Part 115

This is another saint in the church of England calendar and the almanacs. He was bishop or archbishop of Rheims, and the instructor of Clovis, the first king of the Franks who professed christianity; Remigius baptized him by trine immersion. The accession of Clovis to the church, is deemed to have been the origin of the “_most christian king_,” and the “_eldest son of the church_,” which the kings of France are stiled in the present times.

_Salters’ Company._

The beadles and Servants of the worshipful company of salters are to attend divine service at St. Magnus church, London-bridge, pursuant to the will of sir John Salter, who died in the year 1605; who was a good benefactor to the said company, and ordered that the beadles and servants should go to the said church the first week in October, three times each person, and say, “How do you do brother Salter? I hope you are well!”[336]

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Lowly Amaryllis. _Amaryllis humilis_. Dedicated to _St. Remigius_.

[336] Annual Register, 1769.

~October 2.~

_Feast of the Holy Angel-Guardians._ _St. Thomas_, Bp. of Hereford, A. D. 1282. _St. Leodegarius_, or _Leger_, A. D. 678.

_Guardian-Angels._

The festival of “the Holy Angel-Guardians” as they are called by Butler, is this day kept by his church. He says that, “according to St. Thomas,” when the angels were created, the lowest among them were enlightened by those that were supreme in the orders. It is not to be gathered from him how many orders there were; but Holme says, that “after the fall of Lucifer the bright star and his company, there remained still in heaven more angels then ever there was, is, and shall be, men born in the earth.” He adds, that they are “ranked into nine orders or chorus, called the nine quoires of holy angels;” and he ranks them thus:--

1. The order of _seraphims_. 2. The order of _cherubims_. 3. The order of _archangels_. 4. The order of _angels_. 5. The order of _thrones_. 6. The order of _principalities_. 7. The order of _powers_. 8. The order of _dominions_. 9. The order of _virtues_.

Some authors put them in this sequence: 1. seraphims; 2. cherubims; 3. thrones; 4. dominions; 5. virtues; 6. powers; 7. principalities; 8. archangels; 9. angels. Holme adds, that “God never erected any order, rule, or government, but the devil did and will imitate him; for where God hath his church, the devil will have his synagogue.” The latter part of this affirmation is versified by honest Daniel De Foe. He begins his “True-born Englishman” with it:--

Wherever God erects a house of prayer The devil’s sure to have a chapel there.

* * * * *

_Angel_, in its primitive sense, denotes a _messenger_, and frequently signifies men, when, from the common notion of the term, it is conceived to denote ministering spirits. Angels, as celestial intelligences, have been the objects of over curious inquiry, and of worship. Paul prohibits this: “Let no man,” he says, “beguile you of your reward, in a voluntary humility, and the worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen.”[337] An erudite and sincere writer remarks, that “The worship, which so many christians pay to angels and saints, and images and relics, is really a false worship, hardly distinguishable from idolatry. When it is said, in excuse, that ‘they worship these only as mediators,’ that alters the case very little; since to apply to a false mediator is as much a departure from Jesus Christ, our only advocate, as to worship a fictitious deity is withdrawing our faith and allegiance from the true God.”[338]

* * * * *

Amid the multiplicity of representations by Roman catholic writers concerning angels, are these by Father Lewis Henriques, “That the streets of Paradise are adorned with tapestry, and all the histories of the world are engraven on the walls by excellent sculptors; that the angels have no particular houses, but go from one quarter to another for diversity; that they put on women’s habits, and appear to the saints in the dress of ladies, with curles and locks, with waistcoats and fardingales, and the richest linens.”

This occupation of the _angels_ agrees with the occupations that Henriques assigns to the _saints_; who, according to him, are to enjoy, with other pleasures, the recreation of bathing: “There shall be pleasant bathes for that purpose; they shall swim like fishes, and sing as melodious as nightingales; the men and women shall delight themselves with muscarades, feasts and ballads; women shall sing more pleasantly than men, that the delight may be greater; and women shall rise again with very long hair, and shall appear with ribands and laces as they do upon earth.” Father Henriques was a Jesuit, and communicates this information in a book entitled, “_The Business of the Saints in Heaven_,” published by the written authority of Father Prado, the Provincial of the order of Jesuits at Castille, dated at Salamanca, April 28th, 1631.[339]

“For _Age_ and _Want_ save while you may No morning sun lasts a whole day.”

