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frequent marriages it occasioned, so that it was considered one of the best matrimonial markets in England.*

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Whether the matches made at these "matrimonial markets" were always very prudent, is very much to be doubted. keen observing poet writes:

"Hatred is by far the longer pleasure,

Man loves in haste, but detests at leisure."

Perhaps the following advice of Young may be worthy the deepest consideration:

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Pause, ponder, sift, deliberate, and weigh."

At times, when the writer has perambulated a fair, (and he has visited many, both for business and pleasure,) and wicked Cupid has whispered in his ear, "which would you like?" the fair reader, should he be so highly honoured, will, he hopes, excuse him, when he states the reply was, although not disdainfully,

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For the one was too short, the other too tall;

Or too plump, or too slender, too young, or too old,
And this was too bashful, and that was too bold."

At another annual fair, held at Easter, in that good old town, twelve old women side off for a game at trap ball, which they keep up, with the greatest vigour and hilarity, until sunset. An old lady named Gill, upwards of sixty years of age, has been celebrated as the mistress of this sport for a number of years; and it affords much of the good old humour to flow round, while the merry combatants dexterously hurl the giddy balls to and fro. Afterward, they retired to their homes, where "Voice, fiddle, and flute,

No longer are mute.”

closing the day with apportioned mirth and merriment.

There was a very large fair at Sturbitch, near Cambridge. In the reign of James I., sixty hackney coaches attended from London.

Most of the fairs at this time, are only for cheese, hops, cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep. The sheep are very numerous; the largest sheep fair in the British dominions is at Ballinasloe, in Ireland; there was at that fair, in 1839, between 80,000 and 90,000 sheep.

I cannot help regretting the decline of these festivities. England has suffered much, and is still suffering, from their

*Mackay's "Journey through England."

abolition, "a bow always kept bent will grow feeble and lose its force," is a very old and true simile. It is attributed to the profligate Charles II., the abolition of one of these festivals, and that one, in the eyes of a Christian, the one of the most importance:

"The good old fashion, when Christmas was come,

To call in his neighbours with bag-pipes and drum.”

to warm, to exhilarate, and to cheer them at that chill season, "While every shrub, and every blade of grass,

And every pointed thorn seem'd wrought of glass."

Man must have time for relaxation and reflection, and also for fun and frolic; if authority is wanting, to whom can I better refer than to Solomon, who has said, "there is a time for everything." Statesmen should think of this before it is too late; the present state of Great Britain offers to their review such a state of things as was never offered to their contemplation before, viz. a nation of individuals, where the mass of the labourers are obliged to be incessantly occupied at their labours, from morning till night, all the year round, like the lowest of animals, to procure a bare existence. It was a remark of Aristotle, that "poverty leads to sedition and crime.” From the

humble origin of the present minister, Sir Robert Peel, one should suppose he could not fail to perceive this very important. circumstance, but he, alas! seems only to have his mind bent upon raising the means to pay the interest of the national debt, and when that fails, as fail it will, without "an equitable adjustment," who can predict the confusion which will follow? "While silent their discontent is visible." Cicero.

England has been a great, a powerful, and a happy nation; other nations have often appealed to her, in the noble character of an arbitrator; and at those periods she had her fairs, wakes, and festivals, these customs, therefore, could not have demoralised her. If days of leisure and relaxation may be subject to abuse, they may also be periods of improvement. How many of the young are inspirited to their duty, as well as cautioned and advised by their parents, masters, and guardians, with more effect, to make some extra exertion, or to refrain from expending their money on less useful things, but to reserve it to buy clothes or other needful articles, which will add to their decency or respectability at those annual periods. Those who can be so far inspirited may be farther improved, it advances them one step in the up-hill of life, and constantly appeals to them as a warning to avoid a descent which will make them feel loss and degradation.

But, on the other hand, if there is to be no relaxation, no prospect of ease, either for body or mind, what can they care for? what can they possess which they value? Hopes, expectations, and rewards, those stimulants which rouse the most torpid soul to everything great and noble, which makes it form and fix its most holy resolves, and most durable praiseworthy resolutions, cease their heavenly influences, and they descend to the lowest scale in God's creation, mere senseless, sinful, sensual animals.

For ages there have been Statute fairs, for the annual hiring of male and female servants.* A servant so hired is bound to obey during the whole term of the year; the contract is binding on both sides; if any circumstance arises by which either the master or servant is dissatisfied, the jurisdiction of a magistrate can alone arrange it.

This has a very powerful political bearing, and produces as well a great moral effect; hence the servant cannot help but have steady habits, and learn due obedience, while he or she is sure to be supplied with good food, a good bed, and the wages secured, and good examples kept constantly before them.

And hence, in case of war, here is a sailor, or soldier, or militia-man, half drilled; for subordination is become part of his very nature. It was this political system which formed those

brave men who could thrice be led on to the fatal assault of the cotton bags at New Orleans, on the memorable 8th of January, 1815. But without this order, subordination and good discipline, they would not have obeyed their orders twice; and although the repetition of those orders was useless, still it shows how such orders were obeyed, and the why and the wherefore such discipline and such bravery could be brought into action. Tully wisely observes, "All our civil virtues, all our studies, all our pleadings, industry, and commendations, lies under the protection of our warlike virtues.”

*In the year 1831 their number was as follows: In England, 77 in a thousand females,

16 in a thousand males.

Wales, 102

Scotland, 88

Ireland, 63

It also

i. p. 15.

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operates upon the whole labouring population, for the amount, see vol. See more about this law and the apprentices, vol. i. p. 227.

115

BELLS AND BELL-RINGING

"Those evening bells, those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells,

Of youth and home, and that sweet time

When last I heard their soothing chime." MOORE.

Such is part of a beautiful song by Moore, which most lovers of music know full well, and which appears to me proper to head this chapter, on a science peculiar to England. She was for ages known by foreigners, as "the bell-ringing

Island." It is not that in Great Britain bells were first introduced and rung there.

"Bells called Nolæ, were used as early as the fifth century. Bede informs us Campane (which means bells,) were employed at the funeral of Abbess Hilda, in 680; and ten years afterward, the art of casting them had so far advanced, that Croyland Abbey possessed a peal of bells, whose sounds were then regulated to the diatonic scale; but whether they were sounded by machinery, or by striking them by hammers, or according to the present mode, would be an interesting subject for enquiry." Gent. Mag. The custom of bell-ringing may be thus traced to the Saxons, and was common at the time of the Norman conquest.

But the ringing of a peel of bells in changes, according to the principles of permutation, is the most delightful out of door harmony, that can possibly be conceived. And I doubt not, that if there was a peel of six or eight bells, in a proper elevated tower; "the bells, the music, nighest bordering on Heaven," on one of the islands in New York's beautiful bay, rung of an evening, the Battery gardens would be nightly crowded to hear them.

The music of bells is altogether melody; and the pleasure arising consists in its interchanges, and the various succession and general predominance of the consonants in the sounds produced.

The bells have furnished some of the most beautiful similes and comparisons of most of the English poets. Thus says Cowper :

"How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear;

In cadence sweet, now dying all away,

Now peeling loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on.'

Wordsworth thus speaks of the entrance to an English country church yard:

"Part shaded by cool leafy elms, and part

Offering a cool resting place to those who seek the house of worship,*
While the bells that ring with all their sweet and plaintive voices,
Or before the last hath ceased its solitary knoll-

Then he enters."

"There is a sublimity in the gradual increase of sounds. It is equally sublime to listen to sounds when they retire from us." In bell-ringing-Crescendo, and Diminuendo, so delightfully charming and so difficult of exquisite execution on any instrument, is by these performed with the air, in the highest perfection. Milton writes

"Ring out ye metal spheres,

And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,

And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow."

And again

"With other echo late I taught your shades,
To answer and resound far other song."

In the whole hemisphere of sound, there is no circumstance more strikingly curious, than that of an echo. Echoes are produced by a reflecting body-as a house, a hill, or a wood, and indeed on the main sail of a ship; for in Professor Silliman's Journal, vol. 19, there is recorded an instance of the bells of Saint Salvador, at, Brazil, having been heard out at sea one hundred miles!

How sublime would be the effect of a merry peal, their various melodious changes, being reflected back by the Neversink hills, the sails of the shipping, the various eminences of the Jersey shore, and the prominences of this large city.

"Oft on a plat of rising ground,

I hear the far off curfew sound,
O'er some wide water'd shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar."

If such is the effect of the single curfew, how rich would it be with a well graduated lively peal, heard in the morning, when the ear has been refreshed by sleep. The notion of their sounds being much enhanced, when situated near to water, wants no confirmation, when we recount the case of the sentinel, who was charged with sleeping upon his post, on the ramparts of Windsor Castle. The life of this man was saved by the extraordinary circumstance of his having heard, at midnight,

* Many of the pilgrims who visit Shakspeare's tomb in the church at Stratford-upon-Avon, speaks enthusiastically of the long avenue of wide spreading limes, which cover the seated walk to the principal entrance.

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