covery of Archangel was the beginning of trade with Russia, while far to the south, on the coast of Guinea, John Hawkins found a yet more lucrative but abominable traffic in the transport of negroes to America. With each new year of peace the tide of wealth flowed into the cities and the body of traders increased in number and influences. The leading merchants began to affect a luxury beyond the reach of any but the richest nobility, while, in matters of state, their gold conferred upon them an authority which they had never before enjoyed. The merchant companies which were formed to guard British mercantile interests in different parts of the globe, wielded a power which was regarded with jealousy and even with alarm by the high officers of the crown, and toward the end of Elizabeth's reign many charters and monopolies were revoked by special legislation on account of their absorption of the national wealth. All classes of the population felt the effect of this prosperity. The consumption of wine, hitherto used but rarely except in the houses of the great, was quadrupled, and the agricultural classes began to substitute meat for the salt fish upon which they had subsisted previously. The rough and wattled* farmhouses of preceding generations, which would not now be considered fit for human habitation, were replaced by solid and comfortable buildings of brick and stone, not a few of which survive to the present day. Among the yeomanry, small land holders forming a connecting link between the more prosperous farmers and the peasantry, the wooden trenchers which had served the purpose of their forefathers for centuries were discarded for the pewter platters which remained in use until displaced by the cheap crockery of modern times. It was not uncommon, indeed, about this period, to find pieces of silver plate in the homes of some of the yeomanry. Immense advances were made in the domestic comfort which was the foundation of that English home-life, concerning which so much has been said and sung, and which is generally conceded to have exerted a most potent influence in the formation of the national character. The floors of the better farm *Made of interwoven branches. It is an Anglo-Saxon word, the original sense of which is, "something twined or woven together; hence it came to mean a hurdle woven with twigs, or a bag of woven stuff; hence applied also to the baggy flesh on a bird's neck." houses were now adorned by carpets in place of the rushes which had been the only covering hitherto. Chimneys, too, which as yet had been exceedingly rare, were introduced generally, and with them the attractions of the chimney corner. Pillows, once despised by the hardy villagers as effeminate, came into general use and contemporary observers began to fear that the courage, hardihood, and endurance of the race would disappear with the rude and almost barbarous simplicity of the past. The change in the mode of living among the wealthier classes-the nobles, the landed gentry, and the merchant princes--was even more marked. The establishment of more intimate social and business relations with foreign countries, resulted naturally in the adoption of whatever was most attractive in the foreign manner of life. This was especially noticeable in the development of domestic architecture both as regards external design and interior arrangement and decoration. The principal rooms for the reception and entertainment of guests, which formerly had shared the ground floor in common with the kitchen and other domestic affairs, were raised to the second story in imitation of the Italian fashion, and this of course led in due time to the construction of those noble staircases which are such striking features of the entrance hall of the period. The appearance of the principal English towns hitherto mean and monotonous in the extreme, underwent a gradual transformation. The houses of the merchants grew loftier and more pretentious and were made picturesque by the addition of gables and parapets*. Inside, the rooms were decorated with wainscoting† of richly carved oak, or even more costly woods, by elaborate chairs and cabinets and tapestry of the rarest handiwork. In the sleeping rooms hitherto so bare and unattractive, soft carpets and rich hangings began to appear together with those mighty beds, huge in size and elaborate in ornamentation in which *[Para-pets.] "In archæology, a wall or barrier, either balconies, roofs of houses, sides of bridges, etc., to preplain or ornamental, placed at the edges of platforms or vent people from falling over." As a military term which was its first use, it was the name of a wall or rampart or elevation of earth rising breast high to protect the soldiers from the enemy. It is derived from the Latin parare, to guard, and the Italian petto (Latin pectus), breast. [Wain'scot-ing.] A word of Teutonic origin, meaning a lining of boards for the walls of apartments, fashioned in panel-work. the sleeper lay swallowed up in billows of point with jewels worth many a broad acre. down. The change in the character of the large country houses was no less marked. With the last traces of feudalism disappeared the battlements which once converted homes into castles. In their place appeared the magnificent halls which are still among the most picturesque objects in English landscape. Knowle, Langleat, Burleigh, Hatfield, Audley End, and many others might be specified as surviving examples of these medieval palaces wonderfully harmonious in their infinite variety of turrets and gables, their oriel windows* and decorated fronts, looking over Italian gardens, with their terraces and fountains, toward wide expanses of wood or pasture land. The castle hall in which the baron used to sit high above his retainers had now vanished forever and the head of the household retired with his family to his parlor or "with-drawing room" leaving the hall to his servants. The lord no longer rode at the head of his retainers but traveled luxuriously in a coach with outriders and footmen according to his degree, so that any one might tell by the number and style of the attendants whether the equipage was that of a nobleman, a squire, or a simple citizen. Glass esteemed in a previous generation as a costly luxury, was now used with the greatest liberality and Lord Bacon in a fit of conservatism grumbled that he could not tell where to go to be out of the sun or the cold. The new spirit of luxury manifested itself not only in the dwellings but in the dress of both men and women. A fashionable assemblage was a blaze of gold and jewels. The enormous stomachers of the gentler sex, hideously prolonged almost to the knees, were embroidered with gold and precious stones, while diamonds and emeralds, pearls and rubies, flashed in their hair. The gentlemen were no less splendid in their array of slashed doublet and hose, the seniors in sober colors, dark velvets, perchance trimmed with gold, the juniors in silks and satins reflecting all the hues of the rainbow and decked at every * A large window in a recess, a large bay window. "In Old French oriel and oriole are spelt alike, and hence can be traced to the same source. The Latin word for oriole is aureolus, golden or gilded.... This explains at once the use of the word; it meant any portico, recess, or small room which was more private and better ornamented than the rest of the building." From this it came to be specificaly used of the windows of little apartments projecting outward from buildings. Adventurers laden with the glittering spoils of the far East or West were constantly returning to their homes, and the spectacle of treasures thus speedily and easily won encouraged a general prodigality. For the rich there was a succession of splendid masques— which, in cost and size at least, would dwarf into insignificance the most elaborate spectacular pantomime of to-day-of feasts, of tourneys, or of hunts; while for the poor there was bear-fighting, bull-baiting, boxing and wrestling matches, and other kindred sports. It was a fighting, drinking, gambling, lovemaking, reckless age, but the disease of dissipation was not sufficiently prolonged or general to weaken the great heart of the nation. It was the Italian manner that was most affected in dress, speech, and etiquette, and in each case it was exaggerated almost to the point of burlesque. The arts of dancing and fencing, both of which were carried to a high point of excellence, were, doubtless, useful accomplishments, but the formalities of address and the minute distinctions of social courtesies were more than a little absurd, while the affectations of speech introduced by John Lyly under the name of Euphuism, were absolutely ridiculous. And yet the court lady in the days of King James I. who could not carry on a conversation in this jargon was held to be little better than a savage. The Euphuists have been caricatured very effectively both by Shakspere and Sir Walter Scott. It must not be supposed that this luxury and prodigality extended through all classes of society, although, as has been said, the effects of the general national prosperity were felt in the remotest corners of the realm. The great middle class was only just beginning to arise and there was an immense gulf, both socially and pecuniarily, between the nobles and the country squires, and a still wider between the merchants and solid tradesmen and the mechanics and peasantry. Even in that golden age of literature, the veneer of civilization was neither broad nor deep, being confined for the most part to the ranks of the aristocracy. The diffusion of even elementary knowledge was far from general. The accomplishments of Elizabeth herself, the only solace of her unhappy youth, would not have been considered remarkable in any later age than her own, but stamped her as a prodigy of erudition.* Nor was she backward in the display of her knowledge, and the profoundest scholars and wisest statesmen of the day were none too proud to angle for her favor by permitting her to triumph in argument or quotation, or in the solution of riddles, rebuses, and acrostics† which were among the pet follies of the day. But this affectation of universal knowledge on the part of her imperious majesty made earning fashionable and gave an impetus to scholarship and the arts which bore rare fruit a little later on. The true standard of education for the ordinary run of students, both in the schools and universities, was attested sufficiently by the degraded intellectual condition of the clergy, and the dense ignorance prevailing among the younger sons of the gentry, the smaller squires, and farmers, and the whole world of mechanics and tradesmen. It was the custom to send the oldest son of a great or rich family to the continent to learn the social accomplishments of France or Italy or to study for a season in the more serious air of Germany. But the great mass of fairly prosperous young men and women could do little more than read and write, and thought it no shame to confess their illiteracy. The younger sons of the country squires, if they could not qualify themselves for admission into one of the so-called professions, attached themselves to the service of some great noble in modified imitation of the old feudal times, offered their swords to the highest bidder wherever fighting was going on, orjoined some expedition to the Americas or the Indies where they practically led the lives of buccaneerst. Perhaps they returned with riches which in those days seemed almost fabulous, or left their bones to whiten amid savages or at the bottom of the sea. In the days of the Stuarts there was a chance of regular military employment under the crown, but the time of standing armies had not yet arrived. In the cities the common fate of youths was to be bound apprentices, at a very early age, to some tradesman or master mechanic who *Learning, scholarship. As a person in possession of such attainments has been polished by the implied discipline required, and freed from rudeness, a name containing within itself this meaning was chosen; e, from, out, and rudis, rude. +[A-crostic.] A short poem in which the letters be ginning the lines spell a word. Greek, akros, outermost, first, and stikos, row, order, line. See THE CHAUTAUQUAN for December, page 394. was invested by law with an almost absolute authority over them for varying terms of years. The master was bound in his part to instruct his apprentice fully in the secrets of his handicraft, to feed and clothe him in a befitting manner, and to look after his spiritual welfare. In every well-organized family the working day began with private family devotions, and in these the apprentice was compelled to take part. On Sundays, especially when Puritanism succeeded to the lax habits of the Cavaliers, he followed his master to church or chapel carrying a Bible in one hand, and if he were a stout, fellow, a staff in the other wherewith to defend his employer from robbery or insult. On week days he arose with sunrise and labored until sunset. One of his chief duties was to attend to customers in his master's shop, another was to guard the goods exposed in the stalls which lined the streets, another to stimulate business by directing the attention of passers-by to the wares on exhibition. Each apprentice had a set speech artfully prepared in praise of the useful or ornamental articles at his disposal, and he was a fortunate lad who could tempt a buyer by some timely stroke of wit or flattery. They prefaced their eulogies by cries of "What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack?" and in all leading thoroughfares there was a continuous uproar which assumed the character of a riot whenever a quarrel, an attempted robbery, or some other cause furnished an excuse for the shout of "clubs," which brought to the scene of the disturbance every apprentice within hearing. The life of an apprentice bound to an illtempered or tyrannical master, who held him in practical slavery, was not a happy one, but the training and the discipline were of inestimable benefit to lads who had to make their own way in the world. By the time their indentures had run out, they were masters of their trade, with a good prospect of becoming substantial citizens in their turn. It was from the ranks of the apprentices that the great army of merchants was constantly recruited, and it was the business skill acquired in those weary months of servitude that gave England her commercial pre-eminence. The country, in the seventeenth century, was slow to catch the fashions of the town. There were no railroads, telegraphs, newspapers, or postal service, and communication between different points was difficult and often dangerous. The roads were terribly day after the hounds and a night over the bottle constituted in their eyes the sum of earthly felicity. Their daughters were taught to read and write, to cook and sew, and, perhaps, strum a little upon the spinet, for the occasional entertainment of their friends. Their sons got most of their education in the stables. rough and infested in all secluded districts by robbers, who flourished in spite of the death penalty which was inflicted for the smallest theft. The rich never traveled for any considerable distance without a strong escort of armed servants, and the country gentry whenever they went abroad by night took care to be well mounted and armed. It was only by chance through the agency. of some peddler or traveler that the news of the city, the latest fashion, scandal, or vice, reached the villages, whose inhabitants lived on from year to year in patriarchal ignorance if not in patriarchal simplicity. Luxuries were to be found only in the mansion of the lord of the manor, or the houses of the richer squires. The farm-houses, even of the better sort, were bare and comfortless, while the homes of the laborers were squalid to a degree. With the squires life meant a succession of hard riding and hard drinking. Deer were still plentiful in the north, west, and south and every cover was full of foxes. A For the poorer classes of the rural population life had few relaxations. Among those were cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bullbaiting, and now and then a boxing or a wrestling match. Their chief dissipations occurred at the annual fair with its Jack Puddings,* jugglers, and quacks of every description, and at Christmas, which by a survival of ancient feudal custom, was still a period of general and prolonged feasting. A buffoon who performs pudding tricks, such as swallowing a certain number of yards of black-pudding. S. Bishop observes that each country names its stage buffoon from its favorite viand: the Dutchman calls him sage); the Frenchman, Jean Potage (John Porriage); the Italian, Mac-a-rō'ni; and the English, Jack Pudding." Pickel-herringe; the Germans, Hans Wurst (John Sau A BRITISH AMERICA. BY PROFESSOR A. P. COLEMAN, PH. D. HOST of sunny islands fringing the Gulf and Caribbean Sea, a foothold in Central and South America, the lonely Falkland Islands off Cape Horn, and the cooler half of North America, make up Britain's possessions in the New World, possessions almost as large as Europe, and thirty times the size of the British Isles, but with scarcely 7,000,000 inhabitants. That "river in the ocean," the Gulf Stream, separates Florida from the first of the British West Indies, the Bahamas, whose coral reefs and islands rising out of a shallow sea form stepping-stones from the northern republic of whites to the half barbarous republic of blacks in San Domingo. Many of these 3,000 islets and islands are waterless and uninhabited; only Andros, the largest, can boast of running streams; and the only good harbor is that of Nassau, the capital, well-known for its delightful winter climate. One of the Bahamas, probably Watling Island, was the first land to greet the anxious eyes of Columbus on that voyage which so changed the history of the world. Farther to the southeast the Lesser Antilles, chiefly belonging to Britain, sweep a wide curve between Puerto Rico and the mouth of the Orinoco, finishing the line of stepping-stones between North and South America. These small but beautiful islands of volcanic rock edged with coral are divided into two confederacies, the Leeward Islands to the north having their seat of government in Antigua, and the Windward Isles to the south with their capital in the least known island, Barbados. Anvil-shaped Trinidad, famous for its lakes of pitch, one of the largest and most prosperous of the British West Indies, is really only a fragment of South America cut off by a few miles of shallow sea at the Serpents' and Dragons' Mouths Last comes Jamaica just south of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea, a noble island one hundred and fifty miles long having in its center the splendidly wooded Blue Mountains which lift themselves 7,000 feet from the sea and give every wished-for climate, from the fever- the islands from the Spaniard; and of the reish tropical plains at their foot to the tem- lentlessly cruel buccaneers who cruised and perate mountain flanks with their cool fought and plundered, and then found safe breezes. The largest of the British Antilles hiding places among the island mazes. is also the most populous, having 600,000 inhabitants, nine-tenths of whom are colored, even in the capital, Kingston, a city of more than 40,000 people. Two colonies are on the mainland, Balize, a thinly peopled strip of coast-line east of Yucatan; and British Guiana wedged in between Venezuela, Brazil, and the Dutch province of Surinam in South America. It contains a hundred thousand square miles of forest and savannah,* a few degrees north of the equator, peopled by a few thousand white planters and a quarter of a million darker skinned inhabitants, who cultivate the hot but fertile coast-land. There are rumors of gold mines along the disputed Venezuelan frontier. To people from the sober north there is a strange attraction in these gem-like islands and luxuriant coasts of the Caribbean Sea with their shores strewn with corals and exquisite shells under blue tropic skies. A strange intensity rules in their physical conditions; streaming vertical sunshine and copious tropical rains clothe the soil with rampant verdure decked with gaudy flowers and fruits; tangled thickets of ferns and shrubs and creepers fill the dells and climb over the rocks, while graceful palms and magnificent forest trees rise above, transmuting the fierce sunshine into rich gums and precious woods. But there is the violence as well as the luxuriance of the tropics, for hurricanes devastate forests and plantations, earthquakes have shattered more than one of their cities, and volcanic fires lurk in at least one of their mountains. The early history of the West Indies is a wild romance. For the professed love of God and the real love of gold, these seeming "isles of the blest" were turned into hells by their ruthless Spanish conquerors, who slaughtered or worked to death the ill-fated Indians, replacing them by African slaves. Then came the terrible but fascinating exploits of British seamen who won many of •Spelled also without the h at the end. A plain of grass affording pasturage in a rainy season. It was so called from the Spanish word sabana, the name of a sheet for the bed, and also of a plain, probably from the resemblance of a plain covered with snow to a bed dressed in white. C-Apr. More settled times succeeded when planters grew rich from the toil of negro slaves or of convicts shipped from England, and sent eastward to the Old World full cargoes of sugar and rum and molasses until the seaports of Jamaica and many a smaller island grew proud and wealthy. But decline followed prosperity when fifty years ago the slaves were liberated throughout the empire and the labor needful on the great plantations was no longer assured; and the decline was hastened by the rise of the beet-sugar production of France and Germany fostered by bounties so as to offer a ruinous competition with their chief staple. For years past the West Indies have stagnated, for the attempts made to replace the sugar-cane and tobacco-plant by coffee and other tropical products were only partially successful; however, of late there are signs of revival. In Jamaica, for instance, American enterprise is building railroads and stimulating the trade in oranges, pineapples, and bananas with the great cities of the United States. Jamaica even has the courage to invite all nations to a World's Exhibition this winter in Kingston. An interesting but unpromising feature of the British West Indies presents itself in the strange sources of its 1,600,000 people. The original inhabitants are almost wholly lost and their places taken by the descendants of negro slaves reinforced by thousands of coolies brought from the East Indies and China under a system little better than slavery, the whole mixed in all proportions with the blood of profligate Europeans. In none of the colonies do the white planters form more than a small percentage, and it is doubtful if men of northern races can ever so acclimatize themselves as to thrive and increase in the West Indies. These black and brown and tawny races with their admixtures make poor material for the building of a nation in a land and climate which so tempt to idleness. Under the circumstances Britain wisely holds these tropical possessions under tutelage as crown colonies, with representative institutions indeed, but having their officials appointed and their finances controlled largely by governors, who, unlike their mistress, the Queen of England, rule |