Full text of "All The Year Round"

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ESTABLISHED 1&72

LAWRENCE, MASS.

"The Story of our Lives from Tear to Year." Shakespeare.

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

ft muMn Sountal.

CONDUCTED BY

CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
ISTIEW SEBIES.

From December 5,- 1868

LONDON:
PUBLISHED AT N- 26, WELLINGTON STREET;

AND BY MESSRS. CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1869.

BBlXTFORT HOUSE, STEAND.

Aboard Ship .
Alaska

Amateur Beat, An .
America, The Irish in
America, The Pacific Railroad
Ancestry, A Question of .
Ancient College Youths .
Angels, City of the .
Anglo-Saxons and Celts .
Armour-plated Houses .
Arthur, Comish Legends of
Aztec Ruins of New Mexico
As the Crow Flies, Due West

Hounslow Heath .

Bedfont to Windsor

Eton to Newbury.

Marlborough to Glastonbury

Bridgewater to Taunton

Taunton to Exeter

Across Dartmoor .

Tavistock to Plymouth

Plymouth

Plymouth to Bodmin .

Bodmin to Padstow .

Padstow to Redruth .

Penryn to the Land's End

Due East (Essex): Barking to
Braintree .

Pleshyand Dunmow to Colches

tor

Australian Gold Fields .
Avebury, Druidic Temple at

Balloons in War .
Bamfleld Moore Carew .
Bare Feet, A Plea for .
Barking to Braintree
Barlow, Mr.
Bed at the Bustard .
Bell Ringers, the Society of
Bengal, Village Life in .
Berlioz the Composer .
Birmingham a Century Ago
Blake, Admiral
Bodmin to Padstow
Boy ! in Madras
Bray, The Vicar of .
Bridgewater to Taunton .
Bridgewater Will Case .
Britany, A Peasant Wedding
Brown-Paper Parcel . "
Bull Fight, Mr. Lufkin at a
Burning Heretics

PAGE
. 12
. 177
. 300
. 510
. 293
318, 428

. 397

318, 428

. 465

Cadbury Castle .... 259
California, Chinese in . 367

Candles ....
Caricature History . . . .184
Casting Statues . . . .276
Century of Birmingham Life . 462
Charles the First, Discovery of the

Body of 113

Children's Hospital at Ratcliffe . 61
Chinese from Home . . .367

Chops 562

Churches Buried in Sand . 453, 474
City of the Angels . . . .397
Civil Wars, Stories of the . 139, 175
258, 322, 342, 418, 594
Clocks and Watches . . 487
Club of Franciscans, The . . 137
Coal, Oil from 58

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Coelongh Battle, The . . 525, 533

Colchester 594

Compact Revolution, A . . . 421
Composite Candles .... 58

Convent Belles 445

Convent Life 445

Convict Question, The . . .414
Cookery Manual for Fast Days . 353
Cornish Legends, The 420, 451, 473, 514
Courts of Justice, French . . 604

Crediton 269

Criminal Community, The . . 414

Daniel Gtjmb 420

Darell the Murderer, Story of . 174
Dart, The River .... 284
Dartmoor, Traditions of. . . 283
Death's Head Moth, The . . 90
Devizes, The Siege of . 176

Dick Steele 8

DickTurpin . . . .41,560
Diamonds, The History of . \ 153
Dinner in an Hour .... 108
Domestic Turks .... 54
Donnington Castle .... 139
Dorking, Origin of the Name . 37
Drake, Sir Francis . . . .322
Dream, Singular Story of a . . 473
Dunmow Flitch, The . . .592

East London, Children's Hospital
East London, The Poor of
Eclipse Seen in India
Education in Italy .
Election Address, A New
Election, Use of Man in the Moon
English and their Origin
English Peasant .
English, The Pedigree of the .

Epping Forest

Eton School, Anecdotes of
Eton to Newbury .
Exchange and Mart Journal .
Execution by Fire in Sicily .
Exeter, Traditions of

250

159

11*

564

428

. 132

318, 428

. 559

. 136

. 33

. 101

. 260

Fasting and Abstinence, A Manual
for 353

Fatal Curiosity, The Story of . 514

Fatal Zero:
A Diary Kept at Homburg 19, 43. 67
95, 117, 139, 162, 189, 212, 237, 262
286, 308, 332, 356

Fish Markets of Paris .

Flogging Captains .

Flowers, Pottery for

Forrabury Bells, The Legend of

Four-in-Hand Club .

Franciscans, The Club of

Frankenstein, A Modern

French Courts of Justice

George the Third at Windsor . 113
Gipsy Glimpses .... 536
Glastonbury Abbey . . .177
Glazed Bricks for Houses . . 465
Gloucester, Murder of the Duke of 591
Gold in Cape Colony . . 107, 288
Gold Fields, down a Mine . . 608
Good Company for New Year's

Day 204

Gunpowder Plot . . . .559

HAYDON'sHome . . . .343

Hector Berlioz 495

Helston, A Festival Day at . . 514
Henry the Eighth, Sisters of . . 644
Herrington-by-the-Sea . . . 329
Hidden Witness . 78>

Highwaymen, Stories of . 39, 560

Holy Fire, The Last Ash of a . 101
Hopton, Sir Ralph . . . .418

Horology 487

Hounslow Heath, Stories of . .39
Houses, Glazed Bricks for . . 465

India, The Eclipse of the Sun in . 250
India, Village Life in Bengal . 581
Indians of New Mexico 468, 493, 517
Injured Innocents .... 414
Inquisition, The Burning of Heretics 101
Irish in America .... 510>
Italy's School Bell . . . .159

Jack of Newbury . . . .139
Jefferies and the Bloody Assize . 211
Jewels 153

Keeley, Mr. Robert . . .438
Kelly, Mrs., The Will of. . . 391
Kimberley's, Lord, Bill . . .415
King Arthur, Legends of . . 451

King Cole 594

King's College Hospital, New

Year's Day in . . . .304
Knights of the Round Table . . 452
Koh-i-noor, The . . . .155

Lamps, Lighting by 268

Land's End, Legends of the .. . 516
Langford (Mr.), upon Birmingham 462
Last Ash of a Holy Fire . . 101
Law Courts, Where to put the . 224
Lead Mills, A Visit to . . .302
Leading and Driving . . . 608

Lighting 268

Lightning, Playing with . . 617

Liskeard 418

Little Italy's School Bell . . 159
Living, Odd Ways of Getting a, 521, 569
Lord Chamberlain, A Report to the

324, 349, 372
Lots of Money .... 491
Loves, The Memory of Old . . 169

MACREADY'S, Mr., Management of
Covent Garden . . . .253

Madras Boy 66

Magna Charta 112

Man in the Moon .... 564
Manual for Fasting Days . . 353
Marlborough to Glastonbury . 173
Martyrs at Newbury . . . 139
Medmenham Abbey . . . 137
Melusina .... 475,498
Memory of Old Loves . . . 169
Merchant's Hanaper, The . . 84
Mexico, Native Tribes of New . 468
493, 517, 540
Mexico, Travelling in 399

Modern Frankenstein . . . 200
Mogul Diamond, The ... 154
Money and Happiness . . . 491
Monmouth's Rebellion . . .209

PAGE

Monsters 223

More of Wills and Will Making . 375
390, 454, 525, 533, 574

Mr. Barlow I 56

Mr. Lufkin at a Bull Fight . . 595
Mr. Volt, Alchemist . . .127
Music Halls and Theatres, 324, 349, 372
Mystery of the Moated Schloss 229, 253
My Version of Poor Jack . . 36

Naphtha 69

Native Tribes of New Mexico . 468

493, 517, 540

Newbury, The Battle of . . . 139

New Lamps for Old Ones . . 33

New Mexico, Native Tribes of . 468

493, 517, 540

New Uncommercial Samples. By

Charles Dickens :

Aboard Ship .... 12

A Small Star in the East . .61

A Little Dinner in an Hour , 108

Mr. Barlow 156

An Amateur Beat . . . 300
A Fly-Leaf in a Life . . .589
New Year's Day at King's College

Hospital 204

North Curry, A Curious Custom at 257
Nun, The Life of a . . . .445

Odd Monsters 223

Odd Ways of Getting a Living 521, 569

Old King Cole 594

Old Loves 169

Oil from Coal 58

Oil upon the Waves . .198

PACIFIC Railroad . . . .293
Padstow to Redruth . . .473
Palermo, Burning Heretics at . 101
Pandemonium, The Royal . . 326
Panton Will Case . . . .574

Parafflne 58

Paris Fish Markets . . . .236
Paris, Odd Ways of Getting a Liv-
ing 521, 569

Pearl Fisheries of Scotland . . 125

Peasant Life 132

Peasant Wedding in Britany . . 150
Pedigree of the English People 318, 428
Penitential Food . . . .353
Penryn to the Land's End . . 514
Penzance, Curious Custom at .515
Phantom of Regatta Island . . 546
Pigeons of Venice .... 17
Playing with Lightning . . . 617
Plea for Bare Feet . . . .402

Pleshy 591

Plymouth, Legends of . . . 341
Police and the Ticket-of-Leave Men 415
Polytechnic, The . . . .617

Poor Jack 36

Portuguese Revolution, A . . 421
Poste Restante . . . .180
Pottery for Flowers . . .615
Pouring Oil upon the Waves . . 198
Precious Stones . . . .153
Prisoners' Aid Society . . . 415
Prose, The Vindication of . . 346
Puebla 397

Punch, The Modern Frankenstein

Question of Ancestry . . .318
Question of Priority . . .428
Quite a New Election Address . 115

Rabbit Skin 247

Reading, The Abbey of . . . 138
Redruth. The Mines at . . . 475
Regatta Island, The Phantom of . 546
Report to the Lord Chamberlain, 324
349, 372
. 591
. 462
. 284

Richard the Second
Riots at Birmingham
River Dart
Robert Keeley
Rochford, The Village of
Rougemont Castle .
Round Table of King Arthur
Runnymede .
Russian Postman .
Royal Pandemonium, The

Sculpture
Second-Class Virtues
Sedgenioor, The Battle of
Sewing Machines .
Schools in Italy
Scotch PeUrls .

56 L
260
452
112
182

Slight Question of Fact .

Society of College Youths

Soft Sackcloth and Ashes

Some Other Odd Livings

South African Gold

Southend

Spanish Post Office

Statue-Making

Steele, Mr., Murder of .

Steele, Sir Richard .

Stonehenge

Stories :

A Hidden Witness .

Bed at the Bustard

Brown-Paper Parcel . i

Death's Head Moth, The

Melusina

Merchant's Hanaper, The

Modern Frankenstein

Mr. Volt, Alchemist .

Mystery of the Moated Schloss
229,

Phantom of Regatta Island
St. Just and St. Keverne

St. Neots

St. Piran, The Buried Church of .

St. Winifred

Sun, The

Tallow Candles .
Taunton after Monmouth'

bellion . ' 211

Tavistock, Traditions of . . 322
Theatres and Music Halls, 324, 319, 372
Those Convent Belles . . . 445
Ticket-of-Leave Men . . . 414

Tilbury Fort 561

Timepieces of the Ancients . . 487
Tintagel Castle . . . .452
Tintern Abbey, The Owners of . 525

Ee-

PAGE

Tiverton 258

To the Lord Chamberlain, 324, 349 372

Tregeagle, Legend of 453

Trelawney, The Bishop . . . 420

Truro 474

Tudor Slip Knot, The ... 544

Turks, Domesticated ... 54

Uncommercial Samples. By
Charles Dickens :

Aboard Ship . . . .12

A Small Star in the East . .61

A Little Dinner in an Hour . 108

Mr. Barlow 156

An Amateur Beat . . . 300

A Fly-Leaf in a Life . . .589

Venice, The Pigeons of . . .17

Vicar of Bray 137

Village Life in Bengal . . .581
Vindication of Prose . . . 346

Virtues 585

Volunteer Commissioner's Report,
A 324,349,372

Walcheren Expedition . . 344
Waltham Abbey . . . .560
War Balloons 297

Wax Lights 270

Weaver, Wit, and Poet ... 441
Wellington, The Town of . . 258
Wesley in Cornwall .... 475
Where to Put the Law Courts . 224

White Lead 302

Wills and Will Making . . .375
390, 454. 525, 533, 574
Wiltshire Downs, Stones of . . 173
Windsor Castle, Legends of . . 112
Westman's Wood . . . . 2S5
Woman Question in Black Letter,

The 611

Wood, Mr., of Gloucester, Wills of 454

Wrecked in Port . . . . 1

25, 49, 73, 97, 121, 145, 169, 193, 217,

241, 265, 289, 313. 337, 361, 385, 409,

433, 457, 481, 505, 529, 553, 577, 601

Wretchedville . . . .277

POETRY.
An Acorn

Blind Man's Fireside
Cluster of Lyrics .
Eternal Pendulum .
Facts and Fancies .
Garland of Lyrics .

Hall Porter at the Club .

Hampton Court

Legend of the Prince's Plume

Lyrical Interludes .

Man Overboard

Milestones

Old Dick Purser .

Out of Work .

Pervigilium Veneris

Planting of the Vine

Poet, The

Poor Man on a Tender Subject

Scotch Sincerity

Witch, The

Wreath of Fancies .

M4
498

540
155

407

024
107
516

132
277

f -gS3i

HE-STOI^Y-OF OTU I\- ilVES -JT^OM "Ye/^TO */V

J%%$!>imifil

CON DUCT Et>- BY

WITH WHICH US

j^COI\PO^ATED

^OlfSEHOLDWoi^DS"

SATURDAY, DECEMBER

TO THE PUBLIC.

A very unjustifiable paragraph has appeared in some newspapers, to the effect that I have
relinquished the Editorship of this Publication. It is not only unjustifiable because it is
wholly untrue, but because it must be either wilfully or negligently untrue, if any respect be
due to the explicit terms of my repeatedly -published announcement of the present New
Series under my own hand. Charles Dickens.

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Story by the Author of " Black Sheep."

CHAPTER I. MORIBUND.

" I say ! Old Ashurst's going to die !
I heard old Osborne say so. I say, Hawkes,
if Ashurst does die, we shall break up at
once, shan't we ?"

" I should think so ! But that don't
matter much to me ; I'm going to leave
this term."

" Don't I wish I was, that's all ! Hawkes,
do you think the governors will give old
Ashurst's place to Joyce ?"

" Joyce ? that snob ! Not they, in-
deed! They'll get a swell from Oxford,
or somewhere, to be head master ; and
I should think he'll give Master Joyce the
sack."

Little Sam Baker, left to himself,
turned out the pocket of his trousers,
which he had not yet explored, found a
half- melted acidulated drop sticking in
one corner, ' removed it, placed it in his
mouth, and enjoyed it with great relish.
This refection finished, he leaned his lit-
tle arms over the park -paling of the
cricket -field, where the above- described
colloquy had taken place, and surveyed the
landscape. Immediately beneath him was
a large meadow, from which the hay had
been just removed, and which, looking

brown and bare and closely shorn as the
chin of some retired Indian civilian, re-
mained yet fragrant from its recent trea-
sure. The meadow sloped down to a broad,
sluggishly- flowing stream, unnavigated and
unnavigable, where the tall green flags,
standing breast - high, bent and nodded
gracefully, under the influence of the gentle
summer breeze, to the broad-leaved water-
lilies couchant below them. A notion of
scuttling across the meadow and having
"a bathe" in a sequestered part of the
stream, which he well knew, faded out of
little Sam Baker's mind before it was half
formed. Though a determined larker and
leader in mischief among his coevals, he
was too chivalrous to take advantage of the
opportunity which their chief's illness gave
him over his natural enemies, the masters.
Their chief's illness. And little Sam
Baker's eyes were lifted from the river and
fixed themselves on a house about a quarter
of a mile further on a low-roofed, one-
storeyed, red-brick house, with a thatched
roof and little mullioned windows, from
one of which a white blind was fluttering
in the evening breeze.

" That's his room," said little Sam
Baker to himself. " Poor old Ashurst !
He wasn't half a bad old chap ; he often

let me off a hundred lines ; he poor

old Ashurst !" And two large tears burst
from the small boy's eyes and rolled down
his cheeks.

2 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

The boy was right. Where the white
blind fluttered was the dominie's bedroom,
and there the dominie lay dying. A gaunt,
square, ugly room, with panelled walls, on
which the paint had cracked and rubbed
and blistered, with such furniture as it
possessed old fashioned, lumbering, and
mean, with evidence of poverty everywhere
evidence of poverty which a woman's
hand had evidently tried to screen and
soften without much effect. The bed, its
well-worn red moreen curtains with a dirty
yellow border having been tightly bound
round each sculptured post for the ad-
mittance of air, stood near the window, on
which its occupant frequently turned his
glazed and sunken eyes. The sun had
gone to rest, the invalid had marked its
sinking, and so had those who watched
him. The same thought had occurred to
all, though not a word had been spoken ; but
the roseate flush which he leaves behind
still lingered in the heavens, and, as if in
mockery, gave momentarily to the dying
man's cheek a bright healthy hue, such as
he was destined never to wear in life again.
The flush grew fainter, and faded away,
and then a glance at the face, robbed of its
artificial glory, must have been conclusive
as to the inevitable result. For the cheeks
were hollow and sunken, yellowish-white
in colour, and cold and clammy to the
touch ; the eyes, with scarcely any fire left
in them, seemed set in large bistre rings ;
the nose was thin and pinched, and the
bloodless lips were tightly compressed with
an expression of acute pain.

The Reverend James Ashurst was dying.
Every one in Helmingham knew that, and
nearly every one had a word of kindness
and commiseration for the stricken man,
and for his wife and daughter. Dr. Osborne
had carried the news up to the Park several
days previously, and Sir Thomas had
hemmed and coughed and said, " Dear
me," and Lady Churchill had shaken her
head piteously, on hearing it. "And no-
thing much to leave in the way of eh,

my dear doctor ?" It was the doctor's
turn to shake his head then, and he solaced
himself with a large pinch of snuff, taken
in a flourishing and sonorous manner,
before he replied that he believed matters
in that way were much worse than people
thought ; that he did not believe there was
a single penny not a single penny : indeed,
it was a thing not to be generally talked
of, but he might mention it in the strictest
confidence to Sir Thomas and my lady,
who had always proved themselves such

good friends to the Ashursts that was, he
had mentioned to Mrs. Ashurst that there
was one faint hope of saving her husband's
life, if he would submit to a certain opera-
tion which only one man in England,
Godby, of St. Vitus's Hospital in London,
could perform. But when he had mentioned
Godby 's probable fee and you could not
expect these eminent men to leave their
regular work and come down such a long
distance under a large sum he saw at
once how the land lay, and that it was im-
possible for them to raise the money. Miss
Ashurst curious girl that, so determined
and all that kind of thing had indeed
pressed him so hard that he had sent his
man over to the telegraph office at Brock-
sopp with a message, inquiring what would
be Godby's exact charge for running down
it was a mere question of distance with
these men, so much a mile and so much for
the operation but he knew the sum he
had named was not far out.

From the Park Dr. Osborne had driven
his very decorous little four-wheeler to
"Woolgreaves, the residence of the Cres-
wells, his other great patients, and there he
had given a modified version of his story,
with a very much modified result. For old
Mr. Creswell was away in France, and
neither of the two young ladies was of an
age to feel much sympathy, unless with
their intimate relations, and they had been
educated abroad, and seen but little of the
Helmingham folk ; and as for Tom Cres-
well, he was the imp of the school, having
all Sam Baker's love of mischief without
any of his good heart, and would not have
cared who was ill or who died, provided
illness or death afforded occasion for slack-
ing work and making holiday. Every one
else in the parish was grieved at the news.
The rector bland, polished, and well en-
dowed with worldly goods had been most
actively compassionate towards his less
fortunate brother ; the farmers, who looked
upon " Master Ashurst " as a marvel of
book learning, the labourers who had con-
sented to the removal of the village sports,
held from time immemorial on the village
green, to a remote meadow whence the
noise could not penetrate to the sick man's
room, and who had considerately lowered
the matter as well as the manner of their
singing as they passed the school-house at
night in jovial chorus; all these people
pitied the old man dying, and the old wife
whom he would leave behind. They did not
say much about the daughter ; when they
referred to her it was generally to the effect

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED EST PORT.

[December 5, 1868.] 3

that she would manage tolerably well for
herself, for " she were a right plucked 'un,
Miss Marian were."

They were right. It needed little skill
in physiognomy to trace, even under the
influence of the special circumstances sur-
rounding her, the pluck, and spirit, and de-
termination in every feature of Marian
Ashurst's face. They were patent to the
most ordinary beholder; patent in the
brown eye, round rather than elongated,
small yet bright as a beryl; in the short
sharply curved nose, in the delicately
rounded chin, which relieved the jaw of a
certain fulness, sufficiently characteristic,
but scarcely pretty. Variety of expression
was Marian's great charm; her mobile
features acting under every impulse of her
mind, and giving expression to her every
thought. Those who had seen her seldom,
or only in one mood, would scarcely have
recognised her in another. To the old man,
lying stretched on his death-bed, she had
been a fairy to be worshipped, a plaything
to be for ever prized. In his presence the
brown eyes were always bright, the small,
sharp, white teeth gleamed between the ripe,
red lips, and one could scarcely have traced
the jaw, that occasionally rose rigid and
hard as iron, in the soft expanse of the
downy cheek. Had he been able to raise
his eyes, he would have seen a very
different look in her face as, after bending
over the bed and ascertaining that her
father slept, she turned to the other
occupant of the room, and said, more in
the tone of one pondering over and repeat-
ing something previously heard than of a
direct question :

"A hundred and thirty guineas, mother !"
For a minute Mrs. Ashurst made her no
reply. Her thoughts were far away. She
could scarcely realise the scene passing
round her, though she had pictured it to
herself a hundred times, in a hundred
different phases. Years ago how many
years ago it seemed ! she was delicate and
fragile, and thought she should die before
her husband, and she would He awake for
hours in the night, rehearsing her own
death-bed, and thinking how she should
tell James not to grieve after her, but to
marry again, anybody except that Eleanor
Shaw, the organist's daughter, and she
should be sorry to think of that flighty
minx going through the linen and china
after she was gone. And now the time
had really come, and he was going to be
taken from her; he, her James, with his
big brown eyes and long silky hair, and

strong lithe figure, as she first remembered
him going to be taken from her now, and
leave her an old woman, poor and lone and
forlorn and Mrs. Ashurst tried to stop the
tears which rolled down her face, and to
reply to her daughter's strange remark.

" A hundred and thirty guineas ! Yes,
my dear, you're thinking of Mr. I forget
his name the surgeon. That was the sum
he named."

"You're sure of it, mother?"
" Certain sure, my dear ! Mr. Casserly,
Dr. Osborne's assistant, a very pleasant-
spoken young man, showed me the tele-
graph message, and I read it for myself.
It gave me such a turn that I thought I
should have dropped, and Mr. Casserly
offered me some sal volatile or peppermint
I mean of his own accord, and never in-
tended to charge for it, I am sure."

"A hundred and thirty guineas! and
the one chance of saving his life is to be
lost because we cannot command that sum !
Good God ! to think of our losing him for

want of Is there no one, mother, from

whom we could get it ? Think, think ! It's
of no use sitting crying there ! Think, is
there no one who could help us in this
strait ?"

The feeling of dignity which Mrs. Ashurst
knew she ought to have assumed was scared
by her daughter's earnestness, so the old
lady merely fell to smoothing her dress,
and, after a minute's pause, said in a
tremulous voice,

" I fear there is no one, my dear ! The
rector, I daresay, would do something, but
I'm afraid your father has already borrowed
money of him, and I know he has of Mr.
King, the chairman of the governors of
the school. I don't know whether Mr.

Casserly "

"Mr. Casserly, mother, a parish doctor's
drudge ! Is it likely that he would be able
to assist us ?"

"Well, I don't know, my dear, about
being able, I'm sure he would be willing !
He was so kind about that sal volatile that

I am sure he would do what Lord ! we

never thought of Mr. Creswell !"

Set and hard as Marian's face had been
throughout the dialogue, it grew even
more rigid as she heard these words. Her
lips tightened, and her brow clouded as
she said, " Do you think that I should have
overlooked that chance, mother ? Do yon
not know that Mr. Creswell is away in
Prance ? He is the very first person to
whom I should have thought of applying."
Under any other circumstances, Mrs.

eQ=

4 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Ashurst would have been excessively de-
lighted at this announcement. As it was,
she merely said, " The young ladies are at
Woolgreaves, I think."

"The young ladies!" repeated Marian,
bitterly "the young ladies ! The young
dolls dolts dummies to try dresses on !
What are Maude and Gertrude Creswell
to us, mother ? "What kindness, courtesy
even, have they ever shown us ? To get
their uncle's purse is what we most
need "

"Oh, Marian, Marian!" interrupted Mrs.
Ashurst, "what are you saying ?"

"Saying?" replied Marian, calmly

saying ,

The truth! What should I

say, when I know that if we had the com-
mand of Mr. Creswell' s purse, father's life
might from what I gather from Dr.
Osborne most probably would be saved !
Are these circumstances under which one
should be meek and mild and thankful for
one's lot in life ! Is this a time to talk

of gratitude and He's moving! Yes,

darling father, Marian is here !"

Two hours afterwards, Marian and Dr.
Osborne stood in the porch. There were
tears in the eyes of the garrulous but
kindly old man ; but the girl's eyes were
dry, and her face was set harder and more
rigid than ever. The doctor was the first
to speak.

"Good night, my dear child," said he;
" and may God comfort you in your afflic-
tion ! I have given your poor mother a
composing draught, and trust to find her
better in the morning. Fortunately, you
require nothing of that kind. God bless
you, my dear ! It will be a consolation to
you, as it is to me, to know that your
father, my dear old friend, went off perfectly
placid and peacefully."

" It is a consolation, doctor more espe-
cially as I believe such an ending is rare
with people suffering under his disease."

"His disease, child ? Why, what do you
think your father died of?"

" Think, doctor ? I know ! Of the want
of a hundred and thirty guineas !"

CHAPTER II. RETROSPECTIVE.

The Reverend James Ashurst had been
head master of the Helmingham Grammar
School for nearly a quarter of a century.
Many old people in the village had a vivid
recollection of him as a young man, with his
bright brown hair curling over his coat col-
lar, his frank fearless glances, his rapid jerky
walk. They recollected how he was by no

means particularly well received by the
powers that then were, how he was spoken
of as "one of the new school" a term in
itself supposed to convey the highest degree
of opprobrium and how the elders had
shaken their heads and prophesied that no
good would come of the change, and that it
would have been better to have held on to
old Dr. Munch, after all. Old Dr. Munch,
who had been Mr. Ashurst's immediate pre-
decessor, was as bad a specimen of the old-
fashioned, nothing- doing, sinecure-seeking
pedagogue as could well be imagined ; a ro-
tund, red-faced, gouty-footed divine, with a
thick layer of limp white cravat loosely tied
round his short neck, and his suit of clerical
sables splashed with a culinary spray ; a
man whose originally small stock of clas-
sical learning had gradually faded away,
and whose originally large stock of idleness
and self-gratification had simultaneously
increased. Forty male children, born in
lawful wedlock in the parish of Helming-
ham, and properly presented on the foun-
dation, might have enjoyed the advantages
of a free classical and mathematical educa-
tion at the Grammar School under the will
of old Sir Ranulph Clinton, the founder ;
but, under the lax rule of Dr. Munch, the
forty gradually dwindled to twenty, and of
these twenty but few attended school in
the afternoon, knowing perfectly that for
the first few minutes after coming in from
dinner the Doctor paid but little attention
as to which members of the class might be
present, and that in a very few minutes he
fell into a state of pleasant and unbroken
slumber.

This state of affairs was terrible, and,
worst of all, it was getting buzzed abroad.
The two or three conscientious boys who
really wanted to learn shook their heads in
despair, and appealed to their parents to
"let them leave;" the score of lads who
enjoyed the existing state of affairs were,
lad-like, unable to keep it to themselves,
and went about calling on their neighbours
to rejoice with them ; so, speedily, every one
knew the state of affairs in Helmingham
Grammar School. The trustees of the
charity, or " governors," as they were
called, had not the least notion how to pro-
ceed. They were, for the most part, re-
spectable tradesmen of the place, who had
vague ideas about " college" as of a se-
questered spot where young men walked
about in stuff gowns and trencher caps, and
were, by some unexplained circumstance,
rendered fit and ready for the bishop to
convert into clergymen. There must, they

S--

=&.

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN" PORT.

[December 5, 1868.] 5

thought, probably be in this "college"
some one fit to take the place of old Dr.
Munch, who must be got rid of, come what
might. At first, the resident " governors"
the tradesmen of Helmingham thought it
best to write to two of their colleagues,
who were non-resident, and not by any
manner of means tradesmen, being, in fact,
two distinguished peers of the realm, who,
holding property in the neighbourhood,
had, for political reasons, thought fit to
cause themselves to be elected governors of
old Sir Ranulph Clinton's foundation. The
letters explaining the state of affairs, and
asking for advice, were duly written ; but
matters political were at a standstill just
then ; there was not the remotest chance of
an election for years ; and so the two
private secretaries of the two noble lords
pitched their respective letters into their
respective waste-baskets, with mutual grins
of pity and contempt for the writers.
Thrown back on their own resources, the
resident governors determined on applying
to the rector ; acting under the feeling that
he, as a clergyman, must have been to this
"college," and would doubtless be able to
put them in the way of securing such a
man as they required. And they were
right. The then rector, though an old
man, still kept up occasional epistolary in-
tercourse with such of his coevals as re-
mained at the university in the enjoyment
of dignities and fellowships ; and, being him-
self both literate and conscientious, was by
no means sorry to lend a hand towards the
removal of Dr. Munch, whom he looked
upon as a scandal to the cloth. A corre-
spondence entered into between the Rector
of Helmingham and the Principal of St.
Beowulph's College, Oxford, resulted in
the enforced resignation of Dr. Munch as
the head master of Helmingham Gram-
mar School, and the appointment of the
Reverend James Ashurst as his successor.
The old Doctor took his fate very calmly ;
he knew that for a long time he had been
doing nothing, and had been sufficiently well
paid for it. He settled down in a pleasant
village in Kent, where an old crony of his
held the position of warden to a City Com-
pany's charity, and this history knows him
no more.

When James Ashurst received his ap-
pointment he was about eight-and-twenty,
had taken a double second class, had been
scholar and tutor of his college, and stood
well for a fellowship. By nature silent and
reserved, and having found it necessary for
the achievement of his position to renounce

nearly all society for he was by no means
a brilliant man, and his successes had been
gained by plodding industry, and constant
application rather than by the exercise of
any natural talent James Ashurst had
but few acquaintances, and to them he
never talked of his private affairs. They
wondered when they heard that he had.
renounced certain prospects, notably those
of a fellowship, for so poor a preferment as
two hundred pounds a year and a free
house : for they did not know that the odd,
shy, silent man had found time in the in-
tervals of his reading to win the heart of a
pretty, trusting girl, and that the great
hope of his life, that of being able to marry
her and take her to a decent home of
which she would be mistress, was about to
be accomplished.

On a dreary, dull day, in the beginning
of a bitter January, Mr. Ashurst arrived at
Helmingham. He found the schoolhouse
dirty, dingy, and uncomfortable, bearing
traces everywhere of the negligence and
squalor of its previous occupant; but the
chairman of the governors, who met him
on his arrival, told him that it should be
thoroughly cleaned and renovated during
the Easter holidays, and the mention of
those holidays caused James Ashurst's
heart to leap and throb with an intensity
with which house-painting could not pos-
sibly have anything to do. In the Easter
holidays he was to make Mary Bridger his
wife, and that thought sustained him splen-
didly during the three dreary intervening
months, and helped him to make head
against a sea of troubles raging round him.
For the task on which he had entered was
no easy one. Such boys as had remained
in the school under the easy rule of Dr.
Munch were of a class much lower than
that for which the benefits of the founda-
tion had been contemplated by the bene-
volent old knight, and having been un-
accustomed to any discipline, had arrived
at a pitch of lawlessness which required all
the new master's energy to combat. This
necessary strictness made him unpopular
with the boys, and, at first, with their
parents, who made loud complaints of their
children being "put upon," and in some cases
where bodily punishment had been inflicted
retribution had been threatened. Then,
the chief tradespeople and the farmers,
among whom Dr. Munch had been a daily
and nightly guest, drinking his mug of
ale or his tumbler of brandy- and- water,
smoking his long clay pipe, taking his hand
at whist, and listening, if not with pleasure,

6 [December 5, 1868.;

ALL THE YEAE ROUND.

[Conducted by

at any rate without remonstrance, to lan-
guage and stories more than sufficiently
broad and indecorous, found that Mr.
Ashurst civilly, but persistently, refused
their proffered hospitality, and in conse-
quence pronounced him "stuck-up." No
man was more free from class prejudices,
but he had been bred in old Somerset
country society, where the squirearchy
maintained an almost feudal dignity, and
his career in college had not taught him
the policy of being on terms of familiarity
with those whom Fortune had made his
inferiors.

So James Ashurst struggled on during
the first three months of his novitiate at
Helmingham, earnestly and energetically
striving to do his duty, with, it must be
confessed, but poor result. The governors
of the school had been so impressed by the
rector's recommendation, and. by the testi-
monials which the new master had sub-
mitted to them, that they expected to find
the regeneration of the establishment would
commence immediately upon James Ash-
urst' s appearance upon the scene, and were
rather disappointed when they found that,
while the number of scholars remained
much the same as at the time of Dr.
Munch' s retirement, the general dissatis-
faction in the village was much greater
than it had ever been during the reign of
that summarily-treated pedagogue. The
rector, to be sure, remained true to the
choice he had recommended, and main-
tained everywhere that Mr. Ashurst had
done very well in the face of the greatest
difficulties, and would yet bring Helming-
ham into notice. Notwithstanding constant
ocular proof to the contrary, the farmers
held that in the clerical profession, as in
freemasonry, there was a certain occult
something beyond the ordinary ken, which
bound members of "the cloth" together,
and induced them to support each other to
the utmost stretch of their consciences a
proceeding which, in the opinion of free-
thinking Helmingham, allowed of a con-
siderable amount of elasticity.

At length the long looked for Easter tide
arrived, and James Ashurst hurried away
from the dull grey old midland- country
village, to the bright little Thames- bordered
town where lived his love. A wedding
with the church approach one brilliant
pathway of spring flowers, a honeymoon of
such happiness as one knows but once in a
lifetime, passed in the lovely lake country,
and then Helmingham again. But with a
different aspect. The old schoolhouse itself,

brave in fresh paint and new plaster, its
renovated diamond windows, its cleaned
slab, so classically eloquent on the merits
fundatoris nostri, let in over the porch, its
newly stuccoed fives' wall and fresh gra-
velled playground ; all this was strange but
intelligible. But James Ashurst could not
understand yet the change that had come
over his inner life. To return after a hard
day's grinding in a mill of boys to his own
rooms, was, during the first three months
of his career at Helmingham merely to ex-
change active purpose for passive existence.
Now, his life did but begin when the
labours of the day were over, and he and
his wife passed the evenings together, in
planning to combat with the present, in
delightful anticipations of the future. Mr.
Ashurst unwittingly and without the least
intending it, had made a very lucky hit in
his selection of a wife, so far as the Hel-
mingham people were concerned. He was
"that bumptious" as they expressed it, or
as we will more charitably say, he was
so independent, as not to care one rap
what the Helmingham people thought
of anything he did, provided he had, as
indeed at that time he always had for he
was conscientious in the highest degree
the knowledge that he was acting rightly
according to his light. In a very few
weeks the sweetness, the quiet frankness,,
the prepossessing charm of Mrs. Ashurst's
demeanour, had neutralised all the ill-
effects of her husband's three months''
previous career. She was a small-boned,
small- featured, delicate-looking little wo-
man, and, as such, excited a certain amount
of compassion and kindness amid the mid-
land-county ladies, who, as their husbands
said of them, "ran big." It was a positive
relief to one to hear her soft little treble
voice after the booming diapason of the
Helmingham ladies, or to see her pretty
little fat dimpled hands flashing here and
there in some coquetry of needle- work, after
being accustomed to looking on at the
steady play of particularly bony and knuckly
members, in the unremitting torture of
eminently utilitarian employment. High
and low, gentle and simple, rich and poor,
felt equally kindly disposed towards Mrs.
Ashurst. Mrs. Peacock, wife of Squire
Peacock, a tremendous magnate and squire
of the neighbouring parish, fell so much in
love with her that she made her husband
send their only son, a magnificent youth
destined eventually for Eton, Oxford, Par-
liament, and a partnership in a brewery, to
be introduced to the Muses as a parlour-

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 5, 18(58.] 7

boarder in Mr. Ashurst's house, and Hiram
Brooks, the blacksmith and minister of the
Independent Chapel, who was at never-
ending war with all the members of the
Establishment, made a special exception in
Mrs. Ashurst's favour, and doffed his greasy-
leathern cap to her as she passed the forge.

And his pretty little wife brought him
good fortune, as well as domestic happiness.
James Ashurst delighted to think so. His
popularity in the village, and in the sur-
rounding country was on the increase ; the
number of scholars on the foundership had
reached its authorised limit (a source of
great gratification, though of no pecuniary
profit, to the head master) ; and Master
Peacock had now two or three fellow-
boarders, each of whom paid a fine annual
sum. The governors thought better of
their head master now, and the old rector
had lived long enough to see his recom-
mendation thoroughly accepted, and his
prophecy, as regarded the improved status
of the school, duly fulfilled. Popular, suc-
cessful in his little way, and happy in his
domestic relations, James Ashurst had but
one want. His wife was childless, and this
was to him a source of discomfort, always
felt and occasionally expressed. He was
just the man who would have doated on a
child, would have suffered himself to have
been pleasantly befooled by its gambols,
and have worshipped it in every phase of
its tyranny. But it was not to be, he sup-
posed ; that was to be the one black drop
in his draught of happiness : and then,
after he had been married for five or six
years, Mrs. Ashurst brought him a little
daughter. His hopes were accomplished,
but he nearly lost his wife in their ac-
complishment ; while he dandled the newly
born treasure in his arms, Mrs. Ashurst's
life was despaired of, and when the chubby
baby had grown up into a strong child, and
from that sphere of life had softened down
into a peaceful girl, her mother, always
slight and delicate, had become a constant
invalid, whose ill health caused her husband
the greatest anxiety, and almost did away
with the delight he had in anticipating
every wish of his darling little Marian.

James Ashurst had longed for a child,
and he loved his little daughter dearly
when she came, but even then his wife held
the deepest and most sacred place in his
heart, and as he marked her faded cheek
and lustreless eye, he felt a pang of re-
morse, and accused himself of having set
himself up against the just judgment of
Providence, and of having now received the

due reward of his repining. For one who
thought his darling must be restored to
health, no sacrifice could be too great to
accomplish that result ; and the Helming-
ham people, who loved Mrs. Ashurst
dearly, but who in their direst straits were
never accustomed to look for any other
advice than that which could be afforded
them by Dr. Osborne, or his village op-
ponent, Mr. Sharood, were struck with ad-
miration when Dr. Langton, the great
county physician, the oracle of Brocksopp,
was called into consultation. Dr. Langton
was a very little man, noted almost as
much for his reticence as for his skill. He
never wasted a word. After a careful ex-
amination of Mrs. Ashurst he pronounced
it to be a tiresome case, and prescribed a
four months' residence at the baths of Ems,
as the likely treatment to effect a mitiga-
tion, if not a cure. Dr. Osborne, after the
great man's departure, laughed aloud in
his bluff way at the idea of a country
schoolmaster sending his wife to Ems.
" Langton is so much in the habit of going
about among the country families, and
these novi homines of manufacturers who
stink of brass, as they say in these parts,
that he forgets there is such a thing as
having to look carefully at ways and
means, my dear Ashurst, and make both
dovetail ! Baths of Ems, indeed ! I'm
afraid you've thrown away your ten
guineas, my good friend, if that's all
you've got out of Langton!" But Dr.
Osborne's smile was suddenly checked
when Mr. Ashurst said very quietly that
as his wife's health was dearer to him than
anything on earth, and that as there was no
sacrifice which he would not make to ac-
complish its restoration, he should find
means of sending her to Germany, and of
keeping her there until it was seen what
efi'ect the change had on her.

And he did it ! For two successive
summers Mrs. Ashurst went to Ems with
the old nurse who had brought her up, and
accompanied her from her pretty river-side
home to Helmingham; and at the end of
the second season she returned compara-
tively well and strong. But she needed all
her strength and health when she looked
at her husband when he came to meet her
in London, and found him thin, changed,
round-shouldered, and hollow-eyed, the
very shadow of his former self. James
Ashurst had carried through his plans as
regarded his wife at enormous sacrifice. He
had no ready money to meet the sudden
call upon his purse which such an expedi-

<rg=

8 [December5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

tion rendered necessary, and he had re-
course to money-lenders to raise the first
loans required ; then to friends to pay the
interest on and to obtain renewals of these
loans ; then to other money-lenders to re-
place the original sums ; and then to other
friends to repay a portion of the first friendly
loans, until, by the time his wife returned
from the second visit to the Continent, he
found himself so inextricably involved that
he dared not face his position, dared not
think of it himself, much less take her into
his confidence, and so he went blindly on,
paying interest on interest, and hoping
ever, with a vague hope, for some relief
from his troubles.

That relief never came to James Ashurst
in his lifetime. He struggled on in the
same hopeless, helpless, hand-to-mouth
fashion for about eight years more, always
impecunious in the highest degree, always
intending to retrieve his fallen fortune,
always slowly, but surely, breaking and be-
coming less and less of a man under the
harass of pecuniary troubles, when the ill-
ness which for some time had threatened
him set in, and, as we have seen, he died.

DICK STEELE.

There are characters to whom History vouch-
safes no more than a passing sneer or a dispara-
ging monosyllable. Whether, for instance, she
guides the pen of Johnson, of Scott, of Macau-
lay, or of Thackeray, the most dignified of the
Muses misses no opportunity of calling the
author of The Christian Hero "Dick." Sir
Kichard Steele is seldom distinguished in her
pages by his proper title without a spirit of
merriment, as if royalty had knighted him in
jest. Yet the mere mention of his beloved and
loving partner in genius and in fame, is always
graced with some prefix of respect. Where, in
the annals of the Augustan age of English litera-
ture, does History condescend to sport with the
memory of the Eight Honourable Joseph Ad-
dison, and call him " Joe" ?

This difference in distinguishing Steele from
his friend is the more painful to those who
admire him for the sake of his works, because it
is greatly deserved. Contemporary and subse-
quent opinion has, no doubt, been harsh in
selecting " Dick's" sins, as the sponsors who
gave him that name ; but his many virtues
were obscured from all, except from his inti-
mate companions. His own irrepressible can-
dour flourished his worst faults in the faces
of Mankind ; who must not, therefore, be
blamed for forming their judgment of him from
the only evidence presented to them on the
surface. With Addison the result was pre-
cisely opposite. The surface of his character
shone with a polish that always commanded

respect; and it was natural that his failings,
concealed within a grave and stately exterior,
should never have linked his name with the
lightest touch of familiarity.

But, besides the personal shortcomings which
Steele was too open-hearted to conceal, he
laboured under a disadvantage from which his
foremost associates were free ; but which has
since been entirely overlooked. During the
time of his greatest popularity the doctrine of
Caste was paramount. Keaction from the
grand democratic convulsion of the previous
century, had produced a democracy blind to its
own interests. Tory mobs passionately as-
saulted opponents of passive obedience and the
divine right of kings. So fervent was the
worship of the Tuft, that the public at large
liked their nobility and gentry the better for
lording it over them. A fool of quality held
his own, as a matter of course, against a Solon of
humble birth, even in good company. What-
ever the discussion, a well-born disputant in
danger of defeat had only to ask the question,
" Who are you, sir?" to be certain of victory,
if his adversary's answer denoted him to be
nothing better than a plebeian. In case of any
sort of confusion respecting paternity, defeat
would be the more crushing. This kind of
humiliation Sir Richard Steele had constantly
to endure. When teaching in the Tatler " the
minuter decencies and- inferior duties of life,"
Steele excited the ire of all the sharpers, duel-
lists, rakes, mohocks, sots, and swearers extant.
The more prominent ruffians of gentle blood
retorted upon him the withering non sequitur
that nobody could find out who his father was.
When he insisted, in his famous Crisis, that
Dunkirk should be demolished according to
treaty, Dr. Wagstaffe thought he had demol-
ished Steele, by logically declaring that "he
was ashamed of his name," and that he owed
" his birth and condition to a place more bar-
barous than Carrickfergus." As a convincing
argument against reinstating him in the go-
vernorship of Drury Lane Theatre, Dennis
taunted him with being " descended from a
trooper's horse ;" the elegant sentence finishing
with such a fling at his colleague, Cibber, as
unmistakably directed the venom against
Steele's birth, and not against a well-known in-
cident in his youthful career. The authors of
the Examiner, of the Female Tatler, and other
scandalisers flung with more dirt doubts at
his origin, and Steele cleared it all off, except
that which defiled his name. If he had been
once for all explicit on that head, his foes would
have ceased to trouble him, and the doubt
would have ceased to trouble his friends. It
manifestly did trouble them. In the last num-
ber of the Englishman, Steele wrote thus : " In
compliance to the prepossessions of others,
rather than, as I think it a matter of conside-
ration myself, I assert (that no nice man of my
acquaintance may think himself polluted by
conversing with me) that whoever talks to me
is speaking to a gentleman born." No more.
Neither in Steele's private correspondence, nor
in his public writings is this assertion coupled

Charles Dickens.]

DICK STEELE.

[December 5, 1868.] 9

with any more specific statement ; and, although
no gentleman is called upon to plead pedigree in
abatement of abuse levelled at his early history,
yet his friends can always put in that plea for him
when proper data are to be obtained. Delicacy
in the days of Dennis, Curl, Tutchin, Ridpath,
Roper, Wagstaffe, Savage, Mrs. Manley, Pope,
and Swift, could not in the least have restrained
his friends ; for the secrets of private life were
marshalled and made public for party purposes,
on both sides of every question, with lavish
coarseness. Yet the necessary information can
nowhere be picked out of the voluminous lega-
cies left by Steele's contemporaries. Even
Death, which breaks the seals of many myste-
ries, revealed nothing but perplexity. In no
immediate notice of Steele's demise are his birth
and parentage distinctly set forth. Curl, in a
memoir published a year after that event, hits
the mark no nearer than this: "Being de-
scended from English parents, he used to call
himself an Englishman born in Dublin."

The further Time floats us away from the
sources of evidence, the fewer doubts remain.
Open any biographical essay, dictionary, or any
cyclopaedia, and you will find it stated, without
qualification, that Richard Steele's father was
an Irish councillor - at - law and private sec-
retary to James, first Duke of Ormond, and
that his mother's name was Gascoigne. The
date of his birth has never been so confidently
stated. Every year has received that honour
from 1671 to 1676.. The General Dictionary of
Birch and Lockman gives no date ; the Bio-
graphia Britannica mentions 1676; Nathan
Drake, 1675 ; and 1672 has been noted down
more than once : 1671 has remained the fashion
since the publication, by Nichols, of Steele's
Epistolary Correspondence, for a reason which
will be' set forth presently.

Thanks to Sir Bernard Burke the present
successor both of Steele's uncle, Gascoigne, and of
his friend Addison, as keeper of the Birmingham
Record Tower in Dublin Castle the fists of
counsel in the Four Courts have been searched.
No one named Steele appears in them within
the required period ; but a Richard Steele was
admitted a member of the King's Inns as an
attorney, in 1667. Again, no gentleman named
Steele served James, first Duke of Ormond,
as private secretary. Neither in the records
of Kilkenny Castle, nor in the papers abstracted
thence by Carte (when he wrote the life of
Marlborough's rival) and deposited them in the
Bodleian Library, does the name of Steele occur
in any official matter but once, and then it be-
longed to a lawyer's clerk, who was paid a small
sum of money on account of his master. Henry
Gascoigne, Dick Steele's uncle, succeeded Sir
George Lane as the duke's secretary in 1674.

The earliest authentic notice of the date of
Steele's birth is thus recorded in the registers of
the London Charter House, for November
17th, 1684 :

" Richard Steel admitted for the Duke of
Ormond, in the room of Phillip Burrell
aged 13 years 12th March next."

Reckoning that 12th day of March, according

to the old style, to be still in the year 1684, the
date of Steele's birth would thus be fixed in 1671.
It happens that an entry exists in the registers of
St. Bride's Church, Dublin, which coincides ex-
actly too exactly, perhaps with this register:

" Chrissenings commencing from the 25th of
March, 1671.* March ye 12th, Richard, sonn
of Richard Steele, baptised."

This date, therefore, has been generally
adopted as Steele's birthday, ever since the
above document was made known by Nichols,
in his preface to Steele's Epistolary Corre-
spondence. A copy of it, certified by a clergy-
man and two churchwardens, appears amongst
Steele's loose papers in the British Museum, at
the back of a calculation of the profits of Drury
Lane Theatre in 1721, something in cypher
about The Fishpool, and the address of a
chemist in Westminster. Why it was ob-
tained, or whether acknowledged by Steele as
certifying his own date of birth, can never be
ascertained. It sets forth, in fact, no more
than the date of a baptism performed if it re-
cord the baptism of Sir Richard before the
baby was a day old. This slender improbability
got over, the two documents harmonise suf-
ficiently to set doubt at rest. But a third
memorandum, in the register of matriculations
of the University of Oxford, revives it :
" ^Edes Christi.

" Ter e Hilarii 1689. Mar. 13. Ric. Steele
16. R. S. Dublin Gen."

Expanded and translated reading thus : " On
the 13th of March, in Hiliary Term, 16f
Richard Steele, of Christ Church, sixteen years
of age, son of Richard Steele of Dublin, gentle-
man." Had the father been a barrister, he
would have been designated " esquire."

If Steele completed his sixteenth year only
at the above date, he must have been born in
the year 1673. This entry, and that at the
Charter House, are equally authentic, and
equally contradictory of each other ; but
does it matter to the world at large whether
Steele's father was English or Irish, a council-
lor, the private secretary to a duke, or not ; or in
what year Steele himself was born ? These doubts
will not lessen Sir Richard's value to posterity
as a genial humourist, a kind sympathetic cen-
sor, and a sound politician. They can neither
dim nor brighten the lustre of his fame and
they are only put forward here to illustrate
some of Steele's early letters, which now see
the light in print for the first time.

By the courtesy of the Marquis of Ormonde,
the present writer has been granted access to
the archives of Kilkenny Castle, where the
following characteristic letters were discovered
amidst a dazzling treasury of historical docu-
ments dating from Brian Boroihm downwards.
They are addressed to Dick's " uncle," Henry
Gascoigne, the then Duke of Ormond's private
secretary. They are printed exactly as written.
Jan. 5 [1690]

Sir, My Tutour has received ye Certificate
for seven pound, for which I most humbly

* New Year's-day, old style.

"5=

10 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by-

thank you. T have been w th Dr Hough who
received y r letter and Enquired very Civilly
after You and my Ladye's health. When I
took my leave of him he desired me to inform
him, if at any time he could be servicable or
assistant to me for he would very readily do it.
Dr Aldridge Gives he's Service to y", and told
me he should write to you himself by this post.
This is all at present from y r most humble Servt
and ever-obedient nephew R. Steele.

Pray S r direct letters to me myself for 'tis
something troublesome to my Tutour y" I am and
have been very much indisposed by a bile just
over my left eye ; but I think it mends now.

Postmark March 31 [1690].
S r , I received your letter, and gave Mr.
Sherwin his paper from you. Most of the
money he had in his hands was before disposed
of, therefore he gave me but five pounds, but
he will give the rest next Wednesday, till
which time I defer my giving y" A true and
particular account how my Tutour and I design
to dispose of the whole ; the night after I writ
my last Mr. Home sent for me to the tavern,
where he and Mr. Wood a fellow of that Coll.,
treated me with Claret and Oysters. I went to
give him an account of what you commanded
me, but I shall Do at the first Opportunity.
Our Dean whome you expected Is, I suppose
now at London, the election for students is not
very far of now ; if y" would be pleased to speak
to him or purchace from my Lord a word or
two ; it would perhaps get me the most Credit-
able preferment for young men in the whole
university there are many here that think of it,
but none speak their mind; the places are
wholly in the Dean and Cannon's dispose with-
out respect to Scholarship ; but if you will
vouchsafe to use your interest in my behalf
there shall be nothing wanting in the endea-
vours of Your most obedient nephew

and most humble servant
R. Steele.

The Dean has two in his gift. My most
humble duty to my lady.

May 14.

S r , I have received the Bundle My Lady
sent to me And do most humbly thank ye for
that and all the rest of y r favours, but my
request to you now is that you would compleat
all the rest by solliciting the Dean who is now
in London in my behalfe for a student's place
here ; I am satisfied that I stand very fair in
his favour. He saw one of my Exercises in the
House and commended it very much and said
y' if I went on in me Study he did not question
but I should make something more than ordi-
nary. I had this from my Tutour. I have I
think a good character throughout the whole
Coll ; I 6peake not this f r out of any vanity or
affectation but to let you know that I have not
been altogether negligent on my part : these
places are not given by merit but acquired by
friends, though I question not but so generous a
man as our Dean would rather prefer one that
was a Scholar before another. I have had so

great advantage in being* *** my own abilities
are so very mean I believe there are very few of
the Gown in the Coll. so good scholars as I am.
My Tutour before told me that if you should be
pleased to use your interest for me, or p' my
lord's letter or word in my behalfe ; it would
certainly do my businesse. And y r Friend Dr.
Hough the new Bishop of Oxon, I believe may
doe much now, for Dr. Aldrich is, as it were,
his Dean. Perhaps, Sir, you may be modest in
solliciting him, because you may think others
trouble him for the same thing ; But pray, S r ,
don't let that hinder you for it will be the same
case next Election, and if we misse this oppor-
tunity 'tis ten to one whether we ever have such
another ; besides the Dean won't have a place
again this three year ; therefore I beseech you
S r as you have been always heretofore very good
to me to use your utmost Endeavour now in my
behalfe And assure y'self that whatever prefer-
ment I ever attain to shall never make me in-
gratefully forget, and not acknowledge the
authour of all my advancement but I shall ever
be proud of writing myself Your most obliged
and

Hum : Ser"

Rich: Steele.

On a sheet of drafted letters on various mat-
ters in Henry Gascoigne's writing, one of
which bears date May 27, 1690 (commencing,
"I was on ship-board about 3 weeks ago,
when I sprained my right arm," which may
account for the delay), is the following memo-
randum : " That your ldship will be pleased to
befriend Dick Steele, who is now entered iu
Ch. Ch., by getting him a student's place there,
or something else, to Exse: mee of charges
beside what is allowed him by the Charter
House." The Duke of Ormond was Chancellor
of the University of Oxford.

This request was not granted, but an equiva-
lent was obtained. Steele eventually became a
postmaster of Merton College. This letter is
addressed to Gascoigne's wife.

Honoured Madam,

Out of a deep sense of y r la" 1 " Goodnesse
Towards me, I could not forbear accusing
myselfe of Ingratitude in omitting my duty, by
not acknowledging y r lad' Mp ' s favours by frequent
letters ; but how to excuse myself as to that
point I know not, but must humbly hope yt as
you have been alwaies soe bountiful to me as to
encourage my endeavours, so y a will be soe mer-
cif ull to me as to pardon my faults and neglects,
but, Madam, should I expresse my gratitude for
every benefit y' I receive at y r lad sh9 '' and my
good Vnkle, I should never sit down to meat
but I must write a letter when I rise from
table ; for to his goodnesse I humbly acknow-
ledge my being, but, Mada m , not to be too
tedious, I shall only subscribe myself Mada ra ,

Humble servant and obedient though unworthy
nephew
R. Steele.

* End of page torn away, and one line illegible.

Ctf

Charles Dickens.]

PERVIGILIUM VENERIS.

[December 5,

I] 11

Pray mada m give my duty to my unkle and
my good Ant, and my love to my Ingenious
Cousin and humble service to good Mrs.
Dwight.

Some of these letters are indorsed with the
dates in Henry Gascoigne's hand " Dick
Steele."

Always Dick from the beginning !

PERVIGILIUM VENERIS.

(paraphrased.)
This poem, commonly printed amongst the verses
"attributed to Gallus," was asserted by Erasmus to
have been written by Catullus, and by Saumasius to be
the work of some unknown poet of the middle ages.
The supposition, however, which attributes the author-
ship of the poem to Annaeus Florus, has been sanctioned
by Wernsdorf : and certainly, whatever be the period
which produced the Pervigilium Veneris, it would seem
to have been a period of literary decadence, such as the
age of Hadrian. That which has tempted to a para-
phrase of this little poem is the essentially modern
character of it. Its defects have the sort of charm
which belongs to features the most faulty, if those fea-
tures strengthen the family likeness in the countenance
of a kinsman.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more !

New is now the song I sing,

As the freshness of the morn

In the sweetness of the Spring,

When the old world is new-born.

In the Spring the loves assemble,

And the birds in budded bowers ;

In the Spring the young leaves tremble

To wet kissings of sun showers.

'Tis the Spring time, and to-morrow,

All among the leafy groves,

Shall divine Dione borrow,

To make cradles for her Loves,

Myrtle branches glad and green.

And, to-morrow, lord and king

Love shall be, from morn to e'en,

Of the kingdoms of the Spring,

And Love's Mother, lady and queen,

These shall rule the world, I ween.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more !

Form'd from out the white sea foam

And pure ichor all divine,

'Mid those azure flocks that roam

Pastured on the breezy brine,

When the Spring was on the earth,

And the Spring's warmth in the water,

Did old Ocean's joy give birth

To his wave-born wanton daughter,

Therefore to Dione dear

Is the birth-time of the year.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more.

She it is, with gemmy blossoms,

That doth paint the purple year.

She, from whose abundant bosoms

(While the amorous atmosphere

Hums for joy) fresh-bubbled showers

Brim the milk-pails warm and white.

She, at morning, decks the flowers

With the lucid tears of night :

Dewy drops, whose downward brightness,

Pausing, trembling, seems to fall,
Yet, sustained by its own lightness,
Cannot leave those petals small !
Silver drops, from stars distill'd
By the balmy night serene :
Silent, sliding touches, skill'd
To unloose that clinging green
Woven the warm buds around
With such quaint concealing care ;
Which their sweet breasts, yet unbound,
Do, for virgin vesture, wear ;
Till the maiden flowers, at morn,
Blushing meet the enamoured sun
For whose kisses they were born ;
Trembling, glowing, one by one
(Timorous and naked brides !)
Each from out her secret bower,
Where no more chill April hides
What to find the wistful shower,
Sighing low, the leaves divide,
Flower peeps forth after flower.
O that blush of maiden woo'd,
When her virgin love is won !
What is like it ? Cypris' blood
And the kiss of Cypris' Son,
And the morning's purple wings,
And the ruby's burning heart,
These, and all delicious things,
Of its beauty are but part !
Yesterday, O trembling maid,
Buried those ripe blushes lay
Under virgin snows, afraid
Of the tale they tell to-day :
Yesterday, that little breast,
Happy bride, hid joy, like sorrow,
Fearful, in its flutter'd vest.
Love shall loose the strings to-morrow.
Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,

Ye that never have loved before !
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more !

She, their gentle Deity,
Calls the nymphs in myrtle grove.
But their leader ? Who is he,
If he be not armed Love ?
No. To-day is holiday.
Lore hath laid his arms aside.
Naked will he sport and play,
All the amorous Spring-tide,
Lest his bow and arrows trim,
Or his torch, should do some ill.
Yet, O nymphs, beware of him I
Naked Love is weapon'd still.
Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,

Ye that never have loved before !
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more !

Maidens, chaste and pure as thou,

Virgin Delia, to thee

Venus sends us. Prithee now

To our revels welcome be.

Leave our pleasant grove unstain'd

By the blood of savage beast,

And, by maiden prayers constrain 'd,

Deign to grace our jocund feast.

Nights of azure weather three,

Dancing these dim woods of thine,

Thou our merry troops shalt see

Crown'd with roses and myrtle twine.

Ceres will not be away ;

Nor the tippling Bacchus, Lady ;

Nor the Lord of lyric lay ;

All along the leafage shady

(IS thou wilt not say us nay)

Thee to charm, the sweet night long,

We will chaunt our roundelay ;

And thyself shalt praise our song.

Prithee, Delia, do not stay

From Dione's court to-day.

12 [December 5, 18G8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

[Conducted by-

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more !
She, amidst Hyblsean flowers,
Bids us build her florid throne ;
And in this light court of ours
Lightly is her bidding done.
All the Graces will be there,
Hybla all her flowers will lend
Treasures which the opulent year
Doth to her, in tribute, send :
Flowers many more than ever
Bloom'd on Enna's meadow bants,
Flowers from every lawn and river
That doth owe Dione thanks !
And the maidens all will come
From the vales and from the mountains ;
Leaving, these their woodland home,
Those their haunts in happy fountains,
Here the nymphs are hastening :
Whilst outspeeding one another,
Boys and maidens homage bring
To the Boy- God's winged Mother,
But she bids you, while 'tis Spring,
Boys and maidens both beware,
Since she let's young love go bare.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more I

Beauty's self hath bid us gather

Beauteous buds, and bring them to her.

For the all-paternal iEther,

He, the green world's earliest wooer,

Wills that, to his warm embrace,

Her most bounteous womb shall bear

(Youngest of an ancient race !)

Yet another infant year.

On her balmy bosom fall

In delicious dews and rains

His prolific kisses all ;

Whose sweet influence the deep veins

Of the Mighty Mother fill

With such throbbing joys as pant

Into visible forms, and thrill

Every green and grassy haunt,

Lawn, and lake, and dale, and hill,

With love's labour procreant.

Over heaven, and over earth,

On thro' rill, and river, and ocean,

Moves the mystic spirit of birth,

With a soft and secret motion ;

And his breath, with raptures rife,

Opes the glowing gates of life.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before,

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once moro !

She, the household gods of Troy
Jnto royal Latium led.
She to her illustrious boy
The Laurentian virgin wed ;
Gave to Mars, in snatcht embrace,
Lips too sweet for Vesta's shrine j
And the Bomulean race
Married to the Sabine line :
Whence the lordly Koman springs
Whence the Conscript Fathers were,
Knights, Quirites, king-born kings,
Caesar's self, and Caesar's heir !

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more !

Far i' the fields doth pleasure stray :

Far i' the fields is Venus found :

Love, himself, was born, they say,
Far i' the fields, on flowery ground.
Him the grassy lawns did guard,
From his happy hour of birth ;
He was born on thymy sward :
He was nurst by Kural Mirth.
Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,

Ye that never have loved before !
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more i
Now his gentle yoke he throws
Over all things far and wide.
Hark ! the lusty bullock lows
After his brown-spotted bride.
The chill ocean's uncouth droves
Couple in their briny bowers :
And the birds pursue their loves,
Singing from their leafy towers.
Even the wild swan's marriage hymny
Thro' the reedy marish rings :
And in poplar shadows dim
All night Philomela sings.
Who that hears her happy song
Could believe that voice laments
A loved sister's bitter wrong ?
No ! she sings, and, singing, vents
Pain (if pain at all) made such
By a too great stress of gladness,
Joy, that were not joy so much
If there were no joy in sadness !
She, and all things else, do sing.
I, alone ? shall I be dumb
When to me the long-wisht Spring
Of my love's sweet prime is come ?
Nay, if I were silent now,
Would not my dishonour'd Muse
Voice, name, fame, and laurel bough.
Evermore to me refuse P
Which were then deserved most,
Mine, or weak Amyclse's fate,
Whom her coward silence lost
When the foe was at the gate ?
Love, to-morrow ! love, to morrow,

Ye that never have loved before I
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more !

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

By Charles Dickens.

aboard ship.

My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller
for the firm of Human Interest Brothers,
have not slackened since I last reported of
them, but have kept me continually on the-
move. I remain in the same idle employ-
ment. I never solicit an order, I never get
any commission, I am the rolling stone that
gathers no moss unless any should by
chance be found among these Samples.

Some half a year ago, I found myself in
my idlest, dreamiest, and least account-
able condition altogether, on board- ship,
in the harbour of the City of New York, in
the United States of America. Of all
the good ships afloat, mine was the good
steam-ship Russia, Captain Cook, Cunard
line, bound for Liverpool. What more could
I wish for ?

I had nothing to wish for, but a pros-
perous passage. My salad-days, when I was

i3=

=fc

Charles Dickens.'

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

[December 5, 1868.] 13

green of visage and sea- sick, being gone
with better things (and worse), no coming
event cast its shadow before. I might,
but a few moments previously, have imi-
tated Sterne, and said, " ' And yet, methinks,
Eugenius' laying my forefinger wistfully
on his coat-sleeve thus ' and yet, methinks,
Eugenius, 'tis but sorry work to part with
thee, for what fresh fields * * * my dear
Eugenius * * * can be fresher than thou
art, and in what pastures new shall I find
Eliza or call her, Eugenius, if thou wilt,
Annie,' " I say I might have done this, but
Eugenius was gone, and I hadn't done it.

I was resting on a skylight on the hurri-
cane-deck, watching the working of the
ship very slowly about, that she might
head for England. It was high noon on a
most brilliant day in April, and the beauti-
ful bay was glorious and glowing. Eull
many a time, on shore there, had I seen
the snow come down, down, down (itself
like down), until it lay deep in all the ways
of men, and particularly, as it seemed, in
my way, for I had not gone dry-shod
many hours for months. Within two or
three days last past, had I watched the
feathery fall setting in with the ardour of a
new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts
of a worn out winter, and permitting
glimpses of a fresh young spring. But a
bright sun and a clear sky had melted the
snow in the great crucible of nature, and it
had been poured out again that morning
over sea and land, transformed into myriads
of gold and silver sparkles.

The ship was fragrant with flowers.
Something of the old Mexican passion for
flowers may have gradually passed into
North America, where flowers are luxu-
riously grown and tastefully combined in
the richest profusion ; but be that as it
may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers had
come on board, that the small Officer's
Cabin on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed
over into the adjacent scuppers, and banks
of other flowers that it couldn't hold, made
a garden of the unoccupied tables in the
passengers' saloon. These delicious scents
of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs
of the sea, made the atmosphere a dreamy,
an enchanting one. And so, with the watch
aloft setting all the sails, and with the
screw below revolving at a mighty rate,
and occasionally giving the ship an angry
shake for resisting, I fell into my idlest
ways and lost myself.

As, for instance, whether it was I lying
there, or some other entity even more mys-
terious, was a matter I was. far too lazy to

look into. What did it signify to me if it
were I or to the more mysterious en-
tity if it were he ? Equally as to the
remembrances that drowsily floated by me
or by him why ask when, or where, the
things happened ? Was it not enough that
they befel at some time, somewhere ?

There was that assisting at the Church
Service on board another steam-ship, one
Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps on the
passage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear
the ship's bells go, as like church-bells as
they could ; pleasant to see the watch off
duty mustered, and come in ; best hats,
best Guernseys, washed hands and faces,
smoothed heads. But then arose a set
of circumstances so rampantly comical, that
no check which the gravest intentions could
put upon them would hold them in hand.
Thus the scene. Some seventy passengers
assembled at the saloon tables. Prayer-
books on tables. Ship rolling heavily.
Pause. No minister. Rumour has related
that a modest young clergyman on board
has responded to the captain's request that
he will officiate. Pause again, and very
heavy rolling. Closed double doors sud-
denly burst open, and two strong stewards
skate in, supporting minister between them.
General appearance as of somebody picked
up, drunk and incapable, and under convey-
ance to station-house. Stoppage, pause, and
particularly heavy rolling. Stewards watch
their opportunity, and balance themselves,
but cannot balance minister : who, struggling
with a drooping head and a backward ten-
dency, seems determined to return below,
while they are as determined that he shall
be got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon.
Desk portable, sliding away down a long
table, and aiming itself at the breasts of
various members of the congregation. Here
the double doors, which have been carefully
closed by other stewards, fly open again, and
worldly passenger tumbles in, seemingly
with Pale Ale designs : who, seeking friend,
says " Joe !" Perceiving incongruity, says
"Hullo! Beg yer pardon!" and tumbles
out again. All this time the congregation
have been breaking up into sects as the
manner of congregations often is each
sect sliding away by itself, and all pounding
the weakest sect which slid first into the
corner. Utmost point of dissent soon at-
tained in every corner, and violent rolling.
Stewards at length make a dash ; conduct
minister to the mast in the centre of the
saloon, which he embraces with both arms ;
skate out ; and leave him in that condition
to arrange affairs with flock.

14 [December 5

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

There was another Sunday, when an
officer of the ship read the Service. It was
quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the
dangerous and perfectly unnecessary ex-
periment of striking up a hymn. After it
was given out, we all rose, but everybody
left it to somebody else to begin. Silence
resulting, the officer (no singer himself)
rather reproachfully gave us the first line
again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old
gentleman, remarkable throughout the pas-
sage for his cheerful politeness, gave a little
stamp with his boot (as if he were leading
off a country dance), and blithely warbled
us into a show of joining. At the end
of the first verse we became, through
these tactics, so much refreshed and encou-
raged, that none of us, howsoever unmelo-
dious, would submit to be left out of the
second verse; while as to the third we
lifted up our voices in a sacred howl that
left it doubtful whether we were the more
boastful of the sentiments we united in
professing, or of professing them with a
most discordant defiance of time, and tune.

"Lord bless us," thought I, when the
fresh remembrance of these things made me
laugh heartily, alone in the dead water-
gurgling waste of the night, what time I was
wedged into my berth by a wooden bar, or
I must have rolled out of it, " what errand
was I then upon, and to what Abyssinian
point had public events then marched ?
No matter as to me. And as to them, if
the wonderful popular rage for a plaything
(utterly confounding in its inscrutable un-
reason) had not then lighted on a poor
young savage boy, and a poor old screw of
a horse, and hauled the first off by the hair
of his princely head to ' inspect' British
volunteers, and hauled the second off by
the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal
Palace, why so much the better for all of
us outside Bedlam !"

So, sticking to the ship, I was at the
trouble of asking myself would I like to
show the grog distribution in "the fiddle"
at noon, to the Grand United Amalga-
mated Total Abstinence Society. Yes, I
think I should. I think it would do them
good to smell the rum, under, the circum-
stances. Over the grog, mixed in a bucket,
presides the boatswain's mate, small tin
can in hand. Enter the crew, the guilty
consumers, the grown up Brood of Giant
Despair, in contradistinction to the Band of
youthful angel Hope. Some in boots, some
in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls,
some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very
few in jackets, most with sou' wester hats,

all with something rough and rugged
round the throat ; all, dripping salt water
where they stand ; all pelted by weather,
besmeared with grease, and blackened by
fhe sooty rigging. Each man's knife in its
sheath in Ms girdle, loosened for dinner.
As the first man, with a knowingly kindled
eye, watches the filling of the poisoned
chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to
be prosaic), and tossing back his head, tosses
the contents into himself, and passes the
empty chalice and passes on, so the second
man with an anticipatory wipe of his
mouth on sleeve or neck-kerchief, bides his
turn, and drinks and hands, and passes on.
In whom, and in each as his turn approaches,
beams a knowingly-kindled eye, a brighter
temper and a suddenly awakened tendency
to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do
I even observe that the man in charge of
the ship's lamps, who in right of his office
has a double allowance of poisoned chalices,
seems thereby vastly degraded, even though
he empties the chalices into himself, one
after the other, much as if he were deliver-
ing their contents at some absorbent esta-
blishment in which he had no personal
interest. But vastly comforted I note them
all to be, on deck presently, even to the
circulation of a redder blood in their cold
blue knuckles; and when I look up at
them lying out on the yards and holding
on for life among the beating sails, I cannot
for my life see the justice of visiting on
them or on me the drunken crimes of
any number of criminals arraigned at the
heaviest of Assizes.

Abetting myself in my idle humour, I
closed my eyes and recalled life on board
of one of those mail packets, as I lay, part
of that day, in the bay, of New York !
The regular life began mine always did,
for I never got to sleep afterwards with
the rigging of the pump while it was yet
dark, and washing down of the decks. Any
enormous giant at a prodigious hydropathic
establishment, conscientiously undergoing
the Water Cure in all its departments, and
extremely particular about cleaning his
teeth, would make those noises. Swash,
splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble,
swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash,
splash, bubble, rub. Then the day would
break, and descending from my berth by a
graceful ladder composed of half-opened
drawers beneath it, I would reopen my
outer deadlight and my inner sliding win-
dow (closed by a watchman during the
"Water Cure), and would look out at the
long - rolling lead - coloured white - topped

*B=

Charles Dickens.;

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. [December 5, 1868.] 15

waves, over which the dawn, on a cold
winter morning, cast a level lonely glance,
and through which the ship fought her
melancholy way at a terrific rate. And
now, lying down again, awaiting the season
for broiled ham and tea, I would be com-
pelled to listen to the voice of conscience
the Screw.

It might be, in some cases, no more than
the voice of Stomach, but I called it in my
fancy by the higher name. Because, it
seemed to me that we were all of us, all day
long, endeavouring to stifle the Voice. Be-
cause, it was under everybody's pillow,
everybody's plate, everybody's camp-stool,
everybody's book, everybody's occupation.
Because, we pretended not to hear it, espe-
cially at meal times, evening whist, and
morning conversation on deck ; but it was
always among us in an under monotone, not
to be drowned in pea soup, not to be
shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by
books, not to be knitted into any pattern,
not to be walked away from. It was
smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in
the strongest cocktail ; it was conveyed on
deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay
there in their wrappers until the stars
shone ; it waited at table with the stewards ;
nobody could put it out with the lights. It
was considered (as on shore) ill bred to
acknowledge the Voice of Conscience. It
was not polite to mention it. One squally
day an amiable gentleman in love, gave
much offence to a surrounding circle, in-
cluding the object of his attachment, by
saying of it, after it had goaded him over
two easy chairs and a skylight : " Screw !"

Sometimes it would appear subdued. In
fleeting moments when bubbles of champagne
pervaded the nose, or when there was " hot
pot" in the bill of fare, or when an old dish
we had had regularly every day, was de-
scribed in that official document by a new
name. Under such excitements, one would
almost believe it hushed. The ceremony of
washing plates on deck, performed after
every meal by a circle as of ringers of
crockery triple-bob majors for a prize,
would keep it down. Hauling the reel,
taking the sun at noon, posting the
twenty-four hours' run, altering the ship's
time by the meridian, casting the waste
food overboard, and attracting the eager
gulls that* followed in our wake; these
events would suppress it for a while. But
the instant any break or pause took place in
any such diversion, the Voice would be at
it again, importuning us to the last extent.
A newly married young pair, who walked

the deck affectionately some twenty miles
per day, would, in the full flush of their ex-
ercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and
stand trembling, but otherwise immovable,
under its reproaches.

When this terrible monitor was most
severe with us, was when the time ap-
proached for our retiring to our dens for
the night. When the lighted candles in the
saloon grew fewer and fewer. When the
deserted glasses with spoons in them, grew
more and more numerous. When waifs of
toasted cheese, and strays of sardines fried
in batter, slid languidly to and fro in the
table-racks. When the man who always
read, had shut up his book and blown out
his candle. When the man who always
talked, had ceased from troubling. When
the man who was always medically re-
ported as going to have delirium tremens,
had put it off till to-morrow. When the
man who every night devoted himself to a
midnight smoke on deck, two hours in
length, and who every night was in bed
within ten minutes afterwards, was button-
ing himself up in his third coat for his
hardy vigil. For then, as we fell off one by
one, and, entering our several hutches, came
into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge water
and Windsor soap, the Voice would shake
us to the centre. Woe to us when we sat
down on our sofa, watching the swinging
candle for ever trying and retrying to stand
upon his head, or our coat upon its peg imi-
tating us as we appeared in our gymnastic
days, by sustaining itself horizontally from
the wail, in emulation of the lighter and
more facile towels. Then would the Voice
especially claim us for its prey and rend us
all to pieces.

Lights out, we in our berths, and the
wind rising, the Voice grows angrier and
deeper. Under the mattress and under the
pillow, under the sofa and under the wash-
ing stand, under the ship and under the sea,
seeming to arise from the foundations under
the earth with every scoop of the great
Atlantic (and why scoop so !), always
the Voice. Vain to deny its existence, in
the night season ; impossible to be hard
of hearing ; Screw, Screw, Screw. Some-
times i it lifts out of the water, and revolves
with'a whirr, like a ferocious firework
except that it never expends itself, but is
always ready to go off again ; sometimes it
seems to be aguish and shivers ; sometimes
it seems to be terrified by its last plunge,
and has a fit which causes it to struggle,
quiver, and for an instant stop. And now
the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so

16 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

fiercely screwed through time and space,
day and night, fair weather and foul, can
roll. Did she ever take a roll before, like
that last ? Did she ever take a roll before,
like this worse one that is coming now ?
Here is the partition at my ear, down in the
deep on the lee side. Are we ever coming
np again together ? I think not ; the par-
tition and I are so long abont it that I really
do believe we have overdone it this time.
Heavens, what a scoop ! What a deep
scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long
scoop ! Will it ever end, and can we bear
the heavy mass of water we have taken on
board, and which has let loose all the table
furniture in the officers' mess, and has
beaten open the door of the little passage
between the purser and me, and is swashing
about, even there, and even here ? The
purser snores reassuringly, and the ship's
bells striking, I hear the cheerful "All's
well !" of the watch musically given back
the length of the deck as the lately diving
partition, now high in air, tries (unsoftened
by what we have gone through together)
to force me out of bed and berth.

"All's well!" Comforting to know,
though surely all might be better. Put
aside the rolling, and the rush of water,
and think of darting through such dark-
ness with such velocity. Think of any
other similar object coming in the opposite
direction ! Whether there may be an at-
traction in two such moving bodies out at
sea, which may help accident to bring them
into collision ? Thoughts too arise (the Voice
never silent all the while, but marvellously
suggestive) of the gulf below ; of the strange
unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys
over which we are passing ; of monstrous
fish, midway ; of the ship's suddenly alter-
ing her course on her own account, and with
a wild plunge settling down, and makjng
that voyage, with a crew of dead discoverers.
Now, too, one recalls an almost universal ten-
dency on the part of passengers to stumble,
at some time or other in the day, on the
topic of a certain large steamer making this
same run, which was lost at sea and never
heard of more. Everybody has seemed under
a spell, compelling approach to the threshold
of the grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture,
and pretence of never having been near it.
The boatswain's whistle sounds ! A change
in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, and the
watch very busy. Sails come crashing home
overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto ;
every man engaged appears to have twenty
feet, with twenty times the average amount
of stamping power in each. Gradually the

noise slackens, the hoarse cries die away,
the boatswain's whistle softens into the
soothing and contented notes, which rather
reluctantly admit that the job is done for
the time, and the Voice sets in again. Thus
come unintelligible dreams of up hill and
down hill, and swinging and swaying,
until consciousness revives of atmospherical
Windsor soap and bilge water, and the
Voice announces that the giant has come
for the Water Cure again.

Such were my fanciful reminiscences as
I lay, part of that day, in the Bay, of New
York O ! Also, as we passed clear of the
Narrows and got out to sea ; also, in many
an idle hour a# sea in sunny weather. At
length the observations and. computations
showed that we should make the coast of
Ireland to-night. So I stood watch on
deck all night to-night, to see how we made
the coast of Ireland.

Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly
phosphorescent. Great way on the ship, and
double look-out kept. Vigilant captain on
the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over
the port side, vigilant second officer stand-
ing by the quarter- master at the compass,
vigilant third officer posted at the stern-rail
with a lantern. No passengers on the quiet
decks, but expectation everywhere never-
theless. The two men at the wheel, very
steady, very serious, and very prompt to
answer orders. An order issued sharply
now and then, and echoed back; other-
wise the night drags slowly, silently, and
with no change. All of a sudden, at the
blank hour of two in the morning, a vague
movement of relief from a long strain ex-
presses itself in all hands ; the third officer's
lantern twinkles, and he fires a rocket, and
another rocket. A sullen solitary light is
pointed out to me in the black sky yonder.
A change is expected in the Light, but none
takes place. " Give them two more rockets,
Mr. Vigilant." Two more, and a blue fight
burnt. All eyes watch the light again. At
last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up
from it, and even as that small streak in
the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed
to Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and
back again under the Ocean to America.

Then, up come the half-dozen passengers
who are going ashore at Queenstown, and
up comes the Mail- Agent in charge of the
bags, and up come the men who are to
carry the bags into the Mail Tender that
will come off for them out of the harbour.
Lamps and lanterns gleam here and there
about the decks, and impeding bulks are
knocked away with handspikes, and the

Charles Dickens/

THE PIGEONS OF VENICE.

[December 5, 1868/

port-side bulwark, barren but a moment
ago, bursts into a crop of heads of seamen,
stewards, and engineers. The light begins
to be gained upon, begins to be alongside,
begins to be left astern. More rockets, and,
between us and the land, steams beautifully
the Inman steam- ship, City of Paris, for
New York, outward bound. We observe
with complacency that the wind is dead
against her (it being with us), and that
she rolls and pitches. (The sickest pas-
senger on board is the most delighted by
this circumstance.) Time rushes by, as we
rush on, and now we see the light in
Queenstown Harbour, and now the lights
of the Mail Tender coming out to us.
What vagaries the Mail Tender performs
on the way, in every point of the compass,
especially in those where she has no busi-
ness, and why she performs them, Heaven
only knows ! At length she is seen plung-
ing within a cable's length of our port
broadside, and is being roared at through
our speaking trumpets to do this thing, and
not to do that, and to stand by the other,
as if she were a very demented Tender
indeed. Then, we slackening amidst a
deafening roar of steam, this much- abused
Tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and
the men in readiness carry the bags aboard,
and return for more, bending under their
burdens, and looking just like the paste-
board figures of the Miller and his Men in
the Theatre of our boyhood, and comporting
themselves almost as unsteadily. All the
while, the unfortunate Tender plunges high
and low, and is roared at. Then the Queens-
town passengers are put on board of her,
with infinite plunging and roaring, and the
Tender gets heaved up on the sea to that
surprising extent, that she looks within an
ace of washing aboard of us, high and dry.
Roared at with contumely to the last, this
wretched Tender is at length let go, with a
final plunge of great ignominy, and falls
spinning into our wake.

The Voice of conscience resumed its do-
minion, as the day climbed up the sky, and
kept by all of us passengers into port.
Kept by us as we passed other lighthouses,
and dangerous islands off the coast, where
some of the officers, with whom I stood
my watch, had gone ashore in sailing ships
in fogs (and of which by that token they
seemed to have quite an affectionate remem-
brance), and past the Welsh coast, and
past the Cheshire coast, and past every-
thing and everywhere lying between our
ship and her own special dock in the
Off which, at last, at nine of the

clock, on a fair evening early in May, we
stopped, and the Voice ceased. A very
curious sensation, not unlike having my
own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence,
and it was with a no less curious sensation
that I went over the side of the good
Cunard ship Russia (whom Prosperity at-
tend through all her voyages !), and sur-
veyed the outer hull of the gracious monster
that the Voice had inhabited. So, perhaps,
shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey
the frame that held the busier Voice, from
which my vagrant fancy derived this simi-
litude.

THE PIGEONS OF VENICE.

Of all the sights of Venice none are more
remarkable in their way than the sunsets and
the pigeons. Stand on the Molo of a winters
afternoon, with the Doge's Palace on your left
hand, and the church of the Salute (Our Lady
of Health) on your right, and you will see the
Windows of the West thrown open ; you will
see sunsets that suggest the Judgment Day and
the destruction of the world by fire. Wait
until the bells ring and the watcher on the
tower has mumbled his Ave Maria, and you
will see a cloud of pigeons flying from all parts
of the city towards the setting sun. It is the
tocsin of the Virgin Mary; "twenty-four
o'clock," as the Romans say. In a little while,
it will be dark, and these pigeons (sacred birds
of Venice) will have sought their nests among
the domes and spires of the cathedral.

How it came to be a point of pride with the
Venetians to defend these birds and to leave
legacies to them, and afterwards, in a bewil-
dered sort of way, to seek saintships for them
in the local calendar, are matters involved in
mystery. But thus much is known respecting
them.

The pigeons of Venice are the proteges of
the city, as the Lions of St. Mark are its pro-
tectors. They are fed every day at two o'clock.
A dinner bell is rung for them ; and they are
not allowed to be interfered with. Any person
found ill-treating a pigeon is arrested. If it be
his first offence, he is fined ; if he be an old
offender, he is sent to prison. In the good old
days of the Republic, the guilt of shedding a
pigeon's blood could only be expiated by the
law of Moses taking full effect upon the culprit
in the spirit of "an eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth," much as the same law was brought
to bear on poachers, sheepstealers, and others
in our own country, eighty years ago.

It is believed by the credulous that the
pigeons of Venice are in some way connected
with the prosperity of the city ; that they fly
round it three times every day in honour of the
Trinity ; and that their being domiciled in the
town is a sign that it will not be swallowed up
by the waves. When it is high water, they
perch on the top of the tower. When the

18 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Venetians are at war, or when there is any
prospect of a change of dynasty, they gather
round the Lion of St. Mark, over the entrance
to the cathedral, and consult in a low voice
about the destinies of the city. Doubt these
facts if you like, but not in Venice. What
spiders were to Robert Bruce, what crocodiles
are to certain wild tribes in Africa, the colum-
bines or little pigeons are to the Venetians.

Some writers assert that the birds came to
Venice at the time of the crusades, one of their
number having settled on the helmet of a trou-
badour or "fighting bard," whose songs had
lured it out of Palestine. Other accounts say
that they were originally heard of, in connexion
with a festival or religious procession which
took place soon after the foundation of the
cathedral in 1071. But the real story is this.

On a certain Palm Sunday, in the Middle
Ages, the priests of St. Mark determined to
give the people a treat. They collected a
number of pigeons, tied small weights to their
wings, and set them flying over the Piazza, with
a view to their falling into the hands of " needy
and deserving persons." Stones, sticks, and
knives, were thrown at the birds, and many
birds were killed ; but some escaped and con-
cealed themselves in the crevices of the cathe-
dral. One took refuge under the gown of the
Virgin Mary (a statue so called), and another
got entangled in the hands of a clock and bled
to death. The sacrednessof the place screened
the survivors from further harm, and all
thoughts of pursuing them were abandoned.
They became the pets of the city, and after a
few years were taken under the protection of
the Doge. By that time they had multiplied
to such an extent as to have become almost as
numerous as the sparrows are in London ; and
so great were the love and veneration which
they excited in the breasts of the populace, that
no man's life was considered safe who insulted
a pigeon. Special laws were made for them,
called Pigeon Laws, and Venice ran the risk at
one time of being permanently called Columbia,
or the City of Doves. Finally, a pension was
settled upon them, and a daily dinner-bell was
rung for their accommodation.

A curious part of this affair is, that the birds
never* forget their dinner hour never allow
their excursions on the Lagunes to interfere
with it. Sometimes the bell rings too soon,
sometimes too late; but the birds are always
there at the right time ; and if the bell-ringing
be omitted as it sometimes has been by way
of experiment they scream and flap their
wings in a peculiar manner. This may seem
incredible, but the story has been verified over
and over again, both for the amusement of
visitors and the satisfaction of the authorities.

It is a pretty sight of a summer's day to
watch these birds flying about the Piazza to
the sound of the bells, and finally alighting
under the window of the terrace where their
dinner is thrown out to them in a golden shower
of grain. Once upon a time it was a young
lady who performed this office; now it is a
young man. The change is for the worse.

The pigeons of Venice are black and white
(or grey) with pink eyes and red feet. A beau-
tiful green collaret surrounds the throat; the
body is quite Avhite under the wings. Some of
them have white tails, whiter than the snow
which falls on the summit of the Appenines ;
and opal or topaz eyes, which change their tints
a thousand times a day. It is of birds like
these that mention is made in Eastern stories,
birds that did duty as postmen, and carried
letters to and fro between ladies and gentlemen.
Some say the pigeons of St. Mark are of so rare
a breed that none like them are to be obtained
for love or money out of the sea-city ; but the
vouchers are Venetians.

Their principal foes are the cats, the enemies
of the feathered race in all parts of the world.
Various depredations have been made on the
cathedral by these amateurs of game, causing it
to be feared, at one time, that a one-sided war
of extermination would take place. But these
fears have not been realised. The birds are on
their guard against their enemies, and house-
wives who are troubled with mice tise traps for
their destruction in lieu of cats. Thus, the cats
are often reduced to the last stage of misery
and degradation. More like tigers than do-
mestic animals, they will fly at their foes on the
slightest provocation. But cats are so shame-
fully treated all over Italy, that there is some
excuse for their ferocity. In obscure places
they are looked upon as emissaries of the Devil,
and are burnt for witches.

Pigeon pie is not a favourite dish with the
Venetians. It is considered " shabby genteel "
food. Children accustomed to play with the
birds in the Piazza will not touch it, and
beggars have been known to prefer a crust of
dry bread to pigeon's flesh. It may naturally be
asked how pigeons come to be eaten at all in a
place where they are the object of so much
romantic attachment, and why poulterers ex-
pose them in their shop windows. Ask this
question of an hotel-keeper, and he will tell you
that the pigeons sold for food are not the pigeons
of St. Mark, but have been imported into
Venice from the mainland at great trouble
and expense. He will tell you, if he be a
Venetian, that he would rather die than cook a
city pigeon.

The long and the short of the matter is, that
the pigeons of St. Mark are a remnant of the
ancient glories of the city : a living record of
the days when Venice was the mistress of the
seas, the centre of civilisation, the market-place
and tribune of one-half of the civilised world.
To a Venetian these birds are messengers of
peace tokens of pride and power which will
one day reassert themselves.

Some of the pigeons took part in the revolu-
tion of 1849 (flying between the Austrians and
the Italians) and were shot by mistake ; others
were cooked for food, or eaten raw. But it is
the boast of the Venetians that Venice was
true to the pigeons even in her hour of famine ;
that their dinner-bell was rung regularly ; and
that their dinner was supplied to them without
stint, when hundreds of families were in want

=5=

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 5, 1868.] 19

of the commonest necessaries of life, and were
visited at the same time by fire, famine, and
pestilence. Daniel Manin did his work well.
He defended the city against the Austrians, but
he did not forget the city birds. They were in
a measure bequeathed to him by the Doges, his
predecessors, and the people ate porridge while
the pigeons (in prime condition to be killed)
were flying about the streets. Honour to
Daniel Manin ! His body lies in the cathedral,
but the pigeons of St. Mark have made a dove-
cot of his prison bars, and prefer it (or seem to
prefer it) to the Bridge of Sighs. So say the
people of Venice. And a wild song, sung by
the boatmen of the Molo, declares that the
spirit of Daniel Manin is flying about the
Lagunes to this day, in the shape of a beautiful
white dove.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG.
CHAPTER I.

Datchlet, Monday, August the First.
Another day of agony and of acting. Soon
all must be stopped. It cannot go on.
Here is my last day of absence from the
bank, and I am not one bit better. They
have been only too indulgent. But what
can they do ? They must have their work
done, and already they are complaining up
in the London office. A hundred and fifty
pounds a year, and that darling of mine,
Dora^ the children all depending on me.
If I lost this situation, what would become
of us ? And yet I must. My fingers can
scarcely feel the pen, and the trembling
characters swim before my eyes as I write
on ; the paper seems to rise up like waves
of a huge white sea and suffuse my pupils.
What am I to do ? There, my darling has
just gone out with the usual question,
" How do you feel now, dear ? You are
stronger after this rest, are you not ?" And
I falsely say " Yes !" How can I pain her,
she suffers more than I do. 0, what folly
and infatuation to have brought her into
this state of life ! I should have stood by
and let her marry that man, who would
have, at least, maintained her in comfort ;
but my own selfishness would not let me.
He might have turned out a good husband.
Though he was not a good man, she must
have made him one. But my selfishness
must sacrifice her to myself. Like us all !
There ! I open a book a favourite one of
mine Holy Living and Dying, and read a
sentence ; up rises the page to my eyes like
a great wave of foam; a faint buzzing
begins in my ears and swells into the
roar of a great sea. What does all this

mean ? What can be coming ? God pre-
serve my senses ! or can this be a punish-
ment that I have deserved ? Yet the doc-
tor proceeds with his cant, " A little rest is
all that is wanted you must give up
work." How smoothly they say these
things so complacently. And pray will
you, sir, feed her, feed them, pay the rent ?
No ! so far from that, his eye is wander-
ing to her gentle delicate little fingers,
which, ty that divine Aladdin's Lamp a
dear devoted girl contrives to find, have
got hold of what will satisfy him. We
men can find for ourselves readily enough,
but they find for others. There there I
must stop.

That cruel fellow, Maxwell, the manager,
has been twice here in these three days.
A cold, hard, cruel man. He said, he
supposes I am suffering, as I say so, but
really he cannot see what is wrong with
me. With difficulty restraining myself, I
ask him, Did he suppose I was counter-
feiting, or that the doctor was counterfeit-
ing? He answers in his insolent way,
that what he supposed privately did not
bear on the matter ; the question was how
the bank was to get its work done. I must
see that they could not go on paying high
salaries to invalids. He had his duty to
the board and shareholders. I was either
very sick, or only a little sick. If the
former I had better resign, if the latter I
had better return to my work. He really
could give me no longer than to-morrow at
furthest.

Poor Dora shrinks from this cruel sen-
tence as if she were standing in the dock
with a child in her arms.

"Oh, Mr. Maxwell," she cries, "you will
not be so cruel!" He gave her a savage
look.

"That is the word they have for me
through the town. Mr. Maxwell, the hard
man a griping, cruel man. I do my duty,
my good Mrs. Austen, and let every one else
whether they are ladies and gentlemen or
no, do theirs."

That was our crime. He never forgave
that. He had once swept the bank offices,
so the story went. He had no religion but
money and figures. He had never been
seen once in a place of worship, and one of
the clerks saw a cheap translation of the
infidel Renan on his table. Yet whatever
he does to us I can pray for him to an in-
dulgent Lord, and I shall get Dora to do
the same. There again, I must stop. This
agitation makes me forget for a few seconds
that I can't write.

20 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Tuesday, 2nd. At last it has all broken
down. I dare not go to the office. Quite
helpless. She sees it, and knows the
miserable night I have passed. I have
sent to Maxwell, to the bank. He has
cruelly warned me that on the day after to-
morrow they will call upon me to resign.
Then what will be done ! . . . . only one
thing Heaven's will.

Three o'clock. Mr. Stanhope, the clergy-
man, just gone. Lord Langton has fallen
from his horse, and they have got down
Sir Duncan Dennison, the great London
doctor a good man and a charitable
man and Mr. Stanhope has brought
him on to me. But his remedy ! I could
have laughed, but for her sad face. * " My
good friend, no tricks will do here. You
are in a bad way this moment; and I
tell you solemnly your only chance is the
German waters, and, listen, one special one
of those German places Homburg is the
only thing to save you. I snatched a man
from the jaws, from the throat of death, this
year, by packing him off. You must go to-
morrow morning." A fine remedy, and a
precious one truly. Maxwell comes in as
the doctor is there, and Dora passionately
tells him what has been said. He lis-
tens coolly and civilly.

" With that I have nothing to say. We
have to begin making out the report to-
night, and are not going to take on fresh
hands to swell the expenses. The best
thing you can do and I advise you as
manager is to resign at once. I have
another man ready for the place, and I dare
say it could be arranged that a quarter's
salary could be got in some way, as a
bonus, with which you could take your
expedition."

" And leave them to starve ! What do
you suppose is to become of us ? Are they
to be turned out on the road ? Has your
bank, your board of blood-suckers, no heart,
no soul ? "

" The Associated Bank ! God bless me,
yes !" said Sir Duncan, who had been
silent. " I attend at least two of the
directors, as honest and soft fellows as ever
signed a cheque. They're not the fellows
to suck anybody's blood unless at least,
it's in private."

" They are men of business, sir," said
Maxwell, "and do their duty to the bank
and the shareholders."

Then they all left us, Sir Duncan saying :

" My poor fellow, I am sorry for you !
Something may turn up."

We, however, were calm. As I said

before, I had taught Dora whom to turn to
in these straits, and bade her pray for
even Maxwell. On myself I find a sort of
insensibility coming, I suppose from illness.
And yet I have great vitality and life, and
if there was a crisis or purpose before me,
could shake all off for a time.

Four o'clock ! What ungrateful crea-
tures we are ! Oh, to an ever bountiful
Providence be all praise ! It seems like
a miracle; but that confidence, somehow,
never failed. A telegram lies before me
from the directors in London. A note from
Maxwell, at the same time. He would not
come himself, though he came so often
before, to gloat over our miseries. But I
shall find out more of his treachery. Still
I am so joyous, so supremely happy, I
can be angry with no one. Mr. Barnard,
who is a director, but who has been away
on the Continent, has come down himself.
He has seen and told me the plan leave
of absence, and i" am not to resign ! Oh,
happy change ! I feel as in a dream !

Five o'clock. There is more happiness
to set down. I can hardly write these
words not from sickness, but from excite-
ment. It is all settled, and I go, not this
morning, but to-night this very night.
Heaven is very good too good ! Not an
hour ago Mr. Barnard came in here his
knock made me tremble.

" So you are ill ?" he said, it seemed
with sternness. " Well, this can't go on.
You will lose your situation; the bank
must have its work done."

" I know it, sir," I said.

"And so this Sir Duncan says nothing
short of Homburg will do you. A first-
class watering-place, and an expensive
journey for a bank clerk ! Well, well !"

Dora was in a flood of tears. " Oh, he
will die, sir !" she said, passionately.

" No he won't," he said, with a sudden
change in manner " or, at least, if he does,
it shall be his own fault. Come, he shall
go, and this night too."

My dear gave a scream. I felt the
colour in my own face. He sat down and
gave us details of this miraculous deliver-
ance.

Here was the plan, and I do recognise in
it one more proof of that actual guidance of
Providence that positive interference in
our affairs here below. Oh, how unworthy,
I say again, am I of such goodness ! Our
bank, it seems, in London, has a good many
Jew directors, and has been trying to get a
little foreign business in the way of agency.
A rich Frankfurt merchant, whom he knew,

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 5, 1868.] 21

was anxious to buy an estate in England, for
which Barnard was trustee. It was a small
one, but he fancied the situation and the
house. The writings were prepared ; and
a solicitor was going out to have them exe-
cuted, and to receive the money and make
other arrangements, when Mr. Barnard
conceived this idea of substituting me for
the solicitor.

"You shall have your expenses there
and back, and handsome ones, too, out of
which you can squeeze a fortnight's keep.
But you must be back within the month ;
no shirking, mind, for I am your warranty,
and get well, too ; make use of every hour ;
for if you lose this chance, we can't promise
you another."

He has gone. A case with the papers and
a letter of instruction has just come up. A
clerk who brought them counted down fifty
golden sovereigns. It is a dream. Dora
danced round and kissed one of them. If
she were only coming, my love and guar-
dian angel ; but we cannot compass that !
It will be only for one month, and I shall
come back to her happy and strong, and
able to work for our children. Is it a
dream? It is like a wish in a Fairy
Tale. The express leaves to-night at eight.
I shall sleep in London and go on to-
morrow.

Wednesday, London, Charing Cross
Hotel. Bore the journey wonderfully, get-
ting better absolutely. This is all hope
dancing before my eyes. No ledger this
morning my heart is bounding within me.
So curious this great desolate chamber,
where a hundred people are taking break-
fast. Could hear the screaming of the
engine close by. My train, yes, in ten
minutes. Delighful all this excitement. It
is new life a bright sunny day the
bustling crowds going by the gay look
of everything, and the pleasant journey all
before me.

CHAPTER II.

Brussels, six p.m. Such a day. Delicious
sea happy travellers charming green
fields, and that strange look of Ostend, the
first foreign place I have ever seen. All
red tiles and potsherds, it seemed to me, at
a distance. The white quays and yellow
houses. Then the trains through the plea-
sant Belgian country ; the odd faces, and
that singular custom of the guard coming
in so mysteriously at the door, when the
train is at full speed. What things I shall
have to tell and amuse darling Dora,
whose name makes my heart low, only this

excitement prevents me thinking of any-
thing dismal. I shall write a book of
travels, make a little money, and give it all
to her. But this amazing and delicious
capital ! It is awe- striking so solid and
splendid and the glorious cathedral ! Such
wealth, such gorgeousness to be in the
world, which we do not dream of even.
The trees in the streets, the people sitting
out and taking coffee, the splendid carriages,
and all with such a grand and noble air of
stateliness. I have noted a thousand things
to tell Dora when I return. I feel getting
stronger every moment, and a quarter of
an hour ago read an English paper, with-
out finding the words swimming, and the
paper rising up to my eyes. I think I shall
go on to-night.

Friday, Cologne. A long night in the
great roomy carriages, and very comfort-
able. A little curtain to draw over the
lamp, and the whole left to myself: so I
might have been in my own room, yet did
not get to sleep till nearly one o'clock ; not
so much from noise or novelty, as from my
own thoughts, so much was coming back on
me. This was the first time I had been away
from home, from Dora ; and now that I
was at a distance, she, and all that she had
passed, began to rise before me like pic-
tures. I could see now like a man walk-
ing back to get a good view of a picture
her sweet face in the centre, and what a
deal I had gone through to win it for
myself ! Though she never shall know it,
much of what I suffer now is owing to that
six years' feverish anxiety. And I saved
her from him. For a time I did feel some
remorse, yet now I do not. It was all for
a good end.

Let me think now, as an entertainment,
of the first bright day on which I saw her.
Some wealthy people, who lived in tolerable
state, had " filled their house," as it is
called, and had asked me down. I was
reluctant to go. In these days and not
unpleasant days were they how I lived in
the book world, and very pleasant friends I
had among them. For as Richard of Bury
says, in words that sound like old church
bells, "These are the masters that instruct
us without rods ; if you chide them they do
not answer, if you neglect or ill-treat them
they bear no malice. They are always
cheerful, sweet-tempered, ready to talk and
comfort us at any hour of night or day."
For them I felt an affection they seemed
to me beautiful, with charming faces, and
shall I own it ? some of the prettiest faces
of nature when shown to me, appeared to

::o

22 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

me, much as these pretty faces would look
on mere money treasures. Do I not re-
member how I used to look out at the
world, as from a window, and punctually as
the clock struck twelve every night, would
put away work, fetch out the best novel
of the day, light the soothing cigar, and
read for two hours ? How enjoyable was
this time, almost too exquisite ! But the
whole was about to collapse like a card
house.

How curious this dark country looks
" roaring by" the window with the glare
and flash from a station. The dull " burr"
of the train, and the lights from the win-
dows dappling the ground. As I look out
I see the small dark figure of the guard
creeping along outside. In this situation,
in my lonely blue chamber, there is a
sort of vacuity for thought, the world
is shut out and the pictures of the past
pour in ... .

Was it not a very stately place a new
castle, grand stabling, horses and carriages
in profusion, as I was shown into the great
drawing-room, and received with welcome
by the hostess. The guests were all out,
shooting, riding, walking, and so unfortu-
nate she says lunch was over. The young
ladies were in the garden, where we would
go and look for them. Stay ; no, here they
were coming, and past the mullioned win-
dows, which ran down to the ground,
flitted two or three figures, led by a little
scarlet cloak. In a second cheerful voices
rang out like music ; the door opened, and
she came tripping in. I did not see the
others. I do not know who they were
to this moment ; but was it not then, my
dear foolish Austen, that everything fell in
like a house of cards that the glory
passed away from the books and never re-
turned?

Her name was Dora a pretty and melo-
dious one ; she was small, elegantly made,
and with dancing eyes, bright sloe black
hair, and a look of refinement about her
small features I have never seen in any one
else. She was full of spirits, and laughter,
and delight. I recollect to this moment
how I was introduced, with what a co-
quettish solemnity she went through the
ceremony, and how, as I bowed, I felt
something whisper to me, " This is an im-
portant moment for you, sir . . ."

She was daughter to a great House in
the neighbourhood. From that hour she
unconsciously entered into my life. She
little thought how her airy figure was to
hover about my study, and of how many

day dreams she was to be the centre. So
do the years go by ; yet that dull blue cloth
before me seems to open and draw away,
and show me that gay noonday and that
"morning room" at House as dis-
tinctly as if it were yesterday. In my
pocket-book I have at this moment a pic-
ture of her, done, not by the fanciful touch
of memory, but by, perhaps, the less en-
during one of the camera. It is hard to
see by this light. Yes, there she is, a
cloud of white sweeping behind her, flowers
in her hand, with a soft inquiring look,
half serious, and that seems on the verge
of breaking into a smile, and spoiling the
operator's whole work. So I saw her then,
so I see her now. What if I was never
to see her again ! But this is too lugu-
brious ! . . .

There, the blast again a flashing and
flaring of lamps, a screaming of the
whistles, and we rumble into a blaze of
light, with buffets and offices lit up, and
sleepy passengers waiting. One fellow in
a white hat invades my blue chamber a
gross Belgian, with a theatrical portman-
teau pushed in before him, and an air as if
he were performing some feat of distinction.
Away flutters the little figure, and from
that moment the charm is broken, clouds
of tobacco- smoke begin, wherein, I sup-
pose fitting back-ground he sees pic-
tures of his own gross dejeuner a la four-
chette, or dinner, at the Trois Freres. A
true beast, that presently grunts and snores,
lives but for the present hour, and never
lifts up his soul in gratitude or humility.
There, he has got out, and we have done
with him. I know now the secret of this
dislike ; he reminded me so of Grainger,
the only evil genius I ever encountered in
my life, and the evil genius that I van-
quished. Rather, grace and strength came
to me from above, to aid me to vanquish
him.

I see the very street in the little town on
that gay morning. How well I remember
our all rushing to the window of the bank
the day the regiment came in when we
heard their music, and I must have seen
him Grainger walk by, his sword drawn,
at the head of his company, and looked at
him, perhaps with admiration. I little
dreamed what he was to be towards me,
later. I thought of their coming with
pleasure ; it would vary the monotony. I
thought of how they would amuse her,
perhaps, for whom a country town must be
dull indeed. Later, I see soldiers walking
about the place, the officers rather fine and

Charles Dickens.j

FATAL ZERO.

U 23

contemptuous, for which one could bear
them no ill-will, as they had fought and bled
for us, and might take little airs.

(A cold blast and rush of air, as the con-
ductor has come in like a spirit, with a
lantern, and wants to see tickets.)

Let me look back again, setting my head,
now aching a good deal, against these com-
fortable cushions. It is not likely that I
shall sleep under these strange conditions.
I like dwelling on little pictures of that time,
and it is an easy and pleasant amusement
constructing them. I next see one of our
country-town little parties, and he making
his way no, not making, he disdained
that trouble, he took it. His way he
chose fitfully ; he selected anything at
hazard, called it his way, and others
cheerfully bowed and adopted it. There
are a few such men in the world, and I
have often envied them. Such a manner is
worth money and place and estate. See
how long one of us takes to carry out a
little play, to get to know people, even.
We hesitate, make timorous advances, lose
days and weeks. He does all in a few
minutes. Time, in this short life, is money,
and more valuable.

I dare say all this time he heartily dis-
liked me I am sure he did and had that
instinctive dislike which one man often has
to another from the very outset. His eyes
seemed to challenge me, and he knew me
for an adversary. How could I com-
pete with him, with such advantages on his
side ? And he had a great one, for in those
days, my dear Dora, you were a little,
ever so little, of a coquette, and liked to
have your amusement, which was very
natural indeed.

I have had my trials. My father had
speculated and lost a fine estate, which he
had also encumbered. We had all then to
work and do what we could. I was a
gentleman, and, though not a rich one,
quite as good as they. But they looked
down on me, because we had lost our for-
tune. Dora's father had bitterly resented
what she had done, and all her fortune and
estate, too, was left away to a cousin a
drinking, hunting fellow who was amazed
at his good fortune. I never regretted it
a moment.

Grainger cast his eyes on her just to fill
up his idle time. For me he affected con-
tempt, but from me he was to have a lesson.
They wished to force her to marry him,
and she was helpless in their hands.
But when I heard that scandal about* the
innkeeper's daughter, where, too, he was

lodging, was I not right to hunt it up ?
Could I have stood by and looked on ?
And though they said, and he protested, it
was false, what of that ? Did I not know
him to be a man of a certain life ? There
were other cases as bad. He was not fit
to be her husband, and if he did " go to the
bad," later, it concerned himself, and
merely proved my discernment. Thank
God I saved her ! and I can now lay my
hand on my heart and feel no compunction

whatever that happy first year !

She changed the whole colour of my life,
made me thoughtful, steady, and taught
me even to pray, which I did little of
before. Angel ! She shall teach me much
more yet.

Saturday. Homburg at last. Delight-
ful and most easy journey. I have written
my letter to her from this sweet and pas-
toral place. I write in the daintiest of
little rooms, the yellow jalousies drawn close
to keep out the sun. Outside the window
is a balcony, Venetian-like in its breadth,
filled up with a whole garden of flowers,
where there is a table, and where one can
walk about. It recals an old and lost
place in the country, before we were ruined,
as they say. Overhead is an awning, and
when the sun is less strong, I can go out,
and walk up and down, and look into the
street. If only Dora were here ! No matter ;
one of these days she shall be, and better
times will come ; " one colour cannot always
be turning up," as the maid said this morn-
ing. And here comes the post a fellow
like a soldier, with a very grim moustache,
who hands in a letter. It is from her, I
could guess at her writing from the very
balcony. I run down to take it from the
landlady's hands and tear it open. It seems
a whole year since I have seen her. Dear
characters ! sweet writing ! I fasten it in
here, at this page of my little diary.

" Dearest, Oh,' how I miss and long for
you. How I long to learn that you have
borne the journey well ; not that you are tetter
already, for that I am not so unreasonable
as to expect. But soon you will tell me so.
Our two little darlings only know that you
have gone away. They think it is to the
nearest town, and that you will be back to-
morrow. Don't fatigue yourself writing,
think only of your dear health. Keep out
of the dreadful sun, and amuse yourself.
I hope this will find you on your arrival.
" Dora."

The underlined words, how delicate, how

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[December 5, 1868.]

like her sweet soul ! She has a faint notion,
but she dares not let it appear, that I
am a little better. I shall write this mo-
ment what joyful news for her ! . . . There,
I have told her all, everything. Four closely
written pages, a little swimming of the head,
but I could almost work at the ledger this
moment. I have told her how I was out be-
times this morning, at six o'clock ; how I
walked up the bright street lined with fairy
looking houses, all with their short broad
balconies loaded with flowers, past the gay
festive pavilions, more than hotels, the
Four Seasons, the Victoria, with the cool
shady courts and porches, past that turn
to the right, down another sweet alley where
are more fairy-like houses with balconies,
and where the great ones live. The Kisse-
leff- street they call it, which gives a grand
and inspiring Russian association. All this
time in front of me, as I ascend, and seem-
ingly far away, yet very close, are the rich,
cool, heavily laden Taunus hills, covered
with trees and verdure, rising slowly and
grandly, and filling up the gap between the
houses at the far end of the town. Then
I walk on upwards, and see lovers of plea-
sure in white coats and straw Panama
hats, sitting out. in front of the hotels and
smoking in the shade. Then I pass the
great red building, the Kursaal, the Temple
of Play, which looks like a king's palace.
Then I turn down to the right, past the
most inviting villas, all colours and shapes,
now a Swiss chalet, now a true Italian
house, but overgrown with the most ex-
quisite foliage, the metal of their balconies
all embroidered with leaves, behind which
you see white dresses, and from behind
which comes the clink of breakfast china.
Other windows, windows lower down, are
thrown wide open, and there the morn-
ing meal goes on, even in the- gardens ;
fat men in white coats and no waist-
coats, with four double chins at least, are
enjoying pipe and coffee. Then the houses
stop short, and the dense greenery begins,
groves upon groves, forest mounting over
forest, walks winding here and winding
there. Along the path, honest Homburgers
have their little table with an awning, under
which is the cool melon, the grape, the de-
licious honey, and mountain butter, most
inviting. If Dora were but on my arm how
she would enjoy all this, as, indeed, I must
stop in this description to tell her.

Well, I walk on through this greenery,
through the most charming alleys, cut in the
groves, and, through the trees, see afar the
glitter of company, the sheen of curious
figures flitting to and fro among the
leaves, the glimpse of a Swiss chalet. Such
crowds, it seems like a Watteau feast ! Down
through the avenues float the balmiest
breezes, health restoring as I feel when they
touch me. Then I emerge on the open
space, and see the most animated scene,
bright colours, bright dresses, white coats,
grey coats, hats white and grey, fluttering
veils, pink and cream coloured parasols,
flowers, " costumes," of every pattern, actu-
ally like the opening scene of the chorus at
an opera seen long, long ago. From a pagoda
came strains of rich music with the clash
of cymbals, and soft stroke of drum. How
new, how delicious all this to me ! In the
centre was the well deep below, with spa-
cious steps leading down, and girls giving
out the water, and crowds pressing forward
to receive it. The chinking of glass every-
where. Beyond, again, rows of little shops
for jewellery and trifles, charming and most
exhilarating scene, as I look on. The ani-
mation and gaiety drive away all the
sinking and weakness, and I seem to grow
strong and hopeful every moment. Down
the steps do they troop, the loveliest of
women, French, English, and American, as
I know by the curious chatter of the voices,
and with them lords, and friends, and ad-

Early in December will be ready
THE COMPLETE SET

TWENTY VOLUMES,

With General Index to the entire work from its
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heretofore.

FAREWELL SERIES OF READINGS.

MR. CHARLES DICKENS.

MESSES. CHAPPELL and Co. have the honour
to announce that Mb. Dickens will read as follows :
Monday, December 7, Thursday, December 10, Friday,
December 11, Monday, December 14, and Saturday
Morning, December 19, Edinburgh; Wednesday, De-
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day, December 22, St. James's Hall, London.

All communications to be addressed to Messes.
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Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street Strand. Printed by C. Whiting, Iieaufort House, Strand.

HE-STOJ^X-QF- OUR; HYES-JROM 'Ye^TO YZJi

COJ^DUCTED-BY

^ETH WB1CE IS If^COI\po^T EO

5l0\liSH0LP'V0HpS ^
sag gfi ' ii a af-r a i%

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1868

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Story by the Author of "Black Sheep."
CHAPTER III. MARIAN.

The little child who was so long prayed
for, and who came at last in answer to
James Ashnrst's fervent prayers, had no-
thing daring her childhood to distinguish
her from ordinary children. It is scarcely
worthy of record that her mother had a
hundred anecdotes illustrative of her pre-
cocity, of her difference from other infants,
of certain peculiarities never before noticed
in a child of tender years. All mothers say
these things, whether they believe them or
not, and Mrs. Ashurst, stretched on her
sick couch, did believe them, and found in
watching what she believed to be the ab-
normal gambols of her child, a certain relief
from the constant dreary wearing pain
which sapped her strength, and rendered her
life void, and colourless, and unsatisfactory.
James Ashurst believed them fervently;
even if they had required a greater amount
of credulity than that which he was blessed
with, he, knowing it gave the greatest
pleasure to his wife, would have stuck to
the text that Marian was a wonderful,
"really, he might say, a very wonderful,
child." But he had never seen anything
of childhood since his own, which he had
forgotten, and the awakening of the com-
monest faculties in his daughter came upon
him as extraordinary revelations of subtle
character, which, when their possessor had
arrived at years of maturity, would astonish
the world. The Helmingham people did not
subscribe to these opinions. Most of them
had children of their own, who, they con-
sidered, were quite as eccentric, and odd,
and peculiar as Marian Ashurst. "Not
that I'm for 'lowin that to be pert and

sassy one minute, and sittin' mumchance
wi'out sa much as a word to throw at a
dog the next, is quite manners," they would
say among themselves, " but what's ye to
expect ? Poor Mrs. Ashurst layin' on the
brode of her back, and little enough of that,
poor thing, and that poor feckless creature,
the schoolmaster, buzzed i' his 'ed wi' book
larnin' and that ! A pretty pair to bring
up such a tyke as Miss Madge !"

That was in the very early days of her
life. As the " tyke " grew up she dropped
all outward signs of tykeishness, and seemed
to be endeavouring to prove that eccen-
tricity was the very last thing to be as-
cribed to her. The Misses Lewin, whose
finishing school was renowned throughout
the county, declared they had never had
so quick or so hard-working a pupil as Miss
Ashurst, or one who had done them so
much credit in so short a time. The new
rector of Helmingham declared that he
should not have known how to get through
his class and parish work, had it not been
for the assistance which he had received
from Miss Ashurst, at times when when
really well, other young ladies would,
without the slightest harm to themselves,
be it said, have been enjoying themselves
in the croquet-ground. When the wardrobe
woman retired from the school to enter into
the bonds of wedlock with the drill-sergeant
(whose expansive chest and manly figure
when going through the "exercise with-
out clubs," might have softened Medusa
herself), Marian Ashurst at once took upon
herself the vacant situation, and resolutely
refused to allow any one else to fill it.
These may have been put down as eccen-
tricities ; they were evidences of odd cha-
racter certainly not usually found in girls
of Marian's age, but they were proofs of a
spirit far above tykeishness. All her best

eg:

[December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

friends, except of course the members
of her family, whose views regarding her
were naturally extremely circumscribed,
noticed, in the girl an exceedingly great
desire for the acquisition of knowledge, a
power of industry and application quite
unusual, an extraordinary devotion to any-
thing she undertook, which suffered itself
to be turned away by no temptation, to be
wearied by no fatigue. Always, eager to
help in any scheme, always bright-eyed and
clear-headed and keen-witted, never unduly
asserting herself, but always having her
own way while persuading her interlocutors
that she was following their dictates, the
odd shy child grew up into a girl less shy
indeed, but scarcely less odd. And cer-
tainly not loveable ; those who fought her
battles most strongly and even in that
secluded village there were social and do-
mestic battles, strong internecine warfare,
carried on with as much rancour as in the
great city itself were compelled to admit
there was "a something" in her which
they disliked, and which occasionally was
eminently repulsive.

This something had developed itself
strongly in the character of the child, be-
fore she emerged into girlhood, and though
it remained vague as to definition, while
distinct as to impression in the minds of
others, Marian herself understood it per-
fectly, and could have told any one, had
she chosen, what it was that made her un-
like the other children, apart from her
being brighter and smarter than they, a
difference which she also perfectly under-
stood. She would have said, " I am very
fond of money, and the others are not;
they are content to have food and clothes,
but I like to see the money that is paid for
them, and to have some of it, all for myself,
and to heap it up and look at it, and I am
not satisfied as they are, when they have
what they want I want better things,
nicer food, and smarter clothes, and more
than them, the money. I don't say so, be-
cause I know papa hasn't got it, and so he
cannot give it to me, but I wish he could.
There is no use talking and grumbling
about things we cannot have ; people laugh
at you, and are glad you are so foolish
when you do that, so I say nothing about
it, but I wish I was rich."

Marian would have made some such an-
swer to any one who should have endea-
voured to get at her mind to find out what
that was lurking there, never clearly seen,
but always plainly felt, which made her
" old fashioned," in other than the pathetic

and interesting sense in which that ex^
preseion has come to be used with reference
to children, before she had entered upon
her teens.

A clever mother would have found out
this grave and ominous component of the
child's character would have interpreted
the absence of the thoughtless extrava-
gance, so charming, if sometimes so trying,
of childhoods would have been quick to
have noticed that Marian asked, "What
will it cost?" and gravely entered into
mental calculation on occasions when other
children would have demanded the pur-
chase of a coveted article clamorously, and
shrieked if it were refused. But Mrs.
Ashurst was not a clever mother, she was
only a loving, indulgent, rather helpless
one, and the little Marian's careful ways
were such a practical comfort to her, while
the child was young, that it never occurred
to her to investigate their origin, to ask
whether such a very desirable and fortunate
effect could by possibility have a reprehen-
sible, dangerous, insidious cause. Marian
never wasted her pennies, Marian never
spoiled her frocks, Marian never lost or
broke anything ; all these exceptional
virtues Mrs. Ashurst carefully noted and
treasured in the storehouse of her memory.
What she did not notice was, that Marian
never gave anything away, never volun-
tarily shared any of her little possessions
with her playfellows, and, when directed to
do so, complied with a reluctance which all
her pride, all her brave dread of the ap-
pearance of being coerced, hardly enabled
her to subdue, and suffered afterwards in
an unchildlike way. What she did not
observe was, that Marian was not to be
taken in by glitter and show ; that she
preferred, from the early days in which
her power of exhibiting her preference
was limited by the extent of the choice
which the toy-merchant who combined
hardbake and hairdressing with minister-
ing to the pleasures of infancy afforded
within the sum of sixpence. If Marian
took any one into her confidence, or asked
advice on such solemn occasions generally
ensuing on a protracted hoarding of the
coin in question it would not be by the
questions, " Is it the prettiest ?" " Is it the
nicest?" but, "Do you think it is worth
sixpence ?" and the child would look from
the toy to the money, held closely in the
shut palm of her chubby hand, with a per-
turbed countenance, in which the pleasure
of the acquisition was almost neutralised
by the pain of the payment a countenance

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 12. 1868.;

in -which the spirit of barter was to be dis-
cerned by knowing eyes. But none such
took note of Marian's childhood. The illu-
mination of love is rather dazzling than
searching in the case of mothers of Mrs.
Ashurst's class, and she was dazzled.
Marian was perfection in her eyes, and at
an age at which the inversion of the rela-
tions between mother and daughter, com-
mon enough in later life, would have
appeared to others unreasonable, prepos-
terous, Mrs. Ashurst surrendered herself
wholly, happily, to the guidance and the
care of her daughter. The inevitable self-
assertion of the stronger mind took place,
the inevitable submission of the weaker.
In this instance, a gentle, persuasive, un-
conscious self-assertion, a joyful yielding,
without one traversing thought of humilia-
tion or deposition.

Her daughter was so clever, so helpful,
so grave, so good, her economy and ma-
nagement surely they were wonderful in
so young a girl, and must have come to her
by instinct ? rendered life such a different,
so much easier a thing, delicate as she was,
and requiring so disproportionate a share of
their small means to be expended on her,
that it was not surprising Mrs. Ashurst
should see no possibility of evil in the origin
of such qualities.

As for Marian's father, he was about as
likely to discover a comet or a continent as
to discern a flaw in his daughter's moral
nature. The child, so longed for, so fer-
vently implored, remained always, in her
father's sight, Heaven's best gift to him;
and he rejoiced exceedingly, and wondered
not a little, as she developed into the girl
whom we have seen beside his death-bed.
He rejoiced because she was so clever, so
quick, so ready, had such a masterly mind
and happy faculty of acquiring knowledge ;
knowledge of the kind he prized and re-
verenced ; of the kind which he felt would
remain to her, an inheritance for her life.
He wondered why she was so strong, for
he knew she did not take the peculiar kind
of strength of character from him or from
her mother.

It was not to be wondered at that these
peculiarities of Marian Ashurst were no-
ticed by the inhabitants of the village
where she was born, and where her
childish days had been passed ; but it was
remarkable that they were regarded with
anything but admiration. For a keen ap-
preciation of money, and an unfailing deter-
mination to obtain their money's worth,
had long been held to be eminently charac-

teristic of the denizens of Helmingham.
The cheese-factor used to declare that the
hardest bargains throughout his county
connexion were those which Mrs. Croke,
and Mrs. Whicher, and, worst of all, old
Mrs. M'Shaw (who, though Helmingham
born and bred, had married Sandy M'Shaw,
a Scotch gardener, imported by old Squire
Creswell) drove with him. Not the very
best ale to be found in the cellars of the
Lion at Brocksopp (and they could give
you a good glass of ale, bright, beaming,
and mellow, at the Lion, when they chose),
not the strongest mahogany - coloured
brandy- and- water, mixed in the bar by the
fair hands of Miss Parkhurst herself, not
even the celebrated rum-punch, the recipe
of which, like the songs of the Scandi-
navian scalds, had never been written out,
but had descended orally to old Tilley, the
short, stout, rubicund landlord had ever
softened the heart of a Helmingham farmer
in the matter of business, or induced him to
take a shilling less for a quarter of wheat,
or a truss of straw, than he had originally
made up his mind to sell it at.

" Canny Helmingham," was its name
throughout the county, and its people
were proud of it. Mr. Frampton, an earnest
clergyman who had succeeded the old rector,
had been forewarned of the popular preju-
dice, and on the second Sunday of his
ministry addressed his parishioners in a
very powerful and eloquent discourse upon
the wickedness of avarice and the folly of
heaping up worldly riches; after which,
seeing that the only effect his sermon had
was to lay him open to palpable rudeness,
he wisely concentrated his energies on his
translation of Horace's Odes (which has
since gained him such great renown, and
of which at least forty copies have been
sold), and left his parishioners' souls to take
care of themselves. But however canny
and saving they might be, and however
sharply they might battle with the cheese-
factor, and look after the dairymaid, as
behoved farmers' wives in these awful days
of free trade (they had a firm belief in
Helmingham that " Cobden," under which
generic name they understood it, was a kind
of pest, as is the smut in wheat, or the tick
in sheep), all the principal dames in the
village were greatly shocked at the un-
natural love of money which it was im-
possible to help noticing in Marian Ashurst.

" There was time enow to think o' they
things, money and such like fash, when
pipple was settled down," as Mrs. Croke
said, " but to see children hardenin' their

28 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

hearts and scrooin' their pocket-money is
unnatural, to say the least of it !" It was
unnatural and unpopular in Helmingham.
Mrs. Croke put such a screw on the cheese-
factor, that in the evening after his deal-
ings with her, that worthy filled the com-
mercial room at the Lion with strange
oaths and modern instances of sharp deal-
ing in which Mrs. Croke bore away the
palm ; but she was highly indignant when
Lotty Croke's godmother bought her a
savings bank, a grey edifice, with what
theatrical people call a practicable chimney
down which the intended savings should be
deposited. Mrs. Whicher's dairymaid, who,
being from Ireland, and a Roman Catholic
in faith, was looked upon with suspicion,
not to say fear, in the village, and who
was regarded by the farmers as in con-
stant, though secret, communication with
the Pope of Rome and the Jesuit College
generally, declared that her mistress " can-
thered the life out of her" in the matter of
small wages and much work ; but Mrs.
Whicher's daughter, Emily, had more crim-
son gowns, and more elegant bonnets,
with regular fields of poppies, and perfect
harvests of ears of corn growing out
of them, than any of her compeers, for
which choice articles the heavy bill of
Madame Morgan formerly of Paris, now
of Brocksopp was paid without a murmur.
" It's unnatral in a gell like Marian Ashurst
to think so much o' money and what it
brings," would be a frequent remark at
one of those private Helmingham institu-
tions known as "Thick teas." And then Mrs.
Croke would say, "And what like will a
gell o' that sort look to marry ? Why a
man maun have poun's and poun's before
she'd say, ' yea' and buckle to! "

But that was a matter which Marian had
already decided upon.

CHAPTER IV. MARIAN'S CHOICE.

At a time when it seemed as though
the unchildlike qualities which had distin-
guished the child from her playmates and
coevals were intensifying and maturing in
the girl growing up, then, to all appear-
ance, hard, calculating, and mercenary,
Marian Ashurst fell in love, and thence-
forward the whole current of her being
was diverted into healthier and more na-
tural channels. Fell in love is the right
and the only description of the process, so
far as Marian was concerned. Of course
she had frequently discussed the great
question which racks the hearts of board-
ing school misses, and helps to fill up the

spare time of middle-aged women, with her
young companions ; had listened with out-
ward calmness and propriety, but with an
enormous amount of unshown cynicism, to
their simple gushings ; and had said suffi-
cient to lead them to believe that she
joined in their fervent admiration of and
aspiration for young men with black eyes
and white hands, straight noses, and curly
hair. But all the time Marian was building
for herself a castle in the air, the proprietor
of which, whose wife she intended to be,
was a very different person from the hair-
dressers' dummies whose regularity of fea-
ture caused the hearts of her companions to
palpitate. The personal appearance of her
future husband had never given her an in-
stant's care ; she had no preference in the
colour of his eyes or hair, in his height,
style, or even of his age, except she
thought she would rather he were old.
Being old, he was more likely to be gene-
rous, less likely to be selfish, more likely to
have amassed riches and to be wealthy.
His fortune would be made, not to be
made; there would be no struggling, no
self-denial, no hope required. Marian's
domestic experiences caused her to hate
anything in which hope was required ; she
had been dosed with hope without the
smallest improvement, and had lost faith
in the treatment. Marriage was the one
chance possible for her to carry out the
dearest, most deeply implanted, longest
cherished aspiration of her heart the ac-
quisition of money and power. She knew
that the possession of the one led to the
other, from the time when she had saved
her schoolgirl pennies and had noticed the
court paid to her by her little friends, to
the then moment, when the mere fact of her
having a small stock of ready money, even
more than her sense and shrewdness, gave
her position in that impecunious household,
she had recognised the impossibility of
achieving even a semblance of happiness in
poverty. When she married, it should be
for money, and for money alone. In the
hard school of life in which she had been
trained she had learned that the prize she
was aiming at was a great one, and one
difficult to be obtained ; but that know-
ledge only made her the more determined
in its pursuit. The difficulties around her
were immense ; in the narrow circle in
which she lived she had not any present
chances of meeting with any person likely
to be able to give her the position which
she sought, far less of rendering him sub-
servient to her wishes. But she waited

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 12, 1868.] 29

and hoped; she was waiting and hoping,
calmly and quietly fulfilling the ordinary
duties of her very ordinary life, but never
losing sight of her fixed intent. Then
across the path of her life there came a
man who seemed to give promise of even-
tually fulfilling the requirements she had
planned out for herself. It was but a
promise; there was nothing tangible; but
the promise was so good, the girl's heart
yearned for an occupant, and, with all its
hard teaching and its worldly aspirations,
it was but human after all. So her human
heart and her worldly wisdom came to a
compromise in the matter of her acceptance
of a lover, and the result of that compro-
mise was her engagement to Walter Joyce.
When the Helmingham Grammar School
was under the misrule of old Br. Munch,
then at its* lowest ebb, and nominations
to the foundation were to be had for the
asking, and, indeed, in many cases were
sent a-begging, it occurred to the old head
master to offer one of the vacancies to Mr.
Joyce, the principal grocer and maltster of
the village, whose son was then just of an
age to render him accessible to the benefits
of the education which Sir Ranulph Clinton
had demised to the youth of Helmingham,
and which was then being so imperfectly
supplied to them under the auspices of Dr.
Munch. You must not for an instant imagine
that the offer was made by the old Doctor
out of pure loving-kindness and magna-
nimity ; he looked at it, as he did at most
things, from a purely practical point of
view ; he owed Joyce, the grocer, so much
money, and if Joyce, the grocer, would write
him a receipt in full for all his indebtedness
in return for a nomination for Joyce junior,
at least he, the Doctor, would not have done
a bad stroke of business. He would have
wiped out an existing score, the value of
which proceeding meant, in Dr. Munch's
eyes, that he would be enabled at once to
commence a fresh one, while the acquisi-
tion of young Joyce as a scholar would not
cause one atom of difference in the manner
in which the school was conducted, or rather
left to conduct itself. The offer was worth
making, for the debt was heavy, though the
Doctor was by no means sure of its being
accepted. Andrew Joyce was not Helming-
ham born ; he had come from Spindleton,
one of the large inland capitals, and had
purchased the business which he owned.
He was not popular among the Helming-
ham folk, who were all strict church people,
so far as morning service attending, tithe
paying, and parson-respecting were con-

cerned, from the fact that his religious ten-
dencies were suspected to be what the vil-
lagers termed "methodee." He had his
seat in the village church, it is true, and
put in an appearance there on the Sunday
morning, but instead of spending the Sab-
bath evening in the orthodox way which at
Helmingham consisted in sitting in the best
parlour, with a very dim light, and enjoying
the blessings of sound sleep, while Nelson's
Fasts and Festivals, or some equally proper
work, rested on the sleeper's knee, until it
fell off with a crash, and was only recovered
to be held upside down until the grateful
announcement of the arrival of supper Mr.
Joyce was in the habit of dropping into
Salem Chapel, where Mr. Stoker, a shining
light from the pottery district, dealt forth
the most uncomfortable doctrine in the
most forcible manner. The Helming-
ham people declared, too, that Andrew
Joyce was "uncanny" in other ways; he
was close-fisted and niggardly, his name was
to be found on no subscription list ; he was
litigious ; he declared that Mr. Prickett, the
old-fashioned solicitor of the village, was too
slow for him, and he put his law matters
into the hands of Messrs. Sheen and Na-
smyth, attorneys at Brocksopp, who levied
a distress before other people had served a
writ, and who were considered the sharpest
practitioners in the county. Old Dr. Munch
had heard of the process of Messrs. Sheen
and Nasmyth, and the dread of any of it
being exercised on him originally prompted
his offer to Andrew Joyce. He knew that
he might count on an ally in Andrew
Joyce's wife, a superior woman in very
delicate health, who had great influence
with her husband, and who was devoted to
her only son. Mrs. Joyce, when Hester
Baines, had been a Bible-class teacher in
Spindleton, and had had herself a fair
amount of education, would have had more,
for she was a very earnest woman in her
vocation, ever striving to gain more know-
ledge herself for the mere purpose of im-
parting it to others, but from her early
youth she had been fighting with a spinal
disease, to which she was gradually suc-
cumbing, so that although sour granite-
faced Andrew Joyce was not the exact help-
mate that the girl so full of love and trust
would have chosen for herself, when he
offered her his hand and his home, she was
glad to avail herself of the protection thus
afforded, and of the temporary peace which
she could thus enjoy, until called, as she
thought she should be, very speedily to her
eternal rest.

30 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

That call did not come nearly as soon as
Hester Baines had anticipated ; not, indeed,
until nearly a score of years after she gave
np Bible-teaching, and became Andrew
Joyce's wife. In the second year of her
marriage a son was born to her, and thence-
forward she lived for him, and for him
alone. He was a small, delicate, sallow-faced
boy, with enormous liquid eyes, and rich red
lips, and a long throat, and thin limbs, and
long skinny hands. A shy retiring lad,
with an invincible dislike to society of any
kind, even that of other boys ; with a hatred
of games, and fun; and an irrepressible
tendency to hide away somewhere, any-
where, in an old lumber-room amid the
disused trunks and broken clothes-horses,
and general lumber, or under the wide-
spreading branches of a tree, and then, ex-
tended prone on his stomach, to he, with his
head resting on his hands, and a book
flat between his face-supporting arms. He
got licked before he had been a week at
the school, because he openly stated he did
not like half-holidays, a doctrine which when
first whispered among his schoolfellows was
looked upon as incredible, but which, on
proof of its promulgation, brought down
upon its holder severe punishment. Despite
of all Dr. Munch's somnolency and neglect,
despite of all his class-fellows' idleness,
ridicule, or contumely, young Joyce would
learn, would make progress, would ac-
quire accurate information in a very extra-
ordinary way. When Mr. Ashurst assumed
the reins of government at Helmingham
Grammar School, the proficiency, promise,
and industry of Walter Joyce were the only
things that gave the new dominie the smallest
gleam of interest in his new avocation.
With the advent of the new head master
Walter Joyce entered upon a new career ;
for the first time in his life he found some
one to appreciate him, some one who could
understand his work, praise what he had
done, and encourage him to greater efforts.
This had hitherto been wanting in the
young man's life. His father liked to
know that the boy " stuck to his book ;"
but was at last incapable of understanding
what that sticking to the book produced,
and his mother, though conscious that her
son possessed talent such as she had al-
ways coveted for him, had no idea of the real
extent of his learning. James Ashurst was
the only one in Helmingham who could
rate his scholar's gifts at their proper value,
and the dominie's kind heart yearned with
delight at the prospect of raising such a
creditable flower of learning in such un-

promising soil. He praised himself, not
merely with the young man's present bnt
with his future. It was his greatest hope
that one of the scholarships at his old col-
lege should be gained by a pupil from
Helmingham, and that that pupil should
be Walter Joyce. Mr. Ashurst had been in
communication with the college authorities
on the subject ; he had obtained a very un-
willing assent an assent that would have
been a refusal had it not been for Mrs.
Joyce's influence from Walter's father that
he would give his son an adequate sum
for his maintenance at the University, and
he was looking forward to a quick coming
time when a scholarship should be vacant,
for which he was certain Walter had a
most excellent chance, when Mrs. Joyce
had a fit and died. From that time forth
Andrew Joyce was a changed man. He
had loved his wife in his grim, sour, puri-
tanical way, loved her sufficiently to strive
against this grimness and puritanism to
the extent of his consenting to five for the
most part in the ordinary fashion of the
world. But when that gentle influence
was once removed, when the hard-headed,
narrow-minded man had no longer the soft
answer to turn away his wrath, the soft
face to look appeahngly up against his
harsh judgment, the quick intellect to
combat his one-sided dogmatisms, he fell
away at once, and blossomed out as the
bitter bigot into which he had gradually
but surely been growing. No college edu-
cation for his son then ; no assistance for
him from a bloated hierarchy, as he re-
marked at a public meeting, glancing at
Mr. Sefton, the curate, who had eighty
pounds a year and four children ; no money
of his to be spent by his son in a dissolute
and debauched career at the university.
Mr. Stoker had not been at any university
as, indeed, he had not, having picked
up most of his limited education from a
travelling tinker, who combined pot-mend-
ing and knife-grinding with Bible and tract
selling and where would you meet with
a better preacher of the Gawspel, a more
shining light, or a comelier vessel ? Mr.
Stoker was all in all to Andrew Joyce then,
and when Andrew Joyce died, six months
afterwards, it was found that, with the
exception of the legacy of a couple of
hundred pounds to his son, he had left all
his money to Mr. Stoker, and to the chapel
and charities represented by that erudite
divine.

It was a sad blow to Walter Joyce, and
almost as sharp a one to James Ashurst.

"8=

=&>

Charles Dickens.;

WRECKED m PORT.

[December 12, 1868.] 31

The two men Walter was a man now
grieved together over the overturned hopes
and the extinguished ambition. It was
impossible for Walter to attempt to go to
college just then. There was no scholarship
vacant, and if there had been, the amount to
be won might probably have been insuffi-
cient even for this modest youth. There was
no help for it ; he must give up the idea,
What, then, was he to do ? Mr. Ashurst
answered that in his usual impulsive way.
Walter should become under-master in the
school. The number of boys had increased
immensely. There was more work than
he and Dr. Breitmann could manage ; oh
yes, he was sure of it, he had thought so a
long time, and Walter should become third
classical master, with a salary of sixty
pounds a year, and board and lodging
in Mr. Asnurst's house. It was a rash
and wild suggestion, just likely to ema-
nate from such a man as James Ashurst.
The number of boys had increased, and
Mr. Ashurst's energy had decreased ;
but there was Dr. Breitmann, a kindly,
well-read, well-educated doctor of phi-
losophy, from Leipzig; a fine classical
scholar, though he pronounced " amo" as
" ahmo," and " Dido" as " Taito ;" a gen-
tleman, though his clothes were thread-
bare, and he only ate meat once a week,
and sometimes not then unless he were
asked out ; and a disciplinarian, though he
smoked like a limekiln ; a habit which in
the Helmingham school-boys' eyes pro-
claimed the confirmed debauchee of the
Giovanni or man-about-town type. Walter
Joyce had been a favourite pupil of the
doctor's, and was welcomed as a colleague
by his old tutor with the utmost warmth.
It was understood that his engagement
was only temporary, he would soon have
enough money to enable him, with a scho-
larship, to astonish the university, and

then ! Meanwhile Mr. Ashurst and all

around repeated that his talents were mar-
vellous, and his future success indisput-
able.

That was the reason why Marian Ashurst
fell in love with him. As has before been
said, she thought nothing of outward ap-
pearance, although Walter Joyce had grown
into a sufficiently comely man, small in-
deed, but with fine eyes and an eloquent
mouth, and a neatly turned figure ; nor,
though a refined and educated girl, did she
estimate his talents save for what they
would bring. He was to make a success
in his future life! that was what she
thought of her father said so, and so far

in matters of cleverness and book learning,
and so on, her father's opinion was worth
something. Walter Joyce was to make
money and position, the two things of
which she thought, and dreamed, and
hoped for, night and day. There was no
one else among her acquaintance with his
power. No farmer within the memory of
living generations had done more than to
keep up the homestead bequeathed to him
whilst attempting to increase the number or
the value of his fields ; and even the gratifi-
cation of her love of money would have been
but a poor compensation to a girl of Ma-
rian's innate good breeding and refinement
for being compelled to pass her life in the
society of a boor or a churl. No ! Walter
Joyce combined the advantage of educa-
tion and good looks, with the prospect of
attaining wealth and distinction ; he was
her father's favourite, and was well thought
of by everybody, and and she loved him
very much, and was delighted to comfort
herself with the thought that in doing so
she had not sacrificed any of what she was
pleased to consider the guiding principles
of her life.

And he, Walter Joyce, did he recipro-
cate, was he in love with Marian ? Has it
ever been your lot to see an ugly or, better
still, what is called an ordinary man for
ugliness has become fashionable both in
fiction and in society to see an ordinary
looking man hitherto politely ignored, if
not snubbed, suddenly taken special notice
of by a handsome woman, a recognised
leader of her set, who, for some special pur-
pose of her own, suddenly discovering that
he has brains, or conversational power, or
some peculiar fascination, singles him out
from the surrounding ruck, steeps him in the
sunlight of her eyes, and intoxicates him
with the subtle wiles of her address ? It does
one good, it acts as a moral shower-bath, to
see such a man under such circumstances.
Tour fine fellow simpers and purrs for a
moment, and takes it all as real legitimate
homage to his beauty; but the ordinary
man cannot, so soon as he has got over his
surprise at the sensation, cannot be too
grateful, cannot find ways and means cum-
brous frequently and ungraceful, but emi-
nently sincere of showing his appreciation
of the woman. Thus it was with Walter
Joyce. The knowledge that he was a
grocer's son had added immensely to the
original shyness and sensitiveness of his
disposition, and the free manner in
which his frank and delicate personal ap-
pearance had been made the butt of out-

32 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

spoken " chaff" of the school-boys had
made him singularly misogynistic. Since
the early days of his youth, when he had
been compelled to give a very unwilling
attendance twice a week at the dancing
academy of Mr. Hardy, where the boys of
the Helmingham Grammar School had their
manners softened, nor were suffered to
become brutal, by the study of the terpsi-
chorean art, in the company of the young
ladies from the Misses Lewins' establish-
ment, Walter Joyce had resolutely es-
chewed any and every charge of mixing in
female society. He knew nothing of it,
and pretended to despise it ; it is needless
to say, therefore, that so soon as he was
brought into daily communication with a
girl like Marian Ashurst, possessed both of
beauty and refinement, he fell hopelessly
in love with her, and gave up every
thought, idea, and hope, save that in
which she bore a part. She was his god-
dess, and he would worship her humbly
a,nd at a distance. It would be sufficient
for him to touch the hem of her robe, to
hear the sound of her voice, to gaze at
her with big dilated eyes, which not that
he knew it were eloquent with love, and
tenderness, and worship.

Their love was known to each other, and
to but very few else. Mr. Ashurst, look-
ing up from his newspaper in the blessed
interval between the departure of the boys
to bed, and the modest little supper, the
only meal which the family in which
Joyce was included had in private, may
have noticed the figures of his daughter
and his usher, erst his favourite pupil,
lingering in the deepening twilight round
the lawn, or seen " their plighted shadows
blended into one" in the soft rays of the
moonlight. But, if he thought anything
about it, he never made any remark.
Life was very hard and very earnest with
James Ashurst, and he may have found
something softening and pleasing in this
little bit of romance, something which he
may have wished to leave undisturbed by
worldly suggestions or practical hints. Or,
he may have had no idea of what was
actually going on. A man with an in-
cipient disease beginning to tell upon him,
with a sickly wife, and a perpetual skiving
not merely to make both ends meet, but to
prevent them bursting so wide asunder as
to leave a gap through which he must
inevitably fall into ruin between them, has
but little time, or opportunity, or inclina-
tion, for observing narrowly the conduct
even of those near and dear to him. Mrs.

Ashurst, in her invalid state, was only too
glad to think that the few hours which
Marian took in respite from attendance on
her mother were pleasantly employed, to
inquire where or in whose society they were
passed. Neither Marian's family nor Joyce
kept any company by whom their absence
would be noticed ; and as for the villagers,
they had fully made up their minds on the
one side that Marian was determined to
make a splendid match ; on the other, that
the mere fact of Walter Joyce's scholarship
was so great as to incapacitate him from
the pursuit of ordinary human frailties : so
that not the ghost of a speculation as to
the relative position of the couple had
arisen amongst them. And the two young
people loved, and hoped, and erected their
little castles in the air, which were palatial
indeed as hope- depicted by Marian, though
less ambitious as limned by Walter Joyce,
when Mr. Ashurst's death came upon them
like a thunderbolt, and blew their unsub-
stantial edifices into the air.

See them here on this calm summer
evening, pacing round and round the lawn,
as they used to do, in the old days already
ages ago as it seems, when James Ashurst,
newspaper in hand, would throw occasional
glances at them from the study window.
Marian, instead of letting her fingers
lightly touch her companion's wrist, as is
her wont, has passed her arm through his,
and her fingers are clasped together round
it, and she looks up in his face, as they
come to a standstill beneath the big out-
spread branches of the old oak, with
an earnest tearful gaze such as she has
seldom, if ever, worn before. There must
be matter of moment between these two
just now, for Joyce's face looks wan and
worn ; there are deep hollows beneath his
large eyes, and he strives ineffectually to
conceal, with an occasional movement of his
hand, the rapid anxious play of the muscles
round his mouth. Marian is the first to

And so you take Mr. Benthall's deci-
sion as final, Walter, and are determined to
go to London?"

" Darling, what else can I do ? Here is
Mr. Benthall's letter, in which he tells me
that, without the least wish to disturb me
a mere polite phrase that he shall bring
his own assistant master to Helmingham.
He writes, and means kindly, I've no
doubt but here's the fact !"

" Oh, yes, I'm sure he's a gentleman,
Walter ; his letter to mamma proves that,

Charles Dickens.]

NEW LAMPS FOR OLD ONES.

[December 12, 1868.] 33

offering to defer his arrival at the school-
house until our own time. Of course
that is impossible, and we go into Mr.
Swainson's lodgings at once."

"My dearest Marian, my own pet, I
hate to think of you in lodgings ; I cannot
bear to picture you so !"

"You must make haste and get your
position, and take me to share it, then,
Walter !" said the girl, with a half melan-
choly smile ; " you must do great things,
Walter. Dear papa always said you would,
and you must prove how right he was !"

" Dearest, your poor father calculated on
my success at college for the furtherance of
my fortune, and now all that chance is
over ! Whatever I do now must be "

" By the aid of your own talent and in-
dustry, exactly the same appliances which
you had to rely on if you had gone to the
university, Walter. You don't fear the re-
sult ? you're not alarmed and desponding
at the turn which affairs have taken ? It's
impossible you can fail to attain distinction,
and and money and and position, Walter
you must, don't you feel it ? you
must !"

" Yes, dear, I feel it; I hope I think !
perhaps not so strongly, so enthusiastically
as you do. You see, don't be downcast,
Marian, but it's best to look these things in
the face, darling ! all I can try to get is a
tutor's, or an usher's, or a secretary's place,
and in any of these the want of the uni-
versity stamp is heavily against me. There's
no disguising that, Marian !"

" Oh, indeed ; is that so ?"

"Yes, child, undoubtedly. The uni-
versity degree is like the hall mark in
silver, and I'm afraid I shall find very few
persons willing to accept me as the genuine
article without it."

"And all this risk might have been
avoided if your father had only "

" Well, yes ; but then, Marian darling,
if my father had left me money to go to
college immediately on his death I should
never have known you known you, I
mean, as you are, the dearest and sweetest
of women."

He drew her to him as he spoke and
pressed his lips on her forehead. She re-
ceived the kiss without any undue emo-
tion, and said :

" Perhaps that had been for the best,
Walter."

" Marian, that's rank blasphemy. Fancy
my hearing that, especially, too, on the
night of my parting with you ! No, my
darling, all I want you to have is hope,

and courage, and not too much am-
bition, dearest. Mine has been compara-
tively but a lotus- eating existence hitherto ;
to-morrow I begin the battle of life."

" But slightly armed for the conflict, my
poor Walter !"

"I don't allow that, Marian. Youth,
health, and energy are not bad weapons to
have on one's side, and with your love in
the background "

" And the chance of achieving fame and
fortune for yourself keep that in the fore-
ground !"

" That is to me, in every way, less than
the other, but it is of course an additional
spur. And now "

And then ? When two lovers are on the
eve of parting, their conversation is scarcely
very interesting to any one else. Marian
and Walter talked the usual pleasant non-
sense, and vowed the usual constancy, took
four separate farewells of each other, and
parted, with broken accents, and lingering
hand- clasps, and streaming eyes. But
when Marian Ashurst sat before her toi-
lette-glass that night, in the room which
had so long been her own, and which she
was so soon to vacate, she thought of what
Walter Joyce had said as to his future, and
wondered whether, after all, she had not
miscalculated the strength, not the courage,
of the knight whom she had selected to
wear her colours in his helm in the great
contest.

NEW LAMPS FOR OLD ONES.

It is a fact, concerning the soundness of
which there can be no doubt, that we all keep
by us, among our possessions, a considerable
number of objects which we do not want, for
which we have no possible use, which are very
much in our way, and which we would be ex-
ceedingly glad to be rid of, if we only knew
how. Some people, with little space at their
disposal, have been so encumbered in this way
with large accumulations of rubbish, inherited
from many generations of collectors, that they
have even been heard, after a day spent in
futile attempts to deal with these unvalued
possessions, to express, in the bitterness of
their souls, a longing for a "judicious fire" to
break out in the house. In default of that
great comfort, it would be an excellent arrange-
ment if a perambulating furnace could be
brought round, at certain intervals, and moored
for a time before our doors.

Incremation of this sort, however, is a way
out of the difficulty only available in certain
cases. Some kinds of rubbish are hardly suit-
able for burning. Metallic rubbish, earthen-
ware rubbish, bone and ivory rubbish, old door

cg=

34 [December 12, 186S.]

ALL THE YEAR SOUND.

[Conducted by

handles, disabled locks, bunches of
keys, superseded door knockers, ancient jam
pots, broken china figures, plaster casts with-
out noses, empty ink jars, medicine bottles
half full of mixture which was to be taken
three times a day and wasn't, worn-out tooth-
brush handles, knobs that have come off every-
thing that could have a knob, handles of every-
thing that could have a handle handles of
parasols, of button hooks, of butter knives, of
paper knives, of water jugs, of tea pots. There
are, besides such mere rubbish and refuse, cer-
tain objects which belong to most people, which
are of some occasionally of great intrinsic
value, but which we don't in the slightest
degree appreciate, and secretly yearn to be
delivered from. There is the pair of vases for
the chimneypiece, which were given you on
your marriage day, and which, entirely destroy-
ing the effect of your drawing-room, you have
banished to a bedroom, where they are bitterly
in the way. There is the set of dining-room
chairs, bought by yourself, with your eyes
open, when you paid away hard money and a
good deal of it in order that you might be-
come possessed of what you detest from the
bottom of your soul. There is that claret-
coloured surtout, which will not answer at all,
and which is not likely to wear out, because
you never put it on ; also, the pair of unmen-
tionables, the material of which, when they
were brought home, turned out to be so much
more violent in colour than it looked in the
tailor's pattern-book. What are you to do with
such things as these? You cannot burn a
whole set of dining-room chairs, or a claret-
coloured surtout ; and you don't like the idea
of selling them, because, if it got about, your
friends would at once come to the conclusion
that you were on the eve of bankruptcy, and
so your social position might suffer. What are
you to do ?

What you are to do is simply this : You are
to advertise in a journal called The Exchange
and Mart. You are to advertise that you are
willing to barter these objects which are harass-
ing the life out of you, for certain other ob-
jects, which you specify, and which are equally
harrowing to their present proprietor.

The Exchange and Mart is a weekly periodi-
cal, which has been in existence something
over six months. The object with which this
journal has been started may be best explained
by a quotation from the first page of the work
itself :

"The Exchange and Mart Jouenal" has been
established to provide a medium between tbe seller and
buyer, and at a very cheap rate to enable any one who
wishes to dispose of any article, either by exchange or
by sale, to do so to the very best advantage.

It wall be desirable to give a short explanation of our
scheme, so that intending advertisers may the more
easily avail themselves of the advantages we offer.

First, let us suppose a person wishing to effect an ex-
change through our columns, he will write to the editor
thus: Sir, I wish to make the following exchange
{Sere follows the list of articles to be exchanged), for

which I enclose stamps (enclosing the number of

stamps as per regulations). If the advertiser chooses
to add his own name and address, he can of course do

so ; but supposing he should wish to keep it secret, he
will then send us his name and address, and we shall
attach a number to his advertisement, in place of his
name, and all letters answering his advertisement will
therefore be addressed to that number at our office. In
addition to this, the advertiser can, if he wish, send the
article advertised for exchange to our office on view.
The same rules apply to the department of "The
Mart," with this addition, that a charge of five per
cent will be made on all articles sold at our office. As
to the department of " Wants and Vacancies," the de-
sirability of having some organ where servants and
masters can be brought into communication at a merely
nominal cost, is too obvious to need demonstration.

It will be seen here that not only do the ori-
ginators of this scheme take the interests of
their clients very much to heart, but that great
consideration for their feelings is also exhibited,
and ample provision made for that tendency to
shrink from observation which ever besets the
amateur seller, and which we see provided
against by the pawnbroking fraternity in the
shape of those private doors round the corner,
always inseparable from such of their establish-
ments as are found in our genteeler neigh-
bourhoods.

Some plain directions to intending adver-
tisers follow :

Let us now proceed to point out the course to be pur-
sued by any persons answering the advertisements ;
and first as regards "The Exchange." The person
answering an advertisement of Exchange must enclose
that answer, stamped, and with the distinguishing
number of the advertisement clearly written upon the
top of it, under cover to the editor of The Exchange
and Maet, who will thus bring the two parties into
communication. The same course of procedure applies
to " The Mart."

To ensure that the advertisement should be widely
seen, we guarantee a minimum circulation often thou-
sand weekly."

That last "guarantee" is a bold one, and
shows that the proprietors of the undertaking
regard the class which is ready to fly to ills it
knows not of, rather than to endure those
which it has, as rather a large one. And, in-
deed, judging from the advertisements which
fill more than a dozen large columns of this
wonderful journal, it would seem to be so. It
is pathetic to observe how the means of
making their miseries known having at length
come in their way the proprietors of all sorts
of detested objects hurry forward in search of
deliverance from their passive tormentors. The
present writer once went to see the " Home
for Lost and Starving Dogs ;" and as soon as
he appeared in the yard, every one of those
poor ownerless wretches rushed headlong to
the bars behind which they were confined, each
imagining that his especial proprietor had at
last turned up. So with these advertisers.
They were pining hopeless among those fatal
possessions, when suddenly the proprietors of
The Exchange and Mart appeared on the scene
with signals of deliverance ; and instantly the
advertisers flung themselves at their feet,
frantic with gratitude and hope. " Rescue me
from this concertina, which I can't play !" cries
one. "Deliver me from this statuette, the
sight of which is killing me by inches !" shrieks
another. " This gun," groans a third, "with

Charies Dickens.]

NEW LAMPS FOR OLD ONES.

[December 12, 18C8.] 35

which I have never shot anything ! Remove it
from above my chimneypiece, and take a load
from my heart !"

The advertisers who seek to make their wants
known through, the pages of The Exchange
and Mart, seem to possess many characteristics
in common. The same articles appear to be
popular and unpopular with them. They all
want sealskin jackets and sewing - machines,
and none of them want incomplete pieces of
Berlin wool work, and "boxes of oil paints
nearly new." There is, by the way, a very
brisk desire to get rid of these last, suggesting
the idea that a considerable proportion of the
advertisers have been the victims of a false
impression that they had a vocation for art.
Sometimes the revulsion of feeling brought
about by the acquirement of these " paints" is
very strong indeed, as in the case of an adver-
tiser in the twentieth number of The Exchange,
who suddenly discovers, after cultivating for a
brief space the peaceful arts that soften men's
manners, a certain blood-thirsty tendency, at
once incongruous and terrible. " I have," says
this gentleman, " an oil-paint box almost com-
plete, and very little used. I want a small
breech-loading revolver."

Among the characteristics shared in common
by the clients of the Exchange journal must
be noted a wonderful and touching hopeful-
ness. They are so inexplicably sanguine. They
see nothing outrageous in the idea of getting
new lamps for old ones. The lamps they have
to dispose of are very old ones, and they know
it. The wares they offer for competition are,
for the most part, no doubt, defective, imper-
fect, and disappointing ; yet they expect that
the objects which they are to get in exchange
for them are to possess none of those qualities.
Here is a wonderful instance of this hopeful-
ness. It is headed " Goats !"

"Three pure white Sicilian goats to be ex-
changed for a lock-stitch sewing-machine, Wil-
son preferred, in perfect condition."

A gentleman or lady possessed of a sewing-
machine, by the best maker, in perfect condition,
is expected to part with it, and to receive in
return three terrible goats ! Is this a thing
likely to happen ? Is it likely, again, that the
advertiser who has " a fine tame fox, which he
wishes to exchange for a gold watch or guard,"
will meet with a customer ? Or that the pro-
prietor of an ivory card-case is to be able to
exchange it, or "two pieces of Chinese and
Japanese embroidery" for a " Cleopatra" or a
" AVanzer" sewing-machine, in good order ?

These sewing-machines are in continual re-
quest. In one copy of The Exchange there are no
less than eleven advertisements for these useful
articles, for which the most various and incon-
gruous things guitars, celestial and terrestrial
globes, bantam cocks, and magic lanterns,
among the rest are offered in exchange.

This incongruity between the object offered
and that which is advertised for, is another of
the curiosities of advertisement which the new
journal supplies us with. Besides such instances
as have been already mentioned, we find such

notices as the following, in plenty: "Butter-
dish of carved white wood, with green glass
centre, quite new, never used, cost eight shil-
lings and sixpence. To exchange for Mendels-
sohn's Lieder ohne Worte ; or a pair of lady's
skates, or a round brass American clock, or a
carved fretwork brooch, or Tennyson's poems."
"I will give forty pencil drawings," says one
advertiser, "all good, some excellent, for
twelve pounds of good honey !" " ' Raising
the Maypole,' quite new," says another ; " size,
forty inches by thirty inches. Wanted blankets,
or offers." Another advertiser wishes to change
a pair of archery targets for a good guitar ; an-
other, to become possessed of a small revolver
in place of Knight's Natural History ; another
to exchange a handsome lever gold watch and
seals, for a cow !

Among the remarkable points to which one's
attention is frequently drawn in considering
these notices, is the exceeding popularity oS
sealskin. The advertisements for sealskin
jackets, sealskin muffs, sealskin waistcoats, seal-
skin purses, follow one another in close suc-
cession, and are even more numerous than those
for sewing-machines. Neither do the owners
of the former, any more than the latter, appear
to tire of such possessions, or wish to be rid of
them. There are no instances of advertisers
wishing to part, either with sealskin jackets or
sewing-machines.

Occupying ourselves still with the especial
peculiarities developed in the columns of this
curious periodical, one cannot help noticing
what a rare quality accuracy and intelligibility in
written description is. This is manifested by
the Exchange advertisers, both in describing
the objects they wish to part with, and those of
which they desire to become possessed. Thus,
there are advertisers who announce their pos-
session of a "very good long thick watch-
chain," without specifying of what metal it is
composed ; others, who are in want of a yard
" or so " of piece silk ; others, who yearn for a
large new album, " to hold four in a page "
four what ? Some of the descriptions, too, are
very minute in detail, and some characterised
by a certain conscientiousness. A set of steel
ornaments, for instance, which are "slightly
rusty," are advertised ; and a lace shawl, a
"little soiled;" while one advertiser, in her
desire to be strictly honest, enters into quite a
little narrative of the autobiographical sort : " I
have," she says, " a good bracelet, bought at the
Exhibition in '62. I do not know of what metal
it is made, but I think it cannot be plated, as I
have worn one bought at the same time, a great
deal, and it has not in the least turned colour."

Some people are possessed of very hopeless
goods indeed, and seem to be perfectly con-
scious of their unfortunate position. Here is
an unhappy case : "I have ten gross of plate-
powder, each in packet boxes. I wish to ex-
change for anything useful. Open to offers."
And here another: "I have about a hun-
dred different, mostly freethought, pamphlets,
average price sixpence, which I would ex-
change for anything useful worth a guinea."

36 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

The strange phenomena, connected with the
stamp-collecting mania, are among the pecu-
liarities developed in these pages. Extraor-
dinary revelations are made, of the patience and
perseverance exhibited by " collectors" of this
kind. Some of these advertise, for exchange,
books containing upwards of five hundred
stamps, foreign and colonial, or eight hundred
postmarks in an album. Is it conceivable that
anybody can want eight hundred postmarks ?
Another collector offers " a book with double
clasps, containing one thousand and seventy
arms, crests, and monograms, all coloured ;
Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, arms of all
nations, county arms, nearly all the army,
militia, volunteer, schools, &c." There are,
likewise, strange and terrible treasures of the
monogram and stamp kind, and some very
mysterious matters indeed, which are called
"eccentrics." Here is a fearfully mystifying
announcement : "I have twenty military
badges, and Adam and Eve eccentric, to ex-
change for others ; or would give two badges for
Tom Dawson's cat, Miss Senhouse, Miss Charl-
ton's fan, Mr. Milbank's eccentric." Mr. Tom
Dawson's cat is the subject of another adver-
tisement, and is evidently a much prized and
well-known specimen among " eccentrics."

Through the agency of the department of this
Periodical, called the " Exchange," persons
encumbered may get a different set of objects
more suitable to their wants ; while another de-
partment of the Journal, " The Mart," affords
them a chance of turning these same unappre-
ciated wares into money. It is probably a good
thing that such a system as this should be in
existence, for even if the parties to these trans-
actions do not acquire any very valuable ad-
ditions to the number of their possessions, they
at least get a change in the nature of their en-
cumbrances, and that is something. For, even
if you skip out of the frying-pan into the fire,
it must still be admitted that you do get a
change, and perhaps though the general
opinion seems to run the other way a change
not altogether for the worse.

THE HALL PORTER AT THE CLUB.

" How long, good friend, have you sat here,
A warder at the door,
To let none pass but the elect
Into the inner floor ?"
" I think 'tis thirty years at least ;
I came in manly prime,
And now I'm growing frail and old,
And feel the touch of Time.

'' Many's the change that I have seen
Since first I entered here ;
A thousand merry gentlemen
Were members in that year.
And of the thousand there remain

Scarce fifty that I know,
And they are growing old like me,
' And hobble as they go.

" Seven hundred underneath the sod,
The great, the rich, the free ;
A hundred fallen on evil days,
Too poor to pay the fee.

Fifty resigned because their wives

Forbade them to remain ;
And half a score went moody mad

From overwork of brain.
: And two committed suicide,

One for a faithless wife,
And one for fear to face the law

That could not take his life.
But why run o'er the mournful list ?

Each month that passes round,
Sees some old leaf from this old tree

Fall fluttering to the ground.
: And you, my friend, who question me,

Are young, and hale, and strong,
You'll have such memories as mine

If you but live as long !"

; Well ! well ! I know ! Why moralise ?

Or go in search of sorrow ?
Here's half a crown to drink my health ;

And better luck to-morrow !"

MY VERSION OF POOR JACK.

The " Poor Jack" of whom I write is
not a sailor, though perhaps for him also,,
as well as for the Poor Jack whom Charles
Dibdin has immortalised, there may be a
sweet little cherub sitting up aloft. My
Poor Jack is a landsman, and, although
he will npt admit the fact, a beggar.
There is this much to be said for his
denial of the truth, that he is to a certain
extent a trader, and that in the summer
months and the early autumn he does a
certain amount of profitable business
profitable from his humble point of view,
though never sufficiently remunerative to
enable him to deal with either the tailor or
the shoemaker. His whole attire is elee-
mosynary, and his raggedness, though
doubtless very uncomfortable to himself,
is exceedingly picturesque, and might, if
any good artist happened to fall in with
him, procure for him the honour of a
sitting, and such reward in silver as the
pose might be worth. Jack is sixty-five
years of age, and has a large handsome
brown beard, striped rather than sprinkled
with grey. Though I have known him for
three or four years, I never saw him but
once without his hat on a very battered
and tattered one it is and then I dis-
covered that his beard was the only hir-
suteness he could exhibit, and that, in fact,
his head was as bald and devoid of hair
as a basin. His elbows peep out from his
sleeves, and his toes from his miserable old
shoes, and his general raggedness is as
looped and windowed as that which Lear
pitied and Shakespeare described. In his
youth Poor Jack was a carpenter, but he
has not done a stroke of carpenter's work
for upwards of forty years, having, as he
says, been disabled at five-and-twenty by

Charles Dickens]

MY VERSION OF POOR JACK.

[December 12, 1SC8.]

rheumatism in his right shoulder and hand
and in both of his feet rheumatism so
long neglected or so imperfectly treated as
to have become chronic and incurable.
Having no money to set up a shop, and no
friends to help him, he had betaken himself
to the road to live by what he could pick
up ; not perhaps without reliance upon the
sweet little cherub already mentioned, or on
the Providence that takes account of men
as well as of sparrows.

Poor Jack called upon me a few weeks
ago with a basket of mushrooms that he
had gathered in the fields, having a stand-
ing commission from me to give me the
first offer of these dainties whenever he can
find sufficient for a dish. The last time
I had seen him prior to this visit, was
about six weeks previously, when I had
come across him in a byway, sitting by the
side of a ditch, and very drunk indeed. I
reminded him (perhaps unnecessarily) of
the fact, but as I had bought his mush-
rooms at a good price, he was not offended.

"Yes," said he, "I remember; I was
main drunk. I think I was never so drunk
in all my life before. It was with cham-
pagne."

" Champagne ?" I repeated incredulously.

" Yes, champagne ; and not bad stuff
neither, though it did make me uncom-
mon ill."

Jack went on to explain that there had
been a large pic-nic party upon the hill that
day, at which nearly two hundred people
were present, dispersed in groups under the
trees. As attendance upon pic-nics is part of
his regular business, he was, as he said, " to
the fore" on this occasion, to take his chance
either of being ruthlessly driven away, as
he sometimes is for his utter incongruity
with surrounding circumstances, or of being
employed, as he mostly is, in some way or
other, or of obtaining a share of the broken
victuals and remnants of the feast. Jack
had been plashing about all the morning in
the little river that winds and murmurs
under the hill- side, and had the large
basket, which is usually slung at his back,
filled with fresh forget-me-nots, which he
had gathered on the banks of the stream.
Young ladies romantic little dears ! love
the forget-me-not more for its name than
for its beauty, and Jack's venture among
the merry-makers with such an abundant
supply of a flower so suggestive to love-
makers proved to be a success. One young
gentleman gave him a shilling for a bunch,
which he forthwith presented to a young
lady, and such a desire for forget-me-nots

took possession of all the other ladies, young
and old, that the gentlemen in attendance,
as in gallantry and duty bound, made all
haste to gratify their wishes. The conse-
quence was that Jack's forget-me-nots were
speedily sold at highly remunerative prices,
and he found himself in possession of nearly
twelve shillings. " It was the best day's
work I ever did in my life," said Jack;
" nor was this all. Pic-nic people, though
they generally bring plenty of wine, ale, or
ginger-beer with them, always manage to
forget to bring water ; and this party had
not a drop. One of the ladies asked me if
I could get some, and a gentleman sitting
next to her on the grass offered to give me
a bottle of champagne in exchange for six
bottles of cold pump water. They had the
water, and I had the wine. I had heard of
champagne, but I had never tasted a drop
in my life. They all laughed to see me
drinking it. Let them laugh as wins,
thought I, as I sat under a tree by myself,
and drank out of the bottle."

" You liked it, of course ?"

" Liked it ! It was glorious, and did me
a power of good; leastways, I think it
would have done if I had stuck to the one
bottle. But I amused the gentlemen, I
suppose, and made fun for them, so they
gave me more, and more again upon the
top of that, till my head began to spin and
swim, and I felt that I was going to be
very unwell. How I got away I don't re-
member, but I was main ill, and after a
while I fell asleep where you saw me.
When I woke it was pitch dark, and I
heard the church clock at Darkham strike
three in the morning."

"Darkham," said I; " where's that?
You mean Dorking."

" jSTo," replied Jack, very dictatorially, j
and as if sure of his point. " Some people
say Dorking, others say Darking, I say
Darkham."

Jack had begun to interest me, for if I
have a favourite hobby it is philology, and
I had long had a suspicion that the modern
name of this pretty little town was not the
correct one.

" Did you ever hear any one else call it
Darkham ?"

"Yes, my father and my mother, and
scores of people. There is Mickleham, and
Effingham, and Brockham, and Bookham,
and Dark-ham, all in a string, as I might
say."

"Have you any idea what Darkham
means ? Bookham means the home among
the beech-trees, Brockham the home by

38 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

the brook, Mickleham the great home, and
Effingham is probably Upping home; but
what is Darkham ?"

" The dark home," said Jack, as if the
question were settled.

" No, that's not it, though I think you
may be right about the name. Darag or
Darach is the old Celtic for oak, and Dark-
ham is the home among the oak-trees."

" You've got it now," said Jack. " That's
it for sartain."

I have had many talks with Jack, and
have taken considerable interest in his
humble fortunes. As soon as the leaves fall
from the trees and the nights begin to grow
cold and frosty, Jack retires from the busy
world into his winter palace. That palace is
the workhouse, or rather the workhouse in-
firmary ; for Jack cannot work if he would,
and his rheumatism or poor man's gout
he does not exactly know to which of the
two names his inveterate malady is properly
entitled requires the treatment that none
but the parish doctor and the parish funds
will supply. But as soon as the cuckoo is
heard in the woods, Jack, after a hyberna-
tion which he has shared with the flies, the
bees, the dormice, and other of God's
creatures, which are mercifully permitted
to sleep all through the season when no
food is to be found for them, emerges once
again into the light of day to ply his voca-
tion. He looks so very miserable, and so
picturesque, that many kind-hearted people
stop him on the road, and give him either
of their own poverty or of their riches the
wherewithal to make himself a little more
comfortable. But he never asks for charity.
For this reason he denies being a beggar
a figment, a white He, a suppressio veri,
whatever it may be called, which does no
harm to anybody, while it administers very
sensibly to the little pride that the world
and old age and hard struggles have left in
him. It is his wish to earn an honest sub-
sistence, and he does his best in that direc-
tion, and with a very patient, humble, and
uncomplaining spirit. The first objects of
his solicitude as soon as he is emancipated
from his winter thraldom are the primrose
roots and flowers, with which he drives his
small bargains in the towns and villages
with people who want to ornament their
little front gardens or their cottage windows,
and which he sells for what he can get for a
penny or a halfpenny a root, or for a piece
of bread, or, better still, for a pair of old
boots or shoes, or any cast-off garment that
may be too ragged for the poorest of the
poor, but which is not utterly valueless to

such as he. He also collects herbs, or, as
he calls them, " yarbs," either for the garden
or for the use of the poor people and the
notable housewives among them, who have
faith in simples for his treatment and cure
of burns and scalds or other simple maladies.
Though, unlike Milton's herbalist, he cannot
Ope his leathern scrip,
And show us simples of a thousand names,

he can display some dozens of varieties in
his basket, and can tell what they were sup-
posed to be good for. One day he got an
order from a village apothecary for cart-
loads of groundsel, if he could collect as
much, and was busy on the job for a whole
fortnight. It was wanted for a military
hospital for the purpose of making poultices.
But he never received so extensive an order
again. Ferns and orchids were other sources
of income, and last, but by no means the
least, were watercresses and mushrooms.
Jack has no faith in the new-fangled ideas
about mushrooms, and does not believe that
there is more than one kind in England that
is edible. ' ' Mushrooms, ' ' said he, with a con-
servatism strongly opposed to the radicalism
of the present day, that will not allow us
our ancient faith even in fungi, " have been
growing in the English meadows for a
thousand years, and if there were more
than one sort good for eating, do you think
our grandfathers and their grandfathers
would not have found it out ? No, no !"
he added, with strong emphasis, " there is
only one mushroom : all the others are
toadstools : and I won't believe otherwise if
all the doctors in England says the con-
trary."

There is a suspicion afloat, that in his
early manhood, and when he first took to
the road, Jack got into trouble, and was
had before a justice of the peace for poach-
ing. But the suspicion is too vague and
shadowy to merit much notice. I have
tried more than once to get him on the
subject of the Game Laws, as affecting
people in his circumstances and the rural
population generally; but he has always
evaded it, and expressed no opinion, or even
made a remark, except " that he did not un-
derstand about that." Jack can read, and
has a small, dog's-eared, and very shabby-
looking and well-thumbed Bible, which he
carries in his basket, and reads every Sunday
in the fields, out of the public path some-
where, when the weather is fine, and he
has enough bread-and-cheese or scraps of
victuals in his pocket to serve for his di nn er.
He never goes to church in the summer
when he is a free man, having been, he

Charles Dickens.]

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[December 12, 1868.]

says, turned from the door of a church
some years ago by the beadle, who told
him he was much too dirty to come in.
" Perhaps what he said was true," observed
Jack, when he told me the circumstance;
" bnt I thought all the same, that I might
hare been allowed to go into a corner.
Howsomever, I went away, and sat upon a
tombstone to rest myself out of the beadle's
sight, and hear the organ play, and thought
that, maybe, when I was put under the
mould, I might be as clean as Mr. Beadle
or Mr. Parson, or any of the grand folks in
the pews ! And I think so still, though, as I
said, it was a good many years ago, and I
was not so near the mould as I am now."
But though Jack avoids church in summer,
he regularly attends the service in the Union
during the winter months, and seems, from
the manner in which he speaks of the
sermons he hears, to be quite as good a
Christian as his betters, who "fare sump-
tuously every day."

The last time I saw Jack he was on his
way to the union workhouse for the winter,
when he showed me the ticket of admission
duly signed by the relieving officer.

" I am afraid," he said, " I shall not
come out again ; though I shall be glad to
see the primroses and hear the cuckoo once
more. I don't think I have been a very bad
man, though once, and only once in my life,
I had a pheasant for dinner."

I thought Jack was going to talk about
that poaching business at last ; but he hesi-
tated, and pulled up suddenly.

" No ! I have not been a very bad man ;
and if I have not worked as hard as other
people, it is because I have not been able to
work."

"Well, Jack!" I said, "your life has
been a hard one, I have no doubt. But I
never knew much harm of you ; and I sup-
pose that, like the rest of us, you have had
your joys as well as your sorrows."

" There was a young woman," he said
but he did not wipe his eye with his cuff,
nor whimper " who was very fond of me,
and she died when I was twenty and she
was eighteen. Since that time the best
things I have known in the world have
been the sunshine and the warm weather.
It is very hard to be poor, and lonely, and
cold. Cold, as far as I know, is the worst
of all worse than hunger; at least I've
found it so. And if it were not for the
cold, I don't think I'd go to the Union
at all, but would try and jog along in the
winter as I do in the summer."

Poor Jack, it will be seen, though he has

a certain amount of pride, has not a very
high spirit how could he have, with such
a hopeless battle to fight ? and by no
means despises the workhouse, or thinks it
derogatory to his manly dignity as some of
the hard-working poor do, to depend upon
it for assistance. Without its kindly hand,
however, he would doubtless die in the cold
December of "serum on the brain," as
the parish doctors have lately taken to call
starvation. So small blame be to hi for
going into it when he must, and for coming
out of it when he can. In spite of his last
fit of despondency, I hope to see the old
fellow out again in the spring, along with
his favourite primroses, listening to the
cuckoo, gathering simples, and drawing
such comfort out of the sunshine as Dio-
genes may have done, but without the
misanthropy, that perhaps was not real,
even with Diogenes.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE WEST. HOUNSLOW HEATH.

[We purpose, in a rapid series of papers, to fly with
the crow in various directions from London, and take a
bird's-eye view of the roads as they have been.]

Swift in a phantom mail coach, the ghosts of
four " spankers" whirl us along the great west
road. The phantom guard blows a faint blast
on his phantom horn as we dash down the long
dingy street of Brentford, and sweep on with
whizzing wheels between the broad nursery
gardens. Here and there, a ladder reared
against the fruit tree boughs, shows where the
last russets and leather jackets have just been
picked for all-devouring London. Faster,
through Brentford, where the ghosts of Ho-
garth's time seem for ever grouped around the
doorway of that quaint inn, The London Ap-
prentice. On past the river almshouses and
the little garden by which the dark barge sails
flit; on between the rows of shops and the
gables of the small town at the Duke's Gate, and
we are at Hounslow and on legendary ground.

Were we magicians we should at once call
together the dispersed atoms of the highwaymen
who rattled in chains above the Hounslow furze
bushes. From the roots of the fir trees, and the
earth beneath the brambles, from the flints of the
road side and the water of the rivulets, we would
collect the fragments of the wicked bodies, until
once more the " Captain " who swore " by the
bones of Jerry Abershaw" should appear in
his black mask, gold-laced cocked hat, and
scarlet roquelaure, with his silver " pops " in
his deep pockets, bestriding his chesnut mare,
the bold and reckless rascal of the pleasant
days when thirteen gibbets stood at one time
near Bason Bridge on the road to Heston.
Yes ! Thirteen shapeless bundles, dangled at one
time in view of the wayfarer across the terrible
heath, in the beginning of this century. It
was an old joke against Lord Islay, who once

40 [December 12, 1858.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

lived at Hounslow, that, on his ordering his
gardener to cut an avenue to open a view, the
perspective disclosed a gibbet with a thief on it,
and that several members of the Campbell
family having died with their shoes on, the
prospect revived such ominous and unpleasant
reminiscences that Lord Islay instantly ordered
the prospect to be closed again with a clump
of thick Scotch firs.

If any highwayman who galloped to the gal-
lows a century ago, could see Hounslow Heath
now, he would wonder where the four thou-
sand acres that covered fourteen parishes had
shrunk to. He would find only a few dozen
acres of grass field enclosed for the cavalry re-
views on one side of the road, and a few dozen
acres of rough furze and bramble on the other
for cavalry drill. Local historians say that the
heath was once an oak forest that spread its
green boughs from Staines to Brentford, and
there is an old tradition that the last wolf
killed, centuries ago now, was hunted down at
Perry Oaks, near Feltham Hill.

In Charles the First's time Hounslow con-
tained one hundred and twenty houses, chiefly
inns and ale-houses relying on travellers. It was
always indeed dependent on the coaches of the
great west road. Every third house is still an
inn or a beer shop. Ruined stables, faded signs
of the Marquis of Granby and other bygone
celebrities, still testify to the old prosperity of
the place, when the Comet used to come flashing
in, five minutes under the hour, from Piccadilly.

Let us sketch the Comet of the old days.
Tom Brown, the coachman, allows only fifty
seconds for changing horses smart's the word
with him. Tom in the neat white hat, the
clean doeskin gloves, the well cut trousers and
dapper frock we quote a contemporaneous
portrait is the pink of Jarvies. The coach is
a strong, well-built, canary- coloured drag : a
bull's head on the doors : a Saracen's head on
the hind boot. It carries fourteen passengers
and goes ten miles an hour, guaranteed pace.
There is a big bell-mouthed blunderbuss, ready
for the Turpin boys ; there are two pistols in
the cases; there is a lamp on each side the
coach, and another gleams out under the foot-
board. In fifty seconds three greys and a pie-
bald have replaced the three chesnuts and a
bay.

The ostler fastens the last buckle ; the
coachman's foot is already on the roller bolt.

" How is Paddy's leg ?" he asks, as he settles
down to his seat and shakes out the reins.

"Nearly right, sir," replies the horse-keeper,
twitching off the last cloth.

"Let 'em go, then," says the great artist,
" and take care of yourselves."

The spankers strike out and away they go,
over what coachmen used to call " the hospital
ground," from Hounslow to Staines. The coach-
man generally sprang his cattle over this bit of
level, where there was no pebble bigger than a
nutmeg. They kept for it all the ' ' box-kickers"
and stiff-mouthed old platers, whose backs
would not hold an ounce down hill or draw an
ounce up queer tempered creatures, that were

over the pole one day and over the bars the
next. So they used to flash past the Scotch
firs where Mr. Steele was murdered, and the
pond where Mr. Mellish was killed, and by the
turn where Courthorpe Knatchbull beat off the
four scoundrels, and the place where Turpin,
according to Mr. Samuel Weller, let fly at the
bishop's too hasty coachman :

And just put a couple of balls in his nob,
And perwailed on him to stop.

The crow takes note, upon the wing, of a
pretty tradition of Hounslow which addresses
itself to the human heart. During those cruel
wars that brought the king's army and the
parliamentarians alternately to encamp on
Hounslow Heath, one Mr. George Trevelyan,
a cavalier gentleman of Nettlecomb, in Somer-
setshire, and suspected of plotting against
Cromwell, was seized by puritan soldiers, and
sent close prisoner to the Tower. His captors,
took care, moreover, to burn and destroy all of
his property that they could, and, above all,
drove off with them from the stables and fields
of Nettlecomb and its neighbourhood, every
horse that would mount a dragoon, or drag a
cannon, or a baggage waggon. They left the
old house beggared, ransacked, and defaced^
and rode off singing their sullen psalms.
Heaven and earth was moved for Trevelyan's
release by his devoted wife ; but Cromwell,
bent on breaking such stubborn spirits, would
not listen to any less ransom than two thousand
pounds. But where to get it? The faithful
steward racked his brains, and the poor wife
wrought and prayed ceaselessly in her great
need. Farms were sold, old oaks were felled, dear
heirlooms were beaten down for the goldsmith
and the Jews ; above all, as the old record espe-
cially notes, " the great Barley Mow" was taken
to market. The tAvo thousand gold pieces were
at last spread by the delighted steward before the
eyes of the tearful wife. The difficulty now, was,
how to get the bags of gold safe up to London,
and escape the hungry highwaymen of Bag-
shot and Hounslow, the rapacious constables of
hostile towns, and the stray snatchers in inn
yards ? At last Heaven sent a thought to her
heart. She had heard of rough roads where
ladies had harnessed strong draught oxen to the
cumbrous family coaches, to drag them through
the sloughs and deep-rutted lanes to some great
dance or solemn assembly. The horses were
all gone for miles round. The thought was at
once turned to action. The great " gold" coach
was provisioned for the long journey, the faith-
ful steward, true as steel, accompanied the
loving wife ; and they took twenty-eight days
doing the hundred and sixty miles. The dark
prison doors flew open. The loving wife
flew into the arms of her free husband.
But she sickened of small-pox at Hounslow
the first halting place for the swift home-
ward horses as it had been the last for the
slow oxen and she died breathing the name
which had been the watchword of her great
devotion. She was buried at Hounslow, on
the site of the home of the old Brotherhood

=&>

Charles Dickens.]

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[December 12, 1868.] 41

of the Trinity, who had devoted their lives to
the redeeming of captives ; and in the church a
simple tablet still exists to her memory, record-
ing only the fact of her burial and the names of
her children.

From the earliest records, Hounslow Heath
was a notorious ride for highwaymen. Whether
it was on this heath that Claude Duval, really
made the knight's lady dance a coranto, and
then charged the husband a hundred pounds
for it, may be uncertain ; but it is certain that
Captain Hind, who tried to stop Cromwell,
and who did rob Bradshaw and Harrison, in-
fested this wild common. The gallant captain
was eventually hung at Worcester, and his
head was set up, as a scarecrow to gentlemen of
his kidney, over the bridge gate. Hind fought
for the king at Worcester, and when the hue
and cry was hot after him, artfully and daringly
came to London, called himself Brown, changed
his wig, dyed his face, and took lodgings at a
barber's opposite St. Lunstan's Church ; but
the worthless barber betrayed the gallant rogue,
who swung for it.

There was seldom great daring in the rob-
beries of the highwaymen. They were but poor
humbugs. They had houses of intelligence ; they
had ostlers, drivers of waggons and packhorses,
innkeepers, barmaids, turnpike men, and car-
riers, in their pay. They did not attack
armed travellers if they could help it, and
when they did so they generally did it by
surprise or by force of numbers. They ob-
tained heavy purses and rich boxes of plate,
but they had to cast money away by handfuls
to their spies and to the constables who tole-
rated them or aided their escapes. Wild drink-
ing and gambling were the desperate reactions
from their dangers and their days of starvation
and short commons. Then came the gallops,
the short cuts, the flying of gates and brooks,
the fording of rivers, to get by moonlight to
Hounslow : with every bridle path, and field,
and hedge of which district every highwayman
was familiar. Then they dashed up to some
coach and exchanged shots, or they rammed
their pistols through the glass windows, and
frightened the ladies into fits, and the men into
submission. The watch was drawn from the
boot, the jewels from under the cushions ; they
tossed the spoil into their deep pannier pockets,
cursed, threatened, and dashed off. Then even-
tually they were leaped on in some brandy shop
parlour, or were torn down in a savage hue and
cry, or were felled by some despairing man, or
were betrayed by some jealous mistress. Next
came the hard jury and the steel-faced judge,
the dim stone room, the staring faces of quid-
nuncs and heartless men of fashion, the last
revel with the turnkey and perhaps the chaplain
(for those were odd times), then the unri vet-
ting of the fetters, the presentation of the nose-
gay, the bellman's mechanical verses, and the
grim ride backward up Holborn-hill to Tyburn.

In the reign of William and Mary, Hounslow
trembled at the name of Whitney, who, like
his successor, Turpin, began life as a butcher.
He then kept an inn in Hertfordshire. The

best story told of him is that he plundered a
gentleman named Long of a hundred pounds in
silver. The traveller represented that he had
far to go, and did not know where to get money
on the road. Whitney at once opened the bag
and handed it to him. Long could not resist
the opportunity, and drew out a brimming hand-
ful. Whitney did not remonstrate, but only
said with a smile, as he rode off : "I thought
you would have had more conscience, sir."
Whitney was at last trapped in a house in Mil-
ford-lane, and died in his shoes at a place
called Porter's Block, near Smithfield. He was
only thirty-four ; highwaymen seldom attained
old age.

Some heroes get their fame very undeservedly.
This is especially the case with Mr. Richard
Turpin, who was but a mean and cruel sort of
thief, let alone a murderer. He was an Essex
butcher, who turned housebreaker, and he and
his gang had a cave in Epping Forest, where
they and their horses lay in ambuscade. The
street ballad writer of 1739 wrote :

On Hounslow Heath, as I rode o'er,
I spied a lawyer riding before.
" Kind, sir," said I, " arn't you afraid
Of Turpin, that mischievous blade ? "

O rare Turpin, hero ! O rare Turpin, !
Says Turpin, " He'll ne'er find me out ;
I've hid my money in my boot."
" Oh," says the lawyer, " there's none can find
My gold, for it's stitched in my cape behind."

O, rare Turpin, &c.
As they rode down by the Powder Mill,
Turpin commands them to stand still.
Said he, " Your cape I must cut off,
For my mare she wants a saddle cloth."
This caused the lawyer much to fret,
To think he was so fairly bet ;
And Turpin robbed him of his store,
Because he knew he'd lie for more.

It is a curious trait of the times that Turpin
was allowed to hold half an hour's conversation
with the hangman before he took his leap from
the ladder.

John Hawkins, one of the wretches that
fed the Hounslow crows in 1722, was the
greatest robber of mail coaches on record. He
stole the bags of five mail coaches in one morn-
ing, of two the next day, and of one the next.
His gang of thieves were even so audacious
as to stop coaches in Chancery-lane and Lin-
coln's Inn-fields. They used to go and dine at
the Three Pigeons at Brentford ; then ride on
about six in the evening to the Post House at
Hounslow, or to Colnbrook, where they would
inquire at what hour the mails were due.

It was by no means uncommon for ruined
gamblers and bankrupt tradesmen to take a
moonlit ride to the heath to retrieve their
shattered fortunes, and in 1750, it is on record
that William Parson, the wild son of a baronet,
and who had been brought up at Eton, and
had been in both the navy and army, com-
mitted a robbery on the fatal heath, after his
return from transportation, and was hung there
in chains to scare the night riders.

But travellers had their artifices as well as
highwaymen. Men of audacity, when stopped,

42 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

had sometimes the effrontery to pretend to be
fellow thieves, and were allowed to pass toll
free. On one occasion a bold officer in the army,
forewarned that the coach would be stopped,
hid himself in the basket, and on two highway-
men riding up, shot one through the head, and
drove off the other. In later times, Townshend,
the celebrated Bow-street runner, used often to
ride as an armed escort before coaches conveying
government money. Townshend was a little
fat man, who wore a flaxen wig, kerseymere
breeches, a blue straight cut coat, and a broad-
brimmed white hat. He was daring, dexterous,
and cunning ; and his merits, manners, and odd
sayings were much relished by the royal
family. On one occasion, Townshend having to
escort a carriage to Reading, took with him his
friend Joe Manton, the celebrated gunmaker,
who was fond of adventure, and as brave as a
lion. Soon after reaching Hounslow, three foot-
pads stopped the coach, and Joe was just going
to draw trigger, when Townshend cried out,
" Stop, Joe ; don't fire ! Let me talk to the
gentlemen." A glimpse of the moon revealed
Townshend's dreaded figure to the thieves, who
instantly took to their heels ; but he had already
recognised them. In a few days his rough and
ready hand was on their collars, and they were
soon tried and packed off to Botany Bay.

There is a legend at Hounslow that a certain
Bishop of Raphoe was shot on the heath, being
mistaken for a highwayman. John Rann (alias
Sixteen-string Jack) acquired a name, about
1774, at which Hounslow postilions trembled.
This fellow had been coachman to Lord Sand-
wich, who then lived at the south-east corner
of Bedford-row, and he acquired his singular
name by wearing breeches with eight strings at
either knee, to record the number of his ac-
quittals. He was a handsome impudent fellow,
much admired by his companions ; and he is de-
scribed as swaggering at Bagnigge -wells in a
scarlet coat, deep-flapped tambour waistcoat,
white silk stockings, and laced hat. He drank
freely there, lost, with extreme nonchalance, a
hundred - guinea diamond ring, and openly
boasted that he was a highwayman, and could
replace the lost jewel by one evening's work.
He once showed himself at Barnet races in a blue
satin waistcoat trimmed with silver, and was
followed by an admiring crowd. He even had
the matchless impudence to attend a Tyburn
execution, and push his way through a ring of
constables, saying that he was just the sort of
man who ought to have a good place, as he him-
self might figure there some day. Just before
he was taken for robbing Mr. Devall near the
ninth milestone on the Hounslow road, he had
stopped Dr. Bell, the chaplain to the Princess
Amelia, and taken from him eighteenpence and
an old watch. This fellow used to boast that
Sir John Fielding's people always used him
very genteelly ; consequently if they held up a
finger he would follow them as quiet as a lamb.
When brought before Sir John, Rann wore
a bundle of flowers as big as a broom in
the breast of his coat, and had his irons
tied up tastefully with bhie ribbons. At

his trial he appeared in a pea-green suit,
a ruffled shirt, and a hat bound round with
silver strings. He gave a supper a few
nights before his execution. An intelligent
observer, who saw the cart pass the end of
John-street with Rann in it, bound for Tyburn,
describes him in his pea-green coat, carrying,
as he sat by his coffin, with the chaplain reading
prayers to him, an enormous nosegay, presented,
according to custom, from the steps of St. Se-
pulchre's Church. Nothing in life, however, so
well became Sixteen-string Jack as the leaving
it ; for he died penitently, not like desperate
Abershaw, who, on mounting the gibbet so long
eager for him, kicked his shoes off among the
crowd, and leaped savagely into another world.

It is interesting to remember that the first
suggestion of Gay's Beggars' Opera was a remark
of Swift's, as he sat with his friends, one day in
Pope's villa at Twickenham. Hounslow Heath
then spread within a quarter of a mile of
Twickenham, and Pope must often have seen
flying highwaymen chase past the door. Field-
ing, writing in 1775, does not say much for the
moral tone of the Hounslow population at that
time. He describes a captain of the Guards,
who, being robbed on Hounslow Heath, as
soon as the highwayman left, unharnessed a
horse, mounted it, and pursued the fellow, at
noon day, through Hounslow town, shouting,
"Highwayman! Highwayman V\ but no one
joined in the pursuit.

There was always blood, bad or good, being
spilled on Hounslow Heath ; in 1802 a ter-
rible crime, for a long time hidden in mys-
tery, threw a darker gloom over the gibbet
ground. Mr. Steele, a lavender merchant, in
Catherine-street, Strand, who had a house and
nursery-garden at Feltham, left town for Felt-
ham on the afternoon of the fifth of November.
About seven o'clock on the evening of the
sixth, he left Feltham, on his way back to
town, wearing a round hat, almost new, half
boots, and a great coat. He was never seen
again alive. About a quarter past eight, the
driver of the Gosport coach, about ten minutes
after having changed horses at Hounslow, and
when between some trees near the powder
mills and the eleventh milestone, heard a man
moaning, and several groans. On the tenth
the body of the murdered man was found in a
ditch some little distance off the road, towards
the barracks. The back part of the skull was
beaten in, and there was a strap round the
neck. A bludgeon lay near the body, and a
pair of shoes, and an old soldier's hat, with
worsted binding. No clue was obtained to the
crime until the end of 1806, when a deserter
named Hatfield, just sentenced to the hulks for
theft, confessed it. Holloway and Haggarty,
labourers, had arranged the murder while they
were drinking together at a public-house in
Dyot-street. Haggarty, then a marine in the
Shannon frigate, was apprehendedatDeal. When
asked where he had been, that time four years,
he turned pale and almost fainted. Hatfield
proved that Holloway killed Mr. Steele because
he struggled much, just as a coach was ap-

Charles Dicken8.;

FATAL ZERO.

[December 12, 1868.] 43

proaching. Holloway carried off Mr. Steele's
hat and wore it about London, till, at the in-
stigation of Hatfield, he one day filled it with
stones and threw it over Westminster Bridge.
The booty was only twenty-seven shillings.

The two wretches were hung at Newgate on
February 23, 1807. Holloway kept swearing
he was innocent, and shouting, "No verdict,
no verdict, gentlemen. Innocent, innocent."
The long delay in the arrest of the men, and
some lingering belief in their innocence, had
attracted forty thousand people to the narrow
street of the Old Bailey. When the malefac-
tors appeared on the scaffold, the mob seethed
like a black and angry sea. A struggle for life
began, and several women and boys were in-
stantly crushed to death. A savage fight for
life ensued. At the end of Green Arbour-
court, nearly opposite the debtors' door, a
pieman unfortunately dropped his basket, and
many persons falling over this, were in-
stantly trampled to death. A cart overloaded
with spectators breaking down just then added
to the horror and despair of the scene. The
episodes were agonising. A father saw his son,
a fine boy of twelve, trodden to death, but es-
caped himself with some cruel bruises. A woman
with a child at the breast, in dying threw her
child to a bystander, who tossed it to another
who threw it to another, until it reached some
people in a cart, who saved it. Upwards of a
cart-load of shoes, hats, and petticoats were
picked up. Twenty-seven bodies were taken
to St. Bartholomew's Hospital alone.

Two more legends of the heath must not be
forgotten. In James the First's time (December
5, 1606), two young hot-blooded lawyers fought
a duel alone in a wild part of the heath. They
were found, side by side, each having spitted
the other with his rapier. In this extremity
they had become reconciled, though too weak
from loss of blood to help each other. Three
years before this, Sir John Townsend (who had
been knighted at the siege of Cadiz by the
chivalrous Earl of Essex) fought a duel here
on horseback with Sir Matthew Brown, Baron
of Beech worth, with sword and pistol. Both
combatants were dangerously wounded in this
desperate and fierce rencontre, Sir Matthew
dying on the spot, and Sir John Townsend
soon after. So the crow flies, and so the
world went once.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG : A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER III.

The Briton I know him by his talk-
ing loud about my "breakfast." How
often do I hear the florid, white- whiskered
Briton, suffering from the heat acutely,
tell his friend and tell me for he does not
care who hears him, and prefers an audi-
ence that "he'd speak to Grungl, at the
Hesse, about giving some more of that
wild deer," or "that he was going to get

his cutlets, and very odd the Times was so
late;" or else what seems the standard
grumble, about "kreutzers and their in-
fernal money. Look, I say, what can you
make of such things as these ?" And he
does seem to think that wherever the
Englishman goes, his money, meats, steaks,
joints, beds, clubs, Times, &c, should go
with him, and be the money, meat, steaks
of the country. (My dearest Dora, will
you know me after this, or do you suppose
it is your poor invalid that is writing ?
Such a change in me already to be af-
fecting to be funny !) But I go on. Then
I see the great doctor of the place, Seidler,
whose book, Homburg and its Springs, is
in every bookseller's. He is walking about
here, talking to the English, who hang on
his words, and his carriage and horses
wait at the end of the walk a good adver-
tisement, for every stranger asks whose it
is. The Briton with the white whiskers, I
remark, is great on Seidler. At dinner he
tells every one what " Seidler said to me
this morning. Seidler made me cut off
a tumbler of the kayserbrowning, and told
me if I had taken it another day he would
not have answered for it. Egad ! I was
working away, and if he hadn't stopped
me," &c. Seidler, I can see, is looked on
as a magician who can do as he likes with
the springs, and mysteriously check their
whole efficiency if you offend him. Any
one who takes them without consulting
him goes to destruction at once; or else
they do the patient no good at all. We
might as well be quaffing common spring
water. A third of a tumbler, he will
say, every half-hour in the morning, or
a tumbler at seven, and half a tumbler
at a quarter to ten. The idea seems to
be, that, delayed till ten, the prescription
would have no efficacy; and I see the
fresh white- whiskered man, watch in hand,
counting the moments. I go myself to
Seidler, and believe him to be clever ; and
he certainly hit off my case at once. But
these little tricks the English themselves
force on him, as their maladies are so
tricky and fanciful. He says, three weeks of
the water, and, of course, of Seidler three
tumblers of the former, and one interview
with the latter per diem "will make a
new man of me." And I believe him.
My dear, shall I confess it, I can bear this
separation, and am not craving to be back.
It will be better in the end I should be
here. But after ten days I know I shall
get restless and eager to see your pretty
face. Now, dear, I stop this log, for I

44 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

have to go to the baths. To-morrow I go
into Frankfort on the business, having heard
from the merchant, who has fixed an hour to
see me. He talks of some difficulty, but I
shall work hard, and do everything to show
our gratitude to our dear benefactor. And
if I can conclude the matter on more fa-
vourable terms, and save him some money,
I shall lessen my obligation a little. I
find a gentleman whom I met in the walks,
and who seems to have a sort of interest in
me, is going back to London to-night. I
shall send him what I have written so far,
and he will post it in London to Dora.

Saturday. The first portion of the log
has gone off. She will have it by Mon-
day, and I know it will amuse them. She
will read it out.

At twelve to-day, I pass by the grand red
granite building, of a rich handsome stone,
and which is Homburg. It is in the centre of
the town in the street, but has a garden in
front ; with a row of orange trees, con-
sidered the noblest in the world. There is
really something grand in the air of these
magnificent strangers, each in his vast green
box, and standing, I suppose, thirty feet
high. The greatest and most tender care
is taken of them : men are watering, wash-
ing, cleaning, coiffeing these aristocrats,
morning, noon, and night. They are al-
lowed to appear abroad during the hot
months only, and when the cooler period
sets in, they are tenderly moved to a vast
palace far off in the woods, built expressly
for them, where they five together all the
winter, with fires, and blanketing, and
matting, and everything luxurious. The
story runs that they were lost, one by one,
by a certain landgrave, or elector, or grand
duke, who staked them against a hundred
pounds a piece ; and now that brings me to
what I have been indirectly fencing off,
and which fills me with a certain dread, as I
think of it. I never felt such a sensation, as
when, after passing through the noble pas-
sage floored with marble, three or four hun-
dred feet long, where a whole town might
promenade, I found myself in a vast cool
shaded hall that seemed like the ban-
queting-room of a palace. It was of noble
proportions, a carved ceiling, and literally
one mass of gorgeous fresco painting and
gold. Noble chandeliers of the most elegant
design hang down the middle, the arches
in the ceiling are animated with figures of
nymphs and cupids, with gardens and
terraces, and the portico furnishing is rich
and solid, and in the most exquisite taste.
From these open other rooms, seen through

arches and beyond the folds of lace cur-
tains, and each decorated in a different
taste one, snowy white and gold, another,
pale pink and gold. The floors are parquet
in the prettiest patterns. Servants in rich
green and gold liveries glide about, and the
most luxurious soft couches in crimson
velvets line the walls. What art has done
is indeed perfect and most innocent ; but
where nature and humanity gathers round,
standing in two long groups down the room,
it almost appals. For I hear the music,
the faint, prolonged "a-a-a-rr." Then the
clatter and sudden rattle and chinking of
silver on silver, of gold on gold, and the
low short sentences of those who preside
over the rite, and silence again. As I join
the group and look over shoulders, then I
see that strange human amphitheatre, that
oval of eager and yet impassive faces, all
looking down on the bright green field
the cloth of gold, indeed. What a sight !
the four magicians, with their sceptres
raised. The piles of gold, the rouleaux, the
rich coils of dollars like glittering silver
snakes, and more dangerous than a snake
the fluttering notes nestling in little velvet-
lined recesses, and peeping out through
the gilt bars of their little cages. There is
something awful in this spectacle, and yet
there is a silent fascination something, I
suppose, that must be akin to the spectacle
at an execution.

The preparation, the prompt covering of
the green ground in those fatal divisions,
the notes here, the little glittering pile of
yellow pieces, the solid handsome dollars,
whose clinking seems music, the lighter
florins, the double Fredericks, and the fat
sausage-like rouleaux, which these wonder-
ful and dexterous rakes adjust so delicately !
Now the cards are being dealt slowly,
while the most perfect stillness reigns, and
every eye is bent on those hands. I hear
him at the end of the first row give a
sort of grunt, "ung!" then begin his
second, and end with a judgment or ver-
dict. There is a general rustle and turning
away of faces, stooping forward, a marking
of paper, and the four fatal rakes begin
sweeping in greedily gold and notes and
silver all in confusion, a perfect rabble
while, this fatal work over, two skilful
hands begin to spout money, as it were, to
the ends of the earth. On the fortunate
heaps left undisturbed come pouring down
whole Danae showers of silver and gold ;
and to the rouleaux come rolling over
softly companion rouleaux. Now do eager
fingers stretch out and clutch their prize.

<Q?r

Charles Dickena]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 12, 1868.] 45

Other faces, yellow and contorted, their
fingers to their lips, look on dismally.
Then it begins again ; figures are stooping
forward to lay on ; and so the wretched
formula goes on, repeated for I made the
calculation some seven hundred times that
day. But it never seems to flag, and every
time has the air of fresh, and fresher,
novelty. It begins to sicken me, and that
air of stern concentrated attention, of
sacrifice even, depresses me ; and when I
think that if a return could be got of the
agitation, palpitations, hopes, fears, despair,
exultation, going on during these seven
hundred operations, it would represent a
total of human agony inconceivable. Then
I see how it can be again multiplied
through the twelve months of this wicked
year. Then I think of the prospective
miseries to others at a distance, to wives
and to children lives wretched, lives un-
settled miserable deaths. I say, I think
of all this, and ask, is it too much to call
these men special ministers of Mephisto-
pheles a band under the decent respect-
able name of a Bank, organised to destroy
souls by a machinery, the like of which for
completeness exists not on this earth ? I
say, there is nothing on earth approaching
this company, whose men and emissaries
ought to wear cock's feathers and red and
black dresses, for their complete and suc-
cessful exertions for destruction and corrup-
tion. They distil their poison over that
green board, and it is carried away to all
countries to England, France, America,
Belgium, Germany, whence the victims re-
turn again and again, bringing fresh ones,
like true decoys. They hang men ; they
punish and imprison for far less crimes ;
but on the heads of these wretches is the
ruin of thousands of bodies and souls, the
spiritual death, and the actual corporeal
death of thousands more, who have hung
themselves to the fair trees planted in sweet
bowers by the "administration," or stifled
themselves with charcoal in front of this
fatal palace, and who have actually dabbled
with their brains over the vile green table on
which they have lost all. A banking com-
pany! all fair, give and take, and such
phrases ! Satan says the same in Ms deal-
ings.

And here is this functionary in the trim
suit a pink-faced, hard, cat-eyed sinner,
who steals about, and watches everybody,
and his own agents also more than any one
else. A capital officer they tell me, skilful
and wary at the accounts. To him the
shareholders will one day present a piece

of plate, or hard cash, which he would
prefer, in acknowledgment of his exertions
in their interest. Oh, that some fitting
punishment could be devised for those
who thus fatten on the blood of the inno-
cent ! I should not come here. I should
not breathe this tainted air look on this
painted vice, and their wretched shabby
baits, to win the approbation of the decent
and the moral, like myself. Here are your
English newspapers of every kind and de-
gree. Pray read all day long in these
charming rooms, and sit on those soft
couches, or out here in these charming gar-
dens while our music plays for you. Do
understand, nothing is expected from you
in return. You, charming English ladies,
so fair and pretty, you can work with those
innocent fingers ; and your nice high-
spirited brothers, they would like to get up
cricket, would they ? Here is a nice field ;
we shall have it mowed and got ready, and
to-morrow shall come from Frankfort the
finest bats, stumps, balls everything com-
plete. Do you give the order ; get them
from London, if you like. We shall pay.
There is shooting, too quite of the best.
We shall be proud to find the guns and
dogs, and even the powder. It will do us
an honour. Get up a little fete ; a dance
in the Salons des Princes. We shall light
it up for you, and find the servants. So
do these tricksters try to impose on us,
with their sham presents, for which our
Toms and Charleses good-natured elder
brothers must pay, and pay secretly, in
many a visit to these tables. They have
built us a superb theatre one of the hand-
somest of its size in Europe. How kind,
how considerate ! yet they charge us a
napoleon for a stall, if there is any one
worth hearing. Presents, indeed ! we
know the poor relative who comes with a
twopenny-halfpenny pot of jam, and ex-
pects to get a handsome testimonial in re-
turn. Everything about our " administra-
tion" is in keeping ; and I almost grieve that
I should have come to such a place. This
resolution, at least, I can make : never to
let the light of an honest man's face beam
on their evil doings.

I feel I am rather warm on this matter,
but it does seem to me that the whole has
been too gently dealt with hitherto, and
treated too indulgently. Even these con-
querors, who, we are told, have given them
notice that they are to be chassed, have
shown too much respect. They talk of
equities a lease. Do we hold to leases
with pirates ? Do we make treaties with

= tP

=2.

46 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Bin Sykes? Had I been the king, I
would have marched two regiments into
their glittering halls, seized their infamous
tools, broken the rakes across the soldiers'
knees, torn up their cards, smashed into
firewood the roulette board and its num-
bers, impounded their gold and silver and
sent it to the hospitals, and, locking the
doors and leaving sentries, have marched
off M. A. and M. B., the admirable men of
business, in a file of soldiers. I should
have these fellows tried, and put to hard
labour for the rest of their fives. As it is,
a culpable weakness has given them three
or four years more to pursue their vile
work, and gather, say, twenty thousand
precious souk into Satan's own bag net.

chapter rv.

Eleven o'clock at night. I cannot en-
dure this terrible spectacle any more, and
shall not go to that place again. "What I
have seen to-night is almost awful. I went
in to those rooms, now fit up, rich in colours,
and glittering like a king's palace. Such a
crowd, and such a contrast ! First, I had
gone on the terrace, and looked down on the
charming gardens, where the innocent were
at the little tables, each surrounded with
its group, sipping coffee ; the music playing
in the pavilion. Then I turn round and
look at the blazing windows, at the great
door behind me, which yawns like a cavern.
I hear the faint "click-click" and "rattle-
rattle," and that vast and quiet group,
crowded together. They are serious and
earnest ; but there are delighted and festive
groups, wandering about happy families,
charming young girls, good-natured papas
and mammas looking on with delight ; and
now one of the young girls comes tripping
back with " Charles," in such delight,
showing something shining in her hand.
The great soft couches round are fined
with festive-looking people. Every one is
" circulating," and there is an air of anima-
tion and motion over all. Some curiosity
makes me finger, and share it also a wish
to describe to my little darling at home
such a strange and singular phase of man-
ners and character. I draw near to that
other table the one I had not seen in the
morning, and which is consecrated to rou-
lette. It glitters all over with pieces, sown
thickly, sown broadcast, dotted here, there,
and everywhere, in perfect spasms of dis-
tribution. They contend with each other,
this yellow, fiery-eyed, and dirty man, and
the keen but pretty girl with the powder
an inch thick on her face, and her pink silk

gathered up about her. They grudge each
other room, do these combatants; they
glare savagely underneath ; the old lady in
black silk guides, with a trembling hand,
her single piece to some number firml y
seen, but whose place she guesses at. As
the ball flies round in its tiny circus, every
arm, with long stretched wrists, lunges out,
eager to be on ; piece jostles piece. " Give
us standing room," they say, no matter
whether they be lost or won. Then comes
the sudden leap and metallic click as the
ball stumbles into its bed ; then the water-
fall comes spouting down from the centre
the heavy streams of coin, directed and
fighting with pleasant jingling on its fel-
lows. No one seems daunted by defeat.
I see one man who has been frantically
piling his gold here, there, and everywhere,
and, by some strange and devilish perver-
sity, is not allowed to win no, not once
while little, mean, cautious fiddlers, with
their shillings and francs, fare admirably.
I see him. biting his lips as his nervous
fingers turn over the half-dozen little gold
pieces, in that agonising uncertainty which
I note so often, whether to play the bold
game now, risk all, or save this little wreck
for another season. And all to be decided
within a second. When it is gone, a
pause, and then that rueful walking away
off the stage, while others rush into his
place. Or another. His all seems gone;
when, after an undecided council, his hand
seeks his breast-pocket a note to be
changed something that he has no right
to meddle with ! Then the girls, young,
pretty, and not innocent of fear ; then the
ladies good sensible wives at home, but
transformed by coming to these places
gradually come in, greedy harpies, and
ready, if they lose, to turn cat-like on their
husbands. All this wreck, this shocking
wreck, caused by this factory of wicked-
ness ! I have had enough for one day and
for one night. I wish I had not seen it,
for it makes me wretched ; and yet it is
worth seeing as a spectacle of infamy.
What I have written, too, will interest my
pet at home; and, as I know she hoards
up every scrap of my writing, perhaps one
day others will find it, and read it, and it
may act as a warning. There ! I am going
to bed infinitely better. God be praised
for his mercy ! and for my pet's sake I will
say over her little prayer, which she will
be saying about the same time :

" Lord! Thou wlw dost guide tlw ship
over the waters, and bring safe to its jour-
ney's end the fiery train, look on me in this

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 12, 1868.] 47

distant land. Save me from harm of soul
and body ; give me back health and strength,
that I may serve Thee more faithfully, and be
able to bring others dependent on me to serve
Thee also, and add to Thy glories ! Amen."

Sunday. How sweet and delicious are
the mornings here ; what soft airs blow
gently from these luxuriant trees and moun-
tains ! One really grows fonder of the
place every moment. The mornings are
the most charming ; ever so pastoral, and
yet it will seem but the pastoral of the
theatre or the opera sham trees and shep-
herdesses ; and I feel all the time that the
corrupting Upas garden spreads its fatal
vanities over all. These pretty wells, en-
chanting walks, innocent flowers, music,
lights, trees, ferns, what not they could
hardly be, without this support. The odious
and plundering vice keeps up and pays
for all, even for the innocent blessings of
nature; and I doubt whether one is not
accessory before the act to those results in
accepting any benefit from so contami-
nated a source, and lending one's coun-
tenance in return to their doings. But this
is too much refining, and my pet at home
will smile at such scruples. I must not
set up to be a saint, and I shall do more
practical work if, by word or example, I
can save some light and careless soul from
the temptation. Some way I seem to
myself to be grown a little too virtuous
since I came here ; but in presence of this
awful destroyer it is hard not to be serious.

Another of the baits to purchase the
good-will of the decent is the reading
room, flooded literally with journals of all
climes. Squire John Bull is paid special
attention to, by half a dozen of his fa-
vourite Times, Pall- Mall, Morning Herald
even though what put that journal in the
heads of the administration it would be
hard to tell and the veteran Galignani.
But a glass door between the Times and
squire, who is stingy at heart, and resents
postage, and at the same time having to
subscribe to his club at home, where he
can have all these papers for nothing
British flesh and blood could not stand
that; so he and his wife I knew him at
once by his gold glass and complacent an-
as he reads come every morning at eleven
o'clock, and sit and devour their cheap
news till one or two. The greediness and
selfishness displayed as to getting papers
by these people is inconceivable. I do
say there is more of the little mean vices
engendered in that room than one could
possibly conceive in so small a space. The

moment he enters there is the questing eye
looking round with suspicion and eager-
ness until he sees the mainsail of his Times
fluttering in another Briton's hand, an old
enemy i.e. one who is a slow reader, and
who reads every word. He himself is a
slow reader, and reads every word ; but
that is nothing to the point. A look of
dislike and anger spreads over his face ;
but there is the other copy, also "in
hand" in the hand of a dowager, with
glasses also " that beast of a woman," he
tells his wife. The person in whose hands
he likes to see his Times is a young
"thing," a "chit of a girl," who just
skims over a column or two, reads the
Court Circular portion, and the account of
the latest opera. Indeed, he thinks that
she has no business to be reading at all.
He prowls about, looking at the owners of
other papers, as who should say, "Ugh,
you !" Now some one lays down a paper,
and he rushes at it, anticipating another
cormorant by a second : it is only the old
journal, not yesterday's. Then, with eyes
of discontent, he goes up to the reader in
possession of the Times, and says, bitterly,
" I'll trouble you when you have done with
that ;" to which the answer is a grunt.
And then he draws a chair close opposite
to him, and if glaring can hurry, or rest-
less moving of the chair, or impatient eja-
culation, he could not fail. When he does
secure it, what a read he has, and how he
does take it out of the others ! If he could
he would have three or four one to sit on,
one lying near him. And yet he is not a
bad man, I am sure, at home ; but the
very atmosphere of this place, perverts
everything. Yet the French and Germans
in this room take the thing tranquilly.
They read their little newspaper quietly and
swiftly, with a little faint eagerness to get
possession of the Figaro, or some diverting
paper ; but no one glares at his neighbour.
My Dora at home will send me out a
paper, so I shall be independent of these
rascals and their pitiful bribes.

Two o'clock. The dogs in the street
drawing the little milk carts, harnessed so
prettily, and drawing so " willingly."
Honest Tray, with his broad jaws well
open, and he himself panting from the
heat, looks up every now and again to the
neat German girl who walks by him. When
she wants him to go on, she leads him
gently by his great yellow ear, as if it was
a bridle. When there are two together they
trot on merrily ; but the work is too much
for the poor paws of a single one. When

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[December 12, 1868.]

they are waiting, I notice she draws them
into the shade, and they He down there, in
their harness.

I must tell you, dearest, ahout the people
here, for this is a great place in which to
study human nature and character. All
the tribes of the earth seem to come here
and take a new sort of shape as they stay.
It is a paradise for women, and for pretty
women, and therefore if my pet were here,
but I must not turn that pretty head.
Neither should I like her to be exposed to
the bold, free-and-easy study of some of
the gentry who walk about here, and sur-
vey beauty leisurely. In England, did any
venture to " stare," as we would call it, in
such a fashion, we should be tempted to
fetch him a good stroke across his insolent
face. But here, in this scattering of all
the licentious free laws of Europe, it is
tolerated and invited even. Yes, women
are actually proud of this questionable sort
of attention, and they give a look in return,
though only a second's length, as if to
challenge fresh attention. And yet it must
be owned our own decent, decorous dames
and girls, they look a poor race here ; they
seem to want style, which is with beauty,
colour, everything save expression. There
is, indeed, a charming-looking girl, who
walks about here with a sister, and has an
air of enjoyment and delight truly refresh-
ing in the fade indifference which prevails.
She has the most mysterious likeness to
my Dora at home : I am glad she is here, as
she will be a little photograph of one who
is so dear to me. The same expression,
the same aristocratic look that she has.
Petite, with an exquisitely- shaped head,
the richest and glossiest dark hair, the
most refined outline of face ; I am struck
with her more and more. What contrasts
to her the Americans, dressed to ex-
travagance in theatrical "costumes," as
they call laces and flounces, and the
shortest of dresses, and the highest of
heels, some certainly two or three inches
high ! Their faces are surprisingly round
and full and brilliant, their figures good
and handsome, which is a surprise ; but
when they open their full lips out streams
the twang, nasal and horny. I shall see
more of them, however, at a ball to be
given presently. I know some little de-
tails of dress, &c, will amuse. What will
my pet say to a rich black silk Watteau

dress, all looped and curtained up, all over
embroidery, with a crimson Spanish petti-
coat seen below, and the black all lit up
here and there with the most delicate
little lines and edging of crimson ? It is
as delicate as a Cardinal's undress. What
will I say ? I hear my pet answer. It would
cost half a year's salary. Then what will
she say to a faint amber-coloured summer
dress, all looped and hanging in festoons,
with a pale blue and white petticoat ?
This is, indeed, dressing in water colour,
and both are American. There is another,
a sort of pale sprite of a fairy, so white and
delicate are her cheeks, so lustrous her
eyes, so artificial the effect. She is all eternal
smiles and giggling, and writhing and
twistings of the neck, a favourite part of
American pantomime. Her dress is be-
comingly short, and the oft- quoted Sir John
Suckling's fine is abolished, and ladies
feet do not, like little mice, "run in and
out;" but rather arrogantly display them-
selves peacock-like, as ostentatiously as
they can. We might find patterns here
for the plumage of all the birds of the air,
from the flamingo downward ; with a good
deal of damaged ware, which I would not for
the world my pet saw, but this is only more
of the work of the Mephistopheles company
yonder. To think, again I say, that these
pure blessings, these life-giving springs,
sent to give strength and innocence, all to
be turned into fresh agents for attracting
villany and vice. Was there ever such
diabolical perversity !

Early in December will be ready
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MESSES. CHAPPELL and Co. have the honour
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17, Glasgow ; Tuesday, December 22, St. James's Hall,
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^HE-STO^-OF- OV*V ilvES JROM-'Y^A^TO *y\

CONDUCTED- BY

'3fotfSH0LD*W0^DS *

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19.

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Stoey by the Author op "Black Sheep.

CHAPTER V. WOOLGREAVES.

" You will be better when you have made
the effort, mother," said Marian Ashurst to
the widow, one day, when the beauty of the
summer was at its height, and death and
grief seemed very hard to bear, in the face
of the unsympathising sunshine. " Don't
think I underrate the effort, for indeed I
don't, but you will be better when you have
made it."

" Perhaps so, my dear," said Mrs.
Ashurst, with reluctant submissiveness.
" You are right ; I am sure you always are
right : but it is so little use to go to any
place where one can't enjoy oneself, and
where everybody must see that it is impos-
sible ; and you have you know " Her

lip trembled, her voice broke. Her little
hands, still soft and pretty, twined them-
selves together, with an expression of pain.
Then she said no more.

Marian had been standing by the open
window, looking out, the side of her head
turned to her mother, who was glancing at
her timidly. Now she crossed the room,
with a quick steady step, and knelt down
by Mrs. Ashurst' s chair, clasping her hands
upon the arm.

" Listen to me, dear," she said, with her
clear eyes fixed on her mother's face, and
her voice, though softened to a tone of the
utmost tenderness, firm and decided. " You
must never forget that I know exactly what
and how much you feel, and that I share it
all" (there was a forlornness in the girl's
face which bore ample testimony to the
truth of what she said) " when I tell you,
in my practical way, what we must do.
You remember, once, then, you spoke to me

about the Creswells, and I made light of
them and their importance and influence.
I would not admit it ; I did not understand
it. I had not fully thought about it then ;
but I admit it now. I understand it now,
and it is my turn to tell you, my dearest
mother, that we must be civil to them ; we
must take, or seem to take, their offers of
kindness, of protection, of intimacy, as they
are made. We cannot afford to do other-
wise, and they are just the sort of people to
be offended with us irreparably, if we did
not allow them to extend their hospitality
to us. It is rather officious, rather ostenta-
tious ; it has all the bitterness of making
us remember more keenly what they might
have done for us, but it is hospitality, and
we need it ; it is the promise of further
services which we shall require urgently.
You must rouse yourself, mother ; this must
be your share of helpfulness to me in the
burthen of our life. And, after all, what
does it matter ? "What real difference does
it make ? My father is as much present to
you and to me in one place as in another.
Nothing can alter, or modify, or soften;
nothing can deepen or embitter that truth.
Come with me the effort will repay itself."
Mrs. Ashurst had begun to look more
resolved, before her daughter, who had
spoken with more than her usual earnest-
ness and decision, had come to an end of
her argument. She put her arm round the
girl's neck, and gave her a timid squeeze,
and then half rose, as though she were
ready to go with her, anywhere she chose,
that very minute. Then Marian, without
asking another word on the subject, busied
herself about her mother's dress, arranging
the widow's heavy sombre drapery with a
deft hand, and talking about the weather,
the pleasantness of their projected walk,
and the daily dole of Helmingham gossip.

50 [December 19, 1888.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Marian cared little for gossip of any kind
herself, bnt it was a godsend to her some-
times, when she had particular reasons for
not talking to her mother of the things that
were in her mind, and did not find it easy
to invent other things to talk to her about.

The object which Marian had in view
just now, and which she had had some diffi-
culty in attaining, was the inducing of her
mother, who had passed the time since
her bereavement in utter seclusion, to
accept the invitation of Mr. Creswell, the
owner of "Woolgreaves, the local grandee
par excellence, the person whose absence
Marian had so lamented on the occasion of
her father's illness, to pass " a long day"
with him and his nieces. It was not the
first time such an invitation had reached
Mrs. Ashurst. Their rich neighbour, the
dead schoolmaster's friend, had not been
neglectful of the widow and her daughter,
but it was the first time Marian had made
up her mind that this advance on his part
must be met and welcomed. She had as
much reluctance to break through the seclu-
sion of their life as her mother, though of a
somewhat different stamp ; but she had been
pondering and calculating, while her mother
had been only thinking and suffering, and she
had decided that it must be done. She did
not doubt that she should suffer more in
the acting upon this decision than her
mother ; but it was made, and must be
acted upon. So Marian took her mother
to "Woolgreaves. Mr. Creswell had offered
to send a carriage (he rather liked the use
of the indefinite article, which implied the
extent of his establishment) to fetch the
ladies, but Marian had declined this. The
walk would do her mother good, and brace
her nerves ; she meant to talk to her easily,
with seeming carelessness, of the possibili-
ties of the future, on the way. At length
Mrs. Ashurst was ready, and her daughter
and she set forth, in the direction of the
distressingly modern, but really imposing,
mansion, which, for the first time, they ap-
proached, unsupported by him, in whose
presence it had. never occurred to them
to suffer from any feeling of inferiority
of position or means, or to believe that any
one could regard them in a slighting
manner.

Mr. Creswell, of Woolgreaves, had en-
tertained a sincere regard, built on pro-
found respect, for Mr. Ashurst. He
knew the inferiority of his own mind, and
his own education, to those of the man who
had contentedly and laboriously filled so
humble a position one so unworthy of his

talents, as well as he knew the superiority
of his own business abilities, the difference
which had made him a rich man, and which
would, under any circumstances, have kept
Mr. Ashurst poor. He was a man pos-
sessed of much candour of mind and sound
judgment; and though he preferred, quite
sincerely, the practical ability which had
made him what he was, and heartily enjoyed
all the material advantages and pleasures
of his life, he was capable of profound ad-
miration for such unattainable things as
taste, learning, and the indefinable moral
and personal elements which combine to
form a scholar and a gentleman. He was
a commonplace man in every other respect
than this, that he most sincerely despised
and detested flattery, and was incapable of
being deceived by it. He had not failed to
understand that it would have been as im-
possible to James Ashurst to flatter as to
rob him ; and for this reason, as well as for
the superiority he had so fully recognised,
he had felt warm and abiding friendship
for him, and lamented his death, as he had
not mourned any accident of mortality since
the day which had seen his pretty young
wife laid in her early grave. Mr. Creswell,
a poor man in those days, struggling man-
fully very far down on the ladder, which he
had since climbed with the ease which not
unfrequently attends effort, when something
has happened to decrease the value of suc-
cess, had loved his pretty, uneducated, merry
little wife very much, and had felt for a
while after she died, that he was not sure
whether anything was worth working or
striving for. But his constitutional activity
of mind and body had got the better of that
sort of feeling, and he had worked and
striven to remarkably good purpose ; but
he had never asked another woman to share
his fortunes. This was not altogether oc-
casioned by fingering regret for his pretty
Jenny. He was not of a sentimental turn
of mind, and he might even have been
brought to acknowledge, reluctantly, that
his wife would probably have been much
out of place in the fine house, and at the
head of the luxurious establishment which
his wealth had formed. She was humbly
born, like himself, had not been ambitious,
except f love and happiness, and had had
no better education than enabled her to
read and write, not so perfectly as to foster
in her a taste for either occupation. If Mr.
Creswell had a sorrowful remembrance of
her sometimes, it died away with the reflec-
tion that she had been happy while she
lived, and would not have been so happy

*Xr-

Charles Dickens]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 19. 1868.]

now. His continued bachelor estate was
occasioned rather by his close and engross-
ing attention to the interests of his busi-
ness, and, perhaps, also to the narrow social
circle in which he lived. Pretty, unedu-
cated, simple young country women will
retain their power of pleasing men who
have acquired education, and made money,
and so elevated themselves far above their
original station ; but the influence of edu-
cation and wealth upon the tastes of men of
this sort is inimical to the chances of the
young women of the classes in society
among which they habitually find their
associates. The women of the "well-to-
do" world are unattractive to those men
who have" not been bom in it. Such
men either retain the predilections of
their youth for women like those whose
girlhood they remember, or cherish ambi-
tious aspirations towards the inimitable, not
to be borrowed or imported, refinement of
the women of social spheres far above them.
The former was Mr. Creswell's case, in as
far as anything except business can be said
to have been active in his affairs. The
" ladies" in the Helmingham district were
utterly uninteresting to him, and he had
made that fact so evident long ago that
they had accepted it ; of course regarding
him as an " oddity," and much to be
pitied ; and since his nieces had taken up
their abode, on the death of their father,
Mr. Creswell's only brother, at Woolgreaves,
a matrimonial development in Mr. Cres-
well's career had been regarded as an im-
possibility. The owner of Woolgreaves
was voted by general feminine consent " a
dear old thing," and a very good neighbour,
and the ladies only hoped he might not
have trouble before him with " that pickle,
young Tom," and were glad to think no
poor woman had been induced to put her-
self in for such a life as that of Tom's step-
mother would have been.

Mr. Creswell's only brother had belonged,
not to the "well-to-do" community, but,
on the contrary, to that of the " ne'er-do-
weels," and he had died without a shilling,
heavily in debt, and leaving two helpless
girls sufficiently delicately nurtured to
feel their destitution with keenness amount-
ing to despair, and sufficiently "fashion-
ably," i.e. ill-educated, to be wholly in-
capable of helping themselves to the mercy
of the world. The contemplation of this
contingency, for which he had plenty of
leisure, for he died of a lingering illness,
did not appear to have distressed Tom
Creswell. He had believed in " luck" all

his life, with the touching devotion of a
selfish man, who defines " luck" as the
making of things comfortable for himself,
and is not troubled with visions of, after
him, the modern version of the deluge,
which takes the squalid form of the pawn-
broker's, and the poor-house ; and "luck"
had lasted bis time. It had even survived
him, so far as his children were concerned,
for his brother, who had quarrelled with
him, more from policy and of deliberate
interest, regarding him as a hopeless spend-
thrift, the helping of whom was a useless
extravagance, than from anger or disgust,
came to the aid of the widow and her
children, when he found that things were
very much worse than he had supposed
they would prove to be.

