Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

UMBRELLAS.

Thomas Coryat, in his Crudities, vol. i. p. 134, gives us a curious notice of the early use of the umbrella in Italy. Speaking of fans, he says :

These fans are of a mean price, for a man may buy one of the fairest of them for so much money as countervaileth one English groat. Also many of them (the Italians) do carry other fine things of a far greater price, that will cost at the least a ducat, which they commonly call in the Italian tongue umbrellaes, that is, things that minister shadow unto them for shelter against the scorching heat of the sun. These are made of leather, something answerable to the form of a little canopy, and hooped in the inside with diverse little wooden hoops that extend the umbrella in a pretty large compass. They are used especially by horsemen, who carry them in their hands when they ride, fastening the end of the handle upon one of their thighs: and they impart so long a shadow unto them, that it keepeth the heat of the sun from the upper parts of their bodies.

[ocr errors]

In Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, "printed by John Beale, 1617, part iii. booke i. chap. ii. p. 21," is the following passage:In hot regions, to auoide the beames of the sunne, in some places (as in Italy), they carry Vmbrels, or things like a little canopy, over their heads; but a learned Physician told me, that the use of them was dangerous, because they gather the heate into a pyramidall point, and thence cast it down perpendicularly vpon the head, except they know how to carry them for auoyding that danger.

The following passage is from the fourth edition of Blount's Glossographia, published as far back as 1674:

Umbrello (Ital. Ombrella), a fashion of round and broad Fans, wherewith the Indians (and from them our great ones), preserve themselves from the heat of the sun or fire; and hence any little shadow, Fan, or other thing, wherewith the women guard their faces from the sun.

And in Phillips's New World of Words, 7th ed., 1720 :—

Umbrella or Umbrello, a kind of broad Fan or Skreen, which in hot countries People hold over their heads to keep off the Heat of the Sun; or such as

are here commonly us'd by women to shelter them from Rain: Also, a wooder. Frame cover'd with cloth or stuff, to keep off the sun from a window.

Parasol (Fr.), a small sort of canopy or umbrello, which women carry over their Heads, to shelter themselves from Rain, &c.

Gay mentions umbrellas in his Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets of London, published 1712 :—

Good housewives all the winter's rage despise,
Defended by the ridinghood's disguise;
Or, underneath th' umbrella's oily shade,
Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread.
Let Persian dames the umbrella's ribs display,
To guard their beauties from the sunny ray;
Or sweating slaves support the shady load,
When Eastern monarchs show their state abroad;
Britain in winter only knows its aid,

To guard from chilling showers the walking maid.
Book i. lines 209–218.

That it was, perhaps, an article of curiosity rather than use in the middle of the seventeenth century, is evident in the fact of its being mentioned in the "Musæum Tradescantianum, or Collection of Rarities, preserved at South Lambeth near London, by John Tradescant." 12mo. 1656. It occurs under the head of "Utensils," and is simply mentioned as "An Umbrella."

Lt.-Col. (afterwards Gen.) Wolfe, writing from Paris, in the year 1752, says:

The people here use umbrellas in hot weather to defend them from the sun, and something of the same kind to secure them from snow and rain. I wonder a practice so useful is not introduced in England (where there are such frequent showers), and especially in the country, where they can be expanded without any inconveniency.

The introduction of this article of general convenience is attributed to Jonas Hanway, the Eastern traveller, who on his return to his native land rendered himself justly celebrated by his practical benevolence. In a little book with a long title, pub

lished in 1787, written by "John Pugh," are to be found many curious anecdotes related of Hanway, and apropos of umbrellas, in describing his dress Mr. Pugh says,-" When it rained, a small parapluie defended his face and wig; thus he was always prepared to enter into any company without impropriety, or the appearance of negligence. And he (Hanway) was the first man who ventured to walk the streets of London with an umbrella over his head after carrying one near thirty years, he saw them come into general use." Hanway died 1786.

PHONETIC PECULIARITY.

It is a very curious phonetic peculiarity, that we have in the English language a large number of monosyllabic words ending in sh, all of which are expressive of some violent action or emotion. The following are a few which have occurred without search, in alphabetical order: "Brush, brash, crash, crush, dash, gash, gush, hash, gnash, lash, mash, pash, push, quash, rush, slash, mash, squash, splash, thrash.

HIGH CHURCH AND LOW CHURCH,

A Universal History of Party; with the Origin of Party Names, would form an acceptable addition to literary history. Such names as Puritan, Malignant, Evangelical, can be traced up to their first commencement, but some obscurity hangs on the mintage-date of the names we are about to consider.

As a matter of fact, the distinction of High Church and Low Church always existed in the Reformed English Church, and the history of these parties would be her history. But the names were not coined till the close of the seventeenth century, and were not stamped in full relief as party names till the first year of Queen Anne's reign.

In October, 1702, Anne's first Parliament and Convocation assembled:

From the disputes in Convocation at this period, the appellations High Church and Low Church originated, and they were afterwards used to distinguish the clergy. It is singular that the bishops were ranked among the Low Churchmen (see Burnet, v. 138; Calamy, i. 643; Tindal's Cont., iv. 591).— Lathbury's Hist. of the Convocation, Lond. 1842, p. 319.

Mr. Lathbury is a very respectable authority in matters of this kind, but if he use "originated" in its strict sense, he is probably mistaken, as I am tolerably certain that I have met with the words several years before 1702. At the moment, however, I cannot lay my hands on a passage to support this assertion.

The disputes in Convocation gave rise to a number of pamphlets, such as A Caveat against High Church, Lon. 1702, and The Low Churchmen vindicated from the unjust Imputation of being No Churchmen, in Answer to a Pamphlet called “The Distinction of High and Low Church considered:" Lond. 1706, 8vo. Dr. Sacheverell's trial gave additional zest to the dudgeon ecclesiastick, and produced a shower of pamphlets. This is the title of one of them: Pulpit War, or Dr. S-1, the High Church Trumpet, and Mr. H-ly, the Low Church Drum, engaged by way of Dialogue, Lond. 1710, 8vo.

To understand the cause of the exceeding bitterness and virulence which animated the parties denominated High Church and Low Church, we must remember that until the time of William of Orange, the Church of England, as a body-her sovereigns and bishops, her clergy and laity-comes under the former designation; while those who sympathized with the Dissenters were comparatively few and weak. As soon as William was head of the Church, he opened the floodgates of Puritanism, and admitted into the Church what previously had been more or less external to it. This element, thus made part and parcel of the Anglican Church, was denominated Low Church. William supplanted

the bishops and clergy who refused to take oaths of allegiance to him as king de jure; and by putting Puritans in their place, made the latter the dominant party. Add to this the feelings of exasperation produced by the murder of Charles I., and the expulsion of the Stuarts, and we have sufficient grounds, political and religious, for an irreconcilable feud. Add, again, the reac tion resulting from the overthrow of the tyrannous hot-bed and forcing system, where a sham conformity was maintained by coercion; and the Church-Papist, as well as the Church-Puritans, with ill-concealed hankering after the mass and the preachinghouse, by penal statutes were forced to do what their souls abhorred, and play the painful farce of attending the services of "The Establishment."

A writer in a High Church periodical of 1717 (prefacing his article with the passage from Proverbs vi. 27) proceeds:

The old way of attacking the Church of England was by mobs and bullies, and hard sounds; by calling Whore, and Babylon, upon our worship and liturgy, and kicking out our clergy as dumb dogs: but now they have other irons in the fire; a new engine is set up under the cloak and disguise of temper, unity, comprehension, and the Protestant religion. Their business now is not to storm the Church, but to lull it to sleep: to make us relax our care, quit our defences, and neglect our safety. . . . These are the politics of their Popish fathers: when they had tried all other artifices, they at last resolved to sow schism and division in the Church: and from thence sprang up this very generation, who by a fine stratagem endeavoured to set us one against the other, and they gather up the stakes. Hence the distinction of High and Low Church.―The Scourge, p. 251.

In another periodical of the same date, in the Dedication "To the most famous University of Oxford," the writer says:

These enemies of our religious and civil establishment have represented you as instillers of slavish doctrines and principles... if to give to God and Cæsar his due be such tow'ring, and High Church principles, I am sure St. Peter and St. Paul will scarce escape being censured for Tories and Highflyers.The Entertainer, Lond. 1717.

« PredošláPokračovať »