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Charles Dickens

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Reprinted Pieces

by Charles Dickens

April, 1997 [Etext #872]

Project Gutenberg's Etext of Reprinted Pieces, by Charles Dickens

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Reprinted Pieces by Charles Dickens

Scanned and proofed by David Price

ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

Reprinted Pieces

THE LONG VOYAGE

WHEN the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against

the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I

have read in books of voyage and travel. Such books have had a

strong fascination for my mind from my earliest childhood; and I

wonder it should have come to pass that I never have been round the

world, never have been shipwrecked, ice-environed, tomahawked, or

eaten.

Sitting on my ruddy hearth in the twilight of New Year's Eve, I

find incidents of travel rise around me from all the latitudes and

longitudes of the globe. They observe no order or sequence, but

appear and vanish as they will - 'come like shadows, so depart.'

Columbus, alone upon the sea with his disaffected crew, looks over

the waste of waters from his high station on the poop of his ship,

and sees the first uncertain glimmer of the light, 'rising and

falling with the waves, like a torch in the bark of some

fisherman,' which is the shining star of a new world. Bruce is

caged in Abyssinia, surrounded by the gory horrors which shall

often startle him out of his sleep at home when years have passed

away. Franklin, come to the end of his unhappy overland journey -

would that it had been his last! - lies perishing of hunger with

his brave companions: each emaciated figure stretched upon its

miserable bed without the power to rise: all, dividing the weary

days between their prayers, their remembrances of the dear ones at

home, and conversation on the pleasures of eating; the last-named

topic being ever present to them, likewise, in their dreams. All

the African travellers, wayworn, solitary and sad, submit

themselves again to drunken, murderous, man-selling despots, of the

lowest order of humanity; and Mungo Park, fainting under a tree and

succoured by a woman, gratefully remembers how his Good Samaritan

has always come to him in woman's shape, the wide world over.

A shadow on the wall in which my mind's eye can discern some traces

of a rocky sea-coast, recalls to me a fearful story of travel

derived from that unpromising narrator of such stories, a

parliamentary blue-book. A convict is its chief figure, and this

man escapes with other prisoners from a penal settlement. It is an

island, and they seize a boat, and get to the main land. Their way

is by a rugged and precipitous sea-shore, and they have no earthly

hope of ultimate escape, for the party of soldiers despatched by an

easier course to cut them off, must inevitably arrive at their

distant bourne long before them, and retake them if by any hazard

they survive the horrors of the way. Famine, as they all must have

foreseen, besets them early in their course. Some of the party die

and are eaten; some are murdered by the rest and eaten. This one

awful creature eats his fill, and sustains his strength, and lives

on to be recaptured and taken back. The unrelateable experiences

through which he has passed have been so tremendous, that he is not

hanged as he might be, but goes back to his old chained-gang work.

A little time, and he tempts one other prisoner away, seizes

another boat, and flies once more - necessarily in the old hopeless

direction, for he can take no other. He is soon cut off, and met

by the pursuing party face to face, upon the beach. He is alone.

In his former journey he acquired an inappeasable relish for his

dreadful food. He urged the new man away, expressly to kill him

and eat him. In the pockets on one side of his coarse convict-

dress, are portions of the man's body, on which he is regaling; in

the pockets on the other side is an untouched store of salted pork

(stolen before he left the island) for which he has no appetite.

He is taken back, and he is hanged. But I shall never see that

sea-beach on the wall or in the fire, without him, solitary

monster, eating as he prowls along, while the sea rages and rises

at him.

Captain Bligh (a worse man to be entrusted with arbitrary power

there could scarcely be) is handed over the side of the Bounty, and

turned adrift on the wide ocean in an open boat, by order of

Fletcher Christian, one of his officers, at this very minute.

Another flash of my fire, and 'Thursday October Christian,' five-

and-twenty years of age, son of the dead and gone Fletcher by a

savage mother, leaps aboard His Majesty's ship Briton, hove-to off

Pitcairn's Island; says his simple grace before eating, in good

English; and knows that a pretty little animal on board is called a

dog, because in his childhood he had heard of such strange

creatures from his father and the other mutineers, grown grey under

the shade of the bread-fruit trees, speaking of their lost country

far away.

See the Halsewell, East Indiaman outward bound, driving madly on a

January night towards the rocks near Seacombe, on the island of

Purbeck! The captain's two dear daughters are aboard, and five

other ladies. The ship has been driving many hours, has seven feet

water in her hold, and her mainmast has been cut away. The

description of her loss, familiar to me from my early boyhood,

seems to be read aloud as she rushes to her destiny.

'About two in the morning of Friday the sixth of January, the ship

still driving, and approaching very fast to the shore, Mr. Henry

Meriton, the second mate, went again into the cuddy, where the

captain then was. Another conversation taking place, Captain

Pierce expressed extreme anxiety for the preservation of his

beloved daughters, and earnestly asked the officer if he could

devise any method of saving them. On his answering with great

concern, that he feared it would be impossible, but that their only

chance would be to wait for morning, the captain lifted up his

hands in silent and distressful ejaculation.

'At this dreadful moment, the ship struck, with such violence as to

dash the heads of those standing in the cuddy against the deck

above them, and the shock was accompanied by a shriek of horror

that burst at one instant from every quarter of the ship.

'Many of the seamen, who had been remarkably inattentive and remiss

in their duty during great part of the storm, now poured upon deck,

where no exertions of the officers could keep them, while their

assistance might have been useful. They had actually skulked in

their hammocks, leaving the working of the pumps and other

necessary labours to the officers of the ship, and the soldiers,

who had made uncommon exertions. Roused by a sense of their

danger, the same seamen, at this moment, in frantic exclamations,

demanded of heaven and their fellow-sufferers that succour which

their own efforts, timely made, might possibly have procured.

'The ship continued to beat on the rocks; and soon bilging, fell

with her broadside towards the shore. When she struck, a number of

the men climbed up the ensign-staff, under an apprehension of her

immediately going to pieces.

'Mr. Meriton, at this crisis, offered to these unhappy beings the

best advice which could be given; he recommended that all should

come to the side of the ship lying lowest on the rocks, and singly

to take the opportunities which might then offer, of escaping to

the shore.

'Having thus provided, to the utmost of his power, for the safety

of the desponding crew, he returned to the round-house, where, by

this time, all the passengers and most of the officers had

assembled. The latter were employed in offering consolation to the

unfortunate ladies; and, with unparalleled magnanimity, suffering

their compassion for the fair and amiable companions of their

misfortunes to prevail over the sense of their own danger.

'In this charitable work of comfort, Mr. Meriton now joined, by

assurances of his opinion, that, the ship would hold together till

the morning, when all would be safe. Captain Pierce, observing one

of the young gentlemen loud in his exclamations of terror, and

frequently cry that the ship was parting, cheerfully bid him be

quiet, remarking that though the ship should go to pieces, he would

not, but would be safe enough.

'It is difficult to convey a correct idea of the scene of this

deplorable catastrophe, without describing the place where it

happened. The Haleswell struck on the rocks at a part of the shore

where the cliff is of vast height, and rises almost perpendicular

from its base. But at this particular spot, the foot of the cliff

is excavated into a cavern of ten or twelve yards in depth, and of

breadth equal to the length of a large ship. The sides of the

cavern are so nearly upright, as to be of extremely difficult

access; and the bottom is strewed with sharp and uneven rocks,

which seem, by some convulsion of the earth, to have been detached

from its roof.

'The ship lay with her broadside opposite to the mouth of this

cavern, with her whole length stretched almost from side to side of

it. But when she struck, it was too dark for the unfortunate

persons on board to discover the real magnitude of the danger, and

the extreme horror of such a situation.

'In addition to the company already in the round-house, they had

admitted three black women and two soldiers' wives; who, with the

husband of one of them, had been allowed to come in, though the

seamen, who had tumultuously demanded entrance to get the lights,

had been opposed and kept out by Mr. Rogers and Mr. Brimer, the

third and fifth mates. The numbers there were, therefore, now

increased to near fifty. Captain Pierce sat on a chair, a cot, or

some other moveable, with a daughter on each side, whom he

alternately pressed to his affectionate breast. The rest of the

melancholy assembly were seated on the deck, which was strewed with

musical instruments, and the wreck of furniture and other articles.

'Here also Mr. Meriton, after having cut several wax-candles in

pieces, and stuck them up in various parts of the round-house, and

lighted up all the glass lanthorns he could find, took his seat,

intending to wait the approach of dawn; and then assist the

partners of his dangers to escape. But, observing that the poor

ladies appeared parched and exhausted, he brought a basket of

oranges and prevailed on some of them to refresh themselves by

sucking a little of the juice. At this time they were all

tolerably composed, except Miss Mansel, who was in hysteric fits on

the floor of the deck of the round-house.

'But on Mr. Meriton's return to the company, he perceived a

considerable alteration in the appearance of the ship; the sides

were visibly giving way; the deck seemed to be lifting, and he

discovered other strong indications that she could not hold much

longer together. On this account, he attempted to go forward to

look out, but immediately saw that the ship had separated in the

middle, and that the forepart having changed its position, lay

rather further out towards the sea. In such an emergency, when the

next moment might plunge him into eternity, he determined to seize

the present opportunity, and follow the example of the crew and the

soldiers, who were now quitting the ship in numbers, and making

their way to the shore, though quite ignorant of its nature and

description.

'Among other expedients, the ensign-staff had been unshipped, and

attempted to be laid between the ship's side and some of the rocks,

but without success, for it snapped asunder before it reached them.

However, by the light of a lanthorn, which a seaman handed through

the skylight of the round-house to the deck, Mr. Meriton discovered

a spar which appeared to be laid from the ship's side to the rocks,

and on this spar he resolved to attempt his escape.

'Accordingly, lying down upon it, he thrust himself forward;

however, he soon found that it had no communication with the rock;

he reached the end of it, and then slipped off, receiving a very

violent bruise in his fall, and before he could recover his legs,

he was washed off by the surge. He now supported himself by

swimming, until a returning wave dashed him against the back part

of the cavern. Here he laid hold of a small projection in the

rock, but was so much benumbed that he was on the point of quitting

it, when a seaman, who had already gained a footing, extended his

hand, and assisted him until he could secure himself a little on

the rock; from which he clambered on a shelf still higher, and out

of the reach of the surf.

'Mr. Rogers, the third mate, remained with the captain and the

unfortunate ladies and their companions nearly twenty minutes after

Mr. Meriton had quitted the ship. Soon after the latter left the

round-house, the captain asked what was become of him, to which Mr.

Rogers replied, that he was gone on deck to see what could be done.

After this, a heavy sea breaking over the ship, the ladies

exclaimed, "Oh, poor Meriton! he is drowned; had he stayed with us

he would have been safe!" and they all, particularly Miss Mary

Pierce, expressed great concern at the apprehension of his loss.

'The sea was now breaking in at the fore part of the ship, and

reached as far as the mainmast. Captain Pierce gave Mr. Rogers a

nod, and they took a lamp and went together into the stern-gallery,

where, after viewing the rocks for some time, Captain Pierce asked

Mr. Rogers if he thought there was any possibility of saving the

girls; to which he replied, he feared there was none; for they

could only discover the black face of the perpendicular rock, and

not the cavern which afforded shelter to those who escaped. They

then returned to the round-house, where Mr. Rogers hung up the

lamp, and Captain Pierce sat down between his two daughters.

'The sea continuing to break in very fast, Mr. Macmanus, a

midshipman, and Mr. Schutz, a passenger, asked Mr. Rogers what they

could do to escape. "Follow me," he replied, and they all went

into the stern-gallery, and from thence to the upper-quarter-

gallery on the poop. While there, a very heavy sea fell on board,

and the round-house gave way; Mr. Rogers heard the ladies shriek at

intervals, as if the water reached them; the noise of the sea at

other times drowning their voices.

'Mr. Brimer had followed him to the poop, where they remained

together about five minutes, when on the breaking of this heavy

sea, they jointly seized a hen-coop. The same wave which proved

fatal to some of those below, carried him and his companion to the

rock, on which they were violently dashed and miserably bruised.

'Here on the rock were twenty-seven men; but it now being low

water, and as they were convinced that on the flowing of the tide

all must be washed off, many attempted to get to the back or the

sides of the cavern, beyond the reach of the returning sea.

Scarcely more than six, besides Mr. Rogers and Mr. Brimer,

succeeded.

'Mr. Rogers, on gaining this station, was so nearly exhausted, that

had his exertions been protracted only a few minutes longer, he

must have sunk under them. He was now prevented from joining Mr.

Meriton, by at least twenty men between them, none of whom could

move, without the imminent peril of his life.

'They found that a very considerable number of the crew, seamen and

soldiers, and some petty officers, were in the same situation as

themselves, though many who had reached the rocks below, perished

in attempting to ascend. They could yet discern some part of the

ship, and in their dreary station solaced themselves with the hopes

of its remaining entire until day-break; for, in the midst of their

own distress, the sufferings of the females on board affected them

with the most poignant anguish; and every sea that broke inspired

them with terror for their safety.

'But, alas, their apprehensions were too soon realised! Within a

very few minutes of the time that Mr. Rogers gained the rock, an

universal shriek, which long vibrated in their ears, in which the

voice of female distress was lamentably distinguished, announced

the dreadful catastrophe. In a few moments all was hushed, except

the roaring of the winds and the dashing of the waves; the wreck

was buried in the deep, and not an atom of it was ever afterwards

seen.'

The most beautiful and affecting incident I know, associated with a

shipwreck, succeeds this dismal story for a winter night. The

Grosvenor, East Indiaman, homeward bound, goes ashore on the coast

of Caffraria. It is resolved that the officers, passengers, and

crew, in number one hundred and thirty-five souls, shall endeavour

to penetrate on foot, across trackless deserts, infested by wild

beasts and cruel savages, to the Dutch settlements at the Cape of

Good Hope. With this forlorn object before them, they finally

separate into two parties - never more to meet on earth.

There is a solitary child among the passengers - a little boy of

seven years old who has no relation there; and when the first party

is moving away he cries after some member of it who has been kind

to him. The crying of a child might be supposed to be a little

thing to men in such great extremity; but it touches them, and he

is immediately taken into that detachment.

From which time forth, this child is sublimely made a sacred

charge. He is pushed, on a little raft, across broad rivers by the

swimming sailors; they carry him by turns through the deep sand and

long grass (he patiently walking at all other times); they share

with him such putrid fish as they find to eat; they lie down and

wait for him when the rough carpenter, who becomes his especial

friend, lags behind. Beset by lions and tigers, by savages, by

thirst, by hunger, by death in a crowd of ghastly shapes, they

never - O Father of all mankind, thy name be blessed for it! -

forget this child. The captain stops exhausted, and his faithful

coxswain goes back and is seen to sit down by his side, and neither

of the two shall be any more beheld until the great last day; but,

as the rest go on for their lives, they take the child with them.

The carpenter dies of poisonous berries eaten in starvation; and

the steward, succeeding to the command of the party, succeeds to

the sacred guardianship of the child.

God knows all he does for the poor baby; how he cheerfully carries

him in his arms when he himself is weak and ill; how he feeds him

when he himself is griped with want; how he folds his ragged jacket

round him, lays his little worn face with a woman's tenderness upon

his sunburnt breast, soothes him in his sufferings, sings to him as

he limps along, unmindful of his own parched and bleeding feet.

Divided for a few days from the rest, they dig a grave in the sand

and bury their good friend the cooper - these two companions alone

in the wilderness - and then the time comes when they both are ill,

and beg their wretched partners in despair, reduced and few in

number now, to wait by them one day. They wait by them one day,

they wait by them two days. On the morning of the third, they move

very softly about, in making their preparations for the resumption

of their journey; for, the child is sleeping by the fire, and it is

agreed with one consent that he shall not be disturbed until the

last moment. The moment comes, the fire is dying - and the child

is dead.

His faithful friend, the steward, lingers but a little while behind

him. His grief is great, he staggers on for a few days, lies down

in the desert, and dies. But he shall be re-united in his immortal

spirit - who can doubt it! - with the child, when he and the poor

carpenter shall be raised up with the words, 'Inasmuch as ye have

done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.'

As I recall the dispersal and disappearance of nearly all the

participators in this once famous shipwreck (a mere handful being

recovered at last), and the legends that were long afterwards

revived from time to time among the English officers at the Cape,

of a white woman with an infant, said to have been seen weeping

outside a savage hut far in the interior, who was whisperingly

associated with the remembrance of the missing ladies saved from

the wrecked vessel, and who was often sought but never found,

thoughts of another kind of travel came into my mind.

Thoughts of a voyager unexpectedly summoned from home, who

travelled a vast distance, and could never return. Thoughts of

this unhappy wayfarer in the depths of his sorrow, in the

bitterness of his anguish, in the helplessness of his self-

reproach, in the desperation of his desire to set right what he had

left wrong, and do what he had left undone.

For, there were many, many things he had neglected. Little matters

while he was at home and surrounded by them, but things of mighty

moment when he was at an immeasurable distance. There were many

many blessings that he had inadequately felt, there were many

trivial injuries that he had not forgiven, there was love that he

had but poorly returned, there was friendship that he had too

lightly prized: there were a million kind words that he might have

spoken, a million kind looks that he might have given, uncountable

slight easy deeds in which he might have been most truly great and

good. O for a day (he would exclaim), for but one day to make

amends! But the sun never shone upon that happy day, and out of

his remote captivity he never came.

Why does this traveller's fate obscure, on New Year's Eve, the

other histories of travellers with which my mind was filled but

now, and cast a solemn shadow over me! Must I one day make his

journey? Even so. Who shall say, that I may not then be tortured

by such late regrets: that I may not then look from my exile on my

empty place and undone work? I stand upon a sea-shore, where the

waves are years. They break and fall, and I may little heed them;

but, with every wave the sea is rising, and I know that it will

float me on this traveller's voyage at last.

THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER

THE amount of money he annually diverts from wholesome and useful

purposes in the United Kingdom, would be a set-off against the

Window Tax. He is one of the most shameless frauds and impositions

of this time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasurable

harm he does to the deserving, - dirtying the stream of true

benevolence, and muddling the brains of foolish justices, with

inability to distinguish between the base coin of distress, and the

true currency we have always among us, - he is more worthy of

Norfolk Island than three-fourths of the worst characters who are

sent there. Under any rational system, he would have been sent

there long ago.

I, the writer of this paper, have been, for some time, a chosen

receiver of Begging Letters. For fourteen years, my house has been

made as regular a Receiving House for such communications as any

one of the great branch Post-Offices is for general correspondence.

I ought to know something of the Begging-Letter Writer. He has

besieged my door at all hours of the day and night; he has fought

my servant; he has lain in ambush for me, going out and coming in;

he has followed me out of town into the country; he has appeared at

provincial hotels, where I have been staying for only a few hours;

he has written to me from immense distances, when I have been out

of England. He has fallen sick; he has died and been buried; he

has come to life again, and again departed from this transitory

scene: he has been his own son, his own mother, his own baby, his

idiot brother, his uncle, his aunt, his aged grandfather. He has

wanted a greatcoat, to go to India in; a pound to set him up in

life for ever; a pair of boots to take him to the coast of China; a

hat to get him into a permanent situation under Government. He has

frequently been exactly seven-and-sixpence short of independence.

He has had such openings at Liverpool - posts of great trust and

confidence in merchants' houses, which nothing but seven-and-

sixpence was wanting to him to secure - that I wonder he is not

Mayor of that flourishing town at the present moment.

The natural phenomena of which he has been the victim, are of a

most astounding nature. He has had two children who have never

grown up; who have never had anything to cover them at night; who

have been continually driving him mad, by asking in vain for food;

who have never come out of fevers and measles (which, I suppose,

has accounted for his fuming his letters with tobacco smoke, as a

disinfectant); who have never changed in the least degree through

fourteen long revolving years. As to his wife, what that suffering

woman has undergone, nobody knows. She has always been in an

interesting situation through the same long period, and has never

been confined yet. His devotion to her has been unceasing. He has

never cared for himself; HE could have perished - he would rather,

in short - but was it not his Christian duty as a man, a husband,

and a father, - to write begging letters when he looked at her?

(He has usually remarked that he would call in the evening for an

answer to this question.)

He has been the sport of the strangest misfortunes. What his

brother has done to him would have broken anybody else's heart.

His brother went into business with him, and ran away with the

money; his brother got him to be security for an immense sum and

left him to pay it; his brother would have given him employment to

the tune of hundreds a-year, if he would have consented to write

letters on a Sunday; his brother enunciated principles incompatible

with his religious views, and he could not (in consequence) permit

his brother to provide for him. His landlord has never shown a

spark of human feeling. When he put in that execution I don't

know, but he has never taken it out. The broker's man has grown

grey in possession. They will have to bury him some day.

He has been attached to every conceivable pursuit. He has been in

the army, in the navy, in the church, in the law; connected with

the press, the fine arts, public institutions, every description

and grade of business. He has been brought up as a gentleman; he

has been at every college in Oxford and Cambridge; he can quote

Latin in his letters (but generally misspells some minor English

word); he can tell you what Shakespeare says about begging, better

than you know it. It is to be observed, that in the midst of his

afflictions he always reads the newspapers; and rounds off his

appeal with some allusion, that may be supposed to be in my way, to

the popular subject of the hour.

His life presents a series of inconsistencies. Sometimes he has

never written such a letter before. He blushes with shame. That

is the first time; that shall be the last. Don't answer it, and

let it be understood that, then, he will kill himself quietly.

Sometimes (and more frequently) he HAS written a few such letters.

Then he encloses the answers, with an intimation that they are of

inestimable value to him, and a request that they may be carefully

returned. He is fond of enclosing something - verses, letters,

pawnbrokers' duplicates, anything to necessitate an answer. He is

very severe upon 'the pampered minion of fortune,' who refused him

the half-sovereign referred to in the enclosure number two - but he

knows me better.

He writes in a variety of styles; sometimes in low spirits;

sometimes quite jocosely. When he is in low spirits he writes

down-hill and repeats words - these little indications being

expressive of the perturbation of his mind. When he is more

vivacious, he is frank with me; he is quite the agreeable rattle.

I know what human nature is, - who better? Well! He had a little

money once, and he ran through it - as many men have done before

him. He finds his old friends turn away from him now - many men

have done that before him too! Shall he tell me why he writes to

me? Because he has no kind of claim upon me. He puts it on that

ground plainly; and begs to ask for the loan (as I know human

nature) of two sovereigns, to be repaid next Tuesday six weeks,

before twelve at noon.

Sometimes, when he is sure that I have found him out, and that

there is no chance of money, he writes to inform me that I have got

rid of him at last. He has enlisted into the Company's service,

and is off directly - but he wants a cheese. He is informed by the

serjeant that it is essential to his prospects in the regiment that

he should take out a single Gloucester cheese, weighing from twelve

to fifteen pounds. Eight or nine shillings would buy it. He does

not ask for money, after what has passed; but if he calls at nine,

to-morrow morning may he hope to find a cheese? And is there

anything he can do to show his gratitude in Bengal?

Once he wrote me rather a special letter, proposing relief in kind.

He had got into a little trouble by leaving parcels of mud done up

in brown paper, at people's houses, on pretence of being a Railway-

Porter, in which character he received carriage money. This

sportive fancy he expiated in the House of Correction. Not long

after his release, and on a Sunday morning, he called with a letter

(having first dusted himself all over), in which he gave me to

understand that, being resolved to earn an honest livelihood, he

had been travelling about the country with a cart of crockery.

That he had been doing pretty well until the day before, when his

horse had dropped down dead near Chatham, in Kent. That this had

reduced him to the unpleasant necessity of getting into the shafts

himself, and drawing the cart of crockery to London - a somewhat

exhausting pull of thirty miles. That he did not venture to ask

again for money; but that if I would have the goodness TO LEAVE HIM

OUT A DONKEY, he would call for the animal before breakfast!

At another time my friend (I am describing actual experiences)

introduced himself as a literary gentleman in the last extremity of

distress. He had had a play accepted at a certain Theatre - which

was really open; its representation was delayed by the

indisposition of a leading actor - who was really ill; and he and

his were in a state of absolute starvation. If he made his

necessities known to the Manager of the Theatre, he put it to me to

say what kind of treatment he might expect? Well! we got over that

difficulty to our mutual satisfaction. A little while afterwards

he was in some other strait. I think Mrs. Southcote, his wife, was

in extremity - and we adjusted that point too. A little while

afterwards he had taken a new house, and was going headlong to ruin

for want of a water-butt. I had my misgivings about the water-

butt, and did not reply to that epistle. But a little while

afterwards, I had reason to feel penitent for my neglect. He wrote

me a few broken-hearted lines, informing me that the dear partner

of his sorrows died in his arms last night at nine o'clock!

I despatched a trusty messenger to comfort the bereaved mourner and

his poor children; but the messenger went so soon, that the play

was not ready to be played out; my friend was not at home, and his

wife was in a most delightful state of health. He was taken up by

the Mendicity Society (informally it afterwards appeared), and I

presented myself at a London Police-Office with my testimony

against him. The Magistrate was wonderfully struck by his

educational acquirements, deeply impressed by the excellence of his

letters, exceedingly sorry to see a man of his attainments there,

complimented him highly on his powers of composition, and was quite

charmed to have the agreeable duty of discharging him. A

collection was made for the 'poor fellow,' as he was called in the

reports, and I left the court with a comfortable sense of being

universally regarded as a sort of monster. Next day comes to me a

friend of mine, the governor of a large prison. 'Why did you ever

go to the Police-Office against that man,' says he, 'without coming

to me first? I know all about him and his frauds. He lodged in

the house of one of my warders, at the very time when he first

wrote to you; and then he was eating spring-lamb at eighteen-pence

a pound, and early asparagus at I don't know how much a bundle!'

On that very same day, and in that very same hour, my injured

gentleman wrote a solemn address to me, demanding to know what

compensation I proposed to make him for his having passed the night

in a 'loathsome dungeon.' And next morning an Irish gentleman, a

member of the same fraternity, who had read the case, and was very

well persuaded I should be chary of going to that Police-Office

again, positively refused to leave my door for less than a

sovereign, and, resolved to besiege me into compliance, literally

'sat down' before it for ten mortal hours. The garrison being well

provisioned, I remained within the walls; and he raised the siege

at midnight with a prodigious alarum on the bell.

The Begging-Letter Writer often has an extensive circle of

acquaintance. Whole pages of the 'Court Guide' are ready to be

references for him. Noblemen and gentlemen write to say there

never was such a man for probity and virtue. They have known him

time out of mind, and there is nothing they wouldn't do for him.

Somehow, they don't give him that one pound ten he stands in need

of; but perhaps it is not enough - they want to do more, and his

modesty will not allow it. It is to be remarked of his trade that

it is a very fascinating one. He never leaves it; and those who

are near to him become smitten with a love of it, too, and sooner

or later set up for themselves. He employs a messenger - man,

woman, or child. That messenger is certain ultimately to become an

independent Begging-Letter Writer. His sons and daughters succeed

to his calling, and write begging-letters when he is no more. He

throws off the infection of begging-letter writing, like the

contagion of disease. What Sydney Smith so happily called 'the

dangerous luxury of dishonesty' is more tempting, and more

catching, it would seem, in this instance than in any other.

He always belongs to a Corresponding-Society of Begging-Letter

Writers. Any one who will, may ascertain this fact. Give money

to-day in recognition of a begging-letter, - no matter how unlike a

common begging-letter, - and for the next fortnight you will have a

rush of such communications. Steadily refuse to give; and the

begging-letters become Angels' visits, until the Society is from

some cause or other in a dull way of business, and may as well try

you as anybody else. It is of little use inquiring into the

Begging-Letter Writer's circumstances. He may be sometimes

accidentally found out, as in the case already mentioned (though

that was not the first inquiry made); but apparent misery is always

a part of his trade, and real misery very often is, in the

intervals of spring-lamb and early asparagus. It is naturally an

incident of his dissipated and dishonest life.

That the calling is a successful one, and that large sums of money

are gained by it, must be evident to anybody who reads the Police

Reports of such cases. But, prosecutions are of rare occurrence,

relatively to the extent to which the trade is carried on. The

cause of this is to be found (as no one knows better than the

Begging-Letter Writer, for it is a part of his speculation) in the

aversion people feel to exhibit themselves as having been imposed

upon, or as having weakly gratified their consciences with a lazy,

flimsy substitute for the noblest of all virtues. There is a man

at large, at the moment when this paper is preparing for the press

(on the 29th of April, 1850), and never once taken up yet, who,

within these twelvemonths, has been probably the most audacious and

the most successful swindler that even this trade has ever known.

There has been something singularly base in this fellow's

proceedings; it has been his business to write to all sorts and

conditions of people, in the names of persons of high reputation

and unblemished honour, professing to be in distress - the general

admiration and respect for whom has ensured a ready and generous

reply.

Now, in the hope that the results of the real experience of a real

person may do something more to induce reflection on this subject

than any abstract treatise - and with a personal knowledge of the

extent to which the Begging-Letter Trade has been carried on for

some time, and has been for some time constantly increasing - the

writer of this paper entreats the attention of his readers to a few

concluding words. His experience is a type of the experience of

many; some on a smaller, some on an infinitely larger scale. All

may judge of the soundness or unsoundness of his conclusions from

it.

Long doubtful of the efficacy of such assistance in any case

whatever, and able to recall but one, within his whole individual

knowledge, in which he had the least after-reason to suppose that

any good was done by it, he was led, last autumn, into some serious

considerations. The begging-letters flying about by every post,

made it perfectly manifest that a set of lazy vagabonds were

interposed between the general desire to do something to relieve

the sickness and misery under which the poor were suffering, and

the suffering poor themselves. That many who sought to do some

little to repair the social wrongs, inflicted in the way of

preventible sickness and death upon the poor, were strengthening

those wrongs, however innocently, by wasting money on pestilent

knaves cumbering society. That imagination, - soberly following

one of these knaves into his life of punishment in jail, and

comparing it with the life of one of these poor in a cholera-

stricken alley, or one of the children of one of these poor,

soothed in its dying hour by the late lamented Mr. Drouet, -

contemplated a grim farce, impossible to be presented very much

longer before God or man. That the crowning miracle of all the

miracles summed up in the New Testament, after the miracle of the

blind seeing, and the lame walking, and the restoration of the dead

to life, was the miracle that the poor had the Gospel preached to

them. That while the poor were unnaturally and unnecessarily cut

off by the thousand, in the prematurity of their age, or in the

rottenness of their youth - for of flower or blossom such youth has

none - the Gospel was NOT preached to them, saving in hollow and

unmeaning voices. That of all wrongs, this was the first mighty

wrong the Pestilence warned us to set right. And that no Post-

Office Order to any amount, given to a Begging-Letter Writer for

the quieting of an uneasy breast, would be presentable on the Last

Great Day as anything towards it.

The poor never write these letters. Nothing could be more unlike

their habits. The writers are public robbers; and we who support

them are parties to their depredations. They trade upon every

circumstance within their knowledge that affects us, public or

private, joyful or sorrowful; they pervert the lessons of our

lives; they change what ought to be our strength and virtue into

weakness, and encouragement of vice. There is a plain remedy, and

it is in our own hands. We must resolve, at any sacrifice of

feeling, to be deaf to such appeals, and crush the trade.

There are degrees in murder. Life must be held sacred among us in

more ways than one - sacred, not merely from the murderous weapon,

or the subtle poison, or the cruel blow, but sacred from

preventible diseases, distortions, and pains. That is the first

great end we have to set against this miserable imposition.

Physical life respected, moral life comes next. What will not

content a Begging-Letter Writer for a week, would educate a score

of children for a year. Let us give all we can; let us give more

than ever. Let us do all we can; let us do more than ever. But

let us give, and do, with a high purpose; not to endow the scum of

the earth, to its own greater corruption, with the offals of our

duty.

A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR

THERE was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and

thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child

too, and his constant companion. These two used to wonder all day

long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at

the height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of

the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of

GOD who made the lovely world.

They used to say to one another, sometimes, Supposing all the

children upon earth were to die, would the flowers, and the water,

and the sky be sorry? They believed they would be sorry. For,

said they, the buds are the children of the flowers, and the little

playful streams that gambol down the hill-sides are the children of

the water; and the smallest bright specks playing at hide and seek

in the sky all night, must surely be the children of the stars; and

they would all be grieved to see their playmates, the children of

men, no more.

There was one clear shining star that used to come out in the sky

before the rest, near the church spire, above the graves. It was

larger and more beautiful, they thought, than all the others, and

every night they watched for it, standing hand in hand at a window.

Whoever saw it first cried out, 'I see the star!' And often they

cried out both together, knowing so well when it would rise, and

where. So they grew to be such friends with it, that, before lying

down in their beds, they always looked out once again, to bid it

good night; and when they were turning round to sleep, they used to

say, 'God bless the star!'

But while she was still very young, oh, very, very young, the

sister drooped, and came to be so weak that she could no longer

stand in the window at night; and then the child looked sadly out

by himself, and when he saw the star, turned round and said to the

patient pale face on the bed, 'I see the star!' and then a smile

would come upon the face, and a little weak voice used to say, 'God

bless my brother and the star!'

And so the time came all too soon! when the child looked out alone,

and when there was no face on the bed; and when there was a little

grave among the graves, not there before; and when the star made

long rays down towards him, as he saw it through his tears.

Now, these rays were so bright, and they seemed to make such a

shining way from earth to Heaven, that when the child went to his

solitary bed, he dreamed about the star; and dreamed that, lying

where he was, he saw a train of people taken up that sparkling road

by angels. And the star, opening, showed him a great world of

light, where many more such angels waited to receive them.

All these angels, who were waiting, turned their beaming eyes upon

the people who were carried up into the star; and some came out

from the long rows in which they stood, and fell upon the people's

necks, and kissed them tenderly, and went away with them down

avenues of light, and were so happy in their company, that lying in

his bed he wept for joy.

But, there were many angels who did not go with them, and among

them one he knew. The patient face that once had lain upon the bed

was glorified and radiant, but his heart found out his sister among

all the host.

His sister's angel lingered near the entrance of the star, and said

to the leader among those who had brought the people thither:

'Is my brother come?'

And he said 'No.'

She was turning hopefully away, when the child stretched out his

arms, and cried, 'O, sister, I am here! Take me!' and then she

turned her beaming eyes upon him, and it was night; and the star

was shining into the room, making long rays down towards him as he

saw it through his tears.

From that hour forth, the child looked out upon the star as on the

home he was to go to, when his time should come; and he thought

that he did not belong to the earth alone, but to the star too,

because of his sister's angel gone before.

There was a baby born to be a brother to the child; and while he

was so little that he never yet had spoken word, he stretched his

tiny form out on his bed, and died.

Again the child dreamed of the open star, and of the company of

angels, and the train of people, and the rows of angels with their

beaming eyes all turned upon those people's faces.

Said his sister's angel to the leader:

'Is my brother come?'

And he said, 'Not that one, but another.'

As the child beheld his brother's angel in her arms, he cried, 'O,

sister, I am here! Take me!' And she turned and smiled upon him,

and the star was shining.

He grew to be a young man, and was busy at his books when an old

servant came to him and said:

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

Again at night he saw the star, and all that former company. Said

his sister's angel to the leader.

'Is my brother come?'

And he said, 'Thy mother!'

A mighty cry of joy went forth through all the star, because the

mother was re-united to her two children. And he stretched out his

arms and cried, 'O, mother, sister, and brother, I am here! Take

me!' And they answered him, 'Not yet,' and the star was shining.

He grew to be a man, whose hair was turning grey, and he was

sitting in his chair by the fireside, heavy with grief, and with

his face bedewed with tears, when the star opened once again.

Said his sister's angel to the leader: 'Is my brother come?'

And he said, 'Nay, but his maiden daughter.'

And the man who had been the child saw his daughter, newly lost to

him, a celestial creature among those three, and he said, 'My

daughter's head is on my sister's bosom, and her arm is around my

mother's neck, and at her feet there is the baby of old time, and I

can bear the parting from her, GOD be praised!'

And the star was shining.

Thus the child came to be an old man, and his once smooth face was

wrinkled, and his steps were slow and feeble, and his back was

bent. And one night as he lay upon his bed, his children standing

round, he cried, as he had cried so long ago:

'I see the star!'

They whispered one another, 'He is dying.'

And he said, 'I am. My age is falling from me like a garment, and

I move towards the star as a child. And O, my Father, now I thank

thee that it has so often opened, to receive those dear ones who

await me!'

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

OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE

IN the Autumn-time of the year, when the great metropolis is so

much hotter, so much noisier, so much more dusty or so much more

water-carted, so much more crowded, so much more disturbing and

distracting in all respects, than it usually is, a quiet sea-beach

becomes indeed a blessed spot. Half awake and half asleep, this

idle morning in our sunny window on the edge of a chalk-cliff in

the old-fashioned watering-place to which we are a faithful

resorter, we feel a lazy inclination to sketch its picture.

The place seems to respond. Sky, sea, beach, and village, lie as

still before us as if they were sitting for the picture. It is

dead low-water. A ripple plays among the ripening corn upon the

cliff, as if it were faintly trying from recollection to imitate

the sea; and the world of butterflies hovering over the crop of

radish-seed are as restless in their little way as the gulls are in

their larger manner when the wind blows. But the ocean lies

winking in the sunlight like a drowsy lion - its glassy waters

scarcely curve upon the shore - the fishing-boats in the tiny

harbour are all stranded in the mud - our two colliers (our

watering-place has a maritime trade employing that amount of

shipping) have not an inch of water within a quarter of a mile of

them, and turn, exhausted, on their sides, like faint fish of an

antediluvian species. Rusty cables and chains, ropes and rings,

undermost parts of posts and piles and confused timber-defences

against the waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter of tangled

sea-weed and fallen cliff which looks as if a family of giants had

been making tea here for ages, and had observed an untidy custom of

throwing their tea-leaves on the shore.

In truth, our watering-place itself has been left somewhat high and

dry by the tide of years. Concerned as we are for its honour, we

must reluctantly admit that the time when this pretty little

semicircular sweep of houses, tapering off at the end of the wooden

pier into a point in the sea, was a gay place, and when the

lighthouse overlooking it shone at daybreak on company dispersing

from public balls, is but dimly traditional now. There is a bleak

chamber in our watering-place which is yet called the Assembly

'Rooms,' and understood to be available on hire for balls or

concerts; and, some few seasons since, an ancient little gentleman

came down and stayed at the hotel, who said that he had danced

there, in bygone ages, with the Honourable Miss Peepy, well known

to have been the Beauty of her day and the cruel occasion of

innumerable duels. But he was so old and shrivelled, and so very

rheumatic in the legs, that it demanded more imagination than our

watering-place can usually muster, to believe him; therefore,

except the Master of the 'Rooms' (who to this hour wears knee-

breeches, and who confirmed the statement with tears in his eyes),

nobody did believe in the little lame old gentleman, or even in the

Honourable Miss Peepy, long deceased.

As to subscription balls in the Assembly Rooms of our watering-

place now, red-hot cannon balls are less improbable. Sometimes, a

misguided wanderer of a Ventriloquist, or an Infant Phenomenon, or

a juggler, or somebody with an Orrery that is several stars behind

the time, takes the place for a night, and issues bills with the

name of his last town lined out, and the name of ours ignominiously

written in, but you may be sure this never happens twice to the

same unfortunate person. On such occasions the discoloured old

Billiard Table that is seldom played at (unless the ghost of the

Honourable Miss Peepy plays at pool with other ghosts) is pushed

into a corner, and benches are solemnly constituted into front

seats, back seats, and reserved seats - which are much the same

after you have paid - and a few dull candles are lighted - wind

permitting - and the performer and the scanty audience play out a

short match which shall make the other most low-spirited - which is

usually a drawn game. After that, the performer instantly departs

with maledictory expressions, and is never heard of more.

But the most wonderful feature of our Assembly Rooms, is, that an

annual sale of 'Fancy and other China,' is announced here with

mysterious constancy and perseverance. Where the china comes from,

where it goes to, why it is annually put up to auction when nobody

ever thinks of bidding for it, how it comes to pass that it is

always the same china, whether it would not have been cheaper, with

the sea at hand, to have thrown it away, say in eighteen hundred

and thirty, are standing enigmas. Every year the bills come out,

every year the Master of the Rooms gets into a little pulpit on a

table, and offers it for sale, every year nobody buys it, every

year it is put away somewhere till next year, when it appears again

as if the whole thing were a new idea. We have a faint remembrance

of an unearthly collection of clocks, purporting to be the work of

Parisian and Genevese artists - chiefly bilious-faced clocks,

supported on sickly white crutches, with their pendulums dangling

like lame legs - to which a similar course of events occurred for

several years, until they seemed to lapse away, of mere imbecility.

Attached to our Assembly Rooms is a library. There is a wheel of

fortune in it, but it is rusty and dusty, and never turns. A large

doll, with moveable eyes, was put up to be raffled for, by five-

and-twenty members at two shillings, seven years ago this autumn,

and the list is not full yet. We are rather sanguine, now, that

the raffle will come off next year. We think so, because we only

want nine members, and should only want eight, but for number two

having grown up since her name was entered, and withdrawn it when

she was married. Down the street, there is a toy-ship of

considerable burden, in the same condition. Two of the boys who

were entered for that raffle have gone to India in real ships,

since; and one was shot, and died in the arms of his sister's

lover, by whom he sent his last words home.

This is the library for the Minerva Press. If you want that kind

of reading, come to our watering-place. The leaves of the

romances, reduced to a condition very like curl-paper, are thickly

studded with notes in pencil: sometimes complimentary, sometimes

jocose. Some of these commentators, like commentators in a more

extensive way, quarrel with one another. One young gentleman who

sarcastically writes 'O!!!' after every sentimental passage, is

pursued through his literary career by another, who writes

'Insulting Beast!' Miss Julia Mills has read the whole collection

of these books. She has left marginal notes on the pages, as 'Is

not this truly touching? J. M.' 'How thrilling! J. M.'

'Entranced here by the Magician's potent spell. J. M.' She has

also italicised her favourite traits in the description of the

hero, as 'his hair, which was DARK and WAVY, clustered in RICH

PROFUSION around a MARBLE BROW, whose lofty paleness bespoke the

intellect within.' It reminds her of another hero. She adds, 'How

like B. L. Can this be mere coincidence? J. M.'

You would hardly guess which is the main street of our watering-

place, but you may know it by its being always stopped up with

donkey-chaises. Whenever you come here, and see harnessed donkeys

eating clover out of barrows drawn completely across a narrow

thoroughfare, you may be quite sure you are in our High Street.

Our Police you may know by his uniform, likewise by his never on

any account interfering with anybody - especially the tramps and

vagabonds. In our fancy shops we have a capital collection of

damaged goods, among which the flies of countless summers 'have

been roaming.' We are great in obsolete seals, and in faded pin-

cushions, and in rickety camp-stools, and in exploded cutlery, and

in miniature vessels, and in stunted little telescopes, and in

objects made of shells that pretend not to be shells. Diminutive

spades, barrows, and baskets, are our principal articles of

commerce; but even they don't look quite new somehow. They always

seem to have been offered and refused somewhere else, before they

came down to our watering-place.

Yet, it must not be supposed that our watering-place is an empty

place, deserted by all visitors except a few staunch persons of

approved fidelity. On the contrary, the chances are that if you

came down here in August or September, you wouldn't find a house to

lay your head in. As to finding either house or lodging of which

you could reduce the terms, you could scarcely engage in a more

hopeless pursuit. For all this, you are to observe that every

season is the worst season ever known, and that the householding

population of our watering-place are ruined regularly every autumn.

They are like the farmers, in regard that it is surprising how much

ruin they will bear. We have an excellent hotel - capital baths,

warm, cold, and shower - first-rate bathing-machines - and as good

butchers, bakers, and grocers, as heart could desire. They all do

business, it is to be presumed, from motives of philanthropy - but

it is quite certain that they are all being ruined. Their interest

in strangers, and their politeness under ruin, bespeak their

amiable nature. You would say so, if you only saw the baker

helping a new comer to find suitable apartments.

So far from being at a discount as to company, we are in fact what

would be popularly called rather a nobby place. Some tip-top

'Nobbs' come down occasionally - even Dukes and Duchesses. We have

known such carriages to blaze among the donkey-chaises, as made

beholders wink. Attendant on these equipages come resplendent

creatures in plush and powder, who are sure to be stricken

disgusted with the indifferent accommodation of our watering-place,

and who, of an evening (particularly when it rains), may be seen

very much out of drawing, in rooms far too small for their fine

figures, looking discontentedly out of little back windows into

bye-streets. The lords and ladies get on well enough and quite

good-humouredly: but if you want to see the gorgeous phenomena who

wait upon them at a perfect non-plus, you should come and look at

the resplendent creatures with little back parlours for servants'

halls, and turn-up bedsteads to sleep in, at our watering-place.

You have no idea how they take it to heart.

We have a pier - a queer old wooden pier, fortunately without the

slightest pretensions to architecture, and very picturesque in

consequence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all

over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, sails, ballast,

and rickety capstans, make a perfect labyrinth of it. For ever

hovering about this pier, with their hands in their pockets, or

leaning over the rough bulwark it opposes to the sea, gazing

through telescopes which they carry about in the same profound

receptacles, are the Boatmen of our watering-place. Looking at

them, you would say that surely these must be the laziest boatmen

in the world. They lounge about, in obstinate and inflexible

pantaloons that are apparently made of wood, the whole season

through. Whether talking together about the shipping in the

Channel, or gruffly unbending over mugs of beer at the public-

house, you would consider them the slowest of men. The chances are

a thousand to one that you might stay here for ten seasons, and

never see a boatman in a hurry. A certain expression about his

loose hands, when they are not in his pockets, as if he were

carrying a considerable lump of iron in each, without any

inconvenience, suggests strength, but he never seems to use it. He

has the appearance of perpetually strolling - running is too

inappropriate a word to be thought of - to seed. The only subject

on which he seems to feel any approach to enthusiasm, is pitch. He

pitches everything he can lay hold of, - the pier, the palings, his

boat, his house, - when there is nothing else left he turns to and

even pitches his hat, or his rough-weather clothing. Do not judge

him by deceitful appearances. These are among the bravest and most

skilful mariners that exist. Let a gale arise and swell into a

storm, let a sea run that might appal the stoutest heart that ever

beat, let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands throw up a rocket

in the night, or let them hear through the angry roar the signal-

guns of a ship in distress, and these men spring up into activity

so dauntless, so valiant, and heroic, that the world cannot surpass

it. Cavillers may object that they chiefly live upon the salvage

of valuable cargoes. So they do, and God knows it is no great

living that they get out of the deadly risks they run. But put

that hope of gain aside. Let these rough fellows be asked, in any

storm, who volunteers for the life-boat to save some perishing

souls, as poor and empty-handed as themselves, whose lives the

perfection of human reason does not rate at the value of a farthing

each; and that boat will be manned, as surely and as cheerfully, as

if a thousand pounds were told down on the weather-beaten pier.

For this, and for the recollection of their comrades whom we have

known, whom the raging sea has engulfed before their children's

eyes in such brave efforts, whom the secret sand has buried, we

hold the boatmen of our watering-place in our love and honour, and

are tender of the fame they well deserve.

So many children are brought down to our watering-place that, when

they are not out of doors, as they usually are in fine weather, it

is wonderful where they are put: the whole village seeming much too

small to hold them under cover. In the afternoons, you see no end

of salt and sandy little boots drying on upper window-sills. At

bathing-time in the morning, the little bay re-echoes with every

shrill variety of shriek and splash - after which, if the weather

be at all fresh, the sands teem with small blue mottled legs. The

sands are the children's great resort. They cluster there, like

ants: so busy burying their particular friends, and making castles

with infinite labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is

curious to consider how their play, to the music of the sea,

foreshadows the realities of their after lives.

It is curious, too, to observe a natural ease of approach that

there seems to be between the children and the boatmen. They

mutually make acquaintance, and take individual likings, without

any help. You will come upon one of those slow heavy fellows

sitting down patiently mending a little ship for a mite of a boy,

whom he could crush to death by throwing his lightest pair of

trousers on him. You will be sensible of the oddest contrast

between the smooth little creature, and the rough man who seems to

be carved out of hard-grained wood - between the delicate hand

expectantly held out, and the immense thumb and finger that can

hardly feel the rigging of thread they mend - between the small

voice and the gruff growl - and yet there is a natural propriety in

the companionship: always to be noted in confidence between a child

and a person who has any merit of reality and genuineness: which is

admirably pleasant.

We have a preventive station at our watering-place, and much the

same thing may be observed - in a lesser degree, because of their

official character - of the coast blockade; a steady, trusty, well-

conditioned, well-conducted set of men, with no misgiving about

looking you full in the face, and with a quiet thorough-going way

of passing along to their duty at night, carrying huge sou'-wester

clothing in reserve, that is fraught with all good prepossession.

They are handy fellows - neat about their houses - industrious at

gardening - would get on with their wives, one thinks, in a desert

island - and people it, too, soon.

As to the naval officer of the station, with his hearty fresh face,

and his blue eye that has pierced all kinds of weather, it warms

our hearts when he comes into church on a Sunday, with that bright

mixture of blue coat, buff waistcoat, black neck-kerchief, and gold

epaulette, that is associated in the minds of all Englishmen with

brave, unpretending, cordial, national service. We like to look at

him in his Sunday state; and if we were First Lord (really

possessing the indispensable qualification for the office of

knowing nothing whatever about the sea), we would give him a ship

to-morrow.

We have a church, by-the-by, of course - a hideous temple of flint,

like a great petrified haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary,

who, to his honour, has done much for education both in time and

money, and has established excellent schools, is a sound, shrewd,

healthy gentleman, who has got into little occasional difficulties

with the neighbouring farmers, but has had a pestilent trick of

being right. Under a new regulation, he has yielded the church of

our watering-place to another clergyman. Upon the whole we get on

in church well. We are a little bilious sometimes, about these

days of fraternisation, and about nations arriving at a new and

more unprejudiced knowledge of each other (which our Christianity

don't quite approve), but it soon goes off, and then we get on very

well.

There are two dissenting chapels, besides, in our small watering-

place; being in about the proportion of a hundred and twenty guns

to a yacht. But the dissension that has torn us lately, has not

been a religious one. It has arisen on the novel question of Gas.

Our watering-place has been convulsed by the agitation, Gas or No

Gas. It was never reasoned why No Gas, but there was a great No

Gas party. Broadsides were printed and stuck about - a startling

circumstance in our watering-place. The No Gas party rested

content with chalking 'No Gas!' and 'Down with Gas!' and other such

angry war-whoops, on the few back gates and scraps of wall which

the limits of our watering-place afford; but the Gas party printed

and posted bills, wherein they took the high ground of proclaiming

against the No Gas party, that it was said Let there be light and

there was light; and that not to have light (that is gas-light) in

our watering-place, was to contravene the great decree. Whether by

these thunderbolts or not, the No Gas party were defeated; and in

this present season we have had our handful of shops illuminated

for the first time. Such of the No Gas party, however, as have got

shops, remain in opposition and burn tallow - exhibiting in their

windows the very picture of the sulkiness that punishes itself, and

a new illustration of the old adage about cutting off your nose to

be revenged on your face, in cutting off their gas to be revenged

on their business.

Other population than we have indicated, our watering-place has

none. There are a few old used-up boatmen who creep about in the

sunlight with the help of sticks, and there is a poor imbecile

shoemaker who wanders his lonely life away among the rocks, as if

he were looking for his reason - which he will never find.

Sojourners in neighbouring watering-places come occasionally in

flys to stare at us, and drive away again as if they thought us

very dull; Italian boys come, Punch comes, the Fantoccini come, the

Tumblers come, the Ethiopians come; Glee-singers come at night, and

hum and vibrate (not always melodiously) under our windows. But

they all go soon, and leave us to ourselves again. We once had a

travelling Circus and Wombwell's Menagerie at the same time. They

both know better than ever to try it again; and the Menagerie had

nearly razed us from the face of the earth in getting the elephant

away - his caravan was so large, and the watering-place so small.

We have a fine sea, wholesome for all people; profitable for the

body, profitable for the mind. The poet's words are sometimes on

its awful lips:

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand.

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

Yet it is not always so, for the speech of the sea is various, and

wants not abundant resource of cheerfulness, hope, and lusty

encouragement. And since I have been idling at the window here,

the tide has risen. The boats are dancing on the bubbling water;

the colliers are afloat again; the white-bordered waves rush in;

the children

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him

When he comes back;

the radiant sails are gliding past the shore, and shining on the

far horizon; all the sea is sparkling, heaving, swelling up with

life and beauty, this bright morning.

OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE

HAVING earned, by many years of fidelity, the right to be sometimes

inconstant to our English watering-place, we have dallied for two

or three seasons with a French watering-place: once solely known to

us as a town with a very long street, beginning with an abattoir

and ending with a steam-boat, which it seemed our fate to behold

only at daybreak on winter mornings, when (in the days before

continental railroads), just sufficiently awake to know that we

were most uncomfortably asleep, it was our destiny always to

clatter through it, in the coupe of the diligence from Paris, with

a sea of mud behind us, and a sea of tumbling waves before. In

relation to which latter monster, our mind's eye now recalls a

worthy Frenchman in a seal-skin cap with a braided hood over it,

once our travelling companion in the coupe aforesaid, who, waking

up with a pale and crumpled visage, and looking ruefully out at the

grim row of breakers enjoying themselves fanatically on an

instrument of torture called 'the Bar,' inquired of us whether we

were ever sick at sea? Both to prepare his mind for the abject

creature we were presently to become, and also to afford him

consolation, we replied, 'Sir, your servant is always sick when it

is possible to be so.' He returned, altogether uncheered by the

bright example, 'Ah, Heaven, but I am always sick, even when it is

IMpossible to be so.'

The means of communication between the French capital and our

French watering-place are wholly changed since those days; but, the

Channel remains unbridged as yet, and the old floundering and

knocking about go on there. It must be confessed that saving in

reasonable (and therefore rare) sea-weather, the act of arrival at

our French watering-place from England is difficult to be achieved

with dignity. Several little circumstances combine to render the

visitor an object of humiliation. In the first place, the steamer

no sooner touches the port, than all the passengers fall into

captivity: being boarded by an overpowering force of Custom-house

officers, and marched into a gloomy dungeon. In the second place,

the road to this dungeon is fenced off with ropes breast-high, and

outside those ropes all the English in the place who have lately

been sea-sick and are now well, assemble in their best clothes to

enjoy the degradation of their dilapidated fellow-creatures. 'Oh,

my gracious! how ill this one has been!' 'Here's a damp one coming

next!' 'HERE'S a pale one!' 'Oh! Ain't he green in the face,

this next one!' Even we ourself (not deficient in natural dignity)

have a lively remembrance of staggering up this detested lane one

September day in a gale of wind, when we were received like an

irresistible comic actor, with a burst of laughter and applause,

occasioned by the extreme imbecility of our legs.

We were coming to the third place. In the third place, the

captives, being shut up in the gloomy dungeon, are strained, two or

three at a time, into an inner cell, to be examined as to

passports; and across the doorway of communication, stands a

military creature making a bar of his arm. Two ideas are generally

present to the British mind during these ceremonies; first, that it

is necessary to make for the cell with violent struggles, as if it

were a life-boat and the dungeon a ship going down; secondly, that

the military creature's arm is a national affront, which the

government at home ought instantly to 'take up.' The British mind

and body becoming heated by these fantasies, delirious answers are

made to inquiries, and extravagant actions performed. Thus,

Johnson persists in giving Johnson as his baptismal name, and

substituting for his ancestral designation the national 'Dam!'

Neither can he by any means be brought to recognise the distinction

between a portmanteau-key and a passport, but will obstinately

persevere in tendering the one when asked for the other. This

brings him to the fourth place, in a state of mere idiotcy; and

when he is, in the fourth place, cast out at a little door into a

howling wilderness of touters, he becomes a lunatic with wild eyes

and floating hair until rescued and soothed. If friendless and

unrescued, he is generally put into a railway omnibus and taken to

Paris.

But, our French watering-place, when it is once got into, is a very

enjoyable place. It has a varied and beautiful country around it,

and many characteristic and agreeable things within it. To be

sure, it might have fewer bad smells and less decaying refuse, and

it might be better drained, and much cleaner in many parts, and

therefore infinitely more healthy. Still, it is a bright, airy,

pleasant, cheerful town; and if you were to walk down either of its

three well-paved main streets, towards five o'clock in the

afternoon, when delicate odours of cookery fill the air, and its

hotel windows (it is full of hotels) give glimpses of long tables

set out for dinner, and made to look sumptuous by the aid of

napkins folded fan-wise, you would rightly judge it to be an

uncommonly good town to eat and drink in.

We have an old walled town, rich in cool public wells of water, on

the top of a hill within and above the present business-town; and

if it were some hundreds of miles further from England, instead of

being, on a clear day, within sight of the grass growing in the

crevices of the chalk-cliffs of Dover, you would long ago have been

bored to death about that town. It is more picturesque and quaint

than half the innocent places which tourists, following their

leader like sheep, have made impostors of. To say nothing of its

houses with grave courtyards, its queer by-corners, and its many-

windowed streets white and quiet in the sunlight, there is an

ancient belfry in it that would have been in all the Annuals and

Albums, going and gone, these hundred years if it had but been more

expensive to get at. Happily it has escaped so well, being only in

our French watering-place, that you may like it of your own accord

in a natural manner, without being required to go into convulsions

about it. We regard it as one of the later blessings of our life,

that BILKINS, the only authority on Taste, never took any notice

that we can find out, of our French watering-place. Bilkins never

wrote about it, never pointed out anything to be seen in it, never

measured anything in it, always left it alone. For which relief,

Heaven bless the town and the memory of the immortal Bilkins

likewise!

There is a charming walk, arched and shaded by trees, on the old

walls that form the four sides of this High Town, whence you get

glimpses of the streets below, and changing views of the other town

and of the river, and of the hills and of the sea. It is made more

agreeable and peculiar by some of the solemn houses that are rooted

in the deep streets below, bursting into a fresher existence a-top,

and having doors and windows, and even gardens, on these ramparts.

A child going in at the courtyard gate of one of these houses,

climbing up the many stairs, and coming out at the fourth-floor

window, might conceive himself another Jack, alighting on enchanted

ground from another bean-stalk. It is a place wonderfully populous

in children; English children, with governesses reading novels as

they walk down the shady lanes of trees, or nursemaids

interchanging gossip on the seats; French children with their

smiling bonnes in snow-white caps, and themselves - if little boys

- in straw head-gear like bee-hives, work-baskets and church

hassocks. Three years ago, there were three weazen old men, one

bearing a frayed red ribbon in his threadbare button-hole, always

to be found walking together among these children, before dinner-

time. If they walked for an appetite, they doubtless lived en

pension - were contracted for - otherwise their poverty would have

made it a rash action. They were stooping, blear-eyed, dull old

men, slip-shod and shabby, in long-skirted short-waisted coats and

meagre trousers, and yet with a ghost of gentility hovering in

their company. They spoke little to each other, and looked as if

they might have been politically discontented if they had had

vitality enough. Once, we overheard red-ribbon feebly complain to

the other two that somebody, or something, was 'a Robber;' and then

they all three set their mouths so that they would have ground

their teeth if they had had any. The ensuing winter gathered red-

ribbon unto the great company of faded ribbons, and next year the

remaining two were there - getting themselves entangled with hoops

and dolls - familiar mysteries to the children - probably in the

eyes of most of them, harmless creatures who had never been like

children, and whom children could never be like. Another winter

came, and another old man went, and so, this present year, the last

of the triumvirate, left off walking - it was no good, now - and

sat by himself on a little solitary bench, with the hoops and the

dolls as lively as ever all about him.

In the Place d'Armes of this town, a little decayed market is held,

which seems to slip through the old gateway, like water, and go

rippling down the hill, to mingle with the murmuring market in the

lower town, and get lost in its movement and bustle. It is very

agreeable on an idle summer morning to pursue this market-stream

from the hill-top. It begins, dozingly and dully, with a few sacks

of corn; starts into a surprising collection of boots and shoes;

goes brawling down the hill in a diversified channel of old

cordage, old iron, old crockery, old clothes, civil and military,

old rags, new cotton goods, flaming prints of saints, little

looking-glasses, and incalculable lengths of tape; dives into a

backway, keeping out of sight for a little while, as streams will,

or only sparkling for a moment in the shape of a market drinking-

shop; and suddenly reappears behind the great church, shooting

itself into a bright confusion of white-capped women and blue-

bloused men, poultry, vegetables, fruits, flowers, pots, pans,

praying-chairs, soldiers, country butter, umbrellas and other sun-

shades, girl-porters waiting to be hired with baskets at their

backs, and one weazen little old man in a cocked hat, wearing a

cuirass of drinking-glasses and carrying on his shoulder a crimson

temple fluttering with flags, like a glorified pavior's rammer

without the handle, who rings a little bell in all parts of the

scene, and cries his cooling drink Hola, Hola, Ho-o-o! in a shrill

cracked voice that somehow makes itself heard, above all the

chaffering and vending hum. Early in the afternoon, the whole

course of the stream is dry. The praying-chairs are put back in

the church, the umbrellas are folded up, the unsold goods are

carried away, the stalls and stands disappear, the square is swept,

the hackney coaches lounge there to be hired, and on all the

country roads (if you walk about, as much as we do) you will see

the peasant women, always neatly and comfortably dressed, riding

home, with the pleasantest saddle-furniture of clean milk-pails,

bright butter-kegs, and the like, on the jolliest little donkeys in

the world.

We have another market in our French watering-place - that is to

say, a few wooden hutches in the open street, down by the Port -

devoted to fish. Our fishing-boats are famous everywhere; and our

fishing people, though they love lively colours, and taste is

neutral (see Bilkins), are among the most picturesque people we

ever encountered. They have not only a quarter of their own in the

town itself, but they occupy whole villages of their own on the

neighbouring cliffs. Their churches and chapels are their own;

they consort with one another, they intermarry among themselves,

their customs are their own, and their costume is their own and

never changes. As soon as one of their boys can walk, he is

provided with a long bright red nightcap; and one of their men

would as soon think of going afloat without his head, as without

that indispensable appendage to it. Then, they wear the noblest

boots, with the hugest tops - flapping and bulging over anyhow;

above which, they encase themselves in such wonderful overalls and

petticoat trousers, made to all appearance of tarry old sails, so

additionally stiffened with pitch and salt, that the wearers have a

walk of their own, and go straddling and swinging about among the

boats and barrels and nets and rigging, a sight to see. Then,

their younger women, by dint of going down to the sea barefoot, to

fling their baskets into the boats as they come in with the tide,

and bespeak the first fruits of the haul with propitiatory promises

to love and marry that dear fisherman who shall fill that basket

like an Angel, have the finest legs ever carved by Nature in the

brightest mahogany, and they walk like Juno. Their eyes, too, are

so lustrous that their long gold ear-rings turn dull beside those

brilliant neighbours; and when they are dressed, what with these

beauties, and their fine fresh faces, and their many petticoats -

striped petticoats, red petticoats, blue petticoats, always clean

and smart, and never too long - and their home-made stockings,

mulberry-coloured, blue, brown, purple, lilac - which the older

women, taking care of the Dutch-looking children, sit in all sorts

of places knitting, knitting, knitting from morning to night - and

what with their little saucy bright blue jackets, knitted too, and

fitting close to their handsome figures; and what with the natural

grace with which they wear the commonest cap, or fold the commonest

handkerchief round their luxuriant hair - we say, in a word and out

of breath, that taking all these premises into our consideration,

it has never been a matter of the least surprise to us that we have

never once met, in the cornfields, on the dusty roads, by the

breezy windmills, on the plots of short sweet grass overhanging the

sea - anywhere - a young fisherman and fisherwoman of our French

watering-place together, but the arm of that fisherman has

invariably been, as a matter of course and without any absurd

attempt to disguise so plain a necessity, round the neck or waist

of that fisherwoman. And we have had no doubt whatever, standing

looking at their uphill streets, house rising above house, and

terrace above terrace, and bright garments here and there lying

sunning on rough stone parapets, that the pleasant mist on all such

objects, caused by their being seen through the brown nets hung

across on poles to dry, is, in the eyes of every true young

fisherman, a mist of love and beauty, setting off the goddess of

his heart.

Moreover it is to be observed that these are an industrious people,

and a domestic people, and an honest people. And though we are

aware that at the bidding of Bilkins it is our duty to fall down

and worship the Neapolitans, we make bold very much to prefer the

fishing people of our French watering-place - especially since our

last visit to Naples within these twelvemonths, when we found only

four conditions of men remaining in the whole city: to wit,

lazzaroni, priests, spies, and soldiers, and all of them beggars;

the paternal government having banished all its subjects except the

rascals.

But we can never henceforth separate our French watering-place from

our own landlord of two summers, M. Loyal Devasseur, citizen and

town-councillor. Permit us to have the pleasure of presenting M.

Loyal Devasseur.

His own family name is simply Loyal; but, as he is married, and as

in that part of France a husband always adds to his own name the

family name of his wife, he writes himself Loyal Devasseur. He

owns a compact little estate of some twenty or thirty acres on a

lofty hill-side, and on it he has built two country houses, which

he lets furnished. They are by many degrees the best houses that

are so let near our French watering-place; we have had the honour

of living in both, and can testify. The entrance-hall of the first

we inhabited was ornamented with a plan of the estate, representing

it as about twice the size of Ireland; insomuch that when we were

yet new to the property (M. Loyal always speaks of it as 'La

propriete') we went three miles straight on end in search of the

bridge of Austerlitz - which we afterwards found to be immediately

outside the window. The Chateau of the Old Guard, in another part

of the grounds, and, according to the plan, about two leagues from

the little dining-room, we sought in vain for a week, until,

happening one evening to sit upon a bench in the forest (forest in

the plan), a few yards from the house-door, we observed at our

feet, in the ignominious circumstances of being upside down and

greenly rotten, the Old Guard himself: that is to say, the painted

effigy of a member of that distinguished corps, seven feet high,

and in the act of carrying arms, who had had the misfortune to be

blown down in the previous winter. It will be perceived that M.

Loyal is a staunch admirer of the great Napoleon. He is an old

soldier himself - captain of the National Guard, with a handsome

gold vase on his chimney-piece presented to him by his company -

and his respect for the memory of the illustrious general is

enthusiastic. Medallions of him, portraits of him, busts of him,

pictures of him, are thickly sprinkled all over the property.

During the first month of our occupation, it was our affliction to

be constantly knocking down Napoleon: if we touched a shelf in a

dark corner, he toppled over with a crash; and every door we

opened, shook him to the soul. Yet M. Loyal is not a man of mere

castles in the air, or, as he would say, in Spain. He has a

specially practical, contriving, clever, skilful eye and hand. His

houses are delightful. He unites French elegance and English

comfort, in a happy manner quite his own. He has an extraordinary

genius for making tasteful little bedrooms in angles of his roofs,

which an Englishman would as soon think of turning to any account

as he would think of cultivating the Desert. We have ourself

reposed deliciously in an elegant chamber of M. Loyal's

construction, with our head as nearly in the kitchen chimney-pot as

we can conceive it likely for the head of any gentleman, not by

profession a Sweep, to be. And, into whatsoever strange nook M.

Loyal's genius penetrates, it, in that nook, infallibly constructs

a cupboard and a row of pegs. In either of our houses, we could

have put away the knapsacks and hung up the hats of the whole

regiment of Guides.

Aforetime, M. Loyal was a tradesman in the town. You can transact

business with no present tradesman in the town, and give your card

'chez M. Loyal,' but a brighter face shines upon you directly. We

doubt if there is, ever was, or ever will be, a man so universally

pleasant in the minds of people as M. Loyal is in the minds of the

citizens of our French watering-place. They rub their hands and

laugh when they speak of him. Ah, but he is such a good child,

such a brave boy, such a generous spirit, that Monsieur Loyal! It

is the honest truth. M. Loyal's nature is the nature of a

gentleman. He cultivates his ground with his own hands (assisted

by one little labourer, who falls into a fit now and then); and he

digs and delves from morn to eve in prodigious perspirations -

'works always,' as he says - but, cover him with dust, mud, weeds,

water, any stains you will, you never can cover the gentleman in M.

Loyal. A portly, upright, broad-shouldered, brown-faced man, whose

soldierly bearing gives him the appearance of being taller than he

is, look into the bright eye of M. Loyal, standing before you in

his working-blouse and cap, not particularly well shaved, and, it

may be, very earthy, and you shall discern in M. Loyal a gentleman

whose true politeness is ingrain, and confirmation of whose word by

his bond you would blush to think of. Not without reason is M.

Loyal when he tells that story, in his own vivacious way, of his

travelling to Fulham, near London, to buy all these hundreds and

hundreds of trees you now see upon the Property, then a bare, bleak

hill; and of his sojourning in Fulham three months; and of his

jovial evenings with the market-gardeners; and of the crowning

banquet before his departure, when the market-gardeners rose as one

man, clinked their glasses all together (as the custom at Fulham

is), and cried, 'Vive Loyal!'

M. Loyal has an agreeable wife, but no family; and he loves to

drill the children of his tenants, or run races with them, or do

anything with them, or for them, that is good-natured. He is of a

highly convivial temperament, and his hospitality is unbounded.

Billet a soldier on him, and he is delighted. Five-and-thirty

soldiers had M. Loyal billeted on him this present summer, and they

all got fat and red-faced in two days. It became a legend among

the troops that whosoever got billeted on M. Loyal rolled in

clover; and so it fell out that the fortunate man who drew the

billet 'M. Loyal Devasseur' always leaped into the air, though in

heavy marching order. M. Loyal cannot bear to admit anything that

might seem by any implication to disparage the military profession.

We hinted to him once, that we were conscious of a remote doubt

arising in our mind, whether a sou a day for pocket-money, tobacco,

stockings, drink, washing, and social pleasures in general, left a

very large margin for a soldier's enjoyment. Pardon! said Monsieur

Loyal, rather wincing. It was not a fortune, but - a la bonne

heure - it was better than it used to be! What, we asked him on

another occasion, were all those neighbouring peasants, each living

with his family in one room, and each having a soldier (perhaps

two) billeted on him every other night, required to provide for

those soldiers? 'Faith!' said M. Loyal, reluctantly; a bed,

monsieur, and fire to cook with, and a candle. And they share

their supper with those soldiers. It is not possible that they

could eat alone.' - 'And what allowance do they get for this?' said

we. Monsieur Loyal drew himself up taller, took a step back, laid

his hand upon his breast, and said, with majesty, as speaking for

himself and all France, 'Monsieur, it is a contribution to the

State!'

It is never going to rain, according to M. Loyal. When it is

impossible to deny that it is now raining in torrents, he says it

will be fine - charming - magnificent - to-morrow. It is never hot

on the Property, he contends. Likewise it is never cold. The

flowers, he says, come out, delighting to grow there; it is like

Paradise this morning; it is like the Garden of Eden. He is a

little fanciful in his language: smilingly observing of Madame

Loyal, when she is absent at vespers, that she is 'gone to her

salvation' - allee a son salut. He has a great enjoyment of

tobacco, but nothing would induce him to continue smoking face to

face with a lady. His short black pipe immediately goes into his

breast pocket, scorches his blouse, and nearly sets him on fire.

In the Town Council and on occasions of ceremony, he appears in a

full suit of black, with a waistcoat of magnificent breadth across

the chest, and a shirt-collar of fabulous proportions. Good M.

Loyal! Under blouse or waistcoat, he carries one of the gentlest

hearts that beat in a nation teeming with gentle people. He has

had losses, and has been at his best under them. Not only the loss

of his way by night in the Fulham times - when a bad subject of an

Englishman, under pretence of seeing him home, took him into all

the night public-houses, drank 'arfanarf' in every one at his

expense, and finally fled, leaving him shipwrecked at Cleefeeway,

which we apprehend to be Ratcliffe Highway - but heavier losses

than that. Long ago a family of children and a mother were left in

one of his houses without money, a whole year. M. Loyal - anything

but as rich as we wish he had been - had not the heart to say 'you

must go;' so they stayed on and stayed on, and paying-tenants who

would have come in couldn't come in, and at last they managed to

get helped home across the water; and M. Loyal kissed the whole

group, and said, 'Adieu, my poor infants!' and sat down in their

deserted salon and smoked his pipe of peace. - 'The rent, M.

Loyal?' 'Eh! well! The rent!' M. Loyal shakes his head. 'Le bon

Dieu,' says M. Loyal presently, 'will recompense me,' and he laughs

and smokes his pipe of peace. May he smoke it on the Property, and

not be recompensed, these fifty years!

There are public amusements in our French watering-place, or it

would not be French. They are very popular, and very cheap. The

sea-bathing - which may rank as the most favoured daylight

entertainment, inasmuch as the French visitors bathe all day long,

and seldom appear to think of remaining less than an hour at a time

in the water - is astoundingly cheap. Omnibuses convey you, if you

please, from a convenient part of the town to the beach and back

again; you have a clean and comfortable bathing-machine, dress,

linen, and all appliances; and the charge for the whole is half-a-

franc, or fivepence. On the pier, there is usually a guitar, which

seems presumptuously enough to set its tinkling against the deep

hoarseness of the sea, and there is always some boy or woman who

sings, without any voice, little songs without any tune: the strain

we have most frequently heard being an appeal to 'the sportsman'

not to bag that choicest of game, the swallow. For bathing

purposes, we have also a subscription establishment with an

esplanade, where people lounge about with telescopes, and seem to

get a good deal of weariness for their money; and we have also an

association of individual machine proprietors combined against this

formidable rival. M. Feroce, our own particular friend in the

bathing line, is one of these. How he ever came by his name we

cannot imagine. He is as gentle and polite a man as M. Loyal

Devasseur himself; immensely stout withal; and of a beaming aspect.

M. Feroce has saved so many people from drowning, and has been

decorated with so many medals in consequence, that his stoutness

seems a special dispensation of Providence to enable him to wear

them; if his girth were the girth of an ordinary man, he could

never hang them on, all at once. It is only on very great

occasions that M. Feroce displays his shining honours. At other

times they lie by, with rolls of manuscript testifying to the

causes of their presentation, in a huge glass case in the red-

sofa'd salon of his private residence on the beach, where M. Feroce

also keeps his family pictures, his portraits of himself as he

appears both in bathing life and in private life, his little boats

that rock by clockwork, and his other ornamental possessions.

Then, we have a commodious and gay Theatre - or had, for it is

burned down now - where the opera was always preceded by a

vaudeville, in which (as usual) everybody, down to the little old

man with the large hat and the little cane and tassel, who always

played either my Uncle or my Papa, suddenly broke out of the

dialogue into the mildest vocal snatches, to the great perplexity

of unaccustomed strangers from Great Britain, who never could make

out when they were singing and when they were talking - and indeed

it was pretty much the same. But, the caterers in the way of

entertainment to whom we are most beholden, are the Society of

Welldoing, who are active all the summer, and give the proceeds of

their good works to the poor. Some of the most agreeable fetes

they contrive, are announced as 'Dedicated to the children;' and

the taste with which they turn a small public enclosure into an

elegant garden beautifully illuminated; and the thorough-going

heartiness and energy with which they personally direct the

childish pleasures; are supremely delightful. For fivepence a

head, we have on these occasions donkey races with English

'Jokeis,' and other rustic sports; lotteries for toys; roundabouts,

dancing on the grass to the music of an admirable band, fire-

balloons and fireworks. Further, almost every week all through the

summer - never mind, now, on what day of the week - there is a fete

in some adjoining village (called in that part of the country a

Ducasse), where the people - really THE PEOPLE - dance on the green

turf in the open air, round a little orchestra, that seems itself

to dance, there is such an airy motion of flags and streamers all

about it. And we do not suppose that between the Torrid Zone and

the North Pole there are to be found male dancers with such

astonishingly loose legs, furnished with so many joints in wrong

places, utterly unknown to Professor Owen, as those who here

disport themselves. Sometimes, the fete appertains to a particular

trade; you will see among the cheerful young women at the joint

Ducasse of the milliners and tailors, a wholesome knowledge of the

art of making common and cheap things uncommon and pretty, by good

sense and good taste, that is a practical lesson to any rank of

society in a whole island we could mention. The oddest feature of

these agreeable scenes is the everlasting Roundabout (we preserve

an English word wherever we can, as we are writing the English

language), on the wooden horses of which machine grown-up people of

all ages are wound round and round with the utmost solemnity, while

the proprietor's wife grinds an organ, capable of only one tune, in

the centre.

As to the boarding-houses of our French watering-place, they are

Legion, and would require a distinct treatise. It is not without a

sentiment of national pride that we believe them to contain more

bores from the shores of Albion than all the clubs in London. As

you walk timidly in their neighbourhood, the very neckcloths and

hats of your elderly compatriots cry to you from the stones of the

streets, 'We are Bores - avoid us!' We have never overheard at

street corners such lunatic scraps of political and social

discussion as among these dear countrymen of ours. They believe

everything that is impossible and nothing that is true. They carry

rumours, and ask questions, and make corrections and improvements

on one another, staggering to the human intellect. And they are

for ever rushing into the English library, propounding such

incomprehensible paradoxes to the fair mistress of that

establishment, that we beg to recommend her to her Majesty's

gracious consideration as a fit object for a pension.

The English form a considerable part of the population of our

French watering-place, and are deservedly addressed and respected

in many ways. Some of the surface-addresses to them are odd

enough, as when a laundress puts a placard outside her house

announcing her possession of that curious British instrument, a

'Mingle;' or when a tavern-keeper provides accommodation for the

celebrated English game of 'Nokemdon.' But, to us, it is not the

least pleasant feature of our French watering-place that a long and

constant fusion of the two great nations there, has taught each to

like the other, and to learn from the other, and to rise superior

to the absurd prejudices that have lingered among the weak and

ignorant in both countries equally.

Drumming and trumpeting of course go on for ever in our French

watering-place. Flag-flying is at a premium, too; but, we

cheerfully avow that we consider a flag a very pretty object, and

that we take such outward signs of innocent liveliness to our heart

of hearts. The people, in the town and in the country, are a busy

people who work hard; they are sober, temperate, good-humoured,

light-hearted, and generally remarkable for their engaging manners.

Few just men, not immoderately bilious, could see them in their

recreations without very much respecting the character that is so

easily, so harmlessly, and so simply, pleased.

BILL-STICKING

IF I had an enemy whom I hated - which Heaven forbid! - and if I

knew of something which sat heavy on his conscience, I think I

would introduce that something into a Posting-Bill, and place a

large impression in the hands of an active sticker. I can scarcely

imagine a more terrible revenge. I should haunt him, by this

means, night and day. I do not mean to say that I would publish

his secret, in red letters two feet high, for all the town to read:

I would darkly refer to it. It should be between him, and me, and

the Posting-Bill. Say, for example, that, at a certain period of

his life, my enemy had surreptitiously possessed himself of a key.

I would then embark my capital in the lock business, and conduct

that business on the advertising principle. In all my placards and

advertisements, I would throw up the line SECRET KEYS. Thus, if my

enemy passed an uninhabited house, he would see his conscience

glaring down on him from the parapets, and peeping up at him from

the cellars. If he took a dead wall in his walk, it would be alive

with reproaches. If he sought refuge in an omnibus, the panels

thereof would become Belshazzar's palace to him. If he took boat,

in a wild endeavour to escape, he would see the fatal words lurking

under the arches of the bridges over the Thames. If he walked the

streets with downcast eyes, he would recoil from the very stones of

the pavement, made eloquent by lamp-black lithograph. If he drove

or rode, his way would be blocked up by enormous vans, each

proclaiming the same words over and over again from its whole

extent of surface. Until, having gradually grown thinner and

paler, and having at last totally rejected food, he would miserably

perish, and I should be revenged. This conclusion I should, no

doubt, celebrate by laughing a hoarse laugh in three syllables, and

folding my arms tight upon my chest agreeably to most of the

examples of glutted animosity that I have had an opportunity of

observing in connexion with the Drama - which, by-the-by, as

involving a good deal of noise, appears to me to be occasionally

confounded with the Drummer.

The foregoing reflections presented themselves to my mind, the

other day, as I contemplated (being newly come to London from the

East Riding of Yorkshire, on a house-hunting expedition for next

May), an old warehouse which rotting paste and rotting paper had

brought down to the condition of an old cheese. It would have been

impossible to say, on the most conscientious survey, how much of

its front was brick and mortar, and how much decaying and decayed

plaster. It was so thickly encrusted with fragments of bills, that

no ship's keel after a long voyage could be half so foul. All

traces of the broken windows were billed out, the doors were billed

across, the water-spout was billed over. The building was shored

up to prevent its tumbling into the street; and the very beams

erected against it were less wood than paste and paper, they had

been so continually posted and reposted. The forlorn dregs of old

posters so encumbered this wreck, that there was no hold for new

posters, and the stickers had abandoned the place in despair,

except one enterprising man who had hoisted the last masquerade to

a clear spot near the level of the stack of chimneys where it waved

and drooped like a shattered flag. Below the rusty cellar-grating,

crumpled remnants of old bills torn down, rotted away in wasting

heaps of fallen leaves. Here and there, some of the thick rind of

the house had peeled off in strips, and fluttered heavily down,

littering the street; but, still, below these rents and gashes,

layers of decomposing posters showed themselves, as if they were

interminable. I thought the building could never even be pulled

down, but in one adhesive heap of rottenness and poster. As to

getting in - I don't believe that if the Sleeping Beauty and her

Court had been so billed up, the young Prince could have done it.

Knowing all the posters that were yet legible, intimately, and

pondering on their ubiquitous nature, I was led into the

reflections with which I began this paper, by considering what an

awful thing it would be, ever to have wronged - say M. JULLIEN for

example - and to have his avenging name in characters of fire

incessantly before my eyes. Or to have injured MADAME TUSSAUD, and

undergo a similar retribution. Has any man a self-reproachful

thought associated with pills, or ointment? What an avenging

spirit to that man is PROFESSOR HOLLOWAY! Have I sinned in oil?

CABBURN pursues me. Have I a dark remembrance associated with any

gentlemanly garments, bespoke or ready made? MOSES and SON are on

my track. Did I ever aim a blow at a defenceless fellow-creature's

head? That head eternally being measured for a wig, or that worse

head which was bald before it used the balsam, and hirsute

afterwards - enforcing the benevolent moral, 'Better to be bald as

a Dutch cheese than come to this,' - undoes me. Have I no sore

places in my mind which MECHI touches - which NICOLL probes - which

no registered article whatever lacerates? Does no discordant note

within me thrill responsive to mysterious watchwords, as 'Revalenta

Arabica,' or 'Number One St. Paul's Churchyard'? Then may I enjoy

life, and be happy.

Lifting up my eyes, as I was musing to this effect, I beheld

advancing towards me (I was then on Cornhill, near to the Royal

Exchange), a solemn procession of three advertising vans, of first-

class dimensions, each drawn by a very little horse. As the

cavalcade approached, I was at a loss to reconcile the careless

deportment of the drivers of these vehicles, with the terrific

announcements they conducted through the city, which being a

summary of the contents of a Sunday newspaper, were of the most

thrilling kind. Robbery, fire, murder, and the ruin of the United

Kingdom - each discharged in a line by itself, like a separate

broad-side of red-hot shot - were among the least of the warnings

addressed to an unthinking people. Yet, the Ministers of Fate who

drove the awful cars, leaned forward with their arms upon their

knees in a state of extreme lassitude, for want of any subject of

interest. The first man, whose hair I might naturally have

expected to see standing on end, scratched his head - one of the

smoothest I ever beheld - with profound indifference. The second

whistled. The third yawned.

Pausing to dwell upon this apathy, it appeared to me, as the fatal

cars came by me, that I descried in the second car, through the

portal in which the charioteer was seated, a figure stretched upon

the floor. At the same time, I thought I smelt tobacco. The

latter impression passed quickly from me; the former remained.

Curious to know whether this prostrate figure was the one

impressible man of the whole capital who had been stricken

insensible by the terrors revealed to him, and whose form had been

placed in the car by the charioteer, from motives of humanity, I

followed the procession. It turned into Leadenhall-market, and

halted at a public-house. Each driver dismounted. I then

distinctly heard, proceeding from the second car, where I had dimly

seen the prostrate form, the words:

'And a pipe!'

The driver entering the public-house with his fellows, apparently

for purposes of refreshment, I could not refrain from mounting on

the shaft of the second vehicle, and looking in at the portal. I

then beheld, reclining on his back upon the floor, on a kind of

mattress or divan, a little man in a shooting-coat. The

exclamation 'Dear me' which irresistibly escaped my lips caused him

to sit upright, and survey me. I found him to be a good-looking

little man of about fifty, with a shining face, a tight head, a

bright eye, a moist wink, a quick speech, and a ready air. He had

something of a sporting way with him.

He looked at me, and I looked at him, until the driver displaced me

by handing in a pint of beer, a pipe, and what I understand is

called 'a screw' of tobacco - an object which has the appearance of

a curl-paper taken off the barmaid's head, with the curl in it.

'I beg your pardon,' said I, when the removed person of the driver

again admitted of my presenting my face at the portal. 'But -

excuse my curiosity, which I inherit from my mother - do you live

here?'

'That's good, too!' returned the little man, composedly laying

aside a pipe he had smoked out, and filling the pipe just brought

to him.

'Oh, you DON'T live here then?' said I.

He shook his head, as he calmly lighted his pipe by means of a

German tinder-box, and replied, 'This is my carriage. When things

are flat, I take a ride sometimes, and enjoy myself. I am the

inventor of these wans.'

His pipe was now alight. He drank his beer all at once, and he

smoked and he smiled at me.

'It was a great idea!' said I.

'Not so bad,' returned the little man, with the modesty of merit.

'Might I be permitted to inscribe your name upon the tablets of my

memory?' I asked.

'There's not much odds in the name,' returned the little man, ' -

no name particular - I am the King of the Bill-Stickers.'

'Good gracious!' said I.

The monarch informed me, with a smile, that he had never been

crowned or installed with any public ceremonies, but that he was

peaceably acknowledged as King of the Bill-Stickers in right of

being the oldest and most respected member of 'the old school of

bill-sticking.' He likewise gave me to understand that there was a

Lord Mayor of the Bill-Stickers, whose genius was chiefly exercised

within the limits of the city. He made some allusion, also, to an

inferior potentate, called 'Turkey-legs;' but I did not understand

that this gentleman was invested with much power. I rather

inferred that he derived his title from some peculiarity of gait,

and that it was of an honorary character.

'My father,' pursued the King of the Bill-Stickers, 'was Engineer,

Beadle, and Bill-Sticker to the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in

the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. My father stuck

bills at the time of the riots of London.'

'You must be acquainted with the whole subject of bill-sticking,

from that time to the present!' said I.

'Pretty well so,' was the answer.

'Excuse me,' said I; 'but I am a sort of collector - '

''Not Income-tax?' cried His Majesty, hastily removing his pipe

from his lips.

'No, no,' said I.

'Water-rate?' said His Majesty.

'No, no,' I returned.

'Gas? Assessed? Sewers?' said His Majesty.

'You misunderstand me,' I replied, soothingly. 'Not that sort of

collector at all: a collector of facts.'

'Oh, if it's only facts,' cried the King of the Bill-Stickers,

recovering his good-humour, and banishing the great mistrust that

had suddenly fallen upon him, 'come in and welcome! If it had been

income, or winders, I think I should have pitched you out of the

wan, upon my soul!'

Readily complying with the invitation, I squeezed myself in at the

small aperture. His Majesty, graciously handing me a little three-

legged stool on which I took my seat in a corner, inquired if I

smoked.

'I do; - that is, I can,' I answered.

'Pipe and a screw!' said His Majesty to the attendant charioteer.

'Do you prefer a dry smoke, or do you moisten it?'

As unmitigated tobacco produces most disturbing effects upon my

system (indeed, if I had perfect moral courage, I doubt if I should

smoke at all, under any circumstances), I advocated moisture, and

begged the Sovereign of the Bill-Stickers to name his usual liquor,

and to concede to me the privilege of paying for it. After some

delicate reluctance on his part, we were provided, through the

instrumentality of the attendant charioteer, with a can of cold

rum-and-water, flavoured with sugar and lemon. We were also

furnished with a tumbler, and I was provided with a pipe. His

Majesty, then observing that we might combine business with

conversation, gave the word for the car to proceed; and, to my

great delight, we jogged away at a foot pace.

I say to my great delight, because I am very fond of novelty, and

it was a new sensation to be jolting through the tumult of the city

in that secluded Temple, partly open to the sky, surrounded by the

roar without, and seeing nothing but the clouds. Occasionally,

blows from whips fell heavily on the Temple's walls, when by

stopping up the road longer than usual, we irritated carters and

coachmen to madness; but they fell harmless upon us within and

disturbed not the serenity of our peaceful retreat. As I looked

upward, I felt, I should imagine, like the Astronomer Royal. I was

enchanted by the contrast between the freezing nature of our

external mission on the blood of the populace, and the perfect

composure reigning within those sacred precincts: where His

Majesty, reclining easily on his left arm, smoked his pipe and

drank his rum-and-water from his own side of the tumbler, which

stood impartially between us. As I looked down from the clouds and

caught his royal eye, he understood my reflections. 'I have an

idea,' he observed, with an upward glance, 'of training scarlet

runners across in the season, - making a arbour of it, - and

sometimes taking tea in the same, according to the song.'

I nodded approval.

'And here you repose and think?' said I.

'And think,' said he, 'of posters - walls - and hoardings.'

We were both silent, contemplating the vastness of the subject. I

remembered a surprising fancy of dear THOMAS HOOD'S, and wondered

whether this monarch ever sighed to repair to the great wall of

China, and stick bills all over it.

'And so,' said he, rousing himself, 'it's facts as you collect?'

'Facts,' said I.

'The facts of bill-sticking,' pursued His Majesty, in a benignant

manner, 'as known to myself, air as following. When my father was

Engineer, Beadle, and Bill-Sticker to the parish of St. Andrew's,

Holborn, he employed women to post bills for him. He employed

women to post bills at the time of the riots of London. He died at

the age of seventy-five year, and was buried by the murdered Eliza

Grimwood, over in the Waterloo Road.'

As this was somewhat in the nature of a royal speech, I listened

with deference and silently. His Majesty, taking a scroll from his

pocket, proceeded, with great distinctness, to pour out the

following flood of information:-

'"The bills being at that period mostly proclamations and

declarations, and which were only a demy size, the manner of

posting the bills (as they did not use brushes) was by means of a

piece of wood which they called a 'dabber.' Thus things continued

till such time as the State Lottery was passed, and then the

printers began to print larger bills, and men were employed instead

of women, as the State Lottery Commissioners then began to send men

all over England to post bills, and would keep them out for six or

eight months at a time, and they were called by the London bill-

stickers 'TRAMPERS,' their wages at the time being ten shillings

per day, besides expenses. They used sometimes to be stationed in

large towns for five or six months together, distributing the

schemes to all the houses in the town. And then there were more

caricature wood-block engravings for posting-bills than there are

at the present time, the principal printers, at that time, of

posting-bills being Messrs. Evans and Ruffy, of Budge Row;

Thoroughgood and Whiting, of the present day; and Messrs. Gye and

Balne, Gracechurch Street, City. The largest bills printed at that

period were a two-sheet double crown; and when they commenced

printing four-sheet bills, two bill-stickers would work together.

They had no settled wages per week, but had a fixed price for their

work, and the London bill-stickers, during a lottery week, have

been known to earn, each, eight or nine pounds per week, till the

day of drawing; likewise the men who carried boards in the street

used to have one pound per week, and the bill-stickers at that time

would not allow any one to wilfully cover or destroy their bills,

as they had a society amongst themselves, and very frequently dined

together at some public-house where they used to go of an evening

to have their work delivered out untoe 'em."'

All this His Majesty delivered in a gallant manner; posting it, as

it were, before me, in a great proclamation. I took advantage of

the pause he now made, to inquire what a 'two-sheet double crown'

might express?

'A two-sheet double crown,' replied the King, 'is a bill thirty-

nine inches wide by thirty inches high.'

'Is it possible,' said I, my mind reverting to the gigantic

admonitions we were then displaying to the multitude - which were

as infants to some of the posting-bills on the rotten old warehouse

- 'that some few years ago the largest bill was no larger than

that?'

'The fact,' returned the King, 'is undoubtedly so.' Here he

instantly rushed again into the scroll.

'"Since the abolishing of the State Lottery all that good feeling

has gone, and nothing but jealousy exists, through the rivalry of

each other. Several bill-sticking companies have started, but have

failed. The first party that started a company was twelve year

ago; but what was left of the old school and their dependants

joined together and opposed them. And for some time we were quiet

again, till a printer of Hatton Garden formed a company by hiring

the sides of houses; but he was not supported by the public, and he

left his wooden frames fixed up for rent. The last company that

started, took advantage of the New Police Act, and hired of Messrs.

Grissell and Peto the hoarding of Trafalgar Square, and established

a bill-sticking office in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, and

engaged some of the new bill-stickers to do their work, and for a

time got the half of all our work, and with such spirit did they

carry on their opposition towards us, that they used to give us in

charge before the magistrate, and get us fined; but they found it

so expensive, that they could not keep it up, for they were always

employing a lot of ruffians from the Seven Dials to come and fight

us; and on one occasion the old bill-stickers went to Trafalgar

Square to attempt to post bills, when they were given in custody by

the watchman in their employ, and fined at Queen Square five

pounds, as they would not allow any of us to speak in the office;

but when they were gone, we had an interview with the magistrate,

who mitigated the fine to fifteen shillings. During the time the

men were waiting for the fine, this company started off to a

public-house that we were in the habit of using, and waited for us

coming back, where a fighting scene took place that beggars

description. Shortly after this, the principal one day came and

shook hands with us, and acknowledged that he had broken up the

company, and that he himself had lost five hundred pound in trying

to overthrow us. We then took possession of the hoarding in

Trafalgar Square; but Messrs. Grissell and Peto would not allow us

to post our bills on the said hoarding without paying them - and

from first to last we paid upwards of two hundred pounds for that

hoarding, and likewise the hoarding of the Reform Club-house, Pall

Mall."'

His Majesty, being now completely out of breath, laid down his

scroll (which he appeared to have finished), puffed at his pipe,

and took some rum-and-water. I embraced the opportunity of asking

how many divisions the art and mystery of bill-sticking comprised?

He replied, three - auctioneers' bill-sticking, theatrical bill-

sticking, general bill-sticking.

'The auctioneers' porters,' said the King, 'who do their bill-

sticking, are mostly respectable and intelligent, and generally

well paid for their work, whether in town or country. The price

paid by the principal auctioneers for country work is nine

shillings per day; that is, seven shillings for day's work, one

shilling for lodging, and one for paste. Town work is five

shillings a day, including paste.'

'Town work must be rather hot work,' said I, 'if there be many of

those fighting scenes that beggar description, among the bill-

stickers?'

'Well,' replied the King, 'I an't a stranger, I assure you, to

black eyes; a bill-sticker ought to know how to handle his fists a

bit. As to that row I have mentioned, that grew out of

competition, conducted in an uncompromising spirit. Besides a man

in a horse-and-shay continually following us about, the company had

a watchman on duty, night and day, to prevent us sticking bills

upon the hoarding in Trafalgar Square. We went there, early one

morning, to stick bills and to black-wash their bills if we were

interfered with. We WERE interfered with, and I gave the word for

laying on the wash. It WAS laid on - pretty brisk - and we were

all taken to Queen Square: but they couldn't fine ME. I knew

that,' - with a bright smile - 'I'd only give directions - I was

only the General.' Charmed with this monarch's affability, I

inquired if he had ever hired a hoarding himself.

'Hired a large one,' he replied, 'opposite the Lyceum Theatre, when

the buildings was there. Paid thirty pound for it; let out places

on it, and called it "The External Paper-Hanging Station." But it

didn't answer. Ah!' said His Majesty thoughtfully, as he filled

the glass, 'Bill-stickers have a deal to contend with. The bill-

sticking clause was got into the Police Act by a member of

Parliament that employed me at his election. The clause is pretty

stiff respecting where bills go; but HE didn't mind where HIS bills

went. It was all right enough, so long as they was HIS bills!'

Fearful that I observed a shadow of misanthropy on the King's

cheerful face, I asked whose ingenious invention that was, which I

greatly admired, of sticking bills under the arches of the bridges.

'Mine!' said His Majesty. 'I was the first that ever stuck a bill

under a bridge! Imitators soon rose up, of course. - When don't

they? But they stuck 'em at low-water, and the tide came and swept

the bills clean away. I knew that!' The King laughed.

'What may be the name of that instrument, like an immense fishing-

rod,' I inquired, 'with which bills are posted on high places?'

'The joints,' returned His Majesty. 'Now, we use the joints where

formerly we used ladders - as they do still in country places.

Once, when Madame' (Vestris, understood) 'was playing in Liverpool,

another bill-sticker and me were at it together on the wall outside

the Clarence Dock - me with the joints - him on a ladder. Lord! I

had my bill up, right over his head, yards above him, ladder and

all, while he was crawling to his work. The people going in and

out of the docks, stood and laughed! - It's about thirty years

since the joints come in.'

'Are there any bill-stickers who can't read?' I took the liberty of

inquiring.

'Some,' said the King. 'But they know which is the right side

up'ards of their work. They keep it as it's given out to 'em. I

have seen a bill or so stuck wrong side up'ards. But it's very

rare.'

Our discourse sustained some interruption at this point, by the

procession of cars occasioning a stoppage of about three-quarters

of a mile in length, as nearly as I could judge. His Majesty,

however, entreating me not to be discomposed by the contingent

uproar, smoked with great placidity, and surveyed the firmament.

When we were again in motion, I begged to be informed what was the

largest poster His Majesty had ever seen. The King replied, 'A

thirty-six sheet poster.' I gathered, also, that there were about

a hundred and fifty bill-stickers in London, and that His Majesty

considered an average hand equal to the posting of one hundred

bills (single sheets) in a day. The King was of opinion, that,

although posters had much increased in size, they had not increased

in number; as the abolition of the State Lotteries had occasioned a

great falling off, especially in the country. Over and above which

change, I bethought myself that the custom of advertising in

newspapers had greatly increased. The completion of many London

improvements, as Trafalgar Square (I particularly observed the

singularity of His Majesty's calling THAT an improvement), the

Royal Exchange, &c., had of late years reduced the number of

advantageous posting-places. Bill-Stickers at present rather

confine themselves to districts, than to particular descriptions of

work. One man would strike over Whitechapel, another would take

round Houndsditch, Shoreditch, and the City Road; one (the King

said) would stick to the Surrey side; another would make a beat of

the West-end.

His Majesty remarked, with some approach to severity, on the

neglect of delicacy and taste, gradually introduced into the trade

by the new school: a profligate and inferior race of impostors who

took jobs at almost any price, to the detriment of the old school,

and the confusion of their own misguided employers. He considered

that the trade was overdone with competition, and observed speaking

of his subjects, 'There are too many of 'em.' He believed, still,

that things were a little better than they had been; adducing, as a

proof, the fact that particular posting places were now reserved,

by common consent, for particular posters; those places, however,

must be regularly occupied by those posters, or, they lapsed and

fell into other hands. It was of no use giving a man a Drury Lane

bill this week and not next. Where was it to go? He was of

opinion that going to the expense of putting up your own board on

which your sticker could display your own bills, was the only

complete way of posting yourself at the present time; but, even to

effect this, on payment of a shilling a week to the keepers of

steamboat piers and other such places, you must be able, besides,

to give orders for theatres and public exhibitions, or you would be

sure to be cut out by somebody. His Majesty regarded the passion

for orders, as one of the most unappeasable appetites of human

nature. If there were a building, or if there were repairs, going

on, anywhere, you could generally stand something and make it right

with the foreman of the works; but, orders would be expected from

you, and the man who could give the most orders was the man who

would come off best. There was this other objectionable point, in

orders, that workmen sold them for drink, and often sold them to

persons who were likewise troubled with the weakness of thirst:

which led (His Majesty said) to the presentation of your orders at

Theatre doors, by individuals who were 'too shakery' to derive

intellectual profit from the entertainments, and who brought a

scandal on you. Finally, His Majesty said that you could hardly

put too little in a poster; what you wanted, was, two or three good

catch-lines for the eye to rest on - then, leave it alone - and

there you were!

These are the minutes of my conversation with His Majesty, as I

noted them down shortly afterwards. I am not aware that I have

been betrayed into any alteration or suppression. The manner of

the King was frank in the extreme; and he seemed to me to avoid, at

once that slight tendency to repetition which may have been

observed in the conversation of His Majesty King George the Third,

and - that slight under-current of egotism which the curious

observer may perhaps detect in the conversation of Napoleon

Bonaparte.

I must do the King the justice to say that it was I, and not he,

who closed the dialogue. At this juncture, I became the subject of

a remarkable optical delusion; the legs of my stool appeared to me

to double up; the car to spin round and round with great violence;

and a mist to arise between myself and His Majesty. In addition to

these sensations, I felt extremely unwell. I refer these

unpleasant effects, either to the paste with which the posters were

affixed to the van: which may have contained some small portion of

arsenic; or, to the printer's ink, which may have contained some

equally deleterious ingredient. Of this, I cannot be sure. I am

only sure that I was not affected, either by the smoke, or the rum-

and-water. I was assisted out of the vehicle, in a state of mind

which I have only experienced in two other places - I allude to the

Pier at Dover, and to the corresponding portion of the town of

Calais - and sat upon a door-step until I recovered. The

procession had then disappeared. I have since looked anxiously for

the King in several other cars, but I have not yet had the

happiness of seeing His Majesty.

'BIRTHS. MRS. MEEK, OF A SON

MY name is Meek. I am, in fact, Mr. Meek. That son is mine and

Mrs. Meek's. When I saw the announcement in the Times, I dropped

the paper. I had put it in, myself, and paid for it, but it looked

so noble that it overpowered me.

As soon as I could compose my feelings, I took the paper up to Mrs.

Meek's bedside. 'Maria Jane,' said I (I allude to Mrs. Meek), 'you

are now a public character.' We read the review of our child,

several times, with feelings of the strongest emotion; and I sent

the boy who cleans the boots and shoes, to the office for fifteen

copies. No reduction was made on taking that quantity.

It is scarcely necessary for me to say, that our child had been

expected. In fact, it had been expected, with comparative

confidence, for some months. Mrs. Meek's mother, who resides with

us - of the name of Bigby - had made every preparation for its

admission to our circle.

I hope and believe I am a quiet man. I will go farther. I KNOW I

am a quiet man. My constitution is tremulous, my voice was never

loud, and, in point of stature, I have been from infancy, small. I

have the greatest respect for Maria Jane's Mama. She is a most

remarkable woman. I honour Maria Jane's Mama. In my opinion she

would storm a town, single-handed, with a hearth-broom, and carry

it. I have never known her to yield any point whatever, to mortal

man. She is calculated to terrify the stoutest heart.

Still - but I will not anticipate.

The first intimation I had, of any preparations being in progress,

on the part of Maria Jane's Mama, was one afternoon, several months

ago. I came home earlier than usual from the office, and,

proceeding into the dining-room, found an obstruction behind the

door, which prevented it from opening freely. It was an

obstruction of a soft nature. On looking in, I found it to be a

female.

The female in question stood in the corner behind the door,

consuming Sherry Wine. From the nutty smell of that beverage

pervading the apartment, I have no doubt she was consuming a second

glassful. She wore a black bonnet of large dimensions, and was

copious in figure. The expression of her countenance was severe

and discontented. The words to which she gave utterance on seeing

me, were these, 'Oh, git along with you, Sir, if YOU please; me and

Mrs. Bigby don't want no male parties here!'

That female was Mrs. Prodgit.

I immediately withdrew, of course. I was rather hurt, but I made

no remark. Whether it was that I showed a lowness of spirits after

dinner, in consequence of feeling that I seemed to intrude, I

cannot say. But, Maria Jane's Mama said to me on her retiring for

the night: in a low distinct voice, and with a look of reproach

that completely subdued me: 'George Meek, Mrs. Prodgit is your

wife's nurse!'

I bear no ill-will towards Mrs. Prodgit. Is it likely that I,

writing this with tears in my eyes, should be capable of deliberate

animosity towards a female, so essential to the welfare of Maria

Jane? I am willing to admit that Fate may have been to blame, and

not Mrs. Prodgit; but, it is undeniably true, that the latter

female brought desolation and devastation into my lowly dwelling.

We were happy after her first appearance; we were sometimes

exceedingly so. But, whenever the parlour door was opened, and

'Mrs. Prodgit!' announced (and she was very often announced),

misery ensued. I could not bear Mrs. Prodgit's look. I felt that

I was far from wanted, and had no business to exist in Mrs.

Prodgit's presence. Between Maria Jane's Mama, and Mrs. Prodgit,

there was a dreadful, secret, understanding - a dark mystery and

conspiracy, pointing me out as a being to be shunned. I appeared

to have done something that was evil. Whenever Mrs. Prodgit

called, after dinner, I retired to my dressing-room - where the

temperature is very low indeed, in the wintry time of the year -

and sat looking at my frosty breath as it rose before me, and at my

rack of boots; a serviceable article of furniture, but never, in my

opinion, an exhilarating object. The length of the councils that

were held with Mrs. Prodgit, under these circumstances, I will not

attempt to describe. I will merely remark, that Mrs. Prodgit

always consumed Sherry Wine while the deliberations were in

progress; that they always ended in Maria Jane's being in wretched

spirits on the sofa; and that Maria Jane's Mama always received me,

when I was recalled, with a look of desolate triumph that too

plainly said, 'NOW, George Meek! You see my child, Maria Jane, a

ruin, and I hope you are satisfied!'

I pass, generally, over the period that intervened between the day

when Mrs. Prodgit entered her protest against male parties, and the

ever-memorable midnight when I brought her to my unobtrusive home

in a cab, with an extremely large box on the roof, and a bundle, a

bandbox, and a basket, between the driver's legs. I have no

objection to Mrs. Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby, who I

never can forget is the parent of Maria Jane) taking entire

possession of my unassuming establishment. In the recesses of my

own breast, the thought may linger that a man in possession cannot

be so dreadful as a woman, and that woman Mrs. Prodgit; but, I

ought to bear a good deal, and I hope I can, and do. Huffing and

snubbing, prey upon my feelings; but, I can bear them without

complaint. They may tell in the long run; I may be hustled about,

from post to pillar, beyond my strength; nevertheless, I wish to

avoid giving rise to words in the family.