Mrs. Tom Creswell afforded a living ex-
ample of her husband's " luck." She was
a mild, gentle, very silly, very self-denying,
estimable woman, who loved the " ne'er-
do-weel" so literally with all her heart, that
when he died, she had not enough of that
organ left to go on living with. She did
not see why she should try, and she did
not try, but quietly died in a few months,
to the astonishment of rational people,
who declared that Tom Creswell was a
"good loss," and had never been of the
least use either to himself or any other
human being. What on earth was the
woman about ? Was she such an idiot as
not to see his faults ? Did she not know
what a selfish, idle, extravagant, worthless
fellow he was, and that he had left her to
either pauperism or dependence on any one
who would support her, quite compla-
cently ? If such a husband as he was
what she had seen in him beyond his hand-
some face, and his pleasant manner, they
could not tell was to be honoured in this
way, gone quite daft about, in fact ; they
really could not perceive the advantage to
men in being active, industrious, saving, pru-
dent, and domestic. Nothing could be more
true, more reasonable, more unanswerable,
or more ineffectual. Mrs. Tom Creswell
did not dispute it ; she patiently endured
much bullying by strong-minded, tract-
dropping females of the spinster persua-
sion ; she was quite satisfied to be told she
had proved herself unworthy of a better
husband. She did not murmur as it was
proved to her, in the fiercest forms of
accurate arithmetic, that her Tom had
squandered sums which might have pro-
vided for her and her children decently,
and had not even practised the poor self-
denial of paying for an insurance on his

z &

52 [December 19, 1868.;

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

life. She contradicted no one, she rebuked
no one, she asked forbearance and pity from
no one, she merely wept, and said she was
sure her brother-in-law would be kind to
the girls, and that she would not like to be
a trouble to Mr. Creswell herself, and was
sure her Tom would not have liked her to
be a trouble to Mr. Creswell. On this point
the brother of the " departed saint," as the
widow called the amiable idler of whose
presence she considered the world un-
worthy, by no means agreed with her. Mr.
Creswell was of opinion that so long as
trouble kept clear of Tom, Tom would
have been perfectly indifferent as to where
it lighted. But he did not say so. He had
not much respect for his sister-in-law's
intellect, but he pitied her, and he was not
only generous to her distress, but also
merciful to her weakness. He offered her
a home at Woolgreaves, and it was arranged
that she should "try" to go there, after a
while. But she never tried, and she never
went, she "did not see the good of"
anything, and in six months after Tom
Creswell' s death his daughters were settled
at Woolgreaves, and it is doubtful whether
the state of orphanhood was ever in any
case a more tempered, modified misfortune
than in theirs.

Thus, the family party at the hand-
some house, which Mrs. Ashurst and her
daughter were about to visit, was composed
of Mr. Creswell, his son Tom, a specimen
of the schoolboy class, of whom this history
has already afforded a glimpse, and the
Misses Creswell, the Maud and Gertrude of
whom Marian had, in her grief, spoken in
terms of sharp and contemptuous disparage-
ment, which, though not entirely cen-
surable, judged from her point of view,
were certainly not altogether deserved.

Mr. Creswell earnestly desired to befriend
the visitor and her daughter. Gertrude
Creswell thought it would be very " nice" to
be "great friends" with that clever Miss
Ashurst, and had, with all the impulsiveness
of generous girlhood, exulted in the idea
of being, in her turn, able to extend kind-
ness to people in need of it, even as she
and her sister had been. But Maud, who
though her actual experience of life had
been identical with her sister's, had more
natural intuition and caution, checked the
enthusiasm with which Gertrude drew this
picture :

"We must be very careful, Gerty dear,"
she said. " I fancy this clever Miss Ashurst
is very proud. People say you never find
out the nature of any one until trouble

brings it to the light. It would never do to let
her think one had any notion of doing her
services, you know, she might not like it
from us ; uncle's kindness to them is a
different thing ; but we must remember
that we are, in reality, no better off than
she is."

Gertrude reddened. She had not spoken
with the remotest idea of patronage of Miss
Ashurst in her mind, and her sister's warn-
ing pained her. Gertrude had a dash of
her father's insouciance in her, though in
him it had been selfish joviality, and in her
it was only happy thoughtlessness. It had
occurred to Gertrude, more than once before
to-day, to think she should like to be mar-
ried to some one whom she could love very
much indeed, and away from this fine place
Avbich did not belong to them, though her
uncle was very kind, in a home of her own.
Maud had a habit of saying and looking
things which made Gertrude entertain such
notions, and now she had, with the best in-
tentions, injured her pleasure in the anti-
cipation of the visit of Mrs. Ashurst and
Marian.

It was probably this little incident which
lent the slight touch of coldness and re-
straint to the manner of Gertrude Creswell
which Marian instantly felt, and which she
erroneously interpreted. When they had
met formerly, there had been none of this
hesitating formality.

" These girls don't want us here," said
Marian to herself; ''they grudge us their
uncle's friendship, lest it should take a form
which would deprive them of any of his
money."

Perhaps Marian was not aware of the
resolve lurking in her heart even then, that
such was precisely the form which that
friendship should be made to take. The
evil warp in her otherwise frank and noble
mind told in this. Gertrude Creswell, to
whom in particular she imputed mercenary
feeling, and the forethought of a calculating
jealousy, was entirely incapable of anything
of the kind, and was actuated wholly by her
dread that Marian should misinterpret any
premature advance towards intimacy on
her part as an impertinence. Thus the
foundation of a misunderstanding between
the two was laid.

Marian's thoughts had been busy with
the history of the sisters, as she and her
mother approached Woolgreaves. She had
heard her father describe Tom Creswell and
his wife, and dwell upon the fortunate
destiny which had transferred Maud and
Gertrude to their uncle's care. She thought

Charles Dickens.

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 19, 1868.] 53

of all that now with bitterness. The con-
trast between her father's character, life,
and fate, and the character, life, and fate of
Tom Creswell, was a problem difficult to
solve, hard to endure. Why had the mea-
sure been so differently she would, she
must say, so unjustly meted to these two
men ? Her fancy dwelt on every point in
that terrible difference, lingered around
the two death-beds, pictured the happy,
sheltered, luxurious, unearned security of
those whom the spendthrift had left un-
cared for, and the harsh, gloomy future be-
fore her mother and herself, in which only
two things, hard work and scanty means,
were certain, which had been the vision her
father must have seen of the fate of those
he loved, when he, so fitted to adorn an
honoured and conspicuous position, had
died, worn out in the long vain strife with
poverty. Here were the children of the
man who had lived utterly for self, and the
widow and child of the " righteous," who
had done his duty manfully from first to
last. Hard and bitter were Marian's re-
flections on this contrast, and earnestly did
she wish that some speedy means of ac-
celerating by efforts of her own the fulfil-
ment of those promises of Providence, in
which she felt sometimes tempted to put
little faith, might arise.

" I suppose he was not exactly forsaken,"
said the girl, in her mind, as she approached
the grand gates of Woolgreaves, whose iron-
mongery displayed itself in the utmost pro-
fusion, allied with artistic designs more
sumptuous than elegant, " and that no one
will see us ' begging our bread ;' but there
is only meagre consolation to me in this,
since he had not what might or all their
service is a pretence, all their ' opinions'
are lies have saved him, and I see little to
rejoice in, in being just above the begging
of bread."

"They have done a great deal to the
place since we were here, Marian," said Mrs.
Ashurst, looking round admiringly upon
the skilful gardening, and rich display of
shrubs, and flowers, and outdoor decorations
of all kinds. " It must take a great many
hands to keep this in order. Not so much
as a leaf or a pebble out of its place."

"They say there are four gardeners
always employed," said Marian. " I wish
we had the money it costs ; we needn't wish
Midsummer-day further off then. But here
is Mr. Creswell, coming to meet us."

Marian Ashurst was much more attrac-
tive in her early womanhood than she had
promised to be as a very young girl, and

the style of her face and figure was of the
kind which is assisted in its effect by a
somewhat severe order of costume. She
was not beautiful, not even positively hand-
some, and it is possible she might have
looked commonplace in the ordinary dress
of young women of limited means, where
cheap material and coarse colouring must
necessarily be used. In her plain attire of
deep mourning, with no ornament save one
or two trinkets of jet, which had been her
mother's, Marian Ashurst looked far from
commonplace, and remarkably ladylike.
The strongly defined character in her face,
the composure of her manner, the quietness
of her movements, were not the charms
which are usually associated with youth,
but they were charms, and her host was a
person to whom they were calculated to
prove especially charming. Except in his
generally benevolent way of entertaining a
kindly regard for his friend's daughter, Mr.
Creswell had never noted nor taken any
particular notice of Marian Ashurst; but
she had not been an hour in his house before
she impressed herself upon him as being
very different from all the other girls of his
acquaintance, and much more interesting
than his nieces.

Mr. Creswell felt rather annoyed with his
nieces. They were civil, certainly ; but they
did not seem to understand the art of mak-
ing the young lady, who was visiting them,
happy and ' ' at home. ' ' There was none of the
freemasonry of "the young person" about
them. After a while, Mr. Creswell found that
the order of things he had been prepared
for what he certainly would have taken to
be the natural order of things was altered,
set aside, he did not know how, and that
he was walking along the trim garden paths,
after luncheon, with Miss Ashurst, while
Maud and Gertrude took charge of the
visitor to whom he had meant to devote
himself, and were making themselves as
amiable and pleasant to her as they had
failed to make themselves to Marian. Per-
haps the fault or the reason was as much
on Miss Ashurst's side as on theirs. Before
he had conducted his visitor over all the
"show" portions of the grounds and
gardens, Mr. Creswell had arrived at the
conclusion that Marian was a remarkable
young woman, with strong powers of ob-
servation, and a decided aptitude for solid
and sensible conversation, which probably
explained the coldness towards her of Maud
and Gertrude, who were not remarkable,
except for fine complexions, and hair to
correspond, and whose talk was of the most

54 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

vapid description, so far as he had had the
opportunity of observing.

There was not mnch of importance in
appearance to relate about the occurrences
of a day which was destined to be re-
membered as very important by all who
passed its hours at Woolgreaves. It had
the usual features of a "long day;" spas-
modic attacks of animation and lapses of
weariness, a great deal of good eating and
drinking, much looking at pictures and
parade books, some real gratification, and
not a little imperfectly disguised fatigue.
It differed in one respect, however, from
the usual history of a "long day." There
was one person who was not glad when it
came to an end. That person was Mr.
Creswell.

Poor Mrs. Ashurst had found her visit
to Woolgreaves much more endurable than
she expected. She had indeed found it
almost pleasurable. She had been amused
the time had passed, the young ladies
had been kind to her. She praised them to
Marian.

"They are nice creatures," she said;
" really tender-hearted and sincere. Of
course they are not clever like you, my
dear ; but then all girls cannot be expected
to be that."

"They are very fortunate," said Marian,
moodily. " Just think of the safe and
happy life they lead. Living like that is
living. We only exist. They have no
want for the present; no anxiety for the
future. Everything they see and touch,
all the food they eat, everything they wear,
means money."

"Yes," said Mrs. Ashurst; "and after
all, money is a great thing. Not, indeed,"
she added, with tears in her eyes, " that I
could care much for it now, for it could not,
if we had it, restore what we have lost."

"No," said Marian, frowning, "but it
could have saved us from losing it ; it
could have preserved love and care, home,
position, and happiness to us. True,
mother, money is a great thing."

But Marian's mother was not listening
to her. Her mind had returned to its
familiar train of thought again.

Something had been said that day about
Mrs. Ashurst' s paying Woolgreaves a longer
visit, going for a week or two, of course,
accompanied by Marian. Mrs. Ashurst had
not decidedly accepted or negatived the
proposition. She felt rather nervous about
it herself, and uncertain as to Marian's
sentiments, and her daughter had not aided
her by word or look. Nor did Marian recur

to the subject when they found themselves
at home again in the evening. But she re-
membered it, and discussed it with herself
in the night. Would it be well that her
mother should be habituated to the comforts,
the luxuries of such a house, so unattainable
to her at home, so desirable in her state of
broken health and spirits ? This was the
great difficulty which beset Marian ; and
she felt she could not decide it then.

Her long waking reverie of that night
did not concern itself with the people she
had been with. It was fully occupied with
the place. Her mind mounted from floor
to floor of the handsome house, which re-
presented so much money, reviewing and
appraising the furniture, speculating on the
separate and collective value of the plate,
the mirrors, the hangings, the decorations.
Thousands and thousands of pounds, she
thought, hundreds and hundreds of times
more money than she had ever seen, and
nothing to do for it all. Those girls who
lived among it, what had they done that
they should have all of it ? Why had she,
whose mother needed it so much, who could
so well appreciate it, none of it ? Marian's
last thought before she fell asleep that night
was, not only that money was a great thing,,
but that almost anything would be worth
doing to get money.

DOMESTIC TURKS.

My friend, Nourri Effendi, had passed a con-
siderable portion of his life in the department of
Foreign Affairs, and had spent some time in the
European embassies. His chief western acquire-
ments were French and a little German, but
he was a distinguished oriental scholar. As a
master of the epistolary style in Turkish or
rather in Turkish strongly dashed with Persian
after the ancient fashion few could get near
him, for he mounted to the seventy-seventh
heaven of inspiration. The Effendi, being by
no means a man of the world, continually got
into contentions with his colleagues. Thus he
was often thrown out of employment, and it
was difficult for his numerous old friends and
admirers to find him anything suitable to his
genius; for he did not shine so much in the
quantity of his work, as in his own estimate of
the quality. The quantity was small.

I remember his favouring me by writing a
translation of five lines which were to be ad-
dressed in triplicate to the Grand Vizier, the
Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Minister
of Commerce. The Effendi, as was his wont,
came later than his appointment, with a time-
honoured excuse, that as Zuleikha Hanum
wanted him to buy something, her errand had
engaged him.

He set himself sedulously and seriously to

Charles Dickens/

DOMESTIC TUKKS.

[December 13, 18GSJ 55

Avork. I asked him now and then how he was
getting on, but he had been three hours at it
before he called my attention to the accom-
plishment of one portion of his task. He then
read me the draft of three lines of his high-
flown Turkish, and solicited me to admire the
beautiful antithesis, and to acknowledge how
well the two parts of the phrase were bal-
anced. " It is almost poetry," said he.

" Mashalla, Effendi," said I, " it is an admi-
rable composition ; but it states the very oppo-
site of my meaning ; and, like poetry, it is not
true."

"It would be a pity, Bey," replied he, "to
sacrifice such a gem. Observe !" He went
on, &c. &c.

He was confident it would excite the atten-
tion and admiration of the Grand Vizier. With
great difficulty I did at last get my own mean-
ing substituted, deeply to his regret.

He then copied out in due form the letter for
his highness ready for the post, and I affixed
my signet.

"Now," said I, " Effendi, quick with the
two copies for the Foreign Minister and the
Minister of Commerce."

"I will at once," responded he, "set about
composing a suitable epistle for his Highness
the Minister of Foreign Affairs."

" Wherefore, Effendi, when there is nothing
more to be done than to copy that to the Grand
Vizier, as it is the communication of the facts ?"

" True," answered he ; " but therefore it will
never do. This letter is composed for the dignity
of the Grand Vizier. As Aali Pasha is one of
the most distinguished scholars in Turkey, I
cannot think of writing to him what is only
suited for the Grand Vizier. While respecting
the exalted rank of Aali Pasha, we must lower
it in style, to adapt it to one who is no longer
grand vizier."

" And the Minister of Commerce," said I ;
" what as to his copy ?"

"Inshallah !" said the Effendi, soberly, " we
will provide for him, too. We must compose
him another letter, with other words, in propor-
tion to his quality ; for he is much lower in
rank than Aali Pasha or a grand vizier. Fear
not !"

The Effendi applied himself to the blithesome
occupation of compiling such an epistle as should
gratify the critical eye of the universally ad-
mired master of learning, and the mail steamer
had worked some two hours down the harbour
with his letter for the Grand Vizier and my
poor and hasty substitutes for the jewelled
literary treasures of Nourri Effendi, before he
had finished Number Two.

"Mashallah, Bey," said he, "the steamer
has gone. What a pity ! For this is indeed a
satisfactory letter."

He went off, having another commission to
execute for his wife on his way home ; and I
never asked him for Number Three.

He was indeed an accomplished master of
his graphic art, and would sit, green spec-
tacles on nose, and smoke, and write, and blot
out, and get another whiff from his chibook,

and another word from the coinage of his brain,
and so his task proceeded. A distinguished
provincial authority, who had been a chamber-
lain of the Sultan, courtly, courteous, and ac-
complished, had received me with some hospi-
tality ; and on his being promoted to a higher
post I was desirous of congratulating him.
Nourri Effendi gladly came to my aid. Three
days did he devote to the composition of a short
letter. Though he expounded to me its mean-
ings and its beauties, for there were many for
each word, it would, in my inferior state of ap-
preciation, have taken me at least three days
more, to arrive at anything near its exact inter-
pretation. I fear that I affixed my mehur or
signet to a document which I very imperfectly
understood.

After many days the slow post brought me a
reply from His Excellency. Having glanced
at it, I transferred it to Nourri Effendi for his
perusal. He was in ecstasies, and he read,
re-read, and remarked upon each passage,
making (I dare say) a most valuable com-
mentary on the recondite mysteries of the
oriental language. The Governor was well
known to be as great a master of the sublime
as Nourri Effendi, and had responded valiantly.

At the Effendi's request I delivered the pre-
cious work of art to him, and at the end of a
month he was still exhibiting to admiring and
bored friends his draft, with the Governor's
admirable response.

Nourri Effendi's domestic claims so much in-
terfered with his public engagements, that his
occasional apologies on this head brought on
many little conversations about family matters.
His wife, although of provincial extraction, had
profited by a long residence in Stambool, to
acquire the tasteful habits of a metropolitan.
There was no need to inquire how many wives
the Effendi had, for there could be but one
autocrat to whose sway he was bound. In vain
had the legislator of Islam conferred on him, as
a true believer, the prerogative of summary
divorce by his own whim or behest, and of
making this irrevocable by the formula of
triple divorce. The Effendi must have been
long ago convinced that such divorces were not
invented for deliverance from such a wife as
his, and that divorce would only have been fol-
lowed by re-marriage to her, under conditions
of severer thraldom. I imagine he had, as the
limit of his liberty, a right of grumbling outside
his own house, and beyond reach of the lady's
ears. The narrow income of the Effendi was
spent under my lady's dictation, and extraordi-
nary budgets were demanded, although they
were obliged to live a life of much enforced
economy, greatly to her discontent. His pro-
vision of tobacco and snuff could only have
been obtained by making a forced levy on the
receipt of his monthly salary ; after which
epoch his purse departed from him.

From this authority I got an insight into
the subject of mothers-in-law in Turkey, and I
grieve to say he was not so devotedly attached
to his mother-in-law as perhaps he ought to
have been. Unluckily he had moved near to

56 [Decembor 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

his wife's birthplace, and this not only brought
him a visit from mamma when he could ill
afford it, but his wife exercised her privilege
under the marriage laws of Turkey, by making
a return journey. Mothers-in-law need not
legally be brought into the house, in Turkey,
but whether they can practically be kept out
by an ordinary husband it is hard to say.
Nourri Effendi's relative had kindly gone as
far as Stambool to visit him and his wife. As
for the visits of wives to their mothers, that is
a totally different matter. A refusal to allow
such expression of affection might be attended
by a summons to the nearest police magistrate,
and a warrant to levy on the goods of the
culprit such sum for travelling charges, outfit,
dresses, presents, &c, as the lady might de-
mand, and competent assessors possibly female
declare to be consistent with the wife's pre-
tensions in society.

From Nourri Effendi I learned the opinions
of Turkish wives on the important subject of
followers. "Madame," said he, "has kept me
at home again, asking me to buy her a pair of
black slaves, which she says we absolutely re-
quire for our respectability ; but that I do not
see." I had long known that in Turkey every-
thing must be perfect, and therefore in pairs.
As a boy I had seen the braces of pistols and
the pairs of knives and watches, and this pre-
pared me for seeing the male and female popu-
lation paired off, to avoid the imperfection of
the odd state and the consequent perils of the
evil eye. A pair of slaves was a new idea. The
pair of slaves did not mean two boys or two
girls, but a pair, a boy and a girl.

"I have told her several times we do not
want them, and cannot afford them ; but she
persists, as women will, and says ' they will be
a great economy besides.' I do not like blacks
in the house, because they are only fresh- caught
barbarians, and, besides, we cannot want two.
' Why not,' said I, ' get some decent orphan
girl from the country, whom we can take care
of ;' but madame answers she does not want
girls, as in a short time they are sure to have
brothers and cousins, who will see them ; but a
black from Africa has no cousins."

From the lady with servants, the transition
to the lady without them is not great.

Osman Aga, the son of a good family in a
large provincial city, was, when I knew him, a
retired captain of cavalry on half -pay or pension,
married to a lady whose patrimony was some
small bit of property near the former city of
Assos. Osman had profited little at school ; he
could not write, and he did not like reading
that art, indeed, he now left to his wife. In
those good old times he could be a captain
without them. As every one, instead of sign-
ing his name, affixes his signet, Osman was
sufficiently qualified when he contented himself
with the figures which would fill up a return of
his troop, or make out the quantities in an
account for barley or chopped straw in case
no learned private was at hand to officiate as
clerk.

Besides his long period of service in every

part of the empire, Osman Aga had been in
the brilliant Bulgarian campaign against the
Russians, and wore the medal. He was never
tired of extolling the gallantry and conduct of
the handful of English heroes who had served
with the Ottoman army ; though a thorough
patriot, he often wished that the Turkish
soldiery were led by such officers.

The captain had served so long as to earn his
pension ; a sum of twelve pounds a year, paid
monthly when not in arrear. On this sum,
there are still parts of Turkey in which he
could have kept his wife and daughter ; but he
could not do that in a western city, to which
progress had brought European prices. He in-
herited a small house in a respectable quarter,
but had no other patrimony. His sole remain-
ing resources were the scanty olive and grape
crops on the fields of Adileh Hanum, which
furnished little coin for remittance.

Osman Avas anxious to eke out his narrow
income by some small employment, and had
lately lost a petty berth on the extraordinary
staff at the customs, to which he was waiting to
be restored. A Turkish friend of rank spoke
very strongly to me of Osman Aga as a man of
character and integrity, and begged me to use
my influence to get him temporary occupation.
Osman Aga became, therefore, an occasional
caller at my house. He was a thin man, of
middle height and of soldierly bearing, about
fifty-five. His uniform frock-coat was carefully
kept and brushed. Its smartness was of the
past, and the medals were its only ornament.
He was always neat, though in Turkey a button
or two off, or any such divergence from sym-
metry, is no more thought of than in Munster.

In his walks to my house, he by-and-by
brought a shy little baby girl, with large black
eyes. Sometimes she was in full dress, going
out on a holiday ; her finger-nails and palms
duly stained with henna, a pretty embroidered
handkerchief on her head, with a jewel, a gold
coin, or a flower adorning it ; sometimes she
was in her ordinary muslin walking dress ;
never gaudy. An elder boy had died of fever,
and she was the only child. Little Fatmeh was
soon familiar in my family. Her gentle well-
behaved ways won regard for her, though she
could seldom be prevailed on to accept anything.
When she did so, the fruit, or whatever it might
be, was always first shown to her father, and
then taken home to her mother.

At last, I got a temporary berth for Osman
Aga as kerserdar, or police inspector, at an
unhealthy place in the country : to the great
delight of himself and his family, and also of
mine. The small income would at once place
them at ease. Adileh Hanum called on my
wife, with Fatmeh, to express her gratitude.
She was a quiet ladylike woman of five-and-
thirty ; well and neatly, but not richly, dressed,
with the Constantinople yashmak, and not the-
provincial veil.

This lady told my family of the strain the
captain's loss of office had brought on their
small income, and the benefit my intervention
had conferred on them. They were thankful to

Charles Dickens.]

DOMESTIC TURKS.

[December 19, 1868.] 57

God, and her husband would ever be found
faithful to me.

While the captain was officiating in the
country, and lookiag after evildoers, I some-
times saw him. He told me that his quarters
were bad, but that he had at length found a
small house in the village, and was going to
have his family down. I thought they would
hardly like the change from a city life to the
dulness of a village. " The familia," said he,
" had been used to it in her father's house, and
was fond of goats, and turkeys, and geese, and
fowls, and a garden. It would be quite a treat
for Fatmeh, who could play about all day long."
Familia, or family, is now a common polite
word in Turkish for wife.

The captain's occupation ran out ; he became
a suitor to me again ; the treasury, to remit to
the foreign creditor, and keep faith with him,
held back payments from Osman and other
pensioners and home servants ; and he was as
ill off as ever. Every now and then I got him
some little employment, and received his thanks.
There was never a Bairam, or Christmas, or
Easter, for some years when the complimentary
calls in our house did not include Captain
Osman Aga, with his wife and daughter. I
had become his effective patron and friend, and
his devotion went beyond European bounds,
though the position of a captain in the army in
Turkey is not even yet what it is in Europe.
The captain, yuzbashi, or head of a hundred in
the regular army, was, till the change was made
in my time, no more than a warrant officer ;
commissions beginning with second majors, and
only the sons of country gentlemen or squireens
serving as captains and lieutenants. The
present Sultan, to elevate the army, has given
official precedence to the captains ; but they
hardly realise their new honours at the tail of
the aristocracy. Europeans seldom understand
the real status of the captain, and draw very
disparaging reflections from incidents which
come before them. The captain is often no
more than an illiterate common man raised
from the ranks I must add, though, generally
a conscientious soldier and thorough master of
his drill and business.

A curious story is told of a French ambas-
sador, as an illustration of the want of dig-
nity in what he considered to be Turkish
officers. The old general, being present at
the grand audience, in the Seraglio at the
Bairam, received some attentions from a captain
commanding near him. On leaving, his ex-
cellency desired his dragoman to tender his
thanks to the captain, and invite him, as a
brother- officer, to dinner. The captain ex-
pressed his gratitude, but continued to hang
about, as if wanting something more. "I can
settle it," said the dragoman ; and he evidently
did so, as the captain retired with much ex-
pression of contentment. " How did you
manage it ?" " I gave him a five-franc piece,
with which he was much better satisfied than
with the honour of dining with your excel-
lency." The ambassador naturally wondered
at the low standard of Turkish officers, and it

was no business of the Levantine dragoman to
undeceive him, and inform him that the captain
was not an officer, but a sergeant-major.

As to Osman Aga, both before and after his
elevation to the table of precedency as a func-
tionary of state of the fourth class, his devotion
to me was the same. It never occurred to him,
or to me, that it was a degradation, and it was
what he would willingly have shown to his
general, or to any dear friend. H we were on
a journey, no one but himself was allowed to
saddle my horse, if he could help it. He would
snatch my boots out of the hands of my men,
and polish them himself. There was no act of
personal help he would not tender, and this
without any sycophantism or loss of respect on
either side. The colonel will fill the chibook
of his old general he is as his child. The
major will do as much for the colonel, the
captain for the major under whom he has
served, and so on. Two friends of equal rank
will vie which shall seem to kiss the hem of the
other's robe ; and ladies act in the same way.
However undignified this may seem to Euro-
peans, not being Spaniards, it conveys to the
Osmanli an idea of dignity ; not of humiliation.
Under the old constitution (and the impress of
it is not yet lost), all was so far democratic
that any porter in the street might aspire to the
highest honours, and believe himself destined
to become grand vizier. Those who attain
honours are therefore looked upon as delegates
and representatives of the mass, to whom free-
men cheerfully do homage.

In the course of years, Fatmeh grew bigger,
and not so shy, and I found she had been sent
to school ; on which the captain expressed his
sentiments with as much unction as if he had
never played the dunce. " The Family," said
he, " considers schooling religious and neces-
sary. The Family can read, and Fatmeh, In-
shallah, will get on with her learning, as is her
duty !"

" Inshallah, please God !" responded I.

By-a-nd-by Fatmeh made progress in her
reading, and the reverend schoolmaster, the
captain told me, was much satisfied with her.
She gave me a specimen of her skill out of one
of my books, reading some hard words with all
the precision and ceremony of a Hojah ; nor
did she neglect her needle. Besides work of
her mother's, she brought me a handkerchief
she had embroidered, and my family looked on
her as a bright girl.

Occasionally on festivals we got presents
from Adileh Hanum of choice confectionery or
pastry, and we found the small household con-
ducted with as much comfort and care as Turk-
ish arrangements will allow.

The poor captain was much pinched after I
left ; but I am informed that Fatmeh is married
to a rising merchant, and that there were great
festivities, to which we should all have been
invited, had we been on the spot. Adileh
Hanum spends some of her time in arranging
her daughter's household, and the captain
passes his spare time in the warehouse of his
son-in-law, where, though his expertness is

58 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

limited, he is ornamental as a companion to old
customers and a guarantee of respectability to
new acquaintances.

PARAFFINE.

Whence the paraffine about which we read so
much in the newspapers? How was it dis-
covered, where is it obtained, what are its pro-
perties, by what means is it manufactured?
Daily we read of its marvellous capabilities,
its destructive powers, and the numerous and
strange uses to which it can be applied. Occa-
sionally we are startled with reports of terrible
disasters which it has occasioned : railway trains
burnt to ashes, as at Abergele recently ; houses
blown into ruins and the inhabitants maimed
and killed ; heads of quiet households startled
into hysterics by the unexpected explosion of
the evening lamps ; ships lost at sea by incau-
tious stowage of the barrels containing the
liquid. Painfully familiar is the reading public
with the name of paraffine ; but to most persons
it is a name and nothing more.

And yet its history has in it something of ro-
mance. The discovery of the mineral from
which it is extracted was an accident. Its
manufacture was for a long time a secret. The
profits which arose from its production gave rise
to a law-suit, as famous and interminable as those
of Plainestanes v. Peebles, or Jarndyce v. Jarn-
dyce. Its production suddenly raised a poor,
almost unknown, district, into a thriving and
populous seat of industry. Added to all this,
the processes to which it is subjected are among
the most curious and interesting in modern
chemistry.

The word paraffine is almost new to the lan-
guage, its introduction dating back only so far
as the year 1847. About that time, Professor
Lyon Playfair, who was travelling in Derby-
shire, had his attention drawn to a thick, dark,
oily fluid trickling from some rents in a coal
mine. The peculiarity of the liquid arrested his
thoughts ; and after due calculation and experi-
ment, he arrived at the conclusion that this sub-
stance, which was, through ignorance, allowed
to run to waste, contained properties of a very
remarkable and valuable character. Being him-
self occupied with other investigations, he com-
municated the result of his observations to Mr.
James Young, an acquaintance of an analytical
turn of mind, and encouraged him to conduct
experiments with the view of testing the quali-
ties of the crude and mysterious liquor. Acting
upon the hints thus given, and sustained by
strong hopes of a successful issue, that gentle-
man took the matter in hand, bringing to the
prosecution of the Avork great experience, per-
severance, and no inconsiderable degree of
knowledge as a practical chemist. The result
far exceeded his expectations. Subjected to
distillation, the coarse fluid yielded a pale yel-
low-coloured oil, full of floating lustrous par-
ticles. Further experiments proved these to
be crystals of paraffine a substance then only
known to the learned. This discovery led to

the establishment in Derbyshire of a small
manufactory, for distilling burning and lubri-
cating oils from the coarse petroleum issuing
from the coal-mine. The venture proved ex-
ceedingly remunerative ; and for two years a
pretty extensive trade in the new oils was
maintained.

Suddenly the supply of the raw material
ceased : the trickling stream of coarse petroleum
was dried up ; and the manufactory was stopped.
The untoward event caused much chagrin to
the proprietor, who was beginning to look for-
ward Avith assurance to the foundation of a
highly profitable source of commerce. He found
himself at once cut off from employment, and
the experiments which had cost him so much
toil and anxiety threatening to become value-
less. Indomitable will saved him from despair.
He felt persuaded that a substitute could be
found for the petroleum, and to the discovery
of this his energies were directed. Reflection
and observation had, some time before, caused
him to arrive at the conclusion that the crude
petroleum was produced by simple natural
causes ; and further study of the subject con-
vinced him that those causes were merely the
gradual distillation of coal by means of subter-
ranean heat. This was a great step in advance.
Prospects of success again dawned upon him,
and he looked forward to the early resumption
of his manufactory. One desideratum only re-
mained, and that was to be able to produce an
artificial petroleum equal to the natural rock-
oil, the supply of which he had exhausted.
This difficulty also yielded to perseverance and
after two years' investigations in the laboratory,
he found that a liquid of an oleaginous kind,
similar in its properties to the natural oil, was
obtained by subjecting coal to distillation at a
low temperature.

These preliminary obstacles vanquished, the
next point to be considered Avas, Avhere to pro-
cure the requisite mineral ? Petroleum, it Avas
found, could be extracted from any coal of a
bituminous nature ; but the species known as
cannel coal yielded the largest quantities. Even
this, however, was not sufficiently rich in oil-
producing qualities to induce Mr. Young to re-
vive the manufacture. He feared that the
expense would be too great, and that the quan-
tity of petroleum produced would be in very
small proportion to the amount of coal con-
sumed. Various coal-fields were surveyed, and
numerous investigations were conducted, with
the view of deciding whether a mineral could
not be procured Avhich would yield a fair supply
of oil ; but for a long time the result was de-
spaired, of. Almost every coal was suitable,
but none was sufficiently prolific. Clearly, little
prospect of establishing another manufactory !
Just as Aveariness of the heart, arising from
hope deferred, was setting in, a discovery was
made in Linlithgowshire which gave a neAV turn
to events, and promised to realise the most
sanguine wishes of the investigator. This was
in the year 1850. Borings, which had been
carried on near Bathgate for some time, made
knoAvn the fact that a peculiar kind of coal

Charles Dickens.]

PARAFFINE.

[December 19, 18C8] 59

which there abounded was exceedingly rich in
oil. Mr. Young becoming apprised of the fact,
lost no time in acquiring a lease of the coal-
field ; and in the year following he opened the
Bathgate Paraffine Works, which, in the course
of a few years, converted a small weaving
village, with a population of three thousand
souls, into an industrious hive of upwards of
ten thousand.

For the sake of convenience we have described
the substance from which the future paraffine
was to be made as Linlithgowshire " coal ;" but
this designation has been denied it by learned
and competent authorities. To the unpractised
eye, however, it is purely a species of coal, and
may be regarded essentially as such. It is a
hard, lustreless, rusty, black-coloured mineral,
very brittle, and apt to break into thin slabs
like slates. Perhaps there are few more notable
instances of the truth, that you can get men to
swear that black is white, and white black, than
in connexion with the " coal" to which we are
referring. As has been said, it was the subject
of a celebrated law-suit. The proprietor to
whom the coal-field belonged, becoming aware
in due course that an invaluable article called
paraffine was being distilled from it, which was
rapidly pouring a fortune into the treasury of
the distiller, demanded a very large increase of
rental. This was refused, and the dispute went
to court. The case dragged its slow length for
years. Geologists, naturalists, mineralogists,
chemists, colliers; witnesses, learned and un-
learned, were ranged on either side and pitted
against each other. The proprietor of the
estate and his friends declared that the sub-
stance out of which paraffine was being manu-
factured was not " coal," as defined in the lease,
but a mineral of a distinct species, and that
therefore he had the right to increase the rental
(seeing the mineral had turned out so valuable),
or to get the lease cancelled. Mr. Young and his
witnesses, on the other hand, averred that the
substance was coal, and none other than coal ;
and that if he had discovered valuable properties
in it he should reap the benefit. The dispute,
as is generally the case, was ultimately found
to have benefited no one but the lawyers.

Leaving history, let us pass to the process of
manufacture. Here the most wonderful part of
the tale has to be related. Few persons who
are accustomed to use the pure white candles,
delicate as wax in their hue, and known
popularly by the name of "composites;" and
the clear oil, almost as transparent as water,
which is called " paraffine ;" have any idea that
both are produced from a dull, compact coal,
totally devoid of the lustre which gives to that
mineral the appellation of the " black diamond."
And yet this seeming miracle is achieved by the
aid of chemistry that strange science which
changes and transmutes substances, and reveals
properties hidden and mysterious at the will or
instigation of the student. The process by
which the change is effected is complicated and
laborious ; but, freed from its technicalities, it
may be easily explained.
The coal yields four different articles, all of

which are largely employed in daily life, and
have given rise to a considerable commerce.
There is, first, the paraffine oil for burning, at
present manufactured by thousands of gallons ;
which, in many parts of England, where gas is
still unknown, is the staple commodity of illu-
mination. Then a second quality of the same
oil, considerably cruder and coarser, which, on
account of its cheapness and general aptitude,
is largely employed for lubricating machinery.
Naphtha comes next upon the list a light,
volatile fluid ; much used by travelling show-
men to light up their stalls and tents. Lastly,
there is solid paraffine a pure, white, shining,
tasteless substance, scarcely distinguishable
from wax, which is manufactured into candles.
These substances, though widely differing in
colour, properties, and consistency, are all
manufactured by nearly the same process, the
difference consisting merely in the number of
times that a particular operation is repeated.

Boghead mineral is the name of the coal em-
ployed in the manufacture of paraffine ; and this
is conveyed from the pits direct into the heart
of the works, by means of branch lines of rail-
way. Arrived here, the coal is passed through
a huge iron crushing-machine, and broken into
small pieces, to facilitate the labour of subse-
quent stages. The first result to be achieved
is to extract the crude oil from the coal. This
is effected by means of retorts, into which the
mineral is put, and the oleaginous matter ex-
tracted by burning. These retorts may, for our
purposes, be described as huge upright iron
pipes passing through furnaces. The coal is
rilled into the pipe or tube by the top, which is
then closed with an air-tight valve ; and the
bottom of the pipe is led into a pool of water to
prevent the entrance of air from below. A low
red heat of uniform temperature is maintained
constantly in the retorts. As the coal is acted
upon by the fire, it descends gradually in the
tube and becomes entirely decomposed. The
essential or oleaginous property of the mineral
passes off in vapour, and the refuse falls through
the bottom of the pipe into the pool of water,
and is raked away. The vapour or steam, as it
is generated by the decomposition of the coal, is
carried off by a pipe in the side of the retort.
This pipe again communicates with a series of
pipes placed upright in the open air, and ar-
ranged on the same principle as the bars of
a common gridiron, after the fashion that pre-
vails in gasworks. The vapour, in travelling
through this labyrinth of pipes, cools, is con-
densed into liquid, and is run off into an im-
mense reservoir sunk into the ground. The
crude, oily liquor thus collected is a thick,
black, greasy fluid, not unlike tar, which moves
with a sluggish motion when stirred, and gives off
inflammable vapours at the usual atmospheric
temperature. This coarse oil, both in its pro-
perties and appearance, closely resembles natural
petroleum, and is equal to the rock oil, which,
as we have seen, was obtained in Derbyshire.

The raw material thus procured by simple
burning is kept stored in the tank, and is only
drawn off when required. To the observer

*5=

60 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

nothing seems stranger than that this heavy,
black, tarry liquid should produce oil as pure
as water, and solid paraffine as white as marble.
And yet the marvel is wrought daily, and on a
scale which supplies distant markets of the
world with oil. It is a mere question of re-
fining. The black liquor is, as it were, boiled,
washed, and bleached, re-boiled, re- washed, and
re-bleached, until the last particle of its dark-
ness and impurity is purged away. The first
step in the work of refinement is in some re-
spects similar to the previous process of decom-
position. The crude tarry liquid is put into
stills, which we may call huge boilers of gigantic
strength, with movable doors or fids. When
the stills have been filled, the doors are closed,
and the joints are stuffed with clay, so as to
render the interior perfectly air-tight. Firos
are then lighted in the furnaces below the
boilers, and kept up to a steady heat, till the
fluid inside distils over and is transmuted again
into vapour. This vapour, as in the former
instance, permeates through another series of
condensing pipes, and, during its transit, is re-
transmuted into liquor, and flows into a second
reservoir. Collected in this tank, the oil shows
abundant evidence of the severity of the ordeal
through which it has been put. It passed into
the stills black, and of the consistency of
treacle ; it has come out of a dark green
colour, and of the consistency of pea-soup. A
large portion of the coal-black has, in fact, been
boiled out of it, which is now to be found in
the bottom of the boilers in the shape of a
lustrous compact residue resembling coke, for
which it makes a very good substitute.

The next stage in the process of purification
is of a different character. The dark green
liquor is transferred to tanks, and a certain
quantity of strong sulphuric acid is added. The
acid is employed in order still further to bleach
the oil, and purge it of some more of the im-
purity with which it is so largely impregnated.
To effect this object it is essential that the oil
and the acid should be mixed up or assimilated
as much as possible a work of some difficulty,
on account of the tendency of the former to
float on the top, by reason of its lighter specific
gravity. This tendency is neutralised by the
action of a revolving stirrer fitted with blades,
which, when put in motion, beats and agitates
the two liquids, and causes them to mingle
equally. For four hours is this operation con-
tinued, until, under the biting influence of the
acid, the dark green oil changes to pale green,
and gives token of having parted with much
of the grosser substances that had rendered it
dull and opaque. The stirrers being at length
stopped, the liquor is allowed to settle, and
the organic impurities that have been separated
from it by the action of the vitriol, collect in the
bottoms of the tanks. The lees in this case
assume the shape of a coarse acid tar, which is
also used as a substitute for fuel.

The oil, thus far cleansed of its foulness, is
now transferred to clean tanks, mixed with a
strong solution of caustic soda, and again sub-
jected to the beating of the stirrers. The action
of the alkali extracts a good deal more of the

colouring matter, and changes the pale green
to yellow. At the end of a second period of
four hours the liquor is allowed to settle, is
drawn off from the lees as before, is pumped
into the stills and re-distilled, and is again
brought back to be put through the acid and
alkali bleaching process ; the result being its as-
sumption of a clear, pale, yellow colour. When
in this stage of its preparation the oil contains
the elements of no less than four different pro-
ducts, each valuable as articles of commerce, to
separate which is the next care of the manu-
facturer.

The separation is effected merely by distilling
the oil at various temperatures. At the lowest
temperature the lightest and most volatile parts
of the oil pass off in the shape of vapour.
Upon being cooled, by passing through pipes,
this vapour yields a liquid which, upon being
distilled by itself, gives a light, transparent, in-
flammable fluid known by the name of naphtha,
the specific gravity of which is considerably
less than that of the naphtha derived from coal-
tar. This naphtha is largely employed as a
substitute for turpentine in india-rubber works,
where it is employed to dissolve the materials-
used in that branch of manufacture. At the
temperature next to the lowest, those parts of
the oil that are next to naphtha in point of
volatility are taken off, distilled and condensed,
and yield paraffine or lamp oil. The processes of
purification and distillation are repeated with
this oil till it has assumed the requisite degree
of purity, and beconles transparent and almost
free from smell. A gallon of this oil weighs
about eight and a quarter pounds, and is, in
point of illuminating power, nearly equal to one
gallon and a quarter of American petroleum. A
yet higher temperature than that which is neces-
sary for the production of the burning oil pro-
duces a thick, heavy, lubricating oil, used in vast
quantities in the Lancashire factories for oiling
the machinery, and also by watch and clock
and philosophical instrument makers. This oil,
when it comes from the still, is largely impreg-
nated with solid paraffine, and when it cools it
assumes the consistency of grease, the paraffine
having coagulated into crystals. Before the
lubricating oil can be made available for what
it is intended, these crystals must be separated
from it ; and here again another operation, but
one of a very simple nature, is requisite. The
oil is poured into thick canvas bags, which are
placed in hydraulic presses. Pressure is then
applied with such force that the oil is squeezed
out of the bags, leaving the crystals within.
The oil thus squeezed out is the lubricating oil,
and is ready for the market ; the crystals are
the paraffine in embryo which has so often been
admired in the shape of candles.

When turned out of the bags the paraffine is
in its coarsest state, and is of a dirty yellow
colour. This hue is the result of the quantity
of oily matter which the substance, in spite of
its frequent purgings, still retains. Its perfect
and final purification is effected by the repeti-
tion of a single process, continued till the re-
quisite clearness is obtained. The paraffine is
dissolved in heated naphtha, and is kept in solu-

Charles Dickens.]

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. [December 19, 1368.] 61

tion for a considerable time, after which it is
allowed to cool and again assume its crystalline
form. The process of squeezing in the press is
repeated, and when shaken out of the bags this
time the paraffine is seen to have changed from
yellow to dirty white, and is consequently so
much purer. The operations of dissolving and
straining are repeated till perfect pureness and
whiteness are obtained. This result achieved,
the odour of naphtha which clings to the sub-
stance is driven off by steam, and the paraffine,
in a liquid state, is run into moulds, which
form it into thick round cakes. In this shape
it is sent off to the candle -makers.

AN ACOKN.

Within this little shell doth lie

A wonder of the earth and sky ;

Grasped in the hollow of my hand,

But more than I can understand.

A germ, a life, a million lives,

If this small life but lives and thrives,

And draws from earth, and air, and sun,

The endings in this husk begun.

A few years hence, a noble tree,

If time and circumstance agree :

'Twill shelter in the noonday shade

The browsing cattle of the glade.

'Twill harbour in its arching boughs

The ringdove and its tender spouse,

The bright-eyed squirrel, acorn fed,

The dormouse in its wintry bed.

Its stalwart arms and giant girth,

Felled by the woodman's stroke to earth,

May build for kings their regal thrones,

Or coffins to enclose their bones.

And looking further down the groove,

Where Time's great wheels for ever move,

We may behold, all sprung from this,

A woodland in the wilderness.

A forest filled with stately trees,

To rustle in the summer breeze,

Or moan with melancholy song,

When wintry winds blow loud and strong.

And ; would the hope might be fulfilled !

A forest large enough to build,

When war's last shattered flag is furled,

The peaceful navies of the world.

Such possibilities there lie,

In this young nursling of the sky !

We know ; but cannot understand ;

Acorns ourselves in God's right hand !

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.
By Charles Dickens,
a small star in the east.
I had been looking, yester- night, through
the famous Dance of Death, and to-day the
grim old wood- cuts arose in my mind with
the new significance of a ghastly monotony
not to be found in the original. The weird
skeleton rattled along the streets before
me, and struck fiercely, but it was never at
the pains of assuming a disguise. It
played on no dulcimer here, was crowned
with no flowers, waved no plume, minced
in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine-
cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted

no gold. It was simply a bare, gaunt,
famished skeleton, slaying its way along.

The borders of Ratcliffe and Stepney,
Eastward of London, and giving on the
impure river, were the scene of this "uncom-
promising Dance of Death, upon a drizzling
November day. A squalid maze of streets,
courts, and alleys of miserable houses let out
in single rooms. A wilderness of dirt, rags,
and hunger. A mud-desert chiefly inha-
bited by a tribe from whom employment
has departed, or to whom it comes but
fitfully and rarely. They are not skilled
mechanics in any wise. They are but la-
bourers. Dock labourers, water- side la-
bourers, coal porters, ballast heavers, such
like hewers of wood and drawers of water.
But they have come into existence, and
they propagate their wretched race.

One grisly joke alone, methought, the
skeleton seemed to play off here. It had
stuck Election Bills on the walls, which
the wind and rain had deteriorated into
suitable rags. It had even summed up the
state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters
of one ruined house. It adjured the free
and independent starvers to vote for This-
man and vote for Thatman ; not to plump,
as they valued the state of parties and the
national prosperity (both of great import-
ance to them, I think !), but, by returning
Thisman and Thatman, each nought with-
out the other, to compound a glorious and
immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is
nowhere more cruelly ironical in the ori-
ginal monkish idea !

Pondering in my mind the far-seeing
schemes of Thisman and Thatman, and of
the public blessing called Party, for staying
the degeneracy, physical and moral, of
many thousands (who shall say how
many ?) of the English race ; for devising
employment useful to the community, for
those who want but to work and live ; for
equalising rates, cultivating waste lands,
facilitating emigration, and above all things,
saving and utilising the oncoming genera-
tions, and thereby changing ever-grow-
ing national weakness into strength ; pon-
dering in my mind, I say, these hopeful
exertions, I turned down a narrow street
to look into a house or two.

It was a dark street with a dead wall on
one side. Nearly all the outer doors of the
houses stood open. I took the first entry
and knocked at a parlour door. Might I
come in ? I might, if I plased, Sur.

The woman of the room (Irish) had
picked up some long strips of wood, about
some wharf or barge, and they had just
now been thrust into the otherwise empty

62 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

grate, to make two iron pots boil. There
was some fish in one, and there were some
potatoes in the other. The flare of the
burning wood enabled me to see a table
and a broken chair or so, and some old
cheap crockery ornaments about the chim-
neypiece. It was not until I had spoken
with the woman a few minutes that I saw
a horrible brown heap on the floor in a
corner, which, but for previous experience
in this dismal wise, I might not have
suspected to be "the bed." There was
something thrown upon it, and I asked
what that was ?

" 'Tis the poor craythur that stays here,
Sur, and 'tis very bad she is, and 'tis very
bad she's been this long time, and 'tis better
she'll never be, and 'tis slape she doos all
day, and 'tis wake she doos all night, and
'tis the lead, Sur."

" The what ?"

" The lead, Sur. Sure 'tis the lead-mills,
where the women gets took on at eighteen-
pence a day, Sur, when they makes appli-
cation early enough and is lucky and
wanted, and 'tis lead-pisoned she is, Sur, and
some of them gits lead-pisoned soon and
some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and
some but not many niver, and 'tis all ac-
cording to the constitooshun, Sur, and some
constitooshuns is strong and some is weak,
and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned bad
as can be, Sur, and her brain is coming out
at her ear, and it hurts her dreadful, and
that's what it is and niver no more and
niver no less, Sur."

The sick young woman moaning here,
the speaker bent over her, took a bandage
from her head, and threw open a back
door to let in the daylight upon it, from
the smallest and most miserable backyard
I ever saw.

" That's what cooms from her, Sur, being
lead-pisoned, and it cooms from her night
and day the poor sick craythur, and the
pain of it is dreadful, and God he knows
that my husband has walked the sthreets
these four days being a labourer and is
walking them now and is ready to work
and no work for him and no fire and no
food but the bit in the pot, and no more
than ten shillings in a fortnight, God be
good to us, "and it is poor we are and dark
it is and could it is indeed !"

Knowing that I could compensate myself
thereafter for my self-denial, if I saw fit, I
had resolved that I would give nothing in
the course of these visits. I did this to
try the people. I may state at once that
my closest observation could not detect any

indication whatever of an expectation that
I would give money ; they were grateful to
be talked to, about their miserable affairs,
and sympathy was plainly a comfort to them ;
but they neither asked for money in any
case, nor showed the least trace of surprise
or disappointment or resentment at my
giving none.

The woman's married daughter had by
this time come down from her room on
the floor above, to join in the conversation.
She herself had been to the lead-mills very-
early that morning to be " took on," but
had not succeeded. She had four children,
and her husband, also a water- side labourer
and then out seeking work, seemed in no
better case as to finding it, than her
father. She was English, and by nature
of a buxom figure and cheerful. Both in
her poor dress, and in her mother's, there
was an effort to keep up some appearance
of neatness. She knew all about the suf-
ferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all
about the lead-poisoning, and how the
symptoms came on, and how they grew :
having often seen them. The very smell
when you stood inside the door of the
works was enough to knock you down, she
said, yet she was going back again to get
" took on." What could she do ? Better be
ulcerated and paralysed for eighteenpence a
day, while it lasted, than see the children
starve.

A dark and squalid cupboard in this
room, touching the back door and all man-
ner of offence, had been for some time the
sleeping-place of the sick young woman.
But the nights being now wintry, and the
blankets and coverlets " gone to the leaving
shop," she lay all night where she lay all
day, and was lying then. The woman of
the room, her husband, this most miserable
patient, and two others, lay on the one
brown heap together for warmth.

" God bless you, sir, and thank you !"
were the parting words from these people
gratefully spoken too with which I left
this place.

Some streets away, I tapped at another
parlour door on another ground floor.
Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and
four children, sitting at a washing stool
by way of table, at their dinner of bread
and infused tea-leaves. There was a very
scanty cinderous fire in the grate by
which they sat, and there was a tent bed-
stead in the room with a bed upon it and
a coverlet. The man did not rise when I
went in, nor during my stay, but civilly
inclined his head on my pulling off my hat,

Charles Dickens.;

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

[December 19, 1868.] 63

and, in answer to my inquiry whether I
might ask him a question or two, said,
" Certainly." There being a window at
each end of this room, back and front, it
might have been ventilated ; but it was
shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and
was very sickening.

The wife, an intelligent quick woman,
rose and stood at her husband's elbow, and
he glanced up at her as if for help. It soon
appeared that he was rather deaf. He was
a slow simple fellow of about thirty.

" What was he by trade ?"

" Gentleman asks what are you by trade,
John ?"

" I am a boiler-maker ;" looking about
him with an exceedingly perplexed air, as
if for a boiler that had unaccountably
vanished.

" He ain't a mechanic you understand,
sir," the wife put in, " he's only a labourer."

" Are you in work ?"

He looked up at his wife again. " Gen-
tleman says are you in work, John ?"

" In work !" cried this forlorn boiler-
maker, staring aghast at his wife, and then
working his vision's way very slowly round
to me; " Lord, no !"

" Ah ! He ain't indeed !" said the poor
woman, shaking her head, as she looked at
the four children in succession, and then
at him.

" Work !" said the boiler-maker, still
seeking that evaporated boiler, first in
my countenance, then in the air, and then
in the features of his second son at his
knee : "I wish I was in work ! I haven't
had more than a day's work to do, this
three weeks."

" How have you lived ?"

A faint gleam of admiration lighted up
the face of the would-be boiler-maker, as
he stretched out the short sleeve of his
threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, point-
ing her out : "on the work of the wife."

I forget where boiler-making had gone
to, or where he supposed it had gone to ;
but he added some resigned information on
that head, coupled with an expression of
his belief that it was never coming back.

The cheery helpfulness of the wife was
very remarkable. She did slop-work;
made pea-jackets. She produced the pea-
jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon
the bed : the only piece of furniture in the
room on which to spread it. She showed
how much of it she made, and how much
was afterwards finished off by the machine.
According to her calculation at the mo-
ment, deducting what her trimming cost

her, she got for making a pea-jacket ten-
pence halfpenny, and she could make one
in something less than two days. But,
you see, it come to her through two hands,
and of course it didn't come through the
second hand for nothing. Why did it come
through the second hand at all ? Why, this
way. The second hand took the risk of
the given-out work, you see. If she had
money enough to pay the security deposit
call it two pound she could get the
work from the first hand, and so the second
would not have to be deducted for. But
having no money at all, the second hand
come in and took its profit, and so the
whole worked down to tenpence halfpenny.
Having explained all this with great intel-
ligence, even with some little pride, and
without a whine or murmur, she folded
her work again, sat down by her husband's
side at the washing stool, and resumed her
dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal
was, on the bare board, with its old galli-
pots for cups, and what not other sordid
makeshifts ; shabby as the woman was in
dress, and toning down towards the Bos-
jesman colour, with want of nutriment and
washing ; there was positively a dignity in
her, as the family anchor just holding
the poor shipwrecked boiler-maker's bark.
When I left the room, the boiler-maker's
eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if
his last hope of ever again seeing that
vanished boiler lay in her direction.

These people had never applied for parish
relief but once ; and that was when the
husband met with a disabling accident at
his work.

Not many doors from here, I went into
a room on the first floor. The woman
apologised for its being in "an untidy
mess." The day was Saturday, and she
was boiling the children's clothes in a
saucepan on the hearth. There was no-
thing else into which she could have put
them. There was no crockery, or tinware,
or tub, or bucket. There was an old galli-
pot or two, and there was a broken bottle
or so, and there were some broken boxes
for seats. The last small scraping of coals
left, was raked together in a corner of the
floor. There were some rags in an open
cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner of
the room was a crazy old French bedstead,
with a man lying on his back upon it in a
ragged pilot jacket, and rough oilskin fan-
tail hat. The room was perfectly black.
It was difficult to believe, at first, that it
was not purposely coloured black : the
walls were so begrimed.

64 [December 19, 1868.;

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

As I stood opposite the woman boiling
the children's clothes she had not even a
piece of soap to wash them with and apo-
logising for her occnpation, I could take in
all these things without appearing to notice
them, and could even correct my inventory.
I had missed, at the first glance, some half
a pound of bread in the otherwise empty
safe, an old red ragged crinoline hanging
on the handle of the door by which I had
entered, and certain fragments of rusty iron
scattered on the floor, which looked like
broken tools and a piece of stove-pipe.
A child stood looking on. On the box
nearest to the fire sat two younger chil-
dren ; one, a delicate and pretty little
creature whom the other sometimes kissed.
This woman, like the last, was woe-
fully shabby, and was degenerating to the
Bosjesman complexion. But her figure,
and the ghost of a certain vivacity about
her, and the spectre of a dimple in her
cheek, carried my memory strangely back
to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre,
London, when Mrs. Eitzwilliam was the
friend of Victorine.

" May I ask you what your husband
is?"

" He's a coal-porter, sir." With a glance
and a sigh towards the bed.
" Is he out of work ?"
" Oh yes, sir, and work's at all times very
very scanty with him, and now he's laid
up."

" It's my legs," said the man upon the
bed, " I'll unroll 'em." And immediately
began.

" Have you any older children ?"
" I have a daughter that does the needle-
work, and I have a son that does what he
can. She's at her work now, and he's
trying for work."

" Do they live here ?"
" They sleep here. They can't afford to
pay more rent, and so they come here at
night. The rent is very hard upon us.
It's rose upon us too, now sixpence a
week on account of these new changes in
the law, about the rates. "We are a week
behind; the landlord's been shaking and
rattling at that door, frightful; he says
he'll turn us out. I don't know what's to
come of it."

The man upon the bed ruefully inter-
posed : " Here's my legs. The skin's
broke, besides the swelling. I have had a
many kicks, working, one way and an-
other."

He looked at his legs (which were
much discoloured and misshapen) for a

while, and then appearing to remember
that they were not popular with his fa-
mily, rolled them up again, as if they were
something in the nature of maps or plans
that were not wanted to be referred to,
lay hopelessly down on his back once more
with his fantail hat over his face, and
stirred not.

" Do your eldest son and daughter sleep
in that cupboard ?"

" Yes," replied the woman.
" With the children ?"
" Yes. We have to get together for
warmth. We have little to cover us."

"Have you nothing by you to eat but
the piece of bread I see there ?"

" Nothing. And we had the rest of the
loaf for our breakfast, with water. I don't
know what's to come of it."

" Have you no prospect of improvement ?"
" If my eldest son earns anything to-day,
he'll bring it home. Then we shall have
something to eat to-night, and may be able
to do something towards the rent. J not,
I don't know what's to come of it."
" This is a sad state of things."
" Yes, sir, it's a hard, hard life. Take
care of the stairs as you go sir they're
broken and good day, sir !"

These poople had a mortal dread of
entering the workhouse, and received no
out-of-door relief.

In another room in still another tene-
ment, I found a very decent woman with
five children the last, a baby, and she
herself a patient of the parish doctor- to
whom, her husband being in the Hospital,
the Union allowed for the support of her-
self and family, four shillings a week and
five loaves. I suppose when Thisman,
M.P., and Thatman, M.P., and the public
blessing Party, lay their heads together
in course of time, and come to an Equalisa-
tion of Rating, she may go down the Dance
of Death to the tune of sixpence more.

I could enter no other houses for that
one while, for I could not bear the contem-
plation of the children. Such heart as I
had summoned to sustain me against the
miseries of the adults, failed me when I
looked at the children. I saw how young
they were, how hungry, how serious and
still. I thought of them, sick and dying
in those lairs. I could think of them
dead, without anguish ; but to think of
them, so suffering and so dying, quite un-
manned me.

Down by the river's bank in Ratcliffe, I
was turning upward by a side street,
therefore, to regain the railway, when my

fis

ChaFles Dickens.'

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. [December 19, 1868.] 65

eyes rested on the inscription across the
road, " East London Children's Hospital."
I could scarcely have seen an inscription
better suited to my frame of mind, and I
went across and went straight in.

I found the Children's Hospital esta-
blished in an old sail-loft or storehouse, of
the roughest nature, and on the simplest
means. There were trap- doors in the floors
where goods had been hoisted up and
down ; heavy feet and heavy weights had
started every knot in the well-trodden
planking; inconvenient bulks and beams
and awkward staircases perplexed my pas-
sage through the wards. But I found it
airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven-and-
thirty beds I saw but little beauty, for
starvation in the second or third gene-
ration takes a pinched look ; but I saw
the sufferings both of infancy and child-
hood tenderly assuaged, I heard the little
patients answering to pet playful names,
the light touch of a delicate lady laid
bare the wasted sticks of arms for me
to pity ; and the claw- like little hands, as
she did so, twined themselves lovingly
around her wedding-ring.

One baby mite there was, as pretty as any
of Raphael's angels. The tiny head was
bandaged, for water on the brain, and it
was suffering with acute bronchitis too,
and made from time to time a plaintive,
though not impatient or complaining little
sound. The smooth curve of the cheeks
and of the chin was faultless in its con-
densation of infantine beauty, and the large
bright eyes were most lovely. It happened,
as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that
these eyes rested upon mine, with that
wistful expression of wondering thought-
fulness which we all know sometimes in
very little children. They remained fixed
on mine, and never turned from me while
I stood there. When the utterance of that
plaintive sound shook the little form, the
gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as
though the child implored me to tell the
story of the little hospital in which it was
sheltered, to any gentle heart I could ad-
dress. Laying my world- worn hand upon
the little unmarked clasped hand at the
chin, I gave it a silent promise that I
would do so.

A gentleman and lady, a young husband
and wife, have bought and fitted up this
building for its present noble use, and have
quietly settled themselves in it as its me-
dical officers and directors. Both have had
considerable practical experience of me-
dicine and surgery ; he, as house-surgeon I

of a great London Hospital ; she, as a very
earnest student, tested by severe examina-
tion, and also as a nurse of the sick poor,
during the prevalence of cholera. With
every qualification to lure them away, with
youth and accomplishments and tastes and
habits that can have no response in any
breast near them, close begirt by every re-
pulsive circumstance inseparable from such
a neighbourhood, there they dwell. They
five in the Hospital itself, and their
rooms are on its first floor. Sitting at
their dinner table they could hear the cry
of one of the children in pain. The lady's
piano, drawing materials, books, and other
such evidences of refinement, are as much
a part of the rough place as the iron bed-
steads of the little patients. They are put
to shifts for room, like passengers on board
ship. The dispenser of medicines (attracted
to them, not by self-interest, but by their
own magnetism and that of their cause)
sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and
has his washing apparatus in the side-
board.

Their contented manner of making the
best of the things around them, I found so
pleasantly inseparable from their useful-
ness ! Their pride in this partition that we
put up ourselves, or in that partition that
we took down, or in that other partition
that we moved, or in the stove that was
given us for the waiting-room, or in our
nightly conversion of the little consulting-
room into a smoking-room. Their admira-
tion of the situation, if we could only get
rid of its one objectionable incident, the
coal- yard at the back ! " Our hospital
carriage, presented by a friend, and very
useful." That was my presentation to a
perambulator, for which a coach-house had
been discovered in a corner down-stairs,
just large enough to hold it. Coloured
prints in all stages of preparation for being
added to those already decorating the wards,
were plentiful ; a charming wooden pheno-
menon of a bird, with an impossible top-
knot, who ducked his head when you set a
counter weight going, had been inaugurated
as a public statue that very morning ; and
trotting about among the beds, on familiar
terms with all the patients, was a comical
mongrel dog, called Poodles. This comical
dog (quite a tonic in himself) was found
characteristically starving at the door of
the Institution, and was taken in and fed,
and has lived here ever since. An admirer
of his mental endowments has presented
him with a collar bearing the legend,
" Judge not Poodles by external appear-

66 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR BOUND.

[Conducted by

ances." He was merrily wagging his tail
on a boy's pillow when he made this modest
appeal to me.

When this Hospital was first opened in
January of the present year, the people
could not possibly conceive but that some-
body paid for the services rendered there ;
and were disposed to claim them as a
right, and to find fault if out of temper.
They soon came to understand the case
better, and have much increased in grati-
tude. The mothers of the patients avail
themselves very freely of the visiting rules ;
the fathers, often on Sundays. There is
an unreasonable (but still, I think, touch-
ing and intelligible), tendency in the
parents to take a child away to its
wretched home, if on the point of death.
One boy who had been thus carried off on
a rainy night, when in a violent state of
inflammation, and who had been afterwards
brought back, had been recovered with
exceeding difficulty; but he was a jolly
boy, with a specially strong interest in his
dinner, when I saw him.

Insufficient food and unwholesome living
are the main causes of disease among these
small patients. So, nourishment, cleanli-
ness, and ventilation, are the main reme-
dies. Discharged patients are looked after,
and invited to come and dine now and
then; so are certain famishing creatures
who never were patients. Both the lady
and the gentleman are well acquainted, not
only with the histories of the patients and
their families, but with the characters and
circumstances of great numbers of their
neighbours : of these they keep a register.
It is their common experience that people
sinking down by inches into deeper and
deeper poverty, will conceal it, even from
them, if possible, unto the very last ex-
tremity.

The nurses of this Hospital are all young ;
ranging, say, from nineteen to four-and-
twenty. They have, even within these
narrow limits, what many well -endowed
Hospitals would not give them : a comfort-
able room of their own in which to take their
meals. It is a beautiful truth that in-
terest in the children and sympathy with
their sorrows, bind these young women to
their places far more strongly than any
other consideration could. The best skilled
of the nurses came originally from a kin-
dred neighbourhood, almost as poor, and
she knew how much the work was needed.
She is a fair dressmaker. The Hospital
cannot pay her as many pounds in the year
as there are months in it, and one day the

lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her
about her improving her prospects and fol-
lowing her trade. No, she said ; she could
never be so useful, or so happy, elsewhere,
any more ; she must stay among the
children. And she stays. One of the
nurses, as I passed her, was washing a
baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I
stopped to speak to her charge : a common,
bullet - headed, frowning charge enough,
laying hold of his own nose with a slippery
grasp, and staring very solemnly out of a
blanket. The melting of the pleasant face
into delighted smiles as this young gentle-
man gave an unexpected kick and laughed
at me, was almost worth my previous pain.

An affecting play was acted in Paris
years ago, called The Children's Doctor.
As I parted from my Children's Doctor
now in question, I saw in his easy black
necktie, in his loose buttoned black frock
coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of
his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the
very turn of his moustache, the exact reali-
sation of the Paris artist's ideal as it was
presented on the stage. But no romancer
that I know of, has had the boldness to
prefigure the life and home of this young
husband and young wife, in the Children's
Hospital in the East of London.

I came away from Ratcliffe by the Step-
ney railway station to the Terminus at
Fenchurch- street. Any one who will re-
verse that route, may retrace my steps.

THE MADRAS BOY.

The Madras boy is not a boy. The word is
a corruption of the Telugu word " boyi," a
palanquin bearer. There is nothing which
sounds stranger to a new-comer in Madras than
the constant cries of Boy ! He makes a call,
and immediately on his entering the room
the lady of the house cries, Boy ! This
startles him. But he is reassured by hearing
"Yes, mam," answered, and seeing a native
(probably of advanced years) appear and receive
orders to have the punkah pulled. The master
of the house comes in, greets his visitor, says
he must stop to tiffin, and immediately roars,
Boy! Again the domestic appears, and is
ordered to have the horse taken out of the
gharie ; and so on at short intervals the silvery
call or the trumpet roar of, Boy ! resounds
through the house. Ladies are generally some
time before they can bring themselves to be
constantly calhng Boy! but in a bachelor's
house the cry seems to be ever in the air. " Boy,
cheroot!" "Boy, fire!" " Boy, soda !" And
ever and anon, when the Boy is dozing, or far
off, one hears the cry " crescendo," until it is
evident that the caller must be red in the face

; P

Charles Dickens]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 19, 1S6S.] 67

with anger and exertion. For, nothing ruffles
a Madrasee more, than to shout Boy in vain.

Ramasami may be taken as the generic
name of the Madras Boy ; just as Jeames is
that of the London footman. There are
Pronasamis, Chimasamis, Appasamis, Autonis,
Lazaruses, Gabriels, and a host of other
names, but these are seldom used or even
known by masters and mistresses. It is as a
bachelor's factotmn that Ramasami is seen
to the best advantage. If his master's salary
be small, Ramasami will manage his house,
wait at table, black his boots, take care of his
clothes, sew on his buttons in short do the
work of half a dozen servants and will smoke
only a few of master's cheroots, and will cheat
him only a little. As his master's salary in-
creases Ramasami takes care that more servants
shall be engaged, and that the expenses shall
increase ; he smokes more of his master's che-
roots, and cheats him a little more. But he is
generally so willing, so handy, and after all
cheats so discreetly, that a Madras Boy is ge-
nerally acknowledged to be the best bachelor's
servant in India. In a family where his accounts
are carefully examined by the mistress daily,
where there are plenty of servants under him,
when he is not kept up to the mark as regards
fire and cool soda, when he is not liable to be
called on unexpectedly in the dead of night to
prepare hot grilled bones and cool beer, then
he generally degenerates into a fat, lazy, com-
monplace butler.

In many ways all Boys are strangely alike,
as if they were all members of one family, or
had all been brought up together. This is par-
ticularly noticeable in their English, which is of
the " pigeon" kind, but much better than that
of the Chinese. The use of the present parti-
ciple and the word only is a marked peculiarity.
u What master saying that only I doing" con-
veys to you Ramasami's intention of acting
according to your order. The word " done" is
also invariably used as an auxiliary to express
the completion of an act. " Boy, have you done
that?" "Done do, sir." The simple perfect,
when used by Ramasami, can never be trusted
as having its proper grammatical force. Ask
the Boy whether the brandy is gone, and if he
says " Yes, sir, gone," should you find ten
minutes afterwards that it is not gone, you must
not look upon this as a great departure from
truth. But if you ask him, "Has the brandy
done go?" and he says "Yes, sir, done go,"
then, if it have not really gone, you are justified
in calling him what David in his haste called
all men. Some Boys have adopted, as pets of
their own, particular English words ; one of the
first Boys the writer had in the country, had
so adopted the word " about." He had origin-
ally been a cook-boy in a regiment, and having
learnt slang and the use of his fists, he con-
stantly aired both accomplishments when he
had differences of opinion with the other ser-
vants or bazaar-men. One day he was brought
to his master, guarded by two police peons
with guns, and a third with a drawn sword,
who declared that the Boy had nearly killed a

man. The Boy was asked what he had to say
for himself ? His reply was to the effect that
he had quarrelled with the man, but had only
slanged him, and that somebody else had done
the beating : which he expressed thus : " I only
jaw about ; 'n other man lick about." But the
schoolmaster is abroad in India, as elsewhere,
and it seems likely that before long the Boy
will speak English as correctly as the ordinary
run of servants at home. It cannot be long
before bells will be introduced into the houses
of Europeans in India, and they will sound the
death -knell of the cry, " Boy !"

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT II0MBURG : A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER V.

Monday. I am not sorry I adopted
that resolution of forswearing the Kursaal,
its reading-rooms, &c, though I did see
Mr. Lewis, the clergyman of the English
chapel, going in and sitting down, and
reading his Galignani. Can he know what
he is doing ? He is on the spot, a resident,
and it is, as it were, in his parish ; at all
events it is his concern. I even saw him
enter from the colonnade, go up the steps
into the great tavern entrance and pass
through. He was looking for some one.
Still, if I were to refine on the matter, this
garden where I am now, is theirs, kept by
their gardeners. This very seat on which
I sit, was paid for by them. What do you
say, Dora ? Send me some little bit of
casuistry to help me over the matter ....

What scenes I do see, even so far off as
I am now; hints, as it were, of a whole
history. Thus have I come in late to a
theatre, and, standing in the box lobby,
have peeped in through the little glass
window in the door. That glimpse has
a strange mystery, from the fact of all
having been worked up to a point. The
situation seems changed, while we who
look are in quite another region a long
way behind, as it were. I have noticed a
fair-haired youth with a gold " pinch-nose,"
and who is certainly not more than twenty,
and on his arm is a charming little French
girl of seventeen, round and rosy, and
dressed in the most piquant way imagin-
able. I soon found out that they are just
married, not further back than a month.
They were supremely happy, like children
running from one thing to another, and
enjoying everything with a charming hap-
piness and animation. He wore a straw-
coloured silk coat and white hat. She, a
most coquettish little hat and a pink and
white short dress. On the first day I had

68 [December 19, 18G8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

noticed them standing at the month of
what I call the "yawning cave," hesitating
gently, she looking in with the strangest
air of curiosity, half in amazement, half
in awe. Then I see them go in, and some-
how that seems, hy a sort of instinct, to be
for me the beginning of something that
would end tragically. The look of supreme
happiness seemed, I suppose, to imply a
contrast and supplement of disaster. In
half an hour I saw them come back, she
triumphant, fluttering he with a com-
placent and boyish smile, looking at some-
thing bright in his hand. She skipped
and danced and clapped her hands. I sup-
posed they had won. They were children,
and I had a surprising interest in them I
know not why .... I dined to-day at the
Four Seasons Hotel, which at these places,
is always said to be a most gay and festive
looking hotel, with orange trees in front,
and a kind of scene-painting air. So an
old gentleman, who had been all round the
watering places, told me. He could not ac-
count for it, he said, but "there it was."
I accounted for it to him by the invincible
power of names. Give a girl, I said, a pretty
and romantic name, like Geraldine, or
Dorcas, or Violet, and she will be sure in
some degree to fall into the hey of that pretty
music. He did not seem to see it, but
grunted and moved away from me. An-
other man said, "he supposed it paid,"
which did not touch the matter. Their
table d'hotes are certainly the most festive
way of eating a dinner. There is such
variety in the faces, such pretty, intel-
lectual, stupid, heavy faces faces, indeed,
that seem to have been turned all day long
towards that dinner, and wistfully expect-
ing it. A long narrow room, yet so bright
and airy, and looking on the street ; I can
fancy nothing so cheerful. Every one is in
good humour ; and even the waiters have
a festive air, principally, I believe, from
their being boys and boyish, as is the
custom here, and not the mouldy, ancient,
clumsy - legged, clumsy - fingered veterans
who do duty with us. And what a good
dinner what a choice of wine, instead of
our limited sherry, and claret, and " Bass."
The little flasks dot the table down. The
affenthaler ordinary, but good ; the yellow
hocks, infinite in variety ; the better Ass-
manhauser, and the hockheimer sparkling,
all at such moderate prices. I see complete
families pour in, and take up position in line,
father, stout mother, pleasant daughters,
and the conceited son. Then the dinner
sets in like a torrent; all those pleasan
German dishes. Those vegetables which we

know not of in England, and best of all,
those delicious fowls, wherewith arrives
the late but welcome salad. It does seem
to me that it arrives at the precise and
fitting moment, with a pleasant sense of ex-
pectancy going before it, he and his friend,
the fowl. My dear Dora will hardly think
that this can be her old invalid that is
speaking.

On this day I find myself seated next to
the little husband and wife of the morning,
who come in full of delight and satisfaction
and smiling, they know not why. I con-
fess I am glad to be near so much inno-
cence, and also on account of a little
scheme I have in view. With such a pair,
it is not difficult to begin a conversation.
They were glad of the sympathy. My dear
Dora knows that my stock of French is tole-
rably respectable, and that I can put it to
fair use. They spoke together, and told
me everything about themselves. They
were not rich, but had enough. They were
enjoying themselves so. It was the most
delicious place in the world. " It was
Heaven itself," she said ; " and do you
know," she added, "all the money we
made that is, he made to-day, and so
easily eight napoleons ; and out of it he
bought me this sweet little brooch." And
she showed on her breast what was cer-
tainly a very charming little ornament.
This naivete and her agreeable prattle
began to interest me a great deal ; but I
could see there was in him a certain boyish
self-sufficiency a latent idea that this
gaming success was chiefly owing to his own
cleverness. He talked very wisely about
the principles. I quietly ventured to hint
that luck might change, as it did so often
and so fatally. But he only laughed. Just
as dinner was nearly over, a friend sent in
to him ; he went out, and I was left with
the charming little wife. Something in-
spired me to seize the opportunity and
give a little warning to this interesting
young creature.

" Your husband," I said, " seems quite
excited about his success ; but may I give
you a piece of advice? This beginning
ends always in the same way. You know
not how fatal is this spell, once it gets any
influence. This rage for play, if it takes
possession of any one, destroys all else love,
happiness, everything else. I know it, and
every one here knows it." This way of
putting it was a little artful, and I saw it
had great effect. The pretty face looked a
little scared. I went on. " I speak sin-
cerely and in your interest, though I am a
mere stranger; and I do advise you and

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 19, 1SC8J

warn you to take care and not encourage
jour husband in this pursuit. There is no
harm done as yet, and be content with
your little spoils." This may seem a little
too indulgent, too complacent, to the evil
practice, against which I have sworn war
to the knife, to the death, and from which,
with the blessing of Heaven, I shall rescue
many. But such a foe it is pardonable to
meet with craft like his own.

He had come back, but I saw she had
grown thoughtful. It was something to
do a little bit of good, even in this cheap
way. I see them at night, hovering about
the yawning entrance to the cave, she, with
a little hesitation, whispering him earnestly,
and looking in with trepidation. They do
not see me. They walk away, but, alas,
come back, and enter.

CHAPTER VI.

Tuesday. But I must leave these minor
things quite out of sight, to come to the
strangest thing that has happened, the
most mysterious and inconceivable. Who
could have dreamt of it ? And yet I am
not sorry. Dora, dear, prepared for some-
thing dramatic ! Let me begin calmly. Last
night, after the young pair had gone in, I
was sitting under the long glass colonnade
of the terrace, looking down on the crowd in
those gardens, lit up by the twinkling lamps,
and which have such a charm for me. Along
that colonnade are about a hundred little
tables, all crowded with eager and lively
people, sipping drinks, taking iced beer,
champagne, happy winners, and more
dismal losers. The waiters are flying up
and down, hurrying to and fro, shouting
orders ; while below, among the green
trees and flowers, are the crowds seated,
and on the right the illuminated kiosque,
with the delicious Prussian band pouring
out their strains. ' ' Ravishing" is but a poor
word for these accomplished musicians, who
belong to the Thirty-fourth Regiment, and
are led by the skilful "' chapel - master,"
Parlow. Their vast strength and breath
of sound, their rich instruments, with
every instrument made the most of, their
exquisite taste, volume, clearness, dis-
tinctness, and mastery of the most diffi-
cult passages, makes their performance
almost entrancing. Hear them play three
overtures William Tell, Tiinnhauser, and
Oberon and the musician will be amazed
as well as enraptured, the marvellous violin
passages of the last being performed like
so much child's play -just as an accom-
plished pianoforte player runs up and
down the keys. Hear them, too, in some

fantasia on airs from L'Africaine or Faust,
and revel in the taste and feeling of the
solo, and the dramatic bursts and crashes,
and the "hurrying" and lingering of the
time, as though they were an opera
orchestra. When we think of our crea-
tures those groups of hodmen and me-
chanics who form what is by courtesy
termed " a military band," those mere
grinders and sawyers of music, who play
as though they would dig or hammer
when we think, I say, of our " crack" regi-
ments, our Guards, formed out of the very
pink of professionals, and see how mediocre
is the result, one must feel a little humilia-
tion and some envy, and should be glad to
come this distance to hear those Prussians.
I can hear them, too, with a safe con-
science, for they do not belong to the
administration.

But I am putting off this wonderful
surprise. I am sitting there, listening,
close, also, to the mouth of the cave, which
has still for me that sense of mystery, when
I hear some angry voices, and two men are
coming down the steps in excitement.
One is tall, and in a white Panama hat,
and very excited. I hear him say, " It is
always the way when I listen to your
infernal talk. I'd have had a hundred
in my hand now but for you. I'd like to
pitch you down these steps, on your face !
Go leave me alone !"

The voice seemed familiar to me, so cold
and grating, with all its excitement, that I
seemed to recal it perfectly. Unconsciously
I started up to be quite certain, and, on
the noise, he turned and looked at me.
He knew me; I knew him. His face
turned livid, and a spasm of fury passed
over it.

"Grainger!"

" Austen !"

He advanced towards me, and for a
moment I thought he meant some violence.
But he suddenly checked himself, and then
walked away, down the terrace. Then, as
suddenly turned back and came up to me.

After a pause, " So," he went on, "you
are here. Did you know that I was here ?"

" No, Grainger," I answered ; "I did
not."

" What, no new scheme on hand ? No,
I should say not ; for you had better wait,
my friend, until you know whether the
old account has been closed."

" The only scheme I have," I answered,
"is to get back some health, which is
nearly gone from me."

" Ay. But do you know all that has
gone from me all that you tooh from me ?

70 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conductr d by

Eh ? stole from me ! What do you say ?
Answer !"

Again there was something so threaten-
ing in his manner, that I half moved back,
as if to defend myself.

"Oh, don't be afraid," he said; "we
dare not do these things in this place. Here
kellner, come here, will yon ! Bring some
red wine here, strong and good, and don't
be an hour, with your ' Via, monsieur,'
and all that humbug. Come, sit down, Mr.
Austen ; you may as well ; I am not going
to be violent, so you needn't be afraid. I
want to let you know something which you
ought to know."

" Grainger," I said, " when all that took
place, you had your opportunity. I met
you fairly and "

" Met me fairly /" he repeated, his eyes
dropping on me with a flash, " can you
say that ?" Then he laughed. " My good
friend that is all so long ago. An old story
like that must not be exhumed. Let it
rot away in the ground. Dead leaves, my
boy. If you don't rake 'em up, I promise
you I shan't. There. Come ! let us have
something, as earnest. You shall pay for
me, who was the loser, and I think the
injured man."

Something in this phrase struck me, and
I felt there was some truth in what he
said. He was the defeated party ; I was
the victor, and ought to be generous.
"What shall it be," I said, "cham-
pagne ?" " Do you take me for an Ame-
rican ?" he said, with a laugh. "No,
sir ; cognac. Now let us talk. I have
forgiven and forgotten all that though
it ruined me. She had a sort of infatua-
tion over me, that girl I mean, Mrs.
Austen. If she had come here I would
have followed her. I'd have played my
body and soul, that is if I had seen a
chance. You had it all your own way.
How does she look does she hate me?
Come ! And yet a good deal is on her
gentle head. This is my life now, poor
me; a 'hell,' to many others. You saw
what I was then, a gentleman, at least well
off, respected own that ! Well, I had to
leave the army ; I did something I ought
not to have done, from sheer desperation.
Yes, I did, and sank lower and lower, and
all this was your joint work ; but I don't
want to blame you. By Jove, it is I who
am raking up the dead leaves after all!
Ah ! here's the cognac."

I felt a pity for him. There was truth
in what he said. Since you, Dora, had been
saved from him, all these troubles had
come upon him. He had grown desperate ;

he was at least privileged to speak as he
pleased, and have that slight consolation.
I saw, too, that he was altered. At that
time he was considered by the women a
good-looking man, his face having a little
of that rude gauntness which is not un-
pleasing. He had large eyes, and a black
irregular beard and moustache. Now he
had grown careless in his dress. I knew
how much that portended, and felt a deep
pity for him.

" Grainger," I said, " it was hard for
you, for I know you loved her. But I
declare solemnly here, that my loving her
had nothing to do with it, and you know
yourself, Grainger, the marriage with you
could not have been for her happiness after
that business "

His brow contracted. " I know what
you mean," he said. " That was false, false
in everything. Ealse, as I sit here, and
hope to be well I have not much hope of
that,"

"They said it was true," I said; "but
even to have such a rumour, and a fair
innocent young girl, admit yourself, Grain-
ger, it could not be."

He answered in a low voice, " It was
all false, a He, an invention. There was
the sting. Of course, I could not prove it ;
but suppose it untrue, what punishment
would you say was enough for those who
did me so horrid an injury would a whole
life be too long to devote to punishing the
doer of such an injury?"

" I suppose you mean me ?" I said.

" I did mean you then," he said. " I
suppose, if there had been opportunity, of
course I could have killed you. But that
is all over, all past and gone. Nothing
could make Roly Poly as he was before.
The egg-shell is broken, and the yolk run
out. So tell me about yourself, and about
her. What brings you here ?"

There was something so frank, so gene-
rous, so valorous in this way of taking the
thing, that with an involuntary motion I
put out my hand and grasped his. Shall I
say, too, I felt a sudden twinge of con-
science; and had all along a dim fore-
boding that the story might not have been
true, or at least, have got its colouring of
truth, from what might have been in-
terested motives on my side ? I was too
much concerned, perhaps, to be impartial,
and if he was innocent, then some share in
this work might be laid to my account.
What was plainly my duty was to try and
compensate in some way, at least by kind-
ness for I had not much else at my com-
mand for so cruel a wrong as this. I com-

Charles Diekens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 19, 1SC8.] 71

plied heartily with his wish ; told him all
that brought me here, and the business I
was about. He listened attentively. Then
we wandered back, step by step, slowly and
agreeably too, till we got to the old, old
days, where we called up all those scenes,
Dora, the military balls, the pleasant
nights, and pleasant days ; what seemed like
pictures or scenes out of a beautiful play
seen in childhood misty, indistinct, but
delightful to think over. He spoke charm-
ingly, regretfully, and even tenderly.

" Those were happy and innocent days,"
he said. " Scarcely happy after all for me,
though there is a sort of happiness in such
suffering. Yet compared with all I have

gone through since ! Still in this life,"

he added, nodding at the cave behind us,
" there is an excitement, too it helps one
to forget."

" But think, how will it end ?" I said, with
some excitement. " It cannot have the
slow progress of what you call a life. It
must hurry on suddenly to destruction.
Oh, Grainger, stop, I implore of you, be-
fore it be too late !"

" But if it be too late," he said, " and
was too late years ago ? But I don't know
if I saw any road. it is all a jungle, or my
eyes have got dim. Still, since you have
talked to me, and brought before me those
days, I don't feel quite so bad. We will
speak of those things again her name to
me may have some power, at least, and if
you will not think it a trouble or a bore

while you are here "

I wrung his hand warmly. " I would
take it as a favour," I said ; "oh, let me
help you in some way, and if I have in-
jured you, let me at least try and keep you
from this life, which nrast end in misery
and ruin."

" "Well, we shall see," he said.
Two people came out of the cave a
little hurriedly. It was the youthful hus-
band walking first, by himself, his hands in
his pockets, his face flushed. She was trip-
ping behind him, with the most dismal de-
picted expression on her face. In a moment
that small hand, it had a tiny black mitten
on, was on his arm. It seemed to receive
an impatient welcome there, and dropped
again.

Grainger followed my eyes, "Ah!" he
said, " the old story !"

Hers met mine, and they seemed to say,
" Oh, how right you were ;" I knew I was
an instinct told me I should be so. After
all, bred in a country town, as I was, my
dear Dora, I have learnt to judge a little
of human nature. It comes by a sort of

instinct. I wish I had been wrong in this
mistake ; but the same instinct whispers to
me that this is but the end of the first act.
Poor little pair !

" That was the way it was with me at
first," said Grainger ; " I know that story
pretty well. I have seen it here over and
over again. Will you come in with me
and see me try my hand a new face brings
new luck. And yet to-night it seems to
jar upon me you have brought me back
into the old days. But still what can I
do. As well tell a man who has sold him-
self to brandy, not to drink. Besides,
what would be the use ? I may as well
finish, as I have begun. I have nothing to
look to now."

" I cannot tell you how this pains me,
Grainger," I said, really distressed. " 0,
if my words could but have some little
effect ! Do as you say the holy influence
of the past is upon you just for this night
abstain. Even for Dora's sake, whom you
once so loved, and who would rejoice to
know that her name even had that little
power left. If you knew its effect on me/"

A very curious look came into his face.
He turned it off with a laugh. " Well, a
night doesn't make much difference. I'm
a fool, I know. There, we'll walk about
instead."

I felt almost a thrill of pleasure at this
unexpected success. My pet's name is,
indeed, an amulet to conjure with. After
so many years, and at so many hundred
miles distance, to have such a power ! And
I think I may fairly claim a small share of
the credit. Earnestness and sincerity go
some way : perhaps, too, that little magna-
nimity. There was some little tact in
my reception of him ; others might have
grown confused or angry. Here am I
praising myself; but I am in such good
spirits. Put up your gentle prayer for
him, Dora.

Wednesday. I found Grainger last night
really entertaining and amusing. Hitherto
a good many of the people here have been
like the figures in front of the old grinding
organs, revolving, and glittering, and ec-
centric to look at, but still without names
or characters. Grainger knows them all,
names, dates, and addresses. There was
the great banker, there was the great spe-
culator, the man who could change paper
into gold by a touch, by a word even, and
who was now wandering about here, as
poor as I or my companion. Did I see
that ascetical-looking-man ? that was the
Bishop of Gravesend; or that woman in
orange and black, the famous Phryne

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[December 19, 1SC8.]

Coralie, English by birth, but who had
risen to the highest rank in whatever " car-
riere " she followed. There was the great
singer, who had shrieked and declaimed
the tragedy queens of opera, who had de-
nounced the craven Pollio many thousand
nights in her life, who had bearded wicked
Counts de Luna as many times more, who
had sang in the garden turning over the
stage jewels with grinning Mephistopheles
and enraptured Faust ; and here she was
taking an ice. Here on the terrace is the
smaller lady, who sits on a lower throne,
but has far more subjects and adorers. Here
is that Baker, known to every one who
comes to these places, who dogs lords and
ladies, and makes them stand while he
pours in Ms little adulatory small shot ;
and here is quite a happy hunting ground
for those ladies of good connexion and title
even, whose wings have been a little burnt
as they fluttered through town drawing-
rooms, but who find them quite sufficient
to support them here, the atmosphere is so

He is infinitely amusing is Grainger, his
stories and his scandal, which I can quite
conceive to be perfectly true. I can see he
has got into spirits as he tells these things ;
and though it is rather light and unpro-
fitable food for the mind, it takes off his
mind from things more dangerous. What
we said last night has left a deep im-
pression : and to think of one so clever, so
observant, so brilliant even, to have been
shipwrecked in this way, indirectly through
our doing ! I must ask my dear pet to
write me out something kind and sympa-
thetic, which I can show to this poor waif
and comfort him. That little heart has
done the mischief, and she must make up
a little, and I lay a husband's despotic
commands on her. For I have set my
heart on bringing this man back into the
path of decency and order, and feel a con-
viction I shall succeed, if I could get but
some power and influence over him. I say
again, my pet must pray.

Sunday. How strange is a Sunday in
this place ! There is an English church, a
chaplain, and a regular round of duty ;
but I think there would be less affectation
in ignoring altogether such religious ma-
chinery. It is at variance with the place,
quite an anachronism. For even in the
relations of, religion to the state I mean

to the " administration" there used to enter
something grotesque and curious. When
the use of the Lutheran church was gra-
ciously conceded to English worshippers
it was an article strictly insisted on, " that
there should be no preaching against going
to the Bank" pleasant euphuism for
gambling. This was a serious warning.
Later on, as the church and chaplain had
to be kept up by voluntary contributions
and " a book," which was sent round to
the visitors, the company found that this
was telling a little indirectly on their in-
terests. Testy fathers grew impatient at
these applications : " infernal begging
place," "have to pay my own man at
home" complaints which were, of course,
nothing to the Bank. But when it was
added, " I shall take care not to come back
here again," it took another shape. Like
the "refait" at their own game, it told,
on the whole, against the player. So it
was conveyed to the chaplain that in their
zeal for the advancement of religion the
administration would be happy to pay him
his salary, and a handsome one too ; the
collecting by a book was scarcely dignified,
&c. This tempting offer had to be de-
clined, possibly with reluctance ; but was a
little too strong. The wages of preaching
to be furnished by the wages of sin ! By-
and-by, too, it might have been required
that a word or two should be delicately in-
sinuated in favour of the harmlessness of
the game.

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MESSRS. CHAPPELL and Co. have the honour
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Wednesday, December 16, and Thursday, December
17, Glasgow ; Saturday Morning, December 19, Edin-
burgh; Tuesday, December 22, St. James's Hall,
London.

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Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street Strand. Printed by C Whitihg, Beaufort House, Strand.

HE-STO^-OJE-' OUR.: HVES-JHoM-TEa^TO *aI\J.

COHDUCTD-BY

With which is J^cob^po^ted
" SlOlfsEMOLD'VoHpS*

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26,

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Skkial Story by the Althoe op "Black Sheep.'

CHAPTER VI. BREAD SEEKING.

There are few streets in London better
known to that large army of martyrs, the
genteelly-poor, than those which rnn north-
ward from the Strand, and are lost in the
two vast tracts of brick known nnder the
names of Covent- garden and Drury-lane.
Lodging-house keepers do not affect these
streets, preferring the narrow no-thorough-
fares on the other side of the Strand, abut-
ting on the river ; streets eternally ringing
with the hoarse voice of the costermonger,
who descends on one side and ascends on
the other ; eternally echoing to the grinding
of the organ-man, who gets through his
entire repertoire twice over during his pro-
gress to the railing overlooking the mud-
bank, and his return to the pickle- shop at
the top ; eternally haunted by the beer- boy
and the newspaper-boy, by postmen in-
furiated with wrongly addressed letters,
and by luggage - laden cabs. In the
streets bearing northward no costermonger
screams and no organ is found ; the denizens
are business-people, and would very soon put
a stop to any such attempt. Business, and
nothing but business, in that drab- coloured
house with the high wire blinds in the
window, over which you can just catch a
glimpse of the top of a hanging white robe.
Cope and Son are the owners of the drab-
coloured house, and Cope and Son are the
largest retailers of clerical millinery in
London. All day long members of " the
cloth," sleek, pale, emaciated, high church
curates ; stout, fresh- coloured, huge- whis-
kered, broad church rectors; fat, pasty-faced,
straight-haired evangelical ministers, are

pouring into Cope and Son's for clothes,
for hoods, for surplices, for stoles, for every
variety of ecclesiastical garment. Cope and
Son supply all, in every variety, for every sect ;
the M.B. waistcoat and stiff-collared coat
reaching to his heels in which the Honour-
able and Reverend Cyril Genuflex looks so
imposing, as he, before the assembled
vestry, defies the scrutiny of his evange-
lical churchwarden; the pepper-and-salt
cutaway in which the Reverend Pytchley
Quorn follows the hounds ; the black stuff
gown in which the Reverend Locock Con-
greve perspires and groans as he deals out
denunciations of those sitting under him ;
and the purple bedgown, turned up with
yellow satin, and worked all over with
crosses and vagaries, in which poor Tom
Phoole, such a kind-hearted and such a
soft-headed vessel, goes through his ritual-
istic tricks all these come from the esta-
blishment of Cope and Son's, in Rutland-
street, Strand. The next house on the
right is handy for the high church clergy-
men, though the evangelicals shut their
eyes and turn away their heads as they pass
by it. Here Herr Tubelkahn, from Elberfeld,
the cunning worker in metals, the artificer
of brass and steel and iron, and sometimes
of gold and silver, the great ecclesiastical
upholsterer, has set up his lares and penates,
and here he deals in the loveliest of mediae-
valisms and the choicest of renaissance
wares. The sleek long-coated gentry who
come to make purchases can scarcely thread
their way through the heterogeneous con-
tents of Herr Tubelkahn's shop. All massed
together without order ; black oaken chairs,
bought up by Tubelkahn's agents from oc-
cupants of tumbledown old cottages in
midland districts ; crosiers and crucifixes,
ornate and plain, from Elberfeld ; sceptres
and wands from Solingen, lecterns in the

eS=

74 [December 26, 186S.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

shape of enormous brazen eagles with out-
stretched wings from Birmingham, enor-
mous candelabra and gaseliers of Gothic
pattern from Liege, and sculptured pulpits
and carved altar-rails from the Curtain-
road, Shoreditch. Altar-cloths hang from
the tables, and altar carpets, none of your
common loom- woven stuff, but hand- worked
and as Herr Tubelkahn gives you to
understand by the fairest fingers are
spread about to - show their patterns to the
best advantage; while there is so much
stained glass about ready for immediate
transfer to the oriel windows of country
churches, that when the sun shines, Herr
Tubelkahn's customers seem to be sud-
denly invested with Joseph's garment of
many colours, and the whole shop lights up
like a kaleidoscope.

Many of the customers both of Messrs.
Cope and Tubelkahn were customers, or,
more euphuistically, clients, of Messrs.
Camoxon, who kept the celebrated Clerical
and Educational Registry higher up the
street ; but these customers and clients
invariably crossed and recrossed the road,
in proceeding from the one to the other of
these establishments, in order to avoid a cer-
tain door which lay midway between them.
A shabby swing door sun-blistered, and with
its bottom panel scored with heel and toe
kicks from impatient entrance- seeking feet;
a door flanked by two flaming bills, and
surrounded by a host of close- shaven,
sallow-faced men, in shabby clothes and
shiny hats, and red noses, and swinging
canes, noble Romans, roystering cavaliers,
clamorous citizens, fashionable guests, vir-
tuous peasants all at a shilling a night ;
for the door was, in fact, the stage-door of
the Cracksideum Theatre. The shabby
men in threadbare jauntiness smiled fur-
tively, and grinned at each other as they
saw the sleek gentlemen in shining broad-
cloth step out of their path ; but the said
gentlemen felt the proximity of the Thes-
pian temple very acutely, and did not
scruple to say so to Messrs. Camoxon, who,
as in duty bound, shrugged their shoulders
deprecatingly, and changed the conversa-
tion. They were very sorry, but and
they shrugged their shoulders ! When men
shrug then- shoulders to their customers it's
time that they should retire from business.
It was time that the Messrs. Camoxon so
retired, for the old gentleman now seldom
appeared in Rutland- street, but remained
at home at Wimbledon, enacting his fa-
vourite character of the British squire,
and actually dressing the part in a blue

eoat and gilt buttons, grey knee-breeches,
and Hessian boots ; while young George
Camoxon hunted with the queen's hounds,
had dined twice at the Life Guards' mess
at Windsor, and had serious thoughts of
standing for the county. But the business
was far too good to give up ; every one
who had a presentation or an advowson to
sell took it to Camoxons' ; the head clerk
could tell you off-hand the net value of
every valuable living in England, the age
of the incumbent, and the state of his
health, every rector who wanted assist-
ance, every curate who wanted a change,
in servants' phrase, "to better himself,"
every layman who wanted a title for
orders, every vicar who, oddly enough,
wanted to change a dull bleak living in
the north for a pleasant social sphere of
duty in a cheerful neighbourhood in the
south of England ; parents on the look-out
for tutors, tutors in search of pupils all
inscribed their names on Camoxons' books,
and looked to them for assistance in their
extremity. There was a substantial, re-
spectable, orthodox appearance about Cam-
oxons', in the ground-glass windows, with
the device of the Bible and Sceptre duly
inscribed thereon; in the chaste internal
fittings of polished mahogany and plain
horsehair stools, with the Churchman's
Almanack on the wall in mediaeval type,
very illegible, and in a highly mediaeval
frame, all bosses and clamps ; in the big
ledgers and address books, and in the Post-
office Directory, which here shed its trucu-
lent red cover, and was scarcely recog-
nisable in a meek sad-coloured calf bind-
ing ; and, above all, in the grave, solemn,
sable-clad clerks, who moved noiselessly
about, and who looked like clergymen play-
ing at business.

Up and down Rutland- street had Walter
Joyce paced full a thousand times since his
arrival in London. The name of the
street and of its principal inhabitants were
familiar to him, through the advertisements
in the clerical newspaper which used to be
sent to Mr. Ashurst at Helmingham ; and
no sooner was he settled down in his little
lodging in Winchester - street, than he
crossed the mighty artery of the Strand,
and sought out the street and the shops of
which he had already heard so much. He
saw them, peered in at Copes' and at
Tubelkahn's, and looked earnestly at
Camoxons' ground-glass window, and half
thought of going in to see whether they
had anything which might suit him on
their books. But he refrained until he had

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED m PORT.

[December 25

received the answers to a certain advertise-
ment which he had inserted in the news-
papers, setting forth that a yonng man
with excellent testimonials he knew he
could get them from the rector of Helin-
ingham was desirous of giving instruc-
tion in the classics and mathematics.
Advertising, he thought, was a better and
more gentlemanly medium than causing a
detailed list of his accomplishments to be
inscribed in the books of the Ecclesiastical
Registry, as a horse's pedigree and per-
formances are entered in the horsedealer's
list; but when, after hunting for half an
hour through the columns of the news-
paper's supplement, he found his adver-
tisement amongst a score of others, all
of them from men with college honours, or
promising greater advantages than he could
hold forth, he began to doubt the wisdom
of his proceeding. However, he would
wait and see the result. He did so wait
for three days, but not a single line ad-
dressed, as requested, to W. J. found its
way to Winchester- street. Then he sent
for the newspaper again, and began to
reply to the advertisements which he
thought might suit him. He had no high
thoughts or hopes, no notions of regene-
rating the living generation, or of placing
tuition on a new footing, or rendering it
easy by some hitherto unexplained pro-
cess. He had been an usher in a school,
for the place of an usher in a school he
had advertised, and if he could have ob-
tained that position he would have been
contented. But when the few answers to
his advertisement arrived, he saw that it
was impossible to accept any of the offers
they contained. One man wanted him to
teach French with a guaranteed Parisian
accent, to devote his whole time out of
school hours to the boys, to supervise them
in the Indian sceptre athletic exercises, and
to rule over a dormitory of thirteen, "where,
in consequence of the lax supervision of the
last didaskolos, severe measures would be
required," for twenty pounds a year. An-
other gentleman, whose note-paper was
ornamented with a highly florid Maltese
cross, and who dated his letter " Eve of S.
Boanerges," wished to know his opinion
of the impostor- firebrand M. Luther, and
whether he (the advertiser) had any con-
nexions in the florist or decorative line,
with whom an arrangement in the mutual
accommodation way could be entered into ;
while a third, evidently a grave senten-
tious man, with a keen eye to business,
expressed, on old-fashioned Bath-post, gilt-

edged letter paper, his desire to know
"what sum W. J. would be willing to
contribute for the permission to state, after
a year's residence, that he had been one of
Dr. Sumph's most trusted helpmates and
assistants ?"

No good to be got that way, then, and a
visit to Camoxons' imminent, for the money
was running very, very short, and the
conventional upturning of stones must be
proceeded with. Visit to Camoxons' paid,
after much staring through the ground-
glass windows (opaque generally, but trans-
parent in the Bible and Sceptre artistic bits)
much ascent and descent of two steps cogi-
tatively, final rush up top step wildly, and
hurried, not to say pantomimic, entrance
through the ground-glass door, to be con-
fronted by the oldest and most composed
of the sable- clad clerks. Bows exchanged ;
name and address required ; name and ad-
dress given in a low and serious whisper, and
repeated aloud in a clear high treble, each
word, as it was uttered, being transcribed
in a hand which was the very essence of
copperplate into an enormous book. Po-
sition required ? Second or third master-
ship in a classical school, private tutor-
ship, as secretary or librarian to a noble-
man or gentleman. So glibly ran the
old gentleman's steel pen over these items
that Walter Joyce began to fancy that ap-
plicants for one post were generally ready
and willing to take all or any, as indeed they
were. "Which university, what college?"
The old gentleman scratched his head with
the end of his steel-pen holder, and looked
across at Walter, with a benevolent expres-
sion which seemed to convey that he would
rather the young man would say Christ-
church than St. Mary's, and Trinity in
preference to Clare. Walter Joyce grew
hot to his ear tips, and his tongue felt
too large for his mouth, as he stammered
out, " I have not been to either Uni-
versity I ," but the remainder of the

sentence was lost in the loud bang with
which the old gentleman clapped to the
heavy sides of the big book, clasped it with
its brazen clasp, and hoisted it on to a
shelf behind him with the dexterity of a
juggler.

" My good young friend," said the old
clerk, blandly ; " you might have saved
yourself a vast amount of vexation, and me
a certain amount of trouble, if you had
made that announcement earlier ! Good
morning !"

" But do you mean to say "

" I mean to say that in that book at the

76 [December 2G, 18G8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

present moment are the names of sixty
gentlemen seeking just the employment
which you have named, all of whom are
not merely members of colleges, but mem-
bers who have taken rank, prizemen, first-
class men, wranglers, senior optimes ; they
are on our books, and they may remain there
for months before we get them off. You
may judge, then, what chance you would
have. At most agencies they would have
taken your money and given you hope.
But we don't do that here it isn't our
way good morning !"

" Then you think I have no chance "

" I'm sure of it through us at least
good- morning !"

Joyce would have made another effort,
but the old gentleman had already turned
on his heel, and feigned to be busy with
some letters on a desk before him, so Walter
turned round too, and silently left the
registry office. *

Silently, and with an aching heart. The
old clerk had said but little, but Walter
felt that his dictum was correct, and that
all hopes of getting a situation as a tutor
were at an end. Oh, if his father had only
left him money enough to go to college,
he would have had a future before him
which but then, Marian ? He would
never have known that pure, faithful,
earnest love, failing which, life in its
brightest and best form would have been
dull and distasteful to him. He had that
love still, thank Heaven, and in that
thought there were the elements of hope,
and the promptings to bestir himself yet
once more in his hard self-appointed task
of bread- winning.

Money running very short, and time
running rapidly on. Not the shortest
step in advance since he had first set
foot in London, and the bottom of his
purse growing painfully visible. He had
taken to frequenting a small coffee-house
in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden,
where, as he munched the roll and drank
the tea, which now too often served him as
a dinner, he could read the newspapers and
scan the advertisements to see if there were
anything likely to suit him among the my-
riad columns. It was a quiet and secluded
little place, where but few strangers entered
he saw the same faces night after night, as
he noticed and where he could have his
letters addressed to him under his initials,
which was a great comfort, as he had
noticed lately that his landlady in his
river-side lodging-house had demurred to
the receipt of so much initialled correspon-

dence, ascribing it, as Walter afterwards
learned from the " slavey" or maid-of-all-
work, either to " castin' orryscopes, tellin'
charickters by 'andwritin', or rejen'rative
bolsum for the 'air !" things utterly at
variance with the respectability of her es-
tablishment.

A quiet secluded little place, sand- floored
and spittoon-decorated, with a cosy clock
and a cosy red-faced fire, singing with
steaming kettles, and cooking chops, and
frizzling bacon ; with a sleepy cat, a pet of
the customers, dozing before the hearth,
and taking occasional quarter-of-an-hour
turns round the room, to be back-rubbed,
and whisker- scratched, and tit-bit fed;
with tea and coffee and cocoa, in thick
blue China half-pint mugs, and with
bacon of which the edge was by no
means to be cut off and thrown away,
but was thick, and crisp, and deli-
cious as the rest of it, on willow-pattern
plates ; with little yellow pats of country
butter, looking as if the cow whose im-
pressed form they bore had only fed upon
buttercups, as different from the ordinary
petrified cold cream which in London
passes current for butter as chalk from
cheese. " Bliffkins's" the house was
supposed to have been leased to Bliff kins
as the Elephant, and appeared under that
title in the Directories ; but no one knew
it but as " Bliffkins's" was a Somerset-
shire house, and kept a neat placard
framed and glazed in its front window to
the effect that the Somerset County Ga-
zette was taken in. So that among the
thin pale London folk who "used" the
house you occasionally came upon stal-
wart giants, big- chested, horny-handed,
deep- voiced, with z's sticking out all over
their pronunciation, jolly Zummerzetshire
men, who brought Bliff kins the latest gossip
from his old native place of Bruton and
its neighbourhood, and who, during their
stay and notably at cattle- show period
were kings of the house. At ordinary
times, however, the frequenters of the
house never varied indeed it was under-
stood that Bliffkins's was a "connexion,"
and did not in the least depend upon
chance custom. Certain people sat in cer-
tain places, ordered certain refreshment,
and went away at certain hours, never
varying in the slightest particular. Mr.
Byrne, a wizened old man, who invariably
bore on his coat and on his hair traces of
fur, and fluff, and wool, who was known to
be a bird-stuffer by trade, and who was re-
puted to be an extreme radical in politics

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED m PORT.

[December 2G, 1868.] 77

and the writer of some of those spirit-
stirring letters in the weekly press signed
"Lucius Junius Brutus" and " Scrutator,"
sat in the right-hand corner box nearest
the door, where he was out of the draught,
and had the readiest chance of pouncing
upon the boy who brought in the evening
papers, and securing them before his rival,
Mr. Wickwar, could effect a seizure. Mr.
Wickwar, who was a retired tailor, and had
plenty of means, the sole bane of his life
being the danger to the constitution from
the recklessly advanced feeling of the
times, sat at the other end of the room,
being gouty and immobile, contenting him-
self with glaring at his democratic enemy,
and occasionally withering him with choice
extracts from the Magna Charta weekly
journal. The box between them was
usually devoted of an evening to Messrs.
O' Shane and Begson, gentlemen attached
to the press, capital company, full of anec-
dote and repartee, though liable to be
suddenly called away in the exigence of
their literary pursuits. The top of the
policeman's helmet or the flat cap of the
fireman on duty just protruded through
the swing-door in their direction, acted as
tocsins to these indefatigable public ser-
vants, cut them off in the midst of a story,
and sent them flying on -the back of an
engine, or at the tail of a crowd, to witness
scenes which, pourtrayed by their graphic
pencils, afforded an additional relish to the
morning muffin at thousands of respectable
breakfast-tables. Between these gentle-
men and a Mr. Shimmer, a youngish man,
with bright eyes, hectic colour, and a
general sense of nervous irritation, there
was a certain spirit of camaraderie which
the other frequenters of Bliffkins's could
not understand. Mr. Shimmer always
sat alone, and during his meal inva-
riably buried himself in one of the choice
volumes of Bliffkins's library, consisting of
old volumes of Blackwood's, Bentley's,
and Tait's magazines, from which he
would occasionally make extracts in a
very small hand in a very small note-
book. It was probably from the fact of a
printer's boy having called at Bliffkins's
with what was understood to be a " proof,"
that a rumour arose and was received
throughout the Bliffkins connexion that
Mr. Shimmer edited the Times news-
paper. Be that as it might, there was
no doubt, both from external circum-
stances and from the undefined defer-
ence paid to him by the other gentle-
men of the press, that Mr. Shimmer

was a literary man of position, and that
Bliffkins held him in respect, and, what
was more practical for him, gave him
credit on that account. An ex-parish clerk,
who took snuff and sleep in alternate
pinches ; a potato salesman in Covent
Garden, who drank coffee to keep himself
awake, and who went briskly off to busi-
ness when the other customers dropped
off wearily to bed; a marker at an adjoin-
ing bowling-alley, who would have been a
pleasant fellow had it not been for his
biceps, which got into his head and into his
mouth, and pervaded his conversation;
and a seedsman, a terrific republican, who
named his innocent bulbs and hyacinths
after the most sanguinary heroes of the
French revolution, filled up the list of
Bliffkins's " regulars."

Among these quiet people "Walter Joyce
took up his place night after night, until
he began to be looked upon as of and be-
longing to them. They were intolerant of
strangers at Bliffkins's, of strangers that is
to say, who, tempted by the comforts of the
place, renewed their visits, and threatened
to make them habitual. These were for
the most part received at about their third
appearance, when they came in with a
pleasant smile and thought they had made
an impression, with a strong stare and a
dead silence, under the influences of which
they ordered refreshment which they did
not want, had to pay for, and went away
without eating, amid the contemptuous
grins of the regulars. But Walter Joyce
was so quiet and unobtrusive, so evidently
a gentleman, desirous of peace and shelter
and refuge at a cheap rate, that the great
heart of Bliffkins' softened to him at once ;
they themselves had known the feelings
under which he sought the asylum of that
Long-acre Patmos, and they respected him.
No one spoke to him, there was no acknow-
ledgment of his presence among them ;
they knew well enough that any such
manifestation would have been out of place ;
but when, after finishing his very simple
evening meal, he would take a few sheets
of paper from his pocket, draw to him the
Times' supplement, and, constantly refer-
ring to it, commence writing a series of
letters, they knew what all that portended,
and all of them, including old Wickwar, the
ex-tailor and great conservative, silently
wished him godspeed.

Ah, those letters, dated from Bliffkins's
coffee-house, and written in Walter Joyce's
roundest hand, in reply to the hundred of
chances which each day's newspaper sheet

78 [December 23, 1SG8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

offered to every enterprising bread-seeker,
chances so promising at the first glance,
so barren and so fall of rottenness when they
came to be tested ! Clerkships ? Clerkships
galore! legal, mercantile, general clerks
were wanted everywhere, only apply to
A. B. or Y. Z., and take them ! Bnt when
A. B. or Y. Z. replied, Walter Joyce found
that the legal clerks must write the regular
engrossing hand, must sweep out the office
ready for the other clerks by nine A.M., and-
must remain there occasionally till nine P.M.,
with a little outdoor work in the service of
writs and notices of ejectment. The duties
required of the mercantile clerk were but
little better, and those of the general clerks
were worst of all, while throughout a net
income of eighteen shillings a week ap-
peared to be the average remuneration.
" A secretary wanted." Certainly, four se-
cretaries wanted nearly every day, for public
companies which were about to bring forth
an article in universal demand, but of
which the supply had hitherto been limited,
and which could not fail to meet with an
enormous success and return a large divi-
dend. In all cases the secretary must be
a man of education and of gentlemanly
manners, so said the advertisements ; but
the reply to Walter Joyce's application,
said in addition that he must be able to
advance the sum of three hundred pounds,
to be invested in the shares of the com-
pany, which would bear interest at the
rate of twenty-five per cent per annum.
The Press ? Through the medium of their
London fraternity the provincial press was
clamorous for educated men who could
write leading articles, general articles and
reviews ; but on inquiry the press required
the same educated men to be able to com-
bine shorthand reporting with editorial
writing, and in many cases suggested the
advisability of the editorial writer being
able to set up his own leaders in type at case.
The literary institutions throughout the
country were languishing for lecturers, but
when Walter Joyce wrote to them, offering
them a choice of certain subjects which he
had studied, and on which he thought him-
self competent of conveying real information,
he received answers from the secretaries,
that only men of name were paid by the
institutions, but that the committee would
be happy to set apart a night for him if he
chose to lecture gratis, or that if he felt
inclined to address the inhabitants of
Knuckleborough on his own account, the
charge for the great hall was three pounds,
for the smaller hall thirty shillings a night,

in both cases exclusive of gas, while the
secretary, who kept the principal stationer's
shop and library in the town, would be
happy to become his agent, and sell his
tickets at the usual charge of ten per cent.
Four pounds a week, guaranteed ! Not a
bad income for a penniless man ; to be
earned, too, in the discharge of a light and
gentlemanly occupation, to be acquired by
the outlay of three shillings' worth of
postage stamps. Walter Joyce sent the
postage stamps, and received in return a
lithographic circular, very dirty about the
folded edges, instructing him in the easiest
method of modelling wax flowers !

That was the final straw. On the receipt
of that letter, and on the reading of it
he had taken it from the stately old look-
ing-glass over the fire-place to the box
where of late he usually sat Walter Joyce
gave a deep groan, and buried his face in
his hands. A minute after he felt his hair
slightly touched, and looking up saw old
Jack Byrne bending over him.

" What ails ye, lad ?" asked the old
man, tenderly.

" Misery despair starvation !"

" I thought so !" said the old man calmly.
Then taking a small battered flask from
his breast and emptying its contents into a
clean cup before him " Here, drink this,
and come outside. We can't talk here !"

Walter swallowed the contents of the
cup, mechanically, and followed his new
friend into the street.

A HIDDEN WITNESS.

" She is positively starving, and this money
will be the saving of her."

These words were spoken in the course of a
conversation between my old friend Mr. John
Irwin, retired civil-servant, and myself ; both
sitting on a fine September morning in a little
summer-house, in the garden of our mutual
friend the Rev. Henry Tyson, Rector of North -
wick-Balham, in the county of Berkshire. The
subject of our conversation had been a piece
of very flagitious behaviour on the part of a
wealthy retired tradesman, Harding by name,
who lived in the neighbourhood. A sum of
money, amounting to a hundred pounds, was
owing by this man to a widow, living also
close at hand, for work done by her husband,
just before he died. The validity of the claim
had been denied by Mr. Harding, and pay-
ment obstinately refused.

" I have made it all right, however," said my
friend, with something approaching to a chuckle.
" It happens that this Harding is to a certain
extent in my power. The particulars of a

=5*

Charles Dickens.]

A HIDDEN" WITNESS.

[December !

years ago, not of the most creditable nature,
and all the facts relating to which came before
me in the course of my official career, are not
only perfectly well known to me, but he knows
that I know of them, and is aware that I could
even at this day use them against him if I chose.
Consequently he is always exceedingly civil to
me, and when, in the course of a conversation be-
tween us yesterday, I explained to him assum-
ing as I did so a dangerous look, which I could
see had its effect that I should take it exceed-
ingly ill if he did not at once consider this poor
woman's claim, and forthwith pay her what he
had owed to her husband, he turned very pale,
and informed me that since a person on whose
judgment he could so entirely rely as he could on
mine, was of opinion, after duly considering the
claim, that it was a just one, he would at once
give up his own view of the case, which had
certainly hitherto been opposed to mine, and
would without delay discharge the liability.
He only begged that he might be spared the
annoyance of a personal interview with his
creditor, and that I would undertake in my own
person to see the widow and transact the busi-
ness part of the arrangement myself.

"You know," continued Mr. Irwin, "how
interested I have always been in this poor soul's
case, and you will believe how readily I under-
took the charge. This very afternoon the busi-
ness is to be brought to a conclusion. I have
arranged to call on Harding (who as you know
lives close by) at three o'clock, to get the
money, and I will then convey it with my own
hands to the poor woman as a surprise."

" You have never done a better day's work,"
I said. " How do you mean to go ?"

" I shall walk. It is not above a couple of
miles. The path across the fields by Gorfield
Copse is the nearest way, isn't it ?"

" Yes, by a good deal," I answered. "Would
you like a companion ?"

" Well, I should like one, certainly," was my
friend's answer, "but I feel a little delicacy
about introducing a stranger into the business
either that with Mr. Harding himself, or
with my friend the widow, who is the proudest
and most sensitive woman in the world."

I assented to the justice of this objection,
and having some letters to write, got up to go,
leaving my friend sitting in the summer-house.
As I quitted it, turning sharply round to go
into the house, I came suddenly upon a man
who was emerging from among the shrubs
which formed the back of the little arbour.

He was an occasional helper about the place,
and I had noticed him more than once, and not
with favour. He was a very peculiar, and, as I
thought, a very ill-looking man. He was a shy,
slouching sort of creature, who always started
and got out of the way when you met him. A
man with hollow sunken eyes, a small mean
pinched sort of nose, and a prominent savage-
looking under jaw, with teeth like tusks, which
his beard did not always conceal. This beard,
by-the-by, was one of the most marked charac-
teristics of the man's appearance, it being as
was his hair also of that flaming red colour

which is not very often seen really red, with
no pretensions to those auburn, or chesnut, or
golden tints which have become fashionable of
late years. The blazing effect of this man's
colouring was increased very much by the head-
dress he wore : an old cricketing cap of brightest
scarlet. He was otherwise dressed in one of
those short white canvas shirts or frocks
which are much worn by engineers, stokers,
and plasterers, over their ordinary clothes.
There was a great brown patch of new
material let into the front of this garment
which showed very conspicuously, even at a
distance. His lower extremities were clad in
common velveteen trousers, old and worn.

Such was the man who appeared suddenly
in my path as I left the summer-house, and who
disappeared as suddenly out of it a moment
after our encounter, gliding stealthily off in the
direction of the kitchen garden.

I saw my good friend Mr. Irwin once more
before he started on his beneficent errand.
He was in high spirits, and had got himself up
in great style for the occasion, with a light-
coloured summer over- coat, to keep off the
dust, and a white hat. I think he had a flower
in his button-hole.

There was one part of Mr. Irwin's equipment
a little out of the common way, and this was a
butterfly net fixed to the end of a stick. My
friend was a most enthusiastic entomologist,
and when in the country never stirred without
carrying with him this means of securing his
favourite specimens. I joked him a little on
the introduction of this unusual element into a
business transaction, suggesting that Mr. Hard-
ing would think that he had brought it as a
receptacle for the widow's money. " I must
have it with me," said the old gentleman, " for
if I ever venture to go out without it I invari-
ably meet with some invaluable specimen which
escapes me in a heart-rending manner. But,"
he added, " I'm not going to let Harding dis-
cover my weakness, you may be sure. I'll
leave it outside among the bushes, and recover
it when the interview is over."

" Well, good luck attend you any way," I
called after him, " a successful end to your
negotiations, and plenty of butterflies."

The good-hearted old fellow gave me a nod
and a smile, and, flourishing his net, was pre-
sently off on his mission.

I had what we familiarly call " the fidgets"
that afternoon. I could not settle down to
anything. Having tried wandering about the
garden, I now took, in turn, to wandering
about the house, going first into one room and
then into another, looking at the pictures,
taking up different objects which lay about,
and examining them in an entirely purposeless
way.

At the top of my friend's house there was a
little room in a tower, which was used as a
smoking-room, and also as a kind of observa-
tory : my host being in the habit of observ-
ing the heavenly bodies through his telescope
when favourable occasion offered. I remem-
bered the existence of this apartment now, and

80 [December 26, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

[Conducted by-

feeling that a small dose of tobacco would suit
my present condition very well, determined to
climb the turret staircase, and enjoy a quiet
smoke in the observatory.

The room was charming. There were large
windows in it, and the view was most exten-
sive, taking in scenery of a very varied kind
hill and dale, wood, river, and plain. The
signs of habitation were not numerous, the
country being but thinly populated : still there
were cottages and farmhouses scattered here
and there, and even one or two villages in the
distance. I lighted my cigar and gave myself
up to tranquil enjoyment of the scene before
me.

As I sat thus, the clock of my host's church
struck three. Kemembering that to be the hour
of Mr. Irwin's interview with Harding, my
thoughts reverted to the subject of the widow's
debt, and to the good-nature which my old
friend had displayed in giving himself so
much trouble and undertaking such a thank-
less office. My mind did not dwell long on
these things, however. I happened to catch
sight of the telescope, which was put away in a
corner of the room ; and being restless, and
not in a mood in which total inaction was
agreeable to me, I determined to have it out and
examine the details of the landscape which I
had just been studying on a large scale.

The day was very favourable for my pur-
pose. The sun was shining and there was an
east wind : a combination which often produces
a remarkable clearness in the atmosphere.
Circumstances could not possibly be more suit-
able for telescopic operations, so placing the
instrument on its stand before one of the open
windows, I sat down and commenced my
survey.

It was a superb telescope, and although I
knew it well, and had often used it before, I
found myself still astonished at its power and
range. I set myself to trying experiments as
to the extent of its capacity, taking the time
by the church clock of a village two miles off,
trying to make out what people were doing in
the extreme distance, and in other ways putting
the capabilities of the instrument to the test.
That done, with results of the most satisfactory
kind, I went to work in a more leisurely fashion,
shifting the glass from point to point of the
landscape, as the fancy took me, and enjoying
the delicious little circular pictures, which, in
endless variety, seemed to fit themselves, one
after another, into the end of the instrument.
The little round pictures were some of them
very pretty. Here was one the first the tele-
scope showed me in the front of which was a
small patch of purple earth just brought under
the plough. A little copse bounded one side
of this arable land ; there was a very bright
green field in the distance ; and in the fore-
ground the plough itself was crawling slowly
along, drawn by a couple of ponderous and
sturdy horses, a bay and a white, whose course
was directed by an old man with a blue necker-
chief, the ends hanging loose, a boy being in at-
tendance to turn the horses at the end of each

furrow, and generally to keep them up to their
work.

A turn of the glass, and another picture
takes its place. A road-side ale-house now.
One of the upper windows has a muslin half
blind betokening the guest chamber, another
on the ground floor is ornamented with a red
curtain the tap-room, this, where convivial
spirits congregate on Saturday nights. The
inn has a painted sign ; somebody in a scarlet
coat and with something on his head which I
can't quite make out; perhaps it is a three-
cornered hat, and perhaps the inn is dedicated
to the inevitable Marquis of Granby. Stay ! I
recollect now seeing such an inn in one of my
walks in the neighbourhood. It is the Marquis
of Granby, as I well remember. An empty
cart is standing in front of the house, the driver
watering his horses, and beering himself, just
before the house door, where I can see him
plainly

Another and a more extensive turn, and the
little railway station comes within the limits of
the magic circle. Not much to interest here :
a small whitewashed, slate-roofed, formal build-
ing, hard, and angular, and hideous. A lot of
sacks piled up against the wall, waiting to be
sent off by the luggage train, a great signal post
rising into the air, a row of telegraphic poles
stretching away in perspective.

Now a prosperous farmstead, with a big
thatched house, where the farmer and his
family reside, with well-preserved sheds and
outhouses: there is a straw-yard, too, with
cattle standing knee-deep, and eating out of
racks well found in hay ; and there are pigs
wallowing in the mire, and there are cocks and
hens jerking themselves hither and thither,
and pecking, and generally fussing, as their
manner is. This picture in its circular frame
pleases me well, and so does the next. A gen-
tleman's seat of the entirely comfortable, not of
the showy and ostentatious, sort. The grounds
are large enough to be called a park, and the
house lying rather low, as it was the fashion to
build a century or two ago, stands in the midst
of them, with a trim and pleasantly formal
flower-garden round about it. It is a red brick
house of the Hanoverian time, with a rather
high slate (green slate) roof, with dormer win-
dows in it. The other windows have white
sashes which are flush with the wall, and not,
as in these days, sunk in a recess.

I look long on this scene, and then, not with-
out reluctance, shift my glass, and turning away
from human habitations, begin to examine the
more retired and unfrequented parts of the
landscape. The magic circle now encloses
nothing but trees and meadows, and little quiet
nooks and corners, where the lazy cows stand
about in shady places too idle even to feed, or
where the crows blacken the very ground by
their numbers, unmolested by shouting boys,
unscared by even the old traditional hat and
coat upon a stick. I come presently to a little
bright green paddock, with a pony feeding in
it a refreshing little round picture pleasant to
dwell on. There is a pond in one corner of the

Charles Dickens.]

A HIDDEN WITNESS.

[December 26, 1S6S.;

paddock, surrounded with pollard willows : the
water reflecting them upon its surface, as also a
little patch of sky which it gets sight of some-
how, between the branches. It is a comfortable
and innocent little place this, with a small
wood close by, with a haystack near the gate,
and stay what is this ? There are figures here
two men how plainly I see them ! But
What are they doing ? They are in violent
movement. Are they fighting, wrestling, strug-
gling ? It is so. A struggle is going on be-
tween them, and one of the two he wears a
bright red cap has the best of it. He has his
antagonist, who seems to be weak and makes
but faint resistance, by the throat ; he strikes
fiercely at the wretched man's head with a thick
stick or club he holds, and pressing on him
sorely, beats him fiercely to the ground. The
man who has the best of it there is something
more of red about him besides his cap ; is it his
beard? does not spare the fallen man, but
beats him still about the head a gray head
surely with his club. Horrible sight to look
on. I would give anything to tear myself
away from the telescope or at least to close my
eyes, and shut out the sickening spectacle.
But the butchery is nearly over. The gray-
haired man continues yet to struggle and re-
sist, but only for a little while. In a very
short time the contest, as I plainly see, will be
over. The conquered man, making one more
supreme effort, rises nearly to his feet, receives
another crushing blow, falls suddenly to the
ground, and is still. Merciful Heaven! what
is this ! Who are these two men ? Do I know
them ? It cannot be that that is my dear old
friend lying helpless on the ground, and that
the other is the man whom I took note of, just
now, in the. rectory garden. It cannot be that
this deed, of which I have been a witness in-
active, powerless to help or save is a murder !
I felt for a moment as if all presence of mind,
and power of action, had deserted me. What
was I to do ? That was all that I coidd say,
over and over again, as I sat still gazing
through the telescope with an instinctive feel-
ing that I must not lose one single incident
of the scene before me. All that happened I
must see. I recalled my senses by a mighty
effort, and reasoned as men do in a crisis.
What was to be done ? The place where this
horrible deed was being committed was so far
off about three quarters of a mile as the crow
flies, more than a mile by any road I knew of
that there could be no possibility of my
getting there in time to be of the slightest
use. The end, if it had not come already
and I felt certain that it had must most surely
have come before I could traverse that dis-
tance. There was but one way now in which
I could be of any service, and that was in
securing the detection of the murderer. I
must remain at my post and watch his every
movement, besides endeavouring to render my-
self certain, so far as the glass would enable me
to be so, concerning his appearance and dress.
So there I sat, helpless and spell-bound, but
watching with devouring eyes. There was a

sudden stillness where there had been before so
much of struggling and movement. The blows
had ceased to fall now. The deed was accom-
plished, and there was no more need for them.
The man himself, the murderer, was still, and I
made sure of his identity. There was the red
hair, there was the red beard, there was the
scarlet cap lying on the ground, there was the
canvas frock with the patch in front. There
was no doubt. Alas ! was there any doubt
either about that other figure lying on the grass
beside him ? The light-coloured summer coat
which he had worn when I last saw him, the
white hairs. It was nearly too much to bear,
but a savage craving for vengeance came to my
aid, and braced up my energies I dispelled
by an effort of the will a dimness which came
before my eyes, and straining them more in-
tensely than ever, saw the man with the red
cap start up, as if suddenly conscious that
he was losing time, and set himself to work to
rifle the body of his victim. As far as I could
see, he was engaged in emptying the poor old
man's pockets, and once I thought I saw the
gleam of something golden ; but this might have
been fancy. At all events he continued for
some time to turn the body over and over,
and then, having, I suppose, satisfied himself
with what he had secured, he got up, and
dragging the corpse after him, made his way to
the little wood close by, and entering it, dis-
appeared from sight. And now, indeed, a crisis
had arrived when it was difficult in the extreme
to know how to act. What if that disappearance
were final ? What if he should get out of the
wood at the further extremity and I should see
him no more ?

It was a breathless moment. I continued to
watch, and hardly breathed. At last, and
when I was becoming desperate with un-
certainty, I saw something move again. The
trees were parted, and at the same place where
the murderer had entered the wood, bearing
with him the body of my old friend, he now re-
appeared, alone. He stood a moment as if un-
decided, and then came out, looking behind
him first, and then arranging the disturbed
boughs as though to make the place look as
if no one had passed that way. That done,
he stood still for a moment, looking about
him as if in search of something, and then
he moved across how unconscious of the
pursuer on his track, the telescope following his
every step, unseen and unsuspected ! to
where at the corner of the meadow there was,
as I have mentioned, a little pond with pollard
willows round about its margin. He stooped
and took up some object lying beside the pond.
What was it? There was something green
about it. Was it old Mr. Irwin's butterfly net?
I could not see with certainty, but no doubt it
was, and no doubt the poor old gentleman had
wandered away from the footpath, which was
near at hand, in pursuit of some entomological
specimen.

The man with the red cap threw this object
into the water. Then taking off his canvas
frock, he began to wash the front of it, stained

82 [December 26, 1868.;

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

no doubt with blood. Then he washed his
hands and face, and putting on the frock,
wet as it was in part, stood up and once
more looked suspiciously about. All this took
time, but I dared not remove my eye from the
glass for a single instant. Once I had tried to
reach the bell-handle, but I could not. Some-
thing would, however, have to be done pre-
sently, and done on the instant.

For he was going He turned his back upon
the pond ; looked about, as if to see whether
there were any traces of his crime visible ; then
crossed the field, got over the gate by the hay-
stack, was lost to sight for a moment, appeared
again, disappeared again, and finally, after
being out of sight for some time, showed at
last, walking along the high road, until he
came to a road-side inn, that very Marquis of
Granby spoken of above, into which he entered.

And now, indeed, I felt that the time had
come when some decisive step must be taken.
If he were not secured now, while he was in
the public-house if he got out of it without
being taken he might get off by ways which
were hidden from my range of vision, and
so escape. I still dared not move my eye from
the telescope or the telescope from the inn-
door. It was absolutely indispensable that he
should not be able to leave the house without
my knowing it. I must not stir then ; but as
something required to be done instantly, some-
body else must stir for me. In a moment I de-
cided on my course. Remaining motionless at
my post, I lifted up my voice, and gave utter-
ance to such a succession of shouts that I con-
fidently expected that the whole establishment
would rush up-stairs to the observatory, think-
ing that I myself was being murdered. It was
not so, however, and considering the noise I
made, it seemed really astonishing how long I
called in vain. At last it did appear that I was
heard. The head gardener was in the grounds
close by, and the sound of my voice reached
him at length through the open window. Even
when he heard, however, it was evident that
he could not make out whence the cries
which reached him came. ""Who calls?"' he
cried. " Here," I shouted. " In the tower.
Help, help at once ! There is not a moment to
lose." And very soon I heard the welcome
sound of footsteps hurrying up the turret
stairs. Almost before the door was opened, or
the gardener in the room, I issued my orders.
" Jump upon the pony," I cried, still with my
glass fixed on the door of the old inn, " and
gallop at full speed down to the Marquis of
Granby. There has been a murder committed,
and the murderer is in that house. He has on
a scarlet cap, has red hair and a red beard, and
a canvas frock, with a dark patch in front."

" What ! My helper here ?" cried the gar-
dener.

"The same. Seize him, or, if he has left
when you get there, raise the hue and cry, and
follow him. He has murdered poor old Mr.
Irwin. Don't stop to answer," I added, as the
man uttered an exclamation of surprise and
horror. " Go go at once. I dare not leave

this post. Go, and if you meet any one on
your way send him her any one to me."

The man was a sharp fellow, and disappeared
instantly. Very soon I had the satisfaction of
hearing the sound of a horse's hoofs galloping
out of the yard at the back. Meanwhile, half
the household, alarmed by Avhat the man had
told them, had rushed up to the observatory,
and were now gathered round me as I sat at
the telescope. They were silent for a time,
and I could feel, though my eyes were en-
gaged, that they were watching me intently.

" "What is his name ?" I asked, after a while.

"His name is Mason," somebody replied:
" "William Mason." Then there was silence
again as I went on watching.

" For God's sake, what is it, sir?" cried the
old housekeeper, suddenly, in answer, I sup-
pose, to an involuntary exclamation of mine.

" The door has opened," I answered.

" Is he coming out ?"

No one appeared for a moment ; at last some
one passed out. It was not he, however it
was an old woman carrying a bundle.

There were several false alarms of this kind,
as different people who had been taking re-
freshment at the tap came out, one after
another, in pretty rapid succession. At last,
after a longer interval than usual, the door
opened quickly once again.

"It is he," I said, hardly knowing till I
heard the confused murmur of an exclamation
from the group behind me that I spoke. " He
has come out. He is looking first one way and
then another, and now he is gone, and the gar-
dener will be too late !"

I could still see him, and could make out in
which direction he was going.

" Is any one belonging to the stable here ?"

" Yes, sir," replied a voice I knew.

" Get a horse saddled at once, Matthew, and
bring him round. The swiftest you have in."

In a moment I heard the man's footsteps
clattering down the stairs.

" Can you see him still ?" asked the old house-
keeper.

" At present I can, but I shall not be able to
do so long. The part of the road he is ap-
proaching is hidden from my view."

Yery soon my prediction came true. There
was a turn in the road. Trees and buildings
and rising ground intervened and hid the figure.
It did not show again for a long space : when
it did it came out by the railway station.

I sat and thought the situation over, and the
conviction forced itself upon me, more and
more strongly, that this railway station would
be the ultimate destination of the murderer,
and that the only chance now was to keep a
steady watch upon its approaches. But my
eyes, especially the left eye, which I had to
keep closed, were now so tired that I could
hardly use them. I found it, however, by- no
means easy to get a substitute.

There were only present at this time the
women servants and a boy. The boy could not
be trusted, of course, and the women, one and
all, proclaimed, as they seated themselves

= ^

Charles Dickens.]

A HIDDEN WITNESS.

[December 20, 1SCS.;

by turns before the glass, that they could only
see " something dark bobbing up and down at
the end of it." At last it was suggested that
Martin, the vicar's factotum, who had been out,
must be at home by this time, and a servant
being despatched in search of him, he presently
appeared and took my place at the glass :
through which he could see perfectly.

" He lives just there, sir, between the part
of the road where you say he disappeared and
the station," said Martin, when he had heard
all the foregoing particulars. " Just behind
that row of poplars you see down yonder."

This opened a new view of the matter. Mar-
tin suggested that perhaps he had gone home,
and that the right course might be to send there
to capture him. The propriety of this, however,
I doubted.

" Keep your attention fixed upon the sta-
tion," I said, "and let me be informed of all
that goes on there. He will find his way there
at last."

Martin kept his glass fixed on the little
building in silence. Everything appeared to be
at a standstill for the moment.

" An old woman carrying a basket is making
her way slowly to the station," said Martin ;
"one or two other people are beginning to
arrive."

" AVhat sort of people ?"
" Oh, not our man. One is a lad, looks like
a gentleman's groom, come to fetch some
parcel. The other is a miller with a sack of
meal. There are signs of some stir about the
place, and I can make out the porters moving
about. What time is it, sir ?" asked the man,
suddenly.

" Twenty minutes past four," I answered.
" The down train is due at 4.29," said Martin.
" That accounts for the bustle."
"Where does it go to?" I asked.
" It's the Bristol train, sir," was the answer.
Just the place where, I thought, the mur-
derer would want to go.

" There's a cart driven by an old man with a
great many parcels, which the porters are re-
moving, and taking into the station ; there's a
man with a couple of pointers coupled. The
train's coming, sir, I can see the smoke, and
they're working the signals as hard as they can
go. Here's a carriage driving up with a pair
of white horses. It's the Westbrook carriage
I can see the liveries. There's Squire West-
brook getting out, and there are the two young
ladies. Here's the postman with his leather
bag. Here's a woman with a little boy ; the
train's in now, and they're just going to shut
the doors. Here comes somebody running.
He's a volunteer, one of our own corps. He'll
be too late. No ; the porter sees "him, and
beckons him to make haste. The volunteer
runs harder than ever, the porter drags him
into the station and the door is shut."

" Is there nobody else?" I asked, in violent
excitement.

" Not a soul, sir, and now the train is off."
" And are you sure you've not missed any
one ?"

" Quite sure, sir."

I was profoundly disappointed, and for the
moment puzzled how to act. Watching the
station was, for the present, useless. There
would not be another train until eight o'clock
at night. The only chance under these circum-
stances seemed to be the chance of finding the
man at his own house. Thither I determined
to go, thinking that even if he were not there I
might obtain some information from the neigh-
bours which might prove of use. I got a de-
scription of the house and its situation from
Martin, and, leaving him with directions still to
keep a watch on the station, ran down-stairs, and
finding the horse I had ordered waiting for me
at the door, went off at full speed.

The horse carried me so well that in a very
short time I had reached the little clump of
cottages to which I had been directed, and one
of which was the dwelling-place of the murderer.
I dismounted, and throwing my horse's bridle
on the palings in front of the cottage, passed
along the little path which led to the door, and
proceeded to try the latch. The door was
locked. Looking up at the windows there
were but two I saw that they also were firmly
secured, and that the blinds were down. The
small abode had a deserted look, and I felt that
it was empty ; but I knocked loudly, neverthe-
less, and shook the door.

The noise of my arrival, and of my knocking,
at length disturbed some of the neighbours, and
one or two of them appeared.

" Is this William Mason's house?" I asked,
addressing one of them : an old man, who looked
tolerably intelligent, but wasn't.

" Yes, sir. But he's not there now. He's
gone out," the man replied, after a minute or
two devoted to thought.

" Gone out ? How long ago ?"
"Well," replied the man, after more time
spent in reflection, " I should think it was
about half an hour."

" Which way did he go ?"
The old man took more time than ever to
consider this question, driving me almost wild
with his delay. Then, after looking first one
way and then the other, he pointed in the
direction of the station. I was already on
horseback again, and just about to move off,
when another of the neighbours interposed.

"I do think," said this one, speaking, if
possible, more deliberately than the other,
" that he went to his drill."

"Drill!" I cried. "What drill?"
" Why, volunteer drill, to be sure."
" What !" I screamed. " Was he a volun-
teer?"

"Yes, sir. The parson he requires every-
body in his employment "

I did not wait for more, but galloped off,
as fast as my horse could go, to the railway
station. I saw it all now. In the interval
during which we had lost sight of the man he
had been home, and, thinking that a change of
costume might baffle pursuit, had assumed the
volunteer dress as the best disguise at his dis-
posal.

84 [December 26, 1808.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

" Does any one here remember a man, in a
volunteer uniform, who went off just now by
the down train ?" This was my inquiry, ad-
dressed to the first person I met at the station
a porter, who referred me to the station
clerk, to whom I put the same question. This
man answered in the affirmative at once. His
attention had been particularly directed to this
volunteer, by his having required change for a
five-pound note, at the last moment, as the
train was going to start.

" For what place did he take his ticket ?"

" Bristol."

"That man is a murderer," I said, "and
must be arrested. If you telegraph at once to
Bath, the message will be there long before the
train, and he can be stopped."

And so this terrible experience the par-
ticulars of which 1 have related just as they
occurred came to an end. The murderer was
arrested at Bath, and on his being searched
the hundred pounds except the small sum
which he had expended on his railway ticket
were found upon him. The evidence against
him was in all points overwhelming. The
body of poor Mr. Irwin was discovered in the
little wood. I myself directed the search.
When it was concluded I wandered away to
the willow pond to look for the butterfly-net.
One end of the stick was visible above the
water, the other end being sunk by the weight
of the metal ring which was attached to it.

There was no link wanting in the mass
of proof. The evidence, which it was my part
to give on the trial, was irresistible. Great
attempts were made to shake it, to prove that
I might easily have made a mistake of identity ;
and that such details as I had described could
not have been visible through the telescope at
such a distance. Opticians were consulted ; ex-
periments were made. It was distinctly proved
that it was really possible for me to have seen
all that I stated I had seen ; and though
there was much discussion raised about the
case, and though some of the newspapers took
it up, and urged that men's lives were not to
be sacrificed to the whims of "an idle gentle-
man who chose to spend his afternoons in
looking out of window through a spy-glass,"
the jury returned a verdict against the prisoner,
and William Mason was convicted and hanged.

The reader may, perhaps, be sufficiently in-
terested in the facts of this case to be glad to
hear that the poor woman, who was the inno-
cent cause of the commission of this ghastly
crime, did get her hundred pounds after all,
though not from the hands of Mr. James Irwin.

THE ETERNAL PENDULUM.
Swing on, old pendulum of the world,

For ever and for ever,
Keeping the time of suns and 6tars,

^ The march that endeth never.
Your monotone speaks joy and grief,

And failure and endeavour,
Swing on, old pendulum, to and fro,

For ever and for ever !

Long as you swing shall earth be glad,

And men be partly good and bad,

And in each hour that passes by,

A thousand souls be born and die ;

Die from the earth, to live we trust,

Unshackled, unallied with dust.

Long as you swing shall wrong come right,

As sure as morning follows night ;

The days go wrong the ages never

Swing on, old pendulum swing for ever !

THE MERCHANT'S HANAPER.

"You have often wondered why I did
not marry Ashley Graham when I told you
that he asked me," Rose Mantell said to-
me one evening, as we sat by the open,
window looking out on the moonlight
quivering over the lake, and silvering the
old mountains like a fine hoar frost spread
over them ; " and now you want to know
why I am going to America, where I have
no friends at least, none you know of.
Well, I have always put you off when you
have questioned me, but to-night I will make
a clean breast of it, as people say, and tell
you my whole story."

You remember when we lived in Percy-
street, my brother James and I ? and you
remember how poor we were, and what a
miserable thing we made of it together, he
with his painting and I with my music ? We
did not hide things from you as we did
from others, but let you into the mysteries
of our numerous makeshifts and contri-
vances, and how we managed to exist on
what others would have starved on. And
you remember how proud and sensitive
James was ? and how, with his wretched
income so hardly earned, too, poor fellow I
he was determined to keep up appear-
ances, and never let the "world know how
poor he was ? It was hard work, I can
assure you; and the heavy end of the
stick fell to me ; the heavy end of this kind
cf stick always does fall to the woman ; for,
as the housekeeper, I had to make the best
of things and to feel the worst, to pull the
two gaping ends together as well as I could
and to put myself in the gap when I could
not.

Of course you remember Ashley Graham,
my brother's great friend ? They had been
students together at the Academy; and
once or twice in old days James had been
down to the Lakes where Ashley lived ; and
in his humble modest way, dear fellow,
looked up to his friend as to a superior
being infinitely beyond him in everything.
Certainly Ashley's family was better than
ours; and, though they were all ruined

--S 3

Chades Dickens. J

THE MERCHANT'S HANAPER.

[December 26, 1868.] 85

now, his early bringing up had been more
luxurious and refined than ours had been ;
so that he in a manner condescended when
he came into our home sphere, and he
made me understand that he condescended.
You know how men can make women
understand this. With James of course
Ashley was all that was genial and brotherly,
though there was that certain flavour of the
superior being in all he said or did ; but he
treated me very much as if I was an upper
servant or an automaton. He never spoke
to me ; never even shook hands with
me when he came in or went away ;
if he had anything to ask, anything he
wanted done for him, he looked at James
and asked him, though I had to do it ; and
if by any chance he came when James was
out, and waited for him, he used to take a
book and busy himself in that, without pay-
ing more attention to me than he did to the
cat. And not quite so much. So this was
how I knew that Ashley Graham held him-
self superior to us. He was too honourable
to treat me as his equal when he knew that
I was his inferior, I used to think ; and I
liked him all the better for his haughtiness.

Ashley knew very little about our real
circumstances, and we hid the seamy side
from him, perhaps foolishly. For instance,
he did not know that we had only two
rooms ; that behind the large old Indian
screen of our sitting-room was James's bed ;
and that the other little room at the top of
the house was mine. He was as poor as
we were, but he was in society and we were
not ; and that gave him an appearance of
superior condition, which of course he
wanted to keep up for the sake of his
family. Still, he knew that James did not
sell many pictures, and, as I tell you, we
were all half- starved together. But Ashley
thought we were better off than we were,
and only I knew how poor he was.

He was often in our rooms, and lately he
got into the way of sleeping there. The
first time he asked for a bed it was a wild
wet winter's night, when no one with a
heart could have turned out even a dog. In
those days he lived over at Holloway, or
some unearthly place like that ; it was past
twelve, and the last omnibus had gone ; a
cab would have ruined him outright a
cab from Percy- street to Holloway for a
poor painter who did not sell his pictures,
the thing was impossible ! so when he
asked, in that off-hand cavalier way of his,
if we could take him in, and James looked
at me, I answered briskly, " Yes, certainly ;"
and, with a sign to James, " if Mr. Graham

does not object to a little room at the top
of the house."

No, Mr. Graham did not object to a little
room at the top of the house : he said this
quite graciously, as if he was conferring a
favour, not receiving it ; upon which I
went up- stairs, and began to arrange my
own room for him. It was a pleasure !
Georgie ! I was just a slave, and nothing
more ! I brought out my poor little hoard
of meagre prettinesses, and laid them about
the room where they made the most effect ;
I hid away my own things, so that he should
not know whose room it was ; and when my
brother took him up- stairs, even he scarcely
seemed to know what I had done, and I re-
ally believe imagined I had somehow chan-
ged my room, and that I was to be quite
comfortable myself for the night. He did not
see me again to ask me how I had managed
I am speaking now of James and neither
he nor Ashley knew that I had passed the
night sitting on a wooden chair by the empty
kitchen hearth ; for the landlady let us have
a little kitchen for my cooking and washing,
&c. It had been originally the scullery,
and was a dirty, damp old hole ; but it did
well enough. We were too poor to be fas-
tidious.

In the morning I took up Ashley's hot
water and his boots, which I had cleaned
with my own hands. He thought it was
the landlady's servant who had waited on
him, and as he passed me on the stairs he
gave her sixpence, which the girl took quite
tranquilly, as even less than her due. Those
boots let me into the secret of Ashley's
poverty. They were old and worn, and I
mended them for him, I must say, cleverly.
I often did this ; for Ashley, never dreaming
that I had only a hard wooden chair for my
bed when he slept with us, continually now
overstayed his time, playing chess or " talk-
ing shop" with my brother, and at last got
to ask for his room as almost a matter of
course. James was too proud and timid,
poor fellow ! to tell the truth, and I was too
happy to be of use to Ashley to murmur at
any sacrifice that I could make. It was the
sweetest time of my life ! That humble un-
recognised self-sacrifice for the one you
honour is almost more delicious than grati-
tude !

And all this time Ashley took no more
notice of me than before. I was very young.
James was only a protection in name, not
in reality ; and, girl as I was, I could under-
stand something of the motive of his reserve,
and see into the value of it. And yet I used
to think he might have been just a little

[December 2G, 1SCS.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

more cognisant of my existence ! He need
not have made love to me, or been very at-
tentive, but just a little as I used to say,
just as much as to the cat !

One day Ashley came to us in a terrible
state. Even James saw that something had
happened, and I, studying his every mood
and expression as I did, knew at once that
some distress was in the background. And it
was something so new to see Ashley moved
so strong and almost hard as he was
that one felt it more in him than if it had
been any other man. At least I did.

" James, my good fellow !" he said, in an
excited way, " lend me five pounds, can you ?
My mother is dangerously ill, and they have
written for me to go to her to-night. I
happen not to have as much money about
me at this moment, and I cannot get any
from old Campbell until I have finished my
work. He as good as bought my Herodias
Dancing yesterday, but still you know it
was not done out and out, so I could not
very well ask him for the money, could I ?"

Poor Ashley ! His Herodias Dancing
one of the most hideous things you ever
saw was no more sold to old Campbell
than I was ! If Ashley could have got into
the hands of any picture- dealer whatsoever
he would have considered his fortune made.
James blushed and hesitated. Five pounds !
Ashley might as well have asked him for
five hundred. We had not five shillings in
the house ; for we had had a bad week, and
I was thinking somewhat ruefully of the
short commons we should have to go upon,
and how we were to get fed at all for the
next ten days or so ; and now Ashley was
in trouble too, and wanted us to help him.
James looked at me in great embarrassment.
One by one we had parted with all our little
valuables, but I had kept back one, a very
handsome pearl ring of my dear mother's,
which our father had given her on her wed-
ding day. This was emphatically the last
of our treasures, and I had struggled hard
and made many sacrifices to keep it.

When James looked at me so wistfully,
and when I thought of Ashley's trouble
his mother perhaps dying, and he her only
son, and so fond of her ! I could not help
crying; but I could not hesitate. What
had been sacred to me for my mother's
sake should be given to him for his. There
was no sacrilege in this ; it was a righteous
disposition of a sacred treasure.

" I will get the money from the bank,
James," I said.

And Ashley, though he stared, was taken
in by the quiet matter-of-fact way in which

I spoke. A poor artist in Percy-street, and
a banker ? Well ! it was a land of miracle,
if true; but then there are miracles yet
afloat. So I went out and pawned my ring,
and came back with the money to Ashley.
And of the two, James was decidedly the
more astonished. Ashley took the money,
said carelessly to me, " I am sorry you
have had so much trouble, Miss Mantell,"
and thanked James very warmly. When
he went away I ran up- stairs, and flinging
myself on the bed sobbed bitterly. This
precious ring my last possession and
James thanked for lending out of a super-
fluous balance what I had procured by the
sacrifice of my best treasure ! It was a
little hard ; don't you think so, too, Georgie ?
But I did not let my brother see what I
felt ; and James, as you know, was one of
those dear good creatures who never see any-
thing they are not absolutely told or shown.

But I was half afraid that I had opened
the door to a good deal of discomfort in the
future; for Ashley would be sure to do
about money as he had done about the bed-
room, taking for granted that he could have
whatever he asked for, and that James
could help him with money from that ba-
lance at his banker's as he could help him
with a room from his liberal arrangement
of lodging. Not that he was selfish ; you
must not think that ; but he was thought-
less. Was he not an artist ? and could he,
therefore, be anything but thoughtless ?
Besides, he did not know the kind of
reverential feeling that both James and I
had for him, and how we would have
rather sacrificed ourselves than see him
want anything that we could get for him.

Of course Ashley believed in the banker's
balance, and, from the ease with which the
loan of five pounds had been had, assumed
that more might be had as easily ; and not
long after his return from the north for
his mother got better, against all expectation
he asked James for another loan; this
time to enable his mother and sister to
come up to London and make a home with
him. And when he spoke of his sister
his dear and beautiful Cora I saw, what I
had long suspected, that one cause of my
brother's intense attachment to Ashley was
in his love for Cora. It was almost pathetic
to watch the expression that came over his
face while Ashley was speaking. If only
Cora could be brought to London ! if only
he might sometimes see her !

Ashley wanted twenty pounds. If five
could only be had by pawning my ring, I
ask you, Georgie, where could twenty come

Charles Dickens]

THE MERCHANT'S HANAPEE,

[December 26, 18C8.] 87

from ? James was in an agony, and I was
powerless to help him. If sorrow and pain
could have bought these men their happi-
ness they would have had it without much
delay ; but what could a weak and ignorant
girl do for them ? Absolutely nothing !
I saw James look round the shabby room,
and I saw where his eyes rested. By rare
good fortune he had been commissioned
to paint a portrait for one of those so-called
patrons of art whose patronage consists in
getting the best productions of clever young
men, yet unknown, at merely nominal
prices. It was for a rich City merchant to
whom James had been introduced, and it
was to be thirty pounds when done. Could
he mortgage it ? There was no use in ask-
ing Mr. Hawes to give him an advance.
He thought he had done great things in
giving the order at all ; and there was every
probability that if he paid him on delivery
lie would charge him a per-centage on the
transaction, and make a profit out of his
" cash down." ~No there was no use in
going to him ! He had lent my brother
a magnificent silver- gilt hanaper which he
wanted introduced into his picture. It had
been a presentation-piece from some society
or other, and the City merchant was very
proud of his cup. It was a hideous thing,
artistically speaking, but it was worth some
hundreds of pounds.

My brother looked at this tankard. I
do not know what made me do it, but I took
it up quietly, and dusted it with my apron.

"I hope this has not got scratched or
hurt in any way," I said; and it was rare
that I spoke before Ashley. "You re-
member Mr. Hawes is coming for it to-
morrow, Jamie ?"

" What a shame that a fellow like that
should have such a thing and so vilely
ugly too !" said Ashley. " It is worth only
the weight of metal ; but that is being
worth something," he added, as if reflecting.

"Yes, it is hideously ugly criminally
ugly !" said James ; "but it cost no end of
money, I dare say. Old Hawes, I know, sets
great store by it, the old rhinoceros ! But as
it is, it is too good for him. And to think that
we should be at the orders of such a man !
that we should be obliged to put such a
vile thing as that into our work !"

He spoke in the artist's injured tone. I
have often noticed that artists are injured
when they are employed by men who do
not understand art Philistines as they call
them.

"Better send it to the smcl ting-pot !"
laughed Ashley.

I say laughed, but it was a bitter sneer
rather than a laugh.

James flushed, and I trembled. It never
occurred to me as possible that my brother
could do anything so dishonourable as deal
with another man's property my dear
Jamie, the very soul of chivalrous feeling !
and yet I somehow feared Ashley's sugges-
tion. I knew how he loved that man, and
I knew that he, quite as much as Ashley,
wanted to see Cora and Mrs. Graham in
London. But wishing and doing, envying
and stealing, are two different things ; and
though I trembled I did not definitely dis-
trust.

That night Ashley slept with us. I was
going to say as usual ; for, indeed, it was a
very frequent thing now ; and I passed the
night sitting on a wooden chair before the
empty kitchen hearth.

I had fallen into an uneasy doze just at
the last hours, as the day began to break,
when I was awakened by hearing a step
on the stairs. The house was one of those
creaking old places where a mouse could
hardly stir without being heard ; and there
was something in the build of it that made
my little kitchen like an echoing vault.
The step came down the stairs and across
the hall ; I heard the door- chain rattle, and
the bolt shoot back ; and then the door
opened and slammed to again; and a
hurried footfall passed on the pavement.
How like Ashley's step ! An unaccountable
terror came over me ; what was he doing
out so early ? but then I thought it might
be Mr. Thomson, the lodger, who lived next
door to me up-stairs, and who used some-
times to go out very early before any one
else was astir. He was a commission agent,
as he called himself ; an irreverent servant
used to speak of him as " our commercial
gent ;" and, my brother, who had an artist's
contempt for commerce in all its branches,
always called him the bagman. He was a
bold, coarse, good-looking man, with large
roving eyes and long fingers; a man for
whom I had an especial horror, partly be-
cause he would waylay me on the top landing
when I went to bed, asking me all manner
of things about my brother and his work,
and who were his patrons, and what he got
for such and such a picture, &c. He wished
to pass himself off as knowing something
about painting, and he knew as much of it
as I did of algebra ! Still, we had no right
to dislike him as we did, and so I often
said to James when Ave were alone.

Determined then that it should be Mr.
Thomson who had gone out early, I tried to

88 [December 2G, 18GS.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

calm my nerves for I was nervous, foolish
as it sounds. One cannot sit night after
night in a damp, dark kitchen, without get-
ting nervous ! By degrees the day broke
fully, and I went up- stairs to do the house
work before my brother got up. Eor I
was the only servant we had ; we could not
afford even a share in the drudge kept
for the house. When I went up- stairs I
found the door of our sitting-room open
just ajar as if it had been pulled to and
not shut. I went in. James was still
asleep behind the screen. I could hear his
breathing, poor fellow ! such a fast and
heavy sleeper as he was ! I looked round
the room with a kind of dread, as if I
expected to see something terrible ; on the
table, where the hanaper had stood last
night, lay the velvet-lined oaken case open
and empty. The precious deposit which
the rich City merchant had left, not without
some half-insulting words of caution, and
which he was coming to reclaim to-day,
was gone.

I called my brother hurriedly, and he
woke up.

"James!" I said, "what has become of
the hanaper?"

" The hanaper ? what ? what do you
mean?" he answered.

" It is not here, James ; it has been taken
out of the case it has gone."

"Gone! nonsense!" he said. "Why,
who could have taken it, Rose ?"

I did not speak I could not. It was so
clear, and yet so dreadful.

" Call Ashley," said James, his thoughts
turning instinctively to the man he loved
and trusted most.

All this time James had been dressing
hastily behind the screen, and now he came
out into the room. Just as he did so, the
street-door opened by a latch-key, and Ash-
ley came up the stairs and straight into our
sitting-room. His coat was wet it was
raining heavily and he carried the latch-
key in his hand.

" Here, old fellow," he said to James,
quietly ; " here is your latch-key. I took it
with me, as I went out so early."

" Ashley !" said James, in his scared way.

"Hey! what's the matter?" cried the
other.

"The hanaper!" was all my brother
could say.

" What about it, man ?"
"It is gone !"

" By Jupiter ! you don't say so," said
Ashley, turning pale.

" I can swear it was here last night," said

Jamie, excitedly, "Rose herself put it away
in the case."

" Yes, I saw it," answered Ashley,
gloomily.

Then he turned suddenly to me, and
looked at me as I thought suspiciously. I
reddened under his eyes, and he saw me
flush. It seemed to me as if he could read
my thoughts as if he knew what I knew.
And how could he ? Young people always
imagine that they are seen through, and I
thought I was seen through now.

Jamie saw nothing suspected nothing.
He was sitting with his head resting on his
hands, and his elbows on his knees, feeling
as a man does when he is suddenly plunged
into destruction when his name is tainted
and his career closed. As for me, the whole
world seemed to have crashed into ruin at
my feet ; but the one I could not under-
stand was Ashley. If I might have died
before this moment ! I could not believe
him guilty, and yet I could not doubt the
evidence of my senses. He had been out
in the early morning so far indeed he con-
fessed honestly enough ; no one else had
been out that. I could swear to ; and cer-
tainly no burglary had been committed.
And it was not to be supposed that we
harboured thieves in the house.

At that moment Mr. Thomson came
down- stairs, whistling as he passed our
door. He looked in and nodded, and his
great black eyes roved all about the place
and seemed to take in every inch and scrap
there was to be seen.

"A wet morning," he said, in his thick
oily voice, shaking his large loose cloak
about him as he gave a kind of growling
shiver. Then he strode down the stairs,
flung open the street-door, and slammed it
against him noisily : and bo went on his
way, whistling. How I wished that we all
had as light a heart as this unpleasant bag-
man ! and that one among us had so clear
a conscience !

I was so sorry for poor James ! He
seemed quite paralysed, and though Ashley
proposed sending for the police, and putting
the whole place under a kind of arrest
and I wondered at his audacity yet my
brother refused to adopt this or any other
suggestion, but sat, as I tell you, with his
head on his hands and his elbows resting
on his knees, more like a creature crazed
with dread than anything else. Meanwhile
time was drawing on, and it drew close to
the hour when Mr. Hawes had appointed
to come for his treasure.

" James," I said, " dear Jamie ! you must

Charles Dickens.]

THE MERCHANT'S HANAPER.

[December 26, 1868.] 89

decide on something ! It is twelve o'clock
now, and Mr. Hawes conies at one. What
will you do, dear ? What can we do ?"

I ought to have told you that by this
time James and I were alone. Ashley had
been obliged to leave, and for the first time
in our acquaintance I had not been sorry to
see him go. He had been very kind to me
and very cheery with James, but I shrank
from him visibly ; though he looked at me
as people do look at something seen for the
first time, and seemed almost as if he had
found me out, after such a long period of
overlooking ! At any other time I should
have been transported with his attention ;
it would have been my pride, my joy, my
heaven, but now I felt degraded by it, as
if he wanted to buy my silence, to make
me an accomplice in his crime through my
love. Oh, Georgie, what an awful thing it
is to feel that the one you love above all
else in life is base and false !

Well ! when I spoke to James like this
I seemed to startle him as if from a dream.
"Yes, Rose, I remember," he said, getting
up and pushing his dank fair hair from his
white face. " I will go and make it all right
with him. My poor little Rose ! you have
had a nasty fright, dear, and you are quite
pale and trembling. Never mind now, it
will soon be all right."

He kissed me tenderly, and before I could
stop him, or even answer back his loving
words, he too had left the house, and left
me indeed alone.

I cannot tell you much more of what hap-
pened, for I only remember things very con-
fusedly. I remember Mr. Hawes coming
to the house, and I remember his loud angry
voice and furious face ; I remember a swarm
of policemen in the room the place seemed
filled with them and I remember Ashley's
grand bearing and noble look in the midst
of them. He seemed like a beautiful demon
to me like Lucifer: a god, but a fallen
one. And then oh, Georgie, do not let me
think of it ! I remember a noise, as of men's
feet, a tumult of voices, and a hustling at
the door, and Something was brought in
and laid tenderly on the bed. It was my
brother all that was of him now ! found
dead in a lonely part of Kensington Gardens,
with an empty bottle of poison in his hand.
Proud and sensitive as he was, the shock
and horror had been too much for him, and
he chose to brave the wrath of God rather
than undergo the doubt, the accusation of
his fellow-men.

After this the newspaper reports can tell
you the story better than I. You know that

Ashley was arrested on suspicion, tried, and
acquitted for want of sufiicient evidence;
acquitted but not cleared ; for all that my
dear Jamie's death divided the suspicion.
The oddest part of it was that the hanaper
could not be traced in the remotest way.
It had apparently vanished off the face of
the earth, and how it had gone, or what had
become of it, was as much a mystery to the
police as to us. It looked as if Ashley had
taken it and for my own part I never
doubted it ; but what had he done with it ?
who had he sold it to ? and how was it that
the police could not trace it ? And how was
it, too, that Ashley was suddenly so flush of
money if he had not stolen it ? He said an
old aunt had died and left him a legacy. God
forgive me ! I did not believe a word of it !
And yet I loved him, Georgie ! Unworthy
as I believed him to be, and the cause of
that poor boy's death, I loved him with my
whole heart. I had grown into womanhood
loving him ; and, if even I had wished it, I
could not have cut him out of my life now.
But I would not marry him. He asked me
more than once, and he pleaded passionately
for he suddenly quite changed towards
me, as I have said, and from utter neglect
passed into the most intense love. But I
was firm. I could not have married him
then ! So he went away to America, and
I came down here to Ambleside, as gover-
ness to the rector's children ; and here I
have been ever since two years two long,
painful, weary years ! And now I am go-
ing to America next week ; my passage is
taken, and in a fortnight's time I shall be
standing on the quay at New York, with
Ashley's Graham's hand in mine ! If
you read this letter you will see what has
changed my life, and what has taken me as
a penitent to the feet of the man I love, and
have always loved.

She gave me an open letter written in a
faint and trembling hand, and signed A.
Thomson. It said that "he, the writer,
being now at the point of death, wished to
make confession, and reparation so far as
he could, of the evil he had caused. For it
was he who had taken the hanaper ; and
he had it under his large cloak while he
stood by the open door of the room, and
nodded, and spoke to Rose Mantell of the
weather. It was a bold stroke," he said,
" and the idea occurred to him only when
he heard Ashley go out so early. Know-
ing the habits of the Mantells, and their
hours, he had stolen down- stairs to James's
room and found the door ajar. Ashley had

90 [December 26, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

left it open when lie went in for the latch-
key. He had often seen the hanaper, and
as often coveted it, and thought how much
he could make of it ; for among his ac-
quaintances was a ' fence' " (he had
the grace to explain the word further
on) "and who was perfectly safe. He
saw the oaken case ; noiselessly unslid the
clasp ; and in a quarter of an hour after
he left the house, the rich City merchant's
presentation plate was seething in the
smelting pot. He had timed his going
out to accord just with Ashley's return
that he might show himself at the door of
the room unconcerned and ignorant of the
trouble there was within it ; and while they
were all too much dazed with their loss to
know very clearly what was best to be done.
No suspicion had ever fallen on him, though
his rooms had been searched, as those of
the other inmates of the house ; and he had
gone on living in his garret with honour
and punctual payments until now. And
now he wished to pay his last debt ; when
he could die in peace, and with an easy
conscience." Easy conscience, the rogue !
and yet, who is to limit the mercy of the
Infinite ! God forgive us all, sinners that
we are !

THE DEATH'S HEAD MOTH.

I. THE PALACE DINNER.

The court of the Grand Duke of Eisenherz
was dining, and dining moodily. It had been
said by the cynics of the Grand Duke's capital
that the only pleasant hour spent by the
miserable court was the dinner hour ; yet on
this particular occasion even that hour was
not very agreeable. The sickly little duke,
a voluptuary, a fop, and a fool, as heartless
as he was brainless, was testy, snappish, fretful,
and splenetic, and in the most vexatious of
tempers, complaining of the wine, swearing
terrible oaths at his servants, kicking his pet
spaniels, snubbing the Lord Chamberlain,
almost barking at the minister of war, old iron-
necked General Blossow, contradicting the
Countess Schwellenberg, the lady of the robes,
and refusing even to look in the direction of
that old painted hag his stepmother, the
duchess, who, reddening behind the thick coats
of white and of red vermilion that choked up
her wrinkles, was in as viperish a temper as
could rise from the depths of a proud and evil
heart, corrupted by all the petty ambitions of
a small and depraved court in that demoralised
age that immediately preceded the red deluge
of the great revolution.

It was an October twilight, the few pale
gleams of day lingered on the glasses, jugs,
fruit dishes, and silver that strewed the
vast table. Here and there the blade of a

fruit knife, or the stopper of a decanter,
glanced out of the" gloom which elsewhere
had risen slowly like a black flood, and sub-
merged the German Pharaohling and all his
host. The duke's face, pale, jaded, and fretful,
could be dimly seen by the light of his powdered
hair, but the duchess, who sat gaunt and erect,
with her back to a central window, appeared
a mere shapeless mass of darkness.

In all that concourse there were only two
persons really natural and at their ease, and
even these two were unhappy more unhappy,
indeed, than their fellows. The one was a
beautiful young girl, who sat on the right hand
of the duchess. Her tender face, irradiated
with clusters of sunshiny hair, was spiritualised
by a fine intelligence, and dignified by a certain
calm power that gave almost a queenly cha-
racter to a beauty otherwise specially gentle,
loving, and womanly. She seemed unable and
unwilling to conceal a certain foreboding of
coming rank ; but pride in that gentle heart
was no evil passion. In that pure soil the
poison plant had lost its venom, and glowed
only with amaranthine flowers. The sceptre
she would sway, those who loved her said,
would be rather a branch of lilies than the
hated sword.

The other was a pale intellectual-looking
young man, dressed in a plain austere black
velvet suit, reflecting light only from the
cut steel buttons which glistened here and
there in the last glimmer of day. Professor
Mohrart was the court physician, an honour
acquired by him at an early age, rather by
dint of his acknowledged learning than any
special regard borne him by either the dowager
duchess or the duke, whom he disdained to
flatter, and whose patronage of alchemy and
astrology he strongly condemned. He spoke but
little, and seemed lost in contemplation, except
when now and then his large dark eyes fell with
a mournful and tender regard on Mademoiselle
Blossow, the daughter of the minister of war,
and the duke's betrothed. There was indeed a
rumour in Eisenherz that a few years before he
had been attached to Mademoiselle Blossow,
but that the stern old general, from ambitious
motives, had refused him her hand. This
dream was no doubt long past. He had about
him now the preoccupied air of the student,
and he seemed out of place among those
heartless courtiers and self-conscious ladi^ of
honour.

"We start then to-morrow, Frederick, to
Schwarzstein," said the duchess, suddenly, in
her shrill voice. " The coaches must be ready
by three, to reach Graffenberg by dusk."

" My honoured and revered stepmother,"
said the young duke, with listless spitefulness,
" you are only too good and kind in arranging
the movements of our court. Since we last
spoke to you we have changed our mind. I
and the general take Beatrice with us to-
morrow hunting in the forest at Eichenwald.
That exercise will be too fatiguing for you, we
fear. The chamberlain can go with you to
your worthy cousin at Schwarzstein."

Charles Dickens.]

THE DEATH'S HEAD MOTH.

[December 2<3, 1868.] 91

The dowager duchess turned livid through
her paint, but made no reply, and said insolently
to one of the ladies in waiting, ' ' Light that
candle for me that is on the mantelpiece. It is
like sitting in a vault."

The lady so harshly bidden to do this servile
duty, performed it with an obsequious and unre-
sisting humility, and as she did so, a large moth,
with rich brown and yellow and mottled wings,
and a black and yellow speckled body, settled
on the wall before the light. It was a death's
head moth, with that curious mark that is vul-
garly supposed to resemble a skull unusually
conspicuous on its thorax. It uttered a faint
shrill plaintive cry like that of a mouse, and
flew back into the darkness. It passed close to
Mademoiselle Beatrice, wavered over to Pro-
fessor Mohrart, then brushed the face of the
ex-duchess with its wings, and settled on the
table before the young duke, who, snatching
the fan of a lady next him, struck at the moth
with such force that, though he missed the insect,
he snapped the stems of several wine-glasses.
The hidden tiger within him leaped out now as
he sprang up, threw down his chair, and tore at
the great crimson bell-rope, till the corridors
echoed again, and half a dozen servants hurried
in with candelabra.

" Madame la Duchesse," he said, petulantly,
to his mother, " you know I detest darkness,
yet you will force me to sit here to save half a
dozen wax candles. We will not be controlled.
Charles, Louis, tell the major-domo we will
dine no more without lights, no,- not even in
summer. There seems to be a doubt amongst
some of you who reigns at Eisenherz ; you shall
soon learn. Mademoiselle Beatrice, I kiss
your hand. Ladies, adieu. Gentlemen, the
faro table is ready let us try fortune again ;
and you fellows, search the room and kill
that moth. I hate to have those things buzzing
about."

" Poor moth," thought the professor. " Poor
Eisenherz! That man will grow up a mon-
ster."

" That moth brings bad luck to some of us,"
said one of the footmen to another.

II. THE CUP OF CHOCOLATE.

Two things were well known to the meanest
lacqueys of the palace. First, that the dowager
duchess detested the intended marriage of her
stepson ; secondly, that the quarrels between
the duke and his ambitious stepmother were
every day growing more embittered.

It was the evening of the day that the
duchess was to return from Schwarzstein. The
duke has come in tired from hunting, and re-
tired to his private apartment. In the embra-
sure of a window in one of the brightly lit ante-
chambers sat the young physician, looking out
thoughtfully into the starry night, half shel-
tered by a heavy crimson velvet curtain which
he held back from the mullioned panes.

"She loved me once," he thought. "She
told me she did, and I loved her, till her
father and the cruel world came between us.

Does she love me still ? Oh, could I but learn
that !"

He started ; for an icy hand like that of a
corpse had touched him on the shoulder. He
looked round. It was the duchess, who pointed
to the open door of an inner boudoir, and led
him in. She locked the door, and stood close
to the surprised professor.

"Professor Mohrart," she said, "you well
know how great a regard I feel for you. What
honours we have destined for you, you may
not know so well. We know you wise,
faithful, and true ; we would trust you with
an especial duty. We claim but one small
service."

The young physician bowed gravely.

"Madame la Duchesse," he said, "I am a
faithful servant of the house of Eisenherz.
Your wishes are laws. All that I can do, sub-
servient to my duty to God and man, I will do
to serve either you or the duke."

" Answer me first one question truly. You
did once love Mademoiselle Beatrice, the duke's
betrothed ?"

The young man hesitated ; then, with almost
a groan, he said, " I did."

"And you still love Beatrice Blossow?"

Professor Mohrart made no reply.

" You do love her. I have seen a letter
you wrote her, urging her to fly with you to
England, to escape the match she detested;
you see, I know all. You have her letter,
refusing to go, but professing unalterable
love for you. Give me that letter ; you
are not rich. You shall have ten thousand
Friedrich d'ors for that mere small square of
pink paper."

The professor remained silent.

" You shall marry the daughter of the richest
noble in all Eisenherz."

" Madame la Duchesse," said the professor at
last, " you would prevent the marriage of the
duke, it is clear. Whatever I may or may not
have once felt, I now owe all humble homage
and duty to that beautiful and amiable lady,
and I will give you no help in this matter."

" You refuse, then ?"

" I refuse."

" You defy my anger ?"

" I neither defy it nor dread it. I refuse to
help you to prevent the marriage of the duke,
your stepson, with Mademoiselle Beatrice."

" You persist in that?"

"I do."

" You love her, and yet you would marry her
to another ! She loves you, yet prefers wealth
and a title. Bah !"

" No ; she has forgotten me ; and I wish her
to have that title, which is her ambition."

" And you deny recent letters ?"

"I do. They may have been written, but
they have never reached me."

" And your own of the fourth of last month ?"

" That I wrote, but Mademoiselle Beatrice
has not replied to me, Madame la Duchesse,
since I broke off the engagement on her not
answering my letter pressing her to fly at the
first rumour of the duke's attentions."

92 [December 2G, 18C8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

" Fool !" the duchess as she spoke unlocked
a secretaire, and drew out a small packet of let-
ters " there are both hers and yours ; they
were intercepted by my orders. All I want you
to do is to take her last and produce it yourself
to the duke, altering the date of it to yester-
day as a proof of her contempt and hatred of
him. Fool! do you not see she has taken
his hand only in despair of gaining back
yours? Punish her for so easily relinquish-
ing you."

Mohrart stood there like a man mortally
wounded : his heart ceased almost to beat.
Then a fire came into his eyes. " Tempter, sent
from below," he said, "you have wrecked the
happiness of two hearts, merely to help for-
ward some evil scheme, to advance some
evil purpose, whither tending you yourself
best know; but I will not interrupt the
progress of Beatrice to the rank and power
she will ennoble. I have prayed to Heaven to
give me the strength to surrender her for the
happiness of this people. The strength was
given me. I will not turn back. I will not be
faithless to Heaven now to advance the wicked
intrigues of a corrupt woman."

The duchess was at a white heat. She
burned, but there were no sparkles and there
was no blaze.

" 'Tis well," she said. " Wise only in books,
you push from you honours I offered you. Fools !
you shall both perish ; you shall learn what it is
to brave my anger. Had I found you obedient
I might have seated you on the throne by my
side, now only misery and desolation await you.
You do not comprehend the grandeur of my
views, and you place yourself beneath the foot
of a mindless girl. Be it so. You shall soon
learn how devastating is the anger of a
slighted woman."

Here the duchess unlocked the door and
angrily rang a silver bell that stood on the table.
A hard-featured female attendant instantly ap-
peared with a tray of chocolate and a little
crystal bottle of ratafia.

"Professor," she said, "will you please add
two drops of that ratafia to the duke's choco-
late ; my hand shakes ; he prefers it to vanille.
Louise, tell the duke his chocolate awaits him
here."

"I did not wish Louise to see that we had
quarrelled," said the duchess. " Adieu, Pro-
fessor Mohrart. Adieu, long-suffering lover.
You have not gall enough to hate even the man
who will marry the woman who still loves you.
Excellent Christian, adieu ; some day, perhaps,
you will think of revenge, but beware of mine
first."

The duke's voice was heard at the very mo-
ment the last glimpse of the crimson silk train
of the duchess swept from the room. He
came in patting a huge tawny stag hound with
which a long-eared spaniel of the finest dimen-
sions was playing with dignified condescen-
sion.

" Well, professor," he said, as he threw him-
self languidly in a gilt chair, " to tell you the
truth, I am infernally wearied with that absurd

pastime that men have christened hunting, and
which seems to me a mere ingenious way of en-
couraging men of fashion to break their valuable
necks. My amiable stepmother sent me word
that Desanges had brought my chocolate here.
Aye, there I see it is. Would you oblige me
by handing it a thousand thanks. Do you
care for Sevres, M. le Professor?"

The professor replied in the affirmative.

" This cup of mine is mere peasant crockery to
the jewelled set I have ordered for our wedding
breakfast by the by, my dear professor, why
did you never marry ? There's that handsome
blonde daughter of the lord chamberlain with
thirty thousand "

Here the duke raised the cup to his lips and
began languidly to sip. He put it down.

" This chocolate is far too strong of the
ratafia." As he said this the duke suddenly rose
with a peculiar wild stare in his eyes, staggered,
caught at the tablecloth for support, and dragged
it towards him till it fell on the floor, throwing
the candelabra down with a crash. Then he
fell heavily forward upon his face before the
astonished professor could run to his as-
sistance.

The professor knelt over the fallen man, and
was in the act of loosening his neckcloth as the
duchess and her servant entered. They uttered
piercing cries of horror, and ran to raise the
duke in their arms ; but already the duke was
in the agonies of death. The only Avords he
faintly articulated were :

" It was Mohrart who put poison into my
chocolate. I always thought he hated me.
Mind you, people, that he is broken on the

wheel " Then he moaned again, made

a faint effort to rise, groaned twice, and fell
back dead in the arms of a servant.

III. THE SEALED KNOTS.

" There is no hope for him," said a barber
in a crowd outside the town hall of Eisenherz,
the day of Mohrart's trial, to his friend the
saddler, "no hope at all, I tell you. The
Lord Chamberlain's own man, who has been
all day at the trial, tells me that the dowager
duchess's maid can swear she saw Mohrart
pour laurel water into the duke's chocolate,
a bottle of ratafia mixed with laurel water
was actually found on the floor of Mohrart's
bedroom, and there was laurel water after-
wards discovered in the chocolate left in the
cup. Oh, he was a double-dyed villain ! Yet
he looked so plausible. Well, I shall go and
see him on the wheel, neighbour."

" And the duchess's gentleman, I hear," said
a third gossip, who just then came up " has
produced intercepted letters, showing love still
existed between Mohrart and Lady Beatrice ;
but Mohrart's defence is that the dates have been
forged, or that they were letters of a year
ago, before the duke admired Beatrice, and
when he and Beatrice were engaged to be
married. There is a report that the Sealed Knots
intend to rescue him from prison, believing him
a victim of some state intrigue, so the guards

Cbaries Dickeus.]

THE DEATH'S HEAD MOTH.

[December 2C, 1808.] 93

at the prison were yesterday doubled. Our
duchess has a tight grasp."

"Stuff!" said the other, "I not only don't
believe it, but what's more, I don't even be-
lieve there are any conspirators in Eisenherz
who assume such a name."

" Come, come, neighbour," said the first,
" we know there are disaffected people in Eisen-
herz, and it does not much matter what name
they go by. You yourself probably are one of
them, because you deny what every one knows
is a fact. They know each other, that's
certain."

The gossips were but too correct. Poor
Mohrart was that day found guilty and sen-
tenced to be broken on the wheel on the first
day of November. An hour before midnight
of the day of his trial the prisoner's cell door
grated open. Mohrart leaped up from his
knees, for he was praying. It was General
Blossow.

"Mohrart," he said, "I was no friend of
yours when you were in prosperity. I hated you
because I thought you had proudly refused to
answer the letters of my daughter who loved
you, you thought I coveted the duke's power
and title ; but now I see it all. The asso-
ciates of the Sealed Knots have proved to
me that the dates of the letters shown at
the trial were forged, and that it was the
duchess and not you who poisoned the duke.
She had long resolved his death. Through one
of the same secret societies I have just gained
access here to-night to plan your escape. Do
you still love Beatrice? Did you ever really
love her ?"

" General Blossow, I love your daughter, so
that I would not dread even that terrible
death to-morrow, could I but press my lips
to hers but once more. I always loved her. It
was my evil pride alone that forbade me to ask
the reason why my letters of passionate appeal
as well as of passionate accusation were never
answered. Saints in Heaven, how could I ever
suspect her gentle heart of forgetfulness or of
mean ambition !"

" Beatrice is here. You shall see her ; she
knows all now," said the general, throwing open
the door. The next instant the lovers were
clasped in each other's arms, in all the ecstatic
joy of renewed hope.

Suddenly their conversation was interrupted
by the tramp of feet, and a sound of grounded
muskets. The door flew open, and the duchess
appeared upon the threshold.

" General," she said, mockingly, with the old
viperish hatred in her pursed- up eyes, " you
seem surprised to see me. You were rash to
trust my paid emissaries. I too, you see, have
dealings with conspirators. Every step you
took I knew. As for this wanton, seize her
soldiers, for she has been an accomplice in this
detestable crime, as I before found. General
Blossow, you shall answer us promptly for this
treason. Where are your brave conspirators of
the Sealed Knot now ? As for you, poisoner,
the wheel will soon be ready for you. Yes, if
half Eisenherz had joined in killing my poor

stepson, half Eisenherz should perish miserably
as you shall. Soldiers, to separate prisons with
them. Remove them. Jailers, tear that woman
from the murderer's arms."

There was a groan, the shriek of a fainting
woman, and the ponderous door closed upon the
unhappy Mohrart as the doors of a vault might
do upon a corpse. The next time it opened it
would be for the soldiers who were to lead him
to a death of shame.

He seemed forsaken even by Heaven.

IV. THE INSURRECTION.

There is a limit to the patience even of slaves.
An insurrection had broken out in the city of
Eisenherz. A rumour that Count SchweUen-
berg was marching upon the city from Hesse
Darmstadt, with ten thousand men, having been
summoned by the urgent entreaties of the
duchess, had set every heart on fire. The
mysterious members of the Sealed Knot Club
had been, however, it was said, untiring in their
efforts to delay the revolt, which they con-
sidered premature.

The insurgents, in an irresistible deluge, were
pouring on towards the palace, now closely
guarded by two thousand Hessian soldiers, who
had sworn to defend the duchess to the last. The
sea of angry faces had already surged into the
great square of the cathedral, to mass together
for the attack upon the palace. A dozen black-
smiths having dragged a cannon from the adja-
cent park, were already shouting for the advance,
when a small group of masked men quietly
emerged from a house next the cathedral, and
dispersing through the crowd, whispered direc-
tions to the leaders of the mob. Their mandates
at first seemed to be disputed.

" Let's burn the Hell-cat !" cried some. " She
showed no mercy for others ; she has no mercy
for Mohrart or the general's daughter."

"Break her on the wheel," cried another,
" as she did my father !"

"Hang her from the cathedral tower!"
screamed a third. " She had my son shot yes-
terday for merely crying, ' Long five General
Blossow.' "

But the frantic outcries of these men were in
vain. A secret irresistible agency seemed at
work. Even the blacksmiths left the cannon
at the cathedral doors, the savage pikemen and!
hammermen, by twos and threes, turned sul-
lenly homeward. The roaring crowd gradually
grew silent as by enchantment, and melted like
ice, for so the Sealed Knots had willed it.

When the duchess heard of it, she smiled,,
tapped her fan, and calmly said, "I thought
the scum would never face bayonets. The
instinct of self-preservation is still, you see,
strong, even in the detested canaille."

V. THE CHAPEL ON THE MOUNTAIN.

It was the annual custom of the duchess, who
was as superstitious as she was cruel, to spend
two days in the first week of every November in
a little chapel half way up a lonely mountain,

94 [December 2G, 1868.]

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

three miles from Eisenherz. Her enemies said
that by that short seclusion the wretched
woman believed that she atoned for all the sins
of the past twelvemonth. She usually went
with only one attendant, the old soldier and
his wife, who took care of the chapel, providing
her with simple food.

It was a cold and foggy evening when the
duchess descended from her great gilt coach,
and took the winding way through the woods
that led her to the chapel. Her yellow
velvet train rustled over the wet dead leaves.
The wind was sighing among the leafless
larches, and moaning among the black boughs
of the fir trees. Two hundred yards up, a stir-
ring in the brake startled the duchess ; she
looked, and saw, by the light her servant car-
ried, an old man, whom she recognised as the
old guardian of the chapel, kneeling and gather-
ing fir-cones. He looked pale and ill, and did
not at first rise, but shook either with cold or
fear when the duchess addressed him.

" Karl Hauffman," she cried, " why are you
so far from the chapel? Did you not expect
me ? Is the man imbecile ? Answer."

The old man rose, drew himself feebly up,
and made the military salute, still trembling
with the cold as he made the salute, and
came nearer. Just then an owl hooted three
times.

"Your royal highness,-' he said, his teeth
chattering, "we did expect you; we had your
message yesterday ; but my wife is ill, and I
have been out gathering fir-cones for the
fire."

" You should not leave the chapel. Are the
altar lamps lit for our devotions ?"

"Your royal highness, they are. We ex-
pected you half an hour ago."

"And are the candles ready in the room of
the Twelve Apostles ?"

" Everything has been made ready for your
royal highness ; and I will go forward with the
lantern through the wood"

" The wind seems rising," said the duchess.

" There will be a storm soon," said the old
man, as he led on with the light.

As the old man pushed open the rusty chapel
door, which was wet with damp, the wind shook
the mouldy black and silver hangings of the
walls, which rose and fell with a melancholy
wavelike swell. Two of the candles on the altar
blew out with the draught. At that moment a
horn sounded higher up the mountain, and
seemed to be answered by an echo far down
towards the city, and an owl screeched as if
in answer. Then there was a deep silence.

The duchess knelt for some time in prayer.
Then she rose, and said to her attendant,
"You remain here, while I go and make my
confessions, according to my custom, in the
chamber of the Apostles."

The duchess rose, crossed herself, and lifting
the black hangings to the left of the altar,
entered the apartment which her superstition
had so strangely furnished. The black curtain
fell behind her, and seemed to shut her out for
ever from all living things. It seemed a grave

that she had entered. It was a long low-roofed
room, dimly lit, and hung with dark tapestry
like the chapel. In the centre stood a long
table, covered with a dark red cloth, round
which, with gilt cups before them, sat twelve
wax figures of the apostles, as large as life,
with flaxen hair and beards, and clothed ac-
cording to the strictest tradition of the old
painters. The wax faces and staring black
eyes of eleven of the number were fixed on
Saint Peter, who, with the gilt cross keys in
his right hand, sat at their head. The at-
titude of each apostle was varied. Saint
John was turned half round listening to Saint
Thomas ; Judas was clutching the bag ; Saint
James was pointing to Heaven ; Saint Mark
was gazing thoughtfully on Saint Luke ; Saint
Luke was regarding Saint Peter with the in-
tensest veneration. Three apostles alone at
the lower end of the table were in shadow,
for the lights at that end of the table had blown
out.

The mind of the guilty duchess was rapt in
awe at the sight of these august figures, which
strongly stirred her imagination. She cast her-
self at the feet of Saint Peter.

"Holy Saint Peter,"she exclaimed, "intercede
for me at the golden gates, I pray thee, intercede
for one who has done evil, it is true, but only
that good might come. I struck down my chief
enemy only that the people might be the more
wisely governed and the town be saved from
the tyranny of heresy. To-morrow a traitor
dies upon the wheel, and an ambitious wanton
will be found dead in her cell. Pardon, Holy
Saint ! Pardon ! Let a miraculous voice, I
pray thee, answer the penitent who now lies"
at thy feet. He does not answer. Is Heaven
silent? Ye lesser apostles hear me then. Spare
a guilty woman ! Spare me ! Spare "

As she uttered these incoherent prayers, the
wretched woman, casting off her jewels and dis-
hevelling her powdered hair, crept round from
figure to figure in an agony of the most abject
and superstitious fear.

Suddenly, as she burst into hysterical tears
of passionate supplication, and crept on her
knees from figure to figure, the first apostle in
shadow, at whose feet she knelt and whose robe
she at that moment clasped, sprang to his feet,
held her down and seized her throat before she
could utter a cry for help ; a second and a third
figure rose, and the three struck her to the
ground with three fierce, swift, and simultane-
ous stabs. Then the three men disguised as
apostles strode into the outer chapel.

"Woman!" they said to the terrified at-
tendant of the duchess, " your mistress needs
your help. Tell her the Sealed Knots planned
this vengeance for her crimes. In the palace
where it had long awaited her the vengeance
might have been less sure and deadly." In a
moment they had disappeared in the dark-
ness.

It was afterwards said that on the frozen
painted cruel face of that detestable dying
woman, a Death's Head Moth was found rest-
ing. The omen had been accomplished. As

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 26,

9r>

they raised the stiffened body the insect flew
off into the fir wood and was no more seen.

The miserable woman did not survive many
hours. Her party lost all heart after her death,
the chief ministers of her cruelty fled. General
Blossow, instantly released, at once surrendered
the town to the Bavarian troops, who, thanks
to the Sealed Knots, were in time to garrison
Eisenherz and repulse an attempt to surprise
the town by the cousin of the duchess. Mohrart
and Beatrice were married the moment the
Bavarian rule was established and the city
grew secure.

This strange story is a true one, and is still
preserved as a tradition in the south of Ger-
many. The chapel on the mountain side, now
a ruin, still crowns the mountain above Eisen-
herz, and the road winds on towards Schwarz-
stein and the Bavarian frontier.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG ! A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER VII.

Thursday. I have not yet heard from
Frankfort, but they tell me here that the
merchant is away at his estates. There is no
hurry, however nay, I should wish for a
little time to devote myself to this mission,
as I may call it. I have watched Grainger all
this day, and he has not gone in at least I
have not seen him myself; for I must keep
to my fixed rule of not entering that cruel
spiders' net, that tigers' den. I asked him
this evening. He laughed, and would give
me no answer. "Don't expect miracles,"
he said ; " you can't expect a man to reform
all at once. That little picture we made
out together last night is still going about
with me, dancing before my eyes. I wish
I could shut it out; I did so for some
years. Come in," he added, " and let us at
least look at them, as the hungry beggars
find some relief in looking into a cook-shop
window."

I shook my head. " I have made a sort
of resolution," I said, "and must keep to
it. It would be sanctioning, in some sort,
what I cannot approve."

"What rubbish!" he said, suddenly
turning on me, then checked himself. " I
beg your pardon ; I have not got rid of my
old ways as yet. I wash I had had those
scruples. Talk to me now about her,
about Dora Mrs. Austen, I mean. It's
like Annot Lyle and her harp."

These little allusions and turns of ex-
pressions which dotted over all Grainger's
conversation, with many others that I can-
not recal, show what a cultivated taste he
had. I did not give him credit for being

so entertaining and amusing. We dined
together that day, and again we strayed
back to the old subject.

" The night," he said, "when I got that
news, is one I cannot dare to look back to.
It makes my head unsteady; you know
the feeling. Here, kellner, cognac ! That's
the only thing."

" No," I said, "it is not the only thing;
it is as dangerous as the other. Forgive
me if I advise you again. I am going to
have some sherry, and oblige me by taking
some of it instead."

He groaned, laughed a little roughly, as
his habit was, and said :

" Well, I suppose so. No cognac, then.
What on earth is all this ? You are making
me do things that no other man could
attempt."

" I hare no power," I said, looking down.
" I am working with another charm."

He paused. " Ah, yes ; I suppose that
is so."

I had already come to know the clergy-
man of the place. He had sent me his
book, and I suspect some of the gamblers'
money figured there to a good amount. I
met this gentleman in the evening, and he
came up to speak to me. There was some-
thing about him I did not like, and he had
an authoritative air which I was inclined
to resent. (I hear Dora, who believes
in clergymen to the very bottom of her
gentle heart, and, I suspect, believes that,
with their coats, shovel hats, white ties,
&c, they have come down straight from
Heaven ; have a sort of angelic conforma-
tion, wings folded up, &c.)

" I see," he said, sitting down next me
on one of the green garden chairs " I see
you are intimate with that man here, Mr.
Grainger, or Captain Grainger, as he calls
himself. May I ask, do you know what his
character is?"

I was happy to answer him with both
facts and logic.

" The War Office also calls him captain,"
I said ; " and I do know a good deal about
him."

" I am afraid nothing good, then ; for it
is my duty to warn you, as a sort of tem-
porary parishioner, the care of whose soul
I have, that his character is very bad
indeed, and that he is not a person any one
of character should be seen with. He is a
most dangerous man. You are young and
inexperienced, Mr. Austen, and he has led
several, as young and experienced, into
mischief already. That is the reason I
speak to you."

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[December 26, 18GS.;

I could not help smiling. This rustic I
clergyman, fetched out of some outlying j
district to this doubtful duty, lecturing me I
and others ! It was, of course, in his duty,
and he meant well; but I think it was
rather free and easy to a mere stranger.

" I am quite capable of taking care of
myself, Mr. Lewis," I said. " I have my
own reasons for associating with that gen-
tleman. What if I succeeded in influencing
him in changing his life and heart; does
that at all enter into your philosophy ?"

" Oh, well and good," he said, smiling.
"God forbid I should interfere. But we
must judge these things by the ordinary
rule of the world. Have you any reason to
lead you to hope ?"

"Yes," I said.

" Well, then, you ought to go and look
after him now ; for I was passing from the
news-room just now, and saw him playing
frantically. Come with me, and I will
show him to you."

" I never go into that place," I said,
coldly, and meaning a rebuke.

" Into the news-room ?" he said. " Why
not ? Ah, you haven't patience to wait for
the papers. It's a very good school for
patience."

" As you ask me the reason, I do not
wish to be indebted to men who fatten on
human misery. I make no merit of it, but
I think it better not."

" This sounds strange," he said. " Let
me ask, do you know the Bishop of Graves-
end ? He goes there every day. Do you
know the good Lord Calborough, who
takes the chair at his meetings ? I have
seen him looking over shoulders at the
roulette. Ah, I see you distrust yourself.
Well, there is no disgrace in flying from
the danger."

I have always resented this sort of
superior knowledge of you which some
elergymen affect, much as a doctor says,
" Ah, I know feel a pain here exactly
a sense of fluttering after meals exactly
so." This rather nettled me. I had heard,
too, he was rather sarcastic, and was said
to know the world. Then he didn't know
me. Afraid to trust myself ! I might have
been afraid to trust him, but not myself.

He went away. I was hardly inclined

to accept what he said about the Bishop of
Gravesend or the apostolic Lord Calbo-
rough. Still he spoke with authority and
with an air of circumstance. What was
that pattering on the glass overhead ? Rain,
rain coming down in pailfuls. There is a
general sauve qui peut from the gardens.
They come rushing up the steps, eager,
laughing, chattering like monkeys crea-
tures which, in other respects, some of the
men resemble. All, of course, ascend and go
pouring into the cave. The bountiful rain,
here, is unconsciously one of the faithful
friends and servants of the administration.
They should put him in their gew-gaw
livery green, gold, and scarlet in which
they dress up their disguised " bullies," who
prowl about the room, ready to rush up on
the slightest signal of a disturbance. I am
almost alone on the terrace a place of
which I am getting tired. "Afraid to trust
myself." I can't put that self-sufficient
clergyman's speech out of my head. Thus
it is with some natures : when they leap to
a conclusion, it is always sure to be the
meanest one that can present itself.

After all, I have made no vow, and am
bound by no promise ; nor do I, more than
the Bishop of Gravesend or my Lord Calbo-
rough, think it any harm to go through
those rooms, or even to linger there for
some good object, provided your behaviour
is not to be construed into an endorsement
or approbation of the proceedings. I am
no casuist, and there is a good broad band
of common sense, I flatter myself, running
through my composition. I would not be
tied down, as a weaker mind, by an abstract
adherence to the mere letter of a resolution ;
I would look entirely to the spirit; and
therefore, to assert this principle, I rise
from my solitude on the terrace and walk
into the cave. I wish to find Grainger.

Now ready,
THE COMPLETE SET

TWENTY VOLUMES,

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WRECKED IN PORT.

A Sekial Story by thb Authok of "Black Sheep.

CHAPTER VII. A NEW FRIEND.

When they stood in the street, with the
fresh night wind blowing npon them, the
old man stopped, and, peering anxiously
into his companion's face, said, abruptly,
"Better?"

" Much better, thank you ; quite well, in
fact. There's no occasion for me to trouble
you any more ; I "

"What? All gaff eh? Old Jack
Byrne sold eh ? Swallowed his brandy,
and want to cut ? Is that the caper ?"

" I beg your pardon, I don't quite clearly
understand you, I'm sorry to say" for
Walter knew by the tone of his voice that
the old man was annoyed " I'm very
weak, and rather stupid I mean to say in
in the ways and the talk of London and
I don't clearly follow what you said to me
just now ; only you were so kind to me at
first, that "

" Provinces !" muttered the old man to
himself. " Just like me ; treating him to
my pavement patter, and thinking he un-
derstood it ! All right, I think, as far as
one can judge; though God knows that's
often wrong enough I Then, aloud, "Kind !
nonsense ! I'm an odd old skittle, and talk
an odd language ; but I've seen the ups
and downs of life, my lad, and can give
you good advice if I can't give anything
else. Have you anything to do to-night ?
Nothing ? Sure I'm not keeping you
from the opera or any swell party in Park-
lane ? No ! Then come home with me
and have a bit o' pickled salmon and a
glass of cold gin- and- water, and let's talk
matters out."

Before he had concluded his sentence,

the old man had slipped Joyce's arm
through his own, and was making off at
a great rate and also with an extraordinary
shamble, in which his shoulder appeared to
act as a kind of cutwater, while his legs
followed considerably in the rear. Walter
held on to him as best he could, and in this
fashion they made their way through the
back streets, across St. Martin' s-lane, and
so into Leicester-square. Then, as they
arrived in front of a brilliantly lighted es-
tablishment, at the door of which cabs
laden with fashionably dressed men and
gaudily dressed women were continually
disgorging their loads, while a never ceasing
stream of pedestrians poured in from the
street, Jack Byrne came to a sudden halt,
and said to his companion, " Now I'm
going to enjoy myself!"

Walter Joyce had noticed the style of
people pouring in through the turnstiles
and paying their admission money at the
brilliantly lit boxes ; and as he heard these
words he unconsciously drew back. You
see he was but a country-bred young man,
and had not yet been initiated into the-
classical enjoyments of London life. Jack
Byrne felt the tug at his arm, and looked
at him curiously. " What is it ?" said he.
" You thought I was going in there ? I ?
Oh, my dear young friend, you'll have to
learn a great deal yet; but you're on the
suspicious lay, and that's a chalk to you !
You thought I'd hocussed the brandy I
gave you at Bliffkins's ; you thought I was
going to take you into this devil's crib, did
you ? Not I, my dear boy ; I'd as soon
take you in as myself, and that's saying a
good deal. No ; I told you I was going to
enjoy myself so I am. My enjoyment is
in watching that door, and marking those
who go through it not in speculating on
what's going on inside, but in waiting for

98 [January 2, 1S69.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

the end, my young friend in waiting for
the end ! Oh, yes, jump out of your
brougham, my Lord Tomnoddy ; but don't
split your lavender gloves in attempting to
close the door behind you the cad will do
that, of course ! Beautiful linen, white as
snow, and hair all stuck close to his head,
look ; but mark his forehead what's your
name ? Joyce ? Mark his forehead,
Joyce ; see how it slopes straight away
back. Look at that noble space between
his nose and his upper lip the ape type,
my friend the ape type ! That's one of
your hereditary rulers, Joyce, my boy !
That fellow sits and votes for you and me,
bless him ! He's gone in now to improve
his mind with the literature of comic songs,
and the legs of the ballet, and the fascina-
tions of painted Jezebels, and to clear
his brain with drinks of turpentine and
logwood shavings ! And that's one of our
hereditary legislators ! Oh, Lord, how
much longer how much longer !"

The policeman on duty at the door,
whose duty it was to keep the pathway
clear, now sallied forth from the portico
and promenaded in the little crowd, gently
pushing his way amongst them with a
monotonous cry of " Move on there, please
move on !" Joyce noticed that his com-
panion regarded this policeman with a half
defiant, half pitying air, and the old man
said to him, as they resumed their walk,
" That's another of the effects of our blessed
civilisation ! that gawk in blucher boots
and a felt helmet that machine in a
shoddy great coat, who can scarcely tell B
from a bull's foot, and yet has the power to
tell you and me and other men, who pay
for the paving rate ay, and for the sup-
port of such scum as he is, for the matter
of that to move on ! Suppose you think
I'm a rum 'un, eh ?" said Mr. Byrne, sud-
denly changing his voice of disgust into
a bantering tone. " Not seen many like
me before; don't want to see any more,
perhaps ?"

" I don't say that," said Joyce, with a
half smile ; " but I confess the sentiments
are new to me, and "

" Brought up in the country, my lord or
the squire, eh ? So pleased to receive
notice coming out of church, ' plucks the
slavish hat from the villager's head,' and
all that ! Sorry I've not a manorial hall
to ask you into, but such as it is you're
welcome. Hold hard, here !"

The old man stopped before a private
door in a small street of very small shops
running between Leicester-square and the

Hayiaiarket, took out a key, and stood back
foy his companion to pass before him into a
dark and narrow passage. When the door
was closed behind him, Mr. Byrne struck a
light, and commenced making his way up
the narrow staircase. Joyce followed him
flight after flight, and past landing after
landing, until at length the top story was
reached. Then Mr. Byrne took out another
key, and, unlocking the door immediately
in front of him, entered the room, and bade
his companion follow him.

Walter Joyce found himself in a long
low room, with a truckle bed in one corner,
bookshelves ranged round three sides, and
in the middle, over which the curtains were
now drawn, a large square table, with an
array of knives and scissors upon it, a heap
of wool in one corner, and an open case of
needles of various kinds, polished bright
and shining. On one end of the mantel-
piece stood a glass case containing a short-
horned white owl, stuffed, and looking won-
derfully sagacious ; on the other a cock,
with full crop and beady eye, and open
bill, with one leg advanced, full of self-suffi-
ciency and conceit. Over the mantelpiece,
in a long low case, was an admirably car-
ried out bit of Byrne's art, representing
the death-struggles of a heron struck by a
hawk. Both birds were stuffed, of course,
but the characteristics of each had been
excellently preserved; the delicate heron
lay completely at the mercy of his active
little antagonist, whose " pounce" had evi-
dently just been made, and who with beak
and talons was settling his prey.

While Joyce was looking round at these
things, the old man had lit a lamp suspended
from the ceiling, and another standing on the
square work-table ; had opened a cupboard,
and from it had produced a black bottle,
two tumblers, and a decanter of water ; had
filled and lit a mighty pipe, and had mo-
tioned his companion to make free with the
liquor and with the contents of an ancient-
looking tobacco jar, which he pushed to-
wards him.

" Smoke, man I." said he, puffing out a
thin line of vapour through his almost
closed lips, and fanning it away lazily with
his hand "smoke! that's one thing
they can't keep from us, though they'd
like. My lord should puff at his Havannah
while the commonalty, the plebs, the pro-
fanum valgus, who are hated and driven
away, should ' exhale mundungus, ill-per-
fuming weed ! ' Thank God we've altered
all that since poor Ambrose Phillips's day ;
he'd get better change for his Splendid

Charles Dickens.]

VVKECKED IN PORT.

[January 2, 1869.] 99

Shilling now than ever he did in his time.
Eh ? Talking Greek to you, am I, or
worse than Greek, for that you'd under-
stand, I dare say, and you'll never under-
stand my old mutterings and croakings.
You can read Greek ?"

" Yes," Joyce said ; " I am reckoned a
tolerable Grecian."

"Indeed!" said the old man, with a
grin ; " ah ! no doubt you were an honour
to your college !"

" Unfortunately," said Walter, " I have
never been to college."

" Then your state is the more gracious !
By George ! I thought I'd picked up with
a sucking don, all trencher cap, and second
aorist, and Conservative principles, Church
and State, a big Bible with a sceptre
stretched across it, and a fear of the
' Swart mechanics' bloody thumbs' printed
off on my lord's furniture, as provided by
Messrs. Jackson and Graham ! You don't
follow me, young fellow ? Like enough,
like enough. I think myself I'm a little
enigmatical when I get on my hobby, and
it requires a good steady stare of honest
wonderment, such as I see on your face
now, to bring me up short. I'm brought
up short now, and can attend to more
sublunary matters, such as yours. Tell
me about yourself."

"What shall I tell you?" asked Joyce.
" I can tell nothing beyond what you al-
ready know, or can guess. I'm without

friends, without work, I've lost hope "

" No, no, my boy ! not lost, only mis-
laid it. We never lose hope so long as
we're good for anything ! Sometimes, when
I've been most depressed and down, about
the only thing in life that has any interest
for me now and you've no idea what that
is, have you, Joyce, eh ?"

"No, indeed; unless, perhaps, your chil-
dren !"

" Children ! Thank God I never had a
wife or a child to give me a care ! No ; the
People's cause, my boy, the people's cause !
That's what I live for; and sometimes, as
I've been saying, I've been downhearted
about that. I've seen the blood beating us
down on the one side, and the money
beating us down on the other, and I've
thought that it was useless kicking against
the pricks, and that we had better cave in
and give up !"

" But you say you never lost hope ?"

"Never, entirely! When I've been at

my lowest ebb, when I've come home here

with the blood in my veins tingling from

aristocratic insult, and with worse than that,

contempt for my own fellow working men
surging up in my heart, I've looked up at
that case there over the mantelshelf, and my
pluck's revived ! That's a fine bit of work
that is, done by an old pupil of mine, who
worked his soul out in the People's cause
in '48, and died in a deep decline soon
after. But what a fancy the lad had!
Look at that heron ! Is not it for all the
world like one of your long, limp, yaw-
yaw, nothing - knowing, nothing - doing
young swells ? Don't you read ' used-up' in
his delicate plumage, drooping wings,
lack-lustre eye ? And remark how the
jolly little hawk has got him ! No breed
about him, keen of sight, swift of wing,
active with beak and talon that's all he
can boast of, but he's got the swell in his
grip, mind you ! And he's only a proto-
type of what's to come !"

The old man rose as he spoke, and
taking the lamp from the table, raised it
towards the glass case. As he set it down
again he looked earnestly at Joyce, and
said: "You think I'm off my head, per-
haps and I'm not sure that I'm not when
I get upon this topic and you're think-
ing that at the first convenient oppor-
tunity you'll slip away, with a 'Thank
ye !' and leave the old lunatic to his demo-
cratic ravings ? But, like many other
lunatics, I'm only mad on one subject, and
when that isn't mentioned I can converse
tolerably rationally, can perhaps even be
of some use in advising one friendless and
destitute. And you, you say, are both."

" I am, indeed ! but I scarcely think
you can help me, Mr. Byrne, though I
don't for an instant doubt your friendship
or your wish to be of service. But it
happens that the only people from whom I
can hope to get anything in the way
of employment, employment that brings
money, belong to that class against which
you have such violent antipathies, the the
' swells,' as you call them."

"My dear young fellow, you mistake
me ! If you do as I should like you, as
an honest Englishman with a freeman's
birthright, to do, if you do as I myself
old Jack Byrne, one of the prisoners of '48,
'Bitter Byrne,' as they call me at the
club if you do as I do, you'll hate the
swells with all your heart, but you'll use
'em ! When I was a young man, young
and foolish, blind and headstrong, as all
young men are, I wouldn't take off my cap
to a swell, wouldn't take a swell's orders,
wouldn't touch a swell's money ! Lord bless
you, I saw the folly of that years ago ! I

100 [January 2, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

should have been starved long since if I
hadn't. My business is bird-stuffing, as
you may have heard or guessed, and where
should I have been if I'd had to live
upon all the orders for bird-stuffing I got
from the labouring classes ? They can't
stuff themselves enough, let alone their
birds ! The swells want owls, and hawks,
and pheasants, and what not stuffed with
outspread wings for fire-screens, but the
poor people want the fire itself, and want
it so badly that they never hollow for
screens, and wouldn't use 'em if they had
'em. No, no ; hate the swells, my boy, but
use 'em. What have you been ?"

" An usher in a school !"

" Of course ! I guessed it would be some
of those delightful occupations for which
the supply is unlimited and the demand
nothing, but I scarcely thought it could be
so bad as that ! Usher in a school ! hewer
in a coal-pit, stone-breaker on a country
road, horse in a mill, anything better than
that!"

" What could I do ?"

" What could you do ? Sell your books,
pawn your watch, take a steerage passage
and go out to Australia. Black boots, tend
sheep, be cad to an omnibus, or shopwalker
to a store out there, every one of 'em better
than dragging on in the conventional torture
of this played-out staggering old country !
That's a little gassy you'll think, and so it
is, but I mean better than that. I've long-
standing and intimate connexions with the
Zoological Acclimatisation Society in Mel-
bourne, and, if you can pay your passage
out, I'll guarantee that in the introductions
I give you, they'll find you something to
do. If you can't find the money for your
passage out, perhaps it can be found for
you!"

Not since James Ashurst's death, not
for some weeks before that event indeed,
when the stricken man had taken leave of
his old pupil and friend, had Walter Joyce
heard the words of friendship and kindness
from any man. Perhaps, a little unmanned
by the disappointment and humiliation he
had undergone since his arrival in London,
he was a little unmanned at this speech
from his newly found friend ; at all events
the tears stood in his eyes, and his voice
was husky, as he replied :

" I ought to be very much obliged to
you, and indeed, indeed I am ! but I fear
you'll think me an ungrateful cub when I
tell you that I can't possibly go away from
England. Possibly is a strong word, but
I mean, that I can't think of it until I've

exhausted every means, every chance of
obtaining the barest livelihood here !"

The old man eyed him from under his
bent brows earnestly for a moment, and
then said abruptly. "Ties, eh ? father?"

"No!" said Joyce, with a half blush
very young, you see, and country bred
" as both my mother and father are dead,
but but there is "

" Oh Lord!" grunted Mr. Byrne; "of
course there is, there always is in such
cases ! Blind old bat I was not to see
it at first ! Ah, she was left lamenting,
and all the rest of it, quite knocks the
Australian idea on the head ! Now, let
me think what can be done for you here \
There's Buncombe and Co., the publishers,
want a smart young man, smart and cheap
they said in their letter, to contribute to
their new Encyclopaedia, The Naturalist.
That'll be one job for you, though it won't
be much."

" But, Mr. Byrne," said Joyce, " I have
no knowledge, or very little, of natural his-
tory. Certainly not enough to "

" Just too much to prevent your being
too proud to take a hint or two from Gold-
smith's Animated Nature, my boy, as he
took several from those who preceded
him. That, and a German book or two
you'll find on the shelves you understand
German ? That's right will help you to all
the knowledge Buncombe will require of
you, or all they ought to expect for the
matter of that, at ten and six the column.
You can come here of a morning, you
won't interfere with me, and grind away
until dark, when we'll have a walk and
a talk ; you shall tell me all about yourself,
and we'll see what more can be done, and
then we'll have some food at Biiff kins's and
learn all that's going on !"

" I don't know how to thank you," com-
menced Joyce.

" Then don't attempt to learn !" said
the old man. " Does it suit you, as a begin-
ing only, mind ! do you agree to try it we
shall do better things yet, I hope ; but will
you try it ?"

" I will indeed ! If you only knew '*

"I do ! good-night ! I got up at day-
break, and ought to have been in bed long
since ! Good-night !"

Not since he had been in London, had
Walter Joyce been so light of heart as
when he closed Mr. Byrne's door behind
him. Something to do at last ! He felt
inclined to cry out for joy ; he longed for
some one to whom he could impart his
good fortune.

=ff

Charles Dickens.]

THE LAST ASH OF A HOLY FIRE. [January 2, 1863.] 101

His good fortune ! As he sat upon his
wretched bed in bis tiny lodging, luxurious
words rang in bis ears. " And the chance
of achieving fame and fortune, keep that
in the foreground !" Fame and fortune !
And he had been overjoyed because he had
obtained a chance of earning a few shil-
lings as a bookseller's hack, a chance for
which he was indebted to a handicrafts-
man. But a poor first step towards fame
and fortune, Marian would think ! He un-
derstood how utter had been her inexpe-
rience, and his own; he had learned the
wide distance between the fulfilment of
such hopes as theirs, and the best of the
bare possibilities which tbe future held for
them, and the pain which this knowledge
brought him, for the sake of his own
share in it, was doubly keen for hers. It
was very hard for Walter Joyce to have to
suffer the terrible disappointment and dis-
enchantment of experience ; but it was far
harder for him to have to cause her to
share them. Marian would, indeed, think
it a "poor first step." He little knew
how much more decisive a one she was
about to take herself.

THE LAST ASH OF A HOLY FIRE.

A few months ago a petition was presented
to the Italian parliament, which, though it con-
cerned a matter of private interest only, and
was one in a crowd of many others presenting
no features of interest whatever, excited some
attention in Italy, and will appear yet more
strange and remarkable to English readers.
It was the petition of certain members of a
family in Sicily, begging that they and their
descendants might henceforward be exonerated
from a certain payment which they and their
forefathers had hitherto been called upon to
make every year to the fiscal agents of the
government.

The payment in question has been made re-
gularly, ever since the year 1724. In that year,
a certain Sister Gertrude, a Benedictine nun,
was burned alive for heresy, in the city of Pa-
lermo. Now, although the expenses attend-
ing this execution were cheerfully supported
by the royal exchequer, it was not to be
expected that those occasioned by the long
previous proceedings before the tribunal of
the Holy Inquisition, enormously increased as
they were by the obstinacy and perversity of
this heretic nun, should be also paid out of
the royal funds. Who then was to pay these
expenses ? If it be a rule of jurisprudence in
our own heretical latitudes that the Crown
never loses its claims, far more is it utterly out
of the question in orthodox Catholic lands that
Mother Church should lose any portion of her
dues, rights, and profits ! And on this occasion

the Holy Inquisition had worked so hard, and
so assiduously during so long a time ! Who
was to pay for all this? The family of the
heretic nun were condemned to pay the costs
of her trial. But all that the unhappy family
of the nun possessed in the world, was far from
sufficient to pay the charges of the Holy Office
for condemning its heretic daughter to the
flames. Under these circumstances a pater-
nal government came to the rescue, paid
the money down, and decreed that the family
should pay so much a year to the royal exche-
quer for ever after ! - >*

This was the payment from which the de-
scendants of the family of that unhappy and
troublesome Sister Gertrude, now sought, in
the year of grace 1868, to be relieved, after a
hundred and forty-four years, during which it
had been regularly and annually made.

The Italian parliament is not without its fair
proportion of members whose notions of human
policy may be summed up in the well-known
formula of the drill-sergeant, u Be as you was /"
and it is perhaps strange that on the presenta-
tion of this petition no honourable member rose
in his place to point out the demoralising effects
that would follow in a secluded and religious
little community in the Sicilian highlands, from
destroying the above record of a great and
salutary example. But the tide of public
opinion is running rather strong just at present
against Rome and its ways and works ; and no
one was found to gainsay the petition of the
long-suffering Calatanisettan family.

The one or two papers which noticed the in-
cident, said that the petition proceeded from a
family of Palermo. But this was an error. The
family of Sister Gertrude belong to Calatani-
setta, a little inland townlet among the moun-
tains. It is wonderful enough that the revenue
of united and regenerated Italy should have
been increased by such a payment for several
years. And it would have been more extra-
ordinary still, if the people had belonged to,
and the circumstances had happened at, Pa-
lermo. It must be supposed that, at Calata-
nisetta, it is only just beginning to dawn upon
the minas of the inhabitants that the govern-
ment of Victor Emmanuel might be induced to
excuse a payment exacted on such grounds.
Or perhaps it had been entirely forgotten why
this annual charge was made ; perhaps it was
not until some local antiquary happened to
stumble on the history of the matter, that the
idea of getting the payment remitted, occurred
to the family.

Nevertheless, the deed on account of which
this money has been paid yearly for a hundred
and forty-four years, was by no means done in
a corner. It is duly chronicled by the his-
torians of Sicily and of the kingdom of Naples.
It was the subject of a special record and de-
tailed description published at the time (and
now become very scarce), which a Bolognese
publisher has just reprinted.

From this latter source is taken the following
account of a scene that was being enacted in
Palermo while George the First was reigning,

cS=

=ft

102 [January 2, iB69.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

and when Newton, Swift, and Fielding were
thinking and writing in England !

The narrative was written by Don Antonino
Mongitore, a canon of the cathedral of Pa-
lermo, one of the most learned men of his
time and country. He opens his story thus :
"It is beyond doubt that one of the greatest
and most invaluable benefits which the Divine
Providence has conferred on the kingdom of
Sicily, is the sacred tribunal of the Inquisi-
tion."

The key-note is thus struck at once ; and the
reader understands what is to be the tone of
the learned and reverend canon's strain. Yet
the reader may be somewhat surprised by some
of the details of this the last " auto dafe" ever
" celebrated" in Sicily.

The historian Colletta, who briefly refers to
the incident in the first book of his history,
tells us that Fra Romualdo, a lay brother of the
Augustines, and Sister Gertrude, a Benedictine
nun, fell into the hands of the Inquisition in
the year 1699. The friar was accused of
" Quietism," "Molinism," and heresy ; the nun
of "pride, vanity, rashness, and hypocrisy."
" Quietism," a form of heresy that we hear
much of in the religious history of those days
in Spain, Italy, and France, was so called, as is
readily understood, from the perfect "quiet"
which its professors considered to be the great
object of man's religious efforts here below,
and which they profess to have attained. The
line of thought and speculation which led up to
this form of doctrine is curiously similar to
that which conducted Eastern philosophers and
fanatics to the cultivation of the "Nerbudda."
But it is unquestionably true that the profes-
sors of this doctrine were led to opinions and
practices that would seem to have little connec-
tion with " quiet" of any kind, and that were
doubtless exceedingly objectionable, by what-
ever standard of religion or morals judged.
" Mohnism " was so called from Michele
Molinos, a Spanish casuist and speculative
moralist, whose doctrines are objectionable
enough, even when understood as he would
himself have explained them. But his subtle
speculations, when taken in hand by monks
and nuns of unbounded ignorance of naturally
weak minds, rendered weaker by the life-long
habit of referring all notions of right and
wrong, not to the dictates of the natural con-
science, and the common sense of mankind,
but to the abstruse rules of a most intricate
casuistry were sure to lead to a maze of absur-
dities which really did merit Bridewell and
bread and water.

If any reader be curious to see what sort of
life and state of things the doctrines of Quiet-
ism, thus treated and practised, are hkely to
produce, he may refer to De Potter's Life (in
French) of Scipio Bicci, the reforming Bishop
of Pistoia. He will there find a revelation,
sworn in evidence, of the interior bfe of a
nunnery, in which all, or abnost all the nuns
had embraced the doctrines of Quietism under
the teaching of the monks of a neighbouring
Dominican convent. He will read of the long

and arduous efforts of Bicci to put down this
nest of abominations efforts backed up by
Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, but which,
despite such backing, were fruitless against
the persevering counter-efforts of the Jesuits
supported by the authority of the Pope.

No doubt this poor daft creature, Sister Ger-
trude, was " a Quietist" after her fashion. And
it is very probable that she may have been
guilty of " vaingloriousness, pride, and rash-
ness." But " hypocrisy" was just the one tiling
of which she assuredly was not guilty, inas-
much as she went to the stake because she
would at all costs avow her poor crazy opinions
instead of denying or retracting them.

Colletta says simply that both the nun and
the friar were mad. And certainly no mid-
summer madness was ever madder than the
trash which they declared themselves to believe,
and for obstinately adhering to which they
died. But the Inquisitors sent the medical
officers of the Holy Office to visit them in their
cells, and those enlightened gentlemen felt
their pulses, and declared they were of per-
fectly sound mind or at all events sound
enough to afford the spectacle of an "Act of
Faith" to the inhabitants of Palermo.

No word is said by Canon Mongitore, nor,
more strangely, by Colletta, to account for the
fact that whereas these victims were seized and
imprisoned in 1699, they were not executed
until the 6th of April, 1724. Their "process"
had been brought to an end, and they had
been condemned to the stake, long years before.
Of course, the suggestion of a writer who con-
siders the establishment of the Inquisition the
greatest blessing that Providence has bestowed
on Sicily, is to the effect that all this delay was
due to the mercy and longsuffering of the In-
quisitors, who were all those years labouring
to bring about the conversion of the heretics.
Those who read his description of the execution
of the sentence at last, and his account of all
the preparations made to enable all classes of
the population to " enjoy" godere the spec-
tacle, will feel little doubt that the Inquistors
themselves, as well as all the rest of Palermo,
were looking forward to the " Act of Faith" as
to a treat of which they would not have been
baulked on any consideration.

Why was the treat so long delayed ? The
most probable conjecture is, that the viceroy
who preceded him under whose rule the execu-
tion took place, was a man of a different stamp,
whose permission for the " celebration" could
not be obtained. It is certain that a new
viceroy began his reign shortly before the ex-
ecution took place.

" The Sacred Tribunal of the Inquisition in
Sicily," says Canon Mongitore, " has the laud-
able custom of showing from time to time, as
occasion may offer, its profitable operation by
celebrating a Public Act of Faith," which " is a
sketch or rehearsal of the last judgment," cele-
brated " for the glory of the Holy Faith, for the
consolation of the good, the confusion of un-
believers, and the immortal honour of the Holy
Inquisition."

Charles Dickens.]

THE LAST ASH OF A HOLY FIRE. [January 2, 1869.] 103

The first step was to obtain leave for the
treat in contemplation from the sovereign,
Charles the Sixth, the third king of Sicily of
the name. He writes in Spanish from Prague
on the 7th of July, 1723, " not only approving
the celebration, but with splendid liberality
promising that the royal treasury should supply
the expenses necessary for carrying it out with
all possible punctuality and splendour."

Then the 6th of April, 1724, is fixed by the
Inquisitors as the great day. And Don Fran-
cesco Perino, clad in a gown of crimson velvet,
and mounted on a horse caparisoned with gold
brocaded trappings, and attended by the con-
stables of the senate, all in crimson velvet
gowns, and further attended by trumpeters,
pipers, drummers, and cymbal-players, is sent
to ride through the city and make proclamation
of the intended Public Act, with due notice of
time and place. He also proclaims the indul-
gences promised by the Holy Father to all
those who shall be present on the occasion.
Everybody is invited ; "taking note, however,
that they are to come in the beat clothes that
they can wear, in order to appear duly decorated
for the great lustre of the occasion, and glory
of God."

There is first to be a great procession from
the Palace of the Inquisition to the theatre
prepared for the celebration of the "Act of
Faith," carrying the great "green cross" of
the Inquisition, which will be erected on the
altar in the theatre on that day, and will re-
main there all that night in custody of officers
of the Inquisition. Special invitations are sent
to all the civil and ecclesiastical bodies to take
part in the procession. Only to the " bare-
footed Augustines " no invitation is sent, for
" reasons of convenience and propriety," i.e.,
because the man to be burned was one of their
body. Specially the company of "La Vergine
Assunta " was invited not only to be present,
but to perform their part of the show. They
were instituted for the express purpose of en-
deavouring to save the souls of those condemned
by the Inquisition, by convincing them of their
errors. The company of the " Assunta" would
have been terribly affronted if they had not
been duly invited to play their part in the
spectacle. They kept twelve theologians spe-
cially trained to hunt down heresy into its last
retreats. And all of these were brought to
bear upon the obstinate heretics, a couple at a
time at first, and then as the last hour drew
near, all twelve together !

On the following day, the 6th, there is to be
another great and solemn procession, on the
occasion of bringing the prisoners from the
prison of the Inquisition to the theatre.
Everybody in Palermo, who had any sort of
civil or religious status whatsoever, is to take
part in this ; a great number of them on
horseback, many carrying huge lighted tapers
of yellow wax, and all in the fullest of full
dress.

Then we have a detailed description of the
theatre : not the place where the last scene
of all, the actual burning, was to take place,

but that in which the reading of the sentences
with great pomp, and in the presence of almost
all the city, was to be performed. Thence the
prisoners were to be taken, with more "pride,
pomp, and circumstance," to another spot hard

This theatre was erected on a large open
space immediately on the south side of the
cathedral. Every detail of the construction,
with the measurements of every part, is
given by Canon Mongitore. We may, how-
ever, content ourselves with a general no-
tion of the arrangement and appearance of
the whole. In the old book, from which the
reprint has been made, and which may still
be seen in the Magliabecchian library, there
is a large illustration, not reproduced in the
reprint.

Supposing a wooden building of vast size to
have been raised, much in the form of an ordi-
nary theatre, let the reader represent to him-
self a huge and lofty throne occupying the
centre of what in such a theatre would be the
stage. This is for the three Inquisitors, with
lower seats by the side of, and beneath it, for
their principal officials. A series of compart-
ments, very much in the nature of the boxes
in a theatre, but more extensive, occupy the
place of the ordinary boxes ; except that at one
part of the semicircle there is an open space
left void, in order to allow a free view of the
proceedings to a distinguished portion of the
rank and fashion of Palermo, who occupy the
balconies and -windows of a neighbouring
palace. All this range of boxes is assigned to
the various public bodies of the city. Two
large galleries, however, are set apart, one for
the Princess Eoecaporita, and one for the
Princess Resuttana, and the ladies in great
numbers invited by them.

In the middle of the space occupied by the
orchestra in theatres destined to less holy pur-
poses, is an isolated stage, high, but of small
dimensions. This is to be occupied by the pri-
soners one at a time. There are twenty-eight
of them ; but only two are to be burned. The
others having abjured their errors, and become
reconciled to the Church, are to receive their
sentences to minor punishments. These six-
and-twenty, of both sexes, are accused, for the
most part, of bigamy and fortune-telling ; the
men mainly of the first ; the women of the
second, crime. And they are condemned to
various terms of seclusion, imprisonment,
banishment, forced labour, and in every case
to a sort of pillory procession through the
city. There is a species of dock at the back
part of the pit for all these prisoners, and
leading from that to the high stage in the
middle of the orchestra is a raised pathway
much like that used by flying-leap performers
with the trapeze along which the criminals
are to be brought one by one to take their
stand on the high stage, while their crimes are
rehearsed and their sentences read. The hero
and heroine of the day are reserved to the
last ; the other twenty-six are evidently re-
garded by all the assemblage as mere ob-

r P

104 [January 2, 1869.;

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

structions in the way of the real amusement of
the occasion.

At the part of the theatre furthest from
the stage, in the place where in Continental
theatres the royal box is situated, stands the
altar, with the great green crucifix of the In-
quisition erected on it, and a great display of
flowers and wax candles. And on each side of
this, are boxes for the musicians.

All these constructions are most superbly
adorned with all sorts of upholstery crimson
velvet, blue velvet, cloth of gold, brocade, gold
lace, and embroidery in carefully graduated
degrees of magnificence, from the plainer seats
of the clerks and ushers, to the culmination of
gorgeous splendour in the throne of the three
Inquisitors. In the midst of all this glow of
gold and colour, the box of the prisoners, and
the high stage to which they are conducted one
by one, are draped with black.

One portion of the edifice thus arranged has
not yet been mentioned ; but it must by no
means be forgotten. Behind each of the various
compartments or boxes that for the Inquisitors,
that for the senate, those for the religious cor-
porations, those for the ladies behind each of
them, except indeed the dock of the prisoners,
there were large and commodious apartments,
in which elegant, and as Canon Mongitore
again and again specially assures us abundant
repasts were served. Thus, after all, the hours
occupied in reading the sentences of the minor
criminals were not altogether lost ; for that
was the time of which the gay assemblage of
pleasure-seekers availed themselves, for enjoy-
ing the good things prepared for them.

Canon Mongitore is very particular in re-
cording who paid for all the feasting. The dif-
ferent banquets, it seems, were provided by
different persons. Of course, the Inquisition
fed its own members. It also provided, in the
most elegant and gallant manner, for one large
party of ladies, invited by the wife of the noble
selected for the high honour of carrying the
great standard of the Inquisition on this oc-
casion. The noble senate provided their own
banquet. The viceroy feasted another large
party of ladies. The monastic bodies were
entertained : some at the cost of their own con-
vents : some at that of the Inquisition.

The first procession on the evening of the
5th of April, came off very successfully : the
rather as a great number of the first nobles of
the country all the jeunesse doree of Palermo
had besought the Inquisition to allow them
the signal honour of enrolling themselves
among the " familiars" of the Holy Office for
the great occasion. Canon Mongitore carefully
records all their names. Colletta says that he
will abstain from repeating them, because those
who bore those names in his day would blush
too painfully at the infamy of their pro-
genitors.

This first procession, however, was much less
interesting than that which was to take place
on the morrow ; for the culprits did not appear
in it. The terrible green crucifix was carried
through the city, and stood all night on the

altar in the theatre. And all Palermo was on
the tip-toe of suspense and expectation of the
morrow.

From the earliest dawn the whole city was
afoot, and crowded into the streets and squares
through which the procession was to pass. At
nine in the morning it began to issue from the
palace of the Inquisition ; the getting of it into
order and the passage of it through the streets
was a very long affair, for many thousands of
persons took part in it. But the people waited
with unwearying patience for the coming of the
most interesting part of the show the crimi-
nals. At last they made their appearance :
first the penitents, dressed in black, with yel-
low mitres on their heads, walking one by one ;
last the two impenitent heretics who were to
furnish forth the treat of the day. These last
were dressed in garments saturated with pitch,
and painted all over with flames. Their mitres
were similarly saturated with pitch. On either
side of each of them walked a learned theologian,
who ceased not, as they walked, to ply them with
the most learned arguments and the most press-
ing exhortations to confess their errors even at
that eleventh hour.

Not that it is to be supposed that if either of
the unhappy wretches had been frightened into
a recantation, Palermo would have been on that
occasion deprived of its expected treat ; but it
would have made all the difference as regarded
the prospects of the prisoners after the Inqui-
sition had done its worst upon them. The
strenuous efforts made for the saving of their
souls were considered quite a feature in the en-
tertainment ; and so actively and urgently did
the priests on either hand of the prisoners
exert themselves that they were completely
knocked up before the procession had accom-
plished half its course, and their places were
immediately supplied by two fresh divines, who
continued their efforts. But, as Canon Mongi-
tore says despairingly, " all this battering ac-
complished nothing !"

It was between eleven and twelve, when the
different bodies who had taken part in the pro-
cession, found themselves arranged in their
proper places in the theatre. Then the re-
verend Maestro Pietro Antonio Majorana as-
cended a pulpit prepared for the purpose, and
pronounced a discourse in praise of the Inqui-
sition, especially enlarging on its clemency
and mercy, and on the iniquities and enor-
mities of the prisoners condemned to the
fire. Canon Mongitore reports this discourse
at length.

Then began the reading of the sentences of
the twenty-six minor criminals, and everybody
made off in the direction of the viands. It was
deemed necessary, it would seem, that one In-
quisitor should remain in his place during this
part of the business. So the Inquisitors took
it by turns : two only at a time retiring, for,
Canon Mongitore says, " the necessary support
of the body."

It was between two and three, when the
sentences of the penitent culprits were got
through, and the feasted guests hastened back

Charles Dickens/

THE LAST ASH OF A HOLY FIRE.

[January 2, 1869.] 105

into the theatre to be present at the more
exciting part of the performance.

Sister Gertrude was first made to ascend the
high stage in the centre of the theatre. During
the reading of her sentence, which lasted half
an hour, "bold and unabashed in aspect, mum-
bling, she vomited forth horrid blasphemies,
so that the ushers at her side were obliged to
shut her mouth with a gag."

Then the same was done by Fra Romualdo.
He, too, showed all the signs of the most har-
dened impenitence. He did not bow to the
crucifix, nor even to the Inquisitors ! But it
does not seem to have been considered neces-
sary to gag him.

The next thing was to strip the prisoners of
their religious habit. For this purpose the
pitched and painted garments had to be lifted
off them. Then the friar's and nun's dresses
were " opprobriously" taken off, and the pitch
saturated garments were replaced. The hair
of the female prisoner was also saturated with
pitch.

Just then, the wretched woman " seemed to
give some signs of a disposition to relent."
Immediately a theologian of first - rate power
was called in haste from a neighbouring mo-
nastery of Jesuits, and was closeted with her.
But at the end of a very few minutes, he left
her, and reported that any apparent movement
of penitence on her part had been either mo-
mentary or feigned.

Then the sitting in the theatre was at an
end. The Inquisitors rose, and returned in
carriages provided by the viceroy, to their
palace ; not to be absent let it not be sup-
posed for an instant from the burning, but to
change their dresses, and to return forthwith
to the Piano di Santo Erasimo, in which the
execution was to take place.

There also, scaffoldings and stands had
been erected, in such sort as to allow every-
body a full and near view of the execu-
tion. And the senators and the nobles, and
the monks and the friars, and the ladies, all
hurried away from the theatre to their places
in the plain of Santo Erasimo. And there,
again, refreshments ices, cakes, and so forth
were handed round ; for it was now within
an hour of sunset ; they had been at it all day ;
and a little more sustentation of the body was
necessary for those who were not sustained by
the excitement of being about to be burned
alive.

From the theatre to the place of execution,
each of the two impenitent heretics was
carried on a cart drawn by bullocks ; standing
upright on the cart, tied to a stake securely
fixed in the floor of it. The cart carrying
Sister Gertrude entered the space railed off in
the middle of the large piazza, first. Four
theologians got into each cart, two standing on
each side of either prisoner, "and all these
doctors continued their fervent exhortations
and last salutary admonitions unceasingly,
during the whole transit."

Think of the horrible falsity, sham, and
hollowness of the whole thing ! Picture to |

yourself the figures of those eight learned
divines, in their doctors' gowns, with the
" azure hat" pecidiar to the servants of the In-
quisition on their heads, vieing with each other
in urgently and with much gesticulation deafen-
ing the ears and stunning the minds of the
poor wretches about to die in the flames, with
voluble trash drawn from the cut - and - dry
manuals of their science !

The stake to which each victim was to be
bound, was erected on a scaffolding raised a
considerable height from the ground. Under
this scaffolding, and not around the person of
the prisoner, were heaped together the fagots
and fuel ; an arrangement which secured,
both considerable prolongation of the victims'
agonies, and a far more complete view of them
by the assembled multitude, than the less in-
genious method of heaping fagots around the
body of the sufferer.

" Then," when Gertrude had ascended the
scaffold and been bound to the stake, "the
servants and indefatigable priests of the Holy
Office opened their last batteries against the
hardened heart of the obstinate wretch. And
truly it is not possible to describe with the pen
how they sweated for her conversion, both
coming along in the cart, and on the scaffold
in the last moments of her miserable life, in
the hope of bringing her to see her errors ! But at
last, their energies being worn out, and seeing
that their exhortations, their labour, and their
tears were uselessly poured forth, they were
obliged to retire and. leave the place to Justice.

" Thereupon they first burned her hair [satu-
rated with pitch, it will be remembered] to let
her feel a small taste of the burning of the fire
[literally word for word], but she showed no
more care for her hair than for her soul. Then
they set fire to the pitch-soaked outer garment,
to try whether the heat of the flames would
make her open her eyes. But finding that she
was still most obstinate, they set fire to the
wood of the furnace underneath, which, burn-
ing the planks that supported her, the wretch
plunged down into the fire, and was there con-
sumed, and her soul passed from the temporal
to the eternal fire."

Then came the bullock-drawn cart bearing
the other victim. " But as he was descending
from it, the concourse of people who crowded
around him was extraordinary. Cavaliers r
monks, and people of every condition, showing
an immense zeal for his eternal salvation, threw
themselves at his knees, and with loving re-
proaches, and with entreaties, and with acts of
profound humiliation on their knees, strove by
force of tears to prove their desire for his salva-
tion, imploring him to repent, and to have
mercy on his own soul. But they all spoke
both with their tongues and with their eyes to
one deaf. He remained inflexible, without
giving the least sign of repentance or emo-
tion."

" Then he was closely bound to the stake by
the executioner. And they set fire to the gar-
ment soaked in pitch. Thereupon he made
violent struggles to loose himself, and blew at

106 [January 2, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

the fire as the flames burned his face, as though
he would have extinguished it. But for all
that, the obstinate wretch gave no sign of re-
pentance. Then they set fire to the furnace
underneath, and as the flames mounted he
made the most frantically violent efforts. But
the plank on which he rested was quickly
burned, and he fell face foremost into the
left hand part of the furnace. And from these
flames he passed to try the anguish of the
eternal fire !"

And the ladies of Palermo sipped their ices as
they watched the scene.

This is the story of the last execution by fire
that ever took place in Sicily.

And very strange it is to think, that the
great grandfathers and grandmothers of people
now living may have been present at it ;
stranger still, that a portion of the sentence of
condemnation which consigned these unfor-
tunates to the flames, should have continued in
operation up to the spring of the present year !

SOUTH AFRICAN GOLD.

Gold has been discovered in South Africa,
also diamonds worth from twenty to five -hun-
dred pounds.

The writer of this narrative, who lately left
the Cape Colony, and while there specially di-
rected his attention to the subject of the gold
fields, will endeavour to tell what was known
on the subject when he left South Africa.

From Cape Town, the capital of the Colony,
to Hope Town, situated on its north-eastern
frontier, near where the diamonds before al-
luded to have been found, is a distance of six
hundred miles. To reach Hope Town by bullock
waggons would take at least thirty days. Hope
Town might, however, be reached in twenty
days from Port Elizabeth, a place further east-
ward, and about four days more distant from
England by steam than Cape Town. No other
means of transit are available than waggons
eighteen feet long, drawn by sixteen oxen, at
the rate of twenty miles a day. After crossing
the Orange river the explorer still has seven
hundred and six miles of country to traverse
before he reaches the southern end of the fine
of gold fields, which do not belong to the Cape,
but will eventually form a grand extension of
the colony of Natal.

But what ground have we for believing that
there really are valuable gold fields in South
Africa ; and what reason have we to expect that
they will prove remunerative ? It need hardly
be said that waggon loads of gold would be per-
fectly valueless to a man in the heart of a
desolate country, without any means of carrying
it to where it can be turned to account. Before
twenty-four hours had passed, the possessors
would willingly give all for a mutton chop
and a glass of water. ' ' What with the gold works
of the tract which, I think, really supplied the
Ophir of Solomon, and the great coal fields of
Natal, South Africa is about to become an El

Dorado. " These are the words of perhaps the
greatest living authority in Europe, to the
greatest living authority in South Africa upon
the subject. They are words pregnant with
hope, but hope still unborn.

The discoverer of the southern gold fields is
Herr Mauch, a German traveller of considerable
acquirements, connected scientifically with Dr.
Petermann of Gotha. He describes himself as
perfectly amazed at the immense auriferous
wealth spread before him, and believes that the
yield will be above that of Australia or Cali-
fornia. Specimens of the quartz found by
him were forwarded to Port Elizabeth, and
tested with very satisfactory results. Herr
Mauch was at the time of his discovery ac-
companied by a celebrated elephant hunter,
Mr. Hartly.

These gold fields lie within the territory of
a chief called Machien, who has since the dis-
covery of gold proposed to Sir Philip Wode-
house, the governor of the Cape Colony, to
transfer the sovereignty of his territory to
Great Britain.

The reason why the chief is so ready to make
the offer unsolicited, is that his territory lies
contiguous to what is called the Transvaal
Republic, a colony of disaffected boers who, in
consequence of the abolition of slavery in the
Cape Colony, parted with their farms, with-
drew beyond the boundary, and have more
than once been engaged in active hostility
against the crown. They have, whether wisely
or not, been recognised as an independent state ;
and their numbers are recruited by adventurers
from other parts.

The Transvaal Republic is the refuge of every
miscreant who finds the Cape Colony too hot
to hold him. It is the Alsatia of South Africa ;
and it is unquestionable that slavery there exists
under the mild term of apprenticeship, and
in order to obtain " apprentices" the adult
aborigines are constantly, under one pretence or
another, shot down in cold blood, men and
women, and the children carried off as slaves.
This proceeding is facetiously called hunting
for "black ivory."

No sooner did the Transvaal Republic learn
that gold exists in the territories of their neigh-
bours, than their legislators, by a very simple
process of enactment, annexed to their own do-
minions a large slice of land to which they have
not the slightest claim, to which their title
never has been, and never will be recognised.
The chief, Machien, fearing that he will be un-
able to cope with such unscrupulous adversaries,
recruited as they will doubtless still further be
by the scum of other parts of the earth, has
offered his land to the Queen of England.

The offer of annexation was made by Machien
through the Rev. Mr. Mackenzie, a missionary
resident in those parts, who has added his testi-
mony, in favour of the auriferous wealth of that
region, and transmitted to the colony several
fine specimens of gold quartz. Some diggers
from the Transvaal Republic are already at
work.
Attention having thus been directed to the

Charles Dickens.]

THE POET.

[January 2, 18G9.] 107

subject, and the -writers of more ancient date
considted, it appears that from a remote period
of antiquity until a time comparatively recent,
all the east coast of Africa between Abyssinia
and the confines of the Cape Colony has been
regarded as rich in gold. Not only did Heber
use no poet's licence when he said " Where
Afric's sunny fountains roll down their golden
sands ;" but Livingstone speaks of the prac-
tice of gold washing in the rivers. It ap-
pears that when a native discovers a particle
of gold larger than usual, he carefully replaces
it where he found it, believing it to be the seed
of gold.

The southern gold fields are believed to be
about sixty miles long and twenty broad. The
extent of the northern, which lie near the Zam-
besi river, is not yet equally well determined ;
but traces of gold have been found nearer the
Cape Colony.

On the receipt of Machien's proposal of an-
nexation, which the Governor of the Cape was
not in a position to accede to, without authority
from home, his excellency submitted to the
Cape parliament a proposal to send an explor-
ing party to investigate the matter ; to deter-
mine the best route ; and to ascertain what
were the facilities for procuring food and water.
The parliament at once voted a sum of money
for the purpose ; and when the writer left the
colony affairs were in progress for carrying out
the designs. Meanwhile, private parties were
already forming for reaching the gold fields,
and various suggestions as to the best route
appeared in print.

Some advocated their approach from the
western coast, from a spot called Waalfisch, or
Walich Bay ; this would mean a somewhat long
voyage by sea, and a still longer and much more
precarious journey over land, for the gold fields
lie nearer the eastern than the western coast of
Africa ; while Walich Bay is on the west coast.
As, however, a party was forming to adopt that
route, it is to be presumed that the originators
of the plan had good reason for pursuing this
course. Some, again, advocate the fine through
the Cape Colony by Hope Town, on its fron-
tiers, thence skirting the western boundary of
the Transvaal Republic by the mission station of
Kuruman and Kolobeny, into Machien's terri-
tory. Others propose to start from Port Natal,
and to pursue a north-western course ; and a
fourth class, believing that the Transvaal boers,
in spite of their rowdyism and hatred of the
English, would still be sufficiently alive to their
own interest to further the attempt to pass
through their land, advocate the adoption of that
route. The man of all others best able to form a
judgment, in the absence of Dr. Livingstone,
one who though never actually on the spot, has
been in constant communication with the great
traveller, is of opinion, that the proper route
will be by the Zambesi ; and that in spite of the
difficulty of landing at the mouth of that river,
and the malaria so fatal along part of the
banks, it will be better to face these perils
and make a rush to the northern fields, which
are not far from the Victoria falls, than to

traverse the deserts from the Cape, and to
risk annoyance from Kaffir chiefs and unruly
boers.

THE POET.

HIM8ELP.

" Who is this ?" said the Moon

To the rolling Sea,
" That wanders so sadly, madly, and gladly,

Looking at thee and me?"

Said the Sea to the Moon,

" 'Tis right you should know it,
This wise good man

Is a wit and a poet ;
But he earns not, and cannot,

His daily bread,
So he'll die

By-and-by,
And they'll raise a big monument

Over his head !"

Said the bonnie round Moon to the beautiful Sea,
" What fools the men of your Earth must be I"

HIS CEITIC.

What knows the critic of the book ?
As much, it may be, as the rook,
Perched on the high cathedral tower,
Knows of the solemn organ's power
That heaves below with tides of sound,
Ebbing and flowing all around.
As much, it may be, as at Borne,
The fly upon St. Peter's dome
Knows of the architect's design,
Who planned and built that fane divine.
As much, perchance, if truth were said,
As the hat upon the critic's head
Knows of the critic's rule or plan,
Or whether he is ass or man !

HIS nEEAM OF HIS POEMS.

'Twas in the starry midnight,

The wind was whirling low,
And the tall beech trees replying,

As it rocked them to and fro,
When half awake, half sleeping,

I thought that I was dead,
And floated to the gates of Heaven,

With angels at my head.

Angels ; ah, well I knew them !

Pleasant, and fair, and kind}
Things of my own creation,

And children of my mind.
I looked upon their faces,

And on their sunny wings ;
Their eyes as bright as morning,

Their breath like balm of springs.

And some of them were smiling

Like innocence when glad ;
And some were grave and pensive,

With tearful eyes and sad.
But all of them were lovely ;

They were no more than seven }
And they floated me and wafted me,

And carried me to Heaven.

"And are ye all ?" I whispered,

Betwixt a smile and tear,
" Out of a thousand, only seven,

To make my light appear ?
Out of a thousand, only seven,

To shine about my name,
And give me what I died for,

The heritage of fame ?"

108 [January 2, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

" Hush !" said a stately angel,

Eesponsive to my thought,
" We're all that future times shall know

Of what your hand hath wrought ;
Your gay green leaves, and flowers of song,

You've flung them forth, broad-cast j
But like the bloom of parted years,

They've gone into the past.

" But we, though no one knows us,

Shall echo back your tones
As long as England's speech shall run

The circuit of the zones.
Think not your fate unhappy !

To live to future time,
In noble thoughts and noble words,

Is destiny sublime."

"Angels of grace and beauty;"

I rubbed mine eyes and sighed
A dream ! a dream ! a pleasant dream !

Of vanity and pride.
A sleeping thought ! A waking doubt !

If only one not seven
Of all my rhymes be doomed to live,

Earth shall be part of Heaven.

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

By Charles Dickens.

a little dinner in an hour.

It fell out on a day in this last autumn
that I had to go down from London to a
place of sea- side resort, on an hour's busi-
ness, accompanied by my esteemed friend
Bullfinch. Let the place of sea- side re-
sort be, for the nonce, called Namelesston.

I had been loitering about Paris in very
hot weather, pleasantly breakfasting in the
open air in the garden of the Palais Royal
or the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in
the open air in the Elysian Fields, plea-
santly taking my Cigar and lemonade in
the open air on the Italian Boulevard to-
wards the small hours after midnight. Bull-
finch an excellent man of business had
summoned me back across the channel,
to transact this said hour's business at
Namelesston, and thus it fell out that Bull-
finch and I were in a railway carriage to-
gether on our way to Namelesston, each
with Ids return ticket in his waistcoat
pocket.

Says Bullfinch : "I have a proposal to
make. Let us dine at the Temeraire."

I asked Bullfinch, Did he recommend
the Temeraire ? Inasmuch as I had not
been rated on the books of the Temeraire
for many years.

Bullfinch declined to accept the respon-
sibility of recommending the Temeraire,
but on the whole was rather sanguine about
it. He "seemed to remember," Bullfinch
said, that he had dined well there. A plain
dinner but good. Certainly not like a
Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch obviously

became the prey of want of confidence),
but of its kind very fair.

I appealed to Bullfinch's intimate know-
ledge of my wants and ways, to decide
whether I was usually ready to be pleased
with any dinner, or for the matter of that
with anything, that was fair of its kind and
really what it claimed to be. Bullfinch doing
me the honour to respond in the affirma-
tive, I agreed to ship myself as an Able
Trencherman on board the Temeraire.

" Now, our plan shall be this," says Bull-
finch, with his forefinger at his nose. " As
soon as we get to Namelesston, we'll drive
straight to the Temeraire, and order a little
dinner in an hour. And as we shall not have
more than enough time in which to dispose
of it comfortably, what do you say to giving
the house the best opportunities of serving
it hot and quickly, by dining in the coffee-
room?"

What I had to say was, Certainly. Bull-
finch (who is by nature of a hopeful consti-
tution) then began to babble of green geese.
But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein,
urging considerations of time and cookery.

In due sequence of events, we drove up
to the Temeraire and alighted. A youth
in livery received us on the doorstep-.
" Looks well," said Bullfinch, confidentially..
And then aloud, " Coffee-room !"

The youth in livery (now perceived to be
mouldy) conducted us to the desired haven,
and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the
waiter at once, as we wished to order a
little dinner in an hour. Then Bullfinch
and I waited for the waiter until, the waiter
continuing to wait in some unknown and
invisible sphere of action, we rang for the
waiter: which ring produced the waiter
who announced himself as not the waiter
who ought to wait upon us, and who didn't
wait a moment longer.

So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room
door, and melodiously pitching his voice into
a bar where two young ladies were keeping
the books of the Temeraire, apologetically
explained that we wished to order a little
dinner in an hour, and that we were de-
barred from the execution of our inoffen-
sive purpose, by consignment to solitude.

Hereupon one of the young ladies rang
a bell which reproduced at the bar this-
time the waiter who was not the waiter
who ought to wait upon us ; that extraor-
dinary man, whose life seemed consumed
in waiting upon people to say that he
wouldn't wait upon them, repeated his
former protest with great indignation, and
retired.

Charles Dickens.;

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

[January 2, 1SC9.] 109

Bullfinch with a fallen countenance was
about to say to me " This won't do," when
the waiter who ought to wait upon us, left
off keeping us waiting at last. "Waiter,"
said Bullfinch, piteously, "we have been a
long time waiting." The waiter who ought
to wait upon us, laid the blame upon the
waiter who ought not to wait upon us, and
said it was all that waiter's fault.

"We wish," said Bullfinch, much de-
pressed, " to order a little dinner in an
hour. What can we have ?"

" What would you like to have, gentle-
men ?"

Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of
speech and action, and with a forlorn old
fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which the
waiter had given him, and which was a
sort of general manuscript Index to any
Cookery- Book you please, moved the pre-
vious question.

We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole,
curry, and roast duck. Agreed. At this
table by this window. Punctually in an
hour.

I had been feigning to look out of this
window ; but I had been taking note of the
crumbs on all the tables, the dirty table-
cloths, the stuffy soupy airless atmosphere,
the stale leavings everywhere about, the
deep gloom of the waiter who ought to
wait upon us, and the stomach-ache with
which a lonely traveller at a distant table in
a corner was too evidently afflicted. I now
pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming cir-
cumstance that this traveller had dined.
We hurriedly debated whether, without in-
fringement of good breeding, we could ask
him to disclose if he had partaken of mock-
turtle, sole, curry, or roast duck? We
decided that the thing could not be politely
done, and that we had set our own stomachs
on a cast, and they must stand the hazard
of the die.

I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to
be true ; I am much of the same mind as to
the subtler expressions of the hand ; I hold
physiognomy to be infallible; though all
these sciences demand rare qualities in
the student. But I also hold that there
is no more certain index to personal cha-
racter, than the condition of a set of casters
is to the character of any hotel. Knowing
and having often tested this theory of mine,
Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst,
when, laying aside any remaining veil of
disguise, I held up before him in suc-
cession, the cloudy oil and furry vinegar,
the clogged cayenne, the dirty salt, the
obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy

sauce in a flannel waistcoat of decompo-
sition.

We went out to transact our business.
So inspiriting was the relief of passing into
the clean and windy streets of Namelesston
from the heavy and. vapid closeness of the
coffee-room of the Temeraire, that hope
began to revive within us. We began to
consider that perhaps the lonely traveller
had taken physic, or done something inju-
dicious to bring his complaint on. Bull-
finch remarked that he thought the waiter
who ought to wait upon us, had brightened
a little when suggesting curry ; and al-
though I knew him to have been at that
moment the express image of despair, I
allowed myself to become elevated in
spirits. As we walked by the softly lapping
sea, all the notabilities of Namelesston,
who are for ever going up and down with
the changelessness of the tides, passed to
and fro in procession. Pretty girls on horse-
back, and with detested riding-masters;
pretty girls on foot ; mature ladies in hats
spectacled, strongminded, and glaring at
the opposite or weaker sex. The Stock
Exchange was strongly represented, Jeru-
salem was strongly represented, the bores of
the prosier London clubs were strongly re-
presented. Fortune hunters of all deno-
minations were there, from hirsute insol-
vency in a curricle, to closely buttoned-
up swindlery in doubtful boots, on the
sharp look-out for any likely young gentle-
man disposed to play a game at billiards
round the corner. Masters of languages,
their lessons finished for the day, were going
to their homes out of sight of the sea ; mis-
tresses of accomplishments, carrying small
portfolios, likewise tripped homeward ; pairs
of scholastic pupils, two and two, went lan-
guidly along the beach, surveying the face of
the waters as if waiting for some Ark to come
and take them off. Spectres of the George
the Fourth days flitted unsteadily among the
crowd, bearing the outward semblance of
ancient dandies, of every one of whom it
might be said, not that he had one leg in
the grave, or both legs, but that he was
steeped in grave to the summit of his high
shirt- collar, and had nothing real about
him but his bones. Alone stationary in the
midst of all the movement the Namelesston
boatmen leaned against the railings and
yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked at
the moored fishing-boats and at nothing.
Such is the unchanging manner of life with
this nursery of our hardy seamen, and very
dry nurses they are, and always wanting
something to drink. The only two nautical

110 [January 2, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

personages detached from the railing, were
the two fortunate possessors of the celebrated
monstrous unknown barking fish, just caught
(frequently just caught off Namelesston),
who carried him about in a hamper, and
pressed the scientific to look in at the lid.

The sands of the hour had all run out
when we got back to the Temeraire. Says
Bullfinch then to the youth in Every, with
boldness: "Lavatory!"

When we arrived at the family vault with
a skylight, which the youth in livery pre-
sented as the Institution sought, we had
already whisked off our cravats and coats ;
but finding ourselves in the presence of
an evil smell, and no linen but two crumpled
towels newly damp from the countenances
of two somebody elses, we put on our
cravats and coats again, and fled unwashed
to the coffee-room.

There, the waiter who ought to wait
upon us had set forth our knives and forks
and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty ac-
quaintance we had already had the pleasure
of making, and whom we were pleased to
recognise by the familiar expression of its
stains. And now there occurred the truly
surprising phenomenon that the waiter who
ought not to wait upon us, swooped down
upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and
vanished with the same.

Bullfinch with distracted eyes was fol-
lowing this unaccountable figure "out at
the portal," like the Ghost in Hamlet,
when the waiter who ought to wait upon
us jostled against it, carrying a tureen.

"Waiter!" said a severe diner, lately
finished, perusing his bill fiercely through
his eye-glass.

The waiter put down our tureen on a
remote side table, and went to see what
was amiss in this new direction.

" This is not right, you know, waiter.
Look here. Here's yesterday's sherry,
one and eightpence, and here we are again,
two shillings. And what does Sixpence
mean?"

So far from knowing what sixpence
meant, the waiter protested that he didn't
know what anything meant. He wiped
the perspiration from his clammy brow,
and said it was impossible to do it not
particularising what- and the kitchen was
so far off.

"Take the bill to the bar, and get it
altered," said Mr. Indignation Cocker : so to
call him .

The waiter took it, looked intensely at it,
didn't seem to like the idea of taking it to
the bar, and submitted as a new light upon

the case, that perhaps sixpence meant six
pence.

" I tell you again," said Mr. Indignation
Cocker, " here's yesterday's sherry can't
you see it ? one and eightpence, and here
we are again, two shillings. What do you
make of one and eightpence and two shil-
lings ?"

Totally unable to make anything of one
and eightpence and two shillings, the waiter
went out to try if anybody else could;
merely casting a helpless backward glance
at Bullfinch, in acknowledgment of his
pathetic entreaties for our soup tureen.
After a pause, during which Mr. Indigna-
tion Cocker read a newspaper, and coughed
defiant coughs, Bullfinch rose to get the
tureen, when the waiter reappeared and
brought it: dropping Mr. Indignation
Cocker's altered bill on Mr. Indignation
Cocker's table as he came along.

"It's quite impossible to do it, gentle-
men," murmured the waiter; "and the
kitchen is so far off."

" Well. You don't keep the house ; it's
not your fault, we suppose. Bring some
sherry."

" Waiter !" From Mr. Indignation Cocker,
with a new and burning sense of injury
upon him.

The waiter, arrested on his way to our
sherry, stopped short, and came back to see
what was wrong now.

" Will you look here ? This is worse
than before. Do you understand ? Here's
yesterday's sherry one and eightpence, and
here we are again two shillings. And
what the devil does Ninepence mean ?"

This new portent utterly confounded the
waiter. He wrung his napkin, and mutely
appealed to the ceiling.

"Waiter, fetch that sherry," says Bull-
finch, in open wrath and revolt.

" I want to know," persisted Mr. In-
dignation Cocker, "the meaning of Nine-
pence. I want to know the meaning of
sherry one and eightpence yesterday, and
of here we are again two shillings. Send
somebody."

The distracted waiter got out of the
room, under pretext of sending somebody,
and by that means got our wine. But the
instant he appeared with our decanter,
Mr. Indignation Cocker descended on him
again.

"Waiter!"

"You will now have the goodness to
attend to our dinner, waiter," says Bull-
finch, sternly.

" I am very sorry, but it's quite impos-

Charles Dickens.;

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[January 2, 1869.] HI

sible to do it, gentlemen," pleaded the
waiter ; " and the kitchen "

"Waiter!" said Mr. Indignation Cocker.
" Is," resumed the waiter, " so far
off, that "

" Waiter ! " persisted Mr. Indignation
Cocker, " send somebody."

We were not without our fears that the
waiter rushed out to hang himself, and we
were much relieved by his fetching some-
body in gracefully flowing skirts and with
a waist who very soon settled Mr. In-
dignation Cocker's business.

"Oh!" said Mr. Cocker, with his fire
surprisingly quenched by this apparition.
" I wished to ask about this bill of mine,
because it appears to me that there's a
little mistake here. Let me show you.
Here's yesterday's sherry one and eight-
pence, and here we are again two shillings.
And how do you explain Ninepence ?"

However it was explained in tones too
soft to be overheard, Mr. Cocker was
heard to say nothing more than " Ah-h-h !
Indeed! Thank you! Yes," and shortly
afterwards went out, a milder man.

The lonely traveller with the stomach-
ache had all this time suffered severely;
drawing up a leg now and then, and sip-
ping hot brandy and water with grated
ginger in it. When we tasted our (very)
mock turtle soup, and were instantly seized
with symptoms of some disorder simu-
lating apoplexy, and occasioned by the
surcharge of the nose and brain with luke-
warm dish-water holding in solution sour
flour, poisonous condiments, and (say)
seventy- five per cent of miscellaneous
kitchen stuff rolled into balls, we were
inclined to trace his disorder to that source.
On the other hand, there was a silent
anguish upon him too strongly resembling
the results established within ourselves by
the sherry, to be discarded from alarmed
consideration. Again: we observed him,
with terror, to be much overcome by our
sole's being aired in a temporary retreat
close to him, while the waiter went out
(as we conceived) to see his friends. And
when the curry made its appearance he
suddenly retired in great disorder.

In fine, for the uneatable part of tins
little dinner (as contradistinguished from
the undrinkable) we paid only seven shil-
lings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch
and I agreed unanimously, that no such
ill- served, ill-appointed, ill-cooked, nasty
little dinner could be got for the money
anywhere else under the sun. With that
comfort to our backs, we turned them on

the dear old Temeraire, the charging Teme-
raire, and resolved (in the Scottish dialect)
to gang nae mair to the flabby Temeraire.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE WEST. BEDFONT TO WINDSOR.

High and swift up in the soft blue air the
crow passes over Middlesex, which spreads
below, a great brown and green carpet of
dark plough-land and bright pasture, through
which the Thames winds like a tangled silver
thread. Down from the clouds like a black
flake he will drift to any village in his
way that has a legend, any town that has a
tradition, any old house over whose chimney
he passes, if it has been consecrated by genius,
or is associated with any passage of human
nature that addresses itself to the human heart.
Quickly he will drop from the nearest white
snow -ball of cloud wherever he can find food.
His scent will be keen for old legend and odd
biographical incident. He will peer round for a
moment, peck an instant, and mount again.
His course is to be straight, swift, and westward
to the sea.

He does not alight at Bedfont, but still he
poises his jetty wings over the red roofs of the
old posting village. There, Hood placed the
scene of that quaint and grave little poem of
his, " The Two Peacocks of Bedfont ;" so sim-
ple and so touching a little homily against
vanity and containing that exquisite couplet :

And in the garden plot from day to day
The lily blooms its long white life away.

The poem seems to have arisen from the poet
having one day seen two peacocks strutting in
flaunting pride, and displaying their jewelled
plumes among the humble grassy graves of
Bedfont churchyard. This contrast he sur-
rounded with Stothard-like pictures of a country
Sunday; hand-coupled urchins in restrained talk,
anxious pedagogue, pompous churchwarden
stalking solemnly along, gold-bedizened beadle
passing flaming through the churchyard gate,
terribly conscious of the world's approval, and

Gentle peasant, clad in buff and green,
Like a meek cowslip in the spring serene.

The musing poet little thought of what Bed-
font used to be in the regency times, when the
Four-in-Hand Club's vehicles rattled up to the
Black Dog, or whatever the chief inn then was,
on their way from their rendezvous in George-
street, Hanover-square, to the Windmill, at
Salt-hill. Those were the days when baronets
drove coaches, boxed the watch, smote the
Charlies, wore many-caped coats, and were
sudden and prompt in quarrel. Lord Sefton's
and Colonel Berkeley's turn-outs were specially
superb, the horses perfect, the equipments in
refined taste. One rule of the club was that
no coach should pass another, and that the pace
should never exceed a trot. The society lasted
in full vigour for upwards of twenty years. Mr.
Akers, one of the most spirited members, in his
enthusiastic desire to resemble a regular real

fl=

112 [January 2, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

coachman, filed a chink between hia front teeth,
to enable him to whistle to his nags in the
orthodox manner. It was not a very high am-
bition, but it led Mr. Akers to a coach-box,
and left him there firmly planted.

Up in the air again the crow darts, and a
few quick pulses of his coal black wings bring
him to Staines. Antiquaries derive the name
of the town from a stone which marked the
western bounds of the jurisdiction of the Cor-
poration of London. Lord mayors and alder-
men of old times used to make great days of the
swan-upping, coming in gay barges on an August
afternoon past Staines to their annual dinner
at Medmenham. The Thames swans are chiefly
the property of the Dyers' and Vintners' Com-
panies. The birds build in the eyots about
Hurley, and in the osier beds by the river,
and firm structures of twigs cradle their huge
eggs. The keepers receive a small sum for
every cygnet that is reared, and it is their duty
to guard the eggs, and to build the founda-
tions of the nests. The mark of the Vintners'
Company is two nicks, which mark originated
the well known sign of the swan with two
necks, or nicks. The upping used to begin on
the Monday after Saint Peter's day.

Now the crow skims on his glossy wings to
that little island meadow on the Thames where
King John signed Magna Charta, forced by
his barons, who had gathered together at
Hounslow, under pretence of a tournament.
There were first pronounced those memorable
words :

" No free man shall be apprehended, imprisoned,
disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way de-
stroyed ; nor will we go upon him, nor will we send
upon him, excepting by the legal judgment of his
peers, or by the law of the land. To no man will
we sell, to no man will we deny or delay right and
justice.' 1 ''

O high Court of Chancery ! O patient and
suffering suitors ! O grimy law-haunted houses,
dumb and blind in the midst of crowded
streets, see how well our kings or nobles have
obeyed this solemn clause ! Lawyers, pay a pil-
grimage to the green race meadow near Egham
and repent of your sins and the shortcomings
of tardy justice. That meeting at Runnymede
ended as it began, with a tournament. In less
than a year the faithless king had broken all
his promises, and Louis of France had landed
at Dover as the ally of the barons.

From Runnymede to the royal battlements of
the " proud keep of Windsor," is but a short
flight for the crow. The very prettiest legend
about Windsor is connected with the little gar-
den at the foot of the proud tower on which the
crow first alights, and from which twelve tri-
butary counties can be seen in clear weather.
A young Scotch prince, sent to France to be out
of the way of his dangerous uncle, the Duke of
Albany, was captured off the coast of Norfolk,
and sent to Windsor, where he remained a
prisoner eighteen years. In his poem, the
King's Quaire, the prince has described how he
fell in love with Lady Jane Beaufort, as she
walked in this garden, unconscious of the ad-

miration of the young prisoner. The garden,
he says, had an arbour in the corner, and was
railed in with wands and close-knit hawthorn
bushes ; and in the midst of every arbour was
" a sharp, green, sweet juniper." Suddenly,
the prisoner's eyes fell on

The fairest or the freshest young flower,
That ever I saw methought before that hour,
For which sudden abate anon astart
The blood of all my body to my heart.

Then the enraptured man describes the dress
of the maiden; her golden hair fretted with
pearls and fiery rubies, emeralds, and sap-
phires ; on her head a chaplet of plumes, red,
white, and blue, mixed with quaking spangles ;
about her neck a fine gold chain, with a ruby
in the shape of a heart :

That as a spark of fire so wantonly
Seemed burning upon her white throat.

But suddenly, the fair fresh face passed
under the boughs, out of sight, and then be-
gan the lover's torments, and his day darkened
into night. Altogether, a prettier love story
is not to be found in all the Castle history.
James eventually married this incomparable
lady, niece of the cardinal, and daughter of
the Earl of Somerset, and took her back with
him to Scotland. The accomplished prince
was assassinated at Perth in 1437.

At the old deanery door, took place the
parting between Richard the Second and his
young Queen Isabella, then only eleven years
of age. Froissart says, when the canons had
chanted very sweetly, the king having made
his offerings, he took the queen in his arms
and kissed her twelve or thirteen times, say-
ing, sorrowfully, " Adieu, madame, until we
meet again." Then the queen began to weep,
saying: "Alas, my lord, will you leave me
here ?" The king's eyes filled with tears, and
he said : "By no means, Mamie ; but I will
go first, and you, ma chere, shall come after,
wards." After that, the king and queen partook
of wine and comfits at the deanery, with their
court. Then the king stooped down and lifted
the queen in his arms, and kissed her at least
ten times, saying : " Adieu, ma chere, until we
meet again," and placing her on the ground,
kissed her again. " By our Lady," adds the
chronicler, "I never saw so great a lord make
so much of, or show such affection to, a lady,
as did King Richard to his queen. Great pity
it wa3 they separated, for they never saw each
other more." Soon afterwards came the death
struggle at Pontefract, and the- child became a
widow.

It was in St. George's Chapel that, in 1813,
the body of King Charles the First was dis-
covered. Charles the Second had pretended to
search for it, but probably did not wish to find
it or to incur the cost of a sumptuous monument.
The corpse had been carried to the grave in
1648, in a snow storm, and the dead monarch
obtained secretly the name of " the white king"
among his adherents, from the fact of the
snow that day settling upon the pall. There
was no service read over the body, as the

Charles Dickons/

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[January 2, 1869.] 113

Puritan governor forbade Bishop Prescott to
use the Church of England prayers. On the
coffin being opened, the face was found dark
and discoloured, the forehead and mouth had
little of their muscular substance remaining,
the cartilage of the nose was gone, but the left
eye, though open and full at the first expo-
sure, vanished almost immediately. The shape
of the face was long, the nearly black hair
was thick at the back of the head ; the beard
was a reddish brown. On examining the head,
the muscles of the neck showed contraction,
and the fourth cervical vertebra had been
cut through transversely, leaving the severed
surfaces smooth and even. The appearance
was such as a blow from a heavy axe would
have produced. In this chapel, sleep many
kings and queens ; Jane Seymour among them,
and Henry the Eighth, by his own desire " near
his true and loving wife, Queen Jane." The
gigantic tomb, with six hundred and thirty-
four statues and forty-four "histories," which
the tyrant ordered, was never put up. His
subjects had better things to think of.

Old King George's memory is held dear at
Windsor. Thousands of honest old stories of
him circulate in the neighbourhood, all showing
what a dull, respectable, methodical, worthy,
tiresome old fellow he was. He rose at half-past
seven, attended service in the chapel, and break-
fasted at nine with the queen and the princesses.
The meal lasted only half an hour. The prin-
cesses were ranged according to the severest
etiquette. After breakfast, the king rode out
attended by his equerries and his daughters. H
the weather were bad he sat within doors and
played at chess. He dined at two, the queen
and princesses at four. At five the king visited
the queen and took a glass of wine and water.
He then transacted private business with his
secretary. The evening was spent at cards, all
visitors retiring when the castle clock struck
ten, and always supperless. The royal family
separated at eleven o'clock for the night.

We all know from Peter Pindar how the
king chattered, asked foolish questions, and
answered them himself. His simple adventures
are still narrated in many Windsor farms. One
day he had to pass a narrow gate, on which a
stolid ploughboy sat swinging. " Who are
you, boy ?" said the king. " I be a pig
boy. I be from the low country, and out
of work at present." " Don't they want lads
here?" asked the king. "I don't know,"
replied the boy. "AU hereabouts belongs
to Georgey." "And who is Georgey?"
" Georgey ! Why, the king ; he lives at the
castle, but he does no good to me." The king
instantly ordered the boy to be employed on
his farm, and promised to look after him. He
turned out a steady lad. The king once went into
a cottage and began turning the meat for an old
woman, and was so pleased with himself for
doing it, that he left on the rude table five
guineas to buy a jack, wrapped in a paper with
that notification. There was no pride about him,
and he was very kind hearted. Once he and Char-
lotte met a little boy "the king's beefeater's

little boy." The king said, " Kneel down and
kiss the queen's hand." But the boy was obdu-
rate and determined. " No," said he, "I won't
kneel, for if I do I shall spoil my new breeches."
The king was not so obstinate and pig-headed
but that he could bend to common sense some-
times. One day Colonel Price differed with him
about cutting down a certain tree which the king
thought injured the prospect. " Ay," said the
king, pettishly, "that's your way; you con-
tinually contradict me." " If your majesty,"
replied the colonel, " will not condescend
to listen to the honest sentiments of your ser-
vants, you can never hear the truth." After a
short pause the king kindly laid his hand on
the colonel's shoulder, and said, " You are
right, Price ; the tree shall stand." Even when
Prince George was a boy, Handel had noticed
his fondness for music, and the taste con-
tinued till his death. When old, crazed, and
blind, he would wander up and down the corri-
dors of Windsor, dressed in a purple dressing
gown, his long white beard falling on his breast,
and used at lucid intervals to sing a hymn, and
accompany himself on the harpsichord. One
day towards the end of his life, in a sane
moment, the king heard a bell toll. He asked
who was dead. He was told it was a Mrs.
S. The king had a great memory memory is
almost a royal prerogative and immediately
said : " Ah ! She was a linendraper at the

corner of street. She was a good woman,

and brought up her children in the fear of God.
She is gone to heaven. I hope I shall soon
follow her." Latterly he became impressed
with a sense that he was dead, and used to
say, "I must have a suit of black in memory
of King George the Third, for whom I know
there is a general mourning." He would often
hold conversation with imaginary noblemen,
but the topics to which he referred were always
past events. Sometimes he would sit for hours
in a torpor, his head resting on both hands ;
often he would make his servants sit down r and
would address them as if he were in parlia-
ment.

At last, in 1820, Death came mercifully, and
gave the word of release. The lying in state
took place in the audience chamber, where the
yeomen of the guard stood, their halberts hung
with black crape. The coffin was placed be-
neath a throne hung with black cloth. Two
heralds in tabards sat at the foot of the coffin,
and the mourners at the head. When all the
public had been admitted, the Eton boys were
allowed to pass through the rooms. The funeral
took place by night, and was magnificent and
solemn. The procession was marshalled in St.
George's Hall, the Duke of York being chief
mourner. About nine o'clock the symphony to
the Dead March in Saul reverberated mourn-
fully, the trumpets sounded, and the minute
guns thundered. As the coffin passed by,
every spectator stood uncovered. The torch-
light lit the earnest faces, and gleamed on
the towers, pinnacles, and battlements of the
castle. A detachment of the Grenadier Guards
lined the aisle, their arms and standards re-

114 [January 2, 1869.J

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

versed, and every second man carrying a lighted
wax taper. The van was headed by the poor
knights and the pages. Then came judges,
bishops, privy councillors, and peers. Dukes
bore the pall, marquises supported the canopy
over the coffin. The national banners were
borne by noblemen. The Duke of York fol-
lowed the coffin, and with him came the Dukes
of Clarence, Sussex, and Gloucester, and Prince
Leopold. There was thrill of awe when the
coffin passed into the vault, and the handful
of dust fell and reechoed on the coffin lid. The
herald then read the titles of the new king.
Le Roi est mort ; vive le Roi !

When George the Fourth grew tired of
Brighton and afraid of his subjects, he went
to live at the royal lodge at the end of the
Long Walk. Only a fragment of the lodge
now exists, but there at Virginia Water you
can still see the Chinese temple, from the gal-
lery of which he used daily to try to amuse
himself by angling. He often drove about
Windsor Park in his pony-phaeton, or was
wheeled in a chair round the improvements at
the castle. His last anxiety was about a new
dining-room. He maintained his seclusion to
the last. His thirty miles of avenues were
sacred (o himself. If he had even to cross the
Frogmore road, some of his suite were sent
forward to watch the gates, and observe if the
roads were free from danger. The first gentle-
man in Europe was a miserable man.

From the ruins of the royal cottage, the
crow flits back to the terrace. It was here
old King George used to show himself, with a
simplicity that won the Windsor people. Miss
Burney describes one particularly pretty scene.
The little Princess Amelia, so beloved by the
king, was of the party, " just turned of three
years old, in a robe coat covered with fine
muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and
fan, walking alone and fast, highly delighted
at the Windsor uniforms, and turning from side
to side to see everybody as they passed, for
the terracers always stood, up against the walls,
to make a clear passage for the royal family."

A flight across the Home Park brings the
crow to a bald old oak with a railing round it,
in a line with an avenue of elms, and not far
from the footpath. That is a sacred tree (if,
indeed, the real haunted tree was not accident-
ally cut down, as some suppose, by George the
Third in 1796). Here, most people think that
Heme the Hunter used on winter midnights
to pace, with rugged horns on his head, shaking
his chains, and casting a murrain on cattle.
And here Falstaff came disguised, to be fooled,
mocked, and pinched, by the mischievous fairies
in green. There used to be an old house in
Windsor at the foot of the Hundred Steps,
supposed to have been the house which Shake-
speare sketched as that of Mrs. Page.

Who can now tell the crow as he hovers
over the Garter Tower, or flits round the
Devil's and King John's Towers, where the
first Windsor Castle stood? Some say the
castle now in dreamland, stood two miles east
of Windsor on the banks of the Thames, where
the ancient palace of Edward the Confessor

had been before. Here one day at dinner, Earl
Goodwin submitted voluntarily to the ordeal
of bread. " So may I swallow safe this
morsel of bread that I hold in my hand,"
he said, "as I am guiltless of my brother
Alfred's death." He then took the bread,
which instantly choked him (so the legend
goes on) and being drawn from the table,
was conveyed to Winchester and there buried.
A blind woodcutter once came here to be-
seech the sainted king to restore his sight.
The king replied, " By our Lady ! I shall be
grateful if you, through my means, shall choose
to take pity upon a wretched creature," and
laying his hand on the blind man's eyes, in-
stantly (it is said) restored their sight ; the
woodman exclaiming, "I see you, O king! I
see you, O king !" This absurd custom of
" touching" for diseases, continued until Queen
Anne's time : to whom Dr. Johnson, when a
child, was taken for that purpose. In this same
palace in the rough old times, Harold and
Tosti, his jealous and choleric brother, fought
before King Edward the Confessor. As Harold
was about to pledge the king, Tosti seized him
by the hair. Harold resenting this not un-
naturally leaped on Tosti and threw him
violently to the ground, but the soldiers parted
them. Tosti afterwards joined the Norwegians,
invaded Northumberland, and was slain by his
brother at Banford Bridge, near York, just as
William had landed to render the victory useless.

That same iron-handed Conqueror took a
fancy to Windlesdora (the town by the wind-
ing river), and first built hunting-lodges in
the vales, so as to feast in comfort on the deer
he slew ; then, exchanging some lands in Essex
for it, he acquired the hill above the river,
and built a castle there. All English kings
have delighted in this palace. Henry the First
was married here. Here Henry the Second,
bewailing his undutiful children, caused to be
painted on a wall, an old eagle with its young
ones scratching it, and one pecking out its eyes.
" This," he said, "betokens my four sons, which
cease not to pursue my death, especially my
youngest son, John." From these walls that
same John rode sullenly, to his great mortifi-
cation at Runnymede.

Edward the Third was born here, and from
the royal seat derived his appellation of Ed-
ward of Windsor. At the foot of the slopes,
was the tournament ground, where Edward
used to cross spears with Chandos and Manny,
and display his shield with the white swan and
the defiant motto,

Hay, hay, the Tthite swan,

By Godde's soul, I am thy man.

There is no story connected with Windsor
Castle more touching than that of the death-bed
of Edward's noble-hearted Queen Philippa the
most gentle queen, the most liberal and cour-
teous that ever was, the chroniclers say. When
she felt her end approaching, she called to the
king, and extending her right hand from under
the bed-clothes, placed it in the right hand of
the king, who was sorrowful at his heart.
Then she said: "Sir, we have in peace, joy,
and great prosperity, used all our time to-

Cnarles Dickens.] QUITE A NEW ELECTION ADDRESS. [January 2, 1869.] 115

gether. Sir, now I pray you that at our part-
ing you will grant me three desires." The
king, right sorrowfully weeping, said : " Ma-
dam, desire what ye will, I grant it." Then
she asked the king, firstly, to pay all merchants
on either side the sea, to whom she owed money ;
secondly, to fulfil all vows that she had made to
different churches ; and, thirdly, that when God
called him hence, he would choose no other
tomb but hers, and would he by her side in the
cloisters of Westminster. The king, weeping,
said : "Madam, I grant all your desires." Then
soon after the good lady made the sign of the
cross on her breast, and recommending her
youngest son, Thomas, to the king, gave up
her spirit: which, says Froissart, "I firmly
believe, was caught by the holy angels and
carried to the glory of Heaven, for she had
never done anything, by thought or deed, that
could endanger her losing it. Thus died, this
queen of England, in the year of grace, 1369,
the vigil of the Assumption of the Virgin, on
the 15th of August."

Edward partly rebuilt the palace, his wise
prelate, William of Wykeham, being the archi-
tect. He carved the huge inscription, "Hoc
fecit Wykeham," which is still visible on the
Winchester Tower ; and when the king seemed
inclined to resent the apparent arrogance, ex-
plained that the inscription meant "the castle
had made him." The weak monarch, Henry
the Sixth, was also born at Windsor, fulfilling
the old prophecy written probably years after
the event :

I, Henry, born at Monmouth,

Shall small time reign and much get,

But Henry of Windsor shall reign long and lose all.

The wicked Crook Back brought Henry's
body to Windsor from Chertsey. A black
marble slab in the chapel still marks his
grave. He became the saint of Windsor. Rough
ploughmen from the Berkshire villages came
here, with tapers and images of wax ; and forest
keepers, their doublets stained with deer's blood
and often with man's blood, used to adore a
small chip of the bedstead of the saintly king, his
spur, or his old red velvet hat, which was sup-
posed to cure headaches. Prayers to him were
inserted in the service books of the early part
of the sixteenth century, and the old hat stood
high above all the other Windsor relics.

The Royal Tomb House is another centre
of great traditions. It was originally in-
tended by Henry the Seventh for his tomb.
Henry the Eighth, in the plenitude of his gene-
rosity, gave it to his favourite Wolsey, who
began to rebuild it with all the lavish splendour
in which he delighted. He had determined
to descend into the darkness of a tomb, mag-
nificent as that of the popes, and to be in a sar-
cophagus worthy of the Pharaohs. But he begged
little earth for charity, far away from that royal
tomb, which was swept away in contempt by
the Parliamentarians, who loathed such pomps
and vanities. The upper part was sold as de-
faced brass, for six hundred pounds ; and the
black marble sarcophagus lay untenanted, till
it was taken for the righteous purpose of cover-

ing Nelson's tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral.
George the Third eventually constructed the
vault beneath the Tomb House for himself and
family.

Windsor Castle possesses two distinct relics of
Quentin Matsys, the famous blacksmith of Ant-
werp. On the left of the altar in St. George's
Chapel is a screen of Gothic iron, hammered
out (carved out with a knife one would think) by
Matsys for the tomb of Edward the Fourth.
The king's coat of mail and jewelled surcoat
used to hang near it, but the Puritans carried
them off when they defaced the chapel in 1643.
In the Queen's closet hangs the famous pic-
ture of the Misers, which proved Matsys an
artist, and obtained him the daughter of a
painter for a wife. The painting is hard,
but it is of great excellence ; and the de-
tails are highly curious. The faces are
replete with character, but the meaning of
their expression is disputed. Some think that
both men are money-lenders, rejoicing in an
especially hard bargain; many, that one is a
merchant, and the other a partner or clerk
who is outwitting him. After all, the picture's
traditional name probably expresses the real
intention.

There is a tradition that the upper ward of
Windsor Castle was built by Edward the Third
from the French king's ransom, and the lower
ward remodelled from the ransom of the Scotch
king ; John was shut up in the Round Tower,
formerly called La Rose, and David in the south-
west tower of the upper ward.

Henry the Eighth used to hawk in the
Great Park, and there too in the long green
glades he held his archery meetings. Years
after her father's death, Elizabeth used to come
to the park to shoot deer with her cross bow,
not unfrequently cutting their throats with
her own hunting knife. There is one more
tradition of Windsor worth remembering. A
public -house in Peascod - street, called the
Duke's Head, was once the house of Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham, the Zimri of Dryden.
Charles the Second used to come from the
Castle, and walk with him to Filbert's, the
house of Nell Gwynne.

QUITE A NEW ELECTION ADDRESS.

FROM A VOTER TO A MEMBER.

My Honourable Friend !

What is required of Members of Parlia-
ment is, that they should be faithful ser-
vants of the people and of the crown ;
failing which, not only the public will suffer,
but the crown, in the absence, interception,
or perversion of a truthful account of the
real state of the country ; for, as in the case
of the human body, it is necessary that the
head comprehend the wants of it, in order to
take measures to supply them, so it is with the
body politic. And with the former, the agents
best adapted to administer to its necessities
are sought out. They do not stand on plat-
forms, and overwhelm folks with long speeches,
often " rivers of words, and drops of under-

116 [January 2, 1869.]

ALL THE TEAR BOUND.

[Conducted by

standing," to convince people that they are ex-
cellent in their way, and to cajole them to
employ them ; on the contrary, people get up
and run after them ; they are solicited and sent
for, and rewarded proportionately (it is to be
hoped) to their deserts. So should it be, my
honourable friend, in the case of membership of
Parliament. The M.P. should be known for his
qualities and fitness, and instead of interceding,
he should be interceded with, to lend his assist-
ance. He should be at no expense, for serving
the people, and his reward should consist in
the honour of adroitly managing the business
entrusted to him. It should not be considered
as a recommendation in an accomplished gentle-
man, or plain dealing individual, that he act
honestly, and without immediate regard to bet-
tering himself. Whereas, I notice that a
member of Parliament, filling his post with the
common honesty necessary in humbler life to
ensure a livelihood, is sometimes considered as
a wonder, a phenomenon, without opening his
mouth or moving a finger in the work for which
he is placed where he is. This would suggest
that there is somewhat of laxity of principle
acknowledged to exist in Parliament ; that people
regard it as a sort of necessary evil ; and, on
the principle that

Despair it was come, and he thought it content,

are content to put up with what they get.
My honourable friend, how many among you
are known familiarly for their good works?
How many of you think it an honour to be the
advocates of the people's happiness and improve-
ment ? How many of you go into Parliament,
but to become other than you were? To be
put into a position to do good, is not often
the ambition of the would-be M.P. It is to
be M.P. And instead of being by his own
sheer force, a made man before entering Parlia-
ment, he does but consider the House the
making of him, and that at the expense of
passed over superiority immeasurable. It would
seem, I think, my honourable friend, that the
men for the duties required, are occasionally
chosen at a chance.

In every small section of the community, two
or three individuals are known for some peculiar
qualities appertaining to usefulness; in every
small collection of a dozen huts there is some
person whose advice is sought on occasions of
emergency ; but really, my honourable friend, I
never knew you to have been consulted in such
wise before you added M.P. to your name. I even
question whether many people knew of your ex-
istence until you tacked those two letters to your
name, and thus made something out of a non-
entity. " Who is Mr. So-and-so ?" " Oh ! he is
M.P. for Such a place." " Oh !" That is enough,
and Mr. So-and-so knows it ; that is why he
was so anxious to write M.P. after his name ;
he knows the meaning, if he do not know the
translation, of the moral, " d'un magistrat
ignorant, c'est la robe qu'on salue." But such
people are to the body of the state as poisons
to the system ; they engender bad blood, by
causing stagnation. How many members are
there who give their votes in accordance with

any inward conviction of their own, or the
wishes of their constituents ? How many who
know what these wishes are, or knowing, care ?
How many are guided by them ? How many a
member votes in the House otherwise than as
an adherent to a stronger member, or as an in-
directly subsidised agent? Again ; is it whole-
some, my honourable friend, that at the present
day it should be looked upon as a necessary,
but vulgar and irksome ordeal withal, that a
fit subject for a seat in Parliament should ad-
dress a noisy mob, with the view of gammon-
ing or flattering them into the notion that he is
the very best person they could possibly select
to act for them ? That this hero, in order to
propitiate himself into the good graces of those
enlightened fellow countrymen, should pump
up poor jests, and lend himself to buffoonery
and littlenesses not so honest or harmless, and
certainly not so amusing, as the clap-trap of
the quack doctor and merry-andrew of the days
gone by ? That in order to give specimens of
how he will act, he should vamp up his version
of how he would deal with such and such a
question, at such and such a moment showing
a brick as it were, as a sample of the house he
would build ? There is a strange carelessness
as to who's the member, that is taken advantage
of by the wary. Ask how it came that a vote
was given for such and such a one, what Smith
personally or historically knew of him, what he
expected of him, what he hoped from him in
regard to anything, and you will wait a long
time for your answer. At the Presidential
election in America, the other day, huge bells,
it is said, were sent about, mounted on waggons,
to wake up the voters. Some such stimulus is
needed sadly in this country in these times, for,
as a rule, unless something out of Parliament
is to be got for a vote, or some spite paid off,
people appear very calm, not to say indifferent,
as to giving one at all. But not so apathetic
are they where interests more near and plain to
them are concerned. The densest will think
twice before they entrust a piece of money to
friend or foe, to lay out for them ; they look
out for a strict account of that ; but a vote is
frequently invested quite at random. What
surprise there would be among some of the
" lower orders," if they were told that, to all
intents and purposes, the M.P. is in their
service ; that he goes to market for them ; that
it is his duty to make the best bargains he can
for them ; that he goes to Parliament not merely
because he is the squire, or contractor, or what
not of the neighbourhood, but because he is sent
by them, as solemnly trusted to speak up for
the general interest, and with no more reference
to his money than because he has enough
money to pay others to do his business whilst
he is absent attending to theirs.

Be not puffed up, my honourable friend ! It is
only some of the speeches on the hustings that
are delivered with the aim of enlightenment,
and they are held as downright compliments to
improved intellectual and educational standing,
and are tributes to (as they are tributaries
from) master minds, which the most obtuse and
ignorant can hardly listen to, without, to some

?j=

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[January 2, 1869.] H7

extent, understanding and gaining by, be party-
feeling what it may. But these men are known
to the world as men of generous and exalted
natures. Guiding stars are these men, who, in
arguing questions of interest to the common-
wealth, have shown themselves the expounders
and interpreters of what thousands of others
have thought and would express. These men
have tlie voice of the people with them ; these
men are not merely Members of Parliament,
but Men of the People. When your M.P.-ship
learns that meaning with it, my honourable
friend, it will mean something and be some-
thing ; so long as it does not, it will be Mere
Pretence.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG : A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER VIII.

It is a busy time indeed. There is
clatter, rattle, click-click, sudden pause,
almost awful, a low proclamation, and then
the setting in of chink and jingle ; such
crowds half a dozen deep about the table ;
while outside promenade as thickly the
well-dressed girls and ladies ; the stupid
men who are pouring into pretty ears their
insipid jests, but which they are not to be
blamed for thinking racy from the hearty
reception they meet ; the eager and amused
first visitors, delighted and confounded
with everything, and chuckling with a
stupid complacency over the privilege of
being allowed to enjoy those lights and
gorgeous chambers, soft sofas, and amuse-
ment, all for nothing ! There are mean
minds to whom this element is a sort of
whet. (I hear my dear pet at home say,
as she reads, that I am getting a little
bitter ; but this place does help to give one
a mean estimate of human nature.) But I
look round and try to make out Grainger.
I wander from one table to the other.
Certainly on this night of excitement there
can be no such study as these human faces
and expressions, especially at the moment
the cards arc being dealt. Not at chapel or
church, if the Doctor Seraphicus himself were
preaching, could we find five seconds of such
absorbed expectancy and attention. The
heart, soul, all, are in the faces. Suddenly,
as the verdict sounds light, positive light,
drifts over some, and a positive shadow
over others ; shocking, shocking, yet so
interesting. Talk of a play ! I could look
on here from morning to night. It has
endless variety, and I must be very straight-
laced if I could not do so with that object,
the study of human character, merely in
view. By the way, the doctor said I was
to relax, and amuse myself in every way.
I suppose he meant to gamble, but that

prescription, my good quack, won't do for
me. I have certainly been moping a little.
There I see a greater crowd faces all
looking at one face, gutteral whispers
" way" so the Germans call " oui" " zest
may !" I can understand a hero of the
night a worn, lorn creature a sad, high-
browed, bald, gentlemanly man, fighting
the desperate fight, standing up to the very
teeth of the bank. He was playing what
seems the forlorn hope " le maximoom"
twelve thousand francs, every time ; and a
fat, clean, snowy cushion of notes was
before him, delicately marked in faint blue,
and as thick as the leaves of a book. On
this night, Mephistopheles is playing one
of his most cruel freaks, and one which he
is very fond of. This votary has been win-
ning during the previous few days, and, it
is said, has carried off some six or eight
thousand pounds. The pinch-faced eccle-
siastical looking overseer walks about un-
easily, and has regarded him with dislike
all but openly expressed. But to-night I
can see the bale of notes shifting across
from one colour to the other, ruthlessly
seized on, counted over with an ostentatious
particularity, note after note laid out in
splendid piles, and the trifling balance
tossed back contemptuously. Then I see
him gathering up his dwindling notes, turn
them over with a pitiable irresolution, and
then lay them down on another colour.
Again is proclamation made ; away they
flutter, drawn in by the merciless far-
stretching croupier's claw; and I see his
yellow fingers working nervously at his
forehead, which is as yellow. Then comes
the sudden scrape as the chair is pushed
back, and he is gone. No one cares for
the unsuccessful, and no eye of sympathy,
rather a look of impatient contempt, follows
him.

But Grainger ! Then it was my eye fell
upon him, seated close by, a few gold pieces
before him, his face distorted with impatience,
fury, and hate. Indeed, it seemed another
Grainger, or that a new soul had entered
into him. It almost startled me ; but still
I recollected what I had laid out for myself.
I went round softly and touched him: he
looked back savagely.

" Well ?" he said.

" Come away, do ; I want to speak to
you."

"Is that all ? Then don't worry me now."

" Do listen to me, Grainger. Come, do."

" Confound it, leave me alone, will you.
What the devil do you mean ?" Such de-
moniac fury !

The clergyman was right after all. I had

118 [January 2, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by-

been only deceiving myself, and with a
"bitter disappointment I turned away. In
an instant I was attracted by a sudden
confusion and din of voices, all speaking
together. There was Grainger standing
up, his arms swinging, and gesticulating ;
his mouth pouring out angry French.
Three croupiers were as vehemently expos-
tulating, and pointing, and emphasising
with their rakes. They have not paid him,
he says. They have cheated swindled
him ! The " gallery," as they call the
people standing round, take different sides ;
and now steals up, as if from behind a tree,
that methodist - looking inspector, whose
skin is drawn so tight, and whose clothes
are so brushed, by machinery I think. He
quietly whispers Grainger, no one can learn
what he says ; but I see his head nodding
like the bill of a sparrow. That man's
soul, I suspect, is as tight as his skin and
clothes. I suppose he is worth his six or
seven hundred a year to the administra-
tion. What he says seems to awe Grainger
already the gamblers are impatient at all
this tapage about a few wretched louis,
when there are little hillocks of gold, me-
tallic ant-hills, rising all over the table.

The croupier seizes the moment. The
cards are being dealt, and after that there
can be no more row. Here again Mephis-
topheles and his crew have such an advan-
tage. Eor in analogous relations, the crowd
is sure to take part with one of themselves,
but no one here knows what the next coup
may bring ; and in that expectancy, selfish-
ness grows impatient and sides with the
bank. I admire the dexterity with which
the meaner human passions are thus turned
to profit, and every little broil composed.

I turn away not a little disgusted. Cer-
tainly the strangest and most dramatic of
scenes, and not unprofitable to study. See
here, for instance, a little dingy shop-
woman, with her two children over yonder
on the sofa, perhaps selling candles and
tobacco ; in her brown thread gloves she
has her " little florin." The dull anxiety
in her German face is surprising. Down
goes the piece on "manque," and I see
her look away as the ball spins round.
Her heart, I am sure, almost stops. She
hears, but does not see, the result. The
smile of delight is exquisite she tries
again again succeeds and again suc-
ceeds. Now she is over at the sofa show-
ing her three prizes lying in the brown
thread gloves. How she had clutched at
them over the shoulder of the genteel
player sitting, and who shakes her off im-
patiently, and half gives an execration. He

has forty louis before him; but she was
afraid that if she was not prompt, he or
some other greedy player would seize on
her little treasure. Then she returns full
of triumph, flushed with victory. She
watches and waits a favourable oppor-
tunity; but Mephistopheles has seen her with
one of his grins she loses her first piece, a
palpable agony flits across her face. She
tries again. Zero ! Her little piece is in
prison ; something like agony is in that
dull face. The next turn it is gone, she is
trying again, but will lose. Oh, if she had
been only content to remain as she was !
The very air must be dense with ejacula-
tions of this sort wrung from a thousand
disappointed hearts.

Over yonder I see the young girl sitting
disconsolate, and with such a wistful look
towards the table. She is waiting for
him. He is playing Mephistopheles needn't
trouble himself about that business. It is
in fair train of itself, and will move on to
his wishes, of its own motion.

As I go out on the cool terrace some one
touches my arm.

" I owe you a hearty apology," he said,
" for my roughness. Once we begin there,
we lose all restraint."

I answered coldly, "that it was no
matter."

" But it is matter," he said angrily ; "I
gave you a right to speak to me, and I
met you most unworthily. I had some
excuse, for the interruption brought about
the row that you saw. I suppose your
well-meant caution cost me only ten louis ;
but say you are not angry."

There was something very winning in his
manner, and I could not resist him.

" But I thought you were going to give
this up ?" I said. " You led me to hope I
had some influence."

During our absence a strange metamor-
phosis had taken place in the gardens. They
had become crammed, and below us was a
dense mass of merry figures, but now all
lit up. In the daytime I had noted trees
dotted about that seemed like palm-trees
with drooping branches. It was a rare
" administration" device to line these with
gas - pipes, and hang white globes over
them, up and down. When they treat our
poor human nature as they do, it is only,
all of course, that they should deal with
the glorious fruits of the earth in the same
fashion. Gas and paint, and gilding, and
gewgaws, these make up this sunlight, and
grass greens, and variegated colours of
nature. To the fresh breath of Heaven,
they prefer the miasma of their crowded

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[January 2, 1869.] 119

gaming-room. I daresay, M. D , the

superintendent, finds it suits his lungs
better than the most bracing mountain
atmosphere, and I suppose goes to Baden
or Spa for his holiday. However, here I
see the whole garden lit up with these
trumpery illuminated gas arches and stars,
and meagre hearts, and such things, and
the crowd amused and delighted like chil-
dren, as they are. Qu'il est beau ! Vraiment
c'est magnmque ! and how generous and
liberal this administration ! All for no-
thing; says old paterfamilias the same who
sits on the Times, while he reads the Daily
News, and little dreams that his eldest,
Charles, has already paid this generous
board some five-and- twenty napoleons " on
the red," which alone would defray the
cost of several of these festivities. But
when the band begins the last galop with
eclat and animation, and some half a dozen
cheap Bengal lights are stuck in the trees,
poor innocent trees ! and made to fizz and
blaze, then the enthusiasm bursts out; a
perfect roar of childish delight rises, and
we hear again how " beau," how " mag-
nifique," this conduct is on the part of the
administration. I am far from joining in
these praises ; I think them shabby and
contemptible to a degree, with their few
jets of gas, and their newspapers, and their
chairs, for which nearly every one has to
pay more or less handsomely. Nay, I have
discovered that there is not a young girl,
the most blushing, blooming, and innocent,
who comes here, that does not coax papa
for three florins or so, "just to try my
luck, my dear," and which is swept into
the hands of these monsters. Now, even
Thomas, the valet, and poor Cox, the
ladies' maid, they have stolen up and con-
tributed their two hard earned gulden. Ah,

M. D , with the pinched nose and the

drum-tight skin, decent and respectable as
you are, gerant en chef of the company,
or what you call yourself, do you think that
if we had you in England, you would not
be committed for trial summarily, and your
correct demeanour would only go to in-
fluence the verdict of the jury. This fellow,
I can see, observes the look of dislike with
which I measure him there is a rapport in
these things as well as in likings and I
can see he is thinking, " You are coming
into our net, my boy ; we shall strip you,
and that will teach you not to be oS'ensive
to the administration. You want a lesson."
Talking to Grainger last night, on the
only subject on which he can talk fluently,
a short stumpy man with a jet, glossy,
hair- dresser beard and moustache, a little

hat, and coat very short, also comes up and
says languidly, "How do, Grainger?" He
then sat down in front of us, leant back,
drawing at his cigar with half- closed eyes,
and moving his cane up and down between
his knees in a sort of slow dance.

"Well, D'Eyncourt," said Grainger, "I
went back to those infernal tables, in spite
of the advice of my good friend, which I
had determined to follow."

" Pretended to determine to follow," he
answered, with a slow drawl. " Tell the
truth always, and shame our friends in-
side yonder."

I never saw a face I disliked more, it was
so tallowy, and then the little eyes were
quite flat and oval, and exactly of the pat-
tern we see in a pig. I was going to say
" cat ;" but the head had not the character
which a cat has. He had a sort of Turk-
ish air, and I had often remarked him as
he looked at ladies passing by, with an
inert blinking, as though he were saying,
" I bring you to me ; if I chose to exert
myself, you could not resist, but you are
not worth it." He was a solitary man,
though sometimes I saw him seated with
a family of girls about him, his head back,
his pig's eyes blinking at them, the words
dropping languidly from his mouth, as who
should say, " I just serve you out a few
marbles, you are not worth more, and mind
I am doing this to amuse myself."

He had been a traveller, and the glossy
locks were said to take a good deal of time
to keep in that rich and glossy state.

" You say very queer things," said
Grainger. " Only that we know you."

" No you don't ; I want no excuse of that
sort. I say what I like."

" Then some one will be punishing you
one of these days."

The only answer was a sleepy look of
contempt, which seemed to make Grainger
uneasy.

" My friend here," he said, "believes in
systems ; my friend Austen, who has come
here for his health."

The other never looked at me a second,
or seemed to acknowledge this ambiguous
introductic n.

" You have always played on a system,"
he drawled out, " and with such success !"

"I never lost, but when I did. Curse
them all ! They are the devil's own mouse-
traps and spring- guns."

" You know best about him," said the
other. " But you have stumbled on a truth
for once of course too late. You point a
moral here; the good show you to their
sons as a warning. If I was the adminis-

120

ALJj THE YEAft ROUND.

[January 2, 1869.]

tration, I'd pay you to go away or to keep
cut of sight."

" You speak to me in a very strange way.
If I didn't owe you money "

" Say nothing then about it, as the situa-
tion must continue."

I felt, indeed, for Grainger; there was
something so studied in this insolence ; and
I could not resist whispering a question :
" Is it a large sum ?"

A rueful nod was the reply, and a smile,
a dull smile, melted over the tallow face.

" And so you have taken up a system
the last resource ? "Well, well."

" I did not say I had," replied Grainger.
" My friend here, Mr. Austen, believes in it.
Let me introduce him, Mr. D'Eyncourt."

Grainger seemed to find some revenge
in this little stroke. I was provoked, and
did not wish to know this man.

"Well, what is the system?" he said,
without looking at me.

" I have nothing of the kind ; only I
noticed that everybody who lost to-night
seemed to play very wildly, now on this,
on that, without any guide."

" And pray what is the guide you have
found out ?"

" There can be nothing that you can call
a guide ; but it seems to me common sense
that if one colour has been coming up a
great many times, we may naturally begin
to look out for the other."

" Oh, that's common sense is it ?" he said,
taking his cigar out of his mouth. " It
may be so, I never pretend to say what is
common sense or not. Still there are
thousands who have thought of what you
have said, thousands ; in fact, every beginner
invariably makes that discovery, after he
has won three or four florins."

" You quite mistake. I am no be-
ginner."

" Well, say a napoleon. It's the regular
speech. The regulation discovery. Take
my advice, keep your napoleon, and let
your system go."

" I really don't understand," I said
coldly. "I have never played, and with
the grace of Heaven never shall indulge in
what I think wrong and sinful."

He looked at me curiously. " I have
nothing of course to do with that. In the
church, I see."

" But for the mere theory," I went on,
" I am right. I know something of mathe-

matics, of the common chances of every
day life, and every man of science will
tell you that a rule is better than no rule."

" You are wrong, my dear friend," said
Grainger ; " utterly. Your man of science
is a donkey in these matters. It is one of
the invariable delusions of this place.
You will find out in time."

"Look at this card," I said, warmly,
"which I marked as the game went on,
from curiosity, just to test the thing."

" From curiosity, just to test the thing,"
said D'Eyncourt. " Yes ?"

"Well, see, it falls into the shape ex-
actly as I said. There is a proof."

" Oh ! the card and pin," said he, with
an air of superiority I could have struck
him for. " Everybody appeals to that.
Really this uniformity is delicious."

" Come away, Grainger," I said, feeling
I could hardly control myself. " Let us
have some supper."

As we walked away, Grainger said,
" My dear friend, he's right. You can't un-
derstand these things so well. Your ex-
perience don't go beyond a sixpenny rou-
lette table on a race-course. But here we
do things en grand, you see."

" I am right," I said coldly.

" I wish you were. Well, when do you
go on to Frankfort ?"

When we got home I found a letter
on the table from the German gentleman.
He has at last returned, and will see me
to - morrow morning. This looks like
business. No letter for some days from
my pet, which makes me a little uneasy.
Not that I shall be uneasy no matter
what she may think, as she reads this.
For I use these little " trials of the third
class," as I call them, as so many oppor-
tunities for wholesome discipline, for keep-
ing the mind straight and steady, hardening
it to imaginary woes, strengthening and
giving a tone to the judgment. I am right
also, in my judgment, whatever that languid
upstart may think.

Now ready,
THE COMPLETE SET

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With Gteneeal Index to the entire work from its
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Now ready, ALL THE CHRISTMAS STORIES,
bound together price 5s. ; or, separately, price 4d. each.

The Right of Translating Articles from All the Year Round is reserved by the Authors.

Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street, Strand. Printed by 0. Whiting, Ueaufort House, Strand.

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WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Stokt by tee Authob op " Black Sheep.'

CHAPTER VIII. FLITTING.

Marian Ashurst dearly loved her home.
To her concentrative and self- contained
nature, local associations were peculiarly
precious ; the place in which she had lived
the life so essentially her own was very
dear. The shabby old house, though she
perfectly understood its shabbiness, and
would have prized the power of renovating
and adorniug it as thoroughly as any petite
maitresse would have prized the power of
adorning her bijou residence with all the
prettiness of modern upholstery, was a
shrine in her eyes. Base and unbeautiful,
but sacred, the place in which her father
had dutifully and patiently passed his la-
borious life had it not been wasted ? the
proud discontented spirit asked itself many
a time, but found no voice to answer
"no." She had often pictured to her
fancy what the house might have been made,
if there had but been money to make it
anything with, money to do anything with ;
if only they had not always been so help-
less, so burthened with the especially pain-
ful load of genteel poverty. She had ex-
ercised her womanly ingenuity, put forth
her womanly tastes, so far as she could,
and the house was better than might have
been expected under all the circumstances ;
but ingenuity and taste, which double the
effect of money when united to that useful
agency, are not of much avail without it,
and will not supply curtains and carpet,
paint, varnishing, and general upholstery.
There was not a superfluous ornament, and
there were many in the drawing-rooms at
Woolgreaves, very offensive to her instinc-

tively correct taste, whose price would
not have materially altered the aspect
of Marian Ashurst' s home, as she had
recognised with much secret bitterness
of spirit, on her first visit to the
Creswells. She would have made the
old house pretty and pleasant, if she
could, especially while he lived, to whom
its prettiness and pleasantness might have
brought refreshment of spirit, and a little
cheerfulness in the surroundings of his toil-
some life ; but she loved it, notwithstand-
ing its dulness and its frigid shabbiness,
and the prospect of being obliged to leave
it gave her exquisite pain. Marian was
surprised when she discovered that her
feelings on this point were keener than
those of her mother. She had anticipated,
with shrinking and reluctance of whose
intensity she felt ashamed, the difficulty
she should experience when that last worst
necessity must arise, when her mother
must leave the home of so many years, and
the scene of her tranquil happiness. Mrs.
Ashurst had been a very happy woman,
notwithstanding her delicate health, and the
difficulties it had brought upon the little
household. In the first place, she was
naturally of a placid temperament. In the
second, her husband told her as little as
possible of the constantly pressing, hope-
lessly inextricable, trouble of his life. And
lastly, Mrs. Ashurst's inexperience pre-
vented her realising danger in the future,
from any source except that one whence it
had actually come, fallen in its fullest,
most fatal might the sickness and death of
her husband. When that tremendous blow
fell upon her, it stunned the widow. She
could not grieve, she could not care about
anything else. She was not a woman of
an imaginative turn of mind ; feeling had
always been powerful and deep in her, but

<tf

122 [January 9, 18C9.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

fancy had never been active, so that when
the one awful and overwhelming fact
existed, it was quite enough for her,
it swamped everything else, it needed not
to bring up any reinforcements to her dis-
comfiture. She was ready to go anywhere,
with Marian, to do anything which Marian
advised, or directed. The old house was
to be left, a new home was to be sought
for. A stranger was coming to be the
master where her husband's firm but
gentle rule had made itself loved, re-
spected, and obeyed, for so long ; a stranger
was to sit in her husband's seat, and move
about the house where his step and his
voice were heard no more, listened for
no longer, not even now, in the first con-
fused moments of waking after the blessed
oblivion of sleep. And in that awful fact
all was included.

Poor Mrs. Ashurst cared little for the'
linen and the china now. Whether they
should be packed up and removed to the
humble lodgings which were to be the next
home of herself and her daughter, or whether
Mr. Ashurst 's successor should be asked to
take them at a valuation, were points which
she left to Marian's decision. She had not
any interest in anything of the kind now.
It was time that Marian's mind should be
made up on these and other matters ; and
the girl, notwithstanding her premature
gravity and her habit of decision, found
her task difficult, in fact and sentiment.
Her mother was painfully quiescent, hope-
lessly resigned. In every word and look
she expressed plainly that life had come to
a standstill for her, that she could no longer
feel any interest or take any active part
in its conduct ; and thus she depressed
Marian very much, who had her own sense
of impending disappointment and impera-
tive effort, in addition to their common
sorrow, to struggle against.

Mrs. Ashurst and her daughter had seen
a good deal of the family at Woolgreaves,
since the day on which Marian's cherished
belief in the value and delight of wealth
had been strengthened by that visit to the
splendid dwelling of her father's old friend.
The young ladies had quite "taken to"
Mrs. Ashurst, and Mrs. Ashurst had almost
" taken to" them. They came into Helm-
ingham frequently, and never without
bringing welcome contributions from the
large and lavishly kept gardens at "Wool-
greaves. They tried, in many girlish and
unskilful ways, to be intimate with Ma-
rian ; but they felt they did not succeed,
and only their perception of their uncle's

wishes prevented their giving up the
effort. Marian, was very civil, very much
obliged for their kindness and attention ;
but un-cordial, " un- get- at- able," Maud
Oreswell aptly described it.

The condition of Mr. Ashurst' s affairs
had not proved to be quite so deplorable as
had been supposed. There was a small
insurance of his life; there were a few
trifling sums due to him, which the debtors
made haste to pay, owing, indeed, to the
immediate application made to them by
Mr. Creswell, who interfered as actively as
unostentatiously on behalf of the bereaved
woman ; altogether a little sum remained,
which would keep them above want, or the
almost equally painful effort of immediate
exertion to earn their own living, with
management. Yes, that was the qualifica-
tion, which Marian understood thoroughly,
understood to mean daily and hourly self-
denial, watchfulness, and calculation, and
more and worse than that the termination
on her part of the hope of preventing her
mother's missing the material comforts,
which had been procured and preserved for
her, by a struggle whose weariness she
had never been permitted to comprehend.

The old house had been shabby and
poor, but it had been comfortable. It had
given them space and cleanliness, and
there was no vulgarity in' its meagreness.
But the only order of lodgings to which
her mother and she could venture to aspire
was that which invariably combines the
absence of space and of cleanliness with the
presence of tawdriness and discomfort. And
this must last until Walter should be able
to rescue them from it. She could not
suffice to that rescue herself, but he would.
He must succeed ! Had he not every
quality, every facility, and the strongest of
motives ? She felt this that, in her case,
the strongest motive would have been the
desire for success, per se ; but in his the
strongest was his love of her. She recog-
nised this, she knew this, she admired it
in an abstract kind of way ; when her
heart was sufficiently disengaged from
pressing care to find a moment for any
kind of joy, she rejoiced in it ; but she
knew she could not imitate it 'that was
not in her. She had not much experience
of herself yet, and the process of self-
analysis was not habitual to her ; but she
felt instinctively that the feebler, more
selfish instincts of love were hers, its noble
influences, its profounder motives, her
lover's.

It was, then, to him she had to look, in

*tf

=5"

Charles Dickens.'

WRECKED IN PORT.

[January 9, 18G9.] 123

him she had to trust, for the rescue that
was to come in time. In how much time ?
In how little ? Ah, there was the ever-
present, ever-pressing question, and Marian
brought to its perpetual repetition all the
importance, all the unreasonable measure-
ment of time, all the ignorance of its ex-
ceeding brevity and insignificance, insepa-
rable from her youth.

She had nearly completed the prepara-
tions for departure from the old home;
the few possessions left her and her mother
were ready for removal ; a lodging in the
village had been engaged, and the last few
days were dragging themselves heavily over
the heads of Mrs. Ashurst and Marian,
where Mr. Creswell, having returned to
Woolgreaves after a short absence, came to
see them.

Mrs. Ashurst was walking in the ne-
glected garden, and had reached the far
end of the little extent, when Mr. Creswell
arrived at the open door of the house. A
woman servant, stolid and sturdy, was
passing through the red-tiled square hall.

" Is Miss Ashurst in ?" asked the visitor.
" Mrs. Ashurst is in the garden I see
don't disturb her."

Marian, who had heard the voice, an-
swered Mr. Creswell' s question by appear-
ing on the threshold of the room which had
been her father's study, and which since
his death her mother and she had made
their sitting-room. She looked weary;
the too bright colour which fatigue brings
to some faces was on hers, and her eyelids
were red and heavy ; her black dress, which
had the limp ungraceful lustreless look of
mourning attire too long unrenewed, hung
on her fine upright figure, after a fashion
which told how little the girl cared how
she looked, and the hand she first held
out to Mr. Creswell, and then drew back
with a faint smile, was covered with dust.

" I can't shake hands," she said, " I
have been tying up the last bundles of
books and papers, and my hands are dis-
graceful. Come in here, Mr. Creswell; I
believe there is one unoccupied chair."

He followed her into the study, and took
the seat she pointed out, while she placed
herself on a pile of folios which lay on the
floor in front of the low wide window.
Marian laid her arm upon the window sill,
and leaned her head back against one of
the scanty frayed curtains. Her eyes closed
for a moment, and a slight shudder passed
over her.

" You are very tired, Miss Ashurst, quite
worn out," said Mr. Creswell; "you have

been doing too much packing all those
books I suppose."

" Yes," said Marian, " I looked to that
myself, and, indeed, there was nobody else
to do it. But it is tiring work, and dirty,"
she struck her hands together, and shook
her dress, so that a shower of dust fell
from it " and sad work besides. You
know, Mr. Creswell," here her face softened
suddenly, and her voice fell " how much
my father loved his books. It is not easy
to say good-bye to them ; it is like a faint
echo, strong enough to pain one though, of
the good-bye to himself."

" But why are you obliged to say good-
bye to them ?" asked Mr. Creswell, with
genuine anxiety and compassion.

" What could we do with them ?" said
Marian ; " there's no place to keep them.
We must have taken another room spe-
cially for them, if we took them to pur
lodgings, and there's no one to buy them
here. So we are going to send them to
London to be sold ; I suppose they will
bring a very small sum indeed nothing,
perhaps, when the expenses are paid. But
it is our only means of disposing of them.
So I have been dusting and sorting and
arranging them all day, and I am tired and
dusty and sick sick at heart."

Marian leaned her head on the arm
which lay on the window sill, and looked
very forlorn. She also looked very pretty,
and Mr. Creswell thought so. This softened
mood, so unusual to her, became her, and
the little touch of confidence in her manner,
equally unusual, flattered him. He felt an
odd sort of difficulty in speaking to her.
To this young girl, his old friend's orphan
child, one to whom he intended so kindly,
towards whom his position was so entirely
one of patronage; not in any offensive
sense, of course, but still of patronage.

"I I never thought of this," he said,
hesitatingly ; " I ought to have remem-
bered it, of course ; no doubt the books
must be a difficulty to you, a difficulty to
keep, and a harder one to part with. But,
bless me, my dear Miss Ashurst, you say
there is no one here to buy them. You
did not remember me ? Why did you not
remember me ? Of course I will buy them.
I shall be only too delighted to buy them,
to have the books my good friend loved so
much of course I shall."

" I had seen your library at Wool-
greaves," said Marian, replying to Mr.
Creswell's first impetuous question, " and
I could not suppose you wanted more books,
or such shabby ones as these."

124 [January 9, 18G9.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

" You judge of books like a lady, then,
though you were your father's companion
as well as his pet," said Mr. Creswell,
smiling. " Those shabby books are, many
of them, much more valuable than my
well-dressed shelf- fillers. And even if they
were not, I should prize them for the same
reason that you do, and almost as much
yes, Miss Ashurst, almost as much. Men
are awkward about saying such things, but
I may tell his daughter that but for James
Ashurst I never should have known the
value ef books in other than a commercial
sense, I mean."

" I don't know what they are worth,"
said Marian, " but if you will find out, and
buy them, my mother and I will be very
thankful. I know it will be a great relief
to her to think of them at Woolgreaves,
and all together. She has fretted more
about my father's books being dispersed,
and going into the hands of strangers, than
about any other secondary cause of sorrow.
The other things she takes quietly enough."

The widow could be seen from the
window by them both, as she pursued her
monotonous walk in the garden, with her
head bowed down and her figure so ex-
pressive of feebleness.

" Does she ?" said Mr. Creswell. " I
am very glad to hear that. Then" and
here Mr. Creswell gave a little sigh of
relief "we will look upon the matter of
the books as arranged, and to-morrow I
will send for them. Give yourself no
further trouble about them. Fletcher shall
settle it all."

" You will have them valued ?" Marian
asked, with business-like seriousness.

" Certainly," returned Mr. Creswell ;
" and now tell me what your plans are,
and where these lodgings are to which
you alluded just now. Maud and Ger-
trude have not seen you, they tell me, since
you took them ?"

"No," said Marian, without the least
tone of regret in her voice; " we have not
met since your visit to Manchester. Miss
Creswell's cold has kept her at home, and
I have been much too busy to get so far as
Woolgreaves."

"Your mother has seen my nieces ?"

"Yes; Miss Gertrude Creswell called,
and took her for a drive, and she remained
to lunch at "Woolgreaves. But that was
one day when I was lodging- hunting no-
thing had then been settled."

" The girls are very fond of Mrs.
Ashurst."

"They are very kind," said Marian,

The Misses Creswell were abso-
lutely uninteresting to her, and as yet
Marian Ashurst had never pretended to
entertain a feeling she did not experience.
The threshold of that particular school of
life in which the art of feigning is learned
lay very near her feet now, but they had.
not yet crossed it.

Marian and Mr Creswell remained a
long time together before Mrs. Ashurst
came in. The girl spoke to the old gentle-
man with more freedom and with more
feeling than on any previous occasion of
their meeting ; and Mr. Creswell began
to think how interesting she was in com-
parison with Maud and Gertrude, for
instance; how much sense she had, how
little frivolity. How very good-looking
she was, also ; he had no idea she ever
would have been so handsome yes, posi-
tively handsome ; he used the word in his
thoughts, she certainly had not possessed
anything like it when he had seen her
formerly a dark, prim, old-fashioned kind
of girl, going about her father's study with
an air of quiet appreciative sharpness and
shrewdness, which he did not altogether
like. But she really had become quite
handsome, now, in her poor dress, with
her grieved tired face, her hair carelessly
pushed off it any way, and her hands rough
and soiled ; she had made him recognise
and feel that she had the gift of beauty
also.

Mr. Creswell thought about this when
he had taken leave of Mrs. Ashurst and
Marian, having secured their promise to
come to Woolgreaves on the day but one
after, when he hoped Marian would as-
sist him in assigning places to the books,
which she felt almost reconciled to part
with under these new conditions. He
thought about them a good deal, and tried
to make out, among the dregs of his
memory, who it was who had said, within
his hearing, when Marian was a child,
" Yes, she's a smart little girl, sure enough,
and a dead hand at a bargain."

Marian Ashurst thought about Mr. Cres-
well after he left her and her mother.
Mrs. Ashurst was very much relieved and
gratified by his kindness about the books,
as was Marian also. But the mother and
daughter regarded the incident from dif-
ferent points of view. Mrs. Ashurst dwelt
on the kindness of heart which dictated
the purchase of the dead friend's books as
at once a tribute to the old friendship and a
true and delicate kindness to the survivors.
Marian saw all that, but she dwelt rather

Charles Dickens.]

SCOTCH PEARLS.

[January 9, 1869.] 125

on the felicitous condition which rendered
it easy to indulge such impulses. Here
was another instance, and in her favour, of
the value of money.

" It has made more than one difference
to me," she thought that night, when she
was alone, and looked round the dismantled
study ; "it has made me like old Mr.
Creswell, and hitherto I have only envied
him."

" Do be persuaded, dear Mrs. Ashurst,"
said Maud Creswell, in a tone of sincere
and earnest entreaty. She had made her
appearance at the widow's house early on
the day which succeeded her uncle's visit,
and had presented, in her own and in her
sister's name, as well as in that of Mr.
Creswell, a petition, which she was now
backing up with much energy. " Do come
and stay with us. We are not going
to have any company; there shall be
nothing that you can possibly dislike.
And Gerty and I will not tease you or
Miss Ashurst ; and you shall not be
worried by Tom or anything. Do come,
dear, dear Mrs. Ashurst; never mind the
nasty lodgings ; they can go on getting
properly aired, and cleaned, and so on,
until you are tired of Woolgreaves, and
then you can go to them at any time. But
not from your own house, where you have
been so long, into that little place, in a
street, too. Say you will come, now do."

Mrs. Ashurst was surprised and pleased.
She recognised the girl's frank affection
for her ; she knew the generous kindness
of heart which made her so eager to do
her uncle's bidding, and secure a long
visit to the splendid home he had given his
nieces, to those desolate women. Nothing
but a base mean order of pride could have
revolted against the offer so made, and so
pressed. Mrs. Ashurst yielded, and Maud
Creswell returned to her uncle in high
delight to announce that she had been
successful in the object of her embassy.

" How delightful it will be to have the
dear old lady here, Gerty," said Maud to
her sister. "The more I see of her the
better I like her, and I mean to be so kind
and attentive to her. I think Miss Ashurst
is too grave, and she always seems so busy
and preoccupied: I don't think she can
rouse her mother's spirits much."

" No, I think not," said Gertrude. "I
like the old lady very much too ; but I
don't quite know about Miss Ashurst ; I
think the more I see of her, the less I seem
to know her. You must not leave her

altogether to me, Maud. I wonder why
one feels so strange with her ? Heigh-ho ! ' '
said the girl with a comical look, and a
shake of her pretty head, " I suppose it's
because she's so superior."

On the following day, Mrs. Ashurst and
Marian took leave of their old home, and
were conveyed in one of Mr. Creswell's
carriages to "Woolgreaves.

SCOTCH PEAELS.

Scotch pearls have again come into fashion.
The revival of the public taste in their favour
may be attributed, partly to the recent failure
of the Manaar fisheries in Ceylon, partly to the
cheapness of the western gem, and in some
measure, perhaps, to the fact that large quan-
tities of Scottish pearls have been purchased
by Queen Victoria and the Empress Eugenie.
Some fifteen years ago, these pearls were
scarce and lightly esteemed ; but, owing to the
exertions of a German merchant, and the care
taken by him to select and exhibit the best
specimens, the trade, which had languished for
about a century, has very largely revived, and
is now recognised as a legitimate branch of the
business of the dealer in precious stones.

People are so much accustomed, when pearls
are spoken of, to picture to themselves the
Persian Gulf and its swart eastern divers, that
they rarely think of the produce of their own
shores, or imagine that the fine, delicate, pink-
hued treasures which they admire in the win-
dows of the jewellers, have been fished up out
of their own native rivers. And yet this is not
only so ; but the practice of wading in the
streams to fish for the mussels containing the
pearl, dates back almost to antiquity. Long
before the jeweller's art had become so common
as to place ornaments for bodily decoration
within reach of the multitude, pearls of great
size and beauty were to be found in Scot-
land, in the possession of the humble, who,
though they could not fail to admire them,
were quite ignorant of their value. Rather
more than a century ago, some artist, cun-
ning in the detection of precious stones, pro-
claimed their worth, and a brisk trade in
pearls sprang up between the bleak north of
Scotland and the wealthy marts of the English
metropolis. The fishing was confined to Perth-
shire and one or two counties beyond the
Grampians ; but the chief seat of the industry
was at the head waters of the river Tay.

For a time the dwellers on the banks of the
Tay were zealous, and pearls worth thousands
of pounds were sent up to the London jewel-
lers ; but for a hundred years between 1761
and 18G1 either from lack of zeal on the part
of the fishers, or from a falling off in the
supply of the shell-fish, the fisheries were
allowed to fall into disuse. During that long
interval, Scotch pearls, which had before been
plentiful, were only to be found in certain

126 [January 9, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

shops and at wide intervals ; or, if one of more
than ordinary excellence turned up, it had
been found by accident in the bed of one of
the pearl rivers during a more than ordinarily
dry season. So matters remained until about
1860. Then, a German gentleman travelling
in Scotland, having his attention directed to
some gems procured in the northern streams,
was struck by their elegance and the peculiar
tint which distinguished them notably from
pearls of the East. Himself well acquainted
with precious stones, he at once recognised
the value of the Scotch pearl, and the im-
portant place it might be made to take in
modern jewellery. Making inquiries on the
subject, he discovered that there was at that
time only one known pearl fisher in all Scot-
land, and that the produce of his exertions did
not reach the jewellers, but was sold to a pri-
vate customer. The German felt persuaded
that pearls were to be found in considerable
abundance in certain Scotch rivers, and that
all that was requisite to ensure a large supply,
was, to hold out some inducement to the poor
people to search for the mussels. Full of his
project, he travelled through the districts of
Tay, Doon, and Don, and succeeded in pur-
chasing from the poor cottagers a great many
pearls, which they had fished for their own
amusement, and which they merely kept as
curiosities, not esteeming them of any parti-
cular value. The price given for the gems
roused their cupidity, and a general desire for
mussel fishing was created a desire which
rose into something like a mania when the
merchant announced that he would purchase as
many good pearls, at the same price, as could
be forwarded to him through the post to Edin-
burgh.

Before he completed his circuit, the prospect
of large and easily-earned gains had acted like
a charm upon hundreds, and sent them to the
rivers. Those who were otherwise employed
during the day, devoted hours of the long
summer nights to diligent search after the
coveted shells ; while boys and old persons,
who had no regular avocations, waded day after
day where there was promise of reward. In the
course of a short time pearls of all kinds
good, bad, and indifferent began to flow in
upon the originator of the idea, from Ayrshire,
from Perthshire, and from Highland regions
far beyond the Grampians. He found himself
the possessor of a collection which, for richness
and variety, has seldom been surpassed. A
trade in this class of gems was opened ; the pa-
tronage of royalty was obtained ; and once
again Scotch pearls became known.

The principal rivers in which the pearl-
mussel is found, are the Tay, the Don, the
Teith, the Forth, the Ythan, the Doon, the
Spey, the Ugie, and the Earn. The shell-fish
in the smaller of these streams have been nearly
exhausted by the severe spoliation to which
they have been subjected ; but in the classic
Doon of Burns and the upper reaches of the
Tay, the fishings still yield profitable results.
When the yield of pearl-mussels was at its

highest, and public attention was largely di-
rected to the subject, a theory was advanced
to the effect that the shell-fish in which the pearl
grows, was only to be found in rivers whose
sources were in lochs ; but this was easily re-
futed by the fact that four of the pearl rivers
are known not to issue from lakes. This point
set at rest, it was next thought that the head-
quarters, so to speak, of the much prized mussel,
was in the lochs, and that the rivers contained
only a comparatively small number that had
been swept downward, and gradually accumu-
lated at the elbows of the streams. The latter
supposition was strengthened in consequence of
a number of pearls having been accidentally dis-
covered in Loch Venachar. Dredging experi-
ments were conducted to test the truth of the
new theory, but they ended in failure. Very
few mussels were found, and those were so
much scattered, and in some instances were so
covered with mud, as to make the toil of search
heavy, and the reward light. The hope of
finding large beds of the valuable shell-fish in
the lakes was abandoned, and operations were
confined to the rivers.

The mode of fishing is primitive in its sim-
plicity. No expense is incurred, no instru-
ments are required. There is no mystery in
the craft. Nothing is needed but patience.
Men, women, and children, are rewarded indis-
criminately ; for skill does not avail. To
search the bed of the stream until a collection
of the mussels is discovered, is the first care ;
and this is often the most tedious part of the
work. If these fresh-water shell-fish lay in
such extensive clusters as their brethren of the
salt water, a bank of them might be easily
lighted upon, but they congregate in compara-
tively small numbers, and if the river have a
muddy bottom the search is almost hopeless.
Once discovered, however, the operation of
fishing them out is easy. The fisher wades
into the river, armed with a long stick, one
end of which has a simple slit in it made by a
knife. This stick he pokes down among the
shells, and brings them up firmly wedged
in the slit. He tosses the shells ashore, as
he gets them, and usually does not leave off
until he has amassed a goodly heap. Sometimes
he has only to wade above the knees, and can
pick up the mussels by stooping ; but more
frequently the water covers his hips, and at
times he is immersed almost to the arm-pits :
on which occasions he must dive with his head
below the current. On some of the streams the
people have hit on the expedient of raking the
bed with a large iron rake and bringing the
mussels ashore ; but the cleft stick is the
popular way.

When the fisher has collected shells enough
to try his luck with, he proceeds to open them.
Occasionally he carries the mussels home and
proceeds leisurely ; but more frequently, if the
day be not too far upon the wane, he contents
himself with searching for the spoil upon the
river bank. Those who can afford a knife,
make use of it to force open the shell ; others,
who have none, perform the operation deftly

Charles Dickens.;

MR. VOLT, THE ALCHEMIST.

[January 9, 1863.] 127

with a shell sharpened for the purpose. This
way has an advantage, inasmuch as there
is less risk of scratching the pearl, should
there be one inside. The fisher reckons him-
self unlucky, if he open a hundred shells with-
out finding a pearl. Many a time, however,
this happens, and he goes home deploring a
lost day. The fates may be against him for a
whole week. On the other hand, the first or
second fish he opens may reward his labour.
Frequently the toiler finds a dozen pearls, not
one of which is of any value, by reason of bad
colour, bad shape, or some other defect.
Speaking roughly, it may be estimated that
about one pearl in a dozen brings a profit to the
finder ; and that that one pearl is to be found
in every fortieth shell. The chances of the
pearl-searcher are about equal to those of the
gold-digger, and many who start eagerly on
the quest are soon disheartened. Perseverance
and dogged determination seldom fail in the
long run to realise modest expectations.

The mussels taken from a shingly or rocky
bed are much more productive in pearls than
those derived from the sand. Hence the ex-
perienced fisher does not usually waste his time
in probing the latter, but if he "hit" sand,
goes elsewhere in search of gravel. For a
similar reason he shuns muddy bottoms, be-
cause, though he may get plenty of pearls
there, they are too much discoloured. Na-
turalists are not quite agreed as to the age at
which the mussels begin to grow the pearl, but
it is always when they have attained to ma-
turity and never during adolescence. The ac-
customed operator discards the young mollusc,
and saves himself much unnecessary trouble.

Scotch pearls can never become a substitute
for true pearls of the East ; but their discovery
in abundance has given a new ornament to the
community, and has furnished a substitute for
Eastern pearls far more beautiful and precious
than the dingy imitations in paste.

MK. VOLT, THE ALCHEMIST.

I am by profession a solicitor I regret to
say literally so ; my practice being almost en-
tirely confined to " soliciting" the settlement of
long-standing debts, on behalf of clients whose
less peremptory solicitations have proved inef-
fectual. Business of this nature took me to
Stoppington, on the South JSTorth-Eastern Rail-
way. I had a spare evening before me, and
remembering that an old college chum of
mine, Mark Stedburn, had married and settled
down as a doctor somewhere in the neighbour-
hood, I resolved to look him up.

" You see that tall tower on the hill, right
across the heath, three mile away ? That's Mr.
Volt's Tower at Firworth. Walk straight for
the tower, and you can't mistake. You'll find
Mr. Stedburn's a little further on."

It was a pleasant walk across the winter
heath. The rain had fallen all day, but had
ceased at sunset, and the stars sparkled as if
the rain had washed them newly bright.

Not far from the tower, I met Mark Sted-
burn, bustling along on foot at a great pace.
I might have passed him without knowing who
it was ; he had become so pale, and thin, and
hollow-eyed ; but he recognised me imme-
diately.

" Look here, old boy," he said, " you will sup
with me, and of course I will find you a bed ;
but I'm off to see a patient a couple of miles
away, and I can't say to half an hour how long
I may be detained. I tell you what you shall
do till I return. Take my card, by way of in-
troduction, and go in and see Mr. Volt at the
tower there. He is always delighted to see
visitors, and is a kind of man you won't meet
every day."

" But what is Mr. Volt ?"
" What is he ? Everything, almost. A great
chemist for one thing. He professes to believe
in alchemy. But go in and see him for your-
self. I will meet you there as soon as I can."
And he shook hands, and went his way.

Firworth I found on a great heathy hill, with
two clumps of firs the greater and the lesser
clump. About these, traffic has worn a bald
patch in the heather on the hill-top, and thrown
up a cottage or two, which is Firworth. In the
midst of the lesser clump and in the centre of
the rise, stands Mr. Volt's tall brick tower,
tapering towards the parapet, and surmounted
by a high wooden observatory, whose top is
about ninety feet from the ground. Built into
the walls of the edifice are mystical devices in
dark bricks. A sun-dial, marked with strange
characters, stood out in the light before the door,
when I first saw it, with two enormous boles of
gnarled dead trees on either side, taking gro-
tesque shapes in the evening light. When I
pulled the heavy iron ring at the end of a
chain hanging before the large oaken door, it
seemed as if the clangour of the deep-toned bell
would never cease. It died away in queer
echoes, that seemed to wake again in the top-
most stories of the building above me. I could
hear the sound wandering about the hollow
tower until it reached the observatory, whence
it floated out into the night.

The door was opened by a man, who might
have been of any age between forty and seventy.
He was either an old young man, or a young
old man. He carried an oil-lamp which he
shaded with his hand. I saw that he had a
quantity of matted grey hair and beard ; that
his face was kindly and intellectual, though full
and sleek ; that his eyes, deep and brown and
thoughtful, glowed with a strange dull lustre
that made me suspect opium. His dress was
disorderly, uncouth, and old fashioned.

Apologising for my intrusion, I introduced
myself as a friend of Mr. Stedburn's, and pre-
sented Mark's card.

" I need no introduction," said Mr. Volt,
quietly. " Living here alone, I am always glad
to see a fellow-student. You are a fellow-
student, or you would not be here. Enter."

We passed through some spacious bare rooms
full of old sculpture, old pictures, old books,
and philosophical instruments, heaped in piles

128 [January 9, 1369.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

[Conducted by

without care or order, and covered with dust
and cobwebs. Then he led me into a large
laboratory, of which every part was crammed
with bottles of chemicals, retorts, crucibles,
papers, more old books and pictures, more
strange instruments, and all kinds of learned
litter. A small furnace was at one end of the
room, and beside it a still.

"You see the nature of my employment,"
Mr. Volt began, when he had begged me to be
seated in a tall old-fashioned chair. "My
time is occupied in chemical research. It is a
wide field, sir, a wide field. It is true we
seekers have found neither the philosopher's
stone, nor the elixir vitae, nor the alcahest;
but in seeking them through speculative che-
mistry, we have found the secrets of steam,
gas, electricity. It is good still to keep before
us the three old aims of the alchemists ; the
more so, I think, if they never be attained,
since they stimulate search. When we give up
dreaming of wonders yet unrealised, we shall
give up seeking."

" Am I to suppose," I said, " that you have
yourself contributed an important discovery to
science?"

" I don't know. I can scarcely tell," replied
Mr. Volt, hesitating. " I fear it is in advance
of the age." The eyes of the old man assumed
a singular look of fulness, and the pupils be-
came dilated. " You will probably be sceptical
when I tell you that I have discovered a certain
solvent by which to resolve the being we call
man, at will, into his primitive elements of body
and spirit : allowing the spirit by itself to travel
over the universe, free from the gross trammels
of the fleshly element."

" You do not mean to imply that you can go
out of your body at pleasure ?" I asked, doubt-
ful of Mr. Volt's sanity.

" I do mean no less, and probably more,"
he replied, with composure.

" Surely it is more easy to go out of your
mind," I observed.

"A jest is but a poor answer to a fact
proved by experience. Still I will accept your
very retort as an evidence how plausible my
position really is. If it be so easy as you sup-
pose for a man to go out of his mind (which, to
me, involves a contradiction in terms, since I
hold the mind to be the man himself), it surely
must be less difficult to suppose he can go out
of his body ; which, I take it, is but the external
idea of the man. For my own part I have been
a great traveller, although my external idea
has not left Firworth for many years. I ex-
plored Central Africa long before Livingstone.
I am familiar with the whole tract of Abyssinia,
and have investigated all the territory of Japan.
Dreams, you say? The publishers say the
same. Although I have written volumes on
the subject of my travels, no one will print
them, simply on the ground that I was not
foolish enough to waste time and endanger my
life on long sea voyages, when I could travel
quicker without. I made the first step in
my grand discovery," Mr. Volt went on, and I
saw that argument was out of the question,

" accidentally. Your friend, Mark Stedburn,
who occasionally practises chemistry with me,
was, at my suggestion, combining defiant gas
and iodine in a peculiar manner over the fur-
nace, to produce a vapour of iodic ether at a
high temperature with which to experiment.
When heated to three hundred and eighty de-
grees, fumes of a pale violet colour and of a
penetrating ethereal odour, rose from the cru-
cible, dispersing themselves in wreathing clouds
about the room. I remembered at this moment
having made a very important omission in the
directions I had given him, but feared to speak,
as the operation on which he was engaged was
of so delicate and absorbing a nature, that to
disturb him even by a word would have involved
his going through the whole process again. At
the time I wished very strongly that he would
take a certain book from a shelf beside him, and
refer to section two hundred and seventeen,
where he would find the omitted direction.
His back was towards me at the moment, but I
saw him reach down the book and refer to the
place. When he had completed the experi-
ment successfully, I inquired what had led him
to take down that book ? His reply was : ' I
felt you had told me to do so.' Reflection
convinced me that I had unknowingly projected
my mind upon his ; and I had reason to believe
that the pale violet vapour had rendered this
easier of accomplishment than under ordinary
circumstances. I thereupon commenced a series
of experiments with a view to ascertain how
far it would be possible to carry out this prin-
ciple of the projection of mind. I find it is
first of all needful so to refine the body, by a
course of low vegetable diet, succeeded by a
day's fasting, that the spirit shall withdraw
itself from its outposts and become gradually
detached from the external idea, every part of
which must be brought into abject subjugation
to the will. Then, after inhaling the pale violet
vapour for fifteen minutes, I take a small quan-
tity of confection from this box, and, remaining
in the heated fumes of the vapour, can distil
the spirit from my body in a pure essence, as
easily as we distil the spirit from any other
earthly body. I thus obtain pure concentrated
mind. In this state I can either travel not
involuntarily as in dreams, but consciously and
under the direction of my own will or I can
project my mind on that of another person,
and five in him and direct him for the time
being, while my own body appears to sleep."

" May I ask of what this confection con-
sists?" I said, very sceptically indeed. Mr.
Volt placed in my hand a small tortoise-shell
box, containing a dull greenish paste.

" That is the true ' hatchis,' " he explained ;
" it is made of many ingredients, but Indian
hemp, and a peculiarly volatile preparation of
opium, are two of its active principles."

" And the vapour ?"

" No ; that is my secret. But," he continued,
dropping his voice almost to a whisper, "I
meditate a still greater experiment in the pro-
jection of mind than any I have hitherto at-
tempted. I propose for Mark Stedburn and

Charles Dickens.]

MR. VOLT, THE ALCHEMIST.

[January 9, 1869.] 129

myself to perform the operation simultaneously :
each to project his mind upon that of the other,
and not to rest until we have literally exchanged
ideas I mean outward ideas bodies.

" Has Mr. Stedburn consented to make the
attempt ?" I inquired.

" He has. And we intend to try it very
soon. I do not, however, conceal from myself
that the experiment is fraught with some risk,
since we may have largely to increase the dose
of hatchis. Now, having no near relations of
any kind, I have resolved to execute a docu-
ment, leaving my whole property to Mark Sted-
burn before we begin the experiment. And to
prevent any difficulty, in the event of my de-
cease, arising from ignorant persons who might
stupidly attribute it to suicide (for it might
look like it), I intend to execute an uncon-
ditional deed of gift, instead of a will. If you
would act as trustee under this deed I should
feel obliged."

Just then the great bell rang, and Mark came
in : to my infinite relief.

" Well," he said, " has Mr. Volt told you of
his grand discovery ?"
" Oh, yes," I returned.
" What do you think of it ?"
" I don't know what to think," I replied,
raising my eyebrows to imply that I didn't know
what to say about it in Mr. Volt's presence.

"You see," said Mark to Mr. Volt, "our
friend's mind cannot quite grasp a new and
powerful truth all at once. When he has tested
it by experience, he will be wiser."
" No doubt," he assented.
Was Mark a believer, too ? And were they
both mad? As I looked at the two men
together : Mr. Volt, plump and full-faced :
Mark, thin and pale : it occurred to me that
by deluding him into dreamy and speculative
studies, Mr. Volt had sucked the life and health
out of my friend as if he had been a vam-
pire.

"This is the hatchis," said Mark, bringing
me the box again. " Shall he try it, Mr.
Volt?"

"Yes, if he will: though its effect, alone,
without previous preparation of the body and
without the violet vapour, can only be feeble."
I deprecated any trial of the sort.
"Try it," Mark insisted; "I give you my
word as a medical man, and as your friend,
that I have taken it myself, and that you shall
feel no ill-effects from it. I promise that you
shall not remain more than ten minutes under
its influence. Take the dose Mr. Volt will give
you. It is now ten minutes to nine. You shall
leave the tower with me at nine punctually."

I consented. Mr. Volt brought a tiny
thin spoon, and with it took out a portion of
the hatchis, about as big as a hazel nut.

" Now," said he, " during the time you are
under the influence of this paste, you will have
certain experiences. Decide whether they shall
be real or ideal. Real, in the sense of a suc-
cession of persistently coherent ideas indepen-
dent of your own will (for I think I can so far
project my mind upon yours as to insure that),

or ideal, in the sense of a succession of ideas
directed by your own will."

I replied that as I could at any time obtain a
succession of ideas directed by my own will, I
would elect a succession of ideas produced by
his will.

Having seated me on the sofa, he gave me
the spoonful of hatchis, looking steadily into
my eyes as he did so.

I felt that his eyes hurt me somewhere in my
head I can't tell where and looking at his legs
I saw them grow large, and long, and zig-zaggy,
till they flashed away up in the ceiling, and I
felt a kind of veil-like misty rain let down before
my eyes. I seemed to grow up out of this veil,
or through it, and to gaze on the pure blue
night sky and the sparkling stars, until quickly
I was near them. They loomed, shining, on
me, as huge full-orbed planets, and I could
hear the whirr and rush they made, as they
wheeled past me round their awful orbits until
they grew distant and small, and faded into
twinkling stars again. Then, looking down, I
saw the earth spread out like a dark curtain
beneath me, and I heard it yield two great
notes like notes of a huge organ : one, harsh
and discordant, from the cities that blazed up, a
mass of flame and lurid smoke into the peaceful
sky the cry of trouble and unrest : the other,
like the quiet murmur of the forest in the night
winds. These two went up together to the
stars and blended into music. Then I felt a
cramping sensation and became oppressed, and,
gradually recovering, found myself with Mr.
Volt and Mark. I went home with Mark,
and supped, and I went to bed and slept it off,
and next morning returned to London, and fell
into my humdrum life again.

I cannot tell how long afterwards it may have
been, but as nearly as I can calculate it must
have been at least two months, when I received
a letter from Mark, announcing the death of
Mr. Volt. The letter stated that, in attempt-
ing to carry out their intention of effecting an
exchange of bodies, his eccentric friend had un-
fortunately made a mistake in his dose, which
had proved fatal.

I went down to Firworth immediately. The
first thing that struck me was the alteration in
Mark's appearance. He had become unaccount-
ably plump and sleek, and seemed wonderfully
to have improved in health during the past few
weeks. Another thing occurred to me as odd,
and this gave me pain. Mark appeared strangely
anxious to convince me that Mr. Volt was really
dead, and not in a long trance produced by
" hatchis." Notwithstanding my repugnance,
he insisted on taking me to see his friend's body,
that I might be assured of the fact. There could
be no doubt whatever that Mr. Volt was dead,
nor was there any doubt of the fact that he
had not come to his death by an overdose of
the " hatchis," for the body gave out a most
powerful and unmistakable odour of opium.
Now, it being the character of that drug to
dissipate itself immediately in the system, even
when taken to the extent of an ordinary poison-
ing dose, so thoroughly that it is next to im-

130 [January 9, 1869.;

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

possible to determine its presence by the nicest
tests, it was quite clear to me, from being able
so readily to perceive the smell, that Mr. Volt
had died of an enormous overdose of opium. As
he had been a good chemist, it was hardly
reasonable to suppose that he could have taken
such a dose ignorantly, if in his senses. It re-
mained, therefore, either that Mr. Volt must
have committed suicide, sanely, or in a fit of
insanity, or that the opium must have been
intentionally administered to him by another
person. When I reflected upon Mark's anxiety
to prove that Mr. Volt was dead, and upon his
interest in his death, and when I considered
besides how singularly Mark was altered in
his ways and modes of thought, as well as
in his bodily appearance, for a moment I had
suspicions of him. His account, however,
was as follows : That, under the influence
of the vapour, Mr. Volt had taken by mis-
take the same quantity of opium confection
that he had meant to take of the green paste,
while Mark, conscious of the mistake, yet being
himself under the influence of "hatchis" at
the time, was unable to recover himself soon
enough to prevent the error, or to use remedial
agents to save his friend's life. At the inquest
Mark nevertheless suppressed all mention of the
attempted experiment, and on his deposition
that the deceased had been in the habit of con-
suming large quantities of narcotics, a verdict
was returned to the effect that Mr. Volt came to
his death through taking an overdose of opium in
a fit of temporary insanity. The general opinion
expressed by the rustic jury on dismissal, was
this : " They always know'd old Volt were cer-
tain to pison hisself accidentally some day, and
now he had been and gone and done it sure
enough, and no mistake."

One afternoon, shortly after the funeral, to
while away the time while Mark went to visit
the same distant patient as before, I thought I
would go over the tower and look into some
of Mr. Volt's curious lumber. I obtained the
key from Mrs. Stedburn, and letting myself in
at the great heavy oak door, made my way to
the laboratory. Nothing seemed to have been
disturbed since Mr. Volt's decease. The place
was in its wonted litter. Books, manuscripts,
diagrams, instruments, bottles, retorts, cru-
cibles, were lying about as of yore. Taking
down a large manuscript tome from one of
the shelves, and finding it to consist of some
of Mr. Volt's dream-travels in Northern Asia, I
blew off the dust, and having banged the covers
together to beat out some of the pungent mil-
dew from inside, began reading. I had finished
the first chapter, when I heard my name called
in a tone of entreaty.

"Tom!"

I looked round, but could see no one. Pre-
sently the call was repeated still more plain-
tively.

" Tom !"

There was no mistake about it, and it was
Mark Stedburn's voice.

" Tom, I say !"

The voice seemed to come from the other

side of the laboratory. I concluded that Mark
was in the grounds calling from outside one of
the windows.

"Where are you?" I halloed, going over to
a window to look out.

" Here," said the voice, faintly, apparently
from within the room. It seemed to come from
one of the shelves close by me, but high up. I
took the light ladder that belonged to the
laboratory, and began to examine these shelves
one after another : determined to see into this
delusion, for I thought it nothing else. There
were, on the shelves, books and bottles and
papers papers and bottles and books in end-
less numbers, and all covered with dust. As I
ran my eye along them, I observed one very
small phial, less dusty than the rest, with a
label on it in small characters, apparently writ-
ten more recently than the labels on the other
bottles, for the ink on this one was not dis-
coloured by time as they were. I read thus :

MAEK STEDBUEN.

Bottled, Feb. 4, 1867.

The date was that of Mr. Volt's death. I was
about to take the phial into my hands to
examine it more closely, when a voice, that
appeared to come from the inside of the bottle,
said :

" Take me down very gently. Don't shake
me, Tom, whatever you do. This is It " It
was Mark Stedburn's voice.

" You ?"

" Yes, this is the pure Essence of Mind, which
that rascal, old Volt, has distilled out of my body
in a volatile spirit. Fool that I was to let him
try, but I never believed he could do it. This
is 7, Tom in a fluid state !"

I lifted him down carefully and placed
him before me on the laboratory table. The
bottle contained a thin colourless liquid, which
I judged to be very subtle and highly rec-
tified, because its surface was perfectly level,
and not concave in the slightest degree as
would be the case with the strongest known
spirit. In so confined an area, it would rise
slightly at the sides of the glass, from attraction.
This did not.

I took out the cork to try how he would
smell.

"Don't, Tom, don't; it's so cold," he cried,
piteously, " cork me, there's a dear friend, cork
me quickly, or I shall evaporate, goodness
knows where."

"Mark," I said severely, having complied
with his request, " you are an impostor. You
are a phantasm of the brain, or of the stomach.
You either represent the ill effects of that bit
of ' hatchis' I was f oolish enough to take two
months ago, or you are the ill-digested dinner
I took to-day with you and your wife."

" I'm no impostor, Tom," he answered.
" I'm an unfortunate reality. I'm persistent
and coherent, and independent of your will.
And I've been a most unfortunate reality with-
out the ghost of an external idea ever since
Volt served me this scurvy trick. You didn't
dine with me to-day, Tom. I don't appreciate

cfi=

Charles Dickens.;

ME. VOLT, THE ALCHEMIST.

[January 9, 18G9.] 131

dinners in my fluid state. You dined with Volt
and with my wife."

" Nonsense, Mark. Volt is dead, and you and
I buried him."

" Tom, you don't understand. Will you pro-
mise to listen, and not interrupt me any more ?
I want to lay my case before you for a legal
opinion ?"

Having rubbed my eyes, pinched myself, and
trod on a most painful bunion which I keep for
such emergencies, to prove I was not dreaming,
I consented to listen to the bottle : which pro-
ceeded to deliver itself of this painful narrative.

"You are aware that Mr. Volt and I medi-
tated making an exchange of external ideas
bodies pro tem. Well ; after nearly
a month's dietary, to bring our susceptibilities
to the requisite degree of fineness, we met
in this laboratory for the purpose of carry-
ing out the experiment. Before proceeding
to business, Mr. Volt informed me that, in
case of fatal results to himself, he had left
me the tower and all its contents by deed of
gift. This was very generous, as it appeared to
me, but not very reassuring. We then got our
still under way, and produced a great quantity
of the violet vapour of iodic ether. When we
had become thoroughly impregnated with its
fumes, we each took a stiff dose of ' hatchis.'
Now, whether Mr. Volt, through contriving to
sit nearer than I did to the heating apparatus
which gave out the vapour, inhaled more of it in
the time than I, or how otherwise it took place, I
do not know ; but it is certain that he managed
to distil the spirit out of his body some minutes
before I was ready to leave mine. The con-
sequence was, that while his body remained
empty, waiting for its new tenant, his essence
wandered about the room. ' Be quick, for it's
awfully chilly,' his essence said to me. ' I am
as quick as I can be,' I retorted. As soon as
ever I felt myself loose, I disengaged myself
from my external idea. And I had no sooner done
this than Mr. Volt took possession of it ; for I
heard him say to me, in my old voice, ' All right,
Mark ; I'm in ; how are you getting on ?' You
will scarcely credit the baseness of that man ;
but how do you think he had occupied the time
till I was ready ? If you will believe me, he
had gone over to his empty body and poured a
pint and a half of laudanum down its throat,
and killed it, so as to leave me nowhere to go
to ! I could have cried with vexation ; but being
vapour already, I didn't like to, in case of in-
juring myself. I made several vigorous at-
tempts to condense myself back into my own
body; but my body was only made to ac-
commodate one, and Mr. Volt more than filled
it already. This accounts for its puffing out,
and being so smooth and sleek, now he occupies
it ; it being a little tight for him. ' What is
to become of me ?' I cried. Mr. Volt, who was
pretty comfortably settled in my body by this
time, replied, ' We'll soon settle that,' and he
went and fetched a great cold sheet of glass
ugh! and condensed me into this liquid
state, and poured me into this phial. You
see why the rascal made his property over

to me. It was only in order that, when he had
stolen my body, he might enjoy it himself. Now,
in all your professional experience, did you ever
meet with a case like mine ?"

" Never," I returned.

" Very well, then. What is my remedy in
law against Mr. Volt ?"

"Really," I said, "there is no precedent to
go by. I don't see what you can charge Mr.
Volt with."

" Charge him with !" he retorted, sharply.
"Why, with every crime in the statute book.
Begin with common assault. Isn't it a common
assault to beat a man to a jelly ?"

" Of course it is."

" Then how much more to reduce a man to a
fluid state ? What would he get for the com-
mon assault ?"

" Say a fine of forty shillings and costs."

"And when he has paid that, can't you
charge him with felony? Isn't it felony to steal
wooden legs and arms ?"

" Undoubtedly."

" Then how much the more to steal real
legs and arms. He has got all mine. What
would he get for that ?"

" Not more than a twelvemonth (it being his
first offence), if convicted," I said, with marked
emphasis on the " if."

"You can charge him next with forgery,
can't you? Presuming on stealing my body,
he has forged my name to cheques on my bank-
ing account, besides embezzling the moneys in
my cash-box."

" That is an unquestionable offence."

" How much for the forgery?" he asked.

"About seven years' transportation."

" Then, again, he is living with my wife ; it's
bigamy, and good for two years, at least."

" Scarcely bigamy on his part," I said, " since,
if your story stood in evidence, your wife would
be the bigamist, she having two husbands,
whereas Mr. Volt is not a married man."

"That's unfortunate ; but you can make him
a co-respondent, can't you, and get damages out
of him, and then prosecute him again for pay-
ing the damages out of my money ? And then
you can charge him with suicide, for killing his
own body. What's the punishment for that ?"

" Only to be buried, and he has been that ;
or, if he has not, then he is not dead, and
cannot be charged with that offence."

"Make it murder, then. Indict him under
the name of Stedburn, to save trouble, and
charge him with the murder of Mr. Volt;
when he has been sentenced, get him recom-
mended to mercy, and transported for life, so
that he may come back with a ticket- of : leave
some day, and be sued in the civil courts under
a writ of ejectment for wrongly holding posses-
sion of my body."

" All this is very well, my dear Mark," I
said, " if you could only prove your case, but
I am very much afraid you have no locus standi.
The question is, could you, as a bottle, give such
evidence on these indictments as would satisfy
a jury?"
I heard the bottle murmur some reply,

132 [January 9, 1869.]

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

and then I became conscious of nothing but
the strange veil-like misty rain, and, looking
through this veil where it drew away thin and
transparent, I saw my own body asleep on a
couch in Mr. Volt's laboratory, with Mark
Stedburn beside it, loosening my necktie and
shirt collar and sprinkling water on my face.
Then the veil shrivelled up and was gone, and
I was sitting on the sofa with Mark's hand on
my pulse.

"You're all right now, old fellow, eh?" he
said, kindly.

" Let me go back to London, Mark. I have
had such queer ideas since Mr. Volt's funeral,
that I don't feel myself."

" Funeral ! Why, here is Mr. Volt. Do you
know how long you slept under the 'hat-
chis'?"

" I woke once, I know, two months ago, and
went to London. You haven't given me that
stuff again since I came back, have you?" I
stammered in doubt.

" You had one dose precisely ten minutes ago,
and it is now nine o'clock to the minute," said
Mark, holding up his watch in confirmation.
" Singular preparation, is it not ?"
ff - "I hope," said Mr. Volt, "you are now
thoroughly convinced of the reality of the im-
pressions produced by ' hatchis.' They were
sequent and recurrent, I believe, as those to
which you restrict the term reality ; were they
not? And they took place independently of
your will, I think ?"

" Quite so," I rejoined, " but still they dif-
fered from reality in this important particular,
that whereas phantasy told me you had com-
mitted suicide, I wake up to find you reso-
lutely and persistently alive."

Mr. Volt much wished to argue this point,
but Mark insisted that our time was out, and
dragged me away from the tower to his house
to supper.

"He is one of the cleverest chemists we have
in the country," Mark explained, as we walked
home.

" But he surely is not sane ?"

" He is only mad on one point," returned
Mark, " and I humour him in that for the sake
of his intelligence in other respects ; but rest
assured that, although we frequently exchange
ideas, in the common acceptation of the phrase,
I have no earthly intention of exchanging out-
ward ideas with Mr. Volt, in his sense of the
term."

THE WITCH.
I think I'd like to be a witch,

To sail upon the sea.
In a tub or sieve, in storm or shine,

Mid wild waves flashing free.
I'd catch the billows by the mane,

The bounding billows and strong,
Goad them, and curb them, or trample them down,

Or lull them with a song.
I'd churn the sea, I'd tether the winds,

As suited my fancy best,
Or call the thunder out of the sky,

When the clouds were all at rest.

I'd wreck great ships if they crossed my path,

With all the souls on board,
Wretched, but not so wretched as I,

In the judgments of the Lord.

And then, may be, I'd choose out one

With his floating yellow hair, ,
And save him, for being like my love,

In the days when I was fair.
In the days when I was fair and young,

And innocent and true ;
And then, perhaps, I'd give him a kiss,

And drown him in the blue.
In the blue, blue sea, too good to live

In a world so rotten and bad,
I think I'd like to be a witch,

To save me from going mad !

AN" ENGLISH PEASANT.

If there be any class of the English people
that is pre-eminently unknown to itself and
to all other classes, it is that of the farm
labourer. The squire or other great landed
proprietor of the neighbourhood knows them
after a certain fashion, as he knows his
cattle ; but of the labourer's mind he has as-
little idea as he has of that of the animal
which he bestrides in the hunting-field. He
knows the peasant to be a useful drudge,
like the horse that draws the plough, but
unlike the horse, to be a burden upon the-
poor-rates, either present or prospective.
Furthermore, he suspects him to be a
poacher ; and in his capacity of magistrate
deals out the harshest justice (or injustice)
towards him, if the suspicion ever comes to-
be verified. The squire's lady, and the clergy-
man's lady, and the fair matrons and spin-
sters of the Dorcas Society, or managers of
the Penny Clothes Club, know the labourer's
wife as the grateful and very humble reci-
pient of eleemosynary soup, coals, flannels,
medicines, and other small mercies that are
great in their season. The parson knows
the labourer and his family better perhaps
than anybody, if he be a true parson, and
does his duty by his flock ; but it is doubt-
ful whether even he, however zealous and
truly christian-like he may be, penetrates
into the arcana of the labourer's mind, or un-
derstands what the poor man really thinks of
his condition in this world, or his prospects
in the next. The farmer who employs him
ought to know him. better, but he does not.
The farmer's only concern with him is on a
par with the concern he has for his inani-
mate tools for his plough, his spade, or his
harrow, which he buys as cheaply as he can,,
uses as long as possible, and throws away
when they are worn out. He employs the
labourer when he is young and strong, and
gets as much work out of him as he can, for

Charles Dickens.]

AN ENGLISH PEASANT.

[January 9, 1869.] 133

the smallest price allowed by the custom of
the neighbourhood, and quietly consigns
him to the tender mercies of the work-
house, when old age or decrepitude overtake
him. To the dwellers in great cities the pea-
sant is scarcely known, always excepting the
stage peasant, the favourite dolt and clod-
hopper of the dramatists, the incarnation
of all that is stupid, if he is well disposed
towards society, and the incarnation of all
that is vicious and dangerous, if he has
sense enough to forsake the paths of vil-
lage virtue.

And the peasantry know as little of them-
selves as others know of them. They do
not comprehend, like other labouring men,
the value of union and brotherhood in pre-
venting wages from being screwed down to
the starvation point. They do not see the
necessity if labour fails them in their own
district of trying their fortunes elsewhere.
The law does not make them serfs, but they
make serfs of themselves by their ignorance
and limpet-like tenacity in sticking to the
parish in which they were born. Oliver
Goldsmith may or may not have been right
when he spoke of this class of a former
day ; but extinct in our own as " a bold
peasantry, their country's pride;" but it is
only too certain in our time, that if we are
to look for a "bold" peasantry anywhere
within the circuit of the British Isles, we
must look to the border counties, to Scot-
land, and to Ireland, rather than to Saxon
England. In the southern shires, more
especially, the condition of the peasant is
virtually that of the slave. He is tied to
his parish by circumstances too formidable
to be overcome by any such small and weak
agencies as he can employ ; and he can only
escape from it, to run a worse risk of pau-
perism in the great cities, that do not need
him, and that have no work to offer that
he is capable of performing. By the hardest
labour he cannot earn a decent subsistence,
even in his youngest and strongest days.
He is submissive to authority, because he
is so snubbed, and buffeted, and preached
at, and lectured at, as to have become
hopeless of bettering himself morally or
physically. He is what in the south of
England is called a " droil," and what in the
north of England and the southern shires
of Scotland is called a " snool," i.e., one
whose spirit is broken by oppression and
continuous ill-treatment. He does some-
times, it is true, enter a protest against his
life and its circumstances ; and kindly fate
sometimes takes pity on his misery and lifts
him out of the ill-paid drudgery which is

his normal state. In his wild young days,
when his passions are strong, and he hap-
pens to entangle himself in a love affair,
from which he has no other means of escape,
he desperately enlists for a soldier, and if
he be strong, well-behaved, fortunate, and
has received as much education as enables
him to read, write, and work up in arith-
metic as far as the rule of three, he may
rise in middle age to the dignity of a ser-
geant. A French peasant under similar
circumstances may console himself with the
idea of a marshal's baton, or a colonel's
sash in his knapsack, but no such prospect
exists for the British recruit. A broken
constitution, and a pension of ninepence a
day, are his prospects after forty, and if he
return to his native village after this time,
and is able to hedge or ditch or follow the
plough, he is better off than his fellows by
the ninepence aforesaid. If he be reckless in
another direction, and takes the notion into
his head, which he sometimes does, that the
wild fowl and game generally belong of right
as much to him as they do to the squire or
other great landed proprietor of the neigh-
bourhood, he gets into difficulties far more
serious than love, however illicit and un-
fortunate, could bring upon him, and is
lucky indeed if he do not find himself in
jail, and still luckier if, when he is released
from it, he is not possessed by seven times
as many devils of desperation as possessed
him when he and the law first came into
conflict. Young peasants are to be con-
sidered particularly fortunate if they attract
the attention of the squire or the squire's
lady by their handiness or good looks, for
they may in consequence be promoted from
the paternal cottage to the stables or to
the servants' hall of the great mansion.
This is almost the only road of fortune that
is really open to the agricultural masses.
Once in this position the way is clear
before them, if they are prudent, provident,
ambitious, and not too honest, to amass
from their savings, their " vails," their per-
quisites, and their " priggings," as much
as will elevate them into that upper stratum
of society which is occupied by green-
grocers, beershop-keepers, and other small
tradesmen who have capital enough to
invest in business. But these are the ex-
ceptions, just as the manumitted slaves in
the days of negro slavery in America were
the exception to the otherwise universal
bondage of -the race. " Once a peasant
always a peasant" seems to be the fate of
the large majority of this useful and labo-
rious class, leaving, perhaps, a margin of

134 [January 9, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

five or six per cent who drift off into the
army, the stable, or the kitchen. Why the
English peasantry, the border men excepted,
should be inferior in energy, or in the art
of bettering themselves, to their compeers
in Scotland, Ireland, and "Wales, has never
yet been satisfactorily explained ; nnless
and I do not mean to say that this parti-
cular explanation is wholly satisfactory it
be from the innate sluggishness of blood.
Whatever may be the cause, there is a lack
of imagination among them that leads to a
lack of enterprise, and that seems somehow
or other to run in the blood of those por-
tions of the British people that are not of
Celtic origin or intermixture. The pea-
santry of Saxon England have produced
among them but two poets, Robert Bloom-
field, the author of the Farmer's Boy, and
John Clare, author of the Village Minstrel ;
neither of them a poet with any claims to
the first or even to the second rank, while
Scotland's poets, sprung from the agricul-
tural and labouring classes, are to be num-
bered by scores, including Robert Burns, a
greater than fifty Bloomfields and Clares
rolled into one, and a long bead roll of
genuine bards and minstrels, of whom it is
sufficient to name Allan Ramsay, the barber,
William Ferguson, the sailor, James Hogg,
the shepherd, Robert Tannahill, the weaver,
Hugh Miller, the stonemason, and Jean
Glover, the strolling tinker.

I once endeavoured to make a more inti-
mate acquaintance with one English pea-
sant, than squires and parsons and cha-
ritable ladies ever think it worth while to
cultivate with persons of a caste, from
which their own caste is as much removed
as that of the brahmin from the pariah.
The old man was a fair specimen of his
class, neither much better nor much worse,
neither much more intelligent nor much
more apathetic than his fellows. He was
seventy years of age when I knew him
first, and he lived for three years after-
wards in the workhouse, the sole resource
for such as he, when old age comes upon
them. His name was Plant, and the par-
son of the rural parish in which he was
born and bred, and in the neighbourhood
of which he had laboured until his limbs
grew stiff and his right hand lost its cun-
ning, informed me that there had been
people of that name in the parish for five
hundred years ; perhaps, he said, offshoots
of the royal house of the "Plantagenets,
but, at all events, a very ancient family :
as if all families were not equally ancient,
if we could but trace them! William

Plant married when he was nineteen years
of age, and in the receipt of the not very
magnificent wages of ten shillings a week.
His wife, who was a year older than him-
self, was a domestic servant in the family
of the village doctor, and had saved from
her wages at the time when Plant became
enamoured of her no less a sum than seven
pounds, a fortune in the eyes of one who,
as he said, had never before held two
sovereigns in his hand. The seven pounds
went a good way towards furnishing their
little cottage of two rooms ; and for two or
three years, as the wife was a handy wo-
man, and could do plain needlework, wash,
iron, and get up fine linen, their humble
household was happy enough, and Plant
thought he had done a good thing to
marry. "It kept me out of the public-
house," he said, "and out of bad company. It
had been ' my delight of a shiny night in the
season of the year' just to go out for a lark,
but I never did that after I was married.
By-and-by the children came, and twice
the wife had twins. It seemed to me that
the twins brought us good luck, for the
squire's lady was very kind when they
came, and sent clothes, and baby linen,
and a little port wine for the missus. The
vicar's wife was good too, and made as
much fuss over the babies, for a month or
two, as if they were real live angels. And
it so happened that before twelve years
passed over, the missus and I were in
possession of eleven children, and very
hard put to it to find them bread, let
alone clothes. The missus, after her fifth
child, was no longer able to work, and had
more than enough to do to keep the house
in order and mend the rags. My wages
were by this time two shillings a day.
But, Lord love ye ! that was nothing, not
enough for two of us, let alone thirteen.
How we managed I don't know. They say
Grod Almighty always sends bread when
he sends mouths and stomachs. I did not
find it so always, and when one little child
a poor sickly ailing thing it was died
of fever, I was, I am afraid, almost wicked
enough not to feel very sorry. It was buried
by the parish, and the missus wept over it,
just as if it had been the dearest treasure
in the world, as no doubt it was to her.
It is very hard to keep the little things.
But very hard to lose them all the same,
especially for the womenkind. We got
helped on a bit by the parish every winter ;
and the two elder children a boy and a
girl when they were eight years old,
earned a shilling now and then by weeding

Charles Dickons.;

AN ENGLISH PEASANT.

[January 9, 1869.] 135

and scaring the crows and sparrows. The
misstis, too, earned a little in harvest time,
and betwixt us all we managed, though
God knows how, just to live, and to keep
ourselves warm, though not too warm, I
can assure you. Didn't the children go to
school? Well, to the Sunday school, and
in winter now and then to the day school :
but you see we could not spare them for the
better part of the year ; for as soon as they
growed up to be eight or nine they could
earn summat, however small, if it were
only picking up sticks in the woods and
road side to help to light the fire. It wasn't
much as they learned at the Sunday school,
only reading ; no writing or ciphering
just about as much as I learned when I was
a boy. I can read a little. I read the
Bible and the newspaper sometimes, but I
can't write, and I don't understand news-
papers much, except the murders, the
robberies, the fires, and such like. The
missus can write a bit, and tried to teach
me ; but I was too old to larn, and never
could make nothing on it. She taught Tom,
our oldest boy, to write, and Jane, our
oldest girl; but the children came on so
fast after a time, and she had so much to
do with managing them and mending their
clothes and screwing and scraping to feed
them that she had to give up teaching. I
kept my health and strength wonderfully
well the Lord be praised. I think that if I
could have earned twenty-four shillings a
week instead of twelve I should have been
happy enough in good seasons. Did I never
think of going to America ? Well, I dare
say I may have done. They say there's
plenty of land there, and few men just the
revarse of what there is here ; but how was
I to get to America, I should like to know ?
I could not save a penny in a year, and it
would have cost a matter of forty pounds,
I have heerd, to pay our passage out.
Forty pounds ! You might as well come
upon me for forty millions, or ask me to
pay the national debt ! No ; it was of no
use for me to think of America, and be-
sides, even if I had the money, I was too
old to go to America when I first heerd on
it. It's too late in the day at fifty- six
years of age to go to a new country, and to
a new people. I think my eldest boy, Tom,
would have gone with his wife and children
if he had had money enough ; but it was
the same with him as with me. He got
married like a fool, as his father was
before him, when he was barely twenty ;
but not being of such a good constitution
as me, he couldn't stand the work and the

trouble as I did; and though he's only
fifty now, he's an older man nor I am
at seventy. He's got eight children, and
one of them's a born idiot and another a
cripple. It's hard times for him, I think ;
and if anything should happen to him the
whole family would have to go to the
workhouse. Any more of my children
married ? Yes. My oldest daughter.
She was a tidy girl, and a pretty girl
too, and got into service at the vicar's.
She had good wages, and a good place
plenty to eat and drink, and all her money
her own to buy clothes and ribbons with,
and sometimes at Christmas a pound to
spare to help her poor old father and
mother through the winter. But she did
not know when she was well off. She
would go and get married, after she had
been only three years in service, to a fel-
low as I never could bear a jobbing gar-
dener, who is a good deal too fond of his
beer and bad company to make a good
husband. She's never known what it was
to be comfortable since her marriage, and
wishes she was back again in service, with
a shilling to spare for a ribbon now and
then. Bui she has no shilling and no rib-
bon, nor is likely to have. How many
grandchildren have I ? Well, I think
there have been more than forty of them,
but a good many of 'em are dead died
young, and I do sometimes think that if all
the children that are born into the world
lived and growed up to be men and women
that there wouldn't be half room enough in
the world for 'em, leastways not in England
and in our parish. You say it's wrong for
the poor to marry in this thoughtless man-
ner. Well, perhaps it is. I don't say it isn't ;
but it's about the only comfort the poor
have got, though the comfort always brings
sorrow along with it, and most things do
in this world as far as I know on. It would
be rather hard lines if the birds and the
butterflies might mate, and men and
women might not unless they were rich
and had a hundred and fifty pounds a year,
and were squires, and dukes, and such
like. The missus ? Aye, she's been dead
more 'an ten years now rest her soul;
an' if she had been alive I should not a
gone into the workhouse to be separated
from her, but have got an out- door allow-
ance, and managed somehow to toddle
down to the grave alongside of her. She
was a good woman she was, and sorely
tried, and wears I hope a crown of glory
on her head in heaven at this moment.
1 Blessed are the poor in spirit,' says our

136 [January 9, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted toy

Lord and Saviour, ' for theirs is the King-
dom of Heaven,' and she is in the Kingdom
of Heaven, where I hope to be."

The old man was going to be pathetic,
so I suppose I must have put a sudden
question to him, for he said, rather sharply
for so very mild and meek, and utterly
down -trodden and worn-out a person,
" Have I no dislike in eating the bread of
the parish ? Well, I can't say I have. I
would rather eat it at our cottage, and
have an allowance to live with one of my
sons. And the ' skilligalee' is wretched
poor stuff, and I don't like the house rules,
and would like to get out ofbener than I
do; but still right is right, g and the parish
owes me my bread. I've toiled in it all my
life : and after all, though I'm a pauper, I'm
a man, and not a dog to be turned out to
die in a ditch. And then you see, God is just.
I've had a bad time of it in this world, and
I'll have my good time of it in the next."

The reader will see that there was a
good deal of stolid endurance in Mr.
Plant, but very little pluck, energy, or
spirit. There was good material in him
that had never been worked up to any
good end; material that, under more fa-
vourable circumstances, say in the prairies
of America, where labour is scarce, the soil
fruitful, and farms to be easily obtained by
the poorest of squatters, might have been
so manipulated as to have converted this
patient and hopeless serf into a lively,
active, and prosperous citizen. Though
England may be over-peopled by thought-
less and improvident labourers of the
lowest class, like poor Plant, the world is
not overpeopled by any means; and how
to bring the Plants to the soil that cannot
come to the Plants is the problem. Before
any satisfactory solution is likely to be
obtained, the Plants are likely to go on
breeding, toiling, and suffering for centu-
ries to come, as they have done for cen-
turies past. The more's the pity !

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE WEST. ETON TO NEWBURY.

High up in the thin blue air, on black floating
wings, the crow skims over the grey stone cot-
tages of Berkshire, dropped down, as Tom
Brown truly says, in odd nooks and out-of-the-
way corners, by the sides of shadowy lanes, and
primeval footpaths. The bird skims over snug
thatched roofs and little gardens, ill-made roads,
and great pasture-lands dotted here and there
with clumps of thorns. Passing over the broad
green playing-fields of Eton, where the noble
elm-trees sentinel the river, the crow, regarding

the Eton boys below with benign approval as
the future hope of England, takes the playing-
fields as the text for a pleasant school-boy anec-
dote of 1809 still extant. One morning Shelley,
the poet, then an Eton boy, roused to indigna-
tion by an enemy's taunts, tossed his long
angelic locks, and accepted wager of battle from
his foe of the playground : Sir Thomas Styles,
a plucky little urchin, far younger and shorter
than himself. They were to meet at twelve the
same day. The coming battle was the whispered
talk of every one, and as soon as the rush out
of school took place the ring was formed, the
seconds and bottleholders were chosen. The
tall lean poet towered high above the little
thickset baronet. In the first round, Sir Thomas
felt his way by speculative sparring, while
Shelley tossed his long arms in an incoherent
manner. When they rested, the baronet sat
quietly on the knee of his second ; but Shelley,
disdainful of such succour, and confident of
victory, stalked round the ring and scowled at
his adversary. Time was called, and the battle
began in earnest. The baronet planted a cau-
tious blow on Shelley's chest. The poet was
shaken, but went in and knocked his little ad-
versary down. While he lay there half stunned,
Shelley spouted Homeric defiances, to the de-
light of his audience. In the second and last
round Styles, however, began to wake up, and
eventually delivered a settling "slogger" on
Shelley's " bread-basket." It fell on the poet
like a thunderbolt ; his nervous sensibilities were
roused ; he broke through the ring and flew,
pursued by his seconds and backers, but dis-
tanced them all, and got to earth safely at the
house of his tutor, Mr. Bethell, whom he soon
afterwards nearly blew up with a miniature
steam-engine which a travelling tinker had
manufactured for him.

It was just beyond Datchet Mead, where Fal-
staff was quoited into the Thames, " like a horse-
shoe hissing hot," that old tradition says Izaak
Walton used to come from his Fleet-street shop
to meet Sir Henry Wotton, the Provost of Eton,
looking for little trout ; worthy old men, full of
years, and wise yet kindly knowledge of the
world, they used to sit here, watching their
bobbing floats, baiting hooks, and capping
verses, believing that " angling, after serious-
study, was a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the
spirit, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet
thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of
contentedness, and begetting habits of patience
and peace." Well might Wotton repeat his-
own verses here by the river side :
"Welcome pure thoughts, welcome ye silent groves,
These guests, these courts my soul most dearly loves.
Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing
My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring.
Years afterwards, swarthy Charles the Second
and his laughing ladies used to fish here. Pope
describes the king,

and

Methinks I see our mighty monarch stand,
The pliant rod now trembling in his hand;

And see, he now doth up from Datchet come
Laden with spoils of slaughtered gudgeons home.

Charles Dickens.;

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[January 9, 1809.] 13F

A flight further to Bray, home of the immortal
vicar, Simon Alleyn, who, most dexterous of
helmsmen, steered his bark safely through the
conflicting troubles of Henry the Eighth, when
the axe was always ready for malcontents of
Edward the Sixth, when the Tower's dangerous
doors so often opened and shut of Queen
Mary, when the fires were always ready for
heretics and of Queen Elizabeth, when the
rack was always on the strain for conspirators.
He was first a Papist, then a Protestant, then a
Papist, and then a Protestant again. Bland
soul, so ready to explain away past sermons and
write new ones, what a calm face he must have
turned on all violent controversialists! How
difficult he must have found it to preach his
first sermon after an accession. How he must
have exhausted himself in prudent efforts to
buy up his last violent invective against Pro-
testantism now newly re-established. What
confusion he must have got into, between gowns
and robes. Fuller says the vicar had once seen
some martyrs burnt at Windsor, and found
the fire too hot for his tender temper. When
some ribalds accused him of being a shameless
turncoat without a conscience, a mere shifty
trickster, and a poor frightened changeling,
who went which way the wind blew him

" Kay, nay," said he, smiling, " I have always
kept one principle, which is this : whoever rules,
to live and die the Vicar of Bray."

Glancing on to Maidenhead the crow alights
on the chapel roof to pick up a tradition of an-
other and less lucky Vicar of Bray.

James the First, one day, when hunting, rode
on before his dogs and huntsmen to seek for
luncheon. He rode up to the inn at Maiden-
head, quite ravenous. He tumbled himself off
his horse and shouted for the landlord. Beef
and ale a pasty anything. The landlord,
careless of stray guests, shrugged his shoulders.
There was nothing ready but one roast, and the
Worshipful Vicar of Bray and his curate were
already busy at that ; perhaps they might (as a
favour) allow him to join them. King James
caught at the offer, strode up stairs, knocked
at the door, and asked permission. The vicar
churlishly scowled up from his full and smoking
platter. The curate, jovial and hearty, begged
James to be seated. The king sat down and
plied a good knife and fork. He tossed off his
ale ; he told racy stories ; he made both his re-
luctant and his willing host roar with laughter.
At last there came the mauvais quart d'heure
of Rabelais ; the bill arrived. The curate put
down his money with careless frankness ; the
vicar paid his bill gloomily ; but the luckless
guest could not pay at all. " Eh, mon ! he'd
left his purse behind him in his other breeks."
The vicar saw no joke in this matter, and flatly
refused to pay for the suspicious stranger. The
happy and guileless curate expressed his plea-
sure in being able to make some return for
the amusement he had received, and paid the
stranger's share. Then the three men went
out on the balcony. A huntsman then came
riding up, and, seeing the king, leaped off his
horse and went down on one knee in the

street. The sullen vicar threw himself at the
feet of James, and implored forgiveness :
to which King Jamie replied: "I shall not
turn you out of your living, and you shall
always remain vicar of Bray ; but I shall make
my good friend the curate a canon of Windsor,
whence he will be able to look down both upon
you and your vicarage."

The crow also takes record of Maidenhead
(so called, either from the head of one of the
eleven thousand virgins once preserved there,
or from the timber-wharves that existed there
in the Saxon times) that it has a tradition
which forms a touching episode in English
history. Charles the First, after several years'
separation from his children swarthy little
Charles, grave James, and poor little Elizabeth
was allowed to meet them at the Greyhound
Inn, at Maidenhead, thanks to the amiability
of Lord Fairfax and the kindliness of the army.
" The greatest satisfaction the king could have,"
says Clarendon. Poor king ! Poor children !

Towards the Thames, the crow glides off for
a moment, to rest on the ivy-covered gable of
Medmenham Abbey. In a lovely spot, close
by the ferry house, the building stands : the
tower and cloister being modern, and little re-
maining of the old Cistercian monastery which
at the Reformation contained only two in-
mates. It was here that Francis Dashwood,
afterwards Lord le - Despencer, founded the
infamous club of the Franciscans, of which
Wilkes and Lord Sandwich were members.
"The twelve monks of Medmenham" cele-
brated orgies, which shocked even that coarse
age. Sterne's friend, John Hall Stevenson, of
Crazy Castle, was said to be one of them. Over
a door in the ivied gable still exists the Fran-
ciscan motto. " Fay ce que voudras." A
mystery hung over all the feasts of the Fran-
ciscan Club. The workmen who furnished and
adorned the abbey were kept locked up in
the house, and were hurried back to London
when their work was done. The dinner was
always passed in at the half -opened door, and
no servants were allowed to wait. Devil
worship, said some ; Bacchic festivals, said
others. Country people trembled to see the
abbey windows gleam till daybreak, and to
hear the mad laughter of the revellers. The
story went that the consciences of the monks
were so tormented that they could only sleep
at night in cradles, and part of Wilkes's cradle
is still shown. A curious set of pictures at the
Thatched House Tavern in London, belonging
to the Dilettanti Society, has preserved re-
miniscences of some of the brothers, who,
dressed like monks, are represented as ri-
diculing sacred rites. How these portraits have
got mixed up with the Dilettanti Society the
crow knoweth not. Wilkes is said to have
broken up the Franciscan Club by a mis-
chievous trick. One night when the wine was
circulating fast, and the orgies were at their
highest, a huge ape, hideously dressed, with
horns and other satanic additions, was lowered
down the chimney. The candles were at the
same time extinguished by a pre-arranged plan,

138 [January 9, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

the ape sprang upon the back of one of the
sceptics, who, believing it to be the prince of
evil himself, fell on his knees and began to
shout and pray. The club never rallied after-
wards.

Swift away, after this short resting, to where
the blue smoke rises over Reading, like the
smoke from a witch's caldron. Let the crow
alight first on the abbey gateway. This ab-
bey, founded by Henry the First, and en-
dowed with the privilege of coining, attained
a great name among the English abbeys by the
"incorrupt hand" of St. James the apostle,
presented to it by Henry the First. After
working thousands of miracles, raising cripples,
curing blindness after millions of pilgrimages
had been made to it, and it had been for cen-
turies incensed and glorified, this wonderful
hand was lost at the Dissolution. Some wor-
shipper, who still venerated it, hid it under
ground, where it was found years afterwards,
and is now preserved at Danesfield by a Roman
Catholic family. It will for ever remain a moot
point, however, whether the hand at Danesfield
is the original hand of St. James, or a mere
mummy hand, such as mediaeval thieves used
as candlesticks and talismans. " Hands of
glory" the rascals called them.

This hand of St. James made the fortune of
the abbey at Reading, and was an open hand,
no doubt, to receive all current coin from the
groat to the broad piece. Bells rung, incense
fumed, priests bore the cross, and acolytes the
thurible in the abbey at Reading, encouraged
by the eclat of the incorruptible hand. Henry
the First always delighted in the abbey. He
held a parliament here ; and here he received
Heraclius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, who,
safe out of reach of Saracen's arrow and
sabre, presented the king with the somewhat
nominal gifts of the keys of the Holy Sepulchre
and the royal banners of the sacred city, and
urged Henry to a foray on the Infidel. The
king was true to Reading till his death ; for
when the stewed lampreys of Rouen hurried
him from the world, his heart, tongue, brains,
and bowels were buried in France, and the rest
of his royal remains forwarded to Reading,
where his first queen, " the good Queen Molde,"
lay already, and his second wife Adeliza after-
wards joined him. The abbey became quite a
royal cemetery after the eldest son of Henry
the Second was buried here. At the Dissolution,
when royal tombs were destroyed and the bones
"thrown out," the relics were beaten about
by the sextons' spades and tossed anywhere.
The poorest rubbish heap of Reading had some
of them to feed its nettles. At the same period
Hugh Farringdon, the abbot, was so contuma-
cious and stubborn, and so put out the royal
tyrant by his prate about popes, councils, and
decretals, that the king, flying out at last, had
him hanged, drawn, and quartered, and then
turned the abbey into a palace, which was de-
stroyed at the great rebellion : the ruins re-
maining as a stone quarry for ages. On the
last abbot but one, King Henry the Seventh
played a trick. One day the king, hunting

near Windsor, lost his way, and, riding on to
Reading, passed himself off to the unsuspi-
cious abbot as one of the yeomen of the
guard. A noble sirloin of beef was placed
before him; on this he plied so well his
knife and fork that the abbot was delighted,
and watched him with placid admiration.
" Well fare thy heart," he said ; " for here, in
a cup of sack, I do remember the health of his
grace your master ; I would give a hundred
pounds on condition that I could feed so
lustily on beef as you do. Alas ! my weak
and squeezie stomach could hardly digest the
wing of a small rabbit or chicken." The king
was silent, pledged him, and left him undisco-
vered. Soon after, armed men beat at the
abbey gate, and the squeezie abbot was hurried
to the Tower. The abbot was there kept
some weeks a close prisoner, and nurtured on
bread and water ; his body was empty of food,
Fuller says, and his mind full of fears. He
could not, resolve it how he may, imagine how
he had incurred the king's displeasure. At last,
the abbot's fast having been long enough, a
sirloin of beef was set before the delighted
man, and he soon verified the proverb that two
hungry meals make a glutton. Suddenly in
sprang the king out of a lobby where he had
been in ambuscade. " My lord," quoth his
majesty, " deposit presently your hundred
pounds in gold, or else no going hence all the
days of your life. I have been your physician
to cure you of your squeezie stomach, and now
I want the fee which I have deserved." The
abbot put down the money at once, and re-
turned to Reading, fighter in purse, but also
lighter in heart.

The town, long celebrated for its cloth
trade, was besieged by Essex and the Parlia-
mentarians in 1643. The Puritan entrench-
ments are still visible in the valley. Ten days
the townspeople, encouraged by Sir A. Ashton,
bore the cannonade and then surrendered ; but
the greatest alarm in the town was in 1688,
when the Reading men got into their heads a
notion that the rough-handed Irish soldiers of
King James were coming to massacre the inha-
bitants during divine service. The panic re-
ceived the name of " The Irish Cry."

Archbishop Laud was the son of a Reading
clothier, and the charities he founded still
exist. John Bunyan used, in the days of his
persecutions, after his twelve years and a half
in dismal Bedford jail, sometimes to pass,
through Reading, where he was known, on his
way to visit secret Baptist congregations, dis-
guised as a carter, and carrying a whip. He
is said here to have caught the fever of which
he died.

Perched on the tall flint tower of St. Law-
rence (a church once memorable for a silver
gridiron, and a portion of St. Lawrence), the
crow remembers that at this church Queen Eli-
zabeth would attend service, looking sharply
after the preacher's doctrine. A portentous
object to a nervous clergyman, that stiff old
lady in the ruff and jewelled stomacher must
have been, glowering at him from under the

:%D

Charles Dickens.J

FATAL ZERO.

[January 9, 1SC9.] 139

bushy pyramid of her auburn hair. John Bla-
grove, the mathematician, whose cloaked and
ruffed effigy in this church still grasps the
typical globe and quadrant, left a strange legacy
for the encouragement of Reading maidservants.
The churchwardens of the three parishes were
every year to choose so many maidservants of
five years' standing, who were to meet and throw
dice for a purse of ten pounds on Good Friday.
"Lucky money," says Ashmole, "for I never
yet heard of a maid who got the ten pounds
but soon after found a good husband."

Quick -beating wings bear the crow to New-
bury, where the fame of Jack of Newbury
invites him to a moment's rest on some house-
roof of the quiet solid-looking town by the
swift Kennet. Immortal Jack was a poor
clothier, who, by prudence and industry, con-
trived at last to set a hundred looms at work.
When the Scotch invaded England, in Henry
the Eighth's reign, Jack's quota of defence
was four pikemen and two horsemen ; but
his generous heart disdained so poor a levy,
and he marched northward, followed by fifty
tall horsemen and fifty footmen, well armed
and better clothed than any. If he ever
reached Flodden, Jack no doubt did good
service there against the Scottish spears.
When the king returned to England, he went
to see the brave clothier, and was splendidly
feasted by Jack, who sensibly refused the invi-
dious honour of knighthood. This worthy
man's best work was carrying to a conclusion
a commercial treaty with France and the low
countries, which Wolsey for a long time
thwarted, suspecting Jack of Lutheran prin-
ciples. But Jack was bold, and said : "If my
Lord Chancellor's father had been no faster in
killing calves than my Lord Chancellor is in
despatching of poor men's suits, I think he
would never have worn a mitre." Jack is the
hero of Newbury : an incitement to poor men's
sons for century after century: a ceaseless
source of good and ble ssing to the Berkshire to wn .

The reformers were much persecuted at
Newbury. Three martyrs were burnt at the
sand pits, a quarter of a mile from the town.
When they came to the stake they fell to the
ground. Palmer, one of them, a fellow of Mag-
dalen College, Oxford, repeated the thirty-first
Psalm, and then all rose and kissed the stake.
When Palmer warned the Newbury people of
Popish practices, a brutal bailiff's servant filing
a fagot, and struck him in the face. The
sheriff broke the rascal's head for it, calling
him a cruel tormentor. When the quick flames
began /to dart upward, the three martyrs held
up their hands to Heaven, and crying, " Lord

Jesus strengthe

died peaceably.

In the civil war, Newbury was the scene of
two hot battles. In the first, the cavalier
officers fought in their shirts, not waiting to
put on their doublets before they took horse.
Essex's men wore branches of fern and thorn in
their hats. The London train-bands held very
firm at Newbury Marsh, though Prince Rupert
charged them with the war cry of " Queen Mary
in the field !" Six thousand men were left upon

the ground. Eventually, after six hours' fight-
ing, Essex retired to Reading, Prince Rupert
cutting his rear guard to pieces as it got en-
tangled in Head Man's-lane, near Theale.
That same night sixty cartloads of slain were
brought into Newbury, including the blameless
Falkland, the cavalier " sans peur et sans re-
proche," who had predicted his own death.
A poplar still marks the spot where he fell.
The young Earl of Carnarvon, who led the
cavalry, was brought back to Newbury thrown
across a horse " like a dead calf." The second
battle was in 1644. Charles was on his way
to relieve Donnington Castle. Manchester's
army first attacked Shaw House, while Waller,
crossing the Lambourn, seized Speen a sub-
urban village and attacked the king's horse.
The Puritans advanced on Shaw House, sing-
ing psalms. Colonel Lisle, unarmed and in his
Holland shirt, chased them bravely, shouting,
"For the Crown!" "For Prince Charles!"
" For the Duke of York !" while the bullets
stormed on them from the windows and para-
pets of the manor house. Cloud after cloud
of pikemen gave way before the cavalier
charges. From that stately old red brick
Elizabethan house, which the crow still sees
surrounded by old-fashioned gardens, the cava-
liers shouted approval of brave Colonel Lisle
and his deeds. At last the king's men drew off
to Donnington, and thence to Oxford on a fine
moonlight night : sullenly leaving the church
where Jack of Newbury lies buried and the
market house which contains his son's portrait.

One waft of the wing brings the crow to
Donnington, to that fine old ruin falsely sup-
posed to be the castle given to Chaucer by
John of Gaunt. It did, however, really belong
to the poet's grand-daughter, Alice, and the
great oaks in the park were probably planted
by Thomas Chaucer, the poet's son. This
castle is the spot held so bravely for the king
by Colonel Boys, who being told of three of
the towers being down, and that the Puritans
would give no quarter, and would not leave one
stone upon another, exclaimed, like a brave
cavalier as he was : "That he was not bound
to repair the castle, but, by God's help, he
would keep the ground for the king."

Now, fast towards Wiltshire and the broad
downs, where the wind blows free as over the
ocean, the crow speeds its flight.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT H0MBURG : A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER IX.

Friday. Just returned from Frankfort.
Such a charming old town, refreshing to
see in its reverend innocence and hoariness,
after the flaunting garishness of that new
and wicked spot. I saw the merchant, who
received me very graciously, and had
lunch ready. After it was over we talked
of business, and he began by saying that ho

"3=

140 [January 9, 1800.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

had determined to give the sum he had
offered before, and no more. Something
prompted me at that moment to try and
do something for my friend, and act a
little, though I doubt if it was strictly
conscientious. Still, making a bargain is
making a bargain, and I boldly said that
it was too little, out of the question, &c.
He was a Jew, and I think not disappointed
that there was to be some "haggling." On
that we set to work ; my pet should have
seen the latent diplomatic powers I called
into play. Will you believe me if I did not
triumph over the Jew in the end, and ob-
tain a hundred pounds more for my friend !
A memorandum was signed, and a day
named for me to go before the consul, and
finally conclude the matter. I am greatly
elated at this little victory. On coming
home, I found Grainger waiting at the
train. My first impulse was to tell him of
what I had done; but a wiser discretion
checked me. Here again is a little disci-
pline: and it seems to me, on analysis,
that this wish of communicating news, &c,
is a mere shape of vanity, and arises from
no desire to gratify or amuse any one else.
He told me he had not played the whole
day, but that he had amused himself watch-
ing the game, and trying whether there
was anything in what I had said.

" Well, I spent two hours in that way,"
he said, " and, my dear friend, I must give
it against you. Our friend the Pasha, as
you called him, is right. You don't know
what that man knows."

" He is a shallow creature, I know," I
said ; " I wonder how he is even tolerated
here."

" That fellow has a history, I can tell
you. Harems and seraglios, and sacks,
and all that. Romantic to a degree."

" Romantic," I said, angrily; "that is
the genteel name for vice and villany and
rascaldom."

" Hush ! here he is. I mustn't abuse
him, as he has me bound I mean I mustn't
let him liear me abuse him."

D'Eyncourt came up, his head back, his
round hat back also, and with a little pink
on the centre of his "mutton- fat" cheeks.
" Well?" he said, "going in to play
to step into the bird-lime, and try a
system?"

* " I can't play," said Grainger. " I am
going to give up. It's a struggle, and it's
for the best."

" What ! going to reform ? How many
tricks have you tried in your life, my
friend ? Is this the last ?"

"Tricks, Mr. D'Eyncourt?" said Grain-
ger, colouring. " Tricks ?"

The other put his head further back, as
if to get a good look, and said, coldly, " I
repeat, tricks, Mr. Grainger."

The other, muttering something to him-
self, looked down.
" Yes, I always speak plain. Well,
come in, and let us look at the game. D'ye
hear?"

" No use asking you, Austen," said
Grainger, as it were obeying an order;
" and I won't press you to come. Only
one moment."

He looked very helpless and appealingly
at me.

" Oh, I forgot," said D'Eyncourt ; " you
mentioned something about scruples. Stay
with your, friend. There's Colonel Manby,
yonder."

I had already, my pet will remember,
rather qualified the resolution I had taken
about going into the rooms. In that way,
I believe, we are not responsible, in any
sort, for the doings of the wicked at least
as regards men in different actions. As
well might we look into the lives of all
friends' jealously, and " cut" every one of
them fathers, brothers who had done
anything that was not quite correct. I
said:

" I have no scruples of the kind. Merely
walking through, or looking on, does not
affect the question."

High play was going on ; the count with
the worn face was in his place, his little
bale of clean notes before him.

" Ah, there he is !" said D'Eyncourt.
" They have got their pigeon. Let me see.
How many feathers has he left ? Just a
few, but enough to play with. Yes, they
are giving him two or three back, to stick
into his wing, if he can."

There was a crowd opposite, uttering
the usual ejaculations much as what the
lower Irish do when a strange story is
told to them : "Ha gagne," " C'est le max-
i-moom" so they pronounce it. " Fooh !"
the breath being drawn in between the
teeth.

" The old story," said D'Eyncourt, con-
temptuously.

" Only begin,
Ana then win ;
That's their ruse,
To make you lose ;

a little gambling proverb of my own. He
should be told of the new system."

I had been watching the player, and an
idea occurred to me. I snatched a card

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[January 9, 1869.] 141

and a pin. It is a duty, surely, to give a
lesson now and again to the foolish. It is
serving the world and society.

"Now," I said, coolly, "what if I tell
you how he ought to play to win ? What
will you say to my common sense then ?"

What will I

say

Your common

! I am sure I can't tell."

" You shall he told, then ; and you be
witness, Grainger."

Red had come up three times. " Now,"
I said, " let him put on black."

" No," said Grainger. " Don't you see
he is going for the run."

" Well, what do you say ?" I said to
D'Eyncourt.

" Nothing," he answered ; " why should
I?"

The player did " go for the run," with his
" maximum," and away it fluttered to the
green leather tomb of the capulets, the
slab of which shut down on it with a fatal
click. I said nothing. The player then
waited until two deals had intervened.

" Now," I said, " let him put on red, and
he will win."

He almost seemed to have heard me.
Down went his maximum, pushed across
with trembling fingers; and in a few
seconds was heard the chant, " Rouge
gagne, et couleur."

I will not dwell on this, for fear of tiring
my pet ; but I will tell the whole scene to
her later. But " suffice it to say," as the
novelists are fond of repeating, I really
foretold nearly every successful colour, and,
by some mysterious rapport, the count
seemed to follow or anticipate every pro-
phecy of mine.

" By G ," said Grainger, in a strange
excitement, " it's devilry or magic ! For
Heaven's sake lend me, do, some one, three
naps only three one, then one ! Well,
then a double florin; you won't refuse
that ?"

"Recollect your promise," I whispered
to him "your resolution, your solemn
resolution."

"Folly!" he said; "you are robbing
me at this moment ; it is cruel of you."

I was watching D'Eyncourt. He was
biting his lips with vexation. I could not
resist.

" You won't admit my common sense," I
said ; " it is not to be expected."

" It is easy to play a game with a pin and
a card ; back your opinion with money, and
I'll do the same."

"I never play," I said, coldly, "and
never shall. There are some whom it is

hopeless to convince of the difference of a
mere mathematical study and a pursuit so
dangerous and deadly to both soul and
body."

" Caution, religion, and the theological
virtues. Good. Now, there go my five
lords on red."

" If you wait, about twice more," I said,
calmly, " you would have a better chance.
I hardly think red could come up now."

" Rouge perd, et couleur" came before he
could actually answer me. I went on.

" I dare say there might be a chance for
you now, if you would risk it."

" I shall go on black," he said, putting
down ten lords.

Again, "Rouge gagne, et couleur !"

So it went on, I, with a most extraordi-
nary success in my guess, being astray not
more than three or four times ; and when
I showed the card, tbe pin-holes all cer-
tainly fell into the shape I had predicted.
Mr. D'Eyncourt, however, had lost over
fifty lords.

" This comes," he said, "of playing with
people talking about you, pestering you
with systems and cards and pins. There,
Manby there's a gentleman here turned
prophet. He'll tell you something about
the Derby."

Before I could reply he was gone, and I
turned to Grainger.

" He is inclined to be insolent," I said r
" and I am not inclined to put up with it.
Like any one who cannot bear to be told
they are in the wrong, he wishes to give
vent to his own spleen and malice."

Grainger was hardly attending.

" Why didn't you let me ? I might
have been rich this moment; I'd have
made three hundred louis in the wake of
that fellow. I might have been free from
him, and, but for my slavery, I might have
paid my bill at the lodgings."

" Is it so much ?" I asked.

" Two hundred florins a wretched sum.
But he is insolent enough for its being
ten thousand"

'"Is that all?" I said. "We are very
poor, as you know, Grainger ; but if a hun-
dred florins will help, I can let you have
that much, but you must solemnly swear ;
not a florin goes down on that green cloth.
An oath on your Bible, mind."

"I'll swear anything," he said. "You
are noble, and have always treated me
nobly, whatever I may have said. Still,"
he added, suddenly, "you know it is not
so heavy an obligation.. You admit that?
Only a few pounds, you know."

142 [January 9, 1SC9.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

There was something in his tone that
rather jarred on me, but I recollected that
he was always subject to these alternations,
passing from a most cordial, genial, and
even softened tone, into a cold, bitter, and
hostile manner. It was his way. He was
a disappointed man, so we must have al-
lowance. So that day terminated. Some-
how the calm country town monotony of
mind which I had brought with me seems
to have given way a little before the whirl,
as it were, of this place the strange
figures, the dramatic incidents, the curious
motives of this place. But I am learning
precious lessons. It is like tonics and
cold baths for the mind. After all, how
many of us go through life without hav-
ing even the faintest conception of what
is going on, no conception of what atti-
tudes, and motions, and wonderful freaks
the human mind is eapable of. Novels
and plays tell us a good deal, but we do
not believe in them. One day lets in a
light worth a thousand of Mudie's " sets."
Shall I own that I dwell with compla-
cency on the fact that I, a mere rustic,
ungraduated in the world's devices, should
have held "my own" in that little scene
to-day, by the sheer force of good plain
sense and reason ? Thank Heaven, I am
growing better every hour ! Heaven is
very good to us, certainly.

CHAPTER X.

Tuesday. An interval of some days has
passed without my writing a line. The
fact is, the hours are running by so fast,
and so many little events crowd into the
day, that I have hardly time to do any-
thing. I have even got a little backward
in my letters to my pet. I have been
making a sort of study of this mysterious
and dangerous science of chances, which is
luring all these poor souls to destruction.
It is one of the most curious subjects of
inquiry, and there can be no doubt that
there is more in it than the common vulgar
affectation of superior knowledge will
admit. If I could but freshen up my old
mathematics, I could work the thing out
regularly. The doctor tells me that having
something of interest thus to amuse and
occupy the mind is the real secret of
my improvement. I could have told
him that. Shall I own to another dis-
covery I have made, viz., that when Me-
phistopheles is playing for souls, he does
it with tolerable fairness. I constantly
hear men, Englishmen too, going out with
flushed faces, and muttering, " Pack of

d d swindlers set of cheats !" Now,
a very narrow scrutiny compels me to own
that their dealings are fair, or seem fair.
Shall I go further, and say that they really
seem to put themselves at a disadvantage
with those they encounter. That, of course,
is their business, not mine. I spent four
hours the other morning watching the
game, and I suppose riddled some half a
dozen cards with pin-holes. The result
was the same in the main. I see the
system like a revelation, adding to it, from
experience, this rider : the splendid girt of
self-restraint. There they all break down ;
they cannot halt in time, even for five
minutes. One would be tempted to go
and whisper this simple recipe to each one
of the poor dupes who are rushing down
this fatal hill ; but it is not my business.
Quern Deus vult perdere. I could not save
them, though he could. I see at these
little seats of extortion the stalls where
they sell photographs and ornaments at
literally double the price they can be had
anywhere else I see absolute treatises on
the game. One a serious volume at twenty
francs ; the others little handbooks at a
franc, giving " a sure and infallible method
for winning." These little impostures were
diverting from the solemn tables set out
and the grand terms. " The intermit-
tance," " series," and the oracular advice.
The qualities requisite for the gambler are
to be "courage, vigour, elan, coolness, and
insensibility." " System," above all, must
be pursued (and so far I go with him) ;
" otherwise," he adds, gravely, " you will
indeed remain a simple player (joueur),
but you will never become speculateur."
He fills pages with his various recipes, but
at the end announces that without a
capital of some four tlwusand florins you
will not have " a secure base of operation
to work from." And yet I see this rubbish
in the hands of many a poor fool; and,
what is more, I see many a greater fool
sitting industriously with his book and two
pencils, one red and one black, marking
the colours. One dreadful old fellow, who
is nearly blind, has a complete apparatus
a little dial, mounted on a pincushion, and
bristling all over with red and black-
headed pins, which he shifts about, and
not for half an hour, perhaps, will the safe
combination he so desires, arise, and then
he plays his miserable florin. Of course he
loses, as indeed I could have told him. I
was almost tempted to lay my hand upon
his arm and check him; but, as I have
said so often, that is not my business.

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[January 9, 1869.] 143

Sometimes I see a comic incident the
table laden with gold and covered with
billets, and the croupier touching each
with the magic rake, repeating aloud the
sums staked. "L'or va au rouleau!"
(This always in a growl, as who should
say, " We have you.") " Vin-sang louis au
bilyet!" (This in a mournful manner of
expostulation, as who should say, "Why
not all the bilyet ?") And " Mcetyez a la
masse !" (This very sharp and short, like
the click of a trigger before firing.) An
humble fellow has laid down his double
Frederick, a good stake, but modest, seem-
ing more than it is among the surrounding
magnificence. The dealer is about to begin,
when, in a fit of compunction, the man
calls out, "Moitie a la masse !" and causes
a perfect roar in the gallery. Yet these
men had their hundred and two hundred
louis, their " maximoom" even, depend-
ing on the deal. So they laughed and
went to play, when the guillotine was at
its hardest work.

The gardens are getting dull enough ; I
grow tired of the regularity of the music,
coming at that one hour. Yet there are
people who stay here the whole winter.

A letter from my pet, lying on the table,
waiting for me. Very long and full of
news. I shall paste it in this place.

" Mr own dearest Alfred, God in his
infinite mercy be thanked and praised, for
the delightful news each one of your dear
letters brings us. Such unhoped-for bles-
sings from Homburg, and, indeed, shall I
confess it, when I parted from you, I had a
horrid, miserable, presentiment, that it was
to be the last time I was ever to see that
dear face again. I did not let you know
the agonies I was suffering. For it was for
your own dear health, though I had not
the least hope that it would be benefited.
But thank God that it is so. Now I shall
say no more on that.

" How charming, how amusing, how in-
teresting is your diary, dearest Alfred ! I
have read no novel that comes near to it
for interest. So acute, so full of observa-
tion, such a knowledge of human character.
It brings the whole scene before me; these
dreadful people, and that terrible play, and
what a picture ! it comes back on me at
nights in dreams, and I see their distorted
faces, and the agonies of the poor creatures.
And to think of these wicked, cruel, crea-
tures fattening on the innocent ! Such life
and character, it is too graphic. That figure
of the tight-laced man walking about is a
portrait, and so is that of that cold-blooded

Mr. D'Eyncourt. I have read it over two or
three times to our little darlings, at least
the portions they are likely to understand,

and they laughed so. Mr. , our dear

friend and benefactor, was greatly amused,
and said in a joking way, we should see
you turning gambler yourself, you were so
violent against them. He took their part
and said they were no more than a regis-
tered just like any of our railway or
banking-companies, who took the money of
widows and orphans, and there was nothing
said about it.

" Oh, how strange, how wonderful your
meeting Grainger. Poor Grainger ! I suppose
I may call him now. Indeed I feel for him,
and you can tell him so from me, for I have
much to reproach myself about him. I was
very foolish then and thought that amus-
ing myself with gentlemen was the most
entertaining thing in the world, as you
said once to me, ' having a number of the
scalps hanging at my waist.' Do tell
him I hope he has quite forgiven me.

" Dearest, I write the above for you to
show to Grainger. Do not, I conjure you,
offend him in any way, for I know, which
you cannot know, he never has forgiven
me, or never will forgive me. I saw enough
of him to know that he is vindictive ; and
indeed he threatened, the very last inter-
view, that he would live to punish you, and
me, through you. This, indeed, is making
me most uneasy, and I do wish he was not
there, or you away. But there is only ten
days more, thank Heaven ; so be very kind
to him, or if you see that is no good, keep
him at a distance."

My poor little Dora ! What a wonderful
head it has, peopled with nightmares. Let
me point out to her the inconsistency of
her previous little advice :

" Be very kind to him, and keep him at a
distance." She must send me a recipe for
this mysterious double duty ; for, for the
life, I don't know how to begin it. There
is a smack of the country town in it ; but
I am afraid for the world its little advice is
not of the soundest. Dearest, affection is
your strong point, outside that charmed
circle, I am afraid but I won't say any
more.

" Mr. B joins me in this warning.

He says that everything that you have
written about Grainger bears out what I
fear. The man is trying to get an influence
over you for ends of his own. He says it
is transparently clear, and is going to write
to you himself to be on your guard. He

144

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[January 9, 1SG9.]

has seen more of the world, dearest, and,
as I say, he has entirely based his opinion
on these little points, which he says ' were
unconsciously revealed' in your diary."

Now, here again I must pause to give a
little lecture to my pet. This history was
meant entirely for her own gentle eyes ;
in it I unfold my most secret thoughts and
speculations. I confess I did not think it

would he exhibited to Mr. , benefactor

as he is of mine, and as I must call him.
Through every mind are coursing the
strangest inconsistencies, wishes, plans,
ideas, which one would be ashamed to
admit the existence of to any one, save
the dearest. Outwardly the wise man will
not let such interior feelings affect his
actions. So in future, I trust my darling
won't exhibit my nonsense to any one,
especially as it has brought me into dis-
credit with Mr. , who, you see, has

formed already rather a low opinion of my
strength of mind. I am sorry he thinks so
poorly of me, yet he is welcome indeed.
For never, never can I forget the kindness
he has loaded me with. He has saved my
life, and saved our little home ; for I shall
return strong and healthy, please God.
Still he does not know me, nor what a
discipline I have subjected myself to all
my life.

What oddities there are in these various
foreign countries, and nothing more odd
here than this Homburg itself is quite
Protestant, with about fifty Catholics or
so ; yet we walk across a few fields and we
come upon a purely Catholic little village
called Kirdorff, in which it is said there
is not a single Protestant. In another
direction three miles off, there is a village
as purely Huguenot, composed entirely of
French Protestants, who talk in some mys-
terious compound of old French and Ger-
man. These, I say, seem what a precise
English friend called "quite refreshing
ethnological eccentricities." From Kirdorff
comes news that a German archbishop is
to preach and confirm on Sunday. It
was a pleasant walk in the fresh air of a
morning that seemed to hide its face co-
quettishly under a thin veil and whisper,
" By-and-by you will see my face in all its
splendour." A queer little German village
of thick raw reds and greens which are so

uncomfortable to look at, good houses built
of very rude bricks and framework ; but a
really fine church with two tall spires. In
this little spot, whose street winds and
turns a great deal, they have tried in their
honest simple way to do honour to their
visitor. There are green triumphal arches
of fir, surmounted each with a cross, and
every house is festooned with green gar-
lands of fir. The whole town was literally
gathered in this handsome church ; not a
head was in any window ; the men at one
side, grim, rather gaunt creatures, and the
women at the other side. It had all the
air of a little village festival innocent,
pretty, fervent, with the rows of young
girls in white and flowers, waiting for con-
firmation. Now the archbishop, a tall
figure with a good massive head, is preach-
ing with extraordinary earnestness, and
gestures, and tones, which are really new
and dramatic, and which at home might
enliven some of our sermons. Then the
rude German voices are raised in their
favourite hymns, given out with stentorian
power, moving slowly and lumberingly, but
still with fine effect. I cannot but think if
the gang of money changers yonder, whose
rival temple I can see from the porch, who
if they were driven out, as they shortly will
be, would not scruple to set their infamous
wheels and tables in this sacred precinct,
should no other place be found. The con-
trast was indeed wonderful ; but I am a
little staggered by seeing next me a very
notorious croupier, with his little boy and a
hymn-book in his hand. The respectable
name of "the Bank" I suppose has blinded
him. I am glad to see all the carriages in
Homburg have driven out to this form at
Mortfleurs, and I can make out at the top
some fair English girls who do not belong
to that fold ; but who look on with a re-
spectful attention.

Now ready,
THE COMPLETE SET

TWENTY VOLUMES,

With General Index to the entire work from its
commencement in April, 1859. Each volume, with
its own Index, can also he bought separately as
heretofore.

Now ready, ALL THE CHEISTMAS STOEIES,
bound together price 5s. ; or, separately, price 4d. each.

The Right of Translating Articles from All the Year Round is reserved by the Authors.

Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street, Strand. Printed by C Whiting, Beaufort House, Strand.

HE-STOI^C-Or OU t\- HVES /ROM-Y^A^TO ^EJ\B^,

$^M%$ wmi

CONDUCTED- BY

With whcch is Ij^coi\poi^xed
^OlfsHOLD*Woi^DS *

SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1869

WRECKED IK POET.

A Sebial Stoet bt the Authob of " Black Sheep.'

CHAPTER IX. THE TENTH EARL.

Hetherington House stands in Bean-
fort- square, forming one side of that con-
fessedly aristocratic quarter. The house
stands back in melancholy " grounds" of
dirty gravel, brown turf, and smutted
trees, while the dwarf wall which forms
the side of the square, and is indeed a suf-
ficiently huge brick screen, fences off the
commonalty, and prevents them from ever
catching so much as a glimpse of the Para-
dise within, save when the great gates are
flung open for the entrance or exit of
vehicles, or when the porter, so gorgeous
and yet so simple, is sunning himself in the
calm evening air at the small postern door.
The Countess of Hetherington likes this
brick screen, and looks upon it as a neces-
sary appanage of her rank. When visitors,
having exhausted every topic of conversa-
tion possible to their great minds, a feat
which is easily performed in the space of
five minutes, and beginning to fear the im-
mediate advent of brain softening if not of
idiocy, suddenly become possessed with a
fresh idea after a lengthened contemplation
of the wall in front of them, and with an
air of desperation ask whether it does not
make the house dull, Lady Hetherington
says that, on the contrary, it is the only
thing that renders the house habitable.
She confesses that, during the time she is
compelled to be in London, the sight of
hack cabs, and policemen on their beat,
and those kind of things, are not absolutely
necessary to her existence, and as Sir
Charles Dumfunk insists on her rooms
facing the west, she is glad that the wall

is there to act as a screen. Oh yes, she is
perfectly aware that Lord Letterkenney
had the screen of Purcell House pulled
down and an open Italian facade erected
in its place, the picture of which was in
the illustrated papers, but as Lady Letter-
kenney until her marriage had lived in
Ireland, and had probably never seen any-
thing human except priests and pigs, the
sight of civilised beings was doubtless an
agreeable novelty to her. The same cir-
cumstances did not exist in her, Lady
Hetherington's, case, and she decidedly
liked the screen.

The Earl likes the screen also, but he
never says anything about it, chiefly be-
cause no one ever asks his opinion on any
subject. He likes it because it is his, the
Earl of Hetherington's, and he likes look-
ing at it as he likes looking at the coronet
on his plate, on his carriage panels, and his
horses' harness ; at his family history as set
forth by Burke and Debrett, and at the
marginal illustrations of his coat of arms as
given in those charming volumes; at his-
genealogical tree, a mysterious work of art
which hangs in the library looking some-
thing like an enlarged " sampler" worked
by a school-girl, and from the contempla-
tion of which he derives intense delight.
It does not take a great deal to fill Lord
Hetherington's soul with rapture. Down
in Norfolk villages, in the neighbourhood
of his ancestral home, and far away in scat-
tered cottages on the side of green Welsh
mountains, where the cross-tree rears its
inopportune head in the midst of the lovely
landscape, and where smoke and coal-dust
permeate the soft delicious air, his lordship,
as landlord and mine-holder, is spoken of
with bated breath by tenants and workmen,
and regarded as one of the hardest-headed,
tightest-fisted men of business by stewards

=ip

146 [January 10, 1S69.;

ALL THE YEAR BOUND.

[Conducted by

and agents. They do not see much, scarcely
anything, of him, they say, and they don't
need to, if he's to be judged by the letters
he writes and the orders he sends. To
screw np the rents and to lengthen the
hours of labour was the purport of these
letters, while their style was modelled on
that used by the Saxon Eranklin to his
hog-hind curt, overbearing, and offensive.
Agents and stewards, recipients of these
missives, say bitter words about Lord
Hetherington in private, and tenants and
workmen curse him secretly as they bow
to his decree. To them he is a haughty,
selfish, grinding aristocrat, without a
thought for any one but himself; whereas
in reality he is a chuckle-headed nobleman,
with an inordinate idea of his position cer-
tainly, but kindly hearted, a slave to his
wife, and with one great desire in life, a
desire to distinguish himself somehow, no
matter how.

He had tried politics. When a young
man he had sat as Lord West for his
county, and the first Conservative ministry
which came into office after he had suc-
ceeded to his title, remembering the service
which Lord West had done them in roar-
ing, hooting, and yar-yaring in the House
of Commons, repaid the obligation by ap-
pointing the newly fledged Earl of Hether-
ington to be the head of one of the inferior
departments. Immensely delighted was his
lordship at first, went down to the office
daily, to the intense astonishment of the
departmental private secretary, whose offi-
cial labours had hitherto been confined to
writing about four letters a day, took upon
himself to question some of the suggestions
which were made for his approval, carped
at the handwriting of the clerks, and for at
least a week thought he had at length
found his proper place in the world, and
had made an impression. But it did not
last. The permanent heads of the depart-
ment soon found him out, scratched through
the external cuticle of pride and pomposity,
and discovered the true obstinate dullard
underneath. And then they humoured him,
and led him by the nose, as they had led
many a better man before him, and he sub-
sided into a nonentity ; and then his party
went out of office, and when they came
in again they declined to reappoint Lord
Hetherington, though he clamoured ever
so loudly.

Social science was the field in which his
lordship next disported himself, and prolix,
pragmatical, and eccentric as are its pro-
fessors generally, he managed to excel them

all. Lord Hetherington had his theories on
the utilisation of sewage and the treatment
of criminals, on strikes and trades unions
the first of which he thought should be
suppressed by the military, the second put
down by Act of Parliament and on the
proper position of women; on which sub-
ject he certainly spoke with more than his
usual spirit and fluency. But he was a
bore upon all, and at length the social
science audiences, so tolerant of boredom,
felt that they could stand him no longer,
and coughed him down gently but firmly
when he attempted to address them. Lord
Hetherington then gave up social science
in disgust, and let his noble mind lie fallow
for a few months, during which time he
employed himself in cutting his noble
fingers with a turning-lathe which he
caused to be erected in his mansion,
and which amused him very much : until
it suddenly occurred to him that the
art of bookbinding was one in which his
taste and talent might find a vent. So the
room in which the now deserted turning-
lathe stood was soon littered with scraps of
leather and floating fragments of gilt-leaf,
and there his lordship spent hours every
day looking on at two men very hard at
work in their shirt sleeves, and occasionally
handing them the tools they asked for, and
thus he practised the art of bookbinding.
Every one said it was an odd thing for a
man to take to, but every one knew that
Lord Hetherington was an odd man, con-
sequently no one was astonished, after the
bound volumes had been duly exhibited to
dining or calling friends, and had elicited
the various outbursts of "Jove!" "Ah!"
" Charming !" " Quite too nice !" and
" Can't think how he does it, eh ?" which
politeness demanded, no one was astonished
to hear that his lordship, panting for
something fresh in which to distinguish
himself, had found it in taxidermy, which
was now absorbing all the energies of his
noble mind. The receipt of a packet of
humming birds, presented by a poor ref-
lation in the navy, first turned Lord Hether-
ington's thoughts to this new pursuit, and
he acted with such promptitude that be-
fore the end of a week, Mr. Byrne
small, shrunken, and high- shouldered
had taken the place at the bench lately
occupied by the stalwart men in shirt
sleeves, but the smell of paste and gum
had been supplanted by that of pungent
chemicals, the floor was strewn with
feathers and wool instead of leather and
gilt- leaf, and his lordship, still looking on

Cliarics Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[January 16, 1869.] 147

and handing tools to his companion, was
stuffing birds very much in the same way
as he had bound books.

It was a fine sight to see old Jack Byrne,
"Bitter Byrne," the ultra - radical, the
sourest-tongued orator of the Spartan Club,
the ex- Chartist prisoner, waited on by
gorgeous footmen in plush and silk stock-
ings, fed on French dishes and dry sherry,
and accepting it all as if he had been born
to the situation.

" Why should I quarrel with my bread
and butter, or what's a devilish deal better
than bread and butter," he asked, in the
course of a long evening's ramble with
Walter Joyce, " because it comes from a
representative of the class I hate ? I earn
it, I work honestly and hard for my wage,
and suppose I am to act up to the sham
self-denial preached in some of the prints
which batten on the great cause without
understanding or caring for it suppose I
were to refuse the meal which my lord's
politeness ends me, as some of your
self-styled Gracchi or Patriots would wish,
how much further should we have deve-
loped the plans, or by what the more should
we have dealt a blow at the institution
we are labouring to destroy ? Not one
jot ! My maxim, as I have told you belore,
is, use these people ! Hate them if you
will, despise them as you must, but use
them !"

The old man's vehemence had a certain
weight with Joyce, who, nevertheless, was
not wholly convinced as to the propriety of
his friend's position, and said, " You justify
your conduct by Lord Hetherington's, then ?
You use each other ?"

" Exactly ! My Lord Hetherington in
Parliament says, or would say if he was
allowed the chance, but they know him too
well for that, so he can only show by his
votes and his proxies proxies, by the
Lord ! isn't that a happy state of things
when a minister can swamp any measure
that he chooses by pulling from his pocket
a few papers sent to him by a few brother
peers, who care so little about the question
in hand that they won't even leave their
dinner tables to come down and hear it dis-
cussed ! says that he loathes what he is
pleased to call the lower classes, and consi-
ders them unworthy of being represented
in the legislature. But then he wants to
stuff birds, or rather to be known as a bird
stuffier of taste, and none of the House of
Peers can help him there. So he makes
inquiries, and is referred to me, and en-
gages me, and we work together neither

abrogating our own sentiments. He uses
my skill, I take his money, each has his
quid pro quo, and if the time were ever to
come as it may come, Walter, mark my
words as it must come, for everything is
tending towards it, when the battle of the
poor against the rich, the bees against the
drones, is fought in this country, fought
out, I mean, practically and not theoretically,
we shall each of us, my Lord Hetherington
and I, be found on our respective sides
without the slightest obligation from one to
the other !"

Joyce had come to look forward to those
evening walks with the old man as the
pleasantest portion of the day. From nine
till six he laboured conscientiously at the
natural history work which Mr. Byrne had
procured for him, dull uninteresting work
enough, but sufficiently fairly rewarded.
Then he met his old friend at Bliffkins's,
and after their frugal meal they set out for
a long ramble through the streets. Byrne
was full of information, which, in his
worldly-wise fashion, he imparted, tinged
with social philosophy or dashed with an
undercurrent of his own peculiar views.
Of which an example. Walter Joyce had
been standing for five minutes, silent, rapt
in delight at his first view of the Parliament
Houses as seen from Westminster Bridge.
A bright moonlight night, soft, dreamy,
even here, with a big yellow harvest moon
coming up from the back, throwing the
delicate tracery into splendid relief, and
sending out the shadows thick and black ;
the old man looking on calmly, quietly
chuckling at the irrepressible enthusiasm
mantling over his young friend's cheeks
and gleaming in his eyes.

" A fine place, lad ?"

" Fine ! splendid, superb !"

" Well, not to put too fine a point upon
it, we'll say fine. Ah, they may blackguard
Barry as much as they like, and when it
comes to calling names and flinging mud in
print, mind you, I don't know anybody to
beat your architect or your architect's
friend, but there's not another man among
'em could have done anything like that !
That's a proper dignified house for the
Parliament of the People to sit in when it
comes !"

" But it does sit there, doesn't it ?"

" It ? What ? The Parliament of the
People ? No, sir ; that sits, if you would
believe certain organs of the press, up a
court in Fleet- street, where it discusses the
affairs of the nation over screws of shag
tobacco and pots of fourpenny ale. What

148 [January 16, 1S69.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

[Conducted by

sits there before us is the Croesus Club, a
select assemblage of between six and seven
hundred members, who drop down here to
levy taxes, and job generally, in the interval
between dinner and bed."

"Are they are they there now?"
asked Joyce, eagerly, peering with out-
stretched neck at the building before him.

" Now ? No, of course not, man ! They're
away at their own devices, nine-tenths of
them breaking the laws which they helped
to make, and all enjoying themselves, and
wondering what the devil people find to
grumble at !"

" One of the governors of the old school,
down, down at Helmingham" a large
knot swelled in Joyce's throat as he said
the word, and nearly choked him; never
before had he felt the place so tar away or
the days spent there so long removed from
his then life " was a member of Parlia-
ment, I think ! Lord Beachcroft. Did you
ever hear of him ?"

The old man smiled sardonically. " Hear
of him, man ? There's not one of them
that has made his mark, or that is likely to
make his mark in any way, that I don't
know by sight, or that I haven't heard
speak. I know Lord Beachcroft well enough ;
he's a philanthropist, wants camphorated
chalk tooth-powder for the paupers, and
horse exercise for the convicts. Registered
among the noodles, ranks A 1, weakly
built, leaden-headed, and wants an ex-
perienced keeper !"

" That doctrine would have been taken as
heresy at Helmingham ! I know he came
there once on our speech-day to deliver the
prizes, and the boys all cheered him to the
echo!"

" The boys ! of course they did ! The
child is father to the man ! I forgot, people
don't read "Wordsworth now- a- days, but
that's what he says, and he and Tennyson
are the only poet-philosophers that have
risen amongst us for many years, and boys
shout, as men would, at the mere sight, at
the mere taste of a lord J How they like to
roll ' your lordship' round their mouths,
and fear lest they should lose the slightest
atom of its flavour ! Not that the boys did
wrong in cheering Lord Beachcroft ! He's
harmless enough and well - meaning, I'm
sure, and stands well up among the noodles.
And it's better to stand anywhere amongst
them than to be affiliated to the other
party !"

" The other party ? Who are they, Mr.
Byrne ?"

" The rogues, lad, the rogues ! Rogues

and noodles make up the blessed lot of
senators sitting in your gimcrack palace,
who vote away your birthright and mine,
tax the sweat of millions, bow to Gold Stick
and kiss Black Rod's coat-tails, send our
fleets to defend Von Sourkraut's honour, or
our soldiers to sicken of jungle fever in
pursuit of the rebel Lollum Dha's adver-
saries ! Parliament ? Representatives of
the people ? Very much ! My gallant friend r
all pipeclay and padded breast, who won't
hear of the army estimates being reduced ;
my learned friend, who brings all his
forensic skill and all his power of tongue-
fence, first learned in three- guinea briefs at
the Old Bailey, and now educated up into,
such silvery eloquence, into play for the
chance of a judgeship and a knighthood j
the volatile Irish member, who subsides
finally into the consulate of Zanzibar ; the
honourable member, who, having in his
early youth swept out a shop at Loughboro',.
and arrived in London with eightpence, has
accumulated millions, and is, of course, a
strong Tory, with but two desires in life, to
keep down ' the people,' and to obtain a
card for his wife for the Premier's Saturday
evenings these are the representatives of
the people for you ! Rogues and noodles,
noodles and rogues. Don't you like the
picture ?"

" I should hate it, if I believed in it, Mr.
Byrne !" said Joyce, moving away, "but I
don't ! You won't think me rude or unkind,
but but I've been brought up in so widely
different a faith. I've been taught to hold
in such reverence all that I hear you deny y
that "

" Stick to it, lad ! hold to it while you
can !" said the old man, kindly, laying his
hand on his companion's arm. " My doc-
trines are strong meat for babes too strong,
I dare say and you're but a toothless infant
yet in these things, anyhow ! So much the
better for you. I recollect a story of some
man who said he was never happy or well
after he was told he had a liver ! Go on as
long as you can in pleasant ignorance of
the fact that you have a political liver.
Some day it will become torpid and sluggish,,
and then then come and talk to old Dr.
Byrne. Till then, he won't attempt to
alarm you, depend upon it !"

Not very long to be deferred was the day
in which the political patient was to come
to the political physician for advice and for
treatment.

Beaufort- square looked hideously dull as
Lord Hetherington drove through it on his

cg=

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[January 16, 1863.] 149

way to his home from the railway station a
few days after the conversation above re-
corded, and the clanging of his own great
gates as they shnt behind him echoed and
re-echoed through the vast deserted space.
The gorgeous porter and all the regiment
of domestics were down atWesthope, the
family place in Norfolk, so the carriage
gates were opened by a middle-aged female
with her head tied up for toothache, and
Mrs. Mason, the housekeeper, with a female
retinue, was waiting to receive his lordship
on the steps. Always affable to old ser-
vants of the family, whose age, long service,
and comfortable comely appearance do him
credit, as he thinks, Lord Hetherington
exchanges a few gracious words with Mrs.
Mason, desires that Mr. Byrne shall be
shown in to him so soon as he arrives, and
makes his way across the great hall to the
library. The shutters of his room have
been opened, but there has been no time
given for further preparations, and the big
writing-table, the globes, and the bookcases
are all enswathed in ghostly holland drapery.
The bust of the ninth earl, Lord Hether-
ington' s father, has slipped its head out of
its covering, and looks astonished and as if
it had been suddenly called up in its night-
clothes. My lord looks dismayed, as well
he may, at the dreary room, but finds no
more cheerful outlook from the window
into the little square garden, where a few
melancholy leaves are rotting in the dirty
corners into which they have drifted, and
where Mrs. Mason's grandson, unconscious
of observation, is throwing stones at a cab.
My lord rattles the loose silver in his
trousers' pockets, walks up to the fireplace
and inspects his tongue in the looking-
glass, whistles thoughtfully, sighs heavily,
and is beginning to think he shall go mad,
when Mrs. Mason opens the door and an-
nounces " Mr. Byrne."

" How do, Byrne ?" says his lordship,
much relieved. " Glad to see you ! Come
up on purpose ! Want your help ! "

Mr. Byrne returns his lordship's saluta-
tions, and quietly asks in what way he can
be of use. His lordship is rather taken
aback at being so suddenly brought to
book, but says, with some hesitation,

" Well, not exactly in your own way,
Byrne ; I don't think I shall do any more
what- d'ye- call- urns, birds, any more for
the present, I mean, for the present. Her
ladyship thought those last screens so good
that it would be useless to try to improve
on them, and so she's given me I mean
I've got another idea."

Mr. Byrne, with the faintest dawn of a
cynical grin on his face, bows and waits.

"Fact is," pursues his lordship, "my
place down at Westhope, full of most mon-
strously interesting records of our family
from the time of oh, the Crusaders and
Guy Fawkes and the Pretender, and all
that kind of thing ; records, don't you
know, old papers, and what they call docu-
ments, you know, and those kind of things.
Well, I want to take all these things and
make 'em into a sort of history of the
family, you know, to write it and have it
published, don't they call it ? You know
what I mean."

Mr. Byrne intimates that they do call it
published, and that he apprehends his lord-
ship's meaning completely.

" Well, then, Byrne," his lordship con-
tinues, " what I sent for you for is this.
'Tisn't in your line, I know, but I've found
you clever and all that kind of thing, and
above your station. Oh, I mean it, I do
indeed, and I want you to find me some
person, respectable and educated and all
that, who will just go through these papers,
you know, and select the right bits, you
know, and write them down, you know,

and, in point of fact, just do You know

what I mean 1"

Mr. Byrne, with a radiant look which
his face but seldom wore, averred that he
not merely understood what was meant, but
that he could recommend the very man
whom his lordship required, a young man
of excellent address, good education, and
great industry.

" And he'll understand ?" asked

Lord Hetherington, hesitatingly, and with
a curious look at Mr. Byrne.

" Everything !" replied the old man.
" Your lordship's book will be the most
successful thing you've done !"

" Then" bring him to the Clarendon at
twelve the day after to-morrow ! As he's
to live in the house, and that kind of thing,
her ladyship must see him before he's en-

" I suppose I may congratulate you, my
boy!" said Byrne to Joyce, a day or two
afterwards, as they walked away from the
Clarendon Hotel after their interview,
" though you don't look much pleased
about it !"

" I'm an ungrateful brute," said Walter;
" I ought to have thanked you the instant
the door closed ! For it is entirely owing
to you and your kindness that I have ob-
tained this splendid chance ! But "

150 [January 16, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

" But what ?" said the old man, kindly.

" Did yon notice that woman's reception
of me, and the way she spoke ?"

" That woman ? Oh, my lady ! Hm
she's not too polite to those she considers
her inferiors !"

" Polite ! To me it was imperious, in-
solent, degrading ! But I can put up with
it !" And he added softly to himself, " For
Marian's sake !"

A PEASANT WEDDING IN BEITANY.

On the crest of a high hill in the very heart
of Britany far from railroads, and where
stage coaches are rare visitors, welcomed at
long intervals stands a quaint old village,
nestling between copse and vineyard. A single
jagged street staggers eccentrically from brow
to brow ; a line of tottering huts, moss-grown,
mud-plastered, straw-thatched, stretches on
either side ; a curious little one-sided church,
with square and toppling tower, rusted iron
cross, shapeless windows, and obstinately
crooked roof, stands in the centre ; before
which lies, worn by much use, the village lawn.

I was making the tour of Britany with my
own horse and chaise, and climbed the long
road which ascended to La Vertou, late in the
afternoon of an autumn day, when the fruit of
the ripe vineyards yielded a thick and delicious
perfume to the air. On driving into the vil-
lage street, and while directing my whole at-
tention to the search for a possible village inn
for it was by no means certain that I should
find such an institution I was struck by a
certain activity among the primitive folk, in
contrast with the sleepy air of the other vil-
lages through which I had passed. The huts
seemed to have emptied their whole population
old, middle aged, youthful, and infantile
into the road; there was fast talking and
laughter. The good peasant people, too, were
unusually well dressed : the men's hats were
not quite so dirty and sun-tanned, their blue
blouses not quite so crumpled, their shoes not
quite so rough as I had been wont to see ; the
same was observable of the women's coifs,
shawls, and chains. On the lawn, certain
rustic games were going forward ; at the doors
of the shops, the gossips were gathered, in
high glee. I observed one group, larger than
the rest, which seemed to attract particular
attention. A middle-aged peasant, with a
hardy-looking woman by his side, closely fol-
lowed by a younger couple, and behind them
by a merry shoal of village lads and maidens,
was passing from shop to shop, stopping a while
at each. As the peasant approached the village
merchant would advance, with great ceremony
doff his hat and salute him and usher him and
his troupe within ; while the gossips would se-
parate and allow the company to pass, and
then crowd eager round the door. I was
sorely perplexed to guess what this was all
about.

There was the village inn at last, right
under the little church, with a big elm in
front, and seats around its trunk ; an odd
gable jutting out streetwards ; and a smiling
fat landlord and his buxom dame bowing and
smirking in the doorway, happy to have a
stranger guest. Horse and chaise were stowed
away where, I knew not, and know not to
this day my small quantity of luggage was
deposited in the best room but one, and in a
quarter of an hour I was seated at a simple,
clean, and tempting table, with a bottle of
capital wine at my elbow, and a plump roast
fowl before me. As I was thirsting for com-
pany quite as much as for wine, I bade mine
host sit at table with me and partake. I asked
him (the calls of hunger partially satisfied)
what saint's festival it was? Mine host
laughed a slight respectful laugh, . and with
the French genius for repartee, replied :

"What saint, Monsieur? Why, Saint Ma-
trimony, parbleu !"

He then proceeded to inform me that Nan-
nine, the daughter of Picquet, the village sabot
maker, was to be wedded on the morrow to
Jacques Blot, a thriving young farmer of the
neighbourhood.

" You see, Monsieur, when a youngster
among us falls in love with a lass, the first
thing he does is to run to the village tailor.
Monsieur, the village tailor is our notary, and
keeps our family secrets, and makes our mar-
riages. And Monsieur Poppeau, our village
tailor, is one of your model hommes d'affaires.
Dame ! he is the hardest headed, most silent,
profoundest, most persuasive man in France.
Well, 'tis he to whom young Jacques resorted,
to promote his suit with the pretty little Nan-
nine. Monsieur Poppeau forthwith shoulders
his broom."

" His broom?"

" Monsieur, the symbol of his errand. When
one sees the broom coming, one knows that
one's daughter is sought for, and is to be swept
out of one's house. Monsieur Poppeau, broom
on shoulder, repairs to Monsieur Picquet.
The marriage contract is drawn by Monsieur
Poppeau, who has, as perquisites, presents of
blouses and franc pieces, a pair of stockings of
different colours worked by Nannine's fingers
and a place of honour at all the marriage
ceremonies. Then comes the civil marriage,
which you doubtless know about. But they
are not tied yet, not by a good deal. For a
fortnight, each goes back to his and her own
house, works as usual, seldom sees the other
beloved, and waits in patience parbleu, how
hard it is ! for the proper time to expire.
This rather uncomfortable fortnight Jacques
and Nannine have just completed ; it was over
to-day ; and to-morrow they will be fairly tied
by the ceremony of the church."

" But what was being done to-day?"

"Ah, to-day! Yes, they were buying the
wedding presents. The two middle-aged folk
you saw at the head of the procession were the
father of Jacques, and the mother of Nannine :
each of the young couple having but one parent

=&>

Charles Dickens.]

A PEASANT WEDDING IN BRITANY. [January 16, 1869.] 151

living. Just behind them, doubtless, was the
young couple, bashfully following. The parents
were going about, buying the presents ; here a
silk dress, there a fine lace coif, yonder some
article of menage, or jewellery, or farmers' tools
or stock. 'Tis a holiday for all the young
people of the village. Some of them have been
having a dance, with music, on the lawn ;
others, the more well-to-do, have been escort-
ing Jacques and Nannine to the patissiere and
cabaret, where the happy couple have been
treated to wines, fruits, and cakes ; others have
been following the parents from shop to shop,
and bearing home the presents as they were
purchased."

Mine host and I, our repast over, repaired to
the little bench under the gable of the inn, and
lighted our pipes. We had not sat there long,
when the peasant whom I had noticed leading
the procession the father of Jacques came
up, followed by a merry troop of young vil-
lagers.

" He's coming to invite me to the wedding,"
whispered the landlord. Which he did. Then,
turning to me with a profound salutation,
Jacques's father remarked that he perceived I
was a stranger, and hoped I would likewise
honour him with my presence, not only to the
ceremony, but to the succeeding festivities. I
at once accepted the invitation.

" I beg Monsieur's pardon," said mine host,
as I was about to ascend, candle in hand, to my
chamber, "but if Monsieur would wish to see
the marriage, he must rise very early. The
cure will be at the altar by seven. I pray Mon-
sieur to forgive my not giving him the best
room. But it is a custom that the bridegroom
should hire the best room of the inn the night
before the wedding, for the musicians, who
come from the city, twenty leagues away."

At six on the fresh October morning, I was
dressed and at my simple breakfast of bread,
fruit, and wine ; and at ten minutes before
seven I repaired with mine host and hostess to
the village church. The slate -coloured dawn
was just mellowing into day as we issued into
the zig-zag street, and the little population were
already astir, hastening in chattering groups
towards the scene of the ceremony. They
were crowding in at the door of the oddest
little, one-sided, worn, and musty church you
ever looked on : with ancient frescoes half
obliterated, faded altar cloths, and feeble-look-
ing candlesticks ; at the upper end were two
dim flickering tapers, their rays intercepted by
the squat thick-set form (clothed in sacred at-
tire) of the village cure ; just below him was
the village beadle, with enormous gaudy
chapeau, shivering with cold ; the cure holding
in his sleek fat hands a well-worn book ; the
beadle, clutching his staff of authority.

Jacques and Nannine, clad in the newest and
best apparel the village could afford, reverently
approach the altar and kneel ; their parents
come after, and stand demurely behind. The
rustic population is very quiet and attentive,
and evidently impressed by the holy place.
Then follows the stately Romish marriage

ceremony, needless to describe. No sooner
have the last intonation and the blessing
passed the priest's lips than the auditory begin
to chatter and laugh, to hurry up to bride
and bridegroom and to shower honest and
hearty kisses on them in which the cure,
by the by, is not slow to join. This over,
the married pair and their especial friends fol-
low the good pastor into the sacristy behind
the altar. As a stranger, I am politely bidden
to come too. Here, are spread some cold meat,
bread, and wine, of which all, Nannine in-
cluded, partake with lusty zest, and there is
many a joke and there is much rallying, in
which the priest is merriest of all.

The village folk have meanwhile been busy
on the lawn outside. The grass has been rolled
flat, and tables have been placed, and tents
erected; the musicians have arrived, well
mellowed with wine, and scratching on their
fiddles in their impatience to begin. The wed-
ding party, on emerging from the church, is
greeted by a queer shrill yell, not unlike an
Indian whoop the Breton cheer ; forthwith
the musicians mount the table, take their places
on round stools, and strike up. The bride and
bridegroom proceed to mount a horse : she
seated behind him, and clinging to his waist as
prettily as possible : and they gallop around the
green, to the great amusement and applause of
the spectators, some half-a-dozen times. This
traditional custom complied with, the marriage
dances ,begin. Jacques and Nannine are at
the head of the first set, opposite the parents ;
at the sides are the best friends. It is by no
means easy to describe this rustic wedding
dance. They leap and bound, entering into
the sport as vigorously as they do into their
daily work. They swing their arms about in
ecstatic fury ; the hair escapes from beneath
hats and coifs, perspiration covers their fore-
heads, and their heavy wooden shoes thump
and thump on the flattened grass. It was a
very ancient dance, mine host told me, handed
down from none knew how remote. 'Tis said
that this, as well as the other rustic Breton
dances, had a religious origin, far back in
Druidic ages. The wedding dance is called the
"gavotte"; its noticeable feature is, that the
most expert dancer leads the rest off into num-
berless turnings and counterturnings, then ab-
ruptly stops and sets them all a-jigging, then
rushes off with a sort of " walk round," then
resumes his spiral course with a hop and a skip,
the rest imitating his every movement with
surprising quickness ; the whole apparently, not
really, performed at the leader's caprice. The
dance is made yet more striking by a continual
shouting and laughing, an enraptured throwing
up of hands, and individual eccentricities and
diversions. It is so exhausting that after a
little, even the sturdy sons and daughters of the
soil are fain to give up ; and for awhile they
leave the dancing ring to refresh themselves
and rest.

Long rude tables have been set along the
boundaries of the green, and now fairly groan
with a' bounteous provision of good things eat-

152 [January 16, 18G9.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

able and drinkable ; monsieur the cure is al-
ready seated at the wedding table, with chairs
for bride and bridegroom on either side of him.
The exhausted but still noisy dancers flock
eagerly about the board ; it is amazing to see
what wonderful morning appetites they have,
and how soon the mass of good things dis-
appears. Monsieur le Cure, under the influ-
ence of the punch and wine, grows astonish-
ingly funny, is extremely gallant and attentive
to the bride, and pledges everybody, even me
the stranger guest. Then comes a loud noisy
song, under the inspiration of which the dancers
resume their places on the sward. This time it
is another, and very different dance ; you would
think that, after the wine, it would be a wilder
one than the first; no, it is a sedate move-
ment, the faces of the dancers according with
it. They separate into couples, and dance in
a sort of procession, one behind the other ; it
is not unlike the fine old minute in Don
Giovanni, only it has a rustic spice to it want-
ing in the stately aristocratic dance of our
grandfathers. All day long alternate dancing,
feasting, and singing is kept up, and still the
marriage ceremonies are hardly begun.

The company separated a little before sun-
down, to unite again in front of the church
soon after the grey light of twilight had
thickened to darkness. The tents which had
been erected were illuminated by a hundred
waxen candles and waxen candles, even in
the chateaux of noblemen, are aristocratic in
Britany. Within the tents were long tables,
bounteously laden ; without, large tires had
been made, and there was every Variety of
cooking pot, and pitcher, and grill, and sauce-
pan. The tent was, of course, that of the
bridal party ; and here, among others, were
the cure, the doctor, the apothecary, the tailor,
the postmaster, and myself. At the upper end
of the tent was a little rudely constructed dais,
where the beaming Nannine sat ; around her
were gathered the favoured few, her intimates.
Opposite, was the good fat cure, supported on
either hand by a buxom rustic dame. When
we had all taken our places at the festive
board, I looked about for the bridegroom,
Jacques, but could see him nowhere ; pre-
sently, however, the reason was apparent. It
is, on the occasion of " La Table de la Mariee,"
or " Bridal Feast," the custom that certain of
the young men should act as butlers and cooks ;
these offices are assumed by the relatives and
near friends of the bridegroom, and are posts
of honour. The bridegroom himself performs
the double function of chief cook and head
butler ; he himself is forbidden, by the law
of tradition, to take a drop r morsel that
night; it is his business to superintend the
dishes intended for the bride, and to serve
them up before her. So presently in he came
with a huge platter, on which lay, in bounteous
sauce, a portly turbot ; this he deposited before
the bride, who rose and bowed with smiling
solemnity. Whereupon Monsieur le Cure
sprang to his feet, and raising high his glass of
brandy punch, called out, " To the bride !"

A summons which no one refused, and which
was responded to by a tumultuous jingling of
glasses, tossing off of punch, and clapping of
feet. It was an improvement on our Anglo-
Saxon civilisation, that no speeches were made.
But what an orgy succeeded! How shall I
describe the noise, and the dancing, and the
tipsy songs, and the rude lusty games : not
to speak of the promiscuous hugging and kiss-
ing, and chasing and fondling which that never-
to-be-forgotten scene presented ? Of all the
gallant company, dawn found the bridegroom,
and him alone, sober. The demure and solemn
tailor, though an unusually modest man, was
painfully boastful of his share in bringing about
the present occasion ; Monsieur le Cure was now.
too sombre and dignified by half ; and as for
Jacques's steady papa and his familiars, the
doctor, and the apothecary, and even mine
host, they had, long before dawn, disappeared
beneath the table, and were being slowly
sobered, as morning came, by a bath of dew.
The womankind had retired in high spirits ; all
except the bride, whom custom doomed to sit
there on her dais, bolt upright amid the revel,
until the first rays of the rising sun should slant
into the tent. Jacques had most certainly the
worst of the fun. It was his task to carry the
jaded roysterers home ; and this he did with
admirable patience and perseverance. But his
reward, the taking home of his pretty spouse,
was not even yet earned. The bride must, by
inexorable Breton tradition, go home to her
mother on the succeeding day ; and the orgies
must be resumed a second, and yet a third,
evening. The second evening was like the first ;
all boisterousness, singing, shouting, kissing,
and final collapsing under the table. The
third resembled the two previous evenings,
only in slang parlance, " more so ;" for on
the last, winding up orgies, the shouting and
dancing were noisier, the kissing more vigorous,
and the drunkenness more general, than ever.
Jacques, now permitted to indulge with the
rest in deep potations, made up for lost time,
and was the very first to slide under the table,
where he remained until morning.

There was a curious sight on the morning
following the final evening, which was at once
a traditional custom, and a scene characteristic
of rural Britany. This was the " Beggar's
Dance." The remains of the feast, wine and
meat, were neatly set on tables in the middle
of the green ; and all the beggars of the neigh-
bourhood were invited to partake. The vil-
lagers gathered in a ring around the space, leav-
ing an opening toward the street. Presently
there issued from a little lane a most grotesque
procession. There were the halt, the blind, and
the lame the one-legged, the one-eyed, and
the one-armed ; the patriarchs and the children
of mendicancy, ragged and shoeless, with hats
crownless, and coats tailless, and gowns thread-
less ; hobbling, and plunging, and limping
along, with cracked songs, and yells, and the
queerest imaginable movements. Arrived on
the green they took position in couples, and
performed a singular burlesque on the wedding

Charles Dickens.]

PRECIOUS STONES.

[January 16, 1869.] 15i

dance. This over, they fell to on the feast,
with a will, being waited on by the chief dames
of the village.

Finally, on the wedding-night which is the
fourth night after the wedding all the friends of
the bridal pair visit them as they lie in the nuptial
couch. Each visitor brings a bowl of milk soup ;
and poor Jacques and Nannine must, bongre
malgre, receive from every one a spoonful of
that beverage. The young girls who thus visit
the bridal chamber, secure the pins which have
been used in the fastening of Nannine's shawl
and gown, as a charm to bring them husbands.

PRECIOUS STONES.

If contingencies prevent your going to
Corinth, you content your craving with a
panorama of Corinth. If your poverty, but
not your will, compel your remaining outside a
travelling managerie, you may still have the
pleasure of admiring the pictures. When you
cannot enter a sweet-smelling cookshop, no law
prevents your looking in at the window and
sniffing the odours that exhale from below.
And if you can't pick up diamonds like Sindbad
the Sailor, nor incrust yourself with them like
Prince Esterhazy, we advise you not to take the
matter to heart, but to console yourself by con-
templating them at a distance.

The Cook's Oracle, the Almanac des Gour-
mands, and Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du
Gout, have served a series of Barmecide feasts
to many a compulsory abstainer. In like man-
ner, those who cannot measure pearls by the
pint, nor mark points at whist with unset bril-
liants, may gratify their tastes for gems by the
instructive and interesting Natural History of
Precious Stones and of the Precious Metals,
which Mr. King has given to the world.

Doubtless, jewels are best beheld in situ ;
the situs, however, being neither the mine nor
the matrix, but in their proper place, about
some fair personage which gives you the
chance of admiring two beautiful things at
once. A drawback is that family diamonds,
like family titles, often fall to the lot of the
oldest. Moreover, etiquette forbids young
ladies to wear much jewellery, diamonds being
especially tabooed. Nevertheless, wherever it
may be, a good diamond necklace is a pretty
thing to look at.

Independent of its surpassing beauty, the
diamond strikes the imagination by its value.
The re-cutting merely of the Koh-i-noor is said
to have cost eight thousand pounds. Other
grand diamonds have required a proportional
outlay to bring out their intrinsic qualities.
Even humble stones make good their claim to
attention, and will not be passed by unobserved.
In 1664, Mr. Edward Browne wrote to his
father, Sir Thomas : " March 2. I went to Mr.
Foxe's chamber in Arundell House, where I saw
a great many pretty pictures and things cast in
brasse, some limmings, divers pretious stones,
and one diamond valued at eleven hundred
pound."

That superstition and vulgar error should lay
hold of so remarkable a natural object as the
diamond, might be expected as a matter of
course. The Romans, taught by the Indians,
valued it entirely on account of its supernatural
virtues. They wore the crystals in their native
form, without any attempt to polish, much less
to engrave them. Such, doubtless, was the
ring whose diamond, " Adamas notissimus,"
had flashed in St. Paul's eyes at the momentous
audience before the Jewish queen and her too-
loving brother, in their " great pomp," and
winch afterwards, a souvenir of Titus, graced
the imperious lady's finger in Juvenal's days.
Pliny says the diamond baffles poison, keeps off
insanity, and dispels vain fears. The mediaeval
Italians entitled it " Pietra della Reconcilia-
zione," because it maintained concord between
husband and wife. On this account it was long
held the appropriate stone for setting in the
espousal ring

From Pliny, also, we have the widespread
notion that a diamond, which is the hardest of
stones, is yet made soft by the blood of a goat
but not except it be fresh and warm. " But
this," observes Sir Thomas Browne, " is easier
affirmed than proved." Upon this conceit
arose another that the blood of a goat was
sovereign for the stone. And so it came to be
ordered that the goat should be fed with saxi-
fragous herbs, and such as are conceived of
power to break the stone. Another mistake,
formerly current, is that the diamond is malle-
able, and bears the hammer.

There are facts respecting the diamond as
strange as the fictions. Example, its constant
association with gold, noticed long ago. Where
gold is, there is the diamond. This rule breaks
up the belief of the old lapidaries that diamonds,
are found only in the East Indies, and there
even are confined to Golconda, Visapoor, Ben-
gal, and Borneo. Diamonds have recently been
discovered in most of our gold-yielding colonies,
and probably will turn up in all. The coinci-
dence or companionship of gold with diamonds
can hardly be accidental, although all the dia-
mond mines whose discovery is recorded have
been brought to light in the pursuit of alluvial
gold washings which was notably the case
with the oldest in the Serra do Frio, Brazil, and
the most productive in the world.

South Africa has yielded diamonds enough to
be an earnest of more to come. Australian
" diggins" have already furnished a few, and
will probably yield a vast supply when their
gravel comes to be turned over by people hav-
ing eyes for other objects than nuggets and
gold flakes. In the Paris Exhibition of 1856,
two diamonds were to be seen, found in the
Macquarie river. In the Exhibition of Native
Productions held at Melbourne, 1865, the fea-
ture that excited the greatest interest were
numerous specimens (small, but undeniable) o
the diamond from various parts of the colony.
Finally, in last year's Paris Exhibition, Queens-
land diamonds were produced. Being still
rough, unprofessional persons were unable to
guess at the quality of their water.

154 [January ]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

The British Museum, amongst the native
diamonds, exhibits an octahedral diamond at-
tached to alluvial gold : and strange confirma-
tion of the ancient idea as to their affinity !
not only is the octahedron the primary crystal
of that metal also, but all its secondary modifi-
cations exactly correspond with those of the
diamond. Modern science has made no further
advance towards a solution of this problem be-
yond that propounded as a certainty in the an-
cient Tiniseus. But without solving the pro-
blem, it is clearly worth while for persons likely
to travel in gold-bearing regions to know a
rough diamond when they see it. Otherwise,
they may make ducks and drakes with pebbles
that would pay for their preservation.

Two points determine the value of diamonds
their weight, which can be estimated in the
rough, and their lustre, or water, which is less
easy to judge of. An old treatise says, " The
Water called Coelestis is the Worth of all, and
yet is somewhat difficult to discover in a rough
Diamond. The only infallible Way is to ex-
amine it in the Shade of some tufted Tree. In
Europe, the Lapidaries examine the Goodness
of their rough Diamonds, their Water, Points,
&c, by Daylight ; in the Indies, they do it by
Night."

The diamond is the only gem which becomes
phosphorescent in the dark after long exposure
to the sun's rays, or, Boyle says, after steeping
in hot water. Dr. Wall, in the Philosophical
Transactions, gives his " infallible method" of
distinguishing diamonds from other stones. A
diamond with an easy slight friction in the dark
with any soft animal substance, as the finger,
woollen cloth, or silk, appears luminous in its
whole body. Nay, if you keep rubbing for
some time, and then expose it to the eye, it
will remain so for some time. The excessive
hardness of the diamond is another extraordi-
nary and superlative quality which sets it apart
from most other known substances.

The history of individual diamonds is often
strange and romantic. They have influenced
the fortunes of families, dynasties, and nations.
They bring with them luck, good or ill. Take
the Pitt or Regent diamond, which was found
at Puteal, forty-five leagues from the city of
Golconda, and next to Mirgimola's (the "Mogul"
Diamond) was the largest on record, weighing
in the rough four hundred and ten carats.

Pride, they say, feels no pain ; nor, some-
times, does poverty. The slave who found this
precious pebble concealed it, as the story goes,
in a gash made to receive it in the calf of his
leg until he found an opportunity of escaping
to Madras. There the poor wretch fell in with
an English skipper who, by promising to find a
purchaser for the stone on condition of sharing
half the proceeds, lured him to his ship, and
there disposed of his claims by pitching him
overboard. AParsee merchant of the name of
Jamchund bought this wonderful specimen from
the thief and murderer for the paltry sum of
one thousand pounds, which sum he (the mur-
derer) speedily squandered in debauchery, and,
when it was finished, hanged himself.

Governor Pitt, of Fort St. George, Madras,
states that he purchased it himself of Jam-
chund for twelve thousand five hundred pounds.
Pope, to his annoyance, tried to rob him of the
credit of doing so by assigning its acquisition
to the agency of an " honest factor." To cut
it into a perfect brilliant, in London, occupied
two whole years, at a cost of five thousand
pounds; which outlay was nearly covered by
the value (three thousand five hundred pounds)
of the fragments separated in shaping it. This
operation reduced its weight to one hundred
and thirty-six carats and seven-eighths, but
made it, for perfection of shape as well as for
purity of water, the first diamond in the world,
which it still remains.

The fame of this incomparable jewel soon
spread all over Europe. Uffenbach, a German
traveller who visited this country in 1712,
states that he made many fruitless attempts to
get a sight of it. There was no obtaining an
interview with Governor Pitt, its far from en-
viable possessor. So fearful was he of robbery
(not without cause) that he never let be know
beforehand the day of his coming to town, nor
slept in the same house twice consecutively.
During the next five years that is, until after
long negotiation the Regent Orleans relieved
him of its custody in- 1717 Pitt must have felt
his too-precious stone almost as harassing a
possession as its first finder did. He finally
sold it for one hundred and thirty -five thousand
pounds, a price considered much below its
value ; for, in the inventory of the Regalia, it
is entered at twelve millions of francs, or four
hundred and eighty thousand pounds.

In September, 1792, the great robbery of the
Garde Meuble occurred. Together with the
other regalia of France, the Sancy and the
Regent diamonds were stolen. The former,
being more convertible than its companion, was
never recovered, although a diamond exactly
answering to its description afterwards turned
up. This robbery was effected under circum-
stances of great suspicion in respect to the
keepers, who were supposed to have acted in
the interest of the royal family. The regalia,
including gold plate of almost incalculable
value, had been sealed up by the officers of the
Commune of Paris, after the massacres of the
10th of August. On the 17th of the following
month, the seals were found broken, the locks
picked by means of false keys, and the cabinets
empty. The thieves were never discovered ;
but an anonymous letter directed to the Com-
mune gave information where to find the Regent
together with a noble agate chalice, the latter
stripped of its precious gold mounting. Both
these objects were too well known to be con-
vertible into money without certain detection.
Hence this politeness on the part of the
thieves ; but everything else had disappeared
for ever.

Upon this diamond Buonaparte may be said
to have founded his fortunes. It was verily the
rock on which his empire was built. After the
famous 18th of Brumaire, by pledging the
Regent to the Dutch government, he procured

Charles Dickens.]

MAN OVERBOARD.

[January 1G, 18CDJ 155

the funds indispensable for the consolidation of
his power. After he became emperor, he wore
the diamond set in the pommel of his state-
sword ; doubtless holding that to be a more
significant article of his imperial paraphernalia
than either crown or sceptre.

This remarkable gem exerted a direct in-
fluence in raising to the helm of government
of two hostile nations : in one, the Corsican ad-
venturer ; in the other his renowned adversary,
William Pitt, whose accession to the premier-
ship would probable never have occurred but
for the fortune based upon his great grand-
father's lucky hit.

The Koh-i-noor has liitherto been a fatal
jewel. May its recent recutting have broken
the spell ! Its history is well authenticated at
every step. This stone of fate seems never to
have been lost sight of from the days when
Ala-ud-deen took it from the Eajahs of Malwa,
five centuries and a half ago, to the day when
it became a crown-jewel of England. Tra-
dition carries back its existence in the me-
mory of India to the year 57 B.C. ; and a
still wilder legend would fain recognise in it
a diamond first discovered near Masulipatam,
in the bed of the Godavery, five thousand
years ago.

The Koh-i-noor is reported by Baber, the
founder of the Mogul Empire, to have come
into the Delhi treasury from the conquest of
Malwa, in 1304. The Hindoos trace the curses
and the ultimate ruin inevitably brought upon
its successive possessors by the genius of this
fateful jewel ever since it was first wrested
from the fine of Vikramaditya. If we glance
over its history since 1304, its malevolent in-
fluence far excels that of the necklace for
which Eriphyle betrayed her husband, or the
Eguus Scianus of Greek and Roman tradition.
First falls the vigorous Patan, then the mighty
Mogul Empire, and, with vastly accelerated
ruin, the power of Xadir, of the Dooranee
dynasty, and of the Sikh. Runjeet Singh,
when it was in his possession, was so convinced
of the truth of this belief, that being satisfied
with the enjoyment of it during his own life-
time, he sought to break through the ordi-
nance of fate and the consequent destruction of
his family by bequeathing the stone to the
shrine of Juggernaut for the good of his soul
and the preservation of his dynasty. His suc-
cessors would not give up the baleful treasure,
and the last Maharajah is now a private gentle-
man. In 1850, in the name of the East India
Company (since, in its turn, defunct), Lord
Dalhousie presented the Koh-i-noor to Queen
Victoria.

Perhaps we should have been better without
it ; such, at least, appears to be Mr. King's
opinion. The Brahmins will hardly relinquish
their faith in the malignant powers possessed
by this stone, when they think of the speedily
following Russian war, which annihilated the
prestige of the British army, and the Sepoy
mutiny three years later, which caused Eng-
land's existence as a nation to haag for months
on the forbearance of one man.

The public saw the Koh-i-noor lustreless at
the Exhibition of 1851, then weighing one
hundred and eighty-six carats. Its re-cutting,
performed in 1862, though executed with the
utmost skill and perfection, has deprived the
stone of all its historical and mineralogical in-
terest. As a specimen of a gigantic diamond,
whose native weight and form had been inter-
fered with as little as possible (for with Hindoo
lapidaries the grand object is the preservation
of weight), it stood without a rival, save the
Orloff, in Europe. As it is, in the place of the
most ancient gem in the history of the world
older even than the Tables of the Law and the
Breastplate of Aaron, supposing them still to
exist we get, according to Mr. King, a bad-
shaped, because too shallow, modern brilliant, a
mere lady's bauble, of but second-rate water,
for it has a greyish tinge, and, besides, inferior
in weight to several, being now reduced to one
hundred and two carats and a half.

The operation of re-cutting was performed
in London, under the care of the Messrs. Gar-
rards, the Queen's jewellers, who erected for
that purpose a small four-horse steam engine
on their premises. It was conducted by Voor-
sanger and another skilful workman sent over
by M. Coster from Amsterdam. In conse-
quence of the advantage gained by using steam
power, the actual cutting occupied no more
than thirty-eight working days a striking con-
trast to the two years necessary for cutting the
Pitt diamond by the old hand process. In
some parts of the work, as when it was neces-
sary to grind out a deep flaw, the wheel made
three thousand revolutions per minute.

Mr. King is equally full of pleasant lore
touching other gems, as well as gold and silver.
One emerald story has escaped him. It is told,
if our memory is correct, by Forbes, in his
Oriental Memoirs.

A person, whoever he was, was watching a
swarm of fireflies in an Indian grove one moon-
light night. After hovering for a time in the
moonbeams, one particular firefly, more bril-
liant than the rest, alighted on the grass, and
there remained. The spectator, struck by its
fixity, and approaching to ascertain the cause,
found, not an insect, but an emerald, which
he appropriated and afterwards wore in a
ring.

When the possession of a valuable is hard to
account for, one tale may sometimes be as good
as another provided there be but a tale.

MAN OVERBOARD.

THE FIBST MATE.

Not alone in the storm lurk the danger and the sorrow.

One evening, years ago, doing duty on the deck,
I heard a sailor shout, " Man overboard I" and looking
Over the calm Atlantic, saw him, floating dimly like
a speck !
We could not stop the engines, going fifteen knots an
hour,
Or throw him out a life buoy, so rapidly we sped ;
But I caught, like a thought, his face to Heaven up-
turning,
And prayed for his soul as we left him with the dead.

15G [January 1G, 18C9.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

THE PASSENGER.

Not alone in the sea do the men go down in billows.
I have seen such things on land mid the humble and
the proud.
Men of mark and men of none, and leviathans of
commerce
Go down in calmest weather, in the deep unpitying
crowd.
A flutter and a plash, and a short expiring struggle,
As the great big Ship of Life roars, and steams, and
rushes by :
Man overboard ? What matters ? The paddles roll for
ever,
'Tis the hand of Fate hath done it. Let him die !

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

By Charles Dickens.

mr. barlow.

A great reader of good fiction at an un-
usually early age, it seems to me as though
I had been born under the superintendence
of the estimable but terrific gentleman whose
name stands at the head of my present
reflections. The instructive monomaniac,
Mr. Barlow, will be remembered as the
tutor of Master Harry Sandford and Master
Tommy Merton. He knew everything, and
didactically improved all sorts of occa-
sions, from the consumption of a plate of
cherries to the contemplation of a starlight
night. What youth came to without Mr.
Barlow, was displayed, in the history of
Sandford and Merton, by the example of a
certain awful Master Mash. This young
wretch wore buckles and powder, con-
ducted himself with insupportable levity
at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad
bull single-handed (in which I think him
less reprehensible, as remotely reflecting
my own character), and was a frightful
instance of the enervating effects of luxury
upon the human race.

Strange destiny on the part of Mr.
Barlow, to go down to posterity as child-
hood's first experience of a Bore ! Im-
mortal Mr. Barlow, boring his way
through the verdant freshness of ages !

My personal indictment against Mr.
Barlow is one of many counts. I will
proceed to set forth a few of the injuries
he has done me.

In the first place, he never made, or
took, a joke. This insensibility on Mr.
Barlow's part not only cast its own
gloom over my boyhood, but blighted
even the sixpenny jest books of the time.
Eor, groaning under a moral spell con-
straining me to refer all things to Mr.
Barlow, I could not choose but ask myself
in a whisper when tickled by a printed
jest, " What would he think of it ? What
would he see in it?" The point of the

jest immediately became a sting, and stung
my conscience. Eor, my mind's eye saw
him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from
its shelf some dreary Greek book and
translating at full length what some dismal
sage said (and touched up afterwards, per-
haps, for publication), when he banished
some unlucky joker from Athens.

The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with
all other portions of my young life but
himself, the adamantine inadaptability of
the man to my favourite fancies and
amusements, is the thing for which I hate
him most. What right had he to bore his
way into_ my Arabian Nights ? Yet he
did. He was always hinting doubts of the
veracity of Sindbad the Sailor. If he could
have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I
knew he would have trimmed it, and
lighted it, and delivered a lecture over it on
the qualities of sperm oil, with a glance at
the whale fisheries. He would so soon have
found out on mechanical principles the
peg in the neck of the Enchanted Horse,
and would have turned it the right way in
so workmanlike a manner, that the horse
could never have got any height into the
air, and the story couldn't have been. He
would have proved, by map and compass,
that there was no such kingdom as the
delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the fron-
tiers of Tartary. He would have caused
that hypocritical young prig, Harry, to
make an experiment with the aid of a
temporary building in the garden and a
dummy demonstrating that you couldn't
let a choked Hunchback down an eastern
chimney with a cord, and leave him up-
right on the hearth to terrify the Sultan's
purveyor.

The golden sounds of the overture to the
first metropolitan pantomime I remember,
were alloyed by Mr. Barlow. Click cliek,
ting ting, bang bang, weedle weedle weedle,
Bang ! I recall the chilling air that passed
across my frame and cooled my hot delight,
as the thought occurred to me : " This would
never do for Mr. Barlow !" After the curtain
drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow's
considering the costumes of the Nymphs
of the Nebula as being sufficiently opaque,
obtruded themselves on my enjoyment. In
the Clown I perceived two persons ; one, a
fascinating unaccountable creature of a
hectic complexion, joyous in spirits though
feeble in intellect with flashes of bril-
liancy : the other, a pupil for Mr. Barlow.
I thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly
rise early in the morning, and butter the
pavement for him, and, when he had brought

Charles Dickens.]

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

[January 16, 1869.] 157

him down, would look severely out of his
study- window and ask him how he enjoyed
the fun. I thought how Mr. Barlow would
heat all the pokers in the house and singe
him with the whole collection, to bring
him better acquainted with the properties
of incandescent iron, on which he (Bar-
low) would fully expatiate. I pictured
Mr. Barlow's instituting a comparison
between the clown's conduct at his studies
drinking up the ink, licking his copy-
book, and using his head for blotting-paper
and that of the already mentioned young
Prig of Prigs, Harry, sitting at the Barlovian
feet, sneakingly pretending to be in a rap-
ture of useful knowledge. I thought how
soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown's
hair down, instead of letting it stand erect
in three tall tufts ; and how, after a couple
of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he would
keep his legs close together when he
walked, and would take his hands out of
his big loose pockets, and wouldn't have a
jump left in him.

That I am particularly ignorant what
most things in the universe are made of,
and how they are made, is another of my
charges against Mr. Barlow. "With the
dread upon me of developing into a Harry,
and with the further dread upon me of
being Barlowed if Imade inquiries, by bring-
ing down upon myself a cold shower-bath
of explanations and experiments, I forbore
enlightenment in my youth, and became,
as they say in melodramas, " the wreck you
now behold." That I consorted with idlers
and dunces, is another of the melancholy
facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow respon-
sible. That Pragmatical Prig, Harry, be-
came so detestable, in my sight, that, he
being reported studious in the South, I
would have fled idle to the extremest North.
Better to learn misconduct from a Master
Mash than science and statistics from a
Sandford ! So I took the path which, but
for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden.
Thought I with a shudder, " Mr. Barlow is
a bore, with an immense constructive power
of making bores. His prize specimen is a
bore. He seeks to make a bore of me.
That Knowledge is Power I am not pre-
pared to gainsay ; but, with Mr. Barlow,
Knowledge is Power to bore." Therefore
I took refuge in the Caves of Ignorance,
wherein I have resided ever since, and
which are still my private address.

But the weightiest charge of all my
charges against Mr. Barlow is, that he still
walks the earth in various disguises, seek-
ing to make a Tommy of me, even in my

maturity. Irrepressible instructive mono-
maniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pit-
falls, and lies hiding at the bottom to
burst out upon me when I least expect
him.

A few of these dismal experiences of
mine shall suffice.

Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested
largely in the Moving Panorama trade,
and having on various occasions identified
him in the dark, with a long wand in his
hand, holding forth in his old way (made
more appalling in this connexion, by his-
sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle's-
own Dead- Sea Fruit in mistake for a joke) r
I systematically shun pictorial entertain-
ment on rollers. Similarly I should de-
mand responsible bail and guarantee against
the appearance of Mr. Barlow, before com-
mitting myself to attendance at any as-
semblage of my fellow- creatures where a
bottle of water and a note-book were con-
spicuous objects. For, in either of those
associations, I should expressly expect him.
But such is the designing nature of the
man, that he steals in where no reasonable
precaution or prevision could expect him.
As in the following case :

Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a
country town. In this country town, the
Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, were
announced to appear in the Town Hall, for
the general delectation, this last Christmas
week. Knowing Mr. Barlow to be uncon-
nected with the Mississippi, though holding
republican opinions, and deeming myself
secure, I took a stall. My object was to
hear and see the Mississippi Momuses in
what the bills described as their " National
Ballads, Plantation Break-Downs, Nigger
Part- Songs, Choice Conundrums, Sparkling
Repartees, &c." I found the nine dressed
alike, in the black coat and trousers, white
waistcoat, very large shirt-front, very large
shirt- collar, and very large white tie and
wristbands, which constitute the dress of
the mass of the African race, and which has
been observed by travellers to prevail over
a vast number of degrees of latitude. All
the nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and
had very red lips. At the extremities of
the curve they formed seated in their
chairs, were the performers on the Tam-
bourine and Bones. The centre Momus, a
black of melancholy aspect (who inspired
me with a vague uneasiness for which I
could not then account), performed on a
Mississippi instrument closely resembling
what was once called in this Island a hurdy-
gurdy. The Momuses on either side of him

15S [January 16, 1S69.]

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

had each another instrument peculiar to
the Father of Waters, which may he
likened to a stringed weather-glass held
upside down. There were likewise a little
flute, and a violin. All went well for a
while, and we had had several sparkling
repartees exchanged between the performers
on the tambourine and bones, when the
black of melancholy aspect, turning to the
latter, and addressing him in a deep and
improving voice as "Bones, sir," delivered
certain grave remarks to him concerning
the juveniles present, and the season of the
year ; whereon I perceived that I was in
the presence of Mr. Barlow corked !

Another night and this was in London
I attended the representation of a little
comedy. As the characters were life-like
(and consequently not improving), and as
they went upon their several ways and
designs without personally addressing them-
selves to me, I felt rather confident of
coming through it without being regarded
as Tommy ; the more so, as we were clearly
getting close to the end. But I deceived
myself. All of a sudden, and apropos of
nothing, everybody concerned came to
a check and halt, advanced to the foot-
lights in a general rally to take dead aim
at me, and brought me down with a moral
homily, in which I detected the dread hand
of Barlow.

Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils
of this hunter, that on the very next night
after that, I was again entrapped, where no
vestige of a springe could have been appre-
hended by the timidest. It was a burlesque
that I saw performed ; an uncompromising
burlesque, where everybody concerned, but
especially the ladies, carried on at a very-
considerable rate indeed. Most prominent
and active among the corps of performers
was what I took to be (and she really gave
me very fair opportunities of coming to a
right conclusion) a young lady, of a pretty
figure. She was dressed as a picturesque
young gentleman, whose pantaloons had
been cut off in their infancy, and she had
very neat knees, and very neat satin boots.
Immediately after singing a slang song and
dancing a slang dance, this engaging figure
approached the fated lamps, and, bending
over them, delivered in a thrilling voice a
random Eulogium on, and Exhortation to
pursue, the Yirtues. " Great Heaven !" was
my exclamation. " Barlow !"

There is still another aspect in which
Mr. Barlow perpetually insists on my sus-
taining the character of Tommy, which is
more unendurable yet, on account of its

extreme aggressiveness. Eor the purposes
of a Review or newspaper, he will get up
an abstruse subject with infinite pains, will
Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of
midnight oil, and indeed of everything else,
save cramming himself to the eyes. But
mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his informa-
tion off, he is not contented with having
rammed it home and discharged it upon me,
Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he
was always in possession of it, and made
nothing of it that he imbibed it with his
mother's milk and that I, the wretched
Tommy, am most abjectly behind-hand in
not having done the same. I ask why is
Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow
to this extent ? What Mr. Barlow had
not the slightest notion of, himself, a
week ago, it surely cannot be any very
heavy backsliding in me not to have at
my fingers' ends to-day! And yet Mr.
Barlow systematically carries it over
me with a high hand, and will taunt-
ingly ask me in his articles whether it is
possible that I am not aware that every
schoolboy knows that the fourteenth turn-
ing on the left in the steppes of Russia will
conduct to such-and-such a wandering
tribe ? With other disparaging questions of
like nature. So, when Mr. Barlow ad-
dresses a letter to any journal as a volun-
teer correspondent (which I frequently find
him doing), he will previously have gotten
somebody to tell him some tremendous
technicality, and will write in the coolest
manner: "Now, Sir, I may assume that
every reader of your columns, possessing
average information and intelligence, knows

as well as I do that" say that the

draught from the touch-hole of a cannon of
such a calibre, bears such a proportion in
the nicest fractions to the draught from the
muzzle ; or some equally familiar little fact.
But whatever it is, be certain that it always
tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and
the depression of his enforced and enslaved
pupil.

Mr. Barlow's knowledge of my own
pursuits, I find to be so profound, that my
own knowledge of them becomes as nothing.
Mr. Barlow (disguised and bearing a
feigned name, but detected by me) has oc-
casionally taught me, in a sonorous voice,
from end. to end of a long dinner table,
trifles that I took the liberty of teaching
him five-and-twenty years ago. My clos-
ing article of impeachment against Mr.
Barlow, is, that he goes out to breakfast,
goes out to dinner, goes out everywhere
high and low, and that he will preach to

Charles Dickens.]

LITTLE ITALY'S SCHOOL-BELL. [January 1G, 1809.] 159

me, and that I can't get rid of him. He
makes of me a Promethean Tommy, bound ;
and he is the vulture that gorges itself upon
the liver of my uninstructed mind.

LITTLE ITALY'S SCHOOL-BELL.

" Kingle - tingle - tingle - ring - ting - ting."
Now, my little friends (says dame Progress, ap-
pearing at the door, her active fingers never
ceasing their work, her eager eyes scanning the
disordered legions), time, time ! No more lying
in the sunny comers, no more ruinous gambling
with brass buttons, no more duckings and div-
ings for the amusement of travelling boobies
as idle as yourselves, begging, bickering, and
leading of lives such as an intelligent street
cur, if he had the chance, would proudly reject
in favour of his own. Come in, I say, every
boy of you, and listen to me. Gaetano, put on

your shoes. Do that again, Luigi, and I'll

Well, you have played at soldiers long
enough, and mercy, Giuseppe ! what a cut the
boy has got ! " Fighting with the Roman
fellow ?" Served you right, then. You were
brothers. " Thrashed him all the same, would
you, if it hadn't been for the big French bully
that always takes his part ?" Well, you knew
he would do so, and that he is three times your
size ! No more swimming-matches, nor sailing
of boats, for the present. Remember what
happened on the pond at Lissa, from going out
without your corks. Boys of other schools are
busy with their tasks, or amusing themselves
with their own little games, and here's a beau-
tiful opportunity for you and me. Antonio,
and Pietro, stand apart. Giovenico, instead of
egging them on, stand between them, and
mind, my eye is upon you.

Something very dreadful has been publicly
told of you lately something, my boys, that
might excuse what most of you are doing now,
putting your ringers in your mouths, ashamed.
Seventeen millions, out of twenty -five, that
have not learned to read and write ! I am
quite shocked. If it had not been said by a
statesman and a newspaper, that always
speak truth, I could have hoped there was a
mistake. It is horrible, and I don't think I
can go on.

I need not ask you, children, whether you have

ever heard the name of Giuseppe Garib

Hush ! You stun me. Shout when I've done.
Well, this Giuseppe too wise to be a states-
man, too great to be a king desiring to free
you from the bondage of the most cruel and
oppressive tyrant of the age ignorance seeks
no allies but the liberal and enlightened heart,
uses no weapons but those of peace and love.

He knows and we know that the strife is
strong, and that the victory will be hard. For
ignorance is slow to overcome, and has but
too large a body of devoted adherents, whose
interest it is that the tyrant should continue to
hold the human race in thrall.

The war-note, however, has sounded. The

battle has begun. You know what Giuseppe
said, when they wrote to him that they were
about to erect a statue to his honour. " While
one child, in the district you govern, remains
uneducated, raise no statue to me."

Now, my children, though reading, and
writing, and the certainty that two and two
are four are excellent acquirements, as far as
they go (and that is, at present, far ahead
of us) people cannot always live upon and by
them. Know that your well-wishers do not
limit their desires and efforts to teaching you
these to giving you the key of wisdom's
treasure-chest and leaving you, uncertain and
bewildered, in the presence of her rich and
varied store. They would under that Pro-
vidence which they pray may guide their judg-
ment become instrumental in directing yours.

Our Italy has many a school already, where
such an education as I have described is lucidly
and sedulously bestowed ; but the task of the
teachers seems to end where that which we
propose to ourselves really begins. You must
not alone be made reading and writing ma-
chines, but must be put in the way to become
as you grow up, good husbands and fathers
good wives and mothers good citizens, good
soldiers, good men.

The idea suggested by Garibaldi has been
understood and accepted in his own country ;
but, at present, that country is poor, oppressed
with debt, laden with inevitable taxation. Good
people, in countries blessed with peace and
plenty, have come to our aid, and large-handed
England, whose heart was with us in our fight
for freedom, now assists us to realise the be-
nefits that freedom brings.

Folks there are, I am told, who grumble,
and demand why, seeing that there are still
poor and ignorant people at home, the money
is not all given to them. My boys, mankind is
but one family. If the meal within the house
has been but coarse and scanty, ' shall the
beggar without be left to perish for need of the
crumbs ? When England, in a time of trial,
received large gifts for her suffering thousands
from France and America, I do not remember
that any voice in those noble countries was
raised against that generous recognition of the
universal brotherhood of man.

It is the very success of liberal home efforts
that has encouraged our English friends to
give them a wider extension. In Ireland
schools, such as those proposed for us, have
been some time established. Not only have
they answered their original benevolent end,
but have attained another, not the least ad-
vantage of which is, that it silences the grum-
blers I have alluded to. The schools support
themselves.

Boys and girls, is it not a better thing to
live by the labour of your own honest hands
to become useful, active, intelligent beings
than to he wallowing among the clods of the
earth ? I see by your attention that you are
listening to me, and striving to comprehend
what you are invited to do. Well, then, first,
what is to be learned ? I will tell you.

:fe>

160 [January 16, 1S69.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Boys : Reading, spelling, writing, arithme-
tic, grammar, geography, general and natural
history, book-keeping, and singing.

Girls : All these good things, with the addi-
tion of cooking, the management of house and
kitchen, washing, and needlework.

But it is not all work for learning, though
pleasant, is work and therefore, besides all
these, there will be, when funds allow, play-
grounds for gymnastic exercises, stretching of
limbs and muscles, and workshops for indus-
trial instruction. Boys will be trained to gar-
dening and general agriculture, as well as to
the more essential trades tailors, shoemakers,
carpenters, &c.

Gradually this work will be turned to good
account, independent of the instruction gained
therefrom ; for, if it has been found profitable
in Ireland, surely in Italy, where there is a
perpetual and ever-increasing demand for good
laundresses, domestic servants, and skilled
workers of every description, there will be
plenty of work for the schools. It is conse-
quently proposed to pay, not for your educa-
tion only, but your partial board and clothing,
from the actual work which, in part of your
school hours, you will accomplish.

Thus, it is hoped, when all is in order, the
produce of the afternoon work will defray the
morning's teaching and the noonday meal.
Let me hope that a spirit of independence will
thereby be engendered among you, as a band
of hearty comrades, providing, by the work of
their own strong skilful hands, the means of
mental advancement and the foundation of
happy and contented, perhaps even prosperous
and distinguished, fives.

By the by, I mentioned a " meal ;" that is a
thing of importance. I have not said enough
about it. At half -past twelve (especially when
I have been working cheerfully since break-
fast), I begin to think how good a thing is
polenta ! Bice is not bad, but give me polenta !
And polenta with cheese ! I can only say that
if King Victor himself, after a day with the
chamois, desires anything more delicious, he
hardly deserves to be your king.

I must warn you, however, children, that
this cheese is a very uncertain sensitive thing.
Idleness, noise (fighting especially), seem to
frighten it away. Polenta may always come,
but where there is goodness and industry, only
there can you be sure of finding polenta, icith
cheese !

At our new school, at Cagliari, the first that
will be opened on our system, you will find, in
addition to large and well-lighted rooms, a
pretty garden and orchard. There will be
maps, books, pictures for illustration of what
is taught, and many curious things never yet
presented to your eyes, but of which you
will quickly learn the use. A printing-press, a
sewing-machine, patent machines for washing,
wringing, and mangling, a plaiting-machine,
and no less than a hundred and fifty boxes of
toys ! The greater part of these things have
been provided by one generous hand that of
the president of the English committee, Mrs.

Chambers and, as fifteen schools in her native
land already owe their well-being to her, let us
hope that her countrymen will forgive the
gracious finger she extends to us.

And now, children, one little last word, to
which I require your best attention. Upon no
human institution, however nobly meant or
ably planned, can we hope a blessing to descend
unless the principles of a pure and true religion
are inculcated there. Now, to our walk, pupils
of all creeds Roman Catholics, Protestants,
Jews, &c. are alike welcome. But to accept
the spiritual assistance of professed teachers of
each several creed has been found so productive
of disunion and mistrust, that it has been de-
cided to decline the attendance of any, and to
confide to the authorised teacher and the
ladies of the visiting committee the all-im-
portant duty of religious instruction, founded,
as it will be, upon the blessed truths of the
New Testament.

For my part, I assent to the eloquent words
of one whose voice will not again be heard on
earth.

" In the better order of things, Heaven grant
that the ministry of souls may be left in charge
of woman ! The gates of the Blessed City will
be thronged with the multitude that enter in,
when that clay comes. The task belongs to
woman ; God meant it for her ; He has en-
dowed her with the religious sentiment in its
utmost depth and purity, refined from that
gross intellectual alloy with which every mascu-
line theologist save only One, who merely
veiled himself in mortal and masculine shape,
but was in truth divine has been prone to
mingle it."*

There, boys and girls of Italy that is a long
sentence, but it finishes my lecture. And now
all in to begin !

OLD LOVES.

The Frenchman who said that we always re-
turn to our first loves, said one of the true
things of human nature ; and every mature
mind knows its truth. We do return to our
old loves, and no after affection ever destroys
their place in our hearts.

There are abundant reasons for this going
back upon life at least in thought and desire
if not in actual renewal. In youth, when our
sensations were all new, and when the mere
fact of living was in itself a joy, everything
was painted in with rose colour : everything
was perfect, and each emotion in its novelty
was a veritable revelation of the divine. We
had not then become blunted by satiety,
chilled or corrected by experience. We firmly
believed that what we felt, no one else had ever
felt before, or would ever feel again with any-
thing like our intensity ; we firmly believed
that all other people's emotions were tame and
colourless beside our own. For youth is in
itself a perpetual recreation of the primeval

* Hawthorne.

Charles Dickens.]

OLD LOVES.

[January 16, 18C9 ] 161

Adam, and each man lives for a time in a para-
disc of his own making, winch no brother has
ever shared. We and our special Eve dwell in
it alone, for just so long a time as the fervour
and inexperience of our first passion last. The
pity is, that it lasts so short a time, and that
we wake, while yet so young to the conscious-
ness that all tliis exquisite i delight is only
delusion, and that "the mind sees what it
brings" in love as well as in other things.

The love of a boy or girl is unique. It is
never repeated in kind, though it may be
even surpassed in degree ; for the love of
the mature heart is more powerful than that
of the youthful ; but the freshness, the ecstatic
sense of certainty, the sublime belief in itself
and its own immortality, in its unchangeable-
ness and future, characteristic of the first
young love, have no echo even in the strength
and fidelity of the mature. Besides, it is so di-
vinely blind ; and its blindness remains, though
the eyes may be couched to see everything
else. Though our early charmer was snub-nosed
and red headed, and fully half a dozen years
our elder, yet our memory plays magic tricks
with reality, and we think of her to this day,
as we believed her at the time : beautiful, golden
haired, and sixteen. If we have never seen her
since that fatal hour when we tore ourselves
from her side in an agony of despair at the
cruel fate which sent us to New Zealand or the
West Indies, no shock of personal experience
has shattered the sweet falsehood of our boyish
dreams, and she will always be to us what she
was ; but if we have seen her after our eyes
have been couched, we stand aghast, as at the
discovery of some Melusine in her serpent state.
That plain-featured, commonplace dowdy is no
more the peerless Dulcinea of only ten years
ago, than she is her own grandmother. Hence-
forth she is two persons : the one, living in
memory : the other in actuality ; and of the two
the remembrance is the more real.

No one makes any allowance for the action of
time in another, or expects to find any striking
change, how long soever the interval between
the last parting and the present meeting. An
increasing waistcoat and a decreasing chevelure
in ourselves, tell us beyond all question of an
airy youth for ever fled, and a middle-aged
respectability settled down heavily in its stead :
yet we look to find our boyish ideal exactly
where we left her, and heave no end of depre-
catory sighs when we see the thickened jowl,
the broadened waist, the puffy foot, the meagre
wisp of greyish hair, sole remnant of those
glorious tresses which might have been Godiva's.
"Who would have thought it?" we say com-
passionately, forgetting the lesson set us daily
by our own looking-glass. And then we turn
our faces backward, and know that the Godiva
of our early love is dead, buried ten fathoms
deep by the almighty hand of Time, and that
she has left only her memory to keep us com-
pany. But her memory is immortal, and over
this Time has no kind of power.

Yet there are old loves for whom, when
we have got over the first shock of disappoint- I

ment at finding that forty is not as twenty
was, we knit up the ravelled edges of time,
and carry the past into the present if in
paler colours and a less florid pattern, yet with
a joined thread that makes the two epochs
one. Our love remains the same in essentials,
with a difference in forms. A tender mellow-
ness of affection has taken the place of the old
fervid fiery passion which once consumed as
much as it warmed, and we seem to have
carried on into the present the whole accumu-
lated strength of the past. Certain phrases,
looks, and tones, remind us so vividly of by-
gone days that at last we lose all sharpness of
perception, and can scarcely distinguish between
then and now, till the past becomes the present,
blended and inseparable, and the mind cannot
recognise any break. We all know instances
of the first love married after the severance
perhaps of a quarter of a century, with two
flourishing families in the mean time in-
stances where maturity has taken up the para-
ble of youth, and life has doubled back upon
itself, and ended at its starting place. Such
reunions are not necessarily either happy or
unsuccessful. It all depends on the amount of
mental sympathy possible between the pair,
after the warping of their diverse experiences,
whether the memory of their youthful fancy
can be consolidated into a living love or no. If
the love have been very true and earnest, and
if it have never failed, though it may have been
overlaid and even forgotten, the chances are
that the marriage will be happy ; but say it has
been only a fancy, without solid foundation in
the inner chambers of the heart, and then the
chances are the other way, and the look out is
dubious. But even then, and at the worst, the
luckless experimenters have the memory of the
time when they thought they loved. At the
worst, they can lay the blame on time and
distance, and think: "Ah, well! if they had
been married early in life, when they wished it,
they would have fitted better than they do now ;
they would have each been more plastic, and by
this time would have been welded together as
well as wedded." But an adverse fate came in
between, and hardened angles are the result.

There is something inexpressibly soothing to
our failing vanity, in being with those who
have known us at our best. " Ah ! you should
have known him twenty years ago," is a salve
to many a man's mortification when a young
and irreverent generation passes him by as an
old fogey, not worth a thought he who once
charmed his club and commanded a following
as large as a moderate sized constituency. And
if this be true of men, it is still more so of
women, who depend for social repute and in-
fluence more on their personal charms which
time ruthlessly handles than on their intellec-
tual acquirements, which are of tougher material,
and not so soon frayed and torn. In fact, one
of the best things about early marriages hangs
on this point. The gradual carrying on into
old age of the beauty and sweetness of youth,
gives a kind of youth even to old age. A new
husband would be ashamed to take about that

162 [January 16, 1S69.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by-

dear ugly old woman, and present her to the
world as my wife ; the choice I have made from
among the hundreds of beautiful young crea-
tures ready to my hand. But to her lawful
proprietor she is as much her former self as her
present ; for the change has come so gently
that he has not noticed how it came, and has
never been shocked by it, as he would have
been shocked by a sudden revelation. He loves
her, both for what she was and what she is ; and
remembers how she lost this beauty which had
once been so characteristic of her, and how that
infirmity came upon her when their child died,
and she nearly broke her heart for grief when
he himself was ill, and when she nursed him
and lost her complexion, and got a skin disease
in consequence, which not all the skill and per-
sistency of physicians can overcome. And re-
membering all this, he feels that there is an
honour greater than mere skin-deep beauty even
in her wrinkles and her loose lines, her stiff
joints and her spoiled complexion.

Our feeling for places known and loved in
early life for the old home and conditions
is another form of returning to the old love.
Such places come back to us in our dreams
more frequently than persons return. We
smell the pine woods and the bracken ; we see
the lake and the heather-clad hills ; we are
standing under the white cliff watching the sea
come foaming and tumbling in as we used when
we were children ; or we are out in the grey of
the morning, with that old dog at our heels ; and
we put up the little brown birds and the startled
whirring pheasants as we used to put them up
a long time ago. The burning glories of the
American forests, the luxurious loveliness of
the South, the romance of the East, the fervid
life of the tropics, all are as nothing to us com-
pared to one day of the "hard grey weather"
of our youth, one hour of the sport and vigour
of old times. Alas ! we want to be young again,
that is what our dreams mean ; for, without
youth, our return to those old loves is not prac-
tically satisfactory. How often, when we do
actually go back home after a life spent else-
where, our dreams vanish ! We cannot climb
the familiar crags as we used ; we cannot stand
the fatigue of a long day's partridge shooting
through the stubble, or of grouse shooting on
the moors ; the oars are heavy and not so easily
feathered as of old ; our gun and rod are less
manageable than they were ; the young enthu-
siasm which cared no more for a ducking than
it cared for a midge-bite, is washed away in the
fear of the rheumatic pains sure to follow damp.
Alas, for the frailty of the flesh in the presence
of so much stoutness of soul ! Sometimes, in-
deed, we are able to work the new vein opened
lip on the old ground, and to accept the former
love in its altered relations with ourselves. We
then content ourselves, like my Uncle Toby,
with mimic repetitions of what we can never
perform in their former fulness again ; or we
satisfy ourselves with watching what we cannot
share. If we cannot climb those piirple crags,
our young ones can, while we wait down below,
watching the sunshine and the shadow hurrying

over them, and bringing out, or covering down,
every jut and cranny, every patch of purple
heather, or golden gorse, or tuft of waving fern,
Avith the rapidity of a transformation scene.
The love of nature increases with time, and
grows by knowledge ; the longer we stand by
this great desk, the more we get to love the
lessons learned on it, and to appreciate the value
of the work it enables us to perform.

Old books, too, are old friends, to which we
return with faithful loyalty. It is doubtful if
any one who reads Gil Bias, Don Quixote, or
the Thousand and One Nights, for the first
time in mature life, ever has the same exquisite
enjoyment of them as those who have read
them, while young for the story, and when old
for the art or the philosophy. Delightful they
must always be to every one with brains ; but
they have lost that delicious aroma, that magic
colouring, which the imagination of youth sup-
plies out of its own richness.

On revient a ses premiers amours in religion,
too, as well as in other things if not always,
still often enough to furnish an example. The
convert who has lived contentedly enough in
his new faith, not unfrequently turns back to
the old upon his death-bed, and dies in the
creed in which he had been born but had not
lived. All of which gives us occasion to specu-
late, whether the mind be really independent,
or only seemingly so, and whether first im-
pressions are not of more importance than all
the subsequent self-education acquired.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG : A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER XL

Saturday. I am getting more and more
entertained eveiy hour with the spectacle
here. Again I repeat there would seem to
be no such dramatic touchstone to bring
out human nature and human character.
If one had but a window in every forehead !
The strangest thing is the utter ignorance
and wildness of these poor dupes, who play
on without principle or approach to system.
So simple, so easily attainable, and yet it
occurs to no one. This morning I win
eight times in succession. In spirit I mean.
I paste the card in here as a little relic, and
as a proof of my forecasting powers. The
marks showwhen I played I mean in spirit.

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[January 16, 1869.] 163

My pet will see this at a glance, that the
two colours really alternate in equal batches.
Had I been one of the players just to give
you an idea of the easy way the money is
made I should have earned enough in
ten minutes to have paid all our year's
rent.

This morning, when we are all doing our
procession at the wells, that agreeable man

of God, the Dean of , comes up to me,

with that smug obsequiousness which he
has unconsciously got to exhibit to infe-
riors, from the habit of always addressing
lords and baronets.

"I saw your name," he said, "in the
Fremdenliste, and at once thought you
must be one of the Edward Austens of
Berkshire. Am I right the member ?"

" Yes," I said ; " my father was Edward
Austen, the member."

" Good gracious ! I was sure of it. How
wonderful are the ways" he was going to
add " of Providence !" but more decorously
substituted, " the ways ahem we find
people turning up !"

Of course he had not heard of my fall in
the world, or, if he had, thought it was
one of those genteel bits of ruin which
don't affect people of condition. He was
a great man at a charity sermon, and very
strong "against Rome." We walked up
and down together, he chattering all the
time, with every now and again a nod and
" How d'ye do ?" to some one. After which
he would get abstracted, and look after
that lord uneasily I think meditating
whether there was likely to be a vacancy
beside the lord, when he might join in. I
remember a sermon by this dignitary of
extraordinary warmth and power, on the
text, " Go up higher," which, in his own
life, he illustrated forcibly; and I believe
the true bearing for him of the text was
unconsciously this : "he that humbleth
himself" was to do so, through the hope of
being exalted. 1, I dare say I do him wrong
in this, for he was a charitable man ; but
certainly loved a lord a little too much.
He asked me, "to make one of their
party" at dinner at the Shepherdess, a
mean, obscure place, which some irre-
verent people always called " that pot-
house of a place," but where " the swells"
were fond of planning dinners. Is not this
the world all over ? Some obscure spot or
thing is taken up by " ladies of quality"
no matter what discomfort or stupidity
follows the world pronounces it charming,
and would give their poor battered souls
the cheapest thing they have to get there.

I went to the Shepherdess that evening,
and found ten people at the dean's table.
Only one lord the salt of the earth but
certainly some "nice people," as he would
call them. The dinner was bad enough,
as, indeed, Mr. Boxwell, a hearty jovial
member of parliament, said plainly.

" In fact, my dear dean, what surprises
me altogether is to find you in this queer
place at all."

" Find me here," repeated the dean
" find me here ! Surely there are the

nicest people Lord , Lady , and

Sir John ; why, there is nothing queer about
them."

" I don't mean that ; but I was thinking
of a sermon I have heard of yours, on
' Responsibility,' and all that, and how one
preached more by simply not saying a
word, than by regular sermons. A capital
idea, by the way, which I wish was carried
out in all our churches."

" Oh, that's all very well," said the dean.

(I know these conversations amuse my
pet, and I try to recollect scraps of them
as nearly as possible.)

" In short, it is so droll to find all the
good people gathered here aprons, shovels,
white ties, gaiters, high collars, holy
faces all clustered about a common gam-
bling-house. You can call it Kursaal, and
all that, and talk of the croupier and such
dignified names ; but we know, if the great
Blanc himself took a scrubby room in St.
James's- street, the police would just burst
in, and drag him and his croupiers with
unnecessary violence before Sir Thomas
Henry, who would refuse bail."

I enjoyed this thoroughly. These are
my own views, only put so much better.
But the dean was a shrewd man, and
when ho saw we were all listening, said :
" Oh, we come for our healths. We are
ordered here, sir our health. Those people
have nothing to do with us. And, to tell
you the truth, I don't look at it in that
way at all. They tell me it is all perfectly
fair and above board ; and I hear the good
they do, the sums they give away in
charity, is something incalculable. The
widows and the orphans of the place come
to them, and never go away empty."

I was astonished to hear such careless
language from a man in so responsible a
position, and could not resist saying,
" But how many a widow and orphan, Mr.
Dean, have they made destitute ? How many
households have they filled with desolation ?
The ruin they have caused spreads over
every land, and many and many are the

164 [January 1G, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

dismal messengers they have dismissed to
English homes with hopeless news. No,
their wretched alms, which they are forced
to pay, is no compensation for this whole-
sale pillage."

I spoke warmly, and the dean looked at
me with distrust. " That is all very good
and sonnd, and we are all agreed, of
course: hut we must take things as we
find 'em. These people found out the
wells here, and worked 'em, and developed
'em. If I was inclined to a little sophistry
or casuistry, Mr. Austen, I would ask you,
wouldn't the myriads of rheumatic and dys-
peptic fathers whom they have restored to
health the thousands of wasting daughters
to whose cheeks the what- d'ye- call- 'em
Le Wheez'un" so he pronouncedit "Well
has brought back colour ; the number of
homes it has made happy ! Is not all this
a sort of compensation for the weak-minded,
demoralised gambler, whom they justly
punish ? And serve 'em right too. Now,
Mr. Austen."

"That's putting it very well, dean,"
said the member, laughing; "and, if I
don't mistake, Mr. Austen has benefited
amazingly himself by the gambling wa-
ters."

" Oh, no," said the dean, "there is too
much cant about all this. There, we
must take them as we find 'em. My stock-
broker, worthy man, gives money to schools,
holds plates, and all that but he gambles
on the Exchange, and wins ; and who does he
win from ? Erom some one who has, per-
haps, lost his all. He made a hundred
thousand pounds in Italian stock the other
day. Some poor wretch sold in the panic,
and was destroyed. Well. He bought his
stock. Look at the merchants. Look at

Lord , who made the last bishop, why

he games on the turf. My good sir, if
we're to go about setting right everything
we see or think wrong, why the world might
as well stop. We might all shut up. We
must give and take."

I was indignant to hear such indifference
from one in his sacred position no heart, '
no earnestness and I answered, warmly :
" But, Mr. Dean, when we see this place
crowded with holy I mean with officially
holy men, is there not something more
expected than giving and taking? What
do we hear ? Not a word, not a protest, not
a denunciation of the wickedness going on
about us ; no thunderings from the pulpit. I
cannot understand it. Surely, if we could
suppose a Whitfield, or a Wesley, or a
Knox, or a Luther were found here "

"Heaven forbid!" said the member of
parliament. " The place would get too
hot for me ! Come, we have had enough of
this wine and of the Shepherdess ; and to
show that I quite approve of the dean's
good sense, I am going up to the gambling-
rooms now, to try what can be done with a
napoleon."

As we went out the dean spoke to me
very testily, as if he were sore and wincing
under my thrust.

" You are a little too highflying, my
friend,^' he said, " and not exactly cut out
for a reformer. Believe me there is no
harm in following the general consensus of
leading men. You see all the distinguished
personages here, lay and clerical, neither
protest nor approve. They go their own
way. Joshua was the only one who suc-
ceeded in stopping the sun. Above all,
let us look at home, and keep a guard over
ourselves. While you are busy giving di-
rections, and helping the old ladies across
the street, saving them from the omnibuses,
you yourself may be run over."

And these are the pastors for the poor
sheep of England ; smooth words to make
everything comfortable, and macadamise the
road to salvation. This man is sure to be
a bishop. Well, I shall say no more after
this. He has taken no notice of me since.

CHAPTER XII.

Monday the sixth. The more I look
about me in this strange world, and certainly
in this strangest of places, the more do I feel
that it is good for me morally to be here.
For my weak but well meaning soul, it
has the effect of bracing, nerving, cold
water. I shall return home strengthened
and invigorated. I am not at all sorry to
have passed by these furnaces without
being scorched. The man who shuts him-
self up, and turns away his eyes, is discreet,
and if he knows himself to be weak all is
riaht. Nay, a greater authority than I
has written, he is bound to gird himself
up and flee as fast as his poor tottering
limbs can carry him. If I were a clergy-
man a supposition I very often make, and
there was some talk of it when I was a
boy I would ascend my pulpit, and preach
eternally on this text. If you feel a spark
of courage and strength, face the danger
cautiously, practise, do as a man does
who goes to a gymnasium and trains his
muscles begin to throw a half stone
weight, and increases the amount by de-
grees. I would thunder this at the con-
gregation until they began to think it was

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[January 16, 1869.] 165

a monomania, as I dare say she, whose
eyes will be reading this by-and-by, may
herself think. Or with more indulgence she
will perhaps say, " My dear, I have heard
Dr. Bulmer preach far worse." Well
perhaps he has, and I have no business to
be dressing myself up in a surplice en
amateur. But I say again this does me
good, and it will do me good again to read
it, and perhaps years hence strange eyes
will fall upon it, and reflect, and own,
perhaps a little comically, "Well, he is the
first that has got sermons, not out of stones,
which would be a limited range of subject ;
but out of roulette and the card table, and
the wolfish eyes of ' hell keepers.' " There,
darling, I won't preach again until further
notice.

But the truth is, I am in a sort of ela-
tion, for I did more than mere rapid
preaching this day. Speech may be silvern,
silence golden, but action is, after all, a
diamond. Going in this night to the
roulette table, I see an unusual crowd, and
faces showing that stupid interest and ad-
miration which is about as sincere as that
of the crowd who stand gaping at the fool-
hardy Blondin, or the reckless Leotard.
Fifty per cent of that crowd has a lingering
and secret aspiration, that it might, if a
catastrophe were to be, be only present to
see it. Here I find they are staring at a tall
gay Englishman, a fresh good-looking fellow
in some regiment, and whose honest health
and loud proclamation of the tub every
morning, contrasts with the yellow, dirty
faces and the niggardly economy of soap,
linen, &c, which they insinuate. His play is
of the boldest, not laying the table broadcast
with his gold as some foolish ones do ; but
with a sort of instinct selecting a number
here, another there, and " bedding and
potting" it, as some one said, with his gold.
What I delight in is his contemptuous
treatment of the crew of croupiers, whom
he treats as though they were mere scaven-
gers or night men, not fit to be addressed, or
as you would a dependant. He tosses them
his money insolently, and makes them
arrange it for him, and if they are awkward,
speaks to them with a haughty arrogance
that seems to exasperate them. He has
won with many pieces on Zero, he has hit
the number again and again, and I see the
brigands' eyes of the " hell keepers,"
glancing at him furtively, with anger and
dislike, as though they were thinking,
" Shall we ' set ' him with some of our
bullies as he goes home to his hotel,
and strip him of what he has robbed us

of?" Approving faces are bent on this
darling, whom Fortune in one of her ca-
prices dandles for a few seconds in her
arms, like some pretty child, and then
allows to drop on the pavement. The en-
amelled faces of the mermaids are turned
towards him ; and the rustling of their
fins and tail is heard, as they come swim-
ming round a new prey. I drew near to-
him, and heard him tell a friend behind,
" I must have got more than a thousand
out of them," and a voice that I know
says, in its accustomed drawl, " Now is
the time then, sack 'em, and you'll have the
glory of being the first to break the bank
this season." I knew it seemed intrusive,
but I could not resist saying, in a low
voice, " Now is the time to retire. Luck
always changes."

The soapstone face was stretched round to
look. "Oh! Grainger's friend," he said.
" This is the gentleman I was telling you of,
who has the system "

" I have no system," I said, coolly.

"I was wrong, then, it seems," he went
on. " The gentleman who preaches against
the bank one day, and for his infallible
system the next."

The young fellow was naturally not
attending.

" Confound it !" he said. " The luck is
turning. I have got nothing these last
three turns. I'll take his advice, and
carry off what I have bagged. Come, and
let us count. Here's Grainger. Look
here, Grainger, my boy !"

It was now about half-past eleven. Soon
the mystic proclamation would be heard
"Aux trois derniers!" Grainger's eyes
sparkled with an unholy fire of envy pos-
sibly of disappointment, for I would not do
him wrong as he looked on the glittering
treasure which the other was holding in
his hand as though it were so much mould.
But he turned to me suddenly.

" Here, Pollock, let me introduce a
friend of mine the hero of that little story
which your brother knows."

I remembered there was a Captain Pollock
in the regiment at that time, and I remem-
ber, Dora, being ludicrously jealous one
night, at your dancing with him.

" Oh, indeed !" said the young fellow who
had won. "I recollect. Poor Grainger was
left out in the cold. But I tell you what ;
I'll stand a supper at Chevet's for the whole
party neat meat, neat wines, neat every-
thing. Come, no excuse. The winner
pays for all, and we'll count the cash
between the courses."

"8=

166 [January 16, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Grainger was delighted. I don't set up
to be a Puritan, as you know, Dora, and I
always think of that saint with admiration,
who used to play cards with a swearing
and abandoned crew, and thus gradually
acquired an influence over them. There
again the complacency peeps out an almost
sacerdotal complacency. Precisely like a
saint, am I not ? But, again and again I
repeat, this is all for your pretty eyes and
my own ugly ones.

I went with them. I often say to myself,
" On this day or on this night, let us have
a little festival," when I have been good
and deserve it; when I have been other-
wise, I assure you I can be very stern
and severe to myself. So we sat down
and counted the gold, which was close on
nine hundred napoleons. I own to a
certain wrench and a yearning as I looked
at it, and I think the amount of unconscious
greediness for we are all animals in
the three faces must have been overpower-
ing. Two waiters afar off heard the chink
every ear learns that. They sniffed the dear
metal as a vulture does carrion. Hungry
gamblers looked up from their drink with
ferocious envy. The owner alone was un-
concerned.

" Confound the beggars ! if I didn't
think they'd swindle me, I'd have been as
glad to have bank notes."

Here was the supper. D'Eyncourt
who to his other vices added that of
gourmandise spoke little and eat heartily.
I confess to doing the same, and most
gratefully do I owe my thanks to the Pro-
vidence who has so restored me as to
give me the power of enjoying moderately
such things. What have I done to deserve
these mercies, and not become like one of
the worn-out beings who come here and
drink with a faint hope of miraculously
recovering their lost stomachs ? We were
very merry, Grainger specially so, and I
suspected that the honest lad had helped
his friend with a handful of what he had
carried off. But D'Eyneourt's cat-like
eyes fell on me several times, as if he was
about to say something. He began, in his
drawl :

" The more I see of you, Mr. Austen, the
more you become a mystery to me."

I have put down some people before
now, so I thought I would settle him
before he went further.

"Curious," I said, "the more I see of
you, the less you are a mystery ; in fact,
the first day I read you hke a book."

Pollock laughed loud. " Hit you on the

sternum, my boy, and right, too, though
not nattering."

" Austen's mauleys come down hard
when they do come down," said Grainger.

" What I was saying," said D'Eyncourt,
in his slow impressive way (which I do
envy him), as though he had not heard, as
if he had stopped speaking to light his
cigar, which was now all right " what I
say is, I don't quite understand your role
I mean the attitude you have to this bank.
If you disapprove it, I should keep away
turn my back on Jericho let the fiery-
sword do its work ; but I certainly wouldn't
shelter myself under their gorgeous roof,
sit on their luxurious sofas, read their
English newspapers, with such strong con-
victions. I'd be almost inclined to go to
M. Blanc, the head of the thing, and tell
him so boldly."

I was not sorry that he had begun in
this fashion, and really wished to "tackle"
him before them.

"I think," said I, smiling, "we can all
imagine M. Blanc's polite and pleasant re-
partee, if any such well-meaning remon-
strant were to present himself. But the
fact is, I do not use their Times or their
luxurious sofas and chairs ; and as for their
roof well, I own to taking that barren
advantage of them."

" Had you again on the nob this time,
D'Eyncourt," said the youth, who had
already taken more wine than fitted him to
be a nice judge of such effects.

" Do leave those low boxing metaphors
aside, Mr. Pollock at least among gentle-
men. You mayn't be in such spirits to-
morrow night. But" turning to me
"you are not quixotic enough to expect
that a still small voice like yours I mean
your conscience's could make itself heard
in this Babel ? Have you such a sense of
comical self-delusion that you can place
yourself at that large doorway and turn
back the mob of scoundrels, blackguards,
roughs, cheats, jailbirds, lorettes aye,
and even decent men and women with
your faint expostulation ? Do you tell us
that?"

" No," I said, firmly ; and then, as po-
litely as I could, " but, first of all, suppose
it was my whim ; I am as much entitled to
have that as any one here."

"Scarcely," he said. "As a rule, the
gamblers never make themselves ridicu-
lous."

" That's like having you, my friend,"
said the boy to me.

"But, apart from mere verbal quib-

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[January 1G, 1S69.] 167

bling," I went on, " at the risk of exposing
myself to the suspicion of what is called
cant which, of course, is saying something
that is moral, or religious, or improving "

" Excuse me ; the sayer being neither
moral nor religious, that is cant. And you
have saved me the trouble of coming to the
point ; for I believe that, unconsciously,
you are at heart as great a gambler as any
of them ; and don't be offended you
know the greatest rock is that air of self-
righteousness ' Take heed that ye de-
ceive not yourselves.' "

"Come, no profane quoting here," said
the youth, gravely.

" There is no profanity," I said, laugh-
ing ; " your quotation is not in Scrip-
ture." I was in great vein now, and
began to feel myself a match for him.
" But supposing, now," I went on, "I suc-
ceeded in interposing between two, or one
even, and their destruction, why I am
foolish enough to think it worth while
coming so far for that."

" For Grainger, here ?" he sneered. " A
brand plucked from the burning. You are
the neophyte, it seems, Grainger. Well,
there is a class of missionary they call
' soupers,' and who have rather a suspicion*
class of converts. You're genuine. You're
being brought to see the light, aren't you ?
Seriously," he added, turning to me, "you
don't mean to tell us you have touched
that rocky ground ?"

" Seriously," I replied, impatiently, " I
don't care to discuss such things with
you."

" With all my heart, though I dare say
our friend Grainger has been doing a little
bit of the new regeneration the softening
of this stony heart, and all that. (There is
a regular dialect for all that, which I pro-
fess myself not quite up to.) I can fancy
him saying to you, ' What can I do ? I
am led on dragged on. I have good in-
tentions. I was virtuous once, and I would
give worlds to be back in the old innocent
times the fields, the green, the butter-
cup like you, in short.' Ha, ha !"

" Ha, ha !" roared the host. " Devilish
good."

It was so like what Grainger had been
saying, that I turned sharply and looked
at him with surprise. He was looking at
D'Eyncourt with quite a wicked glare.

" There is some devilish malignity
always in your ideas, D'Eyncourt," he
said a speech that was certainly just and
nicely descriptive. For he might certainly
guess that I had, in my poor way and by

the grace of one greater than I was acting
through me, made some impression on
Grainger; and this artful ridicule would
be precisely a fashion that Satan himself
would have suggested for throwing him
back.

" Come away," said D'Eyncourt ; "we've
had enough. Let us go in and see these
honest fellows counting their money. I
hope they have got a good bag to-night ;
they work hard enough for it, God knows
harder than many a fellow at home on
his sixpence a day, and deserve every coin
they get. Good luck to them ! I hope
they've emptied many a fool's pocket."

As we went out Grainger whispered,
" You don't mind what that snarler says.
He'd sneer at his dead mother. I'm bad
enough, God knows "

" Don't say a word, Grainger," I said,
taking his arm ; " his speeches will have
very little effect on me."

We walked in to see this curious scene.
With all my prejudices, I own that there
is no such dramatic scene in the round of
modern plays though, on second thoughts,
this is poor praise as at the end of the
long and weary day to find "the band"
sitting round and counting their gains.
As soon as the last deal is over I know
what will come. In rush the hired bullies
in their tawdry liveries, carrying brass-
bound strong boxes and bags, and a large
case. Other emissaries emerge, and all,
as it were, fling themselves on the table.
Last arrive two or three cold " bank ma-
nagers," cruel looking men, with the cat-
like, clean-shaven, pitiless M. B., who,
having been at work all day, is now in at
the close, to superintend the finish, and, I
suppose, gloat over an unusual booty.
Everything here is more than charac-
teristic. The henchmen artfully draw a
sort of barrier of chairs, pretending to
draw them away from the table, in reality
a fence against me and other English gen-
tlemen, whom they sapiently think are full
of designs for pillage and sack, and note
their ridiculously suspicious looks. But
the robber- naturally thinks every stranger
one of his cloth. I would not contaminate
my fingers with their gold, nor would I do
as I often see some of our virtuous English
do go up obsequiously to "M. Le Crou-
pier," and ask him to change their fifty-
pound bank-note, which he does so charm-
ingly, " spilling" out five glistening rows
of gold in a second, and giving the full
exchange, so different from the cormorant
bankers in the town. " That gold, madam,

168

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[January 16, 18G9.]

came from the pockets of the tempted, of
the falling ; it was stolen, perhaps, or
should have gone to the destitute or help-
less ; some of the moisture of a frantic
agitation and despair still clings to it : and
you can stoop to accept from these men the
wretched four sous profit or so on each
pound, and chuckle over and talk of their
courtesy. No. For my little changings I
am content to pay the few sous, and be
under no obligations to this vice partner-
ship.

It is really dramatic, the scene now
going on. Every one is busy. Servants
are under the table, with a lamp, raking up
every scrap of paper the torn cards, flung
down in disgust and despair the broken-
down systems, sifting them in the hope,
not often deferred, of coming on the stray
note or dropped louis. Most carefully do
they pry into the emptied rouleau case, for
very often at the bottom lurks the forgotten
piece. But they all watch each other.
Men are busy at the tables gathering up
large handfuls of the pure silver pieces, and
with amazing dexterity are covering the
whole table with squadrons and squares of
them little heaps of five, and the heaps in
rows of five, and the rows of five in
squares of five. So with the gold the
sovereigns in rows, the napoleons and fre-
dericks all in regiments and apart. The
notes are laid out in rows of five also.
Another is busy, not breaking up the rou-
leaux, but weighing them one against the
other ; and they are regularly laid out in
the same way. The banking cashing gen-
tlemen, with spectacles on, printed forms
before them, and pen in hand, are ready;
when, all being ready, the senior of the
place suddenly appears, and, taking a rake,
taps every square of silver, and counts
aloud as he goes on ; in perhaps a minute
has totted up the whole. Down go the
figures in the forms, and then the hirelings
come with the strong boxes and vast
pocket-books for the notes, and shovel in
all the ill-gotten gains, which are locked
securely with three keys and borne away.
After a good day, the pinched-faced M. B.
goes out smiling and joking with his friend
and brother; and, later on, turning into
the superb billiard-rooms, I see him astride
on a chair watching his friends, full of

merry jests, and smoking a cigar. At
midnight, he will go home to his pretty
villa and plaoens uxor, who will ask him
how the bank fared to-day, and he will tell
her gleefully what the winnings were. Of
course he has a hundred or so of shares,
and gets his seventy and eighty per cent.
Think of that ; think of all the villanies
by which money is swindled from one
man's pocket into another ! The racing
and betting man gets it from those who
are as bad as he is, and who can afford it
as well ; even the housebreaker chooses the
rich man's house for his swag; even the
bandit will let the poor man free; but
these wretches fatten on what produces the
widows' tears and fathers' and husbands'
curses. But I lose patience when I dwell
on this, which, too, I cannot cure. If I
was a zealous missionary at home, eager for
"my Master's work," as they call it, I
would not go out to the blacks, I would
come here ; I would stand at the door of
this place ; I would preach in the street, in
front of this red sandstone palace charnel
house of infamy and warn, dissuade, and
exhort, passionately, with my whole heart
and soul. TKere would be real saving of
souls. Their gendarmes and police I
should have no fear of them. That good
bluff king looks on them with no favour,
and gives them a respite grudgingly.
Utopian, some will say, of course, and
smile. Nothing of the kind. But they
would not have the courage. I solemnly
declare, if I were in that profession, it is
the thing I would do. One soul saved
from that den, stopped at the threshold,
would be worth all the blacks who ever
simulated Christianity for a musket or two
strings of glass beads. There are men in
England honest, zealous, ardent ministers
who would gladly seize on this idea : I
want no copyright in it.

Now ready,
THE COMPLETE SET

TWENTY VOLUMES,

With General Index to the entire work from its
commencement in April, 1859. Each volume, with
its own Index, can also be bought separately as
heretofore.

Now ready, ALL THE CHRISTMAS STOKIES,
bound together price 5s. ; or, separately, price 4d. each.

The Right of Translating Articles from All the Year Round is reserved by the Authors.

Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street, Strand. Printed by C Whiting, Beaufort House, Strand.

= r

HE-STO^Y-OP- OUR,- liVXSf P V 0M-7AI^T0 ^Ef^^

W!TH WHICH IS

f4COI\POf\ATED

No. 8. New Series. I SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1869

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Stokt bt the Author Of " Ilack Skeep."

CHAPTER X. AN INTERIOR.

Marian Ashurst had begun, soon after
their parting, to feel that she had been
somewhat too sanguine in her anticipations
of the immediate success of Walter Joyce.
Each little difficulty she had had to en-
counter in her own life until the old home
was left behind had aided to depress her,
to force her to understand that the battle
of life was harder to fight than she had
fancied it, and had brought to her mind a
shapeless fear that she had mistaken, over-
valued, the strength and efficacy of the
weapons with which she must fight that
battle. Walter's letters had not tended to
lift her heart up from its depression. His
nature was essentially candid ; he had
neither the skill nor the inclination to
feign, and he had kept her exactly in-
formed. On his return home after his
interview with Lord and Lady Hethering-
ton, Joyce found a letter awaiting him. It
was from Marian, written to her lover from
Mr. Creswell's house, and ran as follows :

" Woolgreaves, Wednesday.

" My dearest Walter, The project I
told you of, in my last letter, has been
carried out ; mamma and I are settled for
the present at Woolgreaves. How strange
it seems, everything has been done so sud-
denly when it came to the point, and Mr.
Creswell and his nieces turned out so dif-
ferently from what I expected. I did not
look for their taking any notice of us, ex-
cept in the commonplace way of people in
their position to people in ours. I always
had a notion that ' womankind' have but a
small share in men's friendships. However,

these people seem determined to make me
out in the wrong, and though I do not give
the young ladies credit for more than in-
telligent docility, making them understand
that their best policy is to carry out their
uncle's kind intentions that they have
more to gain by obedience in this respect
than to lose by anything likely to be
alienated from them in our direction, I must
acknowledge that their docility is intelli-
gent. They made the invitation most
graciously, urged it most heartily, and are
carrying out all it implied fully. You will
have been surprised at mamma's finding the
idea of being in any one's house endurable,
under the circumstances, but she really
likes it. Maud and Gertrude Creswell,
who are the very opposites of me in every-
thing, belong to the ' sweet girl' species,
and mamma has found out that she likes
sweet girls. Poor mamma, she never had
the chance of making the discovery before !
I do believe it never occurred to her that
her own daughter w T as not a ' sweet girl,'
until she made the conquest of the hearts
of these specimens. The truth is, also, that
mamma feels, she must feel, every one must
feel, the material comfort of living as we are
living here, in comparison with the make-
shift wretchedness of the lodging into which
we shall have to go, when our visit here
comes to a conclusion, and still more, as a
thoroughly known and felt standard of com-
parison, with the intense and oppressive
sadness, and the perpetual necessity for
watchfulness in the least expense, which
have characterised our dear old house since
our sad loss. She is not herself aware of
the good which it has done her to come
here, she does not perceive the change it
has wrought in her ; and it is well she
should not, for I really think the simple,
devoted, grieving soul would be hurt and

170 [January 23, 1S69.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

angry with herself at the idea that any-
thing should make any difference to her,
that she should be 'roused.' How truly
my dear father understood, how highly he
prized her exquisite sensitiveness of feeling ;
he was just the man to hold it infinitely
above all the strong-mindedness in the
world ! I am stronger-minded, happily I
wonder if you like to know that I am, or
whether you, too, prefer the weaker, the
more womanly type, as people say, for-
getting that most of the endurance, and a
good deal of the work, in this world, is our
' womanly' inheritance, and that some of us,
at least, do it with discredit. You don't
want moralising, or philosophising, from
me, though, dearest Walter, do you ? You
complain of my matter-of-fact letters as it
is. I must not yield to my bad habit of
talking to myself, rather than to you on
paper.

"Well, then we came to Woolgreaves, and
found the heartiest of welcomes, and every-
thing prepared for our comfort. As I
don't think you know anything more of the
place than could be learned from our sum-
mer evening strolls about the grounds,
when we always took such good care to
keep well out of sight of the windows, I
shall describe the house. You will like to
'know where and how I live, and to see in
your fancy my surroundings. How glad I
shall be when you, too, can send me a
sketch of anything you can call ' home.'
Of course, I don't mean that to apply to
myself here; I never let any feeling of
enjoyment really take possession of me
because of its transitoriness, you know
exactly in what sense I mean it, a certain
feeling of comfort and quiet, of having to-
morrow what you have had to-day, of
seeing the same people and the same things
around, which makes up the idea of home,
though it must all vanish soon. I wonder
if men get used to alterations in their
modes of life so soon as women do ? I
fancy not. I know there is mamma, and I
am sure a more easily pleased, less con-
sciously selfish human being never existed
(if her share in the comforts of home was
disproportionate, it was my dear father's
doing, not of her claiming), and yet she
has been a week here, and all the luxury
she lives in seems as natural to her, as in-
dispensable as the easy- chair, the especially
good tea, the daily glass of wine, the
daintiest food, which were allotted to her
at home. I saw the girls exchange a look
this morning when she said, ' I hope it
won't rain, I shall miss my afternoon drive

so much !' I wonder what the look meant ?
Perhaps it meant, ' Listen to that upstart !
She never had a carriage of her own in her
life, and because she has the use of ours
for a few days, she talks as if it were a
necessary of life.' Perhaps and I think
they may be sufficiently genuinely sweet
girls to make it possible the look may
have meant that they were glad to think
they had it in their power to give her any-
thing she enjoyed so much. I like it very
much, too ; there is more pleasure in
driving about leisurely in a carriage, which
you have not to pay for, than I imagined,
but I should be sorry the girls knew I cared
very much about it. I have not very much
respect for their intellects, and silly heads
are apt to take airs at the mere idea of
being in a position to patronise. Decidedly,
the best room in the house is mamma's,
and she likes it so much. I often see the
thought in her face, ' if we could have
given him all these comforts, we might
have had him with us now.' And so we
might, Walter, so we might. Just think
of the great age some of the very rich and
grand folks live to ; I am sure I have seen
it in the papers hundreds of times, seventy,
eighty, ninety sometimes, just because they
are rich ; rank has nothing to do with it
beyond implying wealth, and if my father
had been even a moderately rich man, if he
had been anything but a poor man, he
would have been alive to-day. We must
try to be rich, my dearest Walter, and if
that is impossible (and I fear it, I fear it
much since I have been here, and Mr.
Creswell has told me a good deal about how
he made his money, and from all he says it
seems indispensable to have some to begin
with, there is truth in the saying that money
makes money), if that is impossible, at least
we must not think of marrying while we
are poor. I don't think anything can com-
pensate to oneself for being poor, and I
am quite sure nothing, can compensate for
seeing any one whom one loves exposed
to the privations and the humiliations of
poverty. I have thought so much of this,
dearest Walter, I have been so doubtful
whether you think of it seriously enough.
It seems absurd for a woman to say to a
man that she ponders the exigencies of life
more wisely, and sees its truths more fully
than he does, but I sometimes think women
do so, and in our case I think I estimate
the trial and the struggle there is before
us more according to their real weight and
severity than you do, Walter, for you think
of me only, whereas I think of you more

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[January 23, 1863.] 171

than of myself, and as one with myself.
I have learned, since I came here, that to
understand what poverty really means one
mnst see the details of wealth. We have
only a general idea of a fine house and
grounds, a luxurious table and a lot of
servants. The general idea seems very
grand and attractive, but when one sees it
all in working order, when one can find out
the cost of each department, the price of
every article, the scale on which it is all
kept up, not for show, but for every day use,
then the real meaning of wealth, the awful
difficulty of attaining it, realise themselves
to one's mind. The Creswell girls know
nothing about the mechanism of their
splendid home, not much about even their
personal expenses. ' Uncle gives us a hun-
dred and fifty pounds a year, and tells us we
may send him in any reasonable number of
bills besides, ' Maud told me. And it is quite
true. They keep no accounts. I checked
her maid's book for Gertrude, warning her
not to let her servant see her ignorance,
and she says she does not think she ever
had some of the things put down. Just
think of that ! No dyeing old dresses black
for mourning for them, and turning rusty
crape ! Not that that sort of thing sig-
nifies, the calculation is on too large a scale
for such small items, they only illustrate
the whole story of poverty. The house-
keeper and I are quite friendly. She has a
notion that ladies ought to understand
economy, and she is very civil. She has
explained everything to me, and I find the
sums which pass through her hands alone
would be a fortune to us. There are twenty
servants in the house and stables, and their
* hall' is a sight ! When I think of^fehe
shabby dining-room in which my dear
father used to receive his friends great
people, too, sometimes, but not latterly
I do feel that human life is a very unfair
thing.

" The great wide hall, floored with
marble, and ornamented with pictures, and
lamps on pedestals, and stags'-heads, and
all the things one sees in pictures of halls,
is in the centre of the house, and has a dark
carved oak gallery all round it, on which
numerous rooms open, but on the ground-
floor there is a grand dining-room, and a
smaller room where we breakfast, a billiard-
room, a splendid library (all my father's
books arc in it now, and look nothing in
the crowd) ; an ante-room, where people
wait who come on business to Mr. Creswell
(all his business seems to consist in dis-
posing surplus money to advantage), and

at the back of all, opening on the most
beautiful flower-garden you can conceive,
an immense conservatory. This is a great
pleasure to mamma ; there are no painful
associations with such flowers for her ; my
father never gave her such bouquets as
Gertrude brings to the breakfast- table every
morning, and presents to her with a kiss,
which her uncle seems to think particularly
gracious and kind, for he always smiles at
her.

" Indeed, he smiles a good deal at every
one, for he is a very good-natured, amiable,
and kindly man, and seems to think little
of his wealth. I am sure he is dreadfully
imposed upon indeed, I have found out
many instances of it. How happy he could
make us if he would ! I dare say he would
not miss the money which would make us
comfortable. But I must not think of such
a thing. No one could afford to give so
much as it would be wise to marry on, and
we never should be happy if we were not
wise. I don't think Mr. Creswell has a.
trouble in the world, except his son Tom,
and I am not sure that he is a trouble to
him for he doesn't talk much about him-
self but I am quite sure he ought to be.
The boy is as graceless, selfish, heartless
a cub, I think, as ever lived. I remember
your thinking him very troublesome and
disobedient in school, and he certainly is
not better at home, where he has many
opportunities of gratifying his evil propen-
sities not afforded him by school. He is
very much afraid of me, short a time as I
have been here, that is quite evident ; and
I am inclined to think one reason why Mr.
Creswell likes my being here so much is
the influence I exercise over Tom. Very
likely he does not acknowledge that to
himself as a reason, perhaps he does not
even know it, but I can discern it, and also
that it is a great relief to the girls. They
are very kind to Tom, who worries their
lives out, I am sure, when they are alone ;
but 'schoolmaster's daughter' was always
an awful personage in the old days, and
makes herself felt now, very satisfactorily
though silently. I fancy Tom will turn
out to be the crook in his father's lot when
he grows up. He is an unmannerly, com-
mon creature, not to be civilised by all the
comfort and luxury of home, or softened
by all the gentleness and indulgence of his
father. He is doing nothing just now ; he
did not choose to remain with papa's suc-
cessor, and is running wild until he can be
placed with a private tutor some clergy-
man who takes only two or three pupils.

-X3>

1 72 [January 23, 1SC9.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Meantime, the coachman and the groom
are his favourite associates, and the stable
his resort of predilection.

" Do you remember the beech-copse just
beyond Hill- side-road ? The windows of
my room look out in that direction, far
away, beyond the Woolgreaves' grounds ; I
can see the tops of the trees, and the wind-
ing road beyond them. I go up to my
room every evening, to see the sun set
behind the hill there, and to think of the
many times we walked there and talked of
what was to be. Will it ever be, Walter ?
Were we not foolish boy and girl foolish
paupers ? Ay, the word, hard, ugly, but
true. When I look round this room I feel
it, oh, so true ! Mamma and I have a
pretty sitting-room, and a bedroom each on
opposite sides of it. Such rooms, the very
simplicity and exquisite freshness of their
furniture and appointments are more sig-
nificant of wealth, of the ease of household
arrangement, and the perfection of house-
hold service, than any amount of rich up-
holstery. And then the drawing-rooms,
and the girls' rooms, and the music-room,
and the endless spare rooms which, by-
the-by, are rarely occupied for so rich a
man, and one with such a house, Mr. Cres-
well seems to me to have singularly little
society. No one but the clergyman and
his wife has been since we came. I thought
it might be out of delicate consideration for
us that Mr. Creswell might have signified
a wish for especial privacy, but I find that
is not the case. He said to me to-day that
he feared we found Woolgreaves dull. I
do not. I have too much to think of to be
affected by anything of that kind ; and as
my thoughts are rarely of a cheerful order,
I should not ingratiate myself by social
agreeability. Our life is quietly luxurious.
I adhere to my old habit of early rising,
but I am the only person in the house who
enjoys the beauty of the gardens and
grounds in the sweet morning. We break-
fast at ten, and mamma and the girls go
out into the lawn or into the garden, and
they chat to her and amuse her until
luncheon. I usually pass the morning in
the library, reading and writing, or talking
with Mr. Creswell. It is very amusing and
interesting to me to hear all about his
career, how he made so much money, and
how he administers it. I begin to under-
stand it very well now. I don't think I
should make a bad woman of business by
any means, and I am sure everything of
the kind would have a great interest for
me, even apart from my desire for money,

and my conviction that neither happiness
or repose is to be had in this world without
it. The old gentleman seems surprised to
find me interested and intelligent about
what he calls such dry detail, but, just as
books and pictures are interesting, though
one may never hope to possess them, so
money, though it does not belong to myself,
and never can, interests me. Oh, my
dearest Walter, if we had but a little, just
a few hundreds of pounds, and Mr. Cres-
well could teach you how to employ it with
advantage in some commercial undertaking.
He began with little more than one thousand
pounds, and now ! But I might as well
wish you had been born an archbishop. In
the afternoon, there is our drive. What
handsome houses we see, what fine places
we pass by ! How often I occupy myself
with thinking what I should do if I only
had them, and the money they represent.
And how hard the sight of them makes the
past appear ! How little, falling to owr
share, would make the future smiling and
happy !

" The girls are not interesting com-
panions to Mr. Creswell. He is fond of
them, and very kind to them in fact,
lavishly generous they never have an un-
gratified wish, but how can a man, whose
whole life has been devoted to business,
feel much companionship with young girls
like them, who do not know what it means ?
Of course, they think and talk about their
dead parents at least, I suppose so and
their past lives, and neither subject has any
charms for their uncle. They read espe-
cially Maud and, strange to say, they
read solid books as well as novels ; they
excel in fancy-work, which I detest, pro-
bably because I can't do it, and could not
afford to buy the materials if I understood
the art ; and they both play and sing. I
have heard very little good music, and I
am not a judge, except of what is pleasing
to myself, but I think I am correct in
rating Maud's musical abilities very
highly. Her voice thrills me almost to
pain, and to see my mother's quiet tears
when Maud plays to her in the dim even-
ing, is to feel that the power of producing
such salutary, healing emotion is priceless
indeed. What a pity it is I am not a good
musician ! Loving music as you love it,
dearest Walter, it will be a privation to
you if ever that time we talked of comes,
when we should have a decent home to
share that I shall not be able to make
sweet music for you. They are not fond of
me, but I did not think they would be, and

Charles Dickens.;

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[January

M 173

I am not disappointed. I like them, bnt
they are too young, too happy, and too rich
for me not to envy them a little, and
though love and jealousy may co-exist, love
and envy cannot.

" In all this long letter, my own Walter,
I have said nothing of you. You under-
stand why. I dare not. I dare not give
utterance to the discouragement which your
last vague letter caused me, lest such dis-
couragement should infect you, and by
lowering your spirits weaken your efforts.
Under these circumstances, and until I
hear from you more decisively, I will say
nothing, but strive and hope ! On my side,
there is little striving possible, and I dare
not tell you how little hope. v

" Your own,

"Marian."

To the strong, loving, and loyal heart of
Walter, a letter from Marian was a sacred
treasure, a full, intense, solemn delight.
She had thought the thoughts, written the
words, touched the paper. When dis-
appointment, distress, depression, and un-
certainty accumulated upon him most ruth-
lessly, and bore him most heavily to the
ground, he shook them from him at the
bidding of a letter from her, and rose more
than ever determined not to be beaten in
the struggle which was to bring him such
a reward. The calmness, the seeming cold-
ness even of her letters did not annoy or
disappoint him ; theirs was the perfect love
that did not need protestation, that was as
well and as ill, as fully and as imperfectly
expressed by the simplest affirmation as by
a score of endearing phrases. No letter of
Marian's had ever failed to delight, to
strengthen, to encourage Walter Joyce,
until this one reached him.

He opened the envelope with an eager
touch, his dark cheek flushed, and a tender
smile shone in his eyes; he murmured a
word of love as the closely- written sheets
met his impatient gaze.

"A long letter to-day, Marian, my
darling. Did you guess how sadly I wanted
it?"

But as Walter read the letter his coun-
tenance changed. He turned back, and
read some portions twice over, then went
on, and when he concluded it began again.
But not with the iteration of a lover, re-
freshing his first feeling of delight, seeking
pet passages to dwell on afresh. There
was no such pleasurable impulse in the
moody re-reading of this letter. Walter
frowned more than once while he read it,

and struck the hand in which he held it
monotonously against his knee when he
had acquired the full unmistakable meaning
of it.

His face had been sad and anxious when
the letter reached him he had reason for
sadness and anxiety but when he had
read it for the last time, and thrust it into
his breast-pocket, his face was more than
sad and anxious it was haggard, gloomy,
and angry.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE WEST. MARLBOROUGH TO GLASTONBURY.

The crow has a fair flight westward over the
great Wiltshire plain, where the long chalk
waves of the old sea bed are now covered with
crisp short grass, which by turns the wild thyme
purples, and the drifts of thistle-down whiten ;
and where, beside the graves of Danish kings,
wheatears flit from ant-hill to ant-hill, and
quick rabbits scud from thorn bush to thorn
bush. It is a lonely wind-swept region, whose
sentinels are the shepherds wrapped in soldiers'
grey great coats, and moodily watching their
flocks. Roman roads chequer the plain, British
graves dot its surface, Druid circles stud its
desolate regions. Old war-dykes traverse it in
shadowy fines, marking the spots where Alfred
smote the Saxon, or where he fell back
towards the Somersetshire marshes, ready to
pounce again upon their revelling camps.
Sarsen stones and grey wethers point the way
to the great temple of Stonehenge, and the
haunted clusters of Druid altars at Avebury.
Yonder, too, the crow sees here and there the
wool-gatherers, those witch-like old women,
who creep along the valleys of the Downs,
wrenching from the surly thorn-bushes the tufts
of wool the branches have snatched from the
sheltering sheep.

The wind here, with a free and clear rush
of thirty or forty miles, unimpeded by anything
more resisting than a clump of firs or a rifle
butt, comes laden with oxygen and life. As
Mr. Ruskin says of the wind on the Yorkshire
wolds, you can lean up against it. It is the
most vitalising wind that races over England ;
and if it were not for the hard Wiltshire beer
and the still harder cheese, one hardly knows
how Wiltshire men could contrive to die, short
of a hundred years old. Free down the land
has always been here, free to the shifting
flocks of starlings, free to the rabbit and
the fox, free to the hare and the greyhound,
free to the shepherd and the wool-gatherer.
The Downs are quiet enough now quietest
of all on summer Sundays, when the village
bells toss their music from valley to valley ;
quiet at sunset, when the Druid altars grow
once more crimson, and the golden bars of
the western sky rise like steps to the gate of
Heaven, or the last fading rounds of that ladder
on which the patriarch saw the angels ascend-
ing and descending. It was here round the

174 [January 23, ISO.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND

[Conducted by

Wansdyke that in old time hard blows were
struck by Dane and Saxon, Celt and Roman.
Thousands of Romans, with skulls beaten in by
British axes and bronze swords, lie peacefully
under the thin turf of the Wiltshire Downs.
The white horse standard was forced back here
by Arthur's warriors at the crowning victory at
Badbury. Those British villages, now mere rings
of stone, mere dimples in the turf, were first
torn down by the rough hands of men who had
helped to destroy Jerusalem with Titus. Those
Druid circles were once trodden by the white-
robed priests, who urged on the scythed chariots
against the Romans. The thrush pipes sweetly
now from the wood, where once the yelling
painted warriors rushed on the spears of Ves-
pasian ; and the mole burrows silently, where
once the legionaries dug trenches to shelter
themselves from the British slingers.

The crow remembers, as he flies from grassy
camp to camp, many traditions of the plain,
and of its dangers in former days, when Death
often met the traveller in this great ocean of
wild waste.

On a dark calm October night in 1816, the
Exeter mail having traversed many miles of the
plain, rattled at last in the dark up to Winters-
low House, where the guard sounded his bugle
and the coachman stopped. There was but a
dim light at the inn, and the coachman had
hardly pulled up his four smoking horses, when
a dark shape suddenly leaped with a roar upon
one of the leaders. No one knew what monster
it could be. It seemed a horrible nightmare
the passengers leaped down panic-struck.
Two dandies, awakened out of their sleep by the
monster's roars of rage and fury, and by the
horse's screams and neighs of angry terror,
leaped out of the vehicle, dashed into the
inn, and barricaded themselves in an upper
room to bide the result, or at all events to
keep death at bay as long as possible. A
large mastiff belonging to the inn, eager for
battle and careless of what the monster
might be, leaped to the rescue, but was
instantly killed. When lights came, it proved
to be a lioness that had escaped from a
caravan on its way to Salisbury fair. It had
left the horse, which, striking out like a boxer
with its fore hoofs pursued its retreating assail-
ant and beat it to the ground. Presently the
keeper arrived, and, accustomed to tame such
beasts, forced the lioness by blows and threats
into an outhouse, where it was secured.

Floating above Lady Down, the crow notes
that the spot is remarkable for the apparition of
a headless lady, who, centuries ago, was slain
there by her injured husband, who overtook her
as she was flying from him with a lover. But on
the downs, towards Marlborough, a Wiltshire
tradition of the highwaymen times compels the
crow to alight on the stone that records the
fact. One dark night at the beginning of this
century, when pistols were as regular travelling
furniture as cigar cases are now, a Wiltshire
gentleman, riding over the downs beyond
Hungerford, was attacked by two thieves on
foot a short grim man and a tall savage

man. His pistols missed fire, but the tra-
veller having a stout heart and a strong
arm, drove back the fellows with the heavy
butt-end of his riding whip, and eventually,
after a tough fight, beat down the shorter
of his two enemies. After a further tussle
the taller man also threw up the game and
fled. The traveller, resolute on retaliation,
pursued him fast, but the man was swift-footed
fear gave him wings, and though the moon had
just risen, he contrived to dodge about in and
out of Roman encampments, behind bushes and
old earthworks, so as to evade for a long
time the keen and unrelenting pursuit. Hour
after hour the pursuit and the flight con-
tinued, till, just towards daybreak, the traveller
caught the tired rogue in the open, and pushed
him to his full speed. A lash of the horse and
he gained on him. Nearer and nearer now, till
at last in a far valley of the downs he ran in on
him, and leaping off his horse threw him heavily
to the ground, grasped his throat, and bade him
surrender. The man made no resistance, no
curse broke from him, no cry for mercy. He
was dead ! His heart had broken. Like a
hunted hare, he had died of fatigue before
the hounds' teeth could meet in him.

From Inkpen Beacon, the highest chalk hill
of England, and just south of Hungerford, the
crow looks down from his airy height on the
spot where in 1856 the last bustard was caught.
This clumsy bird, the ostrich of Europe, was
once common on the Wiltshire downs, where it
could stride and stalk as it used to do before
the drum drove it away from the plain of
Chalons. It used to be rim down with grey-
hounds, but its flesh hardly repaid this sin-
gular chase. In 1805, one of these strong
birds, four feet long and very powerful in the
claws and beak, attacked a horseman near
Heytesbury, treating the genus homo as an
intruder on its wild domain. The bustard
is now all but extinct.

That brave mansion of the Pophams, Little -
cot, whose muUioned windows overlook the
valley of the Kennet, is the scene of the old
legend of Wild Darell, which Scott tells in the
notes to Rokeby. One night, in the reign of
Elizabeth, a midwife was sent for out of Berk-
shire. The pay was to be light, the groom said,
but the woman must be blindfolded, and must
ask no questions and tell no tales. She con-
sented, and mounted behind the man. who
took her a long rough ride over the downs.
She lost all sense of direction or distance. At
last she arrived at a house, was shown up a
grand staircase, and performed her duties.
When they were ended, the tapestry lifted,
and a ferocious man entered : who seized the
new-born child, dashed it under the grate,
destroying it as ruthlessly as if it had been a
wolf's cub. The woman returned unhappy, and
brooding over the murder. She bore the agonies
of remorse for some time, but at last was
driven to tell the secret and free her conscience.
She went and confessed the matter to a ma-
gistrate. Had she any clue? Yes, she had
counted the number of stairs up which she had

Charles Dickens j

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[January '23, 1869.] 175

been taken, and she had secretly and unob-
served torn off a piece of the bed-cnrtain.
Enquiries were made, suspicion fell on Wild
Darell of Iittlecot, and stern men came search-
ing the old house. Darell was seized, but the
judge was bribed, and the proof was insufficient.
The murderer escaped the sword of justice. But
Heaven, however, he could not escape ; for
he soon afterwards fell, while leaping a stone
stile in hunting still called "Darell's death
place" and broke his neck.

Over the downs outside Marlborough, the
crow skims for a moment to Badbury camp,
alights with a sidelong waft to pick up a
stray tradition. It was in this great double ring
of ditch and rampart, with a fifty foot fall and
an area of two thousand feet, that the Britons
held out for a whole day against the Saxons.
At sunset, the Saxons, with a last tremendous
rush, stormed the camp, and, crashing in with
their axes, conquered the last British stronghold
in Wiltshire.

The crow now drifts into Marlborough, that
quiet scholastic town, so sheltered by the great
bluffs of chalk that gird it round. That hand-
some red brick building, now the college, has
quite a history of its own. The central part of
it is a fragment of the " Great House" built by
Sir Francis Seymour, a grandson of the Pro-
tector, who was created Baron Seymour, by
Charles the First, during the Rebellion ; for
Marlborough was a royal town, and had its rubs
in those times. In 1643, Sir Neville Poole seized
the great house, and held it with his men
in buff, for the parliament. The year before,
Wilmot had stormed and burnt the town,
and sent John Franklin, the popular mem-
ber, and several of the leading townsmen,
prisoners to Oxford. In 1614, Charles himself
came and held his quarters at Marlborough
Castle. In Queen Anne's time the Earl and
Countess of Hertford kept house here, and
entertained many of the great writers. Pope,
bitter and invalided, came here and wrote
verses, and Thomson of the Seasons was staying
here while he wrote his Spring. The other
sections of his great composite poems were
written at Richmond and in London.

A tradition of the old posting days still
lingers in Marlborough. In ] 767, the year be-
fore the great Earl of Chatham, stricken down
by age and infirmities, resigned his place in the
cabinet, the great orator, seized with gout on
the road to London, was compelled to remain
at the Castle Inn at Marlborough. Wilkes
tells us of his eagle eye, the fascination of
his glance, and the unquenchable fire in his
glowing words. The haughty and imperious
old statesman remained shut up in his room
here for many weeks, and we picture to our-
selves the proud old man with the attributes
Wilkes describes, terribly testy at the delay,
and chafing at the vexatious disease, and the
fuss of over-servile landlords and over-zealous
country OUapods. Although so proud that he
never transacted business but in grand official
costume, it was not the first time the earl had
given audiences in bed. During this visit,

which must have set Marlborough talking,
everybody who travelled on the great west
road was astonished to find the town over-
flowing with footmen and grooms in the earl's
livery. What a retinue ! It was fit for a king.
The fact was, it was only a trick of the old
proud earl, who insisted that during his stay
every waiter, stable boy, and odd man at the
Castle Inn, should wear his livery.

Beyond Marlborough, across the downs are
the great Druidic temple of Avebury, the Devil's
Den, and the mysterious artificial hill of Silbury.
Avebury, the centre of all Druidic tradition,
is older than even Stonehenge. At Avebury
there are twenty-eight acres covered by Celtic
graves, and huge Druidic stones. From the adja-
cent hill you see them strewing the ground
everywhere, like flocks of sheep ; and in the dis-
tance down the last ridge of the downs, towards
Bowoodand Savernake Forest, runs the waving
line of the Wansdyke, the old rampart fron-
tier of the Belgse. In 1 740 two avenues of two
miles in length led to the central Avebury circle
of one hundred unhewn stones, enclosing two
more double concentric circles. They were then
supposed to be emblems of the serpent, which
was a symbol of the sun. Six hundred of these
stones have been destroyed, built up in walls,
and hedges, and cottages. Only about a dozen
now remain in their old places. The old church
of Avebury stands near these relics of a for-
gotten superstition, and triumphs over their
decay.

Theorists in Indian Celtic mythology have
gone stark-staring mad about these stone
circles, older than Stonehenge. "A temple of
the sun, obvious to the meanest capacity," cries
one. " Temple of the sun be hanged, learned
idiot," writes another ; " this is a Druid cathe-
dral, a patriarchal temple built ages before the
mere stone-rings of Cornwall, the hallowed
altars of Dartmoor, or the processional avenues
of Britany." "Incompetent blockhead," screams
a third. " Why, Silbury Hill was the Druid's
Ararat, and these stones are emblems of Noah's
Ark and the patriarchal altars !" But the
strangest winged hippogriff of a hobby-horse
that ever trod Cloudland is ridden by Mr. Duke,
who contends that Wiltshire was treated by the
Druids as the ground plan of a vast planetarium
or astronomical map. These same Druids, who
worshipped the god of thunder and adored the
oak and the mistletoe, laid out the whole
range of downs in planetary regions, in which
the sun and planets were represented on a me-
ridional line from north to south a position
from which the ancients believed the planets
had started at the beginning and would return
at the end of the world, when they had run their
course. The earth itself was represented by Sil-
bury Hill ; the sun and moon by the great
circles of Avebury, Avebury being a Phoe-
nician word for " the mighty ones." The
ecliptic by the avenues, or the Serpent. Venus
by a stone circle at Winterbourne Basset ;
Mercury by Walker's Hill ; Mars by an earth-
work at Marden, in the Vale of Pewsey ; Jupi-
ter by Casterley Camp on the edge of Salis-

=5=

176 [January 23,

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

bury Plain ; and Saturn by the great blocks at
Stonehenge. The Druids, who brought Eastern
learning to Europe, were great astronomers,
Mr. Duke says, and represented numerical
and astronomical cycles by these Avebury
stones. He will have it that the numerical
cycles were compounds of the mystic number
four, sacred as an emblem of the four letters
by which the name of the Supreme Being was
expressed in the early languages. The one
hundred stones of the outer ring were four,
twenty-five times repeated, and the four hun-
dred of the avenue one hundred four times re-
peated, whilst the thirty stones of the outer
ring of each double circle represented the
lunar cycle, or days of the month, and the
twelve of the inner the months of the year.

In this way Wiltshire became a great fossil
almanack, and the priests, perambulating the
county before Moore and Zadkiel had con-
ferred their boons on the world, could know
and reckon the proper days for observing reli-
gious festivals. After all these pxizzle-brain
theories, the result is no great enlargement
of knowledge. They just leave us with a con-
fused notion that the circles might have had
some obscure astronomical meaning, and that is
all. It is even uncertain whether Silbury Hill
was cut into its present geometrical form, or was
built up by manual labour. It is nearly as high
as St. Michael's Mount, covering more than
five acres of land ; and it has been calculated
that even in these days navigators could not
build it up for less than twenty thousand
pounds. It was long thought to be the burial
mound of the founder of Avebury ; but it has
been twice opened first in 1777, and afterwards
in 1849, and no trace of any interment could be
found. Many think its name implies that it
was sacred to the god Sul or Sol, as St. Anne's
Hill was to Tanaris, the god of thunder. There
is no tradition about Avebury ; but the story at
Stonehenge is that no one can count the stones
twice alike. When Charles the Second was
waiting there for the friends who were to con-
duct him to the coast of Sussex, where a vessel
was lying off for him, he counted the stones
to beguile the time, and refuted the vulgar
error to his own satisfaction.

The old legend of Stonehenge was, that the
stones were brought from Africa to Ireland by
giants, and that Merlin, by his incantations,
floated them across the sea to please King
Ambrosius, the last British king, who wished
to commemorate the massacre on Salisbury Plain
of Vortigen and three hundred of his nobles by
Hengist the Saxon. In the middle ages Stone-
henge was called "the Giant's Dance." At
Stanton Drew, a Druidical ruin near Bristol,
the legends of the old stone-rings grow more
grotesque. A giant is said to have thrown one
of the stones from a neighbouring hill, and the
chief circle is supposed to consist of the petrified
bodies of a wicked wedding party, who would
dance on Sunday, and to whom the Devil pre-
sented himself as piper, leading them a pretty
dance, and ending by leaving them turned into
pillars of stone

Glancing n through Wiltshire, the crow
rests on the highest weathercock of Devizes,
the old town, so called, as tradition says, from
its having been formerly divided between the
king and the bishop. There is a curious in-
scription on the market cross, which records
a warning to dishonest traders. In 1753 a
woman, named Ruth Pierce, came with two
neighbours from the Vale of Pewsey, to buy,
with their combined money, a sack of wheat.
When her companions paid Ruth did not lay
down her money, though she asserted she had.
They loudly accused her, and she then wished
she might drop down dead if she had not paid.
She had scarcely uttered the words before she
fell down and expired ; and in one of her
clenched hands, the missing money was found.

It was the Bear Inn at Devizes, that the father
of Sir Thomas Lawrence kept ; and here the
handsome boy learnt to draw likenesses and
recite poetry. The father was a restless, de-
sultory man, who had been a solicitor, a poet,
an artist, an exciseman : " everything by turns,
and nothing long." His life had been a web of
unfinished schemes and incomplete studies.
Proud of his son, he used to appear in
powdered periwig and clean ruffles, to ask his
guests whether Tom should recite to them from
the poets, or draw their likenesses? Garrick
used always to stop at the Bear, to hear the
speeches Tom had learned since the last time ;
Prince Hoare, Sheridan, Wilkes, and Lord
Kenyon, all praised and patronised the pretty
boy who had painted his first portrait at six.
Lord Kenyon used to describe the door bursting
open, and the child dashing in riding on a stick.
He was asked if he could take the gentleman's
likeness? "That I can," said the boy, "and
very like too." The restless father soon threw
up the posting-house, and settled at Bath :
where Tom became renowned for his crayon
likenesses, and his portrait of Mrs. Siddons.

The crow from the top of Roundway Hill
looks down on the scene of the defeat of Sir
William Waller by Lord Wilmot in 1643, of
which Clarendon has left us a fine sketch.
After the battle of Lansdown, the royalists
under the Marquis of Hertford and Prince
Maurice, fell back on Devizes, followed by
Waller, who invaded the town and erected
batteries. The town was open then, without
the least defence but small hedges and ditches,
in which cannon were planted. The avenues
were barricaded to stop the puritan cavalry.
The Earl of Crawford, trying to send powder
into the town, was driven off with the loss of
his cannon. The town was in imminent danger.
The musketeers had only one hundred and fifty
pounds weight of match left ; but they collected
all the bed cords and beat and boiled them in
saltpetre ; they then took heart, Lord Wilmot
being at hand. He soon arrived with fifteen
hundred horse and two small field pieces,
which he discharged, to give notice to the
town of his arrival. In the meanwhile Waller
was too confident ; he had refused terms to
the cavaliers, and had written to the parlia-
ment, to say that by the next post he would

Charles Dickens.]

ALASKA.

[January 23, 1869.] 177

announce the number and quality of the
prisoners. He drew up his men on Round-
way Hill, with all Wiltshire and Gloucester-
shire spreading in a blue mist before him.
Wishing to prevent the town from joining
Wilmot, Waller, " out of pure gayety," left
his advantage, his firm reserve, his well flanked
cannon, and his fortress hill, and bore down on
Wilmot. Haslerig's cuirassiers made the first
charge at Sir John Byron's regiment, but they
were worsted by the cavaliers, and driven back.
Then Wilmot broke the other divisions one by
one, and hurled them back, a rabble of wounded
men and frightened horses, towards the Cornish
foot that now broke from the town and attacked
the puritan pikemen and musketeers, turning
their own cannon upon them. The flight was
terrible over the hills, and the pursuit arduous ;
many rolled down into the valley and perished.
Oliver's Castle and the Wansdyke saw many
a death grapple. The rout was complete. The
Cornishmen were relentless! The puritans lost
nearly two thousand men, slain or prisoners,
and Waller fled to Bristol, leaving his guns,
ammunition, and baggage. That defeat was
the cause of great heart-burnings between
Waller and Essex, Waller thinking himself
betrayed and deserted by Essex, who had
let Wilmot march unimpeded from Oxford ;
Essex, reproaching the poet with unsoldierly
neglect and want of eourage in letting himself
be beaten by a mere handful of men without
cannon men, too, against whom he had never
led a single charge in person.

A long swift flight, and the crow is in pleasant
Somersetshire. Passing high over grand old
church towers and snug homesteads, he furls
his wings at the foot of the Mendip Hills, and
descends on the cathedral towers of Wells. In
the hall of the bishop's palace, the last abbot of
Glastonbury was tried for refusing to surrender
his abbey to Henry the Eighth. It was a mock
trial, worthy of the tyrant ; for the abbot was
accused of appropriating the church plate ; and
although acquitted, was seized on his return to
Glastonbury, dragged to the top of the Tor, and
there put to death. This is the same proud abbot
who is said to have defied the king, who had
threatened to burn his kitchen, by building
that strange edifice still to be seen at Glas-
tonbury : square without, octagonal within, and
with a pyramidical roof supporting a pierced
lantern to let out heat and vapour. "I will
build such a kitchen," said the abbot, "that
all the wood in the royal forests will not suffice
to burn it." Modern antiquaries, however,
unfortunately have proved the building to be
far older than Whiting.

A short flight to Glastonbury Abbey brings
the croAV to congenial ruins, shattered pillars,
and ruined arches. Yonder is Wearyall Hill,
where the monkish legends say that Joseph of
Arimathea rested after his long pilgrimage from
the Holy Land. Here, planting his thorn staff
in the ground, he decided to abide : the green
meadows, the swelling hills, and the pleasant
orchards of Somersetshire soothing his wearied
spirit. In the abbey gardens, a graft from the

saint's staff still grows, and flowers at Christ-
mas proof of its miraculous origin.

It was at Glastonbury that, in Henry the
Second's time, was discovered the supposed
grave of King Arthur. Here in Avalon, girt by
marshes, they found the hero in a rude oak coffin,
sleeping beside his guilty but repentant queen,
whose long yellow hair crumbled to dust when a
monk snatched at it. The bones were de-
posited in a magnificent shrine, by Edward the
First, and placed before the high altar.

Glastonbury was a great place for saints.
St. Patrick and St. Benedict were abbots at
Avalon, and to the doubtful saint St. Dunstan
in some crypt here as he worked as a smith,
constructing cross and chalice for holy uses,
the Devil appeared one day at the half door
in the shape of a beautiful woman. It was
here that the saint waited till he had got his
tongs red hot, and then made a rush and
caught the tempter by the nose.

Now, the crow rises for a further flight,
turns his head westward, and strikes out across
the broad green pastures for Sedgemoor and
the borders of sunny Devonshire.

ALASKA.

During the earlier part of last year, public
attention was for a short time devoted to the
Russian settlements in North America. The
course of politics at home happened not to run
over smoothly just at that time, so there was
little inclination to inquire into the affairs of
other countries. Usually eager to criticise,
and that sometimes with scant charity, the
actions of our friends on the other side of
the Atlantic, a strange reticence seemed then
to prevail among us. With the excep-
ton of a few leading articles in the London
papers, Russian America was transferred to
the United States, without one murmur of
assent or disapproval from this country. While
thus in England little interest was felt in the
question, in America it was far different.
There, it was taken up as a party question,
and treated as most party questions are. The
natural advantages and disadvantages of the
country, were alternately exaggerated by
either side. While the friends of Mr. Seward
described it as a paradise of fertility, his
opponents declared it to be " the fag end of
creation." In spite of the ridicule and satire
which beset his every step, Mr. Seward car-
ried his point. On the 30th of October, 1867,
Russian America, or Alaska, was formally
transferred to the United States. So little was
really known of the resources of the country
at that time, that those who spoke so strongly,
to use no harsher word, for or against its ac-
quisition, must have relied more on their ima-
gination than on fact. Indeed, very little is
known about it, even now ; but the information
that has come to light in the interim, has
shown that truth lay between the opposing
parties. If Alaska be not "an Elysian field,"
it is certainly not " a worn-out colony."

178 [January 23, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

To its former owners it must have been of
small advantage. An outlying colony sub-
ject to the frequent attacks of discontented
Indian tribes, and therefore expensive to hold,
is not a very desirable possession. It is not,
then, strange that the Russian government was
very glad to sell it. The enterprising American
has now taken the place of the slow Russian.
The careless servants of the fur company
have been succeeded by settlers keenly alive
to their own interests, ready to work out
the natural resources of the country to the
utmost, and to develop the trade that lan-
guished in the hands of their predecessors.
Even now, the country presents marks of con-
siderable improvement. Sitka, the capital, bears
witness to the energy of the new inhabitants,
who have settled there in such considerable
numbers that the price of land has more than
doubled.

Alaska lies to the north-west of British
Columbia ; and that part of it that is south of
the Yukon river veiy much resembles the
latter colony in soil and climate. In looking at
the map, we can scarcely realise the fact that
the area of Alaska is about four hundred thou-
sand square miles, or almost equal to twice
that of France. Alaska was discovered by
Bering, whose researches are comparatively
little known in this country. He died of
scurvy in the year 1741, after an unsuccessful
attempt to discover the often-sought northern
passage. The island on which he was buried
has since borne his celebrated name. After
Bering's death, expeditions were organised by
the Russian government, which did consider-
able service in exploring the country. Not a
little light has been thrown upon the geography
of the interior by some of those who were
appointed to trace the route of the ill-fated
Franklin.

Sympathy with the fate of the brave man
who fell a victim to his own untiring enter-
prise, and sympathy with those who prosecuted
the search for him amid toils and dangers the
severity of which we can scarcely imagine, has
I led many persons to read the various accounts
of these expeditions, who would, in all proba-
bility, but for them, have been entirely unac-
quainted with the far north. These volumes
have hitherto been the chief source of popular
information on Alaska.

The course of the Yukon was first explored
by the servants of the Russian-American Fur
Company. This mighty river, which has been
called the Northern Mississippi, is upwards of
two thousand miles in length, while its breadth
varies from one to four miles. On its banks
are most of the stations whence the company's
servants carried on the trade with the Indians.
During the summer months it is easy to navigate
compared with other rivers of the same lati-
tude. Accidents occasioned by collision with
icebergs seldom occur. Large masses of ice
are formed in October, but the rapidity of the
current prevents the river from being com-
pletely frozen until November. In the earlier
part of the winter season, these masses are forced

to the surface and are then embedded in the
ice. Sledge travelling, the only mode of com-
munication during the greater part of the year,
is thus rendered tedious and dangerous. The
sledges, which are drawn by dogs, are of the
simplest construction. Many of them are
merely long planks, turned up at one end and
furnished with raw hide straps to secure the
luggage. The most important stations on the
river are Nulato and Fort Yukon. Both forts
were, under the Russian government, gar-
risoned and surrounded by a picket. This was
rendered necessary by the attacks of the In-
dians, who on more than one occasion surprised
the fort, butchered all who came in their way,
and carried off every valuable on which they
could lay their hands. In the year 1850 the Co-
Yukons, a tribe of Indians whose reputation
as being the most bloodthirsty and treacherous
of their race, have caused them to be feared by
all the company's servants, attacked Fort
Nulato, and massacred all, old and young, who
were within. Among the victims was Lieu-
tenant Burnard, whose name will long be re-
membered in connexion with the expedition
sent out under the command of Captain Col-
linson, to search for Sir John Franklin.

Sitka, or New Archangel, as being the only
" city," deserves some passing notice. It is
built upon an island, and is rather low
in situation, being upon a narrow strip of
land that rises from the sea. There is a
small but commodious harbour, which is
guarded by a battery of guns commanding
the entrance. The walls are now in a most
dilapidated condition, while the firing of
any of the cannon would be attended, most
likely, with more disastrous effects to the gun-
ners than to the enemy. Seen from the har-
bour, the green spire of the Greek church,
rising in the midst of the red-painted roofs of
the houses by which it is surrounded, gives
Sitka a gay appearance. In the distance,
ranges of lofty snow-capped mountains sur-
round the city, their sides, as they rise
from the low level of the plain below,
thickly studded with trees. The capital of the
country was also the centre from which the
operations of the Russian-American Fur Com-
pany were carried on. The lines of low stores
that occupy a considerable part of the place
were often filled with the most valuable furs
collected from all the stations on the Yukon.
Hither the servants of the company returned
from their periodical visits to the marts of the
various Indian tribes, and here was the house
of the governor, rising up from the tall cliff that
overlooks the Alaskan capital. Unfortunately
for its prosperity, Sitka enjoys the unenviable
reputation of being about the most rainy place
in the known world, excepting, of course, the ce-
lebrated city in the west of Ireland, where an in-
habitant says it rains thirteen months out of the
year. What is still worse, rain only ceases, to
give place to disease. Dry weather, during the
short summer, invariably brings with it rheu-
matism and pulmonary disorders. Since the
stars and stripes of the United States first

Charles Dickens.]

THE MILESTONES.

[January 23, 18G9.] 1/9

floated over the harbour, Sitka has greatly
improved in every way ; in a few years
perhaps, this improvement will extend to the
health of the inhabitants. The settlers may
find it profitable to drain the marshes which
now surround the place, or, at all events to clear
them of decayed vegetable matter.

Of the many Indian tribes that occupy terri-
tory adjacent to the Yukon river, the most
important are the Ingelets and Co-Yukons.
Speaking different dialects of the same lan-
guage, they resemble each other in many of
their customs and ways of life. The Ingelets
are rather above the average height of Euro-
peans, and are strong and robust. They are
quick and intelligent, too : willing to be
taught, and very apt pupils. Their remarkable
honesty has been proved, in many severe trials,
to be far beyond that of most civilised na-
tions. Love of strong drink is the besetting
sin of the race, and for the introduction of this
fatal habit they may thank their communication
with Europeans.

As the tribes approach nearer to the coast,
they seem to retain less of their native wildness
and barbarity. The Co-Yukons, who are
much further inland than the Ingelets, are
also much further from civilisation. Their
countenances show wildness and ferocity, and
their lives and habits speak the predominance of
the savage. Both tribes possess a passionate
fondness for music and whisky. They live in
houses underground, with close subterranean
entrances. In many of the contrivances of
everyday life they display remarkable inge-
nuity. This quality is particularly shown in
their mode of "Availing" deer: resembling, in
some manner, the Hindoo mode of catching
wild elephants.

Few, except the party opponents of Mr.
Seward, will now assert that Alaska is likely to
prove a bad bargain to the United States. No
one can doubt that the change has been a most
beneficial one to the country itself. While it
is a valuable territory to the United States,
the probability is that it would never have
been so to Russia. Frequent revolts of the
Indians, incited no doubt by oppression on the
part of the officials, had made the colony a
very great trouble and a very small advantage
to the Russian government. The persistent
efforts made by some Russian merchants to
earry on the trade in furs, shows that it was
a trade of very considerable value. In spite of
all hindrances, they persevered. The loss of
life and property, from shipwreck and the
predatory attacks of the Indians, did not
daunt the Russian traders. They endeavoured
to cope with all these disadvantages, and
with the greater evils which resulted from
the indolence and carelessness of their own
servants. Many of these were convicts who
had had the alternative of imprisonment or
service, and had chosen the latter. Under
no such disadvantages will the United States
hold Alaska. The whalers who traded with
some of the ports, exposed to the jealousy of
the Russians, will now be free to push their trade

as briskly as they wish ; or they will be super-
seded by others who will make it their principal
business. Communication with the various
American ports, and with the ports of British
Columbia, will develop her resources far be-
yond the most sanguine dreams of Mr. Seward's
supporters. The forests will soon become very
valuable, and there is reason to suppose that
the mineral wealth of the country is equal to
that of British Columbia. Some gold has been
discovered on the Yukon, but not in sufficient
quantity to entice speculators. The wealth of
the country in furs the present staple article
of export is not equal to its wealth in fisheries.
The extensive cod-banks off the Aleutian
islands are of the most valuable description ;
while salmon, the coveted delicacy of this
country, is there found in such quantities, and
with so little labour, that it possesses scarcely
any value. In these days of quick trans-
port, when it is found profitable to import
commodities from the most distant countries, if
there they can be produced or procured with
the least expenditure of labour and capital
when California sends us corn, and Calcutta
hay who can doubt that the rich fisheries
of these rivers will become a valuable source
of supply for the British market ?

Those who regard the acquisition of Alaska
by the United States, as merely a step to-
wards the possession of the whole continent,
can scarcely regret the transfer. Notwith-
standing the present unsettled condition of the
great republic, and the antipathy to Brother
Jonathan's ways that has long existed in the
minds of the Canadians, few will doubt that
the independent states of America must sooner
or later be united under one government. The
tide of empire rolls westward. Considering
the vast strides in wealth, population, and
education, winch during the last twenty years
have been made on the other side of the
Atlantic, the empire of America may one day
be the ruling power among the nations of the
earth, when perhaps the present empires of the
old world shall have shared the fate of Athens
and Rome.

Mr. Whymper's Travels in Alaska and on
the Yukon, a very interesting book, is the
source whence most of the preceding informa-
tion has been derived.

THE MILESTONES.
Seventy milestones on the road,

The road on which we travel,
Sometimes through the bog and mire,

Sometimes on the gravel.
Sometimes o'er the velvet grass,

Or through the forest alleys,
Sometimes o'er the mountain tops,

Or through the pleasant valleys.
Sometimes through the garden walks,

Light of heart and cheery,
Sometimes o'er the jagged stones

With bleeding feet and weary.
Half my milestones lie behind,

More than half I reckon,
And I can see a Thing before

That seems to nod and beckon.

180 [January 23, 1SC9.;

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Let it beckon ! Let it nod !

My knees are supple-jointed ;
It cannot stop me if it would

Before the day appointed.

POSTE RESTANTE.

There are sermons in stones; but how
many in letters ! It matters little what may-
be within them. I have a whole batch, now
before me, which I do not intend ever to
open ; and one, I know by the postmark, is
fifteen years old. There is quite enough in-
terest for me in their envelopes and their
superscriptions, in their crests and stamps,
in the blots and the scratches they have
picked up on their way. For a letter can,
no more than a man, get through the world
without some rubs, often of the hardest.
Here is a dainty little pink thing of an en-
velope, longer than it is broad a flimsy
brick from the temple of love, shot away as
rubbish long ago. It is directed in the
beautifullest little Italian hand so small
that the effigy of her most gracious Majesty
on the stamp might be, by comparison, the
portrait of the sovereign of Brobdingnag.
But, woe is me ! that careless postman ! The
little letter, ere ever it reached me, tumbled
into the mud. Dun brown splashes deface
its fair outside. The mud is dry as dust
now, but not dustier or drier than the
memories which the envelope awakens.

Those droll dogs of friends you knew once,
were addicted to sending you " comic " en-
velopes through the post monstrous cari-
catures of yourself, or themselves, sketched
in pen and ink waggish quatrains in the
corner addressed to the postman or to Mary
the housemaid who took the letters in. They
fondly hoped, the facetious ones, that the
letter-carrier would crack his sides, that
Mary would grin her broadest grin, at the
sight of their funny letters. But Mary and
the postman did nothing of the kind. Once
in a way, perhaps, the hardworked servant
of the Gr. P. 0. who handed in the " comic"
missive would observe, " He must be arum
'un as sent this; " but the remark was made,
more in grim disparagement than in humor-
ous appreciation. As for Mary, she would
still further turn up that nasal organ for
which nature had already done a good deal
in the way of elevation, and would remark,
"J woxder people isn't above such trum-
peries." Mary knew and revered the sanctity
of the post. Did you ever study the outsides
of servants' letters ? When the housemaid
has a military sweetheart, he is generally in
the pedestrian branch of the service, and his

hand being as yet more accustomed to the
plough than to the pen, he induces a smart
sergeant to address his letters for him. The
non-commissioned officer's stiff, up-and-
down, orderly-room hand is not to be mis-
taken. He is very gallant to the house-
maid. He always calls her "Miss" Mary
Hobbs; but, on the other hand, he never
omits to add a due recognition of yourself
in the "At William Penn's, Esq." I have
even known a sergeant ascend to the regions
of "Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera," and a
flourish. Mary's old father, the ex-butcher,
does not waste any vain compliments upon
her or upon you. "Mary Hobbs, housemaid,
at Mr. Penn's." He is a courteous old
gentleman, nevertheless ; and if Mary shows
you her letter, which she does sometimes in
pardonable pride at the proficiency of her
papa, who, " although he was never no
schollard and going on for seventy-three, is
as upright as a Maypole," you will rarely
fail to discover, in the postscript, that he
has sent his " duty" to you.

But, I repeat, I have had enough in my
time of the insides of letters, and I intend
to write no more letters, and to read as few
as ever I possibly can. With the aid of a
poker, a good wide fireplace and a box of
matches, I got rid, recently, of a huge mass
of old letters. It was the brightest of blazes,
and you would have been astonished by the
diminutiveness of the pile of sooty ashes
which remained in the grate after that bon-
fire. Yet have you not seen in the little
frescoed pigeon-holes of the Roman Colum-
baria, that a vase not much bigger than a
gallipot will hold all that is mortal of one
who was once senator, pro- consul, praetor
what you please ? The ashes of a lifetime's
letters will not more than fill a dustpan.

Dismissing the letters themselves, rele-
gating them all to fiery death behind those
bars, I linger over the envelopes ; I dwell
upon the postmarks, I long to be in the dis-
tant lands to which those marks refer. There
is vast room for speculation in the address
of a letter, for, in the mass of hand- writings
you have seen, many have been forgotten.
In the letter itself your curiosity is at once
appeased, for you turn to the signature me-
chanically, and ten to one, if the letter be
an old one, to read it gives you a sharp pang.
Burn the letters, then ; keep to the enve-
lopes. Especially scan those which have
been directed to you at hotels abroad. In
very rare instances does the memory of a
foreign hotel remind you of aught but plea-
sant things. You lived your hfe. The bills
were heavy, but they were paid. You enj oy ed.

Charles Dickens.]

POSTE RESTANTE.

[January 23, 1SG9.]

181

How good the pickled herrings were at the
Oude-Doelen at the Hague ! What a famous
four-poster they put you into, at the Old
Bible in Amsterdam ! Could anything he
better than the table d'hote at the Hotel
d'Angleterre at Berlin save, perhaps, that
at the Hotel de Russie, close by, and that
other Russie at Frankfort? That Drei
Mohren, at Augsburg, was a good house,
too. What a cellar ! what imperial tokay !
'Tis true that the waiter at Basle swindled
you in the matter of the Bremen cigars which
he declared to be Havanas ; but was not that
little mishap amply atoned for at the Schwei-
zer Hof, Lucerne, six hours afterwards ? The
Schweizer Hof ! Dear me ! how happy you
were, idling about all day long, peering at
Mount Pilate, or watching, with never-end-
ing interest, the tiny boats on the bosom of
the great blue lake ! Here is an envelope
directed to you at Cernobbio ; another at the
Villa d'Este : another at Bellaggio, on the
Lake of Como. Here come Salo and Desen-
zano, on the Lake of Gar da. Ah ! a villanous
hostelry the last ; but with what exultation
you hurried back through Brescia to the
clean and comfortable Hotel Cavour at
Milan ! You were rather short of money,
perhaps, when you arrived in the capital of
Lombardy. Your stock of circular notes
was growing small. No cash awaited you
at the Albergo Cavour nay, nor letters
either. But there would be letters for
you, it was certain, at the Poste Restante.
Quick, Portiere, " un broum" Milanese
for brougham, and not very wide of the
mark. You hasten to the Poste Restante.
There the letters await you ; there is the
stack of circular notes. Yes, and here
among your envelopes at home, is the
banker's letter of advice, enumerating a
hundred cities where he has agents who will
gladly cash your notes at the current rate
of exchange, deducting neither agio nor dis-
count.

The postage and the reception of a letter
in foreign countries notably the less civi-
lised are events accompanied by circum-
stances generally curious and occasionally
terrifying. I never saw a Chinese post-
man, but I can picture him as a kind of
embodied bamboo, who presents you with
your packet of correspondence with some
preposterous ceremonial, or uses some out-
rageously hyperbolical locution to inform
you that your letter is insufficiently
stamped. As for the Russian Empire,
I can vouch, personally, for the whole
postal system of that tremendous do-
minion being, twelve years ago, environed

with a network of strange observances. The
prepayment of a letter from St. Petersburg
to England involved the attendance of at
least three separate departments of the im-
perial post-office, and the administration of
at least one bribe to a dingy official with a
stand-up collar to his napless tail coat, and
the symbolical buttons of the " Tchinn" on
the band of his cap. As those who have
ever made acquaintance with the stage
doorkeepers of theatres in any part of the
world, are aware that those functionaries
are generally eating something from a
basin (preferably yellow), so those who
have ever been constrained to do business
with a Russian government clerk of the
lower grades will remember that, conspi-
cuous by the side of the blotting pad (under
which you slipped the rouble notes when
you bribed him), there was always a sod-
dened blue pocket-handkerchief, the which,
rolled up into a ball, or twisted into a thong,
or waved wide like a piratical flag, served
him alternately as a sign of content, a ges-
ture of refusal, or an emblem of defiance.
You couldn't prepay your letter without
this azure semaphore being put through the
whole of its paces ; unless, indeed, previous
to attending the post-office, you took the
precaution of requesting some mercantile
friend to affix the stamp of his firm to your
envelope. Then, the official pocket-hand-
kerchief assumed, permanently, the sphe-
rical, or satisfied stage ; and you had, more-
over, the satisfaction of knowing that the
stamp of the firm might stand you in good
stead as an Eastern firman, and that, in all
probability, your letter would not be opened
and read as a preliminary to its being de-
spatched to its destination.

So much for sending a letter ; on which
you seldom failed (purely through official
oversight, of course), to be overcharged.
There were two ways of receiving a letter ;
both equally remarkable. I used to live in
a thoroughfare called the Cadetten-Linie,
in the island of Wassili-Ostrow. It was
about three times longer than that Upper
Wigmore- street to which Sydney Smith de-
clared that there was no end. When any
English friend had sufficiently mastered the
mysteries of Russian topographology as to
write " Cadetten-Linie" and " Wassili-Os-
trow" correctly, I got my letter. This was
but seldom. It was delivered at the hotel
where I resided, in a manner which reminded
me vaguely, but persistently, of the spectacle
of Timour the Tartar, and of the Hetman
Platoff leading a pulk of Cossacks over the
boundless steppes of the Ukraine. The post-

r !P

182 [January 23, 18C9.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

man was one of the fiercest little men, with
one of the fiercest and largest cocked- hats I
, ever saw. His face was yellow in the bony
and livid in the fleshy parts ; and the huge
moustache lying on his upper lip, looked
like a leech bound to suck away at him for
evermore for some misdeeds of the Prome-
thean kind.

This Russian postman : don't let me for-
get his sword, with its rusty leather scab-
bard and its brazen hilt, which seemed de-
signed, like Hudibras's, to hold bread and
cheese ; and not omitting, again, the half
dozen little tin-pot crosses and medals
attached by dirty scraps of parti- coloured
ribbon to his breast ; for this brave had
" served," and had only failed to obtain a
commission because he was not " born."
This attache of St. Sergius-le- Grand, if that
highly- respectable saint can be accepted as
a Muscovite equivalent for our St. Martin
of Aldersgate, used to come clattering down
the Cadetten-Linie on a shaggy little pony,
scattering the pigeons, and confounding the
vagrant curs. You know the tremendous
stir at a review, when a chief, for no earthly
purpose that I know of, save to display his
horsemanship and to put himself and his
j charger out of breath, sets off, at a tearing
gallop, from one extremity of the line to the
other : the cock feathers in the hats of his
staff flying out behind them like foam from
the driving waters. Well: the furious charge
of a general on Plumstead Marshes was
something like the pace of the Russian
postman. If he had had many letters
to deliver on his way, he would have been
compelled to modify the ardour of his wild
career; but it always seemed to me that
nineteen-twentieths of the Cadetten-Linie
were taken up by dead walls, painted a
glaring yellow, and that the remaining
twentieth was occupied by the house where
I resided. It was a very impressive spec-
tacle to see him bring up the little pony
short before the gate of the hotel, dismount,
look proudly around, caress the ever- suck-
ing leech on his lip as for twisting the ends
of it, the vampire would never have per-
mitted such a liberty and beckon to some
passing Ivan Ivanovitch, with a ragged
beard and caftan, to hold his steed, or in
default of any prowling Ivan being in the
way, attach his pony's bridle to the palisades.
It was a grand sound to hear him thunder-
ing he was a little man, but he did thunder
up the stone stairs, the brass tip of his
sword-scabbard bumping against his spurs,
and his spurs clanking against the stones,
and the gloves hanging from a steel ring in

his belt, playing rub-a-dub-dub on the lea-
ther pouch which held his letters for delivery
my letters, my newspapers, when they
hadn't been confiscated with all the in-
teresting paragraphs neatly daubed out
with black paint by the censor. And when
this martial postman handed you a letter,
you treated him to liquor, and gave him
copecks. All this kind of thing is altered,
I suppose, by this time in Russia. I have
seen the lowest order of police functionary
and the martial postman was first cousin
to a polizei seize Ivan Ivanovitch, if he
offended him, by his ragged head, and beat
him with his sword-belt about the mouth
until he made it bleed. Whereas, in these
degenerate days, I am told, a Russian gentle-
man who wears epaulettes, or a sword, is
not allowed so much as to pull a droschky-
driver's ears, or kick him in the small of the
back, if he turn to the left instead of the
right. Decidedly, the times are as much
out of joint as a broken marionette.

I have no doubt, either, that the transac-
tion of prepaying a letter has been very
much simplified since the period in which
I visited Russia. The Poste Restante also,
has, of course, been sweepingly reformed.
Brooms were not used in Russia in my
time, save for the purpose of thrashing Ivan
Ivanovitch. The St. Petersburg Poste
Restante in 1856 was one of the oddest in-
stitutions imaginable. It was a prudent
course to take your landlord, or some Russian
friend, with you, to vouch for your respect-
ability. In any case, you were bound to
produce your passport, or rather, your "per-
mission to sojourn," which had been granted
to you on your paying for it when the
police at Count Orloff's had sequestrated
your Foreign Office passport. When divers
functionaries all of the type of him with
the blotting-pad and the blue pockethand-
kerchief were quite satisfied that you were
not a forger of rouble notes, or an incendiary,
or an agent for the sale of M. Herzen's
Kolokol, their suspicions gave way to the
most unbounded confidence. You were
ushered into a large room ; a sack of letters
from every quarter of the globe was bundled
out upon the table ; and you were politely
invited to try if you could make out any-
thing that looked as though it belonged to
you. I am afraid that, as a rule, I did
not obtain the property to which I was
entitled, and somebody else had helped
himself to that which belonged to me.
I wonder who got my letters, and read
them, or are they still mouldering in the
Petropolitan Poste Restante ?

Charles Dickens.]

POSTE RESTANTE.

[January 23, 18G9.] 183

Poste Restante ! Poste Restante ! I scan
envelope after envelope. I know the Poste
Restante in New York, with its struggling
striving crowd of German and Irish emi-
grants craving for news from the dear ones
at home. In connexion with this depart-
ment of the American postal service, I may
mention that in the great Atlantic cities
they have an admirable practice of issuing
periodically, alphabetical lists of persons
for whom letters have arrived by the Euro-
pean mails "to be left till called for," or
whose addresses cannot be discovered. The
latter cases are very numerous ; letters ad-
dressed, "Franz Hermann, New York," or
" My Cousin Biddy in Amerikey," not being
uncommon.

I roam from pillar to post, always "Res-
tante," and ten years slip away, and I come
upon an envelope inscribed, "Poste Res-
tante, Madrid." There is another name for
this traveller's convenience in Spanish, but I
have forgotten it. Otherwise " Poste Res-
tante" belongs to the universal language.
Everybody knows what it means. The Ma-
drilefia Poste Restante is like most other
things of Spain : a marvel and a mystery.
You reach the post-office itself, by a dirty
little street called, if I remember aright, the
Calle de las Carretas, one of the thorough-
fares branching from that Castifian Seven
Dials the Puerta del Sol. Stop ! I really
must apologise for mentioning the name of
the Puerta del Sol. I am mournfully aware
that for the last nine weeks there has been
going about town, in newspapers, in club
rooms, at dinner tables, a ghastly and male-
ficent Bore. This is the Puerta del Sol
Bore. Wither him ! When he spares you
the Puerta del Sol auger, he gives you a
taste of the gimlet of the Calle de Alcala,
or drives you mad with the ratchet- drill of
the Plaza Mayor. Scorch him ! With his
long-winded stories of what he said years
ago, to Zumalacarregui and what Men-
dizabal said to him. Choke him ! With
his interminable discourses about the " pu-
chero," and the "tertullia,"andthe "Cocri-
das de novillos."

I don't want to be a bore, but it is not
my fault if the chief post-office in Madrid
be close to the Puerta del Sol. We must
bow down before incontrovertible facts.
The entrance to the office is in a dingy little
alley lined with those agreeable blackened
stone walls, relieved by dungeon-like barred
windows, common in the cities of northern
Spain. Opposite the post-office door, cower
a few little bookstalls, where, too, you may
buy cheap stationery ; and there, too, in a

little hutch, in aspect between a sentry-box
and a cobbler's-stall, used to sit a public
scribe, who, for the consideration of a few
reals, would indite petitions for such suppli-
ants as deemed that their prayers would be
more readily listened to by authority if they
were couched in words of four syllables and
written in fat round characters with flour-
ishes or " parafos" to all the terminals. The
scribe also would write love-letters for love-
lorn swains of either sex, whose education
had been neglected.

I don't think I ever knew such a black,
dirty, and decayed staircase as that of the
Madrid post-office save, perhaps, that of
the Monte de Piete, Paris. You ascended,
so it seemed, several nights, meeting on the
way male and female phantoms shrouded in
cloaks or in mantillas. The mingled odour
of tobacco smoke, of garlic, and of Spain
for Spain has its peculiar though in-
describable odour was wonderful. The
odds were rather against you, when you
visited the Poste Restante, that the occa-
sion might be a feast or a fast day of
moment. In either case the office opened
very late, and closed very early ; and the
hour selected for your own application
was usually the wrong one. If the
postal machine were in gear, you pushed
aside a green baize door and entered a long
low apartment, with a vaulted roof of stone.
Stuck against the whitewashed walls, Avere
huge placards covered with names, more or
less illegible. Knots of soldiers in undress
stood calmly contemplating those lists. I
don't think a tithe of the starers expected
any letters ; it was only another way of pass-
ing the time. A group of shovel-hatted
priests would be gravely scanning another
list ; a party of black-hooded women would
be gossiping before a third ; and everybody
would be smoking.

You wandered into another vaulted room,
and there you found your own series of fists
those of the " estrangeros." In the way of
reading those lists, madness lay. Tfie sche-
dules belonging to several months, hung side
by side. There were names repeated thrice
over, names written in differently coloured
inks, names crossed out, names blotted,
names altered, names jobbed at with a pen-
knife so as to be indecipherable, by some
contemplative spirit in a sportive mood.
The arrangment of names was alphabetical,
but arbitrary. Sometimes the alphabet be-
gan at A and sometimes at T. The system
of indexing was equally mysterious. I will
suppose your name to be Septimus Terminus
Optimus Penn. To this patronymic and

184 [January 23, 1S69.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

prefixes your correspondent in England has
foolishly added the complimentary Esquire.
Under those circumstances the best thing
you could do was to look for yourself under
the head of " Esquire." Failing in unearth-
ing yourself, then you might try Optimus
and Terminus, and so up to Penn. When
you found yourself a number was affixed to
you. At one extremity of the apartment
was a grating, and behind that grating sat
an old gentleman in a striped dressing-
gown and a black velvet skull cap. If you
can imagine a very tame and sleepy tiger at
the Zoological Gardens, smoking a cigarito,
and with bundles of letters and newspapers,
in lieu of shin bones of beef, to eat, you may
realise the idea of that old gentleman in his
cage at the Poste Restante behind the
Puerta del Sol. You spake him kindly,
and called him " Caballero." He bowed
profoundly and returned your compliment.
Then you told him your number, and handed
your passport through the bars. He looked
at the number and he looked at the pass-
port. Then he kindled another cigarito ;
then, in a preoccupied manner he began the
perusal of a leading article in the Epoca of
that morning. Then after a season, remem-
bering you, he arose, offered you a thousand
apologies, and went away out of the cage
altogether, retiring into some back den
whether to look for your letters, or to drink
his chocolate, or to offer his orisons to San
Jago de Compostella, is uncertain. By this
time there were generally two or three free
and independent Britons clamouring at the
bars ; the Briton who threatened to write to
the Times ; the Briton Avho declared that he
should place the whole matter in the hands
of the British ambassador ; and the persis-
tent Briton who simply clung to the grate, or
battered at the doortrap with an umbrella,
crying, " Hi ! Mossoo ! Donnez-moi mon
letter. Larrup, Milk -street, Cheapside, a
Londres. Donnez-moi. Look alive, will
you !" At last the old gentleman returned,
lighted another cigarito, and began to look
for your letters. For whose letters is he
looking now, I wonder, and where ?

Poste Restante ! Poste Restante ! It has
rested for me close to the Roman Pantheon,
and under the shadow of that blood-stained
sacrificial stone by the great Cathedral of
Mexico. Poste Restante ! How many times
have I journeyed towards it with fluttering
pulse and a sinking in my throat how
many times have I come from it with my
pocket full of dollars, or my eyes full of
tears ; tears that were sometimes of joy,
and sometimes but not often of sorrow.

The Poste Restante has been to me, these
many years, a smooth and a kind post, on
the whole.

CARICATURE HISTORY.

In the last century, no one had thought of
issuing a weekly caricature with accompanying
letterpress ; yet the number of pictorial bur-
lesques of politics and politicians, of fashions
and fashionable leaders, then published, is large ;
and we know all the great men, and many of
the little men of the age, by the pencils of
political satirists, such as Hogarth at one end
of the chain, and. Gillray at the other. Mr.
Thomas Wright has done the student of history
and manners some service by collecting as many
of these fugitive productions as he could lay
his hands on, and giving us an account of them
in a very interesting volume, which he entitles,
Caricature History of the Georges ; or, Annals
of the House of Hanover, compiled from the
Squibs, Broadsides, Window Pictures, Lam-
poons, and Pictorial Caricatures of the Time.
This volume is illustrated with engravings
copied from the old prints of bygone gene-
rations, and in looking through it we seem to
live over again the lives of our ancestors, and
to share with them in the passions, personali-
ties, jealousies, intrigues, and follies of the
hour. Lord Macaulay made a collection of
Whitechapel ballads to illustrate some period
of English history. Mr. Wright has turned to
the same purpose our caricatures from the
accession of George the First to the peace of
1815.

To the proverb that " there is nothing new
under the sun," caricatures are no exception.
They have been found in Egyptian tombs ; and
the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages
are sometimes adorned with extravagantly
humorous pictures, in which the object evidently
was to satirise particular persons or classes.
Caricatures became very popular in England in
the days of the Commonwealth. They used to
be engraved on playing-cards, and one of them
is extant at the present day. It is entitled,
Shuffling, Cutting, and Healing in a Game at
Picquet. Being acted from the year 1653 to
1658. By O. P. [Oliver, Protector] and others,
with great applause. Underneath the title is

the motto, " Tempora mutantur, et nos "

This squib was published in 1659, the year
after Oliver's death, while Richard was feebly
endeavouring to carry on the Protectorate.
The several persons represented Cromwell
and his son, Lambert, Fleetwood, Vane, Len-
thal, Claypole, Harrison, Monk, and others, ex-
press themselves in various pithy and sugges-
tive ways ; and a Papist looks on with the
remark, ' If you all complain, I hope I shall
win at last." Our early caricatures were mostly
manufactured in Holland, and this continued to
be the case even down to the time of the South
Sea Bubble ; but after that date a vigorous race
of native satirical artists sprang up, and has '
continued to the present day.

d3=

Charles Dickens.]

CARICATURE HISTORY.

[January 23, 18G9.] 185

A great number of caricatures arose out of the
Sacheverell business in the reign of Queen Anne.
The reverend doctor, who was a renegade from
Whiggism, had become a vehement Tory and
assertor of High Church principles, and in that
capacity he preached a sermon at St. Paul's,
before the Lord Mayor and Corporation, on the
5th of November. 1709. of so violent a character
towards the Dissenters and their friends, the
principles of the revolution, and the Whig Lord
Treasurer, Godolphin, that it was determined
to impeach the author. In the meanwhile, the
Tories caused the sermon to be printed and
extensively circulated ; and when the trial of
Sacheverell ended in his inhibition for three
years, the condemnation of his discourse, and
the burning of a copy of it by the common
hangman, an immense excitement seized on the
nation, and a series of riots ensued of a very
alarming character. High church clergymen
preached incendiary sermons ; money is said to
have been distributed among the mob ; several
encounters took place in the streets ; dissenting
places of worship were sacked and burnt ;
in short, ferocious intolerance was exhibited.
The commotion was fruitful in ballads and cari-
catures, andnot merely on the side of Sacheverell.
The Whigs were not idle, and Mr. Wright gives a
specimen of the kind of satirical prints they sent
forth against their opponents. We here see
Sacheverell in the act of writing his sermon. He
is prompted on one side by the Pope, and on
the other by the Devil ; and the title of the en-
graving is "The Three False Brethren." In
retaliation for this, the High Church party cari-
catured Bishop Hoadly, a Low Church friend
of the Dissenters, in a print in which Satan
is represented as closeted with the prelate,
whose infirmities are coarsely ridiculed. They
also parodied the Sacheverell caricature, put-
ting a mitred bishop in the place of the Pope,
and making the Devil fly away in terror from
the doctor's pen. The oddest thing done at
that period, however, was the issue of a medal
with a head of Sacheverell on one side, and
on the other a device and inscription which
varied in different copies, so as to suit the pre-
dilections of both parties. The caricatures of
the Sacheverell days are to be found in the
collection of Mr. Hawkins. " In general," says
Mr. Wright, "they are equally poor in design
and execution." The figure or head of the
clerical hero was introduced into all kinds of
articles of ornament or use. Tobacco-stoppers,
seals for letters, coat-buttons, &c, were made
to take sides, and the general excitement was
stimulated by every art that could possibly be
pressed into the service.

On the accession of George the First, and the
return of the Whigs to power after the brief as-
cendancy of Harley and Bolingbroke, the former
of those Ministers was made the subject of a
caricature which seems now not to be in exis-
tence. The object was to represent the Earl
as the tool of the French King and the Pretender
an imputation which he had drawn on himself
by the precipitate and disadvantageous peace
he had concluded after Marlborough's brilliant

victories, and by his intrigues against the House
of Hanover.

The famous South Sea Bubble furnished
abundant matter for literary and pictorial sati-
rists to turn to account. The earliest English
caricature on this disastrous speculation is en-
titled " The Bubblers bubbled ; or, the Devil
take the Hindmost." It contained a great many
figures : a circumstance which seems to have been
regarded as a recommendation, for another cari-
cature of the same period was advertised as
presenting "nigh eighty figures." This was in
1720, and in the same year a large number of
"Bubble" caricatures were issued in France
and Holland. In the latter country, several of
these, together with satirical plays and songs
on the same subject, were collected and pub-
lished in a folio volume, entitled "The Great
Picture of Folly." So great was the demand
for such productions, and so easily were people
satisfied with anything in the shape of a picto-
rial satire on the madness of the hour, that old
engravings were re-issued with a verbal appli-
cation to the various bubble companies, though
the figures could hardly be twisted by the ut-
most ingenuity to any interpretation of current
events. In England, packs of "bubble cards"
were largely sold an idea apparently derived
from the caricature playing-cards of the time
of the Commonwealth. In the sets belonging to
the latter age, each card was embellished with
an engraving representing some preposterous
scheme, accompanied by four lines of verse.
In many cases both pictures and verses were
pointed and epigrammatic. The English cari-
catures of that time, however, are said to be
very inferior to the Dutch.

But an Englishman of signal genius in the
department of comic and tragi-comic art was
on the eve of making himself famous. Hogarth's
first caricature was published in 1721, and its
subject was the company-forming mania of the
previous year.

The general election of 1722, under the ad-
ministration of Sir Robert Walpole, led to the
production of many caricatures by the Tory
party, who were then very much in the shade.
The Tories complained, and not without reason,
that the Whigs resorted to a most extensive
system of bribery, and, being in opposition, they
were of course severely virtuous. In Apple-
bee's Original Weekly Journal, of January
6th, 1722 a Tory publication the follow-
ing editorial note occurs : " Altho' we think
the appointing general meetings of the gentle-
men of counties, for making agreements for
votes for the election of a new Parliament be-
fore the old Parliament is expir'd, is a most
scandalous method and an evident token of
corruption, yet we find it daily practic'd, and,
which is worse, publickly own'd, particularly in
the county of Surrey, where the very names of
the candidates are publish'd, and the votes of
the freeholders openly sollicited in the publick
prints. The like is now doing, or preparing to
be done, for Buckinghamshire ; and we are
told, likewise, that it is doing for other counties
also." There cannot be a doubt that Walpole

186 [January 23, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

used every means in his power to secure a ma-
jority. He hardly made a secret of his determi-
nation to carry the elections by bribery and per-
sonal influence, if he could carry them in no other
way ; and by a liberal expenditure of money he
succeeded. The Tories were very strong on
the matter of this bribery. One of the cari-
catures of the day is entitled "The Pre-
vailing Candidate ; or, the Election carried
by Bribery and the D 1." Another is called,
" Britannia stript by a Villain ; to which is
added, the True Phiz of a late Member." The
former is still in existence, and is engraved in
Mr. Wright's volume. It represents the can-
didatea fine gentleman in peruke and lace
slipping a bag of money into the pocket of the
voter, who seems to hesitate, but is being per-
suaded by a devil hovering in the air above him.
The wife is urged in the same direction by a
parson ; but two little boys express their con-
tempt for the whole proceeding. The last of
some stanzas underneath runs :

" Say the boys, ' Ye sad rogues, here are French
wooden brogues,

To reward your vile treacherous knavery ;
For such traitors as you are the rascally crew

That betray the whole kingdom to slavery.' "

The election which proved so advantageous
to Walpole was succeeded by a calm in the
political world, during which the caricaturists
employed themselves for the most part on
social topics. The rage for pantomime which
at that time took possession of the stage the
humours and vanities of Bich, the harlequin-
manager of Covent Garden Theatre ; of
Heidegger ; of Farinelli ; and of other persons
connected with the amusements of the day
the eccentric performances of " Orator Hen-
ley," the scurrilous clergyman who used to
preach on a tub to the butchers of Clare Market
the quarrels of Pope, and other matters of a
purely personal character these were the sub-
jects which for a long while kept the pictorial
satirists busy, to the exclusion of affairs of state.
It is curious to mark the similarity of the then
condition of the stage to the present. Burlesque
performances, grand scenic effects, realistic con-
trivances, mountebanks, tumblers, rope-dancers,
and wild beasts, were the chief attractions,
against which tragedy and comedy had very
little chance. All the town rushed to see a
movable windmill, as they now flock to witness
a sham steam-engine and train. The machinist
elbowed the dramatic author out of the way,
and in one of his early caricatures Hogarth
represents a barrow-woman wheeling off, as
" waste paper for shops," the plays of Shake-
speare, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Congreve, and
Otway. The date of the print is 1723.

With the death of George the First, in 1727,
the opposition to Sir Bobert Walpole recom-
menced with great vigour. Bolingbroke, who
had been allowed to return to England,
but not to resume his seat in the House
of Lords, sought every opportunity of making
the most virulent attacks on the successful
Minister. He and Pulteney started the famous
political journal called the Craftsman, of which

the working editor was Nicholas Amhurst, who
wrote under the assumed name of Caleb
dAnvers ; and the Tories being thus joined by
the discontented Whigs, Walpole found himself
face to face with a formidable array of ad-
versaries. He was accused of truckling to
France (an imputation brought against every
unpopular Minister), and of fiscal tyranny in
extending the excise duties to wine and tobacco.
The Gin Act passed with a view to restraining
the sale of our English spirit, the consumption
of which by the lower classes had led to great
disorders was also extremely unpopular, and it
proved as complete a failure as attempts to
make people virtuous by statute law generally do
prove. All these matters contributed to bring
Sir Bobert into considerable disrepute, and on
the 13th of February, 1741, Sandys, one of the
malcontent Whigs, made a violent attack on
the Premier, concluding with a motion for an
address to the King, praying him to remove
Walpole from his councils "forever." The
motion was warmly supported by Pulteney,
Pitt (afterwards Lord Chatham), and others ;
but it was lost by a very large majority. On
the same day, Lord Carteret introduced a simi-
lar motion in the House of Lords, and was
seconded by the Duke of Argyle ; but this also
was defeated. The double incident gave occa-
sion to a Ministerial caricature, which is en-
graved in Mr. Wright's book. It is extremely
clever, full of invention, and drawn with con-
siderable spirit. The scene is Whitehall as it
then was the only feature of which now re-
maining is Inigo Jones's Banqueting Hall. A
coach-and-six is being driven furiously towards
the Treasury. The Earl of Chesterfield rides
the off-leader as postilion, and the Duke of Ar-
gyle is on the box as coachman. Lord Carteret,
who sits inside, calls from the window, "Let
me get out " (the application of which, by the
way, is not clear, as it does not seem that the
proposer of the motion in the Lords endea-
voured to escape from the business), and the
coach, which has run over several people, is in
the act of upsetting. Lord Cobham, as foot-
man, holds on to the straps behind, and Lord
Lyttelton a tall, gaunt figure rides on horse-
back after the carriage. In the foreground of
the picture, Pulteney, drawing a set of partisans
after him by their noses, wheels a barrow,
laden with the Craftsman, the Champion, and
other journals in the interest of the Opposition ;
but he sees the catastrophe, and exclaims,
" Zounds ! they're over !" Further on, Sandys,
letting fall his Place Bill, and throwing up his
hands and arms in dismay, exclaims, " I thought
what would come of putting him on the box !"
alluding to the Duke of Argyle ; while, not
far from the coach, Smallbrook, Bishop of Lich-
field, bows obsequiously to the great folks.
Several editions of the print were published
(some with variations), and the "patriots" re-
torted with a paiody. The original was accom-
panied by some verses, rather humorously
conceived ; and Horace Walpole, writing to Con-
way, speaks highly of the whole, and especially
commends the likenesses.

Charles Dickens.;

CARICATURE HISTORY.

[January 23, 1869.] 187

The Second Pretender's rebellion was fruit-
ful in caricatures, of which the most famous is
Hogarth's March of the Guards to Finchley, on
their way to the north. The city trained bands
were at this period made the subject of much
disrespectful joking ; indeed they had a hard
time of it during the whole of the century,
down to the day* when Cowper had his
fling at them in Johnny Gilpin. After the
suppression of the formidable rising in Scot-
land, the caricaturists seem for a long while
to have divided their attention between the
politics of the hour, and the eccentricities of
fashion, or other social topics : giving quite as
much attention to the latter as to the former.
This was the epoch of Hogarth's great produc-
tions, in which comic art was raised to the highest
level. But, though Hogarth had no equal, he
had contemporaries of considerable ability as
fugitive caricaturists. We see much of their
work in Mr. Wright's volume, and it gives us
no mean idea of their readiness and skill.
It is curious to observe how long the feeling of
antagonism to the House of Hanover, as some-
thing foreign and degrading, lasted with a
large proportion of the people. In several of
these caricatures the British Lion is represented
in various ignominious positions relatively to
the Hanoverian White Horse. Politics, how-
ever, as in most times, frequently gave place to
social matters. The rivalries of Garrick and
other eminent actors ; the quackery and inso-
lence of Dr. Hill, a surgeon and journalist, who
made some little name, about the middle of the
century, by his scurrility and assurance ; the
egregious hoax of the Bottle Conjuror at the
Haymarket Theatre; the earthquake of 1750,
the apprehension of which threw all London
into spasms of terror, but which, when it came,
proved to be so gentle that, as Horace Wal-
pole said, "you might have stroked it;" the
Betty Canning Mystery ; the Cock-lane Ghost ;
the rage for Handel and other foreign musi-
cians ; the extravagance of the rich, and the
exaggerations of fashion ; these were favourite
subjects with the caricaturists of the time of
George the Second and of the early years of
George the Third. Towards the conclusion of
the former reign, and for some tune after,
great complaints were made of the profligacy
of manners, and of the evils introduced into
the country by the importation of French
modes and tastes. It cannot be questioned
that the grievance was a serious one, and
that our national morals were never more de-
praved, shameless, and impudently coarse, than
at the period in question. Young men of
fashion, having made the grand tour often in
company with tixtors who were proficients in
every species of debauchery returned to Eng-
land worse than they left it, and propagated
at home the vices they had learnt abroad.
Even though we may not accept as a true pic-
ture, in any general sense, the terrible account
given by Churchill, in his poem called The Times,
we must yet allow that society in the middle of
the eighteenth century was deplorably corrupt.
The Hell-fire Club, and other associations of a

similar character, maintained a standard of
villany which every young rake did his utmost,
to reach ; the ladies were often as bad as the
gentlemen ; masked balls and open-air enter-
tainments at Vauxhall and Ranelagh, contri-
buted to the general laxity of morals ; and the
style of female dress reflected the spirit of the
epoch. The hoops, which had been large enough
in the days of George the First, became much
more outrageous in the next reign ; and a con-
temporary caricature represents a lady being let
down with a crane and pulley into her sedan
chair by three assistants, who carefully lower
her through the open roof. The head-dresses
were equally absurd. They were piled up to an
enormous height by the aid of false hair,
cushions, pins, pomatum, feathers, ribbons, and
artificial flowers ; and very singular are the
pictures we here find of the fantastic forms
they were made to assume. The men soon
rivalled the women in eccentricity of dress. For
a year or two subsequent to 1770, the Maca-
ronis, as the young beaux for awhile delighted
to call themselves, were the talk of the town, the
rage of the moment, and the subjects of wits
and caricaturists.

Going back a few years, we find Hogarth,
towards the conclusion of his life, involved in a
bitter quarrel with Wilkes and Churchill, the
mortification resulting from which is thought
to have hastened his death. The painter had
received a pension from Lord Bute, who, on
rising to power shortly after the accession of
George the Third, made a great show of pa-
tronising literature and art, though doubtless
with no other object than to procure support
for his ministry, of which it stood greatly in
need. In the fervour of his new-born political
zeal, Hogarth attacked his old friend Wilkes in
Number One of the prints called The Times.
Wilkes retaliated in the North Briton; Churchill
assisted on the same side, in his Epistle to
William Hogarth ; and a great many caricatures
were published, representing the painter per-
forming ignominious services for the minister,
or receiving his pay. Lord Bute is frequently
typified by the comic artists of the time in
the form of a large jack-boot, by way of a
pun upon his title. Smollett, as a paid ad-
vocate of the Scotch favourite, and himself a
Scotchman, was severely ridiculed about this
time ; for all our Northern fellow-subjects were
then regarded as Jacobites, or as a set of
hungry adventurers who came to England to
pick up what they could get. The unpopularity
of Lord Bute has hardly ever been equalled ; but
it was shared by his fellow ministers, especially
Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, whose
name lent itself very readily to the caricaturists.
On the other hand, Wilkes and Pitt were the
idols of the populace, until Pitt accepted a
place in the Upper House, under the title of
Lord Chatham, when he was looked upon as a
tool of the court party, which was still ruled
in secret by Bute, though that nobleman had
been compelled to retire from the ministry. In
a caricature published about 1770, Wilkes is
pictured as a patriot worried by two dogs, one

188 [January 23, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

of which has the features of Dr. Johnson,
while the other is distinguished by the head of
some court writer whose identity cannot now be
traced. Johnson was frequently caricatured.
A print issued in 1782 shows him as an owl,
standing on two of his own volumes, and leering
at the heads of Milton, Pope, and others, which
are surrounded with starry rays. This was in
allusion to the depreciatory remarks contained
in his recently published Lives of the Poets.
The face is powerfully drawn, and is probably
a good likeness of the doctor, from the ex-
aggerated and unsympathetic point of view.

It would be impossible, in the compass of a
single essay, to follow the complicated politics
of the reign of George the Third, as exemplified
in the comic art of that long era ; for the cari-
caturists were very busy during the whole of
those sixty years. The love of caricature seems
to have increased as the eighteenth century
wore on towards its close, and a vast number
of pictorial squibs were issued during the days
of the second Pitt and Fox, of Burke and She-
ridan, of Shelburne, North, Warren Hastings,
Grattan, Home Tooke, and the other eminent
politicians of the time. The faces of all these
men have been rendered familiar to us by the
burlesque artists of the period, who did not
spare royalty itself. Indeed, George and his
consort were frequently made the subjects of
ludicrous pictures, which could hardly have
been flattering to their self-esteem. They were
represented as "Farmer George and his wife,"
a very common-place couple, equally plain in
looks and in costume ; as misers hugging their
bags of gold ; as frugal, homely people, frying
sprats or toasting muffins ; as sordid economisers,
trying to save a few pence in any shabby way ;
as perambulators about Windsor and Wey-
mouth, scraping acquaintance with the pea-
santry, and staggering them with rapid and
irrelevant questions ; and in other ludicrous
or ignoble relations. Of course, the celebrated
story of the apple dumplings, told by Peter
Pindar in a well-known poem, was illustrated
by the draughtsmen of the time. A caricature
on this subject, depicting his majesty " learning
to make apple dumplings," was published in
November, 1797- The king's passion for hunt-
ing, his coarse features and ungainly figure, his
over - familiarity of manner, and his devotion
to trivial pursuits, were repeatedly satirised by
the artists of the latter part of the last century.
It used to be said whether justly or not that
his majesty gave so much time to agriculture
that he neglected the duties of State ; and he
was also accused of wasting a good deal of
petty ingenuity in making buttons. But
; the avarice of the august pair was what the
caricaturists were most fond of holding up to
! popular aversion and ridicule. " A very clever
[ caricature was published by Gillray, entitled
i ' Anti-saccharites,' in which the king and queen
are teaching their daughters to take their tea
J without sugar, as ' a noble example of eco-
nomy.' The princesses have a look of great
discontent, but their royal mother exhorts them
to persevere : ' Above all, remember how much

expense it will save your poor papa.' The
king, delighted with the experiment, exclaims,
' O delicious ! delicious !' " Another caricature
by the same artist, published in the same year
(1792), after the arrival of news of the defeat of
Tippoo Saib, shows us Dundas, as the minister
who took charge of Indian affairs, communi-
cating the intelligence to the monarch and his
consort. The secretary of state announces that
" Serin gapatam is taken Tippoo is wounded
and millions of pagodas secured." George-, who
is dressed in the costume of a huntsman, ex-
claims, "Tally ho! ho! ho! ho!" while Char-
lotte sighs forth, " O the dear, sweet pagodas !"
Gillray, it appears, had a personal cause for
disliking the king, the latter having once
spoken of the artist's sketches with contempt.
Yet in December, 1790, Gillray had published
a very loyal caricature, representing Dr. Price,
the Unitarian clergyman, as a disseminator of
treason, anarchy, and atheism, and Burke as
the illustrious upholder of the crown and reli-
gion. Exactly a year later, we find him
satirising William Pitt as a toadstool spring-
ing out of the royal crown, which is described
as " a dunghill." Price could hardly have been
more revolutionary than that.

The most eminent caricaturists of the later
years of the eighteenth and earlier years of the
nineteenth centuries were Gillray, Rowlandson,
and Sayer. Gillray may be said to have re-
fashioned and reanimated the art. His best
works are marked by real genius by great in-
ventiveness, lively characterisation, considerable
humour, and no mean executive skill. His
later works are not so good as his earlier ; some
of them, indeed, he only engraved, without
designing. Rowlandson was coarser, but not
devoid of talent ; and Sayer, though less known
at the present day than either of the others,
was ingenious and prolific. The comic art of
the reign of the third George was more varied
and elaborate than that of the two preceding
reigns ; but it was also more vulgar in spirit
and design. The astounding ugliness of cos-
tume which set in about 1780, and continued in
several forms for many years, was equalled by
the heavy, debauched, bloated, and mean faces
of the people ; and both these facts were made
the most of by the caricaturists.

The profligacy and spendthrift habits of the
Prince of Wales were severely lashed in many
of the caricatures of that period ; but in a little
while personal matters gave place to the more
important considerations arising out of the
revolutionary condition of France, the spread
of agitation in our own country, and the great
war which speedily burst out between ourselves
and the newly established republic. The anti-
revolutionary and anti-Gallican feeling of the
upper and middle classes of England is suffi-
ciently proved by the caricatures reproduced or
described by Mr. Wright, which are almost all
on the national and conservative side. The
French are held up to ridicule in every con-
ceivable way, and John Bull is made to think
the most of himself. The brilliant achieve-
ments of our army and navy were comme-

(

Charles Dickens.

FATAL ZERO.

[January 'J3, 1SG9J 189

morated in many forms. Although there is a
little occasional satire at the expense of the
volunteers, and an outbreak of grumbling now
and then at the taxes, the sentiment, on the
whole, is strongly on the side of loyalty.
Buonaparte is depicted as a braggart, coward,
and imbecile little manikin. The amount of
national self-esteem which was thus encouraged,
looks half-ludicrous, half-pitiable, at this dis-
tance of time. A debased and clap-trap spirit
came over the comic art of the period, and it is
impossible to glance back at it with any sen-
timent of satisfaction. In one of Gillray's
sketches, George the Third appears as the King
of Brobdingnag, holding in his hand the dimi-
nutive figure of Buonaparte, whom he is
scanning through an opera-glass, and address-
ing in these words, slightly altered from
Swift's text: "My little friend Grildrig, you
have made a most admirable panegyric upon
yourself and country ; but, from what I can
gather from your own relation, and the
answers I have with much pains wring'd (sic)
and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude
you to be one of the most pernicious little
odious reptiles that Nature ever suffered to
crawl upon the surface of the earth." The
likeness of George in this print is very good ;
but the portrait of Napoleon presents quite the
reverse of his real appearance. He is drawn
with the lantern jaws and approximating nose
and chin of a very old man though he was
then young and his hair is carroty red ! The
personal appearance of the great general could
not then have been much known in England ;
but some of the later sketches are better. It is
remarkable, by the way, that the popular ideal
of John Bull, continued, even to the early
years of the present century, very different
from that which is now accepted, as if it had
come down to us from time immemorial. The
costume, wig included, is that of the eighteenth
century ; shoes and buckles occupy the place
of the now familiar top-boots ; and the type of
face is rather German or Dutch, than English.
The modern John Bull must have come up
after the peace of 1815.

Mr. Wright's volume concludes with the
death of George the Third, in January, 1820,
and its final pages are occupied with some of
the fashionable oddities, in the way of male
and female dress, of the concluding years of
that long reign. The dandies and dandizettes
of 1819-20 must have been a strange race.
" Dandizette" was a term applied to the femi-
nine devotees to dress, and their absurdities
were fully equal to those of the dandies. We
are now, however, touching upon our own
day. The rising race of caricaturists were men
whose works and lives bring us down to the
present moment ; for the most remarkable of
them is still alive. George Cruikshank con-
nects the age of Gillray, Rowlandson, and
Sayer, with that of the elder Doyle, Leech,
the younger Doyle, and Tenniel. The Georgian
and the Victorian eras are linked together by
the genius of this admirable humourist, who
was a pictorial reformer in the evil days of the

Regency, and who still survives to employ his
pencil on social topics in the better times which
have ensued.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG : A SHORT SERLA.L STORY.
CHAPTER XIII.

Tuesday. At the same time looking over
what I have written, I should not perhaps,
in strict justice, whelm all in indiscriminate
censure I mean the subordinates down-
wards since seeing this croupier in the
church, and who was saying his prayers.
He may have come to think it a mere
mechanical function a simple clerkship in
a bank; and certainly association and
habit blunt the soul. But are there not
clergy here, good men, as I know, to tell
him, that all who touch pitch must be de-
filed, to thunder in his ears that evil got
moneys must not be handled on any pre-
text, to ring out the awful words of Scrip-
ture against gamesters and others to tell
him he must give up all rather than be con-
nected with such sin ? I felt an interest in
the man and would almost be tempted my-
self but this is mere folly and quixotism,

and I am so carried away by pity for the
victims, that I begin to talk nonsense and
impossibilities. What could poor I do ? I
must say, I admire Grainger for his self-
denial, I never see him in the rooms. Some-
times, indeed, he comes, drawn in by the
irresistible temptation; but when he sees
my warning finger his head droops, and
he slips away quietly

Such an adventure this evening. Surely
this is the place for disciplining the mind.
I had strolled into the rooms about ten
o'clock, the most delightful hour of the
night, to have what I call " my quiet game
at humanity." I had my card the menials
are beginning to know me and ply me with
large corking pins, of which I have a
supply for my pet when I saw D'Eyn-
court's face opposite. He was with a lady
a young girl, French or English, decent or
otherwise, for no one can tell here. I have
done some charming country English girls
cruel injustice by mistaking them for what
they were not ; and en revanche, I have
done other creatures too much honour by
taking them for what they were certainly
not. But everything seems inverted here.
I see a scrubby, dowdy, schoolmaster- look-
ing man, with a shambling walk, and
wonder what business he has dining in the
grand Kursaal, when he is revealed as Lord
, who has the palace at the corner

190 [January 23, I860.]

ALL THE YEAK, BOUND.

[Conducted by

of Street, London, and one hundred

and fifty thousand pounds a year to keep
it up. I see a distingue gentlemanly man,
with the true ah' of high breeding about his
hands, &c, and he proves to be an im-
postor who was turned out of the Arling-
ton for cheating at whist. With all I have
learnt, and all I have seen, I own myself
at times quite at fault. The women are
shabby, second-hand tilings ; creatures of
whom we heard such strange stories ten
years ago, reappear here with stories
stranger still. There is Captain Darling,
whom every one knew as the possessor of
a good estate in Scotland, a " club man," a
" racing man," and for a time member of
parliament and director of companies. He
is now reduced to these places, and makes a
few florins " out of the tables." Over on that
sofa I see what has amused me and many
more, going on. That little piquant widow,
Mrs. Dyaper, rosy and dark eyed, and
about whom "there were such stories,"
two years ago. She has come out as the
domestic, almost bereaved, lady, doing
worsted knitting on a chair in a corner,
but not alone ; for to the delight of friends
and lookers-on, she has entangled a grave,
even mouldy, doctor of fifty, in large prac-
tice in London, one of those elderly dry
" professional " men, who are about as
fitted for going into love as for going on
the stage. This is really a dismal business
to watch, especially the stages in beautify-
ing himself one day a pair of canary kid
gloves, brighter linen, and brighter boots. It
will all end in wreck. It is likely he has
sisters at home to whom be will return,
altered, savage, perhaps, and bent in carry-
ing out his scheme.

And yet as I looked on at this infatua-
tion and its victim, one thing occurred to
me, that the gambler's dulness and want
of instinct was on a par with their in-
fatuation. They seemed to go to work in
the wildest and most spasmodic manner.
A few minutes' superficial study of the
game, showed me at once that it must be
subject to certain rude laws, not of course
to be brought under control, or calcula-
tion, but certainly valuable as a sort of
rough guide.

Again I go in, for a short study. It is
curious to see how often zero begins to
come up. The ordinary doctrine of chances
would be that the colours should come up
alternately, and I do observe that they
virtually observe that law, that is, come up
in short batches. Of course, I could see
there were what were called runs, which

set in suddenly and defied all manage-
ment or calculation ; but this was abnor-
mal and unnatural, and must be passed
by. Again for half an hour I tested
this little system, putting down, in imagi-
nation, on the colour I had worked out,
and it almost invariably came up, and I
won, in imagination luckily. Here was I,
a mere novice, hitting on something like
the secret of this devil's mystery, and yet
so dull and blinded were the victims that
not one of them could see his way to suc-
cess, and by some fiendish provision seemed
tempted to lay his money on precisely what
was certain to lose. What a scene, what a
life ! Is there anything anywhere among
the drunkards, spendthrifts, what not, Eke
this cold, desperate, leisurely progress down
the steep hill of ruin ? It is a pass,
along which only one can walk, and down
which the victim is driven slowly back-
ward until he gets to the edge, when he
must go over. The croupiers are a study in
themselves. There are such varied patterns,
young and old, some middle-aged, one or
two very handsome, most of them stout,
and full about the neck. All, however,
have that wary, questing, roving eye (and
some of them very fine ones) that looks
out of the corners sharply. Some are far
more prompt and skilful than the others ;
one or two are absolutely stupid, make
mistakes in counting, &c, and on a crowded
board, are tedious in paying off claims ;
others send out the money clumsily and in
a rude indistinct way, the pieces getting con-
fused with others ; some are prompt and
unerring, sending forth the shower with
the nicest aim, taking exactly the right aim,
and pouring them out with precision ; one is
a dismal ascetic looking fellow who sings
his " faites le jeu," in the most lugubrious
key, as if it was " Voi ch' intrate," &c, or
" Come and be killed, gentlemen ! " Another
has a venomous twinkle in his eye, and
sends the ball spinning with quite a savage
rapidity, as who should say, " Make an end
of this." He proclaims the result with en-
joyment and rakes in the money sharply,
and with a lurch. Even in the tones in
which they proclaim the result, I notice
different favorite keys. Twenty-one seem-
ing to be announced slowly and sadly,
" Vaint-ay-orne ;" on the contrary, " eight"
comes out, short and sharp like the snap-
ping cap : " Whit !" " Oonze " is a gloomy
song ; " Trente-cinq," and " Vin-cat" cheer-
ful and hilarious. One man likes to check
the state of the board as he sweeps in, and
says to himself, " one florin on manque,"

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[January 23, 1869.] 191

two louis " rendus," and such soliloquis-
ing ; but I notice this is not of rigour.
At night there is yet greater excite-
ment, and a kind of pleasant enjoyment
abroad. The bank seems to be losing, and
every one to be winning. The room is
brilliant and every one seemed in good
humour. There is a vast rush to the tables,
so that it was with difficulty I could carry
out my little calculations, now become the
regular amusement of the night. It was
amazing, I say again the fashion in which
my theory was supported. I declare solemnly
that I must have won fifty pounds during
the half-hour I was watching. An easy
way to make a livelihood, indeed.

I have spoken of a charming family I met
at the table d'hote, and who seemed to take a
deep interest in what they believed was
my history. Two more innocent and en-
gaging girls it would be impossible to
conceive, so naive, so good-natured, so en-
gaging. Their remarks were delightful,
and their father seemed to dote on them.
They were well brought up, good and
pious, yet very gay, and with some esprit.
They knew my pet perfectly from what I
had said, and are just the girls she would
love. I had not met them for two or
three days, when, to my surprise, I saw
them entering the gambling-rooms, with
that air of delighted mystery which al-
ways attends the first visit. I say I was
surprised, for they had always spoken with
a sort of dread of the place; and their
father had said : " No, my dear girls,
draw on papa for any money you like, but
don't let us get it in that way." Behind
them, however, was a face which explained
it all that of D'Eyncourt. I saw it bent
down between the two gentle faces, pour-
ing in some whispered platitude this
sham pasha, and he promises to be soon
as bloated as that despot of Egypt. It
gave me a sort of chill to see this evil
influence commenced. The sow-like eyes
blinked at me with a sort of suspicion and
dislike. He did not relish my acquaint-
ance with these charming girls. No man,
indeed, I have remarked, does relish the
introduction of another man upon his little
stage, or to his actresses.

" Papa," said one, who I think is Con-
stance, " has given us a Frederick to play
with, and we wish so much to win. Mr.
D'Eyncourt says he will play for us."

" But if you lose," I said, " you will be
disappointed and put out. If I was you I
would go to those little booths at the
Brunnen, and buy some of the agates or

onyxes, and then you will have a little sou-
venir of the place."

He spoke. " What a goody, goody ar-
rangement ! Dear me ! This is dropping
the word. Now what shall we go on first ?
The roulettes. Let us try the colour.
There, monsieur, s'il vous plait. The way
those stupid idlers block up the place is un-
pardonable. There are two double florins
down, and my own louis beside it."

Such is the malaria, as I may call it, of
this dreadful game, that over those gentle
faces suddenly spread a sort of anxiety
and trouble, with a questioning eagerness,
which I believe firmly was only instinctive,
but which made me quite shudder. With-
out reflection almost I said :

" Don't, I conjure you ! Take it up
again. You will be sorry if you don't.
You won't even win though that is the
next misfortune to losing."

They looked irresolute, but click ! the
silence and the proclamation followed.
Again the gentle, almost rustic, faces
were turned with a painful wistfulness.
Their hearts, I know, were fluttering.
But the verdict, a prolonged " Doozb !
Rouge-pairymank !" They knew their
fate from his impatient look. The mortifi-
cation and disappointment could not be
described.

" Never mind," he said, feeling in his
pockets, " we shall beat them yet. I shall
put down for you now on the same thing."

" You will only lose," I said ; " if you do
play, play with some method."

"I know how to play pretty well," he
said, angrily. " 'Pon my word, it is only
these croakings that are bringing us ill
luck. I wish to Heaven you would leave
the young ladies alone !"

" no," said Constance, warmly ; " we

didn't mean Here, if Mr. Austen

will only put down for me and Kate, you
will follow Mr. D'Eyncourt's advice."

I looked at her irresolutely. "I must
tell you," I said, " I don't play, and have
determined not to play."

"And yet you come here and affect to
study the system, and tell people to put on
that and on that. That is consistent !"

I did not answer him ; but said quietly
to her : "If you must do it, then wait a
little. Let two or three go by, for it begins
to look like a run."

Down came the double click and the
stillness. Manque again.

" Confound it !" said D'Eyncourt, again
plunging at his pocket, the first intuitive
motion with every loser. " It is all this

192

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[January 23,

croaking," he said, impatiently. " Ton my
word, I don't understand. Come away
with me to the other table."

" Indeed I will not," said Constance.
"You can do so if yOu like, and Kate
also ; but we shall go on winning to-
gether."

The next time she lost. " Go on win-
ning" repeated she.

"Don't be alarmed," I said; "we shall
just lie by a little until it goes into shape
again."

So we did, and the next time we did
win. It was certainly wonderful. At the
end of twenty minutes she had fifteen
double florins in her small hand those
fine handsome pieces, which it is a satisfac-
tion to feel. Mr. D'Eyncourt "was out"
a good many napoleons, and the other
girl's disconsolate face showed how mor-
tified and disappointed she was. They are
to go away home in a few days later, and I
am never likely to meet them again ; but
I have no doubt the first shades of jealousy
and coldness that have ever darkened their
young lives have been caused by this fatal
night. As for Mr. D'Eyncourt, he cannot
be a gentleman, and if he gives me any
more of his remarks I shall speak quite
plainly to him.

Midnight. What have I done ! There,
I have entered my room, and there on the
table have I humiliation that I should
write it ! poured down twenty of those
heavy silver pieces ! I am bewildered
they seem to dazzle me. Again what have
I done ? Where are my resolutions ? O
shame ! shame ! All my boastings, my
pride, my contempt for this wickedness ;
and then to have given way like the rest :
after the prayer that I had said so devoutly !
I tremble as I look at those pieces, and feel
a sort of flutter at my heart I ought to
detest, and yet they seem to invite.
what weak, miserable, helpless creatures
the best of us are ! How we swagger and
boast, and how little there is in us ! They
seem if it be not profane to say so like
the thirty pieces

I have been walking up and down,
scarcely able to compose myself to go to
bed. There they lie so heavy, so solid,
so musical in their tone. " Zwei Gulden"
and a great head on the obverse; one a
" Ludwig," another a " Herzog v. Nassau."

And yet, after all, it was no such great
fall; for I saw round me the gentle, the
good, the innocent, the smiling ; and as for
the mere putting down a florin, there is
no absolute crime. Where I was culpable
was in the weakness, the abandonment of
what I had proposed so solemnly. And
it has not turned out ill, so there is no
harm done.

When I look back and analyse my state
of mind, then, I can extenuate a good
deal. The crowd round me, their eager-
ness, their success in winning, the en-
joyment, the excitement, the absence
of care, the enjoying faces looking into
their hands, the close of a pleasant
day, the general air of festivity all this
seemed to draw me in, to absorb me, to
impart a sudden thrill. All seemed to say,
" Come and join us, be one of us ; you are
losing the chance of money."

For a time I forget everything, resolu-
tions and all; and if I had only gone
on

.... Now, on the other hand, there is
such a thing as making too serious an
affair of what has not sufficient import-
ance. As I say, there has been no harm
done. This money I shall just seal up, and
send in to Mr. B., the clergyman, for the new
English chapel or for the poor, I am not
certain which. I ought in all propriety to
contribute to the church, and must have
done so in any case : so query, would not
this be a legitimate advantage to take ?
It would set free other money. On the
whole, I rather lean to the cause of the
poor. They shall profit. After all, there
are people who would laugh if I accused
myself of such a crime ; and even my pet
at home would smile, and say, " 0, I
should have so liked that little money !"
No, no. Indeed, I do her wrong. Indeed,
she would not. And therefore I think I
shall not let her see these leaves. Or I
shall cross out much of it. Now to go to
bed more composed than I was.

Now ready,
THE COMPLETE SET

TWENTY VOLUMES,

With General Index to the entire work from its
commencement in April, 1859. Each volume, with
its own Index, can also be bought separately as
heretofore.

Now ready, ALL TLTE CHRISTMAS STORIES,
bound together price os. ; or, separately, price 4d. each.

The Right of Translating Articles from All the Year Round is reserved by the Authors

Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street, Strand. Printed by C. WHljntQ, Ueaufort House, Strand.

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Story by the Author of " Black Sheep.'

CHAPTER XI. THE LOUT.

Mr. Ore swell's only son, who was named
after Mr. Creswell's only brother, by no
means resembled his prototype either in
appearance, manners, or disposition. For
whereas Tom Creswell the elder had been
a long, lean, washed-out looking person,
with long wiry black hair, sallow com-
plexion, hollow cheeks, and a faint dawn
of a moustache (in his youth he had turned
down his collars and modelled himself
generally on Lord Byron, and throughout
his life he was declared by his wife to be
most aristocratic and romantic looking),
Tom Creswell the younger had a small,
round, bullet head, with closely cropped
sandy hair, eyes deeply sunken and but
little visible, snub nose, wide mouth, and
dimpled chin. Tom Creswell the elder
rose at noon, and lay upon the sofa all
day, composing verses, reading novels, or
playing the flute. Tom Creswell the
younger was up at five every morning,
round through the stables, saw the horses
properly fed, peered into every corn-bin
(" Darng, now whey do thot ? Darnged
if un doesn't count earn grains, I think,"
was the groom's muttered exclamation on
this proceeding), ran his hand over the
animals, and declared that they " didn't
carry as much flesh as they might," with
a look at the helpers, which obviously
meant that they starved the cattle and
sold the oats. Then Tom the younger
would go to the garden, where his greatest
delight lay in counting the peaches, and
nectarines, and plums, and apricots, nestling
coyly against the old red south wall ; in
taking stock of the cucumbers and melons,

under their frames ; and in ticking off the
number of the bunches of grapes slowly
ripening in the sickly heat of the vinery,
while the Scotch head gardener, a man
whose natural hot-headedness was barely
kept within bounds by the strictness of
his religious opinions, would stand by look-
ing on, outwardly placid, but inwardly
burning to deliver himself of his senti-
ments in the Gaelic language. Tom Cres-
well the elder was always languid and
ailing ; as a boy he had worn a comforter,.
and a hareskin on his chest ; had taken
cough - lozenges and jujubes ; had been
laughed at and called " Molly" and " Miss"
by his school- fellows, and had sighed and
simpered away his existence. Tom Cres-
well the younger was strong as a Shetland
pony, and hard' as a tennis ball, full of
exuberant vitality which, not finding suffi-
cient vent in ordinary schoolboy fun, in
cricket, or hockey, or football, let itself oft'
in cruelty, in teasing and stoning animals,
in bullying smaller boys. Tom Creswell
the elder was weak, selfish, idle, and con-
ceited, but you could not help allowing it
he was a gentleman. Tom Creswell the
younger you could not possibly deny it
was a blatant cad.

Not the least doubt of it. Everybody
knew it, and most people owned it. Down
in the village it was common talk. Mr.
Creswell was wonderfully respected in
Helmingham town, though the old people
minded the day when he was thought little
of. Helmingham is strictly conservative,
and when Mr. Creswell first settled himself
at Woolgreaves, and commenced his re-
storation of the house, and was known to
be spending large sums on the estate, and
was seen to have horses and equipages,
very far outshining those of Sir Thomas
Churchill of the Park, who was lord of the

=5*

194 [January 30, 18G9.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by-

manor, and a county magnate of the very-
first order, the village folk could not
understand a man of no particular birth or
breeding, and whose money, it was well
known, had been made in trade which,
to the Helmingham limited comprehension,
meant across a counter in a shop, "just
like Tm Boucher, the draper" attaining
such a position. They did not like the
idea of being patronised by one whom they
considered to be of their own order, and the
foolish face which had been transmitted
through ten generations, and the stupid
head which had never had a wise idea or a
kindly thought in it, received the homage
which was denied to the clever man who
had been the founder of his own fortune,
and who was the best landlord and the
kindest neighbour in the country round.
But this prejudice soon wore away. The
practical good sense which had gained for
Mr. Creswell his position soon made itself
felt among the Helmingham folk, and the
"canny" ones soon grew as loud in his
praise as they had been in his disparage-
ment. Even Jack Forman, the ne'er-do-
weel of the village, who was always sun-
ning his fat form at alehouse doors, and
who had but few good words for any one,
save for the most recent "stander" of beer,
had been heard to declare outside that Mr.
Creswell was the " raight soort," a phrase
which, in Jack's limited vocabulary, stood
for something highly complimentary. The
young ladies, too, were exceedingly popular.
They were pretty, of a downright English
prettiness, expressed in hair and eyes and
complexion, a prettiness commending itself
at once to the uneducated English rustic
taste, wliich is apt to find classical features
" peaky," and romantic expression "fal-lal."
They were girls about whom there was
"no nonsense" cheerful, bright, and
homely. The feelings which congealed
into cold politeness under the influence of
Marian Ashurst's supposed " superiority "
overflowed with womanly tenderness when
their possessor was watching Widow Halton
through the fever, or tending little Madge
Mason's crippled limb. The bright faces
of "the young ladies" were known for
miles through the country round, and
whenever sickness or distress crossed the
threshold they were speedily followed by
these ministering angels. If human prayers
for others' welfare avail on high, Mr. Cres-
well and his nieces had them in scores.

But the Helmingham folk did not pray
much for young Tom ; on the contrary,
their aspirations towards him were, it is to

be feared, of a malignant kind. The war-
fare which always existed between the
village folk and the Grammar School boys
was carried onwitihout rancour. The farmers
whose orchards were robbed, whose grow-
ing wheat was trampled down, whose
ducks were dog-hunted, contented them-
selves with putting in an occasional ap-
pearance with a cart- whip, fully knowing,
at the same time, the impossibility of
catching their young and active tor-
mentors, and with " darng-ing" the rising
generation in general, and the youth then
profiting by Sir Ranulph Clinton's gene-
rosity in particular. The village trades-
men whose windows were broken, when
they discovered who were the offenders,
laid on an additional item to their parents'
account ; when they could not bring the
crime home to any boy in particular,
laid on an additional item to Mr. Ash-
urst's account, and thus consoled them-
selves. Moreover there was a general
feeling that somehow, in a way that they
could not and never attempted to explain,
the school, since Mr. Ashurst had had it
in hand, had been a credit to the place,
and the canny folk, in their canniness,
liked something which brought them credit
and cost them nothing, and had friendly
feelings to the masters and the boys. But
not to young Tom Creswell. They hated
him, and they said so roundly. What was
youthful merriment and mischief in other
boys was, they averred, " bedevilment" in
young Tom. Standing at their doors on
fine summer evenings, the village folk
would pause in their gossip to look after
him as he cantered by on his chesnut pony
an animal wliich Banks, the farrier, de-
clared to be as vicious and as cross-grained
as its master. Eyes were averted as he
passed, and no hat was raised in salutation ;
but that mattered little to the rider. He
noticed it, of course, as he noticed every-
thing in his hang- dog manner, with furtive
glances under his eyebrows ; and he thought
that when he came into his kingdom he
often speculated upon that time he would
make these dogs pay for their insolence.
Jack Forman was never drunk, no given
amount of beer and it was always given
in Jack's case, as he never paid for it
could make him wholly intoxicated ; but
when he was in that state, which he ex-
plained himself as having "an extry pint
in him," Jack would stand up, holding on
by the horse-trough in front of the Seven
Stars, and shake his disengaged fist at
young Tom riding past, and express his

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[January 30, 1SG3.] 195

wish to wring young Tom's neck. Mr.
Benthall, who had succeeded Mr. Ashurst
as head-master of the school, was soon
on excellent terms with Mr. Creswell, and
thus had an opportunity of getting an in-
sight into young Tom's character an op-
portunity which rendered him profoundly
thankful that that interesting youth was
no longer numbered among his scholars,
and caused him much wonderment as to
how Trollope, who was the curate of a
neighbouring parish, who had been chosen
for young Tom's private tutor, could pos-
sibly get on with his pupil. Mr. Trollope,
a mild, gentlemanly, retiring young man,
with a bashful manner and a weak voice,
found himself utterly unable to cope with
the lout, who mocked at him before his
face and mimicked him behind his back,
and refused to be taught or guided by him
in any way. So Mr. Trollope, after speak-
ing to the lout's father, and finding but
little good resulting therefrom, contented
himself with setting exercises which were
never done, and marking out lessons
which were never learned, and bearing a
vast amount of contumely and unpleasant-
ness for the sake of a salary which was very
regularly paid.

It must not be supposed that his son's
strongly marked characteristics passed un-
observed by Mr. Creswell, or that they
failed to cause him an immensity of pain.
The man's life had been so hard and
earnest, so engrossing and so laborious,
that he had only allowed himself two sub-
jects for distraction, occasionally indulged
in : one, regret for his wife ; the other,
hope in his son. As time passed away
and he grew older, the first lessened and
the other grew. His Jenny had been an
angel on earth, he thought, and was now
an angel in heaven, and the period was
nearing, rapidly nearing, when, as he him-
self humbly hoped, he might be per-
mitted to join her. Then his son would
take his place, with no ladder to climb,
no weary heart-burning and hard slaving
to go through, but with the position
achieved, the ball at his foot. In Mr.
Creswell's own experience he had seen
a score of men, whose fathers had been
inferior to him in natural talent and
business capacity, and in luck, which was
not the least part of the affair, holding their
own with the landed gentry whose an-
cestry had been " county people" for ages
past, and playing at squires with as much
grace and tact as if cotton-twist and coal-
dust were things of which they might have

heard, indeed, but with which they had
never been brought into contact. It had
been the dream of the old man's life that
his son should be one of these. The first
idea of the purchase of Woolgreaves, the
lavish splendour with which the place had
been rehabilitated and with which it was
kept up, the still persistent holding on to
business and superintending, though with
but rare intervals, his own affairs, all sprang
from this hope. The old gentleman's tastes
were simple in the extreme. He hated
grandeur, disliked society, had had far
more than enough of business worries.
There was plenty, more than plenty, for
him and his nieces to live on in affluence,
but it had been the dearest wish of his
heart to leave his son a man of mark, and
do it he would.

Did he really think so ? Not in his in-
most heart. The keen eyes which had been
accustomed for so long to read human
nature like a book refused to be hood-
winked; the keen sense used to sift and
balance human motives refused to be pal-
tered with; the logical powers which deduced
effect from cause refused to be stifled or led
astray. To no human being were Tom
Creswell's moral deficiencies and short-
comings more patent than to his father ; it
is needless to say that to none were they the
subject of such bitter anguish. Mr. Cres-
well knew that his son was a failure, and
worse than a failure. If he had been merely
stupid there would have been not much to
grieve over. The lad would have been a
disappointment, as how many lads are dis-
appointments to fond parents, and that was
all. Hundreds, thousands of stupid young
men filled their position in society with
average success. Their money supported
them, and they pulled through. He had
hoped for sometliing better than this for
his son, but in the bitterness of his grief he
allowed to himself that he would have been
contented even with so much. But Mr.
Creswell knew that his son was worse than
stupid ; that he was bad, low in his tastes
and associations, sordid and servile in his
heart, cunning, mean, and despicable. All
the qualities which should have distin-
guished him gentlemanly bearing, refined
manners, cultivated tastes, generous im-
pulses all these he lacked : with a desire for
sharp practice, hard-heartedness, rudeness
towards those beneath him in the social
scale, boorishness towards his equals, he
was overflowing. Lout that he was, he had
not even reverence for his father, had not
even the decency to attempt to hide his

196 [January 30, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

badness, but paraded it in the open day
before the eyes of all, with a kind of sullen
pride. And that was to be the end of all
Mr. Creswell's plotting and planning, all
his hard work and high hopes ? For this
he had toiled, and slaved, and speculated ?
Many and many a bitter hour did the old
man pass shut away in the seclusion of his
library, thinking over the bright hopes
which he had indulged in as regarded his
son's career, and the way in which they
had been slighted ; the bright what might
have been, the dim what was. Vainly the
father would endeavour to argue with him-
self, that the boy was as yet but a boy ;
that when he became a man he would put
away the things which were not childish
indeed, for then would there have been
more hope, but bad, and in the fulness of
time develop into what had been expected
of him. Mr. Creswell knew to the con-
trary. He had watched his son for years
with too deep an interest not to have per-
ceived that as the years passed away, the
light lines in the boy's character grew dim
and faint, and the dark lines deepened in
intensity. Year by year the boy became
harder, coarser, more calculating, and more
avaricious. As a child he had lent his
pocket money out on usury to his school-
fellows, and now he talked to his father
about investments and interest in a manner
which would have pleased some parents and
amused others, but which brought anything
but pleasure to Mr. Creswell as he marked
the keen hungry look in the boy's sunken
eyes, and listened to his half-framed and
abortive but always sordid plans.

Between father and son there was not the
smallest bond of sympathy ; that Mr. Cres-
well had brought himself to confess. How
many score times had he looked into the
boy's face hoping to see there some gleam
of filial love, and had turned away bitterly
disappointed ! How often had he tried to
engage the lad in topics of conversation
which he imagined would have been con-
genial to him, and on which he might have
suffered himself to be drawn out, but with-
out the slightest success. The jovial miller
who lived upon the Dee was not one whit less
careless than Tom Creswell about the opinion
which other folks entertained of him, so
long as you did not interfere with any of
his plans. Even the intended visit of Mrs.
Ashurst and Marian to Woolgreaves elicited
very little remark from him, although the
girls imagined it might not be quite accept-
able to him, and consulted together as to
how the news should be broken to the do-

mestic bashaw. After a great deal of cogi-
tation and suggestion, it was decided that
the best plan would be to take the tyrant
at a favourable opportunity at meal-time,
for instance and to approach the subject
in a light and airy manner, as though it
were of no great consequence, and was only
mentioned for the sake of something to say.
The plot thus conceived was duly carried
out two days afterwards, on an occasion
when, from the promptitude and agility
with which he wielded his knife and fork,
and the stertorous grunts and lip smackings
which accompanied his performance, it was
rightly judged that Master Tom was enjoy-
ing his luncheon with an extra relish. Mr.
Creswell was absent ; he seldom attended
at the luncheon table, and the girls inter-
changed a nod of intelligence, and prepared
to commence the play. They had had. but
little occasion or opportunity for acting, and
were consequently nervous to a degree.

" Did you see much of Mrs. Ashurst in
in poor Mr. Ashurst's time, at the school,
Tom ?" commenced Gertrude, with a good
deal of hesitation and a profound study of
her plate.

" No, no, not much quite enough !" re-
turned Tom, without raising his head.

" Why quite enough, Tom ?" came in
Maud to the rescue. " She is a most de-
lightful woman, I'm sure."

"Most charming," threw in Gertrude, a
little undecidedly, but still in support.

"Ah, very likely," said Tom. "We
didn't see much of her the day boys I
mean ; but Peacock and the other fellows
who boarded at Mr. Ashurst's declared she
used to water the beer, and never sent back
half the fellows' towels and sheets when
they left."

" How disgraceful ! how disgusting !"
burst out Maud. " Mrs. Ashurst is a per-
fect lady, and oh what wretches boys
are !"

" Screech away ! I don't mind," said
the philosophic Tom. " Only what's up
about this ? What's the matter with old
Mother Ashurst ?"

" Nothing is the matter with Mrs. Ashurst,
your father's friend, Tom," said Gertrude,
trying a bit of dignity, and failing miserably
therein, for Gertrude was a lovable, kiss-
able, Dresden china style of beauty, with-
out a particle of dignity in her whole com-
position. "Mrs. Ashurst is your father's
friend, sir, at least the widow of his old
friend, and your father has asked her to
come and stay here on a visit, and and we
all hope you'll be polite to her." It was

:fcn

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[January 30, 1SG9.;

197

seldom that Gertrude achieved such a long
sentence, or delivered one with so much
force. It was quite plain that Mrs. Ashurst
was a favourite of hers.

' Oh," said Tom, " all right ! Old Mother
Ashurst 's coming here on a visit is she ?
All right!"

" And Miss Ashurst comes with her,"
said Maude.

" Oh Lord ! " cried Tom Creswell.
" Miss Prim coming too ! That'll be a clear
saving of the governor's vinegar and olives
all the time she's here. She's a nice creature,
she is." And he screwed up his mouth
with an air of excessive distaste.

" Well, at all events she's going to be
your father's guest, and we must all do our
best to make the visit pleasant to them,"
said Gertrude, who, like most people who
are most proud of what they do least well,
thought she was playing dignity admirably.

" Oh, I don't care !" said Tom. " If the
governor likes to have them here, and you
two girls are so sweet upon them all of a
sudden, I say, all right. Only look here
no interference with me in any way. The
sight of me mustn't make the old lady break
down and burst out blubbing, or anything of
that sort, and no asking me how I'm get-
ting on with my lessons, and that kind of
thing. Stow that, mind !"

"You needn't trouble yourself, I think,"
said Maud ; " it is scarcely likely that
either Mrs. or Miss Ashurst will feel very
keen interest in you or your pursuits."

And out of Maud's flashing eyes, and
through Maud's tightly compressed lips,
the sarcasm came cutting like a knife.

But when their visitors had been but a
very short time established at Woolgreaves,
it became evident not merely to Mr. Cres-
well, but to all in the house, that Master
Tom had at last met with some one who
could exercise influence over him, and that
that some one was Marian Ashurst. It was
the treatment that did it. Tom had been
alternately petted and punished, scolded and
spoiled, but he had never been turned into
ridicule before, and when Marian tried that
treatment on him he succumbed at once.
He confessed he had always thought that
" he could not stand chaff," and now he
knew it. Marian's badinage was, as might
be supposed, of a somewhat grave and serious
order. Tom's bluntness, uncouthness, ava-
rice, and self-love were constantly betraying
themselves in his conversation and conduct,
and each of them offered an admirable
target at which Marian fired telling shots.
The girls were at first astonished and then

delighted, as was Mr. Creswell, who had a
faint hope that under the correction thus
lightly administered his son might be
brought to see how objectionable were
certain of his views and proceedings. The
lout himself did not like it at all. His im-
possibility of standing " chaff," or of answer-
ing it, rendered him for the first time a
nonentity in the family circle; his voice,
usually loud and strident, was hushed when-
ever Marian came into the room. The do-
mestic atmosphere at Woolgreaves was far
more pleasant than it had been for some
time, and Mr. Creswell thought that the
" sweet little girl " was not merely a " dead
band at a bargain," but that she possessed
the brute- taming power, in a manner hither-
to undreamed of. Decidedly she was a very
exceptional person, and more highly gifted
than any one would suppose.

Tom hated her heartily, and chafed in-
wardly because he did not see his way to
revenging himself on her. He had not
the wit to reply when Marian turned him
into ridicule, and he dared not answer her
with mere rudeness, so he remained silent
and sulky, brooding over his rage, and
racking his brains to try and find a crack
in his enemy's armour a vulnerable place.
He found it at last, but, characteristically,
took no notice at the time, waiting for his
opportunity. That came. One day, after
luncheon, when her mother had gone up
for a quiet nap, and the girls were prac-
tising duets in the music-room, Marian set
out for a long walk across the hard, dry,
frost- covered fields to the village; the air
was brisk and bracing, and the girl was in
better spirits than usual. She thoroughly
appreciated the refined comforts and the
luxurious living of Woolgreaves, and the
conduct of the host and his nieces towards
her had been so perfectly charming, that
she had almost forgotten that her enjoy-
ment of those luxuries was but temporary,
and that very shortly she would have to
face the world in a worse position than she
had as yet occupied, and to fight the great
battle of life, too, for her mother and her-
self. Often in the evening, as she sat in
the drawing - room buried in the soft
cushions of the sofa, dreamily listening to
the music which the girls were playing,
lazily watching her mother cozily seated in
the chimney corner, and old Mr. Creswell
by her, quietly beating time to the tune ;
the firelight flickering over the furniture,
and appointments bespeaking wealth and
comfort, she would fall into a kind of half-
trance, in which she would believe that the

C^:

198 [January 30, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by-

great desire of her life had been accom-
plished, and that she was rich placed far
above the necessity of toil or the torture
of penury. Nor was the dream ever en-
tirely dispelled. The comfort and luxury
were there, and as to the term of her en-
joyment, how could that be prolonged ?
Her busy brain was filled with that idea
this afternoon, and so deeply was she in
thought, that she scarcely started at a loud
crashing of branches close beside her, and
only had time to draw back as Tom Cres-
welTs chesnut mare, with Tom Creswell
on her back, landed into the field beside
her.

" Good heavens, Tom, how you startled
me!" cried Marian; "and what's the matter
with Kitty ? She's covered with foam and
trembling all over !"

" I've been taking it out of the blunder-
headed brute, that's all, Miss Ashurst,"
said the lout, with a vicious dig of his spurs
into the mare's sides, which caused her to
snort loudly and to rear on end. "Ah,
would you, you brute ? She's got it in her
head that she won't jump to-day, and I'm
showing her she will, and she must, if I
choose. Stand still, now, and get your
wind, d'ye hear ?" And he threw the reins
on the mare's neck, and turned round in
his saddle, facing Marian. " I'm glad I've
met you, Miss Ashurst," he continued, with
a very evil light in his sullen face, " for
I've got something to say to you, and I'm
just in the mood to say it now."

He looked so thoroughly vicious and
despicable that Marian's first feeling of
alarm changed into disgust, as she looked
at him and said : " What is it, Tom say
on !"

" Oh, I intend to," said the lout, with a
baleful grin. "I intend to say on, whether
you like it or not. I've waited a precious
long time, and I intend to speak now.
Look here. You've had a fine turn at me,
you have ! Chaflin' me and pokin' your
fun at me, and shuttin' me up whenever I
spoke. You're doosid clever, you are, and
so sharp, and all that ; and I'm such a fool,
I am, but I've found out your game for all
that !"

" My game, Tom ! Do you know what
you're talking about, and to whom you are
talking ?"

" Oh, don't I ! That's just it. I'm talk-
ing to Miss Marian Ashurst, and Miss
Marian Ashurst's game is money-making !
Lord bless you, they know all about it
down in the village the Crokers, and the
"Whichers, and them, they're full of stories

of you when you was a little girl, and
they all know you're not changed now.
But look here, keep it to yourself, or take
it away from our place. Don't try it on
here. It's quite enough to have those two
girls saddled on the family, but they are
relations, and that's some excuse. We
don't want any more, mark that. My
father's getting old now, and he's weak, and
don't see things so clearly as he did, but
I do. I see why your mother's got hold of
those girls, and how you're trying to make
yourself useful to the governor. I heard
you offering to go through the Home Farm
accounts the other day !"

"I offered because your because oh,.
Tom ! how dare you ! You wicked, wicked
boy!"

" Oh yes, I know, very likely, but I won't
let any one interfere with me. You thought
you were going to settle yourself on us. I
don't intend it. I'm a boy, all right, but
I know how to get my own way, and I
means to have it. This hot - tempered
brute" (pointing to the pony)' "has found
that out, and you'll find it out, too, before
I have done with you. That's all. Get
on, now."

The pony sprung into the air as he gave
her a savage cut with his whip, and he
rode off, leaving Marian in an agony of
shame and rage.

POURING OIL UPON THE WAVES.

In a plain but effective letter effective be-
cause plain the stewardess of the hapless
Hibernia lately gave a narrative of the fate of
that ship, and of the sufferings of some, at
least, of those who were on board. The tale
of shipwreck need not be told here in full ; it
is noticed in connexion with one only among
a crowd of incidents. A well-appointed ocean
mail steamer left New York on a certain day
about the middle of November last, proud in
her majesty, and well laden with passengers,
mails, and merchandise. All went well for
about a week, when one of those stormy
periods commenced which so calamitously
marked the closing weeks of the year. Things
went wrong ; the machinery broke down, and
the ship filled to such an extent that a precipi-
tate retreat became absolutely necessary. On
the 25th of the month the boats were lowered,
and the passengers and crew embarked in them.
By far the greater number of the sufferers never
saw land again. The most successful of the pre-
carious fleet, had on board the stewardess of
the steamer. When the occupants of this boat
reached land, this stewardess was one of those
who wrote brief narratives of the shipwreck.
She told how, during the boat voyage the
captain poured oil upon the waves, to smooth

Charles Dickons.]

POURING OIL UPON THE WAVES. [January 30, 1869.] 199

their roughness, and to lessen in some degree
the splash of water into the open boat not
actually to level the rolling billows, but to
allay their wild tossing and breaking into spray.
AVhether oil was taken on board the boat for
that purpose we are not told ; we only know
that it was thus used, two or more times, during
that eventful 25th of November.

This subject of oil upon the waves is a
curious one. It is by no means of modern
date, either in its knowledge or its application ;
and yet there is only an indistinct appreciation
of it amongst us generally. We do not place
it among our every-day truths.

In ages long past, the effect of oil in still-
ing the waves was known to many grades of
seafaring men. Pliny stated that the divers
in the Mediterranean and the Archipelago
were wont to take in their mouths a bit of
sponge dipped in oil, and that they were by
this means enabled to remain longer under
water than other divers who were not so
provided. As the diver wants to retain all the
breath he can, and as long as he can, it is
difficult at first to see how the attainment of
the desired object could be facilitated by this
agency ; but an explanation soon offers itself.
The object of taking oil into the mouth was to
calm those small waves on the surface of the
sea, which prevent the light from being so
steadily transmitted to the bottom as is neces-
sary to enable the diver to find the small ob-
jects they search for without delay. By eject-
ing a little oil from the mouth, it rises to the
surface, and, spreading out upon it, calms the
waves sufficiently to admit a good daylight to
penetrate through the water. The habit fol-
lowed by many fishermen and boatmen gives
probability to this explanation. Dr. Halley
mentioned that he saw some of the Florida
Indian divers remain under water two minutes
at a time ; and he proceeded to notice the
effects of a thin film of oil in facilitating the
divers' work. A century and a half ago the
fishermen of some of the Hebrides were accus-
tomed, when the sea was getting rough, to tie
to the end of a cable a mass made chiefly of the
fat of sea-fowl, and allow it to dip into the sea
behind the rudder ; the oil from the fat exerted
a smoothing agency upon the waves. The
Lisbon fishermen sometimes allay the waves on
the bar across the Tagus, when they wish to
cross, by means of a little oil. During the
siege of Gibraltar in the last century, the British
officers often observed the Spanish fishermen
pour a little oil upon the sea, to enable them to
see oysters at the bottom. Herring-fishers on
the coast of Scotland can see from a long dis-
tance when and where a shoal is approaching ;
the water acquires a peculiar smoothness of ap-
pearance from the oil of the fish. Seal-catchers
in the Arctic regions have often observed that,
when the seals eat oily fish (which they often
do), the surface of the sea above them becomes
much smoother than at other parts. The ocean
is often observed to have a peculiar quietness
in the wake of a laden whale ship. This is due
to the small quantity of oil which, somehow or

other, manages to exude from the vessel, per-
haps pumped up with the bilge-water from the
hold. Off some coasts, where fish are speared
instead of netted, a little oil is poured on the
water, to enable the fishers to see their prey
below.

Dr. Franklin, who had an indefatigable habit
of searching out a scientific explanation for
everything that could be explained by science,
resolved to experiment upon this subject of oil
on water. He had read and heard and seen
that oil is thus used, either to make voyaging
more safe and pleasant or to enable the rays of
light to penetrate the water, and he wished to
know the reason why. He first tried a pond
upon a common. Selecting the windward side,
he poured a little oil on the water. Quickly it
spread further and further over to leeward,
until a considerable area of the pond had a very
thin film, which calmed the water in a singular
way. We rather suspect that some error has
crept into the original account of this experi-
ment ; for it is difficult to believe that a tea-
spoonful of oil would render half an acre of
watery surface as smooth as a looking-glass,
which is the substance of Franklin's statement.
On another occasion he made a deep harbour
the scene of his experiments. He anchored a
boat at a certain distance from the shore, and
another boat made several short trips out to
windward and home again. In this second
boat a man had a bottle of oil, which he poured
out in a very small but continuous stream
through a hole in the cork. Franklin, seated
in the first boat, watched the effect of the oil,
Avhile others watched on shore. Leeward of the
anchored boat, little or no change was visible ;
but out windward the oily track spread far and
wide, preventing the waves from breaking into
ripple, foam, and surf.

The poor Hibernia was not by any means the
first ship, the crew of which had cause to wel-
come the effect of oil upon the waves. About
a century ago a Dutch East Indiaman made a
voyage to the East, and fared pretty well until
nearing the islands of Paul and Amsterdam.
A storm then arose, and the captain poured out
a few ounces of olive oil into the sea, to pre-
vent the waves from breaking against and over
the ship ; the plan succeeded, and the ship
went on her way. One of the passengers, in
a letter to the Dutch ambassador at the court
of St. James's, stated that the persons to whom
he afterwards narrated this incident were so in-
credulous, that the officers and himself signed a
certificate declaratory of its truthfulness, so-
hard did it seem to believe the effect of a very
little oil upon a very great sea. Numerous ex-
amples of a similar character are to be found
scattered here and there among the records of
voyages. One of the many trading ships which
ply between Manilla and Singapore had a sin-
gular oil adventure a few years ago. While
on the voyage she encountered a very rough
and unpleasant sea. Suddenly there appeared
a peculiar smoothness of the sea, although
the wind was still bloAving, and the ship ad-
vanced favourably for three days over a sur-

efi

200 [January 30, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

face which had evidently oil upon it. Later in-
formation brought to light the fact that a brig
had started shortly before with a cargo of
cocoa-nut oil ; some of the casks having been
stove in by accident, the wasted oil was pumped
out of the hold into the sea. The ships were
two hundred miles apart, and yet the oily film
reached from the one to the other. About
ten or a dozen years ago a screw steamer, laden
with corn, started from Copenhagen, to bend
round the north of Jutland into the German
Ocean. Just as she was coming near a
stormy headland, the sea became very bad ; the
steamer shipped much water, the engine fires
were gradually extinguished, the engines ceased
to work, and the poor ship rolled helplessly on
the water. A schooner was descried some few
miles distant ; and it was resolved that all hands
should take to the boats, and pull from the
steamer to the schooner. The crew poured
some oil on the waves as they went, and were
thus enabled to meet a somewhat less troubled
sea than would otherwise have encountered
them.

It seems to be now pretty well known how and
why the oil acts in this friendly way : although
some parts of the phenomenon still remain
obscure. If it be attempted to raise waves
upon the surface of oil in a vessel by the force of
the wind, it will be found very difficult to suc-
ceed. The difficulty is probably due to the mutual
cohesion among the particles of oil ; there may
be also less attraction between air and oil than
between air and water. The effect is obviously
far more physical than chemical. Dr. Franklin
expressed his opinion that air is gradually
frustrated, by the oil, in disturbing the tran-
quillity of water. First the wind, blowing over
the water, rubs against the surface and raises
it into wrinkles ; then, the wind continuing,
those wrinkles become the cause of little
waves, and the little waves of greater waves,
and so on until strong billows are the eventual
result produced not necessarily by a violent
wind, for a moderate wind will do it if con-
tinuous. Such is the case under ordinary cir-
cumstances ; but now for the oil. As a drop
of oil spreads into a large and wonderfully thin
film on the surface of water, there must be some
kind of repulsion at work among its particles ;
but be this as it may, the thin film presents no
points or roughnesses against which the wind
may catch, no little file-teeth or saw-teeth to
produce a wrinkle. The oil moves a little with
the wind, acting as a sort of slide by the aid of
which the air glides over the water. With a
strong wind, every large wave becomes covered
with a kind of rippled armour of small waves
or wrinkles ; and each of these wrinkles gives
a hold by which the wind may further act ; but
if there be a film of oil on the surface, these
small wrinkles are prevented from forming,
although the large waves remain. What is
done is, not to prevent large waves from roll-
ing and heaving, but to arrest their increase by
! new waves formed on the back of them. What
occurred to the boats off the coast of Denmark
ehows pretty clearly how the prevention is

brought about. Two boats were supplied with
five gallons of oil each. While the men were
tugging at the oars, the captain, in one of the
boats, watched the advance of the waves, and at
an opportune moment, when a sea appeared
about to approach and swamp them, he caused
a gill or half a pint of oil to be poured out of the
can ; the effect was as if the wave divided and
fell off on either side of the boat. The captain
economised his oil in the long boat so as
to make it last well out till he reached the
schooner ; the mate in the lifeboat was a little
too lavish, got rid of his oil too soon, and
had to pull the latter part of the voyage
against a very heavy sea.

Working men in some trades know a little
of this oil subject, though not in connexion
with waves. If a solution of sugar, or any one
among a considerable number of other solutions,
be boiling in an open vessel over the fire, and
be in danger of boiling over, a little oil poured
upon the surface will immediately make the
violent bubbles subside. Still more simply, if
we draw a mark with a piece of soap, round
the interior of a vessel somewhere between the
top of the vessel and the level of the boiling
liquid, the oil in the soap forms a kind of
magic ring, which prevents, or at least, re-
tards, the rise of the ebullition above that
point. Noxious and unhealthy vapours may
to some extent be kept from rising by some
such means.

A MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.

You have possibly heard the story of a
foolish man who was so highly delighted with
the performance of Punch in an itinerant
show, that he immediately purchased the pup-
pet at an exorbitant price, and took it home
for his own private amusement. Likewise you
have heard, or if not you have conjectured,
that when the foolish man placed Punch on
the table, and found him incapable of move-
ment, he felt grievously disappointed.

But now I am going to tell you of some-
thing of which you certainly have not heard.

I am the foolish man.

My disappointment, as you have heard, or
conjectured, was excessive. Without writing
my autobiography, it will be sufficient if I come
at once to the fact, that at the time of my
absurd purchase, a varied and inchscriminate
love of amusement had converted me into a
sort of Sir Charles Coldstream. The notion
of Punch jumping on the table for my sole
entertainment, had brought with it a sense of
refined selfishness that was almost overpower-
ing. I recollect I once saw Mr. Macready's
inimitable performance of Luke in the version
of Massinger's City Madam, entitled Riches.
Luke, a prodigal who had wasted his substance,
and had afterwards, through the supposed
death of his brother, become possessed of
immense wealth, sat at the head of an enor-
mous table, groaning with every sort of wine
and viand, and he sat alone. Here was a repast

Charles Dickens/

A MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.

[January 30, 1869.] 201

for a score of guests, yet Luke feasted alone.
This was his compensation for the misery he
had endured during that period of his life when,
already accustomed to luxury, he had been sub-
jected to indignity and want. While every-
body else feasted he had starved. Tit for tat.
He now invited himself to a gorgeous banquet,
from which everybody else was excluded. Luke
was a very bad fellow, but there was something
in his nature that harmonised with my own. I
felt more glad than I ought to have been when
he was regaling himself in his selfish fashion ;
less glad than I ought to have been when his
brother returned to life, and retributive justice
hurled him from his lofty eminence.

My feelings, when I brought home the puppet
and laid it on the parlour table before me, must
have been extremely similar to those of Luke
when he first sat down to his feast. I had had
my period of privation. I had not indeed suf-
fered poverty, but I had lost the capability of
being amused, which alone makes life tolerable.
The people standing round the show from
which Punch squeaked forth his paltry ribaldry
had roared with laughter, while I was alto-
gether unmoved. Now the tables were about
to be turned. Punch should squeak for me
alone ; and that very fact might be sufficient
to season his wretched jokes even for my dull
palate.

One of my readers, looking extremely saga-
cious, wonders that I could be such a fool as to
lay Punch on the table and expect him to get
up of his own accord ; and is willing to explain
how the hand of the human performer, craftily
inserted into the puppet, is the sole cause of
its brief vitality. If, having purchased Punch,
I had managed him after the approved fashion,
moving his arms with two of my fingers and
his head with a third, there would at least have
been a method in my madness.

Exactly, I ought to have been amused by
witnessing the twiddle of my own fingers. In
that case a handkerchief knotted into that in-
fantile semblance of a confessional, wherewith
nurses vainly try to amuse squalling children,
would have answered my purpose. The verb
"amuse" rose before me in the purely passive
form. I did not want to amuse myself, but to
be amused that is, by somebody or something
that was not myself, and the sight of Punch in
the street suggested to me that the puppet was
the destined source of amusement.

So far so good ; but, as the sagacious reader
has perceived, I have not yet accounted for my
extreme folly in believing that Punch was
capable of spontaneous motion. The wish that
the inanimate figure might squeak and jump
about was ridiculous enough, but it was not
without precedent. The German poet Heine
once wished that every paving - stone might
have an oyster in its shell, and that the earth
might be visited by heavy showers of cham-
pagne ; and a town where the window-panes
are made of barley-sugar, and ready-roasted
pigs, with knives and forks stuck into their
bodies, run about squeaking, "Come, eat me"
such a town has for years been the coveted

Utopia of many an infant epicure. But why,
in my case, did the floating desire condense
itself into a firm belief? Why did such a
trivial wish become father to such a very auda-
cious thought ?

If the sagacious reader persists in this ques-
tion he has never known what it is to be really
in love. For if he has experienced the sort of
love, out of which such works as Romeo and
Juliet can be fashioned, he must be perfectly,
aware that there is a state of mind in which
wish and belief are entirely commensurate with,
each other. Tell a lover, fired with the sort
of passion, which I now have in view, that his
idol is quick-tempered, greedy, vain, selfish
give her, in short, any attribute that militates
against perfection, and support your assertions
with any amount of evidence, and you will find
that the false faultless image, which is set up
in his own mind, is not to be overthrown by
living witness or by lively argument. No ; he
worships a mental ideal, and the earthly figure
which he has chosen as its corresponding
actuality must exactly resemble it, in spite of
every obstacle. When the idol, so strenuously
bolstered up, falls down, it comes with a crash,
as in the case of Othello.

Well, the desire of seeing a spontaneously
jumping Punch, had with, me reached the in-
tensity of belief, and as the figure lay on the
table before me, I honestly expected it to get
up and execute some of its wonted feats. It
was exactly eight o'clock when I commenced
my experiment, and when the timepiece had
struck the half -hour I was still, with fixed eyes,
staring at a motionless Punch. When I heard
the indication that an hour was completed, I
was in despair.

For about ten minutes, as I learned by the
timepiece, my mind was a perfect blank ; but I
was roused by a sharp ring at the bell. Im-
pelled by I know not what instinct, I strode to
the street door, and tearing it open, saw an
uncouth person with unkempt hair, holding in
his hand a vessel, apparently of tarnished
silver, which he proffered for a moment and
then withdrew. Following the motion of his
arm, I snatched it from him, and closing the
door with a bang, rushed back into the dining-
room, an inner voice telling me that I now held
an elixir of life which would animate the
puppet. I sprinkled a few drops on the rigid
face, and inclined my own head towards it with
feverish expectation. A smart stroke on he
left ear, causing me considerable pain, startled
me from my contemplation. I raised myself to
an erect posture, and to my infinite delight,,
saw Punch sitting upright, and brandishing his
cudgel with more than wonted vigour. (By
the way, I should have said before that I put
this weapon in its proper place, with the arms
of the figure folded across it, when I first laid
my purchase on the table.)

Punch not only moved, and rattled his tiny
legs, but his eyes seemed to flash with a vivid
intelligence which I had never perceived in the
show, and he appeared to meditate some decisive
action. He did not meditate long, but aimed a

*5=

202 [January 30, 1869.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

second blow at my head, which I fortunately
avoided, the removal of a tangible object for the
exercise of his vigour causing him to fall side-
ways on the table. The pain which he appa-
rently felt, when his own wooden head came
into collision with the board, which had only
an oilcloth covering, was clearly expressed by
an increased brightness in his eyes. After view-
ing me maliciously for a few seconds, he dealt
a blow at my table-lamp, the glass leg of which
he demolished, causing the top to fall with a
heavy crash, and leaving me no other light than
such as was afforded by the fire in the grate.
A violent bound then took him to my side-
board, when with insane fury he effected the
destruction of my wine glasses and cruets.

How little do we know what is good for us !
Not many minutes before I had lamented the
want of animation in the hideous figure I had
so foolishly purchased, and now I would have
given anything to see it deprived of the wild
vitality I had still more f oolishly thrust upon it.

The world in general is accustomed to look
upon Punch as simply a ridiculous figure. On
their way to the spots where they pursue the
more serious occupations of life, gentlemen of
education and intelligence have their attention
arrested by the sound of a squeaking voice with
which they have been f amiliar from childhood,
and join a small crowd intent on witnessing the
performance of a drama which causes universal
laughter. They do not much understand what
is passing before them, for the plot of the play
has undergone considerable changes since the
days when their mammas, at a considerable
expense, bespoke a special performance of
Punch for the amusement of the juvenile party
assembled to celebrate their birthday. Possibly
one of the combats at the time of their pause is
between Punch and a very stiff dragon, which
opens its jaws and fiercely squeezes the head of
the puppet between them. They did not see
such a dragon in the days of their youth ; but
they are not astonished at the innovation. The
whole affair is too trifling to awaken anything
like surprise, however adverse the performance
maybe to the law of precedent. The educated
and intelligent spectators feel, however, that
the soundless bite of an ill-shaped dragon is not
sufficient to repay them for their slight sacrifice
of time ; an instinct tells them they ought to
hear the crack of the cudgel against the wooden
head. So they take care to see Punch strike
one of his quasi-human adversaries, and to
see the head of the adversary knocked smartly
against the proscenium before they resume their
journey.

The character of a man of education and in-
telligence may be tested by the precise moment
at which he quits the semicircle of spectators
ranged before Punch's show. Mere vulgarians,
comprising especially those errand boys who
have been enjoined not to lose a moment, are
sure to stop till the performance is over, when
they usually follow in the track of the retiring
exhibitor, and therefore afford no criterion at
all. But with the man of education and intel-
ligence, who is sure never to see either the

beginning or the end of the play, the case is
altogether different. When he is liberal, he
graciously waits till the cashier of the show
comes with the hat, that he may pay a fair price
for the enjoyment he has received. When he
is stingy he takes fright at the hat, and its first
appearance, even in the distance, is the signal
for his departure. When he is merely careless,
he retires indifferently, just as the fit takes him,
without waiting for or shunning the opportunity
of payment. But, however the men of educa-
tion and intelligence may differ from each other,
they all agree in one point. Every one of them,
if on quitting the little crowd he runs against a
friend who passes, leaving the show unnoticed,
feels bound to apologise for having taken part
in a recreation so frivolous. Some refer senti-
mentally to the delight afforded by reminiscences
of the innocent days of children ; some wisely
make the novel remark that " men are but chil-
dren of a larger growth ;" some, more honest,
confess that it is their weakness to like a laugh,
however obtained, and to add that they look
upon Punch as an expedient for the promo-
tion of hilarity that has never been known to
fail.

And so they walk away to keep important
appointments, and to transact important busi-
ness, little reflecting that they have witnessed
one of the most awful tragedies ever offered to
the contemplation of mankind. They have, in
fact, seen represented a series of murders, all
perpetrated by brutal means, that would raise
the horror of civfiised Europe if brought before
the notice of a legal tribunal, and all accom-
panied by reckless derision on the part of the
murderer, an uncouth being, whose form and
voice seem to separate him from the rest of
mankind. It is, I believe, by Charles Lamb
that Punch is regarded as a compound of
Richard the Third and Don Juan. But the
wicked Englishman perishes on Bosworth Field,
and the Spanish libertine is borne away by
fiends ; whereas there is no retributive justice
in the tragedy of Punch. By hanging the hang-
man, the hook-nosed ribald shows that he is
superior to human law ; by killing the Evil One,
who appears not as a tempter, but as a Nemesis,
he shows that he is beyond the reach even of
superhuman punishment. Of all the plays ever
invented, there is none so thoroughly wicked as
that in which the English Punch, widely differ-
ing from his Neapolitan ancestor, is the princi-
pal personage.

This is no digression. It is necessary for my
readers to regard Punch from a serious point of
view, and to know that I am capable of regard-
ing him in a like manner, if they would appre-
ciate the horror which I felt when a living,
moving Punch, apparently an incarnation of the
spirit of malice, was carrying on his work of
destruction before my eyes, visible only by fire-
light. A statue, associated with nothing but
cheerfulness say, for instance, one of the in-
sipid figures copied from some creation of
Canova when standing in a passage, where the
rays of the moon, unmingled with other light,
fall upon it, becomes a ghastly spectacle. In.

Charles Dickens.]

A MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.

[January 30, 1869.] 20<

mere rigidity, under certain aspects, there is
terror, and I nave no doubt that every one of
Madame Tussaud's rooms, inspected by the grey
light of early dawn, becomes a Chamber of
Horrors. What, then, could be more awful
than the deformed Punch, with a thousand
murders upon his head, which, if not real, were,
at any rate, as real as himself, brandishing his
instrument of destruction, with grievous effici-
ency, and displaying hideous features, rendered
more hideous still by the red glare by which
they were illumined ? He seemed a triumphant
demon, sporting in his proper element.

Not without a sense of fear, I made several
desperate clutches at the figure, hoping to arrest
the work of destruction, but I only received as
many severe raps on the knuckles. Some other
measure must be adopted. A thought struck
me. I left the room and descended into the
kitchen, where I heard raps and crashes re-
peated in the room above. The servants had
retired to rest.

Presently I returned to the parlour armed
with a large dish-cover, which was generally
used to retain warmth in haunches of mutton
and other joints of more than ordinary dimen-
sions. Punch was on the table where I had
first placed him, and I was pleased to notice
that my looking-glass was still unbroken. A
languor, probably caused by over-exertion, had
evidently taken possession of the destroyer, and
seizing my opportunity, I clapped the cover
over him, and resolutely held it by the handle.
The clattering noise I heard within showed me
that the activity of the captive had returned.
The sound only served to increase the vigour
of my pressure.

At this moment I heard the latch-key in the
door of the house, and shortly afterwards the
door of the room opened, and a young gentle-
man, who lodged in an upper apartment, and
with whom I was on familiar terms, made his
appearance. He cast a look of surprise at the
broken lamp, but his attention was soon
absorbed by myself. What in the name of
wonder could induce me to stand in the midst
of semi-darkness, pressing a large dish-cover on
the table with all my might, he could not
divine, and with sundry expletives he acknow-
ledged his perplexity. " What was I up to?"
This was his question, couched in an idiom
which he had studied with much assiduity.

Now, I am not given to mendacity, neither
was I guilty of any crime that I wished to
conceal. I was merely doing my little utmost
to prevent the destruction of my property. And
yet something prevented me from telling the
honest truth. Put yourself in my place,
reader, and ask yourself whether there is a
friend in the world to whom you would acknow-
ledge that you were keeping a recently-ani-
mated puppet under a dish-cover ? With im-
pudence suggested by despair, I answered that
I was doing nothing. My reply seemed to be
more satisfactory than I had reason to expect,
and indeed to suggest some meaning that I had
not intended. My friend looked exceedingly
knowing, winked archly, thrust his tongue into

his cheek, and left the room without further
question.

Relieved by his departure, I unwittingly re-
laxed the pressure of my hand, when the dish-
cover, as if impelled by a spring, at once flew
up to the ceiling, and Punch, released from
captivity, was in full enjoyment of a liberty
which he at once expanded into licence, bound-
ing to a small table, which was used to sus-
tain small fragile curiosities, and demolishing
them with demoniac delight. Unable to endure
any longer the wanton tyranny of the reckless
puppet, I seized the poker, and fiercely struck
the head. The body being of a yielding mate-
rial glazed chintz, I believe offered no resist-
ance, and consequently the head was merely
bent beneath my blow without receiving any
injury whatever. Some other mode of attack
must be adopted. Flinging down the poker
and snatching up the tongs, I firmly laid hold
of Punch, and holding the tongs at arms 1
length, conveyed him to the fire.

Nothing I ever endured in my life equalled
the horror I felt during the few moments that
followed. The head of the puppet was pinched
tight between the tongs, but the eyes rolled,
as if Punch were aware of the fate in store for
him, and the little legs kicked convulsively. I
plunged him into a yawning gulf of fire, caused
by the separation of two large coals, and
then thrust him down with the poker. During
this process he writhed as if in the most intense
agony, and his eyes were fixed upon me with
a mixed expression of rage and pain, until the
small flames that arose beneath, began to con-
sume him, and he was gradually changed into
a black shapeless mass. The end of the opera-
tion was marked by a prolonged squeak, that
seemed to enter my very soul. I sank back
exhausted into an arm-chair.

On the following morning I was aroused by
the servant's opening the shutters. Raking the
ashes I discovered a lump of charred wood,
which was evidently the head of the ill-starred
puppet. My friend entered the room, and
asked me if I was better, with more of mirth
and less of anxiety than usually accompanies
such questions, when addressed to an invalid.
In reply to some searching inquiries, he replied,
with a scarcely-suppressed smile, that on the
previous night he had found me, with a very
flushed countenance, violently pressing a dish-
cover on the table, and evidently not very
steady on my feet. The beer-boy, who called
for the empty cans, reported that on the pre-
vious evening I had, somewhat to his surprise,
taken in the beer myself. When I endeavoured
to gather the general opinion as to the destruc-
tion of the lamp and glasses, which still lay in
fragments, the servant stated her belief that
the cat had been in the room.

Surely, my knowledge of my own affairs is
better than of other persons. If my readers
choose to favour an hypothesis, based upon the
evidence of the beer-boy and the servant, and
to decide that I might indeed have bought
Punch, but that all the wonderful events that
followed the purchase were the result of a

204 [January 30, I860.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

heated brain, I can't help it. I have told the
truth to the best of my belief, and if they object
to receive it the fault is theirs : not mine.

GHOSTS.

Ghosts often come to my -window,

And knock at my chamber door,
Or sit by my side at dinner,

Or walk with me on the shore.
I know their villanous faces,

As they giggle, and. sneer, and jar ;
They will not be gone, so I'll count them,

And tell them what they are !

Ghosts of ambitions buried,

Ghosts of a love grown cold,
Ghosts of a fortune squandered,

Ghosts of a tale that's told,
Ghosts of a traitorous friendship,

And of follies nine times nine !
Come Wizard! come! and- lay them

In the deep Red Sea ! of Wine !

GOOD COMPANY FOR NEW
YEAR'S DAY.

" King's College Hospital, Portugal- street,
Lincoln's- inn- fields. The committee of this
institution desire to thank the many friends
who have so kindly assisted them with pre-
sents of flowers and evergreens for the
Christmas decorations of their hospital, and
for furnishing the Christmas Tree for the
children in the Pantia Ralli ward. The
tree will be lighted this evening at about
four o'clock. There are no infectious cases
in the ward, and visitors desirous of seeing
the decorations on the tree will be admitted
at any time by giving their name to the
porter at the door. A large portion of the
decorations have been executed by the pa-
tients themselves, and have been carried out
with so much taste as to be well worth a
visit. E. A. Bedwell, vice-chairman."

This was the invitation to the public
which appeared in the papers on New Year's
morning, and which I, as one of the public,
resolved to accept.

The first thing, of course, that struck the
eye on entering the Pantia Ralli ward was
the large, gaily decorated tree in the centre
of the long, clean, airy room ; then the holly
wreaths, the floral emblems, the pretty
pictures, and bright illuminated texts cover-
ing the walls. The first thing that struck
the heart was the quiet happiness and
homelike look of the groups clustered
about the beds. Each little knot made
a family party of its own, and brought
the home into the hospital. Mothers and
fathers, perhaps with one or two elder
children, perhaps with a baby to help in the
general fun, had come to share in the plea-

sure of their little sufferers ; and wherever
one turned, some sweet and tender picture,
touched in by the hand of living nature,
seemed to bring one closer to one's fellow-
creatures, for sympathy and pity.

Here was one mild, decent- looking family
the father a well-mannered mechanic, the
mother a soft-eyed, pretty young woman,
with a baby and a sturdy little rogue of
five come to see a very lovely little girl,
brought in last night, with some acute affec-
tion of the lungs. Quite unconsciously the
young mother made many a touching pic-
ture, the like of which Raffaelle saw and
noted in his day, as she pressed her sick
child's fevered face against her own cool
cheek, and soothed its moments of weari-
ness with her pretty motherly devices
pretty, if at times not quite wise. This
family interested me much on account
of the winsomeness of the woman, the
exceeding sweetness of the child, and the
polished manner of the father, who was
a foreigner Swiss or German, I imagine.
When I asked him what ailed his child,
I got what seemed to be the stereotyped
answer of the place, "the bronchitis;" but
I made out the underlying causes of bad air
and unwholesome lodging, to which so much
of our disease in towns is owing. " If I had
the means," he said, " I would live in the
country. We would all do more than we
do, if we had the means," he added, with a
pleasant smile.

Passing from them, I came upon a woman
dandling in her arms a dark- eyed diminutive
child, the smallest for its age I have ever
seen. It was eighteen months old, and was
not larger than a small monkey, or good
sized doll. But it was sprightly and intelli-
gent, though also very fretful and irritable,
and with good food and nursing would pro-
bably broaden out into something more nor-
mally human than it looked at present.
Here was a widow with a careworn look
and shabby weeds, too sad to be playful,
holding listlessly on her knee a pallid
attenuated infant, more than half of whose
malady was evidently due to starvation;
here a young woman, rather flashily dressed,
and of a good humoured coarse pattern of
humanity, played with her now healthy
baby, which she had brought to see the tree
out of gratitude for the "kind treatment it
had received from the good gentlemen and
dear sisters of the ward."

Some of the brighter and more original
of the children are for ever imitating all they
see done by their elders, as children gener-
ally do, and one, whose chest had often been

Charles Dickens.] GOOD COMPANY FOR NEW YEAR'S DAY. [January 30, 1809.] 205

sounded with the stethoscope, silently stole
that instrument out of the physician's pocket,
where she knew it lived, and tried his legs
as he had tried her lungs listening with a
wise countenance to the mysterious revela-
tions it made.

How pretty it was, if sometimes so sad,
to see the various attitudes and conditions
of the children ! One little fellow, conva-
lescent but still weak, was seated in a chair
mounted on a table, and looked really pan-
tomimically regal in his small scarlet wrap-
per ; another, enveloped in a blanket, was
laid across its mother's lap and arm in the
attitude of Henriette Brown's " Sick Child;"
some sat up in their cots, playing with the
toys spread out on the bed- shelf before
them; others laid down quietly in theirs,
not speaking and not moving, only turning
their eyes longingly to the fairy tree which
was to gladden and relieve their weary suf-
ferings.

Some of the cases were very interesting,
and I may as well state them now before I
go on to the tree. A child was brought in,
dying from croup. When at the last gasp
they cut into the windpipe, inserted a silver
tube for the child to breathe through, and so
saved its life. I saw the scar ; which will re-
main ; but the little one itself was fat and
lively, and apparently in perfect health. This
too was " the bronchitis" when I asked
the mother, and the scar was " for a lump
in her throat." One child, whom I saw
running about like a miniature lamplighter,
had been paralysed a few months ago ; an-
other had been cured of an awful outburst
of scrofula ; but, perhaps, the most striking
of all the cases, were those of three children
who had been brought in, dying of atrophy.
As they were unable to be fed naturally,
owing to uncontrollable sickness, the phy-
sician ordered beef- tea poultices to be wrap-
ped round the loins and spine, which at
once revived them ; and then began the long
labour of building up what exposure and
privation had nearly destroyed. For be-
tween two and three weeks they were fed
with raw meat, torn by the nurses into the
finest possible filaments, and reduced to a
pulp very small quantities of which they
gave continually, thus nourishing the little
ones by slow degrees "until they were able
to be fed in a more ordinary manner.

But though science can do much, it can-
not do everything ; and with all the lives
saved and the successful cases to the good
of the account, there are others which are
hopeless from the beginning. One was
there this afternoon a beautiful little crea-

ture, so far as mere features went with a
huge tumour on the top of its head, malig-
nant it is feared, and almost as large as the
head itself. As yet, the tumour has not
touched the brain, and the child is quite
natural and intelligent ; but the sadder phase
has to come, and not even the administration
of the Pantia Ralli ward can do more than
alleviate the suffering that must be, and
gladden the poor little life, so far as it may
be gladdened, for its brief remaining term.

Nothing impressed me more than the ex-
treme kindness of the young men towards
the children. They were like big elder
brothers among the little ones, and very un-
like the conventional medical student of
comic literature. Perhaps the adoption of
Sister nurses has had something to do with
the improvement, for there are no paid upper
nurses in the hospital, which is served by
the Sisters of St. John's House. King's
College Hospital was the first to adopt Sis-
ters as the head nurses ; and the result has
been most satisfactory. More intelligent
and more conscientious than the paid class,
they manage the patients and children bet-
ter, carry out the orders of the doctor more
faithfully, and aid him more effectually by
the accuracy of their own observations.
The name of hospital nurse, once synony-
mous with brutality and callous igno-
rance, is now a guarantee for the best
kind of sick tending; and who shall say
where the refining influence of that re-
form ends ? Besides, this self-devotion
gives educated women a work to do that is
as valuable for themselves as for those for
whom it is done. It gives the lonely, duties ;
the unemployed, occupation ; the solitary,
interests and. objects for love and pity.
There is no sickly sentimentalism of any
kind about them, no fantastic excess, no
advanced ritualism, or revivalism, or any
other one-sided manifestation of enthusiasm;
all is done in a quiet self- controlled purpose-
ful manner ; and the work to be done, not
themselves in their mode of doing it, is the
main object which each has before her, and
each tries to carry out to perfection.

As I entered the ward, the Sisters were
decorating the tree, the young assistants
helping; and one or two sturdy little
fellows were made happy by being allowed
to hand up the toys that were to be hung.
Everything was done so deftly, so neatly,
with such good management; no one got
into any other's way ; there was no confu-
sion, no irritation, no contradictory orders,
or opposing wills ; every thing was so peace-
ful and so happy, and the very children,

206 [January 30, 18GD.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

being for the most part ill or delicate, were
less uproarious in their pleasure than would
have been the case had all been in full health.
The most uproarious of all was a self-as-
sertive mite, who could just toddle and tum-
ble about alone, and whose organ of acquisi-
tiveness was decidedly large, for she wanted
all she saw, and screamed lustily when she
did not get it.

Now began to come in the physicians
connected with the hospital, and the ladies
belonging to them; and it was pretty
and eloquent to see how the faces of the
children lightened up as they entered,
some of the bolder indeed running across
the floor for a kindly word or look ; and
one pretty babe holding up her mouth to be
kissed, as confidingly as if she had been at
home. One of the ladies, the wife of one of
the chief physicians, a young mother her-
self, seemed to be a veritable centre of
happiness wherever she moved ; and beauti-
ful as she is, she never looked more lovely
than when talking to these poor little ones,
playing with the babies, and soothing the
sick and fractious, with just as much
tenderness and dear maternal sympathy as
if she had been in her own nursery at
home. God bless her for her good work in
the " Ralli," so lovingly and faithfully per-
formed !

The ward was now quite full. The toys
were hung, the blinds drawn down, the
wax tapers and coloured gelatine lamps
were lighted, and the full glories of the
tree were revealed. The place was all
alive with sickly little creatures, with pale
faces and large bright eyes, brighter and
larger from illness, clustering nearer and
nearer to the magic garden in the centre.
For not only the children in the Ralli ward
itself, but all the children in the hospital
who could be taken from bed, and such of
the out-patients as were brought, were
admitted to the festival. Some invalid
women came tottering in from the nearer
wards, one looking like an Orphic ghost,
with only a white pinched face seen from
the folds of the blanket she had wrapped
round her; a few douce, fatherly, invalid
men gathered quietly at the end of the
room, near the door ; grown girls and boys,
all pale and wan, and feeble yet, poor
young things ! were also admitted all to
see the tree, and all apparently as well
pleased with the joy of the children as if it
had been their own especial treat. And
then the names of the fortunate possessors
of certain lovely toys were called, and the
gentle widow of the founder of the ward

handed them to their owners as they came
forward to receive them. All did not