June 27.

“O’er the green mead the sporting virgins play;Their shining veils unbound, along the skies,Tost and re-tost, the ball incessant flies.”[194]

It is related of St. Cuthbert, who lived in the seventh century, that “whan he was viii yere old, as heplayed at the ballwith other chyldren, sodeynly there stode amonge them a fayre yonge chylde,” who admonished Cuthbert against “vayne playes,” and seeing Cuthbert take no heed, he fell down, wept sore and wrung his hands; “and than Cuthbert and the other chyldren lefte their playe and comforted hym; and than sodeynly he vanyshed away; and than he knewe veryly that it was an angel; and, fro than forth on, he lefte all such vayne playes, and never used them more.”[195]

Ball-playwas formerly played at Easter in churches, and statutes passed to regulate the size of the ball. The ceremony was as follows: the ball being received, the dean, or his representative, began an antiphone, or chant, suited to Easter-day; then taking the ball in his left hand, he commenced a dance to the tune, others of the clergy dancing round, hand in hand. At intervals the ball was handed or tossed by the dean to each of the choristers, the organ playing according to the dance and sport: at the conclusion of the anthem and dance, they went and took refreshment. It was the privilege of the lord, or his locum tenens, to throw the ball, and even the archbishop did it.[196]

The Frenchpalm-playconsisted in receiving the ball and driving it back again with the palm of the hand. Anciently they played with the naked hand, then with a glove, which, in some instances, was lined; afterwards they bound cords and tendons round their hands, to make the ball rebound more forcibly; and hence, says St. Foix, theracketderived its origin.

In the reign of Charles V.,palm-play, which, Strutt says, may properly enough be denominatedhand-tennis, orfives, was exceedingly fashionable in France, being played by the nobility for large sums of money; and when they had lost all that they had about them, they would sometimes pledge a part of their wearing apparel rather than give up the game. Theduke of Bourbon having lost sixty francs at palm-play with M. William de Lyon, and M. Guy de la Trimouille, and not having money enough to pay them, gave his girdle as a pledge for the remainder.

A damsel, named Margot, who resided at Paris in 1424, played athand-tenniswith the palm, and also with the back of her hand, better than any man; and what is most surprising, says St. Foix, at that time the game was played with the naked hand, or at least with a double glove.

Hand-tennisstill continues to be played, though under a different name, and probably a different modification of the game: it is now calledfives, which denomination, perhaps, it might receive from having five competitors in it, as the succeeding passage shews: When queen Elizabeth was entertained at Elvetham, in Hampshire, by the earl of Hertford, “after dinner about three o’clock, ten of his lordship’s servants, all Somersetshire men, in a square greene court before her majesties windowe, did hang up lines, squaring out the forme of a tennis court, and making a cross line in the middle; in this square they, being stripped out of their dublets, played five to five with hand-ball at bord and cord as they tearme it, to the great liking of her highness.”[197]

Fives-playingat Copenhagen-house, is recorded in a memoir of Cavanagh, the famousfives-player, by Mr. Hazlitt. It first appeared in theExaminerof February 17, 1819, and is subjoined, with the omission of a passage or two, not essentially connected with the subject.

——“And is old Double dead? See, see, he drew a good bow; and dead! he shot a fine shoot. John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head. Dead! he would have clapt in the clout at twelve score, and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man’s heart good to see.”

Died at his house in Burbage-street, St. Giles’s, John Cavanagh, the famous hand fives-player. When a person dies, who does any one thing better than any one else in the world, which so many others are trying to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that any one will now see the game of fives played in its perfection for many years to come—for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him.

It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a ball against a wall—there are things indeed that make more noise and do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches and answering them, making verses and blotting them, making money and throwing it away. But the game of fives is what no one despises who has ever played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best relaxation for the mind.

The Roman poet said that “Care mounted behind the horseman, and stuck to his skirts.” But this remark would not have applied to the fives-player. He who takes to playing at fives is twice young. He feels neither the past nor future “in the instant.” Debts, taxes, “domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further.” He has no other wish, no other thought, from the moment the game begins, but that of striking the ball, of placing it, ofmakingit! This Cavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the ball, there was an end of the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what to do. He saw the whole game, and played it; took instant advantage of his adversary’s weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle and from sudden thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal power and skill, quickness and judgment. He could either outwit his antagonist by finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, when he seemed preparing to send the ball with the full swing of his arm, he would, by a slight turn of his wrist, drop it within an inch of the line. In general, the ball came from his hand, as if from a racket, in a strait horizontal line; so that it was in vain to attempt to overtake or stop it. As it was said of a great orator, that he never was at a loss for a word, and for the properest word, so Cavanagh always could tell the degree of force necessary to be given to a ball, and the precise direction in which it should be sent. He didhis work with the greatest ease; never took more pains than was necessary, and while others were fagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if he had just entered the court.

