Household words, No. 24, September 7, 1850
Author: Unknown
Date: 2026-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: English literature -- Periodicals

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Title: Household words, No. 24, September 7, 1850

A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens

Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78194]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78194

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. 24, SEPTEMBER 7, 1850 ***

Transcriber’s Note:

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

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

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

No. 24.]      SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1850.      [Price 2d.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

THE STEEL PEN.

We remember (early remembrances are more durable than recent) an epithet employed by Mary Wollstonecraft, which then seemed as happy as it was original:—“The iron pen of Time.” Had the vindicatress of the “Rights of Women” lived in these days (fifty years later), when the iron pen is the almost universal instrument of writing, she would have bestowed upon Time a less common material for recording his doings.

Whilst we are remembering, let us look back for a moment upon our earliest schooldays—the days of large text and round hand. Twenty urchins sit at a long desk, each intent upon making his copy. A nicely mended pen has been given to each. Our own labour goes on successfully, till, in school-boy phrase, the pen begins to splutter. A bold effort must be made. We leave the form, and timidly address the writing-master with—“Please, sir, mend my pen.” A slight frown subsides as he sees that the quill is very bad—too soft or too hard—used to the stump. He dashes it away, and snatching a feather from a bundle—a poor thin feather, such as green geese drop on a common—shapes it into a pen. This mending and making process occupies all his leisure—occupies, indeed, many of the minutes that ought to be devoted to instruction. He has a perpetual battle to wage with his bad quills. They are the meanest produce of the plucked goose.

And is this process still going on in the many thousand schools of our land, where, with all drawbacks of imperfect education, both as to numbers educated and gifts imparted, there are about two millions and a half of children under daily instruction? In remote rural districts, probably; in the towns certainly not. The steam-engine is now the pen-maker. Hecatombs of geese are consumed at Michaelmas and Christmas; but not all the geese in the world would meet the demand of England for pens. The supply of patés de foie gras will be kept up—that of quills, whether known as primes, seconds, or pinions, must be wholly inadequate to the wants of a writing people. Wherever geese are bred in these islands, so assuredly, in each succeeding March, will every full-fledged victim be robbed of his quills; and then turned forth on the common, a very waddling and impotent goose, quite unworthy of the name of bird. The country schoolmaster, at the same springtime, will continue to buy the smallest quills, at a low price, clarify them after his own rude fashion, make them into pens, and sorely spite the boy who splits them up too rapidly. The better quills will still be collected, and find their way to the quill dealer, who will exercise his empirical arts before they pass to the stationer. He will plunge them into heated sand, to make the external skin peel off, and the external membrane shrivel up; or he will saturate them with water, and alternately contract and swell them before a charcoal fire; or he will dip them in nitric acid, and make them of a gaudy brilliancy but a treacherous endurance. They will be sorted according to the quality of the barrels, with the utmost nicety. The experienced buyer will know their value by looking at their feathery ends, tapering to a point; the uninitiated will regard only the quill portion. There is no article of commerce in which the market value is so difficult to be determined with exactness. For the finest and largest quills no price seems unreasonable; for those of the second quality too exorbitant a charge is often made. The foreign supply is large, and probably exceeds the home supply of the superior article. What the exact amount is we know not. There is no duty now on quills. The tariff of 1845—one of the most lasting monuments of the wisdom of our great commercial minister—abolished the duty of half-a-crown a thousand. In 1832 the duty amounted to four thousand two hundred pounds, which would show an annual importation of thirty-three millions one hundred thousand quills; enough, perhaps, for the commercial clerks of England, together with the quills of home growth;—but how to serve a letter-writing population?

The ancient reign of the quill pen was first seriously disturbed about twenty-five years ago. An abortive imitation of the form of a pen was produced before that time; a clumsy, inelastic, metal tube fastened in a bone or ivory handle, and sold for half-a-crown. A man might make his mark with one—but as to writing, it was a mere delusion. In due course came more carefully finished inventions for the luxurious, under the tempting names of ruby pen, or diamond pen—with the plain gold pen, and the rhodium pen, for those who were sceptical as to the jewellery of the inkstand. The economical use of the quill received also the attention of science. A machine was invented to divide the barrel lengthwise into two halves; and, by the same mechanical means, these halves were subdivided into small pieces, cut pen shape, slit, and nibbed. But the pressure upon the quill supply grew more and more intense. A new power had risen up in our world—a new seed sown—the source of all good, or the dragon’s teeth of Cadmus. In 1818 there were only one hundred and sixty-five thousand scholars in the monitorial schools—the new schools, which were being established under the auspices of the National Society, and the British and Foreign School Society. Fifteen years afterwards, in 1833, there were three hundred and ninety thousand. Ten years later, the numbers exceeded a million. Even a quarter of a century ago two-thirds of the male population of England, and one-half of the female, were learning to write; for in the Report of the Registrar-General for 1846, we find this passage:—“Persons when they are married are required to sign the marriage-register; if they cannot write their names, they sign with a mark: the result has hitherto been, that nearly one man in three, and one woman in two, married, sign with marks.” This remark applies to the period between 1839 and 1845. Taking the average age of men at marriage as twenty-seven years, and the average age of boys during their education as ten years, the marriage-register is an educational test of male instruction for the years 1824–28. But the gross number of the population of England and Wales was rapidly advancing. In 1821 it was twelve millions; in 1831, fourteen millions; in 1841, sixteen millions; in 1851, taking the rate of increase at fourteen per cent., it will be eighteen millions and a half. The extension of education was proceeding in a much quicker ratio; and we may therefore fairly assume that the proportion of those who make their marks in the marriage-register has greatly diminished since 1844.

But, during the last ten years, the natural desire to learn to write, of that part of the youthful population which education can reach, has received a great moral impulse by a wondrous development of the most useful and pleasurable exercise of that power. The uniform penny postage has been established. In the year 1838, the whole number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom was seventy-six millions; in this year that annual delivery has reached the prodigious number of three hundred and thirty-seven millions. In 1838, a Committee of the House of Commons thus denounced, amongst the great commercial evils of the high rates of postage, their injurious effects upon the great bulk of the people:—“They either act as a grievous tax on the poor, causing them to sacrifice their little earnings to the pleasure and advantage of corresponding with their distant friends, or compel them to forego such intercourse altogether; thus subtracting from the small amount of their enjoyments, and obstructing the growth and maintenance of their best affections.” Honoured be the man who broke down these barriers! Praised be the Government that, for once, stepping out of its fiscal tram-way, dared boldly to legislate for the domestic happiness, the educational progress, and the moral elevation of the masses! The steel pen, sold at the rate of a penny a dozen, is the creation, in a considerable degree, of the Penny Postage stamp; as the Penny Postage stamp was a representative, if not a creation, of the new educational power. Without the steel pen, it may reasonably be doubted whether there were mechanical means within the reach of the great bulk of the population for writing the three hundred and thirty-seven millions of letters that now annually pass through the Post Office.

Othello’s sword had “the ice-brook’s temper;” but not all the real or imaginary virtues of the stream that gave its value to the true Spanish blade could create the elasticity of a steel pen. Flexible, indeed, is the Toledo. If thrust against a wall, it will bend into an arc that describes three-fourths of a circle. The problem to be solved in the steel pen, is to convert the iron of Dannemora into a substance as thin as the quill of a dove’s pinion, but as strong as the proudest feather of an eagle’s wing. The furnaces and hammers of the old armourers could never have solved this problem. The steel pen belongs to our age of mighty machinery. It could not have existed in any other age. The demand for the instrument, and the means of supplying it, came together.

The commercial importance of the steel pen was first manifested to our senses a year or two ago at Sheffield. We had witnessed all the curious processes of converting iron into steel, by saturating it with carbon in the converting furnace;—of tilting the bars so converted into a harder substance, under the thousand hammers that shake the waters of the Sheaf and the Don; of casting the steel thus converted and tilted into ingots of higher purity; and, finally, of milling, by which the most perfect development of the material is acquired under enormous rollers. About two miles from the metropolis of steel, over whose head hangs a canopy of smoke through which the broad moors of the distance sometimes reveal themselves, there is a solitary mill where the tilting and rolling processes are carried to great perfection. The din of the large tilts is heard half a mile off. Our ears tingle, our legs tremble, when we stand close to their operation of beating bars of steel into the greatest possible density; for the whole building vibrates as the workmen swing before them in suspended baskets, and shift the bar at every movement of these hammers of the Titans. We pass onward to the more quiet rolling department. The bar that has been tilted into the most perfect compactness has now to acquire the utmost possible tenuity. A large area is occupied by furnaces and rollers. The bar of steel is dragged out of the furnace at almost a white heat. There are two men at each roller. It is passed through the first pair, and its squareness is instantly elongated and widened into flatness;—rapidly through a second pair,—and a third,—and a fourth,—and a fifth.—The bar is becoming a sheet of steel. Thinner and thinner it becomes, until it would seem that the workmen can scarcely manage the fragile substance. It has spread out, like a morsel of gold under the beater’s hammer, into an enormous leaf. The least attenuated sheet is only the hundredth part of an inch in thickness; some sheets are made as thin as the two-hundredth part of an inch. And for what purpose is this result of the labours of so many workmen, of such vast and complicated machinery, destined?—what the final application of a material employing so much capital in every step, from the Swedish mine to its transport by railroad to some other seat of British industry? The whole is prepared for one Steel-pen Manufactory at Birmingham.

There is nothing very remarkable in a steel pen manufactory, as regards ingenuity of contrivance or factory organisation. Upon a large scale of production the extent of labour engaged in producing so minute an article is necessarily striking. But the process is just as curious and interesting, if conducted in a small shop as in a large. The pure steel, as it comes from the rolling mill, is cut up into strips about two inches and a half in width. These are further cut into the proper size for the pen. The pieces are then annealed and cleansed. The maker’s name is neatly impressed on the metal; and a cutting-tool forms the slit, although imperfectly in this stage. The pen shape is given by a convex punch pressing the plate into a concave die. The pen is formed when the slit is perfected. It has now to be hardened, and finally cleansed and polished, by the simple agency of friction in a cylinder. All the varieties of form of the steel pen are produced by the punch; all the contrivances of slits and apertures above the nib, by the cutting-tool. Every improvement has had for its object to overcome the rigidity of the steel,—to imitate the elasticity of the quill, whilst bestowing upon the pen a superior durability.

The perfection that may reasonably be demanded in a steel pen has yet to be reached. But the improvement in the manufacture is most decided. Twenty years ago, to one who might choose, regardless of expense, between the quill pen and the steel, the best Birmingham and London production was an abomination. But we can trace the gradual acquiescence of most men in the writing implement of the multitude. Few of us, in an age when the small economies are carefully observed, and even paraded, desire to use quill pens at ten or twelve shillings a hundred, as Treasury Clerks once luxuriated in their use—an hour’s work, and then a new one. To mend a pen, is troublesome to the old and even the middle-aged man who once acquired the art; the young, for the most part, have not learnt it. The most painstaking and penurious author would never dream of imitating the wondrous man who translated Pliny with “one grey goose quill.” Steel pens are so cheap, that if one scratches or splutters, it may be thrown away, and another may be tried. But when a really good one is found, we cling to it, as worldly men cling to their friends; we use it till it breaks down, or grows rusty. We can do no more; we handle it as Isaak Walton handled the frog upon his hook, “as if we loved him.” We could almost fancy some analogy between the gradual and decided improvement of the steel pen—one of the new instruments of education—and the effects of education itself upon the mass of the people. An instructed nation ought to present the same gradually perfecting combination of strength with elasticity. The favourites of fortune are like the quill, ready made for social purposes, with a little scraping and polishing. The bulk of the community have to be formed out of ruder and tougher materials—to be converted, welded, and tempered into pliancy. The manners of the great British family have decidedly improved under culture—“emollit mores:” may the sturdy self-respect of the race never be impaired!

TWO CHAPTERS ON BANK NOTE FORGERIES.

CHAPTER I.

Viotti’s division of violin-playing into two great classes—good playing and bad playing—is applicable to Bank note making. The processes employed in manufacturing good Bank notes we have already described: we shall now cover a few pages with a faint outline of the various arts, stratagems, and contrivances employed in concocting bad Bank notes. The picture cannot be drawn with very distinct or strong markings. The tableaux from which it is copied are so intertwisted and complicated with clever, slippery, ingenious scoundrelism, that a finished chart of it would be worse than morally displeasing:—it would be tedious.

All arts require time and experience for their development. When anything great is to be done, first attempts are nearly always failures. The first Bank note forgery was no exception to this rule, and its story has a spice of romance in it. The affair has never been circumstantially told; but some research enables us to detail it:—

In the month of August, 1757, a gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Lincoln’s Inn Fields named Bliss, advertised for a clerk. There were, as was usual even at that time, many applicants; but the successful one was a young man of twenty-six, named Richard William Vaughan. His manners were so winning and his demeanour so much that of a gentleman (he belonged indeed to a good county family in Staffordshire, and had been a student at Pembroke Hall, Oxford), that Mr. Bliss at once engaged him. Nor had he occasion, during the time the new clerk served him, to repent the step. Vaughan was so diligent, intelligent, and steady, that not even when it transpired that he was, commercially speaking, “under a cloud,” did his master lessen confidence in him. Some enquiry into his antecedents showed that he had, while at College, been extravagant; that his friends had removed him thence; set him up in Stafford as a wholesale linen draper, with a branch establishment in Aldersgate Street, London; that he had failed, and that there was some difficulty about his certificate. But so well did he excuse his early failings and account for his misfortunes, that his employer did not check the regard he felt growing towards him. Their intercourse was not merely that of master and servant. Vaughan was a frequent guest at Bliss’s table; by-and-by a daily visitor to his wife, and—to his ward.

