From an otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name Fidèle. He belonged to some female, chiefly inhabiting 5 a back-parlour, whose life appears to us to have been consumed in sniffing, and in wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For her, he would sit up and balance cake upon his nose, and not eat it until twenty had been counted. To the avoidable &c. Here are two examples of men most differently gifted: each pursuing his calling; each speaking his truth as God bade him; each honest in his life; just and irreproachable in his dealings; dear to his friends; honoured by his country; beloved at his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of each to give incalculable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be 10 best of our belief we were once called in to our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid to our service. We may not win the baton or epaulettes;1 but God give us strength to guard 15 the honour of the flag! Charles Dickens 1812-1870 OUR SCHOOL (From Household Words, 1852) witness this performance; when, unable even in his milder moments, to endure our presence, he instantly made at us, cake and all. Why a something in mourning, called "Miss Frost," "should still connect itself with our preparatory school, we are unable to say. We retain no impression of the beauty of Miss Frost-if she were beautiful; or of the mental fascinations of Miss Frost-if she were ac20 complished; yet her name, and her black dress hold an enduring place in our remembrance. An equally impersonal boy, whose name has long since shaped itself unalterably into "Master Mawls," is not to be dislodged from 25 our brain. Retaining no vindictive feeling towards Mawls-no feeling whatever, indeed—we infer that neither he nor we can have loved Miss Frost. Our first impression of Death and Burial is associated with this formless pair. We all three nestled awfully in a corner one wintry day, when the wind was blowing shrill, with Miss Frost's pinafore over our heads; and Miss Frost told us in a whisper about somebody being "screwed down." It is the only 35 distinct recollection we preserve of these impalpable creatures, except a suspicion that the manners of Master Mawls were susceptible of much improvement. Generally speaking, we may observe that whenever we see a child We went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had swallowed the play-ground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off the corner of 30 the house, which thus curtailed of its proportions, presented itself, in a green stage of stucco, profilewise towards the road, like a forlorn flatiron without a handle, standing on end. of all other subjects of interest, our mind reverts in a flash to Master Mawls. It seems as if our schools were doomed to be the sport of change. We have faint recollections of a Preparatory Day-School, which we have sought in vain, and which must have been pulled down to make a new street, ages 40 intently occupied with its nose, to the exclusion ago. We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting to a belief, that it was over a dyer's shop. We know that you went up steps to it; that you frequently grazed your knees in doing so; that you generally got your leg over 45 the scraper, in trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe. The mistress of the establishment holds no place in our memory; but rampant on one eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and narrow, is a puffy pug- 50 dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist black muzzle and white 55 teeth, and the insolence of his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. 18 May not become commanding generals or even officers. The baton is the field marshal's staff. But, the School that was our School before the Railroad came and overthrew it, was quite another sort of place. We were old enough to be put into Virgil when we went there, and to get prizes for a variety of polishing on which the rust has long accumulated. It was a School of some celebrity in its neighbourhood-nobody could have said why-and we had the honour to attain and hold the eminent position of first boy. The master was supposed among us to know nothing, and one of the ushers was supposed to know everything. We are still inclined to think the first-named supposition perfectly correct. We have a general idea that its subject had been in the leather trade, and had bought us— meaning our school-of another proprietor, him for the Spanish Main; but nothing certain was ever known about his disappearance. At this hour we cannot thoroughly disconnect him from California. Our School was rather famous for mysterious pupils. There was another-a heavy young man, with a large double-cased silver watch, and a fat knife, the handle of which was a perfect tool-box-who unaccountably appeared who was immensely learned. Whether this belief had any real foundation, we are not likely ever to know now. The only branches of education with which he showed the least acquaintance, were, ruling and corporally 5 punishing. He was always ruling cipheringbooks with a bloated mahogany ruler, or smiting the palms of offenders with the same diabolical instrument, or viciously drawing a pair of pantaloons tight with one of his large 10 one day at a special desk of his own, erected hands, and caning the wearer with the other. We have no doubt whatever that this occupation was the principal solace of his existence. A profound respect for money pervaded Our School, which was of course, derived from 15 unless to give us a depreciatory kick, or grimly close to that of the Chief, with whom he held familiar converse. He lived in the parlour, and went out for walks, and never took the least notice of us-even of us, the first boy to take our hat off and throw it away, when he encountered us out of doors, which unpleasant ceremony he always performed as he passednot even condescending to stop for the purpose. Some of us believed that the classical