Household words, No. 2, April 6, 1850 : A weekly journal

By Charles Dickens

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Title: Household words, No. 2, April 6, 1850
        A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens


        
Release date: March 2, 2026 [eBook #78099]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78099

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


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 2, APRIL 6, 1850 ***

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

                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

       N^o. 2.]      SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1850.      [+Price+ 2_d._




                       A CHILD’S DREAM OF A STAR.


There was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought
of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and
his constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They
wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and
blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water;
they wondered at the goodness and the power of +God+ who made the
lovely world.

They used to say to one another, sometimes, Supposing all the children
upon earth were to die, would the flowers, and the water, and the sky,
be sorry? They believed they would be sorry. For, said they, the buds
are the children of the flowers, and the little playful streams that
gambol down the hill-sides are the children of the water; and the
smallest bright specks, playing at hide and seek in the sky all night,
must surely be the children of the stars; and they would all be grieved
to see their playmates, the children of men, no more.

There was one clear shining star that used to come out in the sky
before the rest, near the church spire, above the graves. It was larger
and more beautiful, they thought, than all the others, and every night
they watched for it, standing hand in hand at a window. Whoever saw
it first, cried out, “I see the star!” And often they cried out both
together, knowing so well when it would rise, and where. So they grew
to be such friends with it, that, before lying down in their beds, they
always looked out once again, to bid it good night; and when they were
turning round to sleep, they used to say, “God bless the star!”

But while she was still very young, oh very very young, the sister
drooped, and came to be so weak that she could no longer stand in the
window at night; and then the child looked sadly out by himself, and
when he saw the star, turned round and said to the patient pale face on
the bed, “I see the star!” and then a smile would come upon the face,
and a little weak voice used to say, “God bless my brother and the
star!”

And so the time came, all too soon! when the child looked out alone,
and when there was no face on the bed; and when there was a little
grave among the graves, not there before; and when the star made long
rays down towards him, as he saw it through his tears.

Now, these rays were so bright, and they seemed to make such a shining
way from earth to Heaven, that when the child went to his solitary bed,
he dreamed about the star; and dreamed that, lying where he was, he saw
a train of people taken up that sparkling road by angels. And the star,
opening, showed him a great world of light, where many more such angels
waited to receive them.

All these angels, who were waiting, turned their beaming eyes upon the
people who were carried up into the star; and some came out from the
long rows in which they stood, and fell upon the people’s necks, and
kissed them tenderly, and went away with them down avenues of light,
and were so happy in their company, that lying in his bed he wept for
joy.

But, there were many angels who did not go with them, and among them
one he knew. The patient face that once had lain upon the bed was
glorified and radiant, but his heart found out his sister among all the
host.

His sister’s angel lingered near the entrance of the star, and said to
the leader among those who had brought the people thither:

“Is my brother come?”

And he said “No.”

She was turning hopefully away, when the child stretched out his arms,
and cried “O, sister, I am here! Take me!” and then she turned her
beaming eyes upon him, and it was night; and the star was shining into
the room, making long rays down towards him as he saw it through his
tears.

From that hour forth, the child looked out upon the star as on the Home
he was to go to, when his time should come; and he thought that he did
not belong to the earth alone, but to the star too, because of his
sister’s angel gone before.

There was a baby born to be a brother to the child; and while he was so
little that he never yet had spoken word, he stretched his tiny form
out on his bed, and died.

Again the child dreamed of the opened star, and of the company of
angels, and the train of people, and the rows of angels with their
beaming eyes all turned upon those people’s faces.

Said his sister’s angel to the leader:

“Is my brother come?”

And he said “Not that one, but another.”

As the child beheld his brother’s angel in her arms, he cried, “O,
sister, I am here! Take me!” And she turned and smiled upon him, and
the star was shining.

He grew to be a young man, and was busy at his books, when an old
servant came to him, and said:

“Thy mother is no more. I bring her blessing on her darling son!”

Again at night he saw the star, and all that former company. Said his
sister’s angel to the leader:

“Is my brother come?”

And he said, “Thy mother!”

A mighty cry of joy went forth through all the star, because the mother
was re-united to her two children. And he stretched out his arms and
cried, “O, mother, sister, and brother, I am here! Take me!” And they
answered him “Not yet,” and the star was shining.

He grew to be a man, whose hair was turning grey, and he was sitting in
his chair by the fireside, heavy with grief, and with his face bedewed
with tears, when the star opened once again.

Said his sister’s angel to the leader, “Is my brother come?”

And he said, “Nay, but his maiden daughter.”

And the man who had been the child saw his daughter, newly lost to him,
a celestial creature among those three, and he said “My daughter’s head
is on my sister’s bosom, and her arm is round my mother’s neck, and at
her feet there is the baby of old time, and I can bear the parting from
her, God be praised!”

And the star was shining.

Thus the child came to be an old man, and his once smooth face was
wrinkled, and his steps were slow and feeble, and his back was bent.
And one night as he lay upon his bed, his children standing round, he
cried, as he had cried so long ago:

“I see the star!”

They whispered one another “He is dying.”

And he said, “I am. My age is falling from me like a garment, and I
move towards the star as a child. And O, my Father, now I thank thee
that it has so often opened, to receive those dear ones who await me!”

And the star was shining; and it shines upon his grave.




                     THE TRUE STORY OF A COAL FIRE.


                     IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

One winter’s evening, when the snow lay as thick as a great feather-bed
all over the garden, and was knee-deep in the meadow-hollows, a
family circle sat round a huge fire, piled up with blocks of coal of
that magnitude and profusion which are only seen at houses in the
neighbourhood of a coal-mine. It appeared as if a tram-waggon had been
‘backed’ into the room, and half its load of great loose coal shot out
into the enormous aperture in the wall which lies below the chimney and
behind the fire-place in these rural abodes. The red flames roared, and
the ale went round.

The master of the house was not exactly a farmer, but one of those
country personages who fill up the interval between the thorough farmer
and the ’squire who farms his own estate,—a sort of leather-legged,
nail-shoed old gentleman, whose elder sons might easily be mistaken
for gamekeepers, and the younger for ploughboys, but who on Sundays
took care to ‘let un see the difference’ at church. Their father was
therefore never called Farmer Dalton, but old Mr. Dalton, and almost
as frequently Billy-Pit Dalton—the coal-mine in which he held a share
being named the ‘William Pitt.’ His lands, however, were but a small
matter; his chief property was a third share he had in this coal-mine,
which was some half a mile distant from the house. His eldest son
was married, and lived close to the mine, of which he acted as the
chartermaster, or contractor with proprietors for the work to be done.

Among the family group that encircled the huge coal fire was one
visitor,—a young man from London, the nephew of old Dalton. He had
been sent down to this remote coal country by his father, in order to
separate him from associates who dissipated his time, and from pursuits
and habits that prevented his mind settling to any fixed occupation
and course of life. Flashley was a young man of kindly feelings and
good natural abilities, both of which, however, were in danger of being
spoiled.

Various efforts were made from time to time to amuse the dashing young
fellow ‘from town.’ Sometimes the old gentleman related the wonders of
the coal-mines, and the perilous adventures of the miners; and on more
than one occasion the curate of the village endeavoured to interest him
in the grand history of the early world, and especially of the period
of antediluvian forests, and their various transmutations. All in vain.
He paid no attention to them. If anything they said made any impression
at all, it was solely due to the subtle texture of the human mind,
which continually receives much more than it seeks, or has wit enough
to desire.

‘You don’t find the coal countries quite so bright and merry as London
town, do ye, Flashley?’ said old Dalton, with a good-natured smile.

‘I can’t say I do, uncle,’ answered the youth, frankly. ‘As to
merriment, that is all very well at the present moment, in front of
that great family bonfire; but all the rest of the day—’ and here
Flashley laughed with easy impudence and no small fun; ‘the house
and garden are in a state of dingy mourning, so are all the roads,
and lanes, and hedges,—in fact, the passage of lines of little black
waggons to and fro, rumbling full of coals, or rattling by, empty,
seems like the chief business of life, and the main purpose for which
men came into the world.’

‘And so they be!’ ejaculated old Dalton, jocosely; ‘so far as these
parts are concerned. You know, Flashley, the world is made up of many
parts, and this be the coal part. We be the men born to do the world’s
work of this sort; and we can’t very handsomely pass all our time
a-sitting before a shiny fire, and drinking ale,—though, that’s good o’
nights, after the work’s done.’

With this laconic homily, old Billy-Pitt Dalton rose smiling from his
chair, emptied his mug of ale, and, shaking the young man kindly by
the hand, trudged off to bed. With much the same sort of smiling ‘good
night,’ the sons all trudged after him. The good dame and her daughter
went last. Flashley remained sitting alone in front of the great fire.

He sat in silence for a long time, watching the fire decline into
great dark chasms, black holes, and rugged red precipices, with grim
smouldering chaotic heaps below.

A word or two about this young man. Flashley Dalton had some education,
which he fancied was quite enough, and was very ambitious without any
definite object. His father had proposed several professions to him,
but none of them suited him, chiefly because, to acquire eminence
in any of them, so long a time was needed. Besides, none seemed
adequate to satisfy his craving for distinction. He looked down rather
contemptuously on all ordinary pursuits. The fact was, he ardently
desired fame and fortune, but did not like to work for either. One
of the greatest injuries his mind had sustained, was from a certain
species of ‘fast literature,’ which the evil spirit of town-life has
squirted into the brains of our young men during the last three or four
years, whereby he had been taught and encouraged to laugh at everything
of serious interest, and to seek to find something ridiculous in all
ennobling efforts. If a great thing was done, he endeavoured to prove
it a little one; if a profound truth was enunciated, he sought to
make it out a lie; to him a new discovery in science was a humbug; a
generous effort, a job. If he went to see an exhibition of pictures, it
was to sneer at the most original designs; if to see a new tragedy, it
was only in the hope of its being damned. If a new work of fiction were
admirable, he talked spitefully of it, or with supercilious patronage;
and as to a noble poem, he scoffed at all such things with some slang
joke at ‘high art;’ besides, he _wrote_ himself, as many a young blade
now attempts to do, instead of beginning with a little study and some
decent reading. To Flashley all knowledge was a sort of absurdity; his
own arrogant folly seemed so much better a thing. He therefore only
read books that were like himself, and encouraged him to grow worse.
The literature of indiscriminate and reckless ridicule and burlesque
had taught him to have no faith in any sincere thing, no respect for
true knowledge; and this had well-nigh destroyed all good in his mind
and nature, as it unfortunately has done with too many others of his
age at the present day.

After sitting silently in front of the fire for some half an hour,
Flashley gradually fell into a sort of soliloquy, partaking in about
equal degrees of the grumbling, the self-conceited, the humorous, and
the drowsy.

‘So, they’re all snoring soundly by this time—all the clodpole Billy
Pittites. Uncle’s a fine old fellow. Very fond of _him_. As for all the
rest!—Wonder why the mine was called the William Pitt? Because it is so
black and deep, I suppose. Before _my_ time. Who cares for him now, or
for any of the bygones! Why should we care for anybody who went before
us? The past ones give place to the fast ones. That’s _my_ feather.

‘But a pretty mess I’ve made of my affairs in London! My father
does not know of half my debts. Hardly know of half of them myself.
Incontinent contractions. Tavern bills, sixty or seventy pounds—maybe
a hundred. Tailors? can’t calculate. Saloons and night-larks, owing
for—don’t know how much, besides money paid. Money borrowed, eighty or
ninety pounds. Books—forget—say sixpence. Like Falstaff’s ha’pennyworth
of bread to all that quantity of sack! Think I paid ready money for all
the light reading, and young gent’s books.’

The fire sank lower and lower, and so did the candles, one of which had
just gone out, and began to send up a curdling stream of yellow smoke.

‘What a place this is for coals. What a smutty face Nature wears! From
the house upwards, all alike,—dull, dusky, and detestable. Pfeu! Smell
of fried mutton fat! Now, then, old Coal fire, hold up your head. I’m
sleepy myself. This house is more like a hearse than a dwelling-place
for live stock. The roadway in front of the house is all of coal-dust;
the front of the house is like a sweep’s, it only wants the dangling
sign of his “brush.” The window-ledges have a constant layer of black
dust over them; so has the top of the porch; so have the chimney-pieces
inside the house, where all the little china cups and gimcracks have a
round black circle of coal-dust at the bottom. There is always a dark
scum over the water of the jug in my bedroom. How I detest this life
among the coals! Where’s the great need of them? Why don’t the stupid
old world burn wood?’

The fire had by this time sunk to dull red embers and grey ashes, with
large dark chasms around and behind. The shadows on the wall were
faint, and shifting with the flickering of the last candle, now dying
in the socket. Flashley’s eyes were closed, and his arms folded, as he
still continued to murmur to himself. Sooth to say, the ale had got
into his head.

‘Margery, the housemaid, has large black eyes, with dark rings of
coal-grime round them. Her hair is also black—her cap like a mourning
mop—and she has worn a black patch on one side of her nose since last
Friday, when I gave her a handful from the coal-scuttle for comparing
me to the lazy young dog that lay asleep before the fire. Margery
Daw!—you shall slide down to the lower regions,—on an inclined plane,
as the Useful Knowledge books would say.

‘Ale is a good thing when it is strong; but a coal-mine is all
nonsense. Still, they seem to make money by it, and _that’s_ some
excuse—some reason for men wasting in work lives which ought to be
passed in pleasure. Human time—human——I thought something touched my
elbow.

‘Human time should not be passed——why there it came again! I must be
dreaming.

‘Old Billy-Pitt Dalton understands brewing. But human time should not
be passed in digging and groping, and diving and searching—whether
to scrape up coals, or what folks call “knowledge.” For the fuel of
life burns out soon enough of itself, and, therefore, it should not be
wasted over the baser material; because the former is all for one’s
self, while coal-fuel, and the search after it, is just working for
other people. Something _did_ touch my elbow! There’s something astir
in the room out in the darkness! It was standing at my side!’

