NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 24 July 1919, Page 26

NOTES

Past and Present In Pages From the Past, the ninth chapter of which appears in the Month for-March, John Ayscough writes in his usual charming style of the differences between travellers now arid sixty years ago. Then, a knowledge of Continental life and literature and art nad become a traditional necessity for educated people. The Englishmen and women who made the Grand Tour were far different from the tourists of to-day. Instead of doing Paris in a week, Rome in ten days, Switzerland in a week-end, they went about it solemnly and leisurely. “They journeyed deliberately, with some French and Italian in their mouths; they were admitted to society in Paris, Rome, Florence, and had time to see something more of foreign people than their monuments. And already at home they had learned to know the great masters of France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands; and already at home they had learned other languages than English, and knew something of the literature of other lands. 3 ’ He also criticises keenly the vast difference between country houses then and now. To-day as a rule the English country house is the week-end caravanserai to which the wealthy member of the Peerage invites his friends and their ladyfriends ; in the old time the country house was the warmest and brightest and soundest institution in England. Sunday was Sunday then, and quietude was quietude. Reading his comments brings home to us once more how home-life has gone and how futile modern education is. Wanted — Parents From the Ave Maria we take the following letter which was written by a school teacher to the Bee, of Sacramento: “I do not hesitate to say that, in my opinion, the children of to-day do not need vocational guides so much as they need a new set of parents,—parents who have spunk enough to crawl back upon the thrones in their own households which they have abdicated in favor of their children ; parents who have energy enough to get their children out of bed in the morning early enough for them to wash their faces, comb their hair and lace their shoes, without the schools being obliged to give promotion or credit for their doing so; parents who, when the shades of night begin to fall, look after their boys with the same degree of care that they give to their bull pup, which they chain up lest he associate with the stranger cur on the street.” By way of comment on this striking letter it is unnecessary to note that association with the “stranger cur' on the street tends to increase the. breed of mongrels, and other undesirable things. In the land of divorce-made-easy parentage is old-fashioned and the care of children left to luck. Outside the Catholic Church home-life is gone and the education of the “flapper” is completed before she is sixteen. In this country we are hurrying along the same path as fast as our awful politicians can lead us. Destroying fire such as that which fell upon the Cities of the Plain would be a mercy of God in comparison with the slow destruction and corruption which is coming as the result of the criminal negligence of parents and of the apostasy of the Government, " Old . and New , When you . are weary of the newspapers, when the silliness of modern novels has reduced you to distraction, when you cannot even smile at the idiocy of the fablegrams, take down George Gissing’s little book, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft , and open it at random. It is a tonic when you need one, a sedative, a bromide, in proper season; it is a book that is seldom out of season. Have you read it? Have you ever bought it? If not, go quickly to a bookseller’s, and get it for the winter evenings; for it is full of rare wisdom, and it has high thoughts and lovely fancies.

and it will repay tenfold the expenditure of the 2s 6d net plus whatever our thriving booksellers exact by way of war bonus or what not. Here is a passage that caught our eye this morning when we wandered to the spot on our shelves where the book was, after having ■ been pestered and exasperated for far too long by that modern abomination, the telephone: "There is no help in visions of Arcadia; yet it is a plain fact that in days gone by the peasantry found life more endurable, and yet .were more intelligent than our clod-hoppers who still hold by the plough. They had their folk-songs, now utterly forgotten. They had romances and fairy lore, which their descendants could no more appreciate than an idyll of Theocritus. Ah, but let it be remembered that they also had a home, and this is the illumining word. . . Wellmeaning folk talk about re-awakening love of the country by means of deliberate instruction. Lies any hope that way Does it seem to promise a return of the time when the old English names of the flowers were common on rustic lips—by which, indeed, they were first uttered. The fact that flowers and birds are wellnigh forgotten, together with the songs and elves, shows how advanced is the process of rural degeneration. Most likely it is foolish to hope for the revival of any bygone social virtue. The husbandman of the future will, I daresay, be a well-paid mechanic, of the engine-driver species : as he goes about his work he will sing the last refrain of the music-hall, and his oft-recurring holidays will be spent in the nearest town. Tor him, I fancy, there will be little attraction in ever such melodious talk about "common objects of the country. Flowers, perhaps, at all events those of tilth and pasture, will have been all improved away. And, as likely as not, the word Home will have only a special significance, indicating the common abode of retired laborers who are drawing the old-age pension. Progress How true it all is! blow true above all of New Zealand ! Into what a small enclosure you could pen the favored few among us who have ever known the old flowers of which George Gissing speaks. For the average youth here old names such as bachelor’s button, London pride, snap-dragon, sweet-briar, cowslips, fairyfingers, and woodbine are words of a foreign tongue. To many the charms of the Bush are unknown and the mystery of the dimly lighted cathedrals of the woods has no appeal. In ugly towns and in broad acres where Utilitarianism is supreme and the landscape means nothing children are reared who will never know the delights of woods and streams and fields. Romance never got a footing here, and the awful schools see to it that it never shall. Visitors comment unfavorably on the low standard of taste revealed by the songs sung amongst us. The drab materialism of life which seeks its highest inspiration in a picture-show is hopeless. The smug placemen and politicians in whose hands the people are content to leave their interests are still more hopeless. Outside the Catholic Church, which, thank God, always stands firm for whatever is sane and lovely in life, there is little beauty or sanity or soundness in town or country. Faith is dead. The minds of the young are too earthly to appreciate the old songs, the old stories, the old romances and fairy lore. Homelife is decaying. The flapper with, her latch-key, the old-faced youths of the Godless schools axe in power. And we call it Px’Ogress!