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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78166 ***
+
+
+     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
+                            A WEEKLY JOURNAL
+
+
+                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+       N^{o.}3.]      SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._
+
+
+
+
+                        THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE.
+
+
+We take this opportunity of announcing a design, closely associated with
+our Household Words, which we have now matured, and which we hope will
+be acceptable to our readers.
+
+We purpose publishing, at the end of each month as a supplementary
+number to the monthly part of Household Words, a comprehensive Abstract
+or History of all the occurrences of that month, native and foreign,
+under the title of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE OF CURRENT EVENTS.
+
+The size and price of each of these numbers will be the same as the size
+and price of the present number of Household Words. Twelve numbers will
+necessarily be published in the course of the year—one for each
+month—and on the completion of the Annual Volume, a copious Index will
+appear, and a title-page for the volume; which will then be called THE
+HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE of such a year. It will form a complete Chronicle of
+all that year’s events, carefully compiled, thoroughly digested, and
+systematically arranged for easy reference; presenting a vast mass of
+information that must be interesting to all, at a price that will render
+it accessible to the humblest purchasers of books, and at which only our
+existing machinery in connexion with this Work would enable us to
+produce it.
+
+The first number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE will appear as a supplement
+to the first monthly part of Household Words, published at the end of
+the present month of APRIL. As the Volume for 1850 would be incomplete
+(in consequence of our not having commenced this publication at the
+beginning of a year) without a backward reference to the three months of
+JANUARY, FEBRUARY, and MARCH, a similar number of THE HOUSEHOLD
+NARRATIVE for each of those months will be published before the year is
+out.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to explain that it is not proposed to render
+the purchase of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE compulsory on the purchasers of
+Household Words; and that the supplementary number, though always
+published at the same time as our monthly part, will therefore be
+detached from it, and published separately.
+
+Nor is it necessary for us, we believe, to expatiate on our leading
+reasons for adding this new undertaking to our present enterprise. The
+intimate connexion between the facts and realities of the time, and the
+means by which we aim, in Household Words, to soften what is hard in
+them, to exalt what is held in little consideration, and to show the
+latent hope there is in what may seem unpromising, needs not to be
+pointed out. All that we sought to express in our Preliminary Word, in
+reference to this work, applies, we think, to its proposed companion. As
+another humble means of enabling those who accept us for their friend,
+to bear the world’s rough-cast events to the anvil of courageous duty,
+and there beat them into shape, we enter on the project, and confide in
+its success.
+
+
+
+
+                      THE TROUBLED WATER QUESTION.
+
+
+My excellent and eloquent friend, Lyttleton, of Pump Court, Temple,
+barrister-at-law, disturbed me on a damp morning at the end of last
+month, to bespeak my company to a meeting at which he intended to hold
+forth. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘the Great Water Supply Congress, which
+assembles to-morrow.’
+
+‘Do you know anything of the subject?’
+
+‘A vast deal both practically and theoretically. Practically, I pay for
+my little box in the Regent’s Park, twice the price for water our friend
+Fielding is charged, and both supplies are derived from the same
+Company. Yet his is a mansion, mine is a cottage; his rent more than
+doubles mine in amount, and his family trebles mine in number. So much
+for the consistency and exactions of an irresponsible monopoly.
+Practically, again, there are occasions when my cisterns are without
+water. So much for deficient supply.’
+
+‘Is your water bad?’
+
+‘Not absolutely unwholesome; but I have drunk better.’
+
+‘Now then, Theoretically.’
+
+‘Theoretically, I learn from piles of blue books—a regular blue mountain
+of parliamentary inquiry instituted in the years 1810, 1821, 1827, 1828,
+1834, 1840, and 1845—from a cloud of prospectuses issued by embryo Water
+Companies, from a host of pamphlets _pro_ and _con_, and from the
+reports of the Board of Health, that of the 300,000 houses of which
+London is said to consist, 70,000 are without the great element of
+suction and cleanliness; I find also that the supply, such as it is, is
+derived from nine water companies all linked together to form a giant
+monopoly; and that, in consequence, the charge for water is in some
+instances excessive; that six of these companies draw their water from
+the filthy Thames;—and the same number, including those which use the
+Lea and New River water, have no system of filtration—hence it is
+unwholesome: that in short, the public of the metropolis are the victims
+of dear, insufficient and dirty water. Like Tantalus of old they are
+denied much of the great element of life, although it flows within reach
+of their parched and thirsty lips. And by whom? By that many-headed
+Cerberus—that nine gentlemen in one—the great monopolist Water Company
+combination of London! Unless, therefore, we bestir ourselves in the
+great cause for which this numerous, enlightened, and respectable
+meeting have assembled here this day—’
+
+‘You forget; you have only two listeners at present—myself and my
+spaniel. I can suggest a more profitable morning’s amusement than a
+rehearsal of your speech.’
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘Your theoretical knowledge is, I doubt not, very comprehensive and
+varied. But second-hand information is not to be trusted too implicitly.
+Every statement of fact, like every story, gains something in
+exaggeration, or loses something in accuracy by repetition from book to
+book, or from book to mouth.’
+
+‘Granted; but what do you suggest?’
+
+‘Ocular demonstration. Let us at once visit and minutely inspect the
+works of one of the Companies. I am sure they will let us in at the
+Grand Junction, for I have already been over their premises.’
+
+‘A capital notion! Agreed.’
+
+The preliminaries—consisting of the hasty bundling up of Mr. Lyttleton’s
+notes for the morrow’s oration, and the hire of a Hansom cab—were
+adjusted in a few minutes.
+
+The order to drive to Kew Bridge, was obeyed in capital style; for in
+three-quarters of an hour we were deposited on the towing path on the
+Surrey side of the Thames, opposite the King of Hanover’s house, and a
+quarter of a mile west of Kew Bridge.
+
+‘Here,’ I explained, ‘is the spot whence the Grand Junction Company
+derive their water. In the bed of the river is an enormous culvert pipe
+laid parallel to this path. Its mouth—open towards Richmond—is barred
+across with a grating, to intercept stray fish, murdered kittens, or
+vegetable impurities, and—except now and then the intrusion edgeways of
+a small flounder, or the occasional slip of an erratic eel—it admits
+nothing into the pipe but what is more or less fluid. The culvert then
+takes a bend round the edge of the islet opposite to us; burrows beneath
+the Brentford road, and delivers its contents into a well under that
+tall chimney and taller iron “stand-pipe” which you see on the other
+side of the river.’
+
+‘And is _this_ the stuff I have to pay four pounds ten a year for?’
+exclaimed Mr. Lyttleton, contemplating the opaque fluid; part of which
+was then making its way into the cisterns of Her Majesty’s lieges.
+
+‘Certainly; but it is purified first. We will now cross the bridge to
+the Works.’
+
+Those of my readers who make prandial expeditions to Richmond, must have
+noticed at the beginning of Old Brentford, a little beyond where they
+turn over Kew Bridge, an immensely tall thin column that shoots up into
+the air like an iron mast unable to support itself, and seems to require
+four smaller, thinner, and not much shorter props to keep it upright.
+This, with the engine and engine-houses, is all they can see of the
+Grand Junction Waterworks from the road. It is only when one gets
+inside, that the whole extent of the aquatic apparatus is revealed.
+
+Determined to follow the water from the Thames till it began its travels
+to London, we entered the edifice, went straight to the well, and called
+for a glass of water. Our hosts—who had received our visit without
+hesitation—supplied us. ‘That,’ remarked one of them, as he held the
+half-filled tumbler up to the light, ‘is precisely the state of the
+water as emptied from the Thames into the well.’
+
+It looked like a dose of weak magnesia, or that peculiar London liquid
+known as ‘skim-sky-blue,’ but deceitfully sold under the name of milk.
+
+‘The analysis of Professor Brande,’ said Lyttleton, ‘gives to every
+gallon of Thames water taken from Kew Bridge, 19·2 parts of solid
+matter; but the water, I apprehend, in which he experimented must have
+been taken from the river on a serener occasion than this. To-day’s rain
+appears to have drained away the chalk—so as to give in this specimen a
+much larger proportion of solids to fluids than his estimate.’
+
+‘In this impure state,’ one of the engineers told us, ‘the water is
+pumped by steam power into the reservoirs to which you will please to
+follow me.’
+
+Passing out of the building and climbing a sloping bank, we now saw
+before us an expanse of water covering 3½ acres; but divided into two
+sections. Into the larger, the pump first delivers the water, that so
+much of the impurity as will form sediment may be precipitated. It then
+slowly glides through a small opening into the lesser section, which is
+a huge filter.
+
+‘The impurities of water,’ said the barrister, assuming an oratorical
+attitude, to give us a taste of his ‘reading up,’ ‘are of two kinds;
+first, such as are mechanically suspended—say earth, chalk, sand, clay,
+dead vegetation or decomposed cats; and secondly, such as are dissolved
+or chemically combined—like salt, sugar, or alkali. Separation in the
+one case is easy, in the other it involves a chemical process. If you
+throw a pinch of sand into a tumbler of water, and stir it about, you
+produce a turbid mixture; but to render the fluid clear again you have
+only to adopt the simple process of letting it alone; for on setting the
+tumbler down for awhile, the particles—which, from their extreme
+minuteness, were easily disturbed and distributed amidst the fluid—being
+heavier than water, are precipitated, or in other words, fall to the
+bottom, leaving the liquid translucent. This is what is happening in the
+larger section of the reservoir to the chalky water of which we drank. I
+think I am correct?’ asked the speaker, angling for a single ‘cheer’
+from the Engineer.
+
+‘Quite so,’ replied that gentleman.
+
+‘Provided the water could remain at rest long enough—which the
+insatiable maw of the modern Babylon does not allow,’—continued the
+honourable orator, rehearsing a bit more of his speech, ‘this mode of
+cleansing would be perfectly effectual. In proof of which I may only
+allude to Nature’s mode of depuration, as shown in lakes—that of Geneva
+for instance. The waters of the Rhone enter that expansive reservoir
+from the Valais in a very muddy condition; yet, after reposing in the
+lake, they issue at Geneva as clear as crystal. But so incessant is the
+London demand, that scarcely any time can be afforded for the impurities
+of the Thames, the Lea, or the New River to separate themselves from the
+water by mere deposition.’
+
+‘True,’ interjected one of the superintendants. ‘It is for that reason
+that our water is passed afterwards into the filtering bed, which is
+four feet thick.’
+
+‘How do you make up this enormous bed?’
+
+‘The water rests upon, and permeates through, 1st, a surface of fine
+sand; 2d, a stratum of shells; 3d, a layer of garden gravel; and 4th, a
+base of coarse gravel. It thence falls through a number of ducts into
+cisterns, whence it is pumped up so as to commence its travels to town
+through the conduit-pipe.’
+
+We were returning to the engine-house, when Lyttleton asked the
+Engineer, ‘Does your experience generally, enable you to say that water
+as supplied by the nine companies, is tolerably pure?’
+
+‘Upon the whole, yes,’ was the answer.
+
+‘Indeed!’ ejaculated the orator, sharply. ‘If that be true,’ he
+whispered to me, in a rueful tone, ‘I shall be cut out of one of the
+best points in my speech.’
+
+‘Of course,’ continued the Engineer, ‘purity entirely depends upon the
+source, and the means of cleansing.’
+
+‘Then, as to the source—how many companies take their supplies from the
+Thames, near to, and after it has received the contents of, the common
+sewers?’
+
+‘No water is taken from the Thames below Chelsea, except that of the
+Lambeth Company, which is supplied from between Waterloo and Hungerford
+Bridges; an objectionable source, which they have obtained an act to
+change to Thames Ditton. The Chelsea Waterworks have a most efficient
+system of filtration; as also have the Southwark and Vauxhall Company;
+both draw their water from between the Red House, Battersea, and Chelsea
+Hospital. The other companies do not filter. The West Middlesex sucks up
+some of Father Thames as he passes Barnes Terrace. Except the lowest of
+these sources, Thames water is nearly as pure as that of other rivers.’
+
+‘Perhaps it is,’ was the answer; ‘but the unwholesomeness arises from
+contaminations received during its course; we don’t object to the
+“Thames,” but to its “tributaries,” such as the black contents of common
+sewers, and the refuse of gut, glue, soap, and other nauseous
+manufactures; to say nothing of animal and vegetable offal, of which the
+river is the sole receptacle. Brande shows that, while the solid matter
+contained in the river at Teddington is 17·4, that which the water has
+contracted when it flows past Westminster is 24·4, and the City of
+London, 28·0.’
+
+‘But,’ said the Engineer, ‘these adulterations are only mechanically
+suspended in the fluid, and are, as you shall see presently, totally
+separated from it by our mode of filtration.’
+
+‘Which brings us to your second point, as to efficient cleansing; you
+admit that without filtration this is impossible, and also that only
+three companies filter; the deduction, therefore, is that two-thirds of
+the water supplied to Londoners is insufficiently cleansed. This indeed,
+is not a mere inference; we know it for a fact, we see it in our ewers,
+we taste it out of our caraffes.’
+
+‘But this does not wholly arise from the inefficient filtration of the
+six companies,’ returned an officer of this Company, ‘the public is much
+to blame—though, when agitating against an abuse, it never thinks of
+blaming itself. Half the dirt, dust, and animalculæ found at table are
+introduced after the water has been delivered to the houses. Impurity of
+all sorts finds its way into out-door cisterns, even when covered, and
+few of them, open or closed, are often enough cleansed. In some
+neighbourhoods water-butts are always uncovered, and hardly ever cleaned
+out. The water is foul, and the companies are blamed.’
+
+‘The blame belongs to the system,’ said the barrister. ‘Domestic
+reservoirs are not only an evil but an unnecessary expense. Besides
+filth, they cause waste and deficient supply: they should be abolished;
+for continuous supply is the real remedy. Let the pipes be always full,
+and the water would be always ready, always fresh, and could never
+acquire new impurities. Still, despite all you say, I am bound to
+conclude that although one-third of the water may arrive in the domestic
+cisterns of the metropolis in a pellucid state, the other two-thirds
+does not.’ Mr. L. then inscribed this calculation in his note book,
+whispering to me that his pet ‘dirty water point’ would come out even
+stronger than he had expected.
+
+We had now returned to one of the engine-rooms.
+
+‘You have tasted the water before, I now present you with some of it
+after, filtration,’ said the chief engineer, handing us a tumbler. ‘This
+is exactly the condition in which we deliver it to our customers.’
+
+It was clear to the eye, and to the taste innocuous; but Lyttleton (who
+I should mention, occasionally turns on powerful streams of oratory at
+Temperance meetings, and is a judge of the article,) complained that the
+liquid wanted ‘flavour.’
+
+‘In other words, then it wants _impurity_’ replied one of our cicerones
+with alacrity, ‘for perfectly pure water is quite tasteless. Indeed,
+water may be too pure. Distilled water which contains no salt, is
+insipid, and tends to indigestion. It is a wise provision of Nature,
+that waters should contain a greater or less quantity of foreign
+ingredients; for without these water is dangerous to drink. It never
+fails to take up from the atmosphere a certain proportion of carbonic
+acid gas, and when passing through lead pipes it imbibes enough
+carbonate of lead to constitute poison. Dr. Christison mentions several
+severe cases of lead (or painter’s) cholic, which arose chiefly in
+country houses to which water was supplied from springs through lead
+pipes. The most remarkable case was that at Claremont, where the ex-king
+of the French and several members of his family were nearly poisoned by
+pure spring water conveyed to the mansion through lead pipes.
+
+‘Mercy!’ I exclaimed, with all the energy of despair that a mere
+water-drinker is capable of, ‘if river water be unwholesome, and pure
+water poison, what _is_ to become of every temperance pledgee?’
+
+The Engineer relieved me: ‘All the Chemists,’ he stated, ‘have agreed
+that a water containing from eight to ten grains of sulphate of magnesia
+or soda, to the imperial gallon, is best suited for alimentary,
+lavatory, and other domestic purposes.’
+
+We were now introduced to the great engine. What a monster! Imagine an
+enormous see-saw, with a steam engine at one end, and a pump at the
+other. Fancy this ‘beam,’ some ten yards long, and twenty-eight tons in
+weight, moving on a pivot in the middle, the ends of which show a
+circumference greater than the crown of the biggest hat ever worn. See,
+with what earnest deliberation the ‘see,’ or engine, pulls up the ‘saw,’
+or balance-box of the pump, which then comes down upon the water-trap
+with the ferocious _àplomb_ of 49 tons, sending 400 gallons of water in
+one tremendous squirt nearly the twentieth part of a mile high;—that is
+to the top of the stand-pipe.
+
+‘We have a smaller engine which “does” 150 gallons per stroke,’ remarked
+our informant: ‘each performs 11 strokes, and forces up 4400 gallons of
+water per minute, and thus our average delivery per diem throughout the
+year is from 4,000,000, to 5,000,000 gallons.’
+
+‘What proportion of London do you supply?’ asked Mr. Lyttleton.
+
+‘The quadrangle included between Oxford Street, Wardour Street,
+Pall-Mall, and Hyde Park; besides the whole of Notting-hill, Bayswater,
+and Paddington. We serve 14,058 houses, to each of which we supply 225
+gallons per day, or, taking the average number of persons per house at
+nine, 25 gallons a head; besides public services, such as baths,
+watering streets, or manufactories; making our total daily delivery at
+the rate of 252 gallons per house. This delivery is performed through 80
+miles of service pipes, whose diameter varies from 3 to 30 inches.
+
+‘Now,’ said my companion, sharpening his pencil, ‘to go into the
+question of supply.’ He then unfolded his pocket soufflet, and brought
+out a calculation, of quantities derived, he said, from parliamentary
+returns and other authorities more or less reliable:—
+
+                                                            Gals. daily.
+ New River Company                                            20,000,000
+ Chelsea Company                                               3,250,000
+ West Middlesex Company                                        3,650,000
+ Grand Junction Company                                        3,500,000
+ East London Company                                           7,000,000
+ South Lambeth Company                                         2,500,000
+ South London Company and Southwark Company                    3,000,000
+ Hampstead Company                                               400,000
+ Kent Company                                                  1,200,000
+                                                              ——————————
+                                                              44,500,000
+ Artesian Wells                                                8,000,000
+ Land-spring Pumps                                             3,000,000
+ “Catch” rain water (say)                                      1,000,000
+                                                              ——————————
+ Making a total quantity supplied daily to London, from all
+   sources, of                                                56,500,000
+
+‘An abundant supply,’ said an engineer eagerly, ‘for as the present
+population of the metropolis is estimated at 2,336,000, the total
+affords about 24 gallons of water per day, for every man, woman, and
+child.’
+
+‘Admitted,’ rejoined Lyttleton; ‘but we have to deal with large
+deductions; first, nearly half this quantity runs to waste, chiefly in
+consequence of the intermittent system. I live in a small house with
+proportionately small cisterns, which are filled no more than three
+times a week; now, as my neighbours have larger houses and larger
+reservoirs, the water when turned on runs for as long a time into my
+small, as it does into their capacious cisterns, and consequently, if my
+stop-taps be in the least out of order, a greater quantity descends the
+waste pipe than remains behind. This is universally the case in similar
+circumstances.’
+
+‘_We_ supply water daily, Sundays excepted,’ remarked the Engineer.
+
+‘Then you are wiser than your neighbours. But every inconvenience and
+nearly all the waste, would be saved by the adoption of the continuous
+system of supply. Secondly, a large quantity of water is consumed by
+cattle, breweries, baths, public institutions, for putting out fires,
+and for laying dust. The lieges of London have only, therefore, to
+divide between them some 10 gallons of water each per day; and, as it is
+generally admitted that a sixth part of their habitations are without
+water at all, the division must be most unequally made. That such is the
+fact is shown by your own figures—your customers get 25 gallons each per
+day, or more than double their share. For this excess, some in poorer
+districts get none at all.’
+
+‘That is no fault of the existing companies. As sellers of an article,
+they are but too happy to get as many customers for it as possible; but
+poor tenants cannot, and their landlords will not, afford the expense.
+If the companies were to make the outlay necessary to connect the houses
+with their mains, they would have no legal power to recover the money so
+expended—nor indeed is it clear, that were they inclined to run the
+risk, the parties would avail themselves of it. In one instance, the
+Southwark and Vauxhall Company offered to construct a tank which would
+give continuous supply to a block of 100 small houses, at the rate of 50
+gallons per diem to each—if the proprietor would pay an additional rate
+sufficient to yield 5 per cent. on the outlay, such additional rate not
+exceeding one half-penny per week for each house, but the offer was
+declined.’
+
+‘That is an extreme case of cheapness on the one side, and of stupidity
+on the other,’ said the barrister. ‘Other landlords will not turn on
+water for their tenants, because of the expense; not only of the
+“plant,” in the first instance, but of the after water-rent. I find, by
+the account rendered to the House of Commons in 1834, that the South
+London Company (since incorporated with the Southwark, as the “Southwark
+and Vauxhall,”—the very Company you mention,) charged considerably less
+than any other. The return shows that while they obtained only 15_s._
+per 1000 hogsheads; the West Middlesex (the highest) exacted 48_s._,
+6_d._ for the same quantity; consequently, had the houses of the foolish
+landlord who refused one half-penny per week for water, stood in
+northwestern instead of southern London, he would have had to pay more
+than treble, or a fraction above three half-pence per week.’
+
+‘Allowing for difference of level,’ I remarked, ‘and other interferences
+with the cheap delivery of water; the disparity in the charges of the
+different companies, and even by the same company to different
+customers, is unaccountable: they are guided by no principle. You have
+mentioned the extreme points of the scale of rates; the remaining
+companies charged at the time you mention, respectively per 1000
+hogsheads, 17_s._, 17_s._, 2_d._, 21_s._, 28_s._, 29_s._, and 45_s._ The
+only companies whose charges are limited by act of parliament are the
+Grand Junction, the East London, the Southwark and Vauxhall, and the
+Lambeth. The others exact precisely what they please.’
+
+‘And,’ interposed Lyttleton, ‘there is no redress: the only appeal we,
+the taxed, have, is to our taxers, and the monopoly is so tight that—as
+is my case—although your next door neighbour is supplied from a cheaper
+company, you are not allowed to change.’
+
+‘The companies were obliged to combine, to save themselves from ruin and
+the public from extreme inconvenience,’ said our informant; ‘during the
+competition streets were torn up, traffic was stopped, and confusion was
+worse confounded in the districts where the opposition raged.’
+
+‘But what happened when the war ceased, and the general peace was
+concluded?’ said Lyttleton, chuckling. ‘To show how ill some of the
+companies manage their affairs, I could cite some laughable cases. When
+the combination commenced, some of them forgot to stop off their mains,
+and supplied water to customers whom they had previously turned over to
+their quondam rivals; so that one company gave the water, and the other
+pocketed the rent. This, in some instances, went on for years.’
+
+Here the subject branched off into other topics. It is worthy of notice
+that the conversation was carried on by the side of the enormous Cornish
+engine, that was driving 4400 gallons per minute 218 feet high.
+
+‘It is marvellous,’ I remarked, ‘that so much power can be exercised
+with so little noise and vibration.’
+
+‘That’s owing to the patent valves in the pump,’ said the stoker.
+
+Taking a last look at the monster, we went outside to view the
+stand-pipe. Being, we were told, 218 feet high, it tops the Monument in
+Fish Street-hill by 16 feet. Within it is performed the last stroke of
+hydraulic art which is needed; for nature does the rest. The water, sent
+up through the middle or thickest of the tubes, falls over into the open
+mouths of the smaller ones—(which most people mistake for
+supports)—descends through all four at once into the conduit-pipe, and
+travels of its own accord leisurely to London. In obedience to the law
+of levels, it rises without further trouble to the tops of the tallest
+houses on the highest spots in the Company’s district. In its way it
+fills a large reservoir on Camden-hill. The iron conduit-pipe ends at
+Poland street, Oxford street, and is 7½ miles long.
+
+Our inspection was now terminated. We took a parting glass of water with
+our intelligent and communicative hosts, and returned to town.
+
+I firmly believe that the success of Lyttleton’s speech at the great
+meeting next day, was very much owing to this visit. The room was
+crowded in every part. His tone was moderate. He avoided the extravagant
+exaggerations of the more fiery order of water spouters. Neither was he
+too tame; he was not—as Moore said of a tory orator—like an
+
+                            ‘awkward thing of wood
+              Which up and down its clumsy arm doth move;
+              And only spout, and spout, and spout away,
+              In one weak, washy, everlasting flood,’
+
+but he came out capitally in the hard, argumentative style. His oration
+bristled with logic and statistics to a degree of which I cannot pretend
+to give the faintest notion.
+
+Sipping inspiration out of a tumbler filled with the flowing subject of
+discussion, Mr. Lyttleton commenced by declaring his conviction that the
+water supplied to the metropolis was, generally speaking, bad in
+quality, extravagantly dear, and, from excessive waste, deficient in
+quantity. In order to remedy those defects an efficient control was
+essential. Continuous supply, filtration, and a uniform scale of rates
+must be enforced. Some of the companies were pocketing enormous
+dividends, and was it a fair argument to retort, that they are now being
+reimbursed for periods of no dividend at all? Are we of the present day
+to be mulcted to cover losses occasioned because the early career of
+some of these companies was marked by the ignorance, imprudence, and
+reckless extravagance, which he (Mr. Lyttleton) could prove it was? If
+our wine merchant, or coal merchant, or baker, began business badly and
+with loss, would he be tolerated, if, when he grew wiser and more
+prosperous, he tried to exact large prices to cover the consequences of
+his previous mismanagement? Mr. Lyttleton apprehended not. With this
+branch of the question—he proceeded to remark—the important subjects of
+distribution and supply were intimately connected. It had been
+ascertained that a vast proportion of the poor had no water in their
+houses. Why? Partly because it was too dear; but partly he (the learned
+speaker) was bound to say from the parsimony of landlords. He had
+pointed out a remedy for the first evil; for the second he would propose
+that every house owner should be bound to introduce pipes into every
+house. The law was stringent on him as to sewers and party-walls, and
+why should not a water supply be enforced on him also?—In dealing with
+the whole question of supply—the honourable gentleman went on to say, he
+could not agree with those who stated that the delivery of it was
+deficient. A moderate calculation estimated the quantity running through
+the underground net-work of London pipes at 56,000,000 of gallons per
+day. Waste (of which there is a prodigious amount), steam-engines,
+cattle, public baths and other supplies deducted, left more than 10
+gallons per diem per head for the whole population,—that is supposing
+these gallons were equitably distributed; but they are not,—the rich get
+an excess, and the poor get none at all. He (the learned barrister) was
+not prepared to say that 10 or 20 gallons per head daily were sufficient
+for all the purposes of life in this or in any other city, great or
+small; but this he would say, that under proper management the existing
+supply might be made ample for present wants;—whether for the
+requirements of augmenting population and increased cleanliness we need
+not discuss now. What was wanted at this time was a better distribution
+rather than a greater supply; but what was wanted most of all was united
+action and one governing body. Without this, confusion, extravagance,
+and waste, would inevitably continue.
+
+Mr. Lyttleton wound up with a peroration that elicited very general
+applause. ‘Although we must,’ he said, ‘establish an efficient control
+over the existing means of water supply, we must neither wholly despise
+nor neglect them, nor blindly rush into new and ruinous schemes. We must
+remove the onus of payment from the poorer tenants to their landlords,
+and into whatever central directing power the Waterworks of this great
+city shall pass,’ concluded the learned orator, with energetic unction,
+‘our motto must be “continuous supply, uniform rates, and universal
+filtration!”’
+
+
+
+
+                      ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.
+
+
+                           THE LUCIFER MATCH.
+
+Some twenty years ago the process of obtaining fire, in every house in
+England, with few exceptions, was as rude, as laborious, and as
+uncertain, as the effort of the Indian to produce a flame by the
+friction of two dry sticks.
+
+The nightlamp and the rushlight were for the comparatively luxurious. In
+the bedrooms of the cottager, the artisan, and the small tradesman, the
+infant at its mother’s side too often awoke, like Milton’s nightingale,
+‘darkling,’—but that ‘nocturnal note’ was something different from
+‘harmonious numbers.’ The mother was soon on her feet; the friendly
+tinder-box was duly sought. Click, click, click; not a spark tells upon
+the sullen blackness. More rapidly does the flint ply the sympathetic
+steel. The room is bright with the radiant shower. But the child,
+familiar enough with the operation, is impatient at its tediousness, and
+shouts till the mother is frantic. At length one lucky spark does its
+office—the tinder is alight. Now for the match. It will not burn. A
+gentle breath is wafted into the murky box; the face that leans over the
+tinder is in a glow. Another match, and another, and another. They are
+all damp. The toil-worn father ‘swears a prayer or two’; the baby is
+inexorable; and the misery is only ended when the goodman has gone to
+the street door, and after long shivering has obtained a light from the
+watchman.
+
+In this, the beginning of our series of Illustrations of Cheapness, let
+us trace this antique machinery through the various stages of its
+production.
