Roundabout Papers [0]
Roundabout Papers
by William Makepeace Thackeray
CONTENTS
ROUNDABOUT PAPERS
On a Lazy Idle Boy
On Two Children in Black
On Ribbons
On some late Great Victories
Thorns in the Cushion
On Screens in Dining-Rooms
Tunbridge Toys
De Juventute
On a Joke I once heard from the late Thomas Hood
Round about the Christmas Tree
On a Chalk-Mark on the Door
On being Found Out
On a Hundred Years Hence
Small-Beer Chronicle
Ogres
On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write
A Mississippi Bubble
On Letts's Diary
Notes of a Week's Holiday
Nil Nisi Bonum
On Half a Loaf--A Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and Co., of
New York, Bankers
The Notch on the Axe.--A Story a la Mode.
Part I
Part II
Part III
De Finibus
On a Peal of Bells
On a Pear-Tree
Dessein's
On some Carp at Sans Souci
Autour de mon Chapeau
On Alexandrines--A Letter to some Country Cousins
On a Medal of George the Fourth
"Strange to say, on Club Paper"
The Last Sketch
ROUNDABOUT PAPERS.
ON A LAZY IDLE BOY.
I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little old town of Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried that very ancient British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,* who founded the Church of St. Peter, on Cornhill. Few people note the church now-a- days, and fewer ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, his statue appears surrounded by other sainted persons of his family. With tight red breeches, a Roman habit, a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt crown and sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image: and, from what I may call his peculiar position with regard to Cornhill, I beheld this figure of St. Lucius with more interest than I should have bestowed upon personages who, hierarchically, are, I dare say, his superiors.
* Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, from the table fast chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill; and says, "he was after some chronicle buried at London, and after some chronicle buried at Glowcester"--but, oh! these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in the "Lives of the Saints," v. xii., and Murray's "Handbook," and the Sacristan at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb with my own eyes!
The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the world--of the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and rushing railways, and the commerce and intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the iron road stretches away to Zurich, to Basle, to Paris, to home. From the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and around which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town, the road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow Rhine, through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the Splugen to the shores of Como. I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and pastoral, than this remote little Chur. What need have the inhabitants for walls and ramparts, except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to dry on them? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates: only at morn and even the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium, and return thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the town, and I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no customers seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There's nobody at the book-shop. "If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour," says the banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o'clock, "you can have the money." There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the