Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/51

 io* s. V.JAN, is, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

39

\vhole tone of their literature testifies that, so far from such feelings being wanting, or lying torpid, i they were fully as active and forceful as they are among ourselves, though of course they were far ' less frequently put on record, for the plain reason j that in those days people rarely wrote books merely I for the sake of relieving their feelings or to make 1 money. If any one would take the trouble, many ' volumes might be compiled in proof of what we have said. The illuminations in the margins of manuscripts, the embroideries on vestments, and, perhaps more than all, the glorious sculptures in the churches scattered over the whole of Western Europe, prove that the men of those days were far more in harmony with nature than the people who wore wigs, gabbled about their feelings, assumed a "melancholy delight in grief," and fell into raptures over the platitudes of Rousseau. We have before our eyes evidence that our more remote forefathers loved flowers. The greater part of those which ornamented the gardens of the Tudor time, and which the wise among us still cherish, were brought over from the Continent during what we call the Middle Ages. Shakespeare and his friends would never have made such good use of them had their ancestors been so steeped in materialistic ignorance as some of our neighbours imagine. That the old garden-flowers were loved for themselves not grown for display only or as a mere fashion, as ladies now wear birds' wings in their hats is proved by the number of them named after those saints who were then the objects of the people's devotion.

When Herr Biese criticizes the nature-worship of the eighteenth century, we are in cordial agreement with him ; but when he reaches the revival of more wholesome thinking which took place near its close, he leaves something to be desired. Of Scott who had at least as deep feeling for nature as Byron or any other of his contemporaries he says hardly anything, and yet, along with Bishop Percy, Scott was the reviver of ballad poetry. The writer is undoubtedly correct in saying that true " landscape painting only developes when nature is sought for her own sake"; but he is equally wrong in assum- ing that in the first centuries " painting was wholly proscribed by Christendom." Surely the catacombs furnish overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is possibly true, as the author points out, that yEneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.) was the first to describe nature "not merely in a few subjective lines, but with genuine modern enjoyment ": but what are we to say of the more inspired of the troubadours ?

The old terraced gardens, with hedges of yew, box, and holly, suffer hard treatment at the hands of Herr Biese. We do not commend the mathe- matical rigidity of these living walls of verdure, as they have been called, and still less the towers, peacocks, and elephants into which the shears of the gardener tortured them ; but there were many and great compensations when the flower-beds they enclosed, and so completely screened from all the gales that blew, were abla/e with the brightest colours. Even the "green architecture" itself formed a pleasant picture for the eye to rest on during the long months of our Northern winter. Much as may be said with justice against these pattern gardens, they formed afar nobler adjunct to a great country house than the miserable attempts at landscape gardening to make room for which they were ruthlessly swept away.

The Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy. By the

Rev. G. E. Phillips. (Sands & Co.) THE object which Mr. Phillips has in view is to- prove that the eleven bishops who refused to accept the Reformation in the reign of Elizabeth are- worthy to be beatified as martyrs of the Christian, faith. The matter has already been mooted at Rome, and the writer, who is a Roman Catholic, con- siders that their cause would be advanced by a pub- lication of their sufferings in a popular form. He endeavours to show that the "persecution" to- which they were subjected was of such a cruel and severe character that it involved not only the suffering, but also the death, of its victims. He has. carefully searched the State Papers and other con- temporary documents for evidence of this vindictive persecution, and the present reviewer can only con- clude that he has failed to prove his case. Beyond" a certain amount of such personal inconvenience as was inevitable in the circumstances, the non- conforming bishops do not seem to have had much cause to complain. Mr. Phillips certainly fails ta produce any definite instance of torment or vindictive ill-treatment having been inflicted on. them. The usual course seems to have been to place the recalcitrant as a "paying guest" in the house of one of the bishops who had been appointed to the vacant see and was held responsible for his. safe-keeping. He shared the same table as his host, and on the testimony of Bishop Andrewes " lived in plenty, in ease, and without discomfort." This perhaps is saying too much, as such enforced com- panionship niay often have proved irksome, and communication with his co-religionists was for- bidden, though apparently not very strictly, as Bon- ner was permitted to receive visits from the Pope's envoy and others, and Tunstall had the last rites administered to him by one of his own Church. They were allowed to take their seat in Parliament,, and record their votes against the Government ; one at least was allowed to go free for a twelve- mile radius round his dwelling. Of course, any curtailment of personal freedom, even in loose custody, may be called "imprisonment" Sander picturesquely calls it being "thrown into chains" (in vincula), and speaks of Tunstall dying "in rigido carcere" but it seems hardly fair to term it "slow martyrdom" which caused their death, or to say, as Cardinal Allen does, that they were "tor- mented and slain." It is characteristic that the author alleges it as a part of the "special suffer- ing "of Tunstall that he was forced to company with Archbishop Parker and that he icas a married: man" (p. 182). He also notes as of sinister import- ance that one de'tenu " died of the stone, having lived icith the Bixhop of London" (italics the author's,, p. 134), as if by some subtle malignity the one fact was the cause of the other. It is similarly unfair to assume that their custody caused their death because it ensued within a few years, most of these bishops having been already men of advanced age on their deprivation, one of them over eighty-five. Yet this is what Mr. Phillips does. Again, after such phrases as " it is impossible to doubt" (p. 149), "we may be certain that" (p. 31'2), "nothing can be judged more likely than, that his [Oglethorpe's] death was really hastened by the sufferings of his confinement" (p. 141), it ia not ingenuous to make the admission that "in the case of Bp. White of Winchester, there is no reason for supposing any actual torture ta have been used upon him " (p. 96). So far-