The Press. — London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

same time began the curious illegal ceremony of Lady Holland's Mob." The Bartholomew tolls had passed through the Riches and the War wicks to the heiress of - Sir Walter Cope; and in her time the Mayors of London attempted to check the licence of the fair,—which was some times begun too early. Lady Holland, anxious probably about her revenues, seems to have in stigated a number of riotous fellows to meet the night previous to the proper day of opening, and sally forth at twelve o'clock to proclaim the fair commenced, by waking up every one in the neighbourhood. After the Restoration, of course the fair was merrier than ever. We read of "monsters" and "curiosities," as well as every kind of licence. By the era of the Popish Plot of Titus Oates, the fair had become a recognized medium of popular political expression, and the favourite squibs were all directed against the Pope. Mr. Morley transcribes a play, extending to twenty-three of his pages, turning on a Popish Plot for the assassination of Queen Elizabeth, in which the Bishop of Rome is represented as a seducer and murderer, and as finally meeting with the fate of Dr. Faustus.—ln 1682-9 the victim of Bartlemytide jesting was the Irish nation ; "Brother Teague" took the place of the obnoxious prelate; and King William's expedi tion, the rule of Tyrconnel in Ireland, and the siege of Derry, are described from the Orange point of view. The play is in five acts, and was nearly the last of the political dramas of which the fair was the theatre. A steady and con stant attempt was made after the Revolution to discourage political satire in this form ; and its most popular amusements were now monsters of all sorts—lrish giants, clever mares, girls joined together by the crowns of their heads, savages, two bodies with one head, two heads on one body', dwarfs, spotted boys, mermaids, " living fairies" (what in Ireland would be 'Lepre chauns), people without arms, or without legs, and varieties of animals. It was also—possibly— the place where dolls first ' came out'—the name, according to our author, being derived, not from ' idol, or dol' (senseless), but from "Dorothy." These articles were formerly called "babies" or " poppets," and enjoyed great repute. But the most important characteristic of the fair during the eighteenth century was the drama in a tolerably legitimate form. Elkanah Settle, who had been the Laureate of James 11., "became the Laureate of Mrs. Mynn," who also "kept a poet."—ln 1707 she produced, per Settle, "on a scale of unprecedented grandeur, the Siege of Troy—thus anticipating the in genious Mr. Brough, who is going to travestie the Father of Poetry at the Lyceum next Boxing night. This was, however, not such a let-down for the Laureate as might be thought, for at this period some of the best actors and actresses used regularly to perform to the fair; and some of the theatres closed their doors while it continued. It was not more derogatory for Pinkethman or Doggett to appear there than for great Parliamentary orators in our own day to delight provincial audiences with platform oratory during the recess. The most steady Bartholomew playwright, however, was a much greater man than Settle. For nine years of his life—a fact which biographers do not seem to have noticed in its full extent—Henry Fielding was regularly connected with the great theatre in the George Inn Yard in Smithfield—a booth proprietor who rented the same ground year after year, wrote numerous plays for it, and evidently looked to it as a source of regular income. Mrs. Pritchard, " whose genius and " virtue Churchill paused to honour amid the " severities of his Rosciad," seems to have been the great novelist's prima donna. Mrs. Cibber also acted at the fair during one season. During all this time, however, the vice of the fair and the interruption to traffic, owing to its fourteen days' extension, had become almost intolerable, but, as long as there was any heart in it, the efforts of the City to put it down were unavailing. Its time was in 1750 reduced to the original three days, but the restriction seems to have been inoperative. Freedom from toll was secured for the citizens in 1754, and the " pig and pork" had been replaced by beef sausages—not to the advantage of the consumers. Plays were inter dicted on various occasions between that date and the commencement of the present century, but it was not till '1827 that Lord Kensington's rights THE PRESS, DECEMBER 18, 1858. were bought by the Corporation, and measures taken for its gradual suppression. Rowlandson, the caricaturist, has preserved the humours of its later days, which had sunk to a very low ebb, exhibiting neither wit nor decency—nothing, in fact, but " curiosities " of the lowest and vul garest kind in the shows, and downright black guardism in the frequenters. Wombwell's mena gerie was one of the latest booths of any importance, and he and others, owing to the high rents purposely exacted by the City for the ground, found it a losing speculation. So, in 1855, it died a natural death, which probably none but the " roughs " would be found to regret. Mr. Morley has written its biography and its epitaph in a pleasant and appropriate spirit. His industry has been most commend able, and he has the knack of interweaving his quotations with his text without giving them the appearance of patchwork—a point requiring much more literary skill than is generally sup posed. He also gives us an excellent and copious index. Let us add that the volume, with its thick mellow " toned " paper, its fair antique type, its numerous quaint engraving s —al mos t a ll from original and recondite sources—and its hand somely-embossed gilt and " bevelled" cover, is a most ornamental book for a drawing-room table, and will make a capital Christmas present for those who like a change from the figures of Mr. John Gilbert and the landscapes of Mr. Birket Foster. Peasant Life in Germany. By Miss Anna C. Johnson. London : Sampson Low, Son, and Co. IT is not often that a book fulfils the promise of its title so thoroughly as this one does. Miss Anna Johnson is no ordinary tourist. She seems to unite in her single person much of the adventurous energy of an Ida Pfeiffer to some portion of the observant acumen of a Harriet Martineau. Not that she by any means attains, in either speciality, the lofty position occupied by those two " bright particular stars." But how ever inferior to both, in their respective walks, Miss Johnson may take her stand beside either where earnestness and sincerity of purpose are concerned. This merit every honest critic must concede her ; and it is one which, with honest critics, must always conciliate, if not plenary indulgence, at least a ready absolution from all venal sins. The approval with which we closed Miss Johnson's book is strong—stronger, indeed, than it looks. A certain portion of its force has been rendered latent by the preliminary necessity of vanquishing a prejudice. The introductory pages of " Peasant Life in Germany" present certain infringements of the canons of Good Taste, which predispose unfavourably. There is in these pars a mixture of the pragmatical and the sanctimonious, too decidedly " Yankee " in its savour to agree with a more refined digestion. A sneer at " lords and dukes and nobles " meets us in the opening paragraph ; a stump orator's allusion to the people, " passed by as if " they were dogs, or worms to be trodden upon, " because they bend their necks to the yoke of " princes," graces the top of the second page ; and a quiet intimation that the author's idea of a tour through Germany was directly inspired by Heaven, startles us at the bottom. All this sort of thing, however, softens down as Miss Johnson begins to grapple with her subject. The republicanism and the sanctimony, although plainly the directing influences of all the fair apostle's exertions, are not offensively obtruded. They may, indeed, be regarded as tending to relieve an occasional heaviness, inherent perhaps in the method of treatment followed. At any rate they inspire, here and there, a rhetorical flourish which enlivens, and an eccentricity of judgment which amuses. Miss Anna Johnson, we have already remarked, is no ordinary tourist. The staple subjects of nomadic literature present no charms for her. Courts and castles, princes and pictures, state dinners and statues, are alike indifferent to her somewhat hard humanitarianism. It is the people only, in the limited sense of the term— those lying on the far side of that " gulf which " separates the prince and the peasant "—who claim her sympathies and are the object of her investigations. The method adopted for carrying out these investigations must be acknowledged as 1239 excellent—and the excellence of the method is a fair guarantee for the accaracy of the results : Twenty years ago (she says) Hewitt dwelt three years in a German village, and wrote of the rural life of the people. We have done the same, though upon a different plan, and, profiting somewhat by hi* advice and experience, executed our task in a different way. We have dwelt a little while in many villages, instead of a long time in one, and having no house of our own, were obliged to dwell with them (sic) night and day, and thus became initiated into their ways of thinking anl,l living, as would be impossible in mere casual visite. Of the two methods—Howitt's and our autl49es —we certainly prefer the latter. Germany, ti purely a " geographical expression "—it • is: f,s,r too complex a structure to admit of bei ng classified a ft er a single fragment, like . some geological formation, ' however perfect that fret& ment may be. For this reason Miss Johnson book is as superior to Howitt's in the amount of information conveyed, as it is inferior to the latter in composition and style. In r es pect to information, indeed, the American lady's book may be said almost to exhaust the subject... It would be difficult to indicate any side of peasant life which she does not treat of—and treat of, too, au fond. Dress, food, manners, amusements, housekeeping, morality, education, agriculture, commerce—all are passed in review with a pro- fusion of illustration, detail, and even, where the occasion is supposed to require it, of historical developments, almost encylopedic. Indeed, when we mention that this book, instead of being an expansion of the jottings down of a diary,. is a selection from "memoranda which would• fill "three folio volumes," some idea may be formed of its teeming abundance of matter. The social contrasts between her own country and the scene of her inquiries appear to strike Miss Johnson with a farce which places vividly betbre us the sharp line of demarcation between the New World and the Old : How can it be possible (she exclaims, with amusing naivete ), when God made of one blood all nations under Heaven, that they cast make themselves Co different, not only in tongue and tint, but in all thought and action ! In all that is within and all that is without, there is scarcely a human re,temblance between the American and the German (!) This is certainly going far—very far ! The observation, however, is made on the fair enthusiast's first stepping out of the boat which lands her at Bremen. May it not be presumed that her most recent corrective of the desagremens of a sea-voyage had been sought in Baron Mun chausen's description of his visit to the moon ? Whatever the probability of this conjecture, it is certain that we find no subsequent allusion to the self-manufactured anatomical distinctions between the American and the German, so curiously hinted at in the above passage. Among the elaborately delineated moral distinctions, the one which first strikes Miss Johnson—and, we trust, every English as well as every American traveller—is the inferior position of women , in Germany. A woman and a donkey harnessed together in a plough is not, Miss Johnson'assures us, an uncommon sight in this, , the most "educated " portion of Europe ! • • • " Women are hired out by the year to do house and farm work, receiving fourteen dollars Asr kfull year's service of this kind ! Woman is thus degiaded from her true posi tion; and we need not describe the:condition of the homes where women spend half their time in the field. • When they work u hard, and do the same things, they are:not treated as the equals of their lords. -Often they walk and drive the oxen, with a genuine thrust and flourish of,the goad-stick, while the men are sitting at their ease - in the cart, smoking, and perhaps swearing at their teamsters:" . A young man of the peasant class tells me that •there is no respect paid to women among them—they strike a woman just as quick as they woald strike a man, and, as we have seen, impose upon her double burdens. if under any circumstances favours are to be shown, the men receive them. In Russia and all middle Germany (says our author in another place) cows are yoked to draw the plough and the cart, as oxen and horses are elsewhere. The yoke is fitted to their foreheads, and with their heads all labour is per- formed. We alluded to this peculiarity to a youug peasant, who said, " Yes, cows and women have to do a good deal with their heads in this country ; " and these two facts led a lady to exclaim, " she should not like to be a cow or a woman in Germany! " Head-work, among us, is esteemed at once the obligation and the prerogative of the more robust eex. The Germans seem to understand both the term and its application differently. We may add, from personal knowledge, by way of appendix to the above, that, even among the better classes, it is customary in Germany for the ladies of the house to lavish upon their male guests all those fetch-and-carry assiduities of which in England they are themselyes the exelu••