“Hangman’s surgery”
It is to the want of such stern yet wholesome monitors we are doubtless to attribute the decay of the national character. We are sunk in effeminacy, withered by the fond ministerings of science. The road of life—which, by its ruggedness, was wont to try the sinews of our Elizabethan ancestors—we, their degenerate children, have spread as with a carpet, and hung the walls around us with radiant tapestry. The veriest household drudge of our time is a Sardanapalus compared to the lackey of the Virgin Queen. The tatterdemalion, who lives on highway alms, may look down upon the beggar of Elizabeth; for the mendicant of Victoria may, with his prayed-for pence, purchase luxuries unknown to the Dives of former days.
And what—if we listen to complaining patriotism—what is the evil born of this? A loss of moral energy; a wasting away of national fibre. Believe this melancholy philosophy, and national weakness came in (a moral moth in the commodity) with silk stockings. Ere then was the bearing of man more majestic in the eyes of angels! For then was the sword the type of station, a gentleman no more appearing abroad without his rapier than a wasp without its sting. Human life could not but lose part of its dignity with its cold steel. What a fine comment on the charity, the gentleness, the humanity of his fellow-men, did every gentleman wear at his side! He was, in a manner, his own law-maker, his own executioner. In the judgment of later philosophy, we are prone to believe that the said gentlemen may appear, at the best, ferocious simpletons—creatures swaggering “between heaven and earth,” with their hands upon their hilts, ready and yearning for a thrust at those who took the wall of their gentility. Ha! those, indeed, were the good old days! And then came a whining, curd-complexioned benevolence, and in progress of time, its thin, white, womanly fingers unbuckled the sword-belt of the bully, and organised police. Sword-makers were bankrupt, and human nature lost a grace!
Thus, it appears, the world has been from age to age declining in virtue, and can only escape the very profound of iniquity by a speedy dissolution. Every half dozen years or so, a prophet growls from a cellar, or cries from the altitude of a garret, the advent of the last day. An earthquake, or some other convulsion (the particulars of which are only vouchsafed to the prophet) is to destroy the earth or London at least; whereupon old gentlemen remove to Gravesend, and careful housewives take stock of their plate. Now, every such prophecy, instead of bewildering honest people with all sorts of fears, and all sorts of anxieties for their personal property, ought to make them sing thanksgiving songs for the promised blessing. It being the creed of these people that the world gets worse and worse, they would at least have the comfort to know that they had seen the last of its wickedness. For a moment, reader, we will suppose you one of these. Consider, upon your own faith, what a terrible wretch will necessarily be your great-great-great-great-great-grandson! Well, would it not be satisfaction to you that this dragon (we believe dragons are oviparous) should be crushed in the egg of the future? How would you like your own flesh and blood inevitably changed by the course of time into the anatomy of something very like a demon? You are bad enough as you are; that dismal truth your own humility preaches to you; to say nothing of the plain speaking of your neighbours. No; out of pure love and pity for humanity, you ought to wish all the world to stop with your own pulse. It is hard enough now, even for the best of us, to keep on the respectable side of the statutes; but, with the growing wickedness of the world, we should like to know what sort of metal will the laws be made of. The great social link must inevitably be a fetter.
How often have we stood, with the unseen tears in our eyes, watching the nobility of the land, in nobility’s best bib and tucker, winding in golden line to the drawing-room of Queen Victoria! Alas! degenerate dukes—faded duchesses. Marquises fallen upon evil times—marchionesses very dim indeed! What are you to the nobility of Elizabeth? What to the grandees of those merry days, the golden shadow of which is brightness itself to the cold, grey glimmering of the present? We have yet one thought to comfort us; and that is, a half belief that the court of Elizabeth was held as nothing to all courts preceding; and so back, until Englishmen mourned over the abomination of cloaks and vests, sorrowing for those golden days, those good old times of the painted Britons! Great was the virtue abounding in woad; grievous the wilful iniquity woven in broad-cloth.
Queen Elizabeth died—fair, regal bud!—in the sweetness of virginity; and though the sun (by some despairing effort) managed to rise the next morning, it has never been wholly itself since. She died, and was brought to Whitehall, to the great calamity of the fish then swimming in the river; for a poet of the day, quoted by Camden, has eternised the evil that in the hour fell upon Thames flounders:—
“The Queene was brought by water to Whitehall;
At every stroke the oares teares let fall;
More clung about the barge; fish under water
Wept out their eyes of pearle, and swame blinde after,