His style of play was as remarkable as his power of execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away the game to show off an attitude, or try an experiment. He was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was more than any one else could even affect to do. He was the bestup-hillplayer in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it up through laziness or want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he nevervolleyed, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the ground, he never missed having them. There was not only no body equal, but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other player half the game, or beat them with his left hand. His service was tremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith together (two of the best players in England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin’s-street, and made seven and twenty aces following by services alone—a thing unheard of. He another time played Peru, who was considered a first-rate fives-player, a match of the best out of five games, and in the three first games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace.

Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession. He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon’s pleasure. A person accosted him, and asked him if he would have a game. So they agreed to play for half-a-crown a game, and a bottle of cider. The first game began—it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh won it. The next was the same. They played on and each game was hardly contested. “There,” said the unconscious fives-player, “there was a stroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never played better in my life, and yet I can’t win a game. I don’t know how it is.” However, they played on, Cavanagh winning every game, and the bye-standers drinking the cider and laughing all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh was only four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in, and said, “What are you here, Cavanagh!” The words were no sooner pronounced than the astonished player let the ball drop from his hand, and saying, “What! have I been breaking my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh?” refused to make another effort. “And yet, I give you my word,” said Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, “I played all the while with my clenched fist.”

He used frequently to play matches at Copenhagen-house for wagers and dinners. The wall against which they play is the same that supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall resounded louder than usual, the cooks exclaimed, “Those are the Irishman’s balls,” and the joints trembled on the spit!

Goldsmith consoled himself that there were places where he too was admired: and Cavanagh was the admiration of all the fives-courts where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when he played matches in the court in St. Martin’s-street, used to fill his gallery at half-a-crown a head, with amateurs and admirers of talent in whatever department it is shown. He could not have shown himself in any ground in England, but he would have been immediately surrounded with inquisitive gazers, trying to find out in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill lay.

He was a young fellow of sense, humour, and courage. He once had a quarrel with a waterman at Hungerford-stairs, and they say, “served him out” in great style. In a word, there are hundreds at this day, who cannot mention his name without admiration, as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the greatest excellence of which they have any notion)—and the noisy shout of the ring happily stood him instead of the unheard voice of posterity.

The only person who seems to have excelled as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his, was the late John Davies, the racket-player. It was remarked of him that he did not seem to follow the ball, but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a foot of wall, and he was sure to make the ball. The four best racket-players of that day were Jack Spines, Jem Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any one of these two hands a time, that is, half thegame, and each of these at their best, could give the best player now in London the same odds. Such are the gradations in all exertions of human skill and art. He once played four capital players together, and beat them. He was also a first-rate tennis-player, and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleet or King’s Bench, he would have stood against Powell, who was reckoned the best open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is at present the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him for a motto over his door,—“Who enters here, forgets himself, his country, and his friends.” And the best of it is, that by the calculation of the odds, none of the three are worth remembering!

Cavanagh died from the bursting of a blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for the last two or three years. This, he was often heard to say, he thought hard upon him. He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly carried off to the regret of all who knew him.

Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic, and could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday, the day on which he died. We have paid this willing tribute to his memory.

“Let no rude hand deface it,And his forlorn ‘Hic Jacet.’”

Fives-playfrom the year 1780 was a chief diversion at Copenhagen-house, particularly while Mrs. Harrington remained the landlady. She was careless of all customers, except they came in shoals to drink tea in the gardens and long room up stairs, or to play at fives, skittles, and Dutch pins, and swill and smoke. The house was afterwards kept by a person named Orchard, during whose time the London Corresponding Society, in 1795, held meetings in the adjacent fields.[198]In 1812, it was proposed by a company of projectors to bring sea-water through iron pipes “from the coast of Essex toCopenhagen fields,” and construct baths, which, according to the proposals, would yield twelve and a half per cent. on a capital of 200,000l.; but the subscription was not filled up, though the names of several eminent physicians sanctioned the undertaking, and the project failed.[199]

