
fragrance as from the spice isles.

Who .among us who are getting old do not
recall the peculiar curranty savour of the
ancient dining-room? I have a white-haired
uncle — he will forgive my telling it — who,
when I was a child, and he a young man from
Oxford, invariably sought opportunities, and
found them, for getting at such a cupboard,
and filling his hand first, and then his mouth,
with currants. To this day, I never see him
without a waft of that old corner -cupboard

coming over me.

And the stout and ruddy yeoman, as he
dipped the whalebone and silver ladle into

82 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

the steaming bowl, in which floated circles of
lemon, sang :

" Behold the wealthy merchant, that trades on foreign seas,
And brings home gold and treasure, for such as live at ease,
With spices and with cinnamon, and oranges also,
They're brought us from the Indies, by the virtue of
the plough."

Then came the reign of the Georges, when
men built for show rather than for comfort,
and the walls were of thin brick overlaid
with composition to keep the rain out ; and
the composition was covered with oil-paint to
keep the rain out of the cracks in the plaster
and in the bricks. In such houses there were
no deep walls in which cupboards could lurk.
It was necessary to have cupboards and
cabinets made as detached pieces of furniture,
taking up room, giving us knocks when we
inadvertently run against them ; and these
cupboards and cabinets were of veneered
stuff, common wood underneath, with a thin
film of mahogany or rosewood glued on, and
every knock given struck off a bit of veneer,
and a change of weather scaled off pieces, and
gave the whole a shabby, measly look. Then
to get her precious cupboard out of the way

OLD FURNITURE 83

of being knocked, and thereby her bottles of
liqueurs and syrups being knocked over, the
lady of the house devised the corner-cupboard.

Also, as things Chinese and Japanese and
Indian were much in fashion, these cupboards
in the corner were very generally painted dark
green or black, and were ornamented with
raised gold figures — all in imitation of Oriental
flowers and birds and men, and very generally
were furnished with beautiful brass-work locks
and hinges.

Nearly every old house has its secret cup-
board— usually in the wall. Very often one
may be found behind the panelling, and near
the fire. In my own house is one cut in
granite, the stone on all sides, and is the
depth of my arm. I have little doubt that
these warm, dry cupboards, so secured that
no mouse can make its way in, were for the
preservation of deeds. Others were for jewel-
lery and plate. The custom of having secret
cupboards was continued after cupboards had
become independent articles of furniture, stand-
ing out in the room ; but then they took the
form of secret compartments, not opened by
keys, but by moving some part of the

84 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

moulding-, or by pressure on some ornamental
plate or piece of inlaid wood or ivory.

It is said that everyone has his secret closet,
and that in it everyone has his skeleton. I
do not know much about the cupboards of
nowaday folk, but when I think of those I
knew in the olden times, it seems to me that
they were full of nothing other than sweets
and spices, of gold and gems ; anyhow, such
were the cupboards of our grandmothers, our
maiden aunts, and our great-grandmothers.
And when we chance in some secret compart-
ment to light on a bundle of their letters, and
look into them, then it is just like the opening
of their corner-cupboards, out pours a sweet
and spicy fragrance — that of the generous
thoughts and kind wishes of their dear old
honest and God-fearing hearts.

CHAPTER V.

WHEN I was a small boy at King's
College School, I boarded with one
of the masters, at a corner house in Queen's
Square. There was a long room in which
we boarders — there were some five-and-twenty
of us — had our meals, and prepared lessons
for the morrow in the evening, under the
supervision of an usher.

One day at tea, the usher having been
85

86 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

summoned out of the room, we boys essayed
who could throw up his piece of bread and
butter highest. Mine went against the ceiling,
and, the butter being unusually thick, adhered.

I was in great alarm ; there was no getting
it down : it stuck, and neither the usher nor
the master, when he entered for prayers,
observed it.

During preparation of lessons, during
prayers, my eyes reverted to the piece of
bread and butter. It remained unnoticed.
That it was also unobserved by the servants,
who were supposed to clean the room, is not
perhaps matter of surprise.

The next day passed — still the bread and
butter hung suspended — but on the third day,
during prayers, flop! — down it came in
front of the master, and left behind it a
nasty, greasy stain on the ceiling.

" Whose piece of bread and butter is that ?"
asked the master, when Amen had been said.

I had to confess, and was whipped.

That stain in the ceiling grew darker daily.
The dust of the room adhered to the butter.
It was not effaced all the while I remained

CEILINGS 89

a boarder, and I involuntarily every day, and
frequently daily, looked at it, to see how much
deeper the tinge was that the patch acquired.

Years after, when I was a man, and the old
master was dead, and the house was in other
hands, I ventured to ask the then tenants to
be allowed to look at my old school-haunt.
And— actually — the bread and butter stain was
still there. Like murder — it could not be hid.
The ceiling had been repeatedly whitewashed,
but ever through the coverings that overlaid
it, the butter mark reasserted itself.

I cannot say whether it was this which
causes me always, on entering a room, to
direct my eyes to the ceiling— but I do, and
observe it always with much interest.

The ceiling of the world is not one blank
space ; it is sprinkled with stars at night, and
strewn with clouds by day. Why then should
the ceilings of our rooms be blank surfaces ?
We spread carpets of colour on our floors.
We decorate richly our walls. Why should
the ceiling alone be left in hideous baldness,
in fact, absolutely plain ? White ceilings were
a product of that worst period of art — save

9o

the mark ! that age of no art at all, the begin-
ning of the present century.

The ceiling came in in the reign of Henry
VIII., and reached its greatest perfection
in that of Elizabeth. At a later period the
ornamentation became richer, but not so
tasteful.

The mouldings were worked with " putty
lime," lime finely sifted and mixed with some
hair, the lines of the ornamentation were made
with ribbons of copper or lead, and the pattern
was fashioned by hand over this.

It is supposed that the drops one finds in
Tudor ceilings, and which are not of plaster,
or plaster only, but of carved wood, are
a mere ornament, and purposeless.

This, however, is not the case. Such en-
riched ceilings are very heavy, and their
weight has a tendency to break down the
laths to which they adhere, but these pendents
are bolted into the rafters, and serve to form
so many supports for the entire ceiling, which
without them might in time fall.

The Elizabethan ceiling was geometrical in
design, but with bands of flower-work, con-

CEILINGS 91

ventional in character, introduced, and some-
times consisted in strap-work, studded with
rosettes, wondrously interlacing.

Then came a simpler geometrical pattern,
circles enclosing wreaths of flowers copied
from nature, exquisitely delicate and beautiful ;
but the imitation was carried sometimes too
far, as when the flower heads are suspended
on fine stalks of copper wire.

In a little squirarchical mansion in Corn-
wall, of no architectural beauty, there was a
marvellously beautiful ceiling of the date of
Charles II., the flowers and fruit infinitely
varied, and wrought with exquisite delicacy.
The room was low, and for that reason the
artist had taken special pains in the modelling.

A "Brummagem" man bought up the land
and the house — this latter was far too small
to suit his ideas, and it was left unoccupied.

One day the rector said to him : " I want
to have my school treat next Thursday-
should rain fall, may I take the children into
the old hall ? "

"By all means," said the new squire; "but
it will be stuffy : I will have it ventilated."

92 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

He at once went down with two carpenters
and ripped strips through the lovely ceiling
from one end of the room to the other, utterly
destroying this incomparable work, that must
have occupied the artist months of patient
labour, and which had called forth the best
efforts of his genius.

That is how mulish stupidity is every day
destroying the achievements of genius. It
is on a level with that of the chawbacon who,
having got hold of a Stradella violin, broke
it up to light his fire with the splinters.

There was, perhaps, a little heaviness in these
ceilings — a little more than there ought to be,
and the perfection of plaster work was attained
in Germany at a somewhat later period, when
the rococo ceilings came in. These were superb
— not heavy, but rich with fancy and exquisite
in delicacy. This never reached England, or
if a foreign workman came here and did a
ceiling or two, the art did not take root.
Instead it died completely out, and we were
left with quite plain ceilings or such as had a
centre-piece, cast, of no style — vulgar, tasteless,
and mechanical, and of plaster of Paris.

CEILINGS 93

We have come now to recognize, tardily,
the right of the ceiling to decoration, and are
either papering it or covering it with lincrusta,
or papier mac/it, or asbestos " salamander "
decoration, applied. This is better than
nothing, but, of course, is mechanical and
monotonous, and can never compete with the
work that is the direct outcome of mental
effort and manual dexterity.

In connection with a ceiling I subjoin the
following story from a friend :

" In 1891 my head mason had an attack
of influenza, and this fell on his nerves, and
convinced that he had been ill-wished he
consulted a white-witch at — — , who in-
formed him that he had been ' overlooked '
by one of his own profession, and that he
had applied too late for a cure to be effected.
The man became terribly depressed ; he
wandered over the country, disappearing for
days, and keeping his family in alarm, lest
he should make away with himself.

" This went on for several years. He would
do no work, he took no interest in anything,
and could speak of nothing but his ailments.

94 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

' His heart was broke,' such was his descrip-
tion of himself. Well, I was about to rebuild
a wing of my mansion, and to make of one
large room a ball-room. I went to my be-
witched mason and said to him, ' Thomas, I
wish you would help me. I am very anxious
to have a first-class decorated ceiling to that
ball-room, and you know what these Londoners
be : they do all by machinery, and you buy
a ceiling by the yard — nasty, vulgar stuff I
would be ashamed to have seen here. I '11
tell you what it is, Thomas, those Londoners
come out of town and sail about the country
in the holiday time picking up ideas. I think
we must show them how a thing in ceilings
ought to be done, and let them understand
that we are not such fools as they take us
to be. Try your hand at my ball-room ceiling.
Get it started at any rate/ The man was not
a plasterer by profession, but he had done some
plaster work for me, and took an interest in it.

" ' Oh, sir! ' said he, ' my heart is broke. I
couldn't do it.'

" ' What,' I answered, ' not to teach the
Londoners a lesson ? '

CEILINGS 95

" ' Well, I '11 begin it, but never be able
to finish it.'

" ' Then begin it, man.'

" So he did. Between us we contrived to
model roses and tulips, etc. And then we
set to work casting and finishing off. Then
came the glorious rainless summer of 1896.
'Thomas,' said I, 'we must get the walls of
the ball-room up and roofed over before
winter. Do now lend a hand with building.
Then when bad weather comes on you can
begin to set up the ceiling.' So all the
summer he was building — did not miss a
day, and this winter he is hard at work at
his ceiling, full of interest and delight, and
has recovered his good looks, and to a large
extent forgotten his maladies, and by the time
that the last rose is finished off, I trust he
will be a sound man again."

Now what my friend wrote me conveys
a moral. Our country workmen, masons,
carpenters, smiths, are not fools. They need
only to be directed in the paths of good
taste, to execute admirable work, as good as
anything produced in former days. Do not

96 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

over-teach and direct them, give them good
examples, show them the principles of con-
struction and decoration, and then, as much as
may be, leave them to work the details out by
themselves. They become intensely interested
and proud of their work, and take all their
friends and fellow-tradesmen to see it, whether
it be in the church or the manor-house ; and
that this sort of education, producing results
in the place, attaches them to their village
home, goes without saying.

There was a grand old fellow, George Bevan
by name, a mason, who worked in this parish
when I was a boy. And now, whenever in
alteration or in pulling down a bit of George
Bevan's work is come upon, the masons stand
still, shake their heads, and say, " As well
blast a rock as put a pick into George Bevan's
work." Then say I, "Aye, and a hundred
years hence folk will say, ' This has been done
by the White family. There were giants in
those days.' "

Unhappily, many of our landed proprietors
think it quite enough to build "neat" farm-
houses and cottages, and pay no regard to

CEILINGS

97

beauty. It does not cost more to build what
is beautiful than what is hideous ; if they took
pains to educate their local artisans to do work
that is pleasing, they would be elevating them
in culture, and, what is more, attaching them
to those old homes of theirs that they have
helped to make a delight to the eye ; whereas,
set them to build what is ugly, and even though
ignorant of the principles of art, they are dimly
conscious that the cottage they occupy is not a
place pleasant to the eye, and not one they can
ever grow to love.

CHAPTER VI.

AS the manor-house with its hall was the
centre of the organization for civil pur-
poses, so was the Church the religious centre
of the parish. In a considerable number of
cases it certainly occupies the place of the
older temple, in which the thane or chief was
godi or priest as well as law-man in his hall.

This was not always the case ; a good many
of our churches are of later and exclusively
Christian foundation, and were then planted in
such place as was determined by quite other
considerations.

The parish church is full of interest con-
nected with the parish, it has been built and
decorated by the ancestors of the humble

98

THE PARISH CHURCH 99

inhabitants of the place, the yard about it
contains their dust ; in it they have left some-
thing of their very best — to be swept away by
the modern restorer to put in his own stuff,
manufactured at a distance, the whole executed
by a strange contractor employing strange
workmen. The village people have done
nothing towards it, but have looked on to
see the monumental slabs of their forefathers
torn up, some sawn in half and employed to
line drains, the frescoes that their forbears had
painted scraped away, the Jacobean altar rails
turned by ancient carpenters of the village
thrown forth to rot, and their place supplied
by some painted and gilt stuff, procured from
Messrs. This and That, near Covent Garden,
chosen from an illustrated catalogue.

Some wiseacres cry out because antiquaries
complain at this devastation, but have not
these latter a right to complain when parochial
history written in the parish church is being
obliterated ? And is it not better to leave
things alone, than put them into the hands of
strangers? In my own neighbourhood is a
church, Bridestowe, that had a beautiful wood

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screen. An incumbent gave up this church to
a restorer. He cut down the screen, took the
tracery of the screen-windows, sawed it in half,
turned it upside down, and employed it to glue
on to some wretched deal bench-ends, and to
a breastwork screen to the chancel, and to
ornament a deal door.

At Sheepstor was a gorgeous screen, rich
with gold and colour. I remember it well.
The church was delivered over to a local
builder to be made neat, and cheaply — above
all, cheaply. He destroyed the entire screen,
and left the church a horror to behold. Now
the present rector has recovered a few poor
fragments of the screen and has stuck them
up, attached to a pillar with a box beneath,
pleading for subscriptions for the reconstruction
of what was wantonly destroyed fourteen years
ago.

In the year 1851, when I was a boy of
seventeen, I went a walking tour in Devon-
shire, and halted one day at Kenton to see
the church. I found in it not only one of the
finest screens in the county, but also the
very finest carved oak pulpit, richly coloured

THE OLD PULPIT, KENTON

THE PARISH CHURCH 103

and gilt. I at once made a careful working
drawing of it to scale.

Years passed away, and not till 1882 did I
revisit the church — when, judge my distress.
It had been put into the hands of an architect
to "restore," and he had restored the pulpit
out of existence, and replaced it by the thing
represented on the next page.

I at once asked the rector what had become
of the old pulpit, which, by the way, had been
hewn out of the trunk of an enormous oak
tree. He replied that he knew nothing about
it — except that he thought some scraps of the
carving were in the National School. I then
went to the school-house and questioned the
master about it. He said that he believed there
was some old carving in a cupboard — and there
we found it, with dusters, old reading books, a
dirty sponge, and any amount of cobwebs and
filth. The rector kindly allowed me to carry
away the scraps, and with them and my work-
ing drawing taken thirty-one years before we
found that it was possible to reconstruct the
old pulpit, and now — thanks to my cousin, who
has illustrated this book, and the zeal of the

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new rector of Kenton — this splendid pulpit has
been restored — really restored this time.

THE MODERN-GOTHIC PULl'IT, KENTON

Let this be a lesson to rectors and others
who put their poor churches into the hands
of architects.

THE PARISH CHURCH 105

I do not know that human perversity is
more conspicuous in anything than in the
monstrous Belgian carved wooden pulpits, that
are the admiration of visitors and the pride of
sacristans. They are enormous erections of
oak, marvellously pieced together, and carved
to represent various sacred scenes, the figures
being life-sized.

The pulpit in Antwerp Cathedral represents
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, in half-draped
allegorical figures ; above whose heads trees
intertwine, with birds among the branches,
and amidst leaves and beetles and lizards and
snails appears the preacher as another lusits
naturce.

A good number of ancient pulpits remain
in English churches, some of oak, others of
stone. A pulpit of iron is said to have existed
formerly in the Cathedral at Durham ; and I
have seen one such of very elaborate character
at Feldkirchen, in the Vorarlberg.

Who can say but that we shall be having
them in aluminium before long ! There is a
fashion in these things, and we are at the
dawn of an aluminium age. That will have

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one advantage ; it will see the close of the
epoch of Bath-stone and marble pulpits, all
ugly and unsuitable, in our cold northern
climate, where the pulpit should be calculated
to warm, not to chill.

There is a fashion not only in the material
of which pulpits are made, but also in their
structure. At one time they were very high
up above the heads of the congregation, then
they were let down very low, so that the
preacher was scarce raised at all, and now
they are pushed a little further up. In a
church I know the central stem of the pulpit
is of stout oak. When the fancy was that the
preacher should be high up, then the end of
the post was planted on the ground. Then
came the fashion that it should be low,
accordingly a deep hole was sunk with a pick
under the base, and the post lowered into
it. Presently it was considered that the low-
ness of the pulpit was too considerable, the
preacher was inaudible at the end of the
church ; accordingly pick and spade were
engaged again, and the post pulled half-height
up again and there wedged. Here is a

THE PARISH CHURCH 107

suggestion for future use. Why not have the
stem telescopic ? Then the whole body of the
pulpit can be made to go up or come down,
as suits the preacher's voice.

I remember some years ago hearing that
Bishop Wilberforce when he ruled the See of
Oxford was once, and once only, disconcerted
in the pulpit. This was the occasion. He
had gone to preach at the opening of a new
church, or the restoration of an old one, I
cannot recall which. Now one of the great
improvements introduced was that the floor of
the pulpit was so contrived as to work upon
a screw to adapt the height within the pulpit
to the occupant. The pulpit was circular
internally, and as the screw turned it turned
the floor round. The parish clerk was vastly
pleased at the ingenuity and convenience of
this arrangement, and considered that the re-
opening of the church demanded imperatively
the exhibition of the new mechanism. He
waited till the bishop was in the pulpit, and
had said, " Let us pray," when he went to the
vestry and began to work the crank. To his
inexpressible surprise Bishop Wilberforce found

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the book-board slipping from before his face,
and that he was revolving, and facing in quite
a different direction from that which he had
taken up when he called for the prayers of the
congregation.

Presently the red face of the clerk appeared
looking approvingly through the vestry-door,
to see how the mechanism worked, and then
with renewed energy he fell to at the crank,
and round went the prelate again, and his face
to his great puzzlement was brought back to
the book-board.

He got through the collect somehow, rose
to his feet, and gave out the text.

To his infinite concern and perplexity he
began his text facing the congregation, and
ended it presenting his back to them. Not
only so, but he was obviously rising out of
his pulpit, or rising higher in it as he rotated
on his axis.

It was in vain that he tried to begin his
sermon, and shuffled into suitable position,
the floor revolved under him, and the book-
board and sides of the pulpit seemed to be
sinking away from him. A sense of nausea,

THE PARISH CHURCH 109

of sea-sickness, came over the right reverend
father, and he feared that in another turn his
knees would be level with the edge of the
pulpit. He became giddy.

By this time the incumbent of the church
had discovered what was in process, and pre-
cipitated himself into the vestry, threw himself
on the crank, and worked it backwards with
a vigour truly admirable, but with the result
that he spun the bishop round in reverse order
to that in which he had gone up, as he let him
down to a suitable level.

As I heard the story, I learned that on this
occasion the eloquence of Samuel Wilberforce
deserted him.

How far the tale is true, I am not in a
position to say. I tell the tale as it was
current at the time.

A certain fluent pulpit orator, a great
luminary in his theological school, had a
spring contrivance at the back of his pulpit,
into which he could throw himself, and in
which he could sway his body from side to
side.

The trumpet mouths in connection with

no AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

tubes that are carried into pews occupied by
deaf persons have given rise to mistakes.

One preacher, who was short-sighted, and
who always harangued extempore, on entering
the pulpit took off his spectacles, and, seeing
something circular beside the desk, supposed
it to be a shelf or bracket, and put the glasses
on it, whereupon down shot the spectacles and
blocked the tube. Another, who had been
provided with a glass of water, emptied the
vessel into the receiver, and the deaf old
lady at the end of the tube received into her
ear — not a gush of oratory, but a jet of water.

One hot summer's day my wife and I
happened to be at Eichstatt, in Bavaria ; the
day was Whitsun Eve. We tried the doors
of a large church, and found them locked,
with the exception of one small side door that
opened out of a cloister, and we entered the
church by that.

To my great surprise I heard a voice high
pitched and ringing through the spacious
vaults in earnest pastoral address. I thought
this very odd, as no one was in the church
save an old sacristan, who was dusting and

THE PARISH CHURCH in

decorating the side altars previous to the
ceremonies of Whit-Sunday.

My wife and I strolled down the side aisle,
looking at the pictures, and still the impas-
sioned harangue pealed through the church.
As we passed the sacristan he began to laugh.
We went further, and, having seen all that was
to be seen in the north aisle, emerged into the
nave, with the purpose of crossing the church
to look at the pictures in the south aisle, when
we saw a young cure in the pulpit, gesticulating,
pouring forth a fervid address to his dearly
beloved brethren — who were conspicuously
absent. Suddenly the preacher was aware
of an English gentleman and lady as audience.
He paused, lost the thread of his discourse,
put his hand into his pocket for the MS.,
found it, but could not find his place ; made
a new rush at a sentence ; his voice gave way,
and, turning tail, he ran down the pulpit stairs,
and darted out of the church in confusion.
He was a young priest, recently ordained,
practising his first sermon which he was to
deliver on the morrow.

I have seen what is not often seen — women

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occupying a pulpit, and that in a Roman
Catholic church. It came about in this way.
I was at Innsbruck when the marriage took
place of the daughter of the Governor of
Tyrol, Count Taaffe, with some distinguished
nobleman.

The cathedral was crammed with all the
6lite of the place, and there was no seeing
the blush on the cheek of the bride, for there
was no seeing the bride at all for the crowd.
Beside me were two very well-dressed ladies
who were extremely troubled at this. I be-
lieve, however, they were more anxious to
have a good sight of the bridegroom than
of the bride.

" My dear Ottilie," whispered one to the
other, "this will never do. I must, I posi-
tively must see them."

" But how, Nottburg, sweetest, is that to be
done ? We cannot get into the gallery, that
is packed."

" My angel ! packed or not packed, I simply
must see the ceremony. I shall die if I don't."

" What can be done ? There are women
standing on the rails of the side altars."

THE PARISH CHURCH 113

" My Ottilie, it is a matter of life or death.
I must see."

"But how?"

"Hold— the pulpit!"

Now the pulpit was a gorgeous affair of
marble and gilding, and was accessible only
by means of a little door in the wall. It was
very high. At once Nottburg and Ottilie,
clinging to each other, worked a way for
themselves with their elbows, using them
like fins, through the crowd towards this
particular door. I watched them. No one
else had thought of invading the pulpit.
Through the door they went, and they bolted
it behind them, and in another moment there
they were, bonnets and feathers and smiles,
in the pulpit, and no one could dislodge them,
as they had secured the door behind.

I have said there is a fashion in pulpits,
and there is caprice as well. A very eloquent
preacher I know entertains the idea of having
space in which to stride about. Accordingly
he set up in his new church an oblong plat-
form, measuring loft, by 5ft, and he enclosed
it with a plain deal railing, 3 ft. 6 in. high.
i

ii4 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

He himself being a very tall man, this suited
him admirably. He would place both his
hands on the rail, and swing the upper portion
of his body over when he sought to be im-
pressive. Unhappily, for a great festival, he
invited by letter a stranger, whom he had
never seen, to preach for him. On the arrival
of the strange preacher, he proved to be a
very small man indeed. Still, I do not think
it occurred to the incumbent to make provision,
nor did he realize what the result would be, till
the Preacher of the Day ascended the pulpit,
when, at once, by rector, by choir, by the
entire congregation, it was seen that the
sermon could, would, must be nothing but a
farce. The preacher was visible in the pulpit
— and looked for all the world like a white
rabbit hopping about in a cage, his head could
hardly be seen over the top.

At once vergers were sent with hassocks,
and two of these were placed in the pulpit,
one balanced on top of the other, and on
this the little man had to maintain his
equilibrium — or seek to maintain it, not
always successfully, as at intervals one

THE PARISH CHURCH 115

hassock would slip away, whereupon the
preacher's head disappeared, and the sermon
was interrupted while he chased the evading
hassock and replaced it as a footstool.

When I was an undergraduate at Cam-
bridge there was a very little man incumbent
of a certain church, and not only was he
little, but there was something indescribably
comical in his appearance. The only occasion
on which I went to service there this odd little
man mounted the pulpit with great solemnity
and gave out as his text : " I am fearfully and
wonderfully made." I can remember nothing
of his sermon, but the sight of the droll little
object in the pulpit giving out this text is in-
effaceable in my memory.

There is one feature of the ancient pulpit
which is not now reproduced. This is the
sounding-board. No sounding-boards were
employed to assist the voice in mediaeval
churches, but then such churches were built
in proportions acoustically suitable, and it is
hard to find an ancient church in which the
voice does not travel easily. The forming of
square and high pews no doubt did much to

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interfere with ease in preaching, as every such
pew became a trap for catching the waves
of sound. Consequently the device of a
sounding-board was introduced when churches
were chopped up into boxes, and the voice
needed concentration and assistance. When
the pews disappeared, the need for the
sounding-board ceased and it has disappeared
likewise.

In one of the groups of islands in the South
Pacific where the Wesleyan missionaries have
succeeded in converting the natives, a friend
of mine was desirous of doing something as
a recognition of much kindness which he had
received from the chief, and before leaving
the island he asked the chief what he could
let him have as a token of his regard. The
native replied that there was one thing he
and his people craved for with all the ardour
of their fiery tropical blood — and this was a
pulpit. In the island of Rumtifoo visible in
the offing, the converts had a very fine pulpit
in their chapel, but here in this island was

none ; would Mr. X • give him a pulpit ?

The Englishman pondered. He had never

THE PARISH CHURCH 117

in his life made a pulpit, and he had never
accurately observed the organic structure of
a pulpit, so as to know how to set about to
make one. However, in his desire to oblige,
he took counsel with an English sailor, and
these two set to work to design and execute
a pulpit.

Their initial difficulty was, however, how to
get the proper material. No wood boards
were to be had except some old champagne
cases. These cases were knocked to pieces,
and out of the boards an octagonal pulpit was
reared.

When got into shape the two Englishmen
walked round it, eyed it, and agreed that
something was wanting to complete it, and
that was a book-desk. Accordingly this was
fashioned out of some more pieces of the
champagne cases and fastened to the pulpit,
which was now removed to the chapel and
set in position.

The English makers of the pulpit next
seated themselves in front of it and studied
with a critical and, as far as possible, an im-
partial eye. Both agreed that it would not

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quite do as it was, for on the boards com-
posing the sides were drawn in black large
champagne bottles, and there were fragments
of the inscription, "This side up," worked
into the structure.

" It must be painted," said my friend.

"It must — certainly," responded the sailor.
"It don't look quite as it ort."

But no paint was procurable in the island.
However, it was discovered that a pot of
Aspinall's enamel was in the island of Rumti-
foo, and the chief managed to negotiate an
exchange — whether an ox, or so many cocoa-
nuts, or a wife was given for the enamel pot
I cannot remember.

The pot, when procured, proved to be one
of emerald-green. The brighter the better,
thought my friend ; and he and the sailor
proceeded to paint the pulpit, and cover over
the inscription and the bottles.

Great was the eagerness of the native chief
to have the pulpit opened, and he sent to the
island of Kokabundi for a native evangelist
to occupy the pulpit for the first time, and
sanctify it.

THE PARISH CHURCH 119

The evangelist came. The chapel was
crammed with native Christians, and the
preacher ascended the emerald-green pulpit.

All went well for a while, all went very well
till the preacher warmed to his subject, and
then he laid hold of the book-desk and swung
himself about, and banged on it with his sable
fists, till — crack, smash ! — the book-desk went
to pieces.

Nothing disconcerted, rather roused to more
vehement action and harangue, the evangelist
now laid hold of the sides of the pulpit, he
dashed himself from side to side, he almost
precipitated himself over the edge, he grappled
with the flanks, and pulled this way, that way,
till — crack ! smash ! — the sides began to gape
like a tulip that is going off bloom, and
presently away went one .side, then another,
and the whole pulpit was a wreck.

But this was not all ; the paint had not
been given time thoroughly to dry ; the hands
of the orator were moist, not to say sticky,
and the paint came off on his fingers and
palms, and as he wiped his face, dripping
with perspiration, he left on it great smears

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of emerald enamel on nose and eyebrows,
cheek and chin.

The congregation was worked up as by a
magnetic influence : it sighed, allelujahed,
groaned, swayed, the women laid hold of
each other's tresses and pulled as they
rocked themselves, and when the preacher
banged on the desk, the native males in
sympathy banged on each other's pates as
well. Some screamed, some fell on their
backs and kicked. Indeed, never since the
conversion of the island had there been
known such a rousing revival as on this
occasion ; and great was the exultation of
the natives to think that one of their own
preachers by his fervour had " busted up "
an English-made pulpit.

And now a few words on the old gallery
at the west end of the church, at present dis-
appearing everywhere.

In every man's life there have been mistakes
upon which he looks back with self-reproach.
Such a mistake was that which I made on
entering on the incumbency of East Mersea,
in Essex.

THE PARISH CHURCH 121

A deputation waited on me, consisting of
labourers, who asked that I would restore the
old instrumental music in the church, which
had been abolished by my predecessor.

Now my predecessor had provided a costly
harmonium, of the best procurable quality. I
had to consider this. I considered, moreover,
the agonies I had endured as a boy from the
performance of a west gallery orchestra ; so
I declined to entertain the project.

Next Sunday was windy. There was in
the church a stove, and to the stove-pipe
outside a cowl. In the wind the cowl twisted
and groaned. Afterwards I learned from a
superior farmer's wife, that, having heard of
the purpose of the deputation to call on me,
at the first groan of the cowl her blood ran
cold ; with horror in all her nerves she thought
— " He has given way. Here is the orchestra
tuning up ! "

I regret, however, that I did not yield, for I
believe now that no old institution should be
abolished that is capable of improvement. It
is quite true that the performances were tortur-
ing to the ear that was educated, nevertheless

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they were the best that the village musicians
could produce, and therefore ought not to
have been rejected. There was in them an
element of life, they were capable of improve-
ment, and they were homegrown.

The harmonium was a new instrument, it
had to be played by the schoolmistress, an
importation ; and, after all, a harmonium is
an odious instrument, only a degree better
than the old village orchestra.

But I think that it was not merely the
painfulness of the performances of the old
orchestra that caused their abolition. I am
sure that many a parson would have gone
on enduring, having his ears tortured and
his teeth set on edge, had it not been for
the discords in the instrumentalists, as well
as in the instruments.

The quarrels in the west gallery were pro-
verbial. Strikes had begun there long before
they began in factories and coal-mines. Some-
times the strikes were against the parson, if
he interfered with the orchestra for intemperate
proceedings — leaving bottles of ale and spirits,
or rather leaving bottles that had contained

THE PARISH CHURCH 123

these liquors — in the gallery after practice
night. Sometimes the strikes were against
the conductor, or the first violin, and I have
a recollection of one of the strikes being an
emphatic one, when the fiddle-stick performed
its part on the head of the flute, and the
flute on the head of the fiddle.

There was a dear old rector I remember,
who said once : "I never can be brought to
believe that there will be music in heaven, for
if there be music there, there must be choirs
and orchestra ; and if choirs and orchestra,
then there can be no harmony."

The bickerings, the heart-burnings, in the
west gallery were a constant source of trouble
to the parson, and if he seized on a means of
establishing peace by abolishing the orchestra,
he was not altogether to blame.

The first stage in getting rid of the village
orchestra was taken by the introduction of
the barrel-organ. I can well recall that stage.

Now the barrel-organ had but a limited
range of tunes. Our organ had a vein of
lightness and wantonness in it. How this
came about I do not know. But one of

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the tunes ground out on it was " The Devil's
Hop." This would never do. There were
two elements of difficulty in it. In the first
place, if this tune were not turned on we
would be one tune the poorer in divine service.
But it was intolerable that any psalm should
be sung to " The Devil's Hop." After much
consideration the difficulty was solved in this
way. On the organ the title " The Devil's
Hop" was altered into " De Ville's Hope,"
and instructions were issued to the grinder
to grind slowly and solemnly. By this means
the air served for an Easter psalm.

I possess a very interesting manuscript. A
great-uncle of mine, the late Sir Edward
Sabine, when a youth, was on one of the
early Polar expeditions. Whilst he was
absent, a cousin kept a diary of the daily
doings at home, for his entertainment on his
return. This was in 1819. I believe my
great-uncle never read the MS., but I have
done so with great delight.

Now in it occurs this entry :

"To-day — walked to South Mimms Church
where a novelty has been introduced — a

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barrel-organ in the west gallery, in place of
the old orchestra. I listened and thought it
very beautiful, but I do not approve of these
changes in divine service. To what will they
lead ? Where will be the end ? "

My dear relative who penned these words
is long since dead. What would she have
said had she lived to the present day ?

The barrel-organ is gone now. It is a thing
of the past. The next stage was a little
wheezing organ that cost about £20, some-
times even less. Horrible little things they
were, broken-winded, giving out squeaks and
puffs, and with no bass notes at all. More-
over, they were always getting out of order.

One had been introduced into a neighbour-
ing church in place of the discarded barrel-
organ, and the neighbourhood was invited to
be present on the Sunday in which it was
to be "opened." But alas! It had opened
itself in an unexpected and irremediable
manner — irremediable on the spur of the
moment, and by inexperienced persons.
There had been damp weather, and the
leather of the bellows had become unglued.

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The blower bowed to his work when the
organ voluntary was to begin. " Hussh-h-h ! "
a puff. The keys were struck, with more
vigour the blower laboured, and louder
sounded the puffs — and nothing was heard
save the puffs. Then the clerk left his desk
and went to the gallery to open an inquiry.
Presently, after much whispering and knock-
ing about of seats in the gallery, the clerk
came to the front, with a red face, and
announced ore rotundo, " This here be to
give notice. This here dratted orging ain't
going to play this here Sunday. 'Cos hers
busted her belleys."

When there had been a fracas among the
instrumentalists, or when the organ had
"busted," then the choir had to sustain the
burden of the singing unsupported. And
sometimes when the organ or organist was
unequal to* some new anthem on a high
festival, the choir had to perform by itself.

I recollect one notable occasion. It was
Christmas. The village choir was intent on
performing the Hallelujah Chorus from the
" Messiah." Bless you, my dear readers !

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they were not timorous and hesitating in
those days any more than in these, when
only quite recently a young village carpenter
proposed for a rustic parish entertainment a
piece out of " Lohengrin."

To return to the Hallelujah Chorus. Un-
happily the organist was bowled over by a
severe cold and could not attend. The
soprano was cook at the rectory, and the
plum-pudding had somehow gone wrong and
must be attended to. So she did not attend.
The alto had been invited "with her young
man " to a friend's at a distance, therefore she
could not attend, and the bass had been out
carolling all night and drinking ale, and was
hoarse and — well, indisposed. Accordingly,
nothing daunted, our tenor gave us the
Hallelujah Chorus as a solo, without ac-
companiment at all, and without the other
parts. That was a wonderful performance—
never to be forgotten.

The other day I was in a restored church,
with stained glass windows, with brass can-
delabra, with velvet and gold hangings, with
carved oak bench-ends, and encaustic tiled

128 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

floors, and — I could not help myself — I
laughed ; for I saw in the side chapel a huge
organ, elaborately painted and gilt. It had
three key-boards, and I could not count all
the stops. Nothing to laugh at in that ; no :
but there was, in the contrast between the
church as it is now and what it was fifty years
ago, as I remember it. I was then in it on
a Sunday. There were no carved benches
then, but tall deal pews. There was no
organ : there was an orchestra in the west
gallery, and the clerk was first violin therein.
But his duties required that he should sit near
the reading-desk at the chancel arch. Now,
when it came to the giving out a psalm, the
old fellow stood up and announced : " Let us
sing to the praise and glory of God the -
Psalm." Having done this, he left his desk
and strode down the nave whistling the tune
very shrilly, till he reached the west gallery,
where he took his place at the music-stand,
and drew the bow across his fiddle, tuned it,
and the whole orchestra broke out into music
—or, to be more exact, uproar.
In small country parishes it was by no

THE PARISH CHURCH 129

means infrequent that the clerk alone could
read, and he had to do all the responses.
When it came to the psalm, he read out two
lines audibly. Whereupon choir and congre-
gation sang those two lines. Then he gave
out two more lines, and those were sung. So
on to the end. This was not very musical ;
but what else could be done, when the power
to read print was not present in the congre-
gation ?

I do not think that the true history of the
west end gallery in a parish church is properly
known. In mediaeval churches there was a
very rich and elaborately carved wood screen
between the chancel and the body of the
church. The screen had several purposes
to serve, some symbolical, some liturgical,
some practical.

In the first place it was symbolical of death.
In the Tabernacle and Temple a veil hid the
Holy of Holies ; but on the death of Christ
the veil was rent asunder from the top to the
bottom, and this signified that the way into
the Holiest Place was open to all, and that
death ceased to be the impenetrable mystery

i3o AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

it had been; since Christ, by His death, had
overcome death, it was possible to look beyond
the veil and see the glorious place where is the
Mercy-Seat and the Altar-Throne, and where
our Great High Priest standeth, ever making
intercession for us.

Now, in the mediaeval churches, the chancel
represented the Holiest Place, or heaven, and
the nave was the figure of the Church on
earth. Consequently the screen, dividing the
nave from the chancel, was a figure of death.
But inasmuch as by faith we can look through
and beyond the barrier of death, the screens
were made of carved work pierced through,
so that the chancel with the altar might be
perfectly visible beyond the screen. And
inasmuch as death was overcome by Christ,
the crucifix stood above the screen, a figure
that proclaimed that it was through the cross
of Christ alone, that the kingdom of heaven
was opened to all believers, and that death
was swallowed up in victory.

So much for the symbolic meaning of the
screen. And yet, no— one word more must
be added. Last summer I was walking along

THE PARISH CHURCH 133

the north coast of Devon, when I visited the
very fine parish church of Coombe Martyn.
This noble church possesses an exceedingly
fine rood-screen that has not been demolished.
The church possesses something else of
interest — a very intelligent, quaint old parish
clerk.

As I was admiring the screen, the old man,
who was dusting in the church, came up to me
and said : " Please, your honour, have y' ever
heard tell why the screen-doors niver shut ?"

I expressed my doubt that this was so.

" Now, do y' go and look at ivery old church
screen you seez," said the clerk. "If it ho'n't
been meddled wi' by them blessed restorers,
you '11 find for sure sartain that the oak doors
won't shut. Zur, see here. Here be the
doors. Try 'em ; they can't be made to shut."

I answered that the wood had swelled, and
the joinery was imperfect.

" No, your honour," said the old man. "If
you look close, you '11 see it was made on
purpose not to fit."

On examination it certainly did appear that
the doors in question never could have been

134 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

fastened. I admitted this, but doubted
whether it was the same with all screen-gates.

"It's the same wi' all," said the old man.
" I Ve looked at scores, and they was all made
just the same, on purpose not to fit."

"That is very odd," said I, still incredulous.

"It was done on purpose," said the old man.

Then he came out with his explanation.

" Doant y' see, your honour. Them old
men as made the screens weren't bad joiners,
and they weren't fules neither. They was
a sight better joiners than we be now. The
reason they did it was this. For sure sartain
the chancel means heaven, and the body of
the church means airth. And then, doan't
it say in Scriptur, ' The gates shall not be shut
at all ? ' Very well, if the chancel be meant
to tell o' the heavenly Jerusalem, then the
screen gates must be made not to fit, that
never nobody may never be able to fasten 'em
no more. The old men weren't bad joiners,
nor fules — not they."

And now — to the liturgical significance of
the screen. As already said, it supported the
crucifix, and the rule was that during Lent

THE PARISH CHURCH 135
all images were to be veiled or covered with

o

wraps. Accordingly, on the top of the screens
were galleries by means of which the crucifix
could be reached for the veiling on Shrove
Tuesday, and the unveiling on Easter Eve.

But the screen served a third purpose, and
that was eminently practical. On it sat the
orchestra and choir. The gallery was made
broad and solid to support them, and was
furnished with a back to the west, against
which the performers might lean, and which
concealed them from the congregation in the
nave. These backs have for the most part
disappeared ; nevertheless, several remain.
They naturally were the first part of a screen
to give way through the pressure of somnolent
human beings against it.

The choir and instrumentalists sat on the
rood-screen, where they could see every move-
ment of the priest at the altar, and so take
their cues for singing and playing. It was
essential that they should be in this position.
In Continental churches, where in many places
the screens have been mutilated or removed,
the choirs still occupy their old places. For

i<6 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

instance, at Bruges, where the screen in the
cathedral is reduced to a mere block of black
and white marble beside the chancel steps,
the musicians remain perched at the top. At
Freiburg, where the screen and gallery have
been erected in one of the transepts, quite out
of sight of the altar, the singers and orchestra
are on it.

At the Reformation, when the crucifix was
torn away, a great ugly gap was left in the.
gallery- back above the screen. In cathedrals
this gap was filled up with the organ. And
in cathedrals and large churches the organ
displaced the instrumentalists.

In many churches the screen itself was
destroyed or allowed to fall into decay. But
the use of the gallery was not forgotten. The
priest now occupied the reading-desk, and as
this was very generally in the body of the
church, something had to be done to bring
the choir and orchestra into a suitable position
facing him.

Accordingly, in a great number of cases
the gallery was removed to the west end
of the church, and those who rendered the

THE PARISH CHURCH 137

musical portion of divine service moved
with it. Hence it came about that in a
vast majority of cases the gallery at the
west end, under the tower arch, came to
be the great focus and centre of music and
discord.

Now the fashion has set in everywhere to
pull down the west gallery and open out the
tower arch. But when the west gallery is
gone, whither is the organ to go ? Where
is the choir to be put ? The choirs are now
very generally accommodated in the chancel,
but the organ has been moved about into
various places more or less unsuitable.

At one time the fashion was to build out
a sort of chapel on the north side and to fit
the organ into it ; boxing it up on all sides
but one. Naturally, the organ objected to
this treatment. It was made to occupy an
open space : it demanded circulation of air.
In the pocket into which it was thrust it
became damp, and went out of tune.

Nothing could have been designed more
senseless than these cramped chapels for
organs. The organ sets waves of air in

138 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

motion, and the walls boxing in the pipes
prevented the waves from flowing. It was
found that organs in this position did not
give forth a volume of sound commensurate
with their cost and size, and they were pulled
out, and stuck in side aisles, and painted and
gilt, and an attempt made to render an un-
sightly object comely by flourish of decoration.

But again difficulties and objections became
evident. An organ ought not to be on the
damp floor, and it ought to be well elevated.
Moreover, planted at the east end of an aisle,
it did not support the congregation in their
singing. It roared and boomed in the ears
of the choir ; and if the service is to be an
elaborate performance, in which the congre-
gation takes the part of audience only, then
it is in the right place. But if the divine
worship is to be congregational, if all are to
be encouraged to sing, then the organ is out
of place.

Consequently in a good many cases there
is a talk of moving back the organ into a
west gallery.

Unhappily, an organ is a very expensive

THE PARISH CHURCH 139

traveller. An individual can tour round the
globe at about the same cost that will move
an organ from one end of a church to another.
Hundreds on hundreds of pounds have been
spent in marching the unhappy organ about ;
and we cannot be sure that its wanderings are
over yet.

In these restless and impatient days, when
everyone has a theory and a scheme, and
desires to do what is contrary to what has
been done, the hardest of lessons to acquire,
and that entailing most self-restraint, but that
which is least costly, and most calculated to
give a man peace at the last, is to let well
alone.

And now before we leave the old church,
something must be said about the tower and
bells.

On the Continent there is absolutely no art
in bell-ringing — it is what any fool can do ;
the bells are clashed together, there is no
sequence of notes, no changes in succession,
there is noise, not melody. I remember many
years ago passing through the queer little
village with a queerer name, Corpsnuds, in the

140 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

French Landes, on Midsummer-day. From
the quaint church -tower sounded the most
extraordinary clatter of bells, without sequence
and without harmony. Moreover, from the
top of the tower fluttered an equally extra-
ordinary flag. On more attentive examination
of the latter, when the wind was sufficiently
strong to unfurl and expand it, it became
obvious that this flag was nothing more nor
less than a pair of dingy black trousers split
at the seam, and reseated with a dingy navy-
blue patch.

Having made the observation, I entered the
belfry, to ascertain what produced the clatter
among the bells.

There I discovered the sexton, in his blouse,
very hot, very red, profusely perspiring, racing
about the interior swinging the end of a single
bell-rope.

On seeing me he halted, and wiped his brow
on his sleeve. I asked him how it was that
he alone was able to ring a peal of bells.

'•''Mais!" he answered, "Cest bien possible.
I have tied a broomstick in a knot of the
rope, among the bells, and as I whisk the

THE PARISH CHURCH 141

rope about, the stick rattles this bell, that
bell, all of them. Voila tout!"

" And the banner waving augustly above
the tower ? " I further inquired.

liBien simple" was his answer. "An old
pair of my patched pantaloons. My wife slit
them ; we have no parish flag, so I said —
allons! me s pant a Ions. There they are : aloft !
One must do what one can in honour of the
bon Saint Jean''

It is in England alone that bell-ringing is
an art, and oh ! how lovely an art it is — to
those far away who hear the swell and fall of
the bells, the music always having a certain
sadness in it. But it has its sordid side, as
has all art, and the sordid side is the interior
of the belfry ; or, let us say, was, before reform
pushed its way there.

There was some excuse for the ringers to
conduct themselves in a free and easy manner
in the belfry when it was shut off from the
body of the church by a screen of boards
against which the west gallery was erected.
Then the belfry was so much apart from the
church that it ceased to be regarded as per-

142 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

taining to it, or being included within its
sacred atmosphere. Accordingly the ringers
conducted themselves in the belfry as they
saw fit. They introduced pipes, also a barrel
of beer. They sketched each other on the
boards, never in complimentary style. They
wrote scurrilous verses on the screen, and
sometimes conducted there all kinds of buffoon
games, and played practical jokes on each
other.

Not only did they consider that they might
do as they liked in the belfry, but that they
might have access to it when they liked, and
ring on whatever occasion they pleased.

Another abuse crept in. The ringers con-
sidered that they had done quite sufficient
when they had rung a peal before Divine
Service. Their ringing ended, they would
withdraw to the road or loiter about the
churchyard, talking and smoking, whilst wor-
ship proceeded within the church.

In a certain place that I know the ringers
had been allowed their own way under an
indifferent rector, and the worst possible con-
dition of affairs had resulted. Then came a

THE PARISH CHURCH 143

new rector with the reforming spirit in him,
and he resolved to put matters to right.
Hitherto the belfry key had been retained by
the sexton, a prime offender. The parson
demanded it. The sexton refused to surrender
it. Then the rector went with a blacksmith to
the tower door, broke it open, and affixed a
new lock to it with a key that he retained for
himself.

Great was the indignation among the
ringers, and an anonymous letter was received
by the rector :

"This be to giv Nottis. If you pass'n
doant mind wot your about and let we ring
the bells as plazes we, then us wull knock your
little 'ed off."

The rector was not to be intimidated. That
night he went to the belfry and locked himself
in.

At the usual time for the practice to begin
the ringers arrived, and he heard them discuss
him and his doings in the churchyard. That
he did not mind.

" I say," remarked the sexton, "ain't he the
minister ? Wot do that mean but that he 's

i44 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

sent by the bishop to minister to us and do
jist as us likes ? "

" Shure, b'aint no meanin' in words if that
ain't it," responded another.

" Us won't be pass'n-ridden," said a third.

" Us '11 break open the door," said a fourth.

"And if he interferes, us '11 scatt his little
head open," said a fifth, "as us wrote he —
you knaws."

Then came a bang against the tower door.

Now there happened to be a little window
close to the door, just large enough for a man
to put his head, but not his shoulders, through.

" I put on the lock, and I '11 have it off,"
said the blacksmith. " I've brought a bar o'
iron on purpose."

Then the rector put his head through the
window, and said, "Will you? Here's my
little head, scatt that first."

The men drew back disconcerted.

He had gained the day, and established his
authority over the ringers, and control of the
belfry door.

And now, in the same place, there is as well-
conducted a set of ringers as may be found

THE PARISH CHURCH 145

anywhere, and some of the old lot are still
there. The first step in the reform of the belfry
was that of obtaining mastery over the key.

A second step was taken when the west
gallery was demolished and the tower-arch
thrown open, so that the bell-ringers were
visibly in the church, and so came to feel that
they were in a sacred building in which there
must be no profanity.

In several instances much good has been
done by the rector or the curate becoming
himself a ringer, or, if not that, taking a lively
interest in the ringing, and being present in
the belfry, or visiting it, on practising nights.

Some curious customs remain connected
with bell-ringing. In Yorkshire it is cus-
tomary when there occurs a death in the
parish to toll the bell. Three strokes thrice
repeated signify an adult male ; three strokes
twice repeated signify an adult female ; two,
two, three, a male infant ; two, two, two, a
female child. These strokes are then followed
by as many as there were years in the age
of the deceased. At Dewsbury and at Hor-
bury, near Wakefield, on Christmas Eve, at

146 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

midnight, the devil's knell is rung. When I
was curate at the latter place, at first I knew
nothing of this singular knell. On my first
Christmas Eve I had retired to bed, when at
midnight I heard the bell toll.

Now, my window looked out into the
churchyard, and was, in fact, opposite the
tower door. I was greatly shocked and
distressed, for I had not heard that anyone
was ill in the parish, and I feared that the
deceased must have passed away without the
ministrations of religion.

I threw up my window and leaned out,
awaiting the sexton. I counted the strokes-
three, three, three : then I counted the ensuing
strokes up to one hundred.

Still more astonished, I waited impatiently
the appearance of the sexton.

When he issued from the tower, I called
to him :

"Joe, who is dead?"

The man sniggered and answered, " T'owd
un, they say."

"But who ^dead?"

"T'owd chap."

THE PARISH CHURCH 147

"What old man? He must be very old
indeed."

"Ay ! he be owd ; but for sure he '11 give
trouble yet."

It was not till next day that my vicar ex-
plained the matter to me.

At Dewsbury the devil's knell is thus
accounted for. A certain bell there, called
Black Tom of Sothill, is said to have been
an expiatory gift for a murder, and the
tolling is in commemoration of the execution
of the murderer. One Thomas Nash, in
1813, bequeathed ^50 a year to the ringers
of the Abbey Church, Bath, "on condition
of their ringing on the whole peal of bells,
with clappers muffled, various solemn and
doleful changes on the i4th of May in every
year, being the anniversary of my wedding-
day ; and also on the anniversary of my
decease, to ring a grand bob-major and merry
peals unmuffled, in joyful commemoration of
my happy release from domestic tyranny and
wretchedness."

A singular and beautiful custom still subsists
in the village of Horningsham, Wilts, where,

148 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

at the burial of a young maiden, " wedding
peals " are rung on muffled bells.

At the induction of a new vicar or rector
it is customary for him to lock himself into
the church, and then proceed to the belfry
and "ring himself in." It is, I- believe,
universal in England for the parishioners to
count the number of strokes he gives, as
these are said to indicate the number of years
during which he will hold the cure.

There still remain in some places certain
forcible evidences that the ringers regaled
themselves in the belfries, and these have
taken the shape of ale-jugs. At Hadleigh,
in Suffolk, is such a pitcher of brown glazed
earthenware, that holds sixteen quarts, and
bears this inscription :

"We, Thomas Windle, Isaac Bunn, John Mann, Adam
Sage, George Bond, Thomas Goldsborough, Robert Smith,
Harry West."

and below the names are these lines :

" If you love me doe not lend me,
Use me often and keep me cleanly,
Fill me full, or not at all,
If it be strong, and not with small."

THE PARISH CHURCH 149

At Hinderclay, a ringer's pitcher is still
preserved in the church tower, with the in-
scription on it :

" From London I was sent,
As plainly doth appear :
It was with this intent,

To be filled with strong beer.
Pray remember the pitchers when empty."

In a closet of the steeple of St. Peter's,
Mancroft, Norwich, is another, that holds
thirty-five pints. At Clare is a similar jug
that holds over seventeen quarts, and one at
Beccles that will contain six gallons less one
pint.

As already said, the church bells, which
the ringers regarded as their own, or as
parish property, they chose to ring on the
most unsuitable occasions, as when a "long
main " at cock-fighting had been won. Church
bells were occasionally rung for successful race-
horses. In the accounts of St. Edmund's,
Salisbury, is this entry :

" 1646. Ringing the race-day, that the Earl of Pembroke
his horse winne the cuppe vsh."

At Derby, when the London coach drove
through the town in olden times it was usual
to announce its arrival by ringing the church
bells, that all such as had fish coming might
hasten to the coach and secure the fish whilst
fairly fresh.

It used to be said that St. Peter's six
bells, which first sounded the approach of
the London coach, called "Here's fresh fish
come to town. Here 's fresh fish come to
town." Next came All Saints', further up
the street, with its peal of ten, "Here's fine
fresh fish just come into the town. Here's
fine fresh fish just come into the town."
Close by All Saints' stood St. Michael's,
with but three bells, and one of them
cracked, and the strain of this peal was,
" They 're stinking ; they 're stinking ! " But
St. Alkmund replied with his six, a little further
on in the street, " Put more salt on 'em, then.
Put more salt on 'em, then."

The earliest bells we have are the Celtic
bells of hammered bronze, in shape like sheep
bells, and riveted on one side. When these
bells were first introduced they caused great

THE PARISH CHURCH 151

astonishment, and many stories grew up about
them. Thus, in the church of Kelly, in
Devon, is an old stained-glass window that
represents St. Oudoc, Bishop of Llandaff, with
a golden yellow bell at his side. The story
is told of him that he was one clay thirsty,
and passing some women who were washing
clothes, he asked of them a draught of water.
They answered laughingly that they had no
vessel from which he could drink. Then he
took a pat of butter, and moulded it into the
shape of a cup or bell, and filled it with water,
and drank out of it. And this golden bell
remained in the church of Llandaff till it was
melted up by the commissioners of Henry
VIII.

A still more wonderful story was related
of St. Keneth, of Gower, who, as a babe,
was exposed in an osier coracle to the waves.
The seagulls fluttered over him, and bore him
to a ledge of rock, where they made a bed for
him of the feathers from their breasts. Then
they brought him a brazen bell to serve as
baby's bottle, and every day the bell was filled
with milk by a forest doe.

152 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

It is with bells as with all the faculties of
man. They are all "very good" when used
harmoniously; but the "sweet bells" can be
"jangled out of tune " not only by the failure
of mental power — as in the case of Hamlet —
but by lack of balance and order in the moral
sense.

CHAPTER VII.

i

WILL take mine ease at mine inn ! "

What an element of coziness, hospi-
tality, picturesqueness is introduced into the
village by the inn ! There is another side-
but that we will not consider.

I know some villages from which the squire
has banished the hostelry, and poor, forlorn,
half-hearted places they seem to me. If there
be a side to the village inn that is undesir-
able, I venture to think that the advantage
of having one surpasses the disadvantages.
WThat the squire has done in closing the inn he

154 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

hardly realizes. He has broken a tradition that
is very ancient. He has snapped a tie with
the past. In relation to quite another matter,
Professor G. T. Stokes says : " History is all
continuous. Just as the skilful geologist or
palaeontologist can reconstruct from an in-
spection of the strata of a quarry the animal
and vegetable life of past ages, so can the
historian reconstruct out of modern forms,
rites, and ceremonies, often now but very
shadowy and unreal, the essential and vigorous
life of society as it existed ten centuries ago.
History, I repeat, is continuous. The life of
societies, of nations, and of churches is con-
tinuous, so that the life of the present, if
rightly handled, must reveal to us much of
the life of the past."* So is it with the
parish ; and so the dear old village inn has
its story of connection with the manor, and
its reason for being, in remote antiquity.

I have gone to Iceland to illustrate the
origin of the manor, I shall go to Tyrol to
explain the beginnings of the village inn —
that is to say the manorial inn with its

* Ireland and the Celtic Church, London, 1892, p. 276.

THE VILLAGE INN 157

heraldic sign, in contradistinction to the
church house, with its ecclesiastical sign.
Each has its history — and each derives from
a separate institution.

What is the origin of signs ? The earliest
signs were certainly heraldic. We have still
in many villages the " So-and-so Arms," with
the shield of the lord of the manor emblazoned
upon it with all its quarterings. Or we have
the Red Lion, or the White Hart, or the
Swan, all either crests or cognizances of a
family, or of a sovereign or queen. The
Swan sign is said to date from Anne of
Cleves ; the White Hart was the badge of
Richard II., and inns with this sign probably
were erected in that reign, and have retained
this cognizance unchanged since. We know
of inns under the name of the Rose, which
there can be little question came into life as
hostelries in the time of the Yorkists and
Lancastrians. The Wheatsheaf was the
Burleigh badge, the Elephant that of Beau-
mont, the Bull's Head was a Boleyn cogniz-
ance, the Blue Boar the badge of the De
Veres, Earls of Oxford ; the Green Dragon

i58 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

of the Earls of Pembroke, the Falcon of the
Marquis of Winchester.

It does not, however, follow that the inns
that have these signs date from the periods
when, let us say, Anne Boleyn was queen,
because they bear the token of the Bull's
Head, or from the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
when Burleigh was in power, because of the
Wheatsheaf; for it will not infrequently be
found that they take their titles and signs
from a much more local origin, the coat or
cognizance of the squire who holds the manor.

There was a reason for this : the inn was
originally the place where the true landlord,
i.e. the lord of the land, received his guests,
and every traveller was his guest. In Iceland
at the present day there is but one inn at
Reykjavik, the capital, and that is kept by
a Dane. The traveller in the island goes to
any farmhouse or parsonage, and is taken in.
Indeed, by law a traveller cannot be refused
hospitality. When he leaves he makes a pre-
sent either of money or of something else that
will be valued, but this is a present, and not
a .payment. In many parts of Tyrol it is

THE VILLAGE INN 159

much the same. The excursionist is put up
at the priest's house. The writer has been
thus received, among other places, at Heilig-
kreutz, in the Oetz Thai. In the evening
the room — the curb's parlour — was filled with
peasants who asked for wine, and were sup-
plied. When they left they put money in
the hand of the pastor's sister, whilst he,
smoking his pipe, looked out of the window.
When the writer left next morning the same
farce was enacted. Further up the same
valley is Vent, where again the cure receives
travellers, and his sister receives the payment,
but there a definite charge is made ; but at
Heiligkreutz what was given was accepted
as a present. The priests who entertain do
not of course hang up signs over their doors.
The pastor is supposed to be given to hospi-
tality, and would give of his all freely and
cheerfully if he could afford it ; but of late
years, as travellers have become more numer-
ous, his pittance has become smaller, so that
his hospitality can no longer be gratuitous.

In the old romances of chivalry we read
of travellers always seeking the castle of some

160 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

knight, and asking, almost demanding, lodging
and entertainment.

Hospitality was a duty among the Germanic
races. According to Burgundian law, the
Roman who received a traveller was not
allowed to do so gratis ; the poorer Burgun-
dian host was bound to pay the Roman for
the keep of the traveller if he was unable to
accommodate him in his own house. The
honour of receiving a guest freely was too
great to be conceded to a conquered people.
When Theodoric with his Ostrogoths con-
quered Italy they were amazed at the Roman
tavern system, and at the iniquity of the
taverners, who had double measures, a just
one for natives and an unjust one for
foreigners. Why, the traveller should be
treated freely, the Ostrogoth argued ; and
Cassiodorus, under the orders of the king,
drew up laws to enforce at least honesty, if
he could not bring about liberality, in the
Latin osteria. We are inclined to be over-
hard in our judgment of the knights and
barons of Germany in the Middle Ages,
whose castles are perched on every command-

THE VILLAGE INN 161

ing rock by every road and river, but we
are scarcely just. It is true that there were
robber knights, but so there are at all times
rascals among a class, and we are wrong in
supposing that every ruined keep was the
nest of a robber knight. It was not so. The

O

knights kept the roads in order, and supplied
mules and horses to travellers ; they also gave
them free hospitality when they halted for the
night. The travellers paid a small toll for
the maintenance of the road, and also for the
use of the horses and mules which carried
them on to the next stage. On the navigable
rivers the barons kept the tow-path and sup-
plied the beasts which would drag the barges
up the stream, and for this also they received,
and very properly, a toll.

Here and there an ill-conditioned knight
exacted more than was his due, but he was
speedily reduced to order. It was to the
interest of all the knights and barons along
the highway to keep the communication open,
and not to divert it into another channel ;
consequently when one member of the con-
fraternity was exacting and troublesome the

M

162 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

rest combined against him, or his over-lord
reduced him to reason.

As the knights and barons had their castles
on heights for purposes of defence, and these
heights were considerable, it was not con-
venient for the wayfarers at the end of a
toilsome journey to have to scramble up the
side of a mountain to the castle of the lord
to enjoy his hospitality. Accordingly they
were entertained by him below in the village
built on the highway. Moreover, he himself
did not always inhabit the castle. It was
irksome to him, and his wife and servants,
to be perched on a rock like an eagle, conse-
quently in time of peace he lived in his "town
house," that is, his mansion at the foot of the
hill, where he could get his provisions easily,
and see the world as it flowed along the road.
In an old German village there is accordingly
to be found generally a somewhat stately
mansion below as well as the castle above,
with the same coat-of-arms carved over their
doors, inhabited by the same family in past
times, oscillating as circumstances required
between the house and the castle.

THE VILLAGE INN 163

When roads were maintained and the post-
horses found by the knights and barons, they
could charge for their toll enough to cover the
expense of entertainment ; but it is not im-
probable that the servant, the butler, received
a present which he transmitted to his master,
and which the traveller reckoned as a fair
remuneration for the wine he had drunk and
the meat and bread he had eaten.

The lord's house could always be recognized
by the shield with his arms hung up over his
door, and to this day the signboard is in
German " Schild." The sign was always
armorial. In many a Tyrolean and in some
old German inns may still be seen the coat-of-
arms of the noble owner, now plain publican,
carved in front of the inn, and the schild — the
heraldic shield with lion, or eagle, or bear, or
swan, or ape, or hare — hanging as well from a
richly ornamented iron bar.

Nothing can be conceived more picturesque
than the one long street of Sterzing on the
Brenner Pass : the houses are old, gabled, and
a considerable number of them have their
stanchions of richly twisted ironwork painted

1 64 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

and gilt, hanging out on each side over the
narrow street, supporting large shields with
armorial beasts. In the church may be seen
the same shields on monuments, crowned with
baronial coronets and knightly helmets, the
tombstones of former owners and inhabitants
of these houses, and also of former landlords.

As commerce increased, and the roads be-
came better, it was impossible for the nobles
to entertain freely. Moreover, the Thirty
Years' War, again the Seven Years' War,
and finally the Napoleonic wars, had so im-
poverished them that they were forced to
charge for entertainment, and to derive a
revenue from it.

From one cause or another they lost their
land, and then sank to be mere innkeepers.
This was rarely the case in Germany, but it
was not uncommon in Tyrol, where to this day
the hotel and tavern keepers represent the best
blood in the land. They have well-attested
pedigrees, of which they are proud ; and they
dispense hospitality, not now gratuitously, but
with courtesy and kindliness, in the very
houses in which their ancestors have lived

THE VILLAGE INN 165

for three or four hundred years, and under the
sign which adorned the helmets and shields
of their forefathers when they rode in tourna-
ment or battle.

At the Krone, the principal inn at Brunec-
ken, in the Puster Thai, the staircase is
adorned with the portraits of the family, con-
taining among them prelates, and warriors,
and stately ladies ; and the homely Tyrolese
girl in costume who attends you at table, and
the quiet, simple old host and hostess are the
lineal descendants of these grandees.

The writer spent a night at the homeliest
of taverns at Eben, between the Aachen See
and Jenbach. The little parlour was perfectly
plain, panelled with brown pine, with a bench
round it ; in one corner a rude crucifix, in
another the pottery-stove. The host wore
a brown jacket and knee-breeches, and a
coarse knitted cap on his head — quite a
peasant, to all appearance, yet he could show
his pedigree in an emblazoned tree, and right
to bear arms as an adeliger. So, also, at the
Croce at Cortina d' Ampezzo. The family
tree adorns the passage of the humble inn,

166 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

and a few years ago, before the run of tourists
to the Dolomites, the pretty newly married
hostess wore the local costume. On the post
road between Nauders and Meran, the last
station where the diligence stops before
reaching Meran is at an inn, the sign of
which is the " Brown Bear." The arms of
the family are carved on the front of the
house, and the sign hangs over the door.
The landlord represents the family which bore
these arms in mediaeval times, and he is, I
believe, of baronial rank.

Mais, in the same valley, stands at the
junction of the road from Italy over the
Stelvio, and that to Nauders, and that to
Meran, as also the road up the Miinster Thai,
which likewise leads to Italy. Down to last
century it was, no doubt, an important place.
Trade flowed through it. There are remains
of castles and towers about it, and in the
Middle Ages several noble families held these
castles, the keys to Germany from Italy, under
the Emperor. The place lies somewhat high,
the land is not very productive, and they were
not able to become rich on the yield of the

THE VILLAGE INN 167

soil. They lived on the tolls they took of
travellers, and when the postal system was
established and passed into the hands of
Government, they lost a source of revenue,
and went down in the world. At Mais are
two or three inns, and two or three general
stores. At the latter can be bought anything,
from ready-made clothes to sheets of note-
paper and sealing-wax. The principal of these
stores is held by a family named Flora. It is
worth the while of the traveller to turn into
the cemetery of the parish church, and he will
find ranges of white marble tombs of the family
of his host at the inn, and of the Floras, where
he has bought some notepaper and a reel of
cotton. These tombs are sculptured with
baronial helmets, and proud marshalling of
heraldic serpents and bears, with impalements
and quarterings and achievements — I will not
be certain, but I think they have supporters
also.

I remember that in Messrs. Churchill and
Babington's charming book on the Dolomites
they speak with astonishment at finding them-
selves in an inn which was once a noble

1 68 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

family's residence, and then discovering that
they were the guests of this noble family ;
but such a state of things is by no means
uncommon in Tyrol. There are hundreds
of innkeepers who are of noble rank, with
a right to wear coronets, and who do assume
them — on their tombstones.

Now, this state of things in Tyrol is
peculiarly interesting, because it shows us
a social condition which has passed into
oblivion everywhere else, and of which,
among ourselves, the only reminiscenses are
to be found in the heraldic signs of inns,
and in the host being termed land-lord. The
lord of the manor ceased to be landlord of
inn with us a long time ago, and probably
very early put in a substitute to act as host,
and kept himself aloof from his guests. He
lived in his manor-house, and entertained at
a guest-house, a hostelry. In a good many
instances in England, where there is a great
house, the servants of guests are accommodated
at the manorial inn, by the park gates. It was
not so in Tyrol, and to this day the evidence
of this old custom remains. As already said,

THE VILLAGE INN

169

in Tyrol one may be entertained by the cure".
This is only where there is no inn. Where
the lord did not have a mansion and receive,

there the pastor received in his parsonage.
Now, in England there is scarcely a parish
without its church inn — an inn generally
situated on the glebe, of which the parson

1 70 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

is the owner ; and very often this church inn
is a great cause of vexation to him. It stands
close to the church — sometimes conspicuously
taken out of the churchyard — and the
proximity is not often satisfactory. The
church inn has for its sign, may be, the
"Ring of Bells," or simply the "Bell," or
the "Lamb and Flag" — anyhow, some sign
that points to its connection with the church.
These inns were originally the places of en-
tertainment where the parson supplied the
wants of the parishioners who came from a
distance, and brought their food with them,
but not their drink. These people attended
morning service, then sat in the church house,
or church inn, and ate their meal, and were
supplied with ale by the parson or his sub-
stitute.

At Abbotskerswell, South Devon, is a perfect
old church inn, that has remained untouched
from, probably, the reign of Richard II. It
consists of two rooms — one above stairs, and
one below. The men sat in the lower, the
women in the upper room. Each was furnished
with an enormous fire in winter, and here the

THE VILLAGE INN 171

congregation took their dinner before attending
vespers.

In France the same thing took place in the
church porches, and that was one reason why
the porches were made so large. Great abuses
were consequent, and several of the French
bishops charged against, and the Councils
condemned, the eating and drinking in the
porches.

If the people from a distance were to remain
for the afternoon service, they must go some-
where. The writer has seen the porches of
German and French cathedrals full of women
eating their dinner, after having heard the
morning mass, and who were waiting for
the service in the afternoon ; but they are no
longer served there with ale and wine by
the clergy. Flodoard, in his account of S.
Remigius, says that that saint .could only stop
the inveterate custom at Rheims by a miracle :
he made all the taps of those who supplied
the wine to stop running. But to return once
more to the ordinary tavern. The French
auberge, the Italian albergo, derive from the
old Teutonic here-berga, which has for signi-

i;2 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

fication " the lord's shelter " — that is, the house
of shelter provided by the lord of the manor.

A cartulary of 1243, published in the Gallia
Christiana, shows us a certain knight Raimond,
who, on his birthday, assigns an annual charge
on his estate of three hundred sous for the
support of the village hostelry, which shows
us that in France the nobles very early gave
up themselves entertaining, but considered
themselves in some way bound to keep up
the inn.

In 1380, at Liege, the clergy stirred up the
people against the nobles to obtain their ex-
pulsion. But a difficulty arose, as it was found
that the nobles were the innkeepers of the
city, and to expel them was to close the public-
houses, and for that the Liegeois were not
prepared. So the riot came to an abrupt
conclusion.

In Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem, 1707, the
squire is represented as habitually frequenting
his village inn, and as habitually becoming
drunk there. Smollett tells us that Squire
Pickle, when he retired into the country, met
with abundance of people who, in consideration

THE VILLAGE INN 173

of his fortune, courted his acquaintance, and
breathed nothing but friendship and hospitality;
yet even the trouble of receiving and returning
these civilities was an intolerable fatigue to
a man of his habits and disposition. He
therefore left the care of the ceremonial to his
sister, who indulged herself in all the pride of
formality, while he himself, having made a
discovery of a public-house in the neighbour-
hood, went thither every evening, and enjoyed
his pipe and can, being well satisfied with the
behaviour of the landlord, whose communica-
tive temper was a great comfort to his own
taciturnity. At the village tavern squire and
attorney and doctor were wont to meet, and
not infrequently the parson appeared there as
well. That condition of affairs is past. It is
not so in Germany — where, in small villages,
gentlefolks and tradesmen, the Catholic priest
and the evangelical pastor, the baron and the
notary, the grocer and the surgeon, meet of an
evening, knock glasses, rub ideas, and in a cloud
of tobacco smoke lose bigotry in religion and
class prejudice. Would not the same have
been the case had our squires and parsons

174 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

continued to frequent the village inn ? Would
not their presence have acted as a check on
over much drinking ?

It is now too late to revert to old habits,
but I have a hankering notion that it would
have been, perhaps, on the whole, better if
the gentle classes had not " cut " the tavern,
and instead have taken their ease there, in
sobriety and kindly intercourse, yeoman,
squire, and farm labourer, on the one level of
the tavern floor, round the blaze of the one
hearth warming all, drinking the same generous
liquor, and in the one mellowing atmosphere of
tobacco smoke.

CHAPTER VIII.

EVERY manor had its mill, and conse-
quently there is hardly a village without
one. The lord of the manor had certain
rights over the mill and over his tenants,
who were required to go to his mill and to
no other.

The mill is usually a very picturesque
adjunct to the scenery. It is frequently an
old building ; it has ancient trees standing
round it ; there is the mill-pool, the sluice, the
wheel, and the foaming waters discharged
over it.

The miller himself is a genial figure, dusted
with flour, his face lighted up with the con-
sciousness that though all the rest of the parish
may starve, that will not he.

175

176 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

And the miller's cottage is almost always
scrupulously clean and well - kept. I have
known many mills, but I never knew a
slattern among miller's wives, never saw a
hug-a-mug condition of affairs in the miller's
home.

The miller anciently did not stand over-well
with the rest of the villagers. He ground the
corn of the farmer and the gleanings of the
poor, and took his toll from each sack, his fist
full and more than his due, so it was said.
The miller's thumb was a big thumb, and his
fist had a large grip.

But it was not only that the miller was
supposed to take more than his due of grain,
he was suspected of taking what was not his
from the lips of the girls and wives who came
with their sacks of corn to the mill to have
it ground. The element of jealousy of the
miller breaks out in a great many country
songs. The good nature, the joviality, the
cleanness of the miller, no doubt made him a
persona grata to the fair sex in a village, and
those who could not rival him revenged
themselves in lame poems and halting song.

THE MANOR MILL 177

But for all that he was regarded with
suspicion, there was a sense of something
picturesque, romantic about the miller. He
was a type of the genial, self-reliant English-
man ; and the writer of the well-known song
of the Miller of Dee hit him off to a nicety : —

" There was a jolly miller once lived by the River Dee ;
He worked and sang from morn till night ; no lark more

blithe than he ;

And this the burden of his song for ever used to be,
I care for nobody, no, not I, if nobody cares for me."

That the miller is esteemed to be a shrewd
man appears from such songs and plays as the
"Miller of Mansfield."

So also the miller's daughter forms a topic
for many a story, play and song, never with
a sneer, always spoken of with admiration,
not only because she is goodly, but a type of
neatness, and " cleanliness comes next to
goodliness." The new machinery and steam
are fast displacing the old mills that were
turned by water, and the old dusty miller is
giving place to the trim gentleman who does
most of the work in the office, without
whitening his coat.

178 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

I know an aged miller and his wife who
had been for years occupying a quaint old-
fashioned mill of the simplest construction,
and which answered all purposes required in
the village. But a few years ago a new
venture was started — a great mill worked by
steam, and with electric lighting through it,
and now no corn is sent to the ancient mill
that is crumbling and rotting away, and the
old people are decaying within it.

" Thomas," said I one evening over the fire
to this miller, " how long have you been
married ? "

"Fifty years next Michaelmas."

" And when did you court your wife ?
When did you find the right one ? "

"Lor bless y', sir, I can't mind the time
when we weren't courting each other. I b'lieve
us began as babbies. Us knowed each other
as long as us knowed anything at all. Us went
to school together — us larned our letters to-
gether, us was vaccinated together, her was took
from my arm ; and us growed up together."

"And when did you first think of making
her yours ? "

THE MANOR MILL 179

" Bless y', sir, I never first thought on it at
all ; I never thought other from the time I
began to think but that it must be — it wor
ordained so."

" Have you children ? "

" Yes ; they be all out in the world and
doing well. We haven't to blush for any of
them — men and maids all alike — respectable."

" Then you ought to be very happy."

" I reckon us ought, and us should be but
for that new mill."

"It is spoiling your custom?"

" It is killin' of us old folks out. It isn't so
much that us gets no grinding I mind, but it
leaves me and my Anne with no means in
our old age, and us don't like to go on to
the childer, and us don't like to go into the
work'us. There it is. Us did reckon on
being able honestly to get our bread for
ourselves and ax nobody for nothing. But
now this ere new mill wi' the steam ingens
and the electric light — someone must pay for
all that, and who is that but the customers ?
I Ve no electric light here, water costs nothing.
Coals costs twenty-one shillings a ton, and it

i8o AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

takes a deal o' coals to make the ingen march.
Who pays for the coals ? Who pays for the
electric light ? The customers get the flour
at the same price as I send it out with none
of them jangangles. How do they manage it ?
I reckon the corn is tampered with — there's
white china-clay or something put wi' the flour.
It can't be done otherwise. But I reckon folk
like to say, ' Our flour corned from that there
mill worked wi' steam and lighted by electric
light/ and if they have those things, then, I
say they can't have pure flour. So it must be,
I think, but folk say that I am an old stoopid
and don't understand nothing. All I can say
is I can turn out wholesome flour, and niver
put nothing in but corn grains, and niver
turned out nothing but corn flour, wheat and
oat and barley."

On the day of the golden wedding of the
old couple I visited them. I made a point of
this, and brought them some little comfort.

I found them very happy. A son and a
daughter had taken a holiday to see their
parents and congratulate them. The parson's
wife had sent in a plum pudding, the squire

THE MANOR MILL 181

a bottle of old port. Several friends had
remembered them — even the miller in the
new style, who had electric light and steam
power, had contributed a cake. There were
nuts and oranges — but perhaps the present
which gave most gratification was a doll, a
miller with a floured face, sent by a grandchild
with a rough scrawl. I supply the stops to
make it intelligible.

" Dear Grandada and Granny, — At skool, teacher
said old pipple go into a sekond childood. So has
you be so tremenjous old you must be orful babies.
I think you will want a doll, so i sends you wun, with
mutch love, and i drest the doll myself as a miller.
Hever yors, dear grandada and granny. — RosiE."

Though the village mill usually — almost
always — presents a pleasant picture in one's
memory, a picture of cheerfulness and content,
of good nature and neatness, it is not always
so. I remember one mill which carries with
it a sadness whenever I recall it. Not that the
mill was gloomy in itself, but that the story
connected with it was such as to make one sad.

The miller, whom we will call Pike, was
unhappily somewhat inclined to drink. He

182 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

was not an intemperate man at home, far
from it ; and in his mill, at his work, he was
always sober. But when he went to market,
when he got among boon companions, he was
unable to resist the temptation of taking more
than was good for his head. He did a very
respectable business, and turned over a good
deal of money, and was altogether a " warm "
man. One day he went to market and
gathered in there several debts that were
owing him, and put all his money, amount-
ing to twenty-five pounds seventeen and
sixpence, in a pouch of leather, tied a bit of
string round the neck, put it in his pocket
— that of his overcoat as it happened, and
not in his trousers or his breast pocket — and,
mounting his tax cart, drove home.

The evening had closed in, and part of his
way was through a wood, where the shadows
lay thick and inky. Whether it were that he
had drunk too much or that the road was
too dark to see his way well, I cannot say,
but it is certain that the miller was upset and
flung into the hedge.

Just then up came a workman, a man named

THE MANOR MILL

183

Richard Crooke, who caught the horse, righted
the cart, and helped Pike, the miller, into his
seat again. Pike was shaken but not hurt.

He was confused in his mind, not, however, so
much so as to fail to know who had assisted
him, and to thank him for it.

1 84 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

On reaching home he at once put up his
horse, and entering his house, and going
upstairs, took off his overcoat, found it was
torn and in a shocking condition of dirt,
wherefore he threw it aside and went to bed.

He slept till late next morning, and when
he woke he remembered but uncertainly the
events of the previous evening. However,
after he had had a cup of strong tea made
for him by his mother — he was a widower
without children, and his mother kept house
for him — he began to recall events more dis-
tinctly, and then, with a start, he remembered
his money bag. He hastily ran upstairs to the
torn and soiled overcoat and felt in all the
pockets. The bag of gold and silver was gone.

In a panic Pike rushed out of the house
and ran to the scene of his accident. He
searched there wherever there were tokens
of the upset, and they were plain in the
mud and the bruised twigs of the bushes.
Not a trace of the bag that contained so
much money could he find, not one ha'penny
out of the twenty-five pounds seventeen
shillings and sixpence did he recover.

THE MANOR MILL 185

He went to Crooke's cottage to question
him. The man was out. He was horseman
to one of the farmers, so Pike pursued him
to the farm and found him ploughing. He
asked him if he had seen — picked up anything.
No — Crooke had not observed anything.
Indeed, as he remarked, the night was too
dark, and the blackness under the trees was
too complete for him to have seen anything
that had been dropped. Crooke seemed
somewhat nettled at being questioned. Of
course, had he noticed anything belonging to
the miller fallen out of his trap, or out of his
pockets, he would have handed it to the
owner.

Pike was not satisfied. He was convinced
that no one had been over the by-road that
morning before he examined it, as it led only
to the mill and to the farm where Crooke
worked.

What had become of the money? Had
anyone retained it ?

Not long afterwards, to the astonishment
of the miller and some of the farmers, Crooke
bought a little property, a cottage and a couple

1 86 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

of fields. There was no doubt that he had
borrowed some of the money requisite ; he
said he had saved the rest. Was that
possible ? From that moment a strong and
ineradicable conviction formed in Pike's mind
that he had been robbed by Richard Crooke.

With envy and rage he watched the husband-
man move into his little tenement, and begin
to till his field. Pike considered that this
tenement was his own by rights. Crooke
had bought it with the miller's money taken
from him on the night when he was upset.
Crooke had taken advantage of his being a
little fresh, and a little confused by the fall,
to purloin the bag containing twenty-five
pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence.

From this time all joy, all cheeriness was
gone from the life of the miller ; his heart
turned bitter as gall, and all his bitterness was
directed against Richard Crooke. He brooded
over his wrong. He did not venture openly
to accuse the man he suspected, but he dropped
hints which prejudiced opinion against Crooke.
But everyone knew that this Richard had been
a careful man, saving his money.

THE MANOR MILL 187

Pike watched the corn grow on Crooke's
field ; he wished a blight might fall upon it.
But it throve, the ears were heavy, it was
harvested in splendid condition, and stacked
in the corner of the field.

Then, one night the corn rick was on fire.
This was the work of an incendiary. It must
have been done wilfully, and by someone who
bore Crooke a grudge. Richard had not
insured, and the loss to him was a very
serious matter. It might have been ruin
had not a "brief" been got up and some
pounds subscribed to relieve him.

No one could say who had done the deed.
Yet nobody doubted who the incendiary had
been. Nothing could be proved against any-
one.

A twelvemonth passed. A malevolent
pleasure had filled the heart of the miller
when he had heard that Crooke's stack was
consumed, and he somewhat ostentatiously
gave half a sovereign to the brief. He was
angry and offended when the half-sovereign
was returned him. Richard Crooke declined
to receive his contribution.

i88 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

During the year Pike's character deterior-
ated ; he went more frequently to the public-
house, he neglected his work, and what he did
was done badly.

Then one morning — on opening his eyes in
bed, they fell on a little recess in the wall, high
up beyond most people's reach, a place where
he had been wont to put away things he
valued and did not desire should be meddled
with. A sudden thought, a suspicion, flashed
across his mind. He started from bed, put
his hand into the recess, and drew forth his
money bag, opened it and counted out twenty-
five pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence.

On returning home, the night of his acci-
dent, he had taken the bag out of his torn and
sullied overcoat pocket, had put it in this
hiding-place, and forgotten all about it. He
hastily dressed himself — he would eat no
breakfast, but drank brandy, several glasses
full — went out, and when next seen was a
corpse, dragged out of his mill-pond, hugging
his money bag.

Not till then were mouths unlocked, and
men said that Pike, angered at his loss,

THE MANOR MILL

189

believing that Crooke had robbed him, had
fired the stack ; and that when he found out
his mistake, in shame and remorse, and un-
certain how he could remedy the wrong done
— he had destroyed himself.

CHAPTER IX.

AS the sun to the planets so stands the
manor-house to the farms on the manor ;
that is to say, so far as the relations of dignity
and dependence go. But the sun gives to its
satellites and receives nothing, whereas from
the lord of the manor come the loan of land,
of house, and of farm-buildings, for which
loan the tenant pays a rent, that is to say,
so much interest on so much capital placed
at his disposal. An old English farmhouse
that has not been meddled with is a very
interesting study. It represents to us the
type of our manor-houses before the reign
of the Tudors. Owing to the prosperity
which England enjoyed at the cessation of

the Wars of the Roses our gentry rebuilt

190

THE FARMHOUSE 191

their houses, and rebuilt yet again, as fashions
changed, so that we have very few of the
manor-houses left that were erected before
Tudor times.

The old farmhouse in England is in plan
very much what the old manoir was in France.
I will take a plan and give a drawing of that
of Anseremme on the Meuse near Dinant.
This has the parish church attached to it, as
it not infrequently was to the manor-house in
England.

The dwelling-house forms one side of the
courtyard. The other sides are occupied by
farm-buildings, stables, cart-sheds, granaries,
etc.

To reach the front door of the house one
must wade through straw trampled by cattle
and oozing with manure. Our forefathers
did not mind that. Our farmers of the right
sort love it. A farmer whose heart does not
glow at stable and cowstall manure has missed
his vocation. But everything in its place, and
the unfortunate feature of this paving of
manure was that it adhered to boots and
entered the house. This mattered little when

192 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

halls were strewn with rushes. But when
polished oak boards and next carpets came in,
the entrance to the house had to be altered,
so that at least the women-kind need not tread
over ankles in manure before entering the house.

Where there is a farmhouse there must be
a court in which the cattle can run, and where
better than under the eye of the master and
mistress.

But there was, and is, another, and more
serious, drawback. Wells have been sunk
close to the houses, and very generally in
intimate relation to the courtyard. The
result is that in a great many cases the
water in the wells becomes contaminated. It
is really amazing how many centuries have
rolled by without people discovering the fact
that such proximity produces contamination,
and such contamination leads to diphtheria,
or typhoid fever. But stupidity is ever with
us, so I do not wonder. Here is a fact.
In a certain village of over a thousand
inhabitants, that I knew, there is a National
School, which having an endowment commands
the services of a first-class schoolmaster.

I

(N

THE FARMHOUSE 195

Now it fell out that water from a beautiful
spring among the hills was brought into this
village, and a tap placed outside the school-
master's residence.

Said the village schoolmaster to himself, "If
I use this water I shall have to pay the rate.
If I don't I cannot be called upon for it. I
will get all my water from the well in the
adjoining farmyard." He did so, and his young
wife and child died of diphtheria.

Now, if a man like a cultured schoolmaster
at the close of the nineteenth century will act
like this, is it a marvel that our forefathers,
who were without the means of knowing better,
should have made such mistakes ?

A merciful Providence must have brooded
over our ancestors and protected them ; how
else is it possible that they were not all swept
away, and none left to be the progenitors of
our own enlightened selves ?

I suppose that systems adapted themselves
to their surroundings and to what they assimi-
lated, and our forbears got into the way of
fattening and thriving on bacilli, germs, and all
like horrors.

196 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

But to return to the farmhouse.

In one that is well-conducted, the court in
which pigs wallow, bullocks poach the litter,
ducks waddle, and find nutriment in what would
be death to all other creatures, is the nucleus
and treasury, the cream of the whole farm.
Having considered the plan of the Walloon
Manoir, look at a plan of an old English
farm congeries of buildings. Is it not clear
that — omitting the church — the type is the
same ?

The old-fashioned farmer, like the old-
fashioned squire, did not ask to have a view
of distant horizons from his windows, but
sought to look upon his stock and see that
it throve.

It was, may be, more riskful to leave cattle
about in the fields in former days, though I
am not very sure of that. England was always
a quiet, law-abiding, well-conducted country.
And perhaps the cattle at one time may have
been driven into the pen for the night, about
the master's house. His court was his kraal.
But that was long, long ago, when there
were wolves and cattle-lifters in the land.

THE FARMHOUSE 199

In ordered times only ewes at lambing time,
and cows about to calve, and young bullocks
were kept in the courtyard ; and the calves
that the dairymaid had to feed, by dipping her
hand in milk and then giving it to the long-
legged, silly creatures to suck.

The cows were milked in the fields, and
milked by the dairymaids. Then that fashion
was abandoned, and cows were driven to the
stables to be there milked, and these cowhouses
were so deep in manure as to dirty the skirts
and white stockings of the maids, so they with-
drew from the task, and now only men milk
the cows.

Alas for the dairymaid ! That charming,
merry, innocent ideal of a country girl.
Indeed to be a milkmaid and to be merry
were almost synonymous in the olden time.
Sir Thomas Overbury, in his " Character of
a Milkmaid," says: "She dares go alone, and
unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no
manner of ill, because she means none ; yet,
to say truth, she is never alone : she is still
accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts,
and prayers, but short ones."

200 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

In the " Character of a Ballad-monger,"
in Whimzies, 1631, we find: "Stale ballad
news, cashiered the city, must now ride fast
for the country, where it is no less admired
than a giant in a pageant : till at last it grows
so common there, too, as every poor milkmaid
can chant and chirp it under her cow, which
she useth as a harmless charm to make her
let down her milk."

In Beaumont and Fletcher's play, The Cox-
comb, Nan, the Milkmaid, says :

"Come, you shall e'en home with me, and be our

fellow ;

Our home is so honest !

And we serve a very good woman, and a gentle-
woman ;

And we live as merrily, and dance o' good days
After evensong. Our wake shall be on Sunday :
Do you know what a wake is ? — we have mighty cheer
then."

Who does not remember old Isaac Walton
and his merry ballad-singing dairy-maid ?

Pepys, in his Diary, i3th October, 1662,
writes : "With my father took a melancholy
walk to Portholme, seeing the country-maids
milking their cows there, they being there now

THE FARMHOUSE 201

at grass ; and to see with what mirth they
come all home together in pomp with their
milk, and sometimes they have music go
before them."

" When cold bleak winds do roar,
And flowers can spring no more,

The fields that were seen

So pleasant and green
By winter all candied o'er :

Oh ! how the town lass

Looks, with her white face
And lips so deadly pale.

But it is not so

With those that go

Through frost and snow,

With cheeks that glow,
To carry the milking pail."

On May-day was the festival of the milk-
maids. I- can remember, in 1845, seeing Jack
in the Green and Maid Marian parading in
the Strand.

Pepys, in his Diary, on the ist May, 1667,
enters — "To Westminster; on the way meet-
ing many milkmaids with their garlands upon
their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them."

In a set of prints called " Tempest's Cryes
of Lon'on," one is called " The Merry Milk-

202 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

maid," whose proper name was Kate Smith.
She is dancing with her milk-pail on her head,
decorated with silver cups, tankards, and
salvers, borrowed for the purpose, and tied
together with ribbands, and ornamented with
flowers. " Of later years, the plate, with other
decorations, were placed in a pyramidical
form, and carried by two chairmen upon a
wooden horse. The milkmaids walked before
it, and performed the dance without any en-
cumbrance."

In a curious German account of London
and London life, written by Otto Von
Rosenberg, and published at Leipzig in 1834,
is a picture of a milkmaids' May dance ; but
in London it had become a chimney-sweeps'
performance in place of one of milkmaids.
In the country it maintained its character as
a festival of dairy-maids. Rosenberg thus
describes it :

" A hobbledehoy youth leads the pro-
cession with a three-cornered cocked hat on
his head, pasted over with gilt paper. Eye-
brows and cheeks are strongly marked with
paint. A coat of gay colour flaps about his

THE FARMHOUSE 203

body, and this coat is imitated from the
uniform of a French field-marshal, and is
sown over with flowers and ornaments of
gilt paper. Over his right shoulder hangs
a red silk band, to which a wooden sword
is attached. His knee-breeches and stockings
are white. He is followed by a figure from
head to toe buried under a conical structure,
which is woven round with fresh may, and
at the summit has a crown. This object has
no other purport than to hobble after the rest.
" To complete the trefoil is a girl who
stands in no way behind Netherland damsels
in beauty and lively movements. Her hair,
which in the morning had been carefully done
up in braids, becomes disengaged by the action
and heat, and her incessant leaps and twirls,
and finally falls about her shoulders like that
of a fury. She wears a low dress and short
sleeves of white very transparent texture
reaching to her calves, and exposing below
rather massive feet, which are wound about
with green. In her hand she waves a great
wooden spoon, and this she extends to the
windows for gratuities. But as she dances

204 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

through the streets she brandishes this great
spoon above her head, like a witch who is
invoking a spirit."*

Alack-a-day ! The milkmaid is a creature
of the past. Now in farmhouses there is great
difficulty . in getting any girl to work. They
want to go to the towns, or consider them-
selves too highly educated to do menial work.

And the sower, the mower, the reaper and
thrasher are also extinct.

I remember as a boy repeatedly watching a
sower pacing up and down a field strewing the
corn to right and left from the wooden seed-lap
carried in front, and thinking what a picture
it made. Now corn is sown with a drill.

In the very early morning, as the sun rose
and the dew was on the grass, it was pleasant
of old to hear the musical whetting of the
scythe, and then the hiss as the blade swept
through the herb and shore it down. That
is no more. The grass is mown in the
meadows by the mechanical mower, and on
the lawn by a contrivance whose movements
are anything but musical. In former days

* Bilder aus London, Leipzig, 1834.

THE FARMHOUSE 205

also the harvesting was a real delight. The
reapers, with their hooks, worked their way
along in rows. It cannot be better described
than in the Harvest Song, well known in the
south-west of England :

" The corn is all ripe, and the reapings begin,
The fruits of the earth, O we gather them in ;
At morning so early the reap-hooks we grind,
And away to the fields for to reap and to bind ;
The foreman goes first in the hot summer glow,
And he sings with a laugh, my lads, all of a row.

Then, all of a row ! then all of a row !

And to-night we will sing boys, All of a row !

" We're in, says the catchpole, behind and before,
We '11 have a fresh edge and a sheaf or two more.
The master stands back for to see us behind ;
Well done, honest fellows, bring the sheaves to the

bind.

Well done, honest fellows, pare up your first brink,
You shall have a fresh edge, and a half pint to drink.

Then, all of a row ! etc.

" And so we go through the heat of the day,
Some reaping, some binding, all merry and gay.
We '11 reap and we '11 bind, we will whistle and sing,
Unflagging until the last sheaf we bring in.
It 's all our enjoyment wherever we go,
To work and to sing, Brothers, all of a row.
Then, all of a row ! etc.

206 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

" Our day's work is done, to the farmhouse we steer,
To eat a good supper and drink humming beer ;
We wish the good farmer all blessings in life,
And drink to his health, and as well to his wife.
God prosper the grain for next harvest we sow,
When again in the arrish we '11 sing, Boys, hallo !
Then, all in a row ! etc."

When the reapers had cut nearly the whole
field they reached a portion that had been
purposely left, and this, instead of attacking
in row, they surrounded, shouting " A neck !
a neck ! " and of this the last sheaf was
fashioned, and on top of it was a little figure
formed of plaited corn, and this was conveyed
in triumph to the garner.

My old coachman, who had served three
generations of my family and had seen four,
was the last man who made these corn-men
in our neighbourhood, and long after the
custom had been abandoned, he was wont on
every harvest thanksgiving to produce one of
these comical figures for suspension in the
church. The head was made of a tuft of
barley, and flowers were interwoven with the
rest.

All this is of the past, and so also is the

THE FARMHOUSE 209

throb of the flail. There are not many
labourers now who understand how to wield
the flail. The steam thrasher travels from
farm to farm and thrashes and winnows,
relieving man of the labour. The flail is only
employed for the making of " reed," i.e., straw
for thatching the rick.

What a robust, rubicund, hearty fellow is
our old English farmer. The breed is not
extinct, thank God ! At one time, when it
was the fashion to run two and three farms
into one, and let this conglomerate to a man
reputed warm and knowing, then it did seem
as if the " leather pocketed " farmer was
doomed to extinction. But it is the gentle-

O

man farmer who has gone to pieces, and the
simple old type has stood the brunt of the
storm, and has weathered the bad times.

What a different man altogether he is from
the French paysan and the German bauer !
The latter, among the mountains, is a fine
specimen, his wealth is in oxen and cows.
But the bauer, on arable land in the plains, is
an anxious, worn man, who falls into the
hands of the Jews, almost inevitably. Our

210 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

farmers, well fed, open-hearted, hospitable, yet
close-fisted over money, would do well to learn
a little thrift from the continental peasant. On
market days, if they sell and buy, they also
spend a good deal at the ordinary and in
liquor.

At a tythe dinner I gave, in another part
of England from that I now occupy, the
one topic of conversation and debate was
whether it were expedient on returning from
market to tumble into the ditch or into the
hedge, and if it should happen that the
accident happened in the road, at what portion
of the highway it was "plummest" to fall.

On market days is the meeting of the Board
of Guardians, and on that Board the farmer
exercises authority and rules.

An old widow in receipt of parish relief once
remarked: "Our pass'n hev been preachin' this
Michaelmas a deal about the angels bein' our
guardgins. Lork a biddy ! I Ve been in two
counties, in Darset and Zummerset, as well as
here. Guardgins be guardgins whereiver they
be. And I knows very well, if them angels is
to be our guardgins in kingdom come — it '11 be

THE FARMHOUSE 211

a loaf and 'arf a crown and no more for such
as we."

In North Devon there was a farmer, whom
we will call Tickle, who was on a certain
Board of Guardians, of which Lord P. was
chairman. Now Mrs. Tickle died, and so for
a week or two the farmer did not take his
usual seat. The chairman got a resolution
passed condoling with Mr. Tickle on his loss.

Next Board day, the farmer appeared,
whereupon Lord P. addressed him : "It is
my privilege, duty, and pleasure, Mr. Tickle,
to convey to you, on behalf of your brother
guardians, an expression of our sincere and
heartfelt and profound regret for the sad loss
you have been called on to endure. Mr.
Tickle, the condolence that we offer you is
most genuine, sir. We feel, all of us, that the
severance which you have had to undergo is
the most painful and supreme that falls to
man's lot in this vale of tears. Mr. Tickle, it
is at once a rupture of customs that have
become habitual, a privation of an association
the sweetest, holiest, and dearest that can be
cemented on earth, and it is — it is — in short —

212 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

it is — Mr. Tickle, we condole with you most
cordially."

The farmer addressed looked about with a
puzzled and vacant expression, then rubbed
his chin, then his florid cheeks, and seemed
thoroughly nonplussed. Presently a brother
farmer whispered in his ear, " Tes all about
the ou'd missus you Ve lost."

" Oh ! " and the light of intelligence illu-

o o

mined his face, " that 's it, es it. Well, my
lord and genl'men, I thank y' kindly all the
same, but my ou'd woman — her wor a terr'ble
teasy ou'd toad. It hev plased the Lord to
take 'er, and plase the Lord he'll keep 'er."

The ordinary farmer is not a reader — how
can he be, when he is out of doors all day,
and up in the morning before daybreak ? We
complain that he does not advance with the
times ; but he is a cautious man, who makes
quite sure of his ground before he steps.

The County Council, at the expense of the
ratepayers, send about lecturers, who are well
paid, to hold forth in village schoolrooms on
scientific agriculture, the chemistry of the soil,
and scientific dairying.

THE FARMHOUSE 213

No one usually attends these lectures except
a few ladies, but on one occasion a farmer was
induced by the rector or the squire, as a
personal favour, to listen to one on the
chemistry of common life.

He listened with attention when the lecturer
described the constituents of the atmosphere,
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen. At the close
he stood up, stretched himself, and said :
" Muster lecturer ! You Ve told us a terr'ble
lot about various soorts o' gins, oxegen and
so on, I can't mind 'em all, but you ha'nt
mentioned the very best o' all in my 'umble
experience, and that 's Plymouth gin. A drop
o' that with suggar and water — hot — the last
thing afore you go to bed, not too strong nor
too weak neither, is the very first-ratedst of
all. I've tried it for forty years."

And then he went forth, shrugged his
shoulders, and said, "That chap, he's traveller
for some spirit merchants, as have some new-
fangled gins — but I'll stick to Plymouth gin,
I will."

A friend of mine was Mayor for a year in
a town, the name of which is unimportant.

2i4 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Being of a hospitable and kindly turn, he sent
invitations to all the farmers in the neigh-
bourhood who were within the purlieu of
the borough to dine with him on a certain
evening, and at the bottom of the invitation
put the conventional R. S. V. P.

To his surprise he received no answers
whatever. The invitation, however, was much
discussed at the ordinary, and the mysterious
letters at the close subjected to scrutiny and
debate.

" Now what do you makes 'em out to
mane ? " asked one farmer.

" Well, I reckon," answered he who was
addressed, " tes what we're to ate at his supper.
Rump Steak and Veal Pie."

" Git out for a silly," retorted the first,
" muster bain't sach a vule as to have two
mates on table to once. Sure enough them
letters stand for Rump Steak and Viggy (plum)
PuddenV

"Ah ! Seth ! you have it. That 's the truth,"
came in assent from the whole table.

But what a fine man the old farmer is — the
very type of John Bull. That he is being

THE FARMHOUSE 215

driven out of existence by foreign colonial
competition I cannot believe. He is a slow
man to accommodate himself to changed
circumstances, but he can turn himself about
when he sees his way ; arid he has a shrewd
head, and knows soil and climate.

In George Coleman's capital play, " The
Heir at Law," Lady Daberly says to her son
Dick, "A farmer! — and what's a farmer, my
dear?"

To which Dick replies, " Why, an English
farmer, mother, is one who supports his
family, and serves his country by his industry.
In this land of commerce, mother, such a
character is always respectable."

CHAPTER X.

THE type of the old English cottage was
—one room below for kitchen and every
other purpose by day, and one room upstairs
for repose at night for the entire family, and
this reached by a stair like a ladder. Very
poor quarters as we now consider, but re-
latively not poor when compared with the
farms and manor-houses at the time when
they were built.

And a vast number of our labourers' cottages
date from two, three, and four hundred years
ago; especially where built of stone or "cob."
The latter is kneaded clay with straw in it.
This makes a warm and excellent wall, and

one that will endure for ever if only the top

216

THE COTTAGES 217

be kept dry. Brick cottages are later. Timber
and plaster belong to the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. The oak turns hard as
iron and is perhaps more enduring than iron,
for the latter is eaten through in time with
rust.

That which is destroying the old cottage
is not the tooth of time, but the insurance
office, which imposes heavy rates on thatched
buildings, and when the thatch goes and its
place is taken by slate, the beauty of the
cottage is gone. But generally, if a cottage
that was thatched has to be slated, it is found
that the timbers were not put up to bear the
weight of slate, so have to be renewed, and
then it is said by the agent, " Pull the whole
thing down, it is not worth re-roofing. Build
it afresh from the foundation." Then, in the
place of a lovely old building with its windows
under thatch, and the latter covering it soft
and brown and warm as the skin of a mole,
arises a piece of hideousness that is perhaps
more commodious, but hardly so comfortable.
I know that labourers who have been trans-
ferred from old "cob" cottages under thatch

2i8 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

to new brick cottages under slate, complain
bitterly that they are losers in coziness by
the exchange, and that they suffer from cold
in these trim and gaunt erections.

No cottages are more lovely than those that
are tiled, when the tiles are old; and the Eastern
Counties, if they lack the beauty of landscape
of the West, and of the Welsh hills, and the
Lake district, infinitely surpass them in the
picturesqueness of their groups of cottages.
Slate, it must be admitted, is only beautiful
when mellowed by the growth over it of
lichen ; and some slate not even time can
make other than ugly.

I have been reading Professor Fawcett's
Economic Position of the British Labourer,
and I note the following passage relative to
our agricultural workmen : " Theirs is a life
of incessant toil for wages too scanty to give
them a sufficient supply even of the first
necessaries of life. No hope cheers their
monotonous career ; a life of constant labour
brings them no other prospect than that
when their strength is exhausted they must
crave as suppliant mendicants a pittance from

221

parish relief. Many classes of labourers have
still to work as long, and for as little remunera-
tion as they received in past times ; and one
out of every twenty inhabitants of England
is sunk so deep in pauperism that he has to
be supported by parochial relief."

This is very interesting. Mr. Fawcett was,
I believe, blind and resided in a town. No
doubt he evolved this sad picture out of his
interior consciousness. Beside it let me put
some notes from my diary.

1896. Dec. 25, Christmas Day. Universal holiday.

„ 26, Day after Christmas. No work done.

„ 27, Sunday.

„ 28, Monday, Bank Holiday ; no work.

1897. Jan. i, New Year's Day, General Holiday;

no work.

„ 2, Saturday ; not full work.

„ 3, Sunday.

„ 6, Old Christmas Day. No work done.

„ 9, Saturday ; not full work.

„ 10, Sunday.

„ 11, Excursion to Plymouth and panto-
mime. Half the workmen gone
to the pantomime.

„ 13, Hounds met. All the men off running
after them. Wages as usual.

222 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Ten work - days out of twenty. I don't
grudge it them. I rejoice over it with all
my heart, but I cannot see that this quite
jumps with Professor Fawcett's description.
Of course it is not Christmas time all the
year, but at other times are other festivals,
flower shows, reviews, harvest festivals, club
feasts, Bank Holidays, regattas, etc., etc., and
my experience is that when there is anything
to be seen the workmen go to see it and take
their wives with them.

A few years ago there was a large bazaar
given in my neighbourhood. I asked after-
wards of the secretary and treasurer from
whom most money was taken. The answer
was, " From the young agricultural workmen.
Squires didn't come, farmers didn't come — all
too poor ; but the young farm lads and lasses
seemed to have gold in their purses and not
to mind spending it."

Very glad to hear it I was, only I regretted
that it was one class only that was well off
and not the other two.

Now let us see whether my experience of
the wages and housing of the labourers agrees

THE COTTAGES 223

with Professor Fawcett's picture. Here, where
I live — and it was the same when I was in
other parts of England (before the depression
there) — the wages of the labourer was four-
teen to fifteen shillings a week. For a
comfortable cottage with over half an acre
of garden he pays from /"4 to £6 per annum,
hardly sufficient to pay for keeping the cottage
in repair, consequently it may be said that he
has garden and half the house rent given to
him. The garden is worth to him from £4.
to £6 per annum. Consequently his receipts
per annum may be reckoned at £4.2 or ^48.
He has to pay out of this into his club. He
has nothing to pay in rates or taxes, or for his
children's education ; and if he has children,
every son, on leaving school, till he marries
brings in to him say 6s. to i2s. per week
for his board, and his daughters go out into
service and earn from £10 to £20 per annum
as wages, and ought to remit some of this to
their parents.

I am convinced that there is many a peasant
proprietor abroad who would jump at the
offer to be an English farm labourer.

224 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

I have spent ten years in collecting the
folk songs of the West of England, and I
have not come across one in which the
agricultural labourer grrumbles at his lot. On

o o

the contrary, their songs, the very outpouring
of their hearts, are full of joy and happiness.
Once, indeed, an old minstrel did say to me,
" Did y' ever hear, sir, 'The Lament of the
Poor Man?'"

I pricked up my ears. Now at last I was
about to hear some socialistic sentiment, some
cry of anguish of the oppressed peasant.
"No," I answered, "never — sing it me."

And then I heard it. The lament of a
man afflicted with a scolding wife. That
alone made him poor, and that affliction is
not confined to the dweller in the cottage.

Here and there we do come on miserable
cottages — a disgrace to the land. But to
whom do they belong ? They have been
erected on lives, or by squatters, and the
landlords have no power over them. I know
a certain village which is nearly all ruinous ;
but there all the ruinous cottages are held
on lives. It is quite true that the landowner

THE COTTAGES 225

can force the holder of the tenure to put it in
repair, but he is reluctant to put on the screw
of the law, and he argues, " The houses were
built to last three lives — no more. When they
fall in to me, they will fall in altogether, and
I will build decent, solid cottages in their
place."

Over the squatter's cottage he has no con-
trol whatever.

Listen to the note of the agricultural, down-
trodden labourer, his wail of anguish under the
heel of the squire and farmer.

" When the day's work is ended and over, he '11 go
To fair or to market to buy him a bow,
And whistle as he walks, O ! and shrilly too will sing,
There 's no life like the ploughboy's all in merry spring.

" Good luck to the ploughboy, wherever he may be,
A fair pretty maiden he '11 take on his knee,
He '11 drink the nut-brown ale, and this song the lad will

sing,
O the ploughboy is happier than the noble or the king."

This is sung from one end of England to
another, and always to the same very rude
melody in a Gregorian tone, that shows it has
expressed the sentiments of the ploughboy for
at least two hundred years.
Q

226 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Listen again :

" Prithee lend your jocund voices,

For to listen we 're agreed ;
Come sing of songs the choicest,

Of the life the ploughboys lead.
There are none that live so merry

As the ploughboy does in spring,
When he hears the sweet birds whistle

And the nightingales to sing.

" In the heat of the daytime

It 's little we can do,
We will lie beside our oxen

For an hour, or for two.
On the banks of sweet violets

I '11 take my noontide rest,
And it 's I can kiss a pretty girl

As hearty as the best.

" O, the farmer must have seed, sirs,

Or I swear he cannot sow,
And the miller with his millwheel

Is an idle man also.
And the huntsman gives up hunting,

And the tradesman stands aside,
And the poor man bread is wanting,

So 't is we for all provide."

That last verse is delicious. It lets us into
the very innermost heart of the ploughman.
He knows his own value — God bless him.
And so do we.

THE COTTAGES 227

There is one great advantage in our English
system, that, not being bound to the soil, the
poor workman can go wherever there is a
demand for him. And this is one reason why
we have so many examples of a young
fellow who rises high up in the social scale,
and from being a poor lad springs to be a
rich man.

In another chapter I shall have something
to say of the parish ne'er-do-weel. But if
every parish has one of these latter, there
is hardly one that cannot show his contrary.
And now for a true story of one of these
latter.

There is no country in the world, America
possibly excepted, where greater facilities are
afforded for a youth of energy and intelligence
to make his way. But there is something
more that gives a lad now a chance of rising,
something far less generally diffused than
intelligence and less conspicuous than energy,
which is in immense demand, and at a
premium — and that is honesty. In ancient
Greece the churlish philosopher is said to have
lit a lamp and gone about the streets by day

228 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

looking for an honest man. It is, perhaps, the
failing of advanced and widespread culture
that it encourages mental at the expense of
moral progress ; nay, further, that with the
development of mental advance there is moral
retrogression. Every man is now in such
a hurry to make himself comfortable that he
loses all scruple as to the way in which he
sets about it, and so misses the one way para-
mount over all others,. that of common honesty.

This lack of integrity is the thing that all
employers complain of. They can no longer
repose trust in their workmen, in their clerks
—all have to be watched. There is no
question as to their abilities, only as to their
honesty.

This leads me to tell the story — which is
true — of a young man with whose career
I am well acquainted, from childhood till he
was prematurely cut off whilst in the ripeness
of his powers, trusted, esteemed, and loved by
all with whom he was brought in contact. He
began life with little to favour him. His
father was a quarryman who was killed by
a fall of rock, and his mother died not long

THE COTTAGES 229

after, never having recovered from the shock
of the loss of a dearly loved young husband.
So the orphan boy was left to be brought up
by his grandmother, a widow, who went out
charing for her maintenance, and who received
eighteen pence and a loaf per week from the
parish, and who is alive to this day.

The lad grew up lanky, and looked in-
sufficiently fed. The squire of the parish
took him early into his service to clean boots
and run errands at sixpence a day, and after
a while, as the fellow proved trusty, advanced
him to be a butler boy in the house, in livery,
to clean knives and attend the door.

Trusty and good the lad remained in this
condition also, but it was not congenial to him.
One day the housemaid told the mistress, with
a laugh, " Please, ma'am, what do you think ?
Every now and then I 've found bits of wood
laid one across another under Richard's bed.
I couldn't make out what it meant, at last I 've
found out. He's made an arrangement with
the gardener on certain mornings to be up
very early before his regular work begins, that
he may go round the greenhouses with him

23o AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

and help him there, and a bit in the gardens.
Richard won't be a minute late for his work in
the house, but he do so dearly love to be in the
garden that he'll get up at four o'clock to go
there, and as he 's a heavy sleeper, he has the
notion that if he makes a little cross under his
bed by putting one stick across another, and
says over it, ' I want to be waked at four
o'clock,' then sure enough at that hour he
will rise."

When his master and mistress knew the
lad's taste, and heard from him how much
happier he would be in the gardens than in the
house, they put him with the gardener, and he
laid aside his livery never to resume it.

In the gardens he remained for a good
many years, always the same, reliable in every
particular, and then an uneasiness became
manifest in him. When he met his master
he was embarrassed, as though he had some-
thing on his mind that he wished to say, and
yet shrank from saying. Then the squire
received a hint that Richard wished to "have
a tell " with him in private, and he made
occasion for this, and opened the way. The

THE COTTAGES 231

young man still had difficulties in bringing out
what was in his heart, but at last it came forth.
He thought he had learned all that could be
learned from the head gardener ; indeed, in
several points, aided by books, the underling
believed he knew more than his superior, who,
however, was too conservative in his habits to
yield his opinions and change his practice.
Richard wished to better himself. It was not
increase of wage that he desired, but oppor-
tunities of advance in knowledge. He had
hesitated for long, because he knew that he
owed so much to his master, who had been
kind to him, and thought for him for many
years. For this reason he did not wish to
inconvenience him, yet he believed there were
many other lads in the village capable of filling
his place, and the desire in him to progress
in his knowledge of flowers and fruit had
become almost irresistible.

When the squire heard this, he smiled.
" Richard," he said, " I have been thinking the
same thing. I saw you were being held back,
and that is what ought not to be done with
any young mind. I have already written

232 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

about you to Mr. Kewe, the great nurseryman,
and if he values my opinion at all and consults
his own interest, by the end of the week there
will be a letter from him to engage you."

Mr. Kewe did consult his own interest, and
secured this young man. Then, when Richard
came to take his leave, and thank his master
again for his help, with heightened colour he
said, " I think, sir, I ought to add that you
have made two young people happy."

"Two! Richard?"

"Yes, sir. There's Mary Kelloway ; she
has been brought up next door to grandmother
and me, and somehow we have always thought
of each other as like to be made one some
day, and now that I see that I am going ahead
in my profession, both Mary and I fancy the
day isn't so terribly far off."

" Mary Kelloway ! " exclaimed the squire,
and did not at once congratulate the young
man.

" Yes, sir, there is not a better girl in the
place."

" I am quite aware of that, Richard, — but
you know "

THE COTTAGES 233

" Yes, sir, I know that her father and brother
died of decline, and that she is delicate herself;
but, sir, her mother's very poor, and more 's
the reason I should marry her, for then she
can have strengthening things other than
Mrs. Kelloway can afford to give her."

" I am a little afraid, Dick, she will not
make a strong or useful wife, though that she
is as good as gold I do not doubt for an
instant."

" More 's the reason why I should work hard
with both arms and head," answered the young
gardener, "and that, sir, is one reason why
I have been so set on getting forward in my
profession."

Richard was for a few years with the great
nursery gardener, Mr. Kewe, who speedily
found that nothing advanced in his favour by
the squire, his good customer, was unfounded.
He entrusted more and more to Richard, and
the latter rapidly acquired knowledge and
experience.

Occasionally, when he was allowed a day
off, he would run to his native village and see
his grandmother, and, naturally, Mary Kello-

234 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

way. But such holidays could not be fre-
quently accorded, for his master knew he could
trust Richard, and was doubtful whom else in
his gardens he could trust, and plants require
the most careful watching and tending. One
day's neglect in watering, one night's frost
unforeseen, may ruin hundreds of pounds'
worth of goods. The thrip, the mealy bug,
the scale, are enemies to be grappled with
and fought with incessant vigilance, and the
green fly with its legions coming none know
whence, appearing at all seasons, must be
combated with smoke and Gishurst's compound
without intermission.

One day, about noon, or a little after, a
stranger came into the nursery gardens, and
entering one of the conservatories where was
Richard, asked if he could see Mr. Kewe.

" The master," answered the young man,
" is just now at his dinner. If it be particularly
desired I could run to his house."

" By no means," interrupted the visitor. " I
should like to have a walk round the grounds
and through the houses, and I daresay you will
be good enough to accompany me. I have an

THE COTTAGES 235

hour at my disposal, and I would rather spend
it here than anywhere else. I will await the
arrival of Mr. Kewe."

Accordingly Richard accompanied the visitor
about the nursery, and told him the names of
the plants, putting aside such as the stranger
ordered or selected.

"I don't know how it is," said the latter,
pointing with his stick to a row of flourishing
rhododendrons, " but you and all my friends
grow these to perfection, whilst there is a
fatality with mine ; they won't flower, or if
they do, they throw out sickly bloom, and
the plants continually die and have to be
removed."

" It depends on the soil, sir. What is your
soil ? "

" I don't know. Most things do well. We
are on chalk."

" That is it, sir. The rhododendron has an
aversion to lime in any form. A man will not
thrive on hay, nor a horse on mutton chops.
Each plant has its own proper soil in which it
thrives. Give it other soil and it languishes
and dies. Excuse me, sir, for a moment."

236 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Richard ran to a boy who was lifting and
removing a young thuja.

" Look here," he said. " My boy, when
you take a baby from one room to another
you do not carry it by the hair of its little head,
do you ? No, you put your arm under it and
bear it easily — thus. You are transplanting
that tree in altogether a wrong manner. You
hold it — suspend it by the delicate twigs and
leafage, and leave the root unsupported, drop-
ping the soil and exposing every fibre. Treat
a plant with as much consideration and
tenderness as a baby, and it will thank you."

At that moment Mr. Kewe appeared, and
Richard with a bow withdrew, but not before
he had heard the nurseryman address the
visitor as "My lord."

When Richard had gone out of earshot, the
visitor, who was Lord St. Ledger, said to
Mr. Kewe, " I have come here to ask you to
help me. I have lost my good old head
gardener. Poor fellow, he has had brain
fever, and is quite beyond managing the
gardens again. His head and memory are
affected, and his nervous irritability make him

THE COTTAGES 237

unable to carry on smoothly with the others.
I have pensioned him, and now I want
another, and that speedily. I have no under
gardener fit to advance into his room."

"You want an elderly man, my lord ?"

" I want a good man, and an honest one,
and one who understands the business. You
know my gardens, hot-houses, and conser-
vatories."

"If he had only been a little older—
began the nurseryman.

" Oh, I am not particular as to age."

" I was merely considering, my lord — that
man who has been round the gardens with
you—

"Would suit me exactly," interrupted Lord
St. Ledger. "I took a fancy to him at once.
He loves plants. He looks full of intelligence
and honesty."

"Honesty! Honest as the day. And as
for intelligence, there is no lack of that.
Experience may be wanting."

" I '11 take him," said Lord St. Ledger. "I
took stock of the fellow whilst he was going
round with me."

238 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

" I am sorry to part with him," said the
nurseryman, "and yet I should be more sorry
to stand in the way of Richard's advancement."

No sooner had the young man news of his
engagement, and that he had to look to a
comfortable cottage, a good income, and em-
ployment in which he was sure he could be
happy and give satisfaction to his employers,
than he hastened to his native place, which he
had been unable to revisit for six months.

He was full of hope, full of joy, but on his
arrival his joy was somewhat dashed and his
hope clouded. He found that his Mary, whom
he had loved since boyhood, was manifestly
in a decline. Hoping against hope, snatching
at every encouraging symptom, she had not
forewarned him, and he saw on his arrival
that already she was deathstruck.

Her delicate complexion was delicate to the
utmost refinement ; her beautiful soft eyes were
larger than they had ever seemed, even in
childhood ; her lovely face was lovelier than
ever, with an angelic purity and beauty.

Then she told him the truth ; but, indeed,
he saw it for himself.

THE COTTAGES 239

" Mary, dearest," said he, " if there is a little
bit of life left only to you, let it be to me
also."

" Dick, I can but be a burden."

"That — never — a joy as long as you are
with me. Give me the one thing I have
thought of, worked for, if it be but for a year
or two."

"A year or two! Oh, Dick, only perhaps a
month."

" Then let this month be our honeymoon."

And so it was.

The faithful fellow, true to everyone with
whom he was brought in contact, was true
to his dying love. She came, ghostlike, to
church, and I shall never forget the pathos,
the tenderness, the sincerity with which each
took the irrevocable vows which bound in one
the ebbing scrap of one life with the flowing
vigour of the other.

Richard moved his frail, fading Mary to the
pretty gardener's cottage at Lord St. Ledger's.
There she ebbed away, happy, peaceful, with
the love and devotion of her husband sur-
rounding her.

24o AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

The story of his marriage reached the ears
of the ladies of the castle, and hardly a day
passed without some of them coming to see
her, and Lord St. Ledger gave orders that
fruit and flowers were to be hers as she craved
for them.

Just a month after the marriage her coffin
was brought back to her native village and laid
in a grave in a sunny part of the yard.

" Make a double grave," said Richard to
the sexton. A double grave was made.

When the funeral was over, his old master,
the squire, went to him, took his arm, and said,
" Oh, Richard, you have had a terrible loss."

"I have had a great gain, sir."

"A gain!"

" Yes, sir. I could never have been happy
had she not been mine. But she became
mine, and she is mine — for ever."

He returned to his duties.

I have not quite done the story of Richard.
For years there worked in Lord St. Ledger's
woods a man, somewhat rough in manners,

THE COTTAGES 241

slow, but diligent. Only after many years was
the truth known that he was Richard's elder
brother. Richard had been advanced from
gardener to steward of the St. Ledger estates.
Faithful in his garden, he was faithful in his
management of the property, and he appointed
as woodman one of the same surname. It
was not on account of any personal pride in
Richard that the relationship was kept a
secret ; it was at the express wish of his
brother John.

" Look y' here," said John. "You're a
gen'leman, Dick, in broadcloth and silk 'at.
I'm but a poor rummagy labourin' man. Now
if you favours me anyway, and my lord puts
me up a bit, folk '11 say, ' Oh, it 's all becos
he's Mr. Richard's brother.' So I reckon
't will be best to keep that quiet, and then
you can give me a leg up as I desarves it."

And John, partly by his brother's favour,
mainly by his own good conduct, was ad-
vanced, but the relationship was not discovered
till one day Richard was dead. He had
caught a chill that settled on his chest, and
hurried him off at the age of forty-five.

242 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Then John Noble stood forward, and when
Lord St. Ledger said something about Richard
being laid in the churchyard of St. Ledger,
then John said, "Please, my lord, no. I'm
Richard's own brother, and I knowed his
heart's wishes, as was told to none other. He
sent for me when he was a dyin', and sez he
to me, ' I Ve got a double grave made at the
dear old home, in the churchyard, and Mary
she be there, and there lay me by her. Us
was together only one month, but now us shall
be together world wi'out end, Amen.' '

CHAPTER XL

WHAT a different sort of man is the
village doctor of the present day from
the one we can remember fifty years ago.
Of course there are degrees — some able,
others incompetent ; some skilful, others
butchers ; some well-read, others with only
an elementary smattering of knowledge of
the healing art, and of drugs. Now, as
then, there are differences and degrees, but
they are not so marked now as formerly.
The very able men gravitate to the towns,
and there can be none utterly incompetent.

Moreover, the times are against great in-
243

244 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

dividuality. We in this age are all fashioned
much alike ; we are made as marbles are said
to be made, by picking up in the rough and
shaking and shaking and shaking together,
till every angle and asperity is rubbed down ;
and we are turned out as like one another
as marbles, differing only in profession, just
as marbles differ only in colour.

Formerly exact uniformity in the way of
thinking, speaking, dressing, acting, was not
insisted upon, and the village doctor was
not infrequently an oddity. He affected the
oddity — to be a little rough and domineering,
he put on an acerbity of manner that belied
his real sweetness of temper, assumed a rough-
ness at variance with his real gentleness of
heart. Those of us who have lived all our
lives in the country must look back with a
smile rising to the lips, at the recollection of
the village doctors we have met and made
acquaintance with.

They could generally tell a good story.
They were inveterate gossips — knew all the
ins and outs of all the families in every
grade of life within their beat, and though

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 245

they kept professional secrecy, were nothing
loth to tell a tale, where not within the line
of professional responsibility. And they were
such delightful humbugs, also, veiling their
ignorance so skilfully, with much explanation
in grandiose terms that meant nothing.

I remember an old village doctor who I
really believe was absolutely ignorant of all
methods and medicines introduced since he
walked the hospitals, which was in the first
decade of the present century. I have looked
through his medical library since his death,
I have seen his surgical apparatus, and have
taken note of the drugs in his pharmacopcea,
and I am quite sure that his medicinal educa-
tion came to an abrupt stop about the year
1815.

He was a popular doctor, enjoyed a great
reputation in his neighbourhood, maintained
a large family of unmarriageable daughters,
and lived in comfort in a cosy cottage em-
bowered in elms, with its pleasant garden
full of old-fashioned flowers.

This old gentleman's method, on being sent
for, was at once to take a gloomy view of the

246 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

case. "My dear fellow," he would say to
the patient, " this is a very aggravated malady.
/ ougJit to have been sent for before. If you
die, it is your own fault. / ought to have been
sent for before. A stitch in time saves nine.
If now, by a desperate struggle, I pull you
through, then it will teach you a lesson in
future not to delay sending for me till the
time is almost over at which medical assistance
can avail. / ought to have been sent for before''

The advantage of such an address was this.
If the sick person dropped through his hands,
the responsibility was thrown on the sick man
and his friends. If, however, he were to re-
cover, then it exalted the skill of the medical
practitioner to almost miraculous power.

It was really wonderful how the old fellow
imposed on the villagers by this simple dodge.
Sometimes, after a funeral, when I have called
on the bereaved, I have heard the sobbing
widow say : "I shall never, never, cease to
reproach myself for my dear husband's death.
I feel as if I had been his- murderer. I ought
to have sent for Dr. Tuddlams before." If,
however, instead, I called to congratulate a

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 247

convalescent, I heard from him : "It is a
perfect miracle that I am not dead The
doctor gave me up, but he administered what
he said might kill or cure, and he is such a
genius — he pulled me through. No one else
could have done it, not the best doctor in
London, so he told me. He alone knew and
used this specific. But it was my fault leaving
matters so long — I ought to have sent for him
before."

After all, supposing that the country surgeon
were able to set a bone and sew up a wound, it
was just as well that he did not employ the
astounding medicines and follow the desperate
practices in force in the medical profession at
the end of last century and the beginning of
this. Bleeding with lancet and with leeches,
cupping, cauterising, blue-pill, et toujours blue-
bill, were in vogue. Starving in fever — water-
gruel administered where now is given cx-
tractum carnis, toast and water in place of
beef-tea — the marvel is that our forefathers
did not die off like flies under the treatment.

I remember saying to a yeoman in Essex one
day: " What ! nine — ten miles from a doctor? "

248 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

"Well, sir, yes ; it is ten. Thank heaven
we all in this parish mostly dies natural deaths."

And surely, under the bleeding and sali-
vating and starving regime, the grave had
more than her due, and the doctor was the
High Priest of Mors Palida, who brought to
the grim goddess her victims. An old sexton
at Wakefield parish church was also a head-
stone cutter. He was not very exact in his
orthography, but he had the gift of rhyme,
and could compose metrical epitaphs, that,
indeed, sometimes, like Orlando's verses, either
halted, or had too many feet to run on. One
day he was sitting chipping out an inscription
on a headstone, when the surgeon rode up.
The doctor drew rein and looked at the work
of the sexton.

"Halloo!" said he. "Peter Priestley, you Ve
made a blot there," meaning a mis-spelling.

"Have I, doctor?" answered the clerk,
" cover it over. I 've covered over many
blots o' yours." The doctor rode on without
another word.

But the village surgeon had not in old days
the skilled nurse as his assistant : and it is

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 249

now a recognized truth that, for the sick, the
nurse is more important than the doctor. He
sent his medicines, but how could he be sure
that they were taken, or taken regularly ?
The whole system of nursing was as rude
as the whole system of drainage. It was
all happy-go-lucky. The story is well known
of the doctor sending a bottle of mixture to
a sick man, with the direction on it, " Before
taken to be well shaken" — and finding on
his arrival that the attendant had shaken up
the patient pretty vigorously before administer-
ing the draught.

The following story is perfectly true.

A kind-hearted village doctor, finding that
a poor woman he was attending needed
nourishing food, got his wife to send her
a jelly.

Some time after he went to the cottage,
found the ground-floor room untenanted, but
heard a trampling, groaning, and struggling
going on upstairs. He accordingly ascended
to the bedroom, to see a labouring man sit-
ting on the bed, holding up the sick woman's
head, whilst another labouring man - - her

250 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

husband — was standing on the bed, one foot
on each side of the patient, with a black
kitchen kettle in his hand, endeavouring to
pour the contents down her mouth. Both
men were hot and perspiring freely, and the
poor woman was gasping for breath and
almost expiring under the treatment.

" Good gracious ! " exclaimed the doctor,
"what are you about?"

" Please, sir," answered the husband, blow-
ing hard, and wiping his brow with his sleeve,
" us 've been giving her the medicine you
sent down. It got all stiff and hard, so we
clapped it into the kettle and gave it a bile,
and was pouring it down my wife's throat.
I couldn't hold her mouth open myself as well
as mind the kettle, so I just called in my
mate Thomas, to help and hold her up, and
open her mouth for the kettle spout."

The life of the village doctor is a hard one.
Never certain of a meal, and never certain
of a sound, undisturbed sleep, he has to take
his victuals and his rest by snatches, but
then he inhales the fresh, pure air, and that
maintains him in health. He has to keep his

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 251

natural weakness and natural impatience under
great control. Conceive of a man who has
had several broken nights and hard days'
work, with a head swimming with weariness,
called in to a critical case, that he has to
diagnose at once. His faculties are not on
the alert, they cannot be, and if he make a
mistake, an avalanche of abuse is poured down
on him, whereas the fault lies not in himself,
but in the circumstances.

Then, again, how vexatious, when tired
out and hungry, to be suddenly called away
for a drive of many miles — perhaps over the
very road he has just returned along — to see
a malade imaginaire, some hypocondriacal old
maid, who is best dosed with a bread pill,
or to attend to some pet child — whose only
complaint is that it has over-eaten itself, and
who is well again by the time the doctor
arrives.

Then again, the accounts of the doctor are
not very readily paid, often not paid till a
new necessity arrives for calling him in again,
and not very infrequently are not paid at all.
And the surgeon cannot afford to sue for his

252 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

debt in the County Court, lest he get a bad
name as harsh, unfeeling, a "skin-flint."

The patients and their friends have odd
fancies. They do not esteem a doctor much
unless he "changes the medicine," that is to
say. sends a pink one after one that was
yellow, and one smelling of nitre after one
strong of clove. But again, by a strange
caprice they sometimes will have it, when,
to humour this vagary, the doctor has "changed
the medicine "- — that this change is due to a

O

consciousness that he has made a blunder
with the yellow bottle of "stuff," and that
he is going to try his success with the pink
bottle. They become alarmed, think he does
not understand the case, and insist on sending
for another doctor. Consequently, immense
tact, much humouring and adaptability, are
requisite in the village doctor, if he is to
maintain his reputation, more if he is going
to make one. And perhaps no method is
better than that of the know-nothing who
said, " You should have sent for me before,"
and so shifted the responsibility from his own
shoulders.

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 253

What scorn was poured by the doctor on
the quack remedies employed by the old
women of the parish ! And yet, when we
look back to the treatment recommended and
the potions administered by the faculty in
days gone by, I am not sure that the recipes
of the old grandams were not the best — at
least, they were harmless, and such were not
the hackings, cuppings, and bleedings, the
calomel, etc., of the faculty. A good many
of the village remedies were charms, and
charms only, and consequently rubbish.

Many years ago I remember great aston-
ishment was caused in the more cultured
portion of the congregation in our village
church, by a man standing up after the
blessing had been pronounced, and bawling
out :

" This here is to give notice as how Sally
Jago of - - parish has fits terrible bad, and
as how her can't be cured unless her wear
a silver ring made out o' saxpences or vour-
pences or dreepenny bits as come out o' seven
parishes. This here is to give notice as how
I be gwin' to ax for a collection at the door

254 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

in behalf o' Sally Jago as to help to make
thickey there ring."

In a parish I know well, but which I will not
further particularize, the parish clerk draws,
or did till lately, a revenue for the cure of
children with fits. This was what he did ;
I am not quite sure that he does not do it
still. He takes the child up the church tower
and holds it out at each of the angle pinnacles,
and pronounces certain words, what they are
I have not learned. For which he receives
a honorarium.

Now these are mere charms and are perfectly
useless ; they are superstitious usages, that
should not be encouraged or even sanctioned.
But it is quite another matter with the herbal
remedies. Many of these are really useful,
and a great deal more safe to take than the
strong metallic poisons administered by the
faculty. What an amount of mercury, in
the form of blue pill, has been given to the
generation now passing away ! Was not grey
powder much the same ? Are doctors not still
somewhat prone to administer calomel ?

I have no doubt that many of the herbs

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 255

collected and used by the old women were
really effective and curative agents.

One of the plants on which greatest faith
is placed is the elder. We still make elder-
flower water as a cosmetic, and elder-berry
wine as a febrifuge.

Old John Evelyn says, " If the medicinal
prospectus of the leaves, bark, berries, etc.,
were thoroughly known, I cannot tell what
our countryman could ail for which he might
not find a remedy from every hedge, either for
sickness or wound."

The borage was used for cheering depressed
spirits, and we take it now in the cool tankard,
with wine and lemon and sugar, not perhaps
knowing why. But Bacon says that thus
mixed " it will make a sovereign drink for
melancholy persons."

My own experience confirms this. Good
cider cup or champagne cup is sovereign
against low spirits ; this is due, of course, to
the borage.

Where herbs are used, there is probably
something valuable in their properties. The
experience of many generations has gone to

256 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

prove it. A workman who suffered greatly
from abscesses cured himself entirely by the
use of the roots of the teasel which he asked
the writer of this book to be allowed to
dig up in his orchard. But it is quite other
with the little insects that infest the teasel
head, and which are eaten to cure inter-
mittent fevers, or enclosed in a goose quill,
sealed up and worn round the neck as a pre-

servative against ague.

A real charm is where the words are used
without the medicine, and what o-ood it can do

o

is merely the effect on the imagination. That
words alone may sometimes cure, the following
story will show.

A poor woman came to the parson of the
parish with the request — " Please, pass'n ! my
ou'd sow be took cruel bad. I wish now you 'd
be so good as to come and say a prayer over
her."

"A prayer ! Goodness preserve us ! I cannot
come and pray over a pig — a pig, my dear
Sally— that is not possible."

" Her be cruel bad, groaning and won't eat
her meat. If her dies, pass'n — whativer shall

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 257

we do i' the winter wi'out bacon sides, and
ham. Oh dear ! Do y' now, pass'n, come and
say a prayer over my ou'd sow."

"I really — really must not degrade my
sacred office. Sally ! indeed I must not."

" Oh, pass'n ! do y' now ! " and the good
creature began to sob.

The parson was a tender-hearted man, and
tears were too much for him. He agreed to
go to the cottage, see the pig, and do what he
could.

Accordingly, he visited the patient, which
lay groaning in the stye.

The woman gazed wistfully at the pastor,
and waited for the prayer. Then the clergy-
man raised his right hand, pointed with one
finger at the sow and said solemnly : "If thou
livest, O pig! then thou livest. If thou diest,
O pig ! then thou diest."

Singularly enough the sow was better that
same e\iening and ate a little wash. She was
well and had recovered her appetite wholly
next day.

Now it happened, some months after this
that the rector fell very ill, with a quinsy that
s

258 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

nearly choked him. He could not swallow, he
could hardly breathe. His life was in imminent
danger.

Sally was a visitor every day at the rectory,
and was urgent to see the sick man. She was
refused, but pressed so vehemently, that finally
she was suffered— just to see him, but she was
warned not to speak to him or expect him to
speak, as he was unable to utter a word.

She was conducted to the sick-room, and
the door thrown open. There she beheld
her pastor lying in bed, groaning, almost in
extremis.

Raising her hand, she pointed at him with
one finger and said : "If thou livest, O pass'n !
then thou livest ! If thou diest, O pass'n !
then thou diest ! "

The effect on the sick man was — an ex-
plosion of laughter that burst the quinsy, and
his recovery.

I have said that the doctor turned up his
nose at the village dame who used herbs and
charms ; he did not relish, either, the inter-
vention of the Lady Bountiful, whether the
squire's or parson's wife, one or other of

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 259

whom invariably kept a store closet full of
medicines — black draught for adults, dill-water
for babies, Friar's balsam for wounds, salts and
senna leaves, ipecacuanha for coughs, brown
paper slabs with tallow for tightness of the
chest, castor oil for stomach-ache, and Gregory's
powder for feverishness.

My grandmother had such a doctor's shop,
with shelves laden with bottles.

Whenever I was out of sorts, it was always
pronounced to be " stomach," whereupon a
great quart bottle of castor oil was produced,
also a leaden or pewter spoon with hollow
stem, and a lid that moved on hinges, and
closed the spoon. Into this a sufficiency of
castor oil was poured, then my grandmother
applied her thumb to the end of the hollow
handle, and this effectually retained the objec-
tionable oil in the spoon, till this article of
torture had been rammed between my teeth
and was lodged on my tongue. Thereupon
the thumb was removed, and the oil shot
down my throat. I have that spoon now.

A servant girl was invited to a dance, and
obtained leave from her mistress to go. She,

26o AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

however, returned somewhat early. Where-
upon her mistress asked, " Why, Mary ! you
are back very quickly ! "

"Yes, ma'm," answered the domestic with
flaming cheek, "a young man came up to me
as soon as I arrived and axed if my programme
was full — and I — I haven't eat nothink since
midday. I warn't going to stay there and be
insulted."

I suppose my grandmother considered that
after every great Christian festival or domestic
conviviality my programme was overfull, for
the leaden spoon and the quart bottle of castor
oil invariably appeared on the scene upon the
morrow.

On escaping from infancy with its con-
comitants the bottle and spoon, I fell under a
greater horror still, blue pill and senna tea.
My father believed in blue pill, and also
believed that a cupful of senna tea after it
removed any noxious effects the calomel
might be supposed to leave. What a cramp-
ing, pain-giving abomination that senna tea
was ! As I write, the taste of it comes upon
my tongue. What another world we live in,

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 261

that of podophyllin pills coated with silver
or sugar! How little can children of this age
conceive the sufferings of their parents when
they were blooming youths and maidens !

Of course, country people have got odd
notions of their internal construction. A
farmer's wife in Essex told me once that
whenever she was troubled in her lungs she
took a dose of small shot from her husband's
flask. I was horror-struck. She explained :
"You see, sir, my lungs ain't properly attached,
and in windy weather they blows about. You
know how you Ve got the curtain at the church
door weighted with shot — that's to keep it
down. Well, I takes them shot on the same
principle, to keep my lungs down."

Having, at one time, a small stuffed croco-
dile in my room, varnished, and lodged on
my mantel -shelf, I was visited by an old
woman of the humblest class, about some
parish pay that had been cut down by the
hard-hearted guardians, when her eye rested
on the crocodile, and after considering it for
some time, she broke forth with, " I reckon you
got thickey (that) out o' somebody's insides."

262 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

"Most assuredly not," I answered, consider-
ably taken aback at the unexpected question.
Then I added, "What in the name of Wonder
makes you think so ? "

" Becos," she replied, "sure enough, there's
one in me, as worrits me — awful ! And I wish
your honnor'd go to the Board of Gardjins
and take thickey baste along wi' you and show
it to them gardjins, and tell 'em I've got one
just the same rampaging inside o' me, and
get 'em to give me another loaf, and tack
on a sixpence to my pay. I'd like to keep
a pig, your honnor ; only how can I, when
I Ve got a baste like that in my vitals as
consumes more nor half o' what I have to
eat. There ain't no offals for a porker. Can't
be, nohow."

A friend of mine, a gentleman of some
education, and one I should have supposed
superior to such crude notions, assured me
solemnly that he was acquainted with the
following case : — An old dame, in a Devon-
shire country parish, drank some water in
which was the spawn of a triton. The
stomach of the good lady proved to be an

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 263

excellent hatching- place, and the spawn re-
solved into newt, which lived very comfortably
in its snug, if somewhat gloomy, abode.

When the triton was hungry, it was wont
to run about its prison like a squirrel in its
revolving cage, only, of course, in this case,
the cage did not revolve. This made the old
woman so uneasy, that she was hardly able
to endure it. The triton evinced the utmost
repugnance to the smell of fried fish , proximus
ardet Ucalegon, and it was impossible for the
old woman to remain in the house where fish
was being prepared for the table, as the
excitement and resentment of her tenant
became intolerable. My informant assured
me that the old lady had applied to several
doctors for relief, and had obtained none ; at
last she heard of a wise man, or herbalist, at
Bideford, and she visited him. He recom-
mended her to place herself under treatment
by him, and to begin by starving her triton.

The patient accordingly remained in the
place for three days without tasting food,
enduring all the while the utmost discomfort
from the exacting and resentful newt.

264 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

On the third day the uncertificated practi-
tioner tied an earthworm to a thread and let it
down the patient's throat. The triton rose to
the bait, bit, and was whisked out of the
woman's mouth. When she was sufficiently
recovered, the herbalist showed her, in effect,
a horrible monster, which he professed to have
fished out of her inside. This creature was
forthwith put in spirits and exhibited in a
phial in the practitioner's window. There my
informant had seen it — and the woman had
told him her tale.

The story is well known of Dr. Abernethy
and the lady who had swallowed a spider,
which she said gave her great internal in-
convenience. The doctor bade her open her
mouth, he caught a fly, put it into her mouth,
and then snapped his hand and pretended to
have captured the spider which had come up
her throat after the fly. The North Devon
quack had played some such trick with the
old woman, but with the improvement, that he
had utilized the days whilst she was fasting in
looking out for a live newt in a pond, and he
deluded her into believing that this was the

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 265

identical beast that had troubled her, and
which he had so dexterously extracted.

I believe there are few parishes in England
in which similar tales are not told. I
remember seeing a huge oriental centipede
exhibited in a herbalist's window in a large
town in Yorkshire, as having been an inmate
of the stomach of a human being.

I have heard the same story as that told
me in Devon, repeated in Sussex with this
variation, that instead of an earthworm tempt-
ing the newt from its retreat, a roast leg of
mutton was exhibited at the mouth of the
patient. A friend of mine was warned by
an old woman in Staffordshire not to eat cress
from a brook, on the ground that an acquaint-
ance of hers had once thus swallowed toad-
spawn which had been hatched within her.

" Look, sir, at that 'ere boy ! " said an urchin
to me one day ; " he 's gotten a live frog in his
innerds, and if you bide still you can hear it
quack."

" Nonsense," retorted the lad in question.
" What you hear is conscience speakin'. That
there chap ain't got no conscience at all. Put

266 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

your ear to his stomick, and you won't hear
nothin'."

The late Mr. Frank Buckland had so often
heard the assertion that frogs and toads lived
inside human beings, that he actually once
tried the experiment on himself. He let a
live frog hop down his throat. He felt no
after inconvenience.

He tells a story in his Curiosities of Natural
History which he received from a Lancashire
man, and which agrees in some particulars with
that I had from Devonshire. " There lived a
man whose appetite was enormous. He was
always eating, and yet could never get fat ; he
was the thinnest and most miserable of crea-
tures to look at. He always declared that he
had something alive in his stomach ; and a
kind friend, learned in doctoring, confirmed his
opinion, and prescribed a most ingenious plan
to dislodge the enemy, a big triton, who had
taken up his quarters in the man's stomach.
He was ordered to eat nothing but salt food
and to drink no water ; and when he had
continued this treatment as long as he could
bear it, he was to go and lie down near a

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR 267

weir of the river, where the water was running
over, 'with his mouth open.' The man did
as he was told, and open-mouthed and expect-
ant placed himself by the side of the weir.

" The lizard inside, tormented by the salt
food, and parched for want of water, heard
the sound of the running stream, and came
scampering up the man's throat, and jumping
out of his mouth, ran down to the water to
drink. The sudden appearance of the brute
so terrified the weakened patient that he
fainted away, still with his mouth open. In
the meantime the lizard had drunk his full,
and was coming back to return down the
man's throat into his stomach ; he had nearly
succeeded in so doing when the patient awoke,
and seizing his enemy by the tail, killed him
on the spot." And Frank Buckland remarks
thereupon, " I consider this story to be one
of the finest strings of impossibilities ever
recorded." But such stones are told to this
day, and believed in implicitly.

What imagination will do I can show from
my own experience. When a boy, in the
Pyrenees, I once drank from a spring, and

268 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

saw to my horror, when I had already swal-
lowed a mouthful, that the water was alive
with small leeches. I had a bad time of it
for two or three days. I firmly believed I
had leeches alive and sucking my blood
inside me ; I felt them. I became languid.
I believed they would drain my blood away.
Happily, my father heard what was the matter
with me, and explained to me the corrosive
nature of the gastric fluid, and assured me
that nothing living and of the nature of a
leech could resist it. " My dear boy," said
he, "from personal observation of your pro-
ceedings at meal-time, I am convinced you
could digest a pair of boots, and no leeches
could stand a moment against the force of
your vigorous gastric fluid." I believed him,
and forgot all about my imaginary malady.

CHAPTER XII.

EVERY family and village has had its
scapegrace. The family ne'er-do-weel
has been its greatest curse, and has torn down
and dissipated in a few years what it has taken
generations to set up ; any fool can destroy-
only the wise can build.

But it is not so much folly as lack of
principle which constitutes the ne'er-do-weel.
Many a good man is a stupid one, and his
goodness saves his stupidity from carrying
him and his family to ruin. And sometimes
a clever man is a ne'er-do-weel, because his
cleverness is undirected by principle.

Perhaps the most flagrant instance of the
ne'er-do-weel among the aristocracy was that
of Philip Duke of Wharton, the inheritor of
a princely fortune, of extensive estates, and

endowed by nature with brilliant talents, a man

269

270 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

who forfeited everything simply because he
was without principle, and died in abject
poverty, the last of a race which had been
the pride of the North of England ; but he
died in something worse than poverty — in
dishonour. It was of him that Pope wrote
these scathing lines :

" Clodis — the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise ;
Born with whate'er could win it from the wise,
Women or fools must like him, or he dies.
*•*#***

His passion still to covet general praise,

His life to forfeit it a thousand ways.

A tyrant to the wife his heart approves,

A rebel to the very king he loves ;

He dies, sad outcast of each Church and State,

And harder still, flagitious, yet not great.

Ask you why Clodis broke through every rule ?

'T was all for fear the knaves should call him fool.''

The present time shows us some of these
among the inheritors of noble names and
fortunes — men as foolish and unprincipled as
the wretched Duke of Wharton, and who run
through a hardly less disreputable course, to
the disgrace of the name which has hitherto
been held high in history.

SCAPEGRACES 271

In many a humbler family it is the same.
It would seem as though occasionally a sport
of some ignoble, sordid, selfish element broke
out in a stock that has been noted for its self-
respect, its goodness and generosity, and the
wretched creature in which is this vein of
baseness undoes in a few years everything
that it has taken his ancestors many years
of prudence, self-sacrifice, and forethought to
construct.

The writer remembers the instance of a
gentleman in the North of England of excel-
lent abilities, of many extended estates, and of
illustrious name.

He, however, had the misfortune to inherit
his fortune early ; he had lost his father and
mother when quite a boy, and when he came
into his estates he galloped through them,
selling one property and mansion after another,
till he came to spend his last days in a cottage.

Throughout, one had pitied the man rather
than blamed him, because he had not been
taught his duties to God and man at a mother's
knee. But one day the writer said to him,
" Well ! I suppose that if we began life again,

272 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

you and I, with our experiences, we should
live very differently."

" Not a bit of it," he answered promptly,
with a merry laugh, " I 'd go through the
same round to ruin again." After that, the
spring of pity for the man dried up. A man
who cannot learn by experience, who has no
feeling for the shame and sorrow he has caused
his family, deserves only contempt.

As a boy I remember seeing a painting of
a young gentleman with a flat feeble face, and
powdered hair, and laced coat. It was riddled
with small holes. I asked the reason.

It was the portrait of the family scapegrace,
who had alienated the paternal acres and
mansion, and for three generations that
picture had been used for the children to
shoot darts at. So alone did that good-for-
naught prove of the slightest use, in that to
future generations he was held up as the butt
of scorn and loathing in the family, as the one
man who in a few years had wrecked what it
had taken an illustrious ancestry many centuries
to accumulate.

The first token of the course the scapegrace

SCAPEGRACES 273

is going to take is when he begins to fell the
stately trees that have been growing in his
park about his estate for over a hundred years.
I will quote a scene from Coleman's capital
comedy of The Poor Gentleman, which held up
to detestation a man very common in that age.

"An apartment in SIR CHARLES CROPLAND'S house.
SIR CHARLES CROPLAND at breakfast; his valet
de chambre adjusting his hair.

" Sir Chas. What day of the month was it yesterday,
when I left town?

" Valet. The first of April, Sir Charles.

" Sir Chas. Umph ! When Mr. Warner (the steward)
comes, show him in.

" Valet. I shall, Sir Charles. [Exit.

" Sir Chas. This same lumbering timber upon my
ground has its merits. Trees are notes issued from the
bank of Nature, and as current as those payable to
Abraham Newland. I must get change for a few oaks,
for I want cash consumedly. So, Mr. Warner.

Enter WARNER.

" Warner. Your honour is right welcome into Kent.
I am proud to see Sir Charles Cropland on his estate
again. I hope you mean to stay on the spot for some time,
Sir Charles ?

" Sir Chas. A very tedious time. Three days, Mr.
Warner.

" Warner. Ah, good sir ! I wish you lived entirely upon
the estate, Sir Charles.
T

274 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

" Sir C/ias. Thank you, Warner ; but modern men of
fashion find it devilish difficult to live upon their estates.

" Warner. The country about you is so charming !

11 Sir Chas. Look ye, Warner, I must hunt in
Leicestershire — for that's the thing. In the frosts and
the spring months I must be in town at the clubs— for
that's the thing. In summer I must be at the watering-
places — for that's the thing. Now, Warner, under these
circumstances, how is it possible for me to reside upon
my estate? For my estate being in Kent

" Warner. The most beautiful part of the country —

" Sir Chas. Curse beauty ! My estate being in Kent

" Warner. A land of milk and honey ! —

" Sir Chas. I hate milk and honey.

" Warner. A land of fat !

" Sir Chas. Damn your fat ! Listen to me. My estate
being in Kent

" Warner. So woody ! —

11 Sir Chis. Curse the wood! No, that's wrong — for
it 's convenient. I am come on purpose to cut it.

" Warner. Ah ! I was afraid so ! Dice on the table,
and then, the axe to the root ! Money lost at play, and
then, good luck ! the forest groans for it.

"Sir Chas. But you are not the forest, and why the
devil do you groan for it ?

" Warner. I heartily wish, Sir Charles, you may not
encumber the goodly estate. Your worthy ancestors had
views for their posterity.

" Sir Chas. And I shall have views for my posterity. I
shall take special care the trees shan't intercept their prospect.
In short, Mr. Warner, I must have three thousand pounds
in three days. P'ell timber to that amount immediately."

SCAPEGRACES 275

A singular circumstance happened some
years ago. I was told it by a timber merchant
who was on the spot.

A respectable nobleman died, leaving a
scapegrace son to inherit his title, estates,
and wealth.

It was then that the Jews came down like
vultures on the heir. They had lent him
money on post-obits ; and there was not
enough to satisfy them. Accordingly the
mandate went forth for the cutting-down and
sale of the magnificent timber in the park-
trees of centuries' growth.

The day of the sale arrived, and timber
merchants had gathered from far and near,
and the auctioneer was about to begin the
sale of the trees — standing in their majesty.
"By heaven!" said the dealer to me, "it
made my heart ache to see them — the trees
themselves looked like nobles — I say it made
my heart ache, though I hoped to profit by
them too."

Well, just as the sale began a telegraphic
messenger came galloping up with an orange
envelope.

276 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

The earl had shot himself.

The sale was stopped. The trees could
not be felled. He had cut short his own
worthless life, and each stick of timber, every
one of which was more valuable than his
miserable self, was saved.

"As the gaming and extravagance of the
young men of quality has arrived now at a
pitch never heard of, it is worth while to
give some account of it," writes Horace
Walpole in his last journals (1772). "They
had a club at one Almacks in Pall Mall,
where they played only for rouleaus of ^50
each rouleau ; and generally there was
.£10,000 in specie on the table. Lord
Holland had paid about ,£20,000 for his two
sons. Nor were the manners of the game-
sters, or even their dresses for play, undeserv-
ing notice. They began by pulling off their
embroidered clothes, and put on frieze great-
coats, or turned their coats inside outwards
for luck. They put on pieces of leather
(such as is worn by footmen when they
clean knives) to save their lace ruffles ; and
to guard their eyes from the light, and to

SCAPEGRACES 277

prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned
straw hats with broad brims, and adorned with
flowers and ribbons ; masks to conceal their
emotions when they played at quinze. Each
gamester had a small, neat stand by him, with
a large rim to hold his tea, or a wooden bowl
with an edge of ormolu, to hold his rouleaus.
They borrowed great sums of the Jews at
exorbitant premiums. Charles Fox called
his outward room, where these Jews waited
till he rose, the Jerusalem Chamber. His
brother Stephen was enormously fat ; George
Selwyn said he was in the right to deal with
Shylocks, as he could give them pounds of
flesh."

There is a charming old house in Throwleigh,
Devon, called Wonson Manor, the ancient seat
of the Knapmans, from whom it passed to
the Northmores of Cleave, together with large
estates in the neighbourhood.

William Northmore of Cleave, M.P. for
Okehampton from 1713 to 1734, was a great
gambler, and he lost at one sitting .£17,000
on the turn of an ace of diamonds in a game
of putt.

278 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

This led to forced sales and the loss of
the ancestral acres and house of Well in South
Tawton, and of nearly all the property in
Throwleigh except the manor-house. William
Northmore had an ace of diamonds painted
in one of the panels of the wainscot of his
bedroom, and every night before turning into
bed he cursed the ace instead of saying his
prayers. The ace is still shown. Now
Wonson is also passed away.

There was in North Devon no more
ancient family than Dowrish of Dowrish,
whose authentic pedigree goes back to King
John's reign, when Dowrish Keep was erected.
The descent was direct from father to son for
twenty generations, that is to say for five
hundred years, always seated on the same
acres and occupying the same house, that
had indeed been added to, remodelled, but
which was in itself a record of the lives and
thoughts, ambitions, and discouragements of
a family that had married into the best in the
land, the de Helions, the Carews, the Fulfords,
and the Northcotes.

Then, in graceless days, came the graceless

SCAPEGRACES 281

fool who undid the work of twenty genera-
tions in one night. The manor of Kenner-
leigh belonged and had belonged to the
Dowrishes for centuries.

One night the then squire and Sir Arthur
Northcote were playing piquet. Mr. Dowrish,
being eldest hand, held the four aces, four
kings, and four queens, and promptly offered
to bet his manor of Kennerleigh against ^500,
by no means its value even in those days,
that he won the game. Sir Arthur took the
bet, having a claim of carte blanche on his
undiscarded hand. After Sir Arthur had
discarded, he took up two knaves, and held
two points of five each, each headed by the
knave. Mr. Dowrish being about to declare,
was stopped by Sir Arthur's claim for ten for
carte blanche, which ruined his chances. The
point fell to Sir Arthur, and two quints, who
scored thus :

Carte blanche . . .10

Point 5

Two quints at 15 each . 30
Repique. . . .60

105 and game.

282 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

At the present day there would be holes
to pick in this method of counting, as Mr.
Dowrish on his side could have claimed his
" fourteens " for aces, kings, and queens before
allowing the sequences to count, but not so
formerly, when the rule was absolute as to the
order of counting, point, sequence, threes or
fours of suits. So the manor was lost, and
Kennerleigh belongs to Lord Iddesleigh at
the present day.

In commemoration of the game, the table
at which it was played was inlaid with repre-
sentations of the two hands, and is now in
Dowrish House, a mansion that has lost all
its interest, having been remodelled in sub-
urban villa style, but nobly situated and
commanding a glorious view.

Gambling thus recklessly is an illustration
of reversion to one of the strongest passions
that actuates man in his lowest savage state.
So the Alaskan natives. " They often pass
whole days and nights absorbed in the occu-
pation. Their principal game is played with
a handful of small sticks of different colours,
which are called by various names, such as the

SCAPEGRACES 283

crab, the whale, the duck, and so on. The
player shuffles all the sticks together, then,
counting out a certain number, he places them
under cover of bunches of moss. The object
seems to be to guess in which pile is the
whale, and in which the crab, or the duck.
Individuals often lose at this trifling game
all their worldly possessions. We are told
of instances where, spurred on by excitement,
a native risks his wife and children, and if he
loses, they become the recognized property
of the winner, nor would anyone think of
interfering with such a' settlement."*

A certain earl, when a young man, being
fond of play, called on Beau Nash to gamble
with him. Nash first won from him all his
ready money, then the title deeds of his
estates, and finally the very watch in his
pocket, and the rings on his fingers — all in
one night. Nash thereupon read him a
lecture on his incredible folly, and returned
all his winnings, at the same time extracting
from him a promise that he would never play

* BALM, The New Eldorado, Boston, 1889, p. 199.

284 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

But it is not among the gentry only that
the scapegraces are found, though such as are
highly placed are most noticed. They are to
be found in every class, and there is not a
village which does not produce these sour
fruit.

The generality of these scapegraces are
simply scatter-brains, filled with exuberant
spirits that carry them beyond the bounds
that constrain the commonplace folk. If these
fellows, full of animal spirits, effervescing with
the joy of life, have principle and wise parents
to advise them, they will turn out admirable
men, useful members of society. The army
or the navy is the profession to which they
naturally gravitate, and first-rate soldiers and
sailors they make. But this is if they have
principle. Without that as a fly-wheel, they
spin themselves out without doing good to
themselves or to anyone else.

Compare some of the scamps we have
known at school, in a parish, with the heavy,
plodding lout, who is without go and without
intelligence. Which makes the best man in
the end ? The scamp undoubtedly, if his

SCAPEGRACES 285

scampishness springs out of exuberant spirits
and there be no root of vice in the heart.

The heavy, plodding lout becomes a whole-
some and useful member of society ; but he is
without freshness and energy.

We cannot doubt that some untoward
circumstance sometimes throws a young
fellow out of his proper course of life, and
throughout his career he is conscious that
he has got into the wrong groove. Then
he either makes the best of it, or continues
in sullen resentment with resistance at heart
against the restraints and contrarieties he
encounters — gets into difficulties, is cast out
when too late to take up another course,
and squanders life away in disorder or
idle repenting. I knew a boy who, getting
into a " row " at school, instead of waiting
and receiving his punishment pluckily, and
accepting it as deserved, ran away to sea.

I met him many years after, a sailor, and
he said to me, " The blot of my life was
that I did not accept the birch I had
deserved. I cut away to sea. I have been
now a seaman for fifteen years, and have

286 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

never yet found my sea-legs. Whenever
there is a capful of wind, and the water is
a bit rough, I am sick as a dog. It is always
the same. It stands against me. I hate the
sea. But I made a fool of myself when I ran
from school, and a fool I shall remain to the
end."

"Not a bit," was my reply. "Like a
sensible man, you have held to the profession
you chose, and make the best of it. You win
back thereby all the respect you threw away
when you shirked your punishment."

There was every temptation to this young
man to become a ne'er-do-weel, but he did not
give way to the temptation. He recognized
the fact that he had made a mistake, and he
took the consequences like a man. But, then,
it is, perhaps, one only in five of those who
make these mistakes who has the courage
to accept the results, and accommodate himself
to them.

Where there is a sound substratum of
healthy conscience and force of character,
there one may always hope that a mistake
in early life will right itself.

SCAPEGRACES 287

But if there be mere love of lawlessness,
mere wilfulness, in the outbreaks of youth,
then there is no redemption, the ne'er-do-weel
boy remains a ne'er-do-weel to the end of the
chapter.

I remember one such. I knew him as
a boy, and confess to have entertained a
liking for him ; but his escapades passed all
bounds of moderation. A good-natured,
chestnut-haired boy he was, with clear,
trembling blue eyes, a fair complexion some-
what marred by freckles, and straight, elastic
figure. Unhappily this lad had not parents
who taught their children what would do them
good in life ; nor kept them to the National
School, where they might have acquired that
which their parents neglected to inculcate.

The young fellow sometimes came to church,
and then went into the gallery behind the
choir. Now, in the choir sat a young fellow
with a head covered with natural curls of a
tow colour, on Sundays drenched in hair-oil.
One Sunday the scapegrace thrust a lighted
match into the mass of oiled curls, and the
head blazed up at once.

288 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

The same ne'er-do-weel, whilst he was
ringing the tenor bell, suddenly threw the loop
of the rope over the neck of the next man,
who was instantly whisked up against the
belfry floor above and thrown down, and very
nearly killed.

On again another occasion, he thrashed a
fellow called "Old Straw" with a flail, saying
that he was bent on finding if there was any
good to be got out of him. He broke Straw's
leg, and was sentenced by the magistrates to
be put in the stocks.

That was the last occasion when stocks
were used in England, and so angry was the
squire at the revival of the stocks, that after
the sentence had been carried out he had them
chopped up and burnt.

The disgrace of the stocks was too much
for our ne'er-do-weel ; he left the parish and
entered the army, but had to leave — he was
a ne'er-do-weel under the colours as in fustian.
Since then he has been about the world— a
ne'er-do-weel everywhere.

The other day the church bell was tolling.
It was for this ne'er-do-weel. He had re-

SCAPEGRACES

289

turned home to die. The sole wish in the
heart of the man with a wasted life was to lie,
to cast down the wreck of his body, in the
earth of the native parish which had bred him,
and to have no headstone to mark the mound
under which lay naught but the ashes of a
ne'er-do-weel.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHERE there is private property there
must be a demarcation, showing its
limits ; and where there are crops on arable
land, there, either one or other of two alter-
natives must be adopted, the crops must be
protected by a hedge, dyke, or wall, from the
incursions of the cattle, or the cattle must be
kept in confinement, to prevent their straying.
The former is the system adopted in England
and in Westphalia, and the latter is that
general throughout the rest of Germany and
France. The term mark has a curious history.
Originally it signified the forest, so called
because of its gloom, whence our word
murk. The mark or forest bounded the
clearing. Thence it came to signify the limit

of a claim made by a community to land held

290

HEDGES 291

in common. Land bounding a state or prin-
cipality was then called also a mark or the
marches, and the official who watched it
against incursions was the mark - graff, or
margrave, in French marquis, hence our
marquess.

As the limit of a territory or a village, or
a private claim had to be given certain
indications, when the wood had further re-
treated, stones or posts were set up, and signs
were cut on these to show that they limited
claims. The compound was in German entitled
the Gemarkung, and over every Gemarkung
there was a villicus, bailiff, or schultheiss^ who
regulated the affairs of the community.

In 1854 Dr. Konrad Maurer set all political
economists agog by his Introduction to the
History of the Mark, &c. The book was
not intended as a hoax, but it succeeded in
hoaxing pretty largely, and in provoking con-
siderable excitement.

His thesis was that among the Teutonic
races the Land belonged to the People, and that
every householder had rights over the land,
but that the invasion of Feudalism altered

292 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

everything, the lords then seized on the land
and converted the freeholders into serfs and
villains. His assertions were accepted as
gospel, till disputed by Professor Fustel de
Coulanges in 1885 and 1889, who showed, by
production of the original texts, that Maurer
had little or no evidence to sustain his entire
fabric. All the evidence goes the other way,
to show that land, directly men settled, be-
came private property, but that the landlord
allowed his tenants to take wood from forests,
turf from moors, and have certain commons
for pasturage, not as a right, but as a favour.

Maurer had started from a false premise.
The Mark or ager never meant common land,
but the boundary of private estates.* In a
word, as far as evidence goes, his theory was
the erection of a Fools' Paradise for social

* "If a proprietor encroaches on a neighbouring proprietor,
he shall pay fifteen solidi . . . The boundary between two
estates is formed by distinct landmarks, such as little mounds
of stones ... If a man oversteps this boundary, marca, and
enters the property of another, he shall pay the above mentioned
fine." Laws of the Ripuarian Franks, Sect. 60. So the ancient
Bavarian Laws spoke of a man who look a slave over the
borders, extra terminos hoc est extra marcam. (xiii. 9). See

The Origin of Property in Land, by F. de Coulanges, London,

1891.

HEDGES 293

and political reformers. Originally, when men
were nomads, the land belonged to nobody —
but when tillage began, then at once the
marking out of fields became a necessity—
and with the marking came proprietorship.

In France and Germany, where there are
no hedges, there the properties are divided by
an imaginary line drawn between two stone
pegs ; and as fields get divided and subdivided
by inheritance, the number of these marks or
pegs increases.

In order to distinguish his boundaries, a
proprietor sometimes cut the outline of his
foot on a slab, or took the further pains with
a hammer and chisel to scoop it out.

In course of time the significance of these
foot imprints in stone was completely forgotten,
and as they are found all the world over, the
vulgar began to regard them with awe, and
create legends to account for their existence.

When Robinson Crusoe lit upon the foot-
print in the wet sand on the shore, he had
no rest till he discovered who had left it there.
And so, when the peasantry came on these
marks in stone, long after such marks had

294 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

ceased to have any practical significance, they
cudgelled their brains to explain them, and,
of course, hit on wrong explanations.

In Scotland there are several of these. So
also in India and Ceylon. Buddha's footprint
is venerated in five places. In the chapel
of the Ascension on the top of the Mount
of Olives is shown the mark of the foot-
steps of the Saviour. Arculf, who visited
Palestine about the year 700, says, " Upon
the ground in the midst of the church may
be seen the last prints in the dust made by
the feet of the Lord, and the roof is open
above where He ascended." Now, however,
the impress is shown cut in the rock.

At Poitiers, in the church of St. Radegund,
is the footprint of the Saviour, impressed by
Him when He appeared to this abbess saint.

At Bolsena is a slab on which are the foot-
prints of St. Christina.

In Rome a chapel called " Domine quo
vadis " is built over a similar slab. The
story goes that St. Peter, afraid of perishing
in the persecution of Nero, attempted to fly
from Rome, when he met Christ at the spot

HEDGES 295

where stands the chapel, and he asked Him,
"Lord, whither goest Thou." "To be cruci-
fied again in Rome," was the answer. Peter,
ashamed of his cowardice, returned and died
a martyr's death.

In Poland as many as eighteen of these
footprints have been registered.

Curiously enough, footprints outlined in the

ALABASTER SLAB WITH FOOTPRINTS, VATICAN, ROME

marble have been found in the catacombs of
Rome closing the graves of early Christians.
In the Kircherian Museum in Rome is one
of these. It is a square marble, slab with two
pairs of footprints incised upon it, pointed in
opposite directions, as if occasioned by a
person going and returning, or by two
persons passing each other. Another stone
from the catacombs bears the name of

296 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Januaria, and has on it the print of a pair
of feet in sandals carved on it.

The circumstance that all sorts of legendary
matter attaches to these footprints, shows that
their real significance has been lost. Yet they
must have had a meaning and a purpose, and
that all over the world. When the purpose
for which executed no longer existed, or it was
no longer necessary to express this purpose,
then the purport of these marks was left to
wild conjecture.

We cannot be very far wrong in saying
that primarily these footprints were cut as
boundary marks, or as marks indicating
possession. When a settler took land and
enclosed it, then he cut his mark at the corners
of his enclosure ; and the simplest and most
natural mark was the impression of his foot.

Tin miners in old times were required an-
nually to cut their marks in the turf of their
claims. If they failed to do this, they forfeited
their claims. Indeed, the very term possession
is derived from the expression pedes posiii —
" I have set my feet down." Among the
Roman lawyers the maxim held that what the

HEDGES 297

foot struck that could be claimed as private
property. The German word marke, marca,
meant a limit, a boundary. Now we use the
word mark as a sign, or token of possession.
We have tradesmen's marks. And, as already
said, the simplest of all marks was the foot-
print. If any dispute arose, the owner put his
foot down on the tracing, and showed thereby
a right of ownership.

We see in the footprints on tombslabs the
same idea — of claiming proprietorship in a
grave. The two pairs are for the husband
and wife.

It has been argued that where horse hoofs
have been cut in a slab, that indicates the
wider limits of a domain, or a community-
district, which was ridden round, but that the
footprints of men thus graven betokened
private lands belonging to individuals, or
rather, to heads of households.

At Totnes, in Devon, in the High Street,
is a slab of stone, on which is the now much
worn impress of a foot. This from time im-
memorial has been said to have been the print
of the foot of Brutus when he landed in

298 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

Britain, and took possession of our Isle for
himself and his descendants. As he did so
he declared :

" Here I stand, and here I rest,
And this place shall be called Totnes ! "

But now let us turn from boundaries indi-
cated by marks to those artificially erected
enclosing the entire claim.

Such are our hedges, dykes, and walls.

The hedge in many parts of England and in
Scotland is a small privet or thorn division be-
tween fields, or dividing a field from the road.
To a Northerner, to speak of a bank six or ten
feet high with trees on the top as a hedge, is
held to be a misappropriation of terms. A
hedge, according to him, is only a line of
quickset eighteen inches or two feet high ;
a bank of earth dividing fields is a dyke. But
then in Ireland a dyke is both a bank and a
ditch. In fact, hedge is derived from the same
source as the Latin ager, and the Norse akr,
and our acre ; and signifies earth cast up,
either by the plough or the spade, either in
tilling or in banking. This is the meaning
the Sanskrit akara has ; and in Latin, ager

HEDGES 299

has its double meaning, as a bank and as a
field. So I contend that we in the South-West
of England are quite right in using for the
banks that enclose our fields the term hedge.

It is a great hardship to the poor cattle on
the Continent to be stall-fed, and how poor
is the meat from such beasts every English-
man knows who has travelled. If we glory
in the Roast Beef of Old England, it is
because our cattle are able to roam about
the pastures, and are healthy and vigorous,
and their flesh sound and juicy accordingly.
And this is due to our hedges.

In certain parts of the Alpine chains, there
are portions delivered over to the chamois
as their own, in which no gun may be fired,
where the beautiful creatures may be sure of
rest and security, in which they may nurture
their young, and to which, when hard pressed,
they may flee, as to Cities of Refuge. In Tyrol
such an asylum is called a Gamsenfreiheit.

Of late years it has become necessary for
law in Switzerland to extend its protection
to the Edelweiss. This peculiar and beautiful
flower is much in request, both by lovers who

300 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

present it to their sweethearts, and also for the
formation of little mementoes for travellers.

The Edelweiss does not require an altitude
so great that it is near the snow, nor a pre-
cipitous rock to crown ; the poor plant has
been driven higher and ever higher, and to
inaccessible points as the only places where
it can live unmolested. At Rosenheim, on
the Bavarian plateau, at the roots of the
mountains are fields of Edelweiss, where the
plant is cultivated to satisfy the insatiable
visitor who insists on going home from his
holiday with a tuft in his hat, and on sending
dried specimens to all his friends.

Well ! what must England have been before
it was cultivated in nearly every part ? Verily,
it must have been a land of flowers. Now
the flowers are banished — that is to say, the
vast majority of kinds, by the plough and
harrow. Only those are left which can with-
stand both and such as take refuge in our
hedges. The hedgerow is, in fact, to our
English flowers, what the Gamsenfreiheit is
to the Tyrolean chamois — their city of refuge,
their asylum from utter eradication.

HEDGES 301

How infinitely dreary is the landscape in
France without hedges. The eye ranges over
a boundless plain of rolling land, that is divided
into strips of various colours like a plaid, and
no trees are visible except lines of trimmed
poplars, or a scrubby wood kept for fuel.
The eye ranges over belts of cabbage and
colza, potatoes, beetroot, barley and lentils,
wheat and sanfoin. There is not a single
hedge anywhere — no harbour for such plants
as have not the stubbornness to live on in
spite of plough, and pick, and spade, and hoe.
Flowers there are — for flowers are obstinate
and persist in coming — grape hyacinths, star
of Bethlehem, lungwort, scarlet anemones,
tulips, blue-bottles, cornflowers, salvia, and so
on — because they dive out of reach of the
spade and share, or because they do not
object to having their tubers cut up — they
rather like it. They multiply from every
portion. But this is not the case with all
flowers. Some have too refined a nature, are
too frail, modest, reserved, to endure rough
treatment. They ask only to be let alone.
They will die if incessantly worried — and for

302 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

such there is no other place of refuge avail-
able except the hedgerow.

I was the other day on the battlefield of
Poitiers. The chroniclers tell of the banks,
the hedges and vineyard walls that stood in
1356, and afforded shelter for the English
archers. Not one remains. Every hedge
has been levelled, every mound spread, and
with them have gone all those flowers that
once made the battlefield like a garden.

Our old English hedges are the Poor Man's
conservatory, are the playground of his children.
How starred they are in spring with primroses !
How they flush with red robin ! How they
mantle with bluebell ! How they wave with
foxglove ! Talking of the latter, I was driving
one day in Cornwall, when my coachman
pointed to a range of foxgloves, and said :
" Look there, sir ! They are just like girls ! "

" What do you mean ? " I asked.

"Did you never notice," said he, "that the
foxglove always turns its flowers towards the
road — it never looks into the hedge ? "

" Naturally, no flower exists that does not
look to the light."

HEDGES 303

"'T ain't that," said the driver. "Tis they
know they Ve got pretty faces, and wants to
show them."

Then, again, the ferns and the mosses !

What a wealth of beauty in them ! What a

variety ! Not to be discovered in the field ;

only in their own quarter, reserved for them

—the hedgerow.

Our hedges are probably as ancient as our
civilization. We know of a few only that
have been erected within the memory of
man ; the majority have existed from the
period when our land was first put into culti-
vation. And it is remarkable that in the
north of Germany, in Westphalia, the Saxon
region whence came our Teutonic ancestors,
there the hedge with which we are familiar
in England is to be met with as well, as an
institution of the country, and a feature of the
landscape.

Look at the size of some hedges — their
width at the base, the height to which they
rise, the traces they bear of venerable an-
tiquity ! This is not perhaps the case in all
parts of England, but it is so in the west.

304 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

An agent of an earl, with large estates,
told me that when first he took the agency
five-and-twenty years ago, he waged war on
the hedges, he had them swept away and
replaced by low divisions with quickset over
which any child might jump. But after long
experience he had learned that our ancestors
were not such fools as we suppose, in this
matter. He learned that not only were the
high hedges a protection to the cattle from
wind and rain, but that they furnished a very
necessary store of dry food for them at a
time when their pastures are sodden. See
bullocks in wet weather, how they scramble
up the hedges, how they ravenously devour
the dry grass in them. That is because the
hedges supply them with something that they
cannot get elsewhere.

In the West of England a hedge top is
frequently finished off with slates that project,
and this is to prevent rabbits, even sheep, from
overleaping them. In Cornwall, on the bank
top is a footpath beside the lane, a large deep
cleft in the land, that converts itself into a
torrent in wet weather. It is a common

HEDGES 305

sight to see women, and children on their way
to school, pencilled against the sky walking
on the hedge tops. So when certain hedges
have thus been converted into footways, then
a rail is often put across them to prevent
horsemen from using them in like manner.

Anent sheep jumping hedges, I may venture
here to tell a tale of a certain old rogue who
went by the name of Tup-Harry. This is
how he got his nickname. Harry was a
small farmer, and he had a neighbour with
better means, and a better farm than his
own. One very dry season Harry had come
to the end of his grass for a flock of sheep
he possessed. His neighbour had, however,
got a fine field of mangel-wurzel. Harry
looked over the hedge — a hedge furnished
with outstanding slates — and greatly longed
for these mangels for his sheep ; but he did
not relish running the risk of being caught
taking them. So he went in the evening
into his field that was bare of grass, put his
head against the hedge, bent his back, and
called " Tup ! Tup ! Tup ! " whereupon up
ran his old ram, jumped on his back, went

306 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

on to the hedge, and over into the mangel
field, and all the flock in Indian file scampered
after him over the back of Harry. Very
early in the morning the rogue went into the
devastated mangel field, put his head against
the hedge, bent his back, called " Tup ! Tup !
Tup ! " and up came the ram, ran over his
back on to the hedge, and returned to the
barren quarter again, followed in Indian file
by all the flock. That was done several
times, and no signs appeared anywhere of
the hedge being broken through, or of a
padlocked gate having been opened. At
last one night the farmer who was robbed
hid himself, and saw the whole proceeding.
Tup- Harry did not try that trick on again.

CHAPTER XIV.

FOR how far down below the surface the
rights of the lord of the manor extend,
has not I believe as yet been determined, so
we may presume that it goes down as far as
man can dig and sink his shafts. In a good
number of counties in England there is
nothing underground worth bringing up, and
consequently such rights are not of much
value. It is quite otherwise where there is
mineral wealth, and it is from the coal or
the copper or the tin that lies deep under-
ground that the wealth of some of our
landed proprietors comes. But there is this

307

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consolation for such as have nothing of great
importance below the surface, that those who
are deriving their large incomes from the beds
or veins deep underground are exhausting their
patrimony ; coal and metal will not recover
themselves as the surface soil will.

It has been my lot to live where the under-
ground industry was great, in Yorkshire where
were coalmines, and on the borders of Corn-
wall where were once great copper and tin
mines ; also in my youth manganese was
extracted out of the rock on my paternal
inheritance. I have had a good deal to do
with those who have worked underground,
and so may be allowed here to give some
reminiscences connected with mining and
quarrying.

Alack-a-day ! As the old order changeth,
one of the most fresh and delightful characters
Old England has produced is disappearing.
Cornish mining is almost at its end. Every
week away from the peninsula goes a shipload
of miners for whom their occupation is gone,
and with them the old cap'n.

Well, what is our loss is others' gain ! and

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 309

he goes to another part of the round world
to be there as a waft of fresh air, a racy and
delightful companion, a typical Cornish Celt,
every inch a man, strong in body, and as strong
in opinions, a little rough at times, but with a
tenderness of heart like that of a woman.

If we go along the great backbone of
Cornwall, we find it a mass of refuse heaps

—every here and there is a bristling chimney,
an old engine-house, but all desolate ; the
chimney gives forth no smoke, the engine
is silent. The story is everywhere the same

—the mine has failed. Is the lode worked
out ? Oh dear no ! There is still plenty of
tin — but foreign competition has struck the
death-blow to Cornish mining, and the
Cornish miner, if he will not starve, must
seek his future elsewhere.

Of course there are captains and captains ;
there is the clever, wheedling captain, who
starts mines never intended to pay, of which
the only metal to be found is in the pockets
of the dupes who are persuaded to invest in
them. I knew one such. He found a mine,
and was very anxious to get up a company,

3io AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

so he "salted" it cleverly enough, by dynamit-
ing tin into the rock. But the mining engineer
sent down to see this mine and report on it
to the investors was too shrewd for him.
The projected mine was not in Cornwall, but
in Devon. "Halloa!" said he, "how comes
this tin here ? It is Cornish metal."

So that mine never got on all fours.

In a great number of cases, in the large
majority, in fact, the captain is himself the
dupe, and dupe of his own ambition. Mining
is a speculation ; it is a bit of gambling. No
one can see an inch into solid rock, and no
one can say for certain that indications that
promise may not prove deceptive. The captain
sees the indications, the dupes do all the rest.
If the lode proves a failure, then those who
have lost in it come down on the captain and
condemn him as a rascal.

But there are cases where concealment or
falsification of the truth is actually practised.
Caradon Hill, near Liskeard, according to the
saying, is vastly rich in ore :

" Caradon Hill well wrought
Is worth London Town dear bought."

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 311

It has been mined from time immemorial,
but is now left at rest, and has been deserted
for some years. The tale is told — we will not
vouch for its accuracy— that in one of the
principal mines on Caradon the miners came
on an immense "bunch" of copper, and at
once, by the captain's orders, covered it up
and carried on their work where it was sure
to be unproductive. Down, ever more down-
wards went the shares, as the mine turned
out less and less copper, and just as all
concerned in the bit of roguery were about
to buy up the shares at an absurd price, in
burst the water and swamped the mine.
To clear it of water would require powerful
engines, take time, and prove costly. But as
shares had fallen so low no capitalists could
be found to invest, and there lies this vast
treasure of copper unlifted, deep under water.
"I tell the tale as 'twas told to me." Is it
true ? I cannot say — at all events it gives a
peep into the methods by which the rise and
fall of shares can be managed, and it shows
how completely investors are at the mercy
of the mining captains. But that there are

3i2 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

rogues among the captains does not prove
that roguery is prevalent, or that many are
tainted with it. On the contrary, as a body
they are thoroughly honest, but speculative
and sanguine.

There is a certain captain who has great
faith in the divining-rod. One day he was
bragging about what he had done therewith,
when an old miner standing near remarked :

" How about them eighteen mines, cap'n,
you Ve been on as have turned out flukes ? "

" I don't say that the rod tells how muck
metal there is, but that it tells where metal
lies that is sure sartain. Now look here,
you unbelieving Thomas, I '11 tell you what
happened to me. There was a pas'le o' fools
wouldn't believe nothing about the divining-
rod, and they said they 'd give me a trial
wi' my hazel rod ; so I took it, and I went
afore 'em over the ground, and at last the
rod kicked, just like my old woman when her 's
a bit contrary. Well, said I, you dig there!
and dig they did."

" And did you come on a lode, cap'n ? "

" I '11 tell you what we came on — a farmer's

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 313

old 'oss as had been buried 'cos her died o'
strangles. Well, I promise you, they laughed
and jeered and made terrible fools o' them-
selves, and said I was done. I done ! said I—
not I ; the divining-rod is right enough. Look,
they buried the old 'oss wi' her four shoes on.
The rod told the truth — but mark you, her
didn't say how much metal was underground."

The endurance and coolness of the miner
are remarkable. But an instance or two will
show this better than by dilating on the fact.

At a certain mine, called Drakewalls, the
shaft crumbled in. It was sunk through a
sandy or rubbly matter that had no cohesion.
When it ran in there were below two miners.

The entombment at Drakewalls took place
on Tuesday, February 5th, 1889, and the two
miners shut in by the run of ground were
John Rule, aged thirty-five, and William Bant,
aged twenty-one, the former being somewhat
deaf. They had pasties to eat, and burnt
their candles so long as they could keep them
alight. They suffered most from cold and
damp and want of water, their water keg
being buried in the rush of sand. At one

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time, while they were discussing the chances
of rescue, Rule said to Bant, " I believe .they
will come through. You never did any crime
bad enough to be kept here " ; to which Bant
replied "No"; and Rule added, reflectively,
"This would be a right place for Jack the
Ripper. Us two cu'd settle 'n — and ate'n too,
if hard put to 't." They were rescued on the
night of Saturday, February gth. The pitman,
Thomas Chapman, had worked night and day
without cessation from February 5th to the
night of February gth, and, moreover, was
lowered eighty feet to where they were confined.
None of the other men would undertake to
descend, fearing lest the entombed men might
have lost their reason in their long confinement.
One of the most curious facts connected with
the entombment was that the two men had not
lost account of time, but knew almost exactly
what day and hour it was. In reply to a
question, they said, "It's Saturday midnight,"
and, as a matter of fact, it was about one
o'clock on the Sunday morning.

Bant was found in a somewhat dazed con-
dition. Not so Rule, who walked out with

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 315

great composure, and the remark he made
was, "Any fellow han' me a light and a bit
o' baccy for my pipe ? " and on reaching the
grass he said, " I wonder if my old woman
have got summot cookin' for me."

He was much surprised that all wished to
shake him by the hand. " Why," said he,
"what is all this about? I ain't done nothin'
but sit in darkness."

Chapman received the Victoria medal for
his devotion. He had to go up to town for
it, and was presented with it by the Princess
of Wales.

Very often the captains are sober, and
teetotalers. But this is not always the case,
unhappily; and some are temperance advocates
on the platform, but something else in the
public-house. There was an old chap of this
description who was known far and wide for
his ardent temperance harangues, and for the
astounding instances he was able to produce
of the judgments that followed on occasional
indulgence. A very good friend one day went
with him to prospect a promising new district.
They entered to refresh at the little tavern,

3i6 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

situated some twelve hundred feet above the
sea, perhaps the highest planted public-house
in England. The friend was amused to see
Captain Jonas take the whisky bottle and half
fill his glass, holding his hand round the tumbler
to hide how much he had helped himself to.

" Halloa, cap'n ! " exclaimed the friend, " I
thought you took naught but water."

" Sir," answered Jonas with great composure,
"us must live up to our elevation. I does it
on principle."

Some of the Cornish mining captains have
had experiences out of England as common
miners. There is one I know who worked
in the Australian gold-fields many years ago,
and he loves to yarn about those days.

"We were a queer lot," said he to me one
day ; " several of us — and my mate was one —
(not I, you understand) — were old convicts.
But it was as much as my life was worth to
let 'em know that I was aware of it. There
were various ways in which a score against
a man might be wiped out. I '11 tell you
what happened once. There was a chap
called Rogers — he came from Redruth way —

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 317

and he let his tongue run too free one day,
and said as how he knew something of the
back history of a few of our mates. Well, I
was sure evil would come of it, and evil did.
Things was rough and ready in those days,
and we 'd tin buckets for carrying up the gold,
and sand, and so on. Well, one day when
Rogers was about to come up the shaft, by
the merest chance, one of them buckets was
tipped over, and fell down. I went after him
down the shaft, and that there bucket had cut
off half his head, and cut near through his
shoulder. You wouldn't ha' thought it would
have done it, but it did. Bless you, I 've seen
a tumblerful of water knock a man down if the
water didn't ' break,' as they call it, before
reaching the bottom of a deep shaft ; it comes
down in one lump like lead."

After a while he went on — " I had a near
squeak once, the nearest I ever had. When
we were going to blast below, all men were
sent up except the one who was to light the
fuse. Well, one day there was only myself
to do it. I set fire to the fuse, and away I
went, hauled up. But somehow it didn't go

3i8 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

off. I thought that the water had got in, so
before I reached the top and had got out, I
signalled to be lowered again. I had just
reached the bottom when the explosion took
place. The rocks and stones went up past
me in a rush, and down they came again.
How it happened that I escaped is more
than I can tell you ; but God willed it ; that
was enough for me. I was back with my
shoulder to the rock, and the stones came
down in a rain, but not one any bigger than
a cherry stone hit me. But I can tell you
the men above were frightened. They couldn't
believe their ears when I shouted ; they couldn't
believe their eyes when they saw me come
up without a scratch. Folks say the age o'
miracles is past. I '11 never say that ; it was
a miracle I weren't killed, and no mistake."

"Well, captain," said I, "and did you make
a fortune out at the Australian goldfields ? "

He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.

"I went out with half- a -crown in my
pocket. When I came back I 'd got just one
ha'penny."

"But all the gold you found ? "

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 319

"That had a curious way of leaving me,
and getting into the possession of my mate—
him who 'd been a convict. He grew rich,
he did. I didn't. Well, I came back with
experience."

"And now, cap'n, what are you going to
do?"

"There's nothing going on in the old
country. I'm off somewhere over the seas
again. Can't help it. I love dear old Eng-
land, and blessed old Cornwall above all, but
if they won't or can't support me and my
family I must go elsewhere."

Alas ! this is too true. The mines are
nearly all shut down. In one parish alone,
that of Calstock, there were twenty -two in
active operation a few years ago, now not
one.

The miners are scattered over the world.
They are gone to South Africa, to Brazil, to
the Straits Settlements.

But where are no mines, there are quarries.
Oh ! the delightful hours spent in boyhood in
old quarries ! In picking blackberries where
the brambles grow rank over the heaps of

32o AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

rubble and ripen their delicious fruit against
the crumbled stone that radiates the warmth
of the sun! In groping after fossils in the
chalk quarries of the South Downs, delighted
in being able to extract a fossil sponge or a
glistening shark's tooth !

Nothing so unsightly as a new quarry, a
wound in the face of nature, yet nothing more
picturesque than one which is old, all the scars
healed over by nature.

And then, again, what haunts old quarries are
for rabbits — and therefore also places in which
boys delight to spend hours ferreting Bunny.

In connexion with a quarry I will venture
to tell a story — curious, because showing a
form of superstition not extinct. I tell the
tale my own way, but it is fundamentally true
—that is to say, it is quite true that the
quarryman told it ; and believed himself to
have been victimized in the way I relate,
though I cannot vouch for the exact words
he employed.

I was examining for geological purposes a
quarry in Cornwall that had been opened in
the side of a hill for the extraction of stone,

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 321

wherewith to metal the roads. Whilst study-
ing the strata, I observed a sort of nick in the
uppermost layer of rock, under the earth which
rose above the surface of the rock some three
feet six inches or four feet.

The nick was about two feet deep and the
same breadth, and the sides were cut per-
pendicularly. It was clearly artificial, and at
once struck me as being a section of a grave.
There was no churchyard interfered with, so
that I supposed the grave was prehistoric, and
at once exclaimed to the quarryman engaged
in the excavation that this was a grave. He
put down his pick, and answered :

"Yes, sir, it is a grave what you see here,
and what is more I can tell you whose grave
it is, or was. And a coorious sarcumstance is
connected with that there grave, and if you
don't mind sitting down on that piece o' rock
for five minutes, I'll tell you all about it."

Without paying much heed to the statement
that the man made, that he knew whose last
resting-place it was, I inquired whether any
flint or bronze weapons had been found there.

"No, sir," said the quarryman, "nothing of

322 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

the sort as far as I know ; it was the head of
the grave we cut through, and when we sent
the pick into it, the gentleman's head came
down into the quarry."

" Gentleman's head ? What gentleman's
head ? "

"Well, sir, I did not know at the time. It
gave me a lot of trouble did that head, or
rather the teeth from it. If you'll be so good
as to sit down on that stone, I'll tell you all
about it, and I reckon it will be worth your
trouble. It's a coorious story, as coorious a
story as you have ever heard, I take it."

"I will listen, certainly. But excuse me
one moment. I should like to crawl up the
side of the quarry, and examine the grave."

"It's my lunch time, and I've nothing to do
but to eat and talk for half-an-hour," said the
quarryman, "so I'll tell you all the whole
story, when you Ve been up and come down
again. There be bones there. You '11 find
his neck ; we cut off the head of the grave.
But, whatever you do, leave the bones alone.
Don't carry any away with you in your pocket,
or you '11 be just in a pretty way."

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 323

I made the exploration I required. I
found that a grave had been cut in the rock.
Clearly, when the interment took place, those
who made the grave did not consider that
there was a sufficient depth of earth, and they
had accordingly cut out a hole in the rock,
below the soil, to accommodate the dead man.
Bones were still in situ. I could find no trace
of coffin, but in all likelihood, if there had
been one there, it had rotted away, and the
gravelly soil from above had fallen in on all
sides, and had taken the place of the wood as
it decomposed. And if there had been a
mound above the dead man, the sinking in
after decomposition had caused it to disappear.
There were bushes of heather above the grave,
but nothing to indicate that a tomb had been
in the place, as far as could be judged from
above. Its presence would not have been
guessed had it not been revealed by the
operations of the quarrymen.

Having completed my observations, I re-
turned to the bottom, and seated myself on
the stone indicated by the workman. He
occupied the top of another, and was engaged

324 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

on a pie — an appalling composition of heavy
pastry, potato, and bacon, grey in colour as a
Jerusalem artichoke, and close in texture and
heavy as a cannon ball. He cut large junks
out of this terrible specimen of domestic
cookery, and thrust them between knife and
thumb into his mouth. As he opened this
receptacle I observed that the gums were
ill -provided with teeth, so that mastication
must be imperfect. It is really extraordinary
how the wives of working-men exhibit their
ingenuity in proving "how not to do it." It
is said that the way to a man's heart is
through his stomach. If that be the case, it
predicates either extraordinary personal fasci-
nation on the part of the wives, or really
miraculous virtue on the part of the husbands,
that any domestic attachment should subsist
in the cottages of the agricultural labourer
and artisan. Or is it that the wives are
resolved to put the tenderness, the devotion
of their men to the severest possible test, as
cannon are run over a new suspension-bridge ?
"You see, sir," said the quarryman, "when
we cut that new slice we went slap through

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 325

the head of the grave, and never knowed there
was a grave there, till down came the head,
like a snowball. It was my partner, James
Downe, as was up there wi' his pick. Me was
sitting here, and I 'd just opened my bag for
my dinner, when I heard James a-hollerin'
to me to look out. I did look up, and seed
that there skull come jumping down the side,
and before I could undo my legs — I 'd knotted
them for my lunch, and had the bag open on
my lap — down came the skull, and with one
skip it flopped right among my victuals, and
there it sat in my lap, looking up in my face,
as innocent as a babe, so it seemed to me.

"Well, sir, I daresay you know, if you
know anything — and you seem to be a learned
gentleman — that there ain't a better preserva-
tive against toothache than to carry about a
dead man's tooth in your pocket. Dead men's
teeth don't lie about promiscuous as empty
snail shells, and I 'd often wished to have one.
I suffer terrible from my teeth. I Ve been
kept roving with pain night after night, and
one ain't up to work when one has been
kept roving all night, either with teeth or

326 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

babies. Me and the church sexton ain't the
best of friends. You see, I 'm a Bible
Christian and spiritual, and that there sexton
is of the earth, earthy. I couldn't ask a
favour of him, to accommodate me with a
tooth if he haps to turn one up when digging
a new grave. It is true we have got a
cemetery of our own to the chapel, but it's
new, and nothing is turned up there but earth-
worms. As this was the case I was uncommon
joyful when that head came bouncing into my
lap. I found the teeth weren't particular tight
in, and with my knife I easily got a tooth or
two out ; I thought I 'd be square all round,
so I got out a back tooth — they call 'em molars
up to the Board School — and an eye tooth and
a front one. Then I thought I was pretty well
set up and protected against toothache. I got
my wife to sew 'em up in a bit o' silk and hung
it round my neck. I may say this — from that
day so long as I wore the dead man's teeth
I never had a touch of toothache."

" And how long did you wear them ? "

" Three days, sir."

"Not more? Why did you not retain them ?"

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 327

" I '11 tell you why, if you'll listen to me."

" Certainly. But what have you done with
the skull ? "

"Chucked it away. It weren't no good to
nobody — least of all to the owner. And for
me — I 'd got out of it all I wanted."

" You have not the teeth now ? "

" No. I kept them for three days and then
chucked them away."

" Have you had toothache since ? "

" Terrible ; but I had what was wusser
when I had the teeth."

" Well, go on and tell me what the wusser
was."

" So I will, if you '11 listen to me. Well,
sir, I had them teeth done up in a bit of silk,
and hung round my throat. The first night
I went to bed, that was Saturday, I had the
little bag round my neck. I hadn't laid my
head on the pillow, before — but, I must tell
you, I 'm a Bible Christian, and a serious man.
I 'm a local, I am, and I preach in our chapel,
and am generally reckoned a rousin' sort of
a preacher. For, sir, I knows how to . work
'em up. Well, when you understand that,

328 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

you will comprehend how astonished I was
when I laid my head on the pillow, to find
I wasn't no more what I ought to ha' been.
In the first place, I hadn't gone to bed in my
clothes, and no sooner was my head on my
pillow than I was in a red coat and breeches
and gaiters ; and what is more, in the second
place, I 'd laid me down to rest, and I found
myself astride on a saddle, on horseback,
tearin' over the country, jumpin' hedges, tally-
hoin' — me, as never rode a hoss in my life, and
never tally-hoed, and wouldn't do it to save
my soul. I knowed all the while I was doing
wrong. I knowed I 'd got to preach in our
chapel next evening, the Sabbath Day — and
here was I in a red coat, and galloping after
the hounds, and tearin' after a fox, and swear-
ing orful ! I couldn't help myself. I believe
my face was as pink as my coat. I tried to
compose my mouth to say Hallelujah, but
I couldn't do it — I rapped out a — but, sir,
I dussn't even whisper what I then swore at
the top o' my voice ; and I had to preach at
a revival within some few hours. It was
terrible — terrible ! "

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 329

I saw the quarryman's face bathed in per-
spiration. The thought of what he had gone
through affected him, and his hand shook as
he heaved a lump of pasty to his quivering
lips.

" I tried to think I was in the pulpit ; you
must understand, sir, if at a right moment you
bang the cushion and kick the panels — it '11
bring down sinners like over-ripe greengages.
But it wor no good ; I was whacking into
my cob, and kicking with spurs into her flanks,
and away she went over a five-barred gate — it
was terrible — terrible, to a shining light, one
o' the Elect People, sir, — such as be I."

The man heaved a sigh and wiped his
brow and cheeks, and rose with his pudding-
bag.

"All the Sabbath day after that," continued
the quarryman, " I wasn't myself. It lay on
my conscience that I 'd done wrong ; and when
I preached in the evening there was no unction
in me, no more, sir, than you could have
greased the fly-wheel of your watch with ;
and usually there 's quite a pomatum-pot full.
I didn't feel happy, and it was with a heavy

330 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

heart and a troubled head that I went to bed
on the Sabbath night." He heaved another
sigh, and folded up his lunch-bag.

"Will you believe it, sir? No sooner had
I closed my eyes than I was in a public-house.
I — I — who've been a Band of Hope ever
since I was a baby. I 've heard say I never
took to the bottle even in earliest infancy,
though it was but a bottle of milk, so ingrained
in me be temperance principles. I 've heard
mother say she put a bit of sopped bread
into a rag, and let me have that when a
baby — so stubborn was I, and so furious did
I kick out with my little legs when shown
the bottle. It was the name, I reckon, set
me against it. However, sir, there I was,
just out of the pulpit at Bethesda, and in
the 'Fox and Hounds' drinking. I tried to
call out for Gingerade, but the words got
altered in my throat to Whisky Toddy.
And what was more, I was singing — roaring
out at the top of my voice —

" ' Come, my lads, let us be jolly,
Drive away dull melancholy ;
For to grieve it is a folly
When we meet together ! ' "

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 331

The quarryman covered his eyes with his
hands — he was ashamed to look up.

"If that wasn't bad enough, the words that
followed were worse — and I a teetotaler down
to the soles of my feet.

" ' Here 's the bottle, as it passes
Do not fail to fill your glasses ;
Water drinkers are dull asses
When they 're met together.

" ' Milk is meet for infancy,
Ladies like to sip Bohea ;
Not such stuff for you and me
When we 're met together.'

" All the while I sang it I knew I was
saying good-bye to my consistency, I was
going against my dearest convictions. But
I couldn't help myself, it was as though an
evil spirit possessed me. I was myself and
yet not myself. It was terrible — terrible-
terrible!"

The quarryman swung his pasty bag and
smote his breast with it.

" That warn't all," he continued, and lowered
his tone. " There was an uncommon pretty
barmaid with red rosy cheeks and curling

332 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

black hair ; and somehow I got my arm
round her waist and was kissing her. Well,
I don't so much mind about that, for kiss-
ing is scriptural, and Paul calls them kisses
of peace. But these were not kisses of peace
by any means — and there was the mischief,
for I knowed my wife was looking on, and,
sir, I knowed the consequences would be orful
— orful — simply orful."

The quarryman's head sank on his knees,
he clasped his hands over the back of his
head, and groaned for full five minutes. Pre-
sently he looked up, pulled himself together,
and continued his narrative.

" The worst of all is behind. I was very
busy on Monday, as I was on Mr. Conybeare's
committee. We were in for the election, and
I 'm tremendous strong as a Liberal, and for
Home Rule, and I reckon I can influence a
good many votes in my district of Cornwall.
Well, sir, I 'd been about canvassing for Mr.
Conybeare very hard, yet all the while I had
a sort of deadly fear at my heart that what
I 'd been doing, both hunting and drinking,
and swearing and singing, and kissing the

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 333

barmaid, would come out in public, or would
be thrown in my teeth by the Consarvatives,
and might damage the good cause. But no
one said nothing about it on Monday, and
towards evening my mind was more at
ease.

" I was very tired when I went to bed, for
I had been working, as I said, very hard
indeed, and persuading of obstinate politicians
is worse than breaking stones for the road,
and far worse than converting of obstinate
sinners. No sooner had I laid my head on
the pillow than — will you believe it, sir ? — I
was in the full swing of the election. I didn't
know it was coming on so fast. I thought
it would be three weeks, but not a bit of it.
They 'd set up a polling place in the Board
School, and there was I swaggering up to
register my vote. There were placards—
Unionist on one side, but I wouldn't look at
them ; on the other were the Radical posters—
from Mr. Conybeare — and I knowed my own
mind. If any man in England be true and
loyal to the G.O.M. that's me. Well, sir, in
I walked and gave my name. I knowed my

334 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

number, and went as confident as possible
into the little box of unplaned deal boards,
and with my paper in one hand took the
pencil in the other, wetted the pencil with my
tongue to make sure it marked black enough,
and then set down my cross. Will you believe
it ? — that sperit o' pervarsity and devilry had
come over me once more, and I'd gone and
voted Consarvative."

The quarryman staggered back, and I had
just time to spring to his aid. He had fainted.
I held him in my arms till he came round. I
threw water over his face, and by degrees he
was himself again.

" Orful ! orful ! wasn't it ? " said he. "Well,
sir, after that I would have nothing more to do
with them teeth. They did it. I chucked 'em
away ; toothache would be better all night long ,
than the trials I had to undergo when I had
them dead man's teeth about me."

" But have you not dreamed since ? " I
asked, looking at the pasty which, when he
fainted, I had taken in my hand.

"Yes, sir, often, very often; but then my
dreams since have always been Nonconformist,

UNDERGROUND RIGHTS 335

Temperance, and Radical dreams — and them 's
wholesome."

"You said something about knowing who it
was whose grave you had disturbed ? "

"Well, so I believe I do. I did not know at
the time, but afterwards, when I began to tell
my story ; then there was a talk about it and
a raking and a grubbing among old folks'
memories, and there was an old woman who
said she could throw some light on the subject.
Her tale was that about a hundred years ago,
or more perhaps, she could not be sure, there
lived at the Old Hall one Squire Trewenna.
The Hall has been pulled down because of
the mines, and the Trewennas are all gone.
Squire Trewenna was a terrible man for
hunting and drinking, and was, moreover, a
regular rory tory Conservative. He was a
fast chap, and no good to nobody but to dogs
and horses, and before he died he begged that
he might be buried on the brink of the moor
where he 'd ridden so often and enjoyed
himself so much, and had killed a tremendous
big fox in the last hunt he ever went out in
before gout got to his stomick. And he said

336 AN OLD ENGLISH HOME

he wanted no headstone over him, that fox
and hounds and horses might go over his
grave. Well, folks forgot, as there was no
headstone, where he lay, exact, and old Betty
Tregellas says she believes what we cut into
was Squire Trewenna's grave. I think so
too, for how else was it that when I had those
teeth about me I was so possessed wi' a spirit
of unrighteousness and drinking and Con-
sarvatism ? I reckon you Ve had a Board
School education and been to the University,
and are a larned man. Tell me, now, am I
not right ? "

W, Brendan & Son, Printers, Plymouth.

A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS

AND ANNOUNCEMENTS OF

METHUEN AND COMPANY

PUBLISHERS : LONDON

36 ESSEX STREET

W.C. "

CONTENTS

PAGE
FORTHCOMING BOOKS, .... 2

FOBTRY, ...... 8

BELLES LETTRES, ANTHOLOGIES, ETC., . . 9

ILLUSRTATED BOOKS, ..... lo

HISTORY, ....... II

BIOGRAFHY, ...... 14

TRAVEL, ADVENTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY, . . 15

NAVAL AND MILITARY, .... i"/

GENERAL LITERATURE, . . . . l8

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, . • . . ' . 2O
PHILOSOPHY, ... . .20

THEOLOGY, . . . . ; . 21

FICTION, ' .' . . . . . 24

BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, . ..,;,. 34

THE PEACOCK LIBRARY, • . . . 34

UNIVERSITY EXTENSION SERIES, • • • 35

SOCIAL QUESTIONS OF TO-DAY . . 36
CLASSICAL TRANSLATIONS . '37

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS, . • 37

SEPTEMBER 1898

SEPTEMBER 1898.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Travel and Adventure

NORTHWARD : OVER THE GREAT ICE. By R. E.
PEARY. With over 800 Illustrations, Maps and Diagrams. Two
Volumes. 1 100 pp. Demy Svo. $2s. net.

In this important work Lieutenant Peary tells the story of his travels and adven-
tures in the Arctic regions. His extraordinary sledge journey and his experiences
among the Eskimos are fully described, and this book is a complete record of his
Arctic work, for which the Royal Geographical Society has this year awarded
him their Gold Medal.

The fact that Lieutenant Peary is about to start on a determined effort to reach the
North Pole lends a special interest to this book.

THROUGH ASIA. By SVEN HEDIN. With 250 Illustrations
by the Author and from Photographs, and 10 Maps. Two volumes.
Royal 'Svo. 36.?. net.

In this book Dr. Sven Hedin, the distinguished Swedish e_xplorer, describes his
four years' experiences and his extraordinary adventtires in Central Asia. Dr.
Hedin is an accomplished artist, and his drawings are full of vigour and interest.

In adventurous interest and substantial results in various departments of know-
ledge, Dr. Hedin's journey will bear comparison with the travels of the great
explorers of the past, from Marco Polo downwards.

The Gold Medals of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Russian Geographical
Society have been conferred upon him for this journey.

THE HIGHEST ANDES. By E. A. FITZGERALD. With
40 Illustrations, 10 of which are Photogravures, and a Large Map.
Royal '8v0. 30*. net.

Also, a Small Edition on Handmade Paper, limited to 50 Copies,
4to. £5, $s.

A narrative of the highest climb yet accomplished. The illustrations have been
reproduced with the greatest care, and the book, in addition to its adventurous
interest, contains appendices of great scientific value.

CHITRAL : The Story of a Minor Siege. By SIR G. S. ROBERT-
SON, K.C.S.I. With Numerous Illustrations and a Map. Demy Svo.
21 s. net.

Sir George Robertson, who was at the time British Agent at Gilgit, has written
the story of Chitral from the point of view of one actually besieged in the fort.
The book is of considerable length, and has an Introductory part explaining
the series of events which culminated in the famous siege ; also an account of
Ross's disaster in the KORAGH defile, the heroic defence of RESHUN, and Kelly's
great march. It has numerous illustrations — plans, pictures and portraits — and a
map, and will give a connected narrative of the stirring episodes on the Chitral
frontier in 1895.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 3

TWENTY YEARS IN THE NEAR EAST. By A. HULME
BEAMAN. Demy Svo. los. 6d.

A personal narrative of experiences in Syria, Egypt, Turkey and the Balkan States,
including adventures in the Lebanon, during the bombardment of Alexandra, the
first Egyptian Campaign, the Donogla Expedition, the Cretan Insurrection, etc.

The book also contains several chapters on Turkey, its people and its Sultan.

Theology

DOCTRINE AND DEVELOPMENT. By HASTINGS RASH-
DALL, M. A., Fellow and Tutor of New College, Oxford. Crown 8vo.
6s.

This volume consists of twenty sermons, preached chiefly before the University of
Oxford. They are an attempt to translate into the language of modern thought
some of the leading ideas of Christian theology and ethics.

CLOVELLY SERMONS. By WILLIAM HARRISON, M.A., late
Rector of Clovelly. With a Preface by LUCAS MALET. Crown 8vo.
3*. &/.

A volume of Sermons by a son-in-law of Charles Kingsley.

APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY : As Illustrated by the Epistles
of S. Paul to the Corinthians. By H. H. HENSON, M.A., Fellow
of All Souls', Oxford. Crown 8vo. 6s.

•fcan&boofcs of abeologg.

General Editor, A. ROBERTSON, D.D., Principal of King's College,
London.

THE XXXIX. ARTICLES OF THE CHURCH OF ENG-
LAND. Edited with an Introduction by E. C. S. GIBSON, D.D.,
Vicar of Leeds, late Principal of Wells Theological College. Revised
and Cheaper Edition in One Volume. Demy %vo. 1 2s. 6d.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE
CREEDS. By A. E. BURN, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of
Lich field. Demy Svo. los. 6d.

ttbe Gburcbman's library.

Edited by J. H. BURN, B.D.

A series of books by competent scholars on Church History, Institu-
tions, and Doctrine, for the use of clerical and lay readers.

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HERE AND HERE-
AFTER. By Canon WINTERBOTHAM, M.A., B.Sc., LL.B.
Crown Svo. $s. 6d.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S ANNOUNCEMENTS

Commentarfe0.

General Editor, WALTER LOCK, D.D., Warden of Keble College,

Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis in the

University of Oxford.

Messrs. METHUEN propose to issue a series of Commentaries upon such
Books of the Bible as still seem to need further explanation.

The object of each Commentary is primarily exegetical, to interpret
the author's meaning to the present generation. The editors will not
deal, except very subordinately, with questions of textual criticism or
philology ; but taking the English text in the Revised Version as their
basis, they will try to combine a hearty acceptance of critical principles
with loyalty to the Catholic Faith. It is hoped that in this way the series
may be of use both to theological students and to the clergy, and also to
the growing number of educated laymen and laywomen who wish to read
the Bible intelligently and reverently.

THE BOOK OF JOB. Edited, with Introduction and Notes,
by E. C. S. GIBSON, D.D., Vicar of Leeds. Demy 8vo. 6s.

Xibrarg of Devotion.

Pott 8vo. 2s. ; leather 2s. fid. net.

NEW VOLUMES.

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. A Revised Translation with
an Introduction, by C. BIGG, D.D., late Student of Christ Church.

Dr. Bigg has made a practically new translation of this hook, which the reader
will have, almost for the first time, exactly in the shape in which it left the
hands of the author.

A BOOK OF DEVOTIONS. By J. W. STANBRIDGE, M.A.,
Rector of Bainton, Canon of York, and sometime Fellow of St.
John's College, Oxford. Pott 8vo.

This book contains devotions, Eucharistic, daily and occasional, for the use of mem-
bers of the English Church, sufficiently diversified for those who possess other
.works of the kind. It is intended to be a companion in private and public worship,
and is in harmony with the thoughts of the best Devotional writers.

History and Biography

THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL SIR A. COOPER KEY. By

Admiral P. H. COLOMB. With a Portrait. Demy 8vo. i6s.
This life of a great sailor throws a considerable light on the evolution of the Navy
during the last fifty years.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
By EDWARD GIBBON. A New Edition, edited with Notes,
Appendices, and Maps by J. B. BURY, LL.D., Fellow of Trinity
College, Dublin. In Seven Volumes. Demy 8vo, gil( top. 8s. 6d.
each. Crown 8vo. 6s. each. Vol. VI.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 5

A HISTORY OF EGYPT, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO
THE PRESENT DAY. Edited by W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, D.C.L.,
LL.D., Professor of Egyptology at University College. Fully Illus-
trated. In Six Volumes. Crown 8vo. 6s, each.

Vol. IV. ROMAN EGYPT. J. G. MILNE.

Vol. V. THE EGYPT OF THE PTOLEMIES. J. P. MAHAFFY.

THE CANON LAW IN ENGLAND. By F. W. MAITLAND,
LL. D. , Downing Professor of the Laws of England in the University
of Cambridge. Royal 8vo. "js. 6J.

A volume of Essays on the History of the Canon Law in England. These Essays
deal chiefly with the measure of authority attributed in medieval England to the
papal law-books, and one entitled (i) William Lyndwood, (2) Church, State and
Decretals, (3) William of Drogheda and the Universal Ordinary, (4) Henry II.
and the Criminous Clerks, (5) Execrabilis in the Common Pleas, and (6) The
Deacon and the Jewess.

A HISTORY OF SHREWSBURY SCHOOL. By G. W.

FISHER, M.A., Assistant Master. With Numerous Illustrations.
Demy 8vo. Js. 6d.

A HISTORY OF WESTMINSTER SCHOOL. By J. SER-
GEANT, M.A., Assistant Master. With Numerous Illustrations.
Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d.

A HISTORY OF ETON COLLEGE. By W. STERRY, B.A.

With Numerous Illustrations. Demy 8v0. Js. 6d.

General Literature

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By JOHN BUNYAN. Edited,
with an Introduction, by C. H. FIRTH, M.A. With 39 Illustrations
by R. ANNING BELL. Crown 8vo. 6s.

This book contains a long Introduction by Mr. Firth, whose knowledge of the period
is unrivalled ; and it is lavishly illustrated.

AN OLD ENGLISH HOME. By S. BARING GOULD. With

Numerous Plans and Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 6s.
This book describes the life and environment of an old English family.

CAMBRIDGE AND ITS COLLEGES. By A. HAMILTON
THOMPSON. With Illustrations by E. H. NEW, Pott 8vo, y.
Leather, 3.?. 6d. net.
This book is uniform with Mr. Wells's very successful book, ' Oxford and its Colleges. '

UNIVERSITY AND SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS. By W.
REASON, M.A. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. [Social Question Series.

DANTE'S GARDEN. By ROSAMOND COTES. With a frontis-
piece Fcap. 8vo. 3*. 6d.

An account of the flowers mentioned by Dante, with their legends.

READING AND READERS. By CLIFFORD HARRISON.

Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
A little book of principles and hints by the most distinguished of living reciters.

6 MESSRS. METHUEN'S ANNOUNCEMENTS
Educational

VOLUMETRIC ANALYSIS. By J. B. RUSSELL, Science

Master at Burnley Grammar School. Crown 8vo. is.
A small Manual, containing all the necessary rules, etc., on a subject which has
hitherto only been treated in expensive volumes.

A KEY TO STEDMAN'S EASY FRENCH EXERCISES.
By G. A. SCHRUMPF. Crown 8vo. 35. net.

A SHORTER GREEK PRIMER. By A. M. M. STEDMAN,

M.A. Crown 8vo. is. 6d.
A book which contains the elements of Accidence and Syntax.

CARPENTRY AND JOINERY. By F. C. WEBBER. With
many Illustrations. Crown 8vo. $s. 6d.

[Handbooks of Technology.
A Manual for technical classes and self-instruction.

PRACTICAL MECHANICS. By SIDNEY H. WELLS. Illus-
trated. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d. [Handbooks of Technology.

A CLASS-BOOK OF DICTATION PASSAGES. By W.

WILLIAMSON, M.A. Crown 8vo. is. 6d.

The passages are culled from recognised authors, and a few newspaper passages are
included. The lists of appended words are drawn up mainly on the principle of
comparison and contrast, and will form a repertoire of over 2000 words, embracing
practically all the difficulties felt by the pupil.

Byzantine Texts

Edited by J. B. BURY, LL.D., Professor of Modern History at
Trinity College, Dublin.

EVAGRIUS. Edited by PROFESSOR LEON PARMENTIER of
Liege and M. BIDEZ of Gand. Demy 8vo.

Cheaper Editions

BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA. By Sir H. H. JOHNSTON,
K.C.B. With nearly Two Hundred Illustrations, and Six Maps.
Revised and Cheaper Edition. Crown 4(0. 2is.net.
' The book is crowded with important information, and written in a most attractive
style ; it is worthy, in short, of the author's established reputation.'— Standard.

VAILIMA LETTERS. By ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. With
an Etched Portrait by WILLIAM STRANG, and other Illustrations.
Cheaper Edition. Crown %vo. Buckram. 6s.

A BOOK OF CHRISTMAS VERSE. Edited byH.C. BEECHING,
M.A., and Illustrated by WALTER CRANE. Cheaper Edition.
Crown 8vo, gilt top. 3^. 6J.

A collection of the best verse inspired by the birth of Christ from the Middle Ages
to the present day.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 7

LYRA SACRA : An Anthology of Sacred Verse. Edited by H.
C. BEECH ING, M. A. Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. Buckram. y.6d.
' A charming selection, which maintains a lofty standard of excellence.' — Times.

Fiction

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG. By GILBERT PARKER,

Author of ' The Seals of the Mighty.' Crown 8vo. 6s.
A romance of 1 798.

THE TOWN TRAVELLER. By GEORGE GISSING, Author
of ' Demos,' ' In the Year of Jubilee,' etc. Crown 8vo. 6s.

THE COUNTESS TEKLA. By ROBERT BARR, Author of

' The Mutable Many.' Crown 8vo. 6s.
A historical romance.

THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED. By DOROTHEA

GERARD, Author of ' Lady Baby,' ' Orthodox,' etc. Crown 8vo. 6s.

DOMITIA. By S. BARING GOULD, Author of 'The Broom

Squire,' etc. Crown 8vo. 6s.
A romance of imperial Rome.

FROM THE EAST UNTO THE WEST. By JANE BARLOW,
Author of ' Irish Idylls,' ' A Creel of Irish Stories,' etc. Crown 8vo. 6s.

TO ARMS ! By ANDREW BALFOUR, Author of 'By Stroke of

Sword.' Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s.
A romance of 1715.

THE JOURNALIST. By C. F. KEARY. Crown Zvo. 6s.

A story of modern literary life.

PEGGY OF THE BARTONS. By B. M. CROKER, Author of

' Proper Pride.' Crown 8vo. 6s.
A VENDETTA OF THE DESERT. By W. C. SCULLY.

Crown 8vo. $s. 6d.
A South African romance.

CORRAGEEN IN '98. By Mrs. ORPEN. Crown %vo. 6s.

A romance of the Irish Rebellion.

AN ENEMY TO THE KING. By R. N. STEPHENS. Crown

8vo. 6s.
PLUNDERPIT. By J. KEIGHLEY SNOWDEN. Crown Svo. 6s.

A romance of adventure.

DEADMAN'S. By MARY GAUNT, Author of ' Kirkham's Find.'

Crown 8vo. 6s.
An Australian story.

WILLOWBRAKE. By R. MURRAY GILCHRIST. Crownlvo. 6s.
THE ANGEL OF THE COVENANT. By J. MACLAREN
COBBAN. Crown 8vo. 6s.

A historical romance, of which Montrose is the hero.

OWD BOB, THE GREY DOG OF KENMUIR. By ALFRED
OLLIVANT. Crown 8vo. 6s.

A story of the Cumberland dales.

ANANIAS. Bythe Hon. Mrs. ALAN BRODRICK. CrownZvo. 6s.

ADVENTURES IN WALLYPUG LAND. By G. E. FARROW.

With Illustrations by ALAN WRIGHT. Crown Svo. Gilt top. 51.

A LIST OF

MESSRS. METHUEN'S

PUBLICATIONS

Poetry

Rudyard Kipling. BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS. By
RUDYARD KIPLING. Thirteenth Edition. Crown %vo. 6s.

1 Mr. Kipling's verse is strong, vivid, full of character. . . . Unmistakable genius
rings in every line.' — 7'imes.

1 The ballads teem with imagination, they palpitate with emotion. We read them
with laughter and tears ; the metres throb in our pulses, the cunningly ordered
words tingle with life ; and if this be not poetry, what is?' — Pall Mall Gazette.

Rudyard Kipling. THE SEVEN SEAS. By RUDYARD
KIPLING. Fourth Edition. Crown 8va. Buckram, gilt top. 6s.

' The new poems of Mr. Rudyard Kipling have all the spirit and swing of their pre-
decessors. Patriotism is the solid concrete foundation on which Mr. Kipling has
built the whole of his work.' — Times.

' The Empire has found a singer ; it is no depreciation of the songs to say that states-
men may have, one way or other, to take account of them.1 — Manchester
Guardian.

' Animated through and through with indubitable genius.'— Daily Telegraph.

"Q." POEMS AND BALLADS. By "Q." Crown Svo. 3^.6^.

' This work has just the faint, ineffable touch and glow that make poetry.' — Speaker.

" Q." GREEN BAYS : Verses and Parodies. By " O.," Author
of ' Dead Man's Rock,' etc. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. y.6cf.

E. Mackay. A SONG OF THE SEA. By ERIC MACKAY.

Second Edition. Fcap. 8v0. $s,

' Everywhere Mr. Mackay displays himself the master of a style marked by all the
characteristics of the best rhetoric." — Globe.

H. Ibsen. BRAND. A Drama by HENRIK IBSEN. Translated

by WILLIAM WILSON. Second Edition. Crown Svo. $s. 6d.
'The greatest world-poem of the nineteenth century next to "Faust." It is in
the same set with "Agamemnon," with " Lear," with the literature that we now
instinctively regard as high and holy.' — Daily Chronicle.

"A.G." VERSES TO ORDER. By "A. G." Cr. Svo. zs.bd.

net.
' A capital specimen of light academic poetry. '— St. James's Gazette.

J. G. Cordery. THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER. A Transla-
tion by J. G. CORDERY. Crown 8va. js. 6d.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 9

Belles Lettres, Anthologies, etc.

E. L. Stevenson. VAILIMA LETTERS. By ROBERT Louis
STEVENSON. With an Etched Portrait by WILLIAM STRANG, and
other Illustrations. Second Edition. Crown 8v0. Buckram. 6s.
' A. fascinating book.' — Standard.
' Fulj of charm and brightness." — Spectator.
' A gift almost priceless.' — Speaker.
' Unique in literature.' — Daily Chronicle.

George Wyndham. THE POEMS pF WILLIAM SHAKE-
SPEARE. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by GEORGE
WYNDHAM, M. P. Demy&vo. Buckram^ gilt top. \os.6d.

This edition contains the ' Venus," ' Lucrece,' and Sonnets, and is prefaced with an
elaborate introduction of over 140 pp.

' One of the most serious contributions to Shakespearian criticism that has locn pub-
lished for some time.' — Times.

'One of the best pieces of editing in the language.' — Outlook.

' This is a scholarly and interesting contribution to Shakespearian literature.' —
Literature.

'We have no hesitation in describing Mr. George Wyndham's introduction as a
masterly piece of criticism, and all who love our Elizabethan literature will find a
very garden of delight in it. '—Spectator.

' Mr. Wyndham's notes are admirable, even indispensable.' — Westminster Gazette.

'The standard edition of Shakespeare's poems." — World.

' The book is written with critical insight and literary felicity." — Standard.

W. E. Henley. ENGLISH LYRICS. Selected and Edited by

W.E.HENLEY. Crown 8vo. Buckram, gilt top. 6s.
' It is a body of choice and lovely poetry.' — Birmingham Gazette.

Henley and Whibley. A BOOK OF ENGLISH PROSE.
Collected by W. E. HENLEY and CHARLES WHIBLEY. Crown 8vo.
Buckram, gilt top. 6^.

' Quite delightful. A greater treat for those not well acquainted with pre-Restoration
prose could not be imagined.'— At Atnatuttt.

H. 0. Beeching. LYRA SACRA : An Anthology of Sacred Verse.
Edited by H. C. BEECHING, M.A. Crown 8vo. Buckram. 6s.
'A charming selection, which maintains a lofty standard of excellence." — Titties.

"Q." THE GOLDEN POMP: A Procession of English Lyrics.
Arranged by A. T. QUILLER COUCH. Crown 8vo. Buckram. 6s.
' A delightful volume : a really golden ' ' Pomp." ' — Spectator.

W. B. Yeats. AN ANTHOLOGY OF IRISH VERSE.

Edited by W. B. YEATS. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6d.
1 An attractive and catholic selection.' — Times.

G. W. Steevens. MONOLOGUES OF THE DEAD. By

G. W. STEEVENS. Foolscap Svo. 3*. 6d.

' The effect is sometimes splendid, sometimes bizarre, but always amazingly clever."
— Pall Mall Gazette.

W. M. Dixon. A PRIMER OF TENNYSON. By W. M.
DIXON, M.A., Professor of English Literature at Mason College.
Crown Svo. 2s. 6d.

' Much sound and well-expressed criticism. The bibliography is a boon.' — Speaker.
A 2

io MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

W. A. Craigie. A PRIMER OF BURNS. By W. A. CRAIGIE.

Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.
' A valuable addition to the literature of the poet.' — Times.

L. Magnus. A PRIMER OF WORDSWORTH. By LAURIE

MAGNUS. Crown 8vo. zs. 6d.
'A valuable contribution to Wordsworthian literature.' — Literature.

Sterne. THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM
SHANDY. By LAWRENCE STERNE. With an Introduction by
CHARLES WHIBLEY, and a Portrait. 2 vols. is.

' Very dainty volumes are these ; the paper, type, and light-green binding are all
very agreeable to the eye. ' — Globe.

Congreve. THE COMEDIES OF WILLIAM CONGREVE.
With an Introduction by G. S. STREET, and a Portrait. 2 vols. "js.

Morier. THE ADVENTURES OF HAJJI BABA OF
ISPAHAN. By JAMES MORIER. With an Introduction by E. G.
BROWNE, M.A., and a Portrait. 2 vols. ?s.

Walton. THE LIVES OF DONNE, WOTTON, HOOKER,
HERBERT, AND SANDERSON. By IZAAK WALTON. With
an Introduction by VERNON BLACKBURN, and a Portrait. $s. 6</.

Johnson. THE LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS. By
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. With an Introduction by J. H. MILLAR,
and a Portrait. 3 vols. IQJ. 6d.

Burns. THE POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. Edited by
ANDREW LANG and W. A. CRAIGIE. With Portrait. Demy 8vo,
gilt top. 6s.

This edition contains a carefully collated Text, numerous Notes, critical and textual,
a critical and biographical Introduction, and a Glossary.

' Among editions in one volume, this will take the place of authority.' — Times.

F. Langbridge. BALLADS OF THE BRAVE: Poems of
Chivalry, Enterprise, Courage, and Constancy. Edited by Rev. F.
LANGBRIDGE. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6</. School Edition.
2s. 6d.

' A very happy conception happily carried out. These " Ballads of the Brave " are
intended to suit the real tastes of boys, and will suit the taste of the great majority.'
—Spectator. ' The book is full of splendid things. '— World.

Illustrated Books

F. D. Bedford. NURSERY RHYMES. With many Coloured

Pictures. By F. D. BEDFORD. Super Royal 8vo. $s.
'An excellent selection of the best known rhymes, with beautifully coloured pictures
exquisitely printed.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

S. Baring Gould. A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES retold by S.

BARING GOULD. With numerous illustrations and initial letters by

ARTHUR J. GASKIN. Second Edition. Crown %vo. Buckram. 6s.

' Mr. Baring Gould is deserving of gratitude, in re-writing in simple style the old

stories that delighted our fathers and grandfathers.'— Saturday Revieiv.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST n

S. Baring Gould. OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES. Col-
lected and edited by S. BARING GOULD. With Numerous Illustra-
tions by F. D. BEDFORD. Second Edition, Crown 8vo. Buckram. 6s.
'A charming volume. The stories have been selected with great ingenuity from
various old ballads and folk-tales, and now stand forth, clothed in Mr. Baring
Gould's delightful English, to enchant youthful readers.' — Guardian.

S. Baring Gould. A BOOK OF NURSERY SONGS AND
RHYMES. Edited by S. BARING GOULD, and Illustrated by the
Birmingham Art School. Buckram, gilt top. Crown 8v0. 6s.
' The volume is very complete in its way, as it contains nursery songs to the number
°f 77i game-rhymes, and jingles. To the student we commend the sensible intro-
duction, and the explanatory notes.' — Birmingham Gazette.

H. 0. Beeching. A BOOK OF CHRISTMAS VERSE. Edited
by H. C. BEECHING, M.A., and Illustrated by WALTER CRANE.
Crown 8vo, gilt top. $s.

An anthology which, from its unity of aim and high poetic excellence, has a better
right to exist than most of its fellows.' — Guardian,

History

Gibbon. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE. By EDWARD GIBBON. A New Edition, Edited with
Notes, Appendices, and Maps, by J. B. BURY, LL.D., Fellow of
Trinity College, Dublin. In Seven Volumes. Demy &vo. Gilt top.
8s. 6d. each. Also crown 8vo. 6s. each. Vols. /., //., ///., IV.t
and V.

' The time has certainly arrived for a new edition of Gibbon's great work. . . . Pro-
fessor Bury is the right man to undertake this task. His learning is amazing,
both in extent and accuracy. The book is issued in a handy form, and at a
moderate price, and it is admirably printed." — Times.

' This edition, is a marvel of erudition and critical skill, and it is the very minimum
of praise to predict that the seven volumes of it will supersede Dean Milman's as
the standard edition of our great historical classic.' — Glasgow Herald.

' At last there is an adequate modern edition of Gibbon. . . . The best edition the
nineteenth century could produce.' — Manchester Guardian.

Flinders Petrie. A HI STORY OF EGYPT, FROM THE EARLIEST

TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY. Edited by W. M. FLINDERS

PETRIE, D.C.L., LL.D., Professor of Egyptology at University

College. Fully Illustrated. In Six Volumes. Crown 8vo. 6s. each.

Vol. I. PREHISTORIC TIMES TO XVlTH DYNASTY. W. M. F.

Petrie. Third Edition.
Vol. II. THE XVIlTii AND XVIIlTH DYNASTIES. W. M. F.

Petrie. Second Edition.

1 A history written in the spirit of scientific precision so worthily represented by Dr.
Petrie and his school cannot but promote sound and accurate study, and
supply a vacant place in the English literature of Egyptology.' — Times.

Flinders Petrie. RELIGION AND CONSCIENCE IN
ANCIENT EGYPT. By W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, D.C.L.,
LL.D. Fully Illustrated. Crown %vo. 2s. 6d.

' The lectures will afford a fund of valuable information for students of ancient ethics.
— Manchester Guardian.

12 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

Flinders Petrie. SYRIA AND EGYPT, FROM THE TELL
EL AMARNA TABLETS. By W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE,
D.C.L., LL.D. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.

'A marvellous record. The addition made to our knowledge is nothing short of
amazing. ' — Times.

Flinders Petrie. EGYPTIAN TALES. Edited by W. M.
FLINDERS PETRIE. Illustrated by TRISTRAM ELLIS. In Two
Volumes. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. each.

' A valuable addition to the literature of comparative folk-lore. The drawings are

really illustrations in the literal sense of the word.' — Globe.
' Invaluable as a picture of life in Palestine and Egypt.' — Daily News.

Flinders Petrie. EGYPTIAN DECORATIVE ART. By
W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE. With 120 Illustrations. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d.

' In these lectures he displays rare skill in elucidating the development of
decorative art in Egypt, and in tracing its influence on the art of other
countries. ' — Times.

C. W. Oman. A HISTORY OF THE ART OF WAR.

Vol. II. : The Middle Ages, from the Fourth to the Fourteenth
Century. By C. W. OMAN, M.A., Fellow of All Souls', Oxford.
Illustrated. Demy 8vo. 2is.

' The book is based throughput upon a thorough study of the original sources, and
will be an indispensable aid to all students of mediaeval history.' — AtJiemzuin.

' The whole art of war in its historic evolution has never been treated on such an
ample and comprehensive scale, and we question if any recent contribution to the
exact history of the world has possessed greater and more enduring value.' — Daily
Chronicle.

S. Baring Gould. THE TRAGEDY OF THE CAESARS.
With numerous Illustrations from Busts, Gems, Cameos, etc. By S.
BARING GOULD. Fourth Edition. Royal%vo. 15*.

' A most splendid and fascinating book on a subject of undying interest. The great
feature of the book is the use the author has made of the existing portraits of the
Caesars, and the admirable critical subtlety he has exhibited in dealing with this
line of research. It is brilliantly written, and the illustrations are supplied on a
scale cf profuse magnificence.' — Daily Chronicle.

H. de B. Gibbins. INDUSTRY IN ENGLAND : HISTORI-
CAL OUTLINES. By H. DE B. GIBBINS, M.A., D.Litt. With
5 Maps. Second Edition. Demy 8vo. los. 6d.

H. E. Egerton. A HISTORY OF BRITISH COLONIAL
POLICY. By H. E. EGERTON, M.A. Demy 8vo. i2s. 6d.

' It is a good book, distinguished by accuracy in detail, clear arrangement of facts,

and a broad grasp of principles.' — Manchester Cna?-dian.
'Able, impartial, clear. . . . A most valuable volume.' — Athenteum.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 13

Albert Sorel. THE EASTERN QUESTION IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By ALBERT SOREL, of the French
Academy. Translated by F. C. BRAMWELL, M.A., with an Intro-
duction by R. C. L. FLETCHER, Fellow of Magdalen College,
Oxford. With a Map. Crown Sva. 4*. &/.

'The author's insight into the character and motives of the leading actors in the
drama gives the work an interest uncommon in books based on similar material." —
Scotsman.

C. H. Qrinling. A HISTORY OF THE GREAT NORTHERN

RAILWAY, 1845-95. By CHARLES H. GRINLING. With Maps

and Illustrations. Demy %vo. IQJ. 6d.

'Admirably written, and crammed with interesting facts.' — Daily Mail.
' The only adequate history of a great English railway company that has as yet

appeared.' — Times.
' Mr. Grinling has done for the history of the Great Northern what Macaulay did for

English History." — The Engineer.

A. Clark. THE COLLEGES OF OXFORD : Their History
and their Traditions. By Members of the University. Edited by A.
CLARK, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Lincoln College. 8vo. I2s. 6d.

' A work which will certainly be appealed to for many years as the standard book on
the Colleges of Oxford." — Athenoum.

Perrens. THE HISTORY OF FLORENCE FROM 1434

TO 1492. By F. T. PERRENS. Sw. 12*. 6d.

A history of Florence under the domination of Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de
Medicis.

J. Wells. A SHORT HISTORY OF ROME. By J. WELLS,

M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Wadham Coll., Oxford. With 4 Maps.

Crown 8vo. 35. 6d.
This book is intended for the Middle and Up_per Forms of Public Schools and for

Pass Students at the Universities. It contains copious Tables, etc.
' An original work written on an original plan, and with uncommon freshness and

vigour. ' — Speaker.

0. Browning. A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ITALY,
A.D. 1250-1530. By OSCAR BROWNING, Fellow and Tutor of King's
College, Cambridge. Second Edition. In Two Volumes. Crown
8v0. $s. each.

VOL. I. 1250-1409. — Guelphs and Ghibellines.
VOL. II. 1409-1530. — The Age of the Condottieri.

' Mr. Browning is to be congratulated on the production of a work of immense
labour and learning.' — Westminster Gazette.

O'Grady. THE STORY OF IRELAND. By STANDISH
O'GRADY, Author of ' Finn and his Companions.' Cr. Svo. 2s. 6d.
' Most delightful, most stimulating. Its racy humour, its original imaginings,
make it one of the freshest, breeziest volumes.' — Methodist Times.

14 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

Biography

S. Baring Gould. THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONA-
PARTE. By S. BARING GOULD. With over 450 Illustrations in
the Text and 12 Photogravure Plates. Large quarto. Gilt top. 365.

' The best biography of Napoleon In our tongue, nor have the French as good a
biographer of their hero. A book very nearly as good as Southey's " Life of
Nelson." ' — Manchester Guardian.

'The main feature of this gorgeous volume is its great wealth of beautiful photo-
gravures and finely-executed wood engravings, constituting a complete pictorial
chronicle of Napoleon I.'s personal history from the days of his early childhood
at Ajaccio to the date of his second interment.' — Daily Telegraph.

'Nearly all the illustrations are real contributions to history.' — Westminster Gazette.

Morris Fuller. THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF JOHN
DAVENANT, D.D. (1571-1641), Bishop of Salisbury. By MORRIS
FULLER, B.D. Demy 8vo. los. 6d.

J. M. Kigg. ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY : A CHAPTER
IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. By J. M. RIGG. DemySvo. "js. 6d.

Mr. Rigg has told the story of the life with scholarly ability, and has contributed
an interesting chapter to the history of the Norman period.' — Daily Chronicle.

F. W. Joyce. THE LIFE OF SIR FREDERICK GORE
OUSELEY. By F. W. JOYCE, M.A. 7s. 6d.

' This book has been undertaken in quite the right spirit, and written with sympathy,
insight, and considerable literary skill.' — Times.

W, G. Collingwood. THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN. By
W. G. COLLINGWOOD, M.A. With Portraits, and 13 Drawings by
Mr. Ruskin. Second Edition. 2 vols. &vo. 32*.

' No more magnificent volumes have been published for a long time.' — Times.

' It is long since we had a biography with such delights of substance and of form.
Such a book is a pleasure for the day, and a joy for ever.' — Daily Chronicle.

0. Waldstein. JOHN RUSKIN. By CHARLES WALDSTEIN,

M.A. With a Photogravure Portrait. Post 8vo. 5*.
'A thoughtful and well-written criticism of Ruskin's teaching.' — Daily Chronicle.

A. M. F. Dannesteter. THE LIFE OF ERNEST RENAN, By
MADAME DARMESTETER. With Portrait. Second Edition. Cr. %vo. 6s.

' A polished gem of biography, superior in its kind to any attempt that has been made
of recent years in England. Madame Darmesteter has indeed written for English
readers " The Life of Ernest Renan."' — Athenatim.

'It is a fascinating and biographical and critical study, and an admirably finished
work of literary art.' — Scotsman.

' It is interpenetrated with the dignity and charm, the mild, bright, classical grace of
form and treatment that Renan himself so loved ; and it fulfils to the uttermost
the delicate and difficult achievement it sets out to accomplish.' — Academy.

W. H. Hutton. THE LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. By

W. H. HUTTON, M.A. With Portraits. Crown Svo. $s.
1 The book lays good claim to high rank among our biographies. It is excellently,
even lovingly, written.1 — Scotsman. ' An excellent monograph.' — Times.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 15

Travel, Adventure and Topography

H. H. Johnston. BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA. By Sir
H. II. JOHNSTON, K.C.B. With nearly Two Hundred Illustrations,
and Six Maps. Second Edition. Crown \to. 30^. net.

' A fascinating book, written with equal skill and charm — the work at once of a
literary artist and of a man of action who is singularly wise, brave, and experi-
enced. It abounds in admirable sketches from pencil." — Westminster Gazette.

' A delightful book . . . collecting within the covers of a single volume all that is
known of this part of our African domains* The voluminous appendices are of
extreme value.' — Manchester Guardian.

' The book takes front rank as a standard work by the one man competent to write
it.' — Daily Chronicle.

L. Decle. THREE YEARS IN SAVAGE AFRICA. By

LIONEL DECLE. With 100 Illustrations and 5 Maps. Second

Edition. Demy 8vo. 2is.
' A fine, full book.'— Pall Mall Gazette.
' Abounding in thrilling adventures.1 — Daily Telegraph.
' His book is profusely illustrated, and its bright pages give a better general survey

of Africa from the Cape to the Equator than any single volume that has yet been

published.' — Times.
'A delightful book." — Academy.

' Astonishingly frank. Every page deserves close attention.' — Literature.
' Unquestionably one of the most interesting books of travel which have recently

appeared.' — Standard.

' The honest impressions of a keen-eyed and intrepid traveller.' — Scotsman.
' Appealing powerfully to the popular imagination.' — Globe.

Henri of Orleans. FROM TONKIN TO INDIA. By PRINCE
HENRI OF ORLEANS. Translated by HAMLEY BENT, M.A. With
100 Illustrations and a Map. Crown 4(0, gilt top. 2$s.

' A welcome contribution to our knowledge. The narrative is full and interesting,
and the appendices give the work a substantial value.' — Times.

'The Prince's travels are of real importance . . . his services to geography have been
considerable. The volume is beautifully illustrated.'— A thenaum.

R. S. S. Baden-Powell. THE DOWNFALL OF PREMPEH.
A Diary of Life in Ashanti, 1895. By Colonel BADEN-POWELL.
With 21 Illustrations and a Map. Cheaper Edition. Large Crown
8vo. 6s.
1 A compact, faithful, most readable record of the campaign.1— Daily Nevus.

R. S. S. Baden-Powell. THE MATABELE CAMPAIGN, 1896.
By Colonel BADEN- POWELL. With nearly 100 Illustrations. Cheaper
Edition. Large Crown 8vo. 6s.

' As a straightforward account of a great deal of plucky work unpretentiously done,
this book is well worth reading.' — Times.

S. L. Hinde. THE FALL OF THE CONGO ARABS. By
S. L. HINDE. With Plans, etc. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d.

' The book is full of good things, and of sustained interest.' — St. James's Gazette.
' A graphic sketch of one of the most exciting and important episodes in the struggle

for supremacy in Central Africa between the Arabs and their European rivals.'—

Times.

16 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

A. St. H. Gibbons. EXPLORATION AND HUNTING IN
CENTRAL AFRICA. By Major A. ST. H. GIBBONS, F.R.G.S.
With 8 full-page Illustrations by C. WHYMPER, 25 Photographs and
Maps. Demy 8ve>. i$s.

His book is a grand record of quiet, unassuming, tactful resolution. His adven-
tures were as various as his sporting exploits were exciting.' — Times.

E. H. Alderson. WITH THE MASHONALAND FIELD
FORCE, 1896. By Lieut. -Colonel ALDERSON. With numerous
Illustrations and Plans. Demy 8v0. los. 6d.
'An interesting contribution to the story of the British Empire's growth.' — Daily

News,
'A clear, vigorous, and soldier-like narrative.' — Scotsman.

Seymour Vandeleur. CAMPAIGNING ON THE UPPER
NILE AND NIGER. By Lieut. SEYMOUR VANDELEUR. With
an Introduction by Sir G. GOLDIE, K.C.M.G. With 4 Maps,
Illustrations, and Plans. Large Crown 8v0. los. 6d.
Upon the African question there is no book procurable which contains so much of
value as this one.' — Guardian.

Lord Fincastle. A FRONTIER CAMPAIGN. By the Viscount
FINCASTLE, V.C., and Lieut. P. C. ELLIOTT-LOCKHART. With a
Map and 1 6 Illustrations. Second Edition. Crown &vo. 6s.
'An admirable book, combining in a volume a piece of pleasant reading for the
general reader, and a really valuable treatise on frontier \tar.'—Atketueu»t.

J. K. Trotter. THE NIGER SOURCES. By Colonel J. K.

TROTTER, R.A. With a Map and Illustrations. Crown 8vo. $s.
'A most interesting as well as a lucidly and modestly written book.' — Spectator.

Michael Davitt. LIFE AND PROGRESS IN AUSTRAL-
ASIA. By MICHAEL DAVITT, M.P. With 2 Maps. Crozvn 8vo.
6s. 500 pp.

' An interesting and suggestive work.' — Daily Chronicle.
'Contains an astonishing amount of practical information.' — Daily Mail.
' One of the most valuable contributions to our store of Imperial literature that has
been published for a very long time." — Pall Mall Gazette.

W. Crooke. THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF
INDIA : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND ADMINISTRATION. By W.
CROOKE. With Maps and Illustrations. Demy 8vo. los. 6d>

' A carefully and well-written account of one of the most important provinces of the
Empire. Mr. CrooVe deals with the land in its physical aspect, the province
under Hindoo and Mussulman rule, under British rule, its ethnology and sociology,
its religious and social life, the land and its settlement, and the native peasant.
The illustrations are good, and the map is excellent.' — Manchester Guardian.

A. Boisragon. THE BENIN MASSACRE. By CAPTAIN
BOISRAGON. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. y. 6d.

' If the story had been written four hundred years ago it would be read to-day as an
English classic.' — Scotsman.

'If anything could enhance the horror and the pathos of this remarkable book it is
the simple style of the author, who writes as he would talk, unconscious of his
own heroism, with an artlessness which is the highest an.'— Pall Mall Gazette.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 17

H. S. Cowper. THE HILL OF THE GRACES : OR, THE GREAT
STONE TEMPLES OF TRIPOLI. By H. S. COWPER, F.S.A. With
Maps, Plans, and 75 Illustrations. Demy 8v0. los. 6d.
Forms a valuable chapter of what has now become quite a large and important
branch of antiquarian research.' — Times.

W. Kinnaird Rose. WITH THE GREEKS IN THESSALY.
By W. KINNAIRD ROSE, Renter's Correspondent. With Plans and
23 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 6s.

W. B. Worsfold. SOUTH AFRICA. By W. B. WORSFOLD,

M.A. With a Map. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
'A monumental work compressed into a very moderate compass.' — World.

Naval and Military

G. W. Steevens. NAVAL POLICY : By. G. W. STEEVENS.

Demy 8vo. 6s.

This book is a description of the British and other more important np.vies of the world,
with a sketch of the lines on which our naval policy might possibly be developed.
'An extremely able and interesting work.' — Daily Chronicle.

D. Hannay. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY,

FROM EARLY TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY. By DAVID HANNAY.

Illustrated. 2 Vols. Demy 8vo. Js. 6d. each. Vol. I., 1200-1688.
' We read it from cover to cover at a sitting, and those who go to it for a lively and

brisk picture of the past, with all its faults and its grandeur, will not be disappointed.

The historian is endowed with literary skill and style.' — Standard.
'We can warmly recommend Mr. Hannay's volume to any intelligent student of

naval history. Great as is the merit of Mr. Hannay's historical narrative, the

merit of his strategic exposition is even greater.' — Times.

C. Cooper King. THE STORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY. By
Colonel COOPER KING, Illustrated. Demy 8vo. "js. 6d.

' An authoritative and accurate story of England's military progress.' — Daily Mail.

' This handy volume contains, in a compendious form, a brief but adequate sketch of
the story of the British army.' — Daily News.

R. Southey. ENGLISH SEAMEN (Howard, Clifford, Hawkins,
Drake, Cavendish). By ROBERT SOUTHEY. Edited, with an
Introduction, by DAVID HANNAY. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

'Admirable and well-told stories of our naval history." — Army and Navy Gazette.

1 A brave, inspiriting book.' — Black and White.

W. Clark Russell. THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL LORD COL-
LINGWOOD. By W. CLARK RUSSELL, With Illustrations by
F. BRANGVVYN. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

' A book which we should like to see in the hands of every boy in the country.1 —
St. James's Gazette. ' A really good book.' — Saturday Review.

E. L. S. Horsburgh. THE CAMPAIGN OF WATERLOO.

By E. L. S. HORSBURGH, B.A. With Plans. Crown Svo. 5*.
'A brilliant essay — simple, sound, and thorough.' — Daily Chronicle.

A3

1 8 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

H.B. George. BATTLES OF ENGLISH HISTORY. ByH.B.

GEORGE, M.A., Fellow of New College, Oxford. With numerous
Plans. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

' Mr. George has undertaken a very useful task — that of making military affairs in-
telligible and instructive to non-military readers — and has executed it with laud-
able intelligence and industry, and with a large measure of success.' — Times.

General Literature

S. Baring Gould. OLD COUNTRY LIFE. By S. BARING
GOULD. With Sixty- seven Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo. Fifth
Edition. 6s.

' " Old Country Life," as healthy wholesome reading, full of breezy life and move-
ment, full of quaint stories vigorously told, will not be excelled by any book to be
published throughout the year. Sound, hearty, and English to the core. ' — World.

S. Baring Gould. HISTORIC ODDITIES AND STRANGE

EVENTS. By S. BARING GOULD. Fourth Edition. Crown &vo. 6s.
' A collection of exciting and entertaining chapters. The whole volume is delightful
reading. ' — Times.

8. Baring Gould. FREAKS OF FANATICISM. By S. BARING

GOULD. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
' A perfectly fascinating book.' — Scottish Leader.

S. Baring Gould. A GARLAND OF COUNTRY SONG :
English Folk Songs with their Traditional Melodies. Collected and
arranged by S. BARING GOULD and H. F. SHEPPARD. Demy &to. 6s.

S. Baring Gould. SONGS OF THE WEST: Traditional
Ballads and Songs of the West of England, with their Melodies.
Collected by S. BARING GOULD, M.A., and H. F. SHEPPARD,
M.A. In 4 Parts. Parts I., II., III., 3*. each. Part IV., $s.
In one Vol., French morocco, 15*.
' A rich collection of humour, pathos, grace, and poetic fancy." — Saturday Review.

S. Baring Gould. YORKSHIRE ODDITIES AND STRANGE
EVENTS. By S. BARING GOULD. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo.
6s.

S. Baring Gould. STRANGE SURVIVALS AND SUPER-
STITIONS. By S. BARING GOULD. Crown 8vo. Second Edition.
6s.

S. Baring Gould. THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN
FRANCE. By S. BARING. GOULD. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. 32^.

Cotton Minchin. OLD HARROW DAYS. By J. G. COTTON

MINCHIN. Crown 8vo. Second Edition. $s.
'This book is an admirable record.' — Daily Chronicle.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 19

W. E. Gladstone. THE SPEECHES OF THE RT. HON.
W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. Edited by A. W. HUTTON, M.A.,
and H. J. COHEN, M.A. With Portraits. Demy Svo. Vols. IX.
and X. \2s. 6d. each.

E. V. Zenker. ANARCHISM. By E. V. ZENKER. Demy 8vo.
7-r. 6d.

' Well-written, and full of shrewd comments.' — The Speaker.

' Herr Zenker has succeeded in producing a careful and critical history of the growth

of Anarchist theory. He is to be congratulated upon a really interesting work.' —

Literature.

H. G. Eutcbinson. THE GOLFING PILGRIM. By HORACE

G. HUTCHINSON. Crown 8vo. 6s.
' Full of useful information with plenty of good stories.' — Truth.
'Without this hook the golfer's library will be incomplete.' — Pall Mall Gazette.
'We can recommend few books as better company.' — St. James's Gazette.
' It will charm all golfers.' — Times.
' Decidedly pleasant reading.' — Atheneeum.

J. Wells. OXFORD AND OXFORD LIFE. By Members of
the University. Edited by J. WELLS, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of
Wadham College. Crown Svo. 33. 6d.

' We congratulate Mr. Wells on the production of a readable and intelligent account
of Oxford as it is at the present time, written by persons who are possessed of a
close acquaintance with the system and life of the University." — Athen&um.

J. Wells. OXFORD AND ITS COLLEGES. By J. WELLS, M. A.,
Fellow and Tutor of Wadham College. Illustrated by E. II. NEW.
Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3*. Leather. _ 3^. 6d. net.

'An admirable and accurate little treatise, attractively illustrated.' — World.

'A luminous and tasteful little volume.' — Daily Chronicle.

' Exactly what the intelligent visitor wants.' — ^Glasgow Herald.

0. G. Robertson. VOCES ACADEMICS. By C. GRANT
ROBERTSON, M.A., Fellow of All Souls', Oxford. With a Frontis-
piece. Pott. "&vo. 3^. 6d.
' Decidedly clever and_ amusing.' — A thenceum.
' A clever and entertaining little book.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

L. Whibley. GREEK OLIGARCHIES : THEIR ORGANISA-
TION AND CHARACTER. By L. WHIBLEY, M.A., Fellow
of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Crown Svo. 6s.
'An exceedingly useful handbook : a careful and well-arranged study.' — Times.

L. L. Price. ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PRACTICE.
By L. L. PRICE, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Crown
8vo. 6s.

J. S. Shedlock. THE PIANOFORTE SONATA : Its Origin

and Development. By J. S. SHEDLOCK. Crown Svo. 55.
1 This work should be in the possession of every musician and amateur. A concise
and lucid history and a very valuable work for reference.' — Athenaum.

E. M. Bowden. THE EXAMPLE OF BUDDHA: Being Quota-
tions from Buddhist Literature for each Day in the Year. Compiled
by E. M. BOWDEN. Third Edition. i6mo. 2s. 6d.

2O MESSRS. METHUEN'S List

Science and Technology

Freudenreich. DAIRY BACTERIOLOGY. A Short Manual
for the Use of Students. By Dr. ED. VON FREUDENREICH.
Translated by J. R. AINSWORTH DAVIS, B. A. Crown 8vo. zs.6d.

Chalmers Mitchell. OUTLINES OF BIOLOGY. By P.

CHALMERS MITCHELL, M.A., Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s.
A text-book designed to cover the new Schedule issued by the Royal College of
Physicians and Surgeons.

G.Massee. A MONOGRAPH OF THE MYXOGASTRES. By

GEORGE MASSEE. With 12 Coloured Plates. Royal '8vo. i^s.net.
A work much in advance of any book in the language treating of this group of
organisms. Indispensable to every student of the Myxogastres. ' — Nature.

Stephenson and Suddards. ORNAMENTAL DESIGN FOR
WOVEN FABRICS. By C. STEPHENSON, of The Technical
College, Bradford, and F. SUDDARDS, of The Yorkshire College,
Leeds. With 65 full-page plates. Demy 8vo. Js. 6d.
'The book is very ably done, displaying an intimate knowledge of principles, good
taste, and the faculty of clear exposition.' — Yorkshire Post

HANDBOOKS OF TECHNOLOGY.

Edited by PROFESSORS GARNETT and WERTHE1MER.

HOW TO MAKE A DRESS. By J. A. E. WOOD.

Illustrated. Crown 8vo. is. 6d.
A text-book for students preparing for the City and Guilds examination, based on

the syllabus. The diagrams are numerous.

' Though primarily intended for students, Miss Wood's dainty little manual may be
consulted with advantage by any girls who want to make their own frocks. The
directions are simple and clear, and the diagrams very helpful.'— Literature.
'A splendid little book." — Evening News.

Philosophy

L. T. Hobhouse. THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. By

L. T. HOBHOUSE, Fellow of C.C.C, Oxford. Demy8vo. 2is.
' The most important contribution to English philosophy since the publication of Mr.

Bradley' s " Appearance and Reality." ' — Glasgow Herald.
' A. brilliantly written volume.1 — Times.

W. H. Fairbrother. THE PHILOSOPHY OF T. H. GREEN.

By W. H. FAIRBROTHER, M. A. Crown 8vo. y. 6d.

' In every way an admirable book.' — Glasgow Herald.

F. W. Bussell. THE SCHOOL OF PLATO. By F. W.
BUSSELL, D.D., Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. Demy Svo.
I or. 6d.

' A highly valuable contribution to the history of ancient thought.'— Glasgow Herald.
' A clever and stimulating book, — Manchester Guardian.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 21

F. S. Granger. THE WORSHIP OF THE ROMANS. By
F. S. GRANGER, M.A., Litt.D., Professor of Philosophy at Univer-
sity College, Nottingham. Crown &vo. 6s.

A scholarly analysis of the religious ceremonies,beliefs, and superstitions of ancient
Rome, conducted in the new light of comparative anthropology.'— Times.

Theology

Ibanfcboofcs of ^beoloss.

General Editor, A. ROBERTSON, D.D., Principal of King's College,

London.

THE XXXIX. ARTICLES OF THE CHURCH OF ENG-
LAND. Edited with an Introduction by E. C. S. GIBSON, D.D.,
Vicar of Leeds, late Principal of Wells' Theological College. Second
and Cheaper Edition in One Volume. Demy 8vo. \2s. 6d.
' Dr. Gibson is a master of clear and orderly exposition. And he has in a high
degree a quality very necessary, but rarely found, in commentators on this topic,
that of absolute fairness. His book is pre-eminently honest.' — Times.
After a survey of the whole book, we can bear witness to the transparent honesty
of purpose, evident industry, and clearness of style which mark its contents.
They maintain throughout a very high level of doctrine and tone.' — Guardian.
' The most convenient and most acceptable commentary.' — Expository Times.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF RELIGION.

By F. B. JEVONS, M.A., Litt.D., Principal of Bishop Hatfield's

Hall. Demy 8vo. los. 6d.
' Dr. Jevons has written a notable work, which we can strongly recommend to the

serious attention of theologians and anthropologists.' — Manchester Guardian.
' The merit of this book lies in the penetration, the singular acuteness and force of the

author's judgment. He is at once critical and luminou*, at once just and suggestive.

A comprehensive and thorough book.' — Birmingham Post.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION. By R. L.

OTTLEY, M.A. , late fellow of Magdalen College, Oxon., and Principal

of Pusey House. In Two Volumes. DemySvo. 155.
' Learned and reverent : lucid and well arranged.' — Record.
'A clear and remarkably full account of the main currents of speculation. Scholarly

precision . . . genuine tolerance . . . intense interest in his subject — are Mr.

Ottley's merits.' — Guardian.

Gburcbman's Xfbrarg.

Edited by J. H. BURN, B.D.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY. By
W. E. COLLINS, M.A., Professor of Ecclesiastical History at King's
College, London. With Map. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6d.

An investigation in detail, based upon original authorities, of the beginnings of the
English Church, with a careful account of earlier Celtic Christianity. Some very
full appendices treat of a number of special subjects.

'An excellent example of thorough and fresh historical work.' — Guardian.

SOME NEW TESTAMENT PROBLEMS. By ARTHUR
WRIGHT, Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge. Crown 8vo. 6s.
' Bold and outspoken ; earnest and reverent.'— Glasgow Herald.

22 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

S. E. Driver. SERMONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED
WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT. By S. R. DRIVER, D.D.,
Canon of Christ Church, Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Uni-
versity of Oxford. Crown Svo. 6s.
' A welcome companion to the author's famous ' Introduction.' — Guardian.

T. K. Cheyne. FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITI-
CISM. By T. K. CHEYNE, D.D., Oriel Professor at Oxford.
Large crown Svo. Js, 6d.
A historical sketch of O. T. Criticism.
'A very learned and instructive work." — Times.

H. H. Henson. DISCIPLINE AND LAW. By H. HENSLEY
HENSON, B. D., Fellow of All Souls', Oxford; Incumbent of St.
Mary's Hospital, Ilford ; Chaplain to the Bishop of St. Albans.
Fcap. Svo. 2s. 6d.

1 An admirable little volume of Lent addresses. We warmly commend the general
drift of Mr. Henson's book.' — Guardian.

H. H. Henson. LIGHT AND LEAVEN : HISTORICAL AND
SOCIAL SERMONS. By H. HENSLEY HENSON, M.A. Crown Svo.
6s.

' They are always reasonable as well as rigorous. ' — Scotsman.

W. H. Bennett. A PRIMER OF THE BIBLE. By Prof.

W.H.BENNETT. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d.
'The work of an honest, fearless, and sound critic, and an excellent guide in a small

compass to the books of the Bible.' — Manchester Guardian,
1 A unique primer. ' — English Churchman.

O.H.Prior. CAMBRIDGE SERMONS. Edited by C.H. PRIOR,

M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Pembroke College. Crmvn Svo. 6s.
A volume of sermons preached before the University of Cambridge by various
preachers, including the late Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Westcott.

Cecilia Robinson. THE MINISTRY OF DEACONESSES.
By Deaconess CECILIA ROBINSON. With an Introduction by the
Lord Bishop of Winchester and an Appendix by Professor ARMITAGE
ROBINSON. Crown Svo. 3*. 6J.

'A learned and interesting book, combining with no ordinary skill the authority of
learned research with the practical utility of a descriptive manual of parish work.'
— Scotsman.

E. B. Layard. RELIGION IN BOYHOOD. Notes on the

Religious Training of Boys. By E. B. LAYARD, M.A. iSmo. is.

W. Yorke Fausset. THE DE CATECHIZANDIS
RUDIBUS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Edited, with Introduction,
Notes, etc., by W. YORKE FAUSSET, M.A. Crown Svo. $s. 6d.

An edition of a Treatise on the Essentials of Christian Doctrine, and the best
methods of impressing them on candidates for baptism.

F. Weston. THE HOLY SACRIFICE. By F. WESTON, M.A.,

Curate of St. Matthew's, Westminster. Pott Svo. is.
A small volume of devotions at the Holy Communion, especially adapted to the
needs of servers and those who do not communicate.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 23

A Kempis. THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. By THOMAS A
KEMPIS. With an Introduction by DEAN FARRAR. Illustrated by
C. M. GERE, and printed in black and red. Second Edition. Fcap.
Sv0. Buckram. $s. 6d. Padded morocco, $s.

'Amongst all the innumerable English editions of the " Imitation," there can have
been few which were prettier than this one, printed in strong and handsome type,
with all the glory of red initials.' — Glasgow Herald.

J. Keble. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. ByJOHNKEBLE. Withan
Introduction and Notes by W. LOCK, D. D. , Warden of Keble College,
Ireland Professor at Oxford. Illustrated by R. ANNING BELL.
Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Buckram. %s. 6d. Padded morocco, $s.
' The present edition is annotated with all the care and insight to be expected from
Mr. Lock. The progress and circumstances of its composition are detailed in the
Introduction. There is an interesting Appendix on the MSS. of the " Christian
Year," and another giving the order in which the poems were written. A "Short
Analysis of the Thought " is prefixed to each, and any difficulty in the text is ex-
plained in a note.' — Guardian.

3Lfbrar£ of Devotion.

Pott 8vo. zs.; leather, 2s. 6d. net.

'This series is excellent.' — THE BISHOP OF LONDON.

' A very delightful edition." — THE BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS.

' Well worth the attention of the Clergy.' — THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD.

' The new " Library of Devotion " is excellent.' — THE BISHOP op PETERBOROUGH.

' Charming.' — Record.

'Delightful.'— Church Bells.

THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Newly

Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by C. BIGG, D.D.,

late Student of Christ Church.
' The translation is an excellent piece of English, and the introduction is a masterly

exposition. We augur well of a series which begins so satisfactorily.' — Times.
' No translation has appeared in so convenient a form, and none, we think, evidenc-

ing so true, so delicate, so feeling a touch.' — Birmingliam Post.
' Dr. Bigg has made a new and vigorous translation, and has enriched the text with

a luminous introduction and pithy notes.' — Speaker.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. By JOHN KEBLE. With Intro-

duction and Notes by WALTER LOCK, D.D., Warden of Keble

College, Ireland Professor at Oxford.
'No prettier book could be desired.' — Manchester Guardian.
'The volume is very prettily bound and printed, and may fairly claim to be an

advance on any previous editions.' — Guardian.
' The introduction is admirable, and admirers of Keble will be greatly interested in

the chronological list of the poems.' — Bookman.'

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. A Revised Translation,
with an Introduction, by C. BIGG, D.D. , late Student of Christ
Church.

Dr. Bigg has made a practically new translation of this book, which the reader will
have, almost for the first time, exactly in the shape in which it left the hands of
the author.

'The text is at once scholarly in its faithful reproduction in English of the sonorous
Church Latin in which the original is composed, and popular in the sense of being
simple and intelligible.'— Scotsman.

24 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

Heatierg oC Edition

Edited by H. C. BEECHING, M.A. With Portraits, crown Svo. y.6d.

A series of short biographies of the most prominent leaders of religious
life and thought of all ages and countries.

The following are ready —

CARDINAL NEWMAN. By R. H. HUTTON.
JOHN WESLEY. By J. H. OVERTON, M.A.
BISHOP WILBERFORCE. By G. W. DANIEL, M.A.
CARDINAL MANNING. By A. W. HUTTON, M.A.
CHARLES SIMEON. By H. C. G. MOULE, D.D.
JOHN KEBLE. By WALTER LOCK, D.D.
THOMAS CHALMERS. By Mrs. OLIPHANT.
LANCELOT ANDREWES. By R. L. OTTLEY, M.A.
AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. By E. L. CUTTS, D.D.
WILLIAM LAUD. By W. H. HUTTON, B.D.
JOHN KNOX. By F. M'CUNN.
JOHN HOWE. By R. F. HORTON, D.D.
BISHOP KEN. By F. A. CLARKE, M.A.
GEORGE FOX, THE QUAKER. By T. HODGKIN, D.C.L.
JOHN DONNE. By AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.
THOMAS CRANMER. By A. J. MASON.

Other volumes will be announced in due course.

Fiction

SIX SHILLING NOVELS

Marie Corelli's Novels

Crown %vo. 6s. each.

A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. Seventeenth Edition.

VENDETTA. Fourteenth Edition.

THELMA. Eighteenth Edition.

ARDATH. Eleventh Edition.

THE SOUL OF LILITH Ninth Edition.

WORMWOOD. Eighth Edition.

BARABBAS : A DREAM OF THE WORLD'S TRAGEDY

Thirty-second Edition.

' The tender reverence of the treatment and the imaginative beauty of the writing
have reconciled us to the daring of the conception, and the conviction is forced on
us that even so exalted a subject cannot be made too familiar to us, provided it be
presented in the true spirit of Christian faith. The amplifications of the Scripture
narrative are often conceived with high poetic insight, and this "Dream of the
World's Tragedy" is a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase of the supreme
climax of the inspired narrative.' — Dublin Review,

THE SORROWS OF SATAN. Thirty-eighth Edition.

' A very powerful piece of work. . . . The conception is magnificent, and is likely
to win an abiding place within the memory of man. . . . The author has immense
command of language, and a limitless audacity. . . . This interesting and re-
markable romance will live long after much of the ephemeral literature of the day
is forgotten. ... A literary phenomenon . . . novel, and even sublime.' — W. T.
STEAD in the Review of Reviews.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 25

Anthony Hope's Novels

Crown 8v0. 6s. each.
THE GOD IN THE CAR. Seventh Edition.

' A very remarkable book, deserving of critical analysis impossible within our limit ;
brilliant, but not superficial ; well considered, but not elaborated ; constructed
with the proverbial art that conceals, but yet allows itself to be enjoyed by readers
to whom fine literary method is a keen pleasure.'— The World.

A CHANGE OF AIR. Fifth Edition,

'A graceful, vivacious comedy, true to human nature. The characters are traced
with a masterly hand.' — Times.

A MAN OF MARK. Fourth Edition.

' Of all Mr. Hope's books, " A Man of Mark " is the one which best compares with
1 ' The Prisoner of Zenda. " ' — National Observer.

THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO. ThirdEdition.

' It is a perfectly enchanting story of love and chivalry, and pure romance. The
Count is the most constant, desperate, and modest and tender of lovers, a peerless
gentleman, an intrepid fighter, a faithful friend, and a magnanimous foe.' —
Guardian.

PHROSO. Illustrated by H. R. MILLAR. ThirdEdition.

' The tale is thoroughly fresh, quick with vitality, stirring the blood, and humorously,

dashingly told.' — St. James's Gazette.

' A story of adventure, every page of which is palpitating with action.' — Speaker.
' From cover to cover " Phroso " not only engages the attention, but carries the reader

in little whirls of delight from adventure to adventure.' — Academy.

SIMON DALE. By ANTHONY HOPE. Illustrated. Third

Edition. Crown 8v0. 6s.
' "Simon Dale" is one of the best historical romances that have been written for a

long while.' — St. James's Gazette.
'A bright and gallant story." — Graphic.
' A brilliant novel. The story is rapid and most excellently told. As for the hero,

he is a perfect hero of romance — he is brave, witty, adventurous, and a good

lover. ' — A thenceum.
' There is searching analysis of human nature, with a most ingeniously constructed

plot. Mr. Hope has drawn the contrasts of his women with marvellous subtlety

and delicacy. This love-story of 200 years ago makes the man and the woman

live again.' — Times.

S. Baring Gould's Novels

Crown Sv0. 6s. each.

'To say that a book is by the author of " Mehalah" is to imply that it contains a
story cast on strong lines, containing dramatic possibilities, vivid and sympathetic
descriptions of Nature, and a wealth of ingenious imagery.' — Speaker.
' That whatever Mr. Baring Gould writes is well worth reading, is a conclusion that
may be very generally accepted. His views of life are fresh and vigorous, his
language pointed and characteristic, the incidents of which he makes use are
striking and original, his characters are life-like, and though somewhat excep-
tional people, are drawn and coloured with artistic force. Add to this that his
descriptions of scenes and scenery are painted with the loving eyes and skilled
hands of a master of his art, that he is always fresh and never dull, and it is
no wonder that readers have gained confidence in his power of amusing and
satisfying them, and that year by year his popularity widens." — Court Circular.

ARM I N E LL. Fourth Edition.

URITH. Fifth Edition.

IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. Sixth Edition.

MRS. CURGENVEN OF CURGENVEN. Fourth Edition.

26 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

CHEAP JACK ZITA. Fourth Edition.
THE QUEEN OF LOVE. Fourth Edition.
MARGERY OF QUETHER. Third Edition.
JACQUETTA. Third Edition.
KITTY ALONE. Fifth Edition.

NOEMI. Illustrated by R. C. WOODVILLE. Third Edition.
THE BROOM-SQUIRE. Illustrated by F DADD. Fourth
Edition.

THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS. Third Edition.
DARTMOOR IDYLLS.

GUAVAS THE TINNER. Illustrated by F. DADD. Second
Edition.

BLADYS. Illustrated. Second Edition.

Gilbert Parker's Novels

Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE. Fourth Edition.

' Stories happily conceived and finely executed. There is strength and genius in Mr.
Parker's style.'— Daily Telegraph.

MRS. FALCHION. Fourth Edition.

1 A splendid study of character.' — Atheneevm.

' But little behind anything that has been done by any writer of our time.' — Pall
Mall Gazette. ' A very striking and admirable novel.' — St. James's Gazette.

THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE.

1 The plot is original and one difficult to work out ; but Mr. Parker has done it with
great skill and delicacy. The reader who is not interested in this original, fresh,
and well-told tale must be a dull person indeed.' — Daily Chronicle.

THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. Illustrated. Sixth Edition.

' A rousing and dramatic tale. A book like this, in which swords flash, great sur-
prises are undertaken, and daring deeds done, in which men and women live and
love in the old passionate way, is a joy inexpressible .' — Daily Chronicle.

WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC : The Story of

a Lost Napoleon. Fourth Edition.

' Here we find romance — real, breathing, living romance. The character of Valmond
is drawn unerringly. The book must be read, we may say re-read, for any one
thoroughly to appreciate Mr. Parker's delicate touch and innate sympathy with
humanity.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH: The Last Adven-
tures of ' Pretty Pierre.' Second Edition.

1 The present book is full of fine and moving stories of the great North, and it will
add to Mr. Parker's already high reputation." — Glasgow Herald.

THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY. Illustrated. Ninth Edition.

' The best thing he has done ; one of the best things that any one has done lately.'—

St. James's Gazette.
' Mr. Parker seems to become stronger and easier with every serious novel that he

attempts. He shows the matured power which his former novels have led us to

expect, and has produced a really fine historical novel.' — Athcnaum.
1 A great book.'— Black and White.
'One of the strongest stories of historical interest and adventure that we have read

for many a day. ... A notable and successful book.' — Speaker.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 27

THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES. Second Edition. y.t>d.

1 Living, breathing romance, genuine and unforced pathos, and a deeper and more
subtle knowledge of human nature than Mr. Parker has ever displayed before.
It is, in a word, the work of a true artist.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

Conan Doyle. ROUND THE RED LAMP. By A. CONAN

DOYLE. Fifth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.

' The book is far and away the best view that has been vouchsafed us behind the
scenes of the consulting-room. ' — Illustrated London News.

Stanley Weyman. UNDER THE RED ROBE. By STANLEY
WEYMAN, Author of 'A Gentleman of France.' With Illustrations
by R. C. Woodville. Fourteenth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.
'A book of which we have read every word for the sheer pleasure of reading, and
which we put down with a pang that we cannot forget it all and start again.' —
Westminster Gazette.

1 Every one who reads books at all must read this thrilling romance, from the first
page of which to the last the breathless reader is haled along. An inspiration of
manliness and courage.' — Daily Chronicle.

Lucas Malet. THE WAGES OF SIN. By LUCAS
MALET. Thirteenth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.

Lucas Malet. THE CARISSIMA. By LUCAS MALET,
Author of 'The Wages of Sin,' etc. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.

S. R. Crockett. LOCHINVAR. By S. R. CROCKETT, Author

of 'The Raiders,' etc. Illustrated. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.

' Full of gallantry and pathos, of the clash of arms, and brightened by episodes of

humour and love. . . . Mr. Crockett has never written a stronger or better book.'

— Westminster Gazette.

S. R. Crockett. THE STANDARD BEARER. By S. R.
CROCKETT. Crown Sve. 6s.

' A delightful tale in his best style.' — Speaker.

' Mr. Crockett at his best.' — Literature.

' Enjoyable and of absorbing interest.' — Scotsman.

Arthur Morrison. TALES OF MEAN STREETS. By ARTHUR

MORRISON. Fourth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.
' Told with consummate art and extraordinary detail. In the true humanity of the

book lies its justification, the permanence of its interest, and its indubitable

triumph.' — A thenaunt.
' A great book. The author's method is amazingly effective, and produces a thrilling

sense of reality. The writer lays upon us a master hand. The book is simply

appalling and irresistible in its interest. It is humorous also ; without humour

it would not make the mark it is certain to make.'— World.

Arthur Morrison. A CHILD OF THE JAGO. By ARTHUR

MORRISON. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.
1 The book is a masterpiece.'— Pall Mall Gazette.
'Told with great vigour and powerful simplicity.'— Athenattm.

28 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

Mrs. Clifford. A FLASH OF SUMMER. By Mrs. W. K. CLIP-
FORD, Author of ' Aunt Anne,' etc. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
' The story is a very beautiful one, exquisitely told.' — Speaker.

Emily Lawless. HURRISH. By the Honble. EMILY LAW-
LESS, Author of ' Maelcho,' etc. Fifth Edition. Crown 8v0. 6s.

Emily Lawless. MAELCHO : a Sixteenth Century Romance.
By the Honble. EMILY LAWLESS. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

' A really great book.' — Spectator,

'There is no keener pleasure in life than the recognition of genius. A piece of work
of the first order, which we do not hesitate to describe as one of the most
remarkable literary achievements of this generation.' — Manchester Guardian.

Emily Lawless. TRAITS AND CONFIDENCES. By The
Honble. EMILY LAWLESS. Crown &vo. 6s.

'A very charming little volume. A book which cannot be read without pleasure and
profit, written in excellent English, full of delicate spirit, and a keen appreciation
of nature, human and inanimate.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

Jane Barlow. A CREEL OF IRISH STORIES. By JANE
BARLOW, Author of ' Irish Idylls. ' Second Edition. Crown 8v0. 6s.
'Vivid and singularly real.' — Scotsman.

J. H. Findlater. THE GREEN GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE.
By JANE H. FINDLATER. Fourth Edition. Croion 8vo. 6s.

'A powerful and vivid story.' — Standard.

' A beautiful story, sad and strange as truth itself.' — Vanity Fair.

' A very charming and pathetic tale.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

1 A singularly original, clever, and beautiful story.' — Guardian.

' Reveals to us a new writer of undoubted faculty and reserve force.' — Spectator.

'An exquisite idyll, delicate, affecting, and beautiful.' — Black and White.

J. H. Findlater. A DAUGHTER OF STRIFE. By JANE
HELEN FINDLATER. Crown 8vo. 6s.

'A story of strong human interest." — Scotsman.

' Her thought has solidity and maturity.' — Daily Mail.

Mary Findlater. OVER THE HILLS. By MARY FINDLATER.

Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
' A strong and fascinating piece of work.' — Scotsman.

' A charming romance, and full of incident. The book is fresh and strong." — Speaker.
' Will make the author's name loved in many a household.' — Literary World.
'A strong and wise book of deep insight and unflinching truth.' — Birmingham Post.

H. G. Wells. THE STOLEN BACILLUS, and other Stories.

By H. G. WELLS. Secottd. Edition. Crow n 8vo. 6s.
' They are the impressions of a very striking imagination, which, it would seem, has
a great deal within its reach.' — Saturday Review.

MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 29

H. G. Wells. THE PLATTNER STORY AND OTHERS. By H.

G. WELLS. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

' Weird and mysterious, they seem to hold the reader as by a magic spell." — Scotsman.
' No volume has appeared for a long time so likely to give equal pleasure to the
simplest reader and to the most fastidious critic.' — Academy.

Sara Jeanette Duncan. A VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION.

By SARA JEANETTE DUNCAN, Author of ' An American Girl in
London.' Illustrated. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

' Humour, pure and spontaneous and irresistible.' — Daily Mail.

'A most delightfully bright book. '— Daily Telegraph.

' Eminently amusing and entertaining.' — Outlook.

' The dialogue is full of wit.' — Globe.

' Laughter lurks in every page.' — Daily News.

E. F. Benson, DODO : A DETAIL OF THE DAY. By E. F.
BENSON. Sixteenth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

' A delightfully witty sketch of society.' — Spectator.
' A perpetual feast of epigram and paradox.'— ^Speaker.

E. F. Benson. THE RUBICON. By E. F. BENSON, Author of
' Dodo. ' Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

E. F. Benson. THE VINTAGE. By E. F. BENSON. Author
of 'Dodo.' Illustrated by G. P. JACOMB-HOOD. Third Edition.
Crown 8v0. 6s.

' An excellent piece of romantic literature ; a very graceful and moving story. We
are struck with the close observation of life in Greece.' — Saturday Review.

' Full of fire, earnestness, and beauty.' — The World.

'An original and vigorous historical romance.' — Morning Post.

Mrs. Oliphant. SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE. By Mrs.

OLIPHANT. Crown 8vo. 6s.
' Full of her own peculiar charm of style and character-painting.' — Pall Mo.ll Gazette.

Mrs. Oliphant. THE TWO MARYS. By Mrs. OLIPHANT.
Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

Mrs. Oliphant. THE LADY'S WALK. By Mrs. OLIPHANT.

Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
'A story of exquisite tenderness, of most delicate fancy.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

W. E. Norris. MATTHEW AUSTIN. By W. E. NORRIS, Author
of ' Mademoiselle de Mersac,' etc. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
'An intellectually satisfactory and morally bracing novel.' — Daily Telegraph.

W. E. Norris. HIS GRACE. By W. E. NORRIS. Third

Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

' Mr. Norris has drawn a really fine character in the Duke of Hurstbourne. —
A thenaum.

W. E. Norris. THE DESPOTIC LADY AND OTHERS.
By W. E. NORRIS. Crown 8vo. 6s.

1 A budget of good fiction of which no one will tire.1 — Scotsman.

30 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

W. E. Norris. CLARISSA FURIOSA. By W. E. NORRIS,

Crown Svo. 6s.

* As a story it is admirable, as a jeu desprit it is capital, as a lay sermon studded
with gems of wit and wisdom it is a model.' — The World.

W. Clark Russell. MY DANISH SWEETHEART. By W.
CLARK RUSSELL. Illustrated. Fourth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.

Robert Barr. IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS. By ROBERT

BARR. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.

' A book which has_ abundantly satisfied us by its capital humour." — Daily Chronicle.
' Mr. Barr has achieved a triumph.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

Robert Barr. THE MUTABLE MANY. By ROBERT BARR,
Author of ' In the Midst of Alarms,' ' A Woman Intervenes,' etc.
Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.
' Very much the best novel that Mr. Barr has yet given us. There is much insight

in it, and much excellent humour.' — Daily Chronicle.

'An excellent story. It contains several excellently studied characters.' — Glasgow
Herald.

J. Maclaren Cobban. THE KING OF ANDAMAN : A
Saviour of Society. By J. MACLAREN COBBAN. Crown Svo. 6s.

' An unquestionably interesting book. It contains one character, at least, who has
in him the root of immortality.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

J. Maclaren Cobban. WILT THOU HAVE THIS WOMAN ?
By J . M . COBBAN, Author of ' The King of Andaman. ' Crown Svo. 6s.

M. E. Francis. MISS ERIN. By M. E. FRANCIS, Author of

' In a Northern Village.' Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.
' A clever and charming story.' — Scotsman.
' Perfectly delightful.' — Daily Mail.
' An excellently fancied love tale.' — Athenieuiu.

Robert Hichens. BYE WAYS. By ROBERT HICHENS. Author

of ' Flames,' etc. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s.
' A very high artistic instinct and striking command of language raise Mr. Hichens'

work far above the ruck. ' — Pall Mall Gazette.
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Percy White. A PASSIONATE PILGRIM. By PERCY WHITE,

Author of ' Mr- Bailey-Martin. ' Crown Svo. 6s.

' A work whichit is not hyperbole to describe as of rare excellence.' — Pall MallGazette.
' The clever book of a shrewd and clever author.' — Athenamm,

W. Pett Ridge. SECRETARY TO BAYNE, M.P. By
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J. S. Fletcher. THE BUILDERS. By J. S. FLETCHER, Author
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MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 31

Andrew Balfour. BY STROKE OF SWORD. By ANDREW
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8vo. 6s.

' A banquet of good things.' — Academy.

1 A recital of thrilling interest, told with unflagging vigour." — Globe.
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J. B. Burton. IN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY. By J. BLOUN-
DELLE-BURTON.' Second Edition. CrownSvo. 6s.
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J. B. Burton. DENOUNCED. By J. BLOUNDELLE-BURTON.
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' A brave story — brave in deed, brave in word, brave in thought.' — Si. fames' s Gazette.
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J. B. Burton. ACROSS THE SALT SEAS. By J. BLOUN-
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' The very essence of the true romantic spirit.' — Truth.

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W. 0. Scully. THE WHITE HECATOMB. By W C.

SCULLY, Author of ' Kafir Stories.' Crown 8vo. 6s.
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W. C. Scully. BETWEEN SUN AND SAND. By W. C.

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inexpressible space and stillness swallow him up, and there is no world for him

but that immeasurable waste.' — Athen&vm.
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'One of the most enthralling tales we have read.' — World.

Victor Waite. CROSS TRAILS. By VICTOR WAITE. Illus-
trated. Crown 8vo. 6s.

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H. Morrah. A SERIOUS COMEDY. By HERBERT MORRAH.

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32 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

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L. B. Walford. SUCCESSORS TO THE TITLE. By Mrs.
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fully -witty.'— Pall Mall_ Gazette.
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J. A. Barry. IN THE GREAT DEEP. By J. A. BARRY.

Author of 'Steve Brown's Bunyip.' Crown 8vo. 6s.
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MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 33

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McCHESNEY.

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A HOME IN INVERESK. By T. L. PATON.

MISS ARMSTRONG'S AND OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES.

By JOHN DAVIDSON.

DR. CONGALTON'S LEGACY. By HENRY JOHNSTON.
TIME AND THE WOMAN. By RICHARD PRYCE.
THIS MAN'S DOMINION. By the Author of 'A High

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THE MOVING FINGER. By MARY GAUNT.

JACO TRELOAR. By J. H. PEARCE.

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A CUMBERER OF THE GROUND. By CONSTANCE SMITH.

THE SIN OF ANGELS. By EVELYN DICKINSON.

AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL. By X. L.

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THE QUIET MRS. FLEMING. By R. PRYCE.

DISENCHANTMENT. By F. MABEL ROBINSON.

34 MESSRS. METIIUEN'S LIST

THE SQUIRE OF WANDALES. By A. SHIELD.

A REVEREND GENTLEMAN. By J. M. COBBAN.

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ENGLISH TRADE AND FINANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH

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36 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST

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MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 37

MODERN CIVILIZATION IN SOME OF ITS ECONOMIC ASPECTS.

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