ence;

-

and

for two the bread it had been hard | other such out-of-the-way village as enough to find hitherto for one. Work this and take the adult population man in which he can take no interest, alter-by man into confidential chat; much nating with idleness he does not enjoy, that now perplexes his political soul make up the sum of his colorless exist- will then, I warrant him, become plain. but he asks no sympathy; his And now the day draws near when, world is bounded by the horizon, and for the second time, I am to leave my he is blind to all beyond the confines of nursery. The present fades out of sight his own parish. A rare visit to the a while, and I recall the last departure market-town and the half-yearly ap- hence, when strangers they told me pearance of the travelling cheap-jack, were my parents came to take me away. with his van-load of varied wares, form It is Sunday evening. I am in the his landmarks of time. Given enough vicarage garden saying good-bye to the to eat and drink, and a corner in the dog and cat overnight, lest I shall have White Hart on his missus's washing- no time to spare before the early start day, he is content. Knowing little he to-morrow morning. The exciting proswants little; and surely Wisdom on pect of a railway journey does little to ten shillings a week were Folly indeed. qualify the sorrow of parting from the In vain have I sought the agricul- animals, my tailless bantam and my tural laborer known to politicians own particular garden down by the that keen-eyed, intelligent man, whose pond. That I am to leave forever the rude eloquence contrasts so strangely kind old vicar and his daughter who with his untrimmed finger-nails and have been as parents to me is more patched pantaloons, and whose eager than I can realize. I am about to ness to discuss the Allotment Question | leave the only "home" I have ever and beneficial legislation holds the known, and with a strange father and sympathetic stranger spellbound on the mother; "life" lies behind; I know cottage doorstep. Perhaps H- in no farther future than to-morrow, her lagging behind the times, is less it seems as though the end of all things advanced than other rural villages, for were come. I could not find that laborer, though I Again it is Sunday and evening. I searched every heart pints of beer and am standing on the same spot under pipes of tobacco could render accessible. the copper-beech on the vicarage lawn ; Dubious nails and ragged pantaloons the bells are ringing for service, and there were in plenty; a sense that from the schoolhouse down the road higher wages would be acceptable was comes faintly the echo of children's universal ; that farmers could not af- voices chanting the evening hymn. I ford to pay more was almost equally cannot choose but listen, and listening widely acknowledged. But beyond the I am five years old once more, leaving narrow boundary of these closely per- my nursery for the unknown. sonal interests all was dense, impene- bells have stopped. trable mist. I found no 66 opinions," go in. advanced or otherwise; no eloquence; not even a vague hunger for acres and cows. Party government was no more than a name to these contentedly unenlightened rustics; the colored lithograph portrait of the queen, which adorned many a cottage wall, embodied the owner's idea of Authority, and the existence of any other between her Majesty and the landlord was a vague fact, admitted only to be ignored. Let any one who believes this a libel investigate for himself; let him go to some

The

Bedtime; I must

From Temple Bar.

GLIMPSES BACK: A HUNDRED YEARS

AGO.

A LIBRARY is unlike every other room in the house, not because it is generally the most comfortable, and has the sleepiest armchairs, nor because it supplies you with "something" to read. The magazines of the month and papers of the day do that, not to

speak of the weekly periodicals, which are so many. These all mainly tell us of what is going on in the world, and what our neighbors, friends, and enemies are thinking and saying about it. In them we look for the last jokes that have been made to make us laugh, the last murders that have been reported (with ingenuity of detail) to satisfy our natural appetite for the realistic, and there we skip or study speeches which have been delivered in order to make us agree with the speakers, or think for ourselves.

We get all this in any room where the tables are supplied with what we call "current literature." But the walls of a "library" are more than screens to shut out the cold, and surround easy-chairs.

shall have for supper, and ascertain whether our beds are properly aired. Thus throughout any researches into the past the little threads and fringes of life are ever showing themselves, and events which cast great shadows are accompanied by insistent daily needs, enjoyments, and vexations.

There

But to return to our library. is a shelf in mine which holds what was called the "New Annual Register." and I have just been taking down the volume which tells me what men were saying, doing, and thinking exactly one hundred years ago. Mighty things had freshly come, or were coming to pass in those days, including such as the French Revolution and the Independence of the United States, let alone wars and rumors of wars in Europe, and what men then called "the East Indies." The record of these fills about one-third of the octavo volume under the title of "British and Foreign History," while another, headed "Biographical Anecdotes and Characters," is a medley of papers, essays, reviews, poetical and other extracts, and “Observations on the "stile" of Demosthenes, the natural history of the beaver, the fifth satellite of Saturn, verses to a fly taken out of a bowl of punch (capital letters), with receipts for the making of cyder and the curing of hydrophobia. All these take up as much room as America, India, France, and the rest of the world.

Every book-lined shelf is really a "curtain," through the chinks of which we may peep at the past, hear what men were saying, and see what they were doing in the years gone by. There, too, we may behold great completed clusters of history, and learn (if we can) how events which have become turning-points in the world's course arose, were carried on, and sometimes ended. We may perceive also that the greatest of these often hung on the smallest of nails, like pictures; and see how the mightiest impulses which have stirred mankind were accompanied throughout with a by-play of lesser incidents which go far to make up the pleasures and the pains of daily experience. There never, indeed, was a time in which sugar was not sweet, buttons did not come off, chimneys did not smoke, and it was not difficult to find a piece of bread buttered on both sides. Probably some of the three hundred at Thermopyle had colds in their heads, and the "Decay of the Roman Empire ". was surely accompanied by that of many Roman teeth. Gibbon does not notice this, but it concerned ancient citizens more personally" principal." I have sometimes wonthan the conduct of senates or Cæsars. Though the turning round of the earth is a mighty business, involving the order of creation and the existence of mankind, we have to think what we

Thus manifold tastes are suited, but it is from a large sheaf in the middle of the book that I would first pluck a few stalks for my reader. It is called "Principal Occurrences in the Year."

These are not gathered from the small fields of the United Kingdom alone. The whole world offers a harvest, and the reaper wanders over its surface cutting handfuls here and there from what seem to him the richest growths, and worthy of being called

dered at the guiding motive of those chroniclers who pin an event to each day in our present common almanacks, and fill a space which might have served for the making of a memoran

dum with the statement that on such | hint that there was any prospect of its and such a date "John Bright was general adoption. It was only "ingenborn," or Galileo died." Occasion-ious." Presently follows an account ally you come across a juxtaposition of the execution of one "Anckerwhich suggests a fitness in the se- stroem," who had assassinated his quence of events. The other day I Swedish Majesty. This reveals a hornoticed these immediately following rible bluntness of the age to the cruelannouncements in a penny calendar. ties of punishment, being recorded Martyrs burned at Oxford," "Fire without comment, except that the asInsurance begins." This was obvi- sassin was taken to the final place of ously unintentional, otherwise there execution "amid the hisses and hootwould surely have been more happy ings of the attending multitudes," coincidences. But the choice of the which, says the narrator coolly, historian who records the "Principal "seemed considerably to affect him." Occurrences" for a whole year in the One might have thought his feelings "New Annual Register" indicates what had become blunted by that time, for would seem to be a curious paucity of this is how he was treated. news in the journals of the day, since Having been deprived of " his rights in his opening pages he gives equal of nobility, and of a citizen, with inprominence to " an extraordinary earth-famy," the night before, he "was conquake at Lisbon," the offering by the ducted to the Ritten-haus market, and pope of "a suite of superb rooms" in fastened by an iron collar upon a scafthe Vatican to "Prince Augustus, fifth fold during two hours, and afterwards son of his Britannic Majesty" (who whipped with a rod of five lashes, at a politely declined them), and the finding stake, where, under his name, with the of "an enormous stone in the body of title of regicide added, was tied the pisa cart mare at Colchester." This tol and the knife, the instruments of comes in the chronicle of January, his crime. The same punishment was which also immortalizes a certain "Mr. repeated on the 20th at the Hay-marSmith" who was crushed to death in a ket, and the 21st at the market of crowd outside the Haymarket Theatre, Adolphus Frederic. Yesterday termi and the humanity of the inhabitants of nated his existence on a scaffold erected Hull, "which deserves to be recorded in the great square. His right hand to their honor," since they collected was first chopped off by the execufifty-six pounds " for the relief of a tioner, who immediately afterwards beshipwrecked crew. More interesting headed him, and then divided his body is a glimpse of the rude condition of into four quarters, which are stuck up. agriculture a hundred years ago. This in different parts of the city." is indicated by two announcements. The first records the invention of a machine," which is so simple, and so excellently contrived, that by one and the same movement it separates completely, and throws into different receivers, the heavy corn and the light." The other tells how "an ingenious farmer," having cut the "tops and tails," stacked and thatched about twenty loads of turnips, so that they And there is not a word in the narwere preserved from the frost, and rative of the registrar to indicate any "when opened," were found per-perception on his part that the three fectly sound and fresh," affording "an days' torture (for it was nothing less) excellent fodder." This now common of this criminal could be reckoned barprocess was then hailed as a unique barous, or that the recital of it would discovery, but the narrator does not be other than gratifying to his educated

66

It is added that " At the commencement of his punishment he shewed much firmness, but his strength became exhausted from his sufferings; and he was dragged, being incapable of walking, to the places of punishment and execution.

It was then that the people hooted (loyal subjects !), not at the hideousness of the spectacle, but al "him."

66

readers. Indeed, this "occurrence" is | the day seem to have been almost recorded with evident satisfaction at always impotent. Instances of lonthe sense of just retribution which it gevity are of course duly recorded, and revealed. The story of another fol- in one, that of " a little woman " who lows, also illustrating the severity of died in the hundred and fifth year of punishment a hundred years ago. her age, it is mentioned that, "Some Some convicts who had escaped from years before her death she had a new Botany Bay in an open boat were cap-set of teeth." But it is not said tured after a miserable voyage of ten whether these were provided by a denweeks and taken to England, but ex- tist or by nature; if by the former, pressed a desire to suffer death rather was it to rank as a principal occurthan be sent back to New South Wales.rence 99 ? Those were the days of damages for In these days of rapid intercourse it libel, however. On the same page is is interesting to notice that the arrival the report of an action brought by a of "the Thames Frigate off Portsyoung lady against the proprietor of mouth on April the 3rd, "with dethe Morning Post, Mr. Tattersal, a spatches from the East Indies," has a "horse-dealer," living in the Isle of paragraph to itself, she having sailed Ely, who (on that account) pleaded from "Tellicherry" the 28th of Deignorance of "what was going on in cember, and from the Cape the 2nd this great city," i.e., London. But of February. But these long postal 'the jury brought in a verdict for the voyages lasted occasionally into the plaintiff - damages, £4,000." Then" fifties" of the present century. we have mention of one Serjeant Take other entries which indicate Grant," whose sentence, for some social advance. In the report of the cause, was mitigated," ," and instead of House of Commons on the number of his having a thousand" lashes, he debtors in different gaols (the total was let off with "fifty," which he re- number was 1,957), it appears that ceived "on the parade at St. James'." "one Gaskin," a leather-dresser, had The mention of the original punish- been confined eleven years for a debt ment ordered is, apparently, incidental. of "five shillings" in the county gaol The point in the "occurrence" is the at Worcester. This was hard lines, but mitigation of his sentence. Public not to be compared with the sufferings whipping, however, was by no means of some negroes, next recorded, as reserved for military offenders. Two thus (without comment) : Barbadoes, 66 occurrences" in the outskirts of this June 17. The King George, Howard same year are mentioned, one of which (was he related to the philanthroespecially involved a matter of "great pist ?), of Bristol, was lost about the importance to the public, who were middle of April to windward of this daily suffering under similar imposi- island. She had on board when she tions." A man had fraudulently ob- went on shore 283 men slaves, 261 of tained two shillings from a servant for whom were drowned in the 'tweenthe delivery of a parcel, and for this he decks, they being in irons, and the was sentenced to three months' im- gratings locked down. One old man prisonment, and then "to be publickly and a boy, being not well, and on deck, whipped from the Admiralty to Charing swam to shore, as did many of the Cross, and thence to Bridge Street, women, 87 of whom were sold here." Parliament Street." In the other case, Still there were not wanting some that of kidnapping a voter, the offender kindly disposed people in English sowas sentenced to be "whipped through ciety. The next paragraph tells us the streets" of Edinburgh, and then how when Lord Egremont's horse won "banished Scotland for seven years." £50 on the race-ground at Brighthelmstone," his lordship asked some

Among the events mentioned, few are more frequent than fires, for the gentlemen who stood near him extinguishing of which the engines of "whether there was a Sunday School

at Brighton." The answer was that the real representatives of the people, there were 66 two." His lordship then and that therefore the laws were not desired that the plate won by his horse enacted by their own consent." Mr. might be equally divided for the ben- Perry seems to have escaped, since a efit of those laudable institutions. All reward of £100 was offered for his this, be it remarked, was in the lifetime apprehension. of some who (presumably) are alive

now.

The last item in "Principal Occurrences is the table of metropolitan mortality for the year, in which it appears that the "Burials" showed an excess over the "Christenings of 865, and that of the children who had died (the total deaths of all ages being 20,213), 8,703 were under five years of age, and that only 432 persons (male and female) reached the age of eighty in the twelve months. With regard to the proportion of infant deaths, since children were not counted till they had been christened, there would probably be many who died (born, but unreckoned) before baptism. This suggests an appalling picture of infant mortality in London (and, indeed, elsewhere), only a hundred years ago.

It was exactly a hundred years ago that Earl Stanhope's experiments for navigating vessels with "the steam engine were recognized by the Navy Board, which undertook to pay the expense of one (two hundred tons burden) on condition that if she do not answer, after a fair trial, she shall be returned to Earl Stanhope, and all the expense incurred made good by him." This, adds the narrator, "is undoubtedly a noble experiment, and highly honorable to his lordship, whatever may be its success. If it answer, the advantage to the public, particularly in inland navigation, will be immense." The next paragraph tells us that Lord Falmouth and others were laudably On searching the "Principal Occurexerting themselves to prevent the rences" of the following year for the plundering of wrecked vessels by the fate of the man who stuck a handbill, country people on the coast of Corn-"This house to let, etc.," on the door wall.

There is mention made of food riots in various parts, and straws in the wind showed that certain disaffected people were being inflamed by reason of what had been coming to pass in France. One man was taken into custody for having stuck upon the door of the Fleet Prison "This house to let. Peaceable possession will be given by the present tenants, etc., etc. Bastiles are no longer necessary in Europe." We are not here told what was done with this dangerous wag, but a company of the London militia was ordered to be on duty night and day, and a large meeting of bankers, traders, and others was held at Merchant Taylors' Hall," when a declaration expressive of their determination to support our present happy constitution was unanimously agreed

of the Fleet Prison, I find that "since he had conducted himself with a criminal effrontery that bespoke no compunction of heart," he was sentenced to be "imprisoned in Newgate for the term of three years, and during that time to stand once in the pillory at the Royal Exchange, and at the expiration of his imprisonment to find security for his good behavior for five years, himself in £500, and two sureties in £250 each " a lesson to political billstickers.

As might be expected, one marked feature of this century-old "Register" is the repeated list of men and women "left for execution." Some of these, indeed, were respited, but the gibbet was the chief weapon of the law for punishing all sorts and conditions of offenders. Protests, however, were not wanting against this severity. The public conscience was beginning to be touched, though it can hardly be said to have been awakened till within the last thirty or forty years. Voices, too,