After Orchard’s tenancy, Copenhagen-house was kept by one Tooth, who encouraged brutal sports for the sake of the liquors he sold. On a Sunday morning the fives-ground was filled by bull-dogs and ruffians, who lounged and drank to intoxication; so many as fifty or sixty bull-dogs have been seen tied up to the benches at once, while their masters boozed and made match after match, and went out and fought their dogs before the house, amid the uproar of idlers attracted to the “bad eminence” by its infamy. This scene lasted throughout every Sunday forenoon, and then the mob dispersed, and the vicinity was annoyed by the yells of the dogs and their drunken masters on their return home. There was also a common field, east of the house, wherein bulls were baited; this was called the bull-field. These excesses, although committed at a distance from other habitations, occasioned so much disturbance, that the magistrates, after repeated warnings to Tooth, refused him a license in 1816, and granted it to Mr. Bath, the present landlord, who abated the nuisance by refusing to draw beer or afford refreshment to any one who had a bull-dog at his heels. The bull-field has since been possessed and occupied by a great cow-keeping landlord in the neighbourhood, though by what title he holds it is not known, certainly not by admission to it aswasteof the manor. This field is close to the mud cottage hereafter mentioned in Hagbush-lane, an ancient way to Highgate-hill.

Near the spot at which Hagbush-lane comes out into the Holloway-road to Highgate, the great lord Bacon met with the cause of his death, in a way not generally known. He was taking an airing in his coach, on a winter-day, with Dr. Witherborne, a Scotchman, physician to James I., and the snow laying on the ground. It occurred to lord Bacon that flesh might be preserved in snow as well as in salt; resolving to try the experiment, they alighted from the carriage, and going into a poor woman’s cottage at the foot of Highgate-hill, they bought a hen; his lordship helped to stuff the body with snow, which so chilled him that he fell ill, and could not return to his lodgings; he therefore went to the earl of Arundel’s house at Highgate, where a bed was warmed for him with a pan of coals;but the bed not having been lain in for about a year before was damp, and so increased his disorder that in two or three days he died.

It is not to defame so great a man, the greatest of modern times, but merely to illustrate his well-known attachment to particularfavourites, that a paper is here for the first time printed. It is a bill of fees to counsel, upon an order made in the court of chancery by lord Bacon, as keeper of the great seal, during the first year he held it. From this it appears that counsel had been retained to argue a demurrer, on the first day of Michaelmas term, 1617; and that the hearing stood over till the following Tuesday, before which day “one of my lord-keeper’sfavourites” was retained as other counsel, and, “beingone of my lord-keeper’sfavourites,” had a double fee for his services. The mention of so extraordinary a fact in a common bill of costs may perhaps justify its rather out-of-the-way introduction in this place. The paper from whence it is here printed, the editor of theEvery-Day Bookhas selected from among other old unpublished manuscripts in his possession, connected with the affairs of sir Philip Hoby, who was ambassador to the emperor of Germany from Henry VIII., and held other offices during that reign.

At Copenhagen-house, the eye and the stomach may be satisfied together. A walk to it through the fresh air creates an appetite, and the sight must be allowed some time to take in the surrounding prospect. A seat for an hour or two at the upstairs tea-room windows on a fine day is a luxury. As the clouds intercept the sun’s rays, and as the winds disperse or congregate the London atmosphere, the appearance of the objects it hovers over continually varies. Masses of building in that direction daily stretch out further and further across the fields, so that the metropolis may be imagined a moving billow coming up the heights to drown the country. Behind the house the

“Hedge-row elms, o’er hillocks green,”

is exquisitely beautiful, and the fine amphitheatre of wood, from Primrose-hill to Highgate-archway and Hornsey, seems built up to meet the skies. A stroll towards either of these places from Copenhagen-house, is pleasant beyond imagination. Many residents in London to whom walking would be eminently serviceable, cannot “take a walk” without a motive; to such is recommended the “delightful task” of endeavouring to trace Hagbush-lane.

Crossing the meadow west of Copenhagen-house, to the north-east corner, there is a mud built cottage in the widest part of Hagbush-lane, as it runs due north from the angle formed by its eastern direction. It stands on the site of one still more rude, at which until destroyed, labouring men and humble wayfarers, attracted by the sequestered and rural beauties of the lane, stopped to recreate. It was just such a scene as Morland would have coveted to sketch, and therefore Mr. Fussell with “an eye for the picturesque,” and with a taste akin to Morland’s, made adrawingof it while it was standing, and placed it on the wood whereon it is engraven, to adorn thenext page.

Cottage formerly in Hagbush-lane.“Why this cottage, sir, not three miles from London, is as secluded as if it were in the weald of Kent.”

This cottage stands no longer: its history is in the “simple annals of the poor.” About seven years ago, an aged and almost decayed labouring man, a native of Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, with his wife and child, lay out every night upon the road side of Hagbush-lane, under what of bough and branch they could creep for shelter, till “winter’s cold” came on, and then he erected this “mud edifice.” He had worked for some great land-holders and owners in Islington, and still jobbed about. Like them, he was, to this extent of building, a speculator; and to eke out his insufficient means, he profited, in his humble abode, by the sale of small beer to stragglers and rustic wayfarers. His cottage stood between the lands of two rich men; not upon the land of either, but partly on the disused road, and partly on the waste of the manor. Deeming him by no means a respectable neighbour for their cattle, they “warned him off;” he, not choosing to be houseless, nor conceiving that their domains could be injured by his little enclosure between the banks of the road, refused to accept this notice, and he remained. For this offence, one of them caused his labourers to level the miserable dwelling to the earth, and the “houseless child of want,” was compelled by this wanton act to apply for his family and himself to be taken into the workhouse. His application was refused, but he received advice to build again, with information that his disturber was not justified in disturbing him. In vain he pleaded incompetent power to resist; the workhouse was shut against him, and he began to build another hut. He had proceeded so far as to keep off the weather in one direction, when wealth again made war upon poverty, and while away from his wifeand child, his scarcely half raised hut was pulled down during a heavy rain, and his wife and child left in the lane shelterless. A second application for a home in the workhouse was rejected, with still stronger assurances that he had been illegally disturbed, and with renewed advice to build again. The old man has built for the third time; and on the site of the cottage represented in the engraving, erected another, wherein he dwells, and sells his small beer to people who choose to sit and drink it on the turf seat against the wall of his cottage; it is chiefly in request, however, among the brickmakers in the neighbourhood, and the labourers on the new road, cutting across Hagbush-lane from Holloway to the Kentish-town road, which will ultimately connect the Regent’s-park and the western suburb, with the eastern extremity of this immensely growing metropolis. Though immediately contiguous to Mr. Bath, the landlord of “Copenhagen-house,” he has no way assisted in obstructing this poor creature’s endeavour to get a morsel of bread. For the present he remains unmolested in his almost sequestered nook, and the place and himself are worth seeing, for they are perhaps the nearest specimens to London, of the old country labourer and his dwelling.

From the many intelligent persons a stroller may meet among the thirty thousand inhabitants of Islington, on his way along Hagbush-lane, he will perhaps not find one to answer a question that will occur to him during his walk. “Why is this place called Hagbush-lane?” Before giving satisfaction here to the inquirer, he is informed that, if a Londoner, Hagbush-lane is, or ought to be, to him, the most interesting way that he can find to walk in; and presuming him to be influenced by the feelings and motives that actuate his fellow-citizens to the improvement and adornment of their city, by the making of anewnorth road, he is informed that Hagbush-lane, though now wholly disused, and in many parts destroyed, was theold, or rather theoldestnorth road, or ancient bridle-way to and from London, and the northern parts of the kingdom.

Now for its name—Hagbush-lane.Hagis the old Saxon wordhæg, which became corrupted intohawgh, and afterwards intohaw, and is the name for the berry of the hawthorn; also the Saxon wordhagasignified a hedge or any enclosure.Hagafterwards signified a bramble, and hence, for instance, the blackberry-bush, or any other bramble, would be properly denominated ahag. Hagbush-lane, therefore, may be taken to signify either Hawthornbush-lane, Bramble-lane, or Hedgebush-lane; more probably the latter. Within recent recollection, Whitcomb-street, near Charing-cross, was calledHedge-lane.

