Initial commit of ebook 78174 filesHEADmain

1 files changed, 2441 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/78174-0.txt b/78174-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f08758f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78174-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2441 @@
+*** 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 ***