attainments of this phenomenon were terrific, but that his penmanship and arithmetic were defective, and he had come there to mend them; others, that he was going to set up a school, and had paid the Chief "twenty-five pound down," for leave to see Our School at work. The gloomier spirits even said that he was going to buy US, against which contingency conspiracies were set on foot for a general defection and running away. However, he never did that. After staying for a quarter, during which period, though closely observed, he was never seen to do anything but make pens out of quills, write small-hand in a secret portfolio, and punch the point of the sharpest blade in his knife into his desk all over it, he too disappeared, and his place knew him no its Chief. We remember an idiotic goggleeyed boy, with a big head, and half-crowns without end, who suddenly appeared as a parlour-boarder, and was rumoured to have come by sea from some mysterious part of the 20 earth where his parents rolled in gold. He was usually called "Mr." by the Chief, and was said to feed in the parlour on steaks and gravy; likewise to drink currant wine. And he openly stated that if rolls and coffee were ever denied 25 him at breakfast, he would write home to that unknown part of the globe from which he had come, and cause himself to be recalled to the regions of gold. He was put into no form or class, but learnt alone, as little as he liked-30 and he liked very little-and there was a belief among us that this was because he was too wealthy to be "taken down." His special treatment, and our vague association of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and 35 Coral Reefs occasioned the wildest legends-to be circulated as his history. A tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject-if our memory does not deceive us, by the hand There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, that now chronicles these recollections-in 40 with a delicate complexion, and rich curling which his father figured as a Pirate, and was shot for a voluminous catalogue of atrocities: first imparting to his wife the secret of the cave in which his wealth was stored, and from which his only son's half-crowns now issued. 45 was the son of a Viscount who had deserted more. hair, who, we found out, or thought we found out (we have no idea now, and probably had none then, on what grounds, but it was confidentially revealed from mouth to mouth) his lovely mother. It was understood that if he had his rights, he would be worth twenty thousand a year. And that if his mother ever met his father, she would shoot him with s Dumbledon (the boy's name) was represented lour-boarder's mind. This production was re- to the muzzle, for that purpose. He was a very suggestive topic. So was a young mulatto, who was always believed (though very amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere. But, we think they were both outshone, upon the whole, by another boy who claimed to have been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and to have only one birthday in five years. We suspect this to have been a fiction--but he lived upon it all the time he was at Our School. among us as equivalent to a declaration. We were of opinion on that occasion, that to the last moment he expected Maxby's father to ask him to dinner at five o'clock, and there5 fore neglected his own dinner at half-past one, and finally got none. We exaggerated in our imaginations the extent to which he punished Maxby's father's cold meat at supper; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated with The principal currency of Our School was slate pencil. It had some inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never reduced to a standard. To have a great hoard of it, was somehow to be rich. We used to bestow it in charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon our chosen friends. When the holidays were coming, contributions were solicited for cer- 10 wine and water when he came home. But, we all liked him; for he had a good knowledge of boys, and would have made it a much better school if he had had more power. He was writing-master, mathematical master, English tain boys whose relatives were in India, and who were appealed for under the generic names of "Holiday-stoppers," appropriate marks of remembrance that should enliven and cheer them in their homeless state. Personally, we 15 master, made out the bills, mended the pens, always contributed these tokens of sympathy in the form of slate pencil, and always felt that it would be a comfort and a treasure to them. and did all sorts of things. He divided the little boys with the Latin master (they were smuggled through their rudimentary books, at odd times when there was nothing else to do), and always called at parents' houses to inquire after sick boys, because he had gentlemanly manners. He was rather musical, and on some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it was lost, and it Our School was remarkable for white mice. 20 Red-polls, linnets, and even canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange refuges for birds, but white mice were the favourite stock. The boys trained the mice, much better than the masters trained the 25 made the most extraordinary sounds when he boys. We recall one white mouse, who lived in the cover of a Latin dictionary, who ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets, turned wheels, and made even a very creditable appearance on the stage as the Dog 30 of Montargis.1 He might have achieved greater things, but for having the misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal procession to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep inkstand, and was dyed black and drowned. The 35 afterwards was thought to favour Maxby sometimes tried to play it of an evening. His holidays never began (on account of the bills) until long after ours; but, in the summer vacations he used to take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack; and at Christmas-time he went to see his father at Chipping Norton, who we all said (on no authority) was a dairy-fedpork-butcher. Poor fellow! He was very low all day on Maxby's sister's wedding-day, and more than ever, though he had been expected to spite him. He has been dead these twenty years. Poor fellow! mice were the occasion of some most ingenious engineering, in the construction of their houses and instruments of performance. The famous one belonged to a Company of proprietors, some of whom have since made Railroads, 40 the Latin master as a colourless, doubled-up, Engines, and Telegraphs; the chairman has erected mills and bridges in New Zealand. The usher at Our School, who was considered to know everything, as opposed to It was Our remembrance of Our School, presents near-sighted man with a crutch, who was always cold, and always putting onions into his ears for deafness, and always disclosing ends of flannel under all his garments, and almost the Chief, who was considered to know 45 always applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief nothing, was a bony, gentle-faced, clericallooking young man in rusty black. whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby's sisters (Maxby lived close by, and was a day pupil), and further that he "favoured 50 Maxby.' As we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby's sisters on half-holidays. He once went to the play with them, and wore a white waistcoat, and a rose; which was considered 1 Aubrey of Montdidier was murdered in 1371. He had 55 a dog, Dragon, who after the murder showed a marked dislike toward one, Richard of Macaire. Suspicion was aroused, and Richard of Macaire was condemned to judicial combat with the dog. He was mortally wounded, and before dying confessed the crime. A bronze group at Montargis, France, commemorates the dog. to some part of his face with a screwing action round and round. He was a very good scholar, and took great pains where he saw intelligence and a desire to learn: otherwise, perhaps not. Our memory presents him (unless teased into a passion) with as little energy as colour-as having been worried and tormented into monotonous feebleness-as having had the best part of his life ground out of him in a Mill of boys. We remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry afternoon with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not when the foot-step of the Chief fell heavy on the floor; how the Chief aroused him, in the midst of a dread silence, and said, "Mr. Blinkins, are you ill, sir?" how he blushingly replied, "Sir, rather so;" how the Chief retorted with severity, "Mr. Blinkins, this is no place to be ill in" (which was very very true) and walked back, solemn as the ghost in Hamlet, until, catching a wandering eye, he caned that boy for inattention, and happily expressed his feelings towards the Latin master through the medium of a substitute. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) THE OLD COACH ROADS OF ENGLAND (From the Introduction to Felix Holt, 1866) There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a gig, and taught the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an accomplishment in great social demand in after-life); and there was a brisk little French master who 15 used to come in the sunniest weather, with a handleless umbrella, and to whom the Chief was always polite, because (as we believed), if the Chief offended him he would instantly address the Chief in French, and forever con- 20 well polished tankards, the smiling glances of found him before the boys with his inability to understand or reply. Five-and-thirty years ago the glory had not yet departed from the old coach roads: the great road-side inns were still brilliant with pretty barmaids, and the repartees of jocose hostlers; the mail still announced itself by the merry notes of the horn; the hedge-cutter or the rick-thatcher might still know the exact hour by the unfailing yet otherwise meteoric apparition of the pea-green Tally-ho or the yellow Independent; and elderly gentlemen in pony chaises, quartering2 nervously to make way for the rolling, swinging swiftness, had not yet ceased to remark that times were finely changed since they used to see the packhorses and hear the tinkling of their bells on this very highway. In those days there were pocket-boroughs,' a Birmingham unrepresented in Parliament and compelled to make strong representations out of it, unrepealed corn-laws, three-and-sixpenny letters, a brawny and many-breeding pauperism, and other departed evils; but there There was besides a serving man, whose name was Phil. Our retrospective glance presents Phil as a shipwrecked carpenter, cast 25 away upon the desert island of a school, and carrying into practice an ingenious inkling of many trades. He mended whatever was broken, and made whatever was wanted. He was general glazier, among other things, and 30 mended all the broken windows-at the prime cost (as was darkly rumoured among us) of ninepence, for every square charged three-andsix to parents. We had a high opinion of his mechanical genius, and generally held that 35 the Chief "knew something bad of him," and on pain of divulgence forced Phil to be his bondsman. We particularly remember that Phil had a sovereign contempt for learning: which engenders in us a respect for his sagacity, 40 were some pleasant things, too, which have as it implies his accurate observation of the relative positions of the Chief and the ushers. He was an impenetrable man, who waited at table between whiles, and throughout "the half" kept the boxes in severe custody. He 45 was morose even to the Chief, and never smiled, except at breaking-up, when in acknowledgement to the toast, "Success to Phil! Hooray!" he would slowly carve a grin out of his wooden face, where it would remain until we were all 50 gone. Nevertheless, one time, when we had the scarlet fever in the school, Phil nursed all the sick boys of his own accord, and was like a mother to them. There was another school not far off, and of course our school could have 55 nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way with schools, whether of boys or men. Well! the railway has swallowed up ours, and the locomotives now run smoothly over its ashes. also departed. Non omnia grandior ætas quar fugiamus habet, says the wise goddess: you have not the best of it in all things, oh youngsters! the elderly man has his enviable memories, and not the least of them is the memory of a long journey in midspring or autumn on the outside of a stage-coach. Posterity may be shot, like a bullet, through a tube, by atmospheric pressure from Winchester to Newcastle: that is a fine result to have among our 1i. e. about 1830, when travel by the railway had but just begun. 2 V. page 576, n. 3. 3 A borough controlled by one man, which, as it were he carried in his pocket. There were many of them, and many important places like Birmingham that were unrepresented before the enactment of the Reform Bill in 1832. 4 V. page 686, n. 1. i. e. at that time it cost three shillings and six pence to send a letter. The older time does not hold all those things which we naturally avoid. The passage is from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the "wise goddess is Minerva. hopes; but the slow, old-fashioned way of getting from one end of our country to the other is the better thing to have in the memory. The tube-journey can never lend much of a picture and narrative; it is as barren as an exclamatory O! Whereas the happy outside passenger seated on the box from the dawn to the gloaming gathered enough stories of English life, enough of English labors in town and country, enough aspects of earth and sky, 10 to make episodes for a modern Odyssey. Suppose only that his journey took him through that central plain,' watered at one extremity by the Avon, at the other by the Trent. As blossomed, ruby-berried night-shade, of the wild convolvulus climbing and spreading in tendrilled strength till it made a great curtain of pale-green hearts and white trumpets, of 5 the many-tubed honeysuckle, which, in its most delicate fragrance, hid a charge more subtle and penetrating than beauty. Even if it were winter the hedgerows showed their coral, the scarlet haws, the deep-crimson hips, 10 with lingering brown leaves to make a resting place for the jewels of the hoar-frost. Such hedgerows were often as tall as the laborers' cottages dotted along the lanes, or clustered into a small hamlet, their little dingy windows the morning silvered the meadows with their 15 telling, like thick-filmed eyes, of nothing but the darkness within. The passenger on the coach-box, bowled along above such a hamlet, saw chiefly the roofs of it: probably it turned its back on the road, and seemed to lie away from everything but its own patch of earth and sky, away from the parish church by long fields and green lanes, away from all intercourse except that of tramps. If its face could be seen it was most likely dirty; but the dirt was Protestant dirt, and the big, bold, gin-breathing tramps were Protestant tramps. There was no sign of superstition near, no crucifix or image near to indicate a misguided reverence: the inhabitants were probably so free from superstition that they were in much less awe of the parson than of the overseer. Yet they were saved from the excesses of Protestantism by not knowing how to read, and by the absence of hand-looms and mines to be the pioneers of Dissent, they were kept safely in the via media11 of indifference, and could have registered themselves in the census by a big black mark as members of the Church of England. long lines of bushy willows marking the watercourses, or burnished the golden corn-ricks clustered near the long roofs of some midland homestead, he saw the full-uddered cows driven from their early pasture to the milking. 20 Perhaps it was the shepherd, head-servant of the farm, who drove them, his sheep-dog following with a heedless, unofficial air as of a beadle in undress. The shepherd with a slow and slouching walk, timed by the walk of 25 grazing beasts, moved aside, as if unwillingly, throwing out a monosyllabic hint to his cattle; his glance, accustomed to rest on things very near the earth, seemed to lift itself with difficulty to the coachman. Mail or stage coach 30 for him belonged to that mysterious distant system of things called "Gover'ment," which, whatever it might be, was no business of his, any more than the most outlying nebula or the coal-sacks of the southern hemisphere; his 35 solar system was the parish; the master's temper and the casualties of lambing-time were his region of storms. He cut his bread and bacon with his pocket-knife, and felt no bitterness except in the matter of pauper laborers and 40 the bad luck that sent contrarious seasons and the sheep-rot. He and his cows were soon left behind, and the homestead too, with its pond overhung by elder-trees, its untidy kitchengarden and cone-shaped yew-tree arbor. But 45 everywhere the bushy hedgerows wasted the land with their straggling beauty, shrouded the grassy borders of the pastures with cat-kined hazels, and tossed their long blackberry branches on the corn-fields. Perhaps they 50 and little gardens in front, all double-daisies or were white with May, or starred with palepink dog-roses; perhaps the urchins were already nutting among them, or gathering the plenteous crabs. It was worth the journey only to see those hedgerows, the liberal homes 55 of But there were trim cheerful villages, too, with a neat or handsome parsonage and grey church set in the midst; there was the pleasant tinkle of the blacksmith's anvil, the patient cart-horses waiting at his door; the basketmaker peeling his willow wands in the sunshine; the wheelwright putting the last touch to a blue cart with red wheels; here and there a cottage with bright, transparent windows showing pots full of blooming balsams or geraniums, dark wall-flowers; at the well clean and comely |