With a new-fashion'd hall, built where the old one stood, Hung round with new pictures, that do the poor no good, With a fine marble chimney, wherein burns neither coal nor wood, And a new smooth shovelboard, whereon no victuals ne'er stood; Like a young courtier, etc.
With a new study, stuff'd full of pamphlets and plays, And a new chaplain, that swears faster than he prays, With a new buttery-hatch that opens once in four or five days, And a new French cook, to devise fine kickshaws and toys; Like a young courtier, etc.
With a new fashion, when Christmasse is drawing on, On a new journey to London straight we all must begone, And leave none to keep house, but our new porter John, Who relieves the poor with a thump on the back with a stone; Like a young courtier, etc.
With a new gentleman usher, whose carriage is compleat, With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry up the meat, With a waiting-gentlewoman, whose dressing is very neat, Who when her lady has din'd, lets the servants not eat; Like a young courtier, etc.
With new titles of honour bought with his father's old gold, For which sundry of his ancestors' old manors are sold; And this is the course most of our new gallants hold, Which makes that good housekeeping is now grown so cold, Among the young courtiers of the King, Or the King's young courtiers.
In a word, the old English feeling seemed nearly extinct for a time; and the ancient customs which had connected themselves therewith, one by one fell more or less into disuse. The chain of _universal_ sympathy and _general_ observance, which had long kept the festival together in all its parts, was broken; and the parts fell asunder, and were by degrees lost or overlooked. Let no man say that this is scarcely worth lamenting! Let none imagine that, in the decay of customs useless or insignificant in themselves, there is little to regret! "The affections," says Sterne, "when they are busy that way, will build their structures, were it but on the paring of a nail;" and there is no practice of long observance and ancient veneration--whether among nations or individuals--round which the affections have not in some degree twined themselves, and which are not therefore useful as supports and remembrancers to those affections. There are few of the consequences springing from civil war more lamentable than the disturbance which it gives to the social arrangements, were it but to the meanest of them. It is impossible that customs long identified with the feelings should perish without those feelings (though from their own eternal principle they will ultimately revive and find new modes of action) suffering some temporary injury. It was a beautiful assertion of Dr. Johnson that his feelings would be outraged by seeing an old post rooted up from before his door which he had been used to look at all his life,--even though it might be an incumbrance there. How much more would he have grieved over the removal of a village Maypole, with all its merry memories and all its ancient reverence!