They were standing by a window on the top storey of the Bank, commanding a court-yard, where a sentry was on duty. To our friend’s amazement, the man dashed out of the room without speaking one word, suddenly appeared in the court-yard, performed a war-dance round this astonished soldier—who was a modest young recruit—made the shillelah flutter, like a wooden butterly, round his musket, round his bayonet, round his head, round his body, round his arms, inside and outside his legs, advanced and retired, rattled it all around him like a firework, looked up at the window, cried out with a high leap in the air, “Whooroo! Thry me!”—vanished—and never was beheld at the Bank again from that time forth.
Part XIX.
THE DOOM OF ENGLISH WILLS.
CATHEDRAL NUMBER ONE.
THERE are few things in this beautiful country of England, more picturesque to the eye, and agreeable to the fancy, than an old Cathedral town. Seen in the distance, rising from among cornfields, pastures, orchards, gardens, woods, the river, the bridge, the roofs of ancient houses, and haply the ruins of a castle or abbey, the venerable Cathedral spires, opposed for many hundred years to the winter wind and summer sun, tower, like a solemn historical presence, above the city, conveying to the rudest mind associations of interest with the dusky Past. On a nearer approach, this interest is heightened. Within the building, by the long perspectives of pillars and arches; by the earthy smell, preaching more eloquently than deans and chapters, of the common doom; by the praying figures of knights and ladies on the tombs, with little headless generations of sons and daughters kneeling around them; by the stained-glass windows, softening and mellowing the light; by the oaken carvings of the stalls, where the shorn monks told their beads; by the battered effigies of archbishops and bishops, found built up in the walls, when all the world had been unconscious, for centuries, of their blunt stone noses; by the mouldering chapter-room; the crypt, with its barred loopholes, letting in long gleams of slanting light from the Cloisters where the dead lie, and where the ivy, bred among the broken arches, twines about their graves; by the sound of the bells, high up in the massive tower; by the universal gravity, mystery, decay, and silence. Without, by the old environing Cathedral-close, with its red-brick houses and staid gardens; by the same stained glass, so dark on that side though so bright within; by the pavement of half-obliterated tombstones; by the long echoes of the visitors’ footsteps; by the wicket-gate, that seems to shut the moving world out of that retirement; by the grave rooks and jackdaws that have built their nests in steeple crevices, where the after-hum of the chimes reminds them, perhaps, of the wind among the boughs of lofty trees; by the ancient scraps of palace and gateway; by the ivy again, that has grown to be so thick and strong; by the oak, famous in all that part, which has struck its mighty root through the Bishop’s wall; by the Cathedral organ, whose sound fills all that space, and all the space it opens in the charmed imagination.
There may be flaws in this whole, if it be examined, too closely. It may not be improved by the contemplation of the shivering choristers on a winter morning, huddling on their gowns as they drowsily go to scamper through their work; by the drawling voice, without a heart, that drearily pursues the dull routine; by the avaricious functionary who lays aside the silver mace to take the silver pieces, and who races through the Show as if he were the hero of a sporting wager. Some uncomfortable doubts may, under special circumstances, obtrude themselves, of the practical Christianity of the head of some particular Foundation. He may be a brawler, or a proud man, or a sleek, or an artful. He may be usually silent, in the House of Lords when a Christian minister should speak, and may make a point of speaking when he should be silent. He may even be oblivious of the truth; a stickler by the letter, not the spirit, for his own purposes; a pettifogger in the supreme court of God’s high law, as there are pettifoggers in the lower courts administering the laws of mortal man. Disturbing recollections may arise, of a few isolated cases here and there, where country curates with small incomes and large families, poor gentlemen and scholars, are condemned to work, like blind horses in a mill, while others who do not work get their rightful pay; or of the inconsistency and indecorum of the Church being made a Robe and Candlestick question, while so many shining lights are hidden under bushels, and so many black-cloth coats are threadbare. The question may present itself, by remote chance, whether some shovel-hats be not made too much on the model of the banker’s shovel with which the gold is gathered on the counter, and too little in remembrance of that other kind of shovel that renders ashes unto ashes, and dust to dust. But, on the whole, the visitor will probably be content to say, “the time was, and this old Cathedral saw it, when these things were infinitely worse; they will be better; I will do all honor to the good that is in them, (which is much), and I will do what in me lies for the speedier amendment of the bad.”
In this conclusion, we think the visitor of the old Cathedral would be right. But, it is important to bring to the knowledge of all visitors of old Cathedrals in England, and of all who stay at home too, the most gigantic and least known abuse, attaching to those establishments. It is one which affects, not only the history and learning of the country, and that powerfully, but the legal rights and titles of all classes—of every man, woman, and child, rich and poor, great and small, born into this English portion of this breathing world.
For the purpose of the object on which we now enter, we have consulted a great mass of documents, and have had recourse to the personal experience of a gentleman who has made this kind of research his business. In every statement we make, we shall speak by the card, that equivocation may not undo us. The proof of every assertion, is ready to our hand.
The public have lately heard some trifling facts relative to Doctors’ Commons, through the medium of a young gentleman who was articled, by his aunt, to a proctor there. Our readers may possibly be prepared to hear that the Registry of the Diocese of Canterbury, in which are deposited all the wills proved in that large, rich, and populous district, is a job so enormous as to be almost incredible. That the Registrars, with deputies, and deputies’ deputies, are sinecurists of from sixteen to seventeen thousand pounds, to seven or eight thousand pounds, a-year; that the wills are not even kept secure from fire; that the real working men are miserably paid out of the rich plunder of the public; that the whole system is one of greed, corruption, and absurdity, from beginning to end. It is not, however, with the Registry of Canterbury that our business lies at present, but with the Registries and Peculiars of other dioceses, which are attached to the old Cathedrals throughout Great Britain, and of which our readers may be by no means prepared to hear what we shall have to tell.
Let us begin by setting forth from London on a little suppositious excursion—say with Mr. William Wallace, of the Middle Temple and the Royal Society of Antiquaries.
Mr. William Wallace, for the purpose of a literary pursuit in which he is engaged, involving the gratification of a taste he has for the history of old manners and old families, is desirous, at his own proper cost and charge, to search the registers in some Cathedral towns, for wills and records. Having heard whispers of corruption in these departments, and difficulty of search, Mr. Wallace arms himself with letters from the Bishops of those places. Putting money in his purse besides, he goes down, pretty confidently.