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literature, and science,—from the country of the
Medici, of Michael Angelo and Raphael. "When we read,"
says Mr. Hilhard in allusion to these times, " of the taste
and civilisation of Rome, the graceful entertainments of
the nobility, the wit, the poetry, the courtly manners,
the scholarship, the extended commerce, and the manufacturing
skill which marked the period, it is difficult to
believe that the best blood in England were then dining
at ten, that the dinners were composed of huge masses
of fresh and salted meat spread upon a great oak table,
and that their food was shovelled into the mouth without
the help of a fork,—that the floor of their dining-halls
was strewn with rushes, among which the dogs
searched and fought for bones,—and that in the intervals
of feeding, their minds were recreated by the postures of
tumblers and the coarse jokes of licensed jesters."1
It is time, however, that this paper should draw to a
close, not that we have by any means exhausted every
object of interest. To the lovers of old churches and
their accompaniments, there are many things to delight
them: there are the fine brasses of the families of
Cheyne and Boleyn at Hever, and that curious one in
the church of Leigh, which represents an angel with a
trumpet summoning a female from her tomb, who is
rising forth with joined hands, with a scroll from her
mouth, with these words inscribed, " Behold, O Lord,
I come willingly." There is the lich-gate at Hartfield,
under an old cottage, the corresponding house which
1 ' Six
Months in Italy,' by Mr. Hilhard. The savage spirit must have
been pretty strong even in the best men in the days of Queen
Elizabeth,
when Sir Philip Sidney, though greatly provoked, could thus write
to his
father's secretary:—
" Mr. Mollineux,—Few wordes are beste; my letters to my
father have
come to the eyes of some, neither can I condemne any but you for
it. ...
I assure you before GOD, that if I know you do so much as read any
letter
I write to my father, without his commandment or my consent, I
will thrust
my dagger into you, and trust to it, for I speak in earnest; in
the mean
time, farewell."—Collins's Sidney Papers.
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