Flashley made an effort to rise; but instead of doing so, he fell
sideways over one arm of the chair, with his arms hanging down. Staring
up helplessly from this position, he saw a heavy dwarfed figure with
shining eyes, coming out of the darkness of the room! He could not
distinguish its outline; but it was elf-like, black, and had a rough
rocky skin. It had eyes that shot rays like great diamonds; and through
its coal-black naked body, the whole of its veins were discernible,
not running with blood, but filled with stagnant gold. Its step was
noiseless, yet its weight seemed so immense, that the floor slowly bent
beneath it; and, like ice before it breaks, the floor bent more and
more as the figure came nearer.

At this alarming sight, Flashley struggled violently to rise. He did
so; but instantly reeling half round, dropped into the chair, with his
head falling over the back of it. At the same moment the ponderous
Elfin took one step nearer; and the whole floor sank slowly down, with
a long-drawn moan, that ended in a rising and rushing wind, with which
Flashley felt himself borne away through the air, fleeter than his
fast-fleeing consciousness.

In the progress of generations and cycles—in that wealth and
dispensation of Time ordained by +Him+, before whose sight ‘one day
is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day’—mere grains
of sand running through the glass that regulates the operations of
never-ending work—the bodies of all living things, whether animal or
vegetable, fulfil their destinies by undergoing a gradual transmutation
into other bodies and things of the most opposite kind to their own
original being. Original being, accurately to speak, there is none; but
we must call that thing original to which some other thing is traced
back as to its ultimate point, or starting place, and at which we are
obliged to stop, not because it is the end, but because we can go no
further; nevertheless, up to that antediluvian period, and during a
great part of it, we are moving in the dusky yet demonstrable regions
and tracts of substantial facts, and scientific knowledge.

Not daring to unclose his eyes, Flashley gradually returned to
consciousness, and heard a voice speaking near to him, yet in tones
that seemed like the echoes of some great cavern or deep mine.

‘Man lives to-day,’ said the voice—and the youth felt it was the black
Elfin, with the diamond eyes and golden veins, that was speaking—‘man
lives to-day, not only for himself and those around him, but also that
by his death and decay fresh grass may grow in the fields of future
years,—and that sheep may feed, and give food and clothing for the
continuous race of man. Even so the food of one generation becomes
the stone of another. And the stone shall become a fuel—a poison—or a
medicine. Awake, young man!—awake from the stupor of an ignorant and
presumptuous youth—and look around you!’

The young man, with no little trepidation, opened his eyes. He found he
was alone. The strange being that had just spoken was gone. He ventured
to gaze on the scene that surrounded him.

The place in which he found himself seemed to partake, not in distinct
proportions, but altogether, so far as this was possible, of a wild
forest of strange and enormous trees—a chaotic jungle—a straggling
woodland, and a dreary morass or swamp, intersected by a dark river,
that appeared to creep towards the sea which embraced a part of the
distant horizon with a leaden arm. The moist mound whereon he stood
was covered with ferns of various kinds—the comb-fern, the wedge-fern,
the tooth-fern, the nerve-fern—and of all sizes, rising from a
crumpled crest bursting through the earth, to plants of a foot high,
of several feet, and thence up to lofty trees of forty or fifty feet
in height, with great stems and branching crowns. The green-stemmed
and many-pointed mare’s-tail was also conspicuous in number and in
magnitude; not merely of two or three feet high, as in the present
period of the earth, but large green-jointed trees, shooting up their
whisking spires to fourteen or fifteen feet. Thickly springing up
in wild and threatening squadrons over the morass, they bent their
heads in long rows after rows over the edge of the muddy river, with
sullen, moveless, and interminable monotony. Here and there, enormous
sombre shrubs oppressed the scene. The collective clumps resembled
the inextricable junction of several of our thickest-foliaged trees,
as though several oaks had agreed to unite their trunks, and make
one—several beeches, the same—several poplars—several limes—though not
one of them bearing likeness in trunk or foliage to oak, or beech, or
poplar, or lime, or any known tree of present date.

Clumps also were there, of a rank undergrowth, out of which limp bare
stems shot up to a great height, covered with a sickly white mealy
powder, and terminating, for the most part, in coarse brown swollen
heads, or gigantic black fingers, varied with dull red bosses at
the tops of the great stems, broken cups, or red and grey forks and
spikes,—a sort of monstrous club-moss and cup-moss, with lichens,
coarse water-weeds, and water-grasses at the base.

Uncouth and terrible as were the forms to the young man’s eyes, there
were some things not without grace. Large trees, having their entire
trunks and boughs elegantly fluted, bearing leaves at regular intervals
on each fluting upwards and along every bough, rose up amidst the
disordered vegetation. Where the leaves had fallen from the lower part
of the trunk, marks were left, like seals, at regular intervals on the
flutings.[A]

In many places, close to the trees just described, huge tortuous
succulent roots[B] protruded from the ground, as if anxious to exchange
their darkness and want of air for the light, and for the warm
atmosphere, attracted by the strong gases with which it was impregnated.

Round the feet of the young man lay intertangled bunches and bundles of
wood-weeds, river-weeds, and other weeds that seemed to partake equally
of the river and the sea; long rank grasses, sword-like, spear-like,
or with club-like crowns of seeds, and fungi of hideous shapes, gross,
pulpy, like giants’ heads, hairy and bearded, and sometimes bursting
and sending forth steamy odours that were scarcely to be borne, and
which the youth felt to be a deadly poison, but that for the time he,
somehow, was endowed with a ‘charmed life.’

[A] These trees are known in fossil botany as the _Sigillariæ_.

[B] The _Stigmaria_.

Spell-bound, he turned from these dismaying sights, to trees that rose
to altitudes of from sixty to eighty feet, having leaves in long rows
upon all the boughs, from which they shot forth direct, and without the
intervention of any small twigs or other usual connecting medium of
foliage. The same course of leaves had existed on the trunk, from which
they had fallen as the tree rose up to maturity, and had left scars
or scales, like a Mosaic ornament, and a sign of their progressive
years.[C]

Gazing through and beyond all these lofty trunks, Flashley beheld in
the distance a sort of palm-like and pine-like trees, standing against
the pale blue sky, which far transcended all the rest in altitude, and
seemed indeed, here and there, to rise to a hundred feet above the
whole range of other lofty trees! His eyes ached as he stared at them.
It was not their altitude alone that caused a painful impression, but
the feeling of their unbroken solitude—a loneliness unvisited by a
single bird, and with nothing between them and the heavens, to which
they seemed to aspire for ever, and in vain.

No flowers on any of the trees and shrubs around him were to be
seen—and no fruits. The tone of colour was grave, sullen, melancholy.
It was a solitude that seemed to feel itself. Not only no bird was
visible, but no quadruped, insect, creeping thing, or other form of
animal life. The earth was devoted solely to the production of enormous
vegetation.

To complete the pregnant solemnity of the scene, there were no sounds
of life or motion in the air; all was silence.

Looking round with a forlorn and overawed yet enquiring face, he
discerned something like two keen stars of arrowy light at the foot
of a gigantic fern-tree, at some distance from him. The darting rays
seemed directed towards him. They were eyes; they could be nothing
else! He presently perceived that the rough black elfin figure, with
the veins of stagnant gold, was seated there, and that its eyes were
fixed upon him!

[C] The _Lepidodendron_.

‘The scene amidst which you stand,’ said the Elfin in his echo-like
voice, and without moving from his seat beneath the tree, ‘is the
stupendous vegetation of the elder world. The trunks and stems of the
antediluvian earth erect their columns, and shoot up their spires
towards the clouds; their dull, coarse foliage overhangs the swamps,
and they drink in, at every pore, the floating steam impregnated with
the nutriment of prodigies. No animal life do you behold, for none
is of this date, nor could it live amidst these potent vapours which
feed the vegetation. And yet these vast trees and plants, this richly
poisoned atmosphere, this absence of all animal life of man, and
beast, and bird, and creeping thing, is all arranged in due order of
progression, that man may hereafter live, not merely a savage life, but
one civilised and refined, with the sense of a soul within—of God in
the world, and over it, and all around it—whereof comes man’s hope of a
future life beyond his presence here. Thus upward, and thus onward ever.

‘And all this monstrous vegetation above ground shall be cast down and
embedded deep in the dark bowels of the earth, there under the chemical
process of ages to become a fuel for future generations of men, yet
unborn, who will require it for their advance in civilisation and
knowledge. Yes; these huge ferns, these trunks, and stems, and towering
fabrics of trees, shall all crash down—sink deep into the earth with
all the rank enfolding mass of undergrowth—there to be jammed and
mashed up between beds of fiery stone and grit and clay, and covered
with oozy mud and sand, till stratum after stratum of varied matter
rises above them, and forms a new surface of earth. On this surface the
new vegetation of the world will commence, while that of the old lies
beneath,—not rotting in vain, nor slumbering uselessly in darkness, but
gradually, age after age, undergoing transmutation by the alchemy of
Nature, till verdure becometh veriest blackness, and wood is changed to
coal.

‘Then man is born, appearing on the earth only when the earth is
ready to receive him, and minister to his wants. At first he useth
wood for his fuel; but as his knowledge expands and deepens he
penetrates far below the surface, and there finds forests of fuel
almost inexhaustible, made ready for his various needs and arts. And
when, in far-off ages, these vast stores become exhausted, others will
be discovered not only of the same date, but which have been since
accumulated; for the same process of transmutation is constantly going
on. Thus present time always works for future ages.

‘Slowly as moves the current in _my_ veins,’—the Elfin rose up as he
said this—‘veins which seem to your eye to contain a stagnant gold,
but whose metallic current, in its appointed period of years, performs
each several circulation within me,—yea, slowly as this, or any other
invisible progression, move these mighty forest trees towards their
downward course, to rise again in coals,—in fire,—and thence ascend to
air. Yes, this invisible motion is as certain withal, as that immediate
action which mortal nature best can comprehend.’

As the Elfin uttered these last words, the great trees around sank with
crashing slant one over the other!—then came rushing, like a sudden
tempest, down upon the earth; and the young man was overwhelmed with
the foliage, and instantly lost all further consciousness.

The traveller who has journeyed for many days across the fertile levels
and shining flats of Holland, must often have bethought him that all
this was surging ocean, but a few years ago; in like manner, by an
inverse process, the voyager up the Mississippi or Missouri rivers,
or the wayfarer for many days through the apparently interminable and
dense forests of North America, might look forward to a period when all
these masses of vegetation would become coal, if left to be dealt with
by the regular process of nature.

The rapid advances of civilisation into these wooded solitudes may
prevent the transmutation to which they were otherwise destined; and
the same may be said of the forests even on many of the vast tracts, as
yet scarcely trodden by the foot of man, in New Zealand and Australia;
but many other giant forest tracts exist in unknown regions, which are
destined to follow the law of transmutation, and secretly become a
carbonic fuel for future ages of discovery.

But what does young Flashley now behold? He is aroused from his trance,
and is again conscious of surrounding objects. He is seated, so that he
cannot move, on a little wooden bench beneath a low wooden shed, such
as labourers ‘knock up’ by way of temporary shelter in the vicinity of
some great works. Great works are evidently in hand all around him.

Labourers with pick-axes and spades came hurrying to the spot, and
began to dig a circular hole of some seven feet in diameter. Then came
others with a great wooden roller on a stand, with a thick rope, like a
well-rope, wound round it; and fixing this across the top of the hole,
they let down a basket, ever and anon, and brought it up filled with
earth and stones. It was evident that they were employed in sinking a
shaft.

They worked away at a prodigious rate, the descending baskets
continually taking down men with pickaxes and spades; and next with
carpenter’s tools and circular pieces of wood-work, with which they
made an inner frame round the sides of the shaft below. Bricklayers,
with hods of bricks, were next let down in the baskets, and with the
support of the circular frame beneath, they rapidly cased the inside
of the shaft with brickwork up to the top. More and deeper digging out
then took place—more wooden frame-work below, with more brickwork round
the sides, and gradually sinking lower and lower. This was continued
again and again, till suddenly loud cries from below announced some new
event. The diggers had arrived at springs—water was gushing in upon
them!

Up came the rope and basket with three men standing up inside and
holding on the rope, and two men and a boy clinging round rope and
basket, and round each other as they best could, and with no small
peril to all. Leaping, scrambling, or lugged to the side, they relieved
the basket, which rapidly ran down again to bring up others.

Meanwhile came labourers heavily trotting beneath the weight of pumps
and pump-gear; and they rigged up the pump, and as soon as all the men
and boys were out of the shaft, up came the water pouring in a thick
volume, now mud-coloured, now clay-coloured, and now grey and chalky.
At length the volume became less and less, and soon there was no more.
Down again went basket after basket, with men or boys in them. Flashley
shuddered, as something within him seemed to say ‘_Your_ turn will
come!’ Up came the clay, and the sand, and the gravel, and the chalk
as before; and soon a mixture of several earths and stones. Thus did
they toil and toil below and above, winding up and winding down, till
at last a shout of success was heard faintly echoing from the deep pit
beneath, and presently up came a basket full of broken limestone, and
grit, and red sandstone—and coals!

Flashley now observed a great turmoil above, but all with definite
intention, and preparations for new and larger works. A steam-engine
was fitted up in a small brick edifice at a hundred yards distance,
from which came a strong rope that passed over a large drum or broad
wheel. The rope was then extended to the shaft, over the top of which
a small iron wheel was erected; and over this they carried the rope,
which was to take down men and bring up coals. A larger measure than
the basket, called a _corve_, was fastened to this rope by chains, and
up and down it went bringing great heaps of coals to the surface. After
a time, wood-work and iron-work of various kinds were sent down, and
sledges and trucks with little wheels; and then broad belts were put
round horses, by means of which they were raised, kicking and capering
wildly in the air, and staring with horrified eye-balls into the black
abyss, down which they were lowered, every limb trembling, and their
ears sharpened up to a single hair.

At this sight Flashley’s ears began to prick and tingle in sympathy,
for he felt that he should not much longer remain a mere spectator of
these descents into the lower regions of the earth.

And now corve after corve full of coals rose in regular succession
from the mine, and tram-roads were laid down, upon which little black
waggons constantly ran to and fro, carrying away the coals from the
pit’s mouth. While all this had been going on, a second shaft was sunk
at no great distance; but no coals were seen to issue from it. It was
for air, and ventilation of the mine.

The men sometimes went down standing up in the corve, but generally
each man sat in the loop of a short chain which he hooked on to the
rope; and, in this way, six or seven went swinging down together in a
bunch; sometimes ten or twelve in a bunch; and now and then, by some
using longer chains than the others, in a double bunch, amounting to as
many as twenty, men and boys.

A voice, which seemed to come from beneath the earth, but which poor
Flashley recollected too well as that of the Elfin who had carried him
so recently into the antediluvian forests and swamps, now called him by
his name, with a familiarity that made him shudder. Instantly he found
himself borne away from the wooden shed, and placed on the brink of the
first shaft. A strange apparatus, composed of a chain with a loop at
bottom, and an iron umbrella over head, was now attached to the rope
by three chains. It had very much the look of some novel instrument
of torture. Into this loop Flashley’s legs were placed in a sitting
posture.

‘Straddle your legs!’ cried an old black-visaged miner, as the young
man was swung off from the brink, and suspended over the profound
abyss below. Not obeying, and, indeed, not instantly understanding
the uncouth injunction, Flashley had omitted the ‘straddling;’ in
consequence of which the chain loop clipped him close around, and
pinched his legs together with a force that would have made him utter a
cry, but for the paramount terror of his position. Down he went. Round
and round went the shaft-wheel above—faster and faster—and lower and
lower he sank from the light of day between the dark circular walls of
the shaft.

At first the motion was manifestly rapid. It took away his breath.
It became more rapid. He gave himself up for lost. But presently the
motion became more smooth, and more steady—then quite steady, so that
he thought he was by no means descending rapidly. Presently, again,
he fancied he was not descending at all—but stationary—or, rather,
_ascending_. It was difficult to think otherwise. The current of air
rising from below, meeting his swiftly descending body, gave him this
impression.

He now saw a dim light moving below. It became stronger, and almost
immediately after he saw three half-naked demons of the mine, as he
thought, who stood ready to receive him.

For the first time he ventured to cast a forlorn look upwards. He
beheld the iron umbrella with a light from beneath flashing upon it.
Again, he turned his eyes below. He was close down upon the demons.
One of them held a lamp up to his face as he descended among them.
Whereupon these three demons all uttered a jovial laugh, and welcomed
him.

‘Oh, _where_ am I?’ exclaimed Flashley, in utter dismay.

‘At the first “workings” of the Billy-Pitt Mine!’ shouted a voice.
‘Steady the chains!’

The chains were steadied, and in a moment Flashley felt himself
launched into a new abyss, down which he descended in utter darkness,
and in utter silence, except from the rushing of the air-currents, and
the occasional grating of the iron umbrella against the sides of the
shaft.




                             LIZZIE LEIGH.


                     IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II.

‘Mother,’ then said Will, ‘why will you keep on thinking she’s alive?
If she were but dead, we need never name her name again. We’ve never
heard nought on her since father wrote her that letter; we never knew
whether she got it or not. She’d left her place before then. Many a one
dies is——’

‘Oh my lad! dunnot speak so to me, or my heart will break outright,’
said his mother, with a sort of cry. Then she calmed herself, for
she yearned to persuade him to her own belief. ‘Thou never asked,
and thou’rt too like thy father for me to tell without asking—but it
were all to be near Lizzie’s old place that I settled down on this
side o’ Manchester; and the very day after we came, I went to her
old missus, and asked to speak a word wi’ her. I had a strong mind to
cast it up to her, that she should ha’ sent my poor lass away without
telling on it to us first; but she were in black, and looked so sad I
could na’ find in my heart to threep it up. But I did ask her a bit
about our Lizzie. The master would have her turned away at a day’s
warning, (he’s gone to t’other place; I hope he’ll meet wi’ more
mercy there than he showed our Lizzie,—I do,—) and when the missus
asked her should she write to us, she says Lizzie shook her head; and
when she speered at her again, the poor lass went down on her knees,
and begged her not, for she said it would break my heart, (as it has
done, Will—God knows it has),’ said the poor mother, choking with her
struggle to keep down her hard overmastering grief, ‘and her father
would curse her—Oh, God, teach me to be patient.’ She could not speak
for a few minutes,—‘and the lass threatened, and said she’d go drown
herself in the canal, if the missus wrote home,—and so—

‘Well! I’d got a trace of my child,—the missus thought she’d gone to
th’ workhouse to be nursed; and there I went,—and there, sure enough,
she had been,—and they’d turned her out as soon as she were strong, and
told her she were young enough to work,—but whatten kind o’ work would
be open to her, lad, and her baby to keep?’

Will listened to his mother’s tale with deep sympathy, not unmixed with
the old bitter shame. But the opening of her heart had unlocked his,
and after a while he spoke.

‘Mother! I think I’d e’en better go home. Tom can stay wi’ thee. I
know I should stay too, but I cannot stay in peace so near—her—without
craving to see her—Susan Palmer I mean.’

‘Has the old Mr. Palmer thou telled me on a daughter?’ asked Mrs. Leigh.

‘Aye, he has. And I love her above a bit. And it’s because I love her I
want to leave Manchester. That’s all.’

Mrs. Leigh tried to understand this speech for some time, but found it
difficult of interpretation.

‘Why should’st thou not tell her thou lov’st her? Thou ’rt a likely
lad, and sure o’ work. Thou ’lt have Upclose at my death; and as for
that I could let thee have it now, and keep mysel by doing a bit of
charring. It seems to me a very backwards sort o’ way of winning her to
think of leaving Manchester.’

‘Oh mother, she’s so gentle and so good,—she’s downright holy. She’s
never known a touch of sin; and can I ask her to marry me, knowing what
we do about Lizzie, and fearing worse! I doubt if one like her could
ever care for me; but if she knew about my sister, it would put a gulf
between us, and she’d shudder up at the thought of crossing it. You
don’t know how good she is, mother!’

‘Will, Will! if she’s so good as thou say’st, she’ll have pity on such
as my Lizzie. If she has no pity for such, she’s a cruel Pharisee, and
thou ’rt best without her.’

But he only shook his head, and sighed; and for the time the
conversation dropped.

But a new idea sprang up in Mrs. Leigh’s head. She thought that she
would go and see Susan Palmer, and speak up for Will, and tell her the
truth about Lizzie; and according to her pity for the poor sinner,
would she be worthy or unworthy of him. She resolved to go the very
next afternoon, but without telling any one of her plan. Accordingly
she looked out the Sunday clothes she had never before had the heart
to unpack since she came to Manchester, but which she now desired to
appear in, in order to do credit to Will. She put on her old-fashioned
black mode bonnet, trimmed with real lace; her scarlet cloth cloak,
which she had had ever since she was married; and always spotlessly
clean, she set forth on her unauthorised embassy. She knew the Palmers
lived in Crown Street, though where she had heard it she could not
tell; and modestly asking her way, she arrived in the street about a
quarter to four o’clock. She stopped to inquire the exact number, and
the woman whom she addressed told her that Susan Palmer’s school would
not be loosed till four, and asked her to step in and wait until then
at her house.

‘For,’ said she, smiling, ‘them that wants Susan Palmer wants a kind
friend of ours; so we, in a manner, call cousins. Sit down, missus,
sit down. I’ll wipe the chair, so that it shanna dirty your cloak.
My mother used to wear them bright cloaks, and they’re right gradely
things again a green field.’

‘Han ye known Susan Palmer long?’ asked Mrs. Leigh, pleased with the
admiration of her cloak.

‘Ever since they comed to live in our street. Our Sally goes to her
school.’

‘Whatten sort of a lass is she, for I ha’ never seen her?’

‘Well,—as for looks, I cannot say. It’s so long since I first knowed
her, that I’ve clean forgotten what I thought of her then. My master
says he never saw such a smile for gladdening the heart. But may be
it’s not looks you’re asking about. The best thing I can say of her
looks is, that she’s just one a stranger would stop in the street to
ask help from if he needed it. All the little childer creeps as close
as they can to her; she’ll have as many as three or four hanging to her
apron all at once.’

‘Is she cocket at all?’

‘Cocket, bless you! you never saw a creature less set up in all your
life. Her father’s cocket enough. No! she’s not cocket any way. You’ve
not heard much of Susan Palmer, I reckon, if you think she’s cocket.
She’s just one to come quietly in, and do the very thing most wanted;
little things, maybe, that any one could do, but that few would think
on, for another. She’ll bring her thimble wi’ her, and mend up after
the childer o’ nights,—and she writes all Betty Harker’s letters to
her grandchild out at service,—and she’s in nobody’s way, and that’s
a great matter, I take it. Here’s the childer running past! School is
loosed. You’ll find her now, missus, ready to hear and to help. But we
none on us frab her by going near her in school-time.’

Poor Mrs. Leigh’s heart began to beat, and she could almost have turned
round and gone home again. Her country breeding had made her shy of
strangers, and this Susan Palmer appeared to her like a real born lady
by all accounts. So she knocked with a timid feeling at the indicated
door, and when it was opened, dropped a simple curtsey without
speaking. Susan had her little niece in her arms, curled up with fond
endearment against her breast, but she put her gently down to the
ground, and instantly placed a chair in the best corner of the room for
Mrs. Leigh, when she told her who she was. ‘It’s not Will as has asked
me to come,’ said the mother, apologetically, ‘I’d a wish just to speak
to you myself!’

Susan coloured up to her temples, and stooped to pick up the little
toddling girl. In a minute or two Mrs. Leigh began again.

‘Will thinks you would na respect us if you knew all; but I think you
could na help feeling for us in the sorrow God has put upon us; so I
just put on my bonnet, and came off unknownst to the lads. Every one
says you’re very good, and that the Lord has keeped you from falling
from his ways; but maybe you’ve never yet been tried and tempted as
some is. I’m perhaps speaking too plain, but my heart’s welly broken,
and I can’t be choice in my words as them who are happy can. Well now!
I’ll tell you the truth. Will dreads you to hear it, but I’ll just tell
it you. You mun know,’—but here the poor woman’s words failed her, and
she could do nothing but sit rocking herself backwards and forwards,
with sad eyes, straight-gazing into Susan’s face, as if they tried to
tell the tale of agony which the quivering lips refused to utter. Those
wretched stony eyes forced the tears down Susan’s cheeks, and, as if
this sympathy gave the mother strength, she went on in a low voice, ‘I
had a daughter once, my heart’s darling. Her father thought I made too
much on her, and that she’d grow marred staying at home; so he said
she mun go among strangers, and learn to rough it. She were young, and
liked the thought of seeing a bit of the world; and her father heard on
a place in Manchester. Well! I’ll not weary you. That poor girl were
led astray; and first thing we heard on it, was when a letter of her
father’s was sent back by her missus, saying she’d left her place, or,
to speak right, the master had turned her into the street soon as he
had heard of her condition—and she not seventeen!’

She now cried aloud; and Susan wept too. The little child looked up
into their faces, and, catching their sorrow, began to whimper and
wail. Susan took it softly up, and hiding her face in its little neck,
tried to restrain her tears, and think of comfort for the mother. At
last she said:

‘Where is she now?’

‘Lass! I dunnot know,’ said Mrs. Leigh, checking her sobs to
communicate this addition to her distress. ‘Mrs. Lomax telled me she
went’——

‘Mrs. Lomax—what Mrs. Lomax?’

‘Her as lives in Brabazon-street. She telled me my poor wench went to
the workhouse fra there. I’ll not speak again the dead; but if her
father would but ha’ letten me,—but he were one who had no notion—no,
I’ll not say that; best say nought. He forgave her on his death-bed. I
dare say I did na go th’ right way to work.’

‘Will you hold the child for me one instant?’ said Susan.

‘Ay, if it will come to me. Childer used to be fond on me till I got
the sad look on my face that scares them, I think.’

But the little girl clung to Susan; so she carried it upstairs with
her. Mrs. Leigh sat by herself—how long she did not know.

Susan came down with a bundle of far-worn baby-clothes.

‘You must listen to me a bit, and not think too much about what I’m
going to tell you. Nanny is not my niece, nor any kin to me that I know
of. I used to go out working by the day. One night, as I came home,
I thought some woman was following me; I turned to look. The woman,
before I could see her face (for she turned it to one side), offered me
something. I held out my arms by instinct: she dropped a bundle into
them with a bursting sob that went straight to my heart. It was a baby.
I looked round again; but the woman was gone. She had run away as quick
as lightning. There was a little packet of clothes—very few—and as if
they were made out of its mother’s gowns, for they were large patterns
to buy for a baby. I was always fond of babies; and I had not my wits
about me, father says; for it was very cold, and when I’d seen as well
as I could (for it was past ten) that there was no one in the street,
I brought it in and warmed it. Father was very angry when he came, and
said he’d take it to the workhouse the next morning, and flyted me
sadly about it. But when morning came I could not bear to part with
it; it had slept in my arms all night; and I’ve heard what workhouse
bringing up is. So I told father I’d give up going out working, and
stay at home and keep school, if I might only keep the baby; and after
awhile, he said if I earned enough for him to have his comforts, he’d
let me; but he’s never taken to her. Now, don’t tremble so,—I’ve but a
little more to tell,—and maybe I’m wrong in telling it; but I used to
work next door to Mrs. Lomax’s, in Brabazon-street, and the servants
were all thick together; and I heard about Bessy (they called her)
being sent away. I don’t know that ever I saw her; but the time would
be about fitting to this child’s age, and I’ve sometimes fancied it
was her’s. And now, will you look at the little clothes that came with
her—bless her!’

But Mrs. Leigh had fainted. The strange joy and shame, and gushing love
for the little child had overpowered her; it was some time before Susan
could bring her round. There she was all trembling, sick impatience to
look at the little frocks. Among them was a slip of paper which Susan
had forgotten to name, that had been pinned to the bundle. On it was
scrawled in a round stiff hand,

‘Call her Anne. She does not cry much, and takes a deal of notice. God
bless you and forgive me.’

The writing was no clue at all; the name ‘Anne,’ common though it was,
seemed something to build upon. But Mrs. Leigh recognised one of the
frocks instantly, as being made out of part of a gown that she and her
daughter had bought together in Rochdale.

She stood up, and stretched out her hands in the attitude of blessing
over Susan’s bent head.

‘God bless you, and show you His mercy in your need, as you have shown
it to this little child.’

She took the little creature in her arms, and smoothed away her sad
looks to a smile, and kissed it fondly, saying over and over again,
‘Nanny, Nanny, my little Nanny.’ At last the child was soothed, and
looked in her face and smiled back again.

‘It has her eyes,’ said she to Susan.

‘I never saw her to the best of my knowledge. I think it must be her’s
by the frock. But where can she be?’

‘God knows,’ said Mrs. Leigh; ‘I dare not think she’s dead. I’m sure
she isn’t.’

‘No! she’s not dead. Every now and then a little packet is thrust
in under our door, with may be two half-crowns in it; once it was
half-a-sovereign. Altogether I’ve got seven-and-thirty shillings
wrapped up for Nanny. I never touch it, but I’ve often thought the
poor mother feels near to God when she brings this money. Father wanted
to set the policeman to watch, but I said No, for I was afraid if she
was watched she might not come, and it seemed such a holy thing to be
checking her in, I could not find in my heart to do it.’

‘Oh, if we could but find her! I’d take her in my arms, and we’d just
lie down and die together.’

‘Nay, don’t speak so!’ said Susan gently, ‘for all that’s come and
gone, she may turn right at last. Mary Magdalen did, you know.’

‘Eh! but I were nearer right about thee than Will. He thought you would
never look on him again if you knew about Lizzie. But thou’rt not a
Pharisee.’

‘I’m sorry he thought I could be so hard,’ said Susan in a low voice,
and colouring up. Then Mrs. Leigh was alarmed, and in her motherly
anxiety, she began to fear lest she had injured Will in Susan’s
estimation.

‘You see Will thinks so much of you—gold would not be good enough for
you to walk on, in his eye. He said you’d never look at him as he was,
let alone his being brother to my poor wench. He loves you so, it makes
him think meanly on everything belonging to himself, as not fit to come
near ye,—but he’s a good lad, and a good son—thou’lt be a happy woman
if thou’lt have him,—so don’t let my words go against him; don’t!’

But Susan hung her head and made no answer. She had not known until
now, that Will thought so earnestly and seriously about her; and even
now she felt afraid that Mrs. Leigh’s words promised her too much
happiness, and that they could not be true. At any rate the instinct
of modesty made her shrink from saying anything which might seem like
a confession of her own feelings to a third person. Accordingly she
turned the conversation on the child.

‘I’m sure he could not help loving Nanny,’ said she. ‘There never was
such a good little darling; don’t you think she’d win his heart if he
knew she was his niece, and perhaps bring him to think kindly on his
sister?’

‘I dunnot know,’ said Mrs. Leigh, shaking her head. ‘He has a turn
in his eye like his father, that makes me——. He’s right down good
though. But you see I’ve never been a good one at managing folk; one
severe look turns me sick, and then I say just the wrong thing, I’m so
fluttered. Now I should like nothing better than to take Nancy home
with me, but Tom knows nothing but that his sister is dead, and I’ve
not the knack of speaking rightly to Will. I dare not do it, and that’s
the truth. But you mun not think badly of Will. He’s so good hissel,
that he can’t understand how any one can do wrong; and, above all, I’m
sure he loves you dearly.’

‘I don’t think I could part with Nancy,’ said Susan, anxious to stop
this revelation of Will’s attachment to herself. ‘He’ll come round to
her soon; he can’t fail; and I’ll keep a sharp look-out after the poor
mother, and try and catch her the next time she comes with her little
parcels of money.’

‘Aye, lass! we mun get hold of her; my Lizzie. I love thee dearly for
thy kindness to her child; but, if thou can’st catch her for me, I’ll
pray for thee when I’m too near my death to speak words; and while I
live, I’ll serve thee next to her,—she mun come first, thou know’st.
God bless thee, lass. My heart is lighter by a deal than it was when
I comed in. Them lads will be looking for me home, and I mun go, and
leave this little sweet one,’ kissing it. ‘If I can take courage, I’ll
tell Will all that has come and gone between us two. He may come and
see thee, mayn’t he?’

‘Father will be very glad to see him, I’m sure,’ replied Susan. The way
in which this was spoken satisfied Mrs. Leigh’s anxious heart that she
had done Will no harm by what she had said; and with many a kiss to the
little one, and one more fervent tearful blessing on Susan, she went
homewards.




                          WORK! +An Anecdote.+


A Cavalry Officer of large fortune, who had distinguished himself in
several actions, having been quartered for a long time in a foreign
city, gradually fell into a life of extreme and incessant dissipation.
He soon found himself so indisposed to any active military service,
that even the ordinary routine became irksome and unbearable. He
accordingly solicited and obtained leave of absence from his regiment
for six months. But, instead of immediately engaging in some occupation
of mind and body, as a curative process for his morbid condition, he
hastened to London, and gave himself up entirely to greater luxuries
than ever, and plunged into every kind of sensuality. The consequence
was a disgust of life and all its healthy offices. He became unable to
read half a page of a book, or to write the shortest note; mounting his
horse was too much trouble; to lounge down the street was a hateful
effort. His appetite failed, or everything disagreed with him; and
he could seldom sleep. Existence became an intolerable burthen; he
therefore determined on suicide.

With this intention he loaded his pistols, and, influenced by early
associations, dressed himself in his regimental frock-coat and crimson
sash, and entered St. James’s Park a little before sunrise. He
felt as if he was mounting guard for the last time; listened to each
sound, and looked with miserable affection across the misty green
towards the Horse Guards, faintly seen in the distance.

A few minutes after the officer had entered the park, there passed
through the same gate a poor mechanic, who leisurely followed in the
same direction. He was a gaunt, half-famished looking man, and walked
with a sad air, his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground, and his large
bony hands dangling at his sides.

The officer, absorbed in the act he meditated, walked on without being
aware of the presence of another person. Arriving about the middle
of a wide open space, he suddenly stopped, and drawing forth both
pistols, exclaimed: ‘Oh, most unfortunate and most wretched man that I
am! Wealth, station, honour, prospects, are of no avail! Existence has
become a heavy torment to me! I have not strength—I have not courage to
endure or face it a moment longer!’

With these words he cocked the pistols, and was raising both of them
to his head, when his arms were seized from behind, and the pistols
twisted out of his fingers. He reeled round, and beheld the gaunt
scarecrow of a man who had followed him.

‘What are you?’ stammered the officer, with a painful air; ‘How dare
you to step between me and death?’

‘I am a poor hungry mechanic;’ answered the man, ‘one who works from
fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and yet finds it hard to earn a
living. My wife is dead—my daughter was tempted away from me—and I am
a lone man. As I have nobody to live for, and have become quite tired
of my life, I came out this morning, intending to drown myself. But as
the fresh air of the park came over my face, the sickness of life gave
way to shame at my own want of strength and courage, and I determined
to walk onwards and live my allotted time. But what are _you_? Have
you encountered cannon-balls and death in all shapes, and now want the
strength and courage to meet the curse of idleness?’

The officer was moving off with some confused words, but the mechanic
took him by the arm, and threatening to hand him over to the police if
he resisted, led him droopingly away.

This mechanic’s work was that of a turner, and he lived in a dark
cellar, where he toiled at his lathe from morning to night. Hearing
that the officer had amused himself with a little turnery in his youth,
the poor artisan proposed to take him down into his workshop. The
officer offered him money, and was anxious to escape; but the mechanic
refused it, and persisted.

He accordingly took the morbid gentleman down into his dark cellar,
and set him to work at his lathe. The officer began very languidly,
and soon rose to depart. Whereupon, the mechanic forced him down again
on the hard bench, and swore that if he did not do an hour’s work for
him, in return for saving his life, he would instantly consign him to a
policeman, and denounce him for attempting to commit suicide. At this
threat the officer was so confounded, that he at once consented to do
the work.

When the hour was over, the mechanic insisted on a second hour, in
consequence of the slowness of the work—it had not been a fair hour’s
labour. In vain the officer protested, was angry, and exhausted—had the
heartburn—pains in his back and limbs—and declared it would kill him.
The mechanic was inexorable. ‘If it _does_ kill you,’ said he, ‘then
you will only be where you would have been if I had not stopped you.’
So the officer was compelled to continue his work with an inflamed
face, and the perspiration pouring down over his cheeks and chin.

At last he could proceed no longer, come what would of it, and sank
back in the arms of his persecuting preserver. The mechanic now
placed before him his own breakfast, composed of a twopenny loaf of
brown bread, and a pint of small beer; the whole of which the officer
disposed of in no time, and then sent out for more.

Before the boy who was despatched on this errand returned, a little
conversation had ensued; and as the officer rose to go, he smilingly
placed his purse, with his card, in the hands of the mechanic. The poor
ragged man received them with all the composure of a physician, and
with a sort of dry, grim humour which appeared peculiar to him, and the
only relief of his otherwise rough and rigid character, made sombre by
the constant shadows and troubles of life.

But the moment he read the name on the card, all the hard lines in his
deeply-marked face underwent a sudden contortion. Thrusting back the
purse and card into the officer’s hand, he seized him with a fierce
grip by one arm—hurried him, wondering, up the dark broken stairs,
along the narrow passage—then pushed him out at the door!

‘You are the fine gentleman who tempted my daughter away!’ said he.

‘I—_your_ daughter!’ exclaimed the officer.

‘Yes, my daughter; Ellen Brentwood!’ said the mechanic. ‘Are there so
many men’s daughters in the list, that you forget her name?’

‘I implore you,’ said the officer, ‘to take this purse. _Pray_ take
this purse! If you will not accept it for yourself, I entreat you to
send it to her!’

‘Go and buy a lathe with it,’ said the mechanic. ‘Work, man! and repent
of your past life!’

So saying, he closed the door in the officer’s face, and descended the
stairs to his daily labour.




                       GOOD VERSES OF A BAD POET.


  Few things in Dryden or Pope are finer than these lines by a man whom
  they both continually laughed at;—Sir Richard Blackmore.

 Exhausted travellers, that have undergone
 The scorching heats of Life’s intemperate zone,
 Haste for refreshment to their beds beneath,
 And stretch themselves in the cool shades of Death.




                           PERFECT FELICITY.

                         IN A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW.


I am the Raven in the Happy Family—and nobody knows what a life of
misery I lead!

The dog informs me (he was a puppy about town before he joined us;
which was lately) that there is more than one Happy Family on view in
London. Mine, I beg to say, may be known by being the Family which
contains a splendid Raven.

I want to know why I am to be called upon to accommodate myself to a
cat, a mouse, a pigeon, a ringdove, an owl (who is the greatest ass
I have ever known), a guinea-pig, a sparrow, and a variety of other
creatures with whom I have no opinion in common. Is this national
education? Because, if it is, I object to it. Is our cage what they
call neutral ground, on which all parties may agree? If so, war to the
beak I consider preferable.

What right has any man to require me to look complacently at a cat on
a shelf all day? It may be all very well for the owl. My opinion of
_him_ is that he blinks and stares himself into a state of such dense
stupidity that he has no idea what company he is in. I have seen him,
with my own eyes, blink himself, for hours, into the conviction that
he was alone in a belfry. But _I_ am not the owl. It would have been
better for me, if I had been born in that station of life.

I am a Raven. I am, by nature, a sort of collector, or antiquarian.
If I contributed, in my natural state, to any Periodical, it would be
The Gentleman’s Magazine. I have a passion for amassing things that
are of no use to me, and burying them. Supposing such a thing—I don’t
wish it to be known to our proprietor that I put this case, but I say,
supposing such a thing—as that I took out one of the Guinea-Pig’s eyes;
how could I bury it here? The floor of the cage is not an inch thick.
To be sure, I could dig through it with my bill (if I dared), but what
would be the comfort of dropping a Guinea-Pig’s eye into Regent Street?

What _I_ want, is privacy. I want to make a collection. I desire to get
a little property together. How can I do it here? Mr. Hudson couldn’t
have done it, under corresponding circumstances.

I want to live by my own abilities, instead of being provided for in
this way. I am stuck in a cage with these incongruous companions, and
called a member of the Happy Family; but suppose you took a Queen’s
Counsel out of Westminster Hall, and settled him board and lodging
free, in Utopia, where there would be no excuse for ‘his quiddits, his
quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks,’ how do you think
_he_’d like it? Not at all. Then why do you expect _me_ to like it, and
add insult to injury by calling me a ‘Happy’ Raven!

This is what _I_ say: I want to see men do it. I should like to get
up a Happy Family of men, and show ’em. I should like to put the Rajah
Brooke, the Peace Society, Captain Aaron Smith, several Malay Pirates,
Doctor Wiseman, the Reverend Hugh Stowell, Mr. Fox of Oldham, the Board
of Health, all the London undertakers, some of the Common (very common
_I_ think) Council, and all the vested interests in the filth and
misery of the poor, into a good-sized cage, and see how _they_’d get
on. I should like to look in at ’em through the bars, after they had
undergone the training I have undergone. You wouldn’t find Sir Peter
Laurie ‘putting down’ Sanitary Reform then, or getting up in _that_
vestry, and pledging his word and honour to the non-existence of Saint
Paul’s Cathedral, I expect! And very happy _he_’d be, wouldn’t he, when
he couldn’t do that sort of thing?

I have no idea of you lords of the creation coming staring at me in
this false position. Why don’t you look at home? If you think I’m fond
of the dove, you’re very much mistaken. If you imagine there is the
least good will between me and the pigeon, you never were more deceived
in your lives. If you suppose I wouldn’t demolish the whole Family
(myself excepted), and the cage too, if I had my own way, you don’t
know what a real Raven is. But if you _do_ know this, why am _I_ to be
picked out as a curiosity? Why don’t you go and stare at the Bishop of
Exeter? ’Ecod, he’s one of our breed, if any body is!

Do you make me lead this public life because I seem to be what I ain’t?
Why, I don’t make half the pretences that are common among you men! You
never heard _me_ call the sparrow my noble friend. When did _I_ ever
tell the Guinea-Pig that he was my Christian brother? Name the occasion
of my making myself a party to the ‘sham’ (my friend Mr. Carlyle will
lend me his favourite word for the occasion) that the cat hadn’t really
her eye upon the mouse! Can _you_ say as much? What about the last
Court Ball, the next Debate in the Lords, the last great Ecclesiastical
Suit, the next long assembly in the Court Circular? I wonder you are
not ashamed to look me in the eye! I am an independent Member—of the
Happy Family; and I ought to be let out.

I have only one consolation in my inability to damage anything, and
that is that I hope I am instrumental in propagating a delusion as to
the character of Ravens. I have a strong impression that the sparrows
on our beat are beginning to think they may trust a Raven. Let ’em try!
There’s an uncle of mine, in a stable-yard down in Yorkshire, who will
very soon undeceive any small bird that may favour him with a call.

The dogs too. Ha ha! As they go by, they look at me and this dog,
in quite a friendly way. They never suspect how I should hold on to
the tip of his tail, if I consulted my own feelings instead of our
proprietor’s. It’s almost worth being here, to think of some confiding
dog who has seen me, going too near a friend of mine who lives at a
hackney-coach stand in Oxford Street. You wouldn’t stop _his_ squeaking
in a hurry, if my friend got a chance at him.

It’s the same with the children. There’s a young gentleman with a hat
and feathers, resident in Portland Place, who brings a penny to our
proprietor, twice a week. He wears very short white drawers, and has
mottled legs above his socks. He hasn’t the least idea what I should
do to his legs, if I consulted my own inclinations. He never imagines
what I am thinking of, when we look at one another. May he only take
those legs, in their present juicy state, close to the cage of my
brother-in-law of the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park!

Call yourselves rational beings, and talk about our being reclaimed?
Why, there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t astonish you, if we could only
get out! Let _me_ out, and see whether _I_ should be meek or not. But
this is the way you always go on in—you know you do. Up at Pentonville,
the sparrow says—and he ought to know, for he was born in a stack
of chimneys in that prison—you are spending I am afraid to say how
much every year out of the rates, to keep men in solitude, where they
+CAN’T+ do any harm (that you know of), and then you sing all sorts of
choruses about their being good. So am I what you call good—here. Why?
Because I can’t help it. Try me outside!

You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, the Magpie says; and I agree
with him. If you are determined to pet only those who take things and
hide them, why don’t you pet the Magpie and me? We are interesting
enough for you, ain’t we? The Mouse says you are not half so particular
about the honest people. He is not a bad authority. He was almost
starved when he lived in a workhouse, wasn’t he? He didn’t get much
fatter, I suppose, when he moved to a labourer’s cottage? He was thin
enough when he came from that place, here—I know that. And what does
the Mouse (whose word is his bond) declare? He declares that you don’t
take half the care you ought; of your own young, and don’t teach
’em half enough. Why don’t you then? You might give our proprietor
something to do, I should think, in twisting miserable boys and girls
_into_ their proper nature, instead of twisting us out of ours. You are
a nice set of fellows, certainly, to come and look at Happy Families,
as if you had nothing else to look after!

I take the opportunity of our proprietor’s pen and ink in the evening,
to write this. I shall put it away in a corner—quite sure, as it’s
intended for the Post Office, of Mr. Rowland Hill’s getting hold of it
somehow, and sending it to somebody. I understand he can do anything
with a letter. Though the Owl says (but I don’t believe him), that the
present prevalence of measles and chicken-pox among infants in all
parts of this country, has been caused by Mr. Rowland Hill. I hope I
needn’t add that we Ravens are all good scholars, but that we keep our
secret (as the Indians believe the Monkeys do, according to a Parrot of
my acquaintance) lest our abilities should be imposed upon. As nothing
worse than my present degradation as a member of the Happy Family
can happen to me, however, I desert the General Freemasons’ Lodge of
Ravens, and express my disgust in writing.




                         A DIALOGUE OF SHADOWS.


 [_Scene, Purgatory_ (1778). The Shades of an Englishman and a
   Frenchman are pacing by the side of a gloomy river.]

 _Englishman._ What bustle is here? Can we not groan in peace?

 _Frenchman._ There are some new arrivals. One, who comes
 Straight from the finest kingdom of the earth,
 Has caused a vast sensation. Here he is!

                              [_The Shade of Voltaire enters._

 _Engl._ I never saw a ghost so thin as this.

 _Volt._ Good day, Messieurs,—if we may call this day!
 Faith, there’s a pleasant warmth about the place.
 After our rapid journey thro’ the dark,
 With cold winds driving us, and jarring atoms
 Whistling about our ears, ’tis not so bad
 To reach this hot and twilight land at last.
 Sir, if’t be not a liberty, may I ask
 For a pinch of charcoal.

 _French._                         With much pleasure, sir,
                                         [_Presents his box._
 Any news from France?

 _Volt._                        France, sir, is growing young;
 Thro’ me, and d’Alembert, and Diderot,
 And that mad envious watchmaker, who did
 Good in his own despite. Before the earth
 Shall have swung a dozen times about the sun,
 Our dragon’s seed will rise and show some fruit.

 _French._ We are glad to see you here, sir.

 _Volt._                                 Without doubt, sir.
 A strange place this. Our French geographers
 Had doubts if such a region were. Nay, some
 Proved to the satisfaction of their friends,
 That ’twas impossible.

 _Eng._                                 So most things seem,
 Until they are discovered.

 _Volt._                                   That’s well said;
 Sir, I salute you.

 _French._ You’ll find some excellent company, Monsieur.

 _Volt._ You have some famous men here,—doubtless, sir.
 A priest or two?

 _French._        A few.

 _Volt._              I thought so, sir.
 A king perhaps?

 _French._           Oh, plenty. Let me see—
 One, two, three.

 _Volt._ Sir, spare your arithmetic.
 I am not curious. Yet, among these last,
 There’s surely one who dwelt in Prussia once?
 He made bad verses, which I mended. Eh?
 One Frederick?

 _French._      Called the Great—

 _Volt._                           By little men.
 The same: Is he always in the saddle now?

 _French._ We have no horses here.

 _Volt._                      Is ’t so? _N’importe_.
 A sedan will do for me. Now that I think of it,
 Where are your ladies? Any of them from France?

 _Eng._ Shoals, shoals, sir.
 We’ve larger, lighter batches from that land,
 Than all the rest o’ the globe.

 _Volt._                        I shall be glad
 To renew friendship with some few of them.
 Madame du Châtelet—

 _French._             She was a friend of yours?

 _Volt._ I had some strong delusion of that sort.
 ’Twas when she flattered me. But, tell me, sir,
 What time do you dine in this agreeable land?
 I feel no appetite.

 _Eng._            We do not dine.

 _Volt._ Not dine! when do you eat?

 _Eng._                          We do not eat.

 _Volt._ Umph! that is odd. When do you sleep then?

 _Eng._          Sir,
 We do not sleep.

 _Volt._         I’ faith, this jest begins
 To grow a little serious. I thought I knew
 Somewhat of most things; but this puzzles me.
 Lest I should err again, pray what _do_ you here,
 In this most quiet kingdom—all day long?
 Nay, day and night? What pastime?—

 _Eng._                                   We repose!
 Sometimes we dream; of times and people gone,—
 Sometimes of our own country; we retrace
 Our course in earthly life; our deeds—

 _Volt._                                 I have done
 Some deeds myself. Perhaps, Monsieur, you have seen
 A dictionary of mine, which made some noise?
 A fable or two, which told some bitter truths?
 A famous poem?—mark me.—

 _Eng._                          Your great work,
 I have read, and much admired.

 _Volt._                         The _Henriade?_
 Sir, you have taste.

 _Eng._               Not so:—a work less large
 In bulk; yet greater. ’Twas indeed no more
 Than a small memorial; touch’d wi’ the light of Truth,
 The strength of Right. Fine Sense and Pity joined,
 Begat it. It came forth, midst tears, and scorn,
 And burning anger. These inspired your pen
 To the argument, when murdered Calas died.

 _Volt._ You bring me light, sir,—comfort,—almost faith.
 The dark thoughts that at times have haunted me,—
 The small ambition to be thought a wit,—
 The wish to sting my many enemies,—
 Seem disappearing. Sir, my thanks! I feel
 A warmth about my bosom, and begin
 To think that joys dwell not alone on earth,
 But some survive even in Purgatory.




                    AN AUSTRALIAN PLOUGHMAN’S STORY.


In red hot haste to get out of a Colonial town—where the life was too
much like what I had sailed eighteen thousand miles to avoid,—I agreed
to my Mr. Gumscrew’s terms without debate. Board and lodging for self
and horse, undertaking to do the light work of the farm for twelve
months without wages. On these conditions I took up my abode in a
wooden hut thatched with bark, on which any well-bred short-horn would
have looked with contempt. The sun and moon shone clearly through the
chinks between the weather boards; my bedstead was a bullock’s hide
stretched over four posts driven into the ground, a slip of green hide
hanging from wall to wall, formed at once my clothes-horse and chest of
drawers.

To the great contempt of my companion and fellow lodger, the overseer,
I did put up a shelf for a few of my books, and drive in a nail for a
small shaving glass, although not then able to boast a beard. The floor
was of clay, variegated with large holes where the morning broom had
swept too hard. The fire-place, built of unhewn stone, formed a recess
half the size of our apartment. The kitchen was detached, and although
small, rather better constructed than our chief hut, for the cook built
it himself, and being an ‘old hand’ took pains with his special domain.

If I had been ordered into such a dog-kennel in England how I should
have grumbled, and devoured my heart, in vain complainings; but now—it
was my own choice, I had _hope before me_,—the glorious climate, the
elastic atmosphere made chinks and cracks in walls of no consequence;
and when inclined to grumble, I thought of the dark den-like lawyer’s
office in which I had wearied away the last six months of my European
life.

After a few days spent in cantering round the neighbourhood, I was
ready to commence my light ‘duties.’

Returning home one evening I stopped my horse to look at our ploughman
breaking up a fine piece of alluvial flat, which had recently been
cleared and fenced in. He had ten pair of oxen and a heavy swing plough
at work. There was a man to help him to drive, but his voice was as
good as his hands, and it was a pleasure to see him, as he turned up a
broad furrow of virgin soil, and halted his team, and lifted the big
plough over the roots of the stumps that dotted the paddock, as if it
had been a feather weight. Our ploughman, Jem Carden—Big Jem he was
commonly called—was a specimen of English peasantry such as we don’t
often see in Australia, tall, though a round shouldered stoop took
off something from his height, large limbed but active, with a curly
fair-haired bullet head, light-blue good-natured eyes, and hooked nose,
large mouth full of good teeth, a solid chin, a colour which hard work
and Australian sun could not extract, and an expression of respectful
melancholy good nature that at once prepossessed me in his favour. He
was then in the prime of life, a perfect master of every kind of rural
work, ploughing, sowing, reaping, mowing, thatching, breaking-in, and
driving bullocks and horses, and not less an adept in all Colonial
pursuits, for he could do as much with a saw, an auger, an axe, and an
adze as a European workman with a complete chest of tools. He was a
very good fellow, too, always ready to help any one at a pinch; when
the stockman broke his leg he walked twenty miles through the rain, a
tropical rain in bucketfuls, although they had fought the day before
about a dog of Jem’s, the stockman had been ill using; and yet Big Jem
was a convict, or speaking colonially, ‘a prisoner.’

About a year after my arrival at the Station, Mr. Gumscrew having
purchased a large herd of cattle a bargain from a person living some
200 miles from us, in the Mochi district, where all the grass was
burned up, determined on sending me for them, as there was little doing
at Springhill, and left me to choose any one I pleased to accompany me.
I chose Carden.

We got our horses into the paddock close to the hut overnight; the next
morning, at sunrise, buckled a blanket, a couple of shirts, a bag of
tea and sugar, a quart pot, and a pair of hobbles to my saddle, and
started in high spirits.

Now, living in the Bush, and especially while travelling, there is
not the same distance between a master and well-behaved man, although
a prisoner, as in towns. From the first I was interested in the
ploughman, so I took the opportunity of this expedition to learn more
about him.

We travelled all day from sunrise to sundown, seldom going off a walk,
at which our horses could do nearly five miles an hour: toward evening
we tried to strike some station or shepherd’s hut, the whereabouts of
which Jem generally knew by the mixture of experience and instinct
that constitute a perfect Bushman; if we could not light upon a hut
we camped down near a waterhole, lighted a fire on some hollow fallen
gum-tree, hobbled out our horses on the pasture near, put the quart
pots to boil, the damper (flour cake) in the ashes to bake, and smoked
our pipes until all was ready; then rolling up each in his blanket,
slept soundly on the bare ground.

I think it was on the third day that we came upon a long stretch of
open undulating country, where the grass scarcely gave back a sound to
our horses’ feet. I dropped the reins on my little mare’s neck, and
began to fill my pipe; but seeing Carden’s pipe still stuck in his
straw hat, I knew he must be bankrupt in a Bushman’s greatest luxury,
so handed him my pouch, and said, ‘Come, ride along side me, and tell
me how you came here; for I cannot imagine how so honest a fellow ever
got into trouble.’

‘Master,’ he answered, ‘I’ll tell you all the truth; but give me a
little time, for my heart’s full, and it will take us a good three
hours to get across these plains.’ So we paced on in silence for the
space of one pipe, when he spoke again, and said, ‘Master, excuse me,
but I’m not much of a scholar, and if you would read me a chapter from
this book, it would do me a power o’ good. I try sometimes myself to
spell it out, but somehow I can’t see the letters “plain.”’ His eyes
were full of tears as he timidly handed a black clasped copy of the
Bible.

There was something painful in the emotion and humbleness of a strong
man before me a stripling alone with him in a desert.

I took the book from him; on the flyleaf was written, ‘Lucy Carden on
her Marriage from her friend and pastor the Rev. Charles Calton,’ and
turning it over it opened at the 51st Psalm: instinctively, I began to
read aloud, until I came to the 17th verse, ‘The sacrifices of God are
a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not
despise.’ At these words my companion wept aloud, and murmured, ‘Oh, my
poor wife’—and I, too, I knew not why, also wept.

Then we rode on in silence for some time; from a confused reverie I
was awakened by my companion saying in a hoarse voice, ‘Master, I am
ready—I can tell you my story now.

‘I was born in a village in Hampshire, the youngest of a large
family—the son of labouring people. As soon as I had strength and voice
enough, I was sent into the fields to scare the birds from the corn,
and at eight years old, I began to drive plough for my father, so I got
very little schooling but what I picked up in the winter evenings at
a school kept by an old pensioned soldier. To tell the truth, I never
liked my books when I was young, for which now I have often need to be
sorry. But I was a strong hearty lad, and no out-door work came amiss
to me. As soon as I could stand to them, I took hold of the stilts of
the plough, and by the time I was sixteen, I could do a man’s day’s
work.

‘When I was seventeen I won a great ploughing-match. Among the young
gentlemen that came to see it was our young ’Squire, that owned nearly
all the parish. He had just left College, and come into his fortune,
for his father had been dead a many years. He was so much pleased with
what he saw at the ploughing-match, that he determined to take the Home
Farm into his own hands, and nothing would serve him but that I must
be his head ploughman; indeed, I believe if I had understood writing
and cyphering, he would have made me his bailiff,—for he was a young
gentleman that nothing could stop when he took a fancy into his head.
I mind well when he sent me off at twelve o’clock at night to London
in his own carriage to buy a team of Suffolk Punches, he had heard of
from a gentleman that was dining with him. Well, this made a man of
me at once. I was as tall as I am now, and I’m afraid I grew spoiled
with so much good. I was courting my Lucy at the time. She was the
only daughter of the blacksmith in the next village, and if ever there
was an angel she was one. The parson and his daughters noticed her
a good deal, because she was clever at her book and sang so sweetly
at church. Her father was a drunken old chap; her mother had been
dead many years. I used to look out for him when he came down to our
village, as he often did to drink and play at bowls, and see him safe
over the stiles when he was ill able to walk straight. Many and many a
day, after ploughing all day, and supping up my horses, have I walked
five miles, half leading, half carrying, old Johnny Dunn, for the sake
of five minutes’ talk to dear Lucy. Well, one night, in a wet autumn,
I was up at the Hall to take the ’Squire’s instructions; for he loved,
when he had strangers from London, to have me in after dinner, to give
me a glass o’ wine and make believe of talking farming; old Dunn tried
to get home after an evening’s bouse by a short cut over a ford I had
often led him, missed his footing, and was found by some lads that went
next morning to take up their night lines, stone dead—drowned.

‘There was poor Lucy left all alone in the world, for her father,
who had been a dragoon farrier, and married one of Parson Calton’s
maid-servants, had no relations in that part of the country.

‘I was getting good wages: there was a cottage and garden, belonging
to the ploughman of the Home Farm, that I had never taken up, because
I had lived with my father. The ’Squire made me many presents, and
I had saved a little money, made by working at different things in
winter evenings, being always handy with tools. Well, to make a long
story short, Lucy found her father had left nothing behind him but a
quarter’s pension he had not had time to drink, a few pounds due for
work, and the furniture of his cottage. She had nobody to take care of
her, so we moved the furniture to my cottage, and were married before
I was nineteen, and on the day Parson Calton gave her that Bible,
that never has left me since I left her. Many people blamed us, and
wanted us to wait. I don’t think good Mr. Calton quite liked it, but
his daughters were well pleased, and gave Lucy her wedding dress. Oh,
God, sir, when I think upon those days, on two years that followed, and
think of what I am, I wonder how I live and keep my senses. There was
not a happier couple or prettier cottage in the county. My working days
were not hard, for I had Lucy to welcome me home; and then on Sundays,
to see her dressed in her best and walk across the fields to church,
and hear her sing! Why, there was not a lady in the county could
compare with her, and I have heard many great gentlemen say so.

‘I had a child, too, a darling little Lucy. * * * But this was too much
happiness to last; we had been married just two years. The ’Squire
stopped at our cottage, as he was riding by on his way to London, to
settle about a ploughing-match that he had determined to make up for
the next week, and talked over a plan for breaking up a lot of old
pasture. A fortnight afterwards the bailiff came down with a letter in
his hand, and said with a grave face, “Carden, I have some bad news
for you; the ’Squire has determined to give up farming, and is going
to foreign parts. I am to discharge all the hinds as soon as I can get
a tenant for the farm. You are to be paid up to Christmas, and you
may keep the cottage until the farm’s let, but I rather think Farmer
Bullivant will take it.”

‘Here was a blow; we had thought ourselves provided for for life, and
now we had a home and a living to seek. Farmer Bullivant would not keep
me on, I knew well; he had his own ploughman, a relation. Well, we were
put to sore straits; but at last I got another place, although at lower
wages, some distance from my native village. Hard times came on; wages
were lowered again and again; and at the same time a cry rose up round
the country against the threshing-machines that were being very much
used, and were throwing a good many poor people out of work. The people
in England, sir, are not as we are here, sir, a very few words, and one
or two desperate fellows can always lead them; they are so ignorant,
they are ready for anything when they are badly off.

‘I went up one night to get my wages, and behold, when I got me to
the farmer’s house, the bailiffs were in, and he going to be sold up,
and the winter coming on. I walked toward home half mad; passing by a
public-house, who should be at the door but the ’Squire’s gamekeeper—he
kept him on—and he being sorry to see me so downcast, for he was a good
kind fellow, though a gamekeeper, would make me take a glass with him;
I think I had not been in a public-house since I had been married. The
drink and the grief flew up into my head; before I got home, I fell in
with a crowd of friends and fellow-labourers holloing and shouting.
They had been breaking Farmer Bullivant’s threshing-machine, and swore
they would not leave one in the county. I began to try to persuade
them to go away quietly, but they ended by persuading me; we met a
machine, as ill-luck would have it, on the road just turning into
Farmer Grinder’s stack-yard. We smashed it to pieces; in the middle of
the row the soldiers came up. I was taken in the act, with about twenty
others; they lodged us in Winchester gaol the same night. The assizes
were sitting; they tried us in batches, and found us guilty almost as
soon as we came into court. I never saw my poor wife until the moment
when the judge sentenced me to transportation for life. I hear her
scream often now; I wake with it in the middle of the night. We had
no time to get any one to speak to character for us; we had no lawyer
or counsellor. Such poor people as we were had no friends of any use.
The farmers who knew us were too angry and too frightened—although some
of them were the first to speak against the threshing-machines. Good
Parson Calton had been away, ill and dying, or I do not think it would
have happened. For where are we poor countrymen to look for a friend
wiser than ourselves if the Parson or the ’Squire does not stand by us?

‘My wife came to see me in prison, and wept so we could not talk much;
for it was so quick, so sudden—it seemed like a horrid dream; for me to
be a felon—for me, that could not strike a blow against any man, except
in fair fight—that never wronged a living soul out of a farthing—to
be the same as robbers and murderers! Well, I advised her to get quit
of all bits of furniture, and try to get to service, through the Miss
Caltons. I knew they were not rich, and could not help except by giving
her a good name—by giving a character to the convict’s wife! We were
to have met again the next day; the poor soul had walked twenty miles
to Winchester, and a fruit-woman that was in court took pity on her
when she fainted, and gave her half her bed. But the same night I was
waked up from the first sound sleep I had had since I was taken, and
put into a coach with a lot of others, with a guard of soldiers, and
sent off to the hulks; and in three days we sailed for Botany Bay, as
they called it in England. Oh, sir, that time was terrible. There were
many on board that thought the punishment a pleasure voyage. They had
no wives, no children to love. They had no good name to lose; they had
not lived in one parish to know and love every stick and stone in it.
They boasted of their villany, and joked at the disgraceful dress; they
only found fault with the food, and the labour of helping to stow the
ship; I did not care for the food or the work. They made me a constable
on the voyage, and I landed with a good character from the surgeon in
charge. I was assigned straight away to Major Z——. You must have heard,
sir, what a terrible man he was. A rich man that had forgotten he had
once been poor. He had more cattle and stock of all kinds than he could
count; he starved us, he cursed us, and very few Mondays passed that he
didn’t take up five or six for a flogging. But he was very glad to get
me and three or four of the same lot, for it was not often such regular
first-rate husbandmen came into the colony, so we were better treated
than many. For in those times, if masters could be hard where they took
a spite, still prisoners had a good chance of getting on. Well, my
spirits rose and I began to have some hope when I found that, with good
luck, I might have my “ticket,” that would give liberty in the colony,
in seven years, and when I saw so many who had been prisoners riding
about in their carriages, or driving teams of their own, as good as the
’Squire’s. Indeed, those that had good masters got on very well, but it
was commonly thought that Major Z—— never parted with a good man if he
could help it. He was sure to make up some charge and get him flogged,
so as to put off the time for his getting a _ticket of leave_.

‘I had driven oxen at home and soon got into the ways of the colony,
when, one day, the master came down to see a new piece of land I had
been breaking up near a house he was building, and was so pleased that
he began to talk quite kindly, although every second word was an oath,
and asked me all about myself. Well, I told him, and made bold to say
that, as he was going to build a large dairy, if he would send for my
wife and child we would serve him for any wages he choose, all the days
of our lives. He turned on me like a tiger, he cursed me, he told me he
wanted no women or brats on his estate, no canting saints, no parsons,
all he wanted was men that could work, and work they should. “If, you
fool,” he said, “you had asked for a gallon of rum among the gang you
might have had it, and drowned all your troubles, but I’ll have no
women here, wives or no wives.”

‘I think at that moment Satan took possession of me. I was ready to do
anything for my liberty, or to be free from my tyrant, and there were
tempters enough all round me. A few days afterwards one of my fellow
servants, an old hand, who had heard the last part of my master’s
speech, came to me in the evening, and, after telling me that he
supposed I had found out that nothing was to be got by fair means, that
my master was a rogue, in fact that every one was a rogue who was not a
fool, he began to hint that he could tell me a way to get my wife out
and my liberty too. I swallowed the bait, I listened; then he went on
to show how with money anything could be done in the colony, told me
instances of tickets and conditional pardons, besides escapes managed
by bribing, and then, when I was thoroughly poisoned, he swore me to
secrecy and explained how, out of a thousand bullocks, a few pair would
never be missed; so that all I had to do when I took a bullock team
to Sydney was to yoke an extra pair of young bullocks, making ten or
twelve pair, instead of eight or ten—a butcher, near where the drays
generally stood, was all ready prepared to take and pay for, as many
pair of bullocks as I chose to drive in. They were worth from 10_l._ to
12_l._ each, and I was to have 6_l._ for every pair.

‘I refused point blank. “Well,” he said, “I rely on your honour not to
peach.” He knew he had caught me. My master took an early opportunity
of having me flogged on a charge of insolence; the magistrates were two
friends who had been dining with him. My tempter came to me again,
and, on the next opportunity, I drove in the bullocks and became a
_thief_. Having begun I could not stop; my tempter became my tyrant; to
drown care I began to drink and to associate with the old hands, and
then the money, for which I had resigned body and soul, melted away.
What I saved up I knew not what to do with, and so I went on getting
worse and worse, until one day, just as I was driving a pair of young
heifers into the butcher’s yard, I was arrested, tried, and convicted
on the evidence of my fellow-servant, who, having been found out in
another robbery, saved himself by turning on me. I was sentenced to
three years hard labour in an iron gang on the Blue mountains. What I
suffered in those three years no tongue can tell. I was coupled with
a wretch who had been a thief from his childhood, a burglar, and a
murderer, but there was one man, a political prisoner sentenced to the
iron gang for striking his overseer, who saved me, and spoke words of
comfort to me; my term was shortened a year for rescuing a gentleman
from a bush ranger, and Major Z—— having left the colony, I was
assigned to my present master. In another year I shall have my ticket,
but what I shall do heaven only knows. I have had one letter from my
wife; she was living as dairy-maid with one of the Miss Caltons, who
had married a country gentleman; they were very good to her, and I
think her letter, full of good words, helped to save me from total
ruin. But you, sir, are almost the only gentleman that has spoken
a kind word to me in the Colony. We live like beasts of the field,
working and well-fed, but nothing more. On many stations the prisoners
don’t even know when Sunday comes round, and we die like dogs.’

Here he paused: and I felt so much affected by his melancholy story,
that I could not at the time answer him, or offer any words of comfort.

       *       *       *       *       *

In my various wanderings I lost sight of Carden for two or three
years; but one day as I was going down to Sydney with a mob of horses
of my own for sale, at a roadside inn I met Jem Carden, at the head
of a party of splitters and fencers doing some extensive work in
the neighbourhood on a new station; he was looking thin, haggard,
nervous, and was evidently ashamed to meet me. In fact he was only just
recovering from a drunken spree; I taxed him with his folly; he owned
it, and showed me the cause. He could earn with ease at piece-work,
from 5_l._ to 8_l._ a week, building stations and stockyards. Twice he
had saved, and paid into the hands of apparently respectable parties,
40_l._, to remit for the passage of his wife and daughter. The first
time the dashing Mr. W—— was insolvent two days after receiving the
money. In the second instance he was kept nine months in suspense,
and then learned from England by letter and in the Sydney list of
bankrupts, that he had been again swindled. ‘And what,’ he asked, when
he had concluded this tale of pitiful, contemptible robbery, ‘what can
a poor fellow do but drink his cares away, when all striving to be
honest and happy is in vain!’

I thought, but did not say, how uneven were the laws that sent Jem
to the iron gang for stealing a bullock, and had no punishment for
those who devoured his hard earnings, and laughed at him from their
carriages. Thank God, a better system has been established, and
government now charges itself with the passage money of poor men’s
relations.

But barren sympathy was of little use, so I turned to the ploughman,
and said, ‘What money have you left?’ ‘About 10_l._ in the landlord’s
hands; he’s an honest man, although a publican.’ ‘And what are you to
have from this contract?’ ‘My share will be over 40_l._, and I can get
it done in less than six weeks, working long hours.’ ‘Then hand me over
the 10_l._, give me your solemn promise not to touch anything stronger
than Bushman’s tea for twelve months, and to let me have 30_l._ out of
your contract when I return this way, and I will send the money for
you.’

To cut this long story short, I put the business in the hands of my
excellent friend B******, one of the modern race of Australians,
wealthy, warm-hearted, and liberal, who was on his way to England.
Within a year the ploughman embraced his wife; they returned with me to
my station, they passed some years with me, and some eventful scenes,
before the district round me was settled. They have now a station and
farm of their own; they are growing rich, as all such industrious
people do in Australia, but they have not forgotten that they once
were poor. If you need a subscription for a church, a school, or a
sick emigrant, you may go to Mr. Carden, safe of a generous answer. It
is Mr. Carden now; and perhaps that fine little boy may sit a native
Representative in an Australian Parliament. A tall youth who rides
beside him, is not his son but the orphan child of a poor prisoner,
whom he adopted ‘to make up in part,’ as he expressed it, ‘for what
happened long ago.’

Lucy Carden, now the mother of a numerous brood of Australians, has
grown happy and portly, although you may trace on her mild features the
tide marks of past griefs.

The last time I saw them I was on my way to England. ‘Oh, sir,’ said
the happy husband and father, ‘tell the wretched and the starving how
honest, _sober_ labour is sure of a full reward here. Tell them that
here poverty may be turned to competence, crime to repentance and
happiness. And pray tell the great gentlemen who rule us that we much
need both preachers and teachers in this wide Bush of Australia, but
that it is _virtuous wives who rule us most_, and in a lovely land make
the difference between happiness and misery.’




                    HEATHEN +and+ CHRISTIAN BURIAL.


If, from the heights of our boasted civilisation, we take a retrospect
of past history, or a survey of other nations—savage nations
included,—we shall, with humiliation, be forced to acknowledge
that in no age and in no country have the dead been disposed of
so prejudicially to the living as in Great Britain. Consigning
mortal remains to closely-packed burial-grounds in crowded cities;
covering—scarcely interring them—so superficially that exposure
sometimes shocks the sentiments, while the exhalations of putrefaction
always vitiate the air, is a custom which prejudice has preserved the
longest to this land. A calculation made by Dr. Playfair, and quoted
by the Board of Health in their admirable report on Burials, estimates
the amount of noxious gases evolved annually from the metropolitan
grave-yards alone at 55.261 cubic feet per acre. The average of corpses
packed into each acre is 1117; therefore, as 52,000 interments take
place every year, the entire amount of poison-gas emitted per annum to
enter the lungs of the Londoners, and hasten their descent to the grave
to contribute fresh supplies for their successors, is 2,572,580 cubic
feet.

It is our present purpose to see whether such a fact can be paralleled
by researches into the past or by a short survey of the manners and
customs of existing savage life itself—adding such of the singular or
instructive funeral ceremonies of the various people as will prove
interesting.

Among the most ancient records are those of the Egyptians. The care
of that extraordinary people for their dead, both as to actual
preservation and that they should not become noxious to the living,
has never been surpassed. This partly arose, it is true, from a
superstitious reverence for the material part of man; but that
superstition doubtless originated from the wise sanitary regulations
of their early sages. The laws of Leviticus—many of them instituted to
prevent disease and the depreciation of the species—formed, in like
manner, a main part of the religion of the Jews.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul would return, after the
lapse of ages, to inhabit, in this world, the same body from which it
had been separated by death. In this belief commenced the process of
embalming by which the bodies of that people have been preserved with
wonderful integrity to the present day. To so extraordinary a point had
the antiseptic art been brought that, as appears from Diodorus, there
was a mode of preservation which ensured the retaining of the eyebrows,
eyelashes, and the general external character of the person, who could
be recognised by their form and features. ‘Whence,’ says Dr. Pocock,
in his Travels through Egypt, ‘many of the Egyptians kept the bodies
of their ancestors in houses [but never near their own residences]
adorned at a very great expense, and had the pleasure to see their
forefathers, who had been dead many years before they were born, and
to observe all their features as well as if they were living.’ The
painter’s art has in modern times superseded these curious picture
galleries.

Another peculiarity could not have been due to superstition, but to a
more rational care of the living than we at present evince, namely, the
distance of their great burial-places from their chief cities. The Nile
intervened; the Necropoli, including the range of stupendous pyramids,
were formed on the western, while the most considerable towns were on
the eastern bank of that river. Diodorus gives an interesting account
of the ceremonies arising out of this wise arrangement.

‘Those who prepare to bury a relative, give notice of the day intended
for the ceremony, to the Judges and all the friends of the deceased,
informing them that the body will pass over the lake of that district,
or that part of the Nile, to which the dead belonged; when, on the
Judges assembling to the number of more than forty, and ranging
themselves in a semicircle on the further side of the lake, the vessel
provided for this purpose is set afloat. It is guided by a pilot called
in the Egyptian language, _Charon_; and hence they say that Orpheus,
travelling in old times into Egypt, and seeing this ceremony, formed
the fable of the infernal regions, partly from what he saw, and partly
from invention. The vessel being launched on the lake, before the
coffin which contains the body is put on board, the law permits all
who are so inclined, to bring forward an accusation against it. If any
one steps forth, and proves that the deceased had led an evil life,
the Judges pronounce sentence, and the body is precluded from burial;
but if the accuser is convicted of injustice in his charge, he himself
incurs a considerable penalty. When no accuser appears, or when the
accusation is proved to be false, the relations present change their
expressions of sorrow into praises of the dead.’ The author adds, that
many kings had been judicially deprived of the honours of burial by the
indignation of their people; and that the dread of such a fate had the
most salutary influence on the lives of the Egyptian sovereigns.

Two singular coincidences will occur to the reader on perusing this
passage:—A _postmortem_ trial, precisely similar to that described
above, forms part of the Roman Catholic ritual of Canonising a Saint.
Before the defunct can be inscribed in the Calendar, a person appears
to set forth all the involuntary candidate’s sins and backslidings
during life; and if these be of a venal character he is rejected.
This officer is called ‘The Devil’s advocate.’ Secondly, the ancient
Egyptian and excellent system of funereal water conveyance is, it would
appear, to be revived. In the Report of the Board of Health, dated two
thousand years later than that of Diodorus Siculus, the most extensive
new burial-place recommended, is to be on the borders of the Thames;
and one of the Board’s propositions runs thus:—

‘That, considering the river as a highway passing through the largest
extent of densely-peopled districts, the facilities for establishing
houses of reception on its banks, the conveniences arising from the
shorter distances within the larger portion of the same area for the
removal of the bodies to such houses of reception, the advantages of
steam boat conveyance over that by railway in respect to tranquillity,
and the avoidance of any large number of funerals at any one point,
at any one time, and of any interference with common traffic and with
the throng of streets; and, lastly, taking into account its great
comparative cheapness, it is desirable that the chief metropolitan
cemetery should be in some eligible situation accessible by water
carriage.’

The case of the Jews is stronger than that of the Egyptians, as showing
saner modes of burial than we have so long persisted in. They had no
especial regard for the mere body, except as the temple of the soul;
hence, a burial-place was, with them, _the house of the living_; an
expression finely implying that death is the parent of immortal life.
Their cemeteries were always in sequestered spots. In the 23rd chap.
of Genesis we find that Abraham, when his wife Sarah died, desired a
family burying-ground from the tribe among whom he lived:—

  ‘And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons
  of Heth, saying,

  ‘I am a stranger and a sojourner with you; give me possession of a
  burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead _out of my sight_.’

A ready consent was given, and he was offered the choice of their
sepulchres. But this did not satisfy him: he wished to obtain the Cave
of Machpelah, and the field in which it lay, from Ephron, the son of
Zohar. The generous proprietor offered it as a gift, but the Patriarch
purchased it. Thus the first transference on record of real property
was the acquisition, in perpetuity, by the patriarch Abraham, of a
family burying-ground especially selected for its seclusion.

Nor was the classic heathen of a more western clime less mindful of
public health in his modes of disposing of the dead. The Romans, being
largely indebted to the Greeks for their science, literature, arts, and
habits of life, of course adopted their funeral ceremonies; and one
general description may suffice for those of both. By law of the Twelve
Tables, burial was prohibited within the city of Rome, and therefore
cemeteries were provided without the walls.[D]

[D] ‘_Hominem Mortuum in urbe ne sepelito neve urito._’

Immediately after the death, the body was washed, anointed with
aromatic unguents, and sometimes embalmed. It was shrouded in fine
linen; white with the Greeks and black with the Romans. If the departed
was a person of rank, he was clothed in his garments of ceremony, kept
for seven days during the preparations for the funeral, and lay in
state in the vestibule of his house, at the door of which were placed
branches of pine or cypress, together with the hair of the deceased,
which had been consecrated to the infernal deities. In Rome, between
death and burial seven days elapsed. The funeral was attended by the
friends and relatives of the deceased, who were bidden by a herald,
pronouncing the invitation:—‘It is time for whoever wishes, to go to
the funeral of N. son of N.; who is now to be borne from home.’[E]

The remains of persons who had done service to the state were honoured
by the attendance of public officers, and sometimes the procession was
followed by large bodies of the people. According to one of the laws of
Solon, the Athenians carried out the bodies of the dead before sunrise,
especially the young, in order that the orb of day might not throw
his light on so sad a spectacle, or by his heat induce decomposition
prematurely. The body was laid on a bier, crowned with flowers,
and having the face exposed. The bier was followed by the funeral
procession, among whom, at Roman funerals, there was often a _mime_,
or buffoon, wearing the dress of the deceased, and giving satirical
imitations of his bearing and manners. At the funeral of the Emperor
Vespasian, the lustre of whose many virtues was tarnished by love of
money, a celebrated buffoon (as Suetonius tells us) acted the part of
the emperor,—mimicking, as was customary, the deportment and language
of the deceased. Having asked the managers of the funeral what would
be the amount of its expense, and being answered that it would cost
a sum equivalent to eighty-thousand pounds, he replied, that if they
would give him eight hundred, he would throw himself into the Tiber—for
drowning was thought so revolting a death, that bodies rejected by the
waves were denied sepulture. The bust of the deceased, his warlike
trophies, or decorations of honour, were conspicuously exhibited in
the procession. His family followed the bier, walking bareheaded and
barefooted, with dishevelled hair, and mourning dresses of black; and
after them came bands of hired mourners, male and female, who rent the
air with cries and lamentations. Thus the body was conveyed to the
place of sepulture.

[E] ‘_Exequîas N., N. filii, quibus est commodus ire, tempus est: ollus
(ille) ex ædibus effertur._’

The claims to antiquity vaunted by the Chinese next force upon
attention their provisions against allowing the dead to interfere with
the well-being of the living. As they believe themselves _perfect_, to
alter any one custom is sacrilege punishable with death; hence they
observe the same ceremonies now, that their ancestors did several
thousand years ago. ‘Their tombs and sepulchres,’ says Mr. Sirr, ‘are
always built outside the city walls, and usually upon a hill, which is
planted with cypress and pine trees.’ In China nothing is so offensive
to good breeding as the remotest allusion to death. A number of amusing
periphrases are therefore resorted to when a hint of the subject is
unavoidable; a funeral is called from the kind of mourning used: ‘A
white affair.’

In Persia intramural burials are also forbidden. ‘The place of
sepulture,’ says a Persian sage, ‘must be far from dwellings: near it
must be no cultivation; nor the business necessarily attending the
existence of dwellings; no habitation nor population must be near it.’
This is another ancient injunction in remarkable accordance with one of
the recommendations of our modern sages, the Board of Health.

The Mahommedans again show much better taste than Christians in their
Mausoleums and burial-places—they never bury in their temples or within
the walls of a town.

Among the funeral customs of the other inhabitants of the East, that
of burning the dead is of very great antiquity. The Jews adopted it
only in emergencies. When Saul fell on the fatal field of Gilboa, and
his body was left exposed by the enemy, it was burnt by his faithful
followers (1 Samuel, chap, xxxi., v. 11–13). From a passage in the
book of Amos (chap. vi., v. 10), it appears that the bodies of the
dead were burnt in times of pestilence, no doubt on sanitary grounds.
For the same reason, incineration has been habitually perpetuated
in tropical climates, but has been accompanied unhappily with the
most horrible superstitions, particularly in Hindustan, where it is
associated with the self-sacrifice of the widow on the funeral pile of
her dead husband. The origin of this last custom, as a religious rite,
has been the subject of much investigation and discussion among learned
Orientalists; but Colebrooke, in his paper on the ‘Duties of a Faithful
Hindoo Widow,’ in the fourth volume of the _Asiatic Researches_,
has shown that this, among other duties of a faithful widow, is
prescribed by the ancient Sanscrit books of the Bramins. Bernier, the
French traveller, who visited India at the time when this practice
of self-immolation was very general, gives striking descriptions of
several scenes of this kind which he witnessed. The heroine of one
of them was a woman who had been engaged in some love intrigues with
a young Mahommedan, her neighbour, who was a tailor, and could play
finely on the tabor. This woman, in the hopes of marrying her paramour,
poisoned her husband, and then told the tailor that it was time for
them to elope together, as they had projected, as, otherwise, she
should be obliged to burn herself. The young man, fearing lest he
might be entangled in a dangerous affair, flatly refused. The woman,
expressing no surprise, went to her relations and informed them of the
sudden death of her husband, protesting that she would not survive
him, but would burn herself along with him. Her kindred, well satisfied
with so generous a resolution and the great honour thereby done to the
whole family, presently had a pit made and filled with wood, exposing
the corpse upon it, and kindling the fire. All being prepared, the
woman went to embrace and take farewell of all her kindred and friends
who surrounded the pit, among whom was the tailor, who had been invited
to play upon the tabor along with a number of other minstrels, as was
usual on such occasions. The woman, having come to the place where the
young man stood, made a sign as if she would bid him farewell with
the rest; but, instead of gently embracing him, she seized him by the
collar with both hands, dragged him with all her strength to the pit,
into which she threw herself and him together, and both instantly
perished in the flames.

It was not till a comparatively recent period that the British
Government made any attempt to abolish or check this barbarous custom:
being unwilling, it would seem, to interfere with the religious rites
and usages of the natives. The tardy intervention of the British
Government has at length effectually put an end to the practice;
and the natives themselves, instead of resenting this measure as
a violation of their religion, have (as might have been expected)
universally hailed it as a deliverance from a horrible oppression under
which they groaned, but from which they were unable to emancipate
themselves.

Throughout the greatest part of the wide region comprehended under the
general name of India, this practice of burning the dead prevails,
except among those who profess Mahommedanism. In the kingdom of Siam,
it is regarded as the most honourable funeral; the bodies of criminals,
and of persons disgraced, being buried. In the Birman empire, burning
is the established practice.

In colder climates where the necessity for the rapid disposal of
mortality is not so great, cremation has not been prevalent. Among the
Greeks and Romans, it was confined to the wealthier classes, because of
its expensiveness. When the Romans burnt the bodies of the dead, the
ashes were gathered and enclosed in a vase or urn, which was sometimes
deposited in the burial-place of the family, and sometimes preserved
by them in their house. Among the remains of antiquity which have been
found in Britain, and which belong to the period when a large portion
of this country was a Roman province, there are many sepulchral urns
which must have been deposited in the ground, either by the Roman
population of this island, or by the British who adopted the Roman
usages. Some of these urns are described by Sir Thomas Browne, and
later discoveries of a similar kind have been made at different times.
They have been found to contain, not only ashes mixed with half-burnt
human bones, but the remains of combs, beads, and other articles of
dress, and coins, both Roman and British.

Burning the dead has fallen into disuse in many countries where it once
prevailed, partly because of the expense—fuel diminishing as population
and agriculture increased—and partly, perhaps, because the early
Christians may have thought it less congruous than interment with the
doctrine of the Resurrection. ‘Christians,’ says Sir Thomas Browne, in
his usual quaint style, ‘abhorred this way of obsequies, and, though
they sticked not to give their bodies to be burned in their lives,
detested that mode after death; affecting rather a depositure than
absumption, and properly submitting unto the sentence of God, to return
not unto ashes but unto dust again, conformably unto the practice of
the Patriarchs; the interment of our Saviour, of Peter, Paul, and the
ancient Martyrs.’ In every age, and in every country where Christianity
has prevailed, the burial of the dead has been the unvarying usage.

Evidence, however, of a desire for another remarkable revival of the
practices of antiquity now lies before us. It is no less than the
prospectus of an association—bearing the recent date of January,
1850—“for Promoting the Practice of Decomposing the Dead by Fire.”
Among other advantages, cheapness is promised. We may mention as some
criterion on this point, that Mr. Ward, the Indian missionary, who had
many opportunities of ascertaining the fact, computed that the smallest
quantity of wood necessary to consume a human body, is about three
hundred weight.

However averse public feeling may be to this mode of disposing of the
remains of deceased relatives; yet anything is better than crowded city
churchyards and poisoned air. To these a favourable contrast is offered
by even the curious expedients of savage life—of which we now proceed
to take a glance.

The Parsees or Gabres—the race of fire-worshippers who still exist
in India,—abhor the burning of the dead as a pollution of the Deity
whom they adore. This feeling they appear to have inherited from the
ancient worshippers of fire, the Chaldeans, and the Magi of Persia;
from whom, also, they seem to have derived the custom of exposing
the bodies of the dead to be devoured by dogs, and beasts and birds
of prey. A similar usage exists at this day in the kingdom of Tibet.
‘According to the custom of Tibet,’ says Mr. Turner (Narrative of an
Embassy to Tibet), ‘instead of that pious attention which is paid to
the remains of the dead, in the preservation of their bodies from
pollution, by depositing them in the ground, they are here exposed
after their decease, like the Parsees of India, in the open air, and
left to be devoured by ravens, kites, and other carnivorous birds.
In the more populous parts, dogs also come in for their share of the
prey, and regularly attend the consummation of the last obsequies.’
The same practice anciently existed among the Colchians, and has been
remarked by modern travellers among the Illinois of North America, and
the savage inhabitants of the Aleutian islands. Even in this revolting
custom we trace a desire—savagely indulged, it is true—to ward off the
bad effects of putrefaction by a speedy disposal of the air-polluting
remains of the dead.

Among the Caffres, Hottentots, and other savage tribes of Southern
Africa, adjoining the European settlements, it seems to have been
customary to expose aged and helpless people in desert places, and
leave them to die, because of a superstition against any one expiring
in a hut. Intercourse with civilisation is mitigating this and other
barbarities.

Of the means used to avert the evils of decay by preservation, none
are more singular than those mentioned by Captain Tuckey, as in force
upon the river Congo. The people envelope their corpses in cloth; the
smell of putrefaction being only kept in by the quantity of wrappers.
These are successively multiplied as they can be procured, or according
to the rank of the deceased. The bulk thus attained is only limited by
the power of conveyance to the grave; so that the first hut in which
the body is deposited becoming too small, a second, a third—even to a
sixth—each larger than the former, is placed over it.

The South American savages run no risks from the putrefying remains
of their dead. The Orinoco tribes fasten them by a rope to the trunk
of a tree on the shore and sink the body in the river. In the course
of four and twenty hours the skeleton is picked perfectly clean by
the fish. Bones alone are reverenced in this part of the world. The
inhabitants of the Pampas and other South American tribes bury only the
bones of the dead, the flesh having been first removed from them: an
operation performed by the women. While the work of dissection is going
on, the men walk round the tent, covered with long mantles, singing
a mournful tune, and striking the ground with their spears, to drive
away the evil spirits. The bones, being prepared, are packed up in a
hide, and conveyed on a favourite horse of the deceased to the family
burial-place, sometimes hundreds of miles distant. Being disposed in
their natural order and tied together so as to form a skeleton, they
are clothed in the deceased’s best attire, and ornamented with beads
and feathers. The skeleton is placed in a sitting posture, with the
carcases of horses, killed—in order that their master may ride them in
the next world—in a pit or grave, which is then covered over. Among all
the customs of unenlightened mankind, there are few more remarkable
than this provision for the material wants of the dead in another state
of existence. In all ages, and in most parts of the world, the dead man
has been sent to his long home, furnished with servants, horses, dogs,
domestic utensils—every article of physical comfort and enjoyment
he is supposed to require. Money has been supplied for his journey,
and even (as among the Jukati of Siberia) food has been put into his
coffin, ‘that he may not hunger on his road to the dwelling of souls.’
‘As if,’ quaintly remarks an ancient Spanish traveller, ‘the infernal
regions were a long way off.’ But in every instance the corpse has been
so dealt with as to prevent injury to those who still exist.

It is now time to allude to our own burial customs, and to the great
reform which happily has at length begun. It appears extraordinary,
that amidst the advance which has been made in social and sanitary
science, Great Britain should be the last to give up the unwholesome
custom of continuing the dead as near neighbours to the quick. The
long conservation of this evil has mainly arisen from a sentiment of
the superior sanctity of burial-places in and near to sacred edifices.
That this is, however, an unqualified superstition, it is not difficult
to prove, by tracing it to its root. Joseph Bingham states in his
_Origines Ecclesiasticæ_, that churchyards owe their origin to respect
paid to the remains of saints and martyrs, which was shown first by
building churches and chapels over them, and then by a general desire
of people to be interred as near to their sacred dust as possible.
This privilege was only for a time accorded to Emperors and Kings, but
so early as the sixth century the commonalty were allowed places, not
only under the church wall, but in the consecrated space of ground
surrounding it. Bodies were not deposited within the church till after
a long struggle on the part of the heads of the Church.[F]

So far from burying in churches, corpses were not admitted into
parish churches, even for the funeral service to be read over them,
except under special circumstances. An interesting canon—the 15th of
the Council of Tribur—runs thus, ‘The funeral service must only be
performed in the church where the bishop resides: that is to say in
the cathedral of the diocese. If that church be too distant, it may be
celebrated in some other, where there is a community of canons, monks,
or religious orders; in order that the deceased may have the benefit
of their prayers. Should again that be impossible, the service may be
performed where the defunct during life paid tythes: this is in his
parish church.’ By a previous canon (one of the Council of Meaux) no
burial fees could be exacted by the clergy, although the relations
were allowed to give alms to the poor. This injunction was but little
observed either at or after the time it was laid, in 845.

[F] Several canons were issued against this now universal abuse. Among
others, the 18th of the Council of Brague (Portugal) in 563. The 72nd
of the Council of Meaux (845), the 17th of the Council of Tribur, 895,
&c.

The unwholesome practice of intra-ecclesiastical interment became
general after the 10th century, when the clergy succumbed to the power
of money, and the sale of the indulgence proved too profitable to be
abandoned. To show by what frauds the unhealthy custom was kept up, we
may cite a legend relating to St. Dunstan. An unbaptised son of Earl
Harold having been deposited within the church where the deceased saint
rested, St. Dunstan—so the fable runs—appeared twice to the chaplain
to complain that he could not rest in his grave for the stench of the
young Pagan. Other underground saints were, however, consulted on the
matter, and they silenced St. Dunstan by acquiescing in the abuse.
It therefore not only continued but gave rise to another evil. Tombs
came to be erected, and these became convenient as lurking-places and
rendezvous for various immoral and improper purposes. The Council of
Winchester, in 1240, forbade the holding of markets, gaming and other
iniquities performed among the tombs in churches and cemeteries. But
this injunction was of little avail, as we learn from the History of
St. Paul’s. Duke Humphrey’s Tomb in ‘Paul’s walk’ (the middle aisle of
the Cathedral), was the occasional resort for ages of the idleness and
infamy of London. It was a regular mart and meeting place for huxters,
gossips, gamblers, and thieves. In 1554 the Lord Mayor prohibited the
church to be used for such ‘irreverent’ purposes, under pain of fine.
Still it was not till the great fire that Duke Humphrey’s tomb was
utterly deserted.

Meanwhile in every part of the country, families who could afford the
expense, were buried inside in preference to outside the various places
of worship, and, until the present year, no effective stop has been
put to the evil. Our French neighbours were before us in this respect.
Inhumation inside churches was forbidden except in rare cases, by a
royal ordinance dated Versailles, 10th March, 1777. We perceive by
the excellent report of Dr. Sutherland to the Board of Health on the
practice of interments in Germany and France, that cemeteries have been
since substituted by law in almost every considerable town in those
countries. It has therefore been continued, almost exclusively in this
empire.

At last, however, we have good reason to hope that intramural burials,
with all their attendant evils, will speedily be themselves buried with
the barbarous relics of the past. The comprehensive suggestions of the
Board of Health appear to meet every difficulty, and as a strong stream
of common sense has, we hope and believe, set in in favour of funereal
reform, we trust they will pass into the statute book without much
opposition; some they will inevitably encounter, in compliance with the
fixed law of English obstinacy.

It may console those in whom lingers, from old association, almost a
religious prejudice in favour of churchyards, to be reminded that some
of the most eminent Christians, both lay and clerical, have earnestly
pleaded for extramural cemeteries. Evelyn—the model of a Christian
gentleman—regretted that after the Fire of London advantage had not
been taken of that calamity to rid the city of its burial-places, and
establish a necropolis without the walls. ‘I yet cannot but deplore,’
says he, in his ‘Silva,’ ‘that when that spacious area was so long
a _rasa tabula_, the churchyards had not been banished to the north
walls of the city, where a grated inclosure of competent breadth for
a mile in length, might have served for an universal cemetery to all
the parishes, distinguished by the like separations, and with ample
walks of trees, the walks adorned with monuments, inscriptions, and
titles, apt for contemplation and memory of the defunct, and that wise
and excellent law of the Twelve Tables renewed.’ The pious Sir Thomas
Browne says quaintly in his ‘Hydriotaphia,’ ‘To live indeed is to be
again ourselves; which being not only a hope but an evidence in noble
believers, ’tis all one to lie in St. Innocent’s Churchyard, as in the
sands of Egypt, ready to be anything in the ecstasy of being ever, and
as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.’

Would it not then be well to reflect, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and fifty, whether any of the best, whether the
very worst custom—considering the state of society in which it has
obtained—is so extraordinary and degrading as that of burying the dead
in the midst of the living, to generate an amount of human destruction,
compared with which the slaughter attendant on an African funeral
is as a drop of water in an ocean. It should be remembered that, in
the barbarous customs we have cited there is always to be traced the
perversion of an idea:—as that the dead man will want food, passage
money, attendants, beasts of burden, something that benighted ignorance
is unable to separate from the wants incidental to this earthly state.
There is no such poor excuse for the custom into which this civilised
age has insensibly lapsed, until its evils have become too great to
bear. The affection which endures beyond the grave is surely more
fitly associated with a tomb in a beautiful solitude than amidst the
clamour and clatter of a city’s streets. If, in submission to that
moral law of gravitation, which renders it difficult to separate our
thoughts of those who have departed from some lingering association
with this earth, we desire to find a resting-place for our dead which
we can visit, and where we may hope to lie when our own time shall
come, reason and imagination alike suggest its being in a spot serenely
sacred to that last repose of so much of us as is mortal, where natural
decay may claim kindred with nature, in her beautiful succession of
decay and renovation, undisturbed by the strife of the brief scene that
has closed.

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




Transcriber’s notes

The original text is followed as much as possible. There are however
some printing errors and inconsistencies in spelling that have been
corrected. These are listed below.

To represent formatting the following conventions are used:
 _word_ means that “word” is in italics;
 +word+ means that “word” is in small capitals.

Corrections

 Page 26  “coal mine” in “the coal mine in which he held a share” and in
          “a third share he had in this coal mine” changed to
          “coal-mine”, as elsewhere in the text;
 Page 27  “Coal-fire” in “Now, then, old Coal-fire” changed to
          “Coal fire”, as elsewhere;
 Page 32  unmatched double quote behind “Many a one dies is——” replaced
          by single quote;
 Page 32  “and the very day at after we came” changed to “and the very
          day after we came”;
 Page 32  missing period added after “Thou ’rt a likely lad, and sure o’
          work”;
 Page 33  unmatched double quote before “Ay, if it will come to me.”
          replaced by single quote;
 Page 35  doubling of “Park” in “and entered St. James’s Park Park”
          removed;
 Page 37  “Guinea Pig” in “When did _I_ ever tell the Guinea Pig”
          hyphenated, as elsewhere;
 Page 40  “ploughing match” in “I won a great ploughing match”
          hyphenated, as elsewhere;
 Page 40  missing opening quote added before “When I was seventeen”;
 Page 41  “threshing machine” in “They had been breaking Farmer
          Bullivant’s threshing machine” hyphenated, as elsewhere;
 Page 41  missing opening quote added before “Here was a blow;”;
 Page 42  closing quote removed behind “I refused point blank.”, as the
          speaker continues;
 Page 42  four asterisks interpreted as thought break;
 Page 43  “passage-money” in “with the passage-money of poor men’s
          relations” separated, as usual at the time of publication;
 Page 44  “burial places” in “great burial places from their chief
          cities” hyphenated, as elsewhere;
 Page 46  single closing quote behind “for Promoting the Practice of
          Decomposing the Dead by Fire.” replaced by double quote, to
          match the opening;
 Page 48  “the slaughter-attendant on an African funeral” changed to “the
          slaughter attendant on an African funeral”;
 Page 48  “Published at...Printed by” line combined into one; originally
          one was placed under the left column, the other under the right
          one.



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