Miss Bliss was a young lady of some attractions, not the smallest of which was a handsome fortune. Young Vaughan made the most of his opportunities. He was well-looking, well-informed, dressed well, and evidently made love well, for he won the young lady’s heart. The guardian was not flinty hearted, and acted like a sensible man of the world. “It was not,” he said on a subsequent and painful occasion, “till I learned from the servants and observed by the girl’s behaviour that she greatly approved Richard Vaughan, that I consented; but on condition that he should make it appear that he could maintain her. I had no doubt of his character as a servant, and I knew his family were respectable. His brother is an eminent attorney.” Vaughan boasted that his mother (his father was dead), was willing to re-instate him in business with a thousand pounds; five hundred of which was to be settled upon Miss Bliss for her separate use.

So far all went on prosperously. Providing Richard Vaughan could attain a position satisfactory to the Blisses, the marriage was to take place on the Easter Monday following, which the Calendar tells us happened early in April, 1758. With this understanding, he left Mr. Bliss’s service, to push his fortune.

Months passed on, and Vaughan appears to have made no way in the world. He had not even obtained his bankrupt’s certificate. His visits to his affianced were frequent, and his protestations passionate; but he had effected nothing substantial towards a happy union. Miss Bliss’s guardian grew impatient; and, although there is no evidence to prove that the young lady’s affection for Vaughan was otherwise than deep and sincere, yet even she began to lose confidence in him. His excuses were evidently evasive, and not always true. The time fixed for the wedding was fast approaching; and Vaughan saw that something must be done to restore the young lady’s confidence.

About three weeks before the appointed Easter Tuesday, Vaughan went to his mistress in high spirits. All was right: his certificate was to be granted in a day or two; his family had come forward with the money, and he was to continue the Aldersgate business he had previously carried on as a branch of the Stafford trade. The capital he had waited so long for, was at length forthcoming. In fact, here were two hundred and forty pounds of the five hundred he was to settle on his beloved. Vaughan then produced twelve twenty-pound notes; Miss Bliss could scarcely believe her eyes. She examined them. The paper she remarked seemed rather thicker than usual. “Oh,” said Bliss, “all Bank bills are not alike.” The girl was naturally much pleased. She would hasten to apprise Mistress Bliss of the good news.

Not for the world! So far from letting any living soul know he had placed so much money in her hands, Vaughan exacted an oath of secresy from her, and sealed the notes up in a parcel with his own seal; making her swear that she would on no account open it till after their marriage.

Some days after, that is, “on the twenty-second of March,” (1758) we are describing the scene in Mr. Bliss’s own words—“I was sitting with my wife by the fireside. The prisoner and the girl were sitting in the same room—which was a small one—and although they whispered, I could distinguish that Vaughan was very urgent to have something returned which he had previously given to her. She refused, and Vaughan went away in an angry mood. I then studied the girl’s face, and saw that it expressed much dissatisfaction. Presently a tear broke out. I then spoke, and insisted on knowing the dispute. She refused to tell, and I told her that until she did, I would not see her. The next day I asked the same question of Vaughan; he hesitated. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘I dare say it is some ten or twelve pound matter—something to buy a wedding bauble with.’ He answered that it was much more than that, it was near three hundred pounds! ‘But why all this secresy,’ I said; and he answered it was not proper for people to know he had so much money till his certificate was signed. I then asked him to what intent he had left the notes with the young lady? He said, as I had of late suspected him, he designed to give her a proof of his affection and truth. I said, ‘You have demanded them in such a way that it must be construed as an abatement of your affection towards her.’” Vaughan was again exceedingly urgent in asking back the packet; but Bliss remembering his many evasions, and supposing that this was a trick, declined advising his niece to restore the parcel without proper consideration. The very next day it was discovered that the notes were counterfeits.

This occasioned stricter enquiries into Vaughan’s previous career. It turned out that he bore the character in his native place of a dissipated and not very scrupulous person. The intention of his mother to assist him was an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss Bliss the forged notes solely for the purpose of deceiving her on that matter. Meanwhile the forgeries became known to the authorities, and he was arrested. By what means, does not clearly appear. The “Annual Register” says that one of the engravers gave information; but we find nothing in the newspapers of the time to support that statement; neither was it corroborated at Vaughan’s trial.

When Vaughan was arrested he thrust a piece of paper into his mouth, and began to chew it violently. It was, however, rescued, and proved to be one of the forged notes; fourteen of them were found on his person, and when his lodgings were searched twenty more were discovered.

Vaughan was tried at the Old Bailey on the seventh of April, before Lord Mansfield. The manner of the forgery was detailed minutely at the trial:—On the first of March (about a week before he gave the twelve notes to the young lady) Vaughan called on Mr. John Corbould, an engraver, and gave an order for a promissory note to be engraved with these words:—

“No. ——.

“I promise to pay to ——, or Bearer, ——, London ——.”

There was to be a Britannia in the corner. When it was done, Mr. Sneed (for that was the alias Vaughan adopted) came again, but objected to the execution of the work. The Britannia was not good, and the words “I promise” were too near the edge of the plate. Another was in consequence engraved, and on the fourth of March Vaughan took it away. He immediately repaired to a printer, and had forty-eight impressions taken on thin paper, provided by himself. Meanwhile, he had ordered, on the same morning, of Mr. Charles Fourdrinier, another engraver, a second plate, with what he called “a direction,” in the words, “For the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” This was done, and about a week later he brought some paper, each sheet “folded up,” said the witness, “very curiously, so that I could not see what was in them. I was going to take the papers from him, but he said he must go upstairs with me, and see them worked off himself. I took him upstairs; he would not let me have them out of his hands. I took a sponge and wetted them, and put them one by one on the plate in order for printing them. After my boy had done two or three of them, I went downstairs, and my boy worked the rest off, and the prisoner came down and paid me.”

Here the Court pertinently asked, “What imagination had you when a man thus came to you to print on secret paper, ‘the Governor and Company of the Bank of England?’”

The engraver’s reply was:—“I then did not suspect anything. But I shall take care for the future.” As this was the first Bank of England note forgery that was ever perpetrated, the engraver was held excused.

It may be mentioned as an evidence of the delicacy of the reporters that, in their account of the trial, Miss Bliss’s name is not mentioned. Her designation is “a young lady.” We subjoin the notes of her evidence:—

“A young lady (sworn). The prisoner delivered me some bills; these are the same (producing twelve counterfeit Bank notes sealed up in a cover, for twenty pounds each), said they were Bank bills. I said they were thicker paper—he said all bills are not alike. I was to keep them till after we were married. He put them into my hands to show he put confidence in me, and desired me not to show them to any body; sealed them up with his own seal, and obliged me by an oath not to discover them to any body. And I did not till he had discovered them himself. He was to settle so much in Stock on me.”

Vaughan urged in his defence that his sole object was to deceive his affianced, and that he intended to destroy all the notes after his marriage. But it had been proved that the prisoner had asked one John Ballingar to change first one, and then twenty of the notes; but which that person was unable to do. Besides, had his sole object been to dazzle Miss Bliss with his fictitious wealth, he would most probably have entrusted more, if not all the notes, to her keeping.

He was found guilty, and passed the day that had been fixed for his wedding, as a condemned criminal.

On the 11th May, 1758, Richard William Vaughan was executed at Tyburn. By his side, on the same gallows, there was another forger: William Boodgere, a military officer, who had forged a draught on an army agent named Calcroft, and expiated the offence with the first forger of Bank of England notes.

The gallows may seem hard measure to have meted out to Vaughan, when it is considered that none of his notes were negotiated and no person suffered by his fraud. Not one of the forty-eight notes, except the twelve delivered to Miss Bliss, had been out of his possession; indeed the imitation must have been very clumsily executed, and detection would have instantly followed any attempt to pass the counterfeits. There was no endeavour to copy the style of engraving on a real Bank note. That was left to the engraver; and as each sheet passed through the press twice, the words added at the second printing, “For the Governor and Company of the Bank of England,” could have fallen into their proper place on any one of the sheets, only by a miracle. But what would have made the forgery clear to even a superficial observer was the singular omission of the second “n” in the word England.[1]

1. Bad orthography was by no means uncommon in the most important documents at that period; the days of the week, in the day-books of the Bank of England itself, are spelt in a variety of ways.

The criticism on Vaughan’s note of a Bank clerk examined on the trial was:—“There is some resemblance, to be sure; but this mote” (that upon which the prisoner was tried) “is numbered thirteen thousand eight hundred and forty, and we never reach so high a number.” Besides there was no water-mark in the paper. The note of which a fac-simile appeared in our eighteenth number, and dated so early as 1699, has a regular design in the texture of the paper; showing that the water-mark is as old as the Bank notes themselves.

Vaughan was greatly commiserated. But despite the unskilfulness of the forgery, and the insignificant consequences which followed it, the crime was considered of too dangerous a character not to be marked, from its very novelty, with exemplary punishment. Hanging created at that time no remorse in the public mind, and it was thought necessary to set up Vaughan as a warning to all future Bank note forgers. The crime was too dangerous not to be marked with the severest penalties. Forgery differs from other crimes not less in the magnitude of the spoil it may obtain, and of the injury it inflicts, than in the facilities attending its accomplishment. The common thief finds a limit to his depredations in the bulkiness of his booty, which is generally confined to such property as he can carry about his person; the swindler raises insuperable and defeating obstacles to his frauds if the amount he seeks to obtain is so considerable as to awaken close vigilance or enquiry. To carry their projects to any very profitable extent, these criminals are reduced to the hazardous necessity of acting in concert, and thus infinitely increasing the risks of detection. But the forger need have no accomplice; he is burdened with no bulky and suspicious property; he needs no receiver to assist his contrivances. The skill of his own individual right hand can command thousands; often with the certainty of not being detected, and oftener with such rapidity as to enable him to baffle the pursuit of justice.

It was a long time before Vaughan’s rude attempt was improved upon: but in the same year, (1758), another department of the crime was commenced with perfect success;—namely, an ingenious alteration, for fraudulent purposes, of real Bank notes. A few months after Vaughan’s execution, one of the northern mails was stopped and robbed by a highwayman; several Bank notes were comprised in the spoil, and the robber, setting up with these as a gentleman, went boldly to the Hatfield Post office, ordered a chaise and four, rattled away down the road, and changed a note at every change of horses. The robbery was, of course, soon made known, and the numbers and dates of the stolen notes were advertised as having been stopped at the Bank. To the genius of a highwayman this offered but a small obstacle, and the gentleman-thief changed all the figures “1” he could find into “4’s.” These notes passed currently enough; but, on reaching the Bank, the alteration was detected, and the last holder was refused payment. As that person had given a valuable consideration for the note, he brought an action for the recovery of the amount; and at the trial it was ruled by the Lord Chief Justice, that “any person paying a valuable consideration for a Bank note, payable to bearer, in a fair course of business, has an understood right to receive the money of the Bank.”

It took a quarter of a century to bring the art of forging Bank notes to perfection. In 1779, this was nearly attained by an ingenious gentleman named Mathison, a watchmaker, from the matrimonial village of Gretna Green. Having learnt the arts of engraving and of simulating signatures, he tried his hand at the notes of the Darlington Bank; but, with the confidence of skill, was not cautious in passing them, was suspected, and absconded to Edinburgh. Scorning to let his talent be wasted, he favoured the Scottish public with many spurious Royal Bank of Scotland notes, and regularly forged his way by their aid to London. At the end of February he took handsome lodgings in the Strand, opposite Arundel Street. His industry was remarkable; for, by the 12th of March, he had planed and polished rough pieces of copper, engraved them, forged the water-mark, printed and negotiated several impressions. His plan was to travel and to purchase articles in shops. He bought a pair of shoe-buckles at Coventry with a forged note, which was eventually detected at the Bank of England. He had got so bold that he paid such frequent visits in Threadneedle Street that the Bank clerks became familiar with his person. He was continually changing notes of one, for another denomination. These were his originals, which he procured to make spurious copies of. One day seven thousand pounds came in from the Stamp Office. There was a dispute about one of the notes. Mathison, who was present, though at some distance, declared, oracularly, that the note was a good one. How could he know so well? A dawn of suspicion arose in the minds of the clerks; one trail led into another, and Mathison was finally apprehended. So well were his notes forged that, on the trial, an experienced Bank clerk declared he could not tell whether the note handed him to examine was forged or not. Mathison offered to reveal his secret of forging the water-mark, if mercy were shown to him; this was refused, and he suffered the penalty of his crime.

Mathison was a genius in his criminal way, but a greater than he appeared in 1786. In that year perfection seemed to have been reached. So considerable was the circulation of spurious paper-money that it appeared as if some unknown power had set up a bank of its own. Notes were issued from it, and readily passed current, in hundreds and thousands. They were not to be distinguished from the genuine paper of Threadneedle Street. Indeed, when one was presented there, in due course, so complete were all its parts; so masterly the engraving; so correct the signatures; so skilful the water-mark, that it was promptly paid; and only discovered to be a forgery when it reached a particular department. From that period forged paper continued to be presented, especially at the time of lottery drawing. Consultations were held with the police. Plans were laid to help detection. Every effort was made to trace the forger. Clarke, the best detective of his day, went, like a sluth-hound, on the track; for in those days the expressive word “blood-money” was known. Up to a certain point there was little difficulty; but beyond that, consummate art defied the ingenuity of the officer. In whatever way the notes came, the train of discovery always paused at the lottery-offices. Advertisements offering large rewards were circulated; but the unknown forger baffled detection.

While this base paper was in full currency, there appeared an advertisement in the Daily Advertiser for a servant. The successful applicant was a young man, in the employment of a musical-instrument maker; who, some time after, was called upon by a coachman, and informed that the advertiser was waiting in a coach to see him. The young man was desired to enter the conveyance, where he beheld a person with something of the appearance of a foreigner, sixty or seventy years old, apparently troubled with the gout. A camlet surtout was buttoned round his mouth; a large patch was placed over his left eye; and nearly every part of his face was concealed. He affected much infirmity. He had a faint hectic cough; and invariably presented the patched side to the view of the servant. After some conversation—in the course of which he represented himself as guardian to a young nobleman of great fortune—the interview concluded with the engagement of the applicant; and the new servant was directed to call on Mr. Brank, at 29, Titchfield Street, Oxford Street. At this interview Brank inveighed against his whimsical ward for his love of speculating in lottery-tickets; and told the servant that his principal duty would be to purchase them. After one or two meetings, at each of which Brank kept his face muffled, he handed a forty and twenty pound Bank note; told the servant to be very careful not to lose them; and directed him to buy lottery-tickets at separate offices. The young man fulfilled his instructions, and at the moment he was returning, was suddenly called by his employer from the other side of the street, congratulated on his rapidity, and then told to go to various other offices in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange, and to purchase more shares. Four hundred pounds in Bank of England Notes were handed him, and the wishes of the mysterious Mr. Brank were satisfactorily effected. These scenes were continually enacted. Notes to a large amount were thus circulated; lottery-tickets purchased; and Mr. Brank—always in a coach, with his face studiously concealed—was ever ready on the spot to receive them. The surprise of the servant was somewhat excited; but had he known that from the period he left his master to purchase the tickets, one female figure accompanied all his movements; that when he entered the offices, it waited at the door, peered cautiously in at the window, hovered around him like a second shadow, watched him carefully, and never left him until once more he was in the Company of his employer—that surprise would have been greatly increased.[2] Again and again were these extraordinary scenes rehearsed. At last the Bank obtained a clue, and the servant was taken into custody. The directors imagined that they had secured the actor of so many parts; that the flood of forged notes which had inundated that establishment would at length be dammed up at his source. Their hopes proved fallacious, and it was found that “Old Patch,” (as the mysterious forger was, from the servant’s description, nick-named) had been sufficiently clever to baffle the Bank directors. The house in Titchfield Street was searched; but Mr. Brank had deserted it, and not a trace of a single implement of forgery was to be seen.

2. Francis’s History of the Bank of England.

All that could be obtained was some little knowledge of “Old Patch’s” proceedings. It appeared that he carried on his paper coining entirely by himself. His only confidant was his mistress. He was his own engraver. He even made his own ink. He manufactured his own paper. With a private press he worked his own notes; and counterfeited the signatures of the cashiers, completely. But these discoveries had no effect; for it became evident that Mr. Patch had set up a press elsewhere. Although his secret continued as impenetrable, his notes became as plentiful as ever. Five years of unbounded prosperity ought to have satisfied him; but it did not. Success seemed to pall him. His genius was of that insatiable order which demands new excitements, and a constant succession of new flights. The following paragraph from a newspaper of 1786 relates to the same individual:—

“On the 17th of December, ten pounds was paid into the Bank, for which the clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to receive a Bank note of equal value. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to the cashier, instead of which the bearer took it home, and curiously added an 0 to the original sum, and returning, presented it so altered to the cashier, for which he received a note of one hundred pounds. In the evening, the clerks found a deficiency in the accounts; and on examining the tickets of the day, not only that but two others were discovered to have been obtained in the same manner. In the one, the figure 1 was altered to 4, and in another to 5, by which the artist received, upon the whole, nearly one thousand pounds.”

To that princely felony, Old Patch, as will be seen in the sequel, added smaller misdemeanors which one would think were far beneath his notice; except to convince himself and his mistress of the unbounded facility of his genius for fraud.

At that period the affluent public were saddled with a tax on plate; and many experiments were made to evade it. Among others, one was invented by a Mr. Charles Price, a stock-jobber and lottery-office keeper, which, for a time, puzzled the tax-gatherer. Mr. Charles Price lived in great style, gave splendid dinners, and did everything on the grandest scale. Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find so much as a silver tooth-pick on his magnificent premises. In truth, what he was too cunning to possess, he borrowed. For one of his sumptuous entertainments, he hired the plate of a silversmith in Cornhill, and left the value in bank notes as security for its safe return. One of these notes having proved a forgery, was traced to Mr. Charles Price; and Mr. Charles Price was not to be found at that particular juncture. Although this excited no surprise—for he was often an absentee from his office for short periods—yet in due course and as a formal matter of business, an officer was set to find him, and to ask his explanation regarding the false note. After tracing a man who he had a strong notion was Mr. Charles Price through countless lodgings and innumerable disguises, the officer (to use his own expression) “nabbed” Mr. Charles Price. But, as Mr. Clarke observed, his prisoner and his prisoner’s lady were even then “too many” for him; for although he lost not a moment in trying to secure the forging implements, after he had discovered that Mr. Charles Price, and Mr. Brank, and Old Patch, were all concentrated in the person of his prisoner, he found the lady had destroyed every trace of evidence. Not a vestige of the forging factory was left. Not the point of a graver, nor a single spot of ink, nor a shred of silver paper, nor a scrap of anybody’s handwriting, was to be met with. Despite, however, this paucity of evidence to convict him, Mr. Charles Price had not the courage to face a jury, and eventually he saved the judicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanging himself in Bridewell.

The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed; and even after the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries—which dates from the suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797, and which will be treated of in a succeeding paper—“Old Patch” was still remembered as the Cæsar of Forgers.

THE TWO GUIDES OF THE CHILD.

A spirit near me said, “Look forth upon the Land of Life. What do you see?”

“Steep mountains, covered by a mighty plain, a table-land of many-coloured beauty. Beauty, nay, it seems all beautiful at first, but now I see that there are some parts barren.”

“Are they quite barren?—look more closely still!”

“No, in the wildest deserts, now, I see some gum-dropping acacias, and the crimson blossom of the cactus. But there are regions that rejoice abundantly in flower and fruit; and now, O Spirit, I see men and women moving to and fro.”

“Observe them, mortal.”

“I behold a world of love; the men have women’s arms entwined about them; some upon the verge of precipices—friends are running to the rescue. There are many wandering like strangers, who know not their road, and they look upward. Spirit, how many, many eyes are looking up as if to God! Ah, now I see some strike their neighbours down into the dust; I see some wallowing like swine; I see that there are men and women brutal.”

“Are they quite brutal?—look more closely still.”

“No, I see prickly sorrow growing out of crime, and penitence awakened by a look of love. I see good gifts bestowed out of the hand of murder, and see truth issue out of lying lips. But in this plain, O Spirit, I see regions—wide, bright regions,—yielding fruit and flower, while others seem perpetually veiled with fogs, and in them no fruit ripens. I see pleasant regions where the rock is full of clefts, and people fall into them. The men who dwell beneath the fog deal lovingly, and yet they have small enjoyment in the world around them, which they scarcely see. But whither are these women going?”

“Follow them.”

“I have followed down the mountains to a haven in the vale below. All that is lovely in the world of flowers makes a fragrant bed for the dear children; birds singing, they breathe upon the pleasant air; the butterflies play with them. Their limbs shine white among the blossoms, and their mothers come down full of joy to share their innocent delight. They pelt each other with the lilies of the valley. They call up at will fantastic masques, grim giants play to make them merry, a thousand grotesque loving phantoms kiss them; to each the mother is the one thing real, the highest bliss—the next bliss is the dream of all the world beside. Some that are motherless, all mother’s love. Every gesture, every look, every odour, every song, adds to the charm of love which fills the valley. Some little figures fall and die, and on the valley’s soil they crumble into violets and lilies, with love-tears to hang in them like dew.

“Who dares to come down with a frown into this happy valley? A severe man seizes an unhappy, shrieking child, and leads it to the roughest ascent of the mountain. He will lead it over steep rocks to the plain of the mature. On ugly needle-points he makes the child sit down, and teaches it its duty in the world above.”

“Its duty, mortal! do you listen to the teacher?”

“Spirit, I hear now. The child is informed about two languages spoken by nations extinct centuries ago, and something also, O Spirit, about the base of a hypothenuse.”

“Does the child attend?”

“Not much; but it is beaten sorely, and its knees are bruised against the rocks, till it is hauled up, woe-begone and weary, to the upper plain. It looks about bewildered; all is strange,—it knows not how to act. Fogs crown the barren mountain paths. Spirit, I am unhappy; there are many children thus hauled up, and as young men upon the plain; they walk in fog, or among brambles; some fall into pits; and many, getting into flower-paths, lie down and learn. Some become active, seeking right, but ignorant of what right is; they wander among men out of their fog-land, preaching folly. Let me go back among the children.”

“Have they no better guide?”

“Yes, now there comes one with a smiling face, and rolls upon the flowers with the little ones, and they are drawn to him. And he has magic spells to conjure up glorious spectacles of fairy land. He frolics with them and might be first cousin to the butterflies. He wreathes their little heads with flower garlands, and with his fairy land upon his lips he walks toward the mountains; eagerly they follow. He seeks the smoothest upward path, and that is but a rough one, yet they run up merrily, guide and children, butterflies pursuing still the flowers as they nod over a host of laughing faces. They talk of the delightful fairy world, and resting in the shady places learn of the yet more delightful world of God. They learn to love the Maker of the Flowers, to know how great the Father of the Stars must be, how good must be the Father of the Beetle. They listen to the story of the race they go to labour with upon the plain, and love it for the labour it has done. They learn old languages of men, to understand the past—more eagerly they learn the voices of the men of their own day, that they may take part with the present. And in their study when they flag, they fall back upon thoughts of the Child Valley they are leaving. Sports and fancies are the rod and spur that bring them with new vigour to the lessons. When they reach the plain they cry, ‘We know you, men and women; we know to what you have aspired for centuries; we know the love there is in you; we know the love there is in God; we come prepared to labour with you, dear, good friends. We will not call you clumsy when we see you tumble, we will try to pick you up; when we fall, you shall pick us up. We have been trained to love, and therefore we can aid you heartily, for love is labour!’”

The Spirit whispered, “You have seen and you have heard. Go now, and speak unto your fellow-men: ask justice for the child.”

To-day should love To-morrow, for it is a thing of hope; let the young Future not be nursed by Care. God gave not fancy to the child that men should stamp its blossoms down into the loose soil of intellect. The child’s heart was not made full to the brim of love, that men should pour its love away, and bruise instead of kiss the trusting innocent. Love and fancy are the stems on which we may graft knowledge readily. What is called by some dry folks a solid foundation may be a thing not desirable. To cut down all the trees and root up all the flowers in a garden, to cover walks and flower-beds alike with a hard crust of well-rolled gravel, that would be to lay down your solid foundation after a plan which some think good in a child’s mind, though not quite worth adopting in a garden. O, teacher, love the child and learn of it; so let it love and learn of you.

CHIPS.

EASY SPELLING AND HARD READING.

An interesting case of educational destitution presents itself in the following letter. It is written by the son of a poor, but honest, brickmaker of Hammersmith, who emigrated to Sidney, and is now a shepherd at Bathurst. While the facts it contains are clearly stated, and the sentiments expressed are highly creditable to the writer—showing that his moral training had not been neglected by his parents—the orthography is such as, we may safely affirm, would not have emanated from any human being with similar abilities, and in a similar station, than an Englishman.

England stands pre-eminent in this respect. The parents of this letter-writer were too poor to pay to have their child taught, and consequently with the best will in the world to be an ordinary scholar, he is unable to spell. The clever manner in which such letters are selected as represent the sounds he is in the habit of giving to each word, shows an aptitude which would assuredly have made with the commonest cultivation a literate and useful citizen. More amusing orthography we have no where met; but the information it conveys is of the most useful kind. The reader will perceive that the points touched upon are precisely those respecting which he would wish to be informed; were he about to emigrate.

The epistle not only gives a truthful picture of an Australian shepherd’s condition, but is in itself a lesson and a censure on that want of national means of education from which at least one-third of the adult population of England suffer, and of which the writer is an especial victim and example:—

“Deer mother and father and sisters i root thes few lines hooping to find you All well for I arr in gudd halth my self and i wood root befor onley i wos very un setled and now i have root i houp you will rite back as soon as you can and send how you all arr and likwise our frends and i am hired my self for a sheeprd 12 munts for 19 pound and my keep too for it wos to soun for our work when i arive in the cuntry it is a plesent and a helthay cuntry and most peple dows well in it as liks onley it is a grait cuntry for durnkerds and you do not Xpket for them to do well no weer i have not got any folt to find of the cuntry for after few theres man can bee is own master if hee liks for the wagers is higher then tha arr at hom and the previshen is seeper and peple do not work so hard as thay do at tom and if any wne wish to com com at wonce and don with it same as i did and take no feer oof the see whot ever for i did not see any danger whot ever and it is a cuntry that puur peapole can get a gud living in hoostlue wich thay can not at tom i arr vrey well plesed off the cuntry and i should bee very happy if i had som relishon over with mee and i am 230 miles up the cuntry and wee had a very plesent voyge over in deed and likwise luckey and vrey litle sickenss and no deths deer mother and father i houp you will lett our frends no how i am geeting on and der frends you take no heed what pepole says about horstler take and past your own thouths about it and if any body wishes to com i wood swade them to com con pepole can geet a gud living there wer tha cant at tome and pepole beter com and geet a belly full then to stop at tome and work day and night then onely get haf a bely ful and i am shuur that no body can not find any folt off the cuntry eXcep tis pepole do not now when tha arr doing well [price of pervison] tee lb 1s to 3s suuger lb 2d to 6d coofe lb 8d to 1s bred lb 1d to 2d beef lb 1d to 2d mutten ditto baken lb 6d to 1s. poork lb 2d to 4d butter lb 6d to 1s chees lb 4d to 8d pertos price as tome sope lb 4d to 6d starch and blue and sooder home price candles lb 4d to 6d rice lb 2d to 4d hags hom price trekle lb 4d to 5d solt lb 1d peper nounc 2d tabaker lb 1s to 6s beer 4d pot at sednay and up in the pool 1s spirts hom price frut happles pars horengs lemns peshes gusbryes curneth cheerys cokelnut storbyes rasberys nuts of all sorts vegtbles of all sorts price of cloths much the same as tome stok very resneble sheep 2s 6d heed wait about 80 pounds fat bullket about 1000 wit 3l pour hors from 2l to 10l ther is wonderful grait many black in the cuntry but tha will not hurt any one if you will let them aolne.

traitment on bord ship,

wee arive in the 7 febery and sailed to graveshend then wee stop ther 2 days then wee sailed from ther to plymeth and wee stop ther 9 days and took in loot more emigrant then wee sailed from ther to seednay we arive to seednay 8 of June wee had it vry ruf in the bay of biskey and three mor places beside but i did not see any dainger of sinking not the lest for wee had a vry plesent voyges over in deed the pervison on bord ship Monday pork haf pound pea haf pint butter 6 ounces weekly tea 1 ounce per week 9 ounces daily biscuit Tusday beef haf pound rice 4 ounces flour 1 pound per week Wendesday pork haf pound peas haf pint raisins haf pound per week cooffee 1 ounce and haf per week Thursday preserved meet haf pound Friday pork haf pound peas haf pint Sadurday beef haf pound rice 4 ounces sugar three Quarter pound per week Sunday preserved meat haf pound fresh woter three Quarrts daily vinegar haf pint per week Mustard haf ounce per week salt tow ounces per week lime Juse haf pint per week my der sisters i houp you will keep your selvs from all bad company for it is a disgrace to all frends and likwise worse for you own sellvs o rember that opinted day to com at last tis behoups that wee shal bee free from all dets o whot a glorious tirm it will bee then wee shal feel no more pains nor gref nor sorows nor sickness nor truble of any cind o whot a glorious term it will bee then o seeners kip your selvs out off the mire for feer you shuld sink to the bootem the sarvents wagars of houstler tha geets ges haf as much mour as tha gets at tome and my sister Maryaan shee kood geet 16 punds a year and Sarah get 20 pound and Marther get 8 or 9 pound and tha arr not so sharp to the servents as tha arr at tome i houp you will send word wot the yungest child name is and how it is geeting on and send the date when it wos born and i houp this will find you all weel and cumfortble to. J. R.”

A VERY OLD SOLDIER.

The following is a chip from a block whence we have already taken a few shavings:—“Kohl’s Travels in the Netherlands.” It describes the National Hospital for the Aged at Brussels. Some of the inmates whom he found in it, though still alive, belong to history. It must have been with a sort of archaic emotion that our inquisitive friend found himself speaking to a man who had escorted Marie Antoinette from Vienna to Paris, on the occasion of her marriage!

“The magnitude of the Hospice des Vieillards in Brussels,” says Mr. Kohl, “fully realises the idea of a National establishment. The building itself fulfils all the required conditions of extent, solidity, and convenience. The gardens, court-yards, and apartments are spacious and well arranged. The sleeping and eating rooms are large, and well furnished; and it is pleasing to observe, here and there, the walls adorned with pictures painted in oil-colours. The inmates of this Hospice pass their latter days in the enjoyment of a degree of happiness and comfort which would be unattainable in their own homes. The chapel is situated only at the distance of a few paces from the main building, and is connected with it by means of a roofed corridor; thus obviating the difficulties which prevent old people from attending places of public worship when, as it frequently happens, they are situated at long and inaccessible distances from their dwellings. In winter the Chapel of the Hospice is carefully warmed and secured against damp.

“At the time of my visit to the Hospice des Vieillards in Brussels, the establishment contained about seven hundred inmates, of both sexes, between the ages of seventy and eighty. Of this number six hundred and fifteen were maintained at the charge of the establishment, and seventy-five, being in competent circumstances, defrayed their own expenses. That the number of those able to maintain themselves should bear so considerable a relative proportion to the rest, is a fact which bears strong testimony in favour of the merits of the establishment. Those who support themselves live in a style more or less costly, according to the amount of their respective payments. Some of the apartments into which I was conducted certainly presented such an air of comfort that persons, even of a superior condition of life, could scarcely have desired better.

“I learned from the Governor of the Hospice that the average cost of the maintenance of each individual was about seventy-five centimes per day, making a total diurnal expenditure of six hundred francs, or of two hundred thousand francs per annum. But as this estimate includes the wages of attendants and the expenses consequent on repairs of the building, it may fairly be calculated that each individual costs about three hundred francs per annum. The Hospice frequently receives liberal donations and bequests from opulent private persons.

“For such of the pensioners as are able to work, employment is provided: others are appointed to fill official posts in the veteran Republic. Now and then a little task-work is imposed; but the Hospice being rich, this duty is not exacted with the precision requisite in establishments for the young, where the inmates having a long worldly career before them, it is desirable that they should be trained in habits of regularity and industry. The pensioners of the Brussels Hospice des Vieillards, enjoy much freedom; and they are even allowed some amusements and indulgences, which it might not be proper to concede to young persons. For example, they are permitted to play at cards; but it will scarcely be said there is anything objectionable in such an indulgence to old persons who have run out their worldly course; for even were they fated once more to enter into society, their example could neither be very useful nor very dangerous. Here and there I observed groups of the pensioners, male and female, seated at cards, staking their pocket-money, of which each has a small allowance, on the hazard of the game. The penalties assigned for misdemeanours are very mild, consisting merely in the offending party being prohibited from going out, or, as it is called, la privée de la sortie. In extreme cases the delinquent is confined to his or her own apartment.

“It has seldom been my lot to visit a charitable institution, which created in my mind so many pleasing impressions as those I experienced in the Hospital for the Old in Brussels. It was gratifying to observe in the spacious court-yards the cheerful and happy groups of grey-haired men and women, sunning themselves in the open air. Some were playing at cards, whilst here and there the females were seated at work, and men sauntering about smoking their pipes and gossiping. Every now and then I met an old man whistling or singing whilst he paced to and fro. More than one of these veterans had been eye-witnesses of interesting historical events, which now belong to a past age. Several of them had served as soldiers during the Austrian dominion in Belgium. Of these the porter of the Hospital was one.

“The most remarkable character in the whole establishment was an old Dutchman, named Jan Hermann Jankens, who was born at Leyden in the year 1735. At the time when I saw him, he was one hundred and nine years of age; or, to quote his own description of himself, he was ‘leste, vaillant, et sain.’”

“Il nous rapelle en vain
Apres un siècle de séjour,
Ses plaisirs ainsi que ses amertumes.”

“These lines were inscribed beneath his portrait, which hung in his own apartment. I remarked that the painter had not flattered him. ‘You are right, Sir,’ replied he; ‘the fact is, I am much younger than my portrait,’ and to prove that he was making no vain boast, he sprang up, and cut several capers, with surprising agility. His faculties were unimpaired, and he was a remarkable example of that vigorous organisation which sometimes manifests itself in the human frame; and which excites our wonder when we find that such delicate structures as the nerves of sight and hearing may be used for the space of a century without wearing out. Until within two years of the time when I saw Jankens, he had been able to work well and actively. His hand was firm and steady, and he frequently wrote letters to his distant friends. When in his one hundred and seventh year, he thought, very reasonably, that he might give up work. ‘And what do you do now?’ I enquired. ‘I enjoy my life,’ replied he; ‘I saunter about the whole day long, singing, smoking, and amusing myself. I spend my time very gaily!’

“‘Yes, Sir; he dances, drinks, and sings all day long!’ exclaimed, in a half-jeering, half-envious tone, another veteran, named Watermans, who had joined us, and who, though only ninety years of age, was much more feeble than Jankens.

“I learned from the latter that he had had fifteen children; but that of all his large family, only one survived, though most of them had lived to a goodly age. His memory was stored with recollections of events connected with the marriage of Louis the Sixteenth; for, when a soldier in the Austrian service, he had formed one of the military escort which conducted Marie Antoinette into France. He sang me an old song, which had been composed in honour of the Royal nuptials, and which he said was very popular at the time. It was in the usual style of such effusions; a mere string of hyperbolic compliments, in praise of the ‘beauteous Princess,’ and the ‘illustrious Prince.’ It sounded like an echo from the grave of old French loyalty. Jankens sang this song in a remarkably clear, strong voice; but nevertheless, the performance did not give satisfaction to old Watermans, who, thrusting his fingers into his ears, said peevishly, ‘What a croaking noise!’

“Heedless of this discouraging remark, the venerable centenarian was preparing to favour me with another specimen of his vocal ability, when the great bell in the court-yard rang for supper. ‘Pardon, Sir,’ said Jankens, with an apologetic bow, ‘but—supper.’ Whereupon he hurried off in the direction of the refectory, with that sort of eager yearning with which it might be imagined he turned to his mother’s breast one hundred and nine years before.

“‘It is amazing that that old fellow should have so sharp an appetite,’ observed the petulant Watermans, hobbling after him in a way which showed that he too was not altogether unprepared to do honour to the evening meal.”

This Hospital for the Aged is a sort of National Almshouse not solely peculiar to Belgium. Private munificence does in England what is done abroad by Governments; but it is to be deplored that a more general provision for the superannuated does not exist in this country. Workhouses are indeed asylums for the old; but for those who are also decayed in worldly circumstances, they cannot afford those comforts which old age requires. Except Greenwich Hospital for sailors, and Chelsea Hospital for soldiers, we have no national institution for old people.

THE HOUSEHOLD JEWELS.

A Traveller, from journeying
In countries far away,
Re-passed his threshold at the close
Of one calm Sabbath day;
A voice of love, a comely face,
A kiss of chaste delight,
Were the first things to welcome him
On that blest Sabbath night.

He stretched his limbs upon the hearth,
Before its friendly blaze,
And conjured up mixed memories
Of gay and gloomy days;
And felt that none of gentle soul,
However far he roam,
Can e’er forego, can e’er forget,
The quiet joys of home.

“Bring me my children!” cried the sire,
With eager, earnest tone;
“I long to press them, and to mark
How lovely they have grown;
Twelve weary months have passed away
Since I went o’er the sea,
To feel how sad and lone I was
Without my babes and thee.”

“Refresh thee, as ’tis needful,” said
The fair and faithful wife,
The while her pensive features paled,
And stirred with inward strife;
“Refresh thee, husband of my heart,
I ask it as a boon;
Our children are reposing, love;
Thou shalt behold them soon.”

She spread the meal, she filled the cup,
She pressed him to partake;
He sat down blithely at the board,
And all for her sweet sake;
But when the frugal feast was done,
The thankful prayer preferred,
Again affection’s fountain flowed;
Again its voice was heard.

“Bring me my children, darling wife,
I’m in an ardent mood;
My soul lacks purer aliment,
I long for other food;
Bring forth my children to my gaze,
Or ere I rage or weep,
I yearn to kiss their happy eyes
Before the hour of sleep.”

“I have a question yet to ask;
Be patient, husband dear.
A stranger, one auspicious morn,
Did send some jewels here;
Until to take them from my care,
But yesterday he came,
And I restored them with a sigh:
—Dost thou approve, or blame?”

“I marvel much, sweet wife, that thou
Shouldst breathe such words to me;
Restore to man, resign to God,
Whate’er is lent to thee;
Restore it with a willing heart,
Be grateful for the trust;
Whate’er may tempt or try us, wife,
Let us be ever just.”

She took him by the passive hand,
And up the moonlit stair,
She led him to their bridal bed,
With mute and mournful air;
She turned the cover down, and there,
In grave-like garments dressed,
Lay the twin children of their love,
In death’s serenest rest.

“These were the jewels lent to me,
Which God has deigned to own;
The precious caskets still remain,
But, ah, the gems are flown;
But thou didst teach me to resign
What God alone can claim;
He giveth and he takes away,
Blest be His holy name!”

The father gazed upon his babes,
The mother drooped apart,
Whilst all the woman’s sorrow gushed
From her o’erburdened heart;
And with the striving of her grief,
Which wrung the tears she shed,
Were mingled low and loving words
To the unconscious dead.

When the sad sire had looked his fill.
He veiled each breathless face,
And down in self-abasement bowed,
For comfort and for grace;
With the deep eloquence of woe,
Poured forth his secret soul,
Rose up, and stood erect and calm,
In spirit healed and whole.

“Restrain thy tears, poor wife,” he said,
“I learn this lesson still,
God gives, and God can take away,
Blest be His holy will!
Blest are my children, for they live
From sin and sorrow free,
And I am not all joyless, wife,
With faith, hope, love, and thee.”

THE LABORATORY IN THE CHEST.

The mind of Mr. Bagges was decidedly affected—beneficially—by the lecture on the Chemistry of a Candle, which, as set forth in a previous number of this journal, had been delivered to him by his youthful nephew. That learned discourse inspired him with a new feeling; an interest in matters of science. He began to frequent the Polytechnic Institution, nearly as much as his club. He also took to lounging at the British Museum; where he was often to be seen, with his left arm under his coat-tails, examining the wonderful works of nature and antiquity, through his eye-glass. Moreover, he procured himself to be elected a member of the Royal Institution, which became a regular house of call to him, so that in a short time he grew to be one of the ordinary phenomena of the place.

Mr. Bagges likewise adopted a custom of giving conversaziones, which, however, were always very private and select—generally confined to his sister’s family. Three courses were first discussed; then dessert; after which, surrounded by an apparatus of glasses and decanters, Master Harry Wilkinson was called upon, as a sort of juvenile Davy, to amuse his uncle by the elucidation of some chemical or other physical mystery. Master Wilkinson had now attained to the ability of making experiments; most of which, involving combustion, were strongly deprecated by the young gentleman’s mamma; but her opposition was overruled by Mr. Bagges, who argued that it was much better that a young dog should burn phosphorus before your face than let off gunpowder behind your back, to say nothing of occasionally pinning a cracker to your skirts. He maintained that playing with fire and water, throwing stones, and such like boys’ tricks, as they are commonly called, are the first expressions of a scientific tendency—endeavours and efforts of the infant mind to acquaint itself with the powers of Nature.

His own favourite toys, he remembered, were squibs, suckers, squirts, and slings; and he was persuaded that, by his having been denied them at school, a natural philosopher had been nipped in the bud.

Blowing bubbles was an example—by-the-bye, a rather notable one—by which Mr. Bagges, on one of his scientific evenings, was instancing the affinity of child’s play to philosophical experiments, when he bethought him Harry had said on a former occasion that the human breath consists chiefly of carbonic acid, which is heavier than common air. How then, it occurred to his inquiring, though elderly mind, was it that soap-bladders, blown from a tobacco-pipe, rose instead of sinking? He asked his nephew this.

“Oh, uncle!” answered Harry, “in the first place, the air you blow bubbles with mostly comes in at the nose and goes out at the mouth, without having been breathed at all. Then it is warmed by the mouth, and warmth, you know, makes a measure of air get larger, and so lighter in proportion. A soap-bubble rises for the same reason that a fire-balloon rises—that is, because the air inside of it has been heated, and weighs less than the same sized bubbleful of cold air.”

“What, hot breath does!” said Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, it’s a curious thing, when you come to think of it, that the breath should be hot—indeed, the warmth of the body generally seems a puzzle. It is wonderful, too, how the bodily heat can be kept up so long as it is. Here, now, is this tumbler of hot grog—a mixture of boiling water, and what d’ye call it, you scientific geniuses?”

“Alcohol, uncle.”

“Alcohol—well—or, as we used to say, brandy. Now, if I leave this tumbler of brandy-and-water alone——”

“If you do, uncle,” interposed his nephew, archly.

“Get along, you idle rogue! If I let that tumbler stand there, in a few minutes the brandy-and water—eh?—I beg pardon—the alcohol-and-water—gets cold. Now, why—why the deuce—if the brandy—the alcohol-and-water cools; why—how—how is it we don’t cool in the same way, I want to know? eh?” demanded Mr. Bagges, with the air of a man who feels satisfied that he has propounded a “regular poser.”

“Why,” replied Harry, “for the same reason that the room keeps warm so long as there is a fire in the grate.”

“You don’t mean to say that I have a fire in my body?”

“I do, though.”

“Eh, now? That’s good,” said Mr. Bagges. “That reminds me of the man in love crying, ‘Fire! fire!’ and the lady said, ‘Where, where?’ And he called out, ‘Here! here!’ with his hand upon his heart. Eh?—but now I think of it—you said, the other day, that breathing was a sort of burning. Do you mean to tell me that I—eh?—have fire, fire, as the lover said, here, here—in short, that my chest is a grate or an Arnott’s stove?”

“Not exactly so, uncle. But I do mean to tell you that you have a sort of fire burning partly in your chest; but also, more or less, throughout your whole body.”

“Oh, Henry!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson, “How can you say such horrid things!”

“Because they’re quite true, mamma—but you needn’t be frightened. The fire of one’s body is not hotter than from ninety degrees to one hundred and four degrees or so. Still it is fire, and will burn some things, as you would find, uncle, if, in using phosphorus, you were to let a little bit of it get under your nail.”

“I’ll take your word for the fact, my boy,” said Mr. Bagges. “But, if I have a fire burning throughout my person—which I was not aware of, the only inflammation I am ever troubled with being in the great toe—I say, if my body is burning continually—how is it I don’t smoke—eh? Come, now!”

“Perhaps you consume your own smoke,” suggested Mr. Wilkinson, senior, “like every well-regulated furnace.”

“You smoke nothing but your pipe, uncle, because you burn all your carbon,” said Harry. “But, if your body doesn’t smoke, it steams. Breathe against a looking-glass, or look at your breath on a cold morning. Observe how a horse reeks when it perspires. Besides—as you just now said you recollected my telling you the other day—you breathe out carbonic acid, and that, and the steam of the breath together, are exactly the same things, you know, that a candle turns into in burning.”

“But if I burn like a candle—why don’t I burn out like a candle?” demanded Mr. Bagges. “How do you get over that?”

“Because,” replied Harry, “your fuel is renewed as fast as burnt. So perhaps you resemble a lamp rather than a candle. A lamp requires to be fed; so does the body—as, possibly, uncle, you may be aware.”

“Eh?—well—I have always entertained an idea of that sort,” answered Mr. Bagges, helping himself to some biscuits. “But the lamp feeds on train-oil.”

“So does the Laplander. And you couldn’t feed the lamp on turtle or mulligatawny, of course, uncle. But mulligatawny or turtle can be changed into fat—they are so, sometimes, I think—when they are eaten in large quantities, and fat will burn fast enough. And most of what you eat turns into something which burns at last, and is consumed in the fire that warms you all over.”

“Wonderful, to be sure,” exclaimed Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, and how does this extraordinary process take place?”

“First, you know, uncle, your food is digested—”

“Not always, I am sorry to say, my boy,” Mr. Bagges observed, “but go on.”

“Well; when it is digested, it becomes a sort of fluid, and mixes gradually with the blood, and turns into blood, and so goes over the whole body, to nourish it. Now, if the body is always being nourished, why doesn’t it keep getting bigger and bigger, like the ghost in the Castle of Otranto?”

“Eh? Why, because it loses as well as gains, I suppose. By perspiration—eh—for instance?”

“Yes, and by breathing; in short, by the burning I mentioned just now. Respiration, or breathing, uncle, is a perpetual combustion.”

“But if my system,” said Mr. Bagges, “is burning throughout, what keeps up the fire in my little finger—putting gout out of the question?”

“You burn all over, because you breathe all over, to the very tips of your fingers’ ends,” replied Harry.

“Oh, don’t talk nonsense to your uncle!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson.

“It isn’t nonsense,” said Harry. “The air that you draw into the lungs goes more or less over all the body, and penetrates into every fibre of it, which is breathing. Perhaps you would like to hear a little more about the chemistry of breathing, or respiration, uncle?”

“I should, certainly.”

“Well, then; first you ought to have some idea of the breathing apparatus. The laboratory that contains this, is the chest, you know. The chest, you also know, has in it the heart and lungs, which, with other things in it, fill it quite out, so as to leave no hollow space between themselves and it. The lungs are a sort of air-sponges, and when you enlarge your chest to draw breath, they swell out with it and suck the air in. On the other hand you narrow your chest and squeeze the lungs and press the air from them;—that is breathing out. The lungs are made up of a lot of little cells. A small pipe—a little branch of the windpipe—opens into each cell. Two blood-vessels, a little tiny artery, and a vein to match, run into it also. The arteries bring into the little cells dark-coloured blood, which has been all over the body. The veins carry out of the little cells bright scarlet-coloured blood, which is to go all over the body. So all the blood passes through the lungs, and in so doing, is changed from dark to bright scarlet.”

“Black blood, didn’t you say, in the arteries, and scarlet in the veins? I thought it was just the reverse,” interrupted Mr. Bagges.

“So it is,” replied Harry, “with all the other arteries and veins, except those that circulate the blood through the lung-cells. The heart has two sides, with a partition between them that keeps the blood on the right side separate from the blood on the left; both sides being hollow, mind. The blood on the right side of the heart comes there from all over the body, by a couple of large veins, dark, before it goes to the lungs. From the right side of the heart, it goes on to the lungs, dark still, through an artery. It comes back to the left side of the heart from the lungs, bright scarlet, through four veins. Then it goes all over the rest of the body from the left side of the heart, through an artery that branches into smaller arteries, all carrying bright scarlet blood. So the arteries and veins of the lungs on one hand, and of the rest of the body on the other, do exactly opposite work, you understand.”

“I hope so.”

“Now,” continued Harry, “it requires a strong magnifying glass to see the lung-cells plainly, they are so small. But you can fancy them as big as you please. Picture any one of them to yourself of the size of an orange, say, for convenience in thinking about it; that one cell, with whatever takes place in it, will be a specimen of the rest. Then you have to imagine an artery carrying blood of one colour into it, and a vein taking away blood of another colour from it, and the blood changing its colour in the cell.”

“Aye, but what makes the blood change its colour?”

“Recollect, uncle, you have a little branch from the windpipe opening into the cell which lets in the air. Then the blood and the air are brought together, and the blood alters in colour. The reason, I suppose you would guess, is that it is somehow altered by the air.”

“No very unreasonable conjecture, I should think,” said Mr. Bagges.

“Well; if the air alters the blood, most likely, we should think, it gives something to the blood. So first let us see what is the difference between the air we breathe in, and the air we breathe out. You know that neither we nor animals can keep breathing the same air over and over again. You don’t want me to remind you of the Black Hole of Calcutta, to convince you of that; and I dare say you will believe what I tell you, without waiting till I can catch a mouse and shut it up in an air-tight jar, and show you how soon the unlucky creature will get uncomfortable, and begin to gasp, and that it will by-and-by die. But if we were to try this experiment—not having the fear of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, nor the fear of doing wrong, before our eyes—we should find that the poor mouse, before he died, had changed the air of his prison considerably. But it would be just as satisfactory, and much more humane, if you or I were to breathe in and out of a silk bag or a bladder till we could stand it no longer, and then collect the air which we had been breathing in and out. We should find that a jar of such air would put out a candle. If we shook some lime-water up with it, the lime-water would turn milky. In short, uncle, we should find that a great part of the air was carbonic acid, and the rest mostly nitrogen. The air we inhale is nitrogen and oxygen; the air we exhale has lost most of its oxygen, and consists of little more than nitrogen and carbonic acid. Together with this, we breathe out the vapour of water, as I said before. Therefore in breathing, we give off exactly what a candle does in burning, only not so fast, after the rate. The carbonic acid we breathe out, shows that carbon is consumed within our bodies. The watery vapour of the breath is a proof that hydrogen is so too. We take in oxygen with the air, and the oxygen unites with carbon, and makes carbonic acid, and with hydrogen, forms water.”

“Then don’t the hydrogen and carbon combine with the oxygen—that is, burn—in the lungs, and isn’t the chest the fireplace, after all?” asked Mr. Bagges.

“Not altogether, according to those who are supposed to know better. They are of opinion, that some of the oxygen unites with the carbon and hydrogen of the blood in the lungs; but that most of it is merely absorbed by the blood, and dissolved in it in the first instance.”

“Oxygen absorbed by the blood? That seems odd,” remarked Mr. Bagges, “How can that be?”

“We only know the fact that there are some things that will absorb gases—suck them in—make them disappear. Charcoal will, for instance. It is thought that the iron which the blood contains gives it the curious property of absorbing oxygen. Well; the oxygen going into the blood makes it change from dark to bright scarlet; and then this blood containing oxygen is conveyed all over the system by the arteries, and yields up the oxygen to combine with hydrogen and carbon as it goes along. The carbon and hydrogen are part of the substance of the body. The bright scarlet blood mixes oxygen with them, which burns them, in fact; that is, makes them into carbonic acid and water. Of course, the body would soon be consumed if this were all that the blood does. But while it mixes oxygen with the old substance of the body, to burn it up, it lays down fresh material to replace the loss. So our bodies are continually changing throughout, though they seem to us always the same; but then, you know, a river appears the same from year’s end to year’s end, although the water in it is different every day.”

“Eh, then,” said Mr. Bagges, “if the body is always on the change in this way, we must have had several bodies in the course of our lives, by the time we are old.”

“Yes, uncle; therefore, how foolish it is to spend money upon funerals. What becomes of all the bodies we use up during our lifetimes? If we are none the worse for their flying away in carbonic acid and other things without ceremony, what good can we expect from having a fuss made about the body we leave behind us, which is put into the earth? However, you are wanting to know what becomes of the water and carbonic acid which have been made by the oxygen of the blood burning up the old materials of our frame. The dark blood of the veins absorbs this carbonic acid and water, as the blood of the arteries does oxygen,—only, they say, it does so by means of a salt in it, called phosphate of soda. Then the dark blood goes back to the lungs, and in them it parts with its carbonic acid and water, which escapes as breath. As fast as we breathe out, carbonic acid and water leave the blood; as fast as we breathe in, oxygen enters it. The oxygen is sent out in the arteries to make the rubbish of the body into gas and vapour, so that the veins may bring it back and get rid of it. The burning of rubbish by oxygen throughout our frames is the fire by which our animal heat is kept up. At least this is what most philosophers think; though doctors differ a little on this point, as on most others, I hear. Professor Liebig says, that our carbon is mostly prepared for burning by being first extracted from the blood sent to it—(which contains much of the rubbish of the system dissolved)—in the form of bile, and is then re-absorbed into the blood, and burnt. He reckons that a grown-up man consumes about fourteen ounces of carbon a day. Fourteen ounces of charcoal a day, or eight pounds two ounces a week, would keep up a tolerable fire.”

“I had no idea we were such extensive charcoal-burners,” said Mr. Bagges. “They say we each eat our peck of dirt before we die—but we must burn bushels of charcoal.”

“And so,” continued Harry, “the Professor calculates that we burn quite enough fuel to account for our heat. I should rather think, myself, it had something to do with it—shouldn’t you?”

“Eh?” said Mr. Bagges; “it makes one rather nervous to think that one is burning all over—throughout one’s very blood—in this kind of way.”

“It is very awful!” said Mrs. Wilkinson.

“If true. But in that case, shouldn’t we be liable to inflame occasionally?” objected her husband.

“It is said,” answered Harry, “that spontaneous combustion does happen sometimes; particularly in great spirit drinkers. I don’t see why it should not, if the system were to become too inflammable. Drinking alcohol would be likely to load the constitution with carbon, which would be fuel for the fire, at any rate.”

“The deuce!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, pushing his brandy-and-water from him. “We had better take care how we indulge in combustibles.”

“At all events,” said Harry, “it must be bad to have too much fuel in us. It must choke the fire I should think, if it did not cause inflammation; which Dr. Truepenny says it does, meaning, by inflammation, gout, and so on, you know, uncle.”

“Ahem!” coughed Mr. Bagges.

“Taking in too much fuel, I dare say you know, uncle, means eating and drinking to excess,” continued Harry. “The best remedy, the doctor says, for overstuffing is exercise. A person who uses great bodily exertion, can eat and drink more without suffering from it than one who leads an inactive life; a foxhunter, for instance, in comparison with an alderman. Want of exercise and too much nourishment must make a man either fat or ill. If the extra hydrogen and carbon are not burnt out, or otherwise got rid of, they turn to blubber, or cause some disturbance in the system, intended by Nature to throw them off, which is called a disease. Walking, riding, running, increase the breathing—as well as the perspiration—and make us burn away our carbon and hydrogen in proportion. Dr. Truepenny declares that if people would only take in as much fuel as is requisite to keep up a good fire, his profession would be ruined.”

“The good old advice—Baillie’s, eh?—or Abernethy’s—live upon sixpence a day, and earn it,” Mr. Bagges observed.

“Well, and then, uncle, in hot weather the appetite is naturally weaker than it is in cold—less heat is required, and therefore less food. So in hot climates; and the chief reason, says the doctor, why people ruin their health in India is their spurring and goading their stomachs to crave what is not good for them, by spices and the like. Fruits and vegetables are the proper things to eat in such countries, because they contain little carbon compared to flesh, and they are the diet of the natives of those parts of the world. Whereas food with much carbon in it, meat, or even mere fat or oil, which is hardly anything else than carbon and hydrogen, are proper in very cold regions, where heat from within is required to supply the want of it without. That is why the Laplander is able, as I said he does, to devour train-oil. And Dr. Truepenny says that it may be all very well for Mr. M‘Gregor to drink raw whiskey at deer-stalking in the Highlands, but if Major Campbell combines that beverage with the diversion of tiger-hunting in the East Indies, habitually, the chances are that the Major will come home with a diseased liver.”

“Upon my word, sir, the whole art of preserving health appears to consist in keeping up a moderate fire within us,” observed Mr. Bagges.

“Just so, uncle, according to my friend the Doctor. ‘Adjust the fuel,’ he says, ‘to the draught—he means the oxygen; keep the bellows properly at work, by exercise, and your fire will seldom want poking.’ The Doctor’s pokers, you know, are pills, mixtures, leeches, blisters, lancets, and things of that sort.”

“Indeed? Well, then, my heart-burn, I suppose, depends upon bad management of my fire?” surmised Mr. Bagges.

“I should say that was more than probable, uncle. Well, now, I think you see that animal heat can be accounted for, in very great part at least, by the combustion of the body. And then there are several facts that—as I remember Shakespeare says—

“‘help to thicken other proofs,

That do demonstrate thinly.’

“Birds that breathe a great deal are very hot creatures; snakes and lizards, and frogs and fishes, that breathe but little, are so cold that they are called cold-blooded animals. Bears and dormice, that sleep all the winter, are cold during their sleep, whilst their breathing and circulation almost entirely stop. We increase our heat by walking fast, running, jumping, or working hard; which sets us breathing faster, and then we get warmer. By these means we blow up our own fire, if we have no other, to warm ourselves on a cold day. And how is it that we don’t go on continually getting hotter and hotter?”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, “I suppose that is one of Nature’s mysteries.”

“Why, what happens, uncle, when we take violent exercise? We break out into a perspiration; as you complain you always do, if you only run a few yards. Perspiration is mostly water, and the extra heat of the body goes into the water, and flies away with it in steam. Just for the same reason, you can’t boil water so as to make it hotter than two hundred and twelve degrees; because all the heat that passes into it beyond that, unites with some of it and becomes steam, and so escapes. Hot weather causes you to perspire even when you sit still; and so your heat is cooled in summer. If you were to heat a man in an oven, the heat of his body generally wouldn’t increase very much till he became exhausted and died. Stories are told of mountebanks sitting in ovens, and meat being cooked by the side of them. Philosophers have done much the same thing—Dr. Fordyce and others, who found they could bear a heat of two hundred and sixty degrees. Perspiration is our animal fire-escape. Heat goes out from the lungs, as well as the skin, in water; so the lungs are concerned in cooling us as well as heating us, like a sort of regulating furnace. Ah, uncle, the body is a wonderful factory, and I wish I were man enough to take you over it. I have only tried to show you something of the contrivances for warming it, and I hope you understand a little about that!”

“Well,” said Mr. Bagges, “breathing, I understand you to say, is the chief source of animal heat, by occasioning the combination of carbon and hydrogen with oxygen, in a sort of gentle combustion, throughout our frame. The lungs and heart are an apparatus for generating heat, and distributing it over the body by means of a kind of warming pipes, called blood-vessels. Eh?—and the carbon and hydrogen we have in our systems we get from our food. Now, you see, here is a slice of cake, and there is a glass of wine—Eh?—now see whether you can get any carbon and oxygen out of that.”

The young philosopher, having finished his lecture, applied himself immediately to the performance of the proposed experiment, which he performed with cleverness and dispatch.

THE HOME OF WOODRUFFE THE GARDENER.

IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

It was observed by Woodruffe’s family, during one week of spring of the next year, that he was very absent. He was not in low spirits, but absorbed in thought, and much devoted to making calculations with pencil and paper. At last, out it came, one morning at breakfast.

“I wonder how we should all like to have Harry Hardiman to work with us again?”

Every one looked up. Harry! where was Harry? Was he here? Was he coming?

“Why, I will tell you what I have been thinking,” said their father. “I have thought long and carefully, and I believe I have made up my mind to send for Harry, to come and work for us as he used to do. We have not labour enough on the ground. Two stout men to the acre is the smallest allowance for trying what could be made of the place.”

“That is what Taylor and Brown are employing now on the best part of their land,” said Allan; “that is, when they can get the labour. There is such difference between that and one man to four or five acres, as there was before, that they can’t always get the labour.”

“Just so; and therefore,” continued Woodruffe, “I am thinking of sending for Harry. Our old neighbourhood was not prosperous when we left it, and I fancy it cannot have improved since; and Harry might be glad to follow his master to a thriving neighbourhood; and he is such a careful fellow that I dare say he has money for the journey,—even if he has a wife by this time, as I suppose he has.”

Moss looked most pleased, where all were pleased, at the idea of seeing Harry again. His remembrance of Harry was of a tall young man, who used to carry him on his shoulders, and wheel him in the empty water-barrel, and sometimes offer to dip him in it when it was full, and show him how to dig in the sand-heap with his little wooden spade.

“Your rent, to be sure, is much lower than in the old place,” observed Abby.

“Why, we must not build upon that,” replied the father; “rent is rising here, and will rise. My landlord was considerate in lowering mine to 3l. per acre, when he saw how impossible it was to make it answer; and he says he shall not ask more yet, on account of the labour I laid out at the time of the drainage. But when I have partly repaid myself, the rent will rise to 5l.; and, in fact, I have made my calculations, in regard to Harry’s coming, at a higher rent than that.”

“Higher than that?”

“Yes: I should not be surprised if I found myself paying, as market-gardeners near London do, ten pounds per acre, before I die.”

“Or rather, to let the ground to me, for that, father,” said Allan, “when it is your own property, and you are tired of work, and disposed to turn it over to me. I will pay you ten pounds per acre then, and let you have all the cabbages you can eat, besides. It is capital land, and that is the truth. Come—shall that be a bargain?”

Woodruffe smiled, and said he owed a duty to Allan. He did not like to see him so hard worked as to be unable to take due care of his own corner of the garden;—unable to enter fairly into the competition for the prizes at the Horticultural Show in the summer. Becky now, too, ought to be spared from all but occasional help in the garden. Above all, the ground was now in such an improving state that it would be waste not to bestow due labour upon it. Put in the spade where you would, the soil was loose and well-aired as needs be: the manure penetrated it thoroughly; the frost and heat pulverised, instead of binding it; and the crops were succeeding each other so fast, that the year would be a very profitable one.

“Where will Harry live, if he comes?” asked Abby.

“We must get another cottage added to the new row. Easily done! Cottages so healthy as these new ones pay well. Good rents are offered for them,—to save doctors’ bills and loss of time from sickness;—and, when once a system of house-drainage is set agoing, it costs scarcely more, in adding a cottage to a group, to make it all right, than to run it up upon solid clay as used to be the way here. Well, I have good mind to write to Harry to-day. What do you think,—all of you?”

Fortified by the opinion of all his children, Mr. Woodruffe wrote to Harry. Meantime, Allan and Becky went to cut the vegetables that were for sale that day; and Moss delighted himself in running after and catching the pony in the meadow below. The pony was not very easily caught, for it was full of spirit. Instead of the woolly insipid grass that it used to crop, and which seemed to give it only fever and no nourishment, it now fed on sweet fresh grass, which had no sour stagnant water soaking its roots. The pony was so full of play this morning that Moss could not get hold of it. Though much stronger than a year ago, he was not yet anything like so robust as a boy of his age should be; and he was growing heated, and perhaps a little angry, as the pony galloped off towards some distant trees, when a boy started up behind a bush, caught the halter, brought the pony round with a twitch, and led him to Moss. Moss fancied he had seen the boy before, and then his white teeth reminded Moss of one thing after another.

“I came for some marsh plants,” said the boy. “You and I got plenty once, somewhere hereabouts: but I cannot find them now.”

“You will not find any now. We have no marsh now.”

The stranger said he dared not go back without them: mother wanted them badly. She would not believe him if he said he could not find any. There were plenty about two miles off, along the railway, among the clay-pits, he was told; but none nearer. The boy wanted to know where the clay-pits hereabouts were. He could not find one of them.

“I will show you one of them,” said Moss; “the one where you and I used to hunt rats.” And, leading the pony, he showed his old gipsy playfellow all the improvements, beginning with the great ditch,—now invisible from being covered in. While it was open, he said, it used to get choked, and the sides were plastered after rain, and soon became grass-grown, so that it was found worth while to cover it in; and now it would want little looking to for years to come. As for the clay-pit, where the rats used to pop in and out,—it was now a manure-pit, covered in. There was a drain into it from the pony’s stable and from the pig-styes; and it was near enough to the garden to receive the refuse and sweepings. A heavy lid, with a ring in the middle, covered the pit, so that nobody could fall in, in the dark, and no smell could get out. Moss begged the boy to come a little further, and he would show him his own flower-bed; and when the boy was there, he was shown everything else: what a cartload of vegetables lay cut for sale; and what an arbour had been made of the pent-house under which Moss used to take shelter, when he could do nothing better than keep off the birds; and how fine the ducks were,—the five ducks that were so serviceable in eating off the slugs; and what a comfortable nest had been made for them to lay their eggs in, beside the water-tank in the corner; and what a variety of scarecrows the family had invented,—each having one, to try which would frighten the sparrows most. While Moss was telling how difficult it was to deal with the sparrows, because they could not be frightened for more than three days by any kind of scarecrow, he heard Allan calling him, in a tone of vexation, at being kept waiting so long. In an instant the stranger boy was off,—leaping the gate, and flying along the meadow till he was hidden behind a hedge.

Two or three days after this one of the ducks was missing. The last time that the five had been seen together was when Moss was showing them to his visitor. The morning after Moss finally gave up hope, the glass of Allan’s hotbed was found broken, and in the midst of the bed itself was a deep foot-track, crushing the cucumber plants, and, with them, Allan’s hopes of a cucumber prize at the Horticultural Exhibition in the summer. On more examination, more mischief was discovered, some cabbages had been stolen, and another duck was missing. In the midst of the general concern, Woodruffe burst out a-laughing. It struck him that the chief of the scarecrows had changed his hat; and so he had. The old straw hat which used to flap in the wind so serviceably was gone, and in its stead appeared a helmet,—a saucepan full of holes, battered and split, but still fit to be a helmet to a scarecrow.

“I could swear to the old hat,” observed Woodruffe, “if I should have the luck to see it on anybody’s head.”

“And so could I,” said Becky, “for I mended it,—bound it with black behind, and green before, because I had not green ribbon enough. But nobody would wear it before our eyes.”

“That is why I suspect there are strangers hovering about. We must watch.”

Now Moss, for the first time, bethought himself of the boy he had brought in from the meadow; and now, for the first time, he told his family of that encounter.

“I never saw such a simpleton,” his father declared. “There, go along and work! Now, don’t cry, but hold up like a man and work.”

Moss did cry; he could not help it; but he worked too. He would fain have been one of the watchers, moreover; but his father said he was too young. For two nights he was ordered to bed, when Allan took his dark lantern, and went down to the pent-house; the first night accompanied by his father, and the next by Harry Hardiman, who had come on the first summons. By the third evening, Moss was so miserable that his sisters interceded for him, and he was allowed to go down with his old friend Harry.

It was a starlight night, without a moon. The low country lay dim, but unobscured by mist. After a single remark on the fineness of the night, Harry was silent. Silence was their first business. They stole round the fence as if they had been thieves themselves, listened for some time before they let themselves in at the gate, passed quickly in, and locked the gate (the lock of which had been well oiled), went behind every screen, and along every path, to be sure that no one was there, and finally, perceiving that the remaining ducks were safe, settled themselves in the darkness of the pent-house.

There they sat, hour after hour, listening. If there had been no sound, perhaps they could not have borne the effort: but the sense was relieved by the bark of a dog at a distance; and then by the hoot of the owl that was known to have done them good service in mousing, many a time; and once, by the passage of a train on the railway above. When these were all over, poor Moss had much ado to keep awake, and at last his head sank on Harry’s shoulder, and he forgot where he was, and everything else in the world. He was awakened by Harry’s moving, and then whispering quite into his ear:—

“Sit you still. I hear somebody yonder. No—sit you still. I won’t go far—not out of call: but I must get between them and the gate.”

With his lantern under his coat, Harry stole forth, and Moss stood up, all alone in the darkness and stillness. He could hear his heart beat, but nothing else, till footsteps on the path came nearer and nearer. They came quite up; they came in, actually into the arbour; and then the ducks were certainly fluttering. In an instant more, there was a gleam of light upon the white plumage of the ducks, and then light enough to show that this was the gipsy boy, with a dark lantern hung round his neck, and, at the same moment, to show the gipsy boy that Moss was there. The two boys stood, face to face, motionless from utter amazement, and the ducks had scuttled and waddled away before they recovered themselves. Then, Moss flew at him in a glorious passion, at once of rage and fear.

“Leave him to me, Moss,” cried Harry, casting light upon the scene from his lantern, while he collared the thief with the other hand. “Let go, I say, Moss. There, now we’ll go round and be sure whether there is any one else in the garden, and then we’ll lodge this young rogue where he will be safe.”

Nobody was there, and they went home in the dawn, locked up the thief in the shed, and slept through what remained of the night.

It was about Mr. Nelson’s usual time for coming down the line; and it was observed that he now always stopped at this station till the next train passed,—probably because it was a pleasure to him to look upon the improvement of the place. It was no surprise therefore to Woodruffe to see him standing on the embankment after breakfast; and it was natural that Mr. Nelson should be immediately told that the gipsies were here again, and how one of them was caught thieving.

“Thieving! So you found some of your property upon him, did you!”

“Why, no. I thought myself that it was a pity that Moss did not let him alone till he had laid hold of a duck or something.”

“Pho! pho! don’t tell me you can punish the boy for theft, when you can’t prove that he stole anything. Give him a whipping, and let him go.”

“With all my heart. It will save me much trouble to finish off the matter so.”

Mr. Nelson seemed to have some curiosity about the business; for he accompanied Woodruffe to the shed. The boy seemed to feel no awe of the great man whom he supposed to be a magistrate, and when asked whether he felt none, he giggled and said “No;” he had seen the gentleman more afraid of his mother than anybody ever was of him, he fancied. On this, a thought struck Mr. Nelson. He would now have his advantage of the gipsy woman, and might enjoy, at the same time, an opportunity of studying human nature under stress—a thing he liked, when the stress was not too severe. So he passed a decree on the spot that, it being now nine o’clock, the boy should remain shut up without food till noon, when he should be severely flogged, and driven from the neighbourhood: and with this pleasant prospect before him, the young rogue remained, whistling ostentatiously, while his enemies locked the door upon him.

“Did you hear him shoot the bolt?” asked Woodruffe. “If he holds to that, I don’t know how I shall get at him at noon.”

“There, now, what fools people are! Why did you not take out the bolt? A pretty constable you would make! Come—come this way. I am going to find the gipsy-tent again. You are wondering that I am not afraid of the woman, I see: but, you observe, I have a hold over her this time. What do you mean by allowing those children to gather about your door? You ought not to permit it.”

“They are only the scholars. Don’t you see them going in? My daughter keeps a little school, you know, since her husband’s death.”

“Ah, poor thing! poor thing!” said Mr. Nelson, as Abby appeared on the threshold, calling the children in.

Mr. Nelson always contrived to see some one or more of the family when he visited the station; but it so happened, that he had never entered the door of their dwelling. Perhaps he was not himself fully conscious of the reason. It was, that he could not bear to see Abby’s young face within the widow’s cap, and to be thus reminded that hers was a case of cruel wrong; that if the most ordinary thought and care had been used in preparing the place for human habitation, her husband might be living now, and she the happy creature that she would never be again.

On his way to the gipsies, Mr. Nelson saw some things that pleased him in his heart, though he found fault with them all. What business had Woodruffe with an additional man in his garden? It could not possibly answer. If it did not, the fellow must be sent away again. He must not burden the parish. The occupiers here seemed all alike. Such a fancy for new labour! One, two, six men at work on the land within sight at that moment, over and above what there used to be! It must be looked to. Humph! he could get to the alders dryshod now; but that was owing solely to the warmth of the spring. It was nonsense to attribute everything to drainage. Drainage was a good thing; but fine weather was better.

The gipsy-tent was found behind the alders as before, but no longer in a swamp. The woman was sitting on the ground at the entrance as before, but not now with a fevered child laid across her knees. She was weaving a basket.

“Oh, I see,” said Woodruffe, “This is the way our osiers go.”

“You have not many to lose, now-a-days,” said the woman.

“You are welcome to all the rushes you can find,” said Woodruffe; “but where is your son?”

Some change of countenance was seen in the woman; but she answered carelessly that the children were playing yonder.

“The one I mean is not there,” said Woodruffe. “We have him safe—caught him stealing my ducks.”

She called the boy a villain—disowned him, and so forth; but when she found the case a hopeless one, she did not, and therefore, probably could not, scold—that is, anybody but herself and her husband. She cursed herself for coming into this silly place, where now no good was to be got. When she was brought to the right point of perplexity about what to do, seeing that it would not do to stay, and being unable to go while her boy was in durance, she was told that his punishment should be summary, though severe, if she would answer frankly certain questions. When she had once begun giving her confidence, she seemed to enjoy the license. When her husband came up, he looked as if he only waited for the departure of his visitors to give his wife the same amount of thrashing that her son was awaiting elsewhere. She vowed that they would never pitch their tent here again. It used to be the best station in their whole round—the fogs were so thick! From sunset to long after sunrise, it had been as good as a winter night, for going where they pleased without fear of prying eyes. There was not a poultry-yard or pig-stye within a couple of miles round, where they could not creep up through the fog. And they escaped the blame, too; for the swamp and ditches used to harbour so much vermin, that the gipsies were not always suspected, as they were now. Till lately, people shut themselves into their homes, or the men went to the public-house in the chill evenings; and there was little fear of meeting any one. But now that the fogs were gone, people were out in their gardens, on these fine evenings, and there were men in the meadows, returning from fishing; for they could angle now, when their work was done, without the fear of catching an ague in the marsh as they went home.

Mr. Nelson used vigorously his last opportunity of lecturing these people. He had it all his own way, for the humility of the gipsies was edifying. Woodruffe fancied he saw some finger-talk passing, the while, though the gipsies never looked at each other, or raised their eyes from the ground. Woodruffe had to remind the Director that the whistle of the next train would soon be heard; and this brought the lecture to an abrupt conclusion. On his finishing off with, “I expect, therefore, that you will remember my advice, and never show your faces here again, and that you will take to a proper course of life in future, and bring up your son to honest industry;” the woman, with a countenance of grief, seized one hand and covered it with kisses, and the husband took the other hand and pressed it to his breast.

“We must make haste,” observed Mr. Nelson, as he led the way quickly back; “but I think I have made some impression upon them. You see now the right way to treat these people. I don’t think you will see them here again.”

“I don’t think we shall.”

As he reached the steps the whistle was heard, and Mr. Nelson could only wave his hand to Woodruffe, rush up the embankment, and throw himself panting into a carriage. Only just in time!

By an evening train, he re-appeared. When thirty miles off, he had wanted his purse, and it was gone. It had no doubt paid for the gipsies’ final gratitude.

Of course, a sufficient force was immediately sent to the alder clump; but there was nothing there but some charred sticks, and some clean pork bones, this time, instead of feathers of fowls, and a cabbage leaf or two. The boy had had his whipping at noon, after a conference with his little brother at the keyhole, which had caused him to withdraw the bolt, and offer no resistance. Considering his cries and groans, he had run off with surprising agility, and was now, no doubt, far away.

CHAPTER VIII.

The gipsies came no more. The fogs came no more. The fever came no more; at least, in such a form as to threaten the general safety. Where it still lingered, it was about those only who deserved it,—in any small farm-house, where the dung-yard was too near the house; and in some cottage where the slatternly inmates did not mind a green puddle or choked ditch within reach of their noses. More dwellings arose, as the fertility of the land increased, and invited a higher kind of tillage; and among the prettiest of them was one which stood in the corner,—the most sunny corner,—of Woodruffe’s paddock. Harry Hardiman and his wife and child lived there, and the cottage was Woodruffe’s property.

Yet Woodruffe’s rent had been raised; and pretty rapidly. He was now paying eight pounds per acre for his garden-ground, and half that for what was out of the limits of the garden. He did not complain of it; for he was making money fast. His skill and industry deserved this; but skill and industry could not have availed without opportunity. His ground once allowed to show what it was worth, he treated it well; and it answered well to the treatment. By the railway, he obtained what manure he wanted from the town; and he sent it back by the railway to town in the form of crisp celery and salads, wholesome potatoes and greens, luscious strawberries, and sweet and early peas. He knew that a Surrey gardener had made his ground yield a profit of two hundred and twenty pounds per acre. He thought that, with his inferior market, he should do well to make his yield one hundred and fifty pounds per acre; and this, by close perseverance, he attained. He could have done it more easily if he had enjoyed good health; but he never enjoyed good health again. His rheumatism had fixed itself too firmly to be entirely removed; and, for many days in the year, he was compelled to remain within doors, or to saunter about in the sun, seeing his boys and Harry at work, but unable to help them.

From the time that Allan’s work became worth wages, in addition to his subsistence, his father let him rent half a rood of the garden-ground for three years, saying—

“I limit it to three years, my boy, because that term is long enough for you to show what you can do. After three years, I shall not be able to spare the ground, at any rent. If you fail, you have no business to rent ground. If you succeed, you will have money in your pocket wherewith to hire land elsewhere. Now you have to show us what you can do.”

“Yes, father,” was Allan’s short but sufficient reply.

It was observed by the family that, from this time forward, Allan’s eye was on every plot of ground in the neighbourhood which could, by possibility, ever be offered for hire: yet did his attention never wander from that which was already under his hand. And that which was so great an object to him became a sort of pursuit to the whole family. Moss guarded Allan’s frames, and made more and more prodigious scarecrows. Their father gave his very best advice. Becky, who was no longer allowed, as a regular thing, to work in the garden, found many a spare half-hour for hoeing and weeding, and trimming and tying up, in Allan’s beds; and Abby found, as she sat in her little school, that she could make nets for his fruit trees. It was thus no wonder that, when a certain July day in the second year arrived, the whole household was in a state of excitement, because it was a sort of crisis in Allan’s affairs.

Though breakfast was early that morning, Becky and Allan and Moss were spruce in their best clothes. A hamper stood at the door, and Allan was packing in another, which had no lid, two or three flower-pots, which presented a glorious show of blossom. Abby was putting a new ribbon on her sister’s straw bonnet; and Harry was in waiting to carry up the hampers to the station. It was the day of the Horticultural Show at the town. Woodruffe had been too unwell to think of going till this morning; but now the sight of the preparations, and the prospect of a warm day, inspired him, and he thought he would go. At last he went, and they were gone. Abby never went up to the station: nobody ever asked her to go there; not even her own child, who perhaps had not thought of the possibility of it. But when the train was starting, she stood at the upper window with her child, and held him so that he might lean out, and see the last carriage disappear, as it swept round the curve. After that the day seemed long, though Harry came up at his dinner-hour to say what he thought of the great gooseberry in particular, and of everything else that Allan had carried with him. It was holiday time, and there was no school to fill up the day. Before the evening, the child became restless, and Abby fell into low spirits, as she was apt to do when left long alone; so that Harry stopped suddenly at the door when he was rushing in to announce that the train was within sight.

“Shall I take the child, Miss?” said Harry. (He always called her “Miss.”) “I will carry him——But, sure, here they come! Here comes Moss,—ready to roll down the steps! My opinion is that there’s a prize.”

Moss was called back by a voice which everybody obeyed. Allan should himself tell his sister the fortune of the day, their father said.

There were two prizes, one of which was for the wonderful plate of gooseberries; and at this news Harry nodded, and declared himself anything but surprised. If that gooseberry had not carried the day, there would have been partiality in the judges, that was all; and nobody could suppose such a thing as that. Yet Harry could have told, if put upon his honour, that he was rather disappointed that everything that Allan carried had not gained a prize. When he mentioned one or two, his master told him he was unreasonable; and he supposed he was.

Allan laid down on the table, for his sister’s full assurance, his sovereign, and his half-sovereign, and his tickets. She turned away rather abruptly, and seemed to be looking whether the kettle was near boiling for tea. Her father went up to her; and on his first whispered words, the sob broke forth which made all look round.

“I was thinking of one, too, my dear, that I wish was here at this moment. I can feel for you, my dear.”

“But you don’t know—you don’t know—you never knew——.” She could not go on.

“What don’t I know, my dear?”

“That he constantly blamed himself for saying anything to bring you here. He said you had never prospered from the hour you came, and now——”

And now Woodruffe could not speak, as the past came fresh upon him. In a few moments, however, he rallied, saying,

“But we must consider Allan. He must not think that his success makes us sad.”

Allan declared that it was not about gaining the prizes that he was chiefly glad. It was because it was now proved what a fair field he had before him. There was nothing that might not be done with such a soil as they had to deal with now.

Harry was quite of this opinion. There were more and more people set to work upon the soil all about them; and the more it was worked the more it yielded. He never saw a place of so much promise. And if it had a bad name in regard to healthiness, he was sure that was unfair,—or no longer fair. He and his were full of health and happiness, as they hoped to see everybody else in time; and, for his part, if he had all England before him, or the whole world, to choose a place to live in, he would choose the very place he was in, and the very cottage; and the very ground to work on that had produced such a gooseberry and such strawberries as he had seen that day.

THE SINGER.

Unto the loud acclaim that rose
To greet her as she came,
She bent with lowly grace that seemed
Such tribute to disclaim;
With arms meek folded on her breast
And drooping head, she stood;
Then raised a glance that seemed to plead
For youth and womanhood;
A soft, beseeching smile, a look,
As if all silently
The kindness to her heart she took,
And put the homage by.

She stood dejected then, methought,
A Captive, though a Queen,
Before the throng, when sudden passed
A change across her mien.
Unto her full, dilating eye,
Unto her slender hand,
There came a light of sovereignty,
A gesture of command:
And, to her lip, an eager flow
Of song, that seemed to bear
Her soul away on rushing wings
Unto its native air;
Her eye was fixed; her cheek flushed bright
With power; she seemed to call
On spirits that around her flocked,
The radiant Queen of all;
There was no pride upon her brow,
No tumult in her breast;
Her soaring soul had won its home,
And smiled there as at rest;
She felt no more those countless eyes
Upon her; she had gained
A region where they troubled not
The joy she had attained!
Now, now, she spoke her native speech,
An utterance fraught with spells
To wake the echoes of the heart
Within their slumber-cells;
For at her wild and gushing strain,
The spirit was led back
By windings of a silver chain,
On many a long-lost track;
And many a quick unbidden sigh,
And starting tear, revealed
How surely at her touch the springs
Of feeling were unsealed;
They who were always loved, seemed now
Yet more than ever dear;
Yet closer to the heart they came,
That ever were so near:
And, trembling to the silent lips,
As if they ne’er had changed
Their names, returned in kindness back
The severed and estranged;
And in the strain, like those that fall
On wanderers as they roam,
The Exiled Spirit found once more
Its country and its home!

She ceased, yet on her parted lips
A happy smile abode,
As if the sweetness of her song
Yet lingered whence it flowed;
But, for a while, her bosom heaved,
She was the same no more,
The light and spirit fled; she stood
As she had stood before;
Unheard, unheeded to her ear
The shouts of rapture came,
A voice had once more power to thrill,
That only spoke her name.
Unseen, unheeded at her feet,
Fell many a bright bouquet;
A single flower, in silence given,
Was once more sweet than they;
Her heart had with her song returned
To days for ever gone,
Ere Woman’s gift of Fame was her’s,
The Many for the One.

E’en thus; O, Earth, before thee
Thy Poet Singers stand,
And bear the soul upon their songs
Unto its native land.
And even thus, with loud acclaim,
The praise of skill, of art,
Is dealt to those who only speak
The language of the heart!
While they who love and listen best,
Can little guess or know
The wounds that from the Singer’s breast
Have bid such sweetness flow;
They know not mastership must spring
From conflict and from strife.
“These, these are but the songs they sing;”
They are the Singer’s life!

A LITTLE PLACE IN NORFOLK.

Theodore Hook’s hero, Jack Bragg, boasted of his “little place in Surrey.” The Guardians of the Guiltcross poor have good reason to be proud of their little place in Norfolk. When the Guiltcross Union was formed, Mr. Thomas Rackham, master of the “house,” set aside a small estate for the purpose of teaching the Workhouse children how to cultivate land. This pauper’s patrimony consisted of exactly one acre one rood and thirty-five poles of very rough “country.” A certain number of the boys worked upon it so diligently, that it was soon found expedient to enlarge the domain, by joining to it three acres of “hills and holes,” which in that state were quite useless for agricultural purposes. Two dozen spades were purchased at the outset to commence digging the land with, and six wheel-barrows were made by a pauper, who was a wheelwright; pickaxes and other tools were also fashioned with the assistance of the porter, who was a blacksmith. By means of these tools, and the labour of some fourteen sturdy boys, the whole of this barren territory was levelled, the top sward being carefully kept uppermost. We copy these and the other details from Mr. Rackham’s report to the Guardians, for the information and encouragement of other Workhouse masters, who may have the will and the power to “go and do likewise.”

It appears then, that by the autumn of 1846 one acre of the new land was planted with wheat, and two roods twenty three poles of the home land—the one acre one rood and thirty-five poles mentioned above—was also planted with wheat, making in all one acre two roods and twenty three poles under wheat for 1847. This land produced eighteen coombs three pecks beyond a sufficient quantity reserved for seed for the wheat crop of 1848. The remainder of the land was planted with Scotch kale, cabbages, potatoes, &c., &c., which began coming into use in March, 1847. The entire domain is now under fruitful cultivation.

“The quantity of vegetables actually consumed by the paupers according to the dietary tables only,” says Mr. Rackham, “is charged in the provision accounts. Persons acquainted with domestic management and the produce of land are aware that, where vegetables are purchased, a great deal is paid for that which is useless for cooking purposes. In the present case this refuse is carefully preserved and used for feeding pigs, which were first kept in April 1848. This accounts for the large amount of pork fatted, as compared with the small quantity of corn and pollard used for the pigs. The leaves, &c., not eaten by the pigs, become valuable manure. If the Guardians would consent to keep cows, different roots and vegetables might be grown to feed them with; and these would produce an increased quantity of manure, whilst an increased quantity of manure would afford the means of raising a larger amount of roots and green crops, and secure a more extended routine in cropping the land. This would add to the profit of the land account, and give much additional comfort to the aged people and the young children in the workhouse.” But Mr. Rackham is ambitious of a dairy, chiefly for the training of dairy-maids: who would become doubly acceptable as farm servants.

Besides other advantages, the experiment presents one dear to the minds of rate-payers—it tends to reduce the rates. The average profit per annum on each of the acres has been fifteen pounds. Here are the sums:—The profit of the first year was sixty pounds two shillings and fourpence farthing; second year, fifty-one pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence; to Christmas, 1849, three-quarters of a year, sixty-seven pounds two shillings and one penny farthing; total, one hundred and seventy-nine pounds one shilling and elevenpence halfpenny.

As at the Swinton and other pauper schools, a variety of industrial arts are taught in the Guiltcross Union house, and the fact that sixty of the boys and girls who have been trained in it are now earning their own living, is some evidence of the success of the system pursued there.

Of one of the cultivators of this “little place in Norfolk” (not we believe an inmate of the Union), an agreeable account was published in a letter from Miss Martineau lately in the Morning Chronicle. It shows to what good account a knowledge of small farming may be turned. That lady having two acres of land, at Ambleside, in Westmoreland, which she wished to cultivate, sent to Mr. Rackham to recommend her a farm servant. The man arrived, and his Guiltcross experience in cultivating small “estates” proved of essential service. He has managed to keep two cows and a pig, besides himself and a wife, on these narrow confines; for Miss Martineau calculates that the produce in milk, butter, vegetables, &c., obtained from his skill and economy for herself and household, quite pays his wages. This is her account of him:—

“He is a man of extraordinary industry and cleverness, as well as rigid honesty. His ambition is roused; for he knows that the success of the experiment mainly depends on himself. He is living in comfort, and laying by a little money, and he looks so happy that it would truly grieve me to have to give up; though I have no doubt that he would immediately find work at good wages in the neighbourhood. His wife and he had saved enough to pay their journey hither out of Norfolk. I gave him twelve shillings a week all the year round. His wife earns something by occasionally helping in the house, by assisting in my washing, and by taking in washing when she can get it. I built them an excellent cottage of the stone of the district, for which they pay one shilling and sixpence per week. They know that they could not get such another off the premises for five pounds a year.”

This is all very interesting and gratifying, but there are two sides to every account. Supposing the system of agricultural and other industrial training were pursued in all Unions in the country (and if it be a good system, it ought to be so followed), then, instead of boys and girls being turned out every three years in sixties, there would be accessions of farmers, tailors, carpenters, dairy-maids, and domestic servants every year to be reckoned by thousands. Supposing that every fourteen of the agricultural section of the community had been earning fifteen pounds a year profit per acre, we should then have a large amount of produce brought into the market in competition with that of the independent labourer. When, again, the multitude of boys had passed their probation, themselves would be thrown in the labour market (as the sixty Guiltcross boys already have been), so that their older and weaker competitors would, in their turn, be obliged to retire to the Workhouse, not only to their own ruin, but to the exceeding mortification of the entire body of parochial rate-payers. The axiom, that when there is a glut in a market any additional supply of the same commodity is an evil, applies most emphatically to labour. In this view, the adoption of the industrial training system for paupers and criminals would be an evil; and an evil of the very description it is meant to cure—a pauperising evil.

The easy and natural remedy is a combination of colonisation, with the industrial training system. In all our colonies ordinary, merely animal labour is eagerly coveted, and skilled labour is at a high premium. There a competition for, instead of against, all sorts of labour is keenly active. Yet great as is the demand, it is curious that no comprehensive system for the supply of skilled labour has yet been adopted. Except the excellent farm school of the Philanthropic Society at Red Hill, no attempt is made to teach colonisation. The majority of even voluntary colonists are persons utterly ignorant of colonial wants. They have never learned to dig or to delve. Many clever artists have emigrated to Australia, where pictures are not wanted; not a few emigrant ladies, of undoubted talents in Berlin work and crochet, have always trembled at the approach of a cow, and never made so much as a pat of butter in their lives. Still they succeed in the end; but only after much misery and mortification, which would have been saved them if they had been better prepared for colonial exigencies. The same thing happens with the humbler classes. Boys, and even men, have been sent out to Canada and the Southern Colonies (especially from the Irish Unions), utterly unfitted for their new sphere of life and labour.

If, therefore, the small beginnings at Guiltcross be imitated in other Unions (and it is much to be wished that they should be), they will be made to grow into large results. But these results must be applied not to clog and glut the labour market at home; but to supply the labour market abroad.

If to every Union were attached an agricultural training school, upon a plan that would offer legitimate inducements for the pupils to emigrate when old enough and skilled enough to obtain their own livelihood, this country would, we are assured, at no distant date be de-pauperised.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page | Changed from | Changed to
565 | the deuce—if the brand—the alcohol-and-water | the deuce—if the brandy—the alcohol-and-water

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

- Renumbered footnotes.

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Table of Contents

- HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

- ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

- THE STEEL PEN.

- TWO CHAPTERS ON BANK NOTE FORGERIES.

- CHAPTER I.

- THE TWO GUIDES OF THE CHILD.

- CHIPS.

- EASY SPELLING AND HARD READING.

- A VERY OLD SOLDIER.

- THE HOUSEHOLD JEWELS.

- THE LABORATORY IN THE CHEST.

- THE HOME OF WOODRUFFE THE GARDENER.

- IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

- CHAPTER VIII.

- THE SINGER.

- A LITTLE PLACE IN NORFOLK.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE