Household words, No. 21, August 17, 1850
Author: Unknown
Date: 2026-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: English literature -- Periodicals

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Title: Household words, No. 21, August 17, 1850

A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens

Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78191]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78191

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. 21, AUGUST 17, 1850 ***

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

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

No. 21.]      SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1850.      [Price 2d.

THE RAILWAY WONDERS OF LAST YEAR.

The unblushing individual who inflated the first bubble prospectus in the early days of Railway scheming must regard, if he be still in existence (and we have good reason to believe that he lives, a prosperous gentleman), with superlative amazement the last Report of Her Majesty’s Railway Commissioners.

When in his dazzling document the preposterous “promoter” certified the forthcoming goods transit at six times the amount his most sanguine “traffic-taker” could conscientiously compute; when he quadrupled the boldest calculations of the expected number of passengers—when, in short, he projected his prognostics beyond the widest bounds of probability, and then added a few cyphers at the end of each sum, to make “round numbers”—he was not so mad as to believe that he lied in the least like truth. Mad as he was not, he never could have supposed that an after-time would come when his lying prospectus would be pronounced as far short of, as his mendacious imagination endeavoured to make it exceed, the Truth. But that time has arrived.

Let us suppose a friend of his, a far-seeing prophet, reading a proof of the pet prospectus by the aid of magnifying glasses; let us figure the statistical foreteller of future events assuring its author that, twenty years thence, his immeasurable exaggerations would be out-exaggerated by what should actually come to pass; that his brazen bait to catch share-jobbers would shrink—when placed beside the Railway records of eighteen-hundred-and-forty-nine—into a puny, minimised, understatement. How he would have laughed! How immediately his mind would have reverted from the sanguine seer to the terminus of flighty intellects known as Bedlam. With what remarkable unction he would have said, “Phoo! Phoo! My good fellow, you must be lapsing into lunacy. What! Do you mean to say I have not laid it on thick enough? Why, look here!” and he turns to the latest of the Stamp Office stage-coach returns: “Do you mean to tell me—now that coach travelling has arrived at perfection, and that the wonderful average of coach passengers is six millions a year—that, instead of quadrupling the number of travellers who are likely to use my line, I ought to multiply them by a hundred? Why, you may as well try to persuade me that I ought to promise for our locomotives twenty, instead of fifteen, miles an hour; which—Heaven forgive me—I have had the courage to set down. Stuff! If I were to romance at that rate, we should not sell a share.”

And our would-be Major Longbow would have had reason for the faith that was in him. In his highest flights he dared not exceed too violently the statistics of G. R. Porter, or have added too high a premium on the expectations of George Stephenson. The former calculated that up to the end of 1834, when not a hundred miles of Railway were open, the annual average of persons who travelled by coach was about two millions, each going over one hundred and eighty miles of ground in the year.[1] Supposing each individual performed that distance in three journeys, the whole number of persons must have multiplied themselves into six millions of passengers. As to speed, Mr. George Stephenson said at a dinner-party given to him at Newcastle in 1844, that when he planned the Liverpool and Manchester line, the directors entreated him, when they went to Parliament, not to talk of going at a faster rate than ten miles an hour, or he “would put a cross upon the concern.” Mr. George Stephenson did talk of fifteen miles an hour, and some of the Committee asked if he were not mad! Mr. Nicholas Wood delivered himself in a pamphlet as follows:— “It is far from my wish to promulgate to the world that the ridiculous expectations, or rather professions, of the enthusiastic speculatist will be realised, and that we shall see engines travelling at the rate of twelve, sixteen, eighteen, twenty miles an hour. Nothing could do more harm towards their general adoption and improvement than the promulgation of such NONSENSE!”

1. “Porter’s Progress of the Nation,” vol. ii. p. 22.

It would seem, then, that the Longbow of the aboriginal prospectuses was actually modest in his estimate as to passengers and speed. But only a few years must have made him utterly ashamed of his moderation and modesty. How disgusted he must have felt with his timid prolusions, even when 1843 arrived. For that year revealed travellers’ tales that exceeded his early romances by what Major Longbow himself would have called “an everlasting long chalk.” Within that year, seventy railroads, constructed at an outlay of sixty millions sterling, conveyed twenty-five millions of passengers three hundred and thirty millions of miles, at an average cost of one penny and three quarters per mile, and an average speed of twenty-four miles per hour, with but one fatal accident.

But if our parent of railway proprietors were astonished at what happened in 1843, with what inconceivable amazement he must peruse the details of 1849! We should like to see the expression of his countenance while conning the report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Railways for last year. At the end of every sentence he would be sure to exclaim, “Who would have thought it?”

From this unimpeachable record of scarcely credible statistics, it appears that at the end of 1849 there were, in Great Britain and Ireland, five thousand five hundred and ninety-six miles of railway in active operation; upwards of four thousand five hundred and fifty-six of which are in England, eight hundred and forty-six in Scotland, and four hundred and ninety-four in Ireland. Besides this, the number of miles which have been authorised by Parliament, and still remain to be finished is six thousand and thirty; so that, if all the lines were completed, the three kingdoms would be intersected by a net-work of railroad measuring twelve thousand miles: but of this there is only a remote probability, the number of miles in course of active construction being no more than one thousand five hundred, so that by the end of the present year it is calculated that the length of finished and operative railway may be about seven thousand four hundred miles, or as many as lie between Great Britain and the Cape of Good Hope, with a thousand miles to spare. The number of persons employed on the 30th of June, 1849, in the operative railways was fifty-four thousand; on the unopened lines, one hundred and four thousand.

When the schemer of the infancy of the giant railway system turns to the passenger-account for the year 1849, he declares he is fairly “knocked over.” He finds that the railway passengers are put down at sixty-three million eight hundred thousand; nearly three times the number returned for 1843, and a hundred times as many as took to the road in the days of stage-coaches. The passengers of 1849 actually double the sum of the entire population of the three kingdoms.

The statement of capital which the six thousand miles now being hourly travelled over represents, will require the reader to draw a long breath;—it is one hundred and ninety-seven and a half millions of pounds sterling. Add to this the cash being disbursed for the lines in progress, the total rises to two hundred and twenty millions! The average cost of each mile of railway, including engines, carriages, stations, &c., (technically called “plant,”) is thirty-three thousand pounds.

Has this outlay proved remunerative? The Commissioners tell us, that the gross receipts from all the railways in 1849 amounted to eleven millions, eight hundred and six thousand pounds; from which, if the working expenses be deducted at the rate of forty-three per cent. (being about an average taken from the published statements of a number of the principal companies), there remains a net available profit of about six millions seven hundred and twenty-nine thousand four hundred and twenty pounds to remunerate the holders of property to the amount of one hundred and ninety-seven millions and a half; or at the rate, within a fraction, of three and a half per cent. Here our parent of railway prospectuses chuckles. He promised twenty per cent. per annum.

In short, in everything except the dividends, our scheming friend finds that recent fact has outstripped his early fictions. He told the nervous old ladies and shaky “half-pays” on his projected line, that Railways were quite as safe as stage-coaches. What say the grave records of 1849? The lives of five passengers were lost during that year and those by one accident—a cause, of course, beyond the control of the victims; eighteen more casualties took place, for which the sufferers had themselves alone to blame. Five lives lost by official mismanagement, out of sixty-four millions of risks, is no very outrageous proportion; especially when we reflect that, taking as a basis the calculations of 1843, the number of miles travelled over per rail during last year, may be set down at eight hundred and forty-five millions; or nine times the distance between the earth and the sun.

Such are the Railway wonders of the year of grace, one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine.

THE WATER-DROPS.
A FAIRY TALE.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

The Suitors of Cirrha, and the young Lady; with a reference to her Papa.

Far in the west there is a land mountainous, and bright of hue, wherein the rivers run with liquid light; the soil is all of yellow gold; the grass and foliage are of resplendent crimson; where the atmosphere is partly of a soft green tint, and partly azure. Sometimes on summer evenings we see this land, and then, because our ignorance must refer all things that we see, to something that we know, we say it is a mass of clouds made beautiful by sunset colours. We account for it by principles of Meteorology. The fact has been omitted from the works of Kaemtz or Daniell; but, notwithstanding this neglect, it is well known in many nurseries, that the bright land we speak of, is a world inhabited by fairies. Few among fairies take more interest in man’s affairs than the good Cloud Country People; this truth is established by the story I am now about to tell.

Not long ago there were great revels held one evening in the palace of King Cumulus, the monarch of the western country. Cirrha, the daughter of the king, was to elect her future husband from a multitude of suitors. Cirrha was a maiden delicate and pure, with a skin white as unfallen snow; but colder than the snow her heart had seemed to all who sought for her affections. When Cirrha floated gracefully and slowly through her father’s hall, many a little cloud would start up presently to tread where she had trodden. The winds also pursued her; and even men looked up admiringly whenever she stepped forth into their sky. To be sure they called her Mackerel and Cat’s Tail, just as they call her father Ball of Cotton; for the race of man is a coarse race, and calling bad names appears to be a great part of its business here below.

Before the revels were concluded, the King ordered a quiet little wind to run among the guests, and bid them all come close to him and to his daughter. Then he spoke to them as follows:—

“Worthy friends! there are among you many suitors to my daughter Cirrha, who is pledged this evening to choose a husband. She bids me tell you that she loves you all; but since it is desirable that this our royal house be strengthened by a fit alliance with some foreign power, she has resolved to take as husband one of those guests who have come hither from the principality of Nimbus.” Now, Nimbus is that country, not seldom visible from some parts of our earth, which we have called the Rain-Cloud. “The subjects of the Prince of Nimbus,” Cumulus continued, “are a dark race, it is true, but they are famed for their beneficence.”

Two winds, at this point, raised between themselves a great disturbance, so that there arose a universal cry that somebody should turn them out. With much trouble they were driven out from the assembly; thereupon, quite mad with jealousy and disappointment, they went howling off to sea, where they played pool-billiards with a fleet of ships, and so forgot their sorrow.

King Cumulus resumed his speech, and said that he was addressing himself, now, especially to those of his good friends who came from Nimbus. “To-night, let them retire to rest, and early the next morning let each of them go down to Earth; whichever of them should be found on their return to have been engaged below in the most useful service to the race of man, that son of Nimbus should be Cirrha’s husband.”

Cumulus, having said this, put a white nightcap on his head, which was the signal for a general retirement. The golden ground of his dominions was covered for the night, as well as the crimson trees, with cotton. So the whole kingdom was put properly to bed. Late in the night the moon got up, and threw over King Cumulus a silver counterpane.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

The Adventures of Nebulus and Nubis.

The suitors of the Princess Cirrha, who returned to Nimbus, were a-foot quite early the next morning, and petitioned their good-natured Prince to waft them over London. They had agreed among themselves, that by descending there, where men were densely congregated, they should have a greater chance of doing service to the human race. Therefore the Rain-Cloud floated over the great City of the World, and, as it passed at sundry points, the suitors came down upon rain-drops to perform their destined labour. Where each might happen to alight depended almost wholly upon accident; so that their adventures were but little better than a lottery for Cirrha’s hand. One, who had been the most magniloquent among them all, fell with his pride upon the patched umbrella of an early-breakfast woman, and from thence was shaken off into a puddle. He was splashed up presently, mingled with soil, upon the corduroys of a labourer, who stopped for breakfast on his way to work. From thence, evaporating, he returned crest-fallen to the Land of Clouds.

Among the suitors there were two kind-hearted fairies, Nebulus and Nubis, closely bound by friendship to each other. While they were in conversation, Nebulus, who suddenly observed that they were passing over some unhappy region, dropped, with a hope that he might bless it. Nubis passed on, and presently alighted on the surface of the Thames.

The district which had wounded the kind heart of Nebulus was in a part of Bermondsey, called Jacob’s Island. The fairy fell into a ditch; out of this, however, he was taken by a woman, who carried him to her own home, among other ditch-water, within a pail. Nebulus abandoned himself to complete despair, for what claim could he now establish on the hand of Cirrha? The miserable plight of the poor fairy we may gather from a description given by a son of man of the sad place to which he had descended. “In this Island may be seen, at any time of the day, women dipping water, with pails attached by ropes to the backs of the houses, from a foul fetid ditch, its banks coated with a compound of mud and filth, and strewed with offal and carrion; the water to be used for every purpose, culinary ones not excepted; although close to the place whence it is drawn, filth and refuse of various kinds are plentifully showered into it from the outhouses of the wooden houses overhanging its current, or rather slow and sluggish stream; their posts or supporters rotten, decayed, and, in many instances broken and the filth dropping into the water, to be seen by any passer by. During the summer, crowds of boys bathe in the putrid ditches, where they must come in contact with abominations highly injurious.”[2]

2. Report of Mr. Bowie on the cause of Cholera in Bermondsey.

So Nebulus was carried in a pail out of the ditch to a poor woman’s home, and put into a battered saucepan with some other water. Thence, after boiling, he was poured into an earthen tea-pot over some stuff of wretched flavour, said to be tea. Now, thought the fairy, after all, I may give pleasure at the breakfast of these wretched people. He pictured to himself a scene of love as preface to a day of squalid toil, but he experienced a second disappointment. The woman took him to another room of which the atmosphere was noisome; there he saw that he was destined for the comfort of a man and his two children, prostrate upon the floor beneath a heap of rags. These three were sick; the woman swore at them, and Nebulus shrunk down into the bottom of the tea-pot. Even the thirst of fever could not tolerate too much of its contents, so Nebulus, after a little time, was carried out and thrown into a heap of filth upon the gutter.

