missioner for the Taxes in the could himself play on the same area, and apparently flageolet. knighted, though his name is not to be found in the official list of knights. He is even selected by the Council of State as a man of capacity to deal with problems of publio safety. One finds a letter addressed to him in July 1659 from his old friend Sir James Harrington, at that time President of the Council: "Hearing that a rude multitude from Enfield Town have broken down the hedges of an enclosure, and threaten to out down the houses as well, we desire you to examine the business, and proceed according to law to suppress the tumult, and in case you require further help, have ordered two troops of horse to be in the neighbourhood to act under your orders for the public good." A peaceful honour came to him the following year in the friendship of Samuel Pepys. They met at Westminster Hall for the first time on the 30th August 1660, and dined together at Heaven's coffee-house.2 It was the love of music that drew them together, for Pagitt was a great player on the organ and the viol, and Pepys was wont to be "transported ravished and soul-enwrapped with all kinds of wind-musique," and Two years later the diarist notes down, "At Lord Sandwich's. Pagitt being there, Will Howe and I and he played over some things of Locke's which pleased us well, it being the first music I have heard for a great while." Again in December of that year, after hearing service in the King's Chapel, they forgather in the same nobleman's house. "Met Howe and Pagitt the Counsellor, an old lover of musique. We sang some Psalms of Mr Lawes and played some symphonies till night. Had great store of good musique." The last record of their meeting is in 1664, when Pepys strolls round to Pagitt's rooms in town and finds him at chamber music "with Dr Walgrave, an Englishman bred at Rome, who plays the best on the lute that I ever heard man." Of the rest of Pagitt's acts and emoluments there is no record remaining; no annotated sermons of the Hadley Rector, no further comminations against his stepmother, no more Examen Salutis meae. Nothing indeed but a blank silence extending over seven years which breaks for a moment on a Latin epitaph and passes into the unbroken silence of the tomb. On the 2nd January 1669 the dust of 1 This disorder was due to the sale and enclosure of Enfield Chase from 1652 onwards, by which the local farmers were deprived of common land which, as they claimed, had been enjoyed for 300 years. Justinian disposed of the matter by appointing a Commission to inquire. 2 A place of entertainment in Old Palace Yard, on the site of which the Committee Rooms of the House of Commons now stand. It is called in 'Hudibras "False Heaven at the end of the Hall." Sir Justinian Pagitt, Custos Brevium et Recordorum de Banco Regis was laid to rest in the Church of St Giles-in-theFields, close to those chambers in Elm Court where as a youth he had meditated on the mysteries of life and death. Beneath the pride of his coat-ofarms and the humble confidence of his motto, "Deo Restituit," he sleeps securely, where stepmothers cease from troubling and recorders are at rest. Ten months later his widow slept beside him. Her own memorial is in plain English, and commends her virtues simply by giving the number of her children. As for her sons, Justinian alone survived, and perpetuated the memory of his father by presenting a cottage to the parson and the elerk, and six tenements for the use of decayed householders within the parish of Hadley. The latter, though rebuilt, are still known as the "Pagitt Rooms." One other memorial there is if one could but discover it-namely, a panegyric poem entitled, Ad ornatissimum Justinianum Pagitt Arm. Custodem Brevium, the composition of Payne Fisher, some time PoetLaureate to the Protectoror, as he styled himself after the Restoration, "the chief scribbler and pamphleteer to His Infernal Majesty." The poem is referred to by Antony Wood as existing in his day, but it never came to be printed, and hitherto my searches my searches have been in vain. It is possible that this portrait-study may attract it to the light. As for the lady Mazaretta, the villain of this piece, it must be told that she survived all her enemies and lived viotorious to the verge of ninety years. Her career adds one more melancholy example of the good estate of the wicked and the inequitable lot of mortals here below. For while the soft pliable natures have but a few days on the earth, and mostly in the shade, the wicked seem to bask, like the bay - trees, in the sun of uncounted years. According to her physician, Mazaretta's appetite was enormous to the end. But where is she now? REGINALD L. HINE. ON THE WALL. BY ZERES. "Old men who have followed the Eagles since boyhood say that nothing in the Empire is more wonderful than the Wall.” -Confidences of Parnesius the Centurion in Britain. arrow warfare, personal vendettas that are decided by the domestic dao,1 and the earnest study of every variety of demon propitiation and animism known to the Theosophical Society. Their almost impenetrable forests teem with big game-tiger, wild elephant, and buffalo abounding,-while, as a general rule, their rushing mountain rivers are well stooked with fish. BETWEEN Burma and Assam, and farther to the north between Assam and Thibet, lie & series of wild mountain ranges that are practically unexplored. In these inhospitable and almost trackless regions a steaming tropical sun and an annual rainfall of some two hundred inches both combine to raise dense barriers of Gargantuan vegetation so formidable that pigmy man is often unable to penetrate them. Many of them are foul Here and there, however, feeders, and a whole family will among their depths live camp under the lee of a trapped where it is possible to live at elephant until its stinking carall without being choked by oase has been completely conthe strangling jungle-a score sumed.... Races unpleasing in of different savage races. habit and custom, it still remains Those Englishmen who know to be said in their favour that them well can differentiate they are neither cannibals nor between such jungle tribes, teetotalers. When raiding, these and will tell you