Household Words, No. 11, June 8, 1850
Author: Unknown
Date: 2026-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: English literature -- Periodicals

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Title: Household Words, No. 11, June 8, 1850

A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens

Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78176]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78176

Credits: Richard Tonsing, Steven desJardins, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 11, JUNE 8, 1850 ***

Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

“Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS.”—Shakespeare.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

No. 11.]      SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1850.      [Price 2d.

FROM THE RAVEN IN THE HAPPY FAMILY.

Halloa!

You won’t let me begin that Natural History of you, eh? You will always be doing something or other, to take off my attention? Now, you have begun to argue with the Undertakers, have you? What next!

Ugh! you are a nice set of fellows to be discussing, at this time of day, whether you shall countenance that humbug any longer. “Performing” funerals, indeed! I have heard of performing dogs and cats, performing goats and monkeys, performing ponies, white-mice, and canary-birds; but, performing drunkards at so much a day, guzzling over your dead, and throwing half of you into debt for a twelvemonth, beats all I ever heard of. Ha, ha!

The other day there was a person “went and died” (as our Proprietor’s wife says) close to our establishment. Upon my beak I thought I should have fallen off my perch, you made me laugh so, at the funeral!

Oh my crop and feathers, what a scene it was! I never saw the Owl so charmed. It was just the thing for him.

First of all, two dressed-up fellows came—trying to look sober, but they couldn’t do it—and stuck themselves outside the door. There they stood, for hours, with a couple of crutches covered over with drapery: cutting their jokes on the company as they went in, and breathing such strong rum and water into our establishment over the way, that the Guinea Pig (who has a poor little head) was drunk in ten minutes. You are so proud of your humanity. Ha, ha! As if a pair of respectable crows wouldn’t have done it much better?

By-and-bye, there came a hearse and four, and then two carriages and four; and on the tops of ’em, and on all the horses’ heads, were plumes of feathers, hired at so much per plume; and everything, horses and all, was covered over with black velvet, till you couldn’t see it. Because there were not feathers enough yet, there was a fellow in the procession carrying a board of ’em on his head, like Italian images; and there were about five-and-twenty or thirty other fellows (all hot and red in the face with eating and drinking) dressed up in scarves and hatbands, and carrying—shut-up fishing-rods, I believe—who went draggling through the mud, in a manner that I thought would be the death of me; while the “Black Jobmaster”—that’s what he calls himself—who had let the coaches and horses to a furnishing undertaker, who had let ’em to a haberdasher, who had let ’em to a carpenter, who had let ’em to the parish-clerk, who had let ’em to the sexton, who had let ’em to the plumber painter and glazier, who had got the funeral to do, looked out of the public-house window at the corner, with his pipe in his mouth, and said—for I heard him—“that was the sort of turn-out to do a gen-teel party credit.” That! As if any two-and-sixpenny masquerade, tumbled into a vat of blacking, wouldn’t be quite as solemn, and immeasurably cheaper!

Do you think I don’t know you? You’re mistaken if you think so. But perhaps you do. Well! Shall I tell you what I know? Can you bear it? Here it is then. The Black Jobmaster is right. The root of all this, is the gen-teel party.

You don’t mean to deny it, I hope? You don’t mean to tell me that this nonsensical mockery isn’t owing to your gentility. Don’t I know a Raven in a Cathedral Tower, who has often heard your service for the Dead? Don’t I know that you almost begin it with the words, “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out”? Don’t I know that in a monstrous satire on those words, you carry your hired velvets, and feathers, and scarves, and all the rest of it, to the edge of the grave, and get plundered (and serve you right!) in every article, because you WILL be gen-teel parties to the last?

Eh? Think a little! Here’s the plumber painter and glazier come to take the funeral order which he is going to give to the sexton, who is going to give it to the clerk, who is going to give it to the carpenter, who is going to give it to the haberdasher, who is going to give it to the furnishing undertaker, who is going to divide it with the Black Jobmaster. “Hearse and four, Sir?” says he. “No, a pair will be sufficient.” “I beg your pardon, Sir, but when we buried Mr. Grundy at number twenty, there was four on ’em, Sir; I think it right to mention it.” “Well, perhaps there had better be four.” “Thank you, Sir. Two coaches and four, Sir, shall we say?” “No. Coaches and pair.” “You’ll excuse my mentioning it, Sir, but pairs to the coaches, and four to the hearse, would have a singular appearance to the neighbours. When we put four to anything, we always carry four right through.” “Well! say four!” “Thank you, Sir. Feathers of course?” “No. No feathers. They’re absurd.” “Very good, Sir. No feathers?” “No.” “Very good, Sir. We can do fours without feathers, Sir, but it’s what we never do. When we buried Mr. Grundy, there was feathers, and—I only throw it out, Sir—Mrs. Grundy might think it strange.” “Very well! Feathers!” “Thank you, Sir,”—and so on.

Is it and so on, or not, through the whole black job of jobs, because of Mrs. Grundy and the gen-teel party?

I suppose you’ve thought about this? I suppose you’ve reflected on what you’re doing, and what you’ve done? When you read about those poisonings for the burial society money, you consider how it is that burial societies ever came to be, at all? You perfectly understand—you who are not the poor, and ought to set ’em an example—that, besides making the whole thing costly, you’ve confused their minds about this burying, and have taught ’em to confound expence and show, with respect and affection. You know all you’ve got to answer for, you gen-teel parties? I’m glad of it.

I believe it’s only the monkeys who are servile imitators, is it? You reflect! To be sure you do. So does Mrs. Grundy—and she casts reflections—don’t she?

What animals are those who scratch shallow holes in the ground in crowded places, scarcely hide their dead in ’em, and become unnaturally infected by their dead, and die by thousands? Vultures, I suppose. I think you call the Vulture an obscene bird? I don’t consider him agreeable, but I never caught him misconducting himself in that way.

My honourable friend, the dog—I call him my honourable friend in your Parliamentary sense, because I hate him—turns round three times before he goes to sleep. I ask him why? He says he don’t know; but he always does it. Do you know how you ever came to have that board of feathers carried on a fellow’s head? Come. You’re a boastful race. Show yourselves superior to the dog, and tell me!

Now, I don’t love many people; but I do love the undertakers. I except them from the censure I pass upon you in general. They know you so well, that I look upon ’em as a sort of Ravens. They are so certain of your being gen-teel parties, that they stick at nothing. They are sure they’ve got the upper hand of you. Our proprietor was reading the paper, only last night, and there was an advertisement in it from a sensitive and libelled undertaker, to wit, that the allegation “that funerals were unnecessarily expensive, was an insult to his professional brethren.” Ha! ha! Why he knows he has you on the hip. It’s nothing to him that their being unnecessarily expensive is a fact within the experience of all of you as glaring as the sun when there’s not a cloud. He is certain that when you want a funeral “performed,” he has only to be down upon you with Mrs. Grundy, to do what he likes with you—and then he’ll go home, and laugh like a Hyæna.

I declare (supposing I wasn’t detained against my will by our proprietor) that, if I had any arms, I’d take the undertakers to ’em! There’s another, in the same paper, who says they’re libelled, in the accusation of having disgracefully disturbed the meeting in favour of what you call your General Interment Bill. Our establishment was in the Strand, that night. There was no crowd of undertakers’ men there, with circulars in their pockets, calling on ’em to come in coloured clothes to make an uproar; it wasn’t undertakers’ men who got in with forged orders to yell and screech; it wasn’t undertakers’ men who made a brutal charge at the platform, and overturned the ladies like a troop of horse. Of course not. I know all about it.

But—and lay this well to heart, you Lords of the creation, as you call yourselves!—it is these undertakers’ men to whom, in the last trying, bitter grief of life, you confide the loved and honoured forms of your sisters, mothers, daughters, wives. It is to these delicate gentry, and to their solemn remarks, and decorous behaviour, that you entrust the sacred ashes of all that has been the purest to you, and the dearest to you, in this world. Don’t improve the breed! Don’t change the custom! Be true to my opinion of you, and to Mrs. Grundy!

I nail the black flag of the black Jobmaster to our cage—figuratively speaking—and I stand up for the gen-teel parties. So (but from different motives) does the Owl. You’ve got a chance, by means of that bill I’ve mentioned—by the bye, I call my own a General Interment Bill, for it buries everything it gets hold of—to alter the whole system; to avail yourselves of the results of all improved European experience; to separate death from life; to surround it with everything that is sacred and solemn, and to dissever it from everything that is shocking and sordid. You won’t read the bill? You won’t dream of helping it? You won’t think of looking at the evidence on which it’s founded—Will you? No. That’s right!

Gen-teel parties, step forward, if you please, to the rescue of the black Jobmaster! The rats are with you. I am informed that they have unanimously passed a resolution that the closing of the London churchyards will be an insult to their professional brethren, and will oblige ’em “to fight for it.” The Parrots are with you. The Owl is with you. The Raven is with you. No General Interments. Carrion for ever!

Ha, ha! Halloa!

HOW WE WENT FISHING IN CANADA.

There were three of us. Our purpose was fishing, in Canadian fashion, under the ice, and our destination was the township of New Ireland, distant about seventy miles from our starting point, Quebec, and situated about midway between the St. Lawrence and the American line. Our conveyance was a stout, commodious, yet light, and not inelegant sleigh, with seats for four, and plentifully supplied with buffalo robes, which are dressed so as to be as soft as blankets—useful in a temperature of twenty degrees below Zero, and ornamental from their fringes, which were garnished with various devices, all of which had some reference to the wild denizens of the forest. Under each seat was a box, which we stowed with a goodly supply of creature comforts and a few books, thus prudently making provision against the contingencies of privation and ennui. Our locomotive power consisted of two small but very spirited horses, which were neatly harnessed, with a string of merry sleigh bells dangling from the girths of each.

In this comfortable condition we in due time arrived at “Richardson’s,” one of the most celebrated hostelries in the seignory of St. Giles.

Here we put up for the night, tempted to do so by the superiority of the accommodation, especially as we had but an easy day’s journey before us for the morrow. During the morning it was so intensely cold that our breath formed thick crusts of ice on the shawls which we had round our necks, whilst the bushy whiskers of our companion Perroque were pendant with tiny icicles. As our horses warmed, almost every hair on their backs formed the nucleus of a separate icicle, which, by-and-bye, made them all stand erect, and caused the animals to look more like porcupines than horses. About midday it began to moderate, and by nightfall the temperature had risen considerably. The wind had by this time set in, with a steady current from the east. This, with the change of temperature, made us somewhat uneasy as to the weather; but our hopes rose when we found that it was yet a brilliant starlight about 10 o’clock, when we retired to rest. But even then the coming tempest was not far off; and in about two hours afterwards the wind was howling fearfully about the house, which it shook to its very foundations, whilst the driving snow pattered against the windows as if clouds of steel filings had been driven against them. I was soon soothed to sleep by the wild lullaby of the winter night, and did not awake again until eight in the morning, when I was called by a servant, who entered my room with a lighted candle in her hand. I should otherwise have been in darkness, for the snow had, over night, completely blocked up my window. My room was on the ground-floor, and looked to the east. Against that side of the house, the snow had been piled by the wind in an enormous wreath, which partly encroached upon the windows of the floor above. Blungle, my other friend, who had recently arrived from the region of Russell Square, London, slept in a room contiguous to mine, but he refused to get up, declaring that although it was still the middle of the night, he was too wide awake to be humbugged. It was not until breakfast was sent in to him, and he found by the state of his appetite that it must have been several hours since he had supped, that he condescended to examine his window, which discovered to him the true state of the case.

The wind was still high, and although the snow had ceased to fall, the tempest abated nothing of its fury. The dry snow was driven like light sand before the blast, until the air was thick with it. Neither man nor beast was astir, every living thing taking shelter from the storm. By-and-bye, the heavy pall overhead began to rend, and a few faint gleams of sunshine would occasionally light up the wild turmoil and confusion that raged below. About ten o’clock, the clouds were rolled away, and the sun shone steadily out. For a full hour afterwards the wind maintained its strength, but by noon had so far abated, that the drift had almost ceased.

But, by this time, the roads had become utterly impracticable. They were, indeed, obliterated; the snow lying, in some places, lightly upon them; and in others, forming huge swelling wreaths, either across or along them. We were eager to go forward, but were dissuaded by our host from attempting it, till the afternoon, when the road might be at least practicable. On such occasions the law requires the owners of land to “break the roads” passing through or by their respective properties; and by two o’clock every sleigh in St. Giles’s was out for the purpose. As soon as a track was opened, we prepared to start. The road for the first quarter of a mile had been well sheltered; and as the evergreens were still standing, there was but little difficulty in keeping the old track, which afforded a firm footing for the horses. But beyond that the evergreens had been prostrated and buried in the snow; and it was evident that our pioneers had floundered in the midst of difficulties. Such was presently our own fate, our horses having plunged into the soft snow, where it was fully six feet deep, from which we had with no little difficulty and labour to dig them out. This quenched our enthusiasm, and we returned to the inn, where we remained for another night.

Next morning we were enabled to proceed, though but slowly, on our way. Leaving St. Giles’s, we entered St. Sylvestre, the last, on this road, of the belt of French seignories lying between the St. Lawrence and the “Townships.” It is almost exclusively inhabited by British settlers. In the townships, Frenchmen are as rare as negroes in Siberia. The first township we came to was that of Leeds; on entering which we found a great change in the whole aspect of the country. From being flat and monotonous it became suddenly varied and undulating, and appeared to consist of a succession of rather lofty ridges, with broad belts of fertile table land at their summit. On gaining the top of the first, we turned to enjoy the prospect which lay behind us. It was really magnificent. The air was so clear and crisp, that almost every object embraced within the distant horizon had a distinct form and outline. The level tract over which we had passed lay extended beneath our feet, stretching for about forty miles to the St. Lawrence. In appearance it was as variegated as a carpet,—the white patches of every shape and size with which it was interspersed indicating the clearances amongst the dark brown woods. The bold and precipitous banks of the St. Lawrence could be traced for miles, whilst here and there the stream itself was visible. The distant city, on its rocky promontory, came out in fine relief against the sky, its tin covered spires glistening in the sunshine like silver pinnacles. A little to the right, the outline of the chain of hills lying behind it, although they were fully sixty miles distant from us, was distinctly visible in the far-off heavens.

On quitting Leeds, our way led chiefly through the woods, the clearances being now the rare exception.

At length we reached the district, or “township,” of New Ireland, which having been settled by immigrants from Maine and New Hampshire, more than forty years ago, is now reckoned one of the wealthiest and most prosperous parts of the country. To one of its well-to-do farmers we had introductions, and took up our quarters. His large and spacious house was built upon a high bank, overlooking one of the smaller lakes, from which our sport was to be derived, because it afforded one of the best fishing grounds in the neighbourhood. Shortly after breakfast (the buck-wheat cakes and pumpkin pie were beyond praise), we prepared for a day’s sport. Our tackle would appear rather odd to English sportsmen: our lines consisted of strong hempen cords, of which we provided ourselves with about a dozen. To each were attached two very large hooks, dressed upon thin whip-cord. We had likewise three axes, and as many chisels of the largest size, attached to handles about six feet long. In addition to these we had a shovel and a broad hoe. They were all stowed into a large hand sleigh, which was dragged to the fishing ground by a servant.

The lake was about three miles long and half-a-mile wide. It lay in a beautiful valley, embossed in the deep and sombre pine woods, which covered the lower grounds. It was one of a series, some of which were smaller and others much larger than itself. For fully five months in the year the surface of each is frozen to the depth of several feet. We started off to skate to the upper end, which was two-and-a-half miles distant. My friend Blungle, not an accomplished skater, made so very false a start, that he was speedily noticed spinning round rapidly on the ice on a pivot, of which his heels and his head formed opposite angles—precisely like a rotatory letter V. Perroque, our French comforter and guide is a perfect Perrot in skates, and performed the most graceful evolutions around our prostrate friend, in a manner that produced a pretty and highly diverting tableau. At last, however, he managed to “feel his feet” better, and we all soon afterwards reached the fishing ground.

The spot selected was close to the head of the lake, where the stream flowing from that immediately above, fell into it. Here the fish are generally attracted by the greater quantity of food there deposited by the stream. In winter they have additional inducements, owing to the greater warmth of the water from the number of springs in the neighbourhood, and to the greater abundance of light which they enjoy through the ice which is here comparatively thin. Indeed, over some of the springs no ice forms during the coldest seasons. Our first care was to make at least half-a-dozen holes in the ice. This sportsman-like operation we commenced with our axes, making each hole about three feet in diameter. When we got down about a foot or so the axes became useless to us, and we had to resort to our chisels, with which we speedily progressed; clearing the holes of the broken ice with the shovel first and afterwards with the hoe. We were not long at work, before we found the utility of the long handles of both hoe and chisels, the ice which we had to perforate being fully three feet thick. There is a legend in the neighbourhood, of an Irishman, who, having forgotten his chisel, very wisely got into the hole which he was cutting, that he might use his axe with better effect; he, of course, kept going down as the hole got deeper and deeper, until, at last, he went down altogether, and, according to the report, made food for the fish he intended to capture.

Things being thus prepared, we baited our hooks with pieces of fat pork, and dropped them into the water—the lines being set in each hole—the other end of each line was attached to the middle of a stick, about six feet in length, so placed, that it could not be dragged into the hole. These we left lying upon the ice, some distance from the holes, so as to give us warning of a bite, and the fish an opportunity of running a little when hooked. The contemplative angler of the Waltonian School has no chance here, for he would be inevitably frozen to an icicle before he obtained so much as a bite. For amusement as well as for warmth, therefore, we skated in the immediate vicinity of our lines, of which we seldom lost sight. The fish, which is a species of pike, and attains a large size, sometimes weighing upwards of thirty pounds, are soon attracted to the spot by the columns of light descending through the apertures in the ice. It is seldom, therefore, that the angler has to remain long in suspense ere some token is afforded him that his labour is not likely to be in vain. A few minutes after the casting of the nets, I happened to approach the hole in which mine were set, and was looking inquisitively into its leaden depths, eager, if possible, to catch a glimpse of what was going on underneath, when suddenly the stick to which one of the lines was attached, was dragged towards the aperture with great velocity, and catching me by the heels, turned poor Blungle’s laugh completely against me; for it laid me at once upon my back, with my legs spanning the hole. I should certainly have gone with it, but that the stick, when the fish came to the end of his run, lay firmly across it, and kept me up. Having risen, I thought it my time, and began to pull at the line. From the power with which I had to contend, however, I found it necessary to have a better foundation than my skates afforded me; so getting upon my knees, I soon brought my captive to light, and deposited him upon the ice. He was a splendid fish, weighing upwards of twenty pounds, and floundered prodigiously for a few minutes. The frost, however, soon tranquilised him, and in about a quarter-of-an-hour he was as hard and brittle as an icicle.

We continued our sport for some time with tolerable success, having, by three o’clock, caught eleven fish, the smallest of which weighed eight pounds. But our pleasures were brought to an untimely period by Blungle, whose ill luck had now passed into a proverb amongst us. Hitherto no fish had favoured his line with so much as the passing compliment of a nibble. He had given up the attempt, and for nearly two hours had been amusing himself by skating up and down the lake. Practice had improved him, and like all beginners, he was proud of his prowess, and was particularly anxious to redeem his lost character for skating by one extraordinary achievement. He had been warned to give what a nautical friend of our host called a “wide berth” to the mouth of the stream which ran into the lake. Bold in the strength of his newly acquired skill, he neglected this advice, and about three o’clock shot rapidly past us in the direction of the stream. In less than a minute there was a loud agonising cry for help.

We looked round. Every vestige of Blungle was invisible, except his head, and that was seen just above the ice, his body being immersed in water. He had ventured too far, and the ice had given way with him. Mirth instantly was changed to the acutest apprehension. In that part, the ice was so weak, that he might have broken it by pressing his arms against it. But this he could not do; for although his toes touched ground, he happened to be standing on the tail of a small bank, off which the water rapidly deepened in one direction. For a moment or two we were perplexed what to do, when it occurred to us that we might turn the hand sleigh to account. Having tied the three chisels with their long handles, firmly together, we tied the long pole thus furnished, to the sleigh, and pushed it towards him; Perroque putting a large piece of pork upon the sleigh, that he might bite at it. He hesitated for some time to relinquish his secure foothold; but at length, seeing that it was his only chance, and being terrified by a great fish which came up and stared him hungrily in the face, he seized the sleigh, which we then pulled towards us, and got safely to land. It crushed and broke the weak ice, but rose upon that which was stronger, dragging Blungle with it.

For some time he lay where we landed him, and would soon have been as stiff as the fish, had we not raised him to his feet, when he immediately started for the house. We followed him as soon as we could, dragging our tackle, implements, and spoils along with us, and were not long in overtaking him; for before he had got half-way down the lake, his clothes had become quite stiff, and he looked like a man in a cracked glass case. On reaching the house, it was with difficulty we undressed him and put him to bed; when by dint of warmth without, and brandy administered within, we gradually thawed him. He did not afterwards join our fishing; but confined himself to improving his skill in skating in the centre of the lake.

We remained altogether four days, by which time we had caught as many fish as we had room for in our sleigh. We then bade adieu to our kind host and his family, and after a pleasant journey, arrived towards the evening of the second day, at Quebec. The fish, which were still frozen and in excellent condition, we distributed in presents to our friends.

A WISH.

Oh, that I were the Spirit of a Plant,
Rear’d in Imagination’s evergreen world,—
To lift my head above the meadow grass,

And strike my roots, far-spread and intervolved,

Deep as the Central Heart, wherefrom to taste

The springs of infinite being! From that source

What pregnant fermentations would arise;
What blossom, fruit, perfume, and influence;
To purify mankind’s destructive blood,—
So full of life and elevating powers—
So cloy’d and clogg’d for exercise of good.

THE BLACK DIAMONDS OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.—THE DIAMONDS.

The history and adventures of the ‘great diamonds’ of Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western potentates, have been often chronicled; their several values have been estimated at hundreds of thousands, and at millions; but not a syllable has ever been breathed of their utility. The reason is tolerably obvious; these magnificent diamonds are of no practical use at all, being purely ornamental luxuries. Now, it has occurred to us that the diamonds indigenous to England, are the converse of these brilliant usurpers of the chief fame of the nether earth (to say nothing of the vain-glories on the upper surface) being black, instead of prismatic white—opaque, instead of transpicuous; and in place of deriving a fictitious and fluctuating value from scarcity and ornamental beauty, deriving their value from the realities of their surpassing utility and great abundance. They certainly make no very striking figure in the ball-room dress of prince or princess; but it is their destiny and office to carry comfort to the poor man’s home, as well as to the mansion of the rich; they are not to be looked upon as treasures of beauty, they are to be shovelled out and burnt; they are not the bright emblems of no change, and no activity, but like heralds, sent from the depths of night, where Nature works her secret wonders, to advance those sciences and industrial arts which are equally the consequence and the re-acting cause of the progress of humanity.

In the reign of King Edward the First of England, a new fuel was brought to London, much to his subjects’ objection and the perplexity of his majesty. Listen to the history—not of the king, but of the great event of his time which few historians mention.

If chemical nature beneath the earth be accounted very slow, human nature above ground is comparatively slower,—and without the same reason for it. The transmutations beneath the earth require centuries for their accomplishment, and of necessity;—the proper use of new and valuable discoveries on the surface, is a matter of human understanding and rational will. In the former case, the thing is not perfect without its number of centuries; in the latter, the thing has very seldom been acknowledged without great lapse and loss of time, because mankind will not be made more comfortable and happy without a long fight against the innovation. Wherefore coals, the most excellent material of fuel,—for cooking, for works of industry and skill, for trades and arts, and the cutting short of long journeys,—have only been in use during the last three centuries.

The first mention of coals, as a fuel, occurs in a charter of Henry the Third, granting licenses to the burgesses of Newcastle to dig for coals; and in 1281, this city had created, out of these diggings, a pretty good trade.

In the beginning of the fourteenth century, coals were first sent from Newcastle to London, by way of a little experiment on the minds of the blacksmiths and brewers, and a few other trades needing fuel; but for no other purposes. So the good black smoke rose from a score or two of favoured chimneys.

As one man, all London instantly rose up against it, and was exceeding wroth. Whereof, in 1316, came a petition from Parliament to the king, praying his Majesty,—if he had any love for a fair garden, a clean face, yea, or a clean shirt and ruff,—and if he did not wish his subjects to be choked, or, at the very best, to be smoked into bad hams,—to forbid all use of the new and pestilent fuel called “coals.”

So the king, seeing the good sense and reasonableness of the request, forthwith issued a Proclamation, commanding all use of the dangerous nuisance of coals to cease from that day henceforth.

But the blacksmiths and brewers took counsel together, and they were joined by several other trades, who had found great advantage in the use of coals; and they resolved to continue the same, as secretly as might be—forgetting all about the smoke, or innocently trusting that it would not again betray them.

No sooner, however, did the black smoke begin to rise and curl above the chimneys, than it was actually seen by many eyes!—and away ran the people bawling to Parliament; and more petitions were sent; and his Majesty, being now very angry, ordered all these refractory coal-burning smiths, brewers, and other injurious rogues to be heavily fined, and their fire-places and furnaces cast down and utterly demolished.

All this was accordingly done. Still, it was done to no purpose; for so very excellent was the result to the different trades of those who had smuggled and used the prohibited fuel, that use it by some means they would, let happen what might. More chimneys than ever now sent up black curling clouds, and more fire-places and furnaces were destroyed; and so they went on.

At length it was wisely discovered that nobody had been choked, poisoned, “cured” into a bad ham, or otherwise injured and transformed. Now, then, of course, it was reasonable to expect, as the advantages were proved to be so great and numerous, the injuries trivial, and the dangers nothing, the use of coal would become pretty general, without more prohibition, contest, or question.

No, indeed; this is not the way the world goes on. Social benefits are not to be forced upon worthy people at this rate. Centuries must elapse—even as we find with the growth of metals and minerals beneath the earth. In the latter case, it is a necessary condition; in the former, it is made one.

The many good services and value of coals being now ascertained, as well as their harmlessness (except that they certainly did give a bad colour to all the public edifices and great houses), and the progressive increase of many luxuries of life, together with their advantages to numerous trades besides those of the wisely-valiant and not-to-be-denied blacksmiths and brewers who first adopted and persisted in using them, every facility for their importation into London was naturally expected by the citizens of that highly-favoured place. Innocent human nature! vain hopes of children, who always expect reason from those who preach it! For now, various lets and hindrances were cunningly devised, in the shape of taxes and duties, so as to check the facilities of interchange between London and Newcastle. So, the new fuel—the product of the mine destined one day to become the Black Diamonds of England—had to struggle for its freedom through a succession of “wise and happy reigns.”

CHAPTER II.
THE EMANCIPATION OF THE DIAMOND.

Before a cargo of coals could be discharged from a collier, it was necessary to get the permission of the Lord Mayor to land them. And how was this to be obtained? By what sort of dulcet persuasion, we are left in no difficulty to conjecture; but as to the amount of the sum, a modest official veil of darkness enshrouds the record. The perquisites, however, granted to the aldermen, are fortunately within reach of knowledge; and accordingly we find it set down that the corporation were empowered to measure and weigh coals, either in person, and in their gowns, or by proxy, if they preferred that course, and to charge the sum of 8d. per ton for their labour. This was confirmed by a charter in 1613. By this tax the City made some 50,000l. a year, and rejoiced exceedingly.

This system of protection, under several forms and pleasant variations, long continued, and was extended all over England, the pressure falling most unequally, to the injury of the least wealthy and the poor, according to the immemorial custom of Governments. Some of the people of London were audacious enough to complain that they did not need to be protected from the Newcastle coals, but all on the contrary, would give any fair sum to obtain them; and that, indeed, what they really needed was to be protected from the Lord Mayor and Corporation, and other taxes and duties. But these people were reproved as ignorant and froward, and told that they understood nothing at all:—what they had to do, was simply—to pay, first for the protection, and then for the coals. So they paid. But the importance of the article being found to exceed even the greediness of the impost, the use of coals became general during the reign of Charles the First; the same, with other taxes, being demanded, from the reign of William the Third downwards.

In 1830, and not before, the heaviest of the above duties were abolished; those, however, which were collected from the Londoners being excepted—for their old impertinence—together with two or three sea-ports, who had also spoken.

Who shall repress a truth? Coals were excellent good things—there was no reason in denying it. But any foolish people, and there will always be more than enough found to do it, can repress a truth for an abominably long period, denying it without reason, yet very effectually. Or, when they admit it, then comes the tax and penalty to be paid for the fact. Thus was the free introduction and use of coals repressed throughout England until 1830; from which date, its grand rise from the bowels of the earth into a new and most extensive importance may be dated.

Yet, as extremes meet, and as human nature delights in opposites, if only by way of reaction or relaxation, so the long-continued obstinate slowness of past ages bids fair, in our own day, to enter upon an extreme change to flighty prematurities, and the over-leaping of all intermediate and necessary knowledge. But the reign of the fast-ones is now approaching its height; which having once reached, it will then have a rapid decline into contempt, and so give place to regular and steady advances upon solid ground.

Still, we are not to infer from the present flourishing state of things, that the great black-diamond millionaires are very numerous, or that fortunes are readily accumulated in the trade. Coal mines are hazardous speculations: costly is the sinking of shafts—precarious the lives of men and property from constant dangers of explosion or inundation; whereof it comes that no Insurance Office will guarantee such property against these or any other accidents. True may it be that the large coal owners on the Tyne and the Wear rejoice in a sort of monopoly; as do other owners; but herein shall we not find the cause of coals being sold in London at nearly three times the price they cost at the pit’s mouth. The cause is to be sought in the expenses of transit (which, alone, are often equal to, and not unfrequently exceed, the cost price); in the loss of screening; the expenses of lighters and lightermen wharfs, officers, and wharfingers, coal-heavers, carmen, horses, waggons, sacks—to say nothing of long credit, or bad debts;—and the profits of the various middle-men, among the most numerous of whom are the brass-plate coal merchants (whose establishments simply consist of an order-book, wherein it appeareth that they get a little more than they give); and the retailers of various gradations.

All these difficulties, and all these reductions and dues, notwithstanding, and in spite of,—the coal trade has risen during the last twenty years to a magnitude in quantity and influence which may be regarded as one of the greatest commercial triumphs of this our England.

The coal-fields of the United States of America are upwards of fourteen times larger extent than ours; yet, in 1845, while the American coal mines produced 4,400,000 of tons, the coal mines of England produced upwards of 32,000,000 of tons. In the same year, our production of iron was more than four times the American amount. Moreover,—and here may the gravest historian exalt his pen, and yet be accounted no flourisher,—we have for some years past been able to supply coals to all the great powers of the globe. In 1842, England exported 60,000 tons of coals to the United States of America; 88,000 tons to Russia; 111,000 tons to Prussia; 515,900 tons to France;—not to speak of the hundreds of thousands of tons exported in the same year to Germany collectively, to Holland, to Denmark, Sweden, the East Indies and China, &c., &c.

The use of coals has now extended, not only over the civilised world, but in its potent form of steam has reached most of the remoter regions. From Suez to Singapore are steam vessels already in course of passage, and the line will soon be carried to Australia. When the American locomotives have made their way to the shores of the Pacific, their vessels will be ready to carry onward the traffic to China and the Indian Islands from the east; “and thus,” as writes a learned critic, discoursing of the virtues of steam-coal, “complete the circuit of the globe.” Whereby, “a steam voyage round the world will in a few years, be so practicable, that the merchant and tourist may make the circuit within a year, and yet have time enough to see and learn much at many of the principal ‘stations’ on his way.”

All rightful honour, then, to these priceless Diamonds—whether they be black spirits or furnace-white, flame-red spirits, or ashy-grey—whether cannel coal and caking coal—cherry coal and stone coal—whether any of the forty kinds of Newcastle coal, or any of the seventy species of the great family, from the highest class of the bituminous, down to the one degree above old coke.

CHAPTER III.—THE COAL EXCHANGE.

Near to the Custom House rises one of the most ornate edifices in the metropolis,—the Coal Exchange of London,—in which is carried on one of our most stupendous trades.

It is Wednesday—a market day—we ascend the steps of a beautiful sort of round tower, and pass through the folding swing-doors of the principal entrance. The space here, or little vestibule, forms the base of the centre of a well-staircase of iron. You look up, through the coiling balustrades as they climb up to the top, and at the very top you see a painting in the Rubens style of colouring, (though a long way after Rubens in other respects,) of the figure of a prodigal lady, who is upsetting a cornucopia, full—not of coals—but of all the most richly coloured fruits of Italy and the East, which seem about to descend straight through the centre of the well-staircase, and shower down upon your wondering and expectant head. Cupids—or, at least, little chubby boys, tumbling in the air—are also in attendance on this theatrical Goddess of Abundance.

Passing from this entrance into the grand central market, you find yourself in a circular area boarded with oak planks of a light and dark hue, arranged in a kind of mosaic of long angles, which converge to a centre piece, wherein a great anchor is inlaid. Beside this, there is a wooden dagger, to the blade of which a legend of no interest is attached. Three ranges of cast-iron galleries rise all round, terminating above in a large glass dome, with an orange-coloured centre of stained glass. Around the floor of the area, at due intervals, long desks of new polished oak, with inkstands let into the wood, stand invitingly ready for the transaction of business. The City Arms, on a series of small shields, is the simple adornment of the outer balustrade-work of the three galleries,—except, also, that these galleries often have many lady-visitors who lean over and contemplate the ‘dark doings’ of the busy black-diamond merchants who congregate below.

But let it not be supposed that the ornaments of the Coal Exchange of London are confined to the City Arms, or even the beauty of the lady-visitors. Private offices, and recesses for business, having the most neat, orderly appearance, even to a primness and propriety worthy of the Society of Friends, are observable round the area, beneath the galleries; but the panels of the woodwork that separate these offices, rejoice in the most lively adornments, à la Jullien. They are covered with emblematic, fanciful, and not very characteristic pictures and designs, all in the brightest hues; and, being painted on a light ground, they have a look of gaiety and airiness quite of a continental character. The weight and gravity of the City has, for once—and by way of smiling antagonism to what every one would expect of a coal-market—determined to emulate the gayest places of public amusement in France or Germany. Restaurants, cafés, dancing-rooms—and oh!—shall we say it—a touch of Cremorne! In one panel you see a figure of Watchfulness, typified by a robed lady, with a wise-faced owl at her side. The river Severn is typified by Naïads and a dolphin—by a little poetic licence. In another panel we have Charity, bearing a couple of children, with a figure of old Father Thames sitting among rushes below. Then, we have Perseverance for the Avon, emblemed by a snail at the foot of a brunette lady with black eyes,—the favourite style of beauty of the artist, Mr. Sang. The Trent and the Tyne are similarly illustrated, and all in the brightest colours, on a light ground.

Let us now return to the principal entrance, and ascend to the first gallery. The panels all round, are painted as below. The chief subject of most of them appears to be a colliery—that is, the works above ground, such as the little black house of the steam-engine, with its long chain passing over the drum, and then over a wheel above the pit’s mouth. The first we come to is the celebrated Wallsend colliery. Each has fanciful designs above and beneath, as if to atone for the dark reality of the centre piece, picturesque as this is always made. Over some of these we find heraldic monsters of the right frightful Order of the Griffin, prancing above greyhounds who crouch on each side of a large ornamental cup, not unlike a head-dress of the ancient South American Indians, which however is supported by a lady in the bright costume of a Mexican peasant, wearing wings. Beneath there lies a rich grouping of grapes, arborescent ferns, with vulture-headed griffins, and flowers of the cactus. The collieries are occasionally varied with a sea-piece, in which, of course, a black collier-vessel is sailing from the North. Sometimes the scene is a shore-piece with a collier boat; but presided over by the usual sort of nut-brown mining beauty with Italian eyes, and hair in no particular order, bearing a fruit-basket on her head, piled up with all sorts of ripe fruit of the most tempting size and colour. Beneath her, we again find the griffin vultures holding watch over some logs of antediluvian trees.

Wandering onwards in this way, we observed, a little in advance of us, a seafaring man, in a rough blue pilot coat, with a face so weather-beaten that it looked as hard as a ship’s figure-head, and a pair of great dangling hands that seemed hewn out of solid oak. He was very busy in front of one of the panels, admiring a lady with very good-humoured black eyes, and cheeks as red as ripe tomatos, carrying on her head a basket of Orlean plums and alligator pears, richly grouped with a profusion of grapes, and crimson flowers of the cactus. Her face was turned smilingly upwards at a collier brig in full sail.

We congratulated him on his ‘choice,’ and the suggestion appearing to please his fancy, a little colloquy ensued, from which it turned out that he was Thomas Oldcastle, of Durham, captain of the collier brig ‘Shiner,’ of South Shields, and having just discharged his cargo at Rotherhithe, had come to London to amuse himself for a few hours. Arriving at the entrance in the course of our talk, we ascended the stairs together, and soon reached the second gallery.

The flooring of this gallery—in fact the whole of it, like the previous one, was of cast iron. In the semicircle of the entrance was a picture of Newcastle, on one side, with its iron bridge and railway combined, and its old stone bridge below. It was very well and characteristically painted, and of a sombre and rather smoky colour, which Captain Oldcastle said was too like to be very pleasing. His thoughts were evidently reverting to the very highly coloured operatic ladies below. On the other side of this entrance was a picture of Durham, with the cathedral among the trees—also a very good and truthful picture. Captain Oldcastle, after great deliberation, and the slow pocketing of both hands, was obliged to confess that it was something like the old place. But this wall was not right—any how—and that spire did not look so—when last he saw it—in short, it was clear he wanted reality, could not make out perspective differences, and preferred the handsome looks of the brunette fruit-bearer in the lower gallery.

But though our honest friend had no good taste in pictures, there was a great mass of good solid practical knowledge in the hard-outlined head of this rough captain of the North Sea. It turned out that he was an old friend of Mr. Buddle, the coal engineer of Wallsend, and often quoted him as authority. Chancing to ask him some question about the number of people employed in the coal trade on the Tyne and the Wear, he said that he had heard Buddle say (twenty years ago) there were nearly 5,000 boys, and quite 3,500 men underground in the works near the Tyne: and nearly 3,000 men, and 700 boys above ground. On the Wear, he said there were 9,000. All of these were employed in the mines, and taking the coal to the ships on the two rivers. Captain Oldcastle estimated the vessels employed at about 1,400, which would require 15,000 sailors and boys to work them “as all ought to be.” Besides these, there were lots more hands in other parts of the great coal trade of the north.

But as this estimate of his friend Buddle, we remarked, had been made twenty years ago, was it not pretty certain that the numbers had immensely increased by this time? To this the Captain replied that it was so, no doubt; and supposing that every other district, besides the North, of the entire coal trade of England, had increased in the same proportion, and if you added to this all the agents, factors, clerks, subordinates, whippers, lightermen, wharfingers, &c., there would be found upwards of 200,000 men engaged in the Coal trade of England,—enough, he added with a grimly comical look, if a war broke out, to furnish the army and navy with 20,000 men each, at a week’s notice.

“If they liked the work,” we added; but the Captain had walked on, attracted by a picture in one of the panels. It was a portrait of a miner in his underground dress—when he wears any—the darkness of his figure and position in the mine being pleasantly and appropriately relieved by an immense quantity of highly coloured tropical fruits, flowers, griffin vultures, long and sleek-necked cranes, arborescent ferns, various logs of wood known in fossil botany, with here and there a string of choice jewels,—rubies, emeralds, and carbuncles of prodigious size, such as one has seen in “Blue Beard” and “Pizarro.” The next figure was a miner with a Davy-lamp, whom Captain Oldcastle shrewdly conjectured to be looking out for some of those jewels so profusely accorded to the fortunate miner in the previous picture.

In walking round these galleries, amidst so many adornments attracting the attention, a visitor might be excused for not too hastily turning his thoughts to utility. But this thought, in these too practical days, will obtrude itself. The number of the private rooms for offices, on each gallery, is considerable; their accommodations, all that could be desired; their appearance most neat, quiet, and unexceptionable; but by far the greater part are empty. Nobody will take them. Many of those on the ground-floor, or area of the market—obviously the best place by far—are unlet. These are of the high-priced, of course; still, as the price decreases with the ascent, why are not more of the upper offices taken? Here—in the very centre of all the great Coal trade of England!—and not one-third, not one-fourth, we think, of the offices let? We expressed our astonishment to the Captain.

“Oh!” said he, “the City is a queer place, and the City authorities are a rum sort of reasoners. They asked too much rent for these berths at first; and though but a few factors and merchants can afford to give it, the City still persists. And so they are obliged to go to the expence of fires in all the empty offices to keep them aired three-quarters of the year round, rather than see the place full at a moderate rent. That’s how I read their log.”

We now ascended to the third gallery. Here, the cold, though not the “beggarly array of empty boxes,” was most expressive of the mismanagement, somehow and somewhere of this well-placed, and most commodious building, on which so much money has been expended.

The paintings in the entrance of this uppermost gallery were of ‘Shields’ on one side, and ‘Sunderland’ on the other. That of Shields was a view of colliers in the river by moonlight, with a dull sky of indigo blue, and smoky clouds—very well done, and truthful, having a sufficient mixture of reality for the nature of the subject, and of fancy for the picturesque. The picture of Sunderland, with its one-arched iron bridge, which is so high above the water, that a collier can pass underneath without striking her topmasts, is also a night scene; but by torch-light; the red flashes of which fall upon a train of little upright waggons full of coals, coming from the pit to be shipped.

The panels round this gallery are adorned with paintings of gigantic ferns, fragments of the trunks of the lepidodendron, and the sigillaria, and other stems and foliage of those antediluvian plants and trees which subsequently contributed most largely to the coal formations. These paintings are interspersed with various miners’ tools, above which rises the glass dome of the building.

Descending the well-staircase, we asked Captain Oldcastle what capital he thought was employed by the great coal owners on the Tyne and Wear. He said—quoting his friend Buddle again, as authority—that they could not have embarked less than a million and a half of money, without reckoning any of the vessels on the river; but taking these into the account, the capital employed would not amount to less than between eight and ten millions. And this estimate was made by Buddle twenty years ago!

THE GREAT PENAL EXPERIMENTS.

Prison Life, like life in all other circumstances, has its extremes; and these have been pushed to the farthest verge of contrast by the ‘great experiments’ that have lately been essayed. There is an aristocracy of prisoners, and a commonality of prisoners; there are palace prisons, and kennel prisons in which it would be cruelty to confine refractory dogs. We have hardened criminals put into training in Model Prisons for pattern penitence, and novices in crime thrust into dens with the most depraved felons; so as to bring them down in morals to the lowest practicable level. The study of some of these extremes is instructive. It shows what results have been produced by the ‘great experiments’ which have been tried; either how much reform they have effected; or how many misdemeanants they are likely to add to the already over-populated dangerous class. For the sake of impartiality we shall in each instance offer no description of our own; but we intend to cite what has already been in print.

A graphic but eccentric pen has supplied a vivid description of the palace order of gaols. “Some months ago,” says Mr. Carlyle, in a recent pamphlet, “some friends took me with them to see one of the London Prisons; a Prison of the exemplary or model kind. An immense circuit of buildings; cut out, girt with a high ring wall, from the lanes and streets of the quarter, which is a dim and crowded one. Gateway as to a fortified place; then a spacious court, like the square of a city; broad staircases, passages to interior courts; fronts of stately architecture all round. It lodges some Thousand or Twelve-hundred prisoners, besides the officers of the establishment. Surely one of the most perfect buildings, within the compass of London. We looked at the apartments, sleeping-cells, dining-rooms, working-rooms, general courts or special and private; excellent all, the ne-plus-ultra of human care and ingenuity; in my life I never saw so clean a building; probably no Duke in England lives in a mansion of such perfect and thorough cleanness. The bread, the cocoa, soup, meat, all the various sorts of food, in their respective cooking-places, we tasted; found them of excellence superlative. The prisoners sat at work, light work, picking oakum and the like, in airy apartments with glass roofs, of agreeable temperature and perfect ventilation; silent, or at least conversing only by secret signs; others were out, taking their hour of promenade in clean flagged courts; methodic composure, cleanliness, peace, substantial wholesome comfort, reigned everywhere supreme.”

This is the great model experiment. We can easily reverse the picture. It is but a short walk from Pentonville to Smithfield—scarcely two miles—yet, in the prison world, the two places are antipodes. Here, within the hallowed precincts of the City, stands Giltspur Street Compter, upon the state of which we produce another witness. Mr. Dixon, in his work on London Prisons, testifies that in this jail the prisoners “sleep in small cells, little more than half the size of the model cell at Pentonville, which is calculated (on the supposition that the cell is to be ventilated on the best plan which science can suggest, regardless of cost) to be just large enough for one inmate. The cell in Giltspur Street Compter is little more than half the size, and is either not ventilated at all, or is ventilated very imperfectly. I have measured it, and know exactly the quantity of air which it will hold, and have no doubt but that it contains less than any human being ought to breathe in, in the course of a night. Well, in this cell, in which there is hardly room for them to lie down, I have seen five persons locked up, at four o’clock in the day, to be there confined, in darkness, in idleness, to pass all those hours, to do all the offices of nature, not merely in each other’s presence, but crushed by the narrowness of their den into a state of filthy contact which brute beasts would have resisted to the last gasp of life! Think of these five wretched beings—men with souls, and gifted with human reason—condemned, day by day, to pass in this unutterably loathsome manner two-thirds of their time! Can we wonder if these men come out of prison, after three or four months of such treatment, prepared to commit the most revolting crimes? Could five of the purest men in the world live together in such a manner without losing every attribute of good which had once belonged to them? He would be a rash man who would dare to answer—‘Yes.’ Take another fact from Newgate. In any of the female wards may be seen, a week before the Sessions, a collection of persons of every shade of guilt, and some who are innocent. I remember one case particularly. A servant girl, of about sixteen, a fresh-looking healthy creature, recently up from the country, was charged by her mistress for stealing a brooch. She was in the same room—lived all day, slept all night—with the most abandoned of her sex. They were left alone; they had no work to do; no books—except a few tracts for which they had no taste—to read. The whole day was spent, as is usual in such prisons, in telling stories—the gross and guilty stories of their own lives. There is no form of wickedness, no aspect of vice, with which the poor creature’s mind would not be compelled to grow familiar in the few weeks she passed in Newgate awaiting trial. When the day came, the evidence against her was found to be the lamest in the world, and she was at once acquitted. That she entered Newgate innocent I have no doubt; but who shall answer for the state in which she left it?”

Let us not wrong the City in supposing it singular in promoting these loathsome prison scenes. A hundred passages, in nearly as many blue books, are ready for quotation, to show how some of the ‘great experiments’ in not a few of the National prisons have turned out. One, however, will do. Here is a sentence or two from the Government’s own report of the state of one of its own hulks at Woolwich—the same Government which has been so good as to dispense upwards of 90,000l. of the public money in building the Pentonville Model. We cannot quote it entire, by reason of some of the passages being too revolting for reproduction in these pages:—

“In the hospital ship, the “Unité,” the great majority of the patients were infested with vermin, and their persons in many instances, particularly their feet, begrimed with dirt. No regular supply of body linen had been issued; so much so, that many men had been five weeks without a change; and all record had been lost of the time when the blankets had been washed; and the number of sheets was so insufficient, that the expedient had to be resorted to of only a single sheet at a time to save appearances. Neither towels nor combs were provided for the prisoners’ use. * * * On the admission of new cases into the hospital, patients were directed to leave their beds and go into hammocks, and the new cases were turned into the vacated beds, without changing the sheets.”

Is anything more shocking than the Compter, Newgate, and the Unité to be conceived? Do travellers tell us of anything worse in Russia, or China, or Old Tartary? “O! yes; there is Austria and its life-punishments in Spielberg,” some one may suggest, “surely there is no London parallel for that.” But Mr. Dixon answers there is:—in the Millbank Penitentiary. ‘The dark cells,’ he says, ‘are fearful places, and sometimes melancholy mistakes are made in committing persons to them. You descend about twenty steps from the ground-floor into a very dark passage leading into a corridor, on one side of which the cells—small, dark, ill-ventilated, and doubly barred—are ranged. No glimpse of day ever comes into this fearful place. The offender is locked up for three days, and fed on bread and water only. There is only a board to sleep on; and the only furniture of the cell is a water-closet. On a former visit to Millbank, some months ago, I was told there was a person in one of these cells. “He is touched, poor fellow!” said the warden, “in his intellects.” But his madness was very mild. He wished to fraternise with the other prisoners; declared that all mankind are brethren; sang hymns when told to be silent; and when reprimanded for taking these unwarranted liberties, declared that he was the “governor.” They said he pretended to be mad; which, seeing that his vagaries subjected him to continual punishments, and procured him no advantages, was very likely! They put him into darkness to enlighten his understanding; and alone, to teach him how unbrotherly men are. Poor wretch! He was frightened with his solitude, and howled fearfully. I shall never forget his wail as we passed the door of his horrid dungeon. The tones were quite unearthly, and caused an involuntary shudder. On hearing footsteps, he evidently thought they were coming to release him. While we remained in the corridor, he did not cease to shout and implore most lamentably for freedom: when he heard us retreating, his voice rose into a yell; and when the fall of the heavy bolts told him that we were gone, he gave a shriek of horror, agony, and despair, which ran through the pentagon, and can never be forgotten. God grant that I may never hear such sounds again! On coming again, after three or four months’ absence, to this part of the prison, the inquiry naturally arose, “What has become of the man who pretended to be mad?” The answer was, “Oh, he went mad, and was sent to Bedlam!”’

What happens at Pentonville, and what takes place at Millbank, is done under the same eye, under the same legislative supervision. The two “great experiments” of iron and feather-bed prison reform are worked out by the same power. The despots of Russia, Austria, and China, are at least consistent. They have not carried on opposite systems—one of extreme severity, and another of superlative ‘coddling.’ In no other country but this does Justice—blind as she is—administer cocoa and condign misery to the same degree of crime with the same hand.

We have thrown these facts together, merely to awaken attention to them. We purposely abstain from suggestive comment. We know that the subject of reformatory punishment is fraught with difficulties, to conquer which all the “great experiments” have been tried. But they have only been “great” because of their great expense and their great failure; and when the failure is incontestable—proved beyond doubt by the direst results,—should they not be abandoned, and something else tried, instead of being made an absolute matter of faith, and a test to which certain county magistrates, whom we could name, bring every man who is unhappy enough to be within their power? The cause of it is plainly and constantly presented at the bar of every Police Court and in the dock of every Sessions House. It has resulted from an utter misapprehension of means to end, and a lofty disregard of the good old adage, “prevention is better than cure.” Although it has been daily observed that ignorance—moral more than intellectual—ignorance has been the forerunner of all juvenile crime, we have never tried any very great experiment upon that. On the contrary, we spend hundreds of thousands every year to effect the manifest impossibility of re-forming what has never been formed. We have tried every shade of system but the right. Ingenuity has been on the rack to invent every sort of reformatory, from the iron rule of Millbank, to the affectionate fattening at Pentonville—except one, and that happens to be the right one. Punishment has occupied all our thoughts,—training, none. We condemn young criminals for not knowing certain moralities which we have not taught them, and—by herding them with accomplished professors of dishonesty in transit jails—punish them for immoralities which have been there taught them. Instances of this can be adduced in so large a proportion as to amount to a rule; to which the appearance of instructed juvenile criminals at the tribunals is the exception. Two or three glaring cases occurred only the past month. We select one as reported in the “Globe” newspaper of Tuesday, May 7:—

‘Bow-Street Police-Court.—This day, two little children, whose heads hardly reached the top of the dock, were placed at the bar before Mr. Jardine, charged with stealing a loaf. Their very appearance told the want they were in. The housekeeper to Mr. Mims, baker, Drury Lane, deposed, that they, about eight o’clock last evening, went into the shop and asked for a quartern loaf, and while her back was turned to get it for them, they stole a half quartern loaf, value 2½d., which was lying on the counter, and made off with it. Police constable, F 14, deposed, that he was on duty in Drury Lane, and seeing them quarrelling over the loaf, he asked them where they had got it. One of them answered, they had stolen it. After ascertaining how they came by it, he took them into custody. In defence, the prisoners said they were starving. Mr. Jardine sentenced them both to be once whipped in the House of Correction.’

These children were without means, friends, or any sort of instruction. They were whipped then for their ignorance and want, for both which they are not responsible. After whipping and a few imprisonments they will doubtless be boarded and instructed by fellow prisoners into finished thieves. The authorities tell us, that five-eighths of the juvenile criminals—and a few become professional after the age of twenty—who are received into jails, have not received one spark of moral or intellectual training!

These, and a thousand other facts too obvious for the common sense of our readers to be troubled with, induce us to recommend one other ‘great experiment’ which has never yet been tried. It has the advantage of being a preventive as well as a cure—it is—compared with all the penal systems now in practice—immeasurably safer, more humane, and incalculably cheaper. The ‘great experiment’ we propose, is National Education.

THE ORPHAN’S VOYAGE HOME.

The men could hardly keep the deck,
So bitter was the night;
Keen north-east winds sang thro’ the shrouds,
The deck was frosty white;
While overhead the glistening stars
Put forth their points of light.

On deck, behind a bale of goods,
Two orphans crouch’d, to sleep;
But ’twas so cold, the youngest boy
In vain tried not to weep:
They were so poor, they had no right
Near cabin doors to creep.

The elder round the younger wrapt
His little ragged cloak,
To shield him from the freezing sleet,
And surf that o’er them broke;
Then drew him closer to his side,
And softly to him spoke:—

“The night will not be long”—he said,
“And if the cold winds blow,
We shall the sooner reach our home,
And see the peat-fire glow;
But now the stars are beautiful—
Oh, do not tremble so!

“Come closer!—sleep—forget the frost—
Think of the morning red—
Our father and our mother soon
Will take us to their bed;
And in their warm arms we shall sleep.”
He knew not they were dead.

For them no father to the ship
Shall with the morning come;
For them no mother’s loving arms
Are spread to take them home:
Meanwhile the cabin passengers
In dreams of pleasure roam.

At length the orphans sank to sleep
All on the freezing deck;
Close huddled side to side—each arm
Clasp’d round the other’s neck.
With heads bent down, they dream’d the earth
Was fading to a speck.

The steerage passengers have all
Been taken down below,
And round the stove they warm their limbs
Into a drowsy glow;
And soon within their berths forget
The icy wind and snow.

Now morning dawns: the land in sight,
Smiles beam on every face!
The pale and qualmy passengers
Begin the deck to pace,
Seeking along the sun-lit cliffs
Some well-known spot to trace.

Only the orphans do not stir,

Of all this bustling train:

They reach’d their home this starry night!

They will not stir again!

The winter’s breath proved kind to them,

And ended all their pain.

But in their deep and freezing sleep

Clasp’d rigid to each other,

In dreams they cried, “The bright morn breaks,

Home! home! is here, my brother!

The Angel Death has been our friend—

We come! dear Father! Mother!”

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

TEA.

The history of tea, from its first introduction to England, may be read in the history of taxation. It appears to have escaped the notice of nearly all writers on tea, that the first tax is a curious illustration of the original mode of its sale. By the act of the 22d and 23d Charles II., 1670–1, a duty of eighteenpence was imposed upon ‘every gallon of chocolate, sherbet, and tea, made and sold, to be paid by the makers thereof.’ It is manifest that such a tax was impossible to be collected without constant evasion; and so, after having remained on the Statute Book for seventeen years, it was discovered, in 1688, that ‘the collecting of the duty by way of Excise upon the liquors of coffee, chocolate, and tea, is not only very troublesome and unequal upon the retailers of these liquors, but requireth such attendance of officers as makes the neat receipt very inconsiderable.’ The excise upon the liquor was therefore repealed, and heavy Customs’ duties imposed on the imported tea.

The annals of tea may be divided into epochs. The first is that in which the liquid only was taxed, which tax commenced about ten years after we have any distinct record of the public or private use of tea. In 1660, dear old Pepys writes, ‘I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink) of which I never had drank before.’ In 1667, the herb had found its way into his own house: ‘Home, and there find my wife making of tea; a drink which Mr. Pelling, the Potticary, tells her is good for her cold and defluxions.’

Mrs. Pepys making her first cup of tea is a subject to be painted. How carefully she metes out the grains of the precious drug, which Mr. Pelling, the Potticary, has sold her at a most enormous price—a crown an ounce at the very least. She has tasted the liquor once before: but then there was sugar in the infusion—a beverage only for the highest. If tea should become fashionable, it will cost in housekeeping as much as their claret. However, Pepys says, the price is coming down; and he produces the handbill of Thomas Garway, in Exchange Alley, which the lady peruses with great satisfaction; for the worthy merchant says, that although ‘tea in England hath been sold in the leaf for six pounds, and sometimes for ten pounds the pound weight,’ he ‘by continued care and industry in obtaining the best tea,’ now ‘sells tea for 16s. to 50s. a pound.’ Garway not only sells tea in the leaf, but ‘many noblemen, physicians, merchants, &c., daily resort to his house to drink the drink thereof.’ The coffee-houses soon ran away with the tea-merchant’s liquid customers. They sprang up all over London; they became a fashion at the Universities. Coffee and tea came into England as twin-brothers. Like many other foreigners, they received a full share of abuse and persecution from the people and the state. Coffee was denounced as ‘hell broth,’ and tea as ‘poison.’ But the coffee-houses became fashionable at once; and for a century were the exclusive resorts of wits and politicians. ‘Here,’ says a pamphleteer of 1673, ‘haberdashers of political small wares meet, and mutually abuse each other and the public, with bottomless stories and headless notions.’ Clarendon, in 1666, proposed, either to suppress them, or to employ spies to note down the conversation. In 1670 the liquids sold at the coffee-houses were to be taxed. We can scarcely imagine a state of society in which the excise officer was superintending the preparation of a gallon of tea, and charging his eightpence. The exciseman and the spy were probably united in the same person. During this period we may be quite certain that tea was unknown, as a general article of diet, in the private houses even of the wealthiest. But it was not taxation which then kept it out of use. The drinkers of tea were ridiculed by the wits, and frightened by the physicians. More than all, a new habit had to be acquired. The praise of Boyle was nothing against the ancient influences of ale and claret. It was then a help to excess instead of a preventive. A writer in 1682 says,—‘I know some that celebrate good Thee for preventing drunkenness, taking it before they go to the tavern, and use it very much also after a debauch.’ One of the first attractions of ‘the cup which cheers but not inebriates’ was as a minister of evil.

The second epoch of tea was that of excessive taxation; which lasted from the five shillings Customs’ duty of 1688 to 1745, more than half a century, in which fiscal folly and prohibition were almost convertible terms. Yet tea gradually forced its way into domestic use. In a Tatler of 1710 we read ‘I am credibly informed, by an antiquary who has searched the registers in which the bills of fare of the court are recorded, that instead of tea and bread and butter, which have prevailed of late years, the maids of honour in Queen Elizabeth’s time were allowed three rumps of beef for their breakfast.’ Tea for breakfast must have been expensive in 1710. In the original edition of the Tatler, we have many advertisements about tea, one of which we copy:—

From the Tatler of October 10, 1710.

“Mr. Fary’s 16s. Bohee Tea, not much inferior in goodness to the best Foreign Bohee Tea, is sold by himself only at the Bell in Gracechurch Street. Note,—the best Foreign Bohee is worth 30s. a pound; so that what is sold at 20s. or 21s. must either be faulty Tea, or mixed with a proportionate quantity of damaged Green or Bohee, the worst of which will remain black after infusion.”

‘Mr. Fary’s 16s. Bohee Tea, not much inferior in goodness to the best Foreign Bohee Tea’ was, upon the face of it, an indigenous manufacture. ‘The best Foreign Bohee is worth 30s. a pound.’ With such Queen Anne refreshed herself at Hampton Court:

‘Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.’

When the best tea was at 30s. a pound, the home consumption of tea was about a hundred and forty thousand pounds per annum. A quarter of a century later, in the early tea-drinking days of Dr. Johnson, the consumption had quadrupled. And yet tea was then so dear, that Garrick was cross even with his favourite actress for using it too freely. ‘I remember,’ says Johnson, ‘drinking tea with him long ago, when Peg Woffington made it, and he grumbled at her for making it too strong. He had then begun to feel money in his purse, and did not know when he should have enough of it.’ In 1745, the last year of the second tea epoch, the consumption was only seven hundred and thirty thousand pounds per annum. Yet even at this period tea was forcing itself into common use. Duncan Forbes, in his Correspondence, which ranges from 1715 to 1748, is bitter against ‘the excessive use of tea; which is now become so common, that the meanest families, even of labouring people, particularly in boroughs, make their morning’s meal of it, and thereby wholly disuse the ale, which heretofore was their accustomed drink; and the same drug supplies all the labouring women with their afternoon’s entertainments, to the exclusion of the twopenny.’ The excellent President of the Court of Session had his prejudices; and he was frightened at the notion that tea was driving out beer; and thus, diminishing the use of malt, was to be the ruin of agriculture. Some one gave the Government of the day wiser counsel than that of prohibitory duties, which he desired.

In 1745, the quantity of tea retained for home consumption was 730,729 lbs. In 1746, it amounted to 2,358,589 lbs. The consumption was trebled. The duty had been reduced, in 1745, from 4s. per lb. to 1s. per lb., and 25 per cent. on the gross price. For forty years afterwards, the Legislature contrived to keep the consumption pretty equal with the increase of the population, putting on a little more duty when the demand seemed a little increasing. These were the palmy days of Dr. Johnson’s tea triumphs—the days in which he describes himself as ‘a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has for many years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evenings; with tea solaces the midnights; and with tea welcomes the morning.’ This was the third epoch—that of considerable taxation, enhancing the monopoly price of an article, sold to the people at exorbitant profits.

In 1785, the Government boldly repealed the Excise duty; and imposed only a Customs’ duty of 12½ per cent. The consumption of tea was doubled in the first year after the change, and quadrupled in the third. The system was too good to last. The concession of three years in which the public might freely use an article of comfort was quite enough for official liberality and wisdom. New duties were imposed in 1787; the consumption was again driven back, and by additional duty upon duty, was kept far behind the increase of the population for another thirty years. In 1784, the annual consumption was only 4,948,983 lbs.; in 1787, with a reduced duty, it was 17,047,054 lbs.; in 1807, when we had almost reached the climax of high duties, it was only 19,239,212 lbs. This state of things, with very slight alteration, continued till the peace. The consumption had been nearly stationary for thirty years, with a duty raised from 12½ per cent. to 96 per cent. Those were the days, which some of us may remember, when we paid 12s. a pound for our green tea, and 8s. for our black; the days when convictions for the sale of spurious tea were of constant occurrence; and yet the days when Cobbett was alarmed lest tea should become a common beverage, and calculated that between eleven and twelve pounds a year were consumed by a cottager’s family in tea-drinking. During this fourth epoch of excessive taxation, the habit of tea-drinking had become so rooted in the people, that no efforts of the Government could destroy it. The teas under 2s. 6d. a pound (the Company’s warehouse prices without duty), were the teas of the working classes—the teas of the cottage and the kitchen. In 1801, such teas paid only an excise of 15 per cent.; in 1803, they paid 60 per cent.; in 1806, 90 per cent. And yet the washerwoman looked to her afternoon ‘dish of tea,’ as something that might make her comfortable after her twelve hours’ labour; and balancing her saucer on a tripod of three fingers, breathed a joy beyond utterance as she cooled the draught. The factory workman then looked forward to the singing of the kettle, as some compensation for the din of the spindle. Tea had found its way even to the hearth of the agricultural labourer. He ‘had lost his rye teeth’—to use his own expression for his preference of wheaten bread—and he would have his ounce of tea as well as the best of his neighbours. Sad stuff the chandler’s shop furnished him: no commodity brought hundreds of miles from the interior of China, chiefly by human labour; shipped according to the most expensive arrangements; sold under a limited competition at the dearest rate; and taxed as highly as its wholesale cost. The small tea-dealers had their manufactured tea. But they had also their smuggled tea. The pound of tea which sold for eight shillings in England, was selling at Hamburg for fourteenpence. It was hard indeed if the artisan did not occasionally obtain a cup of good tea at a somewhat lower price than the King and John Company had willed. No dealer could send out six pounds of tea without a permit. Excisemen were issuing permits and examining permits all over the kingdom. But six hundred per cent. profit was too much for the weakness of human nature and the power of the exciseman.

From the peace, to the opening of the China tea-trade in 1833, and the repeal of the excise duty in 1834, there was a considerable increase in the consumption of tea, but not an increase at all comparable to the increase since 1834. We consumed ten million pounds more tea in 1833 than in 1816, a period of sixteen years; we consumed in 1848, a period of fifteen years, seventeen million pounds more than in 1833. In 1848 we retained for home consumption, 48,735,791 pounds. It is this present period of large consumption which forms the fifth epoch.

The present duty on tea is 2s. 2¼d. a pound. The experienced housewife knows where to buy excellent tea at 4s. a pound. But there are shops in London where tea may be bought at 3s., and 3s. 4d. a pound. Such low priced teas are used more freely than ever by the hard-working poor. The duty is now unvarying, but enormously high. It is unnecessary to assume that the cheap teas are now adulterated teas. In the London Price Currents of the present May, there are several sorts of tea as low as 8d. per pound, wholesale without duty. The finer teas vary from 1s. to 2s. In 1833, previous to the opening of the China trade, the price of Congou tea in the Company’s warehouses ranged from 2s. to 3s. per pound; in 1850 the lowest current price was 9d., the highest 1s. 4d. In 1833, the Company’s price of Hyson tea varied from 3s. to 5s. 6d.; in 1850, the lowest current price was 1s. 2d., the highest 3s. 4d.

With the amount of duty on tea twice as high in 1850 as in 1833, how is it that tea may be universally bought at one half of the price of 1833? How is it that an article which yields five millions of revenue has become so cheap that it is now scarcely a luxury? Before we answer this, let us explain why we say that the duty is twice as high now as in 1833. Before the opening of the China trade tea was taxed under the Excise at an ad-valorem duty of ninety-six per cent. on one sort, and one hundred per cent. on another, which gave an average of about half-a-crown a pound. Those who resisted the destruction of the Company’s monopoly predicted that the supply would fall off under the open trade; that the Chinese would not deal with private merchants; that the market for tea in China was a limited one; that tea would become scarcer and dearer. The Government knew better than this. It repealed the Excise duty with all its cumbrous machinery of permits; and it imposed a Customs’ duty at per pound, which exists now, as it did in 1836, with the addition of five per cent. Had the duty of 1833 been continued,—the hundred per cent duty—the great bulk of tea, which is sold at an average of a shilling a pound would have been only taxed a shilling a pound; it is now taxed 2s. 2¼d. By a side-wind, the Government, with what some persons may call financial foresight, doubled the tax upon the humbler consumers. But it may be fairly questioned whether, if the tax of 1833 had continued, the Government would not have secured as much revenue by the poor doubling their consumption of tea. The demand for no article of general use is so fluctuating as that for tea. In seasons of prosperity, the consumption rises several millions of pounds above the average; in times of depression it falls as much below. Tea is the barometer of the poor man’s command of something more than bread. With a tax of 2s. 2¼d. a pound, it is clear that if sound commercial principles, improved navigation, wholesale competition, and moderate retail profits, had not found their way into the tea-trade, since the abolition of the monopoly in 1833, the revenue upon tea would have been stationary, instead of having increased a million and a half. All the manifold causes that produce commercial cheapness in general—science, careful employment of capital in profitable exchange, certainty and rapidity of communication, extension of the market—have been especially working to make tea cheap. Tea is more and more becoming a necessary of life to all classes. Tea was denounced first as a poison, and then as an extravagance. Cobbett was furious against it. An Edinburgh Reviewer of 1823, keeps no terms with its use by the poor: ‘We venture to assert, that when a labourer fancies himself refreshed with a mess of this stuff, sweetened by the coarsest black sugar, and with azure blue milk, it is only the warmth of the water that soothes him for the moment; unless, perhaps, the sweetness may be palatable also.’ It is dangerous even for great reviewers to ‘venture to assert.’ In a few years after comes Liebig, with his chemical discoveries; and demonstrates that coffee and tea have become necessaries of life to whole nations, by the presence of one and the same substance in both vegetables, which has a peculiar effect upon the animal system; that they were both originally met with amongst nations whose diet is chiefly vegetable; and, by contributing to the formation of bile, their peculiar function, have become a substitute for animal food to a large class of the population whose consumption of meat is very limited, and to another large class who are unable to take regular exercise.

Tea and coffee, then, are more especially essential to the poor. They supply a void which the pinched labourer cannot so readily fill up with weak and sour ale; they are substitutes for the country walk to the factory girl, or the seamstress in a garret. They are ministers to temperance; they are home comforts. Mrs. Piozzi making tea for Dr. Johnson till four o’clock in the morning, and listening contentedly to his wondrous talk, is a pleasant anecdote of the first century of tea; the artisan’s wife, lingering over the last evening cup, while her husband reads his newspaper or his book, is something higher, which belongs to our own times.

THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER VI.

The new clergyman was, as the landlord had supposed he would be, a very different person from Mr. Finch. If he had not been a fearless man, he would not have come: much less would he have brought his wife, which he did. The first sight of this respectable couple, middle-aged, business like, and somewhat dry in their manner, tended to give sobriety to the tone of mind of the Bleaburn people; a sobriety which was more and more wanted from day to day; while certainly the aspect of Bleaburn was enough to discourage the new residents, let their expectations have been as dismal as they might.

Mr. and Mrs. Kirby arrived when Bleaburn was at its lowest point of depression and woe. The churchyard was now so full that it could not be made to hold more; and ten or eleven corpses were actually lying unburied, infecting half-a-dozen cottages from this cause. There was an actual want of food in the place—so few were able to earn wages. Farmer Neale did all he could to tempt his neighbours to work for him; for no strangers would come near a place which was regarded as a pesthouse; but the strongest arm had lost its strength; and the men, even those who had not had the fever, said they felt as if they could never work again. The women went on, as habitual knitters do, knitting early and late, almost night and day; but there was no sale. Even if their wares were avouched to have been passed through soap and water before they were brought to O——, still no one would run the slightest risk for the sake of hose and comforters; and week after week, word was sent that nothing was sold: and at last, that it would be better not to send any more knitted goods. In the midst of all this distress, there was no one to speak to the people; no one to keep their minds clear and their hearts steady. For many weeks, there had not been a prayer publicly read, nor a psalm sung. Meanwhile, the great comet appeared nightly, week after week. It seemed as if it would never go away; and there was a general persuasion that the comet was sent for a sign to Bleaburn alone, and not at all for the rest of the earth, or of the universe; and that the fever would not be stayed while the sign remained in the sky. It would have been well if this had been the worst. The people, always rude, were now growing desperate; and they found, as desperate people usually do, an object near at hand to vent their fury upon. They said that it was the doctor’s business to make them well: that he had not made them well: that so many had died, that anybody might see how foul means had been used; and that at last some of the doctor’s tricks had come out. Two of Dick Taylor’s children had been all but choked, by some of the doctor’s physic; and they might have died, if the Good Lady had not chanced to have been there at the moment, and known what to do. And the doctor tried to get off with saying that it was a mistake, and that that physic was never made to go down anybody’s throat. They said, too, that it was only in this doctor’s time that there had been such a fever. There was none such in the late doctor’s time; nor now, in other places—at least, not so bad. It was nothing like so bad at O——. The doctor had spoken lightly of the comet: he had made old Nan Dart burn the bedding that her grandmother left her—the same that so many of her family had died on: and, though he gave her new bedding, it could never be the same to her as the old. But there was no use talking. The doctor was there to make them well; and instead of doing that, he made two out of three die, of those that had the fever. Such grumblings broke out into storm; and when Mr. and Mrs. Kirby descended into the hollow which their friends feared would be their tomb, they found the whole remaining population of the place blocking up the street before the doctor’s house, and smashing his phials, and making a pile of his pill-boxes and little drawers, as they were handed out of his surgery window. A woman had brought a candle at the moment to fire the pill-boxes: and she kneeled down to apply the flame. The people had already broken bottles enough to spill a good deal of queer stuff; and some of this stuff was so queer as to blaze up, half as high as the houses, as quick as thought. The flame ran along the ground, and spread like magic. The people fled, supposing this the doings of the comet and the doctor together. Off they went, up and down, and into the houses whose doors were open. But the woman’s clothes were on fire. She would have run too; but Mr. Kirby caught her arm, and his firm grasp made her stand, while Mrs. Kirby wrapped her camlet cloak about the part that was on fire. It was so quickly done—in such a moment of time, that the poor creature was not much burned; not at all dangerously; and the new pastor was at once informed of the character of the charge he had undertaken.

That very evening Warrender was sent through the village, as crier, to give a notice, to which every ear was open. Mr. Kirby having had medical assurance that it was injurious to the public health that more funerals should take place in the churchyard, and that the bodies should lie unburied, would next day, bury the dead above the brow, on a part of Furzy Knoll, selected for the purpose. For anything unusual about this proceeding, Mr. Kirby would be answerable, considering the present state of the village of Bleaburn. A waggon would pass through the village at six o’clock the next morning; and all who had a coffin in their houses were requested to bring it out, for solemn conveyance to the new burial ground: and those who wished to attend the interment must be on the ground at eight o’clock.

All ears were open again the next morning, when the cart made its slow progress down the street; and some went out to see. It was starlight: and from the east came enough of dawn to show how the vehicle looked with the pall thrown over it. Now and then, as it passed a space between the houses, a puff of wind blew aside the edge of the pall, and then the coffins were seen within, ranged one upon another,—quite a load of them. It stopped for a minute at the bottom of the street; and it was a relief to the listeners to hear Warrender tell the driver that there were no more, and that he might proceed up to the brow. After watching the progress of the cart till it could no longer be distinguished from the wall of grey rock along which it was ascending, those who could be spared from tending the sick put on such black as they could muster, to go to the service.

It was, happily, a fine morning;—as fine a November morning as could be seen. It is not often that weather is of so much consequence as it was to the people of Bleaburn to-day. They could not themselves have told how it was that they came down from the awful service at Furzy Knoll so much more light-hearted than they went up; and when some of them were asked the reason, by those who remained below, they could not explain it,—but, somehow, everything looked brighter. It was, in fact, not merely the calm sunshine on the hills, and the quiet shadows in the hollows; it was not merely the ruddy tinge of the autumn ferns on the slopes, or the lively hop and flit of the wag-tail about the spring-heads and the stones in the pool; it was not merely that the fine morning yielded cheering influences like these, but that it enabled many, who would have been kept below by rain, to hear what their new pastor had to say. After going through the burial service very quietly, and waiting with a cheerful countenance while the business of lowering so many coffins by so few hands was effected, he addressed, in a plain and conversational style, those who were present. He told them that he had never before witnessed an interment like this; and he did not at all suppose that either he or they should see such another. Indeed, henceforth any funerals must take place without delay; as they very well might, now that, on this beautiful spot, there was room without limit. He told them how Farmer Neale had had the space they saw staked out since yesterday, and how it would be fenced in—roughly, perhaps, but securely—before night. He hoped and believed the worst of the sickness was over. The cold weather was coming on; and, perhaps, he said with a smile, it might be a comfort to some of them to know that the comet was going away. He could not say for himself that he should not be sorry when it disappeared; for he thought it a very beautiful sight, and one which reminded every eye that saw it how ‘the heavens declare the glory of God;’ and the wisest men were all agreed that it was a sign,—not of any mischief, but of the beauty of God’s handiwork in the firmament, as the Scriptures call the starry sky. The fact was, it was found that comets come round regularly, like some of the other stars and our own moon; and when a comet had once been seen, people of a future time would know when to look for it again, and would be too wise to be afraid of it. But he had better tell them about such things at another time, when perhaps they would let their children come up to his house, and look through a telescope,—a glass that magnified things so much, that when they saw the stars, they would hardly believe they were the same stars that they saw every clear night. Perhaps they might then think the commonest star as wonderful as any comet. Another reason why they might hope for better health was, that people at a distance now knew more of the distress of Bleaburn than they had done; and he could assure his neighbours, that supplies of nourishing food and wholesome clothing would be lodged with the cordon till the people of the place could once more earn their own living. Another reason why they might hope for better health was, that they were learning by experience what was good for health and what was bad. This was a very serious and important subject, on which he would speak to them again and again, on Sundays and at all times, till he had shown them what he thought about their having, he might almost say, their lives and health in their own hands. He was sure that God had ordered it so; and he expected to be able to prove to them, by and by, that there need be no fever in Bleaburn if they chose to prevent it. And now, about these Sundays and week days. He deeply pitied them that they had been cut off from worship during their time of distress. He thought there might be an end to that now. He would not advise their assembling in the church. There were the same reasons against it that there were two months ago; but there was no place on earth where men might not worship God, if they wished it. If it were now the middle of summer, he should say that the spot they were standing on,—even yet so fresh and so sunny,—was the best they could have; but soon the winter winds would blow, and the cold rains would come driving over the hills. This would not do: but there was a warm nook in the hollow,—the crag behind the mill,—where there was shelter from the east and north, and the warmest sunshine ever felt in the hollow,—too hot in summer, but very pleasant now. There he proposed to read prayers three times a week, at an hour which should be arranged according to the convenience of the greatest number; and there he would perform service and preach a sermon on Sundays, when the weather permitted. He should have been inclined to ask Farmer Neale for one of his barns, or to propose to meet even in his kitchen; but he found his neighbours still feared that meeting anywhere but in the open air would spread the fever. He did not himself believe that one person gave the fever to another; but as long as his neighbours thought so, he would not ask them to do what might make them afraid. Then there was a settling what hours should be appointed for worship at the crag; and the mourners came trooping down into the hollow, with brightened eyes, and freshened faces, and altogether much less like mourners than when they went up.

Before night, Mr. Kirby had visited every sick person in the place, in company with the doctor. The poor doctor would hardly have ventured to go his round without the assistance of some novelty that might divert the attention of the people from his atrocities. Mr. Kirby did not attempt to get rid of the subject. He told the discontented, to their faces, that the doctor knew his business better than they did; and bade them remember that it was not the doctor but themselves that had set fire to spirits of wine, or something of that sort, in the middle of the street, whereby a woman was in imminent danger of being burnt to death; and that their outrage on the good fame and property of a gentleman who had worn himself half dead with fatigue and anxiety on their account might yet cost them very dear, if it were not understood that they were so oppressed with sorrow and want that they did not know what they were about. His consultations with the doctor from house to house, and his evident deference to him in regard to matters of health and sickness, wrought a great change in a few hours; and the effect was prodigiously increased when Mrs. Kirby, herself a surgeon’s daughter, and no stranger in a surgery, offered her daily assistance in making up the medicines, and administering such as might be misused by those who could not read the labels.

“That is what the Good Lady does, when she can get out at the right time,” observed some one; “but now poor Jem is down, and his mother hardly up again yet, it is not every day, as she says, that she can go so far out of call.”

“Who is this Good Lady?” inquired Mr. Kirby. “I have been hardly twenty-four hours in this place, and I seem to have heard her name fifty times; and yet nobody seems able to say who she is.”

“She almost overpowers their faculties, I believe,” replied the doctor; “and, indeed, it is not very easy to look upon her as upon any other young lady. It comes easier to one’s tongue to call her an angel than to introduce her as Miss Mary Pickard, from America.”

When he had told what he knew of her, the Kirbys said, in the same breath,

“Let us go and see her.” And the doctor showed them the way to Widow Johnson’s, where poor Jem was languishing, in that state which is so affecting to witness, when he who has no intellect seems to have more power of patience than he who has most. The visitors arrived at a critical moment, however, when poor Jem’s distress was very great, and his mother’s hardly less. There lay the Good Lady on the ground, doubled up in a strange sort of way; Mrs. Johnson trying to go to her, but unable; and Jem, on his bed in the closet within, crying because something was clearly the matter.

“What’s to do now?” exclaimed the doctor.

Mary laughed as she answered, “O nothing, but that I can’t get up. I don’t know how I fell, and I can’t get up. But it is mere fatigue—want of sleep. Do convince Aunty that I have not got the fever.”

“Let’s see,” said the doctor. Then, after a short study of his new patient, he assured Mrs. Johnson that he saw no signs of fever about her niece. She had had enough of nursing for the present, and now she must have rest.

“That is just it,” said Mary. “If somebody will put something under me here, and just let me sleep for a few days, I shall do very well.”

“Not there, Miss Pickard,” said Mrs. Kirby, “you must be brought to our house, where everything will be quiet about you; and then you may sleep on till Christmas, if you will.”

Mary felt the kindness; but she evidently preferred remaining where she was; and, with due consideration, she was indulged. She did not wish to be carried through the street, so that the people might see that the Good Lady was down at last; and besides, she felt as if she should die by the way, though really believing she should do very well if only let alone. She was allowed to order things just as she liked. A mattress was put under her, on the floor. Ann Warrender came and undressed her, lifting her limbs as if she was an infant, for she could not move them herself; and daily was she refreshed, as she had taught others to refresh those who cannot move from their beds. Every morning the doctor came, and agreed with her that there was nothing in the world the matter with her; that she had only to lie still till she felt the wish to get up; and every day came Mrs. Kirby to take a look at her, if her eyes were closed: and if she was able to talk and listen, to tell her how the sick were faring, and what were the prospects of Bleaburn. After these visits, something good was often found near the pillow; some firm jelly, or particularly pure arrow-root, or the like; odd things to be dropped by the fairies; but Mrs. Kirby said the neighbours liked to think that the Good Lady was waited on by the Good People.

Another odd thing was, that for several days Mary could not sleep at all. She would have liked it, and she needed it extremely, and the window curtain was drawn, and everybody was very quiet, and even poor Jem caught the trick of quietness, and lay immoveable for hours, when the door of his closet was open, watching to see her sleep. But she could not. She felt, what was indeed true, that Aunty’s large black eyes were for ever fixed upon her; and she could not but be aware that the matter of the very first public concern in Bleaburn was, that she should go to sleep; and this was enough to prevent it. At last, when people were getting frightened, and even the doctor told Mr. Kirby that he should be glad to correct this insomnolence, the news went softly along the street one day, told in whispers even at the further end, that the Good Lady was asleep. The children were warned that they must keep within doors, or go up to the brow to play; there must be no noise in the hollow. The dogs were not allowed to bark, nor the ducks to quack; and Farmer Neale’s carts were, on no account, to go below the Plough and Harrow. The patience of all persons who liked to make a noise was tried and proved, for nobody broke the rule; and when Mary once began sleeping, it seemed as if she would never stop. She could hardly keep awake to eat, or to be washed; and, as for having her hair brushed, that is always drowsy work, and she could never look before her for two minutes together while it was done. She thought it all very ridiculous, and laughed at her own laziness, and then, before the smile was off her lips, she had sunk on her pillow and was asleep again.

PART III.
CHAPTER VII.

It was a regular business now for three or four of the boys of Bleaburn to go up to the brow every morning to bring down the stores from O——, which were daily left there under the care of the watch. Mr. Kirby had great influence already with the boys of Bleaburn. He found plenty for them to do, and, when they were very hungry with running about, he gave them wholesome food to satisfy their healthy appetite. He said, he and Mrs. Kirby and the doctor worked hard, and they could not let anybody be idle but those who were ill: and, now that the regular work and wages of the place were suspended, he arranged matters after his own sense of the needs of the people. The boys who survived and were in health, formed a sort of regiment under his orders, and they certainly never liked work so well before. Every little fellow felt his own consequence, and was aware of his own responsibility. A certain number, as has been said, went up to the brow to bring down the stores. A certain number were to succeed each other at the doctor’s door, from hour to hour, to carry medicines, that the sick might neither be kept waiting, nor be liable to be served with the wrong medicine, from too many sorts being carried in a basket together. Others attended upon Warrender, with pail and brush, and helped him with his lime-washing. At first it was difficult, as has been said, to induce the lads to volunteer for this service, and Mr. Kirby directed much argument and persuasion towards their supposed fear of entering the cottages where people were lying sick. This was not the reason, however, as Warrender explained, with downcast eyes, when Mr. Kirby wondered what ailed the lads, that they ran all sorts of dangers all day long, and shirked this one.

“’Tis not the danger, I fancy, Sir,” said Warrender; “they are not so much afraid of the fever as of going with me, I’m sorry to say.”

“Afraid of you!” said Mr. Kirby, laughing. “What harm could you do them?”

“’Tis my temper, Sir, I’m afraid.”

“What is the matter with your temper? I see nothing amiss with it.”

“And I hope you never may, Sir: but I can’t answer for myself, though at this moment I know the folly of such passion as these lads have seen in me. Sir, it has been my way to be violent with them; and I don’t wonder they slink away from me. But—”

“I am really quite surprised,” said Mr. Kirby. “This is all news to me. I should have said you were a remarkably staid, quiet, persevering man; and, I am sure, very kind hearted.”

“You have seen us all at such a time, you know, Sir! It is not only the misfortunes of the time that sober us, but when there is so much to do for one’s neighbours, one’s mind does not want to be in a passion—so to speak.”

“Very true. The best part of us is roused, and puts down the worse. I quite agree with you, Warrender.”

The boys were not long in learning that there was nothing now to fear from Warrender. No one was sent staggering from a box on the ear. No hair was ever pulled; nor was any boy ever shaken in his jacket. Instead of doing such things, Warrender made companions of his young assistants, taught them to do well whatever they put their hands to, and made them willing and happy. While two or three thus waited on him, others carried home the clean linen that his daughter and a neighbour or two were frequently ready to send out: and they daily changed the water in the tubs where the foul linen was deposited. Others, again, swept and washed down the long steep street, making it look almost as clean as if it belonged to a Dutch village. After the autumn pig-killing, there were few or no more pigs. The poor sufferers could not attend to them; could not afford, indeed, to buy them; and had scarcely any food to give them. Though this was a token of poverty, it was hardly to be lamented in itself, under the circumstances; for there is no foulness whatever, no nastiness that is to be found among the abodes of men, so dangerous to health as that of pig-styes. There is mismanagement in this. People take for granted that the pig is a dirty animal, and give him no chance of being clean; whereas, if they would try the experiment of keeping his house swept, and putting his food always in one place, and washing him with soap and water once a week, they would find that he knows how to keep his pavement clean, and that he runs grunting to meet his washing with a satisfaction not to be mistaken. Such was the conclusion of the boys who undertook the purification of the two or three pigs that remained in Bleaburn. As for the empty styes, they were cleaner than many of the cottages. After a conversation with Mr. Kirby, Farmer Neale bought all the dirt-heaps for manure; and in a few days they were all trundled away in barrows—even to the stable-manure from the Plough and Harrow—and heaped together at the farm, and well shut down with a casing of earth, beat firm with spades. Boys really like such work as this, when they are put upon it in the right way. They were less dirty than they would have been with tumbling about and quarrelling and cuffing in the filthy street; in a finer glow of exercise; with a more wholesome appetite; and far more satisfaction in eating, because they had earned their food. Moreover, they began to feel themselves little friends of the grown people—of Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, and the Doctor, and the Warrenders—instead of a sort of reptiles, or other plague; and Mr. Kirby astonished them so by a bit of amusement now and then, when he had time, that they would have called him a conjuror, if he had not been a clergyman. He made a star—any star they pleased—as large as the comet, just by making them look at it through a tube; and he showed them how he took a drop of foul water from a stinking pool, and put it between glasses in a hole in his window-shutter; and how the drop became like a pond, and was found to be swarming with loathsome live creatures, swimming about, and trying to swallow each other. After these exhibitions, it is true the comet seemed much less wonderful and terrible than before; but then the drop of water was infinitely more so. The lads studied Mr. Kirby’s cistern—so carefully covered, and so regularly cleaned out; and they learned how the water he drank at dinner was filtered; and then they went and scoured out the few water-tubs there were in the village, and consulted their neighbours as to how the public of Bleaburn could be persuaded not to throw filth and refuse into the stream at the upper part, defiling it for those who lived lower down.

One morning at the beginning of December—on such a morning as was now sadly frequent, drizzly, and far too warm for the season—the lads who went up to the brow saw the same sight that had been visible in the same place one evening in the preceding August. There was a chaise, and an anxious post-boy, and a lady talking with one of the cordon. Mr. Kirby had learned what friends Mary Pickard had in England, and which of them lived nearest, and he had taken the liberty of writing to declare the condition of the Good Lady. His letter brought the friend, Mrs. Henderson, who came charged with affectionate messages to Mary from her young daughters, and a fixed determination not to return without the invalid.

“To think,” as she said to Mary when she appeared by the side of her mattress, “that you should be in England, suffering in this way, and we not have any idea what you were going through!”

Mary smiled, and said she had gone through nothing terrible on her own account. She might have been at Mr. Kirby’s for three weeks past, but that she really preferred being where she was.

“Do not ask her now, Madam, where she likes to be,” said Mr. Kirby, who had been brought down the street by the bustle of a stranger’s arrival. “Do not consult her at all, but take her away, and nurse her well.”

“Yes,” said the Doctor; “lay her in a good air, and let her sleep, and feed her well; and she will soon come round. She is better—even here.”

“Madam,” said Widow Johnson’s feeble but steady voice, “be to her what she has been to us; raise her up to what she was when I first heard her step upon those stairs, and we shall say you deserve to be her friend.”

“You will go, will not you?” whispered Mrs. Kirby to Mary. “You will let us manage it all for you?”

“Do what you please with me,” was the reply. “You know best how to get me well soonest. Only let me tell Aunty that I will come again, as soon as I am able.”

“Better not,” said the prudent Mrs. Kirby. “There is no saying what may be the condition of this place by the spring. And it might keep Mrs. Johnson in a state of expectation not fit for one so feeble. Better not.”

“Very well,” said Mary.

Mrs. Kirby thought of something that her husband had said of Mary; that he had never seen any one with such power of will and command so docile. She merely promised her aunt frequent news of her; agreed with those who doubted whether she could bear the jolting of any kind of carriage on the road up to the brow; admitted that, though she could now stand, she could not walk across the room; allowed herself to be carried on her mattress in a carpet, by four men, up to the chaise; and nodded in reply to a remark made by one little girl to another in the street, and which the doctor wished she had not heard, that she looked “rarely bad.”

The landlady at O—— seemed, by her countenance, to have much the same opinion of Mary’s looks, when she herself brought out the glass of wine, for which Mrs. Henderson stopped her chaise at the door of the Cross Keys. The landlady brought it herself, because none of her people would give as much as a glass of cold water, hand to hand with any one who came from Bleaburn. The landlady stood shaking her head, and saying she had done the best she could; she had warned the young lady in time.

“But you were quite out in your warning,” said Mary. “You were sure I should have the fever: but I have not.”

“You have not!”

“I have had no disease—no complaint whatever. I am only weak from fatigue.”

“It is quite true,” said Mrs. Henderson, as the hostess turned to her for confirmation. “Good wine like this, the fresh air of our moors, and the easy sleep that comes to Good Ladies like her, are the only medicines she wants.”

The landlady curtsied low—said the payment made should supply a glass of wine to somebody at Bleaburn, and bade the driver proceed. After a mile or two, he turned his head, touched his hat, and directed the ladies’ attention to a bottle of wine, with loosened cork, and a cup which the hostess had contrived to smuggle into the pocket of the chaise. She was sure the young lady would want some wine before they stopped.

“How kind every body is!” said Mary, with swimming eyes. Mrs. Henderson cleared her throat, and looked out of the window on her side.

YOUNG RUSSIA.

Certain social theorists have, of late years, proclaimed themselves to the puzzled public under the name and signification of ‘Young.’ Young France, Young Germany, and Young England have had their day, and having now grown older, and by consequence wiser, are comparatively mute. In accordance with what seems a natural law, it is only when a fashion is being forgotten where it originated—in the west—that it reaches Russia, which rigidly keeps a century or so behind the rest of the Continent. It is only recently, therefore, that we hear of ‘Young Russia.’

The main principles of all these national youths are alike. They are pleasingly picturesque—simperingly amiable; with a pretty and piquant dash of paradox. What they propose is not new birth, or dashing out into new systems, and taking advantage of new ideas; but reverting to old systems, and furbishing them up so as to look as good as new. Re-juvenescence is their aim; the middle ages their motto. Young England, to wit, desires to replace things as they were in the days of the pack-horse, the thumb-screw, the monastery, the ducking-stool, the knight errant, trial by battle, and the donjon-keep. To these he wishes to apply all possible modern improvements, to adapt them to present ideas, and to present events. Though he would have no objection to his mailed knight travelling per first-class railway, he would abolish luggage-trains to encourage intestine trade and the breed of that noble animal the pack-horse. He has indeed done something in the monastic line; but his efforts for the dissemination of superstition, and his denunciations of a certain sort of witchcraft, have signally failed. In truth, the task he has set himself—that of re-constructing society anew out of old materials—though highly archæological, historical, and poetic, has the fatal disadvantage of being simply impossible. It is telling the people of the nineteenth century to carry their minds, habits, and sentiments back, so as to become people of the thirteenth century; it is trying to make new muslin out of mummy cloth, or razors out of rusty nails.

