Household Words, No. 10, June 1, 1850
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Date: 2026-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

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Title: Household Words, No. 10, June 1, 1850

A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens

Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78175]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78175

Credits: Richard Tonsing, Steven desJardins, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 10, JUNE 1, 1850 ***

Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

“Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS.”—Shakespeare.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

No. 10.]      SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1850.      [Price 2d.

A POPULAR DELUSION.

Victimised by a deceptive idea originating in ‘The Complete Angler,’ and which has been industriously perpetuated by a numerous proprietary of punts and houses of public entertainment and eel pies—the London disciples of Izaak Walton usually seek for sport in the upper regions of the Thames. They resort to Shepperton, or Ditton, or Twickenham, or Richmond. Chiefly, it would seem, as a wholesome exercise of the greatest Christian virtue, patience; for recent experience proves that anglers who soar above sticklebats, and are not content with occasional nibbles from starving gudgeons, or the frequent entanglements of writhing eels, mostly return to their homes and families with their baskets innocent of the vestige of a single scale.

If—as may be safely asserted—the aim, end, and purpose of all fishing is fish, the tenacity with which this idea is clung to, is astonishing; we may indeed say, amazing when we reflect that there exists—-below bridge—a particular spot, more convenient, more accessible, and affording quite as good accommodation as any of the above-bridge fishing stations, and which abounds at particular states of the tide, at particular times of the day, and at no particular seasons of the year, but all the year round, in fish of every sort, size, species, and condition, from the cod down to the sprat; from a salmon to a shrimp; from turbots to Thames flounders. Neither is there a single member of any one of these enormous families of fishes that may not be captured with the smallest possible expenditure of patience. And although the bait necessary for that purpose (a white bait manufactured of metal at an establishment on that bank of the Thames known as Tower Hill,) is unfortunately not always procurable by every class of her Majesty’s subjects; yet it is so eagerly caught at, that, with a moderate supply, the least expert may be sure of filling his fish-basket very respectably.

In order to partake of all the advantages offered by this famed spot, it is necessary to rise betimes. The fishing excursion of which we are now about to give a sketch, commenced at about four o’clock on a Monday morning. The rain which fell at the time did not much matter, on account of the sheltered position of that margin of the Thames to which we were bound. With a small basket, and the waistcoat pocket primed with a little of the proper sort of bait; with no other rod than a walking stick, and no fly whatever, (except one upon four wheels procured from a neighbouring cab stand,) we arrived at the great fish focus; which, we may as well mention, to relieve suspense, is situated on the Middlesex shore of the Thames at a short distance below London Bridge, close to the Custom House, opposite the Coal Exchange, and has been known from time immemorial as Billingsgate.

When we arrived at the collection of sheds and stalls—like a dilapidated railway station—of which this celebrated place consists, it was nearly five o’clock. Its ancient reputation had prepared us for scenes of confusion and for volubility of abuse, which have since the times of the Tritons ever been associated with those whose special business is with fish. It was, therefore, with very great surprise that we walked unmolested through that portion of the precinct set aside as the market. We went straight to the river’s edge, rod in hand, without having had once occasion to use it as a weapon, and without hearing one word that might not have been uttered in the Queen’s drawing-room on a court day. No crowding, no elbowing, no screaming, no fighting: no ungenteel nick-names, no foul-mouthed females hurling anathemas at their neighbours’ optics; no rude requests to despatch ourself suddenly down to the uttermost depth the human mind is capable of conceiving; no wish expressed that we might be inflated very tight indeed; no criticisms on the quality of our hat; no impertinent questions as to our present stock of soap; nothing whatever, in short, calculated to sustain the ancient reputation of Billingsgate.

With easy deliberation we sauntered down to the dumb-barge which forms a temporary landing-place while a better one is being built. There we beheld a couple of clippers, quite as trim as any revenue-cutter; over the sides of which were being handed all sorts of fish; cod, soles, whitings, plaice, John Dorys, mackerel; some neatly packed in baskets. That nothing should be wanting utterly to subvert established notions of Billingsgate, the order, quietness, and system with which these cutters were emptied, and their cargoes taken to the stalls, could not be exceeded.

This office is performed by fellowship-porters. Being responsible individuals, they prevent fraud. Formerly a set of scamps, called laggers, ‘conveyed’ the fish; but they used to drop some of the best sort softly into the stream, and pick them up at low water. An idea may be formed of the profits of their dishonesty, from the fact that laggers offered seven shillings a day to be employed, instead of demanding the wages of labour. When a salesman had one or two hundred turbots consigned to him, a lagger would give the hint to an accomplice, who would quickly substitute several small fish for the same number of the largest size; a species of fraud which the salesman had it not in his power to detect, as the tally was not deficient.

At that time an immense number of bad fish was condemned every morning by the superintendent. There was an understanding between the consignees and salesmen that when the market was well supplied, any overplus should be kept back in store boats at Gravesend, and not brought to market till the supply was diminished, and the price raised. This dishonest mode of ‘regulating’ the market caused a great many stale fish to be brought to it; hence the quantity condemned. Now, however, the celerity with which fish can be conveyed prevents any such practice, and of late years the superintendent has only had occasion to condemn in rare instances.

Every possible expedient and appliance is now resorted to, to bring fish to market fresh. As we have a minute or two to wait on the Billingsgate punt before the market opens, let us trace the history of a fish from the sea to the salesman’s stall. Suppose him to be a turbot hauled with a hundred other captives early on Monday afternoon on board one of the Barking fishing fleet moored on a bank some twenty miles off Dover. He is no sooner taken on board than he is trans-shipped immediately with thousands of his flat companions in a row-boat into a clipper, which is being fast filled from other vessels of the fleet. When her cargo is complete, she sets sail for the mouth of the Thames, and on entering it is met by a tug steamer, which tows her up to Billingsgate early on Tuesday morning, bringing our turbot alive—for he has been put into a tank in the hold of the clipper. He is sold as soon as landed, and finds his way to table in the neighbourhood of the Mansion House or Belgrave Square some four-and-twenty hours after he has been sporting in the sea, not less than a hundred and fifty miles off.

Enormous accessions in the supply of fish to the London market have been effected, first by the employment of clippers as carrier-boats, (instead of each fishing-boat bringing its own cargo as formerly,) and secondly, by the use of steam-tugs for towing the transit-craft up the river. In the old time a south-westerly wind deprived all London of fish. While it prevailed the boats, which usually took shelter in Holy or East Haven on the Essex shore, waited for a change of wind, till the fish became odoriferous. The cargo was then thrown overboard, and the boats returned on another fishing voyage.

The Thames was, at that time, the only highway by which fish was brought to Billingsgate; but the old losses and delays are again obviated by another source of acceleration. Our turbot is brought at waggon pace compared with the more perishable mackerel. The Eddystone lighthouse is at least two hundred and fifty miles from Thames Street. Between it and the Plymouth Breakwater lie some hundreds of fishing boats, plying their trawl-nets. A shoal of mackerel, the superficies of which may be measured by the mile, find their way among them, and several thousands dart into the nets. They are captured, hauled on board, shovelled into a clipper, and while she stands briskly in for shore, busy hands on board are packing the fish in baskets. Thousands of these baskets are landed in time for the mail train, rattle their way per railroad to Paddington, and by seven o’clock on the following morning—that is, in sixteen hours after they were rejoicing in the ‘ocean wave’—are in a London fishmonger’s taxed-cart on their road to the gridiron or fish-kettle, as the taste of the customer dictates.

No distance appears too great from which to bring fish to Billingsgate. Packed in long boxes, both by rail and river, between layers of ice, salmon come daily in enormous quantities from the remotest rivers of Ireland, of Scotland, and even from Norway. So considerable an item is ice in the fishmonger’s trade, that a large proprietor at Barking has an ice-well capable of stowing eight hundred tons. Another in the same line of business has actually contracted with the Surrey Canal Company for all the ice generated on their waters!

As we cogitate concerning these ‘great facts’ on the dumb-barge, and while the baskets and boxes are being systematically landed, it strikes five. A bell—the only noisy appurtenance of Billingsgate—stunningly announces that the market is open. The landing of fish proceeds somewhat faster, and fishmongers, from all parts of London, and from many parts of the provinces—from Oxford, Cambridge, Reading, Windsor, &c.—group themselves round the stalls of such salesmen as appear to have the choicest fish. These are rapidly sold by (Dutch) auction; and taken to the buyers’ carts outside the market.

Nothing can exceed the gentlemanly manner in which the auction is conducted, except the mode of doing business at Christie and Manson’s. Before the commencement, the salesman, with his flannel apron protecting his almost fashionable attire from scaly contact, is seen—behold him yonder!—seated behind his stall enjoying a mild Havannah, with an appearance of sublime indifference to all around him. Presently, his porter deposits a ‘lot’ of fish between him, and an eager group of buyers. He puts down his cigar and mounts his rostrum.

“What shall we say, gentlemen, for this score of cod? Shall we say seven shillings a piece?”

No answer.

“Six?”

Perfect silence. The auctioneer gives pause for consideration, and takes a whiff at his Havannah. Time is, however, precious, where fish is concerned, and he is not long in abating another shilling.

“A crown?”

“Done!” exclaims Mr. Jollins of Pimlico.

“Five pounds, if you please!” demands the seller. A note is handed over, and the twenty cod are hoisted into Mr. Jollins’ cart, which stands in Thames Street, before a second lot is quite disposed of.

This mild proceeding is going on all over the market. On looking to see if the remotest relic of such a being as a fish-fag is to be seen, we observe a gentleman who, though girded with the flannel uniform of the craft, has so fashionable a surtout, so elegant a neckerchief, and such a luxuriance of moustache and whiskers, that we mistake him for an officer in her Majesty’s Life Guards, selling fish by way of—what in Billingsgate used to be called—a ‘jolly lark.’ Enquiry proves, however, that he is the accredited consignee of one of the largest fishing fleets which sail out of the Thames.

We are bound to confess that the high tone of refinement which had hitherto been so well supported on the occasion of our visit, became in a little while, slightly depressed. As the legislature of the British empire consists of Crown, Lords, and Commons; so also the executive of Billingsgate is composed of three estates: first, of the Lord Mayor (Piscine secretary of state, Mr. Goldham); secondly, of an aristocracy, and, thirdly, of a commonalty, of salesmen. The latter—called in ancient Billingsgate Bummarees, in modern ditto, ‘Retailers’—are middlemen between the smaller fishmonger and the high salesman aristocracy. They purchase the various sorts of fish, and arrange them in small assorted parcels to suit the convenience of suburban fishmongers, or of those peripatetic tradesmen, to whom was formerly applied the obsolete term almost of ‘Costermonger.’ The transactions between these parties were not conducted under the influence of those strict rules of etiquette which governed the earlier dealings of the morning. Indeed, we detected the proprietor of a very respectable looking donkey answering a civil enquiry from a retailer as to what he was ‘looking for’ with

“Not you!”

It is right, however, to add, in justice to the reputation of a locality which has been so long and so undeservedly regarded as the head quarters of verbal vulgarity, that a friend of the offender asked him solemnly if he remembered were he wos; and if he warn’t ashamed of his-self for going and bringing his Cheek into that ’ere markit?

Connected with the perambulating purveyors, there is a subject of very great importance; namely, cheap food for the poor. Although painful revelations of want of proper sustenance in every part of this overcrowded country, are daily breaking forth to light; although the low dietaries of most workhouses, and some prisons, are very often complained of; yet the old Celtic prejudice against fish still exists in great force among the humbler orders. Few poor persons will eat fish when they can get meat; many prefer gruel, and some slow starvation. Divers kinds of wholesome and nutritious fish are now sold at prices not above the means of the poorest persons; yet, so small is the demand, that the itinerant vendor—through whom what little that is sold reaches the humble consumer—makes it a matter of perfect indifference when he starts from home whether his venture for the day shall be fish or vegetables. His first visit is to Billingsgate; but if he find things, as regards price or kind, not to his taste, he adjourns to speculate in Covent Garden. He has, therefore, no regular market for what might most beneficially become a staple article. During the fruit season, little or no fish reaches the humbler classes; because then their purveyors find dealings with the ‘Garden’ more profitable than dealings at the ‘Gate.’

Not long since a large quantity of wholesome fish of various sorts was left upon the hands of the market superintendent. By the advice of the Lord Mayor, it was forwarded for consumption to Giltspur Street Compter. The prisoners actually refused to eat it, and accompanied their refusal with a jocose allusion to the want of a proper accompaniment of sauce.

Among the stronger instances of the popular aversion to this kind of food, we may mention that in 1812, one of the members of the Committee for the Relief of the Manufacturing Poor, agreed with some fishermen to take from ten to twenty thousand mackerel a day, at a penny a piece; a price at which the fishermen said they could afford to supply the London market, to any extent, were they sure of a regular sale. On the 15th June, 1812, upwards of seventeen thousand mackerel, delivered at the stipulated price, were sent to Spitalfields, and sold to the working weavers at the original cost of a penny a piece. Though purchased with great avidity by the inhabitants of that district, it soon appeared that Spitalfields alone would not be equal to the consumption of the vast quantities of mackerel which daily poured into the market; they were, therefore, sent for distribution at the same rate, in other parts of the town; workhouses and other public establishments were also served, and the supply increased to such a degree, that five hundred thousand mackerel arrived and were sold in one day.

This cheap and benevolent supply was eagerly absorbed while the distress lasted; but as soon as trade revived, the demand fell off and finally ceased altogether.

Is this aversion to fish unconquerable? If it be not, what an enormous augmentation of wholesome food might be procured to relieve the increasing wants of the humble and needy. All the time the above experiment was tried, only a small portion of the coast was available for the supply of the densest inland populations of this island. Now, there is scarcely a creek or an estuary from which fish cannot be rapidly transported, however great the distance.

Compared with the boundless means of supply, and the lightning-like powers of transit, the price of fish is at present inordinately dear. But this is solely the fault of the public. The demand is too inconsiderable to call forth any great and, therefore, economical system. The voyager, per steam, between the Thames and Scotland, or between London and Cork, cannot fail to wonder when he sees, as he surely will see on a warm, calm day, scores of square miles of haddocks, mackerel, pilchards, herrings, &c.; when he has left on shore thousands of human beings pining for food. These enormous shoals approach the land, too, on purpose to be caught. In the History of British Fishes, Mr. Yarrell says, ‘The law of Nature which obliges mackerel and many others to visit the shallower water of the shores at a particular season, appears to be one of those wise and beautiful provisions of the Creator by which not only is the species perpetuated with the greatest certainty, but a large portion of the parent animals are thus brought within the reach of man, who, but for the action of this law, would be deprived of many of those species most valuable to him as food. For the mackerel dispersed over the immense surface of the deep, no effective fishery could be carried on; but approaching the shore as they do from all directions, and roving along the coast collected in immense shoals, millions are caught, which yet form but a very small portion compared with the myriads that escape.’ The fecundity of some of the species is marvellous. It has been ascertained by actual experiment, that the roe of the cod fish contains from six to nine millions of eggs.

Nor are river fish less abundant. Mr. Yarrell says, that two persons once calculated from actual observation, that from sixteen to eighteen hundred of the delicate ingredients for Twickenham pies passed a given point on the Thames in one minute of time; an average of more than one hundred thousand per hour. And this eel-fare, as it is called, is going on incessantly for more than two months. The king of fish is equally prolific, and quite as easily captured. The choicest salmon that appear in Billingsgate are from the river Bann, near Coleraine. We found it eighteen pence per pound; yet it is recorded that fourteen hundred and fifty salmon were taken in that river at one drag of a single net!

The appetite for fish is, it would seem, an acquired taste; but it would be of enormous advantage if any means could be devised for encouraging the consumption of this description of food. In order to commence the experiment we would suggest the regular introduction of fish into workhouse and prison dietaries. Formerly, such a measure was not practicable during the whole of the year, but, with a trifling outlay, such a system of supply might be organised as would ensure freshness and constancy.

The proprietor of the handsome donkey, who led us into this statistical reverie, informed us—and he was corroborated by his friend—that the only certainty was the red-herring and periwinkle trade; but then the competition was so werry great. “I don’t know how it is,” he observed, “but people’ll buy salt things with all the wirtue dried out on ’em, but——”

“That’s because they has a relish,” interrupted the Mentor.

“But fresh fish,” renewed the other gentleman, with a glance of displeasure at being interrupted; “fresh fish—all alive, as we cries ’em—fresh fish, mind you!—they can’t abear!”

We also learnt from these gentlemen that the professors of the Hebrew faith were the only constant fish-eaters.

“And wy?” continued the councillor, “cos when they eats fish, they thinks they’re a fasting!”

This reminding us that we were actually fasting, we complimented our friend on his donkey (which he assured us was a ‘Moke’ of the reg’lar Tantivy breed), and having completed the filling of our basket, were about to return home to breakfast, with an excellent appetite, and a high respect for the manners of modern fishmongers, when he hailed us easily with, “Halloa, you Sir!”

We went back.

“I tell you wot,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the Market Tavern,—“but p’raps you have though.”

“Have what?” said we.

“Dined at Simpson’s, the Fish Hord’n’ry,” said he.

“Never,” said we.

“Do it!” said he. “You go and have a tuck-out at Simpson’s at four o’clock in the arternoon (wen me and my old ooman is a going to take our tea, with a winkle or wot not) and you’ll come out as bright as a star, and as sleek as this here Moke.”

We thanked him for his hint towards the improvement of our personal appearance, which was a little dilapidated at that hour of the morning, and were so much impressed by the possibility of rivalling the Moke, that we returned at four o’clock in the afternoon, and climbed up to the first floor of Mr. Simpson’s house.

A glance at the clock assured us that Mr. Simpson was a genius. He kept it back ten minutes, to give stragglers a last chance. Already, the long table down the whole length of the long low room was nearly full, and people were sitting at a side table, looking out through windows, like stern-windows aboard ship, at flapping sails, and rigging. The host was in the chair, with a wooden hammer ready to his hand; and five several gentlemen, much excited by hunger and haste, who had run us down on the stairs, had leaped into seats, and were menacing expected turbots with their knives.

We slipped into a vacant chair by a gentleman from the Eastern Counties, who immediately informed us that Sir Robert Peel was all wrong, and the agricultural interest blown to shivers. This gentleman had little pieces of sticking-plaster stuck all over him, and we thought his discontent had broken out in an eruption, until he informed us that he had been ‘going it, all last week’ with some ruined friends of his who were also in town, and that ‘champagne and claret always had that effect upon him.’

On our left hand, was an undertaker from Whitechapel. “Here’s a bill,” says he; “this General Interment! What’s to become of my old hands who haven’t been what you may call rightly sober these twenty years? Ain’t there any religious feeling in the country?”

The company had come, like the fish, from various distances. There was a respectable Jew provision-merchant from Hamburg, over the way. Next him, an old man with sunken jaws that were always in motion, like a gutta percha mouth that was being continually squeezed. He had come from York. Hard by, a very large smooth-faced old gentleman in an immense ribbed satin waistcoat, out of Devonshire, attended by a pink nephew who was walking the London Hospitals. Lower down, was a wooden leg that had brought the person it belonged to, all the way from Canada. Two ‘parties,’ as the waiter called them, who had been with a tasting-order to the Docks, and were a little scared about the eyes, belonged to Doncaster. Pints of stout and porter were handed round, agreeably to their respective orders. Everybody took his own pint pot to himself, and seemed suspicious of his neighbour. As the minute hand of the clock approached a quarter past four, the gentleman from the Eastern Counties whispered us, that if the country held out for another year, it was as much as he expected.

Suddenly a fine salmon sparkled and twinkled like a silver harlequin before Mr. Simpson. A goodly dish of soles was set on lower down; then, in quick succession, appeared flounders, fried eels, stewed eels, cod fish, melted butter, lobster-sauce, potatoes. Savoury steams curled and curled about the company’s heads, and toyed with the company’s noses. Mr. Simpson hammered on the table. Grace!

For one silent moment, Mr. Simpson gazed upon the salmon as if he were the salmon’s admiring father, and then fell upon him, and helped twenty people without winking. Five or six flushed waiters hurried to and fro, and played cymbals with the plates; the company rattled an accompaniment of knives and forks; the fish were no more, in a twinkling. Boiled beef, mutton, and a huge dish of steaks, were soon disposed of in like manner. Small glasses of brandy round, were gone, ere one could say it lightened. Cheese melted away. Crusts dissolved into air. Mr. Simpson was gay. He knew the worst the company could do. He saw it done, twice every day. Again he hammered on the table. Grace!

Then, the cloth, the plates, the salt-cellars, the knives and forks, the glasses and pewter-pots, being all that the guests had not eaten or drunk, were cleared; bunches of pipes were laid upon the table; and everybody ordered what he liked to drink, or went his way. Mr. Simpson’s punch, in wicked tumblers of immense dimensions, was the most in favour. Mr. Simpson himself consorted with a company of generous spirits—connected with a Brewery, perhaps—and smoked a mild cigar. The large gentleman out of Devonshire: so large now, that he was obliged to move his chair back, to give his satin waistcoat play: ordered a small pint bottle of port, passed it to the pink nephew, and disparaged punch. The nephew dutifully concurred, but looked at the undertaker’s glass, out of the corner of his eye, as if he could have reconciled himself to punch, too, under pressure, on a desart island. The ‘parties’ from the Docks took rum-and-water, and wandered in their conversation. He of the Eastern Counties took cold gin-and-water for a change, and for the purification of his blood. Deep in the oiled depths of the old-fashioned table, a reflection of every man’s face appeared below him, beaming. Many pipes were lighted, the windows were opened at top, and a fragrant cloud enwrapped the company, as if they were all being carried upward together. The undertaker laughed monstrously at a joke, and the agriculturist thought the country might go on, say ten years, with good luck.

Eighteen pence a-head had done it all—the drink, and smoke, and civil attendance excepted—and again this was Billingsgate! Verily, there is ‘an ancient and fish-like smell’ about our popular opinions sometimes; and our hereditary exaltations and depressions of some things would bear revision!

GREENWICH WEATHER-WISDOM.

In England everybody notices the weather, and talks about the weather, and suffers by the weather, yet very few of us know anything about it. The changes of our climate have given us a constant and an insatiable national disease—consumption; the density of our winter fog has gained an European celebrity; whilst the general haziness of the atmosphere induces an Italian or an American to doubt whether we are ever indulged with a real blue sky. ‘Good day’ has become the national salutation; umbrellas, water-proof clothes and cough mixtures are almost necessities of English life; yet, despite these daily and hourly proofs of the importance of the weather to each and all of us, it is only within the last ten years that any effectual steps have been taken in England to watch the weather and the proximate elements which regulate its course and variations.

Yet, in those ten years positive wonders have been done, and good hope established that a continuance of patient enquiry will be rewarded by still further discoveries. To take a single result it may be mentioned, that a careful study of the thermometer has shown that a descent of the temperature of London from forty-five to thirty-two degrees, generally kills about 300 persons. They may not all die in the very week when the loss of warmth takes place, but the number of deaths is found to increase to that extent over the previous average within a short period after the change. The fall of temperature, in truth, kills them as certainly as a well aimed cannon-shot. Our changing climate or deficient food and shelter has weathered them for the final stroke, but they actually die at last of the weather.

Before 1838 several European states less apt than ourselves to talk about the weather, had taken it up as a study, and had made various contributions to the general knowledge of the subject; but in that year England began to act. The officials who now and then emerge from the Admiralty under the title of the ‘Board of Visitors,’ to see what is in progress at the Greenwich Observatory, were reminded by Mr. Airy, the astronomer royal, that much good might be done by pursuing a course of magnetic and meteorological observations. The officials ‘listened and believed.’

The following year saw a wooden fence pushed out behind the Observatory walls in the direction of Blackheath, and soon afterwards a few low-roofed, unpainted, wooden buildings were dotted over the enclosure. These structures are small enough and humble enough to outward view, yet they contain some most beautifully constructed instruments, and have been the scene of a series of observations and discoveries of the greatest interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling sees only a series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some 80 feet high, steadied by ropes, and having a lanthorn at the top, and a windlass below; and if he looks closer he perceives a small inner enclosure surrounded by a dwarf fence, an upright stand with a moveable top sheltering a collection of thermometers, and here and there a pile of planks and unused partitioning that helps to give the place an appearance of temporary expediency—an aspect something between a collection of emigrant’s cottages and the yard of a dealer in second-hand building materials. But,—as was said when speaking of the Astronomical Observatory,—Greenwich is a practical place, and not one prepared for show. Science, like virtue, does not require a palace for a dwelling-place. In this collection of deal houses during the last ten years Nature has been constantly watched, and interrogated with the zeal and patience which alone can glean a knowledge of her secrets. And the results of those watches, kept at all hours, and in all weathers, are curious in the extreme: but before we ask what they are, let us cross the barrier, and see with what tools the weather-students work.

The main building is built in the form of a cross, with its chief front to the magnetic north. It is formed of wood; all iron and other metals being carefully excluded; for its purpose is to contain three large magnets, which have to be isolated from all influence likely to interfere with their truthful action. In three arms of the cross these magnets are suspended by bands of unwrought, untwisted silk. In the fourth arm is a sort of double window filled with apparatus for receiving the electricity collected at the top of the mast which stands close by. Thus in this wooden shed we find one portion devoted to electricity—to the detection and registry of the stray lightning of the atmosphere—and the other three to a set of instruments that feel the influence and register the variations of the magnetic changes in the condition of the air. ‘True as the needle to the pole,’ is the burden of an old song, which now shows how little our forefathers knew about this same needle, which, in truth, has a much steadier character than it deserves. Let all who still have faith in the legend go to the magnet-house, and when they have seen the vagaries there displayed, they will have but a poor idea of Mr. Charles Dibdin’s sea-heroes whose constancy is declared to have been as true as their compasses were to the north.

Upon entering the magnet-house, the first object that attracts attention are the jars to which the electricity is brought down. The fluid is collected, as just stated, by a conductor running from the top of the mast outside. In order that not the slightest portion may be lost in its progress down, a lamp is kept constantly burning near the top of the pole, the light of which keeps warm and dry a body of glass that cuts off all communication between the conductor and the machinery which supports it. Another light for the purpose of collecting the electricity by its flame, is placed above the top of the pole. This light, burning at night, has given rise to many a strange supposition in the neighbourhood. It is too high up to be serviceable as a lanthorn to those below. Besides, who walks in Greenwich Park after the gates are closed? It can light only the birds or the deer. ‘Then, surely,’ says another popular legend, ‘it is to guide the ships on the river, when on their way up at night;—a sort of land-mark to tell whereabouts the Observatory is when the moon and stars are clouded, and refuse to show where their watchers are.’

All these speculations are idle, for the lights burn when the sun is shining, as well as at night; and the object of the lower one is that no trace of moisture, and no approach of cold, shall give the electricity a chance of slipping down the mast, or the ropes, to the earth, but shall leave it no way of escape from the wise men below, who want it, and will have it, whether it likes or no, in their jars, that they may measure its quantity and its quality, and write both down in their journals. It is thus that electricity comes down the wires into those jars on our right as we enter. If very slight, its presence there is indicated by tiny morsels of pendent gold-leaf; if stronger, the divergence of two straws show it; if stronger still, the third jar holds its greater force, whilst neighbouring instruments measure the length of the electric sparks, or mark the amount of the electric force. At the desk, close by, sits the observer, who jots down the successive indications. In his book he registers from day to day, throughout the year, how much electricity has been in the air, and what was its character, even to such particulars as to whether its sparks were blue, violet, or purple in colour. At times, however, he has to exercise great care, and it is not always that he even then escapes receiving severe shocks.

Passing on, we approach the magnets. They are three in number; of large size, and differently suspended, to show the various ways in which such bodies are acted upon. All hang by bands of unwrought silk. If the silk were twisted, it would twist the magnets, and the accuracy of their position would be disturbed. Magnets, like telescopes, must be true in their adjustment to the hundredth part of a hair’s breadth. One magnet hangs north and south; another east and west; and a third, like a scale-beam, is balanced on knife-edges and agate planes, so beautifully, that when once adjusted and enclosed in its case, it is opened only once a year, lest one grain of dust, or one small spider, should destroy its truth; for spiders are as troublesome to the weather-student as to the astronomer. These insects like the perfect quiet that reigns about the instruments of the philosopher, and with heroic perseverance persist in spinning their fine threads amongst his machines. Indeed, spiders occasionally betray the magnetic observer into very odd behaviour. At times he may be seen bowing in the sunshine, like a Persian fire-worshipper; now stooping in this direction, now dodging in that, but always gazing through the sun’s rays up towards that luminary. He seems demented, staring at nothing. At last he lifts his hand; he snatches apparently at vacancy to pull nothing down. In truth his eye had at last caught the gleam of light reflected from an almost invisible spider line running from the electrical wire to the neighbouring planks. The spider who had ventured on the charged wire paid the penalty of such daring with his life long ago, but he had left his web behind him, and that beautifully minute thread has been carrying off to the earth a portion of the electric fluid, before it had been received, and tested, and registered, by the mechanism below. Such facts show the exceeding delicacy of the observations.

For seven years, the magnets suspended in this building were constantly watched every two hours—every even hour—day and night, except on Sundays, the object being that some light might be thrown upon the laws regulating the movements of the mariner’s compass; hence, that whilst men became wiser, navigation might be rendered safer. The chief observer—the genius loci—is Mr. Glaisher, whose name figures in the reports of the Registrar-General. He, with two assistants, from year to year, went on making these tedious examinations of the variations of the magnets, by means of small telescopes, fixed with great precision upon pedestals of masonry or wood fixed on the earth, and unconnected with the floor of the building, occupying a position exactly between the three magnets. This mode of proceeding had continued for some years with almost unerring regularity, and certain large quarto volumes full of figures were the results, when an ingenious medical man, Mr. Brooke, hit upon a photographic plan for removing the necessity for this perpetual watchfulness. Now, in the magnet-house, we see light and chemistry doing the tasks before performed by human labour; and doing them more faithfully than even the most vigilant of human eyes and hands. Around the magnets are cases of zinc, so perfect that they exclude all light from without. Inside those cases, in one place, is a lamp giving a single ray of prepared light which, falling upon a mirror soldered to the magnet, moves with its motions. This wandering ray, directed towards a sheet of sensitive photographic paper, records the magnet’s slightest motion! The paper moves on by clockwork, and once in four-and-twenty hours an assistant, having closed the shutters of the building, lights a lanthorn of yellow glass, opens the magnet-boxes, removes the paper on which the magnets have been enabled to record their own motions, and then, having put in a fresh sheet of sensitive paper, he shuts it securely in, winds up the clockwork, puts out his yellow light and lets in the sunshine. His lanthorn glass is yellow, because the yellow rays are the only ones which can be safely allowed to fall upon the photographic paper during its removal from the instrument, to the dish in which its magnetic picture is to be fixed by a further chemical process. It is the blue ray of the light that gives the daguerrotypic likeness;—as most persons who have had their heads off, under the hands of M. Claudet, or Mr. Beard, or any of their numerous competitors in the art of preparing sun-pictures, well know.

Since the apparatus of Mr. Brooke for the self-registration of the magnetic changes has been in operation at Greenwich, the time of Mr. Glaisher and his assistants has been more at liberty for other branches of their duties. These are numerous enough. Thermometers and barometers have to be watched as well as magnets. To these instruments the same ingenious photographic contrivance is applied.

The wooden building next to the magnet-house on the south-west contains a modification of Mr. Brooke’s ingenious plan, by which the rise and fall of the temperature of the air is self-registered. Outside the building are the bulbs of thermometers freely exposed to the weather. Their shafts run through a zinc case, and as the mercury rises or falls, it moves a float having a projecting arm. Across this arm is thrown the ray of prepared light which falls then upon the sensitive paper. Thus we see the variations of the needle and the variations in heat and cold both recording their own story, within these humble-looking wooden sheds, as completely as the wind and the rain are made to do the same thing, on the top of the towers of the Observatory. The reward given to the inventor of this ingenious mode of self-registration has been recently revealed in a parliamentary paper, thus:—‘To Mr. Charles Brooke for his invention and establishment at the Royal Observatory, of the apparatus for the self-registration of magnetical and meteorological phenomena, 500l.’ Every year the invention will save fully 500l. worth of human toil; and the reward seems small when we see every year millions voted for warlike, sinecure, and other worse than useless purposes.

Photography, however, cannot do all the work. Its records have to be checked by independent observations every day, and then both have to be brought to their practical value by comparison with certain tables which test their accuracy, and make them available for disclosing certain scientific results. The preparation of such tables is one of the practical triumphs of Greenwich. Many a quiet country gentleman amuses his leisure by noting day by day the variations of his thermometer and barometer. Heretofore such observations were isolated and of no general value, but now by the tables completed by Mr. Glaisher, and published by the Royal Society, they may all be converted into scientific values, and be made available for the increase of our weather-wisdom. For nearly seventy years the Royal Society had observations made at Somerset House, but they were a dead letter—mere long columns of figures—till these tables gave them significance. And the same tables now knit into one scientific whole, the observations taken by forty scientific volunteers, who, from day to day, record for the Registrar-General of births and deaths, the temperature, moisture, &c., of their different localities, which vary from Glasgow to Guernsey, and from Cornwall to Norwich.

What the Rosetta stone is to the history of the Pharaohs, these Greenwich tables have been to the weather-hieroglyphics. They have afforded something like a key to the language in which the secrets are written; and it remains for industrious observation and scientific zeal to complete the modern victory over ancient ignorance. Already, the results of the Greenwich studies of the weather have given us a number of curious morsels of knowledge. The wholesale destruction of human life induced by a fall in the temperature of London has just been noticed. Besides the manifestation of that fact, we are shown, that instead of a warm summer being followed by a cold winter, the tendency of the law of the weather is to group warm seasons together, and cold seasons together. Mr. Glaisher has made out, that the character of the weather seems to follow certain curves, so to speak, each extending over periods of fifteen years. During the first half of each of these periods, the seasons become warmer and warmer, till they reach their warmest point, and then they sink again, becoming colder and colder, till they reach the lowest point, whence they rise again. His tables range over the last seventy-nine years—from 1771 to 1849. Periods shown to be the coldest, were years memorable for high-priced food, increased mortality, popular discontent, and political changes. In his diagrams, the warm years are tinted brown, and the cold years grey, and as the sheets are turned over and the dates scanned, the fact suggests itself that a grey period saw Lord George Gordon’s riots; a grey period was marked by the Reform Bill excitement; and a grey period saw the Corn Laws repealed.

A few more morsels culled from the experience of these weather-seers, and we have done.

Those seasons have been best which have enjoyed an average temperature—nor too hot nor too cold.

The indications are that the climate of England is becoming warmer, and, consequently, healthier; a fact to be partly accounted for by the improved drainage and the removal of an excess of timber from the land.

The intensity of cholera was found greatest in those places where the air was stagnant; and, therefore, any means for causing its motion, as lighting fires and improving ventilation, are thus proved to be of the utmost consequence.

Some day near the 20th of January—the lucky guess in 1838 of Murphy’s Weather Almanac—will, upon the average of years, be found to be the coldest of the whole year.

In the middle of May there are generally some days of cold, so severe as to be unexplainable. Humboldt mentions this fact in his Cosmos; and various authors have tried to account for it,—at present in vain. The favourite notion, perhaps, is that which attributes this period of cold to the loosening of the icebergs of the North. Another weather eccentricity is the usual advent of some warm days at the beginning of November.

Certain experiments in progress to test the difference between the temperature of the Thames and of the surrounding atmosphere are expected to show the cause of the famous London fog. During the night the Thames is often from ten to seventeen degrees warmer, and in the day time from eight to ten degrees colder than the air above it.

If the theory of weather-cycles holds good, we are to have seasons colder than the average from this time till 1853, when warmth will begin again to predominate over cold. A chilly prophecy this to close with, and therefore, rather let an anecdote complete this chapter on the Weather-Watchers of Greenwich.

Amongst other experiments going on some time ago in the Observatory enclosure, were some by which Mr. Glaisher sought to discover how much warmth the Earth lost during the hours of night, and how much moisture the Air would take up in a day from a given surface. Upon the long grass within the dwarf fence already mentioned were placed all sorts of odd substances in little distinct quantities. Ashes, wood, leather, linen, cotton, glass, lead, copper, and stone, amongst other things, were there to show how each affected the question of radiation. Close by upon a post was a dish six inches across, in which every day there was punctually poured one ounce of water, and at the same hour next day, as punctually was this fluid re-measured to see what had been lost by evaporation. For three years this latter experiment had been going on, and the results were posted up in a book; but the figures gave most contradictory results. There was either something very irregular in the air, or something very wrong in the apparatus. It was watched for leakage, but none was found, when one day Mr. Glaisher stepped out of the magnet-house, and looking towards the stand, the mystery was revealed. The evaporating dish of the philosopher was being used as a bath by an irreverent bird!—a sparrow was scattering from his wings the water left to be drunk by the winds of Heaven. Only one thing remained to be done; and the next minute saw a pen run through the tables that had taken three years to compile. The labour was lost—the work had to be begun again.

MY WONDERFUL ADVENTURES IN SKITZLAND.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

The Beginning is a Bore—I fall into Misfortune.

I am fond of Gardening. I like to dig. If among the operations of the garden any need for such a work can be at any time discovered or invented, I like to dig a hole. On the 3d of March, 1849, I began a hole behind the kitchen wall, where-into it was originally intended to transplant a plum-tree. The exercise was so much to my taste, that a strange humour impelled me to dig on. A fascination held me to the task. I neglected my business. I disappeared from the earth’s surface. A boy who worked a basket by means of a rope and pulley, aided me; so aided, I confined my whole attention to spade labour. The centripetal force seemed to have made me its especial victim. I dug on until Autumn. In the beginning of November I observed that, upon percussion, the sound given by the floor of my pit was resonant. I did not intermit my labour, urged as I was by a mysterious instinct downwards. On applying my ear, I occasionally heard a subdued sort of rattle, which caused me to form a theory that the centre of the earth might be composed of mucus. In November, the ground broke beneath me into a hollow and I fell a considerable distance. I alighted on the box-seat of a four-horse coach, which happened to be running at that time immediately underneath. The coachman took no notice whatever of my sudden arrival by his side. He was so completely muffled up, that I could observe only the skilful way in which he manipulated reins and whip. The horses were yellow. I had seen no more than this, when the guard’s horn blew, and presently we pulled up at an inn. A waiter came out, and appeared to collect four bags from the passengers inside the coach. He then came round to me.

“Dine here, Sir?”

“Yes, certainly,” said I. I like to dine—not the sole point of resemblance between myself and the great Johnson.

“Trouble you for your stomach, Sir.”

While the waiter was looking up with a polite stare into my puzzled face, my neighbour, the coachman, put one hand within his outer coat, as if to feel for money in his waistcoat pocket. Directly afterwards his fingers came again to light, and pulled forth an enormous sack. Notwithstanding that it was abnormally enlarged, I knew by observation of its form and texture that this was a stomach, with the œsophagus attached. This, then, the waiter caught as it was thrown down to him, and hung it carelessly over his arm, together with the four smaller bags (which I now knew to be also stomachs) collected from the passengers within the coach. I started up, and as I happened to look round, observed a skeleton face upon the shoulders of a gentleman who sat immediately behind my back. My own features were noticed at the same time by the guard, who now came forward, touching his hat.

“Beg your pardon, Sir, but you’ve been and done it.”

“Done what?”

“Why, Sir, you should have booked your place, and not come up in this clandestine way. However, you’ve been and done it!”

“My good man, what have I done?”

“Why, sir, the Baron Terroro’s eyes had the box-seat, and I strongly suspect you’ve been and sat upon them.”

I looked involuntarily to see whether I had been sitting upon anything except the simple cushion. Truly enough, there was an eye, which I had crushed and flattened.

“Only one,” I said.

“Worse for you, and better for him. The other eye had time to escape, and it will know you again, that’s certain. Well, it’s no business of mine. Of course you’ve no appetite now for dinner? Better pay your fare, Sir. To the Green Hippopotamus and Spectacles, where we put up, it’s ten-and-six.”

“Is there room inside?” I enquired. It was advisable to shrink from observation.

“Yes, Sir. The inside passengers are mostly skeleton. There’s room for three, Sir. Inside, one-pound-one.”

I paid the money, and became an inside passenger.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

Of Divisions which occur in Skitzland—I am taken up.

Professor Essig’s Lectures on Anatomy had so fortified me, that I did not shrink from entering the Skitzton coach. It contained living limbs, loose or attached to skeletons in other respects bare, except that they were clothed with broadcloth garments, cut after the English fashion. One passenger only had a complete face of flesh, he had also one living hand; the other hand I guessed was bony, because it was concealed in a glove obviously padded. By observing the fit of his clothes, I came to a conclusion that this gentleman was stuffed throughout; that all his limbs, except the head and hand, were artificial. Two pairs of Legs, in woollen stockings, and a pair of Ears, were in a corner of the coach, and in another corner there were nineteen or twenty Scalps.

I thought it well to look astonished at nothing, and, having pointed in a careless manner to the scalps, asked what might be their destination? The person with the Face and Hand replied to me; and although evidently himself a gentleman, he addressed me with a tone of unconcealed respect.

“They are going to Skitzton, Sir, to the hair-dresser’s.”

“Yes, to be sure,” I said. “They are to make Natural Skin Wigs. I might have known.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir. There is a ball to-morrow night at Culmsey. But the gentry do not like to employ village barbers, and therefore many of the better class of people send their hair to Skitzton, and receive it back by the return coach properly cut and curled.”

“Oh,” said I. “Ah! Oh, indeed!”

“Dinners, gentlemen!” said a voice at the window, and the waiter handed in four stomachs, now tolerably well filled. Each passenger received his property, and pulling open his chest with as much composure as if he were unbuttoning his waistcoat, restored his stomach, with a dinner in it, to the right position. Then the reckonings were paid, and the coach started.

I thought of my garden, and much wished that somebody could throw Professor Essig down the hole that I had dug. A few things were to be met with in Skitzland which would rather puzzle him. They puzzled me; but I took refuge in silence, and so fortified, protected my ignorance from an exposure.

“You are going to Court, Sir, I presume?” said my Face and Hand friend, after a short pause. His was the only mouth in the coach, excepting mine, so that he was the only passenger able to enter into conversation.

“My dear Sir,” I replied, “let me be frank with you. I have arrived here unexpectedly out of another world. Of the manners and customs, nay, of the very nature of the people who inhabit this country, I know nothing. For any information you can give me, I shall be very grateful.”

My friend smiled incredulity, and said,

“Whatever you are pleased to profess, I will believe. What you are pleased to feign a wish for, I am proud to furnish. In Skitzland, the inhabitants, until they come of age, retain that illustrious appearance which you have been so fortunate as never to have lost. During the night of his twenty-first birthday, each Skitzlander loses the limbs which up to that period have received from him no care, no education. Of those neglected parts the skeletons alone remain, but all those organs which he has employed sufficiently continue unimpaired. I, for example, devoted to the study of the law, forgot all occupation but to think, to use my senses and to write. I rarely used my legs, and therefore Nature has deprived me of them.”

“But,” I observed, “it seems that in Skitzland you are able to take yourselves to pieces.”

“No one has that power, Sir, more largely than yourself. What organs we have we can detach on any service. When dispersed, a simple force of Nature directs all corresponding members whither to fly that they may re-assemble.”

“If they can fly,” I asked, “why are they sent in coaches? There were a pair of eyes on the box-seat.”

“Simply for safety against accidents. Eyes flying alone are likely to be seized by birds, and incur many dangers. They are sent, therefore, usually under protection, like any other valuable parcel.”

“Do many accidents occur?”

“Very few. For mutual protection, and also because a single member is often all that has been left existing of a fellow Skitzlander our laws, as you, Sir, know much better than myself, estimate the destruction of any part absent on duty from its skeleton as a crime equivalent to murder——”

After this I held my tongue. Presently my friend again enquired whether I was going up to Court?

“Why should I go to Court?”

“Oh, Sir, it pleases you to be facetious. You must be aware that any Skitzlander who has been left by Nature in possession of every limb, sits in the Assembly of the Perfect, or the Upper House, and receives many state emoluments and dignities.”

“Are there many members of that Upper Assembly?”

“Sir, there were forty-two. But if you are now travelling to claim your seat, the number will be raised to forty-three.”

“The Baron Terroro—” I hinted.

“My brother, Sir. His eyes are on the box-seat under my care. Undoubtedly he is a Member of the Upper House.”

I was now anxious to get out of the coach as soon as possible. My wish was fulfilled after the next pause. One Eye, followed by six Pairs of Arms, with strong hard Hands belonging to them, flew in at the window. I was collared; the door was opened, and all hands were at work to drag me out and away. The twelve Hands whisked me through the air, while the one Eye sailed before us, like an old bird, leader of the flight.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

My Imprisonment and Trial for Murder.

What sort of sky have they in Skitzland? Our earth overarches them, and, as the sunlight filters through, it causes a subdued illumination with very pure rays. Skitzland is situated nearly in the centre of our globe, it hangs there like a shrunken kernel in the middle of a nutshell. The height from Skitzland to the over-arching canopy is great; so great, that if I had not fallen personally from above the firmament, I should have considered it to be a blue sky similar to ours. At night it is quite dark; but during the day there is an appearance in the Heaven of white spots; their glistening reminded me of stars. I noticed them as I was being conveyed to prison by the strong arms of justice, for it was by a detachment of members from the Skitzton Police that I was now hurried along. The air was very warm, and corroborated the common observation of an increase of heat as you get into the pith of our planet. The theory of Central Fire, however, is, you perceive quite overturned by my experience.

We alighted near the outskirts of a large and busy town. Through its streets I was dragged publicly, much stared at, and much staring. The street life was one busy nightmare of disjointed limbs. Professor Essig, could he have been dragged through Skitzton, would have delivered his farewell lecture upon his return. ‘Gentlemen, Fuit Ilium—Fuit Ischium—Fuit Sacrum—Anatomy has lost her seat among the sciences. My occupation’s gone.’ Professor Owen’s Book ‘On the Nature of Limbs,’ must contain, in the next edition, an Appendix ‘Upon Limbs in Skitzland.’ I was dragged through the streets, and all that I saw there, in the present age of little faith, I dare not tell you. I was dragged through the streets to prison and there duly chained, after having been subjected to the scrutiny of about fifty couples of eyes drawn up in a line within the prison door. I was chained in a dark cell, a cell so dark that I could very faintly perceive the figure of some being who was my companion. Whether this individual had ears wherewith to hear, and mouth wherewith to answer me, I could not see, but at a venture I addressed him. My thirst for information was unconquerable; I began, therefore, immediately with a question:

“Friend, what are those stars which we see shining in the sky at mid-day?”

An awful groan being an unsatisfactory reply, I asked again.

“Man, do not mock at misery. You will yourself be one of them.”

‘The Teachers shall shine like Stars in the Firmament.’ I have a propensity for teaching, but was puzzled to discover how I could give so practical an illustration of the text of Fichte.

“Believe me,” I said, “I am strangely ignorant. Explain yourself.”

He answered with a hollow voice:

“Murderers are shot up out of mortars into the sky, and stick there. Those white, glistening specks, they are their skeletons.”

Justice is prompt in Skitzland. I was tried incredibly fast by a jury of twelve men who had absolutely heads. The judges had nothing but brain, mouth and ear. Three powerful tongues defended me, but as they were not suffered to talk nonsense, they had little to say. The whole case was too clear to be talked into cloudiness. Baron Terroro, in person, deposed, that he had sent his eyes to see a friend at Culmsey, and that they were returning on the Skitzton coach, when I, illegally, came with my whole bulk upon the box-seat, which he occupied. That one of his eyes was, in that manner, totally destroyed, but that the other eye, having escaped, identified me, and brought to his brain intelligence of the calamity which had befallen. He deposed further, that having received this information, he despatched his uncrushed eye with arms from the police-office, and accompanied with several members of the detective force, to capture the offender, and to procure the full proofs of my crime. A sub-inspector of Skitzton Police then deposed that he sent three of his faculties, with his mouth, eye, and ear, to meet the coach. That the driver, consisting only of a stomach and hands, had been unable to observe what passed. That the guard, on the contrary, had taxed me with my deed, that he had seen me rise from my seat upon the murdered eye, and that he had heard me make confession of my guilt. The guard was brought next into court, and told his tale. Then I was called upon for my defence. If a man wearing a cloth coat and trousers, and talking excellent English, were to plead at the Old Bailey that he had broken into some citizen’s premises accidentally by falling from the moon, his tale would be received in London as mine was in Skitzton. I was severely reprimanded for my levity, and ordered to be silent. The Judge summed up and the Jury found me Guilty. The Judge, who had put on the black cap before the verdict was pronounced, held out no hope of mercy, and straightway sentenced me to Death, according to the laws and usage of the Realm.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

The last Hours of the Condemned in Skitzland—I am executed.

The period which intervenes between the sentence and execution of a criminal in Skitzland, is not longer than three hours. In order to increase the terror of death by contrast, the condemned man is suffered to taste at the table of life from which he is banished, the most luscious viands. All the attainable enjoyment that his wit can ask for, he is allowed to have, during the three hours before he is shot, like rubbish, off the fields of Skitzland.

Under guard, of course, I was now to be led whithersoever I desired.

Several churches were open. They never are all shut in Skitzton. I was taken into one. A man with heart and life was preaching. People with hearts were in some pews; people with brains, in others; people with ears only, in some. In a neighbouring church, there was a popular preacher, a skeleton with life. His congregation was a crowd of ears, and nothing more.

There was a day-performance at the Opera. I went to that. Fine lungs and mouths possessed the stage, and afterwards there was a great bewilderment with legs. I was surprised to notice that many of the most beautiful ladies were carried in and out, and lifted about like dolls. My guides sneered at my pretence of ignorance, when I asked why this was. But they were bound to please me in all practicable ways, so they informed me, although somewhat pettishly. It seems that in Skitzland, ladies who possess and have cultivated only their good looks, lose at the age of twenty-one, all other endowments. So they become literally dolls, but dolls of a superior kind; for they can not only open and shut their eyes, but also sigh; wag slowly with their heads, and some times take a pocket-handkerchief out of a bag, and drop it. But as their limbs are powerless, they have to be lifted and dragged about after the fashion that excited my astonishment.

I said then, “Let me see the Poor.” They took me to a workhouse. The men, there, were all yellow; and they wore a dress which looked as though it were composed of asphalte; it had also a smell like that of pitch. I asked for explanation of these things.

A Superintendent of Police remarked that I was losing opportunities of real enjoyment for the idle purpose of persisting in my fable of having dropped down from the sky. However, I compelled him to explain to me what was the reason of these things. The information I obtained, was briefly this:—that Nature, in Skitzland, never removes the stomach. Every man has to feed himself; and the necessity for finding food, joined to the necessity for buying clothes, is a mainspring whereby the whole clockwork of civilised life is kept in motion. Now, if a man positively cannot feed and clothe himself, he becomes a pauper. He then goes to the workhouse, where he has his stomach filled with a cement. That stopping lasts a life-time, and he thereafter needs no food. His body, however, becomes yellow by the superfluity of bile. The yellow-boy, which is the Skitzland epithet for pauper, is at the same time provided with a suit of clothes. The clothes are of a material so tough that they can be worn unrepaired for more than eighty years. The pauper is now freed from care, but were he in this state cast loose upon society, since he has not that stimulus to labour which excites industry in other men, he would become an element of danger in the state. Nature no longer compelling him to work, the law compels him. The remainder of his life is forfeit to the uses of his country. He labours at the workhouse, costing nothing more than the expense of lodging, after the first inconsiderable outlay for cement wherewith to plug his stomach, and for the one suit of apparel.

When we came out of the workhouse, all the bells in the town were tolling. The Superintendent told me that I had sadly frittered away time, for I had now no more than half-an-hour to live. Upon that I leaned my back against a post, and asked him to prepare me for my part in the impending ceremony by giving me a little information on the subject of executions.

I found that it was usual for a man to be executed with great ceremony upon the spot whereon his crime had been committed. That in case of rebellions or tumults in the provinces, when large numbers were not unfrequently condemned to death, the sentence of the law was carried out in the chief towns of the disturbed districts. That large numbers of people were thus sometimes discharged from a single market-place, and that the repeated strokes appeared to shake, or crack, or pierce in some degree that portion of the sky towards which the artillery had been directed. I here at once saw that I had discovered the true cause of earthquakes and volcanoes; and this shows how great light may be thrown upon theories concerning the hidden constitution of this earth, by going more deeply into the matter of it than had been done by any one before I dug my hole. Our volcanoes, it is now proved, are situated over the market-places of various provincial towns in Skitzland. When a revolution happens, the rebels are shot up,—discharged from mortars by means of an explosive material evidently far more powerful than our gunpowder or gun-cotton; and they are pulverised by the friction in grinding their way through the earth. How simple and easy truth appears, when we have once arrived at it.

The sound of muffled drums approached us, and a long procession turned the corner of a street. I was placed in the middle of it,—Baron Terroro by my side. All then began to float so rapidly away, that I was nearly left alone, when forty arms came back and collared me. It was considered to be a proof of my refractory disposition, that I would make no use of my innate power of flight. I was therefore dragged in this procession swiftly through the air, drums playing, fifes lamenting.

We alighted on the spot where I had fallen, and the hole through which I had come I saw above me. It was very small, but the light from above shining more vividly through it made it look, with its rough edges, like a crumpled moon. A quantity of some explosive liquid was poured into a large mortar, which had been erected (under the eye of Baron Terroro) exactly where my misfortune happened. I was then thrust in, the Baron ramming me down, and pounding with a long stock or pestle upon my head in a noticeably vicious manner. The Baron then cried “Fire!” and as I shot out, in the midst of a blaze, I saw him looking upward.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

My revenge on the Skitzlanders.

By great good fortune, they had planted their artillery so well, that I was fired up through my hole again, and alighted in my own garden, just a little singed. My first thought was to run to an adjoining bed of vegetable marrows. Thirty vegetable marrows and two pumpkins I rained down to astonish the Skitzlanders, and I fervently hope that one of them may have knocked out the remaining eye of my vindictive enemy, the Baron. I then went into the pantry, and obtained a basket full of eggs, and having rained these down upon the Skitzlanders, I left them.

It was after breakfast when I went down to Skitzland, and I came back while the dinner bell was ringing.

BIRTH SONG.

Hail, new-waked atom of the Eternal whole,
Young voyager upon Time’s mighty river!
Hail to thee, Human Soul,
Hail, and for ever!
Pilgrim of life, all hail!
He who at first called forth
From nothingness the earth,

Who clothed the hills in strength, and dug the sea;

Who gave the stars to gem
Night, like a diadem,
Thou little child, made thee;
Young habitant of earth,

Fair as its flowers, though brought in sorrow forth,

Thou art akin to God who fashioned thee!

The Heavens themselves shall vanish as a scroll,

The solid earth dissolve, the stars grow pale,

But thou, oh Human Soul,
Shalt be immortal! Hail!
Thou young Immortal, hail!
He, before whom are dim
Seraph and cherubim,
Who gave the archangels strength and majesty,
Who sits upon Heaven’s throne,
The Everlasting One,
Thou little child, made thee!
Fair habitant of Earth,

Immortal in thy God, though mortal by thy birth,

Born for life’s trials, hail, all hail to thee!

SONG OF DEATH.

Shrink not, O Human Spirit,
The Everlasting Arm is strong to save!
Look up, look up, frail nature, put thy trust
In Him who went down mourning to the dust,
And overcame the grave!
Quickly goes down the sun;
Life’s work is almost done;

Fruitless endeavour, hope deferred, and strife!

One little struggle more,
One pang, and then is o’er
All the long, mournful, weariness of life.
Kind friends, ’tis almost past;
Come now and look your last!
Sweet children, gather near,
And his last blessing hear,
See how he loved you who departeth now!
And, with thy trembling step and pallid brow,
O, most beloved one,
Whose breast he leaned upon,
Come, faithful unto death,
Receive his parting breath!
The fluttering spirit panteth to be free,
Hold him not back who speeds to victory!

—The bonds are riven, the struggling soul is free!

Hail, hail, enfranchised Spirit!

Thou that the wine-press of the field hast trod!

On, blest Immortal, on, through boundless space,

And stand with thy Redeemer face to face;
And stand before thy God!
Life’s weary work is o’er,
Thou art of earth no more;

No more art trammelled by the oppressive clay,

But tread’st with winged ease

The high acclivities

Of truths sublime, up Heaven’s crystalline way.

Here no bootless quest;
This city’s name is Rest;
Here shall no fear appal;
Here love is all in all;
Here shalt thou win thy ardent soul’s desire;
Here clothe thee in thy beautiful attire.
Lift, lift thy wond’ring eyes!
Yonder is Paradise,
And this fair shining band
Are spirits of thy land!

And these who throng to meet thee are thy kin,

Who have awaited thee, redeemed from sin!

—The city’s gates unfold—enter, oh! enter in!

THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER III.

Mr. Finch was standing in front of his bookcase, deeply occupied in ascertaining a point in ecclesiastical history, when he was told that Ann Warrender wished to speak to him.

“O dear!” he half-breathed out. He had for some time been growing nervous about the state of things at Bleaburn; and there was nothing he now liked so little as to be obliged to speak face to face with any of the people. It was not all cowardice; though cowardice made up sadly too much of it. He did not very well know how to address the minds of his people; and he felt that he could not do it well. He was more fit for closet study than for the duties of a parish priest; and he ought never to have been sent to Bleaburn. Here he was, however; and there was Ann Warrender waiting in the passage to speak to him.

“Dear me!” said he, “I am really very busy at this moment. Ask Ann Warrender if she can come again to-morrow.”

To-morrow would not do. Ann followed the servant to the door of the study to say so. Mr. Finch hastily asked her to wait a moment, and shut the door behind the servant. He unlocked a cupboard, took out a green bottle and a wineglass, and fortified himself against infection with a draught of something whose scent betrayed him to Ann the moment the door was again opened.

“Come in,” said he, when the cupboard was locked.

“Will you please come, sir, and see John Billiter? He is not far from death; he asked for you just now; so I said I would step for you.”

“Billiter! The fever has been very fatal in that house, has it not? Did not he lose two children last week?”

“Yes, sir; and my father thinks the other two are beginning to sicken. I’m sure I don’t know what will become of them. I saw Mrs. Billiter stagger as she crossed the room just now; and she does not seem, somehow, to be altogether like herself this morning. That looks as if she were beginning. But if you will come and pray with them, Sir, that is the comfort they say they want.”

“Does your father allow you to go to an infected house like that?” asked Mr. Finch. “And does he go himself?”

Ann looked surprised, and said she did not see what else could be done. There was no one but her father who could lift John Billiter, or turn him in his bed; and as for her, she was the only one that Mrs. Billiter had to look to, day and night. The Good Lady went in very often, and did all she could; but she was wanted in so many places, besides having her hands full with the Johnsons, that she could only come in and direct and cheer them, every few hours. She desired to be sent for at any time, night or day; and they did send when they were particularly distressed, or at a loss; but for regular watching and nursing, Ann said the Billiters had no one to depend on but herself. She could not stay talking now, however. How soon might she say that Mr. Finch would come?

Mr. Finch was now walking up and down the room. He said he would consider, and let her know as soon as he could.

“John Billiter is as bad as can be, Sir. He must be very near his end.”

“Ah! well; you shall hear from me very soon.”

As Ann went away, she wondered what could be the impediment to Mr. Finch’s going with her. He, meantime, roused his mind to undertake a great argument of duty. It was with a sense of complacency, even of elevation, that he now set himself to work to consider of his duty—determined to do it when his mind was made up.

He afterwards declared that he went to his chamber to be secure against interruption, and there walked up and down for two hours in meditation and prayer. He considered that it had pleased God that he should be the only son of his mother, whose whole life would be desolate if he should die. He thought of Ellen Price, feeling almost sure that she would marry him whenever he felt justified in asking her; and he considered what a life of happiness she would lose if he should die. He remembered that his praying with the sick would not affect life on the one side, while it might on the other. The longer he thought of Ellen Price and of his mother, and of all that he might do if he lived, the more clear did his duty seem to himself to become. At the end of the two hours, he was obliged to bring his meditations to a conclusion; for Ann Warrender’s father had been waiting for some time to speak to him, and would then wait no longer.

“It is not time lost, Warrender,” said Mr. Finch, when at last he came down stairs. “I have been determining my principle, and my mind is made up.”

“Then, Sir, let us be off, or the man will be dead. What! you cannot come, Sir! Why, bless my soul!”

“You see my reasons, surely, Warrender.”

“Why, yes; such as they are. The thing that I can’t see the reason for, is your being a clergyman.”

While Mr. Finch was giving forth his amiable and gentlemanly notions of the position of a clergyman in society, and of filial consideration, Warrender was twirling his hat, and fidgetting, as if in haste; and his summing up was——

“I don’t know what your mother herself might say, Sir, to your consideration for her; but most likely she has, being a mother, noticed that saying about a man leaving father and mother, and houses and lands, for Christ’s sake; and also——But it is no business of mine to be preaching to the clergyman, and I have enough to do, elsewhere.”

“One thing more, Warrender. I entrust it to you to let the people know that there will be no service in church during the infection. Why, do not you know that, in the time of the plague, the churches were closed by order, because it was found that the people gave one another the disease, by meeting there?”

John had never heard it; and he was sorry to hear it now. He hastened away to the Good Lady, to ask her if he must really tell the afflicted people that all religious comfort mast be withheld from them now, when they were in the utmost need of it. Meantime, Mr. Finch was entering at length in his diary, the history of his conflict of mind, his decision, and the reasons of it.

Henceforth, Mr. Finch had less time for his diary, and for clearing up points of ecclesiastical history. There were so many funerals that he could never be sure of leisure; nor, when he had it, was he in a state to use it. Sometimes he almost doubted whether he was in his right mind, so overwhelmingly dreadful to him was the scene around him. He met Farmer Neale one day. Neale was at his wit’s end what to do about his harvest. Several of his labourers were dead, and others were kept aloof by his own servants, who declared they would all leave him if any person from Bleaburn was brought among them; and no labourers from a distance would come near the place. Farmer Neale saw no other prospect than of his crops rotting on the ground.

“You must offer high wages,” said Mr. Finch. “You must be well aware that you do not generally tempt people into your service by your rate of wages. You must open your hand at such a time as this.”

Neale was ready enough now to give good wages; but nobody would reap an acre of his for love or money. He was told to be thankful that the fever had spared his house; but he said it was no use bidding a man be thankful for anything, while he saw his crops perishing on the ground.

Next, Mr. Finch saw, in his afternoon ride, a waggon-load of coffins arrive at the brow from O——. He saw them sent down, one by one, on men’s shoulders, to be ranged in the carpenter’s yard. The carpenter could not work fast enough; and his stock of wood was so nearly exhausted that there had been complaints, within the last few days, that the coffins would not bear the least shock, but fell to pieces when the grave was opened for the next. So an order was sent to O—— for coffins of various sizes; and now they were carried down the road, and up the street, before the eyes of some who were to inhabit one or another of them. The doctor, hurrying from house to house, had hardly a moment to spare, and no comfort to give. He did not see what there was to prevent the whole population from being swept away. He was himself almost worn out; and just at such a moment, his surgery boy had disappeared. He had no one that he could depend on to help him in making up the medicines, or even to deliver them. The fact was, he said in private, the place was a pest-house; and, except to Miss Pickard, he did not know where to look for any aid or any hope whatever. It would not do to say so to the people; but, frankly speaking, this was what he felt. When the pastor’s heart was thus sunk very low, he thought he would just pass the Plough and Harrow, and see who was there. If there were any cheerful people in Bleaburn, that was where they would be found. At the Plough and Harrow, the floor was swept and the table was clean; and the chimney was prettily dressed with green boughs; but there were only two customers there; and they were smoking their pipes in silence. The landlord said the scores were run up so high, he could not give more credit till better days. The people wanted their draught of comfort badly enough, and he had given it as long as he could; but he must stop somewhere: and if the baker had to stop scores (as he knew he had) the publican had little chance of getting his own. At such a time, however, he knew men ought to be liberal; so he went on serving purl and bitters at five in the morning. The men said it strengthened their stomachs against the fever before they went to work (such of them as could work) and God forbid he should refuse them that! But he knew the half of those few that came at five in the morning would never be able to pay their score. Yet did the publican, amidst all these losses, invite the pastor to sit down and have a cheerful glass; and the pastor did not refuse. There was too little cheerfulness to be had at present to justify him in declining any offer of it. So he let the landlord mix his glass for him, and mix it strong.

It was easy to make the mixture strong; but not so easy to have a ‘cheerful glass.’ The host had too many dismal stories to tell for that; and, when he could be diverted from the theme of the fate of Bleaburn, it was only to talk of the old king’s madness, and the disasters of the war, and the weight of the taxes, and the high price of food, and the riots in the manufacturing districts; a long string of disasters all undeniably true. He was just saying that he had been assured that something would soon appear which would explain the terrors of the time, when a strange cry was heard in the street, and a bustle among the neighbours; and then two or three people ran in and exclaimed, with white lips, that there was a fearful sign in the sky.

There indeed it was, a lustrous thing, shining down into the hollow. Was there ever such a star seen,—as large as a saucer—some of the people said, and with a long white tail, which looked as if it was about to sweep all the common stars out of the sky! The sounds of amazement and fear that ran along the whole street, up and down, brought the neighbours to their doors; and some to the windows, to try how much they could see from windows that would not open. Each one asked somebody else what it was; but all agreed that it was a token of judgment, and that it accounted for everything; the cold spring, the bad crops, the king’s illness, the war, and this dreadful sickly autumn. At last, they bethought them of the pastor, and they crowded round him for an explanation. They received one in a tone so faltering as to confirm their fears, though Mr. Finch declared that it certainly must be a comet: he had never seen a comet; but he was confident this must be one, and that it must be very near the earth:—he did not mean near enough to do any harm;—it was all nonsense talking of comets doing any harm.

“Will it do us any good, Sir?” asked the carpenter, sagely.

“Not that I know of. How should it do us any good?

“Exactly so, Sir: that is what we say. It is there for no good, you may rely upon it: and, for the rest, Heaven knows!”

“I hope farmer Neale may be seeing it,” observed a man to his neighbour. “It may be a mercy to him, if it is sent to warn him of his hard ways.”

“And the doctor, too. I hope it will take effect upon him,” whispered another. The whisper was caught up and spread. “The doctor! the doctor!” every one said, glancing at the comet, and falling to whispering again.

“What are they saying about the doctor?” whispered Mr. Finch to the landlord. “What is the matter about him?” But the landlord only shook his head, and looked excessively solemn in the yellow light which streamed from his open door. After this, Mr. Finch was very silent, and soon stole away homewards. Some who watched him said that he was more alarmed than he chose to show. And this was true. He was more shaken than he chose to admit to his own mind. He would not have acknowledged to himself that he, an educated man, could be afraid of a comet: but, unnerved before by anxiety of mind, and a stronger dose of spirit and water than he had intended to take, he was as open to impression as in the most timid days of his childhood. As he sat in his study, the bright, silent, steady luminary seemed to be still shining full upon his very heart and brain: and the shadowy street, with its groups of gazers, was before his eyes; and the hoarse or whimpering voices of the terrified people were in his ear. He covered his eyes, and thought that he lived in fearful times. He wished he was asleep: but then, there were three funerals for to-morrow! He feared he could not sleep, if he went to bed. Yet, to sit up would be worse; for he could not study to-night, and sitting up was the most wearing thing of all to the nerves. Presently he went to his cupboard. Now, if ever, was the time for a cordial; for how should he do his duty, if he did not get sleep at night, with so many funerals in the morning? So he poured out his medicine, as he called it, and uncorked his laudanum bottle, and obtained the oblivion which is the best comfort of the incapable.

PART II.
CHAPTER IV.

There were some people in Bleaburn to whom the sign in heaven looked very differently. On the night when the people assembled in the street to question each other about it, Mary was at the Billiters’ house, where, but for her, all would have been blank despair. Mrs. Billiter lay muttering all night in the low delirium of the fever; and Mary could not do more for her than go to the side of her mattress now and then, to speak to her, and smooth her pillow, or put a cool hand on her forehead, while one of the dying children hung on the other shoulder. At last, the little fellow was evidently so near death that the slightest movement on her part might put out the little life. As he lay with his head on her shoulder, his bony arms hanging helpless, and his feet like those of a skeleton across her lap, she felt every painful breath through her whole frame. She happened to sit opposite the window; and the window, which commanded a part of the brow of the hollow, happened to be open. Wherever the Good Lady had been, the windows would open now; and, when closed, they were so clear that the sunshine and moonlight could pour in cheerfully. This September night was sultry and dry; and three fever patients in two little low rooms needed whatever fresh air could be had. There sat Mary, immoveable, with her eyes fixed on the brow from which she had seen more than one star come up, since she last left her seat. She now and then spoke cheerfully to the poor mutterer in the other room, to prevent her feeling lonely, or for the chance of bringing back her thoughts to real things: and then she had to soothe little Ned, lying on a bed of shavings in the corner, sore and fretful, and needing the help that she could not stir to give. His feeble cry would have upset any spirits but Mary’s; but her spirits were never known to be upset, though few women have gone through such ghastly scenes, or sustained such tension of anxiety.

“I cannot come to you at this moment, Ned,” said she, “but I will soon,—very soon. Do you know why your brother is not crying? He is going to sleep,—for a long quiet sleep. Perhaps he will go to sleep more comfortably if you can stop crying. Do you think you can stop crying, Ned?”

The wailing was at once a little less miserable, and by degrees it came to a stop as Mary spoke.

“Do you know, your little brother will be quite well, when he wakes from that long sleep. It will be far away from here,—where daddy is.”

“Let me go, too.”

“I think you will go, Ned. If you do, you will not live here any more. You will live where daddy is gone.”

“Will Dan Cobb tease me then? Dan does tease us so!”

Mary had to learn who Dan Cobb was,—a little boy next door, who was not in the fever as yet. He was always wanting Ned’s top. Would he want Ned’s top in that place where they were all going to be well?

“No,” said Mary; “and you will not want it, either. When we go to that place, we have no trouble of carrying anything with us. We shall find whatever we want there.”

“What shall I play at?”

“I don’t know till we go and see; but I am sure it will be with something better than your top. But, Ned, are you angry with Dan? Do you wish that he should have the fever? And are you glad or sorry that he has no top?”

By this time the crying had stopped; and Ned, no longer filling his ears with his own wailing, wondered and asked what that odd sound was,—he did not like it.

“It will soon be over,” said Mary, very gently. “It is your brother just going to sleep. Now, lie and think what you would say to Dan, if you were going a long way off, and what you would like to be done with your top, when you do not want it yourself. You shall tell me what you wish when I come to you presently.”

Whether Ned was capable of thinking she could not judge, but he lay quite silent for the remaining minutes of his little brother’s life;—a great comfort to Mary, who could not have replied, because the mere vibration of her own voice would now have been enough to stop entirely the breathings which came at longer and longer intervals. Her frame ached, and her arms seemed to have lost power,—so long was it since she had changed her posture. At such a moment it was that the great comet came up from behind the brow. The apparition was so wonderful, and so wholly unexpected, that Mary’s heart beat; but it was from no fear, but rather a kind of exhilaration. Slowly it ascended, proving that it was no meteor, as she had at the first moment conjectured. When the bright tail disclosed itself, she understood the spectacle, and rejoiced in it, she scarcely knew why.

When at last the breathing on her shoulder ceased, she let down the little corpse upon her knee, and could just see, by the faint light from the rush candle in the outer room, that the eyes were half closed, and the face expressive of no pain. She closed the eyes, and, after a moment’s silence, said:

“Now, Ned, I am coming to you, in a minute.”

“Is he asleep?”

“Yes. He is in the quiet long sleep I told you of.”

Ned feebly tried to make room for his brother on the poor bed of shavings; and he wondered when Mary said that she was making a bed in the other corner which would do very well. She was only spreading mammy’s cloak on the ground, and laying her own shawl over the sleeper; but she said that would do very well.

Mary was surprised to find Ned’s mind so clear as that he had really been thinking about Dan and the top. She truly supposed that it was the clearing before death. He said:

“You told me daddy was dead. Am I going to be dead?”

“Yes, I think so. Would not you like it?—to go to sleep, and then be quite well?”

“But, shan’t I see Dan, then?”

“Not for a long time, I dare say: and whenever you do, I don’t think you and he will quarrel again. I can give Dan any message, you know.”

“Tell him he may have my top. And tell him I hope he won’t have the fever. I’m sure I don’t like it at all. I wish you would take me up, and let me be on your knee.”

Mary could not refuse it, though it was soon to be going over again the scene just closed. Poor Ned was only too light, as to weight; but he was so wasted and sore that it was not easy to find a position for him. For a few minutes he was interested by the comet, which he was easily led to regard as a beautiful sight, and then he begged to be laid down again.

The sun was just up when Mary heard the tap at the door below, which came every morning at sunrise. She put her head out of the window, and said softly that she was coming,—would be down in two minutes. She laid poor Ned beside his brother, and covered him with the same shawl; drew off the old sheets and coverlid from the bed of shavings, bundled them up with such towels as were in the room, and put them out of the window, Warrender being below, ready to receive them. She did not venture to let the poor mother see them, delirious as she was. Softly did Mary tread on the floor, and go down the creaking stair. When she reached the street she drew in, with a deep sigh, the morning air.

“The poor children’s bedding,” she said to Warrender.

“They are gone?” he inquired. “What, both?”

“One just before midnight. The other half-an-hour ago. And their mother will follow soon.”

“The Lord have mercy upon us,” said Warrender, solemnly.

“I think it is mercy to take a family thus together,” replied Mary. “But I think of poor Aunty. If I could find any one to sit here for half-an-hour, I would go to her, and indeed, I much wish it.”

“There is a poor creature would be glad enough to come, ma’am, if she thought you would countenance it. A few words will tell you the case. She is living with Simpson, the baker’s man, without being his wife. Widow Johnson was very stern with her, and with her daughter, Billiter, for being neighbourly with the poor girl—though people do say that Simpson deceived her cruelly. I am sure, if I might fetch Sally, she would come, and be thankful; and——”

“O! ask her to come and help me. If she has done wrong, that is the more reason why she should do what good she can. How is Ann?”

“Pretty well. Rather worn, as we must all expect to be. She never stood so many hours at the wash-tub, any one day, as she does now every day: but then, as she says, there never was so much reason.”

“And you, yourself?”

“I am getting through, ma’am, thank you. I seem to see the end of the white-washing, for one thing. They have sent us more brushes of the right sort from O——, and I should like, if I could, to get two or three boys into training. They might do the outhouses and the lower parts, where there are fewest sick, while I am upstairs. But, for some reason or other, the lads are shy of me. There is some difference already, I assure you, ma’am, both as to sight and smell; but there might be more, if I could get better help.”

“And you are careful, I hope, for Ann’s sake, to put all the linen first into a tub of water outside.”

“Yes, surely. I got the carpenter’s men to set a row of tubs beside our door, and to promise to change the water once a day. I laughed at them for asking if they could catch the fever that way: and they are willing enough to oblige where there’s no danger. Simpson offered to look to our boiler as he goes to the bakehouse when, as he says, Ann and I ought to be asleep. I let him do it and thank him; but it is not much that we sleep, or think of sleeping, just now.”

“Indeed,” said Mary, “you have a hard life of it, and without pay or reward, I am afraid. I never saw such——”

“Why, ma’am,” said Warrender, “you are the last person to say those sort of things. However, it is not a time for praising one another, when there are signs in the heaven, and God’s wrath on earth.”

“You saw the comet, did you? How beautiful it is! It will cheer our watch at nights now. Ah! you see I don’t consider it anything fearful, or a sign of anything but that, having a new sort of stars brought before our eyes to admire, we don’t understand all about the heavens yet, though we know a good deal; and just so with the fever: it is a sign, not of wrath, as I take it, but that the people here do not understand how to keep their health. They have lived in dirt, and damp, and closeness, some hungry and some drunken: and when unusual weather comes, a wet spring and a broiling summer, down they sink under the fever. Do you know, I dare not call this God’s wrath.”

Warrender did not like to say it, but the thought was in his mind, why people were left so ignorant and so suffering. Mary was quick at reading faces, and she answered the good fellow’s mind, while she helped to hoist the bundle of linen on his shoulder.

“We shall see, Warrender, whether the people can learn by God’s teaching. He is giving us a very clear and strong lesson now.”

Warrender touched his hat in silence, and walked away.

Aunty had for some time been out of danger from the fever, or Mary could not have left her to attend on the Billiters, urgent as was their need. But her weakness was so great that she had to be satisfied to lie still all day in the intervals of Mary’s little visits. Poor Jem brought her this and that, when she asked for it, but he was more trouble than help, from his incurable determination to shut all doors and windows, and keep a roaring fire: he did everything else, within his power, that his mother desired him, but on these points he was immoveable. If ever his mother closed her eyes, he took the opportunity to put more wood on the fire; and he looked so grievously distressed if requested to take it off again, that at last he was let alone. Mary was fairly accustoming him to occupy himself in bringing pails of water and carrying away all refuse, when she was summoned to the Billiters; but the hint was given, and the neighbours saw that they need no longer use water three or four times over for washing, while poor Jem was happy to carry it away, rinse the pails, and bring fresh. His cousin Mary had often of late found him thus engaged: but this morning he was at home, cowering in a chair. When she set the windows open, he made no practical objection; and the fire was actually out. Mary was not therefore surprised at Aunty’s reply to her inquiries.

“I am tolerably easy myself, my dear, but I can’t tell what has come over Jem; it seems to me that somebody must have been giving him drink, he staggered so when he crossed the room half-an-hour ago; yet I hardly think he would take it, he has such a dislike to everything strong. What a thing it is that I am lying here, unable to stir to see about it myself!”

“We will see about it,” said Mary, going to poor Jem. “I neither think he would touch drink, nor that any body would play such a trick with him at such a time. No,” she went on, when she had felt his pulse and looked well at his face, “it is not drink: it is illness.”

“The fever,” groaned the mother.

“I think so. Courage, Aunty! we will nurse him well: and the house is wholesome now, you know. You are through the fever: and his chance is a better one than yours, the house is so much more airy, and I have more experience.”

“But, Mary, you cannot go on for ever, without sleep or rest, in this way. What is to be done, I don’t see.”

“I do, Aunty. I am very well to-day. To-morrow will take care of itself. I must get Jem to bed; and if he soon seems to be moaning and restless, you must mind it as little as you can. It is very miserable, as you have good reason to know; but——”

“I know something that you do not, I see,” said Aunty. “A more patient creature than my poor Jem does not live in Bleaburn, nor anywhere else.”

“What a good chance that gives him!” observed Mary, “and what a blessing it is, for himself and for you! I must go to my cousin now presently; and I will send the doctor to see Jem.”

The poor fellow allowed himself to be undressed; and let his head fall on his bolster, as if it could not have kept up a minute longer. He was fairly down in the fever.

CHAPTER V.

That evening, Mary felt more at leisure and at rest than for weeks past. There was nothing to be done for Mrs. Billiter but to watch beside her: and the carpenter had had his whispered orders in the street for the coffins for the two little boys. The mother had asked no questions, and had appeared to be wandering too much to take notice of anything passing before her eyes. Now she was quiet, and Mary felt the relief. She had refreshed herself (and she used to tell, in after years, what such refreshments were worth) with cold water, and a clean wrapper, and a mutton-chop, sent hot from the Plough and Harrow for the Good Lady (with some wine which she kept for the convalescents), and she was now sitting back in her chair beside the open window, through which fell a yellow glow of reflected sunshine from the opposite heights. All was profoundly still. When she had once satisfied her conscience that she ought not to be plying her needle because her eyes were strained for want of sleep, she gave herself up to the enjoyment—for she really was capable of enjoyment through everything—of watching the opposite precipice; how the shadow crept up it; and how the sunny crest seemed to grow brighter; and how the swallows darted past their holes, and skimmed down the hollow once more before night should come on. Struck, at last, by the silence, she turned her head, and was astonished at the change she saw. Her cousin lay quiet, looking as radiant as the sunset itself; her large black eyes shining, unoppressed by the rich light; her long dark hair on each side the wasted face, and waving down to the white hands which lay outside the quilt. Their eyes met, full and clear; and Mary knew that her cousin’s mind was now clear, like the gaze of her eyes.

“I see it all now,” said the dying woman, gently.

“What do you see, love?”

“I see the reason of everything that I did not understand before.” And she began to speak of her life and its events, and went on with a force and clearness, and natural eloquence—yet more, with a simple piety—which Mary was wont to speak of afterwards as the finest revelation of a noble soul that she had ever unexpectedly met with. Mrs. Billiter knew that her little boys were dead; she knew, by some means or other, all the horrors by which she was surrounded; and she knew that she was about to die. Yet the conversation was a thoroughly cheerful one. The faces of both were smiling; the voices of both were lively, though that of the dying woman was feeble. After summing up the experience of her life, and declaring what she expected to experience next, and leaving a message for her mother, she said there was but one thing more; she ‘should like to receive the sacrament.’ Mary wrote a note in pencil to Mr. Finch, and sent it by Sally, who had been hovering about ever since the morning, in the hope of being of further use, but who was glad now to get out of sight, that her tears might have way; for she felt that she was about to lose the only friend who had been kind to her (in a way she could accept) since Simpson had put her off from the promised marriage.

“She is sorry to part with me,” said that dying friend. “Cousin Mary, you do not think, as my mother does, that I have done wrong in noticing Sally, do you?”

“No; I think you did well. And I think your mother will be kind to her, for your sake, from this time forward. Sickness and death open our eyes to many things, you know, cousin.”

“Ay, they do. I see it all now.”

Sally was sorely ashamed to bring back Mr. Finch’s message. Well as she knew that time was precious, she lingered with it at the door.

Mr. Finch was sorry, but he was too busy. He hoped he should not be sent for again; for he could not come.

“Perhaps, Miss,” said Sally, with swimming eyes, “it might have been better to send somebody else than me. Perhaps, if you sent somebody else—”

“I do not think that, Sally. However, if you will remain here, I will go myself. It does not matter what he thinks of me, a stranger in the place; and perhaps none of his flock could so well tell him that this is a duty which he cannot refuse.”

Mary had not walked up the street for several weeks. Though her good influence was in almost every house, in the form of cleanliness, fresh air, cheerfulness, and hope, she had been seen only when passing from one sick room to another, among a cluster of houses near her aunt’s. She supposed it might be this disuse which made everything appear strange; but it was odd scarcely to feel her limbs when she walked, and to see the houses and people like so many visions. She had no feeling of illness, however, and she said to herself, that some time or other she should get a good long sleep; and then everything would look and feel as it used to do.

As she passed along the street, the children at play ran in to the houses to say that the Good Lady was coming; and the healthy and the convalescent came out on their door-steps, to bid God bless her; and the sick, who were sensible enough to know what was going on, bade God bless her from their beds.

What influence the Good Lady used with the clergyman there is no saying, as the conversation was never reported by either of them; but she soon came back bright and cheerful, saying that Mr. Finch would follow in an hour. She had stepped in at Warrender’s, to beg the father and daughter to come and communicate with the dying woman. They would come: and Sally would go, she was sure, and take Ann Warrender’s place at the wash-tub at home; for there were several sick people in want of fresh linen before night. Poor Sally went sobbing through the streets. She understood the Good Lady’s kindness in sending her away, and on a work of usefulness, because she, alas! could not receive the communion. She was living in sin; and when two or three were gathered together in the name of Christ, she must be cast out.

There was little comfort in the service, unless, as the bystanders hoped, the sick woman was too feeble and too much absorbed in her own thoughts to notice some things that dismayed them. Mrs. Billiter was, indeed, surprised at first at the clergyman’s refusal to enter the chamber. He would come no further than the door. Mary saw at a glance that he was in no condition to be reasoned with, and that she must give what aid she could to get the administration over as decently as possible. Happily, he made the service extremely short. The little that there was he read wrong: but Mrs. Billiter (and she alone) was not disturbed by this. Whether it was that the deadening of the ear had begun, or that Mr. Finch spoke indistinctly, and was chewing spices all the time, or that the observance itself was enough for the poor woman, it seemed all right with her. She lay with her eyes still shining, her wasted hands clasped, and a smile on her face, quite easy and content; and when Mr. Finch was gone, she told Mary again that she saw it all now, and was quite ready. She was dead within an hour.

As for Warrender, he was more disturbed than any one had seen him since the breaking out of the fever.

“Why, there it is before his eyes in the Prayer-book,” said he, “that clergymen ‘shall diligently from time to time (but especially in the time of pestilence, or other infectious sickness) exhort their parishioners to the often receiving of the holy communion:’ and instead of this, he even shuts up the church on Sundays.”

“He is not the first who has done that,” said Mary. “It was done in times of plague, as a matter of precaution.”

“But, Miss, should not a clergyman go all the more among the people, and not the less, for their having no comfort of worship?”

“Certainly: but you see how it is with Mr. Finch, and you and I cannot alter it. He has taken a panic; and I am sure he is the one most to be pitied for that. I can tell you too, between ourselves, that Mr. Finch judges himself, at times, as severely as we can judge him; and is more unhappy about being of so little use to his people than his worst enemy could wish him.”

“Then, Ma’am, why does not he pluck up a little spirit, and do his duty?”

“He has been made too soft,” he says, “by a fond mother, who is always sending him cordials and spices against the fever. We must make some allowance, and look another way. Let us be thankful that you and Ann are not afraid. If our poor neighbours have not all that we could wish, they have clean bedding and clothes, and lime-washed rooms, fresh and sweet compared with anything they have known before.”

“And,” thought Warrender, though he did not say it, but only touched his hat as he went after his business, “one as good as any clergyman to pray by their bedsides, and speak cheerfully to them of what is to come. When I go up the stair, I might know who is praying by the cheerfulness of the voice. I never saw such a spirit in any woman,—never. I have never once seen her cast down, ever so little. If there is a tear in her eye, for other people’s sake, there is a smile on her lips, because her heart tells her that everything that happens is all right.”

This night, Mary was to have slept. She herself had intended it, warned by the strange feelings which had come over her as she walked up the street: and it would gratify Aunty’s feelings that the corpse should not be left. She intended to lie down and sleep beside the still and unbreathing form of the cousin whose last hours had been so beautiful in her eyes. But Aunty’s feelings were now tried in another direction. Unable to move, Aunty was sorely distressed by Jem’s moanings and restlessness; and Mary was the only one who could keep him quiet in any degree. So, without interval, she went to her work of nursing again. Next, the funeral of Mrs. Billiter, and two or three more, fixed for the same day, were put off, because Mr. Finch was ill. And when Mr. Finch was ill, he sent to beg the Good Lady to come immediately and nurse him. After writing to his own family, to desire some of them to come and take charge of him, she did go to him: but not to remain day and night as she did with the poor who had none to help them. She saw that all was made comfortable about him, gave him his medicines at times, and always spoke cheerfully. But it was as she saw from the beginning. He was dying of fear, and of the intemperate methods of precaution which he had adopted, and of dissatisfaction with himself. His nervous depression from the outset was such as to predispose him to disease, and to allow him no chance under it. He was sinking when his mother and sister arrived, pale and tearful, to nurse him: and it did no good that they isolated the house, and locked the doors, and took things in by the window, after being fumigated by a sentinel outside. The doctor laughed as he asked them whether they would not be more glad to see him, if he came down the chimney, instead of their having to unlock the door for him. He wondered they had not a vinegar bath for him to go overhead in, before entering their presence. The ladies thought this shocking levity; and they did not conceal their opinion. The doctor then spoke gravely enough of the effects of fear on the human frame. With its effects on the conscience, and on the peace of the mind, he said he had nothing to do. That was the department of the physician of souls. (His hearers were unconscious of the mournful satire conveyed in these words.) His business was with the effect of fear on the nerves and brain, exhausting through them the resources of life. He declared that Mr. Finch would probably have been well at that moment, if he had gone about as freely as other persons among the sick, more interested in getting them well than afraid of being ill himself; and, for confirmation, he pointed to the Good Lady and the Warrenders, who had now for two months run all sorts of risks, and showed no sign of fever. They were fatigued, he said; too much so; as he was himself; and something must be done to relieve Miss Pickard especially; but—

“Who is she?” inquired the ladies. “Why is she so prominent here?”

“As for who she is,” replied he, “I only know that she is an angel.”

“Come down out of the clouds, I suppose.”

“Something very like it. She dropped into our hollow one August evening—nobody knows whence nor why. As for her taking the lead here, I imagine it is because there was nobody else to do it.”

“But has she saved many lives, do you think?”

“Yes, of some that are too young to be aware what they owe her; and of some yet unborn. She could not do much for those who were down in the fever before she came: except, indeed, that it is much to give them a sense of relief and comfort of body (though short of saving life) and peace of mind, and cheerfulness of heart. But the great consequences of her presence are to come. When I see the change that is taking place in the cottages here, and in the clothes of the people, and their care of their skins, and their notions about their food, I feel disposed to believe that this is the last plague that will ever be known in Bleaburn.”

“Plague! O horrid!” exclaimed the shuddering sister.

“Call it what you will,” the doctor replied. “The name matters little when the thing makes itself so clear. Yes, by the way, it may matter much with such a patient as we have within there. Pray, whatever you do, don’t use the word ‘plague’ within his hearing. You must cheer him up; only that you sadly want cheering yourselves. I think an hour a day of the Good Lady’s smile would be the best prescription for you all.”

“Do you think she would come? We should be so obliged to her if she would!”

“And she should have a change of dress lying ready in the passage-room,” declared the young lady. “I think she is about my size. Do ask her to come.”

“When I see that she is not more wanted elsewhere,” replied the doctor. “I need not explain, however, that that smile of hers is not an effect without a cause. If we could find out whether we have anything of the same cause in ourselves; we might have a cheerfulness of our own, without troubling her to come and give us some.”

The ladies thought this odd, and did not quite understand it, and agreed that they should not like to be merry and unfeeling in a time of affliction; so they cried a great deal when they were not in the sick room. They derived some general idea, however, from the doctor’s words, that cheerfulness was good for the patient; and they kept assuring him, in tones of forced vivacity, that there was no danger, and that the doctor said he would be well very soon. The patient groaned, remembering the daily funerals of the last few weeks; and the only consequence was that he distrusted the doctor. He sank more rapidly than any other fever patient in the place. In a newspaper paragraph, and on a monumental tablet, he was described as a martyr to his sacred office in a season of pestilence; and his family called on future generations to honour him accordingly.

“I am sorry for the poor young man,” observed the host at the Plough and Harrow; “he did very well while nothing went wrong; but he had no spirit for trying times.”

“Who has?” murmured farmer Neale. “Any man’s heart may die within him that looks into the churchyard now.”

“There’s a woman’s that does not,” observed the host; “I saw the Good Lady crossing the churchyard this very morning, with a basket of physic bottles on her arm—”

“Ah! she goes to help to make up the medicines every day now,” the hostess explained, “since the people began to suspect foul play in their physic.”

“Well; she came across the bit of grass that is left, and looked over the rows of graves—not smiling exactly, but as if there was not a sad thought from top to bottom of her mind—much as she might look if she was coming away from her own wedding.”

“What is that about ‘sweet hopes,’ in the newspaper?” asked Neale; “about some ‘sweet hopes’ that Mr. Finch had? Was he going to be married?”

“By that, I should think he was in love,” said the host: “and that may excuse some backwardness in coming forward, you know.”

“The Good Lady is to be married, when she gets home to America,” the hostess declared. “Yes, ’tis true. Widow Johnson told the doctor so.”

“What will her lover say to her risking her life, and spending her time in such a way, here?” said Neale.

“She tells her aunt that he will only wish he was here to help her. He is a clergyman. ‘O!’ says she, ‘he will only wish he was here to help us.’”

“I am sure I wish he was,” sighed Neale. “I wonder what sort of a man will be sent us next. I hope he will be something unlike poor Mr. Finch.”

“I think you will have your wish,” said the landlord. “No man of Mr. Finch’s sort would be likely to come among us at such a time.”

THE SON OF SORROW.

A FABLE FROM THE SWEDISH.

All lonely, excluded from Heaven,
Sat Sorrow one day on the strand;
And, mournfully buried in thought,
Form’d a figure of clay with her hand.

Jove appeared. “What is this?” he demands;

She replied. “’Tis a figure of clay.

Show thy pow’r on the work of my hand;

Give it life, mighty Father, I pray!”

“Let him live!” said the God. “But observe,

As I lend him, he mine must remain.”

“Not so,” Sorrow said, and implor’d,

“Oh! let me my offspring retain!

“’Tis to me his creation he owes.”

“Yes,” said Jove, “but’twas I gave him breath.”

As he spoke, Earth appears on the scene,

And, observing the image, thus saith:

“From me—from my bosom he’s torn,

I demand, then, what’s taken from me.”

“This strife shall be settled,” said Jove;

“Let Saturn decide ’tween the three.”

This sentence the Judge gave. “To all
He belongs, so let no one complain;
The life, Jove, Thou gav’st him shalt Thou
With his soul, when he dies, take again.

“Thou, Earth, shalt receive back his frame,
At peace in thy lap he’ll recline;
But during his whole troubled life,
He shall surely, O Sorrow, be thine!

“His features thy look shall reflect;
Thy sigh shall be mixed with his breath;
And he ne’er shall be parted from thee
Until he reposes in death!”

MORAL.

The sentence of Heaven, then is this:

And hence Man lies under the sod;

Though Sorrow possesses him, living,

He returns both to Earth and to God.

THE APPETITE FOR NEWS.

The last great work of that great philosopher and friend of the modern housewife, Monsieur Alexis Soyer, is remarkable for a curious omission. Although the author—a foreigner—has abundantly proved his extensive knowledge of the weakness of his adopted nation; yet there is one of our peculiarities which he has not probed. Had he left out all mention of cold punch in connexion with turtle; had his receipt for curry contained no cayenne; had he forgotten to send up tongs with asparagus, or to order a service of artichokes without napkins, he would have been thought forgetful; but when—with the unction of a gastronome, and the thoughtful skill of an artist—he marshals forth all the luxuries of the British breakfast-table, and forgets to mention its first necessity, he shows a sort of ignorance. We put it to his already extensive knowledge of English character, whether he thinks it possible for any English subject whose means bring him under the screw of the Income-tax, to break his fast without—a newspaper.

The city clerk emerging through folding doors from bed to sitting-room, though thirsting for tea, and hungering for toast, darts upon that morning’s journal with an eagerness, and unfolds it with a satisfaction, which show that all his wants are gratified at once. Exactly at the same hour, his master, the M.P., crosses the hall of his mansion. As he enters the breakfast-parlour, he fixes his eye on the fender, where he knows his favourite damp sheet will be hung up to dry.—When the noble lord first rings his bell, does not his valet know that, however tardy the still-room-maid may be with the early coffee, he dares not appear before his lordship without the ‘Morning Post?’ Would the minister of state presume to commence the day in town till he has opened the ‘Times,’ or in the country till he has perused the ‘Globe?’ Could the oppressed farmer handle the massive spoon for his first sip out of his sèvres cup till he has read of ruin in the ‘Herald’ or ‘Standard?’ Might the juvenile Conservative open his lips to imbibe old English fare or to utter Young England opinions, till he has glanced over the ‘Chronicle?’ Can the financial reformer know breakfast-table happiness till he has digested the ‘Daily News,’ or skimmed the ‘Express?’ And how would it be possible for mine host to commence the day without keeping his customers waiting till he has perused the ‘Advertiser’ or the ‘Sun?’

In like manner the provinces cannot—once a week at least—satisfy their digestive organs till their local organ has satisfied their minds.

Else, what became of the 67,476,768 newspaper stamps which were issued in 1848 (the latest year of which a return has been made) to the 150 London and the 238 provincial English journals; of the 7,497,064 stamps impressed on the corners of the 97 Scottish, and of the 7,028,956 which adorned the 117 Irish newspapers? A professor of the new science of literary mensuration has applied his foot-rule to this mass of print, and publishes the result in ‘Bentley’s Miscellany.’ According to him, the press sent forth, in daily papers alone, a printed surface amounting in twelve months to 349,308,000 superficial feet. If to these are added all the papers printed weekly and fortnightly in London and the provinces, the whole amounts to 1,446,150,000 square feet of printed surface, which was, in 1849, placed before the comprehensive vision of John Bull. The area of a single morning paper,—the Times say—is more than nineteen and a half square feet, or nearly five feet by four, compared with an ordinary octavo volume, the quantity of matter daily issued is equal to three hundred pages. There are four morning papers whose superficies are nearly as great, without supplements, which they seldom publish. A fifth is only half the size. We may reckon, therefore, that the constant craving of Londoners for news is supplied every morning with as much as would fill about twelve hundred pages of an ordinary novel; or not less than five volumes.

These acres of print sown broad-cast, produce a daily crop to suit every appetite and every taste. It has winged its way from every spot on the earth’s surface, and at last settled down and arranged itself into intelligible meaning, made instinct with ink. Now it tells of a next-door neighbour; then of dwellers in the uttermost corners of the earth. The black side of this black and white daily history, consists of battle, murder, and sudden death; of lightning and tempest; of plague, pestilence, and famine; of sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion; of false doctrine, heresy, and schism; of all other crimes, casualties, and falsities, which we are enjoined to pray to be defended from. The white side chronicles heroism, charitableness, high purpose, and lofty deeds; it advocates the truest doctrines, and the practice of the most exalted virtue: it records the spread of commerce, religion, and science; it expresses the wisdom of the few sages and shows the ignorance of the neglected many—in fine, good and evil as broadly defined or as inextricably mixed in the newspapers as they are over the great globe itself.

With this variety of temptation for all tastes, it is no wonder that those who have the power have also the will to read newspapers. The former are not very many in this country where, among the great bulk of the population, reading still remains an accomplishment. It was so in Addison’s time. ‘There is no humour of my countrymen,’ says the Spectator, ‘which I am more inclined to wonder at, than their great thirst for news.’ This was written at the time of imposition of the tax on newspapers, when the indulgence in the appetite received a check from increased costliness. From that date (1712) the statistical history of the public appetite for news is written in the Stamp Office. For half a century from the days of the Spectator, the number of British and Irish newspapers was few. In 1782 there were only seventy-nine, but in the succeeding eight years they increased rapidly. There was ‘great news’ stirring in the world in that interval,—the American War, the French Revolution; beside which, the practice had sprung up of giving domestic occurrences in fuller detail than heretofore, and journals became more interesting from that cause. In 1790 they had nearly doubled in number, having reached one hundred and forty-six. This augmentation took place partly in consequence of the establishment of weekly papers—which originated in that year—and of which thirty-two had been commenced before the end of it. In 1809, twenty-nine and a half millions of stamps were issued to newspapers in Great Britain. The circulation of journals naturally depends upon the materials existing to fill them. While wars and rumours of wars were rife they were extensively read, but with the peace their sale fell off. Hence we find, that in 1821 no more than twenty-four millions of newspapers were disposed of. Since then the spread of education—slow as it has been—has increased the productiveness of journalism. During the succeeding eight-and-twenty years, the increase may be judged of by reference to the figures we have already jotted down; the sum of which is, that during the year 1848 there were issued, for English, Irish and Scotch newspapers eighty-two millions of stamps,—more than thrice as many as were paid for in 1821. The cause of this increase was chiefly the reduction of the duty from an average of threepence to one penny per stamp.

A curious comparison of the quantity of news devoured by an Englishman and a Frenchman, was made in 1819, in the Edinburgh Review:—‘thirty-four thousand papers,’ says the writer, are ‘dispatched daily from Paris to the departments, among a population of about twenty-six millions, making one journal among 776 persons. By this, the number of newspaper readers in England would be to those in France as twenty to one. But the number and circulation of country papers in England are so much greater than in France, that they raise the proportion of English readers to about twenty-five to one, and our papers contain about three times as much letter-press as a French paper. The result of all this is that an Englishman reads about seventy-five times as much of the newspapers of his country in a given time, as a Frenchman does of his. But in the towns of England, most of the papers are distributed by means of porters, not by post; on the other hand, on account of the number of coffee-houses, public gardens, and other modes of communication, less usual in England, it is possible that each French paper may be read, or listened to, by a greater number of persons, and thus the English mode of distribution may be compensated. To be quite within bounds, however, the final result is, that every Englishman reads daily fifty-times as much as the Frenchman does, of the newspapers of his country.’

From this it might be inferred that the craving for news is peculiarly English. But the above comparison is chiefly affected by the restrictions put upon the French press, which, in 1819, were very great. In this country, the only restrictions were of a fiscal character; for opinion and news there was, as now, perfect liberty. It is proved, at the present day, that Frenchmen love news as much as the English; for now that all restriction is nominally taken off, there are as many newspapers circulated in France in proportion to its population, as there are in England.

The appetite for news is, in truth, universal; but is naturally disappointed, rather than bounded, by the ability to read. Hence it is that the circulation of newspapers is proportioned in various countries to the spread of letters; and if their sale is proportionately less in this empire, than it is among better taught populations, it is because there exist among us fewer persons who are able to read them; either at all, or so imperfectly, that attempts to spell them give the tyro more pain than pleasure. In America, where a system of national education has made a nation of readers, (whose taste is perhaps susceptible of vast improvement, but who are readers still) the sale of newspapers greatly exceeds that of Great Britain. All over the continent there are also more newspaper readers, in proportion to the number of people, though, perhaps, fewer buyers, from the facilities afforded by coffee-houses and reading-rooms, which all frequent. In support of this fact, we need go no farther than the three kingdoms. Scotland—where national education has largely given the ability to read—a population of three millions demands yearly from the Stamp Office seven and a half millions of stamps; while in Ireland, where national education has had no time for development, eight millions of people take half a million of stamps less than Scotland.

Although it cannot be said that the appetite for mere news is one of an elevated character; yet as we have before hinted, the dissemination of news takes place side by side with some of the most sound, practical, and ennobling sentiments and precepts that issue from any other channels of the press. As an engine of public liberty, the newspaper press is more effectual than the Magna Charta, because its powers are wielded with more ease, and exercised with more promptitude and adaptiveness to each particular case.

Mr. F. K. Hunt in his ‘Fourth Estate’ remarks, ‘The moral of the history of the press seems to be, that when any large proportion of a people have been taught to read, and when upon this possession of the tools of knowledge, there has grown up a habit of perusing public prints, the state is virtually powerless if it attempts to check the press. James the Second in old times, and Charles the Tenth, and Louis Philippe, more recently, tried to trample down the Newspapers, and everybody knows how the attempt resulted. The prevalence or scarcity of Newspapers in a country affords a sort of index to its social state. Where Journals are numerous, the people have power, intelligence, and wealth; where Journals are few, the many are in reality mere slaves. In the United States every village has its Newspaper, and every city a dozen of these organs of popular sentiment. In England we know how numerous and how influential for good the Papers are; whilst in France they have perhaps still greater power. Turn to Russia, where Newspapers are comparatively unknown, and we see the people sold with the earth they are compelled to till. Austria, Italy, Spain, occupy positions between the extremes—the rule holding good in all, that in proportion to the freedom of the press is the freedom and prosperity of the people.’

Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’
Conducted by Charles Dickens.
Price 2d., Stamped 3d.,
THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
OF
CURRENT EVENTS.

The Number, containing a history of the past month, was issued with the Magazines.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

- Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 10, JUNE 1, 1850 ***

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Table of Contents

- HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

- A POPULAR DELUSION.

- GREENWICH WEATHER-WISDOM.

- MY WONDERFUL ADVENTURES IN SKITZLAND.

- CHAPTER THE FIRST.

- CHAPTER THE SECOND.

- CHAPTER THE THIRD.

- CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

- CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

- BIRTH SONG.

- SONG OF DEATH.

- THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

- IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER III.

- PART II. CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- THE SON OF SORROW.

- THE APPETITE FOR NEWS.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE