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     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.




                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.


                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

       N^{o.} 7.]      SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._




                      THE FIRE BRIGADE OF LONDON.


Earth, Air, and Water are necessary conditions of human life; but Fire
is the first great element of civilisation. Fire, the first medium
between the ‘cooking animal’ and the wild root and raw-flesh-devouring
savage; fire, the best, because the most useful of servants, and,
according to the old proverb, the worst, because the most tyrannical of
masters; fire, the chief friend of man in creations of nature and of
industrial art, yet the most potent of all enemies in destruction; fire,
the most brilliant and magnificent object on the earth, yet the most
frightful and appalling when once it obtains dominion over man and man’s
abodes;—to subdue, and render docile to all needs, this devouring
dragon, and bend his splendid crests, not only to ‘boil the pot’ but to
lick the dust before the feet of Science, this is one of the greatest
triumphs of mankind, the results of which are every year more and more
stupendous.

But, amidst all our mastery, we are never permitted to forget that this
illustrious slave has neither abandoned nor abated one jot of his
original nature. Of this we are but too constantly reminded. Not to
speak of lightning and volcanic eruptions, the weekly record of colliery
and other mine explosions, of steamboat explosions, the burning of
ships, and the dismal transformation to a heap of ashes of valuable
warehouses, costly public edifices, or private houses, with ‘dreadful
loss of life,’ need but the slightest mention to excite a thrill of
alarm, or some passing thought of caution in the mind of every person
holding the smallest stake in the social community.

To meet this sudden emergency, therefore, and to restore the balance of
power, or, rather, to put down the mutiny of this powerful slave, and
reduce him to his habitual subserviency, we have the Fire Brigade,
divided into four sections, and having nineteen stations in the most
central quarters of the metropolis. This includes two ‘mighty engines’
floating on the Thames.

  ‘Of all the rallying words,’ says a writer in Charles Knight’s
  “London,” ‘whereby multitudes are gathered together, and their
  energies impelled forcibly to one point, that of “_Fire!_” is,
  perhaps, the most startling and the most irresistible. It levels all
  distinctions; it sets at nought sleep, and meals, and occupations, and
  amusements; it turns night into day, and Sunday into a “working-day;”
  it gives double strength to those who are blessed with any energy, and
  paralyses those who have none; it brings into prominent notice, and
  converts into objects of sympathy, those who were before little
  thought of, or who were, perhaps, despised; it gives to the dwellers
  in a whole huge neighbourhood the unity of one family.’

But even while we are trimming our midnight lamp to write this paper,
the cry of ‘Fire!’ suddenly resounds from a distant street. The heavy
boots of a policeman clatter along beneath our window. The cry is
repeated by several voices, and more feet are heard hurrying along. The
fire is in a squalid court, leading into a mews which runs close to the
backs of the houses of one side of a great square. We hastily struggle
into an overcoat, snatch up a hat, and issue forth to follow the
alarming cry.

The tumult sounds in the court; the cry of ‘Fire!’ is wildly repeated in
a woman’s voice from one of the windows of the mews; now from another
window!—now from several. ‘Fire! fire!’ cry voices of many passengers in
streets, and away scamper the policemen to the nearest stations of the
Fire Brigade, passing the word to other policemen as they run, till all
the police force in the neighbourhood are clattering along the pavement,
some towards the scene of the fire, but most of them either towards an
engine-station, to one of the Fire-escapes of the Royal Society, or to
pass the word to the policeman whose duty it will be to run to the
engine-station next beyond. By this means of passing the word, somebody
arrives at the gates of the Chief Office of the Fire Brigade, in Watling
Street, and, seizing the handle of the night-bell, pulls away at it with
the vigour which such events always call forth.

The fireman on duty for the night, immediately opens the gate, and
receives the intelligence, cutting short all loquacity as much as
possible, and eliciting the spot where the fire has broken out, and the
extent to which it was raging when the person left. The fireman then
runs to a bell-handle, which he pulls; and applying his ear to the
mouth-piece of a pipe, hears a voice ask, ‘What is it?’ (The fireman
hears his own voice sound as if at a great distance; while the voice
actually remote sounds close in the mouth-piece, with a strange
preternatural effect.) The bell-wire reaches up to the Superintendent’s
bedside; and the bell being rung, Mr. Braidwood raises himself on one
elbow, and applying his mouth to the other end of the tube, answers, and
gives orders. A few words of dialogue conducted in this way, suffice. Up
jumps Mr. Braidwood—crosses the passage to his dressing-room (armoury,
we ought rather to call it), and in three minutes is attired in the
thick cloth frock-coat, boots, and helmet of the Fire Brigade, fixing
buttons and straps as he descends the stairs.

Meanwhile all the men have been equally active below. No sooner has the
fireman aroused Mr. Braidwood, than he rings the bell of the foreman,
the engineer, and the ‘singlemen’s bell’—which means the bell of the
division where the four unmarried men sleep. He then runs out to the
stables, calling the ‘charioteer’ by the way, and two other firemen
lodging close by; after which he returns to assist in harnessing the
horses.

Owing to this simultaneous action, each according to his special and
general duties, by the time Mr. Braidwood reaches the bottom of the
stairs, the engine has been got out, and put in working order. All its
usual furniture, implements, and tools are placed within, or packed
about it. Short scaling-ladders, made to fit into each other, are
attached to the sides; six lengths of hose; branch-pipes,
director-pipes, spare nozzle, suction-pipes, goose-neck, dogs’-tails
(the first to deliver water into the engine; the second are iron
wrenches), canvas sheet, with rope handles round the edge (to catch
people who will boldly jump out of window), dam-board (to prevent water
from plug flowing madly away), portable cistern, strips of sheep-skin
(to mend bursting hose), balls of cord, flat hose, escape-chain,
escape-ropes, mattock, saw, shovel, pole-axe, boat-hook, crow-bar
(_such_ a fellow!) to burst through doors or walls, or break up
pavement; instruments for opening fire-plugs, and keys for turning
stop-cocks of water-mains, &c.

All being ready, the Superintendent mounts the engine to the right of
the driver, and the engineer, foreman, and firemen mount also, and range
themselves on each side of the long red chest at the top, which contains
the multifarious articles just enumerated. Off they start—brisk
trot—canter—gallop! A bright red gleam overspreads the sky to the
westward. The Superintendent knows that the fire in the court has
reached the mews, and the stables are in flames. Full gallop!

Along the midnight streets, which are now all alive with excited
people—some having left the theatres, others wending homeward from
supper at a friend’s, from dances, or perhaps late hours of business in
various trades,—all are running in the direction of the fire! As the
engine thunders by them, the gas-lamps gleaming on the helmets of the
firemen and the eager heads of the horses, the people send up a loud
shout of ‘Fi-ire!’ and follow pell-mell in its wake.

Arriving at the mews, the Superintendent sees exactly all that has
happened—all that must happen—all that may happen—and all that may be
prevented. The court is doomed to utter ruin and ashes; so is the mews.
Two of the larger stables are on fire, and the flames are now devouring
a loft full of hay and straw. But in doing this, their luminous tongues
stretch far beyond, seeking fresh food when this is gone. The wind
too!—the fatal wind, sets in the direction of the square! The flames are
struggling, and leaping, and striving with all their might to reach the
back premises of the houses on this side of the square; and reach it
they will, if this wind continues!

Meanwhile, two of the Fire Brigade engines from stations nearer at hand
than that of the Chief Office, are already here, and hard at work. A
fourth engine arrives from the Chief Office close upon the wheels of the
first—and now a fifth comes thundering up the mews. The Superintendent
taking command of the whole, and having ascertained that all the inmates
of the court and mews have been got out, gives orders for three of the
engines to continue their efforts to overcome the fire, and at any rate
to prevent it spreading to the houses in the square on each side of the
one which is now so imminently threatened. He then directs his own
engine and one other to be driven round to the front of the house in the
square, so as to attack the enemy both in front and rear at the same
time. The flames have just reached it—not a moment is to be lost! As he
drives off, innumerable cries and exhortations seek to arrest his
progress, and to make him alter his intentions. Several voices, louder
and more excited than all the rest,—vociferating something about ‘saving
her life’—cause him to pause, and prepare to turn, till, amidst the
confusion, he contrives to elicit the fact that a stable cat has been
unable to escape, and has darted out upon the burning roof of a
loft—and, also, that Mrs. Jessikin’s laundry—but he listens no further,
and gallops his engine round to the front of the house in the square,
followed by shouts of excitement and several yells.

The Fire-escape ladders of the Royal Society have already arrived here
in front. All the inmates have been got out by the door—at least it is
_said_ that all are out, by those white figures with faces as white,
who, looking round them, really see nothing distinctly and know nothing
as it is—having been awoke by the cries of ‘Fire,’ and not being quite
sure if all this mad hubbub of people, flames, voices, and water-spouts,
may not be some horrible nightmare vision.

The water-plugs have been drawn, and the gutters are all flooded. The
gully-hole is covered—a dam-board arrests the stream and gives depth—the
portable cistern is quickly filled—the suction-pipes of the engines,
being placed in it, both of them are got into position. The flames have
reached the back of the house; their points are just seen rising above
the roof! A rush of people seize on the long pump-levers, all mad to
work the engines. The foreman rapidly selects ten for each side—sets
them to work—and then, one at a time, takes down their names in a book
for the purpose, so that they may be paid a shilling an hour—those who
choose to accept it. But a hundred volunteer to work—they don’t want the
shilling—they want to pump. ‘Let _me_ pump!’ ‘_I’m_ the one to pump!’
‘Do you want any more to pump?’ resound on all sides from men of all
classes, while the crowd press forward, and can scarcely be got to leave
room enough for the engines to be worked—and they would not, but for the
man with the director-pipe, who soon makes a watery circle around him.
The fortunate volunteers at the levers now begin to pump away with a
fury that seems perfectly frantic. The Superintendent, who has had many
a fine-engine disabled during the first five minutes of this popular
furor, insists upon their ardour being restrained; and with no little
difficulty succeeds in getting his pumping done a degree less madly.
Who, that did not know them, would believe that these outrageous pumpers
were the very same people who stood with lack-lustre eyes at some
tedious operation in trade or workshop, all day long; or, who sat
stolidly opposite each other in an omnibus, without a word to say, and
seeming too dull for either thought or action? Look at them now!

The wind still blows strongly from the blazing stables—the flames are
rapidly eating their way through the house from the back! The two upper
stories are already on fire. A figure appears at one of the windows, and
makes signs. All the inmates had NOT been got out! An aged woman—a very
old and faithful servant of the family—had lingered behind, vainly
endeavouring to pack up some of her dear young mistress’s clothes and
trinkets. A prolonged cry bursts from the crowd, followed with
innumerable pieces of advice—bawled, hoarsely shouted, or rapidly
screamed to the Superintendent, and the firemen directing the nozzle of
the hose.

‘Point the nozzle up to the _window_!’

‘Up to the _roof_ of that room!’

‘_Smash_ the windows!’

‘The _Fire-escape_, Mr. Braidwood!’

‘Bring the ropes for her!—_throw up_ the ropes to her!’

‘Don’t smash the windows; you’ll _cut_ her!’

‘She’s gone to _jump out_ at the back!’

‘She is lying on the _floor_!’

‘She’s _suffocated_, Mr. Braidwood!’

‘Send up the _water_, to bring her to her senses!’

‘She’s burnt to _ashes_, Mr. Braidwood—I see her lying _all of a red
tinder_!’

Amidst these vociferations, the Superintendent, having a well-practised
deaf ear for such pieces of advice, has despatched two firemen to ascend
the stairs (no fireman is allowed to enter a burning house alone) while
two others enter below, and a lengthened hose is handed up to them with
a boat-hook through the front drawing-room window, in order to combat
the fire at close quarters, each one being accompanied by another
fireman, in case of one fainting from heat or smoke, and meantime to
assist in getting out furniture from the rooms not yet touched by the
flames.

The two foremost firemen have now ascended the stairs. One remains on
the second-floor landing, to watch, and give notice if their retreat is
likely to be cut off, while the other ascends to the upper room where
the poor old servant had been last seen. The room is quite full of
smoke. He therefore drops down directly with his face almost touching
the floor (because, as the smoke ascends, he thus gets ten or twelve
inches of clear space and air), and in this way creeps and drags himself
along till he sees a bundle of something struggling about, which he at
once recognises, seizes, and drags off as quickly as possible. Almost
exhausted, he meets his comrade on the stairs, who instantly giving aid,
they bring down a little white, smutty, huddled-up bundle, with a
nightcap and arms to it; and as they emerge from the door, are greeted
with shouts of applause, and roars and screams of ‘Bravo! Bravo! God
bless ’em! Bravo!’ from voices of men, and women, and boys.

The old woman presently comes to herself. She holds something in one
hand, which she had never loosed throughout, though she really does not
know what it is. ‘At all events,’ says she, ‘I’ve saved _this_!’

It is a hearth-broom.

The two firemen, each bearing a hose, have now got a position inside the
house—one standing on the landing-place of the second-floor within ten
or twelve feet of the flames, the other planted in the back
drawing-room. The first directs his nozzle so that the water strikes
with the utmost force upon the fire, almost in a straight line, dashing
it out into black spots, and flaws, and steam, as much by the violence
of the concussion as the antagonistic element. The other fireman directs
his jet of water to oppose the advances of the flames from the rafters
of the stables behind, and the wood-work of the back premises. Both the
men are enveloped in a cloud of hot steam, so hot as scarcely to be
endurable, and causing the perspiration to pour down their faces as fast
as the water runs down the walls from the vigorous ‘playing of their
pipes.’

But next door—to the right—what a long succession of drawing-room and
dining-room chairs issue forth, varied now and then with a dripping
hamper of choice wine, and the sound of cracking bottles; now, with a
flattened cradle, now a tea-tray of richly-bound books; now, a
turbot-kettle, and then more chairs!

In the door-way of the house on the left, there is a dreadful jam. An
abominable, huge mahogany table has fixed one of its corners into the
wall, on one side, and the brass castor of one leg into a broken plank
of the flooring, on the other, just as a Broadwood horizontal-grand was
coming down the stairs in the most massive manner (like a piano
conscious of Beethoven), with its five bearers. These five men with the
piano-forte, receiving a check in the passage from three men bearing
boxes and a large clothes-horse, who had themselves received a check by
the jam of the huge mahogany and its eight or nine excited blockheads,
the stoppage became perfect, and the confusion sheer madness. Some of
the inmates of this house, who had been wildly helping and handing down
all sorts of things, observing that a stoppage had occurred below, and
believing they had no more time to spare before the flames would
penetrate their walls, brought baskets to the window, and with great
energy threw out a quantity of beautiful china, glass, and choice
chimney ornaments down upon the stones below, to be taken care of; also
an empty hat-box.

Above all the tumult, and adding in no small degree to the wildness and
abrupt energies of the scene, a violent knocking at doors in the square
is frequently heard, sometimes by policemen, at other times by excited
relations suddenly arriving, desperate to give their advice, and see it
attended to. The bedroom windows, in rows on either side, are alive with
heads, many of them in night-caps, while the upper windows of several,
apparently ‘the nurseries,’ are crowded with white dolls, whose round
white nobs are eagerly thrust forth. In the windows of the houses,
lights are seen to move about rapidly from room to room, and windows are
continually thrown up; a figure looks out wildly—then suddenly
disappears.

The two firemen who had gained positions inside the house, each with his
long hose supplied from the engine below, had hitherto maintained their
posts; the one on the second-floor landing having very successfully
repelled the advance of the fire, the other in the back drawing-room
having fairly obtained a mastery. But a strong gust of wind rising
again, sets all their previous success at nought. The flames again
advance; and all their work has to be done over again.

By this time the two men are nearly exhausted; two other firemen are,
however, close at hand to relieve them. They take their places. As the
flames advance, the engines below are worked with redoubled energy by
the people, who also relieve each other; but no one will relinquish his
place at the pump-lever, so long as he is able to stand, or have one
heave up, or one bang down, more. Still the flames advance!—they enter
the house!—the front drawing-room is suddenly illuminated!—a glare of
light is reflected from a great looking-glass on one of the walls! A
loud shout of excitement resounds from the crowd—while bang! bang! go
the engine-pumps.

The fireman, who is surrounded by so strong a glare of light that he
appears all on fire, is seen to retreat a few paces towards the door. He
is presently joined by another fireman, who runs to the front
drawing-room window, out of which he suspends an iron chain to secure
their escape, in case of need, and then returns to his comrade. They
rally, and each with his brass director-pipe advances again within
half-a-dozen paces of the blazing walls. They are, foot by foot, driven
back into the front drawing-room. The flames follow them, and soon are
very close to the or molu frame-work of the great looking-glass.

Bang! bang! go the engines.

‘Save the glass!’ shout numbers of voices.

‘The ceiling! the ceiling’s bursting down!’ cry others.

Bang! bang! go the engines.

‘Save the pieces!’

‘The door-post’s on fire!’

‘Look behind you!’

‘The glass!—the glass!’

‘Save yourselves!’

Bang! bang! go the engines.

The Superintendent has sent orders to the firemen to give no more
attention to the interior of this house, except with a view to prevent
the fire spreading to the adjoining houses. Consequently, the streams of
water are now directed to drenching the walls, and beating back the
flames on either side. The great looking-glass, no longer an object of
special protection, is presently reached by the flames; they coil and
cluster round the frame-work, which, breaking out into jets of coloured
fire, gives a splendid magnificence to the design of the carving. The
crowd jump up and down to see, and also from excitement. The flames flap
about, and point their long luminous tongues across the broad plate of
the glass, which for a moment reflects every object in the room,—the
falling ceiling—the firemen in their helmets—the blazing ruin
around;—and then, crack!—clash! clash!—the whole falls, a wreck of sharp
angles.

Again a loud shout from the crowd below!—not so much of regret as a kind
of wild purposeless joy, which causes them again to leap up and down,
expecting and (without knowing it) hoping the same thing will happen to
some other glass in the room. Melted lead from the roof now runs
gleaming down—spurting upon the helmet of one of the firemen, and then
running in straggling lines down his thick coat; while a slate falling,
as usual, edgeways, sticks across the centre-piece of his comrade’s
helmet. Now, with a rattling and loud rumble, falls the partition
between the front and back drawing-rooms, and with it a great part of
the ceiling! A terrific shout of alarm bursts from the crowd. The two
firemen are buried in the ruins. The whole space is filled with the
dense smoke and with piles of lath and plaster, and brick and blazing
wood.

But see!—a helmet, white with mortar, rises from the floor near the
window-sill—and now another! One after the other, the exhausted firemen
descend the iron chain, and are caught in the arms of the Superintendent
and two of their comrades below, while loud shouts and vociferations of
applause burst from the crowd.

The stable cat, too, from the mews! See! she has crossed between the
burning rafters, and leaped into the balcony of the next house, with
smoking tail and ears.

The flames have been smothered for a time by this fall of the ceiling
and partition-wall; the Superintendent has now got seven engines round
to the front; he takes advantage of the fortunate accident; the wind,
too, has shifted; the seven engines pour torrents of water upon the
smoking mass and against the walls, and thus continue till the most
frightful of all enemies is thoroughly subdued and reduced to blackness
and quietude. Most dismal is the scene of devastation; but the enemy is
at all events laid prostrate and rendered incapable of further mischief.

Drenched to the skin with cold water, and reeking at the same time with
perspiration, the gallant men of the Fire Brigade return to their
several quarters. Two of them, however, remain on watch with an engine
all night, a change of clothes and ‘a dram’ being sent them from the
station.

The present efficient condition of fire-engines, as may easily be
supposed, has only been the result of many years of skilful experiment
and practical experience. Our ancestors (notwithstanding their wisdom)
were by no means furnished with such means of extinguishing fire,
although, from the great number of wooden buildings, and greater
quantity of wooden materials employed, to say nothing of thatch, they
had greater need of them. On the other hand, they had not so many
scientific combustibles among them. Still, the want of a proper engine
is manifest from what we know of their attempts in that way. They used
squirts,—actually nothing but squirts. Every alderman was obliged to
provide one. It will be understood that the squirt was not of schoolboy
dimensions, but so large as to require two men, holding it in their arms
between them, like a sort of mummy, to dip its nose into a bucket, and
then, raising it to the proper angle, discharge the contents at the
building on fire.

The first construction of the fire engine, properly so called, is
attributable to a German named Hautsch, in 1657, which was afterwards
improved by the brothers Van der Heyden, in 1672. But, though the merit
of the invention confers all due honour on the engineering mind of
Germans, it may be questioned whether the character of the people was
ever of a kind to induce the working of them with promptitude or
efficiency. So recently as a few years ago, when the writer was staying
in the town of Bonn, intelligence was brought of a fire at Popplesdorf,
a village about a mile and a quarter distant. The town engine was got
out by a couple of men, with pipes in their mouths, and the horse—one
horse—being put to, it was trotted off in the most deliberate manner.
Outside the town gates we overtook a number of students and other
gentlemen, all leisurely sauntering with their pipes towards
Popplesdorf, never doubting but they would be in ample time before the
engine had extinguished the fire. And so they were, for it was burning
nearly half the day. Nevertheless, the Prussian Government have been the
first to purchase the invention of the Steam Fire Engine. Their theories
in the matter seem perfect; but to put out a fire with promptitude
cannot be done even by a Steam Fire Engine without a little human
activity.

The contrast of our vivacity in these matters is very striking, and in
no case more so than when some mischievous idiot gives a false alarm (an
atrocity which we believe is not often committed), or when some
extraordinary meteorological phenomenon induces the mistake. We find two
extraordinary instances of this recorded in Knight’s ‘London.’

  ‘On the first of these, _twelve_ engines and _seventy-four_ brigade
  men were kept in constant motion from _eleven in the evening till six
  the next morning_, in endeavouring to search out what appeared to be a
  large conflagration; some of the engines reached Hampstead, and others
  Kilburn, before it was found that the glare was the effect of the
  “northern lights.” On the other occasion, a crimson glare of light
  arose at the north-east part of the horizon, at about eight o’clock in
  the evening, seemingly caused by a fierce conflagration; and the
  resemblance was increased by what appeared to be clouds of smoke
  rising up after the glare, and breaking and rolling away beneath it.
  _Thirteen_ engines and a large body of men went in search of the
  supposed fire, and did not detect their error till they had proceeded
  far to the north-east.’

The statistics of London fires are very interesting, and much may be
learned from them, not only as matter of anxious information, but of
salutary warning.

The total number of fires in London in the past year, was 838. Of these,
28 were utterly destructive fires; the number of lives lost being 26.
Seriously damaged, 228; slightly damaged, 582.

Of chimneys on fire there were 89; and there were 76 false alarms—not
mischievous, but from error or panic.

The number of calls on the fire-office and other aids amounted to 1003.

In the above 838 fires, the number of insurances (ascertained) were 368;
those which insured on the building only, were 163; those which insured
on the contents only, were 72; and the number of uninsured was 235.

Of the 26 lives lost, 13 were from the ignition of bed-furniture or
wearing apparel; explosion of fire-works, 5; and 8 from inability to
escape out of burning houses.

An examination of the statistics of fires in the Metropolis during
sixteen years, _i.e._ from 1833 to 1848 (which document was obligingly
laid before us by Mr. Braidwood), has put us in possession of a great
mass of very curious and instructive information, from which we extract
the following:——

      Apothecaries and dealers in drugs                        36
      Bakers                                                  244
      Booksellers, binders, and stationers                    137

Of these latter, 96 burnt gas; and the fires caused by gas amounted to
28.

      Cabinet-makers                                          156
      Carpenters and workers in wood                          434
      Churches                                                 33

Of these last-named, 3 were totally destroyed, and 10 much damaged; the
rest slightly, or mere alarms. Of the cause of the fires, 8 were from
the stoves, flues, &c., and 2 from lightning.

      Drapers, woollen and linen                              254

Of these, 105 were much damaged; 239 burnt gas; and the cause of 140 of
these fires was carelessness or accident with the gas.

      Fire-Preventive Company                                   1

The cause of this was an experiment with some ‘fire-proof plaster,’
which ignited in a most unexpected and insubordinate manner, and caused
great damage.

      Fire-work Makers                                         49

The cause of these fires, all of which did great damage, was from the
nature of the trade; from the smoking of tobacco; from boys playing with
fire; and from the reckless trick of a lighted squib or cracker being
thrown into the shop-window.

      Gas-works                                                37

From the great care taken, and ready means of prevention, only 9 of
these were much injured, and none totally destroyed.

      Grocers                                                 120

Of these, 109 burnt gas; and 26 of the fires are attributable to
carelessness or accident with the gas.

      Gunpowder-sellers                                         1

Notice the result of a full consciousness of the danger, and
proportionate care. Only one fire!

      Lodgings                                                868

Of the above number, 368 were found to have been caused by the taking
fire of curtains, linen airing, &c. Some of the rest were caused by
hunting fleas, &c.

      Lucifer-match-makers                                    101
      Lunatic asylums                                           2

Observe the great care in these asylums. All the asylums for lunatics
furnishing only two fires in sixteen years!

      Printers and Engravers                                   72
      Private houses                                         3352

Of the above, the immense number of 1302 were discovered to have been
caused by the taking fire of curtains, dresses, airing linen, &c.

      Sale-shops and offices                                  526

Of these, 379 burnt gas; and the fires caused by gas were 129.

      Ships                                                    82

Caused by stores, flues, cooking, igniting of cargo, smoking tobacco,
&c.

      Stables                                                 192

Caused by candles, lucifers, smoking tobacco, intoxication, &c.

      Tailors                                                  81

Seventeen of the above were caused by gas; 13 by candles; and some by
smoking tobacco.

      Theatres                                                 20

Of the above number, 8 were caused by gas; some others by smoking
tobacco, and the taking fire of curtains, dresses, &c.

      Tobacconists                                             43

Of the above, 6 were caused by gas; 6 by lucifer-matches; others by
curtains, smoking tobacco, by a _cat_, and by _rats_. A word more of
these incendiaries presently.

      Victuallers                                             542

Of the above, there were 21 totally destroyed; 167 much damaged, and 354
slightly. Of the causes, 83 were from the flues; 73, curtains, dresses,
&c.; 65, gas; 36, smoking tobacco; 35, a candle. The remainder comes
under the various heads of lucifers, hot cinders, intoxication, children
playing with fire, a spark, and a monkey.

Besides this ‘monkey,’ we have had occasion to mention several other
‘sparks,’ concerning whom some passing explanation may be needed. Having
noticed the word ‘cat,’ occurring several times in the list of annual
causes of fire,—‘Yes,’ replied Mr. Braidwood, ‘we often have a cat.’ It
appears that the cat sometimes upsets the clothes-horse with things
airing; or, perhaps, in creeping under the clothes to get inside the
fender, drags some of them with her on her back. The fire caused by the
monkey was attributable to some prank of his—meaning no harm, perhaps,
but not much caring about that. The incendiarism of the rats was
undoubtedly effected innocently by their investigation of a box of
lucifers, which included a trial if the matches were good to eat. Their
teeth exploded them—a feat very easily performed.

Of carelessness with gas in shops and warehouses, or with candles near
bedroom curtains, muslin dresses, or linen airing before the fire, we
need not speak, as the dangers are too obvious by the results; nor of
carelessness with lucifer-matches; nor the very common practice of
raking out the fire at night from the grate (where it would be safe)
down upon the hearth, and leaving the hot embers, which perhaps ignite
by the air of the closing door, as the careful person retires to bed.
Carelessness with a cigar or pipe is also an obvious cause. Working men
often put their pipes, half-extinguished, or alive at the bottom of the
bowl, into their jacket-pocket at night; and then hang up the jacket,
and go to bed. Children, also, being left alone, near a fire, may
generally be expected to play with fire, either because it is beautiful,
or because the play is interdicted.

With respect to ‘sparks,’ that a house should take fire, had always been
regarded by us with no small degree of scepticism. A gentleman of our
acquaintance carried his disbelief much further. Sitting with a party of
sporting friends round a winter’s fire, and these dangers being the
subject of conversation, he offered to empty the whole contents of the
grate on the carpet in the middle of the room—_he_ to pay all expenses
if the house took fire; his opponent simply to pay for the carpet and
the charred floor. They were all to sit round, and watch the result. It
was agreed. ‘Now,’ said a friend, ‘I will bet you _ten_ to one this
house will take fire, provided we all go out of the room, lock the door,
and leave the house.’ The other would not venture on this.

Mr. Braidwood’s speculation on the question of sparks, in reply to our
doubts, is very curious and practical. He estimated the number of houses
in London at 300,000. Allowing two _domestic_ fires to each house, we
have 600,000 in the day; and these multiplied by 7, give 4,200,000 in a
week. That one spark, therefore, from 4,200,000 fires should fly out
upon some materials easy to ignite, once in a week, is far from
difficult to credit; and this would fully bear out the number on the
list that are declared to have occurred from this cause.

The number of fires and alarms of fire that occurred in London during
the fifteen years ending in 1847, present a continual _increase_. In
1833 they amounted to 458; in 1834, to 482; and so on, down to 1847,
when they amounted to 836. This gives a total of 9662 fires during the
fifteen years. The average of this is 644. We next find that in 1848 the
number of fires amounted to 805; showing an _increase_ beyond the
previous year of 161. In 1849 the number amounted to 838, being an
increase of 33 beyond the previous year.

How are we to reconcile this increase with the extraordinary efficiency
of the Fire Brigade, and the improvements in measures of precaution?
Partly by the regular increase in the numbers of houses. But Mr.
Braidwood frankly declares that this does not meet the increase of fires
and alarms of fire that reach the Office. We can only account for it,
therefore, by the great increase of scientific combustibles, not merely
in our shops, but in our domestic arrangements—especially gas, and
lucifer-matches—and yet more to the fact that, in former years, many
slight fires caused no alarm to be given, while now the arrangements are
so complete, that probably almost every slight alarm of fire that occurs
is carried to the Office, and duly recorded.

With respect to Fire-Escapes; precautions against fire, that should be
adopted in houses; arrangements to meet the accident; and the best means
of extinguishing fires (particularly with reference to Mr. Phillips’
Fire-Annihilator, which possesses an undoubted power over _flames_), we
cannot now afford the space their importance merits; but we shall bear
them in mind for a future number.




                        POETRY IN THE BYE-WAYS.


Every book-hunter, whose connection with paper and print has more of
individuality than of fashion in it—must in his time have met with
scores of small volumes of rhyme forced out with a care and pains of
which the heart aches to think, prefaced with the bad taste of
immoderate deprecation on the part of the author,—or with the worse
appeal of extravagant commendation on the part of the patron—none of
which shall merit a place on the shelf by the side of Crabbe, or
Wordsworth, or Burns—none of which can be denied the possession of some
sparks and breathings of true poetry.

Sometimes, however, it must be owned, that the difficulties under which
the rhymester has laboured, are the best—nay the sole—evidences of his
genius. In the verses of Phillis Wheatly, the negro girl, for instance,
there is not a line that is not the stalest of the stale—not an image
that is not the most second-hand of the second-hand. Yet, that sixty
years since, a woman of her condemned colour and oppressed race—in
America, too,—should find spirits to sing, and power to attract an
audience,—in that fact was a poem of no common order.

Years ago, there passed through the writer’s hand a small collection of
verse—if verse it might be called—in quality, the most dreary and
antipathetic, possible—sectarian hymns, full of phrases, the intimate
sense of which can never have pierced to the mind of their maker. This
was a poor creature in a hospital, who had been found on a harsh January
night, frozen into the kennel where she had fallen, and who paid for
that night’s lodging with a lingering death of cruelly long duration.
Her vital powers gradually retired one by one. For many years she was
unable to move a limb; latterly could scarcely speak audibly, or take
barely sufficient food to keep life in the half-dead body. But these
dismal hymns were her receipt for occupation and cheerfulness. ‘When I
cannot sleep,’ she would say, in a dialect of her own peculiar pattern,
‘I _mew_.’—There was poetry in the origin of these ‘_mewings_,’ though
none in the dark and narrow stanzas themselves.

From the above illustrations it may be gathered that much of the bye-way
poetry with which we shall deal, has never been promoted to the honours
and heartaches of paper and print—nor even taken the manuscript forms of
‘longs and shorts’ as decidedly as did the imaginative instincts of
Black Phillis, or the long-tried patience of the sufferer in the ——
Ward. We may—and shall—have to do with authorship in humble life,—but
less, perchance, than those will expect, who have considered our subject
merely from the outside of the bookseller’s window, or from the sum
total of a rhymester’s subscription list—drawing thence the charming
inference that A., B. or C. is a poet, because he has found a publisher
and extorted a public!—Too seldom has a Capel Lofft, or a Southey, or a
More, while trying to bring forward a Bloomfield, or a Mary Colling, or
an ungrateful Bristol Milkwoman, whose facility in versifying has
arrested them,—considered how wide is the distance betwixt what may be
called the unconscious Poetry of the People—and that meagre and
second-hand manufacture, produced with a desire for fame, or under hopes
of gain, which challenges competition with the efforts of men more
favourably circumstanced, and which goes forth as virtually a
solicitation for alms.—On the one side (to take the first instance which
occurs) we shall find something like the Gondolier songs of Venice,
patched up—St. Mark and the Moon know how!—out of bits of plays and bits
of verses and bits of opera-tunes, by old men and girls and boys, while
a sprightly people ply their picturesque trade under an Italian sky,
with every image round them to inspire and encourage a sense of
tune,—and which, after a while, get so rubbed into shape—so rounded and
changed,—so decked with canal-wit,—so filled with local names and local
words,—that a College of Anatomists should be puzzled to ‘resolve them
into their primary elements.’—On the other side, we may cite as example
any of the myriad verses anxiously strung together by the hectic and
over-wrought operative, by the light of his candle, whose very burning
would be reprehensible as an extravagance, could not the ware fabricated
at midnight find an immediate market. The first is an utterance—the
second a manufacture. The first speaks with the breath of a peculiar
life, and wears the colour of a peculiar scenery—the second is an
exercise produced under circumstances, which, however stimulating to
energy, are but discouraging to Fancy. We may be told, it is true, that
many of our dearest ‘household words’ have been wrung from our greatest
men, by the pressure of the cruellest exigency. One poet, to pay for his
mother’s funeral, must needs write a ‘Rasselas’—another, under
constraint less instant, but perhaps not less harassing, shall gladden
England for ever, by calling up _Olivia_ and _Sophia_ in the hayfield,
and _Farmer Flamborough’s_ Christmas party, and the Vicar slyly making
an end of ‘the wash for the face,’ which his innocently-worldly
daughters were brewing. But evidence like this does nothing to
contradict our wisdom. Had Johnson been compelled to compose his superb
style, at a moment’s warning by the coffin-side; had Goldsmith possessed
no treasury of adventure and experience to draw upon, no power to handle
the pen already learned—neither _Imlac_ nor _Mrs. Primrose_ would have
been alive at this day. Without preparation, training, craftsmanship,
there is little literature—there is no art. Ballads may grow up—but not
epics be produced, nor five-act plays be constructed, nor tales be
woven, nor even a complete lyric be finished. It has fallen to the lot
of every one of us too often and again, to see hearts fevered, hopes
wrecked, life embittered, and Death (or Madness) courted, because men
cannot—and their friends _will not_—sufficiently fix their minds on this
plain truth; because inclinations are perpetually mistaken for powers;
because, bewildered by some faëry dream that the world in which a Scott
is king or a Siddons is queen, is paved with gold—every boy who can cut
paragraphs into lengths fancies that he is a Scott—and every girl with a
strong voice who loves playgoing, that she is a _Lady Macbeth_, a
_Cleopatra_, a _Queen Constance_, who can shake ‘the playhouse down.’

At all events, in such mistakes as the above, followed by their sure
consequence of misery, lives not the Poetry which we are seeking. In its
place we too often encounter a dismal wax-work show—a creature with
glassy eyes and hot red cheeks, and a stiff arm, in a noble attitude
perhaps, but always beckoning in one and the same direction,—not the
living, breathing, hoping, fearing being, human like ourselves, yet
better than ourselves, with whom we can sit down at meat, and kneel down
at prayer—not the fragment of Heaven upon Earth to encounter and make
acquaintance with, which redeems us from utter heartlessness or
discomfort. The Poetry of appreciation when creation is impossible—the
Poetry of daily life, as sung in deeds of unselfishness, delicacy,
triumph over temptations—consideration of the weak (let the brute-force
theorists ‘sound their trumpets and beat their drums’ as loudly as if
upon themselves devolved the whole orchestral and choral noise of ‘Judas
Maccabeus’) and companionship with the humble—the Poetry of a healthy,
not a maudlin love for Nature—these are to be sought out and gathered
up. In turn we may sit on the bleak hill-sides of Scotland with the
shepherd-rhymesters of the north—or wander down the alleys of English
manufacturing towns, to see what fairly-patterned verse may have been
woven there. Or in a green lane we may open such a book as good Mr.
Barnes has published in the Dorsetshire dialect, to show how ingeniously
music may be got out of a corrupt local English phraseology. Or we may
cross the Channel to hear Jasmin, the Provençal hairdresser, recite; or
to see Reboul, the Nismes baker, bring out an ode hot from his oven.—But
our business will be more with deeds than with words, more with genuine
thoughts and impulses in action, than with second-hand fancies, faded as
the coarse artificial flowers of a milliner’s shop in Leicester Square,
when the season is over, which no passer-by, ‘gentle or simple,’ can
think of taking home.

We may have to do, moreover, with the poetry of association as conveyed
in those festivals of joy or of sorrow which mark the progress of life
and the peculiarity of manners. The nasal, droning burial psalm that may
still be heard in remote places of England, winding up a hollow lane or
across the corner of a moor,—as some little congregation of friends or
neighbours bears a dead body home,—the twilight vesper service
(intrinsically tuneless and unmusical) of the Sisters of Charity, who
come back to their _Beguinage_ after a long day of hard work, hard
prayers, hard consolation, and hard gossip among the poor;—do these
things say nothing to us? Is nothing told us by the cry of sailors as
they warp the ship into dock at the close of a wild and wintry voyage?
by the serenade-music with which the impulsive people of a German town
welcome some favourite poet or artist?—Are these not all, more or less,
poems conveying to us something of feeling, and life, and youth, be we
ever so soured, ever so seared by perpetual contact with coarser and
harsher contemplations and employments? May we not call up such
pictures,—may we not soothe ourselves with such harmonies,—may we not
lay them to our souls as evidences? We must not use them by way of
unction flattering us into the sentimental Waiting Gentlewoman’s notion
that crime is to disappear like a scene in a pantomime, and thieves all
of a sudden to grow as orderly as beadles; but we may apply them as
alteratives when we are in danger of being wearied into doggedness, by
the man who enacts fits at the street corner—or by the begging-letter
Impostor who wrings crowns out of kind-hearted and economical souls, who
must for their credulity’s sake forego their holiday—or by the Pole with
his anti-Russian pamphlet, who makes his way in, to abase himself by
fawning and genteel mendicity, under pretext of being a friend’s
friend—or by the sight of such a pillar of stone as the woman who went
into the confectioner’s shop to buy gingerbread, ‘because they were
going to see our Sally hanged, and should be hungry!’

Yes: if sights and provocations and discouragements like these—of the
earth, earthy—force themselves into our highways, all the more need is
it that all celestial appearances and sounds in our bye-ways, be they
ever so few, faint, and far, should be collected, and set down. Be they
ever so rich, they will not be rich enough to justify an over-complacent
or supine spirit—still less to tempt the healthily-minded to confound
dross with pure gold: be they ever so meagre, they ought to keep alive
in us the faith, that no portion of the earth is so barren, that Truth
or Beauty, and Love, and Patience, and Honour, cannot grow therein.




               THE MINER’S DAUGHTERS.—A TALE OF THE PEAK.


                           IN THREE CHAPTERS.


                         CHAPTER II.—MILL LIFE.

We must pass over the painful and dreadful particulars of that night,
and of a long time to come; the maniacal rage of the father, the
shattered heart and feelings of the mother, the dreadful state of the
two remaining children, to whom their brother was one of the most
precious objects in a world which, like theirs, contained so few. One
moment to have seen him full of life, and fun, and bravado, and almost
the next a lifeless and battered corpse, was something too strange and
terrible to be soon surmounted. But this was wofully aggravated by the
cruel anger of their father, who continued to regard them as guilty of
the death of his favourite boy. He seemed to take no pleasure in them.
He never spoke to them but to scold them. He drank more deeply than
ever, and came home later; and when there, was sullen and morose. When
their mother, who suffered severely, but still plodded on with all her
duties, said, ‘David, they are thy children too;’ he would reply
savagely, ‘Hod thy tongue! What’s a pack o’ wenches to my lad?’

What tended to render the miner more hard towards the two girls was a
circumstance which would have awakened a better feeling in a softer
father’s heart. Nancy, the younger girl, since the dreadful catastrophe,
had seemed to grow gradually dull and defective in her intellect, she
had a slow and somewhat idiotic air and manner. Her mother perceived it,
and was struck with consternation by it. She tried to rouse her, but in
vain. She could not perform her ordinary reading and spelling lessons.
She seemed to have forgotten what was already learned. She appeared to
have a difficulty in moving her legs, and carried her hands as if she
had suffered a partial paralysis. Jane, her sister, was dreadfully
distressed at it, and she and her mother wept many bitter tears over
her. One day, in the following spring, they took her with them to
Ashford, and consulted the doctor there. On examining her, and hearing
fully what had taken place at the time of the brother’s death—the fact
of which he well knew, for it, of course, was known to the whole country
round—he shook his head, and said he was afraid they must make up their
minds to a sad case; that the terrors of that night had affected her
brain, and that, through it, the whole nervous system had suffered, and
was continuing to suffer the most melancholy effects. The only thing, he
thought, in her favour was her youth; and added, that it might have a
good effect if they could leave the place where she had undergone such a
terrible shock. But whether they did or not, kindness and soothing
attentions to her would do more than anything else.

Mrs. Dunster and little Jane returned home with heavy hearts. The
doctor’s opinion had only confirmed their fears; for Jane, though but a
child, had quickness and affection for her sister enough to make her
comprehend the awful nature of poor Nancy’s condition. Mrs. Dunster told
her husband the doctor’s words, for she thought they would awaken some
tenderness in him towards the unfortunate child. But he said, ‘That’s
just what I expected. Hou’ll grow soft, and then who’s to maintain her?
Hou mun goo to th’ workhouse.’

With that he took his maundrel and went off to his work. Instead of
softening his nature, this intelligence seemed only to harden and
brutalise it. He drank now more and more. But all that summer the mother
and Jane did all that they could think of to restore the health and mind
of poor Nancy. Every morning, when the father was gone to work, Jane
went to a spring up in the opposite wood, famed for the coldness and
sweetness of its waters. On this account the proprietors of the mills at
Cressbrook had put down a large trough there under the spreading trees,
and the people fetched the water even from the village. Hence Jane
brought, at many journeys, this cold, delicious water to bathe her
sister in; they then rubbed her warm with cloths, and gave her new milk
for her breakfast. Her lessons were not left off, lest the mind should
sink into fatuity, but were made as easy as possible. Jane continued to
talk to her, and laugh with her, as if nothing was amiss, though she did
it with a heavy heart, and she engaged her to weed and hoe with her in
their little garden. She did not dare to lead her far out into the
valley, lest it might excite her memory of the past fearful time, but
she gathered her flowers, and continued to play with her at all their
accustomed sports, of building houses with pieces of pots and stones,
and imagining gardens and parks. The anxious mother, when some weeks
were gone by, fancied that there was really some improvement. The
cold-bathing seemed to have strengthened the system: the poor child
walked, and bore herself with more freedom and firmness. She became
ardently fond of being with her sister, and attentive to her directions.
But there was a dull cloud over her intellect, and a vacancy in her eyes
and features. She was quiet, easily pleased, but seemed to have little
volition of her own. Mrs. Dunster thought if they could but get her away
from that spot, it might rouse her mind from its sleep. But perhaps the
sleep was better than the awaking might be; however, the removal came,
though in a more awful way than was looked for. The miner, who had
continued to drink more and more, and seemed to have almost estranged
himself from his home, staying away in his drinking bouts for a week or
more together, was one day blasting a rock in the mine, and being
half-stupified with beer, did not take care to get out of the way of the
explosion, was struck with a piece of the flying stone, and killed on
the spot.

The poor widow and her children were now obliged to remove from under
Wardlow-Cop. The place had been a sad one to her: the death of her
husband, though he had been latterly far from a good one, and had left
her with the children in deep poverty, was a fresh source of severe
grief to her. Her religious mind was struck down with a weight of
melancholy by the reflection of the life he had led, and the sudden way
in which he had been summoned into eternity. When she looked forward,
what a prospect was there for her children! it was impossible for her to
maintain them from her small earnings, and as to Nancy, would she ever
be able to earn her own bread, and protect herself in the world?

It was amid such reflections that Mrs. Dunster quitted this deep,
solitary, and, to her, fatal valley, and took up her abode in the
village of Cressbrook. Here she had one small room, and by her own
labours, and some aid from the parish, she managed to support herself
and the children. For seven years she continued her laborious life,
assisted by the labour of the two daughters, who also seamed stockings,
and in the evenings were instructed by her. Her girls were now thirteen
and fifteen years of age: Jane was a tall and very pretty girl of her
years; she was active, industrious, and sweet-tempered: her constant
affection for poor Nancy was something as admirable as it was singular.
Nancy had now confirmed good health, but it had affected her mother to
perceive that, since the catastrophe of her brother’s death, and the
cruel treatment of her father at that time, she had never grown in any
degree as she ought; she was short, stout, and of a pale and very plain
countenance. It could not be now said that she was deficient in mind,
but she was slow in its operations. She displayed, indeed, a more than
ordinary depth of reflection, and a shrewdness of observation, but the
evidences of this came forth in a very quiet way, and were observable
only to her mother and sister. To all besides she was extremely
reserved: she was timid to excess, and shrunk from public notice into
the society of her mother and sister. There was a feeling abroad in the
neighbourhood that she was ‘not quite right,’ but the few who were more
discerning, shook their heads, and observed, ‘Right she was not, poor
thing, but it was not want of sense; she had more of that than most.’

And such was the opinion of her mother and sister. They perceived that
Nancy had received a shock of which she must bear the effects through
life. Circumstances might bring her feeble but sensitive nerves much
misery. She required to be guarded and sheltered from the rudenesses of
the world, and the mother trembled to think how much she might be
exposed to them. But in everything that related to sound judgment, they
knew that she surpassed not only them, but any of their acquaintance. If
any difficulty had to be decided, it was Nancy who pondered on it, and
perhaps at some moment when least expected, pronounced an opinion that
might be taken as confidently as an oracle.

The affection of the two sisters was something beyond the ties of this
world. Jane had watched and attended to her from the time of her
constitutional injury with a love that never seemed to know a moment’s
weariness or change; and the affection which Nancy evinced for her was
equally intense and affecting. She seemed to hang on her society for her
very life. Jane felt this, and vowed that they would never quit one
another. The mother sighed. How many things, she thought, might tear
asunder that beautiful resolve.

But now they were of an age to obtain work in the mill. Indeed, Jane
could have had employment there long before, but she would not quit her
sister till she could go with her,—and now there they went. The
proprietor, who knew the case familiarly, so ordered it that the two
sisters should work near each other; and that poor Nancy should be as
little exposed to the rudeness of the workpeople as possible. But at
first so slow and awkward were Nancy’s endeavours, and such an effect
had it on her frame, that it was feared she must give it up. This would
have been a terrible calamity; and the tears of the two sisters, and the
benevolence of the employer enabled Nancy to pass through this severe
ordeal. In a while she acquired sufficient dexterity, and thenceforward
went through her work with great accuracy and perseverance. As far as
any intercourse with the workpeople was concerned, she might be said to
be dumb. Scarcely ever did she exchange a word with any one, but she
returned kind nods and smiles; and every morning and evening, and at
dinner-time, the two sisters might be seen going to and fro, side by
side,—Jane often talking with some of them; the little, odd-looking
sister walking silent and listening.

Five more years and Jane was a young woman. Amid her companions, who
were few of them above the middle size, she had a tall and striking
appearance. Her father had been a remarkably tall and strong man, and
she possessed something of his stature, though none of his irritable
disposition. She was extremely pretty, of a blooming fresh complexion,
and graceful form. She was remarkable for the sweetness of her
expression, which was the index of her disposition. By her side still
went that odd, broad-built, but still pale and little sister. Jane was
extremely admired by the young men of the neighbourhood, and had already
many offers, but she listened to none. ‘Where I go must Nancy go,’ she
said to herself, ‘and of whom can I be sure?’

Of Nancy no one took notice. Her pale, somewhat large features, her
thoughtful silent look, and her short, stout figure, gave you an idea of
a dwarf, though she could not strictly be called one. No one would think
of Nancy as a wife,—where Jane went she must go; the two clung together
with one heart and soul. The blow which deprived them of their brother
seemed to bind them inseparably together.

Mrs. Dunster, besides her seaming, at which, in truth, she earned a
miserable sum, had now for some years been the post-woman from the
village to the Bull’s Head, where the mail, going on to Tideswell, left
the letter-bag. Thither and back, wet or dry, summer or winter, she went
every day, the year round. With her earnings, and those of the girls’,
she went well with them, as the world kept a neat, small cottage; and
the world goes on the average with the poor. Cramps and rheumatisms she
began to feel sensibly from so much exposure to rain and cold; but the
never-varying and firm affection of her two children was a balm in her
cup which made her contented with everything else.

When Jane was about two-and-twenty, poor Mrs. Dunster, seized with
rheumatic fever, died. On her death-bed she said to Jane, ‘Thou will
never desert poor Nancy; and that’s my comfort. God has been good to me.
After all my trouble, he has given me this faith, that come weal come
woe, so long as thou has a home, Nancy will never want one. God bless
thee for it! God bless you both; and he will bless you!’ So saying,
Betty Dunster breathed her last.

The events immediately following her death did not seem to bear out her
dying faith; for the two poor girls were obliged to give up their
cottage. There was a want of cottages. Not half of the workpeople could
be entertained in this village; they went to and fro for many miles.
Jane and Nancy were now obliged to do the same. Their cottage was wanted
for an overlooker,—and they removed to Tideswell, three miles off. They
had thus six miles a-day to walk, besides standing at their work; but
they were young, and had companions. In Tideswell they were more
cheerful. They had a snug little cottage; were near a Meeting; and found
friends. They did not complain. Here, again, Jane Dunster attracted
great attention, and a young, thriving grocer paid his addresses to her.
It was an offer that made Jane take time to reflect. Every one said it
was an opportunity not to be neglected: but Jane weighed in her mind,
‘Will he keep faith in my compact with Nancy?’ Though her admirer made
every vow on the subject, Jane paused and determined to take the opinion
of Nancy. Nancy thought for a day, and then said, ‘Dearest sister, I
don’t feel easy; I fear that from some cause it would not do in the
end.’

Jane from that moment gave up the idea of the connection. There might be
those who would suspect Nancy of a selfish bias in the advice she gave;
but Jane knew that no such feeling influenced her pure soul. For one
long year the two sisters traversed the hills between Cressbrook and
Tideswell. But they had companions, and it was pleasant in the summer
months. But winter came, and then it was a severe trial. To rise in the
dark, and traverse those wild and bleak hills; to go through snow and
drizzle, and face the sharpest winds in winter, was no trifling matter.
Before winter was over, the two young women began seriously to revolve
the chances of a nearer residence, or a change of employ. There were no
few who blamed Jane excessively for the folly of refusing the last good
offer. There were even more than one who, in the hearing of Nancy,
blamed her. Nancy was thoughtful, agitated, and wept. ‘If I can, dear
sister,’ she said, ‘have advised you to your injury, how shall I forgive
myself? What _shall_ become of me?’

But Jane clasped her sister to her heart, and said, ‘No! no! dearest
sister, you are not to blame. I feel you are right; let us wait, and we
shall see!’




                          THE USES OF SORROW.


                Oh, grieve not for the early dead,
                  Whom God himself hath taken;
                But deck with flowers each holy bed—
                  Nor deem thyself forsaken,
                When, one by one, they fall away,
                Who were to thee as summer day.

                Weep for the babes of guilt, who sleep
                  With scanty rags stretch’d o’er them,
                On the dark road, the downward steep
                  Of misery; while before them
                Looms out afar the dreadful tree,
                And solemn, sad Eternity!

                Nor weep alone; but when to Heaven
                  The cords of sorrow bind thee,
                Let kindest help to such be given,
                  As God shall teach to find thee;
                And, for the sake of those above,
                Do deeds of Wisdom, Mercy, Love.

                The child that sicken’d on thy knee,
                  Thou weeping Christian mother,
                Had learn’d in this world, lispingly,
                  Words suited for another.
                Oh, dost thou think, with pitying mind,
                On untaught infants left behind?




                  FROM THE RAVEN IN THE HAPPY FAMILY.


I won’t bear it, and I don’t see why I should.

Having begun to commit my grievances to writing, I have made up my mind
to go on. You men have a saying, ‘I may as well be hung for a sheep as a
lamb.’ Very good. _I_ may as well get into a false position with our
proprietor for a ream of manuscript as a quire. Here goes!

I want to know who BUFFON was. I’ll take my oath he wasn’t a bird. Then
what did _he_ know about birds—especially about Ravens? He pretends to
know all about Ravens. Who told him? Was his authority a Raven? I should
think not. There never was a Raven yet, who committed himself, you’ll
find, if you look into the precedents.

There’s a schoolmaster in dusty black knee-breeches and stockings, who
comes and stares at our establishment every Saturday, and brings a lot
of boys with him. He is always bothering the boys about BUFFON. That’s
the way I know what BUFFON says. He is a nice man, BUFFON; and you’re
all nice men together, ain’t you?

What do you mean by saying that I am inquisitive and impudent, that I go
everywhere, that I affront and drive off the dogs, that I play pranks on
the poultry, and that I am particularly assiduous in cultivating the
good-will of the cook? That’s what your friend BUFFON says, and you
adopt him it appears. And what do you mean by calling me ‘a glutton by
nature, and a thief by habit?’ Why, the identical boy who was being told
this, on the strength of BUFFON, as he looked through our wires last
Saturday, was almost out of his mind with pudding, and had got another
boy’s top in his pocket!

I tell you what. I like the idea of you men, writing histories of _us_,
and settling what we are, and what we are not, and calling us any names
you like best. What colors do you think you would show in, yourselves,
if some of us were to take it into our heads to write histories of
_you_? I know something of Astley’s Theatre, I hope; I was about the
stables there, a few years. Ecod! if you heard the observations of the
Horses after the performance, you’d have some of the conceit taken out
of you!

I don’t mean to say that I admire the Cat. I _don’t_ admire her. On the
whole, I have a personal animosity towards her. But, being obliged to
lead this life, I condescend to hold communication with her, and I have
asked her what _her_ opinion is. She lived with an old lady of property
before she came here, who had a number of nephews and nieces. She says
she could show you up to that extent, after her experience in that
situation, that even you would be hardly brazen enough to talk of cats
being sly and selfish any more.

I am particularly assiduous in cultivating the good-will of the cook, am
I? Oh! I suppose you never do anything of this sort, yourselves? No
politician among you was ever particularly assiduous in cultivating the
good-will of a minister, eh? No clergyman in cultivating the good-will
of a bishop, humph? No fortune-seeker in cultivating the good-will of a
patron, hah? You have no toad-eating, no time-serving, no place-hunting,
no lacqueyship of gold and silver sticks, or anything of that sort, I
suppose? You haven’t too many cooks, in short, whom you are all
assiduously cultivating, till you spoil the general broth? Not you. You
leave that to the Ravens.

Your friend BUFFON, and some more of you, are mighty ready, it seems, to
give _us_ characters. Would you like to hear about your own temper and
forbearance? Ask the Dog. About your never overloading or ill-using a
willing creature? Ask my brother-in-law’s friend, the Camel, up in the
Zoological. About your gratitude to, and your provision for, old
servants? I wish I could refer you to the last Horse I dined off (he was
very tough), up at a knacker’s yard in Battle Bridge. About your
mildness, and your abstinence from blows and cudgels? Wait till the
Donkey’s book comes out!

You are very fond of laughing at the parrot, I observe. Now, I don’t
care for the parrot. I don’t admire the parrot’s voice—it wants
hoarseness. And I despise the parrot’s livery—considering black the only
true wear. I would as soon stick my bill into the parrot’s breast as
look at him. Sooner. But if you come to that, and you laugh at the
parrot because the parrot says the same thing over and over again, don’t
you think you could get up a laugh at yourselves? Did you ever know a
Cabinet Minister say of a flagrant job or great abuse, perfectly
notorious to the whole country, that he had never heard a word of it
himself, but could assure the honourable gentleman that every enquiry
should be made? Did you ever hear a Justice remark, of any extreme
example of ignorance, that it was a most extraordinary case, and he
couldn’t have believed in the possibility of such a case—when there had
been, all through his life, ten thousand such within sight of his
chimney-pots? Did you ever hear, among yourselves, anything approaching
to a parrot repetition of the words, Constitution, Country, Public
Service, Self-Government, Centralisation, Un-English, Capital, Balance
of Power, Vested Interests, Corn, Rights of Labor, Wages, or so forth?
_Did_ you ever? No! Of course, you never!

But to come back to that fellow BUFFON. He finds us Ravens to be most
extraordinary creatures. We have properties so remarkable, that you’d
hardly believe it. ‘A piece of money, a teaspoon, or a ring,’ he says,
‘are always tempting baits to our avarice. These we will slily seize
upon; and, if not watched, carry to our favorite hole.’ How odd!

Did you ever hear of a place called California? _I_ have. I understand
there are a number of animals over there, from all parts of the world,
turning up the ground with their bills, grubbing under the water,
sickening, moulting, living in want and fear, starving, dying, tumbling
over on their backs, murdering one another, and all for what? Pieces of
money that they want to carry to their favourite holes. Ravens every one
of ’em! Not a man among ’em, bless you!

Did you ever hear of Railway Scrip? _I_ have. We made a pretty
exhibition of ourselves about that, we feathered creatures! Lord, how we
went on about that Railway Scrip! How we fell down, to a bird, from the
Eagle to the Sparrow, before a scarecrow, and worshipped it for the love
of the bits of rag and paper fluttering from its dirty pockets! If it
hadn’t tumbled down in its rottenness, we should have clapped a title on
it within ten years, I’ll be sworn!—Go along with you, and your BUFFON,
and don’t talk to me!

‘The Raven don’t confine himself to petty depredations on the pantry or
the larder’—here you are with your BUFFON again—‘but he soars at more
magnificent plunder, that he can neither exhibit nor enjoy.’ This must
be very strange to you men—more than it is to the Cat who lived with
that old lady, though!

Now, I am not going to stand this. You shall not have it all your own
way. I am resolved that I won’t have Ravens written about by men,
without having men written about by Ravens—at all events by one Raven,
and that’s me. I shall put down my opinions about you. As leisure and
opportunity serve, I shall collect a natural history of you. You are a
good deal given to talk about _your_ missions. That’s my mission. How do
you like it?

I am open to contributions from any animal except one of your set; bird,
beast, or fish, may assist me in my mission, if he will. I have
mentioned it to the Cat, intimated it to the Mouse, and proposed it to
the Dog. The Owl shakes his head when I confide it to him, and says he
doubts. He always did shake his head, and doubt. Whenever he brings
himself before the public, he never does anything except shake his head
and doubt. I should have thought he had got himself into a sufficient
mess by doing that, when he roosted for a long time in the Court of
Chancery. But he can’t leave off. He’s always at it.

Talking of missions, here’s our Proprietor’s Wife with a mission now!
She has found out that she ought to go and vote at elections; ought to
be competent to sit in Parliament; ought to be able to enter the learned
professions—the army and navy, too, I believe. She has made the
discovery that she has no business to be the comfort of our Proprietor’s
life, and to have the hold upon him of not being mixed up in all the
janglings and wranglings of men, but is quite ill-used in being the
solace of his home, and wants to go out speechifying. That’s our
Proprietor’s Wife’s new mission. Why, you never heard the Dove go on in
that ridiculous way. She knows her true strength better.

You are mighty proud about your language; but it seems to me that you
don’t deserve to have words, if you can’t make a better use of ’em. You
know you are always fighting about ’em. Do you never mean to leave that
off, and come to things a little? I thought you had high authority for
_not_ tearing each other’s eyes out, about words. You respect it, don’t
you?

I declare I am stunned with words, on my perch in the Happy Family. I
used to think the cry of a Peacock bad enough, when I was on sale in a
menagerie, but I had rather live in the midst of twenty peacocks, than
one Gorham and a Privy Council. In the midst of your wordy squabbling,
you don’t think of the lookers-on. But if you heard what _I_ hear in my
public thoroughfare, you’d stop a little of that noise, and leave the
great bulk of the people something to believe in peace. You are
overdoing it, I assure you.

I don’t wonder at the Parrot picking words up and occupying herself with
them. She has nothing else to do. There are no destitute parrots, no
uneducated parrots, no foreign parrots in a contagious state of
distraction, no parrots in danger of pestilence, no festering heaps of
miserable parrots, no parrots crying to be sent away beyond the sea for
dear life. But among you!—

Well! I repeat, I am not going to stand it. Tame submission to injustice
is unworthy of a Raven. I croak the croak of revolt, and call upon the
Happy Family to rally round me. You men have had it all your own way for
a long time. _Now_, you shall hear a sentiment or two about yourselves.

I find my last communication gone from the corner where I hid it. I
rather suspect the magpie, but he says, ‘Upon his honor.’ If Mr. Rowland
Hill has got it, he will do me justice—more justice than you have done
him lately, or I am mistaken in my man.




                      ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

                                 EGGS.


There is a curious illustration of the mode in which kings and
legislators thought to make things cheap, in an Ordinance of Edward the
Second, of the year 1314, in which it is set forth that there is ‘an
intolerable dearth, in these days, of oxen, cows, sheep, hogs, geese,
capons, hens, chickens, pigeons, and eggs;’ and therefore, amongst other
regulations, it is prescribed that twenty eggs shall be sold for a
penny, and that the eggs should be forfeited if the salesman would not
take that price. Some years before (1274), the Lord Mayor of London, in
a similar proclamation, shows us how the commerce of food was conducted,
by ordaining that no huckster of fowl should go out of the city to meet
the country people coming in with their commodities, but buy in the city
after three o’clock, when the great men and citizens had supplied
themselves at the first hand. Of course, these regulations did produce
‘an intolerable dearth;’ and Edward the Second had the candour to
acknowledge this by a proclamation of 1315, in which he says, ‘we have
understood that such a proclamation, which at that time we believed
would be for the profit of the people of our realm, redounds to their
greater damage than profit.’ Nevertheless, two centuries and a half
later, the civic wisdom discovered that ‘through the grievous
covetousness of poulterers, the prices of all poultry wares are grown to
be excessive and unreasonable;’ and therefore the Lord Mayor decrees the
prices of geese and chickens, and commands that eggs shall be five a
penny. (Stow.) In 1597 we learn, that even an attorney-general could not
have the benefit of such an enforced cheapness; for the household book
of Sir Edward Coke shows us that his steward expended 4_s._ 8_d._ in one
week of May, for his master’s family in Holborn, by daily purchases of
eggs at ten for a groat; while at his country house at Godwicke, in
Norfolk, in the same year, he daily bought eggs at twenty a groat in
July.

The fact that in 1597 eggs were double the price in Holborn as compared
with the eggs of Godwicke, is one of the incidental proofs of an almost
self-evident principle, that commercial intercourse, produced by
facilities of communication, is one of the great causes of cheapness
arising out of equalisation of prices. But such facilities further lower
prices, by stimulating production. It is to be noted, that while the
Attorney-General, when in the country, killed his own bullocks and
sheep, and had green geese, capons, and chickens in profusion out of his
own poultry-yard, he bought his eggs. We have no doubt that his
occasional presence at Godwicke encouraged the cottagers in the
provision of eggs for the great man’s use. He did not produce them
himself, for the carriage to London would have been most costly. But his
purchases were irregular. When the family went to Holborn, the eggs had
to seek an inferior market. If no one was at hand, the production
declined. They did not go to London, to lower the price there, by
increasing the supply.

Eggs at ten a groat, even, sound cheap. But while Coke bought his eggs
at ten a groat, he only paid two shillings a stone for his beef. Ten
eggs were, therefore, equivalent to about two pounds of beef. In this
month of April, 1850, good eggs may be bought in London at sixteen for a
shilling, which shilling would purchase two pounds of beef. Eggs are,
therefore, more than one half cheaper in London now than two centuries
and a half ago, by comparison with meat. They are far cheaper when we
regard the altered value of money. In the days of Queen Elizabeth eggs
were a common article of food. We learn from no less an authority than
the Chamberlain of a renowned inn in Kent, that the company who
travelled with the carriers used eggs plentifully and luxuriously. ‘They
are up already, and call for eggs and butter.’ (Henry IV. pt. 1.) But if
we infer that the population of London, in those days of supposed
cheapness, could obtain eggs with the facility with which we now obtain
them, and that the estimated two hundred thousand of that population
could call for them as freely as the pack-horse travellers at
Rochester,—the inference may be corrected by the knowledge of a few
facts, which will show by what means, then undiscovered, a perishable
article is now supplied with unfailing regularity, and without any limit
but that enforced by the demand, to a population of two millions and a
quarter. That such a population can be so supplied without a continuing
increase, or a perpetual variation of price, is an Illustration of
Cheapness, which involves a view of some remarkable peculiarities of our
age, and some important characteristics of our social condition.

In the days of Edward II., the villagers who dwelt within a few miles of
London daily surrounded its walls with their poultry and eggs. The
poulterers were forbidden to become their factors; but unquestionably it
was for the interest of both parties that some one should stand between
the producer and the consumer. Without this, there would have been no
regular production. Perhaps the production was very irregular, the price
very fluctuating, the dearth often intolerable. This huckstering had to
go on for centuries before it became commerce. It would have been
difficult, even fifty years ago, to imagine that eggs, a frail
commodity, and quickly perishable, should become a great article of
import. Extravagant would have been the assertion that a kingdom should
be supplied with sea-borne eggs, with as much speed, with more
regularity, and at a more equalised price, than a country market-town of
the days of George III. It has been stated, that, before the Peace of
1815, Berwick-upon-Tweed shipped annually as many eggs to London as were
valued at 30,000_l._ Before the Peace, there were no steam-vessels; and
it is difficult to conceive how the cargoes from Berwick, with a passage
that often lasted a month, could find their way to the London consumer
in marketable condition. Perhaps the eaters of those eggs, collected in
the Border districts, were not so fastidious in their tastes as those
who now despise a French egg which has been a week travelling from the
Pas de Calais. But the Berwick eggs were, at any rate, the commencement
of a real commerce in eggs.

In 1820, five years after the Peace, thirty-one millions of foreign eggs
found their way into England, paying a duty of 11,077_l._, at the rate
of a penny for each dozen. They principally came from France, from that
coast which had a ready communication with Kent and Sussex, and with the
Thames. These eggs, liable as they were to a duty, came to the consumer
so much cheaper than the Berwick eggs, or the Welsh eggs, or the eggs
even that were produced in Middlesex or Surrey, that the trade in eggs
was slowly but surely revolutionised. Large heaps of eggs made their
appearance in the London markets, or stood in great boxes at the door of
the butterman, with tempting labels of ‘24 a shilling,’ or ‘20 a
shilling.’ They were approached with great suspicion, and not unjustly
so; for the triumphs of steam were yet far from complete. But it was
discovered that there was an egg-producing country in close proximity to
London, in which the production of eggs for the metropolitan market
might be stimulated by systematic intercourse, and become a mutual
advantage to a population of two millions, closely packed in forty
square miles of street, and a population of six hundred thousand spread
over two thousand five hundred square miles of arable, meadow, and
forest land, with six or eight large towns. This population of the Pas
de Calais is chiefly composed of small proprietors. Though the farms are
larger there than in some other parts of France, some of the
peculiarities of what is called the small culture are there observable.
Poultry, especially, is most abundant. Every large and every small
farmhouse has its troops of fowls and turkeys. The pullets are carefully
fed and housed; the eggs are duly collected; the good-wife carries them
to the markets of Arras, or Bethune, or St. Omer, or Aire, or Boulogne,
or Calais: perhaps the egg-collector traverses the district with his
cart and his runners. The egg-trade with England gradually went on
increasing. In 1835, France consigned to us seventy-six millions of
eggs, paying a duty of tenpence for 120. In 1849, we received
ninety-eight millions of foreign eggs, paying a duty of
tenpence-halfpenny per 120, amounting to 35,694_l._ These are known in
the egg-market as eggs of Caen, Honfleur, Cherbourg, Calais, and
Belgium.

In 1825 the commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland was
put upon the same footing as the coasting trade of the ports of England.
Steam navigation between the two islands also had received an enormous
impulse. The small farmers and cottiers of Ireland were poultry-keepers.
Too often the poor oppressed tenants were wont to think—‘The hen lays
eggs, they go into the lord’s frying-pan.’ Steam navigation gave a new
impulse to Irish industry. Before steam-vessels entered the Cove of
Cork, an egg, at certain seasons, could scarcely be found in the market
of that city. England wanted eggs; steam-boats would convey them rapidly
to Bristol; the small farmers applied themselves to the production of
eggs; Cork itself then obtained a constant and cheap supply. In 1835
Ireland exported as many eggs to England as were valued at 156,000_l._,
being in number nearly a hundred millions. In 1847 it was stated by Mr.
Richardson, in a work on Domestic Fowls, published in Dublin, that the
export of eggs from Ireland to England was ‘bordering on a million
sterling.’ The eggs are valued at 5_s._ 6_d._ for 124, which would
indicate an export of about four hundred and fifty millions of eggs. We
come to more precise results when we learn, on the authority of the
secretary of the Dublin Steam-Packet Company, that in the year 1844–5
there were shipped from Dublin alone, to London and Liverpool,
forty-eight millions of eggs, valued at 122,500_l._ In the census of
1841, the poultry of Ireland was valued at 202,000_l._, taking each fowl
at 6_d._ per head. The return was below the reality; for the peasantry
were naturally afraid of some fiscal imposition, worse even than the old
tax of ‘duty fowls,’ when they had to account for their Dame Partletts.
Eight millions of poultry, which this return indicates, is, however, a
large number. The gross number of holdings in Ireland, as shown by the
agricultural returns of 1847, was 935,000; and this would give above
eight fowls to every cottage and farm,—a number sufficient to produce
four hundred and fifty millions of eggs for exportation, if all could be
collected and all carried to a port. One hundred and twenty eggs yearly
is the produce of a good hen. It would be safe to take the Irish export
of eggs at half the number,—an enormous quantity, when we consider what
a trifling matter an egg appears when we talk of large culture and
extensive commerce. Out of such trifles communities have grown into
industrious and frugal habits and consequent prosperity. There was a
time when the English farmer’s wife would keep her household out of the
profits of her butter, her poultry, and her eggs; when she duly rose at
five o’clock on the market-day morning, rode with her wares some seven
miles in a jolting cart, and stood for six hours at a stall till she had
turned all her commodity into the ready penny. The old thrift and the
old simplicity may return, when English farmers learn not to despise
small gains, and understand how many other things are to be done with
the broad acres, besides growing wheat at a monopoly price.

The coast-trade brings English eggs in large numbers into the London
markets. Scotch eggs are also an article of import. The English eggs,
according to the ‘Price Current,’ fetch 25 per cent. more than the
Scotch or Irish. The average price of all eggs at the present time, in
the wholesale London market, is five shillings for 120—exactly a
halfpenny each.

In the counties by which London is surrounded, the production of fresh
eggs is far below the metropolitan demand. Poultry, indeed, is produced
in considerable quantities, but there is little systematic attention to
the profitable article of eggs. Where is the agricultural labourer who
has his half-dozen young hens, from which number, with good management,
nine hundred, and even a thousand eggs may be annually produced, that
will obtain a high price—three times as high as foreign eggs? These six
hens would yield the cottager a pleasant addition to his scanty wages,
provided the egg-collection were systematised, as it is in Ireland. Mr.
Weld, in his ‘Statistical Survey of the County of Roscommon,’ says, ‘The
eggs are collected from the cottages for several miles round, by
runners, commonly boys from nine years old and upwards, each of whom has
a regular beat, which he goes over daily, bearing back the produce of
his toil carefully stowed in a small hand-basket. I have frequently met
with these boys on their rounds, and the caution necessary for bringing
in their brittle ware with safety seemed to have communicated an air of
business and steadiness to their manner, unusual to the ordinary
volatile habits of children in Ireland.’

Making a reasonable estimate of the number of foreign eggs, and of Irish
and Scotch eggs that come into the port of London—and putting them
together at a hundred and fifty millions, every individual of the London
population consumes sixty eggs, brought to his own door from sources of
supply which did not exist thirty years ago. Nor will such a number
appear extravagant when we consider how accurately the egg-consumption
is regulated by the means and the wants of this great community. Rapid
as the transit of these eggs has become, there are necessarily various
stages of freshness in which they reach the London market. The retail
dealer purchases accordingly of the egg-merchant; and has a commodity
for sale adapted to the peculiar classes of his customers. The dairyman
or poulterer in the fashionable districts permits, or affects to permit,
no cheap sea-borne eggs to come upon his premises. He has his eggs of a
snowy whiteness at four or six a shilling, ‘warranted new-laid;’ and his
eggs from Devonshire, cheap at eight a shilling, for all purposes of
polite cookery. In Whitechapel, or Tottenham Court Road, the
bacon-seller ‘warrants’ even his twenty-four a shilling. In truth, the
cheapest eggs from France and Ireland are as good, if not better, than
the eggs which were brought to London in the days of bad roads and slow
conveyance—the days of road-waggons and pack-horses. And a great benefit
it is, and a real boast of that civilisation which is a consequence of
free and rapid commercial intercourse. Under the existing agricultural
condition of England, London could not, by any possibility, be supplied
with eggs to the extent of a hundred and fifty millions annually, beyond
the existing supply from the neighbouring counties. The cheapness of
eggs through the imported supply has raised up a new class of
egg-consumers. Eggs are no longer a luxury which the poor of London
cannot touch. France and Ireland send them cheap eggs. But France and
Ireland produce eggs for London, that the poultry-keepers may supply
themselves with other things which they require more than eggs. Each is
a gainer by the exchange. The industry of each population is stimulated;
the wants of each supplied.




                         MUSIC IN HUMBLE LIFE.


Music—that is, classical music—has of late years been gradually
descending from the higher to the humbler classes. The Muse is changing
her associates; she is taking up with the humble and needy, and leaves
nothing better to her aristocratic friends than their much-loved Italian
Opera. It is to the masses that she awards some of her choicest
scientific gifts. She has of late years permeated and softened the hard
existence of the artisan and the labourer.

It was not always thus. There was an ‘olden time’ in England when Music
was more assiduously cultivated among the higher and educated classes
than it has been in more modern days. In the sixteenth century,
knowledge of music, and skill in its performance were deemed
indispensable to persons of condition. Queen Elizabeth, among her other
vanities, was proud of her musical powers, and not a little jealous of
her unhappy rival, the Queen of Scots, on account of her proficiency in
this accomplishment. The favourite vocal music of that day consisted of
the madrigals of the great Italian and English masters—those wonderful
works of art, which, like the productions of ancient Grecian sculpture,
have baffled all attempts at modern imitation. Yet every well-educated
lady or gentleman was expected to take a part in those profound and
complicated harmonies; and at a social meeting, to decline doing so, on
the score of inability, was regarded as a proof of rudeness and
low-breeding. In Morley’s very curious book, the ‘_Introduction to
Practical Music_,’ a gentleman is represented as seeking musical
instruction in consequence of a mortification of this kind. ‘Supper
being ended,’ says he, ‘and musicke books, according to the custom,
being brought to the table, the mistress of the house presented me with
a part, earnestly requesting me to sing; but when, after many excuses, I
protested unfainedly that I could not, every one began to wonder, yea,
some whispered to others, demanding how I was brought up.’

Music declined in England along with manners. In the middle of the last
century, a period rivalling the days of Charles the Second in moral
profligacy, Lord Chesterfield, who of course expressed the fashionable
feeling of the time, advised his son to eschew the practice of music as
unbecoming a gentleman. This feeling, we need scarcely say, has long
passed away; some of our most accomplished amateurs of both sexes being
found in the highest circles of society.

Traces, however, of the ancient and extensive cultivation of music were
never entirely obliterated; and, as might be expected, they existed,
along with more primitive manners, in the more remote districts of the
country. In some of the northern counties, particularly Lancashire and
Yorkshire, the inhabitants have from time immemorial been remarkable for
skill in vocal harmony, and for their knowledge of the old part-music of
the English school. As these districts have gradually become the seats
of manufactures, the same musical habits have been kept up among the
growing population; and so salutary have these habits been found—so
conducive to order, temperance, and industry—that many great
manufacturers have encouraged them by furnishing to their workpeople the
means of musical instruction.

The Messrs. Strutt, of Derby, trained some of their brawny workmen into
a band, and many of them could step from the forge into the orchestra,
and perform some of the most complicated pieces, by English and foreign
composers, in a creditable style.

Another set of harmonious blacksmiths awaken the echoes of the remotest
Welsh mountains. The correspondent of a London paper, while visiting
Merthyr, was exceedingly puzzled by hearing boys in the Cyfarthfa works
whistling airs rarely heard except in the fashionable ball-room,
opera-house, or drawing-room. He afterwards discovered that the
proprietor of the works, Mr. Robert Crawshay, had established among his
men a brass band, which practises once a week throughout the year. They
have the good fortune to be led by a man (one of the ‘roll-turners’) who
must have had somewhere a superior musical education. ‘I had the
pleasure of hearing them play, and was astonished at their proficiency.
They number sixteen instruments. I heard them perform the Overtures to
Zampa, The Caliph of Bagdad, and Fra Diavolo, Vivi tu, some concerted
music from Roberto, Don Giovanni, and Lucia, with a quantity of Waltzes,
Polkas, and dance music. The bandmaster had them under excellent
control; he everywhere took the time well, and the instruments preserved
it, each taking up his lead with spirit and accuracy; in short, I have
seldom heard a regimental band more perfect than this handful of
workmen, located (far from any place where they might command the
benefit of hearing other bands) in the mountains of Wales. The great
body of men at these works are extremely proud of their musical
performances, and like to boast of them. I have been told it cost Mr.
Crawshay great pains and expense to bring this band to its present
excellent condition. If so, he now has his reward. Besides this, he has
shown what the intellectual capacity of the workman is equal to, and,
above all, he has provided a rational and refined amusement for classes
whose leisure time would otherwise probably have been less creditably
spent than in learning or listening to music.’

The habits and manners of these men appear to have been decidedly
improved by these softening influences. They are peaceful and simple.
‘During a stay of several weeks in the town,’ says the same authority,
‘I neither saw nor heard of altercations or fighting. The man, on his
return from labour, usually washes (the colliers and miners invariably
wash every day from head to foot), puts on another coat, and sits down
to his meal of potatoes, meat, and tea, or broth, and bread and cheese,
as the case may be. His wife and children, comfortably clothed and
cheerful, sit down with him. Afterwards he goes to a neighbour’s house,
or receives some friends of his own, when they discuss the news and
light gossip affecting their class, or talk over the success or
difficulties attending their work and their prospects as regards the
future. Visiting many of their houses at night, I saw numbers of such
groups; in one instance only I saw them drinking beer, and that was at a
kind of house warming, one of the body having that night taken
possession of the neatly furnished house where I found them assembled.’

These are, indeed, only insulated good effects wrought by private
individuals; but their beneficial effects have led to and helped on the
systematic cultivation of music as a branch of popular education under
the direct sanction and authority of the Government; and the labours of
Mr. Hullah, who was chosen as the agent in this good work, have been
attended with a degree of success far beyond anything that could have
been anticipated.

Mr. Hullah had turned his attention to the subject of popular
instruction in Music, before the matter was taken up by the Government,
and had examined the methods of tuition adopted in various parts of the
Continent. An investigation of the system of Wilhem, which had been
formally sanctioned by the French Government, induced him to attempt its
introduction in a modified form, into this country; and he had an
opportunity of doing so by being appointed to instruct in vocal music
the pupils of the training-school at Battersea, then recently opened
under the direction of the National Society. In February 1840, he gave
his first lesson to a class of about twenty boys, and from this small
beginning sprang the great movement which speedily extended over the
kingdom. The success of these lessons attracted the notice of the
Committee of the Privy Council, who undertook the publication of the
work containing the adaptation of the Wilhem system to English use; and
under the sanction of the Committee, three classes were opened in Exeter
Hall for schoolmasters or teachers in elementary schools, each class
limited to one hundred persons; and a fourth class, of the same number,
for female teachers. These classes were opened in February and March
1841. Their expenses were defrayed partly from small payments made by
the pupils themselves, and partly by a subscription raised among a few
distinguished friends of education. It is worthy of particular notice
(as an erroneous impression has existed on the subject) that the
Government has never contributed a shilling to the support of any of Mr.
Hullah’s classes; though the official countenance and encouragement of
the Committee of Council certainly contributed much to Mr. Hullah’s
success.

Many applications for similar instructions having been made by persons
_not_ engaged in teaching, the elementary classes were thrown open to
the public; and in the spring of 1841 these applications became so
numerous, that it was found necessary to engage the Great Room at Exeter
Hall and several of the smaller rooms.

These first courses of elementary lessons being ended, an Upper School
was opened, in December 1841, for the practice of choral music, to
enable those pupils who might desire it to keep up and increase the
knowledge they had acquired. This class was joined by about 250 persons.

The first great choral meeting of Mr. Hullah’s classes was held in April
1842. About 1500 persons sang, of whom the majority were adults, who, a
year before, had possessed no knowledge of music. During the year
following, 861 persons joined the elementary classes, and 1465 became
members of the Upper Schools, which were increased in number from one to
three.

Of these Upper Schools, Mr. Hullah himself says—[1]

Footnote 1:

  _The Duty and Advantage of Learning to Sing._ A Lecture delivered at
  the Leeds Church Institution, 1846.

‘They consist of persons of both sexes, of nearly all ages, and nearly
all ranks; for I think it would be difficult to name a class or calling,
of which they do not include some representative. We have clergymen,
lawyers, doctors, tradesmen, clerks, mechanics, soldiers, and, of
course, many schoolmasters and schoolmistresses. The large number of
females, besides distinguishing us broadly from those musical societies
called Social Harmonists and Glorious Apollos and the like—relics of an
age when men were not at all times fit company for women—besides
producing that courteous and scrupulous tone which female influence must
produce wherever it has fair play, removes the only objection which can
reasonably be made to this kind of social recreation, that it carries
individuals away from their homes, and breaks up family circles; for our
meetings include many a family circle entire—husbands and wives,
brothers and sisters, parents and children; and these, in many
instances, taught by one another.’

When the singing classes were opened in Exeter Hall, other classes were
also opened, also under the sanction of the Committee of Council, for
totally different objects;—instruction in Model Drawing, Writing,
Arithmetic, and Chemistry. The receipts from the singing classes, during
1841, 1842, and 1843, realised a net surplus above expenditure, of
1122£: but nearly the whole of this sum was employed in meeting the
losses on the other classes, in every one of which there was a deficit.
From the very heavy rent, too, demanded for Exeter Hall, it was thought
advisable to quit that place, and transfer the singing classes to the
Apollonicon Rooms in St. Martin’s Lane, till the plan then formed, for
the erection of a building at once less expensive and better fitted for
the accommodation of the classes than Exeter Hall, could be carried into
effect.

This plan has been accomplished by the erection of the edifice in Long
Acre, called St. Martin’s Hall. The funds for this purpose were raised
by the persevering exertions of Mr. Hullah, aided by liberal advances
made by private individuals, subscriptions, and contributions of the
pupils, in testimony of their sense of the advantage they derived from
the schools, and the profits of a series of great Choral Concerts given,
for several seasons, in Exeter Hall. The first stone of the building was
laid by the Earl of Carlisle on the 26th of June, 1847; and the first
public meeting in the Great Hall was held on the 11th of February last.
The edifice, though rendered fit for present use, is not yet fully
completed, in consequence of a portion of the ground forming its site
being still under an unexpired lease. When finished, the great
concert-hall will be 120 feet long, 55 wide, and 40 high; and will
afford accommodation for three thousand persons. There are also a
lecture-room which can hold five hundred persons, three spacious
class-rooms, and a large room intended as a library of music and musical
literature.

At St. Martin’s Hall there are now about 1400 persons in various stages
of instruction; about 450 in the first upper school, about 250 in the
second, and the remainder in the elementary classes. The pupils belong
to every class and calling; the highest ranks of the aristocracy, the
members of almost every trade and profession, the industrious mechanic
and workman; and they all mingle in one common pursuit, without regard
to station or degree, and with the utmost harmony of feeling. There is a
due admixture of the softer sex; and the meetings of the classes are
characterised by such uniform propriety and decorum, that the most
scrupulous parents allow their children, without hesitation, to attend
them.

There are several other places in the Metropolis where Mr. Hullah’s
system of teaching is in operation. He has been appointed Professor of
Vocal Music in King’s College, in which seminary music forms a regular
part of the Theological Course; a knowledge of this art being regarded
as so conducive to the usefulness of a clergyman, that its acquirement,
to a certain extent, is rendered imperative on the students of divinity.
At the Charterhouse, a succession of singing classes has been maintained
for these five or six years.

The National Society for the Education of the Poor has four Normal
Schools, in all of which the musical instruction is under Mr. Hullah’s
direction. These are:—1st, St. Mark’s College, Chelsea; in which, there
are always sixty students, who remain there three years. _All_ learn to
sing, and the majority to write in four-part harmony, before they leave.
They have a daily choral service, in which they sing (without
accompaniment) the services of Tallis, Gibbons, and other (chiefly old)
English masters, and the motets and hymns of the old Italian and Flemish
schools. They are at this time getting up, in their leisure hours, _The
Messiah_, with not only the vocal but the instrumental parts. Attached
to the College is a boys’ school, where the boys (upwards of 200) are
taught to sing by the students. The boys of the first class are all able
to sing the treble parts of _The Messiah_. 2nd, Battersea College, in
which there are about 80 students, who remain about a year. 3rd,
Westminster Training Institution, in which there are about 45 masters
and 60 mistresses, who remain about six months. There are also, in the
school attached, about 200 boys and 150 girls taught to sing. The whole
body forms at once the choir and greater part of the congregation at
Christ Church, Westminster. The children at this school are of the
humblest class. 4th, Whitelands; where there are about 75 young women
training for schoolmistresses. They remain about three years, and attain
some knowledge of Harmony.

Besides the above, under Mr. Hullah’s personal direction, there are
various other training institutions in London, in which his plans have
been adopted, and are carried out by pupils of his own. The most
important of these are, the Borough Road Schools and the Home and
Colonial Infant School Society.

There are Normal Schools at York, Exeter, Oxford, Chester, Warrington,
Durham, and other provincial towns, in all of which music is taught
systematically, according to the methods which the masters have acquired
in the Normal Schools of the metropolis. In Ireland, the National Board
of Education some years ago formally adopted Mr. Hullah’s books, and
have introduced his methods into a variety of seminaries. In Scotland
less seems to have been done. But the authorities of the Free Church
sent a young teacher to study under Mr. Hullah, who returned to
Edinburgh about a year ago, and, we learn, is giving instructions with
success. Mr. Hullah’s ‘Manual’ has been translated into Welsh, and
introduced into some schools in the Principality. Many copies of his
books have been sent to different parts of India, Australia, Van
Diemen’s Land, and New Zealand, for the use of persons teaching in those
remote regions.

It thus appears that Music is becoming a regular branch of popular
education, and for the most part according to an uniform and well-tried
method, in every part of the British empire. The system is of too recent
growth to have brought its fruits to maturity. It may, indeed, be
regarded as in its infancy when compared with the magnitude which it
cannot fail to attain. But already its effects are striking and
encouraging. Music—well, badly, or indifferently taught—forms a part of
the business of the great majority of schools, national, public, and
private, throughout the country. In hundreds of quiet, out-of-the-way
country churches, an approximation is made to a choral service often
purely vocal. Hundreds of country clergymen are now qualified, by
musical attainment, to superintend the singing of their choirs and
congregations, and exert themselves to render it consistent with taste,
propriety, and devotion. And it is a certain fact, that whereas ten
years ago, nobody, in the engagement of a schoolmaster, ever thought of
inquiring about his musical capacity, men defective in this point, but
otherwise of unexceptionable character and attainments, find it next to
impossible to obtain employment.




                           A PARIS NEWSPAPER.


Within the precincts of that resort for foreigners and provincials in
Paris the Palais Royal, is situate the Rue du 24 Fevrier. This
revolutionary name, given after the last outbreak, is still pronounced
with difficulty by those who, of old, were wont to call it the Rue de
Valois. People are becoming accustomed to call the royally named street
by its revolutionary title, although it is probable that no one will
ever succeed in calling the Palais Royal, Palais National; the force of
habit being in this instance too great to efface old recollections. Few
foreigners have ever penetrated into the Rue du 24 Fevrier, though it
forms one of the external galleries of the Palais Royal, and one may see
there the smoky kitchens, dirty cooks,—the nightside, in fact, of the
splendid restaurants whose gilt fronts attract attention inside.
Rubicund apples, splendid game, truffles, and ortolans, deck the one
side; smoke, dirty plates, rags, and smutty saucepans may be seen on the
other.

It is from an office in the Rue du 24 Fevrier, almost opposite the dark
side of a gorgeous Palais Royal restaurant, that issue 40,000 copies of
a daily print, entitled the ‘Constitutionnel.’

Newspaper offices, be it remarked, are always to be found in odd holes
and corners. To the mass in London, Printing-house Square, or Lombard
Street, Whitefriars, are mystical localities; yet they are the daily
birthplaces of that fourth estate which fulminates anathemas on all the
follies and weaknesses of governments, and, without which, no one can
feel free or independent. The ‘Constitutionnel’ office is about as
little known to the mass of its subscribers as either Printing-house
Square or Whitefriars.

There is always an old and respectable look about the interior of
newspaper establishments, in whatever country you may find them. For
rusty dinginess, perhaps there is nothing to equal a London office, with
its floors strewed with newspapers from all parts of the world,
parliamentary reports, and its shelves creaking under books of all sorts
thumbed to the last extremity. Notwithstanding these appearances,
however, there is discipline,—there is real order in the apparent
disorder of things. Those newspapers that are lying in heaps have to be
accurately filed; those books of reference can be pounced upon when
wanted on the instant; and as to reports, the place of each is as well
known as if all labelled and ticketed with the elaborate accuracy of a
public library.

Not less rusty and not less disorderly is the appearance of a French
newspaper office; but how different the aspect of things from what you
see in England!

Over the office of the ‘Constitutionnel’ is a dingy tricolor flag. A few
broken steps lead to a pair of folding-doors. Inside is the sanctuary of
the office, guarded by that flag as if by the honour of the country; for
the tricolor represents all Frenchmen, be he prince or proletarian.

You enter through a narrow passage flanked with wire cages, in which are
confined for the day the clerks who take account of advertisements and
subscriptions. Melancholy objects seem these caged birds; whose hands
alone emerge at intervals through the pigeon-holes made for the purpose
of taking in money and advertisements. The universal beard and
moustachios that ornament their chins, look, however, more
unbusiness-like than are the men really. They are shrewd and knowing
birds that are enclosed in these wire cages.

At publishing time, boys rushing in for papers, as in London offices,
are not here to be seen. The reason of this is simple: French newspaper
proprietors prefer doing their work themselves,—they will have no
middlemen. They serve all their customers by quarterly, yearly, or
half-yearly subscriptions. In every town in France there are
subscription offices for this journal, as well, indeed, as for all great
organs of the press generally. There are regular forms set up like
registers at the Post-office, and all of these are gathered at the
periodical renewal of subscriptions to the central office. The period of
renewal is every fortnight.

Passing still further up the narrow and dim passage, one sees a
pigeon-hole, over which is written the word ‘Advertisements.’ This
superscription is now supererogatory, for there no advertisements are
received; that branch of the journal having been farmed out to a Company
at 350,000fr. a-year. This is a system which evidently saves a vast deal
of trouble. The Advertising Company of Paris has secured almost a
monopoly of announcements and puffs. It has bought up the last page of
nearly every Paris journal which owns the patronage and confidence of
the advertising public of the French Capital. At the end of the same
dark passages, are the rooms specially used for the editors and writers.
In France, journals are bought for their polemics, and not for their
news: many of them have fallen considerably, however, from the high
estate which they held in public opinion previous to the last
revolution. There are men who wrote in them to advocate and enforce
principles; but in the chopping and changing times that France lives in,
it is not unusual to find the same men with different principles,
interest or gain being the object of each change. This result of
revolution might have been expected; and though it would be unfair to
involve the whole press in a sweeping accusation, cases in point have
been sufficiently numerous to cause a want of confidence in many
quarters against the entire press.

The doings of newspaper editors are not catalogued in print at Paris, as
in America; but their influence being more occult is not the less
powerful, and it is this feeling that leads people to pay more attention
to this or that leading article than to mere news. The announcement of a
treaty having been concluded between certain powers of Europe, may not
lower the funds; but if an influential journal expresses an opinion that
certain dangers are to be apprehended from the treaty in question, the
exchanges will be instantly affected. This is an instance amongst many
that the French people are to be led in masses. Singly they have
generally no ideas, either politically or commercially.

The importance of a journal being chiefly centered in that portion
specially devoted to politics, the writers of which are supposed right
or wrong to possess certain influences, it is not astonishing the
editorial offices have few occupants. The editorial department of the
‘Constitutionnel’ wears a homely appearance, but borrows importance from
the influence that is wielded in it—writers decorated with the red
ribbon are not unfrequently seen at work in it. In others, and
especially in the editorial offices of some journals, may be seen,
besides the pen, more offensive weapons, such as swords and pistols.
This is another result of the personal system of journalism. As in
America, the editor may find himself in the necessity of defending his
arguments by arms. He is too notorious to be able to resort to the
stratagem of a well-known wit, who kept a noted boxer in his front
office to represent the editor in hostile encounters. He goes out,
therefore, to fight a duel, on which sometimes depends not only his own
fate, but that of his journal.

With regard to the personal power of a newspaper name, it is only
necessary in order to show how frequently it still exists, to state that
the Provisional Government of February, 1848, was concocted in a
newspaper office, and the revolution of 1830 was carried on by the
editors of a popular journal—that amongst the lower orders in France, at
the present time, the names that are looked up to as those of chiefs,
belong to newspaper editors, whose leading articles are read and
listened to in cheap newspaper clubs, and whose “orders” are followed as
punctually and as certainly as those of a general by his troops. A
certain class of French politicians may be likened to sheep:—they follow
their “leaders.”

The smallness of the number of officials in a French newspaper office is
to be accounted for from the fact that Parliamentary Debates are
transcribed on the spot where the speeches are made; and the reporting
staff never stirs from the legislative assembly. The divers corps of
reporters for Paris journals form a corporation, with its aldermen or
syndici, and other minor officers. Each reporter is relieved every two
minutes; and whilst his colleagues are succeeding each other with the
same rapidity, he transcribes the notes taken during his two minutes’
‘turn.’ The result of this revolving system is collated and arranged by
a gentleman selected for the purpose. This mode of proceeding ensures,
if necessary, the most verbatim transmission of an important speech, and
more equably divides the work, than does the English system, where each
reporter takes notes for half or three-quarters of an hour, and spends
two or three hours—and sometimes four or five—to transcribe his notes.
The French Parliamentary reporter is not the dispassionate auditor,
which the English one is. He applauds or condemns the orators, cheers or
hoots with all the vehemence of an excited partizan.

‘Penny-a-liners’ are unknown in Paris; the foreign and home intelligence
being elaborated in general news’ offices, independent of the
newspapers. It is there that all the provincial journals are received,
the news of the day gathered up, digested, and multiplied by means of
lithography; which is found more efficacious than the stylet and oiled
‘flimsy’ paper of our Penny-a-liners. It is from these latter places
too, that the country journals, as well as many of the foreign press,
the German, the Belgium, and the Spanish, are supplied with Paris news.
England is a good market, as most of our newspapers are wealthy enough
to have correspondents of their own.

My first visit to the ‘Constitutionnel’ was in the day-time, and I
caught the editor as he was looking over some of his proofs. Their
curious appearance led me to ask how they were struck off, and, in order
to satisfy me, he led the way up a dark stair, from which we entered
upon the composing-rooms of the premises. These, in appearance, were
like all other composing-rooms that I had seen; the forms, and cases for
the type, were similar to those in London; the men themselves had that
worn and pale look which characterises the class to which they belong,
and their pallor was not diminished by their wearing of the long beard
and moustache. Their unbuttoned shirts and bare breasts, the short clay
pipe, reminded me of the heroes of the barricades; indeed, I have every
reason to know that these very compositors are generally foremost in
revolutions; and though they often print ministerial articles, they are
not sharers in the opinions which they help to spread. The head printer
contracts for the printing, and chooses his men where he can find them
best. As a body, these men were provident, I was told, and all
subscribed to a fund for their poor, their orphans and widows; they form
a sort of trade union, and have very strict regulations.

I found a most remarkable want of convenience in the working of the
types. For instance, there were no galleys, or longitudinal trays, on
which to place the type when it was set up; but when a small quantity
had been put together in column on a broad copper table, a string was
passed round it to keep it together. Nor was there any hand-press for
taking proofs; and here I found the explanation of the extraordinary
appearance of the proofs I had seen below. For when I asked to have one
struck off, the head printer placed a sheet of paper over the type, and
with a great brush beat it in, giving the proof a sunken and embossed
appearance, which it seemed to me would render correction exceedingly
difficult. The French, it seems, care not for improvement in this
respect, any more than the Chinese, whom the brush has served in place
of a printing-press for some three thousand years.

This Journal has, as I have said, from 40,000 to 50,000 subscribers, in
order to serve whom it was necessary that the presses should be at work
as early as eleven o’clock at night. But there is no difficulty in doing
this, where news not being the _sine quâ non_ of journalism, provincial
and foreign intelligence is given as fresh, which in England would be
considered much behind in time. But even when commencing business at the
early hour above mentioned, I found that it had been necessary for the
paper to be composed twice over, in order to save time; and thus two
printers’ establishments were required to bring out each number of the
journal in sufficient time for the country circulation by early morning
trains. The necessity for this double composition is still existing in
most of the French newspaper offices, but had been obviated here lately,
by the erection of a new printing-machine, which sufficed by the speed
of its working to print the given number of copies necessary for
satisfying the wants of each day.

Having seen through the premises, and witnessed all that was interesting
in the day-time, I was politely requested to return in the evening, and
see the remaining process of printing the paper and getting it ready to
send out from the office.

Punctually at eleven o’clock I was in the Rue du 24 Fevrier. Passing
through the offices which I had seen in the morning, I was led by a sort
of guide down some passages dimly lighted with lamps. To the right and
to the left we turned, descending stone steps into the bowels of the
earth as it seemed to me; the walls oozing with slimy damp in some
parts; dry and saltpetry in others. A bundle of keys, which were
jingling in my guide’s hand, made noises which reminded me of the
description of prisoners going down into the Bastille or Tower. At
another moment a sound of voices in the distance, reminded me of a scene
of desperate coiners in a cellar.

These sounds grew louder, as we soon entered a vast stone cellar, in
which rudely dressed men, half-naked as to their breasts and arms, were
to be seen flitting to and fro at the command of a superior; their long
beards and grimy faces, their short pipes and dirty appearance, made
them look more like devils than men, and I bethought me that here, at
last, I had found that real animal—the printer’s devil. There were two
or three printing-presses in the room, only one of which was going. Its
rolling sound was like thunder in the cave in which we stood. As paper
after paper flew out from the sides of this creaking press, they were
carried to a long table and piled up in heaps.

Presently some of the stoutest men shouldered a mass of these, and my
conductor and myself following them, we entered a passage which led to
another cellar, contiguous to that in which the papers were printed.
There, sitting round a number of tables, were several young women. These
women seized upon a portion of the papers brought in, and with an
amazing rapidity folded them into a small compass. In a few minutes all
the papers I had seen printed were folded and numbered off by dozens.
Then comes another operation: a man came round and deposited before each
woman a bundle of little paper slips, which I found to be the addresses
of the subscribers. The women placed the labels and the paste on one
side, and commenced operations. A bundle of papers, folded, was placed
before each; the forefinger, dipped in the paste, immediately touched
the paper and the label simultaneously, and the ‘Constitutionnel’ flew
out with a speed perfectly astonishing from the hands of these women,
ready to be distributed in town or country. They were then finishing the
labelling of the papers for Paris circulation; 20,000 copies scarcely
sufficing for the supply.

This was the concluding sight in my visit to a Paris Newspaper Office.




                        LINES BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.

                   [_From an Unpublished Autograph._]


              The days of Infancy are all a dream,
              How fair, but oh! how short they seem—
                ’Tis Life’s sweet opening SPRING!

              The days of Youth advance:
              The bounding limb, the ardent glance,
                The kindling soul they bring—
              It is Life’s burning SUMMER time.

                Manhood—matured with wisdom’s fruit,
                Reward of Learning’s deep pursuit—
              Succeeds, as AUTUMN follows Summer’s prime.

                And that, and that, alas! goes by;
                And what ensues? The languid eye,
                The failing frame, the soul o’ercast;
                ’Tis WINTER’S sickening, withering blast,
              Life’s blessed season—for it is the last.




                      SHORT CUTS ACROSS THE GLOBE.

                          THE ISTHMUS OF SUEZ.


That little neck of land which lies between the head of the Red Sea and
the Gulph of Gaza, in the Mediterranean, is the cause of merchandise
circumnavigating the two longest sides of the triangular continent of
Africa on its way to the East; instead of making the short cut which is
available for passengers by what is called the ‘overland route.’ If a
water-way were opened across the Isthmus, the highway for the goods
traffic as well as for the passenger traffic of Europe, India, China,
and Australia, will be along the Mediterranean and Red Seas and the
Indian Ocean. And that highway will be so thronged, that the expense of
travelling by it will be reduced to a _minimum_, and the accommodations
for travellers at intermediate stations raised to a _maximum_ of
comfort.

This state of affairs—analogous to that which occurs in the intercourse
of two towns where there is a round-about road for carts and carriages,
and a footpath across the meadows for foot-passengers only—is attended
by great inconveniences. Letters relating to mercantile transactions are
forwarded by the short cut; the merchandise to which they relate follows
tardily by the round-about road. The advantageous bargain concluded now
may have a very different aspect when the goods come to be delivered
three or four months hence. The seven-league-boot expedition of letters,
and the tardy progress of goods, convert all transactions between
England and India into a game of chance. This fosters that spirit of
gambling speculation already too rife among us.

Again, so long as the route for passengers continues to be something
different and apart from the route for merchandise, the travelling
charges will be kept higher, and the accommodations for travellers less
comfortable than they would otherwise be. Railways, in arranging their
tariff of fares, venture to reduce the charge for passengers (in the
hope of augmenting their number) when they can rely upon the returns
from the goods traffic to make up deficiencies. If merchandise, as well
as travellers and letters, could be carried by what is called the
overland route (of which scarcely two hundred miles are travelled by
land), the passengers’ fares would admit of great reduction; and as that
route would thus become the great highway, frequented by greater crowds,
the accommodation of travellers could be better cared for. Travellers in
carriages rarely reflect how much the amount of charges at inns depends
upon the landlords having a profitable run of business among less
distinguished guests.

As we remarked, when descanting on the Panama route, physical obstacles
to the opening of short cuts are of much less consequence than those
which originate in financial difficulties. Almost any physical obstacles
may be overcome, if money can be profitably invested in the undertaking,
and if money can be got for such investment.

Were we projectors of companies, and engaged in preparing an attractive
prospectus, we might boldly declare that the obstacles in the
construction of a ship canal at Suez are trifling, and that the work
would prove amply remunerative. But being only impartial spectators, we
are obliged to confess that our information respecting the nature of the
country is lamentably defective, and that what we do know does not
warrant any sanguine expectation. Public attention has been
industriously directed from the true line of a ship canal across the
Isthmus of Suez. The late Mehemet Ali—peace to his ashes!—was a humbug
of the first water, and he knew how to avail himself of the services of
kindred spirits. He understood enough of European whims and sentiments
to know what tone of language he must adopt in order to persuade
Europeans he was subserving their views, while he was, in reality,
promoting his own. He talked, therefore, of facilitating the intercourse
between India and Europe, but he thought of making that intercourse pass
through his dominions by the longest route, and in the way which would
oblige travellers to leave the greatest possible amount of money behind
them; and to attain his ends he retained in his service a motley group
of Europeans—the vain, the ignorant, and the jobbing, who did his
spiriting after a fashion that bears conclusive testimony to his
judgment and tact in selecting them.

What is really wanted for the commerce of Europe and India, is a ship
canal across the Isthmus of Suez, by the shortest and least difficult
route. What Mehemet Ali conceded was a land passage through his
dominions by the longest possible route. The natural course of a ship
canal is, in a straight line, from Suez to the eastern extremity of Lake
Menzaleh: the line of transit conceded by Mehemet Ali is from Alexandria
by Cairo to Suez, nearly three times as long. The former line passes
across a low and well-watered region: the latter renders necessary an
interchange of canal and river navigation, and dry land passage across
the desert. The former might be passed in a day without halting: the
latter occupies several days, and includes necessary stoppages in the
inns of Alexandria and Cairo. But Mehemet Ali and his tools directed
attention from the former, and gabbled about railways and other
impracticabilities, and the European public was gulled. Egypt can be
reached any day by a fortnight’s easy and luxurious travel, and yet the
country between the eastern extremity of Lake Menzaleh and Suez is less
accurately known than the Isthmus of Panama.

What we do know, with any degree of certainty about this transit, is
briefly as follows:—The navigation of the Red Sea in the vicinity of
Suez is rather intricate, abounding in shoals, but there is secure
anchorage, and sufficient draft of water for merchant ships of
considerable burden. The Mediterranean off the eastern extremity of Lake
Menzaleh is rather shallow, tolerably sheltered from the west wind,
which prevails for a part of the year, but exposed to the north wind.
Between Suez and the site of the ruins of Pelusium at the eastern end of
the lake, the land is low and level, apparently for a part of the way
between the level of both seas. The low land receives in the wet season
the drainings of the high land on the east, which is a northern
continuation of the mountains between the gulfs of Suez and Akaba. In
addition to this, the land to the westward (northward of the Mokattam
mountains which terminate near Cairo) has a twofold slope,—the principal
northward to the Mediterranean, the secondary eastward to the line of
country we are now describing. Originally, there appears to have been a
branch of the Nile entering the Mediterranean near where the ruins of
Pelusium now are, and those intermediate branches between that and the
Damietta branch.

The first mentioned is now closed, the other two very much obstructed;
but their waters still find a way to the coast, though diminished by
artificial works, and appear to be the cause of the collection of
shallow water called Lake Menzaleh. Here, then, we have sixty
geographical miles of a low country, with no considerable undulations,
towards which the waters of Arabia Petræa flow in their season, and
towards which a considerable portion of the waters of the Nile would
flow if left to fall on the natural declivity of the country. There is
an abundant supply of water for a ship canal. The surface of the ground
is in some places covered with drift sand, but not uniformly nor even
for the most part. The subsoil is hard, clayey or pebbley. The
bent-grasses might be cultivated, as they have been in Holland, to give
firmness to the drift sand where it occurs; and this superficial
obstacle removed, the subsoil is favourable to the construction of a
permanent water-channel. The great difficulty would be the construction
of works by which access to the canal is to be obtained from the
Mediterranean. Apparently they would require to be carried far out into
the sea; and apparently it would be difficult to prevent their being
sanded up by the waves which the north winds drive upon the coast for a
great part of the year.

These difficulties, though great, are not insuperable. The advanced
state of marine architecture and engineering ought surely to be able to
cope with them. By re-opening the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, and
throwing into it the waters which would naturally find their way into
the Tanitic and Mendesian branches, a sufficient stream of water might
be thrown into the Mediterranean at Pelusium to keep a passage open by
its _scour_. We must speak with diffidence about a locality which has
yet been so imperfectly surveyed; but so far as the present state of our
knowledge respecting it enables us to judge, there are no serious
impediments to the construction of a ship canal from Pelusium to Suez,
which would be perfectly accessible and practicable for vessels of from
300 to 350 tons burden; and there is a growing impression among
merchants and skippers that this class of vessels is the best for
trading purposes.

But the great difficulty remains yet to be noticed; the condition of
government and civil security in that country. The isthmus is close on
the borders of civilised Europe, and ample supplies of effective
labourers could be procured from Malta, and the Syrian and African
coasts. But so long as the country is subject to a Turkish dynasty,
could the undertakers count upon fair play and sufficient protection
from the local authorities? And are the jealous powers of Europe likely
to combine in good faith to afford them a guarantee that they should be
enabled to prosecute their enterprise in security?




                            CURIOUS EPITAPH.


The following curious Inscription appears in the Churchyard, Pewsey,
Dorsetshire:—

                          HERE LIES THE BODY
                                  OF
                            LADY O’LOONEY,
                        GREAT NIECE OF BURKE,
                      COMMONLY CALLED THE SUBLIME.
                                SHE WAS
                BLAND, PASSIONATE, AND DEEPLY RELIGIOUS;
                            ALSO, SHE PAINTED
                            IN WATER-COLOURS,
                      AND SENT SEVERAL PICTURES
                            TO THE EXHIBITION.
                          SHE WAS FIRST COUSIN
                            TO LADY JONES;
                              AND OF SUCH
                      IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.


    Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
            Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefrairs, London.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 Page           Changed from                      Changed to

  146 bursting hose), balls of cord,   bursting hose), balls of cord,
      flat rose, escape-chain          flat hose, escape-chain

 ● 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 78172 ***