Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. "Pluck some leafy branch," he says, "and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their strife":—

"The two warring bands joyful unite, And foe embraces foe: each with its lips Licking the others' wings, feet, arms, and breast, Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed, And all inebriate with delight."

So the Swiss,[6] he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget outrage. It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle.

[Footnote 6: "Come quando nei Suizzeri si muove Sedizione, e che si grida a l' arme; Se qualche nom grave allor si leva in piede E comincia a parlar con dolce lingua, Mitiga i petti barbari e feroci; E intanto fa portare ondanti vasi Pieni di dolci ed odorati vini; Ahora ognun le labbra e 'l mento immerge Ne' le spumanti tazze," etc. ]

Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm like the chirping of a bird;—as where he paints (in the very first scene of the "Pastor Fido") the little sparrow flitting from fir to beech, and from beech to myrtle, and twittering, "How I love! how I love!" And the bird-mate ("il suo dolce desio") twitters in reply, "How I love, how I love, too!" "Ardo d' amore anch' io."

Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a flower,—except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he has only a little crypt in the "Autori Diversi." I think of him as I think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning deshabille with only the added improvisation of a rose.

In his "Asolani" Bembo gives a very full and minute description of the gardens at Asolo, which relieved the royal retirement of Caterina, the Queen of Cyprus. Nothing could be more admirable than the situation: there were skirts of mountain which were covered, and are still covered, with oaks; there were grottos in the sides of cliffs, and water so disposed—in jets, in pools inclosed by marble, and among rocks—as to counterfeit all the wildness of Nature; there was the same stately array of cypresses, and of clipped hedges, which had belonged to the villas of Pliny; temples were decorated with blazing frescoes, to which, I dare say, Carpaccio may have lent a hand, if not that wild rake, Giorgione. Here the pretty Queen, with eight thousand gold ducats a year, (whatever that amount may have been,) and some seventy odd retainers, held her court; and here Bembo, a dashing young fellow at that time of seven or eight and twenty, became a party to those disquisitions on Love, and to those recitations of song, part of which he has recorded in the "Asolani." I am sorry to say, the beauty of the place, so far as regards its artificial features, is now all gone. The hall, which may have served as the presence-chamber of the Queen, was only a few years since doing service as a farmer's barn; and the traces of a Diana and an Apollo were still coloring the wall under which a few cows were crunching their clover-hay.

All the gardening of Italy at that period, as, indeed, at almost all times, depended very much upon architectural accessories: colonnades and wall-veil with frescoes make a large part of Italian gardening to this day. The Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore, and the Borghese Garden at Rome, are fair types. And as I recall the sunny vistas of this last, and the noontide loungings upon the marble seats, counting white flecks of statues amid the green of cypresses, and watching the shadow which some dense-topped pine flings upon a marble flight of steps or a marble balustrade, I cannot sneer at the Italian gardening, or wish it were other than it is. The art-life of Italy is the crowning and the overlapping life. The Campagna seems only a bit of foreground to carry the leaping arches of the aqueducts, and to throw the hills of Tivoli and Albano to a purple distance. The farmers (fattori) who gallop across the fields, in rough sheepskin wrappers, and upon scurvy-looking ponies, are more picturesque than thrifty; and if I gallop in company with one of them to his home upon the farther edge of the Campagna, (which is an allowable wet-day fancy,) I shall find a tall stone house smeared over roughly with plaster, and its ground-floor devoted to a crazy cart, a pony, a brace of cows, and a few goats; a rude court is walled in adjoining the house, where a few pigs are grunting. Ascending an oaken stair-way within the door, I come upon the living-room of the fattore; the beams overhead are begrimed with smoke, and garnished here and there with flitches of bacon; a scant fire of fagots is struggling into blaze upon an open hearth; and on a low table bare of either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of polenta, which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a Scotch colley,—a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the bandages from a squalling Bambino,—a mixed odor of garlic and of goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency,—and you may form some idea of the home of a small Roman farmer in our day. It falls away from the standard of Cato; and so does the man.

He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds, and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift under the new government, I cannot say.

Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers: the intervening thrift of Tuscany had always its influence. The meadows of Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of grass in the season; the valley of the Clitumnus is like a miniature of the Genesee; and around Perugia the crimson-tasselled clovers, in the season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden.

The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of the latter I cannot speak from personal observation; but the dairy-farm, Cascina, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the Cajano property of the great Lorenzo. The stables were admirably arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were invariably reared by hand; and the average per diem of milk, throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheese-tubs of Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new Gonfaloniere, whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their baitings with the tender vetches.

The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do credit to any age or country.

About the better-cultivated portions of Lombardy there is an almost regal look. The roads are straight, and of most admirable construction. Lines of trees lift their stateliness on either side, and carry trailing festoons of vines. On both sides streams of water are flowing in artificial canals, interrupted here and there by cross sluices and gates, by means of which any or all of the fields can be laid under water at pleasure, so that old meadows return three and four cuttings of grass in the year. There are patches of Indian-corn which are equal to any that can be seen on the Miami; hemp and flax appear at intervals, and upon the lower lands rice. The barns are huge in size, and are raised from the ground upon columns of masonry.

I have a dapper little note-book of travel, from which these facts are mainly taken; and at the head of one of its pages I observe an old ink-sketch of a few trees, with festoons of vines between. It is yellowed now, and poor always; for I am but a dabbler at such things. Yet it brings back, clearly and briskly, the broad stretch of Lombard meadows, the smooth Macadam, the gleaming canals of water, the white finials of Milan Cathedral shining somewhere in the distance, the thrushes, as in the "Pastor Fido," filling all the morning air with their sweet

"Ardo d' amore! ardo d' amore!"

the dewy clover-lots, looking like wavy silken plush, the green glitter of mulberry-leaves, and the beggar in steeple-crowned hat, who says, "Grazia," and "A rivedervi!" as I drop him a few kreutzers, and rattle away to the North, and out of Italy.

* * * * *

About the year 1570, a certain Conrad Heresbach, who was Councillor to the Duke of Cleves, (brother to that unfortunate Anne of Cleves who was one of the wife-victims of Henry VIII.,) wrote four Latin books on rustic affairs, which were translated by Barnaby Googe, a Lincolnshire farmer and poet, who was in his day gentleman-pensioner to Queen Elizabeth. Our friend Barnaby introduces his translation in this style:—"I haue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit & pleasure, to put into English these foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected & set forth by Master Conrade Heresbatch, a great & a learned Counceller of the Duke of Cleues: not thinking it reason, though I haue altered & increased his worke, with mine owne readings & obseruations, joined with the experience of sundry my friends, to take from him (as diuers in the like case haue done) the honour & glory of his owne trauaile: Neither is it my minde, that this either his doings or mine, should deface, or any waves darken the good enterprise, or painfull trauailes of such our countrymen, of England, as haue plentifully written of this matter: but always haue, & do giue them the reuerence & honour due to so vertuous, & well disposed Gentlemen, namely, Master Fitz herbert, & Master Tusser: whose workes may, in my fancie, without any presumption, compare with any, either Varro, Columella, or Palladius of Rome."

The work is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farm-practice in general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods; the third, to cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been an attentive reader of the older authors I have discussed, and his citations from them are abundant. He had also opportunity for every-day observation in a region which, besides being one of the most fertile, was probably at that time the most highly cultivated in Europe; and his work may be regarded as the most important contribution to agricultural literature since the days of Crescenzi. He reaffirms, indeed, many of the old fables of the Latinists,—respects the force of proper incantations, has abiding faith in "the moon being aloft" in time of sowing, and insists that the medlar can be grafted on the pine, and the cherry upon the fir. Rue, he tells us, "will prosper the better for being stolen"; and "If you breake to powder the horne of a Ram & sowe it watrying it well, it is thought it will come to be good Sperage" (Asparagus). He assures us that he has grafted the pear successfully when in full bloom; and furthermore, that he has seen apples which have been kept sound for three years.

Upon the last page are some rules for purchasing land, which I suspect are to be attributed to the poet of Lincolnshire, rather than to Heresbach. They are as good as they were then; and the poetry none the worse:—

"First see that the land be clear In title of the seller; And that it stand in danger Of no woman's dowrie; See whether the tenure be bond or free, And release of every fee of fee; See that the seller be of age, And that it lie not in mortgage; Whether ataile be thereof found, And whether it stand in statute bound; Consider what service longeth thereto, And what quit rent thereout must goe; And if it become of a wedded woman, Think thou then on covert baron; And if thou may in any wise, Make thy charter in warrantise, To thee, thine heyres, assignes also; Thus should a wise purchaser doe."

The learned Lipsius was a contemporary of Councillor Heresbach, and although his orthodoxy was somewhat questionable, and his Calvinism somewhat stretchy, there can be no doubt of the honest rural love which belongs to some of his letters, and especially to this smack of verse (I dare not say poetry) with which he closes his Eighth (Cent. I.)

"Vitam si liceat mihi Formare arbitriis meis: Non fasces cupiam aut opes, Non clarus niveis equis Captiva agmina traxerim. In solis habitem locis, Hortos possideam atque agros, Illic ad strepitus aquae Musarum studiis fruar. Sic cum fata mihi ultima Pernerit Lachesis mea; Tranquillus moriar senex."

And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor prison,—

"the hymnis consecrat Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among, That all the gardens and the wallis rung."

And through the "Dreme" of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, "green y-powdered with daisy." Upon the half-ploughed land, lying yonder veiled so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all "forswat,"

"plucked up his plowe Whan midsomer mone was comen in And shoke off shear, and coulter off drowe, And honged his harnis on a pinne, And said his beasts should ete enowe And lie in grasse up to the chin."

But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry (even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down in grass of that height.

* * * * *

Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true,—a certain "Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyncoln," and a Henri Calcoensis, among them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early experiences in a lawyer's office, and some later experiences of the legal profession; he may have written well upon "Tenures," but he had not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.

I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of that sweet ballad of the "Nut Browne Mayde" has come to us in a Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon "the crafte of graffynge & plantynge & alterynge of fruyts." What could be happier than the conjunction of the knight of "the grenwode tree" with a good chapter on "graffynge"?

Fitz-herbert's work is entitled a "Boke of Husbandrie," and counts, among other headings of discourse, the following:—

"Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen."

"To cary out dounge & mucke, & to spreade it."

"The fyrste furryng of the falowes."

"To make a ewe to love hir lambe."

"To bye lean cattel."

"A shorte information for a young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve."

"What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally."

(seq.) "To kepe measure in spendynge."

"What be God's commandments."

By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of husbandry as did Xenophon.

Among other advices to the "young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve" he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if "he fynde any horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him take out his tables & wryte the defautes; & when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at nyght, then let him call his bayley, & soo shewe him the defautes. For this," says he, "used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; & yf he cannot wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a stycke."

Sir Anthony is gracious to the wife, but he is not tender; and it may be encouraging to country-housewives nowadays to see what service was expected of their mothers in the days of Henry VIII.

"It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte, wash & wring, to make hey, to shere corne, & in time of neede to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough, to lode hay corne & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees & al maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging to a household, & to make a true rekening & accompt to her husband what she hath receyved & what she hathe payed. And yf the husband go to market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he disceyveth himselfe, & he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore they must be true ether to other."

* * * * *

I come next to Master Tusser,—poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond, happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this:—

"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive, Thou teaching thrift, thyself could never thrive; So, like the whetstone, many men are wont To sharpen others when themselves are blunt."

I cannot help considering poor Tusser's example one of warning to all poetically inclined farmers.

He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after impressed for the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Afterward he was for some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he lives "in clover." It appears that he had some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go up to London, where he remained some ten years,—possibly as singer,—but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and commenced as farmer in Suffolk,—

"To moil and to toil With loss and pain, to little gain, To cram Sir Knave";—

from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and but little sturdy resolution. Thence he goes to Ipswich, or its neighborhood, with no better experience. Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at Dereham Abbey; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered, and his landlord a screw: so he does not thrive here, but goes to Norwich and commences chorister again; but presently takes another farm in Fairstead, Essex, where it would seem he eked out a support by collecting tithes for the parson. But he says,—

"I spyed, if parson died, (All hope in vain,) to hope for gain I might go dance."

Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague, we find him returned to London, to die,—where he was buried in the Poultry.

There are good points in his poem, showing close observation, good sense, and excellent judgment. His rules of farm-practice are entirely safe and judicious, and make one wonder how the man who could give such capital advice could make so capital a failure. In the secret lies all the philosophy of the difference between knowledge and practice. The instance is not without its modern support: I have the honor of acquaintance with several gentlemen who lay down charming rules for successful husbandry, every time they pay the country a visit; and yet even their poultry-account is always largely against the constipated hens.

What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air of entire resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes: he does not seem to count his hardships either wonderful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us of the thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without greatly impugning the head-master; and his shiftlessness in life makes us strongly suspect that he deserved it all.

Fuller, in his "Worthies," says Tusser "spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon." In short, though the poet wrote well on farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping, and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant. I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:—

"To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low, But how, and how suddenly, few be that know, What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave, (To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?"

* * * * *

I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of English authors, "the most ingenious husbandman of his age."[7] He is elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin's Lane. He was an enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries, corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that "rare and peerless plant, the grape," he insists upon the wholesomeness of the wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden: "And if," he says, "any exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe any true skill in the judgment of high country wines: although for their better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these wines) gaue this sentence upon them: that he neuer drank any better new wine in France."

[Footnote 7: Latter part of sixteenth century; and was living, according to Johnson, as late as 1606.]

I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!

Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that "delicate Knight," Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had gone by in England. "This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required: and so, by witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect cherrie-colour: and when he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full maturities."

These notices are to be found in his "Flores Paradise." Another work, entitled "Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land," enumerates, in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth, moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust, soap-boilers ashes, and marle." But what I think particularly commends him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers, is his little tract upon "The Setting of Corne."[8]

[Footnote 8: This is not mentioned either by Felton in his Portraits, etc., or by Johnson in his History of Gardening. Donaldson gives the title, and the headings of the chapters.]

In this he anticipates the system of "dibbling" grain, which, notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century[9] as a new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed, proposed the drill, and repeated tillage; but certain advantages, before unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh, in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; "why the corne shootes into so many eares"; how the ground is to be dug for the new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes and covering the grain.

[Footnote 9: See Young, Annals of Agriculture, Vol. III. p. 219, et seq.]

I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by giving his own envoi to the most considerable of his books:—"Thus, gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee to the God of Nature, from whom all the true light of Nature proceedeth."

* * * * *

Gervase Markham must have been a roistering gallant about the time that Sir Hugh was conducting his experiments on "Soyles"; for, in 1591, he had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel which he fought in behalf of the Countess of Shrewsbury; there are also some painful rumors current (in old books) in regard to his habits in early life, which weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country counsellor. I suspect, that, up to mature life, at any rate, he knew much more about the sparring of a game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as well as upon almost every subject connected with husbandry. And that these were good books, or at least in large demand, we have in evidence the memorandum of a promise which some griping bookseller extorted from him, under date of July, 1617:—

"I, Gervase Markham, of London, Gent, do promise hereafter never to write any more book or books to be printed of the diseases or cures of any cattle, as horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &c. In witness whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24th day of Julie.

"GERVIS MARKHAM."

He seems to have been a man of some literary accomplishments, and one who knew how to turn them to account. He translated the "Maison Rustique" of Liebault, and had some hand in the concoction of one or two poems which kindled the ire of the Puritan clergy. There is no doubt but he was an adroit bookmaker; and the value of his labors, in respect to practical husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging, compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices already received. His observations upon diseases of cattle and upon horsemanship were doubtless based on experimental knowledge; for he was a rare and ardent sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in the detection of infirmities.

I suspect, moreover, that there were substantial grounds for that acquaintance with gastronomy shown in the "Country Housewife." In this book, after discoursing upon cookery and great feasts, he gives the details of a "humble feast of a proportion which any good man may keep in his family."

"As thus:—first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boyl'd capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted; sixthly, a pig rosted; seventhly chewits baked; eighthly, a goose rosted; ninthly, a swan rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted; twelfth, a pasty of venison; thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; fourteenth, an olive pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard or dowsets."

This is what Master Gervase calls a frugal dinner, for the entertainment of a worthy friend; is it any wonder that he wrote about "Country Contentments"?

* * * * *

My chapter is nearly full; and a burst of sunshine is flaming over all the land under my eye; and yet I am but just entered upon the period of English literary history which is most rich in rural illustration. The mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance ranges over them, where they stand in tidy platoon, start a delightfully confused picture to my mind.

I think it possible that Sir Hugh Platt may some day entertain at his Bednall-Greene garden the worshipful Francis Bacon, who is living down at Twickenham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written essays, which Sir Hugh must know,—in which he discourses shrewdly upon gardens, as well as many kindred matters; and through his wide correspondence, Sir Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs which have been brought home from Virginia and the Roanoke, and very possibly he is making trial of a tobacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day to his friend, the French Ambassador.

I can fancy Gervase Markham "making a night of it" with those rollicking bachelors, Beaumont and Fletcher, at the "Mermaid," or going with them to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,—the latter taking the part of Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His friends say that this Will has parts.

Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney, who threatened to thrust a dagger into the heart of poor Molyneux, his father's steward, for opening private letters (which poor Molyneux never did); and Sir Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients; and in virtue of his knowledges, he writes a terribly magniloquent and tedious "Arcadia," which, when he comes to die gallantly in battle, is admired and read everywhere: nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But the memory of his generous and noble spirit is far livelier than his book. It was through him, and his friendship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by the Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among the Bally-Howra hills of Ireland.

And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that "shepherd of the sea," visited the poet, and found him seated

"amongst the coolly shade Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore."

Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the introduction of that new esculent, the potato? Did they talk tobacco? Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or upon the probable "clip" of the year?

Nothing of this; but

"He pip'd, I sung; and when he sung, I pip'd: By chaunge of tunes each making other merry."

The lines would make a fair argument of the poet's bucolic life. I have a strong faith that his farming was of the higgledy-piggledy order; I do not believe that he could have set a plough into the sod, or have made a good "cast" of barley. It is certain, that, when the Tyrone rebels burned him out of Kilcolman Castle, he took no treasure with him but his Elizabeth and the two babes; and the only treasures he left were the ashes of the dear child whose face shone on him there for the last time,—

"bright with many a curl That clustered round her head."

I wish I could love his "Shepherd's Calendar"; but I cannot. Abounding art of language, exquisite fancies, delicacies innumerable there may be; but there is no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes, no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that champs the bit, no sky-piercing falcon.

And as for the "Faery Queene," if I must confess it, I can never read far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties. It is a marvellously fair sea and broad,—with tender winds blowing over it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming curlew.

In short, I can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest—as we farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil that lifts heavily.

And so I leave the matter,—with the "Faery Queene" in my thought, and leaning on my spade.

* * * * *



CIVIC BANQUETS.

It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Englishman will be able to reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition,) the immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which, elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges of Tartarus.

Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too much to affirm, that, on this side of the water, people never dine. At any rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of culture which we have attained.

It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which, while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal enjoyment, because out of the very perfection of that lower bliss there had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the master-pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible, a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achievement,—the production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect taste,—the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with wine,—must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted and tumultuous place we find it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner.

The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those public or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in matters of peace or war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place have long held their sessions; and always, in convenient contiguity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace, where an ox might lie roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St. Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient banqueting-room that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to the description of it.

In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold a mediaeval edifice, in the basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathedral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries. Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though it was noonday when I last saw it, the panelling of black oak, and some faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI.'s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of their substance, when you try to make them out. Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them, or by women with dish-clouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs. Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the earliest, hang on the walls; and on the dais, or elevated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of state, which more than one royal character is traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned New-England kitchens.

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall, opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the door-way, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery, while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound beneath,—why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing pages is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the English character; since, from, the earliest recognizable period, we find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnificently as their palaces or cathedrals.

I know not whether the hall just described is still used for festive purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor are so. For example, there is Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls. It is also enriched with Holbein's master-piece, representing a grave assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits, (with such extensive beards that methinks one-half of the company might have been profitably occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the reader; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by respectable citizens, who would never dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and lined with crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall, there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table, comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less noticeable vessels, two Loving-Cups, very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups, including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which, when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where I spent several years.

The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and, inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine, without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with English taste.

The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present took place during assize time, and included among the guests the judges and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town-Hall at seven o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company, but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.

There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume. It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the good-breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still farther advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and his stomach to assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to that metropolis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments: he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman smart, (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few,) you make him a monster: his best aspect is that of ponderous respectability.

To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the Suffolk bar, but the bar of any inland county in New England, might show a set of thin-visaged, green-spectacled men, looking wretchedly worn, sallow with the intemperate use of strong coffee, deeply wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly furrowed about the month, with whom these heavy-cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must needs be, would stand very little chance in a professional contest. How that matter might turn out I am unqualified to decide. But I state these results of my earliest glimpses of Englishmen, not for what they are worth, but because I ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing. In course of time, I came to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages are a rather good-looking people, dress in admirable taste from their own point of view, and, under a surface never silken to the touch, have a refinement of manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a separate endowment,—that is to say, if the individual himself be a man of station, and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The sturdy Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, have their own proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their exemplifying the proneness of a traveller to measure one people by the distinctive characteristics of another,—as English writers invariably measure us, and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly, instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may be in conformity.

In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which I never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining-hall was of noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There was a splendid table-service, and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, richly decorated with gold-lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming young-manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly an agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest faces, and behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an important business in hand, and so determined to be equal to the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier than a snow-white table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decoration, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin at each plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes before the first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of artificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral, and the simplest viands are the best. Printed bills-of-fare were distributed, representing an abundant feast, no part of which appeared on the table until called for in separate plates. I have entirely forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there is a pervading commonplace and identicalness in the composition of extensive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying a hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was suggested to me that certain juicy old gentlemen had a private understanding what to call for, and that it would be good policy in a stranger to follow in their footsteps through the feast. I did not care to do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of Camacho's caldron, any sort of pot-luck at such a table would be sure to suit my purpose; so I chose a dish or two on my own judgment, and, getting through my labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the Englishmen toil onward to the end.

They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely; for I observed that they seldom took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however, did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various, as that to which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance with rare vintage: does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his life-long friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and reaping the reward of his constancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too often. Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual imprudences of that kind, though, in my opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir John Linkwater, or Drinkwater,—but I think the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last,—while sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk. "Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most indifferent fact in the world, "I was drunk last night. There are my five shillings."

During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the gentlemen on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with great unction on the social standing of the judges. Representing the dignity and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes, and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it appeared to me that the judges are fully conscious of their paramount claims to respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his nature from its original germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it obtrusively in the faces of innocent by-standers.

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and let slip few opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly-featured table-fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then began a conversation that abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and, somehow or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man, certainly not a scholar of accurate training; and yet he seemed to have all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at command. My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of English characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps both. Under the mollifying influences of abundance of meat and drink, he grew very gracious, (not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe his evidently genuine good-will,) and by-and-by expressed a wish for further acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London and inquire for Sergeant Wilkins,—throwing out the name forcibly, as if he had no occasion to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's retort to Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar announcement,—"Of what regiment, pray, Sir?"—and fancied that the same question might not have been quite amiss, if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard of him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a rough customer, and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases; and it caused me more regret than might have been expected, on so slight an acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qualities, he possessed, I think, the most attractive one of all,—thorough manhood.

After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decanters were set before the Mayor, who sent them forth on their outward voyage, full freighted with Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors, methought, the latter found least acceptance among the guests. When every man had filled his glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a toast. It was, of course, "Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that effect; and immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary tootings and thrummings I had already heard behind me, struck up "God save the Queen," and the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing that famous national anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active influence of the sentiment of Loyalty; for, though we call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood,—at present, in the flesh and blood of a woman,—and manages to combine love, awe, and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to embody his mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred, in a single person, and make her the representative of his country and its laws. We Americans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in consequence of our proud perogative of caring no more about our President than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in a cornfield.

But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrously, to see this party of stout middle-aged and elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of meat and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old stanzas from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which two organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in ours. The song seemed to me the rudest old ditty in the world; but I could not wonder at its universal acceptance and indestructible popularity, considering how inimitably it expresses the national faith and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of England, the Almighty's consequent respect and partiality for that redoubtable little island, and His presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against the contumacious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English to the very last prejudice, could not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of every pitch between rolling thunder and the squeak of a cartwheel, and that the strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of them, I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in the land, whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, my first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose not to sing any more, unless it be "Hail Columbia" on the restoration of the Union) were poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinced grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority; and we finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind.

Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions and interests of the country, and speeches in response to each were made by individuals whom the Mayor designated or the company called for. None of them impressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial oratory. It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and shapeless utterances most Englishmen are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there, and ultimately getting out what they want to say, and generally with a result of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of commonplace running through them; and any rough, yet never vulgar force of expression, such as would knock an opponent down, if it hit him, only it must not be too personal, is altogether to their taste; but a studied neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, they cannot abide. They do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a nobleman, (as, for example, Lord Stanley, of the Derby family,) who, as an hereditary legislator and necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and, if I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as likely to applaud theirs as our own. When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you have been listening to a real man, and not to an actor; his sentiments have a wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence or elaborating a peroration.

It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that nobody in England seems to feel any shyness about shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable ideas out of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, nobody did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little Major of Artillery, who responded for the Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesitating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not, would rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have said a word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon's, was this poor Major's proper organ of utterance.

While I was thus amiably occupied in criticizing my fellow-guests, the Mayor had got up to propose another toast; and listening rather inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively towards Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port towards me, "it is your turn next"; and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he kindly added,—"It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best, if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably,—and, indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of his wordy wanderings find no end.

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I, in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse, any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the United States and highly complimentary to their distinguished representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band struck up "Hail Columbia," "Old Hundred," or "God save the Queen" over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, "Hear!" most vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and must, and should do to utter.

Well; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all. "It was handsomely done!" quoth Sergeant Wilkins; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under fire.

I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever, but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to meet it as I best might; for this was one of the necessities of an office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I was much embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a large one,—the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I had little or nothing to say; whereas, if I came to the scratch in perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible, it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and far-off as the clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the chief requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others, if he deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains on an object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it must be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception of truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him, when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may make it ten times as acceptable to the audience.

* * * * *

This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord-Mayor's dinner at the Mansion-House in London. I should have preferred the annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good-fortune to witness it. Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular dinners, and gladly accepted it,—taking the precaution, nevertheless, though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence, and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion-House, at half-past six o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion-House was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed, however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity was a seat in the Lord-Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do, sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the early days of our country; so that the Lord-Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be hardly second to the prime-minister of the throne. The true great men of the city now appear to have aims beyond city-greatness, connecting themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the aristocracy of the country.

In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should have taken to be military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver epaulets; but they turned out to be officers of the Lord-Mayor's household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the places which they were respectively to occupy at the dinner-table. Our names (for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were announced; and ascending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door-way of the first reception-room, where, also, we had the advantage of a presentation to the Lady-Mayoress. As this distinguished couple retired into private life at the termination of their year of office, it is inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of respectable mediocrity into one of preeminent dignity within their own sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been correctly informed, the Lord-Mayor's salary is exactly double that of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expenditure.

There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide folding-doors; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I recollect none preeminently distinguished in either department. But it is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face to face, thus to bring them together, under genial auspices, in connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be the Lord-Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether, during his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to me that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society, however, I presume that the Lord-Mayor's card does not often seek out modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the bore, and doubtful about the honor.

One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other public or partially public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt, they were principally the wives and daughters of city-magnates; and if we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satirical poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its women and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain heterodox opinions which I had inbibed, in my Transatlantic newness and rawness, as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of English beauty. To state the entire truth, (being, at this period, some years old in English life,) my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness, (Heaven forbid that I should call it scrawniness!) a deficiency of physical development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice,—all which characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was sometimes driven to a half-acknowledgment, that the English ladies, looked at from a lower point of view, were perhaps a little finer animals than they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could really be said to have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in exchange for half a hundred-weight of human clay!

At a given signal we all found our way into an immense room, called the Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic, and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending the whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between them, occupying nearly its entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the Lord-Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing on the food,—a ceremony which the English never omit, at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider, I fear, not so much a religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish before the soup.

The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I partook of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim, always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its indigenous site; and the very fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the Lord-Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox customs which people follow for half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy, yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher's-meat, do not generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden him,—a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals, inspiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a to-morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case, a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner.