Babylonian and Assyrian Literature
9781465540904
1 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I was born before the age of railroads, steamboats, electric telegraphs, or the penny post; and when society in the remote country districts of England was very little changed from what it had been a hundred years before. In those days living was simple, locomotion both difficult and restricted, and absence from home a rare event, save for the grandees who were bound to be in London for their place in Parliament or for their attendance at Court. Women of the upper middle class kept their houses and looked after their children with more vigilance of personal superintendence than now; and if there was less taste there was less finery, nor was extravagance made into an aesthetic virtue as it is in these present times. The religious revival had not begun for the nation at large; for all that Wesley and Whitfield had done good work among the rough men of the West, and had transformed a large proportion of the Cornish miners and fishermen from brutalized savages and wreckers, among whom the King’s writ did not run, into God-fearing and law-abiding citizens. Education was at its lowest possible ebb?though local grammar-schools in the North were plentiful, kept up by old-time grants and bequests from former founders and benefactresses; though Robert Raikes had established Sunday-schools here and there, where minds had begun to awaken to the need of saving souls; though Joseph Lancaster had got a fair trial for his system of teaching; and though even infant-schools, which we generally believe to be emphatically of modern establishment, languished feebly in certain populous places. Still, none of these waves of progress, as yet slow and sluggish, though gathering, as they went, the volume and power we know of, had stirred the stagnant shallows of remote country places at the time of which I write; and society, as found on the moors, in the dales, and in the villages among the mountains, was satisfied with the most elementary knowledge for the so-called educated classes and absolute ignorance for all the rest. The Reform Bill, Catholic emancipation and the emanacipation of slaves, the political rights of the Jews, free trade and a free press, were all as yet the golden apples of liberty and justice held in the closed hand of Time. The press-gang was a recognised institution; felony was punishable by death?and stealing sheep, as well as any article the value of thirteen-pence halfpenny from the dwelling-house, was felony. Though Howard’s remonstrances had had some effect, and Coldbath Fields prison had been built in accordance with his views, our gaols were in general a disgrace to civilization, and our laws were still justly stigmatized as ‘written in blood.’ Monday morning hangings were part of the week’s ordinary work; and my father just remembered to have seen thirteen men hanging in a row at Tyburn, with never a murderer among them