‘Young Russia’ is an equal absurdity, but from a precisely opposite cause; for, indeed, this sort of youth out of age is a series of paradoxes. The Russian of the present day is the Russian of past ages. He exists by rule—the rule of despotism—which is as old as the Medes and Persians; and which forces him into an iron mould that shapes his appearance, his mind, and his actions, to one pattern, from one generation to another. Hence everything that lives and breathes in Russia being antique, there is no appreciable antiquity. The new school, therefore—even if amateur politics were allowable in Russia, which they are not, as a large population of exiles in Siberia can testify—has no materials to work upon. Stagnation is the political law, and Young Russia dies in its babyhood for want of sustenance. What goes by the name of civilisation, is no advance in wealth, morals, or social happiness. It is merely a tinsel coating over the rottenness and rust with which Russian life is ‘sicklied o’er.’ It has nothing to do with a single soul below the rank of a noble; and with him it means champagne, bad pictures, Parisian tailors, operas, gaming, and other expences and elegancies imported from the West. Hundreds of provincial noblemen are ruined every year in St. Petersburg, in undergoing this process of civilisation. The fortunes thus wasted are enormous; yet there is only one railroad now in operation throughout the whole empire, and that belongs to the Emperor, and leads to one of his palaces a few miles from the Capital. Such is Russian civilisation. What then is Young Russia to do? Ask one of its youngest apostles, Ivan Vassilievitsch.

This young gentleman—for an introduction to whom we are indebted to Count Sollogub—was, not long ago, parading the Iverskoy boulevard—one of the thirteen which half encircle Moscow—when he met a neighbour from the province of Kazan. Ivan had lately returned from abroad. He was a perfect specimen of the new school, inside and out. Within, he had imbibed all the ideas of the juvenile or verdant schools of Germany, France, and England. Without, he displayed a London macintosh; his coat and trowsers had been designed and executed by Parisian artists; his hair was cut in the style of the middle ages; and his chin showed the remnants of a Vandyke beard. He also resembled the new school in another respect: he had spent all his money, yet he was separated from home by the distance of a long—a Russian—journey.

To meet with a neighbour—which he did—who travelled in his own carriage, in which he offered a seat, was the height of good fortune. The more so, as Ivan wished to see as much of Russian life on the road as possible, and to note down his impressions in a journal, whose white leaves were as yet unsullied with ink. From the information he intended to collect, he intended to commence helping to reconstruct Russian society after the order of the new Russiaites.

The vehicle in which this great mission was to be performed, was a humble family affair called a Tarantas.[1] After a series of adventures—but which did not furnish Ivan a single impression for his note-book—they arrive at Vladimir, the capital of a province or ‘government.’ Here the younger traveller meets with a friend, to whom he confides his intention of visiting all the other Government towns for ‘Young Russia’ purposes. His friend’s reply is dispiriting to the last degree:—

1. For further particulars of this comfortable conveyance, its occupants, and their adventures, we must refer the reader to Count Sollogub’s amusing little book, to which he has given the name of ‘The Tarantas.’

“There is no difference between our government towns. See one, and you’ll know them all!”

“Is it possible?”

“It is so, I assure you, Every one has a High-street; one principal shop, where the country gentlemen buy silks for their wives, and champagne for themselves; then there are the Courts of Justice, the assembly-rooms, an apothecary’s shop, a river, a square, a bazaar, two or three street-lamps, sentry-boxes for the watchmen, and the governor’s house.”

“The society, however, in the government towns must be different?”

“On the contrary. The society is still more uniform than the buildings.”

“You astonish me: how is that?”

“Listen. There is, of course, in every government town a governor. These do not always resemble each other; but as soon as any one of them appears, police and secretaries immediately become active, merchants and tradesmen bow, and the gentry draw themselves up, with, however, some little awe. Wherever the governor goes, he is sure to find champagne, the wine so much patronised in the province, and everybody drinks a bumper to the health of the ‘father of the province.’ Governors generally are well-bred, and sometimes very proud. They like to give dinner parties, and benevolently condescend to play a game of whist with rich brandy-contractors and landowners.”

“That’s a common thing,” remarked Ivan Vassilievitsch.

“Do not interrupt me. Besides the governor, there is in nearly every government town the governor’s lady. She is rather a peculiar personage. Generally brought up in one of the two capitals, and spoiled with the cringing attentions of her company. On her husband’s first entry into office, she is polite and affable; later, she begins to feel weary of the ordinary provincial intrigues and gossips; she gets accustomed to the slavish attentions she receives, and lays claim to them. At this period she surrounds herself with a parasitical suite; she quarrels with the lady of the vice-governor; she brags of St. Petersburg; speaks with disdain of her provincial circle, and finally draws upon herself the utmost universal ill-feeling, which is kept up till the day of her departure, when all goes into oblivion, everything is pardoned, and everybody bids her farewell with tears.”

“Two persons do not form the whole society of a town,” interrupted again Ivan Vassilievitsch.

“Patience, brother, patience! Certainly there are other persons besides the two I have just spoken of: there is the vice-governor and his lady; several presidents, with their respective ladies, and an innumerable crowd of functionaries serving under their leadership. The ladies are ever quarrelling in words, whilst their husbands do the same thing upon foolscap. The presidents, for the most part, are men of advanced age and business-like habits, with great crosses hanging from their necks, and are during the daytime to be seen out of their courts only on holidays. The government attorney is generally a single man, and an enviable match. The superior officer of the gens-d’armes is a ‘good fellow.’ The nobility-marshal a great sportsman. Besides the government and the local officers, there live in a government town stingy landowners, or those who have squandered away their property; they gamble from evening to morning, nay, from morning to evening too, without getting the least bit tired of their exercise.”

“Now, about the mode of living?” asked Ivan Vassilievitsch.

“The mode of living is a very dull one. An exchange of ceremonious visits. Intrigues, cards—cards, intrigues. Now and then, perchance, you may meet with a kind, hospitable family, but such a case is very rare; you much oftener find a ludicrous affectation to imitate the manners of an imaginary high life. There are no public amusements in a government town. During winter a series of balls are announced to take place at the Assembly-rooms; however, from an absurd primness, these balls are little frequented, because no one wants to be the first in the room. The ‘bon genre’ remains at home and plays whist. In general, I have remarked, that on arriving in a government town, it seems as if you were too early or too late for some extraordinary event. You are ever welcomed: ‘What a pity you were not here yesterday!’ or, ‘You should stay here till to-morrow.’”

In process of time Ivan Vassilievitsch and his good-natured fat companion, Vassily Ivanovitsch, reach a borough town, where the Tarantas breaks down. There is a tavern and here is a description of it.

‘The tavern was like any other tavern,—a large wooden hut, with the usual out-buildings. At the entrance stood an empty cart. The staircase was crooked and shaky, and at the top of it, like a moving candelabrum, stood a waiter with a tallow candle in his hand. To the right was the tap-room, painted from time immemorial to imitate a grove. Tumblers, tea-pots, decanters, three silver and a great number of pewter spoons, adorned the shelves of a cupboard; a couple of lads in chintz shirts, with dirty napkins over their shoulders, busied themselves at the bar. Through an open door you saw in the next room a billiard table, and a hen gravely promenading upon it.

‘Our travellers were conducted into the principal room of this elegant establishment, where they found, seated round a boiling tea-urn, three merchants,—one grey-haired, one red-haired, and one dark-haired. Each of these was armed with a steaming tumbler; each of them sipped, smacked his lips, stroked his beard and sipped again the fragrant beverage.

‘The red-haired man was saying:—’

“I made, last summer, a splendid bargain: I had bought from a company of Samara-Tartars, some five hundred bags of prime quality, and had at the same time a similar quantity, which I purchased from a nobleman who was in want of money, but such dreadful stuff it was, that if it had not been for the very low price, I would never have thought of looking at it. What did I do? I mixed these two cargoes, and sold the whole lot to a brandy-contractor at Ribna, for prime quality.”

“It was a clever speculation,” remarked the dark-haired.

“A commercial trick!” added the grey-haired.

‘Whilst this conversation was proceeding, Vassily Ivanovitsch and Ivan Vassilievitsch had taken seats at a separate little table; they had ordered their tea, and were listening to what the three merchants were saying.

‘A poor looking fellow came in and took from his breast-pocket an incredibly dirty sheet of paper, in which were wrapped up bank-notes and some gold, and handed it over to the grey-haired merchant, who, having counted them over, said:’

“Five thousand, two hundred and seventeen roubles. Is it right?”

“Quite right, Sir.”

“It shall be delivered according to your wish.”

‘Ivan asked why the sender had not taken a receipt?

‘The red and dark-haired merchants burst out laughing; the grey-haired got into a passion.’

“A receipt!” he cried out furiously, “a receipt! I would have broken his jaw with his own money had he dared to ask me for a receipt. I have been a merchant now more than fifty years, and I have never yet been insulted by being asked to give a receipt.”

“You see, Sir,” said the red-haired merchant, “it is only with noblemen that such things as receipts and bills of exchange exist. We commercial people do not make use of them. Our simple word suffices. We have no time to spare for writing. For instance, Sir: here is Sidor Avdeievitsch, who has millions of roubles in his trade, and his whole writing consists of a few scraps of paper, for memory’s sake, Sir.”

“I don’t understand that,” interrupted Ivan Vassilievitsch.

“How could you, Sir? It is mere commercial business, without plan or façade. We ourselves learn it from our childhood: first as errand-boys, then as clerks, till we become partners in the business. I confess it is hard work.”

Upon this text Ivan preaches a ‘Young Russia discourse.’

“Allow me a few words,” he said with fervour. “It appears to me that we have in Russia a great number of persons buying and selling, but yet, I must say, we have no systematic commerce. For commerce, science and learning are indispensable; a conflux of civilised men, clever mathematical calculations—but not, as seems to be the case with you, dependence upon mere chance. You earn millions, because you convert the consumer into a victim, against whom every kind of cheat is pardonable, and then you lay by farthing by farthing, refusing yourselves not only all the enjoyments of life, but even the most necessary comforts.... You brag of your threadbare clothes; but surely this extreme parsimony is a thousand times more blameable than the opposite prodigality of those of your comrades who spend their time amongst gipsies, and their money in feasting. You boast of your ignorance, because you do not know what civilisation is. Civilisation, according to your notions, consists in shorter laps of a coat, foreign furniture, bronzes, and champagne—in a word, in outward trifles and silly customs. Trust me, not such is civilisation.... Unite yourselves! Be it your vocation to lay open all the hidden riches of our great country; to diffuse life and vigour into all its veins; to take the whole management of its material interests into your hands. Unite your endeavours in this beautiful deed, and you may be certain of success! Why should Russia be worse than England? Comprehend only your calling; let the beam of civilisation fall upon you, and your love for your fatherland will strengthen such a union; and you will see that not only the whole of Russia, but even the whole world will be in your hands.”

‘At this eloquent conclusion, the red and the dark-haired merchants opened wide their eyes. They, of course, did not understand a single word of Ivan Vassilievitsch’s speech.’

“Alas, for Young Russia,” Ivan dolefully remarks in another place;—

“I thought to study life in the provinces: there is no life in the provinces: every one there is said to be of the same cut. Life in the capitals is not a Russian life, but a weak imitation of the petty perfections and gross vices of modern civilisation. Where am I then to find Russia? In the lower classes, perhaps, in the every-day life of the Russian peasant? But have I not been now for five days chiefly amongst this class? I prick up my ears and listen; I open wide my eyes and look, and do what I may, I find not the least trifle worth noting in my ‘Impressions.’ The country is dead; there is nothing but land, land, land; so much land, indeed, that my eyes get tired of looking at it; a dreadful road—waggons of goods, swearing carriers, drunken stage-inspectors; beetles creeping on every wall; soups with the smell of tallow-candles! How is it possible for any respectable person to occupy himself with such nasty stuff? And what is yet more provoking, is the doleful uniformity which tires you so much, and affords you no rest whatever. Nothing new, nothing unexpected! To-morrow what has been to-day; to-day what has been yesterday. Here, a post-stage, there again a post-stage, and further the same post-stage again; here, a village-elder asking for drink-money, and again to infinity village-elders all asking for drink-money. What can I write? I begin to agree with Vassily Ivanovitsch; he is right in saying that we do not travel, and that there is no travelling in Russia. We simply are going to Mordassy. Alas! for my ‘Impressions.’”

Whoever wants to know more of this amusing Young Russian, must consult “The Tarantas.” We can assure the reader that the book is fraught with a store of amusement—chiefly descriptions of town and country life in Russia—not often compressed into the modest and inexpensive compass of a thin duodecimo.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

- Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

- Renumbered footnotes.

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Table of Contents

- HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

- FROM THE RAVEN IN THE HAPPY FAMILY.

- HOW WE WENT FISHING IN CANADA.

- A WISH.

- THE BLACK DIAMONDS OF ENGLAND.

- CHAPTER I.—THE DIAMONDS.

- CHAPTER II. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE DIAMOND.

- CHAPTER III.—THE COAL EXCHANGE.

- THE GREAT PENAL EXPERIMENTS.

- THE ORPHAN’S VOYAGE HOME.

- ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

- TEA.

- THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

- IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER VI.

- PART III. CHAPTER VII.

- YOUNG RUSSIA.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE