Page:The world's show, 1851, or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to "enjoy themselves", and to see the Great Exhibition (IA worldsshow1851or00mayh).pdf/14

 spot more green than the enclosure of Leicester Square,—who knows no people more primitive than the quaker corn-factors of Mark Lane, and nothing more truthful than the "impartial inquiries" of the Morning Chronicle, or more kind-hearted than the writings of ''The Economist'',—who has drunk of no philosophy deeper than that of the Penny Cyclopædia,—who has felt no quietude other than that of the City on a Sunday,—sighed for no home but that which he can reach for "threepence all the way," and wished for no last resting-place but a dry vault and a stucco cenotaph in the theatrical Golgothas of Kensal and of Highgate;—such a man can form no image of the peace, the simplicity, the truth, and the beauty which aggregate into the perpetual Sabbath that hallows the seclusion about and around the Lake of Buttermere.

Here the knock of the dun never startles the hermit or the student—for (thrice blessed spot!) there are no knockers. Here are no bills, to make one dread the coming of the spring, or the summer, or the Christmas, or whatever other "festive" season they may fall due upon, for (oh earthly paradise!) there are no tradesmen, and—better still—no discounters, and—greater boon than all—no! not one attorney within nine statute miles of mountain, fell, and morass, to ruffle the serenity of the village inn. Here that sure-revolving tax-gatherer—as inevitable and cruel as the Fate in a Grecian tragedy—never comes, with long book and short inkhorn, to convince us it is Lady-day—nor "Paving," nor "Lighting," nor "Water," "Sewers," nor "Poors," nor "Parochials," nor "Church," nor "County," nor "Queen's," nor any other accursed accompaniment of our boasted civilization. Here are no dinner-parties for the publication of plate; no soirées for the exhibition of great acquaintances; no conversaziones for the display of your wisdom, with the full right of boring your friends with your pet theories; nor polkas, nor schottisches, nor Cellarii, for inflaming young heirs into matrimony. Here there are no newspapers at breakfast to stir up your early bile with a grievance, or to render the merchant's morning meal indigestible with the list of bankrupts, or startle the fundholder with a sense that all security for property is at an end. Here there are no easy-chair philosophers,—not particularly illustrious themselves for a delight in hard labour,—to teach us to "sweep all who will not work into the dust-bin." Here, too, there are no Harmonic Coalholes, or Cyder Cellars, nor Choreographic Casinos, or Cremornes, or other such night colleges for youth, where ethics are taught from professional chairs occupied by "rapid" publicans, or by superannuated melodists, with songs as old as themselves, and as dirty as their linen.

No! According to a statistical investigation recently instituted, to the great alarm of the inhabitants, there were, at the beginning of the ever-to-be-remembered year 1851, in the little village situate between the Lakes of Crummock and Buttermere, fifteen inhabited houses, one uninhabited, and one church about the size of a cottage; and within three miles of these, in any direction, there was no other habitation whatsoever. This little cluster of houses constituted the village called