Wise Saws and Modern Instances Part 5

"Really, Mr. Subdean," said he to that cathedral dignitary, as he overtook him, by the County Hospital, at the top of the "Steep Hill," in the forenoon of one of these drowsy days, "I think our autumns grow duller and duller every year: I'm sure you must feel it to be a bore that you are in residence this latter end."

"I feel it to be a little dull to be among you, at this time of the year, Mr. Nixon," replied the subdean, "but still it is an agreeable change."

"I am glad you can think so, sir," rejoined Gentleman Nixon;--for that was the mode by which he was usually distinguished from the several tradesmen Nixons who inhabited the city,--"I am glad you can bring yourself to think so: for my own part, I feel it to be very dull, very dull, indeed!--Are you for a walk to the Bar, sir?"

"I am, Mr. Nixon: shall I have the pleasure of your company?" was the rejoinder of the courteous and kind-natured clergyman.

"I shall be most happy, Mr. Subdean: I feel very highly honoured, sir: I----"

"And what is the best news, stirring, Mr. Nixon?" asked the subdean, desirous of cutting short the retired gentleman's flourish of politeness.

"Well, sir," answered Mr. Nicholas, very quickly, "I think the best news is that the poor freemen have had the spirit to stop this mushroom scheme of the town council to turn the West Common into a botanical garden. They are a mischievous set, these Below-hill Whig-radicals, depend upon it, Mr. Subdean: we shall have need to look sharp after 'em."

The churchman was full well acquainted with Gentleman Nixon's undeviating adherence to the "Pink" partisanship,--that is to say, Sibthorpian, or "House-of-Canwick" side of politics, which was most prevalent "Above-hill"--the division of old Lincoln comprising the habitations situate around the ancient castle and magnificent cathedral, and beyond which the Roman city did not extend. The subdean, I say, knew well that Mr. Nixon was among the most unchanging of the well-nigh changeless denizens in this elevated region: he knew that Mr. Nicholas professed the highest, the most exclusive toryism; and therefore he showed no signs of surprise at the uncharitable manner in which Mr.

Nicholas chose to express himself upon the question of the political morality displayed by the citizens dwelling in the lower region; and yet the clergyman, by one gentle word, excited great surprise in Mr.

Nicholas Nixon.

"I really don't think the new corporation are intentionally mischievous," said he; "I have no doubt they mean well: 'tis reckoned to be an age of improvements, you know, Mr. Nixon, and they must be in the fashion."

"'Pon my honour, sir, I don't understand the rule by which you distinguish between mischievous deeds and intentions," sharply observed Mr. Nicholas: "I always think that when a number of men deliberately attempt mischief they mean it."

"I think their scheme would have been less objectionable had they proposed that each of the poor freemen should have cultivated a little plot of garden ground for himself on the common," observed the churchman, by way of parrying the citizen's strong remark.

"But the law would not permit that, in my opinion, any more than the other," said the retired gentleman: "besides, the fact is just this, sir: once permit these reforming gentry to begin their schemes of improvement, and one acre after another would disappear from the corporate tenure of the freemen,--until, the property becoming individual, it would quickly be bought for a dog's price, by one or other of these liberals who have longer purses and more knavish heads than the rest of their neighbours."

"I hope none of the new corporation are such men as you are speaking of," said the subdean: "you know, Mr. Nixon, I neither go along with them nor their party; but I do not like to be uncharitable."

"Uncharitable! nonsense, sir!" exclaimed the exclusive cit, forgetting his courtesy, through bigoted partisanship: "I do not hold these fellows to be at all deserving of a charitable opinion, for I believe them capable of any wickedness. Why, sir, as Mr. Christopher shrewdly observed on the hustings in the castle-yard at the last county contest, while he pointed to the venerable Minster, 'These fellows would turn that sacred and time-hallowed building into a cotton-mill to-morrow if they had the power.' I believe he hit the mark there, sir, for he made the liberals very sore, I a.s.sure you," and Mr. Nicholas Nixon chuckled with a vindictive pleasure as he ended.

"If I did not excuse Mr. Christopher from a knowledge of the rash speeches which excitement and opposition impel country gentlemen to deliver on the hustings," rejoined the clergyman, looking somewhat grave, "I could not hesitate to censure him for making so offensive a remark. I do not see any good to be done by this fierce spirit of quarrel--but much evil."

"Pardon me, Mr. Subdean," persisted Gentleman Nixon, "but I really must say that I think if all of us were as tamely disposed as yourself, the church would soon tumble over your ears."

"I think nothing can tend to build it up so securely, Mr. Nixon,"

returned the dignitary, with a smile, "as showing the world that we, as ministers of the church, are the truest friends of mankind,--the readiest and most cheerful toilers for human happiness. You know I never like to talk politics, in any shape; I would much rather hear you and other gentlemen propose some plan for making the poor more comfortable in their circ.u.mstances,--or join you in any little scheme for amusing them. Do you attend the concerts of these young working-men in St.

Peter's church, Mr. Nixon?"

"Sir, I take the liberty to tell you plainly," persevered the heated "Pink" partisan, "that the easy good-nature of such kind-hearted people as yourself, and the indolence of our most respectable citizens Above-hill, go far to make it nearly impossible, already, to recover any degree of influence in city affairs. We are almost a lost party: the Blues have it all their own way,--and although you must be aware they are bent on ruining the poor entirely, under the mask of helping them, yet you will not lend a hand to oppose them----"

"But am I not telling you, my dear sir," interrupted the subdean, "that I think all the quarrels in the world can never convince mankind--the poor as well as the rest--that the quarrellers are the friends of mankind? If the Blue party be so bitterly bent on ruining the poor, as you say they are--let us carry relief into the houses of the poor always in the spirit of benevolence, and never as an act to oppose a party. If we look at the very persons we have to relieve, I think we may learn to do this,--for indeed, Mr. Nixon, there is no denying but that the poor are much more skilful in discerning the motives of those who visit them with charitable professions, than they were some years ago."

"Why, sir, what with Methodist cant on the one hand, and demagoguism on the other, the poor are spoilt," replied Mr. Nicholas, in the same tart spirit: "they have the impudence, now-a-days, to pry into the conduct of all ranks and conditions: your cloth does not screen you from their envious inquisitiveness; and they make all kinds of offensive and sneering remarks on respectable people. And then, their pride! Why now, Mr. Subdean, here we are, nearly at St. Botolph's bar, and not a single poor man has paid you a mark of respect, all the way we have walked!

Take my word for it, sir,--forty years ago if I had been honoured to walk down the street with a cathedral dignitary, I should have seen every poor man that we met touch his hat to him! I ask you, sir, what is to come of such a state of things?" concluded Mr. Nicholas, in a very earnest and emphatic tone.

The churchman fairly burst into laughter; and had it been any other than a Minster grandee, Gentleman Nixon would have been highly irritated by his mirth. As it was, he began to suspect himself of folly, for having carried his opposition to such an extremity in a merely friendly dialogue.

"Come now, Mr. Nixon," resumed the subdean, in a tone of pleasant expostulation, "does not this very circ.u.mstance, of the striking change in manners that you have alluded to, convince you that the hostile course is unwise? Do you expect, now, that the poor can be brought to observe the same outwardly submissive courtesies that their fathers practised when you and I were young?"

"Well, I must confess, I do not," tardily--but perforce of conviction--Mr. Nicholas made answer.

"It would be foolish to expect it, Mr. Nixon," continued the clergyman; "and as they will continue to keep the course they have commenced outwardly, so will they grow in the habit of scrutinising the conduct of those above them. I think the time is nearly at hand when neither Blues nor Pinks, nor any other shade of political party, will be able to raise excitements by attempting to persuade the poor, that these are designing to cheat them, while those are their disinterested and sympathising friends. The times are changed, for the English people are changed: we cannot deny it, since we have here a proof of it, Mr. Nixon."

"That we have, too truly, Mr. Subdean!" echoed Mr. Nicholas, and sighed very dolorously.

"Nay, I do not think there is any cause for regret, in all this,"

observed his cheerful and more enlightened acquaintance; "whatever severe causes may have operated to produce it, no philanthropist can regret that there is discernible the commencement of a spirit of self-respect on the part of the poor. We are all equal in the sight of our Maker, you know, my friend; and for my part I a.s.sure you, I do not desire that the old usages of servility should be resumed, and the great first law of human brotherhood be again lost sight of--for, I suspect, that was too often the fact while the brother in superfine cloth received such frequent obeisance from the brother in ragged linen."

"I must again say you surprise me greatly, sir," observed Gentleman Nixon, beginning again to recover his belligerent humour.

"But _do not_ be surprised, Mr. Nixon," answered the churchman, instantly and persuasively: "the world has changed, though you remain an honest Tory, and----"

"And you have become a Whig, sir, I fear," observed Mr. Nicholas, while his face and throat began to a.s.sume the hue of a distempered turkey-c.o.c.k.

"No, Mr. Nixon, a Conservative, if you please."

"All the same," said the retired gentleman, but with a subsidence of his mettle; "scarcely any thing but a distinction without a difference."

"To speak the broad truth," resumed the clergyman, "there are but very few now, who boast themselves,--as you do, Mr. Nixon, most honestly,--to be Tories. Nor are you very far from right in your belief of the resemblance of some other parties,--for the old Whig and the modern Conservative are nearly akin. The modern Whig would also have been a Radical some few years ago, while the hotter advocates for change have also considerably enlarged their demands."

"And do you pretend to tell me, Mr. Subdean," asked Mr. Nicholas, very impatiently, "that you and others are any other than madmen to yield to this jacobinical spirit of change?--I say jacobinical--the plain word that my father used, and that I believe to be the best word."

"But I do _not_ believe it to be the best word, my dear sir," repeated the subdean, and took the hand of the retired gentleman with a smile,--seeing they were about to separate; "I believe we should be madmen indeed if we did not yield wisely to this spirit of change. You will never find me among the advocates of rash and hasty changes, Mr.

Nixon; but I repeat--change has begun,--and if we do not yield to it wisely, it will speedily proceed more rashly and hastily than any of us would wish to see. All parties are amalgamating, for they are blending names; and all ranks are converging to a common point, where rank will be forgotten. Forty years ago you could not have imagined that a cathedral dignitary would have walked from the 'Chequer Gate to St.

Botolph's Bar, and not one of the hundreds of poor men he met ever touch their hat to him;--and yet you have walked with me every inch of the way this morning, and seen every poor man pa.s.s by without showing the subdean any more respect than he shows to one of his ragged neighbours:--you have seen this, Mr. Nixon, and you cannot deny that _it was so_. Good morning, sir!"

"Good morning, sir!" echoed Mr. Nicholas Nixon, though it was somewhat vacantly. And thrice he turned to look after the clergyman when they had separated,--stunned and confounded as he felt at what the dignitary had said; and then wondered how it could be! But the more Mr. Nicholas wondered, the less he could comprehend what he wondered at. He knew that he himself was what he was thirty years ago,--the same old-fashioned Tory, who, even then, lived each day alike, in the same house in the Minster-yard; but as for the subdean and many others, though he perceived they had changed, he could not comprehend why:--all that he could comprehend was,--that _it was so_.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES;

OR, ONE PARSON AND TWO CLERKS.

It was at the very time,--for History is notoriously fond of synchronisms for her greatest events,--witness Mycale and Plataea, fought and won on the self-same day,--it was at the very time that Papineau and the Canadian rebels took up swords and guns to resist Sir John Colborne and the English troops,--that the old women of Stow, in the parts of Lindsey, took up eggs to pelt the parish parson!

All the world knows, or if it doth not know it has profited but little by the industry of antiquarians, that Stow, in the division of Lindsey, and eight miles north-and-by-west of Lincoln, was an ancient Roman station, under the euphonic appellation of _Sidnacester_; that under that name it was the seat of a Saxon bishopric; that although Remigius de Feschamp, one of the Norman tyrant's fighting churchmen, transferred the seat of the diocese to Lincoln, yet when the stately cathedral which he founded was finished, while they placed his episcopal effigy on one of the grand pinnacles of the imposing west front, they fixed the grotesque image of "the Swineherd of Stow" (holding in his hand the horn which he gave filled with silver pennies, towards building the Minster,) on the other; that the episcopal palace of Stow was the favourite residence of the bishops of Lincoln down to the close of the fourteenth century, and that Stow still gives t.i.tle to an archdeacon; lastly, that its venerable-looking church, dedicated to the blessed Virgin, constructed in the form of the Holy Rood, and adorned with a west door of decayed Gothic grandeur, is, to this day, called "the Mother of Lincoln Minster."

Now such being the distinctions of Stow itself, of course the "Perpetual Curate" of Stow, on receiving the awful impressment of episcopal hands, and the mysterious invest.i.ture of canonical habits, together with the comfortable appointment of the patron to the vacant curacy, entered on the discharge of his spiritual functions with strong notions of the alt.i.tude of his office, and of the plenary powers attached thereto. The ideas of the governed, however, in these days, somehow or other, don't happen to preserve an equal alt.i.tude, respecting office, with those of the governors; and the new Perpetual Curate of Stow, the successor to the once vice-regal priests of Sidnacester, was stricken with ghostly astonishment at finding that sundry rustics of his parish cared not a bodle for his new authority; that they snapped their fingers at his counsel and reproofs; and, setting at nought his college learning, preferred lending their ears to the unlearned Wesleyan local preachers,--a race of heretics who are so vulgar and unfashionable as to follow the example of Paul, and other vulgar workers of old, who earned their bread with the labour of their own hands, and yet, occasionally, ministered in word and doctrine. In the very nature of things this was unsavoury to a clergyman,--especially to a young one,--but more especially to one who actually stood in the shoes, speaking spiritually, of the princely and potential bishops of Sidnacester: it was not for him, above all established teachers in the shire, to endure such contemptuous preferences, and by that endurance permit heresy to bud and blossom unchecked.

Now, a neighbouring reverend brother of his, the fox-hunting shepherd of Willingham, was also very grievously pestered with these energetic heretics,--and he had resorted to the ancient evangelical custom of thundering forth anathemas against them from his pulpit: but that only seemed to render the pestiferous teachers more successful,--so the Perpetual Curate of Stow resolved to exert the whole power of his wit in discovering some effectual way of doing, what his zealous and pious brother of Willingham could not do,--driving out heresy, and subduing the rebellious spirit of his flock. So to work the Perpetual Curate went with his wit, and a profound mine he wrought: such a mine as would, no doubt, have blown up heresy for ever in his parish, had he ever been able to put the match to it: so profound, that, since his scheme was frustrated, no one has ever been able to fathom it, and, therefore, _n.o.body_ can tell _anybody_ what it really was. But how was it that a scheme so profound, so workmanlike, so masterly, did not succeed? Alas!

how often in this frail humanity of ours do the most exalted enterprises fail, yea, often by the unexpected resistance of the very instruments on which we think we can most unerringly and safely depend! And thus it was with the great Perpetual Curate: he was most magnanimously bent on subduing revolt and heresy, when, lo! even Sir Amen, his clerk, lifted up his heel against him!

Now this was a notable event of a very auspicious character for the revolters. Clerk William Middleton was no ordinary clerk. Gervase Middleton, his father, had been clerk before him. Clerk William Middleton had, therefore, an important hereditary stamp upon him. And then, he was a _schollard_, as the old women called it, and was so gentle, that he was never known to hurt a worm; so moral, that he was never seen drunk in his life; so religious, that he never used a stronger oath than "Marry good faith!" and "By'r Lady!" (old oaths of popish times that are not yet lost in old Lincolnshire); and so upright, that he would not deny his conscience, even for the parson! This was no ordinary auxiliary on the side of the enemy; and there was no wonder that it put the Perpetual Curate, for a while, to his wit's end, to hear the reports which were brought to him by one Spurr (who was spurred on by his own inward aims to reach Sir Amen's office), of the stout and unflinching and open a.s.sertions made in the streets of Stow, by Clerk William Middleton, that the Methodists had as much right to preach as the parson! It was heresy he did not expect from such a quarter; but he was resolved he would be even with this member of the revolt, however; so he played a master-stroke so suddenly, that it shook the whole parish like an earthquake: he actually _un_-clerked Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, the old, learned, hereditary, gentle, moral, upright, pious, and religious parish-clerk!!!

This was a most unprecedented and most unexpected event; and it gave rise, as may be guessed it would, to a mighty concatenation of stupendous occurrences. The spirit of the Perpetual Curate was roused, and his genius, too, as was proved by his statesmanlike blow at the ring-leader of the rustic confederacy; and the spirit of the parishioners was roused likewise, for they were determined that, although the parson might appoint a new clerk, they would stick by the old one. The ensuing Sunday, accordingly, brought forth the strange anomaly of _one_ parson with _two_ clerks, reading the church service in the ancient aisle of Stow! Moreover, when the _chosen_ of the Perpetual Curate was beheld to be the egregious tale-bearer and notorious sycophant, Spurr, who was no adept at the letters of his prayer-book, the churchwarden and parishioners were alike wroth, and resolved, still more resolutely, on abiding by their old respected utterer of amens, Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase. Thus it fell out that Clerk Spurr,--we know not, nor care we, what was his p.r.o.nomen, or "christened" name, as they call it in Lincolnshire; whether it were Moses or Mahershalalhashbaz, Nahum or Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah or Judas Iscariot, we cannot tell, nor doth it concern the dignity of this our record, to say with positiveness,--for the fellow was but as a buzzard to a sparrow-hawk, when compared with the rightful clerk; but thus it fell out, that Clerk Spurr was called "the Parson's Clerk," while Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, bore the creditable and legitimate epithet of "the Parish Clerk."

And, then, it came to pa.s.s that, when announcements of christenings, burials, or marriages, had to be made, the parishioners, in the spirit of their preference, commissioned their own clerk, "the Parish Clerk,"