Supposing the reader to proceed from the old man’s mud-cottage in a northerly direction, he will find that the widest part of Hagbush-lane reaches, from that spot, to the road now cutting from Holloway. Crossing immediately over the road, he comes again into the lane, which he will there find so narrow as only to admit convenient passage to a man on horseback. This was the general width of the road throughout, and the usual width of all the English roads made in ancient times. They did not travel in carriages, or carry their goods in carts, as we do, but rode on horseback, and conveyed their wares or merchandise in pack-saddles or packages on horses’ backs. They likewise conveyed their money in the same way. In an objection raised in the reign of Elizabeth to a clause in the Hue and Cry bill, then passing through parliament, it was urged, regarding some travellers who had been robbed in open day within the hundred of Beyntesh, in the county of Berks, that “they were clothiers, and yet travailed not withe the great trope of clothiers; they also carried their money openlye in wallets upon their saddles.”[200]The customary width of their roads was either four feet or eight feet. Some parts of Hagbush-lane are much lower than the meadows on each side; and this defect is common to parts of every ancient way, as might be exemplified, were it necessary, with reasons founded on their ignorance of every essential connected with the formation, and perhaps the use, of a road.

It is not intended to point out the tortuous directions of Hagbush-lane; for the chief object of this notice is to excite the reader to one of the pleasantest walks he can imagine, and to tax his ingenuity to the discovery of the route the road takes. This, theancientnorth road, comes into thepresentnorth road, in Upper Holloway, at the foot of Highgate-hill, andwent in that direction to Hornsey. From the mud-cottage towards London, it proceeded between Paradise-house, the residence of Mr. Greig, the engraver, and the Adam and Eve public-house, in the Holloway back-road, and by circuitous windings approached London, at the distance of a few feet on the eastern side of the City Arms public-house, in the City-road, and continued towards Old-street, St. Luke’s. It no where communicated with the back-road, leading from Battle-bridge to the top of Highgate-hill, called Maiden-lane.

Hagbush-lane is well known to every botanizing perambulator on the west side of London. The wild onion, clowns-wound-wort, wake-robin, and abundance of other simples, lovely in their form, and of high medicinal repute in our old herbals and receipt-books, take root, and seed and flower here in great variety. How long beneath the tall elms and pollard oaks, and the luxuriant beauties on the banks, the infirm may be suffered to seek health, and the healthy to recreate, who shall say? Spoilers are abroad.

ThroughHagbush-lane every man has a right to ride and walk;inHagbush-lane no one man has even a shadow of right to an inch as private property. It is a public road, and public property. The trees, as well as the road, are public property; and the very form of the road is public property. Yet bargains and sales have been made, and are said to be now making, under which the trees are cut down and sold, and the public road thrown, bit by bit, into private fields as pasture. Under no conveyance or admission to land by any proprietor, whether freeholder or lord of a manor, can any person legally dispossess the public of a single foot of Hagbush-lane, or obstruct the passage of any individual through it. All the people of London, and indeed all the people of England, have a right in this road as a common highway. Hitherto, among the inhabitants of Islington, many of whom are opulent, and all of whom are the local guardians of the public rights in this road, not one has been found with sufficient public virtue, or rather with enough of common manly spirit, to compel the restoration of public plunder, and in his own defence, and on the behalf of the public, arrest thehighwayrobber.

Building, or what may more properly be termed the tumbling up of tumbledown houses, to the north of London, is so rapidly increasing, that in a year or two there will scarcely be a green spot for the resort of the inhabitants. Against covering of private ground in this way, there is no resistance; but against its evil consequences to health, some remedy should be provided by the setting apart of open spaces for the exercise of walking in the fresh air. The preservation of Hagbush-lane therefore is, in this point of view, an object of public importance. Where it has not been thrown into private fields, from whence, however, it is recoverable, it is one of the loveliest of our green lanes; and though persons from the country smile at Londoners when they talk of being “rural” at the distance of a few miles from town, a countryman would find it difficult to name any lane in his own county, more sequestered or of greater beauty.

LINESWRITTEN IN HAGBUSH-LANE.A scene like this,Would woo the care-worn wiseTo moralize,And courting lovers court to tell their bliss.Had I a cottage hereI’d be content; for whereI have my booksI have old friends,Whose cheering looksMake me amends.For coldnesses in men: and so,With them departed long ago,And with wild-flowers and treesAnd with the living breeze,And with the “still small voice”Within, I would rejoice,And converse hold, while breathHeld me, and then—come Death!*

LINES

WRITTEN IN HAGBUSH-LANE.

A scene like this,Would woo the care-worn wiseTo moralize,And courting lovers court to tell their bliss.Had I a cottage hereI’d be content; for whereI have my booksI have old friends,Whose cheering looksMake me amends.For coldnesses in men: and so,With them departed long ago,And with wild-flowers and treesAnd with the living breeze,And with the “still small voice”Within, I would rejoice,And converse hold, while breathHeld me, and then—come Death!

