It would be difficult to
classify
him under any school.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
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BISMARCK.
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LIBRARY
Gi
WORLD'S BEST LITERATUR
Ancient and Modern
CHARLES DUDLEY WAN
KETIOP
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
SIA GH
GEORGE FW. NR
ASSOCIATI EDI
>
THIRTY VOLUMES
VOL. IV
NEW YORK
R. S. IEALE AND. J. A. HILL
PUBLISHLKS
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3
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LIBRARY
OF THE
WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE
Ancient and Modern
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
EDITOR
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE,
LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE,
GEORGE H. WARNER
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
THIRTY VOLUMES
VOL. IV
NEW YORK
R. S. PEALE AND. J. A. HILL
PUBLISHERS
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Lit
.
3300. . .
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
COPYRIGHT 1897
BY R. S. PEALE AND J. A.
All rights reserved
NER COMPANE
WERNER
PRINTERS
AMRON
BINDERS
HILL
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THE ADVISORY COUNCIL
CRAWFORD H. TOY, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Professor of Hebrew, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL. D. , L. H. D. ,
Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of
YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn.
WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH. D. , L. H. D. ,
Professor of History and Political Science,
BRANDER MATTHEWS, A. M. , LL. B. ,
Professor of Literature, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City.
JAMES B. ANGELL, LL. D. ,
President of the
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N. J.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich.
WILLARD FISKE, A. M. , PH. D. ,
Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages
and Literatures,
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N. Y.
EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal.
ALCÉE FORTIER, LIT. D. ,
Professor of the Romance Languages,
TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.
WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A. ,
Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of
English and History,
UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.
PAUL SHOREY, PH. D. ,
Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D. ,
United States Commissioner of Education,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Professor of Literature in the
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D. C.
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WALTER BESANT
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Old-Time London (London')
The Synagogue (The Rebel Queen')
The Lion
The Pelican
The Eagle
The Phoenix
The Ant
The Siren
BION
VOL. IV
MARIE-HENRI BEYLE (Stendhal)
Threnody
Hesper
BY L. OSCAR KUHNS
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
LIVED
1838-
BY FREDERIC TABER COOPER
Princess Sanseverina's Interview (Chartreuse de Parme')
Clélia Aids Fabrice to Escape (same)
WILLEM BILDERDIJK
Ode to Beauty
From the Ode to Napoleon'
Slighted Love
The Village Schoolmaster ('Country Life')
The Whale
The Crocodile
The Turtle-Dove
The Mandragora
Sapphire
Coral
Dr. Johnson ('Obiter Dicta')
The Office of Literature (same)
Truth-Hunting (same)
1783-1842
1756-1831
275 B. C.
1850-
PAGE
1837
1852
1861
1884
:.
1893
1898
## p. 1828 (#18) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL- Continued:
Benvenuto Cellini (same)
On the Alleged Obscurity of Mr. Browning's Poetry (same)
OTTO EDWARD LEOPOLD VON BISMARCK
Letters To Frau von Arnim
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
vi
BY MUNROE SMITH
To His Wife: Aug. 7, 1851; June 6, 1859; June
8, 1859 June 28, 1859; July 26, 1859
To Oscar von Arnim
To His Wife: Aug. 4, 1862; July 9, 1866; Sept. 3,
1870; June 23, 1852
Personal Characteristics of the Members of the Frankfort
Diet
From a Speech on the Military Bill
WILLIAM BLACK
Sigurd Slembe's Return
How the Mountain Was Clad (Arne')
The Father
Over the Lofty Mountains ('Arne')
The Cloister in the South (Arnljot Gelline')
The Plea of King Magnus (Sigurd Slembe')
Sin and Death (same)
The Princess
The End of Macleod of Dare
Sheila in London (A Princess of Thule')
WILLIAM BLAKE
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE
LIVED
A Desperate Venture ('Lorna Doone')
A Wedding and a Revenge (same)
Landing the Trout (Alice Lorraine')
A Dane in the Dike (Mary Anerley')
Song
Song
The Two Songs
Night
1815-
1832-
The Tiger
1841-
1825-
1757-1827
The Piper and the Child
Holy Thursday
Cradle Song
The Little Black Boy
PAGE
1929
1959
1983
2011
2041
## p. 1829 (#19) ############################################
vii
CHARLES BLANC
Rembrandt (The Dutch School of Painters')
Albert Dürer's 'Melancholia' (same)
Ingres (Life of Ingres')
Calamatta's Studio (Contemporary Artists')
Blanc's Début as Art Critic (same)
Delacroix's 'Bark of Dante' (same)
graving')
Poussin's Shepherds of Arcadia' (same)
Landscape (same)
Genesis of the Grammar)
Moral Influence of Art (Grammar of Painting and En-
Style (same)
Law of Proportion in Architecture (same)
STEEN STEENSEN BLICHER
A Picture
The Knitting-Room
The Hosier
MATHILDE BLIND
From 'Love in Exile'
Seeking
Songs of Summer
A Parable
Love's Somnambulis
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
LIVED
1813-1882
Two
Wine
Song
FRIEDRICH MARTIN VON Bodenstedt
1782-1848
1847-1896
The Mystic's Vision
From Tarantella'
BY W. J. STILLMAN
Frederick of the Alberighi and His Falcon
The Jew Converted to Christianity by Going to Rome
The Story of Saladin and the Jew Usurer
The Story of Griselda
1313-1375
O Moon, Large Golden Sum-
mer Moon
Green Leaves and Sere
1819-1892
PAGE
2051
Unchanging
The Poetry of Mirza-Schaffy (Thousand and One Days in
the East')
Mirza-Schaffy (same)
+
2064
2075
2089
2116
1
## p. 1830 (#20) ############################################
FRIEDRICH MARTIN VON BODENSTEDT
The School of Wisdom (same)
An Excursion into Armenia (same)
Mirza-Jussuf
Wisdom and Knowledge
JOHANN JAKOB BODMER
Kinship of the Arts (Rubens')
Poetry and Painting (Holbein ')
Tribute to Tobacco (Dürer')
BOËTIUS
viii
475-525
Of the Greatest Good (Consolations of Philosophy')
1036-1711
GEORGE H. BOKER
The Black Regiment
The Sword-Bearer
Sonnets
Continued:
1823-
Madame de Sévigné as a Letter-Writer ('Life of Madame
de Sévigné')
SAINT BONAVENTURA
LIVED
French Society in the Seventeenth Century (same)
How Horace Lived at his Country-House (The Country
of Horace and Virgil')
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
Advice to Authors (The Art of Poetry')
The Pastoral, the Elegy, the Ode, and the Epigram (same)
To Molière (The Satires')
GASTON BOISSIER
1698-1783
BY THOMAS DAVIDSON
BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE
At the Horse-Fair ('Lavengro')
A Meeting (The Bible in Spain')
1823-1890
On the Beholding of God in His Footsteps in This Sensible
World
GEORGE BORROW
1221-1274
PAGE
1803-1881
2128
2133
2141
2152
2163
2169
2175
## p. 1831 (#21) ############################################
ix
JUAN BOSCAN
JACQUES BENIGNE BOSSUET
On the Death of Garcilaso
A Picture of Domestic Happiness (Epistle to Mendoza')
JAMES BOSWELL
BY ADOLPHE COHN
SIR JOHN BOWRING
From the Sermon upon The Unity of the Church'
Opening of the Funeral Oration on Henrietta of France
From the 'Discourse upon Universal History'
Public Spirit in Rome
BY CHARLES F. JOHNSON
An Account of Corsica
A Tour to Corsica
The Life of Samuel Johnson
The Cross of Christ
Watchman! What of the Night?
LIVED
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
1493-? 1540
A Norwegian Dance (Gunnar)
1627-1704
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
PAUL BOURGET
The American Family ('Outre-Mer')
The Aristocratic Vision of M. Renan (Study of M. Renan ')
2263
1740-1795
Hymn
From Luis de Gongora: Not All Nightingales
From John Kollar-Sonnet
From Bogdanovich (Old Russian) — Song
From Bobrov - The Golden Palace
From Dmitriev: The Dove and The Stranger
From Sarbiewski: Sapphics to A Rose
1852-
1792-1872
1848-1895
1837-
Advent of the Hirelings (The Christmas Hirelings')
"How Bright She Was -» etc. (Mohawks')
PAGE
2203
2209
2227
2252
2272
2279
## p. 1832 (#22) ############################################
GEORG BRANDES
SEBASTIAN BRANDT
Björnson (Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century')
The Historical Movement in Modern Literature (Main
Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century')
X
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
FREDRIKA BREMER
The Universal Shyp
Of Hym That Togyder Wyll Serve Two Maysters
Of To[o] Moche Spekynge or Bablynge
THE ABBÉ DE BRANTÔME (Pierre de Bourdeille)
1842-
1527-1614
The Dancing of Royalty (Lives of Notable Women')
The Shadow of a Tomb (Lives of Courtly Women')
M. le Constable Anne de Montmorency (Lives of Dis-
A Home-Coming (The Neighbors')
The Landed Proprietor (The Home')
A Family Picture (same)
CLEMENS BRENTANO
LIVED
tinguished Men and Great Captains')
Two Famous Entertainments (Lives of Courtly Women')
The Nurse's Watch
The Castle in Austria
1458-1521
ELISABETH BRENTANO (Bettina von Arnim)
JOHN BRIGHT
1801-1865
· 1778-1842
1785-1859
Dedication: To Goethe (Goethe's Correspondence with a
Child')
Letter to Goethe
Bettina's Last Meeting with Goethe (Letter to Her Niece)
In Goethe's Garden
1811-1889
From Speech on the Corn Laws (1843)
From Speech on Incendiarism in Ireland (1844)
From Speech on Non-Recognition of the Southern Con-
federacy (1861)
From Speech on the State of Ireland (1866)
From Speech on the Irish Established Church (1868)
PAGE
2299
2311
2319
2328
2343
2348
2354
## p. 1833 (#23) ############################################
xi
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
1755-1826
From 'Physiology of Taste': The Privations; On the Love
of Good Living; On People Fond of Good Living
1816-1855
CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ AND HER SISTERS
Jane Eyre's Wedding-Day (Jane Eyre')
Madame Beck (Villette')
PHILLIPS BROOKS
CHARLES BROCK DEN BROWN
A Yorkshire Landscape (Shirley)
The End of Heathcliff (Emily Bronté's 'Wuthering Heights')
1835-1893
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Personal Character ('Essays and Addresses')
The Courage of Opinions (same)
Literature and Life (same)
LIVED
Wieland's Statement (Wieland')
JOHN BROWN
Marjorie Fleming (Spare Hours')
Death of Thackeray (same)
1771-1810
PAGE
2365
1810-1882
2381
2417
2425
2437
## p. 1834 (#24) ############################################
1
## p. 1835 (#25) ############################################
LIST OF PORTRAITS
Walter Besant
Marie-Henri Beyle
Augustine Birrell
Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck
Björnstjerne Björnson
IN VOL. IV
William Black
Richard Doddridge Blackmore
William Blake
Mathilde Blind
Giovanni Boccaccio
Friedrich Martin von Bodenstedt
Johann Jakob Bodmer
Boëtius
Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux
Gaston Boissier
George H. Boker
George Borrow
Jacques Bénigne Bossuet
James Boswell
Paul Bourget
Sir John Bowring
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
Georg Brandes
Sebastian Brandt
Abbé de Brantôme
Fredrika Bremer
Elisabeth Brentano
John Bright
Brillat-Savarin
Charlotte Bronté
Phillips Brooks
Charles Brockden Brown
Dr. John Brown
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1837
WALTER BESANT
(1838-)
W
ALTER BESANT, born in Portsmouth, England, in 1838, did not
begin his career as a novelist till he was thirty years old.
His preparation for the works that possess so certain a
maturity of execution, with as certain an ideal of performance, was
made at King's College, London, and afterwards at Christ's College,
Cambridge, where he took mathematical honors. Abandoning his
idea of entering the Church, he taught for seven years in the Royal
College of Mauritius. Ill health compelled his return to England,
and he then took up literature as a pro-
fession. His first novel he had the courage
to burn when the first publisher to whom
he showed it refused it.
But the succeeding years brought forth
'Studies in Early French Poetry,' a delicate
and scholarly series of essays; an edition
of Rabelais, of whom he is the biographer
and disciple, and, with Professor Palmer,
a History of Jerusalem,' a work for which
he had equipped himself when secretary of
the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Mr. Besant was also a student in another
WALTER BESANT
special field. He knew his Dickens as no
other undergraduate in the University knew that branch of polite
literature, and passed an examination on the 'Pickwick Papers'
which the author declared that he himself would have failed in. By
these processes Mr. Besant fitted himself mentally and socially for
the task of story-telling. The relations of a man of letters to the
rest of the world are comprehensively revealed in the long list of
his novels.
From the beginning he was one who comes with a tale "which
holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner";
nor is the charm lessened by the sense of a living and kindly voice
addressing the hearer. His novels are easy reading, and do not con-
tain an obscure sentence. As art is an expression of the artist's
mind, and not a rigid ecclesiastical canon, it may be expressed in as
many formulas as there are artists. Therefore, while to few readers
life casts the rosy reflection that we have learned to call Besantine,
one would not wish it to disappear nor to be discredited.
## p. 1838 (#28) ############################################
1838
WALTER BESANT
It was in the year 1869 that Walter Besant, by a happy chance,
made the acquaintance of James Rice, the editor of Once a Week,
and became a contributor to that magazine. In 1871 that literary
partnership between them began, which is interesting in the history
of collaboration. Mr. Rice had been a barrister, and added legal
lore to Mr. Besant's varied and accurate literary equipment. The
brilliant series of novels that followed includes 'Ready-Money Morti-
boy,' 'My Little Girl,' With Harp and Crown,' 'The Golden Butter-
fly,' 'The Seamy Side,' and 'The Chaplain of the Fleet. ' The latter
story, that of an innocent young country girl left to the guardian-
ship of her uncle, chaplain of the Fleet prison, by the death of
her father, is delicately and surprisingly original. The influence of
Dickens is felt in the structure of the story, and the faithful, almost
photographic fidelity to locality betrays in whose footsteps the
authors have followed; but the chaplain, though he belongs to a
family whose features are familiar to the readers of Little Dorrit ›
and 'Great Expectations,' has not existed until he appears in these
pages, pompous, clever, and without principle, but not lacking in
natural affection. The young girl whose guileless belief in everybody
forces the worst people to assume the characters her purity and
innocence endows them with, is to the foul prison what Picciola was
to Charney. Nor will the moralist find fault with the author whose
kind heart teaches him to include misfortune in his catalogue of
virtues.
―――
Mr. Rice died in 1882, and All Sorts and Conditions of Men,'
Mr. Besant's first independent novel, appeared the same year. It
is a novel with a purpose, and accomplished its purpose because an
artist's hand was necessary to paint the picture of East London that
met with such a response as the People's Palace. The appeal to
philanthropy was a new one. It was a plea for a little more of the
pleasures and graces of life for the two million of people who
inhabit the east end of the great city. It is not a picture of life in
the lowest phases, where the scenes are as dramatic as in the
highest social world, but a story of human life; the nobility, the
meanness, the pathos of it in hopelessly commonplace surroundings,
where the fight is not a hand-to-hand struggle with bitter poverty or
crime, but with dullness and monotony. The characters in 'All Sorts
and Conditions of Men' are possibly more typical than real, but one
hesitates to question either characters or situation. The "impossible
story has become true, and the vision that the enthusiastic young
hero and heroine dream has materialized into a lovely reality.
'The Children of Gibeon' (1884) and The World Went Very Well
Then (1885) are written with the same philanthropic purpose; but if
Sir Walter Besant were not first of all a story-teller, the possessor of
## p. 1839 (#29) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1839
a living voice that holds one spellbound till he has finished his tale,
the read would be more sensible of the wide knowledge of the
novelist, and his familiarity with life in its varied forms.
Here are about thirty novels, displaying an intimate knowledge
of many crafts, trades, and professions, the ways of landsman and
voyager, of country and town, of the new world and the old, of
modern charlatanism as shown in Herr Paulus,' of the "woman
question" among London Jews as in the 'Rebel Queen,' and the
suggestion of the repose and sufficiency of life's simple needs as told
in 'Call Her Mine' and 'Celia's Arbor. '
In the Ivory Gate' the hero is the victim of a remarkable hallu-
cination; in the story of The Inner House' the plummet of sugges-
tion plunges into depths not sounded before, and the soul's regeneration
is unfolded in the loveliest of parables.
The range of Sir Walter Besant reaches from the somewhat con-
ventionalized 'Dorothy Forster' to 'St. Katharine's Tower,' where
deep tragedy approaches the melodramatic, or from the fascination of
"The Master Craftsman' to the Wapping Idyll' of the heaps of
miser's treasure. There is largeness of stroke in this list, and a wide
prospect. His humor is of the cheerful outdoor kind, and the laugh
is at foibles rather than weakness. He pays little attention to fashion
in literature, except to give a good-natured nod to a passing fad.
It would be difficult to classify him under any school. His stories
are not analytical, nor is one conscious of that painstaking fidelity to
art which is no longer classed among the minor virtues. When he
fights, it is with wrong and oppression and the cheerless monotony
of the lives of the poor; but he fights classes rather than individuals,
although certain characters like Fielding the plagiarist, in 'Armorel
of Lyonesse,' are studied from life. The village of bankrupts in All
in a Garden Fair' is a whimsical conceit, like the disguise of Angela
in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' and the double identity of
Edmund Gray in 'The Ivory Gate. ' In reading Besant we are con-
stantly reminded that humanity is wider than the world; and though
its simplest facts are its greatest, there is both interest and edification
in eccentricities.
In 1895 he was made a baronet, and is president of the Society of
Authors, of whom he has been a gallant champion against the pub-
lishers.
## p. 1840 (#30) ############################################
1840
WALTER BESANT
OLD-TIME LONDON
From Sir Walter Besant's 'London': copyrighted 1892, by Harper and Brothers
HE London house, either in Saxon or Norman time, presented
no kind of resemblance to the Roman villa.
It had no
THE
cloisters, no hypocaust, no suite or sequence of rooms.
This unlikeness is another proof, if any were wanting, that the
continuity of tenure had been wholly broken. If the Saxons
went into London, as has been suggested, peaceably, and left the
people to carry on their old life and their trade in
way, the Roman and British architecture
no new thing, but a
style grown up in course of years and found fitted to the cli-
mate would certainly have remained. That, however, was not
the case.
The Englishman developed his house from the patri-
archal idea.
-
―
First, there was the common hall; in this the household lived,
fed, transacted business, and made their cheer in the evenings.
It was built of timber, and to keep out the cold draughts it was
afterwards lined with tapestry. At first they used simple cloths,
which in great houses were embroidered and painted; perches of
various kinds were affixed to the walls, whereon the weapons,
the musical instruments, the cloaks, etc. , were hung up. The
lord and lady sat on a high seat; not, I am inclined to think, on
a dais at the end of the hall, which would have been cold for
them, but on a great chair near the fire, which was burning in
the middle of the hall. This fashion long continued. I have
myself seen a college hall warmed by a fire in a brazier burn-
ing under the lantern of the hall. The furniture consisted of
benches; the table was laid on trestles, spread with a white
cloth, and removed after dinner; the hall was open to all who
came, on condition that the guest should leave his weapons at
the door.
The floor was covered with reeds, which made a clean, soft,
and warm carpet, on which the company could, if they pleased,
lie round the fire. They had carpets or rugs also, but reeds were
commonly used. The traveler who chances to find himself at
the ancient and most interesting town of Kingston-on-Hull, which
very few English people, and still fewer Americans, have the
curiosity to explore, should visit the Trinity House. There,
among many interesting things, he will find a hall where reeds.
## p. 1841 (#31) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1841
are still spread, but no longer so thickly as to form a complete
carpet. I believe this to be the last survival of the reed carpet.
The times of meals were: the breakfast at about nine; the
"noon-meat," or dinner, at twelve; and the "even-meat," or sup-
per, probably at a movable time, depending on the length of the
day. When lighting was costly and candles were scarce, the
hours of sleep would be naturally longer in winter than in the
summer.
In their manner of living the Saxons were fond of vege-
tables, especially of the leek, onion, and garlic. Beans they also
had (these were introduced probably at the time when they com-
menced intercourse with the outer world), pease, radishes, turnips,
parsley, mint, sage, cress, rue, and other herbs. They had
nearly all our modern fruits, though many show by their names,
which are Latin or Norman, a later introduction. They made
use of butter, honey, and cheese. They drank ale and mead.
The latter is still made, but in small quantities, in Somerset and
Hereford shires. The Normans brought over the custom of
drinking wine.
In the earliest times the whole family slept in the common
hall. The first improvement was the erection of the solar, or
upper chamber.
This was above the hall, or a portion of it, or
over the kitchen and buttery attached to the hall.
The arrange-
ment may be still observed in many of the old colleges of Oxford
or Cambridge. The solar was first the sleeping-room of the lord
and lady; though afterward it served not only this purpose, but
also for an ante-chamber to the dormitory of the daughters and
the maid-servants. The men of the household still slept in the
hall below. Later on, bed recesses were contrived in the wall,
as one may find in Northumberland at the present day. The
bed was commonly, but not for the ladies of the house, merely
a big bag stuffed with straw. A sheet wrapped round the body
formed the only night-dress. But there were also pillows, blan-
kets, and coverlets. The early English bed was quite as luxuri-
ous as any that followed after, until the invention of the spring
mattress gave a new and hitherto unhoped-for joy to the hours
of night.
The second step in advance was the ladies' bower, a room
or suite of rooms set apart for the ladies of the house and their
women. For the first time, as soon as this room was added, the
women could follow their own vocations of embroidery, spinning,
IV-1J6
## p. 1842 (#32) ############################################
1842
WALTER BESANT
and needlework of all kinds, apart from the rough and noisy
talk of the men.
The main features, therefore, of every great house, whether
in town or country, from the seventh to the twelfth century,
were the hall, the solar built over the kitchen and buttery, and
the ladies' bower.
There was also the garden. In all times the English have
been fond of gardens. Bacon thought it not beneath his dignity
to order the arrangement of a garden. Long before Bacon, a
writer of the twelfth century describes a garden as it should be.
"It should be adorned on this side with roses, lilies, and the
marigold; on that side with parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood,
coriander, sage, savery, hyssop, mint, vine, dettany, pellitory,
lettuce, cresses, and the peony. Let there be beds enriched with
onions, leeks, garlic, melons, and scallions. The garden is also
enriched by the cucumber, the soporiferous poppy, and the daffo-
dil, and the acanthus. Nor let pot herbs be wanting, as beet-
root, sorrel, and mallow. It is useful also to the gardener to
have anise, mustard, and wormwood.
A noble garden
will give you medlars, quinces, the pear main, peaches, pears of
St. Regle, pomegranates, citrons, oranges, almonds, dates, and
figs. "
The latter fruits were perhaps attempted, but one doubts
their arriving at ripeness. Perhaps the writer sets down what he
hoped would be some day achieved.
·
The in-door amusements of the time were very much like our
own. We have a little music in the evening; so did our fore-
fathers. We sometimes have a little dancing; so did they, but
the dancing was done for them. We go to the theatres to see
the mime; in their days the mime made his theatre in the great
man's hall. He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs,
he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed
astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was al-
ready as disreputable as when we find him later on with his
ribauderie. Again, we play chess; so did our ancestors. We
gamble with dice; so did they. We feast and drink together;
so did they. We pass the time in talk; so did they. In a word,
as Alphonse Karr put it, the more we change, the more we
remain the same.
Out-of-doors, as Fitz-Stephen shows, the young men skated,
wrestled, played ball, practiced archery, held water tournaments,
baited bull and bear, fought cocks, and rode races. They were
## p. 1843 (#33) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1843
also mustered sometimes for service in the field, and went forth
cheerfully, being specially upheld by the reassuring consciousness
that London was always on the winning side.
The growth of the city government belongs to the history
of London. Suffice it here to say that the people in all times.
enjoyed a freedom far above that possessed by any other city of
Europe. The history of municipal London is a history of con-
tinual struggle to maintain this freedom against all attacks, and
to extend it and to make it impregnable. Already the people
are proud, turbulent, and confident in their own strength. They
refuse to own any other lord but the king himself; there is no
Earl of London. They freely hold their free and open meetings,
their folk-motes, in the open space outside the northwest corner
of St. Paul's Churchyard. That they lived roughly, enduring
cold, sleeping in small houses in narrow courts; that they suf-
fered much from the long darkness of winter; that they were
always in danger of fevers, agues, "putrid" throats, plagues,
fires by night, and civil wars; that they were ignorant of letters,
-three schools only for the whole of London, all this may
very well be understood. But these things do not make men
and women wretched. They were not always suffering from pre-
ventable disease; they were not always hauling their goods out
of the flames; they were not always fighting. The first and
most simple elements of human happiness are three; to wit, that
a man should be in bodily health, that he should be free, that
he should enjoy the produce of his own labor. All these things
the Londoner possessed under the Norman kings nearly as much
as in these days they can be possessed. His city has always
been one of the healthiest in the world; whatever freedom
could be attained he enjoyed; and in that rich trading town all
men who worked lived in plenty.
The households, the way of living, the occupations of the
women, can be clearly made out in every detail from the Anglo-
Saxon literature. The women in the country made the garments,
carded the wool, sheared the sheep, washed the things, beat the
flax, ground the corn, sat at the spinning-wheel, and prepared
the food. In the towns they had no shearing to do, but all the
rest of their duty fell to their province. The English women
excelled in embroidery. "English" work meant the best kind of
work. They worked church vestments with gold and pearls and
precious stones. "Orfrey," or embroidery in gold, was a special
-
## p. 1844 (#34) ############################################
1844
WALTER BESANT
art. Of course they are accused by the ecclesiastics of an over-
weening desire to wear finery; they certainly curled their hair,
and, one is sorry to read, they painted, and thereby spoiled their
pretty cheeks. If the man was the hlaf-ord [lord],- -the owner
or winner of the loaf, -the wife was the hlaf-dig [lady], its dis-
tributor; the servants and the retainers were hlaf-oetas, or eaters
of it. When nunneries began to be founded, the Saxon ladies in
great numbers forsook the world for the cloister. And here they
began to learn Latin, and became able at least to carry on corre-
spondence specimens of which still exist-in that language.
Every nunnery possessed a school for girls. They were taught
to read and to write their own language and Latin, perhaps also
rhetoric and embroidery. As the pious Sisters were fond of
putting on violet chemises, tunics, and vests of delicate tissue,
embroidered with silver and gold, and scarlet shoes, there was
probably not much mortification of the flesh in the nunneries of
the later Saxon times.
This for the better class. We cannot suppose that the daugh-
ters of the craftsmen became scholars of the nunnery. Theirs
were the lower walks-to spin the linen and to make the bread
and carry on the housework.
## p. 1845 (#35) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1845
"A
THE SYNAGOGUE
From The Rebel Queen': copyrighted 1893, by Harper and Brothers
"D'un jour intérieur je me sens éclairé,
Et j'entends une voix qui me dit d'espérer. ”— Lamartine.
RE you ready, Francesca ? »
――――
Nelly ran lightly down the narrow stairs, dressed for
Sabbath and Synagogue. She was dainty and pretty at all
times in the matter of dress, but especially on a summer day,
which affords opportunity for bright color and bright drapery and
an ethereal appearance. This morning she was full of color and
light. When, however, she found herself confronted with Fran-
cesca's simple gray dress, so closely fitting, so faultless, and her
black-lace hat with its single rose for color, Nelly's artistic sense
caused her heart to sink like lead. It is not for nothing that one
learns and teaches the banjo; one Art leads to another; she who
knows music can feel for dress. "Oh! " she cried, clasping her
hands. "That's what we can never do! "
"What?
"That fit! Look at me! Yet they call me clever. Clara gives
me the new fashions and I copy them, and the girls in our street
copy me
- poor things! —and the dressmaker comes to talk things
over and to learn from me. I make everything for myself. And
they call me clever! But I can't get near it; and if I can't
nobody can. "
A large detached structure of red brick stood east and west,
with a flat façade and round windows that bore out the truth of
the date 1700-carved upon the front. A word or two in that
square character-that tongue which presents so few attractions
to most of us compared with other tongues-probably corrobo-
rated the internal evidence of the façade and the windows.
"This is the synagogue," said Nelly. She entered, and turn-
ing to the right, led the way up-stairs to a gallery running along
the whole side of the building. On the other side was another
gallery. In front of both was a tolerably wide grill, through
which the congregation below could be seen perfectly.
"This is the women's gallery," whispered Nell-there were
not many women present. "We'll sit in the front. Presently
they will sing. They sing beautifully. Now they're reading
## p. 1846 (#36) ############################################
1846
WALTER BESANT
prayers and the Law.
They've got to read the whole Law
through once a week, you know. " Francesca looked curiously
through the grill. When one is in a perfectly strange place, the
first observations made are of small and unimportant things. She
observed that there was a circular inclosure at the east end, as if
for an altar; but there was no altar: two doors indicated a cup-
board in the wall. There were six tall wax-lights burning round
the inclosure, although the morning was fine and bright. At the
west end a high screen kept the congregation from the disturb-
ance of those who entered or went out. Within the screen was
a company of men and boys, all with their hats and caps on their
heads; they looked like the choir. In front of the choir was a
platform railed round. Three chairs were placed at the back of
the platform. There was a table covered with red velvet, on
which lay the book of the Law, a ponderous roll of parchment
provided with silver staves or handles. Before this desk or table
stood the Reader. He was a tall and handsome man, with black
hair and full black beard, about forty years of age. He wore a
gown and large Geneva bands, like a Presbyterian minister; on
his head he had a kind of biretta. Four tall wax candles were
placed round the front of the platform. The chairs were occu-
pied by two or three elders. A younger man stood at the desk
beside the Reader. The service was already begun-it was, in
fact, half over.
Francesca observed next that all the men wore a kind of
broad scarf, made of some white stuff about eight feet long and
four feet broad. Bands of black or blue were worked in the
ends, which were also provided with fringes. "It is the Talleth,"
Nelly whispered. Even the boys wore this white robe, the effect
of which would have been very good but for the modern hat, tall
or pot, which spoiled all. Such a robe wants a turban above it,
not an English hat. The seats were ranged along the synagogue
The place was not full, but there were a good
many worshipers. The service was chanted by the Reader. It
was a kind of chant quite new and strange to Francesca. Like
many young persons brought up with no other religion than
they can pick up for themselves, she was curious and somewhat
learned in the matter of ecclesiastical music and ritual, which she
approached, owing to her education, with unbiased mind. She
knew masses and anthems and hymns and chants of all kinds;
never had she heard anything of this kind before. It was not
east and west.
## p. 1847 (#37) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1847
congregational, or Gregorian; nor was it repeated by the choir
from side to side; nor was a monotone with a drop at the
end; nor was it a florid, tuneful chant such as one may hear in
some Anglican services. This Reader, with a rich, strong voice,
a baritone of great power, took nearly the whole of the service
it must have been extremely fatiguing— upon himself, chanting
it from beginning to end. No doubt, as he rendered the read-
ing and the prayers, so they had been given by his ancestors in
Spain and Portugal generation after generation, back into the
times when they came over in Phoenician ships to the Cartha-
ginian colonies, even before the dispersion of the Ten Tribes.
It was a traditional chant of antiquity beyond record- not a
monotonous chant. Francesca knew nothing of the words; she
grew tired of trying to make out whereabouts on the page the
Reader might be in the book lent her, which had Hebrew on
one side and English on the other. Besides, the man attracted
her-by his voice, by his energy, by his appearance. She closed
her book and surrendered herself to the influence of the voice
and the emotions which it expressed.
There was no music to help him. From time to time the
men in the congregation lifted up their voices-not seemingly
in response, but as if moved to sudden passion and crying out
with one accord. This helped him a little, otherwise he was
without any assistance.
A great Voice. The man sometimes leaned over the Roll of
the Law, sometimes he stood upright, always his great Voice
went up and down and rolled along the roof and echoed along
the benches of the women's gallery. Now the Voice sounded a
note of rejoicing; now, but less often, a note of sadness; now
it was a sharp and sudden cry of triumph. Then the people
shouted with him- it was as if they clashed sword on shield
and yelled for victory; now it was a note of defiance, as when
men go forth to fight an enemy; now it sank to a murmur, as
of one who consoles and soothes and promises things to come;
now it was a note of rapture, as if the Promised Land was
already recovered.
-
Was all that in the Voice? Did the congregation, all sitting
wrapped in their white robes, feel these emotions as the Voice
thundered and rolled? I know not. Such was the effect pro-
duced upon one who heard this Voice for the first time. At first
it seemed loud, even barbaric; there was lacking something which
## p. 1848 (#38) ############################################
1848
WALTER BESANT
the listener and stranger had learned to associate with worship.
What was it? Reverence? But she presently found reverence
in plenty, only of a kind that differed from that of Christian
worship. Then the listener made another discovery. In this
ancient service she missed the note of humiliation. There was
no Litany at a Faldstool. There was no kneeling in abasement;
there was no appearance of penitence, sorrow, or the confession
of sins. The Voice was as the Voice of a Captain exhorting his
soldiers to fight. The service was warlike, the service of a peo-
ple whose trust in their God is so great that they do not need
to call perpetually upon Him for the help and forgiveness of
which they are assured.
