CHAPTER XXII.
HOLIDAYS OF THE LONDON POOR.
Day after day, week after week, month after month—throughout the budding spring—all the while the long-leaved summer reigns—when autumn is throwing her rainbow-hues over the forest, and winter comes forth, blowing his blue nails, and with the snow-flakes hanging on his hair—throughout all these changes he feels but cold and heat: can only tell when it is spring by hearing the cry of “primroses” without the walls; summer, by the hot pavement on which he treads; autumn, by the drawing in of the days and the chilly evenings; and winter, by the cold that seems to eat into his very bones. This is his life; these all the changes he knows, unless the rolling of the monotonous year is varied by the days he never left his sick-bed, or the weeks he spent in the hospital. The weary walls are ever the same; he has counted every fissure in the pavement; almost every morsel of gravel is familiar to his eye: he knows how many slabs are cracked and broken; at what hour he shall have gruel, when a change to potatoes. Meat-days are little feast-days; his spoon and porringer and plate his only comforters, until sleep comes and steeps his senses in forgetfulness. He knows when it is Sunday by receiving his clean shirt, and attending church.
Poverty in the country—however poor it may be, however low it may have fallen—is still surrounded with a few fragments of the Paradise which was once man’s possession. There we see the blue of the sky bending and resting upon the dim rim of the horizon, or losing itself in the twilight of other worlds. The bladed green of the refreshing earth lies below like a rich velvet carpet which God hath diapered with flowers of “all hues,” and thrown down for man to tread upon. The solemn avenue of stately trees rises like a tall temple, roofed in by his mighty hand; and as we gaze upward, we feel the heart worshipping Him unawares, and walk along surrounded with the awe of an old religion. Every rounded pebble beside which the stream plays and murmurs, sends up its tiny voice through the bubbling silver, and fills up the pause in the great anthem which Nature hymns in His praise. In the greenless and sunless streets of the busy city we see not this God-created life, this old world, which has lived on ever since a broad leaf waved; long perchance before Eve planted her white and naked foot on the rounded daisies that blowed in Eden, when the voice of God was heard “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis iii. 8).
The visions which St. John the Evangelist obtained of heaven were of a city whose golden gates were never closed; of a river clear as crystal, and trees bending beneath their load of fruit. Isaiah also saw there “the glory of Lebanon: ... the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of [his] sanctuary.” And in our own dreams of those immortal realms, we but catch dim glimpses of what is beautiful on earth—a peaceful country, green and flowery; and over the sunshine which sleeps thereon the shadows of angels are ever passing.
Those who never see the beauties which God hath scattered over the face of the earth, can scarcely imagine any thing of heaven, or dream of delights beyond the worship which they join in here below.
Our forefathers were a holiday-loving people. With what delight they set out to bring home May! Herrick has told us, in undying verse: they hung a green bough on every door, and suspended from window to window, in the centre of the streets, endless garlands of flowers. The dance under the May-pole was surely preferable to reeling out of a gin-shop; and the archers practising in the cool of a summer evening, under the trees in Moorfields, much better than a stifling skittle-ground, reeking with tobacco, gin, and beer.
If the country is a little farther from London than it was in those days, we are enabled to reach it as soon as they did, when linked to that space-cleaving thunder-bolt, a railway engine; and quick and far away as the flowers have flown, we can still overtake them in a few minutes.
We have great faith in these holidays of the poor; for whatsoever contributes to their happiness removes a portion of what is evil, and supplies the place with what is good. To make a poor weary heart happy and contented for only a few hours, is to lessen the evils of life—it is a rest in the desert, a spring throwing its “loosened silver” through the arid sand, at which they drink, and taking heart, go on their way again more cheerfully. A more selfish and depraved class live not, than those who only think of their own pleasure; who never dream of the delight there is to be found in making others happy.