Household Words, No. 14, June 29, 1850 : A weekly journal

By Charles Dickens

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Title: Household Words, No. 14, June 29, 1850
        A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens


        
Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78178]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78178

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


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 14, JUNE 29, 1850 ***


     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.




                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.


                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.


      N^{o.} 14.]      SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._




                            THE GOLDEN CITY.


“The fitful flame of Young Romance,” fed by the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments, Fairy tales and Heathen Mythologies; the wonderful
fables of Genii and Magicians; stories of towns springing up,
ready-built, out of deserts; tales of cities paved with gold; the Happy
Valley of Rasselas; the territories of Oberon and Titania, Robert Owen’s
New Harmony, and the land of Cockaigne; Gulliver’s Travels, the
Adventures of Peter Wilkins, legends of beggars made kings, and
mendicants millionaires; Sinbad the Sailor, Baron Munchausen, Law of
Laurieston, Major Longbow, Colonel Crocket, the Poyais loan; illimitable
exaggeration; undaunted lying; the most rampant schemes of the most
rabid speculators; the wildest visions of the maddest poet; the airiest
castle of the most Utopian lunatic—any one of these, and all of them put
together, do not exceed the wondrous web of realities that is being
daily woven around both hemispheres of the globe. Not to mention
conversations carried on thousands of miles apart, by means of
electricity, and a hundred other marvels that Science has converted into
commonplaces, we would now confine ourselves to the latest “wonderful
wonder that has ever been wondered at”—the gold region of California;
but more especially to its capital, San Francisco.

The story of the magic growth of this city would have defied belief, had
it not rapidly grown up literally under the “eyes of Europe.” When the
returns were made to the United States’ authorities in 1831, it
contained three hundred and seventy-one individuals, and very few more
resided in it up to the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, in the
Sacramento River. Even in April, 1849, we learn from a credible
eye-witness, that there were only from thirty to forty houses in San
Francisco; and that the population was so small, that so many as
twenty-five persons could never be seen out of doors at one time. There
now lie before us two prints; one of San Francisco, taken in November,
1848, soon after the discovery was made, and another exactly a year
afterwards. In the first, we are able to count twenty-six huts and other
dwellings dotted about at uneven distances, and four small ships in the
harbour. In the second, the habitations are countless. The hollow, upon
which the city partly stands, presents a bird’s-eye view of roofs,
packed so closely together, that the houses they cover are innumerable;
while the sides of the surrounding hills are thickly strewed with tents
and temporary dwellings. On every side are buildings of all kinds, begun
or half-finished, but the greater part of them mere canvas sheds, open
in front, and displaying all sorts of signs, in all languages. Great
quantities of goods are piled up in the open air, for want of a place to
store them. The streets are full of people, hurrying to and fro, and of
as diverse and bizarre a character as the houses: Yankees of every
possible variety, native Californians in _sarapes_ and sombreros,
Chilians, Sonorians, Kanakas from Hawaii, Chinese with long tails,
Malays and others in whose embrowned and bearded visages it is
impossible to recognise any especial nationality. In the midst is the
plaza, now dignified by the name of Portsmouth Square. It lies on the
slope of the hill; and, from a high pole in front of a long one-story
adobe building used as the Custom House, the American flag is flying. On
the lower side is the Parker House Hotel. The Bay of San Francisco is
black with the hulls of ships, and a thick forest of masts intercepts
the landscapes of the opposite coast and the islet of Yerba Buena. Flags
of all nations flutter in the breeze, and the smoke of three steamers is
borne away on its wings in dense wreaths.—The first picture is one of
stagnation and poverty, the other presents activity and wealth in
glowing colours.

“Verily,” says the correspondent of a Boston Paper, “the place was in
itself a marvel. To say that it was daily enlarged by from twenty to
thirty houses may not sound very remarkable after all the stories that
have been told; yet this, for a country which imported both lumber and
houses, and where labour was then ten dollars a day, is an extraordinary
growth. The rapidity with which a ready-made house is put up and
inhabited, strikes the stranger in San Francisco as little short of
magic. He walks over an open lot in his before-breakfast stroll—the next
morning, a house complete, with a family inside, blocks up his way. He
goes down to the bay and looks out on the shipping—two or three days
afterward a row of storehouses, staring him in the face, intercepts the
view.”

An intelligent traveller from the United States, has recorded his
impressions of this marvellous spot, as he saw it in August, 1849:—

“The restless, feverish tide of life in that little spot, and the
thought that what I then saw and was yet to see will hereafter fill one
of the most marvellous pages of all history, rendered it singularly
impressive. The feeling was not decreased on talking that evening with
some of the old residents, (that is of six months’ standing,) and
hearing their several experiences. Every new comer in San Francisco is
overtaken with a sense of complete bewilderment. The mind, however it
may be prepared for an astonishing condition of affairs, cannot
immediately push aside its old instincts of value and ideas of business,
letting all past experiences go for nought and casting all its faculties
for action, intercourse with its fellows, or advancement in any path of
ambition, into shapes which it never before imagined. As in the turn of
the dissolving views, there is a period when it wears neither the old
nor the new phase, but the vanishing images of the one and the growing
perceptions of the other are blended in painful and misty confusion. One
knows not whether he is awake or in some wonderful dream. Never have I
had so much difficulty in establishing, satisfactorily to my own senses,
the reality of what I saw and heard.”[1]

Footnote 1:

  “Eldorado,” by Bayard Taylor, correspondent to the “Tribune”
  newspaper.

The same gentleman, after an absence in the interior of four months,
gives a notion of the rapidity with which the city grew, in the
following terms:—

“Of all the marvellous phases of the history of the Present, the growth
of San Francisco is the one which will most tax the belief of the
Future. Its parallel was never known, and shall never be beheld again. I
speak only of what I saw with my own eyes. When I landed there, a little
more than four months before, I found a scattering town of tents and
canvas houses, with a show of frame buildings on one or two streets, and
a population of about six thousand. Now, on my last visit, I saw around
me an actual metropolis, displaying street after street of well-built
edifices, filled with an active and enterprising people and exhibiting
every mark of permanent commercial prosperity. Then, the town was
limited to the curve of the Bay fronting the anchorage and bottoms of
the hills. Now, it stretched to the topmost heights, followed the shore
around point after point, and sending back a long arm through a gap in
the hills, took hold of the Golden Gate and was building its warehouses
on the open strait and almost fronting the blue horizon of the Pacific.
Then the gold-seeking sojourner lodged in muslin rooms and canvas
garrets, with a philosophic lack of furniture, and ate his simple though
substantial fare from pine boards. Now, lofty hotels, gaudy with
verandas and balconies, were met with in all quarters, furnished with
home luxury, and aristocratic restaurants presented daily their long
bills of fare, rich with the choicest technicalities of the Parisian
cuisine. Then, vessels were coming in day after day, to lie deserted and
useless at their anchorage. Now scarce a day passed, but some cluster of
sails, bound _outward_ through the Golden Gate, took their way to all
the corners of the Pacific. Like the magic seed of the Indian juggler,
which grew, blossomed, and bore fruit before the eyes of his spectators,
San Francisco seemed to have accomplished in a day the growth of half a
century.”

In San Francisco, everything is reversed. The operations of trade are
exactly opposite to those of older communities. There the rule is
scarcity of money and abundance of labour, produce, and manufactures;
here cash overflows out of every pocket, and the necessaries of
existence will not pour in fast enough. Mr. Taylor tells us, that “a
curious result of the extraordinary abundance of gold and the facility
with which fortunes were acquired, struck me at the first glance. All
business was transacted on so extensive a scale that the ordinary habits
of solicitation and compliance on the one hand, and stubborn cheapening
on the other, seemed to be entirely forgotten. You enter a shop to buy
something; the owner eyes you with perfect indifference, waiting for you
to state your want: if you object to the price, you are at liberty to
leave, for you need not expect to get it cheaper; he evidently cares
little whether you buy it or not. One who has been some time in the
country will lay down the money, without wasting words. The only
exception I found to this rule was that of a sharp-faced Down-Easter
just opening his stock, who was much distressed when his clerk charged
me seventy-five cents for a coil of rope, instead of one dollar. This
disregard for all the petty arts of money-making was really a refreshing
feature of society. Another equally agreeable trait was the punctuality
with which debts were paid, and the general confidence which men were
obliged to place, perforce, in each other’s honesty. Perhaps this latter
fact was owing, in part, to the impossibility of protecting wealth, and
consequent dependence on an honourable regard for the rights of others.”

While this gentleman was in San Francisco, an instance of the fairy-like
manner in which fortunes are accumulated, came under his observation. A
citizen of San Francisco died insolvent to the amount of forty-one
thousand dollars the previous autumn. His administrators were delayed in
settling his affairs, and his real estate advanced so rapidly in value
meantime, that after his debts were paid, his heirs derived a yearly
income from it of forty thousand dollars!

The fable of a city paved with gold is realised in San Francisco. Mr.
Taylor reports:—“Walking through the town, I was quite amazed to find a
dozen persons busily employed in the street before the United States
Hotel, digging up the earth with knives and crumbling it in their hands.
They were actual gold-hunters, who obtained in this way about five
dollars a day. After blowing the fine dirt carefully in their hands, a
few specks of gold were left, which they placed in a piece of white
paper. A number of children were engaged in the same business, picking
out the fine grains by applying to them the head of a pin, moistened in
their mouths. I was told of a small boy having taken home fourteen
dollars as the result of one day’s labour. On climbing the hill to the
Post Office I observed in places, where the wind had swept away the
sand, several glittering dots of the real metal, but, like the Irishman
who kicked the dollar out of his way, concluded to wait till I should
reach the heap. The presence of gold in the streets was probably
occasioned by the leakings from the miners’ bags and the sweepings of
stores; though it may also be, to a slight extent, native in the earth,
particles having been found in the clay thrown up from a deep well.”

The prices paid for labour were at that time equally _romantic_. The
carman of one firm (Messrs. Mellus, Howard, and Co.) drew a salary of
twelve hundred a year; and it was no uncommon thing for such persons to
be paid from fifteen to twenty dollars, or between three and four pounds
sterling per day. Servants were paid from forty to eighty pounds per
month. Since this time (August, 1849), however, wages had fallen; the
labourers for the rougher kinds of work could—poor fellows—get no more
than something above the pay of a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British
army, or about four hundred per annum. The scarcity of labour is best
illustrated by the cost of washing, which was one pound twelve shillings
per dozen. It was therefore found cheaper to put out washing to the
antipodes; and to this day, San Francisco shirts are washed and “got up”
in China and the Sandwich Islands. So many hundred dozens of dirty, and
so many hundred dozens of washed linen form the part of every outward
and inward cargo to and from the Golden City.

The profits upon merchandise about the time we are writing of, may be
judged of by one little transaction recorded by Mr. Taylor:—“Many
passengers,” he writes, “began speculation at the moment of landing. The
most ingenious and successful operation was made by a gentleman of New
York, who took out fifteen hundred copies of ‘The Tribune’ and other
papers, which he disposed of in two hours, at one dollar a-piece!
Hearing of this I bethought me of about a dozen papers which I had used
to fill up crevices in packing my valise. There was a newspaper merchant
at the corner of the City Hotel, and to him I proposed the sale of them,
asking him to name a price. ‘I shall want to make a good profit on the
retail price,’ said he, ‘and can’t give more than ten dollars for the
lot.’ I was satisfied with the wholesale price, which was a gain of just
four thousand per cent.”

The prices of food are enormous, and, unhappily, so are the appetites;
“for two months after my arrival,” says a respectable authority, “my
sensations were like those of a famished wolf;” yet the first glance at
the tariff of a San Francisco bill of fare is calculated to turn the
keenest European stomach. “Where shall we dine to-day?” asked Mr.
Taylor, during his visit. “The restaurants display their signs
invitingly on all sides; we have choice of the United States, Tortoni’s,
the Alhambra, and many other equally classic resorts, but Delmonico’s,
like its distinguished original in New York, has the highest prices and
the greatest variety of dishes. We go down Kearney Street to a two-story
wooden house on the corner of Jackson. The lower story is a market; the
walls are garnished with quarters of beef and mutton; a huge pile of
Sandwich Island squashes fills one corner, and several cabbage-heads,
valued at two dollars each, show themselves in the window. We enter a
little door at the end of the building, ascend a dark, narrow flight of
steps and find ourselves in a long, low room, with ceiling and walls of
white muslin and a floor covered with oil-cloth. There are about twenty
tables disposed in two rows, all of them so well filled that we have
some difficulty in finding places. Taking up the written bill of fare,
we find such items as the following:—

                                 SOUPS.
                                              Dol. Cents.
               Mock Turtle                       0     75
               St. Julien                        1     00

               FISH.
               Boiled Salmon Trout, Anchovy
               Sauce                             1     75

               BOILED.
               Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce        1     00
               Corned Beef, Cabbage              1     00
               Ham and Tongues                   0     75

               ENTRÉES.
               Fillet of Beef, Mushroom sauce    1     75
               Veal Cutlets, breaded             1     00
               Mutton Chop                       1     00
               Lobster Salad                     2     00
               Sirloin of Venison                1     50
               Baked Maccaroni                   0     75
               Beef Tongue, Sauce piquante       1     00

So that, with but a moderate appetite, the dinner will cost us five
dollars, if we are at all epicurean in our tastes. There are cries of
‘steward!’ from all parts of the room—the word ‘waiter’ is not
considered sufficiently respectful, seeing that the waiter may have been
a lawyer or a merchant’s clerk a few months before. The dishes look very
small as they are placed on the table, but they are skilfully cooked and
are very palatable to men that have ridden in from the diggings.”

Lodging was equally extravagant. A bedroom in an hotel, 50_l._ per
month, and a sleeping berth or “bunk”—one of fifty in the same
apartment—1_l._ 4_s._ per week. Social intercourse is almost unknown.
There are no females, and men have no better resource than gambling,
which is carried on to an extent, and with a desperate energy, hardly
conceivable. “Gambling,” says a private correspondent, whose letter,
dated April 20, 1850, now lies before us, “is carried on here with a
bold and open front, so as to alarm and astonish one. Thousands and
thousands change hands nightly. Go in, for instance, to a place called
‘Parker House,’ which is a splendid mansion, fitted up as well as any
hotel in England; step into the front room, and you see five or six
Monte, Roulette, and other gaming-tables, each having a bank of nearly
half a bushel of gold and silver, piled up in the centre. That the
excitement shall not be wholly devoid of diversion, the Muses lend their
aid, and a band plays constantly to crowded rooms! Step into the next
building, called ‘El Dorado,’ and there a similar scene is presented,
and which is repeated, on a smaller scale, all over the town. The
gamblers seem to control the town, but of course their days must be
numbered. Fortunes are made or lost daily. People gamble with a freedom
and recklessness which you can never dream of. Young men who come here
must at all times resist gaming, or it must eventually end in their
ruin: the same with drinking, as there is much of it here.”

The variety of habits, manners, tastes, and prejudices, occasioned by
the confluence in one spot of almost every variety of the human species,
is another bar to a speedy deposit of all these floating and opposite
elements into a compact and well assimilated community. “Here,” writes
the same gentleman, “we see the character and habits of the English,
Irish, Scotch, German, Pole, French, Spaniard, and almost every other
nation of Europe. Then you have the South American, the Australian, the
Chilian; and finally, the force of this golden mania has dissolved the
chain that has hitherto bound China in national solitude, and she has
now come forth, like an anchorite from his cell, to join this varied
mass of golden speculators. Here we see in miniature just what is done
in the large cities of other countries; we have some of our luxuries
from the United States and the tropics, butter from Oregon, and for the
most part California, Upper or Lower, furnishes us with our beef, &c.
The streets are all bustle, as you may imagine, in a place now of nearly
thirty thousand inhabitants, independent of a small world of floating
population.”

Not the smallest wonder, however, presented in this region, is the rapid
manner in which social order was shaped out of the human chaos. When a
new placer or “gulch” was discovered, the first thing done was to elect
officers and extend the area of order. The result was, that in a
district five hundred miles long, and inhabited by one hundred thousand
people—who had neither government, regular laws, rules, military or
civil protection, nor even locks or bolts, and a great part of whom
possessed wealth enough to tempt the vicious and depraved,—there was as
much security to life and property as in any part of the Union, and as
small a proportion of crime. The capacity of a people for
self-government was never so triumphantly illustrated. Never, perhaps,
was there a community formed of more unpropitious elements; yet from all
this seeming chaos grew a harmony beyond what the most sanguine apostle
of Progress could have expected. Indeed, there is nothing more
remarkable connected with the capital of El Dorado, than the centre
point it has become.

The story of Cadmus, who sowed dragons’ teeth, and harvested armed men,
who became the builders of cities; the confusion of tongues at the Tower
of Babel; and the beautiful allegory of the lion lying down with the
lamb; are all types of San Francisco. The first, of its sudden rise; the
second, of the varieties of the genus Man it has congregated; and the
third, of the extremes of those varieties, which range from the
Polynesian savage to the most civilised individuals that Europe can
produce. It is a coincidence well worthy of note, that, besides the
intense attraction possessed from its gold, Upper or New California is
of all other places the best adapted, from its geographical position, to
become a rendezvous for all nations of the earth, and that the Bay of
San Francisco is one of the best and most convenient for shipping
throughout the western margin of the American continent. It is precisely
the locality required to make a constant communication across the
Pacific Ocean with the coasts of China, Japan, and the Eastern
Archipelago commercially practicable. Its situation is that which would
have been selected from choice for a concentration of delegates from the
uttermost ends of the earth. If the Chinese, the Malay, the Ladrone, or
the Sandwich Islander had wished to meet his Saxon or Celtic brother on
a matter of mutual business, he would—deciding geographically—have
selected California as the spot of assembly. The attractive powers of
gold could not, therefore, have struck forth over the world from a
better point than in and around San Francisco, both for the interests of
commerce and for those of human intercourse.

The practical question respecting the Golden City remains yet to be
touched. Does it offer wholesome inducements for emigration? On this
subject we can do no more than quote the opinions of the intelligent and
enterprising gentleman, to whose private letter we have already
referred:—“This, I should say, is the best country in the world for an
active, enterprising, steady young man, provided he can keep his health,
as the climate, without due precaution, is not a healthy one. In the
summer season, the weather is pleasantly warm from morning till noon,
then it is windy till evening, and dusty, and then becomes so cold as to
require an over-coat. This weather lasts to October, when the wind gets
round to the south-west. It is dry, warm, and pleasant now (April). This
and the rainy season are the pleasantest and warmest here. Thousands, on
arriving, fall victims to the prevailing disease of dysentery. On the
latter account, therefore, I should not advise, or be the indirect means
of inducing, any one to make the adventure here, because it is
impossible to foresee or calculate whether or not he can stand the
climate and inconveniences of this country; and, if so, he is sure to be
exposed to a miserable and too often neglected sickness, and ending in a
miserable death. I have not been ill myself so far, as my general health
has been extremely good, and I never looked so well as now. The climate
seems to operate injuriously on bilious habits; but to those who can
stand it, it is decidedly pleasanter than England. Fires are never
necessary. Out of doors, at night, a great-coat is required, but in the
house it is always warm. The whole and only question, with a man making
up his mind to locate in California, should be in regard to his health.
Business of all descriptions is better here than in any other part of
the world, and he who perseveres is sure to succeed.

“There are various opinions afloat, in regard to the fertility of the
soil, some holding that there are productive valleys in the interior
which would supply sufficient sustenance for home consumption: others
assert the reverse. Certain it is, however, that in many parts in the
interior, the climate is delightful, but owing to the long continued dry
season, I have doubts as to her ever raising a sufficient supply of
vegetable necessaries of life: our market now is supplied from the
Sandwich Islands and Oregon.

“As to gold mining, it is altogether a lottery; one man may make a large
amount daily, another will but just live. There is an inexhaustible
quantity of gold, however, but with many it is inconceivably hard to
get, as the operations are so many, and health so very precarious, that
it is a mere chance matter if you succeed in getting a large sum
speedily. It seems a question, whether it would not be advisable for the
American Government to work the mines ultimately:

“California must ‘go-a-head:’ the east will pour through the country her
immense commerce into the States, and the mines will last for ages.
Finally, I would now say to my friends, that, if you are inclined to
come to this country, upon this my report of it, you must, to succeed,
attend to my warnings as to drinking and gambling, and to my precautions
against climate.”




                    THE MODERN “OFFICER’S” PROGRESS.


                         II.—A SUBALTERN’S DAY.

However interesting it might prove to the noble relatives of Ensign
Spoonbill to learn his progress, step by step, we must—for reasons of
our own—pass over the first few weeks of his new career with only a
brief mention of the leading facts.

His brother officers had instructed him in the art of tying on his sash,
wearing his forage cap on one side, the secret of distinguishing his
right hand from his left, and the mysteries of marching and
counter-marching. The art of holding up his head and throwing out his
chest, had been carefully imparted by the drill-serjeant of his company,
and he had, accordingly, been pronounced “fit for duty.”

What this was may best be shown, by giving an outline of “a subaltern’s
day,” as he and the majority of his military friends were in the habit
of passing it. It may serve to explain how it happens that British
officers are so far in advance of their continental brethren in arms in
the science of their profession, and by what process they have arrived
at that intellectual superiority, which renders it a matter of regret
that more serious interests than the mere discipline and well-being of
only a hundred and twenty thousand men have not been confided to their
charge.

The scene opens in a square room of tolerable size which, if simply
adorned with “barrack furniture,” (to wit, a deal table, two
windsor-chairs, a coal scuttle, and a set of fire-irons,) would give an
idea of a British subaltern’s “interior,” of rather more Spartanlike
simplicity than is altogether true. But to these were added certain
elegant “extras,” obtained not out of the surplus of five and
three-pence a day—after mess and band subscriptions, cost of uniform,
servant’s wages, &c., had been deducted—but on credit, which it was
easier to get than to avoid incurring expense. A noble youth, like
Ensign Spoonbill, had only to give the word of command to be obeyed by
Messrs Rosewood and Mildew, with the alacrity shown by the slaves of the
lamp, and in an incredibly short space of time, the bare walls and floor
of his apartment were covered with the gayest articles their
establishment afforded. They included those indispensable adjuncts to a
young officer’s toilette, a full length cheval, and a particularly lofty
pier-glass. A green-baize screen converted the apartment into as many
separate rooms as its occupant desired, cutting it up, perhaps, a little
here and there, but adding, on the whole, a great deal to its comfort
and privacy. What was out of the line of Messrs Rosewood and Mildew—and
that, as Othello says, was “not much”—the taste of Ensign Spoonbill
himself supplied. To his high artistic taste were due the presence of a
couple of dozen gilt-framed and highly-coloured prints, representing the
reigning favorites of the ballet, the winners of the Derby and Leger,
and the costumes of the “dressiest,” and consequently the most
distinguished corps in the service; the nice arrangement of cherry-stick
tubes, amber mouth-pieces, meerschaum bowls, and embroidered bags of
Latakia tobacco; pleasing devices of the well-crossed foils, riding
whips, and single sticks evenly balanced by fencing masks and boxing
gloves; and, on the chimneypiece, the brilliant array of nick-nacks,
from the glittering shop of Messrs Moses, Lazarus and Son, who called
themselves “jewellers and dealers in curiosities,” and who dealt in a
few trifles which were not alluded to above their door-posts.

The maxim of “Early to bed” was not known in the Hundredth; but the
exigencies of the service required that Ensign Spoonbill should rise
with the _reveillée_. He complained of it in more forcible language than
Dr. Watts’ celebrated sluggard; but discipline is inexorable, and he was
not permitted to “slumber again.” This early rising is a real military
hardship. We once heard a lady of fashion counselling her friend never
to marry a Guardsman. “You have no idea, love, what you’ll have to go
through; every morning of his life—in the season—he has to be out with
the horrid regiment at half-past six o’clock!”

The Hon. Ensign Spoonbill then rose with the lark, though much against
his will, his connection with that fowl having by preference a midnight
tendency. Erect at last, but with a strong taste of cigars in his mouth,
and a slight touch of whiskey-headache, the Ensign arrayed himself in
his blue frock coat and Oxford grey trowsers; wound himself into his
sash; adjusted his sword and cap; and, with a faltering step, made the
best of his way into the barrack-square, where the squads were forming,
which, with his eyes only half-open, he was called upon to inspect,
prior to their being re-inspected by both lieutenant and captain. He
then drew his sword, and “falling in” in the rear of his company,
occupied that distinguished position till the regiment was formed and
set in motion.

His duties on the parade-ground were—as a supernumerary—of a very
arduous nature, and consisted chiefly in getting in the way of his
captain as he continually “changed his flank,” in making the men “lock
up,” and in avoiding the personal observation of the adjutant as much as
possible; storing his mind, all the time, with a few of the epithets,
more vigorous than courtly, which the commanding officer habitually made
use of to quicken the movements of the battalion. He enjoyed this
recreation for about a couple of hours, sometimes utterly bewildered by
a “change of front,” which developed him in the most inopportune manner;
sometimes inextricably entangled in the formation of “a hollow square,”
when he became lost altogether; sometimes confounding himself with “the
points,” and being confounded by the senior-major for his awkwardness;
and sometimes following a “charge” at such a pace as to take away his
voice for every purpose of utility, supposing he had desired to exercise
it in the way of admonitory adjuration to the rear-rank. In this manner
he learnt the noble science of strategy, and by this means acquired so
much proficiency that, had he been suddenly called upon to manœuvre the
battalion, it is possible he might have gone on for five minutes without
“clubbing” it.

The regiment was then marched home; and Ensign Spoonbill re-entered the
garrison with all the honours of war, impressed with the conviction that
he had already seen an immense deal of service; enough, certainly, to
justify the ample breakfast which two or three other famished subs—his
particular friends—assisted him in discussing, the more substantial part
of which, involved a private account with the messman, who had a good
many more of the younger officers of the regiment on his books. At these
morning feasts—with the exception, perhaps, of a few remarks on drill as
“a cussed bore”—no allusion was made to the military exercises of the
morning, or to the prospective duties of the day. The conversation
turned, on the contrary, on lighter and more agreeable topics;—the
relative merits of bull and Scotch terriers; who made the best boots;
whether “that gaerl at the pastrycook’s” was “as fine a woman” as “the
barmaid of the Rose and Crown;” if Hudson’s cigars didn’t beat Pontet’s
all to nothing; who married the sixth daughter of Jones of the
Highlanders; interspersed with a few bets, a few oaths, and a few
statements not strikingly remarkable for their veracity, the last having
reference, principally, to the exploits for which Captain Smith made
himself famous, to the detriment of Miss Bailey.

Breakfast over, and cigars lighted, Ensign Spoonbill and his friends,
attired in shooting jackets of every pattern, and wearing felt hats of
every colour and form, made their appearance in front of the officers’
wing of the barracks; some semi-recumbent on the doorsteps, others
lounging with their hands in their coat pockets, others gracefully
balancing themselves on the iron railings,—all smoking and talking on
subjects of the most edifying kind. These pleasant occupations were,
however, interrupted by the approach of an “orderly,” who, from a
certain clasped book which he carried, read out the unwelcome
intelligence that, at twelve o’clock that day, a regimental
court-martial, under the presidency of Captain Huff, would assemble in
the officers’ mess-room “for the trial of all such prisoners as might be
brought before it,” and that two lieutenants and two ensigns—of whom the
Hon. Mr. Spoonbill was one—were to constitute the members. This was a
most distressing and unexpected blow, for it had previously been
arranged that a badger should be drawn by Lieutenant Wadding’s bull
bitch Juno, at which interesting ceremony all the junior members of the
court were to have “assisted.” It was the more provoking, because the
proprietor of the animal to be baited,—a gentleman in a fustian suit,
brown leggings, high-lows, a white hat with a black crape round it, and
a very red nose, indicative of a most decided love for “cordials and
compounds”—had just “stepped up” to say that “the bedger _must_ be
dror’d that mornin’,” as he was under a particular engagement to repeat
the amusement in the evening for some gents at a distant town and
“couldn’t no how, not for no money, forfeit his sacred word.” The
majority of the young gentlemen present understood perfectly what this
corollary meant, but, with Ensign Spoonbill amongst them, were by no
means in a hurry to “fork out” for so immoral a purpose as that of
inducing a fellow-man to break a solemn pledge. That gallant officer,
however, laboured under so acute a feeling of disappointment, that,
regardless of the insult offered to the worthy man’s conscience, he at
once volunteered to give him “a couple of sovs” if he would just “throw
those snobs over,” and defer his departure till the following day; and
it was settled that the badger should be “drawn” as soon as the patrons
of Joe Baggs could get away from the court-martial,—for which in no very
equable frame of mind they now got ready,—retiring to their several
barrack-rooms, divesting themselves of their sporting costume and once
more assuming military attire.

