Mackenzie Walcott

“ For every Domum is like the re-assembling of the long sundered members of an united family round their parent’s hearth, the rallying place of their common affections, which is still the home of young and old alike—where all are equal and dear and welcome once again. ”

“ On the right-hand side of the door, which is marked by a brass plate bearing the name of the sub-dean, is a blank arcade, which served as the lavatory of the monks. Let us pass through another door on the lower side. We enter a little yard surrounded by sheds, and stumble, if we are not forewarned, over planks and garden tools; one moment—just peep behind that woodstore, and on that bit of rugged wall you will, even in the imperfect light, discern traces of a round-headed arcade: that is a fragment of the south wall of the monks’ refectory. ”

“ I am greatly pleased with the fancy of Anaxagoras, whose sole request to the people of Lampsacus was, that the children might have a holiday on the anniversary of his death; but I would have the holiday on the day of my funeral. I would connect the happiness of childhood with the peace of the dead, not with the struggles of the dying. ”

“ Here, rather than in the long-drawn aisles of Westminster, the memorial of the poet appears appropriate; but, indeed, he needs no monument. As long as the mountains stand and the lakes brighten the dales which once he celebrated, and with which now his name is imperishably associated, he needs no other monument than his own immortal verse, which he has bequeathed to all who can appreciate and love what is pure and good, and beautiful and holy—a κτῆμα ἐς τὸ ἀεί. ”

“ We glance up at the grand pile of the Minster through the bars of the moulding arcade, and down at the rude effigies of abbats laid under the low-arched recesses below the bench table, and tread upon Long Meg, the huge stone that covers the Forty who fell victims in a great year of plague and pestilence, centuries ago ”

“ There is a view of the Hall by Buck, dated 1735, which represents a great portion of the palace, with its quaint water-towers and moated walls still standing; but although Parliament in 1827 spent 700l. upon the repairs, the state of the Hall is sad enough now; full of litter of every sort, its windows unglazed or bricked up; with damp fastening in the naked walls, and rough rafters stretching across from side to side and meeting above the corbels. ”

“ Let us have examinations, and motives and necessity for study on the part of both candidates and actual officers, though we cannot fail to remember that many a gallant fellow, whom we remember incapable of application to books, down in the lowest form of old Winchester, did good service at Alma and Inkermann, and by an acquaintance with manly sports has raised up a cheerful spirit amongst his men in the piping time of peace. A mere pedant in any class of life is a poor creature. ”

“ At the foot of the cross we read: “The stones which mark the grave of Hartley Coleridge, eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were erected by his surviving brother and sister towards the close of the year 1850.” There Hartley Coleridge was laid on a snowy day in January, the white-haired Wordsworth following the bier, which was light as that of a child, and a crowd of country people filling up the procession. Before spring gave way to summer, Wordsworth himself was borne along the same path by others to his rest. ”

“ The uniform of the present day is certainly more convenient and handsome than, if not so picturesque as that of an earlier period, and when stocks are unknown, shakoes made of an improved shape, and knapsacks better adjusted, we may, perhaps, believe it incapable of improvement.
Glorious, indeed, it is to read on the colours of our regiments the scrolls labelled with the names of hard-won fields, in every quarter of the globe; they are subjects for an honourable pride, and incentives to a generous emulation. ”

“ There is a passive inspiration in all around: the air grows thick with crowding fancies, enhanced by the indistinctness which falls shadowy and mysterious on the chanting choir, and the building that apparently dilates its vast dimensions ”

“ It is a railway journey of little more than an hour and a half from London to the fine old city of Winton, that lies hidden in the valley, surrounded with its breezy downs and laced with silvery water-meads. ”

“ Again and again we will join in the chorus in Ball Court, in Meads, in School Court, and under Middle Gate, when the evening has grown late, and in the summer twilight we slowly and reluctantly depart. But we cannot forget one night, some seven years since, when we sang the song in Commoners, with the appropriate tune following of the “Old Folks at Home,” played by the united bands on the occasion. It is a sore temptation to grow sentimental; but we resist the suggestion, for have we not said that Domum is a happy day? Our speech days remain ”

“ The “Bold Fifth” is a sobriquet of long standing; they wore a red and white feather, and subsequently a white plume, in honour of their rout of the French Grenadiers, at Morne Fortune, in the West Indies, when their success was so complete that every man was able to furnish his cap with the white plumes of the enemy. The 87th have the proud distinction of the Eagle of the 8th French regiment of the Line, as it was the first taken in action during the Peninsular war, having been captured at Barossa, in 1811. ”

“ How little each thought on the threshold of life that he would never meet his fellows again on the same standing; the old phrases in which he or they were initiated would be proscribed, the demeanor altered, the manners and habits of thought different,—that each would have gone through so much, before they would be re-united. ”

“ A bright sun and a welcome holiday were not to be neglected, and we therefore bethought ourselves of a trip, to take advantage of the rare opportunity of a lull in the long bad weather, that has made us doubt the veracity of the almanacs. ”

“ Though much has been done in the way of preservation, and of restoration too, we fear that the spirit in which the Chapter, as a body, deal with the old monastic buildings is somewhat utilitarian, and that they are collectively too much inclined to view the remains of antiquity as a lot of rubbish which militates against the convenience of their residences and those of their officers and dependants. ”

“ The door of the Star Chamber, Westminster Abbey.
We must retrace our steps to the Great Cloister. Before us the beautiful double doorway, with faint traces of gold and colour; its exquisite scrollwork and foliage, with a tree of Jesse entwined, admits us to the vestibule of the Chapter-house, which is situated under the old dormitory. Those prints upon the stone-pavement were by the feet of the monks. On the right is the door with its ugly fringe of human skin; on the left the former entrance to the sacristy, commonly but erroneously known as the Chapel of St. ”

“ The future battles of England will never be won by men who cannot “set a squadron in the field, nor know the division of a battle;” never by the mere successful competitor who achieves his superiority by force of memory, or the cram of a few months. ”

“ Internal evidence is against the fable of a sorrowing captive detained during the holidays; and as for the tree it is called “Domum” Tree because the song was sung under the branches of a former tree which grew upon the same spot. Only hear it sung in Hall on the six last Saturdays in the Long-Half before Evening Hills, and then determine whether it has a sad tune and doleful words. ”

“ To the south of King Street stood the northern gateway of the abbey, a double prison-gate, with doors opening westward and southward—the Bishop of London’s prison for refractory clerks, and subsequently of John Selden, Sir Walter Raleigh, jovial Pepys, and Colonel Richard Lovelace, who sung here that glorious strain within his gloomy cell,—
Stone walls do not a prison make,
⁠Nor iron bars a cage ”

“ He will also then find some excuse if a weary man takes his calumet, or throws himself on his camp-bed, and does not read quite as assiduously as his more fortunate brother citizens, especially when his only library consists of the few books which he can conveniently carry when subjected to frequent change of quarters, and his only additional resources are the meagre circulating library of a garrison town ”

“ There is not a note of sorrow in the whole of it; it is a good honest schoolboy’s chant of joy at escaping from tasks and vulgusses, books and toys—books meaning the forms on which the scholar sits, and toys the bureaus at which he prepares his work; having misnomers as many other things in the wide world beyond those grey College walls have. So lately as 1796 the masters, scholars, choristers, and chaplains, with a band of music, walked in procession round the courts before the Whitsun holidays, and then round “Domum” tree, when Dr. ”

“ There are also in the walls a water-drain, altar-recess, aumbry, and the sockets of a screen.
Once more in the Cloister; the door in the turret opposite is open, and up the winding stair we rise step by step until we stand alongside of the roof of the dormitory, which still retains two windows of the time of the Confessor. Southward rises the long north wall of the Refectory; were the windows divested of their brickwork, we might fancy the remainder of the building was yet perfect. We stoop our head, and pass under a low door into a small room with timbered partitions and plastered walls ”

“ The last monarch who made Whitsun and Christmas cheer, was Bluff Hal, in 1515 and 1526; but on the latter occasion he came with so few attendants, owing to the raging of the plague, that the townsfolk, by way of distinction to past merry making, called it the Still Christmas. Anthony Bec, the only English Patriarch of Jerusalem, bestowed his new buildings on Queen Eleanor, and died here in 1311. Parliaments too, in 1329 and in 1375, have sat in the old Palace ”

“ The “Death’s Head” and the motto, “Or glory,” have been carried by the 12th Lancers since 1759, when Colonel Hale determined to compose the regiment of men of decided character, emulous of the gallantry of General Wolfe, whose death he had witnessed on the heights of Mount Abraham. The name of the “Carabineers,” 6th Dragoon Guards, dates back to 1691. The 56th are popularly known as the Pompadours, as, when raised in 1756, their facings were originally puce, the favourite colour of the worthless Madame de Pompadour ”

“ The former motto was won by that regiment in 1703, at the siege of Tongres: their badge of the Paschal Lamb, the ensign of Portugal, was granted to it in honour of the Queen, Katharine of Braganza, in 1661, as they are known as the Queen’s Royals; but it was perverted into a cruel slander when the regiment was commanded by Colonel Kirke, in 1685, when their popular designation of Kirke’s lambs, was attributed to their presence at the “Bloody Assizes,” of Judge Jeffreys. The “Quò fata vocant,” of the 5th Fusiliers, took origin, probably, in a regimental order of merit, established in 1767. ”

“ It is an old mess-room joke and legend, that the tailors having used up all their scarlet cloth, were compelled to make up the deficiency in cuffs and collars, by fragments of various colours; and this was the origin, (so the veracious “oldster” assures the “youngster,”) of the facings of the British Army. The 13th Light Dragoons were known from the colour of their facings as “the Green Dragoons,” to which their motto, “Viret in æternum” refers, and was confirmed in 1836, the green facings having been restored three years before. The 97th are known as “Celestials,” from their sky-blue facings. ”

“ Now look up, with your back turned on that relic of one of the oldest parts of the conventual buildings; it is Saxon work, and you will see a range of decorated windows in that South Cloister wall, which lighted once the north side of that same chamber, where, on the annual high day, the salmon was served after having been laid before the high altar of the choir; there the successor of Edric the fisherman sate as the guest of my lord abbat. For the monks could tell a wonderful story of the ferry of Lambeth ”

“ By moving accidents bMost disastrous chances,
By moving accidents by flood and field,
By hair-breadth scapes i’the imminent deadly breach.
One curious circumstance is on record. We all know that regimental colours are consecrated, and generally find their last home in the aisles of a cathedral, or in the Hall of Chelsea: but in 1763, the colours of the 25th Regiment, then commanded by Lord W. Lennox, having been riddled with shot, at Minden, and hanging in mere strips from the staff, were interred in Newcastle-on-Tyne, with military honours. ”

“ Henry VII. at intervals retired to Eltham, and Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth would spend a few days in the almost forsaken palace, and King James I. has been known to pass a morning visit here; but Greenwich and Theobald’s appeared to be more inviting to kings and queens, and the hall was left to the keeping of Sir John Gates, till his head fell on the scaffold; to Sir Christopher Hatton, “the dancing Chancellor;” and last of all, to Sir Robert, Earl of Essex, the noted general of the Parliament, who died here, 1646. ”

“ The kettle-drums of the 3rd, or King’s Own Light Dragoons were taken at Dettingen; and when the 34th Foot embarked for the Crimean war, they were compelled, out of courtesy to our Allies, to leave in store in England, their entire corps of brass drums, having taken them by a curious coincidence from the 34th French Infantry, at Arroyo dos Molinos. The King’s Royal Irish, 8th Hussars, in 1715, were permitted to wear buff sword belts, suspended across the right shoulder, as a memorial of their rout of the Spanish cavalry, at Almanza ”