Nubis, in the meantime, had commenced his day with hope of a more fortunate career. On falling first into the Thames he had been much annoyed by various pollutions, and been surprised to find, on kissing a few neighbour drops, that their lips tasted inky. This was caused, they said, by chalk pervading the whole river in the proportion of sixteen grains to the gallon. That was what made their water inky to the taste of those who were accustomed to much purer draughts. “It makes,” they explained, “our river-water hard, according to man’s phrase; so hard as to entail on multitudes who use it, some disease, with much expense and trouble.”

“But all the mud and filth,” said Nubis, “surely no man drinks that?”

“No,” laughed the River-Drops, “not all of it. Much of the water used in London passes through filters, and a filter suffers no mud or any impurity to pass, except what is dissolved. The chalk is dissolved, and there is filth and putrid gas dissolved.”

“That is a bad business,” said Nubis, who already felt his own drops exercising that absorbent power for which water is so famous, and incorporating in their substance matters that the Rain-Cloud never knew.

Presently Nubis found himself entangled in a current, by which he was sucked through a long pipe into a meeting of Water-Drops, all summoned from the Thames. He himself passed through a filter, was received into a reservoir, and, having asked the way of friendly neighbours, worked for himself with small delay a passage through the mainpipe into London.

Bewildered by his long, dark journey underground, Nubis at length saw light, and presently dashed forth out of a tap into a pitcher. He saw that there was fixed under the tap a water-butt, but into this he did not fall. A crowd of women holding pitchers, saucepans, pails, were chattering and screaming over him, and the anxiety of all appeared to be to catch the water as it ran out of the tap, before it came into the tub or cistern. Nubis rejoiced that his good fortune brought him to a district in which it might become his privilege to bless the poor, and his eye sparkled as his mistress, with many rests upon the way, carried her pitcher and a heavy pail upstairs. She placed both vessels, full of water, underneath her bed, and then went out again for more, carrying a basin and a fish-kettle. Nubis pitied the poor creature, heartily wishing that he could have poured out of a tap into the room itself to save the time and labour of his mistress.

The pitcher wherein the good fairy lurked, remained under the bed through the remainder of that day, and during the next night, the room being, for the whole time, closely tenanted. Long before morning, Nubis felt that his own drops and all the water near him had lost their delightful coolness, and had been busily absorbing smells and vapours from the close apartment. In the morning, when the husband dipped a teacup in the pitcher, Nubis readily ran into it, glad to escape from his unwholesome prison. The man putting the water to his lips, found it so warm and repulsive, that, in a pet, he flung it from the window, and it fell into the water-butt beneath.

The water-butt was of the common sort, described thus by a member of the human race:— “Generally speaking, the wood becomes decomposed and covered with fungi; and indeed, I can best describe their condition by terming them filthy.” This water-butt was placed under the same shed with a neglected cesspool, from which the water—ever absorbing—had absorbed pollution. It contained a kitten among other trifles. “How many people have to drink out of this butt?” asked Nubis. “Really I cannot tell you,” said a neighbour Drop. “Once I was in a butt in Bethnal Green, twenty-one inches across, and a foot deep, which was to supply forty-eight families.[3] People store for themselves, and when they know how dirty these tubs are, they should not use them.” “But the labour of dragging water home, the impossibility of taking home abundance, the pollution of keeping it in dwelling-rooms and under beds.” “Oh, yes,” said the other Drop; “all very true. Besides, our water is not of a sort to keep. In this tub there is quite a microscopic vegetable garden, so I heard a doctor say who yesterday came hither with a party to inspect the district. One of them said he had a still used only for distilling water, and that one day, by chance, the bottoms of a series of distillations boiled to dryness. Thereupon, the dry mass became heated to the decomposing point, and sent abroad a stench plain to the dullest nose as the peculiar stench of decomposed organic matter. It infected, he said, the produce of many distillations afterwards.”[4] “I tell you what,” said Nubis, “water may come down into this town innocent enough, but it’s no easy matter for it to remain good among so many causes of corruption. Heigho!” Then he began to dream of Princess Cirrha and the worthy Prince of Nimbus, until he was aroused by a great tumult. It was an uproar caused by drunken men. “Why are those men so?” said Nubis to his friend. “I don’t know,” said the Water-Drop, “but I saw many people in that way last night, and I have seen them so at Bethnal Green.” A woman pulled her husband by, with loud reproaches for his visits to the beer-shop. “Why,” cried the man, with a great oath, “where would you have me go for drink?” Then, with another oath, he kicked the water-butt in passing—“You would not have me to go there!” All the bystanders laughed approvingly, and Nubis bade adieu to his ambition for the hand of Cirrha.

3. Report of Dr. Gavin.

4. Evidence of Mr. J. T. Cooper, Practical Chemist.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

Nephelo goes into Polite Society, and then into a Dungeon.—His Escape, Recapture, and his Perilous Ascent into the Sky, surrounded by a Blaze of Fire.

Nephelo was a light-hearted subject of the Prince of Nimbus. It is he who often floats, when the whole cloud is dark, as a white vapour on the surface. For love of Cirrha, he came down behind a team of rain-drops and leapt into the cistern of a handsome house at the west end of London.

Nephelo found the water in the cistern greatly vexed at riotous behaviour on the part of a large number of animalcules. He was told that Water-Drops had been compelled to come into that place, after undergoing many hardships, and had unavoidably brought with them germs of these annoying creatures. Time and place favouring, nothing could hinder them from coming into life; the cistern was their cradle, although many of them were already anything but babes. Hereupon, Nephelo himself was dashed at by an ugly little fellow like a dragon, but an uglier fellow, who might be a small Saint George, pounced at the dragon, and the heart of the poor fairy was the scene of contest.

After a while, there was an arrival of fresh water from a pipe, the flow of which stirred up the anger of some decomposing growth which lined the sides and bottom of the cistern. So there was a good deal of confusion caused, and it was some time before all parties settled down into their proper places.

“The sun is very hot,” said Nephelo. “We all seem to be getting very warm.” “Yes, indeed,” said a Lady-Drop; “it’s not like the cool Cloud-Country. I have been poisoned in the Thames, half filtered, and made frowsy by standing, this July weather, in an open reservoir. I’ve travelled in pipes laid too near the surface to be cool, and now am spoiling here. I know if water is not cold it can’t be pleasant.” “Ah,” said an old Drop, with a small eel in one of his eyes; “I don’t wonder at hearing tell that men drink wine, and tea, and beer.” “Talking of beer,” said another, “is it a fact that we’re of no use to the brewers? Our character’s so bad, they can’t rely on us for cooling the worts, and so sink wells, in order to brew all the year round with water cold enough to suit their purposes.” “I know nothing of beer,” said Nephelo; “but I know that if the gentlemen and ladies in this cistern were as cold as they could wish to be, there wouldn’t be so much decomposition going on amongst them.” “Your turn in, Sir,” said a polite Drop, and Nephelo leapt nimbly through the place of exit into a china jug placed ready to receive him. He was conveyed across a handsome kitchen by a cook, who declared her opinion that the morning’s rain had caused the drains to smell uncommonly. Nephelo then was thrown into a kettle.

Boiling is to an unclean Water-Drop, like scratching to a bear, a pleasant operation. It gets rid of the little animals by which it had been bitten, and throws down some of the impurity with which it had been soiled. So, after boiling, water becomes more pure, but it is, at the same time, more greedy than ever to absorb extraneous matter. Therefore, the sons of men who boil their vitiated water ought to keep it covered afterwards, and if they wish to drink it cold, should lose no time in doing so. Nephelo and his friends within the kettle danced with delight under the boiling process. Chattering pleasantly together, they compared notes of their adventures upon earth, discussed the politics of Cloud-Land, and although it took them nearly twice as long to boil as it would have done had there been no carbonate of lime about them, they were quite sorry when the time was come for them to part. Nephelo then, with many others, was poured out into an urn. So he was taken to the drawing-room, a hot iron having, in a friendly manner, been put down his back, to keep him boiling.

Out of the urn into the tea-pot; out of the tea-pot into the slop-basin; Nephelo had only time to remark a matron tea-maker, young ladies knitting, and a good-looking young gentleman upon his legs, laying the law down with a tea-spoon, before he (the fairy, not the gentleman) was smothered with a plate of muffins. From so much of the conversation as Nephelo could catch, filtered through muffin, it appeared that they were talking about tea.

“It’s all very well for you to say, mother, that you’re confident you make tea very good, but I ask—no, there I see you put six spoonfuls in for five of us. Mother, if this were not hard water—(here there was a noise as of a spoon hammering upon the iron)—two spoonsful less would make tea of a better flavour and of equal strength. Now, there are three hundred and sixty-five times and a quarter tea-times in the year——”

“And how many spoonfuls, brother, to the quarter of a tea-time?”

“Maria, you’ve no head for figures. I say nothing of the tea consumed at breakfast. Multiply——”

“My dear boy, you have left school; no one asks you to multiply. Hand me the muffin.”

Nephelo, released, was unable to look about him, owing to the high walls of the slop-basin which surrounded him on every side. The room was filled with pleasant sunset light, but Nephelo soon saw the coming shadow of the muffin-plate, and all was dark directly afterwards.

“Take cooking, mother. M. Soyer[5] says you can’t boil many vegetables properly in London water. Greens won’t be green; French beans are tinged with yellow, and peas shrivel. It don’t open the pores of meat, and make it succulent, as softer water does. M. Soyer believes that the true flavour of meat cannot be extracted with hard water. Bread does not rise so well when made with it. Horses——”

5. Evidence before the Board of Health.

“My dear boy, M. Soyer don’t cook horses.”

“Horses, Dr. Playfair tells us, sheep, and pigeons will refuse hard water if they can get it soft, though from the muddiest pool. Racehorses, when carried to a place where the water is notoriously hard, have a supply of softer water carried with them to preserve their good condition. Not to speak of gripes, hard water will assuredly produce what people call a staring coat.”

“Ah, no doubt, then, it was London water that created Mr. Blossomley’s blue swallowtail.”

“Maria, you make nonsense out of everything. When you are Mrs. Blossomley——”

“Now pass my cup.”

There was a pause and a clatter. Presently the muffin-plate was lifted, and four times in succession there were black dregs thrown into the face of Nephelo. After the perpetration of these insults he was once again condemned to darkness.

“When you are Mrs. Blossomley, Maria,” so the voice went on, “when you are Mrs. Blossomley, you will appreciate what I am now going to tell you about washerwomen.”

“Couldn’t you postpone it, dear, until I am able to appreciate it. You promised to take us to Rachel to-night.”

“Ah!” said another girlish voice, “you’ll not escape. We dress at seven. Until then—for the next twelve minutes you may speak. Bore on, we will endure.”

“As for you, Catherine, Maria teaches you, I see, to chatter. But if Mrs. B. would object to the reception of a patent mangle as a wedding present from her brother, she had better hear him now. Washerwoman’s work is not a thing to overlook, I tell you. Before a shirt is worn out, there will have been spent upon it five times its intrinsic value in the washing-tub. The washing of clothes costs more, by a great deal, than the clothes themselves. The yearly cost of washing to a household of the middle class amounts, on the average, to about a third part of the rental, or a twelfth part of the total income. Among the poor, the average expense of washing will more probably be half the rental if they wash at home, but not more than a fourth of it if they employ the Model Wash-houses. The weekly cost of washing to a poor man averages certainly not less than fourpence halfpenny. Small tradesmen, driven to economise in linen, spend perhaps not more than ninepence; in the middle and the upper classes, the cost weekly varies from a shilling to five shillings for each person, and amounts very often to a larger sum. On these grounds Mr. Bullar, Honorary Secretary to the Association for Promoting Baths and Wash-houses, estimates the washing expenditure of London at a shilling a week for each inhabitant, or, for the whole, five millions of pounds yearly. Professor Clark—”

“My dear Professor Tom, you have consumed four of your twelve minutes.”

“Professor Clark judges from such estimates as can be furnished by the trade, that the consumption of soap in London is fifteen pounds to each person per annum—twice as much as is employed in other parts of England. That quantity of soap costs six-and-eightpence; water, per head, costs half as much, or three-and-fourpence; or each man’s soap and water costs, throughout London, on an average, ten shillings for twelve months. If the hardness of the water be diminished, there is a diminution in the want of soap. For every grain of carbonate of lime dissolved in each gallon of any water, Mr. Donaldson declares, two ounces of soap more for a hundred gallons of that water are required. Every such grain is called a degree of hardness. Water of five degrees of hardness requires, for example, two ounces of soap; water of eight degrees of hardness then will need fifteen; and water of sixteen degrees will demand thirty-two. Sixteen degrees, Maria, is the hardness of Thames Water—of the water, mother, which has poached upon your tea-caddy. You see, then, that when we pay for the soap we use at the rate of six-and-eightpence each, since the unusual hardness of our water causes us to use a double quantity, every man in London pays at an average rate of three-and-fourpence a year his tax for a hard water, through the cost of soap alone.”

“Now you must finish in five minutes, brother Tom.”

“But soap is not the only matter that concerns the washerwoman and her customers. There is labour also, and the wear and tear; there is a double amount of destruction to our linen, involved in the double time of rubbing and the double soaping, which hard water compels washerwomen to employ. So that, when all things have been duly reckoned up in our account, we find that the outlay caused by the necessities for washing linen in a town supplied like London with exceedingly hard water, is four times greater than it would be if soft water were employed. The cost of washing, as I told you, has been estimated at five millions a year. So that, if these calculations be correct, more than three millions of money, nearly four millions, is the amount filched yearly from the Londoners by their hard water through the wash-tub only. To that sum, Mrs. Blossomley, being of a respectable family and very partial to clean linen, will contribute of course much more than her average proportion.”

“Well, Mr. Orator, I was not listening to all you said, but what I heard I do think much exaggerated.”

“I take it, sister, from the Government Report; oblige me by believing half of it, and still the case is strong. It is quite time for people to be stirring.”

“So it is, I declare. Your twelve minutes are spent, and we will always be ready for the play. If you talk there of water, I will shriek.”

Here there arose a chatter which Nephelo found to be about matters that, unlike the water topic, did not at all interest himself. There was a rustle and a movement; and a creaking noise approached the drawing-room, which Nephelo discovered presently to be caused by Papa’s boots as he marched upstairs after his post-prandial slumberings. There was more talk uninteresting to the fairy; Nephelo, therefore, became drowsy; his drowsiness might at the Same time have been aggravated by the close confinement he experienced in an unwholesome atmosphere beneath the muffin-plate. He was aroused by a great clattering; this the maid caused who was carrying him down stairs upon a tray with all the other tea-things.

From a sweet dream of nuptials with Cirrha, Nephelo was awakened to the painful consciousness that he had not yet succeeded in effecting any great good for the human race; he had but rinsed a tea-pot. With a faint impulse of hope the desponding fairy noticed that the slop-basin in which he sate was lifted from the tray, in a few minutes after the tray had been deposited upon the kitchen-dresser. Pity poor Nephelo! By a remorseless scullery-maid he was dashed rudely from the basin into a trough of stone, from which he tumbled through a hole placed there on purpose to engulf him,—tumbled through into a horrible abyss.

This abyss was a long dungeon running from back to front beneath the house, built of bricks—rotten now, and saturated with moisture. Some of the bricks had fallen in, or crumbled into nothingness; and Nephelo saw that the soil without the dungeon was quite wet. The dungeon-floor was coated with pollutions, travelled over by a sluggish shallow stream, with which the fairy floated. The whole dungeon’s atmosphere was foul and poisonous. Nephelo found now what those exhalations were which rose through every opening in the house, through vent-holes and the burrowings of rats; for rats and other vermin tenanted this noisome den. This was the pestilential gallery called by the good people of the house, their drain. A trap-door at one end confined the fairy in this place with other Water-Drops, until there should be collected a sufficient body of them to negotiate successfully for egress.

The object of this door was to prevent the ingress of much more foul matter from without; and its misfortune was, that in so doing it necessarily pent up a concentrated putrid gas within. At length Nephelo escaped; but alas! it was from a Newgate to a Bastille—from the drain into the sewer. This was a long vaulted prison running near the surface underneath the street. Shaken by the passage overhead of carriages, not a few bricks had fallen in; and Nephelo hurrying forward, wholly possessed by the one thought—could he escape?—fell presently into a trap. An oyster-shell had fixed itself upright between two bricks unevenly jointed together; much solid filth had grown around it; and in this Nephelo was caught. Here he remained for a whole month, during which time he saw many floods of water pass him, leaving himself with a vast quantity of obstinate encrusted filth unmoved. At the month’s end there came some men to scrape, and sweep, and cleanse; then with a sudden flow of water, Nephelo was forced along, and presently, with a large number of emancipated foulnesses, received his discharge from prison, and was let loose upon the River Thames.

Nephelo struck against a very dirty Drop. “Keep off, will you?” the Drop exclaimed. “You are not fit to touch a person, sewer-bird.”

“Why, where are you from, my sweet gentleman?”

“Oh! I? I’ve had a turn through some Model Drains. Tubular drains, they call ’em. Look at me; isn’t that clear?”

“There’s nothing clear about you,” replied Nephelo. “What do you mean by Model Drains?”

“I mean I’ve come from Upper George Street through a twelve-inch pipe four or five times faster than one travels over an old sewer-bed; travelled express, no stoppage.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes. Impermeable, earthenware, tubular pipes, accurately dove-tailed. I come from an experimental district. When it’s all settled, there’s to be water on at high pressure everywhere, and an earthenware drain pipe under every tap, a tube of no more than the necessary size. Then these little pipes are to run down the earth; and there’s not to be a great brick drain running underneath each house into the street; the pipes run into a larger tube of earthenware that is to be laid at the backs of all the houses; these tubes run into larger ones, but none of them very monstrous; and so that there is a constant flow, like circulation of the blood; and all the pipes are to run at last into one large conduit, which is to run out of town with all the sewage matter and discharge so far down the Thames, that no return tide ever can bring it back to London. Some is to go branching off into the fields to be manure.”

“Humph!” said Nephelo. “You profess to be very clever. How do you know all this?”

“Know? Bless you, I’m a regular old Thames Drop I’ve been in the cisterns, in the tumblers, down the sewers, in the river, up the pipes, in the reservoirs, in the cisterns, in the teapots, down the sewers, in the river, up the pipes, in the reservoirs, in the cisterns, in the saucepans, down the sewers, in the Thames—”

“Hold! Stop there now!” said Nephelo. “Well, so you have heard a great deal in your lifetime. You’ve had some adventures, doubtless?”

“I believe you,” said the Cockney-Drop. “The worst was when I was pumped once as fresh water into Rotherhithe. That place is below high-water mark; so are Bermondsey and St. George’s, Southwark. Newington, St. Olave’s, Westminster, and Lambeth, are but little better. Well, you know, drains of the old sort always leak, and there’s a great deal more water poured into London than the Londoners have stowage room for, so the water in low districts can’t pass off at high water, and there ’s a precious flood. We sopped the ground at Rotherhithe, but I thought I never should escape again.”

“Will the new pipes make any difference to that?”

“Yes; so I am led to understand. They are to be laid with a regular fall, to pass the water off, which, being constant, will be never in excess. The fall will be to a point of course below the water level, and at a convenient place the contents of these drains are to be pumped up into the main sewer. Horrible deal of death caused, Sir, by the damp in those low districts. One man in thirty-seven died of cholera in Rotherhithe last year, when in Clerkenwell, at sixty-three feet above high water, there died but one in five hundred and thirty. The proportion held throughout.”

“Ah, by the bye, you have heard, of course, complainings of the quality of water. Will the Londoners sink wells for themselves?”

“Wells! What a child you are! Just from the clouds, I see. Wells in a large town get horribly polluted. They propose to consolidate and improve two of the best Thames Water Companies, the Grand Junction and Vauxhall, for the supply of London, until their great scheme can be introduced; and to maintain them afterwards as a reserve guard in case their great scheme shouldn’t prove so triumphant as they think it will be.”

“What is this great scheme, I should like to know?”

“Why, they talk of fetching rain-water from a tract of heath between Bagshot and Farnham. The rain there soaks through a thin crust of growing herbage, which is the only perfect filter, chemical as well as mechanical—the living rootlets extract more than we can, where impurity exists. Then, Sir, the rain runs into a large bed of siliceous sand, placed over marl; below the marl there is siliceous sand again—Ah, I perceive you are not geological.”

“Go on.”

“The sand, washed by the rains of ages, holds the water without soiling it more than a glass tumbler would, and the Londoners say that in this way, by making artificial channels and a big reservoir, they can collect twenty-eight thousand gallons a day of water nearly pure. They require forty thousand gallons, and propose to get the rest in the same neighbourhood from tributaries of the River Wey, not quite so pure, but only half as hard, as Thames water, and unpolluted.”

“How is it to get to London?”

“Through a covered aqueduct. Covered for coolness’ sake, and cleanliness. Then it is to be distributed through earthenware pipes, laid rather deep, again for coolness’ sake in the first instance, but for cleanliness as well. The water is to come in at high pressure, and run in iron or lead pipes up every house, scale every wall. There is to be a tap in every room, and under every tap there is to be the entrance to a drain pipe. Where water supply ends, drainage begins. They are to be the two halves of a single system. Furthermore, there are to be numbers of plugs opening in every street, and streets and courts are to be washed out every morning, or every other morning, as the traffic may require, with hose and jet. The Great Metropolis mustn’t be dirty, or be content with rubbing a finger here and there over its dirt. It is to have its face washed every morning, just before the hours of business. The water at high pressure is to set people’s invention at work upon the introduction of hydraulic apparatus for cranes, et cætera, which now cause much hand labour and are scarcely worth steam-power. Furthermore——”

“My dear friend,” cried Nephelo, “you are too clever. More than half of what you say is unintelligible to me,”

“But the grand point,” continued the garrulous Thames drop, “is the expense. The saving of cisterns, ball-cocks, plumbers’ bills, expansive sewer-works, constant repairs, hand labour, street sweeping, soap, tea, linen, fuel, steam-boilers now damaged by incrustation, boards, salaries, doctors’ bills, time, parish rates——”

The catalogue was never ended, for the busy Drop was suddenly entangled among hair upon the corpse of a dead cat, which fate also the fairy narrowly escaped, to be in the next minute sucked up as Nubis had been sucked, through pipes into a reservoir. Weary with the incessant chattering of his conceited friend, whose pride he trusted that a night with puss might humble, Nephelo now lurked silent in a corner. In a dreamy state he floated with the current underground, and was half sleeping in a pipe under some London street, when a great noise of trampling overhead, mingled with cries, awakened him.

“What is the matter now?” the fairy cried.

“A fire, no doubt, to judge by the noise,” said a neighbour quietly. Nephelo panted now with triumph. Cirrha was before his eyes. Now he could benefit the race of man.

“Let us get out,” cried Nephelo; “let us assist in running to the rescue.”

“Don’t be impatient,” said a drowsy Drop. “We can’t get out of here till they have found the Company’s turncock, and then he must go to this plug and that plug in one street, and another, before we are turned off.”

“In the meantime the fire——”

“Will burn the house down. Help in five minutes would save a house. Now the luckiest man will seldom have his premises attended to in less than twenty.”

Nephelo thought here was another topic for his gossip in the Thames. The plugs talked of with a constant water supply would take the sting out of the Fire-Fiend.

Presently, among confused movements, confused sounds, amid a rush of water, Nephelo burst into the light—into the vivid light of a great fire that leapt and roared as Nephelo was dashed against it! Through the red flames and the black smoke in a burst of steam, the fairy reascended hopeless to the clouds.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

Rascally Conduct of the Prince of Nimbus.

The Prince of Nimbus, whose goodnature we have celebrated, was not good for nothing. Having graciously permitted all the suitors of the Princess Cirrha to go down to earth and labour for her hand, he took advantage of their absence, and, having the coast clear, importuned the daughter of King Cumulus with his own addresses. Cirrha was not disposed to listen to them, but the rogue her father was ambitious. He desired to make a good alliance, and that object was better gained by intermarriage with a prince than with a subject. “There will be an uproar,” said the old man, “when those fellows down below come back. They will look black and no doubt storm a little, but we’ll have our royal marriage notwithstanding.” So the Prince of Nimbus married Cirrha, and Nephelo arrived at the court of King Cumulus one evening during the celebration of the bridal feast. His wrath was seen on earth in many parts of England in the shape of a great thunderstorm on the 16th of July. The adventures of the other suitors, they being thus cheated of their object, need not be detailed. As each returns he will be made acquainted with the scandalous fraud practised by the Prince of Nimbus, and this being the state of politics in Cloud-Land at the moment when we go to press, we may fairly expect to witness five or six more thunderstorms before next winter. Each suitor, as he returns and finds how shamefully he has been cheated, will create a great disturbance; and no wonder. Conduct so rascally as that of the Prince of Nimbus is enough to fill the clouds with uproar.

A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD.

There is an establishment in Paris, for providing instruction for artisans of all ages and others employed during the day, which is well worthy of imitation in this country. It has occasioned the establishment, in all parts of France, of a number of evening schools, at which instruction is given without charge to the pupil. We are by no means clear that in this respect a sound principle is observed; holding it to be important that those who can pay anything for the great advantages of education should pay something, however little. But into this question we do not now propose to enter.

The institution was originated in 1680, by Dr. J. Baptiste de la Lulli, Canon of Rheims, lingered on till 1804, but was revived and brought to its present condition of efficacy in 1830. It consists of a parent or training establishment in Paris (Rue Plumet, 33) from which teachers are provided for any locality, in any part of France, or even Italy, for which an evening school may be petitioned by the residents. There are connected with it at present no fewer than five thousand teachers, who call themselves “Brothers of the Christian Schools” (Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes). Four thousand are employed in France, and one thousand in Italy. They are not a Church, but a Lay Community (Religieux laïques). A certain number remain ready at the central establishment to obey any call that may be made for their services.

Before such a requisition is made, the municipal authorities, or any number of benevolent individuals who may choose to subscribe, must have provided a house and school-room, with all proper accommodations, and must certify that a certain number of pupils are willing to enrol themselves. On application to the central establishment three qualified Christian Brothers are sent down, at salaries not exceeding six hundred francs, or twenty-four pounds per annum in the provinces, or thirty pounds a year in Paris. Fewer than three Frères are not allowed to superintend each school; two for the classes, and a probationer to perform the household duties; but, when the schools outgrow the management of that number a fourth is added, to take the management of the whole, and is called a Frère-directeur. The classes are limited to sixty for writing, and one hundred for other branches of education. This limitation is necessary, because the monitorial system is not followed, and the whole weight of the duties falls on the masters.

The schools thus established in the various quarters of Paris are very numerous; six thousand apprentices and artisans attend them after their hours of work—young boys, youths, and adults—the numbers having declined since the revolution of 1848. “I have,” says Mr. Seymour Tremenheere, in a note to his Report on the state of the mining population, “at different times visited some of those evening schools in the Fauxbourgs St. Antoine and St. Martin, containing from four hundred to six hundred, in separate class-rooms of sixty to a hundred each, all well lighted, warmed, and ventilated. The gentle and affectionate manner of the Frères, and their skill in teaching, were very conspicuous, and sufficiently explained their success. The instruction consists, in addition to the doctrines of Christianity, which are the basis of the whole, of reading, writing, arithmetic, a little history, drawing (linear and perspective), and vocal music. In all the classes, many adults who had been at work all day were to be seen mixed with young men and boys, patiently learning to read, or to write and cypher. In the drawing-classes, some were copying ornamental designs, or heads, for their own amusement; others, to improve themselves as cabinetmakers, or workers in bronze, or in other trades for which some cultivation of taste is requisite.”

The superiority of the system of teaching adopted by the Christian Brothers has been proved by a severe test. In Paris, as in London, it is the custom, once a year, to assemble all the parochial schools; not, however, as a mere show for the purpose of uniting in ill-executed psalmody, but with the better and more useful view of testing the improvement of the scholars, and of ascertaining the degrees of diligence and proficiency attained by the masters. The parochial scholars compete for prizes, given by the corporation of the city; not only among themselves, but with the other elementary schools—those of the Christian Brothers among the rest. At these competitions, it has happened, of late years, that the pupils of the latter have been the victors. In one year, they gained seventeen prizes out of twenty; in another, twenty-three out of thirty-one; and, last year, they carried off the highest forty-two prizes: the fortunate candidates of all the other schools only claiming the inferior rewards. In addition to these evening schools for adults and young men who are already gaining their livelihood, the Frères Chrétiens have set on foot Sunday evening sermons at different churches, and also meetings for lectures on religious and moral subjects adapted to the wants of, and calculated to influence, the same class. “I recently was present at one of these meetings in the Faubourg St. Antoine” (we quote our former authority), “where a series of eloquent and forcible addresses was delivered—one, by a Professor of History, on some of the leading points of Christian morals; another, by a gentleman of literary attainments, on Death and a future state; a third, by a gentleman of independent position, on the religious condition of some of the forçats at Toulon; a fourth, by a member of the university, on the displacement of labour by machinery, and its ultimate advantage to the labourer; all of whom had come forward to aid in the task of combating irreligion, and the various forms of error pervading the minds of so many of the working classes of Paris. These were followed by hymns, and by prayers. A deep sense of religion is, indeed, the animating spirit of all the endeavours of the Frères Chrétiens for the benefit of the lower classes, and the principle which sustains them in their self-denying and arduous career.”

The lovers of “great comprehensive systems,”—to whom we adverted in a former page—might, by copying the plan of the French Christian Brothers, carry out a scheme which would be of the utmost use in this country. It would also have the advantage of encouraging small beginnings, and combining them into one great and efficacious whole. We can hardly wait until the present adult generation of ignorance shall die out to be succeeded by another which we are, after all, only half educating. Why not offer inducements, and form plans, for the instruction of grown-up persons, many of whom, having come to a sense of their deficiencies, pine for culture and enlightenment, which they cannot obtain? A central establishment in London—on a general plan somewhat similar to the Government Normal Schools already in existence, but with less cumbrous and costly machinery—could be formed at a small expense; and we doubt not that many a knot of benevolent well-wishers would, in their various localities, be eager to provide all the scholastic matériel for the less favoured artisans and day-workers around them, could they look with confidence to some central establishment for the formation of teachers, in which they could place implicit confidence.

The monitorial system, in a school consisting of all ages—in which a small boy, from his intellectual superiority, might be placed over the heads of pupils, greater, older than himself—is manifestly impracticable; and a larger number of teachers than is usual in schools for children only, would be necessary.

We will borrow from Mr. Tremenheere a comparison between the intellectual acquirements and moral conduct of French workmen and those of English workmen, in the mining districts of each country. We do not assume that the superiority of the French workmen has been occasioned solely by the evening schools of the Christian Brothers, but, after what we have already shown, we consider it reasonable to infer that, since 1830, those establishments have had a large share in the formation of their character. In a former report,[6] Mr. Tremenheere described the habits and manners of the French colliers and miners, especially those at the iron and coal-works in the coalfield near Valenciennes. He was compelled, by the force of unexceptionable evidence, to show how superior they were in every respect, except that of mere animal power, to the generality of the mining population in this country. At the large iron-works at Denain, employing about four thousand people, there were thirty Englishmen from Staffordshire. These men were earning about one-third more wages than the French labourers; but, they spent all they earned in eating and drinking; were frequently drunk; and in their manners were coarse, quarrelsome, disrespectful, and insubordinate. The English manager—who had held for many years responsible situations under some of the leading iron-masters in Staffordshire—stated with regret, that so different and so superior were the intelligence, and the civilised habits and conduct, of the French, that, if any thirty Frenchmen from these works were to go to work in Staffordshire, “they would be so disgusted, they would not stay; they would think they had got among a savage race.”

6. “Report of Inspection of French and Belgian mines, 1848—Appendix.”

There have been, lately, forty Frenchmen employed at one of the large manufactories in Staffordshire, by the Messrs. Chance, at their extensive and well-known glass-works at West Bromwich, in the immediate neighbourhood of some of the great iron-works. Mr. Chance gives the Commissioner the following account of these men:—“A few years ago, we brought over forty Frenchmen to teach our men a particular process in our manufacture. They have now nearly all returned. We found them very steady, quiet, temperate men. They earned good wages, and saved while they were with us a good deal of money. We have had as much as fifteen hundred pounds at a time in our hands belonging to these men, which we transmitted to France for them. One of them, who sometimes earns as much as seven pounds a week, has saved in our service not much short of four thousand pounds. He is with us now. He is a glass-blower. We have about fourteen hundred men in our employ (in the glass-blowing and alkali works) when trade is in a good state. I am sorry to say that the contrast between them and the Frenchmen was very marked in many respects, especially in that of forethought and economy. I do not think that, while we had in our hands the large sum mentioned above as the savings of the Frenchmen at one time, we have had at the same time five pounds belonging to our own people. They generally spend their money as fast as they can get it.”

In Scotland, evening schools abound, and come in effectually to aid the universal system of primary instruction existing over that part of our island. A Wesleyan local preacher told Mr. Tremenheere of the Scotchmen employed on the Northumberland and Durham collieries, “when you go into some of the Scotchmen’s houses, you would be surprised to see the books they have—not many, but all choice books. Some of their favourite authors in divinity are very common among them. Many of them read such books as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and are fond of discussing the subjects he treats of. They also read the lives of statesmen, and books of history; also works on logic; and, sometimes, mathematics. Such men can be reasoned with about anything appertaining to their calling, and they know very well why wages cannot be at particular times higher than a certain standard. They see at once, by the price current in the market, what is the fair portion to go to the workman as wages, according to the circumstances of the pit and the general state of the trade. Such men will have nothing to do with the union. They scorn to read such penny and twopenny publications as we have been talking about. They are fonder of sitting down after their work and reading a chapter of the Wealth of Nations. They will also talk with great zest of many of their great men—their own countrymen, who have raised themselves by their own industry. There are, undoubtedly, some men that come out of Scotland bad men, but these are not informed men. I am speaking of all this neighbourhood, where I have lived all my life. There are a great many Scotch at all the collieries here, and most of them very respectable men, exceedingly so. You may ask me why the union is so strong in parts of Scotland—as in Lanarkshire? It is because in Lanarkshire the pitmen are one-third Irish, and many of the worst Scotch from other counties. Those who come here are among the best in their own country, I should think, from the accounts they give me. When a Scotchman comes here he earns English wages; but he does not spend them as an Englishman does. A Scotchman often, rather than lose buying a good book, will lose his dinner. The Scotchwomen begin to keep their houses cleaner after they get into England, and by degrees they come to keep them as clean as the Englishwomen; and the first generation after their fathers come are equal to the English in their wish to keep everything clean about them. They are generally very saving, and lay out the over-plus of their earnings in books and furniture or lay it by. They have a great disposition to have their children well taught. Indeed, I have seen several lads that have been educated in the Scotch schools, and I find them very well taught; they can reason like men.

“I don’t think I ever saw Adam Smith’s works in more than one or two English pit-men’s houses. They are backward to attempt anything that requires steady thinking, such as that book, or any work on logic or mathematics. The Scotch often study both. This makes one of the great differences between the best working-men of the two people. The English seldom attempt even English grammar or geometry; they always tell me they are obliged to give way when they have made a trial.[7] They had rather read any popular work, such as the ‘Christian Philosopher,’ the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ or Walter Scott’s novels. They love to read their country’s history, and they like to talk of its renown in the ancient French wars of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth. They are also great readers of Napoleon’s and the Duke of Wellington’s wars, and their soul seems to take fire when they talk of their country’s victories. They are fond of biography, and especially that of men who rose from being poor men to be great characters. They are very generous in their dispositions, and will share their loaf with the poor, as all the beggars and trampers from Newcastle and all the country know. They are greatly improved in my time as to drinking habits; there is much less of it, and their money is chiefly spent in living well and making a great show in furniture and dress. The women, too, are improving, and manage their families much better than they used to do. The English pit-boys are exceedingly quick at school—much more so than the Scotch, I think. What I most want to see is better descriptions of schools—schools under masters of ability, who can teach their boys to think and reason. You will find boys who have been at such schools as most of those we have now, that can write a good hand and do some cyphering; but when you come to ask them questions that exercise the mind, they have no idea what to answer. If there were such schools for the boys, the men would soon be a different race; for what the men want is to be taught to exercise their reason fairly, which would prevent their being led away as they are now.”

7. We doubt the general applicability of this description, without questioning its correctness in this case.

With a little modification, this description of the pitman applies, in its more favourable characteristics, to the English operative generally. No one can read it without being convinced that there is sound and hopeful material, in the generous English character to work upon. The natural ability, the deep feeling, the quickness of perception, the susceptibility to religious and moral impressions, the sound common sense where the rudest cultivation has been attained, and the heartfelt patriotism, of the humble orders of this country, are unequalled in the world. Surely this is a rich mine to work; surely it should not be left to unskilled workers, or to chance; but should be faithfully confided to the heads and hearts of men, trained up to its improvement, as to a noble calling, and a solemn duty! In all parts of this land, the people are willing and desirous to be taught. Open schools anywhere, and they will come—even, as the Ragged Schools have proved, out of the worst dens of vice and infamy, in the worst hiding-places, in the worst towns and cities. But, unless the art of teaching is pursued upon a system, as an art, thoroughly understood, and proceeding on sound principles, the best intentions and the most sincere devotion can do next to nothing. For want of competent teachers, there are opportunities being lost at this moment, we do not hesitate to say, in the Ragged Schools of London alone, the waste of which, is of more true importance to the community, than all the theological controversies that ever deafened its ears, and distracted its wits. Meanwhile, the sands of Time are running out remorselessly, and, with every grain, immortal souls are perishing. We want teachers, competent to educate the mind, to rouse the reason, to undo the beastly transformation that has been effected—to our guilt and shame—upon humanity, and to bring God’s image out of the condition of the lower animals. What we have suffered to be beaten out of shape, we must remould, with pains, and care, and skill, and cannot hope to put into its rightful form hap-hazard. And such would be the glorious office and main usefulness of a comprehensive, unsectarian—in short, Christian—Brotherhood in England.

AN EVERY DAY HERO.

“Tell us,” the children to their grandsire said,

“Some wondrous story! tell us of the wars,
Or one of those old ballads that you know
About the seven famous champions,
St. George, St. Denis, and the rest of them.
We have delight in those heroic stories,
And often tell them over to ourselves
And wish that there were heroes now-a-days.”

The old man smoked his pipe; the children urged

More eagerly their wish, athirst to know
Something about the great men of old times,
Deploring still that these degenerate days
Produced no heroes, and that now no poets

Made ballads that were worth the listening to.

The old man smiled and laid aside his pipe;
Then, gazing tenderly into their faces,
Said he would tell them of as great a hero
As any which the ballads chronicled—

The good old ballads which they loved so well.

“Once on a time,” said he, “there was a lad,

Whose name was John; his father was a gardener.

He had great skill in flowers even when a child;

And when his father died, he carried on

The gardener’s trade. One autumn night he found

A young man hiding in his garden-shed,
Haggard and foot-sore, wanting bread to eat;
A fugitive who had escaped the law,
And being now discovered, prayed for mercy,
And told his tale so very touchingly

That the young gardener promised him a refuge,

And strictest secresy. For weeks and months

The stranger worked with him, receiving wages

As a hired labourer. Both were fine young men,

Well-grown, broad-chested, full of strength and mettle;

In outward seeming equal to each other,

But inwardly the two were different.

“The stranger, George, had not a gardening turn,

He was book-learned, and had a gift for figures,

And could talk well, which in itself was good;

But he was double-faced, and false as Judas,

Who did betray the Saviour with a kiss.

He had, in truth, been clerk to some great merchant,

Had wronged his trusting master, and had fled,

As I have said, from the pursuit of law.
Of this, however, John knew not a word,
Knew only that he had been in sore trouble,

And, for that cause, he strove to do him good;

And when he found him useless in his trade,
He introduced him to the Squire’s bailiff,
Whose daughter he had courted many a year.
This bailiff was a simple, honest man,
Who not designing evil, none suspected.

He found the stranger, clever, quick at reckoning,

Smart with his pen; a likely man of business;

And, therefore, on a luckless day for him,

Brought him before the Squire. Ere long he had

A place appointed him which gave him access
To the Squire daily; principles of honour
Were all unknown to him: all means allowable

Which served his ends. He gained a great ascendance

Over the Squire, and ere four years were passed,

He was appointed bailiff.

“The old bailiff

Was sent adrift, and the kind, worthy, Squire,

His thirty years’ employer, turned against him!

It was a villain’s act, first, to traduce,

And then supplant—it was a Judas-trick!

The gardener John, who wooed the bailiff’s daughter,

Had married her before this plotter’s work

Was come to light; and they, poor, simple folk,

Invited him among their wedding-company,

And he, with his black plots hatching within him,

Came, full of smiles, and ate and drank with them;

The double-faced villain! The old bailiff
Was turned adrift, as I have said already,
And his dismissal looked like a disgrace,

Although the Squire brought not a charge against him,

Except that he was old, and younger men

Could better carry out his modern plans!

And modern plans, God knows, they had enough!

Old tenants were removed; and soon a notice

Came to the gardener, John, that he must quit;

Must quit the little spot he loved so well,

And where the poor, heart-broken bailiff, found

A home in his distress. It mattered not
Their likings or convenience, go they must;
The Squire was laying out his place afresh—
Or the new bailiff, rather; and John’s garden
Was wanted for the fine new pleasure-grounds!
“The man of work—the man who toils to live,

Must still be up and doing; ’tis his privilege

That he has little time to wring his hands,
And hang his head because his fate is cruel.
John was a man of action, so, to London

Came he, and, ere a twelvemonth had gone round,

Had taken service as a city fireman.
It was an arduous life; a different life
To that of gardening, of rearing pinks,
Budding the dainty rose, and giving heed
To the unclosing of the tulip’s leaf.

But he was one of those who fear not hardship;

And when he saw his little fortunes wrecked

By the smooth villain whom he had befriended,

He left his native place with wife and children,

Mostly because it galled his soul to meet
The man who had so much abused his goodness,
And, in the wide and busy world of London,
Where, as ’tis said, is room for every man,

He came to try his luck. He was strong-limbed,

Active and agile as a mountain goat,
Fearless of danger, hardy, brave, and full
Of pity as is every noble nature.
“He was the boldest of the London firemen.
Clothed in his iron mail like an old warrior,

He rushed on danger, his true heart his shield;

Fear he had none whene’er his duty called.

Oft clomb he to the roofs of burning houses;

Sprang here and there, and bore off human creatures,

Frantic with terror, or with terror dumb,
Saving their lives at peril of his own.
Such men as these are heroes!
“One dark night,
A stormy winter’s night, a fire broke out
Somewhere by Rotherhithe—a dreadful fire—

In midst of narrow streets where the tall houses

Were habited by poor and squalid wretches,
Together packed like sheep within their pens,
And who, unlike the rich, had nought to offer

For their lives’ rescue. Here the fire broke out,

And raged with fury; here the fireman, John,

‘Mid falling roofs, on dizzy walls aloft,

Through raging flames, and black, confounding smoke,

And noise and tumult as of hell broke loose,

Rushed on, and ever saved some sinking wretch.

Many had thus been saved by his one arm,

When some one said, that in a certain chamber,

High up amid the burning roofs, still lay
A sick man and his child, who, yesternight,
Had hither come as strangers. They were left,
By all forgotten, and must perish there.

Whilst yet they spoke, upon a roof’s high ridge,

Amid the eddying smoke and growing flame,

The miserable man was seen to stand,

Stretching his arms for aid in frantic terror.

“Without a moment’s pause, amid the fire,

Six stories high, sprang John, who caught the word

That still a human being had been left.

Quick as a thought o’er red-hot floors he leapt,

Through what seemed gulfs of fire, on to the roof

Where stood the frantic man. The crowds below

Looked on and scarcely breathed. They saw him reach

The yet unperished roof-tree—saw him pause—

Saw the two men start back, as from each other.

They raised a cry to urge him on. They knew not

That here he met his former enemy—

The man who had returned him evil for good!

And who had lost his place for breach of trust

Some twelvemonths past, and now had come to want.

“The flames approached the roof. A cry burst forth

Again from the great crowd, and women fainted.

And what did John, think you—this city fireman?

—He looked upon the abject wretch before him,
Who fell into a swoon at sight of him,
So sensitive is even an evil conscience,
And, speaking not a word, lifted him up
And bore him safely down into the street—
Then shook him from him like a noisome thing!
“Anon the man revived, and with quick terror

Asked for his child—his little four years’ son—

But he had been forgotten—still was left

Within the house to perish. Who would save him!

Grovelling before his feet the father lay,

Of all forgetful but of his dear child,

And prayed the injured man who had saved his life

To save the boy! ‘Why spake ye not of him?

He was more worthy saving of the two!’

Said John, abrupt and brief—and straight was gone.

Once more he scaled the roof. The crowd was hushed

Into deep silence: it had but one heart,
Had but one breath, intense anxiety
For that brave man who put again his life
In such dire jeopardy. None spoke,

But many a prayer was breathed. Along the roof

Anon they saw him hurrying with the child.

The red flames met him, hemmed him round about!

Escape was not! The women sobbed and moaned

Down in the crowd below; men gazed and trembled,

And wild suggestions ran throughout the mass
Of how he might be saved. But all were vain,
Help was there none! Amid the roaring flames

His voice was heard; he spake, they knew not what;

They hurried to and fro; the engines drenched

The burning pile. He made another sign!

Oh, God! could they but know what was his wish!

—They knew it not! The fierce flame mastered all—

The roof fell in—the child—the man was lost!”
The grandsire paused a moment, then went on;
“Yes, in our common life of every day
There are true heroes, truer, many a one,

Than they whose deeds are blazoned forth on brass!

—Now leave me to myself; give me my pipe—

You’ve had your will; I’ve told you of a hero,

One of God’s making—and he was, your own father!”

THE LIFE AND LABOURS OF LIEUTENANT WAGHORN.

The great benefactors of our species may be divided into two grand classes—the men of thought, and the men of action; the men whose genius was chiefly in the realm of mind, and those whose power lies in tangible things. Let no one set up the idle and invidious comparison as to which of the two is the nobler, since both are equally needful to the world’s progress; all great thoughts and theories, dreams and visions (let us never fear the truth, but honor it even in using terms of vulgar and shortsighted opprobrium) of men of genius and knowledge, being the germ and origin of great actions,—and all great actions being the practical working out of the former, without which no good to mankind at large can be accomplished. To set thought and action, therefore, in opposition to each other, is like setting the arms and legs of Hercules to quarrel with his head while performing his labours. Nor can the distinction, thus broadly stated, be drawn at all times with any definite precision, since the man who conceives and developes a new principle, is sometimes able to carry it out himself. This combination of powers in the same individual is very rare, and is obviously one reason why, in most cases, the originator of a new thing is neglected as a visionary, and a madman. But the energy of thought to conceive and design displayed by Lieutenant Waghorn, was more than equalled by the energy of character and action required to carry out his stupendous plans. Sometimes with the best assistance—sometimes with none—sometimes in defiance of contest, opprobrium, and opposition—the vigour of mind and body of this man caused him to undertake and to succeed in projects which are among the most prominent of those which especially characterise the genius of the present age.

We have intimated that Mr. Waghorn was both a man of thought and action, but this must be understood with certain marked limitations. Mr. Waghorn’s mind was of that peculiar construction, which appears never to think earnestly except with a view to action. Even that quality, which in other men is of the most ideal kind, and commonly exerts itself in matters of little or no substantiality of fact and purpose, with him partook of the physicality of his strong nature as much as the admixture was possible,—so that he may be said to have had a practical imagination. His objects and designs were welded into all the materials of his understanding and knowledge; his ambitions and hopes were fused with the generation of the mighty steam-forces that were to drive his ships across the ocean and inland seas; the elasticity of his spirit was identified with the flying speed of Arab horses, and dromedaries carrying the “mail” across the desert; and when he projected a wonderful shortening of time and space, he at the same moment beheld the broad massive arm of England stretched across to govern and make use of her enormous Indian territories, comprising a hundred million of souls. He never thought of himself; he was too much engaged with the vastness of his designs for his country. We shall see how that country rewarded his efforts.

Thomas Waghorn was born at Chatham, in 1800. At twelve years of age he became a midshipman in Her Majesty’s Navy; and before he had reached seventeen, passed in “navigation” for Lieutenant, being the youngest midshipman that had ever done so—the examination requiring a great amount of both theoretical and practical knowledge, and being always conducted with severity. This made him eligible to the rank of lieutenant, but did not include it. At the close of the year 1817, he was paid off, and went as third mate of a Free-trader to Calcutta. He returned home, and, in 1819, obtained an appointment in the Bengal Marine (Pilot-Service) of India, where he served till 1824. At the request of the Bengal Government, he now volunteered for the Arracan War, and received the command of the Honourable East India Company’s cutter, Matchless, together with a division of gun-boats, and repaired to the scene of action in Arracan, with the south-eastern division of that army and flotilla. He was five times in action, saw much rough work by land and by sea, and escaped with only one wound in the right thigh. He remained two years and a half in this service, and after having received the thanks of all the authorities in that province, he returned to Calcutta in 1827, with a constitution already undermined from the baneful fever of Arracan, where so many thousands had died.

Weakened as he had been, Mr. Waghorn nevertheless rallied to the great project he had secretly at heart, namely, “A steam communication between our Eastern possessions and their mother-country, England.” Even before his departure from Calcutta on furlough, in 1827, ill in health, and only imperfectly recovered from the Arracan fever, still, between its attacks, his energies returned. He communicated his plan to the officials, namely, the Marine Board at Calcutta, who forthwith advanced it to the notice of the then Chief Secretary to the Bengal Government, the present Mr. Charles Lushington, M.P. for Westminster; through whom he obtained letters of credence from Lord Combermere, then acting as Vice-President in Council (Earl Amherst, Governor-General, being on a tour in Upper India), to the Honourable Court of Directors of the East India Company in London, recommending him, in consequence of his meritorious conduct in the Arracan War, “as a fit and proper person to open Steam Navigation with India, viâ the Cape of Good Hope.”

On his homeward voyage, Mr. Waghorn advocated this great object publicly by every means in his power (the numerous attestations of which lie open before us) at Madras, the Mauritius, the Cape, and St. Helena. Directly he arrived in England, he set about the same thing, and advocated the project at all points, particularly in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham. But the Post Office, at that time, was opposed to ocean steam-navigation; and so, unfortunately, were the East India Directors,—with the single exception of Mr. Loch. Two whole years were thus passed in fruitless efforts to make great men open their eyes. At length, in October, 1829, Mr. Waghorn was summoned by Lord Ellenborough, the then Chairman of the Court of Directors, to go to India, through Egypt, with despatches for Sir John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, &c., and more especially, to report upon the practicability of the Red Sea Navigation for the Overland Route.

On the 28th of October, having had only four days’ previous notice from the India House, Waghorn started on the top of the Eagle stage-coach from the Spread Eagle, Gracechurch Street. All his luggage weighed about twenty pounds. The East India Company’s steam-vessel Enterprise was expected to be at Suez, in the Red Sea, from India, on or about the 8th of December. It was much desired that despatches from England should reach her at this place, which Mr. Waghorn undertook they should do. He could not speak French nor Italian, both of which would have been very advantageous; but he had some knowledge of Hindostanee, and a little Arabic.

On this “trip,” as Waghorn calls it, so extraordinarily rapid was the first part of his journey, viz. to Trieste (accomplished in nine days and a half, through five kingdoms) that an enquiry was instituted by the Foreign Office respecting it; for at this time our Post Office Letters occupied fourteen days in reaching that place. Yet Waghorn had been obliged to travel upwards of one hundred and thirty miles out of his direct way, in consequence of broken bridges, falling avalanches, and the disabling of a steamer.

Instantly enquiring for the quickest means of getting on to Alexandria, he was informed that an Austrian brig had sailed only the evening before, and having had calms and light airs all night, she was still in sight from the tops of the hills. Away he dashed in a fresh posting carriage, because if he could reach Pesano, through Capo D’Istria, twenty miles down the eastern side of the Gulf of Venice, before the Austrian vessel had passed, he might embark from this port as passenger for Alexandria. On reaching Pesano, he could still distinguish the vessel, and he accordingly strove to increase the rapidity of his chase to the utmost. He got within three miles of the vessel. At this juncture a strong northerly wind sprang up, and carrying her forward on her course, she was presently lost to sight. Exhausted in body, and “racked,” as he says, by disappointment after the previous excitement, he returned to Trieste.

Ascertaining that the next opportunity of getting to Alexandria would be by a Spanish ship, which was now taking in her cargo in the quarantine ground, he instantly hastened there. The captain informed him that he could not possibly sail in less than three days, and required one hundred dollars for the passage. Waghorn directly offered him one hundred and fifty dollars if he would sail in eight-and-forty hours. Whereupon the captain found that it was just possible to do so; and he kept his word.

“After a tedious passage of sixteen days,” says Waghorn, to whom every hour that did not fly was no doubt tedious, “I arrived at Alexandria, but hearing that Mr. Barker, who held the combined offices of Consul General in Egypt, and agent to the Honourable East India Company, was at his country-house at Rosetta, I hired donkeys, and was on my way for it after five hours’ stay at Alexandria.”

One ludicrous characteristic of the Alexandrian donkeys is worth recording. Never in future can we regard the epithet of “an ass,” as being properly synonymous with stupidity. The creatures ambled and trotted along very well during the first day; but on the subsequent morning, when they clearly perceived that a long journey was before them, they fell down intentionally four or five times, with all the signs of fatigue and weakness. The drivers informed him that it was a common practice of the donkeys.

Embarking on the Nile, our traveller made it his business to navigate the boat himself, in order to take soundings, and to obtain as much knowledge as would promote both the immediate and future objects of his journey.

Mr. Waghorn rested at Rosetta, to recover from his fatigue, and then set out for Cairo on a cangé, a sort of boat of fifteen tons’ burthen, with two large latteen-sails. The rais, or captain, agreed to land him at Cairo in three days and four nights, or receive nothing. This he failed to do, in consequence of the boat grounding on the shoal of Shallakan. Waghorn’s notions of a reason for fatigue, may be curiously gathered from a remark he makes incidentally on this occasion. “The crew,” says he, “were almost fatigued: we have been continually tacking for five days and nights.” Being out of all patience, he left the boat, and again mounting donkeys, proceeded with his servant to Cairo. He left his luggage behind him, merely taking his despatches.

Having obtained camels, and a requisite passport from the Pasha, Mohammed Ali, to guarantee his safe passage across the Desert of Suez; Mr. Waghorn left Cairo on the 5th of December for Suez, and at sunset had pitched his tent on the Desert at six miles distance.

At dawn of day, he was again on his journey, and managed to travel thirty-four miles beneath the burning sun before he halted. The next day he journeyed thirty miles, and in the evening pitched his tent only four miles short of Suez. The next day, he reached the appointed place, and there rested, the Enterprise not having yet arrived.

While waiting with the greatest impatience the arrival of this steamer, Mr. Waghorn appears to have endeavoured to calm himself by jotting down a few observations on the Desert he had just crossed. These observations, slight and few as they are, must be “made much of,” as they are, of all things, the rarest with him. He always saw the end before him, and nearly all his observations were confined to the means of attaining it.

“The Desert of Suez, commencing from Cairo, a gentle ascent, about thirty-five miles on the way; then, the same gradual descent till you arrive at the plains of Suez. The soil of the first five miles from Cairo is fine sand; then, coarse sand, inclinable to gravel. Within twelve miles of Suez” (notice—he is tired already of description, and brings you within twelve miles of the place) “you meet many sand-hills between, till you arrive at the plains before mentioned, which form a perfect level for miles in extent, leading you to the gates of Suez.

“The antelopes I observed in parties of about a dozen each, and the camel-drivers informed me that they creep under the shrubs about eighteen inches high, to catch the drops of dew, which is the only means they have of relieving their thirst. I saw partridges in covies of from six to seven, but nowhere on the wing: they were running about the Desert, and I was informed they were not eaten even by the Arabs.”

Considering the food they pick up in the Desert, perhaps this is no wonder.

Having informed us that camels are to be had very cheaply at Suez—say a dollar each camel for fifty miles’ distance—and that the water is very brackish, he suddenly adds, with characteristic brevity, “To save recapitulation in describing Cossier, it is the same as Suez, viz., camels are to be had in abundance at a trifling expense, and the water is as bad.”

He remained at Suez two days, waiting with feverish anxiety the expected arrival of the Enterprise. She still did not appear—a strong N.W. wind blowing directly down the sea. Being quite unable to endure the suspense any longer, he determined to embark on the Red Sea in an open boat, intending to sail down its centre, in hopes of meeting her between Suez and Cossier.

All the seamen of the locality vigorously remonstrated with Mr. Waghorn against this attempt, and he well knew that the nautical authorities, both of the East India House and the British Government, were of opinion that the Red Sea was not navigable. But he had important Government despatches to deliver—had pledged himself to deliver them on board the Enterprise, and considering that his course of duty, as well as his reputation as a traveller, were at stake, he persisted in his determination. Accordingly, he embarked in an open boat, and without having any personal knowledge of the navigation of this sea, without chart, without compass, or even the encouragement of a single precedent for such an enterprise—his only guide the sun by day, and the North star by night—he sailed down the centre of the Red Sea.

Of this most interesting and unprecedented voyage, the narrative of which everybody would have read with such avidity, Mr. Waghorn gives no detailed account. He disappoints you of all the circumstances. All intermediate things are abruptly cut off with these very characteristic words:—“Suffice it to say, I arrived at Juddah, 620 miles, in six and a half days, in that boat!” You get nothing more than the sum total. He kept a sailor’s log-journal; but it is only meant for sailors to read, though now and then you obtain a glimpse of the sort of work he went through. Thus:—“Sunday, 13th, strong N.W. wind, half a gale, but scudding under storm-sail. Sunset, anchored for the night. Jaffateen islands out of sight to the N. Lost two anchors during the night,” &c. The rest is equally nautical and technical. In one of the many scattered papers collected since the death of Mr. Waghorn, we find a very slight passing allusion to toils, perils, and privations, which, however, he calmly says, were “inseparable from such a voyage under such circumstances,”—but not one touch of description from first to last.

A more extraordinary instance of great practical experience and knowledge, resolutely and fully carrying out a project which must of necessity have appeared little short of madness to almost everybody else, was never recorded. He was perfectly successful, so far as the navigation was concerned, and in the course he adopted, notwithstanding that his crew of six Arabs mutinied. It appears (for he tells us only the bare fact) they were only subdued on the principle known to philosophers in theory, and to high-couraged men, accustomed to command, by experience, viz., that the one man who is braver, stronger, and firmer than any individual of ten or twenty men, is more than a match for the ten or twenty put together. He touched at Cossier on the 14th, not having fallen in with the Enterprise. There he was told by the Governor that the steamer was expected every hour. Mr. Waghorn was in no state of mind to wait very long; so, finding she did not arrive, he again put to sea in his open boat, resolved, if he did not fall in with her, to proceed the entire distance to Juddah—a distance of four hundred miles further. Of this further voyage he does not leave any record, even in his log, beyond the simple declaration that he “embarked for Juddah—ran the distance in three days and twenty-one hours and a quarter—and on the 23rd anchored his boat close to one of the East India Company’s cruisers, the Benares.”

But, now comes the most trying part of his whole undertaking—the part which a man of his vigorously constituted impulses was least able to bear as the climax of his prolonged and arduous efforts, privations, anxieties, and fatigue. Repairing on board the Benares, to learn the news, the captain informed him, that in consequence of being found in a defective state on her arrival at Bombay, “the Enterprise was not coming at all.” This intelligence seems to have felled him like a blow, and he was immediately seized with a delirious fever. The captain and officers of the Benares felt great sympathy and interest in this sad result of so many extraordinary efforts, and detaining him on board, bestowed every attention on his malady.

“Thus baffled,” writes Mr. Waghorn, “I was six weeks before I could proceed onward to Bombay by sailing vessel.” On arriving at Bombay with his despatches, the thanks of the Government in Council, &c., were voted to him, “for having, when disappointed of a steamer, proceeded with these despatches in an open boat, down the Red Sea, &c.” There was evidently much more said of a complimentary kind, but Waghorn cuts all short with the et cætera.

He reached Bombay on the 21st of March, having thus accomplished his journey from London in four months and twenty-one days—an extraordinary rapidity at this date, 1830. Of course, the time he was detained in Cairo, Suez, Cossier, and Juddah (where he lay ill with the fever six weeks), ought to be deducted, because he would have saved all this time, fever inclusive, if he had not expected the Enterprise from India.

He now turned his attention to a series of fresh exhortations to large public meetings which he convened at different places—Calcutta, Madras, the Isle of France, the Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena, &c., on the subject of shortening the route from England to India, and greatly lessening the time. He described the various points of the new route he proposed, and also the new kind of steam-vessel which it was advisable to have built and fitted up, for the sole purpose of a rapid transmission of the mail. In an “Address to His Majesty’s Ministers and the Honourable East India Company,” which we find among his papers, there occurs the following passage—simple in expression, noble in its quiet modesty, but pregnant with enormous results to his country, all of which have already, in a great degree, been accomplished.

“Of myself I trust I may be excused when I say that the highest object of my ambition has ever been an extensive usefulness; and my line of life—my turn of mind—my disposition long ago impelled me to give all my leisure, and all my opportunities of observation, to the introduction of steam-vessels, and permanently establishing them as the means of communication between India and England, including all the colonies on the route. The vast importance of three months’ earlier information to His Majesty’s Government and to the Honourable Company, whether relative to a war or a peace; to abundant or to short crops; to the sickness or convalescence of a colony or district, and oftentimes even of an individual; the advantages to the merchant, by enabling him to regulate his supplies and orders according to circumstances and demands; the anxieties of the thousands of my countrymen in India for accounts, and further accounts, of their parents, children, and friends at home; the corresponding anxieties of those relatives and friends in this country; in a word, the speediest possible transit of letters to the tens of thousands who at all times in solicitude await them, was a service to my mind,” (of the greatest general importance) “and it shall not be my fault if I do not, and for ever, establish it.”

By his indefatigable efforts in India, having extensively made known his plans and methods for accomplishing these great objects, and bringing home with him the testimonial of thanks he had received from the Governor in Council of Bombay, he returned to England. Let his own words—homely, earnest, straightforward, full of sailor-like simplicity, impulsive, and fraught with important results—relate his reception.

“Armed with the record of the Governor’s thanks, I commenced an active agitation in India for the establishment of steam to Europe. In prosecution of this design, I returned to England, expecting, of course, to be received with open arms—at the India House especially. Judge of my surprise on being told by the successor of Mr. Loch (Chairman of the court), that the India Company required no steam to the East at all!

“I told him that the feeling in India was most ardent for it; that I had convened large public meetings at Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, and, in fact, all over the Peninsula, which I had traversed by dawk; that the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, was enthusiastic in the same cause, and had done me the honour to predict (with what prescience need not now, in 1849, be stated), that if ever the object was accomplished, it would be by the man who had navigated the Red Sea in an open boat, under the circumstances already named.

“To all this the Chairman made answer that the Governor-General and people of India had nothing to do with the India House; and if I did not go back and join their pilot service, to which I belonged, I should receive such a communication from that House as would be by no means agreeable to me!

“On the instant I penned my resignation, and placing it in his hands, then gave utterance to the sentiment which actuated me from that moment till the moment I realised my aspiration—that I would establish the Overland Route, in spite of the India House.”

How little must the public of the present day be prepared to find such a condition of affairs, or anything in the shape of antagonism in such a quarter, now that the Overland Route has become not only a practical thing for the “mail” but for ordinary travellers and tourists, and a matter of panorama and pantomime, of dioramic effects and burlesque songs—the sublime, and the ridiculous! But how did it fare with our enterprising sailor, after penning his resignation, and handing it in with such a declaration and defiance?

“This avowal,” says Lieutenant Waghorn, “most impolitic on my part as regarded my individual interests, is perhaps the key to much of the otherwise inexplicable opposition I subsequently met with from those upon whose most energetic co-operation I had every apparent reason to rely. I proceeded to Egypt, not only without official recommendation, but with a sort of official stigma on my sanity!

“The Government nautical authorities reported that the Red Sea was not navigable; and the East India Company’s naval officers declared, that, if it were navigable, the North-Westers peculiar to those waters, and the South-West monsoons of the Indian Ocean, would swallow all steamers up! And, as if there were not enough to crush me in the eyes of foreigners and my own countrymen, documents were actually laid before Parliament, showing that coals had cost the East India Company twenty pounds per ton, at Suez, and had taken fifteen months to get there.”

Notwithstanding all these apparently overwhelming allegations, Mr. Waghorn succeeded in convincing the Pasha of the entire practicability of his plans; and having fully gained the confidence of that potentate, he obtained permission to proceed according to his own judgment. By means of his intimate knowledge of the whole route and all its contingencies, Mr. Waghorn saw that coals might be brought readily enough to Alexandria—then up the Nile—then across the Desert on camels—for not more than five pounds per ton. He immediately hastened back to England, and was “fortunate enough” to impress his conviction on this point on a very able public servant, Mr. Melville, Secretary to the East India House; and through his instrumentality one thousand tons of coals were conveyed by the route, and by the means above-mentioned, from the pit’s mouth to the hold of the steamer at Suez, for four pounds three shillings and sixpence.

“From that hour to this (June, 1849), the same plan, at the same, and even a smaller cost, has been pursued in respect of all the coals of the East India Company,—the saving in ten years being three quarters of a million sterling, as between the estimated, and the actual cost of coal.”

Having now most deservedly obtained the friendship of the Pasha, Mr. Waghorn was enabled to establish mails to India, and to keep that service in his own hands during five years. On one occasion he actually succeeded in getting letters from Bombay to England in forty-seven days; and immediately afterwards both the English Government and the Honourable East India Company, at the pressing solicitations of the London, East India, and China Associations (Mr., since Sir George Larpent, Chairman) started mails of their own—taking from Mr. Waghorn the conveyance of letters, without the least compensation for the loss, from that time to this (1849); these authorities having, till then, repeatedly declared that they had no intention of having mails by this route at all.

It should not be omitted, that, during these efforts, Mr. Waghorn feeling that his position in India would be much advantaged, and therefore his means of utility, if he could receive the rank of Lieutenant in the British Navy, made repeated applications to this effect, from 1832 to 1842. But in vain. He thought that his great services might have obtained this reward for him, especially as it would add to his means of usefulness. But no. Government, like the serpent, is a wonderful “wise beast,” and the ways of Ministers are inscrutable. All spoke of his merits, but none rewarded them. At length, in 1842, Lord Haddington, being Head of the Admiralty, did grant this scarce and astonishing honour! Egypt actually beheld the man, who had brought England within forty-seven days of her sands, before any steam system was in operation between the two countries, permitted to write the letters R.N. after his natural name!

In conjunction with others, partners in the undertaking, Lieutenant Waghorn now arranged for the carriage of passengers, the building of hotels at Alexandria, Cairo, and other places, and he soon familiarised the Desert with the novel spectacle of harnessed horses, vans, and all the usual adjuncts of English travelling, instead of the precarious Arab and his primeval camel. These, with packet-boats on the Nile, and the canal (and afterwards with steamers), duly provided with English superintendants, rendered Eastern travel as easy as a journey of the same length in the hot summer of any of the most civilised countries.

