AT WOKING COMMON. It is curious in these days to notice the effect of | railways on the growth of places-to watch the germ of a few fishers' huts upon the coast, or a congeries of cottages in the country, which have probably remained unaltered and unadded to for generations, develope, on the opening of a line in their vicinity, to the full proportions of villages or towns. Swindon inland, and Seaham on the Durham coast, are instances of the creative impulse afforded by railways, while scarcely a station exists which is not as it were the lodge-gate to enlargement and improvement of the hamlet or town beyond. Woking, as every gazeteer informs us, has been a market town for hundreds of years: its market-house bears the date 1665; but Richardson, in his addition to Defoe's "Tour of Great Britain," quaintly speaks of it as a "private country market-town, so out of the way that it is very little heard of in England." Nevertheless, since the rails of the Southwestern have been laid within a mile of it, this reproach is taken away: the town has roused itself out of centuries of stagnation, and its name is now as familiar as it was formerly unknown. But we confess that Woking proper is not the subject of our paper. Our business is with the wind-swept Common stretching for leagues, its peaty shallows, and sandy hillocks, the floor of a great natural amphitheatre of woods and hills. A few years back, and the whole surface lay unbroken but by the sand and peat diggers, and without other signs of life than the red-tiled roof of a peasant's cot, sunk in some sheltered hollow, "between two dottrel trees," or a group of alders; or the brown tents of a tribe of gipsies, camping, out of the surveillance of farm-bailiffs or gamekeepers. The grey rabbits held it by antique right, and burrowed the sandy hillocks with comparative immunity, and the fieldfares and long-winged plovers shared their wide demesne. The golden-furze, and yellow broom, and petty whin, the common heath, the purple bells of Erica cineria, and the large rose-coloured ones of Erica tetralix, covered its thousands of acres, and the ferns and brakes uncurled their green fronds in Spring, grew red or golden in the Autumn sunshine, and made the beds and coverts of a great host of animal life. And still the wood-smoke curls up through the clear air, from lowly roofs sparsely scattered at long distances over miles of brown heath, and still thousands of rabbits merrily gambolling after sunset, or on moonlight nights, show their white scuts amongst the fern and ling. But a change is beginning to pass over the fare of the wide Common, and while on the one hand, dwellings more lowly than those of peat or sand digger, occupy many hundred acres of the surface on the other, the church and principal buildings of a town unique in this country, the intended town of Unreason, if we may improvise a name for a collection of houses intended for the dwelling places (without confinement) of a community of lunatics, already present a very handsome appearance. In France this system of separation for insane patients has been found to work the happiest results, and taking the hygienic quality of the air and the surroundings into consideration, no finer situation could be found for a sanatorium for mind or body. It is to this conviction that we owe the presence of another public building, the convalescent prison, a large imposing pile of masonry, to which sick criminals are sent from Portland, and Millbank, and other prisons, for the recovery of their health; but in spite of the excellent dietary and generous treatment locally reported to be the rule here, it has recently been unpleasantly brought before the public. Only a short distance on the other side of the iron road, but for the existence of which the Common would have still continued waste land for all the purposes of social life, stands that pet institution of our times, the Dramatic College, its white colonnade and red-brick Elizabethan gables making a cheerful picture, reminiscent of many a scenic pleasure, of Crystal Palace fêtes, and the fair faces of some who have beguiled us, in a two-fold sense, of tears and laughter, and which never look more fair than at midday, playing the part of boutiquiers with merchandise, the proceeds of which helps to increase the funds of this long needed charity. On the same side, a mile and more away, lies the Silent City, or Necropolis, the name of which is familiar to most of our readers, and whose monuments gleaming against a background of dark pines, or breaking the beauty of the glorious flower-beds in the foreground, already makes a remarkable object on the South Western line. All these points of interest are within a radius of a few miles; but putting every other object on one side, the cemetery itself, from the wild but beautiful site it occupies on the moorland plateau, seven miles of which are included in its circumference, might well induce visitors to see for themselves this wonder of western cemeteries, and which, whenever the two thousand acres of which the whole estate consists is brought into use, will form the largest place of sepulture in the world. The arrangements themselves are deserving of notice, and are well calculated, by their simplicity and completeness, to assist in dissipating the lingering relics of that most vulgar of all vanities, the ostentation displayed in the senseless pageantry of undertakers' furniture. The private entrance to the Station in the Westminster Road lands us upon the platform, and in view of the offices, the interior of which exhibits the most careful arrangements for carrying out in a perfect manner the duties with which the Necropolis Company is charged. The waiting-rooms, furnished as at other stations according to class, are separate, and offer entire privacy to their various occupants. The doors move noiselessly; the servants, quiet and respectful, take care that neither sight nor sound shall disturb or offend the feelings of mourners, and from the time one enters the premises till he is summoned to take his seat in the funeral train, not a sound above a footfall is heard, unless it be the locking of the doors of the hearsecarriage when all is ready for removal. But the scheme of the Necropolis Company begins at even an earlier period, and works in this way: Supposing that you, or I, or any other sojourner, or visitor to the metropolis, without home or friends, fell down dead at a railway-station, or breathed our last in the street, or at an hotel or lodging. In the first instance there would probably be the ghastly sanctuary of the parish deadhouse, or the out-office of an adjacent innthough as a rule innkeepers abhor the presence of a dead man (or woman either, for that matter) upon their premises, excepting always such as have met with a tragic end, have been self-slain, or murdered: then the morbid curiosity of customers amply compensates the temporary inconvenience. But we know what a shock such a presence gives to the living inmates of lodging or boarding-houses, and how eager, as a rule, the proprietors are to be quit of the silent inmate who has suddenly become indifferent to bad dinners or ill-made beds, and has tacitly repudiated all further claims upon him. In such a case, if desired, the offices of the Necropolis Company receive the body the night before the funeral, and thus relieve the modern caravansary of its dead guest twelve hours sooner than under ordinary circumstances. In this way also, it enables persons of modest means to avoid the costly funeral paraphernalia, and procession through the streets; which, how ever impressive in less crowded times and noisy thoroughfares than our own, has in these lost all its solemnity, and, under twelve pairs of tight-curbed, plumed, and prancing horses, mutes, feather-bearers, wands, and truncheons, scarcely attracts more than a passing glance from the passengers, too eager in the race of life to pause, or lift a hat, in presence of the formalities of death. One wonders at this stolid indifference in large cities to the most solemn of all spectacles, and which appeals to our sympathies not only on behalf of the individual, but on our own; and yet a fallen horse in the roadway attracts more interest by its living struggles than half-adozen funerals, excepting under abnormal conditions. Out of the precincts of towns, in the quiet of some village church-yard (our suburban cemeteries are too crowded, and in too repulsive requisition to admit of it), or here at Woking, in the heart of the wide common, where the very vastness and solitude attunes the mind to contemplation, and abstracts it (so to speak) out of the wayfaring world into communion with the peaceful dead, we recognize and are affected by the solemnity of their presence. Far off, round the bluff of the great hill to the right as we enter the cemetery, lies Aldershott, with its busy camp-life and stirring military pomp, and active human interests, and passions, the very antipodes of our present stand-point. Far off, we said; yet not so far, but that the vibrations of the drums and fifes ruffle the thin air, and, the wind being in the right direction, the music of the bands floats over the graves at Woking. Here some one tritely whispers to me, that a little while, and all these tens of thousands of soldiers, whose bravery and glitter make the heath glorious on field-days, and fleck the valleys and the dun hills with scarlet, shall lie down impassive and silent as the sleeping sentinels on either side of the entrance to the mausoleum of the Neilsons if we remember aright, which at this distance looks, amongst the trees, like the gable end of a little cottage, and is too far off for us to re-visit. We remember its handsome proportions and finelyexecuted sculpture, especially the figures of the wearied watchers at the door, and admit that it is the most beautiful of the mortuary monuments of the cemetery. Unfortunately for the public, it is situated at the far end of the enclosure, far away from the little church, which from its sixty feet of eminence overlooks every other portion of the ground, and in the vicinity of which the majority of the garden-graves and monuments are gathered. Leaving this part of the cemetery to return to it by-and-bye, the broad path on the left, leading immediately from the platform, takes us to the separate burial-places of various public bodies and religious sects. The first space is set apart for members of the Dramatic Guild, and is not otherwise remarkable at present. The next section is occupied by the Swedish and Norwegian Lutherans, and here we recognize the grave of one whose name will be familiar to many of our readers. We allude to that of the late Madame Kinkle, whose womanly amiability and undoubted talent made her early death a source of regret to all who had the pleasure of knowing her. A little farther on, surrounding the plainly handsome obelisk which marks the site, we find the burial-place of the Manchester Unity of Odd-fellows. Then a tall, white cross, marks the centre of the spot in which the Roman Catholic community are interred. A few white headstones appear, with the symbolic cross and customary inscription, "Requiescat in pace." But the majority of the graves are at present naked heaps of yellow sand, except where nature has mantled them with brown heath, or ling. The same may be said of the greater number of those lying round a rather showy column, sculptured with the emblems of their order, and supporting a really graceful figure, which towers above the other monuments, and signals the place in which the fraternity of "Foresters" are laid to rest. The aridness of the soil is one of the most noticeable features of the cemetery: the whole surface of the enclosure consists of peaty earth upon a substratum of sand and gravel. The antiseptic qualities of the first are well known, while the latter drain themselves and help to drain the entire of the ground. Hence a turfcovered grave is an impossibility, unless artificially nourished; and the innumerable thirdclass ones are sandy hillocks, overlaid, in many instances, with indigenous heaths, and just now rosy or purple with their blossoms. Pursuing a wide sweeping path, with numerous smaller ones branching out of it, we find our way back to the higher part of the ground, and, in doing so, note a variety of exotic pines, which appear to be thoroughly acclimatized. Here an avenue of deodars, which, in spite of the unsheltered situation, are evidently flourishing, though the winds have bent their heads a little out of shape. Another avenue of Wellingtonia gigantea" (an ancestor of which occupies a bay of the Crystal Palace) is also thriving, and the auricaria keeps its ground. Some of the paths are planted with lines of the straight dark Irish yew, whose almost black foliage is at this season lit up with oval waxlike fruit of a bright cherry colour. But the true lovers of the soil are the so-called American plants-the rhododendrons, kalmias, and azaleas, which thrive here as richly as in the neighbouring grounds of Mr. Waterton (to whom the chief beauty of the spring exhibition at the Botanical Gardens is due), and in early summer spread the ornamental parts of the ground with clouds of delicate or vivid colour. At this late period of the year the principal floral beauty of the cemetery consists of the great beds of pelargoniums, petunias, calceolaries, and other late-blooming and hardy plants, which continue in blossom till the frost sets in. Walking on amongst a number of tombs of a conventional pattern, we meet occasionally with an original or an eccentric one. Not very far from the beautiful Gothic monument of Mr. Bent, of Walton, a huge rough block of serpentine stands up amidst what should have been an entourage of flowers, weird and striking. A beautifully polished portion of the slab tells the usual story of a beloved wife's death, and at the same time shows the capabilities of the serpentine, in which mineral the memorialist has a vital interest. On this discovery, we confess that our sentimentality suffered an eclipse. The innocence of the dove had been stung to death in us by the subtlety of the serpent-or rather of the serpentine-and we were moving away with a little bitterness of heart, over the worldly wisdom of that ingeniously-devised memorial, when our steps were arrested by the extreme luxuriance and beauty of a garden-grave at the foot of a white beadstone, on which, in a glazed niche similar to those so common on the monuments in French cemeteries, was a mediæval representation of a Holy Family, in gilt relievo, and chained to the foot of the stone, a mass of curiously conglomerated materials fused in the great fire of London, 1666, and offered by a collector and antiquarg in honour of his wife! But his attentions to the remains of a helpmate over sixty years of age at her death does not end in passive sacrifices: the garden and low rail surrounding it, which is freshly painted by his own hands almost once a fortnight, attest to the undying nature of a faithful husband's regard, and served to modify our recent conclusions; especially when, a few yards further on, we observed lying alone in a wide space, which it is intended hereafter to enclose, an elegant coffin-shaped tomb of polished Purbeck and white marble, on which is screwed, at top and bottom of the body-stone, an ornamental cross of gun-metal, in deference to the wishes of a regretted wife, who had desired that the shadow of this emblem might fall upon her grave. The chasteness of the design, and the beauty of the material and workmanship, are remarkable, and the whole looks like an elegant expression of manly but Christian grief. At a little distance on the other side of a wide path, not far from the heavy-looking mausoleum of the Colquhouns, another grave, more singular than attractive, may be seen-a vault, with a cover running on railway principles, so as to enable a visitor to push it back without assistance. A ladder leads to the interior entrance, and through a grating in the door a solitary coffin is visible; and here frequently comes a devoted survivor to grieve over it, and probably anticipate the time when his own (for which a space is left) will rest beside it. There is some little mystery about this tomb, which bears neither name nor inscription. A sister is said to lie there. But brothers do not mourn their sisters, as a rule, with a fadeless grief, or with a morbid passion continue to visit their remains. We turn away with the words of a remembered song ringing in our ears: "Gone our happy dream of life, But, like an echo, comes back the last verse of the lyric, jubilant and full of hope: "Those whom God made spouse and wife, In the eternal land of Life Thou art mine for ever." Other note-worthy monuments, some of them the graves of men of "mark and likelihood" lie around, but our space will not allow us to particularize them. We retrace our steps to the platform, from whence at a glance we review the cemetery, the unbroken common in the foreground, with a sense of new life; larks soar and sing as if the the great ridge of wooded hills dusky summer had not ended-and still against the sky beyond, and the enceinte, with its tall obelisks, and columns, and statues, pale urns, crosses, headstones, and altar-tombs scattered sparsely amongst the evergreens, or showing white against an adjacent plantation. The sky, bright and cloudless, bends over the wide heath; the air, full of oxygen and balmy with odour, fills us (as it were) with "The chemist bee, with busy murmuring, Extracts the soul of sweetness from each flower," and all is so fresh and sweet, and communicative of a serene enjoyment, that we leave the Necropolis with regret, and resolve at the earliest opportunity to repeat our pilgrimage to Woking Common. C. W. THE LAST APPEARANCE OF THE WANDERING JEW. 22ND APRIL, 1774. The celebrated legend of the Wandering Jew, which occupied so large a share of attention in the middle ages, and which is still believed by many of the peasants of Europe, cannot be traced in any chronicle further than the thirteenth century, though kept in a traditional form long anterior to that time. It probably took its rise from some allegory in the mouth of an eloquent preacher, who personified the sufferings of banishment of the whole Jewish nation, under the form of a single man. The decree of Heaven condemning the Jews to drag their deplorable individuality over the whole world, never to be absorbed or effaced among strange nations, is admirably symbolised in the history of the Wandering Jew. The crusaders were probably the first to bring the story from Palestine, and, at any rate, it attached itself to the terrors of the year One Thousand, which was to be marked as the end of the world, the appearance of Antichrist, and the last Judgment. From this time every imagination was struck with the marvellous history; the theoretical doctors seized upon it, and tried to make it agree with various texts: some asserted he was Malchus, whose ear Peter cut off in the garden; others that he was the wicked thief, who thus received his punishment in the world, or even Pilate himself. The matter was only settled in 1228, when an archbishop, from Armenia, who came to England to visit the relics and holy places, stopped at the monastery of St. Albans, and was questioned about the famous Joseph, who was present at the passion of our Saviour, spoke to him, and is still a witness to the Christian faith. The reply of the archbishop, in his own tongue, was perfectly unintelligible; but a knight of Antioch undertook to translate it, and it has been transmitted to us by the old chronicler, Matthew Paris, as follows: shalt wait till I return! So he is waiting, and every time he reaches the age of a hundred years he is seized with a strange illness, which seems incurable, and ends in lethargy; after which he becomes as young as he was at the time of the crucifixion—that is, thirty years. He has been baptized, wears the eastern dress, is a man of holy conversation, relating all the particulars of the passion and resurrection of the Son of God, and how the apostles separated to preach the gospel: all this he tells without ever smiling; for, plunged in tears and full of the fear of the Lord, he is waiting until Christ shall come to judge all men. He refuses the presents that are offered to him, contents himself with frugal living and plain attire, and places his hope of eternal salvation in the ignorance in which he stood with regard to Jesus." After such a testimony on the part of so venerable a prelate, doubt was impossible; the legend passed from mouth to mouth, spread over France, the low countries, and Germany, where it appears to have been received with more faith and sympathy than anywhere else. But one other contemporary historian mentions it-Philippe Mouskes, bishop of Tournay: and he only translates the History of the Monk of St. Albans. We hear nothing more of this wonderful person for three centuries, at which time a letter, dated the 29th of June, 1564, written by some good Catholic at Hamburg, was widely circulated: from it we extract a few particulars. Paul d'Eitzen, a doctor in theology and bishop of Schleszving, being at Hamburgh, on a visit to his parents, saw standing, opposite a preacher he was listening to, a tall man, with long hair hanging over his shoulders, bare feet, and a mantle reaching over his knees, about fifty years of age. He showed the most marked at tention, bowing, beating his breast, and sighing deeply at the name of Jesus. Noticing his strange gestures, d'Eitzen inquired who he was, and was told that his name was Ahasuerus, a shoemaker by trade, who had been present at the crucifixion. The bishop then spoke to him, and heard various particulars of his life. Many persons came over to see him and pass their judgment upon him, the most common being that he had a familiar spirit. If he heard any one swearing he shewed the greatest excitement and shed tears, saying: "Oh miserable man! how dare you thus take the name of God in vain and abuse it? Had you seen the bitterness and grief our Saviour endured for you and me, you would rather suffer for his glory than blaspheine his name." This letter made the Wandering Jew once more the fashion, and every vagabond beggar who asked for alms, reciting prayers and singing psalms, was taken for him. A few years after, the Wandering Jew presented himself to the magistrates of Strasburg, saying that he had passed through their city two hundred years be- | fore, which was verified by the public registers. He spoke such good German that he was asked to explain this suspicious circumstance; his reply was that, by God's permission, he could understand and speak the native tongue as soon as he set foot in any country. His stay in Strasburg was short, and he expressed some regret that he could not return, since his pilgrimage would be ended when he had traversed the West Indies, and that the last day was near at hand. In the course of the year 1604 he was seen three times in France, and, as his appearance was coincident with tempests and storms, which blew down steeples and trees, the people drew the conclusion that he was carried from one place to another on a whirlwind giving rise to a proverb still in use among the peasants of Brittany and Picardy, who, in the midst of a sudden storm cross themselves and say, "C'est le juif-errant qui passe !" During one of his journeys through the valley of the Elbe, he left a prophecy, which is still repeated. On one of the highest points of the Saxon mountains, the Matterberg, now covered with snow, there was formerly a flourishing town, of which the Jew spoke in these terms: "The first time I come here I find a town: the second time that I shall come, there will be nothing but wood; and at my third visit I shall see nothing but snow and blocks of ice." Ocular witnesses spoke to the fact of his being at Leipsic in 1642. Yet holy persons, coming from Palestine, asserted that he was a prisoner there under the Turks, who kept him in a subterranean dungeon, having no other recreation than walking up and down between the four walls. He still wore his Roman costume, which was wonderfully good, considering that it had been worn for sixteen hundred years. This incredible story came to France in the reign of Henry the Fourth, and being repeated at the Court of Margaret de Valois, the wise Pierre Louvet did not forget to give it a place in his history. In any case, two citizens of Brussels met him in the forest of Soigné, clothed in a very ragged dress, cut after an ancient fashion; he went into an auberge with them, drank something, but would not sit down; told them his history, called himself Isaac Laquedem, and left them greatly alarmed. His appearance was anxiously looked for during the remainder of the century, the German students at the universities made many festivals, in his honour, and drank their beer to his health; essays were written in the schools, but he was no doubt far away in some sixth hemisphere, to us unknown. It was on the 22nd of April, 1774, at six o'clock in the evening, the date being exactly registered, that the Wandering Jew made his last appearance, passing through Brussels into Brabant. Some peasants who saw him remarked the immense length of his beard, and the worn-out dress that he wore, and to them he repeated the well-known story. For nearly ninety years he has not deigned to show himself among a people who might now give him the benefit of the Mendicity Act, but literature and poetry have given him no rest: ten French plays are founded upon the legend; Schubart, the German poet, Edgar Quinet, and Beranger have made him the subject of poems; our own Dr. Croly has written his " Salathiel," and Eugène Sue his "Juif Errant," as the vestiges of a tradition which will soon be effaced. WATCHING THE ROAD. BY ADA TREVANION. The harvest-fields and coppices In the distance past the village, And the church and mill and stile, Creeps the high-road, hot and dusty, Winding on mile after mile. Further still, the park's acacias Lift their graceful boughs on high, And the calm, fair lake reposes, Sapphire-blue as summer sky. There he roves, the past forgetting, By the close-clipped walls of yew; There she moves in robes of satin, O'er the soft grass bloomed with dew. Down the road come happy children, Who have roamed by brake and beck, And have woven wilding flowers Into wreaths for brow and neckDainty travellers in their carriage; Dusty travellers out of breath; Bridal coach, with snowy favours ; Hearse, with sable plumes of death. Now the golden day is waning, And the reapers come in sight; And the road no longer glaring Grows a line of misty white: Though I know it is in vain, Ramsgate. |