It is, however, extremely questionable whether it was the work of the royal lady,—many figures in it would indicate that its manufacture was of more recent date—be it as it may, it is a wondrous specimen of patient industry, and valuable for the representation of manners and customs of the times traced upon it.
Here we bid farewell to castle halls, to the ghosts of belted knights and hooded dames, to spinning wheels and tapestries, falcons, jennets, tournaments, and banquets, to the border’s bord upon the skirting of his lord’s domain, the serf’s log hut, the cowherd’s shed, and the prisoner’s dungeon,—the moat, once deep and flowing, now dried up, and teeming with cultivated trees and shrubs, and ornamental flowers, and sculptured figures,—we say adieu to the past history, written on the flints and mortar of the ramparts, that have braved the “battle and the breeze,” for near a thousand years,—and leave the soaring heights, whence we may look down upon the little city world below as on a stage, whose scenes and
slips are all laid bare beneath us in their skeleton machinery—dark lanes and lumbering alleys crowded round, and shut in out of sight, by facial frontings of glass, and brick, and plaster. Churches and heaped-up churchyards, bursting their walls with the accumulated corruption of centuries of generations,—distant villages and village spires,—and spots made sacred by the blood of hero-martyrs,—the winding river, once the stormy sea-passage for Norsemen and Saxon fleets—and take one final leave of the giant mound,—whose origin, whether first reared in Celtic ages far remote, a temple to the Sun, or a portion of the far-famed Icknild Way, that crosses our island like a belt from south-west to north-east, whether the architecture of Danes, Saxons, or Normans, is alike full of history and of poetry, and the well garnered store-house of many a rich and precious truth,—a monument of the past, ever present to our eye, as a landmark by which to measure the progress of our nation in religion, freedom, and social happiness.
CHAPTER IV.
the market-place.
Market-place.—Present aspect.—Visit to its stalls.—Norfolk Marketwomen.—Christmas Market.—Early History.—Extracts from old records.—Domestic scene of 13th century.—Early Crafts.—Guilds.—Medley of Historical Facts.—Extract from Diary of Dr. Edward Browne.—The City in Charles the Second’s reign.—Duke’s Palace Gardens.—Manufactures.—Wool.—Worsted.—Printing.—Caxton.—Specimens of Ancient Newspapers.—Blomefield.
The old city, so rich in antiquarian remains, can boast but slow progress in modern architectural developments; nor may it vie with many a younger town in its contrivances for the comfort and conveniences of those most useful members of society—the market-folks. No Grainger has arisen, to rear a monument to his own fame, and of his city’s prosperity, in the form of a shelter for this important class of the town and country populace. May be, the picturesque beauty of the Flemish scene, with its changeful canopy of “ethereal blue,” or neutral tint, toned down at whiles to hues of sombre gloom, beneath
the heavy shade of passing storms of hail and thunder, or more steady-falling rain and snow, has made the philanthropists of these reforming times conservatives all, on this one point, while model cottages, baths and washhouses, almshouses for freemen, and almost every other scheme ingenuity may devise to testify the care and thought bestowed upon the public weal, are rising up around. Let the cry of “Protection” once again be raised, not for the “distressed agriculturist” salesman, in his handsome corn exchange, but in favour of the “unprotected females” that sit unsheltered from the sun or storm, to vend the produce of the poultry-yards, the dairy-house, and market-garden.
But though no Temple to Commerce of the larder has been erected—a fact to be deplored in a utilitarian sense—it can never be denied that the good old seat of thriving trade can boast as fine a specimen of a genuine old market-place as may well be found in this day of competition and rivalry. Its motley assemblage of buildings, ranged round the open square, of all styles and all ages, jostling against one another, or here and there huddled together into all sorts of inconceivable groups of varied and fantastic outline; the young ones of to-day starting up with bold and saucy front, and verily squeezing out from among them their quaint, old-fashioned, gable-ended kinsfolk of older date, or sometimes creeping out, as it
were, from beneath them, content with shewing a modern face in some lower window, decked with all the new-fangled conceits of the latest fashions, and allowing their ancestors quiet resting-place aloft, where to moulder away into decay, are a chronology of history in themselves. Now and then, the fretted ironwork of some miniature parade, hanging midway in the air, and clinging to the perpendicular of masonry above some new plate-glassed and glittering front, suggests thoughts of marine villas, moonlight and sea views, and all those pretty poetical fancies associated with a lodging at some fashionable watering-place, and one wonders how they ever came to be transported thither, and for why? They that own them tell us that they have their use, in the city, where the love of pageantry is an heir-loom from generations long since passed away whose birthright was to minister to the gorgeous magnificence of fraternities and guilds, banquettings and processions, that read like fairy tales in this sober nineteenth century; and we would believe in their utility, were it no other than to afford a bird’s eye view of the busy scenes of homely traffic going on upon a market day, amongst the accumulated heaps of provisions for the daily wants of life.
The wants of life! Who amongst us knows the meaning of the words, the reality they hide? Who that has numbered among the wants of life, the gold