THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20287, 21 December 1927, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

By Watfarer. “God bless us all! ” was “Tiny Tim’s ” short but sufficient aspiration on Christmas Day. I shall not try to improve upon it. Our mutual greetings and compliments at the sacred festive season bear the stamp of commonplace, but “ after all,” says Robert Louis Stevenson, “ the comrhonplaces are the groat poetic truths.” We say the same things year after year—“ Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ” —and it would be foolish to strive after originality of phras G in expressing an unchanging sentiment. Sincerity is the one thing needful. A conventionally worded phrase is not necessarily an idl e phrase. For my Christmas quotation I will go back to a hundred years or thereabouts. Washington Irving, that American lover of English life and tradition, wrote of Christmastide in his “Sketch Book”: Amidst the general call to happiness, the bustle of the spirits, and stir of the affections, which prevail at this period, what bosom can remain insensible? ft is, indeed, the season of regenerated feeling—the season for kindling, not merely the fire of hospitality in the hall, tut the gonial flame of charity in the heart. . . . Ho who can turn churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow-beings, and can sit down darkling and repining in his loneliness when all around is joyful, may have his moments of strong excitement and selfish gratification, but he wants the genial and social sympathies which constitute the charm of a merry Christmas.

And so, all who care to read this column, kindly accept my sincere wayfaring salutation of “A Merry Christmas!”

If Gladstone, ardent Churchman and persuasive orator, had been in the House of Commons last Thursday, the fortunes of the Revised Prayer Book would have been different, and the good old Primate’s brief elation of spirit would not have been tragically turned to lamentation and mourning and woe. For the House ap pears to have been in an unwontedly susceptible mood, ready to veer this way or that, as th e contrary winds of argument or prejudice might direct. As a rule, par liamentary debates do not exercise much influence on parliamentary votes. Preconceived convictions are proof against discussions of the eleventh hour, and the tellers might almost announce the votes before the taking of the division. But in this particular instance th e issue was in the lap of the gods to the last moment. A matter which (it might be l*hought) required very sober deliberation was at the mercy of gusts of emotional rhetoric. Fervid eloquence, not reasoning power, was in request; and in fervid eloquence the advocates of the “ Deposited Book appear to have been painfully deficient. Mr Bridgeman, introducing the measure, spoke with the bleating ineffectiveness of the traditional curate of Victorian days, and was no match for his eager Erastian colleague, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, familiarly known as “ Jix.” It was left to Mr Rosslyn Mitchell, who “ is not a member of tke Church of England, but a Theosophist,” to. sway the decision. A fighting speech from the Archbishop of York, or a pathetic appeal from the Primate, would have done the business at the end ; but the Archbishops do not sit in tho House of Commons. And (to revert to our starting point) Mr Gladstone is an ex-member. “ From yon blue heaven above us bent,” what does the Grand Old Churchman think of it all?

During the Prayer Book debate in the House of Lords th e true-blue ultra-Pro-testant banner was lustily hoisted by the Marquis (or Marquess, if you prefer) of Lincolnshire, who will be eighty-five years of age next April. It is forty-two years since Lord Carrington, as he then was, went to New South Wales as Governor and introduced a note of novel vivacity into the viceregal atmosphe.-e. The idea of the sportsman and man of the world, rather than of the stern theologian, is associated with his name ; but as a Buckinghamshire man he reverences the memory and tradition of John Hampden “ I think we have the right to demand,” he declared, “ that in matters ecclesiastical as well as temporal every Englishman should be made to obey the law. We who are conscientiously opposed to the measure are standing shoulder to shoulder by the old faith and English traditions, for which our forefathers fought and John Hampdon

died.” One thinks of the lines of the “ Elegy ”: Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood : Some mute inglorious Milton hero may rest. Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood. Perhaps the vision of Lord Lincolnshire as a dauntless ocotgenarian Hampden is not quite free from an element of incongruity. By the way, th e old Marquis has five daughters, but no son, his heir having died of wounds received in action during the Great War.

Apropos to the immortal “Elegy”: I clip a terse letter from a recent number of the London Observer.

Sir, —Yesterday I came across the - following notice of a new publication. It was in the Monthly Review for February, 1751:

“An Elegy Wrote in a. Country Churchyard. 4to. Dodsley, 6d. Seven Pages. The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity.” That is all. In thoso days reviews were short and to the point.—Yours, etc., W. J. Patlixg Weight. Yes, a terse review—and what a cheap sixpennyworth of poetry! That wrote in a country churchyard ’’ has never been in need of a commentary more extensive than the Monthly Review’s notice in the middle of the eighteenth century. Its appeal goes with unerring directness to the universal heart. Its “ echoes roll from soul to soul and live for ever and ever.” More glorious the writing of that poem than the taking of Quebec!

The English rustic has got rid of the foolish habit of giggling. The “ loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind ” ts not” a typical bucolic characteristic in these davs. If the bishop of an agricultral county makes true report, there is a renaissance of an intelligently Merrie England. The Bishop of Lincoln, examining generally the conditions of life in the country, said he found life happier and more cheerful than it was 50 or 60 years ago. In those days there was among the people a sad sullenness which he did not find to-day The humble bicycle, the more dangerous motor bicycle, tie omnibus, wireless, dancing. had all helped to make a change. They loved dancing as much in the village- iis in the towns, and on the whole lie "obeyed in it. It had had a good effect on the country lads and lasses. Comparing them with people of the towns, he found them big, well-built, robust, and some times strikingly handsome. There was

about them a quiet, grave seriousness wh'ch was not always to he found 1 lie old habit of wiggling had passed away. They had gained poise, manners, and self-respect.

There may be some ultra-conservative souls who'will deplore the disappearance of soulless loutishness from the country side They mav plead for the preservn tinn of the vnkels from whose engaging stupiditv Shakespeare and Dickens and Ha rd v derived such vast stores of fun But this is to carry sentiment too far. I have no tears to shed over the passing of the villave giggler At the same time the attention of the Bishop of Lincoln mmht he directed to another aspect of the" rural situation as noted hv Mr O K Chesterton.

The Findid- habit of life and the appearance of the English village and the whole tone of existence have been altered ent-'rolv bv commercial nrc'sim. fiom America The English inn. the most glorious thing on earth, i- becoming American hotel.

“ The English inn. the most glorious thing oil earth ’’—what a wholesome say. ing that is I

r if,. ..i.-iv b,. a living business. Vr.it after all it is full of compensations. Tho

Church was vanquished in the House of Commons last week, but it was victorious at Carisbrook. “Clergy, 155; doctors, 92.’’ Medicine can boast illustrious names in the annals of cricket, with “ W.G.’’ and his brother “ E.M.” at the top of the list; but they do not appear to have shed their spiritual influence from the Elysian Fields upon the Dunedin fraternity. Analysing the score-sheet, I notice a lack of consistency on both sides. The signs of " team work ” were conspicuously absent. Of twenty-two batsmen thirteen were single-figure performers. Without the Reverend Mr Watson, who made 49, and the Reverend Mr Blamires, whose praise is in the gospel and the cricket fields, the Cloth would have been hard pressed. Sturdy maturity, as well as springy youth, was pleasantly represented. Archidia'conal dignity combined gallantly with the volatile exuberance of the “ juniorist “ house-surgeon. And this sort of thing is all to the good,—all in confonnitv”with the spirit of humane brotherhood,—all part of th t great Christmas commonplace.