ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE.

THE changes that are constantly going forward in the external aspects of society require the lapse of a generation or two to make a due impression upon our senses and our reason. One form of life so imperceptibly slides into another, that we observe no striking contrasts till we look back from our age to our youth, or study, with a purpose of comparison, the pictures which the novelists or dramatists of one period have painted, and then turn to the same occasional records of another period, by the same class of true historians. Thus we see distinctly that Defoe lived in a condition of society very different from that in which Fielding lived, and that Smollett was describing scenes and characters which could never have offered themselves to the observation of Dickens. It is the same with the painters. Hogarth's men and women are essentially unlike those of Gillray, and Gillray's notabilities never to be confounded with those of Doyle or Leech. As a boy, I was familiar with Hogarth. But as pictures of a life that was patent to me, how could I comprehend the cassocked parson on his lean horse, and his daughter alighted from the York Waggon? * A fine lady beating hemp in Bridewell was equally incomprehensible.† I had never seen such a smart industrious apprentice working at a hand-loom as Hogarth showed me; nor such an idle one, gambling with blackguards upon a tombstone, while sober people were going to church. Never beheld I a little boy in a laced cocked-hat, nor saw a bonfire in the middle of the streets on a rejoicing-night.§ Grenadiers wore other caps than I

*Harlot's Progress, plate 1.
Evening.

+ Harlot's Progress, plate 4.
§ Night.

observed in The March to Finchley;' and in the stagecoach of my early days there was no literal basket hung behind, in which sat an old woman smoking a pipe.* As a painter of living manners Hogarth was obsolete in the first decade of this century. But how priceless as a painter of domestic history!

I look back upon my native town as I remember it as a schoolboy. How changed is it in its everyday life-in a hundred minute changes that are not peculiar to my birthplace, but which belong to the universal revolutions of fifty years! How obsolete are many of the familiar things that seemed a part of my early being! A mere list of them would suggest many thoughts not unprofitable to those who know that the progress of a generation is to be read in other memorialists than Hansard.

Windsor was an ill-built town-a patchwork town of encroachments upon the castle, and of lath and plaster tenements run up cheaply upon collegiate and corporate leaseholds. There was nothing ancient in the town, except the church, which was swept away some thirty years ago. 'Mine host of the Garter' had no antique hostelry; and 'Herne's Oak' was a very apocryphal relic. Inns there were, with historical signs; but the Royal Oak' of Charles II., The Queen's Head' of Anne, and The Duke's Head' of the Culloden executioner, were only antique in premature decay. The usual neglect of all country towns clung to Windsor-filthy gutters and unswept causeways.

6

My native town was a Corporate Borough. The Corporation was no abstract authority. It was on all possible occasions visible to the public eye, in solemn processions of red gowns and blue, with the mace-bearer in the front,

*Country Inn-yard.

+ In Windsor, as it was,' I have attempted a picture of the Court-Windsor -the Castle. The present paper has reference solely to the Borough. Windsor, as I knew it as a youth, was a singular mixture of the poetical and the prosaic of the poetical in its antiquities and its regalities of the prosaic in its mean modern town and its very narrow society.

Of its ancient Black Ditches I have spoken elsewhere, p. 417.

and the beadle in the rear. The Corporation marched to church in toged state; and three times a year it astonished the children by this array of grandeur, when it proclaimed a gingerbread fair at street corners, and not a hot spice-nut could be sold till the mace-bearer had shouted 'Oh yes!' I fear all this glory is departed from the land. Elective corporators now go to church in frock coats; and the charter of Charles II., which bestowed upon the Borough three fairs and two market-days, and regulated the buyers and sellers, is held to be as little worth preservation as the edict of Jack Cade that 'seven halfpenny loaves should be sold for a penny.'

The market-bell! Is that rung now? I fear not. There was something deeply impressive in that bell. It spoke loudly of the majesty of the law, which then aspired to regulate some domestic as well as all foreign commerce. The stalls were duly set. The butchers had hung up their joints; the farmer's wife had spread her fowls and her butter upon a white cloth; onions and apples stood temptingly on the pavement side. But not an atom could be sold till the market-bell had rung.

6

There were laws then against 'forestalling,' with cognate crimes termed 'badgering,' 'regrating,' engrossing.' But in the seventh and eighth years of Queen Victoria such statutes were repealed, as being 'made in hinderance and in restraint of trade.' What a solemn thing it appeared to my juvenile understanding to be assured that it was unlawful even to handle a goose till the bell said, 'you may bargain!' There was a board exhibited, which told of heavy penalties, if early housewives were disobedient to the mandates of that bell, and dared to chaffer before other housewives were awake. I used to ponder upon the wisdom of our ancestors, that so regulated the common affairs of life; and forbade the lieges to buy and sell in the same market, which was 'regrating;' or to buy wholesale at all, which was engrossing;' or to buy before the whole world was awake and ready to buy, which was forestalling.' That market-bell is silent for ever, even though Black

stone proclaimed how wise were the laws of which it was the voice.

And then there was the Pie-Powder Court, upon the evening of the fair. In the Town Hall sat the justices in state till midnight. There was a supper, no doubt; but they sat there for the public good, that offenders might be summarily dealt with before the dust of the feet-pied poudre -was shaken off. That was the interpretation which the learned imparted to me-the official etymology, which showed what a noble instrument was the law, when mayor and aldermen kept out of their beds to make offence and punishment go together. A truer etymology shows that the Pie-Powder Court was the court to determine disputes between pedlar and pedlar, the pied puldreux, of Scotland as well as England. The dustifoot' himself is nearly gone; and the court of the 'dustifoot' is gone before him. Yet it was an inoffensive court. Like Chancery it did little; but unlike Chancery it charged little.

The shops of the Borough were not in those days very brilliant. The window-panes were small; and the show in the windows not greatly attractive. There were no tempting tickets of this chaste article only 14s. 10d.' Customers went to the shop for what they wanted, and seldom disputed the price if they had an account. Everybody had an account; for there was a very queer and limited currency. A guinea was a rarity; and so was a shilling with a visible King's head. The sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns. were thin pieces of metal, not always silver, which passed rather as counters than as money. Intrinsically, when good, they were worth about half their nominal amount. How has my boyish heart rejoiced at the useless gift of a pretty shilling,—that is, a shilling with a perfect obverse and reverse! I would put such a rarity to my small store of handsome half-crowns of the first and second Georges, which we used to call 'pocket-pieces,' and gaze at them as sacred things, which it would be profanation to employ as money. It is difficult to look back upon such a state of affairs and comprehend how the business of life went on. Cautious

tradesmen would rather book' your purchases than take your doubtful silver; and there was a sort of Lynch law amongst some, that when a bad coin was tendered, consciously or unconsciously, the hammer and nail were ready to pin the offensive thing to the deal counter, as a terror to all evil-doers. Payments of some amount were often made in copper penny-pieces. A Bank of England one-pound note was a suspected thing, for forgeries were by no means uncommon, even though periodical hangings of the forgers and utterers were holiday spectacles throughout the land. The dirty local notes were the one currency-though sometimes a bank stopped payment. The country banker would also receive very small sums upon interest-for there were no Savings'-banks; and then, when a crash came, great and wide-spreading was the misery. The dirty one-pound note is gone; and so is the worn-out money. No school-boy now values a new shilling, except as an exchanger; and if his grandmother were to give him a pocket-piece,' it would not remain long in his pocket.

My native town, I am afraid, did not contain a very industrious population. It had no manufactures except that of Ale-Windsor Soap had retired to Staines. Few of the community were wealthy, but most of them took life easily, and enjoyed themselves with a good deal of heartiness in their own fashion. There was always some gala to relieve the monotony of the provincial existence—a race, a revel, a review. I think the bells were always ringing. There were about twenty royal birthdays in a year-and the bells pealed out their triple bob-majors' from morn to dewy eve. On all these rejoicing days there were what we called illuminations. A ragged boy or two would carry about illumination candlesticks-such a candlestick being a lump of clay with a hole in it-and these elegant light-bearers were stuck in the windows, and their thin candles flamed away for an hour or so, till they guttered out. The illumination, however, was useful as well as pleasant, for the few public lamps gave small light; and then on the gala nights the maid with a lantern, who ordinarily went before her