Lieutenant Waghorn had now every prospect of making this hitherto undreamed-of novelty as profitable to himself in remuneration of his many arduous labours, as it was serviceable and commodious to the vast numbers of all countries, especially his own, who availed themselves of it. But unfortunately, just when his enterprise, industry, capital, and his possession of Mehemet Ali’s friendship were beginning to produce their natural results, the honourable English Government and the honourable East India Company “gave the monopoly of a chartered contract to an opulent and powerful Company!” Lieutenant Waghorn had coupled with his passenger system the carriage of overland parcels, which was a source of great profit, and through it there was a constant accession to the comforts of the passengers in transit. But it would seem as if the Government and the India House regarded this man only as an instrument to work out advantages for them, in especial, and the world at large, but the moment he had a prospect of obtaining some reward for himself, it was proper to stop him. Had he not been allowed to write Lieutenant before his name, and R.N. after it? What more would he have?

“This Company,” says Waghorn, “already extensive carriers by water, gleaned from my firm the secret of conducting my business with an alleged view to supply it on a much more comprehensive scale, and to employ us in so doing; but when nothing more remained to be learned from us, we were forthwith superseded, though with a useless and utterly unproductive expenditure, on the part of our successors, of six times the money we should have required to accomplish the same end. Overwhelmed by the competition of this giant association, I was entirely deprived of all advantages of this creation of my own energy, and left with it a ruin on my hands, though to have secured me at least the Egyptian transit would not only have been but the merest justice to an individual, but would have been a material gain to the British, public, politically and otherwise. In my hand the English traffic was English, and I venture to say that English it would have continued to this day, had I not been interfered with. But my successors gave it up to the Pasha.”

The absence of all circumstantial descriptions and all graphic details in the papers, both printed and in manuscript, we have previously noticed. We had at first made sure of being able to present our readers with a picturesque and exciting narrative of the Life and Adventures of Lieutenant Waghorn—for adventures, in abundance, both on the sea and the Desert, he must assuredly have had; but he does not give us a single peg to hang an action or event upon, not a single suggestion for a romantic scene. Once we thought we had at last discovered among his papers a treasure of this kind. It was a manuscript bound in a strong cover, and having a patent lock. Inside was printed, in large letters, “Private: Daily Remembrancer: Mr. Waghorn.” It contains absolutely nothing of the kind that was evidently at first intended. It is crammed full of newspaper cuttings; and the only memoranda and remembrances are two or three melancholy affairs of bills and mortgages made to pay debts incurred in the public service. So much for his daily journal of events while travelling. He was manifestly so completely a man of action, that he could not afford a minute to note it down. Had it not been for the vexatious oppositions by which he was thwarted, and the painful memorials and petitions he was subsequently compelled, as we shall find, to present in various quarters, we verily believe he would have given us no written records at all of a single thing he did, and all that would have been left, in the course of a few years after his death, would have been the “Overland Route,” and the name of “Waghorn.”

We must now take a cursory view of his labours. To do this in any regular order is hardly possible, partly from the space they would occupy, but yet more from the desultory and unmanageable condition of the papers and documents before us.

During many years he sailed and travelled hundreds of thousands of miles between England and India, more particularly from the year 1827 to 1835, inclusive; passing up and down the Red Sea with mails, before the East India Company had any steam system on that sea. On one very special occasion, on this side the Isthmus, in October 1839, when the news arrived at Alexandria from Bombay, of Sir John (late Lord) Keane’s success at Ghuznee, he managed to obtain the use of the Pasha of Egypt’s own steamer, the Generoso, the very next day after Her Majesty’s steamer left Alexandria; and he personally commanded this vessel, and conveyed the mail to Malta, which was immediately sent on by the Admiral there, to England. Of such acts of special usefulness on occasions of great emergency, numerous instances might be related of him. His services in Egypt are well known to all who dwell there, or have travelled in that country. For the information of such as may not have any personal knowledge of these things, we may mention a few of the most prominent. Lieutenant Waghorn and his partners, without any aid whatever, with the single exception of the Bombay Steam Committee, built the eight halting places on the Desert, between Cairo and Suez; also the three hotels established above them, in which every comfort and even some luxuries were provided and stored for the passing traveller—among which should be mentioned iron tanks with good water, ranged in cellars beneath;—and all this in a region which was previously a waste of arid sands and scorching gravel, beset with wandering robbers and their camels. These wandering robbers he converted into faithful guides, as they are now found to be by every traveller; and even ladies with their infants are enabled to cross and recross the Desert with as much security as if they were in Europe.

He neglected no means of making us acquainted with our position and line of policy in these countries. He wrote and published pamphlets in England to show the justice and sound policy of our having friendly relations with Egypt, in opposition to the undue position of Turkey (1837, 1838); also, to make his countrymen conversant with the character of Mehemet Ali, and with the countries of Egypt, Arabia, and Syria (1840); another on the acceleration of mails between England and the East (1843); and a letter to Earl Grey on emigration to Australia (1848). At this time, in conjunction with Mr. Wheatley, he had established an agency for the Overland Route to India, China, &c., and had offices in Cornhill, which are still in active operation. The enormous subsequent increase of letters to India by the mail, may be inferred from this fact—that in his first arrangement, Lieutenant Waghorn had all letters for India sent to Messrs. Smith and Elder of Cornhill, to be stamped, and then forwarded to him in Alexandria: the earliest despatches amounted to one hundred and eighty-four letters; this number is now more than doubled by the correspondence of Smith and Elder alone, on their own business. They were the first booksellers who rightly appreciated Mr. Waghorn’s efforts; and they cordially co-operated with him.

“When he left Egypt, in 1841, he had established English carriages, vans, and horses, for the passengers’ conveyance across the Desert (instead of camels); indeed, he placed small steamers (from England) on the Nile and the canal of Alexandria. Every fraction of his money was spent by him in getting more and more facilities; and, had the saving of money been one of the characteristics of his nature, the Overland Route would not be as useful as it now is—and this is acknowledged by all. Mr. Waghorn claimed for himself, and most justly, the merit of this work: he claimed it without fear of denial; and stated upon his honour, that no money or means were ever received by him from either Her Majesty’s Government or the East India Company to aid it. It grew into life altogether from his having, by his own energy and private resources, worked the ‘Overland Mails’ to and from India for two years, (from 1831 to 1834) in his own individual person. ‘Will it be believed,’ says he, ‘that up to that time Mr. Waghorn was thought and called by many, a Visionary, and by some a Madman?’”

It may very easily be believed that this was thought and said, as it is a common practice with the world when anything extraordinary is performed for the first time; and though it may be hard enough for the individual to bear, we may simply set it down as the first step to the admission of his success. But it is very clear the Pasha was wise enough to recognise the value of the man who had done so much, and not only accorded him his friendship and assistance on all occasions, but sent him on one occasion as his confidential messenger to Khosru Pasha, Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Constantinople, in 1839, as well as to Lord Ponsonby, who was there as Ambassador from England at this time.

Nor did his merit pass unrecognised in his own country; first by the public generally, though, perhaps, first of all by the “Times” newspaper, the proprietors of which were subsequently munificent in their pecuniary assistance of his efforts in the Trieste experiments, as indeed were the morning papers generally. In six successive months he accomplished the gain of thirteen days viâ Trieste over the Marseilles route. Lords Palmerston and Aberdeen, as foreign ministers of England; Lords Ellenborough, Glenelg, and Ripon, and Sir John Hobhouse, as presidents of the India Board, were also fully aware of his labours in bringing about the “Overland Route” through Egypt, and thus giving stability to English interests in our Eastern empire.

And now comes the melancholy end of all these so arduous and important labours. Embarrassed in his own private circumstances from the expenditure of all his own funds, and large debts contracted besides, solely in effecting these public objects, he was compelled, after vainly endeavouring to extricate himself by establishing in London an office of agency for the Overland Route, to apply to the India House and the Government for assistance. His constitution was by this time broken up by the sort of toil he had gone through in the last twenty years, and he merely asked to have his public debts paid, and enough allowed him as a pension to enable him to close his few remaining days in rest. He was still in the prime of life; but prematurely old from his hard work.

In consequence of various memorials and petitions the India House awarded Lieutenant Waghorn a pension of 200l. per annum; and the Government did the same. But they would not pay the debts he had contracted in their service. If he had made a bad bargain, he must abide by it, and suffer for it. Both pensions, therefore, were compromised to his creditors, and he remained without any adequate means of support. The following extract, with which we must conclude, is from his last memorial:—

“The immediate origin and cause of my embarrassments was a forfeited promise on the part of the Treasury and the India House, whereby only four instead of six thousand pounds, relied on by me, were paid towards the Trieste Route experiments in the winter of 1846–7, when, single-handed, and despite unparalleled and wholly unforeseen difficulties, I eclipsed, on five trials out of six, the long organised arrangements of the French authorities, specially stimulated to all possible exertion, and supplied with unlimited means by M. Guizot. On the first of these six occasions, there arose the breaking down, on the Indian Ocean, of the steamer provided for me, thereby trebling the computed expenses through the delay; and when, startled by this excessive outlay, I hesitated to entail more, the Treasury and the India House told me to proceed, to do the service well, and make out my bill afterwards. I did proceed. I did the service not only well, not only to the satisfaction of my employers, but in a manner that elicited the admiration of Europe, as all the Continental and British journals of that period, besides heaps of private testimonials, demonstrated. My rivals, to whom the impediments in my path were best known, were loudest in their acknowledgments; and the only drawback to my just pride was the incredulity manifested in some quarters, that I could have actually accomplished what (it is notorious) I did at any time, much less among the all but impassable roads of the Alps, in the depth of a winter of far more than ordinary Alpine severity. I presented my bill. It was dishonoured. I had made myself an invalid, had sown the seeds of a broken constitution, in the performance of that duty. The disappointment occasioned by the non-payment of the two thousand pounds, has preyed incessantly upon me since; and now, a wreck alike almost in mind and body, I am sustained alone by the hope, that the annals of the Insolvent Court will not have inscribed upon them the Pioneer of the Overland Route, because of obligations he incurred for the public, by direction of the public authorities.”

The date of this memorial is June 8th, 1849. High testimonials are appended to it from Lords Palmerston, Aberdeen, Ellenborough, Harrowby, Combermere, Ripon, Sir John Hobhouse, Sir Robert Gordon, and Mr. Joseph Hume. But it did not produce any effect; the debts and the harassing remained; and the pioneer of the Overland Route died very shortly afterwards;—we cannot say of a broken heart, because his constitution had been previously shattered by his labours. Yet it looks sadly like this. He might have lived some years longer. He was only forty-seven. The pension awarded him by the India House he had only possessed eighteen months; and the pension from Government had been yet more tardily bestowed, so that he only lived to receive the first quarter.

At his death both pensions died with him, his widow being left to starve. The India House, however, have lately granted her a pension of fifty pounds; and the Government, naïvely stating, as if in excuse for the extravagance, that it was in consequence of the “eminent services” performed by her late husband, awarded her the sum of twenty-five pounds per annum. This twenty-five pounds having been the subject of many comments from the press, both of loud indignation and cutting ridicule, the Government made a second grant, with the statement that “in consequence of the extreme destitution of Mrs. Waghorn,” a further sum was awarded of fifteen pounds more! This is the fact, and such are the terms of the grant. Why, it reads like an act of clemency towards some criminal or other offender;—“You have been very wicked, you know; but as you are in extreme destitution, here are a few pounds more.”

While these above-mentioned petitions, memorials, and struggles for life and honour were going on, great numbers of our wealthy countrymen were rushing with bags of money to pour out at the feet of Mr. Hudson, M.P., in reward for his having made the largest fortune in the shortest time ever known;—and soon after the Government munificence had been bestowed on the destitute widow of Lieutenant Waghorn, the Marquis of Lansdowne and the Marquis of Londonderry, in their places in the House of Lords, eulogised the splendid “military ability” of F. M. the late Duke of Cambridge, speaking in high terms of the great deeds he would have achieved, “if he had only had an opportunity,” and voting a pension of twelve thousand pounds a year to his destitute son, and three thousand pounds a year to his destitute daughter.

We have now beheld the labours, and the reward, of the pioneer of the Overland Route; who, for the establishment of this route and for manifold services subsequently rendered, received the “thanks” of three quarters of the globe, that is to say, of Europe, Asia, and Africa, “besides numberless letters of ‘thanks’ from mercantile communities at every point where Eastern trade is concerned!” His public debts are not paid to this day.

CHIPS.

THE KNOCKING UP BUSINESS.

New wants are being continually invented, and new trades are, consequently, daily springing up. A correspondent brings to light a novel branch of the manufacturing industry of this country, which was revealed to him in Manchester. Lately, he observes, I was passing through a bye-street in Manchester, when my attention was attracted by a card placed conspicuously in the window of a decent-looking house, on which was inscribed, in good text,

“KNOCKING UP DONE HERE AT 2D. A WEEK.”

I stopped a few moments to consider what it could mean, and chose out of a hundred conjectures the most feasible, namely:—that it referred perhaps to the “getting up” of some portion of a lady’s dress, or knocking up some article of attire or convenience in a hurry. I asked persons connected with all sorts of handicrafts and small trades, and could get no satisfaction. I therefore determined to enquire at the “Knocking up” establishment itself. Thither, accordingly, I bent my steps. On asking for the master, a pale-faced asthmatic man came forward. I politely told him the object of my visit, adding, that from so small a return as 2d. a week, he ought to get at least half profit. “Why, to tell you the truth, Sir,” rejoined the honest fellow, “as my occupation requires no outlay or stock in trade, ’tis all profit.” “Admirable profession!” I ejaculated, “If it is no secret, I should like to be initiated; for several friends of mine are very anxious to commence business on the same terms.”

Not having the fear of rivalry before his eyes, he solved the mystery without any stipulations as to secrecy or premium. He said that he was employed by a number of young men and women who worked in factories, to call them up by a certain early hour in the morning; for if they happened to oversleep themselves and to arrive at the mill after work had commenced, they were liable to the infliction of a fine, and therefore, to insure being up in good time, employed him to “knock them up” at two-pence a week.

On further enquiry, he told me that he himself earned fourteen shillings per week, and his son—only ten years old—awoke factory people enough to add four shillings more to his weekly income. He added, that a friend of his did a very extensive “knocking up” business, his connexion being worth thirty shillings per week; and one woman he knew had a circuit that brought her in twenty-four shillings weekly.

There is an old saying, that one half the world does not know how the other half live. I question whether ninety-nine hundredths of your readers will have known till you permit me to inform them how our Manchester friends, in the “Knocking up” line, get a livelihood.

STATISTICS OF FACTORY SUPERVISION.

The Rev. Mr. Baker has recently issued a pamphlet, defending the moral tone of the factory system against the charges brought against it in the Rev. H. Worsley’s Prize Essay on Juvenile Depravity. We purposely abstain from discussing the merits of the controversy, believing that the truth lies between the two extremes advocated respectively by the reverend disputants. Mr. Henry, however, gives a table of statistics, an abstract of which we cannot withhold. It shows the number of spinning and power-loom weaving concerns in the principal manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Cheshire; also, the number of partners, so far as they are known to the public.

It appears that in Ashton-under-Lyne, Dunkinfield, and Moseley, there are fifty-three mills in the hands of ninety-five partners; Blackburn, and its immediate neighbourhood, has fifty-seven mills and eighty partners; Bolton, forty-two mills and fifty-seven partners; Barnley, twenty-five spinning manufactories and forty-six proprietors; at Heywood there are twenty-eight mills in the hands of forty-six masters. Manchester, it would appear, is not so much the seat of manufacture as of merchandise. Though it abounds in warehouses for the sale of cotton goods, there are no more than seventy-eight cotton factories, having one hundred and thirty-nine masters. Oldham has the greatest number of mills; namely, one hundred and fifty-eight, with two hundred and fifty-two proprietors; Preston, thirty-eight mills, sixty-two partners; Stalybridge, twenty cotton concerns and forty-one proprietors; Stockport, forty-seven mills and seventy-six masters; while Warrington has no more than four mills, owned by ten gentlemen. The total number of cotton manufactories in these districts is five hundred and fifty, which belong to nine hundred and four “Cotton Lords.”

Mr. Baker’s “case” is that a proper moral supervision is exercised over the tens of thousands of operatives employed in these factories; and that such supervision is not delegated from principals to subordinates. It would seem, from his showing, that of the nine hundred and four proprietors, no more than twenty-nine do not reside where their concerns are situated; and that of the entire aggregate of mills, there are only four in or near to which no proprietor resides. Lancashire and Cheshire cotton factories, therefore, are as regards absenteeism, the direct antithesis of Irish estates. The consequence is, that while the former are in a state of average, though intermittent prosperity, the latter have gone to ruin.

COMIC LEAVES FROM THE STATUTE BOOK.

The most manifest absurdities while remaining in fashion receive the greatest respect; for it is not till Time affords a retrospect that the full force of the absurdity is revealed. When men and women went about dressed like the characters in the farce of Tom Thumb, we of the present day wonder that they excited no mirth; nor can we now believe that Betterton drew tears as Cato in a full-bottomed wig. A beauty who a dozen years ago excited admiration in the balloon-like costume of that day, would now, if presenting herself in full-blown leg-of-mutton sleeves, excite a smile. The more intelligent natives of Mexico are now more disposed to grin than to shudder, as they once did, at their comical idols. Everybody has heard of the monkey-god of India. In our day, those who once adored and dreaded him, would as readily worship Punch, and receive his squeakings for oracles, as to bow down before the Great Monkey.

Amongst the most prominent superstitions in which our forefathers believed, as a commercial opinion and rule of legislation, was “Protection;” and we have not awakened too recently from the delusion which descended from them not to perceive its absurdities, especially on looking over their voluminous legacy, the Statute Book. Before, however, we open some of its most comical pages, let us premise that the question of Protection is not a political one. Of the precise force and meaning of the term, there is a large class of “constant readers” who have no definite idea. The word “Protection” calls up in their minds a sort of phantasmagoria composed chiefly of Corn-law leagues, tedious debates in Parliament, Custom-houses, excisemen, smugglers, preventive-men and mounted coast-guards. They know it has to do with imports, exports, drawbacks, the balance of trade, and with being searched when they step ashore from a Boulogne steamer. Floating over this indefinite construction of the term, they have a general opinion that Protection must be a good thing, for they also associate it most intimately with the guardianship of the law, which protects them from the swindler, and with the policeman, who protects them from the thief. That powerful and patriotic sentiment, “Protection to British Industry,” must, they think, be nearly the same sort of thing, except that it means protection from the tricks of foreigners instead of from those of compatriots. They confess that, believing the whole matter to be a complicated branch of politics, they have had neither time nor patience to “go into it.”

In supposing the question of Free Trade or Protection to be a political one, they are, as we have before hinted, in error. It has no more to do with politics than their own transactions with the grocer and the coal-merchant; for it treats of the best mode of carrying on a nation’s, instead of an individual’s dealings with foreign marts and foreign customers. They are also wrong in supposing that protection to life and property is of the same character as that to which British industry is subjected. The difference can be easily explained; and although doubtless the majority of our readers are quite aware of it, yet for the benefit of the above-described, who are not, we will point it out:—Connected, as everybody knows, with whatever is protected, there must be two parties—A, in whose favour it is protected; and B, against whom it is protected. Legitimate and wholesome protection preserves the property we wish to guard against our enemies; impolitic and unwholesome protection too securely preserves property to us which we are most anxious to get rid of—by sale or barter,—against our best friends, our customers.

These elementary explanations are absolutely essential for the thorough enjoyment of the broad comedy, which here and there lightens up that grave publication, the Statutes at Large.

When the laws had protected English manufacturers, and producers from foreign produce and skill; they, by a natural sequence of blundering, set about protecting the British manufacturing population one against another, and the German jest of the wig-makers, who petitioned their Crown Prince “to make it felony for any gentleman to wear his own hair,” is almost realised. In the palmy days of Protection, a British bookbinder could not use paste, nor a British dandy, hair-powder, because the British farmer had been so tightly protected against foreign corn, that the British public could not get enough of it to make bread to eat.

These were perhaps the most expensive absurdities into which John Bull was driven by his mania for protection, but they were by no means the most ludicrous. Among his other dainty devices for promoting the woollen manufacture, was the law which compelled all dead bodies to be buried in woollen cloth. There may not be many who can sympathise with the agony of Pope’s dying coquette:—

“Odious! In woollen! ’Twould a saint provoke;

Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.”

But every one must be astounded at the folly of bribing men to invest ingenuity and industry, to bury that which above ground was the most useful and saleable, of all possible articles. The intention was to discourage the use of cotton, which has since proved one of the greatest sources of wealth ever brought into this country.

The strangest and most practical protest of national common sense, against laws enacting protective duties, was the impossibility of compelling people to obey them. To those laws the country has been indebted for the expensive coast-guards, who cannot, after all, prevent smuggling. The disproportionate penalties threatened by protective laws, show how difficult it was to ensure obedience. In 1765, so invincible was the desire of our ladies to do justice to their neat ancles, that a law had to be passed in the fifth of George the Third, (chapter forty-eight,) decreeing that “if any foreign manufactured silk stockings, &c., be imported into any part of the British dominions, they shall be forfeited, and the importers, retailers, or vendors of the same, shall be subject, for every such offence, to a fine of two hundred pounds, with costs of suit.” The wise legislators did not dare to extend the penalties to the fair wearers, who found means to make it worth the while of the vendors to brave and evade the law.

The complicated and contradictory legislation into which the ignis fatuus of Protection led men, made our nominally protective laws not unfrequently laws prohibitive of industry. To protect the iron-masters of Staffordshire, the inhabitants of Pennsylvania (while yet a British colony) were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to avail themselves of their rich coal and iron mines. To protect the tobacco growers of Virginia (also in its colonial epoch) the agriculturists of Great Britain were forbidden to cultivate the plant—a prohibition which is still in force—even now, that the semblance of a reason or excuse for the restriction exists.

The petty details into which these prohibitions of industry, under the pretext of protecting it, descended, can only be conceived by those who have studied the Statutes at Large. An act was passed in the fourth of George the First (the seventh chapter) for the better employing the manufacturers, and encouraging the consumption of raw silk. This act provides “that no person shall make, sell, or set upon any clothes or wearing garments whatsoever, any buttons made of serge, cloth, drugget, frieze, camlet, or any other stuff of which clothes or wearing garments are made, or any buttons made of wool only, and turned in imitations of other buttons, on pain of forfeiting forty shillings per dozen for all such buttons.” And again, in the seventh year of the same George, the twenty-second chapter of that year’s statutes declared that “No tailors shall set on any buttons or button-holes of serge, drugget, &c., under penalty of forty shillings for every dozen of buttons or button-holes so made or set on.... No person shall use or wear on any clothes, garments, or apparel whatsoever, except velvet, any buttons or button-holes made of or bound with cloth, serge, drugget, frieze, camlet, or other stuffs whereof clothes or woollen garments are usually made, on penalty of forfeiting forty shillings per dozen under a similar penalty.” These acts were insisted on by the ancient and important fraternity of metal button-makers, who thought they had a prescriptive right to supply the world with brass and other buttons “with shanks.” Shankless fasteners, made of cloth, serge, &c., were therefore interdicted; and every man, woman, and child, down to the time when George the Third was king, was obliged to wear metal buttons whether they liked them or not, on pain of fine or imprisonment.

The shackles and pitfalls in which men involved themselves in their chase after the illusive idea of universal protection were as numerous, and more fatal than those with which Louis the Eleventh garnished his castle at Plessis-le-Tours. It was impossible to move without stumbling into some of them. British ship-builders were allowed to ply their trade exclusively for British ship-owners; but, in return, they were compelled to buy the dear timber of Canada, instead of that of the Baltic. British ship-owners had exclusive privileges of ocean carriage, but had to pay tribute to the monopoly of British ship-builders and Canadian lumberers. British sailors were exclusively to be employed in English ships, but in return they were at the mercy of the press-gangs. Dubious advantages were bought at a price unquestionably dear and ruinous.

The condition of our country while possessed by the fallacy of protection, can be compared to nothing so aptly, as to a man under the influence of a nightmare. One incongruity pursues another through the brain. There is a painful half-consciousness that all is delusion, and a fear that it may be reality—there is a choking sense of oppression. The victim of the unhealthy dream, tries to shake it off and awaken, but his faculties are spell-bound. By a great effort the country has awakened to the light of day, and a sense of realities.

The way in which the rural population, great and small, were protected against one another, may be well illustrated by an extract from the third of James the First, chapter fourteen. This act was in force so lately as 1827, for it was only repealed by the seventh and eighth of George the Fourth, chapter twenty-seven. The fifth clause of this precious enactment made a man who had not forty pounds a year a “malefactor” if he shot a hare; while a neighbour who possessed a hundred a year, and caught him in the fact, became in one moment his judge and executioner. After reciting that if any person who had not real property producing forty pounds a year, or who had not two hundred pounds’ worth of goods and chattels, shall presume to shoot game, the clause goes on to say—“Then any person, having lands, tenements, and hereditaments, of the clear value of one hundred pounds a year, may take from the person or possession of such malefactor or malefactors, and to his own use for ever keep, such guns, bows, cross-bows, buckstalls, engine-traps, nets, ferrets, and coney dogs,” &c. This is hardly a comic leaf from the statute book. Indignation gives place to mirth on perusing it. Some portions of the game-laws still in force could be enumerated, equally unreasonable and summary.

Most of the statutes contain a comical set of rules of English Grammar, which are calculated to make the wig of Lindley Murray stiffen in his grave with horror; they run thus:—“Words importing the singular number shall include the plural number, and words importing the plural number shall include the singular number. Words importing the masculine gender shall include females. The word ‘person’ shall include a corporation, whether aggregate or sole. The word ‘lands’ shall include messuages, lands, tenements, and hereditaments of any tenure. The word ‘street’ shall extend to and include any road, square, court, alley, and thoroughfare, or public passage, within the limits of the special act. The expression ‘two justices’ shall be understood to mean two or more justices met and acting together.”

Thus ends our chapter of only a few of the mirth provocatives of the Statutes at Large.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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

- Renumbered footnotes.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 21, AUGUST 17, 1850 ***

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Table of Contents

- HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

- THE RAILWAY WONDERS OF LAST YEAR.

- THE WATER-DROPS. A FAIRY TALE.

- CHAPTER THE FIRST.

- CHAPTER THE SECOND.

- CHAPTER THE THIRD.

- CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

- A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD.

- AN EVERY DAY HERO.

- THE LIFE AND LABOURS OF LIEUTENANT WAGHORN.

- CHIPS.

- THE KNOCKING UP BUSINESS.

- STATISTICS OF FACTORY SUPERVISION.

- COMIC LEAVES FROM THE STATUTE BOOK.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE