CHAPTER XIV.SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY.

Then to the wealthy you will see deniedComforts and joys that with the poor abide;There are who labour through the year, and yetNo more have gained than—not to be in debt;Who still maintain the same laborious course,Yet pleasure hails them from some favourite source;And health, amusement, children, wife, or friend,With life’s dull views their consolations blend.

But if the bias of the mind does not lie in the man’s own art:

Nor these alone possess the lenient powerOf soothing life in the desponding hour;Some favourite studies, some delightful careThe mind with trouble and distresses share;And by a coin, a flower, a verse, a boat,The stagnant spirits have been set afloat;They pleased at first, and then the habit grew,Till the fond heart no higher pleasure knew.Oft have I smiled the happy pride to seeOf humble tradesmen in their evening glee;When of some pleasing,fancied good possessed,Each grew alert, was busy, and was blest.Whether thecall-bird yield the hours delight,Or magnified in microscope, the mite;Or whether tumblers, croppers, carriers seizeThe gentle mind, they rule it, and they please.

Yes, it is in these and many other occupations, dictated by individual organization, or taste, that numbers of the working class find a world of happiness. Some are amateurs of one kind, some of another; some are rearers of fancy pigeons, some of fancy dogs; others are enthusiasts in music, singing, bell-ringing, and make a noise in the world from belfries, organ-lofts, orchestras, at harmonic meetings, and in rural festivals. Some spend a whole life in seeking the perpetual motion; some in devising improvements in steam-engines, and other machines. Whether they deal with realities, or with chimeras, as too often they do, the busy spirit of humanity will be at work in the breasts of the operative class. In the country it assumes many a shape that is beautiful, and others that are picturesque. Some are incorrigible poachers, from the love of the pursuit of wild creatures, of strolling about in solitary glens and woods, of night-watching, and adventure. Others have an inextinguishable love of a gun,—these men all their lives arenoted for this propensity. They have a certain keeper-like appearance. They affect fustian or velveteen jackets, with wide skirts, and huge pockets; gaiters, and strong shoes. They have a lounging, yet unauthorized air, which betrays them to be not the true men of office. They have always some excuse for carrying a gun; they are stuffers of curious birds and animals; or they procure them for one who is; and it is alike amazing how they escape the penalties of the law for trespasses and destruction of game, and yet bring home such owls, squirrels, herons, sea-birds, curlews, plovers, martins, and fillimarts, shrikes, waxen-chatterers, and foxes, and young fawns, as are not to be obtained except by a traversing, daily and nightly, of parks, preserves, woods, and chases, as must be perilous, and, indeed, impracticable to any other men. Noblemen and gentlemen generally find it desirable in the end, to instal this particular variety of the human species in all the honours and freedom of keepership. Happy is the man of this stamp who reaches America. That is the land for him! A land of woods, of herds of deer, and turkeys, of bears and buffaloes. There he may roam the paradise of back settlements, and satiate his soul with hunting and shooting; with lying in wait, and with wild adventure, without fear of game-laws, and the obstructions of monopoly.

Others, again, have an indomitable passion for hunting otters, badgers, polecats, rats, hedgehogs, and similar tenants of out-of-the-way dales, river-sides, thickets and plantations; and have perpetually at their heels, terriers of every kind, spaniels, and lurchers. These are generally well entitled to be classed under the head of ragamuffins; and are generally more than half poachers, being as ready to snap up a leveret, rabbit, or young wild duck, as they are to destroy a stoat. But the passion for their peculiar fancy is inextinguishable, and not to be put out by a whole bench of magistrates, or a voyage to New South Wales, for there the dogs would instinctively muster at their heels, and they would be after the kangaroos at the very first opportunity.

A congener of these, and yet of a somewhat more civilized grade, is the bird-catcher and trainer. Beware of your nightingales that come in April from some sunny land, and shew you the preference of settling for the season in your shrubbery, or coppice. If this man be your neighbour, the glorious song of midnight willsoon experience a mysterious hush. You hear it, and proclaim the news to your family. By day you catch its not-to-be-mistaken notes amongst the budding trees, as you pass in and out of your grounds. “There is the very same bird come to its favourite spot,” you say, to delight your wife, or sister, or children, who clap their hands, and run to carry the news into the housekeeper’s room. “There is the fine old nightingale again in the shrubbery!” At evening on are put bonnets and hats, shawls and cloaks, and forth sallies the happy domestic group. The air is chill, for it is but April; yet the moon is rising in her sweet pensiveness, and the freshness of the air and the budding boughs are about you. Down the narrow path you go, where the primroses gleam faintly from amongst the mossy stems of the shrubbery trees. Past the rustic summer-house you go, down by the close turf of the shadowy lawn—near to the brook, that flows so subduedly in its singing murmurs that it cannot drown a single bird-note. You have reached the little wooden bridge—and hark!—it is there sure enough! Yes, to-night, and the next, and perhaps the next, it is there,—and then it is gone. You wonder why. Can it have deserted its favourite haunt? Can it be the stormy weather? The east wind must have silenced it? No! it is moping in the cage of that villanous bird-catcher, who is intending to aggravate his crime of kidnapping this prince of air-minstrels, by fetching the blackbird which sings on the top of your ash, and the thrush that flings back his notes from the distant elm. Beware of your woodlarks, and your bullfinches, if this man be your neighbour. He has an ear which recognises in a moment the master singer, and he has a dozen arts to put in practice against his liberty. In his little house is a collection of prisoners that would make any reasonable person’s heart ache. He has blackbirds that are studying artificial tunes,—marches and waltzes—how much more apt one would think them to learn dirges and laments! But he has even poor Robin Redbreast put to school under the nightingale—bullfinches that are blinded, and then made to listen in doleful obedience to his flute or pipe. They are to be piping bullfinches of great note and value. But let us leave the melodious melancholy of his prison-house, and when we have lightened our hearts in the open air, we may muster up charity enough to do the man justice. He has, after all, nolack of kindness in his heart. He takes them captive as the Christians take negroes—to civilize them, and make them happier! His soul is in all that he does. I one day met an old man and woman in a wood. As I drew near them I heard a strange chirping of young birds. It was a fine summer evening. “How is this,” I said; “it is time for the birds to be at roost, and yet I hear young ones chirping?” “0!” said the old man—“here they are;” opening his basket, and shewing a nest full of young canaries. “It was a fine evening,” said he, “and I and my old woman thought a walk would do us good, and we thought it would do the birds good too.”

The delights of angling seize upon another class. People that have not been inoculated with the true spirit, may wonder at the infatuation of anglers—but true anglers leave them very contentedly to their wondering, and follow their diversion with a keen delight. Many old men there are of this class, that have in them a world of science,— not science of the book, or of regular tuition, but the science of actual experience. Science that lives, and will die with them; except it be dropped out piecemeal, and with the gravity becoming its importance, to some young neophyte, who has won their good graces by his devotion to their beloved craft. All the mysteries of times and seasons, of baits, flies of every shape and hue; worms, gentles, beetles, compositions, or substances found by proof to possess singular charms. These are a possession which they hold with pride, and do not hold in vain. After a close day in the shop or factory, what a luxury is a fine summer evening to one of these men, following some rapid stream, or seated on a green bank, deep in grass and flowers, pulling out the spotted trout, or resolutely, but subtilely, bringing some huge pike or fair grayling from his lurking place beneath the broad stump and spreading boughs of the alder. Or a day, a summer’s day, to such a man, by the Dove, or the Wye, amid the pleasant Derbyshire hills; by Yorkshire or Northumbrian stream; by Trent or Tweed; or the banks of Yarrow; by Teith, or Leven, with the glorious hills and heaths of Scotland round him! Why, such a day to such a man, has in it a life and spirit of enjoyment to which the feelings of cities and palaces are dim. The heart of such a man,—the power and passion of deep felicity that come breathing from mountains andmoorlands; from clouds that sail above, and storms blustering and growling in the wind; from all the mighty magnificence, the solitude and antiquity of nature upon him—Ebenezer Elliott only can unfold. The weight of the poor man’s life—the cares of poverty—the striving of huge cities, visit him as he sits by the beautiful stream—beautiful as a dream of eternity, and translucent as the everlasting canopy of heaven above him;—they come—but he casts them off for the time, with the power of one who feels himself strong in the kindred spirit of all things around; strong in knowledge that he is a man; an immortal—a child and pupil in the world-school of the Almighty. For that day he is more than a king—he has the heart of humanity and the faith and spirit of a saint. It is not the rod and line that floats before him—it is not the flowing water, or the captured prey, that he perceives in those moments of admission to the heart of nature, so much as the law of the testimony of love and goodness written on every thing around him with the pencil of Divine beauty. He is no longer the wearied and oppressed—the trodden and despised—walking in thread-bare garments, amid men who scarcely deign to look upon him as a brother man,—but he is reassured and recognised to himself in his own soul as one of those puzzling, aspiring and mysterious existences for whom all this splendid world was built, and for whom eternity opens its expecting gates. These are magnificent speculations for a poor angling weaver or carpenter; but Ebenezer Elliott can tell us, that they are his legitimate thoughts when he can break for an instant the bonds of this toiling age, and escape to the open fields. Let us leave him dipping his line into the waters of refreshing thought, and return to the cottage garden. There we shall see another form of that beneficently varied taste which adds so much to the poor man’s pleasures.

We may look into many a cottage garden, and find it a little world of beauty and pleasant cares. Here one poor man is a lover of bees. He has stored his little sheltered garden with all sorts of flowers that bees love, or that come out early in the year for them. On the sunny side of his little domain you see his rustic shed with its row of hives; all neatly thatched, and all sending out their busy stream of honey-gatherers. There is no man of any reflection but must feel what a source of enjoyment that row of hives hasbeen. What cares and contrivances have contributed to extend that row from the solitary swarm, purchased perhaps in the days of deeper poverty than now presses upon him. What summer-noon watchings there have been for the flight of new swarms; what hurry and ringing of pans and fire-shovels to charm them down; what recapturings and bringing back to the ancient bench to form a new family in the little bee-state.

There is one circumstance, however, connected with the keeping of bees, which spoils the poetry of it; and that is the brimstone pit of destruction that awaits them. But there is many a poor man that loves his bees with a strong affection, and loathes to do them that grievous wrong. He levies tribute, but does not destroy. I once saw a fine instance of this feeling. A poor man, a lover and keeper of bees, heard by chance that a swarm had taken up their abode in the roof of Caverswall Nunnery in Staffordshire; and that the abbess was intending to have them destroyed. His residence was at a distance of seven miles from the Abbey, but he instantly put his favourite volume of “Huber on Bees” in his pocket, and set out. Here, being admitted to the presence of the abbess, he told his errand, and begged that she would not commit so barbarous and inhospitable an act,—that providence seemed to have directed those wonderful little creatures thither as it were, for the certainty of protection from the hearts of Christian ladies. At least he begged that she would read that book before she put her threat into execution. He soon afterwards came to me with a face of great delight, saying—“The abbess has read Huber, and she won’t destroy the bees!”

Many cottagers, again, are most zealous and successful florists.[29]This is a taste full of beauty, and possessing a high charm. To select rich and suitable soils; to sow and plant; to nurse and shade, and water; to watch the growth and expansion of flowers of great promise;—it is sufficient for the enjoyment of one spirit.The number of flowers now cultivated by florists is much increased to what it was. They had only the polyanthus, auricula, hyacinth, carnation, tulip, and ranunculus; but the splendid dahlia, and the pansy now engross much of their attention and admiration. Others, again, are collectors and admirers of insects; and as education extends, natural history will, no doubt, receive many zealous adherents from the operative ranks. Crabbe has described both these tastes as united in one man.

There is my friend, the weaver; strong desiresReign in his breast; ’tis beauty he admires.See! to the shady grove he wings his way,And feels in hope the raptures of the day.Eager he looks; and soon to his glad eyes,From the sweet bower, by nature formed, ariseBright troops of virgin-moths, and new-born butterflies;Who broke that morning from their half-year’s sleep,To fly o’er flowers where they were wont to creep.Above the sovereign oak, a sovereign skims,Thepurple Emperor, strong in wing and limbs:There fairCamillatakes her flight serene,Adonisblue, andPaphia, silver queen:With every filmy fly from mead or bower,And hungrySphynx, who threads the honeyed flower;She o’er the larkspurs’ bed, where sweets abound,Views every bell, and hums the approving sound:Poised on her busy plumes, with feelings nice,She draws from every flower, nor tries a floret twice.He fears no bailiff’s wrath, no baron’s blame,His is untaxed, and undisputed game;Nor less the place of curious plants he knows;He both hisFloraand hisFaunashows.For him is blooming in its rich array,The glorious flower which bore the palm away.In vain a rival tried his utmost art,His was the prize, and joy o’erflowed his heart.“This, this is beauty! cast, I pray, your eyesOn this my glory! see the grace—the size!Was ever stem so tall, so stout, so strong,Exact in breadth, in just proportion long;These brilliant hues are all distinct and clean,No kindred tint, no blending streaks between;This is no shaded, run-off, pin-eyed thing,A king of flowers, a flower for England’s king!”

Above the sovereign oak, a sovereign skims,Thepurple Emperor, strong in wing and limbs:There fairCamillatakes her flight serene,Adonisblue, andPaphia, silver queen:With every filmy fly from mead or bower,And hungrySphynx, who threads the honeyed flower;She o’er the larkspurs’ bed, where sweets abound,Views every bell, and hums the approving sound:Poised on her busy plumes, with feelings nice,She draws from every flower, nor tries a floret twice.

He fears no bailiff’s wrath, no baron’s blame,His is untaxed, and undisputed game;Nor less the place of curious plants he knows;He both hisFloraand hisFaunashows.For him is blooming in its rich array,The glorious flower which bore the palm away.In vain a rival tried his utmost art,His was the prize, and joy o’erflowed his heart.“This, this is beauty! cast, I pray, your eyesOn this my glory! see the grace—the size!Was ever stem so tall, so stout, so strong,Exact in breadth, in just proportion long;These brilliant hues are all distinct and clean,No kindred tint, no blending streaks between;This is no shaded, run-off, pin-eyed thing,A king of flowers, a flower for England’s king!”

[29]So successful that they were amongst the first to raise fine flowers before floral societies and flower-shows were in existence; and the names of some of these village florists are attached to some of the finest specimens, Hufton, Barker, and Redgate, appellations which some of our finest carnations, polyanthuses, and ranunculuses bear, are those of old Derbyshire villagers, well known to me, who scarcely ever were out of their own rustic districts, but whose names are thus made familiar all the country over.

Lastly, the general pleasures of a garden form a grand item in the enjoyments of the poor man. To shew what these pleasures are, to what an extent they are enjoyed in some districts, even by town mechanics, and how much further they may be extended, I shall quote a portion of a paper published by me in November 1835, in Tait’s Magazine.

There are, in the outskirts of Nottingham, upwards of 5000 gardens, the bulk of which are occupied by the working class. A good many there are belonging to the substantial tradesmen and wealthier inhabitants; but the great mass are those of the mechanics. These lie on various sides of the town, in expanses of many acres in a place, and many of them as much as a mile and a half distant from the centre of the town. In the winter they have rather a desolate aspect, with their naked trees and hedges, and all their little summer-houses exposed, damp-looking, and forlorn; but, in spring and summer, they look exceedingly well,—in spring all starred with blossoms, all thick with leaves; and their summer-houses peeping pleasantly from among them. The advantage of these gardens to the working-class of a great manufacturing town, is beyond calculation; and I believe no town in the kingdom has so many of them in proportion to its population. It were to be desired that the example of the Nottingham artisans was imitated by those of other great towns; or rather that the taste for them was encouraged, and, in fact, created by the example of the middle classes, and by patriotic persons laying out fields for this purpose, and letting them at a reasonable rate. A wide difference in the capability of indulging in this healthful species of recreation, must of course, depend on the species of manufacture carried on. Where steam-engines abound, and are at the foundation of all the labours of a place, as in Manchester, for instance, there you will find few gardens in the possession of the mechanics. The steam-engine is a never-resting, unweariable, unpersuadable giant and despot; and will go on thumping and setting thousands of wheels and spindles in motion; and men must stand, as it were, the slaves of its unsleeping energies. O! what was the fate of the ancient genii to the fate of our modern mechanics! What was the fate of “the slaves of the lamp,” or the slaves of talismanic ring, to that of the slaves of the steam-engine!Theycould vanish and lie at rest tillcame the irresistible call; they could sport over ocean and desert, through the air and the clouds; they could speed into the depths of space and wander amid the inconceivable mysteries and miracles of unknown worlds, till the omnipotent spell recalled them to execute some temporary wish of their tyrant, and then return to a wide liberty. But the slave of the steam-engine must be at the beck ofhistyrant night or day, with only such intervals as barely suffice to restore his wearied strength and faculties:—therefore you shall not see gardens flourish and summer-houses rise in the vicinity of this hurrying and tremendous power. But where it is not, or but partially predominates, there may the mechanic enjoy the real pleasures of a garden. And how many are those pleasures!

Early in spring—as soon, in fact, as the days begin to lengthen and the shrewd air to dry up the wintry moisture—you see them getting into their gardens, clearing away the dead stalks of last year’s growth, and digging up the soil; but especially on fine days in February and March are they busy. Trees are pruned, beds are dug, walks cleaned, and all the refuse and decayed vegetation piled up in heaps; and the smoke of the fires in which it is burnt, rolling up from many a garden, and sending its pungent odour to meet you afar off. It is pleasant to see, as the season advances, how busy their occupants become; bustling there with their basses in their hands and their tools on their shoulders; wheeling in manure; and clearing out their summer-houses; and what an air of daily-increasing neatness they assume, till they are one wide expanse of blossomed fruit-trees and flowering fragrance. Every garden has its summer-house; and these are of all scales and grades, from the erection of a few tub-staves, with an attempt to train a pumpkin or a wild-hop over it, to substantial brick houses with glass windows, good cellars for a deposit of choice wines, a kitchen, and all necessary apparatus, and a good pump to supply them with water. Many are very picturesque rustic huts, built with great taste, and hidden by tall hedges in a perfect little paradise of lawn and shrubbery—most delightful spots to go and read in of a summer day, or to take a dinner or tea in with a pleasant party of friends. Some of these places which belong to the substantial tradespeople have cost their occupiers from one to five hundred pounds, and the pleasure they take in them may be thence imagined; butmany of the mechanics have very excellent summer-houses, and there they delight to go, and smoke a solitary pipe, as they look over the smiling face of their garden, or take a quiet stroll amongst their flowers: or to take a pipe with a friend; or to spend a Sunday afternoon, or a summer evening, with their families. The amount of enjoyment which these gardens afford to a great number of families is not easily to be calculated—and then the health and the improved taste! You meet them coming home, having been busy for hours in the freshness of the summer morning in them, and now are carrying home a bass brimful of vegetables for the house. In the evening thitherward you see groups and families going; the key which admits to the common paths that lead between them is produced; a door is opened and closed; and you feel that they are vanished into a pure and sacred retirement, such as the mechanic of a large town could not possess without these suburban gardens. And then to think of the alehouse, the drinking, noisy, politics-bawling alehouse, where a great many of these very men would most probably be, if they had not this attraction,—to think of this, and then to see the variety of sources of a beautiful and healthful interest which they create for themselves here:—what a contrast!—what a most gratifying contrast! There are the worthy couple, sitting in the open summer-house of one garden, quietly enjoying themselves, and watching their children romping on the grass-plot, or playing about the walks; in another, a social group of friends round the tea-table, or enjoying the reward of all their spring labours, picking strawberries fresh from the bed, or raspberries, gooseberries, and currants from the bush. In one you find a grower of fine apples, pears, or plums, or of large gooseberries; in another, a florist, with his show of tulips, ranunculuses, hyacinths, carnations, or other choice flowers, that claim all his leisure moments, and are a source of a thousand cares and interests. And of these cares and interests, the neat awning of white canvass, raised on its light frame of wood; the glasses, and screens of board and matting, to defend those precious objects from every rude attack of sun, wind, or rain—all these are sufficient testimonies; and tell of hours early and late, in the dawn of morning and the dusk of evening, when the happy man has been entranced in his zealous labours, and absorbed in a thousand delicious fancies,and speculations of perfection. Of late, the splendid dahlia and the pansy have become objects of attention; and I believe of the latter flower, till recently despised and overlooked, except in the old English cottage-garden, there are now more than a hundred varieties, of such brilliance and richness of hue, and many of them of such superb expanse of corolla, as merit all the value set upon them.

This is the allotment system of the manufacturing town; to the full as desirable as that for the country, and which may be facilitated, fraught as it is with abundant physical and moral good, by philanthropic individuals to a great extent. At Nottingham, as I have observed, the taste seems to have grown up originally of itself, and then, exciting the attention of speculators, has been extended to its present growth by them. The mechanics there have not their gardens at a cheap rate. They all say that they could purchase their vegetables in the market for the amount of their rent and incidental expenses; but then, they get the health and the enjoyment, and their fruit and vegetables they get so fresh.

There are, according to a personal examination made by myself, now, upwards of 5000 of these gardens, containing, as single gardens, 400 square yards each,—the general scale of a garden; though a good many are held as double, and even treble gardens. These let at from a halfpenny to three halfpence per yard; but averaged at three farthings, make a rental of 1l.5s.per garden, or a total of 6250l.Five thousand gardens of 400 yards each of clear garden ground, independent of fences and roads, give 413 acres and about a rood. Now, if we add one-fifth for fences and roads, the total quantity of land occupied is 496 acres, or we may say, in round numbers, 500 acres. Here then, 500 acres, which at fifty shillings an acre—a good rent for ordinary purposes, would yield a rent of 1250l.; yield, by being converted into gardens, a rent of 6250l., or a clear profit of 5000l.

Thus, it is evident, that any persons willing to promote the taste for gardening in the neighbourhood of towns, might double, in many instances, the ordinary rent of the land, and yet let it in gardens at half the price of these Nottingham ones. Even where land in the vicinity of a large town is very highly rented, a halfpenny a yard, and ten gardens to the acre, fences and roads included,would produce 8l.6s.8d.per acre; no contemptible sum; to say nothing of the real kindness of the accommodation, and the health, pleasure, and pure taste communicated to their fellow men; whilst, against the increased risk of loss, and the increased trouble of the collection of rent, are to be set the value of the garden stock, fruit trees, shrubs, and flower roots, and the summer-houses, which enhance the value to the next tenant.

Here I close this chapter, and this department of my work,—the habits and amusements of the people. It is a subject to which I attach no common importance. The people make the majority of our race; and if they are all equally the objects of that divine care which created them, they must be equally the objects of our truest sympathies. This has not hitherto been sufficiently considered: but every day that consideration must be forced more and more upon us; and we shall be made to feel that no philosophy is good which does not include the poor in its theory; no religion is sound which does not recognise their kinship; no legislation is wise which does not operate for their physical and intellectual benefit; and no country can be said to be truly prosperous, where the multitude is not respectable, enlightened, moral, and happy.

Let us all endeavour to hasten this period, as a living proof that Christianity is really preached to the poor; and that our knowledge has produced the most felicitous of its genuine fruits, in peopling this great nation with a race such as no nation has yet possessed; such as may eat,

Well earned, the bread of service, yet may haveA mounting spirit;—one that entertainsScorn of base action, deed dishonourable,Or aught unseemly.Charles Lamb.

Well earned, the bread of service, yet may haveA mounting spirit;—one that entertainsScorn of base action, deed dishonourable,Or aught unseemly.

Charles Lamb.

Sonst stuerzte sich der Himmels-Liebe KussAuf mich herab, in ernster Sabbathstille;Da klang so ahndungsvoll des Glockentones Fuelle,Und ein Gebet war bruenstiger Genuss:Ein unbegreiflich holdes SehnenTrieb mich durch Wald und Wiesen hinzugehn,Und unter tausend heissen Thraenen,Fuehlt’ ich mir eine Welt entstehn.Faust.

Faust.

In other days, the kiss of heavenly love descended upon me in the solemn stillness of the Sabbath; then the full-toned bell sounded so fraught with mystic meaning, and a prayer was vivid enjoyment. A longing, inconceivably sweet, drove me forth to wander over wood and plain, and amid a thousand burning tears, I felt a world rise up to me.Hayward’s Translation.

Hayward’s Translation.

Goethe, in his Faust, has given a very lively description of a German multitude bursting out of the city to enjoy an Easter Sunday;—mechanics, students, citizens’ daughters, servant-girls, townsmen, beggars, old women ready to tell fortunes, soldiers, and amongst the rest, his hero Faust and his friend Wagner, proceeding to enjoy a country walk. They reach a rising ground; and Faust says—“Turn and look back from this rising ground upon the town. From forth the gloomy portal presses a motley crowd. Every one suns himself delightedly to-day. They celebrate therising of theLord, for they themselves have arisen: from the dark rooms of mean houses; from the bondage of mechanical drudgery; from the confinement of gables and roofs; from the stifling narrowness of streets; from the venerable gloom of churches—are they raised up to the open light of day. But look! look! how quickly the mass is scattering itself through the gardens and fields; how the river, broad and long, tosses many a merry bark upon its surface; and how this last wherry, overladen almost to sinking, moves off. Even from the farthest paths of the mountain, gay-coloured dresses glance upon us. I hear already the bustle of the village. This is the true heaven of the multitude; big and little are huzzaing joyously. Here I am a man—here I may be one.”

Making allowance for the difference of national manners, this might serve for a picture of Sunday in the neighbourhood of a large town in England. Human nature is the same everywhere. The girls are looking out for sweethearts; and both mechanics and students are seeking after the best beer and the prettiest girl:

Ein starkes bier, ein beitzender Toback,Und eine Magd im Putz dass ist nun mein Geschmack.

“Strong beer, stinging tobacco, and a girl all in her best,—that is the taste for me,” cries one: and so it is here and everywhere. See how the multitudes of our large manufacturing towns, and of London spend their Sundays. They pour out into the country in all directions, but it is not to enjoy the country only. Theydoenjoy the country; but it is because it heightens their wild delight in smoking, drinking, and flirtation. Who does not know what innumerable haunts there are within five, ten, or even twenty miles round London, to which these classes repair on Sundays: tea-houses and tea-gardens, country inns, hedge-alehouses, all the old and noted places where good beer and tobacco, merry company, and noisy politics are to be found? Norwood, Greenwich, Richmond, Hampton-Court, Windsor, the Nore, Herne-Bay, Gravesend, Margate; and those old-fashioned places of resort that Hone gives you glimpses of; such as Copenhagen-House, the Sluice-House, Canonbury, etc.—what swarming votaries have they all.[30]And what animmensity of new regions will the railroads that are now beginning to stretch their lines from the metropolis in different directions, lay open—terræ incognitæ, as it were, to the millions that in the dense and ever-growing mass of monstrous London pant after an outburst into the country. Truly may these say, through the medium of this modern and most providential means of occasionaldispersion:—

To morrow to fresh fields and pastures new!

[30]The following calculation, made on Whit-Monday 1835, may give some idea of the number of similar pleasure-seekers on a fine summer Sunday. On Monday, between eight in the morning and nine at night, 191 steam-vessels passed through the Pool to and from Margate, Herne-Bay, Sheerness, Southend, the Nore, Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich, including several on their way to and from Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent. Each vessel averaged, at least, 500 persons. The above calculation was made by Mr. Brown, a boat-builder in Wapping, who with his servants, watched them all day. But many passed after nine, swelling the number to upwards of 200; so that more than 100,000 persons must have been afloat in the steamers on Monday, exclusive of the passengers in small boats. Several steam-vessels carried 800 and 900 souls each to the Nore and back, One steam-vessel brought back from Greenwich 1000 persons, another 1300, and a third was actually crowded with 1500 passengers.

I well remember two ladies of high reputation in the literary world, who, after reading Faust, were inspired with a desire to see how the lower classes amused themselves on a Sunday in this country. It was, they thought, a subject of profitable study. They could not divest themselves of the idea that the people must wonderfully enjoy themselves, in their own way; and perhaps they might imagine that they should be received and complimented, as Faust and his friend Wagner were. Well; the experiment was tried. Another gentleman and myself accompanied them; and of all schemes we hit upon that of going by the steam-packet to Richmond. It was a fine morning in May. Our packet and another sailed from St. Katherine’s wharf with crowded decks, and a bright sun over our heads, casting its animating glory upon tower and town, over the majestic river, and the green country to which, anon, we emerged. We swept under bridge after bridge, and saw the mighty metropolis, with its vast wilderness of houses, wharfs, warehouses, and great public buildings, rapidly glide away behind us; above all the towers and spires of churches St. Paul’s lifting its solemn dome and glittering cross; and then the villages, splendid villas, and beautiful gardens, with the tall robinias intheir new leaves, and covered with their snow-white masses of flowers, in gay succession;—Lambeth, Vauxhall, Chelsea, Battersea, Fulham, Putney, Barnes, Chiswick, Kew, Richmond!—it was a fair and promising scene.

The people on board were well-dressed. There were some portly, middle-aged dames, with gold watches at their sides, and clad in richest silks; and there were some as lovely young ones as London could shew. You were sure that there were plenty of the very-well-to-do-in-the-world about you, if there were none of the very refined; substantial tradespeople, that would have the best the world could procure in eating, drinking, and dressing. And there was a knot of Germans too; men with great mustachios and laced coats; and damsels from whose tongues the strong, homely, expressive German speech seemed to fall wondrous softly. It was quite an attractive circumstance: for our fair friends, being just in the fresh fervour of studying “Die Deutche Sprache,” and reading Faust, imagined every thing in them interesting, and doubtless fancied them just such characters as Goethe would have drawn much out of. All seemed promising, when lo! we were at Richmond, and every thing had been only orderly, cheerful, and nothing more.

Ah well! this was English decorum on a Sunday; if it were not very piquant, it was at least, very commendable. We stepped on shore, lunched, strolled about on the terrace, amid streams of gay people; sat on one of the seats, and gazed over that vast expanse of rich woodland, meads, and villas; wandered down the green meadows towards Petersham and Twickenham, into the woods below the Star-and-Garter, and back to the packet. And now we were destined to see the character of the common people on a Sunday jaunt. The moment the packet began to move, it began to rain, and all the way it rained! rained! rained! The ladies took refuge in the cabin. What a cabin! There were all the sober, orderly throng of the morning, metamorphosed by the power of strong drink into a rackety, roaring, drinking, smoking, insolent, and jammed-together crew. The cabin was crushing full. The stairs were densely packed with people. One of the ladies made a precipitate retreat upon deck, and there, with only the protection of her parasol, stood with the patience of a martyr andthe temper of a saint, all the weary length of the voyage, through dripping, drenching, never-ceasing rain! The other, with more fear of her silks and satins, and determined to see what such a crowdwas, persisted in staying below. It was an act which only the highest heroism could have maintained. There was a group taking tea at a side-table, all well, very well-dressed people, and holding a conversation of such language! such sentiments! such anecdotes! and accompanied with such bursts of laughter! at what must have stricken people with any sense of decency, dumb! And then there were those spruce youths, so modest in the morning, now drinking pots of porter and smoking cigars. Yes, smoking cigars, though the laws of the cabin, blazoned aloft, proclaimed—“No smoking allowed in the cabin!”—Spite of all cabin, or cabinet, or parliamentary laws, they drank, they smoked, they rolled voluminous clouds from one to another; and when requested to desist, said—“O, certainly! It is perfectly insufferable for people to smoke in such company; they ought to be turned out.” And then all laughed together at their own wit. The captain was called, and begged to enforce his own law; and they cried, “O yes, captain! certainly, certainly,” and then laughed again; and the captain smiled, and withdrew: for what captain could seriously forbid smoke and drink that were purchased of himself?

These drapers’ apprentices and shopmen, for such they seemed, gloried in annoying the whole company; and for this purpose, they placed themselves by the open window, so that the draft carried the smoke across all the place. There did but prove to be one real gentleman in the whole troop, who accommodated the lady with a seat—for not a soul besides would stir—and said, as he saw her annoyance; for with all her endurance, this was visible—“Madam, what a hell we have got into!”

And such, thought I, is a specimen of the populace of the mighty and enlightened London! Truly the schoolmaster has work enough yet before him.

It was a party in a parlour,Crammed just as they on land are crammed;Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,All noisy, and all damned!

Our fair friends wished to see the character of the commonpeople in their Sunday recreations, and they saw here a specimen that, I feel persuaded, will satisfy them for life. One, at least, saw this; for the other stood stoically silent upon deck, and saw nothing but rain! rain! rain! O the weary time of that voyage! amid oaths and clamour, vulgarity in all its shapes of swaggering, or maudlin foolishness, riot of action, and indecorum of speech, drinking, smoking, crushing, laughing, swearing,—a confusion carried along the fair Thames, and into the heart of London, worse than that of Babel, and worthy of Pandemonium. How many thousands of such Sunday revellers, steeped in drink, and roystering vulgarity, were pouring into that mighty heart of civilization and Christian knowledge, at the moment we joyfully skipped up Westminster-stairs, and thanked heaven that the Goethe experiment was over.

What London exhibits on its own great scale, all our populous manufacturing towns exhibit, each in its own degree. It is curious to observe from the earliest hour of a Sunday morning, in fine weather, what groups are pouring out into the country. There are mechanics who, in their shops and factories,—while they have been caged up by their imperious necessities during the week, and have only obtained thence sights of the clear blue sky above, of the green fields laughing far away, or have only caught the wafting of a refreshing gale on their fevered cheek as they hurried homeward to a hasty meal, or back again to the incarceration of Mammon,—have had their souls inflamed with desires for breaking away into the free country. These have been planning, day after day, whither they shall go on Sunday. To what distant village; to what object of attraction. There have come visions of a neat country alehouse to them; its clean hearth, sanded floor; its capital ale, and aromatic pipe after a long walk; its pure unadulterated fare, sweet bread, savoury rashers of bacon, beef steaks and onions, and all with most mouth-watering odours. Others have seen clear hurrying trout-streams, or deep still fish-ponds, lying all along wild moors, or amid tangled woods; and they have determined to be with them. They will take angle and net; they will strip off clothes, and take the trout with their hands, from under the grassy banks of their little swift streams. They will have a dash at the squire’s carp, when he and all his people are at church.And, in other seasons, mushroom gathering, and nutting, and all kinds of what is called Sabbath-breaking, come before them with an unconquerable impetus. For to their minds—neglected, but full of strong desires and pent-up energies—nature’s delights, wild pursuits, bodily refreshments, and the enjoyment of one day’s full freedom from towns, red walls, dry pavements, shops, masters, and even wives and children, are mixed up into a strange, but wonderfully bewitching excitement. These are going off, before the world in general is awake, at four, five, or six o’clock in a morning, in clusters of twos and threes, sixes and sevens, with long and eager strides, stout sticks in their hands, and faces set towards the country with a determined expression of fresh-air hungriness. And there, again, are going the bird-catchers; two or three of them, with two or three children with them, perhaps. They have some far-off green lane, or furzy common, or airy down in their mind, to which they are hastening with their cages, carried under a piece of green baize, or blinded with a handkerchief. All the way will they stalk on at a four-mile rate, and these little lads—the least not more than five years old—will go on trotting after them, and never think of weariness till all the sport is over, and they are making their way homeward in the evening. Then shall you see them dragged along by one of their father’s hands; for the men will not slacken pace for them, but pull them along with them; and you will see those little legs go on, trot, trot, trot, till you think they will actually be worn to the stumps before they reach home. These men and eager lads you will find in some solitary spot seven or eight miles off, if you go out so far, seated silently under a tall hedge or old tree, or in some moorland thicket, watching their apparatus, which is placed at a distance; their tame bird, of the species they are seeking to take, chained by its leg to a crossed stick, or a bough thrust into the ground. There it is, hopping about and chirping in the sunshine; and around stand cages containing other decoy birds, and other cages ready to receive the unsuspicious birds, that, attracted by the hopping and chirping of their captive kinsmen, will presently come and alight near them, and speedily get entangled in the limed twigs that are disposed about, or will find the net that is ready spread for them, come swoop over them. Every person who has walked the streetsof London, has seen the crowds of these little captives, larks, woodlarks, linnets, goldfinches, nightingales, etc., in the shops, which have been thus caught on all the great heaths and downs, for twenty miles round the metropolis, by fowlers, who are nearly always thus employed there.

Then, again, you see another Sunday class; tradesmen, shopkeepers, and their assistants and apprentices,—all those who have friends in the country,—on horseback or in gigs, driving off to spend the day with those that come occasionally and pay them a visit at markets and fairs. The faces of these are set for farm and other country-houses within twenty miles round. There is not a horse or gig to be had for love or money at any of the livery-stables on a Sunday. These hebdomadal rusticators,—these good dinner-eaters, fruit-devourers, curd-and-cream-consumers, pipe-smokers, and loungers in gardens, garden-arbours, crofts, orchards,—these soi-disant judges of cattle, crops, dogs, guns, game,—these haunters of country-houses, complimenters of country beauties, and lovers of good country fare,—have got them all. Yes, yes, many a pleasant Sunday in the country do these men spend after their fashion,—none of the worst, if none of the holiest; and yet they go to the village church too sometimes, and wonder that so fine a preacher should be hidden in such a place. Towards nine or ten o’clock in the evening, they will be pouring back into the town as blithely as they rolled out in the morning, being now primed with all those good things that lured them away so sharply after breakfast.

And, when they were gone, how sunnily and cheerily passed the day in the town; the merry bells all ringing, the gay people all abroad, streaming along the smooth pavements to church or chapel, or for the forenoon and evening promenade, in their fresh and handsome attire. Such troops of lovely women, such counterpoising numbers of goodly and well-dressed men: all squalor, and poverty, and trouble, and distress, shrunk backward into the alleys and dens out of sight; all cares and tradesmanship shut up in the closed shops and warehouses; and nothing but ease, leisure, bravery of equipment, and shew of wealth, walking in the face of the sun, as if there was no reason why they should not walk there for ever. The very beggars are gone, like swallows in autumn—not one tobe seen, except in the secret rendezvous where they pass one long day of luxurious idleness. The barrack has sent forth its troop of soldiers in their rich full-dress. They have marched with sounding music to the great church, with their usual crowd of boys and idle men after them. And then, morning, noon, or evening, you have seen a group of people collect in the market-place, or some open street, that has grown and grown into a large, dense crowd; and then you have seen a man suddenly appear, with bare head, and book in hand, in the centre. This is some field-preacher; one of many hundreds that on this day, in towns, villages, rural lanes, or on heaths and commons, go out to preach to them who are too indifferent, or too shabby, to come into a respectable place of worship.

We often think how strange it would have been to have lived in the days of the Reformation, or of the Puritans, when men full of zeal went to and fro, through the length and breadth of the land, to denounce the dominant form of religion, and preach repentance and salvation from the Bible. We have not the opposition and the persecution now, or we should have just such men and such scenes. There is such freedom for every man to choose his own mode of worship, and the religiously inclined have so many modes to choose from, and to associate them with a circle of people so much after their own hearts, that they have no impulse to seek further; no, not to seek after those who have no particular desire to be found; they think it enough that they have chapel-room and open doors for those who will come. It is chiefly, therefore, the poor that are left to seek after the poor; that feel it incumbent to “go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.” The mechanic, who has been labouring hard all the week in his worldly vocation, now shaves and washes, and dresses the best he may, and goes forth, fearing not the sneers and the scorn of the great and learned, of the worldly-wise and genteel, but comes into the very face of them, and before their gay windows in the open square; often before the lofty church and majestic cathedral, whose organ-tones are deeply pealing in his ears. There he lifts up his homely features, his rudely clipped head; there he lifts up his horny hand, that has for many a year dealt sturdy strokes to inanimate matter, and now deals, with tenfold zeal,strokes as hard to hearts as hard. There he lifts up his voice in no finely modulated or practised tones, but with earnest pleadings and awful threatenings and unfoldings of God’s judgments on the wicked and careless; and then, with as earnest and affectionate expositions of his mercies, arrests, terrifies, melts, and fills with new sensations and desires the hearts of his fellows in the lowest regions of human life, who have lived beyond the sound of heavenly promises, and of God’s love and fear in a great measure, “because no one cared for their souls.”

The wise may wonder; the learned may curl the lip of classical pride; the gay and the happy, who live in splendid houses, and worship in splendid pews and beneath high and arched roofs, may pass by, and not even glance on the poor illiterate preacher and his spell-bound audience; but that man is, after all, a patriot and a scholar; a good subject of the realm—a good servant of heaven; and will probably effect more real benefit in one day, than a dozen of us, who think sufficiently well of our services to the commonwealth, shall effect in all our lives: and till some comprehensive plan is adopted, by which the Sabbath may lay all its advantages, all its holy peace, all its knowledge and heavenly fruition, before every man, woman and child, in this great empire, he must and shall do what he can to supply the deficiency. With all his ignorance,—and he has much,—he has learned what is necessary for the good of his own spirit, and the strength of natural sympathy has taught him the way to communicate it to the hearts of his fellows. He knows the language, the style, the tone of sentiment and the species of argument that the soonest reaches them. He knows their besetments and their wants, for he has been pursued by the same needs, tainted by the same corruptions, baptized into the same distresses; he has an experimental knowledge that no man of another class can have. With all his extravagance,—and he has much,—he has not half the amount that we daily see in more dignified places; and for the wildness, the error, the eccentricity of his doctrines, ah! how much more readily could we match them in those after whom carriages roll, and the world runs, and on whom honours and wealth are heaped as an inadequate reward. See there, how he extends his arms! how he beats the air! how he strains every muscle, and exerts every fibre of hisframe, till the perspiration rolls from his heated brow; how he thunders, and makes the whole great area ring with the outbreak of his terrors, his adjurations, and his appeals! And yet, from the simple table on which he is mounted shall no folly proceed, that has not its counterpart in the most dignified pulpit, wholly freed—and that is a world of advantage—from the freezing indifference that fills thousands with its torpidity.

For the seamen, London and Liverpool, and other ports, offer their floating or seamen’s chapels, where they may hear the gospel preached in a language that goes straight to their hearts and understandings, but which a landsman would attempt in vain. Like the lower orders in general, they have a language and an experience of their own, and the man who preaches to them in another language, and with other imagery, cannot keep alive their attention, however eloquent, or however learned; and he who attempts their language without a practical knowledge of their life, only excites their ridicule. It is even necessary, occasionally, to accommodate the language of Scripture to their ideas and experience. A very popular preacher once requested permission to address the sailors in their floating chapel at Liverpool, and, attempting seamen’s language, told them that he who secured an interest in Christ, cast anchor on a rock! At once all eyebrows were elevated in amazement, and broad grins overspread every face. “Hear him! Hear him!” they cried, one to another, “he talks of casting anchoron a rock!” Yet there was no uncommon hardness, or propensity to scoffing in these men; on the contrary, it was admirable to see, when Captain Scoresby, the well-known northern voyager, addressed them, how they kindled with interest, and melted down in emotion: when he told them how Christ preached in a ship, how he loved the mariners of his days, the tears started from their eyes, and rolled over scores of hardy cheeks that had faced the fiercest gales, and been tanned by the hottest suns. It was, and is still, I doubt not, delightful to see such an audience. There was the smart sailor and his smart lass; others with their wives and families; and old men who had spent the greatest portion of a long life on the seas. Such a collection of black and curly heads, of bushy whiskers, of the thin and white hair of age, of eyes gleaming with youth and life, or dimmedby the extremity of years!—such an intent and childlike throng of listeners! all so little accustomed to artifice,—to conceal or feel shame for their emotions,—that the changes of their expressions were as rapid and striking as those of the sun and wind on their own element. There sate some happy fathers, with their children on their knees, as though they saw so little of them, had found them so lately, or must leave them so soon, that they could not have them near enough. There sate strong men, touched to the depth of their hearts by the pathos of the preacher, leaning against the side of the cabin, and weeping unrestrained tears, or listening, with lips apart, in breathless attention; and there sate women, who, when winds and tempests were mentioned, turned a fond, anxious look to some dear one sitting by them; and others, who when the voyagers at sea were prayed for, clasped their hands, and looked to heaven unutterable things. Great must be the comfort and the blessing of thus bringing Christianity to the knowledge of our seafaring men. Great has been its effect amongst the fishermen of Cornwall, as any one may see, who will visit the crowded chapels of St. Ives, and other places.

But there is still another class of preachers that may be encountered on Sundays: the disciples of Irving. None of your simple mechanics, but gentlemen—gentlemen in appearance, in manners, in education. You will see such a one pulling out his pocket Bible, in some public situation, and beginning to address the two or three that happen to stand near. The singularity of the thing soon attracts others; there begins to be a moving from all parts towards that spot, till there is at length a large and dense crowd. There, in the midst of this wondering and promiscuous circle, in the most cultivated tones, with the most proper action, and in the purest language, you hear, perhaps, the Honourable and Reverend —— himself, “dealing damnation round the land;” depicting his audience in the most fearful colours, as fallen, utterly corrupt, blackened with every imaginable sin, and wandering blindfold on the very brink of hell. In the opinion of some of these preachers, all the world is lying in ignorance and sin; all other preachers of all other creeds are blind leaders of the blind; to him and his few coadjutors alone has the mystery of godliness been revealed; “they are the men, and wisdom shall die withthem.” I must confess that to me, this cold Calvinism, this abusive and declamatory zeal, though coming from very gentlemanly mouths, is not a thousandth part so attractive as the warm-hearted, liberal, and affectionate addresses of the illiterate mechanic. Nay, to me it is excessively repulsive; and I would much rather find myself in some far-off village, in some green lane, or on the heath, where such are holding their summer camp-meeting.

Back to Index Next