But the early nineteenth century was as savage in some ways as the late seventeenth, which so delighted in despitefully using Nonconformists. The antiquarian collections in the castle, for instance, include a particularly ferocious instrument devised for the protection of the squires' property and for the maiming of poachers. It is a man-trap; one of those devilish contrivances which, actuated by powerful springs and furnished with sharp steel teeth, would, when accidentally trodden on by the poacher, snap down upon his leg with force sufficient to injure the bone and probably mutilate him for life. It was thus the landed interests protected their rabbits, hares and pheasants. The existence of this man-trap, together with the spring guns also used at the same time, is a reproach to the England of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, just as its preservation here as a curiosity is a certificate of the progress achieved in humanity since then.
The present prosperity of Colchester is reflected in many ways, but in none more strikingly than the condition of the castle, now a municipal property, and encircled with lawns and flower-beds, oddly at variance with its time-worn grandeur. The neatness of these surroundings and of the ornamental railings that fence off the enclosure is admirable from the everyday point of view, but the picturesque neglect and rural squalor of other years pointed the moral of the place and annotated its story, while present prettinesses blur the historic page. It is so everywhere throughout the land. When, a hundred years ago, Turner, Sandby, Prout and Girtin, our early water-colourists, roamed the country, making their picturesque sketches, they did not find themselves baulked by flower-beds, cursed by cast-iron fences, or requested not to walk on the grass. They had to pick their hazardous way through miry lanes, or adventure through the bottomless sloughs of farmyards. All these things were offensive to the wayfarer, but they generally meant picturesque compositions and exquisitely sketchable foregrounds. Nowadays the conscientious illustrator, unwilling to picturesquely exaggerate, and yet accursed with cast-iron railings new from Birmingham last week, is in a quandary.
COLCHESTER CASTLE.
The once forlorn condition of Colchester Castle doubtless originated in 1726, when its then owner, Sir Isaac Rebow, left it by will to a detested grandson, on whom he thus conferred a useless encumbrance, a more exasperating bequest than even the proverbial cutting off with a shilling.
A relic of those old days of picturesque neglect is found in the book of an auctioneer, who wrote an account of his "Professional Travels in England in the first half of the Nineteenth Century," modestly veiling his identity, and simply calling himself on his title-page, "An Auctioneer." Part One of his work was issued in 1843, but Part Two is yet to come, and as his first instalment shows little merit, the world can well afford to forego the second.
Coming to the castle, he muses over its ruins, and weeps that cabbages and coriander employ the attention of the Colchester people, rather than the care of ancient fortresses. To him, thus contemplating "the sad remains of so many interesting scenes," enters from an adjoining farm one whom he is pleased to term "an Aborigine." By this he obviously names an Essex farm-labourer. It is an affectation, but he might have done worse. He might have called him, seeing that Colchester is a place of oysters, a "native," in inverted commas, evidences of jocular intent, which would have been dreadful.
"Ah! sir," says the Aborigine, "it was cruel work when them great Barons, as they call 'em, lived here."
"True, my friend," replies the Auctioneer, "but it's a pity to see hogs and donkeys depasturing in their courts and gardens, and grubbing and kicking down their halls and chapels."
"Lord! your honour," rejoins the son of the soil, "what's the use on 'em in these days? I'd sooner see an acre of these 'ere swedes any day, than them there towers and dungeons. Them swedes afore you 'ool carry a score o' fine wethers any month in the year, and plaze ye to look at 'em, but as for them flint walls, you may look at 'em for ever and a day 'fore you find enough o' green for a garnish"; which was indeed a practical rural way of looking at things.