Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 1/Ana (November 5, 1859)
ANA.
Scotch to thk Back-bone. — The terrace behind Fife House, Whitehall, which looks upon the Thames, is made entirely of gravel brought up by sea from Banffshire; the old Earl of Fife, when he was made a British peer some century ago, having vowed that if he was forced to live in London half the year, at all events he would always walk on Scottish soil.
A Word about Hungerford Market. — Our readers probably know that Hungerford Market derives its name, in some way or other, from a member of the Hungerford family. They may not, however, be aware that Sir Edward Hungerford, the worthy knight who built and endowed Hungerford Market, lived in three centuries, having been bom in 1596, and having died in 1711, at the great age of 115 years. As the market stands upon the site of the old town-house of the family, we are at liberty to imagine that the Thames smelt purer and ran with a more silvery and salubrious stream in the days of good old Sir Edward than in the present age. The ancient and noble family of Hungerford at one time held very large possessions in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, the principal seat and residence being at Farley Castle, Wilts, not far from Bath.
Cornwallis and Pitt on the Duke of Wellington. — The opinion of Cornwallis on the Duke of Wellington is expressed in a letter to Sir John Shore (Cornwallis Correspondence), so early as June 10th, 1796. “Dear Sir, — I beg leave to introduce to you Colonel Wesley, who is lieutenant-colonel of my regiment. He is a sensible man, and a good officer; and will, I have no doubt, conduct himself in a manner to merit your approbation. ” The Marquis Wellesley, in a letter addressed to the late John Wilson Croker, and which was privately printed, details an account of his last interview with Pitt, then dying at Putney Hill, in which Pitt said of his brother Arthur, “I never met any military officer with whom it was so satisfactory to converse. He states eveiy difficulty before he undertakes any service, but none after he has undertaken it.” The Marquis, coming away from Pitt’s death-bed, met Colonel Shawe in the Park, and told him, in addition to the statements in this letter, that Pitt congratulated himself on now having found a General to pit against Napoleon Bonaparte.
AN AMERICAN APPLE FROLIC.
The stranger in New England is surprised not only by the gravity of its people, and the dissociation of women from such amusements as they have, but also by the absence of those festivals which are so common in other lands. This singularity deserves analysis; for which purpose it will be necessary to recur to the national antecedents. The Church of Rome arranges her calendar so as to associate devotional feeling with the change of seasons — the hope of seed-time, joy of harvest, beauty of summer, repose of winter — profiting by their spiritual symbolisation, whereof man has an instinctive, though vague, apprehension, as is manifested in Polytheistic religions. These festivals, wisely retained by England after the Reformation, were distasteful to the Puritan fathers of New England, from their pagan origin, as enjoined by prelatical authority, and because, according to their austere conception, mirth was unseemly and displeasing to heaven! Henoe these semi -ancestors interdicted the festivals of their ancestral land, as heathenish and papistical; and consequently, between the influence of a dark Manichean creed and legislative enactments, cheerfulness was dissociated from religion and the daily life of men; imaginative delights were termed "carnal,” and a gloom settled on the land. Now, as nature cannot be violently repressed in her legitimate action without positive injury, these innocent recreations being interdicted, the New Englander found in less praiseworthy pursuits gratification for his desire of emotion. The later Evangel of Poor Richard, whereof the philosopher Franklin was the apostle, being enunciated, the pursuit of gain was consecrated as the prime object of life to an immortal being, and the sordid maxims of a penurious huxter were engrafted on the public policy of a great nation.
This exterminated many of the noblest impulses, and the imaginative love of beauty, branded as ungodly by the Puritans, was now regarded as unprofitable in a pecuniary light, and recreations were condemned wholesale as entailing loss of time. The