that in reality frontier races have not always few of them are exactly alike in the past restricted their either in racial antecedents or activities to intertribal warfare personal idiosyncrasy; but the among themselves, and the ordinary mortal who encoun- lonely tea - planter living in ters such exotic aborigines for remote districts has been the first time may well be the occasional object of their pardoned if he sees little or unwelcome attentions. Exnothing to choose between citing stories of white wothem. Utter savages, wild men helping their husbands men of the woods, trappers to defend their bungalows of game, herdsmen (who even against the rushes of savage domesticate bison !), and occa- head-hunters recall Fenimore sional head-hunters, they oc- Cooper's novels of Red Indian cupy themselves with poisoned- and white settler life in 1 A heavy knife, America. To mention a few of such men—and their confrères all the Empire overare many and varied. Sometimes they sit for months in a lonely outpost, wishing that the destinies of the British Empire had not been cast in Asia or Africa; on other occasions they conduct punitive patrols against erring tribes, while more frequently they soothe by diplomacy shy or restless ones on the verge of tribal stampede. Little honour is theirs, and no glory at all, because hunting as they do in couples-or more often singly-there is nobody to chronicle their exploits. Their lot is fever, fatalism, and a very great loneliness, for in the wilds of Asia and Africa the white man dies swiftly, doctorless and alone, in the arms of some black but kindly savage. During Armageddon their task is not dissimilar from that of the Roman legionaries in ancient Britain, who, unrelieved in their weary vigil and cut off from civilisation, went on holding the Great Wall against the Piots and Scots at a moment in history when Rome herself, embarrassed by graver conflicts nearer home, could give but little thought to her distant provinces and far-flung outposts. of the names of these prehistorio Bushmen Chinns, Singphos, Nagas, Abors, Kukis, Daphlas, Mishmis, and Ankas -is probably to convey little or nothing to the English mind;1 yet in the past they have not been altogether dissociated from our island story, and at rare intervals their names have cropped up in the English Press. When their names have appeared in print at all, it has generally been in connection with the murder of some British official. As in many other parts of our complex Empire, the proximity to civilisation of such barbar. ous backwoods necessitates the presence of some local levies to keep the peace. Even during a European War such military precautions still have to be taken, otherwise a whole countryside might be pillaged. In the case of the dark lands that we are now describing, a dozen battalions of military police are the wardens of the marches. In normal times native militias are trained and led by regular military officers, seconded from their regiments; and although in war - time most of these have now been released for service in Mesopotamia, they have been replaced by "crocks," who, even if no longer fit to support the strain of a prolonged campaign, are still quite capable of waging intermittent savage warfare. The duties 1 The tribesmen under discussion do not as a rule use these names among themselves. Such terms were coined by their Assamese or Bengali neighbours, and signify "naked men,' ," "tattooed men," "jungle men," "eater of a thousand hearts" (i.e., warriors), &c. Beneath them the thickly wooded hillside fell abruptly out of sight; but had they cared to gaze straight ahead across the dizzy emptiness of cloud-filled valley just below, another huge mountain range would have rewarded their efforts. Neither, however, did gaze as we have suggested that they might have done, because both were sick to death of mountain scenery, and tinned Oxford sausages frizzling over the camp fire seemed to them at the moment to be far more worthy of meditative contemplation than all the sunrises of Central Asia put together. The morning dew was helioing them a thousand messages over the hills; the passionless kiss of the laughing young mountain wind fell carelessly upon the boldly offered petals of the flaunting wild orchids around them; the roar of the waterfall below them rose thunderingly in their ears ; but Gallio-like they cared for none of these things, but simply cursed the cook. "No," replied his Captain, eddying breeze, an ugly purple emerging from 8 lopsided soar was plainly visible above bivouac tent, and struggling his left breast. He had acwith an emotion that finally quired this souvenir at Tanga. overcame his efforts to suppress it "No, Peter, I . . . well, haven't: nor any other .. soap either! I've just discovered that coming into camp last night, half my kit went down the khud1 during that landslip. . . ." He ended his remarks with adjectives of appropriate calibre, and then proceeded to loot the subaltern's sponge-bag. Their ablutions completed, the two soldiers seated themselves on a waterproof sheet and watched the preparations that were being made for their early camp breakfast. These were being conducted by a dishevelled down country bearer, assisted by a small chokra of evil mien and sinister aspect. In normal life the Captain belonged to the Royal Regiment of Artillery, and how or why he now found himself in command of a detachment of Gurkha Irregulars concerns no one but himself. He wore two African medal ribbons that were much faded and frayed at the edges, and a black patch over one eye recorded the work of the Turk in Gallipoli. Peter, his subaltern, was a restless fox-terrier-owning youth from the Sikh Brigade, whose only olaim to immediate respectability lay in the possession of a pair of ragged khaki sherts. The rest of his shrinking person was inadequately soncealed by his bath towel, and as this flapped wildly in the "When in Allah's name will those sausages be ready, Alla Bux. . . . God strafe that chokra; what will he do next?" "Hazri taiar hai" (breakfast is ready), at last announced the orouching abomination in muddy muslin, as it blew stertorously upon the damp and unhappy fire; "refrain from drinking the Wister 1 Khudhillside. |