The voice of Nature, however, cries aloud in behalf of Augustus

George, my infant son. It is for him that I wish to utter a few

plaintive household words. I am not at all angry; I am mild - but

miserable.

I wish to know why, when my child, Augustus George, was expected in

our circle, a provision of pins was made, as if the little stranger

were a criminal who was to be put to the torture immediately, on

his arrival, instead of a holy babe? I wish to know why haste was

made to stick those pins all over his innocent form, in every

direction? I wish to be informed why light and air are excluded

from Augustus George, like poisons? Why, I ask, is my unoffending

infant so hedged into a basket-bedstead, with dimity and calico,

with miniature sheets and blankets, that I can only hear him

snuffle (and no wonder!) deep down under the pink hood of a little

bathing-machine, and can never peruse even so much of his

lineaments as his nose?

Was I expected to be the father of a French Roll, that the brushes

of All Nations were laid in, to rasp Augustus George? Am I to be

told that his sensitive skin was ever intended by Nature to have

rashes brought out upon it, by the premature and incessant use of

those formidable little instruments?

Is my son a Nutmeg, that he is to be grated on the stiff edges of

sharp frills? Am I the parent of a Muslin boy, that his yielding

surface is to be crimped and small plaited? Or is my child

composed of Paper or of Linen, that impressions of the finer

getting-up art, practised by the laundress, are to be printed off,

all over his soft arms and legs, as I constantly observe them? The

starch enters his soul; who can wonder that he cries?

Was Augustus George intended to have limbs, or to be born a Torso?

I presume that limbs were the intention, as they are the usual

practice. Then, why are my poor child's limbs fettered and tied

up? Am I to be told that there is any analogy between Augustus

George Meek and Jack Sheppard?

Analyse Castor Oil at any Institution of Chemistry that may be

agreed upon, and inform me what resemblance, in taste, it bears to

that natural provision which it is at once the pride and duty of

Maria Jane to administer to Augustus George! Yet, I charge Mrs.

Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with systematically

forcing Castor Oil on my innocent son, from the first hour of his

birth. When that medicine, in its efficient action, causes

internal disturbance to Augustus George, I charge Mrs. Prodgit

(aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with insanely and inconsistently

administering opium to allay the storm she has raised! What is the

meaning of this?

If the days of Egyptian Mummies are past, how dare Mrs. Prodgit

require, for the use of my son, an amount of flannel and linen that

would carpet my humble roof? Do I wonder that she requires it?

No! This morning, within an hour, I beheld this agonising sight.

I beheld my son - Augustus George - in Mrs. Prodgit's hands, and on

Mrs. Prodgit's knee, being dressed. He was at the moment,

comparatively speaking, in a state of nature; having nothing on,

but an extremely short shirt, remarkably disproportionate to the

length of his usual outer garments. Trailing from Mrs. Prodgit's

lap, on the floor, was a long narrow roller or bandage - I should

say of several yards in extent. In this, I SAW Mrs. Prodgit

tightly roll the body of my unoffending infant, turning him over

and over, now presenting his unconscious face upwards, now the back

of his bald head, until the unnatural feat was accomplished, and

the bandage secured by a pin, which I have every reason to believe

entered the body of my only child. In this tourniquet, he passes

the present phase of his existence. Can I know it, and smile!

I fear I have been betrayed into expressing myself warmly, but I

feel deeply. Not for myself; for Augustus George. I dare not

interfere. Will any one? Will any publication? Any doctor? Any

parent? Any body? I do not complain that Mrs. Prodgit (aided and

abetted by Mrs. Bigby) entirely alienates Maria Jane's affections

from me, and interposes an impassable barrier between us. I do not

complain of being made of no account. I do not want to be of any

account. But, Augustus George is a production of Nature (I cannot

think otherwise), and I claim that he should be treated with some

remote reference to Nature. In my opinion, Mrs. Prodgit is, from

first to last, a convention and a superstition. Are all the

faculty afraid of Mrs. Prodgit? If not, why don't they take her in

hand and improve her?

P.S. Maria Jane's Mama boasts of her own knowledge of the subject,

and says she brought up seven children besides Maria Jane. But how

do I know that she might not have brought them up much better?

Maria Jane herself is far from strong, and is subject to headaches,

and nervous indigestion. Besides which, I learn from the

statistical tables that one child in five dies within the first

year of its life; and one child in three, within the fifth. That

don't look as if we could never improve in these particulars, I

think!

P.P.S. Augustus George is in convulsions.

LYING AWAKE

'MY uncle lay with his eyes half closed, and his nightcap drawn

almost down to his nose. His fancy was already wandering, and

began to mingle up the present scene with the crater of Vesuvius,

the French Opera, the Coliseum at Rome, Dolly's Chop-house in

London, and all the farrago of noted places with which the brain of

a traveller is crammed; in a word, he was just falling asleep.'

Thus, that delightful writer, WASHINGTON IRVING, in his Tales of a

Traveller. But, it happened to me the other night to be lying: not

with my eyes half closed, but with my eyes wide open; not with my

nightcap drawn almost down to my nose, for on sanitary principles I

never wear a nightcap: but with my hair pitchforked and touzled all

over the pillow; not just falling asleep by any means, but

glaringly, persistently, and obstinately, broad awake. Perhaps,

with no scientific intention or invention, I was illustrating the

theory of the Duality of the Brain; perhaps one part of my brain,

being wakeful, sat up to watch the other part which was sleepy. Be

that as it may, something in me was as desirous to go to sleep as

it possibly could be, but something else in me WOULD NOT go to

sleep, and was as obstinate as George the Third.

Thinking of George the Third - for I devote this paper to my train

of thoughts as I lay awake: most people lying awake sometimes, and

having some interest in the subject - put me in mind of BENJAMIN

FRANKLIN, and so Benjamin Franklin's paper on the art of procuring

pleasant dreams, which would seem necessarily to include the art of

going to sleep, came into my head. Now, as I often used to read

that paper when I was a very small boy, and as I recollect

everything I read then as perfectly as I forget everything I read

now, I quoted 'Get out of bed, beat up and turn your pillow, shake

the bed-clothes well with at least twenty shakes, then throw the

bed open and leave it to cool; in the meanwhile, continuing

undrest, walk about your chamber. When you begin to feel the cold

air unpleasant, then return to your bed, and you will soon fall

asleep, and your sleep will be sweet and pleasant.' Not a bit of

it! I performed the whole ceremony, and if it were possible for me

to be more saucer-eyed than I was before, that was the only result

that came of it.

Except Niagara. The two quotations from Washington Irving and

Benjamin Franklin may have put it in my head by an American

association of ideas; but there I was, and the Horse-shoe Fall was

thundering and tumbling in my eyes and ears, and the very rainbows

that I left upon the spray when I really did last look upon it,

were beautiful to see. The night-light being quite as plain,

however, and sleep seeming to be many thousand miles further off

than Niagara, I made up my mind to think a little about Sleep;

which I no sooner did than I whirled off in spite of myself to

Drury Lane Theatre, and there saw a great actor and dear friend of

mine (whom I had been thinking of in the day) playing Macbeth, and

heard him apostrophising 'the death of each day's life,' as I have

heard him many a time, in the days that are gone.

But, Sleep. I WILL think about Sleep. I am determined to think

(this is the way I went on) about Sleep. I must hold the word

Sleep, tight and fast, or I shall be off at a tangent in half a

second. I feel myself unaccountably straying, already, into Clare

Market. Sleep. It would be curious, as illustrating the equality

of sleep, to inquire how many of its phenomena are common to all

classes, to all degrees of wealth and poverty, to every grade of

education and ignorance. Here, for example, is her Majesty Queen

Victoria in her palace, this present blessed night, and here is

Winking Charley, a sturdy vagrant, in one of her Majesty's jails.

Her Majesty has fallen, many thousands of times, from that same

Tower, which I claim a right to tumble off now and then. So has

Winking Charley. Her Majesty in her sleep has opened or prorogued

Parliament, or has held a Drawing Room, attired in some very scanty

dress, the deficiencies and improprieties of which have caused her

great uneasiness. I, in my degree, have suffered unspeakable

agitation of mind from taking the chair at a public dinner at the

London Tavern in my night-clothes, which not all the courtesy of my

kind friend and host MR. BATHE could persuade me were quite adapted

to the occasion. Winking Charley has been repeatedly tried in a

worse condition. Her Majesty is no stranger to a vault or

firmament, of a sort of floorcloth, with an indistinct pattern

distantly resembling eyes, which occasionally obtrudes itself on

her repose. Neither am I. Neither is Winking Charley. It is

quite common to all three of us to skim along with airy strides a

little above the ground; also to hold, with the deepest interest,

dialogues with various people, all represented by ourselves; and to

be at our wit's end to know what they are going to tell us; and to

be indescribably astonished by the secrets they disclose. It is

probable that we have all three committed murders and hidden

bodies. It is pretty certain that we have all desperately wanted

to cry out, and have had no voice; that we have all gone to the

play and not been able to get in; that we have all dreamed much

more of our youth than of our later lives; that - I have lost it!

The thread's broken.

And up I go. I, lying here with the night-light before me, up I

go, for no reason on earth that I can find out, and drawn by no

links that are visible to me, up the Great Saint Bernard! I have

lived in Switzerland, and rambled among the mountains; but, why I

should go there now, and why up the Great Saint Bernard in

preference to any other mountain, I have no idea. As I lie here

broad awake, and with every sense so sharpened that I can

distinctly hear distant noises inaudible to me at another time, I

make that journey, as I really did, on the same summer day, with

the same happy party - ah! two since dead, I grieve to think - and

there is the same track, with the same black wooden arms to point

the way, and there are the same storm-refuges here and there; and

there is the same snow falling at the top, and there are the same

frosty mists, and there is the same intensely cold convent with its

menagerie smell, and the same breed of dogs fast dying out, and the

same breed of jolly young monks whom I mourn to know as humbugs,

and the same convent parlour with its piano and the sitting round

the fire, and the same supper, and the same lone night in a cell,

and the same bright fresh morning when going out into the highly

rarefied air was like a plunge into an icy bath. Now, see here

what comes along; and why does this thing stalk into my mind on the

top of a Swiss mountain!

It is a figure that I once saw, just after dark, chalked upon a

door in a little back lane near a country church - my first church.

How young a child I may have been at the time I don't know, but it

horrified me so intensely - in connexion with the churchyard, I

suppose, for it smokes a pipe, and has a big hat with each of its

ears sticking out in a horizontal line under the brim, and is not

in itself more oppressive than a mouth from ear to ear, a pair of

goggle eyes, and hands like two bunches of carrots, five in each,

can make it - that it is still vaguely alarming to me to recall (as

I have often done before, lying awake) the running home, the

looking behind, the horror, of its following me; though whether

disconnected from the door, or door and all, I can't say, and

perhaps never could. It lays a disagreeable train. I must resolve

to think of something on the voluntary principle.

The balloon ascents of this last season. They will do to think

about, while I lie awake, as well as anything else. I must hold

them tight though, for I feel them sliding away, and in their stead

are the Mannings, husband and wife, hanging on the top of Horse-

monger Lane Jail. In connexion with which dismal spectacle, I

recall this curious fantasy of the mind. That, having beheld that

execution, and having left those two forms dangling on the top of

the entrance gateway - the man's, a limp, loose suit of clothes as

if the man had gone out of them; the woman's, a fine shape, so

elaborately corseted and artfully dressed, that it was quite

unchanged in its trim appearance as it slowly swung from side to

side - I never could, by my uttermost efforts, for some weeks,

present the outside of that prison to myself (which the terrible

impression I had received continually obliged me to do) without

presenting it with the two figures still hanging in the morning

air. Until, strolling past the gloomy place one night, when the

street was deserted and quiet, and actually seeing that the bodies

were not there, my fancy was persuaded, as it were, to take them

down and bury them within the precincts of the jail, where they

have lain ever since.

The balloon ascents of last season. Let me reckon them up. There

were the horse, the bull, the parachute, - and the tumbler hanging

on - chiefly by his toes, I believe - below the car. Very wrong,

indeed, and decidedly to be stopped. But, in connexion with these

and similar dangerous exhibitions, it strikes me that that portion

of the public whom they entertain, is unjustly reproached. Their

pleasure is in the difficulty overcome. They are a public of great

faith, and are quite confident that the gentleman will not fall off

the horse, or the lady off the bull or out of the parachute, and

that the tumbler has a firm hold with his toes. They do not go to

see the adventurer vanquished, but triumphant. There is no

parallel in public combats between men and beasts, because nobody

can answer for the particular beast - unless it were always the

same beast, in which case it would be a mere stage-show, which the

same public would go in the same state of mind to see, entirely

believing in the brute being beforehand safely subdued by the man.

That they are not accustomed to calculate hazards and dangers with

any nicety, we may know from their rash exposure of themselves in

overcrowded steamboats, and unsafe conveyances and places of all

kinds. And I cannot help thinking that instead of railing, and

attributing savage motives to a people naturally well disposed and

humane, it is better to teach them, and lead them argumentatively

and reasonably - for they are very reasonable, if you will discuss

a matter with them - to more considerate and wise conclusions.

This is a disagreeable intrusion! Here is a man with his throat

cut, dashing towards me as I lie awake! A recollection of an old

story of a kinsman of mine, who, going home one foggy winter night

to Hampstead, when London was much smaller and the road lonesome,

suddenly encountered such a figure rushing past him, and presently

two keepers from a madhouse in pursuit. A very unpleasant creature

indeed, to come into my mind unbidden, as I lie awake.

- The balloon ascents of last season. I must return to the

balloons. Why did the bleeding man start out of them? Never mind;

if I inquire, he will be back again. The balloons. This

particular public have inherently a great pleasure in the

contemplation of physical difficulties overcome; mainly, as I take

it, because the lives of a large majority of them are exceedingly

monotonous and real, and further, are a struggle against continual

difficulties, and further still, because anything in the form of

accidental injury, or any kind of illness or disability is so very

serious in their own sphere. I will explain this seeming paradox

of mine. Take the case of a Christmas Pantomime. Surely nobody

supposes that the young mother in the pit who falls into fits of

laughter when the baby is boiled or sat upon, would be at all

diverted by such an occurrence off the stage. Nor is the decent

workman in the gallery, who is transported beyond the ignorant

present by the delight with which he sees a stout gentleman pushed

out of a two pair of stairs window, to be slandered by the

suspicion that he would be in the least entertained by such a

spectacle in any street in London, Paris, or New York. It always

appears to me that the secret of this enjoyment lies in the

temporary superiority to the common hazards and mischances of life;

in seeing casualties, attended when they really occur with bodily

and mental suffering, tears, and poverty, happen through a very

rough sort of poetry without the least harm being done to any one -

the pretence of distress in a pantomime being so broadly humorous

as to be no pretence at all. Much as in the comic fiction I can

understand the mother with a very vulnerable baby at home, greatly

relishing the invulnerable baby on the stage, so in the Cremorne

reality I can understand the mason who is always liable to fall off

a scaffold in his working jacket and to be carried to the hospital,

having an infinite admiration of the radiant personage in spangles

who goes into the clouds upon a bull, or upside down, and who, he

takes it for granted - not reflecting upon the thing - has, by

uncommon skill and dexterity, conquered such mischances as those to

which he and his acquaintance are continually exposed.

I wish the Morgue in Paris would not come here as I lie awake, with

its ghastly beds, and the swollen saturated clothes hanging up, and

the water dripping, dripping all day long, upon that other swollen

saturated something in the corner, like a heap of crushed over-ripe

figs that I have seen in Italy! And this detestable Morgue comes

back again at the head of a procession of forgotten ghost stories.

This will never do. I must think of something else as I lie awake;

or, like that sagacious animal in the United States who recognised

the colonel who was such a dead shot, I am a gone 'Coon. What

shall I think of? The late brutal assaults. Very good subject.

The late brutal assaults.

(Though whether, supposing I should see, here before me as I lie

awake, the awful phantom described in one of those ghost stories,

who, with a head-dress of shroud, was always seen looking in

through a certain glass door at a certain dead hour - whether, in

such a case it would be the least consolation to me to know on

philosophical grounds that it was merely my imagination, is a

question I can't help asking myself by the way.)

The late brutal assaults. I strongly question the expediency of

advocating the revival of whipping for those crimes. It is a

natural and generous impulse to be indignant at the perpetration of

inconceivable brutality, but I doubt the whipping panacea gravely.

Not in the least regard or pity for the criminal, whom I hold in

far lower estimation than a mad wolf, but in consideration for the

general tone and feeling, which is very much improved since the

whipping times. It is bad for a people to be familiarised with

such punishments. When the whip went out of Bridewell, and ceased

to be flourished at the carts tail and at the whipping-post, it

began to fade out of madhouses, and workhouses, and schools and

families, and to give place to a better system everywhere, than

cruel driving. It would be hasty, because a few brutes may be

inadequately punished, to revive, in any aspect, what, in so many

aspects, society is hardly yet happily rid of. The whip is a very

contagious kind of thing, and difficult to confine within one set

of bounds. Utterly abolish punishment by fine - a barbarous

device, quite as much out of date as wager by battle, but

particularly connected in the vulgar mind with this class of

offence - at least quadruple the term of imprisonment for

aggravated assaults - and above all let us, in such cases, have no

Pet Prisoning, vain glorifying, strong soup, and roasted meats, but

hard work, and one unchanging and uncompromising dietary of bread

and water, well or ill; and we shall do much better than by going

down into the dark to grope for the whip among the rusty fragments

of the rack, and the branding iron, and the chains and gibbet from

the public roads, and the weights that pressed men to death in the

cells of Newgate.

I had proceeded thus far, when I found I had been lying awake so

long that the very dead began to wake too, and to crowd into my

thoughts most sorrowfully. Therefore, I resolved to lie awake no

more, but to get up and go out for a night walk - which resolution

was an acceptable relief to me, as I dare say it may prove now to a

great many more.

THE GHOST OF ART

I AM a bachelor, residing in rather a dreary set of chambers in the

Temple. They are situated in a square court of high houses, which

would be a complete well, but for the want of water and the absence

of a bucket. I live at the top of the house, among the tiles and

sparrows. Like the little man in the nursery-story, I live by

myself, and all the bread and cheese I get - which is not much - I

put upon a shelf. I need scarcely add, perhaps, that I am in love,

and that the father of my charming Julia objects to our union.

I mention these little particulars as I might deliver a letter of

introduction. The reader is now acquainted with me, and perhaps

will condescend to listen to my narrative.

I am naturally of a dreamy turn of mind; and my abundant leisure -

for I am called to the Bar - coupled with much lonely listening to

the twittering of sparrows, and the pattering of rain, has

encouraged that disposition. In my 'top set' I hear the wind howl

on a winter night, when the man on the ground floor believes it is

perfectly still weather. The dim lamps with which our Honourable

Society (supposed to be as yet unconscious of the new discovery

called Gas) make the horrors of the staircase visible, deepen the

gloom which generally settles on my soul when I go home at night.

I am in the Law, but not of it. I can't exactly make out what it

means. I sit in Westminster Hall sometimes (in character) from ten

to four; and when I go out of Court, I don't know whether I am

standing on my wig or my boots.

It appears to me (I mention this in confidence) as if there were

too much talk and too much law - as if some grains of truth were

started overboard into a tempestuous sea of chaff.

All this may make me mystical. Still, I am confident that what I

am going to describe myself as having seen and heard, I actually

did see and hear.

It is necessary that I should observe that I have a great delight

in pictures. I am no painter myself, but I have studied pictures

and written about them. I have seen all the most famous pictures

in the world; my education and reading have been sufficiently

general to possess me beforehand with a knowledge of most of the

subjects to which a Painter is likely to have recourse; and,

although I might be in some doubt as to the rightful fashion of the

scabbard of King Lear's sword, for instance, I think I should know

King Lear tolerably well, if I happened to meet with him.

I go to all the Modern Exhibitions every season, and of course I

revere the Royal Academy. I stand by its forty Academical articles

almost as firmly as I stand by the thirty-nine Articles of the

Church of England. I am convinced that in neither case could there

be, by any rightful possibility, one article more or less.

It is now exactly three years - three years ago, this very month -

since I went from Westminster to the Temple, one Thursday

afternoon, in a cheap steamboat. The sky was black, when I

imprudently walked on board. It began to thunder and lighten

immediately afterwards, and the rain poured down in torrents. The

deck seeming to smoke with the wet, I went below; but so many

passengers were there, smoking too, that I came up again, and

buttoning my pea-coat, and standing in the shadow of the paddle-

box, stood as upright as I could, and made the best of it.

It was at this moment that I first beheld the terrible Being, who

is the subject of my present recollections.

Standing against the funnel, apparently with the intention of

drying himself by the heat as fast as he got wet, was a shabby man

in threadbare black, and with his hands in his pockets, who

fascinated me from the memorable instant when I caught his eye.

Where had I caught that eye before? Who was he? Why did I connect

him, all at once, with the Vicar of Wakefield, Alfred the Great,

Gil Blas, Charles the Second, Joseph and his Brethren, the Fairy

Queen, Tom Jones, the Decameron of Boccaccio, Tam O'Shanter, the

Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the Adriatic, and the Great

Plague of London? Why, when he bent one leg, and placed one hand

upon the back of the seat near him, did my mind associate him

wildly with the words, 'Number one hundred and forty-two, Portrait

of a gentleman'? Could it be that I was going mad?

I looked at him again, and now I could have taken my affidavit that

he belonged to the Vicar of Wakefield's family. Whether he was the

Vicar, or Moses, or Mr. Burchill, or the Squire, or a

conglomeration of all four, I knew not; but I was impelled to seize

him by the throat, and charge him with being, in some fell way,

connected with the Primrose blood. He looked up at the rain, and

then - oh Heaven! - he became Saint John. He folded his arms,

resigning himself to the weather, and I was frantically inclined to

address him as the Spectator, and firmly demand to know what he had

done with Sir Roger de Coverley.

The frightful suspicion that I was becoming deranged, returned upon

me with redoubled force. Meantime, this awful stranger,

inexplicably linked to my distress, stood drying himself at the

funnel; and ever, as the steam rose from his clothes, diffusing a

mist around him, I saw through the ghostly medium all the people I

have mentioned, and a score more, sacred and profane.

I am conscious of a dreadful inclination that stole upon me, as it

thundered and lightened, to grapple with this man, or demon, and

plunge him over the side. But, I constrained myself - I know not

how - to speak to him, and in a pause of the storm, I crossed the

deck, and said:

'What are you?'

He replied, hoarsely, 'A Model.'

'A what?' said I.

'A Model,' he replied. 'I sets to the profession for a bob a-

hour.' (All through this narrative I give his own words, which are

indelibly imprinted on my memory.)

The relief which this disclosure gave me, the exquisite delight of

the restoration of my confidence in my own sanity, I cannot

describe. I should have fallen on his neck, but for the

consciousness of being observed by the man at the wheel.

'You then,' said I, shaking him so warmly by the hand, that I wrung

the rain out of his coat-cuff, 'are the gentleman whom I have so

frequently contemplated, in connection with a high-backed chair

with a red cushion, and a table with twisted legs.'

'I am that Model,' he rejoined moodily, 'and I wish I was anything

else.'

'Say not so,' I returned. 'I have seen you in the society of many

beautiful young women;' as in truth I had, and always (I now

remember) in the act of making the most of his legs.

'No doubt,' said he. 'And you've seen me along with warses of

flowers, and any number of table-kivers, and antique cabinets, and

warious gammon.'

'Sir?' said I.

'And warious gammon,' he repeated, in a louder voice. 'You might

have seen me in armour, too, if you had looked sharp. Blessed if I

ha'n't stood in half the suits of armour as ever came out of

Pratt's shop: and sat, for weeks together, a-eating nothing, out of

half the gold and silver dishes as has ever been lent for the

purpose out of Storrses, and Mortimerses, or Garrardses, and

Davenportseseses.'

Excited, as it appeared, by a sense of injury, I thought he would

never have found an end for the last word. But, at length it

rolled sullenly away with the thunder.

'Pardon me,' said I, 'you are a well-favoured, well-made man, and

yet - forgive me - I find, on examining my mind, that I associate

you with - that my recollection indistinctly makes you, in short -

excuse me - a kind of powerful monster.'

'It would be a wonder if it didn't,' he said. 'Do you know what my

points are?'

'No,' said I.

'My throat and my legs,' said he. 'When I don't set for a head, I

mostly sets for a throat and a pair of legs. Now, granted you was

a painter, and was to work at my throat for a week together, I

suppose you'd see a lot of lumps and bumps there, that would never

be there at all, if you looked at me, complete, instead of only my

throat. Wouldn't you?'

'Probably,' said I, surveying him.

'Why, it stands to reason,' said the Model. 'Work another week at

my legs, and it'll be the same thing. You'll make 'em out as

knotty and as knobby, at last, as if they was the trunks of two old

trees. Then, take and stick my legs and throat on to another man's

body, and you'll make a reg'lar monster. And that's the way the

public gets their reg'lar monsters, every first Monday in May, when

the Royal Academy Exhibition opens.'

'You are a critic,' said I, with an air of deference.

'I'm in an uncommon ill humour, if that's it,' rejoined the Model,

with great indignation. 'As if it warn't bad enough for a bob a-

hour, for a man to be mixing himself up with that there jolly old

furniter that one 'ud think the public know'd the wery nails in by

this time - or to be putting on greasy old 'ats and cloaks, and

playing tambourines in the Bay o' Naples, with Wesuvius a smokin'

according to pattern in the background, and the wines a bearing

wonderful in the middle distance - or to be unpolitely kicking up

his legs among a lot o' gals, with no reason whatever in his mind

but to show 'em - as if this warn't bad enough, I'm to go and be

thrown out of employment too!'

'Surely no!' said I.

'Surely yes,' said the indignant Model. 'BUT I'LL GROW ONE.'

The gloomy and threatening manner in which he muttered the last

words, can never be effaced from my remembrance. My blood ran

cold.

I asked of myself, what was it that this desperate Being was

resolved to grow. My breast made no response.

I ventured to implore him to explain his meaning. With a scornful

laugh, he uttered this dark prophecy:

'I'LL GROW ONE. AND, MARK MY WORDS, IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!'

We parted in the storm, after I had forced half-a-crown on his

acceptance, with a trembling hand. I conclude that something

supernatural happened to the steamboat, as it bore his reeking

figure down the river; but it never got into the papers.

Two years elapsed, during which I followed my profession without

any vicissitudes; never holding so much as a motion, of course. At

the expiration of that period, I found myself making my way home to

the Temple, one night, in precisely such another storm of thunder

and lightning as that by which I had been overtaken on board the

steamboat - except that this storm, bursting over the town at

midnight, was rendered much more awful by the darkness and the

hour.

As I turned into my court, I really thought a thunderbolt would

fall, and plough the pavement up. Every brick and stone in the

place seemed to have an echo of its own for the thunder. The

waterspouts were overcharged, and the rain came tearing down from

the house-tops as if they had been mountain-tops.

Mrs. Parkins, my laundress - wife of Parkins the porter, then newly

dead of a dropsy - had particular instructions to place a bedroom

candle and a match under the staircase lamp on my landing, in order

that I might light my candle there, whenever I came home. Mrs.

Parkins invariably disregarding all instructions, they were never

there. Thus it happened that on this occasion I groped my way into

my sitting-room to find the candle, and came out to light it.

What were my emotions when, underneath the staircase lamp, shining

with wet as if he had never been dry since our last meeting, stood

the mysterious Being whom I had encountered on the steamboat in a

thunderstorm, two years before! His prediction rushed upon my

mind, and I turned faint.

'I said I'd do it,' he observed, in a hollow voice, 'and I have

done it. May I come in?'

'Misguided creature, what have you done?' I returned.

'I'll let you know,' was his reply, 'if you'll let me in.'

Could it be murder that he had done? And had he been so successful

that he wanted to do it again, at my expense?

I hesitated.

'May I come in?' said he.

I inclined my head, with as much presence of mind as I could

command, and he followed me into my chambers. There, I saw that

the lower part of his face was tied up, in what is commonly called

a Belcher handkerchief. He slowly removed this bandage, and

exposed to view a long dark beard, curling over his upper lip,

twisting about the corners of his mouth, and hanging down upon his

breast.

'What is this?' I exclaimed involuntarily, 'and what have you

become?'

'I am the Ghost of Art!' said he.

The effect of these words, slowly uttered in the thunder-storm at

midnight, was appalling in the last degree. More dead than alive,

I surveyed him in silence.

'The German taste came up,' said he, 'and threw me out of bread. I

am ready for the taste now.'

He made his beard a little jagged with his hands, folded his arms,

and said,

'Severity!'

I shuddered. It was so severe.

He made his beard flowing on his breast, and, leaning both hands on

the staff of a carpet-broom which Mrs. Parkins had left among my

books, said:

'Benevolence.'

I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment was entirely in the

beard. The man might have left his face alone, or had no face.

The beard did everything.

He lay down, on his back, on my table, and with that action of his

head threw up his beard at the chin.

'That's death!' said he.

He got off my table and, looking up at the ceiling, cocked his

beard a little awry; at the same time making it stick out before

him.

'Adoration, or a vow of vengeance,' he observed.

He turned his profile to me, making his upper lip very bulky with

the upper part of his beard.

'Romantic character,' said he.

He looked sideways out of his beard, as if it were an ivy-bush.

'Jealousy,' said he. He gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and

informed me that he was carousing. He made it shaggy with his

fingers - and it was Despair; lank - and it was avarice: tossed it

all kinds of ways - and it was rage. The beard did everything.

'I am the Ghost of Art,' said he. 'Two bob a-day now, and more

when it's longer! Hair's the true expression. There is no other.

I SAID I'D GROW IT, AND I'VE GROWN IT, AND IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!'

He may have tumbled down-stairs in the dark, but he never walked

down or ran down. I looked over the banisters, and I was alone

with the thunder.

Need I add more of my terrific fate? IT HAS haunted me ever since.

It glares upon me from the walls of the Royal Academy, (except when

MACLISE subdues it to his genius,) it fills my soul with terror at

the British Institution, it lures young artists on to their

destruction. Go where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally working

the passions in hair, and expressing everything by beard, pursues

me. The prediction is accomplished, and the victim has no rest.

OUT OF TOWN

SITTING, on a bright September morning, among my books and papers

at my open window on the cliff overhanging the sea-beach, I have

the sky and ocean framed before me like a beautiful picture. A

beautiful picture, but with such movement in it, such changes of

light upon the sails of ships and wake of steamboats, such dazzling

gleams of silver far out at sea, such fresh touches on the crisp

wave-tops as they break and roll towards me - a picture with such

music in the billowy rush upon the shingle, the blowing of morning

wind through the corn-sheaves where the farmers' waggons are busy,

the singing of the larks, and the distant voices of children at

play - such charms of sight and sound as all the Galleries on earth

can but poorly suggest.

So dreamy is the murmur of the sea below my window, that I may have

been here, for anything I know, one hundred years. Not that I have

grown old, for, daily on the neighbouring downs and grassy hill-

sides, I find that I can still in reason walk any distance, jump

over anything, and climb up anywhere; but, that the sound of the

ocean seems to have become so customary to my musings, and other

realities seem so to have gone aboard ship and floated away over

the horizon, that, for aught I will undertake to the contrary, I am

the enchanted son of the King my father, shut up in a tower on the

sea-shore, for protection against an old she-goblin who insisted on

being my godmother, and who foresaw at the font - wonderful

creature! - that I should get into a scrape before I was twenty-

one. I remember to have been in a City (my Royal parent's

dominions, I suppose), and apparently not long ago either, that was

in the dreariest condition. The principal inhabitants had all been

changed into old newspapers, and in that form were preserving their

window-blinds from dust, and wrapping all their smaller household

gods in curl-papers. I walked through gloomy streets where every

house was shut up and newspapered, and where my solitary footsteps

echoed on the deserted pavements. In the public rides there were

no carriages, no horses, no animated existence, but a few sleepy

policemen, and a few adventurous boys taking advantage of the

devastation to swarm up the lamp-posts. In the Westward streets

there was no traffic; in the Westward shops, no business. The

water-patterns which the 'Prentices had trickled out on the

pavements early in the morning, remained uneffaced by human feet.

At the corners of mews, Cochin-China fowls stalked gaunt and

savage; nobody being left in the deserted city (as it appeared to

me), to feed them. Public Houses, where splendid footmen swinging

their legs over gorgeous hammer-cloths beside wigged coachmen were

wont to regale, were silent, and the unused pewter pots shone, too

bright for business, on the shelves. I beheld a Punch's Show

leaning against a wall near Park Lane, as if it had fainted. It

was deserted, and there were none to heed its desolation. In

Belgrave Square I met the last man - an ostler - sitting on a post

in a ragged red waistcoat, eating straw, and mildewing away.

If I recollect the name of the little town, on whose shore this sea

is murmuring - but I am not just now, as I have premised, to be

relied upon for anything - it is Pavilionstone. Within a quarter

of a century, it was a little fishing town, and they do say, that

the time was, when it was a little smuggling town. I have heard

that it was rather famous in the hollands and brandy way, and that

coevally with that reputation the lamplighter's was considered a

bad life at the Assurance Offices. It was observed that if he were

not particular about lighting up, he lived in peace; but that, if

he made the best of the oil-lamps in the steep and narrow streets,

he usually fell over the cliff at an early age. Now, gas and

electricity run to the very water's edge, and the South-Eastern

Railway Company screech at us in the dead of night.

But, the old little fishing and smuggling town remains, and is so

tempting a place for the latter purpose, that I think of going out

some night next week, in a fur cap and a pair of petticoat

trousers, and running an empty tub, as a kind of archaeological

pursuit. Let nobody with corns come to Pavilionstone, for there

are breakneck flights of ragged steps, connecting the principal

streets by back-ways, which will cripple that visitor in half an

hour. These are the ways by which, when I run that tub, I shall

escape. I shall make a Thermopylae of the corner of one of them,

defend it with my cutlass against the coast-guard until my brave

companions have sheered off, then dive into the darkness, and

regain my Susan's arms. In connection with these breakneck steps I

observe some wooden cottages, with tumble-down out-houses, and

back-yards three feet square, adorned with garlands of dried fish,

in one of which (though the General Board of Health might object)

my Susan dwells.

The South-Eastern Company have brought Pavilionstone into such

vogue, with their tidal trains and splendid steam-packets, that a

new Pavilionstone is rising up. I am, myself, of New

Pavilionstone. We are a little mortary and limey at present, but

we are getting on capitally. Indeed, we were getting on so fast,

at one time, that we rather overdid it, and built a street of

shops, the business of which may be expected to arrive in about ten

years. We are sensibly laid out in general; and with a little care

and pains (by no means wanting, so far), shall become a very pretty

place. We ought to be, for our situation is delightful, our air is

delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, carpeted with wild

thyme, and decorated with millions of wild flowers, are, on the

faith of a pedestrian, perfect. In New Pavilionstone we are a

little too much addicted to small windows with more bricks in them

than glass, and we are not over-fanciful in the way of decorative

architecture, and we get unexpected sea-views through cracks in the

street doors; on the whole, however, we are very snug and

comfortable, and well accommodated. But the Home Secretary (if

there be such an officer) cannot too soon shut up the burial-ground

of the old parish church. It is in the midst of us, and

Pavilionstone will get no good of it, if it be too long left alone.

The lion of Pavilionstone is its Great Hotel. A dozen years ago,

going over to Paris by South-Eastern Tidal Steamer, you used to be

dropped upon the platform of the main line Pavilionstone Station

(not a junction then), at eleven o'clock on a dark winter's night,

in a roaring wind; and in the howling wilderness outside the

station, was a short omnibus which brought you up by the forehead

the instant you got in at the door; and nobody cared about you, and

you were alone in the world. You bumped over infinite chalk, until

you were turned out at a strange building which had just left off

being a barn without having quite begun to be a house, where nobody

expected your coming, or knew what to do with you when you were

come, and where you were usually blown about, until you happened to

be blown against the cold beef, and finally into bed. At five in

the morning you were blown out of bed, and after a dreary

breakfast, with crumpled company, in the midst of confusion, were

hustled on board a steamboat and lay wretched on deck until you saw

France lunging and surging at you with great vehemence over the

bowsprit.

Now, you come down to Pavilionstone in a free and easy manner, an

irresponsible agent, made over in trust to the South-Eastern

Company, until you get out of the railway-carriage at high-water

mark. If you are crossing by the boat at once, you have nothing to

do but walk on board and be happy there if you can - I can't. If

you are going to our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, the sprightliest

porters under the sun, whose cheerful looks are a pleasant welcome,

shoulder your luggage, drive it off in vans, bowl it away in

trucks, and enjoy themselves in playing athletic games with it. If

you are for public life at our great Pavilionstone Hotel, you walk

into that establishment as if it were your club; and find ready for

you, your news-room, dining-room, smoking-room, billiard-room,

music-room, public breakfast, public dinner twice a-day (one plain,

one gorgeous), hot baths and cold baths. If you want to be bored,

there are plenty of bores always ready for you, and from Saturday

to Monday in particular, you can be bored (if you like it) through

and through. Should you want to be private at our Great

Pavilionstone Hotel, say but the word, look at the list of charges,

choose your floor, name your figure - there you are, established in

your castle, by the day, week, month, or year, innocent of all

comers or goers, unless you have my fancy for walking early in the

morning down the groves of boots and shoes, which so regularly

flourish at all the chamber-doors before breakfast, that it seems

to me as if nobody ever got up or took them in. Are you going

across the Alps, and would you like to air your Italian at our

Great Pavilionstone Hotel? Talk to the Manager - always

conversational, accomplished, and polite. Do you want to be aided,

abetted, comforted, or advised, at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel?

Send for the good landlord, and he is your friend. Should you, or

any one belonging to you, ever be taken ill at our Great

Pavilionstone Hotel, you will not soon forget him or his kind wife.

And when you pay your bill at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, you

will not be put out of humour by anything you find in it.

A thoroughly good inn, in the days of coaching and posting, was a

noble place. But no such inn would have been equal to the

reception of four or five hundred people, all of them wet through,

and half of them dead sick, every day in the year. This is where

we shine, in our Pavilionstone Hotel. Again - who, coming and

going, pitching and tossing, boating and training, hurrying in, and

flying out, could ever have calculated the fees to be paid at an

old-fashioned house? In our Pavilionstone Hotel vocabulary, there

is no such word as fee. Everything is done for you; every service

is provided at a fixed and reasonable charge; all the prices are

hung up in all the rooms; and you can make out your own bill

beforehand, as well as the book-keeper.

In the case of your being a pictorial artist, desirous of studying

at small expense the physiognomies and beards of different nations,

come, on receipt of this, to Pavilionstone. You shall find all the

nations of the earth, and all the styles of shaving and not

shaving, hair cutting and hair letting alone, for ever flowing

through our hotel. Couriers you shall see by hundreds; fat

leathern bags for five-franc pieces, closing with violent snaps,

like discharges of fire-arms, by thousands; more luggage in a

morning than, fifty years ago, all Europe saw in a week. Looking

at trains, steamboats, sick travellers, and luggage, is our great

Pavilionstone recreation. We are not strong in other public

amusements. We have a Literary and Scientific Institution, and we

have a Working Men's Institution - may it hold many gipsy holidays

in summer fields, with the kettle boiling, the band of music

playing, and the people dancing; and may I be on the hill-side,

looking on with pleasure at a wholesome sight too rare in England!

- and we have two or three churches, and more chapels than I have

yet added up. But public amusements are scarce with us. If a poor

theatrical manager comes with his company to give us, in a loft,

Mary Bax, or the Murder on the Sand Hills, we don't care much for

him - starve him out, in fact. We take more kindly to wax-work,

especially if it moves; in which case it keeps much clearer of the

second commandment than when it is still. Cooke's Circus (Mr.

Cooke is my friend, and always leaves a good name behind him) gives

us only a night in passing through. Nor does the travelling

menagerie think us worth a longer visit. It gave us a look-in the

other day, bringing with it the residentiary van with the stained

glass windows, which Her Majesty kept ready-made at Windsor Castle,

until she found a suitable opportunity of submitting it for the

proprietor's acceptance. I brought away five wonderments from this

exhibition. I have wondered ever since, Whether the beasts ever do

get used to those small places of confinement; Whether the monkeys

have that very horrible flavour in their free state; Whether wild

animals have a natural ear for time and tune, and therefore every

four-footed creature began to howl in despair when the band began

to play; What the giraffe does with his neck when his cart is shut

up; and, Whether the elephant feels ashamed of himself when he is

brought out of his den to stand on his head in the presence of the

whole Collection.

We are a tidal harbour at Pavilionstone, as indeed I have implied

already in my mention of tidal trains. At low water, we are a heap

of mud, with an empty channel in it where a couple of men in big

boots always shovel and scoop: with what exact object, I am unable

to say. At that time, all the stranded fishing-boats turn over on

their sides, as if they were dead marine monsters; the colliers and

other shipping stick disconsolate in the mud; the steamers look as

if their white chimneys would never smoke more, and their red

paddles never turn again; the green sea-slime and weed upon the

rough stones at the entrance, seem records of obsolete high tides

never more to flow; the flagstaff-halyards droop; the very little

wooden lighthouse shrinks in the idle glare of the sun. And here I

may observe of the very little wooden lighthouse, that when it is

lighted at night, - red and green, - it looks so like a medical

man's, that several distracted husbands have at various times been

found, on occasions of premature domestic anxiety, going round and

round it, trying to find the Nightbell.

But, the moment the tide begins to make, the Pavilionstone Harbour

begins to revive. It feels the breeze of the rising water before

the water comes, and begins to flutter and stir. When the little

shallow waves creep in, barely overlapping one another, the vanes

at the mastheads wake, and become agitated. As the tide rises, the

fishing-boats get into good spirits and dance, the flagstaff hoists

a bright red flag, the steamboat smokes, cranes creak, horses and

carriages dangle in the air, stray passengers and luggage appear.

Now, the shipping is afloat, and comes up buoyantly, to look at the

wharf. Now, the carts that have come down for coals, load away as

hard as they can load. Now, the steamer smokes immensely, and

occasionally blows at the paddle-boxes like a vaporous whale-

greatly disturbing nervous loungers. Now, both the tide and the

breeze have risen, and you are holding your hat on (if you want to

see how the ladies hold THEIR hats on, with a stay, passing over

the broad brim and down the nose, come to Pavilionstone). Now,

everything in the harbour splashes, dashes, and bobs. Now, the

Down Tidal Train is telegraphed, and you know (without knowing how

you know), that two hundred and eighty-seven people are coming.

Now, the fishing-boats that have been out, sail in at the top of

the tide. Now, the bell goes, and the locomotive hisses and

shrieks, and the train comes gliding in, and the two hundred and

eighty-seven come scuffling out. Now, there is not only a tide of

water, but a tide of people, and a tide of luggage - all tumbling

and flowing and bouncing about together. Now, after infinite

bustle, the steamer steams out, and we (on the Pier) are all

delighted when she rolls as if she would roll her funnel out, and

all are disappointed when she don't. Now, the other steamer is

coming in, and the Custom House prepares, and the wharf-labourers

assemble, and the hawsers are made ready, and the Hotel Porters

come rattling down with van and truck, eager to begin more Olympic

games with more luggage. And this is the way in which we go on,

down at Pavilionstone, every tide. And, if you want to live a life

of luggage, or to see it lived, or to breathe sweet air which will

send you to sleep at a moment's notice at any period of the day or

night, or to disport yourself upon or in the sea, or to scamper

about Kent, or to come out of town for the enjoyment of all or any

of these pleasures, come to Pavilionstone.

OUT OF THE SEASON

IT fell to my lot, this last bleak Spring, to find myself in a

watering-place out of the Season. A vicious north-east squall blew

me into it from foreign parts, and I tarried in it alone for three

days, resolved to be exceedingly busy.

On the first day, I began business by looking for two hours at the

sea, and staring the Foreign Militia out of countenance. Having

disposed of these important engagements, I sat down at one of the

two windows of my room, intent on doing something desperate in the

way of literary composition, and writing a chapter of unheard-of

excellence - with which the present essay has no connexion.

It is a remarkable quality in a watering-place out of the season,

that everything in it, will and must be looked at. I had no

previous suspicion of this fatal truth but, the moment I sat down

to write, I began to perceive it. I had scarcely fallen into my

most promising attitude, and dipped my pen in the ink, when I found

the clock upon the pier - a red-faced clock with a white rim -

importuning me in a highly vexatious manner to consult my watch,

and see how I was off for Greenwich time. Having no intention of

making a voyage or taking an observation, I had not the least need

of Greenwich time, and could have put up with watering-place time

as a sufficiently accurate article. The pier-clock, however,

persisting, I felt it necessary to lay down my pen, compare my

watch with him, and fall into a grave solicitude about half-

seconds. I had taken up my pen again, and was about to commence

that valuable chapter, when a Custom-house cutter under the window

requested that I would hold a naval review of her, immediately.

It was impossible, under the circumstances, for any mental

resolution, merely human, to dismiss the Custom-house cutter,

because the shadow of her topmast fell upon my paper, and the vane

played on the masterly blank chapter. I was therefore under the

necessity of going to the other window; sitting astride of the

chair there, like Napoleon bivouacking in the print; and inspecting

the cutter as she lay, all that day, in the way of my chapter, O!

She was rigged to carry a quantity of canvas, but her hull was so

very small that four giants aboard of her (three men and a boy) who

were vigilantly scraping at her, all together, inspired me with a

terror lest they should scrape her away. A fifth giant, who

appeared to consider himself 'below' - as indeed he was, from the

waist downwards - meditated, in such close proximity with the

little gusty chimney-pipe, that he seemed to be smoking it.

Several boys looked on from the wharf, and, when the gigantic

attention appeared to be fully occupied, one or other of these

would furtively swing himself in mid-air over the Custom-house

cutter, by means of a line pendant from her rigging, like a young

spirit of the storm. Presently, a sixth hand brought down two

little water-casks; presently afterwards, a truck came, and

delivered a hamper. I was now under an obligation to consider that

the cutter was going on a cruise, and to wonder where she was

going, and when she was going, and why she was going, and at what

date she might be expected back, and who commanded her? With these

pressing questions I was fully occupied when the Packet, making

ready to go across, and blowing off her spare steam, roared, 'Look

at me!'

It became a positive duty to look at the Packet preparing to go

across; aboard of which, the people newly come down by the rail-

road were hurrying in a great fluster. The crew had got their

tarry overalls on - and one knew what THAT meant - not to mention

the white basins, ranged in neat little piles of a dozen each,

behind the door of the after-cabin. One lady as I looked, one

resigning and far-seeing woman, took her basin from the store of

crockery, as she might have taken a refreshment-ticket, laid

herself down on deck with that utensil at her ear, muffled her feet

in one shawl, solemnly covered her countenance after the antique

manner with another, and on the completion of these preparations

appeared by the strength of her volition to become insensible. The

mail-bags (O that I myself had the sea-legs of a mail-bag!) were

tumbled aboard; the Packet left off roaring, warped out, and made

at the white line upon the bar. One dip, one roll, one break of

the sea over her bows, and Moore's Almanack or the sage Raphael

could not have told me more of the state of things aboard, than I

knew.

The famous chapter was all but begun now, and would have been quite

begun, but for the wind. It was blowing stiffly from the east, and

it rumbled in the chimney and shook the house. That was not much;

but, looking out into the wind's grey eye for inspiration, I laid

down my pen again to make the remark to myself, how emphatically

everything by the sea declares that it has a great concern in the

state of the wind. The trees blown all one way; the defences of

the harbour reared highest and strongest against the raging point;

the shingle flung up on the beach from the same direction; the

number of arrows pointed at the common enemy; the sea tumbling in

and rushing towards them as if it were inflamed by the sight. This

put it in my head that I really ought to go out and take a walk in

the wind; so, I gave up the magnificent chapter for that day,

entirely persuading myself that I was under a moral obligation to

have a blow.

I had a good one, and that on the high road - the very high road -

on the top of the cliffs, where I met the stage-coach with all the

outsides holding their hats on and themselves too, and overtook a

flock of sheep with the wool about their necks blown into such

great ruffs that they looked like fleecy owls. The wind played

upon the lighthouse as if it were a great whistle, the spray was

driven over the sea in a cloud of haze, the ships rolled and

pitched heavily, and at intervals long slants and flaws of light

made mountain-steeps of communication between the ocean and the

sky. A walk of ten miles brought me to a seaside town without a

cliff, which, like the town I had come from, was out of the season

too. Half of the houses were shut up; half of the other half were

to let; the town might have done as much business as it was doing

then, if it had been at the bottom of the sea. Nobody seemed to

flourish save the attorney; his clerk's pen was going in the bow-

window of his wooden house; his brass door-plate alone was free

from salt, and had been polished up that morning. On the beach,

among the rough buggers and capstans, groups of storm-beaten

boatmen, like a sort of marine monsters, watched under the lee of

those objects, or stood leaning forward against the wind, looking

out through battered spy-glasses. The parlour bell in the Admiral

Benbow had grown so flat with being out of the season, that neither

could I hear it ring when I pulled the handle for lunch, nor could

the young woman in black stockings and strong shoes, who acted as

waiter out of the season, until it had been tinkled three times.

Admiral Benbow's cheese was out of the season, but his home-made

bread was good, and his beer was perfect. Deluded by some earlier

spring day which had been warm and sunny, the Admiral had cleared

the firing out of his parlour stove, and had put some flower-pots

in - which was amiable and hopeful in the Admiral, but not

judicious: the room being, at that present visiting, transcendantly

cold. I therefore took the liberty of peeping out across a little

stone passage into the Admiral's kitchen, and, seeing a high settle

with its back towards me drawn out in front of the Admiral's

kitchen fire, I strolled in, bread and cheese in hand, munching and

looking about. One landsman and two boatmen were seated on the

settle, smoking pipes and drinking beer out of thick pint crockery

mugs - mugs peculiar to such places, with parti-coloured rings

round them, and ornaments between the rings like frayed-out roots.

The landsman was relating his experience, as yet only three nights

old, of a fearful running-down case in the Channel, and therein

presented to my imagination a sound of music that it will not soon

forget.

'At that identical moment of time,' said he (he was a prosy man by

nature, who rose with his subject), 'the night being light and

calm, but with a grey mist upon the water that didn't seem to

spread for more than two or three mile, I was walking up and down

the wooden causeway next the pier, off where it happened, along

with a friend of mine, which his name is Mr. Clocker. Mr. Clocker

is a grocer over yonder.' (From the direction in which he pointed

the bowl of his pipe, I might have judged Mr. Clocker to be a

merman, established in the grocery trade in five-and-twenty fathoms

of water.) 'We were smoking our pipes, and walking up and down the

causeway, talking of one thing and talking of another. We were

quite alone there, except that a few hovellers' (the Kentish name

for 'long-shore boatmen like his companions) 'were hanging about

their lugs, waiting while the tide made, as hovellers will.' (One

of the two boatmen, thoughtfully regarding me, shut up one eye;

this I understood to mean: first, that he took me into the

conversation: secondly, that he confirmed the proposition: thirdly,

that he announced himself as a hoveller.) 'All of a sudden Mr.

Clocker and me stood rooted to the spot, by hearing a sound come

through the stillness, right over the sea, LIKE A GREAT SORROWFUL

FLUTE OR AEOLIAN HARP. We didn't in the least know what it was,

and judge of our surprise when we saw the hovellers, to a man, leap

into the boats and tear about to hoist sail and get off, as if they

had every one of 'em gone, in a moment, raving mad! But THEY knew

it was the cry of distress from the sinking emigrant ship.'

When I got back to my watering-place out of the season, and had

done my twenty miles in good style, I found that the celebrated

Black Mesmerist intended favouring the public that evening in the

Hall of the Muses, which he had engaged for the purpose. After a

good dinner, seated by the fire in an easy chair, I began to waver

in a design I had formed of waiting on the Black Mesmerist, and to

incline towards the expediency of remaining where I was. Indeed a

point of gallantry was involved in my doing so, inasmuch as I had

not left France alone, but had come from the prisons of St. Pelagie

with my distinguished and unfortunate friend Madame Roland (in two

volumes which I bought for two francs each, at the book-stall in

the Place de la Concorde, Paris, at the corner of the Rue Royale).

Deciding to pass the evening tete-a-tete with Madame Roland, I

derived, as I always do, great pleasure from that spiritual woman's

society, and the charms of her brave soul and engaging

conversation. I must confess that if she had only some more

faults, only a few more passionate failings of any kind, I might

love her better; but I am content to believe that the deficiency is

in me, and not in her. We spent some sadly interesting hours

together on this occasion, and she told me again of her cruel

discharge from the Abbaye, and of her being re-arrested before her

free feet had sprung lightly up half-a-dozen steps of her own

staircase, and carried off to the prison which she only left for

the guillotine.

Madame Roland and I took leave of one another before mid-night, and

I went to bed full of vast intentions for next day, in connexion

with the unparalleled chapter. To hear the foreign mail-steamers

coming in at dawn of day, and to know that I was not aboard or

obliged to get up, was very comfortable; so, I rose for the chapter

in great force.

I had advanced so far as to sit down at my window again on my

second morning, and to write the first half-line of the chapter and

strike it out, not liking it, when my conscience reproached me with

not having surveyed the watering-place out of the season, after

all, yesterday, but with having gone straight out of it at the rate

of four miles and a half an hour. Obviously the best amends that I

could make for this remissness was to go and look at it without

another moment's delay. So - altogether as a matter of duty - I

gave up the magnificent chapter for another day, and sauntered out

with my hands in my pockets.

All the houses and lodgings ever let to visitors, were to let that

morning. It seemed to have snowed bills with To Let upon them.

This put me upon thinking what the owners of all those apartments

did, out of the season; how they employed their time, and occupied

their minds. They could not be always going to the Methodist

chapels, of which I passed one every other minute. They must have

some other recreation. Whether they pretended to take one

another's lodgings, and opened one another's tea-caddies in fun?

Whether they cut slices off their own beef and mutton, and made

believe that it belonged to somebody else? Whether they played

little dramas of life, as children do, and said, 'I ought to come

and look at your apartments, and you ought to ask two guineas a-

week too much, and then I ought to say I must have the rest of the

day to think of it, and then you ought to say that another lady and

gentleman with no children in family had made an offer very close

to your own terms, and you had passed your word to give them a

positive answer in half an hour, and indeed were just going to take

the bill down when you heard the knock, and then I ought to take

them, you know?' Twenty such speculations engaged my thoughts.

Then, after passing, still clinging to the walls, defaced rags of

the bills of last year's Circus, I came to a back field near a

timber-yard where the Circus itself had been, and where there was

yet a sort of monkish tonsure on the grass, indicating the spot

where the young lady had gone round upon her pet steed Firefly in

her daring flight. Turning into the town again, I came among the

shops, and they were emphatically out of the season. The chemist

had no boxes of ginger-beer powders, no beautifying sea-side soaps

and washes, no attractive scents; nothing but his great goggle-eyed

red bottles, looking as if the winds of winter and the drift of the

salt-sea had inflamed them. The grocers' hot pickles, Harvey's

Sauce, Doctor Kitchener's Zest, Anchovy Paste, Dundee Marmalade,

and the whole stock of luxurious helps to appetite, were

hybernating somewhere underground. The china-shop had no trifles

from anywhere. The Bazaar had given in altogether, and presented a

notice on the shutters that this establishment would re-open at

Whitsuntide, and that the proprietor in the meantime might be heard

of at Wild Lodge, East Cliff. At the Sea-bathing Establishment, a

row of neat little wooden houses seven or eight feet high, I SAW

the proprietor in bed in the shower-bath. As to the bathing-

machines, they were (how they got there, is not for me to say) at

the top of a hill at least a mile and a half off. The library,

which I had never seen otherwise than wide open, was tight shut;

and two peevish bald old gentlemen seemed to be hermetically sealed

up inside, eternally reading the paper. That wonderful mystery,

the music-shop, carried it off as usual (except that it had more

cabinet pianos in stock), as if season or no season were all one to

it. It made the same prodigious display of bright brazen wind-

instruments, horribly twisted, worth, as I should conceive, some

thousands of pounds, and which it is utterly impossible that

anybody in any season can ever play or want to play. It had five

triangles in the window, six pairs of castanets, and three harps;

likewise every polka with a coloured frontispiece that ever was

published; from the original one where a smooth male and female

Pole of high rank are coming at the observer with their arms a-

kimbo, to the Ratcatcher's Daughter. Astonishing establishment,

amazing enigma! Three other shops were pretty much out of the

season, what they were used to be in it. First, the shop where

they sell the sailors' watches, which had still the old collection

of enormous timekeepers, apparently designed to break a fall from

the masthead: with places to wind them up, like fire-plugs.

Secondly, the shop where they sell the sailors' clothing, which

displayed the old sou'-westers, and the old oily suits, and the old

pea-jackets, and the old one sea-chest, with its handles like a

pair of rope ear-rings. Thirdly, the unchangeable shop for the

sale of literature that has been left behind. Here, Dr. Faustus

was still going down to very red and yellow perdition, under the

superintendence of three green personages of a scaly humour, with

excrescential serpents growing out of their blade-bones. Here, the

Golden Dreamer, and the Norwood Fortune Teller, were still on sale

at sixpence each, with instructions for making the dumb cake, and

reading destinies in tea-cups, and with a picture of a young woman

with a high waist lying on a sofa in an attitude so uncomfortable

as almost to account for her dreaming at one and the same time of a

conflagration, a shipwreck, an earthquake, a skeleton, a church-

porch, lightning, funerals performed, and a young man in a bright

blue coat and canary pantaloons. Here, were Little Warblers and

Fairburn's Comic Songsters. Here, too, were ballads on the old

ballad paper and in the old confusion of types; with an old man in

a cocked hat, and an arm-chair, for the illustration to Will Watch

the bold Smuggler; and the Friar of Orders Grey, represented by a

little girl in a hoop, with a ship in the distance. All these as

of yore, when they were infinite delights to me!

It took me so long fully to relish these many enjoyments, that I

had not more than an hour before bedtime to devote to Madame

Roland. We got on admirably together on the subject of her convent

education, and I rose next morning with the full conviction that

the day for the great chapter was at last arrived.

It had fallen calm, however, in the night, and as I sat at

breakfast I blushed to remember that I had not yet been on the

Downs. I a walker, and not yet on the Downs! Really, on so quiet

and bright a morning this must be set right. As an essential part

of the Whole Duty of Man, therefore, I left the chapter to itself -

for the present - and went on the Downs. They were wonderfully

green and beautiful, and gave me a good deal to do. When I had

done with the free air and the view, I had to go down into the

valley and look after the hops (which I know nothing about), and to

be equally solicitous as to the cherry orchards. Then I took it on

myself to cross-examine a tramping family in black (mother alleged,

I have no doubt by herself in person, to have died last week), and

to accompany eighteenpence which produced a great effect, with

moral admonitions which produced none at all. Finally, it was late

in the afternoon before I got back to the unprecedented chapter,

and then I determined that it was out of the season, as the place

was, and put it away.

I went at night to the benefit of Mrs. B. Wedgington at the

Theatre, who had placarded the town with the admonition, 'DON'T

FORGET IT!' I made the house, according to my calculation, four

and ninepence to begin with, and it may have warmed up, in the

course of the evening, to half a sovereign. There was nothing to

offend any one, - the good Mr. Baines of Leeds excepted. Mrs. B.

Wedgington sang to a grand piano. Mr. B. Wedgington did the like,

and also took off his coat, tucked up his trousers, and danced in

clogs. Master B. Wedgington, aged ten months, was nursed by a

shivering young person in the boxes, and the eye of Mrs. B.

Wedgington wandered that way more than once. Peace be with all the

Wedgingtons from A. to Z. May they find themselves in the Season

somewhere!

A POOR MAN'S TALE OF A PATENT

I AM not used to writing for print. What working-man, that never

labours less (some Mondays, and Christmas Time and Easter Time

excepted) than twelve or fourteen hours a day, is? But I have been

asked to put down, plain, what I have got to say; and so I take

pen-and-ink, and do it to the best of my power, hoping defects will

find excuse.

I was born nigh London, but have worked in a shop at Birmingham

(what you would call Manufactories, we call Shops), almost ever

since I was out of my time. I served my apprenticeship at

Deptford, nigh where I was born, and I am a smith by trade. My

name is John. I have been called 'Old John' ever since I was

nineteen year of age, on account of not having much hair. I am

fifty-six year of age at the present time, and I don't find myself

with more hair, nor yet with less, to signify, than at nineteen

year of age aforesaid.

I have been married five and thirty year, come next April. I was

married on All Fools' Day. Let them laugh that will. I won a good

wife that day, and it was as sensible a day to me as ever I had.

We have had a matter of ten children, six whereof are living. My

eldest son is engineer in the Italian steam-packet 'Mezzo Giorno,

plying between Marseilles and Naples, and calling at Genoa,

Leghorn, and Civita Vecchia.' He was a good workman. He invented

a many useful little things that brought him in - nothing. I have

two sons doing well at Sydney, New South Wales - single, when last

heard from. One of my sons (James) went wild and for a soldier,

where he was shot in India, living six weeks in hospital with a

musket-ball lodged in his shoulder-blade, which he wrote with his

own hand. He was the best looking. One of my two daughters (Mary)

is comfortable in her circumstances, but water on the chest. The

other (Charlotte), her husband run away from her in the basest

manner, and she and her three children live with us. The youngest,

six year old, has a turn for mechanics.

I am not a Chartist, and I never was. I don't mean to say but what

I see a good many public points to complain of, still I don't think

that's the way to set them right. If I did think so, I should be a

Chartist. But I don't think so, and I am not a Chartist. I read

the paper, and hear discussion, at what we call 'a parlour,' in

Birmingham, and I know many good men and workmen who are Chartists.

Note. Not Physical force.

It won't be took as boastful in me, if I make the remark (for I

can't put down what I have got to say, without putting that down

before going any further), that I have always been of an ingenious

turn. I once got twenty pound by a screw, and it's in use now. I

have been twenty year, off and on, completing an Invention and

perfecting it. I perfected of it, last Christmas Eve at ten

o'clock at night. Me and my wife stood and let some tears fall

over the Model, when it was done and I brought her in to take a

look at it.

A friend of mine, by the name of William Butcher, is a Chartist.

Moderate. He is a good speaker. He is very animated. I have

often heard him deliver that what is, at every turn, in the way of

us working-men, is, that too many places have been made, in the

course of time, to provide for people that never ought to have been

provided for; and that we have to obey forms and to pay fees to

support those places when we shouldn't ought. 'True,' (delivers

William Butcher), 'all the public has to do this, but it falls

heaviest on the working-man, because he has least to spare; and

likewise because impediments shouldn't be put in his way, when he

wants redress of wrong or furtherance of right.' Note. I have

wrote down those words from William Butcher's own mouth. W. B.

delivering them fresh for the aforesaid purpose.

Now, to my Model again. There it was, perfected of, on Christmas

Eve, gone nigh a year, at ten o'clock at night. All the money I

could spare I had laid out upon the Model; and when times was bad,

or my daughter Charlotte's children sickly, or both, it had stood

still, months at a spell. I had pulled it to pieces, and made it

over again with improvements, I don't know how often. There it

stood, at last, a perfected Model as aforesaid.

William Butcher and me had a long talk, Christmas Day, respecting

of the Model. William is very sensible. But sometimes cranky.

William said, 'What will you do with it, John?' I said, 'Patent

it.' William said, 'How patent it, John?' I said, 'By taking out

a Patent.' William then delivered that the law of Patent was a

cruel wrong. William said, 'John, if you make your invention

public, before you get a Patent, any one may rob you of the fruits

of your hard work. You are put in a cleft stick, John. Either you

must drive a bargain very much against yourself, by getting a party

to come forward beforehand with the great expenses of the Patent;

or, you must be put about, from post to pillar, among so many

parties, trying to make a better bargain for yourself, and showing

your invention, that your invention will be took from you over your

head.' I said, 'William Butcher, are you cranky? You are

sometimes cranky.' William said, 'No, John, I tell you the truth;'

which he then delivered more at length. I said to W. B. I would

Patent the invention myself.

My wife's brother, George Bury of West Bromwich (his wife

unfortunately took to drinking, made away with everything, and

seventeen times committed to Birmingham Jail before happy release

in every point of view), left my wife, his sister, when he died, a

legacy of one hundred and twenty-eight pound ten, Bank of England

Stocks. Me and my wife never broke into that money yet. Note. We

might come to be old and past our work. We now agreed to Patent

the invention. We said we would make a hole in it - I mean in the

aforesaid money - and Patent the invention. William Butcher wrote

me a letter to Thomas Joy, in London. T. J. is a carpenter, six

foot four in height, and plays quoits well. He lives in Chelsea,

London, by the church. I got leave from the shop, to be took on

again when I come back. I am a good workman. Not a Teetotaller;

but never drunk. When the Christmas holidays were over, I went up

to London by the Parliamentary Train, and hired a lodging for a

week with Thomas Joy. He is married. He has one son gone to sea.

Thomas Joy delivered (from a book he had) that the first step to be

took, in Patenting the invention, was to prepare a petition unto

Queen Victoria. William Butcher had delivered similar, and drawn

it up. Note. William is a ready writer. A declaration before a

Master in Chancery was to be added to it. That, we likewise drew

up. After a deal of trouble I found out a Master, in Southampton

Buildings, Chancery Lane, nigh Temple Bar, where I made the

declaration, and paid eighteen-pence. I was told to take the

declaration and petition to the Home Office, in Whitehall, where I

left it to be signed by the Home Secretary (after I had found the

office out), and where I paid two pound, two, and sixpence. In six

days he signed it, and I was told to take it to the Attorney-

General's chambers, and leave it there for a report. I did so, and

paid four pound, four. Note. Nobody all through, ever thankful

for their money, but all uncivil.

My lodging at Thomas Joy's was now hired for another week, whereof

five days were gone. The Attorney-General made what they called a

Report-of-course (my invention being, as William Butcher had

delivered before starting, unopposed), and I was sent back with it

to the Home Office. They made a Copy of it, which was called a

Warrant. For this warrant, I paid seven pound, thirteen, and six.

It was sent to the Queen, to sign. The Queen sent it back, signed.

The Home Secretary signed it again. The gentleman throwed it at me

when I called, and said, 'Now take it to the Patent Office in

Lincoln's Inn.' I was then in my third week at Thomas Joy's living

very sparing, on account of fees. I found myself losing heart.

At the Patent Office in Lincoln's Inn, they made 'a draft of the

Queen's bill,' of my invention, and a 'docket of the bill.' I paid

five pound, ten, and six, for this. They 'engrossed two copies of

the bill; one for the Signet Office, and one for the Privy-Seal

Office.' I paid one pound, seven, and six, for this. Stamp duty

over and above, three pound. The Engrossing Clerk of the same

office engrossed the Queen's bill for signature. I paid him one

pound, one. Stamp-duty, again, one pound, ten. I was next to take

the Queen's bill to the Attorney-General again, and get it signed

again. I took it, and paid five pound more. I fetched it away,

and took it to the Home Secretary again. He sent it to the Queen

again. She signed it again. I paid seven pound, thirteen, and

six, more, for this. I had been over a month at Thomas Joy's. I

was quite wore out, patience and pocket.

Thomas Joy delivered all this, as it went on, to William Butcher.

William Butcher delivered it again to three Birmingham Parlours,

from which it got to all the other Parlours, and was took, as I

have been told since, right through all the shops in the North of

England. Note. William Butcher delivered, at his Parlour, in a

speech, that it was a Patent way of making Chartists.

But I hadn't nigh done yet. The Queen's bill was to be took to the

Signet Office in Somerset House, Strand - where the stamp shop is.

The Clerk of the Signet made 'a Signet bill for the Lord Keeper of

the Privy Seal.' I paid him four pound, seven. The Clerk of the

Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal made 'a Privy-Seal bill for the Lord

Chancellor.' I paid him, four pound, two. The Privy-Seal bill was

handed over to the Clerk of the Patents, who engrossed the

aforesaid. I paid him five pound, seventeen, and eight; at the

same time, I paid Stamp-duty for the Patent, in one lump, thirty

pound. I next paid for 'boxes for the Patent,' nine and sixpence.

Note. Thomas Joy would have made the same at a profit for

eighteen-pence. I next paid 'fees to the Deputy, the Lord

Chancellor's Purse-bearer,' two pound, two. I next paid 'fees to

the Clerk of the Hanapar,' seven pound, thirteen. I next paid

'fees to the Deputy Clerk of the Hanaper,' ten shillings. I next

paid, to the Lord Chancellor again, one pound, eleven, and six.

Last of all, I paid 'fees to the Deputy Sealer, and Deputy Chaff-

wax,' ten shillings and sixpence. I had lodged at Thomas Joy's

over six weeks, and the unopposed Patent for my invention, for

England only, had cost me ninety-six pound, seven, and eightpence.

If I had taken it out for the United Kingdom, it would have cost me

more than three hundred pound.

Now, teaching had not come up but very limited when I was young.

So much the worse for me you'll say. I say the same. William

Butcher is twenty year younger than me. He knows a hundred year

more. If William Butcher had wanted to Patent an invention, he

might have been sharper than myself when hustled backwards and

forwards among all those offices, though I doubt if so patient.

Note. William being sometimes cranky, and consider porters,

messengers, and clerks.

Thereby I say nothing of my being tired of my life, while I was

Patenting my invention. But I put this: Is it reasonable to make a

man feel as if, in inventing an ingenious improvement meant to do

good, he had done something wrong? How else can a man feel, when

he is met by such difficulties at every turn? All inventors taking

out a Patent MUST feel so. And look at the expense. How hard on

me, and how hard on the country if there's any merit in me (and my

invention is took up now, I am thankful to say, and doing well), to

put me to all that expense before I can move a finger! Make the

addition yourself, and it'll come to ninety-six pound, seven, and

eightpence. No more, and no less.

What can I say against William Butcher, about places? Look at the

Home Secretary, the Attorney-General, the Patent Office, the

Engrossing Clerk, the Lord Chancellor, the Privy Seal, the Clerk of

the Patents, the Lord Chancellor's Purse-bearer, the Clerk of the

Hanaper, the Deputy Clerk of the Hanaper, the Deputy Sealer, and

the Deputy Chaff-wax. No man in England could get a Patent for an

Indian-rubber band, or an iron-hoop, without feeing all of them.

Some of them, over and over again. I went through thirty-five

stages. I began with the Queen upon the Throne. I ended with the

Deputy Chaff-wax. Note. I should like to see the Deputy Chaff-

wax. Is it a man, or what is it?

What I had to tell, I have told. I have wrote it down. I hope

it's plain. Not so much in the handwriting (though nothing to

boast of there), as in the sense of it. I will now conclude with

Thomas Joy. Thomas said to me, when we parted, 'John, if the laws

of this country were as honest as they ought to be, you would have

come to London - registered an exact description and drawing of

your invention - paid half-a-crown or so for doing of it - and

therein and thereby have got your Patent.'

My opinion is the same as Thomas Joy. Further. In William

Butcher's delivering 'that the whole gang of Hanapers and Chaff-

waxes must be done away with, and that England has been chaffed and

waxed sufficient,' I agree.

THE NOBLE SAVAGE

TO come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the

least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a prodigious

nuisance, and an enormous superstition. His calling rum fire-

water, and me a pale face, wholly fail to reconcile me to him. I

don't care what he calls me. I call him a savage, and I call a

savage a something highly desirable to be civilised off the face of

the earth. I think a mere gent (which I take to be the lowest form

of civilisation) better than a howling, whistling, clucking,

stamping, jumping, tearing savage. It is all one to me, whether he

sticks a fish-bone through his visage, or bits of trees through the

lobes of his ears, or bird's feathers in his head; whether he

flattens his hair between two boards, or spreads his nose over the

breadth of his face, or drags his lower lip down by great weights,

or blackens his teeth, or knocks them out, or paints one cheek red

and the other blue, or tattoos himself, or oils himself, or rubs

his body with fat, or crimps it with knives. Yielding to

whichsoever of these agreeable eccentricities, he is a savage -

cruel, false, thievish, murderous; addicted more or less to grease,

entrails, and beastly customs; a wild animal with the questionable

gift of boasting; a conceited, tiresome, bloodthirsty, monotonous

humbug.

Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some people will talk about

him, as they talk about the good old times; how they will regret

his disappearance, in the course of this world's development, from

such and such lands where his absence is a blessed relief and an

indispensable preparation for the sowing of the very first seeds of

any influence that can exalt humanity; how, even with the evidence

of himself before them, they will either be determined to believe,

or will suffer themselves to be persuaded into believing, that he

is something which their five senses tell them he is not.

There was Mr. Catlin, some few years ago, with his Ojibbeway

Indians. Mr. Catlin was an energetic, earnest man, who had lived

among more tribes of Indians than I need reckon up here, and who

had written a picturesque and glowing book about them. With his

party of Indians squatting and spitting on the table before him, or

dancing their miserable jigs after their own dreary manner, he

called, in all good faith, upon his civilised audience to take

notice of their symmetry and grace, their perfect limbs, and the

exquisite expression of their pantomime; and his civilised

audience, in all good faith, complied and admired. Whereas, as

mere animals, they were wretched creatures, very low in the scale

and very poorly formed; and as men and women possessing any power

of truthful dramatic expression by means of action, they were no

better than the chorus at an Italian Opera in England - and would

have been worse if such a thing were possible.

Mine are no new views of the noble savage. The greatest writers on

natural history found him out long ago. BUFFON knew what he was,

and showed why he is the sulky tyrant that he is to his women, and

how it happens (Heaven be praised!) that his race is spare in

numbers. For evidence of the quality of his moral nature, pass

himself for a moment and refer to his 'faithful dog.' Has he ever

improved a dog, or attached a dog, since his nobility first ran

wild in woods, and was brought down (at a very long shot) by POPE?

Or does the animal that is the friend of man, always degenerate in

his low society?

It is not the miserable nature of the noble savage that is the new

thing; it is the whimpering over him with maudlin admiration, and

the affecting to regret him, and the drawing of any comparison of

advantage between the blemishes of civilisation and the tenor of

his swinish life. There may have been a change now and then in

those diseased absurdities, but there is none in him.

Think of the Bushmen. Think of the two men and the two women who

have been exhibited about England for some years. Are the majority

of persons - who remember the horrid little leader of that party in

his festering bundle of hides, with his filth and his antipathy to

water, and his straddled legs, and his odious eyes shaded by his

brutal hand, and his cry of 'Qu-u-u-u-aaa!' (Bosjesman for

something desperately insulting I have no doubt) - conscious of an

affectionate yearning towards that noble savage, or is it

idiosyncratic in me to abhor, detest, abominate, and abjure him? I

have no reserve on this subject, and will frankly state that,

setting aside that stage of the entertainment when he counterfeited

the death of some creature he had shot, by laying his head on his

hand and shaking his left leg - at which time I think it would have

been justifiable homicide to slay him - I have never seen that

group sleeping, smoking, and expectorating round their brazier, but

I have sincerely desired that something might happen to the

charcoal smouldering therein, which would cause the immediate

suffocation of the whole of the noble strangers.

There is at present a party of Zulu Kaffirs exhibiting at the St.

George's Gallery, Hyde Park Corner, London. These noble savages

are represented in a most agreeable manner; they are seen in an

elegant theatre, fitted with appropriate scenery of great beauty,

and they are described in a very sensible and unpretending lecture,

delivered with a modesty which is quite a pattern to all similar

exponents. Though extremely ugly, they are much better shaped than

such of their predecessors as I have referred to; and they are

rather picturesque to the eye, though far from odoriferous to the

nose. What a visitor left to his own interpretings and imaginings

might suppose these noblemen to be about, when they give vent to

that pantomimic expression which is quite settled to be the natural

gift of the noble savage, I cannot possibly conceive; for it is so

much too luminous for my personal civilisation that it conveys no

idea to my mind beyond a general stamping, ramping, and raving,

remarkable (as everything in savage life is) for its dire

uniformity. But let us - with the interpreter's assistance, of

which I for one stand so much in need - see what the noble savage

does in Zulu Kaffirland.

The noble savage sets a king to reign over him, to whom he submits

his life and limbs without a murmur or question, and whose whole

life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood; but who, after killing

incessantly, is in his turn killed by his relations and friends,

the moment a grey hair appears on his head. All the noble savage's

wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes no pleasure in anything

else) are wars of extermination - which is the best thing I know of

him, and the most comfortable to my mind when I look at him. He

has no moral feelings of any kind, sort, or description; and his

'mission' may be summed up as simply diabolical.

The ceremonies with which he faintly diversifies his life are, of

course, of a kindred nature. If he wants a wife he appears before

the kennel of the gentleman whom he has selected for his father-in-

law, attended by a party of male friends of a very strong flavour,

who screech and whistle and stamp an offer of so many cows for the

young lady's hand. The chosen father-in-law - also supported by a

high-flavoured party of male friends - screeches, whistles, and

yells (being seated on the ground, he can't stamp) that there never

was such a daughter in the market as his daughter, and that he must

have six more cows. The son-in-law and his select circle of

backers screech, whistle, stamp, and yell in reply, that they will

give three more cows. The father-in-law (an old deluder, overpaid

at the beginning) accepts four, and rises to bind the bargain. The

whole party, the young lady included, then falling into epileptic

convulsions, and screeching, whistling, stamping, and yelling

together - and nobody taking any notice of the young lady (whose

charms are not to be thought of without a shudder) - the noble

savage is considered married, and his friends make demoniacal leaps

at him by way of congratulation.

When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell, and mentions

the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately perceived that

he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned personage,

called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immediately sent for to

Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. The male

inhabitants of the kraal being seated on the ground, the learned

doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, appears, and administers a

dance of a most terrific nature, during the exhibition of which

remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth, and howls:- 'I am the

original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow yow yow! No

connexion with any other establishment. Till till till! All other

Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo Boroo! but I perceive

here a genuine and real Umtargartie, Hoosh Hoosh Hoosh! in whose

blood I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer, Blizzerum Boo! will

wash these bear's claws of mine. O yow yow yow!' All this time

the learned physician is looking out among the attentive faces for

some unfortunate man who owes him a cow, or who has given him any

small offence, or against whom, without offence, he has conceived a

spite. Him he never fails to Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is

instantly killed. In the absence of such an individual, the usual

practice is to Nooker the quietest and most gentlemanly person in

company. But the nookering is invariably followed on the spot by

the butchering.

Some of the noble savages in whom Mr. Catlin was so strongly

interested, and the diminution of whose numbers, by rum and

smallpox, greatly affected him, had a custom not unlike this,

though much more appalling and disgusting in its odious details.

The women being at work in the fields, hoeing the Indian corn, and

the noble savage being asleep in the shade, the chief has sometimes

the condescension to come forth, and lighten the labour by looking

at it. On these occasions, he seats himself in his own savage

chair, and is attended by his shield-bearer: who holds over his

head a shield of cowhide - in shape like an immense mussel shell -

fearfully and wonderfully, after the manner of a theatrical

supernumerary. But lest the great man should forget his greatness

in the contemplation of the humble works of agriculture, there

suddenly rushes in a poet, retained for the purpose, called a

Praiser. This literary gentleman wears a leopard's head over his

own, and a dress of tigers' tails; he has the appearance of having

come express on his hind legs from the Zoological Gardens; and he

incontinently strikes up the chief's praises, plunging and tearing

all the while. There is a frantic wickedness in this brute's

manner of worrying the air, and gnashing out, 'O what a delightful

chief he is! O what a delicious quantity of blood he sheds! O how

majestically he laps it up! O how charmingly cruel he is! O how

he tears the flesh of his enemies and crunches the bones! O how

like the tiger and the leopard and the wolf and the bear he is! O,

row row row row, how fond I am of him!' which might tempt the

Society of Friends to charge at a hand-gallop into the Swartz-Kop

location and exterminate the whole kraal.

When war is afoot among the noble savages - which is always - the

chief holds a council to ascertain whether it is the opinion of his

brothers and friends in general that the enemy shall be

exterminated. On this occasion, after the performance of an

Umsebeuza, or war song, - which is exactly like all the other

songs, - the chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends,

arranged in single file. No particular order is observed during

the delivery of this address, but every gentleman who finds himself

excited by the subject, instead of crying 'Hear, hear!' as is the

custom with us, darts from the rank and tramples out the life, or

crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or

breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities on the

body, of an imaginary enemy. Several gentlemen becoming thus

excited at once, and pounding away without the least regard to the

orator, that illustrious person is rather in the position of an

orator in an Irish House of Commons. But, several of these scenes

of savage life bear a strong generic resemblance to an Irish

election, and I think would be extremely well received and

understood at Cork.

In all these ceremonies the noble savage holds forth to the utmost

possible extent about himself; from which (to turn him to some

civilised account) we may learn, I think, that as egotism is one of

the most offensive and contemptible littlenesses a civilised man

can exhibit, so it is really incompatible with the interchange of

ideas; inasmuch as if we all talked about ourselves we should soon

have no listeners, and must be all yelling and screeching at once

on our own separate accounts: making society hideous. It is my

opinion that if we retained in us anything of the noble savage, we

could not get rid of it too soon. But the fact is clearly

otherwise. Upon the wife and dowry question, substituting coin for

cows, we have assuredly nothing of the Zulu Kaffir left. The

endurance of despotism is one great distinguishing mark of a savage

always. The improving world has quite got the better of that too.

In like manner, Paris is a civilised city, and the Theatre Francais

a highly civilised theatre; and we shall never hear, and never have

heard in these later days (of course) of the Praiser THERE. No,

no, civilised poets have better work to do. As to Nookering

Umtargarties, there are no pretended Umtargarties in Europe, and no

European powers to Nooker them; that would be mere spydom,

subordination, small malice, superstition, and false pretence. And

as to private Umtargarties, are we not in the year eighteen hundred

and fifty-three, with spirits rapping at our doors?

To conclude as I began. My position is, that if we have anything

to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues

are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense.

We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable

object, than for being cruel to a WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE or an ISAAC

NEWTON; but he passes away before an immeasurably better and higher

power than ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the world will

be all the better when his place knows him no more.

A FLIGHT

WHEN Don Diego de - I forget his name - the inventor of the last

new Flying Machines, price so many francs for ladies, so many more

for gentlemen - when Don Diego, by permission of Deputy Chaff-wax

and his noble band, shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen's

dominions, and shall have opened a commodious Warehouse in an airy

situation; and when all persons of any gentility will keep at least

a pair of wings, and be seen skimming about in every direction; I

shall take a flight to Paris (as I soar round the world) in a cheap

and independent manner. At present, my reliance is on the South-

Eastern Railway Company, in whose Express Train here I sit, at

eight of the clock on a very hot morning, under the very hot roof

of the Terminus at London Bridge, in danger of being 'forced' like

a cucumber or a melon, or a pine-apple. And talking of pine-

apples, I suppose there never were so many pine-apples in a Train

as there appear to be in this Train.

Whew! The hot-house air is faint with pine-apples. Every French

citizen or citizeness is carrying pine-apples home. The compact

little Enchantress in the corner of my carriage (French actress, to

whom I yielded up my heart under the auspices of that brave child,

'MEAT-CHELL,' at the St. James's Theatre the night before last) has

a pine-apple in her lap. Compact Enchantress's friend, confidante,

mother, mystery, Heaven knows what, has two pine-apples in her lap,

and a bundle of them under the seat. Tobacco-smoky Frenchman in

Algerine wrapper, with peaked hood behind, who might be Abd-el-

Kader dyed rifle-green, and who seems to be dressed entirely in

dirt and braid, carries pine-apples in a covered basket. Tall,

grave, melancholy Frenchman, with black Vandyke beard, and hair

close-cropped, with expansive chest to waistcoat, and compressive

waist to coat: saturnine as to his pantaloons, calm as to his

feminine boots, precious as to his jewellery, smooth and white as

to his linen: dark-eyed, high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed - got up, one

thinks, like Lucifer or Mephistopheles, or Zamiel, transformed into

a highly genteel Parisian - has the green end of a pine-apple

sticking out of his neat valise.

Whew! If I were to be kept here long, under this forcing-frame, I

wonder what would become of me - whether I should be forced into a

giant, or should sprout or blow into some other phenomenon!

Compact Enchantress is not ruffled by the heat - she is always

composed, always compact. O look at her little ribbons, frills,

and edges, at her shawl, at her gloves, at her hair, at her

bracelets, at her bonnet, at everything about her! How is it

accomplished? What does she do to be so neat? How is it that

every trifle she wears belongs to her, and cannot choose but be a

part of her? And even Mystery, look at HER! A model. Mystery is

not young, not pretty, though still of an average candle-light

passability; but she does such miracles in her own behalf, that,

one of these days, when she dies, they'll be amazed to find an old

woman in her bed, distantly like her. She was an actress once, I

shouldn't wonder, and had a Mystery attendant on herself. Perhaps,

Compact Enchantress will live to be a Mystery, and to wait with a

shawl at the side-scenes, and to sit opposite to Mademoiselle in

railway carriages, and smile and talk subserviently, as Mystery

does now. That's hard to believe!

Two Englishmen, and now our carriage is full. First Englishman, in

the monied interest - flushed, highly respectable - Stock Exchange,

perhaps - City, certainly. Faculties of second Englishman entirely

absorbed in hurry. Plunges into the carriage, blind. Calls out of

window concerning his luggage, deaf. Suffocates himself under

pillows of great-coats, for no reason, and in a demented manner.

Will receive no assurance from any porter whatsoever. Is stout and

hot, and wipes his head, and makes himself hotter by breathing so

hard. Is totally incredulous respecting assurance of Collected

Guard, that 'there's no hurry.' No hurry! And a flight to Paris

in eleven hours!

It is all one to me in this drowsy corner, hurry or no hurry.

Until Don Diego shall send home my wings, my flight is with the

South-Eastern Company. I can fly with the South-Eastern, more

lazily, at all events, than in the upper air. I have but to sit

here thinking as idly as I please, and be whisked away. I am not

accountable to anybody for the idleness of my thoughts in such an

idle summer flight; my flight is provided for by the South-Eastern

and is no business of mine.

The bell! With all my heart. It does not require me to do so much

as even to flap my wings. Something snorts for me, something

shrieks for me, something proclaims to everything else that it had

better keep out of my way, - and away I go.

Ah! The fresh air is pleasant after the forcing-frame, though it

does blow over these interminable streets, and scatter the smoke of

this vast wilderness of chimneys. Here we are - no, I mean there

we were, for it has darted far into the rear - in Bermondsey where

the tanners live. Flash! The distant shipping in the Thames is

gone. Whirr! The little streets of new brick and red tile, with

here and there a flagstaff growing like a tall weed out of the

scarlet beans, and, everywhere, plenty of open sewer and ditch for

the promotion of the public health, have been fired off in a

volley. Whizz! Dust-heaps, market-gardens, and waste grounds.

Rattle! New Cross Station. Shock! There we were at Croydon.

Bur-r-r-r! The tunnel.

I wonder why it is that when I shut my eyes in a tunnel I begin to

feel as if I were going at an Express pace the other way. I am

clearly going back to London now. Compact Enchantress must have

forgotten something, and reversed the engine. No! After long

darkness, pale fitful streaks of light appear. I am still flying

on for Folkestone. The streaks grow stronger - become continuous -

become the ghost of day - become the living day - became I mean -

the tunnel is miles and miles away, and here I fly through

sunlight, all among the harvest and the Kentish hops.

There is a dreamy pleasure in this flying. I wonder where it was,

and when it was, that we exploded, blew into space somehow, a

Parliamentary Train, with a crowd of heads and faces looking at us

out of cages, and some hats waving. Monied Interest says it was at

Reigate Station. Expounds to Mystery how Reigate Station is so

many miles from London, which Mystery again develops to Compact

Enchantress. There might be neither a Reigate nor a London for me,

as I fly away among the Kentish hops and harvest. What do I care?

Bang! We have let another Station off, and fly away regardless.

Everything is flying. The hop-gardens turn gracefully towards me,

presenting regular avenues of hops in rapid flight, then whirl

away. So do the pools and rushes, haystacks, sheep, clover in full

bloom delicious to the sight and smell, corn-sheaves, cherry-

orchards, apple-orchards, reapers, gleaners, hedges, gates, fields

that taper off into little angular corners, cottages, gardens, now

and then a church. Bang, bang! A double-barrelled Station! Now a

wood, now a bridge, now a landscape, now a cutting, now a - Bang! a

single-barrelled Station - there was a cricket-match somewhere with

two white tents, and then four flying cows, then turnips - now the

wires of the electric telegraph are all alive, and spin, and blurr

their edges, and go up and down, and make the intervals between

each other most irregular: contracting and expanding in the

strangest manner. Now we slacken. With a screwing, and a

grinding, and a smell of water thrown on ashes, now we stop!

Demented Traveller, who has been for two or three minutes watchful,

clutches his great-coats, plunges at the door, rattles it, cries

'Hi!' eager to embark on board of impossible packets, far inland.

Collected Guard appears. 'Are you for Tunbridge, sir?'

'Tunbridge? No. Paris.' 'Plenty of time, sir. No hurry. Five

minutes here, sir, for refreshment.' I am so blest (anticipating

Zamiel, by half a second) as to procure a glass of water for

Compact Enchantress.

Who would suppose we had been flying at such a rate, and shall take

wing again directly? Refreshment-room full, platform full, porter

with watering-pot deliberately cooling a hot wheel, another porter

with equal deliberation helping the rest of the wheels bountifully

to ice cream. Monied Interest and I re-entering the carriage

first, and being there alone, he intimates to me that the French

are 'no go' as a Nation. I ask why? He says, that Reign of Terror

of theirs was quite enough. I ventured to inquire whether he

remembers anything that preceded said Reign of Terror? He says not

particularly. 'Because,' I remark, 'the harvest that is reaped,

has sometimes been sown.' Monied Interest repeats, as quite enough

for him, that the French are revolutionary, - 'and always at it.'

Bell. Compact Enchantress, helped in by Zamiel (whom the stars

confound!), gives us her charming little side-box look, and smites

me to the core. Mystery eating sponge-cake. Pine-apple atmosphere

faintly tinged with suspicions of sherry. Demented Traveller flits

past the carriage, looking for it. Is blind with agitation, and

can't see it. Seems singled out by Destiny to be the only unhappy

creature in the flight, who has any cause to hurry himself. Is

nearly left behind. Is seized by Collected Guard after the Train

is in motion, and bundled in. Still, has lingering suspicions that

there must be a boat in the neighbourhood, and WILL look wildly out

of window for it.

Flight resumed. Corn-sheaves, hop-gardens, reapers, gleaners,

apple-orchards, cherry-orchards, Stations single and double-

barrelled, Ashford. Compact Enchantress (constantly talking to

Mystery, in an exquisite manner) gives a little scream; a sound

that seems to come from high up in her precious little head; from

behind her bright little eyebrows. 'Great Heaven, my pine-apple!

My Angel! It is lost!' Mystery is desolated. A search made. It

is not lost. Zamiel finds it. I curse him (flying) in the Persian

manner. May his face be turned upside down, and jackasses sit upon

his uncle's grave!

Now fresher air, now glimpses of unenclosed Down-land with flapping

crows flying over it whom we soon outfly, now the Sea, now

Folkestone at a quarter after ten. 'Tickets ready, gentlemen!'

Demented dashes at the door. 'For Paris, sir? No hurry.'

Not the least. We are dropped slowly down to the Port, and sidle

to and fro (the whole Train) before the insensible Royal George

Hotel, for some ten minutes. The Royal George takes no more heed

of us than its namesake under water at Spithead, or under earth at

Windsor, does. The Royal George's dog lies winking and blinking at

us, without taking the trouble to sit up; and the Royal George's

'wedding party' at the open window (who seem, I must say, rather

tired of bliss) don't bestow a solitary glance upon us, flying thus

to Paris in eleven hours. The first gentleman in Folkestone is

evidently used up, on this subject.

Meanwhile, Demented chafes. Conceives that every man's hand is

against him, and exerting itself to prevent his getting to Paris.

Refuses consolation. Rattles door. Sees smoke on the horizon, and

'knows' it's the boat gone without him. Monied Interest

resentfully explains that HE is going to Paris too. Demented

signifies, that if Monied Interest chooses to be left behind, HE

don't.

'Refreshments in the Waiting-Room, ladies and gentlemen. No hurry,

ladies and gentlemen, for Paris. No hurry whatever!'

Twenty minutes' pause, by Folkestone clock, for looking at

Enchantress while she eats a sandwich, and at Mystery while she

eats of everything there that is eatable, from pork-pie, sausage,

jam, and gooseberries, to lumps of sugar. All this time, there is

a very waterfall of luggage, with a spray of dust, tumbling

slantwise from the pier into the steamboat. All this time,

Demented (who has no business with it) watches it with starting

eyes, fiercely requiring to be shown HIS luggage. When it at last

concludes the cataract, he rushes hotly to refresh - is shouted

after, pursued, jostled, brought back, pitched into the departing

steamer upside down, and caught by mariners disgracefully.

A lovely harvest-day, a cloudless sky, a tranquil sea. The piston-

rods of the engines so regularly coming up from below, to look (as

well they may) at the bright weather, and so regularly almost

knocking their iron heads against the cross beam of the skylight,

and never doing it! Another Parisian actress is on board, attended

by another Mystery. Compact Enchantress greets her sister artist -

Oh, the Compact One's pretty teeth! - and Mystery greets Mystery.

My Mystery soon ceases to be conversational - is taken poorly, in a

word, having lunched too miscellaneously - and goes below. The

remaining Mystery then smiles upon the sister artists (who, I am

afraid, wouldn't greatly mind stabbing each other), and is upon the

whole ravished.

And now I find that all the French people on board begin to grow,

and all the English people to shrink. The French are nearing home,

and shaking off a disadvantage, whereas we are shaking it on.

Zamiel is the same man, and Abd-el-Kader is the same man, but each

seems to come into possession of an indescribable confidence that

departs from us - from Monied Interest, for instance, and from me.

Just what they gain, we lose. Certain British 'Gents' about the

steersman, intellectually nurtured at home on parody of everything

and truth of nothing, become subdued, and in a manner forlorn; and

when the steersman tells them (not exultingly) how he has 'been

upon this station now eight year, and never see the old town of

Bullum yet,' one of them, with an imbecile reliance on a reed, asks

him what he considers to be the best hotel in Paris?

Now, I tread upon French ground, and am greeted by the three

charming words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, painted up (in

letters a little too thin for their height) on the Custom-house

wall - also by the sight of large cocked hats, without which

demonstrative head-gear nothing of a public nature can be done upon

this soil. All the rabid Hotel population of Boulogne howl and

shriek outside a distant barrier, frantic to get at us. Demented,

by some unlucky means peculiar to himself, is delivered over to

their fury, and is presently seen struggling in a whirlpool of

Touters - is somehow understood to be going to Paris - is, with

infinite noise, rescued by two cocked hats, and brought into

Custom-house bondage with the rest of us.

Here, I resign the active duties of life to an eager being, of

preternatural sharpness, with a shelving forehead and a shabby

snuff-coloured coat, who (from the wharf) brought me down with his

eye before the boat came into port. He darts upon my luggage, on

the floor where all the luggage is strewn like a wreck at the

bottom of the great deep; gets it proclaimed and weighed as the

property of 'Monsieur a traveller unknown;' pays certain francs for

it, to a certain functionary behind a Pigeon Hole, like a pay-box

at a Theatre (the arrangements in general are on a wholesale scale,

half military and half theatrical); and I suppose I shall find it

when I come to Paris - he says I shall. I know nothing about it,

except that I pay him his small fee, and pocket the ticket he gives

me, and sit upon a counter, involved in the general distraction.

Railway station. 'Lunch or dinner, ladies and gentlemen. Plenty

of time for Paris. Plenty of time!' Large hall, long counter,

long strips of dining-table, bottles of wine, plates of meat, roast

chickens, little loaves of bread, basins of soup, little caraffes

of brandy, cakes, and fruit. Comfortably restored from these

resources, I begin to fly again.

I saw Zamiel (before I took wing) presented to Compact Enchantress

and Sister Artist, by an officer in uniform, with a waist like a

wasp's, and pantaloons like two balloons. They all got into the

next carriage together, accompanied by the two Mysteries. They

laughed. I am alone in the carriage (for I don't consider Demented

anybody) and alone in the world.

Fields, windmills, low grounds, pollard-trees, windmills, fields,

fortifications, Abbeville, soldiering and drumming. I wonder where

England is, and when I was there last - about two years ago, I

should say. Flying in and out among these trenches and batteries,

skimming the clattering drawbridges, looking down into the stagnant

ditches, I become a prisoner of state, escaping. I am confined

with a comrade in a fortress. Our room is in an upper story. We

have tried to get up the chimney, but there's an iron grating

across it, imbedded in the masonry. After months of labour, we

have worked the grating loose with the poker, and can lift it up.

We have also made a hook, and twisted our rugs and blankets into

ropes. Our plan is, to go up the chimney, hook our ropes to the

top, descend hand over hand upon the roof of the guard-house far

below, shake the hook loose, watch the opportunity of the sentinels

pacing away, hook again, drop into the ditch, swim across it, creep

into the shelter of the wood. The time is come - a wild and stormy

night. We are up the chimney, we are on the guard-house roof, we

are swimming in the murky ditch, when lo! 'Qui v'la?' a bugle, the

alarm, a crash! What is it? Death? No, Amiens.

More fortifications, more soldiering and drumming, more basins of

soup, more little loaves of bread, more bottles of wine, more

caraffes of brandy, more time for refreshment. Everything good,

and everything ready. Bright, unsubstantial-looking, scenic sort

of station. People waiting. Houses, uniforms, beards, moustaches,

some sabots, plenty of neat women, and a few old-visaged children.

Unless it be a delusion born of my giddy flight, the grown-up

people and the children seem to change places in France. In

general, the boys and girls are little old men and women, and the

men and women lively boys and girls.

Bugle, shriek, flight resumed. Monied Interest has come into my

carriage. Says the manner of refreshing is 'not bad,' but

considers it French. Admits great dexterity and politeness in the

attendants. Thinks a decimal currency may have something to do

with their despatch in settling accounts, and don't know but what

it's sensible and convenient. Adds, however, as a general protest,

that they're a revolutionary people - and always at it.

Ramparts, canals, cathedral, river, soldiering and drumming, open

country, river, earthenware manufactures, Creil. Again ten

minutes. Not even Demented in a hurry. Station, a drawing-room

with a verandah: like a planter's house. Monied Interest considers

it a band-box, and not made to last. Little round tables in it, at

one of which the Sister Artists and attendant Mysteries are

established with Wasp and Zamiel, as if they were going to stay a

week.

Anon, with no more trouble than before, I am flying again, and

lazily wondering as I fly. What has the South-Eastern done with

all the horrible little villages we used to pass through, in the

DILIGENCE? What have they done with all the summer dust, with all

the winter mud, with all the dreary avenues of little trees, with

all the ramshackle postyards, with all the beggars (who used to

turn out at night with bits of lighted candle, to look in at the

coach windows), with all the long-tailed horses who were always

biting one another, with all the big postilions in jack-boots -

with all the mouldy cafes that we used to stop at, where a long

mildewed table-cloth, set forth with jovial bottles of vinegar and

oil, and with a Siamese arrangement of pepper and salt, was never

wanting? Where are the grass-grown little towns, the wonderful

little market-places all unconscious of markets, the shops that

nobody kept, the streets that nobody trod, the churches that nobody

went to, the bells that nobody rang, the tumble-down old buildings

plastered with many-coloured bills that nobody read? Where are the

two-and-twenty weary hours of long, long day and night journey,

sure to be either insupportably hot or insupportably cold? Where

are the pains in my bones, where are the fidgets in my legs, where

is the Frenchman with the nightcap who never WOULD have the little

coupe-window down, and who always fell upon me when he went to

sleep, and always slept all night snoring onions?

A voice breaks in with 'Paris! Here we are!'

I have overflown myself, perhaps, but I can't believe it. I feel

as if I were enchanted or bewitched. It is barely eight o'clock

yet - it is nothing like half-past - when I have had my luggage

examined at that briskest of Custom-houses attached to the station,

and am rattling over the pavement in a hackney-cabriolet.

Surely, not the pavement of Paris? Yes, I think it is, too. I

don't know any other place where there are all these high houses,

all these haggard-looking wine shops, all these billiard tables,

all these stocking-makers with flat red or yellow legs of wood for

signboard, all these fuel shops with stacks of billets painted

outside, and real billets sawing in the gutter, all these dirty

corners of streets, all these cabinet pictures over dark doorways

representing discreet matrons nursing babies. And yet this morning

- I'll think of it in a warm-bath.

Very like a small room that I remember in the Chinese baths upon

the Boulevard, certainly; and, though I see it through the steam, I

think that I might swear to that peculiar hot-linen basket, like a

large wicker hour-glass. When can it have been that I left home?

When was it that I paid 'through to Paris' at London Bridge, and

discharged myself of all responsibility, except the preservation of

a voucher ruled into three divisions, of which the first was

snipped off at Folkestone, the second aboard the boat, and the

third taken at my journey's end? It seems to have been ages ago.

Calculation is useless. I will go out for a walk.

The crowds in the streets, the lights in the shops and balconies,

the elegance, variety, and beauty of their decorations, the number

of the theatres, the brilliant cafes with their windows thrown up

high and their vivacious groups at little tables on the pavement,

the light and glitter of the houses turned as it were inside out,

soon convince me that it is no dream; that I am in Paris, howsoever

I got there. I stroll down to the sparkling Palais Royal, up the

Rue de Rivoli, to the Place Vendome. As I glance into a print-shop

window, Monied Interest, my late travelling companion, comes upon

me, laughing with the highest relish of disdain. 'Here's a

people!' he says, pointing to Napoleon in the window and Napoleon

on the column. 'Only one idea all over Paris! A monomania!'

Humph! I THINK I have seen Napoleon's match? There was a statue,

when I came away, at Hyde Park Corner, and another in the City, and

a print or two in the shops.

I walk up to the Barriere de l'Etoile, sufficiently dazed by my

flight to have a pleasant doubt of the reality of everything about

me; of the lively crowd, the overhanging trees, the performing

dogs, the hobby-horses, the beautiful perspectives of shining

lamps: the hundred and one enclosures, where the singing is, in

gleaming orchestras of azure and gold, and where a star-eyed Houri

comes round with a box for voluntary offerings. So, I pass to my

hotel, enchanted; sup, enchanted; go to bed, enchanted; pushing

back this morning (if it really were this morning) into the

remoteness of time, blessing the South-Eastern Company for

realising the Arabian Nights in these prose days, murmuring, as I

wing my idle flight into the land of dreams, 'No hurry, ladies and

gentlemen, going to Paris in eleven hours. It is so well done,

that there really is no hurry!'

THE DETECTIVE POLICE

WE are not by any means devout believers in the old Bow Street

Police. To say the truth, we think there was a vast amount of

humbug about those worthies. Apart from many of them being men of

very indifferent character, and far too much in the habit of

consorting with thieves and the like, they never lost a public

occasion of jobbing and trading in mystery and making the most of

themselves. Continually puffed besides by incompetent magistrates

anxious to conceal their own deficiencies, and hand-in-glove with

the penny-a-liners of that time, they became a sort of

superstition. Although as a Preventive Police they were utterly

ineffective, and as a Detective Police were very loose and

uncertain in their operations, they remain with some people a

superstition to the present day.

On the other hand, the Detective Force organised since the

establishment of the existing Police, is so well chosen and

trained, proceeds so systematically and quietly, does its business

in such a workmanlike manner, and is always so calmly and steadily

engaged in the service of the public, that the public really do not

know enough of it, to know a tithe of its usefulness. Impressed

with this conviction, and interested in the men themselves, we

represented to the authorities at Scotland Yard, that we should be

glad, if there were no official objection, to have some talk with

the Detectives. A most obliging and ready permission being given,

a certain evening was appointed with a certain Inspector for a

social conference between ourselves and the Detectives, at The

Household Words Office in Wellington Street, Strand, London. In

consequence of which appointment the party 'came off,' which we are

about to describe. And we beg to repeat that, avoiding such topics

as it might for obvious reasons be injurious to the public, or

disagreeable to respectable individuals, to touch upon in print,

our description is as exact as we can make it.

The reader will have the goodness to imagine the Sanctum Sanctorum

of Household Words. Anything that best suits the reader's fancy,

will best represent that magnificent chamber. We merely stipulate

for a round table in the middle, with some glasses and cigars

arranged upon it; and the editorial sofa elegantly hemmed in

between that stately piece of furniture and the wall.

It is a sultry evening at dusk. The stones of Wellington Street

are hot and gritty, and the watermen and hackney-coachmen at the

Theatre opposite, are much flushed and aggravated. Carriages are

constantly setting down the people who have come to Fairy-Land; and

there is a mighty shouting and bellowing every now and then,

deafening us for the moment, through the open windows.

Just at dusk, Inspectors Wield and Stalker are announced; but we do

not undertake to warrant the orthography of any of the names here

mentioned. Inspector Wield presents Inspector Stalker. Inspector

Wield is a middle-aged man of a portly presence, with a large,

moist, knowing eye, a husky voice, and a habit of emphasising his

conversation by the aid of a corpulent fore-finger, which is

constantly in juxtaposition with his eyes or nose. Inspector

Stalker is a shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman - in appearance not at

all unlike a very acute, thoroughly-trained schoolmaster, from the

Normal Establishment at Glasgow. Inspector Wield one might have

known, perhaps, for what he is - Inspector Stalker, never.

The ceremonies of reception over, Inspectors Wield and Stalker

observe that they have brought some sergeants with them. The

sergeants are presented - five in number, Sergeant Dornton,

Sergeant Witchem, Sergeant Mith, Sergeant Fendall, and Sergeant

Straw. We have the whole Detective Force from Scotland Yard, with

one exception. They sit down in a semi-circle (the two Inspectors

at the two ends) at a little distance from the round table, facing

the editorial sofa. Every man of them, in a glance, immediately

takes an inventory of the furniture and an accurate sketch of the

editorial presence. The Editor feels that any gentleman in company

could take him up, if need should be, without the smallest

hesitation, twenty years hence.

The whole party are in plain clothes. Sergeant Dornton about fifty

years of age, with a ruddy face and a high sunburnt forehead, has

the air of one who has been a Sergeant in the army - he might have

sat to Wilkie for the Soldier in the Reading of the Will. He is

famous for steadily pursuing the inductive process, and, from small

beginnings, working on from clue to clue until he bags his man.

Sergeant Witchem, shorter and thicker-set, and marked with the

small-pox, has something of a reserved and thoughtful air, as if he

were engaged in deep arithmetical calculations. He is renowned for

his acquaintance with the swell mob. Sergeant Mith, a smooth-faced

man with a fresh bright complexion, and a strange air of

simplicity, is a dab at housebreakers. Sergeant Fendall, a light-

haired, well-spoken, polite person, is a prodigious hand at

pursuing private inquiries of a delicate nature. Straw, a little

wiry Sergeant of meek demeanour and strong sense, would knock at a

door and ask a series of questions in any mild character you choose

to prescribe to him, from a charity-boy upwards, and seem as

innocent as an infant. They are, one and all, respectable-looking

men; of perfectly good deportment and unusual intelligence; with

nothing lounging or slinking in their manners; with an air of keen

observation and quick perception when addressed; and generally

presenting in their faces, traces more or less marked of habitually

leading lives of strong mental excitement. They have all good

eyes; and they all can, and they all do, look full at whomsoever

they speak to.

We light the cigars, and hand round the glasses (which are very

temperately used indeed), and the conversation begins by a modest

amateur reference on the Editorial part to the swell mob.

Inspector Wield immediately removes his cigar from his lips, waves

his right hand, and says, 'Regarding the swell mob, sir, I can't do

better than call upon Sergeant Witchem. Because the reason why?

I'll tell you. Sergeant Witchem is better acquainted with the

swell mob than any officer in London.'

Our heart leaping up when we beheld this rainbow in the sky, we

turn to Sergeant Witchem, who very concisely, and in well-chosen

language, goes into the subject forthwith. Meantime, the whole of

his brother officers are closely interested in attending to what he

says, and observing its effect. Presently they begin to strike in,

one or two together, when an opportunity offers, and the

conversation becomes general. But these brother officers only come

in to the assistance of each other - not to the contradiction - and

a more amicable brotherhood there could not be. From the swell

mob, we diverge to the kindred topics of cracksmen, fences, public-

house dancers, area-sneaks, designing young people who go out

'gonophing,' and other 'schools.' It is observable throughout

these revelations, that Inspector Stalker, the Scotchman, is always

exact and statistical, and that when any question of figures

arises, everybody as by one consent pauses, and looks to him.

When we have exhausted the various schools of Art - during which

discussion the whole body have remained profoundly attentive,

except when some unusual noise at the Theatre over the way has

induced some gentleman to glance inquiringly towards the window in

that direction, behind his next neighbour's back - we burrow for

information on such points as the following. Whether there really

are any highway robberies in London, or whether some circumstances

not convenient to be mentioned by the aggrieved party, usually

precede the robberies complained of, under that head, which quite

change their character? Certainly the latter, almost always.

Whether in the case of robberies in houses, where servants are

necessarily exposed to doubt, innocence under suspicion ever

becomes so like guilt in appearance, that a good officer need be

cautious how he judges it? Undoubtedly. Nothing is so common or

deceptive as such appearances at first. Whether in a place of

public amusement, a thief knows an officer, and an officer knows a

thief - supposing them, beforehand, strangers to each other -

because each recognises in the other, under all disguise, an

inattention to what is going on, and a purpose that is not the

purpose of being entertained? Yes. That's the way exactly.

Whether it is reasonable or ridiculous to trust to the alleged

experiences of thieves as narrated by themselves, in prisons, or

penitentiaries, or anywhere? In general, nothing more absurd.

Lying is their habit and their trade; and they would rather lie -

even if they hadn't an interest in it, and didn't want to make

themselves agreeable - than tell the truth.

From these topics, we glide into a review of the most celebrated

and horrible of the great crimes that have been committed within

the last fifteen or twenty years. The men engaged in the discovery

of almost all of them, and in the pursuit or apprehension of the

murderers, are here, down to the very last instance. One of our

guests gave chase to and boarded the emigrant ship, in which the

murderess last hanged in London was supposed to have embarked. We

learn from him that his errand was not announced to the passengers,

who may have no idea of it to this hour. That he went below, with

the captain, lamp in hand - it being dark, and the whole steerage

abed and sea-sick - and engaged the Mrs. Manning who WAS on board,

in a conversation about her luggage, until she was, with no small

pains, induced to raise her head, and turn her face towards the

light. Satisfied that she was not the object of his search, he

quietly re-embarked in the Government steamer along-side, and

steamed home again with the intelligence.

When we have exhausted these subjects, too, which occupy a

considerable time in the discussion, two or three leave their

chairs, whisper Sergeant Witchem, and resume their seat. Sergeant

Witchem, leaning forward a little, and placing a hand on each of

his legs, then modestly speaks as follows:

'My brother-officers wish me to relate a little account of my

taking Tally-ho Thompson. A man oughtn't to tell what he has done

himself; but still, as nobody was with me, and, consequently, as

nobody but myself can tell it, I'll do it in the best way I can, if

it should meet your approval.'

We assure Sergeant Witchem that he will oblige us very much, and we

all compose ourselves to listen with great interest and attention.

'Tally-ho Thompson,' says Sergeant Witchem, after merely wetting

his lips with his brandy-and-water, 'Tally-ho Thompson was a famous

horse-stealer, couper, and magsman. Thompson, in conjunction with

a pal that occasionally worked with him, gammoned a countryman out

of a good round sum of money, under pretence of getting him a

situation - the regular old dodge - and was afterwards in the "Hue

and Cry" for a horse - a horse that he stole down in Hertfordshire.

I had to look after Thompson, and I applied myself, of course, in

the first instance, to discovering where he was. Now, Thompson's

wife lived, along with a little daughter, at Chelsea. Knowing that

Thompson was somewhere in the country, I watched the house -

especially at post-time in the morning - thinking Thompson was

pretty likely to write to her. Sure enough, one morning the

postman comes up, and delivers a letter at Mrs. Thompson's door.

Little girl opens the door, and takes it in. We're not always sure

of postmen, though the people at the post-offices are always very

obliging. A postman may help us, or he may not, - just as it

happens. However, I go across the road, and I say to the postman,

after he has left the letter, "Good morning! how are you?" "How

are YOU!" says he. "You've just delivered a letter for Mrs.

Thompson." "Yes, I have." "You didn't happen to remark what the

post-mark was, perhaps?" "No," says he, "I didn't." "Come," says

I, "I'll be plain with you. I'm in a small way of business, and I

have given Thompson credit, and I can't afford to lose what he owes

me. I know he's got money, and I know he's in the country, and if

you could tell me what the post-mark was, I should be very much

obliged to you, and you'd do a service to a tradesman in a small

way of business that can't afford a loss." "Well," he said, "I do

assure you that I did not observe what the post-mark was; all I

know is, that there was money in the letter - I should say a

sovereign." This was enough for me, because of course I knew that

Thompson having sent his wife money, it was probable she'd write to

Thompson, by return of post, to acknowledge the receipt. So I said

"Thankee" to the postman, and I kept on the watch. In the

afternoon I saw the little girl come out. Of course I followed

her. She went into a stationer's shop, and I needn't say to you

that I looked in at the window. She bought some writing-paper and

envelopes, and a pen. I think to myself, "That'll do!" - watch her

home again - and don't go away, you may be sure, knowing that Mrs.

Thompson was writing her letter to Tally-ho, and that the letter

would be posted presently. In about an hour or so, out came the

little girl again, with the letter in her hand. I went up, and

said something to the child, whatever it might have been; but I

couldn't see the direction of the letter, because she held it with

the seal upwards. However, I observed that on the back of the

letter there was what we call a kiss - a drop of wax by the side of

the seal - and again, you understand, that was enough for me. I

saw her post the letter, waited till she was gone, then went into

the shop, and asked to see the Master. When he came out, I told

him, "Now, I'm an Officer in the Detective Force; there's a letter

with a kiss been posted here just now, for a man that I'm in search

of; and what I have to ask of you, is, that you will let me look at

the direction of that letter." He was very civil - took a lot of

letters from the box in the window - shook 'em out on the counter

with the faces downwards - and there among 'em was the identical

letter with the kiss. It was directed, Mr. Thomas Pigeon, Post

Office, B-, to be left till called for. Down I went to B- (a

hundred and twenty miles or so) that night. Early next morning I

went to the Post Office; saw the gentleman in charge of that

department; told him who I was; and that my object was to see, and

track, the party that should come for the letter for Mr. Thomas

Pigeon. He was very polite, and said, "You shall have every

assistance we can give you; you can wait inside the office; and

we'll take care to let you know when anybody comes for the letter."

Well, I waited there three days, and began to think that nobody

ever WOULD come. At last the clerk whispered to me, "Here!

Detective! Somebody's come for the letter!" "Keep him a minute,"

said I, and I ran round to the outside of the office. There I saw

a young chap with the appearance of an Ostler, holding a horse by

the bridle - stretching the bridle across the pavement, while he

waited at the Post Office Window for the letter. I began to pat

the horse, and that; and I said to the boy, "Why, this is Mr.

Jones's Mare!" "No. It an't." "No?" said I. "She's very like

Mr. Jones's Mare!" "She an't Mr. Jones's Mare, anyhow," says he.

"It's Mr. So and So's, of the Warwick Arms." And up he jumped, and

off he went - letter and all. I got a cab, followed on the box,

and was so quick after him that I came into the stable-yard of the

Warwick Arms, by one gate, just as he came in by another. I went

into the bar, where there was a young woman serving, and called for

a glass of brandy-and-water. He came in directly, and handed her

the letter. She casually looked at it, without saying anything,

and stuck it up behind the glass over the chimney-piece. What was

to be done next?

'I turned it over in my mind while I drank my brandy-and-water

(looking pretty sharp at the letter the while), but I couldn't see

my way out of it at all. I tried to get lodgings in the house, but

there had been a horse-fair, or something of that sort, and it was

full. I was obliged to put up somewhere else, but I came backwards

and forwards to the bar for a couple of days, and there was the

letter always behind the glass. At last I thought I'd write a

letter to Mr. Pigeon myself, and see what that would do. So I

wrote one, and posted it, but I purposely addressed it, Mr. John

Pigeon, instead of Mr. Thomas Pigeon, to see what THAT would do.

In the morning (a very wet morning it was) I watched the postman

down the street, and cut into the bar, just before he reached the

Warwick Arms. In he came presently with my letter. "Is there a

Mr. John Pigeon staying here?" "No! - stop a bit though," says the

barmaid; and she took down the letter behind the glass. "No," says

she, "it's Thomas, and HE is not staying here. Would you do me a

favour, and post this for me, as it is so wet?" The postman said

Yes; she folded it in another envelope, directed it, and gave it

him. He put it in his hat, and away he went.

'I had no difficulty in finding out the direction of that letter.

It was addressed Mr. Thomas Pigeon, Post Office, R-,

Northamptonshire, to be left till called for. Off I started

directly for R-; I said the same at the Post Office there, as I had

said at B-; and again I waited three days before anybody came. At

last another chap on horseback came. "Any letters for Mr. Thomas

Pigeon?" "Where do you come from?" "New Inn, near R-." He got

the letter, and away HE went at a canter.

'I made my inquiries about the New Inn, near R-, and hearing it was

a solitary sort of house, a little in the horse line, about a

couple of miles from the station, I thought I'd go and have a look

at it. I found it what it had been described, and sauntered in, to

look about me. The landlady was in the bar, and I was trying to

get into conversation with her; asked her how business was, and

spoke about the wet weather, and so on; when I saw, through an open

door, three men sitting by the fire in a sort of parlour, or

kitchen; and one of those men, according to the description I had

of him, was Tally-ho Thompson!

'I went and sat down among 'em, and tried to make things agreeable;

but they were very shy - wouldn't talk at all - looked at me, and

at one another, in a way quite the reverse of sociable. I reckoned

'em up, and finding that they were all three bigger men than me,

and considering that their looks were ugly - that it was a lonely

place - railroad station two miles off - and night coming on -

thought I couldn't do better than have a drop of brandy-and-water

to keep my courage up. So I called for my brandy-and-water; and as

I was sitting drinking it by the fire, Thompson got up and went

out.

'Now the difficulty of it was, that I wasn't sure it WAS Thompson,

because I had never set eyes on him before; and what I had wanted

was to be quite certain of him. However, there was nothing for it

now, but to follow, and put a bold face upon it. I found him

talking, outside in the yard, with the landlady. It turned out

afterwards that he was wanted by a Northampton officer for

something else, and that, knowing that officer to be pock-marked

(as I am myself), he mistook me for him. As I have observed, I

found him talking to the landlady, outside. I put my hand upon his

shoulder - this way - and said, "Tally-ho Thompson, it's no use. I

know you. I'm an officer from London, and I take you into custody

for felony!" "That be d-d!" says Tally-ho Thompson.

'We went back into the house, and the two friends began to cut up

rough, and their looks didn't please me at all, I assure you. "Let

the man go. What are you going to do with him?" "I'll tell you

what I'm going to do with him. I'm going to take him to London to-

night, as sure as I'm alive. I'm not alone here, whatever you may

think. You mind your own business, and keep yourselves to

yourselves. It'll be better for you, for I know you both very

well." I'D never seen or heard of 'em in all my life, but my

bouncing cowed 'em a bit, and they kept off, while Thompson was

making ready to go. I thought to myself, however, that they might

be coming after me on the dark road, to rescue Thompson; so I said

to the landlady, "What men have you got in the house, Missis?" "We

haven't got no men here," she says, sulkily. "You have got an

ostler, I suppose?" "Yes, we've got an ostler." "Let me see him."

Presently he came, and a shaggy-headed young fellow he was. "Now

attend to me, young man," says I; "I'm a Detective Officer from

London. This man's name is Thompson. I have taken him into

custody for felony. I am going to take him to the railroad

station. I call upon you in the Queen's name to assist me; and

mind you, my friend, you'll get yourself into more trouble than you

know of, if you don't!' You never saw a person open his eyes so

wide. "Now, Thompson, come along!" says I. But when I took out

the handcuffs, Thompson cries, "No! None of that! I won't stand

THEM! I'll go along with you quiet, but I won't bear none of

that!" "Tally-ho Thompson," I said, "I'm willing to behave as a

man to you, if you are willing to behave as a man to me. Give me

your word that you'll come peaceably along, and I don't want to

handcuff you." "I will," says Thompson, "but I'll have a glass of

brandy first." "I don't care if I've another," said I. "We'll

have two more, Missis," said the friends, "and confound you,

Constable, you'll give your man a drop, won't you?" I was

agreeable to that, so we had it all round, and then my man and I

took Tally-ho Thompson safe to the railroad, and I carried him to

London that night. He was afterwards acquitted, on account of a

defect in the evidence; and I understand he always praises me up to

the skies, and says I'm one of the best of men.'

This story coming to a termination amidst general applause,

Inspector Wield, after a little grave smoking, fixes his eye on his

host, and thus delivers himself:

'It wasn't a bad plant that of mine, on Fikey, the man accused of

forging the Sou'-Western Railway debentures - it was only t'other

day - because the reason why? I'll tell you.

'I had information that Fikey and his brother kept a factory over

yonder there,' - indicating any region on the Surrey side of the

river - 'where he bought second-hand carriages; so after I'd tried

in vain to get hold of him by other means, I wrote him a letter in

an assumed name, saying that I'd got a horse and shay to dispose

of, and would drive down next day that he might view the lot, and

make an offer - very reasonable it was, I said - a reg'lar bargain.

Straw and me then went off to a friend of mine that's in the livery

and job business, and hired a turn-out for the day, a precious

smart turn-out it was - quite a slap-up thing! Down we drove,

accordingly, with a friend (who's not in the Force himself); and

leaving my friend in the shay near a public-house, to take care of

the horse, we went to the factory, which was some little way off.

In the factory, there was a number of strong fellows at work, and

after reckoning 'em up, it was clear to me that it wouldn't do to

try it on there. They were too many for us. We must get our man

out of doors. "Mr. Fikey at home?" "No, he ain't." "Expected

home soon?" "Why, no, not soon." "Ah! Is his brother here?"

"I'M his brother." "Oh! well, this is an ill-conwenience, this is.

I wrote him a letter yesterday, saying I'd got a little turn-out to

dispose of, and I've took the trouble to bring the turn-out down a'

purpose, and now he ain't in the way." "No, he ain't in the way.

You couldn't make it convenient to call again, could you?" "Why,

no, I couldn't. I want to sell; that's the fact; and I can't put

it off. Could you find him anywheres?" At first he said No, he

couldn't, and then he wasn't sure about it, and then he'd go and

try. So at last he went up-stairs, where there was a sort of loft,

and presently down comes my man himself in his shirt-sleeves.

'"Well," he says, "this seems to be rayther a pressing matter of

yours." "Yes," I says, "it IS rayther a pressing matter, and

you'll find it a bargain - dirt cheap." "I ain't in partickler

want of a bargain just now," he says, "but where is it?" "Why," I

says, "the turn-out's just outside. Come and look at it." He

hasn't any suspicions, and away we go. And the first thing that

happens is, that the horse runs away with my friend (who knows no

more of driving than a child) when he takes a little trot along the

road to show his paces. You never saw such a game in your life!

'When the bolt is over, and the turn-out has come to a standstill

again, Fikey walks round and round it as grave as a judge - me too.

"There, sir!" I says. "There's a neat thing!" "It ain't a bad

style of thing," he says. "I believe you," says I. "And there's a

horse!" - for I saw him looking at it. "Rising eight!" I says,

rubbing his fore-legs. (Bless you, there ain't a man in the world

knows less of horses than I do, but I'd heard my friend at the

Livery Stables say he was eight year old, so I says, as knowing as

possible, "Rising eight.") "Rising eight, is he?" says he.

"Rising eight," says I. "Well," he says, "what do you want for

it?" "Why, the first and last figure for the whole concern is

five-and-twenty pound!" "That's very cheap!" he says, looking at

me. "Ain't it?" I says. "I told you it was a bargain! Now,

without any higgling and haggling about it, what I want is to sell,

and that's my price. Further, I'll make it easy to you, and take

half the money down, and you can do a bit of stiff (1) for the

balance."

" Well," he says again, "that's very cheap." "I believe you," says

I; "get in and try it, and you'll buy it. Come! take a trial!"

'Ecod, he gets in, and we get in, and we drive along the road, to

show him to one of the railway clerks that was hid in the public-

house window to identify him. But the clerk was bothered, and

didn't know whether it was him, or wasn't - because the reason why?

I'll tell you, - on account of his having shaved his whiskers.

"It's a clever little horse," he says, "and trots well; and the

shay runs light." "Not a doubt about it," I says. "And now, Mr.

Fikey, I may as well make it all right, without wasting any more of

your time. The fact is, I'm Inspector Wield, and you're my

prisoner." "You don't mean that?" he says. "I do, indeed." "Then

burn my body," says Fikey, "if this ain't TOO bad!"

'Perhaps you never saw a man so knocked over with surprise. "I

hope you'll let me have my coat?" he says. "By all means." "Well,

then, let's drive to the factory." "Why, not exactly that, I

think," said I; "I've been there, once before, to-day. Suppose we

send for it." He saw it was no go, so he sent for it, and put it

on, and we drove him up to London, comfortable.'

This reminiscence is in the height of its success, when a general

proposal is made to the fresh-complexioned, smooth-faced officer,

with the strange air of simplicity, to tell the 'Butcher's Story.'

The fresh-complexioned, smooth-faced officer, with the strange air

of simplicity, began with a rustic smile, and in a soft, wheedling

tone of voice, to relate the Butcher's Story, thus:

'It's just about six years ago, now, since information was given at

Scotland Yard of there being extensive robberies of lawns and silks

going on, at some wholesale houses in the City. Directions were

given for the business being looked into; and Straw, and Fendall,

and me, we were all in it.'

'When you received your instructions,' said we, 'you went away, and

held a sort of Cabinet Council together!'

The smooth-faced officer coaxingly replied, 'Ye-es. Just so. We

turned it over among ourselves a good deal. It appeared, when we

went into it, that the goods were sold by the receivers

extraordinarily cheap - much cheaper than they could have been if

they had been honestly come by. The receivers were in the trade,

and kept capital shops - establishments of the first respectability

- one of 'em at the West End, one down in Westminster. After a lot

of watching and inquiry, and this and that among ourselves, we

found that the job was managed, and the purchases of the stolen

goods made, at a little public-house near Smithfield, down by Saint

Bartholomew's; where the Warehouse Porters, who were the thieves,

took 'em for that purpose, don't you see? and made appointments to

meet the people that went between themselves and the receivers.

This public-house was principally used by journeymen butchers from

the country, out of place, and in want of situations; so, what did

we do, but - ha, ha, ha! - we agreed that I should be dressed up

like a butcher myself, and go and live there!'

Never, surely, was a faculty of observation better brought to bear

upon a purpose, than that which picked out this officer for the

part. Nothing in all creation could have suited him better. Even

while he spoke, he became a greasy, sleepy, shy, good-natured,

chuckle-headed, unsuspicious, and confiding young butcher. His

very hair seemed to have suet in it, as he made it smooth upon his

head, and his fresh complexion to be lubricated by large quantities

of animal food.

' - So I - ha, ha, ha!' (always with the confiding snigger of the

foolish young butcher) 'so I dressed myself in the regular way,

made up a little bundle of clothes, and went to the public-house,

and asked if I could have a lodging there? They says, "yes, you

can have a lodging here," and I got a bedroom, and settled myself

down in the tap. There was a number of people about the place, and

coming backwards and forwards to the house; and first one says, and

then another says, "Are you from the country, young man?" "Yes," I

says, "I am. I'm come out of Northamptonshire, and I'm quite

lonely here, for I don't know London at all, and it's such a mighty

big town." "It IS a big town," they says. "Oh, it's a VERY big

town!" I says. "Really and truly I never was in such a town. It

quite confuses of me!" and all that, you know.

'When some of the journeymen Butchers that used the house, found

that I wanted a place, they says, "Oh, we'll get you a place!" And

they actually took me to a sight of places, in Newgate Market,

Newport Market, Clare, Carnaby - I don't know where all. But the

wages was - ha, ha, ha! - was not sufficient, and I never could

suit myself, don't you see? Some of the queer frequenters of the

house were a little suspicious of me at first, and I was obliged to

be very cautious indeed how I communicated with Straw or Fendall.

Sometimes, when I went out, pretending to stop and look into the

shop windows, and just casting my eye round, I used to see some of

'em following me; but, being perhaps better accustomed than they

thought for, to that sort of thing, I used to lead 'em on as far as

I thought necessary or convenient - sometimes a long way - and then

turn sharp round, and meet 'em, and say, "Oh, dear, how glad I am

to come upon you so fortunate! This London's such a place, I'm

blowed if I ain't lost again!" And then we'd go back all together,

to the public-house, and - ha, ha, ha! and smoke our pipes, don't

you see?

'They were very attentive to me, I am sure. It was a common thing,

while I was living there, for some of 'em to take me out, and show

me London. They showed me the Prisons - showed me Newgate - and

when they showed me Newgate, I stops at the place where the Porters

pitch their loads, and says, "Oh dear, is this where they hang the

men? Oh Lor!" "That!" they says, "what a simple cove he is! THAT

ain't it!" And then, they pointed out which WAS it, and I says

"Lor!" and they says, "Now you'll know it agen, won't you?" And I

said I thought I should if I tried hard - and I assure you I kept a

sharp look out for the City Police when we were out in this way,

for if any of 'em had happened to know me, and had spoke to me, it

would have been all up in a minute. However, by good luck such a

thing never happened, and all went on quiet: though the

difficulties I had in communicating with my brother officers were

quite extraordinary.

'The stolen goods that were brought to the public-house by the

Warehouse Porters, were always disposed of in a back parlour. For

a long time, I never could get into this parlour, or see what was

done there. As I sat smoking my pipe, like an innocent young chap,

by the tap-room fire, I'd hear some of the parties to the robbery,

as they came in and out, say softly to the landlord, "Who's that?

What does HE do here?" "Bless your soul," says the landlord, "he's

only a" - ha, ha, ha! - "he's only a green young fellow from the

country, as is looking for a butcher's sitiwation. Don't mind

HIM!" So, in course of time, they were so convinced of my being

green, and got to be so accustomed to me, that I was as free of the

parlour as any of 'em, and I have seen as much as Seventy Pounds'

Worth of fine lawn sold there, in one night, that was stolen from a

warehouse in Friday Street. After the sale the buyers always stood

treat - hot supper, or dinner, or what not - and they'd say on

those occasions, "Come on, Butcher! Put your best leg foremost,

young 'un, and walk into it!" Which I used to do - and hear, at

table, all manner of particulars that it was very important for us

Detectives to know.

'This went on for ten weeks. I lived in the public-house all the

time, and never was out of the Butcher's dress - except in bed. At

last, when I had followed seven of the thieves, and set 'em to

rights - that's an expression of ours, don't you see, by which I

mean to say that I traced 'em, and found out where the robberies

were done, and all about 'em - Straw, and Fendall, and I, gave one

another the office, and at a time agreed upon, a descent was made

upon the public-house, and the apprehensions effected. One of the

first things the officers did, was to collar me - for the parties

to the robbery weren't to suppose yet, that I was anything but a

Butcher - on which the landlord cries out, "Don't take HIM," he

says, "whatever you do! He's only a poor young chap from the

country, and butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!" However, they -

ha, ha, ha! - they took me, and pretended to search my bedroom,

where nothing was found but an old fiddle belonging to the

landlord, that had got there somehow or another. But, it entirely

changed the landlord's opinion, for when it was produced, he says,

"My fiddle! The Butcher's a purloiner! I give him into custody

for the robbery of a musical instrument!"

'The man that had stolen the goods in Friday Street was not taken

yet. He had told me, in confidence, that he had his suspicions

there was something wrong (on account of the City Police having

captured one of the party), and that he was going to make himself

scarce. I asked him, "Where do you mean to go, Mr. Shepherdson?"

"Why, Butcher," says he, "the Setting Moon, in the Commercial Road,

is a snug house, and I shall bang out there for a time. I shall

call myself Simpson, which appears to me to be a modest sort of a

name. Perhaps you'll give us a look in, Butcher?" "Well," says I,

"I think I WILL give you a call" - which I fully intended, don't

you see, because, of course, he was to be taken! I went over to

the Setting Moon next day, with a brother officer, and asked at the

bar for Simpson. They pointed out his room, up-stairs. As we were

going up, he looks down over the banister, and calls out, "Halloa,

Butcher! is that you?" "Yes, it's me. How do you find yourself?"

"Bobbish," he says; "but who's that with you?" "It's only a young

man, that's a friend of mine," I says. "Come along, then," says

he; "any friend of the Butcher's is as welcome as the Butcher!"

So, I made my friend acquainted with him, and we took him into

custody.

'You have no idea, sir, what a sight it was, in Court, when they

first knew that I wasn't a Butcher, after all! I wasn't produced

at the first examination, when there was a remand; but I was at the

second. And when I stepped into the box, in full police uniform,

and the whole party saw how they had been done, actually a groan of

horror and dismay proceeded from 'em in the dock!

'At the Old Bailey, when their trials came on, Mr. Clarkson was

engaged for the defence, and he COULDN'T make out how it was, about

the Butcher. He thought, all along, it was a real Butcher. When

the counsel for the prosecution said, "I will now call before you,

gentlemen, the Police-officer," meaning myself, Mr. Clarkson says,

"Why Police-officer? Why more Police-officers? I don't want

Police. We have had a great deal too much of the Police. I want

the Butcher!" However, sir, he had the Butcher and the Police-

officer, both in one. Out of seven prisoners committed for trial,

five were found guilty, and some of 'em were transported. The

respectable firm at the West End got a term of imprisonment; and

that's the Butcher's Story!'

The story done, the chuckle-headed Butcher again resolved himself

into the smooth-faced Detective. But, he was so extremely tickled

by their having taken him about, when he was that Dragon in

disguise, to show him London, that he could not help reverting to

that point in his narrative; and gently repeating with the Butcher

snigger, '"Oh, dear," I says, "is that where they hang the men?

Oh, Lor!" "THAT!" says they. "What a simple cove he is!"'

It being now late, and the party very modest in their fear of being

too diffuse, there were some tokens of separation; when Sergeant

Dornton, the soldierly-looking man, said, looking round him with a

smile:

'Before we break up, sir, perhaps you might have some amusement in

hearing of the Adventures of a Carpet Bag. They are very short;

and, I think, curious.'

We welcomed the Carpet Bag, as cordially as Mr. Shepherdson

welcomed the false Butcher at the Setting Moon. Sergeant Dornton

proceeded.

'In 1847, I was despatched to Chatham, in search of one Mesheck, a

Jew. He had been carrying on, pretty heavily, in the bill-stealing

way, getting acceptances from young men of good connexions (in the

army chiefly), on pretence of discount, and bolting with the same.

'Mesheck was off, before I got to Chatham. All I could learn about

him was, that he had gone, probably to London, and had with him - a

Carpet Bag.

'I came back to town, by the last train from Blackwall, and made

inquiries concerning a Jew passenger with - a Carpet Bag.

'The office was shut up, it being the last train. There were only

two or three porters left. Looking after a Jew with a Carpet Bag,

on the Blackwall Railway, which was then the high road to a great

Military Depot, was worse than looking after a needle in a hayrick.

But it happened that one of these porters had carried, for a

certain Jew, to a certain public-house, a certain - Carpet Bag.

'I went to the public-house, but the Jew had only left his luggage

there for a few hours, and had called for it in a cab, and taken it

away. I put such questions there, and to the porter, as I thought

prudent, and got at this description of - the Carpet Bag.

'It was a bag which had, on one side of it, worked in worsted, a

green parrot on a stand. A green parrot on a stand was the means

by which to identify that - Carpet Bag.

'I traced Mesheck, by means of this green parrot on a stand, to

Cheltenham, to Birmingham, to Liverpool, to the Atlantic Ocean. At

Liverpool he was too many for me. He had gone to the United

States, and I gave up all thoughts of Mesheck, and likewise of his

- Carpet Bag.

'Many months afterwards - near a year afterwards - there was a bank

in Ireland robbed of seven thousand pounds, by a person of the name

of Doctor Dundey, who escaped to America; from which country some

of the stolen notes came home. He was supposed to have bought a

farm in New Jersey. Under proper management, that estate could be

seized and sold, for the benefit of the parties he had defrauded.

I was sent off to America for this purpose.

'I landed at Boston. I went on to New York. I found that he had

lately changed New York paper-money for New Jersey paper money, and

had banked cash in New Brunswick. To take this Doctor Dundey, it

was necessary to entrap him into the State of New York, which

required a deal of artifice and trouble. At one time, he couldn't

be drawn into an appointment. At another time, he appointed to

come to meet me, and a New York officer, on a pretext I made; and

then his children had the measles. At last he came, per steamboat,

and I took him, and lodged him in a New York prison called the

Tombs; which I dare say you know, sir?'

Editorial acknowledgment to that effect.

'I went to the Tombs, on the morning after his capture, to attend

the examination before the magistrate. I was passing through the

magistrate's private room, when, happening to look round me to take

notice of the place, as we generally have a habit of doing, I

clapped my eyes, in one corner, on a - Carpet Bag.

'What did I see upon that Carpet Bag, if you'll believe me, but a

green parrot on a stand, as large as life!

'"That Carpet Bag, with the representation of a green parrot on a

stand," said I, "belongs to an English Jew, named Aaron Mesheck,

and to no other man, alive or dead!"

'I give you my word the New York Police Officers were doubled up

with surprise.

'"How did you ever come to know that?" said they.

'"I think I ought to know that green parrot by this time," said I;

"for I have had as pretty a dance after that bird, at home, as ever

I had, in all my life!"'

'And was it Mesheck's?' we submissively inquired.

'Was it, sir? Of course it was! He was in custody for another

offence, in that very identical Tombs, at that very identical time.

And, more than that! Some memoranda, relating to the fraud for

which I had vainly endeavoured to take him, were found to be, at

that moment, lying in that very same individual - Carpet Bag!'

Such are the curious coincidences and such is the peculiar ability,

always sharpening and being improved by practice, and always

adapting itself to every variety of circumstances, and opposing

itself to every new device that perverted ingenuity can invent, for

which this important social branch of the public service is

remarkable! For ever on the watch, with their wits stretched to

the utmost, these officers have, from day to day and year to year,

to set themselves against every novelty of trickery and dexterity

that the combined imaginations of all the lawless rascals in

England can devise, and to keep pace with every such invention that

comes out. In the Courts of Justice, the materials of thousands of

such stories as we have narrated - often elevated into the

marvellous and romantic, by the circumstances of the case - are

dryly compressed into the set phrase, 'in consequence of

information I received, I did so and so.' Suspicion was to be

directed, by careful inference and deduction, upon the right

person; the right person was to be taken, wherever he had gone, or

whatever he was doing to avoid detection: he is taken; there he is

at the bar; that is enough. From information I, the officer,

received, I did it; and, according to the custom in these cases, I

say no more.

These games of chess, played with live pieces, are played before

small audiences, and are chronicled nowhere. The interest of the

game supports the player. Its results are enough for justice. To

compare great things with small, suppose LEVERRIER or ADAMS

informing the public that from information he had received he had

discovered a new planet; or COLUMBUS informing the public of his

day that from information he had received he had discovered a new

continent; so the Detectives inform it that they have discovered a

new fraud or an old offender, and the process is unknown.

Thus, at midnight, closed the proceedings of our curious and

interesting party. But one other circumstance finally wound up the

evening, after our Detective guests had left us. One of the

sharpest among them, and the officer best acquainted with the Swell

Mob, had his pocket picked, going home!

THREE 'DETECTIVE' ANECDOTES

I. - THE PAIR OF GLOVES

'IT'S a singler story, sir,' said Inspector Wield, of the Detective

Police, who, in company with Sergeants Dornton and Mith, paid us

another twilight visit, one July evening; 'and I've been thinking

you might like to know it.

'It's concerning the murder of the young woman, Eliza Grimwood,

some years ago, over in the Waterloo Road. She was commonly called

The Countess, because of her handsome appearance and her proud way

of carrying of herself; and when I saw the poor Countess (I had

known her well to speak to), lying dead, with her throat cut, on

the floor of her bedroom, you'll believe me that a variety of

reflections calculated to make a man rather low in his spirits,

came into my head.

'That's neither here nor there. I went to the house the morning

after the murder, and examined the body, and made a general

observation of the bedroom where it was. Turning down the pillow

of the bed with my hand, I found, underneath it, a pair of gloves.

A pair of gentleman's dress gloves, very dirty; and inside the

lining, the letters TR, and a cross.

'Well, sir, I took them gloves away, and I showed 'em to the

magistrate, over at Union Hall, before whom the case was. He says,

"Wield," he says, "there's no doubt this is a discovery that may

lead to something very important; and what you have got to do,

Wield, is, to find out the owner of these gloves."

'I was of the same opinion, of course, and I went at it

immediately. I looked at the gloves pretty narrowly, and it was my

opinion that they had been cleaned. There was a smell of sulphur

and rosin about 'em, you know, which cleaned gloves usually have,

more or less. I took 'em over to a friend of mine at Kennington,

who was in that line, and I put it to him. "What do you say now?

Have these gloves been cleaned?" "These gloves have been cleaned,"

says he. "Have you any idea who cleaned them?" says I. "Not at

all," says he; "I've a very distinct idea who DIDN'T clean 'em, and

that's myself. But I'll tell you what, Wield, there ain't above

eight or nine reg'lar glove-cleaners in London," - there were not,

at that time, it seems - "and I think I can give you their

addresses, and you may find out, by that means, who did clean 'em."

Accordingly, he gave me the directions, and I went here, and I went

there, and I looked up this man, and I looked up that man; but,

though they all agreed that the gloves had been cleaned, I couldn't

find the man, woman, or child, that had cleaned that aforesaid pair

of gloves.

'What with this person not being at home, and that person being

expected home in the afternoon, and so forth, the inquiry took me

three days. On the evening of the third day, coming over Waterloo

Bridge from the Surrey side of the river, quite beat, and very much

vexed and disappointed, I thought I'd have a shilling's worth of

entertainment at the Lyceum Theatre to freshen myself up. So I

went into the Pit, at half-price, and I sat myself down next to a

very quiet, modest sort of young man. Seeing I was a stranger

(which I thought it just as well to appear to be) he told me the

names of the actors on the stage, and we got into conversation.

When the play was over, we came out together, and I said, "We've

been very companionable and agreeable, and perhaps you wouldn't

object to a drain?" "Well, you're very good," says he; "I

SHOULDN'T object to a drain." Accordingly, we went to a public-

house, near the Theatre, sat ourselves down in a quiet room up-

stairs on the first floor, and called for a pint of half-and-half,

apiece, and a pipe.

'Well, sir, we put our pipes aboard, and we drank our half-and-

half, and sat a-talking, very sociably, when the young man says,

"You must excuse me stopping very long," he says, "because I'm

forced to go home in good time. I must be at work all night." "At

work all night?" says I. "You ain't a baker?" "No," he says,

laughing, "I ain't a baker." "I thought not," says I, "you haven't

the looks of a baker." "No," says he, "I'm a glove-cleaner."

'I never was more astonished in my life, than when I heard them

words come out of his lips. "You're a glove-cleaner, are you?"

says I. "Yes," he says, "I am." "Then, perhaps," says I, taking

the gloves out of my pocket, "you can tell me who cleaned this pair

of gloves? It's a rum story," I says. "I was dining over at

Lambeth, the other day, at a free-and-easy - quite promiscuous -

with a public company - when some gentleman, he left these gloves

behind him! Another gentleman and me, you see, we laid a wager of

a sovereign, that I wouldn't find out who they belonged to. I've

spent as much as seven shillings already, in trying to discover;

but, if you could help me, I'd stand another seven and welcome.

You see there's TR and a cross, inside." "I see," he says. "Bless

you, I know these gloves very well! I've seen dozens of pairs

belonging to the same party." "No?" says I. "Yes," says he.

"Then you know who cleaned 'em?" says I. "Rather so," says he.

"My father cleaned 'em."

'"Where does your father live?" says I. "Just round the corner,"

says the young man, "near Exeter Street, here. He'll tell you who

they belong to, directly." "Would you come round with me now?"

says I. "Certainly," says he, "but you needn't tell my father that

you found me at the play, you know, because he mightn't like it."

"All right!" We went round to the place, and there we found an old

man in a white apron, with two or three daughters, all rubbing and

cleaning away at lots of gloves, in a front parlour. "Oh, Father!"

says the young man, "here's a person been and made a bet about the

ownership of a pair of gloves, and I've told him you can settle

it." "Good evening, sir," says I to the old gentleman. "Here's

the gloves your son speaks of. Letters TR, you see, and a cross."

"Oh yes," he says, "I know these gloves very well; I've cleaned

dozens of pairs of 'em. They belong to Mr. Trinkle, the great

upholsterer in Cheapside." "Did you get 'em from Mr. Trinkle,

direct," says I, "if you'll excuse my asking the question?" "No,"

says he; "Mr. Trinkle always sends 'em to Mr. Phibbs's, the

haberdasher's, opposite his shop, and the haberdasher sends 'em to

me." "Perhaps YOU wouldn't object to a drain?" says I. "Not in

the least!" says he. So I took the old gentleman out, and had a

little more talk with him and his son, over a glass, and we parted

excellent friends.

'This was late on a Saturday night. First thing on the Monday

morning, I went to the haberdasher's shop, opposite Mr. Trinkle's,

the great upholsterer's in Cheapside. "Mr. Phibbs in the way?"

"My name is Phibbs." "Oh! I believe you sent this pair of gloves

to be cleaned?" "Yes, I did, for young Mr. Trinkle over the way.

There he is in the shop!" "Oh! that's him in the shop, is it? Him

in the green coat?" "The same individual." "Well, Mr. Phibbs,

this is an unpleasant affair; but the fact is, I am Inspector Wield

of the Detective Police, and I found these gloves under the pillow

of the young woman that was murdered the other day, over in the

Waterloo Road!" "Good Heaven!" says he. "He's a most respectable

young man, and if his father was to hear of it, it would be the

ruin of him!" "I'm very sorry for it," says I, "but I must take

him into custody." "Good Heaven!" says Mr. Phibbs, again; "can

nothing be done?" "Nothing," says I. "Will you allow me to call

him over here," says he, "that his father may not see it done?" "I

don't object to that," says I; "but unfortunately, Mr. Phibbs, I

can't allow of any communication between you. If any was

attempted, I should have to interfere directly. Perhaps you'll

beckon him over here?' Mr. Phibbs went to the door and beckoned,

and the young fellow came across the street directly; a smart,

brisk young fellow.

'"Good morning, sir," says I. "Good morning, sir," says he.

"Would you allow me to inquire, sir," says I, "if you ever had any

acquaintance with a party of the name of Grimwood?" "Grimwood!

Grimwood!" says he. "No!" "You know the Waterloo Road?" "Oh! of

course I know the Waterloo Road!" "Happen to have heard of a young

woman being murdered there?" "Yes, I read it in the paper, and

very sorry I was to read it." "Here's a pair of gloves belonging

to you, that I found under her pillow the morning afterwards!"

'He was in a dreadful state, sir; a dreadful state I "Mr. Wield,"

he says, "upon my solemn oath I never was there. I never so much

as saw her, to my knowledge, in my life!" "I am very sorry," says

I. "To tell you the truth; I don't think you ARE the murderer, but

I must take you to Union Hall in a cab. However, I think it's a

case of that sort, that, at present, at all events, the magistrate

will hear it in private."

'A private examination took place, and then it came out that this

young man was acquainted with a cousin of the unfortunate Eliza

Grimwood, and that, calling to see this cousin a day or two before

the murder, he left these gloves upon the table. Who should come

in, shortly afterwards, but Eliza Grimwood! "Whose gloves are

these?" she says, taking 'em up. "Those are Mr. Trinkle's gloves,"

says her cousin. "Oh!" says she, "they are very dirty, and of no

use to him, I am sure. I shall take 'em away for my girl to clean

the stoves with." And she put 'em in her pocket. The girl had

used 'em to clean the stoves, and, I have no doubt, had left 'em

lying on the bedroom mantelpiece, or on the drawers, or somewhere;

and her mistress, looking round to see that the room was tidy, had

caught 'em up and put 'em under the pillow where I found 'em.

That's the story, sir.'

II. - THE ARTFUL TOUCH

'One of the most BEAUTIFUL things that ever was done, perhaps,'

said Inspector Wield, emphasising the adjective, as preparing us to

expect dexterity or ingenuity rather than strong interest, 'was a

move of Sergeant Witchem's. It was a lovely idea!

'Witchem and me were down at Epsom one Derby Day, waiting at the

station for the Swell Mob. As I mentioned, when we were talking

about these things before, we are ready at the station when there's

races, or an Agricultural Show, or a Chancellor sworn in for an

university, or Jenny Lind, or anything of that sort; and as the

Swell Mob come down, we send 'em back again by the next train. But

some of the Swell Mob, on the occasion of this Derby that I refer

to, so far kidded us as to hire a horse and shay; start away from

London by Whitechapel, and miles round; come into Epsom from the

opposite direction; and go to work, right and left, on the course,

while we were waiting for 'em at the Rail. That, however, ain't

the point of what I'm going to tell you.

'While Witchem and me were waiting at the station, there comes up

one Mr. Tatt; a gentleman formerly in the public line, quite an

amateur Detective in his way, and very much respected. "Halloa,

Charley Wield," he says. "What are you doing here? On the look

out for some of your old friends?" "Yes, the old move, Mr. Tatt."

"Come along," he says, "you and Witchem, and have a glass of

sherry." "We can't stir from the place," says I, "till the next

train comes in; but after that, we will with pleasure." Mr. Tatt

waits, and the train comes in, and then Witchem and me go off with

him to the Hotel. Mr. Tatt he's got up quite regardless of

expense, for the occasion; and in his shirt-front there's a

beautiful diamond prop, cost him fifteen or twenty pound - a very

handsome pin indeed. We drink our sherry at the bar, and have had

our three or four glasses, when Witchem cries suddenly, "Look out,

Mr. Wield! stand fast!" and a dash is made into the place by the

Swell Mob - four of 'em - that have come down as I tell you, and in

a moment Mr. Tatt's prop is gone! Witchem, he cuts 'em off at the

door, I lay about me as hard as I can, Mr. Tatt shows fight like a

good 'un, and there we are, all down together, heads and heels,

knocking about on the floor of the bar - perhaps you never see such

a scene of confusion! However, we stick to our men (Mr. Tatt being

as good as any officer), and we take 'em all, and carry 'em off to

the station.' The station's full of people, who have been took on

the course; and it's a precious piece of work to get 'em secured.

However, we do it at last, and we search 'em; but nothing's found

upon 'em, and they're locked up; and a pretty state of heat we are

in by that time, I assure you!

'I was very blank over it, myself, to think that the prop had been

passed away; and I said to Witchem, when we had set 'em to rights,

and were cooling ourselves along with Mr. Tatt, "we don't take much

by THIS move, anyway, for nothing's found upon 'em, and it's only

the braggadocia, (2) after all." "What do you mean, Mr. Wield?"

says Witchem. "Here's the diamond pin!" and in the palm of his

hand there it was, safe and sound! "Why, in the name of wonder,"

says me and Mr. Tatt, in astonishment, "how did you come by that?"

"I'll tell you how I come by it," says he. "I saw which of 'em

took it; and when we were all down on the floor together, knocking

about, I just gave him a little touch on the back of his hand, as I

knew his pal would; and he thought it WAS his pal; and gave it me!"

It was beautiful, beau-ti-ful!

'Even that was hardly the best of the case, for that chap was tried

at the Quarter Sessions at Guildford. You know what Quarter

Sessions are, sir. Well, if you'll believe me, while them slow

justices were looking over the Acts of Parliament, to see what they

could do to him, I'm blowed if he didn't cut out of the dock before

their faces! He cut out of the dock, sir, then and there; swam

across a river; and got up into a tree to dry himself. In the tree

he was took - an old woman having seen him climb up - and Witchem's

artful touch transported him!'

III. - THE SOFA

"What young men will do, sometimes, to ruin themselves and break

their friends' hearts,' said Sergeant Dornton, 'it's surprising! I

had a case at Saint Blank's Hospital which was of this sort. A bad

case, indeed, with a bad end!

'The Secretary, and the House-Surgeon, and the Treasurer, of Saint

Blank's Hospital, came to Scotland Yard to give information of

numerous robberies having been committed on the students. The

students could leave nothing in the pockets of their great-coats,

while the great-coats were hanging at the hospital, but it was

almost certain to be stolen. Property of various descriptions was

constantly being lost; and the gentlemen were naturally uneasy

about it, and anxious, for the credit of the institution, that the

thief or thieves should be discovered. The case was entrusted to

me, and I went to the hospital.

'"Now, gentlemen," said I, after we had talked it over; "I

understand this property is usually lost from one room."

'Yes, they said. It was.

'"I should wish, if you please," said I, "to see the room."

'It was a good-sized bare room down-stairs, with a few tables and

forms in it, and a row of pegs, all round, for hats and coats.

'"Next, gentlemen," said I, "do you suspect anybody?"

'Yes, they said. They did suspect somebody. They were sorry to

say, they suspected one of the porters.

'"I should like," said I, "to have that man pointed out to me, and

to have a little time to look after him."

'He was pointed out, and I looked after him, and then I went back

to the hospital, and said, "Now, gentlemen, it's not the porter.

He's, unfortunately for himself, a little too fond of drink, but

he's nothing worse. My suspicion is, that these robberies are

committed by one of the students; and if you'll put me a sofa into

that room where the pegs are - as there's no closet - I think I

shall be able to detect the thief. I wish the sofa, if you please,

to be covered with chintz, or something of that sort, so that I may

lie on my chest, underneath it, without being seen."

'The sofa was provided, and next day at eleven o'clock, before any

of the students came, I went there, with those gentlemen, to get

underneath it. It turned out to be one of those old-fashioned

sofas with a great cross-beam at the bottom, that would have broken

my back in no time if I could ever have got below it. We had quite

a job to break all this away in the time; however, I fell to work,

and they fell to work, and we broke it out, and made a clear place

for me. I got under the sofa, lay down on my chest, took out my

knife, and made a convenient hole in the chintz to look through.

It was then settled between me and the gentlemen that when the

students were all up in the wards, one of the gentlemen should come

in, and hang up a great-coat on one of the pegs. And that that

great-coat should have, in one of the pockets, a pocket-book

containing marked money.

'After I had been there some time, the students began to drop into

the room, by ones, and twos, and threes, and to talk about all

sorts of things, little thinking there was anybody under the sofa -

and then to go up-stairs. At last there came in one who remained

until he was alone in the room by himself. A tallish, good-looking

young man of one or two and twenty, with a light whisker. He went

to a particular hat-peg, took off a good hat that was hanging

there, tried it on, hung his own hat in its place, and hung that

hat on another peg, nearly opposite to me. I then felt quite

certain that he was the thief, and would come back by-and-by.

'When they were all up-stairs, the gentleman came in with the

great-coat. I showed him where to hang it, so that I might have a

good view of it; and he went away; and I lay under the sofa on my

chest, for a couple of hours or so, waiting.

'At last, the same young man came down. He walked across the room,

whistling - stopped and listened - took another walk and whistled -

stopped again, and listened - then began to go regularly round the

pegs, feeling in the pockets of all the coats. When he came to the

great-coat, and felt the pocket-book, he was so eager and so

hurried that he broke the strap in tearing it open. As he began to

put the money in his pocket, I crawled out from under the sofa, and

his eyes met mine.

'My face, as you may perceive, is brown now, but it was pale at

that time, my health not being good; and looked as long as a

horse's. Besides which, there was a great draught of air from the

door, underneath the sofa, and I had tied a handkerchief round my

head; so what I looked like, altogether, I don't know. He turned

blue - literally blue - when he saw me crawling out, and I couldn't

feel surprised at it.

'"I am an officer of the Detective Police," said I, "and have been

lying here, since you first came in this morning. I regret, for

the sake of yourself and your friends, that you should have done

what you have; but this case is complete. You have the pocket-book

in your hand and the money upon you; and I must take you into

custody!"

'It was impossible to make out any case in his behalf, and on his

trial he pleaded guilty. How or when he got the means I don't

know; but while he was awaiting his sentence, he poisoned himself

in Newgate.'

We inquired of this officer, on the conclusion of the foregoing

anecdote, whether the time appeared long, or short, when he lay in

that constrained position under the sofa?

'Why, you see, sir,' he replied, 'if he hadn't come in, the first

time, and I had not been quite sure he was the thief, and would

return, the time would have seemed long. But, as it was, I being

dead certain of my man, the time seemed pretty short.'

ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD

HOW goes the night? Saint Giles's clock is striking nine. The

weather is dull and wet, and the long lines of street lamps are

blurred, as if we saw them through tears. A damp wind blows and

rakes the pieman's fire out, when he opens the door of his little

furnace, carrying away an eddy of sparks.

Saint Giles's clock strikes nine. We are punctual. Where is

Inspector Field? Assistant Commissioner of Police is already here,

enwrapped in oil-skin cloak, and standing in the shadow of Saint

Giles's steeple. Detective Sergeant, weary of speaking French all

day to foreigners unpacking at the Great Exhibition, is already

here. Where is Inspector Field?

Inspector Field is, to-night, the guardian genius of the British

Museum. He is bringing his shrewd eye to bear on every corner of

its solitary galleries, before he reports 'all right.' Suspicious

of the Elgin marbles, and not to be done by cat-faced Egyptian

giants with their hands upon their knees, Inspector Field,

sagacious, vigilant, lamp in hand, throwing monstrous shadows on

the walls and ceilings, passes through the spacious rooms. If a

mummy trembled in an atom of its dusty covering, Inspector Field

would say, 'Come out of that, Tom Green. I know you!' If the

smallest 'Gonoph' about town were crouching at the bottom of a

classic bath, Inspector Field would nose him with a finer scent

than the ogre's, when adventurous Jack lay trembling in his kitchen

copper. But all is quiet, and Inspector Field goes warily on,

making little outward show of attending to anything in particular,

just recognising the Ichthyosaurus as a familiar acquaintance, and

wondering, perhaps, how the detectives did it in the days before

the Flood.

Will Inspector Field be long about this work? He may be half-an-

hour longer. He sends his compliments by Police Constable, and

proposes that we meet at St. Giles's Station House, across the

road. Good. It were as well to stand by the fire, there, as in

the shadow of Saint Giles's steeple.

Anything doing here to-night? Not much. We are very quiet. A

lost boy, extremely calm and small, sitting by the fire, whom we

now confide to a constable to take home, for the child says that if

you show him Newgate Street, he can show you where he lives - a

raving drunken woman in the cells, who has screeched her voice

away, and has hardly power enough left to declare, even with the

passionate help of her feet and arms, that she is the daughter of a

British officer, and, strike her blind and dead, but she'll write a

letter to the Queen! but who is soothed with a drink of water - in

another cell, a quiet woman with a child at her breast, for begging

- in another, her husband in a smock-frock, with a basket of

watercresses - in another, a pickpocket - in another, a meek

tremulous old pauper man who has been out for a holiday 'and has

took but a little drop, but it has overcome him after so many

months in the house' - and that's all as yet. Presently, a

sensation at the Station House door. Mr. Field, gentlemen!

Inspector Field comes in, wiping his forehead, for he is of a burly

figure, and has come fast from the ores and metals of the deep

mines of the earth, and from the Parrot Gods of the South Sea

Islands, and from the birds and beetles of the tropics, and from

the Arts of Greece and Rome, and from the Sculptures of Nineveh,

and from the traces of an elder world, when these were not. Is

Rogers ready? Rogers is ready, strapped and great-coated, with a

flaming eye in the middle of his waist, like a deformed Cyclops.

Lead on, Rogers, to Rats' Castle!

How many people may there be in London, who, if we had brought them

deviously and blindfold, to this street, fifty paces from the

Station House, and within call of Saint Giles's church, would know

it for a not remote part of the city in which their lives are

passed? How many, who amidst this compound of sickening smells,

these heaps of filth, these tumbling houses, with all their vile

contents, animate, and inanimate, slimily overflowing into the

black road, would believe that they breathe THIS air? How much Red

Tape may there be, that could look round on the faces which now hem

us in - for our appearance here has caused a rush from all points

to a common centre - the lowering foreheads, the sallow cheeks, the

brutal eyes, the matted hair, the infected, vermin-haunted heaps of

rags - and say, 'I have thought of this. I have not dismissed the

thing. I have neither blustered it away, nor frozen it away, nor

tied it up and put it away, nor smoothly said pooh, pooh! to it

when it has been shown to me?'

This is not what Rogers wants to know, however. What Rogers wants

to know, is, whether you WILL clear the way here, some of you, or

whether you won't; because if you don't do it right on end, he'll

lock you up! 'What! YOU are there, are you, Bob Miles? You

haven't had enough of it yet, haven't you? You want three months

more, do you? Come away from that gentleman! What are you

creeping round there for?'

'What am I a doing, thinn, Mr. Rogers?' says Bob Miles, appearing,

villainous, at the end of a lane of light, made by the lantern.

'I'll let you know pretty quick, if you don't hook it. WILL you

hook it?'

A sycophantic murmur rises from the crowd. 'Hook it, Bob, when Mr.

Rogers and Mr. Field tells you! Why don't you hook it, when you

are told to?'

The most importunate of the voices strikes familiarly on Mr.

Rogers's ear. He suddenly turns his lantern on the owner.

'What! YOU are there, are you, Mister Click? You hook it too -

come!'

'What for?' says Mr. Click, discomfited.

'You hook it, will you!' says Mr. Rogers with stern emphasis.

Both Click and Miles DO 'hook it,' without another word, or, in

plainer English, sneak away.

'Close up there, my men!' says Inspector Field to two constables on

duty who have followed. 'Keep together, gentlemen; we are going

down here. Heads!'

Saint Giles's church strikes half-past ten. We stoop low, and

creep down a precipitous flight of steps into a dark close cellar.

There is a fire. There is a long deal table. There are benches.

The cellar is full of company, chiefly very young men in various

conditions of dirt and raggedness. Some are eating supper. There

are no girls or women present. Welcome to Rats' Castle, gentlemen,

and to this company of noted thieves!

'Well, my lads! How are you, my lads? What have you been doing

to-day? Here's some company come to see you, my lads! - THERE'S a

plate of beefsteak, sir, for the supper of a fine young man! And

there's a mouth for a steak, sir! Why, I should be too proud of

such a mouth as that, if I had it myself! Stand up and show it,

sir! Take off your cap. There's a fine young man for a nice

little party, sir! An't he?'

Inspector Field is the bustling speaker. Inspector Field's eye is

the roving eye that searches every corner of the cellar as he

talks. Inspector Field's hand is the well-known hand that has

collared half the people here, and motioned their brothers,

sisters, fathers, mothers, male and female friends, inexorably to

New South Wales. Yet Inspector Field stands in this den, the

Sultan of the place. Every thief here cowers before him, like a

schoolboy before his schoolmaster. All watch him, all answer when

addressed, all laugh at his jokes, all seek to propitiate him.

This cellar company alone - to say nothing of the crowd surrounding

the entrance from the street above, and making the steps shine with

eyes - is strong enough to murder us all, and willing enough to do

it; but, let Inspector Field have a mind to pick out one thief

here, and take him; let him produce that ghostly truncheon from his

pocket, and say, with his business-air, 'My lad, I want you!' and

all Rats' Castle shall be stricken with paralysis, and not a finger

move against him, as he fits the handcuffs on!

Where's the Earl of Warwick? - Here he is, Mr. Field! Here's the

Earl of Warwick, Mr. Field! - O there you are, my Lord. Come

for'ard. There's a chest, sir, not to have a clean shirt on. An't

it? Take your hat off, my Lord. Why, I should be ashamed if I was

you - and an Earl, too - to show myself to a gentleman with my hat

on! - The Earl of Warwick laughs and uncovers. All the company

laugh. One pickpocket, especially, laughs with great enthusiasm.

O what a jolly game it is, when Mr. Field comes down - and don't

want nobody!

So, YOU are here, too, are you, you tall, grey, soldierly-looking,

grave man, standing by the fire? - Yes, sir. Good evening, Mr.

Field! - Let us see. You lived servant to a nobleman once? - Yes,

Mr. Field. - And what is it you do now; I forget? - Well, Mr.

Field, I job about as well as I can. I left my employment on

account of delicate health. The family is still kind to me. Mr.

Wix of Piccadilly is also very kind to me when I am hard up.

Likewise Mr. Nix of Oxford Street. I get a trifle from them

occasionally, and rub on as well as I can, Mr. Field. Mr. Field's

eye rolls enjoyingly, for this man is a notorious begging-letter

writer. - Good night, my lads! - Good night, Mr. Field, and

thank'ee, sir!

Clear the street here, half a thousand of you! Cut it, Mrs.

Stalker - none of that - we don't want you! Rogers of the flaming

eye, lead on to the tramps' lodging-house!

A dream of baleful faces attends to the door. Now, stand back all

of you! In the rear Detective Sergeant plants himself, composedly

whistling, with his strong right arm across the narrow passage.

Mrs. Stalker, I am something'd that need not be written here, if

you won't get yourself into trouble, in about half a minute, if I

see that face of yours again!

Saint Giles's church clock, striking eleven, hums through our hand

from the dilapidated door of a dark outhouse as we open it, and are

stricken back by the pestilent breath that issues from within.

Rogers to the front with the light, and let us look!

Ten, twenty, thirty - who can count them! Men, women, children,

for the most part naked, heaped upon the floor like maggots in a

cheese! Ho! In that dark corner yonder! Does anybody lie there?

Me sir, Irish me, a widder, with six children. And yonder? Me

sir, Irish me, with me wife and eight poor babes. And to the left

there? Me sir, Irish me, along with two more Irish boys as is me

friends. And to the right there? Me sir and the Murphy fam'ly,

numbering five blessed souls. And what's this, coiling, now, about

my foot? Another Irish me, pitifully in want of shaving, whom I

have awakened from sleep - and across my other foot lies his wife -

and by the shoes of Inspector Field lie their three eldest - and

their three youngest are at present squeezed between the open door

and the wall. And why is there no one on that little mat before

the sullen fire? Because O'Donovan, with his wife and daughter, is

not come in from selling Lucifers! Nor on the bit of sacking in

the nearest corner? Bad luck! Because that Irish family is late

to-night, a-cadging in the streets!

They are all awake now, the children excepted, and most of them sit

up, to stare. Wheresoever Mr. Rogers turns the flaming eye, there

is a spectral figure rising, unshrouded, from a grave of rags. Who

is the landlord here? - I am, Mr. Field! says a bundle of ribs and

parchment against the wall, scratching itself. - Will you spend

this money fairly, in the morning, to buy coffee for 'em all? -

Yes, sir, I will! - O he'll do it, sir, he'll do it fair. He's

honest! cry the spectres. And with thanks and Good Night sink into

their graves again.

Thus, we make our New Oxford Streets, and our other new streets,

never heeding, never asking, where the wretches whom we clear out,

crowd. With such scenes at our doors, with all the plagues of

Egypt tied up with bits of cobweb in kennels so near our homes, we

timorously make our Nuisance Bills and Boards of Health,

nonentities, and think to keep away the Wolves of Crime and Filth,

by our electioneering ducking to little vestrymen and our

gentlemanly handling of Red Tape!

Intelligence of the coffee-money has got abroad. The yard is full,

and Rogers of the flaming eye is beleaguered with entreaties to

show other Lodging Houses. Mine next! Mine! Mine! Rogers,

military, obdurate, stiff-necked, immovable, replies not, but leads

away; all falling back before him. Inspector Field follows.

Detective Sergeant, with his barrier of arm across the little

passage, deliberately waits to close the procession. He sees

behind him, without any effort, and exceedingly disturbs one

individual far in the rear by coolly calling out, 'It won't do, Mr.

Michael! Don't try it!'

After council holden in the street, we enter other lodging-houses,

public-houses, many lairs and holes; all noisome and offensive;

none so filthy and so crowded as where Irish are. In one, The

Ethiopian party are expected home presently - were in Oxford Street

when last heard of - shall be fetched, for our delight, within ten

minutes. In another, one of the two or three Professors who drew

Napoleon Buonaparte and a couple of mackerel, on the pavement and

then let the work of art out to a speculator, is refreshing after

his labours. In another, the vested interest of the profitable

nuisance has been in one family for a hundred years, and the

landlord drives in comfortably from the country to his snug little

stew in town. In all, Inspector Field is received with warmth.

Coiners and smashers droop before him; pickpockets defer to him;

the gentle sex (not very gentle here) smile upon him. Half-drunken

hags check themselves in the midst of pots of beer, or pints of

gin, to drink to Mr. Field, and pressingly to ask the honour of his

finishing the draught. One beldame in rusty black has such

admiration for him, that she runs a whole street's length to shake

him by the hand; tumbling into a heap of mud by the way, and still

pressing her attentions when her very form has ceased to be

distinguishable through it. Before the power of the law, the power

of superior sense - for common thieves are fools beside these men -

and the power of a perfect mastery of their character, the garrison

of Rats' Castle and the adjacent Fortresses make but a skulking

show indeed when reviewed by Inspector Field.

Saint Giles's clock says it will be midnight in half-an-hour, and

Inspector Field says we must hurry to the Old Mint in the Borough.

The cab-driver is low-spirited, and has a solemn sense of his

responsibility. Now, what's your fare, my lad? - O YOU know,

Inspector Field, what's the good of asking ME!

Say, Parker, strapped and great-coated, and waiting in dim Borough

doorway by appointment, to replace the trusty Rogers whom we left

deep in Saint Giles's, are you ready? Ready, Inspector Field, and

at a motion of my wrist behold my flaming eye.

This narrow street, sir, is the chief part of the Old Mint, full of

low lodging-houses, as you see by the transparent canvas-lamps and

blinds, announcing beds for travellers! But it is greatly changed,

friend Field, from my former knowledge of it; it is infinitely

quieter and more subdued than when I was here last, some seven

years ago? O yes! Inspector Haynes, a first-rate man, is on this

station now and plays the Devil with them!

Well, my lads! How are you to-night, my lads? Playing cards here,

eh? Who wins? - Why, Mr. Field, I, the sulky gentleman with the

damp flat side-curls, rubbing my bleared eye with the end of my

neckerchief which is like a dirty eel-skin, am losing just at

present, but I suppose I must take my pipe out of my mouth, and be

submissive to YOU - I hope I see you well, Mr. Field? - Aye, all

right, my lad. Deputy, who have you got up-stairs? Be pleased to

show the rooms!

Why Deputy, Inspector Field can't say. He only knows that the man

who takes care of the beds and lodgers is always called so.

Steady, O Deputy, with the flaring candle in the blacking-bottle,

for this is a slushy back-yard, and the wooden staircase outside

the house creaks and has holes in it.

Again, in these confined intolerable rooms, burrowed out like the

holes of rats or the nests of insect-vermin, but fuller of

intolerable smells, are crowds of sleepers, each on his foul

truckle-bed coiled up beneath a rug. Holloa here! Come! Let us

see you! Show your face! Pilot Parker goes from bed to bed and

turns their slumbering heads towards us, as a salesman might turn

sheep. Some wake up with an execration and a threat. - What! who

spoke? O! If it's the accursed glaring eye that fixes me, go

where I will, I am helpless. Here! I sit up to be looked at. Is

it me you want? Not you, lie down again! and I lie down, with a

woful growl.

Whenever the turning lane of light becomes stationary for a moment,

some sleeper appears at the end of it, submits himself to be

scrutinised, and fades away into the darkness.

There should be strange dreams here, Deputy. They sleep sound

enough, says Deputy, taking the candle out of the blacking-bottle,

snuffing it with his fingers, throwing the snuff into the bottle,

and corking it up with the candle; that's all I know. What is the

inscription, Deputy, on all the discoloured sheets? A precaution

against loss of linen. Deputy turns down the rug of an unoccupied

bed and discloses it. STOP THIEF!

To lie at night, wrapped in the legend of my slinking life; to take

the cry that pursues me, waking, to my breast in sleep; to have it

staring at me, and clamouring for me, as soon as consciousness

returns; to have it for my first-foot on New-Year's day, my

Valentine, my Birthday salute, my Christmas greeting, my parting

with the old year. STOP THIEF!

And to know that I MUST be stopped, come what will. To know that I

am no match for this individual energy and keenness, or this

organised and steady system! Come across the street, here, and,

entering by a little shop and yard, examine these intricate

passages and doors, contrived for escape, flapping and counter-

flapping, like the lids of the conjurer's boxes. But what avail

they? Who gets in by a nod, and shows their secret working to us?

Inspector Field.

Don't forget the old Farm House, Parker! Parker is not the man to

forget it. We are going there, now. It is the old Manor-House of

these parts, and stood in the country once. Then, perhaps, there

was something, which was not the beastly street, to see from the

shattered low fronts of the overhanging wooden houses we are

passing under - shut up now, pasted over with bills about the

literature and drama of the Mint, and mouldering away. This long

paved yard was a paddock or a garden once, or a court in front of

the Farm House. Perchance, with a dovecot in the centre, and fowls

peeking about - with fair elm trees, then, where discoloured

chimney-stacks and gables are now - noisy, then, with rooks which

have yielded to a different sort of rookery. It's likelier than

not, Inspector Field thinks, as we turn into the common kitchen,

which is in the yard, and many paces from the house.

Well, my lads and lasses, how are you all? Where's Blackey, who

has stood near London Bridge these five-and-twenty years, with a

painted skin to represent disease? - Here he is, Mr. Field! - How

are you, Blackey? - Jolly, sa! Not playing the fiddle to-night,

Blackey? - Not a night, sa! A sharp, smiling youth, the wit of the

kitchen, interposes. He an't musical to-night, sir. I've been

giving him a moral lecture; I've been a talking to him about his

latter end, you see. A good many of these are my pupils, sir.

This here young man (smoothing down the hair of one near him,

reading a Sunday paper) is a pupil of mine. I'm a teaching of him

to read, sir. He's a promising cove, sir. He's a smith, he is,

and gets his living by the sweat of the brow, sir. So do I,

myself, sir. This young woman is my sister, Mr. Field. SHE'S

getting on very well too. I've a deal of trouble with 'em, sir,

but I'm richly rewarded, now I see 'em all a doing so well, and

growing up so creditable. That's a great comfort, that is, an't

it, sir? - In the midst of the kitchen (the whole kitchen is in

ecstasies with this impromptu 'chaff') sits a young, modest,

gentle-looking creature, with a beautiful child in her lap. She

seems to belong to the company, but is so strangely unlike it. She

has such a pretty, quiet face and voice, and is so proud to hear

the child admired - thinks you would hardly believe that he is only

nine months old! Is she as bad as the rest, I wonder?

Inspectorial experience does not engender a belief contrariwise,

but prompts the answer, Not a ha'porth of difference!

There is a piano going in the old Farm House as we approach. It

stops. Landlady appears. Has no objections, Mr. Field, to

gentlemen being brought, but wishes it were at earlier hours, the

lodgers complaining of ill-conwenience. Inspector Field is polite

and soothing - knows his woman and the sex. Deputy (a girl in this

case) shows the way up a heavy, broad old staircase, kept very

clean, into clean rooms where many sleepers are, and where painted

panels of an older time look strangely on the truckle beds. The

sight of whitewash and the smell of soap - two things we seem by

this time to have parted from in infancy - make the old Farm House

a phenomenon, and connect themselves with the so curiously

misplaced picture of the pretty mother and child long after we have

left it, - long after we have left, besides, the neighbouring nook

with something of a rustic flavour in it yet, where once, beneath a

low wooden colonnade still standing as of yore, the eminent Jack

Sheppard condescended to regale himself, and where, now, two old

bachelor brothers in broad hats (who are whispered in the Mint to

have made a compact long ago that if either should ever marry, he

must forfeit his share of the joint property) still keep a

sequestered tavern, and sit o' nights smoking pipes in the bar,

among ancient bottles and glasses, as our eyes behold them.

How goes the night now? Saint George of Southwark answers with

twelve blows upon his bell. Parker, good night, for Williams is

already waiting over in the region of Ratcliffe Highway, to show

the houses where the sailors dance.

I should like to know where Inspector Field was born. In Ratcliffe

Highway, I would have answered with confidence, but for his being

equally at home wherever we go. HE does not trouble his head as I

do, about the river at night. HE does not care for its creeping,

black and silent, on our right there, rushing through sluice-gates,

lapping at piles and posts and iron rings, hiding strange things in

its mud, running away with suicides and accidentally drowned bodies

faster than midnight funeral should, and acquiring such various

experience between its cradle and its grave. It has no mystery for

HIM. Is there not the Thames Police!

Accordingly, Williams leads the way. We are a little late, for

some of the houses are already closing. No matter. You show us

plenty. All the landlords know Inspector Field. All pass him,

freely and good-humouredly, wheresoever he wants to go. So

thoroughly are all these houses open to him and our local guide,

that, granting that sailors must be entertained in their own way -

as I suppose they must, and have a right to be - I hardly know how

such places could be better regulated. Not that I call the company

very select, or the dancing very graceful - even so graceful as

that of the German Sugar Bakers, whose assembly, by the Minories,

we stopped to visit - but there is watchful maintenance of order in

every house, and swift expulsion where need is. Even in the midst

of drunkenness, both of the lethargic kind and the lively, there is

sharp landlord supervision, and pockets are in less peril than out

of doors. These houses show, singularly, how much of the

picturesque and romantic there truly is in the sailor, requiring to

be especially addressed. All the songs (sung in a hailstorm of

halfpence, which are pitched at the singer without the least

tenderness for the time or tune - mostly from great rolls of copper

carried for the purpose - and which he occasionally dodges like

shot as they fly near his head) are of the sentimental sea sort.

All the rooms are decorated with nautical subjects. Wrecks,

engagements, ships on fire, ships passing lighthouses on iron-bound

coasts, ships blowing up, ships going down, ships running ashore,

men lying out upon the main-yard in a gale of wind, sailors and

ships in every variety of peril, constitute the illustrations of

fact. Nothing can be done in the fanciful way, without a thumping

boy upon a scaly dolphin.

How goes the night now? Past one. Black and Green are waiting in

Whitechapel to unveil the mysteries of Wentworth Street. Williams,

the best of friends must part. Adieu!

Are not Black and Green ready at the appointed place? O yes! They

glide out of shadow as we stop. Imperturbable Black opens the cab-

door; Imperturbable Green takes a mental note of the driver. Both

Green and Black then open each his flaming eye, and marshal us the

way that we are going.

The lodging-house we want is hidden in a maze of streets and

courts. It is fast shut. We knock at the door, and stand hushed

looking up for a light at one or other of the begrimed old lattice

windows in its ugly front, when another constable comes up -

supposes that we want 'to see the school.' Detective Sergeant

meanwhile has got over a rail, opened a gate, dropped down an area,

overcome some other little obstacles, and tapped at a window. Now

returns. The landlord will send a deputy immediately.

Deputy is heard to stumble out of bed. Deputy lights a candle,

draws back a bolt or two, and appears at the door. Deputy is a

shivering shirt and trousers by no means clean, a yawning face, a

shock head much confused externally and internally. We want to

look for some one. You may go up with the light, and take 'em all,

if you like, says Deputy, resigning it, and sitting down upon a

bench in the kitchen with his ten fingers sleepily twisting in his

hair.

Halloa here! Now then! Show yourselves. That'll do. It's not

you. Don't disturb yourself any more! So on, through a labyrinth

of airless rooms, each man responding, like a wild beast, to the

keeper who has tamed him, and who goes into his cage. What, you

haven't found him, then? says Deputy, when we came down. A woman

mysteriously sitting up all night in the dark by the smouldering

ashes of the kitchen fire, says it's only tramps and cadgers here;

it's gonophs over the way. A man mysteriously walking about the

kitchen all night in the dark, bids her hold her tongue. We come

out. Deputy fastens the door and goes to bed again.

Black and Green, you know Bark, lodging-house keeper and receiver

of stolen goods? - O yes, Inspector Field. - Go to Bark's next.

Bark sleeps in an inner wooden hutch, near his street door. As we

parley on the step with Bark's Deputy, Bark growls in his bed. We

enter, and Bark flies out of bed. Bark is a red villain and a

wrathful, with a sanguine throat that looks very much as if it were

expressly made for hanging, as he stretches it out, in pale

defiance, over the half-door of his hutch. Bark's parts of speech

are of an awful sort - principally adjectives. I won't, says Bark,

have no adjective police and adjective strangers in my adjective

premises! I won't, by adjective and substantive! Give me my

trousers, and I'll send the whole adjective police to adjective and

substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective trousers! I'll put

an adjective knife in the whole bileing of 'em. I'll punch their

adjective heads. I'll rip up their adjective substantives. Give

me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and I'll spile the bileing of

'em!

Now, Bark, what's the use of this? Here's Black and Green,

Detective Sergeant, and Inspector Field. You know we will come in.

- I know you won't! says Bark. Somebody give me my adjective

trousers! Bark's trousers seem difficult to find. He calls for

them as Hercules might for his club. Give me my adjective

trousers! says Bark, and I'll spile the bileing of 'em!

Inspector Field holds that it's all one whether Bark likes the

visit or don't like it. He, Inspector Field, is an Inspector of

the Detective Police, Detective Sergeant IS Detective Sergeant,

Black and Green are constables in uniform. Don't you be a fool,

Bark, or you know it will be the worse for you. - I don't care,

says Bark. Give me my adjective trousers!

At two o'clock in the morning, we descend into Bark's low kitchen,

leaving Bark to foam at the mouth above, and Imperturbable Black

and Green to look at him. Bark's kitchen is crammed full of

thieves, holding a CONVERSAZIONE there by lamp-light. It is by far

the most dangerous assembly we have seen yet. Stimulated by the

ravings of Bark, above, their looks are sullen, but not a man

speaks. We ascend again. Bark has got his trousers, and is in a

state of madness in the passage with his back against a door that

shuts off the upper staircase. We observe, in other respects, a

ferocious individuality in Bark. Instead of 'STOP THIEF!' on his

linen, he prints 'STOLEN FROM Bark's!'

Now, Bark, we are going up-stairs! - No, you ain't! - YOU refuse

admission to the Police, do you, Bark? - Yes, I do! I refuse it to

all the adjective police, and to all the adjective substantives.

If the adjective coves in the kitchen was men, they'd come up now,

and do for you! Shut me that there door! says Bark, and suddenly

we are enclosed in the passage. They'd come up and do for you!

cries Bark, and waits. Not a sound in the kitchen! They'd come up

and do for you! cries Bark again, and waits. Not a sound in the

kitchen! We are shut up, half-a-dozen of us, in Bark's house in

the innermost recesses of the worst part of London, in the dead of

the night - the house is crammed with notorious robbers and

ruffians - and not a man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight of

the law, and they know Inspector Field and Co. too well.

We leave bully Bark to subside at leisure out of his passion and

his trousers, and, I dare say, to be inconveniently reminded of

this little brush before long. Black and Green do ordinary duty

here, and look serious.

As to White, who waits on Holborn Hill to show the courts that are

eaten out of Rotten Gray's Inn, Lane, where other lodging-houses

are, and where (in one blind alley) the Thieves' Kitchen and

Seminary for the teaching of the art to children is, the night has

so worn away, being now

almost at odds with morning, which is which,

that they are quiet, and no light shines through the chinks in the

shutters. As undistinctive Death will come here, one day, sleep

comes now. The wicked cease from troubling sometimes, even in this

life.

DOWN WITH THE TIDE

A VERY dark night it was, and bitter cold; the east wind blowing

bleak, and bringing with it stinging particles from marsh, and

moor, and fen - from the Great Desert and Old Egypt, may be. Some

of the component parts of the sharp-edged vapour that came flying

up the Thames at London might be mummy-dust, dry atoms from the

Temple at Jerusalem, camels' foot-prints, crocodiles' hatching-

places, loosened grains of expression from the visages of blunt-

nosed sphynxes, waifs and strays from caravans of turbaned

merchants, vegetation from jungles, frozen snow from the Himalayas.

O! It was very, very dark upon the Thames, and it was bitter,

bitter cold.

'And yet,' said the voice within the great pea-coat at my side,

'you'll have seen a good many rivers, too, I dare say?'

'Truly,' said I, 'when I come to think of it, not a few. From the

Niagara, downward to the mountain rivers of Italy, which are like

the national spirit - very tame, or chafing suddenly and bursting

bounds, only to dwindle away again. The Moselle, and the Rhine,

and the Rhone; and the Seine, and the Saone; and the St. Lawrence,

Mississippi, and Ohio; and the Tiber, the Po, and the Arno; and the

- '

Peacoat coughing as if he had had enough of that, I said no more.

I could have carried the catalogue on to a teasing length, though,

if I had been in the cruel mind.

'And after all,' said he, 'this looks so dismal?'

'So awful,' I returned, 'at night. The Seine at Paris is very

gloomy too, at such a time, and is probably the scene of far more

crime and greater wickedness; but this river looks so broad and

vast, so murky and silent, seems such an image of death in the

midst of the great city's life, that - '

That Peacoat coughed again. He COULD NOT stand my holding forth.

We were in a four-oared Thames Police Galley, lying on our oars in

the deep shadow of Southwark Bridge - under the corner arch on the

Surrey side - having come down with the tide from Vauxhall. We

were fain to hold on pretty tight, though close in shore, for the

river was swollen and the tide running down very strong. We were

watching certain water-rats of human growth, and lay in the deep

shade as quiet as mice; our light hidden and our scraps of

conversation carried on in whispers. Above us, the massive iron

girders of the arch were faintly visible, and below us its

ponderous shadow seemed to sink down to the bottom of the stream.

We had been lying here some half an hour. With our backs to the

wind, it is true; but the wind being in a determined temper blew

straight through us, and would not take the trouble to go round. I

would have boarded a fireship to get into action, and mildly

suggested as much to my friend Pea.

'No doubt,' says he as patiently as possible; 'but shore-going

tactics wouldn't do with us. River-thieves can always get rid of

stolen property in a moment by dropping it overboard. We want to

take them WITH the property, so we lurk about and come out upon 'em

sharp. If they see us or hear us, over it goes.'

Pea's wisdom being indisputable, there was nothing for it but to

sit there and be blown through, for another half-hour. The water-

rats thinking it wise to abscond at the end of that time without

commission of felony, we shot out, disappointed, with the tide.

'Grim they look, don't they?' said Pea, seeing me glance over my

shoulder at the lights upon the bridge, and downward at their long

crooked reflections in the river.

'Very,' said I, 'and make one think with a shudder of Suicides.

What a night for a dreadful leap from that parapet!'

'Aye, but Waterloo's the favourite bridge for making holes in the

water from,' returned Pea. 'By the bye - avast pulling, lads! -

would you like to speak to Waterloo on the subject?'

My face confessing a surprised desire to have some friendly

conversation with Waterloo Bridge, and my friend Pea being the most

obliging of men, we put about, pulled out of the force of the

stream, and in place of going at great speed with the tide, began

to strive against it, close in shore again. Every colour but black

seemed to have departed from the world. The air was black, the

water was black, the barges and hulks were black, the piles were

black, the buildings were black, the shadows were only a deeper

shade of black upon a black ground. Here and there, a coal fire in

an iron cresset blazed upon a wharf; but, one knew that it too had

been black a little while ago, and would be black again soon.

Uncomfortable rushes of water suggestive of gurgling and drowning,

ghostly rattlings of iron chains, dismal clankings of discordant

engines, formed the music that accompanied the dip of our oars and

their rattling in the rowlocks. Even the noises had a black sound

to me - as the trumpet sounded red to the blind man.

Our dexterous boat's crew made nothing of the tide, and pulled us

gallantly up to Waterloo Bridge. Here Pea and I disembarked,

passed under the black stone archway, and climbed the steep stone

steps. Within a few feet of their summit, Pea presented me to

Waterloo (or an eminent toll-taker representing that structure),

muffled up to the eyes in a thick shawl, and amply great-coated and

fur-capped.

Waterloo received us with cordiality, and observed of the night

that it was 'a Searcher.' He had been originally called the Strand

Bridge, he informed us, but had received his present name at the

suggestion of the proprietors, when Parliament had resolved to vote

three hundred thousand pound for the erection of a monument in

honour of the victory. Parliament took the hint (said Waterloo,

with the least flavour of misanthropy) and saved the money. Of

course the late Duke of Wellington was the first passenger, and of

course he paid his penny, and of course a noble lord preserved it

evermore. The treadle and index at the toll-house (a most

ingenious contrivance for rendering fraud impossible), were

invented by Mr. Lethbridge, then property-man at Drury Lane

Theatre.

Was it suicide, we wanted to know about? said Waterloo. Ha! Well,

he had seen a good deal of that work, he did assure us. He had

prevented some. Why, one day a woman, poorish looking, came in

between the hatch, slapped down a penny, and wanted to go on

without the change! Waterloo suspected this, and says to his mate,

'give an eye to the gate,' and bolted after her. She had got to

the third seat between the piers, and was on the parapet just a

going over, when he caught her and gave her in charge. At the

police office next morning, she said it was along of trouble and a

bad husband.

'Likely enough,' observed Waterloo to Pea and myself, as he

adjusted his chin in his shawl. 'There's a deal of trouble about,

you see - and bad husbands too!'

Another time, a young woman at twelve o'clock in the open day, got

through, darted along; and, before Waterloo could come near her,

jumped upon the parapet, and shot herself over sideways. Alarm

given, watermen put off, lucky escape. - Clothes buoyed her up.

'This is where it is,' said Waterloo. 'If people jump off straight

forwards from the middle of the parapet of the bays of the bridge,

they are seldom killed by drowning, but are smashed, poor things;

that's what THEY are; they dash themselves upon the buttress of the

bridge. But you jump off,' said Waterloo to me, putting his fore-

finger in a button-hole of my great-coat; 'you jump off from the

side of the bay, and you'll tumble, true, into the stream under the

arch. What you have got to do, is to mind how you jump in! There

was poor Tom Steele from Dublin. Didn't dive! Bless you, didn't

dive at all! Fell down so flat into the water, that he broke his

breast-bone, and lived two days!'

I asked Waterloo if there were a favourite side of his bridge for

this dreadful purpose? He reflected, and thought yes, there was.

He should say the Surrey side.

Three decent-looking men went through one day, soberly and quietly,

and went on abreast for about a dozen yards: when the middle one,

he sung out, all of a sudden, 'Here goes, Jack!' and was over in a

minute.

Body found? Well. Waterloo didn't rightly recollect about that.

They were compositors, THEY were.

He considered it astonishing how quick people were! Why, there was

a cab came up one Boxing-night, with a young woman in it, who

looked, according to Waterloo's opinion of her, a little the worse

for liquor; very handsome she was too - very handsome. She stopped

the cab at the gate, and said she'd pay the cabman then, which she

did, though there was a little hankering about the fare, because at

first she didn't seem quite to know where she wanted to be drove

to. However, she paid the man, and the toll too, and looking

Waterloo in the face (he thought she knew him, don't you see!)

said, 'I'll finish it somehow!' Well, the cab went off, leaving

Waterloo a little doubtful in his mind, and while it was going on

at full speed the young woman jumped out, never fell, hardly

staggered, ran along the bridge pavement a little way, passing

several people, and jumped over from the second opening. At the

inquest it was giv' in evidence that she had been quarrelling at

the Hero of Waterloo, and it was brought in jealousy. (One of the

results of Waterloo's experience was, that there was a deal of

jealousy about.)

'Do we ever get madmen?' said Waterloo, in answer to an inquiry of

mine. 'Well, we DO get madmen. Yes, we have had one or two;

escaped from 'Sylums, I suppose. One hadn't a halfpenny; and

because I wouldn't let him through, he went back a little way,

stooped down, took a run, and butted at the hatch like a ram. He

smashed his hat rarely, but his head didn't seem no worse - in my

opinion on account of his being wrong in it afore. Sometimes

people haven't got a halfpenny. If they are really tired and poor

we give 'em one and let 'em through. Other people will leave

things - pocket-handkerchiefs mostly. I HAVE taken cravats and

gloves, pocket-knives, tooth-picks, studs, shirt-pins, rings

(generally from young gents, early in the morning), but

handkerchiefs is the general thing.'

'Regular customers?' said Waterloo. 'Lord, yes! We have regular

customers. One, such a worn-out, used-up old file as you can

scarcely picter, comes from the Surrey side as regular as ten

o'clock at night comes; and goes over, I think, to some flash house

on the Middlesex side. He comes back, he does, as reg'lar as the

clock strikes three in the morning, and then can hardly drag one of

his old legs after the other. He always turns down the water-

stairs, comes up again, and then goes on down the Waterloo Road.

He always does the same thing, and never varies a minute. Does it

every night - even Sundays.'

I asked Waterloo if he had given his mind to the possibility of

this particular customer going down the water-stairs at three

o'clock some morning, and never coming up again? He didn't think

THAT of him, he replied. In fact, it was Waterloo's opinion,

founded on his observation of that file, that he know'd a trick

worth two of it.

'There's another queer old customer,' said Waterloo, 'comes over,

as punctual as the almanack, at eleven o'clock on the sixth of

January, at eleven o'clock on the fifth of April, at eleven o'clock

on the sixth of July, at eleven o'clock on the tenth of October.

Drives a shaggy little, rough pony, in a sort of a rattle-trap arm-

chair sort of a thing. White hair he has, and white whiskers, and

muffles himself up with all manner of shawls. He comes back again

the same afternoon, and we never see more of him for three months.

He is a captain in the navy - retired - wery old - wery odd - and

served with Lord Nelson. He is particular about drawing his

pension at Somerset House afore the clock strikes twelve every

quarter. I HAVE heerd say that he thinks it wouldn't be according

to the Act of Parliament, if he didn't draw it afore twelve.'

Having related these anecdotes in a natural manner, which was the

best warranty in the world for their genuine nature, our friend

Waterloo was sinking deep into his shawl again, as having exhausted

his communicative powers and taken in enough east wind, when my

other friend Pea in a moment brought him to the surface by asking

whether he had not been occasionally the subject of assault and

battery in the execution of his duty? Waterloo recovering his

spirits, instantly dashed into a new branch of his subject. We

learnt how 'both these teeth' - here he pointed to the places where

two front teeth were not - were knocked out by an ugly customer who

one night made a dash at him (Waterloo) while his (the ugly

customer's) pal and coadjutor made a dash at the toll-taking apron

where the money-pockets were; how Waterloo, letting the teeth go

(to Blazes, he observed indefinitely), grappled with the apron-

seizer, permitting the ugly one to run away; and how he saved the

bank, and captured his man, and consigned him to fine and

imprisonment. Also how, on another night, 'a Cove' laid hold of

Waterloo, then presiding at the horse-gate of his bridge, and threw

him unceremoniously over his knee, having first cut his head open

with his whip. How Waterloo 'got right,' and started after the

Cove all down the Waterloo Road, through Stamford Street, and round

to the foot of Blackfriars Bridge, where the Cove 'cut into' a

public-house. How Waterloo cut in too; but how an aider and

abettor of the Cove's, who happened to be taking a promiscuous

drain at the bar, stopped Waterloo; and the Cove cut out again, ran

across the road down Holland Street, and where not, and into a

beer-shop. How Waterloo breaking away from his detainer was close

upon the Cove's heels, attended by no end of people, who, seeing

him running with the blood streaming down his face, thought

something worse was 'up,' and roared Fire! and Murder! on the

hopeful chance of the matter in hand being one or both. How the

Cove was ignominiously taken, in a shed where he had run to hide,

and how at the Police Court they at first wanted to make a sessions

job of it; but eventually Waterloo was allowed to be 'spoke to,'

and the Cove made it square with Waterloo by paying his doctor's

bill (W. was laid up for a week) and giving him 'Three, ten.'

Likewise we learnt what we had faintly suspected before, that your

sporting amateur on the Derby day, albeit a captain, can be - 'if

he be,' as Captain Bobadil observes, 'so generously minded' -

anything but a man of honour and a gentleman; not sufficiently

gratifying his nice sense of humour by the witty scattering of

flour and rotten eggs on obtuse civilians, but requiring the

further excitement of 'bilking the toll,' and 'Pitching into'

Waterloo, and 'cutting him about the head with his whip;' finally

being, when called upon to answer for the assault, what Waterloo

described as 'Minus,' or, as I humbly conceived it, not to be

found. Likewise did Waterloo inform us, in reply to my inquiries,

admiringly and deferentially preferred through my friend Pea, that

the takings at the Bridge had more than doubled in amount, since

the reduction of the toll one half. And being asked if the

aforesaid takings included much bad money, Waterloo responded, with

a look far deeper than the deepest part of the river, HE should

think not! - and so retired into his shawl for the rest of the

night.

Then did Pea and I once more embark in our four-oared galley, and

glide swiftly down the river with the tide. And while the shrewd

East rasped and notched us, as with jagged razors, did my friend

Pea impart to me confidences of interest relating to the Thames

Police; we, between whiles, finding 'duty boats' hanging in dark

corners under banks, like weeds - our own was a 'supervision boat'

- and they, as they reported 'all right!' flashing their hidden

light on us, and we flashing ours on them. These duty boats had

one sitter in each: an Inspector: and were rowed 'Ran-dan,' which -

for the information of those who never graduated, as I was once

proud to do, under a fireman-waterman and winner of Kean's Prize

Wherry: who, in the course of his tuition, took hundreds of gallons

of rum and egg (at my expense) at the various houses of note above

and below bridge; not by any means because he liked it, but to cure

a weakness in his liver, for which the faculty had particularly

recommended it - may be explained as rowed by three men, two

pulling an oar each, and one a pair of sculls.

Thus, floating down our black highway, sullenly frowned upon by the

knitted brows of Blackfriars, Southwark, and London, each in his

lowering turn, I was shown by my friend Pea that there are, in the

Thames Police Force, whose district extends from Battersea to

Barking Creek, ninety-eight men, eight duty boats, and two

supervision boats; and that these go about so silently, and lie in

wait in such dark places, and so seem to be nowhere, and so may be

anywhere, that they have gradually become a police of prevention,

keeping the river almost clear of any great crimes, even while the

increased vigilance on shore has made it much harder than of yore

to live by 'thieving' in the streets. And as to the various kinds

of water-thieves, said my friend Pea, there were the Tier-rangers,

who silently dropped alongside the tiers of shipping in the Pool,

by night, and who, going to the companion-head, listened for two

snores - snore number one, the skipper's; snore number two, the

mate's - mates and skippers always snoring great guns, and being

dead sure to be hard at it if they had turned in and were asleep.

Hearing the double fire, down went the Rangers into the skippers'

cabins; groped for the skippers' inexpressibles, which it was the

custom of those gentlemen to shake off, watch, money, braces,

boots, and all together, on the floor; and therewith made off as

silently as might be. Then there were the Lumpers, or labourers

employed to unload vessels. They wore loose canvas jackets with a

broad hem in the bottom, turned inside, so as to form a large

circular pocket in which they could conceal, like clowns in

pantomimes, packages of surprising sizes. A great deal of property

was stolen in this manner (Pea confided to me) from steamers;

first, because steamers carry a larger number of small packages

than other ships; next, because of the extreme rapidity with which

they are obliged to be unladen for their return voyages. The

Lumpers dispose of their booty easily to marine store dealers, and

the only remedy to be suggested is that marine store shops should

be licensed, and thus brought under the eye of the police as

rigidly as public-houses. Lumpers also smuggle goods ashore for

the crews of vessels. The smuggling of tobacco is so considerable,

that it is well worth the while of the sellers of smuggled tobacco

to use hydraulic presses, to squeeze a single pound into a package

small enough to be contained in an ordinary pocket. Next, said my

friend Pea, there were the Truckers - less thieves than smugglers,

whose business it was to land more considerable parcels of goods

than the Lumpers could manage. They sometimes sold articles of

grocery and so forth, to the crews, in order to cloak their real

calling, and get aboard without suspicion. Many of them had boats

of their own, and made money. Besides these, there were the

Dredgermen, who, under pretence of dredging up coals and such like

from the bottom of the river, hung about barges and other undecked

craft, and when they saw an opportunity, threw any property they

could lay their hands on overboard: in order slyly to dredge it up

when the vessel was gone. Sometimes, they dexterously used their

dredges to whip away anything that might lie within reach. Some of

them were mighty neat at this, and the accomplishment was called

dry dredging. Then, there was a vast deal of property, such as

copper nails, sheathing, hardwood, &c., habitually brought away by

shipwrights and other workmen from their employers' yards, and

disposed of to marine store dealers, many of whom escaped detection

through hard swearing, and their extraordinary artful ways of

accounting for the possession of stolen property. Likewise, there

were special-pleading practitioners, for whom barges 'drifted away

of their own selves' - they having no hand in it, except first

cutting them loose, and afterwards plundering them - innocents,

meaning no harm, who had the misfortune to observe those foundlings

wandering about the Thames.

We were now going in and out, with little noise and great nicety,

among the tiers of shipping, whose many hulls, lying close

together, rose out of the water like black streets. Here and

there, a Scotch, an Irish, or a foreign steamer, getting up her

steam as the tide made, looked, with her great chimney and high

sides, like a quiet factory among the common buildings. Now, the

streets opened into clearer spaces, now contracted into alleys; but

the tiers were so like houses, in the dark, that I could almost

have believed myself in the narrower bye-ways of Venice.

Everything was wonderfully still; for, it wanted full three hours

of flood, and nothing seemed awake but a dog here and there.

So we took no Tier-rangers captive, nor any Lumpers, nor Truckers,

nor Dredgermen, nor other evil-disposed person or persons; but went

ashore at Wapping, where the old Thames Police office is now a

station-house, and where the old Court, with its cabin windows

looking on the river, is a quaint charge room: with nothing worse

in it usually than a stuffed cat in a glass case, and a portrait,

pleasant to behold, of a rare old Thames Police officer, Mr.

Superintendent Evans, now succeeded by his son. We looked over the

charge books, admirably kept, and found the prevention so good that

there were not five hundred entries (including drunken and

disorderly) in a whole year. Then, we looked into the store-room;

where there was an oakum smell, and a nautical seasoning of

dreadnought clothing, rope yarn, boat-hooks, sculls and oars, spare

stretchers, rudders, pistols, cutlasses, and the like. Then, into

the cell, aired high up in the wooden wall through an opening like

a kitchen plate-rack: wherein there was a drunken man, not at all

warm, and very wishful to know if it were morning yet. Then, into

a better sort of watch and ward room, where there was a squadron of

stone bottles drawn up, ready to be filled with hot water and

applied to any unfortunate creature who might be brought in

apparently drowned. Finally, we shook hands with our worthy friend

Pea, and ran all the way to Tower Hill, under strong Police

suspicion occasionally, before we got warm.

A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE

ON a certain Sunday, I formed one of the congregation assembled in

the chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception

of the clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were

none but paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the

women in the body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles; the

men in the remaining aisle. The service was decorously performed,

though the sermon might have been much better adapted to the

comprehension and to the circumstances of the hearers. The usual

supplications were offered, with more than the usual significancy

in such a place, for the fatherless children and widows, for all

sick persons and young children, for all that were desolate and

oppressed, for the comforting and helping of the weak-hearted, for

the raising-up of them that had fallen; for all that were in

danger, necessity, and tribulation. The prayers of the

congregation were desired 'for several persons in the various wards

dangerously ill;' and others who were recovering returned their

thanks to Heaven.

Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young women, and

beetle-browed young men; but not many - perhaps that kind of

characters kept away. Generally, the faces (those of the children

excepted) were depressed and subdued, and wanted colour. Aged

people were there, in every variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed,

spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the gleams of

sun that now and then crept in through the open doors, from the

paved yard; shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes, with

their withered hands; poring over their books, leering at nothing,

going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners. There were

weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak without,

continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of pocket-

handkerchiefs; and there were ugly old crones, both male and

female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not

at all comforting to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon,

Pauperism, in a very weak and impotent condition; toothless,

fangless, drawing his breath heavily enough, and hardly worth

chaining up.

When the service was over, I walked with the humane and

conscientious gentleman whose duty it was to take that walk, that

Sunday morning, through the little world of poverty enclosed within

the workhouse walls. It was inhabited by a population of some

fifteen hundred or two thousand paupers, ranging from the infant

newly born or not yet come into the pauper world, to the old man

dying on his bed.

In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a number of listless

women were lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the

ineffectual sunshine of the tardy May morning - in the 'Itch Ward,'

not to compromise the truth - a woman such as HOGARTH has often

drawn, was hurriedly getting on her gown before a dusty fire. She

was the nurse, or wardswoman, of that insalubrious department -

herself a pauper - flabby, raw-boned, untidy - unpromising and

coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being spoken to about the

patients whom she had in charge, she turned round, with her shabby

gown half on, half off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not

for show, not querulously, not in any mawkish sentiment, but in the

deep grief and affliction of her heart; turning away her

dishevelled head: sobbing most bitterly, wringing her hands, and

letting fall abundance of great tears, that choked her utterance.

What was the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward? Oh, 'the

dropped child' was dead! Oh, the child that was found in the

street, and she had brought up ever since, had died an hour ago,

and see where the little creature lay, beneath this cloth! The

dear, the pretty dear!

The dropped child seemed too small and poor a thing for Death to be

in earnest with, but Death had taken it; and already its diminutive

form was neatly washed, composed, and stretched as if in sleep upon

a box. I thought I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall be

well for thee, O nurse of the itch-ward, when some less gentle

pauper does those offices to thy cold form, that such as the

dropped child are the angels who behold my Father's face!

In another room, were several ugly old women crouching, witch-like,

round a hearth, and chattering and nodding, after the manner of the

monkeys. 'All well here? And enough to eat?' A general

chattering and chuckling; at last an answer from a volunteer. 'Oh

yes, gentleman! Bless you, gentleman! Lord bless the Parish of

St. So-and-So! It feed the hungry, sir, and give drink to the

thusty, and it warm them which is cold, so it do, and good luck to

the parish of St. So-and-So, and thankee, gentleman!' Elsewhere, a

party of pauper nurses were at dinner. 'How do YOU get on?' 'Oh

pretty well, sir! We works hard, and we lives hard - like the

sodgers!'

In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, six or

eight noisy madwomen were gathered together, under the

superintendence of one sane attendant. Among them was a girl of

two or three and twenty, very prettily dressed, of most respectable

appearance and good manners, who had been brought in from the house

where she had lived as domestic servant (having, I suppose, no

friends), on account of being subject to epileptic fits, and

requiring to be removed under the influence of a very bad one. She

was by no means of the same stuff, or the same breeding, or the

same experience, or in the same state of mind, as those by whom she

was surrounded; and she pathetically complained that the daily

association and the nightly noise made her worse, and was driving

her mad - which was perfectly evident. The case was noted for

inquiry and redress, but she said she had already been there for

some weeks.

If this girl had stolen her mistress's watch, I do not hesitate to

say she would have been infinitely better off. We have come to

this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the

dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet, and

accommodation, better provided for, and taken care of, than the

honest pauper.

And this conveys no special imputation on the workhouse of the

parish of St. So-and-So, where, on the contrary, I saw many things

to commend. It was very agreeable, recollecting that most infamous

and atrocious enormity committed at Tooting - an enormity which, a

hundred years hence, will still be vividly remembered in the bye-

ways of English life, and which has done more to engender a gloomy

discontent and suspicion among many thousands of the people than

all the Chartist leaders could have done in all their lives - to

find the pauper children in this workhouse looking robust and well,

and apparently the objects of very great care. In the Infant

School - a large, light, airy room at the top of the building - the

little creatures, being at dinner, and eating their potatoes

heartily, were not cowed by the presence of strange visitors, but

stretched out their small hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant

confidence. And it was comfortable to see two mangy pauper

rocking-horses rampant in a corner. In the girls' school, where

the dinner was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful and

healthy aspect. The meal was over, in the boys' school, by the

time of our arrival there, and the room was not yet quite

rearranged; but the boys were roaming unrestrained about a large

and airy yard, as any other schoolboys might have done. Some of

them had been drawing large ships upon the schoolroom wall; and if

they had a mast with shrouds and stays set up for practice (as they

have in the Middlesex House of Correction), it would be so much the

better. At present, if a boy should feel a strong impulse upon him

to learn the art of going aloft, he could only gratify it, I

presume, as the men and women paupers gratify their aspirations

after better board and lodging, by smashing as many workhouse

windows as possible, and being promoted to prison.

In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and

youths were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind

of kennel where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down

at night. Divers of them had been there some long time. 'Are they

never going away?' was the natural inquiry. 'Most of them are

crippled, in some form or other,' said the Wardsman, 'and not fit

for anything.' They slunk about, like dispirited wolves or

hyaenas; and made a pounce at their food when it was served out,

much as those animals do. The big-headed idiot shuffling his feet

along the pavement, in the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable

object everyway.

Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers and other sick women in

bed; groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs

day-rooms, waiting for their dinners; longer and longer groves of

old people, in up-stairs Infirmary wards, wearing out life, God

knows how - this was the scenery through which the walk lay, for

two hours. In some of these latter chambers, there were pictures

stuck against the wall, and a neat display of crockery and pewter

on a kind of sideboard; now and then it was a treat to see a plant

or two; in almost every ward there was a cat.

In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were

bedridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their

beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and

sitting at a table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic

indifference to what was asked, a blunted sensibility to everything

but warmth and food, a moody absence of complaint as being of no

use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to be left alone again,

I thought were generally apparent. On our walking into the midst

of one of these dreary perspectives of old men, nearly the

following little dialogue took place, the nurse not being

immediately at hand:

'All well here?'

No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap sitting among others on a

form at the table, eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his

cap a little to look at us, claps it down on his forehead again

with the palm of his hand, and goes on eating.

'All well here?' (repeated).

No answer. Another old man sitting on his bed, paralytically

peeling a boiled potato, lifts his head and stares.

'Enough to eat?'

No answer. Another old man, in bed, turns himself and coughs.

'How are YOU to-day?' To the last old man.

That old man says nothing; but another old man, a tall old man of

very good address, speaking with perfect correctness, comes forward

from somewhere, and volunteers an answer. The reply almost always

proceeds from a volunteer, and not from the person looked at or

spoken to.

'We are very old, sir,' in a mild, distinct voice. 'We can't

expect to be well, most of us.'

'Are you comfortable?'

'I have no complaint to make, sir.' With a half shake of his head,

a half shrug of his shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile.

'Enough to eat?'

'Why, sir, I have but a poor appetite,' with the same air as

before; 'and yet I get through my allowance very easily.'

'But,' showing a porringer with a Sunday dinner in it; 'here is a

portion of mutton, and three potatoes. You can't starve on that?'

'Oh dear no, sir,' with the same apologetic air. 'Not starve.'

'What do you want?'

'We have very little bread, sir. It's an exceedingly small

quantity of bread.'

The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at the questioner's elbow,

interferes with, 'It ain't much raly, sir. You see they've only

six ounces a day, and when they've took their breakfast, there CAN

only be a little left for night, sir.'

Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises out of his bed-clothes,

as out of a grave, and looks on.

'You have tea at night?' The questioner is still addressing the

well-spoken old man.

'Yes, sir, we have tea at night.'

'And you save what bread you can from the morning, to eat with it?'

'Yes, sir - if we can save any.'

'And you want more to eat with it?'

'Yes, sir.' With a very anxious face.

The questioner, in the kindness of his heart, appears a little

discomposed, and changes the subject.

'What has become of the old man who used to lie in that bed in the

corner?'

The nurse don't remember what old man is referred to. There has

been such a many old men. The well-spoken old man is doubtful.

The spectral old man who has come to life in bed, says, 'Billy

Stevens.' Another old man who has previously had his head in the

fireplace, pipes out,

'Charley Walters.'

Something like a feeble interest is awakened. I suppose Charley

Walters had conversation in him.

'He's dead,' says the piping old man.

Another old man, with one eye screwed up, hastily displaces the

piping old man, and says.

'Yes! Charley Walters died in that bed, and - and - '

'Billy Stevens,' persists the spectral old man.

'No, no! and Johnny Rogers died in that bed, and - and - they're

both on 'em dead - and Sam'l Bowyer;' this seems very extraordinary

to him; 'he went out!'

With this he subsides, and all the old men (having had quite enough

of it) subside, and the spectral old man goes into his grave again,

and takes the shade of Billy Stevens with him.

As we turn to go out at the door, another previously invisible old

man, a hoarse old man in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if

he had just come up through the floor.

'I beg your pardon, sir, could I take the liberty of saying a

word?'

'Yes; what is it?'

'I am greatly better in my health, sir; but what I want, to get me

quite round,' with his hand on his throat, 'is a little fresh air,

sir. It has always done my complaint so much good, sir. The

regular leave for going out, comes round so seldom, that if the

gentlemen, next Friday, would give me leave to go out walking, now

and then - for only an hour or so, sir! - '

Who could wonder, looking through those weary vistas of bed and

infirmity, that it should do him good to meet with some other

scenes, and assure himself that there was something else on earth?

Who could help wondering why the old men lived on as they did; what

grasp they had on life; what crumbs of interest or occupation they

could pick up from its bare board; whether Charley Walters had ever

described to them the days when he kept company with some old

pauper woman in the bud, or Billy Stevens ever told them of the

time when he was a dweller in the far-off foreign land called Home!

The morsel of burnt child, lying in another room, so patiently, in

bed, wrapped in lint, and looking steadfastly at us with his bright

quiet eyes when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if the knowledge

of these things, and of all the tender things there are to think

about, might have been in his mind - as if he thought, with us,

that there was a fellow-feeling in the pauper nurses which appeared

to make them more kind to their charges than the race of common

nurses in the hospitals - as if he mused upon the Future of some

older children lying around him in the same place, and thought it

best, perhaps, all things considered, that he should die - as if he

knew, without fear, of those many coffins, made and unmade, piled

up in the store below - and of his unknown friend, 'the dropped

child,' calm upon the box-lid covered with a cloth. But there was

something wistful and appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in

the midst of all the hard necessities and incongruities he pondered

on, he pleaded, in behalf of the helpless and the aged poor, for a

little more liberty - and a little more bread.

PRINCE BULL. A FAIRY TALE

ONCE upon a time, and of course it was in the Golden Age, and I

hope you may know when that was, for I am sure I don't, though I

have tried hard to find out, there lived in a rich and fertile

country, a powerful Prince whose name was BULL. He had gone

through a great deal of fighting, in his time, about all sorts of

things, including nothing; but, had gradually settled down to be a

steady, peaceable, good-natured, corpulent, rather sleepy Prince.

This Puissant Prince was married to a lovely Princess whose name

was Fair Freedom. She had brought him a large fortune, and had

borne him an immense number of children, and had set them to

spinning, and farming, and engineering, and soldiering, and

sailoring, and doctoring, and lawyering, and preaching, and all

kinds of trades. The coffers of Prince Bull were full of treasure,

his cellars were crammed with delicious wines from all parts of the

world, the richest gold and silver plate that ever was seen adorned

his sideboards, his sons were strong, his daughters were handsome,

and in short you might have supposed that if there ever lived upon

earth a fortunate and happy Prince, the name of that Prince, take

him for all in all, was assuredly Prince Bull.

But, appearances, as we all know, are not always to be trusted -

far from it; and if they had led you to this conclusion respecting

Prince Bull, they would have led you wrong as they often have led

me.

For, this good Prince had two sharp thorns in his pillow, two hard

knobs in his crown, two heavy loads on his mind, two unbridled

nightmares in his sleep, two rocks ahead in his course. He could

not by any means get servants to suit him, and he had a tyrannical

old godmother, whose name was Tape.

She was a Fairy, this Tape, and was a bright red all over. She was

disgustingly prim and formal, and could never bend herself a hair's

breadth this way or that way, out of her naturally crooked shape.

But, she was very potent in her wicked art. She could stop the

fastest thing in the world, change the strongest thing into the

weakest, and the most useful into the most useless. To do this she

had only to put her cold hand upon it, and repeat her own name,

Tape. Then it withered away.

At the Court of Prince Bull - at least I don't mean literally at

his court, because he was a very genteel Prince, and readily

yielded to his godmother when she always reserved that for his

hereditary Lords and Ladies - in the dominions of Prince Bull,

among the great mass of the community who were called in the

language of that polite country the Mobs and the Snobs, were a

number of very ingenious men, who were always busy with some

invention or other, for promoting the prosperity of the Prince's

subjects, and augmenting the Prince's power. But, whenever they

submitted their models for the Prince's approval, his godmother

stepped forward, laid her hand upon them, and said 'Tape.' Hence

it came to pass, that when any particularly good discovery was

made, the discoverer usually carried it off to some other Prince,

in foreign parts, who had no old godmother who said Tape. This was

not on the whole an advantageous state of things for Prince Bull,

to the best of my understanding.

The worst of it was, that Prince Bull had in course of years lapsed

into such a state of subjection to this unlucky godmother, that he

never made any serious effort to rid himself of her tyranny. I

have said this was the worst of it, but there I was wrong, because

there is a worse consequence still, behind. The Prince's numerous

family became so downright sick and tired of Tape, that when they

should have helped the Prince out of the difficulties into which

that evil creature led him, they fell into a dangerous habit of

moodily keeping away from him in an impassive and indifferent

manner, as though they had quite forgotten that no harm could

happen to the Prince their father, without its inevitably affecting

themselves.

Such was the aspect of affairs at the court of Prince Bull, when

this great Prince found it necessary to go to war with Prince Bear.

He had been for some time very doubtful of his servants, who,

besides being indolent and addicted to enriching their families at

his expense, domineered over him dreadfully; threatening to

discharge themselves if they were found the least fault with,

pretending that they had done a wonderful amount of work when they

had done nothing, making the most unmeaning speeches that ever were

heard in the Prince's name, and uniformly showing themselves to be

very inefficient indeed. Though, that some of them had excellent

characters from previous situations is not to be denied. Well;

Prince Bull called his servants together, and said to them one and

all, 'Send out my army against Prince Bear. Clothe it, arm it,

feed it, provide it with all necessaries and contingencies, and I

will pay the piper! Do your duty by my brave troops,' said the

Prince, 'and do it well, and I will pour my treasure out like

water, to defray the cost. Who ever heard ME complain of money

well laid out!' Which indeed he had reason for saying, inasmuch as

he was well known to be a truly generous and munificent Prince.

When the servants heard those words, they sent out the army against

Prince Bear, and they set the army tailors to work, and the army

provision merchants, and the makers of guns both great and small,

and the gunpowder makers, and the makers of ball, shell, and shot;

and they bought up all manner of stores and ships, without

troubling their heads about the price, and appeared to be so busy

that the good Prince rubbed his hands, and (using a favourite

expression of his), said, 'It's all right I' But, while they were

thus employed, the Prince's godmother, who was a great favourite

with those servants, looked in upon them continually all day long,

and whenever she popped in her head at the door said, How do you

do, my children? What are you doing here?' 'Official business,

godmother.' 'Oho!' says this wicked Fairy. '- Tape!' And then

the business all went wrong, whatever it was, and the servants'

heads became so addled and muddled that they thought they were

doing wonders.

Now, this was very bad conduct on the part of the vicious old

nuisance, and she ought to have been strangled, even if she had

stopped here; but, she didn't stop here, as you shall learn. For,

a number of the Prince's subjects, being very fond of the Prince's

army who were the bravest of men, assembled together and provided

all manner of eatables and drinkables, and books to read, and

clothes to wear, and tobacco to smoke, and candies to burn, and

nailed them up in great packing-cases, and put them aboard a great

many ships, to be carried out to that brave army in the cold and

inclement country where they were fighting Prince Bear. Then, up

comes this wicked Fairy as the ships were weighing anchor, and

says, 'How do you do, my children? What are you doing here?' - 'We

are going with all these comforts to the army, godmother.' - 'Oho!'

says she. 'A pleasant voyage, my darlings. - Tape!' And from that

time forth, those enchanting ships went sailing, against wind and

tide and rhyme and reason, round and round the world, and whenever

they touched at any port were ordered off immediately, and could

never deliver their cargoes anywhere.

This, again, was very bad conduct on the part of the vicious old

nuisance, and she ought to have been strangled for it if she had

done nothing worse; but, she did something worse still, as you

shall learn. For, she got astride of an official broomstick, and

muttered as a spell these two sentences, 'On Her Majesty's

service,' and 'I have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient

servant,' and presently alighted in the cold and inclement country

where the army of Prince Bull were encamped to fight the army of

Prince Bear. On the sea-shore of that country, she found piled

together, a number of houses for the army to live in, and a

quantity of provisions for the army to live upon, and a quantity of

clothes for the army to wear: while, sitting in the mud gazing at

them, were a group of officers as red to look at as the wicked old

woman herself. So, she said to one of them, 'Who are you, my

darling, and how do you do?' - 'I am the Quartermaster General's

Department, godmother, and I am pretty well.' Then she said to

another, 'Who are YOU, my darling, and how do YOU do?' - 'I am the

Commissariat Department, godmother, and I am pretty well! Then she

said to another, 'Who are YOU, my darling, and how do YOU do?' - 'I

am the Head of the Medical Department, godmother, and I am pretty

well.' Then, she said to some gentlemen scented with lavender, who

kept themselves at a great distance from the rest, 'And who are

YOU, my pretty pets, and how do YOU do?' And they answered, 'We-

aw-are-the-aw-Staff-aw-Department, godmother, and we are very well

indeed.' - 'I am delighted to see you all, my beauties,' says this

wicked old Fairy, ' - Tape!' Upon that, the houses, clothes, and

provisions, all mouldered away; and the soldiers who were sound,

fell sick; and the soldiers who were sick, died miserably: and the

noble army of Prince Bull perished.

When the dismal news of his great loss was carried to the Prince,

he suspected his godmother very much indeed; but, he knew that his

servants must have kept company with the malicious beldame, and

must have given way to her, and therefore he resolved to turn those

servants out of their places. So, he called to him a Roebuck who

had the gift of speech, and he said, 'Good Roebuck, tell them they

must go.' So, the good Roebuck delivered his message, so like a

man that you might have supposed him to be nothing but a man, and

they were turned out - but, not without warning, for that they had

had a long time.

And now comes the most extraordinary part of the history of this

Prince. When he had turned out those servants, of course he wanted

others. What was his astonishment to find that in all his

dominions, which contained no less than twenty-seven millions of

people, there were not above five-and-twenty servants altogether!

They were so lofty about it, too, that instead of discussing

whether they should hire themselves as servants to Prince Bull,

they turned things topsy-turvy, and considered whether as a favour

they should hire Prince Bull to be their master! While they were

arguing this point among themselves quite at their leisure, the

wicked old red Fairy was incessantly going up and down, knocking at

the doors of twelve of the oldest of the five-and-twenty, who were

the oldest inhabitants in all that country, and whose united ages

amounted to one thousand, saying, 'Will YOU hire Prince Bull for

your master? - Will YOU hire Prince Bull for your master?' To

which one answered, 'I will if next door will;' and another, 'I

won't if over the way does;' and another, 'I can't if he, she, or

they, might, could, would, or should.' And all this time Prince

Bull's affairs were going to rack and ruin.

At last, Prince Bull in the height of his perplexity assumed a

thoughtful face, as if he were struck by an entirely new idea. The

wicked old Fairy, seeing this, was at his elbow directly, and said,

'How do you do, my Prince, and what are you thinking of?' - 'I am

thinking, godmother,' says he, 'that among all the seven-and-twenty

millions of my subjects who have never been in service, there are

men of intellect and business who have made me very famous both

among my friends and enemies.' - 'Aye, truly?' says the Fairy. -

'Aye, truly,' says the Prince. - 'And what then?' says the Fairy. -

'Why, then,' says he, 'since the regular old class of servants do

so ill, are so hard to get, and carry it with so high a hand,

perhaps I might try to make good servants of some of these.' The

words had no sooner passed his lips than she returned, chuckling,

'You think so, do you? Indeed, my Prince? - Tape!' Thereupon he

directly forgot what he was thinking of, and cried out lamentably

to the old servants, 'O, do come and hire your poor old master!

Pray do! On any terms!'

And this, for the present, finishes the story of Prince Bull. I

wish I could wind it up by saying that he lived happy ever

afterwards, but I cannot in my conscience do so; for, with Tape at

his elbow, and his estranged children fatally repelled by her from

coming near him, I do not, to tell you the plain truth, believe in

the possibility of such an end to it.

A PLATED ARTICLE

PUTTING up for the night in one of the chiefest towns of

Staffordshire, I find it to be by no means a lively town. In fact,

it is as dull and dead a town as any one could desire not to see.

It seems as if its whole population might be imprisoned in its

Railway Station. The Refreshment Room at that Station is a vortex

of dissipation compared with the extinct town-inn, the Dodo, in the

dull High Street.

Why High Street? Why not rather Low Street, Flat Street, Low-

Spirited Street, Used-up Street? Where are the people who belong

to the High Street? Can they all be dispersed over the face of the

country, seeking the unfortunate Strolling Manager who decamped

from the mouldy little Theatre last week, in the beginning of his

season (as his play-bills testify), repentantly resolved to bring

him back, and feed him, and be entertained? Or, can they all be

gathered to their fathers in the two old churchyards near to the

High Street - retirement into which churchyards appears to be a

mere ceremony, there is so very little life outside their confines,

and such small discernible difference between being buried alive in

the town, and buried dead in the town tombs? Over the way,

opposite to the staring blank bow windows of the Dodo, are a little

ironmonger's shop, a little tailor's shop (with a picture of the

Fashions in the small window and a bandy-legged baby on the

pavement staring at it) - a watchmakers shop, where all the clocks

and watches must be stopped, I am sure, for they could never have

the courage to go, with the town in general, and the Dodo in

particular, looking at them. Shade of Miss Linwood, erst of

Leicester Square, London, thou art welcome here, and thy retreat is

fitly chosen! I myself was one of the last visitors to that awful

storehouse of thy life's work, where an anchorite old man and woman

took my shilling with a solemn wonder, and conducting me to a

gloomy sepulchre of needlework dropping to pieces with dust and age

and shrouded in twilight at high noon, left me there, chilled,

frightened, and alone. And now, in ghostly letters on all the dead

walls of this dead town, I read thy honoured name, and find that

thy Last Supper, worked in Berlin Wool, invites inspection as a

powerful excitement!

Where are the people who are bidden with so much cry to this feast

of little wool? Where are they? Who are they? They are not the

bandy-legged baby studying the fashions in the tailor's window.

They are not the two earthy ploughmen lounging outside the

saddler's shop, in the stiff square where the Town Hall stands,

like a brick and mortar private on parade. They are not the

landlady of the Dodo in the empty bar, whose eye had trouble in it

and no welcome, when I asked for dinner. They are not the turnkeys

of the Town Jail, looking out of the gateway in their uniforms, as

if they had locked up all the balance (as my American friends would

say) of the inhabitants, and could now rest a little. They are not

the two dusty millers in the white mill down by the river, where

the great water-wheel goes heavily round and round, like the

monotonous days and nights in this forgotten place. Then who are

they, for there is no one else? No; this deponent maketh oath and

saith that there is no one else, save and except the waiter at the

Dodo, now laying the cloth. I have paced the streets, and stared

at the houses, and am come back to the blank bow window of the

Dodo; and the town clocks strike seven, and the reluctant echoes

seem to cry, 'Don't wake us!' and the bandy-legged baby has gone

home to bed.

If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird - if he had only some

confused idea of making a comfortable nest - I could hope to get

through the hours between this and bed-time, without being consumed

by devouring melancholy. But, the Dodo's habits are all wrong. It

provides me with a trackless desert of sitting-room, with a chair

for every day in the year, a table for every month, and a waste of

sideboard where a lonely China vase pines in a corner for its mate

long departed, and will never make a match with the candlestick in

the opposite corner if it live till Doomsday. The Dodo has nothing

in the larder. Even now, I behold the Boots returning with my sole

in a piece of paper; and with that portion of my dinner, the Boots,

perceiving me at the blank bow window, slaps his leg as he comes

across the road, pretending it is something else. The Dodo

excludes the outer air. When I mount up to my bedroom, a smell of

closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like sleepy snuff. The

loose little bits of carpet writhe under my tread, and take wormy

shapes. I don't know the ridiculous man in the looking-glass,

beyond having met him once or twice in a dish-cover - and I can

never shave HIM to-morrow morning! The Dodo is narrow-minded as to

towels; expects me to wash on a freemason's apron without the

trimming: when I asked for soap, gives me a stony-hearted something

white, with no more lather in it than the Elgin marbles. The Dodo

has seen better days, and possesses interminable stables at the

back - silent, grass-grown, broken-windowed, horseless.

This mournful bird can fry a sole, however, which is much. Can

cook a steak, too, which is more. I wonder where it gets its

Sherry? If I were to send my pint of wine to some famous chemist

to be analysed, what would it turn out to be made of? It tastes of

pepper, sugar, bitter-almonds, vinegar, warm knives, any flat

drinks, and a little brandy. Would it unman a Spanish exile by

reminding him of his native land at all? I think not. If there

really be any townspeople out of the churchyards, and if a caravan

of them ever do dine, with a bottle of wine per man, in this desert

of the Dodo, it must make good for the doctor next day!

Where was the waiter born? How did he come here? Has he any hope

of getting away from here? Does he ever receive a letter, or take

a ride upon the railway, or see anything but the Dodo? Perhaps he

has seen the Berlin Wool. He appears to have a silent sorrow on

him, and it may be that. He clears the table; draws the dingy

curtains of the great bow window, which so unwillingly consent to

meet, that they must be pinned together; leaves me by the fire with

my pint decanter, and a little thin funnel-shaped wine-glass, and a

plate of pale biscuits - in themselves engendering desperation.

No book, no newspaper! I left the Arabian Nights in the railway

carriage, and have nothing to read but Bradshaw, and 'that way

madness lies.' Remembering what prisoners and ship-wrecked

mariners have done to exercise their minds in solitude, I repeat

the multiplication table, the pence table, and the shilling table:

which are all the tables I happen to know. What if I write

something? The Dodo keeps no pens but steel pens; and those I

always stick through the paper, and can turn to no other account.

What am I to do? Even if I could have the bandy-legged baby

knocked up and brought here, I could offer him nothing but sherry,

and that would be the death of him. He would never hold up his

head again if he touched it. I can't go to bed, because I have

conceived a mortal hatred for my bedroom; and I can't go away,

because there is no train for my place of destination until

morning. To burn the biscuits will be but a fleeting joy; still it

is a temporary relief, and here they go on the fire! Shall I break

the plate? First let me look at the back, and see who made it.

COPELAND.

Copeland! Stop a moment. Was it yesterday I visited Copeland's

works, and saw them making plates? In the confusion of travelling

about, it might be yesterday or it might be yesterday month; but I

think it was yesterday. I appeal to the plate. The plate says,

decidedly, yesterday. I find the plate, as I look at it, growing

into a companion.

Don't you remember (says the plate) how you steamed away, yesterday

morning, in the bright sun and the east wind, along the valley of

the sparkling Trent? Don't you recollect how many kilns you flew

past, looking like the bowls of gigantic tobacco-pipes, cut short

off from the stem and turned upside down? And the fires - and the

smoke - and the roads made with bits of crockery, as if all the

plates and dishes in the civilised world had been Macadamised,

expressly for the laming of all the horses? Of course I do!

And don't you remember (says the plate) how you alighted at Stoke -

a picturesque heap of houses, kilns, smoke, wharfs, canals, and

river, lying (as was most appropriate) in a basin - and how, after

climbing up the sides of the basin to look at the prospect, you

trundled down again at a walking-match pace, and straight proceeded

to my father's, Copeland's, where the whole of my family, high and

low, rich and poor, are turned out upon the world from our nursery

and seminary, covering some fourteen acres of ground? And don't

you remember what we spring from:- heaps of lumps of clay,

partially prepared and cleaned in Devonshire and Dorsetshire,

whence said clay principally comes - and hills of flint, without

which we should want our ringing sound, and should never be

musical? And as to the flint, don't you recollect that it is first

burnt in kilns, and is then laid under the four iron feet of a

demon slave, subject to violent stamping fits, who, when they come

on, stamps away insanely with his four iron legs, and would crush

all the flint in the Isle of Thanet to powder, without leaving off?

And as to the clay, don't you recollect how it is put into mills or

teazers, and is sliced, and dug, and cut at, by endless knives,

clogged and sticky, but persistent - and is pressed out of that

machine through a square trough, whose form it takes - and is cut

off in square lumps and thrown into a vat, and there mixed with

water, and beaten to a pulp by paddle-wheels - and is then run into

a rough house, all rugged beams and ladders splashed with white, -

superintended by Grindoff the Miller in his working clothes, all

splashed with white, - where it passes through no end of machinery-

moved sieves all splashed with white, arranged in an ascending

scale of fineness (some so fine, that three hundred silk threads

cross each other in a single square inch of their surface), and all

in a violent state of ague with their teeth for ever chattering,

and their bodies for ever shivering! And as to the flint again,

isn't it mashed and mollified and troubled and soothed, exactly as

rags are in a paper-mill, until it is reduced to a pap so fine that

it contains no atom of 'grit' perceptible to the nicest taste? And

as to the flint and the clay together, are they not, after all

this, mixed in the proportion of five of clay to one of flint, and

isn't the compound - known as 'slip' - run into oblong troughs,

where its superfluous moisture may evaporate; and finally, isn't it

slapped and banged and beaten and patted and kneaded and wedged and

knocked about like butter, until it becomes a beautiful grey dough,

ready for the potter's use?

In regard of the potter, popularly so called (says the plate), you

don't mean to say you have forgotten that a workman called a

Thrower is the man under whose hand this grey dough takes the

shapes of the simpler household vessels as quickly as the eye can

follow? You don't mean to say you cannot call him up before you,

sitting, with his attendant woman, at his potter's wheel - a disc

about the size of a dinner-plate, revolving on two drums slowly or

quickly as he wills - who made you a complete breakfast-set for a

bachelor, as a good-humoured little off-hand joke? You remember

how he took up as much dough as he wanted, and, throwing it on his

wheel, in a moment fashioned it into a teacup - caught up more clay

and made a saucer - a larger dab and whirled it into a teapot -

winked at a smaller dab and converted it into the lid of the

teapot, accurately fitting by the measurement of his eye alone -

coaxed a middle-sized dab for two seconds, broke it, turned it over

at the rim, and made a milkpot - laughed, and turned out a slop-

basin - coughed, and provided for the sugar? Neither, I think, are

you oblivious of the newer mode of making various articles, but

especially basins, according to which improvement a mould revolves

instead of a disc? For you MUST remember (says the plate) how you

saw the mould of a little basin spinning round and round, and how

the workmen smoothed and pressed a handful of dough upon it, and

how with an instrument called a profile (a piece of wood,

representing the profile of a basin's foot) he cleverly scraped and

carved the ring which makes the base of any such basin, and then

took the basin off the lathe like a doughy skull-cap to be dried,

and afterwards (in what is called a green state) to be put into a

second lathe, there to be finished and burnished with a steel

burnisher? And as to moulding in general (says the plate), it

can't be necessary for me to remind you that all ornamental

articles, and indeed all articles not quite circular, are made in

moulds. For you must remember how you saw the vegetable dishes,

for example, being made in moulds; and how the handles of teacups,

and the spouts of teapots, and the feet of tureens, and so forth,

are all made in little separate moulds, and are each stuck on to

the body corporate, of which it is destined to form a part, with a

stuff called 'slag,' as quickly as you can recollect it. Further,

you learnt - you know you did - in the same visit, how the

beautiful sculptures in the delicate new material called Parian,

are all constructed in moulds; how, into that material, animal

bones are ground up, because the phosphate of lime contained in

bones makes it translucent; how everything is moulded, before going

into the fire, one-fourth larger than it is intended to come out of

the fire, because it shrinks in that proportion in the intense

heat; how, when a figure shrinks unequally, it is spoiled -

emerging from the furnace a misshapen birth; a big head and a

little body, or a little head and a big body, or a Quasimodo with

long arms and short legs, or a Miss Biffin with neither legs nor

arms worth mentioning.

And as to the Kilns, in which the firing takes place, and in which

some of the more precious articles are burnt repeatedly, in various

stages of their process towards completion, - as to the Kilns (says

the plate, warming with the recollection), if you don't remember

THEM with a horrible interest, what did you ever go to Copeland's

for? When you stood inside of one of those inverted bowls of a

Pre-Adamite tobacco-pipe, looking up at the blue sky through the

open top far off, as you might have looked up from a well, sunk

under the centre of the pavement of the Pantheon at Rome, had you

the least idea where you were? And when you found yourself

surrounded, in that dome-shaped cavern, by innumerable columns of

an unearthly order of architecture, supporting nothing, and

squeezed close together as if a Pre-Adamite Samson had taken a vast

Hall in his arms and crushed it into the smallest possible space,

had you the least idea what they were? No (says the plate), of

course not! And when you found that each of those pillars was a

pile of ingeniously made vessels of coarse clay - called Saggers -

looking, when separate, like raised-pies for the table of the

mighty Giant Blunderbore, and now all full of various articles of

pottery ranged in them in baking order, the bottom of each vessel

serving for the cover of the one below, and the whole Kiln rapidly

filling with these, tier upon tier, until the last workman should

have barely room to crawl out, before the closing of the jagged

aperture in the wall and the kindling of the gradual fire; did you

not stand amazed to think that all the year round these dread

chambers are heating, white hot - and cooling - and filling - and

emptying - and being bricked up - and broken open - humanly

speaking, for ever and ever? To be sure you did! And standing in

one of those Kilns nearly full, and seeing a free crow shoot across

the aperture a-top, and learning how the fire would wax hotter and

hotter by slow degrees, and would cool similarly through a space of

from forty to sixty hours, did no remembrance of the days when

human clay was burnt oppress you? Yes. I think so! I suspect

that some fancy of a fiery haze and a shortening breath, and a

growing heat, and a gasping prayer; and a figure in black

interposing between you and the sky (as figures in black are very

apt to do), and looking down, before it grew too hot to look and

live, upon the Heretic in his edifying agony - I say I suspect

(says the plate) that some such fancy was pretty strong upon you

when you went out into the air, and blessed God for the bright

spring day and the degenerate times!

After that, I needn't remind you what a relief it was to see the

simplest process of ornamenting this 'biscuit' (as it is called

when baked) with brown circles and blue trees - converting it into

the common crockery-ware that is exported to Africa, and used in

cottages at home. For (says the plate) I am well persuaded that

you bear in mind how those particular jugs and mugs were once more

set upon a lathe and put in motion; and how a man blew the brown

colour (having a strong natural affinity with the material in that

condition) on them from a blowpipe as they twirled; and how his

daughter, with a common brush, dropped blotches of blue upon them

in the right places; and how, tilting the blotches upside down, she

made them run into rude images of trees, and there an end.

And didn't you see (says the plate) planted upon my own brother

that astounding blue willow, with knobbed and gnarled trunk, and

foliage of blue ostrich feathers, which gives our family the title

of 'willow pattern'? And didn't you observe, transferred upon him

at the same time, that blue bridge which spans nothing, growing out

from the roots of the willow; and the three blue Chinese going over

it into a blue temple, which has a fine crop of blue bushes

sprouting out of the roof; and a blue boat sailing above them, the

mast of which is burglariously sticking itself into the foundations

of a blue villa, suspended sky-high, surmounted by a lump of blue

rock, sky-higher, and a couple of billing blue birds, sky-highest -

together with the rest of that amusing blue landscape, which has,

in deference to our revered ancestors of the Cerulean Empire, and

in defiance of every known law of perspective, adorned millions of

our family ever since the days of platters? Didn't you inspect the

copper-plate on which my pattern was deeply engraved? Didn't you

perceive an impression of it taken in cobalt colour at a

cylindrical press, upon a leaf of thin paper, streaming from a

plunge-bath of soap and water? Wasn't the paper impression

daintily spread, by a light-fingered damsel (you KNOW you admired

her!), over the surface of the plate, and the back of the paper

rubbed prodigiously hard - with a long tight roll of flannel, tied

up like a round of hung beef - without so much as ruffling the

paper, wet as it was? Then (says the plate), was not the paper

washed away with a sponge, and didn't there appear, set off upon

the plate, THIS identical piece of Pre-Raphaelite blue distemper

which you now behold? Not to be denied! I had seen all this - and

more. I had been shown, at Copeland's, patterns of beautiful

design, in faultless perspective, which are causing the ugly old

willow to wither out of public favour; and which, being quite as

cheap, insinuate good wholesome natural art into the humblest

households. When Mr. and Mrs. Sprat have satisfied their material

tastes by that equal division of fat and lean which has made their

MENAGE immortal; and have, after the elegant tradition, 'licked the

platter clean,' they can - thanks to modern artists in clay - feast

their intellectual tastes upon excellent delineations of natural

objects.

This reflection prompts me to transfer my attention from the blue

plate to the forlorn but cheerfully painted vase on the sideboard.

And surely (says the plate) you have not forgotten how the outlines

of such groups of flowers as you see there, are printed, just as I

was printed, and are afterwards shaded and filled in with metallic

colours by women and girls? As to the aristocracy of our order,

made of the finer clay-porcelain peers and peeresses; - the slabs,

and panels, and table-tops, and tazze; the endless nobility and

gentry of dessert, breakfast, and tea services; the gemmed perfume

bottles, and scarlet and gold salvers; you saw that they were

painted by artists, with metallic colours laid on with camel-hair

pencils, and afterwards burnt in.

And talking of burning in (says the plate), didn't you find that

every subject, from the willow pattern to the landscape after

Turner - having been framed upon clay or porcelain biscuit - has to

be glazed? Of course, you saw the glaze - composed of various

vitreous materials - laid over every article; and of course you

witnessed the close imprisonment of each piece in saggers upon the

separate system rigidly enforced by means of fine-pointed

earthenware stilts placed between the articles to prevent the

slightest communication or contact. We had in my time - and I

suppose it is the same now - fourteen hours' firing to fix the

glaze and to make it 'run' all over us equally, so as to put a good

shiny and unscratchable surface upon us. Doubtless, you observed

that one sort of glaze - called printing-body - is burnt into the

better sort of ware BEFORE it is printed. Upon this you saw some

of the finest steel engravings transferred, to be fixed by an after

glazing - didn't you? Why, of course you did!

Of course I did. I had seen and enjoyed everything that the plate

recalled to me, and had beheld with admiration how the rotatory

motion which keeps this ball of ours in its place in the great

scheme, with all its busy mites upon it, was necessary throughout

the process, and could only be dispensed with in the fire. So,

listening to the plate's reminders, and musing upon them, I got

through the evening after all, and went to bed. I made but one

sleep of it - for which I have no doubt I am also indebted to the

plate - and left the lonely Dodo in the morning, quite at peace

with it, before the bandy-legged baby was up.

OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND

WE are delighted to find that he has got in! Our honourable friend

is triumphantly returned to serve in the next Parliament. He is

the honourable member for Verbosity - the best represented place in

England.

Our honourable friend has issued an address of congratulation to

the Electors, which is worthy of that noble constituency, and is a

very pretty piece of composition. In electing him, he says, they

have covered themselves with glory, and England has been true to

herself. (In his preliminary address he had remarked, in a

poetical quotation of great rarity, that nought could make us rue,

if England to herself did prove but true.)

Our honourable friend delivers a prediction, in the same document,

that the feeble minions of a faction will never hold up their heads

any more; and that the finger of scorn will point at them in their

dejected state, through countless ages of time. Further, that the

hireling tools that would destroy the sacred bulwarks of our

nationality are unworthy of the name of Englishman; and that so

long as the sea shall roll around our ocean-girded isle, so long

his motto shall be, No surrender. Certain dogged persons of low

principles and no intellect, have disputed whether anybody knows

who the minions are, or what the faction is, or which are the

hireling tools and which the sacred bulwarks, or what it is that is

never to be surrendered, and if not, why not? But, our honourable

friend the member for Verbosity knows all about it.

Our honourable friend has sat in several parliaments, and given

bushels of votes. He is a man of that profundity in the matter of

vote-giving, that you never know what he means. When he seems to

be voting pure white, he may be in reality voting jet black. When

he says Yes, it is just as likely as not - or rather more so - that

he means No. This is the statesmanship of our honourable friend.

It is in this, that he differs from mere unparliamentary men. YOU

may not know what he meant then, or what he means now; but, our

honourable friend knows, and did from the first know, both what he

meant then, and what he means now; and when he said he didn't mean

it then, he did in fact say, that he means it now. And if you mean

to say that you did not then, and do not now, know what he did mean

then, or does mean now, our honourable friend will be glad to

receive an explicit declaration from you whether you are prepared

to destroy the sacred bulwarks of our nationality.

Our honourable friend, the member for Verbosity, has this great

attribute, that he always means something, and always means the

same thing. When he came down to that House and mournfully boasted

in his place, as an individual member of the assembled Commons of

this great and happy country, that he could lay his hand upon his

heart, and solemnly declare that no consideration on earth should

induce him, at any time or under any circumstances, to go as far

north as Berwick-upon-Tweed; and when he nevertheless, next year,

did go to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and even beyond it, to Edinburgh; he

had one single meaning, one and indivisible. And God forbid (our

honourable friend says) that he should waste another argument upon

the man who professes that he cannot understand it! 'I do NOT,

gentlemen,' said our honourable friend, with indignant emphasis and

amid great cheering, on one such public occasion. 'I do NOT,

gentlemen, I am free to confess, envy the feelings of that man

whose mind is so constituted as that he can hold such language to

me, and yet lay his head upon his pillow, claiming to be a native

of that land,

Whose march is o'er the mountain-wave,

Whose home is on the deep!

(Vehement cheering, and man expelled.)

When our honourable friend issued his preliminary address to the

constituent body of Verbosity on the occasion of one particular

glorious triumph, it was supposed by some of his enemies, that even

he would be placed in a situation of difficulty by the following

comparatively trifling conjunction of circumstances. The dozen

noblemen and gentlemen whom our honourable friend supported, had

'come in,' expressly to do a certain thing. Now, four of the dozen

said, at a certain place, that they didn't mean to do that thing,

and had never meant to do it; another four of the dozen said, at

another certain place, that they did mean to do that thing, and had

always meant to do it; two of the remaining four said, at two other

certain places, that they meant to do half of that thing (but

differed about which half), and to do a variety of nameless wonders

instead of the other half; and one of the remaining two declared

that the thing itself was dead and buried, while the other as

strenuously protested that it was alive and kicking. It was

admitted that the parliamentary genius of our honourable friend

would be quite able to reconcile such small discrepancies as these;

but, there remained the additional difficulty that each of the

twelve made entirely different statements at different places, and

that all the twelve called everything visible and invisible, sacred

and profane, to witness, that they were a perfectly impregnable

phalanx of unanimity. This, it was apprehended, would be a

stumbling-block to our honourable friend.

The difficulty came before our honourable friend, in this way. He

went down to Verbosity to meet his free and independent

constituents, and to render an account (as he informed them in the

local papers) of the trust they had confided to his hands - that

trust which it was one of the proudest privileges of an Englishman

to possess - that trust which it was the proudest privilege of an

Englishman to hold. It may be mentioned as a proof of the great

general interest attaching to the contest, that a Lunatic whom

nobody employed or knew, went down to Verbosity with several

thousand pounds in gold, determined to give the whole away - which

he actually did; and that all the publicans opened their houses for

nothing. Likewise, several fighting men, and a patriotic group of

burglars sportively armed with life-preservers, proceeded (in

barouches and very drunk) to the scene of action at their own

expense; these children of nature having conceived a warm

attachment to our honourable friend, and intending, in their

artless manner, to testify it by knocking the voters in the

opposite interest on the head.

Our honourable friend being come into the presence of his

constituents, and having professed with great suavity that he was

delighted to see his good friend Tipkisson there, in his working-

dress - his good friend Tipkisson being an inveterate saddler, who

always opposes him, and for whom he has a mortal hatred - made them

a brisk, ginger-beery sort of speech, in which he showed them how

the dozen noblemen and gentlemen had (in exactly ten days from

their coming in) exercised a surprisingly beneficial effect on the

whole financial condition of Europe, had altered the state of the

exports and imports for the current half-year, had prevented the

drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the glut of the

raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with which the

superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce - and all

this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce,

and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per

cent.! He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great

power, what were his principles? His principles were what they

always had been. His principles were written in the countenances

of the lion and unicorn; were stamped indelibly upon the royal

shield which those grand animals supported, and upon the free words

of fire which that shield bore. His principles were, Britannia and

her sea-king trident! His principles were, commercial prosperity

co-existently with perfect and profound agricultural contentment;

but short of this he would never stop. His principles were, these,

- with the addition of his colours nailed to the mast, every man's

heart in the right place, every man's eye open, every man's hand

ready, every man's mind on the alert. His principles were these,

concurrently with a general revision of something - speaking

generally - and a possible readjustment of something else, not to

be mentioned more particularly. His principles, to sum up all in a

word, were, Hearths and Altars, Labour and Capital, Crown and

Sceptre, Elephant and Castle. And now, if his good friend

Tipkisson required any further explanation from him, he (our

honourable friend) was there, willing and ready to give it.

Tipkisson, who all this time had stood conspicuous in the crowd,

with his arms folded and his eyes intently fastened on our

honourable friend: Tipkisson, who throughout our honourable

friend's address had not relaxed a muscle of his visage, but had

stood there, wholly unaffected by the torrent of eloquence: an

object of contempt and scorn to mankind (by which we mean, of

course, to the supporters of our honourable friend); Tipkisson now

said that he was a plain man (Cries of 'You are indeed!'), and that

what he wanted to know was, what our honourable friend and the

dozen noblemen and gentlemen were driving at?

Our honourable friend immediately replied, 'At the illimitable

perspective.'

It was considered by the whole assembly that this happy statement

of our honourable friend's political views ought, immediately, to

have settled Tipkisson's business and covered him with confusion;

but, that implacable person, regardless of the execrations that

were heaped upon him from all sides (by which we mean, of course,

from our honourable friend's side), persisted in retaining an

unmoved countenance, and obstinately retorted that if our

honourable friend meant that, he wished to know what THAT meant?

It was in repelling this most objectionable and indecent

opposition, that our honourable friend displayed his highest

qualifications for the representation of Verbosity. His warmest

supporters present, and those who were best acquainted with his

generalship, supposed that the moment was come when he would fall

back upon the sacred bulwarks of our nationality. No such thing.

He replied thus: 'My good friend Tipkisson, gentlemen, wishes to

know what I mean when he asks me what we are driving at, and when I

candidly tell him, at the illimitable perspective, he wishes (if I

understand him) to know what I mean?' - 'I do!' says Tipkisson,

amid cries of 'Shame' and 'Down with him.' 'Gentlemen,' says our

honourable friend, 'I will indulge my good friend Tipkisson, by

telling him, both what I mean and what I don't mean. (Cheers and

cries of 'Give it him!') Be it known to him then, and to all whom

it may concern, that I do mean altars, hearths, and homes, and that

I don't mean mosques and Mohammedanism!' The effect of this home-

thrust was terrific. Tipkisson (who is a Baptist) was hooted down

and hustled out, and has ever since been regarded as a Turkish

Renegade who contemplates an early pilgrimage to Mecca. Nor was he

the only discomfited man. The charge, while it stuck to him, was

magically transferred to our honourable friend's opponent, who was

represented in an immense variety of placards as a firm believer in

Mahomet; and the men of Verbosity were asked to choose between our

honourable friend and the Bible, and our honourable friend's

opponent and the Koran. They decided for our honourable friend,

and rallied round the illimitable perspective.

It has been claimed for our honourable friend, with much appearance

of reason, that he was the first to bend sacred matters to

electioneering tactics. However this may be, the fine precedent

was undoubtedly set in a Verbosity election: and it is certain that

our honourable friend (who was a disciple of Brahma in his youth,

and was a Buddhist when we had the honour of travelling with him a

few years ago) always professes in public more anxiety than the

whole Bench of Bishops, regarding the theological and doxological

opinions of every man, woman, and child, in the United Kingdom.

As we began by saying that our honourable friend has got in again

at this last election, and that we are delighted to find that he

has got in, so we will conclude. Our honourable friend cannot come

in for Verbosity too often. It is a good sign; it is a great

example. It is to men like our honourable friend, and to contests

like those from which he comes triumphant, that we are mainly

indebted for that ready interest in politics, that fresh enthusiasm

in the discharge of the duties of citizenship, that ardent desire

to rush to the poll, at present so manifest throughout England.

When the contest lies (as it sometimes does) between two such men

as our honourable friend, it stimulates the finest emotions of our

nature, and awakens the highest admiration of which our heads and

hearts are capable.

It is not too much to predict that our honourable friend will be

always at his post in the ensuing session. Whatever the question

be, or whatever the form of its discussion; address to the crown,

election petition, expenditure of the public money, extension of

the public suffrage, education, crime; in the whole house, in

committee of the whole house, in select committee; in every

parliamentary discussion of every subject, everywhere: the

Honourable Member for Verbosity will most certainly be found.

OUR SCHOOL

WE went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the

Railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had

swallowed the playground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off

the corner of the house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions,

presented itself, in a green stage of stucco, profilewise towards

the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without a handle, standing on

end.

It seems as if our schools were doomed to be the sport of change.

We have faint recollections of a Preparatory Day-School, which we

have sought in vain, and which must have been pulled down to make a

new street, ages ago. We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting

to a belief, that it was over a dyer's shop. We know that you went

up steps to it; that you frequently grazed your knees in doing so;

that you generally got your leg over the scraper, in trying to

scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe. The mistress of

the Establishment holds no place in our memory; but, rampant on one

eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and narrow, is a puffy

pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over

Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had

of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his

moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp

tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an

otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we

conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name FIDELE. He

belonged to some female, chiefly inhabiting a back-parlour, whose

life appears to us to have been consumed in sniffing, and in

wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For her, he would sit up and

balance cake upon his nose, and not eat it until twenty had been

counted. To the best of our belief we were once called in to

witness this performance; when, unable, even in his milder moments,

to endure our presence, he instantly made at us, cake and all.

Why a something in mourning, called 'Miss Frost,' should still

connect itself with our preparatory school, we are unable to say.

We retain no impression of the beauty of Miss Frost - if she were

beautiful; or of the mental fascinations of Miss Frost - if she

were accomplished; yet her name and her black dress hold an

enduring place in our remembrance. An equally impersonal boy,

whose name has long since shaped itself unalterably into 'Master

Mawls,' is not to be dislodged from our brain. Retaining no

vindictive feeling towards Mawls - no feeling whatever, indeed - we

infer that neither he nor we can have loved Miss Frost. Our first

impression of Death and Burial is associated with this formless

pair. We all three nestled awfully in a corner one wintry day,

when the wind was blowing shrill, with Miss Frost's pinafore over

our heads; and Miss Frost told us in a whisper about somebody being

'screwed down.' It is the only distinct recollection we preserve

of these impalpable creatures, except a suspicion that the manners

of Master Mawls were susceptible of much improvement. Generally

speaking, we may observe that whenever we see a child intently

occupied with its nose, to the exclusion of all other subjects of

interest, our mind reverts, in a flash, to Master Mawls.

But, the School that was Our School before the Railroad came and

overthrew it, was quite another sort of place. We were old enough

to be put into Virgil when we went there, and to get Prizes for a

variety of polishing on which the rust has long accumulated. It

was a School of some celebrity in its neighbourhood - nobody could

have said why - and we had the honour to attain and hold the

eminent position of first boy. The master was supposed among us to

know nothing, and one of the ushers was supposed to know

everything. We are still inclined to think the first-named

supposition perfectly correct.

We have a general idea that its subject had been in the leather

trade, and had bought us - meaning Our School - of another

proprietor who was immensely learned. Whether this belief had any

real foundation, we are not likely ever to know now. The only

branches of education with which he showed the least acquaintance,

were, ruling and corporally punishing. He was always ruling

ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler, or smiting the palms

of offenders with the same diabolical instrument, or viciously

drawing a pair of pantaloons tight with one of his large hands, and

caning the wearer with the other. We have no doubt whatever that

this occupation was the principal solace of his existence.

A profound respect for money pervaded Our School, which was, of

course, derived from its Chief. We remember an idiotic goggle-eyed

boy, with a big head and half-crowns without end, who suddenly

appeared as a parlour-boarder, and was rumoured to have come by sea

from some mysterious part of the earth where his parents rolled in

gold. He was usually called 'Mr.' by the Chief, and was said to

feed in the parlour on steaks and gravy; likewise to drink currant

wine. And he openly stated that if rolls and coffee were ever

denied him at breakfast, he would write home to that unknown part

of the globe from which he had come, and cause himself to be

recalled to the regions of gold. He was put into no form or class,

but learnt alone, as little as he liked - and he liked very little

- and there was a belief among us that this was because he was too

wealthy to be 'taken down.' His special treatment, and our vague

association of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and

Coral Reefs occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as his

history. A tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject - if

our memory does not deceive us, by the hand that now chronicles

these recollections - in which his father figured as a Pirate, and

was shot for a voluminous catalogue of atrocities: first imparting

to his wife the secret of the cave in which his wealth was stored,

and from which his only son's half-crowns now issued. Dumbledon

(the boy's name) was represented as 'yet unborn' when his brave

father met his fate; and the despair and grief of Mrs. Dumbledon at

that calamity was movingly shadowed forth as having weakened the

parlour-boarder's mind. This production was received with great

favour, and was twice performed with closed doors in the dining-

room. But, it got wind, and was seized as libellous, and brought

the unlucky poet into severe affliction. Some two years

afterwards, all of a sudden one day, Dumbledon vanished. It was

whispered that the Chief himself had taken him down to the Docks,

and re-shipped him for the Spanish Main; but nothing certain was

ever known about his disappearance. At this hour, we cannot

thoroughly disconnect him from California.

Our School was rather famous for mysterious pupils. There was

another - a heavy young man, with a large double-cased silver

watch, and a fat knife the handle of which was a perfect tool-box -

who unaccountably appeared one day at a special desk of his own,

erected close to that of the Chief, with whom he held familiar

converse. He lived in the parlour, and went out for his walks, and

never took the least notice of us - even of us, the first boy -

unless to give us a deprecatory kick, or grimly to take our hat off

and throw it away, when he encountered us out of doors, which

unpleasant ceremony he always performed as he passed - not even

condescending to stop for the purpose. Some of us believed that

the classical attainments of this phenomenon were terrific, but

that his penmanship and arithmetic were defective, and he had come

there to mend them; others, that he was going to set up a school,

and had paid the Chief 'twenty-five pound down,' for leave to see

Our School at work. The gloomier spirits even said that he was

going to buy us; against which contingency, conspiracies were set

on foot for a general defection and running away. However, he

never did that. After staying for a quarter, during which period,

though closely observed, he was never seen to do anything but make

pens out of quills, write small hand in a secret portfolio, and

punch the point of the sharpest blade in his knife into his desk

all over it, he too disappeared, and his place knew him no more.

There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, with a delicate complexion

and rich curling hair, who, we found out, or thought we found out

(we have no idea now, and probably had none then, on what grounds,

but it was confidentially revealed from mouth to mouth), was the

son of a Viscount who had deserted his lovely mother. It was

understood that if he had his rights, he would be worth twenty

thousand a year. And that if his mother ever met his father, she

would shoot him with a silver pistol, which she carried, always

loaded to the muzzle, for that purpose. He was a very suggestive

topic. So was a young Mulatto, who was always believed (though

very amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere. But, we think

they were both outshone, upon the whole, by another boy who claimed

to have been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and to have only

one birthday in five years. We suspect this to have been a fiction

- but he lived upon it all the time he was at Our School.

The principal currency of Our School was slate pencil. It had some

inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never reduced to a

standard. To have a great hoard of it was somehow to be rich. We

used to bestow it in charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon

our chosen friends. When the holidays were coming, contributions

were solicited for certain boys whose relatives were in India, and

who were appealed for under the generic name of 'Holiday-stoppers,'

- appropriate marks of remembrance that should enliven and cheer

them in their homeless state. Personally, we always contributed

these tokens of sympathy in the form of slate pencil, and always

felt that it would be a comfort and a treasure to them.

Our School was remarkable for white mice. Red-polls, linnets, and

even canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other

strange refuges for birds; but white mice were the favourite stock.

The boys trained the mice, much better than the masters trained the

boys. We recall one white mouse, who lived in the cover of a Latin

dictionary, who ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered

muskets, turned wheels, and even made a very creditable appearance

on the stage as the Dog of Montargis. He might have achieved

greater things, but for having the misfortune to mistake his way in

a triumphal procession to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep

inkstand, and was dyed black and drowned. The mice were the

occasion of some most ingenious engineering, in the construction of

their houses and instruments of performance. The famous one

belonged to a company of proprietors, some of whom have since made

Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs; the chairman has erected mills

and bridges in New Zealand.

The usher at Our School, who was considered to know everything as

opposed to the Chief, who was considered to know nothing, was a

bony, gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man in rusty black. It

was whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby's sisters (Maxby

lived close by, and was a day pupil), and further that he 'favoured

Maxby.' As we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby's sisters on

half-holidays. He once went to the play with them, and wore a

white waistcoat and a rose: which was considered among us

equivalent to a declaration. We were of opinion on that occasion,

that to the last moment he expected Maxby's father to ask him to

dinner at five o'clock, and therefore neglected his own dinner at

half-past one, and finally got none. We exaggerated in our

imaginations the extent to which he punished Maxby's father's cold

meat at supper; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated with

wine and water when he came home. But, we all liked him; for he

had a good knowledge of boys, and would have made it a much better

school if he had had more power. He was writing master,

mathematical master, English master, made out the bills, mended the

pens, and did all sorts of things. He divided the little boys with

the Latin master (they were smuggled through their rudimentary

books, at odd times when there was nothing else to do), and he

always called at parents' houses to inquire after sick boys,

because he had gentlemanly manners. He was rather musical, and on

some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it

was lost, and it made the most extraordinary sounds when he

sometimes tried to play it of an evening. His holidays never began

(on account of the bills) until long after ours; but, in the summer

vacations he used to take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack;

and at Christmas time, he went to see his father at Chipping

Norton, who we all said (on no authority) was a dairy-fed pork-

butcher. Poor fellow! He was very low all day on Maxby's sister's

wedding-day, and afterwards was thought to favour Maxby more than

ever, though he had been expected to spite him. He has been dead

these twenty years. Poor fellow!

Our remembrance of Our School, presents the Latin master as a

colourless doubled-up near-sighted man with a crutch, who was

always cold, and always putting onions into his ears for deafness,

and always disclosing ends of flannel under all his garments, and

almost always applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief to some part

of his face with a screwing action round and round. He was a very

good scholar, and took great pains where he saw intelligence and a

desire to learn: otherwise, perhaps not. Our memory presents him

(unless teased into a passion) with as little energy as colour - as

having been worried and tormented into monotonous feebleness - as

having had the best part of his life ground out of him in a Mill of

boys. We remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry

afternoon with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not

when the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the floor; how the

Chief aroused him, in the midst of a dread silence, and said, 'Mr.

Blinkins, are you ill, sir?' how he blushingly replied, 'Sir,

rather so;' how the Chief retorted with severity, 'Mr. Blinkins,

this is no place to be ill in' (which was very, very true), and

walked back solemn as the ghost in Hamlet, until, catching a

wandering eye, he called that boy for inattention, and happily

expressed his feelings towards the Latin master through the medium

of a substitute.

There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a gig,

and taught the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an

accomplishment in great social demand in after life); and there was

a brisk little French master who used to come in the sunniest

weather, with a handleless umbrella, and to whom the Chief was

always polite, because (as we believed), if the Chief offended him,

he would instantly address the Chief in French, and for ever

confound him before the boys with his inability to understand or

reply.

There was besides, a serving man, whose name was Phil. Our

retrospective glance presents Phil as a shipwrecked carpenter, cast

away upon the desert island of a school, and carrying into practice

an ingenious inkling of many trades. He mended whatever was

broken, and made whatever was wanted. He was general glazier,

among other things, and mended all the broken windows - at the

prime cost (as was darkly rumoured among us) of ninepence, for

every square charged three-and-six to parents. We had a high

opinion of his mechanical genius, and generally held that the Chief

'knew something bad of him,' and on pain of divulgence enforced

Phil to be his bondsman. We particularly remember that Phil had a

sovereign contempt for learning: which engenders in us a respect

for his sagacity, as it implies his accurate observation of the

relative positions of the Chief and the ushers. He was an

impenetrable man, who waited at table between whiles, and

throughout 'the half' kept the boxes in severe custody. He was

morose, even to the Chief, and never smiled, except at breaking-up,

when, in acknowledgment of the toast, 'Success to Phil! Hooray!'

he would slowly carve a grin out of his wooden face, where it would

remain until we were all gone. Nevertheless, one time when we had

the scarlet fever in the school, Phil nursed all the sick boys of

his own accord, and was like a mother to them.

There was another school not far off, and of course Our School

could have nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way

with schools, whether of boys or men. Well! the railway has

swallowed up ours, and the locomotives now run smoothly over its

ashes.

So fades and languishes, grows dim and dies,

All that this world is proud of,

- and is not proud of, too. It had little reason to be proud of

Our School, and has done much better since in that way, and will do

far better yet.

OUR VESTRY

WE have the glorious privilege of being always in hot water if we

like. We are a shareholder in a Great Parochial British Joint

Stock Bank of Balderdash. We have a Vestry in our borough, and can

vote for a vestryman - might even BE a vestryman, mayhap, if we

were inspired by a lofty and noble ambition. Which we are not.

Our Vestry is a deliberative assembly of the utmost dignity and

importance. Like the Senate of ancient Rome, its awful gravity

overpowers (or ought to overpower) barbarian visitors. It sits in

the Capitol (we mean in the capital building erected for it),

chiefly on Saturdays, and shakes the earth to its centre with the

echoes of its thundering eloquence, in a Sunday paper.

To get into this Vestry in the eminent capacity of Vestryman,

gigantic efforts are made, and Herculean exertions used. It is

made manifest to the dullest capacity at every election, that if we

reject Snozzle we are done for, and that if we fail to bring in

Blunderbooze at the top of the poll, we are unworthy of the dearest

rights of Britons. Flaming placards are rife on all the dead walls

in the borough, public-houses hang out banners, hackney-cabs burst

into full-grown flowers of type, and everybody is, or should be, in

a paroxysm of anxiety.

At these momentous crises of the national fate, we are much

assisted in our deliberations by two eminent volunteers; one of

whom subscribes himself A Fellow Parishioner, the other, A Rate-

Payer. Who they are, or what they are, or where they are, nobody

knows; but, whatever one asserts, the other contradicts. They are

both voluminous writers, indicting more epistles than Lord

Chesterfield in a single week; and the greater part of their

feelings are too big for utterance in anything less than capital

letters. They require the additional aid of whole rows of notes of

admiration, like balloons, to point their generous indignation; and

they sometimes communicate a crushing severity to stars. As thus:

MEN OF MOONEYMOUNT.

Is it, or is it not, a * * * to saddle the parish with a debt of

2,745 pounds 6S. 9D., yet claim to be a RIGID ECONOMIST?

Is it, or is it not, a * * * to state as a fact what is proved to

be BOTH A MORAL AND A PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY?

Is it, or is it not, a * * * to call 2,745 pounds 6S. 9D. nothing;

and nothing, something?

Do you, or do you NOT want a * * * TO REPRESENT YOU IN THE VESTRY?

Your consideration of these questions is recommended to you by

A FELLOW PARISHIONER.

It was to this important public document that one of our first

orators, MR. MAGG (of Little Winkling Street), adverted, when he

opened the great debate of the fourteenth of November by saying,

'Sir, I hold in my hand an anonymous slander' - and when the

interruption, with which he was at that point assailed by the

opposite faction, gave rise to that memorable discussion on a point

of order which will ever be remembered with interest by

constitutional assemblies. In the animated debate to which we

refer, no fewer than thirty-seven gentlemen, many of them of great

eminence, including MR. WIGSBY (of Chumbledon Square), were seen

upon their legs at one time; and it was on the same great occasion

that DOGGINSON - regarded in our Vestry as 'a regular John Bull:'

we believe, in consequence of his having always made up his mind on

every subject without knowing anything about it - informed another

gentleman of similar principles on the opposite side, that if he

'cheek'd him,' he would resort to the extreme measure of knocking

his blessed head off.

This was a great occasion. But, our Vestry shines habitually. In

asserting its own pre-eminence, for instance, it is very strong.

On the least provocation, or on none, it will be clamorous to know

whether it is to be 'dictated to,' or 'trampled on,' or 'ridden

over rough-shod.' Its great watchword is Self-government. That is

to say, supposing our Vestry to favour any little harmless disorder

like Typhus Fever, and supposing the Government of the country to

be, by any accident, in such ridiculous hands, as that any of its

authorities should consider it a duty to object to Typhus Fever -

obviously an unconstitutional objection - then, our Vestry cuts in

with a terrible manifesto about Self-government, and claims its

independent right to have as much Typhus Fever as pleases itself.

Some absurd and dangerous persons have represented, on the other

hand, that though our Vestry may be able to 'beat the bounds' of

its own parish, it may not be able to beat the bounds of its own

diseases; which (say they) spread over the whole land, in an ever

expanding circle of waste, and misery, and death, and widowhood,

and orphanage, and desolation. But, our Vestry makes short work of

any such fellows as these.

It was our Vestry - pink of Vestries as it is - that in support of

its favourite principle took the celebrated ground of denying the

existence of the last pestilence that raged in England, when the

pestilence was raging at the Vestry doors. Dogginson said it was

plums; Mr. Wigsby (of Chumbledon Square) said it was oysters; Mr.

Magg (of Little Winkling Street) said, amid great cheering, it was

the newspapers. The noble indignation of our Vestry with that un-

English institution the Board of Health, under those circumstances,

yields one of the finest passages in its history. It wouldn't hear

of rescue. Like Mr. Joseph Miller's Frenchman, it would be drowned

and nobody should save it. Transported beyond grammar by its

kindled ire, it spoke in unknown tongues, and vented unintelligible

bellowings, more like an ancient oracle than the modern oracle it

is admitted on all hands to be. Rare exigencies produce rare

things; and even our Vestry, new hatched to the woful time, came

forth a greater goose than ever.

But this, again, was a special occasion. Our Vestry, at more

ordinary periods, demands its meed of praise.

Our Vestry is eminently parliamentary. Playing at Parliament is

its favourite game. It is even regarded by some of its members as

a chapel of ease to the House of Commons: a Little Go to be passed

first. It has its strangers' gallery, and its reported debates

(see the Sunday paper before mentioned), and our Vestrymen are in

and out of order, and on and off their legs, and above all are

transcendently quarrelsome, after the pattern of the real original.

Our Vestry being assembled, Mr. Magg never begs to trouble Mr.

Wigsby with a simple inquiry. He knows better than that. Seeing

the honourable gentleman, associated in their minds with Chumbledon

Square, in his place, he wishes to ask that honourable gentleman

what the intentions of himself, and those with whom he acts, may

be, on the subject of the paving of the district known as Piggleum

Buildings? Mr. Wigsby replies (with his eye on next Sunday's

paper) that in reference to the question which has been put to him

by the honourable gentleman opposite, he must take leave to say,

that if that honourable gentleman had had the courtesy to give him

notice of that question, he (Mr. Wigsby) would have consulted with

his colleagues in reference to the advisability, in the present

state of the discussions on the new paving-rate, of answering that

question. But, as the honourable gentleman has NOT had the

courtesy to give him notice of that question (great cheering from

the Wigsby interest), he must decline to give the honourable

gentleman the satisfaction he requires. Mr. Magg, instantly rising

to retort, is received with loud cries of 'Spoke!' from the Wigsby

interest, and with cheers from the Magg side of the house.

Moreover, five gentlemen rise to order, and one of them, in revenge

for being taken no notice of, petrifies the assembly by moving that

this Vestry do now adjourn; but, is persuaded to withdraw that

awful proposal, in consideration of its tremendous consequences if

persevered in. Mr. Magg, for the purpose of being heard, then begs

to move, that you, sir, do now pass to the order of the day; and

takes that opportunity of saying, that if an honourable gentleman

whom he has in his eye, and will not demean himself by more

particularly naming (oh, oh, and cheers), supposes that he is to be

put down by clamour, that honourable gentleman - however supported

he may be, through thick and thin, by a Fellow Parishioner, with

whom he is well acquainted (cheers and counter-cheers, Mr. Magg

being invariably backed by the Rate-Payer) - will find himself

mistaken. Upon this, twenty members of our Vestry speak in

succession concerning what the two great men have meant, until it

appears, after an hour and twenty minutes, that neither of them

meant anything. Then our Vestry begins business.

We have said that, after the pattern of the real original, our

Vestry in playing at Parliament is transcendently quarrelsome. It

enjoys a personal altercation above all things. Perhaps the most

redoubtable case of this kind we have ever had - though we have had

so many that it is difficult to decide - was that on which the last

extreme solemnities passed between Mr. Tiddypot (of Gumption House)

and Captain Banger (of Wilderness Walk).

In an adjourned debate on the question whether water could be

regarded in the light of a necessary of life; respecting which

there were great differences of opinion, and many shades of

sentiment; Mr. Tiddypot, in a powerful burst of eloquence against

that hypothesis, frequently made use of the expression that such

and such a rumour had 'reached his ears.' Captain Banger,

following him, and holding that, for purposes of ablution and

refreshment, a pint of water per diem was necessary for every adult

of the lower classes, and half a pint for every child, cast

ridicule upon his address in a sparkling speech, and concluded by

saying that instead of those rumours having reached the ears of the

honourable gentleman, he rather thought the honourable gentleman's

ears must have reached the rumours, in consequence of their well-

known length. Mr. Tiddypot immediately rose, looked the honourable

and gallant gentleman full in the face, and left the Vestry.

The excitement, at this moment painfully intense, was heightened to

an acute degree when Captain Banger rose, and also left the Vestry.

After a few moments of profound silence - one of those breathless

pauses never to be forgotten - Mr. Chib (of Tucket's Terrace, and

the father of the Vestry) rose. He said that words and looks had

passed in that assembly, replete with consequences which every

feeling mind must deplore. Time pressed. The sword was drawn, and

while he spoke the scabbard might be thrown away. He moved that

those honourable gentlemen who had left the Vestry be recalled, and

required to pledge themselves upon their honour that this affair

should go no farther. The motion being by a general union of

parties unanimously agreed to (for everybody wanted to have the

belligerents there, instead of out of sight: which was no fun at

all), Mr. Magg was deputed to recover Captain Banger, and Mr. Chib

himself to go in search of Mr. Tiddypot. The Captain was found in

a conspicuous position, surveying the passing omnibuses from the

top step of the front-door immediately adjoining the beadle's box;

Mr. Tiddypot made a desperate attempt at resistance, but was

overpowered by Mr. Chib (a remarkably hale old gentleman of eighty-

two), and brought back in safety.

Mr. Tiddypot and the Captain being restored to their places, and

glaring on each other, were called upon by the chair to abandon all

homicidal intentions, and give the Vestry an assurance that they

did so. Mr. Tiddypot remained profoundly silent. The Captain

likewise remained profoundly silent, saying that he was observed by

those around him to fold his arms like Napoleon Buonaparte, and to

snort in his breathing - actions but too expressive of gunpowder.

The most intense emotion now prevailed. Several members clustered

in remonstrance round the Captain, and several round Mr. Tiddypot;

but, both were obdurate. Mr. Chib then presented himself amid

tremendous cheering, and said, that not to shrink from the

discharge of his painful duty, he must now move that both

honourable gentlemen be taken into custody by the beadle, and

conveyed to the nearest police-office, there to be held to bail.

The union of parties still continuing, the motion was seconded by

Mr. Wigsby - on all usual occasions Mr. Chib's opponent - and

rapturously carried with only one dissentient voice. This was

Dogginson's, who said from his place 'Let 'em fight it out with

fistes;' but whose coarse remark was received as it merited.

The beadle now advanced along the floor of the Vestry, and beckoned

with his cocked hat to both members. Every breath was suspended.

To say that a pin might have been heard to fall, would be feebly to

express the all-absorbing interest and silence. Suddenly,

enthusiastic cheering broke out from every side of the Vestry.

Captain Banger had risen - being, in fact, pulled up by a friend on

either side, and poked up by a friend behind.

The Captain said, in a deep determined voice, that he had every

respect for that Vestry and every respect for that chair; that he

also respected the honourable gentleman of Gumpton House; but, that

he respected his honour more. Hereupon the Captain sat down,

leaving the whole Vestry much affected. Mr. Tiddypot instantly

rose, and was received with the same encouragement. He likewise

said - and the exquisite art of this orator communicated to the

observation an air of freshness and novelty - that he too had every

respect for that Vestry; that he too had every respect for that

chair. That he too respected the honourable and gallant gentleman

of Wilderness Walk; but, that he too respected his honour more.

'Hows'ever,' added the distinguished Vestryman, 'if the honourable

and gallant gentleman's honour is never more doubted and damaged

than it is by me, he's all right.' Captain Banger immediately

started up again, and said that after those observations, involving

as they did ample concession to his honour without compromising the

honour of the honourable gentleman, he would be wanting in honour

as well as in generosity, if he did not at once repudiate all

intention of wounding the honour of the honourable gentleman, or

saying anything dishonourable to his honourable feelings. These

observations were repeatedly interrupted by bursts of cheers. Mr.

Tiddypot retorted that he well knew the spirit of honour by which

the honourable and gallant gentleman was so honourably animated,

and that he accepted an honourable explanation, offered in a way

that did him honour; but, he trusted that the Vestry would consider

that his (Mr. Tiddypot's) honour had imperatively demanded of him

that painful course which he had felt it due to his honour to

adopt. The Captain and Mr. Tiddypot then touched their hats to one

another across the Vestry, a great many times, and it is thought

that these proceedings (reported to the extent of several columns

in next Sunday's paper) will bring them in as church-wardens next

year.

All this was strictly after the pattern of the real original, and

so are the whole of our Vestry's proceedings. In all their

debates, they are laudably imitative of the windy and wordy slang

of the real original, and of nothing that is better in it. They

have head-strong party animosities, without any reference to the

merits of questions; they tack a surprising amount of debate to a

very little business; they set more store by forms than they do by

substances: - all very like the real original! It has been doubted

in our borough, whether our Vestry is of any utility; but our own

conclusion is, that it is of the use to the Borough that a

diminishing mirror is to a painter, as enabling it to perceive in a

small focus of absurdity all the surface defects of the real

original.

OUR BORE

IT is unnecessary to say that we keep a bore. Everybody does.

But, the bore whom we have the pleasure and honour of enumerating

among our particular friends, is such a generic bore, and has so

many traits (as it appears to us) in common with the great bore

family, that we are tempted to make him the subject of the present

notes. May he be generally accepted!

Our bore is admitted on all hands to be a good-hearted man. He may

put fifty people out of temper, but he keeps his own. He preserves

a sickly solid smile upon his face, when other faces are ruffled by

the perfection he has attained in his art, and has an equable voice

which never travels out of one key or rises above one pitch. His

manner is a manner of tranquil interest. None of his opinions are

startling. Among his deepest-rooted convictions, it may be

mentioned that he considers the air of England damp, and holds that

our lively neighbours - he always calls the French our lively

neighbours - have the advantage of us in that particular.

Nevertheless he is unable to forget that John Bull is John Bull all

the world over, and that England with all her faults is England

still.

Our bore has travelled. He could not possibly be a complete bore

without having travelled. He rarely speaks of his travels without

introducing, sometimes on his own plan of construction, morsels of

the language of the country - which he always translates. You

cannot name to him any little remote town in France, Italy,

Germany, or Switzerland but he knows it well; stayed there a

fortnight under peculiar circumstances. And talking of that little

place, perhaps you know a statue over an old fountain, up a little

court, which is the second - no, the third - stay - yes, the third

turning on the right, after you come out of the Post-house, going

up the hill towards the market? You DON'T know that statue? Nor

that fountain? You surprise him! They are not usually seen by

travellers (most extraordinary, he has never yet met with a single

traveller who knew them, except one German, the most intelligent

man he ever met in his life!) but he thought that YOU would have

been the man to find them out. And then he describes them, in a

circumstantial lecture half an hour long, generally delivered

behind a door which is constantly being opened from the other side;

and implores you, if you ever revisit that place, now do go and

look at that statue and fountain!

Our bore, in a similar manner, being in Italy, made a discovery of

a dreadful picture, which has been the terror of a large portion of

the civilized world ever since. We have seen the liveliest men

paralysed by it, across a broad dining-table. He was lounging

among the mountains, sir, basking in the mellow influences of the

climate, when he came to UNA PICCOLA CHIESA - a little church - or

perhaps it would be more correct to say UNA PICCOLISSIMA CAPPELLA -

the smallest chapel you can possibly imagine - and walked in.

There was nobody inside but a CIECO - a blind man - saying his

prayers, and a VECCHIO PADRE - old friar-rattling a money-box.

But, above the head of that friar, and immediately to the right of

the altar as you enter - to the right of the altar? No. To the

left of the altar as you enter - or say near the centre - there

hung a painting (subject, Virgin and Child) so divine in its

expression, so pure and yet so warm and rich in its tone, so fresh

in its touch, at once so glowing in its colour and so statuesque in

its repose, that our bore cried out in ecstasy, 'That's the finest

picture in Italy!' And so it is, sir. There is no doubt of it.

It is astonishing that that picture is so little known. Even the

painter is uncertain. He afterwards took Blumb, of the Royal

Academy (it is to be observed that our bore takes none but eminent

people to see sights, and that none but eminent people take our

bore), and you never saw a man so affected in your life as Blumb

was. He cried like a child! And then our bore begins his

description in detail - for all this is introductory - and

strangles his hearers with the folds of the purple drapery.

By an equally fortunate conjunction of accidental circumstances, it

happened that when our bore was in Switzerland, he discovered a

Valley, of that superb character, that Chamouni is not to be

mentioned in the same breath with it. This is how it was, sir. He

was travelling on a mule - had been in the saddle some days - when,

as he and the guide, Pierre Blanquo: whom you may know, perhaps? -

our bore is sorry you don't, because he's the only guide deserving

of the name - as he and Pierre were descending, towards evening,

among those everlasting snows, to the little village of La Croix,

our bore observed a mountain track turning off sharply to the

right. At first he was uncertain whether it WAS a track at all,

and in fact, he said to Pierre, 'QU'EST QUE C'EST DONC, MON AMI? -

What is that, my friend? 'Ou, MONSIEUR!' said Pierre - 'Where,

sir?' ' La! - there!' said our bore. 'MONSIEUR, CE N'EST RIEN DE

TOUT - sir, it's nothing at all,' said Pierre. 'ALLONS! - Make

haste. IL VA NEIGET - it's going to snow!' But, our bore was not

to be done in that way, and he firmly replied, 'I wish to go in

that direction - JE VEUX Y ALLER. I am bent upon it - JE SUIS

DETERMINE. EN AVANT! - go ahead!' In consequence of which

firmness on our bore's part, they proceeded, sir, during two hours

of evening, and three of moonlight (they waited in a cavern till

the moon was up), along the slenderest track, overhanging

perpendicularly the most awful gulfs, until they arrived, by a

winding descent, in a valley that possibly, and he may say

probably, was never visited by any stranger before. What a valley!

Mountains piled on mountains, avalanches stemmed by pine forests;

waterfalls, chalets, mountain-torrents, wooden bridges, every

conceivable picture of Swiss scenery! The whole village turned out

to receive our bore. The peasant girls kissed him, the men shook

hands with him, one old lady of benevolent appearance wept upon his

breast. He was conducted, in a primitive triumph, to the little

inn: where he was taken ill next morning, and lay for six weeks,

attended by the amiable hostess (the same benevolent old lady who

had wept over night) and her charming daughter, Fanchette. It is

nothing to say that they were attentive to him; they doted on him.

They called him in their simple way, L'ANGE ANGLAIS - the English

Angel. When our bore left the valley, there was not a dry eye in

the place; some of the people attended him for miles. He begs and

entreats of you as a personal favour, that if you ever go to

Switzerland again (you have mentioned that your last visit was your

twenty-third), you will go to that valley, and see Swiss scenery

for the first time. And if you want really to know the pastoral

people of Switzerland, and to understand them, mention, in that

valley, our bore's name!

Our bore has a crushing brother in the East, who, somehow or other,

was admitted to smoke pipes with Mehemet Ali, and instantly became

an authority on the whole range of Eastern matters, from Haroun

Alraschid to the present Sultan. He is in the habit of expressing

mysterious opinions on this wide range of subjects, but on

questions of foreign policy more particularly, to our bore, in

letters; and our bore is continually sending bits of these letters

to the newspapers (which they never insert), and carrying other

bits about in his pocket-book. It is even whispered that he has

been seen at the Foreign Office, receiving great consideration from

the messengers, and having his card promptly borne into the

sanctuary of the temple. The havoc committed in society by this

Eastern brother is beyond belief. Our bore is always ready with

him. We have known our bore to fall upon an intelligent young

sojourner in the wilderness, in the first sentence of a narrative,

and beat all confidence out of him with one blow of his brother.

He became omniscient, as to foreign policy, in the smoking of those

pipes with Mehemet Ali. The balance of power in Europe, the

machinations of the Jesuits, the gentle and humanising influence of

Austria, the position and prospects of that hero of the noble soul

who is worshipped by happy France, are all easy reading to our

bore's brother. And our bore is so provokingly self-denying about

him! 'I don't pretend to more than a very general knowledge of

these subjects myself,' says he, after enervating the intellects of

several strong men, 'but these are my brother's opinions, and I

believe he is known to be well-informed.'

The commonest incidents and places would appear to have been made

special, expressly for our bore. Ask him whether he ever chanced

to walk, between seven and eight in the morning, down St. James's

Street, London, and he will tell you, never in his life but once.

But, it's curious that that once was in eighteen thirty; and that

as our bore was walking down the street you have just mentioned, at

the hour you have just mentioned - half-past seven - or twenty

minutes to eight. No! Let him be correct! - exactly a quarter

before eight by the palace clock - he met a fresh-coloured, grey-

haired, good-humoured looking gentleman, with a brown umbrella,

who, as he passed him, touched his hat and said, 'Fine morning,

sir, fine morning!' - William the Fourth!

Ask our bore whether he has seen Mr. Barry's new Houses of

Parliament, and he will reply that he has not yet inspected them

minutely, but, that you remind him that it was his singular fortune

to be the last man to see the old Houses of Parliament before the

fire broke out. It happened in this way. Poor John Spine, the

celebrated novelist, had taken him over to South Lambeth to read to

him the last few chapters of what was certainly his best book - as

our bore told him at the time, adding, 'Now, my dear John, touch

it, and you'll spoil it!' - and our bore was going back to the club

by way of Millbank and Parliament Street, when he stopped to think

of Canning, and look at the Houses of Parliament. Now, you know

far more of the philosophy of Mind than our bore does, and are much

better able to explain to him than he is to explain to you why or

wherefore, at that particular time, the thought of fire should come

into his head. But, it did. It did. He thought, What a national

calamity if an edifice connected with so many associations should

be consumed by fire! At that time there was not a single soul in

the street but himself. All was quiet, dark, and solitary. After

contemplating the building for a minute - or, say a minute and a

half, not more - our bore proceeded on his way, mechanically

repeating, What a national calamity if such an edifice, connected

with such associations, should be destroyed by - A man coming

towards him in a violent state of agitation completed the sentence,

with the exclamation, Fire! Our bore looked round, and the whole

structure was in a blaze.

In harmony and union with these experiences, our bore never went

anywhere in a steamboat but he made either the best or the worst

voyage ever known on that station. Either he overheard the captain

say to himself, with his hands clasped, 'We are all lost!' or the

captain openly declared to him that he had never made such a run

before, and never should be able to do it again. Our bore was in

that express train on that railway, when they made (unknown to the

passengers) the experiment of going at the rate of a hundred to

miles an hour. Our bore remarked on that occasion to the other

people in the carriage, 'This is too fast, but sit still!' He was

at the Norwich musical festival when the extraordinary echo for

which science has been wholly unable to account, was heard for the

first and last time. He and the bishop heard it at the same

moment, and caught each other's eye. He was present at that

illumination of St. Peter's, of which the Pope is known to have

remarked, as he looked at it out of his window in the Vatican, 'O

CIELO! QUESTA COSA NON SARA FATTA, MAI ANCORA, COME QUESTA - O

Heaven! this thing will never be done again, like this!' He has

seen every lion he ever saw, under some remarkably propitious

circumstances. He knows there is no fancy in it, because in every

case the showman mentioned the fact at the time, and congratulated

him upon it.

At one period of his life, our bore had an illness. It was an

illness of a dangerous character for society at large. Innocently

remark that you are very well, or that somebody else is very well;

and our bore, with a preface that one never knows what a blessing

health is until one has lost it, is reminded of that illness, and

drags you through the whole of its symptoms, progress, and

treatment. Innocently remark that you are not well, or that

somebody else is not well, and the same inevitable result ensues.

You will learn how our bore felt a tightness about here, sir, for

which he couldn't account, accompanied with a constant sensation as

if he were being stabbed - or, rather, jobbed - that expresses it

more correctly - jobbed - with a blunt knife. Well, sir! This

went on, until sparks began to flit before his eyes, water-wheels

to turn round in his head, and hammers to beat incessantly, thump,

thump, thump, all down his back - along the whole of the spinal

vertebrae. Our bore, when his sensations had come to this, thought

it a duty he owed to himself to take advice, and he said, Now, whom

shall I consult? He naturally thought of Callow, at that time one

of the most eminent physicians in London, and he went to Callow.

Callow said, 'Liver!' and prescribed rhubarb and calomel, low diet,

and moderate exercise. Our bore went on with this treatment,

getting worse every day, until he lost confidence in Callow, and

went to Moon, whom half the town was then mad about. Moon was

interested in the case; to do him justice he was very much

interested in the case; and he said, 'Kidneys!' He altered the

whole treatment, sir - gave strong acids, cupped, and blistered.

This went on, our bore still getting worse every day, until he

openly told Moon it would be a satisfaction to him if he would have

a consultation with Clatter. The moment Clatter saw our bore, he

said, 'Accumulation of fat about the heart!' Snugglewood, who was

called in with him, differed, and said, 'Brain!' But, what they

all agreed upon was, to lay our bore upon his back, to shave his

head, to leech him, to administer enormous quantities of medicine,

and to keep him low; so that he was reduced to a mere shadow, you

wouldn't have known him, and nobody considered it possible that he

could ever recover. This was his condition, sir, when he heard of

Jilkins - at that period in a very small practice, and living in

the upper part of a house in Great Portland Street; but still, you

understand, with a rising reputation among the few people to whom

he was known. Being in that condition in which a drowning man

catches at a straw, our bore sent for Jilkins. Jilkins came. Our

bore liked his eye, and said, 'Mr. Jilkins, I have a presentiment

that you will do me good.' Jilkins's reply was characteristic of

the man. It was, 'Sir, I mean to do you good.' This confirmed our

bore's opinion of his eye, and they went into the case together -

went completely into it. Jilkins then got up, walked across the

room, came back, and sat down. His words were these. 'You have

been humbugged. This is a case of indigestion, occasioned by

deficiency of power in the Stomach. Take a mutton chop in half-an-

hour, with a glass of the finest old sherry that can be got for

money. Take two mutton chops to-morrow, and two glasses of the

finest old sherry. Next day, I'll come again.' In a week our bore

was on his legs, and Jilkins's success dates from that period!

Our bore is great in secret information. He happens to know many

things that nobody else knows. He can generally tell you where the

split is in the Ministry; he knows a great deal about the Queen;

and has little anecdotes to relate of the royal nursery. He gives

you the judge's private opinion of Sludge the murderer, and his

thoughts when he tried him. He happens to know what such a man got

by such a transaction, and it was fifteen thousand five hundred

pounds, and his income is twelve thousand a year. Our bore is also

great in mystery. He believes, with an exasperating appearance of

profound meaning, that you saw Parkins last Sunday? - Yes, you did.

- Did he say anything particular? - No, nothing particular. - Our

bore is surprised at that. - Why? - Nothing. Only he understood

that Parkins had come to tell you something. - What about? - Well!

our bore is not at liberty to mention what about. But, he believes

you will hear that from Parkins himself, soon, and he hopes it may

not surprise you as it did him. Perhaps, however, you never heard

about Parkins's wife's sister? - No. - Ah! says our bore, that

explains it!

Our bore is also great in argument. He infinitely enjoys a long

humdrum, drowsy interchange of words of dispute about nothing. He

considers that it strengthens the mind, consequently, he 'don't see

that,' very often. Or, he would be glad to know what you mean by

that. Or, he doubts that. Or, he has always understood exactly

the reverse of that. Or, he can't admit that. Or, he begs to deny

that. Or, surely you don't mean that. And so on. He once advised

us; offered us a piece of advice, after the fact, totally

impracticable and wholly impossible of acceptance, because it

supposed the fact, then eternally disposed of, to be yet in

abeyance. It was a dozen years ago, and to this hour our bore

benevolently wishes, in a mild voice, on certain regular occasions,

that we had thought better of his opinion.

The instinct with which our bore finds out another bore, and closes

with him, is amazing. We have seen him pick his man out of fifty

men, in a couple of minutes. They love to go (which they do

naturally) into a slow argument on a previously exhausted subject,

and to contradict each other, and to wear the hearers out, without

impairing their own perennial freshness as bores. It improves the

good understanding between them, and they get together afterwards,

and bore each other amicably. Whenever we see our bore behind a

door with another bore, we know that when he comes forth, he will

praise the other bore as one of the most intelligent men he ever

met. And this bringing us to the close of what we had to say about

our bore, we are anxious to have it understood that he never

bestowed this praise on us.

A MONUMENT OF FRENCH FOLLY

IT was profoundly observed by a witty member of the Court of Common

Council, in Council assembled in the City of London, in the year of

our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, that the French are

a frog-eating people, who wear wooden shoes.

We are credibly informed, in reference to the nation whom this

choice spirit so happily disposed of, that the caricatures and

stage representations which were current in England some half a

century ago, exactly depict their present condition. For example,

we understand that every Frenchman, without exception, wears a

pigtail and curl-papers. That he is extremely sallow, thin, long-

faced, and lantern-jawed. That the calves of his legs are

invariably undeveloped; that his legs fail at the knees, and that

his shoulders are always higher than his ears. We are likewise

assured that he rarely tastes any food but soup maigre, and an

onion; that he always says, 'By Gar! Aha! Vat you tell me, sare?'

at the end of every sentence he utters; and that the true generic

name of his race is the Mounseers, or the Parly-voos. If he be not

a dancing-master, or a barber, he must be a cook; since no other

trades but those three are congenial to the tastes of the people,

or permitted by the Institutions of the country. He is a slave, of

course. The ladies of France (who are also slaves) invariably have

their heads tied up in Belcher handkerchiefs, wear long earrings,

carry tambourines, and beguile the weariness of their yoke by

singing in head voices through their noses - principally to barrel-

organs.

It may be generally summed up, of this inferior people, that they

have no idea of anything.

Of a great Institution like Smithfield, they are unable to form the

least conception. A Beast Market in the heart of Paris would be

regarded an impossible nuisance. Nor have they any notion of

slaughter-houses in the midst of a city. One of these benighted

frog-eaters would scarcely understand your meaning, if you told him

of the existence of such a British bulwark.

It is agreeable, and perhaps pardonable, to indulge in a little

self-complacency when our right to it is thoroughly established.

At the present time, to be rendered memorable by a final attack on

that good old market which is the (rotten) apple of the

Corporation's eye, let us compare ourselves, to our national

delight and pride as to these two subjects of slaughter-house and

beast-market, with the outlandish foreigner.

The blessings of Smithfield are too well understood to need

recapitulation; all who run (away from mad bulls and pursuing oxen)

may read. Any market-day they may be beheld in glorious action.

Possibly the merits of our slaughter-houses are not yet quite so

generally appreciated.

Slaughter-houses, in the large towns of England, are always (with

the exception of one or two enterprising towns) most numerous in

the most densely crowded places, where there is the least

circulation of air. They are often underground, in cellars; they

are sometimes in close back yards; sometimes (as in Spitalfields)

in the very shops where the meat is sold. Occasionally, under good

private management, they are ventilated and clean. For the most

part, they are unventilated and dirty; and, to the reeking walls,

putrid fat and other offensive animal matter clings with a

tenacious hold. The busiest slaughter-houses in London are in the

neighbourhood of Smithfield, in Newgate Market, in Whitechapel, in

Newport Market, in Leadenhall Market, in Clare Market. All these

places are surrounded by houses of a poor description, swarming

with inhabitants. Some of them are close to the worst burial-

grounds in London. When the slaughter-house is below the ground,

it is a common practice to throw the sheep down areas, neck and

crop - which is exciting, but not at all cruel. When it is on the

level surface, it is often extremely difficult of approach. Then,

the beasts have to be worried, and goaded, and pronged, and tail-

twisted, for a long time before they can be got in - which is

entirely owing to their natural obstinacy. When it is not

difficult of approach, but is in a foul condition, what they see

and scent makes them still more reluctant to enter - which is their

natural obstinacy again. When they do get in at last, after no

trouble and suffering to speak of (for, there is nothing in the

previous journey into the heart of London, the night's endurance in

Smithfield, the struggle out again, among the crowded multitude,

the coaches, carts, waggons, omnibuses, gigs, chaises, phaetons,

cabs, trucks, dogs, boys, whoopings, roarings, and ten thousand

other distractions), they are represented to be in a most unfit

state to be killed, according to microscopic examinations made of

their fevered blood by one of the most distinguished physiologists

in the world, PROFESSOR OWEN - but that's humbug. When they ARE

killed, at last, their reeking carcases are hung in impure air, to

become, as the same Professor will explain to you, less nutritious

and more unwholesome - but he is only an UNcommon counsellor, so

don't mind HIM. In half a quarter of a mile's length of

Whitechapel, at one time, there shall be six hundred newly

slaughtered oxen hanging up, and seven hundred sheep - but, the

more the merrier - proof of prosperity. Hard by Snow Hill and

Warwick Lane, you shall see the little children, inured to sights

of brutality from their birth, trotting along the alleys, mingled

with troops of horribly busy pigs, up to their ankles in blood -

but it makes the young rascals hardy. Into the imperfect sewers of

this overgrown city, you shall have the immense mass of corruption,

engendered by these practices, lazily thrown out of sight, to rise,

in poisonous gases, into your house at night, when your sleeping

children will most readily absorb them, and to find its languid

way, at last, into the river that you drink - but, the French are a

frog-eating people who wear wooden shoes, and it's O the roast beef

of England, my boy, the jolly old English roast beef.

It is quite a mistake - a newfangled notion altogether - to suppose

that there is any natural antagonism between putrefaction and

health. They know better than that, in the Common Council. You

may talk about Nature, in her wisdom, always warning man through

his sense of smell, when he draws near to something dangerous; but,

that won't go down in the City. Nature very often don't mean

anything. Mrs. Quickly says that prunes are ill for a green wound;

but whosoever says that putrid animal substances are ill for a

green wound, or for robust vigour, or for anything or for anybody,

is a humanity-monger and a humbug. Britons never, never, never,

&c., therefore. And prosperity to cattle-driving, cattle-

slaughtering, bone-crushing, blood-boiling, trotter-scraping,

tripe-dressing, paunch-cleaning, gut-spinning, hide-preparing,

tallow-melting, and other salubrious proceedings, in the midst of

hospitals, churchyards, workhouses, schools, infirmaries, refuges,

dwellings, provision-shops nurseries, sick-beds, every stage and

baiting-place in the journey from birth to death!

These UNcommon counsellors, your Professor Owens and fellows, will

contend that to tolerate these things in a civilised city, is to

reduce it to a worse condition than BRUCE found to prevail in

ABYSSINIA. For there (say they) the jackals and wild dogs came at

night to devour the offal; whereas, here there are no such natural

scavengers, and quite as savage customs. Further, they will

demonstrate that nothing in Nature is intended to be wasted, and

that besides the waste which such abuses occasion in the articles

of health and life - main sources of the riches of any community -

they lead to a prodigious waste of changing matters, which might,

with proper preparation, and under scientific direction, be safely

applied to the increase of the fertility of the land. Thus (they

argue) does Nature ever avenge infractions of her beneficent laws,

and so surely as Man is determined to warp any of her blessings

into curses, shall they become curses, and shall he suffer heavily.

But, this is cant. Just as it is cant of the worst description to

say to the London Corporation, 'How can you exhibit to the people

so plain a spectacle of dishonest equivocation, as to claim the

right of holding a market in the midst of the great city, for one

of your vested privileges, when you know that when your last market

holding charter was granted to you by King Charles the First,

Smithfield stood IN THE SUBURBS OF LONDON, and is in that very

charter so described in those five words?' - which is certainly

true, but has nothing to do with the question.

Now to the comparison, in these particulars of civilisation,

between the capital of England, and the capital of that frog-eating

and wooden-shoe wearing country, which the illustrious Common

Councilman so sarcastically settled.

In Paris, there is no Cattle Market. Cows and calves are sold

within the city, but, the Cattle Markets are at Poissy, about

thirteen miles off, on a line of railway; and at Sceaux, about five

miles off. The Poissy market is held every Thursday; the Sceaux

market, every Monday. In Paris, there are no slaughter-houses, in

our acceptation of the term. There are five public Abattoirs -

within the walls, though in the suburbs - and in these all the

slaughtering for the city must be performed. They are managed by a

Syndicat or Guild of Butchers, who confer with the Minister of the

Interior on all matters affecting the trade, and who are consulted

when any new regulations are contemplated for its government. They

are, likewise, under the vigilant superintendence of the police.

Every butcher must be licensed: which proves him at once to be a

slave, for we don't license butchers in England - we only license

apothecaries, attorneys, post-masters, publicans, hawkers,

retailers of tobacco, snuff, pepper, and vinegar - and one or two

other little trades, not worth mentioning. Every arrangement in

connexion with the slaughtering and sale of meat, is matter of

strict police regulation. (Slavery again, though we certainly have

a general sort of Police Act here.)

But, in order that the reader may understand what a monument of

folly these frog-eaters have raised in their abattoirs and cattle-

markets, and may compare it with what common counselling has done

for us all these years, and would still do but for the innovating

spirit of the times, here follows a short account of a recent visit

to these places:

It was as sharp a February morning as you would desire to feel at

your fingers' ends when I turned out - tumbling over a chiffonier

with his little basket and rake, who was picking up the bits of

coloured paper that had been swept out, over-night, from a Bon-Bon

shop - to take the Butchers' Train to Poissy. A cold, dim light

just touched the high roofs of the Tuileries which have seen such

changes, such distracted crowds, such riot and bloodshed; and they

looked as calm, and as old, all covered with white frost, as the

very Pyramids. There was not light enough, yet, to strike upon the

towers of Notre Dame across the water; but I thought of the dark

pavement of the old Cathedral as just beginning to be streaked with

grey; and of the lamps in the 'House of God,' the Hospital close to

it, burning low and being quenched; and of the keeper of the Morgue

going about with a fading lantern, busy in the arrangement of his

terrible waxwork for another sunny day.

The sun was up, and shining merrily when the butchers and I,

announcing our departure with an engine shriek to sleepy Paris,

rattled away for the Cattle Market. Across the country, over the

Seine, among a forest of scrubby trees - the hoar frost lying cold

in shady places, and glittering in the light - and here we are - at

Poissy! Out leap the butchers, who have been chattering all the

way like madmen, and off they straggle for the Cattle Market (still

chattering, of course, incessantly), in hats and caps of all

shapes, in coats and blouses, in calf-skins, cow-skins, horse-

skins, furs, shaggy mantles, hairy coats, sacking, baize, oil-skin,

anything you please that will keep a man and a butcher warm, upon a

frosty morning.

Many a French town have I seen, between this spot of ground and

Strasburg or Marseilles, that might sit for your picture, little

Poissy! Barring the details of your old church, I know you well,

albeit we make acquaintance, now, for the first time. I know your

narrow, straggling, winding streets, with a kennel in the midst,

and lamps slung across. I know your picturesque street-corners,

winding up-hill Heaven knows why or where! I know your tradesmen's

inscriptions, in letters not quite fat enough; your barbers' brazen

basins dangling over little shops; your Cafes and Estaminets, with

cloudy bottles of stale syrup in the windows, and pictures of

crossed billiard cues outside. I know this identical grey horse

with his tail rolled up in a knot like the 'back hair' of an untidy

woman, who won't be shod, and who makes himself heraldic by

clattering across the street on his hind-legs, while twenty voices

shriek and growl at him as a Brigand, an accursed Robber, and an

everlastingly-doomed Pig. I know your sparkling town-fountain,

too, my Poissy, and am glad to see it near a cattle-market, gushing

so freshly, under the auspices of a gallant little sublimated

Frenchman wrought in metal, perched upon the top. Through all the

land of France I know this unswept room at The Glory, with its

peculiar smell of beans and coffee, where the butchers crowd about

the stove, drinking the thinnest of wine from the smallest of

tumblers; where the thickest of coffee-cups mingle with the longest

of loaves, and the weakest of lump sugar; where Madame at the

counter easily acknowledges the homage of all entering and

departing butchers; where the billiard-table is covered up in the

midst like a great bird-cake - but the bird may sing by-and-by!

A bell! The Calf Market! Polite departure of butchers. Hasty

payment and departure on the part of amateur Visitor. Madame

reproaches Ma'amselle for too fine a susceptibility in reference to

the devotion of a Butcher in a bear-skin. Monsieur, the landlord

of The Glory, counts a double handful of sous, without an

unobliterated inscription, or an undamaged crowned head, among

them.

There is little noise without, abundant space, and no confusion.

The open area devoted to the market is divided into three portions:

the Calf Market, the Cattle Market, the Sheep Market. Calves at

eight, cattle at ten, sheep at mid-day. All is very clean.

The Calf Market is a raised platform of stone, some three or four

feet high, open on all sides, with a lofty overspreading roof,

supported on stone columns, which give it the appearance of a sort

of vineyard from Northern Italy. Here, on the raised pavement, lie

innumerable calves, all bound hind-legs and fore-legs together, and

all trembling violently - perhaps with cold, perhaps with fear,

perhaps with pain; for, this mode of tying, which seems to be an

absolute superstition with the peasantry, can hardly fail to cause

great suffering. Here, they lie, patiently in rows, among the

straw, with their stolid faces and inexpressive eyes, superintended

by men and women, boys and girls; here they are inspected by our

friends, the butchers, bargained for, and bought. Plenty of time;

plenty of room; plenty of good humour. 'Monsieur Francois in the

bear-skin, how do you do, my friend? You come from Paris by the

train? The fresh air does you good. If you are in want of three

or four fine calves this market morning, my angel, I, Madame Doche,

shall be happy to deal with you. Behold these calves, Monsieur

Francois! Great Heaven, you are doubtful! Well, sir, walk round

and look about you. If you find better for the money, buy them.

If not, come to me!' Monsieur Francois goes his way leisurely, and

keeps a wary eye upon the stock. No other butcher jostles Monsieur

Francois; Monsieur Francois jostles no other butcher. Nobody is

flustered and aggravated. Nobody is savage. In the midst of the

country blue frocks and red handkerchiefs, and the butchers' coats,

shaggy, furry, and hairy: of calf-skin, cow-skin, horse-skin, and

bear-skin: towers a cocked hat and a blue cloak. Slavery! For OUR

Police wear great-coats and glazed hats.

But now the bartering is over, and the calves are sold. 'Ho!

Gregoire, Antoine, Jean, Louis! Bring up the carts, my children!

Quick, brave infants! Hola! Hi!'

The carts, well littered with straw, are backed up to the edge of

the raised pavement, and various hot infants carry calves upon

their heads, and dexterously pitch them in, while other hot

infants, standing in the carts, arrange the calves, and pack them

carefully in straw. Here is a promising young calf, not sold, whom

Madame Doche unbinds. Pardon me, Madame Doche, but I fear this

mode of tying the four legs of a quadruped together, though

strictly a la mode, is not quite right. You observe, Madame Doche,

that the cord leaves deep indentations in the skin, and that the

animal is so cramped at first as not to know, or even remotely

suspect that HE is unbound, until you are so obliging as to kick

him, in your delicate little way, and pull his tail like a bell-

rope. Then, he staggers to his knees, not being able to stand, and

stumbles about like a drunken calf, or the horse at Franconi's,

whom you may have seen, Madame Doche, who is supposed to have been

mortally wounded in battle. But, what is this rubbing against me,

as I apostrophise Madame Doche? It is another heated infant with a

calf upon his head. 'Pardon, Monsieur, but will you have the

politeness to allow me to pass?' 'Ah, sir, willingly. I am vexed

to obstruct the way.' On he staggers, calf and all, and makes no

allusion whatever either to my eyes or limbs.

Now, the carts are all full. More straw, my Antoine, to shake over

these top rows; then, off we will clatter, rumble, jolt, and

rattle, a long row of us, out of the first town-gate, and out at

the second town-gate, and past the empty sentry-box, and the little

thin square bandbox of a guardhouse, where nobody seems to live:

and away for Paris, by the paved road, lying, a straight, straight

line, in the long, long avenue of trees. We can neither choose our

road, nor our pace, for that is all prescribed to us. The public

convenience demands that our carts should get to Paris by such a

route, and no other (Napoleon had leisure to find that out, while

he had a little war with the world upon his hands), and woe betide

us if we infringe orders.

Drovers of oxen stand in the Cattle Market, tied to iron bars fixed

into posts of granite. Other droves advance slowly down the long

avenue, past the second town-gate, and the first town-gate, and the

sentry-box, and the bandbox, thawing the morning with their smoky

breath as they come along. Plenty of room; plenty of time.

Neither man nor beast is driven out of his wits by coaches, carts,

waggons, omnibuses, gigs, chaises, phaetons, cabs, trucks, boys,

whoopings, roarings, and multitudes. No tail-twisting is necessary

- no iron pronging is necessary. There are no iron prongs here.

The market for cattle is held as quietly as the market for calves.

In due time, off the cattle go to Paris; the drovers can no more

choose their road, nor their time, nor the numbers they shall

drive, than they can choose their hour for dying in the course of

nature.

Sheep next. The sheep-pens are up here, past the Branch Bank of

Paris established for the convenience of the butchers, and behind

the two pretty fountains they are making in the Market. My name is

Bull: yet I think I should like to see as good twin fountains - not

to say in Smithfield, but in England anywhere. Plenty of room;

plenty of time. And here are sheep-dogs, sensible as ever, but

with a certain French air about them - not without a suspicion of

dominoes - with a kind of flavour of moustache and beard -

demonstrative dogs, shaggy and loose where an English dog would be

tight and close - not so troubled with business calculations as our

English drovers' dogs, who have always got their sheep upon their

minds, and think about their work, even resting, as you may see by

their faces; but, dashing, showy, rather unreliable dogs: who might

worry me instead of their legitimate charges if they saw occasion -

and might see it somewhat suddenly.

The market for sheep passes off like the other two; and away they

go, by THEIR allotted road to Paris. My way being the Railway, I

make the best of it at twenty miles an hour; whirling through the

now high-lighted landscape; thinking that the inexperienced green

buds will be wishing, before long, they had not been tempted to

come out so soon; and wondering who lives in this or that chateau,

all window and lattice, and what the family may have for breakfast

this sharp morning.

After the Market comes the Abattoir. What abattoir shall I visit

first? Montmartre is the largest. So I will go there.

The abattoirs are all within the walls of Paris, with an eye to the

receipt of the octroi duty; but, they stand in open places in the

suburbs, removed from the press and bustle of the city. They are

managed by the Syndicat or Guild of Butchers, under the inspection

of the Police. Certain smaller items of the revenue derived from

them are in part retained by the Guild for the payment of their

expenses, and in part devoted by it to charitable purposes in

connexion with the trade. They cost six hundred and eighty

thousand pounds; and they return to the city of Paris an interest

on that outlay, amounting to nearly six and a-half per cent.

Here, in a sufficiently dismantled space is the Abattoir of

Montmartre, covering nearly nine acres of ground, surrounded by a

high wall, and looking from the outside like a cavalry barrack. At

the iron gates is a small functionary in a large cocked hat.

'Monsieur desires to see the abattoir? Most certainly.' State

being inconvenient in private transactions, and Monsieur being

already aware of the cocked hat, the functionary puts it into a

little official bureau which it almost fills, and accompanies me in

the modest attire - as to his head - of ordinary life.

Many of the animals from Poissy have come here. On the arrival of

each drove, it was turned into yonder ample space, where each

butcher who had bought, selected his own purchases. Some, we see

now, in these long perspectives of stalls with a high over-hanging

roof of wood and open tiles rising above the walls. While they

rest here, before being slaughtered, they are required to be fed

and watered, and the stalls must be kept clean. A stated amount of

fodder must always be ready in the loft above; and the supervision

is of the strictest kind. The same regulations apply to sheep and

calves; for which, portions of these perspectives are strongly

railed off. All the buildings are of the strongest and most solid

description.

After traversing these lairs, through which, besides the upper

provision for ventilation just mentioned, there may be a thorough

current of air from opposite windows in the side walls, and from

doors at either end, we traverse the broad, paved, court-yard until

we come to the slaughter-houses. They are all exactly alike, and

adjoin each other, to the number of eight or nine together, in

blocks of solid building. Let us walk into the first.

It is firmly built and paved with stone. It is well lighted,

thoroughly aired, and lavishly provided with fresh water. It has

two doors opposite each other; the first, the door by which I

entered from the main yard; the second, which is opposite, opening

on another smaller yard, where the sheep and calves are killed on

benches. The pavement of that yard, I see, slopes downward to a

gutter, for its being more easily cleansed. The slaughter-house is

fifteen feet high, sixteen feet and a-half wide, and thirty-three

feet long. It is fitted with a powerful windlass, by which one man

at the handle can bring the head of an ox down to the ground to

receive the blow from the pole-axe that is to fell him - with the

means of raising the carcass and keeping it suspended during the

after-operation of dressing - and with hooks on which carcasses can

hang, when completely prepared, without touching the walls. Upon

the pavement of this first stone chamber, lies an ox scarcely dead.

If I except the blood draining from him, into a little stone well

in a corner of the pavement, the place is free from offence as the

Place de la Concorde. It is infinitely purer and cleaner, I know,

my friend the functionary, than the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Ha,

ha! Monsieur is pleasant, but, truly, there is reason, too, in

what he says.

I look into another of these slaughter-houses. 'Pray enter,' says

a gentleman in bloody boots. 'This is a calf I have killed this

morning. Having a little time upon my hands, I have cut and

punctured this lace pattern in the coats of his stomach. It is

pretty enough. I did it to divert myself.' - 'It is beautiful,

Monsieur, the slaughterer!' He tells me I have the gentility to

say so.

I look into rows of slaughter-houses. In many, retail dealers, who

have come here for the purpose, are making bargains for meat.

There is killing enough, certainly, to satiate an unused eye; and

there are steaming carcasses enough, to suggest the expediency of a

fowl and salad for dinner; but, everywhere, there is an orderly,

clean, well-systematised routine of work in progress - horrible

work at the best, if you please; but, so much the greater reason

why it should be made the best of. I don't know (I think I have

observed, my name is Bull) that a Parisian of the lowest order is

particularly delicate, or that his nature is remarkable for an

infinitesimal infusion of ferocity; but, I do know, my potent,

grave, and common counselling Signors, that he is forced, when at

this work, to submit himself to a thoroughly good system, and to

make an Englishman very heartily ashamed of you.

Here, within the walls of the same abattoir, in other roomy and

commodious buildings, are a place for converting the fat into

tallow and packing it for market - a place for cleansing and

scalding calves' heads and sheep's feet - a place for preparing

tripe - stables and coach-houses for the butchers - innumerable

conveniences, aiding in the diminution of offensiveness to its

lowest possible point, and the raising of cleanliness and

supervision to their highest. Hence, all the meat that goes out of

the gate is sent away in clean covered carts. And if every trade

connected with the slaughtering of animals were obliged by law to

be carried on in the same place, I doubt, my friend, now reinstated

in the cocked hat (whose civility these two francs imperfectly

acknowledge, but appear munificently to repay), whether there could

be better regulations than those which are carried out at the

Abattoir of Montmartre. Adieu, my friend, for I am away to the

other side of Paris, to the Abattoir of Grenelle! And there I find

exactly the same thing on a smaller scale, with the addition of a

magnificent Artesian well, and a different sort of conductor, in

the person of a neat little woman with neat little eyes, and a neat

little voice, who picks her neat little way among the bullocks in a

very neat little pair of shoes and stockings.

Such is the Monument of French Folly which a foreigneering people

have erected, in a national hatred and antipathy for common

counselling wisdom. That wisdom, assembled in the City of London,

having distinctly refused, after a debate of three days long, and

by a majority of nearly seven to one, to associate itself with any

Metropolitan Cattle Market unless it be held in the midst of the

City, it follows that we shall lose the inestimable advantages of

common counselling protection, and be thrown, for a market, on our

own wretched resources. In all human probability we shall thus

come, at last, to erect a monument of folly very like this French

monument. If that be done, the consequences are obvious. The

leather trade will be ruined, by the introduction of American

timber, to be manufactured into shoes for the fallen English; the

Lord Mayor will be required, by the popular voice, to live entirely

on frogs; and both these changes will (how, is not at present quite

clear, but certainly somehow or other) fall on that unhappy landed

interest which is always being killed, yet is always found to be

alive - and kicking.

Footnotes:

(1) Give a bill

(2) Three months' imprisonment as reputed thieves.

End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Reprinted Pieces, by Charles Dickens

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