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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78174 ***
+
+
+     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
+                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
+
+
+                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+       N^{o. 9.}]      SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1850.      [Price 2_d._
+
+
+
+
+           THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.
+
+
+                       IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER I.
+
+It was not often that anything happened to enliven the village of
+Bleaburn, in Yorkshire: but there was a day in the summer of 1811, when
+the inhabitants were roused from their apathy, and hardly knew
+themselves. A stranger was once heard to say, after some accident had
+compelled him to pass through Bleaburn, that he saw nothing there but a
+blacksmith asleep, and a couple of rabbits hung up by the heels. That
+the blacksmith was wholly asleep at midday might indicate that there was
+a public house in the place; but, even there, in that liveliest and most
+intellectual spot in a country village of those days,—the ale-house
+kitchen—the people sat half asleep. Sodden with beer, and almost without
+ideas and interests, the men of the place let indolence creep over them;
+and there they sat, as quiet a set of customers as ever landlord had to
+deal with. For one thing, they were almost all old or elderly men. The
+boys were out after the rabbits on the neighbouring moor; and the young
+men were far away. A recruiting party had met with unusual success, for
+two successive years—(now some time since)—in inducing the men of
+Bleaburn to enter the king’s service. In a place where nobody was very
+wise, and everybody was very dull, the drum and fife, the soldierly
+march, the scarlet coats, the gay ribbons, the drink and the pay, had
+charms which can hardly be conceived of by dwellers in towns, to whose
+eyes and ears something new is presented every day. Several men went
+from Bleaburn to be soldiers, and Bleaburn was declared to be a loyal
+place; and many who had never before heard of its existence, spoke of it
+now as a bright example of attachment and devotion to the throne in a
+most disloyal age. While, throughout the manufacturing districts, the
+people were breaking machinery—while on these very Yorkshire hills they
+were drilling their armed forces—while the moneyed men were grumbling at
+the taxes, and at the war in Spain, whence, for a long time, they had
+heard of many disasters and no victories; and while the hungry labourers
+in town and country were asking how they were to buy bread when wheat
+was selling at 95_s._ the quarter, and while there were grave
+apprehensions of night-burnings of the corn magazines, the village of
+Bleaburn, which could not be seen without being expressly sought, was
+sending up strong men out of its cleft of the hills, to fight the
+battles of their country.
+
+Perhaps the chief reason of the loyalty, as well as the quietness of
+Bleaburn, was its lying in a cleft of the hills; in a fissure so deep
+and narrow, that a traveller in a chaise might easily pass near it
+without perceiving that there was any settlement at all, unless it was
+in the morning when the people were lighting their fires, or on the
+night of such a day as that on which our story opens. In the one case,
+the smoke issuing from the cleft might hint of habitations: in the
+other, the noise and ruddy light would leave no doubt of there being
+somebody there. There was, at last, a victory in Spain. The news of the
+battle of Albuera had arrived; and it spread abroad over the kingdom,
+lighting up bonfires in the streets, and millions of candles in windows,
+before people had time to learn at what cost this victory was obtained,
+and how very nearly it had been a fatal defeat, or anything about it, in
+short. If they had known the fact that while our allies, the Spaniards,
+Portuguese, and Germans, suffered but moderately, the British were
+slaughtered as horribly as they could have been under defeat: so that,
+out of six thousand men who went up the hill, only fifteen hundred were
+left standing at the top, the people might have let their bonfires burn
+out as soon as they would, and might have put out their candles that
+mourners might weep in darkness. But they burst into rejoicing first,
+and learned details afterwards.
+
+Every boy in Bleaburn forgot the rabbits that day. All were busy getting
+in wood for the bonfire. Not a swinging shutter, not a loose pale, not a
+bit of plank, or ricketty gate, or shaking footbridge escaped their
+clutches. Where they hid their stock during the day, nobody knew; but
+there was a mighty pile at dusk. It was then that poor Widow Slaney,
+stealing out to close her shutter, because she could not bear the sound
+of rejoicing, nor the sight of her neighbours abroad in the ruddy light,
+found that her shutter was gone. All day, she had been in the loft, lest
+she should see anybody; for the clergyman had been to tell her that her
+son Harry had been shot as a deserter. She had refused to believe it at
+first; but Mr. Finch had explained to her that the soldiers in Spain had
+suffered so cruelly from hunger, and want of shoes and of every comfort,
+that hundreds of them had gone into the towns to avoid starvation; and
+then, when the towns were taken by the allies, such British soldiers as
+were found, and were declared to have no business there, were treated as
+deserters, for an example. It was some comfort that Mr. Finch did not
+think that Harry had done any thing very wicked; but Mrs. Slaney could
+not meet any one, nor bear the flaring light on her ceiling; so she went
+up to the loft again, and cried all night in the dark. Farmer Neale was
+the wonder of the place this evening. He was more gracious than anybody,
+though there was nobody who was not, at all times, afraid of him. When
+he was seen striding down the steep narrow street, the little boys hid
+themselves. They had not been able to resist altogether the temptation
+of dry thorns in his fences, and of the chips which had still lain about
+where his winter felling had been done, and they concluded he was come
+now to give them a rough handling: but they found themselves mistaken.
+He was in high good-humour, sending such boys as he could catch with
+orders upon his people at home for a tar-barrel and a whole load of
+faggots.
+
+“’Tis hardly natural, though, is it?” said Mrs. Billiter to Ann
+Warrender. “It does not seem natural for any father to rejoice in a
+victory when his own son has lost his best leg there.”
+
+“Has Jack Neale lost his leg? O! what a thing!” exclaimed Ann Warrender.
+She was going on, but she perceived that the farmer had heard her.
+
+“Yes,” said he, without any sound of heart-pain in his voice. “Jack has
+lost his right leg, Mr. Finch tells me. And I tell Mr. Finch, it is
+almost a pity the other did not go after it. He deserved no more good of
+either of them when he had let them do such a thing as carry him off
+from his home and his duty.”
+
+“How _can_ you, Mr. Neale?” burst out both the women.
+
+“How can I do what, my dears? One thing I can do; and that is, see when
+an undutiful son is properly punished. He must live on his pension,
+however: he can be of no use to me, now; and I can’t be burdened with a
+cripple at home.”
+
+“I don’t think he will ask you,” Mrs. Billiter said. “He was none so
+happy there before as to want to come again.”
+
+Ann Warrender told this speech to her father afterwards as the severest
+she had ever heard from Mrs. Billiter; and they agreed that it was very
+bold, considering that Billiter was one of Farmer Neale’s labourers. But
+they also agreed that it was enough to stir up flesh and blood to see a
+man made hearty and good-humoured by misfortune having befallen a son
+who had offended him. After all, poor Jack Neale had run away only
+because he could not bear his father’s tyranny. Two more of the Bleaburn
+recruits had suffered—had been killed outright; one a widower, who, in
+his first grief, had left his babes with their grandmother, and gone to
+the wars; and the other, an ignorant lout, who had been entrapped
+because he was tall and strong; had been fuddled with beer, flattered
+with talk of finery, and carried off before he could recover his slow
+wits. He was gone, and would soon be forgotten.
+
+“I say, Jem,” said Farmer Neale, when he met the village idiot, Jem
+Johnson, shuffling along the street, staring at the lights: “you’re the
+wise man, after all: you’re the best off, my man.”
+
+Widow Johnson, who was just behind, put her arm in poor Jem’s, and tried
+to make him move on. She was a stern woman; but she was as much
+disgusted at Farmer Neale’s hardness as her tender-hearted daughter,
+Mrs. Billiter, or anyone else.
+
+“Good day, Mrs. Johnson,” said Neale. “You are better off for a son than
+I am, after all. Yours is not such a fool as to go and get his leg shot
+off, like my precious son.”
+
+Mrs. Johnson looked him hard in the face, as she would a madman or a
+drunken man whom she meant to intimidate; and compelled her son to pass
+on. In truth, Farmer Neale was drunk with evil passions; in such high
+spirits, that, when he found that the women—mothers of sons—would have
+nothing to say to him to-day, he went to the public house, where he was
+pretty sure of being humoured by the men who depended on his employment
+for bread, and on his temper for much of the peace of their lives.
+
+On his way he met the clergyman, and proposed to him to make a merry
+evening of it. “If you will just step in at the Plough and Harrow, Sir,”
+said he, “and tell us all you have heard about the victory, it will be
+the finest thing—just what the men want. And we will drink your health,
+and the King’s, and Marshal Beresford’s, who won the victory. It is a
+fine occasion, Sir; an occasion to confirm the loyalty of the people.
+You will come with me, Sir?”
+
+“No,” replied Mr. Finch, “I have to go among another sort of people,
+Neale. If you have spirits to make merry to-night, I own to you I have
+not. Victories that cost so much, do not make me very merry.”
+
+“Oh, fie, Mr. Finch! How are we to keep up our character for loyalty, if
+you fail us—if you put on a black face in the hour of rejoicing?”
+
+“Just come with me,” said Mr. Finch, “and I can show you cause enough
+for heaviness of heart. In our small village, there is mourning in many
+houses. Three of our late neighbours are dead, and one of them in such a
+way as will break his mother’s heart.”
+
+“And another has lost a leg, you are thinking. Out with it, Sir, and
+don’t be afraid of my feelings about it. Well, it is certain that
+Bleaburn has suffered more than is the fair share of one place; but we
+must be loyal.”
+
+“And so,” said Mr. Finch, “you are going to prepare more of your
+neighbours to enlist, the next time a recruiting party comes this way.
+Oh, I don’t say that men are not to be encouraged to serve their king
+and country: but it seems to me that our place has done its duty well
+enough for the present. I wonder that you, as a farmer, do not consider
+the rates, and dread the consequences of having the women and children
+on our hands, if our able men get killed and maimed in the wars. I
+should have thought that the price of bread—”
+
+“There, now, don’t let us talk about that!” said Neale; “You know that
+is a subject that we never agree about. We will let alone the price of
+bread for to-day.”
+
+Neale might easily forget this sore subject, and every other that was
+disagreeable to other people, in the jollity at the Plough and Harrow,
+where there was an uproar of tipsy mirth for the greater part of the
+night. But Mr. Finch found little mirth among the people left at home in
+the cottages. The poor women, who lived hardly, knitting for eighteen
+hours out of the twenty-four, and finding themselves less and less able
+to overtake the advancing prices of the necessaries of life, had no
+great store of spirits to spend in rejoicing over victories, or anything
+else; and among them there was one who loved Jack Neale, and was beloved
+by him; and others, who respected Widow Slaney, and could not
+countenance noisy mirth while she was sunk in horror and grief. They
+were hungry enough, too, to look upon young Slaney’s death as something
+of an outrage. If hunger and nakedness had driven him into the shelter
+of a town, to avoid dying by the roadside, it seemed to them that being
+shot was a hard punishment for the offence. Mr. Finch endeavoured to
+show, in hackneyed language, what the dereliction of duty really was,
+and how intolerable during warfare; but the end of it was that the
+neighbours pitied the poor young man the more, the more they dwelt upon
+his fate.
+
+As it turned out, Bleaburn made more sacrifices to the war than those of
+the Battle of Albuera, even before drum or fife was again heard coming
+over the moor. The place had not been healthy before; and illness set in
+somewhat seriously after the excitements of the bonfire night. The cold
+and wet spring had discouraged the whole kingdom about the harvest; and
+in Bleaburn it had done something more. Where there are stone houses,
+high winds aggravate the damage of wet weather. The driven rain had been
+sucked in by the stone; and more wet was absorbed from the foundations,
+when the swollen stream had rushed down the hollow, and overflowed into
+the houses, and the pigstyes, and every empty place into which it could
+run. Where there were glass windows and fires in the rooms, the panes
+were dewy, and the walls shiny with trickling drops; and in the cottages
+where there were no fires, the inhabitants were so chilly, that they
+stuffed up every broken window-pane, and closed all chinks by which air
+might enter, in hopes of keeping themselves warm; but the floors were
+never really dry that summer, and even the beds had a chilly feel. The
+best shoes showed mould between one Sunday and another; and the meal in
+the bin (of those who were so fortunate as to have a meal-bin) did not
+keep well. Mr. Finch had talked a great deal about what was to be
+expected from summer weather and the harvest; but as the weeks went on,
+there were graver doubts about the harvest than there had been even
+while people were complaining at Easter, and shaking their heads at
+Whitsuntide; and when a few days of hot weather came at last, the people
+of Bleaburn did not know how to bear them at all. The dead rats and
+decaying matter which had been deposited by the spring overflow, made
+such a stench that people shut their windows closer than ever. Their
+choice now was between being broiled in the heat which was reflected
+from the sides of the cleft in which they lived, and being shut into
+houses where the walls, floors, and windows were reeking with steam. The
+women, who sat still all day, knitting, had little chance for health in
+such abodes; and still less had such of the men as, already weakened by
+low diet, had surfeited themselves with beer on the night of the
+rejoicing, and broiled themselves in the heat of the bonfire, and
+fevered mind and body with shouting, and singing, and brawling, and been
+brought home to be laid upon musty straw, under a somewhat damp blanket.
+This excess was hardly more pernicious to some than depression was to
+others. Those of the people at Bleaburn that had received heart-wounds
+from the Battle of Albuera, thought they could never care again for any
+personal troubles or privations; but they were not long in learning that
+they now suffered more than before from low diet and every sort of
+discomfort. They blamed themselves for being selfish; but this
+self-blame again made the matter worse. They had lost a hope which had
+kept them up. They were not only in grief, but thoroughly discouraged.
+Their gloom was increased by seeing that a change had come over Mr.
+Finch. On Sundays he looked so anxious, that it was enough to lower
+people’s spirits to go to church. His very voice was dismal, as he read
+the service; his sermon grew shorter almost every Sunday: and it was
+about everything that the people cared least about He gave them
+discussions of doctrine, or dry moral essays, which were as stones to
+them when they wanted the bread of consolation and the wine of hope.
+Here and there, women said it really was too much for their spirits to
+go to church, and they staid away; and the boys and girls took the
+opportunity to go spying upon the rabbits. It was such boys and girls
+that gave news of Mr. Finch during the week. Every morning, he was so
+busy over his books in his study, that it was no easy matter to get a
+sight of him; and every fine afternoon he went quietly, by a bye-path,
+to a certain spot on the moor, where an ostler from the Cross Keys at
+O—— was awaiting him with the horse on which he took long rides over the
+hills. Mr. Finch was taking care of his health.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+“Can I have a chaise?” inquired a young lady, on being set down by the
+coach at the Cross Keys, at O——.
+
+“Yes, ma’am, certainly,” replied the neat landlady.
+
+“How far do you call it to Bleaburn?”
+
+“To Bleaburn, ma’am! It is six miles. But, ma’am, you are not going to
+Bleaburn, surely.”
+
+“Indeed I am. Why not?”
+
+“Because of the fever, ma’am. There never was anything heard of like it.
+You cannot go there, I assure you, ma’am, and I could not think of
+sending a chaise there. Neither of my post-boys would go.”
+
+“One of them shall take me as near as is safe, then. I dare say we shall
+find somebody who will take care of my little trunk till I can send for
+it.”
+
+“The cordon would take care of your trunk, if that were all, but—”
+
+“The what?” interrupted the young lady.
+
+“The cordon, they call it, ma’am. To preserve ourselves, we have set
+people to watch on the moor above, to prevent anybody from Bleaburn
+coming among us, to spread the fever. Ma’am, it is worse than anything
+you ever heard of.”
+
+“Not worse than the plague,” thought Mary Pickard, in whose mind now
+rose up all she had read and heard of the horrors of the great plague,
+and all the longing she had felt when a child to have been a clergyman
+at such a time, or at least, a physician, to give comfort to numbers in
+their extremity.
+
+“Indeed, ma’am,” resumed the landlady, “you cannot go there. By what I
+hear, there are very few now that are not dead, or down in the fever.”
+
+“Then they will want me the more,” said Mary Pickard. “I must go and see
+my aunt. I wrote to her that I should go; and she may want me more than
+I thought.”
+
+“Have you an aunt living at Bleaburn?” asked the landlady, in some
+surprise. “I did not know that there was any lady living at Bleaburn. I
+thought they had been all poor people there.”
+
+“I believe my aunt is poor,” said Mary. “I have heard nothing of her for
+several years, except merely that she was living at Bleaburn. She had
+the education of a gentlewoman; but I believe her husband became a
+common labourer before he died. I am from America, and my name is Mary
+Pickard, and my aunt’s name is Johnson; and I shall be glad if you can
+tell me anything about her, if this fever is really raging as you say. I
+must see her before I go home to America.”
+
+“You see, ma’am, if you go,” said the landlady, contemplating the little
+trunk, “you will not be able to come away again while the fever lasts.”
+
+“And you think I shall not have clothes enough,” said Mary, smiling. “I
+packed my box for a week only, but I dare say I can manage. If everybody
+was ill, I could wash my clothes myself. I have done such a thing with
+less reason. Or, I could send to London for more. I suppose one can get
+at a post-office.”
+
+“Through the cordon, I dare say you might, ma’am. But, really, I don’t
+know that there is anybody at Bleaburn that can write a letter, except
+the clergyman and the doctor and one or two more.”
+
+“My aunt can,” said Mary, “and it is because she does not answer our
+letters, that I am so anxious to see her. You did not tell me whether
+you know her name,—Johnson.”
+
+“A widow, I think you said, ma’am.” And the landlady called to the
+ostler to ask him if he knew anything of a Widow Johnson, who lived at
+Bleaburn. Will Ostler said there was a woman of that name who was the
+mother of Silly Jem. “Might that be she?” Mary had never heard of Silly
+Jem; but when she found that Widow Johnson had a daughter, some years
+married, that she had white hair, and strong black eyes, and a strong
+face altogether, and that she seldom spoke, she had little doubt that
+one so like certain of her relations was her aunt. The end of it was
+that Mary went to Bleaburn. She ordered the chaise herself, leaving it
+to the landlady to direct the post-boy where to set her down; she
+appealed to the woman’s good feelings to aid her if she should find that
+wine, linen or other comforts were necessary at Bleaburn, and she could
+not be allowed to come and buy them: explained that she was far from
+rich, and told the exact sum which she at present believed she should be
+justified in spending on behalf of the sick; and gave a reference to a
+commercial house in London. She did not tell—and indeed she gave only a
+momentary thought to it herself—that the sum of money she had mentioned
+was that which she had saved up to take her to Scotland, to see some
+friends of her family, and travel through the Highlands. As she was
+driven off from the gateway of the Cross Keys, nodding and smiling from
+the chaise window in turning the corner, the landlady ceased from
+commanding the post-boy on no account to go beyond the brow, and said to
+herself that this Miss Pickard was the most wilful young lady she had
+ever known, but that she could not help liking her, too. She did not
+seem to value her life any more than a pin; and yet she appeared
+altogether cheerful and sensible. If the good woman had been able to see
+into Mary’s heart, she would have discovered that she had the best
+reason in the world for valuing life very much indeed: but she had been
+so accustomed, all her life, to help everybody that needed it, that she
+naturally went straight forward into the business, without looking at
+difficulties or dangers, on the right hand or the left.
+
+Mary never, while she lived, forgot this drive. Her tone of mind was, no
+doubt, high, though she was unconscious of it. It was a splendid August
+evening, and she had never before seen moorland. In America, she had
+travelled among noble inland forests, and a hard granite region near the
+coasts of New England: but the wide-spreading brown and green moorland,
+with its pools of clear brown water glittering in the evening sunshine,
+and its black cocks popping out of the heather, and running into the
+hollows, was quite new to her. She looked down, two or three times, into
+a wooded dell where grey cottages were scattered among the coppices, and
+a little church tower rose above them; but the swelling ridges of the
+moor, with the tarns between, immediately attracted her eye again.
+
+“Surely,” thought she, “the cordon will let me walk on the moor in the
+afternoons, if I go where I cannot infect any body. With a walk in such
+places as these every day, I am sure I could go through any thing.”
+
+This seemed very rational beforehand. It never entered Mary’s head that
+for a long while to come, she should never once have leisure for a walk.
+
+“Yon’s the cordon,” said the post-boy, at last, pointing with his whip.
+
+“What do you understand by a cordon?”
+
+“Them people that you may see there. I don’t know why they call them so;
+for I don’t hear that they do anything with a cord.”
+
+“Perhaps it is because there is a French word—_cordon_—that means any
+thing that encloses any other thing. They would call your hat band a
+cordon, and an officer’s sash, and a belt of trees round a park. So, I
+suppose these people surround poor Bleaburn and let nobody out.”
+
+“May be so,” said the man, “but I don’t see why we should go to the
+French for our words or anything else, when we have everything better of
+our own. For my part, I shall be beholden to the French for no word, now
+I know of it. I shall call them people the watch, or something of that
+like.”
+
+“I think I will call them messengers,” said Mary: “and that will sound
+least terrible to the people below. They do go on errands, do not
+they,—and take and send parcels and messages?”
+
+“They are paid to do it, Miss: but they put it upon one another, or get
+out of the way, if they can,—they are so afraid of the fever, you
+see.——I think we must stop here, please, Miss. I could go a little
+nearer, only, you see—.”
+
+“I see that you are afraid of the fever too,” said Mary, with a smile,
+as she jumped out upon the grass. One of the sentinels was within hail.
+Glad of the relief from the dulness of his watch, he came with alacrity,
+took charge of the little trunk, and offered to show the lady, from the
+brow, the way down the hollow to the village.
+
+The post-boy stood, with his money in his hand, watching the retreating
+lady, till, under a sudden impulse, he hailed her. Looking round, she
+saw him running towards her, casting a momentary glance back at his
+horses. He wanted to try once more to persuade her to return to O——. He
+should be so happy to drive her back, out of the way of danger. His
+employer would be so glad to see her again! When he perceived that it
+was no use talking, he went on touching his hat, while he begged her to
+take back the shilling she had just given him. It would make his mind
+easier, he said, not to take money for bringing any lady to such a
+place. Mary saw that this was true; and she took back the shilling,
+promising that it should be spent in the service of some poor sick
+person.
+
+As Mary descended into the hollow, she was struck with the quiet beauty
+of the scene. The last sun-blaze rushed level along the upper part of
+the cleft, while the lower part lay in deep shadow. While she was
+descending a steep slope, with sometimes grass, and sometimes grey rock,
+by the roadside, the opposite height rose precipitous; and from chinks
+in its brow, little drips of water fell or oozed down, calling into life
+ferns, and grass, and ivy, in every moist crevice. Near the top, there
+were rows of swallow-holes; and the birds were at this moment all at
+play in the last glow of the summer day, now dipping into the shaded
+dell, down to the very surface of the water, and then sprinkling the
+grey precipice with their darting shadows. Below, when Mary reached the
+bridge, she thought all looked shadowy in more senses than one. The
+first people she saw were some children, excessively dirty, who were
+paddling about in a shallow pool, which was now none of the sweetest,
+having been filled by the spring overflow, and gradually drying up ever
+since. Mary called to these children from the bridge, to ask where Widow
+Johnson lived. She could learn nothing more than that she must proceed;
+for, if the creatures had not been almost too boorish to speak, she
+could have made nothing of the Yorkshire dialect, on the first
+encounter. In the narrow street, every window seemed closed, and even
+the shutters of some. She could see nobody in the first two or three
+shops that she passed; but, at the baker’s, a woman was sitting at work.
+On the entrance of a stranger, she looked up in surprise; and, when at
+the door, to point out the turn down to Widow Johnson’s, she remained
+there, with her work on her arm, to watch the lady up the street. The
+doctor, quickening his pace, came up, saying,
+
+“Who was that you were speaking to?—A lady wanting Widow Johnson! What a
+very extraordinary thing! Did you tell her the fever had got there?”
+
+“Yes, Sir.”
+
+“What did she say?”
+
+“She said she must go and nurse them.”
+
+“Do you mean that she is going to stay here?”
+
+“I suppose so, by her talking of nursing them. She says Widow Johnson is
+her aunt.”
+
+“O! that’s it! I have heard that Mrs. Johnson came of a good family. But
+what a good creature this must be—that is, if she knows what she is
+about. If she is off before morning, I shall think it was a vision,
+dropped down out of the clouds. Eh?”
+
+“She is not handsome enough to be an angel, or anything of that kind,”
+said the baker’s wife.
+
+“O! isn’t she? I did not see her face. But it is all the better, if she
+is not very like an angel. She is all the more likely to stay and nurse
+the Johnsons. Upon my word, they are lucky people if she does. I must go
+and pay my respects to her presently.—Do look now—at the doors all along
+the street, on both sides the way! I have not seen so many people at
+once for weeks past;—for, you know, I have no time to go to church in
+these days.”
+
+“You would not see many people, if you went. See! some of the children
+are following her! It is long since they have seen a young lady, in a
+white gown, and with a smile on her face, in our street. There she goes,
+past the corner; she has taken the right turn.”
+
+“I will just let her get the meeting over, and settle herself a little,”
+said the doctor; “and then I will go and pay my respects to her.”
+
+The little rabble of dirty children followed Mary round the corner,
+keeping in the middle of the lane, and at some distance behind. When she
+turned to speak to them, they started and fled, as they might have done,
+if she had been a ghost. But when she laughed, they returned cautiously;
+and all their brown forefingers pointed the same way at once, when she
+made her final inquiry about which was the cottage she wanted. Two
+little boys were pushed forward by the rest; and it transpired that
+these were grandchildren of Widow Johnson.
+
+“Is she your granny?” said Mary. “Then, I am your cousin. Come with me;
+and if granny is very much surprised to see me, you must tell her that I
+am your cousin Mary.”
+
+The boys, however, had no notion of entering the cottage. They slipped
+away, and hid themselves behind it; and Mary had to introduce herself.
+
+After knocking in vain for some time, she opened the door, and looked
+in. No one was in the room but a man, whom she at once recognised for
+Silly Jem. He was half-standing, half-sitting, against the table by the
+wall, rolling his head from side to side. By no mode of questioning
+could Mary obtain a word from him. The only thing he did was to throw a
+great log of wood on the fire, when she observed what a large fire he
+had. She tried to take it off again; but this he would not permit. The
+room was insufferably hot and close. The only window was beside the
+door; so that there was no way of bringing a current of fresh air
+through the room. Mary tried to open the window; but it was not made to
+open, except that a small pane at the top, three inches square, went
+upon hinges. As soon as Mary had opened it, however, poor Jem went and
+shut it. Within this kitchen, was a sort of closet for stores; and this
+was the whole of the lower floor. Mary opened one other door, and found
+within it a steep, narrow stair, down which came a sickening puff of
+hot, foul air. She went up softly, and Jem slammed the door behind her.
+It seemed as if it was the business of his life to shut everything.
+
+Groping her way, Mary came to a small chamber, which she surveyed for an
+instant from the stair, before showing herself within. There was no
+ceiling; and long cobwebs hung from the rafters. A small window, two
+feet from the floor, and curtained with a yellow and tattered piece of
+muslin, was the only break in the wall. On the deal table stood a phial
+or two, and a green bottle, which was presently found to contain rum. A
+turn-up bedstead, raised only a foot from the floor, was in a corner;
+and on it lay some one who was very restless, feebly throwing off the
+rug, which was immediately replaced by a sleepy woman who dozed between
+times in a chair that boasted a patchwork cushion. Mary doubted whether
+the large black eyes which stared forth from the pillow had any sense in
+them. She went to see.
+
+“Aunty,” said she, going to the bed, and gently taking one of the wasted
+hands that lay outside. “I am come to nurse you.”
+
+The poor patient made a strong effort to collect herself, and to speak.
+She did not want anybody. She should do very well. This was no place for
+strangers. She was too ill to see strangers, and so on; but, from time
+to time, a few wandering words about her knowing best how to choose a
+husband for herself—her having a right to marry as she pleased—or of
+insisting that her relations would go their own way in the world, and
+leave her hers—showed Mary that she was recognised, and what feelings
+she had to deal with.
+
+“She knows where I came from; but she takes me for my mother or my
+grandmother,” thought she. “If she grows clear in mind, we shall be
+friends on our own account. If she remains delirious, she will become
+used to the sight of me. I must take matters into my own hands at once.”
+
+The first step was difficult. Coolness and fresh air were wanted above
+everything. But there was no chimney; the window would not open; poor
+Jem would not let any door remain open for a moment; and the sleepy
+neighbour was one of those who insist upon warm bedclothes, large fires,
+and hot spirit-and-water, in fever cases. She was got rid of by being
+paid to find somebody who would go for Mary’s trunk, and bring it here
+before dark. She did her best to administer another dose of rum before
+she tied on her bonnet; but as the patient turned away her head with
+disgust, Mary interposed her hand. The dram was offered to her, and, as
+she would not have it, the neighbour showed the only courtesy then
+possible, by drinking Mary’s health, and welcome to Bleaburn. The woman
+had some sharpness. She could see that if she took Jem with her, and put
+the trunk on his shoulder, she should get the porter’s fee herself,
+instead of giving it to some rude boy; and, as Mary observed, would be
+doing a kindness to Jem in taking him for a pleasant evening walk. Thus
+the coast was cleared. In little more than half-an-hour they would be
+back. Mary made the most of her time.
+
+She set the doors below wide open, and lowered the fire. She would fain
+have put on some water to boil, for it appeared to her that everybody
+and everything wanted washing extremely. But she could find no water,
+but some which seemed to have been used—which was, at all events, not
+fit for use now. For water she must wait till somebody came. About air,
+she did one thing more—a daring thing. She had a little diamond ring on
+her finger. With this, without noise and quickly, she cut so much of two
+small panes of the chamber-window as to be able to take them clean out;
+and then she rubbed the neighbouring panes bright enough to hide, as she
+hoped, an act which would be thought mad. When she looked round again at
+Aunty, she could fancy that there was a somewhat clearer look about the
+worn face, and a little less dulness in the eye. But this might be
+because she herself felt less sick now that fresh air was breathing up
+the stairs.
+
+There was something else upon the stairs—the tread of some one coming
+up. It was the doctor. He said he came to pay his respects to the lady
+before him, as well as to visit his patient. It was no season for losing
+time, and doctor and nurse found in a minute that they should agree very
+well about the treatment of the patient. Animated by finding that he
+should no longer be wholly alone in his terrible wrestle with disease
+and death, the doctor did things which he could not have believed he
+should have courage for. He even emptied out the rum-bottle, and hurled
+it away into the bed of the stream. The last thing he did was to turn up
+his cuffs, and actually bring in two pails of water with his own hands.
+He promised (and kept his promise) to send his boy with a supply of
+vinegar, and a message to the neighbour that she was wanted elsewhere,
+that Mary might have liberty to refresh the patient, without being
+subject to the charge of murdering her. “A charge, however,” said he,
+“which I fully expect will be brought against any one of us who knows
+how to nurse. I confess they have cowed me. In sheer despair, I have let
+them take their own way pretty much. But now we must see what can be
+done.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mary. “It is fairly our turn now. We must try how we can cow
+the fever.”
+
+
+
+
+                       SPRING-TIME IN THE COURT.
+
+
+                They say the Spring has come again!
+                  There is no Spring-time here;
+                In this dark, reeking court, there seems
+                  No change throughout the year:
+                Except, sometimes, ’tis bitter cold,
+                  Or else ’tis hot and foul;
+                How hard it is, in such a place,
+                  To feel one has a soul!
+
+                They say the Spring has come again!
+                  I scarce believe ’tis so;
+                For where’s the sun, and gentle breeze,
+                  That make the primrose blow?
+                Oh, would that I could lead my child
+                  Over the meadows green,
+                And see him playing with the flowers
+                  _His_ eyes have never seen!
+
+                His toys are but an oyster-shell,
+                  Or piece of broken delf;
+                His playground is the gulley’s side,
+                  With outcasts like himself!
+                _I_ used to play on sunny banks,
+                  Or else by pleasant streams;
+                How oft—oh, God be thanked! how oft—
+                  I see them in my dreams.
+
+                I used to throw my casement wide,
+                  To breathe the morning’s breath;
+                But now I keep the window close—
+                  The air smells so like death!
+                Once only, on my window-sill
+                  I placed a little flower,
+                Something to tell me of the fields—
+                  It withered in an hour.
+
+                Why are we housed like filthy swine?
+                  Swine! they have better care;
+                For we are pent up with the plague,
+                  Shut out from light and air.
+                We work and wear our lives away,
+                  To heap this city’s wealth;
+                But labour God decreed for us—
+                  ’Tis man denies us health!
+
+                They say the Spring has come again
+                  To wake the sleeping seed,
+                Whether it be the tended flower,
+                  Or poor, neglected weed!
+                Then Harvest comes. Think you our wrongs
+                  For ever, too, will sleep?
+                The misery which man has sown,
+                  Man will as surely reap!
+
+
+
+
+                   THE PLANET-WATCHERS OF GREENWICH.
+
+
+There is a morsel of Greenwich Park, which has, for now nearly two
+centuries, been held sacred from intrusion. It is the portion inclosed
+by the walls of the Observatory. Certainly a hundred thousand visitors
+must ramble over the surrounding lawns, and look with curious eye upon
+the towers and outer boundaries of that little citadel of science, for
+one who finds admission to the interior of the building. Its brick
+towers, with flanking turrets and picturesque roofs, perched on the side
+of the gravelly hill, and sheltered round about by groups of fine old
+trees, are as well known as Greenwich Hospital itself. But what work
+goes on inside its carefully preserved boundary and under those
+moveable, black-domed roofs, is a popular mystery. Many a
+holiday-maker’s wonder has been excited by the fall, at one o’clock, of
+the huge black ball, high up there, by the weather vane on the topmost
+point of the eastern turret. He knows, or is told if he asks a loitering
+pensioner, that the descent of the ball tells the time as truly as the
+sun; and that all the ships in the river watch it to set their
+chronometers by, before they sail; and that all the railway clocks, and
+all the railway trains over the kingdom are arranged punctually by its
+indications. But how the heavens are watched to secure this punctual
+definition of the flight of time, and what other curious labours are
+going on inside the Observatory, is a sealed book. The public have
+always been, of necessity, excluded from the Observatory walls, for the
+place is devoted to the prosecution of a science whose operations are
+inconsistent with the bustle, the interruptions, the talk, and the
+anxieties of popular curiosity and examination.
+
+But when public information and instruction are the objects, the doors
+are widely opened, and the press and its _attachés_ find a way into
+this, as into many other sacred and forbidden spots. Only last week one
+of ‘our own contributors’ was seen in a carriage on the Greenwich
+railway, poring over the paper in the last Edinburgh Review that
+describes our national astronomical establishment, and was known
+afterwards to have climbed the Observatory hill, and to have rung and
+gained admission at the little black mysterious gate in the Observatory
+wall. Let us see what is told in his report of what he saw within that
+sacred portal.
+
+In the park on a fine day all seems life and gaiety—once within the
+Observatory boundary, the first feeling is that of isolation. There is a
+curious stillness about the place, and the footsteps of the old
+pensioner, who closes the gate upon a visitor, echoes again on the
+pavement as he goes away to wake up from his astronomical or
+meteorological trance one of the officers of this sanctum. Soon, under
+the guidance of the good genius so invoked, the secrets of the place
+begin to reveal themselves.
+
+The part of the Observatory so conspicuous from without is the portion
+least used within. When it was designed by Christopher Wren, the general
+belief was that such buildings should be lofty, that the observer might
+be raised towards the heavenly bodies whose motions he was to watch.
+More modern science has taught its disciples better; and in
+Greenwich,—which is an eminently practical Observatory,—the working part
+of the building is found crouching behind the loftier towers. These are
+now occupied as subsidiary to the modern practical building. The ground
+floor is used as a residence by the chief astronomer; above is the large
+hall originally built to contain huge moveable telescopes and
+quadrants—such as are not now employed. Now-a-days, this hall
+occasionally becomes a sort of scientific counting-house—irreverent but
+descriptive term—in which, from time to time, a band of scientific
+clerks are congregated to post up the books, in which the daily business
+of the planets has been jotted down by the astronomers who watch those
+marvellous bodies. Another portion is a kind of museum of astronomical
+curiosities. Flamstead and Halley, and their immediate successors,
+worked in these towers, and here still rest some of the old, rude tools
+with which their discoveries were completed, and their reputation, and
+the reputation of Greenwich, were established. As time has gone on,
+astronomers and opticians have invented new and more perfect and more
+luxurious instruments. Greater accuracy is thus obtainable, at a less
+expenditure of human patience and labour; and so the old tools are cast
+aside. One of them belonged to Halley, and was put up by him a hundred
+and thirty years ago; another is an old brazen quadrant, with which many
+valuable observations were made in by-gone times; and another, an old
+iron quadrant, still fixed in the stone pier to which it was first
+attached. Some of the huge telescopes that once found place in this old
+Observatory, have been sent away. One went to the Cape of Good Hope, and
+has been useful there. Another of the unsatisfactory, and now unused,
+instruments had a tube twenty-five feet long, whose cool and dark
+interior was so pleasant to the spiders that, do what they would, the
+astronomers could not altogether banish the persevering insects from it.
+Spin they would; and, spite of dusting and cleaning, and spider-killing,
+spin they did; and, at length, the savans got more instruments and less
+patience, and the spiders were left in quiet possession. This has been
+pleasantly spoken of as an instance of poetical justice. It is but fair
+that spiders should, at times, have the best of astronomers, for
+astronomers rob spiders for the completion of their choicest
+instruments. No fabric of human construction is fine enough to strain
+across the eye-piece of an important telescope, and opticians preserve a
+particular race of spiders, that their webs may be taken for that
+purpose. The spider lines are strained across the best instruments at
+Greenwich and elsewhere; and when the spinners of these beautifully fine
+threads disturbed the accuracy of the tube in the western wing of the
+old Observatory, it was said to be but fair retaliation for the
+robberies the industrious insects had endured.
+
+A narrow stair leads from the unused rooms of the old Observatory to its
+leaded roof, whence a magnificent view is obtained; the park, the
+hospital, the town of Greenwich, and the windings of the Thames, and,
+gazing further, London itself comes grandly into the prospect. The most
+inveterate astronomer could scarcely fail to turn for a moment from the
+wonders of the heavens to admire these glories of the earth. From the
+leads, two turrets are reached, where the first constantly active
+operations in this portion of the building, are in progress.
+
+At the present time, indeed, these turrets are the most useful portions
+of the old building. In one is placed the well-known contrivance for
+registering, hour after hour, and day after day, the force and direction
+of the wind. To keep such a watch by human vigilance, and to make such a
+register by human labour, would be a tedious, expensive, and irksome
+task; and human ingenuity taxed itself to make a machine for perfecting
+such work. The wind turns a weather-cock, and, by aid of cog-wheels the
+motion is transferred to a lead pencil fixed over a sheet of paper, and
+thus the wind is made to write down the direction which itself is
+blowing. Not far distant is a piece of metal, the flat side of which is
+ever turned by the weather-cock to meet the full force of the wind,
+which, blowing upon it, drives it back against a spring. To this spring
+is affixed a chain passing over pullies towards another pencil, fixed
+above a sheet of paper, and moving faithfully, more or less, as the wind
+blows harder or softer. And thus the ‘gentle zephyr’ and the fresh
+breeze, and the heavy gale, and, when it comes, the furious hurricane,
+are made to note down their character and force. The sheets of paper on
+which the uncertain element, the wind, is bearing witness against
+itself, is fixed upon a frame moved by clockwork. Steady as the progress
+of time, this ingenious mechanism draws the paper under the suspended
+pencils. Thus each minute and each hour has its written record, without
+human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant comes to put a
+new blank sheet in the place of that which has been covered by the
+moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound up in a volume.
+The book might with truth be lettered ‘The History of the Wind; written
+by Itself,’—an Æolian autobiography.
+
+Close by is another contrivance for registering in decimals of an inch
+the quantity of rain that falls. The drops are caught, and passing down
+a tube, a permanent mark is made by which the quantity is determined.
+
+The eastern turret is devoted to the Time Ball and its mechanism. Far
+out at sea—away from all sources of information but those to be asked of
+the planets, his compass, his quadrant, his chronometer, and his
+almanack, the mariner feels the value of _time_ in a way which the
+landsman can scarcely conceive. If his chronometer is right, he may feel
+safe; let him have reason to doubt its accuracy, and he knows how the
+perils surrounding him are increased. An error of a few seconds in his
+time may place him in danger—an error of a few minutes may lead him to
+steer blindly to his certain wreck. Hence his desire when he is leaving
+port to have his time-pieces right to a second; and hence the
+expenditure of thought, and labour, and money, at the Greenwich
+Observatory, to afford the shipping of the great port of London, and the
+English navy, the exact time—true to the tenth of a second, or six
+hundredth of a minute—and to afford them also a book, the Nautical
+Almanack, containing a mass of astronomical facts, on which they may
+base their calculations, with full reliance as to their accuracy. Every
+day for the last seventeen years, at five minutes before one o’clock,
+the black ball five feet across and stuffed with cork, is raised halfway
+up its shaft above the eastern turret of the Observatory;—at
+two-and-a-half minutes before that hour, it rises to the top. Telescopes
+from many a point, both up and down the river, are now pointed to this
+dark spot above the Greenwich trees, and many an anxious mariner has his
+time-pieces beside him, that their indications may be made true. Watch
+the Ball as you stand in the Park. It is now just raised. You must wait
+two minutes and a half, and as you do so, you feel what a minute may be.
+It seems a long, palpable, appreciable time, indeed. In the turret
+below, stands a clock telling the true time, gained by a laborious
+watching of the _clock-stars_; and beside the clock, is a man with a
+practised hand upon a trigger, and a practised eye upon the face of the
+dial. One minute—two minutes pass. Thirty seconds more, and the trigger
+has released the Ball. As it leaves the top of the shaft, it is one
+o’clock to the tenth of a second. By the time it has reached the bottom
+it is some five seconds later.
+
+Leaving the Ball Turret, and the old building which it surmounts, the
+new Observatory, where the chief work of the establishment is done,
+claims our notice. This attention would scarcely be given to its outward
+appearance for it is a long low building, scarcely seen beyond its own
+boundaries. The Greenwich Observatory is not a _show_ place, but an
+eminently practical establishment. St. Petersburg and other cities have
+much more gorgeous buildings devoted to astronomical purposes, and
+Russia and other countries spend much more money on astronomy than
+England does, yet the Greenwich Tables have a world-wide reputation, and
+some of them are used as the groundwork for calculations in all
+Observatories at home and abroad. The astronomer does not want marble
+halls or grand saloons for his work. Galileo used a bell-tower at
+Venice, and Kepler stood on the bridge at Prague to watch the stars. The
+men, not the buildings, do the work. No disappointment need be felt,
+then, to find the modern Observatory a range of unadorned buildings
+running east and west, with slits in the roof, and in some of the walls.
+Within these simple buildings are the instruments now used, displaying
+almost the perfection of mechanical skill in their construction and
+finish—beautifully adapted to the object they have to fulfil, and in
+perfect order. They are fixed on solid piers of masonry, deeply imbedded
+in the earth, to secure freedom from vibration—a quality better obtained
+when the foundations are on sand or gravel than when on rock.
+
+To describe the instruments by their technical names, and to go into any
+particulars of the instruments they have superseded, would take space,
+only to do the work of a scientific treatise. Enough, therefore, to say
+that there are the telescopes best adapted to the chief duty of the
+place, which is, watching the moon whenever she is visible; watching the
+_clock-stars_, by which the true time is calculated more exactly than it
+could be from observations of the sun alone; and watching other
+planetary bodies as they pass the meridian. Eclipses, occultations, and
+other phenomena, of course, have their share of attention, and add to
+the burden of the observer’s duties.
+
+The staff of the Observatory includes a chief astronomer, Mr. Airy, with
+a salary of 800_l._ a year; and six assistants who are paid, 470_l._,
+290_l._, 240_l._, 150_l._, 130_l._, and 130_l._, respectively. This does
+not include the officers of the Meteorological branch of the
+establishment, to be spoken of hereafter; and which consists of Mr.
+Glaisher, with 240_l._ a year, one assistant at 120_l._, and two
+additional computers. At times, when these scientific labourers have
+collected more observations than they are able to work out; additional
+help is summoned, in shape of the body of scientific clerks before
+spoken of; who, seated at desks, cast up the accounts the planetary
+bodies, including such regular old friends as the moon and fixed stars,
+but not forgetting those wandering celestial existences that rush, from
+time to time, over the meridian, and may be fairly called the chance
+customers of the astronomer.
+
+Though the interior of the Observatory seems so still, the life of those
+employed there has its excitements. Looking through telescopes forms a
+small part only of their duty—and that duty cannot be done when the
+weather is unfavourable. On cloudy days the observer is idle; in bright
+weather he is busy; and a long continuance of clear days and nights
+gives him more employment than he can well complete. Summer, therefore,
+is his time of labour; winter his time of rest. It appears that in our
+climate the nights, on the whole, are clearer than the days, and
+evenings less cloudy than mornings. Every assistant takes his turn as an
+observer, and a chain of duty is kept up night and day; at other
+periods, the busiest portion of the twenty-four hours at the
+Observatory, is between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon.
+During this time they work in silence, the task being to complete the
+records of the observations made, by filling in the requisite columns of
+figures upon printed forms, and then adding and subtracting them as the
+case requires. Whilst thus engaged, the assistant who has charge of an
+instrument looks, from time to time, at his star-regulated clock, and
+when it warns him that his expected planet is nearly due, he leaves his
+companions, and quietly repairs to the room where the telescope is
+ready. The adjustment of this has previously been arranged with the
+greatest nicety. The shutter is moved from the slit in the roof, the
+astronomer sits upon an easy chair with a moveable back. If the object
+he seeks is high in the heavens, this chair-back is lowered till its
+occupant almost lies down; if the star is lower, the chair-back is
+raised in proportion. He has his note-book and metallic pencil in hand.
+Across the eye-piece of the telescope are stretched seven lines of
+spider-web, dividing the field of view. If his seat requires change, the
+least motion arranges it to his satisfaction, for it rests upon a
+railway of its own. Beside him is one of the star-clocks, and as the
+moment approaches for the appearance of the planet, the excitement of
+the moment increases. ‘The tremble of impatience for the entrance of the
+star on the field of view,’ says an Edinburgh Reviewer, ‘is like that of
+a sportsman whose dog has just made a full point, and who awaits the
+rising of the game. When a star appears, the observer, in technical
+language, _takes a second from the clock face_; that is, he reads the
+second with his eye, and counts on by the ear the succeeding beats of
+the clock, naming the seconds mentally. As the star passes each wire of
+the transit, he marks down in his jotting-book with a metallic pencil
+the second, _and the second only_, of his observation, with such a
+fraction of a second as corresponds, in his judgment, to the interval of
+time between the passage of the star, and the beat of the clock which
+preceded such passage.’
+
+An experienced observer will never commit an error in this mental
+calculation, exceeding the tenth of a second, or six hundredth of a
+minute. When the star has been thus watched over the seven cobweb lines
+(or wires), the observer jots down the hour and minute, in addition to
+the second, and the task is done. Stars, not very near the sun, may be
+seen in broad daylight, but, at night, it is requisite to direct a ray
+of light from a lamp, so far to enlighten the field of the telescope, as
+to permit the spider lines to be seen running across the brighter ground
+on which the expected star is to be visible.
+
+The adjustment of the instruments is a task of great nicety. If they are
+out of trim only a shadow of a shade of a hair’s-breadth, the desired
+accuracy is interfered with, and they have to be re-adjusted.
+Temperature is of course an important element in their condition, and a
+slight sensibility may do mischief. The warmth of the observer’s body,
+when approaching the instruments, has been known to affect their
+accuracy; and to avoid such sources of error, instruments have at times
+been cased in flannel, that the non-conducting powers of that homely
+fabric might screen the too-sensitive metal.
+
+Sunday is a comparative holiday at the Observatory, for then, except
+when any extraordinary phenomena are expected, the only duty done is to
+drop the Time Ball, and observe the moon’s place. The moon is never
+neglected, and her motions have been here watched, during the last
+hundred and seventy years, with the most pertinacious care,—to the great
+service of astronomy, and the great benefit of navigation.
+
+The library should not pass unnoticed. It is small; but being devoted to
+works upon astronomy, and the kindred sciences, there is ample room for
+all that has hitherto been written on the subject, or that can, for many
+generations, be produced. The observations of a lifetime spent in
+watching the stars may be printed in marvellously few pages. A glance
+through the Greenwich Astronomical Library gives a rough general idea of
+what the world has done and is doing for the promotion of this science.
+Russia contributes large, imperial-looking tomes, that tell of extended
+observations made under the munificent patronage of a despot; Germany
+sends from different points a variety of smaller, cheaper-looking, yet
+valuable contributions; France gives proofs of her genius and her
+discoveries; but _her_ forte is not in observation. The French are bad
+observers. They have no such proofs of unremitting, patient toil in
+search of facts, as those afforded in the records of the Greenwich
+Tables of the Moon. Indeed, Greenwich, as we have already said, is a
+working Observatory; and those who go into its library, and its
+fire-proof manuscript-room, and see how its volumes of observations have
+been growing from the small beginnings of the days of Flamstead and
+Halley, to those of our later and more liberal times, will have good
+reason to acknowledge that the money devoted to this establishment has
+been well employed.
+
+One other spot must be noticed as amongst the notable things in this
+astronomical sanctum. It is the Chronometer-room, to which, during the
+first three Mondays in the year, the chief watchmakers of London send in
+their choicest instruments for examination and trial. The watches remain
+for a good portion of a year; their rates being noted, day by day, by
+two persons; and then the makers of the best receive prizes, and their
+instruments are purchased for the navy. Other competitors obtain
+certificates of excellence, which bring customers from the merchant
+service; whilst others pass unrewarded. To enter the room where these
+admirable instruments are kept, suggests the idea of going into a
+Brobdingnag Watch-factory. Round the place are ranged shelves, on which
+the large watches are placed, all ticking in the most distinct and
+formidable way one against another. When they first arrive, in January,
+they are left to the ordinary atmospheric temperature for some months.
+Their rates being taken under these circumstances, a large stove in the
+centre of the apartment is lighted, and heat got up to a sort of
+artificial East India or Gold Coast point. Tried under these influences,
+they are placed in an iron tray over the stove, like so many watch-pies
+in a baker’s dish, and the fire being encouraged, they are literally
+kept baking, to see how their metal will stand that style of treatment.
+Whilst thus hot, their rates are once more taken; and then, after this
+fiery ordeal, such of them as their owners like to trust to an opposite
+test, are put into freezing mixtures! Yet, so beautifully made are these
+triumphs of human ingenuity—so well is their mechanism ‘corrected’ for
+compensating the expansion caused by the heat, and the contraction
+induced by the cold—that an even rate of going is established, so
+nearly, that its variation under opposite circumstances becomes a matter
+of close and certain estimate.
+
+The rates of chronometers on trial for purchase by the Board of
+Admiralty, at the Observatory, are posted up and printed in an official
+form. Upon looking to the document for last year, we find a statement of
+their performances during six months of 1849, with memoranda of the
+exact weeks during which the chronometers were exposed to the open air
+at a north window; the weeks the Chronometer-room was heated by a stove,
+the chronometers being dispersed on the surrounding shelves; and the
+weeks during which they were placed in the tray above the stove. The
+rate given during the first week of trial is in every case omitted; like
+newly entered schoolboys their early vagaries are not taken into
+account; but after that, every merit and every fault is watched with
+jealous care, and, when the day of judgment comes, the order of the
+arrangement of the chronometers in the list is determined solely by
+consideration of their irregularities of rate as expressed in the
+columns, ‘Difference between greatest and least,’ and, ‘Greatest
+difference between one week and the next.’
+
+The Royal Observatory, according to a superstition not wholly extinct,
+is the headquarters, not only of Astronomy, but of Astrology. The
+structure is awfully regarded, by a small section of the community which
+ignorance has still left amongst us, as a manufactory of horoscopes, and
+a repository for magic mirrors and divining-rods. Not long ago a
+well-dressed woman called at the Observatory gate to request a hint as
+to the means of recovering a lost sum of money; and recently, somebody
+at Brighton dispatched the liberal sum of five shillings in a
+post-office order to the same place, with a request to have his nativity
+cast in return! Another, only last year, wrote as follows:—‘I have been
+informed that there are persons at the Observatory who will, by my
+enclosing a remittance and the hour of my birth, give me to understand
+_who is to be my wife_? An early answer, stating all particulars, will
+oblige,’ &c.
+
+This sketch descriptive of its real duties and uses are not necessary to
+relieve the Greenwich Observatory from the charge of being an abode of
+sorcerers and astrologers. A few only of the most ignorant can yet
+entertain such notions of its character; but they are not wholly
+unfounded. Magicians, whose symbols are the Arabic numerals, and whose
+_arcana_ are mathematical computations, daily foretell events in that
+building with unerring certainty. They pre-discover the future of the
+stars down to their minutest evolution and eccentricity. From data
+furnished from the Royal Observatory, is compiled an extraordinary
+prophetic Almanack from which all other almanacs are copied. It
+foretells to a second when and where each of the planets may be seen in
+the heavens at any minute for the next three years. The current number
+of the Nautical Almanack is for the Year of Grace 1853.
+
+In this quiet sanctuary, then, the winds are made to register their own
+course and force, and the rain to gauge its own quantity as it falls;
+the planets are watched to help the mariner to steer more safely over
+the seas; and the heavens themselves are investigated for materials from
+which their future as well as their past history may be written.
+
+
+
+
+                          SWEDISH FOLK-SONGS.
+
+
+                THE DOVE ON THE LILY.
+        There sits a pure dove on a lily so white,
+          On midsummer morning:—
+        She sang of Christ Jesus from morning to night,
+          In Heaven there is great joy, O!
+
+        She sang, and she sang, ’twas a joy to hear,
+        Expecting a maiden in Heaven that year.
+
+        “And should I reach Heaven ere twelvemonths are o’er,
+        Sickness and pain I should know never more.”
+
+        To her father’s hall the maiden she went,
+        And through her left side a sharp pain was sent.
+
+        “Oh! make my bed, mother, in haste, mother dear,
+        I shall in the fields no more wander this year.”
+
+        “And speak such words, daughter, dear daughter, no more;
+        Thou shalt wed with a king ere twelvemonths are o’er.”
+
+        “Oh! better that I be in Heaven a bride,
+        Than remain on the earth amid kingly pride.
+
+        “And father, dear father, go fetch me a priest,
+        For I know that, ere long, death will be my guest.
+
+        “And brother, dear brother, go get me a bier;
+        And sister, dear sister, do thou dress my hair.”
+
+        The maiden, she died, and was laid on her bier,
+        And all her hand-maidens they plaited her hair.
+
+        They carried her out from her father’s hall door;
+        And the angels of God with lights went before.
+
+        They carried the corpse to the churchyard along,
+        And the angels of God went before with a song.
+
+        They buried the maiden beneath the dark sod,
+          On midsummer morning:—
+        And her coming was even well pleasing to God;
+          In Heaven there is great joy, O!
+
+
+
+
+                         A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE.
+
+
+A few Sundays ago, I formed one of the congregation assembled in the
+chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception of the
+clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were none but
+paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the women in the
+body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles; the men in the
+remaining aisle. The service was decorously performed, though the sermon
+might have been much better adapted to the comprehension and to the
+circumstances of the hearers. The usual supplications were offered, with
+more than the usual significancy in such a place, for the fatherless
+children and widows, for all sick persons and young children, for all
+that were desolate and oppressed, for the comforting and helping of the
+weak-hearted, for the raising-up of them that had fallen; for all that
+were in danger, necessity, and tribulation. The prayers of the
+congregation were desired “for several persons in the various wards,
+dangerously ill;” and others who were recovering returned their thanks
+to Heaven.
+
+Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young women, and
+beetle-browed young men; but not many—perhaps that kind of characters
+kept away. Generally, the faces (those of the children excepted) were
+depressed and subdued, and wanted colour. Aged people were there, in
+every variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame;
+vacantly winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through
+the open doors, from the paved yard; shading their listening ears, or
+blinking eyes, with their withered hands; poring over their books,
+leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners.
+There were weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak
+without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of
+pocket-handkerchiefs; and there were ugly old crones, both male and
+female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not at
+all comforting to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon, Pauperism, in
+a very weak and impotent condition; toothless, fangless, drawing his
+breath heavily enough, and hardly worth chaining up.
+
+When the service was over, I walked with the humane and conscientious
+gentleman whose duty it was to take that walk, that Sunday morning,
+through the little world of poverty enclosed within the workhouse walls.
+It was inhabited by a population of some fifteen hundred or two thousand
+paupers, ranging from the infant newly born or not yet come into the
+pauper world, to the old man dying on his bed.
+
+In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a number of listless women
+were lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the ineffectual sunshine
+of the tardy May morning—in the “Itch-Ward,” not to compromise the
+truth—a woman such as HOGARTH has often drawn, was hurriedly getting on
+her gown, before a dusty fire. She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of that
+insalubrious department—herself a pauper—flabby, raw-boned,
+untidy—unpromising and coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being spoken
+to about the patients whom she had in charge, she turned round, with her
+shabby gown half on, half off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not
+for show, not querulously, not in any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep
+grief and affliction of her heart; turning away her dishevelled head:
+sobbing most bitterly, wringing her hands, and letting fall abundance of
+great tears, that choked her utterance. What was the matter with the
+nurse of the itch-ward? Oh, “the dropped child” was dead! Oh, the child
+that was found in the street, and she had brought up ever since, had
+died an hour ago, and see where the little creature lay, beneath this
+cloth! The dear, the pretty dear!
+
+The dropped child seemed too small and poor a thing for Death to be in
+earnest with, but Death had taken it; and already its diminutive form
+was neatly washed, composed, and stretched as if in sleep upon a box. I
+thought I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall be well for thee, O
+nurse of the itch-ward, when some less gentle pauper does those offices
+to thy cold form, that such as the dropped child are the angels who
+behold my Father’s face!
+
+In another room, were several ugly old women crouching, witch-like,
+round a hearth, and chattering and nodding, after the manner of the
+monkies. “All well here? And enough to eat?” A general chattering and
+chuckling; at last an answer from a volunteer. “Oh yes gentleman! Bless
+you gentleman! Lord bless the parish of St. So-and-So! It feed the
+hungry, Sir, and give drink to the thirsty, and it warm them which is
+cold, so it do, and good luck to the parish of St. So-and-So, and
+thankee gentleman!” Elsewhere, a party of pauper nurses were at dinner.
+“How do _you_ get on?” “Oh pretty well Sir! We works hard, and we lives
+hard—like the sodgers!”
+
+In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, six or
+eight noisy mad-women were gathered together, under the superintendence
+of one sane attendant. Among them was a girl of two or three and twenty,
+very prettily dressed, of most respectable appearance, and good manners,
+who had been brought in from the house where she had lived as domestic
+servant (having, I suppose, no friends), on account of being subject to
+epileptic fits, and requiring to be removed under the influence of a
+very bad one. She was by no means of the same stuff, or the same
+breeding, or the same experience, or in the same state of mind, as those
+by whom she was surrounded; and she pathetically complained that the
+daily association and the nightly noise made her worse, and was driving
+her mad—which was perfectly evident. The case was noted for enquiry and
+redress, but she said she had already been there for some weeks.
+
+If this girl had stolen her mistress’s watch, I do not hesitate to say
+she would, in all probability, have been infinitely better off. Bearing
+in mind, in the present brief description of this walk, not only the
+facts already stated in this Journal, in reference to the Model Prison
+at Pentonville, but the general treatment of convicted prisoners under
+the associated silent system too, it must be once more distinctly set
+before the reader, that we have come to this absurd, this dangerous,
+this monstrous pass, that the dishonest felon is, in respect of
+cleanliness, order, diet, and accommodation, better provided for, and
+taken care of, than the honest pauper.
+
+And this conveys no special imputation on the workhouse of the parish of
+St. So-and-So, where, on the contrary, I saw many things to commend. It
+was very agreeable, recollecting that most infamous and atrocious
+enormity committed at Tooting—an enormity which, a hundred years hence,
+will still be vividly remembered in the bye-ways of English life, and
+which has done more to engender a gloomy discontent and suspicion among
+many thousands of the people than all the Chartist leaders could have
+done in all their lives—to find the pauper children in this workhouse
+looking robust and well, and apparently the objects of very great care.
+In the Infant School—a large, light, airy room at the top of the
+building—the little creatures, being at dinner, and eating their
+potatoes heartily, were not cowed by the presence of strange visitors,
+but stretched out their small hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant
+confidence. And it was comfortable to see two mangey pauper
+rocking-horses rampant in a corner. In the girls’ school, where the
+dinner was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful and healthy
+aspect. The meal was over, in the boys’ school, by the time of our
+arrival there and the room was not yet quite re-arranged; but the boys
+were roaming unrestrained about a large and airy yard, as any other
+schoolboys might have done. Some of them had been drawing large ships
+upon the schoolroom wall; and if they had a mast with shrouds and stays
+set up for practice (as they have in the Middlesex House of Correction),
+it would be so much the better. At present, if a boy should feel a
+strong impulse upon him to learn the art of going aloft, he could only
+gratify it, I presume, as the men and women paupers gratify their
+aspirations after better board and lodging, by smashing as many
+workhouse windows as possible, and being promoted to prison.
+
+In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and youths
+were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind of kennel
+where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down at night. Divers
+of them had been there some long time. “Are they never going away?” was
+the natural enquiry. “Most of them are crippled, in some form or other,”
+said the Wardsman, “and not fit for anything.” They slunk about, like
+dispirited wolves or hyænas; and made a pounce at their food when it was
+served out, much as those animals do. The big-headed idiot shuffling his
+feet along the pavement, in the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable
+object everyway.
+
+Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers and other sick women in bed;
+groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs day-rooms,
+waiting for their dinners; longer and longer groves of old people, in
+upstairs Infirmary wards, wearing out life, God knows how—this was the
+scenery through which the walk lay, for two hours. In some of these
+latter chambers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, and a neat
+display of crockery and pewter on a kind of sideboard; now and then it
+was a treat to see a plant or two; in almost every ward, there was a
+cat.
+
+In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were
+bed-ridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their
+beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting
+at a table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was
+asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody
+absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful
+desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. On our
+walking into the midst of one of these dreary perspectives of old men,
+nearly the following little dialogue took place, the nurse not being
+immediately at hand:
+
+“All well here?”
+
+No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap sitting among others on a form at
+the table, eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his cap a little
+to look at us, claps it down on his forehead again, with the palm of his
+hand, and goes on eating.
+
+“All well here?” (repeated.)
+
+No answer. Another old man sitting on his bed, paralytically peeling a
+boiled potato, lifts his head, and stares.
+
+“Enough to eat?”
+
+No answer. Another old man, in bed, turns himself and coughs.
+
+“How are _you_ to-day?” To the last old man.
+
+That old man says nothing; but another old man, a tall old man of a very
+good address, speaking with perfect correctness, comes forward from
+somewhere, and volunteers an answer. The reply almost always proceeds
+from a volunteer, and not from the person looked at or spoken to.
+
+“We are very old, Sir,” in a mild, distinct voice. “We can’t expect to
+be well, most of us.”
+
+“Are you comfortable?”
+
+“I have no complaint to make, Sir.” With a half shake of his head, a
+half shrug of his shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile.
+
+“Enough to eat?”
+
+“Why, Sir, I have but a poor appetite,” with the same air as before;
+“and yet I get through my allowance very easily.”
+
+“But,” showing a porringer with a Sunday dinner in it; “here is a
+portion of mutton, and three potatoes. You can’t starve on that?”
+
+“Oh dear no, Sir,” with the same apologetic air. “Not starve.”
+
+“What do you want?”
+
+“We have very little bread, Sir. It’s an exceedingly small quantity of
+bread.”
+
+The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at the questioner’s elbow,
+interferes with, “It ain’t much raly, Sir. You see they’ve only six
+ounces a day, and when they’ve took their breakfast, there _can_ only be
+a little left for night, Sir.”
+
+Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises out of his bedclothes, as out
+of a grave, and looks on.
+
+“You have tea at night?” The questioner is still addressing the
+well-spoken old man.
+
+“Yes, Sir, we have tea at night.”
+
+“And you save what bread you can from the morning, to eat with it?”
+
+“Yes, Sir—if we can save any.”
+
+“And you want more to eat with it?”
+
+“Yes, Sir.” With a very anxious face.
+
+The questioner, in the kindness of his heart, appears a little
+discomposed, and changes the subject.
+
+“What has become of the old man who used to lie in that bed in the
+corner?”
+
+The nurse don’t remember what old man is referred to. There has been
+such a many old men. The well-spoken old man is doubtful. The spectral
+old man who has come to life in bed, says, “Billy Stevens.” Another old
+man who has previously had his head in the fireplace, pipes out,
+
+“Charley Walters.”
+
+Something like a feeble interest is awakened. I suppose Charley Walters
+had conversation in him.
+
+“He’s dead!” says the piping old man.
+
+Another old man, with one eye screwed up, hastily displaces the piping
+old man, and says:
+
+“Yes! Charley Walters died in that bed, and—and—”
+
+“Billy Stevens,” persists the spectral old man.
+
+“No, no! and Johnny Rogers died in that bed, and—and—they’re both on ’em
+dead—and Sam’l Bowyer;” this seems very extraordinary to him; “he went
+out!”
+
+With this he subsides, and all the old men (having had quite enough of
+it) subside, and the spectral old man goes into his grave again, and
+takes the shade of Billy Stevens with him.
+
+As we turn to go out at the door, another previously invisible old man,
+a hoarse old man in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if he had just
+come up through the floor.
+
+“I beg your pardon, Sir, could I take the liberty of saving a word?”
+
+“Yes; what is it?”
+
+“I am greatly better in my health, Sir; but what I want, to get me quite
+round,” with his hand on his throat, “is a little fresh air, Sir. It has
+always done my complaint so much good, Sir. The regular leave for going
+out, comes round so seldom, that if the gentlemen, next Friday, would
+give me leave to go out walking, now and then—for only an hour or so,
+Sir!—”
+
+Who could wonder, looking through those weary vistas of bed and
+infirmity, that it should do him good to meet with some other scenes,
+and assure himself that there was something else on earth? Who could
+help wondering why the old men lived on as they did; what grasp they had
+on life; what crumbs of interest or occupation they could pick up from
+its bare board; whether Charley Walters had ever described to them the
+days when he kept company with some old pauper woman in the bud, or
+Billy Stevens ever told them of the time when he was a dweller in the
+far-off foreign land called Home!
+
+The morsel of burnt child, lying in another room, so patiently, in bed,
+wrapped in lint, and looking stedfastly at us with his bright quiet eyes
+when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if the knowledge of these things,
+and of all the tender things there are to think about, might have been
+in his mind—as if he thought, with us, that there was a fellow-feeling
+in the pauper nurses which appeared to make them more kind to their
+charges than the race of common nurses in the hospitals—as if he mused
+upon the Future of some older children lying around him in the same
+place, and thought it best, perhaps, all things considered, that he
+should die—as if he knew, without fear, of those many coffins, made and
+unmade, piled up in the store below—and of his unknown friend, “the
+dropped child,” calm upon the box-lid covered with a cloth. But there
+was something wistful and appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in
+the midst of all the hard necessities and incongruities he pondered on,
+he pleaded, in behalf of the helpless and the aged poor, for a little
+more liberty—and a little more bread.
+
+
+
+
+             THE “IRISH DIFFICULTY” SOLVED BY CON Mc Nale.
+
+
+Con Mc Nale would have been summarily repudiated as an Irishman by our
+farce-writers and slashing novelists. He neither drank, fought, nor
+swore; did not make many blunders; and never addressed a friend either
+as his ‘honey’ or his ‘jewel.’ His _cotamore_ was of stout frieze, and
+though Con had long attained his full height, the tailor had left him
+room to grow. The _caubeen_ was not his head-dress, for Con had arrived
+at the dignity of a silk hat, which had been manufactured, as the mark
+in the crown declared, by the Saxons in the Borough of Southwark, which
+locality Con believed to be in the n_a_ighbourhood of England. The
+brogues were also absent, but were favourably represented by shoes of
+native manufacture laced with stout thongs. In fact, Mr. Mc Nale was a
+fine specimen of the finest _pisantry_ in the world—without the rags.
+
+People have gone to the Highlands and to Switzerland, and perhaps seen
+many places not much more grand and picturesque than the district where
+Con Mc Nale had made a patch of the desert to smile. A long range of
+blue mountains rising irregularly above each other, looked down on an
+extensive plain, that lay along the shore of a mighty lake, to the banks
+of which thick plantations crowded so near that the old Irish called the
+water _Lough-glas_, which signifies waters of green. The districts where
+a short but thick and sweet herbage sprung up among the rocks, were
+certainly put to the use of feeding cattle, and it was while employed
+there as a herd-boy, that Con Mc Nale determined to become a farmer. His
+mind was made up. His earnings were hardly enough to keep life in him,
+and if he had tried to save the price of a spade out of them to begin
+business with, the chances are that he would have died prematurely for
+want of food. But that didn’t matter much; he was determined to be a
+farmer. This determination was then as likely of fulfilment as that of
+Oliver Cromwell to become Protector of the Realm, while tending the vats
+at Huntingdon; or that of Aladdin to become a prince, when he was a
+ragged boy in the streets of Bagdad. To show, however, what perseverance
+will do, when I made acquaintance with Mr. Con Mc Nale he had actually
+got possession of a spade, and was making good use of it in a ditch—his
+own ditch, on his own land. As he went on, now digging, now resting on
+the handle, he told me all about his gradual promotion from a herd-boy
+to a country jontleman.
+
+“My father,” said he, “lived under ould Squire Kilkelly, an’ for awhile
+tinded his cattle: but the Squire’s gone out iv this part iv the
+counthry, to Australia or some furrin part, an’ the mentioned house
+(mansion house) an’ the fine propperty was sould, so it was, for little
+or nothin’, for the fightin’ was over in furrin parts; Boney was put
+down, an’ there was no price for corn or cattle, an’ a jontleman from
+Scotland came an’ bought the istate. We were warned by the new man to
+go, for he tuk in his own hand all the in-land about the domain, bein’ a
+grate farmer. He put nobody in our little place, but pulled it down, an’
+he guv father a five guinea note, but my father was ould an’ not able to
+face the world agin, an’ he went to the town an’ tuk a room—a poor,
+dirty, choky place it was for him, myself, and sisther to live in. The
+naighbours were very kind an’ good, though. Sister Bridget got a place
+wid a farmer hereabouts, and I tuk the world on my own showlders. I had
+nothin’ at all but the rags I stud up in, an’ they were bad enuf. Poor
+Biddy got a shillin’ advanced iv her wages that her masther was to giv
+her. She guv it me, for I was bent on goin’ towards Belfast to look for
+work. All along the road I axed at every place; they could giv it me but
+to no good, except when I axed, they’d giv me a bowl iv broth, or a
+piece iv bacon, or an oaten bannock, so that I had my shillin’ to the
+fore when I got to Belfast.
+
+“Here the heart was near lavin’ me all out intirely. I went wandtherin’
+down to the quay among the ships, and what should there be but a ship
+goin’ to Scotland that very night, wid pigs. In throth it was fun to see
+the sailors at cross-purposes wid ’em, for they didn’t know the natur iv
+the bastes. I did. I knew how to coax ’em. I set to an’ I deludhered an’
+coaxed the pigs, an’, by pullin’ them by the tail, knowing that if they
+took a fancy I wished to pull ’em back out of the ship, they’d run might
+and main into her, and so they did. Well, the sailors were mightily
+divarted, an’ when the pigs was aboord, I wint down to the place—an’ the
+short iv it is that in three days I was in Glasgow town, an’ the captain
+an’ the sailors subschribed up tin-shillins an’ guv it into my hand.
+Well, I bought a raping hook, an’ away I trudged till I got quite an’
+clane into the counthry, an’ the corn was, here and there, fit to cut.
+At last I goes an’ ax a farmer for work. He thought I was too wake to be
+paid by the day, but one field havin’ one corner fit to cut, an’ the
+next not ready, ‘Paddy,’ says he, ‘you may begin in that corner, an’
+I’ll pay yees by the work yees do,’ an’ he guv me my breakfast an’ a
+pint of beer. Well, I never quit that masther the whole harvest, an’
+when the raping was over I had four goolden guineas to carry home,
+besides that I was as sthrong as a lion. Yees would wonder how glad the
+sailors was to see me back agin, an’ ne’er a farthin’ would they take
+back iv their money, but tuk me over agin to Belfast, givin’ me the
+hoighth of good thratemint of all kinds. I did not stay an hour in
+Belfast, but tuk to the road to look afther the ould man an’ little
+Biddy. Well, sorrows the tidins’ I got. The ould man had died, an’ the
+grief an’ disthress of poor little Biddy had even touched her head a
+little. The dacent people where she was, may the Lord reward ’em, though
+they found little use in her, kep her, hoping I would be able to come
+home an’ keep her myself, an’ so I was. I brought her away wid me, an’
+the sight iv me put new life in her. I was set upon not being idle, an’
+I’ll tell yees what I did next.
+
+“When I was little _bouchaleen_ iv a boy I used to be a head on the
+mountain face, an’ ’twas often I sheltered myself behind them gray rocks
+that’s at the gable iv my house, an’ somehow it came into my head that
+the new Squire, being a grate man for improvin’, might let me try to
+brake in a bit iv land there, an’ so I goes off to him, an’ one iv the
+sarvints bein’ a sort iv cousin iv mine, I got to spake to the Squire,
+an’ behould yees he guv me lave at onst. Well, there’s no time like the
+prisint, an’ as I passed out iv the back yard of the mentioned (mansion)
+house, I sees the sawyers cutting some Norway firs that had been blown
+down by the storm, an’ I tells the sawyers that I had got lave to brake
+in a bit iv land in the mountains, an’ what would some pieces iv fir
+cost. They says they must see what kind of pieces they was that I wished
+for, an’ no sooner had I set about looking ’em through than the Squire
+himself comes ridin’ out of the stable-yard, an’ says he at onst,
+Mc Nale, says he, you may have a load iv cuttins to build your cabin, or
+two if you need it. ‘The Heavens be your honour’s bed,’ says I, an’ I
+wint off to the room where I an’ Biddy lived, not knowin’ if I was on my
+head or my heels. Next day, before sunrise, I was up here five miles up
+the face of Slieve-dan, with a spade in my fist, an’ I looked roun’ for
+the most shiltered spot I could sit my eyes an. Here I saw, where the
+house an’ yard are stan’in, a plot iv about an acre to the south iv that
+tall ridge of rocks, well sheltered from the blast from the north an’
+from the aste, an’ it was about sunrise an’ a fine morning in October
+that I tuk up the first spadeful. There was a spring then drippin’ down
+the face iv the rocks, the same you see gushin’ through the crockery
+pipe in the farm-yard; an’ I saw at once that it would make the cabin
+completely damp, an’ the land about mighty sour an’ water-_slain_; so I
+determined to do what I saw done in Scotland. I sunk a deep drain right
+under the rock to run all along the back iv the cabin, an’ workin’ that
+day all alone by myself, I did a grate dale iv it. At night, it was
+close upon dark when I started to go home, so I hid my spade in the
+heath an’ trudged off. The next mornin’ I bargined with a farmer to
+bring me up a load iv fir cuttins from the Squire’s, an’ by the evenin’
+they were thrown down within a quarter iv a mile iv my place,—for there
+was no road to it then, an’ I had to carry ’em myself for the remainder
+of the way. This occupied me till near nightfall; but I remained that
+night till I placed two upright posts of fir, one at each corner iv the
+front iv the cabin.
+
+“I was detarmined to get the cabin finished as quickly as possible, that
+I might be able to live upon the spot, for much time was lost in goin’
+and comin’. The next day I was up betimes, an’ finding a track iv stiff
+blue clay, I cut a multitude of thick square sods iv it, an’ having set
+up two more posts at the remainin’ two corners iv the cabin, I laid four
+rows iv one gable, rising it about three feet high. Havin’ laid the
+rows, I sharpind three or four straight pine branches, an’ druv them
+down through the sods into the earth, to pin the wall in its place. Next
+day I had a whole gable up, each three rows iv sods pinned through to
+the three benathe. In about eight days I had put up the four walls,
+makin’ a door an’ two windows; an’ now my outlay began, for I had to pay
+a thatcher to put on the sthraw an’ to assist me in risin’ the rafthers.
+In another week it was covered in, an’ it was a pride to see it with the
+new thatch, an’ a wicker chimbley daubed with clay, like a pallis
+undernathe the rock. I now got some turf that those who had cut ’em had
+not removed, an’ they sould ’em for a thrifle, an’ I made a grate fire
+an’ slept on the flure of my own house that night. Next day I got
+another load iv fir brought, to make the partitions in the winter, an’
+in a day or two after I had got the inside so dhry that I was able to
+bring poor Biddy to live there for good and all. The Heavens be praised,
+there was not a shower iv rain fell from the time I began the cabin till
+I ended it, an’ when the rain did fall, not a drop came through,—all was
+carried off by my dhrain into the little river before yees. The moment I
+was settled in the house I comminced dhraining about an acre iv bog in
+front, an’ the very first winter I sowed a shillin’s worth of cabbidge
+seed, an’ sold in the spring a pound’s worth of little cabbidge plants
+for the gardins in the town below. When spring came—noticin’ how the
+early planted praties did the best, I planted my cabbidge ground with
+praties, an’ I had a noble crap, while the ground was next year fit for
+the corn. In the mane time, every winther I tuk in more and more ground,
+an’ in summer I cut my turf for fewel; where the cuttins could answer,
+in winther, for a dhrain; an’ findin’ how good the turf were, I got a
+little powney an’ carried ’em to the town to sell, when I was able to
+buy lime in exchange, an’ put it on my bog, so as to make it produce
+double. As things went on, I got assistance, an’ when I marrid, my wife
+had two cows that guv me a grate lift.
+
+“I was always thought to be a handy boy; an’ I could do a turn of
+mason-work with any man not riglarly bred to it; so I took one of my
+loads of lime, an’ instead of puttin’ it on the land, I made it into
+morthar—and indeed the stones being no ways scarce, I set to an’ built a
+little kiln, like as I had seen down the counthry. I could then burn my
+own lime, an’ the limestone were near to my hand, too many iv ’em. While
+all this was goin’ on, I had riz an’ sould a good dale iv oats and
+praties, an’ every summer I found ready sale for my turf in the town
+from one jontleman that I always charged at an even rate, year by year.
+I got the help of a stout boy, a cousin iv my own, who was glad iv a
+shilter; an’ when the childher were ould enough, I got some young cattle
+that could graze upon the mountain in places where no other use could be
+made iv the land, and set the gossoons to herd ’em.
+
+“There was one bit iv ground nigh han’ to the cabin, that puzzled me
+intirely. It was very poor and sandy, an’ little better than a rabbit
+burrow; an’ telling the Squire’s Scotch steward iv it, he bade me thry
+some flax, an’ sure enuf, so I did, an’ a fine crap iv flax I had, as
+you might wish to see; an’ the stame-mills being beginnin’ in the
+counthry at that time, I sould my flax for a very good price—my wife
+having dhried it, beetled it, an’ scutched it with her own two hands. I
+should have said before, that the Squire himself came up here with a lot
+iv fine ladies and jontlemen to see what I had done; an’ you never in
+your life seed a man so well plased as he was, an’ a Mimber of Parlimint
+from Scotland was with him, an’ he tould me I was a credit to ould
+Ireland; and sure, didn’t Father Connor read upon the papers, how he
+tould the whole story in the Parlimint House before all the lords an’
+quality: but faix, he didn’t forgit me; for a month or two after he was
+here, an’ it coming on the winter, comes word for me an’ the powney to
+go down to the mentioned (mansion) house, for the steward wanted me; so
+away I wint, an’ there, shure enuf, was an illigant Scotch plough, every
+inch of iron, an’ a lot of young Norroway pines—the same you see
+shiltering the house an’ yard—an’ all was a free prisint for me from the
+Scotch jontleman that was the Mimber of Parliment. ’Twas that plough
+that did the meracles iv work hereabouts; for I often lint it to any
+that I knew to be a careful hand; an’ it was the manes iv havin’ the
+farmers all round send an’ buy ’em. At last I was able to build a brave
+snug house; and praised be Providence, I have never had an hour’s ill
+health, nor a moment’s grief, but when poor Biddy, the cratur, died from
+us. It is thirty years since that morning that I tuk up the first
+spadeful from the wild mountain side; an’ twelve acres are good labour
+land, an’ fifteen drained, an’ good grazin’. I have been payin’ rint
+twinty years, an’ am still, thank God, able to take my own part iv any
+day’s work,—plough, spade, or flail.”
+
+“Have you got a lease?” said I.
+
+“No, indeed; not a schrape of a pin; nor I never axed it. Have I not my
+_tinnant-rite_?”
+
+From that subject, Mr. Mc Nale diverged slightly into politics, touching
+on the state of the _counthry_, and untwisting some entanglements of the
+‘Irish difficulty’ that might be usefully made known in the
+neighbourhood of Westminster.
+
+“Troth, Sir,” said Con, “you English are mighty grand in all your
+doings. You dale wholesale in all sorts iv things; good luck to you—in
+charity as well as in pigs, praties, an’ sich like. Well you want to
+improve Ireland by wholesale; you set up illigant schames for puttin’ us
+all to rights by the million; for clanin’ an’ dranin’ a whole province
+at onst; for giving labour to everybody; an’ all mighty purty on paper,
+with figures all as round an’ nate as copybooks, with long rigiments of
+O’s, after ’em. I’ve heard iv whole stacks of papers piled up an’
+handsomely ticketed in tidy big offices—all ‘rules and riglations’ for
+labourers, which the boys can’t follow, and the inspectors can’t force.
+Why not,” continued Mr. Con, giving his spade a thrust into the ground
+that sent it up to the maker’s name, “Why not tache the boys to do as I
+have done?”
+
+“But all are not so persevering, so knowing, and so fond of work as
+you.”
+
+Whether Mr. Mc Nale was impressed by his own modesty, or by the force of
+my suggestion, I know not. But he was silent.
+
+
+
+
+                          WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+William Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April, 1770; he died on the
+23d of April, 1850. His life was prolonged for ten years beyond the
+space attributed to man by the inspired Psalmist. He lived in an age
+unprecedented for its social and civil revolutions; for its discoveries
+in science, and their practical application. He was fourteen years of
+age when the new North American Republic was finally recognised as one
+of the brotherhood of nations; he witnessed the French Revolution; the
+subjection of every monarchy in Europe, except England and Russia, to
+the absolute will of a French emperor; the instalment and evaporation of
+the Holy Alliance; the European war of twenty years, and the European
+peace of thirty-two years; one Pope carried into exile by a foreign
+conqueror, another driven into exile by his own subjects: and at home,
+the trials of Hardy and Thelwall; the Bank Restriction Act; the
+origination of the Bell and Lancaster systems of Education; the visit of
+the allied monarchs to London; the passing of Peel’s Bill; the
+introduction of Palmer’s mail-coaches and M‘Adam’s roads; the invention
+of steam navigation; the pausing of the Reform Bill; the development of
+the Railway system, and the Electric telegraph. He was the contemporary
+of Davey, Herschell, Bentham, Godwin, Malthus and Ricardo, Byron, Scott,
+Wilkie, Chantrey, Fox, Pitt, Canning and Brougham.
+
+Wordsworth’s age was one of stirring events and great changes. The
+character of his poetry is in startling contrast to that age. It is
+passionless, a record of the poet’s own mind; simple and austere,
+emanating from his own independent thoughts and fancies; receiving
+little of its form and colour from external events, or the feelings and
+opinions of men. For eighty long years, Wordsworth would almost appear
+to have lived ‘_among_ men, not _of_ them;’ sympathising as little with
+the ephemeral pursuits of his contemporaries as the colossal Memnon does
+with the Copts, Turks, and Arabs who now tenant the banks of the Nile.
+
+William Wordsworth was born in the little county town of Cockermouth;
+his father was an attorney—not a wealthy man, but in circumstances that
+enabled him to give his family a fair education. One son entered the
+merchant service, rose to command a vessel, and perished at sea. Another
+has acquired a name as master of Harrow, and the author of a delightful
+book on Greece, full of delicate beauty and fine classical feeling. The
+allusions by William to his favourite sister are among the most touching
+passages in his poems; and one or two little pieces of verse, and some
+extracts from her journals, which he has published, show that she was
+every way deserving of his love. The poetical dedication of the River
+Duddon to Dr. Wordsworth, is full of delightful allusions to the boyhood
+of the brothers, and conveys a pleasing impression of their family
+relations.
+
+Our poet received the rudiments of his education at the grammar school
+of Hawkeshead, in Westmoreland, conducted in his time by a master of
+more than ordinary attainments. In 1787, he matriculated at St. John’s
+College, Cambridge. Even in his boyhood it was obvious that he possessed
+superior abilities, but they were not of the showy and ambitious kind
+which achieve school or college distinction. He was partial to solitary
+rambles; fond of reading and reciting verses; a boy whom elder men
+‘singled out for his grave looks,’ as he has said in the Excursion, and
+liked to converse with.
+
+It was intended that he should enter the Church, the family
+circumstances rendering it necessary that he should adopt a profession.
+But, independently of his wish to devote himself exclusively to literary
+pursuits, he had caught the prevalent spirit of the time—the aversion to
+conventional forms and opinions. A moderate income, settled upon him by
+Raisley Calvert, the victim of a premature decline, enabled him to
+follow his inclinations. This benefit the poet has gratefully
+acknowledged:—
+
+             ‘Calvert, it must not be unheard by them
+             Who may respect my name, that I to thee
+             Owed many years of early liberty.
+             This care was thine, when sickness did condemn
+             Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem;
+             That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
+             Where’er I liked; and finally array
+             My temples with the Muse’s diadem.’
+
+After leaving College he made extensive tours on foot, in Scotland and
+on the Continent with a youthful friend. In 1793 he for the first time
+ventured into print. Two small volumes appeared in that year:
+“Descriptive Sketches, in verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour among
+the Alps;” and “An Evening Walk, an Epistle in Verse, addressed to a
+young Lady from the Lakes in the North of England.” In these poems we
+find no traces of the poetical theory which he subsequently adopted. But
+they are characterised by the same, almost exclusive, preference for
+lakes, cataracts and mountains, the elementary beauty of external
+nature, human passions and incidents, and they contain many passages of
+glaring imagination powerfully expressed.
+
+In 1796 he took up his abode with his sister at Allfaxden, at the foot
+of the Quantock Hills, in Somersetshire. This was an important era in
+the development of his intellect and imagination. During his residence
+at Allfaxden he was in constant and unreserved communication with
+Coleridge. Totally dissimilar as the two men were in character, they had
+many sympathies. Upon both, the classical tastes and ecclesiastical
+opinions inculcated at English schools and colleges, had, without their
+being aware of it, made a deep and indelible impression. Both had been
+animated by the vague but ardent longings after an undefined liberty,
+and perfection of human nature, then prevalent. They were isolated from
+general sympathy without knowing it; from the revolutionary party by
+their literary tastes and strong attachment to traditional English
+morals; from the Church and State party by their freedom from sectarian
+narrowness. The resolute independence of thought of the young poets is
+worthy of all admiration; their frank and cordial communication of all
+their thoughts, equally so. A pleasing though brief sketch of them at
+that time has been given by Hazlitt, in an essay, entitled, ‘My first
+Acquaintance with Poets;’ a more petulant and shallow account, which yet
+contains some valuable information, by Cottle.
+
+The result of this literary alliance was the first volume of the
+“Lyrical Ballads.” The quiet but perfect melody of Wordsworth’s
+versification and the depth of the human sentiment in his reflections,
+the more swelling tone of Coleridge’s verse and his wild unearthly
+imaginings, might have secured a more favourable reception for his work,
+had it not been announced as the result of a new theory of poetry. That
+theory was misapprehended by the critics of the day, and was indeed
+inadequately expressed by its authors themselves. Coleridge subsequently
+developed it in more precise and unexceptionable language in his
+Biographia Literaria. The effect of its premature announcement was, that
+the Lyrical Ballads were judged, not by their own intrinsic merits, but
+by the theory upon which they were said to have been constructed.
+
+The insurmountable indolence of Coleridge—always planning works too
+great for human accomplishment, and resting satisfied with projects—left
+Wordsworth to pursue his path alone. This he did with characteristic
+pertinacity of purpose; if criticism had any influence on him at all, it
+was only to confirm him in his foregone conclusions. After an excursion
+to Germany, in which he was accompanied by his sister and Coleridge, he
+returned to his native country, ‘with the hope,’ as he has told us in
+his Preface to the Excursion, ‘of being enabled to construct a literary
+work that might live.’
+
+In 1803, Wordsworth married his cousin, Miss Mary Hutchinson, and
+settled at Grasmere. He removed in a few years to Rydal Mount, where he
+continued to reside till his death. Subsequently to this time his life
+is utterly devoid of personal incident, and may be briefly recapitulated
+before proceeding to chronicle his poetical productions, which are
+indeed his life. By his wife, who survives him, he had one daughter, who
+died before him, and two sons, one of whom holds a vicarage in
+Cumberland, the other is a distributor of stamps. In 1814, Wordsworth,
+by the patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale, was appointed distributor of
+stamps for Cumberland and Westmoreland—a recognition of the claims of
+genius to public support only second in eccentricity to the making of
+Burns an exciseman. After holding this office for twenty-eight years, he
+was allowed to relinquish it to his eldest son, and retire upon a
+pension of 300_l._ a year. In 1843, he succeeded Southey in the limited
+emoluments and questionable dignity of the Laureateship. His slender
+inheritance, the beneficence of Raisley Calvert, his office under
+Government, his retiring pension, and his emoluments as Laureate,
+sufficed, with his simple tastes, to enable him to wait the slow
+pecuniary returns of his literary labours.
+
+While the critical storm awakened by the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
+was still raging, he composed his Peter Bell and his Waggoner, which
+were not, however, published till many years later. They are full of
+fine and deep-felt poetry. Their language is genuine racy English, and
+their versification unsurpassed for sweetness. It cannot, however, be
+denied that they are marked by a self-willed, exaggerated adherence to
+the theory of poetry he had promulgated, the effect of something that is
+very like a spirit of contradiction. In a playful adaptation of Milton’s
+sonnet, Tetrachordon, Wordsworth defends his choice of subjects by the
+admiration felt or professed for Tam o’ Shanter. He overlooks the utter
+difference between the mode in which Burns conceived and executed that
+poem, and himself his Benjamin the Waggoner. Burns was for the time the
+hero himself. In Tam o’ Shanter, and still more in the Jolly Beggars, he
+expresses the very passions of the characters he presents to us.
+Wordsworth, constitutionally incapable of the emotions of a boon
+companion, merely describes and moralises on the waywardness of his
+Benjamin. We sympathise with the common humanity of Burns’s genial
+reprobates; we feel the cold shadow of Wordsworth’s Benjamin to be a
+hideous intruder among the fine poetical imagery and thought with which
+he is mixed up.
+
+In 1807, Wordsworth published two volumes, containing his own
+contributions to the Lyrical Ballads, with many additional poems. Minute
+detached criticism is not the object of this sketch. Suffice it to say
+that many pieces in these volumes are unsurpassed in English poetry, or
+in the poetry of any language. The Song at the feast of Brougham Castle
+has a rich lyrical exuberance of feeling; the Laodamia is as severely
+beautiful as a Greek statue; Hartleap Well is full of mellow humanity;
+Rob Roy’s Grave, the Highland Girl, ‘She was a phantom of
+delight,’—every piece, in short, is replete with delightful sentiment
+and graphic pictures of rural nature. The objects of some of these poems
+obviously originate in a mistaken apprehension of the scope and purpose
+of poetry. Wordsworth was a curious observer of the workings of the
+human mind, and he sometimes confounded the pleasure derived from such
+metaphysical scrutiny with the pleasure derived from the presentation of
+poetical imaginings. Hence, what is questionable in his Idiot Boy, his
+Harry Gill, and some others.
+
+The Excursion, the most ambitious, and, with all its defects, the
+greatest of his works, was published in 1814. Here the poet was in his
+true element. Wordsworth’s genius was essentially moralising and
+reflective. Incidents and adventure had no charm for him. He arrived at
+his knowledge of character by an inductive process, not like
+Shakespeare, by the intuition of sympathy and imagination. He had no
+power of perceiving those light and graceful peculiarities of men and
+society, generally designated manners, vivid presentations of which
+constitute the charm of so many poets; but he was tremulously alive to
+the charms of inanimate nature.
+
+                        ‘——The sounding cataract
+            Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
+            The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
+            Their colours and their forms, were there to me
+            An appetite; a feeling and a love,
+            That had no need of a remoter charm,
+            By thought supplied, or any interest
+            Unborrowed from the eye.’
+
+His soul was full of lofty and imaginative conceptions of moral truths.
+He, therefore, after severe examination of his own poems, resolved to
+rest his claims to immortality on his composition of ‘a philosophical
+poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society; and to be entitled
+The Recluse, as having for its principal subject the sensations and
+opinions of a poet living in retirement.’
+
+How far this projected work has been advanced to completion, we have no
+means of knowing. A preliminary work, descriptive of the growth of his
+own powers, is, he has informed us, finished. The Recluse was to consist
+of three parts, the first and third containing chiefly meditations in
+the author’s own person; the intermediate introducing characters in a
+semi-dramatic form. It is to be regretted that his second part has alone
+been published, for Wordsworth’s genius was essentially undramatic. But
+notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the poet laboured from the
+selection of an uncongenial form, and his imperfect mastery of blank
+verse (a measure of which, perhaps. Milton alone among our English poets
+has developed the full measure, and varied power of modulation), the
+Excursion is, undoubtedly, a poem in the highest and truest sense of the
+word. The philosophical musings with which it abounds, are alike
+profound and elevating. And nothing can surpass the deep pathos of the
+episodes of Margaret and Ellen.
+
+The subsequent publications of Wordsworth may be briefly enumerated.
+Peter Bell and the Waggoner appeared within two years after the
+Excursion; and the White Doe of Rylstone soon followed them. A
+miscellaneous volume, of which the River Duddon was the most prominent,
+was published in 1820, and Yarrow Revisited, in 1835. Of all these
+works, it may suffice to say that they are highly characteristic of the
+author, and contain many beauties.
+
+Wordsworth’s poetry had long to contend against the conventional
+prepossessions of the literary world. From the beginning, however, his
+genius was felt by superior minds, and by a few young unprejudiced
+enthusiasts. His first admirers were literally a sect, and their
+admiration was, like the devotion of all sectarians, ardent and
+indiscriminating. They have, however, served as interpreters between him
+and the reading public, and thus his merits have come to be generally
+acknowledged. His writings lent a tone to the works of some who, like
+Shelley, dissented from his theory; and some who, like Byron,
+systematically scoffed at them. The public taste was thus insensibly
+approximated to them. Even yet, however, Wordsworth is probably more
+praised than liked. But the process will go on, and in time what is
+really valuable in his poems will take the place that is due to it in
+the land’s literature.
+
+Of the first writings of Wordsworth little need be said. Though they
+contain valuable thoughts, they are lumbering and sufficiently
+unreadable. The once furious controversy about his literary creed as
+heresy, need not be resuscitated; there were great errors on both sides.
+If his merits were individually depreciated, there was much in his
+seemingly supercilious re-assertion, rather than defence and explanation
+of his views, to extenuate the petulance with which he was often
+treated. As for his wanderings in the fields of politics and polemics,
+he is no exception to the general truth, that the warmest admirers of
+poets must regret their deviations into such uncongenial by-ways.
+
+The man was like his poetry; simple and therefore conservative in his
+tastes: self-reliant and sometimes repulsive from his austerity, yet
+with a rich fund of benevolence beneath the hard exterior. His frame was
+strong and sinewy from his habits of exercise; his look heavy, and, at
+first sight, unimpressive; but there was an inexpressible charm in his
+smile. He was the antithesis of the materialist and practical activity
+of the time. He did not understand, and therefore could not appreciate,
+the ennobling tendencies of the social and scientific career on which
+this age has entered—an age into which he had lingered, rather than to
+which he belonged. He looked out upon the world from his egotistic
+isolation rather as a critical spectator, than as a sympathiser. His
+views of it were rusted over with the conservative prejudices of the
+past. Railways he hated, and against them waged a sonneteering war.
+Although they were rapidly increasing the commerce, comforts,
+intercourse, affluence, and happiness of the whole community, they
+invaded the selfish solitude of the one man; and single-handed he did
+battle against the armies of invading tourists, who came to share with
+him the heathful pleasures of the mountain and the lake, in which he
+would have almost preserved a patent right for the few.
+
+This anti-natural spirit, however, did not always lead him astray from
+the right path. In the Excursion, were promulgated, for the first time,
+these views respecting the embruting tendency of the unintermitting toil
+of our factory labourers, the necessity of universal education by the
+State, and the vocation of the English race to colonise the earth, which
+have been so many zealous missionaries. We cannot better conclude these
+desultory remarks,—an imperfect prelude to the lip of a truly good and
+great man—than by quoting part of his weighty words in the Excursion,
+respecting National Education:—
+
+             ‘Oh! for the coming of that glorious time
+             When, prizing Knowledge as her noblest wealth
+             And best protection, this Imperial Realm,
+             While she exacts allegiance, shall admit
+             An obligation, on her part, to _teach_
+             Them who are born to serve her and obey;
+             Binding herself by statute to secure
+             To all her children whom her soil maintains,
+             The rudiments of Letters, and to inform
+             The mind with moral and religious truth,
+             Both understood and practised—so that none,
+             However destitute, be left to droop
+             By timely culture unsustained; or run
+             Into a wild disorder; or be forced
+             To drudge through weary life without the aid
+             Of intellectual implements and tools;
+             A savage horde among the civilised,
+             A servile band among the lordly free!
+
+                    ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
+
+             ‘The discipline of slavery is unknown
+             Amongst us—hence the more do we require
+             The discipline of virtue; order else
+             Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace.
+             Thus duties rising out of good possess’d,
+             And prudent caution, needful to avert
+             Impending evil, do alike require
+             That permanent provision should be made
+             For the whole people to be taught and trained.
+             So shall licentiousness and black resolve
+             Be rooted out, and virtuous habits take
+             Their place; and genuine piety descend,
+             Like an inheritance, from age to age.’
+
+These are indeed worthy to become Household words.
+
+
+
+
+                            FATHER AND SON.
+
+
+One evening in the month of March, 1798,—that dark time in Ireland’s
+annals whose memory (overlooking all minor subsequent _émeutes_) is
+still preserved among us, as ‘the year of the rebellion’—a lady and
+gentleman were seated near a blazing fire in the old-fashioned
+dining-room of a large lonely mansion. They had just dined; wine and
+fruit were on the table, both untouched, while Mr. Hewson and his wife
+sat silently gazing at the fire, watching its flickering light becoming
+gradually more vivid as the short Spring twilight faded into darkness.
+
+At length the husband poured out a glass of wine, drank it off, and then
+broke silence, by saying—
+
+“Well, well, Charlotte, these are awful times; there were ten men taken
+up to-day for burning Cotter’s house at Knockane; and Tom Dycer says
+that every magistrate in the country is a marked man.”
+
+Mrs. Hewson cast a frightened glance towards the windows, which opened
+nearly to the ground, and gave a view of a wide tree-besprinkled lawn,
+through whose centre a long straight avenue led to the high-road. There
+was also a footpath at either side of the house, branching off through
+close thickets of trees, and reaching the road by a circuitous route.
+
+“Listen, James!” she said, after a pause; “what noise is that?”
+
+“Nothing but the sighing of the wind among the trees. Come, wife, you
+must not give way to imaginary fears.”
+
+“But really I heard something like footsteps on the gravel, round the
+gable-end—I wish”—
+
+A knock at the parlour door interrupted her.
+
+“Come in.”
+
+The door opened, and Tim Gahan, Mr. Hewson’s confidential steward and
+right-hand man, entered, followed by a fair-haired delicate-looking boy
+of six years’ old, dressed in deep mourning.
+
+“Well, Gahan, what do you want?”
+
+“I ask your Honour’s pardon for disturbing you and the mistress; but I
+thought it right to come tell you the bad news I heard.”
+
+“Something about the rebels, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, Sir; I got a whisper just now that there’s going to be a great
+rising intirely, to-morrow; thousands are to gather before daybreak at
+Kilcrean bog, where I’m told they’ve a power of pikes hiding; and then
+they’re to march on and sack every house in the country. I’ll engage,
+when I heard it, I didn’t let grass grow under my feet, but came off
+straight to your Honour, thinking maybe you’d like to walk over this
+fine evening to Mr. Warren’s, and settle with him what’s best to be
+done.”
+
+“Oh, James! I beseech you, don’t think of going.”
+
+“Make your mind easy, Charlotte; I don’t intend it: not that I suppose
+there would be much risk; but, all things considered, I think I’m just
+as comfortable at home.”
+
+The steward’s brow darkened, as he glanced nervously towards the end
+window, which jutting out in the gable, formed a deep angle in the outer
+wall.
+
+“Of course ’tis just as your Honour pleases, but I’ll warrant you there
+would be no harm in going. Come, Billy,” he added, addressing the child,
+who by this time was standing close to Mrs. Hewson, “make your bow, and
+bid good night to master and mistress.”
+
+The boy did not stir, and Mrs. Hewson taking his little hand in hers,
+said—
+
+“You need not go home for half-an-hour, Gahan; stay and have a chat with
+the servants in the kitchen, and leave little Billy with me—and with the
+apples and nuts”—she added, smiling as she filled the child’s hands with
+fruit.
+
+“Thank you, Ma’am,” said the steward hastily. “I can’t stop—I’m in a
+hurry home, where I wanted to leave this brat to-night; but he _would_
+follow me. Come, Billy; come this minute, you young rogue.”
+
+Still the child looked reluctant, and Mr. Hewson said peremptorily—
+
+“Don’t go yet, Gahan; I want to speak to you by and by; and you know the
+mistress always likes to pet little Billy.”
+
+Without replying, the steward left the room; and the next moment his
+hasty footsteps resounded through the long flagged passage that led to
+the offices.
+
+“There’s something strange about Gahan, since his wife died,” remarked
+Mrs. Hewson. “I suppose ’tis grief for her that makes him look so
+darkly, and seem almost jealous when any one speaks to his child. Poor
+little Billy! your mother was a sore loss to you.”
+
+The child’s blue eyes filled with tears, and pressing closer to the
+lady’s side, he said:—
+
+“Old Peggy doesn’t wash and dress me as nicely as mammy used.”
+
+“But your father is good to you?”
+
+“Oh, yes, Ma’am, but he’s out all day busy, and I’ve no one to talk to
+me as mammy used; for Peggy is quite deaf, and besides she’s always busy
+with the pigs and chickens.”
+
+“I wish I had you, Billy, to take care of and to teach, for your poor
+mother’s sake.”
+
+“And so you may, Charlotte,” said her husband. “I’m sure Gahan, with all
+his odd ways, is too sensible a fellow not to know how much it would be
+for his child’s benefit to be brought up and educated by us, and the boy
+would be an amusement to us in this lonely house. I’ll speak to him
+about it before he goes home. Billy, my fine fellow, come here,” he
+continued, “jump up on my knee, and tell me if you’d like to live here
+always and learn to read and write.”
+
+“I would, Sir, if I could be with father too.”
+
+“So you shall;—and what about old Peggy?”
+
+The child paused—
+
+“I’d like to give her a pen’north of snuff and a piece of tobacco every
+week, for she said the other day that _that_ would make her quite
+happy.”
+
+Mr. Hewson laughed, and Billy prattled on, still seated on his knee;
+when a noise of footsteps on the ground, mingled with low suppressed
+talking was heard outside.
+
+“James, listen! there’s the noise again.”
+
+It was now nearly dark, but Mr. Hewson, still holding the boy in his
+arms, walked towards the window and looked out.
+
+“I can see nothing,” he said,—“stay—there are figures moving off among
+the trees, and a man running round to the back of the house—very like
+Gahan he is too!”
+
+Seizing the bell-rope, he rang it loudly, and said to the servant who
+answered his summons:—
+
+“Fasten the shutters and put up the bars, Connell; and then tell Gahan I
+want to see him.”
+
+The man obeyed; candles were brought, and Gahan entered the room.
+
+Mr. Hewson remarked that, though his cheeks were flushed, his lips were
+very white, and his bold dark eyes were cast on the ground.
+
+“What took you round the house just now, Tim?” asked his master, in a
+careless manner.
+
+“What took me round the house, is it? Why, then, nothing in life, Sir,
+but that just as I went outside the kitchen door to take a smoke, I saw
+the pigs, that Shaneen forgot to put up in their stye, making right for
+the mistress’s flower-garden; so I just put my _dudheen_, lighting as it
+was, into my pocket, and ran after them. I caught them on the grand walk
+under the end window, and indeed, Ma’am, I had my own share of work
+turning them back to their proper spear.”
+
+Gahan spoke with unusual volubility, but without raising his eyes from
+the ground.
+
+“Who were the people,” asked his master, “whom I saw moving through the
+western grove?”
+
+“People! your Honour—not a sign of any people moving there, I’ll be
+bound, barring the pigs.”
+
+“Then,” said Mr. Hewson, smiling, to his wife, “the miracle of Circe
+must have been reversed, and swine turned into men; for, undoubtedly,
+the dark figures I saw were human beings.”
+
+“Come, Billy,” said Gahan, anxious to turn the conversation, “will you
+come home with me now? I am sure ’twas very good of the mistress to give
+you all them fine apples.”
+
+Mrs. Hewson was going to propose Billy’s remaining, but her husband
+whispered:—“Wait till to-morrow.” So Gahan and his child were allowed to
+depart.
+
+Next morning the magistrates of the district were on the alert, and
+several suspicious looking men found lurking about, were taken up. A hat
+which fitted one of them was picked up in Mr. Hewson’s grove; the gravel
+under the end window bore many signs of trampling feet; and there were
+marks on the wall as if guns had rested against it. Gahan’s information
+touching the intended meeting at Kilcrean bog proved to be totally
+without foundation; and after a careful search not a single pike or
+weapon of any description could be found there. All these circumstances
+combined certainly looked suspicious; but, after a prolonged
+investigation, as no guilt could be actually brought home to Gahan, he
+was dismissed. One of his examiners, however, said privately, “I advise
+you take care of that fellow, Hewson. If I were in your place, I’d just
+trust him as far as I could throw him, and not an inch beyond.”
+
+An indolent hospitable Irish country gentleman, such as Mr. Hewson, is
+never without an always shrewd and often roguish prime minister, who
+saves his master the trouble of looking after his own affairs, and
+manages everything that is to be done in both the home and foreign
+departments,—from putting a new door on the pig-stye, to letting a farm
+of an hundred acres on lease. Now in this, or rather these capacities,
+Gahan had long served Mr. Hewson; and some seven years previous to the
+evening on which our story commences, he had strengthened the tie and
+increased his influence considerably by marrying Mrs. Hewson’s favourite
+and faithful maid. One child was the result of this union; and Mrs.
+Hewson, who had no family of her own, took much interest in little
+Billy,—more especially after the death of his mother, who, poor thing!
+the neighbours said, was not very happy, and would gladly, if she dared,
+have exchanged her lonely cottage for the easy service of her former
+mistress.
+
+Thus, though for a time Mr. and Mrs. Hewson regarded Gahan with some
+doubt, the feeling gradually wore away, and the steward regained his
+former influence.
+
+After the lapse of a few stormy months the rebellion was quelled: all
+the prisoners taken up were severally disposed of by hanging,
+transportation or acquittal, according to the nature and amount of the
+evidence brought against them; and the country became as peaceful as it
+is in the volcanic nature of our Irish soil ever to be.
+
+The Hewsons’ kindness towards Gahan’s child was steady and unchanged.
+They took him into their house, and gave him a plain but solid
+education; so that William, while yet a boy, was enabled to be of some
+use to his patron, and daily enjoyed more and more of his confidence.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another Evening, the twentieth anniversary of that with which this
+narrative commenced, came round. Mr. and Mrs. Hewson were still hale and
+active, dwelling in their hospitable home. About eight o’clock at night,
+Tim Gahan, now a stooping, grey-haired man, entered Mr. Hewson’s
+kitchen, and took his seat on the corner of the settle next the fire.
+
+The cook, directing a silent significant glance of compassion towards
+her fellow-servants, said:
+
+“Would you like a drink of cider, Tim, or will you wait and take a cup
+of tay with myself and Kitty?”
+
+The old man’s eyes were fixed on the fire, and a wrinkled hand was
+planted firmly on each knee, as if to check their involuntary trembling.
+“I’ll not drink anything this night, thank you kindly, Nelly,” he said,
+in a slow musing manner, dwelling long on each word.
+
+“Where’s Billy?” he asked, after a pause, in a quick hurried tone,
+looking up suddenly at the cook, with an expression in his eyes, which,
+as she afterwards said, ‘took away her breath.’
+
+“Oh, never heed Billy! I suppose he’s busy with the master.”
+
+“Where’s the use, Nelly,” said the coachman, “in hiding it from him?
+Sure, sooner or later he must know it. Tim,” he continued, “God knows
+’tis sorrow to my heart this blessed night to make yours sore,—but the
+truth is, that William has done what he oughtn’t to do to the man that
+was all one as a father to him.”
+
+“What has he done? what will you _dar_ say again my boy?”
+
+“Taken money, then,” replied the coachman, “that the master had marked
+and put by in his desk; for he suspected this some time past that gold
+was missing. This morning ’twas gone; a search was made, and the marked
+guineas were found with your son William.”
+
+The old man covered his face with his hands, and rocked himself to and
+fro.
+
+“Where is he now?” at length he asked, in a hoarse voice.
+
+“Locked up safe in the inner store-room; the master intends sending him
+to gaol early to-morrow morning.”
+
+“He will not,” said Gahan slowly. “Kill the boy that saved his life!—no,
+no.”
+
+“Poor fellow! the grief is setting his mind astray—and sure no wonder!”
+said the cook, compassionately.
+
+“I’m not astray!” cried the old man, fiercely. “Where’s the master?—take
+me to him.”
+
+“Come with me,” said the butler, “and I’ll ask him will he see you?”
+
+With faltering steps the father complied; and when they reached the
+parlour, he trembled exceedingly, and leant against the wall for
+support, while the butler opened the door, and said:
+
+“Gahan is here, Sir, and wants to know will you let him speak to you for
+a minute?”
+
+“Tell him to come in,” said Mr. Hewson, in a solemn tone of sorrow, very
+different from his ordinary cheerful voice.
+
+“Sir,” said the steward, advancing, “they tell me you are going to send
+my boy to prison,—is it true?”
+
+“Too true, indeed, Gahan. The lad who was reared in my house, whom my
+wife watched over in health, and nursed in sickness—whom we loved almost
+as if he were our own, has _robbed_ us, and that not once or twice, but
+many times. He is silent and sullen, too, and refuses to tell why he
+stole the money, which was never withheld from him when he wanted it. I
+can make nothing of him, and must only give him up to justice in the
+morning.”
+
+“No, Sir, no. The boy saved your life; you can’t take his.”
+
+“You’re raving, Gahan.”
+
+“Listen to me, Sir, and you won’t say so. You remember this night twenty
+years? I came here with my motherless child, and yourself and the
+mistress pitied us, and spoke loving words to him. Well for us all you
+did so! That night—little you thought it!—I was banded with them that
+were sworn to take your life. They were watching you outside the window,
+and I was sent to inveigle you out, that they might shoot you. A faint
+heart I had for the bloody business, for you were ever and always a good
+master to me; but I was under an oath to them that I darn’t break,
+supposing they ordered me to shoot my own mother. Well! the hand of God
+was over you, and you wouldn’t come with me. I ran out to them, and I
+said—‘Boys, if you want to shoot him, you must do it through the
+window,’ thinking they’d be afeard of that; but they weren’t—they were
+daring fellows, and one of them, sheltered by the angle of the window,
+took deadly aim at you. That very moment you took Billy on your knee,
+and I saw his fair head in a line with the musket. I don’t know exactly
+then what I said or did, but I remember I caught the man’s hand, threw
+it up, and pointed to the child. Knowing I was a determined man, I
+believe they didn’t wish to provoke me; so they watched you for a while,
+and when you didn’t put him down they got daunted, hearing the sound of
+soldiers riding by the road, and they stole away through the grove. Most
+of that gang swung on the gallows, but the last of them died this
+morning quietly in his bed. Up to yesterday he used to make me give him
+money,—sums of money to buy his silence—and it was for that I made my
+boy a thief. It was wearing out his very life. Often he went down on his
+knees to me, and said: ‘Father, I’d die myself sooner than rob my
+master, but I can’t see _you_ disgraced. Oh, let us fly the country!’
+Now, Sir, I have told you all—do what you like with me—send me to gaol,
+I deserve it—but spare my poor deluded innocent boy!”
+
+It would be difficult to describe Mr. Hewson’s feelings, but his wife’s
+first impulse was to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a few
+incoherent words of explanation she led him into the presence of his
+master, who, looking at him sorrowfully but kindly, said:
+
+“William, you have erred deeply, but not so deeply as I supposed. Your
+father has told me everything. I forgive him freely and you also.”
+
+The young man covered his face with his hands, and wept tears more
+bitter and abundant than he had ever shed since the day when he followed
+his mother to the grave. He could say little, but he knelt on the
+ground, and clasping the kind hand of her who had supplied to him that
+mother’s place, he murmured;
+
+“Will _you_ tell him I would rather die than sin again.”
+
+Old Gahan died two years afterwards, truly penitent, invoking blessings
+on his son and on his benefactors; and the young man’s conduct, now no
+longer under evil influence, was so steady and so upright, that his
+adopted parents felt that their pious work was rewarded, and that, in
+William Gahan, they had indeed a son.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+                Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’
+                                Conducted
+                           BY CHARLES DICKENS.
+                        _Price 2d., Stamped 3d._,
+
+                         THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
+                                   OF
+                             CURRENT EVENTS.
+
+
+ _The Number, containing a history of the present month, will be issued
+                          with the Magazines._
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+ ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
+ ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
+     single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
+     1^{st}).
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78174 ***
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+  <body>   
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78174 ***</div>
+
+<div class='tnotes covernote'>
+
+<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p>
+
+<p class='c000'>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='double titlepage'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c001'>
+    <div>“<i>Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS.</i>”—<span class='sc'>Shakespeare.</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>
+  <h1 class='c002'>HOUSEHOLD WORDS.<br> <span class='xlarge'>A WEEKLY JOURNAL.</span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c001'>
+    <div><span class='large'>CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'>N<sup>o. 9.</sup>]&#8196; &#8196; &#8196; SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1850.&#8196; &#8196; &#8196; [Price 2<i>d.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c004'>THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.</h2>
+</div>
+<h3 class='c005'>IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p class='c006'>It was not often that anything happened to
+enliven the village of Bleaburn, in Yorkshire:
+but there was a day in the summer of 1811,
+when the inhabitants were roused from their
+apathy, and hardly knew themselves. A
+stranger was once heard to say, after some
+accident had compelled him to pass through
+Bleaburn, that he saw nothing there but a
+blacksmith asleep, and a couple of rabbits
+hung up by the heels. That the blacksmith was
+wholly asleep at midday might indicate that
+there was a public house in the place; but,
+even there, in that liveliest and most intellectual
+spot in a country village of those days,—the
+ale-house kitchen—the people sat half
+asleep. Sodden with beer, and almost without
+ideas and interests, the men of the place
+let indolence creep over them; and there
+they sat, as quiet a set of customers as ever
+landlord had to deal with. For one thing,
+they were almost all old or elderly men. The
+boys were out after the rabbits on the neighbouring
+moor; and the young men were far
+away. A recruiting party had met with unusual
+success, for two successive years—(now some
+time since)—in inducing the men of Bleaburn
+to enter the king’s service. In a place where
+nobody was very wise, and everybody was
+very dull, the drum and fife, the soldierly
+march, the scarlet coats, the gay ribbons, the
+drink and the pay, had charms which can
+hardly be conceived of by dwellers in towns,
+to whose eyes and ears something new is presented
+every day. Several men went from
+Bleaburn to be soldiers, and Bleaburn was
+declared to be a loyal place; and many who
+had never before heard of its existence, spoke
+of it now as a bright example of attachment
+and devotion to the throne in a most disloyal
+age. While, throughout the manufacturing
+districts, the people were breaking machinery—while
+on these very Yorkshire hills they
+were drilling their armed forces—while the
+moneyed men were grumbling at the taxes,
+and at the war in Spain, whence, for a long
+time, they had heard of many disasters and
+no victories; and while the hungry labourers
+in town and country were asking how they
+were to buy bread when wheat was selling
+at 95<i>s.</i> the quarter, and while there were
+grave apprehensions of night-burnings of the
+corn magazines, the village of Bleaburn, which
+could not be seen without being expressly
+sought, was sending up strong men out of its
+cleft of the hills, to fight the battles of their
+country.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Perhaps the chief reason of the loyalty, as
+well as the quietness of Bleaburn, was its lying
+in a cleft of the hills; in a fissure so deep and
+narrow, that a traveller in a chaise might
+easily pass near it without perceiving that
+there was any settlement at all, unless it was
+in the morning when the people were lighting
+their fires, or on the night of such a day as
+that on which our story opens. In the one
+case, the smoke issuing from the cleft might
+hint of habitations: in the other, the noise
+and ruddy light would leave no doubt of
+there being somebody there. There was, at
+last, a victory in Spain. The news of the
+battle of Albuera had arrived; and it spread
+abroad over the kingdom, lighting up bonfires
+in the streets, and millions of candles in
+windows, before people had time to learn at
+what cost this victory was obtained, and how
+very nearly it had been a fatal defeat, or anything
+about it, in short. If they had known
+the fact that while our allies, the Spaniards,
+Portuguese, and Germans, suffered but moderately,
+the British were slaughtered as
+horribly as they could have been under
+defeat: so that, out of six thousand men
+who went up the hill, only fifteen hundred
+were left standing at the top, the people
+might have let their bonfires burn out as
+soon as they would, and might have put out
+their candles that mourners might weep in
+darkness. But they burst into rejoicing first,
+and learned details afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Every boy in Bleaburn forgot the rabbits
+that day. All were busy getting in wood for the
+bonfire. Not a swinging shutter, not a loose
+pale, not a bit of plank, or ricketty gate, or
+shaking footbridge escaped their clutches.
+Where they hid their stock during the day,
+nobody knew; but there was a mighty pile
+at dusk. It was then that poor Widow
+Slaney, stealing out to close her shutter,
+because she could not bear the sound of
+rejoicing, nor the sight of her neighbours
+abroad in the ruddy light, found that her
+shutter was gone. All day, she had been in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>the loft, lest she should see anybody; for the
+clergyman had been to tell her that her son
+Harry had been shot as a deserter. She had
+refused to believe it at first; but Mr. Finch
+had explained to her that the soldiers in
+Spain had suffered so cruelly from hunger,
+and want of shoes and of every comfort, that
+hundreds of them had gone into the towns to
+avoid starvation; and then, when the towns
+were taken by the allies, such British soldiers
+as were found, and were declared to have no
+business there, were treated as deserters, for
+an example. It was some comfort that Mr.
+Finch did not think that Harry had done
+any thing very wicked; but Mrs. Slaney
+could not meet any one, nor bear the flaring
+light on her ceiling; so she went up to the
+loft again, and cried all night in the dark.
+Farmer Neale was the wonder of the place
+this evening. He was more gracious than
+anybody, though there was nobody who was
+not, at all times, afraid of him. When he was
+seen striding down the steep narrow street, the
+little boys hid themselves. They had not
+been able to resist altogether the temptation
+of dry thorns in his fences, and of the chips
+which had still lain about where his winter
+felling had been done, and they concluded he
+was come now to give them a rough handling:
+but they found themselves mistaken. He
+was in high good-humour, sending such boys
+as he could catch with orders upon his people
+at home for a tar-barrel and a whole load of
+faggots.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“’Tis hardly natural, though, is it?” said
+Mrs. Billiter to Ann Warrender. “It does
+not seem natural for any father to rejoice in
+a victory when his own son has lost his best
+leg there.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Has Jack Neale lost his leg? O! what a
+thing!” exclaimed Ann Warrender. She was
+going on, but she perceived that the farmer
+had heard her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes,” said he, without any sound of heart-pain
+in his voice. “Jack has lost his right
+leg, Mr. Finch tells me. And I tell Mr.
+Finch, it is almost a pity the other did not
+go after it. He deserved no more good of
+either of them when he had let them do such
+a thing as carry him off from his home and
+his duty.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“How <i>can</i> you, Mr. Neale?” burst out both
+the women.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“How can I do what, my dears? One
+thing I can do; and that is, see when an
+undutiful son is properly punished. He must
+live on his pension, however: he can be of no
+use to me, now; and I can’t be burdened with
+a cripple at home.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I don’t think he will ask you,” Mrs. Billiter
+said. “He was none so happy there before as
+to want to come again.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Ann Warrender told this speech to her
+father afterwards as the severest she had ever
+heard from Mrs. Billiter; and they agreed
+that it was very bold, considering that
+Billiter was one of Farmer Neale’s labourers.
+But they also agreed that it was enough to
+stir up flesh and blood to see a man made
+hearty and good-humoured by misfortune
+having befallen a son who had offended him.
+After all, poor Jack Neale had run away only
+because he could not bear his father’s tyranny.
+Two more of the Bleaburn recruits had suffered—had
+been killed outright; one a widower,
+who, in his first grief, had left his babes with
+their grandmother, and gone to the wars;
+and the other, an ignorant lout, who had
+been entrapped because he was tall and
+strong; had been fuddled with beer, flattered
+with talk of finery, and carried off before he
+could recover his slow wits. He was gone,
+and would soon be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I say, Jem,” said Farmer Neale, when he
+met the village idiot, Jem Johnson, shuffling
+along the street, staring at the lights: “you’re
+the wise man, after all: you’re the best off,
+my man.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Widow Johnson, who was just behind, put
+her arm in poor Jem’s, and tried to make
+him move on. She was a stern woman; but
+she was as much disgusted at Farmer Neale’s
+hardness as her tender-hearted daughter,
+Mrs. Billiter, or anyone else.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Good day, Mrs. Johnson,” said Neale.
+“You are better off for a son than I am,
+after all. Yours is not such a fool as to go
+and get his leg shot off, like my precious son.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mrs. Johnson looked him hard in the face,
+as she would a madman or a drunken man
+whom she meant to intimidate; and compelled
+her son to pass on. In truth, Farmer
+Neale was drunk with evil passions; in such
+high spirits, that, when he found that the
+women—mothers of sons—would have nothing
+to say to him to-day, he went to the public house,
+where he was pretty sure of being
+humoured by the men who depended on his
+employment for bread, and on his temper for
+much of the peace of their lives.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On his way he met the clergyman, and proposed
+to him to make a merry evening of it.
+“If you will just step in at the Plough and
+Harrow, Sir,” said he, “and tell us all you
+have heard about the victory, it will be the
+finest thing—just what the men want. And
+we will drink your health, and the King’s,
+and Marshal Beresford’s, who won the victory.
+It is a fine occasion, Sir; an occasion to confirm
+the loyalty of the people. You will come
+with me, Sir?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“No,” replied Mr. Finch, “I have to go
+among another sort of people, Neale. If you
+have spirits to make merry to-night, I own to
+you I have not. Victories that cost so much,
+do not make me very merry.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, fie, Mr. Finch! How are we to keep
+up our character for loyalty, if you fail us—if
+you put on a black face in the hour of
+rejoicing?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Just come with me,” said Mr. Finch, “and
+I can show you cause enough for heaviness of
+heart. In our small village, there is mourning
+in many houses. Three of our late neighbours
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>are dead, and one of them in such a way as
+will break his mother’s heart.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“And another has lost a leg, you are
+thinking. Out with it, Sir, and don’t be
+afraid of my feelings about it. Well, it is
+certain that Bleaburn has suffered more than
+is the fair share of one place; but we must be
+loyal.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“And so,” said Mr. Finch, “you are going to
+prepare more of your neighbours to enlist, the
+next time a recruiting party comes this way.
+Oh, I don’t say that men are not to be
+encouraged to serve their king and country:
+but it seems to me that our place has done its
+duty well enough for the present. I wonder
+that you, as a farmer, do not consider the
+rates, and dread the consequences of having
+the women and children on our hands, if our
+able men get killed and maimed in the wars.
+I should have thought that the price of
+bread—”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“There, now, don’t let us talk about that!”
+said Neale; “You know that is a subject that
+we never agree about. We will let alone the
+price of bread for to-day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Neale might easily forget this sore subject,
+and every other that was disagreeable to
+other people, in the jollity at the Plough and
+Harrow, where there was an uproar of tipsy
+mirth for the greater part of the night. But
+Mr. Finch found little mirth among the
+people left at home in the cottages. The poor
+women, who lived hardly, knitting for eighteen
+hours out of the twenty-four, and finding
+themselves less and less able to overtake the
+advancing prices of the necessaries of life, had
+no great store of spirits to spend in rejoicing
+over victories, or anything else; and among
+them there was one who loved Jack Neale,
+and was beloved by him; and others, who
+respected Widow Slaney, and could not countenance
+noisy mirth while she was sunk in
+horror and grief. They were hungry enough,
+too, to look upon young Slaney’s death as
+something of an outrage. If hunger and
+nakedness had driven him into the shelter of
+a town, to avoid dying by the roadside, it
+seemed to them that being shot was a hard
+punishment for the offence. Mr. Finch endeavoured
+to show, in hackneyed language,
+what the dereliction of duty really was, and
+how intolerable during warfare; but the end
+of it was that the neighbours pitied the poor
+young man the more, the more they dwelt
+upon his fate.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As it turned out, Bleaburn made more sacrifices
+to the war than those of the Battle of
+Albuera, even before drum or fife was again
+heard coming over the moor. The place had
+not been healthy before; and illness set in
+somewhat seriously after the excitements of
+the bonfire night. The cold and wet spring
+had discouraged the whole kingdom about the
+harvest; and in Bleaburn it had done something
+more. Where there are stone houses, high
+winds aggravate the damage of wet weather.
+The driven rain had been sucked in by the
+stone; and more wet was absorbed from the
+foundations, when the swollen stream had
+rushed down the hollow, and overflowed into
+the houses, and the pigstyes, and every empty
+place into which it could run. Where there
+were glass windows and fires in the rooms,
+the panes were dewy, and the walls shiny
+with trickling drops; and in the cottages
+where there were no fires, the inhabitants
+were so chilly, that they stuffed up every
+broken window-pane, and closed all chinks by
+which air might enter, in hopes of keeping
+themselves warm; but the floors were never
+really dry that summer, and even the beds
+had a chilly feel. The best shoes showed
+mould between one Sunday and another; and
+the meal in the bin (of those who were so
+fortunate as to have a meal-bin) did not keep
+well. Mr. Finch had talked a great deal
+about what was to be expected from summer
+weather and the harvest; but as the weeks
+went on, there were graver doubts about the
+harvest than there had been even while
+people were complaining at Easter, and
+shaking their heads at Whitsuntide; and
+when a few days of hot weather came at last,
+the people of Bleaburn did not know how to
+bear them at all. The dead rats and decaying
+matter which had been deposited by the
+spring overflow, made such a stench that
+people shut their windows closer than ever.
+Their choice now was between being broiled
+in the heat which was reflected from the sides
+of the cleft in which they lived, and being
+shut into houses where the walls, floors, and
+windows were reeking with steam.  The
+women, who sat still all day, knitting, had
+little chance for health in such abodes; and
+still less had such of the men as, already
+weakened by low diet, had surfeited themselves
+with beer on the night of the rejoicing,
+and broiled themselves in the heat of the
+bonfire, and fevered mind and body with
+shouting, and singing, and brawling, and been
+brought home to be laid upon musty straw,
+under a somewhat damp blanket.  This
+excess was hardly more pernicious to some
+than depression was to others. Those of the
+people at Bleaburn that had received heart-wounds
+from the Battle of Albuera, thought
+they could never care again for any personal
+troubles or privations; but they were not
+long in learning that they now suffered more
+than before from low diet and every sort
+of discomfort. They blamed themselves for
+being selfish; but this self-blame again made
+the matter worse.  They had lost a hope
+which had kept them up. They were not
+only in grief, but thoroughly discouraged.
+Their gloom was increased by seeing that a
+change had come over Mr. Finch.  On
+Sundays he looked so anxious, that it was
+enough to lower people’s spirits to go to
+church. His very voice was dismal, as he
+read the service; his sermon grew shorter
+almost every Sunday: and it was about
+everything that the people cared least about
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>He gave them discussions of doctrine, or dry
+moral essays, which were as stones to them
+when they wanted the bread of consolation
+and the wine of hope. Here and there,
+women said it really was too much for their
+spirits to go to church, and they staid away;
+and the boys and girls took the opportunity
+to go spying upon the rabbits. It was such
+boys and girls that gave news of Mr. Finch
+during the week. Every morning, he was so
+busy over his books in his study, that it was
+no easy matter to get a sight of him; and
+every fine afternoon he went quietly, by a bye-path,
+to a certain spot on the moor, where an
+ostler from the Cross Keys at O—— was awaiting
+him with the horse on which he took long
+rides over the hills. Mr. Finch was taking care
+of his health.</p>
+
+<h3 class='c008'>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p class='c006'>“Can I have a chaise?” inquired a young
+lady, on being set down by the coach at the
+Cross Keys, at O——.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, ma’am, certainly,” replied the neat
+landlady.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“How far do you call it to Bleaburn?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“To Bleaburn, ma’am! It is six miles.
+But, ma’am, you are not going to Bleaburn,
+surely.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Indeed I am. Why not?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Because of the fever, ma’am. There never
+was anything heard of like it. You cannot
+go there, I assure you, ma’am, and I could
+not think of sending a chaise there. Neither
+of my post-boys would go.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“One of them shall take me as near as is
+safe, then. I dare say we shall find somebody
+who will take care of my little trunk till I
+can send for it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“The cordon would take care of your trunk,
+if that were all, but—”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“The what?” interrupted the young lady.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“The cordon, they call it, ma’am. To
+preserve ourselves, we have set people to
+watch on the moor above, to prevent anybody
+from Bleaburn coming among us, to spread
+the fever. Ma’am, it is worse than anything
+you ever heard of.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Not worse than the plague,” thought Mary
+Pickard, in whose mind now rose up all she
+had read and heard of the horrors of the great
+plague, and all the longing she had felt when
+a child to have been a clergyman at such a
+time, or at least, a physician, to give comfort
+to numbers in their extremity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Indeed, ma’am,” resumed the landlady,
+“you cannot go there. By what I hear, there
+are very few now that are not dead, or down
+in the fever.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Then they will want me the more,” said
+Mary Pickard. “I must go and see my aunt.
+I wrote to her that I should go; and she may
+want me more than I thought.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Have you an aunt living at Bleaburn?”
+asked the landlady, in some surprise. “I did
+not know that there was any lady living at
+Bleaburn. I thought they had been all poor
+people there.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I believe my aunt is poor,” said Mary. “I
+have heard nothing of her for several years, except
+merely that she was living at Bleaburn.
+She had the education of a gentlewoman; but
+I believe her husband became a common
+labourer before he died. I am from America,
+and my name is Mary Pickard, and my aunt’s
+name is Johnson; and I shall be glad if you
+can tell me anything about her, if this fever
+is really raging as you say. I must see her
+before I go home to America.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You see, ma’am, if you go,” said the landlady,
+contemplating the little trunk, “you will
+not be able to come away again while the
+fever lasts.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“And you think I shall not have clothes
+enough,” said Mary, smiling. “I packed my
+box for a week only, but I dare say I can
+manage. If everybody was ill, I could wash
+my clothes myself. I have done such a thing
+with less reason. Or, I could send to London
+for more. I suppose one can get at a post-office.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Through the cordon, I dare say you might,
+ma’am. But, really, I don’t know that there is
+anybody at Bleaburn that can write a letter,
+except the clergyman and the doctor and one
+or two more.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“My aunt can,” said Mary, “and it is
+because she does not answer our letters, that
+I am so anxious to see her. You did not tell
+me whether you know her name,—Johnson.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“A widow, I think you said, ma’am.” And
+the landlady called to the ostler to ask him if
+he knew anything of a Widow Johnson, who
+lived at Bleaburn. Will Ostler said there was
+a woman of that name who was the mother of
+Silly Jem. “Might that be she?” Mary had
+never heard of Silly Jem; but when she
+found that Widow Johnson had a daughter,
+some years married, that she had white hair,
+and strong black eyes, and a strong face
+altogether, and that she seldom spoke, she
+had little doubt that one so like certain of her
+relations was her aunt. The end of it was
+that Mary went to Bleaburn. She ordered
+the chaise herself, leaving it to the landlady to
+direct the post-boy where to set her down;
+she appealed to the woman’s good feelings to
+aid her if she should find that wine, linen or
+other comforts were necessary at Bleaburn,
+and she could not be allowed to come and buy
+them: explained that she was far from rich,
+and told the exact sum which she at present
+believed she should be justified in spending
+on behalf of the sick; and gave a reference to
+a commercial house in London. She did not
+tell—and indeed she gave only a momentary
+thought to it herself—that the sum of money
+she had mentioned was that which she had
+saved up to take her to Scotland, to see
+some friends of her family, and travel through
+the Highlands. As she was driven off from
+the gateway of the Cross Keys, nodding and
+smiling from the chaise window in turning
+the corner, the landlady ceased from commanding
+the post-boy on no account to go
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>beyond the brow, and said to herself that this
+Miss Pickard was the most wilful young lady
+she had ever known, but that she could not
+help liking her, too. She did not seem to
+value her life any more than a pin; and yet
+she appeared altogether cheerful and sensible.
+If the good woman had been able to see into
+Mary’s heart, she would have discovered that
+she had the best reason in the world for
+valuing life very much indeed: but she had
+been so accustomed, all her life, to help everybody
+that needed it, that she naturally went
+straight forward into the business, without
+looking at difficulties or dangers, on the right
+hand or the left.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mary never, while she lived, forgot this
+drive. Her tone of mind was, no doubt, high,
+though she was unconscious of it. It was a
+splendid August evening, and she had never
+before seen moorland. In America, she had
+travelled among noble inland forests, and a
+hard granite region near the coasts of New
+England: but the wide-spreading brown and
+green moorland, with its pools of clear brown
+water glittering in the evening sunshine, and
+its black cocks popping out of the heather,
+and running into the hollows, was quite new
+to her. She looked down, two or three times,
+into a wooded dell where grey cottages were
+scattered among the coppices, and a little
+church tower rose above them; but the
+swelling ridges of the moor, with the tarns
+between, immediately attracted her eye again.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Surely,” thought she, “the cordon will let
+me walk on the moor in the afternoons, if I
+go where I cannot infect any body. With a
+walk in such places as these every day, I am
+sure I could go through any thing.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This seemed very rational beforehand. It
+never entered Mary’s head that for a long
+while to come, she should never once have
+leisure for a walk.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yon’s the cordon,” said the post-boy, at
+last, pointing with his whip.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What do you understand by a cordon?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Them people that you may see there. I
+don’t know why they call them so; for I
+don’t hear that they do anything with a cord.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Perhaps it is because there is a French
+word—<i>cordon</i>—that means any thing that
+encloses any other thing. They would call
+your hat band a cordon, and an officer’s sash,
+and a belt of trees round a park. So, I suppose
+these people surround poor Bleaburn
+and let nobody out.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“May be so,” said the man, “but I don’t see
+why we should go to the French for our
+words or anything else, when we have everything
+better of our own. For my part, I
+shall be beholden to the French for no word,
+now I know of it. I shall call them people
+the watch, or something of that like.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I think I will call them messengers,” said
+Mary: “and that will sound least terrible to
+the people below. They do go on errands, do
+not they,—and take and send parcels and
+messages?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“They are paid to do it, Miss: but they
+put it upon one another, or get out of the
+way, if they can,—they are so afraid of the
+fever, you see.——I think we must stop here,
+please, Miss. I could go a little nearer, only,
+you see—.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I see that you are afraid of the fever too,”
+said Mary, with a smile, as she jumped out
+upon the grass. One of the sentinels was
+within hail. Glad of the relief from the
+dulness of his watch, he came with alacrity,
+took charge of the little trunk, and offered to
+show the lady, from the brow, the way down
+the hollow to the village.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The post-boy stood, with his money in his
+hand, watching the retreating lady, till, under
+a sudden impulse, he hailed her. Looking
+round, she saw him running towards her,
+casting a momentary glance back at his horses.
+He wanted to try once more to persuade her
+to return to O——. He should be so happy
+to drive her back, out of the way of danger.
+His employer would be so glad to see her
+again! When he perceived that it was no
+use talking, he went on touching his hat, while
+he begged her to take back the shilling she
+had just given him. It would make his mind
+easier, he said, not to take money for bringing
+any lady to such a place. Mary saw that this
+was true; and she took back the shilling, promising
+that it should be spent in the service
+of some poor sick person.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As Mary descended into the hollow, she
+was struck with the quiet beauty of the scene.
+The last sun-blaze rushed level along the upper
+part of the cleft, while the lower part lay in
+deep shadow. While she was descending a
+steep slope, with sometimes grass, and sometimes
+grey rock, by the roadside, the opposite
+height rose precipitous; and from chinks in
+its brow, little drips of water fell or oozed
+down, calling into life ferns, and grass, and
+ivy, in every moist crevice. Near the top,
+there were rows of swallow-holes; and the
+birds were at this moment all at play in the
+last glow of the summer day, now dipping
+into the shaded dell, down to the very surface
+of the water, and then sprinkling the
+grey precipice with their darting shadows.
+Below, when Mary reached the bridge, she
+thought all looked shadowy in more senses
+than one. The first people she saw were some
+children, excessively dirty, who were paddling
+about in a shallow pool, which was now none
+of the sweetest, having been filled by the
+spring overflow, and gradually drying up ever
+since. Mary called to these children from
+the bridge, to ask where Widow Johnson lived.
+She could learn nothing more than that she
+must proceed; for, if the creatures had not
+been almost too boorish to speak, she could
+have made nothing of the Yorkshire dialect,
+on the first encounter. In the narrow street,
+every window seemed closed, and even the
+shutters of some. She could see nobody in
+the first two or three shops that she passed;
+but, at the baker’s, a woman was sitting at
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>work. On the entrance of a stranger, she
+looked up in surprise; and, when at the
+door, to point out the turn down to Widow
+Johnson’s, she remained there, with her work
+on her arm, to watch the lady up the street.
+The doctor, quickening his pace, came up,
+saying,</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Who was that you were speaking to?—A
+lady wanting Widow Johnson! What a
+very extraordinary thing! Did you tell her
+the fever had got there?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, Sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What did she say?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“She said she must go and nurse them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Do you mean that she is going to stay
+here?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I suppose so, by her talking of nursing
+them. She says Widow Johnson is her aunt.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“O! that’s it! I have heard that Mrs.
+Johnson came of a good family. But what a
+good creature this must be—that is, if she
+knows what she is about. If she is off before
+morning, I shall think it was a vision, dropped
+down out of the clouds. Eh?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“She is not handsome enough to be an angel,
+or anything of that kind,” said the baker’s wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“O! isn’t she? I did not see her face. But
+it is all the better, if she is not very like an
+angel. She is all the more likely to stay and
+nurse the Johnsons. Upon my word, they
+are lucky people if she does. I must go and
+pay my respects to her presently.—Do look
+now—at the doors all along the street, on both
+sides the way! I have not seen so many people
+at once for weeks past;—for, you know, I
+have no time to go to church in these days.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You would not see many people, if you
+went. See! some of the children are following
+her! It is long since they have seen a young
+lady, in a white gown, and with a smile on
+her face, in our street. There she goes, past
+the corner; she has taken the right turn.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I will just let her get the meeting over,
+and settle herself a little,” said the doctor;
+“and then I will go and pay my respects to
+her.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The little rabble of dirty children followed
+Mary round the corner, keeping in the middle
+of the lane, and at some distance behind.
+When she turned to speak to them, they
+started and fled, as they might have done, if
+she had been a ghost. But when she laughed,
+they returned cautiously; and all their brown
+forefingers pointed the same way at once,
+when she made her final inquiry about which
+was the cottage she wanted. Two little boys
+were pushed forward by the rest; and it
+transpired that these were grandchildren of
+Widow Johnson.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Is she your granny?” said Mary. “Then,
+I am your cousin. Come with me; and if
+granny is very much surprised to see me, you
+must tell her that I am your cousin Mary.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The boys, however, had no notion of entering
+the cottage. They slipped away, and hid
+themselves behind it; and Mary had to introduce
+herself.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After knocking in vain for some time, she
+opened the door, and looked in. No one was
+in the room but a man, whom she at once
+recognised for Silly Jem. He was half-standing,
+half-sitting, against the table by the wall,
+rolling his head from side to side. By no
+mode of questioning could Mary obtain a word
+from him. The only thing he did was to
+throw a great log of wood on the fire, when
+she observed what a large fire he had. She
+tried to take it off again; but this he would
+not permit. The room was insufferably hot
+and close. The only window was beside the
+door; so that there was no way of bringing a
+current of fresh air through the room. Mary
+tried to open the window; but it was not
+made to open, except that a small pane at the
+top, three inches square, went upon hinges.
+As soon as Mary had opened it, however,
+poor Jem went and shut it. Within this
+kitchen, was a sort of closet for stores; and
+this was the whole of the lower floor. Mary
+opened one other door, and found within it a
+steep, narrow stair, down which came a sickening
+puff of hot, foul air. She went up softly,
+and Jem slammed the door behind her. It
+seemed as if it was the business of his life to
+shut everything.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Groping her way, Mary came to a small
+chamber, which she surveyed for an instant
+from the stair, before showing herself within.
+There was no ceiling; and long cobwebs
+hung from the rafters. A small window, two
+feet from the floor, and curtained with a
+yellow and tattered piece of muslin, was the
+only break in the wall. On the deal table
+stood a phial or two, and a green bottle, which
+was presently found to contain rum. A
+turn-up bedstead, raised only a foot from the
+floor, was in a corner; and on it lay some
+one who was very restless, feebly throwing off
+the rug, which was immediately replaced by
+a sleepy woman who dozed between times in
+a chair that boasted a patchwork cushion.
+Mary doubted whether the large black eyes
+which stared forth from the pillow had any
+sense in them. She went to see.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Aunty,” said she, going to the bed, and
+gently taking one of the wasted hands that
+lay outside. “I am come to nurse you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The poor patient made a strong effort to
+collect herself, and to speak. She did not
+want anybody. She should do very well.
+This was no place for strangers. She was
+too ill to see strangers, and so on; but, from
+time to time, a few wandering words about
+her knowing best how to choose a husband
+for herself—her having a right to marry as
+she pleased—or of insisting that her relations
+would go their own way in the world, and
+leave her hers—showed Mary that she was
+recognised, and what feelings she had to deal
+with.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“She knows where I came from; but she
+takes me for my mother or my grandmother,”
+thought she. “If she grows clear in mind, we
+shall be friends on our own account. If she
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>remains delirious, she will become used to the
+sight of me. I must take matters into my
+own hands at once.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The first step was difficult. Coolness and
+fresh air were wanted above everything. But
+there was no chimney; the window would
+not open; poor Jem would not let any door
+remain open for a moment; and the sleepy
+neighbour was one of those who insist upon
+warm bedclothes, large fires, and hot spirit-and-water,
+in fever cases. She was got rid of
+by being paid to find somebody who would go
+for Mary’s trunk, and bring it here before
+dark. She did her best to administer another
+dose of rum before she tied on her bonnet; but
+as the patient turned away her head with
+disgust, Mary interposed her hand. The
+dram was offered to her, and, as she would
+not have it, the neighbour showed the only
+courtesy then possible, by drinking Mary’s
+health, and welcome to Bleaburn. The woman
+had some sharpness. She could see that if she
+took Jem with her, and put the trunk on his
+shoulder, she should get the porter’s fee herself,
+instead of giving it to some rude boy;
+and, as Mary observed, would be doing a
+kindness to Jem in taking him for a pleasant
+evening walk. Thus the coast was cleared.
+In little more than half-an-hour they would
+be back. Mary made the most of her time.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>She set the doors below wide open, and
+lowered the fire. She would fain have put on
+some water to boil, for it appeared to her that
+everybody and everything wanted washing
+extremely. But she could find no water, but
+some which seemed to have been used—which
+was, at all events, not fit for use now. For
+water she must wait till somebody came.
+About air, she did one thing more—a daring
+thing. She had a little diamond ring on her
+finger. With this, without noise and quickly,
+she cut so much of two small panes of the
+chamber-window as to be able to take them
+clean out; and then she rubbed the neighbouring
+panes bright enough to hide, as she
+hoped, an act which would be thought mad.
+When she looked round again at Aunty, she
+could fancy that there was a somewhat clearer
+look about the worn face, and a little less
+dulness in the eye. But this might be because
+she herself felt less sick now that fresh air
+was breathing up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was something else upon the stairs—the
+tread of some one coming up. It was
+the doctor. He said he came to pay his
+respects to the lady before him, as well as to
+visit his patient. It was no season for losing
+time, and doctor and nurse found in a minute
+that they should agree very well about the
+treatment of the patient. Animated by finding
+that he should no longer be wholly alone in his
+terrible wrestle with disease and death, the
+doctor did things which he could not have
+believed he should have courage for. He even
+emptied out the rum-bottle, and hurled it
+away into the bed of the stream. The last
+thing he did was to turn up his cuffs, and
+actually bring in two pails of water with his
+own hands. He promised (and kept his
+promise) to send his boy with a supply of
+vinegar, and a message to the neighbour that
+she was wanted elsewhere, that Mary might
+have liberty to refresh the patient, without
+being subject to the charge of murdering her.
+“A charge, however,” said he, “which I fully
+expect will be brought against any one of us
+who knows how to nurse. I confess they
+have cowed me. In sheer despair, I have let
+them take their own way pretty much. But
+now we must see what can be done.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes,” said Mary. “It is fairly our turn
+now. We must try how we can cow the fever.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c004'>SPRING-TIME IN THE COURT.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>They say the Spring has come again!</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>There is no Spring-time here;</div>
+      <div class='line'>In this dark, reeking court, there seems</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>No change throughout the year:</div>
+      <div class='line'>Except, sometimes, ’tis bitter cold,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Or else ’tis hot and foul;</div>
+      <div class='line'>How hard it is, in such a place,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>To feel one has a soul!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>They say the Spring has come again!</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>I scarce believe ’tis so;</div>
+      <div class='line'>For where’s the sun, and gentle breeze,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>That make the primrose blow?</div>
+      <div class='line'>Oh, would that I could lead my child</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Over the meadows green,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And see him playing with the flowers</div>
+      <div class='line in2'><i>His</i> eyes have never seen!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>His toys are but an oyster-shell,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Or piece of broken delf;</div>
+      <div class='line'>His playground is the gulley’s side,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>With outcasts like himself!</div>
+      <div class='line'><i>I</i> used to play on sunny banks,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Or else by pleasant streams;</div>
+      <div class='line'>How oft—oh, God be thanked! how oft—</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>I see them in my dreams.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>I used to throw my casement wide,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>To breathe the morning’s breath;</div>
+      <div class='line'>But now I keep the window close—</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>The air smells so like death!</div>
+      <div class='line'>Once only, on my window-sill</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>I placed a little flower,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Something to tell me of the fields—</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>It withered in an hour.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>Why are we housed like filthy swine?</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Swine! they have better care;</div>
+      <div class='line'>For we are pent up with the plague,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Shut out from light and air.</div>
+      <div class='line'>We work and wear our lives away,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>To heap this city’s wealth;</div>
+      <div class='line'>But labour God decreed for us—</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>’Tis man denies us health!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>They say the Spring has come again</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>To wake the sleeping seed,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Whether it be the tended flower,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Or poor, neglected weed!</div>
+      <div class='line'>Then Harvest comes. Think you our wrongs</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>For ever, too, will sleep?</div>
+      <div class='line'>The misery which man has sown,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Man will as surely reap!</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>
+  <h2 class='c004'>THE PLANET-WATCHERS OF GREENWICH.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c010'>There is a morsel of Greenwich Park,
+which has, for now nearly two centuries, been
+held sacred from intrusion. It is the portion
+inclosed by the walls of the Observatory.
+Certainly a hundred thousand visitors must
+ramble over the surrounding lawns, and look
+with curious eye upon the towers and outer
+boundaries of that little citadel of science, for
+one who finds admission to the interior of the
+building. Its brick towers, with flanking
+turrets and picturesque roofs, perched on the
+side of the gravelly hill, and sheltered round
+about by groups of fine old trees, are as well
+known as Greenwich Hospital itself. But what
+work goes on inside its carefully preserved
+boundary and under those moveable, black-domed
+roofs, is a popular mystery. Many a
+holiday-maker’s wonder has been excited by
+the fall, at one o’clock, of the huge black ball,
+high up there, by the weather vane on the
+topmost point of the eastern turret. He knows,
+or is told if he asks a loitering pensioner, that
+the descent of the ball tells the time as truly
+as the sun; and that all the ships in the river
+watch it to set their chronometers by, before
+they sail; and that all the railway clocks, and
+all the railway trains over the kingdom are
+arranged punctually by its indications. But
+how the heavens are watched to secure this
+punctual definition of the flight of time, and
+what other curious labours are going on inside
+the Observatory, is a sealed book. The
+public have always been, of necessity, excluded
+from the Observatory walls, for the
+place is devoted to the prosecution of a
+science whose operations are inconsistent
+with the bustle, the interruptions, the talk,
+and the anxieties of popular curiosity and
+examination.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But when public information and instruction
+are the objects, the doors are widely
+opened, and the press and its <i>attachés</i> find a way
+into this, as into many other sacred and forbidden
+spots. Only last week one of ‘our own
+contributors’ was seen in a carriage on the
+Greenwich railway, poring over the paper in
+the last Edinburgh Review that describes our
+national astronomical establishment, and was
+known afterwards to have climbed the Observatory
+hill, and to have rung and gained
+admission at the little black mysterious gate
+in the Observatory wall. Let us see what is
+told in his report of what he saw within that
+sacred portal.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the park on a fine day all seems life and
+gaiety—once within the Observatory boundary,
+the first feeling is that of isolation.
+There is a curious stillness about the place,
+and the footsteps of the old pensioner, who
+closes the gate upon a visitor, echoes again
+on the pavement as he goes away to wake up
+from his astronomical or meteorological trance
+one of the officers of this sanctum. Soon,
+under the guidance of the good genius so
+invoked, the secrets of the place begin to
+reveal themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The part of the Observatory so conspicuous
+from without is the portion least used within.
+When it was designed by Christopher Wren,
+the general belief was that such buildings
+should be lofty, that the observer might be
+raised towards the heavenly bodies whose
+motions he was to watch. More modern
+science has taught its disciples better; and in
+Greenwich,—which is an eminently practical
+Observatory,—the working part of the building
+is found crouching behind the loftier towers.
+These are now occupied as subsidiary to the
+modern practical building. The ground floor
+is used as a residence by the chief astronomer;
+above is the large hall originally built to
+contain huge moveable telescopes and quadrants—such
+as are not now employed. Now-a-days,
+this hall occasionally becomes a sort of
+scientific counting-house—irreverent but descriptive
+term—in which, from time to time, a
+band of scientific clerks are congregated to
+post up the books, in which the daily business
+of the planets has been jotted down by the
+astronomers who watch those marvellous
+bodies. Another portion is a kind of museum
+of astronomical curiosities. Flamstead and
+Halley, and their immediate successors, worked
+in these towers, and here still rest some of
+the old, rude tools with which their discoveries
+were completed, and their reputation,
+and the reputation of Greenwich, were established.
+As time has gone on, astronomers
+and opticians have invented new and more
+perfect and more luxurious instruments.
+Greater accuracy is thus obtainable, at a less
+expenditure of human patience and labour;
+and so the old tools are cast aside. One of them
+belonged to Halley, and was put up by him a
+hundred and thirty years ago; another is an
+old brazen quadrant, with which many valuable
+observations were made in by-gone times;
+and another, an old iron quadrant, still fixed
+in the stone pier to which it was first attached.
+Some of the huge telescopes that
+once found place in this old Observatory,
+have been sent away. One went to the Cape
+of Good Hope, and has been useful there.
+Another of the unsatisfactory, and now unused,
+instruments had a tube twenty-five
+feet long, whose cool and dark interior was
+so pleasant to the spiders that, do what they
+would, the astronomers could not altogether
+banish the persevering insects from it. Spin
+they would; and, spite of dusting and cleaning,
+and spider-killing, spin they did; and, at length,
+the savans got more instruments and less patience,
+and the spiders were left in quiet possession.
+This has been pleasantly spoken of as an
+instance of poetical justice. It is but fair that
+spiders should, at times, have the best of
+astronomers, for astronomers rob spiders for
+the completion of their choicest instruments.
+No fabric of human construction is fine
+enough to strain across the eye-piece of an
+important telescope, and opticians preserve a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>particular race of spiders, that their webs may
+be taken for that purpose. The spider lines
+are strained across the best instruments at
+Greenwich and elsewhere; and when the spinners
+of these beautifully fine threads disturbed
+the accuracy of the tube in the western wing
+of the old Observatory, it was said to be but
+fair retaliation for the robberies the industrious
+insects had endured.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A narrow stair leads from the unused
+rooms of the old Observatory to its leaded roof,
+whence a magnificent view is obtained; the
+park, the hospital, the town of Greenwich, and
+the windings of the Thames, and, gazing
+further, London itself comes grandly into the
+prospect. The most inveterate astronomer
+could scarcely fail to turn for a moment from
+the wonders of the heavens to admire these
+glories of the earth. From the leads, two
+turrets are reached, where the first constantly
+active operations in this portion of the building,
+are in progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the present time, indeed, these turrets
+are the most useful portions of the old building.
+In one is placed the well-known contrivance
+for registering, hour after hour, and
+day after day, the force and direction of the
+wind. To keep such a watch by human
+vigilance, and to make such a register by
+human labour, would be a tedious, expensive,
+and irksome task; and human ingenuity
+taxed itself to make a machine for perfecting
+such work. The wind turns a weather-cock,
+and, by aid of cog-wheels the motion is transferred
+to a lead pencil fixed over a sheet of
+paper, and thus the wind is made to write
+down the direction which itself is blowing.
+Not far distant is a piece of metal, the flat side
+of which is ever turned by the weather-cock to
+meet the full force of the wind, which, blowing
+upon it, drives it back against a spring. To this
+spring is affixed a chain passing over pullies
+towards another pencil, fixed above a sheet of
+paper, and moving faithfully, more or less, as
+the wind blows harder or softer. And thus
+the ‘gentle zephyr’ and the fresh breeze, and
+the heavy gale, and, when it comes, the furious
+hurricane, are made to note down their
+character and force. The sheets of paper on
+which the uncertain element, the wind, is
+bearing witness against itself, is fixed upon a
+frame moved by clockwork. Steady as the
+progress of time, this ingenious mechanism
+draws the paper under the suspended pencils.
+Thus each minute and each hour has its
+written record, without human help or inspection.
+Once a day only, an assistant
+comes to put a new blank sheet in the place
+of that which has been covered by the
+moving pencils, and the latter is taken away
+to be bound up in a volume. The book
+might with truth be lettered ‘The History
+of the Wind; written by Itself,’—an Æolian
+autobiography.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Close by is another contrivance for registering
+in decimals of an inch the quantity of rain
+that falls. The drops are caught, and passing
+down a tube, a permanent mark is made by
+which the quantity is determined.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The eastern turret is devoted to the Time
+Ball and its mechanism. Far out at sea—away
+from all sources of information but those to
+be asked of the planets, his compass, his
+quadrant, his chronometer, and his almanack,
+the mariner feels the value of <i>time</i> in a way
+which the landsman can scarcely conceive.
+If his chronometer is right, he may feel safe;
+let him have reason to doubt its accuracy, and
+he knows how the perils surrounding him
+are increased. An error of a few seconds in
+his time may place him in danger—an error
+of a few minutes may lead him to steer
+blindly to his certain wreck. Hence his
+desire when he is leaving port to have his
+time-pieces right to a second; and hence the
+expenditure of thought, and labour, and
+money, at the Greenwich Observatory, to
+afford the shipping of the great port of
+London, and the English navy, the exact time—true
+to the tenth of a second, or six hundredth
+of a minute—and to afford them also
+a book, the Nautical Almanack, containing a
+mass of astronomical facts, on which they may
+base their calculations, with full reliance as to
+their accuracy. Every day for the last seventeen
+years, at five minutes before one o’clock, the
+black ball five feet across and stuffed with cork,
+is raised halfway up its shaft above the eastern
+turret of the Observatory;—at two-and-a-half
+minutes before that hour, it rises to the top.
+Telescopes from many a point, both up and
+down the river, are now pointed to this
+dark spot above the Greenwich trees, and many
+an anxious mariner has his time-pieces beside
+him, that their indications may be made true.
+Watch the Ball as you stand in the Park. It
+is now just raised. You must wait two
+minutes and a half, and as you do so, you
+feel what a minute may be. It seems a long,
+palpable, appreciable time, indeed. In the
+turret below, stands a clock telling the true
+time, gained by a laborious watching of the
+<i>clock-stars</i>; and beside the clock, is a man with
+a practised hand upon a trigger, and a practised
+eye upon the face of the dial. One
+minute—two minutes pass. Thirty seconds
+more, and the trigger has released the Ball.
+As it leaves the top of the shaft, it is one
+o’clock to the tenth of a second. By the
+time it has reached the bottom it is some
+five seconds later.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Leaving the Ball Turret, and the old building
+which it surmounts, the new Observatory,
+where the chief work of the establishment is
+done, claims our notice. This attention would
+scarcely be given to its outward appearance
+for it is a long low building, scarcely seen
+beyond its own boundaries. The Greenwich
+Observatory is not a <i>show</i> place, but an eminently
+practical establishment. St. Petersburg
+and other cities have much more gorgeous
+buildings devoted to astronomical purposes,
+and Russia and other countries spend much
+more money on astronomy than England does,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>yet the Greenwich Tables have a world-wide
+reputation, and some of them are used as the
+groundwork for calculations in all Observatories
+at home and abroad. The astronomer
+does not want marble halls or grand saloons
+for his work. Galileo used a bell-tower at
+Venice, and Kepler stood on the bridge at
+Prague to watch the stars. The men, not the
+buildings, do the work. No disappointment
+need be felt, then, to find the modern Observatory
+a range of unadorned buildings
+running east and west, with slits in the roof,
+and in some of the walls. Within these simple
+buildings are the instruments now used, displaying
+almost the perfection of mechanical
+skill in their construction and finish—beautifully
+adapted to the object they have to fulfil,
+and in perfect order. They are fixed on solid
+piers of masonry, deeply imbedded in the
+earth, to secure freedom from vibration—a
+quality better obtained when the foundations
+are on sand or gravel than when on rock.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To describe the instruments by their technical
+names, and to go into any particulars of
+the instruments they have superseded, would
+take space, only to do the work of a scientific
+treatise. Enough, therefore, to say that there
+are the telescopes best adapted to the chief
+duty of the place, which is, watching the moon
+whenever she is visible; watching the <i>clock-stars</i>,
+by which the true time is calculated
+more exactly than it could be from observations
+of the sun alone; and watching other
+planetary bodies as they pass the meridian.
+Eclipses, occultations, and other phenomena,
+of course, have their share of attention, and
+add to the burden of the observer’s duties.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The staff of the Observatory includes a chief
+astronomer, Mr. Airy, with a salary of 800<i>l.</i> a
+year; and six assistants who are paid, 470<i>l.</i>,
+290<i>l.</i>, 240<i>l.</i>, 150<i>l.</i>, 130<i>l.</i>, and 130<i>l.</i>, respectively.
+This does not include the officers of the Meteorological
+branch of the establishment, to be
+spoken of hereafter; and which consists of Mr.
+Glaisher, with 240<i>l.</i> a year, one assistant at
+120<i>l.</i>, and two additional computers. At times,
+when these scientific labourers have collected
+more observations than they are able to work
+out; additional help is summoned, in shape
+of the body of scientific clerks before spoken
+of; who, seated at desks, cast up the accounts
+the planetary bodies, including such regular
+old friends as the moon and fixed stars, but
+not forgetting those wandering celestial existences
+that rush, from time to time, over the
+meridian, and may be fairly called the chance
+customers of the astronomer.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though the interior of the Observatory
+seems so still, the life of those employed
+there has its excitements. Looking through
+telescopes forms a small part only of
+their duty—and that duty cannot be done
+when the weather is unfavourable. On
+cloudy days the observer is idle; in bright
+weather he is busy; and a long continuance
+of clear days and nights gives him more
+employment than he can well complete.
+Summer, therefore, is his time of labour;
+winter his time of rest. It appears that in
+our climate the nights, on the whole, are
+clearer than the days, and evenings less
+cloudy than mornings. Every assistant takes
+his turn as an observer, and a chain of duty
+is kept up night and day; at other periods,
+the busiest portion of the twenty-four hours
+at the Observatory, is between nine in the
+morning and two in the afternoon. During
+this time they work in silence, the task
+being to complete the records of the observations
+made, by filling in the requisite columns
+of figures upon printed forms, and then adding
+and subtracting them as the case requires.
+Whilst thus engaged, the assistant who has
+charge of an instrument looks, from time to
+time, at his star-regulated clock, and when
+it warns him that his expected planet is nearly
+due, he leaves his companions, and quietly
+repairs to the room where the telescope is
+ready. The adjustment of this has previously
+been arranged with the greatest nicety. The
+shutter is moved from the slit in the roof, the
+astronomer sits upon an easy chair with a
+moveable back. If the object he seeks is high
+in the heavens, this chair-back is lowered till
+its occupant almost lies down; if the star is
+lower, the chair-back is raised in proportion.
+He has his note-book and metallic pencil in
+hand. Across the eye-piece of the telescope
+are stretched seven lines of spider-web, dividing
+the field of view. If his seat requires change,
+the least motion arranges it to his satisfaction,
+for it rests upon a railway of its own. Beside
+him is one of the star-clocks, and as the
+moment approaches for the appearance of the
+planet, the excitement of the moment increases.
+‘The tremble of impatience for the entrance
+of the star on the field of view,’ says an
+Edinburgh Reviewer, ‘is like that of a sportsman
+whose dog has just made a full point, and
+who awaits the rising of the game. When a
+star appears, the observer, in technical language,
+<i>takes a second from the clock face</i>; that
+is, he reads the second with his eye, and counts
+on by the ear the succeeding beats of the clock,
+naming the seconds mentally. As the star
+passes each wire of the transit, he marks down
+in his jotting-book with a metallic pencil the
+second, <i>and the second only</i>, of his observation,
+with such a fraction of a second as corresponds,
+in his judgment, to the interval of time
+between the passage of the star, and the beat
+of the clock which preceded such passage.’</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>An experienced observer will never commit
+an error in this mental calculation, exceeding
+the tenth of a second, or six hundredth
+of a minute. When the star has been
+thus watched over the seven cobweb lines (or
+wires), the observer jots down the hour and
+minute, in addition to the second, and the task
+is done. Stars, not very near the sun, may be
+seen in broad daylight, but, at night, it is
+requisite to direct a ray of light from a lamp,
+so far to enlighten the field of the telescope,
+as to permit the spider lines to be seen running
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>across the brighter ground on which the
+expected star is to be visible.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The adjustment of the instruments is a task
+of great nicety. If they are out of trim only
+a shadow of a shade of a hair’s-breadth, the
+desired accuracy is interfered with, and they
+have to be re-adjusted. Temperature is of
+course an important element in their condition,
+and a slight sensibility may do mischief.
+The warmth of the observer’s body,
+when approaching the instruments, has been
+known to affect their accuracy; and to avoid
+such sources of error, instruments have at
+times been cased in flannel, that the non-conducting
+powers of that homely fabric might
+screen the too-sensitive metal.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sunday is a comparative holiday at the
+Observatory, for then, except when any extraordinary
+phenomena are expected, the only
+duty done is to drop the Time Ball, and observe
+the moon’s place. The moon is never neglected,
+and her motions have been here watched,
+during the last hundred and seventy years,
+with the most pertinacious care,—to the great
+service of astronomy, and the great benefit of
+navigation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The library should not pass unnoticed. It
+is small; but being devoted to works upon
+astronomy, and the kindred sciences, there is
+ample room for all that has hitherto been
+written on the subject, or that can, for many
+generations, be produced. The observations
+of a lifetime spent in watching the stars may
+be printed in marvellously few pages. A
+glance through the Greenwich Astronomical
+Library gives a rough general idea of what
+the world has done and is doing for the promotion
+of this science. Russia contributes
+large, imperial-looking tomes, that tell of
+extended observations made under the munificent
+patronage of a despot; Germany sends
+from different points a variety of smaller,
+cheaper-looking, yet valuable contributions;
+France gives proofs of her genius and her
+discoveries; but <i>her</i> forte is not in observation.
+The French are bad observers. They
+have no such proofs of unremitting, patient
+toil in search of facts, as those afforded in
+the records of the Greenwich Tables of the
+Moon. Indeed, Greenwich, as we have already
+said, is a working Observatory; and
+those who go into its library, and its fire-proof
+manuscript-room, and see how its volumes
+of observations have been growing from the
+small beginnings of the days of Flamstead
+and Halley, to those of our later and more
+liberal times, will have good reason to acknowledge
+that the money devoted to this
+establishment has been well employed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One other spot must be noticed as amongst
+the notable things in this astronomical sanctum.
+It is the Chronometer-room, to which,
+during the first three Mondays in the year, the
+chief watchmakers of London send in their
+choicest instruments for examination and trial.
+The watches remain for a good portion of a
+year; their rates being noted, day by day, by
+two persons; and then the makers of the best
+receive prizes, and their instruments are purchased
+for the navy. Other competitors obtain
+certificates of excellence, which bring customers
+from the merchant service; whilst
+others pass unrewarded. To enter the room
+where these admirable instruments are kept,
+suggests the idea of going into a Brobdingnag
+Watch-factory. Round the place are ranged
+shelves, on which the large watches are placed,
+all ticking in the most distinct and formidable
+way one against another. When they first
+arrive, in January, they are left to the ordinary
+atmospheric temperature for some
+months. Their rates being taken under these
+circumstances, a large stove in the centre of
+the apartment is lighted, and heat got up to
+a sort of artificial East India or Gold Coast
+point. Tried under these influences, they are
+placed in an iron tray over the stove, like so
+many watch-pies in a baker’s dish, and the
+fire being encouraged, they are literally kept
+baking, to see how their metal will stand that
+style of treatment. Whilst thus hot, their
+rates are once more taken; and then, after
+this fiery ordeal, such of them as their owners
+like to trust to an opposite test, are put into
+freezing mixtures! Yet, so beautifully made
+are these triumphs of human ingenuity—so
+well is their mechanism ‘corrected’ for compensating
+the expansion caused by the heat,
+and the contraction induced by the cold—that
+an even rate of going is established, so
+nearly, that its variation under opposite circumstances
+becomes a matter of close and
+certain estimate.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The rates of chronometers on trial for
+purchase by the Board of Admiralty, at the
+Observatory, are posted up and printed in an
+official form. Upon looking to the document
+for last year, we find a statement of their
+performances during six months of 1849, with
+memoranda of the exact weeks during which
+the chronometers were exposed to the open
+air at a north window; the weeks the Chronometer-room
+was heated by a stove, the
+chronometers being dispersed on the surrounding
+shelves; and the weeks during
+which they were placed in the tray above
+the stove. The rate given during the first
+week of trial is in every case omitted;
+like newly entered schoolboys their early
+vagaries are not taken into account; but
+after that, every merit and every fault is
+watched with jealous care, and, when the
+day of judgment comes, the order of the
+arrangement of the chronometers in the list
+is determined solely by consideration of their
+irregularities of rate as expressed in the
+columns, ‘Difference between greatest and
+least,’ and, ‘Greatest difference between one
+week and the next.’</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Royal Observatory, according to a
+superstition not wholly extinct, is the headquarters,
+not only of Astronomy, but of Astrology.
+The structure is awfully regarded, by
+a small section of the community which ignorance
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>has still left amongst us, as a manufactory
+of horoscopes, and a repository for
+magic mirrors and divining-rods. Not long
+ago a well-dressed woman called at the
+Observatory gate to request a hint as to the
+means of recovering a lost sum of money; and
+recently, somebody at Brighton dispatched
+the liberal sum of five shillings in a post-office
+order to the same place, with a request to have
+his nativity cast in return! Another, only last
+year, wrote as follows:—‘I have been informed
+that there are persons at the Observatory who
+will, by my enclosing a remittance and the hour
+of my birth, give me to understand <i>who is to be
+my wife</i>? An early answer, stating all particulars,
+will oblige,’ &#38;c.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This sketch descriptive of its real duties
+and uses are not necessary to relieve the
+Greenwich Observatory from the charge of
+being an abode of sorcerers and astrologers.
+A few only of the most ignorant can yet entertain
+such notions of its character; but
+they are not wholly unfounded. Magicians,
+whose symbols are the Arabic numerals, and
+whose <i>arcana</i> are mathematical computations,
+daily foretell events in that building with unerring
+certainty. They pre-discover the future
+of the stars down to their minutest evolution
+and eccentricity. From data furnished from
+the Royal Observatory, is compiled an extraordinary
+prophetic Almanack from which all
+other almanacs are copied. It foretells to a
+second when and where each of the planets
+may be seen in the heavens at any minute
+for the next three years. The current number
+of the Nautical Almanack is for the Year of
+Grace 1853.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In this quiet sanctuary, then, the winds are
+made to register their own course and force,
+and the rain to gauge its own quantity as it
+falls; the planets are watched to help the
+mariner to steer more safely over the seas; and
+the heavens themselves are investigated for
+materials from which their future as well as
+their past history may be written.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c004'>SWEDISH FOLK-SONGS.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line in8'>THE DOVE ON THE LILY.</div>
+      <div class='line'>There sits a pure dove on a lily so white,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>On midsummer morning:—</div>
+      <div class='line'>She sang of Christ Jesus from morning to night,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>In Heaven there is great joy, O!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>She sang, and she sang, ’twas a joy to hear,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Expecting a maiden in Heaven that year.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“And should I reach Heaven ere twelvemonths are o’er,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Sickness and pain I should know never more.”</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>To her father’s hall the maiden she went,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And through her left side a sharp pain was sent.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Oh! make my bed, mother, in haste, mother dear,</div>
+      <div class='line'>I shall in the fields no more wander this year.”</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“And speak such words, daughter, dear daughter, no more;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Thou shalt wed with a king ere twelvemonths are o’er.”</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Oh! better that I be in Heaven a bride,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Than remain on the earth amid kingly pride.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“And father, dear father, go fetch me a priest,</div>
+      <div class='line'>For I know that, ere long, death will be my guest.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“And brother, dear brother, go get me a bier;</div>
+      <div class='line'>And sister, dear sister, do thou dress my hair.”</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>The maiden, she died, and was laid on her bier,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And all her hand-maidens they plaited her hair.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>They carried her out from her father’s hall door;</div>
+      <div class='line'>And the angels of God with lights went before.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>They carried the corpse to the churchyard along,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And the angels of God went before with a song.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>They buried the maiden beneath the dark sod,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>On midsummer morning:—</div>
+      <div class='line'>And her coming was even well pleasing to God;</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>In Heaven there is great joy, O!</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c004'>A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c010'>A few Sundays ago, I formed one of the
+congregation assembled in the chapel of a
+large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception
+of the clergyman and clerk, and a very
+few officials, there were none but paupers
+present. The children sat in the galleries;
+the women in the body of the chapel, and in
+one of the side aisles; the men in the remaining
+aisle. The service was decorously
+performed, though the sermon might have
+been much better adapted to the comprehension
+and to the circumstances of the hearers.
+The usual supplications were offered, with
+more than the usual significancy in such a
+place, for the fatherless children and widows,
+for all sick persons and young children, for all
+that were desolate and oppressed, for the
+comforting and helping of the weak-hearted,
+for the raising-up of them that had fallen;
+for all that were in danger, necessity, and
+tribulation. The prayers of the congregation
+were desired “for several persons in the
+various wards, dangerously ill;” and others
+who were recovering returned their thanks
+to Heaven.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among this congregation, were some evil-looking
+young women, and beetle-browed
+young men; but not many—perhaps that
+kind of characters kept away. Generally,
+the faces (those of the children excepted)
+were depressed and subdued, and wanted
+colour. Aged people were there, in every
+variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled,
+stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the
+gleams of sun that now and then crept in
+through the open doors, from the paved yard;
+shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes,
+with their withered hands; poring over their
+books, leering at nothing, going to sleep,
+crouching and drooping in corners. There
+were weird old women, all skeleton within,
+all bonnet and cloak without, continually
+wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of pocket-handkerchiefs;
+and there were ugly old
+crones, both male and female, with a ghastly
+kind of contentment upon them which was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>not at all comforting to see. Upon the whole,
+it was the dragon, Pauperism, in a very weak
+and impotent condition; toothless, fangless,
+drawing his breath heavily enough, and hardly
+worth chaining up.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When the service was over, I walked with
+the humane and conscientious gentleman
+whose duty it was to take that walk, that
+Sunday morning, through the little world of
+poverty enclosed within the workhouse walls.
+It was inhabited by a population of some fifteen
+hundred or two thousand paupers, ranging
+from the infant newly born or not yet come
+into the pauper world, to the old man dying
+on his bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In a room opening from a squalid yard,
+where a number of listless women were
+lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the
+ineffectual sunshine of the tardy May morning—in
+the “Itch-Ward,” not to compromise
+the truth—a woman such as <span class='sc'>Hogarth</span> has
+often drawn, was hurriedly getting on her
+gown, before a dusty fire. She was the nurse,
+or wardswoman, of that insalubrious department—herself
+a pauper—flabby, raw-boned,
+untidy—unpromising and coarse of aspect
+as need be. But, on being spoken to about
+the patients whom she had in charge, she
+turned round, with her shabby gown half on,
+half off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not
+for show, not querulously, not in any mawkish
+sentiment, but in the deep grief and affliction
+of her heart; turning away her dishevelled
+head: sobbing most bitterly, wringing her
+hands, and letting fall abundance of great
+tears, that choked her utterance. What was
+the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward?
+Oh, “the dropped child” was dead! Oh, the
+child that was found in the street, and she
+had brought up ever since, had died an
+hour ago, and see where the little creature
+lay, beneath this cloth! The dear, the pretty
+dear!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The dropped child seemed too small and poor
+a thing for Death to be in earnest with, but
+Death had taken it; and already its diminutive
+form was neatly washed, composed, and
+stretched as if in sleep upon a box. I thought
+I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall
+be well for thee, O nurse of the itch-ward,
+when some less gentle pauper does those offices
+to thy cold form, that such as the dropped
+child are the angels who behold my Father’s
+face!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In another room, were several ugly old
+women crouching, witch-like, round a hearth,
+and chattering and nodding, after the manner
+of the monkies. “All well here? And
+enough to eat?” A general chattering and
+chuckling; at last an answer from a volunteer.
+“Oh yes gentleman! Bless you gentleman!
+Lord bless the parish of St. So-and-So! It
+feed the hungry, Sir, and give drink to the
+thirsty, and it warm them which is cold, so
+it do, and good luck to the parish of St.
+So-and-So, and thankee gentleman!” Elsewhere,
+a party of pauper nurses were at dinner.
+“How do <i>you</i> get on?” “Oh pretty well
+Sir! We works hard, and we lives hard—like
+the sodgers!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In another room, a kind of purgatory or
+place of transition, six or eight noisy mad-women
+were gathered together, under the
+superintendence of one sane attendant. Among
+them was a girl of two or three and twenty,
+very prettily dressed, of most respectable
+appearance, and good manners, who had been
+brought in from the house where she had
+lived as domestic servant (having, I suppose,
+no friends), on account of being subject to
+epileptic fits, and requiring to be removed
+under the influence of a very bad one. She
+was by no means of the same stuff, or the
+same breeding, or the same experience, or in
+the same state of mind, as those by whom
+she was surrounded; and she pathetically
+complained that the daily association and the
+nightly noise made her worse, and was
+driving her mad—which was perfectly evident.
+The case was noted for enquiry and
+redress, but she said she had already been
+there for some weeks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If this girl had stolen her mistress’s watch,
+I do not hesitate to say she would, in all
+probability, have been infinitely better off.
+Bearing in mind, in the present brief description
+of this walk, not only the facts already
+stated in this Journal, in reference to the
+Model Prison at Pentonville, but the general
+treatment of convicted prisoners under the
+associated silent system too, it must be
+once more distinctly set before the reader,
+that we have come to this absurd, this dangerous,
+this monstrous pass, that the dishonest
+felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet,
+and accommodation, better provided for, and
+taken care of, than the honest pauper.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And this conveys no special imputation on
+the workhouse of the parish of St. So-and-So,
+where, on the contrary, I saw many things to
+commend. It was very agreeable, recollecting
+that most infamous and atrocious enormity
+committed at Tooting—an enormity which, a
+hundred years hence, will still be vividly
+remembered in the bye-ways of English life,
+and which has done more to engender a
+gloomy discontent and suspicion among
+many thousands of the people than all the
+Chartist leaders could have done in all their
+lives—to find the pauper children in this
+workhouse looking robust and well, and apparently
+the objects of very great care. In the
+Infant School—a large, light, airy room at the
+top of the building—the little creatures, being
+at dinner, and eating their potatoes heartily,
+were not cowed by the presence of strange
+visitors, but stretched out their small hands
+to be shaken, with a very pleasant confidence.
+And it was comfortable to see two mangey
+pauper rocking-horses rampant in a corner.
+In the girls’ school, where the dinner was also
+in progress, everything bore a cheerful and
+healthy aspect. The meal was over, in the
+boys’ school, by the time of our arrival there
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>and the room was not yet quite re-arranged;
+but the boys were roaming unrestrained about
+a large and airy yard, as any other schoolboys
+might have done. Some of them had
+been drawing large ships upon the schoolroom
+wall; and if they had a mast with shrouds
+and stays set up for practice (as they have in
+the Middlesex House of Correction), it would
+be so much the better. At present, if a boy
+should feel a strong impulse upon him to
+learn the art of going aloft, he could only
+gratify it, I presume, as the men and women
+paupers gratify their aspirations after better
+board and lodging, by smashing as many
+workhouse windows as possible, and being
+promoted to prison.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse,
+a company of boys and youths were
+locked up in a yard alone; their day-room
+being a kind of kennel where the casual poor
+used formerly to be littered down at night.
+Divers of them had been there some long
+time. “Are they never going away?” was the
+natural enquiry. “Most of them are crippled,
+in some form or other,” said the Wardsman,
+“and not fit for anything.” They slunk about,
+like dispirited wolves or hyænas; and made
+a pounce at their food when it was served out,
+much as those animals do. The big-headed
+idiot shuffling his feet along the pavement, in
+the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable
+object everyway.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers
+and other sick women in bed; groves of
+lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved
+down-stairs day-rooms, waiting for their
+dinners; longer and longer groves of old
+people, in upstairs Infirmary wards, wearing
+out life, God knows how—this was the
+scenery through which the walk lay, for two
+hours. In some of these latter chambers,
+there were pictures stuck against the wall,
+and a neat display of crockery and pewter on
+a kind of sideboard; now and then it was a
+treat to see a plant or two; in almost every
+ward, there was a cat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In all of these Long Walks of aged and
+infirm, some old people were bed-ridden, and
+had been for a long time; some were sitting
+on their beds half-naked; some dying in their
+beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table
+near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference
+to what was asked, a blunted sensibility
+to everything but warmth and food, a
+moody absence of complaint as being of no
+use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to
+be left alone again, I thought were generally
+apparent. On our walking into the midst
+of one of these dreary perspectives of old
+men, nearly the following little dialogue
+took place, the nurse not being immediately
+at hand:</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“All well here?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap
+sitting among others on a form at the table,
+eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his
+cap a little to look at us, claps it down on his
+forehead again, with the palm of his hand, and
+goes on eating.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“All well here?” (repeated.)</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No answer. Another old man sitting on
+his bed, paralytically peeling a boiled potato,
+lifts his head, and stares.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Enough to eat?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No answer. Another old man, in bed,
+turns himself and coughs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“How are <i>you</i> to-day?” To the last old
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That old man says nothing; but another
+old man, a tall old man of a very good address,
+speaking with perfect correctness, comes
+forward from somewhere, and volunteers an
+answer. The reply almost always proceeds
+from a volunteer, and not from the person
+looked at or spoken to.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“We are very old, Sir,” in a mild, distinct
+voice. “We can’t expect to be well, most
+of us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Are you comfortable?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I have no complaint to make, Sir.” With
+a half shake of his head, a half shrug of his
+shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Enough to eat?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Why, Sir, I have but a poor appetite,” with
+the same air as before; “and yet I get through
+my allowance very easily.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But,” showing a porringer with a Sunday
+dinner in it; “here is a portion of mutton, and
+three potatoes. You can’t starve on that?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh dear no, Sir,” with the same apologetic
+air. “Not starve.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What do you want?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“We have very little bread, Sir. It’s an
+exceedingly small quantity of bread.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands
+at the questioner’s elbow, interferes with, “It
+ain’t much raly, Sir. You see they’ve only
+six ounces a day, and when they’ve took their
+breakfast, there <i>can</i> only be a little left for
+night, Sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises
+out of his bedclothes, as out of a grave, and
+looks on.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You have tea at night?” The questioner
+is still addressing the well-spoken old
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, Sir, we have tea at night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“And you save what bread you can from
+the morning, to eat with it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, Sir—if we can save any.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“And you want more to eat with it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, Sir.” With a very anxious face.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The questioner, in the kindness of his heart,
+appears a little discomposed, and changes the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What has become of the old man who
+used to lie in that bed in the corner?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The nurse don’t remember what old man is
+referred to. There has been such a many old
+men. The well-spoken old man is doubtful.
+The spectral old man who has come to life in
+bed, says, “Billy Stevens.” Another old man
+who has previously had his head in the fireplace,
+pipes out,</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>“Charley Walters.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Something like a feeble interest is awakened.
+I suppose Charley Walters had conversation
+in him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“He’s dead!” says the piping old man.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another old man, with one eye screwed
+up, hastily displaces the piping old man, and
+says:</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes! Charley Walters died in that bed,
+and—and—”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Billy Stevens,” persists the spectral old
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“No, no! and Johnny Rogers died in that
+bed, and—and—they’re both on ’em dead—and
+Sam’l Bowyer;” this seems very extraordinary
+to him; “he went out!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With this he subsides, and all the old men
+(having had quite enough of it) subside, and
+the spectral old man goes into his grave again,
+and takes the shade of Billy Stevens with
+him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As we turn to go out at the door, another
+previously invisible old man, a hoarse old man
+in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if he
+had just come up through the floor.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I beg your pardon, Sir, could I take the
+liberty of saving a word?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes; what is it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I am greatly better in my health, Sir;
+but what I want, to get me quite round,” with
+his hand on his throat, “is a little fresh air,
+Sir. It has always done my complaint so
+much good, Sir. The regular leave for going
+out, comes round so seldom, that if the gentlemen,
+next Friday, would give me leave to
+go out walking, now and then—for only an
+hour or so, Sir!—”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Who could wonder, looking through those
+weary vistas of bed and infirmity, that it
+should do him good to meet with some other
+scenes, and assure himself that there was
+something else on earth?  Who could help
+wondering why the old men lived on as they
+did; what grasp they had on life; what crumbs
+of interest or occupation they could pick up
+from its bare board; whether Charley Walters
+had ever described to them the days when he
+kept company with some old pauper woman
+in the bud, or Billy Stevens ever told them of
+the time when he was a dweller in the far-off
+foreign land called Home!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The morsel of burnt child, lying in another
+room, so patiently, in bed, wrapped in lint,
+and looking stedfastly at us with his bright
+quiet eyes when we spoke to him kindly,
+looked as if the knowledge of these things, and
+of all the tender things there are to think
+about, might have been in his mind—as if he
+thought, with us, that there was a fellow-feeling
+in the pauper nurses which appeared to
+make them more kind to their charges than the
+race of common nurses in the hospitals—as if
+he mused upon the Future of some older
+children lying around him in the same place,
+and thought it best, perhaps, all things considered,
+that he should die—as if he knew,
+without fear, of those many coffins, made and
+unmade, piled up in the store below—and of
+his unknown friend, “the dropped child,”
+calm upon the box-lid covered with a cloth.
+But there was something wistful and appealing,
+too, in his tiny face, as if, in the midst of
+all the hard necessities and incongruities he
+pondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of the helpless
+and the aged poor, for a little more liberty—and
+a little more bread.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c004'>THE “IRISH DIFFICULTY” SOLVED BY CON Mc&#8201;Nale.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c010'>Con Mc&#8201;Nale would have been summarily
+repudiated as an Irishman by our farce-writers
+and slashing novelists. He neither
+drank, fought, nor swore; did not make many
+blunders; and never addressed a friend either
+as his ‘honey’ or his ‘jewel.’ His <i>cotamore</i>
+was of stout frieze, and though Con had long
+attained his full height, the tailor had left
+him room to grow. The <i>caubeen</i> was not his
+head-dress, for Con had arrived at the dignity
+of a silk hat, which had been manufactured,
+as the mark in the crown declared, by the
+Saxons in the Borough of Southwark, which
+locality Con believed to be in the n<i>a</i>ighbourhood
+of England. The brogues were also
+absent, but were favourably represented by
+shoes of native manufacture laced with stout
+thongs. In fact, Mr. Mc&#8201;Nale was a fine
+specimen of the finest <i>pisantry</i> in the world—without
+the rags.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>People have gone to the Highlands and
+to Switzerland, and perhaps seen many
+places not much more grand and picturesque
+than the district where Con Mc&#8201;Nale had
+made a patch of the desert to smile. A
+long range of blue mountains rising irregularly
+above each other, looked down on an extensive
+plain, that lay along the shore of a
+mighty lake, to the banks of which thick
+plantations crowded so near that the old Irish
+called the water <i>Lough-glas</i>, which signifies
+waters of green. The districts where a short
+but thick and sweet herbage sprung up among
+the rocks, were certainly put to the use of feeding
+cattle, and it was while employed there as a
+herd-boy, that Con Mc&#8201;Nale determined to
+become a farmer. His mind was made up.
+His earnings were hardly enough to keep life
+in him, and if he had tried to save the price
+of a spade out of them to begin business with,
+the chances are that he would have died
+prematurely for want of food. But that didn’t
+matter much; he was determined to be a
+farmer. This determination was then as
+likely of fulfilment as that of Oliver Cromwell
+to become Protector of the Realm, while
+tending the vats at Huntingdon; or that
+of Aladdin to become a prince, when he was
+a ragged boy in the streets of Bagdad. To
+show, however, what perseverance will do,
+when I made acquaintance with Mr. Con Mc&#8201;Nale
+he had actually got possession of a spade,
+and was making good use of it in a ditch—his
+own ditch, on his own land. As he went on,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>now digging, now resting on the handle, he
+told me all about his gradual promotion from
+a herd-boy to a country jontleman.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“My father,” said he, “lived under ould
+Squire Kilkelly, an’ for awhile tinded his
+cattle: but the Squire’s gone out iv this part iv
+the counthry, to Australia or some furrin part,
+an’ the mentioned house (mansion house) an’
+the fine propperty was sould, so it was, for little
+or nothin’, for the fightin’ was over in furrin
+parts; Boney was put down, an’ there was
+no price for corn or cattle, an’ a jontleman
+from Scotland came an’ bought the istate.
+We were warned by the new man to go, for
+he tuk in his own hand all the in-land about
+the domain, bein’ a grate farmer. He put
+nobody in our little place, but pulled it
+down, an’ he guv father a five guinea note,
+but my father was ould an’ not able to face
+the world agin, an’ he went to the town
+an’ tuk a room—a poor, dirty, choky place
+it was for him, myself, and sisther to live
+in. The naighbours were very kind an’
+good, though. Sister Bridget got a place wid
+a farmer hereabouts, and I tuk the world on
+my own showlders. I had nothin’ at all but the
+rags I stud up in, an’ they were bad enuf.
+Poor Biddy got a shillin’ advanced iv her
+wages that her masther was to giv her. She
+guv it me, for I was bent on goin’ towards
+Belfast to look for work. All along the road
+I axed at every place; they could giv it me
+but to no good, except when I axed, they’d
+giv me a bowl iv broth, or a piece iv bacon,
+or an oaten bannock, so that I had my shillin’
+to the fore when I got to Belfast.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Here the heart was near lavin’ me all out
+intirely. I went wandtherin’ down to the
+quay among the ships, and what should there
+be but a ship goin’ to Scotland that very night,
+wid pigs. In throth it was fun to see the sailors
+at cross-purposes wid ’em, for they didn’t know
+the natur iv the bastes. I did. I knew how
+to coax ’em. I set to an’ I deludhered an’
+coaxed the pigs, an’, by pullin’ them by
+the tail, knowing that if they took a fancy
+I wished to pull ’em back out of the ship,
+they’d run might and main into her, and so
+they did. Well, the sailors were mightily
+divarted, an’ when the pigs was aboord, I
+wint down to the place—an’ the short iv it is
+that in three days I was in Glasgow town, an’
+the captain an’ the sailors subschribed up tin-shillins
+an’ guv it into my hand. Well, I
+bought a raping hook, an’ away I trudged
+till I got quite an’ clane into the counthry, an’
+the corn was, here and there, fit to cut. At
+last I goes an’ ax a farmer for work. He
+thought I was too wake to be paid by the day,
+but one field havin’ one corner fit to cut, an’
+the next not ready, ‘Paddy,’ says he, ‘you may
+begin in that corner, an’ I’ll pay yees by the
+work yees do,’ an’ he guv me my breakfast
+an’ a pint of beer. Well, I never quit that
+masther the whole harvest, an’ when the
+raping was over I had four goolden guineas to
+carry home, besides that I was as sthrong as a
+lion. Yees would wonder how glad the sailors
+was to see me back agin, an’ ne’er a farthin’
+would they take back iv their money,
+but tuk me over agin to Belfast, givin’ me the
+hoighth of good thratemint of all kinds. I
+did not stay an hour in Belfast, but tuk to the
+road to look afther the ould man an’ little
+Biddy. Well, sorrows the tidins’ I got. The
+ould man had died, an’ the grief an’
+disthress of poor little Biddy had even
+touched her head a little. The dacent people
+where she was, may the Lord reward ’em,
+though they found little use in her, kep her,
+hoping I would be able to come home an’ keep
+her myself, an’ so I was. I brought her away
+wid me, an’ the sight iv me put new life in
+her. I was set upon not being idle, an’ I’ll
+tell yees what I did next.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“When I was little <i>bouchaleen</i> iv a boy I
+used to be a head on the mountain face, an’
+’twas often I sheltered myself behind them
+gray rocks that’s at the gable iv my house, an’
+somehow it came into my head that the new
+Squire, being a grate man for improvin’,
+might let me try to brake in a bit iv land
+there, an’ so I goes off to him, an’ one iv the
+sarvints bein’ a sort iv cousin iv mine, I got
+to spake to the Squire, an’ behould yees he guv
+me lave at onst. Well, there’s no time like
+the prisint, an’ as I passed out iv the back
+yard of the mentioned (mansion) house, I sees
+the sawyers cutting some Norway firs that had
+been blown down by the storm, an’ I tells
+the sawyers that I had got lave to brake in
+a bit iv land in the mountains, an’ what
+would some pieces iv fir cost. They says they
+must see what kind of pieces they was that
+I wished for, an’ no sooner had I set about
+looking ’em through than the Squire himself
+comes ridin’ out of the stable-yard, an’ says he
+at onst, Mc&#8201;Nale, says he, you may have a load
+iv cuttins to build your cabin, or two if you
+need it. ‘The Heavens be your honour’s bed,’
+says I, an’ I wint off to the room where
+I an’ Biddy lived, not knowin’ if I was
+on my head or my heels. Next day, before
+sunrise, I was up here five miles up the face
+of Slieve-dan, with a spade in my fist, an’ I
+looked roun’ for the most shiltered spot I
+could sit my eyes an. Here I saw, where the
+house an’ yard are stan’in, a plot iv about
+an acre to the south iv that tall ridge of rocks,
+well sheltered from the blast from the north
+an’ from the aste, an’ it was about sunrise
+an’ a fine morning in October that I tuk up the
+first spadeful. There was a spring then drippin’
+down the face iv the rocks, the same you
+see gushin’ through the crockery pipe in the
+farm-yard; an’ I saw at once that it would
+make the cabin completely damp, an’ the land
+about mighty sour an’ water-<i>slain</i>; so I determined
+to do what I saw done in Scotland.
+I sunk a deep drain right under the rock to
+run all along the back iv the cabin, an’ workin’
+that day all alone by myself, I did a grate
+dale iv it. At night, it was close upon dark
+when I started to go home, so I hid my spade
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>in the heath an’ trudged off. The next mornin’
+I bargined with a farmer to bring me up
+a load iv fir cuttins from the Squire’s, an’ by
+the evenin’ they were thrown down within a
+quarter iv a mile iv my place,—for there was
+no road to it then, an’ I had to carry ’em
+myself for the remainder of the way. This
+occupied me till near nightfall; but I remained
+that night till I placed two upright posts of
+fir, one at each corner iv the front iv the
+cabin.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I was detarmined to get the cabin finished
+as quickly as possible, that I might be able to
+live upon the spot, for much time was lost in
+goin’ and comin’. The next day I was up
+betimes, an’ finding a track iv stiff blue clay,
+I cut a multitude of thick square sods iv it,
+an’ having set up two more posts at the
+remainin’ two corners iv the cabin, I laid four
+rows iv one gable, rising it about three feet
+high. Havin’ laid the rows, I sharpind
+three or four straight pine branches, an’
+druv them down through the sods into the
+earth, to pin the wall in its place. Next day
+I had a whole gable up, each three rows iv
+sods pinned through to the three benathe. In
+about eight days I had put up the four walls,
+makin’ a door an’ two windows; an’ now my
+outlay began, for I had to pay a thatcher to
+put on the sthraw an’ to assist me in risin’ the
+rafthers. In another week it was covered in,
+an’ it was a pride to see it with the new
+thatch, an’ a wicker chimbley daubed with
+clay, like a pallis undernathe the rock. I
+now got some turf that those who had cut
+’em had not removed, an’ they sould ’em
+for a thrifle, an’ I made a grate fire an’ slept
+on the flure of my own house that night.
+Next day I got another load iv fir brought, to
+make the partitions in the winter, an’ in a
+day or two after I had got the inside so
+dhry that I was able to bring poor Biddy to
+live there for good and all. The Heavens be
+praised, there was not a shower iv rain fell
+from the time I began the cabin till I ended
+it, an’ when the rain did fall, not a drop
+came through,—all was carried off by my
+dhrain into the little river before yees. The
+moment I was settled in the house I comminced
+dhraining about an acre iv bog in front,
+an’ the very first winter I sowed a shillin’s
+worth of cabbidge seed, an’ sold in the spring
+a pound’s worth of little cabbidge plants for
+the gardins in the town below. When spring
+came—noticin’ how the early planted praties
+did the best, I planted my cabbidge ground
+with praties, an’ I had a noble crap, while
+the ground was next year fit for the corn. In
+the mane time, every winther I tuk in more and
+more ground, an’ in summer I cut my turf
+for fewel; where the cuttins could answer, in
+winther, for a dhrain; an’ findin’ how good the
+turf were, I got a little powney an’ carried
+’em to the town to sell, when I was able to
+buy lime in exchange, an’ put it on my bog,
+so as to make it produce double. As things
+went on, I got assistance, an’ when I marrid,
+my wife had two cows that guv me a grate
+lift.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I was always thought to be a handy boy;
+an’ I could do a turn of mason-work with
+any man not riglarly bred to it; so I took
+one of my loads of lime, an’ instead of puttin’
+it on the land, I made it into morthar—and
+indeed the stones being no ways scarce, I set
+to an’ built a little kiln, like as I had seen
+down the counthry. I could then burn my
+own lime, an’ the limestone were near to my
+hand, too many iv ’em. While all this was
+goin’ on, I had riz an’ sould a good dale iv
+oats and praties, an’ every summer I found
+ready sale for my turf in the town from one
+jontleman that I always charged at an even
+rate, year by year. I got the help of a stout
+boy, a cousin iv my own, who was glad iv a
+shilter; an’ when the childher were ould
+enough, I got some young cattle that could
+graze upon the mountain in places where no
+other use could be made iv the land, and set
+the gossoons to herd ’em.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“There was one bit iv ground nigh han’ to
+the cabin, that puzzled me intirely. It was
+very poor and sandy, an’ little better than
+a rabbit burrow; an’ telling the Squire’s
+Scotch steward iv it, he bade me thry some
+flax, an’ sure enuf, so I did, an’ a fine crap
+iv flax I had, as you might wish to see; an’
+the stame-mills being beginnin’ in the counthry
+at that time, I sould my flax for a very
+good price—my wife having dhried it, beetled
+it, an’ scutched it with her own two hands. I
+should have said before, that the Squire himself
+came up here with a lot iv fine ladies and
+jontlemen to see what I had done; an’ you
+never in your life seed a man so well plased
+as he was, an’ a Mimber of Parlimint from
+Scotland was with him, an’ he tould me I was a
+credit to ould Ireland; and sure, didn’t Father
+Connor read upon the papers, how he tould
+the whole story in the Parlimint House
+before all the lords an’ quality: but faix, he
+didn’t forgit me; for a month or two after he
+was here, an’ it coming on the winter, comes
+word for me an’ the powney to go down to
+the mentioned (mansion) house, for the steward
+wanted me; so away I wint, an’ there, shure
+enuf, was an illigant Scotch plough, every
+inch of iron, an’ a lot of young Norroway
+pines—the same you see shiltering the house
+an’ yard—an’ all was a free prisint for me
+from the Scotch jontleman that was the
+Mimber of Parliment. ’Twas that plough
+that did the meracles iv work hereabouts;
+for I often lint it to any that I knew to be a
+careful hand; an’ it was the manes iv havin’
+the farmers all round send an’ buy ’em. At
+last I was able to build a brave snug house;
+and praised be Providence, I have never had
+an hour’s ill health, nor a moment’s grief, but
+when poor Biddy, the cratur, died from us.
+It is thirty years since that morning that I
+tuk up the first spadeful from the wild
+mountain side; an’ twelve acres are good
+labour land, an’ fifteen drained, an’ good
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>grazin’. I have been payin’ rint twinty
+years, an’ am still, thank God, able to take
+my own part iv any day’s work,—plough,
+spade, or flail.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Have you got a lease?” said I.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“No, indeed; not a schrape of a pin; nor
+I never axed it. Have I not my <i>tinnant-rite</i>?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From that subject, Mr. Mc&#8201;Nale diverged
+slightly into politics, touching on the state of
+the <i>counthry</i>, and untwisting some entanglements
+of the ‘Irish difficulty’ that might be
+usefully made known in the neighbourhood
+of Westminster.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Troth, Sir,” said Con, “you English are
+mighty grand in all your doings. You dale
+wholesale in all sorts iv things; good luck to
+you—in charity as well as in pigs, praties,
+an’ sich like. Well you want to improve
+Ireland by wholesale; you set up illigant
+schames for puttin’ us all to rights by the
+million; for clanin’ an’ dranin’ a whole
+province at onst; for giving labour to everybody;
+an’ all mighty purty on paper, with
+figures all as round an’ nate as copybooks,
+with long rigiments of O’s, after ’em. I’ve
+heard iv whole stacks of papers piled up an’
+handsomely ticketed in tidy big offices—all
+‘rules and riglations’ for labourers, which
+the boys can’t follow, and the inspectors
+can’t force. Why not,” continued Mr. Con,
+giving his spade a thrust into the ground
+that sent it up to the maker’s name, “Why
+not tache the boys to do as I have done?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But all are not so persevering, so knowing,
+and so fond of work as you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Whether Mr. Mc&#8201;Nale was impressed by
+his own modesty, or by the force of my suggestion,
+I know not. But he was silent.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c004'>WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c010'>William Wordsworth was born on the
+7th of April, 1770; he died on the 23d of
+April, 1850. His life was prolonged for ten
+years beyond the space attributed to man by
+the inspired Psalmist. He lived in an age
+unprecedented for its social and civil revolutions;
+for its discoveries in science, and their
+practical application. He was fourteen years
+of age when the new North American Republic
+was finally recognised as one of the
+brotherhood of nations; he witnessed the
+French Revolution; the subjection of every
+monarchy in Europe, except England and
+Russia, to the absolute will of a French
+emperor; the instalment and evaporation of
+the Holy Alliance; the European war of
+twenty years, and the European peace of
+thirty-two years; one Pope carried into
+exile by a foreign conqueror, another driven
+into exile by his own subjects: and at home,
+the trials of Hardy and Thelwall; the Bank
+Restriction Act; the origination of the Bell
+and Lancaster systems of Education; the visit
+of the allied monarchs to London; the passing
+of Peel’s Bill; the introduction of Palmer’s
+mail-coaches and M‘Adam’s roads; the invention
+of steam navigation; the pausing of the
+Reform Bill; the development of the Railway
+system, and the Electric telegraph. He was
+the contemporary of Davey, Herschell, Bentham,
+Godwin, Malthus and Ricardo, Byron,
+Scott, Wilkie, Chantrey, Fox, Pitt, Canning
+and Brougham.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Wordsworth’s age was one of stirring
+events and great changes. The character of
+his poetry is in startling contrast to that age.
+It is passionless, a record of the poet’s own
+mind; simple and austere, emanating from
+his own independent thoughts and fancies;
+receiving little of its form and colour from
+external events, or the feelings and opinions
+of men. For eighty long years, Wordsworth
+would almost appear to have lived ‘<i>among</i>
+men, not <i>of</i> them;’ sympathising as little with
+the ephemeral pursuits of his contemporaries
+as the colossal Memnon does with the Copts,
+Turks, and Arabs who now tenant the banks
+of the Nile.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>William Wordsworth was born in the
+little county town of Cockermouth; his
+father was an attorney—not a wealthy man,
+but in circumstances that enabled him to give
+his family a fair education. One son entered
+the merchant service, rose to command a
+vessel, and perished at sea. Another has
+acquired a name as master of Harrow, and
+the author of a delightful book on Greece,
+full of delicate beauty and fine classical
+feeling. The allusions by William to his
+favourite sister are among the most touching
+passages in his poems; and one or two little
+pieces of verse, and some extracts from her
+journals, which he has published, show that
+she was every way deserving of his love.
+The poetical dedication of the River Duddon
+to Dr. Wordsworth, is full of delightful allusions
+to the boyhood of the brothers, and
+conveys a pleasing impression of their family
+relations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Our poet received the rudiments of his
+education at the grammar school of Hawkeshead,
+in Westmoreland, conducted in his time
+by a master of more than ordinary attainments.
+In 1787, he matriculated at St. John’s
+College, Cambridge. Even in his boyhood it
+was obvious that he possessed superior
+abilities, but they were not of the showy and
+ambitious kind which achieve school or college
+distinction. He was partial to solitary
+rambles; fond of reading and reciting verses;
+a boy whom elder men ‘singled out for his
+grave looks,’ as he has said in the Excursion,
+and liked to converse with.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was intended that he should enter the
+Church, the family circumstances rendering it
+necessary that he should adopt a profession.
+But, independently of his wish to devote
+himself exclusively to literary pursuits, he had
+caught the prevalent spirit of the time—the
+aversion to conventional forms and opinions.
+A moderate income, settled upon him by
+Raisley Calvert, the victim of a premature
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>decline, enabled him to follow his inclinations.
+This benefit the poet has gratefully acknowledged:—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c011'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>‘Calvert, it must not be unheard by them</div>
+      <div class='line'>Who may respect my name, that I to thee</div>
+      <div class='line'>Owed many years of early liberty.</div>
+      <div class='line'>This care was thine, when sickness did condemn</div>
+      <div class='line'>Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem;</div>
+      <div class='line'>That I, if frugal and severe, might stray</div>
+      <div class='line'>Where’er I liked; and finally array</div>
+      <div class='line'>My temples with the Muse’s diadem.’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>After leaving College he made extensive
+tours on foot, in Scotland and on the Continent
+with a youthful friend. In 1793 he
+for the first time ventured into print. Two
+small volumes appeared in that year: “Descriptive
+Sketches, in verse, taken during a
+Pedestrian Tour among the Alps;” and “An
+Evening Walk, an Epistle in Verse, addressed
+to a young Lady from the Lakes in the North
+of England.” In these poems we find no
+traces of the poetical theory which he subsequently
+adopted. But they are characterised
+by the same, almost exclusive, preference for
+lakes, cataracts and mountains, the elementary
+beauty of external nature, human passions
+and incidents, and they contain many passages
+of glaring imagination powerfully
+expressed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In 1796 he took up his abode with his
+sister at Allfaxden, at the foot of the Quantock
+Hills, in Somersetshire. This was an
+important era in the development of his intellect
+and imagination. During his residence
+at Allfaxden he was in constant and unreserved
+communication with Coleridge.
+Totally dissimilar as the two men were in
+character, they had many sympathies. Upon
+both, the classical tastes and ecclesiastical
+opinions inculcated at English schools and
+colleges, had, without their being aware of
+it, made a deep and indelible impression. Both
+had been animated by the vague but ardent
+longings after an undefined liberty, and perfection
+of human nature, then prevalent.
+They were isolated from general sympathy
+without knowing it; from the revolutionary
+party by their literary tastes and strong
+attachment to traditional English morals;
+from the Church and State party by their
+freedom from sectarian narrowness. The
+resolute independence of thought of the
+young poets is worthy of all admiration;
+their frank and cordial communication of
+all their thoughts, equally so. A pleasing
+though brief sketch of them at that time
+has been given by Hazlitt, in an essay, entitled,
+‘My first Acquaintance with Poets;’
+a more petulant and shallow account, which
+yet contains some valuable information, by
+Cottle.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The result of this literary alliance was the
+first volume of the “Lyrical Ballads.” The
+quiet but perfect melody of Wordsworth’s
+versification and the depth of the human
+sentiment in his reflections, the more swelling
+tone of Coleridge’s verse and his wild
+unearthly imaginings, might have secured
+a more favourable reception for his work,
+had it not been announced as the result of
+a new theory of poetry. That theory was
+misapprehended by the critics of the day,
+and was indeed inadequately expressed by
+its authors themselves. Coleridge subsequently
+developed it in more precise and
+unexceptionable language in his Biographia
+Literaria. The effect of its premature announcement
+was, that the Lyrical Ballads
+were judged, not by their own intrinsic merits,
+but by the theory upon which they were said
+to have been constructed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The insurmountable indolence of Coleridge—always
+planning works too great for human
+accomplishment, and resting satisfied with
+projects—left Wordsworth to pursue his path
+alone. This he did with characteristic pertinacity
+of purpose; if criticism had any influence
+on him at all, it was only to confirm
+him in his foregone conclusions. After an
+excursion to Germany, in which he was
+accompanied by his sister and Coleridge, he
+returned to his native country, ‘with the
+hope,’ as he has told us in his Preface to the
+Excursion, ‘of being enabled to construct a
+literary work that might live.’</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In 1803, Wordsworth married his cousin,
+Miss Mary Hutchinson, and settled at Grasmere.
+He removed in a few years to Rydal
+Mount, where he continued to reside till his
+death. Subsequently to this time his life is
+utterly devoid of personal incident, and may
+be briefly recapitulated before proceeding to
+chronicle his poetical productions, which are
+indeed his life. By his wife, who survives
+him, he had one daughter, who died before
+him, and two sons, one of whom holds a
+vicarage in Cumberland, the other is a distributor
+of stamps. In 1814, Wordsworth,
+by the patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale,
+was appointed distributor of stamps for Cumberland
+and Westmoreland—a recognition of
+the claims of genius to public support only
+second in eccentricity to the making of Burns
+an exciseman. After holding this office for
+twenty-eight years, he was allowed to relinquish
+it to his eldest son, and retire upon a
+pension of 300<i>l.</i> a year. In 1843, he succeeded
+Southey in the limited emoluments
+and questionable dignity of the Laureateship.
+His slender inheritance, the beneficence of
+Raisley Calvert, his office under Government,
+his retiring pension, and his emoluments as
+Laureate, sufficed, with his simple tastes, to
+enable him to wait the slow pecuniary returns
+of his literary labours.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>While the critical storm awakened by the
+Preface to the Lyrical Ballads was still
+raging, he composed his Peter Bell and his
+Waggoner, which were not, however, published
+till many years later. They are full of fine
+and deep-felt poetry. Their language is
+genuine racy English, and their versification
+unsurpassed for sweetness. It cannot, however,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>be denied that they are marked by a self-willed,
+exaggerated adherence to the theory of
+poetry he had promulgated, the effect of something
+that is very like a spirit of contradiction.
+In a playful adaptation of Milton’s sonnet,
+Tetrachordon, Wordsworth defends his choice
+of subjects by the admiration felt or professed
+for Tam o’ Shanter. He overlooks the utter
+difference between the mode in which Burns
+conceived and executed that poem, and himself
+his Benjamin the Waggoner. Burns was
+for the time the hero himself. In Tam o’
+Shanter, and still more in the Jolly Beggars,
+he expresses the very passions of the characters
+he presents to us. Wordsworth, constitutionally
+incapable of the emotions of a boon companion,
+merely describes and moralises on the
+waywardness of his Benjamin. We sympathise
+with the common humanity of Burns’s genial
+reprobates; we feel the cold shadow of Wordsworth’s
+Benjamin to be a hideous intruder
+among the fine poetical imagery and thought
+with which he is mixed up.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In 1807, Wordsworth published two volumes,
+containing his own contributions to the Lyrical
+Ballads, with many additional poems. Minute
+detached criticism is not the object of this
+sketch. Suffice it to say that many pieces in
+these volumes are unsurpassed in English
+poetry, or in the poetry of any language. The
+Song at the feast of Brougham Castle has a
+rich lyrical exuberance of feeling; the Laodamia
+is as severely beautiful as a Greek
+statue; Hartleap Well is full of mellow
+humanity; Rob Roy’s Grave, the Highland
+Girl, ‘She was a phantom of delight,’—every
+piece, in short, is replete with delightful sentiment
+and graphic pictures of rural nature.
+The objects of some of these poems obviously
+originate in a mistaken apprehension of the
+scope and purpose of poetry. Wordsworth
+was a curious observer of the workings of the
+human mind, and he sometimes confounded
+the pleasure derived from such metaphysical
+scrutiny with the pleasure derived from the
+presentation of poetical imaginings. Hence,
+what is questionable in his Idiot Boy, his
+Harry Gill, and some others.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Excursion, the most ambitious, and,
+with all its defects, the greatest of his works,
+was published in 1814. Here the poet was in
+his true element. Wordsworth’s genius was essentially
+moralising and reflective. Incidents
+and adventure had no charm for him. He
+arrived at his knowledge of character by an
+inductive process, not like Shakespeare, by the
+intuition of sympathy and imagination. He
+had no power of perceiving those light and
+graceful peculiarities of men and society, generally
+designated manners, vivid presentations
+of which constitute the charm of so many
+poets; but he was tremulously alive to the
+charms of inanimate nature.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c011'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line in12'>‘——The sounding cataract</div>
+      <div class='line'>Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Their colours and their forms, were there to me</div>
+      <div class='line'>An appetite; a feeling and a love,</div>
+      <div class='line'>That had no need of a remoter charm,</div>
+      <div class='line'>By thought supplied, or any interest</div>
+      <div class='line'>Unborrowed from the eye.’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>His soul was full of lofty and imaginative
+conceptions of moral truths. He, therefore,
+after severe examination of his own poems, resolved
+to rest his claims to immortality on
+his composition of ‘a philosophical poem,
+containing views of Man, Nature, and Society;
+and to be entitled The Recluse, as
+having for its principal subject the sensations
+and opinions of a poet living in retirement.’</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>How far this projected work has been advanced
+to completion, we have no means of
+knowing. A preliminary work, descriptive of
+the growth of his own powers, is, he has informed
+us, finished. The Recluse was to consist
+of three parts, the first and third containing
+chiefly meditations in the author’s own person;
+the intermediate introducing characters in a
+semi-dramatic form. It is to be regretted
+that his second part has alone been published,
+for Wordsworth’s genius was essentially undramatic.
+But notwithstanding the disadvantages
+under which the poet laboured from the
+selection of an uncongenial form, and his
+imperfect mastery of blank verse (a measure
+of which, perhaps. Milton alone among our
+English poets has developed the full measure,
+and varied power of modulation), the Excursion
+is, undoubtedly, a poem in the highest
+and truest sense of the word. The philosophical
+musings with which it abounds, are
+alike profound and elevating. And nothing
+can surpass the deep pathos of the episodes
+of Margaret and Ellen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The subsequent publications of Wordsworth
+may be briefly enumerated. Peter Bell and
+the Waggoner appeared within two years
+after the Excursion; and the White Doe of
+Rylstone soon followed them. A miscellaneous
+volume, of which the River Duddon
+was the most prominent, was published in
+1820, and Yarrow Revisited, in 1835. Of all
+these works, it may suffice to say that they
+are highly characteristic of the author, and
+contain many beauties.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Wordsworth’s poetry had long to contend
+against the conventional prepossessions of the
+literary world. From the beginning, however,
+his genius was felt by superior minds,
+and by a few young unprejudiced enthusiasts.
+His first admirers were literally a sect, and
+their admiration was, like the devotion of all
+sectarians, ardent and indiscriminating. They
+have, however, served as interpreters between
+him and the reading public, and thus his
+merits have come to be generally acknowledged.
+His writings lent a tone to the
+works of some who, like Shelley, dissented
+from his theory; and some who, like Byron,
+systematically scoffed at them. The public
+taste was thus insensibly approximated to
+them. Even yet, however, Wordsworth is
+probably more praised than liked. But the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>process will go on, and in time what is really
+valuable in his poems will take the place that
+is due to it in the land’s literature.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of the first writings of Wordsworth little
+need be said. Though they contain valuable
+thoughts, they are lumbering and sufficiently
+unreadable. The once furious controversy
+about his literary creed as heresy, need not
+be resuscitated; there were great errors on
+both sides. If his merits were individually
+depreciated, there was much in his seemingly
+supercilious re-assertion, rather than defence
+and explanation of his views, to extenuate
+the petulance with which he was often treated.
+As for his wanderings in the fields of politics
+and polemics, he is no exception to the
+general truth, that the warmest admirers of
+poets must regret their deviations into such
+uncongenial by-ways.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The man was like his poetry; simple and
+therefore conservative in his tastes: self-reliant
+and sometimes repulsive from his austerity,
+yet with a rich fund of benevolence beneath
+the hard exterior. His frame was strong
+and sinewy from his habits of exercise; his
+look heavy, and, at first sight, unimpressive;
+but there was an inexpressible charm in his
+smile. He was the antithesis of the materialist
+and practical activity of the time. He did
+not understand, and therefore could not appreciate,
+the ennobling tendencies of the social
+and scientific career on which this age has
+entered—an age into which he had lingered,
+rather than to which he belonged. He looked
+out upon the world from his egotistic isolation
+rather as a critical spectator, than as a sympathiser.
+His views of it were rusted over
+with the conservative prejudices of the past.
+Railways he hated, and against them waged
+a sonneteering war. Although they were
+rapidly increasing the commerce, comforts,
+intercourse, affluence, and happiness of the
+whole community, they invaded the selfish
+solitude of the one man; and single-handed
+he did battle against the armies of invading
+tourists, who came to share with him the
+heathful pleasures of the mountain and the
+lake, in which he would have almost preserved
+a patent right for the few.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This anti-natural spirit, however, did not
+always lead him astray from the right path. In
+the Excursion, were promulgated, for the first
+time, these views respecting the embruting
+tendency of the unintermitting toil of our
+factory labourers, the necessity of universal
+education by the State, and the vocation of the
+English race to colonise the earth, which have
+been so many zealous missionaries. We cannot
+better conclude these desultory remarks,—an
+imperfect prelude to the lip of a truly
+good and great man—than by quoting part
+of his weighty words in the Excursion, respecting
+National Education:—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c011'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>‘Oh! for the coming of that glorious time</div>
+      <div class='line'>When, prizing Knowledge as her noblest wealth</div>
+      <div class='line'>And best protection, this Imperial Realm,</div>
+      <div class='line'>While she exacts allegiance, shall admit</div>
+      <div class='line'>An obligation, on her part, to <i>teach</i></div>
+      <div class='line'>Them who are born to serve her and obey;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Binding herself by statute to secure</div>
+      <div class='line'>To all her children whom her soil maintains,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The rudiments of Letters, and to inform</div>
+      <div class='line'>The mind with moral and religious truth,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Both understood and practised—so that none,</div>
+      <div class='line'>However destitute, be left to droop</div>
+      <div class='line'>By timely culture unsustained; or run</div>
+      <div class='line'>Into a wild disorder; or be forced</div>
+      <div class='line'>To drudge through weary life without the aid</div>
+      <div class='line'>Of intellectual implements and tools;</div>
+      <div class='line'>A savage horde among the civilised,</div>
+      <div class='line'>A servile band among the lordly free!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>‘The discipline of slavery is unknown</div>
+      <div class='line'>Amongst us—hence the more do we require</div>
+      <div class='line'>The discipline of virtue; order else</div>
+      <div class='line'>Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace.</div>
+      <div class='line'>Thus duties rising out of good possess’d,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And prudent caution, needful to avert</div>
+      <div class='line'>Impending evil, do alike require</div>
+      <div class='line'>That permanent provision should be made</div>
+      <div class='line'>For the whole people to be taught and trained.</div>
+      <div class='line'>So shall licentiousness and black resolve</div>
+      <div class='line'>Be rooted out, and virtuous habits take</div>
+      <div class='line'>Their place; and genuine piety descend,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Like an inheritance, from age to age.’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>These are indeed worthy to become Household
+words.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c004'>FATHER AND SON.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c010'>One evening in the month of March, 1798,—that
+dark time in Ireland’s annals whose
+memory (overlooking all minor subsequent
+<i>émeutes</i>) is still preserved among us, as ‘the
+year of the rebellion’—a lady and gentleman
+were seated near a blazing fire in the old-fashioned
+dining-room of a large lonely mansion.
+They had just dined; wine and fruit
+were on the table, both untouched, while Mr.
+Hewson and his wife sat silently gazing at
+the fire, watching its flickering light becoming
+gradually more vivid as the short Spring
+twilight faded into darkness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At length the husband poured out a glass
+of wine, drank it off, and then broke silence,
+by saying—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Well, well, Charlotte, these are awful
+times; there were ten men taken up to-day
+for burning Cotter’s house at Knockane; and
+Tom Dycer says that every magistrate in the
+country is a marked man.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mrs. Hewson cast a frightened glance towards
+the windows, which opened nearly to
+the ground, and gave a view of a wide tree-besprinkled
+lawn, through whose centre a
+long straight avenue led to the high-road.
+There was also a footpath at either side of
+the house, branching off through close thickets
+of trees, and reaching the road by a circuitous
+route.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Listen, James!” she said, after a pause;
+“what noise is that?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Nothing but the sighing of the wind
+among the trees. Come, wife, you must not
+give way to imaginary fears.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>“But really I heard something like footsteps
+on the gravel, round the gable-end—I
+wish”—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A knock at the parlour door interrupted
+her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Come in.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The door opened, and Tim Gahan, Mr.
+Hewson’s confidential steward and right-hand
+man, entered, followed by a fair-haired delicate-looking
+boy of six years’ old, dressed in
+deep mourning.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Well, Gahan, what do you want?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I ask your Honour’s pardon for disturbing
+you and the mistress; but I thought
+it right to come tell you the bad news I
+heard.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Something about the rebels, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, Sir; I got a whisper just now that
+there’s going to be a great rising intirely,
+to-morrow; thousands are to gather before
+daybreak at Kilcrean bog, where I’m told
+they’ve a power of pikes hiding; and then
+they’re to march on and sack every house in
+the country. I’ll engage, when I heard it,
+I didn’t let grass grow under my feet, but
+came off straight to your Honour, thinking
+maybe you’d like to walk over this fine evening
+to Mr. Warren’s, and settle with him
+what’s best to be done.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, James! I beseech you, don’t think of
+going.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Make your mind easy, Charlotte; I don’t
+intend it: not that I suppose there would be
+much risk; but, all things considered, I think
+I’m just as comfortable at home.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The steward’s brow darkened, as he glanced
+nervously towards the end window, which
+jutting out in the gable, formed a deep angle
+in the outer wall.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Of course ’tis just as your Honour pleases,
+but I’ll warrant you there would be no harm
+in going. Come, Billy,” he added, addressing
+the child, who by this time was standing
+close to Mrs. Hewson, “make your bow, and
+bid good night to master and mistress.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The boy did not stir, and Mrs. Hewson
+taking his little hand in hers, said—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You need not go home for half-an-hour,
+Gahan; stay and have a chat with the
+servants in the kitchen, and leave little Billy
+with me—and with the apples and nuts”—she
+added, smiling as she filled the child’s hands
+with fruit.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Thank you, Ma’am,” said the steward
+hastily. “I can’t stop—I’m in a hurry
+home, where I wanted to leave this brat to-night;
+but he <i>would</i> follow me. Come, Billy;
+come this minute, you young rogue.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Still the child looked reluctant, and Mr.
+Hewson said peremptorily—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Don’t go yet, Gahan; I want to speak to
+you by and by; and you know the mistress
+always likes to pet little Billy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Without replying, the steward left the
+room; and the next moment his hasty footsteps
+resounded through the long flagged
+passage that led to the offices.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“There’s something strange about Gahan,
+since his wife died,” remarked Mrs. Hewson.
+“I suppose ’tis grief for her that makes him
+look so darkly, and seem almost jealous when
+any one speaks to his child. Poor little
+Billy! your mother was a sore loss to you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The child’s blue eyes filled with tears, and
+pressing closer to the lady’s side, he said:—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Old Peggy doesn’t wash and dress me as
+nicely as mammy used.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But your father is good to you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, yes, Ma’am, but he’s out all day busy,
+and I’ve no one to talk to me as mammy
+used; for Peggy is quite deaf, and besides
+she’s always busy with the pigs and chickens.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I wish I had you, Billy, to take care of
+and to teach, for your poor mother’s sake.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“And so you may, Charlotte,” said her
+husband. “I’m sure Gahan, with all his odd
+ways, is too sensible a fellow not to know
+how much it would be for his child’s benefit
+to be brought up and educated by us, and the
+boy would be an amusement to us in this
+lonely house. I’ll speak to him about it
+before he goes home. Billy, my fine fellow,
+come here,” he continued, “jump up on my
+knee, and tell me if you’d like to live here
+always and learn to read and write.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I would, Sir, if I could be with father
+too.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“So you shall;—and what about old
+Peggy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The child paused—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I’d like to give her a pen’north of snuff
+and a piece of tobacco every week, for she said
+the other day that <i>that</i> would make her quite
+happy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mr. Hewson laughed, and Billy prattled on,
+still seated on his knee; when a noise of footsteps
+on the ground, mingled with low suppressed
+talking was heard outside.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“James, listen! there’s the noise again.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was now nearly dark, but Mr. Hewson,
+still holding the boy in his arms, walked
+towards the window and looked out.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I can see nothing,” he said,—“stay—there
+are figures moving off among the trees, and a
+man running round to the back of the house—very
+like Gahan he is too!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Seizing the bell-rope, he rang it loudly,
+and said to the servant who answered his
+summons:—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Fasten the shutters and put up the bars,
+Connell; and then tell Gahan I want to see
+him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The man obeyed; candles were brought,
+and Gahan entered the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mr. Hewson remarked that, though his
+cheeks were flushed, his lips were very white,
+and his bold dark eyes were cast on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What took you round the house just
+now, Tim?” asked his master, in a careless
+manner.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What took me round the house, is it?
+Why, then, nothing in life, Sir, but that just
+as I went outside the kitchen door to take a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>smoke, I saw the pigs, that Shaneen forgot to
+put up in their stye, making right for the
+mistress’s flower-garden; so I just put my
+<i>dudheen</i>, lighting as it was, into my pocket,
+and ran after them. I caught them on the
+grand walk under the end window, and
+indeed, Ma’am, I had my own share of work
+turning them back to their proper spear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Gahan spoke with unusual volubility, but
+without raising his eyes from the ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Who were the people,” asked his master,
+“whom I saw moving through the western
+grove?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“People! your Honour—not a sign of any
+people moving there, I’ll be bound, barring
+the pigs.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Then,” said Mr. Hewson, smiling, to his
+wife, “the miracle of Circe must have been
+reversed, and swine turned into men; for,
+undoubtedly, the dark figures I saw were
+human beings.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Come, Billy,” said Gahan, anxious to turn
+the conversation, “will you come home with
+me now? I am sure ’twas very good of the
+mistress to give you all them fine apples.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mrs. Hewson was going to propose Billy’s
+remaining, but her husband whispered:—“Wait
+till to-morrow.” So Gahan and his
+child were allowed to depart.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Next morning the magistrates of the
+district were on the alert, and several suspicious
+looking men found lurking about,
+were taken up. A hat which fitted one of
+them was picked up in Mr. Hewson’s grove;
+the gravel under the end window bore many
+signs of trampling feet; and there were
+marks on the wall as if guns had rested
+against it. Gahan’s information touching the
+intended meeting at Kilcrean bog proved to
+be totally without foundation; and after a
+careful search not a single pike or weapon of
+any description could be found there. All
+these circumstances combined certainly looked
+suspicious; but, after a prolonged investigation,
+as no guilt could be actually brought
+home to Gahan, he was dismissed. One of
+his examiners, however, said privately, “I
+advise you take care of that fellow, Hewson. If
+I were in your place, I’d just trust him as far
+as I could throw him, and not an inch beyond.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>An indolent hospitable Irish country gentleman,
+such as Mr. Hewson, is never without
+an always shrewd and often roguish prime
+minister, who saves his master the trouble of
+looking after his own affairs, and manages
+everything that is to be done in both the
+home and foreign departments,—from putting
+a new door on the pig-stye, to letting a farm
+of an hundred acres on lease. Now in this, or
+rather these capacities, Gahan had long served
+Mr. Hewson; and some seven years previous
+to the evening on which our story commences,
+he had strengthened the tie and increased his
+influence considerably by marrying Mrs. Hewson’s
+favourite and faithful maid. One child
+was the result of this union; and Mrs. Hewson,
+who had no family of her own, took much interest
+in little Billy,—more especially after the
+death of his mother, who, poor thing! the
+neighbours said, was not very happy, and
+would gladly, if she dared, have exchanged
+her lonely cottage for the easy service of her
+former mistress.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Thus, though for a time Mr. and Mrs.
+Hewson regarded Gahan with some doubt, the
+feeling gradually wore away, and the steward
+regained his former influence.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After the lapse of a few stormy months the
+rebellion was quelled: all the prisoners taken
+up were severally disposed of by hanging,
+transportation or acquittal, according to the
+nature and amount of the evidence brought
+against them; and the country became as
+peaceful as it is in the volcanic nature of our
+Irish soil ever to be.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Hewsons’ kindness towards Gahan’s
+child was steady and unchanged. They took
+him into their house, and gave him a plain but
+solid education; so that William, while yet a
+boy, was enabled to be of some use to his
+patron, and daily enjoyed more and more of
+his confidence.</p>
+
+<hr class='c012'>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another Evening, the twentieth anniversary
+of that with which this narrative commenced,
+came round. Mr. and Mrs. Hewson
+were still hale and active, dwelling in their
+hospitable home. About eight o’clock at
+night, Tim Gahan, now a stooping, grey-haired
+man, entered Mr. Hewson’s kitchen, and took
+his seat on the corner of the settle next the fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The cook, directing a silent significant
+glance of compassion towards her fellow-servants,
+said:</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Would you like a drink of cider, Tim, or
+will you wait and take a cup of tay with
+myself and Kitty?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The old man’s eyes were fixed on the fire,
+and a wrinkled hand was planted firmly on
+each knee, as if to check their involuntary
+trembling. “I’ll not drink anything this
+night, thank you kindly, Nelly,” he said, in a
+slow musing manner, dwelling long on each
+word.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Where’s Billy?” he asked, after a pause,
+in a quick hurried tone, looking up suddenly
+at the cook, with an expression in his eyes,
+which, as she afterwards said, ‘took away her
+breath.’</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, never heed Billy! I suppose he’s
+busy with the master.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Where’s the use, Nelly,” said the coachman,
+“in hiding it from him? Sure, sooner or
+later he must know it. Tim,” he continued,
+“God knows ’tis sorrow to my heart this
+blessed night to make yours sore,—but the
+truth is, that William has done what he
+oughtn’t to do to the man that was all one
+as a father to him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What has he done? what will you <i>dar</i> say
+again my boy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Taken money, then,” replied the coachman,
+“that the master had marked and put by in
+his desk; for he suspected this some time
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>past that gold was missing. This morning
+’twas gone; a search was made, and the
+marked guineas were found with your son
+William.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The old man covered his face with his hands,
+and rocked himself to and fro.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Where is he now?” at length he asked, in
+a hoarse voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Locked up safe in the inner store-room;
+the master intends sending him to gaol early
+to-morrow morning.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“He will not,” said Gahan slowly. “Kill the
+boy that saved his life!—no, no.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Poor fellow! the grief is setting his mind
+astray—and sure no wonder!” said the cook,
+compassionately.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I’m not astray!” cried the old man,
+fiercely. “Where’s the master?—take me to
+him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Come with me,” said the butler, “and I’ll
+ask him will he see you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With faltering steps the father complied;
+and when they reached the parlour, he
+trembled exceedingly, and leant against the
+wall for support, while the butler opened the
+door, and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Gahan is here, Sir, and wants to know will
+you let him speak to you for a minute?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Tell him to come in,” said Mr. Hewson, in
+a solemn tone of sorrow, very different from
+his ordinary cheerful voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Sir,” said the steward, advancing, “they
+tell me you are going to send my boy to
+prison,—is it true?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Too true, indeed, Gahan. The lad who
+was reared in my house, whom my wife
+watched over in health, and nursed in sickness—whom
+we loved almost as if he were
+our own, has <i>robbed</i> us, and that not once or
+twice, but many times. He is silent and
+sullen, too, and refuses to tell why he stole the
+money, which was never withheld from him
+when he wanted it. I can make nothing of
+him, and must only give him up to justice in
+the morning.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“No, Sir, no. The boy saved your life;
+you can’t take his.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You’re raving, Gahan.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Listen to me, Sir, and you won’t say so.
+You remember this night twenty years? I
+came here with my motherless child, and
+yourself and the mistress pitied us, and spoke
+loving words to him. Well for us all you did
+so! That night—little you thought it!—I was
+banded with them that were sworn to take
+your life. They were watching you outside
+the window, and I was sent to inveigle you
+out, that they might shoot you. A faint
+heart I had for the bloody business, for you
+were ever and always a good master to me;
+but I was under an oath to them that I
+darn’t break, supposing they ordered me to
+shoot my own mother. Well! the hand of
+God was over you, and you wouldn’t come
+with me. I ran out to them, and I said—‘Boys,
+if you want to shoot him, you must
+do it through the window,’ thinking they’d
+be afeard of that; but they weren’t—they
+were daring fellows, and one of them, sheltered
+by the angle of the window, took deadly aim
+at you. That very moment you took Billy on
+your knee, and I saw his fair head in a line
+with the musket. I don’t know exactly then
+what I said or did, but I remember I caught
+the man’s hand, threw it up, and pointed to
+the child. Knowing I was a determined
+man, I believe they didn’t wish to provoke
+me; so they watched you for a while, and
+when you didn’t put him down they got
+daunted, hearing the sound of soldiers riding
+by the road, and they stole away through the
+grove. Most of that gang swung on the
+gallows, but the last of them died this
+morning quietly in his bed. Up to yesterday
+he used to make me give him money,—sums
+of money to buy his silence—and it
+was for that I made my boy a thief. It was
+wearing out his very life. Often he went
+down on his knees to me, and said: ‘Father,
+I’d die myself sooner than rob my master,
+but I can’t see <i>you</i> disgraced. Oh, let us fly
+the country!’ Now, Sir, I have told you all—do
+what you like with me—send me to
+gaol, I deserve it—but spare my poor deluded
+innocent boy!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It would be difficult to describe Mr. Hewson’s
+feelings, but his wife’s first impulse was
+to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a
+few incoherent words of explanation she led
+him into the presence of his master, who,
+looking at him sorrowfully but kindly, said:</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“William, you have erred deeply, but not
+so deeply as I supposed. Your father has
+told me everything. I forgive him freely and
+you also.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The young man covered his face with his
+hands, and wept tears more bitter and
+abundant than he had ever shed since the
+day when he followed his mother to the
+grave. He could say little, but he knelt on
+the ground, and clasping the kind hand of
+her who had supplied to him that mother’s
+place, he murmured;</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Will <i>you</i> tell him I would rather die
+than sin again.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Old Gahan died two years afterwards, truly
+penitent, invoking blessings on his son and on
+his benefactors; and the young man’s conduct,
+now no longer under evil influence, was so
+steady and so upright, that his adopted
+parents felt that their pious work was rewarded,
+and that, in William Gahan, they
+had indeed a son.</p>
+
+<hr class='c012'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’</div>
+    <div><span class='small'>Conducted</span></div>
+    <div><span class='sc'>By</span> CHARLES DICKENS.</div>
+    <div><i>Price 2d., Stamped 3d.</i>,</div>
+    <div class='c003'><span class='large'>THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>OF</span></div>
+    <div>CURRENT EVENTS.</div>
+    <div class='c001'><i>The Number, containing a history of the present month, will be issued with the Magazines.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003'>
+</div>
+<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'>
+
+<div class='chapter ph2'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c013'>
+    <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+ <ul class='ul_1 c001'>
+    <li>Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78174 ***</div>
+  </body>
+  <!-- created with ppgen.py 3.57i (with regex) on 2026-02-03 00:55:36 GMT -->
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78174
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78174)