CHAPTER III.—THE COAL EXCHANGE.

Near to the Custom House rises one of the most ornate edifices in the

metropolis,—the Coal Exchange of London,—in which is carried on one of

our most stupendous trades.

It is Wednesday—a market day—we ascend the steps of a beautiful sort of

round tower, and pass through the folding swing-doors of the principal

entrance. The space here, or little vestibule, forms the base of the

centre of a well-staircase of iron. You look up, through the coiling

balustrades as they climb up to the top, and at the very top you see a

painting in the Rubens style of colouring, (though a long way _after_

Rubens in other respects,) of the figure of a prodigal lady, who is

upsetting a cornucopia, full—_not_ of coals—but of all the most richly

coloured fruits of Italy and the East, which seem about to descend

straight through the centre of the well-staircase, and shower down upon

your wondering and expectant head. Cupids—or, at least, little chubby

boys, tumbling in the air—are also in attendance on this theatrical

Goddess of Abundance.

Passing from this entrance into the grand central market, you find

yourself in a circular area boarded with oak planks of a light and dark

hue, arranged in a kind of mosaic of long angles, which converge to a

centre piece, wherein a great anchor is inlaid. Beside this, there is a

wooden dagger, to the blade of which a legend of no interest is

attached. Three ranges of cast-iron galleries rise all round,

terminating above in a large glass dome, with an orange-coloured centre

of stained glass. Around the floor of the area, at due intervals, long

desks of new polished oak, with inkstands let into the wood, stand

invitingly ready for the transaction of business. The City Arms, on a

series of small shields, is the simple adornment of the outer

balustrade-work of the three galleries,—except, also, that these

galleries often have many lady-visitors who lean over and contemplate

the ‘dark doings’ of the busy black-diamond merchants who congregate

below.

But let it not be supposed that the ornaments of the Coal Exchange of

London are confined to the City Arms, or even the beauty of the

lady-visitors. Private offices, and recesses for business, having the

most neat, orderly appearance, even to a primness and propriety worthy

of the Society of Friends, are observable round the area, beneath the

galleries; but the panels of the woodwork that separate these offices,

rejoice in the most lively adornments, _à la Jullien_. They are covered

with emblematic, fanciful, and not very characteristic pictures and

designs, all in the brightest hues; and, being painted on a light

ground, they have a look of gaiety and airiness quite of a continental

character. The weight and gravity of the City has, for once—and by way

of smiling antagonism to what every one would expect of a

coal-market—determined to emulate the gayest places of public amusement

in France or Germany. Restaurants, cafés, dancing-rooms—and oh!—shall we

say it—a touch of Cremorne! In one panel you see a figure of

_Watchfulness_, typified by a robed lady, with a wise-faced owl at her

side. The river Severn is typified by Naïads and a dolphin—by a little

poetic licence. In another panel we have _Charity_, bearing a couple of

children, with a figure of old Father Thames sitting among rushes below.

Then, we have _Perseverance_ for the Avon, emblemed by a snail at the

foot of a brunette lady with black eyes,—the favourite style of beauty

of the artist, Mr. Sang. The Trent and the Tyne are similarly

illustrated, and all in the brightest colours, on a light ground.

Let us now return to the principal entrance, and ascend to the first

gallery. The panels all round, are painted as below. The chief subject

of most of them appears to be a colliery—that is, the works above

ground, such as the little black house of the steam-engine, with its

long chain passing over the drum, and then over a wheel above the pit’s

mouth. The first we come to is the celebrated Wallsend colliery. Each

has fanciful designs above and beneath, as if to atone for the dark

reality of the centre piece, picturesque as this is always made. Over

some of these we find heraldic monsters of the right frightful Order of

the Griffin, prancing above greyhounds who crouch on each side of a

large ornamental cup, not unlike a head-dress of the ancient South

American Indians, which however is supported by a lady in the bright

costume of a Mexican peasant, wearing wings. Beneath there lies a rich

grouping of grapes, arborescent ferns, with vulture-headed griffins, and

flowers of the cactus. The collieries are occasionally varied with a

sea-piece, in which, of course, a black collier-vessel is sailing from

the North. Sometimes the scene is a shore-piece with a collier boat; but

presided over by the usual sort of nut-brown mining beauty with Italian

eyes, and hair in no particular order, bearing a fruit-basket on her

head, piled up with all sorts of ripe fruit of the most tempting size

and colour. Beneath her, we again find the griffin vultures holding

watch over some logs of antediluvian trees.

Wandering onwards in this way, we observed, a little in advance of us, a

seafaring man, in a rough blue pilot coat, with a face so weather-beaten

that it looked as hard as a ship’s figure-head, and a pair of great

dangling hands that seemed hewn out of solid oak. He was very busy in

front of one of the panels, admiring a lady with very good-humoured

black eyes, and cheeks as red as ripe tomatos, carrying on her head a

basket of Orlean plums and alligator pears, richly grouped with a

profusion of grapes, and crimson flowers of the cactus. Her face was

turned smilingly upwards at a collier brig in full sail.

We congratulated him on his ‘choice,’ and the suggestion appearing to

please his fancy, a little colloquy ensued, from which it turned out

that he was Thomas Oldcastle, of Durham, captain of the collier brig

‘Shiner,’ of South Shields, and having just discharged his cargo at

Rotherhithe, had come to London to amuse himself for a few hours.

Arriving at the entrance in the course of our talk, we ascended the

stairs together, and soon reached the second gallery.

The flooring of this gallery—in fact the whole of it, like the previous

one, was of cast iron. In the semicircle of the entrance was a picture

of Newcastle, on one side, with its iron bridge and railway combined,

and its old stone bridge below. It was very well and characteristically

painted, and of a sombre and rather smoky colour, which Captain

Oldcastle said was too like to be very pleasing. His thoughts were

evidently reverting to the very highly coloured operatic ladies below.

On the other side of this entrance was a picture of Durham, with the

cathedral among the trees—also a very good and truthful picture. Captain

Oldcastle, after great deliberation, and the slow pocketing of both

hands, was obliged to confess that it was something like the old place.

But this wall was not right—any how—and that spire did not look so—when

last he saw it—in short, it was clear he wanted reality, could not make

out perspective differences, and preferred the handsome looks of the

brunette fruit-bearer in the lower gallery.

But though our honest friend had no good taste in pictures, there was a

great mass of good solid practical knowledge in the hard-outlined head

of this rough captain of the North Sea. It turned out that he was an old

friend of Mr. Buddle, the coal engineer of Wallsend, and often quoted

him as authority. Chancing to ask him some question about the number of

people employed in the coal trade on the Tyne and the Wear, he said that

he had heard Buddle say (twenty years ago) there were nearly 5,000 boys,

and quite 3,500 men _underground_ in the works near the Tyne: and nearly

3,000 men, and 700 boys above ground. On the Wear, he said there were

9,000. All of these were employed in the mines, and taking the coal to

the ships on the two rivers. Captain Oldcastle estimated the vessels

employed at about 1,400, which would require 15,000 sailors and boys to

work them “as all ought to be.” Besides these, there were lots more

hands in other parts of the great coal trade of the north.

But as this estimate of his friend Buddle, we remarked, had been made

twenty years ago, was it not pretty certain that the numbers had

immensely increased by this time? To this the Captain replied that it

was so, no doubt; and supposing that every other district, besides the

North, of the entire coal trade of England, had increased in the same

proportion, and if you added to this all the agents, factors, clerks,

subordinates, whippers, lightermen, wharfingers, &c., there would be

found upwards of 200,000 men engaged in the Coal trade of

England,—enough, he added with a grimly comical look, if a war broke

out, to furnish the army and navy with 20,000 men each, at a week’s

notice.

“If they liked the work,” we added; but the Captain had walked on,

attracted by a picture in one of the panels. It was a portrait of a

miner in his underground dress—when he wears any—the darkness of his

figure and position in the mine being pleasantly and appropriately

relieved by an immense quantity of highly coloured _tropical_ fruits,

flowers, griffin vultures, long and sleek-necked cranes, arborescent

ferns, various logs of wood known in fossil botany, with here and there

a string of choice jewels,—rubies, emeralds, and carbuncles of

prodigious size, such as one has seen in “Blue Beard” and “Pizarro.” The

next figure was a miner with a Davy-lamp, whom Captain Oldcastle

shrewdly conjectured to be looking out for some of those jewels so

profusely accorded to the fortunate miner in the previous picture.

In walking round these galleries, amidst so many adornments attracting

the attention, a visitor might be excused for not too hastily turning

his thoughts to utility. But this thought, in these too practical days,

will obtrude itself. The number of the private rooms for offices, on

each gallery, is considerable; their accommodations, all that could be

desired; their appearance most neat, quiet, and unexceptionable; but by

far the greater part are _empty_. Nobody will take them. Many of those

on the ground-floor, or area of the market—obviously the best place by

far—are unlet. These are of the high-priced, of course; still, as the

price decreases with the ascent, why are not more of the upper offices

taken? Here—in the very centre of all the great Coal trade of

England!—and not one-third, not one-fourth, we think, of the offices

let? We expressed our astonishment to the Captain.

“Oh!” said he, “the City is a queer place, and the City authorities are

a rum sort of reasoners. They asked too much rent for these berths at

first; and though but a few factors and merchants can afford to give it,

the City still persists. And so they are obliged to go to the expence of

fires in all the empty offices to keep them aired three-quarters of the

year round, rather than see the place full at a moderate rent. That’s

how I read their log.”

We now ascended to the third gallery. Here, the cold, though not the

“beggarly array of empty boxes,” was most expressive of the

mismanagement, _somehow_ and _somewhere_ of this well-placed, and most

commodious building, on which so much money has been expended.

The paintings in the entrance of this uppermost gallery were of

‘Shields’ on one side, and ‘Sunderland’ on the other. That of Shields

was a view of colliers in the river by moonlight, with a dull sky of

indigo blue, and smoky clouds—very well done, and truthful, having a

sufficient mixture of reality for the nature of the subject, and of

fancy for the picturesque. The picture of Sunderland, with its

one-arched iron bridge, which is so high above the water, that a collier

can pass underneath without striking her topmasts, is also a night

scene; but by torch-light; the red flashes of which fall upon a train of

little upright waggons full of coals, coming from the pit to be shipped.

The panels round this gallery are adorned with paintings of gigantic

ferns, fragments of the trunks of the lepidodendron, and the sigillaria,

and other stems and foliage of those antediluvian plants and trees which

subsequently contributed most largely to the coal formations. These

paintings are interspersed with various miners’ tools, above which rises

the glass dome of the building.

Descending the well-staircase, we asked Captain Oldcastle what capital

he thought was employed by the great coal owners on the Tyne and Wear.

He said—quoting his friend Buddle again, as authority—that they could

not have embarked less than a million and a half of money, without

reckoning any of the vessels on the river; but taking these into the

account, the capital employed would not amount to less than between

eight and ten millions. And this estimate was made by Buddle twenty

years ago!

THE GREAT PENAL EXPERIMENTS.

Prison Life, like life in all other circumstances, has its extremes; and

these have been pushed to the farthest verge of contrast by the ‘great

experiments’ that have lately been essayed. There is an aristocracy of

prisoners, and a commonality of prisoners; there are palace prisons, and

kennel prisons in which it would be cruelty to confine refractory dogs.

We have hardened criminals put into training in Model Prisons for

pattern penitence, and novices in crime thrust into dens with the most

depraved felons; so as to bring them down in morals to the lowest

practicable level. The study of some of these extremes is instructive.

It shows what results have been produced by the ‘great experiments’

which have been tried; either how much reform they have effected; or how

many misdemeanants they are likely to add to the already over-populated

dangerous class. For the sake of impartiality we shall in each instance

offer no description of our own; but we intend to cite what has already

been in print.

A graphic but eccentric pen has supplied a vivid description of the

palace order of gaols. “Some months ago,” says Mr. Carlyle, in a recent

pamphlet, “some friends took me with them to see one of the London

Prisons; a Prison of the exemplary or model kind. An immense circuit of

buildings; cut out, girt with a high ring wall, from the lanes and

streets of the quarter, which is a dim and crowded one. Gateway as to a

fortified place; then a spacious court, like the square of a city; broad

staircases, passages to interior courts; fronts of stately architecture

all round. It lodges some Thousand or Twelve-hundred prisoners, besides

the officers of the establishment. Surely one of the most perfect

buildings, within the compass of London. We looked at the apartments,

sleeping-cells, dining-rooms, working-rooms, general courts or special

and private; excellent all, the ne-plus-ultra of human care and

ingenuity; in my life I never saw so clean a building; probably no Duke

in England lives in a mansion of such perfect and thorough cleanness.

The bread, the cocoa, soup, meat, all the various sorts of food, in

their respective cooking-places, we tasted; found them of excellence

superlative. The prisoners sat at work, light work, picking oakum and

the like, in airy apartments with glass roofs, of agreeable temperature

and perfect ventilation; silent, or at least conversing only by secret

signs; others were out, taking their hour of promenade in clean flagged

courts; methodic composure, cleanliness, peace, substantial wholesome

comfort, reigned everywhere supreme.”

This is the great model experiment. We can easily reverse the picture.

It is but a short walk from Pentonville to Smithfield—scarcely two

miles—yet, in the prison world, the two places are antipodes. Here,

within the hallowed precincts of the City, stands Giltspur Street

Compter, upon the state of which we produce another witness. Mr. Dixon,

in his work on London Prisons, testifies that in this jail the prisoners

“sleep in small cells, little more than half the size of the model cell

at Pentonville, which is calculated (on the supposition that the cell is

to be ventilated on the best plan which science can suggest, regardless

of cost) to be just large enough for _one_ inmate. The cell in Giltspur

Street Compter is little more than half the size, and is either not

ventilated at all, or is ventilated very imperfectly. I have measured

it, and know exactly the quantity of air which it will hold, and have no

doubt but that it contains less than any human being ought to breathe

in, in the course of a night. Well, in this cell, in which there is

hardly room for them to lie down, I have seen _five_ persons locked up,

at four o’clock in the day, to be there confined, in darkness, in

idleness, to pass all those hours, to do all the offices of nature, not

merely in each other’s presence, but crushed by the narrowness of their

den into a state of filthy contact which brute beasts would have

resisted to the last gasp of life! Think of these five wretched

beings—men with souls, and gifted with human reason—condemned, day by

day, to pass in this unutterably loathsome manner two-thirds of their

time! Can we wonder if these men come out of prison, after three or four

months of such treatment, prepared to commit the most revolting crimes?

Could five of the purest men in the world live together in such a manner

without losing every attribute of good which had once belonged to them?

He would be a rash man who would dare to answer—‘Yes.’ Take another fact

from Newgate. In any of the female wards may be seen, a week before the

Sessions, a collection of persons of every shade of guilt, and some who

are innocent. I remember one case particularly. A servant girl, of about

sixteen, a fresh-looking healthy creature, recently up from the country,

was charged by her mistress for stealing a brooch. She was in the same

room—lived all day, slept all night—with the most abandoned of her sex.

They were left alone; they had no work to do; no books—except a few

tracts for which they had no taste—to read. The whole day was spent, as

is usual in such prisons, in telling stories—the gross and guilty

stories of their own lives. There is no form of wickedness, no aspect of

vice, with which the poor creature’s mind would not be compelled to grow

familiar in the few weeks she passed in Newgate awaiting trial. When the

day came, the evidence against her was found to be the lamest in the

world, and she was at once acquitted. That she entered Newgate innocent

I have no doubt; but who shall answer for the state in which she left

it?”

Let us not wrong the City in supposing it singular in promoting these

loathsome prison scenes. A hundred passages, in nearly as many blue

books, are ready for quotation, to show how some of the ‘great

experiments’ in not a few of the National prisons have turned out. One,

however, will do. Here is a sentence or two from the Government’s own

report of the state of one of its own hulks at Woolwich—the same

Government which has been so good as to dispense upwards of 90,000_l._

of the public money in building the Pentonville Model. We cannot quote

it entire, by reason of some of the passages being too revolting for

reproduction in these pages:—

“In the hospital ship, the “Unité,” the great majority of the patients

were infested with vermin, and their persons in many instances,

particularly their feet, begrimed with dirt. No regular supply of body

linen had been issued; so much so, that many men had been five weeks

without a change; and all record had been lost of the time when the

blankets had been washed; and the number of sheets was so insufficient,

that the expedient had to be resorted to of only a single sheet at a

time to save appearances. Neither towels nor combs were provided for the

prisoners’ use. * * * On the admission of new cases into the hospital,

patients were directed to leave their beds and go into hammocks, and the

new cases were turned into the vacated beds, without changing the

sheets.”

Is anything more shocking than the Compter, Newgate, and the Unité to be

conceived? Do travellers tell us of anything worse in Russia, or China,

or Old Tartary? “O! yes; there is Austria and its life-punishments in

Spielberg,” some one may suggest, “surely there is no London parallel

for that.” But Mr. Dixon answers there is:—in the Millbank Penitentiary.

‘The dark cells,’ he says, ‘are fearful places, and sometimes melancholy

mistakes are made in committing persons to them. You descend about

twenty steps from the ground-floor into a very dark passage leading into

a corridor, on one side of which the cells—small, dark, ill-ventilated,

and doubly barred—are ranged. No glimpse of day ever comes into this

fearful place. The offender is locked up for three days, and fed on

bread and water only. There is only a board to sleep on; and the only

furniture of the cell is a water-closet. On a former visit to Millbank,

some months ago, I was told there was a person in one of these cells.

“He is touched, poor fellow!” said the warden, “in his intellects.” But

his madness was very mild. He wished to fraternise with the other

prisoners; declared that all mankind are brethren; sang hymns when told

to be silent; and when reprimanded for taking these unwarranted

liberties, declared that he was the “governor.” They said he _pretended_

to be mad; which, seeing that his vagaries subjected him to continual

punishments, and procured him no advantages, was very likely! They put

him into darkness to enlighten his understanding; and alone, to teach

him how unbrotherly men are. Poor wretch! He was frightened with his

solitude, and howled fearfully. I shall never forget his wail as we

passed the door of his horrid dungeon. The tones were quite unearthly,

and caused an involuntary shudder. On hearing footsteps, he evidently

thought they were coming to release him. While we remained in the

corridor, he did not cease to shout and implore most lamentably for

freedom: when he heard us retreating, his voice rose into a yell; and

when the fall of the heavy bolts told him that we were gone, he gave a

shriek of horror, agony, and despair, which ran through the pentagon,

and can never be forgotten. God grant that I may never hear such sounds

again! On coming again, after three or four months’ absence, to this

part of the prison, the inquiry naturally arose, “What has become of the

man who _pretended_ to be mad?” The answer was, “Oh, he went mad, and

was sent to Bedlam!”’

What happens at Pentonville, and what takes place at Millbank, is done

under the same eye, under the same legislative supervision. The two

“great experiments” of iron and feather-bed prison reform are worked out

by the same power. The despots of Russia, Austria, and China, are at

least consistent. They have not carried on opposite systems—one of

extreme severity, and another of superlative ‘coddling.’ In no other

country but this does Justice—blind as she is—administer cocoa and

condign misery to the same degree of crime with the same hand.

We have thrown these facts together, merely to awaken attention to them.

We purposely abstain from suggestive comment. We know that the subject

of reformatory punishment is fraught with difficulties, to conquer which

all the “great experiments” have been tried. But they have only been

“great” because of their great expense and their great failure; and when

the failure is incontestable—proved beyond doubt by the direst

results,—should they not be abandoned, and something else tried, instead

of being made an absolute matter of faith, and a test to which certain

county magistrates, whom we could name, bring every man who is unhappy

enough to be within their power? The cause of it is plainly and

constantly presented at the bar of every Police Court and in the dock of

every Sessions House. It has resulted from an utter misapprehension of

means to end, and a lofty disregard of the good old adage, “prevention

is better than cure.” Although it has been daily observed that

ignorance—moral more than intellectual—ignorance has been the forerunner

of all juvenile crime, we have never tried any very great experiment

upon _that_. On the contrary, we spend hundreds of thousands every year

to effect the manifest impossibility of re-forming what has never been

formed. We have tried every shade of system but the right. Ingenuity has

been on the rack to invent every sort of reformatory, from the iron rule

of Millbank, to the affectionate fattening at Pentonville—except one,

and that happens to be the right one. Punishment has occupied all our

thoughts,—training, none. We condemn young criminals for not knowing

certain moralities which we have not taught them, and—by herding them

with accomplished professors of dishonesty in transit jails—punish them

for immoralities which have been there taught them. Instances of this

can be adduced in so large a proportion as to amount to a rule; to which

the appearance of instructed juvenile criminals at the tribunals is the

exception. Two or three glaring cases occurred only the past month. We

select one as reported in the “Globe” newspaper of Tuesday, May 7:—

‘BOW-STREET POLICE-COURT.—This day, two little children, whose heads

hardly reached the top of the dock, were placed at the bar before Mr.

Jardine, charged with stealing a loaf. Their very appearance told the

want they were in. The housekeeper to Mr. Mims, baker, Drury Lane,

deposed, that they, about eight o’clock last evening, went into the

shop and asked for a quartern loaf, and while her back was turned to

get it for them, they stole a half quartern loaf, value 2½_d._, which

was lying on the counter, and made off with it. Police constable, F

14, deposed, that he was on duty in Drury Lane, and seeing them

quarrelling over the loaf, he asked them where they had got it. One of

them answered, they had stolen it. After ascertaining how they came by

it, he took them into custody. In defence, the prisoners said they

were starving. Mr. Jardine sentenced them both to be once whipped in

the House of Correction.’

These children were without means, friends, or any sort of instruction.

They were whipped then for their ignorance and want, for both which they

are not responsible. After whipping and a few imprisonments they will

doubtless be boarded and instructed by fellow prisoners into finished

thieves. The authorities tell us, that five-eighths of the juvenile

criminals—and a few become professional after the age of twenty—who are

received into jails, have not received one spark of moral or

intellectual training!

These, and a thousand other facts too obvious for the common sense of

our readers to be troubled with, induce us to recommend one other ‘great

experiment’ which has never yet been tried. It has the advantage of

being a preventive as well as a cure—it is—compared with all the penal

systems now in practice—immeasurably safer, more humane, and

incalculably cheaper. The ‘great experiment’ we propose, is NATIONAL

EDUCATION.

THE ORPHAN’S VOYAGE HOME.

The men could hardly keep the deck,

So bitter was the night;

Keen north-east winds sang thro’ the shrouds,

The deck was frosty white;

While overhead the glistening stars

Put forth their points of light.

On deck, behind a bale of goods,

Two orphans crouch’d, to sleep;

But ’twas so cold, the youngest boy

In vain tried not to weep:

They were so poor, they had no right

Near cabin doors to creep.

The elder round the younger wrapt

His little ragged cloak,

To shield him from the freezing sleet,

And surf that o’er them broke;

Then drew him closer to his side,

And softly to him spoke:—

“The night will not be long”—he said,

“And if the cold winds blow,

We shall the sooner reach our home,

And see the peat-fire glow;

But now the stars are beautiful—

Oh, do not tremble so!

“Come closer!—sleep—forget the frost—

Think of the morning red—

Our father and our mother soon

Will take us to their bed;

And in their warm arms we shall sleep.”

He knew not they were dead.

For them no father to the ship

Shall with the morning come;

For them no mother’s loving arms

Are spread to take them home:

Meanwhile the cabin passengers

In dreams of pleasure roam.

At length the orphans sank to sleep

All on the freezing deck;

Close huddled side to side—each arm

Clasp’d round the other’s neck.

With heads bent down, they dream’d the earth

Was fading to a speck.

The steerage passengers have all

Been taken down below,

And round the stove they warm their limbs

Into a drowsy glow;

And soon within their berths forget

The icy wind and snow.

Now morning dawns: the land in sight,

Smiles beam on every face!

The pale and qualmy passengers

Begin the deck to pace,

Seeking along the sun-lit cliffs

Some well-known spot to trace.

Only the orphans do not stir,

Of all this bustling train:

They reach’d their _home_ this starry night!

They will not stir again!

The winter’s breath proved kind to them,

And ended all their pain.

But in their deep and freezing sleep

Clasp’d rigid to each other,

In dreams they cried, “The bright morn breaks,

Home! home! is here, my brother!

The Angel Death has been our friend—

We come! dear Father! Mother!”

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

TEA.

The history of tea, from its first introduction to England, may be read

in the history of taxation. It appears to have escaped the notice of

nearly all writers on tea, that the first tax is a curious illustration

of the original mode of its sale. By the act of the 22d and 23d Charles

II., 1670–1, a duty of eighteenpence was imposed upon ‘every _gallon_ of

chocolate, sherbet, and tea, made and sold, to be paid by the makers

thereof.’ It is manifest that such a tax was impossible to be collected

without constant evasion; and so, after having remained on the Statute

Book for seventeen years, it was discovered, in 1688, that ‘the

collecting of the duty by way of Excise upon the liquors of coffee,

chocolate, and tea, is not only very troublesome and unequal upon the

retailers of these liquors, but requireth such attendance of officers as

makes the neat receipt very inconsiderable.’ The excise upon the liquor

was therefore repealed, and heavy Customs’ duties imposed on the

imported tea.

The annals of tea may be divided into epochs. The first is that in which

the liquid only was taxed, which tax commenced about ten years after we

have any distinct record of the public or private use of tea. In 1660,

dear old Pepys writes, ‘I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink) of

which I never had drank before.’ In 1667, the herb had found its way

into his own house: ‘Home, and there find my wife making of tea; a drink

which Mr. Pelling, the Potticary, tells her is good for her cold and

defluxions.’

Mrs. Pepys making her first cup of tea is a subject to be painted. How

carefully she metes out the grains of the precious drug, which Mr.

Pelling, the Potticary, has sold her at a most enormous price—a crown an

ounce at the very least. She has tasted the liquor once before: but then

there was sugar in the infusion—a beverage only for the highest. If tea

should become fashionable, it will cost in housekeeping as much as their

claret. However, Pepys says, the price is coming down; and he produces

the handbill of Thomas Garway, in Exchange Alley, which the lady peruses

with great satisfaction; for the worthy merchant says, that although

‘tea in England hath been sold in the leaf for six pounds, and sometimes

for ten pounds the pound weight,’ he ‘by continued care and industry in

obtaining the best tea,’ now ‘sells tea for 16_s._ to 50_s._ a pound.’

Garway not only sells tea in the leaf, but ‘many noblemen, physicians,

merchants, &c., daily resort to his house to drink the drink thereof.’

The coffee-houses soon ran away with the tea-merchant’s liquid

customers. They sprang up all over London; they became a fashion at the

Universities. Coffee and tea came into England as twin-brothers. Like

many other foreigners, they received a full share of abuse and

persecution from the people and the state. Coffee was denounced as ‘hell

broth,’ and tea as ‘poison.’ But the coffee-houses became fashionable at

once; and for a century were the exclusive resorts of wits and

politicians. ‘Here,’ says a pamphleteer of 1673, ‘haberdashers of

political small wares meet, and mutually abuse each other and the

public, with bottomless stories and headless notions.’ Clarendon, in

1666, proposed, either to suppress them, or to employ spies to note down

the conversation. In 1670 the liquids sold at the coffee-houses were to

be taxed. We can scarcely imagine a state of society in which the excise

officer was superintending the preparation of a gallon of tea, and

charging his eightpence. The exciseman and the spy were probably united

in the same person. During this period we may be quite certain that tea

was unknown, as a general article of diet, in the private houses even of

the wealthiest. But it was not taxation which then kept it out of use.

The drinkers of tea were ridiculed by the wits, and frightened by the

physicians. More than all, a new habit had to be acquired. The praise of

Boyle was nothing against the ancient influences of ale and claret. It

was then a help to excess instead of a preventive. A writer in 1682

says,—‘I know some that celebrate good Thee for preventing drunkenness,

taking it before they go to the tavern, and use it very much also after

a debauch.’ One of the first attractions of ‘the cup which cheers but

not inebriates’ was as a minister of evil.

The second epoch of tea was that of excessive taxation; which lasted

from the five shillings Customs’ duty of 1688 to 1745, more than half a

century, in which fiscal folly and prohibition were almost convertible

terms. Yet tea gradually forced its way into domestic use. In a Tatler

of 1710 we read ‘I am credibly informed, by an antiquary who has

searched the registers in which the bills of fare of the court are

recorded, that instead of tea and bread and butter, which have prevailed

of late years, the maids of honour in Queen Elizabeth’s time were

allowed three rumps of beef for their breakfast.’ Tea for breakfast must

have been expensive in 1710. In the original edition of the Tatler, we

have many advertisements about tea, one of which we copy:—

_From the Tatler of October 10, 1710._

“Mr. Fary’s 16_s._ Bohee Tea, not much inferior in goodness to the

best Foreign Bohee Tea, is sold by himself only at the Bell in

Gracechurch Street. Note,—the best Foreign Bohee is worth 30_s._ a

pound; so that what is sold at 20_s._ or 21_s._ must either be faulty

Tea, or mixed with a proportionate quantity of damaged Green or Bohee,

the worst of which will remain black after infusion.”

‘Mr. Fary’s 16_s._ Bohee Tea, not much inferior in goodness to the best

Foreign Bohee Tea’ was, upon the face of it, an indigenous manufacture.

‘The best Foreign Bohee is worth 30_s._ a pound.’ With such Queen Anne

refreshed herself at Hampton Court:

‘Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.’

When the best tea was at 30_s._ a pound, the home consumption of tea was

about a hundred and forty thousand pounds per annum. A quarter of a

century later, in the early tea-drinking days of Dr. Johnson, the

consumption had quadrupled. And yet tea was then so dear, that Garrick

was cross even with his favourite actress for using it too freely. ‘I

remember,’ says Johnson, ‘drinking tea with him long ago, when Peg

Woffington made it, and he grumbled at her for making it too strong. He

had then begun to feel money in his purse, and did not know when he

should have enough of it.’ In 1745, the last year of the second tea

epoch, the consumption was only seven hundred and thirty thousand pounds

per annum. Yet even at this period tea was forcing itself into common

use. Duncan Forbes, in his Correspondence, which ranges from 1715 to

1748, is bitter against ‘the excessive use of tea; which is now become

so common, that the meanest families, even of labouring people,

particularly in boroughs, make their morning’s meal of it, and thereby

wholly disuse the ale, which heretofore was their accustomed drink; and

the same drug supplies all the labouring women with their afternoon’s

entertainments, to the exclusion of the twopenny.’ The excellent

President of the Court of Session had his prejudices; and he was

frightened at the notion that tea was driving out beer; and thus,

diminishing the use of malt, was to be the ruin of agriculture. Some one

gave the Government of the day wiser counsel than that of prohibitory

duties, which he desired.

In 1745, the quantity of tea retained for home consumption was 730,729

lbs. In 1746, it amounted to 2,358,589 lbs. The consumption was trebled.

The duty had been reduced, in 1745, from 4_s._ per lb. to 1_s._ per lb.,

and 25 per cent. on the gross price. For forty years afterwards, the

Legislature contrived to keep the consumption pretty equal with the

increase of the population, putting on a little more duty when the

demand seemed a little increasing. These were the palmy days of Dr.

Johnson’s tea triumphs—the days in which he describes himself as ‘a

hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has for many years diluted his

meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has

scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evenings; with tea

solaces the midnights; and with tea welcomes the morning.’ This was the

third epoch—that of considerable taxation, enhancing the monopoly price

of an article, sold to the people at exorbitant profits.

In 1785, the Government boldly repealed the Excise duty; and imposed

only a Customs’ duty of 12½ per cent. The consumption of tea was doubled

in the first year after the change, and quadrupled in the third. The

system was too good to last. The concession of three years in which the

public might freely use an article of comfort was quite enough for

official liberality and wisdom. New duties were imposed in 1787; the

consumption was again driven back, and by additional duty upon duty, was

kept far behind the increase of the population for another thirty years.

In 1784, the annual consumption was only 4,948,983 lbs.; in 1787, with a

reduced duty, it was 17,047,054 lbs.; in 1807, when we had almost

reached the climax of high duties, it was only 19,239,212 lbs. This

state of things, with very slight alteration, continued till the peace.

The consumption had been nearly stationary for thirty years, with a duty

raised from 12½ per cent. to 96 per cent. Those were the days, which

some of us may remember, when we paid 12_s._ a pound for our green tea,

and 8_s._ for our black; the days when convictions for the sale of

spurious tea were of constant occurrence; and yet the days when Cobbett

was alarmed lest tea should become a common beverage, and calculated

that between eleven and twelve pounds a year were consumed by a

cottager’s family in tea-drinking. During this fourth epoch of excessive

taxation, the habit of tea-drinking had become so rooted in the people,

that no efforts of the Government could destroy it. The teas under 2_s._

6_d._ a pound (the Company’s warehouse prices without duty), were the

teas of the working classes—the teas of the cottage and the kitchen. In

1801, such teas paid only an excise of 15 per cent.; in 1803, they paid

60 per cent.; in 1806, 90 per cent. And yet the washerwoman looked to

her afternoon ‘dish of tea,’ as something that might make her

comfortable after her twelve hours’ labour; and balancing her saucer on

a tripod of three fingers, breathed a joy beyond utterance as she cooled

the draught. The factory workman then looked forward to the singing of

the kettle, as some compensation for the din of the spindle. Tea had

found its way even to the hearth of the agricultural labourer. He ‘had

lost his rye teeth’—to use his own expression for his preference of

wheaten bread—and he would have his ounce of tea as well as the best of

his neighbours. Sad stuff the chandler’s shop furnished him: no

commodity brought hundreds of miles from the interior of China, chiefly

by human labour; shipped according to the most expensive arrangements;

sold under a limited competition at the dearest rate; and taxed as

highly as its wholesale cost. The small tea-dealers had their

manufactured tea. But they had also their smuggled tea. The pound of tea

which sold for eight shillings in England, was selling at Hamburg for

fourteenpence. It was hard indeed if the artisan did not occasionally

obtain a cup of good tea at a somewhat lower price than the King and

John Company had willed. No dealer could send out six pounds of tea

without a permit. Excisemen were issuing permits and examining permits

all over the kingdom. But six hundred per cent. profit was too much for

the weakness of human nature and the power of the exciseman.

From the peace, to the opening of the China tea-trade in 1833, and the

repeal of the excise duty in 1834, there was a considerable increase in

the consumption of tea, but not an increase at all comparable to the

increase since 1834. We consumed ten million pounds more tea in 1833

than in 1816, a period of sixteen years; we consumed in 1848, a period

of fifteen years, seventeen million pounds more than in 1833. In 1848 we

retained for home consumption, 48,735,791 pounds. It is this present

period of large consumption which forms the fifth epoch.

The present duty on tea is 2_s._ 2¼_d._ a pound. The experienced

housewife knows where to buy excellent tea at 4_s._ a pound. But there

are shops in London where tea may be bought at 3_s._, and 3_s._ 4_d._ a

pound. Such low priced teas are used more freely than ever by the

hard-working poor. The duty is now unvarying, but enormously high. It is

unnecessary to assume that the cheap teas are now adulterated teas. In

the London Price Currents of the present May, there are several sorts of

tea as low as 8_d._ per pound, wholesale without duty. The finer teas

vary from 1_s._ to 2_s._ In 1833, previous to the opening of the China

trade, the price of Congou tea in the Company’s warehouses ranged from

2_s._ to 3_s._ per pound; in 1850 the lowest current price was 9_d._,

the highest 1_s._ 4_d._ In 1833, the Company’s price of Hyson tea varied

from 3_s._ to 5_s._ 6_d._; in 1850, the lowest current price was 1_s._

2_d._, the highest 3_s._ 4_d._

With the amount of duty on tea twice as high in 1850 as in 1833, how is

it that tea may be universally bought at one half of the price of 1833?

How is it that an article which yields five millions of revenue has

become so cheap that it is now scarcely a luxury? Before we answer this,

let us explain why we say that the duty is twice as high now as in 1833.

Before the opening of the China trade tea was taxed under the Excise at

an ad-valorem duty of ninety-six per cent. on one sort, and one hundred

per cent. on another, which gave an average of about half-a-crown a

pound. Those who resisted the destruction of the Company’s monopoly

predicted that the supply would fall off under the open trade; that the

Chinese would not deal with private merchants; that the market for tea

in China was a limited one; that tea would become scarcer and dearer.

The Government knew better than this. It repealed the Excise duty with

all its cumbrous machinery of permits; and it imposed a Customs’ duty

_at per pound_, which exists now, as it did in 1836, with the addition

of five per cent. Had the duty of 1833 been continued,—the hundred per

cent duty—the great bulk of tea, which is sold at an average of a

shilling a pound would have been only taxed a shilling a pound; it is

now taxed 2_s._ 2¼_d._ By a side-wind, the Government, with what some

persons may call financial foresight, doubled the tax upon the humbler

consumers. But it may be fairly questioned whether, if the tax of 1833

had continued, the Government would not have secured as much revenue by

the poor doubling their consumption of tea. The demand for no article of

general use is so fluctuating as that for tea. In seasons of prosperity,

the consumption rises several millions of pounds above the average; in

times of depression it falls as much below. Tea is the barometer of the

poor man’s command of something more than bread. With a tax of 2_s._

2¼_d._ a pound, it is clear that if sound commercial principles,

improved navigation, wholesale competition, and moderate retail profits,

had not found their way into the tea-trade, since the abolition of the

monopoly in 1833, the revenue upon tea would have been stationary,

instead of having increased a million and a half. All the manifold

causes that produce commercial cheapness in general—science, careful

employment of capital in profitable exchange, certainty and rapidity of

communication, extension of the market—have been especially working to

make tea cheap. Tea is more and more becoming a necessary of life to all

classes. Tea was denounced first as a poison, and then as an

extravagance. Cobbett was furious against it. An Edinburgh Reviewer of

1823, keeps no terms with its use by the poor: ‘We venture to assert,

that when a labourer fancies himself refreshed with a mess of this

stuff, sweetened by the coarsest black sugar, and with azure blue milk,

it is only the warmth of the water that soothes him for the moment;

unless, perhaps, the sweetness may be palatable also.’ It is dangerous

even for great reviewers to ‘venture to assert.’ In a few years after

comes Liebig, with his chemical discoveries; and demonstrates that

coffee and tea have become necessaries of life to whole nations, by the

presence of one and the same substance in both vegetables, which has a

peculiar effect upon the animal system; that they were both originally

met with amongst nations whose diet is chiefly vegetable; and, by

contributing to the formation of bile, their peculiar function, have

become a substitute for animal food to a large class of the population

whose consumption of meat is very limited, and to another large class

who are unable to take regular exercise.

Tea and coffee, then, are more especially essential to the poor. They

supply a void which the pinched labourer cannot so readily fill up with

weak and sour ale; they are substitutes for the country walk to the

factory girl, or the seamstress in a garret. They are ministers to

temperance; they are home comforts. Mrs. Piozzi making tea for Dr.

Johnson till four o’clock in the morning, and listening contentedly to

his wondrous talk, is a pleasant anecdote of the first century of tea;

the artisan’s wife, lingering over the last evening cup, while her

husband reads his newspaper or his book, is something higher, which

belongs to our own times.

THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER VI.

The new clergyman was, as the landlord had supposed he would be, a very

different person from Mr. Finch. If he had not been a fearless man, he

would not have come: much less would he have brought his wife, which he

did. The first sight of this respectable couple, middle-aged, business

like, and somewhat dry in their manner, tended to give sobriety to the

tone of mind of the Bleaburn people; a sobriety which was more and more

wanted from day to day; while certainly the aspect of Bleaburn was

enough to discourage the new residents, let their expectations have been

as dismal as they might.

Mr. and Mrs. Kirby arrived when Bleaburn was at its lowest point of

depression and woe. The churchyard was now so full that it could not be

made to hold more; and ten or eleven corpses were actually lying

unburied, infecting half-a-dozen cottages from this cause. There was an

actual want of food in the place—so few were able to earn wages. Farmer

Neale did all he could to tempt his neighbours to work for him; for no

strangers would come near a place which was regarded as a pesthouse; but

the strongest arm had lost its strength; and the men, even those who had

not had the fever, said they felt as if they could never work again. The

women went on, as habitual knitters do, knitting early and late, almost

night and day; but there was no sale. Even if their wares were avouched

to have been passed through soap and water before they were brought to

O——, still no one would run the slightest risk for the sake of hose and

comforters; and week after week, word was sent that nothing was sold:

and at last, that it would be better not to send any more knitted goods.

In the midst of all this distress, there was no one to speak to the

people; no one to keep their minds clear and their hearts steady. For

many weeks, there had not been a prayer publicly read, nor a psalm sung.

Meanwhile, the great comet appeared nightly, week after week. It seemed

as if it would never go away; and there was a general persuasion that

the comet was sent for a sign to Bleaburn alone, and not at all for the

rest of the earth, or of the universe; and that the fever would not be

stayed while the sign remained in the sky. It would have been well if

this had been the worst. The people, always rude, were now growing

desperate; and they found, as desperate people usually do, an object

near at hand to vent their fury upon. They said that it was the doctor’s

business to make them well: that he had not made them well: that so many

had died, that anybody might see how foul means had been used; and that

at last some of the doctor’s tricks had come out. Two of Dick Taylor’s

children had been all but choked, by some of the doctor’s physic; and

they might have died, if the Good Lady had not chanced to have been

there at the moment, and known what to do. And the doctor tried to get

off with saying that it was a mistake, and that that physic was never

made to go down anybody’s throat. They said, too, that it was only in

this doctor’s time that there had been such a fever. There was none such

in the late doctor’s time; nor now, in other places—at least, not so

bad. It was nothing like so bad at O——. The doctor had spoken lightly of

the comet: he had made old Nan Dart burn the bedding that her

grandmother left her—the same that so many of her family had died on:

and, though he gave her new bedding, it could never be the same to her

as the old. But there was no use talking. The doctor was there to make

them well; and instead of doing that, he made two out of three die, of

those that had the fever. Such grumblings broke out into storm; and when

Mr. and Mrs. Kirby descended into the hollow which their friends feared

would be their tomb, they found the whole remaining population of the

place blocking up the street before the doctor’s house, and smashing his

phials, and making a pile of his pill-boxes and little drawers, as they

were handed out of his surgery window. A woman had brought a candle at

the moment to fire the pill-boxes: and she kneeled down to apply the

flame. The people had already broken bottles enough to spill a good deal

of queer stuff; and some of this stuff was so queer as to blaze up, half

as high as the houses, as quick as thought. The flame ran along the

ground, and spread like magic. The people fled, supposing this the

doings of the comet and the doctor together. Off they went, up and down,

and into the houses whose doors were open. But the woman’s clothes were

on fire. She would have run too; but Mr. Kirby caught her arm, and his

firm grasp made her stand, while Mrs. Kirby wrapped her camlet cloak

about the part that was on fire. It was so quickly done—in such a moment

of time, that the poor creature was not much burned; not at all

dangerously; and the new pastor was at once informed of the character of

the charge he had undertaken.

That very evening Warrender was sent through the village, as crier, to

give a notice, to which every ear was open. Mr. Kirby having had medical

assurance that it was injurious to the public health that more funerals

should take place in the churchyard, and that the bodies should lie

unburied, would next day, bury the dead above the brow, on a part of

Furzy Knoll, selected for the purpose. For anything unusual about this

proceeding, Mr. Kirby would be answerable, considering the present state

of the village of Bleaburn. A waggon would pass through the village at

six o’clock the next morning; and all who had a coffin in their houses

were requested to bring it out, for solemn conveyance to the new burial

ground: and those who wished to attend the interment must be on the

ground at eight o’clock.

All ears were open again the next morning, when the cart made its slow

progress down the street; and some went out to see. It was starlight:

and from the east came enough of dawn to show how the vehicle looked

with the pall thrown over it. Now and then, as it passed a space between

the houses, a puff of wind blew aside the edge of the pall, and then the

coffins were seen within, ranged one upon another,—quite a load of them.

It stopped for a minute at the bottom of the street; and it was a relief

to the listeners to hear Warrender tell the driver that there were no

more, and that he might proceed up to the brow. After watching the

progress of the cart till it could no longer be distinguished from the

wall of grey rock along which it was ascending, those who could be

spared from tending the sick put on such black as they could muster, to

go to the service.

It was, happily, a fine morning;—as fine a November morning as could be

seen. It is not often that weather is of so much consequence as it was

to the people of Bleaburn to-day. They could not themselves have told

how it was that they came down from the awful service at Furzy Knoll so

much more light-hearted than they went up; and when some of them were

asked the reason, by those who remained below, they could not explain

it,—but, somehow, everything looked brighter. It was, in fact, not

merely the calm sunshine on the hills, and the quiet shadows in the

hollows; it was not merely the ruddy tinge of the autumn ferns on the

slopes, or the lively hop and flit of the wag-tail about the

spring-heads and the stones in the pool; it was not merely that the fine

morning yielded cheering influences like these, but that it enabled

many, who would have been kept below by rain, to hear what their new

pastor had to say. After going through the burial service very quietly,

and waiting with a cheerful countenance while the business of lowering

so many coffins by so few hands was effected, he addressed, in a plain

and conversational style, those who were present. He told them that he

had never before witnessed an interment like this; and he did not at all

suppose that either he or they should see such another. Indeed,

henceforth any funerals must take place without delay; as they very well

might, now that, on this beautiful spot, there was room without limit.

He told them how Farmer Neale had had the space they saw staked out

since yesterday, and how it would be fenced in—roughly, perhaps, but

securely—before night. He hoped and believed the worst of the sickness

was over. The cold weather was coming on; and, perhaps, he said with a

smile, it might be a comfort to some of them to know that the comet was

going away. He could not say for himself that he should not be sorry

when it disappeared; for he thought it a very beautiful sight, and one

which reminded every eye that saw it how ‘the heavens declare the glory

of God;’ and the wisest men were all agreed that it was a sign,—not of

any mischief, but of the beauty of God’s handiwork in the firmament, as

the Scriptures call the starry sky. The fact was, it was found that

comets come round regularly, like some of the other stars and our own

moon; and when a comet had once been seen, people of a future time would

know when to look for it again, and would be too wise to be afraid of

it. But he had better tell them about such things at another time, when

perhaps they would let their children come up to his house, and look

through a telescope,—a glass that magnified things so much, that when

they saw the stars, they would hardly believe they were the same stars

that they saw every clear night. Perhaps they might then think the

commonest star as wonderful as any comet. Another reason why they might

hope for better health was, that people at a distance now knew more of

the distress of Bleaburn than they had done; and he could assure his

neighbours, that supplies of nourishing food and wholesome clothing

would be lodged with the cordon till the people of the place could once

more earn their own living. Another reason why they might hope for

better health was, that they were learning by experience what was good

for health and what was bad. This was a very serious and important

subject, on which he would speak to them again and again, on Sundays and

at all times, till he had shown them what he thought about their having,

he might almost say, their lives and health in their own hands. He was

sure that God had ordered it so; and he expected to be able to prove to

them, by and by, that there need be no fever in Bleaburn if they chose

to prevent it. And now, about these Sundays and week days. He deeply

pitied them that they had been cut off from worship during their time of

distress. He thought there might be an end to that now. He would not

advise their assembling in the church. There were the same reasons

against it that there were two months ago; but there was no place on

earth where men might not worship God, if they wished it. If it were now

the middle of summer, he should say that the spot they were standing

on,—even yet so fresh and so sunny,—was the best they could have; but

soon the winter winds would blow, and the cold rains would come driving

over the hills. This would not do: but there was a warm nook in the

hollow,—the crag behind the mill,—where there was shelter from the east

and north, and the warmest sunshine ever felt in the hollow,—too hot in

summer, but very pleasant now. There he proposed to read prayers three

times a week, at an hour which should be arranged according to the

convenience of the greatest number; and there he would perform service

and preach a sermon on Sundays, when the weather permitted. He should

have been inclined to ask Farmer Neale for one of his barns, or to

propose to meet even in his kitchen; but he found his neighbours still

feared that meeting anywhere but in the open air would spread the fever.

He did not himself believe that one person gave the fever to another;

but as long as his neighbours thought so, he would not ask them to do

what might make them afraid. Then there was a settling what hours should

be appointed for worship at the crag; and the mourners came trooping

down into the hollow, with brightened eyes, and freshened faces, and

altogether much less like mourners than when they went up.

Before night, Mr. Kirby had visited every sick person in the place, in

company with the doctor. The poor doctor would hardly have ventured to

go his round without the assistance of some novelty that might divert

the attention of the people from his atrocities. Mr. Kirby did not

attempt to get rid of the subject. He told the discontented, to their

faces, that the doctor knew his business better than they did; and bade

them remember that it was not the doctor but themselves that had set

fire to spirits of wine, or something of that sort, in the middle of the

street, whereby a woman was in imminent danger of being burnt to death;

and that their outrage on the good fame and property of a gentleman who

had worn himself half dead with fatigue and anxiety on their account

might yet cost them very dear, if it were not understood that they were

so oppressed with sorrow and want that they did not know what they were

about. His consultations with the doctor from house to house, and his

evident deference to him in regard to matters of health and sickness,

wrought a great change in a few hours; and the effect was prodigiously

increased when Mrs. Kirby, herself a surgeon’s daughter, and no stranger

in a surgery, offered her daily assistance in making up the medicines,

and administering such as might be misused by those who could not read

the labels.

“That is what the Good Lady does, when she can get out at the right

time,” observed some one; “but now poor Jem is down, and his mother

hardly up again yet, it is not every day, as she says, that she can go

so far out of call.”

“Who is this Good Lady?” inquired Mr. Kirby. “I have been hardly

twenty-four hours in this place, and I seem to have heard her name fifty

times; and yet nobody seems able to say who she is.”

“She almost overpowers their faculties, I believe,” replied the doctor;

“and, indeed, it is not very easy to look upon her as upon any other

young lady. It comes easier to one’s tongue to call her an angel than to

introduce her as Miss Mary Pickard, from America.”

When he had told what he knew of her, the Kirbys said, in the same

breath,

“Let us go and see her.” And the doctor showed them the way to Widow

Johnson’s, where poor Jem was languishing, in that state which is so

affecting to witness, when he who has no intellect seems to have more

power of patience than he who has most. The visitors arrived at a

critical moment, however, when poor Jem’s distress was very great, and

his mother’s hardly less. There lay the Good Lady on the ground, doubled

up in a strange sort of way; Mrs. Johnson trying to go to her, but

unable; and Jem, on his bed in the closet within, crying because

something was clearly the matter.

“What’s to do now?” exclaimed the doctor.

Mary laughed as she answered, “O nothing, but that I can’t get up. I

don’t know how I fell, and I can’t get up. But it is mere fatigue—want

of sleep. Do convince Aunty that I have not got the fever.”

“Let’s see,” said the doctor. Then, after a short study of his new

patient, he assured Mrs. Johnson that he saw no signs of fever about her

niece. She had had enough of nursing for the present, and now she must

have rest.

“That is just it,” said Mary. “If somebody will put something under me

here, and just let me sleep for a few days, I shall do very well.”

“Not there, Miss Pickard,” said Mrs. Kirby, “you must be brought to our

house, where everything will be quiet about you; and then you may sleep

on till Christmas, if you will.”

Mary felt the kindness; but she evidently preferred remaining where she

was; and, with due consideration, she was indulged. She did not wish to

be carried through the street, so that the people might see that the

Good Lady was down at last; and besides, she felt as if she should die

by the way, though really believing she should do very well if only let

alone. She was allowed to order things just as she liked. A mattress was

put under her, on the floor. Ann Warrender came and undressed her,

lifting her limbs as if she was an infant, for she could not move them

herself; and daily was she refreshed, as she had taught others to

refresh those who cannot move from their beds. Every morning the doctor

came, and agreed with her that there was nothing in the world the matter

with her; that she had only to lie still till she felt the wish to get

up; and every day came Mrs. Kirby to take a look at her, if her eyes

were closed: and if she was able to talk and listen, to tell her how the

sick were faring, and what were the prospects of Bleaburn. After these

visits, something good was often found near the pillow; some firm jelly,

or particularly pure arrow-root, or the like; odd things to be dropped

by the fairies; but Mrs. Kirby said the neighbours liked to think that

the Good Lady was waited on by the Good People.

Another odd thing was, that for several days Mary could not sleep at

all. She would have liked it, and she needed it extremely, and the

window curtain was drawn, and everybody was very quiet, and even poor

Jem caught the trick of quietness, and lay immoveable for hours, when

the door of his closet was open, watching to see her sleep. But she

could not. She felt, what was indeed true, that Aunty’s large black eyes

were for ever fixed upon her; and she could not but be aware that the

matter of the very first public concern in Bleaburn was, that she should

go to sleep; and this was enough to prevent it. At last, when people

were getting frightened, and even the doctor told Mr. Kirby that he

should be glad to correct this insomnolence, the news went softly along

the street one day, told in whispers even at the further end, that the

Good Lady was asleep. The children were warned that they must keep

within doors, or go up to the brow to play; there must be no noise in

the hollow. The dogs were not allowed to bark, nor the ducks to quack;

and Farmer Neale’s carts were, on no account, to go below the Plough and

Harrow. The patience of all persons who liked to make a noise was tried

and proved, for nobody broke the rule; and when Mary once began

sleeping, it seemed as if she would never stop. She could hardly keep

awake to eat, or to be washed; and, as for having her hair brushed, that

is always drowsy work, and she could never look before her for two

minutes together while it was done. She thought it all very ridiculous,

and laughed at her own laziness, and then, before the smile was off her

lips, she had sunk on her pillow and was asleep again.

PART III.

CHAPTER VII.

It was a regular business now for three or four of the boys of Bleaburn

to go up to the brow every morning to bring down the stores from O——,

which were daily left there under the care of the watch. Mr. Kirby had

great influence already with the boys of Bleaburn. He found plenty for

them to do, and, when they were very hungry with running about, he gave

them wholesome food to satisfy their healthy appetite. He said, he and

Mrs. Kirby and the doctor worked hard, and they could not let anybody be

idle but those who were ill: and, now that the regular work and wages of

the place were suspended, he arranged matters after his own sense of the

needs of the people. The boys who survived and were in health, formed a

sort of regiment under his orders, and they certainly never liked work

so well before. Every little fellow felt his own consequence, and was

aware of his own responsibility. A certain number, as has been said,

went up to the brow to bring down the stores. A certain number were to

succeed each other at the doctor’s door, from hour to hour, to carry

medicines, that the sick might neither be kept waiting, nor be liable to

be served with the wrong medicine, from too many sorts being carried in

a basket together. Others attended upon Warrender, with pail and brush,

and helped him with his lime-washing. At first it was difficult, as has

been said, to induce the lads to volunteer for this service, and Mr.

Kirby directed much argument and persuasion towards their supposed fear

of entering the cottages where people were lying sick. This was not the

reason, however, as Warrender explained, with downcast eyes, when Mr.

Kirby wondered what ailed the lads, that they ran all sorts of dangers

all day long, and shirked this one.

“’Tis not the danger, I fancy, Sir,” said Warrender; “they are not so

much afraid of the fever as of going with me, I’m sorry to say.”

“Afraid of you!” said Mr. Kirby, laughing. “What harm could you do

them?”

“’Tis my temper, Sir, I’m afraid.”

“What is the matter with your temper? I see nothing amiss with it.”

“And I hope you never may, Sir: but I can’t answer for myself, though at

this moment I know the folly of such passion as these lads have seen in

me. Sir, it has been my way to be violent with them; and I don’t wonder

they slink away from me. But—”

“I am really quite surprised,” said Mr. Kirby. “This is all news to me.

I should have said you were a remarkably staid, quiet, persevering man;

and, I am sure, very kind hearted.”

“You have seen us all at such a time, you know, Sir! It is not only the

misfortunes of the time that sober us, but when there is so much to do

for one’s neighbours, one’s mind does not want to be in a passion—so to

speak.”

“Very true. The best part of us is roused, and puts down the worse. I

quite agree with you, Warrender.”

The boys were not long in learning that there was nothing now to fear

from Warrender. No one was sent staggering from a box on the ear. No

hair was ever pulled; nor was any boy ever shaken in his jacket. Instead

of doing such things, Warrender made companions of his young assistants,

taught them to do well whatever they put their hands to, and made them

willing and happy. While two or three thus waited on him, others carried

home the clean linen that his daughter and a neighbour or two were

frequently ready to send out: and they daily changed the water in the

tubs where the foul linen was deposited. Others, again, swept and washed

down the long steep street, making it look almost as clean as if it

belonged to a Dutch village. After the autumn pig-killing, there were

few or no more pigs. The poor sufferers could not attend to them; could

not afford, indeed, to buy them; and had scarcely any food to give them.

Though this was a token of poverty, it was hardly to be lamented in

itself, under the circumstances; for there is no foulness whatever, no

nastiness that is to be found among the abodes of men, so dangerous to

health as that of pig-styes. There is mismanagement in this. People take

for granted that the pig is a dirty animal, and give him no chance of

being clean; whereas, if they would try the experiment of keeping his

house swept, and putting his food always in one place, and washing him

with soap and water once a week, they would find that he knows how to

keep his pavement clean, and that he runs grunting to meet his washing

with a satisfaction not to be mistaken. Such was the conclusion of the

boys who undertook the purification of the two or three pigs that

remained in Bleaburn. As for the empty styes, they were cleaner than

many of the cottages. After a conversation with Mr. Kirby, Farmer Neale

bought all the dirt-heaps for manure; and in a few days they were all

trundled away in barrows—even to the stable-manure from the Plough and

Harrow—and heaped together at the farm, and well shut down with a casing

of earth, beat firm with spades. Boys really like such work as this,

when they are put upon it in the right way. They were less dirty than

they would have been with tumbling about and quarrelling and cuffing in

the filthy street; in a finer glow of exercise; with a more wholesome

appetite; and far more satisfaction in eating, because they had earned

their food. Moreover, they began to feel themselves little friends of

the grown people—of Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, and the Doctor, and the

Warrenders—instead of a sort of reptiles, or other plague; and Mr. Kirby

astonished them so by a bit of amusement now and then, when he had time,

that they would have called him a conjuror, if he had not been a

clergyman. He made a star—any star they pleased—as large as the comet,

just by making them look at it through a tube; and he showed them how he

took a drop of foul water from a stinking pool, and put it between

glasses in a hole in his window-shutter; and how the drop became like a

pond, and was found to be swarming with loathsome live creatures,

swimming about, and trying to swallow each other. After these

exhibitions, it is true the comet seemed much less wonderful and

terrible than before; but then the drop of water was infinitely more so.

The lads studied Mr. Kirby’s cistern—so carefully covered, and so

regularly cleaned out; and they learned how the water he drank at dinner

was filtered; and then they went and scoured out the few water-tubs

there were in the village, and consulted their neighbours as to how the

public of Bleaburn could be persuaded not to throw filth and refuse into

the stream at the upper part, defiling it for those who lived lower

down.

One morning at the beginning of December—on such a morning as was now

sadly frequent, drizzly, and far too warm for the season—the lads who

went up to the brow saw the same sight that had been visible in the same

place one evening in the preceding August. There was a chaise, and an

anxious post-boy, and a lady talking with one of the cordon. Mr. Kirby

had learned what friends Mary Pickard had in England, and which of them

lived nearest, and he had taken the liberty of writing to declare the

condition of the Good Lady. His letter brought the friend, Mrs.

Henderson, who came charged with affectionate messages to Mary from her

young daughters, and a fixed determination not to return without the

invalid.

“To think,” as she said to Mary when she appeared by the side of her

mattress, “that you should be in England, suffering in this way, and we

not have any idea what you were going through!”

Mary smiled, and said she had gone through nothing terrible on her own

account. She might have been at Mr. Kirby’s for three weeks past, but

that she really preferred being where she was.

“Do not ask her now, Madam, where she likes to be,” said Mr. Kirby, who

had been brought down the street by the bustle of a stranger’s arrival.

“Do not consult her at all, but take her away, and nurse her well.”

“Yes,” said the Doctor; “lay her in a good air, and let her sleep, and

feed her well; and she will soon come round. She is better—even here.”

“Madam,” said Widow Johnson’s feeble but steady voice, “be to her what

she has been to us; raise her up to what she was when I first heard her

step upon those stairs, and we shall say you deserve to be her friend.”

“You will go, will not you?” whispered Mrs. Kirby to Mary. “You will let

us manage it all for you?”

“Do what you please with me,” was the reply. “You know best how to get

me well soonest. Only let me tell Aunty that I will come again, as soon

as I am able.”

“Better not,” said the prudent Mrs. Kirby. “There is no saying what may

be the condition of this place by the spring. And it might keep Mrs.

Johnson in a state of expectation not fit for one so feeble. Better

not.”

“Very well,” said Mary.

Mrs. Kirby thought of something that her husband had said of Mary; that

he had never seen any one with such power of will and command so docile.

She merely promised her aunt frequent news of her; agreed with those who

doubted whether she could bear the jolting of any kind of carriage on

the road up to the brow; admitted that, though she could now stand, she

could not walk across the room; allowed herself to be carried on her

mattress in a carpet, by four men, up to the chaise; and nodded in reply

to a remark made by one little girl to another in the street, and which

the doctor wished she had not heard, that she looked “rarely bad.”

The landlady at O—— seemed, by her countenance, to have much the same

opinion of Mary’s looks, when she herself brought out the glass of wine,

for which Mrs. Henderson stopped her chaise at the door of the Cross

Keys. The landlady brought it herself, because none of her people would

give as much as a glass of cold water, hand to hand with any one who

came from Bleaburn. The landlady stood shaking her head, and saying she

had done the best she could; she had warned the young lady in time.

“But you were quite out in your warning,” said Mary. “You were sure I

should have the fever: but I have not.”

“You have not!”

“I have had no disease—no complaint whatever. I am only weak from

fatigue.”

“It is quite true,” said Mrs. Henderson, as the hostess turned to her

for confirmation. “Good wine like this, the fresh air of our moors, and

the easy sleep that comes to Good Ladies like her, are the only

medicines she wants.”

The landlady curtsied low—said the payment made should supply a glass of

wine to somebody at Bleaburn, and bade the driver proceed. After a mile

or two, he turned his head, touched his hat, and directed the ladies’

attention to a bottle of wine, with loosened cork, and a cup which the

hostess had contrived to smuggle into the pocket of the chaise. She was

sure the young lady would want some wine before they stopped.

“How kind every body is!” said Mary, with swimming eyes. Mrs. Henderson

cleared her throat, and looked out of the window on her side.

YOUNG RUSSIA.

Certain social theorists have, of late years, proclaimed themselves to

the puzzled public under the name and signification of ‘Young.’ Young

France, Young Germany, and Young England have had their day, and having

now grown older, and by consequence wiser, are comparatively mute. In

accordance with what seems a natural law, it is only when a fashion is

being forgotten where it originated—in the west—that it reaches Russia,

which rigidly keeps a century or so behind the rest of the Continent. It

is only recently, therefore, that we hear of ‘Young Russia.’

The main principles of all these national youths are alike. They are

pleasingly picturesque—simperingly amiable; with a pretty and piquant

dash of paradox. What they propose is not new birth, or dashing out into

new systems, and taking advantage of new ideas; but reverting to old

systems, and furbishing them up so as to look as good as new.

Re-juvenescence is their aim; the middle ages their motto. Young

England, to wit, desires to replace things as they were in the days of

the pack-horse, the thumb-screw, the monastery, the ducking-stool, the

knight errant, trial by battle, and the donjon-keep. To these he wishes

to apply all possible modern improvements, to adapt them to present

ideas, and to present events. Though he would have no objection to his

mailed knight travelling per first-class railway, he would abolish

luggage-trains to encourage intestine trade and the breed of that noble

animal the pack-horse. He has indeed done something in the monastic

line; but his efforts for the dissemination of superstition, and his

denunciations of a certain sort of witchcraft, have signally failed. In

truth, the task he has set himself—that of re-constructing society anew

out of old materials—though highly archæological, historical, and

poetic, has the fatal disadvantage of being simply impossible. It is

telling the people of the nineteenth century to carry their minds,

habits, and sentiments back, so as to become people of the thirteenth

century; it is trying to make new muslin out of mummy cloth, or razors

out of rusty nails.

‘Young Russia’ is an equal absurdity, but from a precisely opposite

cause; for, indeed, this sort of youth out of age is a series of

paradoxes. The Russian of the present day _is_ the Russian of past ages.

He exists by rule—the rule of despotism—which is as old as the Medes and

Persians; and which forces him into an iron mould that shapes his

appearance, his mind, and his actions, to one pattern, from one

generation to another. Hence everything that lives and breathes in

Russia being antique, there is no appreciable antiquity. The new school,

therefore—even if amateur politics were allowable in Russia, which they

are not, as a large population of exiles in Siberia can testify—has no

materials to work upon. Stagnation is the political law, and Young

Russia dies in its babyhood for want of sustenance. What goes by the

name of civilisation, is no advance in wealth, morals, or social

happiness. It is merely a tinsel coating over the rottenness and rust

with which Russian life is ‘sicklied o’er.’ It has nothing to do with a

single soul below the rank of a noble; and with him it means champagne,

bad pictures, Parisian tailors, operas, gaming, and other expences and

elegancies imported from the West. Hundreds of provincial noblemen are

ruined every year in St. Petersburg, in undergoing this process of

civilisation. The fortunes thus wasted are enormous; yet there is only

one railroad now in operation throughout the whole empire, and that

belongs to the Emperor, and leads to one of his palaces a few miles from

the Capital. Such is Russian civilisation. What then is Young Russia to

do? Ask one of its youngest apostles, Ivan Vassilievitsch.

This young gentleman—for an introduction to whom we are indebted to

Count Sollogub—was, not long ago, parading the Iverskoy boulevard—one of

the thirteen which half encircle Moscow—when he met a neighbour from the

province of Kazan. Ivan had lately returned from abroad. He was a

perfect specimen of the new school, inside and out. Within, he had

imbibed all the ideas of the juvenile or verdant schools of Germany,

France, and England. Without, he displayed a London macintosh; his coat

and trowsers had been designed and executed by Parisian artists; his

hair was cut in the style of the middle ages; and his chin showed the

remnants of a Vandyke beard. He also resembled the new school in another

respect: he had spent all his money, yet he was separated from home by

the distance of a long—a Russian—journey.

To meet with a neighbour—which he did—who travelled in his own carriage,

in which he offered a seat, was the height of good fortune. The more so,

as Ivan wished to see as much of Russian life on the road as possible,

and to note down his _impressions_ in a journal, whose white leaves were

as yet unsullied with ink. From the information he intended to collect,

he intended to commence helping to reconstruct Russian society after the

order of the new Russiaites.

The vehicle in which this great mission was to be performed, was a

humble family affair called a _Tarantas_.[1] After a series of

adventures—but which did not furnish Ivan a single _impression_ for his

note-book—they arrive at Vladimir, the capital of a province or

‘government.’ Here the younger traveller meets with a friend, to whom he

confides his intention of visiting all the other Government towns for

‘Young Russia’ purposes. His friend’s reply is dispiriting to the last

degree:—

Footnote 1:

For further particulars of this comfortable conveyance, its occupants,

and their adventures, we must refer the reader to Count Sollogub’s

amusing little book, to which he has given the name of ‘The Tarantas.’

“There is no difference between our government towns. See one, and

you’ll know them all!”

“Is it possible?”

“It is so, I assure you, Every one has a High-street; one principal

shop, where the country gentlemen buy silks for their wives, and

champagne for themselves; then there are the Courts of Justice, the

assembly-rooms, an apothecary’s shop, a river, a square, a bazaar, two

or three street-lamps, sentry-boxes for the watchmen, and the governor’s

house.”

“The society, however, in the government towns must be different?”

“On the contrary. The society is still more uniform than the buildings.”

“You astonish me: how is that?”

“Listen. There is, of course, in every government town a governor. These

do not always resemble each other; but as soon as any one of them

appears, police and secretaries immediately become active, merchants and

tradesmen bow, and the gentry draw themselves up, with, however, some

little awe. Wherever the governor goes, he is sure to find champagne,

the wine so much patronised in the province, and everybody drinks a

bumper to the health of the ‘_father of the province_.’ Governors

generally are well-bred, and sometimes very proud. They like to give

dinner parties, and benevolently condescend to play a game of whist with

rich brandy-contractors and landowners.”

“That’s a common thing,” remarked Ivan Vassilievitsch.

“Do not interrupt me. Besides the governor, there is in nearly every

government town the governor’s lady. She is rather a peculiar personage.

Generally brought up in one of the two capitals, and spoiled with the

cringing attentions of her company. On her husband’s first entry into

office, she is polite and affable; later, she begins to feel weary of

the ordinary provincial intrigues and gossips; she gets accustomed to

the slavish attentions she receives, and lays claim to them. At this

period she surrounds herself with a parasitical suite; she quarrels with

the lady of the vice-governor; she brags of St. Petersburg; speaks with

disdain of her provincial circle, and finally draws upon herself the

utmost universal ill-feeling, which is kept up till the day of her

departure, when all goes into oblivion, everything is pardoned, and

everybody bids her farewell with tears.”

“Two persons do not form the whole society of a town,” interrupted again

Ivan Vassilievitsch.

“Patience, brother, patience! Certainly there are other persons besides

the two I have just spoken of: there is the vice-governor and his lady;

several presidents, with their respective ladies, and an innumerable

crowd of functionaries serving under their leadership. The ladies are

ever quarrelling in words, whilst their husbands do the same thing upon

foolscap. The presidents, for the most part, are men of advanced age and

business-like habits, with great crosses hanging from their necks, and

are during the daytime to be seen out of their courts only on holidays.

The government attorney is generally a single man, and an enviable

match. The superior officer of the _gens-d’armes_ is a ‘good fellow.’

The nobility-marshal a great sportsman. Besides the government and the

local officers, there live in a government town stingy landowners, or

those who have squandered away their property; they gamble from evening

to morning, nay, from morning to evening too, without getting the least

bit tired of their exercise.”

“Now, about the mode of living?” asked Ivan Vassilievitsch.

“The mode of living is a very dull one. An exchange of ceremonious

visits. Intrigues, cards—cards, intrigues. Now and then, perchance, you

may meet with a kind, hospitable family, but such a case is very rare;

you much oftener find a ludicrous affectation to imitate the manners of

an imaginary high life. There are no public amusements in a government

town. During winter a series of balls are announced to take place at the

Assembly-rooms; however, from an absurd primness, these balls are little

frequented, because no one wants to be the first in the room. The ‘_bon

genre_’ remains at home and plays whist. In general, I have remarked,

that on arriving in a government town, it seems as if you were too early

or too late for some extraordinary event. You are ever welcomed: ‘What a

pity you were not here yesterday!’ or, ‘You should stay here till

to-morrow.’”

In process of time Ivan Vassilievitsch and his good-natured fat

companion, Vassily Ivanovitsch, reach a borough town, where the Tarantas

breaks down. There is a tavern and here is a description of it.

‘The tavern was like any other tavern,—a large wooden hut, with the

usual out-buildings. At the entrance stood an empty cart. The staircase

was crooked and shaky, and at the top of it, like a moving candelabrum,

stood a waiter with a tallow candle in his hand. To the right was the

tap-room, painted from time immemorial to imitate a grove. Tumblers,

tea-pots, decanters, three silver and a great number of pewter spoons,

adorned the shelves of a cupboard; a couple of lads in chintz shirts,

with dirty napkins over their shoulders, busied themselves at the bar.

Through an open door you saw in the next room a billiard table, and a

hen gravely promenading upon it.

‘Our travellers were conducted into the principal room of this elegant

establishment, where they found, seated round a boiling tea-urn, three

merchants,—one grey-haired, one red-haired, and one dark-haired. Each of

these was armed with a steaming tumbler; each of them sipped, smacked

his lips, stroked his beard and sipped again the fragrant beverage.

‘The red-haired man was saying:—’

“I made, last summer, a splendid bargain: I had bought from a company of

Samara-Tartars, some five hundred bags of prime quality, and had at the

same time a similar quantity, which I purchased from a nobleman who was

in want of money, but such dreadful stuff it was, that if it had not

been for the very low price, I would never have thought of looking at

it. What did I do? I mixed these two cargoes, and sold the whole lot to

a brandy-contractor at Ribna, for prime quality.”

“It was a clever speculation,” remarked the dark-haired.

“A commercial trick!” added the grey-haired.

‘Whilst this conversation was proceeding, Vassily Ivanovitsch and Ivan

Vassilievitsch had taken seats at a separate little table; they had

ordered their tea, and were listening to what the three merchants were

saying.

‘A poor looking fellow came in and took from his breast-pocket an

incredibly dirty sheet of paper, in which were wrapped up bank-notes and

some gold, and handed it over to the grey-haired merchant, who, having

counted them over, said:’

“Five thousand, two hundred and seventeen roubles. Is it right?”

“Quite right, Sir.”

“It shall be delivered according to your wish.”

‘Ivan asked why the sender had not taken a receipt?

‘The red and dark-haired merchants burst out laughing; the grey-haired

got into a passion.’

“A receipt!” he cried out furiously, “a receipt! I would have broken his

jaw with his own money had he dared to ask me for a receipt. I have been

a merchant now more than fifty years, and I have never yet been insulted

by being asked to give a receipt.”

“You see, Sir,” said the red-haired merchant, “it is only with noblemen

that such things as receipts and bills of exchange exist. We commercial

people do not make use of them. Our simple word suffices. We have no

time to spare for writing. For instance, Sir: here is Sidor

Avdeievitsch, who has millions of roubles in his trade, and his whole

writing consists of a few scraps of paper, for memory’s sake, Sir.”

“I don’t understand that,” interrupted Ivan Vassilievitsch.

“How could you, Sir? It is mere commercial business, without plan or

_façade_. We ourselves learn it from our childhood: first as

errand-boys, then as clerks, till we become partners in the business. I

confess it is hard work.”

Upon this text Ivan preaches a ‘Young Russia discourse.’

“Allow me a few words,” he said with fervour. “It appears to me that we

have in Russia a great number of persons buying and selling, but yet, I

must say, we have no systematic commerce. For commerce, science and

learning are indispensable; a conflux of civilised men, clever

mathematical calculations—but not, as seems to be the case with you,

dependence upon mere chance. You earn millions, because you convert the

consumer into a victim, against whom every kind of cheat is pardonable,

and then you lay by farthing by farthing, refusing yourselves not only

all the enjoyments of life, but even the most necessary comforts.... You

brag of your threadbare clothes; but surely this extreme parsimony is a

thousand times more blameable than the opposite prodigality of those of

your comrades who spend their time amongst gipsies, and their money in

feasting. You boast of your ignorance, because you do not know what

civilisation is. Civilisation, according to your notions, consists in

shorter laps of a coat, foreign furniture, bronzes, and champagne—in a

word, in outward trifles and silly customs. Trust me, not such is

civilisation.... Unite yourselves! Be it your vocation to lay open all

the hidden riches of our great country; to diffuse life and vigour into

all its veins; to take the whole management of its material interests

into your hands. Unite your endeavours in this beautiful deed, and you

may be certain of success! Why should Russia be worse than England?

Comprehend only your calling; let the beam of civilisation fall upon

you, and your love for your fatherland will strengthen such a union; and

you will see that not only the whole of Russia, but even the whole world

will be in your hands.”

‘At this eloquent conclusion, the red and the dark-haired merchants

opened wide their eyes. They, of course, did not understand a single

word of Ivan Vassilievitsch’s speech.’

“Alas, for Young Russia,” Ivan dolefully remarks in another place;—

“I thought to study life in the provinces: there is no life in the

provinces: every one there is said to be of the same cut. Life in the

capitals is not a Russian life, but a weak imitation of the petty

perfections and gross vices of modern civilisation. Where am I then to

find Russia? In the lower classes, perhaps, in the every-day life of the

Russian peasant? But have I not been now for five days chiefly amongst

this class? I prick up my ears and listen; I open wide my eyes and look,

and do what I may, I find not the least trifle worth noting in my

‘_Impressions_.’ The country is dead; there is nothing but land, land,

land; so much land, indeed, that my eyes get tired of looking at it; a

dreadful road—waggons of goods, swearing carriers, drunken

stage-inspectors; beetles creeping on every wall; soups with the smell

of tallow-candles! How is it possible for any respectable person to

occupy himself with such nasty stuff? And what is yet more provoking, is

the doleful uniformity which tires you so much, and affords you no rest

whatever. Nothing new, nothing unexpected! To-morrow what has been

to-day; to-day what has been yesterday. Here, a post-stage, there again

a post-stage, and further the same post-stage again; here, a

village-elder asking for drink-money, and again to infinity

village-elders all asking for drink-money. What can I write? I begin to

agree with Vassily Ivanovitsch; he is right in saying that we do not

travel, and that there is no travelling in Russia. We simply are going

to Mordassy. Alas! for my ‘_Impressions_.’”

Whoever wants to know more of this amusing Young Russian, must consult

“The _Tarantas_.” We can assure the reader that the book is fraught with

a store of amusement—chiefly descriptions of town and country life in

Russia—not often compressed into the modest and inexpensive compass of a

thin duodecimo.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

● Renumbered footnotes.

● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a

single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in

1^{st}).