THE HOUSE, THE GARDEN, AND THE STEEPLE.

A DELIGHTFUL little collection of mottoes has just PI been published by Mr. A. L. Humphreys called "The House, the Garden, and the Steeple" (3s. 6d. net). "They are taken from old houses, from sun-dials, and from bells." Some of the house mottoes am, however, evidently newly made. They may have been superadded upon ancient walls, but they are eminently suited to new ones. The picture they bring before the realer's mind is a modern picture. Take the following three cleverly constructed rhymes which we are about to quote. Do they not make us think of houses lately built in the present fashion, red brick or white rough-cast trimmed with green, fanciful in conception, picturesquely self-conscious, suggestive of every artifice which makes for comfort, designed for health and -

hospitality, with brilliant gardens open to the eye, the Whole redolent Of prosperity and benevolence ?—

" If this house thy notice win, Give kind wish to all therein ; And if it please thee, don't neglect To include the architect."

The writer of this rhyme thought chiefly about the fabric. The next had his mind on his flowers :-

"Give this house, oh traveller, pray, A blessing as you pass this way ; And if you've time, I beg your pardon, While you're at it, bless the garden."

The last is the best verse of the three. The lines approach to poetry :— "Stranger, should this catch your eye,

Do a favour passing by—

Bless this house ere you be gone, And it shall bless you, passing on."

The house mottoes of the past were more grave in tone, many were didactic, some even rather grim. For the most part those who made them did not ask a blessing from the stranger, but merely invoked one upon themselves :—

"God shield this house from grief and fire And sin—no more need man desire."

Some of them would seem to have been put upon the house as a sort of amulet to guard it against the besetting fears of the man who was to live there :— " From the nightmare, And sorrow and fire,

And all evil things that be, Salve Benedicite.'

Another householder was more afraid of robbers, pestilence, and want than of fire or dreams :—

" May this house be ever free

From sickness, thieves, and poverty." .

Among the more religious mottoes, the one we are about to quote pleases us best:—

" Enter, dear Lord, mine house with me, Until I enter Heaven with Thee."

The present writer has a dim recollection that he has seen this before in a slightly different version, the word " Thine " being substituted for "Heaven," a change which makes the verse almost worthy of George Herbert. The strong desire of a religious-minded man to found a family could hardly be better expressed than in the following four lines. They breathe the very spirit of the Old Testament :—

"God, by whose gift this worke I did begin, Conserve the same from skaith, from scheme and sin. Lord, as this building built was by Thy grace, Mak it remain stil with the builder's race."

Only one motto seems to have been specially written for a workman's cottage :—

" He that earneth wages by labour and care,

By the blessing of God, may have something to spare."

The words contain a double suggestion of advice. Not only is the tenant to work well, but his employer is to give him a good wage.

The sun-dial and bell mottoes are less interesting and suggestive than those found on houses, and the more poetic among them are, with one or two marked exceptions, very sad. Perhaps, after all, this is not surprising. The flight of. time is a gloomy subject, whether we want to work, to play, or merely to live, and in the end the bell tolls for all. Human nature finds, no doubt, a certain grim pleasure in gloomy thoughts. Tragedy has a perennial charm, but we change our minds from age to age about how it should be presented to us., A death's-head-and-cross-bones moves no one now to anything but disgust, and repeated assurances that life is short and death not far from any of us are too general in their application to terrify any one in particular. Those grim rhymes the literary value of which is insufficient to make them independent of the time spirit have become meaningless. They belong to an age when it would seem tbat men had to make an effort to remember what no effort now will enable them to forget. A few of the most charming inscriptions in the book, however, belong to sun-dials. For instance, we get an English version of the beautiful French lines :— "L'ombre passe et repasse, ' Sans repasser rhomme passe."

In English it runs :--

"The shadow passes, passes yet again,

But with no second passing passeth man."

As a cometive to this motto of sadness, we know of a sun-dkil,

intended to be so inscribed, which is also to bear the following lines :—

" Yes, they will pass away ; nor deem it strange

They come and go, as comes and goes the sea. And let them come and go, thou, through all change, Fix thy firm gaze on virtue and on me."

One short motto among the more cheerful ones charms us : "Tie always morning somewhere in the world." The words have a consolatory sound in the ears of all sick persons and bad sleepers. The man who desired so ardently to be spared nightmare would have done well to give this motto a place in his garden.

It is very noticeable in looking through a collection of rhymes like these how very many among the more ancient do not scan. The sound is ruthlessly sacrificed to the sense. It must have been irritating, one would think, to be constantly reading a halting line. Are our ears more sensi- tive than those of our forefathers ? The ears of our poets are not ; but perhaps the ordinary man is more critical in this particular than he used to be. There is something quite delightful about a really good bit of jingling verse perfectly put together. It is only now and then, however, that we come across one. The sun-dial motto we quote below furnishes an excellent example. We hear the quick, regular tramp of the feet of Time as he passes through a crowd of busy people. He should not always be depicted as an old man:—

" Make time, save time, While time lasts. All time is no time

When time is past."

Before heraldry was a dead subject, of interest to few but antiquarians, mottoes played a large part in life. Even now we often see a motto act upon an anxious mind with some- thing of mesmeric power. Poor Mr. Crawley got through the awful trial of his false accusation by constantly repeating to

himself : "It's dogged as does it." Can any real good come of a blessing? Possibly more than we think. Can any actual harm come of a curse ? Probably less than we fear. In both cases very strong forces are invoked, to what purpose we are not sure. Anyhow, the power of suggestion is admitted noneadays by every one, by those who think and those who do not think, alike. The one sort admit it in theory, the other in practice. Hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent every year upon advertisement ; in other words, upon the practical application of an occult theory. The advertisers have illustrated for us the power which dwells in a short, memorable sentence. Why should we not make a good use of a bad example, and revive the fashion of mottoes ? We cannot all live in old houses; some of us would not if we could. Next to inheriting a house, nothing makes it so much one's own as having built it according to one's own taste. There never was a time when people of moderate means thought so mach about the outward appearance of their homes or desired so greatly to make them express the personality of the owner. "As the body is to the mind, so is the house to the body," is one of the mottoes now before us. Why is it that it occurs to so few people to weave a device into their silent new walls ?

A motto well chosen or well invented would lend them a human interest, and supply, at least in a measure, the vivifying influence of tradition.