LODGINGS IN LONDON—A CONVIVIAL HUSBAND—THE WIFE GIVES HER OPINION—FAMILY PLEASURES—FAMILY CARES—DRESSING TO GO OUT—THE DRUNKARD’S VISITORS—CHEAP ENJOYMENT—WHO IS THE OWNER?—LONDON FOR THE POOR

As you walk jauntily along any of the great thoroughfares of London, you arrive, ever and anon, at one of those narrow offshoots of which you would scarcely discover the existence, were it not for the paved crossing over which you daintily pick your way on the points of your jetty boots. All the attention you can spare from passing events is devoted to the preservation of your chaussure, and you do not probably think it worth while to bestow even a casual peep down that close, winding alley, in which love and hate, and hopes and fears, and human joys and miseries and sympathies, are all packed together, just as they are in your own house in Belgravia, Tyburnia, or Mayfair, only considerably more cramped for room, and a good deal worse off for fresh air. That noble animal, the horse, generally occupies the ground-floor of such tenements as compose these narrow streets, whilst the dirty children of those bipeds who look after his well-being, embryo coachmen, and helpers, and stablemen, play and fight and vociferate in the gutter, with considerable energy and no little noise, munching their dinners al fresco the while, with an appetite that makes dry bread a very palatable sustenance. A strong “smell of stables” pervades the atmosphere, attributable perhaps to the accumulation of that agricultural wealth which, in its right place, produces golden harvests; and the ring of harness and stamp of steeds, varied by an occasional snort, nearly drown the plaintive street organ, grinding away, fainter and fainter, round the corner. Shirts, stockings, and garments of which we neither know the names nor natures, hang, like Macbeth’s banners, “on the outward walls.” Washing appears to be the staple commerce, while porter seems the principal support, of these busy regions; and as the snowy water-lily rises from the stagnant marsh, so does the dazzling shirt-front, in which you will to-day appear at dinner, owe its purity to that stream of soapy starch-stained liquid now pouring its filthy volume down the gutter. Dirty, drowsy-looking men clatter about with pails and other apparatus for the cleansing of carriages, whilst here and there an urchin is pounced upon and carried off by some maternal hawk, with bare arms and disordered tresses, either to return with a smeared mouth and a festive slice of bread and treacle, or to admonish its companions, by piercing cries, that it is undergoing summary punishment not undeserved. The shrill organ of female volubility, we need hardly say, is in the ascendant; and we may add that the faces generally met with, all dirty and careworn though they be, are gilded by an honest expression of contentment peculiar to those who fulfil their destiny by working for their daily bread.

In one of the worst lodgings in such a mews as we have faintly endeavoured to describe, in a dirty, comfortless room, bare of furniture, and to which laborious access is obtained by a dilapidated wooden staircase, sits our old acquaintance Gingham, now Mrs. Blacke, but who will never be known to “the families in which she lived” by any other than her maiden patronymic. Though in her best days a lady of no fascinating exterior, she is decidedly altered for the worse since we saw her at St. Swithin’s, and is now, without question, a hard-featured and repulsive-looking woman. She has lost the “well-to-do” air, which sits more easily on those who live at “housekeeping” than on those “who find themselves,” and everything about her betrays a degree of poverty, if not of actual want, sadly repugnant to the habits of an orderly upper-servant in a well-regulated establishment.

Of all those who sink to hardships after having “seen better days,” none bear privation so ill as this particular rank. They have neither the determination and energy of “the gentle,” nor the happy carelessness and bodily vigour of the labouring class. It is lamentable to watch the gradual sinking of a once respectable man, who has been tempted, by the very natural desire of becoming independent, to leave “service” and set up on his own account. From his boyhood he has been fed, housed, and clothed, without a thought or care of his own, till he has spread into the portly, grave, ponderous official, whom not even his master’s guests would think of addressing save by the respectful title of “Mister.” He has saved a “pretty bit o’ money”; and on giving warning, announces his long-concealed marriage to the housekeeper, who has perhaps saved a little more. Between them they muster a very few hundred pounds; and on this inexhaustible capital they determine to set up for themselves. If he takes a public-house, it is needless to dwell on the almost inevitable catastrophe. But whatever the trade or speculation on which he embarks, he has everything to learn; education cannot be had without paying for it; business connections cannot be made—they must grow. Those are positive hardships to him, which could scarcely be felt as wants by others of his own sphere, who had not always lived, as he has, on the fat of the land. Discontent and recrimination creep into the household. The wife makes home uncomfortable, and “the husband goes to the beer-shop.” The money dwindles—the business fails—fortunate if the family do not increase. “Trade never was so bad,” and it soon becomes a question of assignees and ten shillings in the pound. The man himself is honest, and it cuts him to the heart. Only great speculators can rise, like the Phoenix, in gaudier plumage after every fresh insolvency; and hunger begins to stare our once portly acquaintance in the face. At last he is completely “sold up,” and if too old to go again into service, he will probably think himself well off to finish in the workhouse. And this is the career of two-thirds of those who leave comfortable homes for the vague future of a shadowy independence, and embark upon speculations of which they neither understand the nature nor count the cost.

But we must return to Gingham, bending her thin, worn figure over some dirty needlework, and rocking with her foot a wooden cradle, in which, covered by a scanty rug not over-clean, sleeps a little pinched-up atom of a child, contrasting sadly with those vigorous, brawling urchins out of doors. There is a scanty morsel of fire in the grate, though the day is hot and sultry, for a “bit of dinner” has to be kept warm for “father”; and very meagre fare it is, between its two delf plates. A thin-bladed knife and two-pronged fork lie ready for him on the rough deal table, guiltless of a cloth; and Gingham wonders what is keeping him, for he promised faithfully to come back to dinner, and the poor woman sighs as she stitches and rocks the child, and counts the quarters told out by the neighbouring clock, and ponders sadly on old times, than which there is no surer sign of a heart ill at ease. Well-to-do, thriving people are continually looking forward, and scheming and living in the Future; it is only your worn, dejected, hopeless sufferer that recalls the long-faded sunshine of the Past.

Gingham’s marriage took place at St. Swithin’s as soon after Mrs. Kettering’s death as appearances would allow, and was conducted with the usual solemnities observed on such occasions in her rank of life. There was a new shawl, and a gorgeous bonnet, and a cake, with a large consumption of tea, not to mention excisable commodities. Tom Blacke looked very smart in a white hat and trousers to match, whilst Hairblower signalised the event by the performance of an intricate and unparalleled hornpipe, such as is never seen now-a-days off the stage. Blanche made the bride a handsome present, which was acknowledged with many blessings and a shower of tears. Gingham’s great difficulty was, how ever she should part with Miss Blanche! and “all went merry as a marriage bell.” But they had not long been man and wife ere Tom began to show the cloven foot. First he would take his blushing bride to tea-gardens and such places of convivial resort, where, whilst she partook of the “cup that cheers but not inebriates,” he would sip consolatory measures of that which does both. After a time he preferred such expeditions as she could not well accompany him on, and would come home with glazed eyes, a pale face, and the tie of his neckcloth under his ear. The truth will out. Tom was a drunken dog. There was no question about it. Then came dismissal from his employer, the attorney. Still, as long as Gingham’s money lasted, all went on comparatively well. But a lady’s-maid’s savings are not inexhaustible, and people who live on their capital are apt to get through it wonderfully fast. So they came down from three well-furnished rooms to a kitchen and parlour, and from that to one miserable apartment, serving all purposes at once. Then they moved to London to look for employment; and Tom Blacke, a handy fellow enough when sober, obtained a series of situations, all of which he lost owing to his convivial failing. Now they paid two shillings a week for the wretched room in which we find them, and a hard matter it often was to raise money for the rent, and their own living, and Tom’s score at “The Feathers,” just round the corner. But Gingham worked for the whole family, as a woman will when put to it, and seemed to love her husband the better the worse he used her, as is constantly the case with that long-suffering sex. “Poor fellow,” she would say, when Tom reeled home to swear at her in drunken ferocity, or kiss her in maudlin kindness, “it’s trouble that’s drove him to it; but there’s good in Tom yet—look how fond he is of baby.” And with all his faults, there is no doubt little Miss Blacke possessed a considerable share of her father’s heart, such as it was.

But even gentle woman’s temper is not proof against being kept waiting, that most irritating of all trials; and Gingham, who in her more prosperous days had been a lady of considerable asperity, could “pluck up a spirit,” as she called it, even now, when she was “raised,”—so, surmounting the coffee-coloured front with a dingy bonnet, and folding her bare arms in a faded shawl, she locked baby in, trusting devoutly the child might not wake during her absence, and marched stoutly off to “The Feathers,” where she was sure to find her good-for-nothing husband.

There he was, sure enough, just as she expected, his old black coat glazed and torn, his pinched-up hat pressed down over his pale, sunken features, his whole appearance dirty and emaciated. None but his wife could have recognised the dapper Tom Blacke, of St. Swithin’s, in that shaky, scowling, dissipated sot. Alas! she knew him in his present character too well. There he was, playing skittles with a ponderous ruffian, in a linen jacket and high-lows, who looked like a showman of a travelling menagerie, only not so respectable; and a little Jew pedlar, with a hawk eye and an expression of countenance that defied Mephistopheles himself to overreach him. There was her husband, betting pots of beer and “goes” of gin, though the cupboard was bare at home and the child crying for food—marking his game with a trembling hand, cheating when he won, and blaspheming when he lost, like the very blackguard to which he was rapidly descending.

Gingham shook a little as she advanced, twirling the door-key nervously round her finger; but she determined to try the suaviter in modo first, so she began, “Tom! Tom Blacke! dinner’s ready, ain’t you coming home?”

“Home! Home be ——! and you, too, Mrs. Blacke; we won’t go home till mornin’—shall us, Mr. Fibbes?” Mr. Fibbes, although appearances were much against him, in his linen jacket and high-lows, was a man of politeness where the fair were concerned, so he took a straw out of his mouth, and replied, “Not to cross the missus, when sich is by no means necessary; finish the game first, and then we’ll hargue the pint—that’s what I say.”

“O Tom, pray come away,” said poor Gingham, who had caught sight of the chalked-up score, and knew, by sad experience, what havoc it would make with the weekly earnings. “I durstn’t leave the child not a minute longer; I’ve kept your bit of dinner all hot for you—come away, there’s a dear!”

“Not I,” said Tom, poising his wooden bowl for a fresh effort, and, irritated by his failure, bursting forth upon his wife. “How can I leave these gentlemen in their game to attend to you? Come, let’s have no nonsense; be off! be off!” he repeated, clenching his fist, and raising his voice to a pitch that called forth from the large man the admonitory remark that “easy does it,” whilst the little Jew’s eyes glittered at the prospect of winning his game.

But Gingham was roused, and she went at him fiercely and at once: “Shame—shame on ye!” she exclaimed, in a low, hoarse voice, gradually rising, as she got more excited, and her pale features worked with passion, “with the child cryin’ at home, and me obliged to come and look for you in such a place as this; me that slaves and toils, and works my fingers to the bone,” holding up her needle-scarred hands to the by-standers, who were already collecting, as they always do when there is a prospect of a row. “Call yourself a man!—a man, indeed!—and let your wife and child starve whilst you are taking your diversion, and enjoying of yourself here? And you too,” she added, attacking the large man and the Jew with a suddenness which much startled the former, “you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you ought; keeping of him here, and making of him as bad as yourselves—though perhaps you’re not husbands and fathers, and don’t know no better. Ay, do, you coward! strike a woman if you dare! Was it for this I left my place and my missus? Oh dear, oh dear, whatever shall I do?” and Gingham, throwing her apron over her head, sank upon a bench in a passion of weeping, supported by a phalanx of matrons who had already collected, and who took part in the altercation, as being to all intents and purposes a Government question.

Tom Blacke was furious, of course. Had it not been for the large man, he would have struck his wife to the ground—alas! not the first time, we fear, that she had felt the weight of a coward’s arm; but that ponderous champion interposed his massive person, and recommended his friend strongly “not to cross the missus.” Truth to tell, Mr. Fibbes had a little shrew of a black-eyed wife at home, who ruled the roast, and kept her great husband in entire subjection; besides which, like most square, powerful men, he was a good-natured fellow, though not very respectable; and having won as much beer as he wanted from Tom, willingly lent his good offices to solder up the quarrel, which ended, as such disturbances generally do, in a sort of half-sulky reconciliation, and the wife marching off in triumph with her captured husband. The women, as usual, had formed the majority of the crowd, and of course sided with the injured lady; so Tom Blacke, after a few ineffectual threats, and an oath or two, left the ground with his still sobbing wife, promising himself an ample revenge if she should dare to cross him at home, when there was no one by to take her part.

When they arrived at the desolate room which served them for home, “baby” was awake, and crying piteously to find its little self alone. On what trifles do the moods and tempers of the human mind depend! The child set up a crow of delight to see its father, instead of the hideous howl in which it had been indulging, and stretched out its little arms with a welcome that went straight to the drunkard’s heart. In another moment he was dancing the little thing up and down in perfect good humour; and poor Gingham, thoroughly overcome, was leaning her head against his shoulder in a paroxysm of reconciled affection, and going through that process of relief known to ladies by the expressive term of “having a good cry.”

How many a matrimonial bicker has been interrupted and ended by the innocent smile of “one of these little ones”! How many an ill-assorted couple have been kept from separation by the homely consideration of “what should be done with the children”! How many an evil desire, how many an unkind thought, has been quenched at its very birth by the pure, open gaze of a guileless child! The stern, severe man, disgusted with the world, and disappointed in his best affections, has a corner in his heart for those whom he prizes as his own flesh and blood; the passionate, impetuous woman, yearning for the love she seeks in vain at home, her mind filled with an image of which it is sin even to think, and beset by the hundred temptations to which those are exposed who pass their lives in wedded misery, pauses on the very threshold, and is saved from guilt when she thinks of her darlings. Sunshine and music do they make in a house, with their bright, happy faces, the patter of their little feet, and the ringing echoes of their merry laugh. Grudge not to have the quiver full of them. Love and prize them whilst you may; for the hour will come at last, and your life will be weary and your hearth desolate when they take wing and fly away.

So Tom Blacke and his wife are reconciled for the time, and would be comparatively happy, were it not for the grinding anxiety ever present to their minds of how to “make both ends meet”—that consideration which poisons the comfort of many a homely dwelling, and which in their case is doubtless their own fault, or at least the fault of the “pater familias,” but none the less bitter on that account.

“There is the baker to pay, and the rent,” sighed Gingham, enumerating them on her fingers; “and the butcher called this morning with his account; to be sure it is but little, and little there is to meet it with. I shall be paid to-day for the plain-work, and I got a bit of washing yesterday, that brought me in sevenpence-halfpenny,” she proceeded, immersed in calculation; “and then we shall be three-and-eightpence short—three-and-eight-pence! and where to get it I don’t know, if I was to drop down dead this minute!”

“I must have a little money to-day, too, missus,” said Tom, in a hoarse, dogged voice; “can’t ye put the screw on a little tighter? A man may as well be starved to death as worried to death; and I can’t face ‘The Feathers’ again without wiping off a bit of the score, ye know.” Gingham’s eye glanced at the Sunday gown, hanging on a nail behind the door—a black silk one, of voluminous folds and formidable rustle, the last remnant of respectability left—and she thought that, too, must follow the rest to the pawnbroker’s, to that receptacle of usury with which, alas! she was too familiar, and from which even now she possessed sundry mocking duplicates, representing many a once-prized article of clothing and furniture.

Tom saw and interpreted the hopeless glance. “No, no,” said he, relenting, “not quite so bad as that, neither; I wouldn’t strip the gown off your back, Rachel, not if it was ever so; I couldn’t bear to see you, that was once so respectable, going about all in rags. We might get on, too,” added he, brightening up, with an expression of desperate cunning in his bad eye—“we might get money—ay, plenty of it—if you were only like the rest: you’re too mealy-mouthed, Mrs. Blacke, that’s where it is.”

“O Tom, what would you have me do?” exclaimed his wife, bursting afresh into tears; “we’ve been honest as yet through it all, and I’ve borne and borne because we were honest. I’d work upon my bare knees for you and the child—I’d starve and never complain myself, if I hadn’t a morsel in the cupboard; but I’d keep my honesty, Tom, I’d keep my honesty, for when that’s gone, all’s gone together.”

“Will your honesty put decent clothes on your back, missus?” rejoined Tom, who did not see that the article in question was by any means so indispensable; “will your honesty put a joint down before the fire, such as we used to sit down to every day, when we was first man and wife, and lived respectable? Will your honesty furnish a bellyful for this poor little beggar, that’s whining now on my knee for a bit to eat?” Gingham began to relent at this consideration, and Tom pursued his advantage: “Besides, it’s not as if it was to do anybody any harm; there’s Miss Blanche got more than she knows what to do with, and the young gentleman—he’s away at the wars. Honesty, indeed! if honesty’s the game, you’ve a right to your share, what Mrs. Kettering intended you should have. I think I ought to know the law; and the law’s on our side, and the justice too. Ah! Rachel, you used not to be so difficult to come round once,” concluded Tom, trying the tender tack, when he had exhausted all his other arguments; and recalling to his wife’s mind, as he intended it should do, their early days of courtship, and the carriage of a certain brown-paper parcel by the sea-shore.

But Gingham felt she had right on her side; and when we can indulge the spirit of contradiction never dormant in our natures, and fight under the banner of truth at the same time, it is too great a luxury for mortal man, or especially mortal woman, to forego, so Gingham was game to the last. “No, Tom, no!” she said, steadily and with emphasis, “I won’t do it, so don’t ask me, and there’s an end of it!”

Her husband put the child down in disgust, banged his hat upon his head, as if to go back to “The Feathers,” and was leaving the room, when a fresh idea struck him. If he could but break down his wife’s self-respect he might afterwards mould her more easily to his purpose, and the course he proposed to adopt might, at any rate, furnish him in the meantime with a little money for his dissipation; so he turned round coaxingly to poor Gingham, and asked for his bit of dinner, and put the infant once more upon his knee, ere he began to sound her on the propriety of applying for a little assistance to her darling Miss Blanche. “You ought to go and see your young lady, Rachel,” said he, quite good-humouredly, and with the old keeping-company-days’ smile; “it’s only proper respect, now she’s grown to be a great lady, and come to London. I’ll mind the child at home; it likes to be left with its daddy—a deary—and you brush yourself up a bit, and put on your Sunday gown there, and take a bit of a holiday; you needn’t hurry back, you know, if they ask you to stay tea in the room, and I’ll be here till you come home; or if I’m not, I’ll get one of the neighbours to look in. So now go, there’s a good wench.”

Mrs. Blacke had not heard such endearing language since the sea-side walks at St. Swithin’s—she felt almost happy again, and nearly forgot the “three-and-eightpence” wanting for the week’s account. Sundry feminine misgivings had she, as to her personal appearance being sufficiently fine to face the new servants, in the exalted character of Miss Blanche’s late lady’s-maid; but women, even ugly ones, have a wonderful knack of adorning themselves on very insufficient materials, and Tom assured her the black silk looked as good as new, and that bonnet always did become her, and always would—so she gave the child a parting kiss, and her husband many injunctions to take care of the treasure, and started in wonderfully good spirits; Tom’s last injunction to her as she departed being to this effect—“If Miss Blanche should ask you how we’re getting on, Rachel, you put your pride in your pocket—mind that—put your pride in your pocket, do you understand?” So the drunkard was left alone with his child.

We have already said Tom was fond of the little thing—in fact, it was the only being on earth that had found its way to his heart. Man must love something, and Tom Blacke, the attorney’s clerk, who had married for money as if he had been a ruined peer of the realm, cared just as little for his wife as any impoverished nobleman might for the peeress with whom his income was necessarily encumbered; but the more indifferent he was to the mother, the fonder he was of the child; and with all his liking for skittles and vulgar dissipation (the whist and claret of higher circles), he thought it no hardship to spend the rest of the afternoon with an infant that was just beginning to talk. He fully intended, as he had promised, to remain at home till his wife returned, but a drunkard can have no will of his own. When a man gives himself up to strong drink he chooses a mistress who will take no denial, for whom appetite grows too fiercely by what it feeds on, whose beck and call he must be ever ready to obey, for she will punish his neglect by the infliction of such horrors as we may fancy pictured in the imagination of the doomed—till he fly for relief back to the enchantress that has maddened him; and whilst the poison begets thirst as the thirst craves for the poison, the liquid fire poured upon the smouldering flame eats, and saps, and scorches, till it expires in drivelling idiocy, or blazes out in raving, riotous madness. Mr. Blacke was tolerably cheerful up to a certain point, when he arrived at that state which we once heard graphically described by the sergeant of a barrack-guard, on whom the duty had devolved of placing an inebriated warrior in solitary confinement—“Was he drunk, sergeant?” said the orderly officer. “No, sir.” “Was he sober, then?” “No, sir.” “How? neither drunk nor sober! what d’ye mean?” “Well, sir, the man had been drinking, no doubt, but the liquor was just dying out in him.”

So with Tom Blacke—after an hour or so the liquor began to die out in him, and then came the ghastly reaction. First he thought the room was gloomy and solitary, and he got nearer the child’s cradle for company—the little thing was again asleep, and he adjusted its coverlet more comfortably—ah! that slimy, crawling creature! what is it? so near the infant’s head—he brushed it away with his hand, but swarms of the same loathsome insects came climbing over the cradle, chairs, and furniture. Now they settled on his legs and clothes, and he beat them down and flung them from him by hundreds, shuddering with horror the while; then he looked into the corners of the room, and put his hands before his eyes after each startled glance, for hideous faces grinned and gibbered at him, starting out from the very walls, and mopping and mowing, shifted their forms and places, so that it was impossible to identify them. He could have borne these, but worse still, there was a Shape in the room with him, of whose presence he was fearfully conscious, though whenever he manned himself to look steadily at it, it was gone. He could not bear to have this visitant behind him, so he backed his chair hard against the wall. In vain—still on the side from which he turned his head the grim Shape sat and cowered and blinked at him. He knew it—he felt it—mortal nerves could bear it no longer. He grew desperate, as a man does in a dream. Should he take the child and run for it? No! he would meet It on the narrow stairs, and he could not get by there. Ha! the window! bounding into the air, child and all, he might escape. He was mad now—he was capable of anything. Come along, little one!—they are blocking up the room—they cover the room in myriads—the Shape is waving them on—light and freedom without, the devil and all his legions within—Hurrah!

Fortunate was it for the hope of the Blacke family that Mrs. Crimp was at this instant returning to her lodgings above, accompanied by several promising young Crimps, with whom, as she toiled up the common staircase, she kept up a running fire of objurgation and entreaty. The homely sounds, the familiar voices, brought Tom Blacke to himself. The vicinity of such a material dame as Mrs. Crimp was sufficient to destroy the ideal in the most brandy-sodden brain, and the horrors left their victim for the time. But he dared not remain to encounter a second attack. He could not answer for the consequences of another hour in that room alone with the child; so he asked his neighbour, a kind, motherly woman, and as fond of a baby as if she had not nursed a dozen of her own, to keep an eye upon his little one, and betook himself straight to “The Feathers,” to raise the accursed remedy to his lips with a trembling hand, and borrow half-an-hour’s callousness at a frightful sacrifice. Tom thought he knew what was good for his complaint, and “clung to the hand that smote him” with the confirmed infatuation of a sot. So we leave him at the bar, with a glazed eye, a haggard smile, and the worm that never dies eating into his very vitals.

In the meantime, Gingham, with the dingy bonnet somewhat cocked up behind, and her bony fingers peeping through the worn thread gloves, is making her way along the sunny pavement in the direction of Grosvenor Square. The old black silk gown looks worse than she expected in that searching light, and she feels nervous and shy at revisiting her former haunts; nor does she like leaving home for many hours at a time. But as she walks on, the exercise does her good. The moving objects on all sides, and the gaudy bustle of London in the height of the season, have an exhilarating effect on her spirits. It is so seldom she has an outing; moped up for days together in that mews, the very change is enjoyment; and the shops, with their cheap dresses and seductive ribbons, are perfect palaces of delight. She cannot tear herself from one window, where an excellent silk for her own wear, and a frock “fit to dress an angel,” as she thinks, for baby, are to be sold, in tempting juxtaposition, respectively for a mere nothing. If she was sure the colour of the silk would stand, she would try and scrape the money together to buy it; but a pang shoots through her as she recalls the fatal “three-and-eightpence,” so she walks on with a heavy sigh, and though she knows she never can possess it, yet she feels all the better for having seen such a dress as that.

And these, and such as these, are the pleasures of the poor in our great metropolis. Continual self-denial, continual self-restraint, continual self-abasement—like Tantalus, to be whelmed in the waters of enjoyment which must never touch the lip. In the country the poor man can at least revel in its freshest and purest delights. We have been told that “the meek shall inherit the earth”; and the day-labourer, mending “my lord’s” park fence, has often far more enjoyment in that wilderness of beauty than its high-born proprietor. While the latter is in bed, the former breathes the sweet morning air and the scent of a thousand wild flowers, whose fragrance will be scorched up ere noon. The glad song of birds makes music to his ear—the whole landscape, smiling in the sunlight, is spread out for the delight of his eye. Not only the park, and the waving woods, and the placid lake, are his property for the time, but the cheerful homesteads, and the scattered herds, and the hazy distance stretching away as far as those blue hills that melt into the sky. He can admire the shadow of each giant elm without disturbing himself as to which of them must be marked for the axe; he can watch the bounding deer without caring which is the fattest to furnish a haunch for solemn dinners and political entertainments, where people eat because they are weary, and drink because they are dull. The distant view he looks upon is to him a breathing, sparkling world, full of light and life and hope—not a mere county, subdivided into votes and freeholds, and support and interest. His frame is attempered by toil to the enjoyment of natural pleasures and natural beauties. The wild breeze fans his brow—the daisies spring beneath his feet—the glorious summer sky is spread above—and the presence of his Maker pervades the atmosphere about him. For the time the man is happy—happier, perhaps, than he is himself aware of. To be sure he is mortal, and in the midst of all he sighs for beer; yet is his lot one not unmixed with many pure and thrilling pleasures; and if he can only get plenty of work, there are many states of existence far worse than that of an English field-labourer.

Not so with the sons of toil in town—there, all enjoyment is artificial, all pleasure must be paid for—the air they breathe will support life, but its odours are far different from those of the wild flower. If their eyes are ever gladdened by beauty, it is but the pomp and splendour of their fellow-creatures, on which they gaze with sneering admiration—half envy, half contempt. If their ears are ever ravished by music, there is a tempting demon wafting sin into their hearts upon the sounds—there is a mocking voice of ribaldry and vulgar revelry accompanying the very concord of heaven. What pleasure can they have but those of the senses? Where have they to go for relaxation but to the gin-shop? What inducement have they to raise themselves above the level of “the beasts which perish”?

Honour to those who are working to provide intellectual amusements for the masses, and that education of the soul which places man above the circumstances by which he is surrounded! Much has been done, and much is still left to do. Those waves must be taught to leap ever upwards, to fling their separate crests towards the sky; for if the tempest should arise, and they should come surging on in one gigantic volume, they will make a clear breach wherever the embankment happens to be weakest; and who shall withstand their force?

Can we wonder to find the lower classes sometimes discontented, when we think of their privations and their toils? Shall a man starve with but half-an-inch of plate-glass betwixt his dry white lips and the reeking abundance of luxurious gluttony? and shall he turn away without a murmur, die, and make no sign? Shall a fellow-creature drag on an existence of perpetual labour, with no pleasures, no relaxations, almost no repose; and shall we expect this dreary, blighted being to be always contented, always cheerful, always respectful to his superiors? Is it to be all one way here below? shall it be all joy, and mirth, and comfort, and superfluity with the one; and all want, and misery, and grim despair with the other? Forbid it, Heaven! Let us, every man, put his shoulder to the wheel—let each, in his own circle, be it small or great, do all in his power for those beneath him—beneath him but in the accident of station, brothers in all besides—live and let live—stretch a helping hand to all who need it—treat every man as one who has an immortal soul—and though “they shall never cease out of the land,” yet will their wants be known and their hardships alleviated, and the fairest spirit of heaven—angelic Charity—shall spread her wings widest and warmest in London for the poor.