At the appointed hour, the court assembled. Captain Huff prepared for
his judicial labours by calling for a glass of his favourite “swizzle,”
which he dispatched at one draught, and then, having sworn in the
members, and being sworn himself, the business began by the appointment
of Lieutenant Hackett as secretary. There were two prisoners to be
tried: one had “sold his necessaries” in order to get drunk; the second
had made use of “mutinous language” _when_ drunk; both of them high
military crimes, to be severely visited by those who had no temptation
to dispose of their wardrobes, and could not understand why a soldier’s
beer money was not sufficient for his daily potations; but who omitted
the consideration that they themselves, when in want of cash,
occasionally sent a pair of epaulettes to “my uncle,” and had a
champagne supper out of the proceeds, at which neither sobriety nor
decorous language were rigidly observed.

The case against him who had sold his necessaries—to wit, “a new pair of
boots, a shirt, and a pair of stockings,” for which a Jew in the town
had given him two shillings—was sufficiently clear. The captain and the
pay-serjeant of the man’s company swore to the articles, and the Jew who
bought them (an acquaintance of Lieutenant Hackett, to whom he nodded
with pleasing familiarity), stimulated by the fear of a civil
prosecution, gave them up, and appeared as evidence against the
prisoner. He was found “guilty,” and sentenced to three months’ solitary
confinement, and “to be put under stoppages,” according to the
prescribed formulæ.

But the trial of the man accused of drunkenness and mutinous language
was not so readily disposed of; though the delay occasioned by his
calling witnesses to character served only to add to the irritation of
his virtuous and impartial judges. He was a fine-looking fellow, six
feet high, and had as soldier-like a bearing as any man in the Grenadier
company, to which he belonged. The specific acts which constituted his
crime consisted in having refused to leave the canteen when somewhat
vexatiously urged to do so by the orderly serjeant, who forthwith sent
for a file of the guard to compel him; thus urging him, when in an
excited state, to an act of insubordination, the gist of which was a
threat to knock the serjeant down, a show of resistance, and certain
maledictions on the head of that functionary. In this, as in the former
instance, there could be no doubt that the breach of discipline
complained of had been committed, though several circumstances were
pleaded in extenuation of the offence. The man’s previous character,
too, was very good; he was ordinarily a steady, well-conducted soldier,
never shirked his hour of duty, was not given to drink, and, therefore,
as the principal witness in his favour said, “the more aisily overcome
when he tuck a dhrop, but as harrumless as a lamb, unless put upon.”

These things averred and shown, the Court was cleared, and the members
proceeded to deliberate. It was a question only of the nature and extent
of the punishment to be awarded. The general instructions, no less than
the favourable condition of the case, suggested leniency. But Captain
Huff was a severe disciplinarian of the old school, an advocate for
red-handed practice—the drum head and the halberds—and his opinion, if
it might be called one, had only too much weight with the other members
of the Court, all of whom were prejudiced against the prisoner, whom
they internally—if not openly—condemned for interfering with their day’s
amusements. “Corporal punishment, of course,” said Captain Huff,
angrily; and his words were echoed by the Court, though the majority of
them little knew the fearful import of the sentence, or they might have
paused before they delivered over a fine resolute young man, whose chief
crime was an ebullition of temper, to the castigation of the lash, which
destroys the soldier’s self-respect; degrades him in the eyes of his
fellows; mutilates his body, and leaves an indelible scar upon his mind.
But the fiat went forth, and was recorded in “hundreds” against the
unfortunate fellow; and Captain Huff having managed to sign the
proceedings, carried them off to the commanding officer’s quarters, to
be “approved and confirmed;” a ratification which the Colonel was not
slow to give; for he was one of that class who are in the habit of
reconciling themselves to an act of cruelty, by always asserting in
their defence that “an example is necessary.” He forgot, in doing so,
that this was not the way to preserve for the “Hundredth” the name of a
crack corps, and that the best example for those in authority is Mercy.

With minds buoyant and refreshed by the discharge of the judicial
functions, for which they were in every respect so admirably qualified,
Ensign Spoonbill and his companions, giving themselves leave of absence
from the afternoon parade, and having resumed their favourite “mufty,”
repaired to an obscure den in a stable-yard at the back of the Blue
Boar—a low public house in the filthiest quarter of the town—which Mr.
Joseph Baggs made his head-quarters, and there, for a couple of hours,
solaced themselves with the agreeable exhibition of the contest between
the badger and the dog Juno, which terminated by the latter being bitten
through both her fore-paws, and nearly losing one of her eyes; though,
as Lieutenant Wadding exultingly observed, “she was a deuced deal too
game to give over for such trifles as those.” The unhappy badger, that
only fought in self-defence, was accordingly “dror’d,” as Mr. Baggs
reluctantly admitted, adding, however, that she was “nuffin much the
wuss,” which was more than could be said of the officers of the
“Hundredth” who had enjoyed the spectacle.

This amusement ended, which had so far a military character that it
familiarised the spectator with violence and bloodshed, though in an
unworthy and contemptible degree, badgers and dogs, not men, being their
subject, the young gentlemen adjourned to the High Street, to loiter
away half an hour at the shop of Messrs. Moses, Lazarus and Son, whose
religious observances and daily occupations were made their jest, while
they ran in debt to the people from whom they afterwards expected
consideration and forbearance. But not wholly did they kill their time
there. The pretty pastry-cook, an innocent, retiring girl, but compelled
to serve in the shop, came in for her share of their half-admiring and
all-insolent persecutions, and when their slang and sentiment were alike
exhausted, they dawdled back again to barracks, to dress for the fifth
time for mess.

The events of the day, that is, the events on which their thoughts had
been centered, again furnished the theme of the general conversation.
Enough wine was drunk, as Captain Huff said, with the wit peculiar to
him, “to restore the equilibrium;” the most abstinent person being
Captain Cushion, who that evening gave convincing proof of the
advantages of abstinence, by engaging Ensign Spoonbill in a match at
billiards, the result of which was, that Lord Pelican’s son found
himself, at midnight, minus a full half of the allowance for which his
noble father had given him liberty to draw. But that he had fairly lost
the money there could be no doubt, for the officer on the main-guard,
who had preferred watching the game to going his rounds, declared to the
party, when they afterwards adjourned to take a glass of grog with him
before he turned in, that “except Jonathan, he had never seen any man
make so good a bridge as his friend Spoonbill,” and this fact Captain
Cushion himself confirmed, adding, that he thought, perhaps, he could
afford next time to give points. With the reputation of making a good
bridge—a _Pons asinorum_ over which his money had travelled—Ensign
Spoonbill was fain to be content, and in this satisfactory manner he
closed one Subaltern’s day, there being many like it in reserve.




                        THE BELGIAN LACE-MAKERS.


The indefatigable, patient, invincible, inquisitive, sometimes tedious,
but almost always amusing German traveller, Herr Kohl, has recently been
pursuing his earnest investigations in Belgium. His book on the
Netherlands[2] has just been issued, and we shall translate, with
abridgments, one of its most instructive and agreeable chapters;—that
relating to Lace-making.

Footnote 2:

  Reisen in den Niederlanden. Travels in the Netherlands.

The practical acquaintance of our female readers with that elegant
ornament, lace, is chiefly confined to wearing it, and their researches
into its quality and price. A few minutes’ attention to Mr. Kohl will
enlighten them on other subjects connected with, what is to them a most
interesting topic, for lace is associated with recollections of mediæval
history, and with the palmy days of the Flemish school of painting. More
than one of the celebrated masters of that school have selected, from
among his laborious countrywomen, the lace-makers (or, as they are
called in Flanders, _Speldewerksters_), pleasing subjects for the
exercise of his pencil. The plump, fair-haired Flemish girl, bending
earnestly over her lace-work, whilst her fingers nimbly ply the
intricately winding bobbins, figure in many of those highly esteemed
representations of homely life and manners, which have found their way
from the Netherlands into all the principal picture-galleries of Europe.

Our German friend makes it his practice, whether he is treating of the
geology of the earth, or of the manufacture of Swedish bodkins, to begin
at the very beginning. He therefore commences the history of
lace-making, which, he says, is, like embroidery, an art of very ancient
origin, lost, like a multitude of other origins, “in the darkness of
by-gone ages.” It may, with truth, be said that it is the national
occupation of the women of the Low Countries, and one to which they have
steadily adhered from very remote times. During the long civil and
foreign wars waged by the people of the Netherlands, while subject to
Spanish dominion, other branches of Belgic industry either dwindled to
decay, or were transplanted to foreign countries; but lace-making
remained faithful to the land which had fostered and brought it to
perfection, though it received tempting offers from abroad, and had to
struggle with many difficulties at home. This Mr. Kohl explains by the
fact, that lace-making is a branch of industry chiefly confined to
female hands, and, as women are less disposed to travel than men, all
arts and handicrafts exclusively pursued by women, have a local and
enduring character.

Notwithstanding the overwhelming supply of imitations which modern
ingenuity has created, _real Brussels lace_ has maintained its value,
like the precious metals and the precious stones. In the patterns of the
best bone lace, the changeful influence of fashion is less marked than
in most other branches of industry; indeed, she has adhered with
wonderful pertinacity to the quaint old patterns of former times. These
are copied and reproduced with that scrupulous uniformity which
characterises the figures in the Persian and Indian shawls. Frequent
experiments have been tried to improve these old patterns, by the
introduction of slight and tasteful modifications, but these innovations
have not succeeded, and a very skilful and experienced lace-worker
assured Mr. Kohl, that the antiquated designs, with all their formality,
are preferred to those in which the most elegant changes have been
effected.

Each of the lace-making towns of Belgium excels in the production of one
particular description of lace: in other words, each has what is
technically called its own _point_. The French word _point_, in the
ordinary language of needlework, signifies simply _stitch_; but in the
terminology of lace-making, the word is sometimes used to designate the
pattern of the lace, and sometimes the ground of the lace itself. Hence
the terms _point de Bruxelles_, _point de Malines_, _point de
Valenciennes_, &c. In England we distinguish by the name of Point, a
peculiarly rich and curiously wrought lace formerly very fashionable,
but now scarcely ever worn except in Court costume. In this sort of lace
the pattern is, we believe, worked with the needle, after the ground has
been made with the bobbins. In each town there prevail certain modes of
working, and certain patterns which have been transmitted from mother to
daughter successively, for several generations. Many of the lace-workers
live and die in the same houses in which they were born; and most of
them understand and practise only the stitches which their mothers and
grandmothers worked before them. The consequence has been, that certain
_points_ have become unchangeably fixed in particular towns or
districts. Fashion has assigned to each its particular place and
purpose; for example:—the _point de Malines_ (Mechlin lace) is used
chiefly for trimming nightdresses, pillow-cases, coverlets, &c.; the
_point de Valenciennes_ (Valenciennes lace) is employed for ordinary
wear or negligé; but the more rich and costly _point de Bruxelles_
(Brussels lace) is reserved for bridal and ball-dresses, and for the
robes of queens and courtly ladies.

As the different sorts of lace, from the narrowest and plainest to the
broadest and richest, are innumerable; so the division of labour among
the lace-workers is infinite. In the towns of Belgium there are as many
different kinds of lace-workers, as there are varieties of spiders in
Nature. It is not, therefore, surprising that in the several departments
of this branch of industry there are as many technical terms and phrases
as would make up a small dictionary. In their origin, these expressions
were all Flemish; but French being the language now spoken in Belgium,
they have been translated into French, and the designations applied to
some of the principal classifications of the workwomen. Those who make
only the ground, are called _Drocheleuses_. The design or pattern, which
adorns this ground, is distinguished by the general term “the Flowers;”
though it would be difficult to guess what flowers are intended to be
portrayed by the fantastic arabesque of these lace-patterns. In Brussels
the ornaments or flowers are made separately, and afterwards worked into
the lace-ground: in other places the ground and the patterns are worked
conjointly. The _Platteuses_ are those who work the flowers separately;
and the _Faiseuses de point à l’aiguille_ work the figures and the
ground together. The _Striquese_ is the worker who attaches the flowers
to the ground. The _Faneuse_ works her figures by piercing holes or
cutting out pieces of the ground.

The spinning of the fine thread used for lace-making in the Netherlands,
is an operation demanding so high a degree of minute care and vigilant
attention, that it is impossible it can ever be taken from human hands
by machinery. None but Belgian fingers are skilled in this art. The very
finest sort of this thread is made in Brussels, in damp underground
cellars; for it is so extremely delicate, that it is liable to break by
contact with the dry air above ground; and it is obtained in good
condition only, when made and kept in a humid subterraneous atmosphere.
There are numbers of old Belgian thread-makers who, like spiders, have
passed the best part of their lives spinning in cellars. This sort of
occupation naturally has an injurious effect on the health, and
therefore, to induce people to follow it, they are highly paid.

To form an accurate idea of this operation, it is necessary to see a
Brabant Threadspinner at her work. She carefully examines every thread,
watching it closely as she draws it off the distaff; and that she may
see it the more distinctly, a piece of dark blue paper is used as a
background for the flax. Whenever the spinner notices the least
unevenness, she stops the evolution of her wheel, breaks off the faulty
piece of flax, and then resumes her spinning. This fine flax being as
costly as gold, the pieces thus broken off are carefully laid aside to
be used in other ways. All this could never be done by machinery. It is
different in the spinning of cotton, silk, or wool, in which the
original threads are almost all of uniform thickness. The invention of
the English Flax-spinning Machine, therefore, can never supersede the
work of the Belgian Fine Thread Spinners, any more than the Bobbin-Net
Machine can rival the fingers of the Brussels lace-makers, or render
their delicate work superfluous.

The prices current of the Brabant spinners usually include a list of
various sorts of thread suited to lace-making, varying from 60 francs to
1800 francs per pound. Instances have occurred, in which as much as
10,000 francs have been paid for a pound of this fine yarn. So high a
price has never been attained by the best spun silk; though a pound of
silk, in its raw condition, is incomparably more valuable than a pound
of flax. In like manner, a pound of iron may, by dint of human labour
and ingenuity, be rendered more valuable than a pound of gold.

Lace-making, in regard to the health of the operatives, has one great
advantage. It is a business which is carried on without the necessity of
assembling great numbers of workpeople in one place, or of taking women
from their homes, and thereby breaking the bonds of family union. It is,
moreover, an occupation which affords those employed in it a great
degree of freedom. The spinning-wheel and lace-pillows are easily
carried from place to place, and the work may be done with equal
convenience in the house, in the garden, or at the street-door. In every
Belgian town in which lace-making is the staple business, the eye of the
traveller is continually greeted with pictures of happy industry,
attended by all its train of concomitant virtues. The costliness of the
material employed in the work, viz., the fine flax thread, fosters the
observance of order and economy, which, as well as habits of
cleanliness, are firmly engrafted among the people. Much manual
dexterity, quickness of eye, and judgment, are demanded in lace-making;
and the work is a stimulater of ingenuity and taste; so that, unlike
other occupations merely manual, it tends to rouse rather than to dull
the mind. It is, moreover, unaccompanied by any unpleasant and harassing
noise; for the humming of the spinning-wheel, and the regular tapping of
the little bobbins, are sounds not in themselves disagreeable, or
sufficiently loud to disturb conversation, or to interrupt the social
song.

In Belgium, female industry presents itself under aspects alike
interesting to the painter, the poet, and the philanthropist. Here and
there may be seen a happy-looking girl, seated at an open window,
turning her spinning-wheel or working at her lace-pillow, whilst at
intervals she indulges in the relaxation of a curious gaze at the
passers-by in the street. Another young _Speldewerkster_, more
sentimentally disposed, will retire into the garden, seating herself in
an umbrageous arbour, or under a spreading tree, her eyes intent on her
work, but her thoughts apparently divided between it and some object
nearer to her heart. At a doorway sits a young mother, surrounded by two
or three children playing round the little table or wooden settle on
which her lace-pillow rests. Whilst the mother’s busy fingers are thus
profitably employed, her eyes keep watch over the movements of her
little ones, and she can at the same time spare an attentive thought for
some one of her humble household duties.

Dressmakers, milliners, and other females employed in the various
occupations which minister to the exigencies of fashion, are confined to
close rooms, surrounded by masses of silk, muslin, &c. They are debarred
the healthful practice of working in the open air, and can scarcely
venture even to sit at an open window, because a drop of rain or a puff
of wind may be fatal to their work and its materials. The lace-maker, on
the contrary, whose work requires only her thread and her fingers, is
not disturbed by a refreshing breeze or a light shower; and even when
the weather is not particularly fine, she prefers sitting at her
street-door or in her garden, where she enjoys a brighter light than
within doors.

In most of the principal towns of the Netherlands there is one
particular locality which is the focus of lace-making industry; and
there, in fine weather, the streets are animated by the presence of the
busy workwomen. In each of these districts there is usually one wide
open street which the _Speldewerksters_ prefer to all others, and in
which they assemble, and form themselves into the most picturesque
groups imaginable. It is curious to observe them, pouring out of narrow
lanes and alleys, carrying with them their chairs and lace-pillows, to
take their places in the wide open street, where they can enjoy more of
bright light and fresh air than in their own places of abode.

“I could not help contrasting,” says Kohl, “the pleasing aspect of these
streets with the close and noisy workrooms in woollen and cotton
manufactories. There the workpeople are all separated and classified
according to age and sex, and marshalled like soldiers. There domestic
and family ties are rudely broken. There chance or exigency separates
the young factory girl from her favourite companions, and dooms her to
association with strangers. There social conversation and the merry song
are drowned in that stunning din of machinery, which in the end
paralyses even the power of thought.”

Our German friend is a little hard upon factory life. Though not so
picturesque, it does not, if candidly viewed, offer so very unfavourable
a contrast to that passed by the Belgian Lace Workers.




                          THE POWER OF MERCY.


Quiet enough, in general, is the quaint old town of Lamborough. Why all
this bustle to-day? Along the hedge-bound roads which lead to it, carts,
chaises, vehicles of every description are jogging along filled with
countrymen; and here and there the scarlet cloak or straw bonnet of some
female occupying a chair, placed somewhat unsteadily behind them,
contrasts gaily with the dark coats, or grey smock-frocks of the front
row; from every cottage of the suburb, some individuals join the stream,
which rolls on increasing through the streets till it reaches the
castle. The ancient moat teems with idlers, and the hill opposite,
usually the quiet domain of a score or two of peaceful sheep, partakes
of the surrounding agitation.

The voice of the multitude which surrounds the court-house, sounds like
the murmur of the sea, till suddenly it is raised to a sort of shout.
John West, the terror of the surrounding country, the sheep-stealer and
burglar, had been found guilty.

“What is the sentence?” is asked by a hundred voices.

The answer is “Transportation for Life.”

But there was one standing aloof on the hill, whose inquiring eye
wandered over the crowd with indescribable anguish, whose pallid cheek
grew more and more ghastly at every denunciation of the culprit, and
who, when at last the sentence was pronounced, fell insensible upon the
greensward. It was the burglar’s son.

When the boy recovered from his swoon, it was late in the afternoon; he
was alone; the faint tinkling of the sheep-bell had again replaced the
sound of the human chorus of expectation, and dread, and jesting; all
was peaceful, he could not understand why he lay there, feeling so weak
and sick. He raised himself tremulously and looked around, the turf was
cut and spoilt by the trampling of many feet. All his life of the last
few months floated before his memory, his residence in his father’s
hovel with ruffianly comrades, the desperate schemes he heard as he
pretended to sleep on his lowly bed, their expeditions at night, masked
and armed, their hasty returns, the news of his father’s capture, his
own removal to the house of some female in the town, the court, the
trial, the condemnation.

The father had been a harsh and brutal parent, but he had not positively
ill-used his boy. Of the Great and Merciful Father of the fatherless the
child knew nothing. He deemed himself alone in the world. Yet grief was
not his pervading feeling, nor the shame of being known as the son of a
transport. It was revenge which burned within him. He thought of the
crowd which had come to feast upon his father’s agony; he longed to tear
them to pieces, and he plucked savagely a handful of the grass on which
he leant. Oh, that he were a man! that he could punish them all—all,—the
spectators first, the constables, the judge, the jury, the
witnesses,—one of them especially, a clergyman named Leyton, who had
given his evidence more positively, more clearly, than all the others.
Oh, that he could do that man some injury,—but for him his father would
not have been identified and convicted.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him,—his eyes sparkled with fierce
delight. “I know where he lives,” he said to himself; “he has the farm
and parsonage of Millwood. I will go there at once,—it is almost dark
already. I will do as I have heard father say he once did to the Squire.
I will set his barns and his house on fire. Yes, yes, he shall burn for
it,—he shall get no more fathers transported.”

To procure a box of matches was an easy task, and that was all the
preparation the boy made.

The autumn was far advanced. A cold wind was beginning to moan amongst
the almost leafless trees, and George West’s teeth chattered, and his
ill-clad limbs grew numb as he walked along the fields leading to
Millwood. “Lucky it’s a dark night; this fine wind will fan the flame
nicely,” he repeated to himself.

The clock was striking nine, but all was quiet as midnight; not a soul
stirring, not a light in the parsonage windows that he could see. He
dared not open the gate, lest the click of the latch should betray him,
so he softly climbed over; but scarcely had he dropped on the other side
of the wall before the loud barking of a dog startled him. He cowered
down behind the hay-rick, scarcely daring to breathe, expecting each
instant that the dog would spring upon him. It was some time before the
boy dared to stir, and as his courage cooled, his thirst for revenge
somewhat subsided also, till he almost determined to return to
Lamborough; but he was too tired, too cold, too hungry,—besides, the
woman would beat him for staying out so late. What could he do? where
should he go? and as the sense of his lonely and forlorn position
returned, so did also the affectionate remembrance of his father, his
hatred of his accusers, his desire to satisfy his vengeance; and, once
more, courageous through anger, he rose, took the box from his pocket
and boldly drew one of them across the sand-paper. It flamed; he stuck
it hastily in the stack against which he rested,—it only flickered a
little, and went out. In great trepidation, young West once more grasped
the whole of the remaining matches in his hand and ignited them but at
the same instant the dog barked. He hears the gate open, a step is close
to him, the matches are extinguished, the lad makes a desperate effort
to escape,—but a strong hand was laid on his shoulder, and a deep calm
voice inquired, “What can have urged you to such a crime?” Then calling
loudly, the gentleman, without relinquishing his hold, soon obtained the
help of some farming men, who commenced a search with their lanterns all
about the farm. Of course they found no accomplices, nothing at all but
the handful of half-consumed matches the lad had dropped, and he all
that time stood trembling, and occasionally struggling, beneath the firm
but not rough grasp of the master who held him.

At last the men were told to return to the house, and thither, by a
different path, was George led till they entered a small,
poorly-furnished room. The walls were covered with books, as the bright
flame of the fire revealed to the anxious gaze of the little culprit.
The clergyman lit a lamp, and surveyed his prisoner attentively. The
lad’s eyes were fixed on the ground, whilst Mr. Leyton’s wandered from
his pale, pinched features to his scanty, ragged attire, through the
tatters of which he could discern the thin limbs quivering from cold or
fear; and when at last impelled by curiosity at the long silence, George
looked up, there was something so sadly compassionate in the stranger’s
gentle look, that the boy could scarcely believe that he was really the
man whose evidence had mainly contributed to transport his father. At
the trial he had been unable to see his face, and nothing so kind had
ever gazed upon him. His proud bad feelings were already melting.

“You look half-starved,” said Mr. Leyton, “draw nearer to the fire, you
can sit down on that stool whilst I question you; and mind you answer me
the truth. I am not a magistrate, but of course can easily hand you over
to justice if you will not allow me to benefit you in my own way.”

George still stood twisting his ragged cap in his trembling fingers, and
with so much emotion depicted on his face, that the good clergyman
resumed, in still more soothing accents; “I have no wish to do you
anything but good, my poor boy; look up at me, and see if you cannot
trust me: you need not be thus frightened. I only desire to hear the
tale of misery your appearance indicates, to relieve it if I can.”

Here the young culprit’s heart smote him. Was this the man whose house
he had tried to burn? On whom he had wished to bring ruin and perhaps
death? Was it a snare spread for him to lead to confession? But when he
looked on that grave compassionate countenance, he felt that it was
_not_.

“Come, my lad, tell me all.”

George had for years heard little but oaths, and curses, and ribald
jests, or the thief’s jargon of his father’s associates, and had been
constantly cuffed and punished; but the better part of his nature was
not extinguished; and at those words from the mouth of his _enemy_, he
dropped on his knees, and clasping his hands, tried to speak; but could
only sob. He had not wept before during that day of anguish; and now his
tears gushed forth so freely, his grief was so passionate as he half
knelt, half rested on the floor, that the good questioner saw that
sorrow must have its course ere calm could be restored.

The young penitent still wept, when a knock was heard at the door, and a
lady entered. It was the clergyman’s wife, he kissed her as she asked
how he had succeeded with the wicked man in the jail?

“He told me” replied Mr. Leyton, “that he had a son whose fate tormented
him more than his punishment. Indeed his mind was so distracted
respecting the youth, that he was scarcely able to understand my
exhortations. He entreated me with agonising energy to save his son from
such a life as he had led, and gave me the address of a woman in whose
house he lodged. I was, however, unable to find the boy in spite of many
earnest inquiries.”

“Did you hear his name?” asked the wife.

“George West,” was the reply.

At the mention of his name, the boy ceased to sob. Breathlessly he heard
the account of his father’s last request, of the benevolent clergyman’s
wish to fulfil it. He started up, ran towards the door, and endeavoured
to open it; Mr. Leyton calmly restrained him, “You must not escape,” he
said.

“I cannot stop here. I cannot bear to look at you. Let me go!” The lad
said this wildly, and shook himself away.

“Why, I intend you nothing but kindness.”

A new flood of tears gushed forth; and George West said between his
sobs,

“Whilst you were searching for me to help me, I was trying to burn you
in your house. I cannot bear it.” He sunk on his knees, and covered his
face with both hands.

There was a long silence, for Mr. and Mrs. Leyton were as much moved as
the boy, who was bowed down with shame and penitence, to which hitherto
he had been a stranger.

At last the clergyman asked, “What could have induced you to commit such
a crime?”

Rising suddenly in the excitement of remorse, gratitude, and many
feelings new to him, he hesitated for a moment, and then told his story;
he related his trials, his sins, his sorrows, his supposed wrongs, his
burning anger at the terrible fate of his only parent, and his rage at
the exultation of the crowd: his desolation on recovering from his
swoon, his thirst for vengeance, the attempt to satisfy it. He spoke
with untaught, child-like simplicity, without attempting to suppress the
emotions which successively overcame him.

When he ceased, the lady hastened to the crouching boy, and soothed him
with gentle words. The very tones of her voice were new to him. They
pierced his heart more acutely than the fiercest of the upbraidings and
denunciations of his old companions. He looked on his merciful
benefactors with bewildered tenderness. He kissed Mrs. Leyton’s hand
then gently laid on his shoulder. He gazed about like one in a dream who
dreaded to wake. He became faint and staggered. He was laid gently on a
sofa, and Mr. and Mrs. Leyton left him.

Food was shortly administered to him, and after a time, when his senses
had become sufficiently collected, Mr. Leyton returned to the study, and
explained holy and beautiful things, which were new to the neglected
boy: of the great yet loving Father; of Him who loved the poor, forlorn
wretch, equally with the richest, and noblest, and happiest; of the
force and efficacy of the sweet beatitude, “Blessed are the Merciful for
they shall obtain Mercy.”

I heard this story from Mr. Leyton, during a visit to him in May. George
West was then head ploughman to a neighbouring farmer, one of the
cleanest, best behaved, and most respected labourers in the parish.




