Household Words, No. 13, June 22, 1850
Author: Unknown
Date: 2026-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: English literature -- Periodicals

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household Words, No. 13, June 22, 1850

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Title: Household Words, No. 13, June 22, 1850

A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens

Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78177]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78177

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. 13, JUNE 22, 1850 ***

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

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

No. 13.]      SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 1850.      [Price 2d.

THE SUNDAY SCREW.

This little instrument, remarkable for its curious twist, has been at work again. A small portion of the collective wisdom of the nation has affirmed the principle that there must be no collection or delivery of posted letters on a Sunday. The principle was discussed by something less than a fourth of the House of Commons, and affirmed by something less than a seventh.

Having no doubt whatever, that this brilliant victory is, in effect, the affirmation of the principle that there ought to be No Anything hut churches and chapels on a Sunday; or, that it is the beginning of a Sabbatarian Crusade, outrageous to the spirit of Christianity, irreconcileable with the health, the rational enjoyments, and the true religious feeling, of the community; and certain to result, if successful, in a violent reaction, threatening contempt and hatred of that seventh day which it is a great religious and social object to maintain in the popular affection; it would ill become us to be deterred from speaking out upon the subject, by any fear of being misunderstood, or by any certainty of being misrepresented.

Confident in the sense of the country, and not unacquainted with the habits and exigencies of the people, we approach the Sunday question, quite undiscomposed by the late storm of mad mis-statement and all uncharitableness, which cleared the way for Lord Ashley’s motion. The preparation may be likened to that which is usually described in the case of the Egyptian Sorcerer and the boy who has some dark liquid poured into the palm of his hand, which is presently to become a magic mirror. “Look for Lord Ashley. What do you see?” “Oh, here’s some one with a broom!” “Well! what is he doing?” “Oh, he’s sweeping away Mr. Rowland Hill! Now, there is a great crowd; of people all sweeping Mr. Rowland Hill away; and now, there is a red flag with Intolerance on it; and now, they are pitching a great many Tents called Meetings. Now, the tents are all upset, and Mr. Rowland Hill has swept everybody else away. And oh! now, here’s Lord Ashley, with a Resolution in his hand!”

One Christian sentence is all-sufficient with us, on the theological part of this subject. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” No amount of signatures to petitions can ever sign away the meaning of those words; no end of volumes of Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates can ever affect them in the least. Move and carry resolutions, bring in bills, have committees, upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady’s chamber; read a first time, read a second time, read a third time, read thirty thousand times; the declared authority of the Christian dispensation over the letter of the Jewish Law, particularly in this especial instance, cannot be petitioned, resolved, read, or committee’d away.

It is important in such a case as this affirmation of a principle, to know what amount of practical sense and logic entered into its assertion. We will inquire.

Lord Ashley (who has done much good, and whom we mention with every sentiment of sincere respect, though we believe him to be most mischievously deluded on this question,) speaks of the people employed in the Country Post-Offices on Sunday, as though they were continually at work, all the livelong day. He asks whether they are to be “a Pariah race, excluded from the enjoyments of the rest of the community?” He presents to our mind’s eye, rows of Post-Office clerks, sitting, with dishevelled hair and dirty linen, behind small shutters, all Sunday long, keeping time with their sighs to the ringing of the church bells, and watering bushels of letters, incessantly passing through their hands, with their tears. Is this exactly the reality? The Upas tree is a figure of speech almost as ancient as our lachrymose friend the Pariah, in whom most of us recognise a respectable old acquaintance. Supposing we were to take it into our heads to declare in these Household Words, that every Post-Office clerk employed on Sunday in the country, is compelled to sit under his own particular sprig of Upas, planted in a flower-pot beside him for the express purpose of blighting him with its baneful shade, should we be much more beyond the mark than Lord Ashley himself? Did any of our readers ever happen to post letters in the Country on a Sunday? Did they ever see a notice outside a provincial Post-Office, to the effect that the presiding Pariah would be in attendance at such an hour on Sunday, and not before? Did they ever wait for the Pariah, at some inconvenience, until the hour arrived, and observe him come to the office in an extremely spruce condition as to his shirt collar, and do a little sprinkling of business in a very easy offhand manner? We have such recollections ourselves. We have posted and received letters in most parts of this kingdom on a Sunday, and we never yet observed the Pariah to be quite crushed. On the contrary, we have seen him at church, apparently in the best health and spirits (notwithstanding an hour or so of sorting, earlier in the morning), and we have met him out a-walking with the young lady to whom he is engaged, and we have known him meet her again with her cousin, after the dispatch of the Mails, and really conduct himself as if he were not particularly exhausted or afflicted. Indeed, how could he be so, on Lord Ashley’s own showing? There is a Saturday before the Sunday. We are a people indisposed, he says, to business on a Sunday. More than a million of people are known, from their petitions, to be too scrupulous to hear of such a thing. Few counting-houses or offices are ever opened on a Sunday. The Merchants and Bankers write by Saturday night’s post. The Sunday night’s post may be presumed to be chiefly limited to letters of necessity and emergency. Lord Ashley’s whole case would break down, if it were probable that the Post-Office Pariah had half as much confinement on Sunday, as the He-Pariah who opens my Lord’s street-door when any body knocks, or the She-Pariah who nurses my Lady’s baby.

If the London Post-Office be not opened on a Sunday, says Lord Ashley, why should the Post-Offices of provincial towns be opened on a Sunday? Precisely because the provincial towns are NOT London, we apprehend. Because London is the great capital, mart, and business-centre of the world; because in London there are hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, away from their families and friends; because the stoppage of the Monday’s Post Delivery in London would stop, for many precious hours, the natural flow of the blood from every vein and artery in the world to the heart of the world, and its return from the heart through all those tributary channels. Because the broad difference between London and every other place in England, necessitated this distinction, and has perpetuated it.

But, to say nothing of petitioners elsewhere, it seems that two hundred merchants and bankers in Liverpool “formed themselves into a committee, to forward the object of this motion.” In the name of all the Pharisees of Jerusalem, could not the two hundred merchants and bankers form themselves into a committee to write or read no business-letters themselves on a Sunday—and let the Post-Office alone? The Government establishes a monopoly in the Post-Office, and makes it not only difficult and expensive for me to send a letter by any other means, but illegal. What right has any merchant or banker to stop the course of any letter that I may have sore necessity to post, or may choose to post? If any one of the two hundred merchants and bankers lay at the point of death, on Sunday, would he desire his absent child to be written to—the Sunday Post being yet in existence? And how do they take upon themselves to tell us that the Sunday Post is not a “necessity,” when they know, every man of them, every Sunday morning, that before the clock strikes next, they and theirs may be visited by any one of incalculable millions of accidents, to make it a dire need? Not a necessity? Is it possible that these merchants and bankers suppose there is any Sunday Post, from any large town, which is not a very agony of necessity to some one? I might as well say, in my pride of strength, that a knowledge of bone-setting in surgeons is not a necessity, because I have not broken my leg.

There is a Sage of this sort in the House of Commons. He is of opinion that the Sunday Police is a necessity, but the Sunday Post is not. That is to say, in a certain house in London or Westminster, there are certain silver spoons, engraved with the family crest—a Bigot rampant—which would be pretty sure to disappear, on an early Sunday, if there were no Policemen on duty; whereas the Sage sees no present probability of his requiring to write a letter into the country on a Saturday night—and, if it should arise, he can use the Electric Telegraph. Such is the sordid balance some professing Heathens hold of their own pounds against other men’s pennies, and their own selfish wants against those of the community at large! Even the Member for Birmingham, of all the towns in England, is afflicted by this selfish blindness, and, because he is “tired of reading and answering letters on a Sunday,” cannot conceive the possibility of there being other people not so situated, to whom the Sunday Post may, under many circumstances, be an unspeakable blessing.

The inconsequential nature of Lord Ashley’s positions, cannot be better shown, than by one brief passage from his speech. “When he said the transmission of the Mail, he meant the Mail-bags; he did not propose to interfere with the passengers.” No? Think again, Lord Ashley.

When the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres moves his resolution for the stoppage of Mail Trains—in a word, of all Railway travelling—on Sunday; and when that Honorable Gentleman talks about the Pariah clerks who take the money and give the tickets, the Pariah engine-drivers, the Pariah stokers, the Pariah porters, the Pariah police along the line, and the Pariah flys waiting at the Pariah stations to take the Pariah passengers, to be attended by Pariah servants at the Pariah Arms and other Pariah Hotels; what will Lord Ashley do then? Envy insinuated that Tom Thumb made his giants first, and then killed them, but you cannot do the like by your Pariahs. You cannot get an exclusive patent for the manufacture and destruction of Pariah dolls. Other Honorable Gentlemen are certain to engage in the trade; and when the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres makes his Pariahs of all these people, you cannot refuse to recognise them as being of the genuine sort, Lord Ashley. Railway and all other Sunday Travelling, suppressed, by the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres, the same honorable gentleman, who will not have been particularly complimented in the course of that achievement by the Times Newspaper, will discover that a good deal is done towards the Times of Monday, on a Sunday night, and will Pariah the whole of that immense establishment. For, this is the great inconvenience of Pariah-making, that when you begin, they spring up like mushrooms: insomuch, that it is very doubtful whether we shall have a house in all this land, from the Queen’s Palace downward, which will not be found, on inspection, to be swarming with Pariahs. Not touch the Mails, and yet abolish the Mail-bags? Stop all those silent messengers of affection and anxiety, yet let the talking traveller, who is the cause of infinitely more employment, go? Why, this were to suppose all men Fools, and the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres even a greater Noodle than he is!

Lord Ashley supports his motion by reading some perilous bombast, said to be written by a working man—of whom the intelligent body of working men have no great reason, to our thinking, to be proud—in which there is much about not being robbed of the boon of the day of rest; but, with all Lord Ashley’s indisputably humane and benevolent impulses, we grieve to say we know no robber whom the working man, really desirous to preserve his Sunday, has so much to dread, as Lord Ashley himself. He is weakly lending the influence of his good intentions to a movement which would make that day no day of rest—rest to those who are overwrought, includes recreation, fresh air, change—but a day of mortification and gloom. And this not to one class only, be it understood. This is not a class question. If there be no gentleman of spirit in the House of Commons to remind Lord Ashley that the high-flown nonsense he quoted, concerning labour, is but another form of the stupidest socialist dogma, which seeks to represent that there is only one class of laborers on earth, it is well that the truth should be stated somewhere. And it is, indisputably, that three-fourths of us are laborers who work hard for our living; and that the condition of what we call the working man, has its parallel, at a remove of certain degrees, in almost all professions and pursuits. Running through the middle classes, is a broad deep vein of constant, compulsory, indispensable work. There are innumerable gentlemen, and sons and daughters of gentlemen, constantly at work, who have no more hope of making fortunes in their vocation, than the working man has in his. There are innumerable families in which the day of rest, is the only day out of the seven, where innocent domestic recreations and enjoyments are very feasible. In our mean gentility, which is the cause of so much social mischief, we may try to separate ourselves, as to this question, from the working man; and may very complacently resolve that there is no occasion for his excursion-trains and tea-gardens, because we don’t use them; but we had better not deceive ourselves. It is impossible that we can cramp his means of needful recreation and refreshment, without cramping our own, or basely cheating him. We cannot leave him to the Christian patronage of the Honourable Member for Whitened Sepulchres, and take ourselves off. We cannot restrain him and leave ourselves free. Our Sunday wants are pretty much the same as his, though his are far more easily satisfied; our inclinations and our feelings are pretty much the same; and it will be no less wise than honest in us, the middle classes, not to be Janus-faced about the matter.

What is it that the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres, for whom Lord Ashley clears the way, wants to do? He sees on a Sunday morning, in the large towns of England, when the bells are ringing for church and chapel, certain unwashed, dim-eyed, dissipated loungers, hanging about the doors of public-houses, and loitering at the street corners, to whom the day of rest appeals in much the same degree as a sunny summer-day does to so many pigs. Does he believe that any weight of handcuffs on the Post-Office, or any amount of restriction imposed on decent people, will bring Sunday home to these? Let him go, any Sunday morning, from the new Town of Edinburgh where the sound of a piano would be profanation, to the old Town, and see what Sunday is in the Canongate. Or let him get up some statistics of the drunken people in Glasgow, while the churches are full—and work out the amount of Sabbath observance which is carried downward, by rigid shows and sad-colored forms.

But, there is another class of people, those who take little jaunts, and mingle in social little assemblages, on a Sunday, concerning whom the whole constituency of Whitened Sepulchres, with their Honorable Member in the chair, find their lank hair standing on end with horror, and pointing, as if they were all electrified, straight up to the skylights of Exeter Hall. In reference to this class, we would whisper in the ears of the disturbed assemblage, three short words, “Let well alone!”

The English people have long been remarkable for their domestic habits, and their household virtues and affections. They are, now, beginning to be universally respected by intelligent foreigners who visit this country, for their unobtrusive politeness, their good-humour, and their cheerful recognition of all restraints that really originate in consideration for the general good. They deserve this testimony (which we have often heard, of late, with pride) most honorably. Long maligned and mistrusted, they proved their case from the very first moment of having it in their power to do so; and have never, on any single occasion within our knowledge, abused any public confidence that has been reposed in them. It is an extraordinary thing to know of a people, systematically excluded from galleries and museums for years, that their respect for such places, and for themselves as visitors to them, dates, without any period of transition, from the very day when their doors were freely opened. The national vices are surprisingly few. The people in general are not gluttons, nor drunkards, nor gamblers, nor addicted to cruel sports, nor to the pushing of any amusement to furious and wild extremes. They are moderate, and easily pleased, and very sensible to all affectionate influences. Any knot of holiday-makers, without a large proportion of women and children among them, would be a perfect phenomenon. Let us go into any place of Sunday enjoyment where any fair representation of the people resort, and we shall find them decent, orderly, quiet, sociable among their families and neighbours. There is a general feeling of respect for religion, and for religious observances. The churches and chapels are well filled. Very few people who keep servants or apprentices, leave out of consideration their opportunities of attending church or chapel; the general demeanour within those edifices, is particularly grave and decorous; and the general recreations without, are of a harmless and simple kind. Lord Brougham never did Henry Brougham more justice, than in declaring to the House of Lords, after the success of this motion in the House of Commons, that there is no country where the Sabbath is, on the whole, better observed than in England. Let the constituency of Whitened Sepulchres ponder, in a Christian spirit, on these things; take care of their own consciences; leave their Honorable Member to take care of his; and let well alone.

For, it is in nations as in families. Too tight a hand in these respects, is certain to engender a disposition to break loose, and to run riot. If the private experience of any reader, pausing on this sentence, cannot furnish many unhappy illustrations of its truth, it is a very fortunate experience indeed. Our most notable public example of it, in England, is just two hundred years old.

Lord Ashley had better merge his Pariahs into the body politic; and the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres had better accustom his jaundiced eyes to the Sunday sight of dwellers in towns, roaming in green fields, and gazing upon country prospects. If he will look a little beyond them, and lift up the eyes of his mind, perhaps he may observe a mild, majestic figure in the distance, going through a field of corn, attended by some common men who pluck the grain as they pass along, and whom their Divine Master teaches that he is the Lord, even of the Sabbath-Day.

THE YOUNG ADVOCATE.

Antoine de Chaulieu was the son of a poor gentleman of Normandy, with a long genealogy, a short rent-roll, and a large family. Jacques Rollet was the son of a brewer, who did not know who his grandfather was; but he had a long purse and only two children. As these youths flourished in the early days of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and were near neighbours, they naturally hated each other. Their enmity commenced at school, where the delicate and refined De Chaulieu being the only gentil-homme amongst the scholars, was the favorite of the master (who was a bit of an aristocrat in his heart) although he was about the worst dressed boy in the establishment, and never had a sou to spend; whilst Jacques Rollet, sturdy and rough, with smart clothes and plenty of money, got flogged six days in the week, ostensibly for being stupid and not learning his lessons—which, indeed, he did not—but, in reality, for constantly quarrelling with and insulting De Chaulieu, who had not strength to cope with him. When they left the academy, the feud continued in all its vigour, and was fostered by a thousand little circumstances arising out of the state of the times, till a separation ensued in consequence of an aunt of Antoine de Chaulieu’s undertaking the expense of sending him to Paris to study the law, and of maintaining him there during the necessary period.

With the progress of events came some degree of reaction in favour of birth and nobility, and then Antoine, who had passed for the bar, began to hold up his head and endeavoured to push his fortunes; but fate seemed against him. He felt certain that if he possessed any gift in the world it was that of eloquence, but he could get no cause to plead; and his aunt dying inopportunely, first his resources failed, and then his health. He had no sooner returned to his home, than, to complicate his difficulties completely, he fell in love with Mademoiselle Natalie de Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been completing her education. To expatiate on the perfections of Mademoiselle Natalie, would be a waste of ink and paper; it is sufficient to say that she really was a very charming girl, with a fortune which, though not large, would have been a most desirable acquisition to De Chaulieu, who had nothing. Neither was the fair Natalie indisposed to listen to his addresses; but her father could not be expected to countenance the suit of a gentleman, however well-born, who had not a ten-sous piece in the world, and whose prospects were a blank.

Whilst the ambitious and love-sick young barrister was thus pining in unwelcome obscurity, his old acquaintance, Jacques Rollet, had been acquiring an undesirable notoriety. There was nothing really bad in Jacques’ disposition, but having been bred up a democrat, with a hatred of the nobility, he could not easily accommodate his rough humour to treat them with civility when it was no longer safe to insult them. The liberties he allowed himself whenever circumstances brought him into contact with the higher classes of society, had led him into many scrapes, out of which his father’s money had one way or another released him; but that source of safety had now failed. Old Rollet having been too busy with the affairs of the nation to attend to his business, had died insolvent, leaving his son with nothing but his own wits to help him out of future difficulties, and it was not long before their exercise was called for. Claudine Rollet, his sister, who was a very pretty girl, had attracted the attention of Mademoiselle de Bellefonds’ brother, Alphonso; and as he paid her more attention than from such a quarter was agreeable to Jacques, the young men had had more than one quarrel on the subject, on which occasions they had each, characteristically, given vent to their enmity, the one in contemptuous monosyllables, and the other in a volley of insulting words. But Claudine had another lover more nearly of her own condition of life; this was Claperon, the deputy governor of the Rouen jail, with whom she had made acquaintance during one or two compulsory visits paid by her brother to that functionary; but Claudine, who was a bit of a coquette, though she did not altogether reject his suit, gave him little encouragement, so that betwixt hopes, and fears, and doubts, and jealousies, poor Claperon led a very uneasy kind of life.

Affairs had been for some time in this position, when, one fine morning, Alphonse de Bellefonds was not to be found in his chamber when his servant went to call him; neither had his bed been slept in. He had been observed to go out rather late on the preceding evening, but whether or not he had returned, nobody could tell. He had not appeared at supper, but that was too ordinary an event to awaken suspicion; and little alarm was excited till several hours had elapsed, when inquiries were instituted and a search commenced, which terminated in the discovery of his body, a good deal mangled, lying at the bottom of a pond which had belonged to the old brewery. Before any investigations had been made, every person had jumped to the conclusion that the young man had been murdered, and that Jacques Rollet was the assassin. There was a strong presumption in favour of that opinion, which further perquisitions tended to confirm. Only the day before, Jacques had been heard to threaten Mons. de Bellefonds with speedy vengeance. On the fatal evening, Alphonse and Claudine had been seen together in the neighbourhood of the now dismantled brewery; and as Jacques, betwixt poverty and democracy, was in bad odour with the prudent and respectable part of society, it was not easy for him to bring witnesses to character, or prove an unexceptionable alibi. As for the Bellefonds and De Chaulieus, and the aristocracy in general, they entertained no doubt of his guilt; and finally, the magistrates coming to the same opinion, Jacques Rollet was committed for trial, and as a testimony of good will, Antoine de Chaulieu was selected by the injured family to conduct the prosecution.

Here, at last, was the opportunity he had sighed for! So interesting a case, too, furnishing such ample occasion for passion, pathos, indignation! And how eminently fortunate that the speech which he set himself with ardour to prepare, would be delivered in the presence of the father and brother of his mistress, and perhaps of the lady herself! The evidence against Jacques, it is true, was altogether presumptive; there was no proof whatever that he had committed the crime; and for his own part he stoutly denied it. But Antoine de Chaulieu entertained no doubt of his guilt, and his speech was certainly well calculated to carry that conviction into the bosom of others. It was of the highest importance to his own reputation that he should procure a verdict, and he confidently assured the afflicted and enraged family of the victim that their vengeance should be satisfied. Under these circumstances could anything be more unwelcome than a piece of intelligence that was privately conveyed to him late on the evening before the trial was to come on, which tended strongly to exculpate the prisoner, without indicating any other person as the criminal. Here was an opportunity lost. The first step of the ladder on which he was to rise to fame, fortune, and a wife, was slipping from under his feet!

Of course, so interesting a trial was anticipated with great eagerness by the public, and the court was crowded with all the beauty and fashion of Rouen. Though Jacques Rollet persisted in asserting his innocence, founding his defence chiefly on circumstances which were strongly corroborated by the information that had reached De Chaulieu the preceding evening,—he was convicted.

In spite of the very strong doubts he privately entertained respecting the justice of the verdict, even De Chaulieu himself, in the first flush of success, amidst a crowd of congratulating friends, and the approving smiles of his mistress, felt gratified and happy; his speech had, for the time being, not only convinced others, but himself; warmed with his own eloquence, he believed what he said. But when the glow was over, and he found himself alone, he did not feel so comfortable. A latent doubt of Rollet’s guilt now burnt strongly in his mind, and he felt that the blood of the innocent would be on his head. It is true there was yet time to save the life of the prisoner, but to admit Jacques innocent, was to take the glory out of his own speech, and turn the sting of his argument against himself. Besides, if he produced the witness who had secretly given him the information, he should be self-condemned, for he could not conceal that he had been aware of the circumstance before the trial.

Matters having gone so far, therefore, it was necessary that Jacques Rollet should die; so the affair took its course; and early one morning the guillotine was erected in the court yard of the jail, three criminals ascended the scaffold, and three heads fell into the basket, which were presently afterwards, with the trunks that had been attached to them, buried in a corner of the cemetery.

Antoine de Chaulieu was now fairly started in his career, and his success was as rapid as the first step towards it had been tardy. He took a pretty apartment in the Hôtel Marbœuf, Rue Grange-Batelière, and in a short time was looked upon as one of the most rising young advocates in Paris. His success in one line brought him success in another; he was soon a favourite in society, and an object of interest to speculating mothers; but his affections still adhered to his old love Natalie de Bellefonds, whose family now gave their assent to the match—at least, prospectively—a circumstance which furnished such an additional incentive to his exertions, that in about two years from the date of his first brilliant speech, he was in a sufficiently flourishing condition to offer the young lady a suitable home. In anticipation of the happy event, he engaged and furnished a suite of apartments in the Rue du Helder; and as it was necessary that the bride should come to Paris to provide her trousseau, it was agreed that the wedding should take place there, instead of at Bellefonds, as had been first projected; an arrangement the more desirable, that a press of business rendered Mons. de Chaulieu’s absence from Paris inconvenient.

Brides and bridegrooms in France, except of the very high classes, are not much in the habit of making those honeymoon excursions so universal in this country. A day spent in visiting Versailles, or St. Cloud, or even the public places of the city, is generally all that precedes the settling down into the habits of daily life. In the present instance St. Denis was selected, from the circumstance of Natalie’s having a younger sister at school there; and also because she had a particular desire to see the Abbey.

The wedding was to take place on a Thursday; and on the Wednesday evening, having spent some hours most agreeably with Natalie, Antoine de Chaulieu returned to spend his last night in his bachelor apartments. His wardrobe and other small possessions, had already been packed up and sent to his future home; and there was nothing left in his room now, but his new wedding suit, which he inspected with considerable satisfaction before he undressed and lay down to sleep. Sleep, however, was somewhat slow to visit him; and the clock had struck one, before he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, it was broad daylight; and his first thought was, had he overslept himself? He sat up in bed to look at the clock which was exactly opposite, and as he did so, in the large mirror over the fire-place, he perceived a figure standing behind him. As the dilated eyes met his own, he saw it was the face of Jacques Rollet. Overcome with horror he sunk back on his pillow, and it was some minutes before he ventured to look again in that direction; when he did so, the figure had disappeared.

The sudden revulsion of feeling such a vision was calculated to occasion in a man elate with joy, may be conceived! For some time after the death of his former foe, he had been visited by not unfrequent twinges of conscience; but of late, borne along by success, and the hurry of Parisian life, these unpleasant remembrancers had grown rarer, till at length they had faded away altogether. Nothing had been further from his thoughts than Jacques Rollet, when he closed his eyes on the preceding night, nor when he opened them to that sun which was to shine on what he expected to be the happiest day of his life! Where were the high-strung nerves now! The elastic frame! The bounding heart!

Heavily and slowly he arose from his bed, for it was time to do so; and with a trembling hand and quivering knees, he went through the processes of the toilet, gashing his cheek with the razor, and spilling the water over his well polished boots. When he was dressed, scarcely venturing to cast a glance in the mirror as he passed it, he quitted the room and descended the stairs, taking the key of the door with him for the purpose of leaving it with the porter; the man, however, being absent, he laid it on the table in his lodge, and with a relaxed and languid step proceeded on his way to the church, where presently arrived the fair Natalie and her friends. How difficult it was now to look happy, with that pallid face and extinguished eye!

“How pale you are! Has anything happened? You are surely ill?” were the exclamations that met him on sides. He tried to carry it off as well as he could, but felt that the movements he would have wished to appear alert were only convulsive; and that the smiles with which he attempted to relax his features, were but distorted grimaces. However, the church was not the place for further inquiries; and whilst Natalie gently pressed his hand in token of sympathy, they advanced to the altar, and the ceremony was performed; after which they stepped into the carriages waiting at the door, and drove to the apartments of Madme. de Bellefonds, where an elegant déjeuner was prepared.

“What ails you, my dear husband?” enquired Natalie, as soon as they were alone.

“Nothing, love,” he replied; “nothing, I assure you, but a restless night and a little overwork, in order that I might have to-day free to enjoy my happiness!”

“Are you quite sure? Is there nothing else?”

“Nothing, indeed; and pray don’t take notice of it, it only makes me worse!”

Natalie was not deceived, but she saw that what he said was true; notice made him worse; so she contented herself with observing him quietly, and saying nothing; but, as he felt she was observing him, she might almost better have spoken; words are often less embarrassing things than too curious eyes.

When they reached Madame de Bellefonds’ he had the same sort of questioning and scrutiny to undergo, till he grew quite impatient under it, and betrayed a degree of temper altogether unusual with him. Then everybody looked astonished; some whispered their remarks, and others expressed them by their wondering eyes, till his brow knit, and his pallid cheeks became flushed with anger. Neither could he divert attention by eating; his parched mouth would not allow him to swallow anything but liquids, of which, however, he indulged in copious libations; and it was an exceeding relief to him when the carriage, which was to convey them to St. Denis, being announced, furnished an excuse for hastily leaving the table. Looking at his watch, he declared it was late; and Natalie, who saw how eager he was to be gone, threw her shawl over her shoulders, and bidding her friends good morning, they hurried away.

It was a fine sunny day in June; and as they drove along the crowded boulevards, and through the Porte St. Denis, the young bride and bridegroom, to avoid each other’s eyes, affected to be gazing out of the windows; but when they reached that part of the road where there was nothing but trees on each side, they felt it necessary to draw in their heads, and make an attempt at conversation. De Chaulieu put his arm round his wife’s waist, and tried to rouse himself from his depression; but it had by this time so reacted upon her, that she could not respond to his efforts, and thus the conversation languished, till both felt glad when they reached their destination, which would, at all events, furnish them something to talk about.

Having quitted the carriage, and ordered a dinner at the Hôtel de l’Abbaye, the young couple proceeded to visit Mademoiselle Hortense de Bellefonds, who was overjoyed to see her sister and new brother-in-law, and doubly so when she found that they had obtained permission to take her out to spend the afternoon with them. As there is little to be seen at St. Denis but the Abbey, on quitting that part of it devoted to education, they proceeded to visit the church, with its various objects of interest; and as De Chaulieu’s thoughts were now forced into another direction, his cheerfulness began insensibly to return. Natalie looked so beautiful, too, and the affection betwixt the two young sisters was so pleasant to behold! And they spent a couple of hours wandering about with Hortense, who was almost as well informed as the Suisse, till the brazen doors were open which admitted them to the Royal vault. Satisfied, at length, with what they had seen, they began to think of returning to the inn, the more especially as De Chaulieu, who had not eaten a morsel of food since the previous evening, owned to being hungry; so they directed their steps to the door, lingering here and there as they went, to inspect a monument or a painting, when, happening to turn his head aside to see if his wife, who had stopt to take a last look at the tomb of King Dagobert, was following, he beheld with horror the face of Jacques Rollet appearing from behind a column! At the same instant, his wife joined him, and took his arm, inquiring if he was not very much delighted with what he had seen. He attempted to say yes, but the word would not be forced out; and staggering out of the door, he alleged that a sudden faintness had overcome him.

They conducted him to the Hôtel, but Natalie now became seriously alarmed; and well she might. His complexion looked ghastly, his limbs shook, and his features bore an expression of indescribable horror and anguish. What could be the meaning of so extraordinary a change in the gay, witty, prosperous De Chaulieu, who, till that morning, seemed not to have a care in the world? For, plead illness as he might, she felt certain, from the expression of his features, that his sufferings were not of the body but of the mind; and, unable to imagine any reason for such extraordinary manifestations, of which she had never before seen a symptom, but a sudden aversion to herself, and regret for the step he had taken, her pride took the alarm, and, concealing the distress she really felt, she began to assume a haughty and reserved manner towards him, which he naturally interpreted into an evidence of anger and contempt. The dinner was placed upon the table, but De Chaulieu’s appetite of which he had lately boasted, was quite gone, nor was his wife better able to eat. The young sister alone did justice to the repast; but although the bridegroom could not eat, he could swallow champagne in such copious draughts, that ere long the terror and remorse that the apparition of Jacques Rollet had awakened in his breast were drowned in intoxication. Amazed and indignant, poor Natalie sat silently observing this elect of her heart, till overcome with disappointment and grief, she quitted the room with her sister, and retired to another apartment, where she gave free vent to her feelings in tears.

After passing a couple of hours in confidences and lamentations, they recollected that the hours of liberty granted, as an especial favour, to Mademoiselle Hortense, had expired: but ashamed to exhibit her husband in his present condition to the eyes of strangers, Natalie prepared to re-conduct her to the Maison Royale herself. Looking into the dining-room as they passed, they saw De Chaulieu lying on a sofa fast asleep, in which state he continued when his wife returned. At length, however, the driver of their carriage begged to know if Monsieur and Madame were ready to return to Paris, and it became necessary to arouse him. The transitory effects of the champagne had now subsided; but when De Chaulieu recollected what had happened, nothing could exceed his shame and mortification. So engrossing indeed were these sensations that they quite overpowered his previous ones, and, in his present vexation, he, for the moment, forgot his fears. He knelt at his wife’s feet, begged her pardon a thousand times, swore that he adored her, and declared that the illness and the effect of the wine had been purely the consequences of fasting and overwork. It was not the easiest thing in the world to re-assure a woman whose pride, affection, and taste, had been so severely wounded; but Natalie tried to believe, or to appear to do so, and a sort of reconciliation ensued, not quite sincere on the part of the wife, and very humbling on the part of the husband. Under these circumstances it was impossible that he should recover his spirits or facility of manner; his gaiety was forced, his tenderness constrained; his heart was heavy within him; and ever and anon the source whence all this disappointment and woe had sprung would recur to his perplexed and tortured mind.

Thus mutually pained and distrustful, they returned to Paris, which they reached about nine o’clock. In spite of her depression, Natalie, who had not seen her new apartments, felt some curiosity about them, whilst De Chaulieu anticipated a triumph in exhibiting the elegant home he had prepared for her. With some alacrity, therefore, they stepped out of the carriage, the gates of the Hôtel were thrown open, the concierge rang the bell which announced to the servants that their master and mistress had arrived, and whilst these domestics appeared above, holding lights over the balusters, Natalie, followed by her husband, ascended the stairs. But when they reached the landing-place of the first flight, they saw the figure of a man standing in a corner as if to make way for them; the flash from above fell upon his face, and again Antoine de Chaulieu recognised the features of Jacques Rollet!

From the circumstance of his wife’s preceding him, the figure was not observed by De Chaulieu till he was lifting his foot to place it on the top stair: the sudden shock caused him to miss the step, and, without uttering a sound, he fell back, and never stopped till he reached the stones at the bottom. The screams of Natalie brought the concierge from below and the maids from above, and an attempt was made to raise the unfortunate man from the ground; but with cries of anguish he besought them to desist.

“Let me,” he said, “die here! What a fearful vengeance is thine! Oh, Natalie, Natalie!” he exclaimed to his wife, who was kneeling beside him, “to win fame, and fortune, and yourself, I committed a dreadful crime! With lying words I argued away the life of a fellow-creature, whom, whilst I uttered them, I half believed to be innocent; and now, when I have attained all I desired, and reached the summit of my hopes, the Almighty has sent him back upon the earth to blast me with the sight. Three times this day—three times this day! Again! again!”—and as he spoke, his wild and dilated eyes fixed themselves on one of the individuals that surrounded him.

“He is delirious,” said they.

“No,” said the stranger! “What he says is true enough,—at least in part;” and bending over the expiring man, he added, “May Heaven forgive you, Antoine de Chaulieu! I was not executed; one who well knew my innocence saved my life. I may name him, for he is beyond the reach of the law now,—it was Claperon, the jailer, who loved Claudine, and had himself killed Alphonse de Bellefonds from jealousy. An unfortunate wretch had been several years in the jail for a murder committed during the phrenzy of a fit of insanity. Long confinement had reduced him to idiocy. To save my life Claperon substituted the senseless being for me, on the scaffold, and he was executed in my stead. He has quitted the country, and I have been a vagabond on the face of the earth ever since that time. At length I obtained, through the assistance of my sister, the situation of concierge in the Hôtel Marbœuf, in the Rue Grange-Batelière. I entered on my new place yesterday evening, and was desired to awaken the gentleman on the third floor at seven o’clock. When I entered the room to do so, you were asleep, but before I had time to speak you awoke, and I recognised your features in the glass. Knowing that I could not vindicate my innocence if you chose to seize me, I fled, and seeing an omnibus starting for St. Denis, I got on it with a vague idea of getting on to Calais, and crossing the Channel to England. But having only a franc or two in my pocket, or indeed in the world, I did not know how to procure the means of going forward; and whilst I was lounging about the place, forming first one plan and then another, I saw you in the church, and concluding you were in pursuit of me, I thought the best way of eluding your vigilance was to make my way back to Paris as fast as I could; so I set off instantly, and walked all the way; but having no money to pay my night’s lodging, I came here to borrow a couple of livres of my sister Claudine, who lives in the fifth story.”

“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed the dying man; “that sin is off my soul! Natalie, dear wife, farewell! Forgive! forgive all!”

These were the last words he uttered; the priest, who had been summoned in haste, held up the cross before his failing sight; a few strong convulsions shook the poor bruised and mangled frame; and then all was still.

And thus ended the Young Advocate’s Wedding Day.

EARTH’S HARVESTS.

“Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than War.”—

Milton’s Sonnet to Cromwell.

Two hundred years ago,[1] the moon
Shone on a battle plain;
Cold through that glowing night of June
Lay steeds and riders slain;
And daisies, bending ’neath strange dew,
Wept in the silver light;
The very turf a regal hue
Assumed that fatal night.

Time past—but long, to tell the tale,
Some battle-axe or shield,
Or cloven skull, or shattered mail,
Were found upon the field;
The grass grew thickest on the spot
Where high were heaped the dead,
And well it marked, had men forgot,
Where the great charge was made.

To-day—the sun looks laughing down
Upon the harvest plain,
The little gleaners, rosy-brown,
The merry reaper’s train;
The rich sheaves heaped together stand,
And resting in their shade,
A mother, working close at hand,
Her sleeping babe hath laid.

A battle-field it was, and is,
For serried spears are there,
And against mighty foes upreared—
Gaunt hunger, pale despair.
We’ll thank God for the hearts of old,
Their strife our freedom sealed;
We’ll praise Him for the sheaves of gold
Now on the battle-field.

1. Naseby, June 14, 1646.

“THE DEVIL’S ACRE.”

There are multitudes who believe that Westminster is a city of palaces, of magnificent squares, and regal terraces; that it is the chosen seat of opulence, grandeur and refinement; and that filth, squalor, and misery are the denizens of other and less favoured sections of the metropolis. The error is not in associating with Westminster much of the grandeur and splendour of the capital, but in entirely dissociating it in idea from the darker phases of metropolitan life. As the brightest lights cast the deepest shadows, so are the splendours and luxuries of the Westend found in juxta-position with the most deplorable manifestations of human wretchedness and depravity. There is no part of the metropolis which presents a more chequered aspect, both physical and moral, than Westminster. The most lordly streets are frequently but a mask for the squalid districts which lie behind them, whilst spots consecrated to the most hallowed of purposes are begirt by scenes of indescribable infamy and pollution; the blackest tide of moral turpitude that flows in the capital rolls its filthy wavelets up to the very walls of Westminster Abbey; and the law-makers for one-seventh of the human race sit, night after night, in deliberation, in the immediate vicinity of the most notorious haunt of law-breakers in the empire. There is no district in London more filthy and disgusting, more steeped in villany and guilt, than that on which every morning’s sun casts the sombre shadows of the Abbey, mingled, as they soon will be, with those of the gorgeous towers of the new “Palace at Westminster.”

The “Devil’s Acre,” as it is familiarly known in the neighbourhood, is the square block comprised between Dean, Peter, and Tothill Streets, and Strutton Ground. It is permeated by Orchard Street, St. Anne’s Street, Old and New Pye Streets, Pear Street, Perkins’ Rents, and Duck Lane. From some of these, narrow covered passage-ways lead into small quadrangular courts, containing but a few crazy, tumble-down-looking houses, and inhabited by characters of the most equivocal description. The district, which is small in area, is one of the most populous in London, almost every house being crowded with numerous families, and multitudes of lodgers. There are other parts of the town as filthy, dingy, and forbidding in appearance as this, but these are generally the haunts more of poverty than crime. But there are none in which guilt of all kinds and degrees converges in such volume as on this, the moral plague-spot not only of the metropolis, but also of the kingdom. And yet from almost every point of it you can observe the towers of the Abbey peering down upon you, as if they were curious to observe that to which they seem to be indifferent.

Such is the spot which true Christian benevolence has, for some time, marked as a chosen field for its most unostentatious operations. It was first taken possession of, with a view to its improvement, by the London City Mission, a body represented in the district by a single missionary, who has now been for about twelve years labouring—and not without success—in the arduous work of its purification; and who, by his energy, tact, and perseverance, has acquired such an influence over its turbulent and lawless population, as makes him a safer escort to the stranger desirous of visiting it, than a whole posse of police. By the aid of several opulent philanthropists whom he has interested in his labours, he has reared up within the district two schools, which are numerously attended by the squalid children of the neighbourhood—each school having an Industrial Department connected with it. An exclusively Industrial School for boys of more advanced age has also been established, which has recently been attached to the Ragged School Union. In addition to these, another institution has been called into existence, to which and to whose objects the reader’s attention will be drawn in what follows.

The Pye Street Schools being designed only for children—many of whom, on admission, manifest an almost incredible precocity in crime—those of a more advanced age seeking instruction and reformation were not eligible to admission. In an applicant of this class, a lad about sixteen, the master of one of the schools took a deep interest from the earnestness with which he sought for an opportunity of retrieving himself. He was invited to attend the school, that he might receive instruction. He was grateful for the offer, but expressed a doubt of its being sufficient to rescue him from his criminal and degraded course of life.

“It will be of little use to me,” said he, “to attend school in the daytime, if I have to take to the streets again at night, and live, as I am now living, by thieving.”

The master saw the difficulty, and determined on trying the experiment of taking him entirely off the streets. He accordingly paid for a lodging for him, and secured him bread to eat. For four months the lad lived contentedly and happily on “bread and dripping,” during which time he proved his aptitude for instruction by learning to read, to write tolerably well, and to master all the more useful rules in arithmetic. He was shortly afterwards sent to Australia, through the kindness of some individuals who furnished the means. He is now doing well in the new field thus opportunely opened up to him, and the experiment of which he was the subject laid the germ of the Institution in question.

In St. Anne Street, one of the worst and filthiest purlieus of the district, stands a house somewhat larger and cleaner than the miserable, rickety, and greasy-looking tenements around it. Over the door are painted, in large legible characters, the following words: “The Ragged Dormitory and Colonial Training School of Industry.” On one of the shutters it is indicated, in similar characters, that the house is a refuge for “Youths who wish to Reform.” None are admitted under sixteen, as those under that age can get admission to one or other of the schools. Those eligible are such vagrants and thieves as are between sixteen and twenty-two, and desire to abandon their present mode of life, and lead honest and industrious courses for the future.

It is obvious that such an institution, if not carefully watched, would be liable to being greatly abused. The pinching wants of the moment would drive many into it, whose sole object was to meet there, instead of to subject themselves to the reformatory discipline of the establishment. Many would press into it whose love of idleness had hitherto been their greatest vice. As it is, this latter class is deterred, to a great extent, from applying, by the Institution confining its operations to the thief and the vagrant. Each applicant, by applying for admission, confesses himself to belong to one or other of these classes, or to both. If he is found to be a subject coming within the scope of the establishment, he is at once admitted, and subjected to its discipline. The natural inference would be, that the avowed object of it would turn applicants from its doors. But this is far from being the case; upwards of two hundred having applied during the past year, the second of its existence.

To distinguish those who are sincere in their application from those who merely wish to make a convenience, for the time being, of the establishment, each applicant, on admission, is subjected to a rigid test. In the attic story of the building is a small room, the walls and ceiling of which are painted with yellow ochre. Last year, for it is only recently that the house has been applied to its present purpose, this room was occupied by a numerous and squalid family, some of whose members were the first victims of cholera, in Westminster. The massive chimney-stack projects far into the room, and in the deep recesses between it and the low walls on either side are two beds formed of straw, with a coarse counterpane for a covering. Beyond this there is not a vestige of furniture in the apartment. This is the Probation-room, the ordeal of which every applicant must pass ere he is fully received into the Institution. But he must pass a whole fortnight, generally alone, his fare being bread and water. His allowance of bread is a pound a-day, which he may dispose of as he pleases, either at a meal or at several. He does not pass the entire day in solitude, for during class-hours he is taken down to the school-room, where he is taught with the rest. But, with that exception, he is not allowed to mingle with the rest of the inmates, being separated from them for the remainder of the day, and left to his own reflections in his lonely cell.

A man, compulsorily subjected to solitude and short commons, may make up his mind to it, and resign himself to his fate. But no one will voluntarily subject himself to such a test who is not tired of a dishonest life, and anxious to reform. In nearly nine cases out of ten it unmasks the impostor. Many shrink at once from the ordeal, and retire. Others undergo it for a day or two, and then leave; for, as there was no compulsion on them to enter, they are at all times at liberty to depart. Some stay for a week, and then withdraw, whilst instances have been known of their giving up after ten or twelve days’ endurance. The few that remain are readily accepted as objects worthy the best efforts of the establishment.

The applicants, particularly the vagrants, are generally in the worst possible condition, as regards clothing. In many cases they are half-naked, like the wretched objects who make themselves up for charity in the streets. Their probation over, they are clad in comparatively decent attire, consisting chiefly of cast-off clothing, furnished by the contributors to the institution. They are then released from their solitary dormitory, and admitted to all the privileges of the house.

The tried and accepted inmates of the Institution have, for the two past years, averaged about thirty each year. They get up at an early hour, their first business being to clean out the establishment from top to bottom. They afterwards assemble at breakfast, which consists of cocoa and bread, of which they make a hearty meal. The business of instruction then commences, there being two school-rooms on the first floor, into one of which the more advanced pupils are put by themselves, the other being reserved for those that are more backward and for the new comers. It is into this latter room that the probationers are admitted during school-hours. During school-hours they are instructed in the fundamental doctrines of religion, and in the elements of education, including geography—particularly the geography of the colonies. The master exercises a general control over the whole establishment. The upper class is taught by a young man, who was himself one of the earliest inmates of the Institution, and who is now being trained for becoming a regular teacher. The other class is usually presided over by a monitor, also an inmate—but one who is in advance of his fellows. Most of those now in the house are able to read, and many to read well. Such as have been thieves are generally able to read when they enter, having been taught to do so in the prisons; those who cannot read being generally vagrants, or such as have been thieves without having been apprehended and convicted. They present a curious spectacle in their class-rooms. Their ages vary from twenty-one to sixteen, there being two in at present under sixteen, but they were admitted under special circumstances. With the exception of the probationers, they are all dressed comfortably, but in different styles, according to the character and fashion of the clothing at the command of the establishment. Some wear the surtout, others the dress-coat; some the short jacket, and others again the paletot. They are all provided with shoes and stockings, each being obliged to keep his own shoes scrupulously clean. Indeed, they are under very wholesome regulations as to their ablutions, and the general cleanliness of their persons. As they stand ranged in their classes, the diversity of countenances which they exhibit is as striking as are the contrasts presented by their raiment. In some faces you can still trace the brutal expression which they wore on entering. In others, the low cunning, begotten by their mode of life, was more or less distinguishable. You could readily point to those who had been longest in the establishment, from the humanising influences which their treatment had had upon their looks and expressions. The faces of most of them were lit up with new-born intelligence, whilst it was painful to witness the vacant and stolid looks of two of them, who had but recently passed the ordeal of the dormitory. Generally speaking, they are found to be quick and apt scholars, their mode of life having tended, in most instances, to quicken their perceptions.

Between the morning and afternoon classes they dine,—their dinner comprising animal food three times a week, being chiefly confined on other days to bread and dripping. They sup at an early hour in the evening, when cocoa and bread form again the staple of their meal. After supper, they spend an hour or two in the training school, which is a large room adjoining the probationers’ dormitory, where they are initiated into the mysteries of the tailors’ and shoemakers’ arts, under the superintendence of qualified teachers. They afterwards retire to rest, sleeping on beds laid out upon the floor, each bed containing one. When the house is full, the two class-rooms are converted at night into sleeping apartments. They are also compelled to attend some place of worship on the Sunday, and, in case of sickness, have the advantage of a medical attendant. During a part of the day they are allowed to walk out, in different gangs,—each gang under the care of one of their number. In their walks they are restricted as to time, and are required to avoid, as much as possible, the low neighbourhoods of the town. Should any of them desire to learn the business of a carpenter; they have the means of doing so; and two are now engaged in acquiring a practical knowledge of this useful trade.

Such is the curriculum which they undergo after being fully admitted into the house. They are so instructed as to wean them as much as possible from their former habits, to inspire them with the desire of living honest lives, and to fit them for becoming useful members of society, in the different offices for which they are destined. They must be six months at least in the house before they are deemed ready to emigrate. Some are kept longer. They are all eager to go,—being, without exception, sickened at the thought of recurring to their previous habits of life. From twenty to thirty have already been sent abroad. The committee who superintend the establishment are anxious to keep forty on the average in the house throughout the year, in addition to sending twenty each year abroad. This, however, will require a larger fund than they have at present at their disposal.

Such is the Institution which, for two years past, has been silently and unostentatiously working its own quota of good in this little-known and pestilential region. It is designed for the reclamation of a class on which society turns its back. Its doors are open alike to the convicted and the unconvicted offender. Five-sixths of its present inmates have been the denizens of many jails—and some of them have only emerged from the neighbouring Penitentiary. It is not easy to calculate the amount of mature crime which, in the course of a few years, it will avert from society, by its timely rescue of the precocious delinquent. It is thus an institution which may appeal to the selfishness, as well as to the benevolence, of the community for aid: though not very generally known, it is visited by many influential parties; and some of the greatest ornaments of Queen Victoria’s Court have not shrunk from crossing its threshold and contributing to its support.

Curious indeed would be the biographies which such an institution could furnish. The following, extracted from the Master’s Record, will serve as a specimen. The name is, for obvious reasons, suppressed.

“John ——, 16 years of age. Admitted June 3rd, 1848. Had slept for four months previously under the dry arches in West-street. Had made his livelihood for nearly five years by picking pockets. Was twice in jail—the last time in Tothill-Fields Prison. The largest sum he ever stole at a time, was a sovereign and a half. Could read when admitted. Learnt to write and cipher. Remained for eight months in the house. Behaved well. Emigrated to Australia. Doing well.”

It is encouraging to know that the most favourable accounts have been received both of and from those who have been sent out as emigrants, not only from this, but also from the Pear Street School. It is now some time since a lad, who, although only fourteen, was taken into the latter, was sent to Australia. He had been badly brought up; his mother, during his boyhood, having frequently sent him out, either to beg or to steal. About a year after her son’s departure, she called, in a state of deep distress, upon the missionary of the district, and informed him that her scanty furniture was about to be seized for rent, asking him at the same time for advice. He told her that he had none to give her but to go and pay the rent, at the same time handing her a sovereign. She received it hesitatingly, doubting, for a moment, the evidence of her senses. She went and paid the rent, which was eighteen shillings, and afterwards returned with the change, which she tendered to the missionary with her heartfelt thanks. He told her to keep the balance, as the sovereign was her own—informing her, at the same time, that it had been sent her by her son, and had that very morning so opportunely come to hand, together with a letter, which he afterwards read to her. The poor woman for a moment or two looked stupified and incredulous, after which she sank upon a chair, and wept long and bitterly. The contrast between her son’s behaviour and her own conduct towards him, filled her with shame and remorse. She is now preparing to follow him to Australia.

Another case was that of a young man, over twenty years of age, who had likewise been admitted, under special circumstances, to the same Institution. He had been abandoned by his parents in his early youth, and had taken to the streets to avert the miseries of destitution. He soon became expert in the art of picking pockets, on one occasion depriving a person in Cornhill of no less than a hundred and fifty pounds in Bank notes. With this, the largest booty he had ever made, he repaired to a house in the neighbourhood, where stolen property was received. Into the room into which he was shown, a gloved hand was projected, through an aperture in the wall, from an adjoining room, into which he placed the notes. The hand was then withdrawn, and immediately afterwards projected again with twenty sovereigns, which was the amount he received for the notes. He immediately repaired to Westminster, and invested ten pounds of this sum in counterfeit money, at a house not a stone’s throw from the Institution.

For the ten pounds he received, in bad money, what represented fifty. With this he sallied forth into the country with the design of passing it off—a process known amongst the craft as “shuffle-pitching.” The first place he went to was Northampton, and the means he generally adopted for passing off the base coin was this:—Having first buried in the neighbourhood of the town all the good and bad money in his possession, with the exception of a sovereign of each, so that, if detected in passing a bad one, no more bad money would be found upon his person; he would enter a retail shop, say a draper’s, at a late hour of the evening, and say that his master had sent him for some article of small value, such as a handkerchief. On its being shown him, he would demand the price of it, and make up his mind to take it; whereupon he would lay down a good sovereign, which the shopkeeper would take up, but, as he was about to give him change, a doubt would suddenly arise in his mind as to whether his master would give the price asked for the article. He would then demand the sovereign back, with a view to going and consulting his master, promising, at the same time, to be back again in a few minutes. Back again he would come, and say that his master was willing to give the price, or that he wished the article at a lower figure. He took care, however, that a bargain was concluded between him and the shopkeeper; whereupon he would again lay down the sovereign, which, however, on this occasion, was the bad and not the good one. The unsuspecting shopkeeper would give him the change, and he would leave with the property and the good money. Such is the process of “shuffle-pitching.” In the majority of instances he succeeded, but was sometimes detected. In this way he took the circuit twice of Great Britain and Ireland; stealing as he went along, and passing off the bad money, which he received, for good. There are few jails in the United Kingdom of which he has not been a denizen. His two circuits took him nine years to perform, his progress being frequently arrested by the interposition of justice. It was at the end of his second journey that he applied for admission to the Pear Street School. He had been too often in jail not to be able to read; but he could neither write nor cipher when he was taken in. He soon learnt, however, to do both; and, after about seven months’ probation, emigrated to America from his own choice. The missionary of the district accompanied him on board as he was about to sail. The poor lad wept like a child when he took leave of his benefactor, assuring him that he never knew the comforts of a home until he entered the Pear Street School. Several letters have been received from him since his landing, and he is now busily employed, and—doing well!

Instances of this kind might be multiplied, if necessary, of what is thus being done daily and unostentatiously for the reclamation of the penitent offender, not only after conviction, but also before he undergoes the terrible ordeal of correction and a jail.

“PRESS ON.”

A RIVULET’S SONG.

“Just under an island, ’midst rushes and moss,

I was born of a rock-spring, and dew;

I was shaded by trees, whose branches and leaves

Ne’er suffered the sun to gaze through.

“I wandered around the steep brow of a hill,

Where the daisies and violets fair

Were shaking the mist from their wakening eyes,

And pouring their breath on the air.

“Then I crept gently on, and I moistened the feet

Of a shrub which enfolded a nest—
The bird in return sang his merriest song,
And showed me his feathery crest.

“How joyous I felt in the bright afternoon,

When the sun, riding off in the west,

Came out in red gold from behind the green trees

And burnished my tremulous breast!

“My memory now can return to the time
When the breeze murmured low plaintive tones,
While I wasted the day in dancing away,
Or playing with pebbles and stones.

“It points to the hour when the rain pattered down,

Oft resting awhile in the trees;
Then quickly descending it ruffled my calm,
And whispered to me of the seas!

“’Twas then the first wish found a home in my breast

To increase as time hurries along;

’Twas then I first learned to lisp softly the words

Which I now love so proudly—‘Press on!’

“I’ll make wider my bed, as onward I tread,
A deep mighty river I’ll be—
‘Press on’ all the day will I sing on my way,
Till I enter the far-spreading sea.”

It ceased. A youth lingered beside its green edge

Till the stars in its face brightly shone;

He hoped the sweet strain would re-echo again—

But he just heard a murmur,—“Press on!”

ADDRESS FROM AN UNDERTAKER TO THE TRADE.

(STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.)

I address you, gentlemen, as an humble individual who is much concerned about the body. This little joke is purely a professional one. It must go no further. I am afraid the public thinks uncharitably of undertakers, and would consider it a proof that Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket. Well; we all try to do the best we can for ourselves,—everybody else as well as undertakers. Burials may be expensive, but so is legal redress. So is spiritual provision; I mean the maintenance of all our reverends and right reverends. I am quite sure that both lawyers’ charges and the revenues of some of the chief clergy are very little, if any, more reasonable than our own prices. Pluralities are as bad as crowded gravepits, and I don’t see that there is a pin to choose between the church and the churchyard. Sanitary revolutionists and incendiaries accuse us of gorging rottenness, and battening on corruption. We don’t do anything of the sort, that I see, to a greater extent than other professions, which are allowed to be highly respectable. Political military, naval, university, and clerical parties of great eminence defend abuses in their several lines when profitable. We can’t do better than follow such good examples. Let us stick up for business, and—I was going to say—leave society to take care of itself. No; that is just what we should endeavour to prevent society from doing. The world is growing too wise for us, gentlemen. Accordingly, this Interments Bill, by which our interests are so seriously threatened, has been brought into Parliament. We must join heart and hand to defeat and crush it. Let us nail our colours—which I should call the black flag—to the mast, and let our war-cry be, “No surrender!” or else our motto will very soon be, “Resurgam;” in other words, it will be all up with us. We stand in a critical position in regard to public opinion. In order to determine what steps to take for protecting business, we ought to see our danger. I wish, therefore, to state the facts of our case clearly to you; and I say let us face them boldly, and not blink them. Therefore, I am going to speak plainly and plumply on this subject.

There is no doubt—between ourselves—that what makes our trade so profitable is the superstition, weakness, and vanity of parties. We can’t disguise this fact from ourselves, and I only wish we may be able to conceal it much longer from others. As enlightened undertakers, we must admit that we are of no more use on earth than scavengers. All the good we do is to bury people’s dead out of their sight. Speaking as a philosopher—which an undertaker surely ought to be—I should say that our business is merely to shoot rubbish. However, the rubbish is human rubbish, and bereaved parties have certain feelings which require that it should be shot gingerly. I suppose such sentiments are natural, and will always prevail. But I fear that people will by and by begin to think that pomp, parade, and ceremony are unnecessary upon melancholy occasions. And whenever this happens, Othello’s occupation will, in a great measure, be gone.

I tremble to think of mourning relatives considering seriously what is requisite—and all that is requisite—for decent interment, in a rational point of view. Nothing more, I am afraid Common Sense would say, than to carry the body in the simplest chest, and under the plainest covering, only in a solemn and respectful manner, to the grave, and lay it in the earth with proper religious ceremonies. I fear Common Sense would be of opinion that mutes, scarfs, hatbands, plumes of feathers, black horses, mourning coaches, and the like, can in no way benefit the defunct, or comfort surviving friends, or gratify anybody but the mob, and the street-boys. But happily, Common Sense has not yet acquired an influence which would reduce every burial to a most low affair.

Still, people think now more than they did, and in proportion as they do think, the worse it will be for business. I consider that we have a most dangerous enemy in Science. That same Science pokes its nose into everything—even vaults and churchyards. It has explained how grave-water soaks into adjoining wells, and has shocked and disgusted people by showing them that they are drinking their dead neighbours. It has taught parties resident in large cities that the very air they live in reeks with human remains, which steam up from graves; and which, of course, they are continually breathing. So it makes out churchyards to be worse haunted than they were formerly believed to be by ghosts, and, I may add, vampyres, in consequence of the dead continually rising from them in this unpleasant manner. Indeed, Science is likely to make people dread them a great deal more than Superstition ever did, by showing that their effluvia breed typhus and cholera; so that they are really and truly very dangerous. I should not be surprised to hear some sanitary lecturer say, that the fear of churchyards was a sort of instinct implanted in the mind, to prevent ignorant people and children from going near such unwholesome places.

It would be comparatively well if the mischief done us by Science—Medicine and Chemistry, and all that sort of thing—stopped here. The mere consideration that burial in the heart of cities is unhealthy, would but lead to extramural interment, to which our only objection—though even that is no very trifling one—is that it would diminish mortality, and consequently our trade. But this Science—confound it!—shows that the dead do not remain permanently in their coffins, even when the sextons of metropolitan graveyards will let them. It not only informs Londoners that they breathe and drink the deceased; but it reveals how the whole of the defunct party is got rid of, and turned into gases, liquids, and mould. It exposes the way in which all animal matter—as it is called in chemical books—is dissolved, evaporates, and disappears; and is ultimately, as I may say, eaten up by Nature, and goes to form parts of plants, and of other living creatures. So that, if gentlemen really wanted to be interred with the remains of their ancestors, it would sometimes be possible to comply with their wishes only by burying them with a quantity of mutton—not to say with the residue of another quadruped than the sheep, which often grazes in churchyards. Science, in short, is hammering into people’s heads truths which they have been accustomed merely to gabble with their mouths—that all flesh is indeed grass, or convertible into it; and not only that the human frame does positively turn to dust, but into a great many things besides. Now, I say, that when they become really and truly convinced of all this; when they know and reflect that the body cannot remain any long time in the grave which it is placed in; I am sadly afraid that they will think twice before they will spend from thirty to several hundred pounds in merely putting a corpse into the ground to decompose.

The only hope for us if these scientific views become general, is, that embalming will be resorted to; but I question if the religious feeling of the country will approve of a practice which certainly seems rather like an attempt to arrest a decree of Providence; and would, besides, be very expensive. Here I am reminded of another danger, to which our prospects are exposed. It is that likely to arise from serious parties, in consequence of growing more enlightened, thinking consistently with their religious principles, instead of their religion being a mere sentimental kind of thing which they never reason upon. We often, you know, gentlemen, overhear the bereaved remarking that they trust the departed is in a better place. Why, if this were not a mere customary saying on mournful occasions—if the parties really believed this—do you think they would attach any importance to the dead body which we bury underground? No; to be sure: they would look upon it merely as a suit of left-off clothes—with the difference of being unpleasant and offensive, and not capable of being kept. They would see that a spirit could care no more about the corpse it had quitted, than a man who had lost his leg, would for the amputated limb. The truth is—don’t breathe it, don’t whisper it, except to the trade—that the custom of burying the dead with expensive furniture; of treating a corpse as if it were a sensible being; arises from an impression—though parties won’t own it, even to themselves—that what is buried, is the actual individual, the man himself. The effect of thinking seriously, and at the same time rationally, will be to destroy this notion, and with it to put an end to all the splendour and magnificence of funerals, arising from it. Moreover, religious parties, being particular as to their moral conduct, would naturally consider it wrong and wicked to spend upon the dead an amount of money which might be devoted to the benefit of the living; and no doubt, when we come to look into it, such expenditure is much the same thing with the practice of savages and heathens in burying bread, and meat, and clothes, along with their deceased friends.

I have been suggesting considerations which are very discouraging, and which afford but a poor look-out to us undertakers. But, gentlemen, we have one great comfort still. It has become the fashion to inter bodies with parade and display. Fashion is fashion; and the consequence is that it is considered an insult to the memory of deceased parties not to bury them in a certain style; which must be respectable at the very least, and cost, on a very low average, twenty-five or thirty pounds. Many, such as professional persons and tradespeople, who cannot afford so much money, can still less afford to lose character and custom. That is where we have a pull upon the widows and children, many of whom, if it were not for the opinion of society, would be only too happy to save their little money, and turn it into food and clothing, instead of funeral furniture.

Now here the Metropolitan Interments Bill steps in, and aims at destroying our only chance of keeping up business as heretofore. We have generally to deal with parties whose feelings are not in a state to admit of their making bargains with us—a circumstance, on their parts, which is highly creditable to human nature; and favourable to trade. Thus, in short, gentlemen, we have it all our own way with them. But this Bill comes between the bereaved party and the undertaker. By the twenty-seventh clause, it empowers the Board of Health to provide houses and make arrangements for the reception and care of the dead previously to, and until interment; in order, as it explains in a subsequent clause, to the accommodation of persons having to provide the funerals—supposing such persons to desire the accommodation. Clause the twenty-eighth enacts “That the said Board shall make provision for the management and conduct, by persons appointed by them, of the funerals of persons whose bodies are to be interred in the Burial Grounds, to be provided under this Act, where the representatives of the deceased, or the persons having the care and direction of the funeral, desire to have the same so conducted; and the said Board shall fix and publish a scale of the sums to be payable for such funerals, inclusive of all matters and services necessary for the same, such sums to be proportioned to the description of the funeral, or the nature of the matter and services to be furnished and rendered for the same; but so that in respect of the lowest of such sums, the funerals may be conducted with decency and solemnity.” Gentlemen, if this enactment becomes law, we shall lose all the advantages which we derive from bereaved parties’ state of mind. The Board of Health will take all trouble off their hands, at whatever sum they may choose to name. Of course they will apply to the Board of Health instead of coming to us. But what is beyond everything prejudicial to our interests, is the proviso “that in respect of the lowest of such sums, the funerals may be conducted with decency and solemnity.” Hitherto it has been understood that so much respect could not be paid in the case of what we call a low affair as in one of a certain style. We have always considered that a funeral ought to cost so much to be respectable at all. Therefore relations have gone to more expense with us, than they would otherwise have been willing to incur, in order to secure proper respect. But if proper respect is to be had at a low figure, the strongest hold that we have upon sorrowing relatives, will be taken away.

It is all very fine to say that we are a necessary class of tradesmen, and if this Bill passes must continue to be employed. If this Bill does pass we shall be employed simply as tradesmen, and shall obtain, like other tradesmen, a mere market price for our articles, and common hire for our labour. I am afraid that it will be impossible to persuade the public that this would not be perfectly just and right. I think, therefore, that we had better not attack the Bill on its merits, but try to excite opposition against it on the ground of its accessary clauses. Let us oppose it as a scheme of jobbery, devised with a view to the establishment of offices and appointments. Let us complain as loudly as we can of its creating a new rate to defray the expenses of its working, and let us endeavour to get up a good howl against that clause of it which provides for compensation to incumbents, clerks, and sextons. We must cry out with all our might upon its centralising tendency, and of course make the most we can out of the pretence that it violates the sanctity of the house of mourning, and outrages the most fondly cherished feelings of Englishmen. Urge these objections upon church-wardens, overseers, and vestrymen; and especially din the objection to a burial rate into their ears. Recollect, our two great weapons—like those of all good old anti-reformers—are cant and clamour. Keep up the same cry against the Bill perseveringly, no matter how thoroughly it may be refuted or proved absurd. Literally, make the greatest noise in opposition to it that you are able, especially at public meetings. There, recollect a groan is a groan, and a hiss a hiss, even though proceeding from a goose. On all such occasions do your utmost to create a disturbance, to look like a popular demonstration against the measure. In addition to shouting, yelling, and bawling, I should say that another rush at another platform, another upsetting of the reporters’ table, another terrifying of the ladies, and another mobbing the chairman, would be advisable. Set to work with all your united zeal and energy to carry out the suggestions of our Central Committee for the defeat of a Bill which, if passed, will inflict a blow on the undertaker as great as the boon it will confer on the widow and orphan—whom we, of course, can only consider as customers. The Metropolitan Interments Bill goes to dock us of every penny that we make by taking advantage of the helplessness of afflicted families. And just calculate what our loss would then be; for, in the beautiful language of St. Demetrius, the silversmith, “Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.”

THE TWO SACKS.

IMITATED FROM PHÆDRUS.

At our birth, the satirical elves

Two sacks from our shoulders suspend:

The one holds the faults of ourselves;

The other, the faults of our friend:

The first we wear under our clothes
Out of sight, out of mind, at the back;
The last is so under our nose,
We know every scrap in the sack.

THE MODERN “OFFICER’S” PROGRESS.

I.—JOINING THE REGIMENT.

“I have got some very sad news to tell you,” wrote Lady Pelican to her friend, Mrs. Vermeil, a faded lady of fashion, who discontentedly occupied a suite of apartments at Hampton Court; “our Irish estates are in such a miserable condition—absolutely making us out to be in debt to them, instead of adding to our income, that poor George—you will be shocked to hear it—is actually obliged to go into the Infantry!”

The communication of this distressing fact may stand instead of the regular Gazette, announcing the appointment of the Hon. George Spoonbill to an Ensigncy, by purchase, in the 100th regiment of foot. His military aspirations had been “Cavalry,” and he had endeavoured to qualify himself for that branch of the service by getting up an invisible moustache, when the Irish agent wrote to say that no money was to be had in that quarter, and all thoughts of the Household Brigade were, of necessity, abandoned. But, though the more expensive career was shut out, Lord Pelican’s interest at the Horse Guards remained as influential as before, and for the consideration of four hundred and fifty pounds which—embarrassed as he was—he contrived to muster, he had no difficulty in procuring a commission for his son George, in the distinguished regiment already named. There were, it is true, a few hundred prior claimants on the Duke’s list; “but,” as Lord Pelican justly observed, “if the Spoonbill family were not fit for the army, he should like to know who were!” An argument perfectly irresistible. Gazetted, therefore, the young gentleman was, as soon as the Queen’s sign-manual could be obtained, and, the usual interval for preparation over, the Hon. George Spoonbill set out to join. But before he does so, we must say a word of what that “preparation” consisted in.

Some persons may imagine that he forthwith addressed himself to the study of Polybius, dabbled a little in Cormontaigne, got up Napier’s History of the Peninsular War, or read the Duke’s Despatches; others, that he went down to Birdcage-Walk, and placed himself under the tuition of Colour-Sergeant Pike, of the Grenadier Guards, a warrior celebrated for his skill in training military aspirants, or that he endeavoured by some other means to acquire a practical knowledge, however slight, of the profession for which he had always been intended. The Hon. George Spoonbill knew better. The preparation he made, was a visit, at least three times a day, to Messrs. Gorget and Plume, the military tailors in Jermyn Street, whose souls he sorely vexed by the persistance with which he adhered to the most accurate fit of his shell-jacket and coatee, the set of his epaulettes, the cut of his trowsers, and the shape of his chako. He passed his days in “trying on his things,” and his evenings—when not engaged at the Casino, the Cider Cellar, or the Adelphi—in dining with his military friends at St. James’s Palace, or at Knightsbridge Barracks. In their society he greatly improved himself, acquiring an accurate knowledge of lansquenet and ecarté, cultivating his taste for tobacco, and familiarising his mind with that reverence for authority which is engendered by the anecdotes of great military commanders that freely circulate at the mess-table. His education and his uniform being finished at about the same time, George Spoonbill took a not uncheerful farewell of the agonised Lady Pelican, whose maternal bosom streamed with the sacrifice she made in thus consigning her offspring to the vulgar hardships of a marching regiment.

An express train conveyed the honourable Ensign in safety to the country town where the “Hundredth” were then quartered, and in conformity with the instructions which he received from the Assistant Military Secretary at the Horse Guards—the only instructions, by the bye, which were given him by that functionary—he “reported” himself at the Orderly-room on his arrival, was presented by the Adjutant to the senior Major, by the senior Major to the Lieutenant-Colonel, and by the Lieutenant-Colonel to the officers generally when they assembled for mess.

The “Hundredth,” being “Light Infantry,” called itself “a crack regiment:” the military adjective signifying, in this instance, not so much a higher reputation for discipline and warlike achievements, as an indefinite sort of superiority arising from the fact that no man was allowed to enter the corps who depended upon his pay only for the figure he cut in it. Lieutenant-Colonel Tulip, who commanded, was very strict in this particular, and, having “the good of the service” greatly at heart, set his face entirely against the admission of any young man who did not enjoy a handsome paternal allowance or was not the possessor of a good income. He was himself the son of a celebrated army clothier, and, in the course of ten years, had purchased the rank he now held, so that he had a right, as he thought, to see that his regiment was not contaminated by contact with poor men. His military creed was, that no man had any business in the army who could not afford to keep his horses or tilbury, and drink wine every day; that he called respectable, anything short of it the reverse. If he ever relaxed from the severity of this rule, it was only in favour of those who had high connections; “a handle to a name” being as reverently worshipped by him as money itself; indeed, in secret, he preferred a lord’s son, though poor, to a commoner, however rich; the poverty of a sprig of nobility not being taken exactly in a literal sense. Colonel Tulip had another theory also: during the aforesaid ten years, he had acquired some knowledge of drill, and possessing an hereditary taste for dress, considered himself, thus endowed, a first-rate officer, though what he would have done with his regiment in the field is quite another matter. In the meantime he was gratified by thinking that he did his best to make it a crack corps, according to his notion of the thing, and such minor points as the moral training of the officers, and their proficiency in something more than the forms of the parade ground, were not allowed to enter into his consideration. The “Hundredth” were acknowledged to be “a devilish well-dressed, gentlemanly set of fellows,” and were looked after with great interest at country balls, races, and regattas; and if this were not what a regiment ought to be, Colonel Tulip was, he flattered himself, very much out in his calculations.

The advent of the Hon. George Spoonbill was a very welcome one, as the vacancy to which he succeeded had been caused by the promotion of a young baronet into “Dragoons,” and the new comer being the second son of Lord Pelican, with a possibility of being graced one day by wearing that glittering title himself, the hiatus caused by Sir Henry Muff’s removal was happily filled up without any derogation to the corps. Having also ascertained, in the course of five minutes’ conversation, that Mr. Spoonbill’s “man” and two horses were to follow in a few days with the remainder of his baggage; and the young gentleman having talked rather largely of what the Governor allowed him (two hundred a-year is no great sum, but he kept the actual amount in the back ground, speaking “promiscuously” of “a few hundreds”), and of his intimacy with “the fellows in the Life Guards;” Colonel Tulip at once set him down as a decided acquisition to the “Hundredth,” and intimated that he was to be made much of accordingly.

When we described the regiment as being composed of wealthy men, the statement must be received with a certain reservation. It was Colonel Tulip’s hope and intention to make it so in time, when he had sufficiently “weeded” it, but en attendant there were three or four officers who did not quite belong to his favourite category. These were the senior Major and an old Captain, both of whom had seen a good deal of service, the Surgeon, who was a necessary evil, and the Quartermaster, who was never allowed to show with the rest of the officers except at “inspection,” or some other unusual demonstration. But the rank and “allowance” of the first, and something in the character of the second, which caused him to be looked upon as a military oracle, made Colonel Tulip tolerate their presence in the corps, if he did not enjoy it. Neither had the Adjutant quite as much money as the commanding officer could have desired, but as his position kept him close to his duties, doing that for which Colonel Tulip took credit, he also was suffered to pass muster; he was a brisk, precise, middle-aged personage, who hoped in the course of time to get his company, and whose military qualifications consisted chiefly in knowing “Torrens,” the “Articles of War,” the “Military Regulations,” and the “Army List,” by heart. The last-named work was, indeed, very generally studied in the regiment, and may be said to have exhausted almost all the literary resources of its readers, exceptions being made in favour of the weekly military newspaper, the monthly military magazine, and an occasional novel from the circulating library. The rest of the officers must speak for themselves, as they incidentally make their appearance. Of their character, generally, this may be said; none were wholly bad, but all of them might easily have been a great deal better.

Brief ceremony attends a young officer’s introduction to his regiment, and the honourable prefix to Ensign Spoonbill’s name was anything but a bar to his speedy initiation. Lieutenant-Colonel Tulip took wine with him the first thing, and his example was so quickly followed by all present, that by the time the cloth was off the table, Lord Pelican’s second son had swallowed quite as much of Duff Gordon’s sherry as was good for him. Though drinking is no longer a prevalent military vice, there are occasions when the wine circulates rather more freely than is altogether safe for young heads, and this was one of them. Claret was not the habitual “tipple,” even of the crack “Hundredth;” but as Colonel Tulip had no objection to make a little display now and then, he had ordered a dozen in honour of the new arrival, and all felt disposed to do justice to it. The young Ensign had flattered himself that, amongst other accomplishments, he possessed “a hard head;” but, hard as it was, the free circulation of the bottle was not without its effect, and he soon began to speak rather thick, carefully avoiding such words as began with a difficult letter, which made his discourse somewhat periphrastic, or roundabout. But though his observations reached his hearers circuitously, their purpose was direct enough, and conveyed the assurance that he was one of those admirable Crichtons who are “wide awake” in every particular, and available for anything that may chance to turn up.

The conversation which reached his ears from the jovial companions who surrounded him, was of a similarly instructive and exhilarating kind, and tended greatly to his improvement. Captain Hackett, who came from “Dragoon Guards,” and had seen a great deal of hard service in Ireland, elaborately set forth every particular of “I’ll give you my honour, the most remarkable steeple-chase that ever took place in the three kingdoms,” of which he was, of course, the hero. Lieutenant Wadding, who prided himself on his small waist, broad shoulders, and bushy whiskers, and was esteemed “a lady-killer,” talked of every woman he knew and damaged every reputation he talked about. Lieutenant Bray, who was addicted to sporting and played on the French horn, came out strong on the subject of hackles, May-flies, grey palmers, badgers, terriers, dew-claws, snap-shots and Eley’s cartridges. Captain Cushion, a great billiard-player, and famous—in every sense—for “the one-pocket game,” was eloquent on the superiority of his own cues, which were tipped with gutta percha instead of leather, and offered, as a treat, to indulge “any man in garrison with the best of twenty, one ‘up,’ for a hundred aside.” Captain Huff, who had a crimson face, a stiff arm, and the voice of a Stentor, and whose soul, like his visage, was steeped in port and brandy, boasted of achievements in the drinking line, which, fortunately, are now only traditional, though he did his best to make them positive. From the upper end of the table, where sat the two veterans and the doctor, came, mellowed by distance, grim recollections of the Peninsula, with stories of Picton and Crawford, “the fighting brigade” and “the light division,” interspersed with endless Indian narratives, equally grim, of “how our fellows were carried off by the cholera at Cawnpore,” and how many tigers were shot, “when we lay in cantonments at Dum-dum;” the running accompaniment to the whole being a constant reference to so-and-so “of ours,” without allusion to which possessive pronoun, few military men are able to make much progress in conversation.

Nor was Colonel Tulip silent, but his conversation was of a very lofty and, as it were, ethereal order,—quite transparent, in fact, if any one had been there to analyse it. It related chiefly to the magnates at the Horse Guards,—to what “the Duke” said to him on certain occasions specified,—to Prince Albert’s appearance at the last levee,—to a favourite bay charger of his own,—to the probability that Lord Dawdle would get into the corps on the first exchange,—and to a partly-formed intention of applying to the Commander-in-Chief to change the regimental facings from buff to green.

The mess-table, after four hours’ enjoyment of it in this intellectual manner, was finally abandoned for Captain Cushion’s “quarters,” that gallant officer having taken “quite a fancy to the youngster,”—not so much, perhaps, on account of the youngster being a Lord’s youngster, as because, in all probability, there was something squeezeable in him, which was slightly indicated in his countenance. But whatever of the kind there might indeed have been, did not come out that evening, the amiable Captain preferring rather to initiate by example and the show of good fellowship, than by directly urging the neophyte to play. The rubber, therefore, was made up without him, and the new Ensign, with two or three more of his rank, confined themselves to cigars and brandy and water, a liberal indulgence in which completed what the wine had begun, and before midnight chimed the Hon. George Spoonbill was—to use the mildest expression,—as unequivocally tipsy as the fondest parent or guardian could possibly have desired a young gentleman to be on the first night of his entering “the Service.”

Not yet established in barracks, Mr. Spoonbill slept at an hotel, and thither he was assisted by two of his boon companions, whom he insisted on regaling with devilled biscuits and more brandy and water, out of sheer gratitude for their kindness. Nor was this reward thrown away, for it raised the spirits of these youths to so genial a pitch that, on their way back—with a view, no doubt, to give encouragement to trade—they twisted off, as they phrased it, “no end to knockers and bell-handles,” broke half a dozen lamps, and narrowly escaping the police (with whom, however, they would gloriously have fought rather than have surrendered) succeeded at length in reaching their quarters,—a little excited, it is true, but by no means under the impression that they had done anything—as the articles of war say—“unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman.”

In the meantime, the jaded waiter at the hotel had conveyed their fellow-Ensign to bed, to dream—if he were capable of dreaming—of the brilliant future which his first day’s experience of actual military life held out.

PICTURES OF LIFE IN AUSTRALIA.

GOING TO CHURCH.

There is something in the dress of an Australian Settler that is no less characteristic than becoming,—what a splendid turn-out of this class may be seen at some of the townships as they meet on the Sunday for Divine service. I have looked at such assemblages in all parts of the colony, until my eyes have dimmed with national pride, to think that to England should belong the right to own them; the old-fashioned Sunday scenes and manners of England, seen in her younger colonies, being thus revived. The gay carts, the dashing gigs, that are drawn round the fence of the churchyard enclosures,—the blood-horses, with side saddles, that are seen quietly roaming about, add much to the interest of the scene. True, there are no splendid equipages, but, then, there are no poor. The dress,—the appearance of the men,—the chubby faces of the children,—the neat and comfortable habiliments of the women (and here let me remark,—for the information of some of the gay young bachelors of England, that, among these Sabbath meetings may be seen here and there the blooming native maiden in a riding habit of the finest cloth, and of the newest fashion, the substantial settler’s daughter riding her own beautiful and pet mare; I say “pet mare,” because some of these maidens have a little stud of their own)—all these realities of rural life strongly impress a stranger with the real comforts which these people enjoy.

CHRISTIAN CHARITY.

As people of different religions meet at times on the highway, somewhere near their respective places of worship, it is delightful to observe that, whatever faith they possess, Christian charity reigns. As neighbours, the men group together, sitting upon, or resting their backs against the fence, whilst a brilliant sun smiles on them. At the same time, their children may be seen decorating themselves with flowers, or dragging a splendid creeper, in order to beautify the horses, and make fly-brushes for them. After the weather has been commented upon, a political shade is seen to pass over the countenances of the assembly. There is great earnestness amongst them. The females arrange for their own comfort, by resting on the shafts of the carts, or seating themselves on the grass. Matrimony and muslins, births and milch cows, by turns engross their attention, while the men make free with matters of State.

As the soft sound of the bell gives notice that the hour of service is near, the party may be seen to break up: children throw aside their garlands, wives join their husbands, and with sober countenances and devout demeanour enter the House of God. There is one circumstance worthy of remark, namely, the perfect security with which they all leave their conveyances—great coats, and shawls, whips and saddles, in gigs and carts; proving that a fair day’s labour for a fair day’s work is a better protection for property than the police.

When divine service is over, the families keep more together. There is a sober reverence about them which shows that they have listened attentively. As they move to their conveyances, or walk on, it is pleasing to see that if their neighbours have been kept longer at another church, the first party out will often delay their departure till they arrive. These charitable pauses are delightful to witness; these neighbourly greetings make bigotry in dismay crouch to the earth, and show, that when the mind is rightly directed, the being of different religions is not inimical to friendship, for frequently in these cases the elder girl of a Catholic family may be seen in the cart of a Protestant neighbour; the wife of one carrying the younger child of the other, at the same time that the two husbands, as they get into the open road, slowly pace their horses, so that they may converse on their way home, occasionally interrupted perhaps by their sons, who, mounted on good horses, try their speed to please their fathers, and throw bunches of wild flowers to their mothers, while younger hands catch at the prize.

DINNER IN THE BUSH.

I unexpectedly joined the party I am now attempting to describe, and leaving my own travelling spring-van at the church-door, took a seat in their cart. On arriving at the farm, the elder son met the party at the slip-rail (homely gate). He was a tall, healthy, open-hearted lad, who greeted us with—

“Come, Mother, be careful. Jump out, girls. Now, Mrs. C——, how welcome you are; and the dinner just ready! Ah! you need not tell me who gave you the sermon: he’s as good as the clock.”

As the girls had all been to church, and there was no female servant in the house, the description of this rural home, and a short detail of the dinner, may be acceptable.

The family room was large, with a commodious fire-place. The table was laid for twelve; the plates and dishes were of blue delf; the knives and forks looked bright and shiny. It may be remarked, that the Settler’s table in New South Wales is somewhat differently arranged from what one is accustomed to see in England, for here the knife and fork were placed at the right of the plate, while a chocolate-coloured tea-cup and saucer stood at the left; a refreshing cup of tea being made a part of the dinner repast. By the fire-place might be seen a large black pot, full of potatoes, with a white cloth laid on the top for the purpose of steaming them. Again, at the outer door might be noticed the son with a man-servant, looking into an oven, and drawing from thence a large hind-quarter of pork, followed by a peach pie.

“Lend a hand here!” shouted the son.

“Ah! I thought you could not do without me,” said the father.

“Keep the youngsters out of the way, and look about you, girls;” cried the mother.

Moving where I could better see the cause of the outcry, a round of beef, cut large and “handsome,” as the settlers say in the Bush, had been forced into a pot; but no fork, although a Bush-fork is rather a formidable tool, could remove it.

“You ought to have put a cord round it,” remarked the mother.

“Turn the pot on one side,” said the father.

“Over with it; out with it; shake!—oh, here we have it now.”

As the pot was removed, the beef was seen to advantage, reeking in a bright clean milk-pan.

“Now, let us make it look decent,” said the self-trained cook, as with his knife he cut the out-pieces off to improve its appearance. His trimmings were substantial cuttings, and displayed to advantage the fine quality of the beef; each cutting he threw to his dogs, as they watched at a respectful distance his operations. Now, though some of my readers may not much admire this bush-culinary art, and this mode of dishing-up a dinner, still there was in the whole scene so much of honest hospitality, so much of cheerful and good humoured hilarity, exhibiting in the most pleasing form the simple manners of a primitive people,—the germs, in fact, of the class of English yeomanry, too often unable to flourish in their own native land, ingrafted and revived in a foreign distant shore, that even the most fastidious and refined could not but feel at such a moment a peculiar zest in joining a family so innocently happy and guileless as this, surrounded as they were by abundance of all the essential necessaries of life. Not a shade of care clouded the party, as they sat down with thankfulness to partake of those things with which God had blessed their labour.

The arrangement of the table was something in unison with the rest. The pork, so well seasoned, graced the head of the table, while the burly piece of beef, now reeking and streaming from its late trimming, was placed before the honest master of this patriarchal family, with a plentiful supply of potatoes, peas, and greens, ranged in their proper places. As soon as the party had partaken of the substantials, the eldest daughter poured tea into the cups set by each one’s plate—for this is the custom amongst the Australian settlers; at the same time the good landlady cut up the peach pie.

The eldest son could now be seen through an open doorway, peering again into the rudely constructed oven, from which he pulled, with a good deal of self-importance and glee, an orange tart, whilst his assistant-cook placed custards on the table in tumblers. The good wife looked amazed, the husband thoughtful.

“How did you get the oranges,” asked the mother.

“Why, Frank Gore brought ’em,” he replied.

“And who made the custards?”

“I made ’em!”

WANTED, A GOOD WIFE.

“What! our Tom make custards!” exclaimed the mother.

“Why not?” replied the young man, evidently anxious to show that he could turn his hand to anything useful.

“I see, I see how it is,” said the father, “Tom heard that Mrs. C. was coming, and he wants a wife.”

“A wife! the like of him want a wife,” said the mother, who, for the first time, looked on his athletic and manly form with sad anxiety.

“Tom made the custard,” said Jane, “and William the tart.”

“I did not bring the oranges,” replied Tom, as Frank Gore entered with a dish of grapes.

“It’s a regular plot,” said the mother.

“A down right contrivance—and I expect it is a settled affair,” observed the father.

“Jane, don’t blush,” sportively remarked Lucy.

“Let me see,” said the father, thoughtfully. “Tom is four years older than I was when I married, so he is,—but Jane is too young.”

“Say a word,” whispered the mother to me; “say a word, Mrs. C.”

“A snug home indeed,—I only wish my father could have seen the comforts I now enjoy.”

The young people, seeing the turn matters were taking, scampered off with glowing cheeks.

“We have four farms I can say master to,” pursued the father, “and eight hundred sheep, and six hundred head of cattle, forty pigs, and a bit of money in the bank, too, that the youngsters don’t know of. Well, all the lad will want is a good wife. Let me see,—I’ll be in Sydney next Monday five weeks,—I must buy them a few things, a chest of drawers,—yes, they’d be handy; and I might as well buy one for Jane, poor girl. Like to deal out to all alike; and the wife wants one. I only thought of taking the cart, but I will want a dray, and eight good bullocks, besides,—that’s easy enough to be seen. Well, well; it’s a nice snug home—one hundred and four acres,—two acres laid out for a vineyard,—forty under crop,—handy for the station, too.” Thus the good man musingly spoke, partly to himself, and partly addressing his wife, who, with a cheerful and approving look, nodded consent.

HOMELY HINTS TO MARRIED STATESMEN.

At this little homestead there were five men, whose savings would have enabled them to have taken farms, if they could have met with suitable girls as wives; and they pretty plainly animadverted upon the policy of those whom they considered the proper persons to have rectified their grievances. One remarked, “What does Lord Stanley care, so that he has a wife himself!”

“Ah!” responded another; “and Peel, with all his great speeches, never said a single word about wives for us.”

“Lord John Russell, too,” said Tom Slaney, “seems just as bad as the rest. What does he think we’re made of? wood, or stone, or dried biscuit?”

“It ought to be properly represented to Earl Grey,” observed the fourth. “Do they call this looking after a young colony? Has nobody no sense?”

“Yes,” replied the most sensitive of the party, “the Queen ought to know it,—it is a cruel shame.”

A COTTAGE, ROMANTIC AND REAL.

John Whitney had now made his hut a comfortable cottage. In the centre of the room stood a neat table, shelves were arranged over a bush-dresser, and at one corner of the room could be seen a neat little plate-rack. A young carpenter in Australia cannot make these things without thinking of matrimony; and the one in Whitney’s cottage was beautifully made, evidently intended as a bridal gift. At the opening of the small window was a neat box of mignonette; whilst a footstool, a salt-box, a board, a rolling-pin, afforded sufficient evidence that a wife was all that was wanted to make this abode a happy home.

Nor did the exterior lack any of those embellishments that are required to invest a cottage with those charms which the hand of nature alone can fully set forth. The tasteful mind and apt hand of Whitney mingled art and nature so well that the first could hardly be distinguished by the luxuriance of the latter. The workman laid first the train, and then allured nature in a manner to follow and adorn his handy-work. He first erected an open verandah of posts, saplings, and laths along the whole front of his cottage, leaving three or four door-ways, or spacious apertures for entrance. Against these posts he planted rose-trees, which in Australia grow to an extraordinary height; and around them he carefully trained beautiful creepers, passionflower, and other wild plants of the Bush, so that in the course of a short time the framework became almost invisible. The posts seemed to have grown into pillars of rosebush, thickly entwined with flowery creepers, threading their way the whole length and height of the verandah, and here and there forming the most fanciful festoons over the doorway, or round the tiny windows, thus throwing a coolness and a freshness of shade into the inmost recesses of the little cottage. There also might be observed two or three well-trained vines intermixed with all, which produced the most tempting clusters of grapes, as they could be seen to hang through the open lattice of the verandah; while, all over the roof of the house grew fine water-melons, the strong stems of which closely encircled the chimney.

It was truly delightful to view this sylvan cottage in the calm and balmy coolness of a dewy morning, and to behold this structure, as it were, of rose-trees and creepers, as the warmth of the morning sun opened those closed flowers that seem thus to take their rest for the night, and the fresh-blown rosebuds that were hardly to be seen the evening before; most of those could now be observed to be tenanted by that busy little creature, the bee, sent “as a colonist,” from England to Australia, humming, in all the active vivacity of its nature, a joyful morning carol to the God of Nature. Indeed, were it not that there were appearances of some more substantial domestic comforts to be seen in the background—such as rows of beans, sweet peas, beds of cabbages, &c., set in the garden, and some young fruit-trees; while near a shady corner might be noticed young ducks feeding under a coop, and “little roasters” gambolling outside the pig-stye, which by the way was deeply shaded by large bushy rose-trees, this cottage at a distance might have been mistaken for a green-house. We ought not to omit that a number of fowls could be observed quietly roosting in some trees at the end of one of the outer buildings.

Truly, it was a little fairy home, with no rent, no taxes, no rates, to disturb the peace of the occupier; and no one, who has not lived in Australia, can conceive with what ease and little expense such rural beauties, such little paradises, and domestic comforts can be formed and kept up in that country. Notwithstanding, however, the beauty of all this—the variety of flowers—the magnificence of the creepers—the stillness and quietness that reigned around, it must be frankly confessed there was a certain vacuum that required filling up. If the animal senses were gratified, the mind felt somehow dissatisfied. There was a coldness, a death-like silence, which hung over the place; there appeared to be a want of rationality in the thing, for there seemed to be no human beings to enjoy it, or not a sufficient number. Yes, this spot of beauty, to make it a delightful happy home, required, what one of our favourite poets, and the poet of nature, calls nature’s “noblest work”—woman. ’Tis but too true—John Whitney wanted a wife to make his home a fit habitation for man. What is John Whitney without her? He may be an excellent carpenter, but he is at the same time a desolate, morose being, incapable of enjoying these beauties of nature. Poor John Whitney keenly felt this; and it was the hope alone, warming and clinging to his heart, that some day he could call himself the father of a family, that inspired him to gather all these beauties and comforts around him.

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

The name of Ebenezer Elliott is associated with one of the greatest and most important political changes of modern times;—with events not yet sufficiently removed from us, to allow of their being canvassed in this place with that freedom which would serve the more fully to illustrate his real merits. Elliott would have been a poet, in all that constitutes true poetry, had the Corn Laws never existed.

He was born on 25th March, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masborough, in the parish of Rotherham, where his father was a clerk in the employment of Messrs. Walker, with a salary of 60l. or 70l. per annum. His father was a man of strong political tendencies, possessed of humorous and satiric power, that might have qualified him for a comic actor. Such was the character he bore for political sagacity that he was popularly known as “Devil Elliott.” The mother of the poet seems to have been a woman of an extreme nervous temperament, constantly suffering from ill health, and constitutionally awkward and diffident.

Ebenezer commenced his early training at a Dame’s school; but shy, awkward, and desultory, he made little progress; nor did he thrive much better at the school in which he was afterwards placed. Here he employed his comrades to do his tasks for him, and of course laid no foundation for his future education. His parents, disheartened by the lad’s apparent stolidity, sent him next to Dalton School, two miles distant; and here he certainly acquired something, for he retained, to old age, the memory of some of the scenes through which he used to pass on his way to and from this school. For want of the necessary preliminary training, he could do little or nothing with letters: he rather preferred playing truant and roaming the meadows in listless idleness, wherever his fancy led him. This could not last. His father soon set him to work in the Foundry; and with this advantage, that the lad stood on better terms with, himself than he had been for a considerable period, for he discovered that he could compete with others in work,—sheer hand-labour,—if he could not in the school. One disadvantage, however, arose, as he tells us, from his foundry life; for he acquired a relish for vulgar pursuits, and the village alehouse divided his attentions with the woods and fields. Still a deep impression of the charms of nature had been made upon him by his boyish rambles, which the debasing influences and associations into which he was thrown could not wholly wipe out. He would still wander away in his accustomed haunts, and purify his soul from her alehouse defilements, by copious draughts of the fresh nectar of natural beauty imbibed from the sylvan scenery around him.

The childhood and youth of the future poet presented a strange medley of opposites and antitheses. Without the ordinary measure of adaptation for scholastic pursuits, he inhaled the vivid influences of external things, delighting intensely in natural objects, and yet feeling an infinite chagrin and remorse at his own idleness and ignorance. We find him highly imaginative; making miniature lakes by sinking an iron vessel filled with water in a heap of stones, and gazing therein with wondrous enjoyment at the reflection of the sun and skies overhead; and exhibiting a strange passion for looking on the faces of those who had died violent deaths, although these dead men’s features would haunt his imagination for weeks afterwards.

He did not, indeed, at this period, possess the elements of an ordinary education. A very simple circumstance sufficed to apply the spark which fired his latent energies, and nascent poetical tendencies: and he henceforward became a different being, elevated far above his former self. He called one evening, after a drinking bout on the previous night, on a maiden aunt, named Robinson, a widow possessed of about 30l. a-year, by whom he was shown a number of “Sowerby’s English Botany,” which her son was then purchasing in monthly parts. The plates made a considerable impression on the awkward youth, and he essayed to copy them by holding them to the light with a thin piece of paper before them. When he found he could trace their forms by these means his delight was unbounded, and every spare hour was devoted to the agreeable task. Here commenced that intimate acquaintance with flowers, which seems to pervade all his works. This aunt of Ebenezer’s, (good soul! would that every shy, gawky Ebenezer had such an aunt!) bent on completing the charm she had so happily begun, displayed to him still further her son’s book of dried specimens; and this elated him beyond measure. He forthwith commenced a similar collection for himself, for which purpose he would roam the field still more than ever, on Sundays as well as week days, to the interruption of his attendances at chapel. This book he called his “Dry Flora,” (Hortus Siccus) and none so proud as he when neighbours noticed his plants and pictures. He was not a little pleased to feel himself a sort of wonder, as he passed through the village with his plants; and, greedy of praise, he allowed his acquaintance to believe that his drawings were at first hard, and made by himself from nature. “Thompson’s Seasons,” read to him about this time by his brother Giles, gave him a glimpse of the union of poetry with natural beauty; and lit up in his mind an ambition which finally transformed the illiterate, rugged, half-tutored youth into the man who wrote “The Village Patriarch,” and the “Corn Law Rhymes.”

From this time he set himself resolutely to the work of self-education. His knowledge of the English language was meagre in the extreme; and he succeeded at last only by making for himself a kind of grammar by reading and observation. He then tried French, but his native indolence prevailed, and he gave it up in despair. He read with avidity whatever books came in his way; and a small legacy of books to his father came in just at the right time. He says he could never read through a second-rate book, and he therefore read masterpieces only;—“after Milton, then Shakespeare; then Ossian; then Junius; Paine’s ‘Common Sense;’ Swift’s ‘Tale of a Tub;’ ‘Joan of Arc;’ Schiller’s ‘Robbers;’ Bürger’s ‘Lenora;’ Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall;’ and long afterwards, Tasso, Dante, De Staël, Schlegel, Hazlitt, and the ‘Westminster Review.’” Reading of this character might have been expected to lead to something; and was well calculated to make an extraordinary impression on such a mind as Elliott’s; and we have the fruit of this course of study in the poetry which from this time he began to throw off.

He remained with his father from his sixteenth to his twenty-third year, working laboriously without wages, except an occasional shilling or two for pocket-money. He afterwards tried business on his own account. He made two efforts at Sheffield; the last commencing at the age of forty, and with a borrowed capital of 150l. He describes in his nervous language the trials and difficulties he had to contend with; and all these his imagination embodied for him in one grim and terrible form, which he christened “Bread Tax.” With this demon he grappled in desperate energy, and assailed it vigorously with his caustic rhyme. This training, these mortifications, these misfortunes, and the demon “Bread Tax” above all, made Elliott successively despised, hated, feared, and admired, as public opinion changed towards him.

Mr. Howitt describes his warehouse as a dingy, and not very extensive place, heaped with iron of all sorts, sizes, and forms, with barely a passage through the chaos of rusty bars into the inner sanctum, at once, study, counting-house, library, and general receptacle of odds and ends connected with his calling. Here and there, to complete the jumble, were plaster casts of Shakspeare, Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon, suggestive of the presidency of literature over the materialism of commerce which marked the career of this singular being. By dint of great industry he began to flourish in business, and, at one time, could make a profit of 20l. a-day without moving from his seat. During this prosperous period he built a handsome villa-residence in the suburbs. He now had leisure to brood over the full force and effect of the Corn Laws. The subject was earnestly discussed then in all manufacturing circles of that district. Reverses now arrived. In 1837 he lost fully one-third of all his savings, getting out of the storm at last with about 6000l., which he wrote to Mr. Tait of Edinburgh, he intended, if possible, to retain. The palmy days of 20l. profits had gone by for Sheffield, and instead, all was commercial disaster and distrust. Elliott did well to retire with what little he had remaining. In his retreat he was still vividly haunted by the demon “Bread Tax.” This, then, was the period of the Corn Law Rhymes, and these bitter experiences lent to them that tone of sincerity and earnestness—that fire and frenzy which they breathed, and which sent them, hot, burning words of denunciation and wrath, into the bosoms of the working classes,—the toiling millions from whom Elliott sprang. “Bread Tax,” indeed, to him, was a thing of terrible import and bitter experience: hence he uses no gentle terms, or honeyed phrases when dealing with the obnoxious impost. Sometimes coarse invective, and angry assertion, take the place of convincing reason, and calm philosophy. At others, there is a true vein of poetry and pathos running through the rather unpoetic theme, which touches us with its Wordsworthian feeling and gentleness. Then he would be found calling down thunders upon the devoted heads of the monopolists, with all a fanatic’s hearty zeal, and in his fury he would even pursue them, not merely through the world, but beyond its dim frontiers and across the threshold of another state. Take them, however, as they stand—and more vigorous, effective, and startling political poetry has not graced the literature of the age.

It was not to be supposed but that this trumpet-blast of defiance, and shrill scream of “war to the knife,” should bring down upon him much obloquy, much vituperation: but all this fell harmlessly upon him; he rather liked it. When people began to bear with the turbid humour and angry utterances of the “Corn Law Rhymer,” and grew familiar with the stormy march of his verse, it was discovered that he was something more than a mere political party song-writer. He was a true poet, whose credentials, signed and sealed in the court of nature, attested the genuineness of his brotherhood with those children of song who make the world holier and happier by the mellifluous strains they bring to us, like fragments of a forgotten melody, from the far-off world of beauty and of love.

Elliott will not soon cease to be distinctively known as the “Corn Law Rhymer;” but it will be by his non-political poems that he will be chiefly remembered by posterity as the Poet of the People;—for his name will still be, as it has long been, a “Household Word,” in the homes of all such as love the pure influences of simple, sensuous, and natural poetry. As an author he did not make his way fast: he had written poetry for twenty years ere he had attracted much notice. A genial critique by Southey in the “Quarterly;” another by Carlyle in the “Edinburgh;” and favourable notices in the “Athenæum” and “New Monthly,” brought him into notice; and he gradually made his way until a new and cheap edition of his works in 1840 stamped him as a popular poet. His poetry is just such as, knowing his history, we might have expected; and such as, not knowing it, might have bodied forth to us the identical man as we find him.

As we have said, Nature was his school; but flowers were the especial vocation of his muse. A small ironmonger—a keen and successful tradesman—we should scarcely have given him credit for such an exquisite love of the beautiful in Nature, as we find in some of those lines written by him in the crowded counting-room of that dingy warehouse. The incident of the floral miscellany: the subsequent study of “The Seasons;” the long rambles in meadows and on hill-sides, specimen-hunting for his Hortus Siccus;—sufficiently account for the exquisite sketches of scenery, and those vivid descriptions of natural phenomena, which showed that the coinage of his brain had been stamped in Nature’s mint. The most casual reader would at once discover that, with Thompson, he has ever been the devoted lover and worshipper of Nature—a wanderer by babbling streams—a dreamer in the leafy wilderness—a worshipper of morning upon the golden hill-tops. He gives us pictures of rural scenery warm as the pencil of a Claude, and glowing as the sunsets of Italy.

A few sentences will complete our sketch, and bring us to the close of the poet’s pilgrimage. He had come out of the general collapse of commercial affairs in 1837, with a small portion of the wealth he had realised by diligent and continuous labour. He took a walk, on one occasion, into the country, of about eighteen miles, reached Argilt Hill, liked the place, returned, and resolved to buy it. He laid out in house and land about one thousand guineas. His family consisted of Mrs. Elliott and two daughters—a servant-maid—an occasional helper—a Welch pony and small gig,—“a dog almost as big as the mare, and much wiser than his master; a pony-cart; a wheel-barrow; and a grindstone—and,” says he, “turn up your nose if you like!”

From his own papers we learn that he had one son a clergyman, at Lothedale, near Skipton; another in the steel trade, on Elliott’s old premises at Sheffield; two others unmarried, living on their means; another “druggisting at Sheffield, in a sort of chimney called a shop;” and another, a clergyman, living in the West Indies. Of his thirteen children, five were dead, and of whom he says—“They left behind them no memorial—but they are safe in the bosom of Mercy, and not quite forgotten even here!”

In this retirement he occasionally lectured and spoke at public meetings; but he began to suffer from a spasmodic affection of the nerves, which obliged him wholly to forego public speaking. This disease grew worse; and in December, 1839, he was warned that he could not continue to speak in public, except at the risk of sudden death. This disorder lingered about him for about six years: he then fell ill of a more serious disease, which threatened speedy termination. This was in May, 1849. In September, he writes, “I have been very, very ill.” On the first of December, 1849, the event, which had so long been impending, occurred; and Elliott peacefully departed in the 69th year of his age.

Thus, then, the sun set on one whose life was one continued heroic struggle with opposing influences,—with ignorance first, then trade, then the corn laws, then literary fame, and, last of all, disease: and thus the world saw its last of the material breathing form of the rugged but kindly being who made himself loved, feared, hated, and famous, as the “Corn Law Rhymer.”

Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’
Conducted by Charles Dickens.
Price 2d., Stamped 3d.,
THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
OF
CURRENT EVENTS.

The Number, containing a history of the past month, was
issued with the Magazines.

Published at the Office, No 16, Wellington Street North, Stand. Printed by Bradbury & Evans, Whitefriars, London.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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

- Renumbered footnotes.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 13, JUNE 22, 1850 ***

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Table of Contents

- HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

- THE SUNDAY SCREW.

- THE YOUNG ADVOCATE.

- EARTH’S HARVESTS.

- “THE DEVIL’S ACRE.”

- “PRESS ON.”

- ADDRESS FROM AN UNDERTAKER TO THE TRADE.

- THE TWO SACKS.

- THE MODERN “OFFICER’S” PROGRESS.

- I.—JOINING THE REGIMENT.

- PICTURES OF LIFE IN AUSTRALIA.

- GOING TO CHURCH.

- CHRISTIAN CHARITY.

- DINNER IN THE BUSH.

- WANTED, A GOOD WIFE.

- HOMELY HINTS TO MARRIED STATESMEN.

- A COTTAGE, ROMANTIC AND REAL.

- EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE