North," and says that it also is famous for its "If not for God's, for Mr Whateley's sake, Sir William Davenant, in his comedy The Wits, in speaking of a certain lady, says: 'She is more devout The following lines of Thomas Jordan, in his Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie, may have had some reference to the doings already mentioned: "They pluckt communion-tables down, They set up Cromwell and his heir- Most persons who have a feeling for the literature of their early years, will lament the destruction of the cross of Banbury, the locality of the famous nursery rhyme : 'Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, To see a black lady ride on a white horse, SEPTEMBER 6. St Pambo of Nitria, abbot, 385. St Macculindus, bishop of Lusk, 497. St Eleutherius, abbot, about 585. St Bega or Bees, virgin, 7th century. Born-Dr Robert Whytt, eminent medical writer, 1714, Edinburgh. Died.-Pope John XIII., 972; Jean Baptiste Colbert, celebrated minister of finance to Louis XIV., 1683; Bishop Edmund Gibson, 1748, Bath; Sir John Fielding, notable police magistrate, 1780, Brompton, London; George Alexander Stevens, song and burlesque writer, 1784; Louis Peter Anquetil, historical writer, 1808; Dr Vicesimus Knox, miscellaneous writer, 1821, Tunbridge; John Bird Sumner, archbishop of Canterbury, author of Records of Creation, and other works, 1862. THE STRATFORD JUBILEE. THE STRATFORD JUBILEE, OR SHAKSPEARE On Wednesday, the 6th of September 1769, and two following days, Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, witnessed a succession of festivities such as seldom befall in an English country town. The object of these remarkable doings was the commemoration of the great Shakspeare, whose remains, upwards of a hundred and fifty years before, had been deposited in the chancel of the parish church of this his native place. To the scarcely less famous exponent of the national dramatist, the celebrated actor, David Garrick, belongs the credit, such as it is, of having devised this festive ceremonial, which, from the novelty as well as popularity of the scheme, created an immense sensation throughout the kingdom. The idea had been suggested to him by a request conveyed from the corporation of Stratford, that he would honour them by becoming a burgess, and accepting of the freedom of the town. Having intimated his willingness to do so, the freedom of the borough was, in May of this year, presented to him in an elegant box, made out of the famous mulberry-tree which Shakspeare himself had planted, but which, a short time previously, had been cut down by its proprietor, a splenetic clergyman, who, in addition to this act of Vandalism, had also pulled down the house in which Shakspeare lived. Vanity and enthusiasm alike stimulating Garrick, he now set himself arduously to work in the carrying out of the idea which he had conceived, and in its accomplishment he was aided by the zealous co-operation both of the authorities of the town of Stratford, and the most influential personages in point of rank and distinction in the realm. The most extensive preparations were made for the proper celebration of the festival; crowds of persons from all parts of England pressed forward to be present on the occasion, and the eventful morning at length dawned. The newspapers and magazines of the day have detailed at considerable length the events which took place, and from these we have compiled the following narrative. On the morning of Wednesday, at five o'clock, the proceedings were inaugurated by a serenade performed through the streets by a band of musicians and singers from Drury Lane Theatre. Several guns were then fired, and the magistrates assembled about eight o'clock in one of the principal streets. A public breakfast was prepared in the new town-hall at nine, presided over by Mr Garrick as steward, who, previous to the reception of the general company, was formally waited on by the mayor and corporation of Stratford, and presented with a medallion of Shakspeare, carved on a piece of the famous mulberry-tree, and richly set in gold. At breakfast, favours in honour of the great dramatist were universally worn by ladies as well as gentlemen, and the assemblage numbered the most distinguished of the aristocracy amid its guests. This entertainment having been concluded, the company proceeded to the church, where the oratorio of Judith was performed under the superintendence of Dr Arne. A procession, with music, led by Mr Garrick, was then formed from the church to the amphitheatre, a wooden building For the wit of all wits, was a Warwickshire wit. Old Ben, Thomas Otway, John Dryden, And half a score more we take pride in, Of famous Will Congreve we boast too the skill, But the Will of all Wills, was a Warwickshire Will, Warwickshire Will, Matchless still, For the Will of all Wills, was a Warwickshire Will. Our Shakspeare compared is to no man, Nor Frenchman, nor Grecian, nor Roman, Their swans are all geese, to the Avon's sweet swan, And the man of all men, was a Warwickshire man, Warwickshire man, Avon's swan, And the man of all men, was a Warwickshire man. As ven'son is very inviting, To steal it our bard took delight in, To make his friends merry, he never was lag, For the wag of all wags, was a Warwickshire wag, Warwickshire wag, Ever brag, For the wag of all wags, was a Warwickshire wag. There never was seen such a creature, Of all she was worth he robbed Nature; He took all her smiles, and he took all her grief, And the thief of all thieves, was a Warwickshire thief, Warwickshire thief, He's the chief, For the thief of all thieves, was a Warwickshire thief. A grand ball commenced in the amphitheatre in the evening, and was kept up till three o'clock next morning. In front of the building, an ambitious transparency was exhibited, representing Time leading Shakspeare to immortality, with Tragedy on one side, and Comedy on the other. A general illumination took place in the town, along with a brilliant display of fireworks, under the management of Mr Angelo. The next morning was ushered in like the former by firing of cannon, serenading, and ringing of bells. A public breakfast was again served in the town-hall, and at eleven o'clock the company repaired to the amphitheatre, to hear performed Garrick's Shakspeare Ode, which he had composed for the dedication of the town-hall, and placing there a statue of the great bard presented by Garrick to the corporation. We quote the grandiloquent language of Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, regarding this production. The performance of the Dedication Ode was noble and affecting: it was like an exhibition in Athens or Rome. The whole audience were fixed in the most earnest attention; and I do believe, that if one had attempted to disturb the performance, he would have been in danger of his life. Garrick, in the front of the orchestra, filled with the first musicians of the nation, with Dr Arne at their head, and inspired with an awful elevation of soul, while he looked from time to time at the venerable statue of Shakspeare, appeared more than himself. While he repeated the ode, and saw the various passions and feelings which it contains fully transfused into all around him, he seemed in ecstasy, and gave us the idea of a mortal transformed into a demigod, as we read in the pagan mythology.' The statue of Shakspeare, above referred to, was raised in a conspicuous position above the water. In the evening another grand ball took place in the town-hall, in which the graceful minuet-dancing of Mrs Garrick, who in her youth had been a distinguished Terpsichorean performer on the London stage, won the highest encomiums. The assembly broke up at four o'clock on Saturday morning, and so ended the Stratford jubilee. As might have been expected, this festive celebration did not escape satire and animadversion, both before and after the event; the jealousy felt against its author, Garrick, being sufficient to call forth many pungent attacks. In the Devil on Two Sticks, Foote introduced the following sarcastic description: A jubilee, as it hath lately appeared, is a public invitation, circulated and urged by puffing, to go post without horses, to an obscure borough without representatives, governed by a mayor and aldermen who are no magistrates, to celebrate a great poet, whose own works have made him immortal, by an ode without poetry, music without melody, dinners without victuals, and lodgings without beds; a masquerade where half the people appeared barefaced, a horse-race up to the knees in water, fireworks extinguished as soon as they were lighted, and a gingerbread amphitheatre, which, like a house of cards, tumbled to pieces as soon as it was finished.' Other squibs appeared in the form of parodies and epigrams; and also a farce, entitled The Stratford Jubilee, intended to have been performed at Foote's theatre, in the Haymarket, but which, though printed and published, seems to have never been placed on the boards. Strictures of a different description were passed on the whole festival by certain of the inhabitants of Stratford, who imputed the violent rains which fell during the jubilee to the judgment of Heaven on such impious demonstrations. This circumstance may recall to some of our readers the worthy minister of Leith, recorded by Hugh Miller in his Schools and Schoolmasters, who ascribed the great fire in Edinburgh in 1824, to the Musical Festival which had a short time previously been celebrated there ! In the month of October following the Stratford jubilee, the Shakspeare pageant devised by Garrick, but the representation of which had been prevented by the unfavourable weather, was brought out by him with great magnificence and success at Drury Lane Theatre, and had a run of nearly a hundred nights. On the 6th of September in the ensuing year, the anniversary of the ceremonial was celebrated at Stratford with great festivity; but the custom seems afterwards to have fallen into desuetude, and no further public commemoration of our great national poet was attempted in the place of his birth for upwards of fifty years. At last, in 1824, the Shakspeare Club was established, and an annual celebration in his honour appointed to be held on the 23d of April, the (erroneously) assumed day of his birth, and which we know, upon good evidence, to have been that of his death. Under the auspices of this association, a splendid gala, after the manner of the jubilee of 1769, was conducted in Stratford, on 23d April 1827 and two following days. A similarly magnificent commemoration took place in 1830, when, among other festive ceremonies, an ode, written for the occasion by Mr Alaric A. Watts, was recited, and a series of *See Book of Days, i. 543. ARTHUR YOUNG. dramatic performances exhibited, in which the principal characters were sustained by Mr Charles Kean. At the celebration in 1836, an oration was delivered in the theatre by Mr George Jones, the American tragedian, and in 1837 by Mr Sheridan Knowles. A memorial theatre, including a library and picture gallery, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1877, has been erected at Stratford for the occasional celebration of the poet's birthday, and for the representation of his plays. The Shakspeare jubilee was the first of those commemorative festivals which have since become so familiar to all of us. In 1785, a grand musical celebration took place in Westminster Abbey in honour of Handel. Centenary festivities were performed in nearly every part of the world, in honour of Robert Burns, in January 1859. Although the 15th August was Sir Walter Scott's real birthday, for various reasons his centenary was celebrated on 9th August 1871, with great enthusiasm in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Dumfries. SEPTEMBER 7. St Regina or Reine, virgin and martyr, 3d century. St Evurtius, bishop of Orleans, confessor, about 340. St Grimonia or Germana, virgin and martyr. St Eunan, first bishop of Raphoe, in Ireland. St Cloud, confessor, 560. St Madelberte, virgin, about 705. Saints Alchmund and Tilberht, confessors, 8th century. Born.-Queen Elizabeth of England, 1533, Greenwich; Thomas Erpenius, celebrated orientalist, 1584, Gorcum, Holland; Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, great commander, 1621, Paris; George Louis, Count de Buffon, distinguished naturalist, 1707, Montbard, Bur gundy; Dr Samuel Johnson, lexicographer and author, 1709, Lichfield; Arthur Young, agricultural writer, 1741. Died.-Emperor Frederick IV. of Germany, 1493, Vienna; Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, historical writer, 1644, Rome; Captain Porteous, murdered by the Edinburgh mob, 1736; Dr John Armstrong, author of The Art of Preserving Health, 1779, London; Leonard Euler, eminent mathematician, 1783, St Petersburg; Mrs Hannah More, religious and moral writer, 1833, Clifton. ARTHUR YOUNG. The most popular and prolific of writers on rural affairs was Arthur Young. No great discovery or improvement in agriculture bears his name: his merit consists in the fact, that he was an agitator, He had a passion for novelties, and such was the vigour of his mind, that he succeeded in affecting the most stolid and conservative of classes with something of his own enthusiasm. He set landlords thinking, enticed and drove them into experiments, and persuaded farmers everywhere to break from the dull routine of centuries. More than any man, England owes to Arthur Young that impulse which, within the last hundred years, has transformed her wastes into rich pastures and fruitful fields, and multiplied the produce of her harvests by many fold. Young was the son of a Suffolk clergyman, and was born in 1741. He was apprenticed to a merchant in Lynn, but an inordinate taste for reading and scribbling interfered sadly with his ARTHUR YOUNG. SEPTEMBER 7. mercantile progress. At the age of seventeen, he wrote a pamphlet on the war against the French in America, for which a publisher gave him ten pounds' worth of books. He next started a periodical, called the Universal Museum, which, by the advice of Dr Johnson, he discontinued at the sixth number. Four novels, about the same time, flowed from his facile pen. At his father's death, in 1769, he wished to enter the army, but at his mother's entreaty refrained, and turned farmer instead, without any practical knowledge of husbandry, and, as he afterwards confessed, with his head bursting with wild notions of improvements. Farming supplied matter and direction for his literary activity, and in 1770 he published, in two thick volumes quarto, A Course of Experimental Agriculture, containing an exact Register of the Business transacted during five years on near 300 acres of various Soils. A few years before, he had printed A Tour through the Southern Counties of England, which proved so popular that he was led to undertake similar surveys in the east, west, and north, and Ireland. These tours excited the liveliest interest in all connected with agriculture: soils, methods of culture, crops, farm-buildings, cattle, plantations, roads, were all discussed in a most vivacious style, and praised or blamed with bluff honesty. Between 1766 and 1775, he relates that he realised £3000 by his agricultural writings, a large sum for works of that order in those times. His own farming was far from profitable, and the terms in which he describes a hundred acres he rented in Hertfordshire, may be taken as a fair specimen of his outspoken manner: 'I know not what epithet to give this soil; sterility falls short of the idea; a hungry vitriolic gravel-I occupied for nine years the jaws of a wolf. A nabob's fortune would sink in the attempt to raise good arable crops in such a country: my experience and knowledge had increased from travelling and practice; but all was lost when exerted on such a spot. I hardly wonder at a losing account, after fate had fixed me on land calculated to swallow, without return, all that folly or imprudence could bestow upon it.' Finding that his income was barely sufficient to meet his expenditure, he engaged to report the parliamentary debates for the Morning Post. This he continued to perform for several years; and after the labours of the week, he walked every Saturday evening to his wretched farm, a distance of seventeen miles from London, from which he as regularly returned every Monday morning. This was the most anxious and laborious part of his life. I worked,' he writes, 'like a coal-heaver, though without his reward.' In 1784, he commenced a periodical work under the title of the Annals of Agriculture, which he continued through forty-five volumes. He admitted no papers unless signed by the author, a regulation which added alike to the interest and authority of the publication. The rule was relaxed, however, in the case of the king, George III., who contributed to the seventh volume a description of the farm of Mr Ducket at Petersham, under the signature of 'Ralph Robinson of Windsor.' Young's English Tours possess considerable historic interest, which will increase with the lapse of years; but their present, and probably future, value in that respect is thrown into the shade by his Agricultural Survey of France, made 73 OLD SAYINGS AS TO CLOTHES. Young was the first who opened their eyes to the on horseback, in 1788. The French admit that very low condition of their husbandry, but his peasantry, their poverty and hardships, are of observations on the social and political state of the peculiar and unique importance, as made on the very verge of the revolution; and no student of the circumstances which led up to that tremendous catastrophe, will ever neglect Arthur Young's Survey. In his French travel he displays a liberal and reforming spirit, but the excesses and atrocities and a host of others, into Toryism, and a pamphlet of the revolutionists drove Young, as it did Burke he published in 1793, entitled The Example of France a Warning to Britain, had a great sale, and attests the depth of his horror and disgust. The fame of Young as an agriculturist was the tokens of admiration he received. The French greater even abroad than at home, and many were Directory, in 1801, ordered the translation of all his agricultural writings, and in twenty volumes they were published in Paris, under the title of Le Cultivateur Anglais. The Empress Catherine sent three young Russians to be instructed by him, and made him the present of a gold snuff-box, with rich ermine cloaks for his wife and daughter. His son, too, was employed by the Czar Alexander, in 1805, to make an agricultural survey around Moscow, and was rewarded with a sum which enabled him to purchase an estate of 10,000 acres of very fertile land in the Crimea, where he settled. Pupils flocked to Arthur Young from all parts of the world. The Duke of Bedford one morning, at his breakfast-table, counted representatives from France, Poland, Austria, Russia, Italy, Portugal, and America. Sir John Sinclair, in 1793, persuaded the ment to establish a Board of Agriculture, of which governYoung was appointed secretary, with a free house and a salary of £400 a year. It was a post for which he was admirably suited, and was the means of preserving him from a very hazardous speculation-a tract of Yorkshire moorland he purposed cultivating. What a change in the destination of a man's life!' he exclaims. Instead of entering, as I proposed, the solitary lord of 4000 acres, in the keen atmosphere of lofty rocks and mountain torrents, with a little creation rising gradually around me, making the desert smile with cultivation, and grouse give way to industrious population, active and energetic, though remote and tranquil, and every instant of my existence making two blades of grass to grow where not one was found before-behold me at a desk in the fog, the smoke, the din of Whitehall!' About 1808, his sight grew dim, terminating in blindness, but his busy career did not close until the 12th of April 1820, when he had nearly reached his eightieth year. OLD SAYINGS AS TO CLOTHES. It is lucky to put on any article of dress, particularly stockings, inside out: but if you wish the omen to portion of your attire in that condition, till the hold good, you must continue to wear the reversed bedtime or cleaning yourself. regular time comes for putting it off-that is, either If you set it right, you will change the luck.' It will be of no use to put on anything with the wrong side out on purpose. |