_The Times_ and other journals report the “obit” of this female. “On the 2nd of October, 1825, died Mrs. Hannah Want, at Ditchingham, Norfolk, in the 106th year of her age. She was born on the 20th of August, 1720, and throughout this long life enjoyed a state of uninterrupted health; and retained her memory and perception to the end with a clearness truly astonishing. Till the day previous to her decease she was not confined to her bed; and on the 105th anniversary of her birth, entertained a party of her relatives who visited her to celebrate the day: she lived to see a numerous progeny to the fifth generation, and at her death there are now living children, grand-children, great-grand-children, and great-great-grand-children to the number of one hundred and twenty-one.”

An intelligent correspondent writes: “As it is _not_ an ‘_every-day_’ occurrence for people to live so long, perhaps you may be pleased to immortalize Hannah Want, by giving her a leaf of your _Every-Day Book_.” That the old lady may live as long after her death as this work shall be her survivor the Editor can promise, “with remainder over” to his survivors.

Hannah Want, in common with all long-livers, was an early riser. The following particulars are derived from a correspondent. She was seldom out of bed after nine at night, and even in winter; and towards the last of her life, was seldom in it after six in the morning. Her sleep was uniformly sound and tranquil; her eye-sight till within the last three years was clear; her appetite, till two days before her death, good; her memory excellent; she could recollect and discourse on whatever she knew during the last century. Her diet was plain common food, meat and poultry, pudding and dumpling, bread and vegetables in moderate quantities; she drank temperately, very temperately, of good, very good, mild home-brewed beer. During the last twenty years she had not taken tea, though to that period she had been accustomed to it. She never had the small pox, and never had been ill. Her first seventy-five years were passed at Bungay in Suffolk, her last thirty at the adjoining village of Ditchingham in Norfolk. She was the daughter of a farmer named Knighting. Her husband, John Want, a maltster, died on Christmas-day, 1802, at the age of eighty-five, leaving Hannah ill provided for, with an affectionate and dutiful daughter, who was better than house and land; for she cherished her surviving parent when “age and want, that ill-matched pair, make countless thousands mourn.”

Hannah Want was of a serious and sedate turn; not very talkative, yet cheerfully joining in conversation. She was a plain, frugal, careful wife and mother; less inclined to insist on rights, than to perform duties; these she executed in all respects, “and all without hurry or care.” Her stream of life was a gentle flow of equanimity, unruffled by storm or accident, till it was exhausted. She was never put out of her way but once, and that was when the house wherein she lived at Bungay was burned down, and none of the furniture saved, save one featherbed.

In answer to a series of questions from the Editor, respecting this aged and respectable female, addressed to another correspondent, he says, “What a work you make about an old woman! ‘I’ll answer none of your silly questions; ax Briant!’ as a neighbouring magistrate said to sir Edmund Bacon, who was examining him in a court of justice. The old woman was well enough. There is nothing more to be learned about her, than how long a body may crawl upon the earth, and think nothing worth thinking--as if ‘thinking was but an idle waste of thought;’ and how long a person to whom ‘naught is every thing, and every thing is nothing’, did nothing worth doing. I suppose that the noted H. W. knew as much of life in 105 hours, as Hannah Want did in 105 years. All I know or can learn about her is nothing, and if you can make any thing of it you may. Some of our _free-knowledgists_, ‘with a pale cast of thought’ have taken a cast of her head, and discovered that her organ of self-destructiveness was harmonized by the organ of long-livitiveness.” This latter correspondent is too hard upon Hannah; but he encloses information on another subject that may be useful hereafter, and therefore what he amusingly says respecting her, is at the service of those readers who are qualified to make something of nothing.

A portrait of Hannah Want, in 1824, when she was in her 104th year, taken by Mr. Robert Childs, “an ingenious gentleman” of Bungay, and etched by him, furnishes the present engraving of her.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Friars’ Minors Soapwort. _Saponaria Officinalis._ Dedicated to _the Guardian Angels_.

[337] Colossians ii. 17.

[338] Jortin.

[339] Moral Practice of the Jesuits. Lond. 12mo. 1670.

~October 3.~

_St. Dionysius_ the Areopagite, A. D. 51. _St. Gerard_, Abbot, A. D. 959. _The two Ewalds_, A. D. 690.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Downy Helenium. _Helenium pubescens._ Dedicated to _St. Dionysius._

SONNET.

_Written at Chatsworth with a Pencil in October._

TIME--SUNSET.

I always lov’d thee, and thy yellow garb, October dear!--and I have hailed thy reign, On many a lovely, many a distant plain, But here, thou claim’st my warmest best regard. Not e’en the noble banks of silver Seine

Can rival Derwent’s--where proud Chatsworth’s tow’rs Reflect Sol’s setting rays--as now yon chain Of gold-tipp’d mountains crown her lawns and bowers. Here, countless beauties catch the ravish’d view, Majestic scenes, all silent as the tomb; Save where the murmuring of Derwent’s wave, To tenderest feelings the rapt soul subdue, While shadowy forms seem gliding through the gloom To visit those again they lov’d this side the grave.

_Rickman._

~October 4.~

_St. Francis_ of Assisium, A. D. 1226. _Sts. Marcus_, _Marcian_, &c. _St. Petronius_, Bp. A. D. 430. _St. Ammon_, Hermit, A. D. 308. _St. Aurea_, Abbess, A. D. 666. _St. Edwin_, King, A. D. 633. _The Martyrs of Triers._

SALE OF HYDE-PARK-CORNER TOLL-GATE.

Before the close of the sessions of parliament in 1825 an act passed for the removal of the toll-gate at Hyde-park-corner, with a view to the free passage of horsemen and carriages between London and Pimlico. So great an accommodation to the inhabitants of that suburb, manifests a disposition to relieve other growing neighbourhoods of the metropolis from these vexatious imposts. On the present occasion a gentleman, evidently an artist, presented the Editor with a drawing of Hyde-park-corner gate on the day when it was sold; it is engraved opposite. This liberal communication was accompanied by the subjoined letter:--

_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book._

Sir,

I have taken the liberty of enclosing you a representation of a scene which took place at Hyde-park-corner last Tuesday, October 4th, being no less than the public sale of the toll-house, and all the materials enumerated in the accompanying catalogue. If you were not present, the drawing I have sent may interest you as a view of the old toll-house and the last scene of its eventful history. You are at liberty to make what use of it you please. The sale commenced at one o’clock, the auctioneer stood under the arch before the door of the house on the north side of Piccadilly. Several carriage folks and equestrians, unconscious of the removal of the toll, stopped to pay, whilst the drivers of others passed through knowingly, with a look of satisfaction at their liberation from the accustomed restriction at that place. The poor dismantled house _without a turnpike man_, seemed “almost afraid to know itself”--“Othello’s occupation was gone.” By this time, if the conditions of the auction have been attended to, not a vestige is left on the spot. I have thought this event would interest a mind like yours, which permits not any change in the history of improvement, or of places full of old associations, to take place without record.

I remain, sir,

Yours, &c.

A CONSTANT READER.

“The last time! a going! gone.” _Auctioneer._ “Down! down! derry down!” _Public._

The sale by auction of the “toll-houses” on the north and south side of the road, with the “weighing machine,” and lamp-posts at Hyde-park-corner, was effected by Mr. Abbott, the estate agent and appraiser, by order of the trustees of the roads. They were sold for building materials; the north toll-house was in five lots, the south in five other lots; the gates, rails, posts, and inscription boards were in five more lots; and the engine-house was also in five lots. At the same time, the weighing machine and toll-houses at Jenny’s Whim bridge were sold in seven lots; and the toll-house near the bun-house at Chelsea, with lamp posts on the road, were likewise sold in seven lots. The whole are entirely cleared away, to the relief of thousands of persons resident in these neighbourhoods. It is too much to expect every thing vexatious to disappear at once; this is a very good beginning, and if there be truth in the old saying, we may expect “a good ending.”

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Southernwood. _Artemesia Aproxanum._ Dedicated to _St. Francis Assissium_.

~October 5.~

_St. Placidus_, &c. A. D. 546. _St. Galla_, 6th Cent.

THE ASS.

The cantering of TIM TIMS[340] startles him who told of his “youthful days,” at the school wherein poor “Starkey” cyphered part of his little life. C. L. “getting well, but weak” from painful and severe indisposition, is “off and away” for a short discursion. Better health to him, and good be to him all his life. Here he is.

THE ASS _No. 2._

(_For Hone’s Every-Day Book._)

Mr. Collier, in his “Poetical Decameron” (Third Conversation) notices a Tract, printed in 1595, with the author’s initials only, A. B., entitled “The Noblenesse of the Asse: a work rare, learned, and excellent.” He has selected the following pretty passage from it. “He (the Ass) refuseth no burthen, he goes whither he is sent without any contradiction. He lifts not his foote against any one; he bytes not; he is no fugitive, nor malicious affected. He doth all things in good sort, and to his liking that hath cause to employ him. If strokes be given him, he cares not for them; and, as our modern poet singeth,

“Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe, And to that end dost beat him many times; He cares not for himselfe, much lesse thy blow.”[341]

Certainly Nature, foreseeing the cruel usage which this useful servant to man should receive at man’s hand, did prudently in furnishing him with a tegument impervious to ordinary stripes. The malice of a child, or a weak hand, can make feeble impressions on him. His back offers no mark to a puny foeman. To a common whip or switch his hide presents an absolute insensibility. You might as well pretend to scourge a school-boy with a tough pair of leather breeches on. His jerkin is well fortified. And therefore the Costermongers “between the years 1790 and 1800” did more politicly than piously in lifting up a part of his upper garment. I well remember that beastly and bloody custom. I have often longed to see one of those refiners in discipline himself at the cart’s tail, with just such a convenient spot laid bare to the tender mercies of the whipster. But since Nature has resumed her rights, it is to be hoped, that this patient creature does not suffer to extremities; and that to the savages who still belabour his poor carcase with their blows (considering the sort of anvil they are laid upon) he might in some sort, if he could speak, exclaim with the philosopher, “Lay on: you beat but upon the case of Anaxarchus.”

Contemplating this natural safeguard, this fortified exterior, it is with pain I view the sleek, foppish, combed and curried, person of this animal, as he is transmuted and disnaturalized, at Watering Places, &c. where they affect to make a palfrey of him. Fie on all such sophistications!--It will never do, Master Groom. Something of his honest shaggy exterior will still peep up in spite of you--his good, rough, native, pine-apple coating. You cannot “refine a scorpion into a fish, though you rince it and scour it with ever so cleanly cookery.”[342]

The modern poet, quoted by A. B., proceeds to celebrate a virtue, for which no one to this day had been aware that the Ass was remarkable.

One other gift this beast hath as his owne, Wherewith the rest could not be furnished; On man himselfe the same was not bestowne, To wit--on him is ne’er engendered The hatefull vermine that doth teare the skin And to the bode [body] doth make his passage in.

And truly when one thinks on the suit of impenetrable armour with which Nature (like Vulcan to another Achilles) has provided him, these subtle enemies to _our_ repose, would have shown some dexterity in getting into _his_ quarters. As the bogs of Ireland by tradition expel toads and reptiles, he may well defy these small deer in his fastnesses. It seems the latter had not arrived at the exquisite policy adopted by the human vermin “between 1790 and 1800.”

But the most singular and delightful gift of the Ass, according to the writer of this pamphlet, is his _voice_; the “goodly, sweet, and continual brayings” of which, “whereof they forme a melodious and proportionable kinde of musicke,” seem to have affected him with no ordinary pleasure. “Nor thinke I,” he adds, “that any of our immoderne musitians can deny, but that their song is full of exceeding pleasure to be heard; because therein is to be discerned both concord, discord, singing in the meane, the beginning to sing in large compasse, then following on to rise and fall, the halfe note, whole note, musicke of five voices, firme singing by four voices, three together or one voice and a halfe. Then their variable contrarieties amongst them, when one delivers forth a long tenor, or a short, the pausing for time, breathing in measure, breaking the minim or very least moment of time. Last of all to heare the musicke of five or six voices chaunged to so many of Asses, is amongst them to heare a song of world without end.”

There is no accounting for ears; or for that laudable enthusiasm with which an Author is tempted to invest a favourite subject with the most incompatible perfections. I should otherwise, for my own taste, have been inclined rather to have given a place to these extraordinary musicians at that banquet of nothing-less-than-sweet sounds, imagined by old Jeremy Collier (Essays, 1698; Part. 2.--On Music.) where, after describing the inspirating effects of martial music in a battle, he hazards an ingenious conjecture, whether a sort of _Anti-music_ might not be invented, which should have quite the contrary effect of “sinking the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the blood, and inspiring despair, and cowardice and consternation.” “’Tis probable” he says, “the roaring of lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, together with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously imitated and compounded, might go a great way in this invention.” The dose, we confess, is pretty potent, and skilfully enough prepared. But what shall we say to the Ass of Silenus (quoted by TIMS), who, if we may trust to classic lore, by his own proper sounds, without thanks to cat or screech-owl, dismaid and put to rout a whole army of giants? Here was _Anti-music_ with a vengeance; a whole _Pan-Dis-Harmonicon_ in a single lungs of leather!

But I keep you trifling too long on this Asinine subject. I have already past the _Pons Asinorum_, and will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun of Jem Boyer, my schoolmaster:--

ASS _in præsenti_ seldom makes a WISE MAN _in futuro_.

C. L.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Starlike Camomile. _Boltonia Asteroides._ Dedicated to _St. Placidus_.

[340] Ante, p. 1308.

[341] Who this modern poet was, says Mr. C., is a secret worth discovering.--The wood-cut on the title of the Pamphlet is--an Ass with a wreath of laurel round his neck.

[342] Milton: _from memory_.

~October 6.~

_St. Bruno_, Founder of the Carthusian Monks, A. D. 1101. _St. Faith_ or _Fides_, and others.

_St. Faith._

This name in the church of England calendar and almanacs belongs to a saint of the Romish church.

According to Butler, St. Faith was a female of Aquitain, put to death under Dacian. He says she was titular saint of several churches in France, particularly that of Longueville in Normandy, which was enriched by Walter Giffard, earl of Buckingham. He also says she was “patroness of the priory of Horsam, in the county of Norfolk;” that “the subterraneous chapel of St. Faith, built under St. Paul’s, in London, was also very famous;” and that “an arm of the saint was formerly kept at Glastenbury.” Nevertheless, Mr. Audley thinks, that as the ancient Romans deified Faith according to the heathen mythology, and as christian Rome celebrates on August 1st the passion of the holy virgins, Faith, Hope, and Charity, it is highly probable these virtues have been mistaken for persons; and, admitting this, Dr. M. Geddes smartly says, “they may be truly said to have suffered, and still to suffer martyrdom at Rome.” Mr. Audley adds, “There is indeed the church of St. Faith at London; but as our calendar is mostly copied from the Romish one, that will account for the introduction of the good virgin amongst us.”[343]

ST. BRUNO.

This saint was an anchoret and the founder of the Carthusian monks. He is stiled by writers of his own age “master of the Chartreuse;” from his order comes our Charter-house at London.

A prelate of the same name is renowned in story, and his last adventures are related in verse.

BISHOP BRUNO.

“Bruno, the bishop of Herbipolitanum, sailing in the river of Danubius, with Henry the Third, then emperour, being not far from a place which the Germanes call Ben Strudel, or the devouring gulfe, which is neere unto Grinon, a castle in Austria, a spirit was heard clamouring aloud, ‘Ho! ho! bishop Bruno, whither art thou travelling? but dispose of thyself how thou pleasest, thou shalt be my prey and spoile.’ At the hearing of these words they were all stupified, and the bishop with the rest crost and blest themselves. The issue was, that within a short time after, the bishop feasting with the emperor in a castle belonging to the countesse of Esburch, a rafter fell from the roof of the chamber wherein they sate, and strooke him dead at the table.”

_Heywood’s Hierarchie of the blessed Angels._