In 1870 he published a work which proved to be the beginning
of a very important contribution to English history.
of a very important contribution to English history.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 to v25 - Rab to Tur
What he saw was a round, trig, neatly clad,
youngish woman, whose face, illumined by the flickering fire,
was positively charming in its piquant assertion of grief. Across
her shapely bosom lay, neatly folded, a snowy kerchief, less white
only than her pearly teeth, as smiling through her sadness, she
exclaimed as she turned to her guest:-
“Lor' bless my soul, ef I 'ain't raked out a sweet 'tater out'n
dese coals! I 'feared you'll be clair disgusted at sech onman-
nerly doin's, Brer Langford; but when dey ain't no company
heah, I des kivers up my 'taters wid ashes an' piles on de live
coals, an' let 'em cook. I don't reck'n you'd even ter say look at
a roas' 'tater, would you, Brer Langford ? ”
The person addressed was rubbing his hands together and
chuckling “Ef yer tecks my jedgmint, Sis' Johnsing, on de
pretater question, roas'in' is de onies way to cook 'em. ”
## p. 14131 (#321) ##########################################
RUTH MCENERY STUART
14131
(C
His hostess had already risen, and before he could remon-
strate she had drawn up a little table, lifted the potato from its
bed, and laid it on a plate before him.
“Ef yer will set down an' eat a roas' 'tater in my miser'ble
little cabin, Brer Langford, I 'clar' fo' gracious hit 'll raise my
sperits mightily. Gord knows I wushes I had some'h'n good to
offer you, a-comin' in out'n de col; but ef you'll please, sir, have
de mannerliness ter hol' de candle, I'll empty my ole cupboard
clean inside outen but I'll fin' you some'h'n 'nother to spressify
yo' welcome. ”
Langford rose, and as he held the light to the open safe, his
eyes fairly glared. He was hungry, and the snowy shelves were
covered with open vessels of tempting food, all more or less
broken, but savory as to odor, and most inviting.
"I 'clare, Sis' Johnsing – I 'clare! ” were the only words that
the man of eloquent speech found to express his appreciation
and joy; and his entertainer continued:-
“Dis heah cupboard mecks me 'shame', Brer Langford. Dey
ain't a thing fittin' fur sech as you in it. Heah's a pan o' col'
'tater pone an' some cabbage an' side meat, an' dis heah's a few
ords an' eens o fried chicken an' a little passel o' spare-ribs,
piled in wid co'n-brade scraps. Hit don't look much, but hit's
all clean. Heah, you gimme de candle, an' you retch 'em all
down, please, sir; an' I ain't shore, but ef I don't disremember,
dey's de bes' half a loaf o' reeson-cake 'way back in de fur cor-
Dat's hit. Now, dat's some'h'n like. An' now pass down
de butter; an’ ef yer wants a tumbler o'sweet milk wid yo'
’tater, you'll haf ter hop an' go fetch it. Lis'n ter me, fur Gord
sake, talkin' ter Brer Langford same as I'd talk ter a reg'lar
plantation nigger!
Langford hesitated.
“Less'n you desires de sweet milk, Sis'
Johnsing -
“I does truly lak a swaller o'sweet milk wid my 'tater, Brer
Langford, but seem lak 'fo' I'd git it fur myse'f I'd do widout it.
Won't you, please, sir, teck de candle an' fetch it fur me? Go
right thoo my room. Hit's in a bottle, a-settin' outside de right-
han' winder des as you go in. ”
Langford could not help glancing about the widow's chamber
as he passed through. If the other room was cozy and clean,
this one was charming. The white bed, dazzling in its snowy
fluted frills, reminded him of its owner, as she sat in all her
ner.
»
>>
## p. 14132 (#322) ##########################################
14132
RUTH MCENERY STUART
starched freshness to-night. The polished pine floor here was
nearly covered with neatly fringed patches of carpet, suggestive
of housewifely taste as well as luxurious comfort.
He had returned with the bottle, and was seating himself,
when the disconsolate widow actually burst into a peal of laugh-
ter.
“Lord save my soul! ” she exclaimed, “ef he 'ain't gone an'
fetched a bottle o' beer! You is a caution, Brer Langford! I
wouldn't 'a' had you know I had dat beer in my house fur
nothin'. When I was feelin' so po'ly in my fus' grief, seem lak
I craved sperityal comfort, an' I went an' bought a whole lot
o'lager-beer. I 'lowed maybe I c'd drink my sorrer down, but
'twarn't no use. I c'd drink beer all night, an' hit wouldn't
nuver bring nobody to set in dat rockin’-cheer by my side an'
teck comfort wid me. Doos you think fur a perfesser ter teck
a little beer ur wine when he feels a nachel faintiness is a fatal
sin, Brer Langford ? »
“Why, no, Sis' Johnsing. Succumstances alter cases, an'hit's
de succumstances o' drinkin' what mecks de altercations; an' de
way I looks at it, a Christian man is de onies pusson who oughter
dare to trus' 'isse'f wid de wine cup, 'caze a sinner don'know
when ter stop. ”
“Dat soun' mighty reason'ble, Brer Langford. An' sence you
fetched de beer, now you 'bleege ter drink it. But please, sir,
go, lak a good man, an' bring my milk, on de tother side in de
winder. ”
The milk was brought, and the Rev. Mr. Langford was soon
smacking his lips over the best supper it had been his minis-
terial good fortune to enjoy for many a day.
As the widow raked a second potato from the fire, she re-
marked, in a tone of inimitable pathos: -
“Seem lak I can't git usen ter cookin' fur one. I cooks
fur two ev'y day; an' somehow I fines a little spec o' comfort
in lookin' at de odd po'tion, even ef I has ter eat it myse'f.
De secon’’tater on de hyearth seem lak hit stan's fur company.
Seein' as you relishes de beer, Brer Langford, I's proud you
made de mistake an' fetched it. Gord knows somebody better
drink it! I got a whole passel o’ bottles in my trunk, an' I
don't know what ter do wid 'em. A man what wuck an' talk
an' preach hard as you does, he need a little some'h'n' 'nother
ter keep his cour'ge up. "
(
## p. 14133 (#323) ##########################################
RUTH MCENERY STUART
14133
»
C
It was an hour past midnight when finally the widow let her
guest out the back door; and as she directed him how to reach
home by a short cut through her field, she said, while she held
his hand in parting: -
“Gord will bless you fur dis night, Brer Langford, fur you is
truly sakerficed yo'se'f fur a po' sinner; an' I b’lieve dey's mo'
true 'ligion in comfortin' a po' lonely widderless 'oman lak I is,
what 'ain't got nobody to stan' by 'er, dan in all de sermons
a-goin': an' now I gwine turn my face back todes my lonely
fireside wid a better hope an' a firmer trus', 'caze I knows de
love o' Gord done sont you ter me. My po' little brade an' meat
warn't highfalutin' nur fine, but you is shared it wid me lak a
Christian, an' I gi'n it ter you wid a free heart. ”
Langford returned the pressure of her hand, and even shook
it heartily during his parting speech:
"Good-night, my dear sister, an' Gord bless you! I feels mo'
courageous an' strenk'n'd myse'f sence I have shared yo' lonely
fireside; an' please Gord, I will make it my juty as well as
my pleasure to he'p you in a similar manner whensomever you
desires my presence. I rejoices to see that you is tryin' wid a
brave heart to rise f'om yo' sorrer. Keep good cheer, my sister,
an' remember dat the Gord o' Aberham an' Isaac an' Jacob - de
patriots o' de Lord - is also de friend ter de fatherless an' wid-
ders, an' to them that are desolate an’ oppressed. ”
With this beautiful admonition, and a last distinct pressure
of the hand, the Rev. 'Mr. Langford disappeared in the darkness,
carefully fastening the top button of his coat as he went, as if
to cover securely the upper layer of raisin-cake which still lay,
for want of lower space, just beneath it within.
He never felt better in his life.
The widow watched his retreating shadow until she dimly saw
one dark leg rise over the rail as he scaled the garden fence;
then coming in, she hooked the door, and throwing herself on
the floor, rolled over and over, laughing until she cried, verily.
“Stan' back, gals, stan' back! ” she exclaimed, rising. “Stan'
back, I say! A widder done haided yer off wid a cook-pot! ”
!
-
With eyes fairly dancing, she resumed her seat before the fire.
She was too much elated for sleep yet.
"I 'clare 'fo' gracious,
I is a devil! ” she chuckled. « Po' Alick - an' po' Steve — an'
po' Jake! ” she continued, pausing after each name with some-
thing that their spiritual presences might have interpreted as a
>
(
## p. 14134 (#324) ##########################################
14134
RUTH MCENERY STUART
sigh if they were affectionately hovering near her. "But,” she
added, her own thoughts supplying the connection, “Brer Lang-
ford gwine be de stylishes' one o' de lot. ” And then she really
sighed. “I mus' go buy some mo' beer. Better git two bottles.
He mought ax fur mo', bein' as I got a trunkful. ” And here
alone in her cabin she roared aloud. “I does wonder huc-
come I come ter be sech a devil, anyhow? I 'lowed I was safe
ter risk de beer. Better git a dozen bottles, I reck'n; give 'im
.
,
plenty rope, po' boy! Well, Langford honey, good-night fur to-
night! But perpare, yo'ng man, perpare! And chuckling as
she went, she passed into her own room and went to bed.
The young minister was as good as his promise, and during
the next two months he never failed to stop after every evening
meeting to look after the spiritual condition of the “widder John-
sing ”; while she, with the consummate skill of a practiced hand,
saw to it that without apparent forethought her little cupboard
should always supply a material entertainment, full, savory, and
varied. If on occasion she lamented a dearth of cold dishes,
it was that she might insist on sharing her breakfast with her
guest; when producing from her magic safe a ready-dressed
spring chicken or squirrel, she would broil it upon the coals in
his presence, and the young man would depart thoroughly satu-
rated with the odor of her delightful hospitality.
Langford had heard things about this woman in days gone
by, but now he was pleased to realize that they had all been
malicious inventions prompted by jealousy: Had he commanded
the adjectives, he would have described her as the most gen-
erous, hospitable, spontaneous, sympathetic, vivacious, and witty,
as well as the most artless, of women. As it was, he thought of
her a good deal between visits; and whether the thought moved
backward or forward, whether it took shape as a memory or an
anticipation, he somehow unconsciously smacked his lips and swal-
lowed.
And yet, when one of the elders questioned him as to
the spiritual state of the still silent mourner, he knit his brow,
and answered with a sigh:
“It is hard ter say, my brothers — it is hard ter say. De ole
lady do nourish an' cherish 'er grief mightily; but yit, ef we hol'
off an' don't crowd 'er, I trus' she'll come thoo on de Lord's side
yit. ”
If there had been the ghost of a twinkle in his interlocutor's
eye, it died out, abashed at itself at this pious and carefully
»
## p. 14135 (#325) ##########################################
RUTH MCENERY STUART
14135
framed reply. The widow was indeed fully ten years Langford's
senior,- a discrepancy as much exaggerated by outward circum-
stances as it was minimized in their fireside relations.
So matters drifted on for a month longer. The dozen bottles
of beer had been followed by a second, and these again by a
half-dozen. This last reduced purchase of course had its mean-
ing. Langford was reaching the end of his tether. At last there
were but two bottles left. It was Sunday night again.
The little cupboard had been furnished with unusual elabo-
ration, and the savory odors which emanated from its shelves
would have filled the room but for the all-pervading essence of
bergamot with which the widow had recklessly deluged her hair.
Indeed, her entire toilet betrayed exceptional care to-night.
She had not gone to church, and as it was near the hour
for dismissal, she was a trifle nervous; feeling confident that the
minister would stop in, ostensibly to inquire the cause of her
absence. She had tried this before, and he had not disappointed
her.
Finally she detected his familiar announcement, a clearing of
his throat, as he approached the door.
"Lif' up de latch an' walk in, Brer Wolf,” she laughingly
called to him; and as he entered she added, “Look lak you
come in answer to my thoughts, Brer Langford. ”
"Is dat so, Sis' Johnsing? ” he replied, chuckling with delight.
“I knowed some'l' n' 'nother drawed me clean over f'om de chu'ch
in de po'in’-down rain. ”
« Is it a-rainin'? I 'clare, I see yer brung yo' umberel; but
sett'n heah by de fire, I nuver studies 'bout de elemints. I been
studyin' 'bout some'h'n' mo'n rain or shine, I tell yer. ”
"Is yer, Sis' Johnsing? What you been studyin' 'bout ? »
“What I been studyin' 'bout? Nemmine what I been studyin'
'bout! I studyin' 'bout Brer Langford now. De po' man look
so tired an’ frazzled out, 'is eyes looks des lak dorg-wood blor-
soms. You is des nachelly preached down, Brer Langford, an'
you needs a morsel o' some'h'n' 'nother ter stiddy yo' cornstitu-
tion. ” She rose forthwith, and set about arranging the young
man's supper.
“But you 'ain't tol' me yit huccome you 'ain't come ter chu'ch
ter-night, Sis' Johnsing ? ”
“Nemmine 'bout dat now. I ain't studyin' 'bout gwine ter
chu'ch now. I des studyin' 'bout how ter induce de size o' yo'
(C
»
## p. 14136 (#326) ##########################################
14136
RUTH MCENERY STUART
(
eyes down ter dey nachel porportiom. Heah, teck de shovel, an'
rake out a han'ful o' coals, please, sir, an' I'll set dis pan o' rolls
ter bake. Dat's hit. Now kiver de led good wid live coals an’
ashes. Dat's a man! Now time you wrastle wid de j'ints o’ dis
roas' guinea-hen, an' teck de corkscrew an' perscribe fur dis beer
bottle, and go fetch de fresh butter out'n de winder, de rolls '11
be a-singin' Now is de accepted time! )
It was no wonder the young man thought her charming.
Needless to say, the feast, seasoned by a steady flow of hu-
mor, was perfect. But all things earthly have an end; and so,
by-and-by, it was all over. A pattering rain without served to
enhance the genial in-door charm, but it was time to go.
"Well, Sis' Johnsing, hit's a-gittin' on time fur me ter be
a-movin',” said the poor fellow at length - for he hated to leave.
« Yas, I knows it is, Brer Langford,” the hostess answered
with a tinge of sadness, “an'dat ain't de wust of it. ”
How does you mean, Sis' Johnsing? ”
“Ain't I tol yer, Brer Langford, ter-night dat my thoughts
was wid you ? Don't look at me so quizzical, please, sir, 'caze I
got a heavy sorrer in my heart. ”
“A sorrer 'bout me, Sis' Johnsing? How so? ”
“Brer Langford -I-I been thinkin' 'bout you all day, an'-
an'— ter come right down ter de p'int, 1-1-” She bit her lip
and hesitated. I 'feerd I done put off what I ought ter said
ter you tell look lak hit 'll 'mos' bre’k my heart to say it. ”
"Speak out, fur Gord sake, Sis' Johnsing, an' ease yo' min'!
What is yo' trouble ? »
She seemed almost crying. “You — you — you mustn't come
heah no mo', Brer Langford. ”
« “Who- me? Wh-wh-what is I done, Sis' Johnsing? ”
“My Gord! how kin I say it? You 'ain't done nothin', my
dear frien'. You has been Gord's blessin' ter me; but — but — I
'clare 'fo' Gord, how kin I say de word ? But — don't you see
yo’se'f how de succumstances stan'? You is a yo'ng man li'ble
to fall in love wid any lakly yo'ng gal any day, an' ter git mar-
ried — an' of co'se dat's right: but don't you see dat ef a po' lone-
some 'oman lak me put too much 'pendence orn a yo'ng man lak
you is, de time gwine come when he gwine git tired a-walkin'
all de way from chu'ch in de po'in'-down rain des fur charity ter
comfort a lonely sinner pusson lak I is; an'- an' settin' heah by
myse'f ter-night, I done made up my min' dat I gwine 'scuse you
»
## p. 14137 (#327) ##########################################
RUTH McENERY STUART
14137
f'om dis task while I kin stand it. Of co’se I don't say but hit
'll be hard. You is tooken me by de han' an' he'ped me thoo
a dark cloud; but you an' me mus' say far'well ter-night, an'
you — you mustn't come back no mo'. ”
Her face was buried in her hands now, and so she could not
see her guest's storm-swept visage as he essayed to answer her.
“You — you — you — you — talkin' 'bout you c'n stan' it, Sis'
Johnsing, an'- an'- seem lak you 's forgitt'n' all bout me. ” His
voice was trembling. I-I knows I ain't nothin' but a no-
'count yo'ng striplin', so ter speak, an' you is a mannerly lady
o' speunce: but hit do seem lak 'fo' you'd send me away, des
lak ter say a yaller dorg, you'd — you'd ax me could I stan' it;
an' — an', tell de trufe, I can't stan' it, an' I ain't gwine stan' it,
'less'n you des nachelly, p'int-blank, out an' out, shets de do' in
>
my face. ”
(
"Brer Langford — ”
"Don't you say Brer Langford ter me no mo', ef you please,
ma'am; an'- an' I ain't gwine call you Sis' Johnsing no mo',
nuther. You is des, so fur as you consents, hencefo'th an'fo'.
ever mo', in season an'out'n season des my Lize Ann. You
knows yo’se'f dat we is come ter be each one-'n'ner's heart's
delight. ” He drew his chair nearer, and leaning forward, seized
her hand, as he continued: “Leastwise, dat’s de way my heart
language hitse'f. I done tooken you fur my sweetness 'fo' ter-
night, Lize Ann, my honey. "
But why follow them any further ? Before he left her, the
widow had consented, with becoming reluctance, that he should
come to her on the following Sunday with the marriage license
in his pocket; on one condition, and upon this condition she in-
sisted with unyielding pertinacity. It was that Langford should
feel entirely free to change his mind, and to love or to marry
any other woman within the week ensuing.
Lize Ann arrived late at service on the following Sunday
evening Her name had just been announced as a happy con-
vert who rejoiced in new-found grace; and when she stepped
demurely up the aisle, arrayed in a plain white dress, her face
beaming with what seemed a spiritual peace, the congregation
were deeply touched, and, eager to welcome her into the fold,
began to press forward to extend the right hand of fellowship
to one who had come in through so much tribulation.
a happy time all round; and no one was more jubilant than the
It was
## p. 14138 (#328) ##########################################
14138
RUTH MCENERY STUART
young pastor, who seemed indeed to rejoice more over this
recovered lamb than over the ninety-and-nine within the fold
who had not gone astray.
The young girl converts of recent date, never slow to respond
to any invitation which led to the chancel, were specially demon-
strative in their affectionate welcome; some even going so far as
to embrace the new “sister,” while others were moved to shout
and sing as they made the tour of the aisles.
When, however, as soon as congratulations were over, it was
formally announced that this identical convert, Mrs. Eliza Ann
Johnsing, was then and there to be joined in the holy estate
of matrimony to the Reverend Julius Cæsar Langford, the shock
was so great that these same blessed damosels looked blankly
one upon the other in mute dismay for the space of some
minutes; and when presently, as a blushing bride, Lize Ann
again turned to them for congratulations, it is a shame to have
to write it, but they actually did turn their backs and refuse to
speak to her.
The emotions of the company were certainly very much
mixed; and the two old crones, Nancy Price and Hester Ann
Jennings, sitting side by side in a front pew, were seen to
nudge each other, as, their old sides shaking with laughter, they
exclaimed:-
“What I tol' yer, Sis' Hest' Ann? ”
«What I tol yer, Sis' Nancy ? »
Dat's des what we tol' one-'n'ner Lize Ann gwine do! ”
Though no guests were bidden to share it, the wedding sup-
per in the little cabin that night was no mean affair; and when
Langford, with a chuckling, half-embarrassed, new-proprietary air,
drew the cork from the beer bottle beside his plate, Lize Ann
said: -
“Hit do do me good ter see how you relishes dat beer. ”
But she did not mention that it was the last bottle, and may-
be it was just as well.
>
## p. 14139 (#329) ##########################################
14139
WILLIAM STUBBS
(1825-)
BY E. S. NADAL
W
SILLIAM STUBBS, Bishop of Oxford, was born at Knaresboroug'n
June 21st, 1825, and was educated at the Grammar School,
Ripon, and Christ Church, Oxford. He was graduated at
Oxford in 1848, taking a first-class in classics and a third-class in
mathematics; and was at once elected to a fellowship at Trinity Col-
lege. In 1848 he was ordained, and later became vicar of a parish in
Essex; he was appointed librarian to Archbishop Longley at Lambeth
in 1862. He served as a school inspector from 1860 to 1866, when he
was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. In 1867
he was elected Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, — always a great dis-
tinction,- and later became an honorary fellow of that college. He
received in succession a number of university and ecclesiastical dig-
nities, and in 1884 was appointed Bishop of Chester, from which soe
he was translated to that of Oxford in 1889.
Bishop Stubbs printed in succession a number of learned editions
of various chronicles relating to ecclesiastical and political history,
such as “Registrum Sacrum Anglicum,' Memorials of St. Dunstan,'
etc.
In 1870 he published a work which proved to be the beginning
of a very important contribution to English history. This was Select
Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History,
from the Earliest Period to the Reign of Edward 1. In 1874 ap-
peared the first volume of his great work, «The Constitutional His-
tory of England in its Origin and Development. The second and
third volumes followed in 1875 and 1878 respectively. This book of
Dr. Stubbs's is the ablest and most authoritative work upon the
subject.
To Dr. Stubbs's view, English constitutional history is not an
isolated matter confined to England. To him it is but part of
the history of the development of Teutonic institutions throughout
Europe. These institutions have spread to countries which are not
Teutonic in blood or language. The four German countries are
France, Spain, England, and Germany. Of these, France and Spain
German neither in blood nor language. We are given an
are
## p. 14140 (#330) ##########################################
14140
WILLIAM STUBBS
interesting comparison of the course of German civilization in these
four countries.
In France, German civilization resulted in despotism; the reason
for which fact is set forth by Dr. Stubbs very clearly. The system
which for the last twelve centuries has formed French history was
originally an adaptation of German polity to the government of a con-
quered race. The Franks, a German people, conquered Gaul, already
a Romanized country. The form of feudalism they set up there was
without any tendencies toward popular freedom. Feudal government
in French history, therefore, runs its logical course. The central
power, which is the cause of the conquest, grows weaker and weaker,
until it is reduced to a shadow, and the parts get stronger. By-and-
by the reverse process sets in: with the decay of the feudal system,
the central power grows stronger and stronger, until it absorbs unto
itself all the power which had once been in the feudatories. An ab-
solute despotism is the result; which ultimately takes the form of
an egotistical tyranny, leading in the end to revolution and disaster.
Owing to the fact that the Germans conquered Gaul, the German
system was imposed on France without the safeguards which it had
on its original ground.
Spain is Germanic in the sense that the governnient is in the
hands of Visigoths, who are kindred to the Germans; and that the
common law and institutions are Germanic.
In Germany there is no alien race; for Germany is never con-
quered but by Germans. When one German tribe has conquered
another, there is a feudal tenure of land. But where the race
mains in its ancient seats, the free German polity continues. The
imperial system, however, — what Dr. Stubbs calls the “Mezentian
union with Italy," — has modified German polity in Germany. It is
for this reason that the German polity has had a freer development
in England than in Germany itself.
Dr. Stubbs emphasizes the essentially German character of the
British constitution; showing that the English are people of German
descent in blood, character, and language, but more especially in the
development of the primitive German civilization. The work, there-
fore, begins with the description of the Germans in their ancient
homes, as given by Cæsar and Tacitus. The characteristics of the
aboriginal society are described. In proceeding, the writer follows
with great learning the course of constitutional development, from
the days of the migration to those of Magna Charta. Volume i. closes
with an account of the triumph of the barons over John. The second
volume pursues the subject through the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries; the third through the fifteenth century. The third volume
is composed of four chapters, each of which is in itself a short history
re-
с
## p. 14141 (#331) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14141
»
of great value and authority. These chapters are (Lancaster and
York,' The King, the Clergy, and the Pope,' Parliamentary Antiqui-
ties,' and (Social and Political Influences at the Close of the Middle
Ages.
The first volume concludes with that point in the history of Eng-
land, when, as regards the rest of the world, it has become a self-
reliant and self-sustained nation; and when, internally, it has been
prepared for representative institutions. The picture which the author
gives incidentally of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would
seem to represent a period of reaction and unmeaning violence. The
political bloodshed of the fourteenth century preludes the internecine
warfare of the fifteenth century. In the fourteenth century, public
and private morality is at a low ebb, and the court is marked by a
splendid extravagance and a coarse indulgence. The author does not
find anything even in the stories of Chaucer to brighten the wretch-
edness of the period. If there has been a retrogression in morals,
there has been one also in art. In architecture the Perpendicular
Style is a decline from the grace and affluent variety of the Decora-
tive. « The change in penmanship is analogous: the writing of the
fourteenth century is coarse and blurred compared with the exqui-
site elegance of the thirteenth, and yet even preferable to the vulgar
neatness and deceptive regularity of the fifteenth. ” But weak as is
the fourteenth century, Dr. Stubbs finds that the fifteenth century
is weaker still: “more futile, more bloody, more immoral. Yet out of
it emerges, in spite of all, “the truer and brighter day. ” He seems
to consider this long period of violence and reaction in a sense the
preparation for the constitutional development of the sixteenth cen-
tury. Upon this point, however, another very able and exact writer,
Mr. Gairdner, is at issue with him. Mr. Gairdner considers the events
of the fifteenth century as tending not at all in the direction of lib-
erty and constitutional government, but of pure absolutism. To the
ordinary reader it will not be quite clear in what way the fifteenth
century differs from any other period of reaction, except in degree
and duration.
The question will naturally arise, as one reads the pages of Dr.
Stubbs (and it is especially pertinent in this work, which is dedicated
to literature), whether this very able writer is a literary historian.
We are decidedly of the opinion that he is. One characteristic of
literature he has to a very high degree,– truthfulness. With him the
word or phrase must always be as nearly as possible the precise
image of the thought. The expression is never allowed to vary a
hair's-breadth to the right or left for the sake of effect. Perhaps he
is at times too scrupulous in his preference for a dry or dull phrase
which is clearly within the truth, to a brighter one which might go
C
»
## p. 14142 (#332) ##########################################
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WILLIAM STUBBS
beyond it. One would think that without the sacrifice of truth he
might have made the story livelier; for the work is for the most part
hard reading. Indeed the style might often be improved in ease and
lucidity. But that literary truthfulness of which we have spoken we
see everywhere. We see it in the conscientious description of the
abstractions among which the reader is required to grope, and to
which the greater part of his work is devoted. But there are, here
and there, pages in which the writer forsakes the abstract for the
concrete, and the dry description of ideas and principles for the de-
lineation of manners and men; and here the literary power is marked.
The powerful strokes express the results of a judgment cautious and
deliberate in the extreme, and yet firm. The combination of a strong
intellect and character with vast knowledge and intense truthfulness
produces a deep impression on the mind of the reader. His confi-
dence is won, and he recognizes the influence and guidance of a
strong individuality. This again is an indication of the presence of
literary power.
In conclusion, it seems to us that the point of view given in this
great work is one which it is especially desirable should be impressed
upon the people of this country. English history is regarded by Dr.
Stubbs not as English only but as German, and as having its forming
influences in still more ancient sources and within broader boundaries.
If this general view is true of England, it is true also of ourselves;
and it is one which we need especially to keep in mind. There is
here a disposition to regard ourselves as separate from the rest of the
world, and from the world's history. This is one of the temptations
of that national pride, which, within its proper limits, is an honorable
sentiment. But we are not separate from the rest of the world.
is the case with all countries, the foundations of what we possess we
have received from other lands. It is not so important, therefore, that
we should ask concerning any national institution or characteristic of
our own, whether it is original (for complete originality is no more
a possible thing to us than to any other country), as whether it is
proper, right, and just.
As
E. s. nadal
## p. 14143 (#333) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14143
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
From the Constitutional History of England)
O
F THE social life and habits of the citizen and burgher, we
have more distinct ideas than of his political action. Social
habits no doubt tended to the formation of political habits
then as now. Except for the purposes of trade, the townsman
seldom went far away from his borough: there he found all his
kinsmen, his company, and his customers; his ambition was grati-
fied by election to municipal office; the local courts could settle
most of his legal business; in the neighboring villages he could
invest the money which he cared to invest in land; once a year,
for a few years, he might bear a share in the armed contingent of
his town to the shire force or militia; once in his life he might
go up, if he lived in a parliamentary borough, to Parliament.
There was not much in his life to widen his sympathies: there
were no newspapers and few books; there was not enough local
distress for charity to find interest in relieving it; there were
many local festivities, and time and means for cultivating comfort
at home. The burgher had pride in his house, and still more per-
haps in his furniture: for although, in the splendid panorama of
mediæval architecture, the great houses of the merchants contrib-
ute a distinct element of magnificence to the general picture, such
houses as Crosby Hall and the Hall of John of Salisbury must
always, in the walled towns, have been exceptions to the rule,
and far beyond the aspirations of the ordinary tradesman; but
the smallest house could be made comfortable and even elegant
by the appliances which his trade connection brought within the
reach of the master. Hence the riches of the inventories at-
tached to the wills of mediæval townsmen, and many of the most
prized relics of mediæval handicraft. Somewhat of the pains
for which the private house afforded no scope was spent on
the churches and public buildings of the town. The numerous
churches of York and Norwich, poorly endowed, but nobly built
and furnished, speak very clearly not only of the devotion, but of
the artistic culture, of the burghers of those towns. The crafts
vied with one another in the elaborate ornamentation of their
churches, their chantries, and their halls of meeting; and of the
later religious guilds, some seem to have been founded for the
express purpose of combining splendid religious services and
## p. 14144 (#334) ##########################################
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WILLIAM STUBBS
processions with the work of charity. Such was one of the better
results of a confined local sympathy. But the burgher did not,
either in life or in death, forget his friends outside the walls.
His will generally contained directions for small payments to the
country churches where his ancestors lay buried. Strongly as his
affections were localized, he was not a mere townsman. Nine-
tenths of the cities of mediæval England would now be regarded
as mere country towns; and they were country towns even then.
They drew in all their new blood from the country; they were
the centres for village trade; the neighboring villages were the
play-ground and sporting-ground of the townsmen, who had in
many cases rights of common pasture, and in some cases rights
of hunting, far outside the walls. The great religious guilds
just referred to, answered, like race meetings at a later period,
the end of bringing even the higher class of the country popu-
lation into close acquaintance with the townsmen, in ways more
likely to be developed into social intercourse than the market
or the muster in arms. Before the close of the Middle Ages the
rich townsmen had begun to intermarry with the knights and
gentry; and many of the noble families of the present day trace
the foundation of their fortunes to a lord mayor of London or
York, or a mayor of some provincial town. These intermar-
riages, it is true, became more common after the fall of the elder
baronage, and the great expansion of trade under the Tudors;
but the fashion was set two centuries earlier. If the advent.
urous and tragic history of the house of De la Pole shone as a
warning light for rash ambition, it stood by no means alone. It
is probable that there was no period in English history at which
the barrier between the knightly and mercantile class was re-
garded as insuperable, since the days of Athelstan; when the
merchant who had made his three voyages over the sea, and
made his fortune, became worthy of thegn-right. Even the
higher grades of chivalry were not beyond his reach; for in 1439
we find William Estfield, a mercer of London, made Knight of
the Bath. As the merchant found acceptance in the circles of
the gentry, civic offices became an object of competition with the
knights of the county: their names were enrolled among the reli-
gious fraternities of the towns, the trade and craft guilds; and
as the value of a seat in Parliament became better appreciated,
it was seen that the readiest way to it lay through the office of
mayor, recorder, or alderman of some city corporation.
## p. 14145 (#335) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14145
Besides these influences, which without much affecting the local
sympathies of the citizen class joined them on to the rank above
them, must be considered the fact that two of the most exclus-
ive and professional” of modern professions were not in the
Middle Ages professions at all. Every man was to some extent
a soldier, and every man was to some extent a lawyer; for there
was no distinctly military profession, and of lawyers only a
very small and somewhat dignified number. Thus although the
burgher might be a mere mercer, or a mere saddler, and have
very indistinct notions of commerce beyond his own warehouse
or workshop, he was trained in warlike exercises; and he could
keep his own accounts, draw up his own briefs, and make his
own will, with the aid of a scrivener or a chaplain who could
supply an outline of form, with but little fear of transgressing
the rules of the court of law or of probate. In this point he was
like the baron,- liable to be called at very short notice to very
different sorts of work. Finally, the townsman whose borough
was not represented in Parliament, or did not enjoy such munici.
pal organization as placed the whole administration in the hands
of the inhabitants, was a fully qualified member of the county
court of his shire, and shared, there and in the corresponding
institutions, everything that gave a political coloring to the life
of the country gentleman or the yeoman.
Many of the points here enumerated belong, it may be said,
to the rich merchant or great burgher, rather than to the ordi-
nary tradesman and craftsman. This is true; but it must be
remembered always that there was no such gulf between the
rich merchant and the ordinary craftsman in the town as existed
between the country knight and the yeoman, or between the
yeoman and the laborer. In the city it was merely the distinc-
tion of wealth; and the poorest apprentice might look forward
to becoming a master of his craft, a member of the livery of
his company, to a place in the council, an aldermanship, a mayor-
alty, the right of becoming an esquire for his life and leaving
an honorable coat-of-arms for his children. The yeoman had no
such straight road before him: he might improve his chances as
they came; might lay field to field, might send his sons to war
or to the universities: but for him also the shortest way to make
one of them a gentleman was to send him to trade; and there
even the villein might find liberty, and a new life that was not
hopeless. But the yeoman, with fewer chances, had as a rule less
XXIV—885
## p. 14146 (#336) ##########################################
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WILLIAM STUBBS
»
ambition; possibly also more of that loyal feeling towards his
nearest superior, which formed so marked a feature of mediæval
country life.
The townsman knew no superior to whose place
he might not aspire: the yeoman was attached by ties of heredi-
tary attachment to a great neighbor, whose superiority never
occurred to him as a thing to be coveted or grudged. The fac-
tions of the town were class factions, and political or dynastic
factions: the factions of the country were the factions of the
lords and gentry.
Once perhaps in a century there was a rising
in the country: in every great town there was, every few years,
something of a struggle, something of a crisis, — if not between
capital and labor in the modern sense, at least between trade and
craft, or craft and craft, or magistracy and commons, between
excess of control and excess of license.
In town and country alike there existed another class of men,
who, although possessing most of the other benefits of freedom,
lay altogether outside political life. In the towns there were the
artificers, and in the country the laborers, who lived from hand
to mouth, and were to all intents and purposes “the poor who
never cease out of the land. ” There were the craftsmen who
could or would never aspire to become masters, or to take up
their freedom as citizens; and the cottagers who had no chance
of acquiring a rood of ground to till and leave to their children:
two classes alike keenly sensitive to all changes in the seasons
and in the prices of the necessaries of life; very indifferently clad
and housed; in good times well fed, but in bad times not fed at
all. In some respects these classes differed from that which in
the present day furnishes the bulk of the mass of pauperism.
The evils which are commonly, however erroneously it may
be, regarded as resulting from redundant population, had not in
the Middle Ages the shape which they have taken in modern
times. Except in the walled towns, and then only in exceptional
times, there could have been no necessary overcrowding of houses.
The very roughness and uncleanliness of the country laborer's
life was to some extent a safeguard: if he lived, as foreigners re-
ported, like a hog, he did not fare or lodge worse than the beasts
that he tended. In the towns, the restraints on building, which
were absolutely necessary to keep the limited area of the streets
open for traffic, prevented any great variation in the number of
inhabited houses: for although in some great towns, like Oxford,
there were considerable vacant spaces which were apt to become
## p. 14147 (#337) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14147
a sort of gipsy camping-ground for the waifs and strays of a
mixed population, most of them were closely packed; the rich
men would not dispense with their courts and gardens, and the
very poor had to lodge outside the walls. In the country town-
ships, again, there was no such liberty as has in more modern
,
times been somewhat imprudently used, of building or not build-
ing cottage dwellings without due consideration of place or pro-
portion to the demand for useful labor. Every manor had its
constitution, and its recognized classes and number of holdings
on the demesne and the freehold, the village and the waste; the
common arable and the common pasture were a village property
that warned off all interlopers and all superfluous competition.
So strict were the barriers, that it seems impossible to suppose
that any great increase of population ever presented itself as a
fact to the mediæval economist; or if he thought of it at all, he
must have regarded the recurrence of wars and pestilences as a
providential arrangement for the readjustment of the conditions
of his problem. As a fact, whatever the cause may have been,
the population of England during the Middle Ages did not vary
in anything like the proportion in which it has increased since
the beginning of the last century; and there is no reason to
think that any vast difference existed between the supply and
demand of homes for the poor.
Still there were many poor;
if only the old, the diseased, the widows, and the orphans are
to be counted in the number. There were too in England, as
everywhere else, besides the absolutely helpless, whole classes
of laborers and artisans whose earnings never furnished more
than the mere requisites of life; and besides these, idle and worth-
less beggars, who preferred the freedom of vagrancy to the re-
strictions of ill-remunerated labor. All these classes were to be
found in town and country alike.
TRANSITION FROM THE AGE OF CHIVALRY
From the Constitutional History of England)
A
ND here our survey, too general and too discursive perhaps
to have been wisely attempted, must draw to its close. The
historian turns his back on the Middle Ages with a brighter
hope for the future, but not without regrets for what he is leav-
ing. He recognizes the law of the progress of this world; in
## p. 14148 (#338) ##########################################
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WILLIAM STUBBS
which the evil and debased elements are so closely intermingled
with the noble and the beautiful, that in the assured march of
good, much that is noble and beautiful must needs share the fate
of the evil and debased. If it were not for the conviction that
however prolific and progressive the evil may have been, the
power of good is more progressive and more prolific, the chron-
icler of a system that seems to be vanishing might lay down his
pen with a heavy heart. The most enthusiastic admirer of me-
diæval life must grant that all that was good and great in it was
languishing even to death; and the firmest believer in progress
must admit that as yet there were few signs of returning health.
The sun of the Plantagenets went down in clouds and thick
darkness; the coming of the Tudors gave as yet no promise of
light: it was “as the morning spread upon the mountains," —
darkest before the dawn.
The natural inquiry, how the fifteenth century affected the
development of national character, deserves an attempt at an
answer; but it can be little more than an attempt, for very little
light is thrown upon it by the life and genius of great men.
With the exception of Henry V. , English history can show
throughout the age no man who even aspires to greatness; and
the greatness of Henry V. is not of a sort that is peculiar to the
age or distinctive of a stage of national life. His personal idio-
syncrasy was that of a hero in no heroic age. Of the best of
the minor workers, none rises beyond mediocrity of character or
achievement. Bedford was a wise and noble statesman, but his
whole career was a hopeless failure. Gloucester's character had
no element of greatness at all. Beaufort, by his long life, high
rank, wealth, experience, and ability, held a position almost un-
rivaled in Europe, but he was neither successful nor disinterested:
fair and honest and enlightened as his policy may have been,
neither at the time nor ever since has the world looked upon
him as a benefactor; he appears in history as a lesser Wolsey, -
a hard sentence perhaps, but one which is justified by the gen-
eral condition of the world in which the two cardinals had to
play their part; Beaufort was the great minister of an expiring
system, Wolsey of an age of great transitions. Among the other
clerical administrators of the age, Kemp and Waynflete were
faithful, honest, enlightened, but quite unequal to the difficulties
of their position; and besides them there are absolutely none
that come within even the second class of greatness as useful
men. It is the same with the barons: such greatness as there is
## p. 14149 (#339) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14149
>
amongst them
and the greatness of Warwick is the climax and
type of it - is more conspicuous in evil than in good. In the
classes beneath the baronage, as we have them portrayed in the
Paston Letters, we see more of violence, chicanery, and greed,
than of anything else. Faithful attachment to the faction which
from hereditary or personal liking they have determined to main-
tain, is the one redeeming feature; and it is one which by itself
may produce as much evil as good, -that nation is in an evil
plight in which the sole redeeming quality is one that owes its
existence to a deadly disease. All else is languishing: literature
has reached the lowest depths of dullness; religion, so far as its
chief results are traceable, has sunk, on the one hand into a
dogma fenced about with walls which its defenders cannot pass
either inward or outward, on the other hand into a mere war-
cry of the cause of destruction. Between the two lies a narrow
borderland of pious and cultivated mysticism, far too fastidious
to do much for the world around. Yet here as everywhere else,
the dawn is approaching. Here as everywhere else, the evil is
destroying itself; and the remaining good, lying deep down and
having yet to wait long before it reaches the surface, is already
striving toward the sunlight that is to come. The good is to
come out of the evil: the evil is to compel its own remedy; the
good does not spring from it, but is drawn up through it. In
the history of nations, as of men, every good and perfect gift is
from above: the new life strikes down in the old root; there is
no generation from corruption.
So we turn our back on the age of chivalry, of ideal heroism,
of picturesque castles and glorious churches and pageants, camps
and tournaments, lovely charity and gallant self-sacrifice; with
their dark shadows of dynastic faction, bloody conquest, griev-
ous misgovernance, local tyrannies, plagues and famines unhelped
and unaverted, hollowness of pomp, disease and dissolution. The
charm which the relics of mediæval art have woven around the
later Middle Ages must be resolutely, ruthlessly broken. The
attenuated life of the later Middle Ages is in thorough dis-
crepancy with the grand conceptions of the earlier times. The
thread of national life is not to be broken; but the earlier
strands are to be sought out and bound together, and strength-
ened with threefold union for the new work. But it will be a
work of time: the forces newly liberated by the shock of the
Reformation will not at once cast off the foulness of the strata
## p. 14150 (#340) ##########################################
14150
WILLIAM STUBBS
were
through which they have passed before they reached the higher
air; much will be destroyed that might well have been con-
served, and some new growths will be encouraged that ought to
have been checked. In the new world, as in the old, the tares
are mingled with the wheat. In the destruction and in the
growth alike, will be seen the great features of difference be-
tween the old and the new.
The printing-press is an apt emblem or embodiment of the
change. Hitherto men have spent their labor on a few books,
written by the few for the few, with elaborately chosen material,
in consummately beautiful penmanship, painted and emblazoned
as if each one a distinct labor of love, each manuscript
unique, precious, — the result of most careful individual training,
and destined for the complete enjoyment of a reader educated up
to the point at which he can appreciate its beauty. Henceforth
books are to be common things. For a time the sanctity of the
older forms will hang about the printing-press; the magnificent
volumes of Fust and Colard Mansion will still recall the beauty of
the manuscript, and art will lavish its treasures on the embellish-
ment of the libraries of the great. Before long, printing will
be cheap, and the unique or special beauty of the early presses
will have departed; but light will have come into every house,
and that which was the luxury of the few will have become the
indispensable requisite of every family.
With the multiplication of books comes the rapid extension
and awakening of mental activity. As it is with the form, so
with the matter. The men of the decadence, not less than the
men of the renaissance, were giants of learning; they read and
assimilated the contents of every known book; down to the
very close of the era, the able theologian would press into the
service of his commentary or his summa every preceding com-
mentary or summa, with gigantic labor, and with an acuteness
which, notwithstanding that it was ill-trained and misdirected, is
in the eyes of the desultory reader of modern times little less
than miraculous: the books were rare, but the accomplished scholar
had worked through them all. Outside his little world all was
comparatively dark. Here too the change was coming. Scholar-
ship was to take a new form: intensity of critical power, devoted
to that which was worth criticizing, was to be substituted as the
characteristic of a learned man for the indiscriminating voracity
of the earlier learning. The multiplication of books would make
## p. 14151 (#341) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14151
such scholarship as that of Vincent of Beauvais, or Thomas Aqui-
nas, or Gerson, or Torquemada, an impossibility. Still there
would be giants like Scaliger and Casaubon,- men who culled
the fair flower of all learning; critical as the new scholars, com-
prehensive as the old: reserved for the patronage of sovereigns
and nations, and perishing when they were neglected, like the
beautiful books of the early printers. But they are a minor feat.
ure in the new picture. The real change is that by which every
man comes to be a reader and a thinker; the Bible comes to
every family, and each man is priest in his own household. The
light is not so brilliant, but it is everywhere; and it shines more
and more unto the perfect day. It is a false sentiment that leads
men in their admiration of the unquestionable glory of the old
culture, to undervalue the abundant wealth and growing glory of
the new.
The parallel holds good in other matters besides books. He
is a rash man who would, with one word of apology, compare
the noble architecture of the Middle Ages with the mean and
commonplace type of building into which, by a steady decline,
our churches, palaces, and streets had sunk at the beginning of
the present century. Here too the splendor of the few has been
exchanged for the comfort of the many; and although perhaps in
no description of culture has the break between the old and the
new been more conspicuous than in this, it may be said that the
many are now far more capable of appreciating the beauty which
they will try to rival, than ever the few were to comprehend the
value of that which they were losing.
youngish woman, whose face, illumined by the flickering fire,
was positively charming in its piquant assertion of grief. Across
her shapely bosom lay, neatly folded, a snowy kerchief, less white
only than her pearly teeth, as smiling through her sadness, she
exclaimed as she turned to her guest:-
“Lor' bless my soul, ef I 'ain't raked out a sweet 'tater out'n
dese coals! I 'feared you'll be clair disgusted at sech onman-
nerly doin's, Brer Langford; but when dey ain't no company
heah, I des kivers up my 'taters wid ashes an' piles on de live
coals, an' let 'em cook. I don't reck'n you'd even ter say look at
a roas' 'tater, would you, Brer Langford ? ”
The person addressed was rubbing his hands together and
chuckling “Ef yer tecks my jedgmint, Sis' Johnsing, on de
pretater question, roas'in' is de onies way to cook 'em. ”
## p. 14131 (#321) ##########################################
RUTH MCENERY STUART
14131
(C
His hostess had already risen, and before he could remon-
strate she had drawn up a little table, lifted the potato from its
bed, and laid it on a plate before him.
“Ef yer will set down an' eat a roas' 'tater in my miser'ble
little cabin, Brer Langford, I 'clar' fo' gracious hit 'll raise my
sperits mightily. Gord knows I wushes I had some'h'n good to
offer you, a-comin' in out'n de col; but ef you'll please, sir, have
de mannerliness ter hol' de candle, I'll empty my ole cupboard
clean inside outen but I'll fin' you some'h'n 'nother to spressify
yo' welcome. ”
Langford rose, and as he held the light to the open safe, his
eyes fairly glared. He was hungry, and the snowy shelves were
covered with open vessels of tempting food, all more or less
broken, but savory as to odor, and most inviting.
"I 'clare, Sis' Johnsing – I 'clare! ” were the only words that
the man of eloquent speech found to express his appreciation
and joy; and his entertainer continued:-
“Dis heah cupboard mecks me 'shame', Brer Langford. Dey
ain't a thing fittin' fur sech as you in it. Heah's a pan o' col'
'tater pone an' some cabbage an' side meat, an' dis heah's a few
ords an' eens o fried chicken an' a little passel o' spare-ribs,
piled in wid co'n-brade scraps. Hit don't look much, but hit's
all clean. Heah, you gimme de candle, an' you retch 'em all
down, please, sir; an' I ain't shore, but ef I don't disremember,
dey's de bes' half a loaf o' reeson-cake 'way back in de fur cor-
Dat's hit. Now, dat's some'h'n like. An' now pass down
de butter; an’ ef yer wants a tumbler o'sweet milk wid yo'
’tater, you'll haf ter hop an' go fetch it. Lis'n ter me, fur Gord
sake, talkin' ter Brer Langford same as I'd talk ter a reg'lar
plantation nigger!
Langford hesitated.
“Less'n you desires de sweet milk, Sis'
Johnsing -
“I does truly lak a swaller o'sweet milk wid my 'tater, Brer
Langford, but seem lak 'fo' I'd git it fur myse'f I'd do widout it.
Won't you, please, sir, teck de candle an' fetch it fur me? Go
right thoo my room. Hit's in a bottle, a-settin' outside de right-
han' winder des as you go in. ”
Langford could not help glancing about the widow's chamber
as he passed through. If the other room was cozy and clean,
this one was charming. The white bed, dazzling in its snowy
fluted frills, reminded him of its owner, as she sat in all her
ner.
»
>>
## p. 14132 (#322) ##########################################
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RUTH MCENERY STUART
starched freshness to-night. The polished pine floor here was
nearly covered with neatly fringed patches of carpet, suggestive
of housewifely taste as well as luxurious comfort.
He had returned with the bottle, and was seating himself,
when the disconsolate widow actually burst into a peal of laugh-
ter.
“Lord save my soul! ” she exclaimed, “ef he 'ain't gone an'
fetched a bottle o' beer! You is a caution, Brer Langford! I
wouldn't 'a' had you know I had dat beer in my house fur
nothin'. When I was feelin' so po'ly in my fus' grief, seem lak
I craved sperityal comfort, an' I went an' bought a whole lot
o'lager-beer. I 'lowed maybe I c'd drink my sorrer down, but
'twarn't no use. I c'd drink beer all night, an' hit wouldn't
nuver bring nobody to set in dat rockin’-cheer by my side an'
teck comfort wid me. Doos you think fur a perfesser ter teck
a little beer ur wine when he feels a nachel faintiness is a fatal
sin, Brer Langford ? »
“Why, no, Sis' Johnsing. Succumstances alter cases, an'hit's
de succumstances o' drinkin' what mecks de altercations; an' de
way I looks at it, a Christian man is de onies pusson who oughter
dare to trus' 'isse'f wid de wine cup, 'caze a sinner don'know
when ter stop. ”
“Dat soun' mighty reason'ble, Brer Langford. An' sence you
fetched de beer, now you 'bleege ter drink it. But please, sir,
go, lak a good man, an' bring my milk, on de tother side in de
winder. ”
The milk was brought, and the Rev. Mr. Langford was soon
smacking his lips over the best supper it had been his minis-
terial good fortune to enjoy for many a day.
As the widow raked a second potato from the fire, she re-
marked, in a tone of inimitable pathos: -
“Seem lak I can't git usen ter cookin' fur one. I cooks
fur two ev'y day; an' somehow I fines a little spec o' comfort
in lookin' at de odd po'tion, even ef I has ter eat it myse'f.
De secon’’tater on de hyearth seem lak hit stan's fur company.
Seein' as you relishes de beer, Brer Langford, I's proud you
made de mistake an' fetched it. Gord knows somebody better
drink it! I got a whole passel o’ bottles in my trunk, an' I
don't know what ter do wid 'em. A man what wuck an' talk
an' preach hard as you does, he need a little some'h'n' 'nother
ter keep his cour'ge up. "
(
## p. 14133 (#323) ##########################################
RUTH MCENERY STUART
14133
»
C
It was an hour past midnight when finally the widow let her
guest out the back door; and as she directed him how to reach
home by a short cut through her field, she said, while she held
his hand in parting: -
“Gord will bless you fur dis night, Brer Langford, fur you is
truly sakerficed yo'se'f fur a po' sinner; an' I b’lieve dey's mo'
true 'ligion in comfortin' a po' lonely widderless 'oman lak I is,
what 'ain't got nobody to stan' by 'er, dan in all de sermons
a-goin': an' now I gwine turn my face back todes my lonely
fireside wid a better hope an' a firmer trus', 'caze I knows de
love o' Gord done sont you ter me. My po' little brade an' meat
warn't highfalutin' nur fine, but you is shared it wid me lak a
Christian, an' I gi'n it ter you wid a free heart. ”
Langford returned the pressure of her hand, and even shook
it heartily during his parting speech:
"Good-night, my dear sister, an' Gord bless you! I feels mo'
courageous an' strenk'n'd myse'f sence I have shared yo' lonely
fireside; an' please Gord, I will make it my juty as well as
my pleasure to he'p you in a similar manner whensomever you
desires my presence. I rejoices to see that you is tryin' wid a
brave heart to rise f'om yo' sorrer. Keep good cheer, my sister,
an' remember dat the Gord o' Aberham an' Isaac an' Jacob - de
patriots o' de Lord - is also de friend ter de fatherless an' wid-
ders, an' to them that are desolate an’ oppressed. ”
With this beautiful admonition, and a last distinct pressure
of the hand, the Rev. 'Mr. Langford disappeared in the darkness,
carefully fastening the top button of his coat as he went, as if
to cover securely the upper layer of raisin-cake which still lay,
for want of lower space, just beneath it within.
He never felt better in his life.
The widow watched his retreating shadow until she dimly saw
one dark leg rise over the rail as he scaled the garden fence;
then coming in, she hooked the door, and throwing herself on
the floor, rolled over and over, laughing until she cried, verily.
“Stan' back, gals, stan' back! ” she exclaimed, rising. “Stan'
back, I say! A widder done haided yer off wid a cook-pot! ”
!
-
With eyes fairly dancing, she resumed her seat before the fire.
She was too much elated for sleep yet.
"I 'clare 'fo' gracious,
I is a devil! ” she chuckled. « Po' Alick - an' po' Steve — an'
po' Jake! ” she continued, pausing after each name with some-
thing that their spiritual presences might have interpreted as a
>
(
## p. 14134 (#324) ##########################################
14134
RUTH MCENERY STUART
sigh if they were affectionately hovering near her. "But,” she
added, her own thoughts supplying the connection, “Brer Lang-
ford gwine be de stylishes' one o' de lot. ” And then she really
sighed. “I mus' go buy some mo' beer. Better git two bottles.
He mought ax fur mo', bein' as I got a trunkful. ” And here
alone in her cabin she roared aloud. “I does wonder huc-
come I come ter be sech a devil, anyhow? I 'lowed I was safe
ter risk de beer. Better git a dozen bottles, I reck'n; give 'im
.
,
plenty rope, po' boy! Well, Langford honey, good-night fur to-
night! But perpare, yo'ng man, perpare! And chuckling as
she went, she passed into her own room and went to bed.
The young minister was as good as his promise, and during
the next two months he never failed to stop after every evening
meeting to look after the spiritual condition of the “widder John-
sing ”; while she, with the consummate skill of a practiced hand,
saw to it that without apparent forethought her little cupboard
should always supply a material entertainment, full, savory, and
varied. If on occasion she lamented a dearth of cold dishes,
it was that she might insist on sharing her breakfast with her
guest; when producing from her magic safe a ready-dressed
spring chicken or squirrel, she would broil it upon the coals in
his presence, and the young man would depart thoroughly satu-
rated with the odor of her delightful hospitality.
Langford had heard things about this woman in days gone
by, but now he was pleased to realize that they had all been
malicious inventions prompted by jealousy: Had he commanded
the adjectives, he would have described her as the most gen-
erous, hospitable, spontaneous, sympathetic, vivacious, and witty,
as well as the most artless, of women. As it was, he thought of
her a good deal between visits; and whether the thought moved
backward or forward, whether it took shape as a memory or an
anticipation, he somehow unconsciously smacked his lips and swal-
lowed.
And yet, when one of the elders questioned him as to
the spiritual state of the still silent mourner, he knit his brow,
and answered with a sigh:
“It is hard ter say, my brothers — it is hard ter say. De ole
lady do nourish an' cherish 'er grief mightily; but yit, ef we hol'
off an' don't crowd 'er, I trus' she'll come thoo on de Lord's side
yit. ”
If there had been the ghost of a twinkle in his interlocutor's
eye, it died out, abashed at itself at this pious and carefully
»
## p. 14135 (#325) ##########################################
RUTH MCENERY STUART
14135
framed reply. The widow was indeed fully ten years Langford's
senior,- a discrepancy as much exaggerated by outward circum-
stances as it was minimized in their fireside relations.
So matters drifted on for a month longer. The dozen bottles
of beer had been followed by a second, and these again by a
half-dozen. This last reduced purchase of course had its mean-
ing. Langford was reaching the end of his tether. At last there
were but two bottles left. It was Sunday night again.
The little cupboard had been furnished with unusual elabo-
ration, and the savory odors which emanated from its shelves
would have filled the room but for the all-pervading essence of
bergamot with which the widow had recklessly deluged her hair.
Indeed, her entire toilet betrayed exceptional care to-night.
She had not gone to church, and as it was near the hour
for dismissal, she was a trifle nervous; feeling confident that the
minister would stop in, ostensibly to inquire the cause of her
absence. She had tried this before, and he had not disappointed
her.
Finally she detected his familiar announcement, a clearing of
his throat, as he approached the door.
"Lif' up de latch an' walk in, Brer Wolf,” she laughingly
called to him; and as he entered she added, “Look lak you
come in answer to my thoughts, Brer Langford. ”
"Is dat so, Sis' Johnsing? ” he replied, chuckling with delight.
“I knowed some'l' n' 'nother drawed me clean over f'om de chu'ch
in de po'in’-down rain. ”
« Is it a-rainin'? I 'clare, I see yer brung yo' umberel; but
sett'n heah by de fire, I nuver studies 'bout de elemints. I been
studyin' 'bout some'h'n' mo'n rain or shine, I tell yer. ”
"Is yer, Sis' Johnsing? What you been studyin' 'bout ? »
“What I been studyin' 'bout? Nemmine what I been studyin'
'bout! I studyin' 'bout Brer Langford now. De po' man look
so tired an’ frazzled out, 'is eyes looks des lak dorg-wood blor-
soms. You is des nachelly preached down, Brer Langford, an'
you needs a morsel o' some'h'n' 'nother ter stiddy yo' cornstitu-
tion. ” She rose forthwith, and set about arranging the young
man's supper.
“But you 'ain't tol' me yit huccome you 'ain't come ter chu'ch
ter-night, Sis' Johnsing ? ”
“Nemmine 'bout dat now. I ain't studyin' 'bout gwine ter
chu'ch now. I des studyin' 'bout how ter induce de size o' yo'
(C
»
## p. 14136 (#326) ##########################################
14136
RUTH MCENERY STUART
(
eyes down ter dey nachel porportiom. Heah, teck de shovel, an'
rake out a han'ful o' coals, please, sir, an' I'll set dis pan o' rolls
ter bake. Dat's hit. Now kiver de led good wid live coals an’
ashes. Dat's a man! Now time you wrastle wid de j'ints o’ dis
roas' guinea-hen, an' teck de corkscrew an' perscribe fur dis beer
bottle, and go fetch de fresh butter out'n de winder, de rolls '11
be a-singin' Now is de accepted time! )
It was no wonder the young man thought her charming.
Needless to say, the feast, seasoned by a steady flow of hu-
mor, was perfect. But all things earthly have an end; and so,
by-and-by, it was all over. A pattering rain without served to
enhance the genial in-door charm, but it was time to go.
"Well, Sis' Johnsing, hit's a-gittin' on time fur me ter be
a-movin',” said the poor fellow at length - for he hated to leave.
« Yas, I knows it is, Brer Langford,” the hostess answered
with a tinge of sadness, “an'dat ain't de wust of it. ”
How does you mean, Sis' Johnsing? ”
“Ain't I tol yer, Brer Langford, ter-night dat my thoughts
was wid you ? Don't look at me so quizzical, please, sir, 'caze I
got a heavy sorrer in my heart. ”
“A sorrer 'bout me, Sis' Johnsing? How so? ”
“Brer Langford -I-I been thinkin' 'bout you all day, an'-
an'— ter come right down ter de p'int, 1-1-” She bit her lip
and hesitated. I 'feerd I done put off what I ought ter said
ter you tell look lak hit 'll 'mos' bre’k my heart to say it. ”
"Speak out, fur Gord sake, Sis' Johnsing, an' ease yo' min'!
What is yo' trouble ? »
She seemed almost crying. “You — you — you mustn't come
heah no mo', Brer Langford. ”
« “Who- me? Wh-wh-what is I done, Sis' Johnsing? ”
“My Gord! how kin I say it? You 'ain't done nothin', my
dear frien'. You has been Gord's blessin' ter me; but — but — I
'clare 'fo' Gord, how kin I say de word ? But — don't you see
yo’se'f how de succumstances stan'? You is a yo'ng man li'ble
to fall in love wid any lakly yo'ng gal any day, an' ter git mar-
ried — an' of co'se dat's right: but don't you see dat ef a po' lone-
some 'oman lak me put too much 'pendence orn a yo'ng man lak
you is, de time gwine come when he gwine git tired a-walkin'
all de way from chu'ch in de po'in'-down rain des fur charity ter
comfort a lonely sinner pusson lak I is; an'- an' settin' heah by
myse'f ter-night, I done made up my min' dat I gwine 'scuse you
»
## p. 14137 (#327) ##########################################
RUTH McENERY STUART
14137
f'om dis task while I kin stand it. Of co’se I don't say but hit
'll be hard. You is tooken me by de han' an' he'ped me thoo
a dark cloud; but you an' me mus' say far'well ter-night, an'
you — you mustn't come back no mo'. ”
Her face was buried in her hands now, and so she could not
see her guest's storm-swept visage as he essayed to answer her.
“You — you — you — you — talkin' 'bout you c'n stan' it, Sis'
Johnsing, an'- an'- seem lak you 's forgitt'n' all bout me. ” His
voice was trembling. I-I knows I ain't nothin' but a no-
'count yo'ng striplin', so ter speak, an' you is a mannerly lady
o' speunce: but hit do seem lak 'fo' you'd send me away, des
lak ter say a yaller dorg, you'd — you'd ax me could I stan' it;
an' — an', tell de trufe, I can't stan' it, an' I ain't gwine stan' it,
'less'n you des nachelly, p'int-blank, out an' out, shets de do' in
>
my face. ”
(
"Brer Langford — ”
"Don't you say Brer Langford ter me no mo', ef you please,
ma'am; an'- an' I ain't gwine call you Sis' Johnsing no mo',
nuther. You is des, so fur as you consents, hencefo'th an'fo'.
ever mo', in season an'out'n season des my Lize Ann. You
knows yo’se'f dat we is come ter be each one-'n'ner's heart's
delight. ” He drew his chair nearer, and leaning forward, seized
her hand, as he continued: “Leastwise, dat’s de way my heart
language hitse'f. I done tooken you fur my sweetness 'fo' ter-
night, Lize Ann, my honey. "
But why follow them any further ? Before he left her, the
widow had consented, with becoming reluctance, that he should
come to her on the following Sunday with the marriage license
in his pocket; on one condition, and upon this condition she in-
sisted with unyielding pertinacity. It was that Langford should
feel entirely free to change his mind, and to love or to marry
any other woman within the week ensuing.
Lize Ann arrived late at service on the following Sunday
evening Her name had just been announced as a happy con-
vert who rejoiced in new-found grace; and when she stepped
demurely up the aisle, arrayed in a plain white dress, her face
beaming with what seemed a spiritual peace, the congregation
were deeply touched, and, eager to welcome her into the fold,
began to press forward to extend the right hand of fellowship
to one who had come in through so much tribulation.
a happy time all round; and no one was more jubilant than the
It was
## p. 14138 (#328) ##########################################
14138
RUTH MCENERY STUART
young pastor, who seemed indeed to rejoice more over this
recovered lamb than over the ninety-and-nine within the fold
who had not gone astray.
The young girl converts of recent date, never slow to respond
to any invitation which led to the chancel, were specially demon-
strative in their affectionate welcome; some even going so far as
to embrace the new “sister,” while others were moved to shout
and sing as they made the tour of the aisles.
When, however, as soon as congratulations were over, it was
formally announced that this identical convert, Mrs. Eliza Ann
Johnsing, was then and there to be joined in the holy estate
of matrimony to the Reverend Julius Cæsar Langford, the shock
was so great that these same blessed damosels looked blankly
one upon the other in mute dismay for the space of some
minutes; and when presently, as a blushing bride, Lize Ann
again turned to them for congratulations, it is a shame to have
to write it, but they actually did turn their backs and refuse to
speak to her.
The emotions of the company were certainly very much
mixed; and the two old crones, Nancy Price and Hester Ann
Jennings, sitting side by side in a front pew, were seen to
nudge each other, as, their old sides shaking with laughter, they
exclaimed:-
“What I tol' yer, Sis' Hest' Ann? ”
«What I tol yer, Sis' Nancy ? »
Dat's des what we tol' one-'n'ner Lize Ann gwine do! ”
Though no guests were bidden to share it, the wedding sup-
per in the little cabin that night was no mean affair; and when
Langford, with a chuckling, half-embarrassed, new-proprietary air,
drew the cork from the beer bottle beside his plate, Lize Ann
said: -
“Hit do do me good ter see how you relishes dat beer. ”
But she did not mention that it was the last bottle, and may-
be it was just as well.
>
## p. 14139 (#329) ##########################################
14139
WILLIAM STUBBS
(1825-)
BY E. S. NADAL
W
SILLIAM STUBBS, Bishop of Oxford, was born at Knaresboroug'n
June 21st, 1825, and was educated at the Grammar School,
Ripon, and Christ Church, Oxford. He was graduated at
Oxford in 1848, taking a first-class in classics and a third-class in
mathematics; and was at once elected to a fellowship at Trinity Col-
lege. In 1848 he was ordained, and later became vicar of a parish in
Essex; he was appointed librarian to Archbishop Longley at Lambeth
in 1862. He served as a school inspector from 1860 to 1866, when he
was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. In 1867
he was elected Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, — always a great dis-
tinction,- and later became an honorary fellow of that college. He
received in succession a number of university and ecclesiastical dig-
nities, and in 1884 was appointed Bishop of Chester, from which soe
he was translated to that of Oxford in 1889.
Bishop Stubbs printed in succession a number of learned editions
of various chronicles relating to ecclesiastical and political history,
such as “Registrum Sacrum Anglicum,' Memorials of St. Dunstan,'
etc.
In 1870 he published a work which proved to be the beginning
of a very important contribution to English history. This was Select
Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History,
from the Earliest Period to the Reign of Edward 1. In 1874 ap-
peared the first volume of his great work, «The Constitutional His-
tory of England in its Origin and Development. The second and
third volumes followed in 1875 and 1878 respectively. This book of
Dr. Stubbs's is the ablest and most authoritative work upon the
subject.
To Dr. Stubbs's view, English constitutional history is not an
isolated matter confined to England. To him it is but part of
the history of the development of Teutonic institutions throughout
Europe. These institutions have spread to countries which are not
Teutonic in blood or language. The four German countries are
France, Spain, England, and Germany. Of these, France and Spain
German neither in blood nor language. We are given an
are
## p. 14140 (#330) ##########################################
14140
WILLIAM STUBBS
interesting comparison of the course of German civilization in these
four countries.
In France, German civilization resulted in despotism; the reason
for which fact is set forth by Dr. Stubbs very clearly. The system
which for the last twelve centuries has formed French history was
originally an adaptation of German polity to the government of a con-
quered race. The Franks, a German people, conquered Gaul, already
a Romanized country. The form of feudalism they set up there was
without any tendencies toward popular freedom. Feudal government
in French history, therefore, runs its logical course. The central
power, which is the cause of the conquest, grows weaker and weaker,
until it is reduced to a shadow, and the parts get stronger. By-and-
by the reverse process sets in: with the decay of the feudal system,
the central power grows stronger and stronger, until it absorbs unto
itself all the power which had once been in the feudatories. An ab-
solute despotism is the result; which ultimately takes the form of
an egotistical tyranny, leading in the end to revolution and disaster.
Owing to the fact that the Germans conquered Gaul, the German
system was imposed on France without the safeguards which it had
on its original ground.
Spain is Germanic in the sense that the governnient is in the
hands of Visigoths, who are kindred to the Germans; and that the
common law and institutions are Germanic.
In Germany there is no alien race; for Germany is never con-
quered but by Germans. When one German tribe has conquered
another, there is a feudal tenure of land. But where the race
mains in its ancient seats, the free German polity continues. The
imperial system, however, — what Dr. Stubbs calls the “Mezentian
union with Italy," — has modified German polity in Germany. It is
for this reason that the German polity has had a freer development
in England than in Germany itself.
Dr. Stubbs emphasizes the essentially German character of the
British constitution; showing that the English are people of German
descent in blood, character, and language, but more especially in the
development of the primitive German civilization. The work, there-
fore, begins with the description of the Germans in their ancient
homes, as given by Cæsar and Tacitus. The characteristics of the
aboriginal society are described. In proceeding, the writer follows
with great learning the course of constitutional development, from
the days of the migration to those of Magna Charta. Volume i. closes
with an account of the triumph of the barons over John. The second
volume pursues the subject through the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries; the third through the fifteenth century. The third volume
is composed of four chapters, each of which is in itself a short history
re-
с
## p. 14141 (#331) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14141
»
of great value and authority. These chapters are (Lancaster and
York,' The King, the Clergy, and the Pope,' Parliamentary Antiqui-
ties,' and (Social and Political Influences at the Close of the Middle
Ages.
The first volume concludes with that point in the history of Eng-
land, when, as regards the rest of the world, it has become a self-
reliant and self-sustained nation; and when, internally, it has been
prepared for representative institutions. The picture which the author
gives incidentally of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would
seem to represent a period of reaction and unmeaning violence. The
political bloodshed of the fourteenth century preludes the internecine
warfare of the fifteenth century. In the fourteenth century, public
and private morality is at a low ebb, and the court is marked by a
splendid extravagance and a coarse indulgence. The author does not
find anything even in the stories of Chaucer to brighten the wretch-
edness of the period. If there has been a retrogression in morals,
there has been one also in art. In architecture the Perpendicular
Style is a decline from the grace and affluent variety of the Decora-
tive. « The change in penmanship is analogous: the writing of the
fourteenth century is coarse and blurred compared with the exqui-
site elegance of the thirteenth, and yet even preferable to the vulgar
neatness and deceptive regularity of the fifteenth. ” But weak as is
the fourteenth century, Dr. Stubbs finds that the fifteenth century
is weaker still: “more futile, more bloody, more immoral. Yet out of
it emerges, in spite of all, “the truer and brighter day. ” He seems
to consider this long period of violence and reaction in a sense the
preparation for the constitutional development of the sixteenth cen-
tury. Upon this point, however, another very able and exact writer,
Mr. Gairdner, is at issue with him. Mr. Gairdner considers the events
of the fifteenth century as tending not at all in the direction of lib-
erty and constitutional government, but of pure absolutism. To the
ordinary reader it will not be quite clear in what way the fifteenth
century differs from any other period of reaction, except in degree
and duration.
The question will naturally arise, as one reads the pages of Dr.
Stubbs (and it is especially pertinent in this work, which is dedicated
to literature), whether this very able writer is a literary historian.
We are decidedly of the opinion that he is. One characteristic of
literature he has to a very high degree,– truthfulness. With him the
word or phrase must always be as nearly as possible the precise
image of the thought. The expression is never allowed to vary a
hair's-breadth to the right or left for the sake of effect. Perhaps he
is at times too scrupulous in his preference for a dry or dull phrase
which is clearly within the truth, to a brighter one which might go
C
»
## p. 14142 (#332) ##########################################
14142
WILLIAM STUBBS
beyond it. One would think that without the sacrifice of truth he
might have made the story livelier; for the work is for the most part
hard reading. Indeed the style might often be improved in ease and
lucidity. But that literary truthfulness of which we have spoken we
see everywhere. We see it in the conscientious description of the
abstractions among which the reader is required to grope, and to
which the greater part of his work is devoted. But there are, here
and there, pages in which the writer forsakes the abstract for the
concrete, and the dry description of ideas and principles for the de-
lineation of manners and men; and here the literary power is marked.
The powerful strokes express the results of a judgment cautious and
deliberate in the extreme, and yet firm. The combination of a strong
intellect and character with vast knowledge and intense truthfulness
produces a deep impression on the mind of the reader. His confi-
dence is won, and he recognizes the influence and guidance of a
strong individuality. This again is an indication of the presence of
literary power.
In conclusion, it seems to us that the point of view given in this
great work is one which it is especially desirable should be impressed
upon the people of this country. English history is regarded by Dr.
Stubbs not as English only but as German, and as having its forming
influences in still more ancient sources and within broader boundaries.
If this general view is true of England, it is true also of ourselves;
and it is one which we need especially to keep in mind. There is
here a disposition to regard ourselves as separate from the rest of the
world, and from the world's history. This is one of the temptations
of that national pride, which, within its proper limits, is an honorable
sentiment. But we are not separate from the rest of the world.
is the case with all countries, the foundations of what we possess we
have received from other lands. It is not so important, therefore, that
we should ask concerning any national institution or characteristic of
our own, whether it is original (for complete originality is no more
a possible thing to us than to any other country), as whether it is
proper, right, and just.
As
E. s. nadal
## p. 14143 (#333) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14143
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
From the Constitutional History of England)
O
F THE social life and habits of the citizen and burgher, we
have more distinct ideas than of his political action. Social
habits no doubt tended to the formation of political habits
then as now. Except for the purposes of trade, the townsman
seldom went far away from his borough: there he found all his
kinsmen, his company, and his customers; his ambition was grati-
fied by election to municipal office; the local courts could settle
most of his legal business; in the neighboring villages he could
invest the money which he cared to invest in land; once a year,
for a few years, he might bear a share in the armed contingent of
his town to the shire force or militia; once in his life he might
go up, if he lived in a parliamentary borough, to Parliament.
There was not much in his life to widen his sympathies: there
were no newspapers and few books; there was not enough local
distress for charity to find interest in relieving it; there were
many local festivities, and time and means for cultivating comfort
at home. The burgher had pride in his house, and still more per-
haps in his furniture: for although, in the splendid panorama of
mediæval architecture, the great houses of the merchants contrib-
ute a distinct element of magnificence to the general picture, such
houses as Crosby Hall and the Hall of John of Salisbury must
always, in the walled towns, have been exceptions to the rule,
and far beyond the aspirations of the ordinary tradesman; but
the smallest house could be made comfortable and even elegant
by the appliances which his trade connection brought within the
reach of the master. Hence the riches of the inventories at-
tached to the wills of mediæval townsmen, and many of the most
prized relics of mediæval handicraft. Somewhat of the pains
for which the private house afforded no scope was spent on
the churches and public buildings of the town. The numerous
churches of York and Norwich, poorly endowed, but nobly built
and furnished, speak very clearly not only of the devotion, but of
the artistic culture, of the burghers of those towns. The crafts
vied with one another in the elaborate ornamentation of their
churches, their chantries, and their halls of meeting; and of the
later religious guilds, some seem to have been founded for the
express purpose of combining splendid religious services and
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processions with the work of charity. Such was one of the better
results of a confined local sympathy. But the burgher did not,
either in life or in death, forget his friends outside the walls.
His will generally contained directions for small payments to the
country churches where his ancestors lay buried. Strongly as his
affections were localized, he was not a mere townsman. Nine-
tenths of the cities of mediæval England would now be regarded
as mere country towns; and they were country towns even then.
They drew in all their new blood from the country; they were
the centres for village trade; the neighboring villages were the
play-ground and sporting-ground of the townsmen, who had in
many cases rights of common pasture, and in some cases rights
of hunting, far outside the walls. The great religious guilds
just referred to, answered, like race meetings at a later period,
the end of bringing even the higher class of the country popu-
lation into close acquaintance with the townsmen, in ways more
likely to be developed into social intercourse than the market
or the muster in arms. Before the close of the Middle Ages the
rich townsmen had begun to intermarry with the knights and
gentry; and many of the noble families of the present day trace
the foundation of their fortunes to a lord mayor of London or
York, or a mayor of some provincial town. These intermar-
riages, it is true, became more common after the fall of the elder
baronage, and the great expansion of trade under the Tudors;
but the fashion was set two centuries earlier. If the advent.
urous and tragic history of the house of De la Pole shone as a
warning light for rash ambition, it stood by no means alone. It
is probable that there was no period in English history at which
the barrier between the knightly and mercantile class was re-
garded as insuperable, since the days of Athelstan; when the
merchant who had made his three voyages over the sea, and
made his fortune, became worthy of thegn-right. Even the
higher grades of chivalry were not beyond his reach; for in 1439
we find William Estfield, a mercer of London, made Knight of
the Bath. As the merchant found acceptance in the circles of
the gentry, civic offices became an object of competition with the
knights of the county: their names were enrolled among the reli-
gious fraternities of the towns, the trade and craft guilds; and
as the value of a seat in Parliament became better appreciated,
it was seen that the readiest way to it lay through the office of
mayor, recorder, or alderman of some city corporation.
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Besides these influences, which without much affecting the local
sympathies of the citizen class joined them on to the rank above
them, must be considered the fact that two of the most exclus-
ive and professional” of modern professions were not in the
Middle Ages professions at all. Every man was to some extent
a soldier, and every man was to some extent a lawyer; for there
was no distinctly military profession, and of lawyers only a
very small and somewhat dignified number. Thus although the
burgher might be a mere mercer, or a mere saddler, and have
very indistinct notions of commerce beyond his own warehouse
or workshop, he was trained in warlike exercises; and he could
keep his own accounts, draw up his own briefs, and make his
own will, with the aid of a scrivener or a chaplain who could
supply an outline of form, with but little fear of transgressing
the rules of the court of law or of probate. In this point he was
like the baron,- liable to be called at very short notice to very
different sorts of work. Finally, the townsman whose borough
was not represented in Parliament, or did not enjoy such munici.
pal organization as placed the whole administration in the hands
of the inhabitants, was a fully qualified member of the county
court of his shire, and shared, there and in the corresponding
institutions, everything that gave a political coloring to the life
of the country gentleman or the yeoman.
Many of the points here enumerated belong, it may be said,
to the rich merchant or great burgher, rather than to the ordi-
nary tradesman and craftsman. This is true; but it must be
remembered always that there was no such gulf between the
rich merchant and the ordinary craftsman in the town as existed
between the country knight and the yeoman, or between the
yeoman and the laborer. In the city it was merely the distinc-
tion of wealth; and the poorest apprentice might look forward
to becoming a master of his craft, a member of the livery of
his company, to a place in the council, an aldermanship, a mayor-
alty, the right of becoming an esquire for his life and leaving
an honorable coat-of-arms for his children. The yeoman had no
such straight road before him: he might improve his chances as
they came; might lay field to field, might send his sons to war
or to the universities: but for him also the shortest way to make
one of them a gentleman was to send him to trade; and there
even the villein might find liberty, and a new life that was not
hopeless. But the yeoman, with fewer chances, had as a rule less
XXIV—885
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»
ambition; possibly also more of that loyal feeling towards his
nearest superior, which formed so marked a feature of mediæval
country life.
The townsman knew no superior to whose place
he might not aspire: the yeoman was attached by ties of heredi-
tary attachment to a great neighbor, whose superiority never
occurred to him as a thing to be coveted or grudged. The fac-
tions of the town were class factions, and political or dynastic
factions: the factions of the country were the factions of the
lords and gentry.
Once perhaps in a century there was a rising
in the country: in every great town there was, every few years,
something of a struggle, something of a crisis, — if not between
capital and labor in the modern sense, at least between trade and
craft, or craft and craft, or magistracy and commons, between
excess of control and excess of license.
In town and country alike there existed another class of men,
who, although possessing most of the other benefits of freedom,
lay altogether outside political life. In the towns there were the
artificers, and in the country the laborers, who lived from hand
to mouth, and were to all intents and purposes “the poor who
never cease out of the land. ” There were the craftsmen who
could or would never aspire to become masters, or to take up
their freedom as citizens; and the cottagers who had no chance
of acquiring a rood of ground to till and leave to their children:
two classes alike keenly sensitive to all changes in the seasons
and in the prices of the necessaries of life; very indifferently clad
and housed; in good times well fed, but in bad times not fed at
all. In some respects these classes differed from that which in
the present day furnishes the bulk of the mass of pauperism.
The evils which are commonly, however erroneously it may
be, regarded as resulting from redundant population, had not in
the Middle Ages the shape which they have taken in modern
times. Except in the walled towns, and then only in exceptional
times, there could have been no necessary overcrowding of houses.
The very roughness and uncleanliness of the country laborer's
life was to some extent a safeguard: if he lived, as foreigners re-
ported, like a hog, he did not fare or lodge worse than the beasts
that he tended. In the towns, the restraints on building, which
were absolutely necessary to keep the limited area of the streets
open for traffic, prevented any great variation in the number of
inhabited houses: for although in some great towns, like Oxford,
there were considerable vacant spaces which were apt to become
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a sort of gipsy camping-ground for the waifs and strays of a
mixed population, most of them were closely packed; the rich
men would not dispense with their courts and gardens, and the
very poor had to lodge outside the walls. In the country town-
ships, again, there was no such liberty as has in more modern
,
times been somewhat imprudently used, of building or not build-
ing cottage dwellings without due consideration of place or pro-
portion to the demand for useful labor. Every manor had its
constitution, and its recognized classes and number of holdings
on the demesne and the freehold, the village and the waste; the
common arable and the common pasture were a village property
that warned off all interlopers and all superfluous competition.
So strict were the barriers, that it seems impossible to suppose
that any great increase of population ever presented itself as a
fact to the mediæval economist; or if he thought of it at all, he
must have regarded the recurrence of wars and pestilences as a
providential arrangement for the readjustment of the conditions
of his problem. As a fact, whatever the cause may have been,
the population of England during the Middle Ages did not vary
in anything like the proportion in which it has increased since
the beginning of the last century; and there is no reason to
think that any vast difference existed between the supply and
demand of homes for the poor.
Still there were many poor;
if only the old, the diseased, the widows, and the orphans are
to be counted in the number. There were too in England, as
everywhere else, besides the absolutely helpless, whole classes
of laborers and artisans whose earnings never furnished more
than the mere requisites of life; and besides these, idle and worth-
less beggars, who preferred the freedom of vagrancy to the re-
strictions of ill-remunerated labor. All these classes were to be
found in town and country alike.
TRANSITION FROM THE AGE OF CHIVALRY
From the Constitutional History of England)
A
ND here our survey, too general and too discursive perhaps
to have been wisely attempted, must draw to its close. The
historian turns his back on the Middle Ages with a brighter
hope for the future, but not without regrets for what he is leav-
ing. He recognizes the law of the progress of this world; in
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which the evil and debased elements are so closely intermingled
with the noble and the beautiful, that in the assured march of
good, much that is noble and beautiful must needs share the fate
of the evil and debased. If it were not for the conviction that
however prolific and progressive the evil may have been, the
power of good is more progressive and more prolific, the chron-
icler of a system that seems to be vanishing might lay down his
pen with a heavy heart. The most enthusiastic admirer of me-
diæval life must grant that all that was good and great in it was
languishing even to death; and the firmest believer in progress
must admit that as yet there were few signs of returning health.
The sun of the Plantagenets went down in clouds and thick
darkness; the coming of the Tudors gave as yet no promise of
light: it was “as the morning spread upon the mountains," —
darkest before the dawn.
The natural inquiry, how the fifteenth century affected the
development of national character, deserves an attempt at an
answer; but it can be little more than an attempt, for very little
light is thrown upon it by the life and genius of great men.
With the exception of Henry V. , English history can show
throughout the age no man who even aspires to greatness; and
the greatness of Henry V. is not of a sort that is peculiar to the
age or distinctive of a stage of national life. His personal idio-
syncrasy was that of a hero in no heroic age. Of the best of
the minor workers, none rises beyond mediocrity of character or
achievement. Bedford was a wise and noble statesman, but his
whole career was a hopeless failure. Gloucester's character had
no element of greatness at all. Beaufort, by his long life, high
rank, wealth, experience, and ability, held a position almost un-
rivaled in Europe, but he was neither successful nor disinterested:
fair and honest and enlightened as his policy may have been,
neither at the time nor ever since has the world looked upon
him as a benefactor; he appears in history as a lesser Wolsey, -
a hard sentence perhaps, but one which is justified by the gen-
eral condition of the world in which the two cardinals had to
play their part; Beaufort was the great minister of an expiring
system, Wolsey of an age of great transitions. Among the other
clerical administrators of the age, Kemp and Waynflete were
faithful, honest, enlightened, but quite unequal to the difficulties
of their position; and besides them there are absolutely none
that come within even the second class of greatness as useful
men. It is the same with the barons: such greatness as there is
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>
amongst them
and the greatness of Warwick is the climax and
type of it - is more conspicuous in evil than in good. In the
classes beneath the baronage, as we have them portrayed in the
Paston Letters, we see more of violence, chicanery, and greed,
than of anything else. Faithful attachment to the faction which
from hereditary or personal liking they have determined to main-
tain, is the one redeeming feature; and it is one which by itself
may produce as much evil as good, -that nation is in an evil
plight in which the sole redeeming quality is one that owes its
existence to a deadly disease. All else is languishing: literature
has reached the lowest depths of dullness; religion, so far as its
chief results are traceable, has sunk, on the one hand into a
dogma fenced about with walls which its defenders cannot pass
either inward or outward, on the other hand into a mere war-
cry of the cause of destruction. Between the two lies a narrow
borderland of pious and cultivated mysticism, far too fastidious
to do much for the world around. Yet here as everywhere else,
the dawn is approaching. Here as everywhere else, the evil is
destroying itself; and the remaining good, lying deep down and
having yet to wait long before it reaches the surface, is already
striving toward the sunlight that is to come. The good is to
come out of the evil: the evil is to compel its own remedy; the
good does not spring from it, but is drawn up through it. In
the history of nations, as of men, every good and perfect gift is
from above: the new life strikes down in the old root; there is
no generation from corruption.
So we turn our back on the age of chivalry, of ideal heroism,
of picturesque castles and glorious churches and pageants, camps
and tournaments, lovely charity and gallant self-sacrifice; with
their dark shadows of dynastic faction, bloody conquest, griev-
ous misgovernance, local tyrannies, plagues and famines unhelped
and unaverted, hollowness of pomp, disease and dissolution. The
charm which the relics of mediæval art have woven around the
later Middle Ages must be resolutely, ruthlessly broken. The
attenuated life of the later Middle Ages is in thorough dis-
crepancy with the grand conceptions of the earlier times. The
thread of national life is not to be broken; but the earlier
strands are to be sought out and bound together, and strength-
ened with threefold union for the new work. But it will be a
work of time: the forces newly liberated by the shock of the
Reformation will not at once cast off the foulness of the strata
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were
through which they have passed before they reached the higher
air; much will be destroyed that might well have been con-
served, and some new growths will be encouraged that ought to
have been checked. In the new world, as in the old, the tares
are mingled with the wheat. In the destruction and in the
growth alike, will be seen the great features of difference be-
tween the old and the new.
The printing-press is an apt emblem or embodiment of the
change. Hitherto men have spent their labor on a few books,
written by the few for the few, with elaborately chosen material,
in consummately beautiful penmanship, painted and emblazoned
as if each one a distinct labor of love, each manuscript
unique, precious, — the result of most careful individual training,
and destined for the complete enjoyment of a reader educated up
to the point at which he can appreciate its beauty. Henceforth
books are to be common things. For a time the sanctity of the
older forms will hang about the printing-press; the magnificent
volumes of Fust and Colard Mansion will still recall the beauty of
the manuscript, and art will lavish its treasures on the embellish-
ment of the libraries of the great. Before long, printing will
be cheap, and the unique or special beauty of the early presses
will have departed; but light will have come into every house,
and that which was the luxury of the few will have become the
indispensable requisite of every family.
With the multiplication of books comes the rapid extension
and awakening of mental activity. As it is with the form, so
with the matter. The men of the decadence, not less than the
men of the renaissance, were giants of learning; they read and
assimilated the contents of every known book; down to the
very close of the era, the able theologian would press into the
service of his commentary or his summa every preceding com-
mentary or summa, with gigantic labor, and with an acuteness
which, notwithstanding that it was ill-trained and misdirected, is
in the eyes of the desultory reader of modern times little less
than miraculous: the books were rare, but the accomplished scholar
had worked through them all. Outside his little world all was
comparatively dark. Here too the change was coming. Scholar-
ship was to take a new form: intensity of critical power, devoted
to that which was worth criticizing, was to be substituted as the
characteristic of a learned man for the indiscriminating voracity
of the earlier learning. The multiplication of books would make
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such scholarship as that of Vincent of Beauvais, or Thomas Aqui-
nas, or Gerson, or Torquemada, an impossibility. Still there
would be giants like Scaliger and Casaubon,- men who culled
the fair flower of all learning; critical as the new scholars, com-
prehensive as the old: reserved for the patronage of sovereigns
and nations, and perishing when they were neglected, like the
beautiful books of the early printers. But they are a minor feat.
ure in the new picture. The real change is that by which every
man comes to be a reader and a thinker; the Bible comes to
every family, and each man is priest in his own household. The
light is not so brilliant, but it is everywhere; and it shines more
and more unto the perfect day. It is a false sentiment that leads
men in their admiration of the unquestionable glory of the old
culture, to undervalue the abundant wealth and growing glory of
the new.
The parallel holds good in other matters besides books. He
is a rash man who would, with one word of apology, compare
the noble architecture of the Middle Ages with the mean and
commonplace type of building into which, by a steady decline,
our churches, palaces, and streets had sunk at the beginning of
the present century. Here too the splendor of the few has been
exchanged for the comfort of the many; and although perhaps in
no description of culture has the break between the old and the
new been more conspicuous than in this, it may be said that the
many are now far more capable of appreciating the beauty which
they will try to rival, than ever the few were to comprehend the
value of that which they were losing.
