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The burgher class of Europe is not the one that has been foremost in the revolutionary movements of history, or that has distinguished itself especially in more modern times by a passionate love of liberty. It is always easy to sneer at Hans Miller and Hans Baker, and at the country where such plebeians are powerful.
Two individuals the one attired as a respectable burgher; the other as a clerical personage in gown and bands-made their appearance upon a stage, opposite the seats of their Highnesses, and pronounced a long dialogue in rhyme. One of the speakers rejoiced in the appellation of the "Desiring Heart," the other was called "Common Comfort."
At length, perceiving that her conductor was grown impatient, she faltered out, "Noble sir " "Sir is for a knight," said the impatient burgher, "and noble is for a baron. I am Harry of the Wynd, an honest mechanic, and free of my guild." "Good craftsman, then," said the minstrel woman, "you judge me harshly, but not without seeming cause.
Even when I had induced a burgher to work, he was off to the post-bags again the instant my back was turned, and I had to go and hunt him up, or else to find some other man to do the work. Yet, in spite of this, I succeeded in removing the gun and Lee-Metford ammunition. We carried away some six hundred cases of this ammunition, and hid it at a spot about three hundred paces from the station.
But if the enemy were not at our heels, we often passed the long nights in sleeplessness, gazing up at the stars with the most bitter feelings in our hearts. No wonder that many a burgher grew gray. We were often kept awake by the tethered horses stumbling among the groups.
Henrica had grown up among her father's boon companions, amid the clinking of glasses and hunting-shouts, Maria in a grave burgher household, and what they told each other seemed like tidings from a strange world.
But there was another side to this genial and healthy picture. A hint that this was a state of society which had its conditions, its limit; and if those were infringed, woe alike to burgher and to prentice.
In former days the lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their moral qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family which each established as soon as he obtained his freedom.
Nothing could be neater or more mythological. The Prince and his escort, sitting in the windows of the town-hall, the square beneath being covered with 3000 or 4000 burgher militia in full uniform, with orange plumes in their hats and orange scarves on their breasts, saw still other sights.
They forgot that the feeling for art existed in the agriculturist as well as in the burgher, and, notwithstanding that the expression of artistic feeling varies according to the difference in culture, in the main it remains the same.
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