“Nay,” said the Duke, “I am for making the matter short and easy. An

expensive army we must have; and a troublesome Parliament to boot is too

much. I am for getting up the army into an honourable condition, and

letting down the Parliament. His Majesty will be persuaded thereto in

time, when he has had another taste of the discontents of his changeable

people.”

Dr. Reede imagined that such an innovation might not be the last change,

if the nation should have more liking to be represented by a Parliament

than ruled by an army. But the Duke did not conceal his contempt for the

new fashion of regarding the people and their representatives. There was

no telling what pass things might come to when monarchs were reduced to

shifts to get money, and the people fancied that they had a right to sit

in judgment on the use that was made of it. He seemed to forget that he

had had a father, and what had become of him, while he set up as an

example worthy of all imitation the spirited old king, bluff Harry, that

put out his hand and took what he pleased, and amused himself with

sending grumblers to seek adventures north, south, east, or west. If the

King would take his advice, he would show the nation an example of the

first duty of a king,—to protect his people from violence,—in such a

fashion as should leave the Parliament little to say, even if allowed to

meet. Let his Majesty bestow all his paternal care on cherishing his

army.

“It is true,” said Dr. Reede, “that a ruler’s first duty is to give

security to his people; and in the lowest state in which men herd

together, the danger is looked for from without; and the people who at

home gather food, each for himself, go out to war, each with his own

weapon. Their ruler does no more than call them out, and point the way,

and lead them home. Afterwards, when men are settled on lands, and made

the property of the rich and strong, they go out to war at the charge of

their lords, and the King has still nothing to do but to command them.

Every man is or may be a warrior; and it is for those who furnish forth

his blood and sinews, his weapons and his food, to decide about the

conduct of the war. But, at a later time, when men intermingle and

divide their labour at will, and the time of slavery is over, every man

is no longer a warrior, but some fight for hire, while those who hire

them stay at their business at home.”

“Or at their pleasures,” observed the Duke, glancing at his brother.

“Under favour, no,” replied Dr. Reede. "It is not, I conceive, the King

that hires the army to do his pleasure, but the people who hire it for

their defence, the King having the conduct of the enterprises. If the

will of the nation be not taken as to their defence,—if they should

perchance think they need no armed defence, and lose their passion for

conquest, whence must come the hire of their servants,—the soldiery?"

“They must help themselves with it,” replied the Duke, carelessly.

"And if they find a giant at every man’s door,—a lion in the path to

every one’s field?" said the divine.

“Thy learning hath perplexed thee, man. These are not the days of

enchantment, of wild beasts, and overtopping men.”

“Pardon me; there are no days when men may not be metamorphosed, if the

evil influence be but strong enough. There are no days when a man’s

household gods will not make a giant of him for the defence of their

shrine. There are no days when there are not such roarings in the path

of violence as to sink the heart of the spoiler within him.”

“Let but the art of war improve like other arts,” said the Duke, “and

our cannon will easily out-roar all your lions, and beat down the giants

you speak of.”

“Rather the reverse, I conceive,” said the plain-spoken clergyman. “The

expense of improved war is aggravated, not only in the outfit, but in

the destruction occasioned. The soldier is a destructive labourer, and,

as such, will not be overlong tolerated by an impoverished nation, whose

consent to strife is the more necessary the more chargeable such strife

becomes to them. Furthermore, men even now look upon blood as something

more precious than water, and upon human souls as somewhat of a higher

nature than the fiery bubbles that our newly-wise chemists send up into

the ether, to wander whither no eye can follow them. Our cannon now

knock down a file where before a battle-axe could cleave but a single

skull. Men begin already to tremble over their child’s play of human

life; and if the day comes when some mighty engine shall be prepared to

blow to atoms half an army, there may be found a multitude of stout

hearts to face it; but where is he who will be brave enough to fire the

touch-hole, even for the sure glory of being God’s arch enemy?”

“Is this brother of thine seeking a patent for some new device of war-

engines?” inquired Charles of the divine. “Methinks your discourse seems

like a preface to such a proposal. Would it were so! for patents aid the

exchequer.”

“Would it were so!” said the Duke, “for a king might follow his own will

with such an engine in his hand.”

“Would it were so!” said Dr. Reede, “for then would the last days of war

be come, and Satan would find much of his occupation gone. Edmund, if

thou wilt invent such an engine as may mow down a host at a blow, I will

promise thee a triumph on that battle-field, and the intercession of

every church in Christendom. Such a deed shall one day be done. War

shall one day be ended; but not by you, Edmund. Men must enact the wild

beast yet a few centuries longer, to furnish forth a barbarous show to

their rulers, till men shall call instead for a long age of fasting, and

sackcloth, and ashes.”

“Meantime,” said Edmund, “they call impertinently for certain accounts

of the charges of our wars which his Majesty is over gracious in

permitting them to demand.”

“Do they think so?”

“They cannot but see,” said the Duke, “by the way his Majesty gave his

speech to the Parliament, that he desires no meddling from them.”

“And how did I speak?” asked the King. “Did I not assure the Commons

that I would not have asked for their subsidies if I had not had need;

and that through no extravagance of my own, but the disorder of the

times? And is not that much to say when I am daily told by my gentlemen

of the palace, and others who know better still, that my will is above

all privilege of Parliament or city, and that I have no need to account

to any at all? How did I speak?”

"Only as if your wits were with your queen, or some other lady, while

the words of your speech lay under your eye. Some words your Commons

must needs remember, from the many times they were said over; but

further——"

“Pshaw!” cried the King, vexed at the description he had himself asked

for. “This learned divine knows not what our Parliament is made of.

There are but two seamen and about twenty merchants, and the rest have

no scruple in coming drunk to the house, and making a mockery of the

country people when they are sober. How matters it how I give my speech

to them?”

“They are indeed not the people,” observed Reede; "and I forewarn your

Majesty that their consent is not the consent of the people; and that

however they may clap the hands at your Majesty’s enterprises and

private sales, the people will not be the less employed in looking back

upon Oliver——"

“And forward to me?” inquired the Duke, laughing.

"And forward to the time when the proud father shall not be liable to

see his only son return barefoot and tattered from a war where he has

spilled his blood; or a daughter made the victim, first of violence, and

then of mockery, through the example of the King’s court; and no justice

to be had but by him who brings the heaviest bribe:—forward to the time

when drunken cavaliers shall be thought unfitting representatives of a

hungering people; and when the money which is raised by the toils of the

nation shall be spent for the benefit of the nation; when men shall

inquire how Rome fell, and why France is falling; and shall find that

decay ensues when that which is a trust is still pertinaciously used as

prerogative, and when the profusion in high places is answerable to the

destitution below!"

“Nay; I am sure there is destitution in high places,” cried the King,

“and luxury in the lower. I see not a few ladies outshining my Queen in

gallantry of jewels; and if you like to look in at certain low houses

that I could tell you of, you will see what vast heaps of gold are

squandered in deep and most prodigious gaming.”

“True; and therein is found the excuse of the court; that whenever the

nation is over-given to luxury, the court is prodigious in its

extravagance.”

“Hold, man!” cried the King. “Wouldst thou be pilloried for a libel?”

“Such is too common a sight to draw due regard,” coolly replied the

divine. “Libels are in some sort the primers of the ignorant multitude,

scornfully despised for their ignorance. There are not means wherewith

to give the people letters in an orderly way; so that they gape after

libels first, and then they gape to see them burned by the hangman; and

learn one sort of hardness by flinging stones at a pilloried wretch, and

another sort of hardness by watching the faces of traitors who pray

confidently on the scaffold, and look cheerfully about them on the

hangman’s hellish instruments; and all this hardness, which may chance

to peril your Majesty, is not always mollified by such soft things as

they may witness at the theatres which profanely give and take from the

licentious times. If the people would become wise, such is the

instruction that awaits them.”

“Methinks you will provoke us to let the people see how cheerfully you

would look on certain things that honest gazers round a scaffold shrink

from beholding. It were better for you to pray for me from your pulpit,

like a true subject of Christ and your King.”

“Hitherto I have done so; but it pleases your Majesty that from my

pulpit I should pray no longer. Alas!” cried he, casting a glance

through the window as he perceived that the vessel drew to land, “alas!

what a raging fire! And another! And a third!”

“The bonfires for the victory,” quietly observed Edmund.

Dr. Reede was forbidden to throw any doubts abroad on the English having

gained a splendid victory. The King had ordered these bonfires at the

close of the fast day. They were lighted, it appeared, somewhat

prematurely, as the sun yet glittered along the Thames; but this only

showed the impatient joy of the people. The church bells were evidently

preparing to ring merry peals as soon as the last hour of humiliation

should have expired. The King’s word had gone forth. It suited his

purposes to gain a victory just now; and a victory he was determined it

should be, to the last moment. When the people should discover the

cheat, the favours occasioned by it would be past recall. They could

only do what they had done before,—go home and be angry.

This was all that now remained for Dr. Reede, the King’s landing being

waited for by a throng of persons whose converse had little affinity

with wise counsel. Certain courtiers, deplorably _ennuyés_ by the king’s

absence, sauntered about the gardens, and looked abroad upon the river,

in hopes of his approach. An importation of French coxcombs from

Dunkirk, in fantastical habits, was already here to offend the eyes of

the insulted English people. It was not till Edmund (who was not

dismissed with Dr. Reede) began to exhibit at home the confidence with

which he had been treated, that Dr. Reede and his lady became aware how

much these accomplished cadets could teach Charles on the part of their

own extravagant master. Louis the Fourteenth knew of more ways of

raising money than even Charles. He had taken to creating offices for

sale, for which the court ladies amused themselves in making names. The

pastime of divining their object and utility was left to the people who

paid for them. They read, or were told,—and it made a very funny

riddle,—that the inspector of fresh-butter had kissed hands on his

appointment; that the ordainer of faggots had had the honour of dining

with his Majesty; and that some mighty and wealthy personage had been

honoured with the office of licenser of barber-wig-makers.

The example of Louis in this and other matters was too good not to be

followed by one in circumstances of equal necessity. Edmund was not by

any means to delay the “discreet composure” by which the minds of the

people were to be propitiated and satisfied. He was to laud to the

utmost the Duke’s conduct of naval affairs,—(whose credit rested on the

ability of his complaisant Clerk of the Acts.) He was to falsify the

navy accounts as much as could be ventured, exaggerating the expenses

and extenuating the receipts, while he made the very best of the

results. He was to take for granted the willingness of a grateful people

to support the dignity of the sovereign, while he insinuated threats of

the establishment of a civil list,—(a thing at that time unknown.) All

this was to be done not the less for room being required for eloquence

about the sale of Dunkirk, and the loan from France, and the bribe from

Holland;—monuments of kingly wisdom all, and of paternal solicitude to

spare the pockets of the people. All this was to be done not the less

for the bright idea which had occurred to some courtier’s mind that the

making of a few new ambassadors might bring money to his Majesty’s

hands. There was more than one man about the court who was very willing

to accept of the dignity of such an office, and to pay to the power that

appointed him a certain fair proportion of the salary which the people

must provide. One gentleman was accordingly sent to Spain, to amuse

himself in reading Calderon, and another to some eastern place where he

might sit on cushions, and smoke at the expense of the people of

England, and to the private profit of their monarch. Amidst all these

clever arrangements, nothing was done for the _security_ or the

_advancement_ of the community. No new measures of _defence_; no better

administration of _justice_; no advantageous _public works_, no

apparatus of _education_, were originated; and, as for the _dignity of

the sovereign_, that was a matter past hope. But by means of the

treacherous sale of the nation’s property and of public offices, by

bribes, by falsification of the public accounts, breaches of royal

credit were for the present stopped, and the day of reckoning deferred.

If the Duke of York could have foreseen from whom and at what time this

reckoning would be demanded, he might have been less acute in his

suggestions, and less bold in his advice; and both he and the King might

have employed to less infamous purpose this day of solemn fast and

deprecation of God’s judgments. But, however true might be Dr. Reede’s

doctrine that the sins of government are the sins of the nation, it

happened in this case, as in a multitude of others, that the accessaries

to the crime offered the atonement, while the principals made sport of

both crime and atonement.

The false report about the late engagement had gained ground

sufficiently to answer the temporary purposes of those who spread it. As

Dr. Reede took his way homewards, bonfires gleamed reflected in the

waters of the river, and exhibited to advantage the picturesque fronts

of the wooden houses in the narrow streets, and sent trains of sparks up

into the darkening sky, and illuminated the steeples that in a few more

seasons were to fall into the surging mass of a more awful

conflagration. On reaching the comfortable dwelling which he expected to

be soon compelled to quit, he gave himself up, first to humiliation on

account of the guilt against which he had in vain remonstrated, and then

to addressing to the King a strong written appeal on behalf of the

conscientious presbyterian clergy, who had, on the faith of the royal

word, believed themselves safe from such temptations to violate their

consciences as they were now suffering under.

On a certain Saturday of the same month might be seen the most

magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames. It far exceeded the

Venetian pageantry on occasion of espousing the Adriatic. The city of

London was entertaining the King and Queen; and the King was not at all

sorry that the people were at the same time entertained, while he was

making up his mind whether, on dissolving the Parliament, he should call

another which would obligingly give him the dean and chapter lands, or

whether he should let it be seen, according to the opinion of his

brother, that there was no need of any more parliaments. As he sat

beside his Queen, in an antique-shaped vessel, under a canopy of cloth

of gold, supported by Corinthian pillars, wreathed with flowers,

festoons, and garlands, he meditated on the comfort that would accrue,

on the one hand, from all his debts being paid out of these church

lands, and, on the other, from such an entire freedom from

responsibility as he should enjoy when there should be no more speeches

to make to his Commons, and no more remonstrances to hear from them,

grounded on dismal tales of the distresses of his people which he had

rather not hear. The thrones and triumphal arches might do for the

corporation of London to amuse itself with, and for the little boys and

girls on either side of the river to stare at and admire: but it was in

somewhat too infantine a taste to please the majority of the gazers

otherwise than as a revival of antique amusements. The most idly

luxurious about the court preferred entertainments which had a little

more meaning in them,—dramatic spectacles, pictures, music, and fine

buildings and gardens. War is also a favourite excitement in the middle

age of refinement; and the best part of this day’s entertainments, next

to the music, was the peals of ordnance both from the vessels and the

shore, which might prettily remind the gallants, amidst their mirth and

their soft flirtations, of the cannonading that was going on over the

sea. Within a small section of the city of London, many degrees of mirth

might be found this day.

In the royal barge, the Queen cast her “languishing and excellent eyes”

over the pageant before her, and returned the salutations of the

citizens who made obeisances in passing, and now and then exchanged a

few words with her Portuguese maids of honour, the King being too

thoughtful to attend to her;—altogether not very merry.

In the barge immediately following, certain of the King’s favourites

made sport of the Queen’s foretop,—turned aside very strangely,—of the

monstrous fardingales and olivada complexions and unagreeable voices of

her Portuguese ladies,—and of the old knight, her friend, whose bald

pate was covered by a huge lock of hair, bound on by a thread, very

oddly. The King’s gravity also made a good joke; and there was an

amusing incident of a boat being upset, which furnished laughter for a

full half hour. A family of Presbyterians, turned out of a living

because the King had broken his word, were removing their chattels to

some poor place on the other side of the river, and had unawares got

their boat entangled in the procession, and were run down by a royal

barge. It was truly laughable to see first the divine, and then his

pretty daughters, with their dripping long hair, picked up from the

water, while all their little wealth went to the bottom: and yet more so

to witness how, when the King, of his bounty, threw gold to the

sufferers, the clergyman tossed it back so vehemently that it would have

struck the Duke of York on the temple, if he had not dexterously

contrived to receive it on the crown of his periwig. It was a charming

adventure to the King’s favourites;—very merry.

In the mansions by the river side, certain gentlemen from the country

were settling themselves, in preparation for taking office under the

government. They and their fathers had been out of habits of business

for fourscore years, and were wholly incapable of it, and knew

themselves to be so; the best having given themselves to rural

employments, and others to debauchery; but, as all men were now declared

incapable of employment who had served against the King, and as these

cavaliers knew that their chief business was to humour his Majesty, they

made themselves easy about their responsibilities, looked after their

tapestries, plate, and pictures, talked of the toils and cares of

office, and were—very merry.

In the narrow streets in their neighbourhood might be hourly seen

certain of the King’s soldiers, belted and armed, cursing, swearing, and

stealing; running into public-houses to drink, and into private ones to

carry off whatever they had a mind to; leaving the injured proprietors

disposed to reflect upon Oliver, and to commend him,—what brave things

he did, and how safe a place a man’s own house was in his time, and how

he made the neighbour princes fear him; while now, a prince that came in

with all the love, and prayers, and good-liking of his people, who had

given greater signs of loyalty and willingness to serve him with their

estates than ever was done by any people, could get nothing but contempt

abroad, and discontent at home; and had indeed lost all so soon, that it

was a miracle how any one could devise to lose so much in so little

time. These housekeepers, made sage by circumstance, looked and spoke

with something very little like mirth. Those who had given occasion to

such thoughts were, meantime,—very merry.

It was not to these merry men, wise people thought, that the King must

look for help in the day of war, but to the soldiers of the republican

army, who had been declared by act of parliament for evermore incapable

of serving the kingdom. But where were these men to be found, if wanted?

Not one could be met with begging in the streets to tell how his

comrades might be reached. One captain in the old parliament army was

turned shoemaker, and another a baker. This lieutenant was now a

haberdasher; that a brewer. Of the common soldiers, some were porters,

and others mechanics in their aprons, and husbandmen in their frocks,

and all as quiet and laborious as if war had never been their

occupation. The spirits of these men had been trained in contentment

with God’s providences; and though, as they sat at the loom and the

last, they had many discontented thoughts of man’s providences, it was

clear to observers among the King’s own servants that he was a thousand

times safer from any evil meant by them than from his own unsatisfied

and insatiable cavaliers. While the staid artizans who had served under

Cromwell looked out upon the river as the procession passed, they

dropped a few words in their families about the snares of the Evil One,

and were—not very merry.

Within hearing of the ordnance in which the young gallants of the court

delighted was an hospital, meagrely supplied with the comforts which its

inmates required, where languished, in a crowded space, many of the

soldiers and sailors who had been set up to be fired at while it was

known in high quarters that there was such a deficiency of ammunition as

must deprive the poor fellows of the power of effectual self-defence.

This fact had become known, and it had sunk deep into the souls of the

brave fellows who, maimed, feverish, and heart-sore,—in pain for want of

the proper means of cure, and half suffocated from the number of their

fellow-sufferers, listened with many a low-breathed curse to the peals

of ordnance that shook their crazy place of refuge, and forswore mirth

and allegiance together.

Within hearing of the shouts and of a faint occasional breath of music

from the royal band, were certain of the two thousand clergy, who were

to resign their livings the next morning, and whose families were taking

advantage of the neighbourhood being deserted for the day to remove

their furniture, and betake themselves to whatever place they might have

found wherein the righteous could lay his head. Dr. Reede was one of

these. He had been toiling all day with his wife, demolishing the _tout

ensemble_ of comfort which had been formed under her management. He was

now, while she was engaged with her infants, sitting alone in his study

for the last time. He was doing nothing; for his business in this place

was closed. He let his eye be amused by the quick flickering in the

breeze of the short, shining grass of his little court, which stretched

up to his window. The dark formal shrubs, planted within the paling by

his own hand, seemed to nod to him as the wind passed over their heads.

The summer flowers in the lozenge-shaped parterres which answered to

each other, danced and kissed unblamed beneath the Rev. Doctor’s gaze.

All looked as if Nature’s heart were merry, however sad might be those

of her thoughtful children. The Doctor stepped out upon the grass. There

was yet more for him to do there. He had, with his own hands, mowed the

plat, and clipped the borders; and the little hands of the elder of his

two children had helped to pluck out the very few weeds that had sprung

up. But the weather had been warm and dry, and, in order to leave the

place in the beauty desired by its departing tenant, it was necessary to

water the flower-court. It was not a very inspiriting thing to glance at

doors and windows standing wide, displaying the nakedness of an empty

dwelling within: so the Doctor hastened to the well to fill his bucket.

Mrs. Reede heard the jingle of the chain, and showed herself at an upper

window, while the child that could walk made her way down stairs with

all speed to help papa, and wonder at her own round little face in the

full bucket. Mrs. Reede was glad that her husband had turned out of his

study, though she could not bring herself to sympathize in his anxiety

to leave all in a state of the greatest practicable beauty. If a gale

had torn up the shrubs, or the hot sun of this summer day had parched

the grass and withered the flowers, she did not think she could have

been sorry. But it was very well that her husband had left his study

open for the further operations necessary there. This room had remained

the very last in its entireness. The time was now come when she must

have asked her husband to quit his chair and desk, and let his books be

dislodged. She would make haste to complete the work of spoliation, and

she hoped he would make a long task of watering the flower-court.

He was not likely to do that when he had once perceived that she and one

of her damsels were lifting heavy loads of books, while another was

taking care of the baby. He hastened to give their final draught to his

favourite carnations, placed a chair for Esther on the grass just

outside the window, where she might sit with the infant, and, while

resting herself, talk to him as he finished her laborious task.

Mrs. Reede did not remember to have ever started so incessantly at the

sound of guns; and the air-music of the window-harp that she had seen in

the pavilions of great men’s gardens had never come so mournfully over

her spirit as the snatches of harmony that the wind now brought from the

river to make her infant hold up his tiny finger while his sister said

“hark!” She was, for once, nervous. It might be seen in her flushed face

and her startled movements; and the poor baby felt it in the absence of

the usual ease with which he was held and played with. A sharp sudden

cry from him called the attention of the doctor from his task. In a

moment, mamma’s grief was more tumultuous than the infant’s.

“O, my child! my child! I have hurt my child! my own little baby!” cried

she, weeping bitterly, and of course redoubling the panic of the little

one.

“My dear love,” said her husband, trying to prove to her that the baby

had only been frightened by a jerk; “my dear love, you alarm yourself

much more than the child. See!” and he held up in the evening sunlight

the brass plate on which his study lamp stood. Its glittering at once

arrested the infant’s terrors: but not so soon could the tears of the

mother be stopped.

“My love, there must be some deeper cause than this trifling accident,”

said he, sitting down on the low window sill beside her chair. “Is it

that you have pent up your grief all day, and that it will have way?”

Mrs. Reede had a long train of sad thoughts to disclose, in the

intervals of her efforts to compose herself. The children, she said,

amused themselves as if nothing was the matter; while who could tell

what they might think hereafter of being thus removed from a fair and

honourable home, and carried where—O, there was no telling what lot

might await them! If everybody had thought the sacrifice a right one,

she could have gone through it without any regret: but some of her

husband’s oldest friends thought him wrong——

“Towards God, or towards you, my love?”

"O, towards these children, I suppose. They dare not think that you

would do anything wrong towards me. I am sure I only think of you first,

and then of the children. How you have preached here, with the souls of

your people in your hand, to mould them as you would! and now, you must

go where your gift and your office will be nothing; and you will be only

like any other man. And, as for the children, we do not know——"

“When the bird leads forth her brood from their warm nest, because

springes are set round about them, does she know what shall befall them?

There may be hawks abroad, or a sharp wind that may be too strong for

their scarce-plumed wings. Or they may gather boldness from their early

flight, and wave in the sunshine on a high bough, and pour out there a

grateful morn and even song from season to season. The parent bird knows

not: but she must needs take them from among the springes, however soft

may be the nest, and cool the mossy tree. We know more than this parent

bird; even that no sparrow falleth unheeded to the ground.”

Mrs. Reede’s tears began to flow again as another faint breath of music

reached her.

“Is it that you will be more composed when the sounds of mirth, to us

unseasonable, have passed away?” asked Dr. Reede, smiling.

“It does seem hard that our spoilers should be making merry while we are

going forth we know not whither,” said the wife.

“How would it advantage the mother bird that the fowlers should lie

close while she plumes her pinions to be gone? Will she stoop in her

flight for all their mirth? As for us, music may be to us a rare treat

henceforth. Let our ears be pleased with it, whencesoever it may come.”

And he made the children hearken, till they clapped their little hands,

and their mother once more smiled. Her husband then said to her,

“If this mirth be ungodly, there is no reason why we should be more

scandalized at it than on any other day, only because we ourselves are

not merry. If it be innocent, we should thank God that others are

happier than ourselves. Yet I am not otherwise than happy in the inward

spirit. I shall never repent this day.”

"They say you will, when——But it is not as if we stood alone. It is said

that there will be a large number of the separated."

“Thank God! not for the companionship to ourselves, so much as for the

profit to his righteousness. It will be much to meet here and there eyes

that tell back one’s own story, and to clasp hands that are undefiled by

the world’s lucre. But it is more to know that God’s truth is so hymned

by some thousand tongues this night, that the echo shall last till weak

voices like ours shall be wanted no more.”

“Let us go,” cried Mrs. Reede, dispersing her last tears, and lifting up

one child while the other remained in her husband’s arms. He took

advantage of her season of strength, and resolved to convey her at once

to the humble lodging which was to be their present abode, and to return

himself to see that all was done. He detained her only to join him in a

brief thanksgiving for the happiness they had enjoyed there since their

marriage day, and to beseech a blessing on him who was to succeed to the

dwelling and to the pastoral office. Courageous as was Mrs. Reede’s

present mood, she was still at the mercy of trifles. The little girl’s

kitten would not bear them company. It had been removed twice, and had

returned, and now was not to be found. It had hidden itself in some

corner whence it would come out when they were gone; and the child

departed in a very unchristian state of distress. Her mamma found that

both she and her child had yet to learn Dr. Reede’s method of not

fretting because of evil-doers.

Though he could not trouble himself with personal resentments, no man

could more strenuously rebuke and expose guilt,—especially guilt in high

places, which is so much worse than other guilt, in as far as it

desolates a wider region of human happiness. In his farewell discourse,

the next day, he urged some considerations on behalf of society far more

eagerly than he ever asked anything for himself.

“It is no new thing,” said he, "for men to be required to set their hand

to that which they believe not, or to affirm that they believe that

which they understand no more in the expression than in the essence. It

is no new thing for a mistake to be made as to such protestation, so

that if a man say he believes that a sown field will bear corn, though

he knows not the manner of its sprouting nor the order of its ripening,

he shall be also required to believe a proposition in an unknown tongue,

whereof he knows not even what it is that should be proposed. It is no

new thing that men should start at such a requisition, as a sound-witted

man would start from the shows and babble of the magician; or as a

modest wise man would shrink from appointing the way to a wandering

comet, lest he should unawares bring the orderly heavens to a mighty

wreck. It is no new thing for the searchers of God’s ways to respect his

everlasting laws more than man’s presumptuous bidding: or for Him whom

they serve so to change the face of things to them as to make his

extremest yoke easy, and his heaviest burden light:—to cast a shade over

what must be foregone,—whether it be life itself, or only the goodly

things in which maybe too much of our life hath been found,—or to beam a

light from his own highest heaven on the wilderness-path, which may seem

horrid to those who are not to tread it, but passable enough to such as

must needs take this way to their everlasting home. These things being

not new, are a sign to us recusants of this day not to be in anywise

astonished or dismayed, and also not to allow a dwelling upon the part

we have taken, as if it were any mighty merit to trust to God’s

providence, which waits only to be trusted, or required any marvellous

faith to commit ourselves to Christ’s word, which, if it be Christ’s,

must stand when the heavens themselves shall be dissolved. It behoves us

rather to look to things less clear than these, and more important than

the putting forth of a few of Christ’s meanest shepherds from their

folds;—for whom the chief Shepherd may perhaps find other occasions;

and, if not, they may be well content to lie down among the sheep,

remembering that he once had not where to lay his head. The true

occasion of this day is not to break one another’s hearts with griefs

and tears, (which may but puff out or quench the acceptable fire of the

altar;) but so to fan the new-kindled flame as that it may seize and

consume whatsoever of foul and desecrating shows most hideous in its

light. Is it not plain that powers whose use is ushered in with prayers,

and alternated with the response of God’s most holy name,—the powers of

government,—are used to ensnare those who open their doors to whatsoever

cometh in that name? It is well that governments should be thus

sanctified to the ears and eyes of the governed; for, if there be a

commission more certainly given straight from the hand of God than

another it is that of a ruler of men. Who but he opens the eyes of the

blind, and unstops the ears of the deaf, and sets the lame on his feet,

and strengthens together the drooping heart and the feeble knees,—by

setting before the one the radiant frame of society in all its fitness,

and waking up for another the voices of human companionship, and

compacting the powers of the weak with those of the strong, and cheering

all by warding off injury from without, and making restraint easy where

perchance it may gall any of those who are within? Sacred is the power

of the ruler as a trust; but if it be used as a property, where is its

sanctity? If the steward puts out the eyes that follow him too closely,

and ties the tongue that importunes, and breaks the limbs of the strong

man in sport, so as to leave him an impotent beggar in the porch of the

mansion,—do we not know from the Scripture what shall be the fate of

that steward? As it is with a single ruler, so shall it be with a

company of rulers,—with a government which regards the people only as

the something on which itself must stand, which takes bread from the

children to give it to dogs; which sells God’s gifts to them that are

without, at the risk of such utter blindness that they shall weary

themselves to find the door out of their perplexities and terrors. What

governments there be that commit the double sin of lording it over

consciences, (which are God’s heritage,) and of ruling for their own low

pleasures instead of the right living and moving of the people, judge

ye. If there be any which mismanage its defence, and deny or pervert

justice, and refuse public works, and make the church a scandal, and the

court a spectacle for angels to weep over and devils to resort to, and,

instead of speeding the people’s freedom with the wings of knowledge,

shut them into the little cells of ancient men’s wits, it is time that

such should know why God hath made them stewards, and should be alarmed

for the coming of their Master. It is not for the men and maid-servants

to wrest his staff from his hands, or to refuse his reasonable bidding,

or to forsake, the one his plough, and the other his mill, and the

maidens to spread the table: but it is for any one to give loud warning

that the Master of the house will surely demand an account of the

welfare of his servants. Such a warning do I give; and such is the

warning spoken by the many mourners of this day, who, because they

honour the kingly office as the holiest place of the fair temple of

society, and kingly agents as the appointed priesthood, can the less

bear to see the nation outraged as if there were no avenging angel of

Jehovah flying abroad; and comfortless in their miseries, as if Jehovah

himself were not in the midst of them."

It was well that Dr. Reede felt that he could bear the pillory. He was

pilloried.

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

THIRD AGE.

History is silent as to the methods by which men were enabled to endure

the tedium of journeys by the heavy coaches of the olden time. The

absence of all notion of travelling faster might, indeed, be no

inconsiderable aid,—an aid of which travellers are at present, for the

most part, deprived; since the mail-coach passenger, the envy of the

poor tenant of the carrier’s cart, feels envy, in his turn, of the

privileged beings who shoot along the northern rail-road; while they,

perhaps, are sighing for the time when they shall be able to breakfast

at one extremity of the kingdom, and dine at the other. When once the

idea of not going fast enough enters a traveller’s mind, _ennui_ is

pretty sure to follow; and it may be to this circumstance that the

patience of our forefathers, under their long incarceration on the road,

was owing—if patience they had. Now, a traveller who is too much used to

journeying to be amused, as a child is, by the mere process of

travelling, is dismayed alike if there be a full number of passengers,

and if there be none but himself. In the first case, there is danger of

delay from the variety of deposits of persons and goods; and in the

second, there is an equal danger of delay from the coachman having all

his own way, and the certainty, besides, of the absence of all

opportunity of shaking off the dulness of his own society.

Mr. Reid, a sociable young barrister, who had never found himself at a

loss on a journey, was left desolate one day last summer when he least

expected it. He had taken his wife and child down to the south, in order

to establish them by the sea-side for a few weeks; and he was now

travelling up to town by the stage-coach, in very amusing company, as he

thought, for the first stage, but presently in solitude. Supposing that

his companions were going all the way, he took his time about making the

most of them, and lost the opportunity. There was a sensible farmer, who

pointed right and left to the sheep on the downs—green downs—retiring in

long sweeps from the road; and he had much to relate of the methods of

cultivation which had been pursued here, there, and everywhere,—with the

Barn Field, and Rick Mead, and Pond-side Field, and Brook Hollow, and

many other pretty places that he indicated. He had also stores of

information on the farmer’s favourite subject of complaint—the state of

the poor. He could give the history of all the well-meant attempts of my

lord this, and my lady that, and colonel the other, to make employment,

and institute prizes of almshouses, and induce their neighbours to lay

out more on patches of land than less helpless folks would think it

worth while to bestow. Meantime, a smart young lady in the opposite

corner was telling her widowed chaperon why she could not abide the

country, and would not be tempted to leave dear London any more,—namely,

that the country was chalky, and whitened the hems of all her

petticoats. The widow, in return, assured the unbelieving girl that the

country was not chalky all over the world, and that she had actually

seen, with her own eyes, the junction of a white, a red, and a black

road,—very convenient, as one might choose one’s walk by the colour of

one’s gown. The widow at the same time let fall her wish to have the

charge—merely for the sake of pleasant occupation—of the household of a

widower, to whose daughters she could teach everything desirable;

especially if they were intended to look after dairy and poultry-yard,

and such things.

“Thank’ee, ma’am,” said the farmer, as she looked full at him; “my

daughters are some of them grown up; and they have got on without much

teaching since their mother died.”

Mr. Reid promised himself to gain more information about the widow’s

estimate of her own capabilities; but she and her charge were not yet

going to “dear London.” They got out at the first country town, just

after the farmer had thrust himself half out of the window to stop the

coach, flung himself on the stout horse that was waiting for him at the

entrance of a green lane, and trotted off, with a prodigious exertion of

knee, elbow, and coat-flap.

Mr. Reid had soon done thinking of the widow, and of the damsel who had

displayed so intimate a knowledge of rural life. Pauperism lasted

longer; but this was only another version of a dismal story with which

he was already too well acquainted. He was glad to think of something

else. He found that he got most sun by riding backward, and most wind by

riding forward, and made his election in favour of the latter. He

discovered, after a momentary doubt, that his umbrella was safe, and

that there was no occasion to trouble his knees any longer with his

great-coat. He perceived that the coach had been new-lined, and he

thought the lace suited the lining uncommonly well. He wondered whether

the people would be as confoundedly long in changing horses at every

stage as they had been at the first. It would be very provoking to

arrive in town too late for dinner at G——’s. Ah! the women by the road-

side found it a fine day for drying the linen they had washed. How it

blew about, flapping, with a noise like mill-sails; big-sleeved

pinafores and dancing stockings! This was a pretty country to live in:

the gentlemen’s houses were sufficiently sheltered, and the cottages had

neat orchards behind them; and one would think pains had been taken with

the green lanes—just in the medium as they were between rankness and

bareness. What an advantage roads among little hills have in the clear

stream under the hedge,—a stream like this, dimpling and oozing, now

over pebbles, and now among weeds! That hedge would make a delicious

foreground for a picture,—the earth being washed away from the twisted

roots, and they covered with brown moss, with still a cowslip here and

there nodding to itself in the water as the wind passed by. By the way,

that bit of foreground might be kept in mind for his next paper for the

“New Monthly.” It would be easy to give his subject a turn that would

allow that hedge and its cowslip to be brought in. What had not Victor

Hugo made of a yellow flower, in a scene to which nobody who had read it

would need a second reference! But this well, to the left, was even

better than the hedge: it must have been described already; for it

looked as if put there for the purpose. What a damp nook in the hedge it

stood in, with three old yews above it, and tufts of long grass to

fringe the place! What a well-used chain and ladle, and what merry,

mischievous children, pushing one another into the muddy pool where the

drippings fell, and splashing each other, under pretence of drinking! He

was afraid of losing the impression of this place, so much dusty road as

he had to pass through, and so many new objects to meet before he could

sit down to write; unless, indeed, he did it now. Why should not he

write his paper now? It was a good idea—a capital thought!

Three backs of letters and a pencil were presently found, and a flat

parcel in one of the window-pockets, which served as a desk, when the

feet were properly planted on the opposite seat. The lines were none of

the straightest, at first; and the dots and stops wandered far out of

their right places; while the long words looked somewhat hieroglyphical.

But the coach stopped; and Mr. Reid forgot to observe how much longer it

took than before to change horses while he was the only passenger. He

looked up only once, and then saw so charming an old granny, with her

little Tommy, carrying a toad-in-a-hole to the baker’s, that he was

rewarded for his momentary idleness, and resolved to find a place for

them too, near the well and the mossy hedge.

He was now as sorry to be off again as before to stop. The horses were

spirited, and the road was rough. His pencil slipped and jerked, this

way and that. Presently his eyes ached: his ideas were jostled away. It

was impossible to compose while the manual act was so troublesome; it

was nonsense to attempt it. Nothing but idleness would do in travelling;

so the blunted pencil was put by, and the eye was refreshed once more

with green.

But now a new sort of country was opening. The hedges were gone, and a

prodigious stretch of fallow on either hand looked breezy and pleasant

enough at first; and the lark sprang from the furrow so blithely, that

Reid longed to stop the coach, that he might hear its trilling. But the

lark could not be heard, and was soon out of sight; and the perspective

of furrows became as wearying as making pothooks had been. Reid betook

himself to examining the window-pockets. There were two or three tidy

parcels for solicitors, of course; and a little one, probably for a

maid-servant, as there were seven lines of direction upon it. The scent

of strawberries came from a little basket, coolly lined with leaves, and

addressed to Master Jones, at a school in a town to be presently passed

through. Reid hoped, for the boy’s sake, that there was a letter too;

and he found an interstice, through which he could slip half-a-dozen

burnt almonds, which had remained in his pocket after treating his own

child. What speculations there would be, next holiday time, about how

the almonds got in! Two or three other little parcels were disregarded;

for among them lay one of more importance to Reid than all the

rest,—three newspapers, tied round once with a bit of red tape, and

directed, in pencil, to be left at the Blue Lion till called for. Reid

took the liberty of untying the tape, and amusing himself with the

precious pieces of type that had fallen in his way. There was little

political intelligence in these papers, and that was of old date; but a

little goes a great way with a solitary traveller; and when the better

parts of a newspaper are disposed of, enough remains in the drier parts

to employ the intellect that courts suggestion. That which is the case

with all objects on which the attention is occupied, is eminently the

case with a newspaper—that whatever the mind happens to be full of there

receives addition, and that the mood in which it is approached there

meets with confirmation. Reid had heard much from the farmer of the

hardships which individuals suffer from a wasteful public expenditure;

and his eye seemed to catch something which related to this matter, to

whatever corner of the papers it wandered.

"STRIKE AT ****** PALACE.—_All the workmen at present employed on this

extensive structure ceased work on the appearance of the contractor

yesterday morning. Their demand for higher wages being decidedly refused

by him, the men quitted the spot, and the works have since remained

deserted. A considerable crowd gathered round, and appeared disposed to

take part with the workmen, who, it is said, have for some time past

been arranging a combination to secure a rise of wages. The contractor

declares his intention to concede no part of the demand._"

The crowd taking part with the workmen! Then the crowd knows less than

the workmen what it is about. These wages are paid by that very crowd;

and it is because they issue from the public purse that the workmen

think they may demand higher wages than they would from a nobleman or

private gentleman. The contractor is but a medium, as they see, between

the tax-payers and themselves; and the terms of the contract must depend

much on the rate of wages of those employed. I hope the contractor will

indeed concede nothing; for it is the people that must overpay

eventually; and it has been too long taken for granted that the public

must pay higher for everything than individuals. I should not wonder if

these men have got it into their heads, like an acquaintance of mine in

the same line, that, as they are taxed for these public buildings, they

have a right to get as much of their money back as they can, forgetting

that if every taxed person did the same, there would be no palace

built;—not but that we could spare two or three extremely well;—or

might, at least, postpone some of the interminable alterations and

embellishments, with an account of which the nation is treated, year

after year, in return for its complaisance in furnishing the cash. Let

their Majesties be nobly lodged, by all means; and, moreover, gratified

in the exercise of tastes which are a thousand times more dignified than

those of our kings in the days of cloth of gold, and more refined than

those of monarchs who could make themselves exceedingly merry at the

expense of their people. The test, after all, is—What is necessary for

the _support_ of the administrating body, and what upholds mere _pomp_?

These are no days for public pomp. In one sense, the time for it is gone

by; in another sense, it is not come;—that is, we ought now to be men

enough to put away such childish things; and, we cannot yet afford them.

Two or three noble royal palaces, let alone when once completed, are, in

my mind, a proper support to the dignity of the sovereign. As for half-

a-dozen, if they do not make up a display of disgraceful pomp, the

barbaric princes of the East are greater philosophers than I take them

for. Yes, yes; let the sovereign be nobly lodged; but let it be

remembered that noble lodgings are quite as much wanted for other

parties.

"_Mr. ——’s motion was lost without a division._"

Aye: just so. The concentrated essence of the people, as the House of

Commons pretends to be, must put up with a sordid lodging, however many

royal palaces England may boast. They are not anything so precious as

they pretend to be, or they would not so meanly exclude themselves from

their right. They might just as faithfully consult the dignity of the

empire by making the King and Queen live in a cottage of three rooms, as

by squeezing themselves into a house where there is neither proper

accommodation for their sittings, nor for the transaction of their

business in Committees, nor for witnessing, nor for reporting their

proceedings. I thought my wife quite right in saying that she would

never again undergo the insult of being referred to the ventilators; and

I have determined twenty times myself that I would despise the gallery

so utterly that I would never set foot in it again: yet to the gallery I

still go; and I should not wonder if my wife puts away, for once or

twice, her disgust at inhaling smoke and steam, and her indignation at

being permitted to watch the course of legislation only through a

pigeon-hole and a grating. The presence of women there, in spite of such

insults, is a proof that they are worthy of being treated less like nuns

and more like rational beings; and the greater the rush and consequent

confusion in the gallery, the more certain is it that there are people

who want, and who eventually will have the means of witnessing the

proceedings of their legislators. But all this is nothing to the

importance of better accommodation to the members. Of all extraordinary

occasions of being economical, that is the most strange which impairs

the exertions of the grand deliberative assembly of the nation,—the most

majestic body, if it understood its own majesty,—within the bounds of

the empire. Why,—every nobleman should be content with one house, and

every private gentleman be ashamed of his stables and kennels, rather

than that the House of Commons should not have a perfect place of

assemblage. I verily believe that many a poor man would willingly give

his every third potato towards thus aiding the true representation of

his interests. It would be good economy in him so to do, if there was

nothing of less consequence to be sacrificed first. But King, Lords, and

Commons are not the only personages who have a claim on the public to be

well housed, for purposes of social support, not pomp.

"_Yesterday morning, Andrew Wilson underwent the sentence of the law,

&c. &c. Though only twenty years of age, he was old in guilt, having

been committed for his first offence,—throwing stones at the police,—-

when he was in his thirteenth year. He is supposed to have been for some

time connected with a gang of desperate offenders; but nothing could be

extracted from him relative to his former associates, though the

reverend chaplain of the jail devoted the most unremitting attention to

the spiritual concerns of the unhappy man._"

So this is the way we tend the sick children of the great social family,

because, forsooth, with all our palaces, we cannot afford a proper

infirmary! As soon as symptoms of sickness appear, we thrust all our

patients together, to make one another as much worse as possible, and

when any one is past hope, we take credit for our humanity in stuffing

him with remedies which come too late. To look at our prisons, one would

think that we must be out in our Christian chronology. That among the

many mansions of the social edifice, room cannot be found for those who

have the strongest claim of all on our pitying love and watchful

care,—what a scandal this is may be most fully comprehended by those who

have passed from the loathsome confusion of the greater number of our

prisons to the silence and rigid order of the very few in which a better

system has been tried. There are persons to press the argument that

while many of our honest poor, in London and in the factory districts,

are crowded together, six or seven families in the same apartment, it

cannot be expected that the guilty should be better accommodated. But

these same honest poor,—trebly honest if they can remain so under such a

mode of living,—may well be as glad as other people that the prisoner

should be doomed to the solitude which their poverty denies to them.

These same honest poor are taxed to pay for the transportation of

multitudes of the guilty, and for the idleness of all: while the

incessant regeneration of crime through our prison methods affords but a

melancholy prospect of augmented burdens on their children’s children

for similar purposes. In this point of view alone, how dearly has the

public paid for the destruction of this Andrew Wilson, and for the

offences of the gang he belongs to! Committed in his childhood for the

childish fault of throwing stones, kept in a state of expensive idleness

for want of an apparatus of labour, thrown into an atmosphere of

corruption for want of room to insulate him, issuing forth as a vagabond

to spread the infection of idleness and vice, and being brought back to

be tried and hanged at the nation’s expense, after he had successfully

qualified others for claiming from the public the expense of

transportation,—would not the injured wretch have been more profitably

maintained through a long life at the public expense? Would it not have

answered better to the public purse to give him an establishment, on

condition of his remaining harmless? If no Christian considerations are

strong enough to rouse us to build new jails, or to transmute the spare

palaces of the educated and the honoured into penitentiaries for the

ignorant and forlorn, there may be calculable truths,—facts of pounds,

shillings, and pence,—which may plead on behalf of the guilty against

the system of mingled parsimony and extravagance by which guilt is

aggravated at home, and diffused abroad, and the innocent have to pay

dear for that present quiet which insures a future further invasion of

their security. Every complainant who commits a young offender to

certain of our jails knows, or may know, that he thereby burdens the

public with a malefactor for life, and with all who will become

criminals by his means. What wonder that the growing chances of impunity

become a growing inducement to crime? There is no occasion to “provide

criminals with port wine and Turkey-carpets;” but there would be more

sense and better economy in this extreme,—if insulation were

secured,—than in the system which remains a reproach to the head and

heart of the community. Ah! here are a few hints as to one of the

methods by which we contrive to have so many young offenders upon our

hands.

“_John Ford, a publican, was fined for having music in his house, &c.

&c._”

“_Two labourers, brothers, named White, were charged with creating a

disturbance in the neighbourhood of the residence of Sir L. M. N. O.,

who has lately enforced his right of shutting up the foot-path, &c.

&c._”

“_The number of boats which passed under Putney Bridge from noon to

sunset on a Sunday in summer, was computed by the informant of the right

reverend bishop to exceed, &c. &c._”

"_The witness stated that he saw the two prisoners that morning in the

Albany Road, Regent’s Park, selling the unstamped publications which

were now produced. He purchased a copy from each of them, and took the

vendors into custody. The magistrates committed the prisoners to the

House of Correction for one month each, and thrust the forfeited papers

into the fire. The prisoners were then removed from the bar, laughing._“

”_On the discussion, last night, relative to the throwing open of the

Museum, we have to observe, &c. &c._“

”_The prisoner related that his dog having, on a former occasion,

brought a hare to him in a similar manner, the gamekeeper had ordered

the animal to be shot. The prisoner’s son had then contrived to secrete

it; but he could assure the magistrates that the animal should be

immediately sacrificed if he might be spared the ruin of being sent to

prison._"

Considering that one of the great objects of government is the security,

and another the advancement, of the people, it seems as if one of the

expenses of government should be providing useful and innocent amusement

for the people. All must have something to do in the intervals of their

toils; and as the educated can find recreations for themselves, it

behoves the guardians of the public to be especially careful in

furnishing innocent amusements to those who are less fitted to choose

their pleasures well. But where are the public grounds in which the poor

of our large towns may take the air, and exercise themselves in games?

Where are the theatres, the museums, the news-rooms, to which the poor

may resort without an expense unsuited to their means? What has become

of the principle of Christian equality, when a Christian prelate murmurs

at the poor man’s efforts to enjoy, at rare intervals, the green

pastures and still waters to which a loving shepherd would fain lead

forth all his flock; and if any more tenderly than others, it would be

such as are but too little left at large? Our administrators are careful

enough to guard the recreations of those who, if deprived of them, are

in the least danger of being driven to guilty excitements. The rich who

can have music and dancing, theatres, picture-galleries and museums,

riding in the parks, and walking in the fields any day of the week,

hunting and boating, journeying and study, must also have one more, at

whatever expense of vice and misery to their less favoured neighbours,

and at whatever cost to society at large. Yes; their game must be

protected, though the poor man must not listen in the public-house to

the music which he cannot hire, nor read at home almost the only

literature that he can buy. He must destroy his cherished dog, if it

happens to follow a hare; and must take his evening walk in the dusty

road if a powerful neighbour forbids him the quiet, green footway. Thus

we drive him to try if there is no being merry at the beer-shop, and if

he cannot amuse himself with his dog in the woods at night, since he

must not in the day. Thus we tempt him to worse places than a cheap

theatre would be. Thus we preach to him about loving and cherishing

God’s works, while we shut out some of them from his sight, and wrest

others from his grasp; and, by making happiness and heaven an

abstraction which we deny him the intellect to comprehend, we impel him

to make trial of misery and hell, and by our acts do our best to speed

him on his way, while our weak words of warning are dispersed by the

whirlwind of temptation which we ourselves have raised. If the

administration of penal justice be a grievous burden upon the people, it

must be lightened by a practical respect to that higher justice which

commands that the interests of all, the noble and the mean, the educated

and the ignorant, be of equal importance in the regards of the

administration; so that government shall as earnestly protest against

the slaughter of the poor man’s dog for the sake of the rich man’s

sport, as the prophet of God against the sacrifice of the poor man’s

ewe-lamb for the rich man’s feast. If bible-read prelates preached from

their hearts upon this text, we should never have another little boy

supposing that he was to be a clergyman, because he went out shooting

with his father. Would that such could be persuaded to leave their

partridges and pheasants, and go east and west, to bring down and send

home the winged creatures of other climes, wherewith to delight the eyes

of the ignorant, and to enlarge his knowledge of God’s works! Meantime,

the well-dressed only can enter the Zoological Gardens; and the footman

(who cannot be otherwise than well-dressed) must pull off his cockade

before he may look at that which may open to him some of the glory of

the 104th Psalm. We are lavish of God’s word to the people, but grudging

of his works. We offer them the dead letter, withholding the spirit

which gives life. Yet something is done in the way of genuine homage.

See here!—

“_Yesterday being the occasion of the annual assemblage of schools in

St. Paul’s * * under the dome * * children sang a hymn * * crowded to

excess * * presence of her Majesty, &c. &c._”

And here follows an account of certain university prize-givings. We are

not without public education,—badged,—the one to denote charity, the

other endowments.

If education were what it ought to be,—the breath of the life of the

community,—there would be an end of this childish and degrading badging.

At present, this prodigious display of white tippets and coloured

cockades under the dome of St. Paul’s tells only that, because the whole

of society is not educated at all, a small portion is educated wrong.

There is less to be proud than ashamed of in such an exhibition; and

though the stranger from a comparatively barbarous country may feel his

heart swell as that mighty infant voice chaunts its hymn of praise, the

thoughts of the meditative patriot will wander from these few elect to

the multitudes that are left in the outer darkness. Till the state can

show how every parent may afford his children a good education, the

state is bound to provide the means for it; and to enforce the use of

those means by making a certain degree of intellectual competency a

condition of the enjoyment of the benefits of society. Till the state

can appoint to every member a sufficiency of leisure from the single

manual act which, under an extensive division of labour, constitutes the

business of many, it is bound to provide the only effectual antidote to

the contracting and benumbing influences of such servile toil.

Till knowledge ceases to be at least as necessary to the happiness of

the state as military skill was to the defence of the Greek Republics,

the state is bound to require of every individual a certain amount of

intellectual ability, as Greece required of her citizens a specified

degree of military skill. Till all these extraordinary things happen, no

pleas of poverty, no mournful reference to the debt, no just murmurs

against the pension list, can absolve us from the obligation of framing

and setting in motion a system of instruction which shall include every

child that shall not be better educated elsewhere. Not that this would

be any very tremendous expense. There is an enormous waste of

educational resources already, from the absence of system and co-

operation. Lords and ladies, squires and dames, farmers’ wives,

merchants’ daughters, and clergymen’s sisters, have their schools,

benevolently set on foot, and indefatigably kept up, in defiance of the

evils of insulation and diversity of plan. Let all these be put under

the workings of a well-planned system, and there will be a prodigious

saving of effort and of cost. The private benevolence now operating in

this direction would go very far towards the fulfilment of a national

scheme. What a saving in teachers, in buildings, in apparatus and

materials, and, finally, in badges! There will be no uniform of white

caps and tippets when there is no particular glory to be got by this

species of charity; when none can be found who must put up with the

humiliation for the sake of the overbalancing good. When the whole

people is so well off that none come to receive alms at the sound of the

trumpet, the trumpet will cease to sound. The day may even arrive when

blue gowns and yellow stockings shall excite pity in the beholders no

more, and no widowed parent be compelled to struggle with her maternal

shame at subjecting her comely lad to the mortifications which the young

spirit has not learned to brave. This last grievance, however, lies not

at the nation’s door. It is chargeable on the short-sightedness of an

individual, which may serve as a warning to us whenever we set to work

on our system of national education. It may teach us, by exhibiting the

folly of certain methods of endowment, to examine others; to avoid the

absurdity of bestowing vast sums in teaching plain things in a perplexed

manner, or supposed sciences which have long ceased to be regarded as

such, or other accomplishments which the circumstances of the times do

not render either necessary or convenient. It may lead our attention

from the endowed school to the endowed university, and show us that what

we want, from our gentlemen as well as our poor, is an awakening of the

intellect to objects of immediate and general concern, and not a

compulsion to mental toil which shall leave a man, after years of

exemplary application, ignorant of whatever may make him most useful in

society, and may be best employed and improved amidst the intercourses

of the world. Let there remain a tribe of book-worms still; and Heaven

forbid that the classics should fall into contempt! But let scholastic

honours be bestowed according to the sympathies of the many; the many

being meantime so cultivated as that they may arrive at a sympathy with

intellectual toil. With the progress of science, the diffusion of

science becomes necessary. The greater the power of the people to injure

or rebel, the more necessary it is to teach them to be above injuring

and rebelling. The ancient tyrant who hung up his laws written in so

small a character that his people could not read them, and then punished

offenders under pretence that his laws were exhibited, was no more

unjust than we are while we transport and hang our neighbours for deeds

of folly and malice, while we still withhold from them the spirit of

power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Bring public education to the

test, and it will be found that badgery is _pomp_, while universal

instruction is essential to the _support_ of the state.

A pretty new church that! But I should scarcely have supposed it wanted

while there is a new Methodist meeting-house on one side the way, and

the large old Independent chapel on the other. The little church that

the lady is sketching before it comes down, might have served a while

longer, I fancy, if the necessity had been estimated by the number of

church-goers, and not of souls, in the parish. Whatever may be thought

of the obligation to provide a national scheme of worship after the

manner in which a national scheme of education is certainly a

duty,—however the essential circumstance of distinction is overlooked,

that every member of the state has, without its assistance,

opportunities of worship, while such is not the case with

instruction,—whatever may be thought of the general question of an

ecclesiastical establishment,—it is not pretended by any that its

purposes are answered by the application of its funds to the

augmentation of private fortunes instead of the religious instruction of

the people. Time was when he who presented to a _benefice_ was supposed

to confer a _benefit_ on the people connected with it. Now we have the

public barter of such presentations for gold; and whether most regard be

always paid to the qualifications of the candidate or to the gold he

brings, let the face of the country declare. Meeting-houses springing up

in every village, intelligent artizans going off to one class or another

of Dissenters, while the stolid race of agricultural labourers lounge to

church,—what does this tell but that the religious wants of the people

are better met by the privately-paid than the publicly-paid church? The

people are not religiously _instructed_ by the clergy, as a body. Look

into our agricultural districts, and see what the mere opening of

churches does for the population,—for the dolts who snore round the fire

in the farm-kitchen during the long winter evenings, and the poor

wretches that creep, match in hand, between the doomed stacks, or that

walk firmly to the gibbet under the delusion that their life-long

disease of grovelling vice is cured and sent to oblivion by a few

priestly prayers and three days of spiritual excitement! Look into our

thronged towns, and search in its cellars and garrets, its alleys and

its wider streets, how many dwellers there see the face of their

clergyman, and have learned from his lips the reason of the hope that is

in them,—if such hope there indeed be! They hear that he who holds the

benefice, _i.e._ is appointed their benefactor, is living in London, or

travelling abroad, on the funds which are derived from the people, and

that a curate, found by accident or advertisement, is coming to do the

duty. He may be a religious instructor, in the real sense of the term,

or he may not. If he be, no thanks to his superior, no thanks to the

state, no thanks to the university that bred him! For aught they know or

trouble themselves about, he may be more ignorant than many a mechanic

in his flock, and more indolent than the finest lady who carries her

salts to her cushioned pew. He might have the same virtues that he has

now if he were a dissenting minister; and nobody disputes that nowhere

does virtue more eminently fail of its earthly recompense than in the

church. Nowhere do luxury and indolence more shamelessly absorb the

gains of hardship and of toil. The sum of the whole matter is, that in

the present state of the church, the people pay largely for religious

instruction, which it is a chance whether they obtain. If the same

payment were made by the people direct,—without the intervention of the

state,—they would be sure to demand and receive an equivalent for their

sacrifices. If the people be supposed incapable of thus providing for

their own spiritual wants, it behoves the state to see that those wants

are actually provided for, so that more than half the nation may not be

compelled, through failure of duty in the establishment, to support a

double ministry. No power in earth or heaven can absolve the state from

the obligation, either to leave to its members the management of their

own funds for religious worship and instruction, or to furnish to every

individual the means of learning the Gospel and worshipping his Maker.

The first is a plan which has been elsewhere found to answer full as

well as any we have yet tried. The last can never be attained by merely

opening a sufficiency of churches, and leaving to men’s cupidity the

chance whether the pulpit shall be occupied by an ape or an apostle.

Have the people got a notion already of such an alternative?

"TITHES.—PARISH OF C.—_On Monday, the Rev. J. B. H. commenced

distraining for tithes due, &c. &c. On that day there were impounded

above forty cows. The parishioners offered security for the cattle,

which was refused, and they have resolved to let the law take its

course. In the mean time, a large military and police force is stationed

in the vicinity of the pound. Sentinels are regularly posted and

relieved, and the place presents more the appearance of a warlike

district than a country village._"

Ah! this Rev. J. B. H. takes for his text, perhaps, “I came not to send

peace on earth, but a sword.” The people, it seems, think his claim,

1476_l._, on a valued property of 9000_l._ a year, excessive. But his

advocate declares that no man, acquainted with first principles, can

deny that the Rev. J. B. H. has a legal right to demand and take his

tithes. Be it so! But first principles tell just as plainly that it is

high time the law was altered:—first principles of humanity to the

clergy themselves, to judge by what comes next.

"_The subscription for the relief of the families of clergymen in

Ireland proceeds but slowly, though the necessity for it increases with

every passing day. Ladies who have been educated with a view to filling

a highly-respectable station in society may now be seen engaged in the

most laborious domestic offices; while their children are thankful to

accept a meal of potatoes from some of the lowest of their father’s

flock._“

”_The widow of an Irish clergyman, middle-aged, is eager to obtain a

situation to superintend the management of the nursery in the family of

a widower, or as useful companion to a lady, or as housekeeper in a

nobleman’s mansion, or as matron in an extensive charitable institution.

She would be willing to make herself useful in any situation not menial,

her circumstances being of an urgent nature.—References to a lady of

rank._“

”_A master of arts, in full orders, is desirous of a curacy. He feels

himself equal to a laborious charge; and a speedy settlement is of more

importance than the amount of salary, especially if there be an opening

for tuition._"

Alas! what a disclosure of misery is here! among a body which the United

Kingdom is taxed to maintain. Poor as the Dissenting clergy may be, as a

body, we hear of no such conflicts in their lot. The poor spirit-broken

clergyman bearing, undeserved by him, the opprobrium belonging to his

church, seeing his gentle wife washing his floor, or striving to patch

up once more the girl’s frock and the boy’s coat; while they, poor

children, peep in at the door of the labourer’s smoky cabin, and rush in

at the first invitation to take a sup of milk or a potatoe! Scraps of

the classics, descriptive of poverty, _will_ run in his head, instead of

gospel consolations of poverty; for the good reason that he was taught

that his classics, and not his choice of poverty, were his title to

preach the gospel. He could find in his heart to inquire further of any

heretical sect, which takes for its rule to employ every one according

to his capacity, and reward him according to his works. However

difficult it might be to fix upon any authority which all men would

agree to be a fitting judge of their capacities and their works, none

would affirm that an educated clergyman is employed according to his

capacities in wandering about helpless amidst the contempt or

indifference of his flock, or that his works are properly rewarded by

the starvation of his family. Then there is the widow of a brother in

the same fruitless ministry! “_Any situation not menial!_” “_Her

circumstances of an urgent nature!_” One poor relation, perhaps, taking

charge of one child, and another of a second; and the third, perhaps,

sent to wear the badge of this lady of rank at a charity-school, that

the widow may be made childless—may advertise herself as “without

incumbrance,” to undertake any situation not menial! Then comes the

curate, eager to undertake more than man can do for as little as man can

live for;—to use his intellectual tools, framed with care, and polished

with long toil, and needing, in their application, all the power of a

philosopher with all the zeal of a saint,—for less than is given to the

artizan who spends his life in the performance of one manual act, or the

clerk, whose whole soul lies in one process of computation! This poor

curate, heart-sick through long waiting, may find employment according

to his capacities, and above them; but, if he be fit for his work, he

will not be rewarded according to it, till those for whom he and his

brethren toil have, directly or indirectly, the distribution of the

recompense. Bring the church, in its turn, to the test. It is certain

that it is made up of pomp and penury; and no power on earth can prove

that it at present yields any support to the state.

Since the people have no benefit from a state education, and but a

questionable benefit from a state church, how much is spent on their

behalf? Here are tables which look as if they would tell something,

though it requires more wit than mortal man has to make out accurately

how the public accounts really stand. Among all the accommodations

provided for the transaction of public business, one would think a pay-

office might be fixed upon where all public claims should be discharged,

in certain allotted departments; and, among all the servants of

government, working men or sinecurists, one would think some might be

employed in preparing such a document as has never yet been seen among

us—an account of the actual annual expenditure of the public money. But

one may make some approach to the truth in the gross:—

“_The expenditure for the last year may be calculated, in round numbers,

at upwards of fifty millions._”

Upon my word, we are a gay nation! If we acted upon the belief held by

some very wise persons, that the business of government might be

conducted at a charge of one per cent. on the aggregate of individual

revenue, this sum total would show us to be rich enough to buy Europe,

and perhaps America to boot. This would give us a national wealth which

it would be beyond Crœsus himself to form a notion of. But we are far

enough from having ourselves governed so cheaply. Let us see how these

fifty millions go:—

“_To the Public Creditor_ £28,000,000

_Civil and Pension Lists_ 1,000,000

_Superannuated and Reduced Allowances of Civil £1,000,000

Departments_

_Do. of Military Ditto_ 4,300,000

_Miscellaneous Charges_ 200,000.”

Here are thirty-four millions and a half devoted to “non-

effective” expenditure. This is a pretty triumph of _Pomp_ versus

_Support_.—Yes,—pomp: for few will now dare to affirm that our

prodigious wars were necessary to the national defence. They were wars

of pomp which undermined our supports: and, as for the glory thus

gained, our descendants will be ashamed of it long before they have done

paying for it.—As for the other items of non-effective expenditure,—the

smaller they appear by the side of the enormous debt charge, the more

necessity there is for their reduction; since the disproportion

proves,—not their smallness, but its bigness. Though they cannot be

abolished,—though their Majesties must have a household,—though the

other branches of the royal family must be supported,—though retired

soldiers and sailors must be taken care of on their quitting a service

from which it is not easy to turn to any other,—no man will now affirm

that reduction is forever impossible; though the like affirmation was

made before the present government proved its falsehood. That their

Majesties must have a household on a liberal scale is true; but that

there are no sinecures in the royal households remains to be proved. And

if such sinecures there must be, it also remains to be proved that they

would not be equally well filled if they were merely honorary offices.

That the members of the royal family, precluded as they are by their

position from being independent, must submit to be maintained by a

pitying people, is also true. It is a lot so full of mortification, that

a Christian nation will soften the necessity to them to the utmost;

cheerfully paying as much as will support them in decent splendour, but

not so much more as will expose them to the taunts of their supporters.

This regard to their feelings is their due, till their day of

emancipation arrives,—till the customs of society shall allow them the

natural rights of men and women,—the power of social exertion, and the

enjoyment of social independence. Their case, however, is peculiar in

its hardships. No other class in society is precluded from either

enjoying ancestral property or accumulating property for themselves; and

it is too much to expect the nation to approve or to pay for the

infliction of a similar humiliation on any who have not, in their own

persons or in those of their very nearest connexions, served the people

for an otherwise insufficient reward. Let the soldier and sailor who

have sacrificed health or member in the public defence be provided for

by a grateful people; but there is no reason why the descendants of

civil officers, or diplomatists retired from already overpaid services,

should receive among them far more than is afforded to naval and

military pensions together. As for the proportion of these naval and

military pensions to the expenditure for effective defence, it is to be

hoped that a long abstinence from war will rectify,—if they must not be

otherwise rectified,—such enormous abuses as that of the number of

retired soldiers far exceeding that of the employed, and of the expenses

of the non-effective service being considerably greater than the

maintenance of the actual army. Monstrous absurdities! that the

factitiously helpless class should cost the nation more than those who

advance some plea,—more or less substantial,—of civil services, rendered

by themselves or their connexions! that these last should cost the

nation more than the whole body of its maimed, and wounded, and worn-out

defenders! and that these again should cost the nation more than its

actual defenders! What wonder that they from whose toils all these

expenses must be paid talk of a national militia,—of arming themselves,

and dispensing with a standing army? It is no wonder: but when we let

them be as wise as they desire to be, they will perceive that their best

weapons at present are the tongues of their representatives. It has not

yet been tried whether these tongues may not utter a spell powerful

enough to loosen this enormous Dead-Weight from the neck of the nation.

But how goes the 15,000,000_l._ for actual service?

“_Of the 15,000,000l. required for active service, three and a half are

expended on the collection of the revenue. Eight and a quarter on

defence. Law and justice swallow up three-quarters of a million. Another

million is required for civil government, and the expenses of

legislation. Diplomacy and the colonial civil service are discharged by

half a million. About half a million is spent on public works. The

remaining odd half million out of the fifteen, is expended on the

management of the debt, and for miscellaneous services,” &c._

So we, a most Christian nation, with abundance of Christian prelates,

and a church which is to watch over the state with apostolic care,—we,

strenuous professors of a religion of peace and enlightenment,—spend

eight millions and a quarter on Defence, and——how much on popular

Education? I suppose the latter forms some little item in one of the

smaller accounts, for I can nowhere see it. Eight millions and a quarter

on Defence, and three quarters on Law and Justice! Eight and a quarter

on Defence, and one on Government and Legislation! Eight millions and a

quarter on Defence, and half a million on Public Works! O,

monstrous!—too monstrous a sin to be charged on any ruler, or body of

rulers, or succession of bodies of rulers! The broad shoulders of the

whole civilized world must bear this tremendous reproach:—the world

which has had Christianity in it these eighteen hundred years, and whose

most Christian empire yet lays out more than half its serviceable

expenditure in providing the means of bloodshed, or of repelling

bloodshed! The proportion would be enormous, even if all the other items

were of righteous signification,—if the proper proportion of the three

and a half millions for Collection went to Education; if Law were

simple, and Justice cheap; if the real servants of Government were

liberally paid, and all idle hangers-on shaken off; if there were no

vicious diplomatic and colonial patronage; and no jobbing in the matter

of Public Works. If all else were as it should be, this item might well

make us doubt what age of the world we are living in, and for what

purpose it is that Providence is pleased to humble us by leaving such a

painful thorn of barbarism in the side of our majestic civilization.

Long must it be before it can grow out. Meantime, let us not boast as if

the whole body were sound; or as if we were not performing as humbling

and factitious a duty in paying our defence-taxes as the bondman of old

in following the banner of the cross to the eastern slaughter-field. The

one was the bondman’s duty then; and the other is the citizen’s duty

now; but the one duty is destined to become as obsolete as the

other.—What glory in that day, to reverse the order of expenditure!

Education, Public Works, Government and Legislation, Law and Justice,

Diplomacy, Defence, Dignity of the Sovereign. When this time shall come,

no one can conjecture; but that we shall not always have to pay eight

millions a year for our defence is certain; if the voice of a wise

man,—(which is always the voice of an awakening multitude,)—say true.

“Human intelligence will not stand still: the same impulse that has

hitherto borne it onwards, will continue to advance it yet further. The

very circumstance of the vast increase of expense attending national

warfare has made it impossible for governments henceforth to engage in

it, without the public assent, expressed or implied; and that assent

will be obtained with the more difficulty, in proportion as the public

shall become more generally acquainted with their real interest. The

national military establishment will be reduced to what is barely

sufficient to repel external attack; for which purpose, little more is

necessary than a small body of such kinds of troops as cannot be had

without long training and exercise; as of cavalry and artillery. For the

rest, nations will rely on their militia, and on the excellence of their

internal polity; for it is next to impossible to conquer a people,

unanimous in their attachment to their national institutions.” Nor will

any desire to conquer them while our example of the results of conquest

is before the eyes of nations. Then the newspapers will not have to give

up space to notices of military reviews; and gentry whose names have no

chance of otherwise appearing in print will not have the trouble of

looking for themselves in the list of army promotions. The pomp of

defence will be done away, while the support will remain in the hearts

and hands of the people.

What a blessed thing it is that as soon as the people do not choose to

pay for pomp, pomp will be done away! What a blessed thing that they

cannot be put out of the question, as Henry VIII.’s people were, by

sending their representatives to the wars as often as they disliked

paying for the King’s gold and silver beards, or the Lady Mary’s fool’s

cap and bells! What a blessing that they can be no longer feared and yet

defied, as when Charles II. did without a parliament because he was

afraid to tell them of the bribes he had taken, and the loans he had

asked, and the cheats he had committed, and the mad extravagance of his

tastes and habits! Here, I see, we are content to pay for

“_Robes, collars, badges, &c., for Knights of the several Orders._

”_Repairing the King’s crown, maces, badges, &c., and gold and silver

sticks._

“_Plate to the Secretary of State._

”_Plate and various equipage money to the Lord Lieutenant and Lord

Chancellor of Ireland._"

This is the people’s own doing. No grown man can be supposed to care for

crowns and gold sticks, and robes and collars, in themselves. It is the

people who choose to preserve them as antiquarian curiosities. So be it,

as long as their taste for antiquities takes this turn, and they can

find grown men good-natured enough to dress up to make a show for their

gratification. But, in another reign or two, it will be necessary to

have dolls made to save busy and grave legislators the toil and

absurdity of figuring in such an exhibition; or perhaps cheap theatres

will by that time be allowed, where those who now act pantomimes, will

not be above exhibiting these other mummeries on Christmas nights.

Meantime, if the people choose to have their functionaries surrounded

with pomp and parade, they must pay the purchase money with thanks.

Whenever they shall become disposed to dispense with guards, trappings,

and pageantry, to respect simplicity, and obey the laws for the sake of

something more venerable than maces and wigs, they have only to say so,

and doubtless the King will feel much relieved, and his ministers very

thankful. The laws will work quite as well for the judges looking like

other people; in the same manner as it is found that physicians’

prescriptions are worth full as much as formerly, though the learned

gentlemen now wear their own hair. We tried this method of simplicity in

our own North American Colonies, less than a century ago. Their total

expenditure was under 65,000_l._ per annum. We shall not have held those

colonies for nothing if we learn from our own doings there how cheap a

thing government may be made, when removed from under the eyes and the

hands of a born aristocracy.

What a rich, stirring, happy-looking country this is before my eyes,

where the people hold up their heads and smile,—very differently, I

fancy, from what they did when the proud Cardinal made a progress

through it, or when whispers of the sale of Dunkirk circulated in

advance or in the rear of the sovereign who bartered away his people’s

honour! How times are changed, when, instead of complaining that the

King and his Ministers sacrifice the nation to their own pomps and

vanities, the people only murmur at an insufficiency of courage and

despatch in relieving them of the burdens imposed by the mal-

administration of a former age! What a change, from being king-ridden,

courtier-ridden, priest-ridden, minister-ridden, to being,—not king-

ridden, less courtier-ridden, priest-ridden only while it is our

pleasure to be so, and ruled by a ministry, every tittle of whose power

hangs upon the breath of the people! One may bear even the debt, for a

short space, with patience, while blessed with the sober certainty that

the true instrument of rectification,—the responsibility of rulers to

the ruled, is at length actually in our hands. One might almost wish

long life to the sinecure pensioners, and be courteous about the three

millions and a half consumed in tax collecting, if one rested in a

comparison of the present with the past. But there is enough before

one’s eyes to remind one how much remains to be done before the nation

shall receive full justice at the hands of its guardians. By small

savings in many quarters, or by one of the several decided retrenchments

which are yet possible and imperative, some entire tax, with its cost of

collection, might ere this have been spared, and many an individual and

many a family who wanted but this one additional weight to crush them,

might now have been standing erect in their independence. What a list of

advertisements is here! Petitions for relief,—how piteous! Offers of

lodging, of service, literary, commercial, and personal, how eager! What

tribes of little governesses, professing to teach more than their young

powers can possibly have achieved! What trains of servants, vehemently

upholding their own honesty and accomplishments,—the married boasting of

having got rid of their children to recommend themselves to their

employers,—ay, even the mother advertising for sale the nourishment

which God created for her first-born! There is no saying how much of all

this is attributable to the weight of public burdens, or to the mode of

their pressure: but it is enough that this craving for support co-exists

with unnecessary public burdens. It is enough, were the craving

aggravated a thousand-fold, and the needless burden extenuated to the

smallest that could be estimated,—it is enough to prove that no

worthless pensioner,—worthless to the nation at large,—should fill his

snuff-box at the public charge, while a single tax-payer is distressed.

For my part, I have no doubt that many of the cases in this long list of

urgent appeals owe their sorrow to this cause. I have no doubt that many

a young girl’s first grief is the seeing a deeper and a deeper gloom on

her father’s brow, as he fails more and more to bear up against his

share of the public burden, and finds that he must at length bring

himself to the point, and surrender the child he has tenderly nurtured,

and dismiss her to seek a laborious and precarious subsistence for

herself. I have no doubt that many of these boasting servants would have

reserved their own merits to bless their own circle, but for the

difficulty that parents, husbands and brothers find in living on taxed

articles. While these things co-exist with the needless expenditure of a

single farthing, I, for one, shall feel that, however thankful we may

and ought to be for our prodigious advance in freedom and moral dignity,

we have still to pray, day and night, that the cry of the poor and the

mirth of the parasite do not rise up together against us. Too fearful a

retribution must await us, if we suffer any more honest hearts to be

crushed under the chariot wheels of any ‘gay, licentious proud’—who must

have walked barefoot in the mud, if their condition had been determined

by their deserts.

What place _is_ this? I was not aware that these pretty villas, and

evergreen gardens, and trim causeways stretched to so great a distance

on any London road. Bless me! where can we be? I know that old oak. I

must have been dreaming if we have passed through Croydon without my

perceiving it. I shall be early at G.’s after all. No! not I! It is some

two hours later than I thought. Travelling alone is the best pastime,

after all. I must tie up these newspapers. It is a wonder they have not

been claimed for the Blue Lion yet.

My wife would say this is just the light for the Abbey; but she has said

so of every light, from the broadest noon sunshine to the glimmer of the

slenderest crescent at midnight. Long may the Abbey stand, quiet amidst

the bustle of moving life, a monitor speaking eloquently of the past,

and breathing low prophecies of the future! It is a far nobler

depository of records than the Tower: for here are brought into

immediate contrast the two tribes of kings,—the sovereigns by physical

force, and the sovereigns by moral force,—the royal Henries, and the

thrice royal Shakspeare and Locke and Wilberforce;—and there remains

also space for some one who perchance may unite the attributes of

all;—who, by doing the highest work of a ruler in making the people

happy, may discharge the commission of a seraph in leading them on to be

wise. Let not the towers totter, nor the walls crumble, till such an one

is there sung to his rest by the requiem of a virtuous people! But the

noblest place of records can never be within four walls, shut in from

the stars. There is one, as ancient, may be, as the Abbey; and perhaps

destined to witness its aisles laid open to the sunrise, and its

monuments to the shifting moonlight,—the old oak that we passed just

now. My wife pities it, standing exposed in its old age to the glare and

the dust, when it was perhaps, in its youth, the centre of a cool, green

thicket. But it is worth living through all things to witness what that

oak has seen. If no prophetic eye were given to men, I think I would

accept the _elixir vitæ_ for a chance of beholding the like. As soon as

that oak had a shade to offer, who came to court it? The pilgrim on his

painful way to the southern shrine,—turning aside to pray that the

helpless might not be ravaged by the spoiler in his absence? The nun who

mourned within her cell, and trembled in God’s sunshine, and passed her

blighted life in this sad alternation? The child who slept on the

turf,—safely, with the adder in the neighbouring grass, and the robber

looking down from the tree in envy of its innocence; innocence which,

after all, was poisoned by a worse fang than the adder’s, and despoiled

by the hand of a ruder bandit,—tyranny?—Who came in a later age?—The

soldier reeking from the battle, and in search of some nook in which to

pray for his little ones and die? The maiden, fleeing from royal lust,

and her father outlawed by royal vengeance? What tales were brought when

the neighbouring stems mouldered away, and left space for the winds to

enter with their tidings from afar? Rumours of heaped battle-fields

across the sea, and of the murmurings of the oppressed in their

comfortless homes, and the indignant remonstrance of captives silenced

in their proclamation of the truth? And then, did weary sailors come up

from the sea, and, while they rested, talk of peace? And merchants of

prosperity? And labourers of better days?—And now that the old oak

yields but a scanty shade,—children come to pick up its acorns, and to

make a ladder of its mouldering sides; and even these infant tongues can

tell of what the people feel, and what the people intend, and what the

King desires for the people, and what the ministers propose for the

people. The old oak has lived to see the people’s day.—O! may the breath

of heaven stir it lightly;—may the spring rains fall softly as the

wintry snow;—may the thunderbolt spare it, and the flash not dare to

crisp its lightest leaf, that it may endure to witness something of that

which is yet to come!—of the wisdom which shall issue sternly from the

abyss of poverty, smoothing its rugged brow as it mounts to a milder and

brighter region; and of pleasure descending from her painted cloud,

sobering her mien as she visits rank below rank, till she takes up her

abode with the lowliest in the form of content. If every stone of yonder

Abbey can be made to murmur like the sea-shell to the awakened ear,

disclosing echoes of the requiems of ages, yet more may this oak whisper

from every leaf its records of individual sorrows, of mutual hopes, and

now of common rejoicing;—a rejoicing which yet has more in it of hope

than of fulfilment. The day of the people is come. The old oak survives

to complete its annals,—the Abbey has place for a record—whether the

people are wise to use their day for the promotion of the great objects

of national association,—public order and social improvement.

It was too late to dine at G.’s; so Reid turned into the Abbey, and

staid there till his own footfall was the only sound that entertained

the bodily ear.

_Summary of Principles illustrated in this volume._

It is necessary to the security and advancement of a community that

there should be an expenditure of a portion of its wealth for purposes

of defence, of public order, and of social improvement.

As public expenditure, though necessary, is unproductive, it must be

limited. And, as the means of such expenditure are furnished by the

people for defined objects, its limit is easily ascertained.

That expenditure alone which is necessary to defence, public order, and

social improvement, is justifiable.

Such a direction of the public expenditure can be secured only by the

public functionaries who expend being made fully responsible to the

party in whose behalf they expend.

For want of this responsibility, the public expenditure of an early

age,—determined to pageantry, war, and favouritism,—was excessive, and

perpetrated by the few in defiance of the many.

For want of a due degree of this responsibility, the public expenditure

of an after age,—determined to luxury, war, and patronage,—was

excessive, and perpetrated by the few in fear of the many, by deceiving

and defrauding them.

For want of a due degree of this responsibility, the public expenditure

of the present age,—determined chiefly to the sustaining of burdens

imposed by a preceding age,—perpetuates many abuses: and, though much

ameliorated by the less unequal distribution of power, the public

expenditure is yet as far from being regulated to the greatest advantage

of the many, as the many are from exacting due responsibility and

service from the few.

When this service and responsibility shall be duly exacted, there will

be—

Necessary offices only, whose duties will be clearly defined, fully

accounted for, and liberally rewarded:

Little patronage, and that little at the disposal of the people:

No pomp,—at the expense of those who can barely obtain support: but

Liberal provisions for the advancement of national industry and

intelligence.

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

Transcriber’s Note

Hyphens appearing on a line or page break have beem removed if the

preponderance of other occurrences are unhyphenated. Those words

occurring midline are retained regardless of other occurrences. The

following variants were retained: schoolhouse / school-house, grandchild

/ grand-child, eyebrows / eye-brows, evildoers / evil-doers, bedside /

bed-side, headache / head-ache.

On some occasions, a word spans a line break, but the hyphen itself has

gone missing. These fragments are joined appropriately without further

notice here.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and

are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

BRIERY CREEK.

26.21 [“]There goes Dods! Removed.

73.20 if it did not come too late.[”] Added.

94.5 Dr. Sneyd was very thankf[n/u]l> for his aid. Inverted.

97.3 she had grown p[ro/or]megranates Transposed.

101.10 a damsel dressed in tawd[r]y finery Inserted.

109.10 which must give way.[”] Removed.

152.3 to be so remembered.[”] Added.

THE THREE AGES.

50.27 for his Maje[s]ty’s service was more Inserted.

55.2 in order to build[ing] a new one Removed.

97.10 the animal should be immediately sacrifi[c]ed Inserted.