On one of the finest mornings of autumn, I was on the box of the Royal Sussex Stage.
I had full leisure to admire the country, for our progress occupied nearly the whole day. We now laugh at our slow-moving forefathers, but is not the time coming when our thirty miles an hour will be laughed at as much as their five? when our passage from Calais to Dover will be made by the turn of a winch, and Paris will be within the penny-post delivery? when the balloon will carry our letters and ourselves; until that still more rapid period, when we shall ride on cannon-shot, and make but a stage from London to Pekin?
On the roof of the coach I found a strong-featured and closely wrapped-up man, who, by degrees, performed the part of my cicerone. His knowledge of the localities was perfect; "every bush and bosky dell," every creek and winding, as the shore came in sight, was so familiar to him, that I should have set him down at once for a smuggler, but for a superiority of tone in his language, and still more from the evident deference to him by the coachman, in those days a leading authority with all the passengers. His occupation is now nearly o'er. Fire and water have swept him away. His broad back, his broad grin, and his broad buttons, are now but recollections.
My new acquaintance exhibited as perfect a knowledge of the country residents as of its map, and nothing could be more unhesitating than his opinions of them all, from the prince and his set, as he termed them, to Mordecai himself. Of my Jew friend, he said, with a laugh, "There is not a better friend to the King's Bench in all England. If you have any thing to lose, he will strip you on the spot. If you have nothing, you may escape, unless he can make something by having you hanged." I begged of him to spare my new friend. "Why," said he, "he is one of my oldest friends, and one of the cleverest fellows alive. I speak tenderly of him, from admiration of his talents. I have a liking for the perfection of a rogue. He is a superb fellow. You will find his 'Hermitage,' as he calls it, a pond of gold fish. But all this you will soon learn for yourself." The coach now stopped on a rising ground, which showed the little fishing village beneath us, basking in the glow of sunset. My cicerone got down, and bade me farewell. On enquiring his name from my fellow-travellers, a group of Sussex farmers, I found a general disinclination to touch on the subject. Even the coachman, the established source of information on all topics, exhibited no wish to discuss the stranger; his official loquacity was almost dumb. "He merely believed that he was something in the navy, or in the army, or in something or other; but he was often in those parts, and generally travelled to London by the Royal Sussex Stage."
No country in Europe has changed its appearance more than the greater part of England during the last fifty years. Sussex was then as wild as the wildest heath of Yorkshire. The population, too, looked as wild as the landscape. This was once the very land of the bold smuggler; the haunt of the dashing defier of the customhouse officer, who in those days generally knew his antagonist too well to interfere with his days or nights, the run between every port of the west of France and the coasts of the Channel, being, in fact, as familiar to both as the lounger in Bond Street to the beau of the day.
We passed groups of men, who, when they had not the sailor's dress, had the sailor's look; some trudging along the road-side, evidently not in idleness; others mounted on the short rough horse of the country, and all knowing and known by our coachman.
On our passing one group, leaning with their backs against one of the low walls which seemed the only enclosure of this rugged region, I, half-laughingly, hinted to one of my neighbours, a giant of a rough-headed farmer, that "perhaps a meeting with such a party, at a late hour, might be inconvenient, especially if the traveller had a full purse." The fellow turned on me a countenance of ridicule. "What?" said he, "do you take them for robbers? Heaven bless you, my lad, they could buy the stage, horses, passengers, and all. I'll warrant you, they will have news from over there," and he pointed towards France, "before it gets into the newspapers, long enough. They are the richest fellows in the county."
"Are they smugglers?" I asked, with sufficient want of tact.
"Why, no," was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a friendwhat shall hinder him from going to bring it? I'm sure, not I."
It was evidently not the "etiquette" on the roof of the Royal Sussex to think much on the subject, and before my curiosity could reach the length of actual imprudence, the coachman pulled up, and informed me that I had reached the nearest turn to "the Hermitage." My valise was lowered down, a peasant was found to carry it, and I plunged into the depth of a lane as primitive as if it had been a path in Siberia.
It was brief, however, and in a few minutes I was within sight of the villa. Here I at once discovered that Mordecai was a man of taste; perhaps the very roughness of the Sussex jungle, through which I had just come, had been suffered to remain for the sake of contrast. A small lodge, covered with late blooming roses, let me into a narrow avenue of all kinds of odorous shrubs; the evening sun was still strong enough to show me glimpses of the grounds on either side, and they had all the dressed smoothness of a parterre. The scene was so different from all that I had been wearied of during the day, that I felt it with double enjoyment; and the utter solitude and silence, after the rough voices of my companions in the journey, were so soothing, that I involuntarily paused before I approached the house, to refresh not more my senses than my mind. As I stood leaning against a tree, and baring my hot brain and bosom to the breeze, that rose with delicious coolness, I heard music. It was a sweet voice, accompanied at intervals by some skilful touches of a harp; and, from the solemnity of the measure, I supposed it to be a hymn. Who was the minstrel? Mordecai had never mentioned to me either wife or daughter. Well, at all events, the song was sweet. The minstrel was a woman, and the Jew's household promised me more amusement than I could have expected from the man of Moorfields. The song ceased, the spell was broken, and I moved on, fully convinced that I had entered on a scene where I might expect at least novelty; and the expectation was then enough to have led me to the cannon's mouth or the antipodes.
THE VIGIL OF VENUS
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN
This old poem, which commemorates the festivities with which ancient Rome hailed the returning brightness of spring, may, perhaps, awaken in our readers some melancholy reflections on the bygone delights of the same season in our own country. To the Romans, it would seem, this period of the year never ceased to bring rejoicing holidays. There is good reason to suppose that this poem was written in the declining times of the empire; if so, it seems that, amidst the public misfortunes that followed one another during that age, the people were not woe-worn and distressed; that they were able to forget, in social pleasures, the gradual decay of their ancient glory. Rome "smiled in death." England is still great and powerful, but she is no longer Merry England.
Most people have heard of the Floralia, and have learned to deduce the frolics of Maid Marian and her comrades from the Roman observances on that festive occasion. But few are aware of the close similarity which this poem shows to have existed between the customs of the Romans and those of our fathers. In the denunciations of the latter by the acrid Puritans of the 17th century, we might almost imagine that the tirade was expressly levelled against the vigils described in the Pervigilium Veneris. If the poem had ever fallen into the hands of those worthies, it would have afforded them an additional handle for invective against the foul ethnic superstitions which the May-games were denounced as representing. Hear Master Stubbes, in his Anatomie of Abuses, published in 1585: