What the living man had suffered can never now be known. Whether, when

first he came distinctly to believe his comrade would die he stood in

blank despair, or whether he implored him on his knees, in an agony

of selfish terror, to live; whether when, perhaps for the first time

in his life, he stood face to face, and so very close, to death, he

thought of immediate burial, or whether he rushed at once to the

gallery to shout out to the nearest sail, perhaps a mile away;--at

what exact moment it was that the thought flashed across him that he

must not bury the body in the sea, lest those on shore should question

him as Cain was questioned for his brother, and he, failing to produce

him, should be branded with Cain’s curse and meet a speedier fate--is

unrecorded. What he did was to make a coffin. He had been a cooper by

trade, and by breaking up a bulk-head in the living room, he got the

dead man covered in; then, with infinite labour he took him to the

gallery and lashed him there. Perhaps with an instinctive wisdom he set

himself to work, cleaned and re-cleaned his lamps, unpacked and packed

his stores. Perhaps he made a point of walking resolutely up to the

coffin three or four times a day, perhaps he never went near it, and

even managed to look over it rather than at it, when he was scanning

the whole horizon for a sail. In his desperation it may have occurred

to him that as his light was a warning to keep vessels off, so its

absence would speedily betray some ship to a dangerous vicinity to his

forlornness, whose crew would be companions to him even though he had

caused them to be wrecked. But this he did not do. No lives were risked

to alleviate his desolation, but when he came on shore with his dead

companion he was a sad, reserved, emaciated man, so strangely worn that

his associates did not know him.

The immediate result of this sad occurrence was, that three men were

always kept at the lighthouse, and this wise rule pertains in the

public service.

Among the minor miseries of life at the Smalls would be such things

as a storm, in which the central flooring was entirely displaced, the

stove thrown from its position “into the boiling surf below, and the

time-piece hurled into a sleeping berth opposite the place it usually

hung.”

Midway between a rock lighthouse and a shore station, both as to

structure and as to the experiences of life in it, is that mongrel

breed amongst edifices, the Pile Lighthouse. There are many sands at

the mouths of tidal rivers where the water is not deep enough, nor are

the channels sufficiently wide to make a light-vessel suitable, and

which yet need marking, and marking, too, at a spot where not only

the ordinary foundations of masonry, but even the pile foundations

used for many purposes, would be at fault. Here it is that two very

ingenious plans have been of service. The one is to fit the lower

extremity of piles with broad-flanged screws, something like the screw

of a steam-vessel, and then setting them upright in the sand, screw

them down with capstans worked from the decks of dumb lighters. These

bottom piles once secured, the spider legs are bolted on to them, and

the spider bodies on the top; a ladder draws up, and a boat swings

ready to be lowered. The other mode of meeting the difficulty of mud or

loose silt and sand, is by hollow cylinders, which, placed upright on

the sand, have the air exhausted from the inside of them, and on the

principle that nature abhors a vacuum (at all events in cylinders),

the weight of the atmosphere on the sand outside forces it up into the

exhausted receiver, and the pile sinks at a rate which, until one gets

accustomed to it, is rather surprising. Here, as in the screw pile, the

foundation once established, the superstructure, whether of straight

shafts or spider legs, is only a matter of detail.

These, then, be the variations of lighthouse structure: rock

lighthouses, solitary giants rising from the ocean deeps; pile

lighthouses, stuck about the shallow estuaries on long red legs, like

so many flamingoes fishing; safer, but with less of dignity and more

of ague;--and lastly, the real _bonâ fide_ shore lighthouse, with its

broad sweep of down, its neat cottages, and trim inclosures. If my

Lord Grenville had had any thought of occupying the residence that he

calculated to eliminate from the king’s good-humour, we take it there

is very little doubt on which class in the foregoing category he would

have fixed his choice.

The remaining contribution to the complement of the lighting service is

the light-vessel. There are, unfortunately, too many outlying dangers

on our coasts where it is either impossible to fix a lighthouse, or

where, from the shifting character of the shoal, it is necessary to

move the light from time to time. Of these the most notable are the

Goodwin Sands. There are constantly propositions for lighthouses on the

Goodwin; and some men, mortified that dry lands once belonging to the

men of Kent should be water-wastes for ever, have proposed boldly to

reclaim them, believing that the scheme would pay, not merely by the

acreage added to the county, but by the buried treasures to be exhumed.

At present they are marked with three light-vessels, one at each end

and one in the middle. There are other floating stations still farther

remote from land; and at one--the Seven Stones, between the Scilly

Islands and the main--the vessel is in forty fathoms water. These

light-ships ride by chains of a peculiarly prepared and toughened iron;

and in heavy weather the strain on the moorings is relieved by paying

out fathom after fathom, until sometimes the whole cable (at the Seven

Stones, 315 fathoms) is in the water. These vessels, of course, are

manned by sailors, and the discipline is that of shipboard; but here,

as on shore, the burden of the main story meets us at the first clause

of the instructions--“You are to light the lamps every evening at

sun-setting, and keep them constantly burning, bright and clear, till

sun-rising,” unless you break adrift, and then, if you have shifted

your position before you could bring up with your spare anchor, you are

to put them out and wait till you can be replaced.

Among the curiosities of lighthouse experience are these two. The

one that it is an occupation in which the modern claim for feminine

participation has been forestalled. There is at this moment a woman

light-keeper, and as she retains her employment it may be inferred that

she does her duty properly. The other is an odd fact, namely, that so

far back as the last century the rationale of the cod-liver oil fashion

was foreshadowed at the “Smalls.” As in the wool-combing districts of

Yorkshire, where the wool is dressed with oil, consumption and strumous

affections of the like character are rare, so it is said that people

going out to the “Smalls” as keepers, thin, hectic and emaciated, have

returned plump, jocund, and robust, on account of living in an unctuous

atmosphere, where every breath was laden with whale oil, and every meal

might be enriched with fish.

The French, from economical reasons, early gave their attention to

the use of seed oils, and the first developments of the moderator

lamp of the drawing-room are exclusively French. There were many

difficulties in the way of applying it to lighthouses until it had

been greatly simplified, because the fact of the carcel lamp being a

somewhat complicated piece of machinery was against its use in places

where, if anything went wrong, it might be a month or two before the

weather would admit of the light-keepers being relieved, and give them

an opportunity of exchanging old lamps for new. The thing was done at

last by a simple but very beautiful adjustment of the argand reservoir,

under which the prime condition for all good combustion was attained,

namely, that the oil just about to be burnt, should be rarefied and

prepared for burning by the action of the heat of that which is at the

moment being consumed. And so great is the quantity of oil used in the

three kingdoms, that this change from sperm to rapeseed oil must have

made a saving of many thousands a year.

But if oil from its portability and comparative simplicity has become

the standard material for light in lighthouses, and has been the object

of a thousand and one nice adaptations in regard to its preparation and

the machinery by which it is consumed, the attention of very able men

has been given to other sources of illumination.

One of these was known as the Bude light, and consisted of jets of

oxygen introduced into the centre of oil wicks, producing an intense

combustion, which turned steel wire into fireworks, but requiring great

management to avoid smoking and charring. It was finally regarded as

unsuitable on account of the manufacture of the gas and its niceties of

chemical manipulation.

The Lime lights, of which there are several, are substantially the

same in this, that oxygen and hydrogen gases have to be made (in the

vicinity of gas-works, the common gas will do for the hydrogen) and are

burnt together upon lime or some analogous preparation; and there is

a magnificent adaptation of the Electric light at this moment at the

South Foreland.

The first electric lights were galvanic. The light, developed between

carbon points, was generated by a galvanic battery. Flickering,

intermittent, and uncertain, the light was yet sufficiently

astonishing, and when it came to be discovered that the residuum from

the decomposition was valuable for making costly colours, “The Electric

Power Light and Colour Company” offered to sell the mere light at a

very low rate; but the difficulties in the way were insuperable, the

manipulation of the batteries was somewhat nice and markedly unhealthy,

the flickering was objectionable, and the light, though intense,

was so extremely minute that the shadows of the framework of the

lantern-glasses widened outwards in a way that would have covered the

horizon seaward with broad bands of dark.

But the matter was not to stop here. In 1831 it had been discovered

by Faraday that when a piece of soft iron surrounded by a metallic

wire was passed by the poles of a magnet, an electric current was

produced in the wire, which could be exalted so as to give a spark;

and upon this hint an apparatus has been constructed, consisting of an

accumulation of powerful magnets and iron cores with surrounding coils.

This apparatus, driven by steam-engines, and fitted with a subtle

ingenuity of resource always tending to simplicity that seems a marked

feature in the mind of the patentee, is, as we have said, at this

moment at work, and very glorious it is to the eye of the observer; a

piece of sunlight poured out upon the night.

The chief point to be determined is its power over fogs. That any

light will penetrate through some fogs is out of the question. The Sun

himself can’t do it. But the artificial light that can hold out longest

and pierce the farthest is clearly the light at all costs for the

turning points in the great ocean highways.

A success of this kind would create something of a revolution in a

branch of lighthouse art on which a vast amount of ingenuity and even

genius has been expended; that is, the apparatus by which the light

should be exhibited. There may be divisions among scientific men as

to the abstract nature and action of light, but sufficient of its

secondary laws are known to make various arrangements in regard to the

management of a generated light most valuable.

The old plan known in scientific nomenclature as the Catoptric system

is by reflection.

Take a bowl of copper, something like a wash-hand basin, and having

shaped it carefully into a parabolic curve, and then silvered and

polished the interior, set it up on its side and introduce an argand

lamp into it, so that the flame of the lamp shall be in true focus, and

we have a reflecting apparatus. These may be multiplied in double and

triple rows, and may be either placed upon flat faces, or curved to the

circle, but a lamp in the centre of a reflector is the basis of the

arrangement.

If a light were put upon a rock in the ocean without a reflector,

it would be seen dimly, but all round. Dimly, because the light,

spreading in all directions, would be weak and diluted, but visible

all round because there would be nothing to obstruct it. But put this

light into a twenty-one inch reflector, and we have two distinct

consequences;--one that we obstruct the radiation of all the rays

except those that escape from the mouth of the reflector; the other,

that we reflect into the same direction as the rays that are escaping

all those we have obstructed from their natural radiation.

A twenty-one inch reflector allows the rays issuing from it to diverge

fifteen degrees. So that we have the light of the 360 degrees (the

whole of the circle) gathered into fifteen (a twenty-fourth part of

the circle). It does not quite follow that within that area the light

will be twenty-four times as strong as if allowed to dissipate itself

all round, because something must be allowed for absorption and waste;

but we believe this allowance has been greatly overstated, and that

where there are no mechanical difficulties in the way, the reflecting

system is decidedly the best. Of course where it is necessary to light

more than fifteen degrees of the circle, it will be necessary to use

more reflectors, placing them side by side round a shaft, and if these

are set into revolving motion, focus after focus of each reflector

comes before the eye of the mariner, and the effect is all that can be

desired.

The dioptric or refracting system of lighting is the reverse of this.

In the reflector the light is caught into a basin and thrown out again.

In the refracting system, in its passage through the glass prisms,

it is bent up or down and falls full upon the eye of the mariner,

instead of wasting itself among the stars or down among the rocks

at the lighthouse foot. For light, falling upon glass at a certain

angle, does not go straight on, but gets deflected and transmitted

in an altered line, as it does through water. And here comes the

weakness of the dioptric system, in close vicinity to its strength.

It is true that prisms and lenses send the light in the direction

which is desired, but they charge a toll for the transmission; the

glass is thick, and somewhat of the nature of a sponge. If we write on

blotting-paper the marks appear on the other side, but some of the ink

has soaked sideways, and there is very little doubt, that when light is

transmitted through glass, a good deal of it is absorbed and retained.

To those who have never seen a dioptric apparatus, or a diagram of

one, it would be very difficult to make any written description

intelligible. The reader must imagine a central lamp, with three or

four circular wicks, making up a core of light four inches across, and

as many high. Round this, and on a level with it, at a distance of

three feet from it, go belts of glass. From these belts, or panels,

the light goes straight out to sea, but as there is a great quantity

of light which goes up to the ceiling and down to the floor, rings of

prisms are put above and below the main panels, and these catch the

upper and lower light, and bend it out to sea, parallel to the main

central beam. When a revolving light has to be made by the dioptric

apparatus, the lenses are so constructed that the light, in going

through them, is gathered up into the exact similitude of a ray, as

it would leave the mouth of a reflector, and of course with the same

result; the central lamp remains stationary, and the lenses move

round it, and focus after focus, flash after flash, come upon the eye

of the mariner. Both the systems admit of peculiar adaptations, and

they have been occasionally combined into a hybrid apparatus, called

Cata-dioptric.

This, then, is, in brief, the history of the development of the

lighthouse system of the United Kingdom. We think it has fairly kept

pace with the development of the mercantile marine. When there were

coal fires at some lighthouses, and wax candles at others, the vessels

that passed them, and were guided by them, were not such as modern

shipwrights would look at with much complacency. But the age that has

produced the _Great Eastern_ can also point to the Skerryvore and the

Bishop Rock lighthouses, to the Electric light, and to a first-class

Lighting apparatus.

Whatever the future in store for the English lighthouse system, one

thing is certain, that it cannot, and was never meant to supersede

seamanship. No amount of lighting will dispense with the necessity for

eyes, no extent of warning is so good as the capacity for grappling

with a danger. The lighthouse authorities may cheer a sailor on his way

with leading lights and beacon warnings, but he must still be a sailor

to turn their warnings to account.

When Rudyerd’s Eddystone was building, Louis XIV. was at war with

England, and a French privateer took the men at work upon the rock,

and carried them to a French prison. When that monarch heard of it, he

immediately ordered them to be released, and the captors to be put in

their place; declaring that, though at enmity with England, he was not

at war with mankind. Extremes meet. The most gorgeous monarch in Europe

and the plain Quaker of Liverpool had one point in common;--they both

agreed that the erection of a Lighthouse was “a great holy good, to

serve and save humanity.”

[Illustration: BESSY’S SPECTACLES.]

Lovel the Widower.

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH MISS PRIOR IS KEPT AT THE DOOR.

[Illustration]

Of course we all know who she was, the Miss Prior of Shrublands, whom

papa and grandmamma called to the unruly children. Years had passed

since I had shaken the Beak Street dust off my feet. The brass plate

of “Prior” was removed from the once familiar door, and screwed, for

what I can tell, on to the late reprobate owner’s coffin. A little

eruption of mushroom-formed brass knobs I saw on the door-post when

I passed by it last week, and CAFÉ DES AMBASSADEURS was thereon

inscribed, with three fly-blown blue teacups, a couple of coffee-pots

of the well-known Britannia metal, and two freckled copies of the

_Indépendance Belge_ hanging over the window blind. Were those their

Excellencies the Ambassadors at the door, smoking cheroots? Pool and

Billiards were written on their countenances, their hats, their elbows.

They may have been ambassadors down on their luck, as the phrase is.

They were in disgrace, no doubt, at the court of her imperial majesty

Queen Fortune. Men as shabby have retrieved their disgraces ere now,

washed their cloudy faces, strapped their dingy waistcoats with

cordons, and stepped into fine carriages from quarters not a whit more

reputable than the Café des Ambassadeurs. If I lived in the Leicester

Square neighbourhood, and kept a café, I would always treat foreigners

with respect. They may be billiard-markers now, or doing a little

shady police business; but why should they not afterwards be generals

and great officers of state? Suppose that gentleman is at present a

barber, with his tongs and stick of fixature for the mustachios, how

do you know he has not his epaulettes and his _bâton de maréchal_ in

the same pouch? I see engraven on the second-floor bell, on my rooms,

“Plugwell.” Who can Plugwell be, whose feet now warm at the fire where

I sate many a long evening? And this gentleman with the fur collar,

the straggling beard, the frank and engaging leer, the somewhat husky

voice, who is calling out on the door-step, “Step in, and ’ave it done.

Your correct likeness, only one shilling”--is he an ambassador, too?

Ah, no: he is only the _Chargé d’affaires_ of a photographer who lives

upstairs: no doubt where the little ones used to be. Law bless me!

Photography was an infant, and in the nursery, too, when _we_ lived in

Beak Street.

Shall I own that, for old time’s sake, I went upstairs, and “’ad it

done”--that correct likeness, price one shilling? Would Some One (I

have said, I think, that the party in question is well married in a

distant island) like to have the thing, I wonder, and be reminded of

a man whom she knew in life’s prime, with brown curly locks, as she

looked on the effigy of this elderly gentleman, with a forehead as bare

as a billiard ball? As I went up and down that darkling stair, the

ghosts of the Prior children peeped out from the banisters; the little

faces smiled in the twilight: it may be wounds (of the heart) throbbed

and bled again,--oh, how freshly and keenly! How infernally I have

suffered behind that door in that room--I mean that one where Plugwell

now lives. Confound Plugwell! I wonder what that woman thinks of me as

she sees me shaking my fist at the door? Do you think me mad, madam? I

don’t care if you do. Do you think when I spoke anon of the ghosts of

Prior’s children, I mean that any of them are dead? None are, that I

know of. A great hulking Bluecoat boy, with fluffy whiskers, spoke to

me not long since, in an awful bass voice, and announced his name as

“Gus Prior.” And “How’s Elizabeth?” he added, nodding his bullet head.

Elizabeth, indeed, you great vulgar boy! Elizabeth,--and, by the way,

how long we have been keeping her waiting!

You see, as I beheld her, a heap of memories struck upon me, and I

could not help chattering; when of course--and you are perfectly right,

only you might just as well have left the observation alone: for I knew

quite well what you were going to say--when I had much better have

held my tongue. Elizabeth means a history to me. She came to me at a

critical period of my life. Bleeding and wounded from the conduct of

that other individual (by her present name of Mrs. O’D--her present

_O’D_-ous name--I say, I will never--never call her)--desperately

wounded and miserable on my return from a neighbouring capital, I went

back to my lodgings in Beak Street, and there there grew up a strange

intimacy between me and my landlady’s young daughter. I told her my

story--indeed, I believe I told anybody who would listen. She seemed

to compassionate me. She would come wistfully into my rooms, bringing

me my gruel and things (I could scarcely bear to eat for awhile

after--after that affair to which I may have alluded before)--she used

to come to me, and she used to pity me, and I used to tell her all, and

to tell her over and over again. Days and days have I passed tearing

my heart out in that second-floor room which answers to the name of

Plugwell now. Afternoon after afternoon have I spent there, and poured

out my story of love and wrong to Elizabeth, showed her that waistcoat

I told you of--that glove (her hand wasn’t so very small either)--her

letters, those two or three vacuous, meaningless letters, with “My dear

sir, mamma hopes you will come to tea;” or, “If dear Mr. Batchelor

_should_ be riding in the Phœnix Park near the _Long Milestone_, about

2, my sister and I will be in the car, and,” &c.; or, “Oh, you kind

man! the tickets (she called it _tickuts_--by heaven! she did) were

too welcome, and the _bouquays_ too lovely” (this word, I saw, had

been operated on with a penknife. I found no faults, not even in her

spelling--then); or--never mind what more. But more of this _puling_,

of this _humbug_, of this _bad spelling_, of this infernal jilting,

swindling, heartless hypocrisy (all her mother’s doing, I own; for

until he _got his place_, my rival was not so well received as I

was)--more of this RUBBISH, I say, I showed Elizabeth, and she pitied

me!

She used to come to me day after day, and I used to talk to her. She

used not to say much. Perhaps she did not listen; but I did not care

for that. On--and on--and on I would go with my prate about my passion,

my wrongs, and despair; and untiring as my complaints were, still more

constant was my little hearer’s compassion. Mamma’s shrill voice would

come to put an end to our conversation, and she would rise up with an

“Oh, bother!” and go away: but the next day the good girl was sure to

come to me again, when we would have another repetition of our tragedy.

I daresay you are beginning to suppose (what, after all, is a very

common case, and certainly _no conjuror_ is wanted to make the guess)

that out of all this crying and sentimentality, which a soft-hearted

old fool of a man poured out to a young girl--out of all this

whimpering and pity, something which is said to be akin to pity might

arise. But in this, my good madam, you are utterly wrong. Some people

have the small-pox twice, _I do not_. In my case, if a heart is broke,

it’s broke: if a flower is withered, it’s withered. If I choose to

put my grief in a ridiculous light, why not? Why do you suppose I am

going to make a tragedy of such an old, used-up, battered, stale,

vulgar, trivial, every-day subject as a jilt who plays with a man’s

passion, and laughs at him, and leaves him? Tragedy indeed! Oh, yes!

poison--black-edged note-paper--Waterloo Bridge--one more unfortunate,

and so forth! No: if she goes, let her go!--_si celeres quatit pennas_,

I puff the what-d’ye-call away! But I’ll have no _tragedy_, mind you!

Well! it must be confessed that a man desperately in love (as I fear

I must own I then was, and a good deal cut up by Glorvina’s conduct)

is a most selfish being: whilst women are so soft and unselfish that

they can forget or disguise their own sorrows for awhile, whilst they

minister to a friend in affliction. I did not see, though I talked

with her daily, on my return from that accursed Dublin, that my little

Elizabeth was pale and _distraite_, and sad, and silent. She would sit

quite dumb whilst I chattered, her hands between her knees, or draw

one of them over her eyes. She would say, “Oh, yes! Poor fellow--poor

fellow!” now and again, as giving a melancholy confirmation of my

dismal stories; but mostly she remained quiet, her head drooping

towards the ground, a hand to her chin, her feet to the fender.

I was one day harping on the usual string. I was telling Elizabeth

how, after presents had been accepted, after letters had passed

between us (if her scrawl could be called letters, if my impassioned

song could be so construed), after everything but the actual word

had passed our lips--I was telling Elizabeth how, on one accursed

day, Glorvina’s mother greeted me on my arrival in M-rr-n Square, by

saying, “Dear--dear Mr. Batchelor, we look on you quite as one of the

family! Congratulate me--congratulate my child! Dear Tom has got his

appointment as Recorder of Tobago; and it is to be a match between him

and his cousin Glory.”

“His cousin _What!_” I shriek with a maniac laugh.

“My poor Glorvina! Sure the children have been fond of each other ever

since they could speak. I knew your kind heart would be the first to

rejoice in their happiness!”

And so, say I--ending the story--I, who thought myself loved, was

left without a pang of pity: I, who could mention a hundred reasons

why I thought Glorvina well disposed to me, was told she regarded me

as an _uncle_! Were her letters such as nieces write? Whoever heard

of an uncle walking round Merrion Square for hours of a rainy night,

and looking up to a bedroom window, because his _niece_, forsooth,

was behind it? I had set my whole heart on the cast, and this was the

return I got for it. For months she cajoles me--her eyes follow me, her

cursed smiles welcome and fascinate me, and at a moment, at the beck of

another--she laughs at me and leaves me!

At this, my little pale Elizabeth, still hanging down, cries, “Oh, the

villain! the villain!” and sobs so that you might have thought her

little heart would break.

“Nay,” said I, “my dear, Mr. O’Dowd is no villain. His uncle, Sir

Hector, was as gallant an old officer as any in the service. His aunt

was a Molloy, of Molloy’s Town, and they are of excellent family,

though, I believe, of embarrassed circumstances; and young Tom----”

“_Tom?_” cries Elizabeth, with a pale, bewildered look. “_His name

wasn’t Tom_, dear Mr. Batchelor; _his name was Woo-woo-illiam_!” and

the tears begin again.

Ah, my child! my child! my poor young creature! and you, too, have

felt the infernal stroke. You, too, have passed the tossing nights of

pain--have heard the dreary hours toll--have looked at the cheerless

sunrise with your blank sleepless eyes--have woke out of dreams, mayhap

in which the beloved was smiling on you, whispering love-words--oh!

how sweet and fondly remembered! What!--your heart has been robbed,

too, and your treasury is rifled and empty!--poor girl! And I looked

in that sad face, and saw no grief there! You could do your little

sweet endeavour to soothe my wounded heart, and I never saw yours was

bleeding! Did you suffer more than I did, my poor little maid? I hope

not. Are you so young, and is all the flower of life blighted for you?

the cup without savour, the sun blotted, or almost invisible over your

head? The truth came on me all at once: I felt ashamed that my own

selfish grief should have made me blind to hers.

“What!” said I, “my poor child. Was it...?” and I pointed with my

finger _downwards_.

She nodded her poor head.

I knew it was the lodger who had taken the first floor shortly after

Slumley’s departure. He was an officer in the Bombay Army. He had had

the lodgings for three months. He had sailed for India shortly before I

returned home from Dublin.

Elizabeth is waiting all this time--shall she come in? No, not yet. I

have still a little more to say about the Priors.

You understand that she was no longer Miss Prior of Beak Street, and

that mansion, even at the time of which I write, had been long handed

over to other tenants. The captain dead, his widow with many tears

pressed me to remain with her, and I did, never having been able to

resist that kind of appeal. Her statements regarding her affairs

were not strictly correct.--Are not women sometimes incorrect about

money matters?--A landlord (not unjustly indignant) quickly handed

over the mansion in Beak Street to other tenants. The Queen’s taxes

swooped down on poor Mrs. Prior’s scanty furniture--on hers?--on mine

likewise: on my neatly-bound college books, emblazoned with the effigy

of Bonifacius, our patron, and of Bishop Budgeon, our founder; on my

elegant Raphael Morghen prints, purchased in undergraduate days--(ye

Powers! what _did_ make us boys go tick for fifteen-guinea proofs of

Raphael, Dying Stags, Duke of Wellington Banquets, and the like?); my

harmonium, at which SOME ONE has warbled songs of my composition--(I

mean the words, artfully describing my passions, my hopes, or my

despair); on my rich set of Bohemian glass, bought on the Zeil,

Frankfort O. M.; on my picture of my father, the late Captain Batchelor

(Hopner), R.N., in white ducks, and a telescope, pointing, of course,

to a tempest, in the midst of which was a naval engagement; on my

poor mother’s miniature, by old Adam Buck, in pencil and pink, with

no waist to speak of at all; my tea and cream pots (bullion), with a

hundred such fond knicknacks as decorate the chamber of a lonely man.

I found all these household treasures in possession of the myrmidons

of the law, and had to pay the Priors’ taxes with this hand, before I

could be redintegrated in my own property. Mrs. Prior could only pay

me back with a widow’s tears and blessings (Prior had quitted ere this

time a world where he had long ceased to be of use or ornament). The

tears and blessings, I say, she offered me freely, and they were all

very well. But why go on tampering with the tea-box, madam? Why put

your finger--your finger?--your whole paw--in the jam-pot? And it is a

horrible fact that the wine and spirit bottles were just as leaky after

Prior’s decease as they had been during his disreputable lifetime. One

afternoon, having a sudden occasion to return to my lodgings, I found

my wretched landlady in the very act of marauding sherry. She gave an

hysterical laugh, and then burst into tears. She declared that since

her poor Prior’s death she hardly knew what she said or did. She may

have been incoherent; she was; but she certainly spoke truth on _this_

occasion.

I am speaking lightly--flippantly, if you please--about this old Mrs.

Prior, with her hard, eager smile, her weazened face, her frowning

look, her cruel voice; and yet, goodness knows, I could, if I liked, be

serious as a sermonizer. Why, this woman had once red cheeks, and was

well-looking enough, and told few lies, and stole no sherry, and felt

the tender passions of the heart, and I daresay kissed the weak old

beneficed clergyman her father very fondly and remorsefully that night

when she took leave of him to skip round to the back garden-gate and

run away with Mr. Prior. Maternal instinct she had, for she nursed her

young as best she could from her lean breast, and went about hungrily,

robbing and pilfering for them. On Sundays she furbished up that

threadbare black silk gown and bonnet, ironed the collar, and clung

desperately to church. She had a feeble pencil drawing of the vicarage

in Dorsetshire, and _silhouettes_ of her father and mother, which were

hung up in the lodgings wherever she went. She migrated much: wherever

she went she fastened on the gown of the clergyman of the parish; spoke

of her dear father the vicar, of her wealthy and gifted brother the

Master of Boniface, with a reticence which implied that Dr. Sargent

might do more for his poor sister and her family, if he would. She

plumed herself (oh! those poor moulting old plumes!) upon belonging to

the clergy; had read a good deal of good sound old-fashioned theology

in early life, and wrote a noble hand, in which she had been used to

copy her father’s sermons. She used to put cases of conscience, to

present her humble duty to the Rev. Mr. Green, and ask explanation of

such and such a passage of his admirable sermon, and bring the subject

round so as to be reminded of certain quotations of Hooker, Beveridge,

Jeremy Taylor. I think she had an old commonplace book with a score of

these extracts, and she worked them in very amusingly and dexterously

into her conversation. Green would be interested: perhaps pretty young

Mrs. Green would call, secretly rather shocked at the coldness of old

Dr. Brown, the rector, about Mrs. Prior. Between Green and Mrs. Prior

money transactions would ensue: Mrs. Green’s visits would cease: Mrs.

Prior was an expensive woman to know. I remember Pye of Maudlin, just

before he “went over,” was perpetually in Mrs. Prior’s back parlour

with little books, pictures, medals, &c. &c.--you know. They called

poor Jack a Jesuit at Oxbridge; but one year at Rome I met him (with a

half-crown shaved out of his head, and a hat as big as Don Basilio’s);

and he said, “My dear Batchelor, do you know that person at your

lodgings? I think she was an artful creature! She borrowed fourteen

pounds of me, and I forget how much of--seven, I think--of Barfoot,

of Corpus, just--just before we were received. And I believe she

absolutely got another loan from Pummel, to be able to get out of the

hands of us Jesuits. Are you going to hear the Cardinal? Do--do go and

hear him--everybody does: it’s the most fashionable thing in Rome.” And

from this I opine that there are slyboots in other communions besides

that of Rome.

Now Mamma Prior had not been unaware of the love passages between

her daughter and the fugitive Bombay captain. Like Elizabeth, she

called Captain Walkingham “villain” readily enough; but, if I know

woman’s nature in the least (and I don’t), the old schemer had thrown

her daughter only too frequently in the officer’s way, had done no

small portion of the flirting herself, had allowed poor Bessy to

receive presents from Captain Walkingham, and had been the manager

and directress of much of the mischief which ensued. You see, in this

humble class of life, unprincipled mothers _will_ coax and wheedle and

cajole gentlemen whom they suppose to be eligible, in order to procure

an establishment for their darling children! What the Prioress did was

done from the best motives of course. “Never--never did the monster see

Bessy without me, or one or two of her brothers and sisters, and Jack

and dear Ellen are as sharp children as any in England!” protested the

indignant Mrs. Prior to me; “and if one of my boys had been grown up,

Walkingham never would have dared to act as he did--the unprincipled

wretch! My poor husband would have punished the villain as he deserved;

but what could he do in his shattered state of health? Oh! you

men,--you men, Mr. Batchelor! how _unprincipled_ you are!”

“Why, my good Mrs. Prior,” said I, “you let Elizabeth come to my room

often enough.”

“To have the conversation of her uncle’s friend, of an educated man,

of a man so much older than herself! Of course, dear sir! Would not a

mother wish every advantage for her child? and whom could I trust, if

not you, who have ever been such a friend to me and mine?” asks Mrs.

Prior, wiping her dry eyes with the corner of her handkerchief, as

she stands by my fire, my monthly bills in hand,--written in her neat

old-fashioned writing, and calculated with that prodigal liberality

which she always exercised in compiling the little accounts between

us. “Why, bless me!” says my cousin, little Mrs. Skinner, coming to

see me once when I was unwell, and examining one of the just-mentioned

documents,--“bless me! Charles, you consume more tea than all my

family, though we are seven in the parlour, and as much sugar and

butter,--well, it’s no wonder you are bilious!”

“But then, my dear, I like my tea so _very_ strong,” says I; “and you

take yours uncommonly mild. I have remarked it at your parties.”

“It’s a shame that a man should be robbed so,” cried Mrs. S.

“How kind it is of you to cry thieves, Flora!” I reply.

“It’s my duty, Charles!” exclaims my cousin. “And I should like to know

who that great, tall, gawky red-haired girl in the passage is!”

Ah me! the name of the only woman who ever had possession of this heart

was not Elizabeth; though I own I did think at one time that my little

schemer of a landlady would not have objected if I had proposed to make

Miss Prior Mrs. Batchelor. And it is not only the poor and needy who

have this mania, but the rich, too. In the very highest circles, as

I am informed by the best authorities, this match-making goes on. Ah

woman--woman!--ah wedded wife!--ah fond mother of fair daughters! how

strange thy passion is to add to thy titles that of mother-in-law! I am

told, when you have got the title, it is often but a bitterness and a

disappointment. Very likely the son-in-law is rude to you, the coarse,

ungrateful brute! and very possibly the daughter rebels, the thankless

serpent! And yet you will go on scheming: and having met only with

disappointment from Louisa and her husband, you will try and get one

for Jemima, and Maria, and down even to little Toddles coming out of

the nursery in her red shoes! When you see her with little Tommy, your

neighbour’s child, fighting over the same Noah’s ark, or clambering

on the same rocking-horse, I make no doubt, in your fond silly head,

you are thinking, “Will those little people meet some twenty years

hence?” And you give Tommy a very large piece of cake, and have a fine

present for him on the Christmas tree--you know you do, though he is

but a rude, noisy child, and has already beaten Toddles, and taken her

doll away from her, and made her cry. I remember, when I myself was

suffering from the conduct of a young woman in--in a capital which

is distinguished by a viceregal court--and from _her_ heartlessness,

as well as that of her relative, who I once thought would be _my_

mother-in-law--shrieking out to a friend who happened to be spouting

some lines from Tennyson’s _Ulysses_:--“By George! Warrington, I

have no doubt that when the young syrens set their green caps at the

old Greek captain and his crew, waving and beckoning him with their

white arms and glancing smiles, and wheedling him with their sweetest

pipes--I make no doubt, sir, that _the mother syrens_ were behind the

rocks (with their dyed fronts and cheeks painted, so as to resist

water), and calling out--‘Now, Halcyone, my child, that air from the

Pirata! Now, Glaukopis, dear, look well at that old gentleman at the

helm! Bathykolpos, love, there’s a young sailor on the maintop, who

will tumble right down into your lap if you beckon him!’ And so on--and

so on.” And I laughed a wild shriek of despair. For I, too, have been

on the dangerous island, and come away thence, mad, furious, wanting a

strait-waistcoat.

And so, when a white-armed syren, named Glorvina, was bedevilling _me_

with her all too tempting ogling and singing, I did not see at the

time, but _now_ I know, that her artful mother was egging that artful

child on.

How when the captain died, bailiffs and executions took possession of

his premises, I have told in a previous page, nor do I care to enlarge

much upon the odious theme. I think the bailiffs were on the premises

before Prior’s exit: but he did not know of their presence. If I had

to buy them out, ’twas no great matter: only I say it _was_ hard of

Mrs. Prior to represent me in the character of Shylock to the Master of

Boniface. Well--well! I suppose there are other gentlemen besides Mr.

Charles Batchelor who have been misrepresented in this life. Sargent

and I made up matters afterwards, and Miss Bessy was the cause of our

coming together again. “Upon my word, my dear Batchelor,” says he one

Christmas, when I went up to the old college, “I did not know how much

my--ahem!--my family was obliged to you! My--ahem!--niece, Miss Prior,

has informed me of various acts of--ahem!--generosity which you showed

to my poor sister, and her still more wretched husband. You got my

second--ahem!--nephew--pardon me if I forget his Christian name--into

the what-d’you-call’em--Bluecoat school; you have been, on various

occasions, of considerable pecuniary service to my sister’s family. A

man need not take high university honours to have a good--ahem!--heart;

and, upon my word, Batchelor, I and my--ahem!--wife, are sincerely

obliged to you!”

“I tell you what, Master,” said I, “there _is_ a point upon which you

ought really to be obliged to me, and in which I have been the means of

putting money into your pocket too.”

“I confess I fail to comprehend you,” says the Master, with his

grandest air.

“I have got you and Mrs. Sargent a very good governess for your

children, at the very smallest remuneration,” says I.

“Do you know the charges that unhappy sister of mine and her family

have put me to already?” says the Master, turning as red as his hood.

“They have formed the frequent subject of your conversation,” I

replied. “You have had Bessy as a governess....”

“A nursery governess--she has learned Latin, and a great deal more,

since she has been in my house!” cries the Master.

“A nursery governess at the wages of a housemaid,” I continued, as bold

as Corinthian brass.

“Does my niece, does my--ahem!--children’s governess, complain of my

treatment in my college?” cries the Master.

“My dear Master,” I asked, “you don’t suppose I would have listened to

her complaints, or, at any rate, have repeated them, until now?”

“And why now, Batchelor, I should like to know?” says the Master,

pacing up and down his study in a fume, under the portraits of Holy

Bonifacius, Bishop Budgeon, and all the defunct bigwigs of the college.

“And why now, Batchelor, I should like to know?” says he.

“Because, though after staying with you for three years, and having

improved herself greatly, as every woman must in your society, my dear

Master, Miss Prior is worth at least fifty guineas a year more than you

give her, I would not have had her speak until she had found a better

place.”

“You mean to say she proposes to go away?”

“A wealthy friend of mine, who was a member of our college, by the way,

wants a nursery governess, and I have recommended Miss Prior to him, at

seventy guineas a year.”

“And pray who’s the member of my college who will give my niece seventy

guineas?” asks the Master, fiercely.

“You remember Lovel, the gentleman-pensioner?”

“The sugar-baking man--the man who took you out of ga...?”

“One good turn deserves another,” says I, hastily. “I have done as much

for some of your family, Sargent!”

The red Master, who had been rustling up and down his study in his

gown and bands, stopped in his walk as if I had struck him. He

looked at me. He turned redder than ever. He drew his hand over his

eyes. “Batchelor,” says he, “I ask your pardon. It was I who forgot

myself--may heaven forgive me!--forgot how good you have been to my

family, to my--ahem!--_humble_ family, and--and how devoutly thankful

I ought to be for the protection which they have found in you.” His

voice quite fell as he spoke; and of course any little wrath which I

might have felt was disarmed before his contrition. We parted the best

friends. He not only shook hands with me at the study door, but he

actually followed me to the hall door, and shook hands at his lodge

porch, _sub Jove_, in the quadrangle. Huckles, the tutor (Highlow

Huckles we used to call him in our time), and Botts (Trumperian

professor), who happened to be passing through the court at the time,

stood aghast as they witnessed the phenomenon.

“I say, Batchelor,” asks Huckles, “have you been made a marquis by any

chance?”

“Why a marquis, Huckles?” I ask.

“Sargent never comes to his lodge-door with any man under a marquis,”

says Huckles, in a low whisper.

“Or a pretty woman,” says that Botts (he _will_ have his joke).

“Batchelor, my elderly Tiresias, are you turned into a lovely young

lady _par hasard_?”

“Get along, you absurd Trumperian professor!” say I. But the

circumstance was the talk not only in Compotation Room that evening

over our wine, but of the whole college. And further, events happened

which made each man look at his neighbour with wonder. For that whole

term Sargent did not ask our nobleman Lord Sackville (Lord Wigmore’s

son) to the lodge. (Lord W.’s father, you know, Duff, was baker to

the college.) For that whole term he was rude but twice to Perks, the

junior tutor, and then only in a very mild way: and what is more, he

gave his niece a present of a gown, of his blessing, of a kiss, and a

high character, when she went down;--and promised to put one of her

young brothers to school--which promise, I need not say, he faithfully

kept: for he has good principles, Sargent has. He is rude: he is

ill-bred: he is _bumptious_ beyond almost any man I ever knew: he is

spoiled not a little by prosperity;--but he is magnanimous: he can own

that he has been in the wrong; and oh me! what a quantity of Greek he

knows!

Although my late friend the captain never seemed to do aught but spend

the family money, his disreputable presence somehow acted for good in

the household. “My dear husband kept our family together,” Mrs. Prior

said, shaking her lean head under her meagre widow’s cap. “Heaven

knows how I shall provide for these lambs now he is gone.” Indeed, it

was not until after the death of that tipsy shepherd that the wolves

of the law came down upon the lambs--myself included, who have passed

the age of lambhood and mint sauce a long time. They came down upon

our fold in Beak Street, I say, and ravaged it. What was I to do?

Could I leave that widow and children in their distress? I was not

ignorant of misfortune, and knew how to succour the miserable. Nay, I

think, the little excitement attendant upon the seizure of my goods,

&c., the insolent vulgarity of the low persons in possession--with

one of whom I was very near coming to a personal encounter--and other

incidents which occurred in the bereft household, served to rouse

me, and dissipate some of the languor and misery under which I was

suffering, in consequence of Miss Mulligan’s conduct to me. I know I

took the late captain to his final abode. My good friends the printers

of the _Museum_ took one of his boys into their counting-house. A blue

coat and a pair of yellow stockings were procured for Augustus; and

seeing the Master’s children walking about in Boniface gardens with

a glum-looking old wretch of a nurse, I bethought me of proposing to

him to take his niece Miss Prior--and, heaven be good to me! never

said one word to her uncle about Miss Bellenden and the Academy. I

daresay I drew a number of long bows about her. I managed about the

bad grammar pretty well, by lamenting that Elizabeth’s poor mother had

been forced to allow the girl to keep company with ill-educated people:

and added, that she could not fail to mend her English in the house

of one of the most distinguished scholars in Europe, and one of the

best-bred women. I did say so, upon my word, looking that half-bred

stuck-up Mrs. Sargent gravely in the face; and I humbly trust, if that

bouncer has been registered against me, the Recording Angel will be

pleased to consider that the motive was good, though the statement was

unjustifiable. But I don’t think it was the compliment: I think it was

the temptation of getting a governess for next to nothing that operated

upon Madam Sargent. And so Bessy went to her aunt, partook of the bread

of dependence, and drank of the cup of humiliation, and ate the pie of

humility, and brought up her odious little cousins to the best of her

small power, and bowed the head of hypocrisy before the don her uncle,

and the pompous little upstart her aunt. _She_ the best-bred woman in

England, indeed! She, the little vain skinflint!

Bessy’s mother was not a little loth to part with the fifty pounds a

year which the child brought home from the Academy; but her departure

thence was inevitable. Some quarrel had taken place there, about which

the girl did not care to talk. Some rudeness had been offered to Miss

Bellenden, to which Miss Prior was determined not to submit: or was it

that she wanted to go away from the scenes of her own misery, and to

try and forget that Indian captain? Come, fellow-sufferer! Come, child

of misfortune, come hither! Here is an old bachelor who will weep with

thee tear for tear!

I protest here is Miss Prior coming into the room at last. A pale face,

a tawny head of hair combed back, under a black cap: a pair of blue

spectacles, as I live! a tight mourning dress, buttoned up to her white

throat; a head hung meekly down: such is Miss Prior. She takes my hand

when I offer it. She drops me a demure little curtsey, and answers my

many questions with humble monosyllabic replies. She appeals constantly

to Lady Baker for instruction, or for confirmation of her statements.

What! have six years of slavery so changed the frank daring young girl

whom I remember in Beak Street? She is taller and stouter than she was.

She is awkward and high-shouldered, but surely she has a very fine

figure.

“Will Miss Cecy and Master Popham have their teas here or in the

schoolroom?” asks Bedford, the butler, of his master. Miss Prior looks

appealingly to Lady Baker.

“In the sch----” Lady Baker is beginning.

“Here--here!” bawl out the children. “Much better fun down here: and

you’ll send us out some fruit and things from dinner, papa!” cries Cecy.

“It’s time to dress for dinner,” says her ladyship.

“Has the first bell rung?” asks Lovel.

“Yes, the first bell has rung, and grandmamma must go, for it always

takes her a precious long time to dress for dinner!” cries Pop. And,

indeed, on looking at Lady Baker, the connoisseur might perceive that

her ladyship was a highly composite person, whose charms required very

much care and arrangement. There are some cracked old houses where the

painters and plumbers and puttyers are always at work.

“Have the goodness to ring the bell!” she says, in a majestic manner,

to Miss Prior, though I think Lady Baker herself was nearest.

I sprang towards the bell myself, and my hand meets Elizabeth’s there,

who was obeying her ladyship’s summons, and who retreats, making me the

demurest curtsey. At the summons, enter Bedford the butler (he was an

old friend of mine, too) and young Buttons, the page under that butler.

Lady Baker points to a heap of articles on a table, and says to

Bedford: “If you please, Bedford, tell my man to give those things to

Pinhorn, my maid, to be taken to my room.”

“Shall not I take them up, dear Lady Baker?” says Miss Prior.

But Bedford, looking at his subordinate, says: “Thomas! tell Bulkeley,

her ladyship’s man, to take her ladyship’s things, and give them to

her ladyship’s maid.” There was a tone of sarcasm, even of parody,

in Monsieur Bedford’s voice; but his manner was profoundly grave and

respectful. Drawing up her person, and making a motion, I don’t know

whether of politeness or defiance, exit Lady Baker, followed by page,

bearing bandboxes, shawls, paper parcels, parasols--I know not what.

Dear Popham stands on his head as grandmamma leaves the room. “Don’t be

vulgar!” cries little Cecy (the dear child is always acting as a little

Mentor to her brother). “I shall, if I like,” says Pop; and he makes

faces at her.

“You know your room, Batch?” asks the master of the house.

“Mr. Batchelor’s old room--always has the blue room,” says Bedford,

looking very kindly at me.

“Give us,” cries Lovel, “a bottle of that Sau....”

“... Terne, Mr. Batchelor used to like. Château Yquem. All right!”

says Mr. Bedford. “How will you have the turbot done you brought

down?--Dutch sauce?--Make lobster into salad? Mr. Bonnington likes

lobster salad,” says Bedford. Pop is winding up the butler’s back at

this time. It is evident Mr. Bedford is a privileged person in the

family. As he had entered it on my nomination several years ago, and

had been ever since the faithful valet, butler, and major-domo of

Lovel, Bedford and I were always good friends when we met.

“By the way, Bedford, why wasn’t the barouche sent for me to the

bridge?” cries Lovel. “I had to walk all the way home, with a bat and

stumps for Pop, with the basket of fish, and that bandbox with my

lady’s----”

“He--he!” grins Bedford.

“‘He--he!’ Confound you, why do you stand grinning there? Why didn’t I

have the carriage, I say?” bawls the master of the house.

“_You_ know, sir,” says Bedford. “_She_ had the carriage.” And he

indicated the door through which Lady Baker had just retreated.

“Then why didn’t I have the phaeton?” asks Bedford’s master.

“Your ma and Mr. Bonnington had the phaeton.”

“And why shouldn’t they, pray? Mr. Bonnington is lame: I’m at my

business all day. I should like to know why they _shouldn’t_ have the

phaeton?” says Lovel, appealing to me. As we had been sitting talking

together previous to Miss Prior’s appearance, Lady Baker had said

to Lovel, “Your mother and Mr. Bonnington are coming to dinner _of

course_, Frederick;” and Lovel had said, “Of course they are,” with a

peevish bluster, whereof I now began to understand the meaning. The

fact was, these two women were fighting for the possession of this

child; but who was the Solomon to say which should have him? Not I.

_Nenni._ I put my oar in no man’s boat. Give me an easy life, my dear

friends, and row me gently over.

“You had better go and dress,” says Bedford sternly, looking at his

master; “the first bell has rung this quarter of an hour. Will you have

some 34?”

Lovel started up; he looked at the clock. “You are all ready, Batch,

I see. I hope you are going to stay some time, ain’t you?” And he

disappeared to array himself in his sables and starch. I was thus alone

with Miss Prior, and her young charges, who resumed straightway their

infantine gambols and quarrels.

“My dear Bessy!” I cry, holding out both hands, “I am heartily glad

to----”

“_Ne m’appelez que de mon nom paternel devant tout ce monde s’il vous

plait, mon cher ami, mon bon protecteur!_” she says, hastily, in very

good French, folding her hands and making a curtsey.

“_Oui, oui, oui! Parlez-vous Français? J’aime, tu aimes, il aime!_”

cries out dear Master Popham. “What are you talking about? Here’s the

phaeton!” and the young innocent dashes through the open window on to

the lawn, whither he is followed by his sister, and where we see the

carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington rolling over the smooth

walk.

Bessy advances towards me, and gives me readily enough now the hand she

had refused anon.

“I never thought you would have refused it, Bessy,” said I.

“Refuse it to the best friend I ever had!” she says, pressing my hand.

“Ah, dear Mr. Batchelor, what an ungrateful wretch I should be, if I

did!”

“Let me see your eyes. Why do you wear spectacles? You never wore them

in Beak Street,” I say. You see I was very fond of the child. She had

wound herself around me in a thousand fond ways. Owing to a certain

Person’s conduct my heart may be a ruin--a Persepolis, sir--a perfect

Tadmor. But what then? May not a traveller rest under its shattered

columns? May not an Arab maid repose there till the morning dawns and

the caravan passes on? Yes, my heart is a Palmyra, and once a queen

inhabited me (O Zenobia! Zenobia! to think thou shouldst have been

led away captive by an O’D.!) Now, I am alone, alone in the solitary

wilderness. Nevertheless, if a stranger comes to me I have a spring for

his weary feet, I will give him the shelter of my shade. Rest thy cheek

awhile, young maiden, on my marble--then go thy ways, and leave me.

This I thought, or something to this effect, as in reply to my remark,

“Let me see your eyes,” Bessy took off her spectacles, and I took

them up and looked at her. Why didn’t I say to her, “My dear brave

Elizabeth! as I look in your face, I see you have had an awful deal of

suffering. Your eyes are inscrutably sad. We who are initiated, know

the members of our Community of Sorrow. We have both been wrecked in

different ships, and been cast on this shore. Let us go hand-in-hand,

and find a cave and a shelter somewhere together.” I say, why didn’t I

say this to her? She would have come, I feel sure she would. We would

have been semi-attached as it were. We would have locked up that room

in either heart where the skeleton was, and said nothing about it, and

pulled down the party-wall and taken our mild tea in the garden. I live

in Pump Court now. It would have been better than this dingy loneliness

and a snuffy laundress who bullies me. But for Bessy? Well--well,

perhaps better for her too.

I remember these thoughts rushing through my mind whilst I held

the spectacles. What a number of other things too? I remember two

canaries making a tremendous concert in their cage. I remember the

voices of the two children quarrelling on the lawn, the sound of the

carriage-wheels grinding over the gravel; and then of a little old

familiar cracked voice in my ear, with a “La, Mr. Batchelor! are _you_

here?” And a sly face looks up at me from under an old bonnet.

“It is mamma,” says Bessy.

“And I’m come to tea with Elizabeth and the dear children; and

while you are at dinner, dear Mr. Batchelor, thankful--thankful for

all mercies! And, dear me! here is Mrs. Bonnington, I do declare!

Dear madam, how well you look--not twenty, I declare! And dear Mr.

Bonnington! Oh, sir! let me--let me, I _must_ press your hand. What a

sermon last Sunday! All Putney was in tears!”

And the little woman, flinging out her lean arms, seizes portly Mr.

Bonnington’s fat hand: as he and kind Mrs. Bonnington enter at the

open casement. The little woman seems inclined to do the honours of

the house. “And won’t you go upstairs, and put on your cap? Dear me,

what a lovely ribbon! How blue does become Mrs. Bonnington! I always

say so to Elizabeth,” she cries, peeping into a little packet which

Mrs. Bonnington bears in her hand. After exchanging friendly words and

greetings with me, that lady retires to put the lovely cap on, followed

by her little jackal of an aide-de-camp. The portly clergyman surveys

his pleased person in the spacious mirror. “Your things are in your

old room--like to go in, and brush up a bit?” whispers Bedford to me.

I am obliged to go, you see, though, for my part, I had thought, until

Bedford spoke, that the ride on the top of the Putney omnibus had left

me without any need of brushing; having aired my clothes, and given my

young cheek a fresh and agreeable bloom.

My old room, as Bedford calls it, was that snug apartment communicating

by double doors with the drawing-room, and whence you can walk on to

the lawn out of the windows.

“Here’s your books, here’s your writing-paper,” says Bedford, leading

the way into the chamber. “Does sore eyes good to see _you_ down here

again, sir. You may smoke now. Clarence Baker smokes when he comes.

Go and get some of that wine you like for dinner.” And the good

fellow’s eyes beam kindness upon me as he nods his head, and departs to

superintend the duties of his table. Of course you understand that this

Bedford was my young printer’s boy of former days. What a queer fellow!

I had not only been kind to him, but he was grateful.

An Essay without End.

To some reader, perhaps, an essay without end may appear odd, and

opposed to the regular order of things; but if he will kindly imagine

the line written on his gravestone--and it is an epitaph which my own

ghost would regard with particular satisfaction--he will at once see

that it is by no means singular. And whatever propriety there may be in

its application to human life, extends to any process of thought; for

thought, like life, is essential, without beginning and without end.

It is this which makes abstract reflection so unsatisfying. An

abstract thought is a sort of disembodied spirit; and when matched

with its kind, the result is generally a progeny of ghosts and

chimeras--numerous, but incapable. In fact, we do not often get so

much as that out of it. Abstract thought generally travels backward.

Childless itself, it goes upon its own pedigree; and as that becomes

mysterious in proportion as it is remote, we soon find ourselves in

a company of shadows, too vast to contemplate and too subtle for

apprehension.

Again it is with thought as it is with life (I should say “soul,” if

the word had not been hackneyed out of all endurance--but then the

poets have exhausted nature)--it must be married to something material

before you can hope to get good fruit from it--capable of continuing

the species. Luckily, anything will do. It seems to have been foreseen

from the creation that thought would scarcely prove prolific, unless

it might be kindled at every sense and by every object in the world.

Experience more than proves the justness of that foresight, and thus

we have sermons in stones. By a bountiful provision, the human mind is

capable of immediate and fruitful alliance with a bough, a brook, a

cloud--all that the eye may see or the ear echo. It may be observed,

too, that just as Sir Cassian Creme strengthens the blood of his

ancient and delicate house by an alliance with his dairy-woman, so a

cultivated mind may produce more vigorous progeny by intimacy with

an atom than with any long-descended speculation on the Soul, say.

Coleridge’s method of thinking is much to the purpose, and what came of

it as a whole?

For amusement’s sake, let us carry theory into practice. Let us try

what course of reflection we may get by contemplating the first

natural object that comes to hand. The field is wide enough: there is

Parnassus, and there is Holborn Hill. But there are too many squatters

on the former eminence already, perhaps; and besides, a kind of Bedlam

is said to have arisen about the base of it lately, beyond which few

adventurers are known to proceed. Our aspirations are humble--we may

choose the lesser hill.

“Alas, then!” says the dear reader, “we are to have some antiquarian

reflections. Better Parnassus and Bedlam!”--Fear not. Providence,

which has otherwise been very good to me, gave me a Protestant

mind; and while therein exists no disposition to adore St. Botolph’s

toes, or to worship St. Pancras’s well-preserved tibia, I am equally

unenthusiastic about Pope’s nightcap, I don’t care a fig for Queen

Anne’s farthings, and I would not go round the corner to behold the

site of the Chelsea bunhouse. There is little, after all, in bricks,

bones, and the coffins of men; but a glimpse into the lives of men, or

into the eyes of nature--that is another thing.

The one may always be had in London, the other never could be had, were

it not for Holborn Hill. Circumstances permitting, every city ought to

be built on a hill; for reasons of morality, and therefore for reasons

of state. No doubt, there is a certain agreeable monotony in levels,

gentle gradients, and a perspicuous network of streets; they may even

impose a wholesome contrast upon the minds of well-to-do citizens, who

go “out of town.” But what of the ill-to-do citizen, who never leaves

its walls? Not only do the bare hard streets present to him no natural

thing, but with strait lines of brick on every side, a stony plane at

his feet, and a flat dull roof over all, he gets no hint of a natural

thing; and all that is artificial in him is hardened and encouraged.

But suppose the city streets wind up and down and round about a hill?

Then by no devices of brick or stone can you keep out the country.

Then Nature defies your macadamization and your chimney stacks; it is

impossible to forget her, or to escape her religious gaze.

When did it occur to any ordinary person walking Bond Street, that once

there had been turf there, and a running about of beetles? On the other

hand, what man of any kind looks over the little Fleet valley to where

Holborn Hill rises on the other side, without wondering how the houses

came there--without feeling that they are only another sort of tents,

pitched upon the earth for a time? “They, too, have to be struck,” says

he, “and there is everywhere wandering away!”

The result is, then, that he hits upon a reflection, which is, I do not

say profound, but at the bottom of all profundity, so far as we have

plumbed it. This reflection is to be found in the sap, fibre, and fruit

of all morality, all law, philosophy, and religion. There is nothing

like it to move the hearts of men; the heart it _cannot_ move belongs

to an atheist (which creature, and not the ape, as some have supposed,

is the link between brutes and men), the heart which it _has not_

moved, to one quite unawakened. For instance, those who fill the gaols;

the society of thieves; the scum of the population, as it is termed,

fermenting in alleys and poisoning the state. We have reformatories

for the young of this breed, whom we endeavour to reclaim by reading,

writing, and arithmetic--attendance at chapel, and book-keeping by

double entry. But when you have put the young reprobate through all

these exercises, you have only succeeded in making gravel walks in a

wilderness; and though from those trim avenues you may scatter good

seed enough, it perishes on the soil, or withers in a tangle of weeds.

After all our labour and seed-scattering, we still complain that it

is so hard to reach the heart. Now here we have the best means of

touching it, perhaps. Let there be found some Professor of Time and

Eternity, skilled to show how the world goes--and _is going_: who

should exhibit, as in a wizard’s glass, the unending procession of

human life. The Roman in his pride, a hundred million Romans in their

pride--all perished; millions of elegant Greeks, with their elegant

wives and mistresses, all perished; Attila’s thundering hosts riding

off the scene--vanished: the clatter of their spears, the fury of their

eyes, the tossing of their shaggy hair, the cloud of thoughts that

moved upon their faces--they and all that belonged to them.

Not that these personages make the most affecting groups in the series

of dissolving views which illustrate the history of the world. I

would rather confine myself to Holborn Hill, were I professor, in a

penitentiary, of Time and Eternity; and between the period when it lay

solitary in the moonlight, clothed with grass, crowned with trees,

bitterns booming by the river below, while some wild mother lay under

the branches singing to her baby in a tongue dead as herself now--from

that time to the present there has been a very pretty striking of

tents and wandering away. Quite enough for any professor’s purpose.

Quite enough, if impressed upon an ignorant vicious heart, to prepare

it for a better--certainly for a more responsible life. Your young

reprobate will never perceive his relations to his Creator, till he

has discovered the relations of mankind to creation, and his own place

among mankind. You desire him to contemplate the Future: he cannot do

it till he is shown the Past.

There is a Scripture text apropos of this, which I have longed many a

day to sermonize upon, but we are far enough from Holborn Hill already;

and apart from moral and mental considerations, it is a sufficient

reason for building cities in hilly places, if the hard-worked, captive

people are thus kept in remembrance of the country, and its peace and

health. This is a luxury as well as a good; delight to the senses, as

well as medicine for the mind. Some of us love nature with a large

and personal love. I am sure I do, for one. Thinking of her, immured

in London as I am, I think also of that prisoner in the Bastille, who

prayed Monseigneur for “some tidings of my poor wife, were it only her

name upon a card.” Were I a prisoner long, I should pray not only for

that, but for some tidings of my mistress Nature, were it only her name

in a leaf. And whereas some of us who have sweethearts go prowling

about the dear one’s house, searching through the walls for her, so at

favourable opportunities I search for my mistress through the bricks

and stones of Holborn Hill. In the noon of a midsummer day, with the

roar of carts, waggons, Atlas and other omnibusses rattling in my ears,

with that little bill of Timmins’s on my mind, how have I seen it clad

in green, the stream running in the hollow, and white dandelion tufts

floating in the air. There a grasshopper chirped; a bee hummed, going

his way; and countless small creatures, burrowing in the grass, buzzed

and whirred like a company of small cotton-spinners with all their

looms at work. Practically, there is no standing timber within several

miles of the place; but if I have not seen trees where an alamode beef

business is supposed to be carried on, I am blind. I have seen trees,

and heard the blackbird whistle.

There is much significance, under the circumstances, in hearing the

blackbird whistle. It is a proof that to me there was perfect silence.

The peculiarity of this animal is, that he _makes_ silence. The more

he whistles, the more still is all nature beside. It is not difficult

to imagine him a sort of fugleman, herald, or black rod, going between

earth and heaven in the interest of either. Take a case: an evening in

autumn. About six o’clock there comes a shower of rain, a bountiful

shower, all in shilling drops. The earth drinks and drinks, holding its

breath; while the trees make a pleasant noise, their leaves kissing

each other for joy. Presently the rain ceases. Drops fall one by one,

lazily, from the satisfied boughs, and sink to the roots of the grass,

lying there in store. Then the blackbird, already on duty in his

favourite tree, sounds his bugle-note. “Attention!” sings he to the

winds big and little; “the earth will return thanks.” Whereupon there

is a stillness deep as--no, not as death, but a silence so profound

that it seems as if it were itself the secret of life, that profoundest

thing. This your own poor carcase appears to recognize. The little

life therein--not more than a quart pot full--knows the presence of

the great ocean from which it was taken, and yearns. It stirs in its

earthen vessel; you feel it moving in your very fingers; you may almost

hear your right hand calling to the left, “I live! I live!” Silence

proclaimed, thanksgiving begins. There is a sensation of the sound of

ten thousand voices, and the swinging of ten thousand censers; besides

the audible singing of birds, the humming of beetles, and the noise of

small things which praise the Lord by rubbing their legs together.

This bird seems to take another important part in the scheme of nature,

worth mentioning.

Everybody--everybody at least who has watched by a sick-bed--knows that

days have their appointed time, and die as well as men. There is one

awful minute in the twenty-four hours when the day palpably expires,

and then there is a reach of utter vacancy, of coldness and darkness;

and then a new day is born, and earth, reassured, throbs again. This

is not a fancy; or if so, is it from fancy that so many people die

in this awful hour (“between the night and the morning,” nurses call

it), or that sick men grow paler, fainter, more insensible? I think

not. To appearance they are plainly washed down by the ebbing night,

and plainly stranded so near the verge of death that its waters wash

over them. Now, in five minutes, the sick man is floated away and is

gone; or the new day comes, snatches him to its bosom, and bears him

back to us; and we know that he will live. I hope I shall die between

the night and the morning, so peacefully do we drift away then. But

ah! blessed Morning, I am not ungrateful. That long-legged daughter of

mine, aged eight at present, did you not bring her back to me in your

mysterious way? At half-past two, we said, “Gone!” and began to howl.

Three minutes afterward, a breath swept over her limbs; five minutes

afterward there was a blush like a reflected light upon her face;

seven minutes, and whose eyes but hers should open, bright and pure as

two blue stars? We had studied those stars; and read at a glance that

our little one had again entered the House of Life.

Our baby’s dying and her new birth is an exact type of the death and

birth of the day. One description serves for both. As she sank away,

fainting and cold, so night expires. This takes place at various

times, according to the season; but generally about two o’clock in the

morning in these latitudes. If you happen to be watching or working

within doors, you may note the time by a coldness and shuddering in

your limbs, and by the sudden waning of the fire, in spite of your

best efforts to keep it bright and cheerful. Then a wind--generally

not a very gentle one--sweeps through the streets--_once_: it does not

return, but hurries straight on, leaving all calm behind it: that is

the breath that passed over the child. Now a blush suffuses the East,

and then open the violet eyes of the day, bright and pure as if there

were no death in the world, nor sin. All which the blackbird seems to

announce to the natural world below. The wind we spoke of warns him;

whereupon he takes his head from under his wing, and keeps a steady

look-out toward the East. As soon as the glory of the morning appears,

he sings his soldierly song; as soon as he sings, smaller fowl wake and

listen, and peep about quietly; when--there comes the day overhead,

sailing in the topmost air, in the golden boat with the purple sails.

And the little winds that blow in the sails--here come they, swooping

over the meadows, scudding along hedgerows, bounding into the big

trees, and away to fill those purple sails again, not only with a

wind, but with a hundred perfumes, and airs heavy with the echoes of a

hundred songs.[25]

I wish I were a poet; you should have a description of all this in

verses, and welcome. But if I were a musician! Let us see what we

should do as musicians. First, you should hear the distant sound of

a bugle, which sound should float away: that is one of the heralds

of the morning, flying southward. Then another should issue from the

eastern gates; and now the grand _reveillé_ should grow, sweep past

your ears (like the wind aforesaid), and go on, dying as it goes.

When as it dies, my stringed instruments come in. These to the left

of the orchestra break into a soft slow movement, the music swaying

drowsily from side to side, as it were, with a noise like the rustling

of boughs. It must not be much of a noise, however, for my stringed

instruments to the right have begun the very song of the morning.

The bows tremble upon the strings, like the limbs of a dancer, who,

a-tiptoe, prepares to bound into her ecstacy of motion. Away! The song

soars into the air as if it had the wings of a kite. Here swooping,

there swooping, wheeling upward, falling suddenly, checked, poised

for a moment on quivering wings, and again away. It is waltz time,

and you hear the Hours dancing to it. Then the horns. Their melody

overflows into the air richly, like honey of Hybla; it wafts down in

lazy gusts, like the scent of the thyme from that hill. So my stringed

instruments to the left cease rustling, listen a little while, catch

the music of those others, and follow it. Now for the rising of the

lark! Henceforward it is a chorus, and he is the leader thereof. Heaven

and earth agree to follow him. I have a part for the brooks--their

notes drop, drop, drop, like his: for the woods--they sob like him.

At length, nothing remains but to blow the hautboys; and just as the

chorus arrives at its fulness, they come maundering in. They have a

sweet old blundering “cow-song” to themselves--a silly thing, made of

the echoes of all pastoral sounds. There’s a warbling waggoner in it,

and his team jingling their bells. There’s a shepherd driving his flock

from the fold, bleating; and the lowing of cattle.--Down falls the lark

like a stone: it is time he looked for grubs. Then the hautboys go

out, gradually; for the waggoner is far on his road to market; sheep

cease to bleat and cattle to low, one by one; they are on their grazing

ground, and the business of the day is begun. Last of all, the heavenly

music sweeps away to waken more westering lands, over the Atlantic and

its whitening sails.

And to think this goes on every day, and every day has been repeated

for a thousand years! Generally, though, we don’t like to think about

that, as Mr. Kingsley has remarked, among others; for when he wrote,

“Is it not a grand thought, the silence and permanence of nature amid

the perpetual noise and flux of human life!--a grand thought, that one

generation goeth and another cometh, and the earth abideth for ever?”

he also meant, “Isn’t it a melancholy thought?” For my part, I believe

this reflection to be the fount of all that melancholy which is in man.

I speak in the broadest sense, meaning that whereas whenever you find a

man you find a melancholy animal, this is the secret of his melancholy.

The thought is so common and so old; it has afflicted so many men in

so many generations with a sort of philosophical sadness, that it

comes down to us like an hereditary disease, of which we have lost the

origin, and almost the consciousness. It is an universal disposition

to melancholy madness, in short. Savages who run wild in woods are

not less liable to its influence than we who walk in civilized Pall

Mall. On the contrary, a savage of any brains at all is the most

melancholy creature in the world. Not Donizetti, nor Mendelssohn,

nor Beethoven himself ever composed such sad songs as are drummed

on tom-toms, or piped through reeds, or chanted on the prairies and

lagoons of savage land. No music was ever conceived within the walls of

a city so profoundly touching as that which Irish pipers and British

harpers made before an arch was built in England. Now this bears out

our supposition; for the savage with the tom-tom, the piper with his

pipe, the harper with his harp, lived always in sight of nature. Their

little fussy lives and noisy works were ever in contrast with its

silence and permanence; change and decay with the constant seasons and

the everlasting hills. Who cannot understand the red man’s reverence

for inanimate nature read by this light--especially his reverence for

the setting sun? For the night cometh, reminding him of his own little

candle of an existence, while he knows that the great orb has risen

upon a hundred generations of hunters, and will rise upon a hundred

more. As for him and his works, his knife will be buried with him, and

there an end of him and his works.

And we Europeans to-day are in the same case with regard to the

silence and permanence of Nature, contrasted with the perpetual flux

and noise of human life. Who thinks of his death without thinking of

it? who thinks of it without thinking of his death? Mother, whose

thoughts dwell about her baby in churchyard lying; Mary, of sister

Margaret who died last year, or of John who was lost at sea, say first

and last--“There the sea rolls, ever as ever; and rages and smiles,

and surges and sighs just the same; and were you and I and the whole

world to be drowned to-day, and all the brave ships to go down with

standing sails, to-morrow there would not be a drop the more in the

ocean, nor on its surface a smile the less. Doesn’t the rain rain upon

my baby’s grave, and the sun shine upon it, as indifferent as if there

were neither babies nor mothers in the world?” Why, this strain is to

be found in all the poetry that ever was written. Walter Mapes may be

quoted, with his, “I propose to end my days in a tavern drinking,” but

his and all such songs merely result from a wild effort to divorce this

“grand thought” from the mind.

But we need not go to America for a red Indian, nor afield to the

hills for illustration; that is to be found in the impression produced

on many thoughtful minds by the contemplation of social life in any

two periods. We behold Sir Richard Steele boozing unto maudlinness in

purple velvet and a laced hat; Captain Mohock raging through Fleet

Street with a drawn rapier; reprobate old duchesses and the damsels who

were to be our grandmothers sitting in the same pew, and then looking

about us, say--“Here we are again!--the duchess on the settee, Mohock

lounging against the mantelpiece, Dick Steele hiccuping on the stairs

in a white neckcloth. There they go through the little comedy of life,

in ruffles and paste buckles; here go we in swallow-tails and patent

leathers. Mohock married, and was henpecked: young Sanglant is to be

married to-morrow. The duchess being dead, one of those demure little

damsels takes up the tradition, and certain changes of costume having

been accomplished, becomes another wicked old woman; and so it goes

on. They die, and we die; and meanwhile the world goes steadily round.

There is sowing and reaping, and there are select parties, and green

peas in their season, and oh! this twopenny life!”

Mind you, I have other ideas. What is all this melancholy, at bottom,

but stupidity and ingratitude? Are we miserable because He who made

all beautiful things preserves them to us for ever? True, He has set

bounds to intellect, and to aspirations which, when they are most

largely achieved, do not always work for pure and useful ends; true,

He does not permit us to become too impious in our pride by giving

eternity to the Parthenons and telegraphs that we make such a noise

about; _but_, all that is really good, and beautiful, and profitable

for man, is everlastingly his. The lovely world that Adam beheld is

not only the same to-day, it is created and given to us anew every

day. What have we said about morning, which is born again (for _us_,

for little ones, the ignorant, the blind, who could not see at all

yesterday) three hundred and sixty-five times in a year--every time

as fresh, and new, and innocent as that which first dawned over Eden?

Now, considering how much iniquity and blindness all the _nights_ have

fallen upon, I must think this a bountiful arrangement, and one which

need not make us unhappy. I love to think the air I breathe through

my open window is the same that wandered through Paradise before our

first mother breathed; that the primroses which grow to-day in our dear

old woods are such as decked the bank on which she slept before sin

and death came into the world; and that our children shall find them,

neither better nor worse, when our names are clean forgotten. And is

it nothing that if we have all death, we have all youth?--brand-new

affections and emotions--a mind itself a new and separate creation, as

much as is any one star among the rest? In the heavens there is a tract

of light called the Milky Way, which to the common eye appears no more

than a luminous cloud. But astronomers tell us that this vast river

of light is a universe, in which individual stars are so many that

they are like the sands on the shore. We cannot see each grain of sand

here on Brighton beach, we cannot see the separate stars of the Milky

Way, nor its suns and great planets, with all our appliances; and yet

each of those orbs has its path, rolling along on its own business--a

world. On learning which we are bewildered with astonishment and awe.

But here below is another shifting cloud, called “the human race.”

Thousands of years it has swept over the earth in great tracts, coming

and going. And this vast quicksand is made up of millions and millions

of individual _I_’s, each a man, a separate, distinct creation; each

travelling its path, which none other can travel; each bearing its own

life, which is no other’s--a world. I think this ought to strike us

with as much awe as that other creation. I think we ought to be filled

with as much gratitude for our own planetary being as astonishment at

the spectacle of any Milky Way whatever. And I only wish that we, the

human race, shone in the eyes of heaven with the light of virtue like

another Milky Way.

Created, then, so purely of ourselves, this is the result with

regard to the natural world about us: that with our own feelings and

affections, we _discover_, each for himself, all the glory of the

universe. And therefore is nature eternal, unchangeable--that all men

may know the whole goodness of God. Whose eyes but mine first saw the

sun set? Some old Chaldean, some dweller in drowned Atlantis, imagined

the feelings of Adam when _he_ first saw the sun go down; ever

since when, this poetical imagining has been going about the world,

and people have envied Adam that one grandest chance of getting a

“sensation.” Why, the Chaldean was Adam! I’m Adam! The sun was created

with me, with you; and by and by, when we had got over the morning of

infancy, we sat on a wall, in a field, on a hill, at our own little

bedroom window, and our childish eyes being by that time opened, we saw

the sun go down for the first time.

Nor are these pleasures and advantages confined to the external world,

to the sensations it inspires, or the influence it exerts upon us. No

human passion, no emotion, the fiercest or the tenderest, comes to us

at second hand. The experience and observation of a thousand years,

all the metaphysical, and poetical, and dramatic books that ever were

written, cannot add a jot to the duration or intensity of any emotion

of ours. They may exercise it, but they cannot form it, nor instruct

it; nor, were they fifty times as many and as profound, could they

dwarf it. It lies in our hearts an original creation, complete, alone:

like my life and yours. Now see how this arrangement works. When, dear

madam, your little Billy was born, all that wondering delight, that

awful tremor of joy, which possessed the heart of the first mother,

was _yours_. You may have seen a piece of sculpture called the First

Cradle. There sits Eve, brooding over her two boys, rocking them

backward and forward in her arms and on her knees--wondering, awe-full,

breathless with joy, drowned in a new flood of love. “Ah!” says the

tender, child-loving female spectator, “what would not one give to

have been that first mother, to have made with one’s arms the first

cradle!” Ignorant soul! One would think, to hear her talk, that the

gifts of heaven grow threadbare by course of time, and that in 1860

we have only the rags thereof! Don’t believe it, for there is another

side to the question! If the gifts and rewards of heaven are paid in

new coin, minted for you, with your effigies stamped upon it, so are

the punishments. The flight of Cain when Abel was killed--Bill Sykes’s

was every way as terrible; and any incipient poisoner who may happen to

read this page may assure himself, that his new and improved process

of murder--whatever advantages it may otherwise offer--is not specific

against the torments of him who first shed blood: no, nor against any

one of them.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] This paper was written a year ago. Mr. Mattieu Williams, in his

book _Through Norway with a Knapsack_, has since confirmed my fancy

that every day dies a natural death. In Scandinavia, there is a

midnight sun; and Mr. Williams says that although the altitude of the

sun is the same ten minutes before twelve as ten minutes after, there

is a perceptible difference in atmospheric tone and colour--“the usual

difference between evening and morning, sunset and sunrise; the light

having a warmer tint before than after midnight.”

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a

predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they

were not changed. This magazine uses colons in places where modern text

uses semi-colons.

Possible spelling and typographical errors were not changed; unbalanced

quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and

otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs.

Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been renumbered and

placed at the ends of the articles that reference them.