                                FLOWERS.


        Dear friend, love well the flowers! Flowers are the sign
        Of Earth’s all gentle love, her grace, her youth,
        Her endless, matchless, tender gratitude.
        When the Sun smiles on thee,—why thou art glad:
        But when on Earth he smileth, _She_ bursts forth
        In beauty like a bride, and gives him back,
        In sweet repayment for his warm bright love,
        A world of flowers. You may see them born
        On any day in April, moist or dry,
        As bright as are the Heavens that look on them:
        Some sown like stars upon the greensward; some
        As yellow as the sunrise; others red
        As Day is when he sets; reflecting thus,
        In pretty moods, the bounties of the sky.

          And now, of all fair flowers, which lovest thou best?
        The Rose? She is a queen, more wonderful
        Than any who have bloomed on Orient thrones:
        Sabæan Empress! in her breast, though small,
        Beauty and infinite sweetness sweetly dwell,
        Inextricable. Or dost dare prefer
        The Woodbine, for her fragrant summer breath?
        Or Primrose, who doth haunt the hours of Spring,
        A wood-nymph brightening places lone and green?
        Or Cowslip? or the virgin Violet,
        That nun, who, nestling in her cell of leaves,
        Shrinks from the world, in vain?

          Yet, wherefore choose, when Nature doth not choose,
        Our mistress, our preceptress? _She_ brings forth
        Her brood with equal care, loves all alike,
        And to the meanest as the greatest yields
        Her sunny splendours and her fruitful rains.
        Love _all_ flowers, then. Be sure that wisdom lies
        In every leaf and bloom; o’er hills and dales;
        And thymy mountains; sylvan solitudes,
        Where sweet-voiced waters sing the long year through;
        In every haunt beneath the Eternal Sun,
        Where Youth or Age sends forth its grateful prayer,
        Or thoughtful Meditation deigns to stray.




                        THE CATTLE-ROAD TO RUIN.


There is more animal food consumed in England than in any other country
in the world. We do not merely say more, in proportion to the size of
England, and the numbers of its inhabitants—for then we should only
utter what every-body must know—but we mean actually _more_, without any
such proportional considerations. Considering, then, this vast amount of
animal food, in all its manifold bearings, it is impossible not to be
struck with a sense of what vital importance it is to the health and
general well-being of the community that this food should be of a
perfectly wholesome kind. That very great quantities are not only
unwholesome, but of the worst and most injurious kind, we shall now
proceed to show. We will set this question clearly before the eyes of
the reader, by tracing the brief and eventful history of an ox, from his
journey to Smithfield, till he rolls his large eye upward for the last
time beneath the unskilful blows of his slaughterer.

A good-natured, healthy, honest-faced ox, is driven out of his meadow at
break of day, and finds a number of other oxen collected together in the
high road, amidst the shouting and whistling of drovers, the lowing of
many deep voices, and the sound of many cudgels. As soon as the expected
numbers have all arrived from the different stalls and fields, the
journey of twenty miles to the railway commences. Some are
refractory—the thrusting and digging of the goad instantly produces an
uproar, and even our good-natured ox cannot help contributing his share
of lowing and bellowing, in consequence of one of these poignant digs
received at random while he was endeavouring to understand what was
required of him. From this moment there is no peace or rest in his life.
The noise and contest is nearly over after a few miles, though renewed
now and then at a cross-road, when the creatures do not know which way
they are to go, and some very naturally go one way, and some the other.
The contest is also renewed whenever they pass a pond, or brook, as the
weather is sultry; and the roads are so dusty, besides the steam from
the breath and bodies of the animals, that their journey seems to be
through a dense, continuous, stifling cloud. It is noon; and the sun is
glaring fiercely down upon the drove. They have as yet proceeded only
twelve miles of their journey, but the sleek and healthy skin of our
honest-faced ox has already undergone a considerable change—and as for
his countenance, it is waxing wroth. His eye has become blood-shot since
they passed the last village ale-house, where he made an attempt, in
passing, just to draw his feverish tongue along the water of the
horse-trough, but was suddenly prevented by a violent blow of the hard
nob-end of a drover’s stick across the tip of his nose. Besides this,
the wound he has received from the goad, has laid bare the skin on his
back, and the sun is beginning to act upon this, as well as the flies.
By the time the twenty miles are accomplished, he is in no mood at all
for the close jam in which he is packed with a number of others in one
of the railway cattle-waggons. He bellows aloud his pain and
indignation; in which sonorous eloquence he is joined by a bullock at
his side, who has lost half one horn by a violent blow from a drover’s
stick, because he had stopped to drink from a ditch at the road-side,
and persisted in getting a taste. Our ox makes the acquaintance of this
suffering individual, and they recount their wrongs to each other; but
the idea of escape does not occur to them; they rather resign themselves
to endure their destiny with stolidity, if possible. Hunger, however,
and worse than this, thirst, causes sensations which are quite beyond
all patient endurance; and again they uplift their great voices in anger
and distress.

Our rather slow-minded ox has now arrived at the opinion that some
mischief is deliberately intended him, and feels convinced that
something more is needed in this world than passive submission. But what
to do, he knows not. His courage is high—only he does not comprehend his
position. Man, and his doings, are a dreadful puzzle to him. His
one-horned friend fully coincides in all this. Meantime, they are
foaming with heat, and thirst, and fever.

After a day’s torture in this way, the animals are got out of the
waggon, by a thrashing process which brings them pell-mell over each
other, many landing on their knees, some head foremost, and one or two
falling prostrate beneath the hoofs of the rest. The journey to London
then commences, the two friends having been separated in the recent
confusion.

With the dreadful scenes, among the live cattle, which regularly take
place in Smithfield market, our readers have already been made
acquainted; it will now be our duty to display before them several
equally revolting, and, though in a different way, still more alarming,
scenes and doings which occur in this neighbourhood, and in other
markets and their vicinities.

Look at this ox, with dripping flanks, half-covered with mud; a horrid
wound across his nose; the flesh laid bare in a rent on his back, and
festering from exposure to the sun and the flies; his eye-balls rolling
fiercely about, and clots of foam dropping from his mouth! Would any one
believe that three days ago he was a good-natured, healthy, honest-faced
ox? He is waiting to be sold. But who will give a decent price for a
poor beast in this unsound condition? He is waiting with a cord round
his neck, by which he is fastened to a rail, and in his anguish he has
drawn it so tight that he is half-strangled; but he does not care now.
He can endure no more, he thinks, because he is becoming insensible.
Presently, among several others brought to the same rail, he recognises
his friend with the broken horn. They get side by side, and gasp deeply
their mutual torments. There are no more loud lowings and bellowings;
they utter nothing but gasps and groans. Besides the fractured horn,
this bullock has since received a thrust from a goad in his right eye,
by which the sight is not only destroyed, but an effect produced which
makes it requisite to sell him at any price he will bring. This being
agreed upon, he is led away to a slaughter-house near at hand. Our poor
ox makes a strong effort to accompany his friend, and with his eye-balls
almost starting from his head, tugs at the cord that holds him by the
throat, until it breaks. He then hastens after the other, but is quickly
intercepted by a couple of drovers, who assail him with such fury, that
he turns about, and runs out of the market.

He is in too wretched and worn-out a condition to run fast, so he merely
staggers onward amidst the blows, till suddenly a water-cart happens to
pass. The sight of the shining drops of water seems to give the poor
beast a momentary energy. He runs staggering at it head foremost—his
eyes half-shut,—falls with his head against the after-part of the wheel
as the cart passes on,—and there lies lolling out his tongue upon the
moistened stones. He makes no effort to rise. The drovers form a circle
round him, and rain blows all over him; but the ox still lies with his
tongue out upon the cool wet stones. They then wrench his tail round
till they break it, and practise other cruelties upon him; but all in
vain. There he lies.

While the drovers are pausing to wipe their sanguinary and demoniac
foreheads, and recover their breath, the ox slowly, and as if in a sort
of delirium, raises himself on his legs, and stands looking at the
drovers with forlorn vacancy. At this juncture the Market Inspector
joins the crowd, and after a brief glance at the various sores and
injuries, condemns the ox as diseased—therefore unfit for sale. He is
accordingly led off, limping and stumbling to the horse-slaughterer’s in
Sharp’s Alley, duly attended by the Inspector, to see that his order of
condemnation be carried into effect. They are followed at a little
distance by two fellows, whose filthy habiliments show that they have
slept amidst horrors, who keep the diseased ox in view with a sort of
stealthy, wolfish “eye to business.”

The dying ox, with the drover, and the Inspector, having slowly made
their way through the usual market difficulties, and (to those who are
not used to it) the equally revolting horrors of the outskirts, finally
get into Sharp’s Alley, and enter the terrific den of the licensed
horse-slaughter-house.

It is a large knacker’s yard, furnished with all the usual apparatus for
slaughtering diseased or worn-out horses, and plentifully bestrewn with
the reeking members and frightful refuse of the morning’s work. But even
before the eye,—usually the first and quickest organ in action,—has time
to glance round, the sense of smell is not only assailed, but taken by
storm, with a most horrible, warm, moist, effluvium, so offensive, and
at the same time so peculiar and potent, that it requires no small
resolution in any one, not accustomed to it, to remain a minute within
its precincts. Three of the corners are completely filled up with a heap
of dead horses lying upon their backs, with their hoofs sticking bolt
upright; while two other angles in the yard are filled with a mass of
bodies and fragments, whose projecting legs and other members serve as
stretchers for raw skins,—flayed from their companions, or from
themselves, lying all discoloured, yet in all colours, beneath. By this
means the skins are stretched out to dry. A few live animals are in the
yard. There is one horse—waiting for his turn—as the ox-party come in;
his knees are bent, his head is bowed towards the slushy ground, his
dripping mane falling over his face, and almost reaching with its lank
end to the dark muddled gore in which his fore hoofs are planted. A
strange, ghastly, rattling sound, apparently from the adjoining
premises, is kept up without intermission; a sort of inconceivably rapid
devil’s-tattoo, by way of accompaniment to the hideous scene.

Two dead horses are being skinned; but all the other animals—of the
four-footed class we mean—are bullocks, in different stages of disease,
and they are seven in number. These latter have not been condemned by
the Inspector, but have been brought here to undergo a last effort for
the purpose of being made saleable—washed and scrubbed, so as to have
the chance of finding a purchaser by torchlight at some very low price;
and failing in this, to be killed before they die, or cut up as soon
after they die as possible. They were all distinguished by slang terms
according to the nature and stage of their diseases. The two best of
these bad bullocks are designated as “choppers;” the three next, whose
hides are torn in several places, are called “rough-uns;” while those
who are in a drooping and reeking condition, with literally a
death-sweat all over them, are playfully called “wet-uns.” To this
latter class belongs our poor ox, who is now brought in, and formally
introduced by the Inspector, as diseased, and _condemned_. The others he
does not see—or, at least, does not notice—his business being with the
ox, who was the last comer. Having thus performed his duty, the
Inspector retires!

But what _is_ this ceaseless rattling tattoo that is kept up in the
adjoining premises? The walls vibrate with it! Machinery of some kind?
Yes—it is a chopping machine; and here you behold the “choppers,” both
horses and diseased bullocks, who will shortly be in a fit state for
promotion, and will then be taken piece-meal next door. Ay, it is so, in
sober and dreadful seriousness. Here, in this Sharp’s Alley, you behold
the largest horse-slaughter-house in the city; and here, next door, you
will find the largest sausage manufactory in London. The two
establishments thus conveniently situated, belong to near
relations—brothers, we believe, or brothers-in-law.

Now, while the best of the diseased bullocks or “choppers” are taken to
the sausage machine, to be advantageously mixed with the choppings of
horse-flesh (to which latter ingredient the angry redness of so many
“cured” sausages, _saveloys_, and all the class of _polonies_ is
attributable), who shall venture to deny that, in the callousness of old
habits, and the boldness derived from utter impunity and profitable
success, a very considerable addition is often made to the stock of the
“choppers,” from many of the “rough-uns,” and from some of the more
sound parts of the miserable “wet-uns?” Verily this thing may be—“’tis
apt, and of great credit,” to the City of London.

But a few words must be said of the “closing scene” of our poor
condemned ox. We would, most willingly, have passed this over, leaving
it to the imagination of the reader; but as no imagination would be at
all likely to approach the fact, we hope we shall be rendering a service
to common humanity in doing some violence to our own, and the readers’
feelings, by exposing such scenes to the gaze of day.

Owing to some press of business, the ox was driven to a neighbouring
slaughter-house in the Alley. He was led to the fatal spot, sufficiently
indicated, even amidst all the rest of the sanguinary floor, by its
frightful condition. They placed him in the usual way; the slaughterman
approached with his pole-axe, and swinging it round in a half-jocose and
reckless manner, to hide his want of practice and skill, he struck the
ox a blow on one side of his head, which only made him sink with a groan
on his knees, and sway over on one side. In this attitude he lay
groaning, while a torrent of blood gushed out of his mouth. He could not
be made to rise again to receive the stroke of death or further torment.
They kicked him with the utmost violence in the ribs and on the cheek
with their iron-nailed shoes, but to no purpose. They then jumped upon
him; he only continued to groan. They wrenched his already-broken tail
till they broke it again, higher up, in two places. He strove to rise,
but sank down as before. Finally they had recourse to the following
torture: they closed his nostrils with wet cloths, held tightly up by
both hands, so that no breath could escape, and they then poured a
bucketful of dirty slaughter-house water into his mouth and down his
throat, till with the madness of suffocation the wretched animal was
roused to a momentary struggle for life, and with a violent fling of the
head, which scattered all his torturers, and all their apparatus of wet
rags and buckets, he rose frantically upon his legs. The same
slaughterman now advanced once more with his pole-axe, and dealt a blow,
but again missed his mark, striking only the side of the head. A third
blow was more deliberately levelled at him, and this the ox, by an
instinct of nature, evaded by a side movement as the axe descended. The
slaughterman, enraged beyond measure, and yet more so by the jeers of
his companions, now repeated his blows in quick succession, not one of
which was effective, but only produced a great rising tumour. The
elasticity of this tumour which defeated a death-blow, added to the
exhaustion of the slaughterman’s strength, caused this scene of
barbarous butchery to be protracted to the utmost, and the groaning and
writhing ox did not fall prostrate till he had received as many as
fifteen blows. What followed cannot be written.

It is proper to add that scenes like these, resulting from want of skill
in the slaughterman, are by no means so common in Smithfield, as in some
other markets—Whitechapel more especially. But they occur occasionally
in an equal or less degree, in every market of the metropolis.

The two haggard, wolf-eyed fellows who had prowled after the ox, and his
Inspector, now step forward and purchase the bruised and diseased corpse
of the slaughtered (murdered) animal, and carry it away to be sold to
the poor, in small lots by gas-light, on Saturday nights, or in the form
of soup; and to the rich, in the disguise of a well-seasoned English
German-sausage, or other delicious preserved meat! So much for the
Inspector, and the amount of duty he so ably performed!

We make the following extract from a pamphlet recently published,
entitled, “An Enquiry into the present state of the Smithfield Cattle
Market, and the Dead Meat Markets of the Metropolis.”

  “The _wet-uns_ are very far gone in disease, and are so bad that those
  who have to touch them, carefully cover their hands to avoid immediate
  contact with such foul substances, naturally fearing the communication
  of poison. A servant of a respectable master butcher, about a
  twelvemonth ago, slightly scratched his finger with a bone of one of
  these diseased animals; the consequence was that he was obliged to go
  to the hospital, where he was for upwards of six weeks, and the
  surgeons all agreed that it was occasioned by the poison from the
  diseased bone. It is also a fact, that if the hands at any time come
  in contact with this meat, they are frequently so affected by the
  strong smell of the medicine which had been given to the animal when
  alive, that it is impossible for a considerable time to get rid of it;
  and yet, it will scarcely be believed, none of these poisonous
  substances are thrown away—all goes in some shape or form into the
  craving stomachs of the hungry poor, or is served up as a dainty for
  the higher classes. Even cows which die in calving, and still-born
  calves, are all brought to market and sold. Let these facts be
  gainsayed; we defy contradiction.”

We must by no means overlook the adventures and sufferings of sheep; nor
the unwholesome condition to which great numbers of them are reduced
before they are sold as human food.

A sheep is scudding and bouncing over a common, in the morning, with the
dew glistening on her fleece. She is full of enjoyment, and knows no
care in life. In the evening of the same day, she is slowly moving along
a muddy lane, among a large flock; fatigued, her wool matted with dust
and slush, her mouth parched with thirst, and one ear torn to a red rag
by the dog. He was sent to do it by the shepherd, because she had lagged
a little behind, to gaze through a gap in the hedge at a duck-pond in
the field. She has been in a constant state of fright, confusion, and
apprehension, ever since. At every shout of the shepherd’s voice, or
that of his boy, and at every bark of the dog, or sound of the rapid
pattering of his feet as he rushes by, she has expected to be again
seized, and perhaps torn to pieces. As for the passage of the dog over
her back, in one of his rushes along the backs of the flock, as they
huddle densely together near some crooked corner or cross-way—in utter
confusion as to what they are wanted to do—what they themselves want to
do—what is best to do—or what in the world is about to be done—no word
of man, or bleat of sheep, can convey any adequate impression of the
fright it causes her. On one of these occasions, when going through a
narrow turnpike, the dog is sent over their backs to worry the leaders
who are going the wrong way, and in her spring forward to escape the
touch of his devilish foot, she lacerated her side against a nail in the
gatepost, making a long wound.

The sudden pain of this causes her to leap out of the rank, up a bank;
and seeing a green field beneath, the instinct of nature makes her leap
down, and scour away. In a moment, the dog—the fury—is after her. She
puts forth all her strength, all her speed—the wind is filled with the
horrors of his voice—of the redoubling sound of his feet—he gains upon
her—she springs aside—leaps up banks—over hurdles—through hedges—but he
is close upon her;—without knowing it, she has made a circle, and is
again nearing the flock, which she reaches just as he springs upon her
shoulders and tears her again on the head, and his teeth lacerate anew
her coagulated ear. She eventually arrives at the railway station, and
is crushed into one of the market waggons; and in this state of
exhaustion, fever, and burning thirst, remains for several hours, until
she arrives in the suburbs of Smithfield. What she suffers in this place
has been already narrated, till finally she is sold, and driven off to
be slaughtered. The den where this last horror is perpetrated (for in
what other terms can we designate all these unnecessary brutalities?) is
usually a dark and loathsome cellar. A slanting board is sometimes
placed, down which the sheep are forced. But very often there is no such
means of descent, and our poor jaded, footsore, wounded sheep—all foul
and fevered, and no longer fit food for man—is seized in the half-naked
blood-boltered arms of a fellow in a greasy red nightcap, and flung down
the cellar, both her fore-legs being broken by the fall. She is
instantly clutched by the ruffians below—dragged to a broad and dripping
bench—flung upon it, on her back—and then the pallid face and patient
eye looks upward!—and is understood.

And shall not we also—the denizens of a Christian land—understand it?
Shall we not say—“Yes, poor victim of man’s necessities of food, we know
that your death is one of the means whereby we continue to exist—one of
the means whereby our generations roll onward in their course to some
higher states of knowledge and civilisation—one of the means whereby we
gain time to fill, to expand, and to refine the soul, and thus to make
it more fitting for its future abode. But, knowing this, we yet must
recognise in you, a fellow-creature of the earth, dwelling in our sight,
and often close at our side, and trusting us—a creature ever harmless,
and ever useful to us, both for food and clothing; nor do we deserve the
good with which you supply us, nor even the proud name of Man, if we do
not, at the same time, recognise your rightful claim to our humane
considerations.”

In the course of last year, there were sold in Smithfield Market, the
enormous number of two hundred and thirty-six thousand cattle; and one
million, four hundred and seventeen thousand sheep. A practical
authority has curiously calculated the number of serious and extensive
bruises, caused by sheer brutality, rather than any accidents, in the
course of a year. He finds that the amount could not be less than five
hundred and twelve thousand. These are only the body-bruises, and do not
include any of the various cruelties of blows and cuts on the nose,
hocks, horns, tails, ears, legs, &c. Of course, this fevered and bruised
flesh rapidly decomposes, and is no longer fit for human food. The flesh
of many an animal out of Smithfield, killed on Monday, has become
diseased meat by Tuesday evening—a fact too well known. The loss on
bruised meat in the year has been calculated, by a practical man, at
three shillings a head on every bullock, and sixpence on every sheep,
making a total loss of Sixty-Three Thousand Pounds per annum. This loss,
it is to be understood, is independent of the quantity of bruised and
diseased meat, which _ought_ to be lost, but is sold at various markets,
as human food. It is also independent of the numbers of diseased calves
and pigs brought to market every week, and sold. Very much of this
diseased meat is sold publicly—in Newgate Market, and Tyler’s Market
more especially—and at any rate there is a special and regular trade
carried on in it. One soup establishment, for the working classes, is
said to carry on a business amounting to between four hundred and five
hundred pounds weekly, in diseased meat. It is also used by sausage,
polony, and saveloy makers; for meat pies, and a-la-mode beef shops; and
is very extensively by many of the concocters of preserved meats for
home and foreign consumption. It is said that one of the Arctic
Expeditions failed, chiefly, in consequence of the preserved meats
failing them. They would not keep. Is it any wonder that they would not
keep? What they were made of—wholly, or in part—has been sufficiently
shown.

  “In Newgate Market,” says the writer previously quoted, “the most
  disgraceful trade is carried on in diseased meat; as a proof of which,
  we assert that one person has been known to purchase from one hundred
  and twenty, to one hundred and thirty diseased carcases of beasts
  weekly; and when it is known that there are from twenty to thirty
  persons, at the least, engaged in this nefarious practice in this
  market alone, some idea may be formed of its extent.

  “The numbers of diseased sheep from _variola ovina_, of small-pox,
  sent to this market, are alarmingly on the increase, and it is much to
  be feared that this complaint is naturalised among our English flocks.
  It is very much propagated in the metropolis. It is an acknowledged
  fact that upwards of one hundred sheep in this state were weekly, and
  for a considerable period, consigned for sale from one owner, who had
  purchased largely from abroad, and this took place at the early part
  of the present year (1848), and was one of the causes of the inquiry
  in Parliament, and the subsequent act.

  “An Inspector is appointed to this market with full powers, acting
  under a deputation from the Lord Mayor; but the duties of the office
  must be of a very difficult nature, and probably _interfere materially
  with the other avocations_ of the Inspector, as we find but little
  evidence of his activity. Compare our statement above with the return
  laid before the Board of Trade, and it will appear that of fifty
  diseased carcases not one on an average is seized.

  “Close adjoining to Newgate Market, is Tyler’s Market, it is only
  separated by Warwick Lane. This market is said to be private property,
  and that no Inspector has ever been appointed. Every description of
  diseased meat is sold here in the most undisguised manner: it is
  _celebrated_ for _diseased pork_. It has been stated by a practical
  man, one well acquainted with the facts, and fully capable of forming
  a correct opinion, that nearly one half of the pigs sold in this
  market during the pork season of 1847, ending March, 1848, was
  diseased and unfit for human food; and of all other diseased animals,
  what has been said of Newgate applies with far greater force to this
  market. In Leadenhall Market diseased meat is also sold, though not to
  the same extent. Whitechapel Market is situate to the south of the
  main or high street bearing the above name. It is rather difficult to
  describe the trade carried on here. The situation of the shops—_long,
  dark, and narrow_, with the _slaughterhouses behind_—is well adapted
  for carrying on the disgraceful practices in either a wholesale or
  retail manner to a very great extent. Some of the very worst
  description of diseased animals brought to Smithfield alive are here
  slaughtered, and large quantities of meat from the country, totally
  unfit for food, arrive in every stage of disease, and are sold by the
  pound and the stone, to a fearful extent. The following are the names
  of the other meat markets, to all of which some diseased animals and
  meat find their way,—and to _none_ of them is any Inspector
  appointed:—

  “Clare Market, retail; Newport, wholesale and retail: St. George’s,
  retail; Oxford, retail; Portman, retail; Brook’s, retail; Sheppard’s,
  retail; Boro’, retail; Carnaby, retail; Spitalfields, retail;
  Finsbury, retail. At all of these markets the meat is exposed for sale
  on Saturday evenings, under the glare of projecting gas burners; and
  the poor, who receive their wages on that day, and are the principal
  customers, are deceived by its appearance in this light; their object
  is of course to obtain the cheapest and the most economical joints;
  the meat without fat, which is generally most diseased, is selected by
  them, being considered the most profitable, though the fact is that
  this species of meat has been proved to be the cause of cancerous
  diseases, and diseases of the chest and lungs.”

The above was attested by one of the witnesses before the Committee of
1828. To think of these abominations having gone on regularly ever
since! Why, it looks as though our legislators had received a
communication from one of the Inspectors, assuring honourable gentlemen
that “it was all nonsense, all this talk about diseased meat! If the
meat was now and then a little queer—though _he_ had never seen such a
thing—none of the poor were any the worse for eating it!” But we will
answer for one thing;—the Inspector never breathed a word about the
_preserved meats_ which so frequently present themselves with a modest
air in purple and white china as delicacies for rich men’s tables!

The _foreign stock_, and the circumstances under which they arrive, must
not be passed over. They are confined during four or five, or even six
days, in the dark and stifling hold of the vessel, and it frequently
occurs that in all this time there is scarcely any food given them (we
are assured, on good authority, that there is often _none_) nor one drop
of water. The condition in which they arrive may be conjectured. Besides
the extensive preparations for the Monday’s market, which are made by
the drovers and salesmen of the home stock during Sunday, the
desecration of the “day of rest” is immensely increased by the supply of
foreign stock, which arrives at the railway at the same time. Foreign
vessels, (we are quoting from evidence before a Committee) bringing
cattle, endeavour to arrive here on Sunday as early as possible, in
order that the salesman may see the stock before the animals are brought
into the market. There is also a very large supply of calves from
Holland, which are all carted from Blackwall; and the confusion and
uproar there, and at Brewer’s Quay on a Sunday morning, passes all
belief. Great quantities of cattle are also sent on Sunday in order to
avoid the expense of _lairage_, or standing-room. About two thousand men
and boys are employed in this real Sunday desecration. Need we say, it
is of the most shocking and cruel nature? _Here_ is something really
worthy of the storm that is so much wasted on minor matters in this
much-vexed question.




                            CLASS OPINIONS.

                                A FABLE.


A Lamb strayed for the first time into the woods, and excited much
discussion among other animals. In a mixed company, one day, when he
became the subject of a friendly gossip, the goat praised him.

“Pooh!” said the lion, “this is too absurd. The beast is a pretty beast
enough, but did you hear him roar? I heard him roar, and, by the manes
of my fathers, when he roars he does nothing but cry ba-a-a!” And the
lion bleated his best in mockery, but bleated far from well.

“Nay,” said the deer, “I do not think so badly of his voice. I liked him
well enough until I saw him leap. He kicks with his hind legs in
running, and, with all his skipping, gets over very little ground.”

“It is a bad beast altogether,” said the tiger. “He cannot roar, he
cannot run, he can do nothing—and what wonder? I killed a man yesterday,
and, in politeness to the new comer, offered him a bit; upon which he
had the impudence to look disgusted, and say, ‘No, sir, I eat nothing
but grass.’”

So the beasts criticised the Lamb, each in his own way; and yet it was a
good Lamb, nevertheless.




               THE REGISTRAR-GENERAL ON “LIFE” IN LONDON.


The Modern Babylon, so great in other things, has a giant’s appetite for
mortality. On an average, a thousand persons die in London weekly, and
are, as a rule, buried under the ground on which they fall. In old days
there was no general record of the character and locality of this great
concentrated mortality; but since the establishment of our present
system of registration of births, marriages, and deaths, we are able to
test not only how many people die, but where they die and what they die
of; and are able to tell moreover, to a considerable extent, how far the
mortality may be ascribed to inevitable and how far to removable causes.
We can now, in fact, almost say, how many die by the folly of man and
how many by the law of nature.

The volumes in which this information is given are by no means
attractive at a first glance. They appear under the authority of a
government office, and contain column after column and page after page
of forbidding-looking figures, printed in the smallest and closest of
type. Yet these account-books, in which the business done by the great
destroyer is posted up from day to day, and year to year, contain some
highly curious and important facts.

The average of a thousand deaths a week in London is by no means evenly
distributed over the year, or over all parts of the metropolis. Each
season and each parish has its peculiarities. Nor is mortality spread
evenly over the various years of life, for the grim tyrant has a special
appetite for humanity at particular ages.

We have already, in some words about weather wisdom, spoken of certain
diagrams in which the changes of our English seasons have been
delineated, and in which the characteristics of succeeding years are
shown by curved lines. At the Registrar-General’s sanctum—a quiet office
in the quietest part of Somerset House—Mr. Farr has reduced those curves
to circles, and the results display themselves in the shape of coloured
diagrams, showing the varying temperature of years, and the degree in
which temperature influences mortality. The mean temperature of the year
arrives in spring about the 115th day, and in autumn about the 293rd day
of the year. The coldest period is the first three weeks in January, the
hottest days being from about the 200th to the 220th of the year. In the
diagrams that exhibit these facts, certain spaces represent each one
hundred deaths, and we soon see how much more favourable to life in
England warm weather is than cold. In hot countries the reverse is the
rule, hot seasons being fatal seasons, because excess at either end of
the scale it is which does the mischief. In England the plague and other
epidemics, which made such havoc amongst our forefathers were brought to
killing intensity, in unusually hot seasons. But deficient as our
sanitary regulations now are, they have been so greatly improved within
the last century or two, that summer is no longer our period of greatest
average mortality, unless we suffer from some terrible visitant like
cholera, and then, of course, all ordinary calculations are set at
nought. Moderation suits all human beings. Our excess of heat or of cold
raises the mortality; moderate warmth being more favourable, however,
than moderate cold.

Mortality in the Metropolis seems regulated by a variety of
circumstances, the principal being the elevation of each district above
the level of the river Thames; the number of persons who live in the
same house; the size and character of the house as regards ventilation
and cleanliness; the state of the sewerage; the number of paupers in the
neighbourhood; and the abundant and good, or scanty and bad, supply of
water. Each London parish has its rank and value in the registrar’s
records of health and death; and the figures are so exact, that there is
no evading the verdict they pronounce. At first thought, one might be
inclined to expect that all the health would be found where all the
wealth and fashion are congregated. But it is not so. As a rule, those
districts stand well whose inhabitants are most blessed with the good
things of this life, but, running through the catalogue as arranged in
the order of their salubrity, we find some localities above the average
of health—nay, one at the very top—which fashion knows nothing of.

In these statements of the registrar, the different districts of the
Metropolis are placed in a list according to their healthiness, those in
which the fewest persons die in a year out of a given equal number,
standing first, followed by those next in sanitary order, until we come
down to those which are but just above the average for all London.
Passing that Rubicon, we see the names of those parishes in which death
gets more than his proper proportion of victims every year; and then,
one after another, down, down the list, until we reach its lowest
depths, in those places where filth and fever reign paramount, and where
such a destroyer as Cholera finds hundreds of victims already weakened
by previous unhealthy influences, and ready to fall a rapid and easy
prey.

Let us go through this graduated scale, that shows how health and
disease struggle for the mastery, and how death turns the balance.

First on the list stands Lewisham, a large parish stretching from
Blackheath across the open hilly fields towards Norwood, and including
the hamlet of Sydenham. Its rural character, scattered population, and
good water, explain its pre-eminence on the sanitary scale. The second
name on the list carries us at once from a green suburban parish to one
of the centres of fashion and aristocracy,—to St. George, Hanover
Square. The presence of this parish, so high up on the scale, is due to
several circumstances; and its claims to such prominence are more
artificial than those of its rural competitor for the palm of
healthfulness. The scale is made out from the census of 1841, which was
taken during the height of the London season, when St. George’s was of
course much fuller than it is on the general average of the year. Its
population, too, is to a great extent composed of servants “in place,”
and, therefore, generally young and in good health, and who, when
dangerously sick, are sent to the hospitals, or to the country to die.
The masters and mistresses of St. George’s, also, are so circumstanced,
that when in bad health they can try the sea-air, or retire to country
seats. All these facts tend to lessen the mortality of the district, and
thus tend to place it high up on the sanitary scale. Its advantages are,
an average elevation of forty-nine feet above the high water mark of the
Thames; its neighbourhood to the parks; its wide open streets; a supply
of water drawn from a Company whose system of filtration is very good; a
comparatively thin population, compared with its extent, there being, in
this parish, only sixty-six persons to an acre; and the size and
character of its houses, which return an average rental of 153_l._ a
year.

From the fashionable “west end” we have to travel to a suburban spot for
the third place in rank on the health-scale. It is the sub-district of
Hampstead. All who have been upon its breezy heath, with its elevation
three or four hundred feet above the river, and its open view of the
surrounding country, will readily understand why Hampstead should rank
high in salubrity—though its average of rental may be low, and though
more persons (as they do) live in each house than in the houses of
Bermondsey and Rotherhithe.

Fourth on the list comes Hackney, which has only thirteen persons to an
acre. This advantage will be seen more strongly, when we know that
Hampstead has but six, and Lewisham, but two; whilst East London has two
hundred and eighty, and Southwark, one hundred and sixty-five persons
per acre. Hackney also has water from the New River, a comparatively
pure source; and, though its houses are small, with a rental of but
35_l._, the number of occupants to each is but seven.

For the fifth in order of salubrity we have again to cross the Thames.
It is Camberwell. This parish lies very low, being only four feet above
the water mark; but, then, it is fringed on one side by the open
country; is sheltered from cold winds; is thinly peopled, having only
twelve persons to an acre, and only six occupants to a house. Its
drainage is, almost necessarily, bad, but its neighbourhood to the green
fields compensates for many sanitary evils.

Wandsworth, with a burden of poor rates almost equal in poundage to that
inflicted upon Southwark and Lambeth comes next. The recommendations of
Wandsworth are, a population of only four to an acre. This indication of
ample open spaces explains the general healthiness of the parish. Its
position and bad drainage have rendered it liable to very heavy loss
from epidemics. Cholera found a larger proportion of victims in
Wandsworth than in the densest peopled parish on the north of the river.

“Merry Islington” ranks only seventh in spite of its high and dry
position, and its New River water, and its neighbouring fields. Its
elevation is eighty-eight feet above the river; its density of
population, twenty-five to an acre; its average rental 35_l._; its
annual deaths, one in fifty.

Kensington and Chelsea follow next, and with them are included Brompton,
Hammersmith, and Fulham. They all lie low, but are in pleasant company
with fields and open spaces; their people are well to do in the world,
and a large portion drink good water.

The City of London district—that is, the portion of the city round about
the Mansion House, and including the houses and warehouses of the rich
traders, who cluster near the Lord Mayor’s chosen dwelling-place—comes
next in order. This is explained by the elevation of the ground, which
is thirty-eight feet above the river; by the value of the property
(average rental 117_l._) which excludes the poor; by the fact that the
Lord Mayor and his neighbours do not drink Thames water; and that their
wealth enables them to live well, and to obtain the best medical
aid,—both for rich and poor. The most affluent also reside out of town,
and many of their old people are drafted off in their old age to
alms-houses, and to country unions. The mortality of this part of the
city is two hundred and fourteen a year out of ten thousand living.

Next after the neighbourhood of the civic ruler, we have the locality
which has been chosen for the palace of the sovereign—St. James’s. The
population of this parish is dense,—being two hundred and nine to an
acre, though its rentals are high. The palace stands in by no means the
best portion of the district, but the saving points are the parks and
the absence of Thames water.

St. Pancras follows St. James’s, its recommendations being an elevation
of eighty feet above the river, and a population not one-third so
closely packed as that of the parish occupied by the palace. Its density
is sixty persons to an acre. Pancras, however, has many poor, and
consequently heavy rates.

Marylebone, its neighbour, claims to follow Pancras, with a greater
elevation and a better class of houses, yet with bad drainage and a
heavier mortality. In Marylebone two hundred and twenty-two persons die
in a year out of ten thousand. The population is more dense than in the
poorer district of Pancras, but the near neighbourhood of Regent’s Park
and open country about Primrose Hill has, of course, a favourable
influence.

We have now to re-cross the river for the thirteenth place upon this
London Sanitary Scale. It is Newington, a suburban parish, with a level
two feet below the water mark, and with bad water, yet having fewer
deaths than more noted and more wealthy quarters. Like Wandsworth,
however, it suffered severely from Cholera, as its swampy position would
lead one to expect.

The district round the palace of the Archbishop—Lambeth—follows next in
order. It is raised but a very few feet above the high water level; its
rents are low, its poor rates high, its nuisances many; and its water
supply bad. But it has the air-draught from the river on one side, and
it is not very far from the fields on the other; and more than all, it
has but thirty-nine persons to an acre, and so it escapes with fewer
deaths in a year than its unfavourable position would lead one to
anticipate. It is, however, another of those spots where Cholera made
great havoc.

From what may be called one river side extremity of South London, we
skip over the central water-side parishes, and go to the opposite
extremity of the metropolis to find at Greenwich our next healthiest
district. Like Lambeth, this place lies low, is badly drained, and has a
poor class of houses, and consequently of people. The secret of its
position on the scale of health is to be found in the fact that the
population is not dense, being only twenty-one to an acre; that it has a
fine park for a playground, and is in near neighbourhood to Blackheath,
and thence to the open and healthy hills and fields of Kent.

Now we must return again to the centre of London for its next most
healthy parish. It is St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields; but having, it is
almost needless to say, no rural character, except by name. Trafalgar
Square, with its fountains, is almost its only enjoyable open space. The
density of population is not over great for such a position; the rental
high; the deaths two hundred and forty to ten thousand living each year.

Away east again for our next and last parish that stands above the
general average of London. Stepney is the place, with its multitude of
small houses at low rentals. It has its water from the river Lea, and
its inhabitants have not very far to go when they wish for a ramble in
the fields. Its yearly contribution to our total mortality is two
hundred and forty-two out of ten thousand souls.

And here a dark line has to be drawn; for Stepney is close down upon the
average mortality of all London. Each parish already named pays less
than the average tribute to death—those presently to be enumerated pay
more. The contributions vary from Clerkenwell, which is the least
unhealthy on the black list to Whitechapel, which is the most unhealthy.
This last parish indeed is the worst in all the metropolis. Between the
two extremes of insalubrity, the districts range in the following order:
Clerkenwell, brought down in the scale by its nests of poverty, and
doubtless, by its huge over-gorged grave-yard. Bethnal Green, with its
host of small houses, and average rental of only 9_l._ The Strand—the
great thoroughfare of fine shops—with a back neighbourhood of filthy
alleys and riverside abominations. Shoreditch, with its stock of poor
people and old clothes. Westminster—regal, historical Westminster—raised
but two feet above the water level, and famous alike for its abbey, its
palace, and its rookeries. Bermondsey, just level with the water line,
and poisoned by open drains and unsavoury factories. Rotherhithe, damp
and foggy. St. Giles’s, another spot renowned for vice, poverty, and
dirt. St. George’s, Southwark, low, poor, and densely crowded. Next come
the two portions of the City of London, technically described as East
London and West London, being in fact those parts beyond the centre
surrounding the Mansion House—the portions indeed especially indulged
with the frowsiness of Cripplegate and the choked-up smells of
Leadenhall; the abominations of Smithfield; the exhalations of the Fleet
ditch; the fever-engendering closeness of the courts off Fleet Street;
and the smoky, ill-smelling sinuosities of Whitefriars. Next below these
“City of London districts” we have Holborn, with a density of two
hundred and thirty-seven to an acre, and a yearly mortality of two
hundred and sixty-six to ten thousand living. Then St. George’s in the
East, with a population far less closely packed than that of Holborn,
yet sending two hundred and eighty-nine souls to judgment every year out
of ten thousand living. Next St. Saviour’s and St. Olave’s, the two
other Southwark parishes who drink Thames water taken from the stream
near their own bridge, and therefore below the Fleet ditch. St. Luke’s,
the locality of another rookery. And, lastly, the zero of this register,
Whitechapel—with its shambles, its poverty, its vice, and its heavy
quota of two hundred and ninety deaths a year out of ten thousand
living.

This glance at the results displayed in the registrar’s thick volume of
figures, published last year, gives us not only an idea of the curious
information to be gleaned from the labours of Mr. Farr and his brother
officers, but shows also how unevenly death visits the different
portions of our huge city. If from our family of two millions the
destroyer takes a thousand souls a week to their final account, the
first and most certain to fall victims are those who, from ignorance, or
recklessness, or poverty, outrage the natural laws by which alone health
and life can be preserved.

A comparison between the chances of death which the Londoner runs as
compared with those suffered by his fellow countrymen in other districts
of England, might be put familiarly somewhat after this fashion. If a
man’s acquaintances were fixed at fifty-two in number, and they lived in
scattered places over England, he would annually lose one by death in
forty-five. If they lived in the southeastern counties, the loss would
be at the lower rate of one in fifty-two. If they all lived in London,
he would lose one out of thirty-nine.

This additional mortality is the penalty now being, day by day,
inflicted upon sinners against sanitary laws in the English metropolis.




                                  BED.

                   “Oh, Sleep! it is a gentle thing,
                     Beloved from pole to pole!”


Was the heart’s cry of the Ancient Mariner at the recollection of the
blessed moment when the fearful curse of life in death fell off him and
the heavenly sleep first “slid into his soul.” “Blessings on sleep!”
said honest Sancho Panza: “it wraps one all round like a mantle!”—a
mantle for the weary human frame, lined softly, as with the down of the
eider-duck, and redolent of the soothing odours of the poppy. The fabled
Cave of Sleep was in the Land of Darkness. No ray of the sun, or moon,
or stars, ever broke upon that night without a dawn. The breath of
somniferous flowers floated in on the still air from the grotto’s mouth.
Black curtains hung round the ever-sleeping god; the Dreams stood around
his couch; Silence kept watch at the portals. Take the winged Dreams
from the picture, and what is left? The sleep of matter.

The dreams that come floating through our sleep, and fill the dormitory
with visions of love or terror—what are they? Random freaks of the
fancy? Or is sleep but one long dream, of which we see only fragments,
and remember still less? Who shall explain the mystery of that loosening
of the soul and body, of which night after night whispers to us, but
which day after day is unthought of? Reverie, sleep, trance—such are the
stages between the world of man and the world of spirits. Dreaming but
deepens as we advance. Reverie deepens into the dreams of sleep—sleep
into trance—trance borders on death. As the soul retires from the outer
senses, as it escapes from the trammels of the flesh, it lives with
increased power within. Spirit grows more spirit-like as matter
slumbers. We can follow the development up to the last stage. What is
beyond?

         “And in that _sleep of death_, what dreams may come!”

says Hamlet—pausing on the brink of eternity, and vainly striving to
scan the inscrutable. Trance is an awful counterpart of sleep and
death—mysterious in itself, appalling in its hazards. Day after day
noise has been hushed in the dormitory—month after month it has seen a
human frame grow weaker and weaker, wanner, more deathlike, till the
hues of the grave coloured the face of the living. And now he lies,
motionless, pulseless, breathless. It is not sleep—is it death?

Leigh Hunt is said to have perpetrated a very bad pun connected with the
dormitory, and which made Charles Lamb laugh immoderately. Going home
together late one night, the latter repeated the well-known proverb, “A
home’s a home, however homely.” “Aye,” added Hunt, “and a bed’s a bed
however _bedly_.” It is a strange thing, a bed. Somebody has called it a
bundle of paradoxes: we go to it reluctantly, and leave it with regret.
Once within the downy precincts of the four posts, how loth we are to
make our exodus into the wilderness of life. We are as enamoured of our
curtained dwelling as if it were the Land of Goshen or the Cave of
Circe. And how many fervent vows have those dumb posts heard broken!
every fresh perjury rising to join its cloud of hovering fellows, each
morning weighing heavier and heavier, on our sluggard eyelids. A caustic
proverb says;—we are all “good risers at night;” but woe’s me for our
agility in the morning. It is a failing of our species, ever ready to
break out in all of us, and in some only vanquished after a struggle
painful as the sundering of bone and marrow. The Great Frederic of
Prussia found it easier, in after life, to rout the French and
Austrians, than in youth to resist the seductions of sleep. After many
single-handed attempts at reformation, he had at last to call to his
assistance an old domestic, whom he charged, on pain of dismissal, to
pull him out of bed every morning at two o’clock. The plan succeeded, as
it deserved to succeed. All men of action are impressed with the
importance of early rising. “When you begin to turn in bed, its time to
turn out,” says the old Duke; and we believe his practice has been in
accordance with his precept. Literary men—among whom, as Bulwer says, a
certain indolence seems almost constitutional—are not so clear upon this
point: they are divided between Night and Morning, though the best
authorities seem in favour of the latter. Early rising is the best
_elixir vitæ_: it is the only lengthener of life that man has ever
devised. By its aid the great Buffon was able to spend half a century—an
ordinary lifetime—at his desk; and yet had time to be the most modish of
all the philosophers who then graced the gay metropolis of France.

Sleep is a treasure and a pleasure; and, as you love it, guide it
warily. Over-indulgence is ever suicidal, and destroys the pleasure it
means to gratify. The natural times for our lying down and rising up are
plain enough. Nature teaches us, and unsophisticated mankind followed
her. Singing birds and opening flowers hail the sunrise, and the hush of
groves and the closed eyelids of the parterre mark his setting. But “man
hath sought out many inventions.” We prolong our days into the depths of
night, and our nights into the splendour of day. It is a strange result
of civilisation! It is not merely occasioned by that thirst for varied
amusement which characterises an advanced stage of society—it is not
that theatres, balls, dancing, masquerades, require an artificial light,
for all these are or have been equally enjoyed elsewhere beneath the eye
of day. What _is_ the cause, we really are not philosopher enough to
say; but the prevalence of the habit must have given no little pungency
to honest Benjamin Franklin’s joke, when, one summer, he announced to
the Parisians as a great discovery—that the sun rose each morning at
four o’clock; and that, whereas, they burnt no end of candles by sitting
up at night, they might rise in the morning and have light for nothing.
Franklin’s “discovery,” we dare say, produced a laugh at the time, and
things went on as before. Indeed so universal is this artificial
division of day and night, and so interwoven with it are the social
habits, that we shudder at the very idea of returning to the natural
order of things. A Robespierre could not carry through so stupendous a
revolution. Nothing less than an avatar of Siva the Destroyer—Siva with
his hundred arms, turning off as many gaspipes, and replenishing his
necklace of human skulls by decapitating the leading conservatives—could
have any chance of success; and, ten to one, with our gassy splendours,
and seducing glitter, we should convert that pagan devil ere half his
work was done.

But of all the inventions which perverse ingenuity has sought out, the
most incongruous, the most heretical against both nature and art, is
Reading in Bed. Turning rest into labour, learning into ridicule. A man
had better be up. He is spoiling two most excellent things by attempting
to join them. Study and sleep—how incongruous! It is an idle coupling of
opposites, and shocks a sensible man as much as if he were to meet in
the woods the apparition of a winged elephant. Only fancy an elderly or
middle-aged man (for youth is generally orthodox on this point,) sitting
up in bed, spectacles on his nose, a Kilmarnock on his head, and his
flannel jacket round his shivering shoulders,—doing what? Reading? It
may be so—but he winks so often, possibly from the glare of the candle,
and the glasses now and then slip so far down on his nose, and his hand
now and then holds the volume so unsteadily, that if he himself didn’t
assure us to the contrary, we should suppose him half asleep. We are
sure it must be a great relief to him when the neglected book at last
tumbles out of bed, to such a distance that he cannot recover it.

Nevertheless, we have heard this extraordinary custom excused on the no
less extraordinary ground of its being a soporific. For those who
require such things, Marryat gives a much simpler recipe—namely, to
mentally repeat any scraps of poetry you can recollect; if your own, so
much the better. The monks of old, in a similar emergency, used to
repeat the seven Penitential Psalms. Either of these plans, we doubt
not, will be found equally efficacious, if one is able to use them—if
anxiety of mind does not divert him from his task, or the lassitude of
illness disable him for attempting it. Sleep, alas! is at times fickle
and coy; and, like most sublunary friends, forsakes us when most wanted.
Reading in that repertory of many curious things, the “Book of the
Farm,” we one day met with the statement that “a pillow of hops will
ensure sleep to a patient in a delirious fever when every other
expedient fails.” We made a note of it. Heaven forbid that the recipe
should ever be needed for us or ours! but the words struck a chord of
sympathy in our heart with such poor sufferers, and we saddened with the
dread of that awful visitation. The fever of delirium! when incoherent
words wander on the lips of genius; when the sufferer stares strangely
and vacantly on his ministering friends, or starts with freezing horror
from the arms of familiar love! Ah! what a dread tenant has the
dormitory then. No food taken for the body, no sleep for the brain! a
human being surging with diabolic strength against his keepers—a human
frame gifted with superhuman vigour only the more rapidly to destroy
itself! Less fearful to the eye, but more harrowing to the soul, is the
dormitory whose walls enclose the sleepless victim of Remorse. No
poppies or mandragora for him! His malady ends only with the fever of
life. _Ends?_ Grief, anxiety, “the thousand several ills that flesh is
heir to,” pass away before the lapse of time or the soothings of love,
and sleep once more folds its dove-like wings above the couch.

“If there be a regal solitude,” says Charles Lamb, “it is a bed. How the
patient lords it there; what caprices he acts without control! How
king-like he sways his pillow,—tumbling and tossing, and shifting and
lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and moulding it to the
ever-varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. He changes _sides_
oftener than a politician. Now he lies full length, then half-length,
obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite across the bed; and none
accuses him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute.
They are his Mare Clausum. How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a
man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme
selfishness is inculcated on him as his only duty. ’Tis the two Tables
of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but how to get well. What
passes out of doors or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them,
affects him not.”

In this climate a sight of the sun is prized; but we love to see it most
from bed. A dormitory fronting the east, therefore, so that the early
sunbeams may rouse us to the dewy beauties of morning, we love. Let
there also be festooned roses without the window, that on opening it the
perfume may pervade the realms of bed. Our night-bower should be
simple—neat as a fairy’s cell, and ever perfumed with the sweet air of
heaven. It is not a place for showy things, or costly. As fire is the
presiding genius in other rooms, so let water, symbol of purity, be in
the ascendant here; water, fresh and unturbid as the thoughts that here
make their home—water, to wash away the dust and sweat of a weary world.
Let no _fracas_ disturb the quiet of the dormitory. We go there for
repose. Our tasks and our cares are left outside, only to be put on
again with our hat and shoes in the morning. It is an asylum from the
bustle of life—it is the inner shrine of our household gods—and should
be respected accordingly. We never entered during the ordinary process
of bed-making—pillows tossed here, blankets and sheets pitched hither
and thither in wildest confusion, chairs and pitchers in the middle of
the floor, feathers and dust everywhere—without a jarring sense that
sacrilege was going on, and that the _genius loci_ had departed. Rude
hands were profaning the home of our slumbers!

A sense of security pervades the dormitory. A healthy man in bed is free
from everything but dreams, and once in a lifetime, or after adjudging
the Cheese Premium at an Agricultural Show—the nightmare. We once heard
a worthy gentleman, blessed with a very large family of daughters,
declare he had no peace in his house except in bed. There we feel as if
in a City of Refuge, secure alike from the brawls of earth and the
storms of heaven. Lightning, say old ladies, won’t come through
blankets. Even tigers, says Humboldt, “will not attack a man in his
hammock.” Hitting a man when he’s down is stigmatised as villainous all
the world over; and lions will rather sit with an empty stomach for
hours than touch a man before he awakes. Tricks upon a sleeper! Oh,
villainous! Every perpetrator of such unutterable treachery should be
put beyond the pale of society. The First of April should have no place
in the calendar of the dormitory. We would have the maxim “Let sleeping
dogs lie,” extended to the human race. And an angry dog, certainly, is a
man roused needlessly from his slumbers. What an outcry we Northmen
raised against the introduction of Greenwich time, which defrauded us of
fifteen minutes’ sleep in the morning; and how indiscriminate the
objurgations lavished upon printers’ devils! Of all sinners against the
nocturnal comfort of literary men, these imps are the foremost; and
possibly it was from their malpractices in such matters that they first
acquired their diabolic cognomen.

The nightcap is not an elegant head-dress, but its comfort is
undeniable. It is a diadem of night; and what tranquillity follows our
self-coronation! It is priceless as the invisible cap of Fortunatus;
and, viewless beneath its folds, our cares cannot find us out. It is
graceless. Well; what then? It is not meant for the garish eye of day,
nor for the quizzing-glass of our fellow-men, or of the ridiculing race
of women; neither does it outrage any taste for the beautiful in the
happy sleeper himself. We speak as bachelors, to whom the pleasures of a
manifold existence are unknown. Possibly the æsthetics of night are not
uncared for when a man has another self to please, and when a pair of
lovely eyes are fixed admiringly on his upper story; but such is the
selfishness of human nature, that we suspect this abnegation of comfort
will not long survive the honeymoon. The French, ever enamoured of
effect, and who, we verily believe, even _sleep_ “_posé_,” sometimes
substitute the many-coloured silken handkerchief for the graceless
“_bonnet-de-nuit_.” But all such substitutes are less comfortable and
more troublesome; and of all irritating things, the most irritating is a
complex operation in undressing. Æsthetics at night, and for the weary!
No, no. The weary man frets at every extra button or superfluous knot,
he counts impatiently every second that keeps him from his couch, and
flies to the arms of sleep as to those of his mistress. Nevertheless,
French novelette writers make a great outcry against nightcaps. We
remember an instance. A husband—rather a good-looking fellow—suspects
that his wife is beginning to have too tender thoughts towards a
glossy-ringletted Lothario who is then staying with them. So, having
accidentally discovered that Lothario slept in a huge peeked nightcowl,
and knowing that ridicule would prove the most effectual disenchanter,
he fastened a string to his guest’s bell, and passed it into his own
room.

At the dead of night, when all were fast asleep, suddenly Lothario’s
bell rang furiously. Upstarted the lady—“their guest must be ill;”—and
accompanied by her husband, elegantly coiffed in a turbaned silk
handkerchief, she entered the room whence the alarum had sounded. They
find Lothario sitting up in bed—his cowl rising pyramid-fashion, a
fool’s cap all but the bells—bewildered and in ludicrous consternation
at being surprised thus by the fair Angelica; and, unable to conceal his
chagrin, he completes his discomfiture by bursting out in wrathful abuse
of his laughing host for so betraying his weakness for nightcaps.

The Poetry of the Dormitory! It is an inviting but too delicate a
subject for our rough hands. Do not the very words call up a vision? By
the light of the stars we see a lovely head resting on a downy pillow;
the bloom of the rose is on that young cheek, and the half-parted lips
murmur as in a dream: “Edward!” Love is lying like light at her heart,
and its fairy wand is showing her visions. May her dreams be happy!
“Edward!” Was it a sigh that followed that gentle invocation? What would
the youth give to hear that murmur,—to gaze like yonder stars on his
slumbering love. Hush! are the morning-stars singing together—a lullaby
to soothe the dreamer? A low dulcet strain floats in through the window;
and soon, mingling with the breathings of the lute, the voice of youth.
The harmony penetrates through the slumbering senses to the dreamer’s
heart; and ere the golden curls are lifted from the pillow, she is
conscious of all. The serenade begins anew. What does she hear?

                     “Stars of the summer night!
                         Far in yon azure deeps,
                     Hide, hide your golden light!
                         She sleeps!
                     My lady sleeps!
                         Sleeps!

                     Dreams of the summer night!
                         Tell her her lover keeps
                     Watch! while in slumbers light
                         She sleeps!
                     My lady sleeps!
                         Sleeps!”[3]

Footnote 3:

  The first and last stanzas of a Serenade of Longfellow’s.




    Published at the Office, No 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
            Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 Page           Changed from                      Changed to

  320 Reisen in der Niederlanden.      Reisen in den Niederlanden.
      Travels in the Netherlands       Travels in the Netherlands

 ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
 ● Renumbered footnotes.
 ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
 ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
     single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
     1^{st}).



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