Household words, No. 1, March 30, 1850
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Title: Household words, No. 1, March 30, 1850

A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens

Release date: September 6, 2026 [eBook #79523]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79523

Credits: Steven desJardins, Eloise Tara Unerman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 1, MARCH 30, 1850 ***

Household Words.
Nº. 1.

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

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

No. 1.] SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1850. [Price 2d.

A PRELIMINARY WORD.

The name that we have chosen for this publication expresses, generally, the desire we have at heart in originating it.

We aspire to live in the Household affections, and to be numbered among the Household thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring into innumerable homes, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less tolerant of one another, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time.

No mere utilitarian spirit, no iron binding of the mind to grim realities, will give a harsh tone to our Household Words. In the bosoms of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor, we would tenderly cherish that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human breast; which, according to its nurture, burns with an inspiring flame, or sinks into a sullen glare, but which (or woe betide that day!) can never be extinguished. To show to all, that in all familiar things, even in those which are repellant on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out:—to teach the hardest workers at this whirling wheel of toil, that their lot is not necessarily a moody, brutal fact, excluded from the sympathies and graces of imagination; to bring the greater and the lesser in degree, together, upon that wide field, and mutually dispose them to a better acquaintance and a kinder understanding—is one main object of our Household Words.

The mightier inventions of this age are not, to our thinking, all material, but have a kind of souls in their stupendous bodies which may find expression in Household Words. The traveller whom we accompany on his railroad or his steamboat journey, may gain, we hope, some compensation for incidents which these later generations have outlived, in new associations with the Power that bears him onward; with the habitations and the ways of life of crowds of his fellow creatures among whom he passes like the wind; even with the towering chimneys he may see, spirting out fire and smoke upon the prospect. The swart giants, Slaves of the Lamp of Knowledge, have their thousand and one tales, no less than the Genii of the East; and these, in all their wild, grotesque, and fanciful aspects, in all their many phases of endurance, in all their many moving lessons of compassion and consideration, we design to tell.

Our Household Words will not be echoes of the present time alone, but of the past too. Neither will they treat of the hopes, the enterprises, triumphs, joys, and sorrows, of this country only, but, in some degree, of those of every nation upon earth. For nothing can be a source of real interest in one of them, without concerning all the rest.

We have considered what an ambition it is to be admitted into many homes with affection and confidence; to be regarded as a friend by children and old people; to be thought of in affliction and in happiness; to people the sick room with airy shapes ‘that give delight and hurt not,’ and to be associated with the harmless laughter and the gentle tears of many hearths. We know the great responsibility of such a privilege; its vast reward; the pictures that it conjures up, in hours of solitary labour, of a multitude moved by one sympathy; the solemn hopes which it awakens in the labourer’s breast, that he may be free from self-reproach in looking back at last upon his work, and that his name may be remembered in his race in time to come, and borne by the dear objects of his love with pride. The hand that writes these faltering lines, happily associated with some Household Words before to-day, has known enough of such experiences to enter in an earnest spirit upon this new task, and with an awakened sense of all that it involves.

Some tillers of the field into which we now come, have been before us, and some are here whose high usefulness we readily acknowledge, and whose company it is an honour to join. But, there are others here—Bastards of the Mountain, draggled fringe on the Red Cap, Panders to the basest passions of the lowest natures—whose existence is a national reproach. And these, we should consider it our highest service to displace.

Thus, we begin our career! The adventurer in the old fairy story, climbing towards the summit of a steep eminence on which the object of his search was stationed, was surrounded by a roar of voices, crying to him, from the stones in the way, to turn back. All the voices we hear, cry Go on! The stones that call to us have sermons in them, as the trees have tongues, as there are books in the running brooks, as there is good in everything! They, and the Time, cry out to us Go on! With a fresh heart, a light step, and a hopeful courage, we begin the journey. The road is not so rough that it need daunt our feet: the way is not so steep that we need stop for breath, and, looking faintly down, be stricken motionless. Go on, is all we hear, Go on! In a glow already, with the air from yonder height upon us, and the inspiriting voices joining in this acclamation, we echo back the cry, and go on cheerily!

LIZZIE LEIGH.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often been, gives a poignancy to sorrow,—a more utter blankness to the desolation. James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale Church were ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836. A few minutes before his death, he opened his already glazing eyes, and made a sign to his wife, by the faint motion of his lips, that he had yet something to say. She stooped close down, and caught the broken whisper, ‘I forgive her, Anne! May God forgive me.’

‘Oh my love, my dear! only get well, and I will never cease showing my thanks for those words. May God in heaven bless thee for saying them. Thou’rt not so restless, my lad! may be—Oh God!’

For even while she spoke, he died.

They had been two-and-twenty years man and wife; for nineteen of those years their life had been as calm and happy, as the most perfect uprightness on the one side, and the most complete confidence and loving submission on the other, could make it. Milton’s famous line might have been framed and hung up as the rule of their married life, for he was truly the interpreter, who stood between God and her; she would have considered herself wicked if she had ever dared even to think him austere, though as certainly as he was an upright man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden sullen rebellion, which tore up the old land-marks of wifely duty and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love and reverence had once been for ever springing.

But those last blessed words replaced him on his throne in her heart, and called out penitent anguish for all the bitter estrangement of later years. It was this which made her refuse all the entreaties of her sons, that she would see the kind-hearted neighbours, who called on their way from church, to sympathise and condole. No! she would stay with the dead husband that had spoken tenderly at last, if for three years he had kept silence; who knew but what, if she had only been more gentle and less angrily reserved he might have relented earlier—and in time!

She sat rocking herself to and fro by the side of the bed, while the footsteps below went in and out; she had been in sorrow too long to have any violent burst of deep grief now; the furrows were well worn in her cheeks, and the tears flowed quietly, if incessantly, all the day long. But when the winter’s night drew on, and the neighbours had gone away to their homes, she stole to the window, and gazed out, long and wistfully, over the dark grey moors. She did not hear her son’s voice, as he spoke to her from the door, nor his footstep as he drew nearer. She started when he touched her.

‘Mother! come down to us. There’s no one but Will and me. Dearest mother, we do so want you.’ The poor lad’s voice trembled, and he began to cry. It appeared to require an effort on Mrs. Leigh’s part to tear herself away from the window, but with a sigh she complied with his request.

The two boys (for though Will was nearly twenty-one, she still thought of him as a lad) had done everything in their power to make the house-place comfortable for her. She herself, in the old days before her sorrow, had never made a brighter fire or a cleaner hearth, ready for her husband’s return home, than now awaited her. The tea-things were all put out, and the kettle was boiling; and the boys had calmed their grief down into a kind of sober cheerfulness. They paid her every attention they could think of, but received little notice on her part; she did not resist—she rather submitted to all their arrangements; but they did not seem to touch her heart.

When tea was ended,—it was merely the form of tea that had been gone through,—Will moved the things away to the dresser. His mother leant back languidly in her chair.

‘Mother, shall Tom read you a chapter? He’s a better scholar than I.’

‘Aye, lad!’ said she, almost eagerly. ‘That’s it. Read me the Prodigal Son. Aye, aye, lad. Thank thee.’

Tom found the chapter, and read it in the high-pitched voice which is customary in village-schools. His mother bent forward, her lips parted, her eyes dilated; her whole body instinct with eager attention. Will sat with his head depressed, and hung down. He knew why that chapter had been chosen; and to him it recalled the family’s disgrace. When the reading was ended, he still hung down his head in gloomy silence. But her face was brighter than it had been before for the day. Her eyes looked dreamy, as if she saw a vision; and by and by she pulled the bible towards her, and putting her finger underneath each word, began to read them aloud in a low voice to herself; she read again the words of bitter sorrow and deep humiliation; but most of all she paused and brightened over the father’s tender reception of the repentant prodigal.

So passed the Christmas evening in the Upclose Farm.

The snow had fallen heavily over the dark waving moorland, before the day of the funeral. The black storm-laden dome of heaven lay very still and close upon the white earth, as they carried the body forth out of the house which had known his presence so long as its ruling power. Two and two the mourners followed, making a black procession, in their winding march over the unbeaten snow, to Milne-Row Church—now lost in some hollow of the bleak moors, now slowly climbing the heaving ascents. There was no long tarrying after the funeral, for many of the neighbours who accompanied the body to the grave had far to go, and the great white flakes which came slowly down, were the boding fore-runners of a heavy storm. One old friend alone accompanied the widow and her sons to their home.

The Upclose Farm had belonged for generations to the Leighs; and yet its possession hardly raised them above the rank of labourers. There was the house and out-buildings, all of an old-fashioned kind, and about seven acres of barren unproductive land, which they had never possessed capital enough to improve; indeed they could hardly rely upon it for subsistence; and it had been customary to bring up the sons to some trade—such as a wheelwright’s, or blacksmith’s.

James Leigh had left a will, in the possession of the old man who accompanied them home. He read it aloud. James had bequeathed the farm to his faithful wife, Anne Leigh, for her life-time; and afterwards, to his son William. The hundred and odd pounds in the savings’-bank was to accumulate for Thomas.

After the reading was ended, Anne Leigh sat silent for a time; and then she asked to speak to Samuel Orme alone. The sons went into the back-kitchen, and thence strolled out into the fields regardless of the driving snow. The brothers were dearly fond of each other, although they were very different in character. Will, the elder, was like his father, stern, reserved, and scrupulously upright. Tom (who was ten years younger) was gentle and delicate as a girl, both in appearance and character. He had always clung to his mother, and dreaded his father. They did not speak as they walked, for they were only in the habit of talking about facts, and hardly knew the more sophisticated language applied to the description of feelings.

Meanwhile their mother had taken hold of Samuel Orme’s arm with her trembling hand.

‘Samuel, I must let the farm—I must.’

‘Let the farm! What’s come o’er the woman?’

‘Oh, Samuel!’ said she, her eyes swimming in tears, ‘I’m just fain to go and live in Manchester. I mun let the farm.’

Samuel looked, and pondered, but did not speak for some time. At last he said—

‘If thou hast made up thy mind, there’s no speaking again it; and thou must e’en go. Thou’lt be sadly pottered wi’ Manchester ways; but that’s not my look out. Why, thou’lt have to buy potatoes, a thing thou hast never done afore in all thy born life. Well! it’s not my look out. It’s rather for me than again me. Our Jenny is going to be married to Tom Higginbotham, and he was speaking of wanting a bit of land to begin upon. His father will be dying sometime, I reckon, and then he’ll step into the Croft Farm. But meanwhile’—

‘Then, thou’lt let the farm,’ said she, still as eagerly as ever.

‘Aye, aye, he’ll take it fast enough, I’ve a notion. But I’ll not drive a bargain with thee just now; it would not be right; we’ll wait a bit.’

‘No; I cannot wait, settle it out at once.’

‘Well, well; I’ll speak to Will about it. I see him out yonder. I’ll step to him, and talk it over.’

Accordingly he went and joined the two lads, and without more ado, began the subject to them.

‘Will, thy mother is fain to go live in Manchester, and covets to let the farm. Now, I’m willing to take it for Tom Higginbotham; but I like to drive a keen bargain, and there would be no fun chaffering with thy mother just now. Let thee and me buckle to, my lad! and try and cheat each other; it will warm us this cold day.’

‘Let the farm!’ said both the lads at once, with infinite surprise, ‘Go live in Manchester!’

When Samuel Orme found that the plan had never before been named to either Will or Tom, he would have nothing to do with it, he said, until they had spoken to their mother; likely she was ‘dazed’ by her husband’s death; he would wait a day or two, and not name it to any one; not to Tom Higginbotham himself, or may be he would set his heart upon it. The lads had better go in and talk it over with their mother. He bade them good day, and left them.

Will looked very gloomy, but he did not speak till they got near the house. Then he said,—

‘Tom, go to th’ shippon, and supper the cows. I want to speak to mother alone.’

When he entered the house-place, she was sitting before the fire, looking into its embers. She did not hear him come in; for some time she had lost her quick perception of outward things.

‘Mother! what’s this about going to Manchester?’ asked he.

‘Oh, lad!’ said she, turning round, and speaking in a beseeching tone, ‘I must go and seek our Lizzie. I cannot rest here for thinking on her. Many’s the time I’ve left thy father sleeping in bed, and stole to th’ window, and looked and looked my heart out towards Manchester, till I thought I must just set out and tramp over moor and moss straight away till I got there, and then lift up every downcast face till I came to our Lizzie. And often, when the south wind was blowing soft among the hollows, I’ve fancied (it could but be fancy, thou knowest) I heard her crying upon me; and I’ve thought the voice came closer and closer, till at last it was sobbing out “Mother” close to the door; and I’ve stolen down, and undone the latch before now, and looked out into the still black night, thinking to see her,—and turned sick and sorrowful when I heard no living sound but the sough of the wind dying away. Oh! speak not to me of stopping here, when she may be perishing for hunger, like the poor lad in the parable.’ And now she lifted up her voice and wept aloud.

Will was deeply grieved. He had been old enough to be told the family shame when, more than two years before, his father had had his letter to his daughter returned by her mistress in Manchester, telling him that Lizzie had left her service some time—and why. He had sympathised with his father’s stern anger; though he had thought him something hard, it is true, when he had forbidden his weeping, heart-broken wife to go and try to find her poor sinning child, and declared that henceforth they would have no daughter; that she should be as one dead, and her name never more be named at market or at meal time, in blessing or in prayer. He had held his peace, with compressed lips and contracted brow, when the neighbours had noticed to him how poor Lizzie’s death had aged both his father and his mother; and how they thought the bereaved couple would never hold up their heads again. He himself had felt as if that one event had made him old before his time; and had envied Tom the tears he had shed over poor, pretty, innocent, dead Lizzie. He thought about her sometimes, till he ground his teeth together, and could have struck her down in her shame. His mother had never named her to him until now.

‘Mother!’ said he at last. ‘She may be dead. Most likely she is.’

‘No, Will; she is not dead,’ said Mrs. Leigh. ‘God will not let her die till I’ve seen her once again. Thou dost not know how I’ve prayed and prayed just once again to see her sweet face, and tell her I’ve forgiven her, though she’s broken my heart—she has, Will.’ She could not go on for a minute or two for the choking sobs. ‘Thou dost not know that, or thou wouldst not say she could be dead,—for God is very merciful, Will; He is,—He is much more pitiful than man,—I could never ha’ spoken to thy father as I did to Him,—and yet thy father forgave her at last. The last words he said were that he forgave her. Thou’lt not be harder than thy father, Will? Do not try and hinder me going to seek her, for it’s no use.’

Will sat very still for a long time before he spoke. At last he said, ‘I’ll not hinder you. I think she’s dead, but that’s no matter.’

‘She is not dead,’ said her mother, with low earnestness. Will took no notice of the interruption.

‘We will all go to Manchester for a twelvemonth, and let the farm to Tom Higginbotham. I’ll get blacksmith’s work; and Tom can have good schooling for awhile, which he’s always craving for. At the end of the year you’ll come back, mother, and give over fretting for Lizzie, and think with me that she is dead,—and, to my mind, that would be more comfort than to think of her living;’ he dropped his voice as he spoke these last words. She shook her head, but made no answer. He asked again,—

‘Will you, mother, agree to this?’

‘I’ll agree to it a-this-ns,’ said she. ‘If I hear and see nought of her for a twelvemonth, me being in Manchester looking out, I’ll just ha’ broken my heart fairly before the year’s ended, and then I shall know neither love nor sorrow for her any more, when I’m at rest in the grave—I’ll agree to that, Will.’

‘Well, I suppose it must be so. I shall not tell Tom, mother, why we’re flitting to Manchester. Best spare him.’

‘As thou wilt,’ said she, sadly, ‘so that we go, that’s all.’

Before the wild daffodils were in flower in the sheltered copses round Upclose Farm, the Leighs were settled in their Manchester home; if they could ever grow to consider that place as a home, where there was no garden, or outbuilding, no fresh breezy outlet, no far-stretching view, over moor and hollow,—no dumb animals to be tended, and, what more than all they missed, no old haunting memories, even though those remembrances told of sorrow, and the dead and gone.

Mrs. Leigh heeded the loss of all these things less than her sons. She had more spirit in her countenance than she had had for months, because now she had hope; of a sad enough kind, to be sure, but still it was hope. She performed all her household duties, strange and complicated as they were, and bewildered as she was with all the town-necessities of her new manner of life; but when her house was ‘sided,’ and the boys come home from their work, in the evening, she would put on her things and steal out, unnoticed, as she thought, but not without many a heavy sigh from Will, after she had closed the house-door and departed. It was often past midnight before she came back, pale and weary, with almost a guilty look upon her face; but that face so full of disappointment and hope deferred, that Will had never the heart to say what he thought of the folly and hopelessness of the search. Night after night it was renewed, till days grew to weeks and weeks to months. All this time Will did his duty towards her as well as he could, without having sympathy with her. He staid at home in the evenings for Tom’s sake, and often wished he had Tom’s pleasure in reading, for the time hung heavy on his hands, as he sat up for his mother.

I need not tell you how the mother spent the weary hours. And yet I will tell you something. She used to wander out, at first as if without a purpose, till she rallied her thoughts, and brought all her energies to bear on the one point; then she went with earnest patience along the least known ways to some new part of the town, looking wistfully with dumb entreaty into people’s faces; sometimes catching a glimpse of a figure which had a kind of momentary likeness to her child’s, and following that figure with never wearying perseverance, till some light from shop or lamp showed the cold strange face which was not her daughter’s. Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck by her look of yearning woe, turned back and offered help, or asked her what she wanted. When so spoken to, she answered only, ‘You don’t know a poor girl they call Lizzie Leigh, do you?’ and when they denied all knowledge, she shook her head, and went on again. I think they believed her to be crazy. But she never spoke first to any one. She sometimes took a few minutes’ rest on the door-steps, and sometimes (very seldom) covered her face and cried; but she could not afford to lose time and chances in this way; while her eyes were blinded with tears, the lost one might pass by unseen.

One evening, in the rich time of shortening autumn-days, Will saw an old man, who, without being absolutely drunk, could not guide himself rightly along the foot-path, and was mocked for his unsteadiness of gait by the idle boys of the neighbourhood. For his father’s sake Will regarded old age with tenderness, even when most degraded and removed from the stern virtues which dignified that father; so he took the old man home, and seemed to believe his often-repeated assertions that he drank nothing but water. The stranger tried to stiffen himself up into steadiness as he drew nearer home, as if there were some one there, for whose respect he cared even in his half-intoxicated state, or whose feelings he feared to grieve. His home was exquisitely clean and neat even in outside appearance; threshold, window, and window-sill, were outward signs of some spirit of purity within. Will was rewarded for his attention by a bright glance of thanks, succeeded by a blush of shame, from a young woman of twenty or thereabouts. She did not speak, or second her father’s hospitable invitations to him to be seated. She seemed unwilling that a stranger should witness her father’s attempts at stately sobriety, and Will could not bear to stay and see her distress. But when the old man, with many a flabby shake of the hand, kept asking him to come again some other evening and see them, Will sought her downcast eyes, and, though he could not read their veiled meaning, he answered timidly, ‘If it’s agreeable to everybody, I’ll come—and thank ye.’ But there was no answer from the girl to whom this speech was in reality addressed; and Will left the house liking her all the better for never speaking.

He thought about her a great deal for the next day or two; he scolded himself for being so foolish as to think of her, and then fell to with fresh vigour, and thought of her more than ever. He tried to depreciate her; he told himself she was not pretty, and then made indignant answer that he liked her looks much better than any beauty of them all. He wished he was not so country looking, so red-faced, so broad-shouldered; while she was like a lady, with her smooth colourless complexion, her bright dark hair and her spotless dress. Pretty, or not pretty, she drew his footsteps towards her; he could not resist the impulse that made him wish to see her once more, and find out some fault which should unloose his heart from her unconscious keeping. But there she was, pure and maidenly as before. He sat and looked, answering her father at cross-purposes, while she drew more and more into the shadow of the chimney-corner out of sight. Then the spirit that possessed him (it was not he himself, sure, that did so impudent a thing!) made him get up and carry the candle to a different place, under the pretence of giving her more light at her sewing, but, in reality, to be able to see her better; she could not stand this much longer, but jumped up, and said she must put her little niece to bed; and surely, there never was, before or since, so troublesome a child of two years old; for, though Will staid an hour and a half longer, she never came down again. He won the father’s heart, though, by his capacity as a listener, for some people are not at all particular, and, so that they themselves may talk on undisturbed, are not so unreasonable as to expect attention to what they say.

Will did gather this much, however, from the old man’s talk. He had once been quite in a genteel line of business, but had failed for more money than any greengrocer he had heard of; at least, any who did not mix up fish and game with greengrocery proper. This grand failure seemed to have been the event of his life, and one on which he dwelt with a strange kind of pride. It appeared as if at present he rested from his past exertions (in the bankrupt line), and depended on his daughter, who kept a small school for very young children. But all these particulars Will only remembered and understood, when he had left the house; at the time he heard them, he was thinking of Susan. After he had made good his footing at Mr. Palmer’s, he was not long, you may be sure, without finding some reason for returning again and again. He listened to her father, he talked to the little niece, but he looked at Susan, both while he listened and while he talked. Her father kept on insisting upon his former gentility, the details of which would have appeared very questionable to Will’s mind, if the sweet, delicate, modest Susan had not thrown an inexplicable air of refinement over all she came near. She never spoke much; she was generally diligently at work; but when she moved it was so noiselessly, and when she did speak, it was in so low and soft a voice, that silence, speech, motion and stillness, alike seemed to remove her high above Will’s reach into some saintly and inaccessible air of glory—high above his reach, even as she knew him! And, if she were made acquainted with the dark secret behind, of his sister’s shame, which was kept ever present to his mind by his mother’s nightly search among the outcast and forsaken, would not Susan shrink away from him with loathing, as if he were tainted by the involuntary relationship? This was his dread; and thereupon followed a resolution that he would withdraw from her sweet company before it was too late. So he resisted internal temptation, and staid at home, and suffered and sighed. He became angry with his mother for her untiring patience in seeking for one who, he could not help hoping, was dead rather than alive. He spoke sharply to her, and received only such sad deprecatory answers as made him reproach himself, and still more lose sight of peace of mind. This struggle could not last long without affecting his health; and Tom, his sole companion through the long evenings, noticed his increasing languor, his restless irritability, with perplexed anxiety, and at last resolved to call his mother’s attention to his brother’s haggard, care-worn looks. She listened with a startled recollection of Will’s claims upon her love. She noticed his decreasing appetite, and half-checked sighs.

‘Will, lad! what’s come o’er thee?’ said she to him, as he sat listlessly gazing into the fire.

‘There’s nought the matter with me,’ said he, as if annoyed at her remark.

‘Nay, lad, but there is.’ He did not speak again to contradict her; indeed she did not know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he look.

‘Would’st like to go back to Upclose Farm?’ asked she, sorrowfully.

‘It’s just blackberrying time,’ said Tom.

Will shook his head. She looked at him awhile, as if trying to read that expression of despondency and trace it back to its source.

‘Will and Tom could go,’ said she; ‘I must stay here till I’ve found her, thou know’st,’ continued she, dropping her voice.

He turned quickly round, and with the authority he at all times exercised over Tom, bade him begone to bed.

When Tom had left the room he prepared to speak.

VALENTINE’S DAY AT THE POST-OFFICE.

Late in the afternoon of the 14th of February last past, an individual who bore not the smallest resemblance to a despairing lover, or, indeed, to a lover in any state of mind, was seen to drop into the box of a Fleet Street receiving-house two letters folded in flaming covers. He did not look round to see if he were observed, but walked boldly into the shop with a third epistle, and deposited thereon one penny. Considering the suspicious appearance of this document—for its envelope was green—he retired from the counter with extraordinary nonchalance, and coolly walked on towards Ludgate Hill.

Long paces soon brought him to St. Martin’s-le-Grand, for he strode like a man who had an imminent appointment. Sure enough, under the clock of the General Post-Office, he joined another, who eagerly asked,—

‘Have you done it?’

The answer was, ‘I have!’

‘Very well. Let us now watch the result.’

Most people are aware that the Great National Post-Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand is divided into halves by a passage, whose sides are perforated with what is called the ‘Window Department.’ Here huge slits gape for letters, whole sashes yawn for newspapers, or wooden panes open for clerks to frame their large faces, like giant visages in the slides of a Magic Lanthorn; and to answer inquiries, or receive unstamped paid letters. The southern side is devoted to the London District Post, and the northern to what still continues to be called the ‘Inland Department,’ although foreign, colonial, and other outlandish correspondence now passes through it. It was with the London District Branch that the two gentlemen first appeared to have business.

Having been led through a maze of offices and passages more or less dark, they found themselves—like knights-errant in a fairy tale—‘in an enormous hall, illumined by myriads of lights.’ Without being exactly transformed into statues, or stricken fast asleep, the occupants of this hall (whose name was Legion) appeared to be in an enchanted state of idleness. Among a wilderness of long tables, and of desks not unlike those on which butter-men perform their active parts of legerdemain in making ‘pats’—only these desks were covered with black cloth—they were reading books, talking together, wandering about, lying down, or drinking coffee—apparently quite unused to doing any work, and not at all expectant of ever having anything to do, but die.

In a few minutes, and without any preparation, a great stir began at one end of this hall, and an immense train of private performers, in the highest state of excitement, poured in, getting up, on an immense scale, the first scene in the ‘Miller and his Men.’ Each had a sack on his back; each bent under its weight; and the bare sight of these sacks, as if by magic, changed all the readers, all the talkers, all the wanderers, all the liers-down, all the coffee-drinkers, into a colony of human ants!

For the sacks were great sheepskin bags of letters tumbling in from the receiving-houses. Anon they looked like whole flocks suddenly struck all of a heap, ready for slaughter; for a ruthless individual stood at a table, with sleeves tucked up and knife in hand, who rapidly cut their throats, dived into their insides, abstracted their contents, and finally skinned them. ‘For every letter we leave behind,’ said the bag-opener, in answer to an inquiry, ‘we are fined half-a-crown. That’s why we turn them inside out.’

The mysterious visitors closely scrutinised the letters that were disgorged. These were from all parts of London to all parts of London and to the provinces and to the far-off quarters of the globe. An acute postman might guess the broad tenour of their contents by their covers:—business letters are in big envelopes, official letters in long ones, and lawyers’ letters in none at all; the tinted and lace-bordered mean Valentines, the black-bordered tell of grief, and the radiant with white enamel announce marriage. When the Fleet Street dispatch appeared, the visitors tracked it, and the operations of the clerk who separated the three bundles of which it consisted were closely followed. With the prying curiosity which now only began to show itself, one of the intruders actually took a copy of the bill which accompanied the letters. It set forth in three lines that there were so many ‘Stamped,’ so many ‘Prepaid,’ and so many ‘Unpaid.’

The clerk counted the stamped letters like lightning, and a flash of red gleaming past showed the inquirers that one of their epistles was safe. Suddenly the motion was stopped; the official had instinctively detected that one letter was insufficiently adorned with the Queen’s profile, and he weighed and taxed it double in a twinkling. Having proved the number of stamped letters to be exactly as per account rendered, he went on checking off the prepaid, turning up the sender’s green missive in the process. He then dealt with the unpaid, amongst which the lookers-on perceived their yellow one. The cash column was computed and cast in a single thought, and a short-hand mark, signifying ‘quite correct,’ dismissed the Fleet Street bill upon a file, for the leisurely scrutiny of the Receiver-General’s office. All the other letters, and all the other bills of all the other receiving-houses, were going through the same routine at all the other tables; and these performances are repeated ten times in every day, all the year round, Sundays excepted!

‘You perceived,’ said one of the two friends, ‘that in the rapid process of counting, our stamped letter gleamed past like a meteor, whilst our money-paid and unpaid epistles remained long enough under observation for a careful reading of the superscriptions.’

‘That delay,’ said an intelligent official, ‘is occasioned because the latter are unstamped. Such letters cause a great complication of trouble, wholly avoided by the use of Queen’s heads. Every officer through whose hands they pass—from the receiving-house-keeper to the carriers who deliver them at their destinations—has to give and take a cash account of each. If the public would put stamps on all letters, it would save us, and therefore itself, some thousands a-year.’

‘What are the proportions of the stamped to the prepaid and unpaid letters which pass through all the post-offices during the year?’

‘We can tell within a very near approximation to correctness:—337,500,000 passed through the post-offices of the United Kingdom during last year, and to every 100 of them about fifty had stamps; 46 were prepaid with pennies; and only 4 were committed to the box unpaid.’

While one of the visitors was receiving this information, the other had followed his variegated letters to the next process; which was that of stamping on the sealed face, in red ink, the date and hour of despatch. The letters are ranged in a long row, like a pack of cards thrown across a table, and so fast does the stamper’s hand move, that he can mark 3000 in an hour. While defacing the Queen’s heads on the other side, he counts as he thumps, till he enumerates fifty, when he dodges his stamp on one side to put his black mark on a piece of plain paper. All these memoranda are afterwards collected by the president, who, reckoning fifty letters to every black mark, gets a near approximation to the number that have passed through the office.

It was by this means that our friends obtained the following account of the number of district letters that passed through this office on St. Valentine’s Day:—

Feb. 14th, 1850. | Paid. | Unpaid. | Stamped. | Total.
| 1d. | 1d. | 2d. | |
Collections. | | | | |
8 o’clock. | 6,872 | 52 | 1,216 | 20,082 | 28,222
10” | 6,212 | 19 | 607 | 13,629 | 20,467
12” | 7,069 | 36 | 612 | 15,240 | 22,957
1” | 2,989 | 17 | 277 | 6,395 | 9,678
2” | 6,520 | 39 | 535 | 13,696 | 20,790
3” | 2,456 | 36 | 328 | 6,909 | 9,729
4” | 4,873 | 36 | 375 | 13,478 | 13,478
5” | 3,340 | 28 | 317 | 8,207 | 11,892
6” | 9,300 | 129 | 958 | 27,950 | 38,337
8” | 3,903 | 32 | 812 | 6,650 | 11,487
| 53,624 | 424 | 6,037 | 126,952 | 187,037

To this total are to be added 6,000 ‘bye’ letters—or those which passed from village to village within the suburban limits of the district post without reaching the chief office—and 100,000 destined for the provinces and places beyond sea, which were transferred to the Inland Department. The grand total for the day, therefore, rose to nearly 300,000. Thus the sacrifices to the fane of St. Valentine—consisting of hearts, darts, Cupid peeping out of paper-roses, Hymen embowered in hot-pressed embossing, swains in very blue coats and nymphs in very opaque muslin, coarse caricatures and tender verses—caused an augmentation to the revenue on this anniversary equal to about 70,000 missives; 123,000 being the usual daily average for district and ‘byes’ during the month of February. This increase, being peculiar to cross and district posts, does not so much affect the Inland Office, for lovers and sweethearts are generally neighbours. The entire correspondence of the three kingdoms is augmented on each St. Valentine’s day to the extent of about 400,000 letters.

‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed one of the visitors, regarding the piles of epistles on the numerous tables, ‘that this mass of letters can be arranged and sent away to their respective addresses in time to receive the next collection, which will arrive in less than an hour?’

‘Quite,’ replied an obliging informant, ‘I’ll tell you how we do it. We have divided London into seventeen sections. There they are, you perceive.’ He then pointed to the tables with pigeon-holes numbered from one to seventeen; one marked ‘blind,’ with a nineteenth labelled ‘general.’ It was explained that the proper arrangement of the letters in these compartments constitutes the first sorting. They are then sorted into sub-divisions; then into districts, and finally handed over to the letter-carriers, who, in another room, arrange them for their own convenience into ‘walks.’ As the visitors looked round they perceived their coloured envelopes—which were all addressed to Scotland—suddenly emerge from a chaotic heap, and lodge in the division marked ‘general,’ as magically as a conjurer causes any card you may choose to fly out of the whole pack. ‘These letters,’ remarked the expositor, ‘being for the country will be presently passed into the Inland Office through a tunnel under the hall. The “blind” letters have superscriptions which the sorters cannot decypher, and are sent to the “blind” table where a gentleman presides, to whom, from the extreme sharpness of his vision, we give the lucus à non lucendo name of the “blind clerk.” You will have a specimen of his powers presently.’

While this dialogue was going on there was a general abatement of the noise of stamping, and shuffling letters, and when the visitors looked round, the place had relapsed into its former tranquillity. It was scarcely credible that from 30,000 to 40,000 letters had been received, stamped, counted, sorted, and sent away in so short a time. ‘A judicious division of labour,’ remarked one of our friends, ‘must work these miracles.’

‘Yes, sir,’ was the reply of an official, ‘and there are from 1200 to 1700 of us to do the work of the district post alone. When it was removed from Gerard Street to this building there was not a quarter of that number. For instance—then, three carriers sufficed for the Paddington district; but, by the dispatch you have just seen completed, we have sent off 2000 letters to that single locality by the hands of twenty-five carriers.’

‘The increase is attributable to the penny system?’ interrogated one of our inquiring friends.

‘Entirely.’

The questioner then referred to a Parliamentary paper of which he had obtained possession. It showed him the history of general postal increase since the era of dear distance rates. In 1839—under the old system—the number of letters which passed through the post was 76,000,000. In 1840 came the uniform penny, and for that year the number was 162,000,000, or an increase of 93,000,000, equal to 123 per cent. That was the grand start; afterwards the rate of increase subsided from 36 per cent. in 1841, to 16 per cent. in 1842 and 1843. In 1845, and the three following years, the increase was respectively, 39, 37, and 30 per cent. Then succeeded a sudden drop; perhaps the culminating point had been attained. The Post-Office is, however, a thermometer of commerce: during the depressing year 1848, the number of letters increased no more than 9 per cent. But last year 37,500,000 epistles passed through the office, being an augmentation of 8,500,000 upon the preceding year, or 11 per cent. of progressive increase. Another Parliamentary document shows, that, although the business is now exactly four-and-a-half times more than it was in 1839, the expense of doing it has only doubled. In the former year the cost of the establishment was not quite 690,000l.; in 1849 it was about 1,400,000l.

While one visitor was poring over these documents, the other deliberately watched the coloured envelopes. They were, with about 2000 other General Post letters, put into boxes and taken to the tunnel to be conveyed into the Inland Office upon a horizontal band worked by a wheel. The two friends now took leave of the District Department to follow the objects of their pursuit.

It was a quarter before six o’clock when they crossed the Hall—six being the latest hour at which newspapers can be posted without fee.

It was then just drizzling newspapers. The great window of that department being thrown open, the first black fringe of a thunder-cloud of newspapers impending over the Post-Office was discharging itself fitfully—now in large drops, now in little; now in sudden plumps, now stopping altogether. By degrees it began to rain hard; by fast degrees the storm came on harder and harder, until it blew, rained, hailed, snowed, newspapers. A fountain of newspapers played in at the window. Water-spouts of newspapers broke from enormous sacks, and engulphed the men inside. A prodigious main of newspapers, at the Newspaper River Head, seemed to be turned on, threatening destruction to the miserable Post-Office. The Post-Office was so full already, that the window foamed at the mouth with newspapers. Newspapers flew out like froth, and were tumbled in again by the bystanders. All the boys in London seemed to have gone mad, and to be besieging the Post-Office with newspapers. Now and then there was a girl; now and then a woman; now and then a weak old man: but as the minute hand of the clock crept near to six, such a torrent of boys, and such a torrent of newspapers came tumbling in together pell-mell, head over heels, one above another, that the giddy head looking on chiefly wondered why the boys springing over one another’s heads, and flying the garter into the Post-Office with the enthusiasm of the corps of acrobats at M. Franconi’s, didn’t post themselves nightly, along with the newspapers, and get delivered all over the world.

Suddenly it struck six. Shut Sesame! Perfectly still weather. Nobody there. No token of the late storm—Not a soul, too late!

But what a chaos within! Men up to their knees in newspapers on great platforms; men gardening among newspapers with rakes; men digging and delving among newspapers as if a new description of rock had been blasted into those fragments; men going up and down a gigantic trap—an ascending and descending-room worked by a steam-engine—still taking with them nothing but newspapers! All the history of the time, all the chronicled births, deaths, and marriages, all the crimes, all the accidents, all the vanities, all the changes, all the realities, of all the civilised earth, heaped up, parcelled out, carried about, knocked down, cut, shuffled, dealt, played, gathered up again, and passed from hand to hand, in an apparently interminable and hopeless confusion, but really in a system of admirable order, certainty, and simplicity, pursued six nights every week, all through the rolling year! Which of us, after this, shall find fault with the rather more extensive system of good and evil, when we don’t quite understand it at a glance; or set the stars right in their spheres?

The friends were informed that 70,000,000 newspapers pass through all the post-offices every year. Upwards of 80,000,000 newspaper-stamps are distributed annually from the Stamp-Office; but most of the London papers are conveyed into the country by early trains. On the other hand, frequently the same paper passes through the post several times, which accounts for the small excess of 10,000,000 stamps issued over papers posted. In weight, 187 tons of paper and print pass up and down the ingenious ‘lift’ every week, and thence to the uttermost corners of the earth—from Blackfriars to Botany Bay, from the Strand to Chusan.

As to the rooms, revealed through gratings in the well, traversed by the ascending and descending-room, and walked in by the visitors afterwards,—those enormous chambers, each with its hundreds of sorters busy over their hundreds of thousands of letters—those dispatching places of a business that has the look of being eternal and never to be disposed of or cleared away—those silent receptacles of countless millions of passionate words, for ever pouring through them like a Niagara of language, and leaving not a drop behind—what description could present them? But when a sorter goes home from these places to his bed, does he dream of letters? When he has a fever (sorters must have fevers sometimes) does he never find the Welch letters getting into the Scotch divisions, and the London letters going to Jericho? When he gets a glass too much, does he see no double letters mis-sorting themselves unaccountably? When he is very ill, do no dead letters stare him in the face? And yonder dark, mysterious, ground-glass balcony high up in the wall, not unlike a church organ without the pipes—the screen from whence an unseen eye watches the sorters who are listening to temptation—when he has a nightmare, does he never dream of that?

Then that enormous table upon which the public shoot their letters through the window-slits—do the four men who sit at it never fancy themselves playing at whist, gathering up an enormous pack of red aces, with here and there a many-hued Valentine to stand for a Court card? Their duty is termed ‘facing,’ or turning the ace-like seals downwards, ready for stamping.

The system of stamping, sorting, and arranging, is precisely similar to that in the District Branch, and by his recently acquired knowledge of it, the person who posted the coloured letters was able to trace them through every stage, till they were tied up ready to be ‘bagged,’ and sent away. While thus employed, his companion made the following observations:—

In an opposite side of the enormous apartment, a good space and a few officials are devoted to repairing the carelessness of the public, which is—in amount and extent—scarcely credible. Upon an average, 300 letters per day pass through the General Post-Office totally unfastened; chiefly in consequence of the use of what stationers are pleased to call ‘adhesive’ envelopes. Many are virgin ones, without either seal or direction; and not a few contain money. In Sir Francis Freeling’s time, the sum of 5000l. in Bank notes was found in a ‘blank.’ It was not till after some trouble that the sender was traced, and the cash restored to him. Not long since, an humble post-mistress of an obscure Welch post-town, unable to decipher the address on a letter, perceived, on examining it, the folds of several Bank notes protruding from a torn edge of the envelope. She securely re-enclosed it to the secretary of the Post-Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand; who found the contents to be 1500l., and the superscription too much even for the hieroglyphic powers of the ‘blind clerk.’ Eventually the enclosures found their true destination.

It is estimated that there lies, from time to time, in the Dead-Letter Office, undergoing the process of finding owners, some 11,000l. annually, in cash alone. In July, 1847, for instance—only a two months’ accumulation—the post-haste of 4658 letters, all containing property, was arrested by the bad superscriptions of the writers. They were consigned—after a searching inquest upon each by that efficient coroner, the ‘blind clerk’—to the Post-Office Morgue. There were Bank notes of the value of 1010l., and money-orders for 407l. 12s. But most of these ill-directed letters contained coin in small sums, amounting to 310l. 9s. 7d. On the 17th of July, 1847, there were lying in the Dead-Letter Office bills of Exchange for the immense sum of 40,410l. 5s. 7d.!

‘I assure you,’ said a gentleman high in this department, ‘it is scarcely possible to take up a handful of letters without finding one with coin in it, despite the facilities afforded by the money-order system. All this is very distressing to us. The temptation it throws in the way of sorters, carriers, and other humble employés is greater than they ought to be subjected to. Seventy men have been discharged for dishonesty from the District Office alone during the past two years.’

‘But the public do use the Money-Order Office extensively?’

This question was startlingly answered by reference to a Parliamentary Return which showed that there were issued and paid in England and Wales alone, during the year which ended on the 5th of January, 1849, 6,852,911 Post-Office orders for sums amounting to the enormous aggregate of 13,678,377l. 3s. 1d.

Taking up a thin card-board box of artificial flowers, which had been shaken into the form of an irregular rhomboid, under the pressure of several pounds’ weight of letters and newspapers, a ‘sub-president’ remarked—‘The faith the public have in us is extraordinary. Here is an article which is designed to go safely to Dublin; yet not one single precaution, except this thin piece of twine, is taken by the sender to ensure its preservation. Here, again, is a pair of white satin shoes, fast losing their colour from friction with damp newspapers and the edges of books. The other day the toe of a similar packet protruded from its very thin casing, and the stamper not being able to stop his hand in time, ornamented it, in vividly blue ink, with the words, “York, Feb. 1, 1850, D.” You will see by this Parliamentary Return of the articles found in the Dead-Letter Office what curious things are trusted to our care.’

The obliging gentleman then produced the document. Its lists showed, amongst other articles,—tooth-picks, tooth-files, fishing-flies, an eye-glass, brad-awls, portraits, miniatures, a whistle, corkscrews, a silver watch, a pair of spurs, a bridle, a soldier’s discharge and sailors’ register tickets, samples of hops and corn, a Greek MS., silver spoons, gold thread, dinner, theatre, and pawn tickets, boxes of pills, shirts, night-caps, razors, all sorts of knitting and lace, ‘doll’s things,’ and a vast variety of other articles, that would puzzle ingenuity to conjecture.

‘Besides carelessness we have to contend against ignorance,’ was remarked as the visitors were introduced to the ‘blind’ table, and to the hawk-eyed gentleman who presides at it. ‘He is provided, you perceive, with a small library of local and general Directories, Court Guides, Army, Navy, and Clergy Lists; and much he needs them, as will be seen by these fac-similes.’ Several transcripts of curiously addressed letters were then produced. ‘Where would you or I have sent a letter

certainly not to its proper destination, which turned out to be the “Amphitrite,” Valparaiso, or elsewhere? Who but our friend here would have found out that another boy in her Majesty’s naval service said to be on board

H.M. Steem Friegkt

Vultur Uncon or els ware,

belonged to the Steam Frigate Vulture, at Hong Kong? Few would think that

Mr. Weston
Osburn Cottage
Ilawait

was a neighbour of her Majesty, and lived at Osborne Cottage, Isle of Wight.’

The following additional epistolary puzzles were then read, amidst, as reporters say, ‘loud laughter:’

Mr. Laurence
New Land
Ivicum (High Wycombe).

W. Stratton
Commonly
Ceald teapot

(We presume as a total abstinence man.)

Weelin (Welwyn).

Thom Hoodless
3 St. Ann Ct
Searhoo Skur (Soho Square).

The ingenious orthographies Ratlifhaivai and Ratlef Fieway went straight to the proper parties in Ratcliffe Highway; but it is a wonder how—

Mr. Dick
Bishop Cans
ner the Wises

got his letter, considering that his place of abode was near Devizes.

For the next specimen of spelling there is some excuse. ‘In England,’ says a French traveller, ‘what they write “Greenwich,” they pronounce “Grinitch,” and I am not quite sure that when they set down “Solomon,” they do not pronounce it “Nebuchadnezzar.”’ ‘I much question,’ continued one of the amateur Post-Office inspectors, ‘if either of us had never seen the name of the place to which the following superscription applies, that we should not have spelt it nearly similarly to the correspondent of—

Peter Robertson
2 Compney 7 Batilian
Rolyl Artirian
Owilige
England.

‘Although the writer’s ear misled him grievously in the other words, he has recorded the sound into which we render Woolwich with curious correctness.’

‘Innocent simplicity baulks us as much as ignorance,’ remarked the head of the hieroglyphic department. ‘Here are one or two specimens of it:—

To Mr. Michl
Darcy
In the town of
England.

‘A schoolboy sends from Salisbury,

To My Uncle Jon
in London.

‘Another addressed the highest personage in the realm—no doubt on particular business—as

Miss
Queene Victoria
of England.’

While this amusement was going forward, the bustle in the adjoining rooms had reached its climax. It was approaching eight o’clock, and the ‘Miller and his Men’ above stairs were delivering their sacks from the mouth of the ever-revolving mill at an incessant rate. These, filled nearly to the mouth with newspapers, were dragged to the tables, which the brass label fastened to the corner of each bag marked as its own, to have the letters inserted. Our friends rushed to where they saw ‘Edinburgh’ painted up on the walls, and there they beheld their yellow, green, and red letters in separate packets, though destined for the same place; just as they had come in at first from Fleet Street. The bundles were popped in a trice into the Edinburgh bag, which was sealed and sent away. Exactly the same thing was happening to every bundle of letters, and to every bag on the premises.

The clock now struck eight, and the two visitors looked round in astonishment. Had they been guests at the ball in ‘Cinderella,’ when that clock struck they would not have been more astonished; for hardly less rapidly did the fancy dresses of the postmen disappear, and the lights grow dim. This is the most striking peculiarity of the extraordinary establishment. Everything is done on military principles to minute time. The drill and subdivision of duties are so perfect, that the alternations throughout the day are high pressure and sudden collapse. At five minutes before eight the enormous offices were glaring with light and crowded with men; at ten minutes after eight the glass slipper had fallen off, and there was hardly a light or a living being visible.

‘Perhaps, however,’ it was remarked as our friends were leaving the building, ‘an invisible individual is now stealthily watching behind the ground glass screen. Only the other day he detected from it a sorter secreting 140 sovereigns.’

It is a deplorable thing that such a place of observation should be necessary; but it is hardly less deplorable—and this should be most earnestly impressed upon the reader—that the public, now possessed of such conveniences for remitting money, by means of Post-Office Orders and Registered Letters, should lightly throw temptation in the way of these clerks, by enclosing actual coin. No man can say that, placed in such circumstances from day to day, he could be stedfast. Many may hope they would be, and believe it; but none can be sure. It is in the power, however, of every conscientious and reflecting mind, to make quite sure that it has no part in this class of crimes. The prevention for this one great source of misery is made easy to the public hand; and it is the public’s bounden duty to adopt it. They who do not, cannot be blameless.

Such is the substance of information obtained by our friends before they took leave of the mighty heart of the postal system of this country.

In conclusion, they beg it to be understood that their experimental letters were not Valentines.

ABRAHAM AND THE FIRE-WORSHIPPER.
A Dramatic Parable.

Scene—The inside of a Tent, in which the Patriarch Abraham and a Persian Traveller, a Fire-Worshipper, are sitting awhile after supper.

Fire-Worshipper (aside). What have I said, or done, that by degrees

Mine host hath changed his gracious countenance,

Until he stareth on me, as in wrath!

Have I, ’twixt wake and sleep, lost his wise lore?

Or sit I thus too long, and he himself

Would fain be sleeping? I will speak to that.

(Aloud.) Impute it, O my great and gracious lord,

Unto my feeble flesh, and not my folly,
If mine old eyelids droop against their will,
And I become as one that hath no sense
Ev’n to the milk and honey of thy words.—

With my lord’s leave, and his good servant’s help,

My limbs would creep to bed.

Abraham (angrily quitting his seat). In this tent, never.

Thou art a thankless and an impious man.

Fire-W. (rising in astonishment). A thankless and an impious man! Oh, sir,

My thanks have all but worshipp’d thee.

Abraham.And whom
Forgotten? like the fawning dog I feed.
From the foot-washing to the meal, and now

To this thy cramm’d and dog-like wish for bed,

I’ve noted thee; and never hast thou breath’d
One syllable of prayer, or praise, or thanks,
To the great God who made and feedeth all.

Fire-W. Oh, sir, the God I worship is the Fire,

The god of gods; and seeing him not here,
In any symbol, or on any shrine,
I waited till he blessed mine eyes at morn,
Sitting in heaven.

Abraham.Oh, foul idolator!

And darest thou still to breathe in Abraham’s tent?

Forth with thee, wretch: for he that made thy god,

And all thy tribe, and all the host of heaven,

The invisible and only dreadful God,

Will speak to thee this night, out in the storm,

And try thee in thy foolish god, the Fire,

Which with his fingers he makes lightnings of.

Hark to the rising of his robes, the winds,

And get thee forth, and wait him.

[A violent storm is heard rising.

Fire-W.What! unhoused!

And on a night like this! me, poor old man,

A hundred years of age!

Abraham (urging him away). Not reverencing

The God of ages, thou revoltest reverence.

Fire-W. Thou hadst a father:—think of his grey hairs,

Houseless, and cuff’d by such a storm as this.

Abraham. God is thy father, and thou own’st not him.

Fire-W. I have a wife, as aged as myself,

And if she learn my death, she’ll not survive it,

No, not a day; she is so used to me;

So propp’d up by her other feeble self.

I pray thee, strike us not both down.

Abraham (still urging him).God made
Husband and wife, and must be own’d of them,
Else he must needs disown them.

Fire-W.We have children,
One of them, sir, a daughter, who, next week,
Will all day long be going in and out,
Upon the watch for me; she, too, a wife,

And will be soon a mother. Spare, oh spare her!

She’s a good creature, and not strong.

Abraham.Mine ears
Are deaf to all things but thy blasphemy,
And to the coming of the Lord and God,
Who will this night condemn thee.

[Abraham pushes him out; and remains alone, speaking.

For if ever

God came at night-time forth upon the world,

’Tis now this instant. Hark to the huge winds,

The cataracts of hail, and rocky thunder,
Splitting like quarries of the stony clouds,
Beneath the touching of the foot of God.

That was God’s speaking in the heavens,—that last

And inward utterance coming by itself.
What is it shaketh thus thy servant, Lord,
Making him fear, that in some loud rebuke
To this idolator, whom thou abhorrest,

Terror will slay himself? Lo, the earth quakes

Beneath my feet, and God is surely here.

[A dead silence; and then a still small voice.

The Voice. Abraham!

Abraham. Where art thou, Lord? and who is it that speaks

So sweetly in mine ear, to bid me turn

And dare to face thy presence?

The Voice.Who but He

Whose mightiest utterance thou hast yet to learn?

I was not in the whirlwind, Abraham;

I was not in the thunder, or the earthquake;

But I am in the still small voice.

Where is the stranger whom thou tookest in?

Abraham. Lord, he denied thee, and I drove him forth.

The Voice. Then didst thou do what God himself forbore.

Have I, although he did deny me, borne

With his injuriousness these hundred years,

And couldst thou not endure him one sole night,

And such a night as this?

Abraham.Lord! I have sinn’d,

And will go forth, and if he be not dead,

Will call him back, and tell him of thy mercies

Both to himself, and me.

The Voice.Behold, and learn!

[The Voice retires while it is speaking; and a fold of the tent is turned back, disclosing the Fire-Worshipper, who is calmly sleeping, with his head on the back of a house-lamb.

Abraham. O loving God! the lamb itself’s his pillow,

And on his forehead is a balmy dew,

And in his sleep he smileth. I, meantime,

Poor and proud fool, with my presumptuous hands,

Not God’s, was dealing judgments on his head,

Which God himself had cradled!—Oh, methinks

There’s more in this than prophet yet hath known,

And Faith, some day, will all in Love be shown.

THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.

As one half of the world is said not to know how the other half lives, so it may be affirmed that the upper half of the world neither knows nor greatly cares how the lower half amuses itself. Believing that it does not care, mainly because it does not know, we purpose occasionally recording a few facts on this subject.

The general character of the lower class of dramatic amusements is a very significant sign of a people, and a very good test of their intellectual condition. We design to make our readers acquainted in the first place with a few of our experiences under this head in the metropolis.

It is probable that nothing will ever root out from among the common people an innate love they have for dramatic entertainment in some form or other. It would be a very doubtful benefit to society, we think, if it could be rooted out. The Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street, where an infinite variety of ingenious models are exhibited and explained, and where lectures comprising a quantity of useful information on many practical subjects are delivered, is a great public benefit and a wonderful place, but we think a people formed entirely in their hours of leisure by Polytechnic Institutions would be an uncomfortable community. We would rather not have to appeal to the generous sympathies of a man of five-and-twenty, in respect of some affliction of which he had had no personal experience, who had passed all his holidays, when a boy, among cranks and cogwheels. We should be more disposed to trust him if he had been brought into occasional contact with a Maid and a Magpie; if he had made one or two diversions into the Forest of Bondy; or had even gone the length of a Christmas Pantomime. There is a range of imagination in most of us, which no amount of steam-engines will satisfy; and which The-great-exhibition-of-the-works-of-industry-of-all-nations, itself, will probably leave unappeased. The lower we go, the more natural it is that the best-relished provision for this should be found in dramatic entertainments; as at once the most obvious, the least troublesome, and the most real, of all escapes out of the literal world. Joe Whelks, of the New Cut, Lambeth, is not much of a reader, has no great store of books, no very commodious room to read in, no very decided inclination to read, and no power at all of presenting vividly before his mind’s eye what he reads about. But, put Joe in the gallery of the Victoria Theatre; show him doors and windows in the scene that will open and shut, and that people can get in and out of; tell him a story with these aids, and by the help of live men and women dressed up, confiding to him their innermost secrets, in voices audible half a mile off; and Joe will unravel a story through all its entanglements, and sit there as long after midnight as you have anything left to show him. Accordingly, the Theatres to which Mr. Whelks resorts, are always full; and whatever changes of fashion the drama knows elsewhere, it is always fashionable in the New Cut.

The question, then, might not unnaturally arise, one would suppose, whether Mr. Whelks’s education is at all susceptible of improvement, through the agency of his theatrical tastes. How far it is improved at present, our readers shall judge for themselves.

In affording them the means of doing so, we wish to disclaim any grave imputation on those who are concerned in ministering to the dramatic gratification of Mr. Whelks. Heavily taxed, wholly unassisted by the State, deserted by the gentry, and quite unrecognised as a means of public instruction, the higher English Drama has declined. Those who would live to please Mr. Whelks, must please Mr. Whelks to live. It is not the Manager’s province to hold the Mirror up to Nature, but to Mr. Whelks—the only person who acknowledges him. If, in like manner, the actor’s nature, like the dyer’s hand, become subdued to what he works in, the actor can hardly be blamed for it. He grinds hard at his vocation, is often steeped in direful poverty, and lives, at the best, in a little world of mockeries. It is bad enough to give away a great estate six nights a-week, and want a shilling; to preside at imaginary banquets, hungry for a mutton chop; to smack the lips over a tankard of toast and water, and declaim about the mellow produce of the sunny vineyard on the banks of the Rhine; to be a rattling young lover, with the measles at home; and to paint sorrow over, with burnt cork and rouge; without being called upon to despise his vocation too. If he can utter the trash to which he is condemned, with any relish, so much the better for him, Heaven knows; and peace be with him!

A few weeks ago, we went to one of Mr. Whelks’s favourite Theatres, to see an attractive Melo-Drama called May Morning, or The Mystery of 1715, and the Murder! We had an idea that the former of these titles might refer to the month in which either the Mystery or the Murder happened, but we found it to be the name of the heroine, the pride of Keswick Vale; who was ‘called May Morning’ (after a common custom among the English Peasantry) ‘from her bright eyes and merry laugh.’ Of this young lady, it may be observed, in passing, that she subsequently sustained every possible calamity of human existence, in a white muslin gown with blue tucks; and that she did every conceivable and inconceivable thing with a pistol, that could anyhow be effected by that description of fire-arms.

The Theatre was extremely full. The prices of admission were, to the boxes, a shilling; to the pit, sixpence; to the gallery, threepence. The gallery was of enormous dimensions (among the company, in the front row, we observed Mr. Whelks); and overflowing with occupants. It required no close observation of the attentive faces, rising one above another, to the very door in the roof, and squeezed and jammed in, regardless of all discomforts, even there, to impress a stranger with a sense of its being highly desirable to lose no possible chance of effecting any mental improvement in that great audience.

The company in the pit were not very clean or sweet-savoured, but there were some good-humoured young mechanics among them, with their wives. These were generally accompanied by ‘the baby,’ insomuch that the pit was a perfect nursery. No effect made on the stage was so curious, as the looking down on the quiet faces of these babies fast asleep, after looking up at the staring sea of heads in the gallery. There were a good many cold fried soles in the pit, besides; and a variety of flat stone bottles, of all portable sizes.

The audience in the boxes was of much the same character (babies and fish excepted) as the audience in the pit. A private in the Foot Guards sat in the next box; and a personage who wore pins on his coat instead of buttons, and was in such a damp habit of living as to be quite mouldy, was our nearest neighbour. In several parts of the house we noticed some young pickpockets of our acquaintance; but as they were evidently there as private individuals, and not in their public capacity, we were little disturbed by their presence. For we consider the hours of idleness passed by this class of society as so much gain to society at large; and we do not join in a whimsical sort of lamentation that is generally made over them, when they are found to be unoccupied.

As we made these observations the curtain rose, and we were presently in possession of the following particulars.

Sir George Elmore, a melancholy Baronet with every appearance of being in that advanced stage of indigestion in which Mr. Morrison’s patients usually are, when they happen to hear, through Mr. Moat, of the surprising effects of his Vegetable Pills, was found to be living in a very large castle, in the society of one round table, two chairs, and Captain George Elmore, ‘his supposed son, the Child of Mystery, and the Man of Crime.’ The Captain, in addition to an undutiful habit of bullying his father on all occasions, was a prey to many vices: foremost among which may be mentioned his desertion of his wife, ‘Estella de Neva, a Spanish lady,’ and his determination unlawfully to possess himself of May Morning; M. M. being then on the eve of marriage to Will Stanmore, a cheerful sailor, with very loose legs.

The strongest evidence, at first, of the Captain’s being the Child of Mystery and the Man of Crime was deducible from his boots, which, being very high and wide, and apparently made of sticking-plaister, justified the worst theatrical suspicions to his disadvantage. And indeed he presently turned out as ill as could be desired: getting into May Morning’s Cottage by the window after dark; refusing to ‘unhand’ May Morning when required to do so by that lady; waking May Morning’s only surviving parent, a blind old gentleman with a black ribbon over his eyes, whom we shall call Mr. Stars, as his name was stated in the bill thus * * * * * *; and showing himself desperately bent on carrying off May Morning by force of arms. Even this was not the worst of the Captain; for, being foiled in his diabolical purpose—temporarily by means of knives and pistols, providentially caught up and directed at him by May Morning, and finally, for the time being, by the advent of Will Stanmore—he caused one Slink, his adherent, to denounce Will Stanmore as a rebel, and got that cheerful mariner carried off, and shut up in prison. At about the same period of the Captain’s career, there suddenly appeared in his father’s castle, a dark complexioned lady of the name of Manuella, ‘a Zingara Woman from the Pyrenean mountains; the wild wanderer of the heath, and the pronouncer of the prophecy,’ who threw the melancholy baronet, his supposed father, into the greatest confusion by asking him what he had upon his conscience, and by pronouncing mysterious rhymes concerning the Child of Mystery and the Man of Crime, to a low trembling of fiddles. Matters were in this state when the Theatre resounded with applause, and Mr. Whelks fell into a fit of unbounded enthusiasm, consequent on the entrance of ‘Michael the Mendicant.’

At first we referred something of the cordiality with which Michael the Mendicant was greeted, to the fact of his being ‘made up’ with an excessively dirty face, which might create a bond of union between himself and a large majority of the audience. But it soon came out that Michael the Mendicant had been hired in old time by Sir George Elmore, to murder his (Sir George Elmore’s) elder brother—which he had done; notwithstanding which little affair of honour, Michael was in reality a very good fellow; quite a tender-hearted man; who, on hearing of the Captain’s determination to settle Will Stanmore, cried out, ‘What! more bel-ood!’ and fell flat—overpowered by his nice sense of humanity. In like manner, in describing that small error of judgment into which he had allowed himself to be tempted by money, this gentleman exclaimed, ‘I ster-ruck him down, and fel-ed in er-orror!’ and further he remarked, with honest pride, ‘I have liveder as a beggar—a roadersider vaigerant, but no ker-rime since then has stained these hands!’ All these sentiments of the worthy man were hailed with showers of applause; and when, in the excitement of his feelings on one occasion, after a soliloquy, he ‘went off’ on his back, kicking and shuffling along the ground, after the manner of bold spirits in trouble, who object to be taken to the station-house, the cheering was tremendous.

And to see how little harm he had done, after all! Sir George Elmore’s elder brother was NOT dead. Not he! He recovered, after this sensitive creature had ‘fel-ed in er-orror,’ and, putting a black ribbon over his eyes to disguise himself, went and lived in a modest retirement with his only child. In short, Mr. Stars was the identical individual! When Will Stanmore turned out to be the wrongful Sir George Elmore’s son, instead of the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, who turned out to be Michael’s son, (a change having been effected, in revenge, by the lady from the Pyrenean Mountains, who became the Wild Wanderer of the Heath, in consequence of the wrongful Sir George Elmore’s perfidy to her and desertion of her), Mr. Stars went up to the Castle, and mentioned to his murdering brother how it was. Mr. Stars said it was all right; he bore no malice; he had kept out of the way, in order that his murdering brother (to whose numerous virtues he was no stranger) might enjoy the property; and now he would propose that they should make it up and dine together. The murdering brother immediately consented, embraced the Wild Wanderer, and it is supposed sent instructions to Doctors’ Commons for a license to marry her. After which, they were all very comfortable indeed. For it is not much to try to murder your brother for the sake of his property, if you only suborn such a delicate assassin as Michael the Mendicant!

All this did not tend to the satisfaction of the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, who was so little pleased by the general happiness, that he shot Will Stanmore, now joyfully out of prison and going to be married directly to May Morning, and carried off the body, and May Morning to boot, to a lone hut. Here, Will Stanmore, laid out for dead at fifteen minutes past twelve, P.M., arose at seventeen minutes past, infinitely fresher than most daisies, and fought two strong men single-handed. However, the Wild Wanderer, arriving with a party of male wild wanderers, who were always at her disposal—and the murdering brother arriving arm-in-arm with Mr. Stars—stopped the combat, confounded the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, and blessed the lovers.

The adventures of ‘Red Riven the Bandit’ concluded the moral lesson of the evening. But, feeling by this time a little fatigued, and believing that we already discerned in the countenance of Mr. Whelks a sufficient confusion between right and wrong to last him for one night, we retired: the rather as we intended to meet him, shortly, at another place of dramatic entertainment for the people.

AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MADLLE CLAIRON.

The occurrence related in the letter which we are about to quote, is a remarkable instance of those apparently supernatural visitations which it has been found so difficult (if not impossible) to explain and account for. It does not appear to have been known to Scott, Brewster, or any other English writer who has collected and endeavoured to expound those ghostly phenomena.

Clairon was the greatest tragedian that ever appeared on the French stage; holding on it a supremacy similar to that of Siddons on our own. She was a woman of powerful intellect, and had the merit of effecting a complete revolution in the French school of tragic acting; substituted an easy, varied, and natural delivery for the stilted and monotonous declamation which had till then prevailed, and being the first to consult classic taste and propriety of costume. Her mind was cultivated by habits of intimacy with the most distinguished men of her day; and she was one of the most brilliant ornaments of those literary circles which the contemporary Memoir writers describe in such glowing colours. In an age of corruption, unparalleled in modern times, Mademoiselle Clairon was not proof against the temptations to which her position exposed her. But a lofty spirit, and some religious principles, which she retained amidst a generation of infidels and scoffers, saved her from degrading vices, and enabled her to spend an old age protracted beyond the usual period of human life, in respectability and honour.

She died in 1803, at the age of eighty. She was nearly seventy when the following letter was written. It was addressed to M. Henri Meister, a man of some eminence among the literati of that period; the associate of Diderot, Grimm, D’Holbach, M. and Madame Necker, &c., and the collaborateur of Grimm in his famous ‘Correspondence.’ This gentleman was Clairon’s ‘literary executor;’ having been intrusted with her Memoirs, written by herself, and published after her death.

With this preface we give Mademoiselle Clairon’s narrative, written in her old age, of an occurrence which had taken place half a century before.

‘In 1743, my youth, and my success on the stage, had drawn round me a good many admirers. M. de S——, the son of a merchant in Brittany, about thirty years old, handsome, and possessed of considerable talent, was one of those who were most strongly attached to me. His conversation and manners were those of a man of education and good society, and the reserve and timidity which distinguished his attention made a favourable impression on me. After a green-room acquaintance of sometime I permitted him to visit me at my house, but a better knowledge of his situation and character was not to his advantage. Ashamed of being only a bourgeois, he was squandering his fortune at Paris under an assumed title. His temper was severe and gloomy; he knew mankind too well, he said, not to despise and avoid them. He wished to see no one but me, and desired from me, in return, a similar sacrifice of the world. I saw, from this time, the necessity, for his own sake as well as mine, of destroying his hopes by reducing our intercourse to terms of less intimacy. My behaviour brought upon him a violent illness, during which I showed him every mark of friendly interest, but firmly refused to deviate from the course I had adopted. My steadiness only deepened his wound; and unhappily, at this time, a treacherous relative, to whom he had intrusted the management of his affairs, took advantage of his helpless condition by robbing him, and leaving him so destitute that he was obliged to accept the little money I had, for his subsistence, and the attendance which his condition required. You must feel, my dear friend, the importance of never revealing this secret. I respect his memory, and I would not expose him to the insulting pity of the world. Preserve, then, the religious silence which after many years I now break for the first time.

‘At length he recovered his property, but never his health; and thinking I was doing him a service by keeping him at a distance from me, I constantly refused to receive either his letters or his visits.

‘Two years and a half elapsed between this period and that of his death. He sent to beg me to see him once more in his last moments, but I thought it necessary not to comply with his wish. He died, having with him only his domestics, and an old lady, his sole companion for a long time. He lodged at that time on the Rempart, near the Chaussée d’Antin; I resided in the Rue de Bussy, near the Abbaye St. Germain. My mother lived with me; and that night we had a little party to supper. We were very gay, and I was singing a lively air, when the clock struck eleven, and the sound was succeeded by a long and piercing cry of unearthly horror. The company looked aghast; I fainted, and remained for a quarter of an hour totally insensible. We then began to reason about the nature of so frightful a sound, and it was agreed to set a watch in the street in case it were repeated.

‘It was repeated very often. All our servants, my friends, my neighbours, even the police, heard the same cry, always at the same hour, always proceeding from under my windows, and appearing to come from the empty air. I could not doubt that it was meant entirely for me. I rarely supped abroad; but the nights I did so, nothing was heard; and several times, when I came home, and was asking my mother and servants if they had heard anything, it suddenly burst forth, as if in the midst of us. One night, the President de B——, at whose house I had supped, desired to see me safe home. While he was bidding me “good night” at my door, the cry broke out seemingly from something between him and me. He, like all Paris, was aware of the story; but he was so horrified, that his servants lifted him into his carriage more dead than alive.

‘Another time, I asked my comrade Rosely to accompany me to the Rue St. Honoré, to choose some stuffs, and then to pay a visit to Mademoiselle de St. P——, who lived near the Porte Saint-Denis. My ghost story (as it was called) was the subject of our whole conversation. This intelligent young man was struck by my adventure, though he did not believe there was anything supernatural in it. He pressed me to evoke the phantom, promising to believe if it answered my call. With weak audacity I complied, and suddenly the cry was heard three times with fearful loudness and rapidity. When we arrived at our friend’s door both of us were found senseless in the carriage.

‘After this scene, I remained for some months without hearing anything. I thought it was all over; but I was mistaken.

‘All the public performances had been transferred to Versailles on account of the marriage of the Dauphin. We were to pass three days there, but sufficient lodgings were not provided for us. Madame Grandval had no apartment; and I offered to share with her the room with two beds which had been assigned to me in the avenue of St. Cloud. I gave her one of the beds and took the other. While my maid was undressing to lie down beside me, I said to her, “We are at the world’s end here, and it is dreadful weather; the cry would be somewhat puzzled to get at us.” In a moment it rang through the room. Madame Grandval ran in her night-dress from top to bottom of the house, in which nobody closed an eye for the rest of the night. This, however, was the last time the cry was heard.

‘Seven or eight days afterwards, while I was chatting with my usual evening circle, the sound of the clock striking eleven was followed by the report of a gun fired at one of the windows. We all heard the noise, we all saw the fire, yet the window was undamaged. We concluded that some one sought my life, and that it was necessary to take precautions against another attempt. The Intendant des Menus Plaisirs, who was present, flew to the house of his friend, M. de Marville, the Lieutenant of Police. The houses opposite mine were instantly searched, and for several days were guarded from top to bottom. My house was closely examined; the street was filled with spies in all possible disguises. But, notwithstanding all this vigilance, the same explosion was heard and seen for three whole months always at the same hour, and at the same window-pane, without any one being able to discover from whence it proceeded. This fact stands recorded in the registers of the police.

‘Nothing was heard for some days; but, having been invited by Mademoiselle Dumesnil [1] to join a little evening party at her house near the Barrière blanche, I got into a hackney-coach at eleven o’clock with my maid. It was clear moonlight as we passed along the Boulevards, which were then beginning to be studded with houses. While we were looking at the half-finished buildings, my maid said, “Was it not in this neighbourhood that M. de S—— died?” “From what I have heard,” I answered, “I think it should be there”—pointing with my finger to a house before us. From that house came the same gunshot that I had heard before. It seemed to traverse our carriage, and the coachman set off at full speed, thinking we were attacked by robbers. We arrived at Mademoiselle Dumesnil’s in a state of the utmost terror; a feeling I did not get rid of for a long time.’

[Mademoiselle Clairon gives some further details similar to the above, and adds that the noises finally ceased in about two years and a half. After this, intending to change her residence, she put up a bill on the house she was leaving; and many people made the pretext of looking at the apartments an excuse for gratifying their curiosity to see, in her every-day guise, the great tragedian of the Théâtre Français.]

‘One day I was told that an old lady desired to see my rooms. Having always had a great respect for the aged, I went down to receive her. An unaccountable emotion seized me on seeing her, and I perceived that she was moved in a similar manner. I begged her to sit down, and we were both silent for some time. At length she spoke, and, after some preparation, came to the subject of her visit.

‘“I was, mademoiselle, the best friend of M. de S——, and the only friend whom he would see during the last year of his life. We spoke of you incessantly; I urging him to forget you,—he protesting that he would love you beyond the tomb. Your eyes which are full of tears allow me to ask you why you made him so wretched; and how, with such a mind and such feelings as yours, you could refuse him the consolation of once more seeing and speaking to you?”

‘“We cannot,” I answered, “command our sentiments. M. de S—— had merit and estimable qualities; but his gloomy, bitter, and overbearing temper made me equally afraid of his company, his friendship, and his love. To make him happy, I must have renounced all intercourse with society, and even the exercise of my talents. I was poor and proud; I desire, and hope I shall ever desire, to owe nothing to any one but myself. My friendship for him prompted me to use every endeavour to lead him to more just and reasonable sentiments: failing in this, and persuaded that his obstinacy proceeded less from the excess of his passion than from the violence of his character, I took the firm resolution to separate from him entirely. I refused to see him in his last moments, because the sight would have rent my heart; because I feared to appear too barbarous if I remained inflexible, and to make myself wretched if I yielded. Such, madame, are the motives of my conduct,—motives for which, I think, no one can blame me.”

‘“It would indeed,” said the lady, “be unjust to condemn you. My poor friend himself in his reasonable moments acknowledged all that he owed you. But his passion and his malady overcame him, and your refusal to see him hastened his last moments. He was counting the minutes, when at half-past ten, his servant came to tell him that decidedly you would not come. After a moment’s silence, he took me by the hand with a frightful expression of despair. ‘Barbarous woman!’ he cried; ‘but she will gain nothing by her cruelty. As I have followed her in life, I shall follow her in death!’ I endeavoured to calm him;—he was dead.”

‘I need scarcely tell you, my dear friend, what effect these last words had upon me. Their analogy to all my apparitions filled me with terror, but time and reflection calmed my feelings. The consideration that I was neither the better nor the worse for all that had happened to me, have led me to ascribe it all to chance. I do not, indeed, know what chance is; but it cannot be denied that the something which goes by that name has a great influence on all that passes in the world.

‘Such is my story; do with it what you will. If you intend to make it public, I beg you to suppress the initial letter of the name, and the name of the province.’

This last injunction was not, as we see, strictly complied with; but, at the distance of half a century, the suppression of a name was probably of little consequence.

There is no reason to doubt the entire truth of Mademoiselle Clairon’s narrative. The incidents which she relates made such a deep and enduring impression on her mind, that it remained uneffaced during the whole course of her brilliant career, and, almost at the close of a long life spent in the bustle and business of the world, inspired her with solemn and religious thoughts. Those incidents can scarcely be ascribed to delusions of her imagination; for she had a strong and cultivated mind, not likely to be influenced by superstitious credulity; and besides, the mysterious sounds were heard by others as well as herself, and had become the subject of general conversation in Paris. The suspicion of a trick or conspiracy never seems to have occurred to her, though such a supposition is the only way in which the circumstances can be explained; and we are convinced that this explanation, though not quite satisfactory in every particular, is the real one. Several portentous occurrences, equally or more marvellous, have thus been accounted for.

Our readers remember the history of the Commissioners of the Roundhead Parliament for the sequestration of the royal domains, who were terrified to death, and at last fairly driven out of the Palace of Woodstock, by a series of diabolical sounds and sights, which were long afterwards discovered to be the work of one of their own servants, Joe Tomkins by name, a loyalist in the disguise of a puritan. The famous ‘Cock-lane Ghost,’ which kept the town in agitation for months, and baffled the penetration of multitudes of the divines, philosophers, and literati of the day, was a young girl of some eleven or twelve years old, whose mysterious knockings were produced by such simple means, that their remaining so long undetected is the most marvellous part of the story. This child was the agent of a conspiracy formed by her father, with some confederates, to ruin the reputation of a gentleman by means of pretended revelations from the dead. For this conspiracy these persons were tried, and the father, the most guilty party, underwent the punishment of the pillory.

A more recent story is that of the ‘Stockwell Ghost,’ which forms the subject of a volume published in 1772, and is shortly told by Mr. Hone in the first volume of his ‘Every Day Book.’ Mrs. Golding, an elderly lady residing at Stockwell, in Surrey, had her house disturbed by portents, which not only terrified her and her family, but spread alarm through the vicinity. Strange noises were heard proceeding from empty parts of the house, and heavy articles of furniture, glass and earthenware, were thrown down and broken in pieces before the eyes of the family and neighbours. Mrs. Golding, driven by terror from her own dwelling, took refuge, first in one neighbouring house, and then in another, and thither the prodigies followed her. It was observed that her maid-servant, Ann Robinson, was always present when these things took place, either in Mrs. Golding’s own house, or in those of the neighbours. This girl, who had lived only about a week with her mistress, became the subject of mistrust and was dismissed, after which the disturbances entirely ceased. But the matter rested on mere suspicion. ‘Scarcely any one,’ says Mr. Hone, ‘who lived at that time listened patiently to the presumption, or without attributing the whole to witchcraft.’ At length Mr. Hone himself obtained a solution of the mystery from a gentleman who had become acquainted with Ann Robinson many years after the affair happened, and to whom she had confessed that she alone had produced all these supernatural horrors, by fixing wires or horse-hairs to different articles, according as they were heavy or light, and thus throwing them down, with other devices equally simple, which the terror and confusion of the spectators prevented them from detecting. The girl began these tricks to forward some love affair, and continued them for amusement when she saw the effect they produced.

Remembering these cases, we can have little doubt that Mademoiselle Clairon’s maid was the author of the noises which threw her mistress and her friends into such consternation. Her own house was generally the place where these things happened; and on the most remarkable occasions where they happened elsewhere, it is expressly mentioned that the maid was present. At St. Cloud it was to the maid, who was her bed-fellow, that Clairon was congratulating herself on being out of the way of the cry, when it suddenly was heard in the very room. She had her maid in the carriage with her on the Boulevards, and it was immediately after the girl had asked her a question about the death of M. de S—— that the gunshot was heard, which seemed to traverse the carriage. Had the maid a confederate—perhaps her fellow-servant on the box—to whom she might have given the signal? When Mademoiselle Clairon went a-shopping to the Rue St. Honoré, she probably had her maid with her, either in or outside the carriage; and, indeed, in every instance the noises took place when the maid would most probably have been present, or close at hand. In regard to the unearthly cry, she might easily have produced it herself without any great skill in ventriloquism, or the art of imitating sounds; a supposition which is rendered the more probable, as its realisation was rendered the more easy, by the fact of no words having been uttered—merely a wild cry. Most of the common itinerant ventriloquists on our public race-courses can utter speeches for an imaginary person without any perceptible motion of the lips; the utterance of a mere sound in this way would be infinitely less difficult.

The noises resembling the report of firearms (very likely to have been unconsciously, and in perfect good faith, exaggerated by the terror of the hearers) may have been produced by a confederate fellow-servant, or a lover. It is to be observed, that the first time this seeming report was heard, the houses opposite were guarded by the police, and spies were placed in the street, but Mademoiselle Clairon’s own house was merely ‘examined.’ It is evident that these precautions, however effectual against a plot conducted from without, could have no effect whatever against tricks played within her house by one or more of her own servants.

As to the maid-servant’s motives for engaging in this series of deceptions, many may have existed and been sufficiently strong; the lightest, which we shall state last, would probably be the strongest. She may have been in communication with M. de S——’s relations for some hidden purpose which never was effected. How far this circumstance may be connected with the date of the first portent, the very night of the young man’s death, or whether that coincidence was simply accidental, is matter for conjecture. The old lady, his relative, who afterwards visited Clairon, and told her a tale calculated to fill her with superstitious dread, may herself have been the maid-servant’s employer for some similar purpose; or (which is at least equally probable) the tale may have had nothing whatever to do with the sound, and may have been perfectly true. But all experience in such cases assures us that the love of mischief, or the love of power, and the desire of being important, would be sufficient motives to the maid for such a deception. The more frightened Clairon was, the more necessary and valuable her maid became to her, naturally. A thousand instances of long-continued deception on the part of young women, begun in mere folly, and continued for the reasons just mentioned, though continued at an immense cost of trouble, resolution, and self-denial in all other respects, are familiar to most readers of strange transactions, medical and otherwise. There seem to be strong grounds for the conclusion that the maid was the principal, if not the sole agent in this otherwise supernatural part of this remarkable story.

THE WAYSIDE WELL.

O! The pretty wayside well,
Wreathed about with roses,
Where, beguiled with soothing spell,
Weary foot reposes.

With a welcome fresh and green,
Wave thy border grasses,
By the dusty traveller seen,
Sighing as he passes.

Treads the drover on thy sward,
Comes the beggar to thee,
Free as gentleman or lord
From his steed to woo thee.

Thou from parching lip dost earn
Many a murmured blessing;
And enjoyest in thy turn
Innocent caressing.

Fair the greeting face ascends,
Like a naiad daughter,
When the peasant lassie bends
To thy trembling water.

When she leans upon her pail,
Glancing o’er the meadow,—
Sweet shall fall the whispered tale,
Soft the double shadow!

Mortals love thy crystal cup;
Nature seems to pet thee,—
Seething Summer’s fiery lip
Hath no power to fret thee.

Coolly sheltered, hid from smirch,
In thy cavelet shady,
O’er thee in a silver birch
Stoops a forest lady.

To thy glass the Star of Eve
Shyly dares to bend her;
Matron Moon thy depths receive,
Globed in mellow splendour.

—Bounteous Spring! for ever own
Undisturbed thy station,—
Not to thirsty lips alone
Serving mild donation.

Never come the newt or frog,
Pebble thrown in malice,
Mud, or withered leaves, to clog
Or defile thy chalice;

Heaven be still within thy ken,
Through the veil thou wearest,—
Glimpsing clearest, as with men,
When the boughs are barest!

A BUNDLE OF EMIGRANTS’ LETTERS.

A scheme has been propounded by Mrs. Chisholm, a lady to whose great exertions in reference to the emigration of the poor, especially of her own sex, the public is much indebted,—for the establishment of what it is proposed to call ‘A Family Colonisation Loan Society.’

The design is based, in the main, upon three positions. First ‘that it is melancholy to reflect that thousands of British subjects should wander about, more like spectres than beings of flesh and blood; and that hundreds should die from starvation, while our vast colonies could provide abundantly for them.’ Secondly, ‘that in England a society is much needed, the great moral aim of which should be to check crime, by protecting and encouraging virtue.’ Thirdly, ‘that the zealous endeavours of the charitable, combined with the industrious and frugal efforts of the working classes themselves,’ could accomplish great ends in the way of emigration.

For these leading considerations, it is proposed that the projected society should assist persons desiring to emigrate, by loans of money for two years or longer without interest. That these loans should be made to friendly parties or groups of approved individuals, acquainted with the character of each other, and becoming jointly and severally responsible for the loans made to them. That agents should be appointed in different parts of Australia, to maintain a general knowledge of the emigrants so assisted, and a general communication with them; and that the advances should always bear a certain proportion to the amount of the funds raised by the emigrants themselves, or by their friends in the Colonies, at the time of their making application for assistance to quit this country.

The re-uniting of various members of one family when some have emigrated, while others have been left at home; and the removal of the difficulty too often found in raising sufficient funds to effect this re-union, is one important object of Mrs. Chisholm’s scheme. And it must not be forgotten that money lent and repaid, would be lent again and again; and thus the good effected by one small sum would become quite incalculable.

It is admitted in the published letter setting forth the design, that the friends and well-wishers of the society can hardly expect the full confidence of the public at its commencement; the great moral problem being yet to be solved; ‘whether the various grades of our working classes can be trusted, or whether, with all our religious, moral, social, and commercial advantages, we are rearing rogues or honest men;’ at the same time it is understood on the authority of the projectress, that in numerous cases where private advances have been made with similar objects, the rule has been gratitude and honesty—not ingratitude and dishonesty; and that her personal experience on this point, under many disadvantageous circumstances, is powerfully encouraging.

There may be difficulties in the details of such a plan; and it is possible that many persons who would retain an honourable sense of an obligation to an individual, would subside into a more lax morality, if the obligation were to a Board. The observation is trite enough, that a number of individuals united in an association will do, without any scruple, in the name of the society, what each of them would deem unworthy of his own character; but there are two sides to this question, and it is equally certain that many persons will take advantage of an associated body, if they can, who would hesitate to cheat any single member of it.

Reserving such questions, there can be little doubt, we apprehend, of the soundness of the three positions we have briefly stated. It is unquestionably melancholy that thousands upon thousands of people, ready and willing to labour, should be wearing away life hopelessly in this island, while within a few months’ sail—within a few weeks’ when steam communication with Australia shall be established—there are vast tracts of country where no man who is willing to work hard (but that he must be, or he had best not go there), can ever know want. That we have come to an absurd pass, in our costly regard for those who have committed crime, and our neglect of those who have not, must be every day more manifest to rational men whose thoughts are not confined within the walls of prisons, but can take the air outside. Nor is it to be contested—either that where it is possible for the poor, by great self-denial, to scrape together a portion of the means of going abroad, it is extremely important to encourage them to do so, in practical illustration of the wholesome precept that Heaven helps those who help themselves; or that they who do so help themselves, give a proof of their fitness for emigration, in one essential, and establish a strong claim on legitimate sympathy and benevolence, to do the rest.

Besides which, it appears to us that there are strong reasons in favour of this emigration of groups of people. It is not only that colonial experience, acting on this side of the water, can wisely proportion the amount of strength and the amount of weakness in each group—the number of single people, the number of married people, the number of men, the number of women, and the number of children—but it is, that from little communities thus established, other and larger communities will rise in time, bound together in a love of the old country still fondly spoken of as Home, in the remembrance of many old struggles shared together, of many new ties formed since, and in the salutary influence and restraint of a kind of social opinion, even amid the wild solitudes of Australia.

These remarks have originated in the circumstance of our having on our desk certain letters from emigrants in Australia, written to relatives and friends here—to serve no purpose, to support no theory, but simply to relate how they are doing, and what they know about the country, and to express their desire to have their dearest relatives and friends about them. As the truth, whatever it may be, on such a subject, cannot be, we think, too plainly stated or too widely diffused in this country, we consider ourselves fortunate in the possession of these documents. We are responsible, of course, for their being genuine, and we write with the originals before us. The passages we shall give are accurately copied, with no correction, and with no omission, but that of names when they occur.

The first is from a man in Sydney, who writes to his brother. He ‘would like to come to England for one day and no more to see the Railways and the baptist chappel.’

If you can emigrate out i shall be able to provide for you Send me word in your next what progress you are making toward finding your way out here do not stop there to staarve for as bad as Sydney is no one that is willing to work need want i am beginning to think of expecting some or all of you out i have told you what i can do and look to God and he will do the rest for you dear brothere send answer to this as soon as Possoble that is if you can understand it but it is wrote so bad i think it will take some time to make it out.

The next is from a man at Melbourne writing to his wife:

My Dear and most beloved Wife this is the 7th letters I have written and sincerly hope this may find you and my dear children in good health likewise all my friends and acquaintances but I have not yet received one from you excepting the one Mr W brought I am realy very anxious about you particularly as I hear such bad accounts from home you are in my thoughts day and night Oh that I could see you here then you would spend the hapiest days you have ever yet spent there is not the care and trouble on your mind here as there is at home but God knows I have my share of it about you but I persevere for your benefit. My dear wife do keep up your spirits and come as soon as you can you will not have to study wich is the cheapest way to get a meal here you can judge for yourself when I tell you that the best flour is only 20 shillings the sack and such quality that you cannot buy in England the bread is the best bread I ever eat in my life and the meat very fine and no price at all for instance I saw a man on Saturday night last buy a very fine round of beef and a fine leg of mutton for 2 shillings and for all that Butchers is a very good trade here there are several Establishments called the boiling down houses where they boil down Bullocks and sheep for the fat only and one house alone will boil down 800 and sometimes a 1000 in one day this may seem almost incredible to you but it is a fact and the beast must be of the best quality sheeps heads and plucks you can have by wheel barrows full for fetching away for people never think of eating such stuff as they call it ox tails you can have for fetching away but you must skin them yourselfe so much for meat. Tea is 1s 6d lb but it can be bought for 1s by the chest Coffee is 9d lb wich can be bought for 5d but you must roast yourselfe or send it to the roasters but you can do it at home very well for every body has what is called a lamp oven here which costs about 7 or 8 shilling and you can bake your bread or your dinners at your own fireplace Potatoes are rather dear they are 1d lb but they are butifully fine onions the same price Cabbages 1½ and 2d each fresh butter 1s 6d lb and salt do 1s 2d lb Mushrooms grow very plentiful you may go and get a bushell some time before breakfast I have taken a deal of notice in the people here they do not study economy as they ought if you where here we could save money fast I am determined to buy a peice of ground shortly and I intend joining the building society but I dont know what to do untill I heare from you I am daily expecting a letter from you I know I could not have had one much sooner for I recon upon ten months to get an answer. I am still living in the little cottage and I have worked very hard lattely I dare say you will be suprised when I tell you that I have been at work as a joiner the last 3 months and I have made 3 Chests of drawers at home in my over time since for a Master Cabinet Maker I expect a winters work at the carpentering as there are a great many Buildings going on here I am happy to say that I enjoy most excellent health indeed it would be a sin to wish for a better state of health I never have had the slightest cough since I came here I have had a slight touch of my old Complant in the legs but I have got a presription which cures it directly the Chemist that made it up told me that my stomach must be like iron and my Constitution as strong as a horse to take it the doctor told me to wear flanell drawers so I got 2 pair and since then I never have it. Rents are rising rapidly here you cant get a cottage with 2 rooms under 7 or 8 shillings a week they have rose my rent to 5s I almost forgot to say that I shall have 10s monthly to pay in the Building Sosiety and 10s entrance it began in January so I shall have the back money to pay and it is expected that it will run out in six years and then you will get 120 pounds out if you let it lay the whole time there is two of them and they are going on flourishing. I have been at work at the builders now 11 weeks and have not lost an hour till last week and then I only lost a quarter which was 1s 6d but I got 10s profit for I had an infant to bury. I made the coffin after I done work that is the first funeral I have been to they never keep a corpse more than 2 days. I have been thinking a great deal about Alfred wether his master will give him his time out to come with you Tell my dear sarah that I have got a beautiful parrot for her I tried hard to rear some to send home to jane and one for poor C. but they died I think of Mr and Mrs C. and fameley very often I wish he was here to have a glass of ale and a pipe with him but he must not expect a long pipe here for they smoke nothing but short pipes about 6 inches long and the blacker they are the better they like them and you have to give ½ each for them give my best respects to him I shall always be glad to hear of his welfare I do hope it will be in my power to reward him for his kindness before long and to Mrs C. and fameley give my love to my brothers and sisters with one exception tell master he would do well here it is an excelent business here indeed one of the best give my love to my dear children. Oh that the day may not be far distant when my happiness may be more Complete by seeing them and you on the happy shore in the Province of Victoria this is the new name given by the Queen for Port Phillip. My dear as soon as I get a letter from you letting me know that you are coming then I shall begin to make up things for my selfe but untill then I am unsettled which way to act for I have saved a few pounds wich will be very much wanted to lay out and I have bought myselfe several things since I have been here that I could not do without, I have been very carefull and am almost a Teetotaler I very seldom drink anything but I will live well and I feel the benefit of it in my strength for I have lately often worked from 4 in the morning till 11 at night and dont feel half so tired as I used with half a days work but sometimes I am almost compelled to go and get a pint of beer for the sake of company as I am at home by my selfe and no one to speak to. I get very dull there is no notice taken of Easter here. I worked all day on Good friday and Easter monday the Melbourn races are thought the most of it lasts 3 days but I worked all the time and did not go to see them I cant enjoy pleasure untill you come to share it with me.

This poor fellow seems to be possessed of an appetite which must have been very inconvenient to him at home. This is his account of a light supper he had one night:

I almost forgot to say that I wanted something for my supper saturday night so I went to the butchers to get some chops and I had a pound and half of the loin 2d fine sheep hearts and a sheep kidney and how much do you think they was why only 4d the lot a fine bullocks kidney is only 2 and a very fine shin of beef 4d or 6d what will the London butcher say to this. Poultry is rather dear but it is about the same price as at home.

Finding himself not quite well, and perhaps a little affected in his digestion by the trifling meal just described, he put himself on short commons as follows:

Yesterday being sunday I took some medecin so I got 4 lbs ½ of the neck of mutton and made myselfe some nice broth and some suet dumplings the meat only cost me 4d½ I think my dear I have stated facts wich ought to cheer you up and you must consider that the sun has been clouded from us a long time but thank God that cloud I hope is being removed and our sunny day are yet to come. I have no doubt about it I can assure you I have not the slightes wish to see England again I dont know wether I told you that all sorts of clothing is much about the same here as home there is some very fine linen drapers shops here there is one thing that is very dear here and that is artificial flowers the comonest is a shilling a sprig flannel is 1 8 a yard the ladies dress very fashionable here My dear as I have nothing more to say at present I must conclude with hoping you will keep up your spirits and that you may have a pleasant and prosperous Voyage wich there is no fear of for it is considered the best voyage out of london. I shall write directly I receive your letter which I am sure will not be long.

A gentleman, who has been ordained as a clergyman of the Church of England, writes thus of Sydney at present:

Sydney is at present crowded with respectable young men,—Bankers and merchants’ clerks, artists and such kind of people, are not wanted at all, so that many of them having but small means are quite in despair. They are almost useless to the settlers and people in the Bush and can find no occupation in town and are therefore liable to every temptation. I hope you will exert all your influence in preventing such people from coming out here, unless they come prepared to go into the Bush as shepherds, &c.

A vast number of the orphans who have come out here have turned out ill in consequence of the bad training at home. They fancy they are young ladies and that they ought to sit and knit or just take a walk on the race course or in the domain, with children. They have not the slightest idea of industry, nor do they understand what household work is. All this they should be practically taught in the old country, and it would save much disappointment and misery when they arrive here.

A poor woman at Sydney, re-united to her children, writes,—

Dear Friend,

Your kind note of Dec. 4th I have received informing me that you had obtained passage to this port for my children. They safely arrived by the Castle Eden all in good health. They however left their box of clothes behind at Plymouth and I have not as yet been able to get any account of it. It appears to be lost, but as they arrived safe I do not care to trouble any one to enquire for this. The oldest girl got married about five months since to a respectable young man a tradesman, a pretty good match—the next boy is apprenticed six months ago to the wheelwright business and the next boy is four months apprenticed to a boot and shoemaker—the other the little one I have myself. My own health is pretty good, and although times are rather dull just now yet I hope that I shall find enough to do to keep along with. Many ships have arrived here with emigrants and this for a time causes rather more to be looking for situations than there are situations to be filled, but most of them go into the country.

