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Everybody must recognise and admire certain qualities specially fostered by town-life; the extraordinary patience, cheerful courage, philosophic irony, and unselfishness of our towns-people qualities which in this war, both at the front and at home, have been of the greatest value. They are worth much of the price paid.
On town-life in the Netherlands: Henri Pirenne, Belgian Democracy: its Early History, trans. by J. V. Saunders . On town-life in the Germanies: Helen Zimmern, The Hansa Towns in "Story of the Nations" Series; Karl von Hegel, Staedte und Gilden der germanischen Volker im Mittelalter, 2 vols. , the standard treatise in German. On French gilds: Martin St.
Eclogues he called them, and meant to have published them by subscription. I remember some of his verses, if you want to hear them. The old man had a great deal to say about "aestivation," as he called it, in opposition, as one might say, to hibernation. Intramural festivation, or town-life in summer, he would say, is a peculiar form of suspended existence or semi-asphyxia.
I assiduously frequented the theatres at a very propitious aera of the stage, when a constellation of excellent actors, both in tragedy and comedy, was eclipsed by the meridian brightness of Garrick in the maturity of his judgment, and vigour of his performance. The pleasures of a town-life are within the reach of every man who is regardless of his health, his money, and his company.
He declared himself tired of his useless life, disgusted with society; it was always the same, one never found any truth, any sincerity. She would have liked to know what town-life was like but she was convinced beforehand that society would never be so pleasant as a country-life.
This latter charge would appear incredible, if we had not the record of more than one case where the homicide justified his act by the plea that his victim was a mere native, and where the plea was held good and sufficient. A very vivid picture of Hiberno-Norman town-life in those days is presented to us in an old poem, on the "Entrenchment of the Town of Ross," in the year 1265.
It is very clear to me that the Anglo-Saxons at least, after a generation or two of town-life, must give up trade and emerge from the City for the recreating part of their year, or else suffer in deeper ways than death.
No one would imagine the transformation that had taken place in my five fellow-travellers. Four days of town-life had told upon them physically and morally. They were tired and disgusted with everything. Accustomed, on an average, to walk twenty miles a day, at Penang, after strolling through a few streets, they had been weary.
Further, we are running to seed physically from too much town-life and the failure of country stocks; we shall never stem that rot unless we re-establish agriculture on a large scale. To do that, in the view of nearly all who have thought this matter out, we must found our farming on wheat; grow four-fifths instead of one-fifth of our supply, and all else will follow.
Without doubt the rapid increase of town-life is responsible for our acknowledged vulgarity. The same process is going on in America and in Northern Germany; but we unfortunately had the lead, and seem to be doing our best to keep it.
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