A scene like this,Would woo the care-worn wiseTo moralize,And courting lovers court to tell their bliss.

Had I a cottage hereI’d be content; for whereI have my booksI have old friends,Whose cheering looksMake me amends.

For coldnesses in men: and so,With them departed long ago,And with wild-flowers and treesAnd with the living breeze,And with the “still small voice”Within, I would rejoice,And converse hold, while breathHeld me, and then—come Death!

Blue Sowthistle.Sonchus Cœruleus.Dedicated toB. Raingarda.

[189]Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.[190]To Mr. Simes, bailiff of the manor, I am indebted for a sight of this rental.[191]Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.[192]Mr. Utterson’s Preface to his edition of Lord Berners’ Froissart, 2 vols. 4to.[193]Mr. Fosbroke’s Dict. of Antiquities.[194]Pope’s Homer.[195]Golden Legend.[196]Mr. Fosbroke’s Dict. of Antiquities.[197]Strutt’s sports, from Mr. Nichol’s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, &c.[198]Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.[199]Ibid.[200]Hoby MSS.

[189]Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.

[190]To Mr. Simes, bailiff of the manor, I am indebted for a sight of this rental.

[191]Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.

[192]Mr. Utterson’s Preface to his edition of Lord Berners’ Froissart, 2 vols. 4to.

[193]Mr. Fosbroke’s Dict. of Antiquities.

[194]Pope’s Homer.

[195]Golden Legend.

[196]Mr. Fosbroke’s Dict. of Antiquities.

[197]Strutt’s sports, from Mr. Nichol’s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, &c.

[198]Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.

[199]Ibid.

[200]Hoby MSS.

St. LadislasI., king of Hungary,A. D.1095.St. John, of Moutier, 6th Cent.

Mr. Howard, in his work on the weather, is of opinion, that farmers and others, who are particularly interested in being acquainted with the variations in the weather, derive considerable aid from the use of the barometer. He says, “in fact, much less of valuable fodder is spoiled by wet now than in the days of our forefathers. But there is yet room for improvement in the knowledge of our farmers on the subject of the atmosphere. It must be a subject of great satisfaction and confidence to the husbandman, to know, at the beginning of a summer, by the certain evidence of meteorological results on record, that the season, in the ordinary course of things, may be expected to be a dry and warm one; or to find, in a certain period of it, that the average quantity of rain to be expected for the month has already fallen. On the other hand, when there is reason, from the same source of information, to expect much rain, the man who has courage to begin his operations under an unfavourable sky, but with good ground to conclude, from the state of his instruments and his collateral knowledge, that a fair interval is approaching, may often be profiting by his observations; while his cautious neighbour, who waited for the weather to ‘settle,’ may find that he has let the opportunity go by. This superiority, however, is attainable by a very moderate share of application to the subject; and by the keeping of a plain diary of the barometer and raingauge with the hygrometer and the vane under his daily notice.”

Perforated St. John’s Wort.Hypericum perforatum.Dedicated toSt. John.

St. Irenæus, Bp. of Lyons,A. D.202.St. LeoII., PopeA. D.683.Sts. Plutarchand others, Martyrs, aboutA. D.202.Sts. PotamianaandBasilides, Martyrs.

1797. George Keate, F.R.S., died, aged sixty-seven. He was born at Trowbridge in Wilts, educated at Kingston school, called to the bar, abandoned the profession of the law, amused himself with his pen, and wrote several works. His chief production is the account of “Capt. Wilson’s Voyage to the Pelew Islands;” his “Sketches from Nature,” written in the manner of Sterne, are pleasing and popular.

Blue Cornflower.Centaurea Cyanus.Dedicated toSt. Irenæus.

Now the rosy- (and lazy-) fingered Aurora, issuing from her saffron house, calls up the moist vapours to surround her, and goes veiled with them as long as she can; till Phœbus, coming forth in his power, looks every thing out of the sky, and holds sharp uninterrupted empire from his throne of beams. Now the mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more slowly, and resorts oftener to thebeer. Now the carter sleeps a-top of his load of hay, or plods with double slouch of shoulder, looking out with eyes winking under his shading hat, and with a hitch upward of one side of his mouth. Now the little girl at her grandmother’s cottage-door watches the coaches that go by, with her hand held up over her sunny forehead. Now labourers look well, resting in their white shirts at the doors of rural alehouses. Now an elm is fine there, with a seat under it; and horses drink out of the trough, stretching their yearning necks with loosened collars; and the traveller calls for his glass of ale, having been without one for more than ten minutes; and his horse stands wincing at the flies, giving sharp shivers of his skin, and moving to and fro his ineffectual docked tail; and now Miss Betty Wilson, the host’s daughter, comes streaming forth in a flowered gown and earrings, carrying with four of her beautiful fingers the foaming glass, for which, after the traveller has drank it, she receives with an indifferent eye, looking another way, the lawful two-pence: that is to say, unless the traveller, nodding his ruddy face, pays some gallant compliment to her before he drinks, such as “I’d rather kiss you, my dear, than the tumbler,”—or “I’ll wait for you, my love, if you’ll marry me;” upon which, if the man is good-looking and the lady in good-humour, she smiles and bites her lips, and says “Ah—men can talk fast enough;” upon which the old stage-coachman, who is buckling something near her, before he sets off, says in a hoarse voice, “So can women too for that matter,” and John Boots grins through his ragged red locks, and doats on the repartee all the day after. Now grasshoppers “fry,” as Dryden says. Now cattle stand in water, and ducks are envied. Now boots and shoes, and trees by the road side, are thick with dust; and dogs rolling in it, after issuing out of the water, into which they have been thrown to fetch sticks, come scattering horror among the legs of the spectators. Now a fellow who finds he has three miles further to go in a pair of tight shoes, is in a pretty situation. Now rooms with the sun upon them become intolerable; and the apothecary’s apprentice, with a bitterness beyond aloes, thinks of the pond he used to bathe in at school. Now men with powdered heads (especially if thick) envy those that are unpowdered, and stop to wipe them up hill, with countenances that seem to expostulate with destiny. Now boys assemble round the village pump with a ladle to it, and delight to make a forbidden splash and get wet through the shoes. Now also they make suckers of leather, and bathe all day long in rivers and ponds, and follow the fish into their cool corners, and say millions of “myeyes!” at “tittlebats.” Now the bee, as he hums along, seems to be talking heavily of the heat. Now doors and brick-walls are burning to the hand; and a walled lane, with dust and broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a thing not to be thought of. Now a green lane, on the contrary, thick-set with hedge-row elms, and having the noise of a brook “rumbling in pebble-stone,” is one of the pleasantest things in the world. Now youths and damsels walk through hay-fields by chance; and the latter say, “ha’ done then, William;” and the overseer in the next field calls out to “let thic thear hay thear bide;” and the girls persist, merely to plague “such a frumpish old fellow.”

Now, in town, gossips talk more than ever to one another, in rooms, in doorways, and out of windows, always beginning the conversation with saying that the heat is overpowering. Now blinds are let down, and doors thrown open, and flannel waistcoats left off, and cold meat preferred to hot, and wonder expressed why tea continues so refreshing, and people delight to sliver lettuces into bowls, and apprentices water doorways with tin-canisters that lay several atoms of dust. Now the water-cart, jumbling along the middle of the streets, and jolting the showers out of its box of water, really does something. Now boys delight to have a waterpipe let out, and set it bubbling away in a tall and frothy volume. Now fruiterers’ shops and dairies look pleasant, and ices are the only things to those who can get them. Now ladies loiter in baths; and people make presents of flowers; and wine is put into ice; and the after-dinner lounger recreates his head with applications of perfumed water out of long-necked bottles. Now the lounger, who cannot resist riding his new horse, feels his boots burn him. Now buckskins are not the lawn of Cos. Now jockies, walking in great coats to lose flesh, curse inwardly. Now five fat people in a stage coach, hate the sixth fat one who is coming in, and think he has no right to be so large. Now clerks inoffices do nothing, but drink soda-water and spruce-beer, and read the newspaper. Now the old clothes-man drops his solitary cry more deeply into the areas on the hot and forsaken side of the street; and bakers look vicious; and cooks are aggravated: and the steam of a tavern kitchen catches hold of one like the breath of Tartarus. Now delicate skins are beset with gnats; and boys make their sleeping companion start up, with playing a burning-glass on his hand; and blacksmiths are super-carbonated; and coblers in their stalls almost feel a wish to be transplanted; and butter is too easy to spread; and the dragoons wonder whether the Romans liked their helmets; and old ladies, with their lappets unpinned, walk along in a state of dilapidation; and the servant-maids are afraid they look vulgarly hot; and the author, who has a plate of strawberries brought him, finds that he has come to the end of his writing.—Indicator.

In the “Miscellanies,” published by the Spalding Society of Antiquaries there is a poem of high feeling and strong expression against “man’s cruelty to man:”—

Why should mans high aspiring mindBurn in him, with so proud a breath;When all his haughty views can findIn this world, yields to death;The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,The rich, the poor, and great, and small,Are each, but worms anatomys,To strew, his quiet hall.Power, may make many earthly gods,Where gold, and bribery’s guilt, prevails;But death’s, unwelcome honest odds,Kicks oer, the unequal scales.The flatter’d great, may clamours raiseOf Power,—and, their own weakness hide,But death, shall find unlooked for waysTo end the Farce of pride.—An arrow, hurtel’d ere so highFrom e’en a giant’s sinewy strength,In time’s untraced eternity,Goes, but a pigmy length—Nay, whirring from the tortured string,With all its pomp, of hurried flight,Tis, by the Skylarks little wing,Outmeasured, in its height.Just so, mans boasted strength, and power,Shall fade, before deaths lightest stroke;Laid lower, than the meanest flower—Whose pride, oertopt the oak.And he, who like a blighting blast,Dispeopled worlds, with wars alarms,Shall be himself destroyed at last,By poor, despised worms.Tyrants in vain, their powers secure.And awe slaves’ murmurs, with a frown;But unawed death, at last is sure,To sap the Babels down—A stone thrown upward, to the skye,Will quickly meet, the ground agen:So men-gods, of earths vanity,Shall drop at last, to men;And power, and pomp, their all resignBlood purchased Thrones, and banquet Halls.Fate, waits to sack ambitions shrineAs bare, as prison walls,Where, the poor suffering wretch bows down,To laws, a lawless power hath past;—And pride, and power, and King, and Clown,Shall be death’s slaves at last.Time, the prime minister of death,There’s nought, can bribe his honest willHe, stops the richest Tyrants breath,And lays, his mischief still:Each wicked scheme for power, all stops,With grandeurs false, and mock display,As Eve’s shades, from high mountain tops.Fade with the rest, away.Death levels all things, in his march,Nought, can resist his mighty strength;The Pallace proud,—triumphal arch,Shall mete, their shadows length:The rich, the poor, one common bed,Shall find, in the unhonoured grave,Where weeds shall crown alike, the head,Of Tyrant, and of Slave.

Power, may make many earthly gods,Where gold, and bribery’s guilt, prevails;But death’s, unwelcome honest odds,Kicks oer, the unequal scales.The flatter’d great, may clamours raiseOf Power,—and, their own weakness hide,But death, shall find unlooked for waysTo end the Farce of pride.—

An arrow, hurtel’d ere so highFrom e’en a giant’s sinewy strength,In time’s untraced eternity,Goes, but a pigmy length—Nay, whirring from the tortured string,With all its pomp, of hurried flight,Tis, by the Skylarks little wing,Outmeasured, in its height.

Just so, mans boasted strength, and power,Shall fade, before deaths lightest stroke;Laid lower, than the meanest flower—Whose pride, oertopt the oak.And he, who like a blighting blast,Dispeopled worlds, with wars alarms,Shall be himself destroyed at last,By poor, despised worms.

Tyrants in vain, their powers secure.And awe slaves’ murmurs, with a frown;But unawed death, at last is sure,To sap the Babels down—A stone thrown upward, to the skye,Will quickly meet, the ground agen:So men-gods, of earths vanity,Shall drop at last, to men;

And power, and pomp, their all resignBlood purchased Thrones, and banquet Halls.Fate, waits to sack ambitions shrineAs bare, as prison walls,Where, the poor suffering wretch bows down,To laws, a lawless power hath past;—And pride, and power, and King, and Clown,Shall be death’s slaves at last.

Time, the prime minister of death,There’s nought, can bribe his honest willHe, stops the richest Tyrants breath,And lays, his mischief still:Each wicked scheme for power, all stops,With grandeurs false, and mock display,As Eve’s shades, from high mountain tops.Fade with the rest, away.

Death levels all things, in his march,Nought, can resist his mighty strength;The Pallace proud,—triumphal arch,Shall mete, their shadows length:The rich, the poor, one common bed,Shall find, in the unhonoured grave,Where weeds shall crown alike, the head,Of Tyrant, and of Slave.

Marvel.

Holiday at the Public Offices, except Excise, Stamp, and Custom.

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