An orphan girl at Bathurst, to whom the Emigration Company granted a free passage, writes thence to a lady in Ireland, ‘If in case any emigrants were coming to Sydney, to send me my little sisters which I left at home.’ Another sighs from ‘Patrick’s Plains, New South Wales,’ for another sister. In these cases, and in that of the wife of the good fellow with the appetite, it seems to us that a society on the proposed plan would do great service, and run little risk. Also in such an instance as the following:

Melbourne, Port Phillip

My Dear Brother and Sister

I now take this opportunity of writing a more lengthened letter than my last which I wrote in haste in which I Enclosed a Draft for the sum of twenty five pounds £25 payable to you on the Bank of Australasia in Austin Friars London thirty days after sight, which I hope you will get Safe. I also send by this ship’s Mail another Draft for the same money only to Ensure the money safe in case one ship might get lost on the passage to London and one Draft I Keep myself. I hope as soon as you receive my letter that you will not make any Delay but write to me Immediately and I hope and trust you will send me a long letter for nothing will give me more pleasure than to hear a little about you all not Omitting one of you you wrote to me for £30 but £25 is all I can spare for the present. I have been perfectly aware of the state of England Ever Since I left or I should have been among you many years since but now I have banished all thoughts from my mind of ever seeing England, the way to Say it is don’t want, for ever since I have been here I have not seen anybody in want but at the present time wages is not quite so good as they were when I wrote to you first that is in Consequence of the late Influx of Emigration of late, you say you have not left a stone unturned to try to get to me the reason is you dont understand farming nor sheep, I am sorry poor mother has met with the accident of which you Say poor Creature Mother must by this time be quite Infirm, and I am happy to hear my sister marys Child I will now say a man Thomas is quite well I suppose he cannot recollect me 20 years since I saw him, I have often thought of him when he first Called me uncle, If I am not mistaken you are the only one who had written anything to me about him I was very fond of him and my Kind love to him and I hope he has the use of his feet. I was not aware of you being married you never stated how long you had been so whether girls or boys what age, now this is unkind of you was it my case I should have told you all particulars with their age and Everything, assist poor Mother all you Can for what kindness I have received from her now think of that. It appears to me that you are all in a thriving way you four Children and your Sister Eight, as I stated in my last letter here I am Tom nobody but myself but you must Endeavour to Increase your family to the same number. I suppose your wife will laugh at me making so bold to Say so but she must forgive me and she must Say so in your next Letter to me my kind love to her and your Children and I hope I shall have that happiness of seeing you all with me before this time 12 months. I will try to make you all as comfortable as my circumstances will admit please the Almighty to spare me but I have my troubles in another way to yours. I believe I told you I had separated from my wife some years since In Consequence of her taking to Drink but she followed me over to port phillip of late since you recd my letter. I gave her another trial and I expended about £20 but all to no purpose therefore I have left her about four months since she has kept me back considerably in pocket but still I Care not, so long as the almighty spares my health how happy I should be if you was with me, but please God in the meanwhile I will Endeavour to purchase about an Acre of Land on some of the Townships so that it will at all times be your Own and a home as long as you live but at the present time I hold a Ticket for which I gave five Guineas for landed property to be drawn in a Lottery in the port philip District at present belonging to the Bank of Australasia when you take your Draft for the £25 which I remit to you ask any of the proprietors of the Bank and no Doubt they will Explain all to you about the Drawing for they are all prizes from 640 acres of land in a prize to ½ an acre as also Dwelling houses. should I be fortunate to get a grand Drawing it shall be all for the sole benefit of you and yours I do certainly expect things will get rather worse that is as far as regards wages, but at the present time when all things is considered now being the middle of winter the slackest time of year but still should it be as I anticipe, then it will be Ten times better than England as you Say you can scarcely keep the wolf from the Door but here you can for you Can and we do buy a sheep at a time from 4s 6d to 6s each oftentimes a milking cow from £1,0,0, to thirty shillings sometimes less a Sack of flour of 200 weight of the best quallity for one pound sugar 2d½ per lb 1s 6d per lb for Tea Everything will seem Quite strange if you come I must Initiate you in our colonial ways you will not be like many who arrives here strangers that know no one. I hope should you come you will bring as many newspapers as you can as also books should you have any for I am very fond of reading should you Engage with the Emigration agents to come Out you will Immediately post a letter in London to me stating the name of the Ship you will be likely to arrive in so that on her Arrival in port phillip I will come on board for you as also on your arrival here you will send a letter Directly from the Ship to me by the post as probably by that means I may get one Safe for where the Shipping Come to anchor is nine miles from Melbourne Just off williams Town. I sent you the first Draft for the £25 by mail that went to London in the ship General Palmer as I am to send by two separate Ships on the receipt of any of my letters you will write to me Immediately you will if you possibly can to bring some recommendations they may be a service to you att all Events they will do you no harm should it cause you any trouble never mind. I suppose I told you in my last Letter of my cousin Williams Death some years since the Bank here charged me £1,0,0 to send you the £25 Mr C. or Mrs C. will no Doubt put you in the way to come to me as I have remitted all I Can spare, had I have recd your letter one Month Earlier I would have sent you £40 they say farm labourers is all they want here I Say no I Consider that my Judgment and Experience of 20 years will allow me to say something on that head for I have seen persons and that many who arrived from London I can safely Say never knew what a plough was meant for untill they came to these Colonies they have made far better farm servants in all its Branches than people from the rural Districts of England who had been brought up to a farm from their Infancy and that in the space of a Couple of years in fact the Londoners is Considered the best working men in the Colonies upon an average they so soon pick anything up and they are I may say the majority of them are the hardest working men such as Bush carpententers splitters and fencers. I stated in one of my letters some years Since to Mother about me being Deaf but I am happy to say that I am now but very slightly and that in my right hear first through a Cold but this last four Months I have been at times been slightly troubled with spitting blood and palpitation of the Heart but I am under a Course of Medicine and getting bether I expect all through a cold that I Caught, Medicine and Doctor’s Charges are very Dear here all has to be paid for. I also Enclose to you the second Draft for the £25 in this Letter as also a memorandum of the present rate of wages for working people as you must expect there has been a great reduction since you received my first letter the Consequence of so many arriving of late from England but still if you was here it would not Interfere materially with you while I am alive please God to see that you and yours would be more comfortobly situated than many who Arrives entire strangers to this province.

The writer of the next, sent out as a labouring man, and then very poor, now holds an influential position at Sydney. The reader will smile at his description of ‘mean and unmanly occupations:’

In Sydney times are rather dull at present—various causes have given rise to this; the disturbed state of Europe has sensibly affected commerce. The Gold hunting Mania of Chalaforina has put to flight many small capitalists, who will ultimately return if permitted by the daring freebooters of that Country. The steady stream of immigration pouring into Sydney has brought down to a fair standard the exorbitant wages given to female Servants. For this the Public are mainly indebted to you. It would be well if possible to advise all persons before leaving home, not upon any account to hang about the purlieus of Sydney, or the other Towns of the Interior for a dislike is generally acquired in those places for a bush life. It is deplorable to see the Number of able bodied men who eke out a miserable subsistence in Sydney in mean and unmanly occupations, such as hawking through the Public Street fish, fruit, vegitables, pies all hot—and various other things as equally disreputable, whilst they could if they possessed a spark of Manliness or common energy of mind obtain respectable employment in the interior, but their Weak and fantestic minds conjure up a thousand Hobgoblins in the Shape of Blacks, Snakes, flying foxes, Squirls, Mad Bulls, and other dreaded Animals, as equally ridiculous. A man coming to New South Wales 16000 miles in search of a living and remaining in Sydney after he lands, is like to an individual who digs all day long in search of some hidden treasure, who when he discovers it declines to take it up, because it would be too burthensome to take home.

The letter with which we shall conclude our extracts, is from a convict—the only one before us, from any member of that class.

New South Wales.

Dear Affectionate Wife and family

I with pleasure embrace this first Opportunity of addressing these few lines to you hoping by the blessing of God they will find you in the perfect enjoyment of Good Health as it leaves me at present thank God for it. I wrote you a letter to you while our stay at the Cape of Good Hope which I hoped you received. We abode there one week and we arrived at Port Jackson in Sydney on the 8th day of June after a fine and pleasing voyage for 4 Callender Months wanting two days only. Nothing worth Mentioning happened all the Voyage. Only 2 of our unhapy Number was taken away from us by death. While lying in Sydney Harbour I engaged for one twelve Month and am now for the present time situated up in the country, in not so quite a comfortable position as I should wish but I must bear it for a short time, and as conveniences will allow I shall be in Sydney to work. Dear Wife You can come out to Me as soon as it pleases you and also my Sister and I will provide for you a comfortable Situation and Home as a good one as ever lies in my power, And When you come or send You must come to My Masters House at Sydney. He is a rich a Gentleman known by every one in this colony, and you must come out as emigrants, and when you come ask for me as a emigrant and never use the word Convict or the ship Hashemy on your Voyage never let it be once named among you, let no one know your business but your own selves, and When you Land come to my Masters a enquire for me and thats quite sufficient. Dear Wife do not you cumber yourself with no more luggage than is necessary for they are of no use out here you can bring your bed and bedclothes and sufficient clothes for yourself and family. You can buy for yourself a tin hook pot to hang on before the fire in the Gally to boil tea at times when it is required. And a few Oranges and lemons for the Sea Sickness or any thing you please. Dear Wife this is a fine Country and a beautiful climate it is like a perpetual Sumer, and I think it will prove congenial for your health, No wild beast nor anything of the Sort out here, fine beautiful birds and every thing seems to smile with pleasure Cockatoos as plentiful and common as crows in England Provisions of Every kind is very cheap you can buy Beef at 1d penny per lb flour 1½d per lb tea 2s per lb and Sugar at 2d per lb and other things as cheep, but this is every poor mans diet. Wages is not so very high out here not so much as they are in England. I have Nothing more to Say at Present more than this is just the country where we can end our days in peace and contentment when we meet. I send my kind love and best of wishes to you all and every one related to you and me, to your father and Mother. Sisters and Brothers, aquaintences and friends and to every one who may ask for me. I send my kind love to you all and especially to my wife and children.

Farewell.

These ‘simple annals of the poor,’ written for no eyes but those to which they were addressed, are surely very pleasant to read, and very affecting. We earnestly commend to all who may peruse them, the remembrance of these affectionate longings of the heart, and the consideration of the question whether money would not be well lent or even spent in re-uniting relatives and friends thus parted, and in sending a steady succession of people of all laborious classes (not of any one particular pursuit) from places where they are not wanted, and are miserable, to places where they are wanted, and can be happy and independent.

Milking in Australia.

—This is a very serious operation. First, say at four o’clock in the morning, you drive the cows into the stock-yard, where the calves have been penned up all the previous night, in a hutch in one comer. Then you have to commence a chase after the first cow, who, with a perversity common to Australian females, expects to be pursued two or three times round the yard, ankle deep in dust or mud, according to the season, with loud halloas and a thick stick. This done, she generally proceeds up to the fail, a kind of pillory, and permits her neck to be made fast. The cow safe in the fail, her near hind leg is stretched out to its full length, and tied to a convenient post with the universal cordage of Australia, a piece of green hide. At this stage, in ordinary cases, the milking commences; but it was one of the hobbies of Mr. Jumsorew, a practice I have never seen followed in any other part of the colony, that the cow’s tail should be held tight during the operation. This arduous duty I conscientiously performed for some weeks, until it happened one day that a young heifer slipped her head out of an ill-fastened fail, upset milkman and milkpail, charged the Head Stockman, who was unloosing the calves, to the serious damage of a new pair of fustians, and ended, in spite of all my efforts, in clearing the top rail of the stock-yard, leaving me flat and flabbergasted at the foot of the fence.—From ‘Scenes in the Life of a Bushman.’ (Unpublished.)

Metal in Sea-Water.

—The French sarans, MM. Malaguti, Durocher, and Sarzeaud, announce that they have detected in the waters of the ocean the presence of copper, lead, and silver. The water examined appears to have been taken some leagues off the coast of St. Malo, and the fucoidal plants of that district are also found to contain silver. The F. serratus and the F. ceramoides yielded ashes containing 1-100000th, while the water of the sea contained but little more than 1-100000000th. They state also that they find silver in sea-salt, in ordinary muriatic acid, and in the soda of commerce; and that they have examined the rock-salt of Lorraine, in which also they discover this metal. Beyond this, pursuing their researches on terrestrial plants, they have obtained such indications as leave no doubt of the existence of silver in vegetable tissues. Lead is said to be always found in the ashes of marine plants, usually about an 18-100000th part—and invariably a trace of copper. Should these results be confirmed by further examination, we shall have advanced considerably towards a knowledge of the phenomena of the formation of mineral veins.—Athenæum.

Published at the Office, No. 16. Wellington Street North, Strand; and Printed by Bradbury & Evans, Whitefriars, London.

Footnotes:

1. 1. The celebrated tragedian. 1.

Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Perceived typos have been silently corrected, while archaic or variant spelling and punctuation have been retained.

The above excludes the section ‘A Bundle of Emigrants’ Letters’, in which all potential errors were retained, as the number of contributing authors made it challenging to separate genuine errors from individual spelling habits.

The totals in the table ‘Feb. 14th, 1850.’ are inaccurate in the original text, and this has been retained.

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Table of Contents

- Household Words. Nº. 1.

- A PRELIMINARY WORD.

- LIZZIE LEIGH. IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

- VALENTINE’S DAY AT THE POST-OFFICE.

- ABRAHAM AND THE FIRE-WORSHIPPER. A Dramatic Parable.

- THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.

- AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MADLLE CLAIRON.

- THE WAYSIDE WELL.

- A BUNDLE OF EMIGRANTS’ LETTERS.

- Milking in Australia.

- Metal in Sea-Water.

- Footnotes:

- Transcriber's Note:

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE