Chapter 3

PERCY LODGE. THAXTED GRANGE. RAPIN THE JESUIT AND SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

It seems that you take pleasure in these walks Sir.Cleanthes. Contemplative content I do, my Lord;They bring into my mind oft meditationsSo sweetly precious, that in the partingI find a shower of grace upon my cheeks,They take their leave so feelingly.MASSINGER.

The difference was very great between Thaxted Grange and Percy Lodge, though somewhat less than that between Northumberland House and the Tobacconists at No. 113 Bishopsgate Street. Yet if a landscape painter who could have embodied the spirit of the scene had painted both, the Grange might have made the more attractive picture, though much had been done to embellish the Lodge by consulting picturesque effect, while the Allisons had aimed at little beyond comfort and convenience in their humble precincts.

From a thatched seat in the grounds of the Lodge, open on three sides and constructed like a shepherd's hut, there was a direct view of Windsor Castle, seen under the boughs of some old oaks and beeches. Sweet Williams, narcissuses, rose-campions, and such other flowers as the hares would not eat, had been sown in borders round the foot of every tree. There was a hermitage, absurdly so called, in the wood, with a thatched covering, and sides of straw; and there was a rosary, which though appropriately named, might sound as oddly to the ears of a Roman Catholic. A porter's lodge had been built at the entrance; and after the Duke's death the long drawing room had been converted into a chapel, in Gothic taste, with three painted windows, which, having been bespoken for Northumberland House, but not suiting the intended alterations in that mansion, were put up here. The Duchess and her servant had worked cross-stitch chairs for this chapel in fine crimson, the pattern was a Gothic mosaic, and they were in Gothic frames.

Se o mundo nos nao anda a' vontadeNaō he pera estranhar, pois he hum sonhoQue nunca con ninguem tratou verdade.Se quando se nos mostra mais risonho,Mais brande, mais amigo, o desprezemos,He graō virtude, e á sua conta o ponho.Mais se, (o que he mais certo) o desprezamosDepois que nos engeita e nos despreza,Que premio, ou que louvor disso esperamos?1

All here however was as it should be: Percy Lodge was the becoming retreat of a lady of high rank, who having in the natural course of time and things outlived all inclination for the pomps and vanities of the world, and all necessity for conforming to them, remembered what was still due to her station; and doing nothing to be seen of men, had retired thither to pass the remainder of her days in privacy and religious peace.

1DIOGOBERNARDES.

All too was as it should be at Thaxted Grange. Picturesque was a term which had never been heard there; and taste was as little thought of as pretended to; but the right old English word comfort, in its good old English meaning, was nowhere more thoroughly understood. Nor anywhere could more evident indications of it be seen both within and without.

A tradesman retiring from business in these days with a fortune equivalent to what Mr. Allison had made, would begin his improvements upon such a house as the Grange by pulling it down. Mr. Allison contented himself with thoroughly repairing it. He had no dislike to low rooms, and casement windows. The whole furniture of his house cost less than would now be expended by a person of equal circumstances in fitting up a drawing-room. Every thing was for use, and nothing for display, unless it were two fowling pieces, which were kept in good order over the fire place in the best kitchen, and never used but when a kite threatened the poultry, or an owl was observed to frequent the dove-cote in preference to the barn.

But out of doors as much regard was shown to beauty as to utility. Miss Allison and Betsey claimed the little garden in front of the house for themselves. It was in so neglected a state when they took possession, that between children and poultry and stray pigs, not a garden flower was left there to grow wild: and the gravel walk from the gate to the porch was overgrown with weeds and grass, except a path in the middle which had been kept bare by use. On each side of the gate were three yew trees, at equal distances. In the old days of the Grange they had been squared in three lessening stages, the uppermost tapering pyramidally to a point. While the house had been shorn of its honours, the yews remained unshorn; but when it was once more occupied by a wealthy habitant, and a new gate had been set up and the pillars and their stone-balls cleaned from moss and lichen and short ferns, the unfortunate evergreens were again reduced to the formal shape in which Mr. Allison and his sister remembered them in their childhood. This was with them a matter of feeling, which is a better thing than taste. And indeed the yews must either have been trimmed, or cut down, because they intercepted sunshine from the garden and the prospect from the upper windows. The garden would have been better without them, for they were bad neighbours; but they belonged to old times, and it would have seemed a sort of sacrilege to destroy them.

Flower-beds used, like beds in the kitchen garden, to be raised a little above the path, with nothing to divide them from it, till about the beginning of the seventeenth century the fashion of bordering them was introduced either by the Italians or the French. Daisies, periwinkles, feverfew, hyssop, lavender, rosemary, rue, sage, wormwood, camomile, thyme and box, were used for this purpose: a German horticulturist observes that hyssop was preferred as the most convenient; box however gradually obtained the preference. The Jesuit Rapin claims for the French the merit of bringing this plant into use, and embellishes his account of it by one of those school-boy fictions which passed for poetry in his days, and may still pass for it in his country. He describes a feast of the rural gods:

Adfuit et Cybele, Phrygias celebrata per urbes;Ipsaque cum reliquis Flora invitata deabusVenit, inornatis, ut erat neglecta, capillis;Sive fuit fastus, seu fors fiducia formæ.Non illi pubes ridendi prompta pepercit,Neglectam risere. Deam Berecynthia materSemotam à turba, casum miserata puellæ,Exornat, certâque comam sub lege reponit,Et viridi imprimis buxo (nam buxifer omnisUndique campus erat) velavit tempora nymphæ.Reddidit is speciem cultus, cœpitque videriFormosa, et meruit: novus hinc decor additus ori.Ex illo, ut Floram decuit cultura, per artemFloribus ille decor posthac quæsitus, et hortis:Quem tamen Ausonii cultores, quemque PelasgiNescivere, suos nullâ qui lege per hortosPlantabant flores, nec eos componere norantAreolis, tonsâque vias describere buxo.Culta super reliquas Francis topiaria gentes,Ingenium seu mite soli cœlique benigniTemperies tantam per sese adjuverit artem;Sive illam egregiæ solers industria gentisExtuderit, seris seu venerit usus ab annis.

The fashion which this buxom Flora introduced had at one time the effect of banishing flowers from what should have been the flower garden: the ground was set with box in their stead disposed in patterns more or less formal, some intricate as a labyrinth and not a little resembling those of Turkey carpets, where mahometan laws interdict the likeness of any living thing, and the taste of Turkish weavers excludes any combination of graceful forms. One sense at least was gratified when fragrant herbs were used in these “rare figures of composures,” or knots as they were called, hyssop being mixed in them with thyme, as aiders the one to the other, the one being dry, the other moist. Box had the disadvantage of a disagreeable odour; but it was greener in winter and more compact in all seasons. To lay out these knots and tread them required the skill of a master-gardener: much labour was thus expended without producing any beauty. The walks between them were sometimes of different colours, some would be of lighter or darker gravel, red or yellow sand; and when such materials were at hand, pulverised coal and pulverised shells.

Such a garden Mr. Cradock saw at Bordeaux no longer ago than the year 1785; it belonged to Monsieur Rabi, a very rich Jew merchant, and was surrounded by a bank of earth, on which there stood about two hundred blue and white flower-pots; the garden itself was a scroll work cut very narrow, and the interstices filled with sand of different colours to imitate embroidery; it required repairing after every shower, and if the wind rose the eyes were sure to suffer. Yet the French admired this and exclaimed,superbe! magnifique!

Neither Miss Allison nor her niece, would have taken any pleasure in gardens of this kind, which had nothing of a garden but the name. They both delighted in flowers; the aunt because flowers to her were “redolent of youth,” and never failed to awaken tender recollections; Betsey for an opposite reason; having been born and bred in London, a nosegay there had seemed always to bring her a foretaste of those enjoyments for which she was looking forward with eager hope. They had stocked their front garden therefore with the gayest and the sweetest flowers that were cultivated in those days; larkspurs both of the giant and dwarf species, and of all colours; sweet-williams of the richest hues; monks-hood for its stately growth; Betsey called it the dumbledore's delight, and was not aware that the plant in whose helmet- rather than cowl-shaped flowers that busy and best-natured of all insects appears to revel more than in any other, is the deadly aconite of which she read in poetry: the white lily, and the fleur-de-lis; peonies, which are still the glory of the English garden; stocks and gilly flowers which make the air sweet as the gales of Arabia; wall-flowers, which for a while are little less fragrant, and not less beautiful; pinks and carnations added their spicy odours; roses red and white peeped at the lower casements, and the jessamine climbed to those of the chambers above. You must nurse your own flowers if you would have them flourish, unless you happen to have a gardener who is as fond of them as yourself. Eve was not busier with her's in Paradise, her “pleasant task injoined,” than Betsey Allison and her aunt, from the time that early spring invited them to their cheerful employment, till late and monitory autumn closed it for the year.

“Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these;” and Solomon in all his wisdom never taught more wholesome lessons than these silent monitors convey to a thoughtful mind and an “understanding heart.” “There are two books,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all. Those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other. This was the scripture and theology of the heathens: the natural motion of the sun made them more admire him than its supernatural station did the children of Israel; the ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them, than in the other all his miracles. Surely the heathens knew better how to join and read these mystical letters, than we Christians who cast a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of nature.”

CONCERNING INTERCHAPTERS.

If we present a mingle-mangle, our fault is to be excused, because the whole world is become a hodge-podge.

LYLY.

It occurs to me that some of my readers may perhaps desire to be informed in what consists the difference between a Chapter and an Inter Chapter; for that there is a difference no considerate person would be disposed to deny, though he may not be able to discover it. Gentle readers,—readers after my own heart, you for whom thisopuswas designed long before it was anopus, when as Dryden has said concerning one of his own plays, “it was only a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and then either chosen or rejected by the judgement,”—good-natured readers, you who are willing to be pleased, and whom therefore it is worth pleasing,—for your sakes,

And for because you shall not think that IDo use the same without a reason why,1

I will explain the distinction.

1ROBERTGREEN.

It is not like the difference between a Baptist and an Anabaptist, which Sir John Danvers said, is much the same as that between a Whiskey and a Tim-Whiskey, that is to say no difference at all. Nor is it like that between Dryads and Hamadryads, which Benserade once explained to the satisfaction of a learned lady by sayingqu'il avait autant de difference qu'entre les Evêques et les Archevêques. Nor is it like the distinction taken by him who divided bread into white bread, brown bread, and French rolls.

A panegyrical poet said of the aforesaid Benserade that he possessed three talents which posterity would hardly be persuaded to believe;

De plaisanter les Grands il ne fit point scrupule,Sans qu'ils le prissent de travers;Il fut vieux et galant sans être ridicule,Et s'enrichit à composer des vers.

He used to say, that he was descended and derived his name from the Abencerrages. Upon a similar presumption of etymological genealogy it has been said that Aulus Gellius was the progenitor of all the Gells. An Englishman may doubt this, a Welshman would disbelieve, and a Jew might despise it. So might a Mahommedan, because it is a special prerogative of his prophet to be perfectly acquainted with his whole pedigree; the Mussulmen hold that no other human being ever possessed the same knowledge, and that after the resurrection, when all other pedigrees will be utterly destroyed, this alone will be preserved in the archives of Eternity.

Leaving however Sir William Gell to genealogize, if he pleases, as elaborately as he has topographized, and to maintain the authenticity and dignity of his Roman descent against all who may impugn it, whether Turk, Jew, or Christian, I proceed with my promised explanation.

The Hebrews call chapters and sections and other essential or convenient divisions, the bones of a book. The Latins called themnodi, knots or links; and every philologist knows that articles, whether grammatical, conventional, or of faith, are so denominated as being the joints of language, covenants and creeds.

Now reader, the chapters of this book are the bones wherewith its body is compacted; the knots or links whereby its thread or chain of thoughts is connected; the articulations, without which it would be stiff, lame and disjointed. Every chapter has a natural dependence upon that which precedes, and in like manner a relation to that which follows it. Each grows out of the other. They follow in direct genealogy; and each could no more have been produced without relation to its predecessor, than Isaac could have begotten Jacob unless Abraham had begotten Isaac.

Sometimes indeed it must of necessity happen that a new chapter opens with a new part of the subject, but this is because we are arrived at that part in the natural prosecution of our argument. The disruption causes no discontinuance; it is, (to pursue the former illustration,) as when the direct line in a family is run out, and the succession is continued by a collateral branch; or as in the mineral world, in which one formation begins where another breaks off.

In my chapters, however, where there is no such natural division of the subject matter, I have ever observed that “one most necessary piece of mastership, which is ever performed by those of good skill in music, when they end a suit of lessons in any one key, and do intend presently to begin another in a differing key.” Upon which piece of mastership, the worthy old “Remembrancer of the best practical music, both divine and civil, that has ever been known to have been in the world,” thus instructs his readers.

“They do not abruptly and suddenly begin such new lessons, without some neat and handsome interluding-voluntary-like playing; which may by degrees (as it were) steal into that new and intended key.

“Now that you may be able to do it handsomely, and without blemish, or incompleteness, (for you must know it is a piece of quaintness so to do), you must take notice, that always, when you have made an end of playing upon any one key, (if discourse or some other occasion do not cause a cessation of play for some pretty time, so as the remembrance of that former key may, in a manner, be forgotten), it will be very needful that some care be taken that you leave that key handsomely, and come into that other you intend next to play upon without impertinency.

“For such impertinencies will seem to be very like such a thing as this, which I shall name—to wit—

“That when two or more persons have been soberly and very intently discoursing upon some particular solid matter, musing and very ponderously considering thereof; all on the sudden, some one of them shall abruptly (without any pause) begin to talk of a thing quite of another nature, nothing relating to the aforesaid business.

“Now those by-standers (who have judgement), will presently apprehend that although his matter might be good, yet his manner and his wit might have been better approved of in staying some certain convenient time, in which he might have found out some pretty interluding discourse, and have taken a handsome occasion to have brought in his new matter.

“Just so is it in music, and more particularly in this last-recited-matter; as to chop different things of different natures, and of different keys, one upon the neck of another, impertinently.

“For I would have it taken notice of, that music is (at least) as a language, if it will not be allowed a perfect one; because it is not so well understood as it might be.—

“Having thus far prepared you with an apprehension of the needfulness of the thing, I will now show you how it is to be done without abruption and absurdness.

“First, (as abovesaid) it may be that discourse may take off the remembrance of the last key in which you played, or some occasion of a leaving off for some pretty time, by a string breaking or the like; or if not, then (as commonly it happens) there may be a need of examining the tuning of your lute, for the strings will alter a little in the playing of one lesson, although they have been well stretched. But if lately put on, or have been slacked down by any mischance of pegs slipping, then they will need mending, most certainly.

“I say some such occasion may sometimes give you an opportunity of coming handsomely to your new intended key: but if none of these shall happen, then you ought, in a judicious and masterly way, to work from your last key which you played upon, in some voluntary way till you have brought your matter so to pass that your auditors may be captivated with a new attention; yet so insinuatingly, that they may have lost the remembrance of the foregoing key they know not how; nor are they at all concerned for the loss of it, but rather taken with a new content and delight at your so cunning and complete artifice.”

With strict propriety then may it be said of these my chapters as Wordsworth has said of certain sonnets during his tour in Scotland and on the English border, that they

Have moved in order, to each other boundBy a continuous and acknowledged tieTho' unapparent, like those shapes distinctThat yet survive ensculptured on the wallsOf Palace, or of Temple, 'mid the wreckOf famed Persepolis; each following each,As might beseem a stately embassyIn set array; these bearing in their handsEnsign of civil power, weapon of war,Or gift to be presented at the ThroneOf the Great King; and others as they goIn priestly vest, with holy offerings charged,Or leading victims dressed for sacrifice.

For an ordinary book then the ordinary division into chapters might very well have sufficed. But this is an extraordinary book. Hath not the Quarterly Review—that Review which among all Reviews is properly accountedfacile Princeps,—hath not that great critical authority referred to itκατ᾽ εξοχηνas “the extraordinary book called the Doctor?” Yes reader;

All things within itAre so digested, fitted and composedAs it shows Wit had married Order.2

And as the exceptions in grammar prove the rule, so the occasional interruptions of order here are proofs of that order, and in reality belong to it.

2B. JONSON.

Lord Bacon (then Sir Francis) said in a letter to the Bishop of Ely upon sending him his writing intitledCogitata et Visa, “I am forced to respect as well my times, as the matter. For with me it is thus, and I think with all men in my case; if I bind myself to an argument it loadeth my mind; but if I rid my mind of the present cogitation it is rather a recreation. This hath put me into these miscellanies, which I purpose to suppress if God give me leave to write a just and perfect volume of philosophy.”

That I am full of cogitations like Lord Bacon the judicious reader must ere this time have perceived; though he may perhaps think me not more worthy on that score to be associated with Bacon, than beans or cabbage or eggs at best. Like him however in this respect I am, however unlike in others; and it is for the reader's recreation as well as mine, and for our mutual benefit, that my mind should be delivered of some of its cogitations as soon as they are ripe for birth.

I know not whence thought comes; who indeed can tell? But this we know, that like the wind it cometh as it listeth. Happily there is no cause for me to say with Sir Philip Sydney,

If I could think how these my thoughts to leave;Or thinking still, my thoughts might have good end;If rebel Sense would Reason's law receive,Or Reason foiled would not in vain contend;Then might I think what thoughts were best to think,Then might I wisely swim, or gladly sink.

Nor with Des-Portes,

O pensers trop pensez, que rebellez mon ame!O debile raison! O lacqs! O traits!

thanks to that kind Providence which has hitherto enabled me through good and evil fortune to maintain an even and well-regulated mind. Neither need I say with the pleasant authors of the “Rejected Addresses” in their harmless imitation of a most pernicious author,

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,And nought is every thing and every thing is nought.

I have never worked in an intellectual treadmill, which as it had nothing to act on was grinding the wind.

“He that thinksill,” says Dean Young, (the poet's father,) “preventsthe Tempter, and does the Devil's business for him; he that thinksnothing, temptsthe Tempter, and offers him possession of an empty room; but he that thinksreligiously, defeatsthe Tempter, and is proof and secure against all his assaults.” I know not whether there be any later example where the wordpreventis used as in the Collect in its Latin sense.

It is a man's own fault if he excogitate vain thoughts, and still more if he enunciate and embody them; but it is not always in his power to prevent their influx. Even the preventative which George Tubervile recommends in his monitory rhymes, is not infallible;

Eschew the idle life!Flee, flee from doing nought!For never was there idle brainBut bred an idle thought.

Into the busiest brain they will sometimes intrude; and the brain that is over-busy breeds them. But the thoughts which are not of our own growth or purchase, and which we receive not from books, society, or visible objects, but from some undiscovered influence, are of all kinds.

Who has a breast so pure,But some uncleanly apprehensionsKeep leets and law days, and in session sitWith meditations lawful?3

I dare not affirm that some are suggestions of the enemy; neither dare I deny it: from all suchtela igneaandtela venenata, whatever be their origin, or whencesoever they come, God preserve us! But there are holy inspirations, which philosophy may teach us to expect, and faith to pray for.

3OTHELLO.

My present business is not with these, but it is with those conceptions which float into the solitary mind, and which if they are unrecorded pass away, like a dream or a rainbow, or the glories of an evening sky. Some of them are no better than motes in the sunbeams, as light, as fleeting, and to all apprehension as worthless. Others may be called seminal thoughts, which if they light not upon a thorny, or stoney, or arid field of intellect, germinate, and bring forth flowers, and peradventure fruit. Now it is in the Interchapters that part of this floating capital is vested; part of these waifs and strays impounded; part of this treasure-trove lodged; part of these chance thoughts and fancies preserved: part I say, because

J'ay mille autres pensers, et mille et mille et mille,Qui font qu'incessamment mon esprit se distile.4

4DES-PORTES.

“There are three things,” says a Welsh triad, “that ought to be considered before some things should be spoken; the manner, the place, and the time.” Touching the manner, I see none whereby they could more conveniently or agreeably be conveyed; and for the place and time these must be allowed to be at my own discretion.

And howsoever, be it well or illWhat I have done, it is mine own; I mayDo whatsoever therewithal I will.5

(Be it remarked in passing that these lines bear a much greater resemblance to Italian poetry than any of those English sonnets which have been called Petrarcal.) One place being (generally speaking) as suitable as another, it has not been necessary for me to deliberate,

Desta antigua preñez de pensamientosQual el primero hare, qual el segundo.6

I have interspersed them where I thought fit, and given them the appellation which they bear, to denote that they are no more a necessary and essential part of thisopus, than the voluntary is of the church service.

Εισὶν δὲ περι του;Περὶ Αθηνων, περι Πύλου,Περι σοῦ, περι ἐμοῦ, περὶ απαντων πραγματων.7

5DANIEL.

6BALBUENA.

7ARISTOPHANES.

A Chapter is, as has been explained, both procreated and procreative: an Interchapter is like the hebdomad, which profound philosophers have pronounced to be not onlyπαρθένος, butαμητωρ, a motherless as well as a virgin number.

Here too the exception illustrates the rule. There are at the commencement of the third volume four Interchapters in succession, and relating to each other, the first gignitive but not generated; the second and third both generated and gignitive, the fourth generated but not gignitive. They stand to each other in the relation of Adam, Seth, Enoch, Kenan. These are the exceptions. The other chapters are all Melchizedekites.

The gentle Reader will be satisfied with this explanation; the curious will be pleased with it. To the captious one I say in the words of John Bunyan, “Friend, howsoever thou camest by this book, I will assure thee thou wert least in my thoughts when I writ it. I tell thee, I intended the book as little for thee as the goldsmith intended his jewels and rings for the snout of a sow!”

If any be not pleased, let them please themselves with their own displeasure.Je n'ay pas enterpris de contenter tout le monde: mesme Jupiter n'aggree à tous.8

8BOUCHET.

INCIDENTAL MENTION OF HAMMOND, SIR EDMUND KING, JOANNA BAILLIE, SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, AND MR. THOMAS PEREGRINE COURTENAY. PETER COLLINSON AN ACQUAINTANCE OF MR. ALLISON'S. HOLIDAYS AT THAXTED GRANGE.

And sure there seem of human kindSome born to shun the solemn strife;Some for amusive tasks design'dTo soothe the certain ills of life,Grace its lone vales with many a budding rose,New founts of bliss disclose,Call forth refreshing shades and decorate repose.SHENSTONE.

Dr. Hammond says he had “heard say of a man who, upon his death-bed, being to take his farewell of his son, and considering what course of life to recommend that might secure his innocence, at last enjoined him to spend his time in making verses, and in dressing a garden; the old man thinking no temptation could creep into either of these employments.” As to the former part of this counsel, a certain Sir Edmund King was of a different opinion; for meeting with Watts in his youth, he said to him, “Young man, I hear that you make verses! Let me advise you never to do it but when you can't help it.” If there were ever a person who could not help it, Joanna Baillie would have said nothing more than what was strictly true, when she observed that “surely writing verses must have some power of intoxication in it, and can turn a sensible man into a fool by some process of mental alchemy.”

“Gardening,” says Mr. Courtenay, in his Life of Sir William Temple, “is a pursuit peculiarly adapted for reconciling and combining the tastes of the two sexes, and indeed of all ages. It is therefore of all amusements the most retentive of domestic affection. It is perhaps most warmly pursued by the very young, and by those who are far advanced in life,—before the mind is occupied with worldly business, and after it has become disgusted with it. There is nothing in it to remind of the bustle of political life; and it requires neither a sanguine disposition nor the prospect of a long life, to justify the expectation of a beautiful result from the slight and easy care which it exacts. Is it too much to say that the mind which can with genuine taste occupy itself in gardening, must have preserved some portion of youthful purity; that it must have escaped, during its passage through the active world its deeper contaminations; and that no shame nor remorse can have found a seat in it.”

Certainly it is not too much to say this of Sir William Temple; nor would it be too much to say it of his biographer, whether he occupy himself, or not, in gardening as well as in literature, after many laborious years honourably passed in political and official life.

Peter Collinson, whose pious memory ought to be a standing toast at the meetings of the Horticultural Society, used to say that he never knew an instance in which the pursuit of such pleasure as the culture of a garden affords, did not either find men temperate and virtuous, or make them so. And this may be affirmed as an undeniable and not unimportant fact relating to the lower classes of society, that wherever the garden of a cottage or other humble dwelling, is carefully and neatly kept, neatness and thrift and domestic comfort will be found within doors.

When Mr. Allison settled at Thaxted Grange, English gardens were beginning generally to profit by the benevolent and happy endeavours of Peter Collinson to improve them. That singularly good man availed himself of his mercantile connections, and of the opportunities afforded him by the Royal Society, of which he was one of the most diligent and useful members, to procure seeds and plants from all parts of the world, and these he liberally communicated to his friends. So they found their way first into the gardens of the curious, then of the rich, and lastly, when their beauty recommended them, spread themselves into those of ordinary persons. He divided his time between his counting-house in Gracechurch street, and his country house and garden at Mill Hill, near Hendon: it might have grieved him could he have foreseen that his grounds there would pass after his death into the hands of a purchaser who in mere ignorance rooted out the rarest plants, and cut down trees which were scarcely to be found in perfection anywhere else in the kingdom at that time.

Mr. Collinson was a man of whom it was truly said that not having any public station, he was the means of procuring national advantages for his country, and possessed an influence in it which wealth cannot purchase, and which will be honoured when titles are forgotten. For thirty years he executed gratuitously the commissions of the Philadelphian Subscription Library, the first which was established in America; he assisted the directors in their choice of books, took the whole care of collecting and shipping them, and transmitted to the directors the earliest accounts of every improvement in agriculture and the arts, and of every philosophical discovery.

Franklin, who was the founder of that library, made his first electrical experiments with an apparatus that had been sent to it as a present by Peter Collinson. He deemed it therefore a proper mark of acknowledgement to inform him of the success with which it had been used, and his first Essays on Electricity were originally communicated in letters to this good man. They were read in the Royal Society, “where they were not thought worth so much notice as to be printed in their Transactions;” and his paper in which the sameness of lightning with electricity was first asserted, was laughed at by the connoisseurs. Peter Collinson however gave the letters to Cave for the Gentleman's Magazine; Cave forming a better judgment than the Royal Society had done, printed them separately in a pamphlet, for which Dr. Fothergill wrote a preface; the pamphlet by successive additions swelled to a volume in quarto which went through five editions, and as Franklin observes, “cost Cave nothing for copy money.”

What a contrast between this English Quaker and Monsieur Le Cour, (observe, reader, I call him Monsieur, lest you should mistake him for a Dutchman, seeing that he lived at Leyden,) who having raised a double tuberose from the seed, and propagated it by the roots, till he had as many as he could find room to plant, destroyed the rest as fast as they were produced, that he might boast of being the only person in Europe who possessed it. Another French florist of the same stamp, M. Bachelier was his name, kept in like manner some beautiful species of the anemone to himself, which he had procured from the East Indies, and succeeded in withholding them for ten years from all who wished to possess them likewise. A counseller of the Parliament however one day paid him a visit when they were in seed, and in walking with him round the garden, contrived to let his gown fall upon them; by this means he swept off a good number of the seeds, and his servant who was apprized of the scheme, dexterously wrapt up the gown and secured them. Any one must have been a sour moralist who should have considered this to be a breach of the eighth commandment.

Mr. Allison was well acquainted with Peter Collinson; he and his sister sometimes visited him at Mill Hill, and upon their removal into Yorkshire they were supplied from thence with choice fruit trees, and fine varieties of the narcissus and polyanthus, which were the good Quaker's favourite tribes. The wall fruits were under Mr. Allison's especial care; he called himself indeed First Lord of the Fruit Department; and if the first lords of certain other departments had taken as much pains to understand their business and to perform it, the affairs of the state would have been better managed than they were in his days, and than they are in ours. Some part also he took in directing the business of the kitchen garden; but the flowers were left entirely to Betsey and her aunt.

The old poet who called himself Shepherd Tonie, and whom Sir Egerton with much likelihood supposes to have been Anthony Munday, gives in his Woodman's Walk an unfavourable representation of provincial morals, when after forsaking the court and the city because he had found nothing but selfishness and deceit in both, he tried the country.

There did appear no subtle shows,But yea and nay went smoothly:But Lord! how country folks can gloseWhen they speak most untruly!More craft was in a buttoned capAnd in the old wives' rail,Than in my life it was my hapTo see on down or dale.There was no open forgery,But underhanded gleaning,Which they call country policyBut hath a worser meaning.Some good bold face bears out the wrong,Because he gains thereby;The poor mans back is crackt ere long,Yet there he lets him lie:And no degree among them allBut had such close intending,That I upon my knees did fallAnd prayed for their amending.

If the author of these verses, or any one who entertained the same opinion, had been a guest of Mr. Allison's at Thaxted Grange, and had remained under his roof long enough to see the way of life there, and the condition of the hamlet, he would have gone away with a very different persuasion. It was a remark of Bishop Percy's that you may discern in a country parish whether there is a resident clergyman or not, by the civil or savage manners of the people. The influence of the clergyman, however exemplary he may be, is materially impaired if his benefice is so poor and his means so straitened that his own necessities leave him little or nothing to spare; but when such a parish priest as Mr. Bacon has for his neighbour such a resident landholder as his friend at the Grange, happy are—not the cottagers only, but all who live within their sphere.

There was no alehouse in the hamlet, and as the fashion of preserves had not yet been introduced, there were no poachers, the inhabitants being thus happily exempted from two of the great temptations with which in our days men of that class are continually beset. If a newspaper ever found its way among them, newspapers were at that time harmless; and when a hawker came he had no pestiferous tracts either seditious or sectarian for sale, or for gratuitous distribution: a scurvy jest-book was the worst article in his assortment. Mr. Bacon had nothing to counteract his pastoral labours except the pravity of human nature. Of this there must every where be but too much; but fortunate indeed is the parish priest who finds himself in like manner stationed where there are no external circumstances to aggravate and excite it.

Wherever more than ordinary pains were bestowed upon a cottager's or farmer's garden, Mr. Allison supplied the housewife with seed of a better kind than she might otherwise have been able to procure, and with grafts from his most serviceable fruit trees. No one who behaved well in his employ was ever left in want of employment; he had always some work going on, the cost of which was allowed for as charity, in his accounts: and when he observed in a boy the diligence and the disposition which made it likely that an opportunity of bettering his condition would not be thrown away upon him, he advised, or if need were, enabled the parents to educate him for trade, and at a proper age provided a situation for him in London. If any of their daughters desired to acquire those useful arts which might qualify them for domestic service, they came to assist and learn from Miss Allison when she distilled her waters, made her cowslip, elder, and gooseberry wines, prepared her pickles and preserves, dried her medicinal plants, or constructed the great goose-pye, which in the Christmas week was always dispatched by the York coach to Bishopsgate Street, for the honour of Yorkshire, and the astonishment of the Londoners. They came also when preparations were making for a holiday, for old observances of this kind were maintained as duly there as by the Romans when the Laws of the Twelve Tables were in use, and every man constantly observed his family festivals as thereby enjoined.

Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday are still in general usage; indeed I do not know that it was ever deemed malignant and idolatrous to eat them on that day even under the tyranny of the Puritans. But in Mr. Allison's days Mid-lent Sunday was not allowed to pass without a wholesome and savoury bowl of furmity on the social board: and Easter day brought with it not only those coloured eggs which are the friendly offering of that season throughout the whole north of Europe, but the tansy pudding also,—originally perhaps introduced, (and possibly by some compulsory converts from Judaism,) as a representative of the bitter herbs with which the Paschal Lamb was to be eaten.

Both Christmas-days were kept at the Grange. There were people in those times who refused to keep what they called Parliament Christmas. But whether the old computation or the new were right, was a point on which neither the master nor mistress of this house pretended to form an opinion. On which day the Glastonbury Thorn blossomed they never thought it necessary to enquire, nor did they go into the byre or the fields to see upon which midnight the oxen were to be found on their knees. They agreed with Mr. Bacon that in other respects it was a matter of indifference, but not so that Christmas should be celebrated on the same day throughout Christendom: and he agreed with them that as the ritual ought to be performed at the time appointed by authority, so the convivial observances might be regulated by the old kalendar, or still more fitly, repeated according to the old reckoning, in deference to old feelings and recollections which time had consecrated.

In Bishopsgate Street it had been found convenient to set down the children and their young guests on these occasions at Pope-Joan, or snip-snap-snorum, which was to them a more amusing because a noisier game. But here was room for more legitimate gambols; and when a young party had assembled numerous enough for such pastime, hunt the slipper, hot cockles, or blind-man's buff were the sports of a Christmas evening. These had been days of high enjoyment to Betsey for a few years after their removal into the country; they ceased to be so when she saw that her aunt's hair was passing from the steel to the silver hue, and remembered that her father had reached the term of life, beyond which, in the ordinary course of nature our strength is but labour and sorrow;—that the one was at an age

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