+
+The tinder-box and the steel had nothing peculiar. The tinman made the
+one as he made the saucepan, with hammer and shears; the other was
+forged at the great metal factories of Sheffield and Birmingham; and
+happy was it for the purchaser if it were something better than a rude
+piece of iron, very uncomfortable to grasp. The nearest chalk quarry
+supplied the flint. The domestic manufacture of the tinder was a serious
+affair. At due seasons, and very often if the premises were damp, a
+stifling smell rose from the kitchen, which, to those who were not
+intimate with the process, suggested doubts whether the house were not
+on fire. The best linen rag was periodically burnt, and its ashes
+deposited in the tinman’s box, pressed down with a close fitting lid
+upon which the flint and steel reposed. The match was chiefly an article
+of itinerant traffic. The chandler’s shop was almost ashamed of it. The
+mendicant was the universal match-seller. The girl who led the blind
+beggar had invariably a basket of matches. In the day they were vendors
+of matches—in the evening manufacturers. On the floor of the hovel sit
+two or three squalid children, splitting deal with a common knife. The
+matron is watching a pipkin upon a slow fire. The fumes which it gives
+forth are blinding as the brimstone is liquifying. Little bundles of
+split deal are ready to be dipped, three or four at a time. When the
+pennyworth of brimstone is used up, when the capital is exhausted, the
+night’s labour is over. In the summer, the manufacture is suspended, or
+conducted upon fraudulent principles. Fire is then needless; so delusive
+matches must be produced—wet splints dipped in powdered sulphur. They
+will never burn, but they will do to sell to the unwary
+maid-of-all-work.
+
+About twenty years ago Chemistry discovered that the tinder-box might be
+abolished. But Chemistry set about its function with especial reference
+to the wants and the means of the rich few. In the same way the first
+printed books were designed to have a great resemblance to manuscripts,
+and those of the wealthy class were alone looked to as the purchasers of
+the skilful imitations. The first chemical light-producer was a complex
+and ornamental casket, sold at a guinea. In a year or so, there were
+pretty portable cases of a phial and matches, which enthusiastic young
+housekeepers regarded as the cheapest of all treasures at five
+shillings. By-and-bye the light-box was sold as low as a shilling. The
+fire revolution was slowly approaching. The old dynasty of the
+tinder-box maintained its predominance for a short while in kitchen and
+garret, in farmhouse and cottage. At length some bold adventurer saw
+that the new chemical discovery might be employed for the production of
+a large article of trade—that matches, in themselves the vehicles of
+fire without aid of spark and tinder, might be manufactured upon the
+factory system—that the humblest in the land might have a new and
+indispensable comfort at the very lowest rate of cheapness. When
+Chemistry saw that phosphorus, having an affinity for oxygen at the
+lowest temperature, would ignite upon slight friction,—and so ignited
+would ignite sulphur, which required a much higher temperature to become
+inflammable, thus making the phosphorus do the work of the old tinder
+with far greater certainty; or when Chemistry found that chlorate of
+potash by slight friction might be exploded so as to produce combustion,
+and might be safely used in the same combination—a blessing was bestowed
+upon society that can scarcely be measured by those who have had no
+former knowledge of the miseries and privations of the tinder-box. The
+Penny Box of Lucifers, or Congreves, or by whatever name called, is a
+real triumph of Science, and an advance in Civilisation.
+
+Let us now look somewhat closely and practically into the manufacture of
+a Lucifer match.
+
+The combustible materials used in the manufacture render the process an
+unsafe one. It cannot be carried on in the heart of towns without being
+regarded as a common nuisance. We must therefore go somewhere in the
+suburbs of London to find such a trade. In the neighbourhood of Bethnal
+Green there is a large open space called Wisker’s Gardens. This is not a
+place of courts and alleys, but a considerable area, literally divided
+into small gardens, where just now the crocus and the snowdrop are
+telling hopefully of the springtime. Each garden has the smallest of
+cottages—for the most part wooden—which have been converted from
+summer-houses into dwellings. The whole place reminds one of numberless
+passages in the old dramatists, in which the citizens’ wives are
+described in their garden-houses of Finsbury, or Hogsden, sipping
+syllabub and talking fine on summer holidays. In one of these
+garden-houses, not far from the public road, is the little factory of
+‘Henry Lester, Patentee of the Domestic Safety Match-box,’ as his label
+proclaims. He is very ready to show his processes, which in many
+respects are curious and interesting.
+
+Adam Smith has instructed us that the business of making a pin is
+divided into about eighteen distinct operations; and further, that ten
+persons could make upwards of forty-eight thousand pins a day with the
+division of labour; while if they had all wrought independently and
+separately, and without any of them having been educated to this
+peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made
+twenty. The Lucifer Match is a similar example of division of labour,
+and the skill of long practice. At a separate factory, where there is a
+steam engine, not the refuse of the carpenter’s shop, but the best
+Norway deals are cut into splints by machinery, and are supplied to the
+matchmaker. These little pieces, beautifully accurate in their minute
+squareness, and in their precise length of five inches, are made up into
+bundles, each of which contains eighteen hundred. They are daily brought
+on a truck to the dipping-house, as it is called—the average number of
+matches finished off daily requiring two hundred of these bundles. Up to
+this point we have had several hands employed in the preparation of the
+match, in connection with the machinery that cuts the wood. Let us
+follow one of these bundles through the subsequent processes. Without
+being separated, each end of the bundle is first dipped into sulphur.
+When dry, the splints, adhering to each other by means of the sulphur,
+must be parted by what is called dusting. A boy sitting on the floor,
+with a bundle before him, strikes the matches with a sort of a mallet on
+the dipped ends till they become thoroughly loosened. In the best
+matches the process of sulphur-dipping and dusting is repeated. They
+have now to be plunged into a preparation of phosphorus or chlorate of
+potash, according to the quality of the match. The phosphorus produces
+the pale, noiseless fire; the chlorate of potash the sharp cracking
+illumination. After this application of the more inflammable substance,
+the matches are separated, and dried in racks. Thoroughly dried, they
+are gathered up again into bundles of the same quantity; and are taken
+to the boys who cut them; for the reader will have observed that the
+bundles have been dipped at each end. There are few things more
+remarkable in manufactures than the extraordinary rapidity of this
+cutting process, and that which is connected with it. The boy stands
+before a bench, the bundle on his right hand, a pile of half opened
+empty boxes on his left, which have been manufactured at another
+division of this establishment. These boxes are formed of scale-board,
+that is, thin slices of wood, planed or scaled off a plank. The box
+itself is a marvel of neatness and cheapness. It consists of an inner
+box, without a top, in which the matches are placed, and of an outer
+case, open at each end, into which the first box slides. The matches,
+then, are to be cut, and the empty boxes filled, by one boy. A bundle is
+opened; he seizes a portion, knowing by long habit the required number
+with sufficient exactness; puts them rapidly into a sort of frame,
+knocks the ends evenly together, confines them with a strap which he
+tightens with his foot, and cuts them in two parts with a knife on a
+hinge, which he brings down with a strong leverage: the halves lie
+projecting over each end of the frame; he grasps the left portion and
+thrusts it into a half open box, which he instantly closes, and repeats
+the process with the matches on his right hand. This series of movements
+is performed with a rapidity almost unexampled; for in this way, two
+hundred thousand matches are cut, and two thousand boxes filled in a
+day, by one boy, at the wages of three half-pence per gross of boxes.
+Each dozen boxes is then papered up, and they are ready for the
+retailer. The number of boxes daily filled at this factory is from fifty
+to sixty gross.
+
+The _wholesale_ price per dozen boxes of the best matches, is FOURPENCE,
+of the second quality, THREEPENCE.
+
+There are about ten Lucifer Match manufactories in London. There are
+others in large provincial towns. The wholesale business is chiefly
+confined to the supply of the metropolis and immediate neighbourhood by
+the London makers; for the railroad carriers refuse to receive the
+article, which is considered dangerous in transit. But we must not
+therefore assume that the metropolitan population consume the
+metropolitan matches. Taking the population at upwards of two millions,
+and the inhabited houses at about three hundred thousand, let us
+endeavour to estimate the distribution of these little articles of
+domestic comfort.
+
+At the manufactory at Wisker’s Gardens there are fifty gross, or seven
+thousand two hundred boxes, turned out daily, made from two hundred
+bundles, which will produce seven hundred and twenty thousand matches.
+Taking three hundred working days in the year, this will give for one
+factory, two hundred and sixteen millions of matches annually, or two
+millions one hundred and sixty thousand boxes, being a box of one
+hundred matches for every individual of the London population. But there
+are ten other Lucifer manufactories, which are estimated to produce
+about four or five times as many more. London certainly cannot absorb
+ten millions of Lucifer boxes annually, which would be at the rate of
+thirty three boxes to each inhabited house. London, perhaps, demands a
+third of the supply for its own consumption; and at this rate the annual
+retail cost for each house is eightpence, averaging those boxes sold at
+a half-penny, and those at a penny. The manufacturer sells this article,
+produced with such care as we have described, at one farthing and a
+fraction per box.
+
+And thus, for the retail expenditure of three farthings per month, every
+house in London, from the highest to the lowest, may secure the
+inestimable blessing of constant fire at all seasons, and at all hours.
+London buys this for ten thousand pounds annually.
+
+The excessive cheapness is produced by the extension of the demand,
+enforcing the factory division of labour, and the most exact saving of
+material. The scientific discovery was the foundation of the cheapness.
+But connected with this general principle of cheapness, there are one or
+two remarkable points, which deserve attention.
+
+It is a law of this manufacture that the demand is greater in the summer
+than in the winter. The old match maker, as we have mentioned, was idle
+in the summer—without fire for heating the brimstone—or engaged in more
+profitable field-work. A worthy woman who once kept a chandler’s shop in
+a village, informs us, that in summer she could buy no matches for
+retail, but was obliged to make them for her customers. The increased
+summer demand for the Lucifer Matches shows that the great consumption
+is amongst the masses—the labouring population—those who make up the
+vast majority of the contributors to duties of customs and excise. In
+the houses of the wealthy there is always fire; in the houses of the
+poor, fire in summer is a needless hourly expense. Then comes the
+Lucifer Match to supply the want; to light the candle to look in the
+dark cupboard—to light the afternoon fire to boil the kettle. It is now
+unnecessary to run to the neighbour for a light, or, as a desperate
+resource, to work at the tinder-box. The Lucifer Matches sometimes fail,
+but they cost little, and so they are freely used, even by the poorest.
+
+And this involves another great principle. The demand for the Lucifer
+Match is always continuous, for it is a perishable article. The demand
+never ceases. Every match burnt demands a new match to supply its place.
+This continuity of demand renders the supply always equal to the demand.
+The peculiar nature of the commodity prevents any accumulation of stock;
+its combustible character—requiring the simple agency of friction to
+ignite it—renders it dangerous for large quantities of the article to be
+kept in one place. Therefore no one makes for store, but all for
+immediate sale. The average price, therefore, must always yield a
+profit, or the production would altogether cease. But these essential
+qualities limit the profit. The manufacturers cannot be rich without
+secret processes or monopoly. The contest is to obtain the largest
+profit by economical management. The amount of skill required in the
+labourers, and the facility of habit, which makes fingers act with the
+precision of machines, limit the number of labourers, and prevent their
+impoverishment. Every condition of this cheapness is a natural and
+beneficial result of the laws that govern production.
+
+
+
+
+                     THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.
+
+
+Mr. Whelks being much in the habit of recreating himself at a class of
+theatres called ‘Saloons,’ we repaired to one of these, not long ago, on
+a Monday evening; Monday being a great holiday-night with MR. WHELKS and
+his friends.
+
+The Saloon in question is the largest in London (that which is known as
+The Eagle, in the City Road, should be excepted from the generic term,
+as not presenting by any means the same class of entertainment), and is
+situate not far from Shoreditch Church. It announces ‘The People’s
+Theatre,’ as its second name. The prices of admission are, to the boxes,
+a shilling; to the pit, sixpence; to the lower gallery, fourpence; to
+the upper gallery and back seats, threepence. There is no half-price.
+The opening piece on this occasion was described in the bills as ‘the
+greatest hit of the season, the grand new legendary and traditionary
+drama, combining supernatural agencies with historical facts, and
+identifying extraordinary superhuman causes with material, terrific, and
+powerful effects.’ All the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men could
+not have drawn MR. WHELKS into the place like this description.
+Strengthened by lithographic representations of the principal superhuman
+causes, combined with the most popular of the material, terrific, and
+powerful effects, it became irresistible. Consequently, we had already
+failed, once, in finding six square inches of room within the walls, to
+stand upon; and when we now paid our money for a little stage box, like
+a dry shower-bath, we did so in the midst of a stream of people who
+persisted in paying their’s for other parts of the house in despite of
+the representations of the Money-taker that it was ‘very full,
+everywhere.’
+
+The outer avenues and passages of the People’s Theatre bore abundant
+testimony to the fact of its being frequented by very dirty people.
+Within, the atmosphere was far from odoriferous. The place was crammed
+to excess, in all parts. Among the audience were a large number of boys
+and youths, and a great many very young girls grown into bold women
+before they had well ceased to be children. These last were the worst
+features of the whole crowd, and were more prominent there than in any
+other sort of public assembly that we know of, except at a public
+execution. There was no drink supplied, beyond the contents of the
+porter-can (magnified in its dimensions, perhaps), which may be usually
+seen traversing the galleries of the largest Theatres as well as the
+least, and which was here seen everywhere. Huge ham-sandwiches, piled on
+trays like deals in a timber-yard, were handed about for sale to the
+hungry; and there was no stint of oranges, cakes, brandy-balls, or other
+similar refreshments. The Theatre was capacious, with a very large
+capable stage, well lighted, well appointed, and managed in a
+business-like, orderly manner in all respects; the performances had
+begun so early as a quarter past six, and had been then in progress for
+three-quarters of an hour.
+
+It was apparent here, as in the theatre we had previously visited, that
+one of the reasons of its great attraction was its being directly
+addressed to the common people, in the provision made for their seeing
+and hearing. Instead of being put away in a dark gap in the roof of an
+immense building, as in our once National Theatres, they were here in
+possession of eligible points of view, and thoroughly able to take in
+the whole performance. Instead of being at a great disadvantage in
+comparison with the mass of the audience, they were here _the_ audience,
+for whose accommodation the place was made. We believe this to be one
+great cause of the success of these speculations. In whatever way the
+common people are addressed, whether in churches, chapels, schools,
+lecture-rooms, or theatres, to be successfully addressed they must be
+directly appealed to. No matter how good the feast, they will not come
+to it on mere sufferance. If, on looking round us, we find that the only
+things plainly and personally addressed to them, from quack medicines
+upwards, be bad or very defective things,—so much the worse for them and
+for all of us, and so much the more unjust and absurd the system which
+has haughtily abandoned a strong ground to such occupation.
+
+We will add that we believe these people have a right to be amused. A
+great deal that we consider to be unreasonable, is written and talked
+about not licensing these places of entertainment. We have already
+intimated that we believe a love of dramatic representations to be an
+inherent principle in human nature. In most conditions of human life of
+which we have any knowledge, from the Greeks to the Bosjesmen, some form
+of dramatic representation has always obtained.[1] We have a vast
+respect for county magistrates, and for the lord chamberlain; but we
+render greater deference to such extensive and immutable experience, and
+think it will outlive the whole existing court and commission. We would
+assuredly not bear harder on the fourpenny theatre, than on the four
+shilling theatre, or the four guinea theatre; but we would decidedly
+interpose to turn to some wholesome account the means of instruction
+which it has at command, and we would make that office of Dramatic
+Licenser, which, like many other offices, has become a mere piece of
+Court favour and dandy conventionality, a real, responsible, educational
+trust. We would have it exercise a sound supervision over the lower
+drama, instead of stopping the career of a real work of art, as it did
+in the case of Mr. Chorley’s play at the Surrey Theatre, but a few weeks
+since, for a sickly point of form.
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+  In the remote interior of Africa, and among the North American
+  Indians, this truth is exemplified in an equally striking manner. Who
+  that saw the four grim, stunted, abject Bush-people at the Egyptian
+  Hall—with two natural actors among them out of that number, one a male
+  and the other a female—can forget how something human and imaginative
+  gradually broke out in the little ugly man, when he was roused from
+  crouching over the charcoal fire, into giving a dramatic
+  representation of the tracking of a beast, the shooting of it with
+  poisoned arrows, and the creature’s death?
+
+To return to MR. WHELKS. The audience, being able to see and hear, were
+very attentive. They were so closely packed, that they took a little
+time in settling down after any pause; but otherwise the general
+disposition was to lose nothing, and to check (in no choice language)
+any disturber of the business of the scene.
+
+On our arrival, MR. WHELKS had already followed Lady Hatton the Heroine
+(whom we faintly recognised as a mutilated theme of the late THOMAS
+INGOLDSBY) to the ‘Gloomy Dell and Suicide’s Tree,’ where Lady H. had
+encountered the ‘apparition of the dark man of doom,’ and heard the
+‘fearful story of the Suicide.’ She had also ‘signed the compact in her
+own Blood;’ beheld ‘the Tombs rent asunder;’ seen ‘skeletons start from
+their graves, and gibber Mine, mine, for ever!’ and undergone all these
+little experiences, (each set forth in a separate line in the bill) in
+the compass of one act. It was not yet over, indeed, for we found a
+remote king of England of the name of ‘Enerry,’ refreshing himself with
+the spectacle of a dance in a Garden, which was interrupted by the
+‘thrilling appearance of the Demon.’ This ‘superhuman cause’ (with black
+eyebrows slanting up into his temples, and red-foil cheekbones,) brought
+the Drop-Curtain down as we took possession of our Shower-Bath.
+
+It seemed, on the curtain’s going up again, that Lady Hatton had sold
+herself to the Powers of Darkness, on very high terms, and was now
+overtaken by remorse, and by jealousy too; the latter passion being
+excited by the beautiful Lady Rodolpha, ward to the king. It was to urge
+Lady Hatton on to the murder of this young female (as well as we could
+make out, but both we and MR. WHELKS found the incidents complicated)
+that the Demon appeared ‘once again in all his terrors.’ Lady Hatton had
+been leading a life of piety, but the Demon was not to have his bargain
+declared off, in right of any such artifices, and now offered a dagger
+for the destruction of Rodolpha. Lady Hatton hesitating to accept this
+trifle from Tartarus, the Demon, for certain subtle reasons of his own,
+proceeded to entertain her with a view of the ‘gloomy court-yard of a
+convent,’ and the apparitions of the ‘Skeleton Monk,’ and the ‘King of
+Terrors.’ Against these superhuman causes, another superhuman cause, to
+wit, the ghost of Lady H.’s mother came into play, and greatly
+confounded the Powers of Darkness, by waving the ‘sacred emblem’ over
+the head of the else devoted Rodolpha, and causing her to sink into the
+earth. Upon this the Demon, losing his temper, fiercely invited Lady
+Hatton to ‘Be-old the tortures of the damned!’ and straightway conveyed
+her to a ‘grand and awful view of Pandemonium, and Lake of Transparent
+Rolling Fire,’ whereof, and also of ‘Prometheus chained, and the Vulture
+gnawing at his liver,’ MR. WHELKS was exceedingly derisive.
+
+The Demon still failing, even there, and still finding the ghost of the
+old lady greatly in his way, exclaimed that these vexations had such a
+remarkable effect upon his spirit as to ‘sear his eyeballs,’ and that he
+must go ‘deeper down,’ which he accordingly did. Hereupon it appeared
+that it was all a dream on Lady Hatton’s part, and that she was newly
+married and uncommonly happy. This put an end to the incongruous heap of
+nonsense, and set MR. WHELKS applauding mightily; for, except with the
+lake of transparent rolling fire (which was not half infernal enough for
+him), MR. WHELKS was infinitely contented with the whole of the
+proceedings.
+
+Ten thousand people, every week, all the year round, are estimated to
+attend this place of amusement. If it were closed to-morrow—if there
+were fifty such, and they were all closed to-morrow—the only result
+would be to cause that to be privately and evasively done, which is now
+publicly done; to render the harm of it much greater, and to exhibit the
+suppressive power of the law in an oppressive and partial light. The
+people who now resort here, _will be_ amused somewhere. It is of no use
+to blink that fact, or to make pretences to the contrary. We had far
+better apply ourselves to improving the character of their amusement. It
+would not be exacting much, or exacting anything very difficult, to
+require that the pieces represented in these Theatres should have, at
+least, a good, plain, healthy purpose in them.
+
+To the end that our experiences might not be supposed to be partial or
+unfortunate, we went, the very next night, to the Theatre where we saw
+MAY MORNING, and found MR. WHELKS engaged in the study of an ‘Original
+old English Domestic and Romantic Drama,’ called ‘EVA THE BETRAYED, OR
+THE LADYE OF LAMBYTHE.’ We proceed to develope the incidents which
+gradually unfolded themselves to MR. WHELKS’S understanding.
+
+One Geoffrey Thornley the younger, on a certain fine morning, married
+his father’s ward, Eva the Betrayed, the Ladye of Lambythe. She had
+become the betrayed, in right—or in wrong—of designing Geoffrey’s
+machinations; for that corrupt individual, knowing her to be under
+promise of marriage to Walter More, a young mariner (of whom he was
+accustomed to make slighting mention, as ‘a minion’), represented the
+said More to be no more, and obtained the consent of the too trusting
+Eva to their immediate union.
+
+Now, it came to pass, by a singular coincidence, that on the identical
+morning of the marriage, More came home, and was taking a walk about the
+scenes of his boyhood—a little faded since that time—when he rescued
+‘Wilbert the Hunchback’ from some very rough treatment. This misguided
+person, in return, immediately fell to abusing his preserver in round
+terms, giving him to understand that he (the preserved) hated
+‘manerkind, wither two eckerceptions,’ one of them being the deceiving
+Geoffrey, whose retainer he was, and for whom he felt an unconquerable
+attachment; the other, a relative, whom, in a similar redundancy of
+emphasis, adapted to the requirements of MR. WHELKS, he called his
+‘assister.’ This misanthrope also made the cold-blooded declaration,
+‘There was a timer when I loved my fellow keretures till they deserpised
+me. Now, I live only to witness man’s disergherace and woman’s misery!’
+In furtherance of this amiable purpose of existence, he directed More to
+where the bridal procession was coming home from church, and Eva
+recognised More, and More reproached Eva, and there was a great to-do,
+and a violent struggling, before certain social villagers who were
+celebrating the event with morris-dances. Eva was borne off in a tearing
+condition, and the bill very truly observed that the end of that part of
+the business was ‘despair and madness.’
+
+Geoffrey, Geoffrey, why were you already married to another! Why could
+you not be true to your lawful wife Katherine, instead of deserting her,
+and leaving her to come tumbling into public-houses (on account of
+weakness) in search of you! You might have known what it would end in,
+Geoffrey Thornley! You might have known that she would come up to your
+house on your wedding day with her marriage-certificate in her pocket,
+determined to expose you. You might have known beforehand, as you now
+very composedly observe, that you would have ‘but one course to pursue.’
+That course clearly is to wind your right hand in Katherine’s long hair,
+wrestle with her, stab her, throw down the body behind the door (Cheers
+from MR. WHELKS), and tell the devoted Hunchback to get rid of it. On
+the devoted Hunchback’s finding that it is the body of his ‘assister,’
+and taking her marriage-certificate from her pocket and denouncing you,
+of course you have still but one course to pursue, and that is to charge
+the crime upon him, and have him carried off with all speed into the
+‘deep and massive dungeons beneath Thornley Hall.’
+
+More having, as he was rather given to boast, ‘a goodly vessel on the
+lordly Thames,’ had better have gone away with it, weather permitting,
+than gone after Eva. Naturally, he got carried down to the dungeons too,
+for lurking about, and got put into the next dungeon to the Hunchback,
+then expiring from poison. And there they were, hard and fast, like two
+wild beasts in dens, trying to get glimpses of each other through the
+bars, to the unutterable interest of MR. WHELKS.
+
+But when the Hunchback made himself known, and when More did the same;
+and when the Hunchback said he had got the certificate which rendered
+Eva’s marriage illegal; and when More raved to have it given to him, and
+when the Hunchback (as having some grains of misanthropy in him to the
+last) persisted in going into his dying agonies in a remote corner of
+his cage, and took unheard-of trouble not to die anywhere near the bars
+that were within More’s reach; MR. WHELKS applauded to the echo. At last
+the Hunchback was persuaded to stick the certificate on the point of a
+dagger, and hand it in; and that done, died extremely hard, knocking
+himself violently about, to the very last gasp, and certainly making the
+most of all the life that was in him.
+
+Still, More had yet to get out of his den before he could turn this
+certificate to any account. His first step was to make such a violent
+uproar as to bring into his presence a certain ‘Norman Free Lance’ who
+kept watch and ward over him. His second, to inform this warrior, in the
+style of the Polite Letter-Writer, that ‘circumstances had occurred’
+rendering it necessary that he should be immediately let out. The
+warrior declining to submit himself to the force of these circumstances,
+Mr. More proposed to him, as a gentleman and a man of honour, to allow
+him to step out into the gallery, and there adjust an old feud
+subsisting between them, by single combat. The unwary Free Lance,
+consenting to this reasonable proposal, was shot from behind by the
+comic man, whom he bitterly designated as ‘a snipe’ for that action, and
+then died exceedingly game.
+
+All this occurred in one day—the bridal day of the Ladye of Lambythe;
+and now MR. WHELKS concentrated all his energies into a focus, bent
+forward, looked straight in front of him, and held his breath. For, the
+night of the eventful day being come, MR. WHELKS was admitted to the
+‘bridal chamber of the Ladye of Lambythe,’ where he beheld a toilet
+table, and a particularly large and desolate four-post bedstead. Here
+the Ladye, having dismissed her bridesmaids, was interrupted in
+deploring her unhappy fate, by the entrance of her husband; and matters,
+under these circumstances, were proceeding to very desperate
+extremities, when the Ladye (by this time aware of the existence of the
+certificate) found a dagger on the dressing-table, and said, ‘Attempt to
+enfold me in thy pernicious embrace, and this poignard—!’ &c. He did
+attempt it, however, for all that, and he and the Ladye were dragging
+one another about like wrestlers, when Mr. More broke open the door, and
+entering with the whole domestic establishment and a Middlesex
+magistrate, took him into custody and claimed his bride.
+
+It is but fair to MR. WHELKS to remark on one curious fact in this
+entertainment. When the situations were very strong indeed, they were
+very like what some favourite situations in the Italian Opera would be
+to a profoundly deaf spectator. The despair and madness at the end of
+the first act, the business of the long hair, and the struggle in the
+bridal chamber, were as like the conventional passion of the Italian
+singers, as the orchestra was unlike the opera band, or its ‘hurries’
+unlike the music of the great composers. So do extremes meet; and so is
+there some hopeful congeniality between what will excite MR. WHELKS, and
+what will rouse a Duchess.
+
+
+
+
+                                 SONNET
+
+                            TO LORD DENMAN.
+
+           _Retiring from the Chief Justiceship of England._
+
+
+            There is a solemn rapture in the Hail
+            With which a nation blesses thy repose,
+            Which proves thy image deathless—that the close
+            Of man’s extremest age whose boyhood glows
+            While pondering o’er thy lineaments, shall fail
+            To delegate to cold historic tale
+            What DENMAN was; for dignity which flows
+            Not in the moulds of compliment extern,
+            But from the noble spirit’s purest urn
+            Springs vital; justice kept from rigour’s flaw
+            By beautiful regards; and thoughts that burn
+            With generous ire, no form but thine shall draw
+            Within the soul, when distant times would learn
+            The bodied majesty of England’s Law.
+
+
+
+
+                             LIZZIE LEIGH.
+
+
+                     IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER III.
+
+That night Mrs. Leigh stopped at home; that only night for many months.
+Even Tom, the scholar, looked up from his books in amazement; but then
+he remembered that Will had not been well, and that his mother’s
+attention having been called to the circumstance, it was only natural
+she should stay to watch him. And no watching could be more tender, or
+more complete. Her loving eyes seemed never averted from his face; his
+grave, sad, care-worn face. When Tom went to bed the mother left her
+seat, and going up to Will where he sat looking at the fire, but not
+seeing it, she kissed his forehead, and said,
+
+‘Will! lad, I’ve been to see Susan Palmer!’
+
+She felt the start under her hand which was placed on his shoulder, but
+he was silent for a minute or two. Then he said,
+
+‘What took you there, mother?’
+
+‘Why, my lad, it was likely I should wish to see one you cared for; I
+did not put myself forward. I put on my Sunday clothes, and tried to
+behave as yo’d ha liked me. At least I remember trying at first; but
+after, I forgot all.’
+
+She rather wished that he would question her as to what made her forget
+all. But he only said,
+
+‘How was she looking, mother?’
+
+‘Will, thou seest I never set eyes on her before; but she’s a good
+gentle looking creature; and I love her dearly, as I’ve reason to.’
+
+Will looked up with momentary surprise; for his mother was too shy to be
+usually taken with strangers. But after all it was natural in this case,
+for who could look at Susan without loving her? So still he did not ask
+any questions, and his poor mother had to take courage, and try again to
+introduce the subject near to her heart. But how?
+
+‘Will!’ said she (jerking it out, in sudden despair of her own powers to
+lead to what she wanted to say), ‘I telled her all.’
+
+‘Mother! you’ve ruined me,’ said he standing up, and standing opposite
+to her with a stern white look of affright on his face.
+
+‘No! my own dear lad; dunnot look so scared, I have not ruined you!’ she
+exclaimed, placing her two hands on his shoulders and looking fondly
+into his face. ‘She’s not one to harden her heart against a mother’s
+sorrow. My own lad, she’s too good for that. She’s not one to judge and
+scorn the sinner. She’s too deep read in her New Testament for that.
+Take courage, Will; and thou mayst, for I watched her well, though it is
+not for one woman to let out another’s secret. Sit thee down, lad, for
+thou look’st very white.’
+
+He sat down. His mother drew a stool towards him, and sat at his feet.
+
+‘Did you tell her about Lizzie, then?’ asked he, hoarse and low.
+
+“I did, I telled her all; and she fell a crying over my deep sorrow, and
+the poor wench’s sin. And then a light comed into her face, trembling
+and quivering with some new glad thought; and what dost thou think it
+was, Will, lad? Nay, I’ll not misdoubt but that thy heart will give
+thanks as mine did, afore God and His angels, for her great goodness.
+That little Nanny is not her niece, she’s our Lizzie’s own child, my
+little grandchild.” She could no longer restrain her tears, and they
+fell hot and fast, but still she looked into his face.
+
+‘Did she know it was Lizzie’s child? I do not comprehend,’ said he,
+flushing red.
+
+‘She knows now: she did not at first, but took the little helpless
+creature in, out of her own pitiful loving heart, guessing only that it
+was the child of shame, and she’s worked for it, and kept it, and tended
+it ever sin’ it were a mere baby, and loves it fondly. Will! won’t you
+love it?’ asked she beseechingly.
+
+He was silent for an instant; then he said, ‘Mother, I’ll try. Give me
+time, for all these things startle me. To think of Susan having to do
+with such a child!’
+
+‘Aye, Will! and to think (as may be yet) of Susan having to do with the
+child’s mother! For she is tender and pitiful, and speaks hopefully of
+my lost one, and will try and find her for me, when she comes, as she
+does sometimes, to thrust money under the door, for her baby. Think of
+that, Will. Here’s Susan, good and pure as the angels in heaven, yet,
+like them, full of hope and mercy, and one who, like them, will rejoice
+over her as repents. Will, my lad, I’m not afeared of you now, and I
+must speak, and you must listen. I am your mother, and I dare to command
+you, because I know I am in the right and that God is on my side. If He
+should lead the poor wandering lassie to Susan’s door, and she comes
+back crying and sorrowful, led by that good angel to us once more, thou
+shalt never say a casting-up word to her about her sin, but be tender
+and helpful towards one “who was lost and is found,” so may God’s
+blessing rest on thee, and so mayst thou lead Susan home as thy wife.’
+
+She stood, no longer as the meek, imploring, gentle mother, but firm and
+dignified, as if the interpreter of God’s will. Her manner was so
+unusual and solemn, that it overcame all Will’s pride and stubbornness.
+He rose softly while she was speaking, and bent his head as if in
+reverence at her words, and the solemn injunction which they conveyed.
+When she had spoken, he said in so subdued a voice that she was almost
+surprised at the sound, ‘Mother, I will.’
+
+‘I may be dead and gone,—but all the same,—thou wilt take home the
+wandering sinner, and heal up her sorrows, and lead her to her Father’s
+house. My lad! I can speak no more; I’m turned very faint.’
+
+He placed her in a chair; he ran for water. She opened her eyes and
+smiled.
+
+‘God bless you, Will. Oh! I am so happy. It seems as if she were found;
+my heart is so filled with gladness.’
+
+That night Mr. Palmer stayed out late and long. Susan was afraid that he
+was at his old haunts and habits,—getting tipsy at some public-house;
+and this thought oppressed her, even though she had so much to make her
+happy, in the consciousness that Will loved her. She sat up long, and
+then she went to bed, leaving all arranged as well as she could for her
+father’s return. She looked at the little rosy sleeping girl who was her
+bedfellow, with redoubled tenderness, and with many a prayerful thought.
+The little arms entwined her neck as she lay down, for Nanny was a light
+sleeper, and was conscious that she, who was loved with all the power of
+that sweet childish heart, was near her, and by her, although she was
+too sleepy to utter any of her half-formed words.
+
+And by-and-bye she heard her father come home, stumbling uncertain,
+trying first the windows, and next the door-fastenings, with many a loud
+incoherent murmur. The little Innocent twined around her seemed all the
+sweeter and more lovely, when she thought sadly of her erring father.
+And presently he called aloud for a light; she had left matches and all
+arranged as usual on the dresser, but, fearful of some accident from
+fire, in his unusually intoxicated state, she now got up softly, and
+putting on a cloak, went down to his assistance.
+
+Alas! the little arms that were unclosed from her soft neck belonged to
+a light, easily awakened sleeper. Nanny missed her darling Susy, and
+terrified at being left alone in the vast mysterious darkness, which had
+no bounds, and seemed infinite, she slipped out of bed, and tottered in
+her little night-gown towards the door. There was a light below, and
+there was Susy and safety! So she went onwards two steps towards the
+steep abrupt stairs; and then dazzled with sleepiness, she stood, she
+wavered, she fell! Down on her head on the stone floor she fell! Susan
+flew to her, and spoke all soft, entreating, loving words; but her white
+lids covered up the blue violets of eyes, and there was no murmur came
+out of the pale lips. The warm tears that rained down did not awaken
+her; she lay stiff, and weary with her short life, on Susan’s knee.
+Susan went sick with terror. She carried her upstairs, and laid her
+tenderly in bed; she dressed herself most hastily, with her trembling
+fingers. Her father was asleep on the settle down stairs; and useless,
+and worse than useless if awake. But Susan flew out of the door, and
+down the quiet resounding street, towards the nearest doctor’s house.
+Quickly she went; but as quickly a shadow followed, as if impelled by
+some sudden terror. Susan rung wildly at the night-bell,—the shadow
+crouched near. The doctor looked out from an upstairs window.
+
+‘A little child has fallen down stairs at No. 9, Crown-street, and is
+very ill,—dying I’m afraid. Please, for God’s sake, sir, come directly.
+No. 9, Crown-street.’
+
+‘I’ll be there directly,’ said he, and shut the window.
+
+‘For that God you have just spoken about,—for His sake,—tell me are you
+Susan Palmer? Is it my child that lies a-dying?’ said the shadow,
+springing forwards, and clutching poor Susan’s arm.
+
+‘It is a little child of two years old,—I do not know whose it is; I
+love it as my own. Come with me, whoever you are; come with me.’
+
+The two sped along the silent streets,—as silent as the night were they.
+They entered the house; Susan snatched up the light, and carried it
+upstairs. The other followed.
+
+She stood with wild glaring eyes by the bedside, never looking at Susan,
+but hungrily gazing at the little white still child. She stooped down,
+and put her hand tight on her own heart, as if to still its beating, and
+bent her ear to the pale lips. Whatever the result was, she did not
+speak; but threw off the bed-clothes wherewith Susan had tenderly
+covered up the little creature, and felt its left side.
+
+Then she threw up her arms with a cry of wild despair.
+
+‘She is dead! she is dead!’
+
+She looked so fierce, so mad, so haggard, that for an instant Susan was
+terrified—the next, the holy God had put courage into her heart, and her
+pure arms were round that guilty wretched creature, and her tears were
+falling fast and warm upon her breast. But she was thrown off with
+violence.
+
+‘You killed her—you slighted her—you let her fall down those stairs! you
+killed her!’
+
+Susan cleared off the thick mist before her, and gazing at the mother
+with her clear, sweet, angel-eyes, said mournfully—
+
+‘I would have laid down my own life for her.’
+
+‘Oh, the murder is on my soul!’ exclaimed the wild bereaved mother, with
+the fierce impetuosity of one who has none to love her and to be
+beloved, regard to whom might teach self-restraint.
+
+‘Hush!’ said Susan, her finger on her lips. ‘Here is the doctor. God may
+suffer her to live.’
+
+The poor mother turned sharp round. The doctor mounted the stair. Ah!
+that mother was right; the little child was really dead and gone.
+
+And when he confirmed her judgment, the mother fell down in a fit.
+Susan, with her deep grief, had to forget herself, and forget her
+darling (her charge for years), and question the doctor what she must do
+with the poor wretch, who lay on the floor in such extreme of misery.
+
+‘She is the mother!’ said she.
+
+‘Why did not she take better care of her child?’ asked he, almost
+angrily.
+
+But Susan only said, ‘The little child slept with me; and it was I that
+left her.’
+
+‘I will go back and make up a composing draught; and while I am away you
+must get her to bed.’
+
+Susan took out some of her own clothes, and softly undressed the stiff,
+powerless, form. There was no other bed in the house but the one in
+which her father slept. So she tenderly lifted the body of her darling;
+and was going to take it down stairs, but the mother opened her eyes,
+and seeing what she was about, she said,
+
+‘I am not worthy to touch her, I am so wicked; I have spoken to you as I
+never should have spoken; but I think you are very good; may I have my
+own child to lie in my arms for a little while?’
+
+Her voice was so strange a contrast to what it had been before she had
+gone into the fit that Susan hardly recognised it; it was now so
+unspeakably soft, so irresistibly pleading, the features too had lost
+their fierce expression, and were almost as placid as death. Susan could
+not speak, but she carried the little child, and laid it in its mother’s
+arms; then as she looked at them, something overpowered her, and she
+knelt down, crying aloud,
+
+‘Oh, my God, my God, have mercy on her, and forgive, and comfort her.’
+
+But the mother kept smiling, and stroking the little face, murmuring
+soft tender words, as if it were alive; she was going mad, Susan
+thought; but she prayed on, and on, and ever still she prayed with
+streaming eyes.
+
+The doctor came with the draught. The mother took it, with docile
+unconsciousness of its nature as medicine. The doctor sat by her; and
+soon she fell asleep. Then he rose softly, and beckoning Susan to the
+door, he spoke to her there.
+
+‘You must take the corpse out of her arms. She will not awake. That
+draught will make her sleep for many hours. I will call before noon
+again. It is now daylight. Good-bye.’
+
+Susan shut him out; and then gently extricating the dead child from its
+mother’s arms, she could not resist making her own quiet moan over her
+darling. She tried to learn off its little placid face, dumb and pale
+before her.
+
+                “Not all the scalding tears of care
+                  Shall wash away that vision fair;
+                Not all the thousand thoughts that rise,
+                  Not all the sights that dim her eyes,
+                    Shall e’er usurp the place
+                    Of that little angel-face.”
+
+And then she remembered what remained to be done. She saw that all was
+right in the house; her father was still dead asleep on the settle, in
+spite of all the noise of the night. She went out through the quiet
+streets, deserted still although it was broad daylight, and to where the
+Leighs lived. Mrs. Leigh, who kept her country hours, was opening her
+window shutters. Susan took her by the arm, and, without speaking, went
+into the house-place. There she knelt down before the astonished Mrs.
+Leigh, and cried as she had never done before; but the miserable night
+had overpowered her, and she who had gone through so much calmly, now
+that the pressure seemed removed could not find the power to speak.
+
+‘My poor dear! What has made thy heart so sore as to come and cry
+a-this-ons. Speak and tell me. Nay, cry on, poor wench, if thou canst
+not speak yet. It will ease the heart, and then thou canst tell me.’
+
+‘Nanny is dead!’ said Susan. ‘I left her to go to father, and she fell
+down stairs, and never breathed again. Oh, that’s my sorrow! but I’ve
+more to tell. Her mother is come—is in our house! Come and see if it’s
+your Lizzie.’ Mrs. Leigh could not speak, but, trembling, put on her
+things, and went with Susan in dizzy haste back to Crown-street.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+As they entered the house in Crown-street, they perceived that the door
+would not open freely on its hinges, and Susan instinctively looked
+behind to see the cause of the obstruction. She immediately recognised
+the appearance of a little parcel, wrapped in a scrap of newspaper, and
+evidently containing money. She stooped and picked it up. ‘Look!’ said
+she, sorrowfully, ‘the mother was bringing this for her child last
+night.’
+
+But Mrs. Leigh did not answer. So near to the ascertaining if it were
+her lost child or no, she could not be arrested, but pressed onwards
+with trembling steps and a beating, fluttering heart. She entered the
+bed-room, dark and still. She took no heed of the little corpse, over
+which Susan paused, but she went straight to the bed, and withdrawing
+the curtain, saw Lizzie,—but not the former Lizzie, bright, gay,
+buoyant, and undimmed. This Lizzie was old before her time; her beauty
+was gone; deep lines of care, and alas! of want (or thus the mother
+imagined) were printed on the cheek, so round, and fair, and smooth,
+when last she gladdened her mother’s eyes. Even in her sleep she bore
+the look of woe and despair which was the prevalent expression of her
+face by day; even in her sleep she had forgotten how to smile. But all
+these marks of the sin and sorrow she had passed through only made her
+mother love her the more. She stood looking at her with greedy eyes,
+which seemed as though no gazing could satisfy their longing; and at
+last she stooped down and kissed the pale, worn hand that lay outside
+the bed-clothes. No touch disturbed the sleeper; the mother need not
+have laid the hand so gently down upon the counterpane. There was no
+sign of life, save only now and then a deep sob-like sigh. Mrs. Leigh
+sat down beside the bed, and, still holding back the curtain, looked on
+and on, as if she could never be satisfied.
+
+Susan would fain have stayed by her darling one; but she had many calls
+upon her time and thoughts, and her will had now, as ever, to be given
+up to that of others. All seemed to devolve the burden of their cares on
+her. Her father, ill-humoured from his last night’s intemperance, did
+not scruple to reproach her with being the cause of little Nanny’s
+death; and when, after bearing his upbraiding meekly for some time, she
+could no longer restrain herself, but began to cry, he wounded her even
+more by his injudicious attempts at comfort: for he said it was as well
+the child was dead; it was none of theirs, and why should they be
+troubled with it? Susan wrung her hands at this, and came and stood
+before her father, and implored him to forbear. Then she had to take all
+requisite steps for the coroner’s inquest; she had to arrange for the
+dismissal of her school; she had to summon a little neighbour, and send
+his willing feet on a message to William Leigh, who, she felt, ought to
+be informed of his mother’s whereabouts, and of the whole state of
+affairs. She asked her messenger to tell him to come and speak to
+her,—that his mother was at her house. She was thankful that her father
+sauntered out to have a gossip at the nearest coach-stand, and to relate
+as many of the night’s adventures as he knew; for as yet he was in
+ignorance of the watcher and the watched, who silently passed away the
+hours upstairs.
+
+At dinner-time Will came. He looked red, glad, impatient, excited. Susan
+stood calm and white before him, her soft, loving eyes gazing straight
+into his.
+
+‘Will,’ said she, in a low, quiet voice, ‘your sister is upstairs.’
+
+‘My sister!’ said he, as if affrighted at the idea, and losing his glad
+look in one of gloom. Susan saw it, and her heart sank a little, but she
+went on as calm to all appearance as ever.
+
+‘She was little Nanny’s mother, as perhaps you know. Poor little Nanny
+was killed last night by a fall down stairs.’ All the calmness was gone;
+all the suppressed feeling was displayed in spite of every effort. She
+sat down, and hid her face from him, and cried bitterly. He forgot
+everything but the wish, the longing to comfort her. He put his arm
+round her waist, and bent over her. But all he could say, was, ‘Oh,
+Susan, how can I comfort you! Don’t take on so,—pray don’t!’ He never
+changed the words, but the tone varied every time he spoke. At last she
+seemed to regain her power over herself; and she wiped her eyes, and
+once more looked upon him with her own quiet, earnest, unfearing gaze.
+
+‘Your sister was near the house. She came in on hearing my words to the
+doctor. She is asleep now, and your mother is watching her. I wanted to
+tell you all myself. Would you like to see your mother?’
+
+‘No!’ said he. ‘I would rather see none but thee. Mother told me thou
+knew’st all.’ His eyes were downcast in their shame.
+
+But the holy and pure, did not lower or vail her eyes.
+
+She said, ‘Yes, I know all—all but her sufferings. Think what they must
+have been!’
+
+He made answer low and stern, ‘She deserved them all; every jot.’
+
+‘In the eye of God, perhaps she does. He is the judge: we are not.’
+
+‘Oh!’ she said with a sudden burst, ‘Will Leigh! I have thought so well
+of you; don’t go and make me think you cruel and hard. Goodness is not
+goodness unless there is mercy and tenderness with it. There is your
+mother who has been nearly heart-broken, now full of rejoicing over her
+child—think of your mother.’
+
+‘I do think of her,’ said he. ‘I remember the promise I gave her last
+night. Thou shouldst give me time. I would do right in time. I never
+think it o’er in quiet. But I will do what is right and fitting, never
+fear. Thou hast spoken out very plain to me; and misdoubted me, Susan; I
+love thee so, that thy words cut me. If I did hang back a bit from
+making sudden promises, it was because not even for love of thee, would
+I say what I was not feeling; and at first I could not feel all at once
+as thou wouldst have me. But I’m not cruel and hard; for if I had been,
+I should na’ have grieved as I have done.’
+
+He made as if he were going away; and indeed he did feel he would rather
+think it over in quiet. But Susan, grieved at her incautious words,
+which had all the appearance of harshness, went a step or two
+nearer—paused—and then, all over blushes, said in a low soft whisper—
+
+‘Oh Will! I beg your pardon. I am very sorry—won’t you forgive me?’
+
+She who had always drawn back, and been so reserved, said this in the
+very softest manner; with eyes now uplifted beseechingly, now dropped to
+the ground. Her sweet confusion told more than words could do; and Will
+turned back, all joyous in his certainty of being beloved, and took her
+in his arms and kissed her.
+
+‘My own Susan!’ he said.
+
+Meanwhile the mother watched her child in the room above.
+
+It was late in the afternoon before she awoke; for the sleeping draught
+had been very powerful. The instant she awoke, her eyes were fixed on
+her mother’s face with a gaze as unflinching as if she were fascinated.
+Mrs. Leigh did not turn away; nor move. For it seemed as if motion would
+unlock the stony command over herself which, while so perfectly still,
+she was enabled to preserve. But by-and-bye Lizzie cried out in a
+piercing voice of agony—
+
+‘Mother, don’t look at me! I have been so wicked!’ and instantly she hid
+her face, and grovelled among the bed-clothes, and lay like one dead—so
+motionless was she.
+
+Mrs. Leigh knelt down by the bed, and spoke in the most soothing tones.
+
+‘Lizzie, dear, don’t speak so. I’m thy mother, darling; don’t be afeard
+of me. I never left off loving thee, Lizzie. I was always a-thinking of
+thee. Thy father forgave thee afore he died.’ (There was a little start
+here, but no sound was heard). ‘Lizzie, lass, I’ll do aught for thee;
+I’ll live for thee; only don’t be afeard of me. Whate’er thou art or
+hast been, we’ll ne’er speak on’t. We’ll leave th’ oud times behind us,
+and go back to the Upclose Farm. I but left it to find thee, my lass;
+and God has led me to thee. Blessed be His name. And God is good too,
+Lizzie. Thou hast not forgot thy Bible, I’ll be bound, for thou wert
+always a scholar. I’m no reader, but I learnt off them texts to comfort
+me a bit, and I’ve said them many a time a day to myself. Lizzie, lass,
+don’t hide thy head so, it’s thy mother as is speaking to thee. Thy
+little child clung to me only yesterday; and if it’s gone to be an
+angel, it will speak to God for thee. Nay, don’t sob a that ‘as; thou
+shalt have it again in Heaven; I know thou’lt strive to get there, for
+thy little Nancy’s sake—and listen! I’ll tell thee God’s promises to
+them that are penitent—only doan’t be afeard.’
+
+Mrs. Leigh folded her hands, and strove to speak very clearly, while she
+repeated every tender and merciful text she could remember. She could
+tell from the breathing that her daughter was listening; but she was so
+dizzy and sick herself when she had ended, that she could not go on
+speaking. It was all she could do to keep from crying aloud.
+
+At last she heard her daughter’s voice.
+
+‘Where have they taken her to?’ she asked.
+
+‘She is down stairs. So quiet, and peaceful, and happy she looks.’
+
+‘Could she speak? Oh, if God—if I might but have heard her little voice!
+Mother, I used to dream of it. May I see her once again—Oh mother, if I
+strive very hard, and God is very merciful, and I go to heaven, I shall
+not know her—I shall not know my own again—she will shun me as a
+stranger and cling to Susan Palmer and to you. Oh woe! Oh woe!’ She
+shook with exceeding sorrow.
+
+In her earnestness of speech she had uncovered her face, and tried to
+read Mrs. Leigh’s thoughts through her looks. And when she saw those
+aged eyes brimming full of tears, and marked the quivering lips, she
+threw her arms round the faithful mother’s neck, and wept there as she
+had done in many a childish sorrow; but with a deeper, a more wretched
+grief.
+
+Her mother hushed her on her breast; and lulled her as if she were a
+baby; and she grew still and quiet.
+
+They sat thus for a long, long time. At last Susan Palmer came up with
+some tea and bread and butter for Mrs. Leigh. She watched the mother
+feed her sick, unwilling child, with every fond inducement to eat which
+she could devise; they neither of them took notice of Susan’s presence.
+That night they lay in each other’s arms; but Susan slept on the ground
+beside them.
+
+They took the little corpse (the little unconscious sacrifice, whose
+early calling-home had reclaimed her poor wandering mother,) to the
+hills, which in her life-time she had never seen. They dared not lay her
+by the stern grand-father in Milne-Row churchyard, but they bore her to
+a lone moorland graveyard, where long ago the quakers used to bury their
+dead. They laid her there on the sunny slope, where the earliest
+spring-flowers blow.
+
+Will and Susan live at the Upclose Farm. Mrs. Leigh and Lizzie dwell in
+a cottage so secluded that, until you drop into the very hollow where it
+is placed, you do not see it. Tom is a schoolmaster in Rochdale, and he
+and Will help to support their mother. I only know that, if the cottage
+be hidden in a green hollow of the hills, every sound of sorrow in the
+whole upland is heard there—every call of suffering or of sickness for
+help is listened to, by a sad, gentle looking woman, who rarely smiles
+(and when she does, her smile is more sad than other people’s tears),
+but who comes out of her seclusion whenever there’s a shadow in any
+household. Many hearts bless Lizzie Leigh, but she—she prays always and
+ever for forgiveness—such forgiveness as may enable her to see her child
+once more. Mrs. Leigh is quiet and happy. Lizzie is to her eyes
+something precious,—as the lost piece of silver—found once more. Susan
+is the bright one who brings sunshine to all. Children grow around her
+and call her blessed. One is called Nanny. Her, Lizzy often takes to the
+sunny graveyard in the uplands, and while the little creature gathers
+the daisies, and makes chains, Lizzie sits by a little grave, and weeps
+bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+                              THE SEASONS.
+
+
+           A blue-eyed child that sits amid the noon,
+             O’erhung with a laburnum’s drooping sprays,
+           Singing her little songs, while softly round
+             Along the grass the chequered sunshine plays.
+
+           All beauty that is throned in womanhood,
+             Pacing a summer garden’s fountained walks,
+           That stoops to smooth a glossy spaniel down,
+             To hide her flushing cheek from one who talks.
+
+           A happy mother with her fair-faced girls,
+             In whose sweet spring again her youth she sees,
+           With shout and dance and laugh and bound and song,
+             Stripping an autumn orchard’s laden trees.
+
+           An aged woman in a wintry room;
+             Frost on the pane,—without, the whirling snow;
+           Reading old letters of her far-off youth,
+             Of pleasures past and joys of long ago.
+
+
+
+
+                      SHORT CUTS ACROSS THE GLOBE.
+
+
+To a person who wishes to sail to California an inspection of the map of
+the world reveals a provoking peculiarity. The Atlantic Ocean—the
+highway of the globe—being separated from the Pacific by the great
+western continent, it is impossible to sail to the opposite coasts
+without going thousands of miles out of his way; for he must double Cape
+Horn. Yet a closer inspection of the map will discover that but for one
+little barrier of land, which is in size but as a grain of sand to the
+bed of an ocean, the passage would be direct. Were it not for that small
+neck of land, the Isthmus of Panama (which narrows in one place to
+twenty-eight miles) he might save a voyage of from six to eight thousand
+miles, and pass at once into the Pacific Ocean. Again, if his desires
+tend towards the East, he perceives that but for the Isthmus of Suez, he
+would not be obliged to double the Cape of Good Hope. The Eastern
+difficulty has been partially obviated by the overland route opened up
+by the ill-rewarded Waghorn. The western barrier has yet to be broken
+through.
+
+Now that we can shake hands with Brother Jonathan in twelve days by
+means of weekly steamers; travel from one end of Great Britain to
+another, or from the Hudson to the Ohio, as fast as the wind, and make
+our words dance to distant friends upon the magic tight wire a great
+deal faster—now that the European and Columbian Saxon is spreading his
+children more or less over all the known habitable world: it seems
+extraordinary that the simple expedient of opening a twenty-eight mile
+passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, to save a dangerous
+voyage of some eight thousand miles, has not been already achieved. In
+this age of enterprise that so simple a remedy for so great an evil
+should not have been applied appears astonishing. Nay, we ought to feel
+some shame when we reflect that evidences in the neighbourhood of both
+Isthmuses exist of such junctions having existed, in what we are pleased
+to designate ‘barbarous’ ages.
+
+Does nature present insurmountable engineering difficulties to the
+Panama scheme? By no means: for after the Croton aqueduct, our own
+railway tunnelling and the Britannia tubular bridge, engineering
+difficulties have become obsolete. Are the levels of the Pacific and the
+Gulph of Mexico, which should be joined, so different, that if one were
+admitted the fall would inundate the surrounding country? Not at all.
+Hear Humboldt on these points.
+
+Forty years ago he declared it to be his firm opinion that ‘the Isthmus
+of Panama is suited to the formation of an oceanic canal—one with fewer
+sluices than the Caledonian Canal—capable of affording an unimpeded
+passage, at all seasons of the year, to vessels of that class which sail
+between New York and Liverpool, and between Chili and California.’ In
+the recent edition of his ‘Views of Nature,’ he ‘sees no reason to alter
+the views he has always entertained on this subject.’ Engineers, both
+British and American, have confirmed this opinion by actual survey. As,
+then, combination of British skill, capital, and energy, with that of
+the most ‘go-ahead’ people upon earth, have been dormant, whence the
+secret of the delay? The answer at once allays astonishment:—Till the
+present time, the speculation would not have ‘paid.’
+
+Large works of this nature, while they create an inconceivable
+development of commerce, must have a certain amount of a trading
+population to begin upon. A goldbeater can cover the effigy of a man on
+horseback with a sovereign; but he must have the sovereign first. It was
+not merely because the full power of the iron rail to facilitate the
+transition of heavy burdens had not been estimated, and because no
+Stephenson had constructed a ‘Rocket engine,’ that a railway with steam
+locomotives was not made from London to Liverpool before 1836. Until the
+intermediate traffic between these termini had swelled to a sufficient
+amount in quantity and value to bear reimbursement for establishing such
+a mode of conveyance, its execution would have been impossible, even
+though men had known how to set about it.
+
+What has been the condition of the countries under consideration? In
+1839, the entire population of the tropical American isthmus, in the
+states of central America and New Grenada did not exceed three millions.
+The number of the inhabitants of pure European descent did not exceed
+one hundred thousand. It was only among this inconsiderable fraction
+that anything like wealth, intelligence, and enterprise, akin to that of
+Europe, was to be found; the rest were poor and ignorant aboriginals and
+mixed races, in a state of scarcely demi-civilisation. Throughout this
+thinly-peopled and poverty-stricken region, there was neither law nor
+government. In Stephens’s ‘Central America,’ may be found an amusing
+account of a hunt after a government, by a luckless American
+diplomatist, who had been sent to seek for one in central America. A
+night wanderer running through bog and brake after a will-o’-the-wisp
+could not have encountered more perils, or in search of a more
+impalpable phantom. In short, there was nobody to trade with. To the
+south of the Isthmus, along the Pacific coast of America, there was only
+one station to which merchants could resort with any fair prospect of
+gain—Valparaiso. Except Chili, all the Pacific states of South America
+were retrograding from a very imperfect civilisation, under a succession
+of petty and aimless revolutions. To the north of the Isthmus matters
+were little, if anything, better. Mexico had gone backwards from the
+time of its revolution; and, at the best, its commerce in the Pacific
+had been confined to a yearly ship between Acapulco and the Philippines.
+Throughout California and Oregon, with the exception of a few European
+and half-breed members, there were none but savage aboriginal tribes.
+The Russian settlements in the far north had nothing but a paltry trade
+in furs with Kamschatka, that barely defrayed its own expenses. Neither
+was there any encouragement to make a short cut to the innumerable
+islands of the Pacific. The whole of Polynesia lay outside of the pale
+of civilisation. In Tahiti, the Sandwich group, and the northern
+peninsula of New Zealand, missionaries had barely sowed the first seeds
+of morals and enlightenment. The limited commerce of China and the
+Eastern Archipelago was engrossed by Europe, and took the route of the
+Cape of Good Hope, with the exception of a few annual vessels that
+traded from the sea-board States of the North American Union to
+Valparaiso and Canton. The wool of New South Wales was but coming into
+notice, and found its way to England alone round the Cape of Good Hope.
+An American fleet of whalers scoured the Pacific, and adventurers of the
+same nation carried on a desultory and inconsiderable traffic in hides
+with California, in tortoise-shell and mother of pearl with the
+Polynesian Islands.
+
+What then would have been the use of cutting a canal, through which
+there would not have passed five ships in a twelvemonth? But twenty
+years have worked a wondrous revolution in the state and prospects of
+these regions.
+
+The traffic of Chili has received a large development, and the stability
+of its institutions has been fairly tried. The resources of Costa Rica,
+the population of which is mainly of European race, is steadily
+advancing. American citizens have founded a state in Oregon. The
+Sandwich Islands have become for all practical purposes an American
+colony. The trade with China—to which the proposed canal would open a
+convenient avenue by a western instead of the present eastern route—is
+no longer restricted to the Canton river, but is open to all nations as
+far north as the Yangtse-Kiang. The navigation of the Amur has been
+opened to the Russians by a treaty, and cannot long remain closed
+against the English and American settlers between Mexico and the Russian
+settlements in America. Tahiti has become a kind of commercial emporium.
+The English settlements in Australia and New Zealand have opened a
+direct trade with the Indian Archipelago and China. The permanent
+settlements of intelligent and enterprising Anglo-Americans and English
+in Polynesia, and on the eastern and western shores of the Pacific, have
+proved so many _depôts_ for the adventurous traders with its innumerable
+islands, and for the spermaceti whalers. Then the last, but greatest
+addition of all, is California: a name in the world of commerce and
+enterprise to conjure with. There gold is to be had for fetching. Gold,
+the main-spring of commercial activity, the reward of toil—for which men
+are ready to risk life, to endure every sort of privation; sometimes,
+alas! to sacrifice every virtue; one most especially, and that is
+Patience. They will away with her now.
+
+Till the discovery of the new Gold country how contentedly they dawdled
+round Cape Horn; creeping down one coast and up another; but now such
+delay is not to be thought of. Already, indeed, Panama has become the
+seat of a great increasing and perennial transit trade. This cannot fail
+to augment the settled population of the region, its wealth and
+intelligence. Upon these facts we rest the conviction that the time has
+arrived for realising the project of a ship canal there or in the near
+neighbourhood.
+
+That a ship canal, and not a railway, is what is first wanted (for very
+soon there will be both), must be obvious to all acquainted with the
+practical details of commerce. The delay and expense to which merchants
+are subjected, when obliged to ‘break bulk’ repeatedly between the port
+whence they sail and that of their destination, is extreme. The waste
+and spoiling of goods, the cost of the operation, are also heavy
+drawbacks, and to these they are subject by the stormy passage round
+Cape Horn.
+
+Two points present themselves offering great facilities for the
+execution of a ship canal. The one is in the immediate vicinity of
+Panama; where the many imperfect observations which have hitherto been
+made, are yet sufficient to leave no doubt that, as the distance is
+comparatively short, the summit levels are inconsiderable, and the
+supply of water ample. The other is some distance to the northward. The
+isthmus is there broader, but is in part occupied by the large and deep
+fresh-water lakes of Nicaragua and Naragua. The lake of Nicaragua
+communicates with the Atlantic by a copious river, which may either be
+rendered navigable, or be made the source of supply for a side canal.
+The space between the two lakes is of inconsiderable extent, and
+presents no great engineering difficulties. The elevation of the lake of
+Naragua above the Pacific is inconsiderable; there is no hill range
+between it and the gulph of Canchagua; and Captain Sir Edward Belcher
+carried his surveying ship _Sulphur_ sixty miles up the Estero Real,
+which rises near the lake, and falls into the gulf. The line of the
+Panama canal presents, as Humboldt remarks, facilities equal to those of
+the line of the Caledonian canal. The Nicaragua line is not more
+difficult than that of the canal of Languedoc, a work executed between
+1660 and 1682, at a time when the commerce to be expedited by it did not
+exceed—if it equalled—that which will find its way across the Isthmus;
+when great part of the maritime country was as thinly inhabited by as
+poor a population as the Isthmus now is; and when the last subsiding
+storms of civil war, and the dragonnades of Louis XIV., unsettled men’s
+minds and made person and property insecure.
+
+The cosmopolitan effects of such an undertaking, if prosecuted to a
+successful close, it is impossible even approximatively to estimate. The
+acceleration it will communicate to the already rapid progress of
+civilisation in the Pacific is obvious. And no less obvious are the
+beneficial effects it will have upon the mutual relations of civilised
+states, seeing that the recognition of the independence and neutrality
+in times of general war of the canal and the region through which it
+passes, is indispensable to its establishment.
+
+We have dwelt principally on the commercial, the economical
+considerations of the enterprise, for they are what must render it
+possible. But the friends of Christian missions, and the advocates of
+Universal Peace among nations, have yet a deeper interest in it. In the
+words used by Prince Albert at the dinner at the Mansion House
+respecting the forthcoming great Exhibition of Arts and Industry,
+‘Nobody who has paid any attention to the particular features of our
+present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of
+most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great
+end—to which indeed all history points—the realisation of the unity of
+mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the
+peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but
+rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties
+and antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different
+nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the
+achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with
+incredible speed; the languages of all nations are known, and their
+acquirements placed within the reach of everybody; thought is
+communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power of lightning.’
+
+Every short cut across the globe brings man in closer communion with his
+distant brotherhood, and results in concord, prosperity, and peace.
+
+
+
+
+                     THE TRUE STORY OF A COAL FIRE.
+
+                     IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Down the lower shaft the young man continued to descend in silence and
+darkness. He did not know if he descended slowly or rapidly. The sense
+of motion had become quite indefinite. There was a horrible feathery
+ease about it, as though he were being softly taken down to endless
+darkness, with an occasional tantalising waft upwards, and then a lower
+descent, which made his whole soul sink within him. But he grasped the
+chain in front of him with all his remaining force, as his only hold on
+this world—which in fact it _was_.
+
+From this condition of helpless dismay and apprehension, poor Flashley
+was suddenly aroused by a violent and heavy bump on the top of his iron
+umbrella! He thought it must be some falling miner, or perhaps his
+ponderous-footed elfin abductor, who had leaped down after him. It was
+only the accidental fall of a loose brick from above, somewhere; but the
+dead bang of the sound, coming upon the previous silence, was
+tremendous. The missile shot off slanting from the iron umbrella—seemed
+to dash its brains out against the side of the shaft—and then flew down
+before him, like a lost soul.
+
+Flashley now felt a wavering motion in his descent, while an increasing
+current of air rose to meet him; and almost immediately after, he heard
+strange and confused sounds beneath. Looking down into the darkness, he
+not only saw a reddening light, but, as he stared down, it became
+brighter, until he saw the gleam of flames issuing from one side of the
+shaft. He fully expected to descend into the midst, and ‘there an end;’
+but he speedily found he was reserved for some other fate. The fire was
+placed in a large chasm, and appeared to have a steep red pathway
+sloping away behind it. He passed it safely. From this moment he felt no
+current of air, but his ears were assailed with a variety of noises, in
+which he could distinguish the gush of waters, the lumbering of wood,
+the clank and jar of chains, and the voices of men—or something worse.
+Three black figures were distinctly visible.
+
+In a few seconds more, his feet touched earth—which seemed to give a
+heave, in answer. His descent from the upper surface had not occupied
+longer time than has been necessary to describe it, but this was greatly
+magnified to his imagination by the number, novelty, and force of the
+emotions and thoughts that had attended it. He was now at the bottom of
+the William Pitt Coal Mine, nine hundred and thirty feet below the
+surface of the earth.
+
+A man all black with coal-dust, and naked from the waist upwards, took
+hold of Flashley, and extricating him from the chain girdle and iron
+umbrella, led him away into the darkness, lighted only by a candle stuck
+in a lump of clay which his conductor held in the other hand.
+
+Over all the various sounds, that of rushing waters predominated at this
+spot; and very soon they turned an angle which enabled Flashley to
+descry a black torrent spouting from a narrow chasm, and rushing down a
+precipitous gully on one side of them to seek some still lower abyss.
+Another angle was turned; the torrent was no longer seen and its noise
+grew fainter almost at every step.
+
+The passage through which they were advancing was cut out of the solid
+coal. It was just high enough for the man to walk upright, though with
+the danger of striking his head occasionally against some wedge of rock,
+stone, or block of coal, projected downwards from the roof. In width the
+sides could be reached by the man’s extended hands. They were sometimes
+supported by beams, and sometimes by a wall of brick, and the roof was
+frequently sustained by upright timbers, and limbs or trunks of trees.
+In one place, where the roofing had evidently sunk, there stood an
+irregular row of stunted oak trunks, of grotesque shapes and shadows,
+many of which were cracked and gaping in ragged flaws from the crushing
+pressure they had resisted; showing that, without them, the roof would
+certainly have fallen, and rendering the passage more ‘suggestive’ than
+agreeable to a stranger beneath. Here and there, at considerable
+distances, candles stuck in clay were set in gaps of the coaly walls, in
+the sandstone, or against the logs and trunks. The pathway was for the
+most part a slush of coal-dust, mixed with mud and slates, varied with
+frequent nobs and snaggs of rock and iron-stone. In this path of
+intermittent ingredients, a tram-road had been established, the rails of
+which had been laid down at not more than 15 inches asunder; and moving
+above this at no great distance, Flashley now saw a dull vapoury light,
+and next descried a horse emerging from the darkness ahead of them. It
+seemed clear that nothing could save them from being run over, unless
+_they_ could run over the horse. However, his guide made him stand with
+his back flat against one side of the passage—and presently the long,
+hot, steamy body of the horse moved by, just moistening his face and
+breast in passing. He had never before thought a horse’s body was so
+long. At the creature’s heels a little low black waggon followed with
+docility. The wheels were scarcely six inches high. Its sides were
+formed by little black rails. It was full of coals. A boy seemed to be
+driving, whose voice was heard on the other side of the horse, or else
+from beneath the animal’s body, it was impossible to know which.
+
+They had not advanced much further when they came to a wooden barricade,
+which appeared to close their journey abruptly. But it proved to be a
+door, and swung open of its own accord as they approached. No sooner
+were they through, than the door again closed, apparently of its own
+careful good will and pleasure. The road was still through cuttings in
+the solid coal, varied occasionally with a few yards of red sandstone,
+or with brick walls and timbers as previously described. Other horses
+drawing little black coal-waggons were now encountered; sometimes two
+horses drawing two or more waggons, and these passed by in the same
+unpleasant proximity. More _Sesame_ doors were also opened and shut as
+before; but Flashley at length perceived that this was not effected by
+any process of the black art, as he had imagined, but by a very little
+and very lonely imp, who was planted behind the door in a toad-squat,
+and on this latter occasion was honoured by his guide with the title of
+an ‘infernal small _trapper_,’ in allusion to some neglect of duty on a
+previous occasion. It was, in truth, a poor child of nine years of age,
+one of the victims of poverty, of bad parents, and the worst management,
+to whose charge the safety of the whole mine, with the lives of all
+within it, was committed; the requisite ventilation depending on the
+careful closing of these doors by the trapper-boys, after anybody has
+passed.
+
+Proceeding in this way, they arrived at a side-working close upon the
+high-road, in which immense ledges of rocks and stones projected from
+the roof, being embedded in the coal. In cutting away the coal there was
+danger of loosening and bringing down some of these stones, which might
+crush the miners working beneath. A ‘council’ was now being held at the
+entrance, where seven experienced ‘undergoers’ were lying flat on the
+ground, smoking, with wise looks, in Indian fashion, and considering the
+best mode of attack, whereby they might bring down the coals without
+being ‘mashed up’ by the premature fall of the rocks and stones together
+with the black masses in which they were embedded.
+
+Among all the gloomy and oppressive feelings induced by this journey
+between dismal walls—faintly lighted, at best, so as to display a most
+forbidding succession of ugly shadows and grotesque outlines—and
+sometimes not lighted at all for a quarter of a mile; there was nothing
+more painful than the long pauses of silence; a silence only broken by
+the distant banging of the trappers’ doors, or by an avalanche of coal
+in some remote working. After advancing in a silence of longer duration
+than any that had preceded it, Flashley’s dark conductor paused every
+now and then, and listened—then advanced; then stopped again
+thoughtfully, and listened. At length he stopped with gradual paces, and
+turning to Flashley, said in a deep tone, the calmness of which added
+solemnity to the announcement,—
+
+‘We are now walking beneath the bed of the sea!—and ships are sailing
+over our heads!’
+
+Several horses and waggons were met and passed after the fashion already
+described. On one occasion, the youth who drove the horse, walked in
+front, waving his candle in the air, and causing it to gleam upon a
+black pool in a low chasm on one side, which would otherwise have been
+invisible. He was totally without clothing, and of a fine symmetrical
+form, like some young Greek charioteer doing penance on the borders of
+Lethe for careless driving above ground. As he passed the pool of water,
+he stooped with his candle. Innumerable bubbles of gas were starting to
+the surface. The instant the flame touched them, they gave forth
+sparkling explosions, and remained burning with a soft blue gleam. It
+continued visible a long time, and gave the melancholy idea of some
+spirit, once beautiful, which had gone astray, and was for ever lost to
+its native region. It was as though the youth had written his own
+history in symbol, before he passed away into utter darkness.
+
+‘You used to be fond,’ observed Flashley’s companion, with grim ironical
+composure, after one of these close encounters with horseflesh—‘You
+_used_ to be fond of horses.’
+
+Flashley made no reply, beyond a kind of half-suppressed groan of
+fatigue and annoyance.
+
+‘Well, then,’ said the other, appearing to understand the smothered
+groan as an acquiescence—‘we will go and look at the stables.’
+
+He turned off at the next corner on the left, and led the way up a
+narrow and steep path of broken brick and sandstone, till they arrived
+at a bank of rock and coal, up which they had to clamber, Flashley’s
+guide informing him that it would save a mile of circuitous path.
+Arriving at the top, they soon came to a narrow door, somewhat higher
+than any they had yet seen. It opened by a long iron latch, and they
+entered the ‘mine stables.’
+
+A strong hot steam and most oppressive odour of horses, many of whom
+were asleep and snoring, was the first impression. The second, was a
+sepulchral Davy-lamp hanging from the roof, whose dull gleam just
+managed to display the uplifting of a head and inquiring ears in one
+place, the contemptuous whisking of a tail in another, and a large
+eye-ball gleaming through the darkness, in another! The stalls were like
+a succession of narrow black dens, at each side of a pathway of broken
+brick and sand. In this way sixty or seventy horses were ‘stabled.’
+
+‘This is a prince of a mine!’ said the guide; ‘we have seven hundred
+people down here, and a hundred and fifty horses.’
+
+They emerged at the opposite end, which led up another steep path
+towards a shaft (for the mine now had four or five) which was used for
+the ascent and descent of horses. They were just in time to witness the
+arrival of a new-comer,—a horse who had never before been in a mine.
+
+The animal’s eyes and ears became more frightfully expressive, as with
+restless anticipatory limbs and quivering flesh he swung round in his
+descending approach to the earth. When his hoofs touched, he made a
+plunge. But though the band and chain confined him, he appeared yet more
+restrained by the appalling blackness. He made a second plunge, but with
+the same result. He then stood stock-still, glared round at the black
+walls and the black faces and figures that surrounded him, and instantly
+fainted.
+
+The body of the horse was speedily dragged off on a sort of sledge, by a
+tackle. The business of the mine could not wait for his recovery. He was
+taken to be ‘fanned.’ Flashley of course understood this as a mine joke;
+but it was not entirely so. A great iron wheel, with broad fans, was
+often worked rapidly in a certain place, to create a current of air and
+to drive it on towards the fire in the up-cast shaft, assisting by this
+means the ventilation of the mine; and thither, or at all events, in
+that direction, the poor horse was dragged, amidst the laughter and
+jokes of the miners and the shouts and whistles of the boys.
+
+How silent the place became after they were gone! Flashley stepped
+forwards towards the spot immediately beneath the shaft. It was much
+nearer to the surface than any of the other shafts, and the daylight
+from above ground just managed to reach the bottom. Under the shaft was
+a very faint circle of sad-coloured and uncertain light. The palest
+ghost might have stood in the middle of it and felt ‘at home.’
+
+The ‘streets’ of the mine appeared to be composed of a series of
+horse-ways having square entrances to ‘workings’ at intervals on either
+side, and leading to narrow side-lane workings. Up one of these his
+guide now compelled Flashley to advance; in order to do which they were
+both obliged to stoop very low; and, before long, to kneel down and
+crawl on all-fours. While moving forward in this way upon the coal-dust
+slush, where no horse could draw a waggon, a poor beast of another kind
+was descried approaching with his load. It was in the shape of a human
+being, but not in the natural position—in fact, it was a boy degraded to
+a beast, who with a girdle and chain was dragging a small coal-waggon
+after him. A strap was round his forehead, in front of which, in a tin
+socket, a lighted candle was stuck. His face was close to the ground. He
+never looked up as he passed.[2]
+
+Footnote 2:
+
+  Young women and girls were also used in this way till the Report of
+  the Children’s Employment Commission caused it to be forbidden by Act
+  of Parliament.
+
+These narrow side-lane passages from the horse-road, varied in length
+from a few fathoms, to half-a-mile and upwards; and the one in which
+Flashley was now crawling, being among the longest, his impression of
+the extent of these underground streets and by-ways, was sufficiently
+painful, especially as he had no notion of what period he was doomed to
+wander through them. Besides, the difficulty of respiration, the
+crouching attitude, the heated mist, the heavy sense of gloomy monotony,
+pressed upon him as they continued to make their way along this dismal
+burrow.
+
+From this latter feeling, however, he was roused by a sudden and loud
+explosion. It proceeded from some remote part of the trench in which
+they were struggling, and in front of them. The arrival of a new sort of
+mist convinced them of this. It was so impregnated with sulphur, that
+Flashley felt nearly suffocated, and was obliged to lie down with his
+face almost touching the coal-slush beneath him, for half-a-minute,
+before he could recover himself. Onward, however, he was obliged to go,
+urged by his gruff companion behind; and in this way they continued to
+crawl till a dim light became visible at the farther end. The light came
+forwards. It proceeded from a candle stuck in the front of the head of a
+boy, harnessed to a little narrow waggon, who pulled in front, while
+another boy pushed with his head behind. A side-cutting, into which
+Flashley and his companion squeezed themselves, enabled the waggon to
+pass. The hindermost boy, stopping to exchange a word with his
+companion, Flashley observed that the boy’s head had a bald patch in the
+hair, owing to the peculiar nature of his head-work behind the waggon.
+They passed, and now another distant light was visible; but this
+remained stationary.
+
+As they approached it, the narrow passage widened into a gap, and a
+rugged chamber appeared hewn out in the coal. The sides were supported
+by upright logs and beams; and further inwards, were pillars of coal
+left standing, from which the surrounding mass had been cut away. At the
+remote end of this, sat the figure of a man, perfectly black and quite
+naked, working with a short-handled pickaxe, with which he hewed down
+coals in front of him, and from the sides, lighted by a single candle
+stuck in clay, and dabbed up against a projecting block of coal. From
+the entrance to this dismal work-place, branched off a second passage,
+terminating in another chamber, the lower part of which was heaped up
+with great loose coals apparently just fallen from above. The strong
+vapour of gunpowder pervading the place, and curling and clinging about
+the roof, showed that a mass of coal had been undermined and brought
+down by an explosion. To this smoking heap, ever and anon, came boys
+with baskets, or little waggons, which they filled and carried away into
+the narrow dark passage, disappearing with their loads as one may see
+black ants making off with booty into their little dark holes and
+galleries under ground.
+
+The naked miner in the first chamber, now crept out to the entrance,
+having fastened a rope round the remotest logs that supported the roof
+of the den he had hewed. These he hauled out. He then knocked away the
+nearest ones with a great mallet. Taking a pole with a broad blade of
+iron at the end, edged on one side and hooked at the other, something
+like a halbert, he next cut and pulled away, one by one, by repeated
+blows and tugs, each of the pillars of coal which he had left within. A
+strange cracking overhead was presently heard. All stepped back and
+waited. The cracking ceased, and the miner again advanced, accompanied
+by Flashley’s guide; while, by some detestable necromancy, our young
+visitor—alack! so very lately such a dashing young fellow ‘about town,’
+now suddenly fallen into the dreadful condition of receiving all sorts
+of knowledge about coals—felt compelled to assist in the operation.
+
+Advancing with great wedges, while Flashley carried two large sledge
+hammers to be ready for use, the miners inserted their wedges into
+cracks in the upper part of the wall of coal above the long chamber that
+had just been excavated, the roof of which was now bereft of all
+internal support. They then took the hammers and began to drive in the
+wedges. The cracks widened, and shot about in branches, like some black
+process of crystallisation. The party retreated several paces—one wide
+flaw opened above, and down came a hundred tons of coal in huge blocks
+and broad splinters! The concussion of the air, and the flight of
+coal-dust, extinguished the candles. At this the two miners laughed
+loudly, and, pushing Flashley before them, caused him to crouch down on
+his hands and knees, and again creep along the low passage by which they
+had entered. A boy in harness drawing a little empty waggon soon
+approached, with a candle on his forehead, as usual. The meeting being
+unexpected and out of order, as the parties could not pass each other in
+this place, Flashley’s special guide and ‘tutor’ gave him a lift and a
+push, by means of which he was squeezed between the rough roofing and
+the upper rail of the empty waggon, into which he then sank down with a
+loud ‘Oh!’ His tutor now set his head to the hinder part of the waggon,
+the miner assumed the same position with respect to the tutor—the boy
+did the same by the miner—and thus, by reversing the action of the
+wheels, the little waggon, with its alarmed occupant, was driven along
+by this three-horse power through the low passage, with a reckless speed
+and jocularity, in which the ridiculous and hideous were inextricably
+mingled.
+
+Arriving at the main horse-road, as Flashley quickly distinguished by
+the wider space, higher roofing, and candles stuck against the sides,
+his mad persecutors never stopped, but increasing their speed the moment
+the wheels were set upon the rails, they drove the waggon onwards with
+yells and laughter, and now and then a loud discordant whistle in
+imitation of the wailful cry of a locomotive; passing ‘getters,’ and
+‘carriers,’ and ‘hurryers,’ and ‘drawers,’ and ‘pushers,’ and other
+mine-people, and once sweeping by an astonished horse—gates and doors
+swinging open before them—and shouts frequently being sent after them,
+sometimes of equivocal import, but generally _not_ to be mistaken, by
+those whom they thus rattled by, who often received sundry concussions
+and excoriations in that so narrow highway beneath the earth.
+
+In this manner did our unique _cortège_ proceed, till sounds of many
+voices ahead of them were heard, and then more and more light gleamed
+upon the walls; and the next minute they emerged from the road-way, and
+entered a large oblong chamber, or cavern, where they were received with
+a loud shout of surprise and merriment. It was the dining-hall of the
+mine.
+
+This cavern had been hewn out of the solid coal, with intervals of rock
+and sandstone here and there in the sides. Candles stuck in lumps of
+damp clay, were dabbed up against the rough walls all round. A table,
+formed of dark planks laid upon low tressels, was in the middle, and
+round this sat the miners, nearly naked,—and far blacker than negroes,
+whose glossy skins shine with any light cast upon them,—while these were
+of a dead-black, which gave their robust outlines and muscular limbs the
+grimness of sepulchral figures, strangely at variance with the
+boisterous vitality and physical capacities of their owners. These, it
+seemed, were the magnates of the mine—the ‘hewers,’ ‘holers,’
+‘undergoers,’ or ‘pickers,’—those who hew down the coal, and not the
+fetchers and carriers, and other small people.
+
+Before he had recovered from his recent drive through the mine, Flashley
+was seated at the table. Cold roast beef, and ham, and slices of cold
+boiled turkey were placed before him, with a loaf of bread, fresh
+dairy-butter, and a brown jug of porter. He was scarcely aware whether
+he ate or not, but he soon began to feel _much_ revived; and then he saw
+a hot roast duck; and then another; and then three more; and then a
+great iron dish, quite hot, and with flakes of fire at the bottom, full
+of roast ducks. Green peas were only just coming into season, and sold
+at a high price in the markets; but here were several delphic dishes
+piled up with them; and Flashley could but admire and sit amazed at the
+rapidity with which these delicate green pyramids sank lower and lower,
+as the great spoonfuls ascended to the red and white open mouths of the
+jovial black visages that surrounded him. He was told that the
+‘undergoers’ dined here every day after this fashion; but only with
+ducks and green peas at this particular season, when the miners made a
+point of buying up all the green peas in the markets, claiming the right
+to have them before all the nobility and gentry in the neighbourhood.
+
+While all this was yet going on, Flashley became aware of a voice, as of
+some one discoursing very gravely. It was like the voice of the Elfin
+who had wrought him all this undesired experience. But upon looking
+forwards in the direction of the sound, he perceived that it proceeded
+from one of the miners—a brawny-chested figure, who was making a speech.
+Their eyes met, and then it seemed that the miner was addressing himself
+expressly to poor Flashley. Something impelled the latter, averse as he
+was, to stand up and receive the address.
+
+‘Young man—or rather gent!’ said the miner—‘You are now in the bowels of
+old mother Earth—grandmother and great grandmother of all these seams of
+coal; and you see a set of men around you, whose lives are passed in
+these gloomy places, doing the duties of their work without repining at
+its hardness, without envying the lot of others, and smiling at all its
+dangers. We know very well that there are better things above ground—and
+worse. We know that many men and women and children, who are ready to
+work, can’t get it, and so starve to death, or die with miserable
+slowness. A sudden death, and a violent is often our fate. We may fall
+down a shaft; something may fall upon us and crush us; we may be damped
+to death;[3] we may be drowned by the sudden breaking in of water; we
+may be burned up by the wildfire,[4] or driven before it to destruction;
+in daily labour we lead the same lives as horses and other beasts of
+burden; but for _all_ that, we feel that we have something else within,
+which has a kind of tingling notion of heaven, and a God above, and
+which we have heard say is called ‘the soul.’ Now, tell us—young master,
+you who have had all the advantages of teachers, and books, and learning
+among the people who live above ground—tell us, benighted working men,
+how have _you_ passed your time, and what kind of thing is your soul?’
+
+Footnote 3:
+
+  _The choke-damp_, carbonic acid gas.
+
+Footnote 4:
+
+  _Fire-damp_, also called _the sulphur_—hydrogen gas.
+
+The miner ceased speaking, but continued standing. Flashley stood
+looking at him, unable to utter a word. At this moment, a half-naked
+miner entered hurriedly from one of the main roads, shouting confused
+words—to the effect that the fire which is always placed in the up-cast
+shaft to attract and draw up the air for the ventilation of the mine,
+had just been extinguished by the falling in of a great mass of coal,
+and the mine was no longer safe!
+
+‘Fire-damp!’—‘The sulphur!’—‘Choke-damp!’ ejaculated many voices, as all
+the miners sprang from their seats, and made a rush towards the main
+outlet. Flashley was borne away in the scramble of the crowd; but they
+had scarcely escaped from the cavern, when the flame of the candles ran
+up to the roof, and a loud explosion instantly followed. The crowd was
+driven pell-mell before it, flung up, and flung down, dashed sideways,
+or borne onwards, while explosion after explosion followed the few who
+had been foremost, and were still endeavouring to make good their
+retreat.
+
+Among these latter was Flashley, who was carried forwards, he knew not
+how, and was scarcely conscious of what was occurring, except that it
+was something imminently dreadful, which he momentarily expected to
+terminate in his destruction.
+
+At length only himself and one other remained. It was the miner who had
+been his companion from the first. They had reached a distant ‘working,’
+and stopped an instant to take breath, difficult as it was to do this,
+both from the necessity of continuing their flight, and also from the
+nature of the inflammable air that surrounded them. Some who had arrived
+here before them, had been less fortunate. Half-buried in black slush
+lay the dead body of a miner, scorched to a cinder by the wildfire; and
+on a broad ledge of coal sat another man, in an attitude of faintness,
+with one hand pressed, as with a painful effort, against his head. The
+black-damp had suffocated him: he was quite dead.
+
+Beyond this Flashley knew nothing until he found himself placed in a
+basket, and rising rapidly through the air, as he judged, by a certain
+swinging motion, and the occasional grating of the basket against the
+sides of the shaft. After a time he ventured to look up, and to his joy,
+not unmixed with awe, he discerned the mouth of the shaft above,
+apparently of the size of a small coffee-cup. Some coal-dust and drops
+of water fell into his eyes; he saw no more; but with a palpitating
+heart, full of emotions, and prayers, and thankfulness, for his prospect
+of deliverance, continued his ascent.
+
+
+           Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+ ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ ● Renumbered footnotes.
+ ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
+ ● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to
+     individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like
+     1^{st}).
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78166 ***