THE

COMPANION.

No. XVIII. WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1828.

Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend."-SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

L

MAY-DAY AT HOLLY LODGE.

WALKING up Highgate Hill on the evening of the first of May, we found a string of carriages lining that beautiful road, and a throng of people collected at the lodge-door of her Grace the Duchess of St Albans. The hedges, instead of white thorn, blossomed with footmen in livery; little boys were in the elms and bushes, trying to get a sight over the way into her Grace's paradise; and a sound of music, and the sight of blue favours at button-holes, told us, that something extraordinary was doing there, on this genial anniversary.

Surely, thought we, the Duchess is not snatching a grace beyond the reach of her title, and setting a good holiday example to the people in high life? If so, and the COMPANION of last week came in her way, we should be doubly sorry that anything we have said should chance to offend her. What we say at any time in this paper, even when apparently designed to offend, is never really so, but has a view to the many; and we have it not in us intentionally to offend a woman, much less a generous one, and one whose face we recollect with pleasure. But a sympathy with us on the subject of May-day is a tender point; and if it turn out, that she has been keeping it, we shall hardly be content till we call her as young as she is rich. Remorse will touch our excessive consciences,

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cause of a great deal of young merriment in others; and tend to keep the heart and the power of pleasing, young to the last.

It was even so the music and the little boys were right: Mayday was being kept in all its glory at Holly Lodge, with a proper May-pole, and garlands, and dances. No: not all its glory, for the "great folks," it seems, did not dance; they "felt ashamed," we suppose, as the children say :-every thing cannot be brought about at once. But then, did none but the poor or the peasantry dance? That would have been better than no dancing; but then it would not have been so pleasant to think of the mistress of the mansion looking upon it as a duchess. No: it was still better, we think, than this, though with a less natural look; for the dancers came from the theatres :-in other words, the association of ideas was not shirked: the Duchess was still Harriett Mellon; and this we used to think was the best thing she could be, till we found that Harriett Mellon could shew herself better for being a Duchess.

If these are the modes in which her Grace means to vindicate herself as an exception to the ordinary rules of matrimony, we say in God's name let her go on, and be the cause of all the mirth, and youth, and love of nature she can think of. This indeed will be making a fine exception out of a monied common-place. But next time we exhort her to make the "gentlefolks" dance. It will be a great lift to the fashionable world; and may help them to find out, that not only chalked floors and stifling rooms, but Mayday, and the morning air, and a good honest piece of turf with health and vigour upon it, have their merits. The press and the steam engine are bringing about great changes in the world; and the greater the sweetness in the blood of all parties, and the humaner their common knowledge, the more happily for all will those changes take place. It is not patronage that will do anything. The Duchess is wise in not affecting to patronize, and to distribute holiday beef and pudding. The poor do not want alms now-a-days. They are too poor, and too well informed. They

want employment and proper pay; and after employment, a reasonable leisure. All this they will get by the inevitable progress of things, and by means of those very improvements which they contemplate at present with a mixture of pain and admiration. But meanwhile care forces them to think; the press enables them to do so with greater tranquillity; and the more they see the rich inclined to be just to them in a serious way, and partaking their pleasures in a lively one, the more the whole common interests of humanity will move forwards, to everyone's honour, and no one's disadvantage.

All the village dances in France, and all the holiday condescensions of the great to the poor, did not prevent the revolution; because in the meantime all the real injustice was going on, the frightful game laws, the odious exactions of labour without pay, privileged classes sunk in luxury, and cities without bread. But the abolition of those frightful game laws would have assisted to prevent the revolution; the cessation of those odious exactions of unrequited labour would have assisted to prevent it; privileged classes, not condescending in the particular, but diffusing the means of knowledge and comfort in general, and making common cause with the poorest in a taste for nature, would have converted it into a happy reformation; and the world would never have had a proof of the stupidity to which the highest are made subject, in the famous speech of a princess, who when told that people wanted bread, asked why they did not eat cakes.

In short, we would have the rich and the poor exhibit as many tastes in common as possible, without being forced to shew one. another either that the immediate possession of wealth is contemplated with impatience, or that good can only be done to poverty in the shape of alms-giving. The best way to further this mutual benefit is for both sides to learn as much, to teach as much, and to enjoy openly as much pleasure common to all, as they can discover; and therefore again we say, long life to the merry meetings at Holly Lodge, and may the sound of the pipe and tabor be heard on May-day again throughout England, among duchesses as healthy as peasants, and peasant-girls as much alive to the poetry of Mayday as duchessés.

CRUELTY TO CHILDREN.

READERS of newspapers are constantly being shocked with the unnatural conduct of parents towards their children. Some are detected in locking them up, and half-starving them: others tax them beyond their strength, and scourge them dreadfully for not bearing it: others take horrible dislikes to their children, and vex and torture them in every way they can think of, short of subjecting themselves to the gallows. In most cases the tyranny is of long duration before it is exposed. A whole neighbourhood are saddened by the cries of the poor victim, till they are obliged to rise up in self-defence, and bring the offender to justice. By this we may judge how many miseries are taking place, of which people have no suspicion; how many wretches have crimes of this sort, to account for the evil in their looks; and how many others, more criminal because more lying, go about in decent repute, while some oppressed and feeble relative, awfully patient, is awaiting in solitude the horror of the returning knock at the door.

It is sometimes alleged by offenders of this description, that the children have real faults, and are really provoking; that their conduct is very "aggravating," as the phrase is; and that "nothing can mend them but blows," which never do. But whence come the faults of children? And how were they suffered to grow to such a height? Really,-setting aside these monsters of unpaternity,-parents are too apt to demand a great deal in their children, which they themselves do not possess. The child, on the mere will of the parents, and without any of their experience, is expected to have good sense, good temper, and heaven knows how many other good qualities; while the parents perhaps, notwithstanding all the lessons they have received from time and trouble, have little or nothing of any of them. Above all, they forget that, in originating the bodies of their children, they originate their minds and temperaments; that a child is but a continuation of his father and mother, or their fathers and mothers, and kindred; that it is further modified, and made what it is, by education and bringing up; and that on all these accounts the parents have no excuse for

abusing and tormenting it, unless with equal wisdom and a glorious impartiality they should abuse and torment themselves in like manner, scourge their own flesh, and condemn themselves to a crust and a black hole. If a father were to give his own sore legs a good flogging for inheriting ill humours from his ancestors, he might with some shew of reason proceed to punish the continuation of them in those of his child. If a cruel mother got into a handsome tub of cold water, of a winter morning, and edified the neighbours with the just and retributive shrieks which she thence poured forth for a couple of hours, crying out to her deceased "mammy" that she would be a good elderly woman in future, and not a scold and a reprobate, then she might, like a proper madwoman (for she is but an improper one now) put her child into the tub after her, and make it shriek out" mammy" in its turn.

But let us do justice to all one's fellow-creatures, not forgetting these very "aggravating" parents. To regard even them as something infernal, and forget that they as well as their children have become what they are from circumstances over which they had no controul, is to fall into their own error, and forget our common humanity. We believe that the very worst of these domestic tyrants (and it is an awful lesson for the best of them) would have been shocked in early life, if they could have been shewn, in a magic glass, what sort of beings they would become. Suppose one of them a young man, blooming with health, and not illnatured, but subject to fits of sulkiness or passion, and not very wise; and suppose that in this glass he sees an old ill-looking fellow, scowling, violent, outrageous, tormenting with a bloody scourge his own child, who is meagre, squalid, and half starved:

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Good

God!" he would cry, can that be myself? Can that be my arm, and my face? And that my own poor little child? There are devils then, and I am doomed to be one of them." And the tears would pour into his eyes.-No; not so, poor wretch: thou art no devil; there is no such thing as devilism, or pure malice for its own sake; the very cruellest actions are committed to relieve the cravings of their own want of excitement, more than to hurt another. But though no devil, you are very ignorant, and are not aware of this. The energies of the universe, being on a great