Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/579

 . 17, 1860.] see a baby clutching at the matches which boys of five or seven are flourishing about, without regard to time or place. With fire insurance offices losing their profits by the act of one five-year-old child, one would think the case pretty clear and strong; yet there is no village which has not a soft, slatternly mother, or a reckless father, who will leave everything to the chance of their children doing no mischief.

While this danger has increased, another has died out. There will hardly be any more fires from the old Powder-plot. It was a serious grievance,—that 5th of November celebration,—in all the country towns and villages, up to a few years ago. The farmer had perhaps no greater trial of temper throughout the year; and the shop-keeper and country-gentleman required all their amiability to get through the first week in November. I am speaking of the Protestant citizens. As for the Catholics, they must have been saints to bear it. Every dry branch that could be abstracted from any tree; every gate that could be got off its hinges; hurdles from the fold, benches from the park; any stray stool, or shutter, or crate, or half-door from a shop; hen coops, knife-boards, pails, washing-tubs,—whatever could be got hold of that would burn, was sure to disappear, and be no more seen till it was detected flaming away in the middle of the bonfire.

The Protestant washerwoman and grocer and farmer, were to be pitied; but how can the wrongs of the Catholic squire and his schoolmaster, and agents, be described! They were despoiled of their property, which was burned before their faces in insult to their religion. Their neighbours took this to heart some time before the celebration was generally discountenanced; and we, for our part, abolished Guy and all his works several years since. As the rustics and the children did not know what they meant by their Guy, there was no making them understand why he should come to an end to their detriment; and to secure the neighbourhood against discontent, and against “bone fires” on the sly, we turned the 5th of November into a Thanksgiving Day, something like that of New England. Everybody gives liberally, under the sense of relief common to Protestants and Catholics. We have a short service in church and chapel in the morning; a dinner for the labourers; wrestling-matches, and a dance in the squire’s big barn. The people who were most at sea about Guy can comprehend a thanksgiving and rejoicing for the fruits of the earth.

In the mountain districts of the country, the 5th of November fires were certainly a pretty sight, kindling and flaming on the crests or spurs of the hills, showing the outlines of the woods, and still glowing red when all the black figures in the front of them were gone home to bed; but there is probably no town in England, and no parish in any county, which does not rejoice that the vindictive service is dropped out of the church ritual, and the insulting triumph over fellow Christians hushed in the better temper which Time brings round.

The other old-fashioned celebration which marks November—Lord Mayor’s Day—is of little interest beyond London; and there everybody knows more about it than any country-cousin can tell. Within nineteen years the day has been distinguished by a truly national interest. As the birthday of the heir to the throne, the 9th of November is welcomed over a far broader area than even the United Kingdom. There are fifty colonies, planted down all over the globe, which have the same interest in the anniversary that we have. Last year, everybody in all those settlements was rejoicing that the Prince had prosperously reached the age of capacity for reigning. In two years more there will be congratulations on the privilege which he shares with every man in the nation,—the attainment of his actual majority. Last year, the blessing was more to the nation than to himself;—we were saved from the danger of a rule by proxy, which can never be insignificant, however (as in this case) improbable. The event of 1862 will be the more important to the Prince, as to be a man among men must ever be the highest privilege to a true man. Meantime, the Lord Mayor’s ancient festival derives new brightness from its implication with the destinies of the Prince of Wales.

As soon as play is done, people have to go to work again. London, called “empty,” up to the close of last month, is reviving,—beginning to give dinners, to attend the theatres, to organise the means of living and enjoying, for the multitude who will flock hither for “the season.” The press feels the load of the new books of the season. The fishmongers are bespeaking ice for their cellars. The shopkeepers are exhibiting furs and warm garments. The milliners are engaging their “hands” for the crushing work of the coming months, before taking their final flight of the year to Paris, to study the fashions. The lawyers are in their haunts again. The parsons mount their pulpits, cured of their special “sore throat” for the time, by having stretched their limbs, instead of their voices, in stout exercise at home and abroad. The physicians, who stole away to avoid becoming patients, have come home openly, and are being fast forgiven by their sick acquaintance for leaving them. On the whole, London may perhaps enjoy setting to work again almost as much as going forth to play.

Townsfolk are much mistaken if they suppose that rural labour relaxes and almost stops because the year is declining. The notion was once true, perhaps. When Bishop Latimer’s father was a farmer, the winter was a stoppage in the life of the husbandman, as it was in that of the fisherman. Though our ancestors ate much more fish than we do, the fishermen laid up their boats and gear in November, and settled down in their chimney-corner for the winter;—not wholly at play, perhaps, for they could make nets and prepare lines; but not dreaming of braving wind and weather in their calling. This must have been, I should think, after the return shoals of herrings—the November shoals—had gone by.

It was much the same in the farm-houses when the great work of killing and salting meat for the coming half-year was achieved. There was little to do in the farmyards and stalls in times when cattle could not be kept alive through the winter,